The Missionary Review of the World — May 1939
1939
The Church in Arabia Salutes You Paul W. Harrison Twenty..six Thousand Africans Converted L. K. Anderson Evangelical Progress in Brazil Philip S. Landes Experiences of a Missionary in Hainan Henry H. Bucher Saint Lucas of Allahabad Dr. and Mrs. Sam Higginbottom and Others Among the Indians in North Dakota Thomas A. Simpson Using Fingers for Eyes Lewis B. Chamberlain 25 Cents a Copy $2.50 a Year
to Remember P LA 0 W ~I ~I to Spend Next Suauner". Vacation with some
I~ I~ America'. Greate.t Tbeolopcal Teachers. May 1-3 –..,. Tenth Annual Missionary Education Institute. Third Chris- Winona Lake School of Theology, Winona Lake, Indiana tian Church, Indianapolis, Ind. For Ministers. Teachers. Miuioaaries. SwuIa,. School Workers aDd La)'JDeD May 14-Rural Life Sunday. For sug- gestions write to Committee on Courses leading to Regular Theological Degrees, Cost Reasonable 50 FREE Town and Country, 297 Fourth Ave., July 11 to August 16-Two Terms 15 Day. Each-Interdenominational ROO M S New York. Evangelical Faith and High Scholarship Combined May 25 – General .Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in U. S. A., Dr. W. E. HiedeNoH. Director Ask for free Proopectus from Dr. J. A. Haffmaa. D…. Marion. Ind. Cleveland, Ohio. copal Summer Camp, P. O. Bijou, Rev. William A. Waddell, D.D., May 25-World-Wide Day of Prayer California-including Utah, Nevada honorably retired missionary of the for ministers and missionaries. and California; Eastern (Sept. 11- Presbyterian Church in South Brazil, 13), Thomas Indian School, Iroquois, died in Sao Paulo, Brazil, February May 30-June 2-Third Biennial Insti- New York – including Michigan, 22, after an illness of several months. tute, A Movement for World Chris- New York, North Carolina and Dr. Waddell went to Brazil in 1890. tianity, New York, N. Y. Florida. He was elected President of Mackenzie College in 1914, and held this position June 7-13 – Ann u a I Conference, Obituary Notes until 1927. From then until his re- Church of the Brethren, Anderson, tirement in 1932, his time was spent Ind. Dr. John Mason Somerndike, a sec- in evangelistic and Presbyterial work retary of the Presbyterian Board of throughout Brazil. June 8 – General Synod of the Re- National Missions, died of heart dis- formed Church in America, New ease on March 14 at his home in *•• York, N. Y. South Orange, New Jersey, at 61 years of age. Dr. Somerndike was Mrs. William A. Mather, Presby- June 16-24-Winona Summer School born in Philadelphia in 1877 and was terian missionary in Paoting, China, of Missions, Winona Lake, Ind. connected with the Presbyterian died in Peiping, February 19. She Courses include Bible, Missions, Board for forty years. Recently his assisted her husband in rural evan- Text Books and addresses by mis- work had to do J,T.<ainly with Sunday gelism and taught in the Girls' Bible sionaries. Write to Mrs. C. E. school missions, Alaska and the In- School, in the Nurses' Training School, Ahrensfeld. 431 S. East Ave., Oak dians. He was the author of "Sunday conducted a Mothers' Club and trained Park, Ill. School Missionary Incidents and Exer- volunteer workers. cises," "Teachers' Manual of Week- June 20-25 – Northern Baptist Con- Day Bible Lessons," "Sunday Schools *** vention, Los Angeles, Calif. in Town and Country," "On the Fir- ing Line," "By-Products of the Rural Dr. Luke Tamikichi Imaizumi, a June 21-25-Sunday School and B. Y. Sunday School." Surviving are his Christian physician who had devoted P. U. Congress of the National Bap- widow, Edna Smith' Somerndike, two the last years of his life to the spread tist Convention, U. S. A., (Inc.) , daughters and a son, J. M. Somern- of Christianity in Japan, died at Tulsa, Okla. dike, 3rd. Sendai, December 30th. In 1932, after making provision for his family, he July 6-11 – International Christian *** turned over the greater part of his Endeavor Convention, Cleveland, fortune, about $100,000, to be used for Ohio. Rev. E. S. Greenbaum, of Montreal, strengthening the Church in Japan. a former president of the Hebrew July ll-August 16 – Winona Lake Christian Alliance of America and '" '" '" School of Theology. Winona Lake, founder of the Hebrew Congregation Ind. Dean, Dr. J. A. Huffman, 302 of Christ in Montreal, died on March Dr. Spencer Lewis, veteran Meth- Morton Blvd., Marion, Ind. 25. He was born 50 years ago in odist missionary in China, died at Poland. After his conversion he Chengtu, February 15th, at the age July 22-28-Baptist World Congress. studied theology in America and was of 85. He had served in China 58 Atlanta, Ga. ordained to the Christian ministry in years and after his retirement in 1929 1917. remained in semi~ctive service until July 24-August 2-World Conference his death. of Christian Youth, Amsterdam, Rev. Martin *Eric* E*kvall, for forty- Holland. '" '" '" six years a missionary in China under Aug. 5-10-Ninth Quadrennial Con- the Christian and Missionary Alliance, Mrs. W. T. Larimer, formerly a sec- vention of the Woman's Home and died on January 6 at Hangkow, retary of the Presbyterian Board for Foreign Missionary Sdciety of Af- China. Mr. Ekvall was born in Christ- Freedmen, died February 15. She rican Methodist Episcopal Zion dala, Sweden, on July 26, 1866. His retired as secretary in 1928 but con- Church, Detroit, Mich. parents emigrated from Sweden in tinued to serve in the Pittsburgh Pres- 1882 and settled near Manchester, byterial Society. August 13-20-Geneva Summer School N. H. Martin and his younger sister of Missions, Lake Geneva, Wis. became students at the Missionary (Concluded on Tkwd Cover.) For information write to Mrs. Paul Training College in New York and H. Wezeman, 1177 S. Humphrey were appointed to China in 1892. Withthause Ave., Oak Park, Ill. of this Co-. every *** Young People'. Society may Regional Conferences of Indian Mis- eonvertef1..into a Sghgol fot sionary Workers, held under the Bishop Joseph Marshall Francis, Bible Training! . – .. auspices of The National Fellowship oldest Protestant Episcopal diocesan of Indian Workers, are as follows: bishop in America, died in Indianapolis 1939 Christian Workers' Course Oklahoma (June 6-8), Bacone Col- on February 13, in his 77th year. Ex- lege, Bacone, Okla. (near Musko- cept for ill health, Bishop Francis A Scriptural Study Each Week-52 Lessons gee)-including Oklahoma, Kansas, would have completed 52 years of Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas; service in the Church last December. A practical, effective course in methods S'authwest (June 13-15), Ganado of Christian work and soul-winning, Mission, Arizona – including New *** Mexico, Arizona and Colorado; Pa- Send 15c in slampa for current iSsue. Mr. Edwin F. Willis, treasurer of cific Northwest (June 20 – 22), the Executive Committee of Foreign HRISTIAN PUBLICATlONSJNG Missions for the Presbyterian Church, (place to be announced)-including U. S., died February 2, in Nashville, 1502 N. Third St., Harrisburg, Pa. Montana, Idaho, Oregon and Wash- Tenn. ington; Central (June 27-29) , Yank- ton College, Yankton, S. D.-includ- ing Nebraska, Iowa, North and South Dakota, Wyoming, Minnesota and Wisconsin; Western (Aug. 29- 31), "Galilee" on Lake Tahoe, Epis-
MISSIONARY Personal
REVIEW OF THE WORLD Dr. J. H. Oldham, who has held the DELAVAN L. PIERSON, Editor office of Secretary of the International Missionary Council since its beginning VOL. LXII MAY, 1939 No.5 in 1910, has resigned in order to give more time to the problems inherent in Publication and Business Office- the relations between Church, Com- Third and Reily Sts., Harrisburg, Pa. munity and State, and the efforts that are being made to solve them. Dr. Editorial and Executive Office– Oldham was the first editor of the In- 156 Fifth Avenue, New York City. ternational Review of Missions, estab- Entered as second-class matter at lished after the Edinburgh Conference in 1910. In later years, he made Post Office, Harrisburg, Pa., under Africa his special care, and served as Act of March 3, 1879. a member of the Commission on Closer Union in East Africa, member of the 25 cents a copy-$2.50 a year. Advisory Committee on Education in Foreign Postage, 50 cents a year. the Tropical Dependencies and as Ad- Published monthly, except August. ministrative Director of the Interna- All rights reserved. Copyrighted 1939. tional Institute of African Languages British agents – Marshall, Morgan and Cultures. and Scott, 12 PaternDster Buildings, London, E. C. 1 shilling per copy, *** 10 sh!11ings a year. Madam Chiang Kai-shek has been MISSIONARY REVIEW PUB- awarded the gold medal of honor of LISHING CO., INC. the New York City Federation of Woman's Clubs for her "indomitable BOARD OF DIRE'CTORS courage and leadership in the crisis ROBERT E. SPEER, President of her native land." This is the first A. L. WARNSHUIS, Vice-President time the award has been made since WALTER MCDOUGALL, Treasurer 1929. DELAVAN L. PIERSON, Secretary *** PAUL J. BRAISTED SAMUEL MCCREA CAVERT Mary Reed, friend of lepers, at 84 D. J. FANT years of age is still superintending MRS. ORRIN R. JUDD the leper colony at Chandag Heights, WM. B. LIPPHARD India. Miss Reed's fifty years of ERIC M. NORTH work for lepers has recently received SAMUEL M. ZWEMER a spontaneous tribute through meet- ings, letters, radio talks, and by the Editorial Chat publication of a new biography. Only 10 swift days direct to Yokohama when you sail by The June number of THE REVIEW *** Empress to the Orient. Only will deal largely with the progress of 3 more days to visit lovely Christianity in America and the de- Sigurgier Sigurdsson has been Hawaii en route by Empress oj velopment of the Christian Church. elected Lutheran Bishop of Iceland to Japan, largest and fastest liner This includes a wide range of activi- succeed Bishop Helgason, retired. on the Pacific, or Empress oj ties, in various fields and by many The new Bishop is 49 years old and Canada. From California types of work. Christian work in has served ten years as pastor in the ports connect at Honolulu. America includes not only pioneering most rugged part of Iceland. in new territory but reclaiming old Frequent sailings from both ground; attempts to reach nOlI; only *** Vancouver and Victoria to miners, and lumbermen of the West Yokohama, Kobe, Nagasaki, and North, but mountains of the The Hon. Kensuke Horinouchi, Shanghai,HongKong,Manila. South; it includes neglected city areas Japan's new ambassador to the United Consult YOUR OWN TRAVEL and rural districts; Indians and Ne- States, is a witnessing Christian. His AGENT or Canadian Pacific: groes, Orientals and Mexicans, Euro- home in Tokyo has often been opened 41 offices in U. S. and Canada. peans and Eskimos, neglected rich and to Christian meetings where morning neglected poor, industrial workers and devotions are the rule. migrants, Moslems, Mormons, Buddhists and atheists. Only a few of *** these will be dealt with but all must be kept in mind in the study of Home Dr. James Dexter Taylor, of Johan- Missions. Our June and July issues nesburg, South Africa, who is now in will be overflowing with interesting the United States, is supervisor of the amalgamated churches of the Rand articles. Native Mission of the Congregational Union of South Africa and of the *** American Board Mission. Dr. Taylor has written a number of books dealing Readers have recently sent in their with race relations and missionary work. comments on the REVIEW, as follows: *** "The March issue is a splendid num- Mrs. Richard H. Soule, who origber and we certainly will use it to ad- inated the United Thank Offering plan fifty' years ago,- celebrated 90 vantage." MISS MARY MOORE, years on February 17. The annual thank offering topped a million before Secretary for the Western A rea, the financial depression. Board of Foreign Missions, *** Presbyterian Church, U. S. A. Robert B. Giffen, recently student *** pastor at the University of Chicago, has become secretary for the Univer- "I find your magazine the best that comes into the office." (Concluded on Third Cover.) ESTHER ROYAL ALTMAN, [225 ] Cincinnati Branch, Woman's For- eign Missionary Society, Meth- odist Episcopal Church.
BRAZIL – THE MONROE PALACE IN RIO DE
BY OX-CART IS STILL ONE OF THE MODES OF TRAVEL IN THE INTERIOR OF BRAZIL THE OLD AND THE NEW IN BRAZIL (See page 243) REVIB ORLD VOLUME LXII AN INTERDENOMINATIONAL REVIEW OF WOBLD-WIDE CHRISTIAN PROGRESS NUMBER 5 MAY, 1939 Topics of the Times CHRISTIAN TRENDS IN JAPAN dent is their opposition to Christ and His spiritual AND CHINA program.
There was a time, forty years ago, when Japan Contrast the trend in China. Forty years ago seemed almost ready to accept Christ ·as the na- the Boxer rebellion sought to obliterate Christiantional ideal if not as divine Saviour. The old edicts ity in China and to drive the "foreign devils" into against Christianity were no more and the boards the sea. Many Christians died as martyrs, but on which they had been posted were only found in the succeeding ten years more Chinese became in museums. There was religious liberty; Bud- Christians than in the previous one hundred years. dhism was dying and Shinto was becoming more But even after the republic was founded by a proand more only a patriotic cult. Many Japanese fessing Christian and religious liberty was propeasants, students and even rulers were turning to Christ and there seemed a possibility that the claimed, there was a widespread anti-Christ.ian Japanese nation might adopt the Christian way of life. But the Christian Church was not ready to sentiment. Governmental decrees separatmg rise fully to the opportunity with a sufficient Church and State included laws against religious supply of consecrated men, money and prayer. instruction even in Christian schools and colleges. This was a serious blow to mission work but Then the tide turned. Rationalism came into Christianity continued to spread. schools and colleges to foster unbelief in Christ and in the authority of the Bible. Materialism Today China is passing through a baptism of took hold of the people and they sought satisfac- blood which is having a refining influence. Not tion in the cultural fruits of Christianity, while only has the anti-Christian feeling disappeared they overlooked the roots. Japanese travelers in but the whole nation seems to be turning toward America and Europe brought stories of the failure Christ. Many of the national leaders are outto practice Christianity in the lands from which standing Christians and not only is missionary missionaries were being sent to Japan. The World work favored but the law forbidding religious War brought another crushing blow to Christian education in public and private schools has been idealism. More recently the increasing power of abrogated. The sacrificial service of the missionthe nationalistic military party in Japan has pro- aries in China's time of need has shown the true moted the effort to establish Shinto shrines .in character of Christ and His Gospel. all Japanese controlled territory, to promote em- But what will be the effect if schools, churches peror worship and to make national S.h.into su- and other institutions in China should come under preme. Patriotism has become a reIIglOn, .and Japanese control? military might is the only power recognIzed. Japan and Korea are both suffering from th~ de- One foreign observer writes: . termination to make Japan supreme – obedIence to God being secondary. This attitude of the If Japan should win this war, Jtahpeando, o~roroefa,mFisosrimonoasray, domI·nant mI·II·tary party in Japan is making opportunity in the Orient-China, Christian life and work difficult in lands dom- embracing a third of the human race, WIll gradually be inated by the Mikado's army. The greater the success of Japan's military forces, the more evi- closed. She will extend her anti-Christian activities from Korea and Japan proper to China, just as soon as possible.
Here is a significant list of questions submitted by the Jap- anese gendarmerie to representative minis~ers of the Chr~s tian churches in Japan: "1. Who is thIS God of ChrIS- tianity? 2. What is your opinion of the 800 myriads of gods of Japan? 3. What is the difference between the Emperor of Japan and your God? 4. What is the differ- [227 ]
ence between a foreign ruler and your God? 5. What is r the relation between the Bible and Imperial Edicts? 6. What is the difference between Imperial Commands and claimed that she was defending them-that it is time the the Commands of Christ? 7. What is your opinion of an- truth or falsity of her claims were definitely proved. The cestor worship and shrine worship? 8. What is your opin- missionaries all go "at their own risk." ion of the ancestors of the Emperor? 9. What is the ultimate goal of your religion? 10. What is your idea of The recently reported statement by the Chinese Comreligious freedom? 11. Why do you regard worship at munist leader, Chu Teh, that he welcomed the mission- Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines as superstitious? aries raises an important point. In 1927 the Chinese Gov- 12. What is the difference between the Christian spirit ernment was opposed to Christian missions in many ways. and the spirit of Japan?" To give honest and Biblical Missionaries settled down to their tasks and in a few years answers to such questions would undoubtedly lead to op- the Chinese Government came to appreciate their work. position and persecution. In 1933 in our conference on "Christianity and Commu- nism" we decided that the only thing Christians could do But if China is victorious the result will be a great vic- was to out-live and out-serve the Communist. Missionary tory for democracy, for human freedom, and for religious efforts, especially in this year of great suffering, ha:ve now liberty. The doors of international trade will be opened won the respect of this Chinese Communist leader. wider than ever before, as China will need vast amounts of everything at one time for her rehabilitation. And best SIGNS OF LIFE AND DEATHof all the doors of missionary opportunity will be opened wider than ever before, not only in China, but in Japan, IN A CHURCH Korea, Formosa, and Manchuria. Victory for China will mean the triumph of right over might. It will mean the Springtime brings new signs of life – in budliberation of the Japanese people themselves from the in- ding trees and flowers, in new apparel, and in human tyranny of their own wicked military leaders. many church services. These awakenings are Surely Christian hearts all over the world should daily peri'Odic. At the Easter sunrise gatherings in join in prayer for victory for China and her brave Chris- hundreds of places all over the United States tian leaders. Surely the citizens of the United States there were pr'Obably not less than 200,000 people should vigorously protest to their government against the present, 'Ostensibly to commemorate the resurrecsale of anything to Japan that aids her in this iniquitous tion of Christ f.om the dead. Without doubt at war, this wanton orgy of murdering innocent men, women least thirty million people in America attended and little children. Christian church services at sometime on Easter -many of them for the first time this year. How Eighty per cent of the missionaries are remain- much does this celebration mean? It is difficult ing in China and most of the mission stations are to know how much is 'Outward show and how much still 'Occupied. The Chinese Christians are show- is an evidence 'Of inward spiritual life. Will the ing their courage and their patriotism, and openly 'Outward signs of awakening continue and bear testify to the c'Omfort and P'Ower of Christ and His fruit or will this apparent life be followed by an Gospel. What can Christian missionaries do for early blight? the Chinese in this time of crisis? Much in every way. They are a tremendous force for righteous- In many shop windows in large cities there ness and save multitudes of Chinese from death are on exhibition beautiful plants and flowersand starvati'On, from dish'Onor, despair and spir- palms, ferns, lilies, poinsettias, roses. They are itual defeat. One missionary writes: the same day after day, year after year; they never wither and die; they are artificial, without In the occupied territories our first duty is to carryon. life. The evidences 'Of life in a plant, an animal, Because their fundamental purpose is humanitarian rather a soul, a church are ability to breathe, to feed, t'O than nationalistic, Christian missions cannot enter into change, to grow, t'O reproduce its own kind. Life any "scorched earth policy." As the Chinese Government is "ability to respond to environment" and is maintold the Friends: "We can do a great deal for our own tained by a life producing and stimulating enpeople behind our lines, but there is a job we cannot do. vironment. That is to care for the people behind the Japanese lines. That you can do. Go and do it." The need is tremendous It requires n'O argument to pr'Ove that the life and the gratitude of the people almost breaks your heart! of a church is n'Ot shown by its beautiful buildings, The Christian missionary i3 the best friend the Chinese by the size of its membership, by the state 'Of its people in the occupied territory have. Every missionary finances, by the el'Oquence 'Of the sermons, by the who can possibly go back should dd so, with the exception impressiveness 'Of its ritual, or by the attendance of women with small children, and even that depends upon at its services. These may all be go'Od and helpful each family's own· position and desires. Single women but they are not the signs of true spiritual life. have proved that they can carry on even under war conditions almost if not as well as men. The story of how A report recently received from a very intellisix women and one man doctor have protected 5,000 refu- gent and spiritually-minded observer in a Chrisgees from the Japanese army in one mission compound tian church contains the following diagnosis 'Of a without any consular assistance, will go down as a classic church in a small American city: of heroism and devotion. Of course, the going of missionaries into occupied territory raises the question of Amer- This church has fallen on difficult days and may be ican rights and interests. But if we hold back for fear forced to close its doors. Only about one-third of the memof those complications we will betray our sacred trust and bers pay anything toward church support; the minister's obligations to serve the suffering. We do not ask for mili- salary is in arrears. . . . The reason for this condition tary protection. Japan has proclaimed so loudly that she is, I believe, that the people do not take any interest outwould protect the rights of third party nationals–even
TOPICS OF THE TIMES
side of themselves. None of them seem to have any and gives evidence of the fruit of the Spirit in knowledge of Christian stewardship. All of the men and love, joy and peace; one whose people show that most of the women show that they do not want to hear they are truly interested in promoting the Cause anything about missions. . . . Many are strongly opposed of Christ throughout the world. to having any benevolence budget. The church does not seem to be spiritually minded. I have never heard any VOLUNTEER SERVICE elder or deacon offer prayer in any meeting-and few of them attend. There is work but no true life; the chief Are we mercenary? Does anyone say that men idea of Christian activity seems to be entertainment, and women will not do effective and continuous church suppers and such things. . . . When the pastor work unless they are paid for their services? The started a Bible class for Lenten services less than ten peo- American Red Cross, that serves humanity in so ple were present, out of a total membership of four hun- many emergencies, has had a remarkable history dred. . . . The majority of the women belong to clubs that disproves this cynical charge. It is called of one sort or another and seem to want to make the upon in times of flood, drought, fire, epidemics, church just another club. hurricane or war to bring relief to many thou- sands who are suffering and in distress or danger. In contrast to this, note the signs of Life in the Forty years ago the headquarters of the Amerrecent annual report of the Peoples Church, To~ ican Red Cross in Wasihington consisted of a oneronto. The pastor is a Bible student, an evangelist room office with one full-time employee; its list and a spiritual teacher. He is deeply interested of donors numbered about three hundred and there in missionary work and ten years ago he organ- were only a few hundred dollars in the national ized "The Peoples Missionary Socety" of the treasury. Today the organization occupies its church. Now they contribute to the support of own building and has a large staff of efficient em- 130 missionaries in eighteen different fields at ployees. But the remarkable fact is that today home and abroad. Their congregational expenses, the Red Cross has in the United States 3,700 local including $3,966 for radio broadcasting, amount to chapters with 3,500,000 members. Its 197,397 $20,410 a year, while they give nearly $40,000 a. volunteer workers are always on call for service; year to missions. and they gave last year the equivalent of more than 105,000 days of volunteer service. They This church shows activity, but also life and made garments, layettes, surgical dressings; they power. The Peoples Monthly states: drove automobiles, gave public health aid, helped in hospitals, prepared food and fed victims of This church stands preeminently for the conversion of many disasters; with free smiling service they souls, the edification of believers and world-wide evan- also collected a million or more dollars in the nagelism; emphasizing especially the four great essentials~ tional relief and membership campaigns. salvation, the deeper life, missions and our Lord's return; endeavoring by every means to give the Gospel message to Another noteworthy fact is that the efficient the Christless masses both at home and abroad, in the head of this organization, Mis,s Mabel Thorp shortest possible time. Boardman, who has been leading the Red Cross for thirty-nine years, has never received any sal- The church activities include: a missionary ary, although she works daily from 9 a. m. to medical institute for prospective missionaries, reg- 4 p. m. and keeps four secretaries busy. It is reular preaching services, radio broadcasts, Sunday markable that this organization, with all its power school with adult Bible classes, elders' and ushers' and money for relief has kept out of politics and, prayer meetings each Sunday, Warriors prayer though handling millions of dollars of public meetin~s, children's services, young people's meet- money, has been free from scandal or charges of ings, women's prayer meetings, church prayer selfish and wasteful use of its relief funds. meetings, Sunday school teachers' meetings, and monthly meetings, for converts and personal All honor to the Red Cross workers; but they workers. are not alone in this free and sacrificial volunteer service for humanity. The Christian Church and How can we expect evidences of spiritual life in its missionary organizations have a still more wona church organization unless there is spiritual life derful record. In the American Protestant Chrisin the pastor and the individual church members? tian churches alone there are not less. than two True life will be manifested in earnest prayer and million women who are working as volunteers to Bible study, in personal work for the conversion serve their fellow men, women, and children, and of non-Christians, in vital spiritual activities and to promote the Kingdom of God on Earth. These in the practice of stewardship of time, talents and women provide free motor service, sew on garmoney. Any church that is not a working force ments, speak at meetings, collect funds, do free for Christ and the Kingdom of God, is apt to be clerical work, cook and serve meals, visit the sick a farce, without effectiveness for the fulfilment of and strangers, care for children, teach Bible Christ's program.
An Indian Christian, N. K. Mukerjee, remarks that a "converted church" is one that is vitally related to Christ; one that is fruitful in spiritual children, not barren; one that lives victoriously
classes – in churches, homes, Christian associa- vited. Mohammedan converts have recently been tions, missions, jails, hospitals and other insti- able to register themselves as Christians, and their tutions. They give or collect not less than marriages by Christian ceremony are officially $20,000,000 a year to support the work done recognized. All religious faiths must stand on through Protestant churches and various Chris- their own merit rather than on tradition or force.
tian societies. All this volunteer service is ren- Iranian officials often praise Christian schools dered without publicity, public honors or material and hospitals and many send their children to rewards. These women are not organized into one these schools rather than to the government insti- great body under an outstanding human leader tutions. Sons and daughters of Cabinet and but they nevertheless work faithfully and effi- Parliament members, of provincial governors ciently, serving Christ and humanity. Their re- and other high officials have been students in ward is reaped in the lives they brighten or help mission schools. Missionary teachers are asked to save, and in the youth whom they teach and to serve on examining boards in Government ex- enlist in the cause of Jesus Christ. aminations, and serve on committees appointed While Chrstian women render the major part by the Ministry of Education to draft new curric- of such volunteer service, the men are not far be- ula for elementary and secondary schools. Re- hind. Their WIOrk is more largely on boards and cently when the Ministry of Education wished to committees, and in furnishing funds for the con- open Government nurs,ing schools they asked for duct of Christian enterprises. When to the Prot- half the time of three American missionary nurs- estants we add the Roman and Greek Catholic and es for three years. to start this work. Here was other volunteer workers, it is clear that mankind is an opportunity to render a unique service to Iran.
not wholly engrossed in the pursuit of money and Christianity in Iran faces new opportunities and pleasure. Sacrificial service is honored among all it is time to pres,s forward in the works of Chris- men-whether it is rendered in the sphere of the .tian faith and love.
State, in social welfare or the Church. Those who acknowledge allegiance to Christ are inspired by INTERDENOMINATIONAL COOPERATION His teachings and example. IN MEDICAL MISSIONS CHRISTIAN OPPORTUNITY IN IRAN Christian workers in mission lands are usually less conscious of the denOiminational distinctions The ancient land of Darius, the Persian, is and barriers than in the United States. This is attracting attention by the progress made in gov- particularly true in medicine. Dr. Edward M. ernment, in material improvements and in educa- Dodd, medical secretary of the Presbyterian tion. The Shah Riza Khan Pahlevi, is 'absolute Board of Foreign Missions, in his Founder's Day ruler of about nine million people. While Islam is address at the Clifton Springs Sanitarium and the recognized religion, and Moslem "doctors of Clinic, said: "It is an 'old saw' that there is no law" wield great influence, there is more religious distinctively Methodist medicine or Presbyterian liberty in Iran than there has been. – The Govern- surgery, no difference between Baptist and Episment seeks to take an impartial attitude toward copalian diagnoses – whatever may be said for all religion and Zoroastrianism, Judaism and Baptist hydrotherapy! Christianity are all recognized. Some officials are – "Most of the large mission medical hospitals in Christians or are very friendly toward Christiani- the field are union institutions in which various ty. "ASia matter of fact, (says a recent Bulletin), denominational groups collaborate. more limitations have been plraced on Mohammedan ceremonies, such as the famous. Moharram cele- "At this end of the line (in America) the Misbrations, than on Christian activities. . The sion Boards have had a joint examining office for Moslem ecclesiastics, who formerly often exer- several years in New York City and last summer cised more authority than government officials, a Christian Medical Council for Overseas Work have been reduced in number and are largely was organized. stripped of power." "There is still so much to be done, so large a In Iran today Evangelical Christians are quite medical and Christian contribution to be made in medical missions, that a life-time service should free to conduct preaching and worship services be devoted to this work. The chief hazards and handicaps today are the extreme phases of nationand to carryon evangelistic effort. Schools are alism in some countries which may in time shut even allowed to give Christian instruction to out foreign doctors, even though a country may Christian students; the government requires all not be adequately supplied with its own physicians elementary pupils to take examinations in the and hospitals. The Church at home should supteachings of their own faith. Missionaries and port and promote this arm of Christian missions Iranian evangelists hold public services to which while there is opportunity." Moslems and other non-Christians are freely in-
Church in Arabia Salutes You*
By PAUL W. HARRISON, M.D., Muscat I ~ .. – i Missionary of the Reformed Church in America ,~========================~I A RABIA is a small country, small in population good news? Everything that is recorded of His .L. at least. Three million men and women, earthly life is part of our message, and everything more or less, are scattered over a million that we know of the significance of His death and square miles of territory. The rainfall can hardly resurrection-all of His humanity and all of His exceed an inch a. year, and perhaps no area in the deity, and in their identifi,cation is our salvation.
world is quite so poor as Arabia. The drought That message we have carried to Arahia. We and the heat and the hunger have hardened the are celebrating our fiftieth anniversary this year.
Arab into one of the great races of the world. Once upon a time there was an Irishman. Some- Mohammed lived and died there, and he still holds body asked him how he was getting along. "Very the souls of the Arabs in the hollow of his hand. badly," he saia, "starvation is staring me in the Christ told us to "Go into all the world and make face." "That," said his friend, "must be very dis- disciples. of all the nations." It would be hard to agreeable for both of you." For forty-five years discover a more difficult task than this one, the that was our situation in Arabia. Our major in- transformation of the Arabs into disciples of door sport was staring our robust sense of failure Christ. But a promise was given with that com. in the face, and it was very disagreeable for all mand. "All power is given unto me in Heaven of us.
and on earth" and "Lo, I am with you all the days." But it is not true any longer. Five years ago, It is in that power that we go out to obey the com- Dr. Dame took a trip down to the Pirate Coast mand. Not with the tepid and futile feeling that and there he preached the Gospel. He did not have men ought to become disciples, but the confident much time for preaching, and perhaps he did not conviction that they will do so. Everything de- preach it very well; but Abdur Razzak listened pends' on this. If we succeed in making men dis- and walked right into the Kingdom of God as a ciples of Christ we succeed in our task. If we fail result of what he heard. It was a gift of God to here, we fail. His workers in Arabia, and we thanked Him and And in carrying out this difficult command, al- took courage.
most the most important equipment of all is a Forty-five years ago, Zaharah was born in Bah- robust sense of failure which refuses to be satis- rein. She did not live a monotonous life, and after fied with anything short of genuine discipleship. she married Mohammed, neither did he. She Human nature is weak and there are two direc- would quarrel with her husband more and more tions in which we tend to slip out from under the industriously until finally there was a major ex- pressure. The first is the wishful thought that if plosion; her husband, having patiently endured only we can provide a man with a shirt, having in many hard words and curses, would lose his it one hole instead of two, we will thereby save his temper, too. After some years Mohammed took soul. The doctors are the ones who yield here. We a second wife, Safeeah, and that made the situa- mend up the holes in a man's anatomical shirt, and tion still worse.
fondly hope that in some way this will make him Zaharah came into contact with the mission- a better man. One year we operated on three aries. She wanted something better than this life hundred hernia patients in Bahrein, and with all of disgrace and fighting and tears, but her resent- these anatomical shirts mended, the city was not ment was hot and her pride was like iron. The the least bit saved. Kingdom of God seemed very far away. But one The final interview in which Christ told us to day after a particularly disgraceful explosion she go and make disciples of all the nations was re- sat in tears in the path where she knew I would ported by Mark, and he remembered that Christ pass. Her pride was gone.
also said, "Go ye therefore and preach the Gospel "Sahib," she said, "I have done it again. What to the whole creation." We make men disciples can I do?"
by giving them the good news about Christ. What I told her that Christ would cleanse her heart of the terrible temper if she would give it com- • Report of an address given at the Madras Conference of the pletely into His hands. I led her in prayer, a word I. M. C.
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at a time. She hesitated at the prayer, "And, God, brought over to, A:rabia and sold as slaves. NOQbie I take Safeeah to be my sister," but after a little was brought Qver as a baby, and his memory bepause she said those words too, and Christ led her gins with the bitter experiences of a slave boy into His Eternal Kingdom. Now she is the strong- whose father and mother were gone; he, a rebelest member of our Muscat group, and while she lious little .boy who wanted to run away and find has nQt led an altogether monotonous life as a them. Noobie is proof, for those who, need it, that Christian, a very splendid Christian she certainly the human spirit has a strength that cannot be has been. broken and a beauty that nothing can efface. Through forty-five years he tried to, escape, and Mobarrek was a sceptic. His first wife was a blows and irons were CQmmQn, but his spirit relittle wild thing, and he at that time was not much otherwise, but they were utterly devoted to each fused to break. other. Then the twin babies came. Out of the After many efforts, which failed, there came valley of the shadQw they came alone. The mo,ther remained behind. Mobarrek never got over that. one which succeeded. At sundown while he was He tried other matrimonial experiments, and a paying the penalty for a previous. unsuccessful bad time was had by all. He became our best com- effQrt, and was wearing the manacles which are pounder, and a very splendid perso,nal friend. their reward, a wandering camel came Qver to However, to the message of Christ he seemed ut- where he was standing. Mounting, irons and all, terly impervious. The mQre he heard of the Gos- he raced savagely thrQugh the night until Muttreh pel the more devout a Moslem he became. One and safety were only eight miles away. There he night I was led to share with him some of my o,wn left the camel dying behind him, and half-crept, deep experiences. The death of his first wife had half-walked over the weary miles that remained. been a desolating experience, and its scars were Providence was with him this time, fQr he met no still on his soul. I had walked in that path too,. Arab anxious to, send him back into the Purgatory It is not easy to share experiences of that sort, .but from which he was escaping, and at last he it is in the deep recesses of our SQuls that Christ dragged himself thrQugh the gates into the delecsaves us, and in that hour of sharing Mobarrek table city. A friendly blacksmith remQved his put his hand in Christ's and has fQund in Him an heavy jewelry and the British CQnsul gave him absolute Master ever since. He leads the Muscat his freedom. When Mobarrek walked into, the group with a love and a maturity that are superb. Kingdom Qf GQd, NQQbie fQllowed him, and the two, have been inseparable cQmpanions Qf the King And Noobie. Who is Noobie? He was a slave ever since. Qf the Bedouins for fQrty-five years. He has been a slave of Jesus Christ for three. AIQng the Mik- And so, the Church which is in Arabia salutes ron coast of Baluchistan tribal raids are common, YQU, yQur brQthers and partakers with yQU in the and the women and children who are captured are tribulation and KingdQm and patience which are in Jesus.
. SOME AFRIOANS' ANSWERED PRAYERS In a sixth grade Bible class in the West Africa MissiQn, the questiQn was asked: "Men- tion sQmething GQd has given you in answer to, prayer."
The fQllQwing answers were fQund among the papers handed in by the pupils. MQt MebomQ said, "I first became a Christian, but my mQther refused to, believe. She preferred the faith Qf my father and her father. But I prayed GQd fQr two, years and she now is a fQllQwer Qf Christ." Nkoe Le'e said, "When my brother's wife died and left a small baby, he wanted me to, take care of it fQr him, even though I was just an unmarried schQQI bQY. But I prayed God that he would give me wisdQm and patience and He did. Today the baby is big and has gQne to, live with his father. I cared fQr him a whole year." MbazQng Zok said, "When I was Qn vacation, it looked as though I CQuld nQt PQssibly find work to make the mQney to, buy my school books and pay GQvernment taxes. I knew I CQuld not CQme back to, schQQI withQut these things so, I prayed GQd with all the strength and hunger in my heart and He put it into, the hearts Qf my friends and they gave me palm kernels to, crack that I sold until I had money enQugh fQr everything." Angumu Kak said, "I was IQst in the fQrest Qne night. I knew a leopard WQuld eat me be- fQre morning and my heart was filled with fear. So, I prayed GQd that He WQuld take care Qf me. Next morning, God showed me the path that led to, my village."-Presbyterian Board News.
Twenty~Six Thousand
Were Converted An Experience of the Church in West Africa ~ –<ilil By the REV. L K. ANDERSON, Metet, Camoroun I THE West Africa Mission of the Presbyterian Church, U. S. A., has had a remarkable growth in recent years. But the knowledge of the untouched thousands in the Cameroun, and the many weak members of the Church, led the Mission to plan a general evangelistic campaign for Christ. The Bulu have a word that describes it oban, meaning "a raid to capture slaves and booty." This campaign was to capture men and women for Christ.
The forces and supplies for this campaign were appraised. The spiritual ammunition was gath- ered in the truth of the Gospel, simple enough to be understood by the least educated. Messages of God's plan of salvatiO'n were printed at the mis- sion press. A strategy was thought out, flexible enough to suit the need of every station and tribe.
Then, according to traditional native procedure, advance scouts were sent out to reconnoitre. For three months the Christians became scouts, visit- ing every hut in the entire district, returning to camp with news of thO'se whO' had been persuaded to' surrender. Then Believers gathered in camps, not like slave raiders to leap into the air driven A WOMAN OF THE NGORO TRIBE by the frenzy O'f a fiendish tom-tom, nor to sweat in contO'rtiO'ns around a flaming pyre of a captive name. The headman is a kindly soul, yet he was slave, but to spend hours in united prayer. And trusted by nO'ne. He attributes his success in at- hO'W earnestly they prayed for those who had re- taining the chieftainship to Mohammedan magic fused to' hear and for the scO'rners and sorcerers! which he bO'ught in his youth. Nominally, he is a There were three mO'nths O'f calm, prayerful prep- Mohammedan, but he and his tribe are ruled by aration for the Gospel of Peace. a fanatical belief in witchcraft. For ten years the A week of preparatory preaching and visitation MissiO'n struggled against this blighting fear, the was followed by a mass meeting on Sunday morn- tiny school gaining an occasional convert to ing. It toO'k long intO' the afternoon merely to strengthen the little Christian community. Things register the names of the hundreds whO' came pro- seemed brighter at times, until the customary an- fessing their faith in Christ as Saviour. As the nual orgy O'f fiendish deviltry drove all semblance campaign gathered impetus, many marveled, and of faith from the feeble followers of the New Way.
some even became fearful of the power that had The missionary arrived at NgorO' late one after- been unleashed. Miracles were of daily occur- noon to' find the one man thought strong enough renee, unexpected conversions of those long to be ordained an elder of the church in his cO'm- prayed for thrilled the Christian communities. munity, lying on his cot bruised and bleeding. It For ten years. a little struggling band of Be- was found that two days before he had been set lievers had tried to capture Ngoro, the largest upon by the men of the tribe when he refused to town of the interesting little tribe O'f the same participate in the horrible heathen practices de~ [233]
manded by the headman. At first he refused to. who. were willing to' make a public prQfessiQn Qf tell the story but after considerable persuasiQn their faith in Jesus Christ. This meant no.thing recQunted the tale of the fiendish machinatiQn Qf less than incurring the wrath Qf the headman, the fear-stricken chief. The gQvernment census and yet seventy-nine men and women came fQr- ward, and remained to. unburden their hearts and AN AFRICAN FETISH HUT seek CQurage fro.m the leaders. One year later sixty-eight Qf these CQnverts were still hQlding true to. their pledge and came back fQr a week to. be instructed in the meaning Qf GQd's grace and truth.
This is Qne instance Qf many thrQughQut SQuth- ern CamerQun. The MissiQn hQped and prayed fQr fifteen thQusand peo.ple to' be WQn fQr the Master. By the end o.f twelve mQnths Qver twenty-six thQu- sand had been enrQlled as beginners in the "Tribe Qf God."
What is the secret o.f the power that some men have enabling them to. sway multitudes and bring them to. a saving knQwledge Qf Jesus Christ? Wherein lay the Po.wer Qf SpurgeQn, Mo.o.dy and Qthers? Is it persQnality or eloquence, ability to. appeal to. the emQtiQns Qr is it a more complete consecratiQn to. Christ? Evidently none Qf these gifts, singly or combined, are sufficient in them- selves. Some men seem to. PQssess them and yet they are only ordinary, faithful pasto.rs Qf the shQwed that the tribe was decreasing rapidly, the A NGORO WIDOW, IN MOURNING COSTUME birth rate was abno.rmally IQW and infant mQrtality was high. The cause eQuId be attributed to. flock. What causes periQdic o.utbreaks Qf Christhe filth and disease resulting frQm the immQ- tian interest and enthusiasm which often center r:ality and carelessnessamQng the peQple o.f the arQund Qne man and so.metimes result in the CQntribe. But the chief blamed the WQmen – the versio.n of many? usual scape-gQat in Africa. He decided that they needed new blQo.d in the tribe; so., on a given day, all the WQmen were herded into. a little grQve Qf trees, stripped Qf what little clQthing they had, and were made to. lie dQwn by little ditches while dQgs. were butchered. Their blQQd flQwed down and was lapped up by the pl'Qstrate wo.men.
It was to. this rite that Mbassa, the Christian elder, refused to. go.. Then he was bQund by fQrest vines and was dragged by fQrce to. be an invQluntary spectator at the disgusting spectacle.
No. WQnder that the team o.f evangelists, chQsen to. sto.rm this citadel Qf Satan, walked the weary miles to. NgQrQ with prayers Qn their lips but scant hQpe in their hearts. A little grQUP o.f Believers, led by a faithful gra;duate Qf the missiQn theQlQgical schQQI, welco.med the visitQrs, and the week's campaign began.
Sunday mQrning the little mud chapel was filled to. Qverflo.wing. AlmQst every person in the tQwn was present, except unfQrtunately, the headman, who. was away Qn a gQvernment errand. The fQur members Qf the team, led by the cQnsecrated Bulu pasto.r, preached with spiritual PQwer. At the clQse Qf the service an invitatiQn was given to all
SAINT LUCAS OF ALLAHABAD
The movement we have descdbed marked a trial and Normal Schools, African helpers of every mighty surge of a mass of humanity, turning from description, government employees, interpreters the lowest depths of sin-cursed filth to march to of divers kinds of tongues, as God had set them the heights. of a knowledge of God in Jesus Christ. in the Church, offered willingly of their time and What caused such a spiritual phenomenon ? It was strength. not brought about through an individual but by a whole army of devoted souls. Every one of them The decision of the Mission, the plan of camknew that they had received supernatural power paign, the prayers offered, and the messages to which they reacted in simple faith by fearless preached, proved once again that the Holy Spirit testimony. Ministers, lay preachers., teachers, is the only agent by whom Jesus Christ must be doctors, instructors and apprentices of the Indus- preached when He is glorified and in full control this will result in the salvation of men.
Saint Lucas of Allahabad By DR. and MRS. SAM HIGGINBOTTOM and others I N MISSIONARY circles in northern India JAMES JOSEPH LUCAS AT NINETY-ONE James Joseph Lucas was a unique institution. He was so deeply, vitally Christian. Jesus I first met Dr. Lucas on November 18, 1903, in Christ was so real to him, and he seemed to have Allahabad. I saw him last in Lahore on March cultivated such a habit of constant communion, the 25th, 1938, when I had chhoti hazrie (early that it was a benediction to be in his presence. morning tea) with him. His mind was as clear Though only two might be present to the eye, one the last time I saw him when he was in his ninetywas always conscious that the Third was there. first year as it was the first time when he was More than any other human being I have ever fifty-four. F'or many years he and his wife had known, Dr. Lucas seemed to carry with him a read "Daily Light" together, and that morning on peculiar spiritual atmosphere. When he would the train I had received comfort from the readgo into meetings, where feelings were running ings for the day. I was being sent home to Amerhigh or where things were being said in the heat ica to make an appeal on behalf of the Allahabad of argument that did not help to calm the troubled Agricultural Institute and did not feel at all sure water, Dr. Lucas by his very presence would that I was doing the wisest thing. The reading change the atmosphere. for that day had removed all my doubts. Dr. Lucas was reading George Bowen's daily selection Never have I known any other man so generous for the day and this too was a deeply spiritual and kindly in his judgment of others, even those and helpful message. who differed most from him and fought him with determination. In the thirty-five years I have known him, especially in dealing with those who opposed him, he seemed to have learned with the Apostle Paul that Love is ready to believe the best and to bear all things. There seemed to be no other man to whom so many people in trouble have gone-young and old, men and women, Indian and non-Indian, religious and non-religious. In trouble they seemed to gravitate to Dr. Lucas; there to find wise counsel. For those who were slipping and had lost their grip-to come to him meant renewed hope and faith and courage. More than most other men he seemed to know what was in man-the wickedness and deceit and sinfulness of the human heart; but he knew also One who was mighty to save even to the uttermost and so there was never a note of despair. He believed that if the wrong doer would submit himself to God, there he would find abundant mercy and forgiveness.
In the early days in Allahabad I would go, on ing for over 68 years against the principalities college holidays, with Dr. Lucas into the villages and powers of darkness. He never lost faith that where he did evangelistic work. There I gained an Jesus is an all-sufficient Saviour for all who accept insight into the physical, mental and spiritual pov- Him; he was able to strengthen the faith of others erty of the village people of India. When I dis- and now he has been granted an abundant encussed with him the idea of the Agricultural In- trance into that City whose Builder and Maker is stitute, the "Mount Hermon" on the hanks of the God. Jumna River, he could not see the need for it at first; but as a result of our discussions he was How to Spell "Disappointment" convinced that this effort would be used by the Lord Jesus to hasten the coming of His Kingdom Once in a time of peculiar stress he came over to northern India. After I had studied agricul- to the farm and found me in the barn among the ture in America and returned with him to the vil- oxen. We sat on the manger and he said: lages, I pointed out some things that were among the causes of their economic disability. "For 40 "Did I ever tell you how I learned to spell disapyears," said Dr. Lucas, "I have been going into pointment with an 'H'?" Indian villages and there was much that puzzled me, but seeing the village through your eyes has "No," I replied. explained much." "Then, I will tell you," he said. "When I was Many of the most spiritual missionaries could ready to start for India, my sister was lying ill of not understand the purpose of the Agricultural typhoid fever at our home at Danville, Kentucky. Institute. Some spoke of it as a "fifth wheel My mother had planned to come to see me off at to the coach," concerned with material things and the boat at New York, but when my sister was so as a diversion of the primary purpose of Chris- ill, she was greatly disturbed to know what to do. tian missions. Through all the heated controversy Finally the neighbors persuaded her that every- Dr. Lucas never wavered. When I was tempted thing possible was being done for my sister, so she to be discouraged he would come and put his hand left with me. We reached New York on Wedneson my shoulder and say, "Higginbottom, every day day morning and I expected to sail that afternoon. I pray for two things for you: First, that you will Mother planned to catch the evening train back continue your work, and second, that God will to Kentucky. Then the Board Secretary came and give you patience." This confidence of Dr. Lucas said, 'The Board finds that there is the largest in me enabled me to go on and work through the number of foreign missionaries being sent out at darkest days, when all I said or did was misunder- one time in the history of the Board, so we have stood. Dr. Lucas lived to see his faith justified, decided to have a big farewell meeting tomorrow, and now all over the world, whether it is Kagawa and I want you to change your sailing date from in Japan or Sir Wilfred Grenfell on the Labrador, Wednesday to Friday.' " or Dr. Alfred Schweitzer in Africa, rural missionaries the world over are seeing and understanding "At first I felt that I didn't want to do this, as the relationship between spiritual and physical I knew how anxious my mother was to return to and mental poverty; what gets rid of one is likely her sick daughter and I did not wish to keep her to help get rid of the others. The rural folk of the over. But after I prayed about it, I finally said backward countries are poor to a degree that to the Board Secretary, 'All right, I will stay.' So America knows little about. When our Lord stood I took part in the meeting and sailed on Friday. up in the synagogue at Nazareth and declared that At the Prince's Landing Station at Liverpool, news the Spirit of the Lord was upon him because he placards told of the loss of the ship on which I had sent him "to preach the Gospel to the poor," was to have sailed on Wednesday. Only one perhe proclaimed the day of release for the world's son was saved in that wreck. I was impressed by rural billion, most of whom live in dire poverty. the fact that God had intervened to prevent my Christ was ,to heal the broken-hearted; He was to sailing on that steamer as I had planned and that set the captive free; He was to preach deliverance He had a work for me to do for Him in India. to them that are bound. This is the only program Then it was that I learned to spell disappointment that is adequate to meet man's need. Dr. Lucas with an 'H'-not 'disappointment,' but 'Hisapsaw this and earnestly helped to carry out our pointment.' " Lord's program. This was always his philosophy of life when James J. Lucas was graduated from Center Col- things did not go in the way he had thought they lege, Kentucky, in 1865, from Yale University in should. He would wait upon God to find out what 1867 and from Princeton Theological Seminary in God was trying to teach him. 1870. He arrived in India in the autumn of 1870 and died in India in January of 1939, after work- It would be difficult to explain all that this view of disappointment has meant in my life. Thirty- five years of close association with Dr. Lucas has meant much to me, and many others remember him as the most Christ-like man they have ever known. He did not seek to escape the pain and
disappointment of the world but he went boldly the man condemn Wanamaker for selling poker forward knowing that where "sin did abound chips while he professed Christianity. Dr. Lucas grace did much more abound." pushed through the crowd and interrupted the speaker, saying: "Sir, Mr. Wanamaker is a friend By MRS. HIGGINBOTTOM of mine and a friend of God, and I do not wish you to say anything against him, even if he does sell The homey Indian bungalow of Dr. and Mrs. poker ti·ps I" The crowd howled, the soap box Lucas gave us a welcome many a time when my orator was confused, and Dr. Lucas smiled and husband and I were confused by the new language led in prayer. It was all so natural and sincere and the new religions, or when new joys or new that it captivated even the careless street throng. sorrows came upon us. He seemed to sense our moods, and with a radiant face would say, "I Dr. Lucas afterward said, "I did not know what found a beautiful promise for me today as my wife the man was talking about; but I was not going and I read 'Daily Light' together early this morn- to have him denounce my friend and call in quesing." The promise seemed to fit our needs as well. tion his loyalty to the Lord." For many years, whenever he married a couple, Dr. Lucas gave them the little book with the hope Once, when we were praying about Allahabad that they too would form the habit of reading it and the general work in India, Dr. Lucas sobbed and praying together every morning. like a child, muttering, "Lord, give us this land which we so love I" Mrs. Lucas, who died in 1931, mothered all the missionaries and made them feel at home around By FRANK G. CORNELIUS her table. Her courtesy and love were also extended to Indian Christians. During my first Looking always to Jesus Christ and living like year I had been sick, my servants were a problem, the Master he served, loving and kind, Dr. Lucas the language was difficult and I was ready to weep. was an inspiration to many a soul. Many years Quick as a flash a missionary friend said to me: ago I had the privilege of working for him in my "Come, change your dress and come with me to professional capacity as "stenographer" when he see Mrs. Lucas." I was an unbidden guest at a dictated to me the "Biography of Robert Stewart lunch party but was welcomed so cordially that Fullerton," and "Commentary on the Epistle to there was no chance to apologize for breaking in the Hebrews" in English. I found that his faith on an invited company. in Jesus was deeper than one could ordinarily comprehend and his life foundations were laid on Dr. Lucas, more than anyone we knew, mani- the "Rock of Ages." fested the Love which is patient, kind, knows no jealousy, makes no parade, is never rude, never By A. RALLA RAM of Allahabad selfish, never resentful (even under strong provocations); is always slow to expose, always eager We always called Dr. Lucas the "st. John" of to believe the best, always hopeful. Hundreds of our time. His face was radiant with the glow of people, Indians and Americans, would heartily a joyous Christian. His gentleness, humility, genendorse that statement. erosity and affection were so infectious and real. We used to make opportunities to seek his study Whenever Dr. Lucas spoke in the church or at a for inspiration and strength. Never did he let us prayer meeting, one heard the comments on every go without prayer. Up till the close of his life his hand: "His face shone." "His goodness glows in delight was in the Scriptures, and their great him." His daughter's death was a terrible shock promises and assurances filled his mind. Who can and sorrow, but at the funeral service he spoke of tell how much literature poured forth from his the lovely influence of her life and of the certain pen to exalt his Master as Saviour and Lord of hope of seeing her again. His radiant, smiling men? face revealed his deep faith and was the means of strengthening the faith of those who were present. By REV. JAMES L. GRAY of Jagadhri By DR. JOHN TIMOTHY STONE He "walked with God." I can think of no better way of describing the life of our dear friend. When Dr. Lucas was my guest at the Brown There was a peculiar radiance about all he said Memorial Church of Baltimore thirty-five years and did that made us all feel that he was conscious ago, he had recently called to see John Wana- of another Presence ever at his. side. To meet him maker who had visited India and was much inter- on the roads of Landour; to talk with him in his ested in the work 'he saw there. The great mer- book-lined study; to see that sHyer hair and the chant was exceedingly busy and as Dr. Lucas be- uplifted hands in Kellogg Church-was always to came tired of waiting, he walked out on the street be made aware of an utter devotion to his Master for a little exercise. Passing a crowd that was and an intimate communion with Him that always being addressed by a soap box orator he heard made me feel that God was near. The place of
prayer was to him the place where "he took off By MR. C. THOMAS his shoes from off his feet" for the ground was indeed most holy. In the quiet of his study; at I can never forget the visit I paid Dr. Lucas at the grave-side with bereaved friends, or in church, his son's house in LahDre Dn March 1, 1938. Dr. that quiet yet thrilling voice was heard pleading Lucas had been ill, but on the previous evening he the promises of God, and leading us with holy was seen standing at the gate of his house giving boldness to the throne of the eternal Father. tracts to. the passers-by. He believed in the power Dr. Lucas was always busy for God and His Kingdo.m. On his daily constitutiDnals you met of the printed page. The faith and prayer life of him with tracts and Gospels in his hand, and a George Muller of Bristol had influenced him a happy word of cheer to coolie, soldier and mission- gDod deal. His own prayer life was known to all ary. In his study he worked with patient dili- his assDciates-the ease with which he would pass gence in English and in Urdu, seeking to give from conversation with men sitting with him to form to anything which he felt would enrich his conversation with GDd. One of his two. surviving fellOW-Christians.. His outlook on mDdern mis- students whom he taught at the Saharanpur TheosiDnary problems was sane and progressive, and logical Seminary said that Dr. Lucas loved his stuhis understanding and sympathy profound. Never dents and taught them by his example how to love did his evangelistic fervor ,lag. Often his zeal, his one another. He preached love and practiced love. piety, his faithfulness have been to me, as a much younger missiDnary, a reproof and a much-needed Dr. Lucas was a Christian saint. Many of us urge and stimulus. feel that nothing can be more helpful to young Christians, Indian and foreign, than a biography of this saintly missionary.
By A., RUSSELL GRAHAM of Indore By HOWARD E. ANDERSON To come to India at the age of twenty-three-tD spend 68 years in the Master's service here-to Editor of "The United Church Review" thrDw aside the well-worn earthy cloak with glad abandon and enter joyfully into His glorious pres- Dr. Lucas was a saint of God. Of few peDple ence. What a life! What a course to' run! So can this be said with the same absence of restraint old in years-so young in spirit! So. spiritual that and the same assurance Df agreement on the part his every cDnversation spDke of an Unseen Presof such a wide circle of acquaintances, and friends ence-yet so beautifully "human"! A saint, a true as he had. His saintliness was revealed in his saint Df God-yet reckoning himself as chief of countenance, the tone Df his voice and his conver- sinners! For he gloried in the Cross of Christ satiDn. Others may praise him fo.r his achieve- and all fDr which that "stumbling block" stood. To. ments, and they were many; but in the realm o.f personal contact, no Dne can tell the number of know Dr. Lucas was to. know Christ better. To. lives he touched for the glory of God. have fellowship with him was, to. desire a more in- The saintliness Df Dr. Lucas was shown in his timate fellowship with the Master. prayers, in what he talked about, in the thDUghts to which he gave expressiDn. They were largely By DR. FRED M. PERRILL Scriptural, fDr he was saturated with Scripture. God's Word was his meat and drink. For years Editor of "The Indian Witness" he lived in constant expectatiDn of the return of Dur Lord. I presume that is what gave him such Dr. J. J. Lucas, the friend of all, was bDrn in calm and repose at funerals, yea, even at the funeral of his own daughter which he himself CDn- Ireland, August 21, 1847, and came to. India in ducted.. He used to say that we who are alive at that advent time shall in no wise "prevent" them 1870. He had finished thirty-six years' service in that are asleep. To him it was indeed a blessed India when I arrived-a fairly long term Df servhope. ice; but for him it was barely half Df the tDtal years he was to give to India. The experience of death was for him an experience of "falling asleep." He grew more and Dr. Lucas had a remarkable memory and used more tired and expressed his desire to. depart. In it in a most helpful way. He must have held many Dehra Dun, a little more than a month before his death, Dr. Lucas spoke to us about a portion of to. a worthy pitch of effort by his encDuragement.
God's Word that had meant much to. him. It was He was a man Df cDnvictions, but he believed that earnest Christian brethren could find a way to that beautiful beatitude, "Blessed are the pure in understand each other. He did not think that heart; for they shall see God." He smilingly ex- bluster and bombast were substitutes for calm and plained that the beatitudes are for the present and considerate thinking. He was a mDdern "fundanot for the future. "So," he said, "the pure in mentalist," but most of all he had a vital Chrisheart shall see GDd now." tian experience and a heart filled with Christian love. For him to live was Christ, but having lived almost a century and having finished the course and kept the faith, certainly fDr him "to. die" was gain. Who. follows in his train?
Fingers for
Cooperative Service to the Spiritual Life of the Blind By the REV. LEWIS BIRGE CHAMBERLAIN, New York General Secretary of the John Milton Society for the Blind BLINDNESS is decreasing among children but when they could see; but only a small portion be- increasing among adults in America. Better come literate through their finger tips.2 After an care· at birth, in infancy and childhood ex- acquaintance with the problem of the literate Blind plains the decrease. Among adults, however, are that began twenty years ago, through supplying not only the historic disease causes and the more embossed Scriptures to them as one of my duties recent hazards and accidents of industry and mod- as a secretary of the American Bible Society, my ern life but also the increase in longevity and, sur- amazement and admiration continue to grow over prisingly, such modern causes as "high blood the achievement of the Blind in using fingers for pressure, hardening of the ar- eyes. It involves real intelli- teries and diabetes." 1 More gence, will power, persistence, than half the Blind in the and, particularly, a sensitive- United States are over fifty- ness in finger tips. Highly edu- five years of age, and there are cated adults are sometimes 11 per cent more blind men frustrated. What of those of than women.1 small education and hardened Though it may seem para- finger tips?
doxical, it really is natural that During recent years em- reading means more to the bossed magazines and books in sightless than to the sighted. Braille 3. have been appearing The Blind are cut off from or- in increased numbers, chiefly dinary life and activities and through generous appropria- have extra time to read and to tions by the United States Con- think. It is a frequent, though gres.s. Public funds, however, not inevitable result, that their are not used for religious lit- thoughts turn to the inner life erature.
-the spiritual; and they desire How then is the spiritual help in Christian life and serv- need and hunger of the sight- ice–the "new life" that grows less being met? Inadequately and gives to others. Many thus and incompletely. The great find blindness a blessing. HELEN KELLER READING HER Protestant churches of Amer- The loss of sight has roused JOHN MIL1'ON MAGAZINE ica-Baptist, Methodist, Pres- byterian and others, from sympathy through the ages.
Christ seemed peculiarly sensitive about it and the whose ranks the bulk of the literate Blind come, Gospels record more miracles by him to cure have neglected for decades both their own blindness than any other physical ailment. In 2 It is estimated that there are some 130,000 Blind in the United America, especially in recent years, much has been States, Gf whGm SGme 25,000 can read Braille. Some tWG Gr three done by both private and public effort, to lighten thGusand whose fingers are not sensitive enough to read the small this great handicap. Braille points, can read the Moon system which, fGr the Blind, is what large type Is to the sighted. In Braille the basis Is an em- The Literate Blind bossed domino six set upright and so small that the finger tip of a child can cover It. TG the uninitiated the fact of a single unit might "Fingers for Eyes" focuses attention, not on imply simplicity, but In it liefl complexity. All tbe letters Gf the the Blind generally, but on those who can read alphabet, all punctuation marks, all capitals, italics, underscoring, all without sight. numerals are made by omissions and combinations of these six pOints. Not only must the mind register and remember what each combina- Doubtless most who become Blind could read tion represents, but the fingers must register the relative positions of these pOints. For example, the single point may occur in any 1 Report of the Public Health Service on January 21, 1939. one of six pGs·itions and a two-point combiIlation may be made in eighteen ways.
3 "Talking Books"-that Is phonograph records of books, and the radio are real boons to the Blind and are being made available by Congress appropriation in considerable numbers. However, they do not take the place of books one may read and study and ponder any more for the sightless than they would for the Sighted.
[239 ]
Blind 4 and the other Blind who form a part of the who reside in all but one of the States and in great home missions field. The relatively heavy twenty-eight other lands. This wide distribution expense of embossed printing, and the relatively is almost entirely due to the activities and interlimited number of Blind affiliated with each de- est of blind readers themselves. They have a way nomination, are chiefly responsible for this fact. of passing magazines from one to another and this diminishes the expense of circulation. The The John Milton Society foreign circulation has come entirely through the Blind them,selves. Illustrations are constant. A Realization of this neglect, and appeals of the blind reader in Texas passes her copy to a blind Blind themselves for help in their spiritual life man in the same city who then sends it to a fel- low blind Hebrew in London who eventually places RE'ADING BRAILLE it in a Hebrew home for the Blind, and reports that "they holler for more." Inmates of homes or and service, brought about the incorporation of institutions for the Blind make one or two copies the "John Milton Society," taking its name from suffice for all their members. A few copies sent to one who despite his own blindness rendered great a State School for the Blind are read by many older service to generations of those having eyes to read. pupils for their own pleasure and then are read by The Society is sponsored by the Councils of them to younger pupils not yet literate with their Home Missions, both general and women's, and fingers. Home teachers of the Blind lend their by the International Council of Religious Educa- copies to their students. A blind American mistion. Its purpose and field were defined as the sionary in China enj oys her own copy and passes supply of general religious magazines, Sunday it on to her blind Chinese teachers who use it with school lessons or Bible stUdies, and religious books. their blind pupils. A masseuse in Jerusalem gains In 1932 the monthly John Milton Magazine was refreshment herself and tells her patients what launched for adults and in 1935 the monthly, Dis- she has read. covery, for boys and girls. Both are in "Braille." In 1937 a small book of standard hymns, words Nearly one hundred blind ministers, missionand music in Braille, the first of its kind, was aries (both home and foreign), and evangelists, issued. 5 The production of three books has been acclaim the John Milton Magazine for the aid it authorized this year: "Daily Devotions," "Sun- gives them in their work and life. Twenty-one day School Manual for Teachers" and "Christmas American denominations are represented by the Carols." The two magazines are free, as are the blind ministry. Some are active pastors and Sunday school papers for the sighted; but gifts preachers and often prepare their sermons from from readers toward their production are encour- the John Milton Magazine. Some are evangelists,; aged and received. The sale of books helps to meet their cost. BLIND GIRLS USING BRAILLE HYMN BOOK The 2,500 monthly copies of the two magazines some home mis!sionaries; some retired and lonely now reach from 10,000 to 12,000 blind readers, and eager for good reading. All are grateful.
• To their credit a few religious bodies have been responding to Among nearly eight hundred letters (several this need but they are exceptions and the activity of most is quite hundred in Braille) from blind readers recently recent. Also they are all keen on their own peculiar teachings. received, about five hundred came from those who Naming them somewhat on the length of their service, they are: attend Sunday school, and of these over two hun- Roman Catholic, the Seventh-Day Adventist, the Church of God, dred are actually Sunday school teachers, some Theosophist, Christian Science, Episcopal, Hebrew and a branch of the Lutheran.
• This year the two magazines are being continued; though a long-standing appeal for a magazine in "Moon" is still deferred because it Is a recurring expense without money as yet provided. "Moon" is to the blind what large print is to those wh<> see.
USING FINGERS FOR EYES
school superintendents – a truly noteworthy English in Holland wishes its stories to pass on record.6 to his scholars.
Sixty denominations listed in the Federal The John Milton Magazine collates and con- Church Year Book are represented by these read- denses its general articles from denominational ers, some of whom are members of religious and interdenominational religious publications.7 groups not listed. What other thousands represent we do not know. Apparently a large portion BLIND SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHER (RIGHT) WITH of the blind readers are not connected with any HER SIGHTED CLASS religious organization. Many are too isolated or too physically restricted. Yet all eagerly receive Intentionally interdenominational, special care is and use these definitely evangelical Christian mag- taken to bring to the Blind, though in much conazines. They need this help even more perhaps densed form, choice articles-devotional, informathan the blind ministers and Sunday, school teach- tional, inspirational, and missionary-from variers. What a field for home mission work! It is a ous sources 7 which the sighted enjoy. The Sunday real privilege to have a share in such a service of school lessons have been condensed from those love. prepared by outstanding Sunday school workers in various denominations.s The Magazines for the Blind Half the pages of both magazines are given to The articles in the John Milton Magazine are general articles and half to treatment of the uni- varied not only in subjects to catch and hold attenform Sunday school lessons. Discovery usually tion, but in simplicity, in strength of language and has stories gathered round one theme each month, and largely from Miss Margaret Applegarth's thought, so that each issue inimitable store. The Sunday school lessons at may have a message for its present are drawn from the Methodist Illustrated variety of readers. Many tes- Quarterly. The bulk of each issue of Discovery timonies pour in, constantly goes to State Schools for the Blind which house marking the real service being most of the 6,000 to 7,000 blind school children in accomplished. Sunday school America, all facing lifelong physical darkness. It teachers say that they could is the only such magazine available to the blind not teach without the magachildren of our great land. Individual copies also zine's Sunday school lesson go far and wide. For example: A grandmother helps. One man in Alrubama in Buenos Aires receives a copy to read to her recently wrote that he had taught a large adult Bible two daughters who are Sunday school teachers; class until blindness cut him and the stories to her own grandchildren who are off. Then he learned Braille, entranced. A blind missionary in Shanghai trans- obtained the John Milton lates some of its stories into Cantonese and into Magazine, and is now back at Mandarin, sending them to schools and scholars his post. Young and old renot using English. A Christian blind teacher of port taking part in Christian Endeavor and in missionary societies, thus having 6 The exact figures are 772 letters received from Blind readers, of a share in the life of the church. A Sunday school whom 498 attend Sunday school and 222 are teachers. 7 A recent summary showed that in the past five years, articles have been drawn from 77 denominational, 27 interdenominational and 17 general sources.
8 Drs. H. C. Moore, Baptist So. (several quarters); C. A. Hauser, Christian and Reformed; M. Stevenson, Disciples; L. H. Bugbee, Methodist; E. ];'. Ziegler, Presbyterian; C. P. Wiles, United Lu- theran; Miss M. Tarbell, J. H. Snowden, G. L. Robinson and D. D. Burrell. The last four publish their lessons in non-denominational form.
teacher from Australia eagerly asks for the mag- "I keep it by my bed to read in the sleepless azine, the existence of which he had just learned. hours of the night." The custodian of a library for the Blind in South Africa appeals for its visits. A blind Japanese "I and my blind husband live in the hills of Ver- Sunday school teacher in H3iwaii rejoices in its mont where we do not see even the postman more help. A blind Presbyterian missionary giving his than once a week. What a comfort the John Millife to India, an Episcopal rector with ten happy ton Magazine is to us both." years of service in Kansas, an Evangelical Lutheran minister, executlve officer of a State Com- Such sentences are typical expressions. Many mission for the Blind, are a few of those who a touching and telling tale could be recounted from rejoice in it. One of its earliest and strongest the correspondence. The gist of it all is that they friends is an eloquent, forceful and successful are hungry souls; eager for and sorely needing blind Methodist minister whose church is filled at such help ; and they gratefully rejoice in havevening as well as at morning services, and who ing it. is in demand as a S'peaker before school, college, Rotarian and other audiences. To serve such is Sponsored by the Councils already named, the indeed a privilege. Society is helped by contributions from some Boards of Home Mi,ssions, Education, Sunday The Major Need School, and Publication. For them, however, these years have been difficult, and their contributions The great bulk of the Blind are not ministers or furnish less than one-tenth of the heavy expense teachers. Too often they are people limited in ex- involved in producing the Brame pUblications. perience and resources, isolated in country and Additional help has come from one other organizaother localities, home-bound by physical disabili- tion interested in the spiritual welfare of the Blind ties. Not a few are deaf, others are bedridden, and the Blind themselves contribute surprisingly. many have scant education and even scantier re- But it is necessary to secure 700/0 of the budget sources. To them the magazine,s, bring cheer and from individuals who are blessed with sight. inspiration, help and comfort and company. Where knowledge of this work is spread, those grateful for their own physical eyesight rejoice in "Next to the Bible it is my most treasured pos- helping the sightless in their quest for spiritual session." aid and life.
ENCOURAGEMENT IN TIME OF CRISIS Rev. C. Darby Fulton, Executive Secretary of the Presbyterian Foreign Mission Commit- tee of Nashville, says that this is a day of unparalleled opportunity in mission work, and lists some outstanding reasons for encouragement: The high spiritual purpose and morale of Christian missionaries. The courage and steadfastness of the Chinese Christians. The scattering of many believers to the provinces of West China has meant that they have carried the 'contagion of their faith into areas heretofore unreached by the Gospel. The new friendship of the Chinese people for the missionary, growing out of the helpful- ness and service he has shown in this emergency. The enormously enhanced prestige of Christianity because such great national leaders as Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, Madame Chiang, and others who are guiding the nation in the present crisis, are themselves Christians. The unprecedented open-heartedness of the people toward the Gospel, with their new long- ings for the assuranecs of faith in the midst of the uncertainties of the present conflict. The return of missionaries and the reoccupation of all our stations. The large crowds attending evangelistic services throughout the country, with many con- versions and other evidences of spiritual awakening. Thousands of Korean Christians standing fast under severe persecution. The deep undercurrent of heart-hunger among the people of Japan. The bond of fellowship that remains unbroken between Japanese and Chinese Christians. The wide open doors in Africa and Brazil.
Progress i11
By REV. PHILIP S. LANDES, Sao Paulo Missionary of the Presbyterian Church, U. S. A., 1912- BRAZIL is, a land of great possibilities and tious and spiritually destitute. With the advent great opportunities. Among the countries of Protestant missions this situation began to be of South America, this republic occupies the changed. first place in territorial extent, population and nat- As soon as Protestant missionaries landed in ural resources. It is larger than the United Brazil, they began distrihuting the Scriptures and States (exclusive of Alaska), covering half the preaching the saving truths which they contain.
map of South America. Thus a new era dawned for the people. From the Within its bounds are vast tracts of undeveloped independence of Brazil in 1822 to the year 1936 land available for the support of human life. The about ten million copies of the Scriptures or por- greater part of the world's supply of coffee is tions of them were distributed by national work- grown in Brazil which could, if necessary, furnish ers and misslionaries.
the world with cotton and foodstuffs such as The Rev. Ashbel G. Simonton, the first Presby- manioc, corn, rice, beans, cacao, sugar, tropica1 terian missiona.ry to Brazil, began work in Rio de fruits and many other agricultural products. Janeiro in 1859. He was a man of broad vision Brazil possesses abundant water-power, vast and statesmanship and laid solid foundations for forests, extensive grazing fields, immense deposits the development of a strong national Church. The of iron and manganese, rubber of the best qual- plan adopted for the development of the work fol- ity, many medicinal plants and a great variety of lowed the lines of the missionary purpose; to win other natural products. These vast resources, men to Christ, to train them for Christian service still mostly undeveloped, are an indication of the and to organize them into churches which should great future which lies before the greatest of our become self-propagating, self-supporting and self- sister republics in the Western Hemisphere. Bra- governing. After eighty years of work, there is zil has a population of forty-five million, but, if it in Brazil a strong national Church, carrying on were as densely populated as the State of New its work independently of foreign control and Jersey, it would contain a population of more than support.
a billion and six hundred million people. The beginnings of missionary work in Brazil A question of vital importance to all of the were characterized by the conversion of individ- American republics, as well as to all Christians, uals who formed the nucleus of the Church.
is this: will Brazil, the greatest of all Latin Amer- Among those won to Christ in this initial period, ican countries, remain democratic or will she join the most notable was a Roman Catholic priest, the "totalitarian states," placing nationalism Rev. Jose Manoel da Concei~ao who was, attracted above God and freedom of worship? The peace to evangelical Christianity by the honesty of the and destiny of the entire Western Hemisphere members of the new sect. He was the first Prot- may depend upon Brazil's decision. In determin- estant minister to be ordained in Brazil, became a iug the issue, evangelical Christianity may be the tireless itinerant evangelist and traveled over decisive factor, judged from the role that Prot- great areas in Southern Brazil.
estantism has played and is playing in the life of At Jandira, in the State of Sao Paulo, there is the Brazilian' people. a fitting memorial to this consecrated evangelist, When a century ago Protestant missions began in the form of a college which is training candi- their work in Brazil, the people had practically no dates for the Gospel ministry. At present this knowledge of the Bible and its saving truths. school has some sixty stUdents, nearly all of whom For three hundred years the Bible had been an expect to preach the Gospel to their own people, unknown book to her people. .It is no wonder, after completing their training in the theological therefore, that the religion of the people consisted seminary.
in the fo'rmal performance of religious rites and Rev. Carvalho Braga, the father of Erasmo ceremonies, devoid of spirituality or vital regen- Braga, was first led to examine the claims of evan- erating power. The dominant religion had left gelical Christianity when, as a clerk in a store, the great mass of the people illiterate, supersti- he read what was on a leaf which had been torn [243 ]
from a Bible to be used as wrapping paper. This one of the elders of the church receiving instrucled to his conversion and later he did a great work tions a.bout the new Christian life into which he as a preacher and as the translator of Davis' Bible had entered. He gave up Spiritualism, drinking, Dictionary. His scholarly son, Rev. Erasmo g1ambling and even smoking, although he had been Braga, became an internationally known religious an inveterate smoker for twenty-five years. It leader in the evangelical world and presided at was a hard struggle, but Christ gave him the victhe Congress of Christian Work at Montevideo in tory. Through his example his wife was won to 1925. Christ and all his family, so that the missionary had the joy of receiving his entire family into the There have been many remarkable instances of fellowship of the Church. Senhor Alvaro became the transforming power of the Gospel in Brazil. a most enthusiastic and energetic personal worker We tell the story of but two men of recent times. and pre,acher of the Gospel. He used to stand at the door of the worship hall in Campo Grande and When Gospel work was begun in the Sta~ of buttonhole passers-by, almost compelling them to enter, in order that they might hear about the Matto Grosso, a young man heard the preaching power that had transformed his life. He has a of the Word of God, for the first time, as he lay government position which takes him to different drunk in the gutter, outside the preaching hall in localities, but wherever he goes, he witnesses to Rosario Oeste. – The Gospe~ message, as it was the Gospel as the power of God unto salvation to sung and preached, touched his heart and he came all who believe. to the missionary with this question: How the Church Is Being Built "Do you think it is possible for me to be forgiven and saved?" It is by conversion of individuals that the Church of Christ is being built up in Brazil, not No wonder he asked this question, for he was by mass movements. The Presbyterian Church of not only a drunkard but a murderer as well. At Brazil has now an adult membership of fifty thoua;bout twelve years of age he had killed a police~ sand, with a yearly increase of ten per cent. Rev. man and later had killed-several other men from Domingos. Ribeiro, in his book, "Origens do Evanambush as they were bathing in a stream. Could gelismo Brazileiro," gives the total number of he be forgiven of God? The missionary was able communicants, baptized children, catechumens to assure him that "the blood of Jesus Christ and adherents of Presbyterian churches as apcleanses us from all sin" and that "if we confess proximately three hundred thousand. More than our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us two hundred Presbyterian national ministers in our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteous- Brazil constitute a fine body of men who have reness." The young man accepted Christ as his ceived an education not a bit inferior to that of Saviour and today is a public school teacher. He most ministers in the United States. They have conducts worship and directs a Sunday school in their own schools and theological seminaries which the far interior of the State of Matto Grosso. are independent of missionary control. The Pres- byterian churches of Brazil have been organized An Extraordinary Man into twenty-three presbyteries, four synods and one General Assembly. These bodies have been A few years ago, when a series of evangelistic compJetely nationalized and are independent of meetings was being conducted in Southern Matta missionary control. The missionaries are still do- Grosso, in the city of Campo Grande, a rather ing the pioneer work, in the interior, and as rapextraordinary man began coming to the meetings.. idly as churches reach the point of self-support, He was known as intelligent and able, but a they are turned over to the national councils. drinker and gambler. It was not unusual for him to come home at four o'clock in the morning after The Southern Baptists also have a strong work a night of dissipation. The missionary thought in Brazil, with ~bout three hundred thousand, that this man, Senhor Alvaro, would be one of the counting adults, children, catechumens and adherlast in the world to be converted, not so much on ents. The Methodists number approximately one account of his vices, but because of his erratic hundred and thirty-five thousand, the Episcopa- Spiritualistic ideas which had made him egotis- lians twenty-seven thousand and the Congregatical and self-sufficient. When an opportunity was tionalists eight thousand. There are also indegiven, at an evangelistic service, for public deci- pendent missions at work with evangelical groups sion, he was one of the first to take a stand, declar- amounting to one hundred and ninety-five thouing his intention to follow Christ. It was difficult sand. In Southern Brazil there are nearly half a to believe that he was converted. He went home million German Lutherans. In round numbers and told his wife that he was a changed man, but the total Protestant population of Brazil is estishe did not believe him. Soon after this, he failed to come home early one night and his wife went out to hunt for him, thinking to find him amongs,t his old companions. She found him at the home of
EVANGELICAL PROGRESS IN BRAZIL
mated at one and a half million, which is about in large measure, to the high grade of theological three and three-tenths per cent of the totalPOI?~ training given to the ministry from the days of ulation. Domingos Riheiro affirms for the year Simonton down to the present time. Last year 1937 that there were, in Brazil, more than three (September 8), the Presbyterian Seminary at thousand preachers of the Gospel, including lay- Campinas, in the State of Sao Paulo, celebrated preachers, and more than four thousand places of the fiftieth anniversary of its foundling. Today it worship. There is probably not a town of any has a strong faculty of scholarly men who have size in all Brazil where there is not a group of also been successful pastors. Twenty-seven stu- Christians witnessing to the power of Christ. dents were graduated in the last three graduating The evangelical churches have produced some EVANGELICAL CANDIDATES FOR THE MINISTRY FIND great religious leaders such as Alvaro Reis, a great A RATTLE'R ON THE COLLEGE CAMPU.S AT orator, pastor and evangelist; Eduardo Carlos JOSE MANOEL DA CONCEICAO Pereira, the author of a Portuguese Grammar used in all the schools of Brazil; Antonio Trajano, classes and the total enrollment last year was the author of textbooks on mathematics adopted thirty-three. This school of the prophets has proin all Brazilian schools; Erasmo Braga, scholar, duced a fine type of leadership for the Presbyteacher and religious leader who also wrote text- terian Church of Brazil. books for the youth of Brazil; Miguel Rizzo, the brilliant pastor of the large and influential Igreja It is not possible here to do justice to all of the Unida in the City of Sao Paulo, and who recently evangelical institutions at work in Brazil, includrepresented the Preshyterian Church of Brazil at ing the splendid work of the British and American the centennial celebration of the Presbyterian Bible Societies, of the Y. M. C. A. and Y. W. C. A., Church. There are many other able leaders, too the printing presses, hospitals, sanatoria and ornumerous to mention. phanages conducted under Protestant auspices. Evangelical Christianity has become a mighty The Influence of the Evangelicals force to be reckoned with in .shaping the destiny of this greatest of the Latin American republics. The Evangelicals of Brazil exert an influence far greater than would be expected from their Let no one suppose, however, that the task numerical strength. Like the Huguenots in the has been completed in Brazil. Not even four per history of France they are usually better informed cent of the total population has been evangelized. and more alert than the rank and file of their fel- The great unoccupied Hinterland is destined to receive millions of people who will need to hear low-citizens. In general, they are intelligent, in- the Good News. Besides this, in the forests of the great Amazon Basin, there are many wild Industrious, honest and patriotic, and exert a great dians who have never heard the Gospel. The task influence upon the life of the nation. of the evangelization of Brazil has been well be- gun, but it is far from completed. The nation is An account of the progress of evangelical Chris- still young and in the formative period of its existtianity in Brazil would not be complete without ence, so that now is the opportune time to lay the some reference to the contribution to education foundations for a still greater Church of Christ made by the Protestant churches. The American in Brazil. It is the part of Christian statesman- School, founded in Sao Paulo, in the early days of ship to act now, in order that the people of our missionary work, served for years as a model for great Sister Republic maybe won for Christ and the educational system of Sao Paulo, recognized may enjoy all the blessings of His full salvation. to be the most advanced state of the Union in educational matters. The American School became a great educational institution which today ministers instruction to some two thousand students in all of its courses, from the primary grades up through the Engineering School of Mackenzie College. There are numerous other important evangelical schools of higher education in Brazil, such as Granberry College at Juiz de F6ra, Gammon Institute at Lavras and Jose Manoel da Conceic;ao at Jandira. A large number of evangelical gymnasia are scattered throughout Brazil, as well as many primary schools. Some devote themselves exclusively to the education of believers and their children.
The success of the work in Brazil has been due,
of a Missionary in
~._ By REV. HENRY H. BUCHER, Nodoa, Hainan, China I I Missionary of the American Presbyterian Church [Mr. and Mrs. Bucher are just completing thei~ first ings, accounts, many details of administration; term as missionaries in Hainan, the island off the south oversight of workmen and evangelis,ts; a funeral coast of China, and recently raided by Jap'anese bombing or a wedding; then some of the Lois (aboriginees) planes and occupied in part by Japanese troops. Mr. come to buy salt or fish from us to take back into Bucher (in per,sonal letters) describes graphically some the mountains. They are so often cheated in experiences connected with mission work in Nodoa and money deals that they depend upon us to help on tours into the country. The latter reveal a few of the them. They bring their midget chickens and sell trials that a missionary encounters today in a land that them to us so that they may have a few cents to lacks good roads and many other conveniences to which buy things for their simple needs. all travelers have grown accustomed in countries where good roads, comfortable inns and gasoline stations abound. There is a satisfaction in spending and being The day of the pioneer missionary has not passed.- spent for people in need, but one practical prob- EDITOR.] R THOUGH there have been no actual raids lem I face is the problem of finding any uninter- or loss of life in Nodoa (due to Japanese rupted time for Bible study and prayer. This is raids), there have been many scares and one of the hardest problems a missionary has; to panics! Altogether this unspeakable, "unde- fa'ce-to be so busy in well-doing that it is difficult clared" war has made inroads upon our strength to keep the spiritual fires burning! This Nodoa and energy – and nerves. In all my life I have church and compound is a very live place; no- never before experienced so sustained a drain where else in Hainan is there so much activity in upon my energies, both mental and physical, as the church, or so many meetings (averaging one during this past year. . . . meeting each night and a chapel service every Mr. Melrose (a fellow missionary) left on fur- morning). The work that I enjoy above all others lough last Spring (1938) and from that time I is the evangelistic work and the contacts with peo- have been the only man of the missionary person- pIe out in the country.
nel in this part of Hainan. I have had charge of Roughly speaking, in the past eight or nine the employees and of all property and repairs of months, I have been away from home out "iIi my the large compound. I have also had a goodly pasture" half the time. The average trip takes share of the accounts and bookkeeping – which about one week. First there are periodic visits can be a thorn in the flesh to one not trained or to each church area to examine candidates for . experienced in it. This has been merely "inci- baptism and to hold communion services. Then dental" to my major missionary task as one of there are eight-day Bible institutes for the in- the superintendents of all the evangelistic work struction of ignorant Christians; third, there is in Nodoa, with a dozen churches and a congrega- the preaching of the Gospel in towns and markets tion of several thousand. I am the treasurer for in order to contact those who have never or seldom all the evangelists in this area, and pastor of six heard the Gospel message!
of the country churches which have a combined While we lived in Kiungchow, where the Hain- 'congregation (not membership) of two thousand. anese language was the medium of expression, I In addition I am responsible for the Lodi field in did a great deal of this third type of evangelistic the mountainous interior where there are twenty- work and enj oyed it. There is a thrill in knowing five hundred professed Believers awaiting instruc- that one is speaking to many who are hearing the tion. I much prefer this phase of work to the ad- Gospel for the first time. Since coming to Nodoa ministrative details and bookkeeping in the mis- I have been able to do very little evangelistic work sion station, but someone must take care of these of this kind because of the "confusion in tongues." details and I have been the only man to undertake One cannot hold a boisterous crowd when speakit for eight months. It has ,been necessary for me ing in a tongue that they cannot understand. In to be absent in the country a great deal, so that Nodoa we are face to face with one of the moSlt the station work has: piled up. amazing dialectical jumbles-the true cross-word Early in the morning-at about 6: 30 a. m.-the puzzl~in all China, if not in all the world. If daily procession begins. It is made up of meet- this sounds like an exaggerated statement, listen [246 ] A GROUP OF CHRISTIAN LOI WOMEN IN HAINAN. THEIR VILLAGE IS NEARLY 100% CHRISTIAN to the enumeration of the different tongues com- huke mo," thinking that I was telling him not to put himself to so much trouble. But by a slight mon here. Every day in Nodoa I hear six major mispronunciation of the "0" in the last word "mo," what I really said was: "Don't act like a pig." On dialects spoken: Hakka, Limko, Mandarin, Dam- another occasion, I started out to take a walk after a day of holding classes. Someone asked me tsiu, Hainanese and Cantonese. As if six were where I was going and I thought that I replied that I was going for a stroll to cool off. By the not enough, and to add to the confusion, we often slightest difference in tone, which most foreigners would not notice even if it was pointed out, I achear the melodious monosyllables of the Loi, Miau tually said: "I am going to visit a young lady."
and Malaysian tongues. If this is not a "Babel" After several such experiences I realized that Limko is not one of those tongues that is easy to and confusion of tongues, then I do not under- pick up from hearing it spoken occasionally, so I hired a teacher and studied an hour a day for a stand the meaning of these words. These six month or more. These later efforts have been crowned with so much succes,s that on December major dialects, though they have some similari- 18th I preached my fil1st sermon in Limko. My aim is to be able to speak to the people in their ties (as is true in the Romance Languages of own dialect wherever I go.
southern Europe), are distinctly different tongues. In the last month there have been two phe- nomena to cheer our hearts greatly: First, the Some of the people can speak and understand only local Nodoa church sponsored a great collection throughout this area for the benefit of war sufferone of these six; most people can converse in sev- ers in North China. Over six hundred local dollars were given by Christians and non-Christians eral, not a few can make themselves completely at home in all six! Unfortunately this last ability does not come to an American without the lubri- cating agency of a great deal of "consecrated sweat." . .
Last summer; as I traveled in the Limko field and conducted Summer Bible Institutes, I under- took to apply myself to the Limko dialect so that my work there might be more effective. My first attempts were not crowned with complete success.!
Upon entering a home, if my host put himself out to be courteous and hospitable I remarked, "Murn
working together. This is a new thing under the we might be compelled to spend several days along sun! the road. Unwisely perhaps, we decided to chance it and trust God-so off we went into the night Another new thing is that at Christmas time and into trouble! about thirty Lois came down from the mountains and brought over ten dollars as their contribution Those next ten miles of road were unlike anyto the work of the church in this presbytery. thing that I have ever seen; I shall carry a men- tal picture of them for years to come! The rain At the present stage in our Hainan church there came down in torrents so that at times I could not is even a greater need for teaching the Bible to see where I was driving and the wind became those who are already professing Christians than alarming. In the light of the headlights the roads for bringing larger numbers into the ohurch that looked impassable and at times we would sink in has already too few teachers. so deep that we would come to a dead stand-still. By backing and charging and trying new ruts we The persecution of Christians by one of t~oi would finally be able to go on. I began to think chiefs is so bad that the Christians have begged that we would make our destination after all, but me to go out to the country field and see what I in the blinding rain and darkness I failed to see can do, largely working through official channels a big hOole until just too late. We settled down as I have no authority to deal with any Loi chief. in that hole until the rear left wheel was out of However, I can talk with him, and we can pray. sight and the rear right humper was sunk in It is a five-day journey on foot to the area where water and mud. The engine pan was fast down the trouble is so that I shall have to walk one hun- on a semi-hard shelf of dirt and the axles were dred and fifty miles, mostly up and down moun- buried in the mud. With Oour mind on a possible tains. But its all a part of the Lord's work and robbery we turned off the headlights, got out in there are great rewards. the drenching rain and deep mud and dug fran- tically with the hoe that I always take along. I *** must have spent at least a half hour down in the Traveling Under Difficulties mud on hands and knees trying to get the jack A recent trip from Hoihow to Nodoa was over under that rear bumper, but the weight of the car only rammed jack and stone down farther the worst road I have ever seen in all my life- into mud. We were stuck and no joke-and nothand I have seen very bad roads in southeastern ing for miles but fields and water and a sea of Asia (China, Siam, Malaysia), India, Persia, Rus- mud. The force of the rain beating against our sia, Turkey, Europe and America. The only trip faces became unbearable, so we climbed back into that was worse in physical strain was the two the car to wait for it to let up a little. We sat days and three nights without stopping in an old there, soaked to the skin with mud and slime and truck from Douzdab to Meshed, Persia! When I the driving rain; we had begun to shiver and left Hoihow I doubted the wisdom of starting out chatter with the cold when to add to our miseries in the face of the storm hut as I had been sent to the wind became so violent that it drove the rain get typhoid serum in a hurry I wanted to carry through the top and the side curtains. I had beout the commission and keep faith with the Nodoa gun to picture what we would be worth in the hospital. morning after a night spent huddled there in the damp and cold our bodies soaked and chilled to The first forty miles we covered in a little over the bone-when rip! ! before we knew what had three hours. The rain came down in torrents; the happened the wind took the top right off the car. wind blew and the road was execrable, but not It did not take us many minutes to conclude that impassable. It seemed a little ominous that in all we couldn't longer contemplate spending the night that time we saw not one other car, nor did any there and live through it. We would have to abancars go out from Nodoa all that day! Just before don the car to its fate-and in the back seat was we reached the half-way road-house, darkness over a hundred dollars worth of school uniforms, came upon us and we experienced what may have hats, books and other things that I had brought been an attempted hold up by bandits. However, along so that they would be safe! Maybe I didn't we reached Sim-toa and had a warm Chinese meal. hate to think of deserting the car there in that The question arose: should we attempt to cover condition to be blown and rained upon, for no one the other forty-five miles that night after dark, could tell how many hours-and open to the sky! with the poss1ibility of robbery (as another car However, we were desperate and had begun to had been p~undered there two weeks before), or think pretty serious thoughts. Each grabbed a should we spend the night in the car at Sim-toa small handbag containing personal belongings and and try to complete the journey the next day over a change of clothing. (The $700 was ina large roads that would be still more softened by a ty- suitcase with all my clothes.) I would gladly phoon rain all night? On the one hand I thought of the $700 that I had in my suitcase. On the other hand there was the likelihood that the roads would be impassable the next day, in which case
EXPERIENCES OF A MISSIONARY IN HAINAN
have left the clothes behind in order to travel light might be disposed to take us in. While the Chinese in the storm, but I couldn't open the bag there in are naturally hospitable they are not inclined to the driving rain and take out that paper money. receive strangers in the middle of the night and So we started toward No-vun which was several out in the country, for they have learned by bitter miles away. experience to assume that everyone is an enemy at such times. (The robbers are very bad in that I shall never forget that wild walk. You can area.) One would be apt to be met by vicious picture us in the midst of a cloudburst and a ty- dogs and perhaps a gun shot rather than by hosphoon wind; the former cut into the skin and pitality. This had been the subject of not a little made vision almost impossible; the latter blew talk before we arrived. us around at will and at times threw us down on the ground or into the fields, or started us run- SOME OF THE WILD LOIS IN A NON-CHRISTIAN VILLAGE ning along the slippery road, unable to stop and unable to proceed without slipping and falling. But there was never so much as a dog bark, for My long suitcase acted as a sort of sail and caught all animals were locked indoors; not a living thing the wind so that it was all I could do to keep stand- was stirring and apparently all were dead as the ing upright. The water and mud were often knee tombs. That is the first time I have ever apdeep; at other places the road was slick and slip- proached a village in China after dark (or in daypery as ice. I fell headlong in the mud a dozen light for that matter) without a multitude of dogs times,and twice I picked myself up in the fields going wild and making the air hideous. Every off the road entirely. Our knees and legs grew house was securely locked, with doors and winweak and our backs ached. That seemed the long- dows barred against the storm, and all the inest walk I ever took; actually it was only four habitants tucked snugly away under all the warm and one half to five miles! Talk about Paul Re- covers they could collect-for it was cold. We vere's ride. That was tough on the horse; this first tried the inn, or roadhouse (which is also the was tough on us! headquarters of the Public Road Department for that area). We yelled, and pleaded and shouted A Midnight Adventure ourselves hoarse-singly and in unison; we bel- lowed in desperation. It was all utterly useless Finally, at nearly midnight, we found ourselves waste of breath and energy. We did not seem to on the outskirts of No-vun-some distance off the be able to make ourselves heard above the noise main highway. Along the road we had passed of the storm. (Next day we found out that they five or six other cars in mud holes,; one was down heard us but didn't want to be bothered; or they in a field and deserted. They had all started out thought that we were robbers.) We didn't dare earlier that day in the hope of beating the storm beat on the door to attract attention for fear lest to Nodoa but all had lost the race. We were cov- we might get too warm a reception. So we went ered with mud from head to foot, drenched and down the street and tried .other places. Soon we soaked, chilled to the bone, and nearly "down and came to what we later found to be the "Smoking out." We were miserable specimens of humanity, Palace" (opium den) where we saw lights through and it didn't add to our peace of mind as we walked through the streets of the town (themselves litle rivulets) to see buildings blown down and other evidences of the violence of the storm. We could not but think of the car out there on the highway and we wondered what would be left of it in the morning. Of course my mind turned anxiously toward Nodoa, wondering what my wife was doing during this storm and how the children were. Had she been able to get the windows and shutters securely locked without help. For months the roof of our house has been leaking like a sieve: the tiles were very inferior, and in a recent storm we had to place pans to catch drips in about five different places. The mental picture was not very reassuring, or calculated to remove anxiety.
We were somewhat reassured by the fact that we saw on the only street of the village two cars that had taken refuge from the storm. If the passengers had been taken into the houses near by then the people of this small village must be awake to the fact that the road was impossible; they
the cracks in the building. We carried on a lively leather seat-covers and the coating of mud. But and edifying conversation with the people inside the car was not utterly ruined. I collected what through these same cracks; but they had no in- was left of the top from a near-by field and folded tention of letting us in. They called out: it up for future use. The engine, the coils, and all else were soaked-and it was still raining by "Go away and leave us alone. We won't open gusts and spurts. To start the engine seemed to you as you are robbers." hopeless but I took a chance and tried the Chinese method that I have seen used with success but not But we had no intention of being denied as we without risk. We ignited several' pieces of paper were getting desperate. We said: and put them into the engine so that the flames curled around the coils, cylinders and spark plugs "If we were robbers would we be standing here to dry them out. It sounds dangerous and it is, with a flashlight lighted up and shouting to you but we were desperate and ,still damp and hungry through the door, making a lot of racket and in- from the proceeding day's "lark." The plan viting you to attack us? Robbers wouldn't be that worked like a charm! The spark caught and the stupid !" engine started. I would not recommend the method to folks at home but it might be a good So the talk went on into the night, for what thing to know about when you visit Hainan. seemed to us hours. We were making no headway and were about to give up hope of getting in The day's work had just begun. There were anywhere – when an old woman (who had no ten men with sturdy poles and great strength, but money or valuables and so was not afraid of being the car would not budge an inch, so deep had it robbed) took pity on us and let us come into her settled, with the bumpers under water and mud house. There was no room for the four of us, but and great suction holding down the rear tires. we, at least temporarily, found warmth and We must have worked at it an hour before we shelter; she finally persuaded the gallant smok- gave up and hired several more men to lift the ing braves across the street to let us come into car bodily out of the slough. Then all rode the their commodious quarters. running board back to No-vun, and it was well that they did, for they often had to get out and The first thing for us to do was to take off our push us through ruts so deep that the bottom of filthy, drenched clothing. We did not have one the car literally plowed through the mUd, and the really dry garment in our handbags or in my suit- front axle and radiator acted as a scrape to level case, but we had some semi-dry pieces and shared off the road, clear away rocks and prepare the what we had. For instance, my pajama tops way for the more vulnerable parts behind. It was looked ridiculous on a little nO-pound Chinese- a miracle – nothing more or less – that we got Bit-kheng, one of the hospital assistants. We had through that stretch of road as far as No-vun quite an interested audience of men and women which is the worst stretch on a very bad road. whose curiosity as we changed our clothing might We drove into No-vun to get something to eat, charitably be explained as "fraternal interest." I pay our bills for our luxurious night's accommodawas too far gone to be "nice." They finally gave tions, and buy gasoline from the Public Roads us some food and a warm drink of some kind Headquarters. I had started from Hoihow with which fortified us against the night that we had to ten gallons, had made about fifty miles of the endure. eighty-nine and had only two gallons left. That gives some idea of the state of the road; under For a bed all four of us were provided with good conditions my car can do nearly twenty miles double doors supported on two wooden horses; on a gallon of gas. for pillows we each had a nice ten-inch brick (guaranteed not to break from the weight of one's Of the rest of that trip as far as Notia I will head, nor to transmit insect life.) The roof leaked spare you the details of the numberless times we but not directly over our heads. The floor was so got stuck, the hours we spent pushing, digging, muddy and slippery that we could scarcely walk jacking up the car and putting rocks under the or keep on our feet. There was very little sleep tires. It will always remain etched upon my memfor any of us that night but we survived! ory as incomparable. We learned that between Notia and Nio-hau two bridges had been washed The Morning After away and were told that we might as well give up any idea of reaching Nodoa that night. But after The next morning with empty stomachs we all our herculean efforts, we were not going to trudged back over the road we had trekked the fail to reach our goal when so near-especially as night before and took five or six men with us to we feared one more night in wet clothes and with help push, drag and persuade the car out of that empty stomachs might be the end of us. So we mud-hole. My imagination had painted a very sad went on. The first bridgeless stream was not wide picture of what the car must be like after being out on the road all night, through a typhoon rain and with no top. It was certainly an awful sight to behold-with all the contents (hat-boxes and school uniforms) melted and merged with the
EXPERIENCES OF A MISSIONARY IN HAlNAN
but had high banks and a deep swift current. We China through Canton are now cut off and we are hired a bunch of farmers to bring beams and left in the dark mostly – and the victims of the planks, and in a couple of hours a bridge was put most alarming rumors. The loss of Canton, nerveacross where there had been none before. There center of the wealthiest province in China, is a was a clearage on each side of only a few inches. dreadful blow, and an awful heartbreak to We had not gone far before the farmers were tear- Hainan. There may have been darker periods ing down the bridge so the next cars to come along ("before the dawn") in the history of other nawould be obliged either to pay four dollars to them tions-but it is not to be denied that the present to rebuild it or could sit there and enjoy the beau- picture is black. We still have hope and faith ties of nature. but we do not know what our future course will The second bridge was wider but the approach LI-EK, niE LOI LEADER, WHO BROUGHT HUNDREDS was damaged and speedy and temporary repairs OF HIS PEOPLE TO CHRIST were out of the question. We decided to take a chance, running through the stream, though the be. Before we can write another letter communiwater was deep and the current racing. There cations may be cut off entirely, or Japan may take was an ox-cart crossing at that point; but a cross- over the island and establish a rigid censorship. ing possible for an ox-cart is usually impossible Already word has come from Hoihow that the to a car. Out came our hoe and again we went local Government has ordered all the Chinese to work leveling off the approaches and cutting women and children and old people to flee from down the bank that we must ascend on the other Hoihow and Kiungchow to the villages. The side. The water was almost up to the waist and French Consul has notified us that France will not the ascent on the other side looked almost impos- defend Hainan, and advises all American women sible. But the alternative was to leave the car and children to leave for Hongkong, as he conthere or spend the night with it in our exhausted, siders the Japanese invasion of Hainan as a mathungry, wet, clammy state. If I had to leave the ter of a few days or possibly hours. car in the middle of the stream it would at least be washed clean, so I breathed deeply and made We have made up our minds, for better or the attempt. The water was up to the engine and worse, to stay by here for the time being at least. the vulnerable parts, but it was so heated from We will stay and serve the people just as long as its exertions that it resisted the water. That is we can, for I prefer to stay by the people here at my theory-because before we reached home the a time of stress and danger. water and mud had permeated into the motor and stalled us; the battery, carburator, and coils were soaked and coated with mud. It was too much for even as noble a car as my little Ford. We had to push her the rest of the way home-and our entry into the compound gates was anything but triumphal! The next day (Sunday) I spent in bed, conscious for the first time in years of many usually well-behaved muscles, now sore as a boil all over, almost too tired and weary to sleep. The next two weeks I spent all the time I could spare working on that car, cleaning it inside and out, putting on a new canvas lining for the top, and repainting the whole car. It really looks very well, but I fear it will never be the same again.
Developments in the War Zone Later: For days we have been intensely watching developments in the war zone – and especially the lightning attack upon our own Province. Everyone 'is greatly disturbed and for several days I have done little but talk with callers, trying to allay fears, answering questions about what is happening (the Chinese will believe that somehow we have inside information that is kept from them). Several days ago came the staggering news of the fall of Canton and its destruction. All communications with war zone and the rest of
Beams from Lima
By DR. SAMUEL S. RIZZO, Newark, N. J.
Pastor of a Portuguese Presbyterian Church T HE recent conference of Lima was not with- service. The liberalism of President Vargas goes out religious significance. Its political re- so far that, being a nominal Catholic, he does not sults, valuable as they were in proclaiming apologize for naming his son after the great rethe validity of International Law, and in pro- former Luther. moting friendly relations among the nations, are secondary in importance when compared with the Several years ago a proposal came before the recognition of certain moral principles accepted Brazilian Congress to "declare" Roman Catholiby the conference, and of great significance to the cism the religion of the majority of the Brazilian Kingdom of God. people. President Vargas, then a congressman, wrote: Religious and Racial Liberty With reference to the proposed amendment (to the Con- stitution, Item No. 10) stipulating that the Catholic The Lima conference was an event, perhaps Church is the church of the majority of the Brazilian peounparalleled in the history of Latin America. ple, I think, in the first place, that such statement is very Twenty-one nations, after much debate, and with disputable. In order that a person might call himself a full acquiescence of their respective governments, Catholic, he should know the doctrine, accept it and live it. signed a document upholding the principle of "in- With such conditions only an elite, a select minority, comdividual liberty without religious or racial preju- ply. The high circles in social life have adopted a Catholidices." cism rather sceptical and elegant. And the vast ignorallt masses are still in the age of fetishist worship of saints While the Americas are not entirely free from with several miracle-working specialties.
religious intolerance, it is only fair to say that The amendment was rejected by an overwhelmsuch intolerance as exists in the republics of the ing vote. south is usually the work of Roman Catholic priests. Such intolerance is not condoned by the At Lima, when the world's political skies were laws and is repudiated by the best citizens. When so dark, it was an auspicious time for this "liberala Presbyterian minister was expelled from the ism" to project itself as a ,beam of hope for decity of Aparecida, Brazil, and the furniture of his mocracy. How long shall "individual liberty withhall was burned by a mob led by German monks, out religious prejudices" prevail in Central and the ex-president Washington Luis, then governor South America we do not know. With the world of Sao Paulo, sent a squadron of oavalry to the constantly menaced by dictators,and the devil acscene of disturbance, and for several Sundays the tive, anything may serve as a pretext to justify same pastor preached in the open air, protected the invalidation of this religious liberty. But by the State troops. I have seen a Christian Jew while it prevails may we, ministers and laymen, knocked down by men of his race when he at- be made equal by the power of the Holy Spirit, tempted to preach the Gospel in Columbus Circle, to the opportunity of this hour. New York. Religious liberty was not vindicated The Christ of the Andes more quickly or with more emphasis by the police Of far-reaching .significance was the declaration of New York, than it was in the case at Aparecida. at Lima, by the twenty-one nations of the Amer- In both instances the intolerance was a violation icas, to express their "unbreakable desire for of the law of the land and was, not condoned by peace, and their profound sentiment of humanity the State. and tolerance." Next to the delegation from The statesmen of South America are, as a rule, Bolivia sat the delegates from Paraguay, all in proud of their "liberalism." When I invited a joyful mood, glad that no longer an abnormal redip~omat in New York to come to a religious serv- lation of hate existed among the family of nations ice in my Portuguese Church in Newark, knowing in the Americas. Dignified and greatly esteemed, that he was of different faith, I added to my presiding over the most important committee of invitation, "I know that you are a liberal." He the conference-the committee on Declaration of sent me a courteous reply, stressing his liberal- Solidarity-sat one of the oldest statesman of the ism and promising to prove it by attending the Americas, the Brazilian delegate, Afranio de [252]
AMONG THE INDIANS OF NORTH DAKOTA
Mello Franco. He was the sole arbiter of the dis- own plans to accept that from Argentina." pute between Colombia and Peru over the conflict Twenty-one nations of the Americas refused, in of Leticia, and his efforts for peace saved thou- the critical hour, to "isolate" Argentina, writing sands of lives from destruction at a time when a declaration of continental solidarity without the Peru, Colombia and Ecuador had already em- signature of Buenos Aires. "The victory belongs barked on a wholesale arming for war. When, to the Messrs. Hull, Mello Franco, Conchas and in the midst of the conference this gentleman re- others, who were magnanimous and did not deceived the sad news of the death of his son-in-law, mand that which the superiority of their forces the sincere sympathy of his admirers poured in . . . could suggest." This declaration marked an in hundreds of telegrams daily from all the Amer- attitude most dramatic in the history of the Panicas showing to the world that those who labor for American Conferences, and perhaps never equaled peace are ble,ssed by man, as well as by God. Let in tne political history of the world! Twenty-one us be thankful for the peacemakers of the Amer- republics sacrificed their personal preferences be- £Cas, and let us' ,pray that the Christ of the Andes, cause they could not bear the separation of a sister today ruling over the Chaco, in Tacna-Arica, and republic from the family of nations. This speaks up in Leticia, shall be always the Prince of Peace of the unity of the Americas much more effectively in the Western Hemisphere. than the Declaration of Solidarity in itself. It was a beautiful example of the Christian principle Solidarity at a Sacrifice of "the second mile," practiced collectively.
Commenting on the Declaration of Lima, a Bra- '" '" '" zilian newspaper wrote: "The only victory that is really to be seen in the declaration of continental Liberty, tolerance, peace and magnanimous sacsolidarity of Lima, is the loyalty and spirit of sac- rifice were the contributions of the Conference of rifice of twenty other nations, who, in order not to Lima to a world darkened by the lack of these virbreak the unity of the Americas, abandoned their tues. Christian people welcome them as new rays of hope for mankind.
Among the Indians in North Dakota* By the VEN. THOMAS A. SIMPSON Archdeacon of Indian Work, North Dakota O N THE Standing Rock Reservation, North some of the men present she said "and he has Dakota, there was Red Hail, a Sioux chief, struck some of you." But she remarked that it so named, says Indian tradition, because he was a good place to be, for if he came after anywas born during a great meteoric shower. For one they could run to the church for refuge. many years he welcomed Indian missionaries to Lastly she said the river was near by and those his cabin for services and largely was responsible who did not wash very often could come for a for the building of St. Gabriel's Chapel at Red swim. Hail Camp (Brien). St. Gabriel's has produced some fine Christian characters among whom are William White Eagle's zeal for Christ led him the Rev. William Skala (White) Cross, a grandson of Red Hail, and Luke and Lucy Shoot-the- into active missionary work, both on the Standing Buffalo. Lucy invited the annual Indian convo- Rock and Fort Berthold Reservations. On one of cation to meet at St. Gabriel's in 1937. Argu- his mis1sionary journeys to Fort Berthold he was ments were advanced in favor of other stations. the means of Yellow Bear's conversion. One night It was said that good food would be served at St. as he was conducting service in his tent, Yellow Sylvan's, while at St. Gabriel's there was a den Bear went on the war path, determined to put an of rattlesnakes which the people from Fort Tot- end to such religious activity. Yellow Bear waited ten did not like. Lucy promptly replied (her re- for a moment outside the tent before going in to marks being interpreted) that nowhere did the break up the meeting, but as he sltood there he Bible teach men to worship their stomachs. She heard for the first time the message of the Master acknowledged that there were rattlesnakes at St. spoken through the lips of White Eagle. His con- Gabriel's and that one of the snakes had seven version followed. At his baptism he was named tongues and one tongue was liquor. Pointing at Paul after St. Paul, who also was once the enemy of Christ. • Condensed from The Spirit 01 Missions, December, 1938. Paul Yellow Bear was an unusual man; as he formerly had used his natural gifts to keep his
friends and neighbors in paganism, he later used vicinity. Here the Church has some eight acres them to win people to Christ. For many years he of land, church, parish house, rectory, and miswas lay reader at St. Paul's Chapel, where he has sion home; all in charge of the Rev. W. S. Cross, left a lasting impression. a retired Indian priest. The existing social and moral conditions demand recognition. The Gov- Paul Bear-Paw, another convert from pagan- ernment has established' a local school system in ism in North Dakota, served for many years as addition to nonreservation schools but the averlay reader at St. James' Church, Cannon Ball, age home life has not kept pace with these adwhere his widow, Julia, is still an active com- vances and the returning student has almost municant. insurmountable problems of adjustment, often reverting to old reservation ways of living. Sick- Thomas Ashley, another chief figure, was an ness is prevalent while social diseases play havoc able leader and efficient interpreter. As an inter- with countless Indians. Among children, the preter he served faithfully, with marked ability, death rate is especially high. Doctors and hospinot only his Church but also the Government and tals are miles away and there are some tragic courts of justice. deaths. Only within one-half mile of St. James' a young girl died of tuberculosis while in the In St. Sylvan's Mission, in the Turtle Moun- same one-roomed cabin a young mother was givtains, labored that staunch Christian, Rising Sun, ing birth to her first child. And there was no one a full-blooded Chippewa, who lived to the age of to help! 110 years. His name was given him because he first saw the light of day when the sun was peep- An adequate program of religious education for ing out of the East. When past middle life he set- Indian children is something yet to be achieved. tled down in the Turtle Mountains, and devoted his Distances, weather conditions, general environtime to raising cattle. He was partly the means ment, seem to be insurmountable difficulties. of preventing a repetition of the Custer massacre Apart from two Church missions there is no orin the Dunseith hills when the county authorities ganized religious instruction. Leaflets, manuals had a misunderstanding about taxes with the of instruction, odd numbers of the Christian Nurmixed-blood Indians. When Rising Sun and his ture Series, religious pictures, are given out and wife received their first annuity from the Govern- used at home, where many of the parents welcome ment, they bought thirty dollars worth of lumber the help given. But the Church has not yet to help build a chapel that they had been wanting touched the problem. The men have their guilds for years, keeping the lumber in their little log and carry out a program of service adapted to hut for six years before their ambition was real- local needs. The Woman's Auxiliary branches ized. St. Sylvan's. log chapel, standing on a high meet for worship and work. elevation of land, is a monument to Rising Sun's devotion. Mr. Robert Fox, an Indian trained at Santee, Nebraska, and his wife, are doing excellent work The present work at Breckenridge Memorial in St. Paul's Mission to the Arickara tribe at Fort Chapel began in 1898. It is about six miles from Berthold. Since their coming the work of the the Agency in what is known as the Crow Hill Church has made real progress. Once a month neighborhood. An Indian named Iyayukamani they give religious instruction at the public school, (He-Follows-Walking) had loaned a house where to classes that are increasing in numbers. The services were conducted in the Dakota langua.ge. Arickara people, having had more educational ad- Iyayukamani was a stalwart Christian and is re- vantages than some other Indians, are more admembered as the founder of the Church work at vanced and more prosperous. this point. Bernard Rainbow, brought up under the Christian influence of Iyayukatnani, carried Originally St. Sylvan's Mission in the Turtle on the work of lay reader for many years. Mountains consisted of a log chapel and seventy acres, of land, but about five years ago the National In recalling these and other names it can be Indian Association turned over to the Church seen that the work among the Indians in North their abutting property consisting of 220 acres, Dakota is unique in that it is the result of the a dwelling house, a frame parish hall, and some missionary zeal of the Indians themselves. dilapidated buildings.
Today there are some eight thousand Indians If the story of this Indian field had to be sumliving on the four reservations where the six mis- med up into one word it would have to be the sions of the Protestant Episcopal Church are word need. Not only is there need for physical located. direction and assistance, there are those deeper and more urgent needs arising out of the social The largest mission on the Standing Rock and tribal background of the various groups, Reservation is St. James', three miles south of which can only be met by a well-balanced program the village of Cannon Ball, in the center of a large express'ed through the Church. Indian community. The name Cannon Ball is derived from the huge rock formations found in the
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I Effective Ways of Working 'Tested Methods for Increasing Interest at Home EDITED BY MISS GRACE W. MCGAVRAN, 5718 OAK AVE.. INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA ~=I============~~==~~~~~ Combatting Summer Heat glad, once a year, to open them At one of the regular meetings to such church groups, especially the members who had made Although it was early summer when the hostess is a member of these trips told about them. it was already hot. Sheer iner- the group. They spoke informally, not attia would keep some people from tempting to philosophize or to attending their missionary meet- In planning such an event, it summarize situations. The y ings. The two missionary or- is wise to put extra effort into merely gave their impressions. ganizations in one church were the arrangements, so that every- Those who had not been able to busy planning attractions, the one may have an unusually good go, gained a new vision of the pull of which might overcome time "visiting." The trip out in needs of a great city and of some that tendency to stay at home. the bus may be made a jolly oc- of the very human ways in which The women's group, made up of casion. Have good, simple and life can be changed when somewomen who can come in the ample food. Have a good pro- one cares enough to do someafternoon, had its special prob- gram, suited for outdoor pro- thing about it. lems. The business women's duction. group (who necessarily met at What is there about which night) had to combat the fatigue Every summer meeting, from your missionary society, your resulting from work through which members of the society ch~rch body, or your young peolong hot hours. come away saying, "Didn't we ple s group need first-hand in- have a good time? Let's do it formation? Do they know that At this point an invitation again next year," has not only many human beings are suffercame from a former minister of accomplished its purpose in this ing in the suffocating streets and the church and his wife, to both series of meetings, but has had a alleys of the very city or town in groups, to hold their next meet- real part in training the women whose comparatively cool subing at the country home to which to look forward to summer mis- urbs you live? Do they know he had retired some years ago. sionary meetings, instead of some of the difficult working and avoiding them. living conditions of migrant The invitation was accepted workers in your own county? with delight. But careful plan- Telling What They Have Seen Do they have firsrt-hand knowlning had to follow. The country edge of the way in which social place was some distance from There is an eternal fascination service and church agencies are the neighborhood so that busses in hearing about interesting working? Do they know what had to be chartered, and the things that we have not seen. avenues of volunteer service are necessary meals planned. There is even greater fascina- open to some of themselves? tion in telling about things we One group went in the after- have seen to those who have not Try making investigations. noon and one in the evening and seen them. Why not make use Those who do it will be glad to both enjoyed a delightful time. of those two characteristics to tell about it. Your meeting will The attendance was as good as achieve summer program effec- have a breath of reality to it if the weather had been more tiveness. which will attract, in spite of hot propitious. The programs were weather. excellent; the fellowship was A missionary group in a large joyful, with an opportunity to city asked several members to A Book Meeting in August wander through the orchard look into certain institutions last with its closely mowed grass, summer during the study of The August is usually a very dead among the flower-beds, along the City. (The summer before the month when many churches alraspberry vines, and beside the same group had asked members most close their doors. lily pool. After a dusty day in to look into the Negro's living town it seemed like a different conditions.) A morning in the But it is during those very world. juvenile court; a visit to the "dead" times that many people county home for orphan chil- have more leisure for reading While only a few societies can dren ; a few hours in police than at any other time during enjoy such an experience, it is court; time spent in one of the the year. possible for more than actually settlement houses-these were a experience it. Many times per- few of the trips made. One organization asked a comsons with lovely grounds are mittee to select new books deal- [255 ]
ing with various missionary sub- Among those put out coopera- living in areas of tension, conjects. These were to include tively by a number of the denom- flict or economic readjustment, stories, biographies, travel, his>- inations, are very good units on "working on some community tory, background material; and world friendship. Less well project of social significance ineven such things 'as the poetry adapted to the longer vacation volving physical labor." and the philosophy of a certain schools, but good for those runcountry or people. ning for a short period are the Work camps require more texts of the Friendship Press than a desire to serve. Only One person, quite clever at (New York), which can be se- those should apply (says the such things, took five or six of cured through any denomina- folder describing them) "who the lighter books, and selected tional publishing house. are willing to live cooperatively from each an incident which she as a part of a group; do hard dramatized. The dramatization Talk over the matter of mis- physical labor; impos.e self-disin each case ended uncompleted sion study with those in charge cipline as a member of a demoat an interesting point, leaving of the vacation school planning. cratically organized group." the group with a desire to know An effective course should be what happened next. placed somewhere in a three- Hard labor, we might say in year cycle. Write to your na- passing, means just that. Wreck- The dramatizations, together tional children's work director, ing houses to create playground with a review of a book or two, the missionary education depart- space; quarrying stone to build formed the program for a meet- ment of your Board of Christian a dam; clearing land for farming, and started the autumn Education, or similar organiza- ing, making roads – these and reading in a very effective way. tion, or to your church publish- other projects are done under ing house for specific informa- technical supervision and must Why not have a book meeting tion. be done right. sometime during the summer? If you do not wish to have dram- A Comparison Ha.rd labor is not all. Noone atized incidents from books, does the camp work for the there are many other ways in I thought of it once as I sat by myself workers. It is a cooperative which books can be introduced. And looked at the boxes that sat on enterprise and the campers must Perhaps you can secure some do camp work themselves. Then member, or some one else who the shelf, there are hours of study. Each is a well known reviewer of One so large, one so small, with a camp, with its relationship to books, able to give a really one of the areas noted above, thought-provoking book review contrast most grim. engages in serious study on the of one of the important books for A bandbox for me, and a mite-box for problems of the community and the coming year's study. The ways of working toward their one review may make up the en- Him. solution. tire program – one to which guests might well be invited, and I paid for my hat and I paid for my You could not do better for one which would stimulate the gown, your young people this summer reading of the book by every than to investigate with them member of the group. Such And I paid for the furs that I pur- this particular field of service books do not often appear, but chased down town, and other avenues of volunteer the type we have in mind is that work. of House of Exile (China), by And when I returned, it was plain as Nora WaIn, or the more recent could be– You could not do better than Himself (India), by Ramahai to guide them to that which is Ranade. A mite-box for Him and a bandbox the "moral equivalent for war, for me. in terms of a constructive and Vacation Church School and adventurous service." I tossed in a dime, but it didn't seem Mission Study right; For specific information about work camps, write to the Work Camp Com- Now is the time to survey the I couldn't be proud of that curious mittee, American Friends SerVice field of studies in world friend- sight; Committee, 20 So. Twelfth Street, ship and in the missionary work Philadelphia, Pa. of the church which are avail- So I took out my check book and tried able for Primary and Junior to be square; Another avenue for a different type study in the Daily Vacation of service may be found in the Chris- Church Schools which will be set For I wanted my giving to look like tian Centers in migrant groups. Write up this summer in thousands of my prayer. to the Council of Women for Home churches. Missions, 297 Fourth Ave., New York. -By Sarella Te Winkle, in Vacation Church School is an "The Missionary Monthly." There is adventure aplenty in takideal place for effective mission Used by permission. ing Vacation Church Schools to the study. Make sure that those in children of isolated regions of our charge of selecting the studies American Youth Can Serve country. Write to The International this summer are aware of the Council of Religious Education, 203 available texts along this line. One of the most interesting So. Wabash Ave., Chicago, 111., to ask developments of recent years is about that. the type of volunteer service made possible to American youth Student Peace Service secretaries under the American Friends are looking for Peace Volunteers to Service Committee. work this summer in America, Mex- ico and Europe. Pacifist youth will Since 1934, when the project find a thrilling service there. Write was started, the movement has grown. What is it?
Briefly, work camps are set up -there were six or seven of them in 1938 – where carefully selected college or university young people spend eight weeks
EFFECTIVE WAYS OF WORKING
to Harold Chance, 20 South 12th since the preparation of entirely Koreans and Japanese, and Street, Philadelphia, for information. different menus would be im- green tea.
There are also innumerable practical. However, a dessert On the China table was a Chiprojects arranged by mission typical of each country was nese evergreen in a dragon bowl, served, as nearly as possible boards of various denominations. after the manner of that coun- and "water flowers." Woven Send out inquiries in various try. straw place mats were used, and directions, and try to plan a con- the place cards were Chinese structive summer of study and The centerpiece for the Mex- scenes, attached to tiny paper valuable experience, for the ico table was a bowl of cactus parasols. Rice wafers, crystalyoung people in your church or plants. Zinnias would be equally lized ginger, peanuts and "jas- appropriate, since this flower community. came originally from Mexico. mine" tea formed the dessert. A list of Chinese proverbs was An International Luncheon There were bright-colored doi- read, the Chinese being noted for lies, fiesta china and paper nap- their terse sayings. (We are indebted to Mrs. H. H. Fer- kins with a fiesta design. The guson for the following account) dessert was penuchi, strips of Chopsticks were provided for fresh coconut and coffee with those who cared to eat rice with An "International Luncheon," hot milk. them. given recently in Xenia, Ohio, was a social occasion with a pur- At the Philippine table, na- At Iran's table, the hostess pose: to create an interest in the tive-drawn work doilies were sprayed each guest's napkin peoples of far-away lands and to used, and as a centerpiece an with rose perfume (from the 10 promote world-mindedness by oriental bowl with brilliant cent store). Roses are grown in attempting to secure a better orange flowers. Place cards were Iran for the manufacture of perunderstanding of how other peo- hand made, using very tiny sea fume, so the centerpiece was a ples live, of their customs, their shells, glued to cards and tinted bowl of roses. Brass is much interests, their problems. Plans to represent flowers. The des- used in Iran, so the candlesticks, for the luncheon were rooted in sert was sliced pineapple, fresh tray and dishes for the dessert the idea of the oneness of the coconut and coffee with hot milk. were of brass; and since green human family. They can be is the Mohammedan color, the adapted to any group. For the West Indies, the cen- paper napkins, ink on the place Tables, each seating eight per- . terpiece was a pottery donkey, cards and the candles were sons, represented countries with tiny plants growing in the green. The dessert was turkish paste, dates and wafers. Black where Presbyterians are at baskets attached to his back. tea was served, guests putting a work. Since this group was not These donkeYis with their bas- lump of sugar in the mouth and large enough to represent all of kets are the common carriers in s,ipping the tea over it, according the sixteen countries, the follow- the West Indies. Little dolls, to Iranian custom. ing seven were selected: Korea, made of sea shells and popular China, India, Iran, Philippine with tourists, were used in the The afternoon program in- Islands, Mexico and the West decorations. A missionary friend cluded a few national songs, and Indies. A tiny national flag and in Santo Domingo sent a native items of news interest from vaa placard on each table indicated candy, made of coconut milk, rious lands. Guests were then the country represented; and to and hand tinted photo scenes in divided into two groups for a arrange the seating, the guests, the West Indies for place cards. "Prof. Quiz" feature, with thirty Another missionary in Porto questions of general missionary as they arrived, drew a slip bear- Rico sent guava paste for this significance, and a score of coring the name of one of the coun- rect answers was kept. Some of tries. The centerpiece, .and other table served as Porto Ricans like the questions. were: appointments of each table, sug- it with yellow cheese and crackgested the country. Some of the ers. At this table also, coffee What people are called a "nation of place doilies were paper world was served with hot milk. . Bible readers"?
maps, secured from Dennison'S, The hostess for the India table Has India more, or fewer people than New York. Place cards con- made "tied and dyed" plate the United States? tained a statement or question doilies, as this art originated about the country to provide con- with the Indians. Their favorite Name five living religions. Which religion has the largest num- ber of adherents?
versation topics.. At each table a flower, yellow marigolds, formed Narne three famous missionaries of "hostess," who had been previ- the centerpiece. At this table, the past.
ously supplied with facts, kept there was chutney, cashew nuts The success of such a lunchthe talk going about her country. and "sweets." Black tea was eon will depend upon planning The following ideas were car- served. well in advance, in order to se- ried out at the various tables. A A "dish garden" made the cure as much background inforlittle canvassing among friends, centerpiece for the Korea table. mation as possible. Denominaand consultation with mission- Place cards were supplied by a tional Boards will gladly supply aries or Board executives, will former missionary. For dessert, songs and proverbs, and interyield many other suggestions. there were rice wafers (from esting facts about all countries Rice was served as a part of the R. H. Macy's, New York), per- are to be found in the MISSIONmain course at all the tables, simmons, a favorite fruit among ARY REVIEW OF THE WORLD.
A Story for the
MOTHER'S DAY FIESTA "Ah, Ricardo, can't we do "Well, I have it here and I'm something?" The tears started By VIOLET WOOD, NEW YORK in Jacinto's eyes. "How good going to give it to you." you are! I did not even notice Ricardo, a Mexican boy, sat our mother's rebozo." "Could we possibly have that hunched over on his pony. He scarcely heeded the cattle as they "No, it is not that I am better one, just for the Mother's Day wandered about nibbling grass. than you, little sister. I am Then, as he heard someone older than you and notice such Fiesta?" Jacinto fairly shouted. shouting "Ricardo!" he looked things," responded Ricardo. up and saw his sister, Jacinto, "Yes," responded the teacher, running in and out among the "Now I am sad like you. Now gentle beasts, shouting: "Hi, the beautiful funny-faced pan- "and if you will make another Ricardo, hi!" sies in my garden no longer make me laugh." one to take its place, your mother As he looked at her he thought, "When I am a man I "There is our friend, Mrs. may keep this one. I'll give you shall buy her ribbons for her Turner, at the church," said hair so that she will not have to Ricardo. "She is the one who the patches and if you sew one tie her braids with shoe strings." spoke to the Senor of the ha- cienda and arranged that I small one every day, the rebozo "What's the matter with you, should take my father's place." Ricardo? Are you ill? Was the will be finished in time for our market-day too much for you "Yes," Jacinto clapped her yesterday?" she asked all in one hands. "Let us go to her dur- Christmas service next year." breath. ing the siesta." Ricardo and Jacinto threw "Ah, Jacinto, how you chatter, Since their mother worked in like a macaw, the noisiest of pa.r- the big house on the hacienda, their arms around Mrs. Turner rots," sighed Ricardo. Jacinto prepared lunch for her brother and herself in the little and then ran after her into her Jacinto, puffing, reached the white-adobe, one-room hut that pony and rubbed his nose affec- was their home. After lunch, little three-room house. Breathtionately. "But, Ricardo, why instead of sitting on the little are you so sad on this beautiful porch under the hanging peppers lessly watched her turn over the May day? We are to have fri- to enj oy their siesta, they set off joles and tortillas for lunch." at a fast pace to the Christian contents of her trunk. In it were Social Center to find their friend. "Tomorrow is the Mother's lovely soalrlaasp,esor(cwlaayterdijsahres~),bea- Day Fiesta." On the way Jacinto gathered sides an armful of wild geraniums "Ah, I have guessed. I know." and dahlias t.o give to their painted pig bank and a huge Jacinto danced around. "You friend. When they reached Mrs. are afraid you will forget your Turner's house, they bot h sombrero. Near the bottom of poem at the Christian Social stopped, suddenly frightened. Center. It is hard to speak Eng- The missionary welcomed them the trunk lay the rebozo made lish, but you are very smart, from her porch and finally Ri- Ricardo; you will not forget." cardo blurted out their problem, of hundreds of patches of gaily with Jacinto butting in tearfully "No, Jacinto, it is not that I every once in a while. colored calico, silk, rayon and fear to forget the English words." Ricardo shookhis head. "I know just the thing," said cotton. It was a beautiful shawl, Mrs. Turner. "You remember "T hen what?" J a c i n t 0 the Christmas pageant we had much more lovely than the usual shrugged. in the church last December?" black rebozo worn by the women. "If I ten you this, you must Ricardo nodded. not let our mother know I have Jacinto burst out, "But what There was great rejoicing in guessed. Promise me, Jacinto." has that-" "Oh, it has a lot to do with it," the little adobe hut when the "Yes, yes, Ricardo. It will be cried the missionary. "Rememas if you had not said it." ber that lovely patchwork rebozo next day the children gave their I made and which your Spanish "Our mother has no new re- teacher wore when she was the mother the rebozo! That evebozo to wear to the Christian Madonna?" Social Center. All the other "Yes," cried both children. ning in the Christian Social Cenmothers who have husbands are going to have new shawls, but [258 ] ter there was no prouder woman our mother has no husband to buy her a rebozo. She will be than the mother of Ricardo and unhappy." Jacinto.
Rkardo was so happy that he shouted his Mother's Day Fiesta poem. Jacinto could scarcely sit still. Mrs. Turner, the mission- ary, thanked God for having the chance to bring happiness.
Making Use of This Story To interest the child in the missionary project among Mex- ican children, who are our near- est neighbors. See how many Mexkan words he knows after reading the story.
1. hacienda (large estate). 2. fiesta (holiday). 3. siesta (resting period after lunch) . 4. frijoles (beans). 5. tortillas (corn pancakes). 6. rebozo (shawl). 7. plaza (city or village square). 8. sarapes (blankets worn by men). 9. so-mbrero (huge hat). 10. senor (Mr. or owner). .
BULLETIN
Council of Women for Home Missions EDITED BY MISS EDITH E. LOWRY, 297 FOURTH AVENUE, NEW YORK, N. Y.
I============================~ Vacation Time – Summer Women and girls. unfamiliar counter in our local tasks and to- with summer conferences often gether solve them. We learn to Conference think that their sole purpose is understand characteristics and to teach the mission study books. viewpoints of peoples from other Yes-vacation time does mean This is only one feature, an im- lands by our contacts with misa summer conference for an in- portant one, but many more sionaries and nationals. We see creasing number of women each courses are offered. It will be ourselves from their viewpoint. year throughout the United of interest to doubting ones to States. There are twenty-two list a few of the courses that Vision – with this fellowship Conferences and Schools of Mis- were successfully tried last sum- comes a new understanding, and sions affiHated with the Council mer at various schools. with this new understanding of Women for Home Missions, comes a loftier vision. A vision and the Committee on Women's Christian conduct today. which places us and our difficul- Work, Foreign Missions Confer- Leadership training in devotionals. ties in their proper relationship. ence. These conferences are held Normal class in leadership. A vision from a spiritual mounat various times from April Book reviews. tain top that gives courage to through October, planned to co- Building and administering a helpful descend to the valley, better preincide with the vacation season. pared to attack the work waiting The attendance ranges from one youth program. there. A vision of the whole hundred and twenty-five dele- Laboratory class in methods of pro- purpose-His Kingdom on earth gates at the smallest conference -and the part we each are privto more than twelve hundred gram building. ileged to contribute. delegates at the largest. They Planning worship services for girlsvary in length of time. A few 1939 Conferences * are for two days-devoting one including personal worship. day to Home Missions and the Christian citizenship. The mission study for 1939 other day to Foreign Missions. Problem clearing. will be developed around the Some are of four-day duration, Religion in art. 'theme "Christ and World Comand many take a full week for Women's work-social action-peace munity." study. It is interesting to note that the large majority of the -unity. "The Mission of the Church delegates are lay-workers and Girls' personality course. Abroad" will be studied against leaders, women and girls from Music in Christian education. the background of the material local churches. Women and Panel discussions on various phases of presented at the great missiongirls who have accepted offices ary conference held in Madras, of responsibility: president of women's interdenominational work India, in December, 1938. In the mission society or women's Round table discussions on Oxford no sense a report of the meeting, auxiliary, devotional I e ad e r, the study books will interpret chairman of worship services, and Madras. the valuable discussions on the teacher of a study book, teacher Infusion of missions in the whole life and work of the younger in the bible school, etc. One mis- churches and the major issues sions school reported local pas- church program. confronting all Churches of the tors as delegates and one confer- East and West in their common ence had four groups: children, We have been thinking and missionary enterprise of the junior girls, senior girls, and writing about courses and dele- coming years. The books are bewomen. Apparently local work- gates, now let us consider the ing prepared by S. Franklin ers, women and girls, realize spiritual benefits derived from Mack and Basil Mathews who that more serious study and a these gatherings. were in attendance at Madras. deeper consecration is of vital importance if they are to per- Fellowship-Understanding "The Mission of the Church at form their various duties accept- -Vision Home" will be presented in ably. It is also encouraging that courses showing the rich fruits the groups attending are com- Fellowship – with worn e n of home missions through a cenposed of younger women. from other churches, from other tury of pioneering, introducing denominations, from other coun- tries. A fellowship with mis- * A list of summer conferences for 1939 sionaries. A fellowship with leaders and teachers. Fellow- will be found on page 260. ships that ripen into life-long friendships. Friendships that call forth the best in us in re- membrance of our conference days together.
Understanding – in this close fellowship we share the prob- lems and difficulties we en- [259 ]
the new leadership and pointing ward, 902 North 6th Street, Cam- and power may be utilized) but out the new tasks for the home bridge, Ohio. also practical new ways of premissionary enterprise of the fu- Mountain Lake Park, Md.-July 19-25 senting the four projects-samture. Books are in preparation -Interdenominational Sum mer ple d ram a s, impersonations, by Arthur S. Limouze and Frank School of Missions. Mrs. F. I. symbols-as well as other inti- S. Mead. Johnson, 711 Lake Shore Boulevard, mate suggestions. about proce- Saint Cloud, Fla. dure so that various types of These books on home and for- women may become active: coleign missions will be taught at AUGUST lege girls, world travelers, inall the mission schools. Kerrville, Texas – August 10-16- valids, etc. Instruction in the Bible will Texas Synodical Auxiliary Training 3. The Publicity Sub-Commitbe given at the conferences. School. Mrs. George M. Smith, "The farther the ages advance in Route 2, Brownsville, Texas. tee is already at work on sample civilization the more will the articles for use in local news- Bible be used."-Goethe. Lake Geneva, Wis. – August 13-20- papers beginning a month ahead Summer School of Missions. Pres., of February 9, 1940, which is Let us strive toward a greater Mrs. W. P. Topping, 406 Center the first Friday in Lent next interdenominational cooperation Street, Elgin, Illinois. year. If you have something in all summer schools and con- good used in your own newsferences. The Council of Women Chautauqua, N. Y.-August 19-25- paper, do send it to us at headfor Home Missions and the For- Institute of World Missions. Miss quarters to share with others, eign Missions Conference are B. Louise Woodford, 930 23rd Ave- for much of our mail asks: eager to help foster this coopera- nue, North, St. Petersburg, Fla. "What shall we say and how tion and may be called upon for suggestions. Many conferences SEPTEMBER shall we say it?" Bradford, take an offering each year for Pennsylvania, mailed us an asthe two home and the two for- Warren. Ohio-September 5-6-School tonishing and glorious reproduceign projects. Let us all support of Missions. Mrs. George Konold, tion of our small blue "Call to these four projects – Migrants, 314 Scott Street, N. E., Warren, Prayer," enlarged to cover one United States G () v ern men t Ohio. entire huge page – including Schools for Indians, Christian Durer's "Praying Hands," all Literature, Union Christian Col- Minnesota (Minneapolis-St. Paul)- the prayer items, the poem, and leges in the Orient-by gifts as September 18-22 – School of Mis- the interdenominational commitis our custom on the World Day sions. Pres., Mrs. C. E. Heard, tees of church women sponsorof Prayer. 3020 Colfax Avenue, Minneapolis, ing it, with a significant line, Minn. reading: "This is not a paid ad- Let us include a summer con- vertisement." So somebody was ference in our vacation. Dallas, Texas – September 25-29- amazingly wide-awake to the School of Missions. Mrs. Mitchell challenging uses of creative pub- Conferences and Schools Langdon. Hutchins, Texas. licity! of Missions Houston, Texas – September 25-29- 4. The New Radio Sub-Com- Affiliated with the Council of Women Leadershin Training School. Dean: mittee will put into the handbook for Home Missions and t "e Com- Mrs. A. B. Haynes, 618 Highland several sample radio programs mittee on Women's Work,For- Avenue, Houston, Texas. of warm and reverent beauty for eign Missions Conference use on a local radio. It is none The World Day of Prayer too soon now to secure "time" DATES AND CHAIRMEN, 1939 for this local broadcast next It is the hope of the Commit- February 9. JUNE tee for the World Day of Prayer that each city has already called In case you have any splendid Winona Lake, Ind.-June 17-24-Sum- together its Day of Prayer lead- ideas to share with your World mer School of Missions. Miss Min- ers to garner their beautiful Day of Prayer Committee, please nie M. Rumsey, 685 Northmoor items, to list all unfulfilled send them to the Chairman, Miss Road, Lake Forest, Illinois. dreams, and plan to make these Margaret Applegarth. Room 63, come true in 1940. Boulder, Colo. – June 25-July 1 – 297 Fourth Avenue, New York. School of Missions. Pres., Mrs. To make all of us conscious of Henry F. Hoffman, 741 Adams the larger values at our com- A Letter from Kinston, Street, Denver, Colorado. mand, the World Day of Prayer North Carolina Committee has set up four sub- Eagles Mere, Pa.-June 2d-.Tuly 1- committees to concentrate on "Yesterday I served on an interde- Interdenominational Confer('nce of preparing sample suggestions to nominational committee to plan for Missions. Mrs. Earl B. Breeding, be gathered into a handbook, for the observance of the World Day of Palmer Avenue and Vernon Road, Fall publication. Prayer. It was most encouraging. Scarsdale, N. Y. We plan to have a program in each of 1. The Program Sub-Commit- the public schools at the chapel period Mount Herman, Calif.-June 24-July tee will have as its duty the prep- and to help the Negroes with materials 1 – Federate School of Missions. aration of three new programs- and plans for observing the day. Mrs. Grace C. Makinson, 201 Ridge- one for children, one for young way Avenue, Oakland, Calif. people, one for women; the lat- "Last year we had a most impres- ter to use the "findings" of the sive service in our church. This year JULY recent Madras Conference, so we will all meet in the Christian that all of us may share in the Northfield, Mass.-July 3-10-Mission- impetus· of new goals for our Church." ary Conference. Miss Edna M. Christian living. Springhorn, 19 Wayside Lane, Scarsdale, N. Y. 2. The Promotion Sub-Com- mittee will put into this hand- Bethesda, Ohio-July 10-14-School of book not only an ideal set-up for Missions. Dean: Mrs. John Se- a local Day of Prayer observance (so that all the innate richness
come to. believe that "might with the remark: "Please in-
makes right" because the in- form owners in America that The Future of Christianity vaders seem to get what they their property will receive good want without much effort. care." The writer of the article World Call asked a number Oof Where is justice, they ask, and describes the kind of care it is Christian workers in China to what is truth? Evangelists who receiving. "Its dormitories have give their reaction to the present stress the future life have con- been used to house troops, alsituation and the outlook for siderable influence on this group. though Japanese property near Christianity in that harassed by is unmolested. These troops land. Briefly, here are some of The other group argues that cook their meals by burning furthe replies: it is more important to struggle niture from the Woman's Build- in this life than to seek immor- ing. Its thirty-year-old trees "Though distressed, Chinese Chris- tality in the next; that it is use- have been cut down over our protians do not believe that God has for- less to speculate over anything test. University safes have been saken them, or that His purposes have so remote. Face the world, chal- rifled, although we informed the been defeated." – J. H. McCallum, lenge it, change it, say they; but Japanese that these safes con- Nanking. the tendency is away from reli- tained nothing but University gion. A number of this group record.s. At least one small *** were once Christian, but now building has been torn down. "Youth are interested in the Chris- they are uncertain as to just Efforts to remove the library tian message as never before. They what to believe. They are say- and laboratory equipment have are rethinking the meaning of life."- ing if Christianity has no effec- failed. Katherine Schutze, Nanking. tive solution for the ills of this chaotic age, sooner or later it Innumerable holes have been *** will disappear. cut in the long fences, and sneak thieves snag typewriters and "Every opportunity for worship, The Association Pre s s of microscopes at will. It is obvious Bible study or service is met with China has published a set of fifty that the local military want this radiant spontaneity. Said one young books and three sets of pam- property after the war is over, man: 'Our lives must be representa- phlets that will be of value to all and are doing all this to depretions of Him. What else should we be these inquiring minds. The view ciate its value, so that it can be about these days?' "-Edna W. Gish, expressed by a Central China bought at a fraction of its worth. Nanking. University student shows how It is valued at $2,000,000, is 100 obvious and how urgent is the per cent American property and *** need for guidance. This student is so registered with the United who was a Christian with a States Government. "The Bible teaches that Jesus came sound religious background said to bring life and liberty. Although he was weary of abstruse books "Near to the Heart of God" our suffering is unspeakable, still our on religion, as most of them canspirit is unbroken."-Pastor Lee Cho- not be understood; nevertheless, Dr. Frank W. Price, of Nanwu, Wuhu. if he could find a good one he king Theological Seminary, gave would study it diligently to see students of Cornell University a *** if there is any alternative to glimpse of China that is refresh- Christianity, and if so, how it ing: "The Church has found real roots could help solve their problems. in the lives of the people, and favor Rural churches in China are feeling with the Government. To us, it seems University of Shanghai their way to new forms of worship. the future of Christianity for the Chi- I have never felt so near to God as in nese has never been brighter."-Daisy An article in the Religious some little village chapel near the B. Slater, Nanking. Herald of Richmond, Va., clari- fields. A cross on a table, a few scrolls fies the situation in regard to the on the wall, some backless benches, *** University of Shanghai, still in but it all belongs to the people and to the hands of the Japanese Army, God. Songs, not merely translations "The Church is the only decent despite repeated promises to re- of our Western hymns but more and thing we have left from our past."- store it to the Baptist Mission. more Christian verse set to Chinese An Educated Chinese. One of these promises ended music, throbbing with the pain and joy, the longing and hopes of country What Students Are Thinking [261 ] life, and rich in rural imagery. I A contributor to the Chinese Recorder points out that the present time is a critical one for students; and divides them into two groups with regard to their attitude toward Christianity. One group is pessimistic. They have been seriously affected by the horrors of war i they have
think of the line in one hymn, "He is Ohristian Oolleges are too small to hold the people, the spring wind and I am the grass; and in some places it is neceslet him blow"; and of that hymn with The most recent reports tell sary to hold parallel meetings. an old ballad tune which Christian us that there are at present over Progress on the East coast is farmers in many parts of China now 6,000 students in all the Chris- constant. sing as they go to their work: tian Colleges in China. This is "Wearing our straw hats and carry- 2,000 more than the previous -Sunday School Times. ing our hoes, we go to our fields, year, and only 1,000 less than praising the Lord." In Shantung and the record of peace days. This JAPAN AND CHOSEN other provinces village Christians are condition is due to the tenacity singing whole sections and chapters of students and staff in the face Economy Must Be Observed of the Bible to old tunes that have of hardship and danger. All the come down through the centuries. To Christian Colleges are still in Orders have been sent from hear the twenty-third Psalm thus existence, although only two are Prefectural Headquarters to all chanted by a country congregation is conducting all their work on religious organizations t hat to be moved to tears. their own campus-West China economy must be pra.cticed in Union University and Yenching the following ways: erect no On Easter of last year I was with University in Peiping. Cheeloo more buildings than are abso- Frank Brown of Suchowfu in one of University carries on sections of lutely necessary; do not use gold the rural churches of his missionary its work on its campus in Shan- in ornaments and decorations; field. The Christians streamed in tung, but the Medical School and do not use gold thread, and limit from the villages and filled the little Science Department have moved as far as possible the use of iron, chapel to overflowing, so that we met to West China. lead and copper; contribute in the yard outside. Each came with waste products to the governa wild flower in his hand and greeted U. S. Property Returned ment; carry on festivals economhis fellow-Christians, "Ye-su fuh-ho ically; do not have elaborate liao, Jesus is risen!" More and more On March 9, Japanese mili- funerals and marriages; curtail the rural churches of China are giv- tary forces, after many months the holding of feasts and the giving the festival the place it deserves, of occupancy, returned Soochow ing of presents; for publicathe church festival and the Christian- University to its Southern Meth- tions, use a poorer grade of ized native festival. odist owners. The Japanese au- paper. thorities also informed the Service for the Wounded United States Government that Suggestions for work that they were returning the South- Christian churches may carry The "Christian Service Coun- ern Presbyterian School and on are indicated in a program cil for Wounded Soldiers in Mission property at Kashing in announced by the Nat i .0 n a l Transit" enlarged its program Chekiang Province, and the Christian Council: (1) In Jain January this year, the nine- Southern Methodist School at pan; comfort for the wounded teenth month of China's resist- Huchow in the near future. and memorial services for the ance to aggression. Headquar- Members of the Soochow Uni- dead. (2) In China. Cooperaters of the Council have been versity staff have returned to tion with comfort agencies in removed to Chungking, provi- start repair work, and resume China and training workers for sional capital, and soon after- work at the institution. evangelism. (3) InternationaL ward eleven service units were Cooperation wit h Christian established along the various -New York Times. agencies in other lands in corhighways, railways, waterways recting mistaken views of J aor other lines of communication The Tide Rising pan's policies, and contacting inthroughout the provinces of dividuals with letters and pam- Shensi, Hupeh, Hunan, Kwangsi From French Indo-China it is phlets. (4) Distribution of the and Kwangtung. Workers wait reported that revivals are Bible and publication of pamupon wounded soldiers at the spreading. The Mois are assem- phlets. on the "emergency." various stations, serve them food bling at almost any hour of the and drink, dress their wounds, day or night for testimony, Kagawa's "Ten Points" write letters for them and ren- praise and prayer. These simpleder all help needed by the war- minded children of the jungle In one address, Kagawa has afflicted men. have met God, know their sins given five points of achievement are forgiven, and are filled with of Christianity in Japanese life. During the past year, the joy. Annamese Christians have They are: personal piety, purity, Christian Service Council had been touched also through a Chi- respect for labor, the spirit of under its direct employ only nese evangelist, and their lives peace and the spirit of social about 100 workers, drawn from have been completely changed. service. As for peace, he says the various Christian churches, that while the Japanese people schools and hospitals in differ- Changes are coming about in have never particularly abhorred ent centers throughout the coun- Sumatra also, and Mohammedan war, they are calling the present try. This foundation group drew influence is on the wane. The war a "war for peace." This into their respective folds of Batak Christians now number idea can be traced to Christianservice a total of 2,000 men. A 400,000, and 28,000 were bap- ity; that is, it is a step in adtotal of 460,754 wounded soldiers tized last year. The churches were assisted during the past year. Generalissimo Chi a n g Kai-shek has expressed his appreciation for the invaluable service thus rendered.
OUR WORLD-WIDE OUTLOOK
vance that they must find an ex- Government officials h a v e jian schools, both in the number cuse for war. of pupils and the quality of work been friendly; a preaching per- done. Most significant of all is the changed attitude toward In a different address he mit for any place at any time Christianity among all the peopointed out five mistakes in mis- was readily secured; but the ple of the Islands. No longer sionary work: too much de- priests had warned the people are expressions of contempt pendence on Japanese workers; that the Protestant devils had heard when a Christian passes failure to read Japanese news- horns, and were evil people. by; opposition is being suppapers; unfamiliarity with good This aroused great curiosity, planted by admiration. Whereas Japanese books; too little min- especially among the children. religion is fighting for its life in gling with Japanese people and As the evangelists approached, so many countries, in Fiji there not growing with the Japanese. however, most people would dis- are signs of a rising tide of re- The Church of Christ will take appear within and bar their vival. time, he says; maybe four hun- doors, but their windows re- mained open, so the workers Clothes for Pitcairn Islanders dred years. would stand on the street and An amateur radio in the home -Japan Christian Quar- preach in a loud voice, knowing of Mrs. Dorothy Hall of Long terly. there were many listening ears. Island, New York, is practically the only contact that the 215 A few of the bolder inquirers Pitcairn Islanders have with the outside world. Ships that hap- "Combating Superstition" came to the evangelist's home in pen to be in that latitude call in- in Formosa frequently, but no closer than day time, but most of them five miles because of the shoals. Islanders must row out to meet The rigorous "Nipponizing" sneaked in at the back door by them. Since Mrs. Hall made campaign under way in Formosa night. At one time the workers public an appeal for supplies and . were speaking to a crowd when medic-ine last July, as all the includes the elimination of the world knows, she has been in Chinese language, even from a woman with eyes tightly closed constant touch with the island, primary schools; all teachers are for fear of seeing something, and the descendants of the required to have a command of came groping through the crowd Bounty mutineers look upon her the Japanese language, which in search of her son who, she as their agent and savior. When- knew, was listening. Still an- ever supplies run short, or demeans that Formosan teachers other day, during a street corner sires are expressed, they appeal are replaced by Japanese. Jap- to Mrs. Hall by radio to make service, an old woman ran out of the purchase and expedite the anese must also be th!Ol spoken her house with a bolo, ready to shipment, thus saving many prelanguage in homes, and the knife the preacher. She was re- cious weeks; otherwise, they strained, but the meeting broke must wait for a ship to call and police check up as to whether up. take the order. A recent request this is being done; also, whether was for a white shirt to wear to church; and something to use families have replaced the old It is encouraging that teach- as a substitute for tea and coffee, since the islanders will not drink Chinese gods with Shinto deities ersand school principals have either for religious reasons. -this, to do away with "superstition"! Compliance with these open minds, and are anxious for Honolulu Again a Foreign requirements assures the head of Field the family a preference in get- students to have the New Tes- On recommendation of the' tament. -The Message. Finance Department of the Epis- copal National Council, Honolulu ting a local job, or success in his The Fijians Today has been restored to its former business; and conversely, with- status as a foreign mission field; and Bishop Littell of Honolulu out such compliance it is impos- The Governor, Sir Harry has been given discretionary sible to find a job, or carryon Luke, was in attendance at the power to allocate appropriations business. Fijian Synod last fall, and was for this field. Since 1935, Hono- lulu had been considered a do- presented a whale's tooth by the mestic missionary field.
ISLANDS OF THE PACIFIC Fijians as a mark of their re- -The Living Church.
Victories in, Batanes Islands gard. The Governor told them that, as a fellow-Christian, he Up to 1937 there had never rejoiced in the evidences of what been a Protestant worker in the Christianity has done for Fiji Batanes Islands, in the extreme and the Fijians.
north of the Philippines. Two The Synod celebrated the 25th Baptist missionaries, Dr. and anniversary of Baker Hall, built Mrs. Culley, were the first to go, in memory of Rev. Thomas and left two Filipino evangelists Baker and seven Fijian Christo establish a permanent work. tians who were killed and eaten A total of 2'15 conversions are in 1867. The building contains noted in the latest report, and 12,000 stones, a fact which sugtwo young men from Batanes gested the text for the occasion: are studying at Manila Evan- "Ye also as living stones are gelistic Institute, in preparation built into a spiritual temple."
for returning to their province Educational progress has been as evangelists. marked in both Indian and Fi-
NORTH AMERIOA The Bible Goes to School the land, for the most part un- molested. Those five Indian Another Unfinished Task Gideon Bibles are going to chiefs and army officials met and Although the Christian forces school. Inspired by Canada's of the United States have been negotiated at the junction of the attempting for more than 300 three years of placing Bibles in years to evangelize the North Trinity and vKelraymsaptoht Rt hi vaet ras~aInnd- American Indians, only about the schools, the Gideons of it is on this half of the 350,000 profess to be either Catholics or Protestants· America adopted as their na- dian Presbyterian Church has while the other half are stili pagan. Sectarian divisions are tional objective ilnastthyeeanr~t"ioTnh'es been built, near the old Indian no doubt partly responsible; an- nation's Book other factor has been the enor- rancheria known as Weitchpec. mity o~ the task ?f evangelizing schools for the boys and girls of the whIte populatIOn as it moved About ten years ago when the westward from the Atlantic to America." Denver, Colo., was the Pacific, obscuring the need Rev. Emil A. Schwab became for evangelizing the Indian. the first city to follow out this p~stor of the Presbyterian In- Now that there are no longer dIan Chureh at Hoopa, he saw 'an any frontiers in the United objective on a large scale, al- States, the Christianization of the Indian should receive more though other states rapidly fol- opportunity to extend Christian attention. Notable work has been done by the Episcopal lo~ed. Six hundred and fifty work among the Indians at Church among the Sioux in South Dakota, and by Baptists BIbles have been placed in 63 Weitchpec; whereupon, a Sunand Methodists in Oklahoma. schools in Denver: Several sub- day School was osregtanuizped~nda -Christian Observer. preaching station urban schools have been sup- Are Americans Being Duped? plied, making a total of 700 ac- through the years services have tually placed in schools, at the been maintained. Lseacsut ryede afr ~oamn appropriation was last report. Contributions have come mainly from Colorado Sun- the Board of National Missions day schools. Gideons themselves which made possible the erection visit Sunday schools and present' of a church building. It was dedi- the plan. cated November 16, 1938. An The fact that copies go only interesting part of the dedica- to rooms requesting one is as- tory service was the reading of surance that it will be used. an historical sketch of the Mis- sion by a grandson of one of the Teachers read passages for a ~ornin~ devotional, they study five Indian chiefs who had a It as hterature, they use it in part in the negotiations over the memory work, they use it as ref- land. erence material.
EpDisrc.oWpa. lRuCshseulrlcBh,owNie~wof Grace Realizing the general lack of Ohristianity and National York, knowledge of the Bible, the Gid- Wealth recently expressed astonishment eons are preparing a list of ref- erences adapted to students; and Speaking before 500 business at ~he number of apparently in- an outgrowth of this whole proj- and professional men at a Chi- cago Chamber of Commerce te~hgent persons who are being ect n?w follows in the forming me~ting, W. A. McIntyre, Sal- of BIble research clubs in the vatIOn Army Commissioner for mIsled by under-cover anti- schools. These are regular the central states, said that the school clubs, each sponsored by Army has contributed two bil- Semitism. Exaggerated state- lion dollars to the wealth of the a member. of the faculty, and United States by the reclamation ments are made that are cal- they pr:ovIde both Bible study of over 200,000 "down-and- and socIal contact for Christian outers." When a citizen is lost culated to arouse dislike of Jews young people. The study in to society through drunkenness, as many thousands are every by people who pose as intelligent these clubs covers a wide range of subjects, such as archeology, ~ear! ther~ is !l- monetary value defenders of the truth. These astronomy and other sciences in the light of the Bible. mevItable m hIS restoration. An people are unwitting tools of -So S. Times. propaganda by groups who are using anti-Semitism as an in- strument to establish here the same sort of fascist regime as is in power in Germany and Italy. Here is the technique: Divide the nation into groups: get New Hoopa Indian Ohurch economist estimates the average ~me. ~roup to hate another; fasten an It was eighty-seven years ago person is worth $10,000 to the last October that five Indian InVIdIOUS label on every one who chieftains, representing tribes in country. Mr. McIntyre says northern California, met a milifst~aeneddosmf(orfa~Armpelraiyca; n ideals of honor tary commission and entered in- that in his life time he has seen call every cham: to treaties with the United plOn of JustIce a communist and every States Government whereby cer- 200,000 human derelicts, with no tain tracts of land were deeded Jew a communist; call every labor to the Indians. These treaties future but sapisrliatbuailnlythaendmophrygsu.ie~ have never been ratified, but the recovered lead,er in the North and every or- Indians have continued to occupy ~amzer of the pitiful share-croppers cally through the ministry of the I!l the South an enemy to the estab- Salvation Army. This means a ~Ishc:d order; call every defender of Jus~lce for the Negro a traitor to contribution to soc i e t y of whIte supremacy – in short stir up $2,000,000,000.
enough antagonisms and you will The totals mount when one make democracy unworkable and the adds the results of other rescue stage will be set for a Hitler.
OUR WORLD-WIDE OUTLOOK
mISSIOns, and the ministry of stroyed. In all, the cash loss is friends with officials, and finally the churches. In commenting, approximately $10,000, but this gained permission to begin evanan editorial writer in the Watch- does not include loss of farm in- gelistic work. Although hunman-Examiner says that while come and that from damaged dreds of men crowded in to hear, one cannot approve of measur- buildings. when they were given their freeing the value of a life in dollars dom, they were soon back in and cents, this is nevertheless a ELMER E. GABBARD. prison for new crimes. Then language that business men the prison walls were made to understand; and that our eco- LATIN AMERICA ring with the warnings of God's nomic depression is in large part judgments on murder, theft, and the result of business leaders Student Pastor in Puerto Rico other forms of wickedness, toforgetting that Christianity pro- gether with the assurance of forduces far-reaching benefits to the The University of Puerto Rico giveness through Christ. Soon nation. is a growing institution. It has it was evident that "something" recently added several ne,w was happening. Tears flowed; Good and Evil Influences buildings, and its six depart- prisoners began to make a "clean ments have a faculty of 229, breast" of their sins and there A group of workers of St. with a total enrolment of nearly has been a mighty turning to Mark's Methodist Church in 5,000 students. For some time Christ in this prison. Many are New Orleans recently made a the evangelical churches of now reading the New Testament, survey of the French Quarter of Puerto Rico have hoped that an and some are genuinely conthat city, in which the church is evangelical pastor might be ap- verted. located, and report that this pointed to the University staff, a Quarter has about a dozen bad hope that has now been realized. A Nurse's Job in Guatemala influences to one good influence; Rev. Domingo Marrero, missionor, 285 bad influences and only ary in Santo Domingo for some Poverty, malnutrition and dis- 25 good ones. In the category years, a Methodist minister with ease underlie the picturesque of bad influences are 264 saloons excellent preparation, a fine beauty of Guatemala which touror beer parlors, six dance halls, speaker and strong in Christian ists admire. Miss Lucy Bestand fifteen gambling houses. education, was appointed to the wick, R.N., conducts a clinic in staff. He has already won the her home in Quezaltenango and Among the twenty-five good respect and affection of both stu- in the near-by villages. She has influences were eight churches, dents and faculty. learned to drive a car on roads eight schools, one park, two play- where a leeway of six inches begrounds, one library, one kinder- The Federation of Evangelical tween the car and precipice is garten, two health centers, and Churches of Puerto Rico re- considered ample, and where 72 two community centers. cently honored Mr. Marrero by hairpin turns in a distance of appointing him as executive sec- two miles make what Guate- -World Outlook. retary of the Committee of Re- malans call a good road. There ligious Education of that or- are regions, however, where the Flood at Buckhorn Mission ganization. nurse and her car cannot go- not because she fears the road The region around Buckhorn, Preaching to Prisoners but because there is no road; Kentucky, experienced the most then she takes her bag and disastrous flood in its history in F. J. Huegel, a missionary to climbs to whatever cornstalk hut January, and the waters did Mexico under the United Chris- may need her services. their worst on the premises of tian Missionary Society, has the Presbyterian Mission there. been a leader in prison work in Last summer typhus broke out The church was under eight feet Mexico. He writes in World Call and 87 died. Though it origof water. The Domestic Science of some of the difficulties. At inates in poverty and filth, the building, McKenzie Hall, Englis Xochimilco the Christian work- privileged class is struck down Home, the Geer Gymnasium and ers were told that if they would too. So Miss Bestwick set up an the store rooms were all flooded. teach the prisoners to read, and isolation hospital in a little evan- The water went into the second kill bed bugs, that would be more gelical chapel, where she and an story of the Domestic Science to the point than giving "a mes- Indian preacher who volunteered building and totally or partially sage of pretty words." Both to help, and twelve patients were destroyed all the weavings. Al- projects were undertaken on the left to fight it out. One patient most all the food supply that side, and the result was a group died; eleven got well. had been canned and dried and of Believers won after a year of placed in the new store room, preaching. Two years of preach- Colombian Christians built safe~ above the highest ing at Coyoacan had a similar water level 'known to the oldest result. Days in the s'addle, nights in citizens, was destroyed. a hammock, heat, insects, fatigue Mexican law forbids evan- are incidentals in an evangelistic The whole farm program of gelical activity in the federal trip over mountain trails in inthe school was disrupted, and prison, but when a young nurse terior Colombia, but these hardhope of returns from gardens, killed her lover and was put in poultry and dairy seem de- the prison, Mr. Huegel visited her. He took books, made
ships did not dim Mr. W. W. mosque in London, connected were granted religious liberty on Thomas' enthusiasm over the with the Ahmadiyya sect which February 17, 1848. Since that staunch qualities of Colombian is only about seventy years old. time, realizing that they must be Christians. Said he: "To use missionary, they have spread the your machete for chopping brush Hinduism has not formerly Gospel throughout Italy and toinstead of carving your neigh- favored proselyting but is now day they have churches, mission bor, to be a teetotaler, to be the conducting propaganda in Eu- stations and organized groups in husband of one wife, to read the rope and America, through their Italy, in Italian East Africa, in Bible and try to practice its swamis. Hindu publications are Uruguay and Argentina, and teaching – all these sound like issued in English and German North America. commonplace things to us; but as well as in Indian languages. they are not commonplace to the Many of the Hindu sects are Bible Study in France mountain villager in Colombia." closely related to Theosophy and some claim a considerable fol- As if tired of human theories, Mr. Thomas met a woman lowing of the yogi cults. French Protestants are drawing who told him she never used to closer to the Word, and forming know when her husband would A Waldensian Celebration Bible reading circles. Out of get home, because he simply this has come the formation of could not pass the cantina with- This year the Waldenses plan Bible study groups in a number out stopping to get drunk. "But to celebrate the 250th anniver- of churches. In one church an now," she said, "I still never sary of their "Glorious Return." entire afternoon was given over know when he'll be home, but After the revocation of the Edict to a detailed study of selected that's because he can't pass. any- of Nantes by Louis XIV of portions of the Bible. In another body on the trail without stop- France, the Waldenses in Italy place, sixty young people were ping to tell him what Christ has suffered greatly from ruthless seen bent over their Bibles in done for him, and urge the other persecutions. In 1687 the small meditation. Observations made man to become a Christian too." remnant were allowed to flee to by these young people, whose Switzerland and there they kept training and environment had -:-Monday Morning. alive their love for religious lib- given them no special aptitude erty and for their valleys in for Bible study, showed a grasp EUROPE Northern Italy. Two years later, of Scripture truth. in August, 1689, Pastor Henry Asiatic Missions in England Arnaud led about 600 men across -Sunday School Times. the Alps to the Waldensian Val- Rev. G. Francis S. Gray, a leys, where, against superior Religions of Central Europe missionary of the S. P. G., when forces of French and Italian on furlough, made an investiga- soldiers, they rewon their home- Practically every European tion of the activities of Bud- land. This "Glorious Return" creed may be found in Czechodhists, Moslems and Hindus in will be celebrated in Italy in slovakian territory. Here live England. He visited the head- August and the first week in Roman Catholics, Lutherans, quarters of the two main Bud- September. Calvinists, Jews, Roman Uniates, dhist organizations. One is the Old Catholics, Baptists, Metho- "Buddhist Lodge," which has The Western Section of the dists, ultra-patriotic Czechoslobeen in existence for about fif- World Alliance, which met in vak National Church, Greek Orteen years and was formerly a Pittsburgh, February 28-March thodox, Pietists, agnostics and branch of the Theosophical 1, adopted resolutions express- atheists. Presidents Masaryk Society. Its work is largely ing their congratulations to the and Benes were of the Hussite devoted to the translation of Waldensian Church, and calling tradition; the present premier Buddhist classics. The other this historic event to the atten- is a Roman prelate. Roman Buddhist Mission (also called Catholics embrace about two the British Maha Badhi) with tion of Protestant churches.* thirds of the population; less headquarters in London, is con- than a tenth are Protestant, the nected with Ceylon Buddhism The Waldenses are the oldest two ma,in subdivisions being and is more intent on propa- survlvmg evangelical church Lutherans and Calvinists. The ganda. It was founded in 1926 group in the West. Their his- Moravians, some of whom setby a Singalese but the monks torY is continuous from the tled in Bethlehem, Penna., total find it difficult to observe their twelfth century to the present about 8,000 in Czechoslovakia. religious rules in the climate of day. Their missionary efforts Congregationalists n u m b e r England. at one time covered most of Eu- 7,000, Methodists 8,000 and Bap- rope and their influence was tists perhaps 3,000 Smaller Islam in Epgland is repre- strong in the Latin, Germanic, American sects, such as Russellsented by two sects. There are and some Slavic lands. The ites, Pentecostals and Seventhonly two mosques but a number Waldenses helped prepare for Day Adventists are represented. of Moslem prayer houses, mainly the Protestant Reformation by There is also a group of some for Eastern M 0 s I ems. One sending missionaries and the 600,000 seceding Catholics who mosque at Woking is staffed by Bible throughout Europe. They resemble in their beliefs the Indians, graduates of Indian universities. There is another • Suitable music and other helps for the celebration of this anniversary may· be ob- tained from the American Waldenslan Aid Society, 156 Fifth Avenue, New York,
OUR WORLD-WIDE OUTLOOK
Alnglicans of the time Qf Henry to its readers last December to. tiQn fQr the purpQse o.f spreading the VIII. kno.wledge amo.ng o.ther peo.ples., cQntribute to a fund to supply that they, to.o., might be made In the midst Qf cQnflicting ra- happy thro.ugh its ,blessings. cial claims Qf Czechs, SIQvaks, destitute Russians all o.ver the These charitable o.rganizatio.ns PQles, Ruthenians, Sudetens, WQrld with free Bibles. This send o.ut their educatio.nal mis- Magyars, Jews, Rumanians and met with pro.mpt and hearty re- siQns, supply them with mo.ney Gypsies, the religiQus aspect Qf SPo.nse on the part o.f Swedish and supPo.rt them in every way, the CzechQslQvakia prQblem have Christians, and in one month fo.r no. o.ther purpo.se but sincere been largely Qverlooked. This about $2,500 were sent to. the service fo.r humanity's sake and seems all the mQre remarkable o.ffice of the paper fo.r this pur- fQr the lessening Qf its afflictions. since this is the land Qf J Qhn pose. With this sum, 6,000 co.m- Wherever these missiQns have Hus, Qne of the fQunders Qf plete Russian Bibles can be sent, gQne, they have becQme angels PrQtestantism. and several societies are now Qf mercy and examples of per- busy distributing them amo.ng fect fulfilment of duty. "God. Seekers" in Yugoslavia Russians in the Baltic States, Po.land, Czecho.slovakia, Ruma- "If the noble feeling, that o.f The Watchman-Examiner re- nia, France, Brazil, Argentina sincere cQoperation among na- PQrts a new religiQus mQvement and Manchuria. tions, permeated the individuals that is sweeping over YugQ- of society and brotherhoo.d of slavia. More than 400 brQther- AFRICA love were spread among all, then hQQds have been Qrganized and all nations would be the memtens Qf thQusands Qf members Leaders for New Egypt bers of one family, and most huhave been enrQlled. TheyadvQ- man tro.ubles would be ended." cate a return to. the Qriginal In 1921 Wilbert Smith went primitive life of the evangelists., to Cairo. with a co.mmissio.n and -The Moslem World. free frQm the "burdens" of an idea. The co.mmissio.n was to. earthly PQssessiQns, and call start an Egyptian Y. M. C. A. Spiritual Progress in themselves "GQd-seekers.." Many Friends in America provided the Sudan thQusands are said to be giving $275,000 for a building, and away all their possessiQns and England and America provided C. M. S. missionaries tell of a j Qining this movement. five secretaries. But the idea remarkable spiritual movement was more difficult to put thro.ugh. in parts Qf the Upper Nile re- Galicians Eager for Gospel It was that the new Y. M. C. A. gion, with schools, hospitals and must be manned by Egyptians churches all flourishing. Mrs. Last year, in the Galician re- and stand o.n its o.wn feet. Now, K. G. Fraser writes in the Life giQn Qf pQland, wQrd was sent after 18 years, eight o.f the ten of Faith: Qut that an evangelical Christian secretaries are Egypitians and meeting WQuid be held in Qne Qf o.nly two. are Americans. The s c h 0 01 s and dispensaries the villages, and five thQusand throughout the country are packed perSQns responded by attending, The first Egyptian to. become with people, and on Sundays the SQme Qf whom had traveled 35 a Y secretary had been an ardent crowds are so great that they have miles. nationalist, and tho.ught the Y overflow meetings at every center. o.ught to. be destroyed, so he At Chief J ambo's there are over 1,000 This meeting was Qne Qf the j Qined it in Qrder to. bo.re fro.m people every Sunday morning. In addevelQpments. Qf the interna- within. Now he is more reSPo.n- dition to sixteen out-schools there are tiQnal Christian WQrk carried Qn sible than any other man for now ten preaching places, and quite with the help of the Central Bu- pro.ducing the yo.ung leaders 10,000 people hear the Gospel every reau for Relief o.f Evangelical both in bo.ys' and men's depart- Sunday. Several well-known witch Churches in Europe, begun ments who. are interpreting doctors have broken up their charms twelve years ago. The work in Y. M. C. A. ideals to. the youth and destroyed their entire parapher- Galicia no.w has 18 salaried pas- of the natio.n. Another of the nalia, and are attending services and tors, 75 grQUps of worshippers, eight is now studying in the New classes regularly. 40 organized churches, 3,020 York Schoo.l of Social WQrk, and recognized church members and plans to. return to. Egypt for spe- There are not enough beds for all 2'0 Sunday Schools. Of the 40 cial work in this field. the patients in the hospital at Lui, and Qrganized cQngregations, five as for schools, about 80 attend the meet in chapels. The remaining Honor to Mission Schools Girls' Classes, sixty the Women's 35, until they receive aid in School and over 200 pupils are in the erecting buildings conforming to. The Governor Qf Assiut PrQv- Boys' School. Sale of Gospels has the local law, meet in peasants' ince, Egypt, in addressing 2,000 gone up by leaps and bounds. In short, cottages consisting of one living at the co.mmencement exercises the increase in the Christian commuroom each. of Assiut College, said: "One of nity has far outstripped the resources the accepted human principles is in teachers and evangelists. It is re- Bibles for Russians that individuals coo.perate in ported that 11,000 Christians are in o.verco.ming difficulties, the the care of one African pastor, the A Swedish Christian paper, strQng helping the weak. Gro.ups nearest missionary being 80 miles Hemmets Van, issued an appeal Qf charitably inclined individ- away. uals have gQne ahead in civiliza- Nigeria Opens Its Doors The establishment of leper set- tlements by the Sudan Interior Mission, the Sudan United Mis- siQn and the C. M. S. in several
provinces of Nigeria has gained boys play football with bare menian and Syrian Evangelical the good will of the people to feet, harder than boots, and the Churches. The Bible Lands such a degree that missionary native band at the game dis- Union for Christian Education work is now possible in the for- courses "The Swanee Ribber" conducted a successful Sunday merly closed Moslem emirates of on instruments of bamboo joints. School Institute and the Arme- Kano, Katsina Zaria and Sokoto nian Christian Endeavor Socie- Provinces. The above named mis- It should be further noted that ties held a large and enthusiastic sions are caring for about 800 the white man's prestige is prac- conference whose results are belepers. With government assist- tically a thing of the past. In ing evidenced in various direcance the Brethren mission is car- the commercial world the su- tions. The British Syrian Mising for 500 lepers and the Dutch perior,educated native has dis- sion and Danish missionaries Reformed Church for 400 more. placed the inferior w hit e. also held a ten-day summer Natives are to be found in large school. In the Steps of Dan Crawford offices and banks, using compli- cated cash registers and type- The Near East School of The- Mr. Ernest Salisbury, mis- writers, and keeping their firm's ology, another union institution, sionary of the Brethren, last ledgers. Many of the captains graduated five students last year visited the district around of large transport steamers are year; two were women. Hospi- Luanza Mission, Elisabethville, natives, as are postmasters and tals of the American Mission in Belgian Congo, where Dan traders. Tripoli and Deir-ez-Zor, and that Crawford labored for so many of the Edinburgh Medical Misyears. He describes a confer- -Sunday School Times. sionary Society in Damascus are ence of native Christians, which all filled and several young began each day with a devotional WESTERN ASIA women have completed their message and prayer. This was training as qualified nurses. followed by a study of Paul's Religion in Turkey Epistle to Titus, presented in a -NearEast Christian Counhelpful manner. Gospel services There is a distinction between cil N eW8 Bulletin. were held in the evenings, and official and personal attitude toon the closing day four converts ward religion in Turkey. Offi- Two Bible Societies Combine were baptized. Nine persons in- cially, Turkey is completely secdicated their desire to become ular, but religion is respected The American Bible Society Christians. because it is ingrained in the life and the British and Foreign and thought of the people. Tur- Bible Society have combined Mr. Salisbury's tour of the key has not suppressed religion, their work in the Near East, Luanza district covered 350 but has separated religious and and have established headquarmiles, including a visit to the tin secular authority which were ters in Beirut. The American mines where thousands of na- formerly united in the Sultan. Press is the chief publishing tives are employed. At the In thousands of mosques and in agency for the Society. During hospital no fewer than 200 pa- hundreds of churches and syna- one recent four-month period, tients are treated daily. Bibles gogues worship goes on unhin- 40,000 Bibles and portions were had been given to a number who dered. Four evangelical churches shipped out, most of them to the had shown their keenness in in Istanbul hold services as Port Said depository. In addievangelistic work, while two na- usual. tion to Bibles, the Press prints tives had been sent as colpor- textbooks and other publications. teurs to villages near the mines. No religious training for chil- A monthly magazine issued by A three-room house has been dren is permitted, except at the Press goes to North and erected for untainted children of home, but there is a good oppor- South America, as well as to leper parents.-The Christian. tunity for mission Sun day Asiatic and European countries. schools. Schools have been sec- Palestine, Iran and other Arabic- Changes in Nyasaland ularized and mosque schools speaking countries are good cus- suppressed. Early morning call tomers for literature. These are suggested by the re- to prayer has been discontinued; cent dedication of a memorial Sunday is now a legal holiday Results Among Moslems window in the mission church instead of the Mohammedan Friat Ekwendeni, representing Luke day. The sale of Christian lit- It is sometimes said that a and commemorating the minis- erature is limited by censorship. hundred years of effort to contry of Dr. Walter A. ElmsIie; vert Moslems have not produced the singing of Ngoni songs with Progress in Syria results. A report of the Near Christian words, and Scottish East Christian Council, while psalms as well. Tales of sav- This country, too, has its prob- admitting that the number of agery are all but incomprehen- lems, but mission schools report converts is not large, calls attensible to Ngoni young people of advance. Aleppo College has tion to the incalculable change today, who are happier by far erected new buildings and over that Christian thought and than their forefathers. There 275 have enrolled. This School ideals have wrought upon Islam. are slave raiders no longer. The is a united undertaking of the The reports reminds that it is American Presbyterian Mission, not required of stewards that the American Board and the Ar-
OUR WORLD-WIDE OUTLOOK
they be successful, but that they Indian Communal Groups Dr. John McKenzie, Principal of must be "faithful." Wilson College, was elected Mod- Recently, the Near East Chris- The National Missionary So- erator, an appointment for three ciety of India has now eleven years. tian Council has been looking fields in India. The work is carinto the reasons for the lack of ried on in association with neigh- Communicant membership of definite results. The inquiry boring missions, and comprises the United Church of Northern has centered around two ques- district work, hospitals, an ash- India stands at present at 77,000, tions : (1) "What special hin- ram and a college. Thus, the all- while the adherents. number well drances make work for Moslems India society has extended its over 200,000. The India Mission less successful than similar ef- work into almost every branch of the Lutheran, and of the Reforts for other people?" and (2) of the Christian missionary en- formed Church in America, were "What changes in methods or terprise. The Poona and Indian incorporated with the United line of approach offer hope of Village Mission, in its last re- Church of North India, after better success?" The two hin- port, faces up to the results of nearly six years of negotiating. drances stand out: Christian itswork. It describes its bapteaching does not mean the same tized converts for the last five Another action taken by the to the Moslem as to the Chris- years as numbering eight. The Assembly had to do with a protian ; and to the Moslem a change churches, which meet almost en- posed foreign mission project. of religion involves a change of tirely in compounds, consist of Definite plans submitted by the group connection and loyalty. Christians entirely dependent Foreign Missions Committee on the mission. There cannot be were approved by the Assembly, The best way to overcome in the whole area more than and the Church will now be these hindrances is first: more fifty-five Christians not depend- asked to support its own mission devotion, more prayer, more ef- ent on the mission; some of the in East Africa. Almost all the fort, more faith, more love; and latter are not in regular attend- Church Councils are supporting second, a way must be found ance, and the names of others are home missions within their own around the obstacles, so as to not even on the church rolls. bounds. avoid a frontal attack on the There are altogether in touch Moslem position. This requires with the mission about one hun- -Presbyterian Register. a sympathetic understanding of dred and sixty individuals. the Moslem mind. Efforts should Growth in Elementary Schools center about making J e sus It should be remembered that Christ known as a personality, India moves in com m una I One of the changes of the last rather than on doctrinal discus- groups, and that work for indi- decade has been the phenomenal sion. New converts should be viduals often causes a deadlock. increase in the number of chilled to develop such a sympathetic One missionary relates his ex- dren going to school; indeed, relationship with their neigh- periences in Hyderabad State, there has been a marked advance bors that a spiritual fellowship where he had refused to baptize in all stages of school training; will follow. individual converts until they but according to the Minister of had made every effort to win Education in Lahore, what is -American Mission Report. their relatives and friends. On now needed is not so much quan- one occasion he took a number titative expansion as consolida- INDIA, BURMA, SIAM of these unbaptized converts tion of what· has been under- with him, and they visited in a taken. He would like to see the Hunger for the Gospel team the relations and friends of system of education in schools to each throughout the district, be based on community work- A convincing evidence of In- with the result that in a few more on actual observation of dia's hunger for the Gospel is months one thousand were under things and facts and nature found in the statement of an preparation for baptism. study than on mere cramming English Methodist missionary in and the reading of officially prethe Deccan. He says that in his -Australian Missionary scribed textbooks. thirty-eight years of missionary Review. service he has never yet gone to Not in costly buildings, but in a village for evangelistic work United Church of North India thatched houses, if need be, he without being called to it by the would have students trained in people thems.elves. During the A successful General Assem- simple living and high thinking; past three or four decades the bly of the United Church of with more attention given to dedemand for copies of the Chris- North India was held early this velopment of mind and chartian Scriptures has far exceeded year in Bombay. From nineteen the supply. Similar conditions acter. -Agricultural Mission Notes.
exist among the Bhils of West- Church Councils, or Presby- A Note on Prohibition . ern Central India. During the teries, covering an area from past three years the North India the Northern Panjab to Assam, The following observation on United Church has baptized Rajputana and Central India, the prohibition campaign is en- thirty thousand from among some 100 delegates gathered. lightening. A correspondent of Some delegates traveled more the Daily Times of India who these primitive peoples.
-Dnyanodaya. than 3,000 miles to be present. has been investigating economic
conditions on behalf of the Bom- these versions is told by Rev. than 1,000 consecutive cases bay Industrial Survey Commit- J. M. S. Hooper in his recently there has not been the loss of tee, made a special study of the published book, "The Bible in any mother. With the medical effects of the "No Drink Cam- India." care has gone the presentation of paign" on the lives of some fish- the Gospel of Christ. ermen. Here is his report: Baptist Union a Reality Bangkok is a difficult field for About 42 fishermen of Kumta were The Baptist Union of India, evangelistic work. In the hustle working in cooperation and owned a Burma and Ceylon is an accom- of such a city, it is difficult to rampan (big net). As was their cus- plished fact. The tentative or- make lasting contacts. A good tom, before going on work with the ganization was set up at Bala- time to present the Gospel is durrampan and after coming from it they sore in February, 1936, a con~ ing the first few days following used to take toddy, all sitting in a stitution was agreed upon and a the birth of a child. To many it circle. Apart from this each of them panel of officers elected. Seven~ is the beginning of plans for also invariably had his bottle or two teen of the various Baptist family life and the home. To in the evening. Excluding this quan- groups ratified the constitution. others it is added responsibility, tity taken on individual account, I An inaugural session of the as well as greater joy to be found that the 42 fishermen spent, be- Union has recently been held, shared. A sympathetic interest, tween November 1937 and February and a president has been elected. with Christ-like care and atten- 1938, Rs. 800 on drinks. In short, Words of greeting from Karens, tion, are bringing results. what was happening was that the in- Burmans, Telugus, Panjabis, come of the male members was being Bengalis, Assamese and head -Siam Outlook. spent on drinks, and it was the woman hunters were a demonstration of who was supporting the family with the power of the Gospel. The Siam – Land of the Free her slender earnings. All this is central theme placed before the changed now. About 90 per cent of delegates at this first session The Siamese have maintained these fishermen are not drinking to- was "All one body in Christ." their independence for the past day. A small number of them have 600 years. Their ancient name freed themselves from debt and have -Baptist Missionary for themselves is thai, free. Just opened accounts with the post offices. Review. now, in this totalitarian age, They have also given up their set no- they are experimenting with a tion that fishing is impossible without Buddhist Missionaries constitution and representative toddy. Small artisans outside the from Siam government. "dry" area want prohibition in their areas too. But the real contribution The Siam Chronicle reports Siam is surrounded by broadof the experiment is seen in the eyes that a group of Buddhist priests casting stations – at Singapore, of the womenfolk. are about to set out from Ceylon Batavia, Hongkong, Calcutta, so on a missionary tour. Starting that all the currents of world How the Bible Came to India from India, and going east thought sweep over her. Her through Burma, Siam, Ind~ political patterns are new, and The honor of giving India her China, China and Japan, they her leaders are young. It is sigfirst Bible belongs to German expect to take three years to go nificant that they take up their missionaries of the Lutheran around the world. In America responsibilities with a heritage Church, who went out in 1706. and Europe they will investigate of religious liberty, unhampered There have been Christians in conditions to see what advances by a racial inferiority complex, Travancore for 1,500 years-Ja- of the Buddhist religion can be less bound by tradition than cobites, converts of early Syrian made in those two areas. Also most Orientals, unafraid of new missions, but no attempt was there are many young men in ideas. All this constitutes a made to provide the Bible for the Ceylon studying, in preparation striking challenge to the Chrisconverts. The Church of Rome to go wherever there may be an tian missionary forces, since nohas been in India for 500 years, open door for the teaching of where else in the world is Budand has today nearly 8,000,000 Buddhism. dhism so well organized and members, but only recently has firmly established as in Siam. any translation of the Scriptures For Mothers and Babies Protestant work there is largely been done under the auspices of the responsibility of the Presbythis Church. While Bangkok has some fine terian Church. The task was hospitals with modern equip- faced at aconferenc·e in Feb- In 1857, the year of the Sepoy ment, they are not adequate to ruary, when a program of evan- Rebellion, the British and For- care for young mothers and new- gelism was outlined for the imeign Bible Society appointed a born babies. Fifteen years ago, mediate future. committee to prepare a union the Presbyterian Mission in version of the Bible. An earlier Siam assigned Miss J. Christen- For the past five years, the Tamil version, translated by Lu- sen to Bangkok, to work out young king Ananda Mahidol has therans, had served the purpose some plan for helping in this been studying in L a usa nne, of introducing the Book, al- great problem. Switzerland. In November he though it had many defects. The went to Bangkok to open the pr.inciple races of all India now Government approval of her newly-elected parliament and atpossess the whole Bible, trans- work has been given for, in more tend to various official duties. lated by men like William Carey and Henry Martyn with the help -Foreign Affairs Bulletin. of Indian scholars, and finally revised by committees of the Bible Societ.y. The story of all Our Missionary Bookshelf Books Briefly Reviewed for the Readers' Information Studies in Popular Islam. By Samuel social worker, builder, truck ments, explicit and tacit. It can M. Zwemer. 8vo. 148 pp. $2.50. driver, preacher in three lan- Macmillan Co. New York. 1939. guages, Bible class teacher, and be expressed in words (verac- has trained a very efficient staff Forty years of study and ex- of native nurses. The frontis- ity) , or in actions such as fulperience has made Dr. Zwemer piece, showing a Burmese doctor an authority on this subject. As a and his wife and twenty-nine filment of contracts, and in missionary to Moslem lands, edi- nurses belonging to his Amertor of The Moslem World, the ican Baptist missionary hospital habits such as fidelity, loyalty, author of many books on Islam, at Namkham, Burma-where he wide travel and recently Pro- has been in charge for seventeen and dependability. A lie is an fessor of History of Religion and years-is most impressive. He Christian Missions at Princeton, is a graduate from Johns Hop- attempt to deceive without conhe has gathered an immense kins University and a fourth amount of information. Above generation missionary, the great- sent. It may not succeed; yet if all he writes with sympathy for grandson of Rev. J. H. Vincent, the good points in Islam, but a pioneer missionary to Burma. it tries to deceive it is a lie from with understanding and convic- Mrs. Seagrave is evidently a tion as to the supremacy of wonderful partner in service. the moment that it crosses the Christ and His Gospel. If you would like to know how liar's lips.." Xes and it may start This volume takes up the use a ,good pioneer missionary doctor of the Moslem prayer beads, the "wastes" his time, of his adven- farther back than the lips. Ka'aba at Mecca, the sword of tures on the road, of the way he Islam, their calendar with feasts "holds the fort" against attack- Dr. Cabot's great book is in and fasts, traditions, supersti- ing tribes from China; if you are tion, sorcery and charms; the interested in amusing incidents, three parts: I-Definitions; 11- Koran and its translations, the tragedies, near tragedies and prophet and the worship of triumphs – physical and spir- Selected Problems in Honesty Adam. Here is an excellent but itual-we recommend this book. brief description of faith and It is easy, fascinating reading and Dishonesty, and III-Phipractice in Moslem life. for young and old,for doctors and laymen. losophy of Honesty. It faces Tales of a Waste-Basket Surgeon. By Dr. Gordon S. Seagrave. 265 Honesty. By Richard Cabot. $2.50. honestly the problem of honesty pp. $1.50. Judson Press. Phil- 326 pp. The Macmillan Co. New adelphia. 1938. York. 1939. and tells the truth about lies.
In an informal, chatty way, This is clear ozone, purifying Here is solid foundation for Dr. Seagrave tells many inter- and penetrating. According to esting experiences of his life as Dr. Cabot's sound doctrine a lie character and human trust and a pioneer missionary doctor in is a lie and it is always wrong. North Burma. The "waste- He agrees with Dr. Henry Clay right relations between men and basket" does not indicate the Trumbull's position: "A Lie quality of his work but the des- Never Justifiable." Honesty and nations. R. E. SPEER. tination of his patients if no truth are obligations not to be skilled medical help had been tampered with, never to be com- Abraham to Allenby. By G. Fredavailable in their time of dire promised. There is no room here erick Owen. Illus. 8vo. 351 pp. need. As it was, he saved many for Dr. Joseph Collins' physi- $2.50. Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co. lives and won unbounded grati- cian's lie. Dr. Cabot is a physi- Grand Rapids, Mich. 1939. tude by this free and loving cian too,and he can find no place service. in a physician's pharmacoopia for Palestine and its history are a lie. And he has his clear defi- important and fascinating from Dr. Seagrave is a true pioneer nitions: "Honesty is the will and many points of view – political, among a primitive people. He the effort to keep one's agree- racial, archeological, geological, is not only physician and sur- cultural and religious. The augeon, but sanitary engineer, [271 ] thor of this large volume has de- voted twelve years to research in preparation for this important popular study. He spent some time with the American School of Oriental Research at Jeru- salem and his books of reference include one hundred contribu- tions to archeology, Biblical and secular history and kindred sub- jects. (He has, however, omitted many important volumes, such as those by Morton, George Adam Smith and George L. Rob- inson.) In popular and vivid narrative style Mr. Owen tells the story of God's call to Abraham to leave Dr of the Chaldees. He carries on the story of the history of Abraham and the children of It Will Be Daybreak Soon. By conflict in China is. not warfare Israel, through Egypt, the wil- Archibald Rutledge. 12mo. 129 pp. but wholesale massacre, rape derness wanderings., the period $1.25. Fleming H. Revel! Co. New and robbery. It is a horrible of the Judges, the Kings, the York. 1939. tale and would have been much exile, the Maccabean period, the worse but for the presence of time of Christ, on through the The American Negro is an in- courageous missionaries and apostolic days, the Arab con- teresting character, intensely hu- other foreigners. quest, the crusades, the rule of man, full of humor, a sense of the Turks up to the capture of God and a nearnes,s, to nature. By Life and By Death. Lessons from Jerusalem by the British under Mr. Rutledge was born in South the Diary of John C. Stam. By General Allenby. It is a check- Carolina in 1883 and is Poet E. Schuyler English. Illus. 12mo. ered history very briefly told, the Laureate of his native state. He 62 pp. 50 cents. Zondervan. Grand early portion following closely understands the Negro of the Rapids, Mich. 1939. the Biblical narrative. The story South and has written several is carefully annotated with copi- books of poetry and prose. In The Christian world knows ous reference notes to each 1932 he received the John Bur- the story of the martyrdom of chapter. roughs medal for "the best na- John and Betty Starn in China in ture writing" in America. This 1934. Their testimony is beau- Preaching-The Doctrines of Grace. volume pictures life on a South- tiful and powerful and abiding. Compiled by Roland G. Leavell. 8vo. ern plantation and reveals the Here are striking extracts from 150 pp. $1.00. Boardman Press. fine character and native ability John Starn's diary written dur- Nashville. 1939. of the old-time Negro. His ing the last three years of his sketches reminds one of some of life. Mr. English has drawn les- Present-day interest in evan- the best features of books on the sons from his courage, his faith, gelism has led the 'Superintend- Negro by Thomas Nelson Page his love and experience. It is ent of Evangelism of the South- and Booker T. Washington. stimulating to faith and sacriern Baptist Convention to collect ficial living and is especially apsome "orthodox" and very help- Green Timber. By Esther Gerberd- pealing to youth. This makes a ful messages from fifteen evan- ing Hunt. 8vo. 220 pp. 75 cents. good companion volume to "The gelical Baptist preachers. They Board of Publication of the lJ nited Faith of John and Betty Stam" deal with such Christian doc- Lutheran Church in America. Phil- with the poems of Betty. trines as God, sin, forgiveness, adelphia. repentence, f a i t h, salvation, Welcome House. By Jessie E. Moore. sanctification and glorification. This is a prize-winning story Illus. 8vo. 95 pp. Friendship These are forceful, biblical, Gos- of Olaf, a young American-born Press. New York. 1939. pel sermons that will furnish Norseman, and Ebba Maj who material for much needed became his wife. He entered the American children – primary messages to congregations in Lutheran ministry and went into and juniors-will like this story churches at home and on the the "great timberland of the of six children whose parents are mission fields. Northwest, where they faced missionaries in Iran. How they difficulties and hardships to- came to America by automobile, The Lord Is Calling. By Oswald J. gether and grew into strong, train and boat, lived in America, Smith. 96 pp. 1 sh. well-seasoned timber." It is an went to church and school, interesting, wholesome story but played, made friends, helped The Work God Blesses. By Oswald without outstanding lit era r y other people, and celebrated J. Smith. 96 pp. 1 811,. Marshall, merit as to situations, plot or Christmas-all this is told in a Morgan and Scott. London. character delineation. loving, sympathetic way, show- ing what a Christian family can Dr. Smith has a large, evan- War Conduct of the Japanese. By be and do. gelical "Peoples Church" of over Shuhsi Hsu, Ph.D. Prepared under 2,000 members in Toronto. They the auspices of the Council of Inter- Canadian Journey. By H. P. Thompare a missionary-minded people national Affairs. Circulated by the son. Paper. 68 pp. S. P. G. Lonwho give $40,000 a year to mis- China Information Service, 945 don. 1939. sions – about two times as Pennsylvania Ave., N. W., Washmuch as they spend on them- ington, D. C. 1938. The Editorial Secretary of the selves. In each of these two Society for the Propagation of volumes we have a number of This 217-page book is an at- the Gospel in Foreign Parts tells the pastor's sermons – one vol- tempt to set forth in unre- of the conditions, the people and ume on Christian doctrines, like strained language the truth the work in Western Canada. It the Virgin Birth, the Resurrec- about Japanese, methods of war- is worth reading and raises hope tion and Salvation vs. Religion; fare in China-in the air, at sea for the Western Hemisphere the other volume on Christian and on land. The author has col': even though Europe should go to service with such topics as "The lected facts and shows how pieces. The prairies, the forests, Supreme Task of the Church," Japan has disregarded interna- the pioneers and the rich reand "Responsibilities of Stew- tional laws, treaties and prom- sources should be won for Christ ardship." They are spiritual, ises, and the rights of non-com- and developed with a knowledge practical, Biblical sermons. which batants. of the love and character of God have proved their effectiveness. and with whole-hearted alle- These records are largely gience to His authority. taken from the reports of the International Committee. The
A Oorrection Edward Rawlings was born at Tomorrow. Report of the Board
Powellton, Brunswick County, Vir- Home Missions, Congregational and Dr. Speer calls our attention to a ginia, on October 23, 1865, and was Christian Churches. 160 pp. New word that was incorrectly read in the graduated from Randolph-Macon Col- York. manuscript of his review of "Essen- lege in 1886. For seventeen years tial Christianity" which appeared on (1890 to 1907) he was a pastor, and The Work God Blesses. Oswald J. page 224 of the April issue. The first was presiding elder one year. He was Smith. 96 pp. 18. Marshall, Morsentence in the last paragraph should appointed Conference Missionary Sec- gan & Scott. London. r:ead: retary in 1908 and the following year was elected Educational Secretary of War Conduct of the Japanese. Shuhsi "Dr. Angus' emphasis on the duty the Board of Missions. For two years Hsu. 217 pp. China Information of Christlikeness, of obedience and (1916-18) he was Secretary of the Service. Washington, D. C. conformity to the Spirit of Christ, or Laymen's Missionary Movement and unselfishness and sacrifice and service in 1917 became Foreign Mission Sec- The Great Succession. Leaders of and love is all to the good, but his sub- retary of the Board. He traveled the Baptist Missionary Society durjective humanism is a swan song of a widely in the interest of missions and ing the Nineteenth Century. E. A. declining liberalism." in 1926 he was elected Secretary of Payne. 160 pp. 28. Garey Press. Education and Promotion and Editor London. Penonll Items of World Outlook. The Voice of the Church in China. (ConcZuded from pa,ge 225.) *** A collection of documents. Preface by Dom P.-C. Lou Tseng-Tsiang. sity Christian Mission, which is mak- Rev. Edmund W. McDowell, D.D., 120 pp. 38. 6d. Longmans. Lon- an honorably retired missionary of the don. ing plans for the academic year of Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A., 1939-40. died in Fort Collins, Colorado, March K. T. Paul. Christian Leader. Reli- ••• 31. He was born in Altoona, Pa., gious Life of India Series. H. A. Rev. Robert M. Hopkins, D.D., March 13, 1857. Mter being gradu- Popley. 254 pp. Rs. 2.4. Y. M. ated from Wooster College, Ohio, and C. A. Press. Calcutta, India. LL.D., for the past ten years general from Western Theological Seminary, Allegheny, he and his wife sailed for Gorakhnath and the Kanphata Yogis. secretary of the World's Sunday Persia in 1887. Dr. McDowell gave George W. Briggs. Religious Life forty years of his life to service in of India Series. 380 pp. Rs. 4.8 School Association, has been elected Persia and Mesopotamia and was in- and 5.8, Y. M. C. A. Press, Calcutta, president of the United Christian Mis- strumental in developing mission work India; 8s. 6d., Oxford University in Urumia, organizing a chain of vil- Press, London. sionary Society with headquarters at lage schools and churches through the Indianapolis. Dr. Hopkins was born mountains all the way from Urumia Yesterday and Tomorrow in North- to Mosul. After the organization of ern Nigeria. Walter Miller. lUus. in Trenton, Kentucky, and has been the United Mission in Mesopotamia in 182 pp. 58. Student Christian engaged in religious educational work 1922, he was stationed at Mosul until Movement Press. London. he was honorably retired in 1928. One since 1900 when he became Sunday of his two sons, Philip C. McDowell, The Mahar Folk. A Study of Un- M.D., is now a member of the Pres- touchables in Maharastra. Alexschool evangelist for the Disciples of byterian Mission in Teheran, Iran. ander Robertson. Religious Life of India Series. Rs. 2 and 3, Y. M. Christ in Kentucky. In 1910 he be- New Books C. A. Press, Calcutta; 48. 6d., Oxcame Bible School Secretary of the ford University Press, London. . American Christian Missionary So- Abraham to Allenby. G. Frederick ciety, and ten years later was placed Owen. 351 pp. $2.50. Eerdman African Women. A Study of the Ibo Pub. Co. Grand Rapids. of Nigeria. Sylvia Leith-Ross. lUus. in charge of the Department of Reli- 367 pp. 158. Faber and Faber. The Art of Conducting Public W or- London. gious Education in the United Chris- ship. Albert W. Palmer. 211 pp. tian Missionary Society. He has done $2.50. Macmillan. New York. From My African Notebook. A. Schweitzer. Trans. by Mrs. C. E. B. a remarkable work in connection with Civilization. The Next Step. Delisle Russell. Illus. 132 pp. 58. Allen Burns. 291 pp. $2.75. W. W. Nor- & Unwin. London. the WorId's Sunday School Associa- ton. New York. tion. He attended the Glasgow Con- The Southern Bantu. L. Marquard Christian Faith in a Day of Crisis. and T. G. Standing. 262 pp. 78.6d. vention in 1924, visited Central and Charles S. MacFarland. 226 pp. Oxfoi'd University Press. London. $1.50. Revell. New York. South Mrica in the interests of Sun- Venezuela. Erna Ferguson. 346 pp. day school work in 1934, and was a Essential Christianity. Samuel An- $3.00. Knopf. New York. gus. 226 pp. $2.00. Macmillan. delegate to the recent Madras Confer- New York. Philippine Pagans. The Autobiog- raphies of Three Ifugaos. R. F. ence. Dr. Hopkins' successor in the Honesty. Richard C. Cabot. 326 pp. Barton. lUus. 271 pp. 15s. Rout- $2.50. Macmillan. New York. ' ledge. London. W. S. S. A. has not yet been elected. The Lord Is Calling. Oswald J. The Gospel in the World. A Restate- ••• Smith. 96 pp. 18. Marshall, Mor- ment of Missionary Principles. God- The Rev. C. E. Wilson, for thirty- gan & Scott. London. frey E. Phillips. 252 pp. 58. Duckfour years Secretary of the Baptist worth. London. Our Father. A Missionary Prayer. Missionary Society of London, has re- C. Mallam Johnston. 27 pp. 3d. World Community. William Paton. S. P. G. London. 192 pp. $1.50. Macmillan. New tired after notable service. He was York. for ten years a missionary in India Preaching. The Doctrines of Grace. Compiled by Roland G. Leavell. 150 The Church of the T'ang Dynasty. (1894 to 1904) and later, during his pp. $1.00. Boardman Press. Nash- John Foster. 168 pp. 48. S. P. ville. C. K. London. secretaryship, visited China, Jamaica, Those Gay Middle Ages. Frederick Bantu Heritage. H. P. Junod. lUus. Africa, India and other fields of the Kershner. 233 pp. $2. Willett 155 pp. 308. Hortors (For the society. Mr. Wilson has proved an Clark & Co. New York. Transvaal Chamber of Mines). Jo- hannesburg, South Mrica. able executive and a wise missionary A Testament of Faith. P. G. S. Hop- wood. 215 pp. $2.00. Macmillan. Re-Thinking Christianity in India. statesman. New York. Edited by D. M. Devasahayam and A. N. Sudarisanam. 267 pp. Rs. 2.8. Obituary Notes A. N. Sudarisanam, Madras, India.
(Concluded from Second Cover.) Living the Christian Faith. Edwin Ewart Aubrey. 118 pp. $1.50. Dr. E. H. Rawlings, Business Man- Macmillan. New York. ager and former Editor of World Outlook, died at his home in Nashville, This Busine-ss of Living. L. W. Gren- Tennessee, on March 17. He was the sted. 187 pp. $1.75. Macmillan. senior connectional secretary of the New York. Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and dean of missionary officers. His work for missions was more diversified than that of any other man and he had held many positions connected with the promotion and administration of missions in the Church.
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THE LIFE OF GEORGE BOWEN OF BOMBAY By ROBERT E. SPEER The biography of a remarkable missionary whom the (then) Prince of Wales visited in Bombay at the request of his mother, Queen Victoria.
What some readers say of this book: Robert Speer's "Life of George Bowen of Bombay" is one was so far-sighted and so deep-seeing!-the former because of the richest of missionary biographies. the latter. If one wants to sum up the interests of our DR. J. LoVBLL MURRAY, Director of the students today-Biblical, social, theological-Bowen is a Canadian School of Missions, Toronto. representative figure. And what a lesson in apparent failure!
What a life! He was old enough to know why he went, . . . I feel strongly that every student and alumnus of our Seminary needs this book. What better book to lead them to and bad enough to know the meaning of salvation. One by_ feed on the Bible. One hears so much "vestibule religion"- product of his. experience was his wonderful humility-noth- ing in the show window and himself in the remote back- men pointing to the door and taking their people as far as the ground. It is inspiring. threshold, but no opening up of the treasures within the G ' n . . P PI f f .1 r Father's House. Read the topics of current sermons, and .lJA. BORGJ! • BRSON, ormer" 0 Japan. Bowen's expositions are precisely what Christians need in order We must all be grateful for this revealing of the main- to grow from puerility into spiritual maturity. Here is no adolescent, but a man in Christ. This is no volume to be springs of Bowen's character, his abiding faith in God, his eamest purpose to be a true and faithful follower of Jesus read and dismissed, but to be marked and to be turned to Ptrist; and his deep-seated conviction that the Gospel of repeatedly. };!=~:ntS~Of "tJ:io;;o;:~7~ar~. Christ could meet the religious needs of India's people. J WILLIAM HAzEN, The Memoirs of George Bowen will continue to be for Missionary in ShoJapur, India. years to come a searching manual of devotion. He has set t.e.eItn.thbicoegnrtauprhyy. oIf coonueld 0nfotthpeutsatihnetlibeostokfigduorwesn.0 fTthheererui·snea- before me an ideal which few could attain; his life is a scathfascination and a depth in this man's soul which held me in ing rebuke to our ease, comfort, self-indulgence and ineE- devout attention. I found myself marking his moving sayings ficiency. J. Ross STBVENSON, which would serve ,as starting points for chapel talks. He President Emeritus, P,in.eton Semina".
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The Missionary Review of the World — April 1939
1939
• A Mission in the Arctic Circle Henry W. Griest, M.D.
Outlook for Christianity in Europe-I Adolf Keller Murad and the Lost Feast Day v. Lane..Frimpole Adversaries and Open Doors in Missions C. Darby Fulton A Milestone in Missionary Progress H. Kerr Taylor "Now Concerning the Collection"
Samuel M. Zwemer Problems of Rural Life-at Madras G. Baez Camargo Toyohiko Kagawa Ira E. Gillet 2S Cents a Cop, $2.50 a Year
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April 26 – Uniting Conference of HURLBUT'S STORY OF THE BIBLE Amel'ican Methodism, Kansas City, BJ' .lESSE LYMAN HURLBUT. D.O. Md. Recommended by all denominations for Itsfreahness and aeeuracy forIt. simplicity of language. for Its freedom from doctrinal dleeu88lon. May 1-3 – Tenth Annual Missionary Education Institute. Third Chris- THE BEST GIFT FOR YOUNG AND OLD tian Church, Indianapolis, Ind. FOR TEACBER8-STUDENT8-POR THE HOME AND SCHOOL May 25 – General Assembly of the One hundred and sixty-eightstories. each complete in itself, yet form- Presbyterian Church in U. S. A., ing a contIDuous Darr.dye of the Bible from Genesis to Revelstion. Cleveland, Ohio. Each ofthe world-old storie. i. told by the noted author in a mannel' thati. vitaIly interesting and instructive to young and old alike. May 30-June 2-Third Biennial Insti- tute, A Movement for World Chris- Biggest _d Best mulr.ted Book EYer Sold lor tbe …..ce tianity, New York, N. Y. Beautifully illustrated with 281 pictures in colors and in black and white; over 100 famous Leinwebel' paintings. 759 pages. PrIce..f2.00 June 7-13 – Ann u a I Conference, Church of the Brethren, Anderson, At all6oolutore. or from the pu6Uahere Ind. …_THE JOHN C. WINSTON CO., Winston Bldg., Philadelphia _ _II June 8 – General Synod of the Re- formed Church in America, New mestic Missions of the National Dr. J. Arthur Funk, a member of York, N. Y. Council of the Protestant Episcopal the Iran Mission of the Presbyterian Ohurch. Church, U. S. A., since 1902, died from June 20-25 – Northern Baptist Con- a heart attack in Hamadan, Iran on vention, Los Angeles, O!lilif. Obituary Notes March 5th. He was born in Spring- field, Ohio June 17, 1873, and' after June 21-25-Sunday School and B. Y. Mrs. Charles W. Abel, the widow of being graduated from New York Uni- P. U. Congress of the National Bap- the famous pioneer missionary in versity and from the College of tist Convention, U. S. A., (Inc.), Papua, died in Kwato on February Physicians and Surgeons, sailed for Tulsa, Okla. 24 after a brief illness. Mrs. Abel Persia where he was in charge first of went out to Papua in 1892 when her the American Hospital in Teheran and June 24-July I-Eagles Mere Confer- husband was associated with the Rev. for the past 35 years in the American ence of Missions. Chairman, Mrs. James Chalmers in work among the Christian Hospital at Hamadan. He Earl Breeding, 24 Rugby Lane, cannibals of New Guinea. Mr. Abel did notable work in the training of Scarsdale, N. Y. died in 1930 while in England. Mrs. kbel and her four children have con- . . physicians who are recognized prac- July 3-10-Northfield Missionary Con- tinued the work and it has greatly en- ference for Women and Girls. East larged in the last eight years. The titioners in Iranian cities. Northfield, Mass. For information, Kwato Mission of Papua is an inde- address Mrs. Warren C. Taylor, 38 pendent, interdenominational w 0 r k '" Union Ave., Schenectady, N. Y. largely supported from the United States and Great Britain. Mrs. Abel Dr. Harold McAfee Robinson, Gen- July 6-11 – International Christian has seen the Papuans change from eral Secretary of the Board of Chris- Endeavor Convention, Cleveland, cannibals, murderers and sorcerers tian Education of the Presbyterian Ohio. into active and devoted Christians and Church, U. S. A., died on March 5th evangelists. at the age of 58. He was born in Shel- July 11-August 16 – Winona Lake byville, Mo., and after graduation School of Theology. Winona Lake, *** from Park College and from Prince- Ind. Dean, Dr. J. A. Huffman, 302 ton Theological Seminary he served Morton Blvd., Marion, Ind. Miss Jessie Maxwell, a missionary as pastor of the Market Square Pres- of the Woman's Missionary Society byterian Church, Germantown. In July 22-28-Baptist World Congress. of the United Church of Canada sta- 1919 he joined the Board of Christian Atlanta, Ga. tioned at Neemuch, Indi'a, died on re- Education and in 1923 was elected turning to her station from a fur- secretary of the division of education July 24-August 2-World Conference lough, early in February. Under her in the home church and community. of Christian Youth, Amsterdam, care the Girls' Boarding School at For the last four years he has been Holland. Neemuch developed into The School General Secretary of the Board.
August 13-20-Geneva Summer School . . of Home Making and was known as DO YOUR S.S.PAPERS of Missions, Lake Geneva, Wis. ~ For information write to Mrs. Paul "Sundar Ghar" (the house beautiful). BIBLE TBUTH~ H. Wezeman, 1177 S. Humphrey ~w Ave., Oak Park, Ill. '" ~ COUNCIL FIRES =~ Personal Items Dr. Clarence True Wilson, aged 66, for Young People international leader in the prohibition Dr. John R. Mott, the famous Meth- cause, died in Portland, Oregon, Feb- 1502 N. Third St. Harrisburg, Penna. odist layman, was re-elected Chair- ruary 17. Evangelical fervor and imman of the International Missionary passioned oratory made Dr. Wilson a Council at the meeting in Madras, spectacular figure in the fight for India, in December. Dr. Mott made a temperance. For more ,than 26 years condition of his acceptance the under- he was head of the Methodist Board st!l;nding that he would not hold the of Temperance and Public Morals. office longer than three years. For twenty years of this period he waged uncompromising war against '" '" '" liquor, gambling and vice, speaking in every part of the United States. President Francis Wei, of Central He frequently engaged in debate with China College, made history, when he Clarence Darrow, avowed agnostic returned to China from the United and anti-prohibitionist, on the liquor States, by preaching in Honolulu on issue, although the two were warm one Sunday and in Manilla on the fol- friends off the platform. Dr. Wilson lowing Sunday. Air travel made this maintained that Darrow would have possible. been a forcible preacher, if he had been converted. '" '" '"
The Rev. Dr. George A. Wieland, of Seattle, Wash., was elected, in February, Executive Secretary for Do-
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BOARD OF DIRE'CTORS ROBERT E. SPEER, President A. L. WARNSHUIS, Vice-President WALTER McDOUGALL, Treasurer DELAVAN L. PIERSON, Secretary PAUL J. BRAISTED SAMUEL MCCREA CAVERT D. J. FANT MRS. OERIN R. JUDD WM. B. LIPl'HAlID ERIC M. NORTH SAMUEL M. ZWEMER Editorial Chat The purpose of •• The Quiet Our readers will be interested in Hour" is to help you maintain the further reports from the Madras Conference–the careful appraisal by Dr. high tide of spiritual enrichment H. Kerr Taylor of Nashville, the criti- that Easter brings. When you ex~ cism by Prof. Kraemer of Holland and three extracts dealing with rural prob- amine a copy you will see how lems in Africa, Mexico and Japan. effectively this daily devotional * *. * guide carries out its purpose. The Next month's article will deal with opportunities and the outlook in meditations are prepared by men China, Brazil, Africa, the Appalachian and women of deep spiritual in~ Mountains and work among the blind. sight. A wealth and variety of *** help is contained in every quarter~ ly issue-one full pa~e for each One of the oldest subscribers to THE day. You can easily give your REVIEW recently wrote as follows: congregation the inspiration .. The Quiet Hour" offers. It costs only a third of a cent a week 1 "I have had the MISSIONARY REVIEW since away back in the 1880's when CONSIGNMENT OFFER my uncle, Rev. Dr. J. M. Sherwood, was working on it with Dr. Arthur T. Pastors and other leaders may order" The Quiet Hour" in quan- Pierson. I just could not do without tities with the privilege of returning any unused copies for credit it." MRS. M. E. WEBER. Sebring, Florida. at the close of the quarter. Cash or deferred payment plan. , *** I~ A more recent subscriber comments ,: DAVID C. COOK PUBLISHING COMPANY on our report of the Madras Confer- , S2-D Lincoln Stroot, Elgin, Illinois ence: ,,,,,,, "I write to thank you for the very Gentlemen: Please send: fine job you have done with the Mad- o Free sample copy of .. The Quiet Hour" ras material. Your readers should o Details of Consignment Offer have a well-rounded idea of what went on at Madras even though they have _ Name …………………………………………………………………….. read nothing else about that confer- Ig. i~ ,III~I~I), ~ i,,-'" Box. "mmm.mm••••••m •••••. ence." REV. E. K. HIGDON, Secretary, Foreign Missions :11 t i d 'ur}~ City………………………………………….. State…………………… Conference, New York.
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COLLEGE – EFFECT OF THE EARTHQUAKE. METHODIST CONGREGATION AT CONCEPCION, FIRST
THE TEACHERS NARROWLY ESCAPED DEATH AFTER THE EARTHQUAKE DESTRUCTION IN THE HEART OF CONCEPCION – WHERE FISSURES IN THE ROAD CAUSED BY THE EARTHQUAKE- PRESBYTERIAN AND METHODIST MISSIONS ARE LOCATED NEAR CONCEPCION THE CONCEPCION CHURCH AND PARSONAGE – BOTH THE REV. MOlSES TORREGOS AND FAMILY. HE IS PASTOR DESTROYED BY THE RECENT EARTHQUAKE OF THE METHODIST CHURCH SCENES CONNECTED WITH THE CHILE EARTHQUAKE REVIE ORLD VOLUME LXII AN INTERDENOMINATIONAL REVIEW OF WORLD-WIDE CHRISTIAN PROGRESS NUMBER 4 APRIL, 1939 Topics of the Times EFFECTS OF THE EARTHQUAKE IN CHILE Rev. S. C. Henderson, of the Presbyterian mis- Letters from missionaries in Chile tell of some sion, wrote from Santiago on January 28th: remarkable escapes from death during the recent earthquake (January 24th) whioh caused wide- All lines and means of communication are cut off and spread destruction of life and property. The cen- we are desperate for information. Airplanes have brought ter of the earthquake was in the neighborhood of mail from Concepcion to some people but we have nothing Concepcion, Chillan and Coihueco-about 300 direct. This afternoon we have heard that all the congremiles south of Valparaiso and Santiago. Over gation in Concepcion are safe. The church building evififty cities and towns were destroyed. It is said dently did not suffer so much as many other buildings. to have been the worst earthquake that Chile has suffered since 1906 when Valparaiso was praoti- Chillan (with a population of 45,000) has suffered most. cally destroyed. It is estimated that one per cent The pastor, Rodolfo Vergara and all his family were in of the people of Chile perished. So far as is Santiago. We have ,practically no notice concerning the known no missionary life was lost in the earth- congregation and the properties. They say only four or quake and only one or two were silightly injured. five houses are left in Chillan which means the destruction The Evangelioal Christians also were wonder- of the church and the manse. fully spared personal inj ury but many lost all their property. According to the latest statistics, ,.The pastor in Talca, Olivero Maufras, says that all the 30,000 people lost their lives, 50,000 were wound- congregation are safe but the church building cracked and ed, many thousands disappeared, and the property the division wall out of plumb. From Curlco the pastor reports all sufe; the church walls cracked.
In Concepcion it will cost considerable to repair the church and manse; and in Chillan we will probably have to rebuild both church and manse.
Rev. Robert B. Elmore, another Presbyterian missionary, wrote from Angol on January 27th: loss has been estimated as high as $60,000,000.00 The force of the shock was felt most in Chillan and in U. S. currency. This is one of the major catas- Concepcion, where the loss of life has been great–10,000 trophesm modern times. in Chillan andi 2,000 in Concepcion. Buildings are down or badly cracked, so they can hardly be used. The railway The Presbyterian Church (North) has several service is cut, all telephone andi telegraph wires are down stations in the eal'lthquake territory, the Methodist and we depend on the radio for news. Episcopal mission is at work in Concepcion and Angol. The Southern Baptists have work in Con- The Methodist mission territory is next to the Presbycepcion and Seventh-Day Adventists in Chillan. terian field on the south, and overlaps in Concepcion (a There are a few independent missionaries-such city of 77,000). Their missionaries and national workers as those of the Soldiers and Gospel Mission. All are safe. The British and Foreign Bible Society reports workers on the field have rendered valiant s'ervice that one of their stations, Chillan in charge of a colporin giving food, shelter, medical care and other teur, suffered heavily. The whole city of 46,000 populaassistance to the earthquake sufferers. There is tion was leveled to the ground. The Baptist (Southern evidence that this physical disaster is caus1ing a Convention) missionaries are reported safe but their spiritual awakening among the people who have property at Chillan and Concepcion is either destroyed been brought face to face with death, many seeing or seriously damaged. their earthly possessions, destroyed, and as they note the loving and effective service given by the The Methodist missionaries report as· follows: missionaries in ithe name of Christ. In Coronel, churches and college in ruins; in Angol, church destroyed and many people home- less; in Concepcion college and church de- stroyed with 600 members destitute; in Chillan, [163 ]
two theaters cO'llapsed, whole audience killed, and pletion, is, however, in ruins-the work of many weeks all churches razed. Talcahuano (the port) prac- destroyed in forty seconds. tically destroyed including Methodist Church and parsonage. After the earthquake, bystanders observing the light on the face of one of our Evangelical Christians, re- Rev. Moises Torregrl()sa, a Methodist pastor marked: Miral la, calma de este gente de Dios/ ("See, in OO'ncepcion, wmte a wee~ after the earthquake: how calm these people of God are!") We hope that many may say "Let us go up with you for we see that God is Chillan is in ruins, 20,000 people dead! Concepcion with you." city, "the Pearl of the south of Chile," has been destroyed. Concepcion College is just a mass of debris and GOD WORKING IN MEXICO ashes. Church building and parsonage have been destroyed. This is a self-supporting church-600 members. Most of the daily newspaper dispatches from Today my people have no homes and have lost everything Mexico tell only of political conflicts and rumors they had. Weare all living like gypsies, sleeping in relalting to communist, fascist and other activicamps out of the city. I have no support but feel my duty ties:; of economic troubles in oil and mining disis to stay here and minister to the poor and the sick. It putes; and of the GO'vernment's restrictions on is time for a big and deep evangelistic campaign, but we religious activity. But there is another side to have no place for worship. How can we find the means the story of Mexico. Many Christians are prayto help our people who are in extreme poverty? F'ifteen ing and witnes:sing; God is working and giving Roman Catholic churches have been destroyed in the earth- signs of His power in the lives of Mexicans. Rev. quake in our city and the Vatican is helping to rebuild. W. M. Taylor of Mexico City, gives the following It is time for prayer and action. Thank God we have glimpses of quiet but effective evangelism. been saved from death. "The distribution of Chris:tian literature by mail Chile has a population of 4,287,445 (including has continued and over 15,000 Gospel portions and 98,703 Indians). Eighteen Protestant missions 45,000 Evangelical tracts have been sent to Mexare at work there, most of them north of Con- ican officials, school teachers, postmasters" telecepcion. The people of Chile, especially in the graph operators, railroad station agents and merrural regions, are very poor and in the small cities chants throughout the country. Thus 30,496 Gosand towns where this blow has fallen, will not be pels and 91,488 tracts have been distributed in able to rebuild their ruined churches and homes. this way since the work began a year and a half They need help. ago. Probably ,every village and town in the Re- public has received at least one Gospel portion. Mr. William M. Strong, director of the Soldiers Continue to pray that GO'd will fulfill His promise and Gospel Mission, with headquarters at Coihu- and will nOot allow His Word to return untO' Him eco, in the earthquake area, wrote from Ooncep- void. cion: "The results have been encouraging. FOor ex- An old historian of Chile, Daniel Riquelme, in writing ample, the secretary of an Indian village in the of the earthquake of Concepcion in 1757, when half the mountainsl of Guerrero received some Christian city was sunk beneath the waves, remarks that "the net literature, read it ·and wrote for more. He was moral result of that distressing time was that the blas- converted and began to have a burden fOor the spir:- phemy and immorality and drunkenness of the men, and itual needs of Ihis tribe. He spoke to his friends the indecency in the dress of the women was put away and. read the New Testament to them. On Aufor a long time and four hundred couples, who had been gust 7th he called a meeting of the Indians and living in sin, went to the priests to have a true marriage translated portions of the New Testament to the rite performed." We pray that a real God-given revival one hundred who attended. He reports that some may result from this, the greatest catastrophe of the West- cried out hecause of their spiritual darkness. The ern hemisphere of all time. Here in this same city of Con- Indian adds: 'Our Lord Jesus Ghrist will Slave us cepcion, there are from twenty-five hundred to three thou- by faith in Him; He will be merciful to us in sand dead. We expect to carry our Gospel tent to Chillan, these forgotten mountains.' where one half the entire population of forty-five thousand are dead and where not more than a dozen houses "Thi:s man is a Tlapaneco Indian in a region still remain standing. hitherto untouched by messengersi of the Gospel. In fact part of this district is marked 'unex- One of the remarkable phenomena of the whole tragic plored' on the Government maps. Now, as a reoccurrence is the fact that hardly one of God's children suit of this Indian's letter, two men have been sent has been touched, although some workers had most miracu- by one mislsion into that region to study the lanlous escapes. guage and translate the New Testament into Tlapaneco. Pray for this Indian, Cruz Avilez, The work, as a result of the earthquake, promises to that God may keep him faithful and use him be large. The soldiers will be in this area for months and among his own people." are already building winter quarters. We should build a regular center to take the place of the tent; it will be a place from which our workers can go out into the town to minister to the needs of the civilians.
At Coihueco, although the town is practically wiped out, our mission headquarters still stand a's a monument of God's grace–its chimneys, a few tiles on the roof, and a few broken dishes are the only reminders of the earthquake there. The new chapel which was nearing com-
TOPICS OF THE TIMES
A special Christian literature campaign has same basis of age, report 21,322,688 members or also been conducted among Believers and over 15,492,016 over thirteen years old. Jewish con- 3,600 books and 14,000 tracts have been distrib- gregations report 2,930,332 members over thir- uted. These may help to bring about a revival. teen years; Eastern Christian sects have 1,014,663 There is a very important work among Mexican members and all other religious bodies 1,453,357. soldiers, and nearly five hundred of them have This seems to indicate that the nominally Prot- publicly declared their decision to follow Christ. estant population of the United States is approxi- New Testaments have been distributed among mately 71,000,000 (or double the total church officers and in the outposts, barracks, headquar- membership), while Roman Catholics number ters and military prisons. Many converts have 30,000,000 and Eastern Christian sects 2,000,000. remained faithful and one whom I had not seen The total number of Christians in America, more for four years informed me that he had explained or less closely connected with the churches, would the way of salvation to his comrades. When a thus be about 103,000,000, leaving 30,000,000 encorporal hesitated about allowing Mr. Taylor to tirely unrelated to the Church. This is a popula- distribute literature to his men, a meeting was tion equal to those of Turkey, Afghanistan and arranged by two women who had heard the Gos- Iran combined. Here is a large and needy field. pel. Every person in the camp came and all were .greatly impressed by the Spirit of God, working At the recent Madras Missionary Conference, through the testimony of one woman whose hus.- delegates from the "younger" (mission) churches band had been converted. The Mexican soldiers placed much emphasis on the need for Church have little or no opportunity to attend church union. This is evident in the United States where s'ervices or to have fellowship with mature Chris- there are forty-two major bodies and where some tians. church families are divided into fifteen or more sub-sects. The largest single organizations are AMERICAN CHURCH STATISTICS the Methodist Episcopal Church with 4,364,142 members (after the coming merger with the Meth- Statistics do not tell the truth-especially as to odist Church, South and the Primitive Methodists spiritual conditions and growth. Life and power it will number 7,385,638 members), the Southern cannot be expressed in mathematics or it would Baptists (4,595,602), the National Baptists—Col- never be true that "one shall chase a thousand ored (3,796,645), the Presbyterians, U. S. A. and two shall put ten thousands to flight." An (1,903,747) the Disciples of Christ (1,597,797), infinitesimal germ may lay Iowa giant and a beam and the United Lutherans (1,541,841). If the of light may halt a railroad train. Baptists should all unite, and include the Disciples of Christ, they would number nearly twelve mil- But statistics, if accurate, may show trends and lion members and all Lutherans would have a reveal weaknesses. It is always interesting to membership of nearly five million. study the religious statistics-prepared every ten years by the United States Census Bureau and Among the non-Christian religious sects in those issued by the Association of Statisticians of America we note the following figures: American Religious Bodies. These latter, for the year 1938, have been summarized by Dr. Herman Congregations Members C. Weber, Editor of the "Year Book of American Churches." According to this summary the num- American Ethical Union ……. . 7 3,024 ber of distinct religious groups in North America American Moslem Brotherhood .. 1,200 have decreased, by mergers and deaths since 1926, Bahai Faith ……………… . 71 2,523 from 212 to 200. Some of the sects are insignifi- Buddhist Mission …………. . 47 30,000 cantly slIIlall and lifeless. A few of the larger Divine Science ……………. . 26 7,000 denominations are merging, like the Methodists, Mayan Temple ……………. . while others are splitting, like the Northern Pres- Spiritualists ……………… . 5 600 byterians, on matters involving leadership or doc- Theosophists ……………… . 543 41,233 trinal emphasis. At the same time new sects are Vedanta Society ………….. . arising among uneducated or underprivileged Mormons (Latter Day Saints) .. 3 5,900 classes; such are "Father Divine's Peace Mission" Reorganized Mormons ……… . 25 400 and "The Church of the First-Born of the United 1,519 Sons of the Almighty." 575 690,401 101,122 The latest reports of church membership in the United States list 35,833,475 in the Protestant Would it not be instructive to tabulate, if pos- bodies, or 31,489,161 persons over 13 years of age. sible, the increase or decrease in church attend- This is an increase of 310,169 since the previous ance and in prayer meeting attendance in the past reports were tabulated. Roman Catholics, on the year, and the observance of family worship? None of the above statistics reveal the spiritual state of the churches or the evidence of Christlike life and service in their members. We are told that the true "vital" statisti(!:;) are kept in the "Lamb's Book of Life."
A KOREAN CHRISTIAN SPEAKS tablets and most of the worship there is directed to the deified spirits of their own ancestors or the Is Christianity a religion (a way of bringing ancestors of the Imperial family. To them are man into relatiQn to God)? If Russia had de- offered various gifts, consisting of fruits of the clared that Christianity is nQt a religion, would soils, flowers acc'Ording to the season, products of that have altered the case?' These questions may the sea, or certain kinds of sacred cloth. In other seem absurd and yet they are t'O the point. Chri&- words, worship before the Kamidana 'Or spirittianity is known as a religion, b'Oth historically shelf is a modified form 'Of the worship before the and universally. I believe in Christ as the Way Jinja or Shinto shrine. tQ God and therefore, regardless of my feelings, I am known as a Christian. I have chosen The Japanese people visit the shrines of their Christianity because I believe Christ is the best own particular sect of Shinto to meditate before and the only true way to bring man into right re- the en-shrined spirits, to pray to them or to worlation to God. I regard the name of Christian as ship them by reverent bowings. This custom is a glorious hQnor, since it signifies that I belong to similar to the Roman Catholic practice of visiting Christ. It denotes a great change has taken place cathedrals and churches or shrines on certain in me as the result of new Christ-given life in re- days. As a rule the Shinto priests do not appear sponse to my acceptance of Him. The significance bef'Ore the shrines except on national holidays or of the name "Christian" is therefore Qf paramQunt on the days on which special services are held in importance, not so much as a matter of religion honor of the spirits of soldiers who have fallen as of all that concerns my s,piritual life. in battle. Government regulations, cover every de- tail of the ceremonies, including the very wording The Japanese Government has officially de- of the prayers read. clared that Shinto shrine worship is not a religious practice but is merely an expressiQn of na- It can be seen that the nature and common tiQnal patriotism. Does this declaration mean that understanding of Shinto shrine worship is inher- Shinto is not a religion and that it has not been, ently religious. It must also be borne in mind histQrically and universally, recognized as such? that there is no distinction between the act of Or does it mean merely that Shinto shrine WQr- worship or obeisance before the Sect Shinto ship, as such, is not a religious practice-related shrines, which are admitted by the Japanese Govto wQrship? ernment to be religious, and before the State Shinto shrines, before which the Government has It is perfectly clear that neither the State or declared that all must bow as an act Qf patriQtism. any other organization is qualified to decide The enshrined deities, the prQcess of enshrinewhether a religion, with a historical background, ment, the details of the ceremonies and Qften the is or is not a religion. Any State or nation can Qfficiating priests Qr ritualists are identical. reject or adopt one of the existing religions as its state-religion, as was done by the Roman Empire On special days, as for example on the Emperunder C'Onstantine; but such a decision in itself Qr's birthday, the leaders of all social organizations does not alter the inherent nature of the religion in ChQsen, including Christian church leaders or Qf the ceremonies connected with it. (ministers, elders and sometimes even deacons) are cQmpelled tQ go to the places where the Shinto One cann'Ot, therefore, accept this declaration worshippers have their religious shrine cereof the Japanese Government concerning the na- monies and to participate in the ceremonies, bQwture of Shinto at its face value but must look into ing befQre the shrine. All Qrganizations so repthe practice 'Of Shinto shrine 'Obeisance to see resented are pronounced by the Government to whether or n'Ot it is religious. It is evident that be shrine worshippers, participating in the soif the declaration by the Japanese Government is called act of natiQnal patriotism. TQ refuse to dQ true, and shrine worship has n'O reHgious signifi- so is tQ be judged guilty of dislQyalty tQ the Emcance but is merely an act of patriotism, there perQr and results in arrest, imprisonment and will be no conflict with the Christian conscience sometimes tQrture. in attendance at the shrines. But if it is not true, then Christians who c'Onform to the Government With the Japanese Empire, now to all intents regulations in this matter naturally believe that they are guilty of idolatry in doing obeisance at and purposes a tQtalitarian state, the Government these Shinto shrines. That is the issue at stake between Christians and the Japanese Government. is ruthless in its insistence that all citizens par- Most of the common people of Japan (the non- ticipate in the shrine ceremQnies. Any discussion Christians) have a Kamidana (spirit-shelf) in their homes. On it are placed the various spirit- of the questiQn is prohibited by the police. Large sectiQns Qf the Church have been cowed intQ sub- mission. The KQrean Christians need yQur prayers as never before. A KOREAN CHRISTIAN.
HENRY GRE"IST WITH A GROUP OF ESKIMOS AT BARROW
A Mission in the Arctic Circle Experiences at Barrow, Alaska, the Northernmost Mission in the World By the REV. HENRY W. GREIST, M.D., D.D.
Honorably Retired Presbyterian Missionary; Stationed at Barrow, 1920 to 1936 BARROW, Alaska, is three hundred miles north but ordinarily weekly periodicals published in the of the Arctic Circle. It is about twelve hun- States come fifty-two copies in one mail sack in dred miles from the Pole, and marks the summer. Not until 1928 was there a radio in northernmost bit of land attached to the North Barrow-at the U. S. Army Signal Corps station. American continent. It was here that Col. and Prior to that time wars, disasters, elections and Mrs. Charles A. Lindbergh landed on their flight other events might occur in the great world out- "North to the Orient." Some islands north of side but it was many months before we learned Canada are nearer the Pole, but they are unin- of them. habited. When Colonel and Mrs. Lindbergh reached Bar- Mails corne to Barrow four times a year, pro- row on their epochal flight, we invited every white vided the one ship in summer succeeds in pene- man, woman and child within two hundred miles trating the ice, and provided further the three to meet these distinguished fliers at dinner in the mails by dog-sledge during the long ten months Presbyterian manse. The total number (includof the Arctic winter succeed in getting in. Mails ing children) who sat at table were seven-in were often six months old before we received addition to the two guests-of-honor and three them, and letters mailed in New York have not Greists. All came who were invited except three infrequently been twelve months en route. All traders in Wainwright who failed to navigate the except first class mail, including parcel post, must ice. corne by ship. Occasionally the Post Office allows a lone newspaper or magazine to corne through, The Arctic is not a white man's country-and never will be. Eskimos alone can thrive there.
[167 ]
The only white people at Barrow are the mission- Barrow is situated, is perhaps the largest presby- aries, two school teachers (one of whom-the hus- tery in the world in point of square miles, but it is band-is the reindeer superintendent), a trader, one of the smallest in membership. During the and the U. S. Army Signal Corps operator and writer's seventeen years of service at Barrow, his. wife, together with any children in these fam- this presbytery had only four active members, the ilies. At Barrow there are no motion picture nearest man being at Fairbanks, eight hundred shows, pool rooms, liquor stores, automobiles, traf- miles distant as the crow flies and separated from fic jams or accidents; no cows, pigs, chickens, Barrow by vast uninhabited spaces of tundra, and sheep, goats or horses within eight hundred miles. by mountains impassable except at very great hazard, by airplane. The three other Presby- terian workers serve white churches at points along the Alaska railway. To travel from our station ·at Barrow to the meeting place of presby- tery anywhere along the railroad would mean a dog-team mileage of not less than fifteen hundred miles, and would take six months, a prohibitive length of time to be absent from one's post.
The missionary at Barrow finds much to do- or did when we maintained both the medical and the religious services in this parish extending a SUMMER "PRESSURE ICE" ON BEACH AT PT. BARROW thousand miles along the coast. It is a work that The Lord's Day is kept as it formerly was· in New calls not only for high spirituality and thorough England as a holy day; all the Eskimos go to training, coupled with devotion to God and to duty, Sunday school, to church and to vespers; and all but it calls also for a plentiful supply of the attend the mid-week prayer meeting as well. The "Three B's" – Blood, Brains and Brawn. The church is. the one social center. evangelist in this isolated region should be a Jack-of-all trades, with the resourcefulness of a The long Arctic Night extends from November Robinson Crusoe. A well-known war corresponduntil late in January, and for a short time the ent twenty years ago, covering assignments in far sun does not rise above the horizon. Then, for places, who became an admirer of missionaries three months, from May to August, it does not and then a student of missions, wrote: A misset at all. These are the periods which are sionary in such a station "should be self-contained, peculiarly trying to white people. The cold in an administrator, teacher, doctor, architect, carwinter is intense but the low temperature is not penter, machinist, engineer, a practical business so trying as the almost incessant fogs in summer, man, and withal tactful and diplomatic." Not together with cold, drizzling rain, which are apt every successful pastor could be a successful misto depress one. The best remedy is to keep busy with one's duties.
The Presbyterian Mission at Barrow, in the Yukon Presbytery, has for its central purpose the evangelization of the Eskimos of Alaska. Hos- pital work was splendidly maintained for many years previous to late 1936; social welfare and community service have also been energetically and faithfully carried on by consecrated and effi- ciently trained workers,……..,but all with this chief end in view – to win the Eskimos to Christ and His Way of Life. Among primitive people the so- U. s. SIGNAL STATION AT BARROW (leftl. WITH HOSPITAL called "Social Gospel," when offered alone, is a failure. Christ must be faithfully presented and AND CHURCH; MANSE AT THE EXTREME RIGHT His cross must be carried to the fore. The arts sionary, and many outstanding missionaries and sciences of civilization may be· readily ac- would discover in the pastorate in an ordinary cepted by people, in so far as they are practically field at home to be a very difficult, if not impos.- useful, but Christian ethics, without Christ as the sible, task.
center of life, are not observed except as they The missionary in the Arctic regions must seem to serve a selfish purpose. Heart conver- travel throughout the winter by dog-team at not sion is the all important goal; then all else follows over five miles per hour. At night, for want of to make a better world. other shelter, he tents out on the ice-bound beach Yukon Presbytery, within the bounds of which in temperatures as low as sixty degrees below
A MISSION IN THE ARCTIC CIRCLE
zero. He must cook his scant supper as best he Jackson visited the Arctic in 1890, with snow can over a tiny oil burning stove, the coffee freez- white hair and deeply wrinkled face but with eyes ing while the reindeer steaks are being broiled. shining like stars, began tugging at the preacher's The coffee must then be warmed again while the coat. He thought it a child in a mother's arms meat is eaten. After this, with his "musher" and behind< him and so ignored the interruption. But guide, he must crawl deep within reindeer sleep- the tugging became more and more insistent. He ing bags, read the Scripttures and offer prayer; turned, and lo! it was this old grandmother, said afterwards he sIeeps,as only healthy men can to be about ninety-five years old. Asked what she sleep under these trying conditions. If a severe storm overtakes them, the travelers are forced to • build a snow-house with a tunnel entrance and a floor lowered deep in a snow bank. The whole .. is covered by a tent slipped over the walls and weighed down at the sides by blocks of snow. .I When the missionary arrives at some camp of DORCAS, A FINE CHRISTIAN ESKIMO GIRL, AT BARROW trappers or reindeer herders, or at some village, scores of miles from any other habitation, he wanted, she replied through the interpreter: makes a house-to-house visitation during the day, "Long time ago, a peddler came to this village holds medical clinics (or did prior to the taking who said he had been a preaeher. The trader over of the medical work by the Government). asked him to preach to us that night, which he Then at night evangelistic services are held in the did. After talking of God's Book, of which we schoolhouse for a week or ten days. The people had never before heard, he went into the teacher's are hungry for the Gospel-and are responsive living quarters, got a wash~basin of water, and but never emotional. They are easily led to accept poured water on my head and on every person's the truth and many wholeheartedly give them- head in that room. Then he said, 'Now you are selves to the Lord Jesus Christ. They take their Christianity seriously, and put to shame nominal Christians in the States. Crowded into the schoolroom are often three times as many as the room would hold if chairs were placed close together. The school desks, intended for one, are occupied by two adults, with children seated on the desk in front of the parents. Boys sit on bookcases or under tables. Children are everywhere, with fathers and mothers sitting flat upon the floor, knees drawn up to make room for others. All mothers seem to hold from one to three babies or older children so that· the preaeher is usually limited to the space that his two feet occupy. But there is no whispering, no sign of restlessness in the audience; the cry of a baby is rarely heard. Every eye is riveted on the minister and every ear strained to catch every word of the interpreter, for the elderly folk cannot understand English very well. Such an opportunity insistently calls for the very best that is in any preacher of God's Word. It is an inspiring experience and sends a man to his knees that he may have the guidance and power of the Holy Spirit.
Early in our ministry in Wainwright, a village about one hundred miles southwest of Barrow, one bitterly cold night in January, the writer was preaching to a crowded house,estimated to contain more than 200 people. Becoming warm in his efforts, he removed his reindeer parka and, in his ordinary coat, stood in the limited space left for him by the crowd. Soon an old woman, known to have been a grandmother when Dr. Sheldon
all Christians.' But 0 Missionary, 0 Missionary, proved sufficient. We have now 533 communicant I want Jesus under the skin." members of the Church in Arctic Alaska. The Eskimo are not an emotional people, but they are My sermon on John 3: 16 was only half finished, intelligent and they wish to know the reasons for but I knelt at the old woman's knees and very what they believe and do. tenderly led her along the Way to Christ. We prayed for her, but in the midst of that short Our medical service was fruitful in giving us contacts with people from far away in Arctic Can- AN ESKIMO CHRISTIAN PREPARING DINNER ada and from many hundreds of miles down the coast southwest to within fifty miles of Kotzebue prayer we were disturbed by her changed de- where there is a well-equipped government hosmeanor; looking up we saw that the Holy Spirit pital. Many of these patients came to us five had spoken to her and had given her the evidence hundred miles by dog-teams, through darkness, that He had sealed her, for her smile waselo- storm and cold, bringing their chronically ill and quent; she was seeking to tell us of the change surgical cases. When asked why they came to us in her heart. That smile did not wear off during instead of going to the government doctor, their the remaining weeks of her life. We arose to our usual reply was, "You people up here pray." They feet and saw that fourteen young married couples came from far beyond the geographical limits of were also kneeling in a circle in front of the our mission and over 52:,000 cases and clinical calls school desks; the people who had been sitting on were recorded during our sixteeen years of servthe floor having made room by changing places ice. There were some repeaters but each bedwith them. All were silently praying, their lips patient was counted only as one case. Eternity moving. Later, all arose and each gave a short alone will reveal the spiritual results. The sick testimony, without any invitation on our part. were dealt with by the missionary, assisted by the From that group three young men have been or- ruling elders, and prayer was coupled with indained as ruling elders of the Olgonic (Wain- struction. Many who were brought from a diswright) Church, and at least two of the women tance, and had only a limited opportunity to hear have been ordained as deaconesses. All the mem- the Gospel, were converted in the hospital. After bers of that group have exhibited changed lives throughout the succeeding years. Thus the Holy JAMES, A WAINWRIGHT ESKilMO, AND HIS WIFE Spirit honors the preaching of the Gospel of IN FRONT OF THEIR IGLOO Christ. We now have a splendid, organized church of believers at Wainwright with a chapel the service on the Lord's Day the young people and a manse, served by Percy Ipalcck, a product would occasionally gather in the hospital to sing of Sheldon Jackson School, and now a licentiate hymns dear to the hearts of these folk. The minof Yukon Presbytery. istryof song, if in the native tongue, often worked wonders with the old people. Friends of the sick, The providence of God and His direct answers who had brought them up to the hospital, reto prayer were remarkable throughout the years mained sometimes for weeks or even months until of our ministry on that coast. Strangely peculiar the ill were able to travel back home. In the meanhave been many of these instances so that our while these friends attended Sunday school and faith grew by leaps and bounds as we carried on, the services of the church, often becoming conabiding in Him and His Word .a!biding in us. We vinced and surrendering their lives to the Lord were far from human help, isolated and alone in Jesus. our service, cut off from those who could enter understandingly into our problems; but God alone
One young man, a half-breed, whOo resided four No tourists came to Barrow throughout the sevhundred fifty miles distant, was deeply under con- enteen years of our service. Dr. A. J. Montviction for weeks and gave his heart to God the gOomery, of the National Board of Missions, while very night before he left in his father's motor director of Alaska work, called one summer day, boat fOor his distant home. He was found drowned having traveled near eight thousand miles to visit the next morning, not far frOom Barrow. His us; but he could not remain on shore for more brothers were greatly impressed and, one by one, than an hOour on account of threatening ice at sea. surrendered to God. Alas! our beloved hOospital My brother, L. T. Greist, a Presbyterian attorney from Chicago, also visited us for three months THE MISSION CHURCH AND CONGREGATION AT BARROW in 1934; he not only won the hearts of the Eskimo along that coast, but they won his admiration as is a thing of the past, in so far as it can serve for well. evangelistic work, except by permission of the gOovernment doctor. Medical mission service else- In late August, 1936, we tearfully turned over where in Alaska has also been relinquished, dis- our medical service to the in-coming government astrously as to the spiritual well-being of our doctor and his nurses, but the new doctor SOOon A:[~ctic Eskimos. We debated during four long resigned and left the service. Another came and years the giving up of our medical work, while did excellent work but was dissatisfied with social the proposition hung fire, but the Mission Board cOonditiOons and left Barrow within the year; a thOought that medical service was costing too much third doctor has now arrived. The natives wonmoney. True, supplies were expensive, coal alOone der at the many frequent changes and fail to comcosting $55 a ton delivered in Barrow, and we prehend why a medical man does not seem to be normally required 150 tons a year. We econo- vitally interested in their religious welfare. mized, denied ourselves, cut wages and salaries frOom 25% to 60%; no one complained, including The Rev. Fred G. Klerekoper, a graduate Oof the Eskimo helpers. Our budget was reduced Princeton Seminary (class of 1934) is now the from about $18,000 tOo nearly $8,000 annually. We missionary in charge. Mrs. Klerekoper was edusacrificed gladly to maintain our beloved medical cated in Mt. Holyoke College, Massachusetts, and evangelism but we were forced to write finis in is a graduate nurse. She is the daughter Oof Presour mission's annals as to our medical service. byterian missionaries in Chosen and a capable worker; but she is not likely to have Oofficial con- In 1920, we had invested $48,000 in the Point nectiOon with the new hospital which is now being Barrow Hospital (largely obtained from the Com- built to replace the one burned in the autumn of monwealth Fund). The Sunday schOool children in Presbyterian churches in the United States had 1936.* These splendidly trained and spiritually~ donated $10,000 from their offerings on Washington's Birthday in 1920 for the equipment. We minded young missionaries are there to carry on had no isolation wards, so seriously needed in time of epidemics. and for the tubercular patients; the DR. GREIST (left), WITH MRS. GREIST, WELCOMING THEIR operating theater was merely a small room in- SUCCESSORS, REV. AND MRS. FRED KLEREKOPER tended for beds, and without prOoper light. The two pipeless hot-air furnaces, intended for small the church work along that thousand miles of bungalow residences, failed utterly tOo protect us Arctic coast. Mr. Klerekoper travels much by against the Arctic cold, high winds, and in the dogs during the Arctic night, in cold and storm thin uninsulated walls of the building. NOotwith- and darkness; he sometimes goes along the coast standing these and other serious handicaps, very in a small motor boat during the short summer. effective and faithful service was done throughout They are young, enthusiastic, hard working and the years and many lives were saved. deserve the intercessory prayers of all God's peo- ple. Theirs is not an easy task, as we knOow from experience. Let us support them.
• The government has appropriated $100,000 to build and equip the new hospital to replace the one destroyed.
A Missionary Epistle from China*
By DR. and MRS. WALLACE CRAWFORD, Chengtu, West China A T THE beginning of the war with Japan the the wire, which costs the Japanese a great sum .r- proportion of casualties in the fighting was to replace. They do no open fighting, but are conthree Chinese to one Japanese; l,ater on it tinually harassing the lines of communication, was two to one, but now it is "even going" and the making it impossible for the Japanese to consoli- casualties are terrific on the side of the Japanese. date their gains in North China.
The initial dazed condition of the Chinese peo- "The people's army" receive no pay, and want ple has given way to a steadily developing deter- none; their leaders are poor and there is no selfmination to. increase their efficiency to the place seeking among them. Their average age is not where they will wear out J.apan. There is little over thirty. Contrast this with the puppet regime desire on the part of the people, outside the main set up in Peiping, where the average age of the regular army, to see the Japanese killed off, but rather to cause them such heavy financial loss as "leaders" is sixty-four. to so embarrass their country and to make it impossible to carryon the "incident." Everywhere Over four hundred thousand of these guerrillas one is impressed with the increasing efficiency of are organized in what the Japanese would have the resistance of the people of China, for it is the us believe is the occupied territory. These men go people's struggle, and not merely the activities of everywhere in the occupied territory, uninterthe army. China is just at the beginning of a rupted by the Japanese who exert no control save colossal man-power preparation. in the immediate cities they occupy.
The Japanese have occupied practically all the The guerrillas are constantly improving their walled cities in certain parts of the country and efficiency. Now they have many miles of telehave paralyzed the normal activities as a whole, phone system and it is reported that they will rebut their control does not exceed five miles beyond ceive a wire of the starting of a train and before the walls of the cities they "control." Every male the train has gone a hundred miles, it runs into a from twelve years old and up is a potential soldier bomb and is wrecked. against the Japanese. They are organized into guerrillas, and they are the ones who control the Instead of breaking the morale of the Chinese country, and not the Japanese. Five miles from people the Japanese action is making that morale. the railway these guerrillas have become such a The spirit of the people is improving instead of menace to the Japanese as to make many of the being destroyed. They argue that the Japanese formerly controlled walled cities untenable. have come and destroyed everything so why not join with the forces opposing the Japanese? That Groups undertake the job of disrupting the rail- is what they are doing in an atmosphere of pov- erty, humility, meekness and intense patriotism.
way.'They go out and draw out the spikes so that Communism which was evident in 1935 is dif- the rails fall apart. After the Japanese found out ferent from the brand which we have in China at this trick, they made wooden spike tops which the moment. There is no more compUlsion about looked so much like tM real thing that the Jap- it than there is in a church school. Thousands anese did not suspect their trick, the result being are entering their University, either as organ- wrecked trains. These were looted by the guer- izers, or mass education leaders, or cooperative rillas, and their supplies carried off into the vil- leaders, and a few as soldiers in the Eighth Route lages to be used against the enemy. Army, which is playing havoc with the Japanese Another group will go out and take off a rail forces. They have a school of art, another for and bury it a mile or two from the railway. Of the educating of municipal leaders, another for course the Japanese replace the rail, but in the cooperatives, and many others in addition to the course of a year one can imagine what it costs actual fighting force, which have engaged the Japan to be constantly replacing rails. Another Japanese in battle. While they have won it has group will cut down telephone poles and carry off been at terrific expense in man power. As Mad- ame Chiang Kai-shek says, "The Japanese are 19;9~~e United en/wren Record ana Missionary Review (February. winning battles, but China will win the war."
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for Christianity in Europe-I
The End and the Rebirth of Churches in Central and Eastern Europe By PROF. D. ADOLF KELLER, D.D., Geneva, Switzerland THE idea of the end has never been alien to the person of Christ, and as a result there is a the Christian Church. The first Christians general abandoning of the Churches and a de- looked for the end of the present order and crease of interest in their activity. for the coming of the Lord's Kingdom. This is what is meant by the word "eschatological." It In such countries we can indeed speak of the was a tremendous tonic for the faith of the first approaching end of those branches of the Chriscentury; and again today, in such an apocalyptic tian Church. In Russia, for instance, there may mood, we say that not only thrones" political in- still be hundreds of Orthodox Russian churches stitutions, economic systems, human empires, but open and crowded. But let us not be deceived: if even Christian Churches, will come to an end. the present policy continues, especially if the pol- icy of anti-Christian education is successful, the It will not be the first time in Christian history. end of an old Christian Church of Russia will be Where is today the Church of St. Augustine, the near. That Church has lost its leader and his inforerunner of Luther in North Africa? It is gone! fluence. It has lost a large part of its episcopacy Where are those seven churches in Asia Minor and priesthood. Thousands of priests and bishops today, to whom the writer of the Apocalypse wrote have been killed or are imprisoned, or have been his seven letters? They have been swept away sent to concentration camps in Siberia. The when Islam, the great killer of Christian Church has lost hundreds of its fine cathedrals and churches, conquered Anatolia and when the last other church buildings, partly by arbitrary de- Christian Archbishop was dragged by his hair struction, partly by transforming Christian through the streets of Smyrna and put to death. churches into museums, cinemas and variety Where is the large Christian Nestorian Church in theatres. The Church has lost its theological Central China? It has died, except for a little academy; no priest can receive a theological eduremnant represented by the Nestorian Assyrians cation in Russia at present. The only theological in Iraq and along the Kabur in Syria. academy is that of Father Bulgakoff in Paris. The It is paradoxical to the Christian faith that any Church in Russia has finally lost its educational part of the Church of the living Christ should influence. It is not allowed to give a religious come to an end. But have we not to face this fact education to the younger generation before they when we see that churches come to an end in our reach their eighteenth year. The Church, being large world cities, or at least in certain strata of considered as the last asylum for obscurantism, the population, for instance among the cultured has lost its influence on public life. According to classes or among labor. Modern indifference, the desire of the present Soviet rulers she should scepticism, secularism, threatens whole Churches become a Christian ghetto in the midst of the Ruswith the end which, like the Church of France, sian people.
have been called the oldest daughters of the The Evangelical Church in Russia has been Church. France counts forty-one millions of in- practically wiped out. Out of 200 Lutheran pashabitants. The Roman Catholic Church does not tors not one is still at work. .' AU were compelled claim more than ten or eleven millions. There to leave the country or enter secular professions; are not over one million of French Protestants. or they were killed or banished and their fam- Where are the other twenty-nine or thirty mil- Hies are suffering hunger and privations. Evanlions of the French people? They are the dying gelical churches have been closed or are used for Church of France. I worldly purposes. The Lutheran Academy under Wherever modern secular ideologies, like the Bishop Malmgren had to be closed.
gospel of Marx or the gospel of Lenin or of Can One still speak of the Church of the Refor- Nietsche, are infecting the mind of the modern mation in Germany? Is not the end near? What world, such Churches feel a resistance ,against the is left of the formerly proud and active Church of preaching of the Gospel of Christ, or even against Martin Luther? There is a foreign office with [173 ]
Bis·chof Heckel; a finance department whose ad- fish on the sand to make himself known to other ministrative measures are sometimes a deadly unknown Christians. Wherever these two or three weapon when they are used against recalcitrant meet in the name of Christ, the new Church is pastors; a minister of state for the Church who born. It grows, we do not know how, in Russian is restricting the Christian Church and muzzling villages, in the woods, on the railway. The new its outspoken ministers. Theological faculties, spiritual Church of Christ will take its form, its which were once the pride of German Protestant- organization, will develop its leadership, its the- ism, today have to fight to maintain their influence ology, when such is God's will.
and to build up confidence, at least in the Confes- Simple Christian folks are perpetuating the sional Church. All over Germany there are thou- Christian Church. Russian mothers, for instance, sands of open churches where the Gospel can be seeing that their children are in danger of grow- preached but little is left today of the former en- ing up like heathen,are taking things in hand and terprising missionary spirit. The old Church of are teaching their children to believe in God, per- the Reformation, as a State Church and as a lead- haps in a very elementary way but with a sincere ing Church, is nearing its end. faith. They will save the Christian feeling in the In many other countries the Church of Christ heart of the people from oblivion and destruction.
faces such deadly enemies as individualism, mod- A new Church is being born also out of the ern secularism and indifferentism which are Church struggle in Germany. The intrepid Pas- transforming the old solid structure of the Evan- tor Niem6ller isa Church builder although he sits gelical Church into a vague religious sentimental- ina concentration camp and is closely watched.
ism and aestheticism. He cannot speak to his fellow prisoners, he can- What then is coming to an end? First of all not even see his family regularly, he cannot write there is to be an end to the unnatural relationship or publish, and yet his influence is spreading as of the Church of Christ with the modern State. an atmospheric power. He is kindling a new fire In many Churches the historic State was consid- of faith in the hearts of many people and encour- ered as the fatherly protector of the Church to ages them to resist a State which does not allow take care of the theological faculties, the religious the Church to be the Chu:r:ch. Hundreds of Ger- education in schools, build manses and pay sal- man ministers are punished for having disobeyed aries to the pastors, and therefore claiming the this autocratic State and they are preaching the right to supervise and influence Church life. But Gospel of Christ without fear. The church janitor this influence has become so strong today, and is who will not take the key of the Church out of his leading the Evangelical Church away from its pocket to open its door for an un-Evangelical original aim, that millions feel that such a com- preacher who has come to replace a believing pas- radeship is against the true nature of a Christian tor is another new church builder; so is the or- Church. An easy compromise between State and ganist who refuses to play the organ to accom- Church is therefore coming to an end. panya service which is not inspired with the spirit Second, a Church of wealth and earthly power of Christ.
is coming to an end; the Church knows today Where two or three have such peculiar courage that, in her need and poverty, she resembles much and faith, where they meet in the name of Christ more that Man who had not where to lay His in private houses, in restaurants, in the market head than she did when she was rich and powerful. place, on the railway, they build up a new Church Third, a Church which thinks she knows better of Christ.
than Christ himself is coming to an end today- It may not yet be recognized a Church as we that Church which is like the grand inquisitor, in understand it, as a great national or denomina- Dostojewski's novel, who sent Jesus Christ away tional organization; may be only a small congre- when He came back because the Church to which gation; but such cells are the living stones with He had left His task knew better than He how to which a Church is built.
handle the world. And this Church is being built even against the Instead of such Churches, which are more and will of its oppressors. It reminds us of that pic- more dying out, a new Church is born. It is yet ture painted by the German painter, Moritz von an invisible Church, with no clearly defined mem- Schwind. He shows a saint building a chapel in bership, with no structure or organization. Two the midst of the wood, continuing his work al- or three members may meet somewhere in Russia, though the devil tries to disturb him; finally the two wanderers in the streets, two farmers in the saint's faith is so strong that he compels even the market, two boatmen on the Volga, not knowing devil against his will, to carry the stones that the each other but suddenly recognizing the brother saint uses for building the chapel.
in Christ by a word, a glance in his eye, a symbolic Therefore, even poverty, isolation, pers.ecution action. This was the case in the first centuries must help to build up a new Church of Christ for when a Christian may have drawn the sign of the which we hope and pray and labor..
and the Lost Feast
-·..e{11 By V. LANE-FRIMPOLE IIi- I N ONE room of a small, two-roomed mud and Musing on his new green sateen shirt with its rubble cottage in northern Syria, lived an Arab five buttons, each of a different color, and yearn- boy named Murad. Here he lived, ate and ing to bite into a Ramazan cake, Murad had almost slept with his parents, his little brothers and his fallen asleep when he heard the sound of visitors, granny. The other room was occupied by his fa- coming in to spend the evening. Everyone seemed ther's brother, with his wife and children. happy. His own grown people had been dread- One night, near the end of the month-long fast fully cross in the late afternoon, Murad thought. of Ramadan, Murad lay on the floor in a corner, But after the sunset cannon had been fired and tucked up in his grandmother's bed, under her they had broken their day-long fast, things were wool-waded quilt. The light of the wood-fire on all right again. Now these visitors, too, seemed the hearth flickered among the shadows of the in happy mood. otherwise dark room. Murad liked to watch the Ah! they were asking Granny to chant them a firelight and to hear the sound of the rain and Mevlud-one of the long Turkish poems about the Prophet Mohammed. All the village thought wind outside. The boy's mind wandered to the approaching granny a notable woman. She could make out any feast which would follow the sacred fast days chapter of the Koran without too much halting to and his imagination played pleasantly with the spell the words, and she had memorized many thought of the cakes and other good things to eat. chapters. But she did not know Arabic and so As a little boy he did keep. the fast and did not understood nothing of the meaning. LaHnized need this abstinance in order to get hungry. He Turkish, inaugurated by the late Kemal Ataturk, thought, too, of the new clothes that his clever she could not read at all, but she could spell aunt, who sewed on the machine, had made for out Turkish words in the Arabic characters, him. In the mind of a child, whose people go by enough to read her M evlud. These Turcomans the sun year, other things would have been asso- living in the mountains of northern Syria were ciated with a holiday for under such a calendar not yet sure of the orthodoxy of the Western alevery feast falls at the same season of the year. phabet for to them the Arabic letters, in which the In America, for example, Decoration Day comes Koran came down from heaven, were the only with the grass and spring flowers; the Fourth of ones that seemed right. July is marked by hot sunshine and trees in full Murad loved to hear his granny chant the Koran leaf; Thanksgiving Day is observed in the midst because of the beautiful roll of it and the awe in of November frosts; Christmas is enlivened with her voice. But he liked far better to hear the Me1)lud because it was in his own language, and snow and ice. For Murad and for all Moslem people this is not much of it he could understand. Happily he the case. The moon year of the Moslem world watched granny go to the high shelf that ran retrogrades at the rate of about ten days every around the room and take down a manuscript sun year. In the year of which we write Ramadan written by a learned Mullah's own hand years ago. came in the middle of December, something that His mother thrust a splinter of pitch-pine into the had not occurred for some thirty-six years. Little fire and lighted the little oil lamp. Then Murad Murad, the Turcoman, had been born of Moslem watched the old lady squat down with the precious parents in a Moslem community, consequently he book on her knee and turn over the leaves with found himself in a completely nonsequential uni- moistened forefinger and thumb. She found the verse, where no effect is traced to any cause; page and in a sweet, thin voice began to chant. where each separate act and event of the day is Oh! it was the bit that Murad liked best, the lullooked upon as caused by a special, arbitrary act laby sung to the Prophet by his nurse Haleema: of the "Will of Allah." It is thought impious to It is Mohammed: let mountains and stones seek to try to understand God's will which is im- Rejoice-wild beasts, too, and birds. possible of comprehension. This concept of an Lady Ameena is his mother, arbitrary will, governing the universe, is rein- She is the fine flower of mothers, forced by the changes of the moon year. Her head is of pearls. Lullaby, my Mohammed, my high Commander, lullaby.
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In the mountain of Mecca was his birthplace wind was blowing as hard as ever. Perhaps it At the Kaaba, at the Black Stone, in the presence of was the gusts of wind that shook the stars and made them twinkle so through the frosty dark. Gabriel, Snug under his quilt, Murad watched the two That Gabriel might praise the Beloved of God, (even women move drowsily about preparing the three Mohammed). o'clock breakfas.t–the iftar. He was not quite Lullaby, my Mohammed, my high Commander, lullaby. awake, not quite asleep. The stir and rustle that The houris, the Paradise maidens, came; the women made seemed to go on for ever. Then They bound white incense in his swaddling bands, his grandmother's voice calling his father broke They praised the Beloved of God. the spell. Lullaby, my Mohammed, my high Commander, lullaby. "Get up, my son! Get up and eat; dawn will Abd el Mutaleb was his grandfather, break before you know it and then it will l;le un- Abdullah was his father, lawful for you to eat until sunset. How will you The Lady Haleema was his nurse. be able to fast all day on an empty stomach?" Lullaby, my Mohammed, my high Commander, lullaby. The Feast Before the Fast May Satan's hands be tied, May the hearts of thy friends be fat, Murad's father rose, stretching his great arms and legs. Villagers sleep in their clothes, so there o son of Lady Ameena. was no delay for dressing. He stepped out of bed, crossed over to the hearth and sat down on the Lullaby, my Mohammed; lullaby, my beautiful Ahmad, floor. No one called Murad for he was too young lullaby. to fast. But the smell of the hot food called him; so crawling from under the quilt, he went and sat Lying there in his nest, Murad listened en- down by his father and snuggled up to him. His tranced. He was six years old and so far as he mother unfolded the woolen bread-cloth, took up knew he had always slept in his granny's bed. He some paper-thin loaves as l10und and big as two supposed that he always would. He could not re- dinner plates. She sprinkled them with water and member the time when he had to give up his cradle folded them in four;, then she flung down one at to the next baby. Granny had always been there each person's place and piled the rest in the middle and always would be, like the sun and wind and of the big tray. Granny put down a copper bowl, rain. He loved her voice as she sang about the full of steaming food, and a pan of curdled milk. baby Mohammed's birth; about the Angel Gabriel Everything was, ready. and those beautiful houris swaddling him as his mother had swaddled their own baby. As the "In the name of God," said Murad's father; quavering, sweet voice went on and on, the faces then scooping up a big mouthful of the hot food of his family and the visitors, visible or invisible with a flap of bread, he ate it. "In the name of as the flames in the fireplace rose and fell, seemed God," echoed, Murad, and did the same. The to float in the warm air. Murad felt himself float- women sat down and they used the same prayer ing. A wind was blowing him down a high, high before they began to eat. mountain-away from two goats that he was herding-blowing him like thistledown. Now the wind "I certainly thought," said Murad's father bewas singing. What was it singing? "Lullaby, tween mouthfuls, "that today was to be the first Mohammed, my high Commander, lullaby. N en-ni day of the Ramadan Byram. I was sure the feast -Nen-ni-i-i." began today and I was surprised when no an- nouncement was made in the mosque last night. Murad did not wake up when his granny came Surely it will not be later than tomorrow. We to bed; not even when she took him in her loving must get ready today; it would be dreadful if we old arms as she had taken his daddy when he was delayed and so lost one of our four great days. a little boy. A little herdboy who has been out on My brother and I will butcher the goat, and you the mountain all day in wind and rain, sleeps women must be about your cooking." Good Mossoundly. The fire died down and the room grew lem as he was, he could not help looking forward dark and cold, but he did not know it. to the end of the month-long fast, with its food- less, waterless, tobaccoless days at the plough, and He seemed scarcely to have dropped to sleep its ni,ghts of broken sleep. when he heard his mother saying to his father,: "Get up! Get up! I have our breakfast ready." "All things happen as God wills," said granny. "If he wills that the feast begin tomorrow, it will "It's not time yet," mumbled Daddy, rolling begin tomorrow." over and yawning. By this time Murad was back under the quilt "Vakit oldu. It is time, and the food is ready." again, and soon his granny and all the others also "How do you know it's time? Did you hear the went back to bed and slept until broad daylight. signal gun in Passtown?" "NO', but one seldO'm hears it these windy nights." Grandmother was up now, and had opened the door wide. The rain had stopped but the east
MURAD AND THE LOST FEAST DAY
When the December sun had warmed the air a may bake our cakes in his new bake-house. Tell little, Murad took the goats out on the mountain. him: your father will do the baking if he will show He wore untanned leather boots with toes turned him how." up, just like the toes of the Hittite boots that one sees pictured on monuments. His mother had tied "Oh! and may I go with father and help bake around his head a piece of Turkish toweling for the cakes?" warmth. In the flat gingham bag slung under his arm was his lunch – red peppers, some goat's "Yes, if you are a good boy and run to Armen's cheese, wrapped up in leathery folds of bread, like a bird and bring back word what he says. Ask and some dried figs. His people were well-to-do politely. Run, let me see. Bakalum!" and could afford to give him this variety. Murad came flying back with the permission. For the older people another hungry day had Then he helped his father load some wood on the begun, but everyone was busy preparing for the donkey for firing, and went with him to the oven four-day feast. Murad's father and uncle slaugh- to light it. Afterwards when the oven was hot tered and flayed the fattened goat and, hanging and the cakes were ready, with the spice kneaded the carcass on a tree, began to cut it up. Neigh- in and sesame seed sprinkled thick on top, Murad bors would buy whatever part they themselves did helped carry to the oven the big copper trays covnot want. The women were as busy; brazen ered with cakes to be baked. All eyes, he watched pestles clanged on brazen mortars as they pounded his father put a batch of cakes on the flat wooden spices – nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, all-spice and shovel, and then" slide them off on the oven floor. mastic gum. The younger women did the pound- Lovely! But lovelier still when father took up the ing, while granny spread the thick woolen bread- browned cakes on the shovel and slid them back cloth on the floor and began to knead a stiff mass on the trays near Murad to cool. Ah! the deliof flour, butter, sugar and leaven for the festal cious, delicious smell! And how good the bits cakes. The hours flew. It was noon. tasted that he broke off and popped into his mouth when no one was looking! If he lives another A Mistake and the Explanation fifty years, Murad will still remember that smell and taste. "Boom! Boom! Boom!"-the dull roar of the Passtown cannon rolled through the mountain. The rej oicing was general, yet every now and People looked at each other in consternation. then someone would say grievingly, "Look how we have been cheated out of the first day of our "Toap atuldu! The cannon is being fired; feast!" It was as if a cloud passed over the sun then the teast began last night! We have missed each time someone said this. The village Khoja a whole day!" The words flew from mouth to (Moslem teacher and preacher) was as vexed as mouth, "We have lost a day from our feast! We any of them. He too was baking cakes at the oven. have lost a day from our feast!" "But how did it come that you made a mistake Such a thing had never been known in the vil- about the day?" asked Armen, the Armenian. lage. To add another day of feasting never occurred to them; if an impious stranger had sug- "The big mountain to the southwest shuts out gested such an idea, they would have rejected it the view, and no one saw the new moon." as impossible. No, the lost day was irrevocably lost. Grown men and women as they were, they "Surely a man like you, who can read and felt it keenly, helplessly, hopelessly as children write, must know when the new moon will first feel a loss. But they went on with their prep- appear," objected Armen. "There are calendars. arations that should have been made the day Everyone knows that the new moon is sure to apbefore. pear on a certain day."
Murad heard the cannon and came racing home Murad's father listened contemptuously to the to ask what had happened. To him and the other Armenian's ignorant talk. Thank God the Khoja children it seemed interesting and exciting. Here, was present and would defend the faith. He did there, everywhere he skipped among his busy not like to have Murad hear such impious talk. elders. That was the worst of these Christian neighbors, Well, as the child had heard it, let him now hear "I take refuge in God," said his mother, pestered the Khoja's refutation. past endurance with his mischief as he teased his little brothers, "Go back to the mountain and look "God forbid," the Khoja was saying. "Nothing after your goats, filthy devil, or I'll murder you." is sure to be. Each event happens as the most high Truth wills it. If he wills a new moon on a "I left them with one of the Armenian boys. certain day, there will be one; if not, there will They're all right," he answered. not. Who can say beforehand-I ask pardon of God-what God's will is going to be? We did not "My nestling," said grandmother intervening, see the moon ourselves, we had no authenticated "run quickly to Armen's house and ask him if we news that it had been seen by responsible persons
elsewhere, therefore we did not know that there Murad crawled into bed and left them still eatwas a new moon." ing. He was so full that he went to sleep quickly, but in the night he awoke, crying with a stomach- "If that is ,the way of it, why did not one of you ache. go to town two days ago and stay to bring the news as soon as the moon was seen in town?" "I take refuge in God from Satan, the stoned," persisted the Armenian. said granny. "What can ail the child ?" She tried to soothe him by rubbing, but that was of no use, "Perhaps, after he had taken all that bother and so she got up and made him some mint tea with headache, there might have been no moon; then plenty of sugar in it. Then she said a charm for his labor would have gone for nothing," answered colic. The pain eased, but he was wide awake and the Khoja. could not go to sleep again at once.
"The cause of each event, no matter how small, "Grandmother," he said, "what happened to the is the will of God. I once heard a sheikh of pro- lost feast day? How does a day get lost, granny? found learning say this: 'It is an error to say that Did it wander off in the mountains like our nanny fire always burns. Fire burns or not just as God goat that the wolf ate? Or did it fall down a deep wills in each case. And the proof is that when the crack between rocks like my piastre piece that I idolaters tried to destroy Abraham by fire, far cried so hard about? How does a day get lost, from burning him the fire caused a thicket of rose- grandmother ?" bushes in bloom to grow up around him, full of singing nightingales. Likewise it is an error to "God predestined that we should lose that day. say that knives cut. A knife cuts if God wills it The Most High Truth wrote that fate on our to cut; if not, no. And the proof is that when foreheads." Abraham was about to sacrifice his son Ishmael, the knife refused to cut. There is no God but "But why?" God; without his will naught comes to pass.' " "I ask pardon of God. Listen to the child! God knows his own work. No good comes from think- Murad, listening with all his ears, thought that ing and asking questions. Please God, it be not what the Khoja said was wonderful, and looked a portent of some evil about to befall us for our triumphantly at the ignorant Armenian. "Annen wickedness! Truly, in these days godlessness has is nice, but he is a giaour (infidel) just the same," so increased that if the Supreme Truth rained he thought. He wished that he had seen Abra- fire on us it would be no more than we deserve. ham's roses and nightingales. That conversation For look how children–even small children-" by the oven laid one more great stone solidly in Murad was always bored when granny began the foundation of the Moslem faith upon which to moralize. "Granny, I kiss your eye, ehant the Murad's life was to be built. M evlud," he coaxed. "Chant the same bit that you did the other night," and he began the nen-ni, Murt-koy is only a mountain village. Murad nen-ni of the Infant Prophet's nurse. His grandhad never seen the rude Ferris wheels-outdating mother took it up and went on verse after verse: Ferris by centuries-that are set up for the children at this feast in Moslem cities, from Con- Mohammed is my heart's core, my theme: stantinople to Calcutta. No strolling gypsies If he weeps, my eye weeps blood. came, as they do to the big towns, with fife and Let me rub my face on his threshold. drum. But even in Murt-koyeverybody had new Lullaby, my Mohammed, my high Commander, lullaby. clothes, and the groups of women and children looked like living gardens. Even the tiny babies His teeth are whiter than white pearls, had new caps of every bright color; amulets were snipped off the old caps and sewed tightly on the The Paradise maidens, the Houris, are his companions; new. Families exchanged cakes; and who so proud as Murad to go from door to door offering He is the Sun of the two worlds. ' a cake with his family's greetings. He was shy and his lashes swept his cheeks; his voice could Lullaby, my Mohammed; lullaby, my beautiful Ahmad, hardly be heard, but his smile was sweet. lullaby; nen-ni, nen-ni-i-i-i-i. And what a feast they had when he returned home! He ate and ate until he was tight as a Her voice quavered like that of a nurse croondrum. He liked that feeling and would have eaten ing to a fretful child. Then she fell silent and more but his father said that he had had enough. listened to her grandson's breathing for a few All through that meal, though, with its fun and seconds. She had almost forgotten him and had laughing, someone of the grown people would sigh felt herself to be Lady Haleema-God's approval and shake the head every now and then and say, be upon her-singing a cradle song to the little "Yazuk! What a pity that we have lost a day!" Mohammed. Then her thoughts homed back to Murad. "He is asleep," she said, fondly kissing his forehead. "Sleep my lamb. Sleep in the pro- tection of God. What do I know? May this lost feast day portend no evil to us. I take refuge in God. Amahn! Amahn! Alas for the lost feast day!"
and Open Doors in Missions*
By REV. C. DARBY FULTON, D.D., Nashville, Tennessee Executive Secretary of the Foreign Missions Committee of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S.
THE Chinese word for "crisis" is written with been employed. Many, unable to endure these suf- two characters; one means "danger," and ferings, have yielded to practices they do not ap- the other "opportunity." Paul suggested the prove. Others, standing grimly amid great same thought when he wrote to the Corinthians, distress, are bearing a shining Christian testi- "For a great door and effectual is opened unto me, mony. Never have we faced so ominous an out- and there are many adversaries." look as is before us in Korea. We cannot foretell Of the "adversaries" by which missionaries are what the end will be. The hour is here for prayer, compassed today, we who live in the tranquil at- earnest and unrelenting. There is no way through mosphere of this land of peace and liberty have this crisis in Korea e~cept as God moves to help not the slightest conception. Writes a missionary us.
in China : "We are in the midst of wickedness and But the greatest "adversary" to missions, the inhuman atrocities on such a colossal scale that the only one we really need fear, is the hindrance we mind is too benumbed to take it all in." Even the ourselves can be through thoughtlessness, and neg- physical survival of our missionaries amid the con- lect. Opposition from without, our missionaries vulsions of war is a daily miracle. All around expect; indifference within the Church all but them is ruin, whole cities in desolation, panic- breaks their hearts. The test of carrying on with stricken multitudes fleeing in bewildered confu- inadequate support, unable to touch the needs sion, the maimed and wounded crying for help, around them, and wondering whether the Church the whole lurid scene a part of the tragedy that has forgotten, brings them their sorest trial. They stalks in the wake of banditry, looting, murder, return on furlough and find us living in elegant rape and arson. Hospitals, schools, and chapels homes. They see our streets choked with shining have been shattered, groups of believers scattered cars. They watch the throngs that jam our to the winds, missionary homes battle-scarred, athletic fields" and reflect that the price of one and the missionaries themselves have sat in the football ticket would pay the salary of a native ruins wondering that they have outlived the de- evangelist in Africa for two months. They read struction around them. that a thrill-crazed crowd has paid in one night Unbelievable as it may seem, the Christian to see a prizefight more than our whole Church churches of Japan and Korea, except for the physi- ever gave in a year to foreign missions, and they cal hardships, are enduring an even harder lot. wonder why they are asked to operate hospitals No group of men and women ever sought to ad- on $380.51 a year and schools on $31.12 a year! vance the interests of the Kingdom under greater They are not complaining; puzzled, that is all. difficulties. The systematic efforts to stifle and They wonder if Christ has lost first place in the suppress everything that is contrary to the pro- hearts of American Christians.
gram of aggressive militarism is bringing the The Great Open Doors whole Christian movement under great spiritual persecution. Cresar is exalted above God, reli- But it is not the "adversaries" that 100m largest gious liberty is denied, conscience is no longer in the missionary's view of the present situation. free. Anyone who sets himself against the policies I have just read twenty-eight letters from China. of the government and the idolatrous exaltation of "Opportunity" is the dominant word. One group the emperor exposes himself to reprisals of the wrote: "We are not unmindful of the dangers, most drastic -character. Untold sufferings have but we are thrilled at the thought of the opporbeen endured by Christians, especially in Korea tunities before us." These they describe as "unwhere the pressure of police power has been ap- limited," "without precedent," "beyond anything plied with increasing severity. Threats, imprison- we have known." They are joining with Paul in ment, torture and other extreme measures have saying, "The things which happened unto me have fallen out rather unto the furtherance of the Gos- • Condensed fram the OMistian Ob$erver. pel." Like him they refer to adversaries with [ 179]
"and," not with "but," as something not to dis- of spiritual experience and a closer fellowship with Him. We are confronted by four vital and courage but to challenge more determined efforts. immediate needs.
It is no exaggeration to say that we are confront- I. A Radical Strengthening of the Missionary Force. The really critical condition with respect ing a day of unparalleled need and opportunity in to our missionary personnel is reflected in the de- creasing number of missionaries comprising our our work around the world. Here are some of the force each year.
elements of great encouragement: The seriousness of this situation is further em- phasized by the fact that our missionaries are The high spiritual purpose and morale of our rapidly becoming a middle-aged and old-aged group. We must look forward definitely to the missionaries. loss of more missionaries through old age and retirement. Add to these the normal toll through The courage and steadfastness of the Chinese sickness and death, and the urgency of a prompt reenforcement of our missionary personnel be- Christian Church. comes clear.
The scattering of many believers to the prov- A heavy strain is thrown on our missionaries as a result of this shrinkage in personnel. One inces of West China where they have carried the missionary carries the burden of two or three. An evangelist in Korea, charged with the overcontagion of their faith unto areas heretofore un- sight of forty churches, is required to take on re- sponsibility for thirty-five more as a field formerly reached by the Gospel. worked by four men must now be carried by two. Missionaries are remaining on the field without The new friendship of the Chinese people for furlough because there is no one in whose hands the task can be left. Doctors are trying to run the missionary, growing out of the helpfulness two hospitals sometimes separated by distances of sixty or seventy miles. The need for reenand service he has, shown in this emergency. forcement is urgent and immediate.
The enormously enhanced prestige of Christian- We need an immediate and vital reenforcement of personnel on all our mission fields. Nothing ity because such great national leaders as General- would so strengthen the morale of our mission- aries or prove so conclusively to the whole world issimo Chiang Kai-shek, Madame Chiang, and our unshakable faith in the ultimate triumph of the Kingdom of Christ. others who are guiding the nation in the present II. A More Adequate Support for Missionaries crisis, are themselves Christians. in Their Work. The critical financial basis on which foreign mission work has, been operating The unprecedented open-heartedness of the peo- for the past several years can be seen from the fact that receipts for the last fifteen years have ple toward the Gospel, with their new longings for fallen off forty per cent.
the assurances of faith in the midst of the uncer- Foreign mission receipts have suffered a reduc- tion so radical that the very survival of the work tainties of the present conflict. has become a matter of wonder. Only by an abso- lutely merciless slashing of appropriations, and The return of missionaries to China and the heroic measures on the part of our missionaries who took one reduction after another in their supreoccupation of all our stations. port, were we able to weather these difficult years.
The large crowds attending evangelistic serv- With this greatly shrunken support we have had to maintain and conserve a work formerly estahices throughout the country, with many conver- lished and maintained on an annual income almost twice as large. sions and other evidences of spiritual awakening. III. The Replacing of Personal Losses of Mis- The deep undercurrent of heart-hunger among sionaries and Property Losses in China. No ac- curate estimate of property damage sustained in the people of Japan. . China can yet be made. However, a letter from Rev. C. W. Worth will indicate something of what The open doors in Africa and Brazil. we must expect. He is describing what he found Thousands of Korean Christians standing fast under severe persecution.
Should it be necess,ary at a time like this to sound a call to prayer and self-denial? Surely in such a day the attitude of prayer ought to be the habitual mood of every Christian. These are great moments in the history of the Christian Church.
They call for maximum Christian living. This is a time for unshakable conviction, because the foun- dations of our faith are being challenged; for great courage, because it is becoming increasingly dangerous to be a Christian; for strong faith, because the signs of the Kingdom's growth are not always easily seen; for confident Christian opti- mism, because God is the master of crises; for confession and prayer, because God will not refuse the cry of His people; for supreme self-denial, because the greatest issues of life are at stake.
The Present Crisis Missions is in crisis; both danger and opportunity are here; danger lest we fail in this time of need and allow the day of visitation to pass; opportunity to present Christ to a heart-hungry world, and to lift our whole Church to new levels
"BUT FROM THE BEGINNING IT WAS NOT SO"
at Kiangyin station which probably suffered more cases, especially where fire has swept the builddamage than any other center of work we have in ings, the loss is total. Probably all of our mis- China! "Of twenty Western style buildings., sev- sionaries have lost something, and many have lost enteen have been completely destroyed by fire. all. Some of the walls are still standing but even with my inexperienced eye I could see that most of these These, then, are definite objectives that should are unfit for use and will have to be razed. About be before us. This year should definitely mark the three hundred feet of compound walls were down end of foreign mission retreat and the beginning due to bombing and shell fire, and only two wooden of an aggressive forward movement in missions. gates were intact in the whole place. We figure We must add strength and reserves to the fastthat the Kiangyin losses are $100,000, and there thinning ranks of our missionaries; we must prohave been losses in other stations which put vide more adequately for their far-flung work together will make another $100,000." Heavy around the world; we must replace, where necesdamage is also reported from Kashing, Soochow, sary, the tools of our work that have been de- Hwaianfu, Sutsien, Yencheng and Haichow. stroyed, and as far as possible the individual losses of our missionaries. Missionaries have likewise suffered the loss of personal belongings. Even where buildings and With the doors of opportunity standing wide, residences have not been destroyed, systematic with God's clear call ringing in our ears, with looting has taken place. Homes have been com- the resources at our dis.posal for a definite adpletely stripped of every valuable thing. In some vance in our missionary task, God forbid that we should fail!
"But From the Beginning it Was Not So"
Notes by the Late ARTHUR T. PIERSON A S IN the case of human marriage, so in other of which otherwise we would be scarcely con- scious. This is seen in the tendency to lower ri.. respects, mankind often comes· to accept standards in literature, in the drama, in marriage totally different customs and even ideals and even religious ceremonials. We need to go from those which God intended and that were at back to "the beginning" as ordered by God in his first held sacred. In the course of history, by wisdom, and to look at the standards which pregradual and sometimes rapid changes, corruptions vailed in ,the apostolic church before corruptions creep in, so that God's original order becomes ob- crept in. The following features in early church scured and perverted. life seem to have been conspicuous: Professor Bernard illustrated our unconscious 1. The recognition of the Holy Spirit as the wisdom and accommodation to a vicious atmosphere by plac- power of God. ing a sparrow under a bell glass. which contained air enough to keep the sparrow alive for tbree 2. The readiness to yield immedi,ate obedience to the call hours. At the end of two hours he put a second of the Holy Spirit. sparrow under the bell; at once it fell over dead, while the former bird was able to breath for the 3. The personal, spiritual presence 'and leadership of fun three hours. In the spiritual realm, we almost Christ in the Church. unconsciously accommodate ourselves to evils which would shock and overwhelm us if we were 4. The Universal obligation of all Christians to bear witsuddenly confronted with them. If a man, like ness to the world and the ceaseless activity in Stephen, had been in a moment transported from preaching the Gospel at home and abroad. the apostolic church into the corrupted atmosphere of some present-day ohurch life, he would have 5. The courageous and unflinching witness to Christ in been stifled. face of persecution and the prevalence of the spirit of martyrdom in the early church. To save ourselves from this unconscious accommodation to a low standard of living and thinking, 6. Constant blessing attending the faithful preaching of we must get back to first principles and practices the Word. as revealed by God. We should candidly compare what is today with what was in God's plan. Liv- 7. The appeal to the testimOony of fulfilled prophecy as ing much with God, through private prayer and an evidence of the truth of God's Word. Bible study, we will breathe such a pure atmosphere that we will at once recognize the pollution 8. The prevailing power of definite and united prayer. 9. The separation Oof the Church frOom the wOorld. 10. The undisputed imminence of the Second Coming Oof Christ. 11. The equality of all Believers in rights and privileges in the Church. 12. The recognition by early Christians of their steward- ship in property and talents.
The proofs of these positions pervade ~he whole New Testament. There is no need for proof texts.
New Testament Idea of the Church*
By the REV. DR. ABDEL ROSS WENTZ, Gettysburg, Pa.
Professor at the Lutheran Theological Seminary I. According to the New Tes.tament the the way in our day for the New Testament idea Church is centered in Christ. Using the figure of the Church. Because the Church was centered of a body, the Head of the Church is Christ. If in the living presence of Christ it was not static we use the figure of a building, the Cornerstone but dynamic. It was governed entirely by the of the Church is Christ. If we use the figure of Holy Spirit of Christ. It had no fixed outlook.
a bride, the Bridegroom of the Church is Christ. Much of its power was due to its. ability to change In the apostolic ideal Christ is the bond that from time to time in order to meet changing con- binds Christians together in a fellowship with ditions. He who was the beating heart of the Christ, the Leader. There is a communion of New Testament is the pulsating center of the dis'Ciples with their Saviour. Church in our day. He is not weighted down with Recent research has taught us to guard against utilitarian programs. He is not one who binds reading too much system and uniformity into the yokes upon men. He is one who has loved and Church of the New Testament. What produced suffered and who still loves and suffers and yearns the Christian community in the first place was and woos-the great Leader of infinite power who not a constitution and by-laws, not even a set of could transform the world, not by force but by principles; it was the faith that pulsated in the fellowship, not by formulas but by faith, not by hearts of the disciples.. That faith was not at logic but by love, not by programs but by per- first drawn from a body of sacred writings nor sonalities.
set down in the form of a creed. It was a rugged This Christian Church, this Christ-centered fel- attachment, not reasoned out and not integrated lowship, we offer to the groping multitudes of the with other emotions. It was simple personal trust present world. It is plastic as the heart of youth.
in a Person, unquestioning devotion to a beloved It is the living Church of the living God. It has personality, who, they felt, had saved them from traditions· that are living and vitalizing. It is abysmal disaster and who, they believed, could kept eternally young by a living Presence. If lead them into abiding safety. This fact that the Christians would minister salvation to a dig,.
Church is Christ-centered is clear, not only from tracted world today the New Testament suggests a the Great Confession in Matthew 16, but also from Church pulsating with the heartbeats of the many passages in the writings of St. Paul and Saviour, a charmed circle that offers fellowship St. John. with the great central Friend of the universe.
But this idea of the Church as, a free pulsating The Church Is to Be Different fellowship centering in Christ has. often been ob- scured. Today the times are ripe for the recovery II. According to the New Testament the of that idea. For a long time men have lived on Church is sacred; it is holy, set apart. It is "called systems and the bracing effect of them. For sev- out," ecclesia. It is different. It is high and eral generations men have been enthralled by lifted up. The Church is holy in its calling. God ideas and the splendor of them. Today, instead called it into being and it belongs to God. It is of ideas and systems and defini.tions, instead of therefore holy, as God is holy.
programs and organizations, personalities are the The individuals who constitute the Church may centers of all great movements~leading person- show many differences among themselves, differalities. To stand outside of the charmed circle of ences of color and race and language, differences leaders today is to be homeless and unoriented. of faith and zeal and goodness. But at least one To stand within the magnetic influence of the thing they have in common, and that is the fact central personality gives the simplest laborer that their faces are turned towards, God. To be heart and motion; it lifts his life from drudgery in the Church is to belong to God. The thing that into thrilling devotion. brings Christians together into fellowship is the This change in the spiritual atmosphere opens fact that they have all experienced redemption • Aqijress ~Iven at the I. M. c;. meeting at Maqras, 1938. through God's grace. The Church is the fellow- [ 182] ship of the sanctified. All the members of the environment. The Head of the Church protested Church can exclaim with St. Paul: "It is God against the low ideals of his day. Because the who hath saved us and called us with a holy call- Church is holy, high and lifted up, it will always ing, not according to our works but according to feel a tension between things as they are and his own purpose and grace." The Church is a things as they ought to be. When the Church in divine institution, not a mere human society. our day identifies itself with some secular system The Church is holy also because the Holy Spirit of economics or social propaganda, it abandons its works in it. As Christ is the head of the body all New Testament character, because in the New the members of the body do his bidding and are Testament the Church represents the higher spir- filled with His spirit. When St. Paul speaks in itual order. The Church is holy.
the benediction of "the communion of the Holy A Missionary Church Spirit," he is thinking of the community of be- lievers where holiness prevails because the mem- III. According to the New Testament the bers harbor the Holy Spirit of their Head. Church is missionary. It is charged with a mis- Jesus made explicit mention of the Church only sion. To be a disciple, a learner confessing twice, according to our records. In both instances Christ, is to be an apostle, to stand under a special the Church is set in opposition to sin and evil. commission. And the mission of the disciples is "The Gates of hell shall not prevail." "If thy the mission of the Church, as the acts of the mem- brother sin … tell it to the Church." The clear bers are the acts of the body. The apostolic mis- implication is that the Church is holy. Christ sion of the Church is to carryon the work of required holiness of his followers.. For this reason Christ himself' on earth. "As the Father hath he entrusted his Church with the keys, the means sent me, even so send I you."
of grace. The Holy Church has the Holy Scrip- The Church, according to the New Testament, tures, the Holy Sacraments, holy laws, holy teach- is not only the product of God's grace through ings.. The single aim of its acts and its teachings Jesus Ghrist, but it is also an agency of God's is to promote holiness. grace, the keeper of the keys to the Kingdom of The New Testament, however, does not repre- Heaven on earth. As the collective body of be- sent the Church as complete or perfect. There is lievers the Church is the appointed agency for the the parable of the tares and the parable of the extension of the Kingdom of God and the salva- dragnet. St. Paul repeatedly addresses his hearers tion of men. The Church is taught to pray: "Thy as saints, and yet in the course of his letters ad- Kingdom come" and to use its life and resources monishes them about their shortcomings. and sins. ~or the conversion of the world.
According to the New Testament the holiness of According to the New Testament the Church the Church is real but not yet fully attained. The is equipped with the means of fulfilling its apos- Church is in actual process of being "cleansed tolic commission. The Church is furnished with from all sin." The Church looks forward in hope the Truth that it must teach the faith by which to the consummation when "Christ shall present the Church lives. The original Twelve were spe- it unto himself, a glorious Church, holy and with- cially trained by intimate association with Christ out blemish." to be his witnesses and they regarded this as their But the incomplete character of the Church's principal duty. They transmitted that duty to holiness does not make its holiness unreal. A their successors, and the Church throughout his- city may be a rich city while some of its citizens tory has accepted the teaching and witnessing con- are still poor. A school may be a learned school cerning Christ. In this. it has continued the while all of its students are still short of the ideal prophetical office of Christ himself.
in learning. The Church, as a society on earth, Another way in which the Church fulfils its will never be complete in its holiness. None of apostolic commission is by fostering associated its members are. Sanctification is a process.. That worship and transmitting the Sacraments. The is true of the collective body as it is true of the apostolic Church is a worshipping Church through individual member. Holiness is progressive. It all ages. It presents Christ as a mediator even shall be perfect hereafter. now. And all the Christian liturgies of the cen- In the course of Church history there have been turies are the continuance of the priestly office of many attempts to secure greater purity and holi- the great Head of the Church, an expression of ness in the Church. And more than once these the Church's apostolic character.
attempts have led to incisions in the body of Then, too, the New Testament indicates that Christ. However contrary to the New Testament, Christ committed to his immediate followers the these efforts testify to a deep underlying convic- exercise of discipline and the administration of tion that the Church must be holy. affairs in the community of believers. There are Because the Church is holy, there must always widely different views as to details but in general be a state of tension between the Church and its there is agreement that the Church must exercise
some powers of discipline and government. In Spirit, always active and energizing, and always this the Church continues the kingly office of progressively revealing himself. He reaches out Christ. in love towards every living soul. The Christian As to this aggressive propulsive quality of the idea of God carries ecumenical implications for Church, according to the New Testament it is of the Church. If God is a personal, living, ener- the essence of the Church and not merely of its gizing God, then his Church is not merely an well being. Any group of professing believers international society binding people together from that does not feel its apostolic commission to the four corners of the earth. It is more than propagate the Gospel and extend the Kingdom has that. It is an ecumenical community bearing in not inherited the Spirit of the Founder. its heart the propulsive power of a boundless love The new aggressiveness of the great non-Chris- that will not stop until it embraces the whole tian religions in our day calls for special emphasis world.
just now on the apostolic character of the New The Church of the New Testament is catholic Testament Church, its aggressive mission to its because its message is a message of divine revelanon-Christian environment. tion and transcends all forms of religion. Chris- A Universal Church tianity is not a religion. Religion is man's effort to adj ust himself to the ultimates. Christianity IV. According to the New Testament the is GoOd's answer to the quest of the human heart. Church is catholic, universal, all-embracing. It Jesus Christ is not the founder of a religion. The possesses inherent qualities that make it fit to be message of the New Testament Church is not the home of all classes of men in all parts of the simply one of several possibilities for man's pious world and in all ages of time. self-expression. It stands alone as God's message to man. It is not just a word from God or a word The Church is catholic because by its nature it about God; it is the Word of God whose content is not limited as to place or time. This idea of the is Jesus Christ. The Church does not come with Church as universal and timeless was not an after- a philosophy, nor a system of doctrine, nor an thought. It is not true that the Church was at ethic; it does not even come with a religion. It first only the group of Christians in a particular comes with a Person, a living God who speaks locality and then when this little obscure group through Jesus Christ. Our God is larger than the had expanded into a mighty enterprise the idea of founder of religion. Our Gospel transcends relia universal Church arose. From the beginning gion as well as time and place. Our Church, so the Church was understood to be the larger in- long as it is faithful to this witness, is the unicarnation of Christ, and the local congregation versal catholic Church. was simply a miniature of the whole. As a thousand different mirrors may at one and the same time reflect the whole orb of the shining sun, so A United Church the local congregations or churches are the re- V. According to the New Testament the flections of the great Church universal. Every Church is, one. This unity is a subject of enor- Church is a catholic Church unless it claims to be mous proportions, and a whole library has grown the only catholic Church. The body of Christ not up about it in recent years. only includes the believers and saints of all nations and places but it also extends, backward and The chief New Testament sources of informaforward in time and includes the saints of the tion about the unity of the Church are the high past as well as those of future ages,. priestly prayer of our Lord and St. Paul's letter to the Ephesians. From these we learn that the Again, the Church is catholic because it rises unity of the Church is a mystery. It is something above the limitations of culture and religion. It in which we believe. It transcends human underis the only community that can meet the needs of standing. all mankind. This is indicated not only by par- ticular words of Jesus and individual passages in As the Church itself is holy, not merely a volun- the New Testament, but also by the very nature tary association of men combining together to of the teaching set forth. Jesus claimed that his effect certain ends, so the unity of the Church is Gospel is sufficient for the needs of all mankind. not merely an earthly visible manifestation de- Both Jesus, and Paul taught with the background vised by men in order to increase the efficiency of Stoic philosophy and universal empire. They of the Church and to pres,ent a so-called "united made universal claims for their Gospel. They pic- front." It is divinely ordained and belongs to the tured the Church as the organ through which God essence of the Church. The unity of the Church, will accomplish His plan not only for men but for according to the New Testament, arises from the the universe. unity of God, "as I and the Father are one." The The Church is catholic because the God to whom Church is one because there is one Spirit, one the Holy Church belongs is a living God. He is a Lord, one Father. The Church is one because all
NEW STUDENT FOREIGN MISSION FELLOWSHIP
members of the Church are members of Christ Finally, the New Testament represents the unity and abide in Him, as branches abide in the vine. of the Church as a process, a growth. It is a present reality, but still imperfect. It cannot be So the unity of the Church is not something in hurried by the manufactured conceptions of men. the golden past, a lost treasure that needs to be Perfect unity will come as a growth in faith and recovered. It is not something in the rosy fu- in "the knoweldge of the Son of God," a growth ture, a high goal that needs to be achieved. It is "into him in all things" which is the Head, even something that exists now, and simply calls for Christ." External means may be used to increase fuller expression. It is something that was and that faith and spread that knowledge, but the huris and is to be. It is as eternal as the Church it- ried establishment of any external union would self. It is as eternal as the God who called the hinder the true process and would check the real Church into being. It is something that belongs growth of unity. to the essence of the Church. The true Church of Christ is one. The New Testament idea of the Church's unity brings two words of warning: first, that our ef- The source of this mystical unity of the Church forts at Church union should not degenerate into is the redeeming work of Christ for men. It is a trifling with something that transcends human not in a unified organization. It is not in a com- comprehension; second, that if our witness to the mon liturgy. The unity of the Church grows out world is to be effective we dare not permit our of a common faith, a common Gospel that centers love for our particular ideas and traditions, to dein the Cross. This, and nothing else is the source lay that growth of unity which our Lord has in of the creative power of the Church. mind for His Church. The New Testament con- ception of the Church's unity suggests that since The New Testament also teaches that this in- the Church is one, we should enter now with joy visible unity will express itself in outward and into a sense of real unity among us. We should visible unity. It is, to be a sign to the world: allow our hearts to be thrilled with the joy that "That the world may believe." The efforts to was in the heart of our Lord as we emphasize achieve this outward unity of the Christian continually the visible and invisible bonds of faith Church have engaged all the ecumenical councils and hope and love that bind us together. "That of by-gone ages and all the world conferences of they may be one,even as we are one." modern times. These efforts have good New Testament warrant and example.
New Student Foreign Mission Fellowship By DR. TOM LAMBIE of the Sudan Interior Mission Recently Missionary to Ethiopia D o WE need another missionary organiza- life of Christian service in favor of the pursuit of tion? There are already over two hundred pleasure and worldly success. In addition to this, Boards and societies in North America-in the lofty Christian appeals for a sacrificial servaddition to local church groups-that are engaged ice, involved in carrying the Gospel to the ends-of in promoting interest in foreign missions. At the earth, have too often been watered down until first blush one is inclined to deprecate the forma- there is not sufficient strength in them to stand tion of a new one, and yet many feel that there the test of opposition from those out of sympathy may be justification for a new Student Foreign with the highest type of missionary service. Missions Fellowship such as the one that had its first national meeting at Keswick Grove, New Even among many church members the gist of Jersey, early in January. current thought would seem to be ,something as follows: The youth of today is susceptable to the appeal for noble ideals and service to mankind, but there Everyone must have a philosophy of life and should try is, at the same time, a tremendous tug upon young to be true to it, having as good a time as possible without people in schools and colleges to give up these inflicting unnecessary injury on others. We ought to keep ideals and to turn aside from the prospect of a most of the laws of the land in which we dwell. Attend- ance on religious services is sometimes helpful. The heathen are probably well enough off as they are, but if
anyone feels like trying to show them Christianity, with- not because they were urged by others to do someout creating a disturbance, then there is no great objection. thing about it, but because they were conscious of Medical relief is a good thing for the heathen but charity, being moved by the Holy Spirit. after all, begins at home. Old creeds are mostly outmoded but we should be tolerant toward those who still hold them. Many more students came to the conference God is a good sort of super-rotarian who will be lenient than had been expected. Forty-eight registered, with everyone, including the heathen, as long as they do the and many others attended but did not register. best they can and are true to their own philosophy of life. The older people, professors and missionaries, were very much in the minority and kept in the Is it any wonder that, where such beliefs pre- background. The colleges represented included vail, there is lack of interest in the missionary Hampden-Sydney, Wheaton, Columbia Bible Colenterprise, that the quality of candidates has de- lege, Davidson, John Stetson University, Glassclined, that financial support has fallen off and boro Teachers', Wilson, Grove City, Drexel Instithat there is evidence of loss in devotion and spir- tute, Women's Medical, University of Pennsylitual power? vania, National Bible Institute, Philadelphia School of the Bible, Pennsylvania Bible Institute, Faced by these conditions and tendencies the Moody Bible Institute, Faith Seminary and Johns new Student Foreign Missions Fellowship has Hopkins University.* been formed in order to make a stand against such ideologies, and to promote missionary inter- A constitution was adopted and a Missionary est among the youth of today ona spiritual and Purpose Pledge was approved which reads as truly New Testament basis. follows: It has been found that in many cases Christian Knowing: young people, who have commenced their college or professional education, expooting to prepare for That Jesus Christ has saved me from my sin, foreign missionary service, have been turned aside That all men without Christ are lost, and that there is from this purpo'se while in college. It is hoped that the new Fellowship may conserve and deepen no other name by which men may be saved; this purpose and help to maintain spiritual ideals. That God's command is, "Go ye into all the world," Only those who have a definite determination to That the laborers are few in the foreign field, go as ambassadors of Christ to the foreign field And believing it to be God's will for me, will be admitted to this Fellowship. Emphasis on two points is stressed: First, absolute adherence I purpose to be a foreign missionary, and will plan accordto the Christian faith as taught in the New Tes- ingly. Until He leads me to the field, I will support tament. This includes belief in the plenary in- the work by my prayers and gifts and by witnessspiration and authority of the Bible, in the Virgin ing. If the Lord's later leading should direct me Birth of Christ, the atonement and salvation into other service, I will seek to give foreign misthrough Christ's voluntary death on the cross, and sions its rightful place of prominence in my min- His bodily resurrection. Second, it is necessary istry. that all Christians have a realization of the obligation to carry forward to completion the still un- Other true-minded students who are in symfinished task of taking the Gospel to the ends of pathy with the movement, but who are undecided the earth. The organizers of this movement be- about their own future and their own life work, lieve that every active member should be person- may attend the meetings of the Fellowship and ally committed to go to the foreign fields as a are to be admitted to an associate membership if missionary of Christ, as soon as possible after they desire. the completion of his or her education. The meeting at Keswick Grove seemed like an- Thousands of students have (in the past fifty other Haystack Prayer Meeting under the guidyears) volunteered to go as missionaries to the ance of the same Holy Spirit and moved by the foreign field but many of them have never gone. same enthusiasm for carrying the Gospel to the Some have lost their faith and vision, some have ends of the earth. There was the same deep conshown themselvelS to be insincere or unstable. secration to the task. The potentialities of that Something could and should be done to prevent meeting seemed boundless. this great waste and to crystalize and spiritualize the thinking of every student volunteer. The These students mean business. They have a young people gathered at Keswick in January felt steadfastness of purpose and a devotion to the the need of banding together for such a purpose, Will of God that is admirable. This movement will grow and be effective in proportion as God is in it and as the Fellowship is true to Him.
• The following officers of the new Fellowship Were elected: Executive Secretary, Kenneth G. Hood, M.A.; Student PreSident, Jack W. Murray, B.A.; Vice-President, Davison Phillips; Secretary, Lois Raws.
CHRISTIAN COLLEGE AND SOME OF THE DELEGATES AT
A Milestone in Missionary Progress An Appreciation and Appraisal of the Madras Conference By DR. H. KERR TAYLOR, Nashville, Tenn.
-~ Formerly Missionary in China; Educational Secretary of the )It- Foreign Mission Work of the Presbyterian Church, U. S.
THE recent conference at Tambaram, a SlUb- tic and ,social work are included in the methods urb of Madras, India, was both inspiring and of this far-flung movement. revealing f:mm the points of view both of the In Madras we saw a demonstration of the sucmission field and of the sending churches. cess of it. Fifty per cent of the 460 delegates 1. Here was a diemonstration of the strength from over 70 countries and scattered areas came and success of the Chrisltian movement. For well from younger churches in mis'siol'l. lands. A better over a hundred years the modern phase of the mis- equipped and technically trained'group of admin- sionary enterprise has been in progress, during istrators and of workers on the: mission field it these last few generations constituting one of the would have been difficult to assemble. All were in maj or points of contact between Western lirfe and close touch with Christian work in their several that in Asia, Mrica and parts of Latin America. areas. Most of them spoke two or more languages There are today over 27,000 missionaries, and the and many spoke more.
annual budgets of the different societies aggregate On no other platform and in no other Name many millions.*. Colleges, hos.pitals, schools, in- could such a gathering have been held. The con- dustrial missions, and different kinds of evangeiis- ference was conscious of its unity in purpose and program, and settled down to seventeen days of quiet and earnest work on matters of supreme con- * aAt pBprroitxaiimnataenlyd $th3e5,0E0u0r,o0p0e0anfrocmontisneenndti.n-Eg DcIhTuOrcRh.es In America, '
Gre [ 187]
cern to. the life of peoples throughout the wQrld. great demQcracies" from SQuth Africa and Egyprt, Here was a remarkable fusing of cQntributions fro.m China and Japan. Here in a co.mmQn serv- from men of utterly diverse backgrQunds Qf race, ice o.f GQd fo.r mankind, fraternity and love were nationality, religiQus experience, theological views nQt only an ideal, but a fact; There was a striking and economics. FQr Qver a fortnight these hun- absence Qf vindictiveness and CQndemnation even dreds Qf workers expressed their cQnvictions and amQng thQse fl'o.m whQm this might have been ap- aspirations, and in most fraternal and earnest prehended. One of the finest influences exerted by fashion SQught, and measurably 'achieved, a unit- any delegation was that o.f the Chinese delegatiQn ed mind and Qutlook. It was an exceptiQnal gath- who. impres,sed the cQnference with their fine re- ering in our mQdern world. It sought fQr the life straint and Christian forbearance. A new empha- Qf our day the larger recognitiQn of a higher and sis was thus made to. the reaIity and the indis- mQre absolute responsibility and control. Here pensability Qf the influence of the Prince Qf Peace.
was a strong witnes,s to the potential unity of srpir- 4. The Madras., meeting was strQng in the em- it in the Lord that is PQssible to. the whole wo.rld. phasis given to. the Church. This was explicit.
2. The cQnference was sanely PQsitive and con- Christianity was nQt cQnceived as a mere perva- structive. The'delegates spoke their minds frank- sive influence; it requires concrete and definite ly, seeking to. conserve the best in the heritage of expression. As Dr. Speer said many years a'go, the church, particularly in its world-wide Chris- "Religious, life, like any other life, is, and must be tian enterprise. cellular; only thus does it conform to. biQIo.gical The positive leade'r&hip Qf the International law." The Church as a fellowship has a faith, a MissiQnary Council was shown in the publishing witness,a life and a cQmmission. In the Church o.f a prepamtQry study book, "The Christian Mes- is the his,toric and effective means for preaching sage in a Non-Christian World," by Dr. H. Krae- the Kingdom of God.
mer of Leiden University, HQlland. This provided 5. It WQuld extend the limits o.f this article un- a massive cQntributio.n to. the wQrld's missriQn lit- l'easonably to. evaluate the -cQntributiQn of the erature, and CQnserves much Qf the best cQnstruc- wo.rk Qf the sixteen commissions into which the tive thQught of recent decades. The thought of co.nference was divided and whQse reports were the conference was largely indebted to. this presen- received by the who.le cQnference. The evalua.tion tatiQn, which aVQided the pitfalls of ra to.Q Qptimis- of the,se findings i,sa WQrk for the churches and tic pragmatism and Qf the hampering weakness of missionary societies in the coming years. Suffice an Qverweening eclecticism so evident in recent it to. say that these studies and recQmmendations years. While thus the strength of much of what were characterized by great breadth Qf under- has been regarded as the current cQntinental standing Qf the phases and prQblems of this world thought was made basic in the thinking Qf the CQn- movement. In such realms rus the nature and func- ference, the gathering itself did nQt hesitate to tion of the Church, its witnesls and relatiQn to. the implement the strQng positiQns Qf this point of non-Christian systems, its wQrship, mini,srtry and view with the view frQm the North American con- literature, and its, social responsibilities and rela- tinent, which emphasizes practical social em- tiQn to. the State, together with its larger corpo- phases Qf the Christian message. rate life, the cQnference made significant contri- Here was a positive advance in curl'ent mis- butions to. current thought andprQvided for the sio.n and church cooperation. It is in such mutual Christian enterprise a compendium fQr seriQus understanding that the possibility Qf collaboratiQn and extended study during the neXit decade.
and union in our enterprises is possible. In a Unresolved Problems troubled world and time, the Madras meeting was driven back upon its basic and essential values. One hesitates to point Qut weaknesses in such a One wonders if it had been possible to. hold such a worthy enterprise. But it WQuld be to.o much to.
cQnference fifteen years, ago, whether the unfortu- hope that srUch a gathering, representing such nate rift in the American churches with regard to diverse elements and different ranges of experi- theQIQgy and methQd Wo.uld have been largely ence, WQuld not reveal elements of indecision and aVQided. Let the church in its cooperative and inconclusiveness which indicate that the final word uniQn enterprises heed the lesson Qf the past two is far frQm being sPQken on SQme impQrtant CQn- decades and not the strength of the Madras Co.l- cerns. The Church in its miss,iQn and in its labQratiQn. Cooperation is easy when the o.bdec- growth on the missiQn field has yet a long way to tives are clea:r and when Christian leadership is go. in solving some Qf its essential prQblems.
positive and unequivocal. 1. There was a recurring indicatiQn throughout 3. The conference was a demonstratiQn in a the -days Qf conference that secondary considera- war-mad Wo.rld Qf ho.W fraternity and under- tiQn is Qften being given to. the basic necesrsity on standing may be attained. It mattered little that all fields Qf a truly indigenous church life. In delegates had come from Germany and from the mQre than one cQmmission,and in the plenary
A MILESTONE IN MISSIONARY PROGRESS
sessions, the cDnference av'Oided the questi'On 'Of for a new generatiQn of workers in this a new self-supPDrt. One heard too little of church fel- day, workers who will in fraternal c'OHaborati'On lowships seeking such cDIiPorate expressi'On as is with the younger churches take up with them the pDssible now, drawing sustenance up frQm the soil service at the point which it has reached and help and life where these fellDwships exist and where carry it to a WQrthy c'Onclusion. they must give their 'Own witness. Representatives of the younger churches had a The missiDn field church shDuld n'Ot, 'Of C'OU~se, go'Od deal tQ say as to the need fQr collab'OratiQn by be a replica 'Of that in the homeland. N'Ot 'Only in wDrkers frDm abroad with the leaders 'Of the Western modes, music, architecture and ministe- yQunger churches, the desirability 'Of a shared CQnrial garb has the church 'On the missi'On fields tD'O trol in the finances of the enterprise, and the feas- 'Often given the impressiDn of being "foreign,:' but ibility of putting the life and service 'Of the mi,sthere has 'Often been evidence 'Of this want of a sionary himself under the direction of the native conditiDning a-ttitude 'Of mind and life in native church and its, leadership. Much of this was insustenance and in independence. One wonders dicative 'Of the new day ,to which we have come or h'OW this whDle attitude of some 'Of the younger are destined. But in the findings> of the commi'schurches appears tD the supporters of the nQn- sion on the unreached fields, one wished fDr a more Christian religiDus insUtutiDns. And the clash convincing caB from the yQunger churches themwith natiDnalistic aspiratiDns i,s a cQmmonplace. selves for young men and w'Omen from abr'Oad, who are undoubtedly needed, with the offer of In some of the sessiQns at Madras the hDpe f'Or challenging and significant tasks even though toadvance WQuld in thi,s respect have been fur- day there has come a new orienting 'Of the misthered had there been less discussion 'Of "grants si'Onary's PQsitiQn and :service. Wise will it be in in aid," "subsidies," and "control 'Of funds,," and the immediate days ahead if in the, calls from the a more earnest and l'ealistic c'Onsideration 'Of some field less emphasis is put on the special qualifica- 'Of the findings of the Department of Social and tiQns needed for new missionaries', and more con- Industrial Research 'Of the International MissiDn- vincing emphasis 'On their indispensability. ary C'Ouncil through its secretary, J. Merle Davis. If the unrealities of much of the 'Outmoded prac- There is indisputable need and challenging SCQpe tice of past decades, with its want of such self- for y'Oung men and women 'Of consecration and maintenance, are not discarded 'On the missiDn training, as was proved by the convincing evifield in these days of wQrld depression and neces- dence furnished by the commi,ssi'On on the unfinsary recom;,tructiQn 'Of financial pDlicy, then the ished task. And c'Onstant contac,t with the youth current oPPDrtunity fDr much real advance at this of 'Our h'Ome lands aSSUl'es 'One that there is no point will have been lost. want of heroic willingness on the part 'Of the yQung pe'Ople to meet the challenges 'Of a new 2. A cDrrelated weakness of the conference was day. But what the missionary cause in the h'Omeits failure to make clear the vital need 'Of new re- lands today requires, in the light 'Of the rapidly cruits for missiQnary service. It is true that aging missiQnary force and the sman numbers of one secti'On was concerned with the place and missi'Onary volunteers, is a clamant and convincfunction and training 'Of the future missionary; ing call fr'Om the y'Ounger churches themselves, and one cDmmission presented the yet unfinished that many of the best y'Outh 'Of the 'Older churches task. But the conference, and particularly the sh'Ould "come over and help" in a task altogether leadership of the YDunger churches, shDuld hav~ beyond the ability 'Of the y'Ounger churches to commade clear in a ringing and vivid way the admit- pass. There sh'Ould be the assurance that, fo.r a ted need for a l'ecruiting 'Of the miSISionary force. whole lifetime at least, such life investment will be cordially welcomed and challengingly em- The leadel's of the younger church wDuld do ployed. It is just here that the yo.unger churches well to keep this in mind. The present missionary force is rapidly aging, and on all sides there are in the next few years can render 'a, m'Ost valuable vast unoccupied fields. We have lived thr'Ough an era of wide mi's,sionary expansion and of enthu- service and can be the means of reinspiring the siastic support. Outstanding missionary leaders 'Older churches to an even larger adventure in the in the sending countries have laid this responsi- vast unreached task of Christian missions abroad. bility on the church and have called f'Or the heroic venture 'Of YDung life in ocoupying fields that 'Oth- 3. Perhaps the explanation of the situation is erwise would not be reached. The center of gravi- in the trend 'Of leadership n'Oticeable on some of ty of the enterprise has now shifted to the mis- the mission fields, as, revealed in Madras. PressiDn field. Inspiration fDra continuatiDn O!f the ent day leadership partakes t'Oo. largely of Western enterprise must take its rise ,there. In this wDrld- viewpoint and supp'Ort. The church on the field wide enterprise, in which the interests of younger is not native enough. It is oriented too. largely churches and the missionary societies are so iden- to the West. Its dress :sh'Ows it. The structure of tical, what is needed is the sounding 'Of a clear call its c'Ooperativeand representative enterprises is conditioned to'O largely 'On f'Oreign funds. In a
conference conducted entirely in English, and The composite nature of the gathering and the therefore reflecting so largely westernized opinion, necessity for the observance of amenities and reone often missed the careful and measured balance straints made impracticable the specific condemand independence of judgment that is the sure nation of known acts of aggression, specific areas mark of a self-supported and entirely indigenous of persecution, and like ills. One must read beenterprise. Jesus lived and died and rose again tween the lines of the finding:s to see what the conin Asia. What the missionary cause today needs is ference reaHy had in mind. After all, the meetthe careful judgment and collabomtion of a na- ing was for counsel in the doing of a specific task tive church whose life and leadership is devoid of in the world, it was not a conference to sit in judgartificiality in its structure and support. We too ment on the world. often think in terms of the churches as they ought to be, and not enough of the churches as they are. The conference was a worthy third in a great Let the Intern~tional Missionary Coundl, and series. Edinburgh in 1910 was a great missionparticularly its constitutive units on the field, re- ary conference that emphasized comity. Jerusaflect current indigenous church life and opinion. lem in 1928 recognized the importance of the The cenlters, of Christian life for these younger younger churches ,and sought a common front and churches are not, or should not be, Canterbury, platform, finding it in a unifying Christology. Rome or New York, but in the mission lands, them- Madras in 1938 conceived of the unfinished task in selves. We need to be on our guard lest we make terms of a world-wide church fellowship. Its the same mistake here that has so often been made greatest contribution was not so much its findin mission projects, 'and in our zeal for results in ings, but in a real sense its very self. The' conorganization and leadership through foreign sub~ ference was perhaps lacking in great creative sidy, run ahead of ourselves. statement. It was a great creation, representing the results of past decades of noble missionary 4. One should not look in the findings for clear service, and indicating the need for further adcut, unequivocal delineations of some of the cur- vance. It emphasized dramatically how far we rent problemslland frictions throug;hout our world. have come, and how far we yet have to go.
An Impression of Madras Conference By PROF. HENDRICH KRAEMER, Leyden, Holland Author of "The Christian Message in a Non-Christian World"
N EVER before have I found it so difficult to The second reason, as far as I can judge, is that formulate an impression about a conference such international conferences become so per- I attended as in regard to that held at fected in their technique, and so standardized in Tambaram (Madras) last December. One usually their methods, that creative explosions and stir- feels reasonably certain that one understands the rings become very rare and almost impossible. general trend and spirit of the conference, and The method adopted in these conferences seems has some definite opinion of the outcome to be to have become somewhat as follows: For a year expected. These conclusions are not clear in re- or two in advance extensive and stimulating pr~ .gard to Tambaram, possibly for two main rea- paratory work is done, which is 'One of the most sons. productive features of a world conference. Peo- ple are urged to collect material, to think out prin- First, the time allotted to handle the sixteen ciples, to criticize methods and principles, and to main subjects (and the many others added dur- outline new visi'Ons and plans. The result is put ing the conference) was far too short. This was at the disposal of the whole missionary enterprise the general feeling of the delegates. Because of in the world. This isa highly stimulating and the many subjects that had to be discussed in five productive influence. days, one was so occupied with the subjects. to be taken up in the special sections attended that it When the day of the conference dawns the delewas impossible to get a grasp of the general sweep gates are divided into sections, to study the variof the conference. ous subjects allotted and to prepare a report for
AN IMPRESSION OF MADRAS CONFERENCE
general consideration. The idea is that a small baram. It was a great privilege to meet so many group study one particular subject and, as a re- ins,piring personalities. It was inspiring to hear, sult of cooperative and creative thought and con- first-hand, how the forces of the Kingdom of God structive criticism, will present the result to. the are working everywhere, often against the greatfull session of the conference for criticism and est odds. The deep sense of Christian fellowship, revision or adoption. experienced at Tambaram, filled the heart with thanksgiving to God. The reality of the Univer- But this eX'cellent idea, in my humble opinion, sal Church of Christ in the world, as the deepest can create useful and satisfactory results only if and solely undeceiving cause for hope and joy, the general guidance of such a conference is sure manifested itself repeatedly in our dealings with and determined and if there is sufficient time. each other. Otherwise the splendid intentions of this technique will become largely inoperative as seemed, to a Probably the most abiding impression I carry great extent, to have been the case at Tambaram. with me is the expectation that from this confer- In many cases the important preparatory work was scarcely used. This does not detract from DR. HENDRICH KRAEMER AND REV. D. T. NILES OF CEYLON the value o.f the preparatory work but it is to be regretted that the conference could not use to full ence a new fire will spread through all the advantage the results of these preparatory labors. churches and mission fields, a new fire of whole- The same pressure of time made it difficult to have hearted surrender to the divine commission of a thorough discussion in the sections where a co.n- evangelizing the world in all its spheres, and of flict of ideas could be given free play in such a strong loyalty to the Church as the fellowship in way that the creative spirits could formulate a Christ. The world needs a clear demonstration common platform. This criticism applies espe- of what the Church, if faithful to its calling, must cially to the most important subjects. be-namely a new, regenerated quality of individ- ual life and of life in fellowship. Tambaram The plenary sessions of the conference were so strongly impressed this vision on the minds of limited in time that they did not bring that whole- those who were present. some and indispensable clash of ideas to enable us to discover the fundamental urges of a conference and the unifying and inspiring force that determines its energizing influence.
Conferences, like that at Tambaram, are of such great importance to the missionary enterprise and to the Church that it is important to discover where their weaknesses may be remedied. Nowadays we kno.w fairly well what the technique of a great international gathering should be in order to obtain the maximum results. Tambaram, however, teaches that this technique cannot yield its due results unless we take at least three or four full weeks for such a gathering. There is an Arab proverb which runs: Haste originates from the devil. This certainly applies to international conferences. One of the fundamental conditions for their fruitfulness is that the mind can work quietly and intensely, open to God and open to each other. Only then can the average-minded and average-gifted delegate have his due share in the work of planning and thinking; and only then can the spiritually and intellectually creative minds make their indispensable contribution.
This is not all that I have to say about Tam- Is this the time, 0 Church of Christ! to sound No! rather, strengthen stakes and lengthen cords, Retreat? To arm with weapons cheap and blunt Enlarge thy plans and gifts, 0 thou elect, The men and women who have borne the brunt And to thy kingdom come for such a time! Of truth's fierce strife, and nobly held their ground? The earth with all its fullness is the Lord's. Is this the time to halt, when all around Great things attempt for Him, great things expect, Horizons lift, new destinies confront, Whose lOVe imperial is, whose power sublime! Stern duties wait our nation, never wont To play the laggard, when God's will was found? CHAJU$S SUlfN~ HOYT.
"Now Concerning the Collection"
By the REV. SAMUEL M. ZWEMER, D.D., Princeton, N. J.
Editor of "The Moslem World"; author of "It Is Hard to Be a Christian," etc.
I N ALL the Greek manuscripts of Paul's first Qf thQse who. gave hilariQusly (2 Cor. 9: 7) and letter to. the Corinthians there is not even a liberally stand Qut in my memory. semicQIQn to. divide the glQriQUS fifteenth chap- 'I1here was a Sioux CQunty farmer in IQwa who. ter on the Resurrection from the statement at the heard of Arabia when I was Qrdained as missionbeginning Qf the sixteenth chapter: "Now Con- ary. His Qwn pioneer experience responded to cerning the CoUection." FQr a Christian to. be- such an appeal and I recall hQW he supported our lieve in the living Redeemer and to abound in the first native evangelist. His letters in Dutch, and wQrk of the LQrd implies regular offerings, gifts those from Kamil Abd ul Messih in Arabic, crossed and self-denial to SUPPQrt this work. Paul was the seas and after translation jQined hearts in an example and an inspiration to. all missiQnaries prayer. and to. all Christians~he was not ashamed Qf the AnQther wealthy farmer was the greatest hog- "collectiQn plate." He wrote elsewhere very raiser in his cQunty and his state. His hQgs took plainly "cQncerning giving and receiving." He the blue ribbon prizes but his heart was that of raised mQney fQr missiQnsand fQr the PQQr Qf the the Gadarenes. One day, as he himself tQld me, Church. He himself was generously supported he received an impudent and threatening letter by the Church at Philippi. frQm gangsters in the cQunty-seat. It was signed It is nQt surprising, therefore, that the mQdern with skull and crQss-bones and sPQke of murder missionary must give of his time and strength unless "YQU skinflint, yQU put two thQusand dQI- when Qn furlQugh to. secure from the Church at lars in a cigar box under a stQne at the crQSS- home mQney for the enterprise. All try it. SQme rQads." In great fear he spread the letter befQre succeed, and some fail. But the experiences Qne the Lord as did Hezekiah Qf old. He prayed that has in being GQd's beggar on the dOQrsteps Qf GQd WQuld deliver him frQm the gang, who ap- Dives and CQmpany are priceless, whether Qne parently meant business, and VQwed to. make resti- meets with liberal gifts Qr niggardly refusals. The tutiQn to. God. He paid his VQW Qver and over same plea meets with varied response. My experi- again to. the cause o.f Christian educatio.n and mis- ence (in this sheaf of stQries) is like that of the siQns; nQr was he ever mQlested.
American so.ldier in the Wo.rld War, who was suc- The largest gift I ever received fDr missio.ns cessively billeted in an Irish, an English and a was from a go.dly and wealthy lady in Chicago..
SCQtch hQme. In each place he asked fo.r mQre I was making an effQrt to. raise $10,000 fQr the sugar in his tea. The Irish WQman said, "here's Nile Missio.n Press in Cairo.. Dr. JQhn TimQthy the bQwl, help YQurself"; the English lady said, StQne, pasto.r o.f the FQurth Presbyterian Church, "pass yQur cup and I'll give you a seco.nd lump"; generQusly gave me five minutes at the close of while the SCDtch ho.usewife looked do.ur while ask- his mQrning service, to. present the need of Chris- ing, "Mon, have ye stirred it?" tian literature in the WQrld Qf Islam. No. Qne else The acid test of Qur love to Christ and His King:- responded to. the appeal at this service but this dom is stewardship. The Master still sits before lady invited us to. luncheon and to. my amazement the treasury and weighs our contributiQns as he gave her check fQr the whQle amQunt. There had did those Qf the rich Pharisees and the poor been prayer in Cairo. and in Chicago..
widQw. It is nQt an easy task to raise mQney for In sharp cQntrast to. such beneficence was an missiQns, but I have often cQmforted myself by experience in Philadelphia where, at the clQse Qf the wQrds of Dr. Arthur T. Pierson: "We knQw a service in which I had sPQken of medical mis- that the rich man opened his eyes on a different sions in Arabia, two. ladies dressed in fine seal- scene, but the beggar landed in Abraham's bos- skin CQats tarried to. meet the preacher. They om." I have met with rebuff on several Qccasions said: "We really CQuld nQt go. without giving yQU during the past fifty years, but the recollectiQns SQme tQken Qf Qur interest in yQur great work [192 ]
EXAMPLES OF SACRIFICIAL GIVING
. . ." and, believe it or not, when I had thanked they were disputing whether to give or not to give, them warmly and opened my closed hand in the I asked playfully, "Who is the head of this house, vestry, the image and superscription was that of you or your wife?" Both deferred to the other. an American twenty-five-cent piece. Then to my delight I saw a wall motto hanging over the living-room table : Jesus Christ is the The following week I was in Rochester, New Head of this house; the unseen guest at every York. It was, a very cold day; I called on an old meal; the silent listener to every conversation. friend who sold automobile accessories. He re- I pointed to it as the answer to my question. Withmarked that my light overooat was unsuited ex- out another word the farmer took a check book cept for Arabia, took down an expensive fur-lined from his overall pocket and wrote a larger sum overcoat, and insisted that I pay for it and wear than any of us had expected. The deacon was it. He looked at the sales tag and said, "the price most of all surprised and led in a prayer of thanksof this to you is twenty-five cents-no I am not giving. joking-pay me the sum and then we'll go to lunch together." I told him the Philadelphia story, and Time would fail to tell of other experiences and paid the quarter. Later the coat was bequeathed of the joy that comes to those at the battle-front to a Dakota missionary. when reinforcements of men and money are forth- coming. The Philippian Church was Paul's joy This Rochester friend kept a tithing account in and crown. How ofen they cheered him by their his bankbook (as I learned, after his death). His free-will offerings, so that even in prison he was son showed the account to me and at the top "their own missionary" and they became an exof each page of benevolences were the words: ample to all the churches of Asia Minor, even to "W. R., in account with his Redeemer." the Corinthians (Philippians 4: 15, 16).
It is a spiritual tonic to meet such businessmen. "Thanks be to God, who giveth us the victory He was like the Philadelphia lawyer to whose through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beoffice the late Fennell P. Turner and I went to loved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmoveable, alsolicit a gift for the Student Volunteer Movement. ways abounding in the work of the Lord, for as "Gentlemen," he said, "you need not waste your much as ye know that your labor is not in v,ain in time or mine by long speeches. I know your cause the Lord. Now concerning the collection." and believe in it. If my funds allow, I shall give you a check." Then he rang for his secretary. EXAMPLES OF SACRIFICIAL GIVING * "Can the tithing account stand another hun- King David would not surrender to cheapness dred?" when it came to his worship of God. When the prophet directed David to go up on the threshing- "No, it is overdrawn." floor of Araunah and there offer a burnt-offering, Araunah freely offered to give the King the "The special account?" threshing-floor, the oxen, and everything that was "No." necessary for the burnt-offering. David's classic "Well, then, draw a check on the special, spe- answer is found in these words: "Neither will I cial account." offer burnt-offerings unto the Lord my God of He explained that this account consisted of re- that which doth cost me nothing" (2 Sam. 24: ceipts from debts unexpeotedly repaid after long 24, 25). He insisted on paying for it. Where standing! there is no sacrifice there is no love and where "I owe my Lord more than these debtors owe there is no love there is no worship. me," he said with a smile. The whole transaction took less than five minutes. Mary of Bethany was at her best in worship The secret of the willing mind and the liberal when she anointed Jesus,' feet with a pound of hand is to realize the Lordship of Christ over our liquid nard, very costly, but without counting the lives and His constant presence with us. In July, cost (John 13: 1). 1918, we were soliciting gifts for missions among the farmers of Sioux County, Iowa. An earnest In "The Gardens of Life," J. R. Straton tells the deacon drove me from farm to farm and nearly following story: everywhere in that prosperous year the farmers gave liberally. We came one day at the breakfast A rich man was down at the waterfront awaiting the hour to the home of one of the wealthiest farmers departure of an ocean liner. He was joined by an acbut my guide said there was no use going in to quaintance, who said to him: ask this man. "He is very close-fisted, although his wife is a liberal soul." "You seem to be much pleased about something." I responded we would better try, since he could "Yes," said the rich man, "I do feel unusually good tonot dp more than say no. As my guide had ex- day. Do you see that vessel at anchor in the North River? pected, the farmer refused bluntly. His wife en- Well, I have on that vessel ten thousand dollars worth of tered a plea but he would not yield an inch. As * Condensed from United Ohurch R6'View of North India.
equipment for a hospital in China, and I just came down wards wrote as follows to the above-mentioned to see the vessel safely off." business man: "That is interesting, and I am glad you made that gift," "As I was for thirty-four years an executive said the friend. "But you know I also have a gift on officer of a large Board.of Foreign Missions (Presthat ship. My only daughter is on that vessel, going to byterian), and am sWI, as Secretary Emeritus, in China to give her life as a missionary." close touch with it, I feel sure that you will ap- preciate my interest in your suggestion that the The wealthy man looked feelingly into the eyes of his churches might cut their foreign missionary work friend and exclaimed: seventy-five per cent, and use the liberated money to further the cause of peace and related objects. "My dear brother, I feel as though I have given nothing, Apart from the reasons for foreign missions that when I think of what this sacrifice means to you." are basic in our Christian faith, may I suggest the following considerations that would be involved This is the spirit that delights the heart of God in so extensive a reduction of missionary work. and the spirit which He seeks to foster in His children. "There are now approximately 40,000 churches in non-Christian lands, with a baptized member- A big lumberjack once said to Frank Higgins, ship of 10,971,066. These churches are the results the "Sky-pilot Lumberjack," as he lay on the oper- of missionary work. While some of them are ating table just before he took the anesthetic: locally self-supporting and all others are contrib- "Frank, you know that we love you and want to uting part of their congregational expenses, thouhelp you. While the doctors are operating I will sands of the smaner ones need our assistance. To be at your door; and Frank, if the doctors find withdraw the major part of this assistance would they need a quart of blood, or a piece of bone, or a seriouly cripple them. They stand for the same bit of skin, they can call on me. Frank, you can principles of peace, brotherhood and righteoushave every drop of blood or every bone in my ness, for which the churches in the United States body; now don't forget, I will be at the door." stand. You eloquently stated the vital need of the cooperation of American churches in creating This is the spirit that God is seeking to cultivate the international conditions that you so ardently when He tells us that it is more blessed to give desire. If the help of the churches here is essenthan to receive. tial in securing world peace, do we not also need the help of the missionary churches to promote There is an interesting story in Philippians 4: .peace abroad? Nationalism cannot create the in- 14-19. The church at Philippi had been minis- ternational mind in churches any more than in tering to the needs of the Apostle Paul while he politics. We need the missionary churches and was in prison in Rome. Paul was very apprecia- they need us. The words of the late Lord Bryce, tive of their gift for it represented real sacrifice, former Ambassador to the United States, are as of which God himself approved. Then the apostle true now as when he wrote them. He declared: makes, as a climax, that matchless promise made to the donors, "And my God shall supply every The jarring contact of many nations in the Far East need of yours, according to his riches in glory in imperatively calls for the strengthening of foreign mis- Christ Jesus." sionary work, which must be the chief influence in smooth- ing that contact, in allaying irritation and in creating Dr. G. Campbell Morgan says, "We know the those conditions of international goodwill which are essentruth of God as no other age has ever known it, tial to the preservation of world peace. The one sure and yet there never was a time when men, know- hope of a permanent foundation for world peace lies in ing and living under its blessings, were less obe- the extension throughout the world of the principles of dient to it than now." In the wake of obedience the Christian Gospel. is rich bles<sing, but in the wake of disobedience is judgment, disappointment and failure. "As a business man, I am sure that you will appreciate the following facts: Sacrificial giving in our service of God enriches and does not impoverish us. Some Significant Facts EXTRAVAGANT RETRENCHMENT "1. The foreign missionary work of the churches has been slowly and laboriously built up In a conference several influential business men for over a hundred years until it now represents urged closer cooperation between commercial and properties and equipment in mission compounds, religious organizations in averting war and pro- hospitals, orphanages, leper asylums, schools, colmoting international goodwill. One of the laymen leges, universities, industrial and agricultural inpresent suggested that the churches might wisely stitutions, residences, church buildings., etc., to a cut down their foreign missionary work seventy- total value of considerably over a hundred millions five per cent and use the liberated money to fur- of dollars. Withdrawal of seventy-five per. cent ther the cause of peace and related objects. One of the financial support which is now being given of the members of this conference, the Rev. Arthur J. Brown, D.D., Secretary Emeritus of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions, after-
EXTRAVAGANT RETRENCHMENT
would close most of the 1,092 hospitals and.56,891 now being given, to foreign missions is not in the schools and colleges. It would necessitate the clos- treasuries of churches and is not at their disposal.
ing of the numerous orphanages, leper asylums, It consists of voluntary offerings designated for s,chools for the blind, the deaf and dumb children, this specific purpose. It is, therefore, a trust fund the industrial and agricultural institutions which which is expended by the churches through their are training youth for useful service and self- boards of foreign missions and it cannot be legally support, raising standards of living, and help- or morally used for anything else.
ing poverty-stricken people better their lot. Lead- "4. The distressing conditions now existing in ers of the churches in Asia freely declare that they China, so far from lessening the need for miss,ion- could not possibly meet the expense of maintain- ary work, has enormously increased it. All the ing these numerous institutions without the help mission compounds in the area of hostilities are they are receiving from the American and Euro- thronged with refugees-penniless, starving peo- pean churches, nor do they yet possess a sufficient ple, the aged, the sick, most of them women and number of trained executives to direct them. children, many of the latter being orphans. The Comparatively few of these properties could be missionaries are toiling literally night and day to sold, except at heavy loss. Forced sales of real help them. Recent letters report 2,500 helpless estate, hard enough in the United States, are refugees in one mission compound and 7,000 in doubly so in non-Christian lands, especially when another. All are dependent on the mi'ssionaries the properties are institutions which cannot be for food 'and medical care. The Chinese have given operated for commercial profit. innumerable testimonies to their gratitude. Gen- "2. The 27,577 missionaries, of whom about eralissimo Chiang Kai-shek and his wife have 15,000 are from America, are appointed for life publicly stated their appreciation and their hope service and cannot fairly be discharged as a mer- that the resources of the missionaries will be in- chant discharges a clerk. After a missionary has creased. In his recent Christmas message to the been given a collegiate and post-graduate training people of the United States, the Generalissimo in America, and a miss,ion board has paid his said: .
travel expenses to a distant land, has provided him There lies upon us, and we presume upon you also our and his family with a house and salary for a min- fellow-Christian readers, a great weight of care which imum of three years while he is acquiring the religion alone can teach us to bear worthily. . . . Peace necessary knowledge of a foreign language and and high moral standards are inseparable, and when they people, he represents a considerable investment become an a::complished fact in the lives of all the peoples of the East and West, there will be no more war. War and becomes a valuable man. It would be costly is brutal, but it will ever be powerless. to rob any of us of the transcendent peace of men who are at peace with to lose him and, if the work is reopened at some themselves. later period, to begin all over again with new and inexperienced men. Moreover, it costs about "Why, then, should we weaken the 'religion'
$1,000 to bring an average missionary (less for and 'high moral standards' in China, which the single missionaries but more for married ones foreign missionary work of our churches is cre- with children) from Asia or Africa to America. ating there and of which the Generalissimo and If seventy-five per cent of the 15,000 American his gifted wife themselves are among the fruits.
missionaries were to be recalled, nearly if not It seems to me that, instead of lessening foreign quite $11,000,000 would be required to bring them missionary work, we should strengthen it if we home. As the mission board could not honorably are to promote both at home and abroad the inter- cut off their salaries without making some pro- national mind and the spirit of world brotherhood vision for their support for a few months until which the foreign missionary enterprise in- they had a reasonable time to secure other em- culcates. . . .
ployment, a meager allowance of at least $500 "Your advocacy of peace, as essential not only per person for this purpose for 11,000 mission- to world trade but to all ,the best interests of man- aries would require $5,500,000 more for the whole kind, is an inspiration to us who have long had number. In other words, the withdrawal of sev- that cause in .our hearts."
enty-five per cent of the 15,000 American mission- aries, so far from liberating money for other uses, It may be that there are other well-meaning would not only ruin missionary work but would church members who think that missionary money involve an aggregate expenditure of approxi- should be diverted to other causes and who do not mately $16,500,000, nearly all of which would be realize the difficulties, the injustice and the tre- a total loss. mendous loss that would result to the Gause of "3. The money that has been given, and that is Christ and the welfare of humanity.-EDITOR.
Among Hindu Pilgrims*
–<111 By REV. RAJENDRA CHANDRA DAS III!o– TAST April a small group of twelve men met in was the same – they all centered in and around L fellowship, prayer and consultation in the the Cross of Christ. The converts, "born" Chris- United City Mission at Benares. They came tians, Europeans and Indians, had each a signifi- from different centres of Hindu pilgrimage in cant story to tell. Each one had a different ap- north 'and northeast India. A few of the local proach to Christ – the Saviour 'and Master. missionaries and Indian Christians also attended Among the converts were different types-social, some sessions.t This conference was composed intellectual, political, moral, spiritual, natural, of persons' who are either engaged in work among personal-every one with an emphasis of his own. pilgrims and other orthodox Hindus in religious There were also one or two who had many of these centres or who are running Christian Ash:r~ams motives combined in determining their Christian surrender. Yet in all this diversity there was a or are interested in the study of the faith and solid and wonderful spirit of unity which all appractice of Hinduism. preciated. It was a pleasant discovery that in a group of heterogeneous elements there could be The purpose of the gathering was threefold: so much understanding and fellowship. There First, fellowship in prayer and interchange of were men of Anglican, Baptist, Quaker, Methoddst experiences and ideas. It was an encouragement and Free Church affiliation and yet there was a to hear reports of how God is using men in differ- happy, joyous and exhilarating fellowship and ent fields. Everybody noted the mighty work of unity. Thank God for this wonderful blessing. the Spirit of God in the difficult field of Brindaban among the Sadhus and Vairagis. In Calcutta the The second object of this conference was the banner of evangelism is kept high among the edu- formation of a simple organization with a view to cated. The A.shram life of Puri is developing fostering this fellowship between different peralong the line of quiet study, meditation and sons and places through the publication of a small prayer, as well as personal evangelism. In Milt- paper and through occasional conferences, as well tra, Rev. R. Templin and some of his colleagues as by interchange of workers. After a discussion are experimenting on Christian life and work of several points it was agreed that a simple oralong brotherhood lines. ganization be formed under some such title as "T.he Association of Christian Ashrams" (work- The views and spiritual experiences, as narrated ers among pilgrims and orthodox Hindus in North by the different members, were as varied as the and Northeast India) – Bhartiya Khristakula men themselves, but the core of the experience • Condensed from The Indian Witness. Samity. A small quarterly paper containing re- t Mr. Abraham Khan came from Puri. He is In charge of the quests for prayers and thanksgiving and short re- Ishapanthy Ashram which was founded by the late Rev. B. C. Sirc,,:r, ~.A., the Y. M. C,. A. evangelist. The Temple of Jagannath ports of work was felt to be desirable. It was dewith Its annual Gar Festival draws hundreds and thousands of people cided that on particular occasions of festivals .from all parts of India. Rev. M. Moses of the Church of God move- workers would be exchanged between different ment represented Calcutta where thousands of pilgrims visit the centres like Puri, Brindaban and Benares as well Temple of Kali. The Rev. J. Y. Sidley of the Baptist Mission repre- as at other normal times. A retreat-conference sented Gaya where Hindus COme in great numbers to offer Pindas like the present one – is to be repeated at least once every two years at a centre and on an occa- (balls of rice) in the names of their relatiYes for the.ir full ant! sion when practical evangelistic work could be final salvation, and Buddhist pilgrims also come to visit the place done among pilgrims and Sadhus. where Buddha was enlightened. Mr. N. N. Das of Patna, retired from Government Secretariat service and associated with the Union This conference was called upon to consider the Church work, represented ancient Pataliputra and HindU bathing feasibility of inaugurating a school to study Hincentres in Bihar. Mr. I. L. Lawrence of the English Methodist duism, with emphasis on its practical, popular and orthodox side. A few of those actually engaged Church represented Ayodhya, the birthplace of Ram, one of the in preaching the Gospel to Sadhus, Sanyasis and great incarnations of the Hindus. The Rev. G. W. Maw of the pilgrims, Pundits and Priests, Mohants and Brah- Fri.ends' Mission, Itarsi, represented not only the pilgrim centres of mins have felt the need of a unity of purpose and RaJPutana and Central India but also the great Himalayan shrines practical knowledge and training in work. It was like Kedarnath and Badrinath. Mr. Maw, in a Sadhu's dress. has traveled far and wide with pilgrims themselves. Pandit Yamua Prasad Chowbey. professor of music. came from the TheologiCal Sem- Inary of .the Methodist Episcopal Church at BareiIIy. Mr. Dldar, a young Hmdu convert of the Methodist Mission, represented Muttra. Brindaban, a most important pilgrim centre especially for Valshnava Bengalees, was represented by the Rev. A. C. Chakravarti, B.D., of the Methodist Church, who has founded a Christian Ashram on his own responsibility in that very "orthodox" place. Benares, where the retreat was held and which Is the greatest centre of Hindu orthodoxy and learning, was represented by the workers and Inmates of the United Mission-the Rev. S. R. Holt, Mr. H. K. Dey and Rev. R. C. Das.
[196 ] unanimously felt that such opportunities would be politico-cultural organization. As a Hindu he saw highly appreciated and utilized by many. The no barrier in Hinduism as regards intermarriage Benares United City Mission offers any facilities and interdining. Coming from a man of his posiit has for such a purpose. A well equipped library tion, this was remarkable inasmuch as Christian was felt necessary and there is already a nucleus circles are not usually conversant with this uniof it at Benares. The study of the faith and prac- versal attitude of Hinduis.m, its orthodox and extice of Hinduism is necessary and important for clusive ideas and practices being more commonly a right approach to Hindus. It is unfortunate that met. almost all workers, Indian or non-Indian, do general work among non-Christians with no special We were convinced of many things, among qualifications to touch effectively either Hindus which the more important are: first, only pracor Moslems. A School of Islamics started a few tical and s,incere Christianity of the apostolic type years ago has rendered valuable service for the in the sense of converted and consecrated personal cause of Christ among Moslems. No less should life through the saving grace of Jesus Christ, as be done intelligently and sympathetically to touch effective in meeting this long-lived and virile Hindus. Hinduism we find in shrines and pilgrim centres; second, only collective witness and cooperative en- There was a paper from the Rev. R. Templin of deavor disclose the secret of the power of Hin- Muttra on the subject of "Witness and the Serv- duism; third, fresh methods of evangelistic ants of the Kingdom." Emphasis was laid on approach to Hindus based on understanding and (1) the need and importance of collective witnes,s; sympathy, must be discovered. Our supreme con- (2) the Kingdom of God rather than the church viction is that the presence of the Living Christ as an institution; (3) God seeks man through among us and the guidance of the Holy Spirit is Christ; (4) no faith without faithfulness.. essential in everything said or done.
The Rev. Atul Chandra Chakravarti, B.D., of ECLECTIC RELIGIONS Brindaban Christian Ashram, in an address on Hinduism, brought out the following points:: The By REV. J. CHRISTY WILSON, D.D., Tabriz, Iran study of Hinduism as a religion and culture is necessary: (1) for goodwill and fellowship with There is great danger in electicism in religion. our non-Christian friends; (2) to equip us better The Bahais are all inclusive and all things to for preaching the Gospel and in bringing out true all men. They will agree with Moslems, Chriscontacts and real differences between Christianity tians or Jews and claim to unite the best things and Hinduism. The following vital issues and from all faiths. practical questions were raised: Should we ag- From Iran the ancient Nestorian Church cargressively s.how the superiority of Christianity ried the Gospel with burning zeal to India, China and deficiency of Hinduism? Should we condemn, and the far reaches of Asia. Very few of the attack, criticize, and find flaws? How can we Christian communities they founded remain topreach Christ-the only Saviour-without arous- day, and one of the reasons for the failure of ing antagonism? How reconcile the claims of these Christian churches to survive, is that they Christianity with goodwill for Hindus? compromised with other faiths. Some advisers believe that missions should do The Rev. G. W. Maw, of Itarsi, speaking on the the same today-"Accept what is good and true Christian approach to the Hindu pilgrims, de- in all religions and work together." But Christ scribed how he lived like a Hindu Sadhu and says we cannot serve two masters, or as the com- Sanyasi, wore the colored robe with the distinctive mon Eastern proverb has it, "You cannot hold mark of the cross on it, lived and conversed with two melons in one hand." the pilgrims and traveled with them up and down When Israel took up idol worship they did not the highways of Indian pilgrimages in North In- intend to forsake Jehovah, they merely wanted dia and the Himalayas. to be broad and get along with other religions. The end was fatal and led to degradation and It was a very interesting deviation from the or- dispersion. dinary course followed among Christians when we Here is a lesson that Christians should take to heard Dr. M. D. Shastri, Principal of the famous heart. We who are working for Christ in the Government Sanskrit College of Benares, speak Bible lands must love men of other religions, but on "How Christ Appeals to the Hindu." He we must call them to worship only God as revealed stressed the Hindu position, viz., that every reli- in Jesus Christ. Men cannot live to the glory of gion has truth and is good for its own followers, God unless they are Christian. Christ must have so that there need be no rivalry or enmity between full and complete allegiance if God is to be glorireligions. The Hindus had no difficulty in rega~d fied.-The Presbyterian. ing Christ as a great teacher and incarnation, because Hinduism is essentially not a religion in the sense of a creed or a way of life but rather a socio-
A Missionary Vacation in Rural
A Letter from a Mother to Her Sons in America By MRS. T. W. B. DEMAREE Formerly under the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, at Oita, Japan -1889 to 1934 SIX of us left home on Saturday for Camp and Tuesday nights with a hundred or more in Nada Hachiman, about thirty miles from attendance. The railroad station master here is Oita. We had two cars in which to load our one of our Kitsuki Christians. He copied a hymn "junk." The girls rode in one car. We brought on a large sheet of paper; we tacked it up on a all the tent and fixtures. Our cars reminded me tree, built a bonfire for light and I taught them of California tourists. to sing. They responded and listened well. The The mosquitos are pretty bad here in evenings girls and I sang some special songs for them.
but we have our nets. The beach and sea bathing Even the old priest, who is at the head of the are perfect. Our tent is stretched in the pines big temple, has been to call and has attended the which grow along the beach as far as we can see. meetings with some of his colleagues. He ex- For this big round tent we need only a center pole pressed the desire to hear more.
and a few stobs and bamboo-quickly and easily Wednesday night, after supper, the members put up, especially where we have so many trees of our party put on their bathing suits and we to which to tie the ropes. went down to the beach. Soon we were joined by The Japanese were seemingly delighted to have the station master, and later a nice looking man us and everybody turned out to help. dressed in a white suit came up and introduced "What do you need?" they asked. himself, saying, "I live on a farm back in the "First," Daddy said, "we must have a center mountains and only heard today that a Christian pole-so long-some bamboo." missionary had come to this place for a few days. I have heard something about Christ and long to Off went a man on a bicycle and by the time we learn more. Have you time to teach me?" had our tent unrolled he came riding up with an ideal pole on his shoulder. Others produced the We came back to the tent and dressed and the smaller bamboo poles and all turned in to help. people continued to gather. I took a group to Talk about kindness, I never saw anything to one side and Daddy took charge of the inquirer.
beat it. Still they came. I spread down tent cloth and All day Sunday we had callers of all descrip- rugs and soon every seat was taken. There must tions: railroad officials, principals of schools, have been fully sixty earnest inquirers, and I teachers, school children, farmers from back in never saw more earnestness. Several times I rethe sticks, some of the funniest specimens. you marked that I thought they must be tired trying ever saw, with questions, questions. Then at to understand me but they declared they under- night a large .group came and asked for a Chris- stood perfectly and begged me to continue. When tian talk and Daddy must have talked for two they were gone Daddy and I were too happy to go hours. He promised to have a real meeting for to bed so we walked down toward the sea to look them tonight when he blows his cornet. at the beautiful full moon and its reflection in the sea, when seven young men came up on bicycles Today we have had rather a quiet day with very saying they had heard in their village, several few inquisitive gazers. The principal of the Kit- miles away, about our meetings and they had come suki girls' school where I once spoke called today with a large basket of fruit, lovely plums and to learn. They seemed much disappointed to learn natsu mikan, which grew in his own garden. that the meeting was over, and asked if we would *** not talk to them a little while, so Daddy took them I stopped to play some games with the crowd. in charge.
. . Now I am seated several paces. from the tent Before I was asleep some old drunken fellows in the shade of the pines with a wonderful breeze came by and made a big hubbub. One old fellow blowing from the sea. We had meetings Monday came into the tent (side curtains were all up) [198 ]
THE NEED OF FARMERS IN JAPAN
and called out in a big loud voice, "Obasan, obasan, real country but autos and autotrucks are conare you asleep? I want your address in Oita so tinually passing and an aeroplane passed over that I can come there and learn more about Chris- my head. tianity. I'm a little drunk tQnight because today we finished putting up the big stQne torii for Qur Day before yesterday as I sat peeling potatoes temple and we are celebrating. Yes, I'm a little for supper a boy was racing his pony al'ound the drunk but I want to. hear mQre." race track beyond our tent. The horse fell and we thought the boy was killed. Daddy and I both He and Qthers hung arQund until after one a. m. started toward him taking a bucket of cold water but we finally shook them off without even mak- from the well. After some working of the bQY's ing them mad. arms and plenty of cold water he began to breathe. Then Japanese came and carried him to. his broth- The man who came early last night from up in er's home. No. bones were broken, and today he the mountains came again as we were finishing is up and has been here, with his parents, kin and breakfast, bringing some beautiful dahlias and neighbors galQre, to. thank us for having saved pears. He was a hungry looking soul and Daddy talked with him for over an hQur. "0, how I wish his life. . . . . they could know there is room for them all and Yesterday the superintendent of the railroad, that Jesus bids them come." three principals of schools, an ex-army captain This is a perfectly wonderful place to spend a and other dignitaries called. . . . summer, and I've never run up against such an opportunity. There is no church near and it is After six days we came back home; we did not get much rest but we had a good time.
The Need of Farmers in Japan* By DR. TOYOHIKO KAGAWA, Tokyo I N JAPAN we have 140 large cities and 1,200 operative. The scale of health insurance is based tQwns and villages are rural. Only 4870 of on the income of the village. The more income the total population is rural. Each year more you have the more you pay. But the treatment than 100,000 people leave the rural sections and and the number of visits of the doctor are the same go to the cities. Five million seven hundred thou- no matter what fee you have paid. sand rural people live on six million hectares. of land. (One hectare equals two and a half acres.) The farmers can now buy good fertilizers be- cause of the cooperatives. They can also buy the Our first cooperative association for farmers lands they till. In 1931 the farmers of Japan sufwas introduced from Germany a few years ago. fered from a depression and a panic. As one re- Until then the farmers borrowed money from the sult many lost the ownership of their lands and loan sharks, with interest sometimes 2570 and today about 4070 of the 5,700,000 farmers are landless. Thirty per cent of them have a little sometimes 30 % per year. The government had a regulation that interest was to he only 20 % on a land; 70 % are tenant farmers; 28 % own small debt, but the loan sharks were able to squeeze the lands; only 270 of the farmers are well off. peasants for more. Today more than 14,000 co- Sixty-five per cent of the owners of farms live in operatives have been organized for the farmers of the tQwns and cities. Therefore, we are endeav- 12,000 communities. There is one central coop- oring through cooperatives to give back to the erative union. farmers the lands which are owned by city people. Each year there are about 3,000 cases of land dis~ Today we have 8,600 storages for rice based on putes-Iabor disputes are almost stopped, but not the cooperative scheme. Through these storages land disputes – because of what the Japanese and cooperatives the price of rice can be fixed farmers suffer from the city owners of their completely. About the middle of December, when farms. Last year the Diet passed a resolution we know about the rice crop, the rate is fixed for that an owner·of farmland can sell the land to anthe year. We can fix the price of silk also.. other person only with the consent of the tiller of the soil. If the tiller of the soil will consult with Through the cooperative plan that we got from the farm credit cooperative, he can probaJbly be Denmark, we have four different forms of insur- helped to buy back his land from the city owner. ance for the people in rural areas. We have a harvest insurance for the rice crop and the silkworm The lay leaders of the Christian churches, as crop; a livestock insurance; a health insurance individuals, are active in these organizations cooperative; and a national health insurance co- everywhere.
• From an address at the 1. M. c. meeting, Madras.
of Rural Life in Africa*
By IRA E. GILLET, Kambini, Portuguese East Africa I ~.- I Principal, Cenlral Training School ~=========================.
A MAN in India was showing me photographs; cupboards and doors. The 8,000 East Indians as he hurriedly passed over some of them residing in the colony handle the major part of the he said, "These are just ordinary villagers." retail trade, and their cloth and blankets are "Ordinary villagers!" I said in amazement, largely replacing the bark-eloth and skins of "why that is all we have in Africa!" former days.
Our people are all "ordinary villagers," exc~pt Protestant Work for a few who are adjusting themselves to the lIfe and work of Durban, Capetown, and the mining Protestant Christian work is almost entirely confined to the southern districts of the colony. areas of Rhodesia and the Rand. For more than Here six long-established and four more recently four million people in Mozambique, more than half established missions are at work under increasas large as the Union of South Africa, and ex- ing limitations. tending for fifteen degrees along the east coast, we have only one high school, and that is in the Speaking for one mission, we insist that mis- sionaries sent out by the Board be rural-minded. extreme southern end of the colony. A man who prefers a game of tennis to a shower when the land needs rain, who is glad to buy eggs A large maj ority of the able-bodied men of our for less than they are worth, or who is too dainty section are continuously away from home at work to touch the manure cart need not apply. in the gold and coal mines of the Transvaal, some of them going as often as eight or ten times for Since the general standard of living, of sobriety, of trustworthiness, and of education, is much shifts of eighteen months each. At the mines the higher in the Christian villages than outside, the unskilled laborer receives about six times as much local administrators are generally sympathetic. in wages as in the colony. Some of this eventually reaches the home village but this, residue is seldom We have a central training school, based on a put into permanent village development. farm and including a Jeanes school, in which church, hospital, farm,shops and classes work as The earthly possessions of most families con- an integrated whole, together with the surround- ing community. Student candidates are examined sist of a pole-and-earth hut, roofed with grass. In and recommended by the elders of their communi- ties whether they be men or boys. Men must the one or two rooms of this house there is little bring their wives and children and establisl;t self- supporting homes for three years, after which the or no furniture beyond a few baskets, pots and more capable ones are permitted to continue for a further period. The whole family attends classes, hgroaeis~', and immediately a fter harvest there is some tills the soil under the direction of the farm leaders such as peanuts, corn, beans and millet, and according to approved methods, shares in the worship and community service of the churchupon which the owner pays an annual tax of about both locally and at considerable distance from the school center. Surveys, preaching missions, agriten dollars. cultural fairs, institutes, and tours of farm-coun- selling are carried on with faculty supervision Because of constant moving to the mines, tribal within a radius of 150 miles – all within the life is badly disintegrated and home life is broken framework of the church organization. up. Where this has not come to pass and where there are sufficient male adults at home to attend In addition to their regular school classes, the the cattle and goats, there are still herds of in- wives are taught various aspects of home-making, ferior cattle, seldom (though increasingly) used simple nursing and midwifery as well as how to for plowing. Farming methods are slow and lead worship services. In fact, nothing that is wasteful. Villagers leave the worked-out fields vital to home and village life is foreign to our proand cultivate new land or old land that has grown up again to thickets. Undecorated clay pots, g~od baskets and mats of various kinds, a little tannmg of hides and a little whittling of wooden articles are the limit of general handicraft; carpentry of the European style is becoming popular for the more progressive, for the making of chairs, tables, • Notes taken by W. W. Reid at the Madras Conference. gram and interest.
[200 ]
RURAL CHANGES IN MEXICO TODAY
Gl'OUPS of Christian villages. are joined into a permanent residences. All church buildings and circuit which, from its own funds, supplemented parsonages and medical substations are built by in decreasing proportion by the mission, makes its the local church. own budget for evangelism, health services, instruction, bulk subscriptions for vernacular news- A family trained at the school goes to a new papers carrying Sunday school lessons, pastoral village or to an old one in need of help, and sets support, home missions and connectional funds. up a permanent home. The man begins his farm There are sixteen of these circuits, including 175 work, and his community visitation as time and villages. Each meets quarterly for inspiration and resources permit, and as need appears. The cirbusiness. To suggest that any of their needs of cuit may give him fl'om two and a half dollars to life do not come within the Church's interes,t five dollars during the quarter depending upon would come to them as a surprise. circumstances; so that he need not resort to the mines to get money for his tax. He and his wife An annual consecration of hoes, seed, and other preach, nurse, teach, farm, encourage, act as implements is held in the majority of these vil- peacemakers, and in short become "lights. in the lages, usually at planting time. Thank offerings world." at the time of the harvest festival bring in gifts according to the gladness-though not necessarily Missionaries visit these Ex-students as often as according to the wealth – of these farmers. In possible and confer with them concerning their spite of evident poverty, with very meagre educa- problems. As they are given larger responsibility tion, surrounded by SOl'cery and drunkenness, they are also taken through additional courses of these units of the Church look to their school at study; and short courses and private conference& the center; to this school they send their boys and are :&requently arranged. their families, and from it they receive help. The primary boarding school for young boys Happily the African in our colony is not the- seems to have contributed little to this whole deoretically the victim of the color bar in industry. velopment, and I am convinced that this luxury The opportunity is usually there for those who is too ineffective to be continued. It must give will take advantage of it. Moreover, by the de- place to more provision for day school instruction velopment of the land the African can make his of students who live at home and so are able to claim to it secure, so that he has not to depend transmit the school influence directly and immesolely on communal holding. Many of our Chris- diately to the home. Much of this can be done tian people are taking advantage of this to erect through some such plan as 4-H clubs and adult education over a wider area.
Rural Changes in Mexico Today* By PROF. G. BAEZ CAMARGO Secretary, National Evangelical Council of Mexico I N MEXICO we are going through a social Spanish seized. The ownership of these lands was change that is greatly affecting the rural life investigated after the Revolution and resulted in of the country. Our rural problems are due to the restoration of much of this communal land to the breaking down of a land system that pre~ the villages. But in the years many new villages vailed for 400 years. The old system of cultiva- had sprung up and they had no lands; for them tion was primitive in technique, and large areas the government bought land and gave it to the of land were in a very few hands. An extreme villages. case, yet illustrating the system, was that one landowner had an area equal to about half the size This ability to own land has made a tremendous of France. change in the life of the village and of the farmer. Before that the farmer had been getting a small In 1910 the Mexican Revolution began. One of wage for tilling the land; he was paid with tickets its main objectives was. the breaking down of the and had to buy his provisions with these tickets system of land holding, the distribution of land, from stores owned by the landowners. Now with and the making of small farms. The old Indian the allocation of land to the villagers., they must villages had communal lands which all the people work their own land, and they cannot count on a of the village cultivated together. These lands the fixed amount of income each week. But the gov- ernment is getting these farmers and villagers * Extract from an address delivered at the recent International adj usted to the new system.
Missionary Conference, at Madras.
Mahka La's Story*
I -..gf By GUSTAF A. SWORD, Kutkai, Burma I ~- SUBADAR MAHKA LA of Kutkai, Burma, Subadar until he saw the thick filthy black tar- was a nominal Christian but a slave to the strong drink and opium habits. More than like substance was being washed from his body. once did he try to break the habit but without success. Associating with one of the young Ka- Especially from the tips of his fingers came a conchin chiefs, who became a Christian ten years ago and who has experienced the power of God, the tinuous stream of filth and slime. The more they Subadar felt more disgusted with himself than ever before and asked the Christian chief for ad- scrubbed the better he felt. vice and help. The chief told the Subadar that the only way of help he knew was through honest After a while the mystical visitors gradually and persistent prayer to God. And so the Subadar began to pray as never before. faded away in the light. Then the light disap- One night he had a vision; a wonderful light peared and the Subadar awakened from his filled the room and his heart and he saw some supernatural beings. In the pure bright light the dream. A wonderful sensation filled his soul. He Subadar felt filthy, mean and unclean. He looked upon his hands and his body and saw that he was felt clean; he felt free, and happy. • black with a dirty substance like opium. One of the visitors came close to him and when he saw As the Subadar got up and walked about he the filth and misery he told the Subadar to wash himself and be cleansed. The Subadar answered: spied his old opium pipe and a package of opium.
"Sir, I am not able to wash myself. I have tried The sight and the smell of it was nauseating so he but this filth sticks to me, no matter how much I try to rid myself of it. Sir, if you will wash me set about to destroy it. He also poured out the then I will be clean." strong drink. Indeed he had been washed clean. Then this supernatural being called his comrades and they set to scrubbing and washing the It is now five years since this happened and the • From The Burma News. Subadar is now a deacon in the church. All who knew him marvelled at the change; today he is a living testimony to God's saving power.
A few years ago when I was in Kutkai building the new mission bungalow, the Subadar came one evening and placed something in my hand saying, "This is my gift for the new Kutkai chapel." It was dark, I could not count the money but as I came into the grass hut we had erected while we were building the new bungalow, I counted the money and found Rs. 150. Since then he has given me Rs. 350 more for the new chapel. He has also given Rs. 300 to the new Baptist Kachin Mission enterprise in Sumprabum.
OAN A OHRISTIAN BE NON-MISSIONARY?
There is no such person as a Christian who is not making a sacrifice to support the work of the Church at home and abroad. I am not the authority for this statement. Christ is, for it was He who said, "He who would come after me let him deny himself" . . . also "Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature." We can't escape the fact that He called us to be ready to make a willing sacrifice in order that all men everywhere might share the Good News. . . . Christ decided this nineteen centuries ago, and all we can do is to either prove our loyalty by heeding His command, or rule ourselves out of the company of those who are truly His followers. The work of Christ needs, and has a right to expect, the united backing of every man, woman and child in the whole Church. Furthermore, I do not consider a person worthy of being presented for confirmation unless he is ready and eager to make his pledge on both sides of the envelope for the work of the whole Church. It is time we stopped turning out these generations of church members, half of whom are ignorant as to their responsibility when it comes to the support of the work of the Church.
-Bishop Hobson.
[202 ] I Effective Ways of Working Tested Methods for Increasing Interest at Home EDITED BY MISS GRACE W. MCGAVRAN, 5718 OAK AVE., INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA ~===============================I~ Not Too Early to Plan! light of present conditions. But mends: "The cost varies from here is a job for the Christians institute to institute, but runs to Plan what? To have at least of the world. I am coming to $25-$35 each, for the ten daysone member from your group believe that if enough Christians for room, board, and tuition. attend a Peace Institute this face this problem, we can condi- Tuition alone is generally $10, summer. tion the next generation to think which is the total cost to be and act in terms of world borne by persons from the neigh- You cannot afford to have brotherhood. borhood. your missionary organization, church and community without "I came away from the con- "Some churches are raising a the stimulation and inspiration scholarship fund to send delethat having a representative at ference, with a definite convic- gates. Women's organizations a Peace Institute will bring. tion that a free church has an might hold benefit teas or din- important function to fulfil in ners, planned in the interna- What values are there to be tional spirit with foreign cosgained? Let some of those speak this present world crisis. Our tumes, flags and posters. The who have gone to other institute American churches dare not money raised could be used to meetings. mark time. In this present crisis send the pastor of the church or the Church must challenge the one of the Church School teach- A woman says: "It was a thinking people of our country, ers. Here is a concrete project stimulating experience to have in terms of world responsibility. for those who ask, 'What can I such men as Samuel Guy Inman We must do it now while we are do for peace?' interpret South America to us; not at war – once war is deto have T. Z. Koo of China, with clared, it will be too late." "The institute is an invaluable all his charm, bring to us the experience. It affords an opporbackgrounds of oriental ten- A student says: "The spirit tunity to sit under internasions; and to have Hugo F. of fellowship was uniquely ap~ tionally known authorities; to Simon rub our thinking the mingle with people from many wrong way. Every course was parent in the way it dominated valuable in helping us to under- even the most bitter of the dis- backgrounds – ministers, teachstand underlying currents in an putes which sometimes arose out ers, librarians, peace leaders, ever-changing world. . . . We of our discussions. Therefore workers, students, religious eduleftNaperville 'instructed' and the two weeks was not only cation directors; and to receive 'inspired' to do something to help highly educational and very en- the stimulus of fresh ideas. bring about better understanding between the races and to joyable, but deeply inspirational "Then too-and not the least make this a better world for in its unity of purpose in the -there is the delightful summer others as well as for ourselves." face of sharply opposed opinions. campus on which the institute is held. All these elements com- A pastor says: "Well-out of "I must add that frequent bine to offer the institute-goer a the experience of those ten days, comments were voiced as to the rewarding time." I returned to my parish with the character of the leadership and renewal and deepening of cer- the staff members. The institute It is sound advice for all of us. tain convictions about life. I members were impressed by the Your first step is to write to your sensed anew the fact of the in- workers of the American Friends missionary or "social action" terdependence of the great hu- who were giving so much time board for information about past man family. I saw the similarity and energy to this cause. and future institutes. Second, of the problems which confront find out approximate costs for the different nations of the "As we left, we were not only the one nearest to you. Third, world. I was strengthened in keyed up to a peak of interest find the person most fitted to go the conviction that the one hope in getting out and fighting in the -your pastor, one of the leading for a way out of all this con- peace movement, but also in a laymen, an outstanding woman fusion is through world coop- feeling that groups such as the eration. American Friends Service Com- of the church-choose carefully. mittee and the Council for Social The person chosen must be able "This looks hopeless in the Action deserve our sincerest to provide leadership after re- support." turning. Do not send a simple The Missionary Herald (Con- gregational – Christian) recom- [203 ]
sponge, no matter how keen the eign Missions came to their hun- of the histo.ry of their "Christ- sponge may be to absorb it all. dredth anniversary, and wanted mas Tree in May" and presented You don't want .to. have to spend a new hymn to celebrate that oc- the plans for the celebration of time squeezing to get informa- casion, this one was chosen from it this year.
tion when your delegate returns! over two hundred hymns sub- The back page of the folder Fourth, lay plans fo.r pro.viding mitted. It was written by Dr. tells the story of the enterprise. tuition,transPo.rtation, board Jay Glover Eldridge of Moscow, and room and texts if needed. Idaho. We all rejoice with the HOW WE STARTED It is not too so.on to start plan- Presbyterian Board in its com- In 1921 Bethel Bible School sent its ning. It takes time to get infor- pletion of such a span of service mation, to secure funds, to de- and we find in the hymn an ex- first big Christmas Box to India. It velop interest, to find the best pression of our o.wn ho.pe and de- carried so much joy to the folks who sire; we therefore want to add received it that for fifteen years it to those hymns through which Bethel folks packed veritable treasure we voice our own aspirations. person to. send and to. complete stores of happiness into great wooden arrangements. Summer rolls The tune to which it is set is boxes and shipped them to India. Each around all too soo.n. * year hundreds of boys and girls, men and women, and leper patients in our mission station depended for their Display Gifts Before Sending fo.und in most church hymnals. Christmas remembrances upon the ar- It is the familiar and beautiful rival of this box. Clothing, school There is much satisfaction in "Hymn to J o.Y" by Beethoven, supplies, religious literature, toilet work completed; the value of the tune to which o.rdinarily we articles, toys, and literally thousands this we ignore when we allo.w a sing "Joyful, Joyful, We Adore of things crossed the ocean each year. co.mmittee to collect gifts, pack Thee." and send them, making a weak Several years ago an increase on verbal repo.rt, or even none. After using this hymn as a the "duty" which our missionaries had solo or qua.rtette, use it in the to pay made us decide to send the With the above procedure, next meeting as a hymn, sung by money instead of a box, thus saving contrast the following: the entire group. It should be the expense qf transportation and in- used frequently thereafter until surance. . The women who co.llected it becomes familiar. scraps for making bed covers for HOW IT WORKED flo.od relief were themselves ut- God of years, Thy love hath led us, terly amazed at the two beautiful Thou hast been our bulwark, strong, Our new plan has been highly sucand serviceable covers evolved cessful. Our members have responded from their contributions. They Wall of fire against the wicked, as loyally to this way of giving as will be ready to embark on a Sword of power against the wrong. they did when bringing articles in similar enterprise again. Christmas wrappings. In 1936 and Thou hast blest of old Thy servants 1937 we sent checks of $100, which The women who made gar- As they bore Thy message far; our missionaries have gladly turned men.ts for a migrant Christian into many useful and welcome gifts. Center, and those who had not We who follow in their footsteps joined in the actual work, were Evermore tpeir debtors are. On next Sunday, May 15th, each delighted and encouraged at the member of the Bible School will be sight of a clothes-line full of Onward lead, 0 King eternal, given a small colored bag into which pretty garments, flapping in the Lo, we heed Thy high command, to put a gift for our Christmas check breeze at their outdoor meeting to India. These bags are to be rejust before the garments were Bear good news to every people, turned on the following Sunday, May sent off. Far and near, in every land. 22nd, and hung on Christmas trees in each department as a part of our ob- Seeing the completed task Thine they are, Thy love doth seek servance of "Christmas in May." We gives a feeling of satisfaction so them, are counting on you! that in future similar tasks will be more readily undertaken. Thou wouldst bring them to the Before we turn to the other light; pages of the folder, please note No matter what your under- how skillfully joy of sending actaking, try to. give the entire or- Lead us on till darkness brightens, tual packages has been turned ganization a visual impression o.f On till faith is lost in sight. into happiness in sending a it in its finished state. money gift. Notice that the Lead us forth, a Church united, little bags in which the money is Strong, courageous, in Thy might. to be collected are bright-colo.red, They will take the place of the Lo, the fields are white with harvest, brightly wrapped packages on Sheaves to garner ere the night. the tree, and will have a dra- One our purpose, One our Leader, LeTSaodhusushsaTlohlny,loavCeh,Kuwricnohgrldseh-twealrilndean,le, vperervfaaiil.lt; The Summer Christmas Tree Enrich Your Devotionals Early in May, 1938, a fo.ur- matic value that mere envelopes for an offering cannot have. Here is a new hymn well worth page folder was distributed to adding to your devotional ma- the members of the Sunday But now let us turn to the first terials. It should be sung first school o.f a large church in page of the folder. It announces as a solo. o.r by a quartette. A Evansville, Indiana, It was not the idea – Christmas in May brief introduction may precede a surprise, of course, for they that Others May Have Christmas its first use, stating that when had for eighteen years been hav- in India in December. It is decthe Presbyterian Board of For- orated with a simple line draw- ing the fun of a Christmas tree ing of a Christmas tree hung in May. But it reminded them with bright-colored balls. That • All quotations are from The Missionary t Copyright by The Board of Foreign Mis- will be the bright co.lored bags of the offerings! Herold at Home ana Abroad and are used by sions of the Presbyterian Church. Used by permiSSion. permiSSion.
EFFECTIVE WAYS OF WORKING
A little verse by the mission- their bright bags on Christ~as Reading for Children * trees small enough to be carned. ary in India closes, "whole In selecting missionary books Christmas in December, makes Then from each department, in all of us remember Him, whose for children, there are always coming brought Christmas for procession, headed by one ca~ry us all." two points to keep in mind. ing the tree, they come hack mto Perhaps the nicest part of this First tChheildarpepneaarraenceent~otlfedthtoe announcement folder is the in- the auditorium, where the trees book.' side two pages which carry a Mother's Day thought which bearing their gifts of love are beautiful books. By thIS I do links this observance of Christmas in May to a Mother and placed together on the pla~form. not mean expensive books, be- Child of long ago. Now the gifts are dedIcated. cause many less expensive bo?ks On Christmas night-long, long ago A mother's arms a baby held. It is recalled what joy ther.e will combine the good taste and SIm- A Child that was the Hope of man be in the use of the articles pur- plicity which are char~cteris~ic A prophet's dream at last fulfilled. chased with the money, or other of beautiful books-a hIgh pnce So many children since that day In many lands o'er all the eartJ:1 uses made of it, in that far-off does not necessarily guarantee Rejoice on Christmas Day and smg land of India. There is emphasis quality. But a book for a child Of Jesus and His holy birth. placed on the gift as a link of must be attractive to the eye as Yet many children would not know Of Him and what He came to be love between those giving and well as to the mind-its size and Except as men and women go those receiving. Carols are sung. shape, the siz~ and face of the To take His Word across the sea. Christmas in May is over. type the bindmg, the cover de- The Church a mother needs to be With arms outstretched to gently The groups which use the sign' and the jacket. hold Summer Christmas Tree idea The second point is the con- Each tiny soul close to her heart And with her love all babes enfold. have found that in this quieter tent. A beautiful appearance is "Christl1w8 in May" our slogan is time the carols are sung with worthless without value between "That Others May Have Christmas Too." fresh zest and enjoyment; that the covers. In judging the con- In May we bring our gifts of love there is opportunity for inter- tents of books for children, there To make their Christmas dreams come true. preting the Christmas message is one question to ask one's self: By poverty and sin oppressed to the world in terms beyond Is the content of the book with- Not many joys their own they call that of remembering the first in the ability of the child for A gift from you may make them know Christmas; that where gifts are whom it is chosen – are the That Jesus came and loved them sent more careful planning is words and the incidents within all. mpoosnseiby,le~' that where the gift is his understanding? 'Tis fitting then, this Mother's Day more generous gift is To think of India's children too The final question, which is available and eagerly offered. As real they are, though far away the deciding factor in a decision As your own children are to you. In trying any such plan it is to buy this book instead of that, In serving them, honor anew weU to remember that careful Mother and Child of Bethlehem. is : Is the content Christian? motivation is necessary. We Send Christmas cheer acros~ the sea Are Christian attitudes, sympa- To India's children-In HIS Name. cannot simply s.ay, "Lo! We will thies and conducts treated as So much for the folder. It does have a summer Christmas tree. motivate the enterprise nicely. natural and normal expressions Careful planning and work in Let everyone bring gifts for it." the departments togethe~ w!th of life? education about the destmatIOn Study the record of what this and use of the gifts comes to a In selecting missionary books culmination on the day set. church actually did, how it Each one from tiny child to for children a few factors must grandmother brings a little planned, and what its presentabright-colored bag to the Sun- be applied: (1) The facts about day school service. tions were. Work out your own other racial and national groups Everyone meets to sing carols plans with a definite reason for for fifteen minutes. Then they must be true. (2) The book go to departmen~s, wher.e a bri~f attempting it; think thoroughly service of worshIp culmmates m must not contain any statements through the introduction to it or illustrations that hold racial which you will use. ~ake ~he occasion a real celebratIOn, WIth or national groups up to ridicule.
enough ceremonial to bring the (3) Great world issues, such as atmosphere of Christmas into its disarmament, world peace, eco- observance. Do not attempt, nomic justice, and racial equal- hwohwicehvegr~ to imitate those things ity must not be minimized. (4) into the season itself, There should be no statements such as simulated snow, etc. by which children I?igh~ gener- Here is a chance to have a semi- alize and come to IdentIfy cer- tropical Christmas, such as a tain racial or national groups great part of the world has every with criminal offenses.
year anyway. Start with plans Many of the books which chil- not too elaborate, and if you find dren have been using as supple- the idea has values, let the ob- mentary readers in geography servance grow from year to are useful in this work of mis- year into one of those traditional sionaryeducation. Many secular affairs, ever recur. ring,.yet . ever publication h~uses are prod?c- new and ever mcreasmg m ing books whIch really are m- worth and value for those taking herently missionary.
hanging the gifts of money in part in its observance. • From Women ana Miss·Wn8.
A Story for the
By VIOLET WOOD, Missionary Education Movement THE GARDEN OF JOSEPH You hQnQr yourself in honoring can to make amends for my past OF ARIMATHlEA cowardness." him," said the boy. "It is the same as when Jesus NicQdemus plucked at his long Drawing their mantles about was born – no. place to. lay his them, Joseph and Nicodemus head. And nQw," Benjamin beard as he sat at the rough table went to Pilot and boldly asked wiped away la tear, "who will on which a flickering lamp for the body of Jesus. Receivtake him down from the cross? ing his permission, they went to Who will give a corner of his es- burned. It should have been still the hill called Golgotha, near to tate for the body of Jesus? He daylight outside, but a strange Joseph's burying ground, and said that he WQuld rise again. took the body from the cross. Oh, that he might rise in a darkness had covered Jerusalem Solemnly they wrapped it in garden such as that Qne of yQurs that afternoon. near to. Jerusalem, beautiful with spices and placed it in the new sunlight, flowers of lilies and "My trades will suffer if the tomb in Joseph's garden. Then palm trees!" Jews think that I am a disciple Qf the Nazarene," sighed Joseph. they rolled a great stone against Joseph of Arimathrea paced the entrance and went home to "Yes," a g r e e d Nicodemus, observe the Sabbath. Meanwhile "but perhaps we could take the Pilot placed a guard of soldiers body in the night and bury him secretly." Benjamin forgot that he was up and down as the boy was but a servant boy and cried to watch the tomb, and to prespeaking. Of all his servants scornfully, "All the wQrld will vent the body from being stolen. none was so loved as the young know where Jesus is buried. You The Sabbath passed in gloom. lad, Benjamin, because he was a cannot hide his burial pl1ace. I But on the third day a great fearless disciple Qf Jesus. Joseph have heard that he said he would commotion arose in the streets. was a believer, too, but in secret. rise again from the dead." Often the master and servant People said to one another: "The journeyed together as father "Your faith shames my grave of Jesus is empty, in spite and son. Benjamin was excused years," said Joseph. of Pilot's guard. The stone is from his work to go to the rolled away! Jesus' disciples say market and public pl1aces to hear The llamp on the table flick- Jesus speak. The boy would re- ered as the door opened and a that he has risen from the dead." turn to the inn where Joseph heavily veiled lady crossed the Hearing this rumor, Joseph, Nic- room and ran to Nicodemus, cry- odemus and Benjamin hurried to awaited him and would sit up ing: "Suchan evil day I have the garden; they saw the empty half the night telling the mer- tomb and marvelled. They also chant what Jesus had said and never seen, my husband. I have been the whole day following the heard the stories of the women done. crowds. Jesus has been cruci- who had gone early to the gar- den and were told how the fied."
A full day they had traveled "But he promised that he will guards had tried to defend themfrom Arimathrea to Jerusalem to live again," cried Benjamin. selves. the house of Nicodemus, a ruler "Judith, this ,child is a disciple "Look," cried Benj amin, "how of the Jews. He, too, was drawn of Jesus, and he would have beautiful this garden is! See to Jesus and had visited him by Joseph give the new tomb in his how the flowers are blooming. night to ask him many questions. garden outside the walls of Jeru- It is a holy place and people will "He gave all fQr me," mut- salem for the body of Jesus," ex- come to see it from over the seas tered Joseph, partly to himself, plained NicQdemus. and across burning deserts." "even his life. And I stand here "I beg it, too," said she as she Benjamin was right. Of all hesitant to give his crucified clasped her hands and turned to the gardens in the world the body a corner of my garden. Yet Nicodemus. "Let us give linens most famous in song and story if I went to Pilate, it would be and aloes to a hundred pounds." is the garden of Joseph of known that I am a disciple of She swung around to Joseph, ex- Arimathrea where the body of claiming: "I would not be Pon- Jesus was buried and where he Jesus." "Ah, but if you love him, J 0- tius Pilate for all the perfumes rose from the dead. seph of Arimathrea, you will of the East. He is uneasy in his count it an hQnor to have his soul tonight. He will not refuse Making Use of This Story body rest in yQur new tomb. In you." Children like to take part in pagthe years to come, men will "I will do it," said Joseph sud- eants, especially when they can be in denly, "for my heart tells me not costume and perform before adults. travel from far and near to see They like better often to take part in the place. 'Here it was,' they to be a coward." plays among themselves and to let will say, 'that the Lord's body "I go with you," cried Nico- their imaginations supply stage prop- was laid by his friend J Qseph.' demus, "and will do whatever I erties and costumes.
[206 ] BULLETIN Council of Women for 'Home Missions EDITED BY MISS EDITH E, LOWRY, 297 FOURTH AVENUE, NEW YORK, N. Y.
===============================~ "CAN CHRISTIANS BIND carry it out. It is hoped that Three members, each from the THE WORLD TOGETHER?" there may be a national radio The only answer to this is: we broadcast as a closing address. National Council of Federated can try. As we face a choice be- But for this the local papers Church Women, the Council of should be watched and local pro- Women for Home Mission-s, and tween Christianity and chaos, grams arranged accordingly. and there seems to be no other the Committee on Women's alternative, it is important that Last year the church women Work of the Foreign Missions of 414 communities in forty-four Conference. The activities and we should think and work to- states and Canada reported havgether. The National Committee ing h e I d interdenominational interests which have become the May Luncheons for the first responsibilities of its committees of Church Women brings this time. This is all the more re- include: (1) International relachallenge to the Christian wom- markable in that only one such tions, (2) World Day of Prayer, en of 77,000 communities in the luncheon was held in New York (3) May Day Luncheon, (4) The United States, and asks that they City each year during the years Church Woman (magazine), and unite in a nation-wide observ- 1934 to 1937 with an average at- (5) local programs. ance of the May Luncheon on tendance in the two hundreds. Thursday, May 4, 1939. To quote from a few of the re- The foundations for the organ- ports which came in last year: The May Luncheons may be "Westminster, Maryland. The ization of the National Commitheld wherever convenient – ho- most thrilling thing was the way tee of Church Women in its prestel, parish house, church gym- all seven churches cooperated in ent form were many years in the nasium or private home-as long arranging for the luncheon." laying. During the early part of as all "come together with one "Elmira, New York. Our main mind." It is suggested that plans address was broadcast for forty- the twentieth century a number five min utes over WESG." of community women's interdebe started immediately by a local "Lyndhurst, New Jersey. A nominational g r 0 ups were wo man's interdenominational committee was appointed to meet formed to further programs of group, a church woman's group, ten days after the luncheon to study and service. The year or some one woman. The coop~ make plans for further unity." 1924 found these groups related "Lawrence, Kansas. Twelve deeration of all Christian women nominations were represented." to the Council of Women for in the community is vital. "In- Home Missions and the Federaterdenominational" means not *** tion of Woman's Boards of Foronly members of the Protestant eign Missions, but evidencing a churches but of all churches WHY IS THERE A NA- desire to extend their programs which "accept Jesus Christ as TJONAL COMMITTEE OF into fields beyond these forms of God and Saviour," for so does CHURCH WOMEN? "Recogthe constitution of the WorId nizing the desperate need of the mission service so as to include Council define its membership. world for the leadership of Jesus all phases of the church's pro- in all areas of life, we hereby de- gram. In ord~r that church women clare that it is imperative that the country over may face the the womanhood of America be- In 1936 the National Council task unitedly, it is. essential (1) come a united force for bringing that the subject for the luncheon in the Kingdom of God and that of Federated Church Women be, "Can Christians Bind the this united body shall relate it- elected a Commission on Re- World Together?"; (2) that the self definitely to an inclusive evaluation to make a study of the I uncheon he interdenomina- united C h r i s t ian advance." whole movement of interdenomtional; and (3) that it be held These words embody the objec- inational cooperation and relaon May 4th. A program outline tive of the Committee which tionships. One of its recommenis being prepared and will be came into being January, 1938. dations was that a conference of Who constitutes the National all national Protestant interdesent to anyone on receipt of five Committee of Church Women? nominational women's groups cents in stamps.. (Address: The and denominational leaders be National Committee of Church [207] held. Out of that conference, Women, Room 63, 297 Fourth held at Lake Geneva in July, Avenue, New York, N. Y.) Local 1937, came the recommendation that a cooperative committee be leaders will have to be secured to formed. This was a,pproved by the two mission organizations,
members were appointed, and an without the aid of God, but I terms of human personality and initial meeting held September, KNOW . . . I KNOW . . . it the right of every man to be 1937. This committee was con- cannot be done without Him." treated as a God-created being stituted as the National Commit- whatever his race, color or tee of Church Women in J an- "How can we make you see," creed." uary, 1938. said he to the young people, "that this is the greatest cause you can "We need to make better use "This committee has taken dedicate your lives to today. All of our leisure time, devoting it only the first steps in cooperation about you, you see practices chal- to our cause and let people know and coordination," states its lenging your sense of right and we have a cause worth working chairman. "We dare not proph- wrong. All about you are signs for." esy as to its future, but we hope of an undermining of our prethis initial step may mean a cious heritage, the democracy in "We need to discover the truth steadily growing unity among which we live, founded in faith about monopoly control, selfish church women in purpose, pro- by our forefathers with the courgram and action, for only thus age of a real conviction." use of land which robs the soil can the respons,ibility in the of the power to bear fruit, selfish overwhelming tasks which are Where can youth find a use of privilege, exploitation of facing the Church and the church greater challenge than the call labor groups, the underpriviwoman today be faced and met." to heal the deep cleavage so ap- leged migrants,share-croppers, parent in human relations today. MABEL M. SHEIBLEY, Man's inhumanity to man, greed, tenant farmers, the unemployed, crime, oppression, strife, envy, city slum areas, the plight of the Member of the Editorial American Indian and the prob- and Publicity Committee, hate, and war, are these not ene- lems of Indian youth, unfair Council 0 f Women f.or mies enough to challenge any ad- practices in industry and race Home Missions. discrimination. All of us are in venturous soul? A "CAUSE" FOR AMER- Following Dr. Muste's ad- close touch with some of these ICAN YOUTH conditions. We may find that dress, five young people told very church people are in part respon- On January 8 there was held in Baltimore a conference for graphically what avenues of sible and therefore not willing young people, the purpose of service were open to· young peO- that our investigations should be which was to help them see a ple. made an issue. We shall need the little more clearly how they could make real the fact that Christian The young people then sep- courage therefore of our convic- Youth has, the answer to the vital arated and met in small groups tions, that is why it is important problems that face our world to- to discuss more intimately ways day. that we have convictions, and and means of participation in dare to live by them." Choosing as its theme, "Chris- the enterprises which offer optian Youth Has the Answer," the portunities for service. "We do not need to be minis- Young People's Committee of the ters or missionaries to put the Home Missions Councils spon- A number of very concrete Gospel into action." sored this conference for young recommendations were the repeople in connection with the sult of these group conferences, "We can form study groups, annual meetings of the Home some of which we enumerate: join a discussion group, plan and Missions Councils. carry out local projects, make a "We need to inform ourselves survey together, e x c han g e Dr. Abraham Muste, of the concerning conditions that are friendship invitations with for- Labor Temple, New York City, impoverishing and debasing mil- eign groups, offer our leisure was invited to pres.ent to youth lions of our fellow countrymen." his challenging message born out time to social service and recreaof a deep personal conviction "We need to demonstrate that tional centers, give voluntary that Christ is the only answer we are not willing to accept priv- service to City Mission interest man has with which to meet the groups, offer to sponsor a group challenge of present-day living. ileges and opportunities for our- selves and be content to ignore for under-privileged children, In his opening address, Dr. another's lack of privilege." but before all else, practice Muste stressed the fact of sin Christ-like living in all our perand the need of a recognition of "We need so deep a conviction sonal relationships." it as the deep seated cause for that existing conditions are our all the unrest and problems of responsibility that we shall feel "We need to give much more our day. "The Christ-way," said compelled to do something about time to prayer." Dr. Muste, "will face the fact of them." sin, man's need of God, his help- Thus did these young people lessness without God and his "We need a better knowledge express themselves. Has youth power when linked with the a cause? The greatest and Eternal. Once I too thought that of the Bible and Jesus' teachings grandest and most challenging man's way out could be found in order that we may approach existing problems in a Christ- cause in the world – one that manner." Christ died for, and one that we as young people must make ours "We need to begin by asking with a throbbing passionate con- ourselves-Am I truly Christian cern. in my attitudes and actions, in all my relationships?" JULIA HEINES, "We need to stop thinking Chairman, Joint Committee on about discrimination against one Young People's Work, Home particular race and think in Missions Council and Council of Women for Home Missions.
World–wide
A Missionary Newspaper of Current Events EDITED BY MRS. HENRIETTA H. FERGUSON, XENIA, OHIO !.'p'
INDIA, BURMA AND SIAM orable man. I have observed Conference at a meeting of its that you Christian people seem Executive Committee in Lahore. Persecution Raises Its Head to know how to do this." In response to this appeal, the Executive Committee passed the Mrs. John L. Goheen, Presby- Danger to be Avoided following resolution: "This Conterian missionary in West India, ference views with alarm the resays that the Hindu world at The following quotation from cent increase in the number of Sangli has blown wide open in Bishop Lapp's book, "The Chris- marriages in cases where the its determination to prevent the tian Church and Rural India," first wife is alive. It condemns Mahars from becoming Chris- emphasizes one of the difficulties the action of those educated tian. Nightly mass meetings in in Christian work in a Hindu en- women who, setting aside all the theater were held with well- vironment: standards of common decency known speakers exalting Hindu- and sympathy for their own sex, ism, attacking Christianity, de- Christian influence is spread out have consented to marry men nouncing the missionaries, and thinly and watered down to what it whose wives are still living. It warning people against going to is considered the non-Christian staff further appeals to. all women to Miraj and the Hospital. Daily and local non-Christian opinion will discountenance and socially boyarticles in the vernacular news- stand for. The compulsory method of cott all such marriages., and do papers were full of untruth and attendance at religious teaching is their utmost to prevent the celeinuendos. Members of the Hindu practiced, which too often imposes up- bration of such marriages in Missionary Society and others on the pupils an insipid form of re- future." descended upon a group of Chris- ligious instruction. No conversions to tians at night with gas torches Christianity are expected, and the ed- -Indian Social Reformer. and tried ,to terrify or cajole ,ucational training for both Christian them into renouncing their faith. and non-Christian students is given in Conference of Missionaries Few went back to Hinduism a secularized Brahmin atmosphere. to Moslems and those who have done so were One has called it partially Hinduizing all from places where Christian our Christian boys. . . . He compared In December, under the ausservices were infrequent. The what in his opinion are futile and pices of the Henry Martyn whole experience teaches the fruitful schools and supported Mr. School of Islamic Studies, a twonecessity of strengthening the Arthur Mayhew's view that quality of day conference of missionaries Christian life by means of daily work, personality, leadership and free to Moslems was held in Delhi. worship and by training leaders experimentation should characterize The delegates (61 in all) were for every village. This has led the Christian school in India. Our drawn from Turkey, Iran, Palesto the adoption of a plan for call as Christian forces is to do some- tine, Cairo, Korea, and from al-' holding classes to develop lay thing of the finest quality and embody most every part of India. A leaders. The high quality of the Christian ideals in every part of number of those present were on those who have come into the school life for the sake of the Chris- their way to Madras for the classes makes it plain that a new tian boys as future leaders in the World Conference. Under the door has opened. Church and in new India, and for the leadership of Dr. Murray Titus, non-Christian pupils and Indian ed- the delegates discussed "The Mrs. Goheen relates a signifi- ucationalists who watch our work, Christian Enterprise, and Its Incant incident in connection with and to whom the Christian Church fluence on Islam." One session the kindergarten at Sangli. A will be either commended or con- was devoted to the need for well known nobleman asked a demned thereby. He criticized the Christian literature for Mosmember of the Mission to take Western Church for building up huge lems. Miss Constance Padwick, his grandson into her home and institutions which represent methods of Jerusalem, told of present to bring him up as her own son, alien to the Indian eye and thought, trends in literature; Rev. W. A. saying – "I want him to be a and difficult for the future Indian Zoerner described an experiment good boy." Church to manage, in the day when in newspaper evangelism in the transfer of control and manage- North India. "But, you know," said the mis- ment into the hands of the Indian sionary, "I should have to teach Church seems so near at hand. "Lord's Acre" Plan in Katpadi him in the Christian way." Punjab Leaders and Polygamy "We are so poor; the rains "Teach him what you please have failed; our young men have and as you please, but make him Several prominent leaders of an upright, clean living and hon- the Punjab have characterized polygamy as the greatest social evil of India. Not long ago a spirited appeal was made to all women by the Central Punjab Branch of the All-India Women's [209 ]
had to go away to the tea estates progressive Maharajah who died pointment of a missionary the to earn cash to pay taxes. How recently, was to make an agree- next year. It soon undertook is it possible to double our ment to prevent alcoholic bev- w 0 r k among the depressed church contribution, if the Mis- erages from going to Bombay classes in Central Travancore, sion withdraws its help and we from his state which adjoins the from whom it met ready reare to pay our pastor his $25 a Bombay presidency. sponse. Within six years, it or- month ?" Total prohibition is one of the ganized the annual Convention at This was the response to the chief objectives of the Congress Mar3Jmon which is the largest news that the Arcot Mission was for an India which they hope to evangelical Christian gathering obliged to discontinue its annual make absolutely independent of in the world. The Convention grant of $150 to a rural church. England. Writing in his weekly which lasts for a week has been A meeting was called; the mis- paper "Harijan," Gandhi says conducted regularly for the last sionary explained the "Lord's the Congress has the right to ex- forty-four years.
Acre" idea, and it was agreed to pect the sympathy "of the best The audience, which often send month-old, purebred chick- minds in the whole world in this, numbers over thirty thousand, ens from the poultry farm toO perhaps the greatest moral listens to the GoOspel truths froOm some 200 village homes, to be movement of the century." famous evangelists. The activi- raised and later contributed to ties of the association oOutgrew the church. The plan took root, To Train Women Workers the boundaries oOf Travancore and Rev. J. J. ValoOis has set within which it was oOriginally down SoOme of the tangible re- Last year the Punjab governsuIts: The IoOcal income was ment launched a five-year plan confined. In its eighteenth antrebled; the pastor received his for rural development, and as a nual meeting it decided to undersalary regularly; everyone had part of this plan a domestic take missionary activities oOut- side Travancore, and then in a specific share in making the training school for women will Bombay Presidency. venture a success, and the spir- be opened in Lahore. One stuitual life was deepened; the dent from each district has been Membership is open to all selected. Christians without distinction, work was not a "flash in the It is claimed toO be the first at- and every member is expected pan," but interest has continued; tempt of its character in India. to be a witness. "N0 debts" is purebred poultry has spread to After receiving nine months another principle lately adopted. other villages; the project at- training these women welfare tracted attention of other vil- -National Missionary lages; and it was the Indians workers will be posted to their Intelligencer. themselves, not the foreign mis- respective districts and tour sioOnary, whoO made the plan selected villages. They will teach Gospel Transforms Primitive work. -Agricultural Mission women improved methods of Men cooking, sewing, knitting, ele- Notes. mentary hygiene, animal hus- Rev. C. U. Strait, of the bandry, fruit culture, gardening, Burma Baptist Mission, says PoOrt of Bombay Decreed Dry that on his first trip to the Chin cooperatives, maternity and wel- Hills fifteen years ago, the Dewitt MacKenzie, Associated fare work. The school will be Deputy Commissioner, a fellow Press correspondent, says that run on residential lines. passenger, bluntly asked him if Gandhi's crusade to make India he knew where he was going; -The Guardian (Bombay).
dry in three years appears to be Mar Thoma Evangelistic and on finding that Mr. Strait "going places." His latest tri- Association was on his way toO undertake umph puts the world famous missionary work, added: "Do port of Bombay on the dry list The Mar Thoma Syrian Chris- you know that the Haka Chins as from August 1. This cosmo- tian Evangelistic Association of are all drunkards-men, women politan city of about 1,200,000 the Reformed Syrian Church in and children?" They were not people has for centuries provided Malabar has completed fifty only drunkards, he found, but the means of quenching the years of missionary work. 'It dirty to the point of being filthy, thirst of wayfarers from all na- preceded the National Mission- and ignorant beyond belief. Povtions. ary Society of India by 17 years. erty, too, was the natural conse- Thus far, out of the 11 prov- It was in September, 1888, that quence. inces of British India, partial twelve men met in Central Tra- A review of what has happrohibition has been inaugurated vancore and decided to fOrllli an pened in a decade and a half is in half a dozen where the nation- association to take the Christian convincing proof of the power alists-that is, the All-India Na- message to their fellowmen of the Gospel. There are now tional Congress – have gained without distinction of caste, Christians in more than a huncontrol of the governments. Ad- creed or denomination. Every dred villages; four hundred or dition of the rich prize of Bom- member of the group was to con- more are baptized every year. bay to the list will give the move- tribute according to his means, Not many of these revert to ment much impetus. as well as to be himself a witness heathenism. Drunken f e as t s One of the last acts of the bearer. Growth in membership have given way toO the Commun- Gaekwar of Baroda, the famQus and funds made possible the ap- ion Service, and it is an in-
OUR WORLD-WIDE OUTLOOK
spirational scene never to be for- tian Homes Campaign of the Hangchow College in Shanghai gotten, says Mr. Strait, to attend Chinese Church, which aims at the Communion Service at a making every Christian home a Dr. Clarence B. Day, of Hang- Chin Hill Association meeting. center of witness. Daily family chow Christian College, writes There twelve to fifteen hundred worship is insisted upon, and is that this college, driven from Christians come together from becoming the regular custom. Hangchow by the Japanese infar and near, and instead of hair Many Chinese Christians would vasion, is now carrying on in the pulling and drunken bouts, one be greatly surprised if they Continental Emporium (a bankobserves a very devout and con- came to America and found how ing and office building) on Nansecrated service. While all are rare a thing is family worship. king Road, Shanghai. St. John's seated closely together on the College was located here a year ground, the service is conducted Missionaries Help Victims ago and Soochow University and without commotion and with the Science Departments of the reverence and dignity. The NO'rth American News- University of Shanghai occupy paper Alliance adds its testimony space in the same building. Indian Church in Rangoon to the service rendered by mis- These temporary arrangements sionaries during the war. More have been made possible by Three years ago an Indian than 4,000 Americans have American contributions. These Church was established in Ran- joined about 3,000 missionaries institutions are working togO'O'n at Judson College. This of other Western nations in gether in class work and operate church now has 88 members, of forming a highly specialized a joint library and a student whom 64 are men and 24 are corps which constitutes the only cafeteria. There are about 2,000 women. During the past year prO'tection the Chinese have in men and women students that there were 16 baptisms. Pastor the dangerous and frequently tax the seating capacity of the Devadass devotes his time to the Iong interval between the retreat classrooms and crowd the elevachurch and evangelistic work of Chinese civil and military tors and stairways. The new amO'ng the Tamils and Telugus forces and the establishment of educational posters display the within the school and in the vi- law and order by the Japanese slogan: "War or no war, Chinese cinity. There are 83 children in invaders. Often they act as Pied Youth must be educated." the Bible school. Pipers to' lead hO'meless children O'ut of the danger zone. For Communists Less Hostile – Watchman-Examiner. more than two years, in addition to Christianity to their usual evangelistic, med- CHINA ical and educational work, they Dr. Earl Cressy, in China have undertaken such special Marches Toward the Cross, Building for the Future tasks as scouring the streets for makes the remarkable statement wO'unded, thrusting themselves that anti-Christian sentiment "Button your cO'at!" is an between drunken Japanese sol- among communists is disappearorder heard frequently on the diers bent 'On looting and raping ing. It is not to be concluded street of any Chinese city. It is their victims, and generally try- that all of them are becoming part of the New Life Move- ing to ease the blows of an occu- Christians, but there is a vast ment which is waging war upon pation by an army that is a law- change from the bitter spirit of untidiness, laziness, .vice and less mob. The conduct of the 1928. Freedom has been given dirt. Anyone slouching along the missionaries is adding a remark- to evangelistic bands of Chinese street with garments half on is able chapter to the history of hu- pastors to circulate among them likely to be told by a member of man heroism in the face of gall- and preach the Gospel. This the YO'uth Brigade to straighten ing trial. sweeping change is described by up his shoulders and keep on the Bishop Roots: left side of the rO'ad. But this is "Only nationals of a foreign not all. The New Life Movement nation can meet the invaders "A short time ago I invited to sends inspectors intO' homes, and and talk to them," is a statement lunch with me one of' the comlabels are affixed to dO'O'rs in- repeated over and over again. munist generals whom I had forming the public whether the heard of in 1930 as a determined hoones are clean or dirty. Every The actual number of mission- enemy of Christianity. After child in school is expected to' do aries on the field has decreased preliminary polite remarks, but something to improve his own by only about 10ro' since the war before he would eat, he asked particular surroundings. Armies began. Board officials report the me, 'Do you remember our past?' of fly swatters strive to see who frequent spectacle of mission- I replied that I remembered him can produce the largest number aries on field trips, caught by an as one who, some years ago, had of dead' flies in a given time. advancing Japanese army, has- carried some of my friends tening frantically back to their around with him as his prison- The O'ld and mid-dle aged in posts, from which Chi n e s e ers. To this he said, 'There were night schoO'ls learn to read how armies and refugees were as many misunderstandings then. a literate people can build a new frantically fleeing away. All de- The missionaries have helped China. The war with Japan has nominations and agencies report much in Shens,i and Shansi. We only increased the ardor of both a large increase in the number are sorry for the misunderstandold and young. Paralleling the of conversions. New Life Movement is the Chris-
ings of the past and want to black lacquer tablet with the JAPAN-CHOSEN work with them for the good of four Chinese words meaning "True Source of All Created Japan Sends Buddhist Priests China hereafter.''' – Watchman-Examiner. Things." The presentation was made in A subtle move on the part of Persecution and Destruction Japan is to send Buddhist priests style. There were musicians and to China, a piece of mission work Forty years of devoted, effi- bearers in gay uniform, some undertaken by the Japanese Budcient service in one of the hard- dhist Federation, whose memest fields in the world, Chinese fine speeches were made and the bership comprises 159,000 Bud- Turkestan, has been tragically usual picture taken. To ensure dhist priests. interrupted. Fourteen of the tha,t only good influences should seventeen missionaries who have Two hundred Japanese Budbeen working under the auspices prevail while the tablet was be- dhist priests have been chosen of the Swedish Mission in Sin- ing hung, the band dared not for the work. Their activities kiang Province (Chinese Tur- stop playing while it was hoisted began October 1 with an inkestan) have been compelled to and fastened in place high above tensive three-weeks' course in return home because of the per- the pulpit. the Chinese language, this course being provided by the Ministry -London Missionary Herald.
secution of the Christians and The Resurgence in the West of Education. Since both peothe practically utter destruction ples use the same characters, the of their work. During a Moslem China's Millions makes fur- acquisition of a working knowlrevolt the station at New Kash- ther comment on the significance edge of Chinese will not be an gar was burned; later the rebels of the westward trek of refu- insuperable task for these J apwere suppressed or driven into gees, which has included per- anese priests.-The Guardian. India. But local authorities re- sonnel of government departvived the persecution, scattering ments, leaders of education, or imprisoning the Christians finance and industry, seeking re- Korean Village Campaign and closing the printing office establishment in "free" China. The plans of the Oriental Misand the hospital. The British A government commission made sionary Society include the send- Foreign Office sought to remedy a survey of these western prov- ing of bands of students to the the situation, but as there was islands off the coast of Korea. no improvement only three mis- inces, and found that their rich- The islanders are very poor, as ness in natural resources is far sionaries have remained to beyond the imagination of those they suffer frequent drouths and watch developments. living in eastern China. They live chiefly on barley instead of Honoring the Church have remained unexploited for rice. Many of them live and die on the island where they were VVhen the Japanese forces lack of good communications, born, without ever making a trip but there are now strategic to the mainland, and therefore were attacking Tsinan, the UTa motor roads linking the large know nothing of such modern cities; one 1,400 miles long ex- things as railway trains and Huai Shu" Christian center shel- motor cars. The students were tered more than 1,000 women tends to the Burmese frontier, often mistaken for government and girls. for over a month, and and it was along this highway officials or police, and many fed those destitute. To show their gratitude, the citizens came that our American ambassador places they had to work for some made the first trip by private car time to assure the people that to the mission and said: "Let us it was all right for them to acpresent you with a red silk um- on his return to the United cept the Gospel tracts. which they States. brella on which the names of the were distributing. donors are inscribed in golden There is an astonishing num- ber of Christians among these letters." "VVhat could we do fleeing refugees, and like the with a red silk umbrella," the "scattered brethren" of the early As they journeyed here and church, they are "everywhere there they sometimes arrived on missionaries asked. "Then we will present you preaching the word." As to stu- an island at midnight, and would find all the inns closed and the with an inscribed tablet that will dents, a missionary writes: extol your virtues to a hundred "If you can imagine all the occupants asleep. They would generations," they said. school boys and girls and univer- then climb the rocks above the "That won't please us," re- sity students of England scat- sea and spend the rest of the plied the missionaries, "we don't tered over the capitals of Europe night praying for all those asleep want to be glorified. VVhy not you get some picture of the ex- below in sin and ignorance. buy a bell to call people to wor- tent, although not of the number, Statistical reports show that ship? If you must present a of refugee students." Another these bands walked 3,519 miles, gift, let it be one in praise of the missionary in Yunnanfu empha- dealt personally with 4,242 perheavenly Father who kept us sizes the spiritual changes that sons, held 218 open-air meetings, safe." So it was decided and have come about, and says that with the result that 918 persons these words were embossed on so strong is the national unity definitely sought the Saviour.
the bell: "The Bell to Rouse the that China can never be con- -Oriental Missionary VVorld." They also prepared a quered by an enemy. Standard.
OUR WORLD-WIDE OUTLOOK
ISLANDS OF THE PAOIFIO NORTH AMERIOA ing to the religious faith of their families. The bill further pro- Going to New Guinea Is America Becoming Pagan? vides that pupils be credited with the time so spent, as if in The latest word from Captain Here are a few facts that actual attendance in school. Ellis Skolfield says that the pro- would seem to substantiate Dr. jected New Guinea trip of the William Adams Brown's claim A Nation-Wide Reading Poll Gospel Ship is now definitely that "America is progressively under way, and the Ship is now becoming pagan." Nearly half The American Institute of at J 010, the last outpost of the of our present population claims Public Opinion has recently com- Philippines b e for e entering no sort of relationship to the pleted a poll on the question: Dutch waters. At J 010 the bal- Christian Church. Ten thousand "What is the most interesting ance of supplies and oil are be- rural communities are church- book you ever ·read?" The aning taken aboard and the re- less, while thirty thousand have swers indicate that the Bible is mainder of the Ship's personnel no pastor in residence. Ap- still the most favored. However, are being awaited. proximately 13,400,000 Ameri- the age distribution is disquiet- can children under twelve years ing. The percentage of people In addition to a full crew in- of age receive no religious in- more than fifty years old who cluding two engineers, there will struction whatever. Many moun- preferred it was more than twice be Captain Skolfield, Dr. Culley, tain pockets and range regions as large as those between thirty Rev. Simon Meek, pastor of the of the South and West, back- and fifty; and six times as high Chinese Church in Manila who ward sections of New England, as those under thirty. will go along as interpreter and Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, the Chinese evangelist and Rev. Dakotas, and elsewhere, voice An editorial in the New York Percy Fraser, independent mis- urgent demands for adequate re- Times declares: sionary who has served in the ligious ministries. Utah has Navy and who will go along as seven whole counties without a Any comment on this may do no special helper to Captain Skol- functioning evangelical mission. more than betray the age of the comfield, also as an addition to the mentator; but it remains a plausible crew. Mr. Fraser is also an In Maine, 100,000 rural folk conjecture that if fewer of the young earnest soul-winner. In addition have no religious opportunities, people of today prefer the Bible it is to these men there will be sev- and throughout New England, because fewer of them read it. It eral Filipino evangelists in the contains not only about the best Engparty. only 40 % of the adults and 33 % lish prose ever written but a greater variety of material than can be found A special gift has made pos- of the young people are claimed in any other single volume on the book sible the purchase of a new life by any church or Sunday school. market; purely as literature, some of boat and some other needed A study of 11 townships of one the most widely read persons in all equipment. Michigan county showed 1,005 ages have found it better reading than children enrolled in 46 public anything else. Oentral Philippine Oollege schools, yet with no church or Sunday school. Another Mich- But in the days when it was uni- Central Philippine College at igan county reported that ap- versally read it was not read purely Iloilo has encouraged local self- proximately one-half its public as literature; it was read because it government since its beginning school pupils were unrelated to was the Word of God, the infallible in 1923, when four Filipino any church, Protestant, Catholic guide for life. If fewer people read members were elected to serve or Jewish. it now, that is to the lasting detriment with the seven missionary mem- of the cultural background of a nation. bers on the school's board of Moral Instruction in Schools trustees. By 1929 a majority of No such survey has previously the trustees were Filipinos. Mis- A bill introduced in the New been made, so that this one does sionaries' places were filled by Jersey State Legislature in Feb- not determine a trend. Some Filipinos in 1936 and 1937 when ruary proclaims in its preamble believe that an adequate apprea number of missionary terms that "One of the first requisites ciation of the Bible can only be expired. In accord with this of a harmonious, contented and acquired in later life, while policy, President H. F. Stuart prosperous state depends upon others say it can never be truly recently offered his resignation, religious tolerance and under- appreciated unless it has been expecting that a Filipino would standing." This bill would au- loved from youth. be chosen to head the institution. thorize public schools to provide The trustees felt that the time one hour of moral instruction In Behalf of Ohina had not yet come for this, and each week; and local boards appointed Rev. F. H. Rose as would be authorized-a permis- American interest in the sufacting president, while they look sive measure – to survey the ferings of the Chinese and the about for a suitable Filipino for religious affiliations of pupils. fate of China is shown by the vice-president, who may later With such information in hand, fact that there are eighty orbecome president. boards could then excuse certain ganizations in America working pupils to attend their respective for the relief of the Chinese suf- -Watchman-Examiner. places of· worship, there to re- ferers or to create practical sym- ceive moral instruction accord- pathy in their behalf. A direc- tory of these groups, published at 33 West 55th Street, New York City, includes all types of organizations, emphasizing va-
rious projects such as political young presbyters were conse- their disregard of the prior occuaid to China, the boycott of Jap- crated. It is patterned after a pation of a field by other Chrisanese goods, the promotion of similar venture started about tian workers. All Christians trade with China, friendly rela- eighteen months earlier in Nas- might learn some valuable lestions and relief of sufferers. sau and Suffolk Counties, New sons from the work of this ener- Eleven of the American organ- York. -New York Times. getic denomination.
izations are composed entirely of German-speaking Churches Chinese. They are scattered all The Seventh-Day Adventists over the country, from New York to California, and from The General Conference of German-speaking churches in Toronto, Canada, to Durham, Seventh-Day Adventists was or- North Carolina. ganized in 1863 – seventy-five the United States form the years ago. Today the work of Progress of Church Union largest foreign group in the Con- this Church is carried forward Those who wish to see denom- all over the world. The Church gregational- Christian Church. inational union will be interested was founded in 1845 and was to know that twelve such unions stimulated by a revival in Bible These have an aggregate memhave taken place in the United study on both sides of the At- States since 1906. Dr. E. D. bership of 22,166, and 109 pas- Kohlstedt, President of the Home lantic Ocean. The leaders em- Missions Council, lists them as phasized keeping God's law, tors. Most of these are in rural follows: especially the observance of the communities. Approximately 95 1906-Presbyterian Church, U. S. A., seventh day as the Sabbath, the and Cumberland Presby- imminent second coming of per cent are German immigrants terian Church. Christ and the judgment on un- from Russia, and the children of 1911-Northern Baptist and Free believers. In 1844 Adventists Baptist Churches. counted a thousand followers such parentage. Who are these and in 1863 there were 3,500 1917-Three Lutheran groups form members. In 1874 these had in- people? German colonists, after the Norwegian Church in creased to 7,000 and in 1894 to America. 42,763. Thirty years later there 1763, settled in southeastern were 70,000 members in Europe 1918-Three other Lutheran bodies Russia and became the object of form the United Lutheran alone with a total of 238,657 in Church. 5,393 churches in all lands. intense persecution. In the early There were then 8,679 pastors 1920-Presbyterian Church, U. S. A., and missionaries scattered to the seventies of the last century, the and Welsh Calvinistic Meth- odist Church. ends of the earth – in addition Czar determined to make Rus- to institutional workers. Today 1922-Evangelical Association and the Adventists report 28,029 sians out of them, and it was United Evangelical Church. workers in 385 countries and in then they sought America, the 1924-Reformed Church in the United 714 languages and dialects. They States and Hungarian Re- have a total membership of land of liberty. Emigration be- formed Church. 452,758 with 8,388 organized churches. The work continues gan at once, but it was not until 1924-Congregational and Evangelical to grow through 5,923 mission- Protestam Churches. after 1890 that they came in ary Volunteer Societies with a 1931-Congregational and Christian membership of 130,748. The large numbers, after which there groups are united. total denominational investment is reported to be $60,026,066. was a continuous influx until 1931-Three Lutheran bodies merge into the American Lutheran Two secrets of the progress 1914. By 1920 there were Church. of this Christian movement seem to be: (1) the missionary spirit 303,532 of their number first 1934-Evangelical Synod of North of its members; (2) the em- America and Ref 0 r m e d and second generation, in the Church in United States. United States. 1939-Unification of American Meth- odism. It is significant that the young Youth Presbytery in Brooklyn people are making little or no In Brooklyn, N. Y., twelve of effort to break away from the religious traditions of their elders. Although there is little opportunity for fellow s hip among these German Congrega- tionalists, since they are scat- tered over a wide area, they maintain their entity as if by un- seen ties, and hold to their mother tongue with great te- nacity. -Advance.
Why Work Among Mormons?
the 38 Presbyterian churches phasis on the Bible as the Word Recently a contributor to and missions have set up a pro- of God; (3) the tithing system Westminster College in Utah visional youth presbytery, made that produces a large and steady wrote Hans P. Freece, a repreup of delegates from young peo- income for church and mission- sentative of this College, and a ples' groups. Their purpose is ary work; (4) the wide use of former Mormon: "As Mormons to promote greater cooperation Christian literature; and (5) the no longer practice polygamy, and in religious work with members large number of volunteer we are led to believe they are their own age from churches of workers. highly educated, with a great other denominations. Members The chief criticisms of the deal of culture and refinement, are to be between the ages of movement are their undue em- just what is the purpose of mis- 15 and 30. phasis on the Old Testament sionary work among them?" To The project was formally Law-especially the observance which Mr. Freece replies :-"It launched in January, when 28 of the old Jewish Sabbath-and is true that polygamy is not now
OUR WORLD-WIDE OUTLOOK
openly practiced, but Mormons forc~ the law against selling liquor Colombian Missionary Society to mmors and to intoxicated persons say the Lord has only suspend- we would request the Territorial A correspondent in Colombian Liquor Commission to deny license re- Clippings describes a meeting of ed it for the time being and that funds to the town, and instead turn ~he Women's Missionary Society that money into the Territorial Treas- m the Central Presbyterian He will restore it in His own ury. Consequently the law was rigidly enforced and there was and is prac- Church of Barranquilla.. There time. God Himself has many tically no drunkenness. The mer- are the usual officers, with com- chant~ re~ort that many long out- mittees expected to have somewives, they say, and polygamy is standmg bIlls have been paid and that thing to report at each meeting. sales I;lre the largest in' years – for Roll call is answered with each practiced in heaven." ~rocerIes, hardware, paint and cloth- member repeating a Bible verse; mg. Mr. Troutman, the principal, de- there is a free will offeriXlg, and "Refinement and culture" are serves all the credit for his fearless a true prayer service. cooperation and determination to probelow the average in Utah. Some tect the natives. The society contributes to help support sick members, and paid better class Mormons send their Monday Morning says that al- the expenses for the hospitaliza- most every third door on the young people to Westminster main street of Sitka is a liquor tion of a faithful member. They stor~. This means sixty saloons also helped to purchase a horse College to get "refinement and servmg a population of less than and saddle for an itinerant mis- 3,500. Alaskan natives are so sionary. culture" ; also, high scholastic ,concerned about this situation attainments. Mormons do not know God nor trust in Jesus Christ, and Christian workers are needed in Utah for the same reason they are needed in China India and Africa. '
Indians On Their Own? that the Alaskan Native Broth- erhood, and Alaskan Native Sis- One of the recommendations terhood, at their 26th annual Among Primitive Indians on Indian work made by the convention, went on record as in favor of a system of governmen- The South American Indians Home Missions Council at its last tal control of liquor, similar to form one of the many groups meeting was a motion for the re- that in force in British Colum- that await the coming of the moval of certain Indian groups bia. missionary. These neglected peofrom the wardship of the Gov- ple range from healthy and ernment, particularly those who LATIN AMERICA friendly to degenerate and suscan well afford to meet their picious. They live in hidden vilobligations in taxation and other Cuban Workers Encouraged lages of the jungle, some orderly, elements of citizenship. some not, in primitive grass Several features of the Cuban houses. Other recommendations called work during the past year mark for the preparation of a state- advance, according to a South- The Inland South America ment setting forth the essentials ern Baptist report. Services are Missionary Union sent two of of a missionary program for In- more largely attended. Sunday their staff, with Indian guides, dians, involving trained leader- schools al'e larger. There are to survey the possibilities for more. frequent calls for cottage wo fo rtkh ea l omnigg ht ht iee sXt i ntgriubuRtiavreir~sonoef ship and one or more cooperative meetmgs. Places of worship are the Amazon. The first five days parishes for experimental work. taxe~ to capacity at ordinary were overland by mule back, Included in this statement is to serVIces, and are proving too attended by every possible diffibean appraisal of the Church's small for special occasions. culty connected with mule psywork in relation to other agen- chology. Then they reached the cies, and suggestions as to serv- The same spirit is manifest in river and the l'est of the trip was many different sections. At Co- by canoe, which sounds pleasant ices best performed by the lon, where people seemed apa- and peaceful but was not. The Church, as well as those best thetic a year ago, there are full canoes were crudely hollowed performed by other agencies. houses at all services. An evan- logs, shallow and heavily loaded. gelist who carried forty decision There were frequent and diffi- -Monday Morning. cards with him when he began cult portages. The sun was blaz- special services in Colon found ing and the insects biting. The Liquor in Alaska they were not enough. This Indian guides fished with bow steady growth calls for better and arrow. One of the men hung Much controversary has arisen trained workers. his clothes to dry on the ropes of the mosquito net one night, and over the liquor problem in Alas- The Southern Baptist Semi- in the morning found that car- nary, now in its third year, has rier ants had happened along ka, and the natives themselves seventeen students. Five go out and devoured most of his shirt. on Sunday to as many different deplore the laxness of law en- centers. Enrolment in the Mis- forcement. Rev. R. K. Wthheeelnear~ of Haines, writes t hat tives had success in their fishing last season, and knowing the peril they were facing he and the government school principal determined to prevent the natives sion School has reached 200 not The missionaries viewed their including seminary students: The hardships with a sense coofnhscuimouosr~ from squandering all their earn- name has been changed from and their perils with a ings on whiskey. He says: Cuban American College to Co- ness of God's protecting care. We notified the Town Council that legio Bautista (Baptist College). -Episcopal News Service. unless the town marshals strictly en-
Two Missions Merged been put up. After surveying the assemblies devoted to the enrich- situation, Mr. Everitt writes: ment of spiritual life. The two Presbyterian Missions in Brazil, the Central and At present there are about 150 In- One is inclined to believe that the South, have been merged for dians living at Poso Yacare and I the pr·esent lull in the battle administrative reasons, and will suppose 200 or more working at the against the Evangelical Churches now be called the Central Brazil cane fields, who will be shortly return- at present is based upon the Mission. Brazil is larger than the ing; there are also numbers of In- same theory as that followed by United States, and the lack of dians living in the vicinity. As there the Communists in Russia in the roads in the interior make it im- is plenty of forest here where they can earlier days of their antireligious possible for committees or collect wild fruits, plenty of fish in the activities: that of letting the administrative g r 0 ups from river, and fruitful ground for gardens,. "old fools" have their churches widely spaced regions to meet there is no reason why this should not so long as youth can be won for planning and organizing be a prosperous startion. -away. The choicest boys are bework. Although the lack of com- ing picked and trained as teachmunications is still a serious To cut down trees and put up build- ers, burgomasters, government problem, it is less so than for- ings is one thing, he continues, but to officials and army officers. They merly, and the two missions be- teach these people and lead them to are insulated as far as possible lieve that greater economy and Christ requires nothing short of a from all Christian influences. more effective work will result miracle. But we have seen miracles from the union. of this kind, and we know that God is -Advance. all-powerful. Lavras Agricultural College Nazification Objectives -Life of Faith. This institution, under the No comment is needed upon auspices of the Southern Presby- EUROPE the following quotation from an terian Church, has recently been address of Alfred Rosenberg, given a very distinct recognition Bibles at Glasgow Empire culture minister of the German by the Brazilian government, Exhibition Reich: having its diplomas accepted for official registration. This mission The great "Empire Exhibi- That the Catholic Church and also agricultural college was the only tion" of Glasgow was open from the Confessional Church, in their presprivate school in Brazil obtain- May to October, 1938, and was ent form, must disappear from the ing such recognition. While the visited by more than 12,000,000 life of our people, is my full convicgovernment realized that the people. Many opportunities were tion, .. , The Hitler Youth Organizaphysical equipment of Lavras afforded for distributing Bibles, tion is an absorbent sponge which was not on a full equality with and none more unique than nothing can withstand. Furthermore, the official government schools, among the dwarfs of "Midget the development of our teaching the outstanding work of the Lav- Town" in the Amusement Park. scheme in schools of all categories is ras graduates caused them to ac- A few of them were Germans, of such an anti-Christian-Jewish type cept the work of Lavras as being the rest Poles, so with a supply that the growing generation will be fully equivalent to that of its of German and Polish Gospels a forewarned against the black-coat own schools. worker sought permission to dis- swindle, , .. We have another means tribute them. He was told that of pressure also and that is the finan- For many years the school had it would be of no use, but the cial one. But here also we must prono more than 2'5 students, but little people were found to be ceed prudently, although systematisince the government recogni- eager to receive the copies. "Po- cally, so as to cut the financial arteries tion the number has gone up to li, Poli," they cried delightedly supplying those clergy whom we cannearly 100. Every effort is now as they retired to a corner to not win over. . . . Reasonable men being made to put the equipment read. will, under pressure, find themselves on a par with that of the govern- compelled to submit to National Soment schools. Some time later a second visit cialist leadership. was paid to "Midget Town," and -Agricultural Mission the visitor was not forgotten. The expected offensive against Notes. Polish Testaments were joyfully Catholic schools in Austria has accepted. The worker was asked been more rapid than was an- In Argentine Chaco to inscribe each copy, after ticipated, and the few Catholic which he was invited to have tea schools permitted to continue The South American Mission- with the midgets. Afterwards, function are those for defective ary Society has established a new it was found that these little station at Poso Yacare, Argen- people carried their Testaments children. * tine Chaco, and the people are about as if a precious possession. eager to learn about the Gospel. The Waldensians Mr. and Mrs. W. C. Everitt have Bible Sales Increase taken up permanent residence in Germany Torre PeIlice, the little capital there, and several buildings have of Italian Protestantism, might The three Bible Societies in be called "the Geneva of Italy." the German Reich (those of There are today 120 Waldensian Wurttemberg, Saxony and Prus- churches and missions through- sia) report an extraordinary in- crease in the sale of Bibles. In • The bulletin of the World's Student line with this is the increased Christian Federation states that on August attendance at Christian summer 19 the German press announced the sup- preSSion of the German Student Christian Movement and the German Women Student Christian Movement.
OUR WORLD-WIDE OUTLOOK
out the land. Lack of funds has effect, and it is said that condi- establishment of international closed the doors of many of their order. schools. One in a remote part of tions are worse now than at that Sicily, with 250 pupils all from -Life of Faith. non-Protestant families, is kept time. Wandering Preachers in open by self-sacrifice on the part Soviet Union of the teachers, who continue Baptist Churches in Rumania without salary. This school has A magazine article recently a long waiting list. Parents pre- In spite of a government order published in Warsaw reveals fer to send their children to the permitting several B apt i s t that in spite of persecution, Or- Evangelical School, even though churches in Rumania to reopen, thodox priests and non-conforma small fee is required, while all churches of that denomina- ist preachers travel up and down government schools are free. tion remain closed; and will re- Russia, holding services and fuse to open even one unless per- evangelizing. They have been Every morning the day's work mission is granted to all. There begins with an hour's Bible are 1,602 Baptist churches in deprived of their parishes, and teaching. The work has far- Rumania. The Minister of the have no settled home. Most of reaching results, as shown by an Interior has given 0 r d e r s them have registered as craftsincident recounted by the pastor. throughout Rumania that no men, to shield themselves from Talking to a boy of nine, he more Baptists are to be arrested, persecution ; and earn their livasked him whether his parents and churchmen are pinning their ing by any kind of manual work could read. To his astonishment, faith to him. Some have it that ililteracy being high in the place, the Rumanian Government is they can find to do, sewing boots, the boy responded, "Yes, Sir." anxious to place itself in a favor- sharpening knives or laying "Where did they go to school?" able light in the United States, brick. Wherever opportunity was the next question, to which in view of the New York World's the answer came, "They have Fair, soon to open. presents itself, they minister to never been to school." Mystified, the spiritual needs of the people. the pastor asked, "How then did Eastern Orthodox Churches All this in spite of the fact that they learn to read?" "I taught in Soviet Russia only officially them," was the boy's answer. The Provisional Committee of registered persons may perform "Every day, when I go home, I the World Council of Churches, teach them from my Bible what meeting in Paris, decided to religious services, and only in I have been learning at school." stress particularly the Commit- chapels under constant super- tee's work among the Eastern vision of local authorities. Unquestionably, to evangelize Orthodox Churches of Russia Italy is to promote the peace of and the Balkans. A special depu- In a recent number of The Europe and of the world. tation was authorized to visit the Godless, the Commissar for Balkans with a view tci strength- Atheism has a curious observa- -The Christian. ening ties, and to develop relief tion: "Ever since the beginning work among the hundreds of Purge of Minorities churches suffering from govern- of the Revolution, no clergyman ment oppression. It was also de- fears the Internationale; where- A missionary in Rumania, re- cided to hold an ecumenical sem- as Bolsheviks even up to the turning from furlough in the inar in Hungary, for the benefit present day experience terror at United States, says that after of student pastors, ministers and the sight of the Cross." "the glorious freedom" at home lay leaders. the return to Rumania is like be- -Life of Faith. ing abruptly landed in another As for the possibility of callworld; and is confident that not ing a confel'ence to discuss the Jewish Home a Failure since the days of the catacombs economic and other causes of has there been such a gigantic war, as purposed by the Federal Ten years ago the Soviet plan to wipe out completely all Council of Churches, it was Evangelical Christianity as that pointed out that the demands of Union founded a Jewish Home being launched by the Govern- the rulers of Germany, Italy and ment of Rumania, unless one ex- Japan have gone far beyond in Siberia, near the Manchukuo cepts that of Russia. Threats, mere economic issues; and inbeatings, arrests and closed volve racial, political and im- frontier. It was planned to setchurches are the methods being perial ambitions which no conused. This missionary believes ference can deal with. Hope tle, on collective farms, Jews that the year 1939 is the time set was expressed that individual by Rumania to purge all reli- Christians may exert an in- from the Ukraine, White Russia gious minorities, and has set fluence to check the drift toward herself to the task in dead war; and general secretaries and other parts of the Soviet earnest. were asked to call together a small number of competent per- Union, to develop the rich min- This was written before the sons, representative of different decree withdrawing rights and nations and churches, who may eral resources and timber of the privileges of Baptists went into exchange their thought as to the region, and gradually to create a self-supporting economic unit.
It was thought that 100,000 Jews would settle in this 12,000 square mile area in ten years.
Later, Jews from other countries were to be invited.
There was some response on the part of Jews, but there has been a large exodus, for not more than 20,000 are now living there, and they are outnumbered by non-Jewish inhabitants, three to one. -Alliance Weekly.
Anti-Church Maneuvers beria, only remaining free ter- There are seven native pas- ritory, the Government has in- tors, 7 licentiates, 201 evange- The difference between com- vited the Mission to Lepers to lists, 152 teachers; and, with munism and lliaziism in their at- secretaries, a total paid staff of titude toward the Church seems cooperate with it and with the 368. Church gains are reported to be one of method only, and three main Missions there in a in all phases of the work. The may be summarized thus: "Rus- campaign to wipe out leprosy. parish has grown to 15,000 sia, the godless; Germany, the square miles and includes 26,249 Christless,." The last two re- In the Belgian Congo, in the Christians. maining Lutheran churches in heart of Mrica, government and Russia have been closed recently, missions collaborate fruitfully in Changes in Ten Years and their pastors thrown into all well established leper colprison, according to the New onies, and the funds supplied Mrs. John M. Imrie, a Presby- York Times. The Moscow Izves- through the American Mission terian missionary of Sakbayeme, tia announces that Christian to Lepers are supplemented by sees much change for the better church property amounting to public grants. In the French in West Africa. Polygamous $3,575,000,000 had been confis- marriages are dying out as a recated by the government since mandated territory of the Cam- sult of Christian training, and the war to exterminate religion eroun, a mandate very nervous happier homes are the order. began twenty-one years ago. Of and tense indeed these days be- Heathen men complain that they the 100,000 congregations, less cause it is a former German col- cannot get wives for missionthan 30,000 remain. At the same ony, the return of which may be trained girls will not marry time, the paper admits there are them. Son Mbok, one of the signs of religious revival in demanded as part of the price of towns, ten years ago had only 15 Russia. European peace, full facility is people desiring to learn; today, given the American Mission to Son Mbok has a Central School, A manifesto of German army Lepers.. a teacher, a catechist, an attendchaplains declares that one in ance of nearly 400 on Sundays, every fifteen Protestant pastors Development of Medical and 100 coming up for communis under arrest. Churches are Missions ion each time. The number of forbidden to organize recreation Christians at Ibon increased to for children, or train students To those who remember the the point where a new town, for the ministry; and the gov- difficulties of financing and staff- Maonk, was started to accommoernment claims the right to dic- ing mission hospitals in Africa, date them. Soon there was a tate the content of all Christian congregation of 1,200. This is preaching. the apathy of people toward such in a prairie country, where noth- work, the present scope of medi- ing can be seen but elephant AFRICA cal missionary work in South grass. The people seem to walk Africa is a cause for thanksgiv- out of the grass, but there they Leprosy and Nationalism ing. The recently published are. Christian Handbook for South Dr. Emory Ross, General Sec- Africa gives the following fig- A prominent chief wanted to retary of the American Mission ures as evidence of this changed become a Christian. He was held to Lepers, observes that so un- off for a time to make sure he selfish a ministry as work for situation: was in earnest, and not seeking lepers might be assumed to be the limelight. But Samuel Hiobi free from politics, but it is not Missionary doctors in kept insisting that he had given the case. In Africa a leper work the matter much thought and carried on for twenty years by South Africa ….. . 44 was anxious to become one of an effective American group has the "Tribe of God." At last he been completely stopped, the Mis s ion a r y nurses was accepted as a beginner. He property expropriated and those put away his wives, (keeping in charge caused to leave the (European) …… . 137 only one – the first one he had country. In two more territories married), and promised to care in Africa not only is official aid Nurses (Bantu) em- for them and their children, seerefused to well-executed leper ing that they have medical care work financed and staffed by ployed by Missions .. 54 when ill. He is an example of Americans, but heavy duties are the many who have rejoiced to laid upon chaulmoogra oil and Native probationers in find the better Christian Way of other medical supplies imported Life. for the treatment of lepers. All training ……… . 314 this has come about partly be- Cameroun in Jeopardy cause of clashing political move- Mission hospital beds . 1,605 ments in Europe, and the Afri- Dr. Emory Ross reminds us cans look on in bewilderment. Inpatients "(1937) …. 17,684 that the Cameroun has had more However, this situation does not languages, more governments, prevail in all of Africa. In Li- Outpatients (1937) .,. 270,264 more foreign adjustments forced Figures About Elat Elat parish of the Presbyte- rian West Africa Mission has 189 chapels with an average at- tendance each Sunday of 35,000; Christians 24,037. Of schools, it has 185 Village Vernacular, 15 Village French, 650 pupils, 1 Boys' and 1 Girls' Boarding School, 745 pupils, 50 teachers in training. In one decade of med- ical work: 110,662 sick folk treated, 5,216 won to Christ.
OUR WORLD-WIDE OUTLOOK
upon it from abroad in the past with another 2,000 enrolment. In describing the contrasts besixty years than any other part (3) Pay salaries of 160 evan- tween then and now, Mrs. Emof Africa. First, English. Be- gelists, and 25 elders and pas- berson says: fore any foreign government tors; all missionary itinerating ruled, English trade, language and all office supplies. (4) Pay If we wished to visit our outstations, and customs dominated the coast for all repairs on buildings which our only mode of travel was by donkey and spread somewhat inland. deteriorate rapidly in that trop- and bush chair. The chair was pro- Second, German. German gov- ical climate and where white pelled on one wheel under the center ernment, language, trade and ants work destruction. Chris- of the seat, with a long "harness" in customs in the 1880's began to tians at home should not con- front to allow room for the "boy" to cover the country. T h i r d, sider their obligation ended with walk or run without knocking his French. The Versailles group of the payment of missionaries' heels against the step. Behind was a treaties consolidated military salaries. shorter harness which a second boy victories; French government, held, in an endeavor to keep the conlanguage, trade and customs Prison Visitation in Uganda veyance steady. Needless to say, there ruled Cameroun. Each succeed- were many bad moments for the pasing foreign influence has fought One feature of C. M. S. work senger when the boys made even a to root out the preceding. in Kampala, Uganda, and has slight swerve. been for some years, is regular During all these changes the visiting at the central prison Last year we started at 10 a. m. in Church has been almost the only twice each week. This is under- an auto to conduct a morning service uninterrupted, continuing for- taken by Rev. A. M. Williams, in one of our indigenous churches, eign factor in Cameroun life. It who has about 70 names on his about sixteen miles away. We found has pioneered in education, med- baptism record; many more 700 people waiting to hear the Gospel, icine, modern agriculture, man- than that number attend the and 200 of these people partook of ual training, spiritual regenera- services. Since most of the men Communion. Leaving this church at tion. It has brought thousands are there for a long term it is 1 : 30 p. m., we went on to ano,ther of Africans, through Christ, into possible to do a good deal with church some twenty-five miles in a closer human as well as closer them, and results are encour- difllerent direction, and found 1,500 spiritual relationships than they aging. Nearly all are illiterate, people waiting. There was insufficient have ever experienced before. It but all are taught to read and room in the church, so they all sat has interpreted and bound and write before they are baptized, under eucalyptus trees, to listen enmediated. It has taught Eng- except the very old. thralled to the same Word of God. It lish, then German, now French. was unforgettable and very touching, Some of the most effective to hear this crowd of people sing in It has been the largest factor leaders in the mission band have their own tongue, "Rock of Ages, cleft in stability and unity. And now been convicts, and it is not un- for me." After this service, once again Germany is demanding the re- common to find prisoners, after Ohristians to the number of 300 sat turn of Cameroun; Germany, their releas,e, going back to their down at the Lord's Table. whose officials oppose Christian- villages to engage in active evanity, forbid the fundamental gelism. We left them as the African sun teachings of Jesus Christ and quickly disappeared behind a mouncomplete loyalty to Him. Changes in Nyasaland tain, and reached the mission station at 5 p. m., having come into contact Making Ends Meet Rev. Wilfrid Emberson has with about 2,200 Africans on one Sab- spent 27 years of service in bath day. And this difference has Rev. James L. Jackson, of Nyasaland,and recently, because come about in eighteen years! Luebo, Congo State, says that of his wife's ill health, both have for the past eight years the mis- returned to England where Mr. When Mrs. Emberson said sionary budget has not been suf- Emberson has accepted the pas- good-bye, the oldest Christian ficient to meet the needs; and torate of a Baptist church in woman, gripping both of Mrs. by way of being explicit lists Kent. During their joint serv- Emberson's hands, said: "Don't what Luebo station is expected ice in Nyasaland, village schools cry mai (mother), we shall go to do for six months on $2,400. have grown from 40 to more on following the Jesus you have (1) Medical work: pay for all than 100. There are now seven helped us to know and love, and medicine in a hospital where indigenous churches. In the when He comes again for His 15,000 patients are treated and early days there was no building children we shall meet again, as many as 75 major operations in which the sick could stay for and in that day say 'Moni' (Good· are performed annually; pay healing, but, after a boy with a morning) face to face." for all emergency medical trips diseased foot had crawled five when gasoline costs 50 cents a days to reach the missionary, -The Christian. gallon, and quinine to keep mis- two mud huts were set apart as sionary families free from ma- a "hospital." During the first Juvenile Crime in laria. (2) Pay teachers' salaries year 7,000 patients were treated, Johannesburg in a school with 2,000 pupils; all and last year 19,229 sick folk reteaching material and entire sup- ceived treatment. Juvenile crime in South Africa is engaging public attention. In port for 14 outstation schools Johannesburg, it has increased by more than 53 per cent during the past year. An inquiry con- ducted by Dr. Ray E. Phillips names poverty as the root of the situation. Children steal because they are hungry. Other causes named are inadequate housing; unstable marriage ties, which means that children are not liv-
ing with parents; liquor con- tine is obvious. The Germans many encouraging facts. In sumption; lack of educational have established an Arab club Sweden, the number of schools advantages-more than half the in Damascus. An Arab doctor, and scholars has increased durnative children are not in school trained in Germany, goes back ing recent years; and their effibecause of lack of accommoda- and forth between Iraq and ciency is steadily improving. tion-and, by no means the least Damascus, and recently infor- Teacher training courses are significant factor – the separa- mation was let slip that he has held regularly, and junior work tion of families, because 300,000 been busy sending money from for girls and boys, who leave the native men are at work in the Germany to Iraq, to be for- Sunday school at fourteen years mines, and living in compounds. warded to Arab committees in of age has been organized. Palestine. A new motor road -World Dominion Press. between Syria and Imq furthers Progress is the keynote of Germany's plan for a "Greater Sunday school work in Esthonia. WESTERN ASIA Germany" to stretch from Ber- Much time has also been given lin to Bagdad. to visitation of German and Rus- Sunday Schools in Bible Lands sian Sunday schools in the vi- However,a write!r in Al Misry cinity of Tartu: here Sunday Many cablegrams during the believes that the Arabs under- school and Bible class work is year have informed the world of stand quite well the consequences being regularly conducted among bloodshed and bitter strife in the of getting into Hitler's power, Russian and German youth; and lands of the Bible, but most of and their officials are not much great enthusiasm is evident on the Sunday school news tells the impressed by Germany's appeals. the part of both teachers and story of a world of cooperation Arabs do not seriously consider s:cholars. and mutual enhancement among any scheme they do not fully men of diverse cultures. From understand. The report reveals that in Tiberias one writes, "The Sun- France, Holland, Hungary and day school is a movement of MISCELLANEOUS many other countries, the work world brotherhood. It is the is making steady progress. only place where Arab and Jew- The Bible and Education ish children meet in peace and World's Student Christian brotherhood in time of racial en- In an address at the Columbia Federation mity and bloodshed." Another Convocation in New York, comreport says, "In spite of war and memorating the 400th anniver- How to make this Federation rebellion, schools were conducted sary of the English Bible, the a force in America is the quesin Palestine with the help of Dean of St. Paul's, London, said, tion that faces the organization Moslem and Arab boys." In in the course of the address: as they look over the world and Jerusalem one thousand children see Christianity on the defensive. were enrolled in six vacation One cannot contemplate a falling "Not here"; one may say, "these Bible schools. away from the reverence and knowl- things can't happen in the edge of the Bible without seeing a United States." Well, can't they? The work of the Bible Lands great danger of national incoherence. There are movements on foot Union for Christian Erlucation In this modern time there is a great here that have already stamped isa unique demonstration of co- risk that the masses of the population out the Student Christian moveoperation in Palestine, Syria, may become, as it were, uprooted, ment in other countries. Transjordania, Lebanon, Iraq without secure foundation for their and Cyprus. Representatives of lives, that they may degenerate into Two things, says a writer in the Greek Orthodox, Armenian a swaying crowd with no common The Intercollegian, are essential Apostolic, Anglican and Amer- values and no continuing tradition. to promote the Federation: eduican Protestant churches carry The nations flourish or decay ulti- cation and funds. For the educaon 'a vast program of Chdstian mately from within. They flourish or tional program is sugges,ted: l. education. The ancient churches decay from the soul. An enthusiastic WorId Felloware adopting modern methods ship Committee to inte,rpret the for work with children, youth It is surely the duty of everyone Federation's aims. 2. Promotion and adults. The Christian con- who owes his own spiritual life to the of international Christian literaference grounds at Chouei"!', Leb- Bible to do his utmost to insist that ture. 3. Study groups. 4. Use anon, have proven to be a busy it shall take its proper place in the of bulletin boards and chapel center twelve months of the year education of the people; and con- speakers in colleges. 5. Estabfor leadership education, Chris- stantly to urge that no education, lish friendships with foreign stutian endeavor conferences and from the most elementary to the most dents. Correspondence with stuboys' camps. advanced, can be adequate which dents in other lands. leaves students in ignorance of this -World Sunday School fountainhead of all that is best in our Local experimentation is sug- Assn. News. common heritage. gested in the matter of raising funds. "Federation Friends" Germany Filters Into -Federal Council Bulletin. should be enlisted among faculty Near East members and others, and a The W. S. S. A. "Pledge Day" might be es,tab- The connection between Ger- lished. many and the troubles in Pales- The World's Sunday School Association is made up of 51 units, with two administrative centers, one in Glasgow, the other in New York. The recently published annual report contains
Missionary
Books Briefly Reviewed for the Readers' Information Directory of Christian Missions and obvious that women of different ing medical service, and assist- Churches in India, Burma and Cey- l"'aces and nationalities around ing in village uplift projects, lon. Introduction by Alexander the world have the same prob- convinced that this is a sounder, McLeish. 512 pp. National Chris- lems and interests. Each author because a more helpfully con- tian Council, Nagpur, India. writes from wide experience as structive process than trying to to what Christ has brought to change labels." This is the fourth edition of her own countrywomen. Taken the Directory since 1932 when as a whole, the chapters supply Aside from this bias against its publication was undertaken a valuable record of the trends Christian missions, the book by the National Christian Coun- of the Christian m 0 v e men t bears the marks of scholarship cil. It contains statistics and a throughout the world. It is and is the best account we have very complete list of approxi- clearly shown that Christianity of present-day Turkey. After mately 200 missionary agencies, is a stabilizing force for nations, describing the background in 61 2',000 stations, 7,000 mission- as well as for individuals. At a pages Mr. Webster deals with aries, 175 periodicals, and 2,500 time, when the whole Christian the struggle for independence institutions in India, Burma and world is menaced by systems and the processes of reforma- Ceylon. Anyone will be im- contrary to the tea,chings of tion and leadership under Atapressed by this vast number of Christ, it is important to point turk. The second and longest Christian enterprises but the Di- to His Way as the only force that part of the book (pages 162-2'89) rectory is of especial value to will cement the nations together deals with the ideology of the missionaries, editors and execu- on the basis of righteousness and present government, particularly tives interested in Christian brotherhood. H. H. FERGUSON. politics, the press, education, and work in India. The Christians the result of all this on the social of all sects and races now are The Turkey of Ataturk: Social Prog- structure, the rural uplift and estimated to number 7,500,000 ress in the Turkish Reformation. the life of the people. of whom about 7,000,000 are In- By Donald Everett Webster. Amerdians. In 1931 Protestants num- ican Academy of Political and So- The volume is beautifully illusbered over 3,000,000, a 50% in- cial Science. 337 pp. Price, $2.50. trated, with photographs, diacrease in ten years, and Roman Philadelphia. 1939. grams, and maps, all of them val- Catholics over 2,000,000. Hindus uable. We have also a gazeteer, number 240,000,000. There are The author was a short-term a full bibliography, and a care- 225 languages spoken, in addi- teacher in the International Col-. ful index. As a secular study, tion to many dialects. The Bible, lege, Izmir (Smyrna), and had one can desire nothing better. in whole or in part, has been other contacts with Turkey. His translated in only 120 of these. book describes the complex proc- S. M. ZWEMER. There are still many unoccupied esses which have as by miracle areas and unevangelized millions produced modern Turkey. Its The Wild Rue: A Study of Muhamin India. viewpoint is not political, nor re- madan Magic and Folklore in Iran. ligious, nor that of the journal- By Bess Allen Donaldson. Luzac & Women and the Way: A Symposium. ist, but that of the sociologist. Co., London. 216 pp. 10/6. 198 pp. Cloth, $1.00; paper, 50 The first sentence in the Intro- cents. The Friendship Press, New duction give the writer's view- Edwyn Bevan, in his Gifford York. 1938. point: "Turkey, no longer an Lectures, used "Symbolism and object of derision, pity, and Belief" as the general title. All What the ace e pta n c e of evangelization, now marches in races are fond of symbols for Christ's Way of Life has meant the vanguard of those nations their faith and superstitionsto the women of every land is a whose post-World War revolu- the Star for Judaism, the Cresquestion here answered by out- tionary processes are most as- cent for Islam, the Swastika for standing Christian women of tounding." At the close of the Buddhism. And so the learned many different parts of the book he remarks: "There are author of this excellent book on world. The list of authors in- still a few Protestant mission- Persian superstition has taken cludes such distinguished leaders aries in the country who do no for title "The Wild Rue," the as Madame Chiang Kai-shek, proselytizing, but spend their most common plant in practice Michi Kawai, Muriel Lester and time in teaching school, render- of magic, used like the mandrake others from home, church, politi- .in the Pentateuch. I know of no cal and professional life, It is [221 ] other volume better suited to give the background of daily life
in Iran. Reforms, social and in- was a deep student 'Of the Bible, captivating. After reading his tellectual, are the order of the which he accepte9. as the in- studies we feel that we know day but eighty percent of the spired word 'Of God, and he was these men and wish to know common people only hear of a preacher tD whom old and even more about them. Dr. them and live their lives under young, learned and unlettered Eastman not only shows us the the shadow of Islam, as in the delighted to listen. He knew men in brief compass, but he repast. That shadow includes a God as revealed in Christ and he veals their backgrDund, the spirit mass of superstition and magic. knew and understood men, be- 'Of the times in which they lived Here we have the key. and their influence 'On posterity. cause he himself was a man. The bODk includes chapters on These Bible notes are m'Ore It is an excellent bDOk for young "The Evil Eye," "Practices at than beautiful nuggets 'Of g'Old men and offers gDod illustrative Child Birth," "M a r ria g e," that Bishop Smith mined in his material for sermons and ad- "Death," and "Burial." We have days 'Of study and prayer, they dresses. an accDunt 'Of superstitions CDnnected with the seasons, the are living seed-thDughts that Evergreen and Other Near East Bible weather, the calendar, dreams Talks. By Abdul-Fady (A. T. Upand sleep; also we learn what came from the granary of God's pious Moslems are supposed tD revealed Word and are copied son) with foreword by Dr. S. M. d'O when they weep or breathe, sneeze or cut their nails and hair. from the Bishop's much used Zwemer. 120 pp. 28. Marshall There is alsD an aCCDunt of wide-margin study Bible. Are Morgan & Scott, Ltd. London. 1938. sacred places, saints and pilgrimages. This material might have nDt such thoughts. as the follDW- This little book of outline talks been better classified but the in- ing stimulating to dee per on the Bible is deceiving in two dex is fairly complete. The book thought, more earnest prayer ways. Its small size does not is written from a woman's view- give pr'Omise 'Of the am'Ount of point but it represents all the old and more Christlike living: life of Persia. As the author says: "Considerable attention "My God, my God, why hast thou real meat in it. And tDO, it gives has been given to religiDus cus- forsaken me" (Mat. 27: 46). This is tDms; this is because the super- hell ! the impression 'Of one of those stitiDns are firmly rooted in the religiDn. With the majority of "Whom God hath raised up" (Acts . devotiDnal books that one can the peDple their occult practices toss off in a day or so and go on. have become religious rites. It 2: 24). If this had been a lie the is to them that they pin their apostles would not have dared to Not so, fDr here is the considered faith, and to them they turn in preach it in Jerusalem – besides the times of trial and crisis. While Holy Spirit could not have blessed a result of years 'Of teaching God's the name 'Of G'Od is often UP'On Word, which fact in itself should their lips, all too frequently it, lie. get it a hearing. This teaching too, is merely a name with which "As for God, his way is perfect" tD conjure. (Ps. 18: 30). We cannot add to a was done in surroundings which perfect thing. To meddle is to spoil. must of necessity reflect them- The uninformed mind turns very "For all the promises of God in him naturally to something tangible in are yea, and in him Amen" (2 Cor. selves in the quality and the times of need. They are surrounded by fears: fears of sickness and death, 1: 20). Subject to no discount. flavor of the material presented. fears of drought and crop failure, fears of famine and flood, fears of "Thy Kingdom come" (Luke 11: 2). The occasional turns and evildoers and their wiles, fears of touches from the Near East save husbands and their relatives, and all Before me petition is allowed for self, this bo'Ok from being just ankinds of fears of the supernatural, and in their ignorance they have but foreign missions are to be rememsought the help of some "magical bered. power" in strange objects or symbols. "But when he was in Rome, he other book of Bible talks. It is sought me out very diligently and SAMUEL M. ZWEMER. clear that the authDr has been found me" (2 Timothy 1: 17). A good there. An instance is the ex- Gems from Bishop Taylor Smith's man is ever seeking people-worldly planation of the "sound of Bible. Compiled by Percy O. Ruoff. 142 pp. 28. 6d. Marshall, Morgan people for Christ; Christians for marching" in the vale of Re- & Scott. London. $1.00. Zonder- van Pub. House, Grand Rapids. Christ. 1939. Not only pastors and teachers phaim (page 38). Again the Bishop Taylor Smith was a re- but all Christians will find this reference tD the ripening of the markable character, with a keen Jaffa oranges (page 41) makes sense of humDr, spiritual dis.. vDlume richly rewarding. cernment, a heart of love and a us realize how much a knowledge faith that begets courage. He Men of Power. Volume III. Four of "the Land" is necessary to an biographies by F'red Eastman. 197 understanding 'Of "the Bo'Ok."
pp. $1.50. Cokesbury Press. Nash- ROBERT F. OGDEN. ville. 1939.
Benjamin Franklin the scien- Highways and Hedges. By William Wistar Hamilton. 119 pp. $1.00. tist and statesman, R. W. Emer- Broadman Press.. Nashville. 1938. SDn the pDet, preacher and essay- ist, George FDX the fDunder of These are brief stories of CDn- the Society of Friends, and verts in evangelistic work, writ- ten by some fifty Christian work- Charles Darwin the revDlution- ers. Some 'Of them are tDD brief ary scientist-all make excellent to make an impression but others subjects for sixty-minute biD- offer effective material for pas- graphical sketches. Dr. Eastman tors and Sunday school teachers who may unfDrtunately lack is a clear thinker and a dramatic these rich persDnal experiences. writer. The glimpses he gives A careful sifting would improve of their develDpment, their the vDlume. achievements and sources 'Of their power are stimulating and
' j I~~
Upptr Room _2_ April, May, June ~ "'! ,,' -II if.
"It 01 ;:t.
o:j 'S ~ '1 :l: '!J .l1 Spiritual Need -&1/121 "I~ :<!-7. Knows No 'Hi '".:s.~ Boundary Lines ';"51 ~ "'I !I'
A page from Korean Edition PERHAPS, as no other publication, THE UPPER ROOM has proved that men of all races, of all tongues, are in great need of the spiritual inspiration of a daily devotional guide. Because of this universal need for it, THE UPPER ROOM is now published in four languages-English, Spanish, Korean, and Hindustani. It can now be read by half the people of the earth in their own language and new translations are being added as the demand for them arises.
In response to requests from pastors who have been using the specially printed Christmas envelopes to mail copies of THE UPPER ROOM to members of their congregations, we are now offering A SPECIALLY PRINTED ENVELOPE FOR MAILING THE EASTER ISSUE This envelope carries an attractive design, printed in an appropriate color. These Easter envelopes are offered at 1 cent each, postpaid, in quantities of 10 or more, or we will mail a copy of the April, May, June issue, to address furnished, in an Easter envelope for 10 cents each.
THE UPPER ROOM is available, in quantities of 10 or more, at 5 cents per copy, post. paid, and on our consignment plan if desired. Yearly subscription, 30 cents postpaid, foreign 40 cents. Spanish edition at same price and on same terms.
The April, May, June issue is now ready for distribution. This is the Easter Issue. The cover is one of the most beautiful and suggestive that we have ever used. The interpreta- tion of the cover picture alone is worth many times the price of the book. Be sure that every member of your congregation is supplied. Place your order at once for prompt delivery.
Send all orders for English and Spanish editions to tbe Upper Room f,.~~=I====Do=c=to=rs=' =B=ui=ld=in=g======N=as=h=vi=lle=,=T=en=n=.==~,,~.~~ [223 ]
The Second World Conference on program in revolutiQnizing the B run n e r' s "Mediator," and Faith and Order, Edinburgh, 1937. method of missionary activity in Schweitzer's the "Mysticism o.f Edited by Leonard Hodgson. $2.25. the C. M. S. stations in northern St. Paul," but has not grasped o.r 386 pp. Macmillan. New York. Nigeria provide food for thQught been grnsped by their doctrine. 1939. The final report of the con- for any who may be interested in The tragedy of the post-war time ference includes six chapters: mission work in West Africa. has driven religious tho.ught and The last section of the book leads experience in this Western world (1) Introduction; (2) The up to the tragedy of his death in into a deeper, mQre mysterious, an airplane crash during his sec- Grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ; ond term as assistant bisho.P in more transcendent cons,truction (3) The Church of Christ and the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. of the thought of Go.d and of the the W.ord .of God; (4) The Com- grace of God, o.f the fact of sin, munion of Saints; (5) The L. K. ANDERSON. and of the manifestatio.n of God Church .of Christ: Ministry and in Christ, and of the deeds o.f Essential Christianity. By Samuel Go.d in Christ and histo.ry, than Sacraments; (6) The Church's Angus. 226 pp. $2.00. Macmillan. is represented in this book. Unity in Life and Worship. New York. 1939. R. E. SPEER. Here is evidence .of the present Let Us Build. By P. E. Burroughs, reality of the ideal which is Dr. Angus maintains the opin- Illus. 154 pp. 60 cents. Broadpursued. Certain manifestatiQns man Press. Nashville. 1938. of unity remain to be attained ion that Christianity is not a but here is a real unity .of the matter of opinion and he sets Building churches-both physspirit in the bo.nd of peace. The fQrth his opinion .of what essen- ically and spiritually-is a pro.bprayer of o.ur Lord for unity tially Christianity is. It is the lem. Fin an c e s, educatio.nal amo.ng His disciples, like the old self-contradictory circle. A equipment, worship, recreational man tells us that "It dQes nQt facilities are all involved-and unity of the Father and S.on, has how the problems are wQrked no.t been achieved but the dis- matter what a man thinks. It out may mean all the difference ciples are striving after it. only mrutters what he is." One replies, "You are ei,ther saying R. E. SPEER. what you think or you are saying Civilization-The Next Step. By C. what YOlU don't think. If the lat- between success and failure. . Delisle Burns. $2.75. 291 pp. W. ter, what are you? If the former, The author is educational and W. Norton & Co. New York. 1939. why are yo.U saying it if it does architectural secretary of the The author's desires and pur- not matter?" Southern Baptist Sunday School poses are of the best. The next Of co.urse Christianity is very Board and his manuscript has step sho.uld be more friendliness, much a matter of opinion, but been approved by forty-two. kindness, intelligence, equality few, if any, readers of THE RE- architects. The book includes and justice. But the philosophy VIEW will agree with Dr. Angus' forty-five plates to illustrate is the old humanism. Humanity opiniQn of it. "Christianity is an twelve building plans for various is to. lift itself by its own boot- sized churches and differing straps. A living GQd and the experience." It is not faith in costs from $7,000 to. $122,000 Christian dynamic are simply God in Christ. "It is faith in each. It is arranged as a textno.t in the picture. The tragedy bo.ok and contains many valuable o.f the world lies deeper than God like that of Jesus." The note and practical suggestions for this diagnosis. There is such a is the note of that pre-war liber- both churches and Sun day reaUty as sin and there is need alism which defined Christianity schools. Many of the plans are o.f a mQre powerful Saviour and as "the religion of Jesus" and de- very attractive and practical. a more radical salvatio.n than is cried "the religion about Jesus." Little attention is. given to social co.nceived here. R. E. SPEER. It deprecates the relatiQnship of and athletic .equipment and the essence of Christianity to which is so popular today in Guy' Bullen. By his friends. Illus. many churches. Maps. 136 pp. 58. Highway Press, "alleged historic facts o.f debat- able historicity (such as, the Vir- gin Birth, the miracles, the phys- London. 1938. ical resurrection o.f Jesus" the Hugo of the Blade. By Julius F. bodily ascension, the official and Seebach. 271 pp. $1.00. United This biography .of the late Rt.
Rev. H. Guy Bullen, As:sistant authoritative establishment of a Lutheran Publication House, Phil- Bishop in Egypt and the Sudan, Church by Him)." It rejects the adelphia. 1938.
is written by friends and aSSQ- deity of Christ. It accepts what This is a moderately interestciates who. pay tribute to the un- in the New Testament suits the ing novel of the Reformation peusual attractiveness o.f the man's author's o.pinion of essential riod, centering about the life of human chaI"acteristics and to his Chris.tianity and rejects what a printer and his descendants s'implicity and powe,r as a devo.ut does not. who were staunch supporters of Christian. Perhaps the least in- Dr. Angus' emphasis on the Protestantism. The "trimming teresting part o.f the book is the duty of Christlikeness, of obedi- blade," used in book binding, be- first section dealing with Bullen's ence and conformity to the Spir- came the symbol of truth and boyhood where an attempt is it o.f Christ, or unselfishness and freedom. This story won first made to relate youthful inclina- sacrifice and service and love is prize in the "John Rung Legacy"
tions to later powers in the mis- all to the go.od, but his subjective contest for 1938, for the best his- sionary's personality. The chap- humanJsm is a swan song of a torical narrative, educational and ters relating to his far-sighted declining Christism. He has read missionary. H. H. F.
from Many Lands: Stories for GOD'S PURPOSE :h:::'::~
Juniors. Illus. 127 pp. Paper, 50 erery day cents. Morehouse-Gorman Co., New York. 1938. A handy volume of 365 inspirational sermonettes written by distinguished Children will like these stories, clergymen of the English·speaking world. Arranged in calendar form. one and leaders of junior groups will find them helpful in creating an for each day in the year. one to each page. interest in the children of other races and lands and in promoting Cloth,60c; Limp Leatherette, $1.00; Art Leather, $1.50 a missionary spirit. In addition to the stories about children in COD'S MESSACE COD'S MINUTE far-away lands, there are tales about American Indians, Ne- 365 prominent clergymen have Here is a marvelous collection of groes and Mountaineers; also about ohildren of island depend- chosen their favorite Scripture pas- 365 Daily Prayers. each 60 seconds encies-Porto Rico, Hawaii, the Philippines. Following the fif- sages. With each as a text, they long. written by 365 of the most teen stories are six biographical sketches, in language children have written a Message that quick- eminent preachers and laymen in can understand, of stalwart Christian leaders, such as Bishop ens faith, and brings comfort. the world. Azariah of India. Cloth, 6Oc; Limp Leatherette, $1.00; Art Leather, 51.50 HENRIETTA H. FERGUSON. THE JOHN C. WINSTON CO., Winston Bldg., Phila. Master Thoughts for Victorious Liv- ing. Edited by Dumont Clarke. 72 The Spirit of the Shepherd. By M. Life's Cricket Match. Reginald pp. 25 cents paper; $1.00 leather- P. Krikorian. 8 vo. 125 pp. $1.00. Wallis. 43 pp. 6d. Pickering & ette cover. Paul M. Hinkhouse. Zondervan Pub. Co. Grand Rapids, Inglis. London. New York. 1938. Mich. 1938. Master Thoughts for Victorious These 285 quotations are from The Twenty-third Psalm is Living. Edited by Dumont Clarke. many different sources from the immortal and seems to be inex- 72 pp. 25 cents; $1.00, Leatherette. Bible to Mohandas Gandhi and haustible. The present inter- Paul Hinkhouse. New York. from John Keats to Robert E. pretation is by an Armenian Speer. They naturally form a shepherd who became a spiritual The Missionary Significance of the great mixture on over fifty topics shepherd and Christian evan- Lord's Prayer. Lee S. Huizenga. and are of varied value. Most gelist. His emphasis in this ex- 84 pp. Eerdmans Pub. Co. of them are very brief-one sen- position is on the revelation of tence – but they offer food for God as the Jehovah who pro- Revealing Christ. Percy Hortill. 71 thought and come from experi- vides, guides, gives peace, over- pp. Is. 2d. S. P. G. London. ence. To many public speakers comes and gives His people a they furnish material for apt Home forever. These character- Studies in Popular Islam. S. M. quotations. istics are all referred to in the Zwemer. 148 pp. $2.50. Mac- Hebrew names. The study is millan. New York. All Around the City. By Esther Frei- practical and interesting rather vogel. Illus. 95 pp. 50 cents paper than unique. The Turkey of Ataturk. Social Prog- and $1.00 cloth. Friendship Press. ress in the Turkish Reformation. New York. 1938. New Boole. Donald Everett Webster. 337 pp. $2.50. Academy of Political and Here is an attractive book on Christian Home Making. (Prepared Social Science. Philadelphia. the city for primary children. A for the Madras Conference of the "Primary Teacher's Guide" is I. M. C.) Edited by Mrs. Robert They Dared to Live. Robert M. Bartalso obtainable at 25 cents a E. Speer and Constance Hallock. lett. 135 pp. $1.25. Association copy. Miss Freivogel describes 141 pp. $1.50. Round Table Press. Press. New York. how children move to the city New York. from the country, their experi- The World's Religions. A Short Hisences at Christmastime, at the Canadian Journey. H. P. Thompson. tory. Charles S. Braden. 256 pp. Neighborhood H 0 use, church 69 pp. S. P. G. London. $1.50. Cokesbury Press. Nashville. school and at play. Pen and ink drawings and the story are de- The Church Faces the World. (Pre- Welcome House. Jessie Eleanor signed to interest children. The pared for the Madras Conference of Moore. Illustrated. 95 pp. $1.00, incidents of life will help them the I. M. C.) Edited by Samuel cloth; 50 cents, paper. Friendship understand other children, and McCrea Cavert. 133 pp. $1.50. Press. New York. to sympathize with many who Round Table Press. are undernourished both physi- John Wyclif and the English Bible. cally and spiritually. It is a Christians in Action. A Record of Melvin M. Cammack. 288 pp. $1.75. good book for children from Work in War-Time China. By American Tract Society. New York. seven to ten years of age. Seven Missionaries. 115 pp. $1.00. Longs, Green & Co. New York. Tales of a Waste-Basket Surgeon. Gordon S. Seagrave. 265 pp. $1.50. Green Timber. Esther Gerberding Judson Press. Philadelphia. Hunt. 220 pp. 75 cents. United Lutheran Pub. House. Philadelphia. The Two Ways. A Play in Six Epi- sodes. A. L. E. WilIiams. 53 pp. Hugo the Blade. Julius F. Seeback. Is. S. P. C. K. London. 271 pp. $1.00. United Lutheran Pub. House. Philadelphia. The W orId's Great Religious Poetry. Compiled by Caroline Miles Hill. The History of Christianity in Amer- $1.69. Macmillan. New York. ica. Frank Grenville Beardsley. 244 pp. $1.50. American Tract Why Be Good? James Reid. 191 pp. Society. New York. $1.50. Cokesbury Press. Nashville.
Historical Atlas of the Holy Land. The Holy Bible. Illustrated by Wil- Maps. 62 pp. $1.00. Rand Mc- liam Hole. 8vo. 1,252 pp. Eyre Nally. New York. and Spottiswoode. London.
Men of Power. Vol. III. Fred East- man. 197 pp. $1.50. Cokesbury Press. Nashville.
State Population Census by Faiths: Meaning, Reliability and Value. H. S. Linfield. 72 pp. $2. Hasid's Bibliographic and Library Service. New York.
'I(~ ,tI1zS .11WiteJ to. ,tItienci
THE NORTHFIELD MISSIONARY CONFERENCE JULY 3-10, 1939 A PIONEER PROJECT in Interdenominational Fellowship on the beautiFul CAMPUS of Northfield Seminary EAST NORTHFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS HUNDREDS OF WOMEN AND GIRLS have received inspiration and training for service in their home churches, their communities and beyond the SEAS Denominational Camps for the Girls SEPARATE CLASSES are held for GIRLS and WOMEN In Bible Study • Mission Study • Leadership Training A FEW OF THE LEADERS WHO WILL TAKE PART Miss Ruth Isabel Seabury Miss Hazel Orton Miss Marguerite Hazzard Miss Alice Murdock Miss Nona M. Diehl Miss Sue Weddell Miss Gertrude Schultz Mrs. Walter C. Stevens Miss Christine Wang Dr. Caroline Palmer Dr. Emily J. Werner YOUR CHURCH SHOULD BE REPRESENTED YOUR LEADERS SHOULD FEEL THE POWER THAT COMES FROM MEETING TOGETHER WITH HUNDREDS OF OTHERS IN THE NAME OF THE LORD JESUS CHRIST For further information address—MRS. WARREN C. TAYLOR. 38 Union Avenue W., Schenectady, N. Y.
THE MOILEM WORLD PUBUSHED BY THE HARTFORD SEMINARY FOUNDATION Editors: SAMUEL M. ZWEMER, EDWIN E. CALVERLEY Some Articles in the April Number Religion and Life • • • Edwin E. Calverley A Protestant View of Moslem Missions Julius Richter The Missionary Conviction and Approach • Robert E. Speer The Law and the Gospel • • • Laurence E. Browne Al.Ghazali and Arabic Versions of the Gospels Constance E. Padwick A Modern Revindication of Islam H. Kraemer Qualities of the Planets D. M. Donaldson A Variant Text of the Fatiha Arthur Jeffery The Traditions of An.Nawawi .. Eric F. F. Bishop The Moslem Doctrine of Sin E. E. Elder Book Reviews Current Topics Survey of Periodicals Sue Molleson Foster +0(-._ _.-~» SUBSCRIBE NOW 50 Cents a Copy. $2.00 a Year (postpaid) In combination with THE MOSLEM WORLD THE MISSIONARY REVIEW OF THE WORLD 156 Fifth Avenue, New York City $3.50 a Year. (Foreign Postage, 50 Cents.) British Agents: MARSHALL, MORGAN & SCOTT, 12 Paternoster Buildings, London, E. C. Price in Great Britain, Eight Shillings a Year, net
The Missionary Review of the World — January 1904
OF THE MISSIONARY SOCIETIES OF THE WORLD FOR
This table includes only Missions to non-Christian and non-Protestant peoples, and so omits work done in non-Catholic Europe, while covering that in behalf of Indians, Chinese, and Japanese in the United States. Tbe figures are derived almost wholly from annual reports, and relate in the main to 1903, tho sometimes the year includes a part of 1902. Thp. aim lIas been to leave the fewest possible blanks, and hence where the la'est official figures were not at hand, conservative estimates have been made, based upon former reports.-REV. D. L. LEONARD, D.D.
~~ ., ., .. .. . ~g .. ., .s .";"is" ~ ….l>.'"<, .., . I :; ,::: ] o~ ..8 :! al~ '»8" III '-~"E"E",~O6al .'!": .eO) Ill,"" Oil 0:: 1 I'J Countries in which Missions ~ os :Ii! §!l a ~ are Sustained N.lIla 41" SOO1£TIBS .0<..>,. .. -e .s~ :l .!: ~ ~~ ~~ illS Oil .~f, o""".'.0~~ ~ ~ Z :B=0 8 """-O<"""J 8 0,"" o·~ 'Qll '0 :iii …asl ~ 0 0 ".,.r!..l 1<.1<. IllS. .Q Oil ~-"''.~Q" ~~ 0 II: .~…. :-M<a::::; r1J r1J "0 " 0"0''0' 0 $740,777 ~ 722,':'58 — 218,513 – — — — — — — — —– 66,263 South Afti~a. Tu~key, India, China, Japan, 23,245 Mit·ronesla. MeXICO, Spain, Austria. A.merican Board…………………………. 1810 1176,439 169 22 170 183 544 27.5 956 1,500 1,394 59,585 5,902 158,806 1,368 Saptist Missionary Union ………………… 1814 127,857 1,406 37,844 Burrna. India, China, Japan, Africa, France. Southem Baptist Convention …………….. 1845 114,062 181 23 116 185 505 289 8,306 3,811 1,665 113,418 7,553 25,000 lipain. Philippines. Free Baptist…………………………….. 1833 62 15,376 54 2 16 67 139 G7 192 331 3BB 8,880 1.790 2,000 100 1,350 China, Japan, Africa, Italy, Mexico, Brazil, Cu ba. 783 8 0 8 2 18 6 66 84 14 904 107 3,860 India (Southern Bengal), Africa.
ChrisUan (DisciplE's) …………………….. , 1875 182,142 25.567 83 4 87 19 9J 47 290 882 92 3,289 581 10,000 89 2,199 India~s~hina, Japan, Turkey, Africa, Phllip- pin 4 5 Japan (Tokyo, etc.). American Christian Convention…………… 118S6 10,386 °@ 0 8 15 7 12 27 35 420 43 1,500 1 Chrlstian and Missionary Alliance………… 1897 211,316 1,748 70 50 70 80 270 ° 151' 426 100 2,800 772 3,500 80 2,200 Africa, India, China, Japan, South America, Protestant Episcopal. ……………………. 1835 489,119 22,527 58 16 39 84 142 75 526 668 240 5,8,9 467 20,000 188 ca, etc 4,622 Afri China, Japan, Haiti, Mexico, Alaska.
Soclety of Friends……………………….. 1871 68,927 6,013 24 30 23 31 108 8 193 301 71 2,120 885 5,112 87 1,716 Mexico, Alaska, Jamaica, China, Japan.
Lutheran, General Council……………….. 1869 26,287 2,190 7 0 8 5 15 3 254 269 22B 3,860 890 . 9,285 180 5,216 India (Madras), Porto Rico• Lutheran, General Synod………………… 1837 61,278 1,300 12 ° 11 9 82 0 506 588 629 8,586 900 85,525 ;US 6,886 India (Madras), West Africa. Scandinavian Alliance……………………. 1891 29,7(i() 570 62 1,500 4 150 Japan, China, India, Africa. lIethodist Episcopal. …..•…•……………. 1819 1,314,000 5,000 45 ° 68 0 108 0 55 168 98 4,847 250,000 839,728 84,480 1,198 35,000 1,181 39.666 China Korea, Japan, India, Africa, Bulgaria, ethodist Episcopal, South………………. 1846 16,289 257 34 243 233 767 510 8,608 4,376 904 12,906 25 MeXlCO, South America. Philippines.
26,452 80 5 79 8 172 95 246 318 312 2,212 China,Korea, Japan, Mexico, Brazil, Cuba.
lIethodist Protestant…………………….. 1888 16,045 662 6 1 7 ° 14 6 15 29 85 469 107 1,0()0 2 885 Japan (Yokohama). Presbyterian ……………………………. 1837 1,064,119 46,540 5,227 27,370 India, China, Japan, Korea, Africa, Syria, Presbyterian, South……………………… 1861 19,690 262 12 268 164 706 192 1,988 2,694 1,529 5,270 125,000 764 Cumberland Presbyterian ……………….•. 1820 168,425 890 Siam, Persia, Spanish America, Philippine,. 29,079 10,727 60 15 56 82 165 15 132 297 246 850 85 12,000 25 1,260 China •. Korea, Japan, Africa, Italy, Mexico, 1,427 9 2 7 7 25 7 28 58 14 1,500 4 Brazll, Cuba. 250 China, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Indians.
Reformed Presbyterian (General Synod) …… 1836 29,555 31iO 8 1 9 10 29 1 41 70 16 316 2.~ 1,000 18 611 India (Northwest Provinces).
United Presbyterian…………….. ……… 1859 193,000 87,318 88 10 40 49 137 46 798 935 403 16,293 1,G97 88,810 312 21,694 Egypt, India (Northwest Provinces).
Reformed (Dutch) ……………………….. 1832 158,895 16100 32 5 29 29 95 33 589 634 270 4,717 304 15,000 307 7,089 Indl'B, China, Japan, Arabia.
Reformed (German)……………………… 1878 66,305 2,000 11 2 13 6 36 10 55 91 64 2,100 350 3,000 4. 361 Japan (Tokyo, Sendal, etc.), China.
German Evangelical Synod……………….. 1883 20,915 1,200 9 0 5 1 15 0 108 123 48 2,263 124 4,999 80 1,877 India (Central Provinces).
United Brethren in Christ ………………. 1858 34,393 2,750 16 0 16 0 32 9 105 137 76 2.700 400 6,000 16 700 West Africa, China.
Woman's Union Missionary Society………. 1861 50,000 2,000 0 ° 0 58 58 ° 200 25B 16 600 ° 400 22 4,700 India, China, Japan. Canada Baptist.•…•….••……………….. 1873 66,103 1,804 Indl'B (Telugus), Bolivia. 1,683 24 1 21 20 66 9 317 :183 70 5,291 673 6,532 107 Canada Methodist……………………….. 1873 139,347 8,916 56 ° 54 ° 110 36' 86 197 245 8,814 792 25,000 49 1,450 Japan (Tokyol, China, Indians. 858 Canada Presbyterian…………………….. 1844 186,809 10,276 49 18 64 45 1–.::. 176 10 177 2,OM 114 4,102 221 6,000 92 6,517 China, India, New Hebrides, West Indies. 212 887 21,484 Formosa. Othe~American Societies….•……………. 1,492 1,149 …… – – – – Totals for AmerIca……………………. 358,700 47,500 418 – -13-2 – -28-7 282 – -2-4,84-3 1,350 – – -69',-000- 615 – -1-675-0 —- ~,964,976 $611,245 1,999 485 1,7GB 5,740 1,741 15,842 9,598 432,765 37,487 1,000,426 7,136 267,007 Baptist Society (England) ……………….. 1792 480,045 35,590 141 5 te9 66 815 29 1,105 1,420 1,046 58,910 3,290 150,000 780 19,086 India, China, Palestine, Africa, West Indies.
London Society (L. M. S.)…………………. 1795 853,2.~5 100,655 172 88 170 65 445 94.3 6,462 6,907 945 69,607 4,891 11l6,026 1,940 92,686 China, India, Africa, Madagascar, Polynesia.
Church SOCiety (C. M. S.)…………………. 1799 1,751,450 154,325 418 152 883 877 1,330 379 8,076 9,406 5SO 81,652 9,687 299.553 2,37R 121,541 Persla, .Chlna, Japan, India, Africa, North 68,800 6,520 230,000 870 AmerIca. etc. Propagation Society (S. P. G.) …………….. 1'001 760,000 28,640 356 0 820 80 676 192 3,140 3,816 3,700 4,322 12,000 146 817 88,000 IndiIt, China, Japan, Malaysia, Africa, West Universities' Mission ..•……•…….•…….. 1859 147,410 4,445 27 21 0 48 100 17 224 324 75 Indles, etc.
5,079 Africa (Lake Nyasa and Zanzibar).
Society of Friends….•……•..•…..•.•.•••.. 1867 92,455 12,000 0 35 29 30 94 0 Il78 1,072 249 2,932 170 27,685 255 16,677 Palestine, India, China, Japan, Natal, Mad· Wesleyan Society………………………… 1816 560,450 agascar. Primatlve Methodist…………………….. 1870 24,270 47,945 227 190 180 0 552 43 1,136 1,683 403 64,614 2,072 175,000 950 42,289 India, China, Africa (West and South), West 6,500 q 4 12 0 27 3 7 84 41 1,466 55 8,500 22 Indies, Italy, Spain.
275 West, South, and Central Africa.
Presbyterian Church of England….•.•……. 1847 132,390 12,r.oo 25 18 28 29 100 33 670 770 261 7,844 591 20,000 112 2,064 India, China, Malaysia, Formosa, Syria.
Presbyterian Church of Ireland..•••..•……. 1840 99,875 8,900 32 24 29 29 114 5 419 582 116 2,796 140 5,000 185 1,870 China, India (Gujeratl, Syria.
Welsh Calvinistic………………………… 1841 48,810 2,820 18 2 14 7 41 10 101 142 41-1 5,104 674 20,340 879 7,698 N.E. India, France (Brittany).
China Inland Mission ………. , …………… 1865 358,830 2,000 50 250 186 248 734 18 741 1,475 509 7,774 1,0'26 12,000 90 1,082 China (Sixteen Provinces).
Established Church of Scotland…………… 1829 267,495 14,200 28 22 36 62 145 10 642 787 217 8,789 774 11,988 225 11,595 India, East Africa, Palestine.
United Free Church……………………… 1843 541,545 ~,235 146 57 118 89 410 65 2,115 2,524 827 39,644 2,813 75,000 915 57,680 India, Africa, Arabia, Palestine. New Heb- rides, China, Japan, West Indillll. …… —– – – – – – – – – – – – Other British Societies•…………….•.•…. 53.480 366 120 176 290 952 – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – 885,062 16 1,201 2,153 875 6,500 852 15,260 – – – – 15,000 – .21-0 Total British Societies………………… $6,957,842 S882,235 2,017 988 1,74U 1,340 6,035 1,763 27,017 33,051 9,255 420,754 34,322 1,158,087 9,527 4-'12,832 Paris Society……………………………. 1~ 282,058 46,000 74 35 64 33 208 48 1,095 1,303 259 29,126 2,500 120,000 690 42,300 Africa (South, East and West), Tahiti, Mad· 8wiss Romande….•….•…………………. 1875 43,250 1.193 143 a lI:ascar. Basel Society… , ………………………… 1815 313,325 2,300 18 5 15 15 58 ° 68 116 58 24,372 2,500 ,59 2,102 1,870 EastAfrica. 51,410 182 76 148 16 422 88 1,265 1,687 566 60,000 .Q35 21,880 South India, China, West Africa Berlin Society …………………………… 1824 15:~,387 5,000 95 15 89 18 217 4 924 1,141 331 21,978 575 48,240 331 8,301 AfrI' ca (East and South), China.
Breklum (SChleswig-Holsteinl…•…………. 1877 39,o.'l3 250 14 °8 3 25 ° 84 107 78 748 220 8,741 39 1,088 Indla (Telugus). Gossner's Society…. ,………………….. lS'16 68,451 19,547 830 5,793 Indla (Ganges, Chota Nagpore). 8,220 48 I> 25 1 69 24 1,145 1,214 250 83,287 210 HermanDsburg Socie~y…… . .. .. .. .. . . . .. . … 1854 112,003 13,877 59 0 55 1 115 ° 223 343 168 24,000 663 51,000 124 7,418 India, South Africa, Persia. Leipsic Society………………………….. 1836 183,671 9,280 866 9,844 South India, Burma, British and German lIoravIIlDChurcla………………………… 1732 224,763 8,750 61 5 42 7 115 30 -650 965 284 32,687 1,198 21,815 218 North Oenua.a Society…………………… 1836 1,986 148 E a.t Africa. 48,434 190,162 168 32 183 11 394 23 47 441 839 98,599 230 24,189 South Africa, Australia, South America, 13,000 18 2 12 10 42 '3 98 140 68 4,500 62 WestIndies. Eskimo. 2,024 West Africa (Slave Coast).
RheniM &ciety (Barna~………………… 1829' 181,527 28,477 140 11 117 17 285 27 1,562 1,817 291 40,288 4,278 91,124 388 17,926 Afllica. Borneo, Sumatra, New Gum.,a, China. 180,840 5.000 15.000 …… Other GermaD Secieties.. _…….. _……….. 48 – – 107 340 -6 258 -59-8 -11-5 – – 7,100 472,306 52 – – -85-0. S319,146 – – – – 72 –1-3 – – – – – – – 920 18.000 25,000 — 125,000 TGtai German Societles.. _.__ ………….. $1,400,434 8,500 8Q2 154 7"~7 191 2,024 155 6,461 8,483 2,485 181,881 11,300 2,189 99,313 128,450 …… NetheriaDda Societies… _…………….. _…. 483,740 58 12 25 3 98 8 205 306 160 4,920 81 445 11,700 …… Scandinavian Societies……………………. 159 84 125 77 895 98 2,096 2,491 1,136 55,285 4,730 872 84,670 Australasian Methodist Society…••…..•…. 1855 – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – —– – – – – – – Totals for Asia, Africa, the Islands, etc…. .-…-.. 121,985 45,000 – -26 11 18 10 65 84 4,132 4,197 1,554 40,525 1,570 1:11,526 1,601 81,414 FljI, Samoa, New Britain, New Guinea. $;'35.650 939 391 5,820 685,220 1,764 68,400 $76,000 620 126 188 158 15,557 4,28-3 62,681 6,759 2,300 – -2.47,-84-0 8,824,065 24,283 989,506 13,282 4,337 71,458 4,046,503 1l'T2,t81 – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – — – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – —– TOTALS FOR CHRiSTENDOM…………… 4,259 '— 4,610 3,318 .. • $17,114,383 $1,955,426 5,863 1.800 78,554 27,800 1.414.176 96,860 – – – – 4. – – – – – – – – – – 25,583 Totals for 1902· …….. · ……………….. . $16,310,424 12,837,675 4,6971t.m 409 12,879 84,740 24:070 ~5,544 9~,607 ,- Missionary Review of the World Old Series i J ANUARY lj VOL. NXewVISIe. riesNo.1 VOL. XXVII. No.1 f SOME GRAVE MISSIONARY PROBLEMS BY THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF One chapter in the Second Book of the Kings * contains a brief epitome of the greatest reformation recorded in Hebrew history. Josiah found at least ten forms of idolatry and iniquity polluting the Temple and people: Worship of Baal and Astarte; Asherah, or Phallic, abominations; Sodomites; Tophet, or Moloch; Chemosh of Moab; Milcom of Ammon; Bethel with Calf Worship, and the consulting of Familiar spirib, and the offering of incense in high places. He destroyed all existing relics of idolatry, defiled idol altars and sites, and degraded priests of Jehovah who had corrupted His worship.
Turn, now, to confront the evils of our own day which call for a new reformation, and the problems which demand practical solution. First looking at the Orient, we find three generic forms of false faith: 1. ANCESTRAL-Worship of deceased ancestors, including all human heroes lifted to Divine honors.
2. ASTRAL-Sun, moon, stars, including the natural forces of the universe, and the material creation.
3. ANIMAL-Various forms of animal life, originally probably used as symbols of Divine creative power, etc., like the Egyptian Apis.
Under these three forms all false faiths may be arranged, as, for example: Under Ancestral, Confucianism, Mohammedanism, Buddhism; under Astral, Parseeism, etc.; under Animal, Brahmanism, Fetishism, etc.
For convenience in stndying the great missionary problems, we may divide the world field into two parts-the Orient and the Occident; the one representing the territory where the dominant false faiths prevail, and the latter the territory of at least a nominal Christianity, whence must come the missionary forces for the great campaign of the Kingdom of Christ.
In Oriental lands we find several gigantic obstacles to the spread of the Gospel, and, while various systems of heathen religion have certain features in common, like polytheism and idolatry, each has some one or more conspicuous characteristics which differentiate it from the others. For instance, Fetishism, the lOWEst form of idolatry, is one of the grossest forms of the worships of nature, as Parseeism, or • u. Kings, xxiii : 1-24. fire-worship, is the most refined. Brahmanism is specially marked by its iron system of caste, and Buddhism by its essential deification of man, in Buddha. Mohammedanism is comparatively a pure system of belief, but corrupted by sensuality, and moder~ Judaism is a pure religion perverted into denial of the Messiahship of the very Christ which it fore- told. Confucianism is a lofty ethical system tainted with the worship of ancestors. Thus, every system has one or more distinguishing features which render it specially difficult to meet and overcome by the modern missionary forces.
In the Occident, even among the nominal people of God, more or less exact counterparts to these errors are found, constituting the main hindrances to missions at home, if indeed they are not more formidable than those encountered abroad. For example: The virtual worship of nature in scientific materialism and naturalism.
The Oaste Spirit, in race prejudice,clasR antagonism, and social hatred.
The Rejection of Ohrist's Deity ir. Unitarianism and philosophic skepticism. .
The Oounterpart of Oonfucianism in dependence on ethical systems, tradition, etc.
Modern idolatry, as it appears in Christian lands, may be classified, therefore, substantially under three main heads: 1. Worship of matter-materialism.
2. Worship of Mammon-wealth and worldly enterprise. S. Worship of wan-self-interest and self-indulgence.
In Christendom there is the Self Life as a principle and motive, with this world as its field of ·operation, and present time as its period of opportunity; while, pel' contra, God commends unselfish love as the principle motive of mission&, with the whole race of man as its field of operation, and with all eternity as its harvest hope and reward. It is a remarkable fact, which should be emphasized as most sig- nificant, that, when we turn to these Occidental lands and study the hindrances which, among so-called Christian peoples, impede or pre- vent the missionary conquest, we thus find every obstacle, confronted abroad, to have its almost exact counterpart at home. The wor- ship of nature corresponds to materialism, sometimes gross, sometimes refined, as in scientific skepticism; the caste system is reflected in race prejudice and class antagonism; the deification of Buddha, in hero worship; the sensuality of Mohammedanism corresponds to the awful corruption of sensual vice; Judaism, with its rejection of the Messiah, to the Christless creeds of a nominal Ohristianity. Ancestral worship has its counterpart in blind reverence for tradition; and idolatry generally, in the worship of Mammon. It is as though Christendom had imported the idols, superstitions, and debasing practises of heathendom, modified them, and called them by other names, still giving them'a shrine and throne in the temple of God, as the Jews did with the strange deities of the heathen. It is another example of the repetitions of history. There is nothing new unger the sun. The
SOME GltAVE MISSIONARY PROBLEMS
human nature which is in the heathen and pagan reappears in the Ohristian, and, so far as unsanctified, brings forth similar if not' essen· tially identical fruit.
Some heathen obstacles are peculiarly formidable. Mohammedan- ism, called also Islam, Resignation, is theoretically entire submission to the will and word of God; practically it is fatalism, not faith. It has two fundamental cre<1al statements: "There is no God but God, and Mohammed is God's apostle." God has no offspring-"begetteth not, nor is begotten." Jesus Ohrist is a great prophet, and will come again to establish Islam everywhere. Angels are mediators between God and man. There are four archangels: Gabriel, Angel of Reve- lations, the Holy Spirit; Michael, Guardian of the Jews; Azrael or Raphael, Angel of Death; Uriel, the Trumpeter of Resurrection.
The duties are four: prayer, almsgiving, fasting, and pilgrimage.
Prayer, five times in every twenty-four hours; almsgiving, legal and voluntary; fasting, during the whole month of Ramadan, from sunrise to sunset (they may eat from sunset to sunrise), and pilgrimage to Mecca. .
Oaste is a term applied chiefly to class divisions in India-" a system of cellular structure, where the cells do not penetrate or communicate." It makes subdivision of labor so rigid that to go outside of the limits of one's employment is a forfeiture of social rank. In some cases even the touch of a lower caste defiles, and some sorts of food are defiled when the shadow of an inferior caste passes or falls over them. In India t~e principal castes are four-priestly, military. mercantile, and servile, with numerous subdivisions; and so stringent are the caste rules that Dr. Judson declared that to get a convert to accept Ohrist and come out for Him was like pulling the eye-tooth of a live tiger!
Some Obstacles at Home (1) 'fhe calc~tlating or mathematical spirit, that coolly calculates whether or not missions pay financially. It puts in one scale the money annually spent and in the other scale the number of converts annually gathered, and weighs one over against the other. Such a method applied to a work commanded by God is itself close akin to blasphemy. Money it is possible to weigh, but who can weigh a soul? On the triple doorways of the Oathedral of Milan are graven three inscriptions. On one side, with all the emblems of plenty and pleasure: " All that pleases us is but for a moment!' Opposite, with all the symbols of pain and anguish: " All that affiicts us is but for a moment." In the middle, over the fadeless crown: "That only is important which is eternal." All temporal good, however desirable, is still temporal. The earth and the works that are therein shall be burned up, while he that doeth the will of God abideth forever.
The story of inissions is a sufficient answer to such financial
arguments. Take one example-Livingstone's body-guard, Susi and Chuma. When they found him dead on his knees in that grass hut at Ilala, they took out his heart and buried it under the moula tree, as the inalienable property of Africa; then rudely embalming the body, wrapped it in bark and canvas and lashed it to a pole, and undertook that greatest funeral march on record, running all manner of risks for forty weeks by day and night. They had to pass through hostile tribes nearly every fifty miles, involving new risk. That journey of fifteen hundred miles demauded all the patience of indomitable love and the sagacity of the most competent generalship. Yet, depending on God, the deed was done, and so the remains of the great missionary general, statesman, and explorer were laid to rest in England's grand Abbey. Do missions pay? That. black man, Susi) whose hand was upon the pall, was fully the equal in nobility of any of the noblemen that helped bear that sacred load; yet Susi was the fruit of missions; and had all the life-blood and treasure spent on African soil wrought no oth~r result than to give such a hero birth, it would be a full compensation.
(2) The Gaste Spirit. This as really exists in such countries as Great Britain and the United States of America, as in India; it may not be as rigid, but in some cases it is as unquestionable and insurmountable. The cellular structure of society is such that cells do not interpenetrate.
Two great facts which are both obvious and conspicuous are sufficient to prove this. The intense race prejudice and hatred which exists toward the colored inhabitants of our country and toward the Chinese emigrants on the one hand, and class separation and antagonism as between poor and rich, capitalists and laborers, everywhere exemplified in society-these are sufficient illustrations both to vindicate and illustrate the affirmation that the spirit of caste is by no means confined to the East Indies or Isles of the Sea. We have our "tabu" system as certainly as the Cannibal Islands of the Pacific. One of the most startling proofs of the malignity of this spirit is found in the amazing growth of lynching and similar acts of violence, especially among the people of the South, in this great republic.
In a letter to The Springfield Hepttblican the eminent Harvard psychologist, Prof. William James, described the lynching spirit as a profound social disease that is so rapidly spreading that "we shall have negro burning in a very fflW years on Cambridge Common and in the Boston Public Garden." Professor James' letter was hardly published before the report of the lynching in Danville, Ill., afforded a lurid verification of his prophecy in a Northern town-the home of the man who has been selected by the Republicans as the Speaker of the House of Representatives, a town that has hitherto been regarded as a center of light and leading for the eastern part of Central Illinois.
SOME GRAVE MISSIONARY
No doubt at the bottom of this lynching there is much latent race hatred, as most of the victims were blacks. But in connection . with this is undoubtedly a still more dangerous defiance and contempt of law. The old triangular contest is upon us: infidelity and irreligion at the opposite angles of the base, and the common apex in which each naturally culminates-disregard of both human and Divine law. The evil is deep-rooted, and the appetite for cruelty in connection with these acts of violence grows, like the tiger's taste of blood, into a maddening fury.
Mary Cowden Clarke, in her book, "The Iron Cousin," represents her heroine as retiring from Christian work among the the slums because she" can not stand the poor smell." Mrs. Rhea, formerly of Persia, has graphically told how, when she first went into those Persian huts and sat down on the earth floor among those filthy and ragged women, she was thankful for the almost naked condition of the children, because the less clothing the less room for vermin to hide. . . . She tells how she went home, threw herself down on the floor of her room, and said: " 0 my God, I never can work among these women without a new baptism of love for them." Thousands of people are kept from Christian work at home by the repulsion which they feel toward the ignorant and degraded, the poor and the unclean. More than this, in at least two cities where the writer has lived he has known Christian people of intelligence and culture who have been so influenced by what may be called ideas of aristocratic locality that they would not pass the line of certain streets, even to engage in Christian work or attend a missionary meeting. Vain is it for us to remonstrate against the caste spirit abroad while such narrowness and meanness exists at home, often under the guise of piety. If we are going to carryon world-wide missions we must learn more sympathy with the immaculate Christ, who was the most "pedect gentleman" who ever trod the earth, and in comparison with whose refinement and delicacy our finest tastes are coarse; yet who, nevertheless, passed his human life in the closest contact with the poorest and lowest and filthiest classes of Palestine, yet who never once betrayed any repulsion, save from hypocrites and formalists.
(3) I. et us look a moment at the Oarnal Sp£r£t, which means the spirit of self-indulgence in all its breadth and length. This may be illustrated in two ways. First, by the comparative cost of missions and of other expenditures, even in Christian communities. Taking $1,000 as the basis of the estimate, it is reckoned that we spend annually on schools, $30; on footwear, $60; on cotton goods, $65; on woolen goods, $75; on meat, $100; on breadstuffs, $150; kid gloves and feathers, $20; on tobacco, $200; on drink, $300. To state it differently, out of every $1,000, we spend for food, $218; clothing, $250; ostrich plumes, $2; education, $30; tobacco and rum,
$500; missions, $2. Our gifts to missions are, therefore, but $2 out of $l,OOO-as much as the ladies give for ostrich plumes! If this does not reveal appalling extravagance on the one hand, it certainly does show appalling parsimony on the other. And, if expenditure for God's work is to be estimated by comparative ontlay, this is a reproach and a shame. It may be said that this is an estimate of money as expended not by Christians, but by society at large in Christian lands. Yet no disciple of Christ can prayerfully consider this tabulated statement· without being impressed that even devout believers can not exculpate themselves from responsibility for such conditions of things. If they do not in this case always lead the way, they are too prompt to follow where others lead.
Another illustration of the carnal spirit is suggested in the following relic of one of the most godly men and ministers of the Scotch Church. Dr. Andrew Bonar once made a quaint analysis of the zeal of the preacher. He reckoned that out of one hundred ounces, personal ambition had twenty-three; love of praise, nineteen; denominational pride, fifteen; pride of talent, fourteen; love of authority, twelve; bigotry, ten; while love of God might claim four, and love to man as man, three.
The late Dr. A. J. Gordon, of Boston, was studying the subject of comparative expenditure, even in the churches. He made careful investigation as to the conditions of churches within, say, a radius of twenty miles from the Clarendon Street Church in Boston, and he found that the amount of money annually expended for organs,' choirs, and other musical performances averaged ten times as much as the whole sum given in these churches to missions-and published his own statement to that effect ! We have personally known facts in our own observation that fully sustain this' statement of Dl'. Gordon's.
(4) The Secular Spirit. By this we mean the constant tendency and temptation to magnify what is temporal and visible over that which is etel'llal and invisible. This seems to be the special form of temptation against which we are warned as that which comes through the world. The flesh seems to represent innate depravity and carnality. The devil seems to stand for lies and wiles, or denial of truth und a delusive and subtle evasion of duty, but the world represents the temporal and visible order, good and desirable, but oftentimes an obstacle and hindrance to the clear vision of things spiritual and Divine.
Nothing is, perhaps, more fatal to a true missionary spirit than the Becular spirit. For example, the spirit of what we call modern enterprise has never yet found its way into missions, certainly not since apostolic times. There have been what we might call spurts and starts in this direction, but no steady, faithful, onward, and upward movement. For example, it is now more than fifty years ago since
Dr. Angus, of London, made the proposition in his famous missionary sermon, that the Ohristian Ohurch should put men enough in the field, and set apart money enough for the work, to evangelize the world in the course of the half century then remaining. He demonstrated mathematically that the Ohurch was strong enough numerically to supply the men and women by giving one out of a hundred to the direct work, and financially abundantly able to supply all the money by giving one out of every hundred dollars of income. His proposi- tion was not only never seriously followed, but it was laughed at as an impossible scheme. Yet it is perfectly obvious that there was nothing in it either unreasonable or impossible.
In the time of Esther, when Ahasuerus wished to reach the utter- most part of his empire in the shortest possible time, in order to save the Jews, the queen's people, from destruction, he had a proclamation translated into every language of his empire, and the swiftest posts carried it to its bounds within nine months, and yet he had none of the facilities of the printing-press, steam transportation, or electric telegraph; and his empire was probably fifteen hundred miles in one direction by three thousand in the other. There were three such proclamations successively sent forth by him in his empire, and this fact seems to be recorded that a lesson might be put permanently before the Ohristian Ohurch as to the possibility of the" evangeliza- tion of the world in a single generation."
(5) The Scientific Spirit. We do not mean that there is anything necessarily antagonistic between science and Ohristianity; of course not. True science is as truly Divine truth as revelation, but scientific theories and facts are different things, and scientific inferences are sometimes strangely delusive and misleading. For example, there is a tendency in our day to carry Herbert Spencer's philosophy of evolution into Ohristianity and even Ohristian work. The basis of evolution is, of course, development and survival of the fittest, and the effect of this, when carried into Ohristianity, is to make the Bible nothing but a book which marks a peculiar stage in the evolution of revealed truth; to make Ohrist only a personal factor, representing also a stage in the evolution of manhood toward perfection; and to make all heathen religions steps and stages in a final evolution of a perfect religious system. With this philosophy permeating Ohristian missions, the heart of Ohristian endeavor is paralyzed. We may let the heathen alone, Why not? They will come out all right in the end, and it is not probable that we can do much even to hasten this slow process which, like other evolutions, takes ages to accomplish.
The beginning of a new year is a good time to take our bearings, and to look seriously at the whole question of our attitude toward a dying world, and at the hindrances in the way of our performance of duty.
There are certain grand incentives and inspirations to missions which must be steadily and prayerfully cultivated.
First: Christ's command and promise. It is a question, at bottom, of submission to Divine authority, or, as the Duke of Wellington said, of « obedience to marching orders."
Second: There must be love for man as man. We must remember Robert McAll's two sentences with which he began and upon which he built up his great mission in France-" God loves you" and " I love you." Nothing can take the place of a passionate devotion to Christ on the one hand and to human souls on the other.
Third: The principle of self-sacrifice, which is born of love and which is identical with it, must become the law of our life. We must have the spirit of John Maynard, the martyr pilot on the Great Lakes of the North. Standing at his wheel on the burning steamer, seeking to beach the boat in time to save the passengers' lives, removing his right hand from the wheel when burned to a crisp, he placed his left hand on the wheel to be burned, and sacrificed his own life cheerfully that he might save the lives of others. We need the spirit of « Ohinese" Gordon, whose principles of life began and ended in utter absorption to the will of God and utter oblivion of self.
Fourth: We need a revival of stewardship. We must learn anew that holy lesson that all things helong to God, and, hence, that man owns nothing. What he has is simply committed to him in trust, to be rendered back to the original Owner. We have long since outgrown this apostolic principle. Men consider that what they have is their own; that it was got by their own industry and sagacity and economy and frugality, and they deny the claims of God upon their property; and this is true even of many devout disciphis.
Last of all, we need the revival of spiritual sensibility. Our faculties must be exercised to discern invisible things, and we must come anew under the powers of the world to come-Ohrist as Leader; the Holy Spirit as Administrator; eternal realities as the hope and inspiration of the Ohurch of God.
When such conditions as these are fulfilled, we- can understand such words as those of Rev. Hunter Oorbett: "I may have' buried my life' in Ohina, but this I know: that at this moment there are at least two thousand converts there who are daily praying to God for me." Dr. H. H. Jessup, of Syria, when offel'ed a missonary secretaryship in New York City, which would have multiplied his salary fourfold and lifted him to leadership in his own land, sent a letter of declination which was itself a grand missionary document. He said, in SUbstance, that his American friends, in asking him to forsake his Syrian work and converts, were suggesting a self-denial for which grace had not yet made him equal. Such identity with the work makes even self-sacrifice a joy.
o
THE ltEDEMPTION OF THE CiTY
THE REDEMPTION OF THE CITY CHURCH FEDERATION AND EVANGELISTIC WORK IN CITIES BY REV. WALTER LAIDLAW, PH.D. Secretary of the Federation of Churches and Christian Organizations in New York City The Bible, opening with a tale of the ruined association of two people, closes with a vision of the rapturous association of a count- less throng. The wretched pair, departing with a curse from Eden's closed gates, give place to the ecstatic myriads of the Holy City, within whose ever-open gates there is no more curse.
The country, tho glorious with the fresh, creative touch of God upon it, was the scene of man's seduction by the serpent, Satan; the city, though first men:tioned as built by Cain, the murderer, and though we read that God interfered with the building or one whose selfish people were harmonious only in speech (Gen. ii: 6, 7), becomes at last the seat of the throne of God and of the Lamb, while the nations, severed by speech and sick from sin, are healed by the leaves of its Tree of Life, and walk together in its light and glory.
The city is thus represented, in the general outline of the Bible, as capable of being transfigured. There is in the program of redemption not only a provision for the fellowship of men with God the Father, but for the fellowship of His children with one another. The cell which shelters an individual ascetic is not the richest place for the revelation of God, but the city, where souls' echoes flow to other souls.
God enriches the individual not only by what He directly gives to him, but by what He gives to him through others. Not the isolation of country life but the association of city life is the final prophecy of the Bible. The pessimism of the "fear-full" is discredited. They see only evil in the modern trend of population to the cities. God's enmity to cities includee only those built for selfish purposes, and whose plans include a tower of escape from the fate and the need of the rest of men. God's glory may flood every avenue and alley of the cities that will cooperate with Him for the good of all humanity.
The general optimism of the Bible concerning urban life receives especial support from the history and teaching of Jesus. He spent the greater part of His life and ministry in Galilee, which in His time was an urban rather than a rural community.* The Gospels themselves bear witness to the multiplicity of the towns of Galilee, and to the influence of its urban make-up upon the plans of the Mas- ter. He sent seventy forerunners, in groups of two, into every city * Josephus may exaggerate when he says that there were two hundred and fifty towns above 15,000 in population, but archeology is justifying the claim that from a mountain height" the land must have looked like one continuous town." The ruins of three hundred and sixty-five towns have been marked in northern Galilee alone. There can be little doubt the Galilee of the days of Jesus was densely populated-as much so as almost any part of the world in our own urban age. w. L.
and place whither He himself was about to come. He calls cities as well as souls to repentance, Chorazin and Bethsaida, as well as Matthew and the Magdalene. He wept over the sorrow of the home of Bethany, but He wept also over the shame of Jerusalem. He bade HIS disciples wait for the coming of the Spirit not on the Mount where He was transfigured, but in the city where He had been crucified. 'rhe devil had tempted Him in the wilderness; the Spirit would come to them in the city. Soon every city, even to the capital of the empire, received the Messianic message needed to complete its life-wisdom for Ephesus and Athens, righteousness for Rome, sanctification for Corinth, redemption for Jerusalem. Paul's letters to Rome, Corinth, Ephesus, Philippi, Colossre, and Thesalonica, especially those last written, are letters to the chnrches, 101' the Christianization of those cities; and the heathen of early Christianity are the heath-men, the countrymen, untouched by the apostles in their sanguine march to _the strategic centers to claim the associated life of humanity for Christ.
The foregoing'has minute relations to the question of church fed- eration for evangelistic work in cities of to-day. Church Federation is necessary: (1) To revive that purpose and expectation of the Ohristian conquest of cities which characterized early Ohristianity.
(2) To compact the churches into the Ohurch, and to acquaint them with the nature of the campaign.
(3) To assist them in conducting the campaign. (4) To conserve the results of foreign missionary campaigns elsewhere. (5) To restore to the Evangel of the Church its original inclusiveness, and to dower her with purpose and power to fulfil the Messianic prophe- cies of the relationship of Ohrist to cities.
The illustration of these claims will be drawn from the experiences of New York's Federation of Churches.
The Restoration of the Conquest Spirit of Early Christianity The expectation of conquest gave substantiality to things not yet seen when John was a prisoner on Patmos, and when his great vision helped to cheer the persecuted Christians to stand firm to the end. The pathetic voice of an illextir.guishable hope sounds out from Paul's prison cell in Rome when he says: "All the saints salute you, especially they that are of Cresar's household" (Phil. iv: 22). In his bonds he rejoices that the Christ has claimed the homage of some who live at the court of the empire which sentenced Him to death. His name, Jesus (Savior), is yet to be above every name-even that of Cresar or Czar. He shall yet triumph. Rome, supreme among the cities, shall yet enthrone Him.
The Curia on the Tiber is not, indeed, an embodiment of the lowly Nazarene; but neither is it Anti-Christ, as last-century Christians
THE REDEMPTION OF THE CITY
were wont to maintain. Nor is it as difficult to believe that Christ shall yet control the cities of the Christian world-London, New York, Chicago, San Franciscoas-it was unlikely that Paul's dauntless hope should be realized. The house where the Crnsars glutonized, as well as the prison where Paul. suffered, have had to be recovered by the archrnologist's spade; but the Fisherman's Ring, or its equivalent, has outlasted Crnsar's crown. Conquering and to conquer, the Christ, whose personal triumph only gives value to Rome, to Geneva, to Canterbury, and to Heidelberg, with all their varying views and ways, survives the disappearance of the Roman empire even as He survived its cross. Paul's hope has been justified, for he walked by" faith and n.ot by sight. If our hope is any less than his it is because we walk by doubt and not by faith. A subtle agnosticism which resolves Christ's resurrection into a subjective vision, or explains Christianity's history by hypnotism, has been stimulated by the march of worldly knowledge and the dwarfing of the earth in space since Paul's day.
But those who accept the historicity of the resurrection and the ver- dict of the jury of twelve aposUes, who were transformed from Jews into cosmopolitans and who sealed their verdict with their life-blood, need have no fears from science or from sociology. They can say, with Pressel: "
"0 earth, thou grain of sand upon the shore of the universe, thou Bethlehem amid the princely cities of the heavens, thou art, and thou shalt remain, the chief among ten thousand suns and worlds, the chosen one of God. On thee the Son of God has a great work to complete. Thou didst once drink in His life-blood, but Thou shalt yet give Him the crown that is His due."
rrhe conquest spirit of early Christianity, in other words, must possess everyone who believes Ohristianity's own account of its origin. This must mean, in turn, the conquest of cities, as Rome, slipping from the Crnsars, has held to the name of Christ. He who directed His disciples to attack and attach the cities does not despair of redeeming New York or London. He incites the true successors of His apostles to capture for Him even the most powerful cities, as He incited Paul to capture Rome. Not many wise or mighty had confessed His leadership in old Corinth, but those who do homage to the Christ to-day are among the wisest and mightiest of the world. The Christian conquest of cities will appear possi"ble to all who have not lost Paul's faith or who have not closed their eyes to the results of H. If our age is as urban in its trend as was Galilee in the days of Jesus, the Master-the" same yesterday, to-day, and forever" in purpose and power-bids His disciples not to sU13cumb to the difficulties, but to meet them, and give to Him, even in this, the preeminence. If modern Christianity will devote itself, faiLh-filled and faithfully, to this task, the Master may speak again the words which He spoke on the
Ttiill MiSSIONAiW REVIEW OF' Ttiill WORLD
return of the Seventy: "I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven."
This, again, must mean church federation. Paul's letters to the churches were letters to the Ohurch, and the consciousness of conquest can not come to Methodism, as such, or to Presbyterianism as such, or to Episcopalianism as such; but it is held by Methodism or any other "ism" that is not self-idolatrous only as it devotes itself to the upbuiIding of the Kingdom of God. One of the noblest expressions concerning federation as yet formulated by a religious communion in this country is the following: We desire to renew the expression of onr profonnd interest in the current movements toward the federation of churches and Christi,an workers. We firmly believe that the vast and perplexing problems confronting the Christian Church in the cities can be met triumphantly only when the Christians of the various denominations give a practical evidence of the essential oneness of the Church of Christ by unselfish cooperation in federative efforts to reach the unchurched multitudes in the congested centers of our population.* To stimulate the expectation of conquest in every city of the land, its churches should be federated into the Ohurch. Without such federation the" isms" are in danger of being more interested in their own surviving and thriving than in the conquest of the city for Ohrist. In other words, without federation the churches are not the Ohnrch as they were in early Ohristianity.
New York needs, at this very hour, an expression of invincible hope and desire for a city whose builder and maker is God. Such expression it might have in a federation of all its churches, which would work back into the faith of all its Ohristians, and forward again, from them and by them, into a Ohristian Oitizens' Union.
II. Compacting the Churches into the Church There are some cities whose federations are little more than a rallying-point for the hope that maketh a Ohristian worker not ashamed, the hope of the final Ohristianizing of his city and his kind. Evangelical alliances and ministerial associations which attempt no active federative work, but which at least help to bring the Ohurch to the conciousness of the churches, are of this nature. But when attempt is made to compact the churches for active work federation is more dynamic and more like early Christianity. It is a great mistake to think that early Ohristianity was absolutely homogeneous in belief and methods of work. Peter was a conservative, and had followers who adhered to Hebrew ritual; Paul was a radical, esteeming it almost a sin to adhere to old forms. J ames, brother of the Lord, differed from *.This resolution was adopted by the National City Evangelization Union of the Methodist Episcopal Church at Pittsburg some years ago, and it not only asserts that the problems incident to the Christian conquest of cities can be solved, but that church federation is the method to solve them.
THE REDEMPTION OF THE CITY
CHART SHOWING PROPORTIONS OF Prote.~t.. Romaa Catholics aDd Helwc1q ill GreaterNewY~1I: PROTESTANTS ROMAN IRONX CATHOLICS Heb.,lopuct. R.C. lSPUct. Prot• .ss~r ct.
'BROOKLYN .Heb.lo.8puct.. R. C. ]4.:a per ct. PTot..s~ pcr ct QU£ENS W Heb.
R. C. Jl2o•.•6ppeel'rc(tt.. ~ P~t. 57 per ct.
RICHMOND a> Htho optret.
R. C. P.9 per ct.
Prot. sL' per cto, CBART OF PROTESTANTISM C .reIu.how com,.ratiyc pofM!.1aI,OQ of BorHtJi. of He_ York.. Di… i,iooa Ie Greater N", Ycwk, altowiq. UI lilt Dad… .,w.ce. lbe ,"porno. 01 tile OIIt-ol~vrU PTot- I ho. relahft proportl..- HeI…". . lMaded l, Ro.a. Catholics ~ow Hit- ntaats to tbe """ote.. aDd, as """ed. tlte pro- .,.-. at ncbf'). aDd Protettuts Ito til. ,.,.n. . . plUIe …~Prot~stulCOGUrlllAi…. 1""HetKt. .) I.a~'IaIioa~OIICb&.
CHARTS PREPARED FOR TH E FEDERATION OF CH UR CH ES both, and idelltified religion with social service to such an extent that Luther repudiated his writings. John, who had leaned upon the Master's bosom, was a mystic, at once conservative and radical-a doer and a dreamer. There was unity between these men, but there was not uniformity. Their unity lay in their common, intense devotion to bring the world to Ohrist and Ohrist to the world, but there was no uniformity. There was federation rather than organic union even in
the apostolic band, or, rather, there was organic union with admitted diversity, It is a long way from the homogeneous communions of to-day to a . widely inclusive organic unity with admitted di- versity, tho there are those who are working fo r this ideal. Bu t the com pacting of the churches into the Ohurch ill any city is a much shorter step, inasmuch as it involves, not the chang- ST. CORNELIUS CHAPEL ing of the customs of a whole communion, but ThIs was formerly the home of Faith Presbyter ian Church only the quickening of (419 West Forty-sixth St reet), but was bought by the the Ohristian conscious- Episcopalians. 8 8 a resul t of the recomm endation oJ the ness and the engaging of Federation, because of the number of that communion In the dIstrIct the Ohristian consecration of the chnrches of a single city. If there is any message in the Book of Revelation, for instance, to the churches of New York, to what churches does it come? To the Methodist alone, or to the Methodist and Presbyterian? Nay, surely to all the churches; that is to say, to the Ohurch of New York. A proper honor to the Bible will, therefore, tend b "the compacting of the churches into the Ohurch if they have an ear to hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches. If that message ' addresses t hem to redeeming the city, a federation ll111,st be effected which will ac- quaint them with the nature of the campaign.
Lutheranism, for exam- "pIe, may know how many of its own churches survive ,and thrive; it may know C~URCH OF THE ARCHANGEL how many new churches they Tbls Protestant Episcopal Church had been abandoned , ought to have and where but in a fe w months became self-supportin g, as a result of the Federation's canvass of the district they could be placed advan- tageously ; but if the city is to be saved, the Ohurch must know where the churches ought to be placed, or to be specially supported, or to be reduced, that nothing be wasted.
Some such work as this has beEm done by the New York Federa- tion in jts seven years of history. It hilS gathered lists of the churches
THE REDEMPTION OF THE CITY
NATIONALITIES IN MANHATTAN BOROUGH. NEW YORK The population of Manhattan includes foreign born (789,342), native colored (34,497). native whites of foreign parentage (713,947), and native whites of native parentage (312,307). in separate tables. The foreign born are divided into two section", non-English speaking and English speaking, and peoples of cognate languages are placed contiguously.
FOREIGN BORN ESTIMATED ENROLLED IN ESTIMATED OUT AFFILIATIONS CHURCHES OF CHURCH NON-ENGLISH rI ~ – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – 165,548 Germany.. 24,832 107,607 32,109 55,073 60,683 Austria.. . . . 15,170 3.035 33,750 52,534 6,262 3,035 10 . 11 42,478 21 Luxembourg .. 11 28,007 Hungary.. 5,603 2,800 19,604 4,000 1,400 1,603 1,400 13,448 Bohemia .. 5,378 6,726 1,344 3,000 1,085 2,378 5,641 128,136 Russia .. 10,250 115,323 l r 1,575 l 19,930 Poland .. 875 8,671'1 2,296 16,535 1,421 r 2,563 4,600 *938 1,099 921 1,883 Finland . 1,883 t 962 *198' 95,~33 Italy. . . 92,096 2,878 959 90,650 1,446 10 270 France. . 6,674 3.076 1,90'03 3,081 51750 } 10,000 1,179 *1,368 280 700 Belgium. . 350 302 829 1,509 Holland .. 378 280 J 4,914 Switzerland. 1,230 829 3,684 3,684 9,453 Roumania . 9,453 (; 860 Spain. . . . . 97 Portugal.. . . 818 6 36 1 570 South America . 97 ) 10,000 *6,786 558 Central America. 570 179 Mexico .. 54 1,443 Cuba . . . _. __ 54 154044/ 35 J 35 1,081 d62 362 1,452 French Canadian 1,089 363 2,000 409 *911 363 1,999 Norway. 80 1,919 80 1,510 10,936 Sweden . . 318 10,607 11 10,909 318 302 1,790 Denmark.. 162 1,610 18 224 162 1,386 865 865 Wales. 865 1,350 110 *360 1,100 Greece .. 110 990 1,070 962 1,070 Turkey.. 108 4.500 4,500 China . 4,500 195 34 161 ~~~ f~Ei~~: 131 131 251 Africa . . . . 251 ni 251 737 Asia, unspecified. . . 589 73 589 75 168 Europe, unspecified. 84 84 84 223 Atlantic islands. . . 23 177 2.3 23 177 51 Pacific islands. 26 25 26 25 175 Unspecified. 87 88 87 88 101 – -203-Bo-rn at Sea. – – 1 -102- -101 – – – – – – – – – 102 – – – — — — 569,988 Total Non-English. . 160,751 169,298 239,939 158,000 77,439 2,751 91,81,9 ENGLISH-SPEAKING ———–1—————– 2'J: Iues~~!li~~e.s : 65 2,1~ iai 644 1,540 32,446 England. . . 4,841 25,982 1,623 9,139 Scotland.. . 914 7,767 458. 166,066 Ireland . . . . 150,954 14,944 168 9,258 Canada (Eng.). . . . ' 2,314 6,944 . . . . 713,947 Whites, For. Parentage 285,579 304,368 124,000 312,307 Whites, Nat. Parentage 62,462 234,230 15,615 ———1– ————— 1,243,424 Total English. 507,129 594,300 141,995 370,930 415,292 136,199 179,008 34,497 Colored Native 698 33,799 3,000 33,625 *2,302 174 1,850,093 TOTAL POPULATION. . 668,578 799,581 381,934 531,930 527,000 136,648 272.581 789,342 TOTAL FOREIGN BORN. ~19,839 227,184 242,319 * ;Excess of estimated affiliation c4limed to he enrolled.
of every Ohristian name in each of the seventy-seven subdivisions of the city. It knows the districts which are abundantly or superabun- dantly supplied with churches; it knows, too, the districts where dense populations have been passed by. By house-to-house religious cen- suses it has discovered to some churches, ministering to special classes or nationalities, that their days of service are over, and that other districts of the city could be better served by them, while, on the other hand, it has brought new churches into other districts adapted to the nationalities and classes within them.
One of the most recent studies of this Federation has oeen a com- putation of the religious adherences of all the nationalities of New York. From the studies made we can measurably teIl what percentage of a group of Russians in New York are Jews, how many Roman . Catholics, and how many Protestants or Greek Catholics. By tabulating the membership of all the churches of the city, and subtracting the population represented thereby from the number of each nationality, an estimate can be made of the number in each nationality who are churchless. Thus guidance can be given as to the forwarding or abandoning of special churches.
The figures for the Manhattan section of Greater New York show, for instance, that no more churches are needed for Welsh, for the membership claimed by the Welsh churches equals the entire Welsh population of Manhattan. On the other hand, the parallel figures for other boroughs show a considerable Welsh population in Brooklyn, and as there are only two Welsh churches in New York, and these both in Manhattan, within two blocks of one another, it is certainly true that the Welsh church properties of the city are not being used to the best ad vantage, either of the Kingdom of God or of Welshdom.
In every large city, and especially in such heterogeneous cities as New York, the Church needs to study population, environment, institutions, etc., to plan her campaigns. Jesus knew that His disciples would enconnter at a certain street a man bearing a pitcher of water on his shoulder; He directed Paul to the very street and dwelling where he would be shown what he should do. But the servants of Jesus in New York can not know all the facts of the city's composition without investigation, and if they desire to Christianize New York they must equip themselves with a larger and larger measure of the knowledge of .Jesus in order that His love may be a larger blessing.
III. Assistance in Conducting the Campaign When fishermen go after fish, they mayor may not be certain that fish are in the waters where they cast their hook or drag their net. A large part of the charm of fishing lies in this uncertainty. The fisher of men, on the other hand, if he be sympathetic with the desire of the Christ to draw all men unto Him, must know where men are. He
THE REDEMPTION OE' THE CITY
has no time for mere outings, tho in a city like New York the results of many of his" pastorial visits n might be classified under that head.
Since ninety-five out of every one hundred families in New York lease their dwellings, and so are constantly on the move, it is an advantage for a clergyman to know where men live to whom he can minister, and this the New York Federation can tell him. Bya cooperative district system each church annually visits, say in the autumn, every family within certain blocks. It notes especially the newly arrived families.
When the district has all been visited it sends the directory of the families to the Federation's office, and the Federation reports the families according to their creed. Adjacent churches do the same thing, and so a bridge of approach is built to every family threshold.
More important still, the out-of-church population, without special creed, are given into the charge of churches supervising the blocks in which they live.
The churches, unfeder- ated, concern themselves only with those families which they can attach to their tenets, while the churches federated on a cooperative district plan WEST INDIAN NEGROES PLAYING CRICKET IN NEW YORK seek to draw all men unto Christ. The cooperative A building formerly used as a home for .discharged COlldistrict plan ii a con- victs is now rented by the Third Moravian Church for these negroes, and bas 187 communicant members fession of their common Leader. Isolated church activity brings so me families to Christ; federation brings Christ to all families. In three assembly districts of New York this kind of work has been suc- cessfully done for several years, and similar organizations are to be effected this autumn in many others.
IV. Consenl'~tion of the Results of Missionary Work It took many years to arouse the churches of the last century to acknowledge the imperativeness of the Great Commission in its ethnic aspects-preaching the Gospel to foreign nations. It may take as many years to educate the churches to acknowledge its imperativeness in its domestic aspect-teaching the nations not only to believe the things Jesus revealed, but also to observe the things that He commanded. One thing is certain: if there is anything in foreign missions beyond a mere "witness" to Christ, church federation is necessary to conserve the results of fidelity to the ethnic aspects of the Great Commission.
The Moravians, for example, early instituted missions in the West Indies. Economic causes are to-day producing a large emigration from those islands, and many Moravian blacks are now New York citizens. The Federation of Ohurches encountered some of them in a house-to-house canvass of 1897, and when the First Moravian Ohurch of New York, desiring to provide a religious home for the blacks who were crowding out the whites, asked the Federation's advice in locating it, the answer was at once ready. The West Indian negro, unlike the American negro, is neither a Baptist nor a Methodist, but a Moravian, and whenever the Federation in future discovers a churchless West Indian negro family it knows the church whose net is adapted to hold him. In other words, the results of foreign missionary effort elsewhere are being conserved. The Federation has just been asked to advise concerning a similar Moravian work in Boston.
v. Purpo,e and Power to Fulfil the Messianic Prophecie, The early Ohristians preached repentance for social sins as well as for personal sins. Take infanticide, for instance. Gibbon tells us that it was "the prevailing vice of antiquity." What removed it? Gibbon, skeptical as he was, was obliged to confess that it was mainly due to the protests of the apostles and their successors, and their revelations of the value of human life. But it took over three hundred years, after the birth of Jesus, to make infanticide a crime in Rome. Are there social elements in the teaching and activities of Jesus which the Ohurch of to-day is neglecting? Jesus says that it is not the will of the Heavenly Father that one little child should perish. The parable of the Ninety and Nine in Matthew is a parable on child-saving. Who framed and toiled for the Ohild Labor laws enacted at Albany last winter? The churches? To a certain extent; for the Federation of Ohurches spoke in favor of those laws on behalf of the two hundred and seven churches in its membership. But where were the other one thousand churches of the city, and their moral and material power i' Far less potent certainly than the settlements, which many call irreligious, but which, for this at least, are certain to receive the blessing of Him who said, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these ye have done it unto Me."
To catalog all the social elements of the Gospel to which the churches are giving inadequate attention would require an article by itself, but meantime it may be pointed out that some churches are so far estranged from the inclusiveness of the early Evangel that they twist the very words of Jesus to excuse their neglect. A prominent Presbyterian minister of this city, in a sermon two years ago, said that Jesus does not mean the physically hungry, naked, sick, etc., but the spiritually hungry, naked, sick, etc. (Matthew xxiii). A Baptist divine of eminence more recently said that Jesus gave attention in
THE REDEMPTION OF THE CITY
His miracles to physical wants mainly in the early part of His minis- try, but that He virtually abandoned this at the end. His intention was to inject the inference that the Ohristian who gives atten~ion purely to the spiritual needs of men is nearer to the Master. In some such fashion the Rheims (Roman Catholic) Bib 1e renders "Give us this day our daily bread," "Give us this dllY our supersubstan- tial bread," adding a foot- note to say that the bread Jesus refers to is the sacra- mental bread. And is this orthodoxy? The day will come when such teaching will again be regarded as heretical- when men's or- thodoxy, in other words, will not only be judged by their A HARTLEY HOUSE KINDERGARTEN conception of the person of Jesus, but also by their con- Tbis settlement was located by tbe Federation at 413 West Forty-sixtb Street, in tbe densest district on Man- hattan's West side. It is denser than any part of London secration to His purposes.
Federation is necessary to the coming of that time. The religious communions of the world stand naturally for their peculiar tenets.
But Federation elevates before them the ideal of the Kingdom of God, to whose extension and perferring their tenets and their activities are to minister. The Kingdom of God is not indeed meat and drink, but neither is it also only" joy in the Holy Ghost." It is also" righteous- ness," something that Christians could promote if they were but more closely united, and "peace," something which has been so little in the ideals of the denominations that Christ speaks concerning it to the modern world, in the main, through the Society of Friends. To bring righteousness and peace to kiss each other in the State is the mission of a Ohurch which follows the inclusiveness of the early Evangel.
The indifference of the Church to physical wants has wrought injury to her success in her spiritual mission. Mr. Jacob A. Riis, the "most useful citizen" of New York, in President Roosevelt's estimate, says in "The Battle with the Slum": The Church, which once stood by indifferent or uncomprehending, is hastening to enter the life of the people. I have told how, in the memory of men yet living, one church, moving up-town away from the crowd, left its old Mulberry Street home to be converted into tenements that justly earned the name of "dens of death" in the Health Department's records, while another became the foulest lodging.house in an unclean city; and of how it was a church corporation that owned the worst underground dive down-town in those bad old days, and turned a deaf ear to all remonstrances. The Church was" angling for souls." But souls in this world live in bodies endowed with reason. The results of that kind of fishing
were empty pews and cold hearts and the conscience-stricken cry that went up, "What shall we do to lay hold of this great multitude that has slipped from us?"
The years have passed and brought the answer. To-day we see churches of every denomination uniting in a systematic canvass of the city to get at the facts of the people's life, of which they had ceased to be a part, pleading for parks, playgrounds, kindergartens, libraries, clubs, and better homes. There is a new and hearty sOlind to the word " brother" that is full of hope.
The wider and wiser Evangel was well expressed by Rev. G.
Campbell Morgan in the Homiletic Review of December, 1899, when he said: The sorrows of the city are most keenly felt in the heart of God. He has abandoned no part of what He Himself created. All the physical disability has His sympathy: the dwellings of the poor, the drainage of the city, the workshops of our men and women.
The Church of Christ exists to reveal God and to act in concert with Him. God is working for the city's regeneration. How is the city to know that it is not Godforsl1ken.? Through the Church…. We must know our city, pray for it, vote for it, and preach to it. Jonah was angry because God would forgive Nineveh. Jesus wept over the sins of the city. I am in sympathy with Jesus rather than with Jonah. Christian am I if I am Christlike; Christlike am I if, like Christ, I weep over the city and give myself for it even unto death.
When Christ reaches and touches our cities, as He desires and designs to do, all who live in them shall flourish "like grass of the earth." '1'he Federation of Churches and Christian Organizations in New York City rejoices, therefore, over the improvement which it has brought to the pbysical welfare of its people.
THE PRESENT OUTLOOK IN CHINA BY HENRY B. FERGUSON, TS'ING KIANG FU, KIANG SU Missionary of the China Inland MiSSion, 1895- China's greatest need, for the life that now is as well as for that which is to come, is the full Gospel, the full revelation of Himself which God has graciously set before us in Jesus Christ; for not only is there " none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved ," but also only the full light of the Sun of Righteousnes, a true and full knowledge of God as revealed in Jesus Christ, can dispel the dense darkness of superstition which invests the whole land of China, burying out of sight even the law of cause and eifect, crushing out the intellectual life of the people, loading them with burdens grievous to be borne, binding them to the past, and making progress difficult almost to the point of impossibility. What the friends of China wish t() see is a nation enlightened andiree, ieMing a.nd Joving God, and, while living for God and the life to come, enjoying all the good that enlightenment brings within the reach of man in this. While as heralds of the Gospel our greatest desire is for the salvation of souls, we can not but be moved with compassion at the sight of the present
THE PRESENT OUTLOOK IN CHINA
distress and be concerned· for its alleviation. Do the signs of the present time indicate that this need will soon be met and this desire fulfilled, or do they lead us to look for further delay? Will China go straight forward to her goal, or will she continue to wander indefinitely in the wilderness? What are the signs, and whither do they point?
Looking out upon China as it is, we see the great mass of the people now, as always, engaged in a hard struggle for a mere existencea struggle which, in most cases, absorbs all their energy and all their thought. "What shall we eat? What shall we drink? Wherewithal shall we be clothed?" After all these things do the heathen seek, and these pressing present necessities overshadow in their minds the affairs of the nation and the infinitely weightier matters of the life to come. Now, as always, they are exposed to calamities which sweep multitudes of them into untimely graves-flood, famine, pestilence, disorder. They are, however, a people of very great capabilities, tremendous endurance, and tremendous patience; wonderful power of recuperation, and of making the best of untoward circumstances; splendid working power, both physical and mental, and, withal, remarkable for court~sy. Yet through lack of enlightened direction they have not realized their capabilities, neither are they now doing so. This physical and mental stamina is their greatest national asset.
Government and Gods Discredited We see also the government weak, discredited, and bewildered. Scorning to receive enlightenment from abroad, it has striven to maintain the traditions of the past, and every effort has ended in total collapse, making its weakness and insufficiency more apparent to the nation and to the world. Its military power and prestige have been shattered, and parts of the national inheritance have passed into the hands of strangers. The army is great only on paper, its administration is thoroughly corrupt, and it has very little either of courage or patriotism. It is of little use either for aggressive warfare, for defense, or for the maintenance of order at home, and is often itself an element of public danger and public dread. So great is the distraction of the government that Manchuria, the ancestral home of the dynasty, containing the ancestral tombs, is being allowed to Blip from its grasp without an effort to retain it and with scarcely a protest. The empress dowager and her advisers were so ignorant and superstitious as to believe in the Boxers, and, confident in their invulnerability, they defied the world. The collapse of the Boxer hope only added to their bewilderment. But tho the government is discredited, there is no present alternative.. Its overthrow would mean anarchy and foreign interference. What the people most desire is peace, in order that they may devote themselves to their struggle for existence without distraction. So the government is tolerated and even maintained, and it
TaE M18810NARY REVIEW OF TaE WORLD
clings to power, concerned far more for its own continuance than for the country's good.
Also the gods of China are discredited. The Boxer movement was an appeal to the gods, particularly to the spirits of departed generations, reverenced in ancestral worship. The movement was idolatrous throughout; its votaries looked to the spirits whom they worshiped to make them invulnerable. Its defeat may have far-reaching effects, altho the Chinese mind but slowly r!3sponds to the stern logic of facts.
China is, moreover, a nation drugged. l'he use of opium has spread to all parts with the most direful results. It is undermining and threatening to destroy that physical and mental stamina which is the greatest asset of the nation. It intensifies the struggle for existence by undermining the working power of millions of workers, transforming productive laborers into indolent, self-indulgent parasites, much more inclined to encroach upon the labor of others than to labor for the benefit of others. Through this habit, multitudes of bread-winners gradually cease to be bread-winners, shirk responsibility, become burdens to the families to which they belong, often abandoning wife and children to shift for themselves, or, in the extreme-of poverty to which the vice brings them, evell selling them to procure the means to assuage the insatiable craving which relentlessly drags them down to ruin. This also diverts much land from the production of foodstuffs, in a country much affiicted by famine, to the production of poison. It is doing more than any other one cause to weaken and destroy the nation. The present helpless condition of China and indifference to her fate are, without doubt, largely due to the effect of the drug through the great multitude of officials, high and low, civil and military, as well as common people, addicted to its use. One effect of opium is to take the reliability out of a man, making him like a wooden pillar which has been infested by white ants: it retains its form, and may retain an appearance of strength, but no dependence can be placed upon it. As the malarial germs in the blood, through unfitting many corpuscles for the 'duty they have to perform in the body, make the body weak ahd unable to bear its burdens, notwithstanding the greater number left unimpared, so the opium in the uation, by destroying or curtailing the usefulness of a multitude of individuals, makes the whole body weak and unable to perform the functions of a nation. There are no signs of this evil abating.
The form of national pride prevailing in China, especially in government and official circles, has proved a most serious and everpresent obstacle to China's betterment. She has been the proudest of the nations, accustomed to look upon herself as the height of perfection in government, in doctrine and morality, in literature and culture, in customs and manners. So far from having anything to learn from foreign nations, she considers herself fit to teach the world the princi-
THE PRESENT OUTLOOK IN CHINA
pIes of right and decorous conduct. U nUke Japan, scarcely less proud, she has never humbled herself to take the learner's place. Though compelled outwardly to lower her lofty pretensions toward other nations, in her heart she retains them still. Her unreasoning pride has led her to the fatal mistake of closing doors and windows against the entrance of light, while making no effective effort to prevent the diffusion of moral pestilence. But God, in his all-wise providence, has brought Ohina down into the valley of humiliation; she is descending deeper; humiliations are being heaped upou her. Yet she is still un humbled, so may have to dwell long in the valley, until she learns the lesson of her experience, and comes up out of it, perhaps by the way of the Valley of the Shadow of Death, a regenerated nation.
The Ohinese nation, in its attitude toward progress, may very fitly be symbolized by a locomotive with its boilers fiiled with tepid water. There is great latent power if only heat can be applied; the locomotive, symbolizing the nation, and the water the mind of the nation, thought, which is a movement of mind as heat is a movement of the particles of matter, is the heat required. The Ohinese as we find them are not progressive becaMe not a thinking people. But through contact with the West, especially with the heralds of the Gospel, thought-heat is being communicated to the cold, inert mass, and a pressure is being created which tends to movement. As the application of heat continues the pressure increases; and there is a possibility that it may become strong enough to move the engine, causing it to go forward. But that is not the desire of those who have their hands on the throttle-the rulers of Ohina; they wish to keep it standing still. As they are powerless to prevent the application of heat and its gradual dissemination throughout the mass, they endeavor to prevent its effect by refusing to open the throttle and by steadily holding down the safety-valve, to prevent any expression of the gathering pressure within. (To this end the government has recently evinced a very strong desire to get its hands on certain native newspaper editors.) What will be the result? Will the restraining force be thrown off, or will the engine go to pieces, or will it be taken control of by outsiders? The Ohinese mind is a slow conductor of thought-heat, yet this heat is slowly permeating the mass and opening the eyes :of the people to the possibility of better things, and creating desires therefor.
The Real Remedy While the nation pursues its chosen course, and difficulties and dangers thicken about her, a sovereign remedy is being applied. That remedy is the truth-primarily, the truth of God as revealed through Jesus Christ, and, secondarily, that emancipation of mind which knowledge of God accomplishes, leading to the recognition of God's ways in the world of men and matter. It is through poverty of truth that Ohina is weak and distressed. Ohina is now in contact
with the nations of the West, who are, in a sense, the repositaries of the truth that China needs. But that contact has not been an unmixed blessing; for while she has been exerting herself to make it ineffective, her efforts have been more successful against good than against evil. While she has received and applied but little of profitable knowledge, the opium habit, undcr foreign pressure, has spread to every corner of the empire, and tens of thousands of her sons have been corrupted and tens of thousands of her daughters sacrificed in palaces of sin and dens of iniquity that flourish under foreign license in Shanghai. It is not truth alone that Western nations bring. To depraved minds our boasted liberty is an opportunity to plunge headlong into sin. When will China have her" senses exercised to discern both good and evil?" And when will she" know to refuse the evil and choose the good?" But the truth is God's remedy for a sinful world. In His hand it is a force that never ceases to operate. Though refused and thwarted a thousand times, it still persists. "The eternal years of God are hers," and the truth of God in Christ shall conquer even in China. Already it has penetrated far. Those who have received Christ are a goodly company, though .few compared with the great mass of the population. But they do not represent the whole result of missionary effort. The seed of truth has been very widely sown where 'no fruit is yet apparent. The esential truths of the Gospel have been planted in minds hostile or indifferent, where curiosity, or a desire (they know not for what) has led the individual to listen to the preacher or read the printed page. '{'he Spirit of God watches over the buried seed. He will cause the living truth to triumph in the coming conflict, when China is aroused, over the dead traditions of the past. Very wide doors of opportunity now stand open before the Lord's servants, and the cry for more laborers to enter these doors continually reaches our ears. The present is a critical time, fraught with tremendous possibilities. Who will go?
What answer must we give to the question as to the present outlook in China? The prospect is bright only to the eye of faith which looks beyond the present. The present" vision is to them that hate her and the interpretation thereof to her enemies." China is still in the wilderness, wounded, helpless, bewildered, drugged, surrounded by enemies and doubtful friends, and failing to recognize her true friends. She needs help from beyond herself, help which is available in God, but she does not yet recognize her need. In the truth of God we have the assurance of the final triumph of righteousness. Whatever vicissitudes the nation may still be called upon to pass through, the hand of God will not be withdrawn. He turns not aside from his purpose of grace. The kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and China shall not be lacking among the number.
THE PROTESTANT LITERARY MOVEMENT IN CHINA
THE PROTESTANT LITERARY MOVEMENT IN CHINA BY REV. J. T. GRAOEY, D.D.
A movement has already begun to take shape for the observance, three years hence, of the one hundredth anniversary of the inception of Protestant missionary work for the Ohinese, dating the centennial observance from the arrival of Robert Morrison in Ohina, 1807. This work was of necessity for many years largely preparatory, aud, for that matter, the whole century has been one of preparation. The foundation work was chiefly of a literary character, and the scholastic work occupied its representatives for the first half of the century, and for the first third of the period was operated from a base outside of the territory-the whole archipelago of southeastern Asia.
In dating the centennial anniversary from Morrison, in 1807, there is no design to underestimate the beginning of Joshua Marshman in 1804, three years earlier. It is difficult for a man to acquire two repu- tations, and Marshman has been so long classed as· one of the great triumvirate-a Oarey, Marshman, and Ward "-and thus with the great worthies of India missionary beginnings, that the tendency has been to obscure the colossal work he did looking to the evangelization of Ohina. If that were accorded its proper weight, the centennial might easily have been observed in 1904. Fortunately the proposal is to begin now, and continue for the next three years, the preliminaries required for a becoming centenary celebration. The appeal has been issued for activity in a a Three Years' Enterprise" before the Morrison date, that all Ohristendom shall join in thanksgiving, confession, and prayer for reinforcement all along the line till it doubles its present numbers, and secures a great increase of the Ohinese Ohristian com- munity.
The First Sixty Years In reviewing the century of laying foundations, it is well to emphasize the first sixty years of Protestant missionary literary work.
In pursuing this investigation, one is struck with the widely separated beginnings, which seem now a special coordination of an overruling power.
Joshua Marshman began the study of the Chinese language under the tuition of Mr. Johannes Lassar, an Armenian born at Macao, who had been engaged by Rev. D. Brown, Provost of Fort William Oollege, Oalcutta, to commence a translation of the Scriptures into the Ohinese language. Marshman gave himself to this work with great persever- ance, till he had" succeeded in producing the first complete transla- tion of the entire Scriptures in Ohinese," published at Serampore, India, 1822. As early as 1809 he published his bulky quarto of seven hundred and twenty-five pages of translation from the original text of
the works of Confucius. This same year he issued a dissertation on the characters and sounds of the Chinese language; also elements of the Chinese language, a grammar growing out of the" Dissertation" known as the" Clavis Sinica."
The interlacing of the providences which connect remotest parts of the earth in the accomplishment of the work of God finds a striking illustration in the fact that an Englishman and an Armem'an from Macao should cooperate in India to translate the Scriptures into Chinese; and that Morrison, the accredited.founder of Protestant missions in Ohina, grandson of a Scotch farmer, should commence the study of Chinese in London, tutored by young Sam-tak, a Ohinese who just happened to be in England, and that he commenced this study only one year later than Marshman did in Calcutta. Each of these men translated the Scriptures into Ohinese, Marshman completing his work, published in India, in 1822; and one year later Morrison his translation, in twenty-one bulky volumes, published at Malacca. Marshman was born four years before Morrison, and survived him by ten years; yet Morrison died in the Danish Hong, at Oanton, and Marshman was buried in the Danish settlement at Serampore, where thirty-eight years before he had begun his missionary work. Marshman wrought alone. Morrison had Milne as coworker on the Bible translation. The same year that Marshman issued, at Serampore, his complete Scriptures in Ohinese, Morrison published his monumental" Dictionary of the Chinese Language," in six quarto volumes, at Macao, the one being aided indirectly by the East India Company, the other in its official employ as translator. Morrison's Dictionary of the Ohinese Language was pronounced by Professor Julien, of Paris, "without dispute the best Chinese Dictionary composed in the English language." It cost the East India Company, who published it, $75,000. Morrison was the author of ten other publications, large and small, in Ohinese, and of fifteen separate other works in English, besides those already mentioned_ William Milne came next, the author of twenty-one publications in Chinese and three in English; following him came Walter Henry Medhurst, who was the chief in the production of another edition of the Bible. The enormous amount of literature furnished by these earlier missionaries laid the foundation of Chinese missions. They were, for the most part, shut up to this avenue of reaching the people, . and a prodigious part of it was done outside of Ohina-in Macao, Malacca, Batavia, Singapore. There lie before the writer now the titles of nearly a thousand pUblications in Chinese, and as many more in English, with Malay and other publications, all of which were issued within the first sixty years from the arrival of Marshman and Morrison in their separate strategic points of labor for the conversion of the Chinese.
It may interest some of the women working in foreign missions, and others of the home workers, to know that at the inception of the work in China, Mrs. Medhurst translated "Lloyd's Scripture Catechism" into the Malay language, which was lithographed at Batavia in 1832 and printed in Roman characters the next year, in order that "an extensive population of professing Christians in the Moluccas might be furnished with a system of doctrine and preeept drawn entirely from Scripture, which may prove widely and lastingly beneficial." * The Roman Catholic missionaries have wrought greatly in their literary productions in China, but Protestant missionaries never have been indifferent to the power of the press. Of course, the modern titles are not countable, but the earlier missionaries as well, were keenly alive to this avenue of reaching nationals who pride themselves on being a preeminently literary people. In the memorials of Protestant missionaries to the Chinese, published in Shanghai, is a list of literary publications by missionaries in English, German, Dutch, Chinese, Mongolian, Malay, Japanese, and Siamese, prior to 1867.t Of those fonowing Marshman, Morrison, Milne, and Medhurst Giitzlaff is credited with sixty-one Chinese titles, two Japanese, one Siamese, five Dutch, seven German, and nine English; Dr. Legge with eighteen Chinese and two English, and Dr. Hobson with the same number; Dr. Muirhead with thirty Chinese and three English; Dr. McCartee with thirty-four Ohinese; Dr. Edkins with fourteen Chinese, seven English, and one Mongolian.
Since 1867 Of the intervening years there is no space now to write. Within the past twenty years the literary glacier of China has exhibited some indications that it may move with a rush. Twenty-six years ago the "School and Text-book Committee" was raised by the Shanghai Conferenee. It was supported seven years later by "The Chinese Book • Miss Aldersey is credited as the first unmarried woman to do missionary work for China, but Mrs. Medhurst's sister, Miss Sophia Martin, lived with the Medhurst's in Batavia, and left for Singapore in 1829. She assisted in conducting a Chinese school, and was the author of a little work in Chinese called "Three Character Classics for the Instruction of Females." She afterward married a Dr. Little in Singapore. Miss Aldersey did not go to the East till 183,', in company with Dr. and Mrs. Medhurst.
t These embrace twenty-eight translations of the Scriptures or portions of the Script~res; thirty commentaries on portions of the Bible; two hundred and thirty-two theological works; twelve works of sacred biography; thirty-seven catechisms; seventeen prayer-books; eighteen hymn-books; eleven educational and linguistic works; eighteen histories; three works on government; fourteen geographies; eight mathematical works; six astronomical works; thirteen medical works; two botanical works; four works on physics; twelve almanacs; twelve serials, and thirteen miscellaneous works-giving a total of four hundred and ninety, on a wide variety of subjects, from the little child's primer to such profound and noble works as Dr. Martin's translation of Wheaton's International Law, Dr. Hobson's medical and physiological works, Mr. Wylie's translations of Euclid's Geometry and Herschell's Astronomy, and Mr. Edkin's translation of Whewell's Mechanics.
and Tract Society." In 1892 this was followed by the "Uhl'istian Literature Society for Ohina."
The Fourteenth Report of "The Society for the Diffusion of Ohristian and General Knowledge among the Ohinese "-a title cumbrous enough to have strangled it-shows that the aim of this society is the circulation of Ohristian literature. The dissemination of this will, perhaps, solve the problem of future Ohinese government, the future history of Ohina being in a sense the future history of the world. The society hopes to influence the Ohinese government to see that Ohristians propose nothing but what every patriot in Ohina must recognize to be working for the welfare of the people and their government. They hope also to bring them to see that the granting of free religious liberty in the public schools and government positions will make for advanced civilization.
This forward literary movement has been a great factor in the modern reform movement in Ohina. The chief of the reformers and the prince imperial himself were identified with it, and it became the target of the empress dowager. All this only points to the influence and power of the literary form of evangelization in an empire every official of which is admitted only through the door of literary examinations.
This "forward movement" groups itself around a few names preeminently, among which are Rev. Timothy Richard,* secretary of the Diffusion Society; Dr. Griffith John (Richard's fellow Welshman), and Dr. Young J. Allen, of the Southern Methodist Ohurch, America.
Dr. Richard is still on the staff of the English Baptist Missionary Society and is supported by them, but assigned to this literary work as secretary of the Diffusion Society. In this great national move-' ment he is ably supported by his fellow officers, of whom are: Sir Robert Hart, Bishops Moule and Moore, Dr. YOl1ng J. Allen, Dr. Griffith John, Dr. Ashmore, and Dr. J. Edkins. That this movement has grell.tly impressed leading Ohinese mandarins and merchants is manifest in many quarters. A Ohinese official, at the last anniversary * Timothy Riehard-or Li Timotai, as the Chinese call him-was born on hia father's farm in 1845, but prepared for a professional career. He became a pupil of Rev. George H. Rouse, who has been missionary in India for thirty years, and is now putting through the press in Calcutta the revised Bengali Bible. Richard determined to be a missionary, and went to China, landing at Chefu 1869. He settled at Tsing Chou Fu, the only European among its SO,OOO inhabitants. In the Shansi famine, which is supposed to have carried off twenty million people, he gained great influence with leading men of the empire by his efforts to relieve the suffering. In the eighties Chang Chih-tung sent to ask him to accept a position for developing the iron and coal resources of the province. In the winter of 1895-6 he was invited to hecome permanent adviser of the Chinese government. He was sumrilOned by imperil,l decree to the consultations of atate to consider the problems relating to the peaceful prosecution of missionary work in China. He is President of the Sh&nsi University, and was asked to organize the University of Tai Yuan Fu. At the close of the Chino-Japanese war Dr. lllchard was chosen to draw up a statement of the Christian religion, with the memorial to the thrcne, which was signed by leading missionaries of all denominations in China. Since the BO:l!:er troubles no less than three governors of provinces have applied to Dr. Richard to aid in settling their diftlculties of iIldeuulity, lUll! also for modern books.
GREATEST LITERARY ENTERPRISE OF CHRISTIAN ERA
of the society, bore strong testimony to the influence of this literature in enlightening the Ohinese and raising their esteem for foreigners, and to cultivate friendly relations with them.
China's Protestant Centennial In connection with what has been written about this Protestant literature during the past hundred years, we take from Gracey's "Ohina" (levised 1903) the following condensed statement. about the proposeu observation of the centennial year-1907: A mass-meeting held in Kuling, China, August 7, 1003, had for its central thought a three years' enterprise, looking to the celebration by some fitting movement of Chinese Protestant centenary year, 1907.
From this meeting went out an appeal to all Protestant Christendom throughout the world to join them in thanksgiving, confession, and prayer; the special object of prayer being that they may get reinforcement all along the line. The proposition is to secure in the next three years: A large increase of members. More Chinese workers. Double the present missionary force.
A movement was inaugurated at Shanghai, July 1,1003, looking to a proper memorial of the Protestant martyrs of all China. The form of memorial suggested is a great connexional building at Shanghai. This will commemorate the martyrs and perpetuate their testimony. It will be a perpetual witness to the world that China has a martyr church. The essential unity of the Christian Church will manifest itself in this united effort as a concrete example of how to honor the dead and bless the living. The committee having it in charge are composed of leading ministers and laymen;such as Rt. Rev. Bishop Graves, Canton; Bishop David H. Moore, Shanghai; Drs. Griffith John, Timothy Richard, Young J. Allen, A. P. Parker, and others.
THE GREATEST LITERARY ENTERPRISE OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA THE WORK OF THE BRITISH AND FOREIGN BIBLE SOCIETY BY F. KLICKMANN, LONDON, ENGLAND One of the most important religious events for the coming year is the centenary of the British and Foreign Bible Society. This Society originated in the desire to supply Wales with the Scriptures in the language of the people, there being a positive famine of Bibles in the principality at the beginning of the last century. Rev. ::I'homas Oharles, of Bala, appealed to the Religious Tract Society of London for a grant of Scriptures in the Welsh language. He showed the need and the eagerness of his people by telling of a little Welsh girl, who had come to him from a distance of between twenty and thirty miles, over the wild mountains, to purchase a Bible. In consequence of this appeal a thought suggested itself to Rev. Joseph Hughes, Secretary of
the Tract Society, that" if such a society were likely to prove useful to Wales, why not to the other countries of Europe-to the whole world ?"
This thought was destined to result in what has been called the greatest literary enterprise of the nineteen Christian countries. The idea appealed to the little gathering of the Tract Society with singular force, and Mr. Hughes was appointed to embody their views in a paper entitled," The Excellence of the Holy Scriptures: An Argument for Their More General Dispersion at Home and Abroad." It had for its motto these words: "Let us be the first institution that ever emanated from one of the nations of Europe for the express purpose of doing good to all the rest." On March 7, 1804, as the outcome of much careful deliberation, the British and Foreign Bible Society was born. Its purpose was the spreading of the Gospel of Peace, yet it sprang into existence in one of the darkest and most tumultous periods in modern history. In the autumn of 1803 Napoleon had formed an immense camp at Boulogne, and prepared to invade England at the head of the army with which he had conquered Italy. The Battle of Trafalgar had not yet been fought, and Waterloo was still further in the future. Judging by external circumstances, it would be difficult to name a year in the last century when the national outlook was less propitious to the launching of such an undertaking.
'rhe men who founded the Bible Soeiety understood little enough of the strange new movements stirring round about them, but they brooded over the miseries and evils of mankind, believing profoundly that for these ills there was no remedy except the Gospel of incarnate and atoning Love. By a splendid act of faith they formed a society for the purpose of giving that Gospel to every human creature in his own mother tongue.
The financial support which enabled the Society so quickly to take shape came from that group of "holy and humble men of heart," sometimes designated" The Clapham Worthies," who, by their pure lives and untiring devotion to God's service, shine out as beacons in the dim light of the struggling century. Granville Sharp, Charles Grant, William Wilberforce, Zachary Macaulay, William Alers Hankey, and Joseph Reyner, men of great and diversified attainments, were united in this movement for the wider circulation of the Scriptures.
At that time the evangelical revival, tho deep and genuine, had kindled only a fraction even of religious England. But this spiritual minority displayed an astonishing ardor and self-sacrifice for the salvation of mankind. The Baptist Missionary Society was nine years old. Both the Church Missionary Society and the Religious Tract Society were five years old. Some of the stanchest adherents of these earlier organizations gave their hearty encouragement to the new venture.
GREATEST LITERARY ENTERPRISE OF CHRISTIAN ERA
From the first the object of the Bible Society has been to issue the Bible as cheaply as possible to all tongues and all peoples, without note or comment. In consequence, it has proved the broad platform on which Ohristians of the most diverse views meet and work in unison; and it is the chief religious institution that is able to associate and unify all Ohristian commu- nions.* It endeavors simply to obey the Master's command and give the Gospel to all nations.
The Society has been singularly fortunate in its presidents. The first was Lord Teignmouth, who THE LATE EARL OE SHAFTSBURY had been Governor-General of India from 1792 to 1798, and who Third President of the British and Foreign BIble for thirty years devoted the best of Society (1851-1885) his energies to the cause. Lord Bexley followed Lord Teignmouth, and during his !Jeventeen years of office the Society accomplished its splendid scheme of giving a copy of the New Testament and of the Psalms to every emancipated negro in the English West Indies who coUld read. This links, in a striking manner, the liberty of person and the liberty of conscience for which such men as Granville Sharp and William Wilberforce prayed and strove and prevailed in the early days of the Society. The Earl of Shaftesbury became president in 1851, and he writes.of it as follows in his private journal: I should have been grieved had * The founders recognized that the management must commend itself equally to all denominations; therefore, three secretaries were appointed to represent respecti,ely the Established Church, the Nonconforming Churches, and the Reformed Churches of the Continent. It was also resolved that the committee should consist of thirty-six laymen, fifteen of wEnhgomlanmd,uasnt dbfeifmteeenmbmeerms boefrstboAr Church of other Christian communions, the remaining six to be foreigners resident in London. The same representative character has been faithfully adhered to through the hundred years of the Society's exiotence, and to-day a balance of denominational interests is THE MARQUIS OF NORTHAMPTON maintained both in the committees and in tbe official staff. President of the British and Foreign Bible Society
circumstances prevented my elevation to this high post. It is the headship of the greatest and noblest of societies, and I am not indifferent either to the honor or the utility of the position.
He was president for thirty-four years, and the Society owes mnch to his wise administration. The Earl of Harrowby became president in 1886. As a cabinet minister, versed in public affairs he brought ripened experience to bear on this work, and gave the Society fourteen years' devoted service. The va- cancy by his death, in 1900, was filled by the Marquis of North ampton, who has already proved himself a worthy successor to these men of illustrious name amI deed.
Translation and Revision The work of the Bible Society is connected, first, with the translation and revision of the Scriptures into the various lan- gnages of mankind; and, second,.
with the printing and circulation of these books. The first volume issued by the Bible Society was St. John's Gospel, for the Indians on the Mohawk River. One of the earliest entries in the So- " HEADQUABTERSOF THE BRITtSH AND FOREIGN BIBLE ciety's books is the following: "To the Mohawk nation 2,000 SOCIETY, 146 QUEEN VICTORIA STREET, LONDON, E. c. .
copies of the Gospel of St. John (bound in calf), £204 98 ·6d."
Since that small edition was sent forth to convey the glad tidings to afar-off people in their own tongue, oyer one-hundred and eighty million copies of the Scriptures have been distributed by the Society.
The following facts, will convey some idea of the immensity of the work accomplished during the hundred years of the Society'S work.
At the beginning of the last century the Bible was current in about forty different languages; to-day some parts of the Bible has been issued in over four hundred, including every great vernacular of the world. And toward this result the British and Foreign Bible Society has contributed more than all other agencies put together. Its list of versions now includes the names of three hundred and seventy distinct forms of speech. Eight new names-Fioti, Kikuyu, Shambala, Karanga, Nogogu, Laevo, Baffin's Land Eskimo, and Madurese-have been added during the past year.
GREATEST LITERARY ENTERPRISE OF CHRISTIAN ERA
The work of translation and revision is usually supervised and financed by the Bible Society, generally through committees organized in the country where the language is spoken, and composed of representative missionaries and native assistants. Such work is usually laborious and often expensive. For example, the actual revision of the text of the recently completed Malagasi Bible (apart from printing) cost considerably over $15,000. But this sinks into insignificance when compared with the expense of translation work at the first. The Society's grants to Dr. Morrison and his assistants, for producing the first Chinese Bible, amonnted to $50,000; while to William Carey SELLING BIBLES F OR COWRl& SHELLS IN UGANDA and his associates, in the various Serampore versions, the grants of money and material exceeded $150,000. In contrast to this, the revision of the Lifu Bible (for the Loyalty Islands), altho it took three years to accomplish, and involved fifty-two thousand three hundred and ten corrections, entailed no more expense for the six natives who assisted the revisers than an annual grant from the Society of six suits of clothes.
One who is accustomed to find the English language sufficient for all his needs in the world's great centers, seldom realizes how limited is its scope. Scores of tribes in Africa, for instance, speak languages, the very names of which are scarcely known to us. The Lolo language is spoken by ten millions of people on the equatorial tributaries of the Kongo, and Galla is the language of a fierce tribe of about six lDillions. There are also vast tracts of country where different languages or dialects are met every ten or fifteen miles. A hundred years
THE FIRST BIBLE CART IN MAXCHURIA ago the Scriptures had been printed in but three African languages: Coptic, Ethiopic, and Arabic; to-day the British and Foreign Bible Society publishes the Bible, complete or in portions, in eighty of the languages indigenous to Africa, apart from those needed by the European or Asistics who had taken up their abode in the Continent.
Tht: diversity of tongues to be found in one country is often a matter of surprise. Last year the Society's agents sold the Scriptures in fifty-three languages in the Russian Empire, in twenty-eight languages in Burma, in over thirty in South Malaysia, in fifty-three in the Egyptian Agency, while in Capetown the Biblewoman alone sold copies in fourteen different languages.
One of the Society's ideals has been not only to produce the Bible in every tongue, but to secure one accepted version in each language that shall be as correct as careful scholars can make it. 'I'here is a constant demand for revisions of versionEl already made, so that the great task of translating and revising the Scriptures never ceases. Of the Bible Society it may truly be said that the sun never sets on its labors. At the present time about a thousand representative missionaries and native assistants are at work in different countries under the Society's auspices and mainly at its expense.
Important and engrossing as is the work of preparing the Bible in all languages, the Society is content with nothing short of actually placing these same Scriptures in the hands of the people for whose supreme need they have been provided. The distribution is accomplished by
GREATEST LITERARY ENTERPRISE OF CHRISTIAN ERA
the Society's agents and sub-agents stationed at depots in the princi- pal capitals of the world. Over eight hundred and fifty colporteurs were employed by the Society last year to carry the Scriptures even to the very outposts of civilization. No country seems too distant and no journey too hazardous for these men.
Many modes of conveyance are necessary to carry the Gospel to the ends of the earth.
The Society's su b-agen t traverses the desolate plains of Mongolia with a small caravan of camels, visiting the nomad tribes in their tents. In this benighted region, where no other Christian organ- ization is at work, he re- cently made a tom of about two:thousand miles, taking with him all the prOVIsIOns he needed, utensils for cooking, half- barrels for carrying water in the desert, leather for men din g the camels'
shoes, etc., since nothing can be bought in Mon- golia but mutton. The Mongols have no money, so that he had to trade the Bibles for sour milk, rotten cheese, pieces of silk, or fuel. Another COLPORTEUR ROHRSETZER I" lmLlVIA colporteur has recently completed a fourteen months'tour in the equally neglected country of Bolivia. Only last year two of the Society's colporteurs suffered mar- tyrdom rather than deny their faith. One, a converted Moor, was murdered by fanatical Moslems in Morocco; the other, an aged Chinese, who had been for many years in the Society's employ, was brutally massacred by Boxers in Szechuan.
Among the convicts and emigrants in Siberia the colporteurs labor indefatigably. We also find them scattering the seed among the opium dens in the East, the lumber camps in the far West, the negroes on the slave coast, and the miners of Klondike-in fact, wherever humanity stands in need of the One Changeless Hope.
On account of the large proportion of women in Eastern lands
who are doomed to spend their lives in the unnatural seclusion of the zenana, the Society supports over six hundred and fifty native Chris- tian Biblewomen, who not only read the Scriptures to their neglected sisters, but who patiently teach any who may be will- ing to learn to read for themselves. These devoted women work under the su- pervision of the missionaries in connection with nearly fifty different missionary or- ganizations. The Society also contributes to the sup- port of European Bible- womeu in Canada, Brazil, North Africa, the Cape, France, England, and else- where.
The British and Foreign Bible Society has been called the handmaid of missions.
From the first it has been linkcd with all the great mis ==-==-=""====_ sionary societies in the closest and most cordial .A COLPORTEUR IN MADRID relations. The bishop of Liverpool has said: "If, owing to some great disaster, the British and Foreign Bible Society were blotted out of existance, it is no ex- aggeration to say that the missionary work of English Christianity would be utterly paralyzed, if not destroyed." The aim of the Society has ever been to provide all missionaries with the Book which is the fundamental basis of their work.
As a rule, Scriptures for the foreign field are granted on "mission- ary terms "-that is to say, the Bible Society sends out the books that are needed, free of cost and carriage paid, to the missionaries at their different stations; in return, the missionaries remit to the Bible House any proceeds arising from the copies which they sell, after deducting the expenses of circulation. .At ber;t, only a small fraction of what the Bible Society expends on the preparation and delivery of these missionary versions can ever come back to it as the result of such sales, while the missionaries obtain all the Scriptures they require without any cost whatever to their own societies.
Another interesting section of the Society's work is the providing of Scriptures in Moon and Braille types for the blind-not only in Europe but also in India and the East, where there are a far larger
GREATillST LiTEaARY ENTE.kPRISE OF Ciil!.IST1AM ERA 3~
proportion of these unfortunates than in our own country. Her late Majesty Queen Victory took much interest in this work, as is evidenced by the following letter addressed to one of the staff: Her Majesty is gratified to find how much is being done for the education of the blind in India, and also to know that these useful efforts were initiated chiefly by you. The Queen congratulates you on the admirable results of your labors, and trusts that you may be blessed with health and strength to continue them.
The Bible Society often acts as the pioneer, or, "the ploughshare" of missions, sending its colporteurs into new countries, and opening up the ground by means of a dispersion of the Gospel, so that when the missionary arrives he sometimes finds the people prepared beforehand and waiting for his teaching. Moreover, the Society can often work in countries that are closed to ordinary missionary enterprise. For instance, in the empire of Russia, Church and State alike give the Society's representatives encouragement and assistance, granting them free rail and steamer passes and free carriage of the Bibles. In the Sudan, also, since the defeat of the Mahdi by the British, it has been deemed inadvisable, for political reasons, to permit missionary work among the Moslem population, but the Bible Society has been allowed to establish a depot at Omdurman, in the market-place, just .opposite the door of the new mosque. There for more than three years it has been selling the Scriptures in a dozen different languages, while native Ohristian colporteurs are also at work on the Blue and White Nile. The SOCiety's work, which was inaugurated at Khartum in 1866, is thus restored once more. The experiences of the Arab colporteurs are of absorbing interest. One recently penetrated the Eastern Sudan as far as South Galabat on the Abyssinian frontier. He writes: There I found some Abyssinians who had A BLIND BIBLE·READER IN ALLAHABAD apostatized under the der- vishes, and offered them a New Testament in their own tongue. They took it, and then burst into tears. "Wherefore do you weep?" I asked. "Will Christ receive us now?" they cried. " Yes," said I, "at any time He will receive you."
Thereupon I read to them from St. Matthew. Then they were glad, and bought three Testaments, two Falash Gospels, and nine Amharic Gospels.
Abyssinia is another country that is closed to the missionary but not to the Scriptures. The Emperor Menelek has not only accepted copies of the freshly revised Ethiopic New Testament, but requested that a consignment might be sent him, adding, "and I will see that they are distributed and a good price paid for them."
Even the mysterious city of Lhassa comes within the scope of the Society's opera- tions, for altho the highlands of Tibet have been sealed for centuries against Europeans, the New Testament has been translated into Tibetan, while at Ghoom, on the slopes of the Himalayas, 'ribetan Ohris- tians are at work printing the books for the Society. These are bought by traders, who carry them back to the impen- etrable fastnesses of that great unknown land.
THE: BRITISH AND FOREIGN BIBLE SOCIETylS COLPOR- Nor does the Society lose TEURS WHO ARE DOING PIONEER WORK oN THE NILE sigh t of the claims of the The pillar commemorate. the Battle of Omdurman English people. Generous grants of Scriptures are made to public and philanthropic institutions at home, schools of all de- nominations, orphanages, hospitals, asylu ms, theological training col- leges, barracks, prisons, etc. On this department of its work the Society spends $50,000 annually. Large consignments are also fre- quently sent out for special objects. For instance, in times of war the Society spares no pains to put the Word of God into the hands of those who, at any moment, may be summoned to eternity. And in this no distinction is made between friend and foe.
In the Russo-Turkish struggle of 1877, 478,000 copies, together with the expenses of transit and colportage at the seat of hostilities, involved an outlay of $120,000; while during the late war in South Africa over 133,000 Bibles, Testaments, and Gospels were distributed in 1900 and 1901 to belligerents on both sides, prisoners and families
GREATEST LITERARY EN',-'ERPRJSE OP CHRISTIAN ERA
in the concentration camps, without counting the supplies provided for the contingents from the antipodes and Canada.
One great factor in the Society's success has been its policy of decentralization. Whereas most large organizations seek to focus themselves at one point, its aim has been to spread self-governing auxiliaries all over the world. In England these auxiliaries and branches number about 5,800, and 2,000 more lie overseas. In Australia, Canada, and New Zealand the Society's powerful auxiliaries not only defray their own expenses, and themselves undertake the printing and passing through the press of certain versions) such as those for the New Hebrides and New Guinea, but they also remit substantial contributions annually to the parent Society.
The American Bible Societies The example of the British and Foreign Bible Society first took root in the United States in Philadelphia. The Philadelphia Bible Society was established on December 12, 1808, and the London committee at once voted a donation of $1,000, and as the supply of Scriptures required in Welsh, Gaelic, French, and German could not be obtained in the States, consignments were sent out from England at cost price. Six years later the number of Bible Societies and kindred associations in the States had increased to sixty-nine. In May, 1816, a convention of delegates from the different societies in the Union was summoned by the Hon. Elias Boudinot, LL.D., President of the New Jersey Society. Thirty-one organizations were represented by sixty delegates, including Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Baptists, Reformed Dutch, Congregationalists, and Friends. But among them
all there was not a dissentient voice; and so great was the Ohristian harmony and love, that some of those least affected could not help crying out: "This is none other than the work of God!" Thus in its appointed season the American Bible Society was established, and Dr. Boudinot, tho prevented by ill health from being present, was elected president-the man who, three-~nd-thirty years before, as President of the Oongress of the United States, had signed the treaty of peace which established the independence of the American people. The tidings of these events were received with great joy and thankfulness by the British and Foreign Bible Society, who testified to their good wishes by a donation of $1,500 and a duplicate set of stereotype plates for the French Bible.
Despite the vast amount of work already accomplished, the needs of the nations are still unsupplied. The committee ofthe British and Foreign Bible Society therefore call upon all branches of Ohrist's Ohurch to make its centenary the occasion of reconsecration in the work, which in the providence of God has been so manifestly committed to its charge.
The Anniversary Celebrations It h~s been decided to celebrate the centenary not only by great public meetings, but also by the observance of March 6, 1904~the last day of the Society's century-as Universal Bible Sunday. The several convocations, unions, and conferences of the churches in England have with unanimity and cordiality recommenhed the adoption of Bible Sunday in their respective churches as a day of thanksgiving for the possession of God's Word, and by emphasizing in sermon and addresses the duty of its wider dissemination among all peoples. The observance of Bible Sunday will not be limited to the British Isles. On the Oontinent of Europe, in Africa, in the East, in British North America, the United States, Central America, Brazil and the Argentine, Australia and New Zealand, Protestant churches have promised to cooperate in this universal celebration. And in order that the Society may be enabled to respond to the many imperious claims that are pressing upon it from every side, it is proposed to raise a special centenary fund of 250,000 guineas ($1,312,500), which is to be devoted to the enlargement of the Society's work in all departments. All who have received help and comfort from the Word of God are asked to give, as a thank-offering, whatever sum they can afford to aid in sending to the millions of people who sit in the Shadow of Death this Book whose leaves are for the healing of nations.
'1'1Ill: RELIGIOUS AW AKEN1NG IN JAPAN
THE RELIGIOUS AWAKENING IN JAPAN BY KlICHI KANEKO New York Correspondent of Yorozu, Japan A year or two ago there were some discussions among the more intellectual classes in Japan on the subject of the religion of the new age. What is the future of the existing religions? What will become of Ohristianity? What can Buddhism or Confucianism do for the coming generation? Is there anything to be preserved in Shintoism? Such were the subjects of discussions, treated rather in an academic way by professors of various universities, 8cholars of high standing, and prominent writers. As the result, there were many pUblications on similar subjects, two of which are noted as representing strongly the two opposing sides. One is from the pen of Dr. Tetsujiro Inoue, head of the schools of philoso· phy in the Imperial University. Dr, Inoue's point of view was that of an ethical teacher, that the religion of the future must be based on ethical principles. Humanity is the only consideration in determining it, and this opinion was advocated by many other scholars as well as average public men. The other side was represented by Dr. Sensei Murakami, a Buddhist scholar of high reputation, who once held a chair on Buddhism in the Imperial University of Tokyo. '1'ho he had published no book on the subject, he wrote many articles, in which he insisted that the new religion can not be founded on ethical truth only. To be a· religion, he asserts, there must be some sentiment in it-that is, it must have some object to be worshiped, it requires authority.
Thns the discussions ended as such; yet the tendency to seek after the new light did not stop, for the degeneration of national morality appeared to be the most serious defect of the country. Mammonism was worshiped by the great majority, including prominent politicians, educators, and even among the clerical circles of different sects, many of whom have changed their sacred career for the profession of money making. It was thought at one time that if this tendency continues for a while there will be no one in the ministry. Many Japanese Ohristian ministers who have had some English training went to the government schools to teach English instead of preaching the Gospel of Ohrist, because hig~er salaries could be obtained; other prominent preachers lLbandoned their ministerial services and went into banking business, where they have been treated with great hostility on account of their familiarity with Western manners and methods.
These and other tendencies have compelled the nation to think about the future of the national morality. A voice from the midst of the darkness was heard, crying: "Rise up to save the corrupted nation! Lift up your hands to fight with the degenerate influences of the times I" Such voices were heard here and there and everywhere, and
TttE lInSSIONARY REVIEW OF THllJ W01tLl>
simultaneously a party named" Risodan "-01', " The Ideal" Societywas organized by the effort of editorial writers of the Yorozu, assisted by men of all ranks and professions. This organization secured imme- diately hundreds of thousands of members throughout the country. Its aim is to elevate the moral tone of the members in general and to apply the principles to their every-day life, regardless of their religious beliefs. It is decidedly an ethical and practical effort. Many local branches were formed all over the country, the main branch being located in 'rokyo, which sends lecturers wherever required. This is, no doubt, one of the most remarkable features of the religious awakening in Japan. '['he society has had, and still exercises, great influence over the younger generation. On the other hand, Christianity and Buddhism began to be studied with great enthusiasm by the students in all schools. When Christianity was first introduced it was studied with some enthusiasm, as now, but the motives were entirely different. Some, in former days, studied it merely for curiosity's sake, while others thought it a good chance to study English and to obtain Western knowledge (as Mr. Ransome boldly stated in his most admirable book, " Japan in Transition "), but very few had faith to follow the teachings of Christ.
This is not, however, a matter of surprise, for the time when Ohristianity was first introduced was one of transition and conflict. Everything was upset, and one could have hardly a chance to think of the deep question of life. Men simply wanted to know something about new things-the new civilization, of which they were absolutely ignorant. '1'0 knoUJ was everything then, and to think was entirely unnecessary; they were busy acquiring and adopting new things. In this way the Japanese introduced many systems from the West, paying slight attention to the fact that there were many vicions elements in the systems. The time has come when Japanese ought to think of what they have done in the past forty years. Now they find their statesmen corrupted, their educationalists depraved, and their family life destroyed; in short, they have become conscious of their condition. Japan really needs to be evangelized. The religious development must always come foom its inner side, just as men can not be forced to believe this or that creed unless his mental condition is ready to accept it. So with regard to a nation and to a country. Japan needs the new light, the new life, that will save her by reconstruction from the very foundation. She needs the same light which shines over the Western nations in this great century. The awakening of religious spirit in Japan to-day is the very consequence of her having walked down slowly the path of natural evolution. May Japan prepare herself for her future great spiritual awaking as she did in political and material things in contrast to her sister countries in the Far East!
THE RELIG10US CONDITION OF' ITAL~
THE RELIGIOUS CONDITION OF ITALY BY THE REV. ALEXANDER ROBERTSON, D.D., VENICE It is extremely difficult for people in England and America to form any accurate conception as to the religious condition of Italy, and as to the influence of the Roman Catholic Church upon that condition. Even those who come over and travel in Italy imagine that it is a real Roman Catholic country; that its inhabitants are sincere, if not bigoted, believers in their Church; that they attend church. They think that the priests are well-educated men; that they have a powerful influence over the people, and guide and direct them; that the people reverence them arid obey them; and that they l'lok up to the Pope as a being apart, representing the Savior on earth, and entitled to be revered almost in a spirit of worship.
Now, what do they find? If they study the conditions at all they find that Italy is a Roman Catholic country only in name; they see that its churches are almost empty of worshipers and filled with sightseers; they find that the priests outside of Rome are comparatively few in number, and are men of the lowest appearance-even outwardly dirty and repulsive; they find that the Italians they meet in their hotels, and whom they employ as guides, coachmen, gondoliers, speak in the most contemptuons manner of them; they find an entire lack of reverence for the Roman Catholic Church and all its doings; and they find that even the Pope is not particularly esteemed.
Let me state the cause or causes of this attitude of the Italians toward their Church and priests. Then we shall see whether or not they are justified in assuming it.
One cause is political. Italians see that the Church is the enemy of their country. Before 1870 it did all in its power to prevent the formation of the union. Again and again the pope brought in foreign soldiers to fight against the Italians. Then, since the union of Italy, the Church· has never ceased to make war upon it. The pope claims the temporal power. He never speaks of King Victor Emmanuel as the King of Italy, but as the King of Sardinia. Pope Pio IX. spoke of him as the wolf of Savoy. So did the organs of Leo XIII. The Vatican is a great center of conspiracy. By the papal guarantees it can not be entered by the Italian police, and, therefore, it is the headquarters of a political agitation hostile to Italy that has its ramifications in every quarter of the country, and in foreign countries, too. It fomeuts disloyalty. It subsidizes newspapers at home and abroad that will speak evil of Italy'S king and government. It employs the priests to agitate against useful legislation. It is now fighting the new proposals regarding the regulation· of marriages. The riots in Sicily, at Cararra and elsewhere, were all indirectly the work of the Vatican. Because, then, the papal Church is the enemy of the
country, therefore the Italians assume an attitude of hostility toward it.
A second cause is ethical. The Italians feel that the influence of the Ohurch is on the side of immorality. Wherever it exercises power it brings about a low moral tone of life. They look upon it as an assurance society which guarantees salvation in another world, no matter how men may live in this. It is looked upon as an arrangement between man and man for immunity in evil. A paper published in Rome which I saw had a picture of a priest sit.ting at his writingtable with a" Tariff for Sin" card before him, making out accounts. Before him stood a gentleman who confessed to have done certain evil things, and the priest was making out the bill. Each sin was expiated at so many masses, and each mass cost so many francs, and the total masses were twenty, and the price of each 2 francs 50 centimes. Thus the man had to pay 50 francs to clear his conscience, in order that he might begin again his evil courses. In this way the papal Ohurch is regarded as inciting to and encouraging evil, while seeming to prevent it. So, also, its system of indulgences is regarded as having the same object and tendency. An indulgence is defined to be "the remission of the temporal punishment due to sin which the Ohurch grants for some good work," which good work generally is giving money in one form or other to the Church. Thus people are encouraged in evil doing; thus Italians regard it as not only not a Ohristian Ohurch, but as the antithesis of Ohristianity. Wherever Christianity goes people are made better. Life is exalted. Materially, intellectually, morally, and spiritually there is advancement; but wherever the Roman Oatholic Ohurch goes, life is degraded-poverty, ignorance, and immorality abound. Italian thinkers are accustomed to contrast Roman Catholicism and Ohristianity, and to hope for the coming of a day when Ohristianity will destroy it. Oharles Dickens once said in regard to the Protestant and Roman Oatholic cantons of Switzerland, that in the former you found" neatness, cheerfulness, industry, education, continued aspiration after better things," while in the latter you found" dirt, disease, ignorance, squalor, and misery."
Another cause of the hostility of the Italians to their Ohurch is that it is simply a shop. They call it the pope's shop, in which everything can be got for money, and nothing without it. "Give! give! give!" is the cry. When the pope had power in Italy every one had to pay heavily to keep up the Ohurch. No will was valid in which there was not a legacy left to it. No one ill could see a doctor till he had first called a priest. In Italy, at the present time, as I have shown, sins are all expiable by fines for masses. The worship of the Madonna is only a. source of gain. There is a Madonna in every village, and there are madonnas for "all the ills that flesh is heir to," and these madonnas can only be approached for the securing of their
THE RELIGIOUS CONDITION OF ITALY
help by money gifts. Saints' days are priests'" market-days." Saints' relics are shown and sold for gain. ~eligious services for the dead and the living are all sold ~Jr so mnch. A funeral may cost ten francs, or it may cost twenty, or, as it dId in the case of a friend of my own, a thousand. The Roman Catholic Church fleeces its sheep. it does not feed them. Italians know that. They were poor when the Church had power, now they are becoming rich, as a nation and as individuals, because they have cast off the burdens of the Church. This explains also thcir hostility to it.
Now in Italy there has been a change of pope, and some people have hopes that there may be also a change of policy. 'I.'his, hO'Neve':, is impossible, for the pope is only the nominal ruler of the Church; the real ruler is the general of the Jesuits, who is called the Black Pope. He it is who really directs the policy of the Church. Guiseppe Sarto, the new pope, is a contrast to Leo XIII, his predecessor. Leo XIII. was of good family, was educated, had traveled much, had held high diplomatic posts, had seen and spoken to princes and kings. Pope Pio X. is of peasant family; his father was the messenger of the municipality of Riese at a wage of eighteen cents a day, his mother was a tailoress, and his family now keeps the village inn and a shop. He is uneducated, altho he was a good student, because he only attended Roman Catholic schools; he has no university education; he has never traveled, and knows nothing of etiquette in good society. At the same time, he is a better man than Leo XIII. Leo XIII. was a miser; thousands of pounds sterling of gold Were found in his bedroom; he never was known to give a penny in charity; he was a cold, unloved, and unlovable man. Pio X. is kind, generous, warm-hearted, obliging, self-denying, and is liked by all. But all the more his influence is to be dreaded, because he will be nsed by the Jesuits as a means of disarming Protestants against the papacy. They are already saying that he is a "religious" pope, and that, therefore, the Church will now be less political and more religious; bu t in fact it will be nothing of the kind. It will always be the enemy of Italy, of liberty, of education, of a free constitution, of human rights everywhere. Papal power rests on human fear, superstition, ignorance, and sin, and these it must encourage. Where truth goes, and liberty, and learning, and the Bible, and Protestant Christianity, it dis- It.ppears.
Americans should therefore be on their guard when they visit Italy agaiRst papal intrigues. When in Rome they ought not to go to see the pope, nor ought they to attend his services in St. Peter's. Great mischief is caused by their doing so. Their recognition of the pope is an insult to King Victor Emanual; it is a betrayal of Italy that is giving them hospitality. The liberty they enjoy in Italy they owe to the Italian government. If the Papal Church had its will,
their liberty, as Protestants, would be cut down. Lastly, their going to see the pope and their recognition of the Church is chronicled not only in Italian but in American newspapers, and thus American Roman Catholics are encouraged, and American Protestants are perplexed. So and so, who in his native American town is a good Protestant, a Sunday-school superintendent, a helper of good works, an influence in politics, went, when in Rome, to see the pope, and he attended the services in St. Peter's. "Surely," they say, "it can not be such a bad Church after all, since he did that." Or they say: "What is the good of fighting against clericalism here at home when Protestant champions encourage it abroad?" Those thus weakly, perhaps from a false sense of liberality, yielding to the fascinations and attractions of the Papal Church when in Rome, damage themselves, damage Italy, and damage their own country and countrymen.
MISSIONARIES GETTING TOGETHER IN HUNAN *.
BY REV. GEORGE L. GELWICKS, SIANGTAN, HUNAN, CHINA Missionary of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America The years have passed into centuries since Xavier, standing before China, cried: "Oh, rock, when wilt thou open to my Master?" It is but little over five years since the "closed" province of Hunan was opened in answer to prayer and persistant knocking and a Protestant missionary ventured to reside there. Less than three years after the first herald of the Cross began to live within the walls of the capital city, whose proud boast was that no "foreign devil" should ever enter its gates, the first conference of Christian missionaries met in Changsha (that capital), June 19-21,1903. We went about the Father's business with perfect security and freedom ata time when crowds of visitors were attending one of the chief celebrations. The streets were thronged with the gorgeous processions of the great idol, and we were forcibly reminded of what God hath wrought.
This large, newly opened field appealed to many mission societies, so that an unusually large number began work within its bounds. This led to the conviction among many missionaries that a conference should be held to consider economy and cooperation in mission work in Hunan. The call thus stated its purpose: In certain older mission fields the attainment of results sought by this conference has been impossible, because the work has become so fixed that any change involved considerable sacrifice. It is, therefore, deemed wise to afford the Hunan missionaries an early opportunity for consultation and cooperation.
• Tho this conference was held six months ago, its importance and the example it sets )Dakes it worthy of particular attention.-EDITORS.
MISSIONARIES GETTING TOGETHER IN HUNAN
Twelve mission societies have resident missionaries in the province: 1. Ohristian and Missionary Alliance. 2. Ohina Inland Mission. 3. Oumberland Presbyterian Mission. 4. London Missionary Society. 5. Mission of the Presbyterian Ohurch in United States of America. 6. Mission of the Reformed Ohurch in United States. 7. Mission of United Evangelical Ohurch. 8. Mission of the Methodfst Protestant Ohurch. 9. Wesleyan Missionary Society. 10. Finland Missionary Society. 11. Norwegian Missionary Society. 12. Ohurch Missionary Society.
Ten of these missions were represented at the conference by thirty- two foreign missionaries. '1'he plans of another society to be repre- sented were unavoidably frustrated, it being in full accord with the conference. The American Church Mission, which has only Chinese workers in the province, expressed regret at its inability to send a delegate. The missionaries present represented Australia, Canada, England, Finland, Germany, Norway, Scotland, and the United States. The spirit of love and oneness that characterized the entire conference bore testimony to the presence and sanction of the Spirit of God. On Sabbath afternoon, in a memorial service, the delegates all united in the observance of the Lord's Supper.
The work and results of the conference, perhaps, can best be stated briefly by reviewing the subjects considered and the resolutions adopted. 'fhe paper on "Affiliation or union of Ohinese 'Churches with respect to name, government, and statement of belief," led to the following resolutions: Reoolved, That the members of the conference pledge themselves to do all that they ca;n to further the outward expression of the real inward unity that exists between the churches represented here. We advise that the Ohinese terms for names held in common be, as far as possible, unified, and that matters in which we differ be emphasized as little as possible; and, Resolved, That the conference recommend the following nomenclature: For Ohristianity, Ohi Tu Ohias (religion of Ohrist); for Protestantism,Fu Yin Ohias (religion of the Gospel); for street chapels, Fu Yin Tang (Gospel hall); for churches where Ohristians worship, Li Pai Tang (worship hall).
The discussion of the subject or " A permanent organization representing Hunan missionaries to deal with questions of comity and general mission interests" resulted in the resolution that the secretary of the conference be empowered to request each mission working in Hunan to appoint a member upon a committee to prepare a plan for a permanent advisory committee, representing all the missions in the province.
After consideration of "Converts and the civil power," the resolution was adopted "that this conrerence of missionaries at present
working in Hunan wishes to record its opinion that the Church of Christ in China should seek in every way to avoid all intermeddling in Chinese litigation of any kind whatsoever."
As a result of the paper on "Mission interrelations regarding enquiries, members, and native workers," this resolution was adopted: Resolved, That inasmuch as the Chinese are entitled to freedom of choice, previous attendance at other services should be no bar to membership in the churches of any mission. But no baptized or communicant member or Chinese worker of any mission '3hould be received or be employed by any other mission without consultation with the first mission. Further, we suggest that when any unbaptized person transfers his attendance to a different mission, the missionaries to whom he comes inquire as to his antecedents. And it is considered a brotherly act for the missionaries from whom he goes to volunteer such information even if not asked.
After the paper upon "Division of territory for the. purpose of making each mission society responsible for a given section," members of the various missions laid before the conference their present plans for the occupation of territory. Tho no formal action was taken, strong emphasis was laid upon the facts that the true principle of divisiou is not a seeking to exclude others from a field, but a seeking to lay responsibility for a definite region upon a particular mission, and that our duty is to cooperate in evangelizing Hunan as speedily and thoroughly as possible, and to avoid the overlapping of forces in certain districts to the neglect of others. Already, as a result of this discussion, two missions have practically decided to yield two cities in favor of other societies and occupy more needy centers. And the other societies expect to adjust their work in accord with these principles.
As a consequence of the discussion of " Cooperation in educational, literary, and medical work," a resolution was adopted, extending an invitation to the Yale University Mission to establish an educational center in Changsha, and recommending the missions working in Hunan to entrust the higher education in the province in sciences, arts, and medicine to this mission, and to confirm their primary education, as far as possible, to the plan of higher education that may be adopted by the Yale Mission. This action was taken in answer to a request from the Yale Mission regarding the advisability of its locating in Hunan. A resolution was also adopted providing" that the committee prepare a plan for a permanent advisory committee be instructed to recommend at the same time a union hymn-book and union Lord's Prayer."
Will not all Christians in the home lands cooperate in all that helps to realize the Master's prayw "that they all may be one; as Thou Father art in Me and I in Thee, that they also may be one in ..'i! Us: that the world may believe that Thou hast sent Me."
THE CHRISTIAN AND HIS MONEY
THE CHRISTIAN AND HIS MONEY * BY REV. G. CAMPBELL MORGAN This title is capable of two interpretations-a false and a true. Everything depends upon the significance of the personal pronoun. In the highest sense of the words the Christian has no money. Himself being now utterly devoted to his Lord, all the power by which he gets money is Divine, and all the money he obtains in the exercise of that power belongs to his Master. If the pronoun indicate absolute possession, the idea is a false one. If it indicate the possession and responsibility. of stewardship, the thought is perfectly correct. That there is a vast amount of carelessness among Christian people on this subject of their relation to money can not be denied. This arises largely from a failure to recognize certain important principles. To understand these wiU be to correct much that is wrong. They may briefly be stated: 1. The Christian belongs to God-spirit, soul, and body-in all powers and possibilities.
2. All that the Christian has is to be used with a single eye to the glory of God in the accomplishment of His purposes.
These things being granted, the method of getting will be safeguarded. No person devoted to Christ will be able to follow any ca11ing, or take up any business which is harmful to himself, or to others, merely for the sake of obtaining money. The method being thus conditioned within the sphere of loyalty to the will of God, the use of money will also be so conditioned. It is at this point that so many mistakes are made. Very much money that is properly obtained is improperly spent. The purpose of spending is too often that of ministering first to the desires of the selflife, then occasionally-and, alas! too often, meanly-gifts are made to God. This is wholly wrong. Another method, far better, is that of devoting a percentage-say, one-tenth-to the work of God, and then using what remains for the necessities of life. That is, however, far from being the highest ideal for tho Ohristian in dealing with his money. The giving of the tenth under present conditions of life does not work out righteously. A person with an income of a pound a week, out of which two shillings are devoted to the work of God, is giving with a generosity that far exceeds two hundred pounds a year out of an income of two thousand pounds, or ten thousand pounds out of an income of one hundred thousand pounds. And yet the man who would give ten thousand pounds out of an income of one hundred thousand pounds would be looked upon as a princely donor, while he who gave his two shillings out of a pound would be considered as one of " those who are not able largely to help the cause."
Applying the principles before laid down, how should a Christian deal with his money? Of whatever incOIne he obtains, he ShOlild say, H This belongs to the Master. I am to discover by honest calculation how much I need for the proper maintenance of my life and home, that both may continue to glorify God. All the rest is to be devoted as He shall direct for the extension of His kingdom among men."
Thus, upon receipt of income, the following items should be carefully and prayerfully considered: 1. Necessary for food to the glory of God.
* From the Illustrated Missionary News.
2. Necessary for clothing to the glory of God. 3. Necessary for shelter to the glory of God. 4. Necessary for mental culture to the glory of God. 5. Necessary for recreation to the glory of God. 6. Necessary for ministering to poorer members of my household to the glory of God. 7. All that remains for God's work. Such a distribution of income would make a great difference in eating and dressing, in home, in mental culture, in recreative indulgence, in sympathetic ministry; and the church would no longer have to beg for assistance for its missionary enterprises from those who are living in rebellion against the Kingship of Christ. Spasmodic giving would be impossible, and the high and glorious ideal of partnership with God would become an every day reality. This method, moreover, would maintain the ideal of stewardship, and would demand a periodic readjustment of expenditure, according to the rise or fall in income. Here, as everywhere, no outside interference must be permitted, but there must be a constant and unceasing submission to the direction of the King. This will be carried out or not, according to the power which rules by love in the heart. If the love of the Lord be dominant, the delight of devotion will be permanent. If the love of money hold sway, theshameiul meanness of giving will continue.
TEN YEARS' PROGRESS OF WOMEN IN INDIA * • BY MISS AUSTICE ABBOTT, BOMBAY, INDIA Member of the American Board, 188B– Our days fly as a weaver's shuttle. Ten years! What are they in the long web that has been spun in the loom of the ages? The dark, heavy web that has been turned out for thousand of years in conservative India -so dark the colors, with but a glint of gold here and th£l'e, and a gay, tiny spot at long, irregular intervals that we must bdieve that the prince of the power of darkness has stood at the head o~ the loom-the shuttle weaving forever and forever its woof of misery, ignorance, and shame, into the warp of superstition and wrong. How could the pattern change, darkness guiding the dark threads through the dark ages? Yet the pattern has changed. Fifty years ago new shimmering lines began to appear in the fabric, the lighter shades have increased, the designs are purer and more effective. The Designer has not changed. The Divine Designer of the ages remains unchanged, but the hand at the loom has changed. Some one is carrying out the God-given patterns in a truer fashion. It is the beginning of a new fabric-dainty, strong. light, and serviceable; the fabric of women that the Indian looms ttlrn out.
The past ten years have seen the greater change. That the condition of women has improved in some places is universally conceded. It will be profitable to know in what parts of India the change has been more rapid; in what direction improvement has been made, and the trend of these improvements.
Improvements are under the heads of: 1. Marriage. 2. Education. 3. Industries. 4. Christian work.
• Condensed from a paper read before the Bombay rdissionary Conferen~.
TEN YEARS' PROGRESS OF WOMEN IN INDIA
1. We take Marriage first, because marriage makes the woman of India. Her birth is an incident; the life she lives is merely an outcome of her marriage; the wedding is the pivotal point.
Twelve years ago the infant of ten years might enter the marital relation! In 1892, after great seethings in the vernacular press and boil- ings in the political pot, the age of consent was raised to twelve years!
Two years more of child-life, two years more for physical development; how meager it is! And yet it was a change for the better.
The agitation of 1892 has, however, done more than this. Individ- uals and communities plead for fourteen years as the limit of the age of consent, but government headed the majority, which was mostly the mass of the ignorant conservative. The leaven of progress began to work, however, and is still quietly pervading thought and action in this direc- tion. In the north some castes have not given their girls in marriage until fourteen, and in the south the Mysore State has led in this respect.
Other states have already made or are considering the making of fourteen years the limit. There is agitation everywhere in the social congress, in states, communities, and individuals; and the leaven will work, we hope, until the whole is leavened, and the brides of India are women instead of babes.
Progress can be reported also in widow remarriage. Individual cases are increasing. In the Bombay Remarriage Hall weddings have occurred between high caste Hindu widows and widowers. In Ahmedabad also there have been remarriages. From 1860-1891 there had been sixty-six of these in the Bombay, Bengal, and Madras presidencies-in 1891, dur- ing the year, eleven remarriages; during the decade, 1891 to 1901, there were seventy-two remarriages. The agitation goes on feebly, but noble spirits are not deterred. .
According to general opinion, the educated young men are not averse to marrying a young widow, but are prevented by the censure and threats of the women of their families. The women are ignorant, and stand in the way, a,lso, of raising the age limit of marriage. They are ignorant because they are married too early to have an education. The late Jus- tice Telang put it well when he said: "We seem to live in a vicious circle -we can not raise the age of marriage for girls among any large portions of the community without a widespread of female education; and, on the other hand, any considerable spread of education was hardly possible until the age of marriage was raised." There has been no great change in the last ten years, since the people are not ready to step out of this vicious circle. In large cities, however, there is a growing indifference to the e~tering wedge. A year or two added to child-freedom might create indignation and opposition, but months more or less are winked at. A remarried widow is looked at askance, but only for a while.
We believe that the telling influence upon child marriage will be more and more the adult marriage of Christian girls. As the famine and plague have greatly swelled this number of Christian girls during the last seven years, we believe that physical and mental improvement among the Christian women will appear to be so great that the Hindu can not but follow their example. There is no greater influence even now at work than the Christian home-the wife and mother a partner in the home, and not merely one of the servants or playthings of the mother- in-law.
2. What has been done, then, in Education the last ten years? Among •
Hindus very little has been accomplished in general education. A year or two more of schooling is something, even tho not yet generally adopted, but it has not made itself felt in any appreciable way-no change to speak of in the Mohammedan community; among the Parsis, the percentage of literates has somewhat increased. The widows' homes and the orphanages for girls, however, which have brought thousands of women and girls under Christian influence, to say nothing of the natural growth of the Christian community, have raised the number of female literates.
The number matriculated or in college courses has but slightly increased, as far as we can judge from statistics returned. The number of women who are properly called educated women have increased 100 per cent., and yet the aggregate seems inflnitesimally small in comparison with the Christian female population. The number of women in the professions increased in the Bombay Presidency 100 per cent. Of these 65 per cent. are in the Christian community. The increase under other religions is mostly in that of the Parsis, while there ani some notable instances among the Hindus. Of women holding responsible positions, the increase is not only in numbers but in quality; for instance, the appointment of lady educational inspectors in Madras and in Bombay.
The increase in Hindu female education can only be spasmodic and individual until early marriage is a thing of the past. While we maybe thankful that education is on the increase, yet this ability to read and write is not in itself an unmixed good; complaints have already been heard that many of our boarding-schools educate the girls beyond their station. They have just enough knowledge to despise work, and few, comparatively, can be used as teachers. It is for this reason that we see, with great hope, the tendency to teach women industries. . Ten years ago a Christian girl had, with but few exceptions, only three avocations before her: that of a wife, a teacher, and a Biblewoman. Now, for a bright educated girl there is open for her, besides the professions of nurse and doctor, lawyer, author, editor of magazines, inspector of schools, etc. Ability and perserverance seem to be the only limit for woman's honorable professional career.
3. Industries. For the thousands of girls who would have made third-rate teachers and Biblewomen there is something better adapted to their capabilities-work that will encourage self-respect, not self-conceit; activity, not indolence; prosperity, not poverty. Ten years ago industries for women were scarcely thought of. Lace-making ill the south was giving employment not only to widows but also to the wives of Christians. In the north needlework wAs taught in some zenanas and in one or two homes for widows. Plain sewing and crocheting was taught in many schools and to a few Christian women-not so much asa means of support as a means of furnishing spending-money. Gold thread embroidery in the Madras district was an industry also ten years ago. The great army of women and children whom the famine brought to the missionary door has necessitated a serious consideration of the question of their support. And while necessarily dependent at the first on outside help, the obvious thing to be done was to provide for their self-support. With this aim in view many industries have sprung up: Rugweaving, embroideries in silk and linen, drawn thread work and lacemaking, weaving sarees, field-work and gardening, plain sewing, basket-
TEN YEARS' PROGRESS OF WOMEN IN INDIA 53-
weaving and chair-making, chick-making, embroidery of shoes, rope- making, and bead-work.
Most of these are employments indigenous to the country, but taken from the men who had nearly the exclusive right and transferred to the women. In most cases the outcome will be natural and stable, and the income better assured if men and women fit their work into each other's hands and not each woman work independently for herself. Progress in this direction has not meant merely that so many thousand women and girls are learning things they did not know before, nor even that they are relieving their parents or husbands or the mission of the burden of their support by the annas of their daily wage. These industries keep them from the gossip of the street or the veranda of the chaw!. It enhances their self-respect, in that they find themselves capable of doing things, and in being able to bear their own burdens and help bear those of others. Last but not lea;;t, this independence has often saved a widow from selling her soul and body for a piece of bread.
We consider the general opening of industries to women as one of the greatest signs of progress in the decade. It is still but an opening, a start; but it is in the right direction.
4. Our next inquiry would be whether there had been tangible prog- ress in the line of what is ca,lled mission work, teachers, Biblewomen, nurses and assistants in hospitals? No general statistics are available; of those received from different parts of India, the rate of increase has been over 200 per cent. While the rate shows progress, still the most hopeful thing about it is that the quality has greatly improved. In 1891 the report was that many of the Biblewomen were untrained, now they are mostly trained; the grade of the teachers is higher in nearly every report, while trained nurses and assistants doing Christian work in hospitals are almost the product of the last decade. Bible schools, trainingschools, and medical schools have more than quadrupled in the last ten years, which shows that while the increase in numbers is very hopeful, the efficiency is greater in proportion. The same state of things is true in regard to female education among all religions in India. The aggregate increase is encouraging, but the increase of those in professional avocations, and especially of those in places of responsihilityand power, gives great hopes for the future of women in India.
After all, it is the spiritual progress of the women in which we are the most -interested. Has it kept pace with the physical and mental progress, or has the growth in these directions had a retrograde influence on the spiritual? This last we can not believe, altho some missionaries have expressed this fear for their own women. It is life that gives growth; what is the new life that has quickened India? It can be no other than the eternal life, which is the Son of God. If this Power is working through head and hand, it can sureJ..y be doing no less through the Spirit, which is of its own substance. There may be less of Bible language freely used, but we believe there is a greater abundance of the fruit 'of the Spirit, a steadier flow of spiritual life in the heart and the home of the women, and a greater dignity of character horn from the love of the truth that is in Christ Jesus.
ATTEMPTS TO ENTER HAUSALAND* BY THE REV. A. E. RICHARDSON, B.D.
While the civilized world still shudders over the horrors and atroci- ties which yet abound on Africa's coasts, calling forth in our hearts eager ambition to adequately" take up the white man's burden "-while the man-of-the-world's complacency over the heathen's" primitive sim- plicity" and "childlike innocence" is rudely shaken by names such as Benin, Ashanti, and Aro, which bear, burnt into them, the memory of hitherto unheard-of abominations-the kingdom of Satan is being attacked at another almost impregnable quarter.
What pen can fully depict the great land of the Hausas-a land so unlike anything met with before? Looked at upon a map there is nothing to indicate a state of affairs differing much from that of surrounding lands. The mighty rivers, the Niger and the Binue, sweep down-the one from the northwest, the other from the northeast-and meet at Lokoja, three hundred and fifty miles above the sea, forming a majestic stream, even here five miles across. Embraced, as it were, by these giant arms, the Hausa country lies, bounded on the north by the Sahara Desert.
Well-watered, undulating, thickly populated, richly fertile, it affords It unique and heretofore unoccupied field for missionary enterprise; for the Hausas are the most remarkable people in the whole of that vast continent. As individuals they are fine, strong, healthy men, full of resource and of great ability-capable of enduring hardship and privation. Instead of a scattered, meager, heathen race dwelling in forest haunts and mountain caves, they form a mighty Mohammedan nation, comprising 15,000,000 people, living in vast walled cities, some of which contain 200,000 inhabitants, And they are as remarkable as they are numerous. Their cities are very bee-hives of industry, their land well cultivated. The noise of the looms, where their far-famed cloth is woven; the roar of the blast-furnaces, where their iron is smelted from the native ore; the countless little lakes of indigo, where their cloth is steeping; the fertile fields; the fine herds of milk-white cattle-all alike witness to the flourishing condition of the country.
The streets and market·places are thronged by well-dressed, stately people, who are courtesy itself, and move to and fro as tho they owned the very world itself. Nor do they lack culture. The babel of their schools is heard on every hanil, for these marvelous.folk possess a literature of their own. The boys are taught to read and write, to shoot and sew. There they dwell, the red turretted walls of their cities towering up toward the fieckless blue sky, their merry laugh and cheerful song ringing out in street and mart, in field and plain-a clever, intelligent, witty race, dwelling in the garden of the world.
But having said this, we have said all that can be said in praise of this people. " Are they not' happy enough as they are' ?" " Ought we to disturb so fair a picture by carrying religious controversy and strife into their midst?" "Is it right to make good Mohammedans into bad Ohristians ? " Oh, the utter folly and blindness of such delusive queries! Good Mohammedans? The mention of only two of the curses of humanity which Mohammedanism not only tolerates but teaches-slavery and polygamy-ought surely to draw down condemnation upon that lifeless, * Condensed from The Spirit of Missions.
ATTEMPTS TO ENTER HAUSALAND
paralyzing creed. The demoralizing, degrading effect of slavery upon master as well as man can only be felt by one who has dwelt in a slaveraiding country. There are probably 10,000,000 slaves in Rausaland, and who can estimate the suffering that this implies?
The people are so perverted that nothing appeals to their hearts and consciences. Tell them of the crucifixion of Ohrist (as the writer once did at the dose of a sermon to 200 men) and a roar of appreciative laughter greets the description of the pains of the cross. Torture? I dare not recount the barbarous methods of killing victims in which the Hausas delight. There is dire oppression, and there is utter lack of redress. Their consciences are seared-nay, almost utterly destroyed. Instead of seeking good, evil is delighted in. Yet you would call them "religious"; bnt what an awful travesty of the word! If you secure the candid opinion of any thoughtful Hausa, he will tell you that the nation is corrupt, from the lowest slave to tbe bigbest Mobammedan priest. "Our hearts are as black as our skins" is the frank and frequent confession.
If ever a nation needed the cleansing Blood of Ohrist-if ever a nation needed tbe power of the Holy Spirit-vf a truth the Hausa nation does. "We have those ten commandments which adorn you,r religion." said a Hausa priest to me; •• but there is this difference. You Ohristians have some power which enables you to keep those commandments. We Moslems have no power to resist breaking them."
As long ago as 1857 Samuel Orowther endeavored to r3ach Sokoto, .he religious center of Hausaland. He was wrecked five hundred miles up the Niger-a fitting type of the failure which almost every succeeding attempt to reach the country has met with. Of these many efforts space will not allow a recital. Early in 1900, however, five of us, under the leadership of Bishop Tugwell, were enabled to penetrate into the very heart of the Hausa states. The journey was one of extreme interest, and fraught with most important consequences; for failure probably meant many years' delay, wbile success would act as a spur to missionaryeffort throughout the wbole of tropical Africa. No one can gauge the far-reaching issues of a flourishing mission among Africa's premier race.
We reached the great city of Kano-a city of two hundred thousand inhabitants, who confidently declared that at a week's notice they could put 10,000 mounted warriors in the field. The king, fearful that the advent of the ,. praying men "-as we were named-would abolish that most awful of all trades-the slave traffic-refused to allow us to remain within his territory. "Seven days is given you by the king in which to leave his city" was the message delivered to us, after a very stormy interview.
So our six hundred miles march was futile, our hopes were vain, our efforts t4rown away? No; that can never be. True it is we were compelled to retrace our steps and reluctantly leave that field ripe unto harvest. A brief stay was made at Gierko, tbirty-four miles south of Zaria. One of our party died there, and another was invalided home. After eight months' residence in that small town of five hundred people an event took place which completely checked further work for the time being. One night a cry rang out on the still air-"Wuta! Wuta! Wuta!" Bishop Tugwell sprang to his tent door. He took in the whole situation at a glance. The midnight sky was lighted up by the glare from the burning mission house. "Fire! Fire! "-the alarm rang out again, calling to action the stupefied sleepers.
Burnt out of the mission house, our hope of remaining at Gierka was shattered. A retreat was necessary, and Hausaland was again without a messenger of Christ. In February, 1902, however, Dr. Walter Miller, one of the bishop's former party, again obtained permission to reenter the country. Accompanied by the Rev. G. P. Bargery, he journeyed up to Zaria and secured the necessary sanction from the king to resettle at Gierka. There he is to-day, fighting that superhuman enemy, Mohammedanism. In December, 1902, the British sent an expedition against the King of Kana, and captured the city. How this will affect the mission we can not yet tell. But one thing is certain: There is need for earnest, continuous, believing prayer on behalf of these Christless millions, and on behalf of the pioneer missionaries holding the fort against insuperable odds-nay, not insuperable, for .. If God be for us, who can be against us?" Men are also needed. There is not an angel in heaven who would not gladly sweep down from realms of glory to, preach the good tidings to the Hausas. That which is forbidden to them is allowed to us. ~hall we refuse to come to the help of our God?
SOME SIGNS OF PROGRESS IN CHINA * BY REV. A. J. BOWEN, NANKING, CHINA Missionary of the Methodist Episcopal Missionary Society, 1897- Since the utter failure of the Chinese to overthrow foreign influence by obliterating the foreigner in 1900, the people seem to have lost faith not only in the government's power to crush out foreign influence and to check the spread of Christianity in their country, but in their own ability to resist it. The result is that they believe Christianity will ultimately prevail, because back of and supporting it are all the forces of the modern world. The Chinese consider Christianity as the religion of the foreigner, and they feel quite certain that the foreigner is invincible. Believing that the Church represents the national and political strength of foreign powers, the people seek to join the Church in order to avail themselves of its prestige and power in their country. Thus in all sections numbers of people seek admission into our fold. This does not indicate greater spirituality on their part, but it does signify that the people believe there is irresistible power in the Church. To the Chinese it is quite strange that the missionaries do not open wide the Church doors and take them in. So again they are caused to realize the Church's power, inasmuch as it is independent of thenl, and they find themselves unable to use it for their own selfish purposes, T!I-ey are checked, and the shock causes them to reflect, and ask what this peculiar doctrine is and what these missionaries and their Churches really mean. There is thus afforded an opportunity to present the spiritual and moral side of our holy religion. So the people are becoming indoctrinated with the truths of Christianity before they enter into the fellowship of the Church. One of the sublimist spectacles of history is that of the unity among all Protestant missionaries in their desire and purpose to prevent the Christian faith from becoming parltlyzed by the mighty tide of worldliness and sin tha' would otherwise flood its bounds and destroy its spiritual influence upon the people.
Another change taking place is, the Chinese themselves are recogni:z;- • Condensed from The Review oj Missions.
SOME SIGNS OF PROGRESS IN CHINA
ing the difference between the methods of Protestants and of Roman Catholics. The Catholic Church has never scrupled to take under its care the characters who have sought its folds through selfish motives. The magistrates in all provinces have had great trouble with Roman Catholic Christians. The contrast between the opposing methods of Protestants and Catholics is so marked that the Chinese quite clearly and justly separate the two. The Chinese authorities, together with the more intelligent people, are quite well aware of the fact that the two branches of Christianity do not represent the same thing.
Again, great progress is being made iIi educational affairs. During the last year the people have come to realize as never before the imperative need of knowledge which they do not possess. They are conscious that the present situation demands modern thoughts and modern things. It is not a spiritual thirst that moves them, but a feeling that they are now face to face with a superior force, if not a superior race or races, and that their very maintenance as a nation depends upon a complete change in the prevailing regime; hence the great cry that is heard on all sides for foreign or modern education. The more intelligent students in schools and colleges condemn the ancient system of education as a thing of the past and tota,lly insufficient to meet the present needs of theircountry. Our mission schools are overflowing with students, while the governors and magistrates take pleasure in urging on this work of education among their people. Two years ago it seemed that all efforts were about to fail through the destruction of school buildings and the slaughter of their occupants. In place of the former have risen, and are still rising, larger and more beautiful structures; while ten times the present number of modern teachers could find employment in this country.
The people seem to have but little confidence in one another, but they are willing to risk the promise of the missionary to almost any extent. We seem to have completely won the confidence of the Chinese merchant and banker in our financial ability and integrity. They appear willing to risk both their money and their children in our hands.
In political affairs much has been already accomplished, and there is a steady movement that is driving this nation along the line of political reform. The alliance between England and Japan brings to China and to all of us a feeling of security from foreign aggression that is truly encouraging. England's treaty with China will tend greatly to help relieve many of the hard and oppressive poliCies of this government.
In conclusion, let me refer to another encouraging feature of Protestant missions here-viz., the organic union of the various branches of the Protestant Church. The Presbyterian bodies have already agreed upon a basis of union, so that, if they are not forestalled in their efforts by the Church at home, there will be in the future but one Presbyterian Church in China. The Baptist divisions are earnestly seeking a similar basis of union. The Methodists are uniting their interests and moving along the same line. In fact, this spirit prevails and must eventually triumph in this country; the necessity of the situation demands it. Not only is this true among the different branches of the denominations, but there is also a spirit of fraternity and adjustment among all Protestants that causes them ~o rejoice in each other's welfare. It is the wish and prayer among all Protestants that this spirit of Christian union and church fellowship shall continue to move and inspire until the highest hopes be realized.
"
EDITORIALS The Condition of Home Churches come a working power upon the mass of Christians, the Church and Christians generally are agreed her missions face a difficulty. that home churches are far from Thirdly: Americans have become taking the interest in the spread of great travelers; as such their exthe Gospel that J e~us Christ would amination of missionary activity is have them. Few real sacrifices are superficial or wanting altogether; made for the Master's work, and and on returning home they hide their ignorance of what might have comparatively little attention is been seen by cool assumption that given to the subject by a vast the missions either do not exist or are practically doing nothing. The majority of those whose first aim blasting influence of these traveled in life should be to "seek first the people uron the missionary cause Kingdom of God and His righteous- at home is much greater than many think. ness." It is sometimes especially Lastly: Anti-missionary spirit helpful to know the impression has been fostered by the seeming made upon one who has been away ingratitude of alien peoples respon- sible for maSl;lacres of missionaries from the home land for a number sent to do them good; moreover, of years and returns to visit the the growing belief in evolution carries in the mind of many an churches. Dr. J. P. Jones, of India, argument against missions to nona man of clear judgment, high Christian peoples. These say, ideals, and practical service, recent- "Why do you not let peoples with ethnic religions gradnally evolve ly returned to America on furlough, their own religious destiny rather and traveled 20,000 miles, speaking than thrust upon them a foreign faith and introduce a revolution of in nearly 200 churches. He calls religious life and conceptions attention to the following facts and among them ?" Doubtless a great deal of the comimpressions which deserve prayer- mercialism of the age has entered ful consideration: into the Church of America, and First is the appalling fact that so this spirit is impatient with the few of the members of the churches remote and not very articulate aphave any knowledge of, or take the slightest interest in, foreign mis- peals of the missionary in foreign sions. That there is not more giving lands. Much of the trouble lies in commensurate with income is not due necessarily to penuriousness. the ignorance of the church-mem- The financial support and substan- bers. The apathy and indifference tial benevolence of Christian people has largely passed out of the chan- can in part be traced to the indifnels of direct churchly activity. ferent-and sometimes worse-ad- Ecclesiasticism, with its direct calls and claims, is held relatively much vocacy by missionaries of their in less esteem than formerly. cause among the churches.
Second: The old doctrines upon On the other hand, there is a which the missionary movement of vastly better attitude of the clergy acenturyago was constructed have toward foreign missionaries than been either swept away or have lost their emphasis. The missions of there was formerly. This is due to-day are not based upon our be- largely to the changed attitude of lief in the hopeless depravity and lost condition of the heathen so the theological seminaries. much as by loyalty to the last The educational aspects of the commission of our Lord and by a conviction that Christianity is renaissance in interest in missionessentially missionary in its charac- ary enterprise are most encouragter. The old motive having ceased to grip the Church of to-day and ing, such as the preparation of the new motive not yet having be- manuals and text-books for study; the annual conferences of officers of va,rious denominational societies; the Student Volunteer movement and the Y. P. S. C. E. movement, which have enlisted intelligent and consecrated youth as never before.
EDITORtALS
The Anti-Sl(oon Movement We have seldom seen any scheme The cause of temperance is in- separably connected with missions for the reprebsion or suppression of both at home and abroad; hence strong drink marked by more signs we call attention to a movement in this direction which has spead of a great uprising. It has long rapidly in America and Great Britain. One of the most remarka- been a mystery to the best men of ble manifestoes ever issued has re- the community that there should cently been published in Great Britain, signed by over 200 prom- be such general apathy with regard inent men from all classes of so- to the ravages of strong drink. It ciety. The signatories include 18 is said that African slavery has bishops of the Established Church and 1 Roman Catholic archbishop, caused the death of a sufficient as well as leading men of various professions, heads of universities, number of victims, directly and inprominent politicians, statesmen, journalists, and editors. Such a directly, to make a double row of body of signers naturally calls attention to the contents of the mani- human bodies around the earth at festo, which is an attempt to start a new temperance reform, and the the equator. Yet even this is small program is definite and positive. For example, it is emphatically in comparison with disaster caused stated that" the present expenditure on alcohol can not be main- by drink. This is well known to tained except at a cost to the community, which imperils the prog- the community, and yet both ress and well-being of the nation." Then, for correction of this obvious Church and State seem hitherto evil, suggestions follow as to radi- to have been absolutely unable to cal measures. First, a great reduction in the number of saloons; cope with this tremendous and and in order to prevent needless injury to those who would thus bJ growing evil, which Jills prisons driven out of the business in which they have previously engaged, it is and hospitals, asylums and insane proposed that the money paid for licenses shall be diverted from other retreats, not to say drunkards' purposes of the treasury, and use it to compensate saloon-keepers de- graves and accursed homes, with prived of licellses. At the same the trophies of its satanic tl'iumph. time it is proposed to fix a date We pray God for the success of any after which withdrawal of licenses shall be without compensation, measures looking to the correction Another measure proposed is to grant to all communities local or amelioration of this awful curse. option, so that the liquor trade may, in any local section, be entire- The Need of a Native Ministry ly suppressed or conducted by municipal authorities, so as to pre- Rt. Rev. James T. Holly, Bishop clude private or public gain. of Haiti, West Indies, writes as follows on this important subject as related especially to his own field of labor: . Neglect to raise up a well-pre- pared native clergy as soon as possible, to whom the propagation of the missionary work should be entirely confided among their own race, I think, is the real cause of the superficial results obtained by European missionaries among those people of a different branch of the human family.
Old Africans, seeing the ruling clergy all white men, say openly that the religion of which those missionaries are the ministers is the "white man'B religion," and that their African traditions, com- ing down from their forefathers" are those of the "black man's re- ligion." They insinuate those ideas into their children. Hence, Ro- manism here, kept up as it has been by white priests from France, has
not been able to root out those going missionaries, but to all work- African superstitions which the ers for God, as worthy of a modern natives practise, along with the Solomon. We could wish to lay Romish religion, as their real relig- stress on Dr. Jessup's warnings ion, and regard Romanism as a about common sense and care for mere French embellishment that bodily health. In God's eyes, piety they observe to be thought Chris- often runs into fanaticism and folly. tian and civilized! It is not a "zeal," according to knowledge, that leads anyone, Racial self-respect demands that through absorption in "the Lord's ministers should be of the same work," to treat plain laws of health race as those to whom they minis- with indifference. .MI'. Stanley ter. In the work which I and my thinks most fatal diseases among colleagues are doing here, we have missionaries and travelers in Africa succeeded, under God, in converting have been due to ignorance or wil- a voodo priest, whom we have em- ful violation of such laws-eating ployed to convert others as lay food, wearing clothing; or persist- missionaries, and we count over 20 ing in habits unsafe in that climate. of them solidly converted to Chris- They walk miles in the hot sun, or tianity; 25 of their mystic temples build dwellings in deadly districts, have been destroyed by the hands and wonder that the fatal fever of these converts, and their gris- cuts them down. Faith trustfully gris burnt up. So far as I can find says, ".My times are in Thy hand," out, no other denomination here but it is presumption that exposes has done as much to make inroads a life to needless peril. Our Lord's upon the African superstitions, first temptation was to distrust His . and we could have, under God's Father's providence, but the second blessing, done vastly more of this snare was to presume upon miracl- kind of work if we had not been lous power in an act of virtual sui- confined to an annual pittance of cide. He who promises to keep about $7,000. what is committed unto Him, for- bids us to" tempt" Him by putting The central fact of the incarna- Him to unwarranted tests. It is tion justifies this idea of a homo- the devil who says, "Cast thyself geneous racial ministry of the Gos- down." pel. Our Lord took not upon Him the nature of angels to convert Mrs. Charles Spurgeon and Her Book men, but our human nature. The Fund apostles ordained ministers among their converts everywhere, and left The messenger of death has been them charged to carryon the work very busy of late, and some who of the Gospel among their con- have been called home have been geners. A great mis.take in this re- among the conspicuous leaders of spect has so far been made in our the Church militant. modern missionary operations, and this mistake is responsible for what Mrs. Charles H. Spurgeon's work is to be deplored in the faulty re- was for God and men. .Mrs. Spur- ligion of onr converts, not only in geon was taken away in compara- the West Indies, but everywhere tively the prime of life, and her else where the Gospel has thus been friends had hoped that many years persistently kept up among unde- might be added to her period of veloped races by a ministry of a service. Since her husband's de- different branch of the human race parture in 1892 she has suffered among them. much from ill health, and has been more secluded and sad. .Mrs. Spur- Dr. Jessup's Advice We commend the" words of theV wise" in the November issue, by Dr. Jessup, * not only to all ont- *There are such demands tor a reprint of Dr. Jessup's admirable paper that a reprint is issued for wider circulation. Copies may be had at 5 cents each-2 cent. by the half hundred, with corresponding reduction when a still larger number is ordered at once. Application may be made to the Editors. or to Funk & Wagnalls, 30 Lafayette Place, New York.
EDITORIALS
geon's life, we hope, may be writ- the translation of his sermons into ten for the sake of the many les- foreign tongues, called the "Fund sons of great value which it would for General Use in the Name of the suggest to the living. What is Lord"; so, likewise, a "Pastors' known as her peculiar work is, Aid Fund." Mrs. Spurgeon's motto perhaps, the most conspicuous and was: "Just do a thing, don't talk the most extensive. She conceived about it." the idea of collecting and redistrib- uting useful volumes, booklets, and India's Missionaries tracts among needy ministers, mis- sionaries, and theological students. We have received a quiet rejoin- She carried on this work for many der from George H. Hamlen, mis- years over increasing territory sionary of the Free Baptist Confer- and enlarging usefulness. ence, with regard to the statements in the September (1003) REVIEW, The so-called "Book Fund" of page 698, which he thinks calcu- Mrs. Spurgeon originated in 1875 in lated to injure the work in India. a very simple way. After reading They are quoted from James Mon- the proofs of her husband's first ro, Esq., but, he says, "are likely series of "Lectures" to his stu- to mislead, and need qualification." dents, he asked her how she liked Some missionaries may be carried it, and she said, "I would like to away by Higher Criticism, but he . place it in the hands of every min- thinks very few. "As a whole, ister in England" "Then," said Indian missionaries exalt the Bible, he, "why don't you do it? How and wisely use it fully as much as much will you give?" She had a the ministers at home; and they little sum laid aside which she de- know it far better and practise it cided to use for this purpose, and much more perfectly than the mawhich paid for one hundred copies. jority of Christians in the home This led to the organizing of a defi- land." nite work. She made known the need and her purpose to supply it, He refers also to the statement and the public response was such on page 712, as to "What India that the next winter she made ex- Need!! "-namely, to see a Christian tensive grants of "The Treasury of life-where it is stated" that there David" and of her husband's ser- is not so much difficulty in the acmons. Within a year she had re- ceptance of Christianity, but that ceived about $2,500-enough for India is in need of seeing a multiover three thousand books. Corre- tude of Christian lives in her spondence disclosed the need, espe- midst." cially of country pastors with very small incomes, which she had never Mr. Hamlen rejoins that "no previously conceived, and this led more Christian Iives can be found to the enlargement of effort. In than in the ranks of the missionten years over twelve thousand aries and among native disciples, ministers from all Christian bodies and that the native Hindus would hftd been helped with useful books, not recognize Jes!ls Christ Himself covering a much wider range than as an embodiment of holy living if her husband's publications. In he were again incarnate among 1886 Mr. Spurgeon declared that them. It may be true that the mis· his wife's strength was no longer sionaries need more Christlikeness, able to cope with the growth of but Hindus need the open eye and this work unaided. Around the the !lnprejudiced mind." main fund there grew up one for Donations Acknowledged No. 286. Industrial Evang. Mission … $25.00 No. 2$7. Plindjta Ramabai ….. ,. , … , 5,00
BOOKS FOR THE MISSIONARY LIBRARY THE NEW ERA IN THE PHILIPPINES. By Ar- Dr. Brown's style is clear, candid. thur J. Brown, D.D. Illustrated. 12rno, and convincing. His narrative is 314 pp. $1.25, net. Fleming H. Revell brightly told and full of interesting Co. 1903. incidents; his facts are important, and. we believe, trustworthy; his Dr. Brown, the able secretary of suggestions and conclusions are such as to command respectful conthe Presbyter~an Board of Foreign sideration. We heartily recom- mend Dr. Brown's book, not only Missions, who has recently returned as instructive, but as entertaining, and of permanent as well as present from a tour of the Asiatic missions, value. It is essential to all who would understand the religious has given us far and away the best conditions and need for Protestant mission work in the Philippines. book yet published on the Philip- * pine Islands from a Christian and TO-DAY IN SYRIA AND PALESTINE. By William missionary point of view. He right- Eleroy Curtis. Illustrated. 8vo, 524 pp. $2.00, net. Fleming H. Revell Co. 1903. ly considers the advent of Ameri- This book is made up of letters can rule in those' islands as the to the Chicago Record-Herald writ- ten during a tour to the Holy Land dawn of a new era, with great op- in the spring of 1001. The writer went through the land from Beirut portunities for progress, but still to Jaffa and Jerusalem, and gath- ered an amount of information uncertain in its outcome. He wise- which is remarkable. He says in the Preface that he dictated on an ly says: "It is not a time for nation- average 2,500 words a day to his son while on the journey. .al glorification or for appeals to He devotes 28 pages to the" Protgreed or passion, but for thought- estant Mission Work in Syria," and speaks with admiration of the ful, solemn consideration of our Christian missionary institutions in Beirut and vicinity. It is reduty. The real issues of freshing to hear from an old news- paper correspondent such glorious the new era in the Philippine Is- language with regard to the Mission Press, the Syrian Protestant Collands are not so much political and lege, and the medical work of Dr. Mary Pierson Eddy. He says: commercial as moral. It is a grave If any gentleman in the United errol' to imagine that they can be States h'ts a few thousand dollars he would like to invest in a noble settled right without the active and and useful enterprise that will pay him bigger dividends than the prayerful cooperation of the Chris- Standard Oil Company, he may ap- ply to the president of the board tian churches of the United States." of trustees, Morris K. Jesup, of New York. for a block of stock in This quotation gives the spirit the Syrian Protestant College.
and purpose of the book, but it Yet on page 53 Mr. Curtis uses scarcely shows its wide scope.
After giving a brief sketch of the early history of t·he Philippines and the story of how the United States took possession, Dr. Brown de- scribes his own tour of the islands and the many interesting things he saw there. In separate chapters he discusses also the Labor Problem, the Chinese Problem, the Character of the Roman Catholic Church and its Relations to Filipinos and Amer- icans, Protestant Missions, Educa- tion, the Real Philippine Ques- tion, etc. In describing the Roman Church Dr. Brown frankly ac- knowledges the good they have done, but as frankly states their evil influence and failure to really Christianize their converts.
1904J BOOKS FOR THE MISSIONARY LIBRARY
. an expression which is liable to He speaks of the Maronites as re- mislead the reader. In speaking of the non-sectarian character of the jecting the dogma of the "resur- college, he says that, while the students are required to attend rection of the body." This is chapel daily, public worship, and Sunday-school on the Sabbath, and incorrect. The Maronites claim to Bible study as a part of the curri- culum, "no evangelical work is at- accept all the creeds of the Roman tempted." He probably means proselyting work. The whole Church. spirit and work of the college is evangelical and largely evangelis- On page 95 is a curious errol', in tic. The professors and teachers believe in preaching the Gospel, which the Moslem population of living the Gospel, and leading their pupils to a saving knowledge of Damascus is put at one-third. It Jesus Christ. Yet there are no special favors granted to one pro- should be four-fifths. . fessing Protestantism. All are free to accept or reject the Ohristian The author accepts Mount Tabor faith, and the result is that the majority of the graduates are as being, without controversy, the men evangelical in sentiment and belief. Mount of the Transfiguration, al MI'. Ourtis is wide of the mark in tho Mount Hermon was probably his statement in regard to Moslem the place. On page 379 Mr. Ourtis converts in Syria. There have been many, but most of them have ventures thf: statement that the been obliged to leave the country. I have, however, the names of at Moslems of Silwan carry water in least a dozen now living in Syria known as Ohristians, and of not a pig skins! An ordinary Moslem few others who are Ohristians in secret. Owing to the espionage of would prefer death to touching a the government, it is extremely difficult for a Mohammedan to pig skin! profess Christianity. But the book is worth reading, There are a few other errors in the book which would have and above the average. The au· been avoided by greater care on the part of the author and proof-reader. thor's good humor, kindly charity For example, besides misspelled words, the writer speaks (page 38) toward all, quick discernment of of the possibility of "seeing Mount Hermon, 30 miles away," from shams, his honest and cordial ap- Beirut, whereas the range of Lebanon hides it completely from view. preciation of the good being done He probably meant Jebel Sannin. by Ohristian missions, and his He errs in making the number of Mohammedans in the world 300,- habit of close observation have 000,000 01' 400,000,000. There are not over 200,000,000. made his work one of the best books of the pilgrim literature on the Holy Land. Those who have been there will be glad to revisit the Land with such a keen and genial guide, and those who have not been there will be impatient to go. J.
PIONEER MISSIONARIES OF' THE CHURCH By Rev. C. C. Creegan, D D. Illustrated. 12mo, 313 pp. $1.25 American Tract So· ciety, New York. 1903.
These sketches of prominent pioneer missionaries are scarcely more than appetizers. The char- acter and main events in the lives of 26 men are outlined in 300 pages. They are really too brief, for there is scarcely enough to give any adequate idea of the im- portance of the work of these men, much less to show their char- acter and the influences which molded them. Dr. Oreegan has, however, shown much discrimina-
tion in selecting the main point in years since the first edition was each career, and has succeeded in including a number of interesting prepared many changes have taken incidents which mark the lives of these great men. Most of the mate- place. The facts and figures have rial in the volume is not new, but it furnishes a source from which been brought more nearly down to much information can be gathered by those disinclined or unable to date, and a chapter on "One Hunread more extended biographies. "Ve hope they will serve as an in- dred Years Ago and Now" has troduction to lives that have already furnished inspiration to been added. There are still some multitudes at home and abroad. corrections that need to be made- Among the heroes whose lifestory is sketched are Reginald e.g., "until within a decade Korea Heber, the missionary bishop and hymn-writer, who studied Latin at continued to be a hermit nation" six and wrote poetry at seven. Robert Morrison, the first Protes- (page 426), and a few similar tant missionary to China, as a lad was pronounced a dunce, but could changes that have been overlooked, repeat Psalm cxix without an error when he, was twelve.. He became a but as a whole the revision has renowned Chinese scholar and translator, and labored amid in- been carefully made. The book is numerable obstacles, having gained only one convert after seven years valuable alike for reading, study, oflabor. We read also of John Eliot and David Brainard, apostles to and reference. The Index might the American Indians, one dying at eigthy-sixand the other at twenty- have been enlarged to advantage. nine, but both accomplishing a great work. There are also Luther * Halsey Gulick, missionary to many lands; Martyn, Duff, Scudder, PROGRAMS FOR MISSIONARY CIRCLES. Arranged Miller, Murdoch, Clough, and by the Ladies' F. M. S. of the First Pres· Schwartz, of India; Hamlin, Bliss, byterian Church. Augusta, Ga. No. XI. Wheeler, and Riggs, of Turkey; 1904. Verbeck, Brown, and Davis, of Japan; Parker, Gilmour, Taylor, These programs are designed for Williams, of China, etc. If one the use of any society, and contain could master even the facts here Parliamentary rules (not, however, briefly set forth they would furnish all in parliamentary praseology), him with a great amount of mis- suggestions to leaders, a missionary sionary information and inspira- creed, constitution, etc. The protion to courage, energy, faith, gram proper takes up varIOus monthly foreign missionary topics, patience, and spiritual living. * with suggestions as to hymns, Scripture passages, order of service, A HUNDRED YEARS OF MISSIONS. By Dr. D. sub-topics, and references to the L. Leonard. Revised edition. 12mo, subject of the month. 448 pp. $1.20. Funk & Wagnalls. 1903. NEW BOOKS We welcome a new edition of Dr. Leonard's book. In the ten CHINA'S BOOK OF MARTYRS. By Luella Miner. Illustrated. 12mo, 512 pp. $1.50, net. 'l'he Pilgrim Press, Boston, and the West· minster Press, Philadelphia. 1903.
TRE WOMEN OF THE MIDDLE KINGDOM. By R. L. McNabb. 12mo. 75c., net. Jennings & Pye, Cincinnati; Eaton & Mains, New York. 1903.
TUFTS AND TAILS. By Archdeacon Moule. Illustrated. 12mo, 72 pp. 18. Church Mi.sionary Society. 1903.
EVOLUTION OF My MISSION V,EWS. By Rev. T. P. Crawford. 12mo, 160 pp. 75c. J. A. Scarboro, Fulton, Ky. 1903.
INDIA, PAST AND PRESENT. By C. H. Forbes· Lindsay. 2 vols. 8vo. $4.00, net. Henry T. Coates, Philadelphia. 1903.
HIGHER HINDUISM IN RELATION TO CHRIS- TIANITY. By T. E. Slater. 8vo. 68. Elliot Stock, London. 1903. ISABELLA THOBURN. By Bishop J. M. Tho· burn. 12mo, 873 pp. $1.2.'i. Jennings & Pye, Cincinnati. 1903. THE NEW ERA IN THE PHILIPPINES. By Ar· thur J. Brown, D.D. Illustrated. 8vo. $1.25. Revell. 1903. ADAORA. The Romance of a West African Girl. By nlary E. Bird. Illustrated. 12mo. 50 cents. Revell. 1903. CHILD LIFE IN MANY LANDS. Edited b~' H. Clay Trumbull. 12mQ. $1.00. Revell. 1903.
GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE
GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE AMERICA or English Canadian, While if we add 71,831 Germans and 59,415 Swedes, President Our Chief Execu- not to speak of Finns, Norwegians, and others of high grade, we find Roosevelt on tive has recently that not far from one-half are of a character that easily accepts Home Missions made this declara- American ideas. In the remainder, however, there are certain elements tion: of anxiety. Thus there are 387,570 Irish, 299,712 French – Canadians It is such missionary work that (thrifty, indeed, and by no means prevents the pioneers from sinking dangerous, yet not entirelysympaperilously near the level of savagery thetic with our ideas); 61,297 Italagainst which they contend. With- ians, 16,701 Portuguese, 42,916 Rusout it, the conquest of this con- sians, 35,739 Poles, and so on. tinent would have had little but an animal side. Because of it, Baptist Home The Baptists of the deep beneath and through the na- Missions United States are tional character, there runs that making proclamapower of firm adherence to a lofty ideal upon which the safety of the tion of the Gospel in nearly two Nation will ultimately depend. dozen tongues-that is, to so many nationalities. The IIlen and the Commenting upon these words, money expended are divided as follows: The Outlook adds: Americans ……………….. $177,185 No armies ever achieved so thorough or so speedy a triumph as the Swedes. . . .. .. .. . . .. .. . . . . . . .. . 20,260 American pioneers dId. And among the pioneers none were more cour- Germans….. . . . . … . .. . . . . . . . 17,lO6 ageous, none were more steadfast, and none more in earnest, or, on Mexicans…………. …….. 11.3.34 the whole, more successful in atattaining their purposes, than the Porto Ricans ………… , …. 9,908 men who went not for the sake of extracting wealth from the soil, Cubans.. . ……………….. , 8,082 hut for the sake of establishing righteousne$S in the new communities.
New England Dr. E. M. Bliss, French.. . . .. . . . .. . . . . . . . . . .. …. 6,014 as a New England field Negroes ……. '" . " ……… 6,287 Indians…………………… 6,078 Mission Field secretary of the Norwegians……….. …….. 5.090 Arne ric a n Tract Danes.. .. .. . . ….. ………… 5,841 Society, says that New England Chinese.. .. . .. .. . .. … …….. 4,707 has become in a large degree mis- Italians. ………………….. 4,115 Jews…. ….. ……………… 1,033 sionary ground. Somewhat more Poles … , .. . .. .. . .. . . .. . .. .. .. . 871 than half the entire population of Japanese ……. , .. . . .. .. ….. . 683 the six New England States is of Bohemians…………… '" . 440 other tha,n native New England Hungarians.. .. .. .. .. . . .. .. .. . . 390 Portuguese. .. . . .. .. .. .. . . . .. .. 346 stock. In the cities the proportion Russians.. .. . .. . .. . .. .. .. . .. .. . 300 is fairly startling. In Boston the Finns……………… …….. 273 percentage of foreign parentage is Total for Home Missions, … , ….. $227,152 over 70; in Cambridge. 69; Fall River, 86; Holyoke and Lawrence, Where the Many things are 83; Hartford, 62; New Britain, 74; Monnon Mischief said and penned New Haven, 63; Providence, 70; Centers about Mormon- Woonsocket, 83. It does not, in- ism which have deed, follow that all may fairly be but slight relation to the weighty called alien, as out of the total for- facts in the case. But every word eign-born considerably more than in the emphatic allegation which one-fourth are English and Scotch, follows is based upon the bed-rock,
of truth. Professor Richard T. public. All enlightened public Ely says: sentiment may modify and cause The Mormon organization is the to be concealed the grosser prac- most nearly perfect piece of social mechanism with which I have ever tises of Mormonism, Congress and in any way come in contact, ex- cepting alone the German army. the law may lop off polygamy, but It moves with the impact of trained regulars and with the zeal of fiery only Christian mission schools and fanatics. It moves to Western coasts, to Eastern capitals. Its Christian academies, and a Chris- hypocrisies blindfold a nation, while it chases, paralyzes, and tian college, baptized with the Holy strangles. With what easy indifference we regard its advance! If Spirit, can destroy Mormonism and we were told that there were two thousand men going through the change its deluded followers into country, every Clne of them infected with smallpox, the nation would happy Christians, and prosperous, flee or would grapple with the dan- ger. But to be told that there are law-abiding citizens. * two thousand men abroad trying with the deftest tact to infect a na- SHELDON JACKSON. tion with a religious system that is blasphemous, and with practise'> American Board The financial histhat are subversive of social moral- Receipts for tory of the Ameriity and destructive of the national Fifty Years can Board is an conscience, is to awaken a mild pro- interesting study. test here and there, or even to call forth as an apology: "Are not With marked regularity dark days Mormons industrious? Look at have appeared when the Board has theirschools, their irrigating ditch- suffered from the general financial es, their commercial prosperityl" conditions which prevailed ill the We go to sleep while their system country. Afterward the receipts spreads and its apostles hasten to- have risen to a higher plane not to ward their avowed goal-the con- go back again. It has not been untrol of the western states and terri- usual for men to predict the limit tories, the ultimate holding of the of receipts for foreign missions; national balance of power." in fact, this occurred as far back as 1837, and has been prophesied The Impor- After personal con- many times since. The average contributions by decades for the last tance of nection with the ninety years, in round numbers is as follows: $16,000; $66,000; $168,000; Winning Utah work of establish- $255,000; $298,000; $451,000; $462,- 000; $645,000; and the last decade, for Christ ing Christian instL including the financial embarrass- ment of 1893-1895, $701,000. For tutions west of the the past few years the question of whether there &hould be a debt has Mississippi River from 1858 to the depended upon the receipts from ]egacies.-Congregational WQ1·k. present, and during those 45 years Do Foreign The report of the dealing with Mexicans, Indians, Missions Pay? A. B. C. F. M. shows Mormons, Eskimos, and whites, of that it has in for- eign mission lands 535 native many nationalities extending over churches under the care of 275 na- tive pastors and 519 native assistan area from Mexico on the south ants (unordained). The additions to these 535 churches were 5,902 to Alaska on the north, and from new members, an average of more than 110 to each church. Can we the Mississippi River to the Pacific find 500 churches in any denomioa,· Ocean, the matured judgment of of my life and experience is to the effect that relatively Utah is the most important, needy, and urgent mission field in the United States -the storm-center of home mis- liiions, the plague-spot of the re-
GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE
tion in this country which report will seem to many entirely wild and impracticable, but I do not use more than 100 accessions during these figures lightly. I have be- come somewhat familiar with the the year? condition of things in the mission- The Episcopal This body of Chris- ary field, and I feel quite sure Church and tians now contains if the above large reinforcement should be sent abroad, it would not the Negroes 85 negro clergy- at all suffice to meet the present men-that is about demand.
1 in 58 of the whole number, min- The Lutheran The Lutheran Church in C h u r c h Almanac istering to 15,000 communicants. America for 190!, authorized by the G e n era I In all, 146 colored men have been Council of the Evangelical Lutheradmitted to holy orders in the an Church in the United States, presents the following summary: Church, 2 of whom are the present Synods in the United States•. ,.". 66 bishops of Cape Palmas, in Liberia, Ministers, ….. , .. ". , ……… ,. . . 7,290 and of Haiti. Congregations. .. . .. . . . … ……. 12,221 Methodist The Christian Ad- Recruits for vocate of Novem- Communicants" …. " ….. ,….. 1,689,385 Foreign Fields ber 11th reproduces Sunday-schools……….. " . .. . .. . 6,072 the faces of 60 mis- Officers and teachers……… , , , . . 58,894 sionaries recently gone, or soon to Scholars……… ". … .. . … ….. 541,659 go, to the foreign field. They are Contributions for missions, etc., ,$1,684,005.56 about equally divided between the The following is the growth for sexes. Of this number, 16 are the past year: destined to India, 11 to China, and Ministers … , ……… , , . , .. , , 135 the others to Burma, Korea, Mexi- Congregations.. . . .. . . . .. .. . . . . .. 245 co, South America, etc. Members. , ………………………. , 97,896 Bishop Thobum This is what this The Almanac gIves also a table of Lutherans (by countries) in all on What Ought eminent authority lands. The following are the to- tals: to be Done says with exclusive Pastors …… , … , …… " ……… , 35,868 reference to his own Churches … , ……… , … " ' .. , …. , 56,170 ~fember3 .. , .. , , ……. , . , .. , ……. , 6(J.16(J,8f?1 Church, the Methodist: E. L. TUCKER. * If asked for an estimate of the men needed, I should say that we The Industrial A United States should enlist at least 250 mission- Evangelistic council of this misaries within the next twelve Mission. India sion Was recently months. Do not be startled in that formed to forward this number seems large. If you had the view which I possess of the and control the interest of the actual extent and imperative de- work. There is already a council mands of the work, you would in Great Britain. The members of wonder at my use of so small a the American council are: Mr. number as ~50. The painful fact is Frank H. Marston, president; Rev. that we' have become accustomed Dr. Le Lacheur, vice-president; to figures which are altogether out Rev. C. C. Cook, 150 Nassau Street, of proportion to the vastness of the New York, secretary; Hugh R. work which we have in hand. We Monro, Esq., 156 Fifth Avenue, should send 75 new missionaries to trea~urer; Rev. W. J. Mosier and southern Asia, 75 mOI'e to eastern D. L. Pierson. Mrs. J. C. Lawson Asia, 50 to Spanish America, and is this year acting as field secretary 50 to Africa. I say nothing of the in America, Mr. Lawson having women, in addition to the heroic wives who would go out with these returned to India to take <;:harge of men. Our woman's society should send a force of at least half as many more-that is, 125 unmarried lady missionaries. Of course, a statement of t,his kind will occasion more surprise than approval. It
the work there. One hundred and great Pernambuco family, without distinction of class or sex. Recife, fifty famine boys are now being FREI CELESTINO. taught trades at the same time September 20, 1903.
that they are learning Christian This proposed Bible-burning was truth. They are thus being de- telegraphed to the daily papers in veloped into industrious self· Rio de Janeiro, and the authorities supporting Christians. * were appealed to to put a stop to Anti-Protestant The American Bible it. Several excellent articles by League. Brazil Society has recently competent and liberal-minded men received from Bra- have appeared in the papers, strong- zil the following information in re- ly denouncing such proceedings.
gard to a proposed Bible-burning The utterances on the subject which is announced in A Provincia, which have made the profoundest one of the daily papers of Pernam- impression of all were in a speech buco, Brazil. From this we trans- made before the House of Federal late a, few extracts: Representatives bya member from Occurring on the 27th of the the State of Rio Grande do SuI. present month the first anniversary of the Providential inaugura- He aJ;gues that the existence and tion of the League against Protestantism in the Penna Church of this work of the league against Protcapital, and desiring to celebrate it with the greatest pomp and re- estantism, and especially the Bibleligious devotion, the Central Directory and its respective council burning, is a violation of the Brain extraordinary session have resolved to observe the following pro- zilian Constitution, which guarangram (here is given the order of the celebration of the mass by tees perfect religious liberty and the bishop the diocease, etc.). protection alike to men of all There will be on a table under the majestic dome of the same ~eeds. * church a considera,ble number of false Bibles, books, tracts, and EUROPE papers rotten with the grossest errors and revolting Protestant The London This organization, heresies, that were voluntarily delivered to those reverend Capuchin Missionary which dates from missionaries by many Catholics, to whom the ministers and pastors of Society 1795, has now 275 this new sect sold them fraudulently, or offered them gratis, as European missionthe true ""Vord of God!-and which are already destined to the flames. aries laboring in foreign lands.
It is respectfully requested of There are 106 in India, 72 in China, Catholics who may have in their possession such little books and 31 in Madagascar, 31 in South cards, that they send and deliver them at once to the said mission- Africa, and 35 in Polynesia and the aries in order to give them tlreir proper doom, seeing that they can West Indies. The official summary not continue to possess them without incurring the canonical penal- which has recently been issued ties thundered by the Holy Mother Church. shows that in addition there are There are invited to attend this 943 ordained native ministers, 3,672 religious festa, besides the illustrious members of the council, all native preachers, 1,579 teachers, the distinguished members of the league and all true Catholics of the and 268 Biblewomen. The church- members number 69,607, and there are 196,026 native adherents. Over £29,000 was raised in the past year at the mission stations, the Bum including medical mission receipts and school fees.
A Nob.b1e Some months since Bequest to I' u mol's weI' e Missions abroad, which now are found to have been founded on fact, to the effect that a Welehman, Mr. Robert
1903J GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLtGENClll
Davies, had bestowed upon the $10,000 represent their contribu- Welsh Oalvinistic Ohurch no less a tions. Bum than £135,000 ($675,000). The inoney consists of debenture stocks A Queer A Saturday "mid- in two of the great English rail- ways. These stocks were originally Midnight night" service, of the value of £118,000, but they are now quoted in the market for Service from 11.30 P.M. to £17,000 more. There are 12 trus- tees, all of them being deacons of 1.30 A.M., is the the Oalvinistic Methodist body, and, in pursuance of the terms of latest departure of a mission at- the document, resident within a radius of thirty miles of Bangor. tached to Holy Trinity Ohurch, Another stipulation is that the money is to be exclusively confined Oloundesley Square, Islington. It to the Khassia mission, to which Mr. Davies has already devoted is held in the church mission hall, several thousands. His present benefaction is reported to yield an and a hearty invitation is extended income of £5,020 annually. to "the homeless, destitute, de- A Worthy Its name tell s Mission in a where its field of spairing, and sorrowful." Describ- Barren Field operation is found. ing one of these interesting seances, The North Africa Mission has 6 male and 20 female the Daily Chronicle says: missionaries in Morocco; 5 male and 13 female missionaries in On entering the hall each visitor Algeria; 5 male and 20 female mis- is handed a cup of coffee and some sionaries in the Regency of Tunis; cake, and while attention is being 2 male and 4 female missionaries in paid to this a party of lady vocalthe Dependency of Tripoli; 5 male ists sing some of Moody and Sanand 6 female missionaries in Egypt key's well-known hymns. There -altogether, 23 male and 63 female was a large gathering after 12 missionaries. This includes wives o'clock. For the most part the auof missionaries. dience was made up of men of the humbler class. If their walk was The Friends A company 0 f unsteady they were assisted to of Armenia Ohristians in Eng- seats by the stewards, and quickly waited upon with refreshment. land. organized in 1896 under the name of the United Free About 600hristian "Friends of Armenia," in a multitude of ways have rendered valu- Church Jewish agents are directly able assistance to the orphans in Turkey. The money collected has Mission employed by this been distributed quite largely through our missionaries, or by Ohurch in the work those with whom our missionaries have been in happy fellowship. of the Jewish Mission, of whom 7 Since their work began, in 1897, they have forwarded over $220,000 are ordained. During the last year to the distressed districts. and during the last quarter not far from 1,296 boys and girls (in the propor- tion of about 1 to 2) were enrolled as pupils in the schools, besides 236 boys and young men in evening classes, or 1,532 in all (which im- plies a daily attendance of proba- bly 1,000 young people), who re- ceive, along with the elements of a sound general education, a knowl- edge of the facts on which the Ohristian faith is based. In some 60,000 cases opportunity was given to the medical missionaries and their assistants to apply the heal- ing art and to minister the Word of Life under favorable conditions.
Hundreds of Jewish men and women attended the places of pub- lic worship and evangelistic meet- ings. M.
The Jews in The work among called simply because they are in Kishinef the Jews in Kishi- danger. .. Absolute security," for nef, Russia, which that matter, can not be guaranteed to anybody anywhere. We mishas been carried on by Probst Fal- sionaries are fully persuaded that tin uninterruptedly since 1859, has we are just now at the post of ceased to exist, because Probst duty, and therefore the safest place Faltin has removed to Riga to en- for us-if safety be an important joy a well-deserved rest in his old consideration-is this particular age. Many Jews have been led to spot. It is possible, of course, that Christ through the instrumentality we may be massacred-very much of this devoted servant of the against our personal desire-but Master, among whom are found we indulge a strong hope that for a the well-known Jewish missiona- while, at least, we may comfort ries Gurland, Friedman, and Rosen- and strengthen the hearts of many strau.ch (the able writer of tracts native friends who are in a measure for Jews), Pastor Ao R. Kuldell, of depending on us. Besides, t.he Allegheny, Pa., and the faithful two boarding-schools for girls Pastor E. E. Gruenstein, of Monti- which are reopened-one here and cello, Iowa. Thus Kishinef, in- one in Kortcha-and the prospect famously known through its mas- of participating in relief work for sacre of Jews in 1903, is left without more than 50,000 starving, naked, a missionary worker among its homeless refugees, forbids the 40,000 Jews-at least, at present! thought of flight. We would However, we understand that rather perish in Macedonia, if it be Peter Rabinowitz, the son of the the Lord's will, than to prolong our unforgotten Joseph Rabinowitz, days outside somewhere and be was in England a short time ago to ashamed of ourselves. interview friends of the Jewish work with regard to its future. M. An Appeal Mis sEll e n M.
A Heroic As a fine illustra- for the Stone, who was re- Facing of tion of the splendid Deadly Peril stuff of which mis- Macedonians leased from the bri- sionaries are com- gands of Macedonia monly made, it is worth while to note carefully the following inci- by American Christians, has writdent. Late last September Mr. Leishman, American Minister at ten to The Christian Herald, ap- Constantinople, sent a letter to the American Board calling attention pealing for help for the Macedonian to Macadonian conditions, and suggesting that it would be wise for refugees who have been driven the missionaries to withdraw from that region until quiet was restored, from their homes by the "Unbecause safety could not be aS8ured to American citizens in that part speakable Turk." She forward" an of the country. A copy of this letter was sent to the missionaries at appeal from the Bulgarian Evan- Monastir, and Rev. Lewis Bond, a missionary, replied as follows: gelical Society, which is, in part, as While appreciating the interest follows: thus manifested by our Minister, we sincerely hope the mission- The present assassination of aries at this station may not be re- thousands of Christians, and the destruction of hundreds of villages with their Christian church build- ings, is a triumph of Mohammedan fanaticism over the Christianity and Christian civilization of the twentieth century. Will God's people all over the Christian world remain silent and irresponsive to the bitter croies of the dying ones in Macedonia?
Dearly beloved in Christ, through the native Bulgarian Evang~lical Society, which for twenty-eight years has been a power for good among the European provinces of Turkey, the Protestant churches in Bulgaria pray you most earnestly to take such timely measures as
1904J GENERAL MIsstoNARY INTELLIGENCE
shall put a stop to the horrible He visited Tripoli, and there saw atrocities and the rapid extermina- Dr. Harris, one of the missionaries tion of the Ohristian population in Macedonia. of the Presbyterian Ohurch, who ASIA had charge of a large hospital in Light on Dufferin Oollege, which good work was being done, Lebanon Schwifat, Mount as well as outside its walls. He L e b a 11 0 n , was founded by Miss Louisa Proctor continues: and Mr. Tanius Said (a native gen- In the ancient city of Hums I saw tleman) for the education of the the sick flock to Dr. Harris as of old they flocked to Christ. He had youth of Syria, in memory of the with him only a pocket-case of medicine and a few instruments. benefits derived from the wise and The receiving-room was our little statesmanlike conduct of the late church, the operating-table a board laid across a couple of benches. But Lord Duiferin, by which the dis- amid those primitive conditions, the missionary gave such relief to trict of Lebanon enjoys greater scores of sufferers that their grati- tude knew no bounds, and men who freedom than any other portion of would have stoned a preacher reverently listened to the doctor .the Sultan's dominions in having a while he talked to them of Ohrist. The work of Dr. Mary Eddy among Ohristian governor. The school women and children is also reprewas opened in 1895 with 20 boys; sentative. Tho hithert'? nominally a member of the Beirut station, now aver 100 are educated within she has itinerated throughout the entire mission field, and even beits walls. Among the pupils are yond it. With her Biblewomen Mohammedans, Druses, Greek and her camping outfit, she jour- neys on horseback to some outlying Ohristians, Maronites, and Prot- village and pitches her tent. A surprising number of the sick and estants. Side by side they study injured speedily appear. It is pa- God's Holy Book. The fame of thetic to see the trustful confidence of that diseased and crippled the education given has spread throng, some of whom are plainly throughout Syria, Palestine, and beyond all help that man can give.
Egypt, so that last year there were Bibles not The Persian gov- over 150 applications for admission. Allowed to ernment has re- A.t the present time, 45 who have Enter Persia cently prohibited been trained in the schools are the introduction of teaching for other missions in Bibles into Persi~. A number of Egypt. Palestine, and Syria, giving cases of Scripture are lying in the satisfaction to their employers. custom-house at Bushire, which Medical Dr. A. J. Brown, in the officials will not release. They MiJSions the course of a tour also stopped a number of Persian in Syria through Asia, was prayer-books sent out by the deeply impressed Ohurch Missionary Society, but with the value of medical missions. they were afterward released.
He says: Even the Turks are better than Healing the sick is an important that, for they permit Bibles to pass phase of mission work in Syria. The antipathy of Moslem and the custom-house-provided they Oatholic to the Protestant preacher does not bind them to the fact that have been properly "expurgated." the medical missionary can cleanse their ulcers and set their broken The Koran enjoins the reading legs. Thus as the educational work opens up wide avenues of influence of the Bible, altho Mohammed was among the children, so medical work opens up equally wide avenues uneasy when he found that one of of influence among the sick and injured. his chief disciples was devoted to it,
"laying to him: "It may be dan- A Hindu The great com- Thanksgiving munity connected gerous." The subterfuge of the with the American modern Mohammedans is that Board Mission in Ahmednagar ob- served June 20th and 21st as days Christians and Jews have corrupted of thaksgiving for God's care dur- ing the recent epidemic of plague, the Scriptures, altho the Koran from which at least 3,500 deaths occurred among the popula tions of makes no such charge. the City. There were but 11 deaths among the Christians of the Ameri- The Persians, altho accounted can mission and the same number from among the handful of Chrisheretics at Mecca, being Shiites in- tian] in the Salvation Army. If the Indian Christian community had stead of Sunnites, are in some re- lost their share of the 3,500 who died, 210 Christians would have been the spects more intolerant than the number instead of 11. "They were about nineteen times as immune as Sunnites. For instance, the Sun- the other communities." If we in- clude those from the Salvation nites adllJit Christians into their Army, the Christian community lost 22, or "ten times as immune mosques, but Mr. Benjamin, for- as the rest of the community." Certainly there was sufficient merly our minister to Persia, says ground for the thanksgiving meet- ings. The reasons are easily disthat there, if a Christian should covered, Among the Christians cases were promptly reported, and make his way into a Shiite mosque, they maintain better sanitary con- ditions. no rank and no considerations of policy would save him from death. t Industrial Rev. James Smith, Training for 0 f Ahmednagar, India's Orphans thus answers the question why he believes in industrial training for orphan children in India: 1. Because for nine years I have tried it and found that in general my most intelligent and resource- ful pupils are those who have had a simple course in lllanual training, in addition to their other work.
2. Because it fits boys and girls for life. Books for the The n u mer 0 n s 3. Because it saves many" block- Blind friends of the late heads," turning them into men of Miss Annie Sharp ability, much to the surprise of some of their teachers. will be interested to learn that her 4. Because it seems to develop lamented death has caused no in- faithfulness and truthfulness better terregnum in the management of than arithmetic and spelling and the North India Missionary Insti- other forms of mere book-work (in which crl',mming and whispering tute for the Blind. She had worked make der,eption and superficiality for many years at Amritsar with so easy) her sister and Miss Hewlett. The 5. Be~ause it makes boys more latter lady was with Miss Sharp self-re.iant and manly.
6. Because it developes original- when she died, and without delay ity. There is no class where there has taken control of the work, and is so much independent and original is now resident at Raipur. One of thinking done as in the class in the latest efforts of the departed mantlal training.
7. Lastly, because working men worker was to draft a letter to The and working boys must have an Christian, giving details of prog- education suited to their future. ress in the adaptation of the Braille· They must be fitted for earning bread. If we simply give them type for the blind. At the close of book-learning they will despise the letter she says: manual labor and be unfitted for such occupation. .. I can not sufficiently thank my
1904J GENERAL MISSIONARY
faithful band of Braille writers and Self-support The Church Mis- other helpers, and I would ask in India sionary Soc i e t y them and others to note these four probably to a larger facts: (1) On our shelves to-day are some 70 English books, also the extent than other missions, is de- whole Urdu Bible, almost tripli- veloping self-support on sound, ago cated, and many copies of the Gos- gresRive lines. The Madras Dio- pels and Psalms; also a few good cesan Record informs us that all the Urdu story books. (2) At Rajpur C. M. S. congregations in Madras we shall number (excluding EUrop- and its neighborhood are finaneans) over 70 souls. About 5 of cially independent of any foreign these will be sighted boys and aid. The affairs of the church are women helpers; the rest are, for all managed by a council consisting practical purposes, blind, and 7 of wholly of Indian clergy and laity, them mentally defective. (3} We and the bishop's testimony that have sent out 9 workers-2 Bible this state of things has grown up women, 2 preachers, and 5 teachers on very sound and solid lines, will of the blind. (4) There is not one very much encourage these Indian pupil (except the sick ones) who pastors and people to renewed efdoes not work according to his or forts for their own spiritual growth, her ability.-The Christian. and for the extension of the King- dom of God. The C. M. S. has Giving by A few years ago I paid much attention to native church organization, and it is a Hindu Christians investigated care- great encouragement to have so fully the economic clear and valuable a testimony given by the bishop of the diocese conditions of the most prosperous to that system as it is at work in the Telugu mission. and largest village congregation of Trouble in For some time past the Madura mission. I discovered that 5 rUI}ees (that is, $1.00) was Tibet we have received the average monthly -income of from India disquieteach family of that congregation. ing letters as to the relations of the And that meant only 33 cents a Indian government with Tibet. month for the support of each There are constant rumors of immember of a family! We have pending military operations, an congregations whose income is less army of Nepalese being stationed than this. And yet the Christians on the frontier. Some years ago a of that mission contributed over 2 rupees (75 cents) per church mem- commercial treaty was arranged her as their offering for 1900. For with Tibet, Sikkim being taken un- all the Protestant missions of South der British protection, and a line of India the average offering per boundary was fixed upon. Herein church member during 1900 was 1 lies the source of the present rupee and 9 annas (52 cents). For trouble, it being alleged that the South India this represented an ag- Tibetans have not fulfilled their gregate sum of 248,852 rupees ($83,· part, but have repeatedly displaced GOO), or about seven and onp-half the masonry pillars erected on the per cent. of the total sum expended boundary. in the missions during that year. The Indian government, after An American can easily realize negotiating with China. appointed how much this offering is as an absolute gift; but he can not realize a commission to treat with Tibet, how much of self-denial it means and the members by appointment to that very poor people, nor how entered the Chumbi Valley some hrge an offering it is as related to the best offerings of our home churches to-day.
REV. J. P. JONES.
months ago, but have waited in tianity, shall in no case be inter- vain at Kamba .long for Ohinese and Tibetan officials with proper fered with, or molested in person credentials to meet them. or property on account of his teach- Preparations have, therefore, been made for a forward move- ing or his religious belief. No rement, a large supply of military stores having been collected in striction shall be placed on Chinese readiness. Whatever the true in- wardness of the situation may be, joining Christian churches. Conit is a call to the people of God to intercede at the throne of grace verts and non-converts, being that a peaceable way may be found out of the impasse, and that we Chinese subjects, shall alike conmay not become involved in another of our "little wars." We form to the laws of China, and remember, too, that brave and devoted missionary, Miss Annie R. shall pay due respect to those in Taylor, who is in that eountry alone, as the representative of the authority, living together in peace Tibetan Pioneer Mission. – The Christian. and amity; and the fact of be- An article appeared in this RE- ing converts shall not protect VIEW for April, 1903, giving an ac- them from the conseqmmces of any count of the missions to Tibet. " offense they may have committed Missions and In Article 13 of the the Treaty with English treaty with before or after their admission into China Ohina of September the Church, or exempt them from 5, 1902, Great Brit- paying ~he legal taxes levied on ain agreed to join in a commission to secure peaceable relationships Chinese subjects generally, except between converts and non-converts in China. In the American treaty, taxes levied and contributions for signed Oct. 8, the question has been dealt with more fully. This is of the support of religious customs such interest that we give it below in full. There is no doubt but and practises contrary to their that all Protestant missions will heartily approve of this article: faith in which they shall not be The principles of the Christian required to take part. religion, as professed by the Protestant and Catholic Churches, are Missionaries shall not interfere recognized as teaching men to do good and to do to others as they with the exercise by the native auwould have others do to them. thorities of their jurisdiction over Those who quietly profess and teach this religion shall not be har- Chinese subjects; nor shall the narassed or persecuted on account of their faith nor in any way dis- tive authorities make any distinccriminated against. Any person, whether citizen of the United tion between converts and non- States or Chinese convert, who, according to those tenets, peace- converts, but shall administer the ably teaches and practises his religion and the principles of Chris- laws without partiality, so that both classes can live together in peace. Missionary societies of the United States of Americl1, shall be permitted to rent and lease in per- petuity, as the property of the sl1,id societies, buildings or land in all parts of the empire for missionary purposes, and after the title-deeds have been found in order and duly stamped by the local authorities, to erect such suitable buildings as may be required for the carrying * on of their good work.
Missionaries In view of the un- and founded c h a r g e s Magistrates sometimes brought in China against Christian missions in China, without discrimination between Protestl1,nt and Roman principles of action, the following extracts from a recent Protestant manifesto deserve careful reading. The mani- festo has been sent, in Chinese, to all officil1,ls throughout the empire.
It reads: Chinese Christians, tho church- members, remain in every respect Chinese citizens, and are subject to
GENERA!. MISSIONARY ntTELLtGENCE
the properly constituted Chinese life. He replied: "I believe I ought to be helping to prepare authorities. The sacred Scriptures young men for the ministry, and ten times the salary you offer and the doctrines of the Church would not take me from my work."
teach obedience to all lawful au- A Martyrs' A committee has Memorial been formed in thority and exhort to good citizen- for China China to raise a ship; and these doctrines are fund of $250,000 to preached in all Protestant erect in Shanghai a Chinese "Exeter Hall" and Missionary churches. The relation of a mis- Union in memory of the foreign and native Christians who gave sionary to his converts is thus that their lives for Christ during the Boxer outbreak. Rev. D. Macof a teacher to his disciples, and he Gillivray, the secretary of the com- mittee, writes as follows: does not desire to arrogate to him- The movement is taking hold on self the position or power of a the China missionaries. Instead of some dead stone, we purpose magistrate. erecting a building which may be a great evangelistic center, a place Unfortunately, it sometimes hap- of unions, a house which will in many ways serve the cause for pens that unworthy men, by mak- which the martyrs died. Some would rather see the money exing insincere professions, enter the pended for living agents. But we be- lieve that living agents will be sent Ohurch and seek to use this connec- out in large numbers by the various boards. The missionary body could tion to interfere with the ordinary not as a united body administer any fund for the sending out of course of law in China. We all missionaries. During the century some 209 died (not counting natives) agree that such conduct is entirely from 18 different societies in Amer· ica and England and elsewhere. reprehensible, and we desire it to The whole idea in this movement is a fascinating one to us who are be known that we give no support situated at the door of China. The hand of God has been seen in its to this unwarrantable practise. progress, and we go forward in hope that He who began will finish. On this account we desire to state This movement is heartily enfor the information of all that: (a) dorsed by missionaries of all the societies in China, and a number The Protestant Church does not of contributions have already been received. The hall is to be built on wish to interfere in law cases. All a prominent site, and used for rr- ligious mass-meetings of natives or cases between Christians and non- foreigners. It is hoped that it may contain the offices of the Bible and Christians must be settled in the tract societies, a missionary library and museum, and many would like courts in the ordinary way. to see a missionary guest-bouse added. The chairman of the com- Officials are called upon to admin- ister fearlessly and impartially jus- tice to all within their jurisdiction.
(b) Native Christians are strictly forbidden to use tlIe ,name of the Church or its officers m the hope of strengthening their positions when they appear before magistrates.
The native pastors and preachers are appointed for teaching and ex- hortation, and are chosen because of their worthy character to carry on this work. To prevent abuses in the future, all officials are re- spectfully requested to report to the missionary every case in which letters or cards using the name of the Church or any of its officers are brought into court. Then proper inquiry will be made and the truth become clear. * Not a Divine grace bears " Rice Christian" the same fruit in all lands and among all peoples, crowding out selfishness, and installing self-sac- rificing love. So that we wonder not when we read that one of the Chinese teachers in Pekin Uni- versity, who was receiving a salary of $15 a month, was recently offered $100 a month to go into commercial
mittee is Bishop Graves, and the clap his hands and say" keep quiet treasurer E. S. Little, Esq.. of while J talk to you," and the elders Shanghai.. would call out, "Shut up!" Such were the circumstances under False Chapels In the course of an which the Gospel was first preached in Hunan 800 miles' trip in to Korean women. Hunan Province, Now last summer, ILbout half of it made on foot, Rev, W. H. Lingle dis- But how chlLnged now! Yester.. covered considerable spurious work day I, with Mr. Moffatt interpretdoing in the nlLme of Christianity. ing, preached in the great new Heathen men had set up chapels church to 600 women, besides 900 bearing the sign "Presbyterian men, all respectful and quiet, and Mission," and, in that name, would of the 600 women, 550 sat on the appeal to the courts with their raised seats just outside the platlawsuits. Mr. Lingle says that he form. Nothing I have ever seen in closed more chapels than he ever heathen lands impressed me more. opened in his life. The Chinese are Among this wonderful company keen enough to appropriate terms was a former sorceress, II> brave old of the Christian religion whenever woman of eighty-six years. Six there is gain to be squeezed out of unkept, dirty women si:s: years ago; them, and, for this reason, Prot- now 600 Christians. estant missionaries are careful to avoid interference with courts of The Forward 'J:'he latest report of justice even in behalf of Christians. -Woman's Work/or Woman. Movement in this movement re- Then and Now The" two pictures" Japan ceived by the Amer- in Korea given in the follow- ing lines were writ- ican BOlLrd in Bos- ten by Rev. D. C. Rankin, Decem- ton is, in brief, as follows: ber 15, 1902, during his visit to Pyenyang, and are nearly the last The results of the Forward Movewords he penned. ment are not by any means limited Then to the number already received In early summer of 1896 Messrs. Moffett and Lee first undertook to into the churches, altho that is a preach to Korean women. He had previously had only men in the most gratifying and encouraging first little building. The women had often stood outside and listened result. There are, in addition: 1. through the key hole. Mrs. Lee came in 1896. The" kitchen" room The new attention which Christiwas opened into the church by rcmoving the wall and hanging a cur- anity has awakened among all tain. Mrs. Lee came in with foul' or five women, who had been" keyhole classes. 2. The union of heart and listeners," and these sat very quietly beside her; but a number hand (all nations and denominaof others in dirty clothes would keep walking about and talking. tions) in prayer, and purpose, and As Mr. Moffet preached he would work. 3. The quickened life of the Church, so that it feels its respon- sihility to evangelize the empire as never before. 4. The workers have received a wider view and have a deeper realization of the immense work to be done in Japan.
5. A new consecration of pastors and Christians, a new sense of the power of the simple Gospel, and..o.
new assuranc)e of victory. 6. Many are led to examine Christianity.
and many thousands, especially of young men, are studying the Bible.
7. The value of thorough prepara- tion and method have been empba- sized. 8. An impulse toward self- support has been given. 9. It has given new courage and hope to the churches in the home lands with * reference to the work.
GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE
A Union Japanese mission- pleasure which it afforded me to visit the admirably conducted es- Hymn-book aries have united tablishment of the American mis- in Japan in the production sionaries on the Sobat and that of of a union hymn- the Austrians on the White Nile- book which is about to issue from one Protestant, the other Roman the press of the Methodists. It was Catholic; but I make no distinction between the two. Both are adpromised for use October 1st. Con- mirably conducted. I entirely con- gregationalists, Methodists, Pres-· cur with Sir Reginald Wingate, byterians, Baptists, and Disciples and with, I believe, every respon- all took part in its compilation; sible authority in this country, in thinking that the time is still disand it expresses the common faith tant when mission work can be and common hope of the universal permitted among the Moslem popu- church. It will contain 450 hymns, lation of the Sudan. But such 125 of which appear also in the efforts as are now being made newly revised Episcopal Hymnal. among the pagan tribes in the southern provinces deserve. and Japanese In Yokohama is a shall certainly receive. any reason- Christian large ChI' i s t ian able amount of encouragement and assistance which can be afforded to Printers printing company them.
which has 220 per- It is less than two decades since sons in its employ, and all these are Khartum, the Sudanese capital, gathered every Monday morning was abandoned to savagery and for a religious service before be- Mahdist tyranny. It was recon- ginning the work of the week. The quered by Lord Kitchener in 1898.
manager is an elder in the Pres- According to Lord Cromer, we byterian church, and the com- suppose that the northern Sudan, pany has a large business, not strongly Mohammedan, has not only through Japan, but in Korea, yet recovered sufficiently from the China, and the Philippine Islands. ravages of war for the spiritual AFRICA onslaught of Christians. This is A Loud Call The missionaries not the case with the natives of the from Egypt in Egypt of the Bahr-el-Ghazal and others of the United Presbyterian Church of North America southern tribes who are not Moshave sent an appeal to their home church for 280 more missionaries. lems. It seems strange that this The church to which this appeal has been made has a threefold southern field has been occupied by record in foreign missions for the year: the largest foreign mission hut two agencies, one of which, we offerings, the largest missionary party sent out, and the largest in- are glad to remember, is American. gathering of souls in any single year of its history. -Outlook. * Great Britain The British policy The African A missionary write" and Missions of exclusion of as a Beggar that the native Af- in the Sudan Christian mission- rican is decidedly aries from the Su- fond of begging, and will beg at dan was recently defined by Lord every opportunity, and for every- Cromer, British agent for Egypt thing upon which his eyes may and the Sudan, as follows: rest, from a pin or nail to the very clothes you weal', and under any pretense whatever he will ask for a gift. If he points out the road to a village, it is: "Fundis. 'ngi tuse" (Missionary, give me a present). If he shows you a stream of water, or comes to your meeting, it is the Let me testify to the special same thing.
A certain traveler tells about a to teach his people, and he was native who was saved by a; mission- overcome with joy. Friends at ary from being killed. He came to the mission later, not to thank the home would be surprised to know missionary for saving his life, but· how much they deny themselves to ask for a piece of cloth because clothes and other things that they his life was saved. This would not may get books. Two of the por- ters who were with us on a recent be unusual for an African. 'Ve itineration, when they received have had natives to ask us for presents because we had done them some service. We suppose they their well-earned wage, returned thought that one good turn de- the whole of it to me, that they might buy a testament, prayerserves another. This shows their book, etc.; and this is no uncomsimpIe childlike mind. In order to have any peace along that line, one must let them know at once that mon case."
no presents will be given, except in exchange for presents. To ex- The Growth of Within the Uganda change presents is a sign of friend- Two Decades British Protector_ ship. ate a recent census Growth in the The statistics for shows 1,070 church buildings with Zulu Mission the last year of this a seating capacity of 126,850, and m iss ion of the an average Sabbath attendance of American Board make an excel- 52,471. It is only twenty years lent showing. The native force, since the first Ohristian baptism consisting of 531 preachers and took place in that country. Verily, teachers, draws no part of its sup- this is a wonder-land for the spread port from the Board. Of the 23 of the Gospel, and bids fair soon to churches in the mission 18 are en- outdo even Hawaii or Madagascar.
tirely self-supporting, and the other five are provided for from the home ISLANDS OF THE SEA missionary fund gathered by the A Wedding in A missionary's exnative Ohristians. The membership in these churches is 4,298, New Guinea perience at his first against 3,555 reported last year. Of the 67 day-schools in the mis- wedding in New sion, 18 are self-supporting, and the others are supported by private Guinea is described in an interestfunds or government grants. The total contributions from native ing way by the Rev. J. H. Oullen, sources to the work of the mission were $7,964, while the total appro- of Port Moresby: priations from the Board for the same purpose amounted to only It was Wednesday, and we had $4,300. our usual service at six o'clock. Service ended, Ruatoka sent the The Word The love for the non-church members outside, while in Uganda Bible is one of the he inquired of the church whether they thought Ikua Laka was a fit most marked traits woman to make a vrife for Deacon of the people of Uganda. A mis- Kevau. There was quite a chorus sionary writes: "A chief who has of assent. He ask ~d several other gone to build a church in a distant questions to the sa me end, and the part of the land, where one is much answers being s.ttisfactory, the needed, will receive no earthly re- public was readmitted and the servward for his. labor, but I promised ice proceeded. I had not been in him that when he had finished I ths country six weeks, but everywould give him a Bible, the better thing I had to say, Scripture, prayer, and all, was printed, and having got it up well the night be- fore, I managed finely. Kevan wore a black cloth waistcoat and trousers, and the bride a somewhat dirty red frock. They bot h stood stolidly at the table, answered the questions readily ap,d distiuc;;tly,
GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE
and took the whole thing as the his subscription of 400 pfennigsmost ordinary business. sounding a large su)'}'l, but in reality Progress John G. Paton being, if anything, less than the in the writes as follows: others; and. to crown all, one man announced his offering as a "kini " New Hebrides "The converts at (guinea), his wife's itS 4 marks, and his child's as 12~ cents! For two the Illission stations hours at least we sat, busy record- in Malekula have built a Christian ing the names and itmounts prom- ised, and in some cases receiving village in which they live. All are the cash. At last we had to close, clothed. They begin and close owing to the lateness of the hour. But next morning still more promevery day with praise and prayer, ises were made, sO that before and are very happy with each other, our meetings closed we were as- giving a daily object lesson to the sured of the success of Kuresa's ap- peal; for more than £300 was promheathen of the joy and peace of ised or given. Christianity. To their village they welcome all new converts, teach MISCELLANEOUS them and help to protect them; and Lessons of Rev. Henry H. Jes- if they re"solve to live there, all Forty-eight sup, D.D., the vet- unite and assist in building a new Yean' eran missionary to house for them after a given plan El<perience Syria, gives the on straight streets running parallel following as the with each other, and with streets lessons that he has learned in his at right angles. All houses are missionary life. They are worth built on strong wood foundations, noting: wattled, plastered with lime, and My first lesson is one of grati- tude to God that I have been whitewashed. The cottages are enabled to live so long in such a neat, and Itre all kept clean~a great blessed work. The second is that, if I could live contrast to the heathen villages. my life over again, I would choose The village is on a healthy site, the missionary work above all bought for the purpose near the others. The third is one of sorrow and mission house, so that they may humiliation at my many mistakes have the help and advice of the and failures, and of strong desire missionary in all difficulties ~aised that I might try again with new by the heathen, and may also help purpose, new wisdom, and new con- the missionary in his work, and re- secration. The fourth is the inadequacy and ceive his constant teaching and worthlessness of the human elecare. ment in themissionitry work unless Samoans I tap pea r s that vitalized, inspired, and controlled Giving to the s e Ohristians by the Divine. The fifth is the vantage-ground Missions have a foreign mis- occupied by the new missionary of sion in Fiji, and to-day, over those who went out when recently an appeal was made fifty years ago_ in its behalf this is what occurred: The sixth is that the great con- vulsions, wars, and massacres which One after another of that great desolate mission fields such as the gathering rose up and made promises of money, ranging from $1 to Syrian massacres of 1860, and the $20, and,' in one case, $50, each fresh offer being received with Chinese Boxer outbreak of 1900, great cheers, the cheers being are the ploughshares upturning the changed to hughter when some would-be wit announced his gift as soil for the good seed, and prepar· 100 centIS, followed by another who ing the way for reconstruction, repromised its English equivalent of 48 pence; and not to be outdone, generation, and reformation. The seventh is that the Bible is th~ "G~rJ1lau" SamQan called out hound to supplant. the Koran, the Vedl,ts, and the books of Oonfucius.
The eighth i~ tlla.t the world
needs the Gospel and will not be at West Indian Conferences have felt rest until it has received Jesus constrained to ask the Yearly Con- Christ. ference to abrogate the constitu- The ninth is that the most pre- tions granted them in 1884, take cious service of the missionary is the oral preaching of the Gospel. * over again the work in the West Indies, and place the several dis- Self-support The Missionary tricts under the immediate charge of the Missionary Committee. It and Reco1'd, of the is painful to add that this involves Independence United FreeChurch, the liquidation of a debt which has run up to £62,000. The independof Slow Growth has these sane cau- ence of the native churches on the mission field is a most desirable tions: end, but it ought not to be formally determined until the life of the na- The development of independent tive churches is tested and proved native churches is one of the most equal to the task. difficult problems of foreign missions. The aim is clear enough- OBITUARY to establish in every separate field 'Colonel Henry H. Hadley, a self-supporting, self-governing, and self-extending church. The H. H. Hadley of New York, died difficulty does not lie only in bringing the native churches to the point at the Colorado of independence; it lies also in this, that when they seem to have at- Sanitarium December 2d of contained self-support, the result of granting independence has often sumption. He leaves a widow and proved disastrous. ThE; London Missionary Society found it so, a son, an Episcopalian clergymen years ago, in the South Sea Islands; the American Board has made a at,Richmond, Ind. Colonel Hadley similar experience; and now the Vesleyan Methodist Conference, was a native of Ohio, and durat its meeting at Camborne in July, ing the last fifteen years has been has had to confess to a similar result in the case of the West Indies. well known as a mission worker In 1884 the Yearly Conference constituted the mission districts in the and lecturer. He was educated in Vest Indies into two independent conferences-the Western, includ- the public schools, and in 1862 be- ing the Jamaica and Hayti dis- came a private in the Ninetieth tricts, and the Eastern, including the Antigua, St. Vincent, and Brit- Ohio volunteer infantry. He was mustered out as captain and brevet lieutenant-colonel in 1866, and in 1875 -he was graduated from the National Law University at Wash- ish Guiana districts. The West In- ington. He became a member of dies were the first mission field of the Wesleyans. The extension and the New York bar and also of the success of their missions there form one of the brighte::;t pages in the bar of the District of Columbia. history of the expansion of Christianity; and it seemed as if now In 1888 Colonel Hadley was conthat enterprise had reached its goal in the starting of the local churches verted and began mission work, un an independent career. But the step has proved premature. At He organized 60 rescue missions anl the moment it was taken these churches were not absolutely self- several total abstinence societies, supporting; it was affirmed, however, that self-government was the and raised over $250,000 for their one thing needed to make them so. Notwithstanding their independ- support. It is said that he adence, repeated grants have had to be made to them. And now, after dressed over 5,000 audiences on the nineteen years' experkmce, the subject of total abstinence and rescue work. His brother, S. H.
Hadley, is the Superintendent of the Water Street Mission, New York. Many friends rejoice in his life and mourn his loss. <-
The Missionary Review of the World — August 1903
McALL MISSION BOAT "BON NOUVELLE"
THE INTERIOR OF THE "BON NOUVELLE ,.
"'THE
Missionary Review of the World Old Bet'ies I AUGUS1' j New Bet'ies VOL, XXVI. No, 8 i 1 VOL, XVI. No, 8 ANDREW MURRAY AND "THE KEY TO THE MISSIONARY * PROBLEM·f BY THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF This, the latest, is, to our mind, the best of Dr. Murray's pen products. Its two hundred pages are aflame with intense missionary zeal, and it is a zeal according to knowledge. Its immediate occasion was found in the felt defect of the great Ecu menical Missionary Conference in New York in 1900, in /lot sufficiently e1f!'}Jhash'ing p?'ayer, and in the equally manifest lack of the average church life, ill not emphasizing missions as the duty and privilege of every believer, and, in fact, as Dr. Murray argues, the one great object for which the Church exists in this world, The author of this book makes missions the true test of the state of the Ohureh, He gives fifty pages to a succinct and· snggestive sketch of the Moravian Brotherhood, a story which, like the story of the Oross, is always new and fasciuating, He repeats those statistics which reveal at once the grand energy and habitual sacrifice of the Unitas Fratrum, and the sad, inexcusable apathy and inactivity of the rest of Christendom. If the standard. of these poor and feeble few were the model of the many, missionary gifts wonld multiply fourfold, and the band of missionary workers would increase nearly fortyf'Jld. If the vast money power of the Ohurch at large were·so put at God's disposal as that each member of Protestant churches should give one cent a day, it would aggregate over five hundred millions of dollars, or at least thirty fold the whole sum contributed last year, These are a few of the facts, marshaled under Mr. Murray's skilful generalship, to prove that ~hat some would have pronounced an impracticable ideal if,to-da~,j;ctually exemplified by a Ohurch that, in numbers ·and resources, is less than a little Benjamin among the tribes, and of which su~h leadership, therefore, might least be expected, • See "The Key to the Missionary Problem," by Rev. Andrew llIurray. Published by the American Tract Society, New York, and by James Nisbet & Co., London.
Dr. Murray mercilessly exposes and unsparingly denounces the worldliness, formality, prayerlessness, and parsimony in the churches, which account for the awful apathy as to a dying world and Christ's command. He contrasts all this with the Moravian unworldliness, spirituality, ceaseless prayer, and intense :oeal. Weare reminded how the suffering of our Lord-the perpetual travail for souls, whose full satisfaction is delayed by a lethargic Ohurch (Isaiah liii : 10-12)-is the main spur to Moravian activity. Their life maxim and battle-cry is to win for the slain Lam.b the reward of his su.trerings! We are reminded also how they seek to translate the Sermon on the Mount into daily living (Matthew vi : 33), ana make everything secondary, putting first things first; how they accept their mission, even at price of martyrdom; how they lay no stress on numbers, money, ,worldly methods, or anything else but prayer, service, and sacrifice. The whole Brotherhood is but an expanded "order of the mustard-seed," in which" no man liveth unto himself," and in which Zinzendorf is indefinitely multiplied -the leader reproduced in his followers.
Dr. Murray calls attention to certain great days in Moravian history, of which five may be specially mentioned: First, May 12, 1727, the Day of the New Statutes, when the Brotherhood at I1errnhut exchanged sectarian zeal and jealousy for the position and ambition of a true Church of Christ; self-will, self-love, selfseeking heing renounced for poverty of spirit, surrender to the will of God, the presidency of the Holy Spirit, and unsparing I'ervice to a tlJing world.
Second, August 13th, the Day (~r the ~Ye1V Pentecost, or Bllptil;rJl of Power. The whole night of August 5th had beel~ spent in prayer, and the eight days following more nearly resembled Pentecostal preparation and blessing than perhaps any similar period since that first outpourillg. The II'hole congregation was as one man on his face before God, like Daniel (Daniel ix : 10). COllYersions multiplied in a remarkable manner, both as to numbers and the proofs of the power of God, and one marked feature was the ingathcring of children. A spirit of grace and supplication was most of all characteristic of this new Pentecost.
Third, August 26th, the Day of tTie _Yew Prayer rigil. Against an unslumbering eneIllY there was absolute need also of an llnsleeping Ohurch. A ceaseless vigil or prayer-watch was resolved on, and twenty·four brethren and as many sisters entered into covenant to spend each one hour, as fixed by lot, ont of each twenty-four hours in solitary prayer for a lost world and a needy Ohurch-these watchers meeting weekly, to confer together and widen their scope of intelligent knowledge of both the Ileed of prayer and occasion for praise.
:Fourth, February 10, 1728, was the Day of the "Mission Dawn, when Zinzendorf pointed to distant lands-Turkey, Morocco, Green-
ANDREW MURRAY AND THE MISSIONARY PROBLEM
land, and the West Indies-as fields of labor, and four years later the first two laborers left for the West Indies, setting out on foot and without purse or scrip. Within another three years, more than thirty additional workers had followed, two of them to Greenland.
Fifth, November 13, 1741, was the Day of the Election of tlte Eldest. This completed the organization of the Brotherhood. They had adopted ,the new statutes, sought and rece.ived the new enduement, consecrated themselves to the new vigil, entered upon their new mission, and now they formally chuse their new Leader.
Leonhard Dober-hitherto the chief elder, known as "the eldest" -felt called himself to mission" work, but no fit man was found to fill his vacant place at home. Then the happy thought was suggested to them by the Spirit that they should ask the great First-born to be the Eldest of the Brotherhood, and, with a strange and hallowed joy, they inaugurated the Lord Jesus into His office. Henceforth He alone was to be Head over all things to the Moravian Church, not nominally, but really and practically.
In view .of such facts, which surely furnish a new chapter in the Illodern acts of the apostles, we can understand the history of the Unitas Flratrum. We are not surprised that, in the first twenty years, this Brotherhood sent out more missionaries than all the rest of Protestant Christendom had in tell times that period I A little Church, at a time when it could count less than three times as many members as the primitive one hnndrecl and twenty in Jerusalem, entered UpOll the greatest enterprise of the Church of the post-apostolic age! The secret is plain: JJersonal passion fo1' Christ first of all, and this bearing its natural fruit in passion foJ' C/wistloss 801tlS. Zinzendorf had s~Lid: "I have but one passion, and it is He! it is He! ,J and this holy zeal became contagious. As Dr. Murray finely says-echoing Chalmer's motto: "The eXIJulsi ve power of a new and mightier affection "-" the secret of detachment is attachment." It is easy to loosen ourselves from the world and self so far as we feel an unseen worId and a Divine SELF holding us with new cords. Once let primary things take their true place, and, of course, all else must be subordinate and secondary. One thing the Moravian Church learned thoroughly: that continual downponring of blessing depends 011 a COlltinual uprising of prayer. Supplication corresponds to evaporation, and the descending blessing to the condensation and rainfall which would be impossible but for the previously rising vapors. There is this reciprocal action between the Hearer of Prayer in heaven and the offerer of prayer all earth: as praise and prayer go up, answers and blessing come down. God thus responds to prayer in new bestowments of blessing; the believer again responds to God's bestowments in new thanksgivings and entreaties.
Thus the Moravians became also the inspirers of zeal in others, as
in the case of John Wesley and George Whitefield, William Carey and William Ward, Jonathan Edwards and Adoniram Gordon, and hosts besides, of whom the world is not worthy.
The essential position of Dr. Murray in this arousing book is fur- ther illustrated by the story of the Church Mission~ry Society and of the China Inland Mission, which, at the crises of their history, have always advanced only by a new faith in God and new prayer for guidance and help.. '1'0 each of these noble organizations Dr. Murray gives a chapter.
God's Purpose for the Church Of one position taken by the earnest friend and ~dvocate of missions in this little volume we have considerable doubt. The keynote of his appeal is found in less than a score of words, that "'1'he winning of the world to God is the supreme, the one, end of the Church's existence" (p. 35). This keynote is heard everywhere, almost in every page and paragraph. While in deep sympathy with the main purpose of the book, we fear there is here not a little overstatement. He says: "To gather in the souls He (Christ) died to save is the one object for which the Church exists" (p. 56). Again Dr. Murray says the" three great principles taught by the Holy Spirit" are: "(1) That the Church exists only for extending the Kingdom; "(2) That every member must be trained to take part in it; "(3) That the personal experience of the love of Christ is the power that fits for this" (p. 66). We hesitate to write one word which might lessen the force of this mighty appeal for higher personal consecration to lliissionary living and giving, praying and working. But we do not believe anything is ever permanently gained by an undue emphasis upon a particular truth. Indeed, out of its true proportion, even truth becomes error. If we rightly read the New Testament, the heavy stress of all its teaching is not upon any form of actiz'ity, but upon cltaracter/ not on doing, but on being. We should with strong conviction say that the one great object for which the individual is saved and the Church called into existence is to exhibit Christ, to exemplify godliness; and that the three great principles taught by the Holy Spirit are: 1. That the Churoh exists only to reproduce and perpetuate Christ among men; 2. That every member is to aid in securing this result by himself becoming as far as possible Chl'istlike; 3. That all power in service ultimately depends on sanctity of character. This we regard as indisputable. There is in the great parable of John xv.-the vine and branches-an extraordinary emphasis npon "jJ'uit," which is referred to eight times, and in a variety of forms.
For that fruit the Vine and Branch exist, and to promote increase of
fruit the Husbltndman takes infinite pains and shows infinite patience. But what is the jrttit? Surely not any form of outward activity, however desirable and useful, but the Ohristlike image. The only place in which the "fruit of the Spirit" is expressly put before us is in Galatians y: 22, 23: "The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance." Nine separate grapes are in this glorious cluster, and all of them appear to be frames of mind and habits of heart-the permanent character- istics of a saintly soul. " Fruit of the Spirit," indeed, as reproducing His essential characteristics in the human spirit. For what is love but the Divine Spirit, in the human spirit, loving? What is joy bnt the Spirit in us rejoicing? What is peace bu t the Spirit reposing? What is long-suffering but the Spirit forbearing? What is gentleness but the Spirit soothing? What is goodness but the Spirit imparting? What is falth but the Spirit confiding? What is meekness but the Spirit condescending? or temperance but the Spirit subduing? All these are quite apart from any form of outward service-nay, they must alike prepare for it and survive it.
There are two great evils which come from any undue emphasis on any sort of work, 'however high and holy: 1. The danger of e;yternalisrn-setting our thoughts on what is to be done, and in that proportion forgetting that the all-important matter is to be Godlike. The fruit depends on the root, but even the fruit is something more than the seed which the fruit contains. We grant that to extend the sway of God over other souls is of great importance, but it is not all-important. Christ puts before llS as a double object, to be supremely sought, the Kingdom of God and Ris Righteousness, and we are not prepared to seek the Kingdom except so far as we embody the righteousness. Men are constantly seeking the short road to successful activity. They want to avoid and evade the necessity of being thoroughly Godlike, and so they try to make up in outward zeal and active effort what they lack of inward sanctity and confol'mity to Christ. On the other hand, if a thoroughly godly character is assnred, all the most heroic and constant and seH-denying work comes as a natural and necessary result. Once secure the full, ripe fruit of saintly character and, the seed, of other such characters will be found within the fruit after its kind.
2. The danger of legalism. There is a strangely persistent spirit of self-justification which prevents many a sinner from being saved at all, and survives even in saints to corrupt their simplicity in Ohrist. As tho not content to be "accepted in the Beloved," we must forever go about to establish our righteousness by some work of our own which we think will commend us to God. We vainly treat the work of Ohrist for us as tho it were not" finished," and needed some supplementary or complementary work of our own to fill up its
defects! The consequence is that we lose our assurance in just such proportion as we feel our activity to be deficient. Instead of finding in our gracious and unchanging judicial standing in Him the impulse and motive of all holy effort, we are striving to do something in order to make sure we are in Christ. Our very activities thus become tainted with self-seeking, and lose their char1l1. They become a part of the price of our acceptance, instead of the lavish and grateful out- lay of love for a salvation divinely and perfectly bought and wrough·t for us. .
But, with this word of caution, we can heartily commend Dr.
Murray'S book as one of the clarion calls of God to His Church for a new advance all along the lines. }fay He so use it to the arousing of the whole Church of God!
Four Ccmmands with Promises As to the great work of missions, we may here give the ou tline of a recent address by the writer before the China Inland Mission, May 12,1903, at London: Four comman(]s 0)' injunctions, with corresponding promises and enconragements, are found in the New Testament.
Matthew yi: 33-" Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added nnto yon."
Matthew xxviii: 19, 20-" Go ye, therefore, and disciple all nations; . . aRd, la, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world." I. Timothy iv: 16-" Take heed unto thyself and unto the doctrine; • . . for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself and them that hear thee." Matthew vi: 6-" Enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father, who is in secret, and thy Father shall reward thee openly." The first is the general law of all holy living: Put first things first, and secondary things will take care of themselves. The second is the "pecific command of missions: Go do the work of the Master, and the Master will be with His servant. The third is stilI more specific; it is the individual secret of service; it prescribes two conditions of effective service: Godly character and faithful teaching. The last is, perhaps, the most important of all, and gives the iunermost secret of all the rest: Habitual secret communion with God. In other words, here are four laws: 1. The Law of Supremacy or Precedence: The great aim. 2. The Law of Service or Obedience: The great work. 3. The Law of Success or Efficiency: The great COncern. 4. The Law of Supply or Efficiency: The great contact.
MoALL MISSION IN FRANCE
THE McALL MISSION IN FRANCE BY MRS. LOUIS}] SEYMOLTH HOUGHTON, NEW YORK Associate Editor of Christian lVol'k. allrl The Evangelist It is nearly thirty-two years since, in October, 1871, two English Christians, man and wife, took up their abode in Belleville, one of the exterior faubourgs of Paris. This brief period, barely the life of one generatinll, has seen the development of the most remarkable mission work known since the Ohristian- izing of Europe.
The time was barely six months removed from the day when that molten tide of pH,ssion which is known as the Paris Commune poured down the steep hillside of Belleville and Montmartre to overwhelm- the fairest city in Europe. For three long months the most frantic anarchy had reigned.. Priests and archbishop were murdered, noble monuments pillaged and burned., the wildest crimes were the order of the day.
'1'he Commune had been put down with a strong hand, its flames smothered in the blood of hundreds of men and women, but beneath the thin crust of law and ROBERT W. McALL authority the 01(1 fires were hotly raging, and none could tell when the pent-up flames might not again break forth. Into the heart of this fiery crater Robert McAll and his wife threw themselves with the living waters of the Gospel of Peace, undertaking to do what the wisest statesmanship, the most absolute power of a hundred years, had sought in vain to do-change the mobs of the Parisianfaubollrgs from fiends into men. Will they succeed?
They had no thought of this when in August, a few weeks alter the Oommune, they went from their church in the South of Eng- land for a few days' holiday in Paris. No place within the limits of civilization could be more profoundly interesting to the thoughtful mind than Paris in that day of her desolation. But it was not her smoking rnins or her desecrated monuments that spoke most signifi- cantly to minds such as theirs; it was the thought of those multitudes of rebellious souls, sore from punishment, burning for revenge, bent under hated domination, who crowded the exterior faubourgs near those ghastly trenches in Pere Lachaise where their dead were lying, scarce covered by the scant earth, as they fell when mown down by
the avenging cannon of their own conntrymen. To the hate-embittered survivors of that ghastly morning went the English minister and his wife-bearing tracts!
The amazing simplicity of heart which could suggest such an act would be ridiculous but for its sublime success. Tracts to commun- ists, the milk of religious consolation to souls athirst for blood, the bread of the Gospel of peace to men starving for revenge! It was like the consummate folly by which St. Paul changed the civ- ilization of a world; and who shall say that its results will be less tremendous in the history of that lIew dispensation whose threshold we are crossing to-day P It was by the word of a work- ing-man in a blollse, standing at the door of a cafe on their last night in Paris, that God called His servants to this work. "It is said of us," he said, "that we are opposed to religion. It is not true ! We will not have an im- posed religion, a religion of forms and ceremonies, but we are ready to !tear if anyone will come and teach us the true religion of free- MRS. It. W. McALL dom and earnestness." This was to Robert and Eliza McAll the call of God, and they obeyed it, fnlly realizing all they were giving up and the fearful risks they were incurring. Yet they acted with prudence, carefully surveying the field, assuring themselves of the cordial alliance of the French pastors, and securing from government the guarded permission to hold" moral meetings," in which, however, they might tell the people of" the love of Jesus Ohrist." Then they went to live in Belleville, scarcely a stone's throw from that fatal garden where six months .before their neighbors had placed thirty priests against a wall and shot them, simply because they were priests.
On the January 17, 1872, a little brick-paved shop in the Rue Julien-Ia-Oroix was opened for the first "Moral Reunion," under the ensign: r———————————~ TO WORKING-MEN!
Some English Friends Desire to Speak to Yon of the Love of J esns Christ .
ENTRANCE FREE
THE MoALL MISSION IN FRANCE
In this brief formula, which, with the substitution a few years later of the word "Christian" for "English," was for many years the device of the" Popular Mission," there were three striking appeals to the Parisian working-men of that time. In the first place, the hearts of the people of Paris were just then knit to those of England as never before or since by deep gratitude for the prompt and lavish generosity with which, so soon as the siege of Paris was raised, England had poured provisions and relief of all kinds into the stricken city. In the next place, it was a new and astounding proposition that RUE JULIEN LA CROIS AND FIRST MISSION HALL IN PARIS "entrance" to a religious meeting could be "free." They had not so learned of the Roman Oatholic Church. And, in the third place, the love of Jesus Christ made a singular appeal to these tortured souls. It must not be overlooked that they did not connect it with religion. Religion, as they knew it, had little to say of Jesus Ohrist and less of love. To this day, in the vast majority of French minds, "religion" and" Oatholicism "are synonymous terms, and Protestants are "the people who have no religion." "We want to be with you because you have no religion," was often and often said to Mr. McAll in the early days, and it is still sometimes said by the simple peasants who come to the mission boats. But then, as now, they felt that the love of Jesus Ohrist was what they needed.
Within a month it became necessary to procure a second shop and open a second meeting-place, and then a third and a fourth-eight,
eleven, llineteeu. III six years, as Prof. Rossceu w St. Hilairc, of the Paris University, said, Mr. MeAll had" eneircled Paris with an evan- gelistic girdle." The seventh year, whcn llews carne of the death of the prince imperial, and all France trembled with dread of a Parisian uprising, that girdle of humble shop missions proved to be as potent as that other girdle of forts on the surrounding hilltops had eight years before proved impotent.
The" mission faubourgs"
were quiet! "You do half our work for us," the police of the faub01!rgs had been wont to say to Mr. McAll, and now the Prefet of the Seine learned how true had been his woi'd to the English minister while yet the embers of the Com m u n e were hot: "Open as many halls as you please, for I have discovered that where you open a hall, thcre I need fewer policemen."
So the work grew A WORKIN{-;-MEX'S CLUB-ROOM IN PARIS until, in 1885, there were thirty-six "stations" in Thi8 1s one of the helpful features of tile McAII JIissioll Paris and its suburbs, in France nine in Marseilles, four in Lyons, three in Nice, and others ill the North, Sou th, and We,st of France, in Algiers Tn nis, and Corsica, to the number of one hundred and twenty, with an aggregate annual attendance of over a million, and with activities which, however familiar to missions and settlemcnts now, were new and original with this mission. Some of them, like the children's rrhursday-school (Thursday being the school holiday), tho long ago adopted by all French churches, even the Roman Catholic, have not yet been imitated elsewhere. So original were works of social utility with the McAll Mission- that ;t is worth while to remember that, tho France is the pioneer in free industrial education, the first industrial school in France was opel1l'1d in a McAlllnll, ih 1873, by a volunteer worker in the mission, an American woman married to a Parisian, and that she was laureated by the French government for introducing industrial education into France.
THE MaALL ]IHSI';ION IN FRANCE
Nevertheless, the work of the TIlission JJ1I8 al way::; been eltieHy CVtUJ- geJistic, and all other works,. English classes, dispel1saries, or whatever else. are strictly subordinated to this. Therefore, the French pastors, until 1878 forbidden by law to do aggressive work in their own churches, gladly threw themselves into the work of the mission.
Such men as Edmond de Pres- sense, Georges and Augu ste Fisch, Theodore and Wilfred Monod, Roger Hollard and De Ooppet are only a few among mallY noted men who haH'
worked, or still work, regularly ill these hails. EugelJ e Bel'sier.
the Phillips Brooks of Frallce.
from the first gave two evellill ;-;:: a week to the mission, and sai : that it was his most valued wor:..
which he would lay down las:.
The words were prophetic, f ''
the last public acts of this gl'e :t pastor, within tw;cnty-four hi I of his unexpected death, '('r.'
to sit on a McAllcomrnittee and li E ". IWGt.:~ ..: U ER8Jtdt, 1). 0 . preach in a McA1l hall.
This volunt.ary servi ce of the pastors makes it easy to adhere to Mr. McAll's rule to found no churches. The converts, and they are many, are sent to the church of their choice~an easy matter, since they feel acquainted with the pastors, who have preached in the halls.
ThuB year after year, in many French churches, the majority of acces- sions are from the McAll Mission.
The whole history of the mi ssion has proved the lasting trutl1 of the unknown working-man's word. France is read,V to hear the simple Gospel" of freedom and earnestness." This has been notably true of late in the extreme North and the extreme South of France, and very recently in that half-pagan island, Oorsica, some account of which 1]3S already been given in this magazine. One of the earliest provincial stations was Boulogne-sur-mer, where a remarkably flourishing work has been carried on, not only among the people of the city, but among the very interesting, passion ately devout, but darkly benighted, people of the fishing suburbs. Many of the fishwives, whose picturesque costumes are the admiration of travelers, have become enlightened and earnest Ohristians, while to the children, whose lives are peculiarly hard, the Sunday and Thursday schools are the two bright hours III the week. .
From Boulogne the work has spread to the quaint old village of
A McALL MISSION MEETlNG IN DESVRES Marquise, where a Reformed Church is the outcome of the mISSIon; and from Marquise a working-man carried it to the factory town of Desvres, so telling his fellows of the good news that they insisted on hearing more. He himself paid the expenses of M. Nezereau, a con- verted priest employed in the mission, to come and tell them more, and soon it proved necessary to open a permanent work. There was no suitable hall. A portable hall owned by the mission, which had done good service in the north, was brought to Desvres. It seated sixty; and thus wrote Mr. Greig, the present director of the mission, after a visit to Desvres a year ago: "When the inhabitants of a town of five thousand souls take turns, nights about, to stand inside or out- side the mission hall, and when the only method by which a man can get from the platform to the door, once the meeting is begun, is by crawling over the heads and shoulders of the audience, one feels that the accommodation is insufficient." Desvres was evidently one of the anomalous cases where the mission, which invests no money in build- ings, must put up a hall, and last January the chapel was dedicated, the mayor and his eleven councillors being among the most assiduol!ls attendants. The curse of Desvres has hitherto been intemperance; but now, as the missionary remarks, "In"Desvres the people cpnsider that to say' I am a temperance man' or (I am a Protestant' is to use equivalent words."
As in the North, so in the Sou th: Ten years ago a. station was opened at Grasse, in the mountains above Cannes. Grasse is a baro racks town, and in addition to a varied and rewarding work in the
THE McALL MISSION IN FRANCE
mlSSlOn hall, a very fruitful work has been done among the young recruits by means 01 the well-equipped soldiers' reading-room. Of late a wave of religious interest has swept over the whole district, largely owing to the itinerating work of the evangelist and his wife, in nineteen mountain villages and hamlets. In many of these places the Gospel was for the first time heard from the lips ofM. Qnehen. The thirst for the truth is something intense. The meetings are held in the open air for want of rooms large enough to accommodate the people. M. and Mme. Quehen begin by singing the hymns, and the people COme running. In one village they found one Sunday afternoon a theater set up on the village green. The owner at once invited them to use his chairs for the service; so the town-crier announced the meeting, and all the chairs were filled. A great number of tracts are given away, and not a few Testaments are sold to these mountain people.
A large measure of the success of this mission is due to the eagerness of the people to spread the Gospel. Like the early Christians, wherever these converts go they go preaching the Word. A cobbler's wife, hearing the good news at an evening meeting, proclaims it r.ext day in the omnibus, as she carries home a pair of shoes. A milk woman tells it to all her customers. A traveling pedlar gives a tract to everyone to whom he opens his wares. A push-cart man gives away hundreds of tracts every year. An old soldier, crippled, gaining his livelihood by singing in the village streets, gives tracts to all who lIsten. A blind man carries them to the bench where he sits in A GROUP OF McALL MISSION WORKERS IN GRASSE, FRANCE
the sun, and gets the passers-by to read them to him. Fifty-two families, living in one citC (tenement house" have a regular system of interchange of the tracts the children bring home from Sunday-school. The mission boats distribute thousands of tracts and Scripture portions every year, and sell great numbers of Bibles and Testaments. It is impossible to describe the eagerness of the people for this literature. "Never have I seen a tract dishonored," says a worker, who has had a quarter century of experience. Workmen read them as they sit under the trees to eat their lunch.
Probably there never was another mission so rich in romantic or even melodramatic incidents as this. Over and over again it has happened that some forlorn outcast in Paris or provincial town, on her way to the river to drown herself, has heard the singing of a hymn that seemed to be especially addressed to her, has entered the hall whence the singing issued, has been comforted, turned from her dark purpose, instructed, converted. Desperate men, even, seeking refuge in suicide, have been thus redeemed to life and usefulness.
The Gospel Boats The true romance of the mission, however, will always be found with the boats, of which there arc now two, Le Bon illessager, com- missioned in 1892, and La Bonne ~Youvelle,* the gift of an American woman, and now in its second year of serrice. These boats, plying on the inland waterways of France, open up almost new territory, and wherever they go they find that same readiness to heal', that same thirst for truth, which was so marked in Paris thirty-two years ago.
People come from distances of three 01' foul' miles around, after their long day's work in the fields 01' vineyards, and if they find the boat filled and the crowd upon the bank keeping them out of earshot, they patiently wait for the second meeting, or even the third. When the boat moves on to the next station they follow it, and to tile next and the next, walking in some cases fifteen miles and back before they can relinquish the privilege! In many cases the priests at first oppose and then are won over; ill some they do not oppose. Often they advise the children to attend, one old Clm] going so far as to give his " catechism" at an earlier hour that they might be in time.
In nearly all cases, mayors and municipal councils are favorable to the boat work. They do not need to be taught that lesson which the Prefet of the Seine Ieal'lled so many years ago; they perceive at once that the teachings on the boats make for good order, and times with- out number these officials have been among the most assiduous "" attendants.
In some cases, however, there is bitter opposition. For instance, • See frontispiece.
THE McALL MISSION IN FRANCE
at Nemours last winter the clerical party, with the aid of the llews- papers, heaped insults upon the workers, and were eloquent in describ- ing the soul-peril wliich would follow a visit to "the boat. As might have been expected, they simply assured a "succe·ss of curiosity" for the work. It shortly became a more serious SllCC.e'SS, so that wlH~n the boat moved on, two Protestant ladies felt cOlistrairied to offer to bear the expenses of a permanent evangelistic work; which is now in operation. ..
rrhe boat mission responds to a very widespread, tho lnarticu-late, need. The service of the priest COllnts for little in most of these vil- lages and hamlets. Free thought is rife throughout France' except AN AUDIENCE O~ BOARD THE BON MESSAGER in certain localities, the people have thrown off the yoke of the Ohurch, refuse to attend services, and content themselves with civil marriage and civil interment. Yet the soul-hunger within them is insistent. The word spoken by that unknown workingman of Paris, on the night of August 18, 1871, is as true to-day as it was then-" toe are ready to hear." All through the length and breadth of France the working people are "ready to hear" him who comes to them with" a religion of freedom and earnestness," and the boats can touch at no small hamlet, no large city, without the entire working population and man·y of more exalted station crowding to hear the message that is spoken within its walls, and offering the free use of kitchens, barns, and municipal halls for permanent work. So far as possible the pastors of Paris avail themselves of these offers, and follow up the boats with occasional itinerating work.
Often they recognize that the boat has passed that way by hearing hymns sung in the street. It is impossible adequately to describe the boon conferred on the people of France by the mission hymn-book, "Cantiques Populaires," the love gift of Dr. and Mrs. McAlI. It is used in all the more popular services of the French churches, and has even crossed the sea for use in New Orleans and in missions to French Canadians. France has no popular songs, and this, perhaps, accounts for the hold these hymns have on the people. One hears them everywhere, on the children's playgrounds, at the women's washing-places, along the streets when men come home from work, on the lips of THE BON IlESSAGER IN AN ICE: FRESHET IN WJNTER young men who never entered a mission hall. Young people going home from fair or fete sing them as they pass along the silent roadR at night. At a country ball, when the girls were challenged to sing, the dancing ceased and solemn silence reigned while a girl sang" Plus pres de toi" (Nearer, my God, to Thee). A fire brigade, out for parade on the festival of the village patron saint, started off singing: a "Jusqu la mort DOUB te serODS fldeles." "
The parish priest at Reuil, one of the boat stations, procured a hymnbook and greatly enjoys it. An old couple going from Paris to live in the country persuaded the parish priest to introduce it into the • "True·Hearted, Whole·Hearted," by Miss Havergal.
THE McALL MISSION IN FRANCE
service. A well-to-do couple from the country, converted by hearing in Paris the hymn, "J'aime Jesus, il m'a sauve,"
went back houle, and for years, at their own expense, carried on meet- ings in their village like those of the McAll Mission.
Space fails to tell of the work of the mission at the three Exposi- tions, of its loyal yet free cooperation with other organizations, tem- perance and Bible societies, and the various evangelizing works of the French churches, to which in unnumbered instances it has served as a pioneer. In return, the appreciation in which the work is held by the churches has been more than once signally illustrated by the readiness of these to take over or to enllY'ge the mission work. Thus in time of stringency, ten years ago, three churches in Lyons, of as many denominations, took the entire support of the five McAll stations. '1'he most notable instance is the splendid new hall in OIignancourt, Paris, built for a Reformed Ohurch, and adopting the neighboring McAll work.
As for the love and honor in which Mr. McAll was held by the French people and the French government during his life, and his memory cherished since his death, any adequate description is impos- sible. He lived to see the mission attain its majority, to be rewarded by medals from two French societies and by the cross of the Legion of Honor from the government, and to have his seventieth birthday celebrated by tens of thousands with love and enthusiasm indescribable More important to him, and a more adequate revelation of his char- acter, he lived to make the mission independent of him-so perfectly organized that his death caused no shock or break to the work. His successor, Rev. C. E. Greig, trained under his own eye, was by Dr.
McAII himself seated in the chair of direction, and he himself inducted into the honorary presidency of the work a prominent business man of Paris, foremost in every good work, M. Louis Sautter. Dr. McAll had long been a great sufferer from agonizing headaches, due, i& proved, from abscesses forming on the brain, and having thus com- pleted his work, on May 11, 1893, Ascension Day, he laid it down.
He was escorted to the grave by a military guard of honor and by thousands of weeping fri~nds. He lies buried in Pere La Chaise, his grave marked by a stone cross. Mrs. McAIl, his second self through all his arduous work, "the secret of Mr. McAIl," as it used often to be said, still lives, and may be seen almost any evening in her old place at the organ, leading the service of song. Her presence there is a benediction, not less appreciated because she and her husband so well founded the work, so wisely, self-denyingly, fitly, that it will go on perpetuating their memorj and continuing their work long after they hv.e.. b(l(lu r(lunited in the presence of God, .
PREACHING THE GOSPEL IN FRANCE THE STORY OF THE CONFLICT AND CONQUEST IN COULAURES BY LOUIS DUPIN DE SAINT ANDRE, COULAURES, FRANCE The best way of getting acquainted with the difficulties and possibilities of the work carried on in France among Catholics by evangelical churches is to stlHly the life of one of the missionary stations. The difficulties found at Coulaures of building up an evangelical congregation in an altogether Catholic country, may be lookell at as typical.
Perigord, in the southwest of France, bordering on Bordeaux, was never really in the north touched by the Sixteen'th Century Reformation. Its capital, Perigueux, was long ago a Protestant city, but the country round it always remained a Roman Catholic country, and full of superstition and prejudice. Protestantism was absolutely unknown there, and I was surprised lately to learn that to the Perigord people "Huguenot" means "a man who does not believe in God"! This is the result of the priests' teaching in the past, and the same intolerance and misinterpretation remain to-day. Roman Catholic priests have preached in Perigord that Protestants are devil-worshipers, and most of the peasants thought that Protestants had an eye in the middle of their foreheads, and they were absolutely sure that ministers had cloven feet!
Such was the condition seven years ago. Except for a small congregation in the town of Perigueux, Protestantism was altogether unknown. In those seven years five stations have been founded in this region by the Societe Centrale d'Evangelization ; there are at present seven pastors, thirteen chapels or halls, and five hundred souls have been rescued from the darkness of ignorance and sin.
A missionary from Madagascar, Rev. P. F. Martin-Escande, who visited Coulaures recently and spent several days in conversation with the peasants, remarked that we were doing the same kind of work here that he was doing in Madagascar-the same difficulties and ignorance of the people to contend with. This is, in very truth, pioneer missionary work.
First of all, the Gospel of Christ is absolutely unknown to them. " Reading the Holy Scriptures is a sin," say the priests. Consequently they are entirely ignorant of the life of our Lord. I have often asked children: "What does Christmas remind us of?" They all answer, "Of the birth of God." "Who was crucified on Good Friday?" "God." Such words are a touching testimony given to the divinity of our Lord, but they reveal a state of fearful ignorance regarding Jesus Christ. I was once called to the death-bed' of a Roman Oatholic who confessed that he wanted long ago to become a Protestant, but had not
PREACHING THE GOSPl!:L IN FRANCE
dared to for fear of losing his means of livelihood. As death was near, he wanted to be shown by a Protestant pastor" how to die." I found that this dying Roman Catholic of the nineteenth century did not know who Jesns Ghrist was! He had heard of God, but never of His Son! And that man had all his life been called a "Christian"! This case is only an exaggerated instance of a general religious state. In the whole of Perigord for the worship of God and of Jesus Christ has been substituted the worship of the Virgin Mary and of St. Antony of Padua.
At the same time the superstitions have remained what they were in the years of long ago. All kinds of absurd ideas are prevalent. For example, they believe that if somebody washes 'linen during Rogation week, all the men in the parish must die; if one does not plant in the corn-fields a little bit of the boxwood blessed by the priest on Palm Sunday, the corn will not grow, and so on.
But the greater part of these superstitions are connected with the worship of saints. The credulity of these people a few years ago was astonishing. In what is called Black Perigord is a little town called Auriar" which possesses nothing remarkable but an old statue of St. Remy. This statue is in a little chapel, which is open only on certain days, once or twice a year. It is generally believed in the neighborhood that it has the power of healing rheumatism, if only one can rub the afflicted part upon it. The result is that, when the church is open, people rush in and begin to rub themselves on the statue. And there have been so many people doing that for ages that there is nothing left of the statue but the trunk-head, arms, and legs have been gradually worn away. During the morning, when everybody is sober, everything goes on with a fair degree of decency, but during the afternoon, when men and women have tested the village wine, everybody wishes to be first to ru b. In the middle of the little chapel there is a real struggle, and blows are exchanged by the impatient worshipers, so that at night, when they close the doors, the chapel's floor is strewn with buttons and pieces of clothing which have been torn away during the fight!
On ordinary days, when the church is shut, people cOllie from great distances to rub themselves on the outside wall of the building, near where the statue stands within. This superstitious belief is found also at St. Raphael, a little village near Coulaures, which is supposed to possess the grave of the same Saint Remy-a very old stone sarcophagus, on whir,h is carved a bish.op's crook. It is said to have the same miraculous power as the statue at Auriac.
The worship of Saint Remy is comparatively harmless, if not for religion, at least for health, but such is not the case for all super- . stitiolls beliefs in pprigord. Certain wells are supposed to heal suffering people if plunged into them, and many a time has a poor sick
baby died because during the winter it has been pitilessly immersed in the cold water of the well of St. SuIpice.
Such superstitions are publicly encouraged by the Roman clergy, which derives from it considerable money, so that it is easy to understand the feeling of disgust for the Ohurch which prevails among the more intelligent people of the district. Priests in France are very scantily paid by the State, and have been led to make people pay innumerable fees for any ecclesiastical act: baptism, first communion, confirmation, marriage, burial, etc. Thus the Roman Oatholic religion appears to many as a mere mercenar1j religion-the "religion of money," as "they call it.
There is also a very strong feeling among the more intelligent of the population that the Roman Oatholic priests are doing their best to prevent the spread of education in the whole country, fearing lest their churches should be left empty when the people discover that these beliefs are mere superstitions and contrary to reason.
The Protestant work among Oatholics is not the demolishing of their religious ideas, but an attempt to rescue from utter unbelief the many souls already disgusted with Romanism. We try to show them, instead of the way to atheism, the way to Ghrist. As missionaries among African Fetishists must make haste in order to save them from becoming Mohammedans, so we must make haste to organize Protestant congregations everywhere in Perigord, in order to save disgusted Roman Catholics from absolute infidelity. These facts explain the opposition we meet from the Roman clergy, and to what extremity things were carried to at Ooulaures.
On the other side of the hills which surround Ooulaures on the south is the village of Oherveix-Oubas, to which in 1895 many people called the Protestant pastor of Perigueux and accepted the reform.* From there the movement toward Protestantism had spread to St. Raphael, a delightful little village on the top of the hills, from where one can see an immense landscape extending as far as the blue line of the mountains of Correze. Three or four men from Coulaures went to some of the services held there, and coming back to their own village, asked the pastor of Oherveix-Oubas, M. Galland, to come and give them a talk on Protestantism. This was on April 25, 1897.
"Oh! what a grand meeting! " wrote M. Galland. "Three hundred and fifty people assembled in a barn which was all too small, so that they * "One day," writes the pastor of Perigueux, in December, 1894, " I received the visit of a man of Cherveix-Oubas, who bears the name of Charles Dupuy. Three or four priests, for reasons I can not mention, had been obliged to.leave that village within a very short time, and in order to punish the discontented parishioners the bishop refused to appoint another. M. Dupuy said to me: 'Will you come and give u~ some popular lectures; explain to us what authentic Christianity is; show that Romanism is not that Christianity, and I promise you a cordial welcome.''' The pastor went, and that was theheginning of the work at Cherveix- Cubas. Now th"re is a Protestant congregation, with a pastor and a church.
PREACHING THE GOSPEL IN FRANCE
ovel'flowed into the yard and the garden. A few days later we again had an audience of three hundred to three hundred and fifty, all listening with the greatest attention. Five hundred New Testaments and twenty-eight Bibles were sold in a short time by our colporteur."
Immediately, priestly opposition began. In the small" commune" of Coulaures, which has only on~ thousand three hundred inhabitants, are several large estates belonging to Catholic families. As many peasants are farmers on the estates, these families have a· great influence in the country, and several prohibited their laborers from going to Protestant meetings, under penalty of being dismissed.._At the same time the grossest calumnies were spread abroad. It was said that the Protestants had caused the last drought, or the fall of hail; that the taxes would soon be doubled in order to pay the high salaries of the pastors; that these were the emissaries of the British government sent to spy out the land; that they were traitors to their country, and had formed an alliance with the Germans to invade France, etc.
It was at that time (October, ]897) that I came for the first time to Ooulaures. I soon discovered that a regular campaign was being carried on against us by a Catholic gentleman, and we found it necessary to call a public meeting, where M. Bianquis, Secretary of the Foreign Mission Society of Paris, and M. Pfender, Director of the Societe Centrale d'Evangelization, came to face our adversaries. The arguments of our opponents show the true nature of our difficulties. They said: 1. Protestantism is a foreigner in France, having been invented by a German, Luther.
2. In the Dreyfus ·case Protestant'! had made an alliance with the Jews to save an abominable traitor to please Germany.
3. In colonies, and especially at Madagascar, Protestants are always the enemies of France. In Madagascar one could always see the Protestant missionaries, the Bible in one hand, a bottle of rum in the other, trying to stupefy the Negroes, when the Catholic missionaries are what every patriot must be-a Frenchman first, a Catholic after, the religion of the motherland being the first of all.
Conclusion. One must not let Protestantism get a footing at Cou- Iaures.
It would not have been difficult to answer these charges if the meeting had not been violently disturbed by a band of roughs, and if a running fire of jokes, whistles, grunts, etc., had not been kept up for two hours to drown the voices of the Protestant speakers. We had to retire at last, announcing another meeting for eight o'clock at night, under our own direction; and there it was possible to reply. At the beginning of this meeting the peasants who had decided to stay with us, threatened and insulted as they were by their friends and relations, asked the minister to let them sing the well-known hymn,
translated into French, "Hold the Fort, for I am Coming I" which rang triumphantly as a token of the victory to come.
Of course the greatest excitement prevailed in the village, and when a fortnight later * the appointed pastor came to hold service, the meeting-house was snrronnded by a mob with clubs and stones, shouting: "A mort les Protestants!" (Death to the Protestants!) It was impossible to get out of the room till at last one of M. Galland's converts, a navy officer, arrived and took the minister in his carriage, and forced his way through the crowd. A man tried to stop the horse by seizing the bridle, but the officer gave the horse a sharp cut with the whip, the animal reared, and the man was flung to the ground. Some clubs rattled upon the carriage without touching the men. The situation was becoming serious; it was a question of life or death. For the next meeting the mounted police were required, and for some time things seemed to go on better.
Two months later a young theological student was sent to till the post temporarily. As he was returning one Sunday morning from service a mob awaited him on Coulaures Bridge. As he crossed it he was jostled about, and cries were heard: "The Protestant to the river!" His presence of mind and the help of a young Roman Catholic saved him from the plunge.
The police made a very strict inquiry of the case, and since then (Easter, 1898) no more attempt against the life of the Protestants has been mllde in Coulaures, Lut the secret persecution has I;ontinued. A carpenter-who is now an elder in our church-has been obliged to go in search of work ten or fifteen miles from his village, because all the Catholics had boycotted him for being a Protestant. Some had not courage to face the persecution, but during the time of hottest opposition twenty dared to bear the sneers and insults of the adversaries of the Gospel by going to the evangelical service. After July 1, 1899, when I was appointed pastor of Coulaures, everything being quiet, the fearful took courage, and the number of Protestants passed gradually from twenty to one hundred and eighty-one, t and on Feb- ruary 4, 1900, we inaugurated our small church. Elders were selected from among the flock, and so the church of Coulaures was planted. The great fight was over, and we had only to increase our influence in the vicinity. The little church has grown so that its extension has obliged us to organize two new congregations, one twelve, the other eighteen miles from Coulaures, having each a pastor at its head.
Protestantism is strongly established in the Perigord, and is gaining ground every day. On the west side we join the new churches of Charente, on the east side the new churches of Correze.
• I was then serving my term in the army, and two pastors were coming alternately every other Sunday to give a lecture or hold a service.
t On December 31, 1901.
A REVIVAL IN INDIA
M. Merle d'Aubigne writes in a way greatly to encourage all those who throughout the world are fighting for Christ: * What has been the origin of this promIsing work? About forty years ago a traveler could be seen driving from village to village through Perigord.. He was a seedsman, and at the same time an earnest and faithful Ohristian. As he passed from house to house he engaged in conversation with the peasants on religious subjects, and often brought a few together of an evening in the village inn. It was the time of Napoleon III., and colportage was subjected to severe restrictions. Yet hidden underneath the bags of seed the emperor's gendarmes would have discovered a provision of hooks. Many of these were sold or left behind in the houses of those who had "received the Word," and it was one of these Bibles, read and pondered over for years-together with the memory of the good merchant-whieh first suggested to the inhabitants of Cherveix-Cubas the idea of calling the Protestant pastor. After nearly half a century of waiting, the seed sown in faith has born a plenteous harvest!
A REVIVAL IN INDIA BY REV. JOHN McLAURIN, D.D., COONOOR, INDIA Missionary of the American Baptist Telugu Mission Many questions may arise in the heart of the reader of the above words. "A Revival in India!" When did it begin and where? How extensive is it, and what progress has it made? Tho we may not be able to answer all these questions to the satisfaction of all, yet we do rejoice that, in a very remarkable degree, the revival is here now.
1. When and where it began. To know this is not essential to our belief, tho it is interesting to trace God's hand in a movement of this kind. In May, 1902, in Coonoor, Nilgirihills, South India, several Telugu missionaries and native Christians, who came to the hills as rnunshis and servants, held services in Telugu in an outhouse on Sunday afternoon. One of the subjects was: "The Needs of Village Christians." A remark was made that they so much needed the Holy Spirit, to cleanse, to enlighten, and to empower them to live holy and consistent lives before the heathen. This thought powerfully impressed one present. He began to pray for the village Christians. But the burden grew too heavy to be borne alone. He wrote to a fellow missionary, whose sympathy he could rely upon, asking him to uuite' with him in daily prayer for a revival of spiritual life among the Christians. The brother replied: "Before they call I will answer: the awakening has begun. I will gladly join you." Shortly after another and yet others joined this praying circle. About the same time, probably the same week, a similar movement, only on a larger scale, began in Kodaikanal, another hill station in South India. In ." Gospel Echoes from Across the Channel," May, 1902.
the latter place the missionaries met together for prayer and fellow- ship in the matter of a revival. A great impetus was given to the movement by these meetings. It was not known to either party that the other was praying for this specific object.
During the same year a compilation was made from the lectures of the Rev. Charles Finney, called "A Spiritual Awakening," by the Indian National Council of Y. M. C. A. in Calcutta. It was translated into Tamil and Telugu, under the auspices of the Madras Y. M. C. A., and scattered throughout South India. Similar influences were at work in Northern India.
n. The extent oj the movement. As early as August, 1902, the ever watchful Y. 11. C. A. of Madras issued a "private prayer circular," containing requests for prayer from members of the circle. These members promise to bring the requests of the circular before God each day for a month. A llew circular is issued each month. February circular contains thirty requests, March twenty-eight, covering all India and Ceylon, and representing almost all missions. In these requests all phases of work are represented. 'rhe movement is gathering force and spreading in extent daily. The present writer has been a missionary in India over thirty years, and has seen nothing compared to this awakening before.
Perhaps in no case has the power of this awakening been as conspicuous as in its effects upon the late Decennial Conference in Madras. The whole atmosphere of the conference was pervaded by the Spirit of God. The Spirit had presided over the appointment of the delegates, had followed them to Madras, and had presided at their meetings in committee, and guided their deliberations in the public assemblies. Note resolutions 1–1, under" The Native Church," and compare them with any former deliverance. The conference focused and intensitied the revival spirit, and sent it into regions hitherto untouched.
The visit of Dr. Torrey and Mr. Alexander, fresh from the scenes of the triumphs of grace in Australia, had created a sympathetic feeling in Madras, and delegates from many lonely stations felt the spiritual glow of the late meetings in their places of entertainment. The presence of representatives of Sunday-school, Christian Endeavor, Young Men's, Young Women's, Student Volnnteer, and other associations accentuated the spirit already present. I have been present at two ecumenical and three Indian missionary conferences, and many large gatherings of Christian workers, but never attended one where the spirit of catholicity, of devotion, of yearning for the elevation of the Christian and the salvation of the lost was so conspicuous. No human skill in organization can account for the results. Dr. Campbell White's impassioned call for one man and one woman missionary to each 50,000 of India's population from America and Europe was the
spiritual outcome of the previous meetings. Madras was only the Pentacost to which the Lord sent many a weary worker to be inspired and anointed afresh for their work in far-away cities and villages. The many calls for private and public prayer, the reports of the con- version of hnndreds in far-separated places, the notes of praise for answered prayer in the awakening of native workers, the unusual number and activity of evangelists, both native and missionary, who have been moved to hold meetings in different places, tog~ther with the large number of evangelists and workers who have come from Great Britain and America during the past year to India, show conclusively that the Lord of the harvest is visiting this land.
III. The field of operation. (a) 'rhe Missionary. The awakening must begin with the missionary, and thank God it did begin with him. He must be filled with the Spirit, the spirit of holiness, of love, of pity, of patience, and self-sacrifice. Pentacost was for the apostles first.
(b) The Native Christians. It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of this point. And it is impossible to- imagine a revival without their being in it. Who else would be. awakened? There are well unto two millions of native Christians in India and Ceylon. 'I'hey are scattered from coast to coast, they are more or less associated with and related to millions of their countrymen and countrywomen. They are better educated in proportion to their number than any other class. They can understand their fellow countrymen as no missionary can. Theoretically, at least, they all know the truth, and tens of thousands of them are lights in the world. Just think what a power they would be if cleansed, enlightened, and filled with the Holy Ghost!
(c) Anglo Educated Hindus and Mohammedans. There are millions of these also. Thousands of them pass through government, missionary, and Hindu universities and colleges each year. Almost everyone of these knows enough of the religion of Jesus Christ to be saved if they would only belillve. Besides these, there are tens of thousands who have been educated in Christian high-schools and village schools, and who have been influenced to become Christians by what they have been taught in'these schools.
(d) I have not mentioned the large class of Anglo-Indians or Eurasians. Many of them are most devoted Christian workers, but large numbers are still only nominally Christian. A genuine spiritual awakening would benefit thousands of these. Many Anglo-Saxons also, both of the ruling and commercial classes, would be largely benefited. The above are the classes most open to the influence of a revival, but it spreads froIl! class to class till many who have never heard the Name would be brought under its influence.
IV. What, then, is 01tr plea.'i' The words of the Man of Macedonia: " Come over and help us." We need more workers very much. We
ueed two for every 50,000, but what we need more than even that is unceasing, importunate, believing prayer. We want millions of people praying daily for India. And we want them to do it now. And we want them to keep on doing it till He hears us. I believe a crisis of missions in India is upon us. If we could concentrate the prayers of God's people upon India at the present time I believe we could do the work of centuries in decades.
Let ever child of God who reads this pray for India.
MISSIONARY TRAINING IN THE HOME BY MISS BELLE M. BRAIN, SPRINGFIELD, OHIO The missionary train.ing of children should begin, first of all, in the home. Nowhere can so strong and sure a foundation for missionary interest and activity be laid as here. "I believe there ought to be education in missions from the cradle," says Dr. Pierson, " and then, as the child's mind and heart are inspired with a desire for the uplifting of mankind, the fire to be fed with fuel appropriate to the measure of the child's intelligence."
Too little importance has been attached to this matter and too little stress laid upon it. We have had books and articles, addresses and conferences galore, on how to interest the young people in the Ohristian Endeavor Society and kindred organizations, but practically nothing on how to interest the little people in the home. Yet this is a matter of primary importance. On it depends, to a great extent, the solution of the whole missionary problem. Note the significant words of Mr. John R. Pepper, of the International Sunday-school Lesson Oommittee, uttered before the New Orleans Missionary Oonference in 1901: I verily believe that the heathen nations can be converted to the religion of Jesus Christ in one generation if the Church will but rear a generation to do the work. . • . I am profoundly impressed with the fact that we will never have an irresistible, all-conquering line of royal givers of gold, silver, or selves, until we do rear them, and the first lesson of this culture in real, honest heart-yearning for the salvation of the whole world must be received in the springs and fountains of early childhood, if we would see the largest yield therefrom. .
There are three great reasons worthy of careful consideration why little children should be early trained in avenues of service to Ohrist and the lost world He came to save: 1. For the good of the child itself. 2. For the sake of what it can accomplish for the cause. 3. To fit it for the responsibilities of the future. Each of these will be briefly considered as follows: 1. In these days when snares and pitfalls for the young abound on every han4, all active, loving interest that a child can be induced to
MISSIONARY TRAINING IN THE HOME
take in a great and noble cal1se that absorbs its thought and aemands from it a portion of both time and money, is a positive safeguard to it. Then, too, the building of character begins at a very early age, and if that character is to be good and true and noble, the highest ideals should be laid upon it during the plastic period when the child is most easily molded. On this point Dr. Pierson has Broken most powerfully as follows: Nothing is so subtly fatal to all true symmetry of character as simple se~fishness. There is as truly peril in a self-indulgent home as in a positively vicious one. Let a child begin by being pampered, petted, indulged, taught to gratify whims and selfish impulses, and you have given a carnal tendency to the whole life. Now there is this precious fruit of very early training in the missionary spirit, thall your boy or girl gets another center of revolution mds'ideof self. Others' wants and woes are thought of, and the penny that would be wasted on sweets is saved for the missionary box. Where missionary songs are sung at the cradle and prayers for the heathen are taught to lisping lips at the mother's knee; where simple facts about the awful needs of pagan homes and hearts are fed to the children as food for thought and tonic for selfdenial, and the habit is thus early imparted of looking beyond personal comfort and pleasure and feeling sympathy for lost souls, a new and strange quality is given to character. It is no strange thing, therefore, that in homes where a tru'6 missionary atmosphere is habitually breathed, we find children insensibly growing up to devote themselves and their substance to God.
2. Ohildren, even very little children, are a greater factor in missionary work than we realize. What they actually accomplish is by no means inconsiderable, and far great8r than we give them credit for. If their efforts should suddenly cease, many a missionary wheel would stop revolving. Since the day when the Lord Jesus used a little lad's five loaves and two small fishes to feed the hungry multitude He has been using children's gifts to bless the world. The figures are not at hand to show the amount given to missions by the children of Ohristendom, but it is undoubtedly a vast sum. In proportion to their income, children are the largest givers in the world. Nor are their prayers to be despised. Few among older Ohristians pray with the simple faith and loving confidence of a little child. If only the curtain were drawn aside, we shoul~ probably find that many of the blessings granted to the cause of missions have been given in answer to the prayers of Ohrist's own little ones. "Thank God for bairns' prayers," wrote James Ohalmers from New Guinea; "I like best the prayers of children."
3. A study of missionary biography shows that many of those who have done the most for the cause received their first missionary inspiration from their parents in the home. The impressions gained during the formative period of childhood are never really lost, and seed sown in the nnrsery, tho it may lie dormant for years, will at length spring up and bear abundant fruit. This was the case with Robert Moffat, David Livingstone, Alexander Duff, Oyrus Hamlin, Jacob Ohamberlain, and other great missionary heroes. It is also true of many whose work has been to " hold the ropes" at home.
It is a solemn thought, freighted with no little responsibility, that from among the children in our homes to-day must come the great niissionaries and missionary givers of to-morrow. Ere long these little ones, now so dependent upon our care, are to be entrusted with the money power of the Church, and upon them will rest the burden of preaching Christ in all the earth. There are endless possibilities wrapped up in their young lives. Dr. Lyman Abbott once used this illustration: I pluck an acorn from the greensward, and hold it to my ear, and this is what it says to me: .. By and by birds will come and nest in me. By and by I will furnish shade for the cattle. By and by I will provide warmth for the home in the pleasant fire. By and by I will be shelter from the storm to those who are under'the roof. By and by I will be the strong ribs of a great vessel, and the tempest will beat against me in vain while I carry men across the Atlantic."
" Oh, foolish little acorn, wilt thou be all this P" I ask. And the little acorn answers: "Yes; God and L"
Borrowing Dr. Abbott's thought, Dr. J. R. Miller has applied it to a little child. We in turn apply it to the missionary possibilities of a little child: I look into the face of a company of little children, and I hear a whisper, saying: .. By and by I will be a blessing to many. By and by I will give money to the Lord Jesus for His work. By and by I will teach many to love the cause of missions. By and by I will cross the ocean to carry the Gospel to those who have it not. By and by I will turn many from worshiping idols to sen'e the living God. By and by I shall finish my course and be amollg the glorified with my Redeemer."
" You, frail, powerless little one?" I ask. And the little child makes answer: "Yes; Christ and 1."
Some Practical Suggestions The responsibility for missionary training in the home lies, of course, largely with the parents, yet it has frequently devolved upon some other member or the household. Count Zinzendorf, the illustrious "father of modern missions," owed his early training to his grandmother, the gifted and pious Baroness von Gersdorf, while the Earl or Shaftesbnry, the devoted advocate of missions both at home and abroad, attributed his first interest ill things spiritual to hil'! devoted old nurse, Maria Millis. It is, however, the parents' rightful privilege, and those who, for ally reason, allow it to be assumed by others, neglect a great duty and miss a great reward. (f Take this young child and nurse it for Me," is a command laid upon every Ohristian parent's heart.
The creation of a missionary atmosphere is a matter of primary importance. A child· reared in a home where missionary books and magazines crowd the library table, where missionary maps and pictures adorn the walls, and where prayer for missions is daily offered at the family altar, unconsciously imbibes the missionary spirit, even tho no direct influence is brought to bear upon it. "I have always believed in missions," said an earnest Ohristian woman not long ago; "it would have been impossible for one brought up in our home to do otherwise."
The history of missions furnishes no more beautiful picture of early missionary training than that of Mackay, of Uganda. Both parents were deeply interested in missions, especially ill Africa, where Livingstone was then making his great explorations. The" Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society" came regularly to the house, and the works of Livingstone, Speke, and Grant were purchased as soon as published. On a map in the study the father traced with his boy the course of the newly discovered rivers, and explained the important part missionaries were taking in the opening up of the great continent.
On the long Sabbath evenings, when the father was preaching at some distant kirk, the mother taught the boy. 'rhe lessons were from the Bible and the catechism. If they had been well learned, the reward was a thrilling missionary story that filled his young heart with missionary zeal. " IVould you like me to go to Africa, mother?" he asked on one of these memorable occasions. " Not unless God prepares you for it, my boy," was her reply; "but if the call comes, see that you do not neglect it." Small wonder is it that in after days the boy became, to borrow Stanley's phrase, "the greatest missionary since Livingstone."
Among the chief delights of childhood are stories, games, and pictures. These should be preempted for the missionary cause, and made to do duty as a means of imparting mis sionary inspiration and instruction.
Missionary literature abounds in fascinating stories of strange lands and peoples, and thrilling adventures of missionaries among them. Little children will sit entranced while such stories are either read or told to them, and stories heard at mother's knee are rarely, if ever, forgotten. With many parents the problem is where to find suitable material. As long as the child is willing to take his reading second hand, the solution is not difficult, for almost every missi()nary magazine and book contains one or more stories that can be retold in language suitable to the childish comprehension. But at tIie age of seven or eight, when the average American child be~ins to evince ~ desire to read for itself, the problem grows more difficult, for there are almost no missionary books suitable for beginners. Herein lies the great lack in missionary literature. There are, of course, many excellent children's magazines and papers which should be in every home, but, as a rule, a child loves a book better than a paper. Twenty years ago there was a similar lack in secular literature, but in recent years many gifted pens have been at work, and there is now a long list of most attractive books for beginners on a great variety of topics. It is to be hoped that the need may soon be met in missionary litera- ture also.
Of books especially attractive to children, "The Story of John G. Paton" undoubtedly heads the list. One little lad, whose mother applied to me for a book to interest him in missions, was so delighted with it that he insisted on hearing all of it twice, and begged his mother (( not to stop reading the part about the sinking of the well until he had heard it a thousand times!" Egerton R. Young's "On the Indian Trail" and" My Dogs in the Northland," S. M. and A. E. Zwemer's "Topsy-Turvy Lan-d," and Hannington's "Peril and Adventure in Oentral Africa," are also great favorites. Hamlin's "My Life and Times," Ohamberlain's "In the Tiger Jungle" and" The Oobra's Den," Hotchkiss' "Sketches from the Dark Oontinent," Williams' (( Missionary Enterprises in the South Sea Islands," Gale's "Korean Sketches" and "Mackay of Uganda," by his sister, are gold-mines of stories attractive to little folks, tho they also include much that is beyond their comprehension. Tho not especially missionary in character, Oarpenter's "Geographical Reader of Asia," Jane Andrews' "Seven Little Sisters," and Isaac Taylor Headland's " Ohinese Mother Goose Rhymes" and" The Ohinese Boy and Girl," are invaluable in creating an interest in foreign lands and peoples.
Playing missionary games is one of the best ways of imparting missionary instruction in the home. It is said t.hat knowledge gained in play is more easily acquired and longer retained than that gained in any other way. A prominent educator declares that his whole life has felt the impress of the old game of "Authors," played in his childhood, and attributes to it much of his love for books. And many a student of the Word is ready to testify to having gained his first knowledge of Bible characters through the Scripture games played .in the home circle on Sunday afternoons. Missionary games similar to these would do much to remedy the woful ignorance which prevails concerning great missionary heroes and their notable achievements. Unfortunately there are very few missionary games available. Simple ones can, however, be easily made at home. In the matter of both books and games English societies are far ill advance of our own. The Ohurch Missionary Society provides a fine array of printed matter for little people, including missionary alphabets, painting-books1 and picture-books for the little ones in the nursery, and missionary lotto and other games for those who are more advanced.
Some one has said that "an ounce of picture is worth a ton of talk." This is, of course, a mere hyperbole, yet so great is the influ- ence of pictures that it demands thoughtful attention from all parents who seek to train their little ones aright. Two illustrations will suffice to show their power. Not long ago there came to the Home of the Friendless, in one of our Western cities, a beautiful and accom- plished girl, brought there from a Ohristian home of wealth and refinement by her bent and broken-hearted father. When the ma- tron, in accordance with her custom, questioned the girl concerning the cause of her downfall, she answered, with sobs and bitter tears: "It was a picture, a nude figure, in my father's dining-room. It ruined me and broke my parents' hearts."
In marked contrast to this sad story of an impure picture that so terribly wrecked a life, is that of Oount Zinzendorf and the Ecce Homo of Sternberg, showing the power of a pure and noble picture to uplift a life. In 1719 the young count, who was destined by his uncle for a . brilliant social career, was sent on a tour of foreign travel to com- plete his education and wean him from his devotion to the service of God. It was a time of testing; but as the young nobleman stood before the famous painting in the Dusseldorf Gallery and gazed into the sad, expressive face of the crucified Redeemer, he renewed his consecra- tion vows and returned home resolved to serve God as never before.
The power of pictures to plant a missionary purpose in the heart of a child is shown in the lives of Duff, of India, and Richardson, of Madagascar, both great heroes of the Oross. The former traced his first desire to be a missionary to pictures of idols shown him by his father at the age of four; the latter to a picture of the martyrdom of the native Ohriatians of Madagascar, shown him by his teacher at the age of seven.
The wealth of pictures that make our present-day books and magazines so attractive constitute one of the best aids to the study of missions, and are a gr~at delight to children. They can be used in many ways. Very pretty picture-books can be made by clipping them and pasting them in an ordinary scrap-book. Especially to be commended are the Orient Pictures issued by the American Baptist Missionary Union. Printed on heavy paper, and reproduced from the best missionary photographs available, they are true works of art, and worthy of a place in any home. Ourios, as well as pictures, have a place in the missionary training of the young. For this reason a missionary museum is an excellent thing, especially for boys, in whom the collective spirit is usually so pronounced. A stamp collection, which brings the boy in touch with every foreign field, might form a part of this. . Hand in hand with missionary instruction in the home must go practical training in missionary work. If the child's missionary development is to be complete, it must be tmrly ta.ught to give its pennies to the Lord Jesus for His work, and to pray for the children of foreign lands and the missionaries who work among them. In the matter of giving, American mothers may learn a lesson from their Hawaiian sisters. In the early days of Christianity in the islands it was the custOIn of many a mother to put a bright coin in her baby's hand and hold it over the contribution-box. If the tiny fingers held on to the shining piece, she gently shook it until it fell, with a merry ring, into the box below. Thus trained, the Hawaiians became noted for their liberality. Surely a plan that worked so well will bear transplanting.
MISSIONARY WORK IN MEXICO: TWENTY YEARS AGO AND NOW BY THE REV. LEVI B. SALMANS, B.D., M.D. Methodist Episcopal Mission, Guanajuato, Mexico, 1885- It would be a pleasing task to trace the splendid progress of the work of God in Mexico as carried on by thirteen missions; bu t as this wonld be all but an impossible undertaking, I will briefly outline the progress of one-that of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
Take, for comparison, the years 1882 and 1902. Then we had nine missionaries of the parent Board, with their families, and five ladies from the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society. Now we have eight and eleven respectively. While the field was ·pretty well preempted then, we have spread out greatly, both in detail and in the char!tcter of the work we are doing. It would be safe to say we have four times as many congregations and four times as many schools as then, besides some kinds of work we did not then carryon.
Our Press has developed greatly, being now a mighty power, as is shown by its over five million pages of religious literature published annually, besides a dozen newspapers and much job-work. Six of our schools have developed into large establishments, with ample edifices, accommodating over three hundred boarders and over one thousand two hundred day pupils, while the attendance in aU our. schools is about five thousand. The courses of study cover fourteen years, and lead through three years of theology to the ministry and four years of normal work to the profession of teaching. Some pupils devote their last three years to nursing, and others to Biblical studies, and work for the after-service of Christ and His Church. Two have finished their studies in the States, graduating in medicine, with the purpose of work in the Church, and an increasing number ar~ ltel.tding their educational careers in the same direction.
MISSIONARY PROBLEMS IN CENTRAL AFRICA
Our self-support during these years has grown up from humble beginnings to about $60,000 annually, while the whole sum expended in the mission in round numbers in 1882 was $45,000 (Mex.), and in 1902, $250,000 (Mex.).
Out of the seven native preachers found in the list published twenty years ago, two are still alive and grown up into the stature of mell in Christ Jesus, holding positions of great importance in our work, and we have added twenty-five more to their number, while our schools are helping on in their preparation a constantly increasing stream of workers for the future, even adding two or three kinds of workers which did not then exist, such as doctors, nurses, and deaconesses.
This brings me to mention that ,the philanthropies are growing up among us, just as they did in the early history of Christianity itself, in the beginnings of Wesley's work, or in the home Church at the present time. Medical missionary work began among us twelve years ago. It has developed greatly, until now we have three dispensaries, a fine hospital, a training-school with ten nurses in it (the first in the Republic)-all manned (and womaned) by three medical missionaries from the States and two native Mexicans educated in this country. The first steps have been taken for the establishment of a school to train house-to-house visitors to work with the schools and in the pastorates, of whom we expect great things.
MISSIONARY PROBLEMS IN CENTRAL AFRICA REV. D.;WITT C. SNYDER, M.D., BROOKLYN, N. Y. For Ten Years Missionary at Luebo, Kongo Independent State After that glorious Sabbath mentioned in my previous article, everything took on a brighter hue. The missionaries were encouraged to greater zeal; the committee in the home land, cheered by the grand news, sent out more missionaries, and the people themselves, having a bright object-lesson before them, became more deeply interested.
The coming of new missionaries made it possible to open a day school, where the children and some older people, mostly men, were taught to read and write in their own language. Our first efforts along this line were hampered by the lack of books and other school materials. We had to begin at the very beginning, reduce the language to writing, and prepare the books. We were dealing with people who had never seen a book, knew nothing of a written language, and who had not only to learn the alphabet but also to learn its use. Our first" book" was.a card containing the alphabet in large red letters, ending with "&." This was hung in a conspicuous spot, and the children were placed where all could see it. We began to teach them
the sounds of each character by repeating them all (except" &") one by one, responsively. This process of instruction they called" counting the book." After we had repeated each letter over and over, and finally came to the end of the alphabet, the whole school called out, in a despairing tone, "Kabafwila! " We soon learned that they had named the sign" & " which we had omitted and with one accord called it "Kabafwila!" which, freely translated, means" Oh, dear, not finished yet! ,.
"Advanced lessons" were all typewritten, a tedious and unsatisfactory method, and we longed for a printing-press. This was received a few years later through the generosity of a friend in Baltimore, and after we had mastered the art of composing and printing we kept it hot for many months. 'rhis press is still working to its greatest capacity, but is now too small to do the needed work, and we are hoping that in some way another may be secured.'" The natives soon learned to set type, and have proved good workers, tho they are rather slow.
Catechumeu classes were formed, and so eager were the people to be instructed in " Bnala b11 Njambi" (Goll's palaver) that many were necessarily turned away. The two classes formed averaged thirty persons in each, and if we had had more teachers at least two additional classes could have been filled.
Marriage Complications Prior to the forming of the classes most of our converts had been from among the younger unmarried people, but now the married men and women carne flocking to us, and this brought Ilew complications. What were we to do when a man with several wives became converted and wished to be baptized? Could he join the Church while living in the sin of polygamy? If not, which wife was he to retain, alld what was to become of the others? The varied questions arising from this condition of things, and the different opinions held by the members of the mission, made it very difficult to reach any final conclusion. At last we decided to compromise by allowing those already married to two or more wives to join the Church without divorcing any of the number, but they were forbidden to contract another marriage. We strongly taught the sin of polygamy, and trusted to the working of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of the Christians. We believe the time will soon come when the people will of themselves give up the practise. The enforced separation of a man from his wives is sure to work harm to some of them, and we must remember that these conditions were entered into before the people knew that it was a sin to have more than one wife. Of course we refused to baptize a man who had entered into polygamy after he had become acquainted with the teachings of the Bible from the missionaries, unless he first put away all * Since writing this the way has been "pened for securing the larger press, and it will soon be on its way to the heart of the Kongo,-DEW. C. S.
SNYDER SEATED AIIIONG A CROWD OF
save the one he had first married. Such a man we considered as having sinned against light, and his wives also were looked upon as partakers in his sin. In other words, we made a difference between those who practised polygamy before the Gospel was preached in their midst and those who, knowing of the teaching of the Scriptures, entered into that state.
The question arose also as to whether we should allow a Christian to marry a heathen. The circumstances were such that we could do little else than advise our Christians not to marry out of the Church. We have knowll of cases where a Christian man married a heathen woman and was the mealls uuder God of her conversion, and vice versa j but do not recall a single marriage of this kind where the Christian went back to heathendom through the influence of the unconverted partner. Another question was: "At what age shall we allow marriage?" This was hard to settle, as no record of age is kept by the people; but, as far as we could judge of age, we refused to marry any girl under fourteen or any boy under sixteen. III view of their previous training, and to avoid placing them under too great temptation, our chief principle was to be assured they were no longer children.
As the church grew in numbers we were confronted with the question of admitting children into the fold, and the age at which a native African can fully grasp the fact of his sinfulness and the need of a Savior. As it was next to impossible to do more than to guess at a child's age, we were governed by the degree of intelligence shown in the catechumen classes. We have had some bright Christians from among the very young people, and invariably found them brighter than the mature men and women who for so long a time had been ruled by th·eir superstitions. Four examples of young Christians may prove interesting.
The Story of Dick and Polly It was difficult for us to remelllber their native names, so we relHtlned them Dick and Polly, John and Bella. The first two were our personal servants, and were inseparable; the other two worked on the station, and were also always together. Dick and Polly were born in the same Baluba village, many miles from Luebo. Their parents were quiet, inoffensive people, and, with the other inhabitants, lived the peaceful, indolent life of the African. Dick and Polly played in the streets with their little dark-skinned companions. Shut out from the world by dense forests on every side, they knew nothing of life other than that enacted within the small village and its immediate neighborhood. Very early one morning, Dick told us. the whole village was aroused by the noise of guns, and as they rushed ant of their houses to learn the meaning of it all, they saw a great number of strange black people approaching, firing guns, and making a terrible noise. Too
MISSIONARY PROBLEMS IN CENTRAL AFRICA
frightened to run, the villagers stood as if paralyzed, and the next moment scores of them fell to the ground, pierced by the bnllets from the guns of the enemy. Then they sought to escape by flight, but too late; those who wrre not kiIled were captured. Dick and Polly hid behind a tree and witnessed the death of their parents, who were shot down in front of their home. The houses were set on fire, while the men and women of the viIlage were tied together like animals, and were corralled and guarded. The victors then prepared the usual cannibal feast, always held after a war or raid. Slices of flesh were carved from the bodies of the dead, the pots were filled, and the feast was on. After the enemy had eaten their fill, a quantity of flesh was dried over the fires to carry away for food on the journey. Dick and Polly saw the bodies of their parents thus mutilated, and afterward, on the journey, were compelled to eat the flesh they had seen cut from the bodies of father and mother. With twenty or more other children they were tied neck by neck to a long native rope, with a space of about eighteen inches between each child. In this malll1er they were compelled to walk over the rough paths through the dense forests day after day for ten days.' When they reached the mission station they presented an appearance too pathetic to be described. Destitute of all clothing, their poor emaciated bodies looked like skeletons encased in parchment. Their feet were filled with running sores, due to the long-enforced walk and exposure. The rope had never been removed from their necks. They had walked by day and slept at nights tied together. They had not been permitted to bathe, so that they were as dirty a looking lot of children as conld be imagined. We bought and liberated them. Soap, water, and clean clothes added much to their appearance, but it took the grace of God to change their faces. As near as we could judge, the four of whom we are writing were about nine or ten years old, tho no trace of childlikeness could be seen on their faces.
Dick was very bright and very much inclined to be tricky; he had a wonderful influence ovel' Polly, and they would put their heads together and hatch all sorts of mischief. While they were fairly honest in most things, they could not resist the temptation to steal our salt. One day Polly left the pantry rather hurriedly as we approached. Telltale sprinklings of salt on the floor looked suspicious, but she dellied all knowledge of how it got there. On examination the pocket of her dress was found packed full of the coveted article, so that she was taken into the bedroom /lnd told to kneel down with Mrs. Snyder, while God was earnestly asked to forgive her for the theft and falsehood. This impressed the little heathen to such an extent that for some time Polly was a model girl. But the desire for salt again overcame her, and she had many a fall before she would stand firm against temptation. One may wonder why we did not give
her all the salt she wanted. .'['his article, which is so common in America and Europe, was used for other than cooking purposes in Africa. There it was equal to gold as a medium of exchange. She had all the salt she wanted to eat freely given her, but we soon learned that Dick instigated most of the thefts and received the stolen article, which he bartered off for other commodities. Besides this, Dick was vicious. He and Polly were fast going the downward road to destruction when the Spirit of God intervened.
The conversion of both came gradually, but was complete. What a bright, happy Ohristian she became 1 As I write I can see her skip· ping across the compound as happy and light-hearted as any young girl in our home land lOne pathetic thing in Africa is to see the sad, careworn faces of the children. Polly's face was of that kind before her conversion. The poor girl became the victim of the dreaded beriberi, or sleeping sickness, and died. But oh, what a glorious death! So quietly, so peacefully, so trustfully she passed away 1 Hers was the first Christian death on our station, and the influence of that death-bed worked wonders. Dick still lives-impulsive, whole-souled Dick! He is now an earnest worker in the Young People's Society of Christian Endeavor of Luebo. He has still many a fight with his old sins, but he fights manfully, and usually comes off conqueror with the help of Ohrist.
John and Bella John and Bella were workers on the station, and had not the direct care that came to those in the household. Bella was a thin, tall girl with a most unattractive face. She would never look at you squarely, and in the early days no smile ever illumined her hard features. She and John joined forces in housebreaking. John was small and could get through the small windows, while Bella waited outside to receive the stolen stuff. We tried to correct them with kindness, but it was thrown away. Then we used corporal punishment on Bella, who was the older. I will never forget the first punishment she received. We gave her ten strokes across the hand, and at the last she fell heavily to the ground and passed into what seemed an epileptic fit. As she lay there with muscles twitching we were filled with compunction, and worked over her most energetically until I discovered that she was feigning to be unconscious. The next time we had occasion to punish her she went off into a fit at the very first rap, and we left her to die at her pleasure while we watched her at a distance, and had the satisfaction of seeing her slowly open her eyes, look carefully around, and then jump up and run away.
She never tried that again with me, but later, when new missionaries arrived, and she was handed over to one of them as a personal servant, she tried the same trick. I was coming out of my house one day when the missionary came, white-faced and breathless, to tell me
MISSIONARY PROBLEMS IN CENTRAL AFRICA
that she feared that she had killed Bella. She said she had occasion to punish her very lightly, but it had seemed too much, and poor Bella lay dying. I heartlessly told her to let her die, as it would not hurt her any, and she would be around all right in a few moments. Then Bella tried a new game. One day the Bah Mbuya people who lived along the river, about two miles from the station, brought Bella to us stark naked, with the tale that they had rescued her from drowning. They had seen her throw herself in the river and had plunged in arter her, and added that it was customary tc pay to the rescuers a piece of cloth (eight yards of unbleached muslin) for saving the life. This seemed reasonable, and we paid. The next week the same thing hap.. pen ed, and we paid again. The following week another piece of cloth went the same way. But when the fourth week rolled around and brought the same rescuers with Bella in their midst, we began to "smell a rat," and refused to pay anything. We told them, moreover, to let her drown the next time, but Bella never died in the water. Her conversion was finally brought about through the earnest prayers of one of the colored missionaries. Tho her Ohristian life was of short duration, it was bright. She died in full belief of her Savior's power to save.
John was unique. Other boys were bad in spots. John was bad through and through. He cared for no one, and each missionary tried' in vain to win John's heart. He resented kindness, showed not the least gratitude, and was so lazy that in comparison the other lazy natives seemed diligent and quick. During the daytime he would lie around in the dirt, so that his body was a horne for the fleas and other vermin. 'rhe" jiggers" actually ate his toes off, and to-day he has not a toe on either foot.
John's besetting sin was stealing chickens. We traced him one night, and found him half a mile from the station, seated alone by himself, around him the dense, black forest, lit only here and there by the eyes of a prowling leopard or by the bright orbs of a passing python. Why they never killed him is marvelous. He had built a small fire of sticks, and, naked as when he carne into the world, he sat before it with his feet in the ashes. In his hand he held a chicken, which he had killed and partly stripped of its feathers. No attempt had been made to draw the fowl, and he held it by the legs over the fire, gently roasting it. Not a gleam of intelligence lit up his face, and one could easily imagine that he was asleep, save for the fact that his eyes shone with a peculiar luster. When it was sufficiently cooked he ate it as a dog ,would, tearing the flesh off with his teeth.
It was next to impossible to keep John at horne. We tried every way we could think of-kindness, love, persuasion, threats·-bnt all were of no avail. At last we resolved to lock him up, but during the night he dug with his hands a hole under the walls of the house and
escaped, together with another chicken. He was caught, brought back, and again locked up. 'l'his time a chain was padlocked around his ankles, but the next morning he was gone, and with him a chicken.
During the day the lock and chain were found beside a big rock at least a mile from the mission. He had dragged himself over the ground until he found a rock and a convenient stone, and had literally smashed the brass lock to pieces. It was several days before we caught him, and then one of the missionaries decided to lock him up in his cook-house, which was a very strong one. His hands were securely tied together, and his feet were bound fast. We found him there the next morning, but during the night he had in some way wriggled himself to the top of the stove, where he had managed to rise to his feet and was industriously chewing away at the end of a piece of smoked halibut that hung from the ceiling. He did not act thus because he was starving, for we gave him plenty to eat.
One day by accident John broke his arm. I set the bones and did it up properly, and told him he must keep the arm in the sling. The next morning John was gone, and a chicken! We instituted search, and at noon he was brought in, his arm flopping helplessly at his side, without a sign of bandage or splints. We set the arm again, and tied him fast to his bed. The morning found him away again, and the mission one hen the less. When evening came the people brought John in, minus the bandages and splints. This time we put him in a strait-jacket, and kept him tied fast until the arm was well. I fed him with a spoon during all the time, and labored for John's soul as never before. He talked beautifully, and I felt that at last he was saved. But, alas! for our fond hopes. No sooner was he free than the chickens and John again disappeared together. .
But the day at last came when John was converted, and since that time he has been a changed hoy. The chickens as well as the mis- sionaries could henceforth sleep peacefully through the night. To- day he is a member of the Young People's Society of Christian Endeavor, and, under the guidance of Mr. Sheppard, is a hard, earnest worker.
The brief histories of these lives give bnt a faint insight i~to the work that the little band of missionaries have done in that dark spot in darkest Africa. Eleven years ago, when the writer first reached Luebo, the place was in the grossest darkness. To-day there are two organized churches and several outstations, and a band of earnest native evangelists, who travel for miles and miles around the country, proclaiming to their brethren the glad news. Schools flourish, books are written and printed, and the whole Bible will soon be translated. In the two churches there is a membership of over fifteen hundred, and scores are added every two months. "Thine, 0 Lord, is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty: for all that is in the heaven and in the earth is thine; thine is the Kingdom, 0 Lord, and thou art exalted as head above 1111."
TIDINGS FROM MANY FIELDS
TIDINGS FROM MANY FIELDS TWENTIETH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE INTERNATIONAL MISSIONARY UNION BY REV. J. T. GRACEY, D.D., PRESIDENT The International Missionary Union convened in its twentieth annual session June 3-9 at the rrabernacle, Clifton Springs, N. Y., one hundred and fifty-six missionaries being present. 'I.'he accom- panying roll is the only one furnished through the press, and is here 'printed because of the close affinity between this Union and this REVIEW. The Union now enrolls nearly twel ve hundred living missionaries who have seen service on the field in periods varying from two to .fifty years. Among those present this year, Rev. John T. Gulick has been thirty-six years in China and Japan, Rev. Dr. John A. House has served thirty-one years in 'rurkey, aud Miss Gertrude R. Hance has done every sort of missionary work in Africa for a like period. Among the veteran women missionaries, less than a score had aggregated over five hundred years of service. The larger number had seen from eight to twenty years of hard work on fields from Siberia to South Seas and from the Cape to Cairo; they were survivors of the Peking siege, even of the India sepoy mutiny, and they had just arrived by the Siberian railway; they had experiences of the Boer war, and they had just come from the Philippines and from the forests of Brazil-a picturesque mosaic of personalities as well as of experience.
, Notes from Afar There were communications by the score from members now abroad, reporting the latest phases of missionary work. Rev. John G.
Paton, D.D., reported from the New Hebrides that one missionary, after a few years' work among the nude savages at his station, has por- tions of the Scriptures translated into their language and 1,200 of them attending school and church. Another, after five years, has about 600 attending church and school; another pastor, who was ordained to the work in 1900, has now at his stations, on Paama and Ambrim, 1,200.
On the island Ape another has 2,700 attending church and 2,300 in his schools, of whom are 587 educated church members. There are in the New Hebrides mission over 16,000 converts, and of them 330 native teachers. MalekuJa, the second largest island, is believed to have a population of from 16,000 to 20,000 cannibals. The men do not wear any clothing and the women very little.
Joseph E. Walker, of Japan, noted changes in twenty years on the Island of Kyu Shu, which has a population of 6,000,000. Twenty years ago there was one city in which, perhaps, a dozen missionaries worked and a half dozen evangelists. Now in ten cities some seventy missionaries live, with hundreds of Japanese evangelists. Then there were 100 native Christians, now at least 2,000.
Rev. S. M. Zwemer, of the Reformed Mission in Arabia, wrote that the last mission conference in Arabia issued a circular in the interest of a conference of all missionaries in Moslem lands-India, Persia, Egypt, and Africa-proposed to be called to assemble in Cairo or Bombay. Rev. John McLaurin, D.D., of the Baptist Mission, Nilgiri Hills, India, reported that the revival is resulting in hundreds of conversions in a dozen or more places (see p. 583). Miss Corinna Shattuck, of Turkey, says the impetus for education is seen by the rush of young women as well as men to the Christian colleges. Rev. J. H. Bruce, of India, called attention to the exclusion from government schools of children because natives of high caste object.
National Affairs and Missions The topic of national and political current movements, as they are related to missionary interests, was gravely considered, and the most recent information given about the Russian Czar's proclamation of so-called religious liberty, which seems to pertain to freedom of worship only and not to freedom of propagandism. Interesting and important statements were made about the administration of the King of the Belgians in Kongo Free State, through concessions and syndicates, and the horrors of the abuse of these, with native cannibal police to enforce them" for revenue only."
The Union adopted resolutions and an address to the King of the Belgians, concerning the atrocious conduct of the concessionaires of the Kongo Free State, and also hitting back hard at the sqneezing process by which the Kongo Free State endeavors to drive out the Protestant missionaries, chiefly because they expose the devilish deeds of the rubber agents.
The Kongo Bololo missionaries have been driven out of Juapa, and American Presbyterians threatened with eviction by force if they do not vacate stations they had opened on the Kassai River. The English Baptists have failed to secure any special favors and are refused land, tho Mr. Grenfel, their active leader, has rendered the state large service through his charts and surveys of the Upper Kongo. In fact, they hate Protestant missionaries as the only persons who dare expose their black arts, which are necessary to produce 200 or 300 per cent. dividends on their investments in syndicate rubber exploitations.
Rev. Henry H. Jessup, D.D., of Syria, was detained en route to the Union. The text of his communication will be found in part elsewhere in this number (see p. 605).
Woman's Work One whole session was given over entirely into tlte hands of the ladies for consideration of Woman's Work. Among those who addressed this meeting were Mrs. Withey, of Angolaland, of the only Protestant mission in that country; Miss Ranney, or the third
generation of that missionary family; Mrs. Mix, twenty-four years in Burma, ten of them among the Shan tribes, sixteen days' journey by cart road from mail station. Mrs. Dr. Goodrich told experiences in the siege of Peking, and of the native Christian girls who gave themselves in calm martyrdom rather than deny their faith. Miss Marks related famine expel" -lnces in India, where, besides daily ministries amid starving millions, she herself received and disbursed $40,000 in relief among over fifty thousand starving people walking the streets in her own locality, while Rev. J. W. Robinson, of the same Methodist mission, disbursed $400,000 in similar attempts to rescue the dying. Most of this money came through the Ohristian Herald fund. Miss Ellen M. Stone spoke of the work in Macedonia and among the Greeks. She was followed by a young Bulgarian woman.
The interest of the week culminated in the farewell meeting to over forty of the missionaries present, now returning to their fields. Among these were: E. W. Clement, Miss Mabel Lee, to Japan; Mrs. Cowles, Miss Hance, Mr. and Mrs. Hill, to Africa; Miss Dunmore, to Mexico; Ira Harris, M.D., to Syria; Dr. Goodrich and Mrs. Goodrich, Miss ROils, Miss Allen, Mr. and Mrs. Partridge, Miss Sloan, Mr. and Mrs. 'Groesbeck, and Mr. and Mrs. L. Whittlesey, to China; G. W. Ray, to Brazil; Miss Isabella Watton, Miss Ranney, Miss Phinney, Mrs. Mix and Miss Craft, to Burma; L. B. Chamberlain, Miss Hatch, Mrs. Everett Smith, W. D. Valentine, M.D., Mrs. J. H. Gill, Miss Annie E. Sanford, W. O. Valentine, Mrs. S. L. Gates, Mrs. M. B. Carleton, M.D., Miss K. Fahs, J. W. Robinson, Mr. and Mrs. C. L. Bare, Miss Mary Means, Miss Lillian Marks, E. Horton, Miss Mary Low, Miss Jennie RoIlier (eighteen), go to India.
A volume would be needed to give anything approaching a satisfactory synopsis of the information given during the week.
The sanitarium of Clifton Springs again entertained the missionaries free of all cost, and Mrs. Dr. Foster personally, and as superintendent of the sanitariam represeniing the trustees, proved, as heretofore, her courtesy and her competence as a hostess. The devotional meetings of the week, under Mr. David McOonaughy, were" quite on the verge of heaven."
ROLL OF THE INTERNATIONAL MISSIONARY UNION Clifton Springs. New York. June 3-8 NAME. FIELD. NAME. FIELD.
Abell, Miss Annie E … ", …… ,' .Micronesia. Beall, Mr. A. W ………………. Japan.
Adams, Mrs. M. D … , .. " …. , .. , . India. Bing, Miss Anna V. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . B Albertson, Miss L. Gertrude .. , . , ,China. Bigelow, Miss Agnes.,., ….. ,….Africa.
Allen, Miss Mary.. . . . .. .. . . . .. . . . . " Bli.s, Mrs. Isaac G .. , …… , . , …. Turkey.
Bare, Rev. O. L …. ,., .. ,",., … , .India. Bond, Mrs. G. A, ……… , ….. ".Malaysia.
Bare, Mrs. O. L …. . .. .. .. . .. . .. .. " Boughton, Miss Emma W ………China.
Barlow, Miss Daisy D………….Japan. Brewer, Miss Jessie ……………India..
Barnes, Miss Mary L ….•……… Africa. Bushnell, Mrs. Albert …..•••.•…Africa.
NAME. FIELD. NAME. FIELD.
Carleton, Mrs. M. B……………. India. Knowlton, Mrs. L. A…………… China. Chapman, Miss Ella L ………… Burma. Chamberlain, Rev. Lewis B…….India. Latimer, Miss Laura nI ……….. .'Mexico. Chamberlain, Mrs. Lewis B. ….. . Clement, Prof. Ernest W ………Japan. Lee, nIiss Mabel.. ……………… Japan. Clement, Mrs. Ernest W ……… . Leslie, William, M.D ………….. Africa. Cole, Rev. J. T ……………… .. Cowles Mr. Georg!) B. ………… Africa. Lowe, Miss Mary E. ……………India. Cowles, Mrs. George B……….. . Craft, Miss Julia G…………….Burma. Luther, Rev. R. M., M.E……….. Burma. Cushing, Rev. Charles W. …….Italy. Marks, Miss Lilian ……………. Indi… Davis, Mrs. Lydia A…………… China. Davisson, Rev. W. C …………..Japan. McConaughy, Mr. David……… . Davisson, Mrs. W. C…………. . Dobbins, Rev. Frank S……..• " . McConaughy, Mrs. David …….. . Drake, Rev. D. H ……………… India. Dreyer, Mr. F. C. II …………… China. McGuire, 1I1rs. John ………….. Burma. Dreyer, Mrs. F. C. II …………. . Dunmore, Miss Effa M………… Mexico. Means, Miss Mary …………….. India. Easton, Miss Susan C…………. India. Fahs, Miss Katherine ………… . Mechlin, Rev. John C………….. Persia. Ferguson, Mr. Henry S……….. China. Ferguson, Rev. William L ……..India. Melton, Miss Mary E …………..Japan. Ferguson, Mrs. William L……. . Fife, Miss Nellie C…………….. Japan. Merritt, C. W. P., M.D………….China. Foote, Mrs. Frank W………….. India. Foster, Rev. JohnM ………….. China. Merritt, Mrs. C. W. P …………. . Foster, Mrs. John M………….. . Fritz, Rev. W. G……………. Philippine Is Mix, Mrs. Huldah………………Burma. Gardner, Miss Sarll,h ………….. Japan. Gates, Mrs. L. S ……………… India. Newcomb, Rev John…………..India. Gill, Mrs. J. H ………………. .. Goodrich, Rev. Chll,uncey ……… China. Newcomb, Mrs. John…………. , Goodrich, Mrs. Chll,uncey……… " Gracey, Rev. J. T ……………..India. Noyes, Miss Mary F ………….. . Gracey, Mrs. J. T…………….. . Osborn, Mrs. W. B…………….. India. Graves, Rev. Roswell H ……….. China. Graves, Mrs. Roswell H ………. . Owen, Rev. C. C., M.D ………… Korea. Griffin, Rev. Z. F ……………… India. Griffin, Mrs. Z. F …………….. . Owen, Mrs. C. C……………… . Groesbeck, Rev. A. F ………….. China. Palmer, Miss Frances E ………..Burma. Groesbeck, Mrs. A. F …………. . Gulick, Rev. John '1' …………. China, Japan Partridge, Rev. S. B…………… China. Gulick, Mrs. John '1'…•……….. Japan. Gulick, Rev. T. L ………………Spain. Partridge, Mrs. S. B………….. . Hallam, Rev. E. C. B ………….. India. Hallam, Mrs. E. C. B… . …….. . Penick, Bishop C. C …………… Africa. Hance, Miss Gertrude R ……….. Africa. Harrington, Rev. F. G…………Japan. Phinney, Miss Harriet…………. Burma. Harris, Ira, M. D.. .. . . .. .. .. .. … Syria. Hatch, Miss S. Isabel. …………. India. Price, Mrs. Rosina E …………. . Hill, Rev. Thomas……………..Africa. Hill, Mrs. Thomas…………… " Priest, Miss Mary A …………… Japan. Hotchkiss, Willi, R ………….. . House, Rev. John A …………… Turkey. Ranney, Miss Ruth ……………. Burma. Howell, Mr. George ……………. China. Ray, Rev. George W ………….. S. America. Howland, Rev. S. W………….. Ceylon. Howland, Mrs. S. W ………….. . Riggs, Miss Mary E …………… China. Humphrey, Rev. J. L., M.D…….. India. Humphrey, Mrs. J. L…………. . Riley, Miss Celia J …………….. S. America. Kelly, Mrs. E. W ……………….Burma. Kingsbury, Rev. F. M., M.D …… Bulgaria. Roberts, Mrs. W. H……………. Burma. Kingsbury, Mrs. F. L ………… .. Kirkpatrick, M. B., M.D ……….. Burma. Robinson, Rev. J. W.O' ………. : .India.
Rollier, Miss Jeanne L ………… .
Rolman, Miss Eva …………….. Japan.
Ross, Miss Isabella……………. China.
Salmans, Rev. Levi B…………. Mexico.
Sa.nford, Miss Annie E ………… India.
Scudder, Rev. Ezekiel C………. . Scudder, Mrs. Ezekiel C………. .
Shaffer, Mrs. Kate B …………. .
Shaw, Miss Kate………………. Japan. Shockley, Miss Mary E ………… China.
Sloan, Miss Addie M …. …..•.•…
Smith, Mrs. Everett G…………. India.
Smith, Miss Lida B ……………. Japan.
Sparkes, Miss Fannie J …………India.
Spencer, Rev. David S………….Japan.
Spencer, Mrs. Da.vid G•…… "" ..
Spencer, Rev. J. 0 …………… ..
Stein, Miss S. E ……………….. China.
Stone, nilss Ellen M…………… Turkey.
Taft, Mrs. George W ………….. Japan.
Thayer, Rev. C. C., M.D……….. Turkey.
Thayer, Mrs. C. C………….. ' ..
Thompson, Miss Mary …………. China.
Thoms, Mrs. Marion W., M.D ….. Arabia.
Thomson, Rev. Robert ………… Turkey. Valentine, Rev. William D………Bnrma.
Walker, Rev. U. L …………….. Africa.
Walker, Mrs. U. L …………… ..
Washburn, Rev. George Too •••.••• India.
A WORD FROM SYRIA
NAME. FIELD. Women's Union Missionary Society…… . Friends……………………………… . Washburn, mrs. George T ……… India. Independent …………………………. . Free Church of Scotland ……………… . Watson, Miss Isabella …………. Burma.
Wherett, Miss Gertrude ……….. Assam.
Wheeler, Mrs. L. N……………. China.
White, Mrs. Wellington ………. . Tutal. …………………………. 156 Whittlesey, Mr. Roger B……… . flY COUNTRIEH Whittlesey, Mrs. Hoger B…….. . India ………………………………… 43 Williams, Mrs. Alice n1. ………. . China ………………………………… 36 Wilson, Miss Frances 0 … . Japan………………… . ……….. 24 Winchester, Rpv. Alexander B… . Burma ……………………………….. 14 Withey, 11rs. Irene F ……………frica.
Worthington, Miss M. C……….. China. Africa. .. . . . . .. . .. .. .. .. .. .. . . . . . . . .. . .. …. 14 Turkey. . . .. . . … . .. .. . . .. . . . .. . . .. . . . .. .. .. . 6 BY DENOMIXATJOX,…. Mexico………………………………. 3 Baptist.. : …………………………….. aD Korea……………….. ……………… 2 Methodist Episcopal. . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . 35 South America. . . . . . . … . . … . . . .. .. .. . …. 2 American Baptist ……………………. :31 Ceylon……………………………….. 2 China Inland Mi ,"ion ………………….. 11 Bulgaria……………………………… 2 Presbyterian (North) …………………. . Assam ………………………………. .
Evangelical Lutheran………………… . Syria ……………………………… _..
Reformed Chul'ch………….. ……….. 5 Persia ………………………………. .
Free Baptist……… ,….. …. ………… 4 Italy ………………………………… .
Presbyterian South). . . . .. .. . . . . . .. . . . . . :1 Philippine Islands…………………… ..
Baptist (South,. . .. . . . … . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 2 Malaysia…………………………….. .
Protestant Episc~)pal………………….. 2 Arabia…………………………….. .
Canadian Baptists……………………. . Spain ……………………………….. .
-.t.-ollng l:1:en 1s Christian AssociatIOn.. 2 Micronesia . …………………………. .
Disciples…………………………….. . Twenty countries represented.
A WORD FROM SYRIA * BY RE,. HENRY H. ,JESSFP, V.D., BEIRUT l:1issionary of the Presbyterian Board1 18,jti- 1. The wedge is beginning to enter the Mohammedan world-the wedge of Gospel light and Ohristian civilization. A Moslem emir in Oairo has published a volume called "The New Woman," advocating the abolition of the veil, the harem, polygamy,.etc., and the Mufti of Oairo has pu bliely endorsed the book. The author says; "'fhis question is one of life and death for us and for the whole Mohammedan world." Mr. Michaiel Ibraham, a converted graduate of the Azhar University in Oairo, is preaching to hundreds of Moslems. One week before I left Syria (on March 8), I baptized four Mohammedan young women, and the evening before I sailed I preached, together with my son William, to a room full of Mohammedan men, who listened with profound interest.
* A personal word accompanies the above, which we take the liberty tu quote, begging pardon, but knowing it will be read with interest. Dr. Jessup says: "The missionary work is a joy and a privilege; it is unspeakably blessed, the noblest and best work ever entrusted to man. I am thankful nothing has ever tempted me to turn aside from it, and I hope to return to Syria, the Lord wiII, next spring. These past forty· seven years has been to me a season of high privilege, of mingled joys and sorrows, but of growing love for the work. The Lord sends us trials and discipline to sanctify us. I have one son, William, a missionary in Syria; two daughters, wives of professors in the Syrian Protestant College in Beirut, and my youngest son, Frederick, is about to go as a missionary to Tabriz, Persia. Surely I ought to be a very grateful man! "-EDITORS.
2. The Protestant community of the Turkish Empire is the most intelligent, the best educated, and has a smaller proportion of illiterates in proportion to its numbers than any community in the empire.
3. There is strong hope that ere many weeks have passed every American church, school, seminary, college, and hospital in the Ottoman empire will be establ'islwl and legalized by imperial firman.
4. The demand for the Scriptures in the various langnages of the empire is increasing so rapidly that it is difficult to run onr printingpresses fast enough to meet it.
5. '1'he six American colleges at Beirnt, Assiut, Constantinople, Marsovan, Kharput, and Aintab are training the men who will one day be the leaders in the new age in '1'urkey. These colleges are already teaching young men of every sect in the land-Mohammedans, Greeks, Armenians, Jews, Roman Catholics, and Kopts–to work together, to respect and love one another, and to labor for the best welfare of their people in the fLlture.
6. The Bible has returned to the East to stay. It wiII never be possible for priestly tyranny or scarcity of snpply to blot ont God's Word again from the lands of the Bible.
7. There is still much land to be possessed and much work to be done: translating, teaching, educating, training a native ministry, and conducting the higher education for young men and young women.
8. The work ealls for the best men and women in the Church to go forth and sow the seed and gather the harvest.
DIFFICULTIES IN EDUCATING MOSLEMS BY 011£ WHO ,rOHKS A:'lO~U THB~l Direct Christian approach to Mohammedans is, by reason of their prejudices, limited mainly to the circLllation of the Seriptures and medical missions, but these are of supreme importance, for the former contains the inspired foundation of onr faith and the latter is its living example. Several indirect agencies, however, are slowly clearing the ground for Mohammedans ultimately to listen to the good news of the Gospel without prejudice, and one of them is found in the spirit and methods of modern education.
The spirit of modern education, or the scientific spirit, is that of seeking the truth. It reports phenomena without prejudice, believes according to evidence, and never quarrels with a fact. The spirit of Mohammedanism is opposed to free thought; it denies or distorts facts according to preconceived notions, and believes as directed by authority. The two are fundamentally at odds.
True education deals with principles; Mohammedanism, with rules. The scientist acquires information by induction; the doctor
DIFlJ'ICULTIES IN EDUCATING MOSLEMS
of Islam acquiesces in the verdict required. Scientific methods of teaching lead to original investigation, enlarging the sphere of human knowledge; Mohammedan methods are chiefly restricted to memoriz- ing~ and their face is sternly set toward the past. The scientific teacher aims to direct his pupils to knowledge greater than his own; the Mohammedan teacher, to keep bright pupils from finding him out. Our students pass by examinatioll; theirs by "a pull." Science, w hen possible, traces every event to the operatiolJ of natural laws; fatalistic Mohammedanism, to the opcration of eternal decrees. Nat- ural Science and Fatalism can not be yoked together in the same team.
Mohammedanism engages to take charge of the intellect as well as the conscience of a "true believer." Its historic temper is manifest in the burning of the great Alexandrian library, alleged to have taken place on this order from the Calif Omar: .
The contents of those books are in conformity with the Koran or they are not. If they are, the Koran is sufficient without them; if they are not, they are pernicious. Let them, therefore, be destroyed.
The alternative has ever been, "Koran, tribute, or sword." Rigid censorship of the press in Mohammedan countries still allows the printing and circulation of only such books and papers as meet official approbation. The curriculum of a school or college is supervised and expurgated in the same way. If doubt arises, the Mohammedan way is to settle it by unsheathing the sword. unwelcome argument or information is advanced at the risk of the neck. Pious frauds are at home in a system, the aim of which is not to be true, but to seem true.
More specifically, the Koran fixes the length of the year at three hundred and fifty-fonr clays, without regard to scientific calculation. Acceptable prayer must be directed toward Mecca, and worshipers at sea sometimes rise from their knees disconcerted because their prayers have been vitiated by the veering of the ship. The call to prayer is to he given five times a day at periods regulated by the daylight. Would not a Mohammedan living in polar regions question his sacred book on the solar disarrangement of its hours for prayer? Mohammed stated that he had given" An Arabic Koran." Does not the founder thus seem to limit his creed to local acceptance, instead of making it universal, as truth from God must be? How can the Mecca pilgrimage, suited to Arab tribes, be practical for men at the other side of the world? How can an inspired book teach the existence of a host of genii? Such points contain seeds of doubt for the system which lays them down.
An Englishman who had embraced Mohammedanism once challenged the truth of Christianity on the ground of the narrative of the Bethlehem star. He claimed that the Bible stands or falls with the truth of the story of the star of Bethlehem which it contains, that Christianity stands or falls with the Bible, and that the narrative of
the star being scientifically impossible, the whole fabric falls together' His challenge was taken up by an evangelical Greek preacher, who ad- duced the well-known Mohammedan story how the moon one night de- scended from the sky and passed up one of the sleeves of the prophet's mantle and out the other. "To what size," asked the Christian, "was the moon reduced, or into how many fragments was it divided, when it passed through the sleeves of the prophet's mantle? How long a time was occupied in the transit, and what was the means by which it was effected?"
Mohammedanism mutilates geography and history. Armenian subjects of the Porte may not study these branches as related to their own nation. Pass a Turkish custom-house with a Bible, and the maps will be torn out, because they show territory now ruled by the sultan once to have been ruled by other sovereigns. Political economy, with its quid pro quo, is counter to the propensities of Mohammedans for pillage, which they have shown frO!!l the time of the prophet to that of the Armenian massacres. Constitutional science can not fellowship the uniform despotism of Mohammedan governments, the entire absence of democratic or representative institutions among them. Physiology and sociology are against polygamy, divorce, and slavery as legalized by the Koran and practised by its followers. The chastise- ment of women and mutilation as a punishment share in the same condemnation, while Ethics has a voice to raise on these and kindred subjects. Astronomy challenges the astrology of the Koran, and impugns the authority of the book that teaches it. Mohammedan medicine is connected by the people with magic, and results in the reputation of army surgeons knowing no more than how to give quinine and castor oil. And theology joins issue on that view of God which represents Him as a simple sovereign instead of as a moral ruler.
The progress of education among Mohammedans, therefore, is one of the means that will ultimately make Mohammedanism impossible to an educated man. Probably the educational system of the Turkish Empire has doubled in efficiency since the present sultan, Abd-ul· Hamid II., ascended the throne twenty-five years ago, and the spirit of inquiry has increased in proportion. Mohammedan patronage of schools where thought is free advances. Mohammedan educational con- ferences in India meet and discuss the organization of a Mohammedan university to supplement the schools already existing. '['he sultan has proposed an agricultural college in Turkey to be conducted by American professors, as the medical and military colleges are already . conducted in part by French and Germans, while English is the pre- dominant influence in the naval college.
Of great significance is the Gordon Memorial College, founded at Khartum, Egypt. Tho distinctively Christian teaching may be for- bidden a place in the curriculum, tho attention may be confined to a.gricultural, technical, and industrial education, an institution on
190;3] A RABBI CONVERTED IN JERUSALEM
British models and with a Moslem constituency will be a powerful Christian agency. The process will be long, but the result is not doubtful. The Gospel of Christ will yet show that it is the power of God unto salvation. Islam contains no article in its creed providing for amendments. The system contains fundamental error as well as fundamental truth, and hence carries the seeds of its own dissolution. It must be transformed by the" exact truth," which it is the province of modern education to discover and make known. 'l'ruth is mighty and must prevaiL All study and learning lead to the Mighty Founder of Christianity, who said, "I am the Truth."
A RABBI CONVERTED IN JERUSALEM BY THE LATE REV. J. M. EPPSTEIN, BRISTOL, ENGLAND Many years ago Dr. Wolfe distributed in Jerusalem a number of New Testamepts. The greater part were burned in the court of the synagog, but some remained in the pockets and reached the heartB of a few. One copy fell into the hands of a young rabbi of good family and means. He was married and had two children. For five long years he secretly studied the New Testament by candle-light in a cave outside Jerusalem, comparing it with the Old, and finally decided for Christ.
When at the missionary's house his "life came and implored him to return to Judaism. The matter was a serious one, he had to choose between his wife or Christ; but by God's grace the decision was given for the Savior.
The wife became exceedingly bitter against him, accused him of many crimes, had him imprisoned, others bribed the jailers to torture him by night, he was compelled by the consul to divorce his wife, one child died, and the wife took the remaining child with her to Russia.
A young cousin of the rabbi swore he would murder him, but he, knowing of his purpose, expostulated with him, "If you murder me, you send me to perdition," and induced him to discuss the question of the truth of Christianity with him. The young cousin began to find he could not hold his ground, and prayed to God for guidance. He usually carried any Christian tracts he was studying in his girdle, the Eastern pocket, and one "day, in the synagogue, having, as a Levite, to follow the priest in reading a portion of the Law, while ascending the steps to do this, his girdle caught in the railing, the tracts fell out, and this sudden discovery would have had fatal results had not the young man sought aud found safety in immediate and rapid flight.
The Rev. John Nicolaison, the missionary to whom he fled, had no room or bed to give him, so he slept in a stable, on a sack of shavings, with It horse-cloth for covering.
With further instruction he was baptized, and after varied experiences God opened the way for him to study at the college in Malta. He then offered himself to the Society for Promoting Christianity Among the Jews. God has abundantly blessed his labors in many lands. He is now located in England, and is the Director of the Wanderer's Home, from which Mr. Bergmann and many others has gone forth after experiencing the new birth. That converted JeWil;lh rabbi is the writer,
THE BEST APOLOGETIC * BY REV. GEORGE JACKSON, B.A., EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND The last ten verses of Matthew's Gospel fall naturally into two equal sections. The first section contains what has been called the" program"
of the enemies of Christ (" Say ye, His disciples came by night and stole Him away while we slept "); the second section contains the" program"
of Christ Himself (" Go ye and make disciples of all the nations, baptiz- ing them into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost").
Set these two programs over against each other, and you will observe there is no point at which they touch. Christ's follows that of His ene- mies, but it does not meet it, it does not discuss it; it simply Ignores it.
He has His own work to do, and He does it without regard either to theirs or them. He might have turned upon them and rent them, and put their crooked policy to shame; but He chose rather to pursue His own ends and to fulfil His own purpose. He does a good work who overthrows falsehood; he does a better who establishes truth. And it was that better work to which the Master bid His disciples put their hands when He charged them, with no sidelong glances at their enemies' plltn, to fulfil their own commission, and preach His Gospel to the whole creation. .
This, then, is our lesson: that where the Gospel and the New Testament are concerned, propagation is at once our first duty and our best defense.
There is no argument for the Scriptures like their circulation. The best " defender of the faith" is not faith's apologist, but faith's apostle. The one way to bring to naught the programs of the enemies of Christ is to carry out the program of Christ. Christian missions must always be the supreme apologetic.
This is not said, of course, in any spirit of depreciation of the Chris- tian student and thinker. Never, perhaps, have these had graverrespon- sibilities laid upon them than are theirs to-day. It is not only that the whole vast frontier of the Church has to be guarded against the incur- sions of an ever-watchful foe, but within the Church itself a thousand difficult problems await the worker. And we know now that the ques- tions which scholarship raises, scholarship must decide. He must be strangely ignorant indeed of the facts and tendencies of his own time who can suffer himself to make light of the calling and duties of the Christian scholar and apologist. Nevertheless, there is a Divine order which may not be reversed, and we are not depreciating the second things when we insist that, important as they are, they are not the first things, and have no right to the first place. And in the Divine order the apologist stands always behind the missionary. Not to defend the truth, but to proclaim it, must be always the first obligation of the Chris- tian Church.
Somebody once asked Charles Sumner, the great American states- man, to hear the other side of slavery. "Hear the other side!" he answered. "There is no other side! " That is how Christianity speaks; and the Church has need to-day to learn that same imperial accent. We have grown too apologetic. We have been too much concerned about the enemy and too studious of his programs. We have spoken too .,Condensed from The [English] Methodist Recorder.
THE BEST APOLOGETIC
often as men whose business it is to make the best of one side of a diffi- cult argument. It is time to mind our own business and to do our own work. It is time to put away the fear of the skeptic from before our eyes, and to recover the lost note of authority. The New Testament is not the word of men who thought they had some little contribution to make to the discussion of a large and difficult problem, and make it modestly, deferentially, like men who hope, indeed, they are in the right, but know they may well be in the wrong. It is the word of revelation, final, absolute, authoritative. And toward such a word our first duty is not to defend it, but to declare it. It is for us to publish abroad what God has made known.
And it is in the declaration of the truth, I repeat, we find its best defense. Men speak sometimes of "proving" Christianity, as if it were a kind of mathematical problem through which, step by step, you could work your way down to the triumphant" Q. E. D." at the bottom. But you can not prove Christianity; Christianity must prove itself. The Gospel, St. Paul says, is a power of God; it is a Divine force, and, there- fore, its proof must be, as some one has well said, not logical, but dynam- ical; it must be demonstrated not by argument, but by what it does. When John sent two of his disciples to Jesus, saying, "Art thou He that cometh, or look we for another? " we read that Jesus said-no, we do not . read that Jesus said anything; what we read is this: "In that hour He cured many of diseases and plagues and evil spirits; and on many that were blind He bestowed sight. Then He answered and said unto them, Go your way and tell John what things ye have seen and heard." There is the real silencing answer-not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power.
I am not afraid to trust Christianity anywhere. It will hold its own . with the solitary thinker in his study; it will stand the cross-fire of experts in the witness-box; it will state the case for itself on paper to any man, and not fear the issue. But if you want to see it in the great- ness of its strength you must see it at work. While it argues, others will argue with it; when it works it puts all its adversaries to silence. " And seeing the man which was healed standing with them, they could say nothing against it." Of course they could not. The God that answereth by healing men, He must be God. And, in the long run, that is the Church's one argument. The answer to its questions, the solution of its perplexities, the open door of escape from its enemies, have all been found in loyalty to its Master's great command to preach the Gospel to the whole creation.
The Logic of Histoq 1. Turn, e.g., to the Church of the first days, and the history of that momentous controversy by which for so long the Church was torn: Must a man be circumcised in order to be saved? To become a Christilln must a Gentile first become a Jew? No more important question could well have been raised by the infant Church; for upon the answer depended whether Christianity was to become the faith of mankind, or remain but the creed of an obscure Jewish sect. How was the question settled P It was settled, a,s so many knotty problems have been settled, by the logic of facts. While the leaders at Jerusalem were debating, Christian Jews, scattered by the persecution which broke out on the death of Stephen, and yielding to the natural impulse of their new· found faith, preached Jesus, so that a great number. not only of Jews, but of
Greeks, believed and turned to the Lord. Philip baptized the Ethiopian eunuch. Barnabas saw with his own eyes what, without respect of per- sons, God had wrought in the Church at Antioch. While Peter yet spake in the house of Cornelius, the centurion, the Holy Spirit fell on all them which heard the Word. And in still more marvelous fashion, during Paul's first missionary journey, God opened a door of faith unto the Gentiles.
Of what use was argument in the face of facts like these? Solvitur ambulando. It used to be an axiom-if I may borrow another man's illustration-that there was no life in the sea beyond the limit of a few hundred feet. Pressure and absence of light, it was said, made life at greater depths impossible. Then came the Challenger, with her deep-sea dredge that went down five miles, and from that enormous depth brought up healthy living things with eyes in their heads. And after that, of course, the old theories had to be let out to make room for the new facts. That. I think, was the position of the early Church in the days of which I have been speaking. Peter's argument was simply unanswerable: "If," he said, "God gave unto them the like gift as He did also unto us, when we believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could withstand God?" Who could maintain that Judaism was the only way into the Kingdom of God in the presence of men who were manifestly within it, but who had not entered by that door?
But now mark where Peter had learned this argument. He had learned it, not in Jerusalem, but in Samaria, in Antioch, in Cresarea. It was the logic, not of the school, or the council-room, but of the mission field. By preaching the Gospel the disciples discovered the true meaning and content of the Gospel which they preached. The thought of the Church widened with the work of its missionaries. It stretched forth its hands to save others, and in doing so it saved itself.
(2) Pass from the first century to the seventh, and again we see the Church saved by the missionary. It was in the early years of that century that Mohammedanism began its long career of conquest. Arabia, Persia, Syria-all fell in quick succession before.the victorious Saracens. Then the tide of invasion rolled westward, and Egypt, Northern Africa, and Spain were swallowed up in the vortex of Islam. So swift and complete was the overthrow of their foes that within a single century the followers of the False Prophet had built up the greatest empire on the face of the earth. Over the archway of a mosque in Damascus may still be read the half-obliterated inscription, "Thy kingdom, 0 Christ, is an everlasting kingdom"; and above it, "There' is no God but God, and Mohammed is His prophet." It is the history in mournful outline of those fateful years. And yet not the whole history, for the picture has another and a brighter side. Mohammed was still but a child on that day, of which every schoolboy has read, when Gregory the Great, then a Benedictine monk, walking in the slave-market at Rome, saw the fair-haired Saxon youths-" Not Angles, but angels," he said-and was moved with pity for the heathen land from which they came. A few years later Augustine landed in Kent, and that very century which witnessed the terrible incursion of Mohammedanism, became, as Dean Church says, "the age of one of the purest and boldest missionary efforts on record. 'rhe seventh century was the age of the conversion of England, the age of Augustine and Theodore of Tarsus,.. of Aidan and Chad, and Aldhelm. It was the age of the missions of Irish monks, Columba
THE BEST APOLOGETIC
and his followers, in Burgundy, and in the vast unknown heathendom beyond it, in the plains and forests of Central Europe, in the Alpine valleys, and on the Danube and the Rhine. Toward the end of the century a burst of missionary zeal carried English teachers, emu- lating their Irish forerunners, to win to the Gospel the land.s from which their fathers had come. Willibrord of Ripon preached to the heathen of Friesland. and founded the see of Utrecht. His greater follower, the Devonshire 'Vinfrid, devoted his life, in the first half of the eighth cen- tury, firbt as a preacher and then as a martyr to the conversion of the Gernlans."
Now, link together these two sets of facts. Gregory probably did not realize the greatness of his own policy; he builded better than he knew. Nevertheless, the fact remains, as a recent Church historian has pointed out, that when Gregory definitely launched the Church on a career of aggression, humanly speaking, he saved Christianity. "On every hand her dominion was threatened and her borders straitened."
But the new enthusiasm kindled by the missionaries beat back the tides of Moslem invasion and won Western Europe for Christ.
(3) Or turn yet again from the seventh to the eighteenth century, and the story of the great Revival. The illustration is hackneyed enough, bu!; in the present connection-and for a Methodist-it is inevitable. And, indeed, it would be difficult to find in the whole history of the Church a more convincing illustration of the truth I am seeking to enforce. Of the religious condition of England, before the Revival haddone its work, it is not necessary for me to speak. The mournful and oft-quoted words used by Butler in 1736, in the advertisement prefixed to his" Analogy,"
are confirmed out of the mouth of a thousand witnesses. Even so late as 1751 we find the same keen observer, in a "Charge" delivered to the clergy of his Durham diocese, lamenting what he calls "the general decay of religion in this nation,"" which," he says, "is now observed by every one, and has been for some time the complaint of all serious persons."
But there is no necessity to dwell upon what is so familiar.. What is not, perhaps, so often noticed is that this religious decline continued unchecked even when, as is now admitted on all sides, the logical victory lay with orthodox Christianity. The Christian apologists, with Bishop Butler at their head, had routed their Deistical opponents along the whole line. Yet still the tide of irreligion had not turned. As Canon Overton i5ays, Christianity in England was in this strange position: "It had been irrefragably proved as against its then opponents; it was estab- lished speculatively on the firmest of firm bases; but speculation was not carried into practise. The doctrine was accepted, but the life was not lived." Again I say, I am not depreciating the work of the Christian thinker. Religion in the eighteenth century had need of a Butler that it might stand four-square to every wind that blew. Nevertheless, the true victors in that fierce fight with vice and error were not faith's apologists, but faith's apostles. It is not to Butler, but to 'Ves!ey, that, under God, we ow the Revival which changed the face of England, and created . world-wide Methodism. Once again the Church was taught that her salvation lies not in defense, but aggression. The missionary spirit is the very breath of her nostrils. Faith dies when it is not diffused. "The Kingdom of God is not in word, but in power."
(4) My last illustlration I take from the history of our own time. It is a well-known fact that about thirt;y years ago, in the early seventies,
the tide of unbelief in our country was again at the flood. Mr. R. H.
Hutton wrote in the Spectator of what he called" The Approach of Dog- matic Atheism." Dean Church, of all men the least likely to fall a victim to mental panic, preaching in St. Mary's, Oxford, a few years before, said: "There are reasons for looking forward to the future with solemn awe. No doubt signs are about us which mean something which we dare scarcely breathe. Anchors are lifting everywhere, and men are committing themselves to what they may meet with on the sea." It was in these days that John Richard Green, the historian, abandoned both his East End curacy and his Christian creed, and that Mr. John Morley used to write the name of God with a small "g"-an act of juvenile folly of which probably Mr. Morley himself has long ago repented in sackcloth and ashes. In one single year-the year 1874-Professor Tyndall delivered his famous Belfast defense of materialism; Profess'or Clifford declared that in a very little time evidence, "of the same kind and of the same cogency" as th:tt which forbids us to assume the existence between the earth and Venus of a planet as large as either of them, would forbid our faith in a Divine Creator; and, lastly, the author of "Supernatural Religion" gave to the world his much-talked-of book, the result of which Mr. Morley believed at the time would be "the complete demolition" of the value of the New Testament as authentic testimony to the occur- rence of the marvels which it relates. Bampton and Hulsean lectures, he declared, would vainly endeavor to restore evidential value to the fabric which had been so rudely damaged. And, if further illustration be required, it may be sufficient to call to mind that it was in the days of which I speak that the fiercely anti-Christian movement which we asso- ciate with the names of Charles Bradlaugh and his now abandoned "Halls of Science" reached its highest point.
Such was the condition of things at the beginning of the seventies.
What turned the tide? Morley and Tyndall and Clifford and Brad- laugh were met and answered on their own ground, as it was meet and right they should be. But once more the real, silencing answer came not by the presentation of the Gospel as a system, but by its manifestation as a life. On June 17, 1873, two American evangelists landed at Liver- pool to begin their marvelous campaign, the results of which are with us in all the churches to this day. What Moody's work did for Scotland may be learned from a chapter in George Adam Smith's" Life of Henry Drummond." What it did for England has yet worthily to be told. But the more closely that remarkable movement is studied, the more com- pletely, I believe, will Dr. Philip Schaff's judgment be confirmed, that "as the Methodist revival, more than a hundred years before, stopped the progress of Deism, so these plain laymen turned the tide of modern materialism and atheism."
The Lesson for To-day What is the lesson for us to-day from these chapters of the Church's history? Unless I have wholly failed to read their significance aright, surely it is this: that more than ever we must bend our energies to the work of propagation; at home and abroad, along the whole line of our frontier, expansion must be our watchword. Faith stilI has her problems, and still, as of old, she will find their solution in the path of unfaltering obedience to her Lord's command. Just because Christianity is what it is, not an abstraction, or a system, or an idea, but a life, there-
THE BEST APOLOGETIC
fore its ultimate, its final vindication must come, not from the world of thought and speculation, but from the world of conduct and life.
Look at some of the questions which are bandied about by the contro- versialists to-day. Is the Gospel for all men? By what r:ight does Christianity claim to be a universal religion? Is it the final word con- cerning man, and man's relation to the Infinite? Or is it but, as one writer callJ it, our "last great religious synthesis," to be by and by incorporated into some larger, wider Gospel? How can we prove-here is a question which I read the other day in the correspondence columns of a religious newspaper-how can we prove the superiority of the Chris- tian ethic to the ethic of extra-Christian systems of philosophy and religion?
Now, all these are matters in regard to which, undoubtedly, scholar- ship has both its duties and its rights. But, primarily, they are prob- lems not so much for the scholar as for the preacher, the missionary, the evangelist. They are not to be worked out like a schoolboy's sum on a slate; they must be worked out, and the answer must be got, in the life. of the Church and the manifold activities of the mission field. The student of comparative religion may demonstrate with his parallel columns the immeasurable superiority of Christianity to every other form of religion which the world has ever known; he may argue from the contents of the revelation its perfect adaptability to every class and condition of men. But again I say, you can not prove Christianity; Christianity must prove itself; the final demonstration must be given in the facts of life and the experience of the world. As Henry Drummond used to say, the evidence for Christianity is not the" Evidences"; the evidence for Christianity is a Christian.
And even in face of present-day controversies concerning our Scriptures, controversies in which sometimes the knife seems to be pointed at the Church's very heart, our duty remains unchanged. It is not for us to stand idly by, waiting till scholarship shall give us back our Bible from the fires of criticism through which it is being passed. We have our work to do, and the unsolved problems of the study must lay upon us no arrest. The truth of truths for the Church, in days like these, is the se1£- evidencing power of its message. Let us not be overanxious for the safety of the ark of God. The Bible needs no propping by our fearful hands; it stands in its own unaided strength.
I have heard of a scientist who invented, several years ago, some new kind of light. Then, to protect it from the wind and the storm-which was one chief source of concern to him-he had put around it a guard of exceptional strength. But one night the fierceness of the tempest shattered the guard and left the light without defense. And the light went out? No; to the experimenter's astonishment, it still burnt on, with clear and steady radiance, as tho all the winds of heaven were asleep. I think some of us have had an experience like that. We were very fearful for our Scriptures, and we fenced them round with Watson's "Institutes," or Paley's" Evidences," or Butler's" Analogy." But the .weather has begun to tell badly on some of our defenses. Nobody reads Watson now. I have heard even a Fernley Lecturer speak slightingly of Paley; and the great Butler himself, some of his critics think, is getting leaky in places. Well, but the Bible is not at the mercy of our defenses; it shines by its own quenchless light; and what the hand of God has kindled the breath of wan shall not put out. 616 THE MISSIONARY REVIEW OF THE WORLD It is in that faith that now, during a whole century, our great British and Foreign Bible Society has done its noble work. What an inspiration, and what a lesson, to remember that the years of its most abounding activities have coincided almost exactly with the years through which the modern Critical Movement has been making headway among us! Pronouncing no judgment upon that movement, resolutely adhering to its "sole object "-" to encourage the wider circulation of the Holy Scriptures, without note or comment "-it has now been th(l means of circulating nearly 170,000,000 copies of Scripture, in languages spoken by seven-tenths of the population of the world. The greatest of all missionary organizations, it has, literally, gone out into all the world and preached the Gospel to the whole creation. It has placed in men's hands the Word of God, trusting the secret spiritual energy that is in it, confiJent that it would establish its own empire over men's hearts and lives. And for every Church that bears the name of Christ this is still the supreme task. "The Kingdom of Heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened." It is for u.s to bring the leaven to the meal..
A REMARKABLE CRISIS IN SOUTH AFRICA * BY L. HOFMEYR President Students' Christian Association of South Africa One of the most remarkable events in the history of the Christian Church is to be witnessed in South Africa at the present time. As one of the fruits of the unfortunate war, which for two years and eight months has raged in South Africa, there are about two hundred young men who have offered themselves to be trained as missionaries for the foreign field. In addition to these, there are about fifty young women who have also volunteered their services. And this is not all, for the names of young men and women are still coming in as candidates for entrance to missionary training-classes. Student Volunteer cards are in great demand, and the numbers in our Student Volunteer Movement are still growing.
As another instance of this most remarkable revival of missionary activity, there is the fact that the circulation of De Koningsbode, the missionary organ of the Dutch Reformed Church in South Afric~, has within a few months increased its circulation from two thousand to over six thousand copies.
Money is being given for missions as never before. Many Christians, who for years have opposed missions, have now confessed their sinful neglect, and are doing all in their power to make good the opportunities that have been lost.
Let it not be thought, however, that the Dutch Reformed Church is now for the first time realizing its responsibility toward the heathen. It has been persistently stated that the Boers hate missionaries and oppose mission work in every form; and, unfortunately, events have happened in history, such as the burning of Livingstone's house, which give color to this statement, and even support it to a certain extent.
• Condensed from The Intercollegian;
MISSIONARY WORK IN THE FROZEN NORTH
Let us take a brief retrospect over what the Reformed Dutch Church has done for missions since 1850. Its mission work is divided into two parts: Buitenlandsch (Foreign), and Binnenlandsch (Home) Mission Work. By the "Foreign" we understand work done outside of or on the borders of civilized South Africa. The foreign mission work of this Church includes mission stations in Banjailand (Rhodesia), Zoutpansberg, Mochuli, Sauls Pood, Waterberg, Mabieskraal, and Wakkerstroom. These last-named places are all on or near the borders of the Transvaal. A very flourishing work is also done in Nyassaland, British Central Africa. There at Mvera, in Central Angoniland, the first station was founded in 1889, by the Rev. A. C. Murray. There are now five head stations and twenty-five white missionaries of th) Dutch Reformed Church. There are between eighty and ninety outstations, and the baptized Christians count over foul' hundred. Sixty trained evangelists assist the missionaries in carrying the Gospel to their own people. This year an evangelists' training-school was opened, in which eighty young men are in training as evangelists. Schools are established at aU the stations and outstations, and the average attendance is over six thousand.
Summing up, we find that there are about sixtyomissionaries laboring under the foreign department of the Dutch Reformed. Church.
By the" Home" department we uuderstand work done among the Kafirs, Hottentots, and other native races of South Africa. In almost every district where there is a white congregation of this Church there is also a congregation for these natives, established and maintained by the Dutch Reformed Church. In this " Home" department we find a membership of 8,771, while 36,090 souls are brought into contact with the Gospel.
God has great things in store for a land and Church where such a love for missions is to be wituessed. The large number of young people offering themselves for the mission field has almost perplexed us. When we think of our churches in the late republic burned down, our cougregations scattered and ruined, and many of our best church-members deceased or impoverished, we tremble lest, in this critical time, we, as a Church, should he found wanting. Again God has heard our prayers, and to meet the requirements of these volunteers the money is coming in well from the members of our Church. At Worcester, in the Cape Colony, a fine propnty of forty apartments and twenty acres of ground ha!; been purchased for £10,000, and in February, 1903, a new traininginstitution for these young men is to be opened there. Over £3,000 has been promised annually for the support of the young men at this institution. In one congregation £1,800 was subscribed within three days for the purchase of the property. The Rev. A. F. Louw, who for nearly two years has been chaplain to the Boer prisoners at St. Helena, has been appointed at the head of this institution.
Such a love for missions is all the more remarkable when we bear in mind the fact that the Kafirs have, in many cases, murdered parties of Boers most brutally during this war. These brutalities exist not only "on paper," but are unhappily the most awful realities. For instance, in the district of Vryheid, in the Transvaal, fifty-six Boers were on@ evening surrounded treacherously and murdered with assegais. They were so mutilated that their friends could scarcely, recognize any of them on the following day. The least number of assegai stabs that anyone had was twenty-five. This band included pious office-bearers of the local
Dutch Reformed Church. Matters are made worse when we bear in mind that in that very district, containing some thirty thousand Kafirs, the Dutch Reformed Church has for many years carried on mission work. On the borders of Swaziland another band of sixty Boers was murdered by the Kafirs. In addition to this there are many other instances of the murder of single Boers.
Most of the young men who have volunteered for the mission field were fully aware of these terrible facts when they offered their services. Such consecration and devotion to the Master's service as constrained them to offer to go and preach the Gospel to the murderers of their fathers, brothers, and friends is indeed one of the most glorious triumphs of the Gospel in our time. The Master's command to "Love your enemies and bless them which persecute you," has been realized in some of these lives. To what causes do we ascribe this great revival of missionary interest? First and foremost it is a gift of God, totally undeserved and almost too great for the recipient. God is, as it were, giving us this as a compensation for all the suffering which our Ohurch has endured during the past three years. For three long years we sat with the black cloud of war over u~ and cried unto God, "To what purpose, 0 God?" And now, with a glorious burst of light, the Son of Righteousness is revealing to us His great plan with us as a Church and people. Another answer is that this is God's way of sanctifying to us as a people the fearful sufferings of the past three years. Prayer flowed unceasingly to the Throne of Grace that this affliction might humble us and bring us back to the God of our fathers, and not pass away from us until God had fulfilled His divine purpose with us. God is answering even above our expectation, for also among our students and scholars there is a wave of revival passing through the land, and during the past two months many have found and confessed Christ for the first time.
Indirectly, the Concentration Camps have played a very prominent part in this revival. There in those camps thousands of people were brought together with the opportunity of meeting daily for service or prayer-meeting under the leading of deeply spiritual and devoted ministers. For many this was an education in itself. They learned more of God's word and more about missions; but of far greater importance than this is the fact that for many this meant a deepening of their spiritual life, and with that deepening a renewed consecration to Him and to the extension of His kingdom. In many of these camps there were revivals of large proportions, where thousands of precious souls found Jesus Christ for the first time. As is well known, missionary consecration depends on the spiritual life, and therefore it is only natural that many should hear the Master's call to the foreign field now for the firlilt time.
We ask the prayers of Christians in other lands for our Church and for these mission candidates, that God Himself may fit them and in His own good time send them out to reap fields that are white to the harvest.
EDITORIALS
EDITORIALS Belgians and the Kongo dition of things, on the ground that the Kongo State is independent. Rev. William Morrison, of Lex- As a matter of fact, however, it is ington, Va., has undertaken a governed from Brussels, and the crusade against the Kongo horrors. king is largely to blame for the He is a member of the American prevailing evils. Presbyterian Mission, and after six years of work at Luebo, on the Wherahiko Rawei Kassai River, about 1,200 miles in the interior of the Kongo State, The editors of this REVIEW feel. from personal observation reluc- compelled at least to suspend judgtantly confirms all the accounts of ment as to the advisability of furthe outrages reported under the ther aid to or cooperation with administration of that miscalled Wherahiko Rawei, who has been "Free State." receiving no little encouragement and pecuniary help in his so-called Mr. Morrison declares that the mission llmong the Maoris of New forced labor exacted by the rubber Zealand, and partly through the monopoly is a virtual slavery, which indirect approval of hi!> work by depopulates villages and drives the this REVIEW. We have received a inhabitants into the forest to escape number of letters from very intellitheir oppressors. The State offi- gent, responsible, and trustworthy cials will not redress these griev- Christians in New Zealand and ances, nor abolish these abuses; elsewhere, whose names we have but through the London press Mr. not yet explicit permission to an- Morrison aroused public attention, nounce, but who have written and the matter was brought up in under no cover of secrecy. In the House of Commons, and a reso- these letters Mr. Rawei is severely lution offered and adopted, declar- criticized as to both the accuracy ing that "the government of the and veracity of his statements, and, Kongo State, having at its incep- in fact, as to his general trustwortion guaranteed to the powers that thiness. the natives should be governed humanely, and that no trading After further sources of informonopoly or privilege should be mation are available, we expect permitted, the House requests the to put before the public a fuller government to confer with the statement of the facts, whatever other signatories of the Berlin they may be; but at present we General Act, in virtue of which feel that at least we are in duty the Kongo State exists, in order bound to caution all parties not that measures may be adopted to to put undue confidence in the abate the prevalent evils." genuineness of Mr. Rawei's mission work. It has been stated that he Mr. Morrison has appealed to is not himself a native Maori, and the American and British ministers that he can show no proper account at Brussels, and the State Depart- of money committed to him for the ment at Washington. The hopes education of Maori children, etc. crea::d by the Kongo Free State He is, we fear, another "free- Conference eighteen years ago lance," irresponsible to any board have been wofully disappointed. of control, and expending money The Belgium government is now at the least very unwisely. waste. endeavoring to disclaim all re- fully. and selfishly. sponsibility for the present con-
The National Drink Dill ment. This law forbids selling or giving opium for use" as a narcot- The national drink bill of the ic" (?) to anybody save a full- United States has nearly doubled blooded Chinaman of full age, and in twenty-two years. The total confines the sales to these to an amount paid for stimulants, as bev- "OpiUIll concessionary" and his erages, in 1002 was $1,370,000,000, "opium dealers," who huy the an advance of $130,000,000 over the monopoly once in three years at average of five years previous. The auction. Druggists, however, may above estimate includes coffee and import direct and sell to anybody tea, as well as distilled and fer- on a physician's prescription, ( ?) of mented liquors. But the showing which sales they are required to is significant and, in our view, keep no record by names. Punish- alarming. ment is fine or imprisonment, with no minimum penalty, so that it A rrominent New York daily may be nominal if public sentiment says: or other influences dispose the judge to leniency. The revenue, Moralists will see in these figures a warn- by way of sweetening the poison, ing against the rapid pace which our people is devoted to education of Filipinos. are setting in business and other affairs The Clerical Union of Manila, in an which induces the use of stimulants, and if $80 cablegram to the Reform Bu- they will compare the statistics of 1901, when reau, through which they appeal to the per capita consumption of alcoholic bev- the American people and the Preserages was 17.9(), with that of 1902, when it ident to defeat the bill, declare it was 19.48 gallons, there will be some force in " would increase consumption," and their argument that the drink bill of the na· is at once "bad rnorals and worse tion Is excessively high. There may be some polit'ics." The bureau has urged little satisfaction to them, however, in the that instead of dealing with the fact that the consumption of spirits was not opium from the "revenue" standso great in 1902 as it was in 1892. The in- point, as Great Britain has done, crease in the past ten years has largely been to its own ~reat dishonor, we should in wine and in beer. It is one of the interest- adopt the Japanese law, which the ing phases of human nature, as shown by world applauds as right and wise, official figures, that panic years, such as prohibiting not only the sale but 1893. saw a much larger consumptian of also the importation. spirits than did years of prosperity. Good In the United States also opium times, when labor is employed and money is needs attention, and here Congress in abundance, stimulates act.ivity in the wine must act. The Bureau of Statisand beer trade, while the consumption of tics shows an increased expenditure spirits mounts high apparently in years of for opium from a quarter of a mildissatisfaction and distress. lion in 1800 to more than a million in 1900. The President has been War on the Opium Traffic asked to bring this alarming in- crease to the attention of the next The use of opium is even more Congress, with a recommendation harmful than the use of alcohol. of legislation like that of Japan so It is, if possible, a more body-and- far as possible. soul destroying poison. No friend Henewed attention is also called, of God or man could fail to work ~hile the opium question is up, to for the putting down of this habit the petition of American missionat home and abroad. Hecently it ary societies, asking that our govhas become a vital subject to Ameri- ernment will initiate diplomatic cans in the Philippines. The International Reform Bureau has brought the opium question in three aspects before the 'Val' Department. The opium monopoly bill was to come up for final passa.ge in the Philippine civil govern-
19031 EDITORIALS
effol't~ to release China from treaty 2. The right and duty of private jUllgment obligation to tolerate the blighting in the interpretation of the Holy Scriptures. opium traffic. 8. The Unity of the Godhead, and the 'rrin- The bureau proposes a world- ity of Persons therein. wide warfare on the opium traffic, in the hope that it can be buried 4. The utter depravity of human nature in b<lside the slave-traffic in the limbo eonsequence of the fan of crimes against civilizatioll. 5. The incarnation of the Son of God, His Ideas from John Wesley work of atonement for sinners of mankind, and His mediatorJal intercession and reign. John 1Vesley, at 24, wrote: "Leis- • 6. The justification of the sinner by faith ure and I have taken leave of each alone. other. I propose to be busy as long as I live if my health is so long in- 7. The work of the Holy Spirit in the con dulged me." Three years later he version and sanctification of the sinner. added: "There are many truths it is not worth while to know. I look 8. The immortality of the soul, the resurupon all the world as my parish; rection of the body, the judgment of the therefore I mean that, in whatever world by our Lord Jesus Christ, with the part of it I am, I judge it meet, eternal blessedness of the righteous, and the right, and my bounden duty to de- eternal punishment of the wickert. clare unto all that are willing to hear the glad tidings of salvation. 9. The Divine institution of a Christian ministry, and the brotherhood of all true he- Be sure to make accommoda- Iievers in Christ. tion for the poor. They are God's building materials in the erecting A Converted Rabbi Gone of His Church. The rich make good scaffolding but bad materials•… Rev. John Moses Eppstein, an The best of all is, God is with us." account of whose conversion ap- An Evangelization Society pears in this number, died in Bris· The annual report of the Evangelization Society of London, Eng- tol, England, in April. For 46 land, is published, and shows grand years he was a missionary of the work done on old Gospel lines. London Jews Society, and at the The Evangelists number 264. time of his death was superin- They preach the Gospel simply, heartily and. as results show, ef- tendent of the Wanderers' Home fectively. A total of 1,212 places at Bristol, England. The Jewish have been snpplied with preaching Missionary Intelligence says of during the year, including 50 summer tents; the money received him: from all sources, £12,011; total meetings, 21,000;' estimated at· The society never had a more tendances, about 2,000,000; average sincere convert, or a more earnest, cost of a meeting, about 11s. ($2.75). able, and gifted missionary than This seems to us a very good show' our brother who has recently ing for a year's work. It is refresh· passed away. His spiritual chiling to see how this society keeps dren are to be found in every quarclose to the old Gospel. Here is its ter of the globe, he having baptized basis: as many as 262 converts during his career as a missionary in both East 1. The Divine inspiration, authority, and and West. During the last few sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures. months of weariness and suffering, Mr. Eppstein still gave attention to the work of the mission, and superintended a wonderful corre- spondence with rabbis in Russia. He was kept in perfect peace, and stated to the writer, who visited him shortly before his death, that he was the happiest man in the world 1 Mr. Eppstein was known to the editor personally. He nearly for- feited his life when he became a follower of Christ. One of his near relatives attempted his assassina- tion, and followed him for that
purpose, but was induced to exam- 1871 before the Baptist Missionary ine into the claims of Christ, and Society in London, we republished, himself became a disciple. with modifications by its distin- guished author, in the July num- Rev. Joseph Angus ber of this REVIEW, 1892. Our readers will do well to peruse it Another one of the band of pro- again. found and reverend scholars to whom we owe the Revised Version Result of the Haystack Meeting of the New Testament is broken by the recent death of the Rev. Joseph In America how remarkable the Angus, D.D., of London, at the ripe stride since that Haystack meeting age of eighty-six. He had been for ill 1806, when Samuel J. Mills pronearly forty years Principal of Re- posed to his three fellows that they gent's Park College, which owes should undertake to send the Gosmuch of its great prosperity to his pel to the heathen. Two years zealous labors, and was the presi- after he and others drew up the dent of the Baptist Union so long constitution of a society that was ago as 1865. He was also one of "to effect in the person of its memthe first elected members of the bers a mission to the heathen." London School Board in 1870. Born But so unpopular was the project at Bolam, near Morpeth, in 1816, that it was drawn up in cypher, so Dr. Angus was educated at King's that no one who accidentally saw College, London, and Edinburgh it could find in it food for satire. University. The Baptist denomi- What a beginning for the work of nation loses in him a great teacher, missions in the new republic beand English non-conformity one of neath the sunset! And now behold the most valiant of its members. the churches of America, all moving in line of battle with thousands But not least among all his of missionaries, and in every land! claims to the perpetual gratitude of the Church of God is found in A Helpful Autobiography his lifelong advocacy of foreign missions. It will be remembered The autobiography of Charles G. that he was, so far as we know, Finney should have a large number the first to suggest that the world of readers. MI'. Finney's ruling might be evangelized within one passion was the winning of souls, generation. He suggested a prac- and the publishers feel that vast ticable plan-that the Church good might be accomplished by should send out one in every hun- awakening a new interest in this dred of her membership, and that book among Christians. One lady by the tithe systern sufficient money has undertaken to gather funds to would be furnished to support this send copies to students in the great band of workers, and that by graduating classes of the theologidistricting off the unevangelized cal seminaries for years back, and population and by a proper distribu- over 15,000 have been thus sent altion of laborers, every soul on earth ready. We have long felt the might easily hear the Gospel, before power of this book, which has few forty years-the average life of a equals in its line, and would gladly generation-had passed. His mem- send out a million copies. We orable sermon on "Apostolic Mis- wish every missionary could read sions; or, the Gospel for Every it. (A. S. Barnes & Co., New York. Creature," originally delivered in $1.25.)
BOOKS FOR THE MISSIONARY LIBRARY
BOOKS FOR THE MISSIONARY LIBRARY WILLIAM BUTLER, THE FOUNDER OF Two MIS- will be inspired by the worth of SIONS OF THE MErHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH. By His Daughter. With an In- his achievements. The story troduction hy Bishop C. C. McCabe. 12mo, 230 pp. $1.00, net. Eaton & Mains, New abounds in the rpmance of Divine York; JenniDgs & Pye, CiDcinatti. providence. ** Rev. William Butler, D.D., ac- THE PROGRAMME OF THE JESUITS. By W. complished what rarely comes to Blair Neatby. Hodder & Stoughton, one man-the distinguished honor London. 1903.
of being the founder of two impor- It is easy to deal in adjectives, tant missions: that of the Method- and call any book "remarkable."- ist Episcopal Church in India, and But within these 200 pages we have of the one in Mexico. The greater found packed a fulness and variety work, by far, was that of starting of information on. the subject the work of his Church in India, treated which it will be hard to under the wise direction of the find anywhere else within the same greatest missionary secretary of space. "The Jesuits," by Grie- Methodism, John P. Durbin, D.D., singer, is a great book, but it takes and of the inimitable Alexander probably nearly twenty times the Duff, D.D., then at the head of space Mr. Neatby uses to tell us Free Church College at Calcutta. essentially the same story. Every In many respects Butler was the man who means to be qualified peer of either of his counselors. In to meet present-day problems in starting the Mexican mission he practical life will need to study had the personal companionship Walsh's "Secret History of the and advice of the far-seeing and Oxford Movement," Robertson's brilliant genius, the late Bishop "Catholic Church in Italy," and Gilbert Haven. Butler built what this marvelously condensed and probably Haven could not have clear statement of the Jesuit done. He brought his long and va- program, and the amazing success ried experience as a pathfinder in with which it is being carried out.
India to the less complicated task LOMAI OF LENAKEL. By Frank H. L. Paton. in Mexico, and was a competent Illustrated. 8vo, 336 pp. $1.50, net. master of the situation from start Fleming H. Revell Co. 1903.
to finish in "founding" the mis- The life storyof Lenakel is one of sion. The outline of the story in exceeding interest, but we regret to each case has been given by the say is very much handicapped by loving hand of his daughter, who being too long drawn out. The became familiar from infancy with book gives an excellent idea of the the great work her father accom- life of the missionaries in the New plished in India, and who accom- Hebrides, and of the character and panied him when he came to the conditions, the trials and triumphs, lesser but mtensely interesting and of their pioneer work on Tanna; important work in Mexico. She but the author and editor have ad- was well furnished to seize and mitted too much that is not of sketch the salient points of her general interest. Few except the father's character and deeds, and author and his family care for a she has done her work well in this detailed account of each storm he biographical sketch of him. In the encountered at sea, or for little halo which surrounds missionary personal family matters and details heroes, as the years go on, William of every-day life that have found a Butler will stand out as among the place in the story of this native foremost, and other generations Christian hero. If the work were
condensed by one-half it would for Sunday-schools and young peomake an unusually fascinating mis- ples'libraries. No one will regret sionary book. As it is, there are the time spent in reading it. * sections which well repay one for reading the whole, which make ex- WINTER INDIA. By Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore. cellent passages for missionary Illustrated. 12mo, 400 pp. $2.00. The readings, and furnish material for Century Company, New York. 1903. sermons and addresses. Mrs. Scidmore has already writ- THE TURK AND HIS LOST PROVINCES. By ten hastily prepared books of travel William Eleroy Curtis. Illustrated. 8vo, on Japan. Java, and China. The 396 pp. $2.00, net. Fleming H. Revell Co. book has been, perhaps, justly criti- 1903. cized as without serious purpose or aim, written only for extension of This is an entertaining but unre- the entertainment which seems to have been the exuberant personal liable record by a newspaper man experience of the author in a rapid run, kodak in hand, to collect the who made a jouruey through Tur- materialfor this literary menu. But whoever reads this volume for enkey, Bulgaria, Servia, Bosnia, and tertainment ought to find that, and morp. The very involuted sentences Greece, as correspondent of the seem burdell':Jd with cyclopedic statements of facts, woven together Chicago Record-Herald. In the in strenuous sketches, with a snap- shot breathlessness, as if the author style of the newspaper reporter, were panting to tell everything all at once. he gives graphic descriptions of life She says she went to India to unin these lands as he saw it. The derstand Kipling and l'ead Kipling to understand India. We hope she information on political and finan- understands Kipling better than she does India. The constituency cial lines seems based on reliable she wrote for was that to which Kip- ling catered-chiefly colonial Engresources, but must be taken with lish folk. The items relating defi- nitely to missions are very few caution. The aim of the writer but not unfriendly. She realizes more than ever before, she says, appears to have been to tell all he "what an appalling task confronts the missionaries," and thinks that heard and saw, without sufficient generations of bigoted Hindus must pass before "any change can regard for the real facts. Twenty- be hoped for." She is sane enough to realize that a century of British nine full-page illustrations attract- rule must contend against twenty- five centuries of superstitious pracively help one to comprehend the tises; and she is, at least, optimist enough to recall that Gautama won situation. There is one chapter on these same people from their idola- try and caste creed through eight Robert College and one on the hundred years, which, if not analy- tically correct, shows that she, Miss Stone incident. It is timely after all, does not despair of the in view of the present disturbances Christianization of India. * * in Macedonia and Bulgaria and Servia, and we wish we could more heartily commend it. ** LIANG-FROM CHINA. By Mrs. A. C. Murdock. 16mo, 78 pp. 35c. Cumberland Presby· terian Publishing House, Nashville, Tenn. 1903.
This is one of the best short stories we have seen to give an idea of the life and character of a Chinese child widow. It is brief and interesting and informing. To our mind, the second portion, relating to the heroine's experiences in America, is not so good, and the whole would have been improved by continuing the story iu the first person. Some points in the plot seem improbable, but, as a whole, it makes an unusually good book
GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE
GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE AMERICA Tacoma, and Port Townsend, Interest in It is cheering to Washington. Missions note the increased During the year ending March Increasing space nowadays al- 31, 1903, the society has sent out lotted to missionary 319 loan libraries, of which 116 were matters by the religious press. As new, and 203 were refitted and rea notable example, a recent issue shipped. The whole number of of the Christian Work and Evan- new libraries sent out is 11,018, an«i gelist filled three entire pages with the reshipments of the same, 13,274, "News from the Missionary Field, making in the aggregate, 24,292. by Eugene R. Smith, late editor of The number of volumes in these lithe Gospel in All Lands." braries, 595,322, has been accessible by first shipment and reshipment Methodist It appears that of to 425;498 men. The number of li- Growth in the the net increase of braries placed on United States Foreign Field the Methodist Epis- naval vessels and in United States hospitals up to date is 1,073, con- copal Church in full taining 39,209 volumes, and these members and probationers; have been accessible to 127, 913 men. amounting to over 50,000, a full fourth, or 12,899, is found in heathen What the The total issues of lands. In Bombay Conference, Bible Society the American Bible more than 10 Christians added for Did Last Year Society for the year every day of 1902; in Northwest India Conference, nearly 8; in Ma- just closed, at home laysia, including the Philippines, and abroad, were 1,193,558, an inmore than 4; in Korea, the newest crease of 269,767 over those of last of foreign missions, 3. In aJI India year. Of these, 734,649 were disthe net increase was 25 every day. tributed in the United States, counting Porto Rico and Hawaii, Work for At the end of sev- but omitting the Philippine Islands. The issues in foreign lands amount Sailors enty-five years of to 1,258,909, or 221,873 increase over the previous year. Of these issues, service for sea-far- 993,454 were from the Bible House in New York, and 1,000,104 from ing men, the American Seamen's the society's agencies abroad, being printed on mission presses in China, Friend Society is able to report Japan, Siam, Syria, and Turkey. The total issues in eighty-seven that last year its chaplains and years amount to 72,670,783 copies.
missionaries have labored in Den- mark and Sweden; at Hamburg, Antwerp, Genoa, and Naples; in the Madeira Islands; at Bombay and Karachi, India; at Yokohama, Nagasaki, and Kobe, Japan; Val- A Splendid At a recent gather- paraiso, Chile; Buenos Ayres and Quaker Record ing in the First Rosario, Argentine Republic; Mon- Friends' Church, in tevideo, Uruguay; Manila, P. I.; Cleveland, to say farewell to 3 mis- in Gloucester, Mass., in New York sionaries ready to set forth for East City, Brooklyn Navy Yard, Nor- Africa to join others dispatched a folk, Hampton Roads, and Newport . year ago, it was stated that this News, Wilmington, Charleston, organization had sent 43 of its Savannah, Galveston, Mobile, Pen- . members to foreign lands in its sacola, New Orleans; in Astoria comparatively brief life, and the and Portland, Oregon; in Seattle, Friends' J3ible Institute, which is
connected with the church, had less than one-half the entire popusent 200 to the foreign field-to lation are of Protestant affiliation. Africa, India, China, Jamaica, South America, and the islands of The Protestant denominations of the sea. Chicago have only 8 per cent. of the population-160,000 in 2,000,000. What One :Madam "Vn, wife of Thirty-three per cent. of 600,000 Chinese Woman the Chinese minis- foreign-born population hav~ b~en but slightly touched by Protestant Learned in tel' recently recalled Christianity. America to China, went back with unbound feet. According to Rev. D. W. "'Tal_ dron, city missionary, in 1900 72.2 Her residence in this country so per cent. of the population of Bosconvinced her of the superiority of ton was of foreign parent,age. Mr. natural feet that she willingly en- Robert Woods, an authority on dured the pain necessary to regain social settlement work in Boston, their normal shape. The toes that says that the North End has ceased had been pressed back to the heels, to be English-speaking. It is Italand kept tightly bandaged all the ian and Russian. time, were gradually allowed to assum~ the natural position, u,ntil Our Jewish No less than 214,041 finally the bandages were removed Fellow Citizens Jews landed upon entirely, and she could walk with ease. She said, in speaking of her our shores between feet: 1899 and May 1 of this year, and more than 75,000 at the port of New My feet are quite big now. But York in the year preceding May 1, I do not care, for I am not in sym- 1903. According to conservative espathy with the little-foot practise timates, there are 1,250,000 Jews in in my country. It is unnatural, the United States, and according to and deprives a woman of so much Joseph Jacobs, the Jews of Greater that is beautiful and useful in life. New York number over 600,000, or 16.5 per cent. of the entire popula- She also said: tion, while in Manhattan Borough they number 500,000, or 27 per cent. There are many American cus- The number of Christian workers toms which I like and shall intro- among them is but 139, of whom duce in China. The Chinese women 58 are found in Greater New York. are eager to take their places in life along with the women of other Congrete illustrations of the nations, and I hope it will not be large Jewish element in the United long before they will be given a States may he found in the facts reasonable amount of freedom. that there were 2,000 Jewish sol- diers in th€ Spanish-American war; The Need of No phase of home there are 6 Yiddish theaters in City Missions missions is more the country; 72 Jewish periodicals are published, and gifts to Jewish important or more denominations last year amounted exigent than that connected with to more than $1,000,000. our great cities, with their rapid growth and the up-town movement The At a meeting held of the churches and the astounding influx of foreign population. Anglo-American in New York, Take these three cases as specimens. Three-fourths of the popu- Mission to the March 13, 1903, of lation of New York is foreign born or of foreign parentage; 2,200,000 Jews the American Misof the entire population of 4,000,000, or slightly over one-half, have no sion to the Jews, affiliation with any Christian body; it was voted to change the name of that organization to the Anglo-
GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE
American Board of Missions to the dence, R. I., heard the writer say Jews. William Cowper Conant in an address that for every $100 was elected secretary. The president is the Rev. David James Bur- gold we could build a church in rell, D.D. This mission has labored Mexico, and asked if the missionthrough its missionary, Herman ary meant "just what he said." Warszawiak, at 424 Grand Street, On being assured that he did, he since October 10, 1897, but this station was closed April 30, 1903, and forwarded the $100 to the mission since that time Mr. Warszawiak rooms, and in due time the money has started an independent mission came and a church also, worth, at 2 Suffolk Street, New York, under his own control and responsi- with land, not less than $1,200 bility. The Anglo-American Board Mexican currency. How is it done? do not wish to found another strug- First, the $100 gold produced about gling mission in New York, but . $250, Mexican currency, and the will endeavor to unite the friends of Israel to raise a fund to estab- land was donated by a venerable lish "a Hebrew Christian Insti- Mexican recently led" from darktute" for evangelistic and philanthropic work. ness to light." Then the small flock was called together, and the We do not endorse Mr. Warsza- matter presented to them by the wiak, but give the above statements from Salvation as a matter presiding elder. Under the enthuof record. siasm created by the two facts above stated, all the stone needed for foundations was brought to the lot by willing hands, the sun-dried brick were secured in the same way, and the rafters for the roof were brought from the forests without cost to us. The money given by Brother Shaw was somewhat aug- mented by small offerings from the members of the congregation and their fdends.
Alaska as a Rev. S. H. Young, Polyglot Saints Bishop Joyce, re- Mission Field Presbyterian mis- in c e n t 1y returned sionary in Alaska, writes in the Interior of the new South America from an episcopal openings in that region through the discovery of rich gold diggings, visitation to the and makes an earnest appeal for money wherewith to construct and " Neglected Oontinent," tells of a maintain both churches and hospitals, including supplies of cots, conference he attended in Rosario, bedding, sick-foods, and all equipments for 50 bed… He also names Argentina, at which" testimonies" one stalwart soul, Rev. Dr. Koonce, who set out in early February, were given in one service in these dragging his own sled, on a thirteen days' journey to Cheena, where he several languages-English, Spansecured lots for a church and hospital, built a cabin with his own ish, Italian, French, German, and hands, in which both could be temporarily housed, and secured a Flemish, while the Doxology was promise from the miners to erect a suitable hospital. sung in them all.
What '100 Did Says Rev. J. W. What a Hindu Not long since, in in Mexico Butler in World- Wide Missions: Coolie Did Missions Blatt, ap- During our last visit to the United in Surinam peared an article on States Mr. Edward Shaw, of Provi- the Dutch mission work among the coolies of Surinam.
The translation of this article says: In 1897 the Lord brought a man to our assistance who has been very faithful, and has been active and zealous in the work. Thisman was born in the neighborhood of Bareilly, North India, in 1843. He was converted in the Sundav-school of the Methodist minister' Butler, and was later sent to the seminary in Benares to be educated. In 1862 he was baptized, receiving the name
of the American president, Abra- number. No missionary society's ham Lincoln. In 1873 he came to request to print and publish a prop- Demerara as nurse on a coolie ves- erly authenticated version in a new tongue has ever been refused. sel, and became superintendent on The society has now 745 colpora plantation. From the very begin- teurs, who sold last year over 1,400,- 000 copies, and 620 Bible women. ning he was interested in his heath- If this society had not existed, many denominational versions en countrymen, taught them read- might have been issued. It has ing and writing, and preached the Gospel to them. On March 10, 1877. the baptism of the first of his converts was announced in a Demerara newspaper.
The" Methodist minister ButIer" brought together the best scholars mentioned was Dr. William But- and linguists in the different lan- ler, the founder of the Methodist guage areas, irrespective of sect or Episcopal missions in India.-In- country, and its versions are, there- dian Witness. fore, accepted and us')d by all the EUROPE missions of Protestant Christen- dom. Church Mis- The last annual re- sionary Society port of this society J. Hudson At the annual meet- to Date is full of interest, Taylor Retires ing of the China and these figures from the China Inland Mission in Inland Mission London a letter are full of cheer. The total receipts for the last year were £353,- was read from J. 163-the largest income of any year Hudson Taylor, stating that he was except those which benefited by the obliged to retire from the work on Centenary Fund. The income was account of his health. He says: £100,000 more than the income of With the concurrence of our 10 years ago. The society has now mission councils in China, America, 422 ordained and 149 lay missionaries, besides 375 wives and 382 and Australia, I have, after consulother women, making a total of 1,328 European representatives. tation with Mr. Howard and the There were also 378 native clergy home council, requested Mr. Haste and 7,673 native lay. teachers. The to altoget,her relieve me from the native Christian adherents numbered 301,096, and the native com- work of general director, and Mr. municants, 81,553. During the year Sloan has become assistant home there had been 21,298 baptisms. director. r feel very thankful to The Bible How indispensable God that, when r am no longer able Society's Work Bible societies are to bear the responsibility, He has for Missions to missions appears in these statements given great unanimity of feeling, and experienced help for the future relating to the .British and Foreign Bible Society, which has issued the carrying on of the work. r have Word entire or in portions ill 367 different languages. The· Church every reason to believe that all the Missionary Society use 90 of these various departments will be carried translations; the Society for the on prayerfully and wisely. If spared to see the autumn of the present year, r shall look back on fifty years since I sailed from Liver- pool to China, with grateful ac- knowledgment for all the way God has led me and for His sustain- ing and providing bounty, and be able to testify that in no good thing that He has ever led me from His Word to expect has He failed me.
Propagation of the Gospel, 60; the Barbican The fourteenth an· various Presbyterian missions, 60; Mission to niversary of this the London Missionary Society, 40; the Jews mission was held and Wesleyan missions, 40. The May 14th. The versions in Africa alone are 81 in president, Prebendary Webb-Pep.
GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE
loe, presided, and a large number the Zambesi is a sister of our late of prominent Hebrew-Christian secretary of the French Conference. and Gentile workers among the One of our minister's sons is now Jews were present. The secretary, preparing for the mission field, Prediger C. T. Lipshytz, was able presumably the Kongo, while a to report progress in every depart- Breton, converted in the Channel ment of the work. The Convert's Islands, labored as Methodist min- Home has been' removed from ister for some years among the Walthamstow to Mitcham, and 44 French Canadians." inquirers and converts have re- ceived hospitality during the year. German Mis- There are 18 Prot- The staff of workers has been in- sions in German estant and 12 Ro- creased, an additional lady worker having been engaged for work Protectorates man Catholic socie- among women and children. The ties at work in the total income of 1902 was about $9,400, 8 converts were baptized German protectorates, most of immediately before the annual which have their domicil in Ger- meeting, 5 men and 3 children, many. The above 30 societies supwhose .father had been baptized port 429 ordained European mis- some years ago. sionaries, 225 lay brothers, and 182 sisters. Wives of missionaries are French Protestants and MiS5ions.- not included in these figures. The record of the Evangelical Mis- The financial contributions made sionary Society of Paris, which is through missions to the protectorthe societyof Protestants inFrance, ates can not be given with accuduring the last decade is very com- racy, because the expenditure can mendable. In all France there are not always be exactly apportioned; about 600,000 Protestants, and dur- but so far as can be ascertained, it ing the past ten years their foreign amounts to 4,000,000 marks yearly missionaries have increased from (£200,000), apart from what is spent 37 to 97, and their annual income upon the training of missionaries from $65,000 to $225,000. and upon home administration. The protectorates contain 1,278 Missionary Zeal lVork and Workers mission schools (900 Protestant and of French (English Wesleyan) 3i8 Roman Catholic), with 47,600 Methodists says:" rt is inter- scholars in all gradations of prog- esting and gratify- ress, among which the manual in- struction classes of the Basel Soing to note the extent to which our ciety deserve special mention. French Church is missionary. Besides maintaining its own mission Hopeful Signs The following signs among the Kab;vles (the aboriginal in Italian are given by D. race of North Africa), our little Missions G. Whittinghill, of French Methodist work has fur- the Southern Bap: nished workers for various parts of the mission field. Within the last tist Mission, as promises of success few years it has given a minister in mission work in Italy: to Haiti, another to Dahomey, another to the Loyalty Islands in 1. A growing spirit of liberality the South Seas. The Rev. T. H. and religious toleration seems to Groves, at present laboring at Bula- characterize the people of Italy. wayo, was brought out at Bologne- Education is becoming more unisur-Mer by the Rev. J. Gaskin, versal every day, newspapers are while one of the lady workers in more largely circulated, ·the spirit of inquiry is more evident. Men a,nd women come to our Protestant churches and listen with respectful
attention. They read our Bibles In addition to these, there are 3 and religious literature, and in other .ways show signs of friendli- theological schools, several weekly ness to the Gospel. and monthly nEwspapers, 2 pub- 2. The present hostile attitude of the Catholic hierarchy toward the lishing houses, tract societies, and government. This has driven many of the best and more patriotic citi- a number of private enterprises, zens to a point where the Church fails to influence them. This pre- all of which are being used of God carious state of affairs is advan- tageous to Protestants who are for the evangelization of Italy. loyal to the government and have no political designs to foster, Italy and The Mate Murri, an but are seeking only, with God's help, the salvation of the people. Romanism Italian priest, re- _ 3. The Roman Church, with the approval of the pope, has reeently cently delivered put into circulation an Italian translation of Acts, John, and at San Marino, that most ancient other parts of the New Testament for the use of the people. There European home of liberty, before are millions of Catholics who know practically nothing of the Bible, an audience of Christian Demoand this translation, tho faulty and fragmentary, will be the means of crats, a profoundly interesting enlightening many in reference to the work of Ohrist. Already more and important discourse on than 200,000 copies have been put into circulation. Christianity and Liberty. In the 4. An article, emanating from course of it he speaks also of the the Vatican, has recently appeared in several of our daily papers, call- necessity of recovering for Italy a ing attention to the rapid progress of Protestantism in Italy, and clearer apprehension of the Gospel. especially in Rome. As a consequence, a committee, consisting of He says (translated into French in 5 cardinals, has been appointed by the pope to consider our work, and the Revue Chl'etienne): to see what could be done to destr(lY or hinder mission work in Heirs of eighteen centuries of Italy. On the contrary, this pro- history, we demand for Catholicism posed inquiry will rather work for and for the Church a great deliverthe furtherance of the Gospel, for ance. These Divine things, the it will not only recognize Protes- Gospel and the society of believers, tantism as a religious force, but it have, however, not been able with will bring our work to the notice impunity to traverse so long It and consideration of the public. course of development and of human activities III the midst of 5. Another hopeful sign is the which they found themselves. Alwork being done daily by the 6 de- ways the same in themselves, givnominations and the British and ers of liberty, generous for who- Foreign Bible Society in preaching ever approached them and tasted and dh~tributing the Word of God. their Divine substance, they suffer in us, in our changing human insti- tutions and habitudes; in all that which we have added to them and in that which we have in part sub- stituted for them and afterward venerated and adored as if this made a part of them: semi-pagan customs revarnished; periodical conceptions of Roman law; philo- sophical and theological ideas elaborated in our schools; monastic institutions fatally degenerated with time, and incapable of renew- ing their youth; political systems, views, sympathies; human advan- tages and priveleges which are dear to us, and which it is hard for us to renounce; antiquated deposits, encumbered with old systems and old social elaborations; outward observances, good and important only when animated by a spirit of truth and of goodness; illusions which covered things unknown with the wing of the supernatural
1903J GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE
abstract categorie!j, which kill, like the more direct preaching of the the letter of the law, a baggage of Gospel. Many of the influential innumerable superfluities. Persians in the town, from the gov- ernor down, profess sympathy with Let us return to the GOSPfill. Let the work done at the hospital, and us-·oh, let usI-set free Christian- in some cases practically help to ity, almost concealed and covered support it. Thus the barrier of overi n the life of our people; let us prejudice is broken down and an restore it to itself and to us the Di- excellent opportunity given for vine beauty of its features, in the making known the message of salwarmth of its pure and spiritual vation. The Persians, for the most flame. How deeply men and we part, appreciate fully the benefits ourselves would be astonished in of Western medical science, but recognizing it such, as it has ap- they are often prevented, by their peared to us in the purest and most native customs and the restrictions happy moments of our inward life, imposed upon them by their religand with what new' energy should ion from taking advantage of it. we not learn to love it arid apply Pl1tients often seek the advice of it! the medical missionary, and they are told what to do, and perhaps We need hardly say that the medicine is given them to take; but when they get home they proceed pope has solemnly raised his voice to 'tell their beads.' If the beads come out a certain way the treatagainst the whole of this admirable ment prescribed is carried out; if not, they throw out the medicine discourse, and against all the ten- and consult one of their own native hakims, or perhaps they will wait dencies of its author. a few days and 'tell their beads' again. I remember one man who Jewish Converts According to sta- promised to come to the hospital in Hungal')" tistics published on a certain day to have an opera- by the Hungarian tion performed on his eye. Prepar- ations were made, but the patient government, 2,158 Jews separated did not turn up; the beads had themselves from the Jewish com- not come out right. The same munities in Hungary during the thing happened a second time. But last six years. Of these, 1,430joined he tried them again, and the third the Roman Catholic Church, 77 the time they came out right, and he Greek Catholic, 35 the Greek Ortho- allowed the treatment to be carried dox, 188 the Evangelical Lutheran, out. "-Mercy and Truth. 417 the Evangelical Reformed, and 11 the Unitarian. During the same The Plague Bubonic plague has six years 363 Roman Catholics be- in India been steadily ad· came Jews. Altho it does not ap- vancing all winter pear from the report wheiher these .were in part such as had left the and spring, and is now at its high- Jewish faith and later reunited, est point, altho, on the whole, not none familiar with the so-called quite so virulent as last year. Acconversions of European Jews to cording to the lastest report more Roman or Greek Catholicism can than 550 were dying every day in doubt that probably the majority the Gujranwala district, and perwere backsliders. haps half as many in the Sialkot ASIA district. But, strange to say, cities Medical Missions Dr. Day, a C. M. S.
in Persia m iss ion a l' y in Yezd, in a letter written shortly before he was com- pelled through ill health to return home, said: "The work in Y ezd is a striking illustratmn of the medi- cal mission preparing the way for
in the Punjab are this year com- Again, Missions Dr. Josiah Oldfield, paratively free. It is publishad a "Failure" of the Royal Col- that there were, in 1897, 56,000 re- lege of Surgeons, corded deaths from plague in India; has been on a jaunt to India, and in 1898, 118,000; in 1899, 135,000; while there held "friendly inter- in 1900, 193,000; in 1901, 274,000; course with not a few persons of in 1902, 577,000; and during the high caste," "was at home in their first three months of 1903, 331,000. houses anywhere," and "lived al- Industrial The In d u s t l' i a I most as a Brahman lives." From Missionaries Evangelical Mis – these witnesses he learned that Wanted sion of Northern "thl') influence of Christianity is Jndia calls for 6 lay nil" in that land. This is how the missionaries to conduct industrial evangelists conie short and trans- departments for working leather, gress: tanning, printing, dairy, canning, We always bathe before we eat; your missionaries do not consider and glass. Consecrated Christian it essential. We always change our clothes and put on a clean garexpert workmen are asked for, and ment to eat in; your missionaries donot mind sitting down to dinner those interested may write to Rev. in the clothes in which thev have walked the streets. We ailow no J. C. Lawson, care of The Chris- dead body to touch our hands; your missionaries do not scruple to put tian Herald, Bible House, New them within their lips, and your missionaries are corrupting our York. This is a very important young men by trying to teach that the spirit of humaneness is unimline of missionary work, and if portant, that the sanctity of life is a chimera, and that animals may rightly conducted will .be a most be slaughtered and eaten, wholly regardless of their sufferings, so efficient means of establishing the long only as the appetite of man is pampered. Your St. Paul said that Kingdom of God in India. he would not eat flesh or drink wine if thereby he made his brothel' to Women's Dress In her "Mosaics offend; but your missionaries have a lower standard, and altho they in India from India" Mrs. know that thereby they offend our religiuus sense, they go on killing Margaret B. Den- and eating and drinking things which revolt to our ideas of right ning gives a description of the Bom- and wrong.
bay Sorosis Club: Another Blow In May last a Ma- The Hindu women were attired at Caste hal', by name Govin a tasteful and costly manner, but their garments were of sobel' in d y a Mokindya, hues. Their head-ornaments of gold were massive and beautiful, was charged with having corrupted the hail' being drawn smoothly back into a knot and fastened by the water of a public spring in these gold medalions. The Mohammedans wore rich costumes Jamkhed, near Ahmednagar. The and fine ornaments, and were distinguished by embroidered turbans; stream was used by high-caste peobut the brilliancy and light of the company came from the soft and ple for drinking purposes, and the shimmering silks of the Parsee ladies-white, rich red, peach, pink, offense of the Mahar consisted in blue, pale yellows, and lovely tints of light green blending and ming- having drawn water from it, altho ling in kaleidoscopic fashion. These graceful garments were trimmed for this he used an iron bucket, with gold and silver braid, rich lace, and bands of embroidered rib- which is a clean vessel. The bon. The necklaces, bracelets, and, in the case of the Hindus, the nose- second-class magistrate, Mr. Bapu jewels and anklets, made a soft tinkling noise as their owners Hari Godpole, convicted the Mahar, moved about. It was an Arabian Nights scene. and fined him 8 rupees. But Mr.
GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE
R. A. Lamb, the district magistrate til a rear attack is made ufon that of Ahmednagar, thought the con- in which the whole socia system viction unjustifiable, as the water of the spring was in no way ren- of the country is imbedded-the dered unclean or impure for drink- zenana.-London Christian. ing purposes, and he referred the matter to the Bombay High Court. Good Doctrine Mr. Mackenzie, of On Julyl 7th the High Court quashed the conviction and sentence, and from a Hakkaland, heard directed the fine to be repaid. Christian from a Hakka licen- Chinaman tiate, who is now under call to the Singapore Chinese church, an in- The Hindu There are abo u t teresting application of a New Tes- Idea of 5,500,000 men in In- tament counsel of perfection-St.
Sanctity dia who have given Paul's Christian ideal, "full-grown"
up all earthly em- manhood. After speaking of what ployment, who live apart as ascet- that means for an individual ics, and spend their time in roaming Christian, he went on to tell what, around the country asreligiousmen- in his judgment, it demands of a dicants. These people are, in the church. No church, he said, was main, doubtless possessed of the progressing toward' manhood laudable ambition to be holy and to which was not steadily aiming at prepare themselves for union with self-support. He would refuse to Brahm. And yet, as a matter of call them "men," he told his Chi- fact, they are the most pestilential nese Christian hearers, 'until they in their morals of all the people of were maintaining their own pastor the land. Many of them, at the and their own Christian school'
same time, both regard themselves without foreign support.
and are regarded by their corelig- Gathering in A missionary in the Devils Honan relates the ionists as the acme of piety. strange doings he Nevertheless, they daily trample once witnessed as follows: "When we entered the yamen (magisunder foot every command of the trate's) gate, the yard was full of men dressed up in masquerade cosdecalog. DR. J. P. JONES. tumes and strutting around on stilts. Some had false-faces on, Mission The Bishop of W 01'- others had their faces painted all sorts of colors. I was told these Women in cester has struck a men were going out for a lark; but they were not, they were hired to India true note in assert- dress and act this way to assist in the worship of Ch'eng Hwang, and ing the great im- they very soon left the yard to join the celebrations out on the streets. portance of women's work in the As I left the yamen gate again, who should I see but Ch'eng Hwang mission field. After commenting himself! Riding in a sedan-chair, with glass windows and brtilliant upon the striking change in public get-up, carried by eight horses, and he himself sitting bolt upright, opinion in i>egard to this develop- with eyes wide open, the figure of a man, a god made with hands I ment, he said at a recent meeting: And this is the 'thiug' which this It is now generally perceived that there can be nothing of more transcendental importance than the development of women's work. The whole possibility of the Christian religion taking hold of such a country as India depends on getting at the hearts of the women, and that depends upon women workers. . . . The progress of religion depends on what is going on in the hearts and minds of the women, and nowhere more so than in India; and the advance of Chris- tianity there will be very slow un-
proud city turns out to honor, Christians, get up every morning bringing their worship and their a half an hour earlier than reprayers, forming processions, beat- quired in order to have time for ing drums, and blowing horns, personal Bible study and prayer. escorting him outside the city gate This is a voluntary movement, and, to a certain temple whic4 he visits, it is felt that the boys are beginand there 'gathers in the devils,' ning to measnre their conduct by keeping them within bounds till Christian standards. Over 10 of the harvests are all gathered, when them have already applied for he will come out again and liberate baptism. them for the winter months, when the devils can do very little harm. A New A missionary, writ- When the sun sets the officials come out in all their finery to meet Chinese Name ing in Faithful Wit- Oh'eng Hwang and escort him back to his temple in the city, and there for Christians ness, says: "The he rests till he is carried out again." Chinese name for Christians in our dialect is Ki-Tok- tu; which means' aOhristdisciple'; but quite a new name has been The Brighter At least 2 mis- made for us by Oonfucian Chinese.
Side of sionaries in China An influential native paper-a Things Chinese of ability and large strenuous supporter of Oonfucian- experience, Dr. ism, in a sort of religious resume Griffith John and Rev. W. S. of a historical kind, uses these Ament, are full of hope and cour- words: 'Confucius indeed did not age as touching the future of that found any separate religion; only vast and populous empire. The when Tauism and Buddhism came former said in a recent address: in to divide.the field with his teach- The Ohurch of God of abont 300 ings it became necessary to desigmembers, which I found on my nate his followers as the Religion arrival in China in 1885, has grown into a Ohurch of 100,000 communi- of the Learned. Since then the cants at least. Ere long these will Disciples of the Ya Family have become a million, and the million will become ten millions, and so on, come in like a flood and have addl d with accelerated speed, till the another religion which they call Christian church shall have become a mighty factor among the forces "The Blessed News."'"
which shape the national life, and AFRICA the principles of the Christian The Africa of In the first edition religion shall dominate the land. In the Ohurch of the present we Our Fathers of the Encyclopedia have the pledge and promise of the Britannica, which Church that is to be. With all its weakness and imperfections, it is appeared in 1768, it was stated: the grandest thing in China to day. The prevailing reHgions here are Mahometanism and Paganism. Chinese Boys The boys' boarding- Ohristianity only takes place (sic) among the Abyssinians and Euro- and school in Ningpo, pean settlements. The government of Africa is in general despotic, Bible Study Central Chi n a, and the inhabitants black!
which last year had Good News At Asyut, situated from Egypt about half way beonly 12 hoys in the academy, this tween Cairo and the year registers 43. Of these about First Cataract, the United Presby- terians have a mission, with a olle-fifth are the children of the flourishing school of 500 pupils among the means of grace. In a gentry. One of these boys recently recent revival 112 volunteered for started a movement for Bible study, and all these sons of the gentry, as weI! as the children of
GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE
missionary work. One of the col- party, Dr. Walter Miller, obtained lege students, a Greek, receiving a bequest of $6,250, gave it to the for- permission from the king to return, ward work in the Nile valley. The converts in Egypt paid $30,000 last and is now trying to establish a year for evangelizing work in addition to what they contributed to- mission on the spot where the first ward sustaining the 180 Christian schools. attempt was made.
Conditions Our announcement Traveling Dr. Miller is one of in Morocco of the rumored ab- in Hausaland the few Christian dication of the Sul- toilers in the region tan of Morocco in our June number of the Upper Niger, a missionary of has proved to be utterly without the C. M. S. In a recent letter he foundation. Our Morocco corre- gives the following experience: spondent writes that" while dis- Last week, on Friday, at 1 o'clock midday, a runner from Zaria came orders have prevailed qllite gener- in with a letter, telling me that Major and Dr. S., at Zaria, both had ally for several months, the sultan blackwater fever and no doctor- would I come at once? I quickly has collected a powerful army packed 5 loads-bed, one box of cooking-pots, one of clothes, books, which, under the command of the medicines, etc., Audu's bed, a bath, table, lamp, ete.-5 loads, got 6 war minister, is at the present lIlO- men (1 for horses) from Girku, and within 2 hours we were off-3.30. ment successfully engaged against We walked till sunset, doing 9 miles. In 20 minutes, you know, the tribes of mountaineers who had it gets quite dark. To you at home, or anyone who has not traveled in accepted the pretender. Africa, it is quite impossible to de- scribe the roads-they are about a Among the sultan's forces are large foot broad (sometimes less), rocks, tree-stumps, holes, etc., all over contingents from those Berber the place; every 2 miles a torrent bed, in the dry season a simple tribes that last fall and winter were deep ravine with almost. precipi- tous sides, in the wet season a rushin insurrection. The Eng- ing river; trees everywhere, in some places overhanging the path, and lish missionaries returned to Fez in at this season grass on either side 10 feet high, or at least it is over February." one's head-swamps everywhere. Sometimes one goes for 2 miles Shall the This iK one of the with fearful mud, water, and slime Gospel Enter burning qnestions nearly up to one's knees, with deep Hausaland? in some circles, and bogs and pits; one's horse, however good, slips and falls and stumbles all the more since all the way. the capture of Kana. A recent SJJirit of Missions contained a India Sending Rev.' F. K u r t z sketch of the efforts of the Church Missionary Society to enter this Christians writes: A recruitcountry. Five missionaries penetrated the heart of Hausaland in to Africa in g station for 1900, a difficult journey of 600 miles, as far as Kano, a city of 200,000. coolies or labore~s But the king, fearing that the "praying men" would try to break to go to Natal, South AfI'ica, w~s up the slave traffic, expelled them. They retreated to a small town of opened in Vinukonda, South India, 500 people, where one of their nnmber died and another was sent home in February, 1900. A great many an invalid. After eight months their mission house was burned and poor people were out of work, and the survivors were obliged to withdraw. In February, 1902, one of at the same time a number of teachers had been obliged to close their schools, as their pupils had moved away. A few of these teachers gathered together a Dum-
bel' of poor people and left for place of his brother. He is a most zealous worker, and always ready Natal. Some went first to Co- to fill a gap, or walk eight or ten miles on Sunday to take a service canada, where they attended the in a little village. Constantly he did this, and it was delightful to Baptist Church under the care of him to give a report of his Sunday visits to those places. He always the Canadian Baptist mission; all went quite alone, and would start off in the early morning, talk to were detained for some time at the people in the village and collect them together, then have a short Madras, where they had to undergo service with them, bid them good- by, and commence his lonely a governmental medical examina- tramp home full of heartfelt joy at having done this Master's will.- tion, as a result of which quite a C. M. S. Gleaner.
number were rejected. While in What Gertrude Ward. of Madras, 16 were converted and bap- Shall the the Universities'
tized into the TondiarpettaBaptist Girls Study? Mission, writes in church. About 500 coolies from Central Africa of a Vinukonda and the surrounding stange perplexity as follows: stations went to Natal during 1900, Shall we teach them reading? They have no literature or books of whom 300 were members of Bap- of any kind, and except for purely religious purposes, such as followtist churches. ing the services in church and re- taining by this means a hold on On one of the large estates at their faith, it may be doubted whether they make much use. of their new home a Baptist church their learningj writing-they have no occasion to use it; arithmetichas been organiz3d, and regular they have no accounts to keep, and they do not as a rule require to services are held in a hall, which count higher than twenty; sewing -their clothes are the loose drapthe proprietor has given them. It eries thrown gracefully around them (in the Greek or Roman style) probably never occurred to Mr. and do not require a single stitch; laund1'y work-is unknown and Day or Mr. Jewett, the founders of unneeded, each person washing her own draperies in the river and the Telugu mission, that the work drying them in the sunj housework -scarcely exists, the people's housthey began would extend into Afri- es being little mud huts, to shelter them from wild beasts; they conca. There are already 70,000 Hin- tain no furniture and few utensils, and the people live almost entirely dus in South Africa. and they are in the open air. It may surprise some of our readers to learn that rapidly increasing. sewing and the more complicated laundry work required for Euro- A Christian A. B. Lloyd writes peans are the work of men in Africa, as in India and other East- King in Bunyoro as follows of the ern countries, and should therefore be taught to boys and not to girls. king chosen to suc- ISLANDS OF THE SEA ceed Kabariga, the great slave- Hawaii Still Rev. Fran k L. raider of a few years ago: in Need Nash, in charge of One most important change that has taken place has been the giving the church in Hilo, of a new king to Bunyoro. A surprise and a delight this has been to Hawaii, sums up conditions in his everybody. Yosuja Kitaimba, the former king, was young and weak, and a very serious hindrance to the advancementof the country's good. So much was this the case that at last the big chiefs went in a body to the sub-commissioner and asked that he might be removed and a new king given them. They selected a young prince (son of Kabarega) about twenty years of age, a man full of power as a chief and leader of men, and above all a most devoted servallt of Christ. There is no one in the whole of Bunyoro who has done more for the advancement of Christ's kingdom throughout the country than Andereya, who has now been made king in
GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE
field as follows: "Hawaii is still a cured to render the needed service missionary field. The Orient has to the Igorrote people, whom the been pouring in its throngs until bishop describes as "a splendid we have 70,000 Japanese and 30,000 people-domestic, industrious, full Chinese; 'besides these there are of trust toward us-in spite of their Portuguese, Swiss, Danes, Norwe- nakedness and savagery. The gians, Belgians, Spaniards, French, Spaniards did nothing but molest Russians. Porto Ricans, and Afri- . them."-Spirit of Missions.
cans, until 23 nationalities are Dr. Rossiter The Rev Dr. S. B. counted-all needing the Gospel. Goes to Manila Rossiter, who for At least a half-dozen Japanese missionaries are needed on this island twenty-seven years alone. We have 1 Japanese church was pastor of the North 'Presbytewith a faithful, earnest minister, rianChurch in New York, and who 1 Chinese, 1 Portuguese, and 1 na- since 1900 has been American Sective Hawaiian church in this city of retary for the McAll Mission of Hilo. Some of our own members France, has been appointed pastor are doing faithful missionary work of the First Presbyterian Church among the various nationalities, in Manila, P. I. He will give up and once a month we have a union his secretaryship in August, and service, when the pastor of the devote some time to the collection "foreign church," as ours is called, of funds for the erection of a new has an opportunity of reaching church in Manila. The First Pressome of the natives through an in- byterian Church in that city, which terpreter. A boarding-school for was the first American congrega- Hawaiian boys and young men is tion to be organized there, is Wordoing excellent work among the shiping in a rented building. natives. Since annexation the liquor traffic has increased to most Dr. Rossiter will go under the alarming proportions. There was auspices of the Presbyterian Board then only one place in Hilo where of Foreign Missions, but goes to perform purely pastoral duties.
liquor was sold, now there are six." Methodism At the meeting of in Borneo the Malaysia Pioneering Bishop Brent has (Methodist Episco- in the promised an early pal) annual conference, held in Feb- Philippines article upon his trip ruary, Bishop Warne appointed the in Northern Luzon. Rev. James M. Hoover, of Penang, From scattered references in his to Sibu, Sarawak, Borneo. This business letters it would seem that is the second appointment to Bor- the journey was such as no Ameri- neo made in the history of Method- can bishop has ever before made. ist missions. The first appointment It is an achievement to be compared was made in April, 1891, when with some of Bishop Selwyn's and Bishop Thoburn sent Dr. H. L. E.
Bishop Patteson's early experiences Luering, then a young recruit of in the South Seas, or Bishop Han- but two years in the field, to work nington's and Bishop Smythies's among the head-hunting Dyaks.
journeys in Central Africa. Much To fill the vacancies caused by the of it was made upon foot through sickness of missionaries on the Maan otherwise inaccessible mountain lay peninsula,. Dr. Luering was re~ country and among a primitive called after ten months of service, people. The opportunities for work and in leaving the island made a in this region seem to be unprece- promise to the headman of one of dented if the right men can be se- the Dyak villages that the Church
he represented would not long leave sources of the country for the benethe natives of the island without fit of the world. At present no one a missionary. The headman, in engaged in commercial industry in turn, gave Dr. Luering one of the New Guinea was identified with skulls that adorned the ridgepole Christianity, and traders came who of his house as a pledge that he were actually antagonistic to Chriswould be a Christian. The promise tianity. Work was, in the native on the pl'.rt of Dr. Luering has not mind, largely divorced from Chrisyet been made good to the Dyaks tianity. What an awful situation by our Church. However, the sit- was thus growing up! " uation in Borneo has so developed that the sending of a missionary to Tobacco as a A mis!,;ionary writes the island has now become impera- Circulating as follows: "I heard tive. In March, 1901, Bishop Medium yesterday from New Warne, after holding the Malaysia Guinea. In that conference, canceled his passage to Manila and, instead, went to Bor- strange land, as you know, they do neo with a shipload of emigrants not yet know the value of silver from the Fukien province, China, coinage. The currency of New a large number of whom were Guinea-it is a very shocking Christians, and among these very thing!-is a stick of tobacco. It is many Methodists. The emigrants a very uncomfortable and dirty arrived in Borneo on a Saturday way of carrying small change, but night, and on Sunday Bishop you have to do it. Everyone of Varne preached to them through our 120 teachers get, on an average, an interpreter, and in the eve- 5 Ibs. of tobacco per month as a ning baptized 12 new converts. part of their pay. The tobacco These converts he left in charge of costs one shilling a pound-it is not several Chinese local preachers, very superior stuff. The New who were members of the coloniz- Guinea government have hitherto ing party. There are 800 adult charged a duty of one shilling a Christians in the colony. pound; but they have now raised that duty to one-and-sixpence. Need of At the annual meet- Now, that unexpected increase in Industrial ing of the London the customs duty will make a dif- Missions in Missionary Society, ference this year of £300 in our New Guinea Rev. F. W. Walker, New Guinea expenditure simply to provide small change for the native from New Guinea, teachers." spoke strongly on the need of industrial missions in such a country. MISCELLANEOUS "The principal occupation of the people had been war, and now that More Zeal The Mrs. Jellybys, fighting was being abolished they for Home who have great sowere a people practically reduced to idleness, for food grew so plenti- Missions licirude for the fully that little labor was needed population of Borto cultivate it, and nearly all that work was done by women. A na- rioboola-Gha, on the right bank of tive had come to him and said: ' Me the' Niger, but none for their own good fellow now; me sing plenty; me no work.' The Church of Christ neighbors, are by no means numermust teach the native that he had ous, tho now and then met with. a duty to develop the great re- But notwithstanding, evangelizing zeal does begin at home. The Rev. Charles Stelze remarks in the Sun- day-school Times: A curious phase of the situation is that, somehow, the Italian who
1903J GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE
owns the banana stand on the tant Missions at the End of the corner does not appeal to us with Nineteenth Century," of which as much force as his brother in sunny Italy. The colored man who the Journal des .Missions observes; lives near the railway track is not It is equitable, and even eulogisnearly so romantic a character as tic study of Protestant missions his relative who lives in Liberia. written by a Catholic priest, and is a most agreeable surprise. We do In New York, recently, they sold a not commonly expect flattery from fine church building in the upper this source. It is indifference or hostility which we have had to part of the city because there were endure from those who have pretoo many foreigners in the neigh- ceded us in the field of missionary borhood. Then they sent the effort, but whom we have in many money to the Board of Foreign cases equaled or surpassed in en- Missions. ergy and perseverance.
Dr. Hale's In the Uhl"isf'lan We can not do better than to cite some brief passages to give a cor- Tribute Register Edward rect idea of the spirit in which this is written: to Missions Everett Hale For men of good faith, who do not allow speaks thus of the themselves to be paid off with mere words, there is the Protestant propaganda a great reactive influence of foreign mis- work to be studied, , , . There are thou- sands of men and women who consecrate sions: themselves, outside of Catholicism, to Chris- ~ tian preaching, and they do not do this with- A careful and wise observer of out arriving at results which we have no New England life, in the first half right to ignore or to deny, We should fly in of the last century. used to say that the face of indisputable fact should we deny the missionary movement which the zeal, the self·denial, the apostolic spirit began with Judson's enthusiasm of the members of the Protestant societies -should be gratefully remembered which labor for the evangelization of the un- by us here, not simply for the good believers. it did in India, but by its enlarge- ment of our life at home. It was a The Might The boldest thought good thing to have a map of India or of Asia Minor hang up in the of the that ever entered, back part of the pulpit. It was a good thing then, and it is a good Gospel the mind of Alex- thing now, to have people's eyes and ears and hearts and hands ander the Great, occupied by something larger than their own working machinery. Julius Cresar, Napoleon Bonaparte, The historian of the century can not fail to see that, side by side President Roosevelt, or any sane with such interest in other lands thus excited, there came in the man, is insignificant in comparison healthy Gospel of self-forgetfulness. Boy or girl learned what the with the purpose of Jesus Christ to Savior meant when he rebuked the selfishness of those who were satis- subject this world unto himself, to fied in trying to save their own lives. It would not be dangerous regenerate the nations, to bring. to say that the A. B. C. F. M. has done more in this way to uplift the peace into the heart, and joy into religion of A-merica than its most successful apostles have done to the life of man. Men have succeeduplift the followers of Buddha. 'Vho reads thoughtfully the sad ed in taming all sorts of wild anistory of the victims of the witchcraft madness does not wonder that mals and in physically subjecting a few hundred people went mad. their fellowmen, but this is nothing'
compared with the subjection of man's will and heart. To change a man's moral nature is the greatest miracle on earth. Again and again have I asked Mohammedan and Brahman to show me one case where a man's moral nature has A The Abbe Pisani, a been changed by their faith or wor- Roman Catholic canon of Paris (that ship. Nowhere have I seen this Book on is, we presume of miracle performed except by faith Missions the Cathedral of in Jesus Christ, and this miracle Notre Dame), has wrought by Jesus has the same re- wt'itten a work entitled, "Protes- sults among all classes of people,
whether they be English, Moham- and arrived at Shanghai, China, medan, Hindu, or Chinese. September 1, 1854. For forty years he labored as a missionary, first in REV. A. E. COOK. Shanghai, then in Tientsin, and later in Peking, which he made his Despise Not There is a very residence in 1864, remaining there the Little Ones pretty story told of till his return to the United States in 1894. The larger part of Dr. the late Earl of Blodget's life in China was devoted Shaftesbury, who one day when out to literary work. He was one of walking in one of the busiest streets five persons who translated the' of London with a friend, was ac- New Testament into the Mandarin, costed -by two little street arabs. the spoken language of the major- They had been standing on the ity of Chinese people. Nearly half edge of the pavement gazing half the hymns used in the Chinese bewildered at the great sea of traf- hymnal were translated by him. fic rolling ever on and on. Several other important works were given to Chinese readers As the earl· approached them, through him; and yet he never maybe they saw by the kindly turned aside from preaching the light in his eyes that their request Gospel, while for many years he would not be denied them, for fear- had a morning class for helpers and lessly one little lad held out his inquirers. His labor has .been dirty hand, saying, "Mister, will largely a seed sowing whose harye help us across to the other side, vest, already noble, will be far for we ape afraid, and want some greater in coming years.-The Conone to lead us." gregationalist.
The earl readily consented, and Rev. Benjamin It is with deep sortaking one little grimy hand of each chUd, led them until they Romig row we announce safely landed on -the other side. When he returned, his friend ques- that Bishop Romig. tioned him in a half contemptuous -manner: "What ever made you of the Moravian Church, gently do that, to take their dirty hands into your own? I should have fell asleep in Christ on Sunday, been afraid to touch them." May 31st, at his home in Herrnhut. His lordship smiled, replying: Germany. In the death of Bishop "One day when my work here is Romig the Moravian Church loses ended, and I get over yonder, I a faithful and beloved minister, want to meet those lads, but no 'Yho. spen~ the ~ar~er part of his longer poor and dirty; and to hear lIfe In actIve mIssIOnary work in my Master's welcome, 'Inasmuch the West Indies, and thus became as ye have done it unto one of the a valuable member of the Mission least of these ye have done it unto Board. Me.'" Rev. I. W. Rev. Dr. Israel OIHTUARY Hathaway Wister Hathaway, Rev. Henry A life of useful mis- Blodget. D.O. sionary labor came . Secretary of the to its close Satur- American Sabbath Union, died on day, May 23d, when Dr. Blodget died in Bridgeport, Conn., where June 16th in Pasadena, CaL, after he has lived for the last nine years. Dr. Blodget was born in Bucksport, an operation for apendicitus. Dr. Me., in 1825, was graduated from Yale in 1848, then from Andover, Hathaway had been secretary of the American Sabbath Union for many years. At the time of the Paris Exposition he conducted the S.abbath confere~ce on the exposi- tIon grounds, whIch attracted wide attention among Americans visit- ing in Paris. He lived in Orange, N. J., and went to California to attend the General Assembly.
The Missionary Review of the World — March 1902
BOY BOOT:.J:Al{ERS AT WORK, B.t.HNARDO'S HOME, aTEPNEY CAUSEWAY
Missionary Review of the World VOL. OXlXd VS.eriesNo. 3 } MARCH J New Series 1 VOL. XV. No. 3 HAPPY HOMES FOR HNOBODY'S CHILDREN"
BY THOMAS J. BARNARDO, F.R.C.S.ED., LONDON, ENGLAND IHE legend over the boys' home in: Stepney Causeway, London,reads~' " No DESTITUTE CHILD EVER REFUSED." For over thirty-fi va, years I have been engaged in 1'es;: cuing little children Jrom' the slums of the great cities in Great Britain, and now I think th"at [, have the largest family in the world. There are under my care about five thousand five hundred children, from the little baby to the great boy or girl entering upon manhood or womanhood and' ready to go forth into life. I have about nine additions to my family every twenty-four hours. Over thirty-five thousand boys and girls have been cared for in these homes since they were opened.
It was God who gave me this work. Even if I had foreseen the extent to which it would attain, the responsibility it would involve, I would not have dared to refuse. This conviction has deepened as the years have rolled on. Times without number He has shown that He was caring for the work. He has heard and answered prayer in the most significant way-not only with regard to funds, but in overcoming difficulties which have seemed to threaten the whole work.
In 1866, when I was about twenty-one years of age, I came over from my home in Ireland and entered one of our great London hospitals, in the east end of London, as a student of medicine. I hoped some day to go as a medical missionary to China, but in the mean time, being a Christian man, I could not be idle while there were heathen all around me in this great city. When the cholera came, I was chosen to visit the sick and inspect the streets. In this way I
learned that vast numbers of people were without Bibles and had no knowledge of God. .
One day I found a little "ragged school," overflowing with chil- dren, but with no one to care for it. So I said, "This is just the very thing, a lot of rough and ragged children." Two or three fellow- students were converted and joined me. We had a small tent, and tried to get a room into which we could. gather these children of the poor, but ~)llly found a little shed-a donkey stable. We cleared the donkeys out and put down a floor ourselves, and then whitewashed the ceiling and the walls. It was not a big affair; it 'cost us half a crown (sixty-two cents) a week for rent. 'We were poor young medical students and had nothing over our expenses to give away, so that it was a lot for us to pay. When a lamp broke it was quite a serious matter. We had a meeting of the chancellor of the exchequer and the whole cabinet to discover how we could manage to get another.
The place was crowded night after night, and we carried on a kind of Bible school. It was there that the incident occurred that led to the work for homeless waifs.
One winter night nearly all the children had gone home-all save one, a small boy of ten. Near the old fireplace I saw him, and said, "Oome, my lad, it is time to go."
" Please, sir, let me stop."
"Let you stop! Of course not. It is past nine; I must shut up now. Go home."
"Please, sir, I ain't got no home."
" Nonsense, boy; if you don't go very soon your mother will come here for you."
" Ain't got no mother."
" Well, then, your father will come."
" Ain't got no father."
" Haven't got a father or a mother, boy! Where do you live?"
"I don't live nowhere."
I thought that here was a young rascal who had done something wrong and run away from home, and who wanted to evade punishment . and was just trying to impose upon me. I said, "Oome here, my lad."
He came up to me, dragging each foot along as if it were heavily weighted. He stood quite two yards off, and I looked at the fellow by the light of the l&mp. The clothes-had I ever seen anything like it?-rags. Bare feet, bare head, no shirt; a few poor rags, torn and tattered, that were held together somehow, revealed in their rents the thin, pinched body of the child who stood before me. Ah, but that face! Drawn and puckered like a care-worn man, and the piercing, dark little eyes-how they looked right through me, as if he would say, "Are you a friend or not?" I have seen thousands of them since.
HAPPY HOMES FOR "NOBODY'S CHILDREN"
I said, " Boy, where did yon come from?" He told me that he had slept the previous night in a hay-cart in the market in White Ohapel, and another lad, whom he found coiled up in the same cart, had told him that there was" a kind gemman up Stepney way" that would let him sleep by the fire.
I doubted if the boy's story was t rue, but thought that it ought to be probed to the bottom, so I said, "My lad, are there more fellows like you without a home?"
The boy looked at me with intense pity for my ignorance, and said, "Lots, sir; heaps on 'em."
I resolved to put him to the test, and said, "Now, my lad, look here.
If I take you with me and give you some coffee THOMAS J. BARNARDO and some grub, and let you lie by a fire all night, will you show me where these other fellows are? "
His little head went nodding up and down in reply, so we went to my lodgings, lit a fire, and sat around the table. When the warm coffee had unlopsed the strings of the little tongne, didn't he talk! I heard enough to fill my heart with indescribable sadness; I heard enough to bring the hot tears to my eyes, and to make me eager to do something.
I found the boy as ignorant and as dark in mind as he was miserable in body. He knew nothing of God, or of heaven, and had never heard of Ohrist, but had a vague notion that He was the pope.
It was nearly half-past eleven when we started out. Then I took him by the hand, and we went down the great White Ohapel thorough- fare, and finally turned into that classic locality known as Petticoat Lane. He led me 'into a large building having a corrugated iron roof.
It was a place where all sorts of old clothes were exchanged and sold among Jew dealers, You could get second-hand, third-hand, fourth- hand, fourteenth-hand clothes there, if you were not fastidious; and you might change them on the spot, and nobody would suggest that there was any breach of delicacy in so doing. Into that dark, silent place I was led by my little pioneer. I had brought a box of matches, and I lit one now and then to look under the benches, but saw no boys.
SOME RAW MATERIAL RECEIVED l~TO THE HOMES "We never lies underneath there now," said the lad. "I used to do it when I were green, but the bobbies get you, and sometimes they will give you their toe." He led me out into a little triangular yard. "They're up there," said the boy, pointing to the wall of the building. At the corner, where the mortar had fallen from. between the bricks, his little bare toes and fingers soon found the way up, until he stood on top. "Now, sir, I'll help you up;" and soon I found my way up near him. What I saw on that roof changed the whole current of my life. On that parapet that night, that cold, bitter night in East London, in the gutter of the roof, I saw lying eleven boys. It seemed to me as tho the hand of God had pulled aside for a moment the curtain that concealed this dreadful class, and had given me one swift glance within, that I might never forget. The boy said, "Shall I wake 'em, sir?" Wake 'em! I didn't dare to wake 'em. What should I do with them? I meant, by God's help, to save this one lad; but what could I do if these eleven awoke and clamored for food and help? I said, "No; come away; I have seen enough."
I took that boy home, arranged with a poor neighbor to give him food, bought him clothing, and by and by I sent him to one of the free schools. But one boy led to another. Night after night I searched the slums for homeless children, and found one after another until at length I had some twenty-eight children. Then a few fellow students helped me. We made a common purse, and my own friends occasionally gave me a little; and we kept on quietly doing each day what we could to 'save these children.
The work went on quietly, but at length the crisis came. I was preparing to be a medical missionary, but was only putting l!..alf my
HAPPY HOMES FOR "NOB(H)Y'S CHILDREN"
heart into it and the other half into my mission work. One day a letter came to me from a man I had never met. He wrote: I hear that you are interested in waif children, and you are thinking of going to China. If you feel disposed to remain in England and give yourself to this work, I will have great pleasure in giving you a thousand pounds to begin your first h<;>me.
I had never conceived of any such gift as that. It seemed like the very voice of God Himself speaking to me. For some ten days I pondered on the matter, and then at length was able to write to him that I was satisfied of the Divine guidance and that I proposed to give myself to this work. After this I spent night after night in searching the slums of London. One day I received an unexpected letter from Lord Shaftesbury which said: DEAR SIR,-Some of us are interested in the fate of "Jinks' baby." Will you come and dine with me to-night and meet some friends who would like to talk about the subject.
I went up to his house in Grosvenor Square, and met a number of men who knew something of this work. After dinner Lord Shaftesbury turned to me and said, " We hear that you sometimes go ou t at night and find a number of children who are destitute and homeless. Do you think that you could lead us to one. of those places to-night? "
They were a little skeptical, and were serving me much as I served little Jim Jervis when I first found him. I said, "Certainly."
TRAINED YOUTHS FROM BARNARDO'S HOMES READY TO EMIGRATE TO CANADA.
So he called half a dozen hansom cabs. Imagine eleven or twelve or more gentlemen in evening dress driving away from Grosvenor Square right down to Billingsgate. We made quite a sensation. One or two policemen hurried up at once to see what was up. I took my bull's-eye lantern, and we went down to a place called the Queen's Shades, a kind of wharf with the end of it blocked up except when vessels came up alongside, so that there was a kind of cul-de-sac. There was a great lot of merchandise, perhaps fifteen feet high, covered with tarpaulin. We saw no boys anywhere about. but I said to Lord Shaftesbury, "If we can only get at that tarpaulin we will find them there." I pulled aside some of the folds, and after a good deal of searching I laid hold of a leg and a foot and pulled away, and by and by there fell down a ragged youngster. Of course he was dreadfully afraid of us, and began to cry and said he was doing no harm. We quieted him, and I said, "I want you to get the fellows out."
"Shall I roof 'em sir?" he said. " Yes," we answered. He got up there and began to pound with his feet. By and by we saw the whole thing begin to move; there were young lives under- neath. Lord Shaftesbury told him he would give every lad that turned out a penny. "All right, sir; we'll get 'em up short. Oome along, you chaps, the bloke will give us each a penny." They came in donble-quick order and they formed a long line. We turned out seventy-three homeless children who had found shelter in that place. With a broken voice and tremulous manner Lord Shaftes- bury said, " Well as I know my London, I had no idea of this." We , took the boys to a coffee-shop and satisfied their hunger as well as 'we could. Then we put into each palm a penny and let them go-let them go because I had no place to take them. Thank God, now if we fonnd two hundred children in a night we could give everyone of them a home. During all these 'years we have never refused a home- less child. That incident brought, this rescue work a little into publicity, and since that time it has grown tremendously. . I first began earnestly to examine the various institutions for destitute children within easy, reach of London. Strange' to say, I found insuperable difficulties to securing admission for friendless waifs. One admitted no child who was not born in wedlock; in another the doors were closed against any child who had not perfect health; in another admission was only if we could promise a donation of five or ten pounds, and in another they only admitted children who were voted in by electors. I resolved that if I opened a home or homes admission should be free and immediate, and that the only title to admission should be
HAPPY HOMES FOR "NOBODY'S CHILDREN"
destitution. I resolved that we would make it a home, not an institu- tion. There must be life, and love, and the family, and somebody there to whom they would become attached, and beneath it all was the firm purpose that children should be brought up in the fear of God and should learn to love Christ. I have no sympathy with the philanthropy that seeks merely to heal the body, and to cleanse it, and to feed it, and denies the greatest gift that God had given.
These children must be won to Christ; that is the truest social economy. We want to undo the effects of their past lives, but the time comes when they leave the influence we have brought to bear upon them, and there is a tendency for it to revert to the old type. The only way to pre- vent that tendency attaining mastery is to bring the child by God's help under the power of the . Gospel.
I think I may claim for our homes a high place on the list of Christian evidences, as I am sure that it is unto the answered prayer offaith that all their real TWO WAIFS OF THE SLUMS progress is to be ascribed. Often the last shilling was expended, but always the coffers were replenished from our Lord's own inexhaustible treasury. Thus it has been even unto this day; and now this large family of over five thousand children, saved by God's help from the direst evils, is still, as ever, dependent upon supplies sent down from heaven, as literally as if an angel brought them, in direct response to the petitions of Christian helpers, which ascend as daily incense to our Father's footstool from every country throughout the world.
Some years ago a sudden incoming of bitterly cold weather found my children shivering in their, cots for lack of warm blankets and not a penny to buy them with. I .laid the need before the Lord. That day passed, but no money came. I continued in prayer. Next morning I went to the house of business I dealt with for such goods and selected what I needed. The price was about £100. As I had no, money, and did not mean to go into"debt, I did not buy, but returned home and laid the whole matter before God. Next morning the first letter I opened was from a clergyman in the south of England,
enclosing a check for £100 "to provide additional clothing n,)eded for the inclement weather."
There have been many such instances, but I will mention only one other of a different type. In dealing with girls I had been compelled to see the need of a village home in which they could be brought up in family life. I wrote a letter to The Christian telling of the need, but no sooner had the letter appeared than misgivings arose in my mind lest I had not waited for the leading of God. Consulting with a godly friend, we resolved to pray that if this were God's will He might give a clear sign before I returned from Oxford, where I was then going. The very morning after we arrived in Oxford a total strltnger put his head into my room and said: " Are you Dr. Barnardo ?" " Yes, I am." " You are proposing to found some qottage homes for girls?" " Yes." " Put me down for the first cottage," said he, and vanished. Hurrying after him, I learned that he had read the letter in The Christian and had determined to erect a cottage in memory of a daughter. He had intended communicating with me on his return _ to London, but hearing of my arrival in Oxford, had come to announce personally his intention. He gave me £350 to put up the first cottage; now there are forty-nine at Ilford, with accommodation for a thousand girls.
A GLIMPSE OF BARNARDO'S HOMES BY THE LATE THOMAS PAUL, OF LONDON Dr. Barnardo has nearly ninety homes and branches in active operation, eight of these being Receiving Homes, or " Ever-Open Doors," in various parts of England, and three being Distributing Homes in Canada in connection with the Emigration Scheme. The remaining seventy-five are homes or'mission centers, dealing with juvenile destitution of every phase, besides relieving distress among the suffering poor, carrying the Gospel to thousands of East End families, and witnessing for Christ among dense masses of the poor, the ignorant, and the sinful. Some of these are mission centers and institutes of various kinds for the benefit of neglected young people not destitute enough to be eligible for admission to the homes, but from forty to fifty are homes dealing with a peculiar class.
From the first, careful system and classification was fonnd to be essential in dealing with outcast and neglected children. To" lump" all ages and classes together is. to mar the efficiency of the whole. Many considerations of phyfical health and moral perversion necessitate separation, lest a whole instit~tion be contaminated. Hence the apparent multiplicity of homes.
HAPPY HOMES FOR "NOBODY'S CHILDREN"
The boys' homes in Stepney Causeway are situated where the work originally started. Here are the headquarters and central office of the whole institution. The four hundred boys in this large family keep the whole place alive with school songs and merry calls.
Inside the home is a hive of industry, throbbing with busy, cheerful life. The great dining-hall, the capacious bath, the admirable gymnasium, the open drill and play ground, and the large schoolrooms are filled with eager young scholars, to most of whom lessons but lately were an unknown quantity. Farther up there are the workshops, where the boys learn thoroughly such useful trades as baking, blacksmithing, brush-making, carpentering, engineering, harness- THE GIRLS' VILLAGE HOME AT ILFORD making, mat-making, printing, shoemaking, tailoring, tinsmithing, and wheelwright. Higher up are the airy dormitories, spotlessly clean.
This central home is for boys from twelve to sixteen; younger boys, from eight to twelve, are sent to Leopold House, a short distance away. Here there are no workspops; education is the main concern, the boys being drafted to Stepney when ready for industrial training. For still younger boys, from five to ten, there is a healthful and pleasant nursery home at Gorey, in the island of Jersey. A large garden provides plenty of open-air occupation for many of these little fellows.
But while these homes receive boys of various classes and ages, there stilI remains a pitiful type for whom, until recently, nothing
whatever was done: big lads, adrift in this great city-runaways who have not found London ~"treets paved with gold, ne'er-do-wells and neglected youths herding in common lodging-houses or on -the streets-fit for any mischief. Such lads were refused by every institution, and rightly so, unless special provision could be made for them. Dr. Barnardo saw and sympathized with their helpless case. For such he opened-experimentally-a Youth's Labor Home. The experiment proved a grand success, and about five thousand big lads have already passed through this home, and after thorough training are now doing well, earning their living at home or in Manitoba.
But it is not only boys who haunt the streets of our great cities. There are many girls-often of tender years-friendless, homeless, hungry, and despairing, exposed to contaminating surroundings and AT WORK IN THE LAUNDRY-GIRLS' VILLAGE HOME, ILI'-'OUl) the vilest treatment. For such the waif-child's friend is on the alert. But long ago he found that barrack homes are unsuited to girls. The great institutions, where everything is done mechanically and by rule, turn out, as English ladies know to their cost, a type of girl wholly unfitted for useful household service. What was needed, was evidently a cottage home where girls might be brought up on family principles, clinging around some one who takes the place of "mother." To supply this need the Village Home at lIford, already referred to, was founded. It is now a beautiful model village, with forty-niue separate cottages round a spacious village green, with a pretty church, a schoolhouse, laundry, infirmary, and other buildings. Be~ides the cottages there are five larger households, the whole accommodating a thousand girls. Each cottage, under the care of a Ohristian "mother," has THE BABrES' CASTLE .AT HAWKHURST from sixteen to twenty-five girls of various ages, and usually with a baby, the pet of the household.
Beautiful as is this Village Home, there is one which has still greater attraction and interest-namely, the famous Babies' Oastle at Hawkhurst, in the county of Kent. The original house and freehold ground was given by a friend, and was altered and enlarged and opened in 11'86. Since then it has been devoted to caring for babies who have been left with no one to care for them. What a fate they have"been saved from! Yet here they are happy and content. .T.he ' titii~8tt~re in the padded pond, where they may roll as they please withoufdanger of being hurt. Many are in their cots enjoying their "nap. Othe,rs, alas! are permanently in their cots, suffering from the terrible results of ,bygone ill usage and horrible neglect. Indeed, in aU pI the' homes the visitor finds here and there boys, girls, or infants who will carry while they live the effects ' of barbarous treatment, in early days.
Even these, however, are happy in present kindness.
Leaving the babies, I would recall the fact that "no' d,cstitute child is refused." This means more than is apparent on the surface.
Many neglected children suffer sadly from ophthalmia, running sores, spinal complaints, and partial paralysis. Such as these were, in old day~' doomed to hopeless misery. No institution Gould ,admit them, They, f6rtheir condition needed isolation and special care. ,come, hQwever, within Dr. Barnardo's line, and hence he has had to'p'rovide for them specially, as of course the health of a large home could not be endangered by the admission of a certain class of neglected children; hence numerous special homes and hospitals. Among these is Her Majesty's Hospital in Stepney Causeway, where pitiable childwrecks are received and treated as their case demands. Moreover, admission means permanent care, whether curable or not.
Others there are, not physically suffering, but painfully, terribly debased by vile and vicious associations and deliberate corruption. For such girls a home is maintained far apart and isolated, in which Christian women of tact and experience devote themselves to the weary work of eradicating evil tendencies and inculcating a purer standard of life and speech.
For elder girls, in need of training for domestic service, there are training homes, such as Sturge House and The Beehive, in Hackney. With those I have briefly described, as the largest and principal homes, are linked a network of convalescent and other homes, as the Memorial Home at Southport for cripples and incurables; also Shelters, Children's Free Lodging-houses, Messenger and Shoeblack Brigades; and a host of agencies which form feeders to the homes, while they help hundreds of boys and girls to a way of living.
Associated with all this, there is an extensive mission organization centering in "The Edinburgh Castle," a converted gin-palace and music-hall in Limehouse, where three thousand poor people come every Sunday evening to hear the Gospel preached by leading evangelists, and where hundreds have been converted to God. A large Ragged School and many smaller mission halls are also carried on, while in connection eighteen or twenty deaconesses reside in the district, and give themselves to the Lord's work among the poor.
THE EVENING PRAYER AT THE BABIES' CASTJ.El HAWKHURST
GREAT MISSIONARY APPEALS OF THE LAST CENTURY
GREAT MISSIONARY APPEALS OF THE LAST CENTURY-II BY THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF The review of the great sermons and addresses of the last hundred years has a threefold interest: historical, biographical, and ethical.
First, it is one of the best ways to study history. Some of these grand utterances marked crises-turning points; they determined methods and measures, they suggested new motives and incentives, they shaped events, they moulded men of action. Hence, like milestones along a road, they indicated the advance toward a certain goal, and sometimes they were like forks· in the road, where a new direction was taken.
Again, these studies have a biographical value. These men were themselves makers of history. Their words shook the world, and their words drew their dynamic force from their own personality. It was character that gave to these appeals their power to arouse, convince, impel. The majesty of the man was behind the royalty of the speech. We learn great lessons by the study of leading men. As John Lord saw, they are the "beacon lights of history," and history may be studied best under their illuminating rays.
But, again, snch a study of powerful appeals is a revelation of ethical truth. These addresses and sermons are crystallizations of ideas, principles, laws of life. Great occasions bring great men to the front, and great men bring to the front great conceptions. They meditate on majestic themes until the fire burns, and then the speech is the vent to the pent-up flame. It may well be that sometimes the utterance born of such conditions is prophetic, and in a double sense it forecasts the future and it disturbs the present. Those who hear are not ready for the truth as it is unveiled, and what is in a sense an inspired appeal falls upon listless ears, or it may be ears that are stopped and obstinately hostile. But, as with many of God's ancient prophets, some of His modern seers have been practically killed by the men of their own generation, while it has been reserved for another generation to build their sepulchers.
Edward Irving It is appropriate to these introductory thoughts that this, the second part of Ollr review of great missionary appeals, should start with Edward Irving.
This man has, in our opinion, never yet had justice done to him. His own generation is responsibie for his judicial murder, but it yet remains for his true monument to be built.
Born in 1792 and dying in 1834, at the early age of forty-two, he
virtually died of a broken heart. He was brilliantly gifted, and a uuiversity polish had added collegiate culture to his native brilliance, as a lapidary develops luster in a gem. It is a sufficient sign of his superb accomplishments that he was at twenty-seven colleague to Dr. Chalmers in Glasgow, and that at thirty he was the foremost light of • the London pulpit, where his success as a metropolitan preacher was such as London had never before witnessed. After some three years the capricious world of fashion became weary of Irving, and he began to be pronounced, if not denounced, a fanatic, whose singularities of opinion and idiosyncrasies of manner verged on mental unbalance. But the real reason why the fashionable world deserted him was doubt- less that, in 1825, he espoused that always unpopular doctrine of the second personal advent of the Lord Jesus, which he believed to be an imminent event. Then three years later he began to affirm that our Lord was so far the son of man as well as the Son of God, that He, in taking our humanity, took it with all its sinfulness, so that He really suffered under like temptations and at all points with ourselves, and so by overcoming evil became the captain of our salvation-the posi- tion which has been attributed to Rev. Andrew Murray in his book on " The Holiest of All." This caused ecclesiastics to thunder against Edward Irving as a heretic.
Deep in the study of prophecy, he was prepared to believe in certain manifestations of prophetic power said to be witnessed in West Scot- land, and with passionate earnestness grasped at this new wonder as possibly one of the precursors of the Lord's coming-a sort of revival of apostolic marvels. This brought matters to a crisis. He was arraigned before his presbytery and convicted of heresy in 1830, and two years later was ejected from his pulpit, the next year to be deposed from the ministry. His defense of himself at this last crisis was one of the most sublime and splendid triumphs of impassioned oratory.
Shortly afterward his health faiied. Harassed by petty persecution, worn out with anxiety, baffled in his most sacred purpose to seek the separation of the Church from the iniquities and plagues of the great Babylon of his day, satirized by the press, ridiculed by the public, branded by the religious courts, he went to Scotland and died of con- sumption at Glasgow.
Edward Irving was a man of whom the world was not worthy. It is a shallow judgment to reckon him simply a dramatic pUlpit orator with a descriptive and rhetorical pulpit style. Dramatic he was, but it was a high order of acting due not to an affectation of effect, but to a soul that was so keenly sensitive to truth that it gave vividness to his imagination and incarnated itself in his action. For example, on one occasion, preaching in London on "the great white throne," he walked up the pulpit steps in his long black gown, his pallid face
GREAT MISSIONARY APPEALS OF THE LAST CENTURY
made more ghastly by raven hair and the dimly lighted church. In each hand he bore a lighted candle, which he placed beside him on the desk. Then opening the pulpit Bible, he proceeded with a solemn, sepulchral voice of marvelous pathetic sweetness to read Revelation xx: "I saw a great white throne and Him that sat upon it." He slowly read that marvelous prose poem that has nothing in aU lan- guage that equals it for awful majesty, and as he pronounced the last words-H And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire "-he stopped an instant, and then deliberately, with a puff of breath, put out both candles! The effect was electric! It was as though the last light of God were quenched and the awful sentence of the last assize were pronounced. It is too superficial a judgment to call that dramatic acting: it was the inmost image of the event, as he saw it, working itself out into a visible form-an idea taking incarnation.
Similarly, after his degradation, driven, as it were, into his native Scotland, he preached in Edinburgh, with difficulty getting a place in which to speak. Some theological students went to hear him, and among them was James McCosh, afterward President of Princeton University. They went to make sport of the erratic fanatic. But as he announced his text-H He bore our sins in his own body on the tree"-all temptation to ridicule was gone. Intense moral earnestness shone through his utterance. The man who believed in modern prophecy had the air of a seer, and he who taught the nearness of the second advent spoke as one whose eyes already beheld the descending Lord. Each one of his sermon heads was a burden borne by Christ for us: sin-guilt, wrath, diabolical malice, human inappreciation, a malefactor's death, and withdrawal of the face of God! And as each new burden was dwelt upon, the preacher himself bowed lower and lower, as though he himself felt the awful load that crushed his Redeemer, sinking him to the earth! Another instance of the unconscious acting out of what for the time possessed the whole man. Dr. McOosh in late life spoke of this scene as indelibly impressed on his memory after more than sixty years had elapsed, and he said it was the most impressive sight his eyes ever beheld.
'rhis was the man that, in 1824, though not yet thirty-two, preached that memorable sermon, and the sermon must be interpreted by the character and convictions of the man.
Edward Irving was at the height of his popularity when the London Missionary Society, always on the lookout for the foremost orators, secured him for its preacher. He always made thorough preparation, but never more so than for that occasion. His youth had been full of missionary' spirit and projects; and, as the full sense of the risk and responsibility of this duty grew upon him, he shut himself up with God and His Word to get his message; .then, when he G~ll).!l forth from,
the secret place, like Elijah, it was in the power of the Spirit. Whitefield's Tabernacle in Tottenham Court Road was the place; and; notwithstanding the day was wet and dreary, the great building was thronged long before the hour. For three hours and a half the crowd sat, jammed in between those walls, and the preacher had to pause twice during the course of his sermon, while a hymn was sung.
The sermon was not a popular one; it was too elevated in tone and theme. The immediate needs of the London Missionary Society were forgotten in the greater need for a new order of missionaries-messengers,of the cross, responsible to no man; studying to show themselves approved only of God, living by faith, in self-denial, scorning man's hire and help alike, lest their singleness of purpose be risked, and dying daily as Christ's martyrs. To many it was a wild and visionary picture, tho fascinating eloquence held the brush that gave it form and color. Doubtless the sermon was not well timed or prudent in human eyes, but its positions were scriptural and spiritual. The preacher had been studying not man's ideas but God's ideals, and had followed the apostolic rule of faith and fidelity rather than the worldly maxim prudence and policy. 'l'he sermon should be read after the interval of a century, to estimate its true value. Irving dealt with the primitive methods of. Uhristian work and God's willingness to honor those who trust Him. He simply held up God's plumb-line, and, because that was the plumb-line of primitive Christianity, time has vindicated his utterances, and turned the visionary dreamer into the true seer.
We have seen already how President Wayland raised a similar standard, that of apostolic precedent. The Divine call to the ministry, with the Divine qualifications therefor, really constitutes his burden. "He takes only two fastening points, the Church of the apostles and the Church of to-day; and, snapping his chalk-line between these two, he makes the mark of requirement as straight as a sunbeam, regardless of what modern theories or usages may be found to lie to the right or to the left of it."
" Every disciple must be a discipler," is his golden maxim. To fence in preaching by any clerical boundaries is, as he maintained, contrary to the Divine plan, and must be fatal to success. The Christian ministry is of Divine appointment; and the setting apart of the most gifted for this special work does not set aside the humblest from a like privilege and responsibility according to his ability and opportunity. " The minister does the same work that is to be done by every other member of the body of Christ; only since he does it exclusively, he may be expected to do it more to edification."
Wayland utters a solemn warning against exclusion from the ministry on account of deficiencies in education. The Church is to call upon God for laborers, and to be ready to receive all whom He sends, spiritual qualifications being of first importance. God needs all kinds of
GREAT MISSIONARY APPEALS OF THE LAST CENTURY 177'
laborers, and we only thwart His plans and onr own service by confi- ning the ministry to the edncated class, Let those who can get the highest culture do so, but let not thos€ who can not, be barred out on that account from the ministry of the Word.
Irving tells how he was moved to the preparation of this sermon by hearing an eminent leader say that, if asked what is the first qualification for a missionary, he would say, Prudence; and the second, Prudence; and the third, Prudence. This utterance he contrasted with the teaching of the Epistle to the Hebrews, whose mighty heroes wrought" by faith," which is "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen; whereas prudence is the substance of things present, the evidence of things seen." This raised the question whether the great commission is not still to be executed in faithfaith in God to furnish men and means, and to render both effectual; or whether we are" to calculate this undertaking as a merchant does his adventure, set it forth as the statesman does his colony: raise the ways and means within the year, and expend them within the year, and so go on as long as we can get our accounts to balance."
A worldly Ohurch is not prepared to urge the apostolic ideal upon mIssIOnaries. Before we ask the heralds of the cross to go far hence, carrying neither purse nor scrip, it behooves us to show our sincerity by accepting the same conditions at home. But the ground taken by Irving was scriptural and well worth espousing. If God sends workmen forth on His business, He is certainly bound to pay the bills; if He commissions His Ohurch to conduct His warfare, He is thereby pledged to furnish the necessary soldiers and munitions of war. Accepting this principle as true, the missionary undertaking ceases to be a mercantile enterprise, to be conducted by the ordinary principles of economics. "It is a work of faith, and not of figures; and we are bound in planning its enlargement to consider our bank account with Heaven, and not. merely our actual cash in hand." This was the substance of Irving's plea, to which he joins the prediction of a speedy return to more apostolic methods in conducting Ohristian missions, and, with such return, "much greater simplicity and larger success."
Joseph Angus and Others 1'he discourse of Joseph Angus, on "Apostolic Missions; or, the Gospel for Every Oreature," was a message" on wheels," fitted to run !,olmd the globe, as indeed it has done. Unconsciously to many, it has suggested t.hat motto, now emblazoned on the banners of the Student Volunteers in their modern missionary crusade: "The world for Ohrist in our generation." Dr. Angus goes so far as to propose that a company of fifty thousand preachers be raised, and £15,000,000 a year for ten years; and he shows that, with such a provision, the Gospel might be preached, and preached repeatedly, to every man,
woman, and child on earth; for, with such a band of workers, at the rate of only seven a day, the whole population of the globe could be individually reached in ten years. He then proceeds to show that to raise fifty thousand preachers would require but one out of every three hundred church members in Protestant Christendom; and that to give £15,000,000 a year would be equivalent to less than one-twentyseventh of the taxable income of Great Britain alone, or less than onefiftieth of the income of Protestant chnrch members.
Dr. Duff's speech in Exeter Hall, in 1837, his English friends pronounced incomparable for eloquenee, even among the great speeches of this superb missionary orator. Nobody could report Dr. Duff, so much depended on his tone and gesture and attitude, all of which evade the most skilful stenographer. But the greatest difficulty was that he so fascinated his hearer that even the reporter found himself leaning on his elbows and in his absorption forgetting to take notes. That speech at Exeter Hall was Dr. Duff at his best. His irony and sarcasm were there, raining hot shot and shell on those who talk glibly about missions and neither do nor give anything; who, as Judson used to say, nearly clip off a missionary's hair for mementos and shake his hand from its socket, and yet willingly let missions die! With his exuberant rhetoric, Dr. Duff pictured India's beauty as the garden and granary of the earth; and then depicted the awful iron systems of caste, idolatry, and impurity that spread the slime of the serpent over all. And so he pressed on toward his climax-the supreme duty of every Christian man, woman, and child in Britain. It was a mixture of denunciation and appeal that made his hearers ashamed of their apathy and avarice and worldliness, and made them yearn to send the saving Gospel to the ends of the earth.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon preached many missionary sermons, but his" Plea for Missions and Missionaries" is, perhaps, one of his most moving appeals. His text was Isaiah vi: 8. He dwelt on the voice of God, "Whom shall I send?" and on man's answer, "Send me." In his masterly way he dealt with the vision of God, the consciousness of human infirmity, and God's way of equipping and qualifying for His work. It is one example of many showing how any pastor, among his own people, on ordinary occasions, may aid missions when his own soul is aflame with the altar-fires of God.
Phillips Brooks, in his sermon, says: "What can be more shameful than to make the imperfection of our Christianity at home an excuse for not doing our work abroad? It is as shameless as it is shameful. It pleads for indulgence on the ground of its own neglect and sin. It is like a murnerer of his father asking the judge to have pity on his orphanhood! "
When Dr. Fleming Stevenson held the Irish assemblage in rapt attention, as he discoursed of (' Our Mission to the East," he had just
GREAT MISSIONARY APPEALS OF THE LAST CENTURY
returned from a year's survey of the native churches in China and . India, and his seraphic soul was on fire with intelligent zeal. He gave to the assembly his" general impressions"; and it was like throwing on the screen, with a powerful light through a magnifying lens, the photographic pictures of the mind. He gave clear views of the vast- ness of the mission enterprise, of the high culture and forward civi- lization of the Orient, and the ancient faiths and systems there prevalent; and then turned to consider the v(tst and beneficent forces at the disposal of the Church, and bore witness to the astonishing results he had seen, notwithstanding the comparatively recent origin of the mission work. He convincingly proved the grand success of missions, and as powerfully reminded his hearers of currents of influence which, like the waters of Shiloah, flow softly, underground, and can not always be traced. After giving evidences of the decay of religious life where false systems prevail, he mightily appealed for a united movement all along the line to cope with the needs of these vast communities in the crisis of their history. .
There are paragraphs in that address not often surpassed by any orator on any occasion; as when he referred to the legend, freely quoted at the religious fair at Hurd wan, that, at the close of the century, the Ganges would lose its sacred character, which would be transferred to a ri vel' which flows farther west, and then interpreted the legend as a true prophecy of the river of God. In the closing sentences he referred, with wonderful eloquence, to the sunrise over the Himalayas, when, as the light gathered. the boundless plains of India grew visible, stretching for hundreds of miles to the south, until, as the sun rose higher over the idol mountains, the "Halls of Heaven," the shadows stole away, the darkness fled, and the sounds of life filled the silent air. This he compared to the outshining of the Sun of Righteousness over the places of the death-shade and the habitations of cruelty.
'1'0 this day one reads this address with a depth of conviction and a warmth of emotion not often awakened; even the absence of the mag- netic personal element does not leave it to seem cold. He who had thrilled so many readers by his sketches of Hans Egede and Pastor Harms, stirred those mercurial Irishmen as they had seldom been moved, and the echo of his appeal may still be heard, tho his silver tongue has long been silent. One of the sublimest passages in all mis- sionary oratory is his appeal for a "great revival of faith-a faith that will recognize the spirit of the mission in the Bible, not as an isolated command, a doubtful inference, or a pathetic farewell; but as the very substance and texture of it, the burden of its prophecies, the glory of its visions, the music of its psalms, and the splendor of its martyr-roll."
(To be continued)
POLITICS AND MISSIONS IN KOREA BY REV. ARTHUR J. BROWN, D.D.* Secretary of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions, New York The problems in Korea may be divided into two main classes- political and missionary. The political problems are so interrelated to the missionary that an out- line of them appears necessary to an understanding of the situa- tion.
First among the political problems is the weakness of the government. It is totally desti- tute of the moral fiber needed in Korea at this time, and the pre- vailing corruption is as great in the Imperial palace as anywhere in the empire. The people are taxed beyond all reason. Any man suspected of having property is liable to be thrown into a filthy prison on some trumped-up charge, and held, or perhaps tor- tured, until he disgorges to the magistrate. Offices are sold to the highest bidder or given to dissipated favorites, who divide the proceeds. The courts give no redress, for the plunderer him- self is usually both judge and jury. So rotten is the entire sys- tem that one marvels that the nation has not fallen to pieces before this. Only the stolid apathy of the Asiatic and the A KOREAN PRINCE rival claims of foreign powers have held it together at all.
The financial problem is as bad as the political. Of course, oppression and official robbery destroy all incentive to accllmulate property. A man has no motive to toil when he knows that an addi- tional ox or a better hOllse would simply result in "a squeeze" from some lynx-eyed official. So he raises only the little rice he requires for food, and devotes the remainder of his time to resting.
* Dr. Brown is now on a tour of the mission field; he has recently visited Korea, and has had an opportunity to see for himself the present condition of the country.-EDITORS.
POLITICS AND MISSIONS IN KOREA
'fhe introduction of foreign goods is making the situation worse instead of better. The Koreans formerly grew their own cotton and wove from it on hand-looms the cloth for the ubiquitous white flowing garments of the common people, while the silk worn by the better classes was also produced at home. Now English cotton and Japanese silk are flooding the country, and the indolent people find it easier to buy them than to ma.ke their own. In like manner they are buying other foreign goods-pipes, tobacco, lamps, and more and more of the utensils which they used to manufacture for themselves. But they have nothing to export to balance these imports. They are not an energetic or a manufacturing people like the Japanese. There are ,I .4. FEW HUNDRED KOREAN CASH"
some mines and forests, bnt concessions to work the one and cut the other have been granted to American, British, and Russian companies, and the product goes to foreign owners, while the price of the concession is squandered by corrupt officials, so that the people derive no benefit. Thus Korea is being drained of her money. It is all outgo and no income.
The condition of the country is reflected in the chaotic state of the currency. It is enough to give a foreigner nervous prostration.* • The currency is of two kinds, Korean and Japanese. Of the Korean coins, one is a large copper one, called a "cash," wIth a square hole in the middle, and considered as one "cash" In the country and five "cash" in Seoul, but having the same purchasing power in both city and country. The other coins are a smaller copper coin of the same value, a one-cent piece, also copper and worth five country cash and twenty-five Seoul cl'sh, and a flvecent nickel piece, worth twenty-five country cash and a hundred and twenty-fl..e Seoul cash. Many commodities, however, are estimated by the" yang," which is said to be one hundred cash of either kind. The nickel is stamped "14 yang," but there is no "yang" piece and no Korean coin larger than the nickel. At the present rate of exchange, one hnndred cents Korean are worth thirty-seven cents gold.
The Japanese pieces in circulation are a half-penny, a penny, and a two-cent piece-all copper; a flve-oent nickel piece, ten, twenty, and fifty cent silver pieceR; a dollar in both silver and paper, and five, ten, and twenty dollar pieces in both silver and gold, tho the last mentioned is so far beyond range of ordinarr. transactions that one is a lmost as helpless with It as if h e had nothing at all. The ~old va ue of all Japanese currency is one-half its value; that is, the dollar, or "yen," as it IS called, is equal to fifty cents gold.
When I traveled among the county villages'I found that no bills of any denomination were accepted. "How can a piece of paper be worth anything?" queried the simple-minded villagers. So we had to tll,ke a supply of copper" cash" which nearly loaded a donkey. Silver, however, was readily accepted, and was indeed so eagerly desired that in Pyeng Yang I had to pay two and a half per cent. premium to get a supply of dollars. When I. returned to Ohemulpo the railway officials preferred bills and would only take my silver yen pieces at ten per cent. discount. In Seoul the Japanese bank accepted them KOREAN COOLTES AND LOAFERS IN FRONT OF A KOREAN HOUSE at ninty-seven cents each. Some time before I die I hope to have leisure to figure out just what my expenses in Korea really were.
The general poverty appears in the architecture. In the more pretentious buildings, as in the imperial palace and the yamens of governors and magistrates, it follows Ohinese lines. But however wonderful they may be in the eyes of a Korean, to a foreigner they are humble enough. A conntry merchant in America lives ill a better house than the Emperor of Korea, while hundreds of stables at home are as attractive as the official residence of the governor Of a province. The buildings are not only plain, but are dilapidated in appearance. It never occurs to a Korean to make repairs, and so. on every side, even in palaces and temples, one sees crumbling walls and dirty courtyards.
The houses of the people are usually made with a rude but strong
PO:t.ITlCS AND M1SSIONS IN KOREA
framework of heavy poles or small tree trunks-always croQked,-for straight trees are rare-with walls of cane· stalks fastened together, straw ropes, and plastered with mud. The roofs in cities are covered with ponderous curved tiles, but in the villages they are universally thickly thatched with rice straw. The doors and windows, if there are any, are covered with thin, tough paper which admits a dim light but no air. '{'he floor is of dirt, covered with oil paper and matting. Under the floor are trenches which serve as flues for the cooking-fire in a separate room. There are no beds in Korea, and the unhappy traveler who fails to bring a cot must sleep, as the natives do, on the floor, half broiled by the heat and plentifully bitten by the swarming vermin.
The prevailing wretchedness is so great, and the impoverishment of the land is so helplessly increasing, that one wonders how long hnman nature can endure such a state of society. But the people are as indifferent to it all as children. They eat their rice and take life easily, while the emperor borrows and the officials steal to keep up appearances. No one appears to note the coming storm, or if any do they shrug their shoulders in the spirit of "after us the deluge."
Russia and Japan in Korea Another phase of the political problem is the conflicting ambitions of Russia and Japan. It is evident that Korea is too weak to maintain her independence much longer. She is sure to fall at no distant day. Several European nations would be glad to get this naturally rich penin~ular of ninety thousand square miles and fifteen millions of docile people, but the contest has narrowed down to the tWQ mentioned.
Japan sees as clearly as the rest of the world that the possession of Manchuria by any European power would in time inevitably involve the occupation of Korea, which forms its southern boundary. But a strait only one hundred and twenty-five miles wide separates the southern part of Korea from Japan, and that too at the vulnerable point of entrance to her Inland Sea, the very heart of the Sunrise Kingdom. No less than seven modern forts at that narrow entrance attest Japan's conception of its vital importance. She naturally feels that the possession of Korea by any other nation would be a grave menace to her own territory. This is the key to Japan's policy in Korea. Beyond question she will fight before she will allow any European nation to entrench itself so near her shores.
But Russia has embarked upon a policy of Asiatic development. In her Siberian possessions her territory already forms the boundary of China for thousands of.miles. To open up the possessions and to bring her into closer contact with the far East she is building that long and costly Siberian Railroad. Its present terminus is Vladivostok,
which is 'So far toward the frozen north that its harbor is ice-locked six months in the year. Of course Russia is not content to be bottled up half the time, and so she wants not only Manchuria but Korea in order that she may have an outlet in an unfrozen sea. And Russia never changes her mind, never abandons a policy. She moves to her goal as steadily and as resistantly as a glacier. English, German, French, and American policies come and go, but Russia's goes on forever. For a long period the rest of the world paid little attention to the Muscovite empire. But all the time she was quietly encroaching on the other countries, "adding other empires to her already enormous domains, until without a shot fired, and by a simple stroke 'of the pen, the mouth of one of the greatest rivers of Asia was indisputably hers and its left bank for hundreds of miles-with much more in the immediate or distant prospect."
There is a fascination almost terrible in this stealthy, never resting, all-embracing movement upon weaker nations as set forth in Colquhoun's recent volume. In the words of the Rev. Dr. Arthur H. Smith, "The standards and the ideals of Russia and of the Russians are very different from those to which we are accustomed, and we see a great deal to criticize in the brutal harshness of her methods, and in the undisguised barbarism of much which seems inseparable from her policy. She appears to be selfish, cunning, and irresistible. When we contemplate the varied phenomena which the advance of Russia during the past century embraces, we not improbably cordially second the view perhaps best expressed by the American poet Whittier: Fell Spider of the North, Stretching thy great feelers forth, Within whose web the freedom dies ,Of nations eaten up as flies.
When war's evil day comes, unhappy Korea will probably be the battle-ground. Meantime her political history is chiefly the narrative of pulling and hauling by the rival powers. Japanese officials have admitted their complicity in the murder of the queen, October 8, 1895. But when they imagined that this had brought Korea within their grasp, the king checkmated them by taking refuge in the Russian legation, February 11, 1896.
Just now the diplomatic contest centers in railways and loans. The only railroad in operation in Korea is a line twenty-six miles long, from Seoul to its port, Chemulpo, which was offered to traffic July 8, 1900. The concession was originally granted to an American, James R. Morse (March 29, 1896), but December 31, 1898, the property was turned over to a Japanese syndicate which opened and operated it. The Japanese also control the telegraph line from Fusan to Seoul. More recently the Japanese have secured a concession to build a railroad from ]lusan to Seoul. They quickly more than subscribed the
POLITICS AND MISSIONS IN KOREA
twenty-five million yen for the bonds, and work has already been begun. As Fusan is within ten hours' steaming from Shimonoseki, the Japanese will soon be able to throw an over-mastering military force into the very center and the capital of Korea.
To offset this advantage, Russia is planning a similar entrance from the north. A French company obtained a concession (July 4, 1896), to construct a line from Wi J u to Seoul. The company failed to carry out its contract, and in June, 1899, waived all its rights on condition that the Korean government should build the road and use only French engineers and materials. Everybody knows that the monarch of Korea has neither the inclination nor the money to build railroads, and it is more than conjectured that Russia is behind this plan, and that Russianfunds will enable him to execute them, unless, as now appears more probable, it is decided to have the French build the road after all. It is significant that the French minister is looking after surveys. Wi Ju being on the border of Manchuria and but a short distance from Port Arthur, where Russia maiutains a large military force, and from Mukden, which is on the Siberian Railroad, Russia will then have direct entrance to Seoul from the north and can get her troops'into the capital as soon as Japan.
Meantime each power agrees not to maintain more than eight hundred soldiers in Korea; of these Japan has about six hundred in the capital, but Russia does not care to support such a contingent here unless compelled to do so by circumstances, and now has only thirty men as a legation guard. No other powers have troops here, tho warships frequently lie in the harbor of Chemulpo. But Japan has a concession for a fort at Fusan, where there is quite a Japanese town connected by cable with Japan, while" of course" squads of soldiers are necessary at various points along the telegraph and railway line to Seoul, "to protect it and keep it open."
The Japanese population of Korea is silently increasing, for the Japanese have become a colonizing people, and every little while Japanese owners are found to have acquired a foothold at some additional point. For example, a few weeks ago it suddenly developed that a Japanese had bought a small island near Chemulpo. The Emperor of Korea wants to add to his palace grounds some property now occupied by the Presbyterian mission, and in exchange offered to give any tract outside the walls that the missionaries might select. Accordingly they cho'tle an elevated plot on the main road between the west gate and the river and near the railway station. His Majesty agreed, but when he tried to buy the site for the mission he found that parts of it belonged to Japanese who refused to sell it. I walked up to the Japanese quarter in another part of the city and found it on ground so high as to easily command the whole capital. '1'here was not a gun in sight, but considerable grading has been done, and certain
embankments looked suspiciously as if they could be utilized as earth- works on very short notice.
In order to ascertain what its rival was getting, the Japanese government last year directed its minister to Korea to make a special report upon the land concessions which the emperor had granted to foreigners. By this report it appears that Germany has nothing but a gold-mine near Langhyan belonging to Herr Walter since 1899. Citizens of the United States have an electric street-car line in Seoul and a reputedly rich gold-mine at Unsan, employing forty foreigners, thirty Japanese, and twelve hundred Koreans, and paying into the imperial treasury an annual royalty of twenty-five thousand yen. The concession was obtained by Mr. Morse, but the mine is now controlled by Hunt &Fassett. Engla~d also has a gold-mine. near Unsan controlled by Pritchard Morgan, a member of Parliament. A branch of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation is reported to be doing a profitable business, and, most important of all, the entire management of the customs and finances is in the hands of a British subject, Mr. J. McLeavy Brown.
Russia (and of course this information was what Japan wanted) was found to have a coal-mine in Hamgyondo, the working of which has been suspended owing to its poor output; whale-fishing concessions; the right to erect buildings for making train-oil; and the. privilege of felling timber in the Yalu and Tumen districts (this concession is said to be very valuable, as the timber is of the best qu.ality).. For the purposes of transport the Russians have constructed with great care roads over the northern frontier of Korea, and have thereby brought the Liao Tung Peninsular into direct communication with Vladivostok.* But this report fails to tell the whole story, for when Russia was concentrating her ambition on obtaining possession of the Liao Tung Peninsula she sought to soothe her sensitive and pugnacious little opponent by an agreement regarding Korea which now prevents her from adopting a policy of open aggression. To get around this little obstacle the Russians are working largely through the French. France has no independent ambitions in Korea, but she is in close league with Russia, doubtless with substantial rewards elsewhere in mind. So Russia is endeavoring to secure through her ally what she could not so easily obtain openly. Frenchmen are being pushed into all possible official positions in Korea, and as the emperor is controlled by the Franco-Russian party, the Russians are obtaining in this way a number of advantages which by and by the French will deliver. Recent illustrations are the repeated efforts to replace Mr. Brown, the inspectorgeneral of customs, with a man who would manage the finances of Korea to suit Russian interests, and the proposal to relieve the monetary ,. Nothing is said concerning the alleged concession of a coaling station and adjacent territory that it was reported Korea had made to Russia.
POLITICS AND MISSIONS IN KOREA
embarrassments of the emperor by a French loan of five million yen, to be secured and repaid, interest and principal, by the sympathetically managed customs. The native officials were more than willing to have a custom's inspector who would be willing to give them an opportunity to peculate. But these little schemes failed to take into consideration the Scotch-Irish courage and pertinacity of the redoubtable Brown, who boldly charged the platoon of Korean soldiers sent to dispossess him, and with a liberal application of cane and boot sent the rifle and bayonet armed warriors flying out of the gate. 'l'he foreign legations, too, promptly took up the question of the loan, and so vigorously protested against this virtual mortgaging of the government to France and Russia that, tho the papers had actually been signed, the deal w:as quietly dropped. Now the emperor, desperate for money, puts the shoe on the other foot by asking the local Japanese bank to lend him 500,000 yen..
All these Franco-Russian schemes are materially aided by the Roman Catholic Ohurch in Korea. It is represented by one bishop, thirty-nine priests, twenty-four unordained workers, all French, and under La Societe des Missions Etrangers, of Paris. There is a magnificent cathedral in Seoul, the most splendid and commanding edifice in the entire capital, and throughout the empire there are sixty-one schools of various grades and a Oatholic population of fortytwo thousand four hundred and forty-one. Bishop Mutel is one of the oldest men I have met in Asia. The relation between the French political plans and the French Oatholic mission· are very close. 'rhe legation and the missionaries work together so openly that the typical priest is commonly believed to be a quasi-political French emissary. In this powerful hierarchy France and Russia have no contemptible reinforcement.
Missionaries and Christians It will readily be seen that the Protestant missionaries and Korean Ohristians are in an exceedingly delicate and difficult position. The missionaries strongly believe with the boards at home that all respects should be paid to the lawfully constituted civil authorities, that special care should be observed not to needlessly embarrass them, that the laws of the land should be obeyed, and that it is better for the disciples of Ohrist to patiently endure some injustice than to array Ohristianity in antagonism to the governments under which they labor.
On the other hand, the Gospel always has and always will be a revolutionary force in a corrupt nation. It tends to develop in men a sturdy independence, a moral fiber, a fearless protest against wrong, which in the end make them what the Puritans-were in England and what our revolutionary sires were in America. It will not do this as quickly among the indolent and pathetic Asiatics as it did among the
more virile Ang1.o-Saxons. But whether sooner or later, the conse- quences are as inevitable as the movement of the planet. Christi- anity and iniquity can not live together in peace.
But for this very reason all the more care should be exercised not to prematurely precipitate a conflict. Already ambitious political leaders have tried to enlist the cooperation of the Korean Christians, but the missionaries have promptly and decisively prevented the consumation of the intrigues. I believe with them that it would be as foolish as it would be suicidal to allow the infant Church to array itself against the government. God may bring about a better day in Korea without any violence at all. The Gospel revolution is often a bloodless one and is best when it is such. What, we desire in Korea is not the dethroning of the emperor or the degradation of any official, or the interference with any proper law or custom. We simply seek the regeneration of the individual man, and through him the purifying of society and the reign of that justice and honesty and morality which are indispensable to the stability of all government and to the welfare of a people.
But from all political scheming the Church should hold aloof. Individual members of it should not be allowed to foment revolution. If revolution is forced from outside the Church, so that men have no alternative but to take sides, then of course each must do what his conscience dictates. But no Christian should make the mistake which Moses made when he smote the Egyptian and" supposed that God by his hand was giving deliverance." It is not necessary to caution the missionaries on this point, for they thoroughly understand its importance. They are on friendly personal terms with the government and officials, and they are determined that by no act of theirs, and by no rashness of the Koreans whom they can control, shall the Church be led into a position which would surely result in tumult, persecution, and perhaps irretrievable disaster.
But whatever may be thought of the official classes we should not fail to do justice to the many good qualities of the Korean people. They are undoubtedly a weaker race than the Japanese and Chinese. But the weakness is chiefly the result of subjection to foreign domination, and to despairing acquiescence in misgovernment and oppression. The superior power of neighboring nations has taught them dependence. The cruel exactions of tax-gatherers have fostered deceit, and the certainty that they would not be allowed to enjoy the fruits of toil has naturally begotten indolence. But the Koreans are not lacking in intelligence, and with a good government, a fair chance, and a Christian basis of morals would develop into a fine people.
The anti-foreign feeling which is so noticeable in China does not exist in Korea. True, there are a few officials who dislike foreigners, while the old- conservative Confucian scholar class is naturally more or
POLITICS AND MISSIONS IN KOREA
less sullen under the spread of new ideas. But the attempt to create an anti-foreign crusade last winter resulted in an inglorious fiasco. There was indeed a temporary commotion when it was discovered that on November 20, 1900, a secret circular edict had been issued ordering an uprising against foreigners on the 6th of December following. Even in the most peaceable of civilized lands there are lawless characters who are ready for violence, and Americans who recall the readiness with which a mob forms in onr own cities will understand how easily trouble might have followed such an edict in Korea. But our always alert and efficient United States Minister, the Hon. Horace N. Allen, took such prompt and decisive measures that the plot resulted in "nothing more than a palace intrigue" by two corrupt schemers.
JAPANESE SETTLEMENT, FUSAN, KOREA Soon afterward one of these, Kim Yung Chun, offended the emperor's favorite concubine, and was hanged March 18, 1901.
And yet trouble is always a possibility in an Oriental country. Extortion and misgovernment will occasionally goad even a patient. people to deeds of unreasoning fury, and when they once begin to "run amuck" they are not apt to distinguish between friend and foe. For example, because the priests of one port allowed some of the converts to serve as collectors of the increased taxes, the populace arose in a frenzy and murdered the whole Christian community. The ringleaders are now being tried in Seoul. No Protestants were involved.
Drought is increasing the general unrest, and the desire of the Japanese to have some excuse for further interference may lead them to secretly foment trouble in the South at almost any time.
But these changes are not imminent enough to justify us in changing our plans. They are simply a phase of the risk always attending missionary work in heathen lands. If Korea were a quiet Christian country we should not send missionaries to it. The very degradation and superstition which cause the tumult constitute the necessity and the opportunity of the Gospel.
" Mamma," said the little daughter of a missionary, "this isn't as nice as America." " No, dear," gently replied the mother; ,"that is why we have come."
But of animosity toward the foreigner there is very little. On the contrary, the Koreans look to the foreigner for help.
We had some opportunity to test the feeling of the people, for we not only visited the cities of Fusan, Chemuipo, Seoul, and Pyeng Yang, but we took a j ourney of three hundred and fifty miles through the interior in TRA VELING IN KOREA chairs, on ponies, and afoot. We passed through scores of villages far from the beaten track of travel, ate in native huts and slept in native inns, with our luggage and supplies piled in the open courtyard.
The people manifested great curiosity, following us in crowds through the streets, forming a solid wall of humanity about llS at every step, and peering at us through every door, window, and crevice. But not once was the slightest insolen ce shown, and not a penny's worth was stolen on all that trip. Everywhere we were treated respectfully and with a kindly hospitality, which quite won our hearts. The best that a vil- lage afforded was gladly placed at our disposal, and while prices were never excessive, in several places the people refused to accept any compensation whatever. We usually sent word ahead, so that accom- modations might be ready 'for us, and whenever we did so groups would walk out several miles to meet us, sometimes in a heavy rain.
The invariable salutation was a smiling inquiry, "Have you come in peace?" and when we left the people would escort us some distance on our way, and then politely bid us good-by in the words, " May you go in the peace of God." It need hardly be said that these were nsually Christians, but we saw multitudes who were not, and while the heathen were noticeably more unkempt than the Ohristians, they, too, were invariably kind and respectful. He must be hard-hearted who could not love such a people, and long to help them to higher levels of thought and life.
TYPES OF KOREAN CHRISTIAN CHARACTER
TYPES OF KOREAN CHRISTIAN CHARACTER BY REV. W. L. SWALLEN American Presbyterian Mission, Korea Human character is best studied in the acts of men and women, so far as these acts may be correctly understood and interpreted. In none are the doings of individuals so scrutinized as in believers-in- creasingly so in heathen lands. We may be more or less familiar with the general Christian character ill a professedly Christian land; but not so in a country where Christ has been unknown, and the people, for centuries, -have been living without God and without light and without hope. Nevertheless, when the Light of Life streams in upon the midnight darkness, the believing among the dead in sin" hear the voice of the Son of God," and hearing, live and shine-shine far brighter, maybe, for the very darkness about them. And we may ex- pect some marked types of Christian character to appear among the heathen in those who have believed the revelation of God as it is in Christ Jesus. This we find interestingly true in the new mission field of Korea. /' Twenty years before the Protestant missionaries went to Korea there were many professing faith- in Mary's son as the work of the Roman Catholic priests. And when the Tai Won Kun, father of the present emperor, sought to wreak his vengeance upon all who pro- fessed- faith and would not recant, twenty thousand native Christians with nine French priests baptized that country with martyr's blood, bearing testimony, in a voice louder than words can utter, to the fact that a new element was fused into their character by the matchless power and unconquerable hope of an endless life. If these twenty thousand, with no copy of God's Holy Word to teach them the way of life, and with only a fragmentary knowledge of the truth as it is in Christ Jesus, could stand that fiery trial and witness so noble a pro- fession even unto death, what may we not expect from the thousands of devoted and much-better instructed Christil)-ns of to-day, who have been reading the Holy Word for themselves, and who have an experi- mental acquaintance with the indwelling Holy Spirit. Forbid that anyone should attempt to say what they would or would not endure were they put to the fiery ordeal, but let us be satisfied in the joyful hope which their faithful lives inspires, and praise God for what we have seen and know of the evidences of a new birth, and of a life which indicates that there will be no compromise with sin or flinching in the time of persecution, because their hope is in God. Of the present company of native believers, few have as yet been called upon to "strive unto blood" for their faith, though they are tried, some of them, most severely; but there are other traits of a noble character which may often best be seen in the" living sacrifice" rather than in
the" dying." It is this feature especially of the Korean Christians that people are and should be interested in to-day. What evidence is there, then, that the Gospel has any power to-day to change the life and character of the Korean people? Let their own changed lives and Christian activities answer. A few simple illustrations from different individuals in distant parts of the empire, from the various stations of life, may serve to throw light upon the question, and show better possibly than anything else the marvelous work of God in that once lone" Hermit Kingdom."
From Idleness to Industry Generally speaking, Koreans are constitutionally lazy. It is born and bred in them. Their phlegmatic temperaments render them thoroughly indisposed to continued or consecutive labor, whether of physical or mental effort. The Koreans are probably the laziest people among nations occupying a cool zone. Possibly there i~ a reason for this. I am inclined to think there is; but, however that may be, we do know that the Gospel effects a change in the Korean believer's character so radical and so permanent as to make him energize in spite of his original nature or environment. Here is Mr. 0–, for example, a man who would not work because he could get on without it (few Koreans do work ,unless they are driven to it by sheer necessity). Mr. 0 – – had a large family, poorly clad and poorly fed, living in "rags and tags" in a tumble-down thatched hut.· He had a good trade, but this he carried on by means of hired workmen, spending his own time in idleness, and often in dire wickedness, giving himself up to passion and pleasure, wholly indifferent to the needs of his wife and children. Mr. 0 – – heard the Gospel and was converted. His first thoughts were to straighten up his crooked ways in relation to his fellows and to his God. That done, he came to me and said: " ~'J{oksa (pastor), it does not seem right that I, a strong, healthy man, should be idle. Though I could live without work, these hands of mine are strong and skilful, and I have a good trade. Why should not I work that I might have more whereof to give to God? Since I have no education, and the gift of speech is not with me, I can not preach or teach the people about Jesus their Savior, but I can earn money and give that to send some one who can, and this is my ambition." So he rolled up his sleeves and entered the black, dirty, soot· covered workshop where I often found him since, when I would call on him, his hands and face all covered with soot. There in the workshop he prayed and toiled and glorified God. One morning, as I was starting on an itinerating trip, Mr. 0 – – met me with his usual happy greeting, but with his countenance beaming with more than usual joy, as he grasped my hand and said: "Moksa, I have gotten onto a good way to make money for the Lord. I just lay aside one
dollar out of every ten for the Lord, and I know that I will have much money for the Lord now." Thereafter the more he made the more he had to give, and the more he gave the more he enjoyed the service of the Lord. His home and family have changed. 'rhey are all Christians now, and Ohristian activity, honor, and noble manhood has taken the place of selfish despotism. He is now clothed in his right mind and living to the glory of God. He has since contributed liberally to the local church and school, to the Korean Religious Tract Society, to the India Relief Fund, to private individuals in need, to the preaching of the Gospel in and about his own n~ighborhood, and, selling his shop and property in the country village, he bought a large house in a magistracy, and fitted up one of the large rooms for a place of worship, where more than fifty now gather to worship God. In his house he has also provided a room for the instruction of the boys and girls of the community. Is there any wonder that in his section of the country there are springing up nIl around groups of believers which will some day be organized into churches ? Not only is this true of Mr. 0–, but the. story of his life is the story of very many who . have gotten hold of the truth as it is in Christ Jesus. From Squalor to Cleanliness There is no word for home in the Korean language. Being with- out the idea, of course they have no word to express it. Their social life is highly organized and etiquette is at a great premium, yet they are without the blessed influences of home or anything that approaches the sentiment surrounding it. They live in the midst of filth and squalor, with perhaps only a few square feet of clean surface whereon to sit and sleep. Lazy people are generally filthy; quite natural that it should be so. But more than that, filth is the breeding-place of every vice-the two generally go together. The Koreans to-day live, as it were, in the accumulated filth of ages, until the disgust of it seems to have almost disappeared. Especially is this true of the poorer people. And were it not also true of the wealthier classes, some steps would certainly be taken to prevent it, which is not done. The care-worn expression of their faces tells the sad story of their hard lives. But how changed is all this when the grace of God lights up the heart! It is a noticeable fact that so soon as the Gospel is received face-washing and clothes-washing and house-cleaning begin. The dust and filth go out with the devil, as hope and cheer and comfort enter with the Gospel. The parents begin to find a common interest in the Word of God which vibrates and permeates all within that little family circle, then widens and radiates through all the channels of their larger lives as they come in touch with their fellow friends, until there is no place where the power of God in their lives is not effectual. Ordinarily little attention is given to the girls; in
fact, the ability to read is not loohd upon as a feminine accomplishment, but when a girl is able to read she is branded with suspicion. The Ohristians, however, are most anxious to have their girls as well as their boys learn not only to read, but also to have them receive an education. The husband and wife may be seen sitting together with their children about them reading or conversing about matters of interest, and the burdens and trials of the day are borne together. The farther one is removed from the power of the Gospel, the less willing is he to share the responsibilities and hardships of life. Thus the heathen husband leaves the burdens of life to be borne alone by his wife, while he betakes himself to his gentry friends for counsel and companionship. But not so where the real home life is begun. This change is most marked and permanent in thousands of homes where the Gospel has entered the hearts of the Koreans. The future is brightening as the light breaks in upon them, and the sentiment as well as the true homes themselves are being reared throughout the empire. And now from these homes go out the hope of the country through the character that is being developed in the children. Bright, brilliant, cheerful, hopeful, skilful and brainy, courteous and sensible, patient and persevering in their forward march, there is nothing that will be able to stop the tide of influence that shall emanate from the homes and lives of these Ohristian Koreans. They are "living epistles," known and read of all men.
" Everywhere Preaching the Word"
, A most marked characteristic of the new-born child of God is the instinctive desire to tell others of the love of Ohrist in his soul. In this particular the Korean Ohristian converts seem to have received ~special grace. The believers go everywhere preaching and t,eaching Ghrist. Of the fifteen thousand believers in Korea comparatively few ~itve been brought to Christ through the direct instrumentality of the foreign missionary. The native Ohristians themselves have witnessed in their daily lives and conversation, dropping the seeds in love and often watering them with their tears. Merchants take with them on their journeyings Bibles, or portions thereof, and religious tracts, and scatter'them with their merchandise. At noon when they take their meals, or at night in the inns with friends or strangers, they talk about the Bible and their own conversion, telling to all the love of Christ in their soul. Men become interested and seek the truth, a group of believers is formed, and a church or churches is the result.
From the prefecture of Ul Yul, in northwestern Whang Rai Province, a man came to the capital to purchase an office, but failing in his eiiort to do so, meeting with Christians and the Gospel, he returned with two horse-loads of Ohristian books, and started upon a new line of endeavor. Two years later I visited that prefecture and
RELIGIOUS FORCES IN MEXICO AND CENTRAL AMERICA
had the supreme delight of worshiping with more than three hundred who had gathered together to hear the Word. The whole prefecture had felt the gracious influence of these Christians, who go throughout the district preachiug and teaching the Gospel.
It is most inspiring to see the simple-minded faith and humble devotion of these native Christians. Space prevents us from speaking at length of their devotion as evidenced in their worship. It is no uncommon sight to see men and women walking ten and twelve miles to a Lord's service. I have seen Christians on a rainy Sabbath, when the rain would be pouring down and the water running in the streets, take off their shoes and socks, and covering their delicate horse-hair hat with an oil-paper covel' and their shoulders with an oil-paper cape, wade through the streets on their way to the house of God. Men tithing their scanty means, and women taking off their jewelry and contributing it to help the poor and extend the Gospel; men, like Paul, preaching the Gospel and working at their trade to support themselves and families; women selling needles and trinkets in order to get into families otherwise barred to the preaching of the Gospel, and the general Christian conversation, at home, on the street, 'in business and everywhere at all times, evidence the devotion and religious activity of these yonng Christians of the once" Hermit Nation." In 1893 three missionaries stood on the heights of the walled city of Pyeng Yang-a city of seventy thousand without a Christian within her walls-and blew the Gospel trumpet, calling for repentance and faith unto holiness. Now eight years have scarcely passed, and a message from Pyeng Yang comes over the sea to the church at home, " A thousand at a mid-week :!,)!'ayer-meeting ona rainy night!" Truly, "the I..ord hath aone it." It is marvelous-yes, but marvelous only to those who know not the power of the Almighty. .
RELIGIOUS FORCES IN MEXICO AND CENTRAL AMERICA BY REV. JOlIN W. BUTLER, D.D., MEXICO CITY Missionary of the Methodist Episcopal Church (North) The use of the word" force" in the subject before us is suggestive, to say the least. The aboriginal tribes inhabiting Mexico and Central America coming, in the remote past, from both transatlantic and transpacific lands, brought with them some knowledge of the Creator and Preserver of mankind. '£his knowledge may have been obscure and the outward manifestations of worship shrouded in mystery. Their priests or oracles were always with them, and through them they were supposed to be in direct communication with the Invisible, Allwise and All-ruling One.. Worship was a part of their very being, instilled into every infant's mind. Their schools were distinctively
religious, and in some cases excessively so, students often being roused at midnight for religious practises, including fasting, prayer, and "mortifying of the flesh." Their priests domineered over the family, and dictated in matters relating to marriage and other domestic affairs.
Temples abounded. ~o form of religion ever constructed more numerous or more sumptuous sanctuaries than the early races on this continent. In the very heart of every town or village which they founded, even in the temporary abodes of the nomadic tribes, there stood the sacred edifice, and there, by its side, lived the priests, while within the sound of worship constantly echoed, and from its altars the holy fire was never allowed to be extinguished, except for a moment every seven years.
The great teocalli of Mexico City, founded sIx years before Colum- bus discovered America, has never before or since been equaled in size and equipment by any sacred edifice on the Western Hemisphere.
It occupied more ground then the present expensive cathedral and spacious public square; indeed, the site was declared by the conquer- ors to be "large enough for five hundred houses." It contained five thousand priests and a multitude of priestesses. On some one or more of the six hundred altars burned the undying fires. Ten thou- sand soldiers garrisoned the sacred enclosure. It is said that several hundreds of lesser teocallis were found in the cities, while towns, vil- lages, and rural districts had an equal proportion. If" God with idols in their worship joined," as Milton says, and there was much more of the ." idols" than of God, He was, nevertheless, recognized as "Supreme Creator and Lord of the Universe." While their altars often swam with the blood of innocent victims, as well as with the blood of prisoners of war, they prayed not only to their thirteen tute- lar deities, but also to the Lord of Heaven and Earth, for the pardon of all their sins.
The Coming of the Spaniards However corrupt and unsatisfactory we may regard their system of worship, we must nevertheless confess that the Spanish conquerors found here religious peoples. That their religion did not satisfy the invaders goes without saying. With the soldier came the priest of another cult. While some of these were, without doubt, exemplary and seIf~sacrificing men, fit models possibly in matters of intelligence, industry, an.d devotion for the missionary of our day, the majority of them were too much like the chief conqueror-mere adventurers and sick with "greed of gold." Whatever means were necessary to bring about the desired end must be employed, nQ matter whether that end be the conquest of vassals or their conversion to Christianity; the Spanish crown must have them and their fabulously reputed wealth, while at the same time the pope must have their religious adherence. .
ItELIGlotl's FOROES IN MEXICO A~1> OENTRAL AMERICA
A single incident from history will serve to illustrate this point. Not long after the landing of the Spaniards they were invited to visit Cempoala, a city of over twenty thousand inhabitants, twenty-four miles inland. They were received with gifts of fruits and flowers, and immediately manifested their appreciation of all by a wholesale transfer of the entire kingdom of Cempoala into the" Kingdom of Grace" by mere brutal force, just as they had done before on the Island of Cozumel and in Tabasco. In the center of the beautiful city stood the temple wherein the people and their fathers had worshiped for centuries. To them it was of an spots the dearest and most sacred on earth. But Spanish soldier and priest unitedly determined that it must be converted into a Christian temple. So the invading army formed a cordon around the temple, while the cannon, with their concentrated thunder and lightning, were made ready, and the following grandiloquent address was delivered by Cortez, the chief of Spanish missionaries: "Gourage, soldiers; now is the time to show that we are Spaniards, and that we have inherited from our ancestors an ardent zeal for our holy relt:gion. Let us break the idols and take from the sight of those unbelievers such vile incentives to their superstition." Thereupon fifty soldiers entered the temple and cast every idol down the stairs, while the natives stood paralyzed. To this Clavigero adds: " After this daring act their prudence was blinded by enthusiasm.
Cortez commanded the priests to bring the fragments of the idols be- fore him and throw them into a fire. He was immediately obeyed, upon which, being full of joy and triumph, as if by breaking the ido-ls he had entirely banished idolatry and superstition from those people, he told their chief he was now willing to accept the eight virgins which had been offered him; that from that time he would consider the Totonacs as his friends and brothers, and in all their exigencies would assist them against their enemies; that as they could never more adore those detestable images of the demon, their enemy, he would place in the same temple an image of the true mother of God, ~hat they might worship and implore her protection in all their neces- sities. He then expatiated in a long discourse upon the sanctity of the Christian religion, after which he ordered the Cempoalese mason to cleanse the wall of the temple of those disgustful stains of human blood which they preserved there as trophies of their religion, and to polish and whiten them. He caused an altar to be made after the mode of Christians and placed the image of the most holy Mary there." _ This policy of force obtained through all the conquest, and with such" apostolic blows and knocks" the representatives of the Cross, al ways holding the sword of Toledo in 'one hand, attempted to pour the light of the Gospel into the benighted understandings of the natives and to expound the mysteries of the Catholic faith.
But such methods always leave their legitimate fruits, and one
may see them all over Mexico and Oentral America to this day. Milton's words are again verified, when he says, Who overcomes By force, hath overcome but half his foe.
How true this is in the present case may be judged from no less an authority than the great Humboldt, who visited Mexico three hundred years later, and wrote as follows: "'rhe introduction of the Romish religion had no other effect upon the Mexicans than to substitute ceremonies and symbols for the rites of a sanguinary worship. Dogma has not succeeded dogma, but only ceremony to ceremony. I have seen them, marked and adorned with tinkling bells, perform savage dances around the aUar while a monk of St. Francis elevated the host."
The presence of such good men as Bishop Las Oasas, Father Gante, and a few others like them, saved, to a certain extent, the situation, and the Roman Oatholic Ohurch at last gained the mastery over the millions of these two countries which, by conquest, had become the new Spain.
When the nineteenth century dawned on the world viceroys still ruled, and Spain, with avaricious hand, managed the exchequer of Mexico and Oentral America. Rome too domineered, and her galling yoke weighed grievously on the peoples. The Ohristian conduct observed in exceptional cases (just mentioned in the fifteenth century), seems to have completely changed, save in very rare instances, and priests and viceroys vied with each other in draining both countries of their resources and leaving the masses in poverty, ignorance, superstition, and idolatry.
False notions of morality obtained, not only among the people but also among the members of the" sacred orders." This sad fact is confessed even by Roman Oatholic authorities. Abbe Emanuel Domenech, a confidential representative of Napoleon IlL, who came here in 1865, was required, after the fall of the short-lived empire and before returning to Europe, to make a tour of observation, and report on the condition of the clergy and Ohurch in Mexico. His report (not intended for Protestant readers) was published in Paris in 1867, and is a fearful arraignment of the Ohurch. He declares the Mexican faith to be dead, and the Mexican religion" a singular assemblage of heartless devotion, shameful ignorance, insane superstition, and hideous vice." Idolatry abounded, and Indian dances were permitted inside the very churches; and then he adds, "The mysteries of the middle ages are utterly outdone by the burlesque ceremonies of the Mexicans. The accouchement of the Virgin, on Ohristmas night, appears to me as indecent. In France the police would forbid the ceremony as a shock to public morals. But public morality being a thing unknown in Mexico, the custom of representing the accouchement of the Virgin
RELIGIOUS FORCES lN MEXICO AND CENTRAL AMERICA
in many of the churches offends no one." And all this was written by a French Roman Oatholic prtest, who declared that even French police would prohibit such performances. Heaven alone knows what all this means, and can fully understand the awful condition of things in Mexico and Central America to within forty years of our day. The abbe says more, and, among other things, declares" if the Pope should abolish all simoniacal livings and excommunicate all the priests having concubines, the Mexican clergy would be reduced to a very small affair," and to prove what he says actually cites cases which he personally witnessed in homes where he was entertained.
Alas and alas! this sad condition of things would seem not to have entirely died out, if one can believe only a fraction of what the secular press is unearthing at the present writing, under the painfully familiar title of " Clerical Scandals."
If to the excesses and corru ption of the Roman Catholic priests be added the iron despotism of Spanish rule so cruelly inflicted by the sixty-one viceroys who represented the crown from 1535 to 1821, the reader will have some idea of the burden under which poor Mexico labored. So galling was the rule that intense hatred toward the Spaniards burned in the breast of every descendant of Montezuma. These oppre-ssed people, and even the creole class, were rigidly excluded from any participation in public service, and in every possible way made to feel that birth on Mexican soil was a misfortune and almost equivalent to being born in slavery. All legislation discriminated against them. Native industries must be checked, so that wine, silks, etc., could only be bought of Spain. Their" earthly lords" lived mostly in old Spain on fat incomes produced by their hard toil on Mexican estates. In this way millions of gold kept pouring out of the country from its lawful owners to enrich those who, by force, had imposed upon the peoples of these two countries a foreign government, a foreign language, and a foreign religion.
Independence and Freedom In 1810 Mexico raised the cry of independence and freedom. In 1821 she finally succeeded in throwing off the Spanish yoke. The States of Central and South America, interested spectators in the struggle, were not slow to follow her example, while the recent and glorious achievements of July 3, 1898, in the harbor of Santiago de Cuba, make it possible to say that these cruel oppressors do not now own a.single foot of land on the American continent. Encouraged by their success in throwing off foreign rule, the people next set to work to overthrow papal hierarchy. But what a stupendous task it was I A Church of over three hundred years' standing, with great cathedrals, rich churches, multitudinous chapels, extensive convents and nunneries, also owned, according to official statistics published in
March
1850, no less than eight hundred and sixty-one estates valued at $71,000,000; twenty-two thousand city lots, at $113,000,OOO-a total of $184,000,000; tho some writers, who assert that the clergy evaded government inspection, put the figure at $300,000,000. While the Archbishop of Mexico drew $130,000 annually for his meager (?) support, and the bishops of Puebla and Morelia $110,000 each, the poor people, whose daily income would not average over thirty cents, with only two hundred and fifty working days in the year, were obliged to pay from ten to twelve dollars for anyone of the seven sacraments of the Ohurch, while without those sacraments they dare not live, much less attempt to die.
But the days of this Ohurch were numbered-the day that Mexico achieved her independence. The work begun under the immortal Hidalgo was carried to its consummation by Benito Juarez, who, together with Oommonfort, Lerdo, and others, shrank not from the Heaven-imposed task, even tho Rome summoned Louis Napoleon, with French and Austrian troops, to her aid, till the separation of Ohurch and State, the sequestration of all Ohurch property, including great cathedrals and humble chapels, rich convents and insignificant nunneries, was an accomplished fact. The Oonstitution of 1857, under which all this was accomplished, may be epitomized as follows: 1. The establishment of a constitutional, federal government. 2. Freedom and protection to slaves. 3. Freedom of religion. 4. Freedom of the press. 5. Nationalization of Church property. 6. Abolition of special tribunals for the Army and for the Ohurch. 7. Treaties to foment foreign commerce. . 8. The opening of the country to immigrants of all creeds and countries.
The Reform Laws, which were the logical outcome of the Oonstitution, emphasized the separation of Ohurch and State, expelled. the Jesuits, suppressed the order of the Sisters of Oharity, refused to recognize all monastic orders, made matrimony a civil contract, prohibited religious processions and the use of clerical vestments on the streets, opened church cemeteries for the burial of all classes and creeds, and made education in the public school free and compulsory. The pope fulminatlld his wrath against an this, and declared such laws, "wherever they may be enacted, as null and void," and then had the audacity to add that all who had act, hand, or part in the framing of such laws had made themselves amenable to "the censures and spiritual punishment" in his power to inflict upon them.
. By the Mexican people these" fulminations from the Vatican were turned into ridicule," and not even the threats of European courts could deter her from her God-inspired purpose. To-day we behold.
l!)o~] Itll:ttGIOt1S lJiORC1l:S IN MEXICO AND CENTnAL AMEItICA
the result! Mexico has taken her place among the enlightened and progressive nations of the earth. Her disenthralled people are freely and rapidly multiplying all kinds of industries, developing her rich mines, planting her wonderfully fertile lands, spreading a magnificent railroad and telegraph system over her entire territory, building schools· and hospitals in every city and town, scattering a free press wide-cast, and protecting every man in the free exercise of his religious beliefs. These events have led to a condition of things which enables the government to meet all its obligations at home and abroad, to close its fiscal year with millions of hard cash in the national treasury, and daily increases the respect and admiration it has long enjoyed on the part of the best nations of the world.
During all these years the Roman Catholic Church, still the dominant religious force in the country, has learned by bitter experience. And it may not be amiss to state that even the most radical leaders of the Liberal party, God's agent in reaching present results, have not been fighting all this time against religion, but against clericalism, priest-craft, and the meddling of the Church in politics. And while many thousands have been driven away from the Church by the abuses mentioned, the great mass of Mexico's fourteen millions are still Roman Catholic in belief. The Church holds its influence over the masses in a variety of ways. First, by its glittering and imposing ceremonialism, which seems to have a special attraction not only for the Latin races but even more so for all Indian races. Second, by means of its sacred shrines, notably Guadalupe, Ameca-meca, Ocotlan, and others, to which monthly and especially annual pilgrimages are made, when thousands and even tellS of thousands attend, some coming from immense distances. Third;through the confessional, and, finally, through the seven so-called sacraments, which bring the priests into the home at every stage of life from the cradle to the grave.
Roman Catholic Forces Nevertheless, modern Mexico, with its new life and especially the spread of Protestantism, has its influence on the old Church, and one can not but note an improvement which it is earnestly hoped may develop more and more. The religious forces of Romanism at the beginning of the new century are about as follows: 1. The pulpit. We mention this not because the Church has in Mexico and Central America as yet developed any great preachers who by their learning and eloquence sway the masses, bnt because the new order of things, and especially the presence of Protestantism, makes preaching a part of Catholic worship. In the course of time this must lead to a better state of things, and possibly with an educated priesthood produce, as in France and America, orators of national repute who can stir and inspire congregations to higher ideals or life and work.
TllEl !ilSS10NAny nEVIEW of 'rBE WORLD
2. Romanism in Mexico and Oentral America can hardly be said to control any press as a religious force. Periodicals they have in increasing numbers. These carry the Ohurch caJendar, and occasionally religious articles; but, on the whole, they are the organs of the political tendencies of the Ohurch, and are much given to criticizing the government and attacking everything that looks like Protestantism or Masonry. What is understood as a religious press in the United States is unknown to Oatholicism in these countries.
3. Hospitals, which might be such eloquent exponents of the practical side of Ohristianity, belong to the government. It is true that the priests are often found iu them trying to influence their management, but in all our twenty-seven years in the country I can recall but one such institution whIch might be called Oatholic, and that was built through the generosity of a single individual.
4. The schools of both countries have long since ceased to be a religious force. Higher schools are not planted or supported by the Ohurch, with the single exception of seminaries, mostly controlled by the Jesuits, where they teach a little theology, much Mariolatry, and, frequently, considerable contempt and spirit of disregard, not to say disobedience, to civil authorities.
5. Then there are a number of so-called pious associations, such as "The Daughters of Mary," "The Apostleship of the Oross," "The Royal Guard of the Heart of Jesus," "The Perpetual Watch of the Holy Sacrament," and others of like nature. The members of these associations have certain duties in the Ohurch, like guarding the images, the "host," etc., and sometimes move in society to do the bidding of the priests. But, judging by appearances, their spccial duty would seem to be that of keeping the collection-plate in "perpetual motion."
Protestant Forces Fortunately for Mexico and Oentral America, the new century opens with other kinds of religious forces at work in both countries. These are forces such as Protestant Ohristianity sets in motion at all times and in all lands.
1. There is the work of that venerable society which has pioneered the missionary work in many lands, sometimes for lack of funds somewhat slowly but never without success; we refer, of course, to the American Bible Society. At present it maintains a general agent in the capital of Mexico and thirty colporteurs scattered throughout the country, many of whom are as devoted men as ever toiled for Ohrist 01' won a martyr's crown. These men distributed in the past year 32,728 volumes of the Scriptures, while the twenty years 0 work record a total of 659,362 copies 01' portions of Holy Writ.
In Oentral America two general agents, assisted by about a dozen colporteurs, have begun to scatter the Word through the several
RELIGIOUS FORCES iN MEXICO ANi> CENTRAL AME:kICA
States. According to the last published report at hand, 9,869 volumes of the Scriptures were circulated in 1899. Perhaps 50,000 volumes have been distributed by the various agencies, including the British and Foreign Bible Societies, and would thus give us a total of over 700,000 copies of the Bible, or portions of the same, scattered in Mex- ico and Central America during the last quarter of the past century. Just as truly as "the entrance" of His Word "giveth light," just so truly will these precious volumes, tho many of them may be burned by fanatic priests or others hidden away, through fear, for long years, as we have known of in the past, yet just so truly will these precious volumes, iu the near future, shed over these weary nations a flood of life Divine.
2. Another living force sent out into these two lands is the printed sheets from the presses of the American Tract Society of New York and the Religious 'l'ract Society of London-twin sisters for good of the two societies above mentioned. Both of these are cooperating as far as their limited resources will permit. This kind of work is greatly augmented by the various presses of the missions in Mexico, which publish books, illustrated papers, Sunday-school lesson leaves, tracts, etc., in great numbers. The Methodist press alone has printed about 70,000,000 pages of religious literature since it was established; the Presbyterian, perhaps, has many more, while several smaller presses are doing their share; so that we are confident that not less than 200,000,000 pages have been or are being distributed among the people carrying the message of salvation. As there is force in the seed so there is life in these "leaves." Who can tell what the harvest will be ?
3. Protestantism now, as in the past, finds a force of great value in her schools, the object being not to antagonize the ever-increasing efforts of these governments, but to aid and cooperate in every such effort; to teach patriotism, and make better and more enlightened citizens; not to demexicanize but to help form more excellent and truer subjects. Already the Protestant schools of Mexico have a matricula of some 18,000 children, whose influence for good must rapidly spread with the passiug years.
4. Protestantism, through her hospitals and dispensaries in San Luis Potosi, Leon, Silao, Guanajuato, Guadalajara, and other places, is commending itself even to the most fanatical, and is exercising an ever-increasing influence in favor of the Great Physician of soul and body, while they ameliorate the sufferings of thousands each year, especially among the poor.
5. The Protestant pulpit is beginning to make itself felt as a force of no mean import. In the early years of our mission work these pulpits were occupied mostly either by men converted in or after reaching middle life, or by foreigners. But the Mexican youth taken
'rllE MISSrONAltY REVIEW 013' '.rHE WORLD
into our schools twenty or more years ago, and trained in "sound doctrines," with notions of sermon building, and, above all, a personal knowledge of salvation, together with a zeal for souls born of the Holy Spirit's presence, are already making the pulpit a power in the land. Tho but few years of this kind of preparation have obtained, such men as Valderrama, Morales, Euroza, Sein, and others who might be mentioned, true-blooded Mexicans, are making themselves feIt in and out of the Church, and, given the language, would be an honor to the Christian pulpit in any land.
6. Here, as in other lands, Protestantism has laid her hand upon the youth, and is drawing them into the Sunday-schools, Epworth League, Christian Endeavor, and Young People's societies. These are being prepared to be a mighty Christian force in the future.
Some idea of their present importance may be obtained when we state that recently five hundred and sixty-three delegates representing these movements, and now united in a federation, met in the City of Puebla for their fourth annual convention. The first convention, four years ago, was attended by only about two hundred.
7. And last, but by no means least, the orderly Christian life and the well-regulated Christian family, standing on Biblical grounds and showing to the world around living examples of happy homes, where the head of the household is a "king and priest unto God," and where of all it may be said: They eat, they drink, and in communion sweet Quaff immortality and joy. .
These are forces which will live to bless these lands and honor God We forever. have spoken of two kinds of religious forces, Roman Catholic and Protestant. The first has had over three hundred years in which to prove its work. Let every impartial reader' look at Mexico and Central America and see the sad results. Protestantism set its forces at work just as the old century passed into the last twenty-five years of its existence. Give us twenty-five years more, and a better pen will write a chapter more glorious than we could dare to prophesy.
A NEW REFORMATION IN FRANCE-MADRANGES* FROM AN OFFICIAL REPORT A remarkable religious movement, which in some respects reminds us of the Reformation of the sixteenth century, has recently taken place in the district of Correze, France, where the most profound religious ignorance and unreasoning prejudice have hitherto existed.
On an undulating plateau in the region of Tulle, about six miles ~ Translated from reports issued by the Societe Evangelique de France by Emma Belle D. Pierson: See also note in Editorial Department.
A NEW REFORMATION IN FRANCE-MADRAliI>:!)3
from Treignac, and some distance from the Monedieres Mountains, lies the little village of Madranges. 'rhis village, barren of natural advantages, is still more neglected from a civil and religious stand- P9int. Since the Revolution it has belonged to the parish of Lonzac, but has suffered much neglect at the hands oftheRomish Church. 'fhe people of Madranges had no priest. The priest of LOl1zac was supposed to minister to them, and for a while he performed mass for them twice a month in their little church. He obliged the children to come for their cate- cheticallessons three times a week to Lonzac at seven in the morning.
In order to be on time they had to start from their homes about three or four o'clock, often accompanied by their parents because they could not find their way in the dark. It is difficult to picture what these poor children suffered from the cold and rain and fatigue, plodding the five or six miles which separated Ma- dranges from Lonzac. Such a state of things could not last. The parents at length refused to send their youngest children. _ The final rupture, however, was caused by the priest himself. One day he abruptly announced to his parishioners of Madranges that as MONSIEUR DUPUY he did not receive payment for this ministration, he would not come again to say mass in their chapel. Stunned by this announcement, the population asked the diocesan authority to attach them to another parish. They also sent three mothers as a delegation to the Bishop of Tulle with a most remarkable letter (January 16, 1898), laying before him the sad plight in which their village was placed, and stating that the priest of Lonzac had flatly refused to administer baptism to a child and communion to two catechumens. They added: Thus, considering that with every effort we make matters worse rather than better, we abandon the struggle, and we place in your hands the sacred house which was given to us that religion might reign in the midst of our families. We hope, sire, that you will find it in your heart
to end this unhappy state of things by authorizing the priest of Veix to come and minister to us at once. The faith has not departed from Madranges. Our men recognize their duties as well as we women.
Even this letter brought no response. The bishop was unmoved, and for eighteen months these poor villagers were entirely deprived of religious services. But they were so deeply religious that they con- trived in many ways to remedy the trouble. For marriage services they went to neighboring village churches, and one of their own num- ber volunteerCld to take charge of religious instruction. An old sacristan named Dupuy helped the children learn the catechism; moreover, he read the Bible to them. When a death took place they carried the body to the church, and the sacristan officiated in place of the priest, reciting the prayers for the dead both there and at the grave. This good man also at Christmas time, seeing the pe()ple sad because no religious services were to be held, gathered them together in the village church and read to them from the Bible the story of the nativity, while his son sang some special Christmas hymns.. What a touching example of faith and genuine attachment to religion in these mountain people!
However, time ran on without any amelioration of their circum- stances.' At last, tired of being thus neglected, the inhabitants made a great decision. August 2, 1898, they addressed a petition to Rev. Mr. Hirsch, Protestant pastor at Brive, telling him how distressed they were, and adding: In view of the neglect, which is an evidence of ill will toward us, the population thus testifies their desire to have henceforth a form of wor- ship which will prevent a return of this primitive ignorance, and they appeal to your kindness for some services which will certainly be well . attended if you will advise us of the day of your arrival.
This letter was sent on by Pastor Hirsh to the Evangelical Society of France, of which he was a member. Touched by the appeal, Rev. Mr. Follourd, agent of the Evangelical Society at Brive, was asked to put himself immediately into communication with the people of Madranges. He found that they had been led to ask for a Protestant pastor, because some of the citizens, when absent from home, had attended Protestant services. The sacristan Dupuy had for a long time been reading a Bible which he had bought of a colporteur. Numbers of other Bibles and copies of the New Testament were bought in the same way, and Pastor Fallourd reported that the ground was prepared and it was only necessary to sow the seed.
About August 16th he went to Madranges and received an enthusiastic welcome upon his arl'lval. Guns were fired in his honor and the church bells rang out to call the people together. At two o'clock a fine assemblage gathered in the open air, the Church being too, small to hold them. This first meeting was a great success. An old
A NEW REFORMATION IN FRANCE-MADRANGES
man was heard to say as he walked home, "There is the religion that I need. When I come to die I do not want the priest called, but the pastor." He had not long to wait, for shortly afterward he died sud- denly, and Pastor Fallourd was called to conduct the funeral. The family urged him to perform the ceremony in the church, using the regular Romish appurtenances. It was no time for use- less discussions, so he consented. It was a most curious and un- common spectacle-a funeral cortege presided over by a Protestant pastor and preceded by a man with a crucifix! At the churcL. Mr. Fallourd mounted the pulpit, while every part of the church-nave, choir, chapel of the Virgin, and even the sacristy-was filled with lis- teners. As it grew dark the sacristan took from the altar the silver candlestick, and, lighting the candle, held it near the pulpit, so that the pastor might see to read from the Bible!
The impression produced by the service was profound, and the people urged him to returu on August 28th, the day of the village fete. They chose this time to show their sympathy with Prostestantism. Five meetings were held in three days, one of which called forth an audience of six hundred people, in spite of a pouring rain. It was indeed a strange sight to see men and women, young people and children, entering the chapel, dipping their fingers into the "holy water" and making the sign of the cross, while they listened in astonished silence to the preaching so new to them, a sermon in which there was no allusion to the Virgin Mary nor to the saints, but only to Jesus Ohrist, who died for our sins and rose again for our justification.
. The people, becoming more and more interested by this preaching of the true Gospel, sent a petition to the Evangelical Society, asking for a settled pastor. This petition was signed by one hundred and fifty-seven names, represent.ing a majority of the residents of the place. Rev. Mr. Fallourd went to Madranges for six months on October 13, 1898, and instituted regular worship there. For two months it was held in the Oatholic church without opposition. The people were much touched by the sympathy shown them after their long years of neglect, and as they heard more of the Gospel their interest in it grew. It is difficult to give an idea of the change that came over the spiritual life of that population. In their homes the ordinary topic of conversation became religion. They spoke of it in the fields, at the fair, riding, or walking, or traveling on the railroad. Women, children, young people and aged, all seemed equally interested in the movement.
When the Romish Ohurch saw how things were tending it immediately named a priest for Madranges, withheld the use of the church edifice from the Protestants, and commenced the regnlar celebration of the mass. The first visit the new priest made was to Dupuy, the sacristan, and demanded that he serve, as formerly, at the mass. But the old
PROTESTANT SUNDAY-SCHOOL CHILDRE~-MADRANGES man had been reading his Bible, and replied to the priest, "Monsieur, I can not serve you at mass; I am a Protestant." Much taken back, the priest turned to Dupuy's son and said, "Well then, Denis, you shall serve me." " I," responded the young man, "still less than my father! " The f~llowing Sunday less than two dozen persons attended mass, while Pastor Fallourd had an audience of one hundred. The next week the priest invited one of his colleagues from a neighboring village, and when the hour came for Mr. Fallourd's meeting to assemble they both placed themselves at the door of the Protestant meeting-place to intimidate those who should attempt to attend the service. As the pastor approached and saw the priests he feared that he would have no audience; but he mistook his- people, for he found a company of young people assembled who had entered courageously under the severe gaze of the two priests, fortifying themselves by singing: Oh, Jesus, we will be faithful, Faithful to Thee till death.
The clergy did everything in their power to regain a hold upon the people. Menaces, promises, and money were used; neither expense nor effort was spared in the endeavor t? draw away or discourage the
A NEW REFORMATION IN FRANCE-MADRANGES
new converts. The priest knew that the Protestants would have a Christmas tree, so he offered tWO! He knew that the people had commenced to love the Bible, so he set himself to speak well of the" Book of books" and to preach the Gospel more like the Protestant pastor. To attract young ,people he instituted games, organized sociables, and distributed money, clothes, and food all winter. But in spite of his efforts he was forced to acknowledge himself defeated.
Aside from a few defections, the Protestants have remained true. Whole families were led into the light. A large company of young people became enthusiastic for Christ. A Sabbath-school and a Thursday school for catechetical and- singing lessons; a regular and wellattended church service; a set' of faithful officers; among them the old sacristan; and, lastly, a solid nucleus -of several hundred adherents, including residents of neighboring villages-all these attest the genuineness of the work.
For some time past Mr. Fallourd has made the 15th of each month, which is the universal fair day, an occasion for a meeting, especially to draw strangers who have been attracted by the fair and who must pass through Madranges. In this way many mountain people from twenty miles round are glad to attend, and when they go back to their homes they recount to their neighbors what they have heard. Thus the good seed is being scattered all abont Mad ranges, oU'TER THE SJ£RVICE IN THE BARN-IIIADRANGES
and the inhabitants of the far-away villages are asking in their turn for the Gospel. Protestant hymns have become very popular, and may be heard from early morning until night in the streets of the vil- lage, in the fields and pastures, echoing and reechoing from hill to hill. Thus the very mountains are made to rejoice. Until lately they had no popular music except light songs, often with vulgar words.
Now these songs are iii iii iii abandoned, and every- where the canticles of the Ohristian faith may be heard. What has brought about this? Draw near to these little shepherds and ask them.
" My children, you are happy to-day?"
" Ah! yes, sir; we can not help singing."
"How old are you?"
"I am four months old," says one.
"And I also – I am four months old."
"How is that? You are fooling me. You look to be fourteen years- both of you."
"Oh, sir, we mean INSIDE THE NEW CHURCH-MADRANGES that it is but four months since we heard and accepted the Gospel. The years we lived without the Gospel do not count. It was lost time." One woman said recently: "Before you came here with the Gospel message I used to be terrified by thunder- storms: I used to light a candle, and, trembling low down before it, repeat over and over' Paters ' and 'Ave Marias'; but now when the thunders roar I sing a hymn and have no fear whatever."
These people are not satisfied with mere attendance at Divine serv- ice and -reading their Bibles. They understand also the importance of sacrifice in Ohristian life. When the use of the church was refused them, they were much discouraged, _but nobly rose to the occasion.
The sacristan offered his house to the pastor for service. Then, as it proved much too small,another man offered his barn, and all gladly set to work to renovate it. At another time, without the knowledge of the pastor, they took up a collection to pay his traveling expenses, and later, having learned that the Societe Evangelique was to have a sale,
A NEW REFORMATION IN FRANCE-MADRANGES
they contributed two sacks of chestnuts. When the erection of s church was proposed they offered to give several days' work and to fur- nish some of the materials.
The people themselves have started prayer-meetings in which the young men and women lead in prayer with a simplicity and fervor truly astonishing. There has been a steady growth up to the present time in numbers and in personal piety of the converts.
This movement at Madranges is but one of a number of symptoms which show a state of soul hunger which is more widespread in France than is generally known. Similar movements are imminent and have already begun in other parts of Correze. We .believe this region to be deliberately opening up itself to the Gospel. Many places have sent to us asking for conferences, and these requests are not prompted by mere anti-clericalism or hatred of the priest. They are tlie expressions of real and deeply felt soul needs. The whole move- ment began years ago by a Bible falling into the hands of a simple farmer. The good man spread the Word of God so well that throughout the whole community there came requests for Bibles and New Testa- ments. The people buy them and read them.
These multitudes, de- tached from Rome but without the light of truth, need our prayers and our help. Already a church has been established at Madranges with four out- posts, but what can one pastor do to serve all the region round with its cry- ing needs? Three other churches ought to be estab- lished at once in order to take advantage of the cordial feel- ing which the people have to- ward Protestant- ism. Pray ear- nestly that the Lord of the har- vest will sen d for t h laborers in t 0 this field, and let the nec- essary mOTley be given to make possible the best work of the messengers of Peace. THE NEW l'ROTESTANT C;:HUIC;:H AT MADRANGlllS
ALLEGED BARBARITIES IN KONGOFREE STATE BY REV. J. T. GRACEY, D.D.
Dr. Wilson, a Presbyterian missionary in West Africa, observed some negro lads tossing a ball which bounded unusually. Curiosity led him to investigate the substance of the ball, which, to his amazement, he found to be what is popularly known as India rubber. lIe called the attention of merchants in England to the discovery which this accident led to, that there were vast quantities of this gum within a short distance of the coast of Africa.
'l'hat discovery stimulated modern methods of communication. The use of rubber for insulating electric wires had already resulted in ocean cables. But the sources whence it was got and the quality of it, and even the limitation of the quantity of it, made it so expensive as to preclude its large use in ocean cables and many arts and industries. The discovery of missionary Wilson led to investigations which revealed the fact that unlimited quantities of rubber could be furnished from West Africa, which, though of a coarser quality, could be utilized at a very low cost in arts and sciences. One who studies a map of the cable lines of the world will be amazed at the results traceable to Dr. Wilson's observation of the negro boys' ball game.
It is sad to have to note that this discovery has brought but little blessing to the native African, and is bringing much of the curse of contact with so-called Christian civilization.
The cupidity of Europeans has led to the organization of effort on an extended scale to exploit Africa "for what there is in it." It is very lamentable that this is accompanied with manifestations of the most reckless disregard of justice and humanitarian measures in a number of localities. The general tendency of the foreign administration of the "spheres of influence" has probably made for progress in a good sense, but there are notable exceptions.
The Belgium government and its king, Leopold II., are ~upposed to be responsible for good government in the Kongo Free State. It is natural that they shonld seek revenue for the conduct of so vast a venture. Among the indigenous resources looked to is the India rubber supply. It is thought not possible that the government in its official capacity could organize a bureau for this branch of income that could be as efficient as a voluntary agency, to whom the government might let the privilege to operate the industry. The government must not, however, give this away. A percentage of the crop of rubber collected must fall to the state as a part of its income. In the practical operation of this theory of administration the Brussels government has sold the privilege to collect rubber through the Free State territory. It also has authorized the use of force in securing the services of the natives in this enterprise.
ALLEGED BARBARITIES IN KONGO FREE STATE
It is patent on the face of the system that it is open to great abuse. A high average of morality in the officers and agents of such a "concession" would be demanded under such conditions to secure even a tolerably decent result. The stockholders in Europe press for high dividends, and are not apt to be over nice as to the methods whieh bring them. Agents far removed from the restraints of any public sentiment, feeling the lassitude of a tropical climate, obliged to find and develop the men and organize the measures for operating the plant or "privilege," are subject to unusual temptations to laxity in the ethical quality of all parts of the appliances.
The agency through which the labor of the expedition and its subordinate administration must be effected is the native races. These " raw heathen" have not been accustomed to regard the "quality of mercy," or to exhibit altruistic characteristics, and they are scarcely likely to develop them when a "tale" of rubber is demanded by fair means-but if not then, by any means. Now when there is added a military force, authorized to obtain compulsory labor from a people reluctant to work at all,and not tempted thereto by any wants they recognize, and for whieh there is at best remuneration unequal to even the new desires whieh eivilization might ereate, it is not difficult to see that the labor factor is not readily secured without chance of great injustice and even cruelty.
When within the contract an armed force is possible, which must be composed of native tribes, and which may be equipped with arms of precision, of which the native popUlation has been denuded by compact of fifteen great nations, the chances for anything like tolerable decency, much less fairness and humanitarianism, rapidly diminishes. Then when one goes a step further in the actual facts, and finds this police force, with unlimited authority to impress men and women, is not only armed with the most modern weapons, but is picked from cannibal tribes, who are turned loose where there is no possible challenge to their conduct, one has hypothetieal eonditions most eompletely adapted to secure injustice, oppression, cruelty, and crime of every grade.
And all this is just what the Kongo Free State has provided. It is not necessary to be over particular in sifting the evidence which is borne by every mail, that this system is operated to result in the blackest and most burping shame of Christendom. The press of Great Britain, of Germany, of France,- and of Brussels itself, has been laden with complaints of results of such an "abomination of desolation." It is true that the evidence is charged with originating from competing and jealous eompanies, who are obliged to accept smaller dividends than the great Kongo eoncessionaires are able to present to their directors, and to the Belgium government to help balance its budget. But the whole crime and cruelty is so well within the possi-
bilities of the provisional sub-government of the concessions that it can make but little difference whether some details of the pandemonium are too lurid or otherwise. They are within the bond. That the Kongo State should hold one-half the shares in the Domaine Prive Oompany, and be indifferent to the reports of murder, torture, and mutilation which accompany its dividt'nds, is beyond comprehension. That these things are of common occnrrence is asserted on the authority of officers who have ad mitted orderilJg the mutilation of hundreds of natives, and suspending the mutilated members on stockades to inspire a zeal to collect rn bber. Knees hacked off, hands severed at the wrist, limbs broken with revolver bullets, rubber collectors tied to stakes and, naked, expos·ed to the burning sun-such are the proceedings, among other&, reported. Fifty blows with a hippo (whip) administered by a sub-agent on a native, because he had not collected enough rubber, were followed by a revolver shot which broke the poor fellow's ankle; whole districts put to fire and sword to terrorize the n~ives to collect rubber; women's right hands cut off because their husbands did not produce enough rubber-these are asserted as specimens of the energetic development of the" Abir" Oompany, organized under Kongo law, by which shares have advanced five hundred per cent. in a few months, and enormous quantities ·of rubber are sent home, a single steamer having carried four hundred and eighty tons of it.
We have chosen to write in moderation (!) of these conditions, and forbear quoting the evidence of greater atrocities, some of them common to all the rubber companies. Oaptain Guy Burrows, after six years' service in the Kongo Free State government, stated, January 2, 1902, in London, to the representative of the Associated Press, that there are abuses which, for the credit of humanity, we decline to quote. He corroborated the statement of an American missionary that the Free State officials employed five hundred cannibals, to whom they issued rifles, to massacre and capture unarmed natives who had rebelled against their brutal methods. He declared that he had sworn testimony of the Belgian government handing over natives to these armed cannibals. He says, "Forced labor prevails everywhere and 'shot-gun' rule is the truest description of the present administration. The companies deriving wealth from the collection of rubber are all more or less state enterprises, as a third or half the shares in ·them are invariably held by the government." He acknowledges that King Leopold and the government have made some show of action against the agents of some of the Upper Kongo companies, bu t says" only minor officials are ever touched." He asserts that" while the present systems for the collection of rubber and the recruitment of natives continue the Kongo Free State will remain a disgrace to the white man's work in Africa."
CHRISTIAN LITERATURE FOR TURKEY
CHRISTIAN LITERATURE FOR TURKEY Lapse of years has not ended, nor can it ever end, the sway of this marvelous city of over millions of Asiatics, to whom during many centuries it has been known as the dominant point of the universe. The influence of Constantinople can never cease so long as the people of Western Asia persist in their ancient custom of coming periodically to this city like the flow of a tidal wave, in order to carry back with its ebb to distant hamlets the impressions and other gains which the city has given them. Under these circumstances the city may be called the throbbing heart of Turkey.-Consianiinople and Its Problems, by Dr. H. O. DWIGHT.
The Ohristian agencies for reaching this strategic point of power with the Gospel have been efficient enough to provoke persistent antagonism in an acute form. The educational institutions of the Protestant commnnities Iilcattered over the empire have been objects of intense persecution an'd the storm-center of conflict between Islam and Ohristianity.
Through it all the schools have secured the result of a large read- ing community. The sultan and his advisers have recently shown their estimate of the power of the press by a supersensitiveness to its issues, and a greatly increased censorship over them. The ludicrous ignorance of this board of censors in the 9.etail of their work finds constant exposure through the secular press of Europe and America.
Paul's Epistle to the Galatians was condemned on the supposition that it was addressed to the population of Galata, Oonstantinople, and when information was given that Paul was dead demand was made for the certificate of his burial. "Onward, Ohristian Soldiers!" was condemned as too martial for circulation in the empire, and" Thy Kingdom Oome" was expunged from the Lord's prayer, as the sultan did not want any other kingdom to come than his own. But all these strictures are a compliment to the power of the press, and the indications are that literature is to be the storm-center in 'l'urkey. Schools continuously pour out multitudes ready to read without discrimination. Prevailing conditions make the issues of native publishers for the most part vicious, or at best indiscriminate.
The American Board, through its Publication Oommittee, is alert to the opportunity and the necessity of the present hour, and has availed itself of the presence in this country at this time of Dr. Henry O. Dwight, whose post-office address is Roselle, New Jersey, to press on the attention of the Ohristian public of all denominations the duty of a well-organized extension of the evangelical literary agencies possible in the Turkish Empire.
HENRY O. DWIGHT, D.D., ON THE CRISIS Four facts constitute to-day a crisis in the history of progress III 'l'urkey: 1. Education has opened a way for literature to shape the moral growth of the people. But morally elevating books in native languages are wanting.
2. American missionaries have won such a leading position in the field of literature in that land that they can reach the people with Ohristian books of power.
3. The missionaries have not the money to publish the fresh, attractive, inspiring books needed to continue the culture begun in the schools.
4. Half-educated native writers of atheistical tendency and ven- dors of the pander's literature have found that there is money in this . situation, and if inaction to-day permits the apostles of sensuality to wrest from the hands of .the missionaries preeminence in the literary field, a like opportunity for molding the moral qualities of the nation can hardly occnr again.
Missionaries of the American Board have been in a great degree the agency bv which a knowledge of reading has been spread through Turkey. – More than any other writers.in the empire, they are equipped for giving to the people books that will elevate, whether in Turkish, Greek, or Armenian. 'l'hey have agencies in every province, and sell their books even in Persia and Russia. 'I.'he American Board supports the missionaries and assistants engaged in literary work, the London Tract Society annually grants $1,250 for printing tracts and some other strictly evangelistic literature, but there is no money to publish books for young people, for general Christian culture in the community at large, or for stimulating thought among the clergy and other leaders.
Schools continuously pour ont multitudes ready to 'read without discrimination. Prevailing conditions make the issues of native publishers for the most part vicious, or at best indiscriminate. Ex- perience has shown that if the missionaries offer the people good books they will be bought and appreciated. We all know that the press is the only means by which a small body of workers call influ- ence vast multitudes. Yet the mission press is almost idle because there is no money to maintain it in activity.
In this emergency an attempt is being made to raise a fund of thirty thousand dollars for the use of the Publication Committee of the American Board's missions in Turkey. This fund will be devoted entirely to maintaining book manufacture; that is to say, it will be dedicated to the expense of paper, illustrations, printing and binding books of Christian culture without sectarian bias.
Printing wiII have to be done in three leading languages of the country, and the necessity for this reduplication makes the sum pro- posed small in proportion to the nature of the enterprise contemplated. The plan is to proceed cautiously, to issue well-chosen books in attractive form, and to sell the books at a small advance only over the cost of production. This will keep the selling price low, will provide for the cost of distribution over a wide territory, and will afford means of increasing the annual output while insuring at the same time the return of all the money to be used again. In short, the fund is to be a capital which is gradually to be invested in the business, whose profits will be small but will go to extend the business. Properly managed, such a fund will not only initiate, but, like an endowment for a college, it will permaneutly continue this enterprise of education, enlightenment, and spiritual culture.
Because of the unsectarian quality of the literature contemplated, philanthropists of every name may aid in this effort to stimulate moral growth in a nation. Because of the profoundly beneficent aim of the undertaking, every Christian may hel p it; for it is of the class of work which Jesus Christ did when he walked among men.
THE RELIGIOUS CONDITION OF NEW YORK
THE RELIGIOUS CONDITION OF NEW YORK * As the greatest city of a Christian country, New York maybe looked upon as a Christian city, pronounced in her adherence to Christian principles, and an unfaltering testimony to the vast continent in which she wields so mighty an influence. This is indeed the ideal which so powerful a metropolis should fulfil. But New York falls far short of it. Her popUlation of 3,437,202 places her second only to London in size and importance. In the commerce of the New World her influence is paramount. In politics, in education, in vast enterprises, she is leading the nation. But in religion, in Protesta.nt church members proportioned to the population, she shows broad districts, teeming with multitudes of mingled peoples, whose religious condition is less than the least of any of our States and Territories.
In 1890 San Francisco showed the lowest proportion of Protestant church members of any of our large cities, only five and eight-tenths of her popUlation being professing evangelicals, while New York City, with her eight per cent. of evangelical Christians, was next lowest. But the total population of San Francisco was less than 300,000, while New York possessed one district-the German-numbering over 200,000, in which the proportion of evangelicals was but four per cent., and another district of 2oo,00D-the Jewish-in which the Protestant church members numbered but nine-tenths of one per cent.
In 1900 the Jewish section showed but three-fifths of one per cent. of evangelical church members, or 1,504 Christians to 221,000 persons.
There is no city in the Union, State or Territory, which shows such religious dearth as these great foreign districts of New York City. Alaska in 1890 had a Protestant church membership of four per cent. and a Protestant church, to say nothing of the Roman Catholic and Greek churches, to every 3,561 persons of her population. Indian Territory in 1890.. had fifteen per cent. of evangelical Christians, and an evangelical church for every 227 of her people-men, women, and children. But New York's Jewish district has only a Protestant church for every 22,000 people, and one ward in the Borough of Brooklyn has a population of 20,000 and not a single Protestant church 01' mission is to be found within its borders.
Above Fourteenth Street in the Borough of Manhattan the evangelical Christians number but nine per cent. of the population, leaving a million and fifty thousand people outside of evangelical Christianity.
The Borough of Brooklyn shows ten per cent. (119,787) of Protestant church members, but even here is left a million and forty-six thousand persons not evangelical Christians.
But startling as are these figures, we stand aghast when we consider the character of this population which we should evangelize-foreigners from every clime under heaven; and not in knots of a hundred or more, but in great, solid massive colonies of hundreds of thousands.
New York is a port of entry, and here the main stream of foreign immigration pours its floods of hapless human beings into our country. To be sure many of them scatter to the West and South and North, but too many-far too many-lodge in New York City. And these are the * Condensed from The City's Millions, a paper published by the" New York Evangelical Band," of which Miss Helen F. Clark is the director. This band is doing most efficient work, and is in sore need of the support of Christians who wish to have a part in rescuing the milliona of this metropolis.-EllITORS.
poorest of the poor. If they were not, if they had the money to carry them across the country they would not stay in New York to struggle and starve and suffer.
In one year 35,000 Russians arrived at New York with but seven dollars each; 66,000 Italians came with eight dollars each, and 23,000 Hungarians came with but five dollars per capita-over 124,000 persons, of whom not one had sufficient money to pay one month's rent in advance. Their poverty is awful. Their ignorance is appalling. Speaking only their native dialects, they huddle together, race by race, living over again their life in the fatherland, perpetuating their customs, perpetuating their religion, unless, as is too often the case, they lapse into atheism and open unbelief.
These are beds for the prolific propagation of socialism and anarchy. Here in these districts are the nihilist societies of the Russians, the socialist and anarchist clubs of the Germans, the Italian Mafia and the Chinese highbinders. All these preach against established institutions, or incite to law"breaking and personal vengeance.
These ignorant and too often lawless foreigners are also the natural prey of corrupt politicians, and through the ballot become to our better citizens a menace that is terrible. What is the outlook for their evangelization?
We have less than 150,000 Christian church members in Manhattan to 1,850,000 inhabitants, and but 302,000 in all of Greater New York against her 3,437,000 people. This is but a handful in the wilderness of people. For this small number-many of them minors, most of them women, too many of them weak and negligent-to accomplish this work of evangelization will mean a tremendous effort on the part of the willing and competent ones.
It will mean not only personal labor but a greater expenditure than New York Christians are probably ready to undertake. For years our generous city givers have been bui~ding up the West and South through our Home Mission Societies, until now there is no settlement of people in country districts in all our dominions on this continent so void of the Gospel as are the poorer districts of our great cities. It is now time for the country districts to help evangelize the cities, and for our general Christian public to look more closely to the condition of our great centers of popUlation, and devise some way by which their menacing elements may be reached by the Gospel.
PROPORTION OF RELIGIOUS AND NON~RELIGIOUS PEItSONS IN THE TWELVE LARGEST CITIES IN THE UNITED STATES, ACCORDING TO THE LAST CHURCH CENSUS (1890) iI il ~ ~ 00 ..1:1 '"..1..:1. t'"; o"'oSil. '" p:~ ..0.. '; ~ ~ ..1:1 • ..1:1", "~''.". '"o~ "..o..lS.'0" ~~ ..0.. "'", ., r;iI[)~.8 …. -0;;'$" ~~ ~'& e"~.;'.;'l:';l'-;l, i~"'.~ .o.. S.0 tl.'"; 0", ;i!&j -'"'".0 l).S ~3 – o1lt::: "''''' ~;;; :.§a ~M<~1l ~~ … ..1:1 " "'" 0- "'''' "'= ~;;; CITY :'0"; -'" – ~ "l ~o CITY '":0; .-'" 14)<0;,;1; 1 – i !,d P. &:I 0 &:I 00 ~~ 0 p0., A< E] Q) =– 2Q);::0: 0- '" ~ "l ~o ~ 0 – – – ~~ NewYork …… 1,515,301 133,096 8 27 63 San Francisco … 298.997; 17,370 5 25 68 Brooklyn ……. 806,343 103,232 12 25 61 Cincinnati. …… 296,908 39,194 13 25 60 ChicaJ;0 …….. 1,099,850 114,657 10 24 64 Cleveland.. … .. . 225601..636543'1 38,837 14 21 Phila elphia…. 1,046,964 166,029 15 16 67 Buffalo……… .. 40,630 15 28 64 54 lsI I St. Lonis ……. 451,770 51,485 11 17 70 ~~ Orleans…. 242,0391 25,700 10 28 60 Boston ……… 448,477 45.560 10 44 45 Greater N. Y…. 3,437,202:302,295 8 26 64 Baltimore …… 434.439 54,516 12 59
1902J EDITORIALS
EDITORIALS The Zioniata in Conference of higher criticism have been con- fined almost exclusively to the The fifth Zionist Congress was ranks of Protestantism. But the held at Basle the first week in the contagion or infection has reached new year, and very largely at- the disciples of. the Vatican, as is tended, its members coming to- seen in the case of Lenormant and gether from points as distant from Dr. Mivart and others. The pope is each other as Astrachan and Lon- a man of much worldly wisdom, don, Canada and Manchuria. Dr. and a consummate tactician, and, Theodor Herzl, Israel ZangwiJI, and though the sessions of the commis- Dr. Max Nordau were the main sion may be private, the conclu- speakers. It would seem as though sions will not be. We shall all look this movement must have some his- with profound interest to see how toric, if not prophetic, significance. the papal Church, hitherto so con- It seems like a rising river, growing servative about inspiration, will in depth, breadth, volume and force take her stand. It would be a new of current, and has been called the 'marvel if the Church which has Jewish Parliament. To make the traditionally been supposed to keep Jewish proletar:iat settled and in- the word of God from the common dustrious, not to pauperize the folk should now be foremost in people, but to colonize and redeem espousing its inerrancy, and dethe land of Israel by agricultural clare for its infallibility, as thirty and industrial development; to lib- years ago it declared for that of erate the Jews from their bonds of the pope. poverty and social fetters, and convert weeping and helpless depend- The Greek Church and Toleration ants into energetic and enterprising citizens and helpers-these are the Meanwhile the Greek Church sublime objects kept before the shows signs of a new attitude. The Zionist leaders, and the whole Russian Church has, for its own movement seems to crystallize supposed well-being, followed a about these great ideals and ideas, sort of protective tariff policy as to and these are what have always religious commodities. Church and moved the world. We wait in ex- State are so unitE;ld, not as by fusion pectancy. but by frost, that to tolerate other faiths among ignorant Russian A Papal Bible Conference peasants has been supposed to tol- erate rebellion against the empire. The pope has called a Bible Con- The result has been that all along gress! A special commission is ap- through the c.enturies since the pointed to consider all questions Reformation, Russia has stood connected with biblical studies, like a huge arctic iceberg, refuswith the design to furnish the ing to melt under the rays of that scholarly minds in the Roman spirit of charity which is fast melt- Catholic communion full oppor- ing all other barriers to Christian tunity to state their opinions and fellowship. Lately signs of a perplexities, and bring them to the "thaw" are apparent. A modified direct notice of the Head of the toleration is extended to those who Church. The purpose seems to be desire to follow the family faith to formulate a rule of faith so as to and worship of their fathers, limit speculation and eliminate whether orthodox or not, proselyte;ontroversy. Hitherto the ravages ing from the Greek Church being,
however, forbidden. And of Ill-te, in Business Principles of the Church the recent revision of the criminal Missionary Society code, penalties for violation of No less than thirteen times, at religious edicts are made less severe different periods of its history, and rigid. We hope the great says a correspondent, the following northern empire of the 'bear may sequences of facts has occurred: go on to learn still better manners, 1. An excess, sometimes large, of until the bear shall at least "for- expenditure over income in the bear "-and perhaps become a lamb. year; The Bishop of Durham 2. A decisive increase in the in- Dr. H. C. G. Moule, the new come of the succeeding year; Bishop of Durham, is a man un- 3. A maintenance of such increase surpassed in the evangelical tone broadly speaking in after years; of his ministry and the catholicity This-the largest missionary so- of his charity. He is a rara avis, ciety in the world-proceeds on combining so much soundness of the principle of sending forth to faith with so much suavity of man- the field all applicants, physical- ner and beauty of temper. We ac- ly, intellectually, and spiritually count it a singular privilege to fitted to go, and trusting the have known and loved him for Lord to move His people to sup- many years. In his letter to the ply funds. There has been, with residents in his new see, his charac- all the receding waves, a steady ter may be clearly discerned breath- -advance to a higher flood-mark.
ing through his utterances: The income for 1812-13 was but In these early days of my work £3,046. It has steadily risen to as Bishop of Durham, I write to offer a greeting to the great min- £279,635 in 1894-95, with very few ing population of the country. I follow a great bishop. The miners instances of even temporary retro- of Durham are not likely to forget him. I can not be like him in his gression. And, as this bears so in- wonderful power of masterly deal- ing with the difficulties of life and mately on the whole policy of mis- labor. But my heart is warm with his examples of devoted service to sionary methods, we think Mr. his brethren, and I pray God for strength to follow it whenever oc- Maconachie's words should be casion shall arise. My first work as a Christian man and a minister quoted: of the Gospel is to preach, when- ever I can, our Lord Jesus Christ The Church Missionary Society as the Divine Savior and eternal has now for more than a century. life of man, the Lord of our spirit- not only been in existence, but its ualllnd immortal being. I have to growth has, broadly speaking, been remember that no outward im- continuous and gradual. There have provement of society can ever be a been times when the growth,viewed ,substitute for the conversion of for a few years, seemed small; but our hearts and the power of God in there has never been any lengthour lives. But when that is said, I ened period when there was a de- remember also that it is His will cisive and maintained retrogresthat we should all love, honor and !lion, either as regards the supply care for our brethren to our very of missionaries or means to main- best in the life that now is. For tain them. Now, if we were deal- Christ has redeemed our whole life ing with an insurance company and our whole being, hllre as well which could exhibit the same large as hereafter, to be His own. I try and continuous development we to set before me the motto, "Love should argue with confidence that and serve." God helping, it shall its business principles are sound, be my motto to the end. and likely to bring prosperity in the future, unless there should be some great change of conditions in the facts with which the company deals. So in the main we are en- titled to argue with confidence that the principles on which the society has grown are sound, and that if
EDITORIALS
we want success in the future we Burma must continue to follow the guid- ance supplied by the past. It is An assistant secretary of the A. important to emphasize this, be- M. B. U. calls attention to the com- mon geographical error in referring cause it is sometimes urged that, to Burma and Assam as if they tho the society has reached a large were separate countries and not scale of operations, the practical now a part of India. In 1826, Assam, and more lately Burma also, be- limit of these operations has been came part of the Indian Empire, approached, and that the very mag- as different territoritids formerly belonging to Spain, Mexico, or nitude of its work is fatal. Russia became parts of the United The business principles of the States.
society, so far as I can discover The George Junior Republic from study of Mr. Stock's history, Commended have been something like the fol- The charges made against the lowing: George Junior Republic have be~n subjected to a thorough investiga- 1. God moveth the hearts of His tion by impartial judges, and the people. The silver and gold are report is published fully and be- His, and He can and will use them yonq. doubt vindicating the man- agement of that institution against for work which He approves. its detractors. The committee ap- 2. That God's people are stew- pointed in September last consisted of Prof. J. H. Hamilton, of Syraards, and that the society has a cuse University; Miss M. C. Rhoades, a teacher inthat city high right to appeal to them as such to school, and Fillmore M. Smith, give to His work. general secretary and superintend- ent of the Society for the Preven- 3. That in using money thus ob- tion of Cruelty to Children, also located in Syracuse. The investigatained the society is itself a stew- tion was desired and urged by Mr. ard, and can not waste money with- Wm. R. George, the founder and su- perintendent of the republic. The out abusing the stewardship. reports seem to have emanated from 4. That God by His Holy Spirit two or three boys, runaways from the republic, who exhibited bodily calls particular men and women injuries which, they claimed, were inflicted on them by the officers of to work in the mission field. That the republic. The charges were the society at its peril dares not ten in number, including cruelty send any others than those thus and brutality, filth and vermin, called into the field, but equally at lewd associations, under-feeding and overwork, etc. It is sufficient its peril dares not refuse to send to say that the vindication of Mr. anyone that is really called of God George and his associates is so ample and complete that the acto His work. cusations must rather inure to the I think, when such facts as these benefit of the institution. It is a case in which the attack becomes are stated, the first and deepest and most really true feeling is that we are dealing with no fancies of human thought or scheming, hut with tremendous certainties. The application of these principles to the myriad questions which come before the committee is a difficult task, and certainly a humbling one. For those who appreciate it there will be little danger of exalting or glorifying the society. The work at Salisbury Square, so far as it is to be sound, is felt to depend daily-nay, hourly-on the breath of God. In Him we live and move and have our being. By workers with such a thought abiding in their hearts things are seen in their true proportion; and retrenchment where possible of a few pounds by judicious economy is, as affecting the principle of stew- ardship, as important as the largest question of selection and preparation of candidates. The committee are day by day doing all they can by anxious revision and supervision to discharge their stewardship.
an advertisement and a recom- Bertrand, 32 rue de Vaugirard, mendation. Paris, and he will be able to give The Waifs of London further information to those in- No one can read the story of Dr. terested.
Barnardo's work for the destitute A Call from Central America children of London without being Our correspondent in San Jose, impressed with its Divine origin Costa Rica, writes of the progress and character. It is not only pic- of the work there, and of the great turesque but effective, and has al- need for further and more efficient ready saved thousands of boys and efforts to reach the people of the city in whlch he lives. We quote girls who would otherwise become from a recent letter, and trust that drunkards and harlots. This work in some way the need may be supcalls for £150,000 a year for its sup- plied: , port. Dr. Barnardo writes that More, much more, should be done here. In this city of 32,000 they are already heavily overdrawn inhabitants the present mission chapel holds only about 70. I have at their bankers, and that £200 long had a conviction, and it' deepens as time moves on, that we ($1,000) a day is needed to furnish ought to have here a real good mission church building and a firstfood alone for their great fam'ily of class preacher in Spanish with a clear head and a heart filled with 5,450 waifs and strays. A child may Christ. Thus far the places of meetbe supported f~r one year for $75, ing have been uninviting. As Christians we should show wisdom and $5(} pays for the outfit and in our work. We need an attractive meeting-place and a preacher who passage of a child who is ready to could command influence with the educated. There are thousands of emigrate to Canada. God uses liv- educated young men and women here who are ready to follow such ing links to answer prayers for the leadership. I am convinced that such a work, under God, would soon supply of these needs. * show a harvest, and that educated young men would be converted and The New Reformation in France trained as evangelists to go out and convert their own people. Christians will be interested in the account of the revival of spirit- J. H. SoBEY. ual religion in the Correze, which is described in this number of the Donations of the Review REVIEW. It is in charge of the In response to the suggestions in Societe Evangelique de France, which has the sole responsibility of our January number, some friends the work in that and in the neighfjoriIfg departments. In 1880 they have generously made donations of sent their first worker into that region, which had not heard any evan- the REVIEW to missionaries and gelical preacher since the Reformation. They have now 8 workers, others unable personally to subbut their hands need to be strengthened. scribe. We have thus already been able to send it to two Young Men's This society carries on a union work of all F r e n c h Protestant Christian associations in India, a churches. It was founded in 1833 for the purpose of preaching the young ladies' seminary in America, Gospel to Protestants and Papists alike, but as the Protestant popu- Ii missionary in Italy, two in India, lation of France is only as 1 in 75 their work lies more among Roman- and one in Korea. There are still ists than Protestants. numbers of applications which we The secretary is Pa,stor Emile would be glad to fill, but are unable to on account of the lack of funds.
*
BOOKS FOR THE MISSIONARY LIBRARY
BOOKS FOR THE MISSIONARY LIBRARY GEOGRAPHY AND ATLAS OF PROTESTANT Mrs- Jews and one to "Fields Practi- SIONS. By Rev. Harlan P. Beach, M.A. Vol. I. 8vo, 571 pp. $1.50. Student Vol- cally Unoccupied,." v1z., Siberia, unteer Movement, New York. 1901. Central Asia, Eastern Turkestan, The educational work of the Stu- dent Volunteer Movement for For- Tibet, Afghanistan, Arabia, French eign Missions is perhaps its most valuable feature, and the high Indo-China, and portions of character of this work is seen in the text-books which are issued China, India, Africa, and South from time to time, and which are used by hundreds of young men and America. young women in their mission study classes. This latest contribution Mr. Beach has given us what is to missionary literature for students by the educational secretary distinctively a book of facts, not of is, as might be expected, a mine of information. Volume 1. contains opinioD!;. They are, however, facts in brief the important facts concerning the missionary fields of which men need to know in order the world. Each chapter describes a separate field and is divided into to form correct opinions, and they two parts: the first presenting the facts bearing on the land, the peo- will furnish fuel for many missionple, and their religions, and the second giving information con- ary fires for years to come. The cerning the missionary forces at work their methods, and the out- author is noted for his accuracy look. and wide research. He quotes All the foreign mission fields are_ presented in this way, with the ex- largely from eminent authorities ception of Papal and Greek Europe. One chapter is devoted to the abo- who have labored in the various rigines of North America-the Eskimos and Indians, but there is no fields, but has so systematized the reference to the negroes; another chapter deals with the Chinese and material as to make his book an Japanese in America, but work for other foreign immigrants is unno- organic whole. ticed. There are various reasons for these distinctions, but the prin- Some minor inaccuracies would ciple one is the necessity of drawing the line somewhere between almost inevitably creep into a book home and foreign missions. Work among large numbers of non-Chris- of such wide scope as this, but we tian foreigners in America is considered "foreign" missions, while have discovered only a few. It is that among others is counted as belonging to the sphere of home misleading to state that Howard missions. Crosby and George Muller were One chapter is devoted to the "converts" from Judaism (p. 525), tho they were in part of Jewish ancestry. It would also be expected that the exact present location of the American Indians would be stated under the head of "Leading Tribes and their Distribution"
(p.13). The list of tribes among whom missionary work is being done is more up-to-date. We might have expected some mention of leper work in India and of Hindu reform movements, but the scope of this volume seems to have for- bidden it.
The first volume is invaluable for study and reference-the best in point of scope, accuracy and" up- to-dateness" thathas appeared-and the second volume; which consists of maps and statistics, is even more unique and needful. But this we reserve for later notice. *
THE MISSIONARY SPEAKER'S MANUAL. By Rev. "chimney-sweep evangelist" and A. R. Buckland and Rev. J. D. Mullins. 8vo, 368 pp.. 68. James Nisbet & Co., his mission in a cow-shed, and the London. "1901. hero is a converted sailor who is a Many pastors and others will welcome this volume of valuable true hero and a true Christian. hints, outlines, and information to help them in preparing missionary Many crying evils of London life addresses. The material is exceedingly well chosen and presented, are held up for correction, and the covering a large variety of topics, and with details full enough to story as a whole will lead the readmake the presentation interesting. er to have greater sympathy with The first department is devoted to useful hints to chairmen, depu- the poor in their struggles and will tations, and speakers as to length of addresses, the general program, awaken a desire to correct the evils and the audience. Then follow sermon outlines and suggestions as of the slums. * to topics, prayers and scripture passages. The illustrative material THE SUBJECT OF THE SHAH. By Charles Haroccupies the major portion of the vey Stileman. Illustrated. 12mo, 96 pp. volume. This includes testimonies 28. Church Missionary Society, London. as to the need, character, and value 1901. of missionary work; the principal features of non-Christian religions; Persia has not recently come stories of missionary heroism, and under the public gaze as forcibly as the triumphs of the Gospel; some has China, Japan, and Turkey. It principles and problems of mission- is, nevertheless, an important field arywork, and the leading statistics. and one which will yet be heard from. The present volume is in- With such a wealth of suggestion tended especially for young folks, and mine of information, even a but is adapted to all who are unnovice may soon become an expert. familiar with this" Land of Queen. Esther." The contents .are pic- * turesquely given in the following anagram. The land of- THE ApOSTLE OF THE SOUTHEAST. By Frank T. Bullen. 12mo, 354 pp. $1 50. D. Apple- Pussy Cats and Poverty· ton & Co , New York. 1901. Etiquette "E rror Rugs " Ruins Sunshine "S adness Indolence "I gnorance Apricots "A pathy This taste of the contents makes one wish for more and we are not disappointed. * Mr. Bullen has given us some ex- "Now! " is the missionary watchtremely entertaining and helpful books in this day, when volumes word for missionary work in each are coming from the press at the rate of thonsands a day and with generation which forms the subject no other purpose than to enrich the author and the publisher. Mr. to a booklet by Dr. Henry C. Ma- Bullen's" With Christ at Sea" has a distinct missionary value, show- bie, of the A. B. M. U. (Revell, ing the conditions of "fo'castle' life and what may be done to im- lOc.) " Now is the accepted time." prove it. His latest book is an interesting story of life in the . Now is the only time on which a slums of London with a chapter or two on life and adventure at sea. sinner can count for repentance, Facts are presented in the form of fiction. The story centers round a and the only time on which a Chris- tian can count for service. " Buy * up the opportunity."
"How A THOUSAND MISSION- ARIES ARE SUPPORTED" is the subject of a pamphlet by eight pas- tors and laymen who believe in and have tried the plan of specific churches undertaking the -support of individual missionaries under the direction of missionary boards. (Revell, IOc.)
GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE
GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE AMERICA States at the beginning of the nine- teenth century was about five and The Caucasian The sen 0 tab I e a third millions, the nation has grown nearly sixteen fold in 100 and words, so eminent- years. There are but three coun- tries which now have a greater the African Iy sane and Chris- population than the United States, viz., China, the British Empire, tian, were recently and the Hussian Empire. Fl:ance, including its dependencies, is the uttered at Montclair, N. J., by fifth country of the world in order of population, and ha!> about Booker T. Washington in an ad- almost tile same number as the United States. dress upon" The Citizenship of the Religious The Oh1"i stian American Negro": Stathtics of the Advocate of Janu· United States aI'y 16th publishes It is of the highest importance that the white race appreciate the three pages of figrare opportunity which is afforded ures relating to the various relig- ious denominations in this country, it to lift itself by lifting others. I prepared by Dr. H. K. Carroll, the have sometimes thought that one expert statil"tician, who had charge of the religious census in 1890. of the objects of the Supreme Ruler in placing what the world The following table gives the membership of the principal religcalls a weak and unfortunate race ious bodies in the United States at in the midst of a seemingly strong the end of last year, with the and fortunate one, is to give one growth during the year: the opportunity to continually RELIGIOUS BODY l'Iemher- Growth grow in breadth of thought, the ship at 1901 Present spirit of tolerance, and generosity of purse, by assisting the other. It Roman Catholic, .. , …. , 9,158,741 468.083 is always easy for a race to yield to Protestanc Episcopal. .. , 750.799 31,341 Disciples of Christ, … ,,' 1,179.541 the temptation of crushing and Southern Baptist……. . 1.674,108 29,559 withholding opportunities from a 26,112 African Methodist. , … . 698,354 22,892 ' weak race-to be deceived by the false doctrine that it lifts itself up Colored Baptist",." ' ., 1.500,802 18,146 in proportion as it keeps others Methodist, North" …. , 2,762,691 16,500 Presbyterian, North".,. 999,815 16,3R2 down. The central idea that I Christian Scientist ….. . 48.930 wish to impress is that this nation Lutheran General Synod 204,098 13.980 Congregationalist .. , . , .. 634,835 4,500 will be strong in its citizenship just Baptist, North" …. ,.,., 1,005,613 in proportion as, in its growth, it 3,475 uplifts nearly 10,000,000 black 3,039 people. It will grow weak in proportion as it yelds to the tempta- tion of neglection or degrading these people of African descent.
Census of The population of Figuring on a total of 77,000,000, Our New the entire United there was a gain of 2.18 per cent. in Possessions States, including all the population of the country dur- ing the past year, while the gain the outlying posses- in the church membership of the sions, was 84,233,069 in the census country was 2.67. The grand totals year 1900. This is itemized as fol- are: Ministers, 146,401; churches, lows: United States proper, 75,994,- 174,107; communicants, 28,070,637- 575; Philippines, 6,961,338; Porto a gain over 1900 of 2,569 ministers, Rico. 953,243; Hawaii, 54,001; Alaska, 63,592; Guam, 9,000; American Samoa, 6,100; persons in the military and naval service of the United States outside of the territory of the United States proper, 91,219.
As the population of the United
3,68R churches, and 730,027 com- Mormons A despatch to the nmnicants. T~e figures for twenty Again Preach New York Sun anof t.he largest denominations are as follows: Polygamy nounces t he spread of the propaganda I Commu- Cornmu- of polygamy by Mormon mission- Illicants ! nicants aries in Nebraska, Kansas, and I 1901 I 1~90 South Dakota. Formerly the mis- sionaries were content simply to H-o-m-a-u-C-'a-t-~-o-Ii-~.-.- ..-.-.'-'1 ?~58.?4111 ?,?3L~1' proselyte for their faith. They Method"t EpIscopal .. " 2.,62,291 2.240.35·' were careful, in order to overcome Baptist. South.. "",.,., I 1.1364,108'1 L2HO,OOO in part at least the antipathy to BaptIst. CollJred, '" , , .. . 1.610801 1.:148,989 anything Mormon, to insist that ,the Church had been reorganized MDiestchiop.ldeisstoEf Pe.ihS"risStu,u.t.h.". 11,14.71779.1,584011' 1 624019..(91.•516 and that polygamy was no longer one of its cardinal doctrines. Baptist, North .. , ….. ,. 1.005.613 IiOO.4W Pl'esbyterian, North.". 91)0,815 1 ~8H,224 The campaign now teing prose- cuted is a masked one. It is no ~lf~f~~~al~~~l~~~~~f.~~·~:. ~g£:~~ ~~~:¥~~ longer insisted on that polygamy Congregationalist.,…… G34.~.a5 1 has been banished from the Church. fd2,771 In a covert way it is stated that Lutheran Synod. Conf., 566.3," 357,153 they are now seeking converts to African Methodist ZioTl, 537,.:33' 3m.788 the Church because polygamy is Lutheran Gen. CouTlcil.. 346/,63 possible in Utah and Idaho, where Latter,Day Saints., .. ,.. 300,000 324.~·47 the Mormons are the dominant 24R02B power in politics. One of these Re-!ormed Gerrllan. ,_… 240,007 144,032 missionaries is quoted as having said recently that the true Mor- DUlted Brethreu ,., .. , 2'27J191I 204,018 mons have never relinquished their Pte~bytel'j<in RO!Jth….. 204,972 202.474 polygamous beliefs, and that he 204,098 expected to seCUle many converts, 'I Culol'ed MethodISt. .. , " 17!1·T21 because most men are by instinct 129.,384 polygamous, and that in a Church Lutheran Gen, Synor, , lH'i ,4~2 governed and run as a busin('ss OIganization a plurality of wives is The Strength At the recent semi- not only not a burden, but a .dis- tinct help to worldly plosperity. of annual conference, These missionaries'have been quot- ing leaders of the Church as saying Mormonism the seventy-second, that the law of plural marriage is God-given, and that no Mormon held in Salt Lake need fear man-made lawb They are also accused of tempting their City. "Apostle" Clawon gave these prospective converts with a pictUJ'e of Mormon supremacy in thefutuI'e figures. Said he: ,. There are to-da y by reason of the fact that plurality of wives means larger families, and 51 stakes in the Mormon Church, 14 that as the average non-Mormon family numbers no more than three foreign missions, 200,000 souls in children, in time the whole ('arth will be filled by the true believers. stakes of Zion, and 50,000 in the They seek to prove that in ancient days, according to both their Bibl(' misbions-a total of 3lO,000: 85,000 and that of the Christian Church, children under eight years of age; the first presidency and 12 apostles, 2CO patriarchs, ('i,800 high priests, D,736 seventies, 20,000 elders, mak- ing a total of 36,744; 4,800 priests, 4,900 teachers, 16,000 deacons, a total of 25,700, constituting the lesser priesthood, or a gl'and total of 02,444 bearing the priesthood of God. Connected with the auxiliary associations of the Church are 30,150 members of the Relief So- ciety, lO,OOO officers and teachers in Sunday-schools and 15,000 chil- dren, 28,000 in the Y. 11. M. I. A.
and 2;";,000 in the Y. L. F. I. A.; 4,060 officers and 31,D88 children in tIle primary association; about 20,- 000 belonging to the religious classes of the Church, the total of those belonging to the auxiliary associations reaching 264,204."
GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE
polygamy was not regarded as a spondence and of agencies of all sin. kinds connected with collecting and distributing the money. The fol- Educational In accordance with lowing table shows this in detail. Gifts in 1901 its custom, the Chi- During the financial year of the Board its expenses amounted to cago Tribune re- $717,081. The distribution of this ports the amounts given for educa- sum will be best understood by tion and charity in the United considering what portion of each States during the year. The ag- $lOO was used in the several lines of gregate for 1899 was $79, 7!9, 956. expenditure: In 1900 it was $62,461,304. For 1901 it reaches the sum of $123,888,732, For the 3 missions in Africa! of which $68,850,961 have gone to West Central. ………… $2.77 colleges and educational institu- East Central………….. 1.77 tions, $22,217,470 to various chari- Zulu ………………….. 4.22 ties, $15,388,700 to' libraries, $11,- 133,112 to museums and galleries, For the Turkish missions: $8.76 and $6,298,489 to churches. The latter only includes the amounts European Turkey……… $4.92 given by will or presented for en- Western Turkey. .. …… 12.52 dowments or special purposes. Mr. Central Turkey. . .. . .. …. 4.60 Carnegie, Mrs. Stanford, and Mr. Eastern Turkey.. … . ….. 5.08 Rockefeller of course lead in this distribution of wealth, the former For Ceylon and Indian missions: $27.12 with gifts amounting to $42,888,500, Mrs. Stanford $30,000,000, and Mr. Marathi. ……………… $10.03 Rockefeller $2,889,750. Madura ………………'.. 7.80 Ceylon.. . . . . ….. .. .. … .. 1.69 Figures for The total member- the Y. M. C. A. ship in the United For the 4 Chinese missions: $19.52 States is 268,477; in ~'uchau . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. $5.05 the world, 533,049. Last year 23 South China…. ………. .59 buildings were erected, and over North China………….. 7.60 $lO,OOO,OOO were expended in the va- Shansi………………… .52 rious forms of work. There are 170 Raitroad Associations, with 43,150 –$13.76 members; 50 Indian Associations, For the Japan mission…….. $11.29 with 1,800 members, 1,000 in Bible ~'or the Sandwich Islands. . . . . .94 classes; lO buildings were erected For Micronesia. .. .. ………. 3.59 last year at an average cost of For 3 missions in Papal lands: $25 to each member. Army Asso- Mexico ……………….. $3.25 ciations were found at 321 points, Spain…………. ……… 1.85 including Cuba and the Philippines, Austria. ….. . ……… …. 1.64 with 54 libraries and 630 Bible classes. –$6.74 What One From the statement Amounts used directly for Hundred Dollars below it will be the missions. . . .. .. …… $91.72 Will Do seen that during For agencies in New York, the past year, of Chicago, San Francisco, . with expenses of mission· every dollar received by the Amer- aries and others in visiting ican Board, 9l.7 cents go directly to churches, etc …………. $2.60 the work abroad, while 8.3 cents are used to cover the cost of corre- For publications of all kinds, 1.60 For salaries of officers and clerks and all other items coming under expenses of administration. . . . . . . . . . . 4.08 Amount used for home ex- penditures…………….- – ' $8.28 $100.00 What Another What would the Million Would Presbyterian Board Do do with another million dollars if the Church should give it? To know what might be done with such a doubled income, let us look back at what has been done with an income of $500,000 in 1872, and compare it with the present work supported at an annual expenditure of about $1,000,000. In 1872 there
were 262 missionaries, now 715; Italy in Con- Of the 487,000 im- then 439 native workers, now 1,841; necticut migrants last year, then 10,681 scholars in schools, now 136,000, or 27.9 per 25,910; then 4,203 church members, now 41,559. The doubled income of cent. were Italian~ They are not these years has represented an in- from the Rome where Paul preach- crease in the work as a whole of ed, but from Sicily, where govern- about 500 per cent. At the same ment, both human and Divine, is ratio, another duplication of in- hated. They are "dagoes" for come would support a work em- whom nobody cares. bracing 2,100 missionaries, 7,500 native workers, 63,000 scholars, and Something has been done for 400,000 native Christians. But an- them in Connecticut. Since 1897 other million dollars would mean a there has been Italian work in Berfar greater increase than this; for lin, Windsor Locks, New Britain, a great deal of missionary machin- New; Haven, and Hartford. Last ery has been provided that will month at Windsor Locks Mr. Guisuffice without proportionate en- seppe Merlino was· ordained and largement for a greatly increased set apart to the ministry-the first mission ary force.-RoBERT E. Italian to be ordained as a Congre- SPEER. gational minister in New England; and only one Italian name now ap- The Volunteers During the pas t pears in the Year-Book. There is of America year the Volunteers good prospect for the organization through their out- of an Italian church in Hartford, and for the enlargement of the door work reached 1,864,951 per- work in New Haven. More than sons, and through their indoor 20 Italian men last winter went meetings 1,241,567 persons heard from house to house on week evethe Gospel. The agencies through nings to hold meetings. One said, which these people were reached "Do you know, we have been prayraised in their own support during ing that our minister would preach the year $81,012.65. the simple Gospel, and I believe God has answered our prayers."- The Volunteers have five Congregationalist. branches of philanthropic work. Through their sociological branches EUROPE they have received 234,814 men, and fed some 371,297 persons at a British Medical lYIedical Missions at nominal cost. This does not in- Missionaries Home and Abroad clude the thousands who have been for January gives fed on holiday occasions. Through the Home of Mercy branch 348 the names and locations of 312 women have been helped and cared medical missionaries holding Britfor, while through the Volunteer ish degrees or diplomas, an intenement work, recently started, crease of 17 from a year ago, and 1,563 families have been visited, of 187 since 1890. These men and and over 4,500 have been helped women are employed by 38 sociewith food and clothing. Through ties, C. M. S. leading with 59 misthe Volunteer Prison League in sionaries, the United Free Church thirteen State prisons 12,000 mem- coming next with 52, the London bers have been enrolled, while over Society following with 31, Presby- 2,000 have been graduated from the terian Church of England and the Hope Halls, 75 per cent. of whom Church of Scotland, 19 each; S.P,G., are known to be doing well. 15; Irish Presbyterian Chlll'ch and China Inland MIssion, 13 each; Ohurch of England Zenana Society,
GENERAL MISSIONARY
12; Wesleyan and Baptist, 7 each, with 320 Chinese assistants and etc. India leads with 115, and 7,600 communicants. Dr. A. Schrie- China follows with 106; in Africa ber estimates that out of 1,000 are 36, and in Palestine 17. missionaries now at work in Africa about a third are Germans. On Work for The British Dee p the Gold Coast 48 Basel mission- Fishermen Sea Mission, which aries minister to nearly 17,000 native communicants. In British for many years has India 180 German missionaries are done a noble work among the working, with 1,300 native teachers fishermen of Newfoundland and and 30,000 day scholars and 73,000 elsewhere, lately held its annual meeting. It was announced that native Christians. In the Dutch the most munificent gift ever made East Indies German missionaries to the mission had been received are also busy. In Sumatra, 33 . frOIn an anonymous donor, a Rhenish missionaries have won splendid new hospital steam traw- 45,000 converts more among the ler costing $50,000. The mission Battaks. fleet now consists of 15 vessels, with 6 doctors aboard, and its sphere of Protestantism Not for many dec- operations includes the North Sea, in France ades have the Prot- the Channel and West Coast estants of France fisheries" and'the fishing-grounds off Labrador. Forty-five tons of been so hopeful as they are nj)w. literature were distributed in 1898; La Nouvelle Vie, the organ of the 11,085 patients were treated in the middle and mediating party, re- North Sea and 2,435 in Labrador; cently said: 16,411 missionary visits were made, and 3,260 services were held at sea. French Protestantism is now more powerful, more energetic, and Work for The last report of more successful than it has been the Jews the London Society for a hundred years. In the begin- ning of the nineteenth century the for Pro mot i n g French Protestant Church num- Christianity among the Jews states bered only 171 pastors, and now that there are now 25 ordained mis- there are mon than 1,200; then sionaries on its staff, 19 workers are there were 78 churches, now there connected with its medical mission, are 1,185, with fully 800 more the women number 34, and the lay- preaching-places. And in all movemen 20. There are 35 Scripture- ments directed against public vice readers, colporteurs, and other and immorality, the Protestants agents, 58 school-teachers, 8 dis- are in the lead. Our churches are pensers, 82 .. Christian Israelites," prospering internally and exter- 23 honorary workers, and 32 wives nally. of missionaries. Professor Doumergue recently German The more than 20 wrote: "The Protestantism of Missionaries G e r man societies France has never developed such expansive power as is the case at Abroad are supporting present. The masses are anxious about 850 mission- to hear the Protestant preaching of the Gospel, and in many Departaries and 4,000 native teachers. In ments whole families and even Chinlt 6 German societies are at whole villages are stretching out work, and in the province of their arms with the cry, 'Come Kwltntung there were altogether over and help us ! ,,, The" Former 46 missionaries, belonging to the Basle, Berlin and Rhenish societies, Priest" movement is spreading un- der the leadership of Abbe Bourrier and his Chretien Frani;ais, and notwithstanding a c()ntroversy
THE MIsstoNAl'ty l'tEVIEW of THE WOl'tLD
within the ranks of these people as Africa. The generous giving is to whether they should join one of done through" zambesias," or local the existing Protestant churches auxiliaries. In Torre Pellice, the or organize a body of their own, chief town, are found 4 societies: the number of converts is steadily the Woman's Society and Uliva, increasing. the Printemps Society (for girls), and the Society de la Pra del Torno. Quite naturally this condition of affairs has called into evidence a The Athenian The world has been pronounced anti-Protestant agita- Riots and watching what it tion, the leader of which is again the Bible has regarded as a the editor, Ernst Renauld, the singular outburst of author of the work, •. Le Peril Protestant," who has not hesitated religious fanaticism at Athens. to make the Protestants the cause But what has seemed to be a relig- of all the ills that have befallen ious quarrel was something differ- France in modern times. The ent., The cause of the trouble was Protestant pastors are in his eyes not religious but linguistic. The "the apostles of a pretended Re- language of the modern Greeks is formed and Prussian religion," and quite different from the language he advocates the use of the sword of the ancient Greeks. But the first against them. In a French public concern of the nation is to trace meeting held in the interests of the their history directly'to the splen- anti-Protestant cause, he publicly did origin of Hellas. The culti- advocated the use of brutal force vated Greeks have therefore set for the suppression of the Protest- themselves to assimilak their lan- ants and even a revival of the guage to the ancient- model. The methods of St. Bartholomew night. result is an ever-widening gulf be- Recently he has established a new tween the common language on anti-Protestant organ called La one side, and the officiAl and written Deliverance. In the prospectus of language on the other. the new journal he writes: The Greeks who have opposed During the past twenty-five this artificial process have even years the 62,000 Protestant minor- been called traitors. There is M. ity have been ruling the 36,000,000 Pallis, for example, who is respon- Oatholic majority in France. They sible for the version of St. Matthew are the masters and we are the into modern Greek which excited persecuted. All our statesmen who the riots. The Greeks who favored have during this quarter of a cen- the ancient form saw that if they tury been in power and have perse- allowed the New Testament in its ,cuted the Oatholics have been early form to be deposed from its Protestants. Weare tired or being eminence as the only authority in the suppressed, the persecuted, the public use, they would cut a link conquered.-The Independent. with the past that is a genuine source of strength. The Greek The Waldenses It will astonish not Ohurch would thoo be on the same and Missions a few to be told by standing with all the other a recent writer in churches, instead of being the only Ohurch in the world which officially Regions Beyond that no less than uses the New Testament in its 14 men and 'women, within a few ancient Greek form. In this sense years, have gone forth from the the cause of the riots may be said Waldensian valleys, whose 15 par- to have been religious; but at bot,· ishes contain a popUlation of only tom it was ling~istic and national. 20,000, and almost all found either in the Basuto or Barotse missions of the Paris Society in South
GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE
ASIA fanaticism. Western.. civilization and Moslem tradition mix like oil Railroads It seems to be a fact and water. A scientific Arabic for the Orient that a German com- monthly like Ai Muktataf (Cairo) is an ally of the Gospel. One has pany has secured only to talk with any Mohammepermission from the Porte to con- dan who reads the newspapers to struct a railway which, connecting realize that the stars in their with one already in existence in courses are fighting against Sisera. Asia .Minor, will within a decade And Sisera begins to know it. Eduextend to the Euphrates and to cation is on our side.-Rev. S. M. some point on the Persian Gulf, so ZWEMER, D.D. crossing the sultan's dominions, and greatly facilitating travel and The CQUege This important intraffic between India and Europe. for Girls in stitution, located in All which is calculated to hasten the demise of "the sick llIan of the Turkey Scutari, across East. " from Constantino- Islam Never before was ple, enrolled 156 students last year, and the number of resident Decadent the opportunity for students was 75. The class that was graduated at the end of the the conquest of Is- year consisted of 7 members: 2 Bulgarians, 2 Armenians, 1 Turk, lam so great or so golden. Politi- 1 Hungarian, and 1 English girl. Of these, 1 will enter the University cally, "the waning crescent pales of Berne to study medicine, 2 will return to the college for graduate the East," and the sword of the Cali- work, 2 will study further in Eng- land and America, and 1 has gone to phate has rusted to the scabbard. a school in the interior as a teacher. The following table will indicate .More than 125,000,000 Moslems are the enrolment by nationality: under Christian rulers; only 41,000,- Armenians, 83; Bulgarians, 20; Greeks, 21; English, 10; Israelites, 000 are under Moslem rulers, and 18,- 9; Turks; 12; Germans, 2; Italians, 1; 1;:lungarians, 4-; American, 1; 000,000 under the sultan. Yet we Austrian, 1; French, 1; Persian, 1.
hear men speak of Islam as if it were The following shows the distri- bution by residence: Aleppo, 1; politically synonymous with Tur- Aidin, 1; Nicomedia, 2 ; Trebizond, 5; Constantinople, 118; Mecca, 2; key, and as if open doors for preach- Salonica, 1; Adrianople, 1; Sivas, 1; Bulgaria, 15; Persia, 1; Russia, ing were only possible after bom- 6; England, 1; Greece, 1.
barding Constantinople. Before Last year was marked by the fact that one member of the gradu- Victoria died two" infidel" women ating class was a .Mohammedan girl, the first in the empire to held the balance of power in the receive the degree of Bachelor of Arts. Halide Edib is already recgovernment of the Mohammedan ognized by her nation as a writer, as she has for some time written world. Queen Wilhelmina of Hol- constantly for the Turkish press of the city. land rules more .Moslems to-day than did the early caliphs. The cradle of Islam, Arabia, has one- half its seaboard under British pro- tection. The keys to every gate- way in the Moslem world are in the politieal grasp of Christian powers. Think of Gibraltar, Al- giers, Cairo, Khartum, Batum, Aden, .Muscat, not to speak of In- dia and the farther East. It is im- possible to enforce the laws relating to renegades under the flag of the "infidel." Freedom of the press . and of speech is the greatest enemy to superstition and Mohammedan
Persecution Tidings have come town, provided the Wesleyan misat Isfahan of a severe Jewish sion at work there will send a lady persecution against doctor, with her equipment of drugs the London Jews Society's work and instruments. The funds of the at Isfahan. Prohibitions have been women's branch of the mission are published in the synagogues; in- even now overdrawn; every penny timidations, threats, blows, and of its ordinary income is claimed bribes have been freely used to by existing work. Yet this Hindu draw away the teachers, the boys, pities the sufferings of the women a~d the converts. Parents have and children about him, aggrabeen compelled to withdraw their vated as they are by the barbarities children. A teacher and three con.. of native practitioners. Miss Anna M. Hellier writes: verts have been brutally ill-treated, and others have deserted the mis- ,Ve have had dread glimpses of sion through fear. nameless horrors perpetrated in the zenanas. We know, too, what a Christian The Bombay Guar- splendid opportunity is now offered Progress in dian says: "As the for preaching Christ. Five years ago we began a medical mission at India census officers in Medak, another town in the same e a c h presidency native State. 'Vhat is the result? Instead of the bitter opposition complete the statistics for the re- which first met the lady doctors, the ligious beliefs of the populations, chief priest of the Mohammedans has himself become their champion, we begin to see how marvelously and says "they hold the hearts of the Christian faith is spreading in Medak in the hollow of their hand." Two additional dispensaries have India. The census for the Punjab been built at populous village cen- ters. During the last three months shows a total of 20,866,847 persons, tho attendance at the weekly Bible classes there has exceeded 4,000, and or an increase of 1,588,922 on the 5,800 patients have been treated. Hundreds of baptisms have been total for 1891. The percentage of recorded during the year.
increase in the various religions is: Sikhs………………… 11 per cent. Mohammedans ……….. 9.4 •.
Hindus ………………. 3.4 Christians ……………. 326 Christians in the Punjab now Hindu The medical school number 71,084, in spite of the ab- Medical for native women, sence of British troops in South Women which was opened Africa. In the Madras Presidency six years ago at the Christian religion also shows a Ludhiana (Punjab), has filled a large increase. The total popula- most useful place in the province. tion of the Madras Presidency is It is recognized by the government 38,623,066, an increase of 2,573,826 as a medical school, and 11 societies on the total for 1891. The percentage of increase in the various relig- have sent students for training; ions is: 27 of the students have now gone Hindus …………….. 6.34 per cent. out to work in connection with 7 Mohammedans ……… 9.11 " Christians ………….. 18.13 " missions; 34 are at pre,;ent in train- Animists ……………. 35.75 ing, and numerous applications are received for such workers. The A Hospital From Indur, in the students are taught by women, and for Indian Nizam's dominions, receive their clinical instruction in Women comes a marvelous a hospital for women. The Univer- challenge to Chris- sity of Lahore is willing to affiliate tian missions. A Hindu gentleman the school as soon as 3 more mem- has offered to build a hospital for bers are added to the teaching staff, women on the finest site in the and when good laboratories for
GENEBAL MlssIONABY INTELLIGENCE
anatomy, chemistry, physiology, audited accounts show that Ramaand bacteriology, etc., have been bai received and expended in this provided. The 100 hospital beds work during the year the sum of required to insure sufficient clinical Rs. 1,48,354, of which about Rs. 58,- teaching are already established. 000 went for buildings, The aver- In order to build and furnish these age cost per annum of each girl or laboratories and an operating the- woman was Rs. 60. ater, and to supply the uutfit and the passage of the extra members The Court The return of the of the staff, a sum of £5,000 is Returns to Chinese court to needed. Peking Peking, after an en- Flocking to Bishop F. Warne forced exile of more Christ states, in a recent issue of The Indian than a year, was the most remark- able episode in the an~als of the Witness, that he has just partici- dynasty except, perhaps, the flight pated in a service in which 1,339 of that same court when Peking persons were baptized-a scene was bombarded by the allied forces. which reminds one of the first day The pageant which celebrated the of Pentecost. At another point- return was highly spectacular, and, Barroda-which he visited, no less as far as its gaudy splendor was than 300 people walked in from concerned, could not be paralleled neighboring villages to attend the anywhere else in the world. The services, some of them coming occasioned marked the complete twenty miles. One woman walked effacement of the traditional deififrom her home seventeen miles to cation of Chinese royalty. The emthe city, carrying her baby, and peror and dowager empress passed then back again with the same before the eyes of a vast multitude load. The bishop reports that of native and foreign people, and there are 10,01,0 already in training, scores of cameras were focussed fully instructed, and committ~d to upon them-an unprecedented the Christian life, and waiting for event. The fact that foreigners baptism, which can not be adminis- werepermittedto view the pageant, tered until arrangements are made and even gaze on the emperor and for putting the new converts under dowager empress, is especially sigproper pastoral care. nificant. It means that the old order of things has passed away, Ramabai's "The financial r e- and that the Chinese court has ac- GreatWork port of Mukti cepted the fact that Peking is not the same, and never can be same, as schoolandnlission, " it was. The change which has been of which Pandita Ramabai is the effected can not be undone. founder and superintendent, is much more than a dry statement Two New The dowager emof receipts and expenditures. Edicts press is said to have About 2,000 persons, old and young, issued two imporare under her watch-care at Mukti. Church and school and industrial tant edicts. The first recites that work play their respective parts in many Chinese formerly studied moulding and developing this large abroad, but were not Manchus, and colony, nearly altogether from the orders the Manchu courtiers and higher Hindu castes. Order, in- generals to nominate Manchus dustry, diligence, and discipline are between the ages of fifteen and features of the institution that twenty-five to go abroad, there to confront one at every point. The study foreign branches of knowl- edge.
The second edict abolishes the is spoken by nearly three-fourths prohibition of intermarriage be- of the' population of China, tho tween Manchus and Chinese, which with a number of dialectic varia- has been enforced since the begin- tions. The attempt is now made ning of the dynasty, and directs for the first time to unify these officials, by diplomatic methods, to dialects and to produce a Bible discourage the binding of the fEet which can be read easily by all the of Chinese female children, because, Mandarin-speaking people of Chi- it is declared, this is a barbarous na. The committee on this version custom. is made up of men from 6 different sections in northern, central, and Union of Pres- An important con- western China, and after a sitting byterians in ference of mission- of six months they have just com- China aries, representing pleted the four Gospels and the 5 Presbyterian de- book of Acts. The work has been slow and, prior to this year, it has nominations-the Eng lis h, the been with very little conference United, Free Church of Scotland, between the members of the com- – the Canadian, and two from this mittee. Dr. Chauncey Goodrich country, North and South-wasre- writes, "How little the Boxers cently held in Shanghai, China, 54 guessed that they were setting our being present. After ample discus- hands free for this great work." sion, it was resolved to prepare a plan for organic or federal union, Confucianism The late Dr. Faber such as may be found practicable for adoption hereafter; to establish a vs. drew a remarkable union theol<;>gical seminary in Nan- king or Chinkiang, to be opened in Christianity threefold compar- the autumn of 1902; to publish a weekly Presbyterian paper; and to ison between Con- arrange for the appointment of a joint committee to collect and dif- fucianism and Christianity. I. fuseinformation inregardtothebest new openings for missionary work Wherein they are alike: (1) Faith which are to be found. The desire for unity in the body was well-nigh in a Divine providence: (2) in an unanimous, and a desire was also expressed that the Presbyterian in- invisible world; (3) the moral law; stitutions should be controled and conducted in such "a broad and (4) prayers; (5) sacrifices; (6) mira- catholic spirit that all denomina- tional differences should be kept cles; (7) social duties; (8) education out of sight, and that all efforts should be for the good of the whole of the personal character; (9) pref- Church of God." erence of virtue to money and The Bible in As long ago as the Mandarin g I' eat missionary honor; (10) steadfastness in mis- con fer e n c e at fortune; (11) uprightness and ve- Shanghai in 1890, preparations were made for the translation of racity; (12) the categorical impera- the Scriptures in three forms: the Mandarin Colloquial, the easy tive; (13) a benevolent government Classical ('Venli), and the higher Classical. The Mandarin Colloquial for the people.
II. Wherein Confucianism is antagonistic to Christ'ianity: (1) polytheism; (2) worship of spirits; (3) adoration of ancestors; (4) tem- ple worship; (5) glorification of the suicide of widows; (6) consulting of oracles; (7) casting of lots for lucky days; (8) polygamy and its consequences; (9) rebellions; (10) exaggeration of the absolute power of the emperor and (11) of parental authority; (12) bloody feuds; (13) exaggeration of filial subordination,
GENERAl. MtsstONAltY INTEl.t.tGENCE
to such a point as to impede in the mission schools has nearly progress; (14) venality of function- doubled.-Calwer Missionsblatt. aries; (15) Oonfucius perjury; (16) magic. Great Progress The Korean Review III. Defects of Confucianism in Korea tells of the inauguover against their perfection in Christianity: (1) Idea of God; (2) ration of a system fatalism; (3) defective revelation; (4) no unreserved sense of responsi- of water-works for Seoul, and the bility and no deep consciousness of sin; (5) no longing for expiation; lighting of its streets by electric- (6) no personal Savior; (7) no recognition of God's image in man; (8) ity. For two years or more elecno universality of salvation; (9) no actual communion with God; (10) a tric railways have been running on defective hope of immortality; (11) the political prosperity of Ohina those streets. Mr. Angus Hamilthe highest good; no Kingdom of of God; (12) lack of a perfect ideal ton, an English correspondent of for self-education; (13) lack of inner and outer purity; morality for men the Pall Mall Gazette, writes: and women different; (14) defectiveness of the doctrine of the five Vith its trains, its cars, and social relations; (15) lack of a regu- its lights, its miles of telegraph lar day of rest; (16) dry morality lines, its railway station hotel, and and ceremonial religion powerless native shops, and glass windows over against the fulness of life in and brick houses, the city is within Ohristianity. measurable distance of becoming the highest, most interesting, and Christian Schools A year and a half cleanest city in the East. And this in Japan Not ago, all Ohristian is accomplished without denuding Now Tabooed schools in Japan it of its own char/itcteristics. There suffered grave in- is no hostile feeling because these things are Western. jury from a decree of the Education Department, which withdrew Korean In the last annual from them government recognition, along with such privileges as Converts report of the Meththey had till then enjoyed in common with the national schools. odist Episcopal Mis- The missionaries decided rather to forego the favor of the government sion in Korea, the Rev. Heber than to give up their religious instruction-acourse which has now Jones writes thus hopefully about met with its reward, for, by a recent decree, the previous status of Korean converts: the Ohristian schools has been restored; and their pupils, on passing I think we missionaries in Korea the final examination, are again can not be too grateful for the fact entitled to attend the higher grade schools, a privilege which includes that our Korean church is a church partial exemption from military of workers for the Lord. As soon service. In consequence of this readjustment, the number of pupils as a Korean is converted he im- mediately begins work among his relatives and neighbors, and presses home Ohristianity on them. As a relult, the missionary, instead of having to go out seeking the people, has more than he can do to care for the people who come seek- ing him. This is one of the pecul- iarities of the work in Korea.
Good Cheer The ad vance of from Japan Ohristianity in Ja- pan is evidently not to be measured by the present num- ber of its enrolled adherents. These are but about 120,000, nearly one- third of them Protestants, the rest divided between the Greek and the Roman Ohurch in the ratio of about one to two. But in the successive Diets the Ohristians have never had less than four times their propor- tional number of members. In the
1'Itt!1 MlSS10~ARY REVIEW OF TItE WORLD
present Diet they have 13 members, or evangelist of their own, always besides the speaker, and among meet together with our Christians them some of tile most efficientmen. on the most friendly terms, assist- "One of them was elected in a ing in the Sunday-school, etc., and strongly Buddhist district by a ma- one of them acting as organist. jority of 5 to 1." Last year, in the The most zealous member of the Executive Committee of the Liberal congregation is a peasant farmer party, 2 of its 3 members were 'who lives seven miles out of the Christians, and this year 10f the 3. town and yet comes in almost reg- Three per cent. of tJ.e officers of the ularly for the Sunday services, and army are said to be Christians, and contributes monthly a sum equivaa goodly proportion also of naval lent to eight or ten days' labor. officers. The late Rear-Admiral One woman came in twenty miles Serata was an ardent and active for the confirmation service, walk- Christian. Christians in abnormal ing all the way." numbers abound in the universitiesand government colleges among AFRICA both students and instructors. Not less than thrf'e of the great dailies Work for the In addition to the of Tokyo are largely in Christian hands, and Christians are at the Moslems in regular educational head of editorial departments in several others. A very large volume Cairo and evangelistic of charitable work and the most work, conducted by successful charitable institution8 are also under Christian manage- the American mission in Cairo for ment. From 2,500 to 3,000 youths pass every year out of Christian the benefit of all classes, meetings schools, where they have averaged 40 years spent under Christian in- are held twice a week for the folfluences. lowers of the Prophet in particular.
The order of exercises is : prayer, l'eading of the Scriptures, and the exposition of a passage selected. This is followed by the discussion of a subject from the Koran or the history of Islam-as, for example, a comparison between the morality Bright Spot The Hokkaido, the of the Koran and the Gospel of Jesus Christ; contradictory statein the most nor the rl y ments of the Koran; incidents of Hokkaido province of Japan, is almost Siberian history recorded by their own writers not in harmony with the in its winter climate; as a fact, it Koran.
abuts upon Russian territory. The province is being rapidly colonized After these exercises are closed by Japanese from the southern with prayer, an opportunity is islands of the empire, among whom given to anyone to ask questions or offer objections in w1'iting. are Christians. "The brightest This rule was made and is strictly observed for the following reasons: spot I visited in the year," writes Bishop Fyson, "was W akkanai, at the extreme north of the island" First, it had been found that when just in sight of the southern end of liberty was given to anyone to reply orally, several claimed the Saghalien. The Christians there have no regular church building, privileges at once, and instead of but a good-sized, neat Japanese asking questions, or presenting ob- house converted into a preaching- jections against the arguments advanced on the subject, the time place, with an earnest eongl'egation was spent in general irrelevent all alive, and including several Methodists, who, l}aving no chapel observations; and, second, because,
GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE
by the observance of this rule, Livingstone once said truly that only the railway could deal the those who desired to learn the death-blow to slavery. The new road will be a powerful agent to truth could do so more easily, and this end, altho slavery is perhaps not so much a curse in the country those whose object was to disturb traversed as it is farther south. The road is nearly six hundred and obstruct the meeting were miles long, and connects Mombasa on the east coait with Lake Vicprevented. toria Nyanza. The completion of the road will also hasten the com- The audiences at these meetings pletion of the Nile irrigation works under British supervision, and will were composed of Moslems. Copts, in general consolidate British in- terests in eastern and central Afand Protestants. Frequently the rica, to the great advantage of general commerce and civilization. places of assembly were too small On the west coast Germany's ac- tion in decreeing the gradual abolto admit all who came, altho they ishment of slavery has met with universal applause. Germ an y's were large enough to accommodate aim is not merely to extinguish slave-raiding, but to put down dofrom 300 to 400. When the meet- mestic slavery itself. A beginning is now being made by requiring ings were begun, certain parties masters to give to all bondmen one~third of their time in which to tried to interrupt and break them work for themselves, by com pelling masters to care for slaves in illness up, but finding their efforts and old age, and by enabling the slaves themselves to purchase their were thwarted, they either absent- freedom.-The Outlook.
ed themselves altogether, or when Slave Trade in The report by Con- Abyssinia and suI General Long present were constrained to follow Arabia at Cairo on the the example of the majority, who slave trade in Egypt conducted themselves becomingly, and Abyssinia shows that slavery still exists in the Soudan in spite so that it may be stated that good of all efforts to check the tmffic. Last year the British government order has been observed and the secured the con.viction of twenty- five persons engaged in buying and speaker has had the respect and selling slaves. But the business still goes on. At one locality alone, attention of his hearers. It is not Jedda, there are twelve well-to-do slave merchants, whose names and too much to say that he merits depots are 'well known. The prices of slaves are given as follows: this, as he has had the advantage of Male or female, 14 years old, about $80; 14 to 20 years,. $100 to $125; being educated by competent teach- 20 to 30 years, $150 each. In Medina ers in the Arabic language and in the tenets of Islam. w. H.
Railroads in The L 0 v e d a I e the Dark Chri8tian Expre88 Continent for December con- tained a long edi- torial concerning railway schemes in Southern and Central Africa, in which mention is made of 25 in progress or talked of, with a total length of 7,000 miles. The Cape to Cairo line of course is included, one on the Upper Kongo to cross eastward to Lake Albert Nyanza, and another to ascend the valley of the Shire, touch Blantyne, and end at Lake Nyassa.
Railroads and The completion by Slavery the British of the in Africa Uganda railwayaf- fords another great opportunity not only for African trade but for African civilization.
and Mecca the prices of both sexes 4 dispensaries. There were 2,077 rise 50 per cent. and upward, and baptisms (843 adults), 21,494 confeseunuchs command readily from sions, 21,152 communions, 775 con- $400 to $500 each. Ordinarily there firmations, 91 marriages. are no auctions or open sales, but in the Godjam country, which is A Tax on The Bishop of Manominally subject to Menelik, the Wives shonaland has been institution of slavery openly exists, confiding tot h e and public sales takes place in the ordinary weekly llarkets. Accord- Capetown correspondent of the ing to Mr. Long the supply of London Telegraph a plan of his own victims for this traffic is obtained for hastening the end of polygamy principally by organized raids up- among' the South African natives. on the country inhabited by mixed The custom is, in the bishop's opin- Shangalia tribes, which separates ion, slowly dying out, as it is. Abyssinia from the Anglo-Egyp- Marriage with the native is a mattian Soudan. While this may seem ter of barter, for he buys his wives measurably discouraging it must at so many head of cattle apiece, be recalled that the British are from 5 head to 50, according to the putting forth their efforts to sup- personal attractions of the young press the traffic, which will be ac- lady. The bishop would put a tax complished in time. -on an ascending scale-on every wife after the first. If the tax on Light Break- Mr. C. W. Hatters- the second wife were fixed, say, at £5, then for the third it would be ing in Uganda ley, a C. M. S. mis- £10, for the fourth £20, and so on. This scheme, the bishop believes, sionary, speakingof would help to solve the difficulty of getting native labor. At present some changes in the customs of the the man with many daughters grows rich easily by disposing of Waganda, says: them. Under the proposed plan the man with one wife would have Many of them sit at table for to work because of his limited suptheir meals, with plates, knives, and ply of daughters, and the muchforks, one of them actually going married man would also have to so far as to have his wife eat at work to pay his taxes. The bishop, table with him. It was an unheard- who has had a long South African of thing until lately for a big chief's experience, looks on his drastic wife to eat in the same house with schemes as quite practicable. her lord. Another leading man (ordained) has gone the length of Good News The London Misallowing his wife to walk down the street with him, and has even al- from sionary Society has lowed her to take his arm; but few can muster up courage for this yet. Madagascar received good news One thing the' chiefs mean to do, and that is to put a stop to drink- from its workers in ing as much as possible, at any rate in public. In'this they are assisted Madagascar. The new resident is in every way by Mr. Tomkins (the acting sub-commissioner for the said to be absolutely impartial in kingdom of Uganda), who has encouraged them to take several religious matters, and quietness strong measures to suppress it.
Roman At the end of 1900 and confidence are being restored.
Catholics the Roman Catholic In the Betsileo Mission a mission- in Uganda mission' in Uganda, ary of the Paris Evangelical Socie- says The Cahver ty, to whom the London Society Missionsblatt, had 22 missionaries, was compelled to turn over its 4 stations, 4 churches and chapels, schools in 1897, has formally hand- 4 schools, 410 average attendance, ed them back, promising all aid in
GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE
case of any future difficulty with the general's youngest son, has the government or with the Jesu- been relieved from his charge of its. The Paris Society and the the Australian Salvationists gen- London Society are working in erally, in order that he may devote perfect harmony, and the Roman his sole attention to the develop- Catholics are evidently losing ment of the estate and the recep- ground. In one district, two years tion of colonists. since, there were six Roman Cath- olic churches and one belonging to Christian Unity In Australia there ,the London Mission; now the Roman Catholic churches are all in Australia has been formed a closed, and the London Society has five. The missionaries speak with union between the great surprise and thankfulness of various branches of Presbyterianthe spiritual life which they find aflame in the hearts of the people, ism, and also between the various notwithstanding the persecutions branches of Methodism. Now they have endured. comes the news that at the Angli- As additional, in the same direction, the Nordisk Missions-Tid- can Synod held at Sydney, Ausskl'ijt gives an interesting sum- tralia, Bishop Stretch introduced mary of the results of the French conquest of the ::lakalava district the following resolution: of Madagascar. While there has been much that was most deplor- That this Synod is profoundly able about it from the missions' conscious of the evils of division, point of view, other things are real and believing that the unity of the benefits, such as the final ending Church is agreeable to the will of of the rotten Hova government of God, urgently prays the Australian these distant parts, and of the con- Bench of Bishops to consider the Ftant fear of robbery and violence whole question of Christian unity, in which both missionaries and and to approach the various Chriscolonists lived. Missionaries can tian communions with an invitanow pursue their work in peace, tion to their leaders for united and the Sakalava, being compelled prayer and deliberation on the to give up their nomadic habits subject. and live under settled laws, are much more accessible to their in- And better yet, the resolutiOli fluence. was adopted by the Synod. If the ISLANDS OF THE SEA bishops shall put this propoilal into Farm Colony The oversea colony, execution, though it may not re- in Australia the last link in Gen- eral Booth's Dark- sult in union, it would develop in- est England scheme for raising the creased cooperation between the "submerged tenth," has at last been provided. Over 20,000 acres churches. of land, situated beside the Collie River, Western Australia, have Tame Pig It appears that in been acquired by the Salvation Army from the colonial govern- VS. New Guinea there ment, and will be utilized forthwith. Commandant Herbert Booth, Wild Pig are two kinds of pigs: the tame pig and the wild pig. The tamed pig is called" sarai," and is much more than a domestic pet. Indeed, un- til the sarai is grown up, and sug- gests pork, it is an honored mem- ber of the family circle. As a little sucking pig it is brought up side by side with the baby, being treated with exactly the same maternal care and attention. When it grows up its ears are split, to denote that it is not an outcast, but some man's valuable property. The wild pig,
which is called "suana," knows no young men after afew years abroad, such distinction. It, poor thing, return to their native country, Japroots about in the bush for its food, anese leaders regard favorably a with its ears inta:ct. If any man Christian mission which will help to catches it, there is no mark to pro- send these young men back with tect it; it is common property, and high standards of moral character. is killed and eaten by its captor. The interest both of our govern- To be called •• sarai," a tame pig, ment and of Japan in this work is a delicate compliment; to be gives to Dr. Sc.udder's mission a called .. suana," a wild pig, is a peculiar value. most offensive insult. MISCELLANEOUS Self-support The statement is in Fiji abroad, and appears How a Church In the year 1855 a to be well-authenti- became neg r 0 merchant cated, that the Wesleyan mission- Independent with his wife and aries in the Fiji Islands are consid- family from Sierra ering the desirability of withdrawing in the main from work in the Leone came to England to visit. islands and leaving the native Mr. Venn invited him to his Christians to themselves to work house, showed him all hospitalout their own form of government ity, and asked him about his axvI doctrine. We can not say how travels. He was a wealthy man true this statement is, but think whom God had prospered in his what it means! Within a lifetime business as a merchant, and Mr. these cannibal islanders have been Venn asked him what he was doing thoroughly Christianized, and to for the Church of Christ in his own such a degree that the withdrawal country with the riches which God Qf the missionaries can be safely had given him. The African sprang contemplated! That assuredly is a to his feet and exclaimed: great achievement. Of course we should like to do Missionary for The Rev. Doremus much, but as long as you treat us the Japanese Scudder has resign- as children we shall behave as chil- dren-do nothing for ourselves, but in Hawaii ed the charge of the need a great deal of looking after First Congrega- by you. Treat us like men and we shall behave as men. We spend tional Church of Woburn, Mass., our money on ourselves because and with his wife will devote you do not arrange for us to spend himself to missions among the it for Christ. As long as the Church Japanese of Hawaii, who now Missionary Society pays for everynumber about 45 per cent. of thing and manages everything, the population. Dr. Scudder, what is there for us to do ? Only through his five years' residence in let us have a share in managing our Japan, his missionary antecedents own Church affairs and you will and training, was prepared for this soon see that we can both do someimportant place. He, with his wife, thing and will give something also sailed from San Francisco January for God. 5th for Japan, and after spending a year there in acquainting himself Mr. Venn took the hint. In 1862 with present conditions, will go to the native Church was organized, Hawaii. As many of the Japanese and is now self-supporting, with 19 native pastors and 19,000 native Christians, who contribute £2,000 a year.
The Missionary Review of the World — July 1892
APOSTOLIC MISSIONS; OR, TIlE GOSPEL FOR EVERY CREATURE
MISSIONARY REVIEW OF THE WORLD.
VOL. XV. No. 'I.-Old &ries.–JULY.–VOL. V. No. 'I.-New Series.
APOSTOLIC MISSIONS j OR, THE GOSPEL FOR EVERY CREATURE. * BY RBV. JOSEPH ANGUS, D.D., REGENT PARK BAPTIST COLLEGE, LONDON, ENGLAND.
" And He said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature."-MARK xvi. 15.
It is a hundred years since the revival of the spirit of missions. At the close of the last century, amid the din and bloodshed of an earlier French revolution, Dr. Carey was publishing his first translation of the New Testament into one of the languages of Bengal. After seven years of apparently fruitless labor, he had begun to desecrate the water of the Ganges by the baptism of his first convert. In the same year Dr. Vanderkemp reached the Cape, and began missions in Africa. It is only a cen. tury since j and now the Bible has been translated for the first time into more than a hundred and fifty languages, spoken by more than half the ~Iobe. Three thousand missionary evangelists are now laboring among the heathen. More than twenty thousand native preachers and teachers have been raised up through their toils, and native church-members are counted by hundreds of thousands. There are still found men who ask tauntingly for evidence of our 8uccess, and yet I venture to affirm that as mighty a work has been done in these last hundred years as in any hundred since the beginning of the Gospel: while in Biblical Translation as much has been done in this century, to give the Bible to the world, as was done in the eighteen centuries that preceded it-Pentecost included!
Cheering as this success and these labors seem, they have not kept pace either with the march of Providence or with the needs of the world. Knowledge and commerce and material civilization, the bounties and the openings of Providence have all multiplied faster than our missions. When Carey began his work India was closed to the Gospel, as was nearly all Asia. Over Africa there brooded a darkness which made even its geography a mystery. Europe was everywhere under the power of the man o~ • See Ed. Notes for Editor'. Introduction. sin, or its churches frowned upon all evangelical labor. Within living memory, India and China, Turkey and Egypt, Burmah and Persia have all become open. Africa has been traversed from end to end; and as to Europe, there are two Baptist churches in Madrid, and dozens of Protestant churches in Italy, while the Gospel is now preached again" at Rome also." The march of Providence, I repeat, has outstripped the progress of the Church.
Or, if that march be measured by other standards than the number of open doors, it is no less striking. When Franklin, the American printer and statesman, proposed for his wife, her mother objected to the marriage, because there were already two presses in America, and she thought there was not room for a third. It is little more than a century since, and there are now ten thousand printing offices in that country alone. To reach that Continent required as many weeks as now it takes days. Only thirty years ago to crOSi from the Atlantic to the Pacific was a six months' journey, perilous and toilsome in the extreme; now it is pleasantly done between Monday morning and Saturday night! Any man who has to travel much will save ten weeks out of every twelve; and if he were to spend his life in travelling, the facilities of travel would practically multiply his years fivefold. Half a century of life spent in travel would now effect as much as two centuries and a half a hundred years ago! In 1871 I read, in San Francisco, what had been written that morning near Sedan, seven thouaand miles away j and most marvellous, perhaps, of all, I reached that city within a month of leaving home, by the gentlest touch of human hands controlling iron and steam-forces that are among the mightiest that men wield. Yet within eighty years the man who spoke of " steam wagons" was deemed insane, and was helped only because" his invention," it was said, "could do no harm, and might lead to something useful." So it is with everything. The human eye can now see through 'space millions of miles farther than it could even when we were born. The three thousand or four thousand fixed stars which the apostles saw are now known to be six or seven millions. The yearly income of England is six or eight times larger than at the beginning of the century, and has trebled within thirty years. The effect of all this is that, for openings of Providence, for facilities of usefulness, for material strength and resources, this year of grace 1892 is much further beyond the year 1800 than are the missionary labors of this year beyond the labors of our fathers. The march, the bounty of Providence, has outstripped us all.
What are the feelings in which we ought to indulge ~ Devout thankfulness and as devout discontent.
Our labors have been" more abundant," the results are highly encouraging, and yet comparatively very little has been done. In this spirit I shall discuss the subject of missions, under the twofold division: (1) The work itself j and (2) the cxtent to which we are to prosecute it. We are to preach the Gospel-that is our work, and we are to preach it to every creature, to all creation, as the word is also rendered-that is the limit of our work. May the Good Spirit Himself help us to understand and to observe both parts of this command.
1. Our Work.-We are to preach the Gospel. The Gospel. In an important sense, it is as old as creation. From the very first men knew of a Divine law, fixing distinctions between right and wrong. Their sinfulness and guilt, atonement through vicarious suffering, God's free and yet righteous mercy, the obligation and th(' efficacy of prayer, the necessity of holiness-all were revealed. But now these truths are set forth with new proofs, are enforced by new motives, amid stronger light, and for a wider audience. This Gospel we may describe in various ways. It is a threefold message-of repentance and remission of sins through our Lord; of personal holiness, and of the work of the Spirit whereby the new life is begun and perfected; of blessedness for all who love and !lerve God. Forgiveness, holiness, blessedness. What more can we need ~ Or it is a twofold message: Christ's work for us, in living, and dying, and pleading, and reigning; and Christ'!! work in ns beginning in grace and ending in glory 1 Or is it a single message: of Christ as crucified, the true Revealer of the Divine holiness and love, the Redeemer and Comforter, and Pattern and Sanctifier of us all ~ This Gospel-at once a threefold, and a twofold, and a single message-Christ came to found even more than to teach. Yet it is the Gospel He taught, as it is the Gospel His apostles taught. So mighty did it prove that the most successful preacher of the apostolic age resolved, as much, perhaps, from experience as from direct inspiration, to know nothing among men, save Jesus Christ as crucified-the power and the wisdom of God. And this Gospel we are to preach. The words that describe our duty in this respect are all of them suggestive. The first of them is the one used in the text at the head of this article. Weare to proclaim it as heralds-not making our message, but carrying it and announcing it with boldness and authority. Sixty times in the New Testament is this word found. Everywhere it describes the bearing of men who feel that they are speaking in God's name. A second word, translated in the same way, means" to talk." It is applied to the easy conversational method adopted by our Lord, and to the somewhat exaggerated sayings of the woman of Samaria. It describes a gift of priceless value-the power of readily introducing and speaking of religious themes. A third word means" to reason," "to discuss." It is the word used to describe Paul's discourses; and it was preaching of this kind that he continued at Troas till midnight, as it was under such preaching Felix trembled. The fourth, and one of the commonest words of all, translated "preach," means to announce " glad tidings." More than fifty times this word is used. It forms the glory of the new Dispensation-that" the poor have the Gospel preached to them." This is the thought that justifies the outburst of the prophet : " How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of them that preach the Gospel of peace." "Blessed [happy] are the poor in spirit," is the first word of our Saviour's longest discourse, and it is the word that is found oftenest ther~. Weare then to be heralds, and talkers, and reasoners, and publishers of good things.
Constantly connected with these terms, which are all translated" preach," are other three. One means to " testify, or bear witness" -from Scripture, and especially from our own experience; another means" to teach ;" and a third " to exhort, or entreat." Thus, at Pentecost, Peter testified and exhorted, saying, "Save yourselves from this untoward generation." Thus Christ sent His disciples to teach all nations: thus the apostles ceased not to teach and preach Jesus Christ; the word suggesting that the truths which we announce we are also to explain and apply. Thus also, wherever Paul went, he exhorted and entreated; his own summary of his ministry is " As we go, we beseech men in Christ's stead. Be ye reconciled unto God."
Here, then, we have in brief the inspired description of our calling. Weare to proclaim the truth with the authority of ambassadors and in God's name j we are to announce it in quiet talk j we are to enforce it by argument, by explanations, by appeals to what we have ourselves felt, by earnest entreaty. There is a preaching that never speaks with authority, but questions and doubts on all things. There is a preaching that never reasons, but is always dogmatic or emotional. There is a preaching that never " talks," but is ever stilted and formal. There is a preaching that is cold discussion, or bare announcement, and never entreats. Apostolic preaching was a combination of all these processes, saturated with prayers and tears.
These statements of the work of Christian evangelists are, I hope, familiar to all our readers. It is part of their glory that they ('.ontain nothing new; and yet they rebuke theories and practices which are found on all sides. They tell us that it is the Gospel we are to preach-not science, or art, or ethical duties; not what we think on public questions, or even on subordinate pointli of theology, but what we know of essential truth. This Gospel we are to preach-not to discover, or to manufacture, or to excogitate from our own consciousness. We are to preach the Gospel-not become pastors of the churches which our preaching may form; not exhibit a gorgeous ritual, or repeat a solemn litany. Weare simply to preach it as men who feel its power, are conyinced of its truth, and know that they have a Divine authority for all they are saying. To this work we are to restrict ourselves when carrying out our Lord's commission. This is the command that is embalmed in the tenderest feelings of true disciples; the one Jegacy which, besides His peace and the promise of His presence, He bequeathed to His Church until He come again.
2. But the second part of my theme may create difficulty. The words of the text not only tell us what our work is, but what its limits are-to what extent we are to prosecute it: "To every creature," " to all creation" is this Gospel to be preached. "In Jerusalem and Judrea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth," is the inspired description of the duty as defined in the Acts j and in thirty years after the death of our'Lord, it had been preached, as the apostle expresses it in the Colossians, "to every creature, , in the whole creation,' under heaven. "
The words are addressed to the apostles-" the eleven j" but to the apostles as the representatives of the entire Church j for it is a duty in which all share. It was in the spirit of this command that Andrew found Peter, as Philip found Nathaniel, preached Christ to him, and brought him to Jesus. It was in the spirit of this command that the woman of Sychar went and told, in the fulness of hel' heart, of Him who seemed the Christ, and .through her talk great multitudes believed. It was in obedience to it that the members of the Church at Jerusalem, when scattered by persecution, all except the apostles went "everywhere preaching the Word." Hence apostles welcomed all fellow-helpers-men and women-in the patience and kingdom of Christ. Hence, the Thessalonian Church earned the high praise that they were " ensamples," a model Church to all that believed j for from them sounded out the Word of the Lord through all the region beyond them. A common duty!
The only other peculiarity that needs notice is that the form of the command, as given in Matthew, shows by the very expression that this work of preaching t.he Gospel to every creature belongs to each age. It is not done once for all. It has to be done again and again. The Church of each generation redeemed by the same blood, renewed and blessed by the same Spirit, has practically the same honor and responsibility-the honor of making known to the world of each generation" the manifold wisdom" and mercy of God.
Here, then, is our work, and here its limits. The Christians of each age are to give the Gospel to the people of that age. Every Christian is to tell the" good news" to everyone he can reach j and Christians collectively are to tell it, if they can, to all the world. Till this is done we are not free from obligation j and if any of the millions we can reach perish unwarned and unbidden, we divide with them the guilt of their ruin. " Many have not the knowledge of God. I speak it," says the apostle, " to your shame."
The Gospel for every creature! Can we give it 1 Is it possible for the age to tell to the age, for the Church to tell to the world the glad tidings of the kingdom ~ In ten or twenty years can repentance and remission of sins be preached through Christ to all nations 1 I believe that they can. The Christians of the nineteenth century are more able to preach the Gospel to the whole world than the Christians of the first century were to preach it to the world of their day. If so, the duty is binding, and the precept of the text is a literal command, a summons claiming obedience from all disciples. Carefully mark once more what the duty is, and how, in the light of the gospels and of the Acts, it is to be fulfilled. In 1he three years of our Lord's ministry He travelled three times over Galilee. Three times He travelled through Judrea and visited Jerusalem. He preached for weeks at Capernaum, His home, and a border town where many were coming and going. Six months He labored in Perrea ; twice at least He was in Samaria. Twice He sent out disciples-the twelve, the seventy; and in all these districts there were believers, hundreds of them, though no church was yet formed. Such was His three years' work-an itinerant home ministry-among, perhaps, three millions of people.
In five-and-twenty years Paul travelled three times over a great part of Asia Minor and Europe. Twice he was kept as prisoner for two years, at Cresarea and at Rome, preaching to all who came to him, and especially to successive soldIers to whom he was chained. At one place he wintered; at another he spent a year and a half; at a third two whole years, " So that all they that dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus." The charm of each scene of labor was an open door and many adversaries. If churches were formed, he encouraged others from among the churches themselves to take the oversight of them, sending written instructions for their government. Those instructions are now the inspired handbooks, which we give in a printed form to our converts, and which are, under God, the means of the growth and permanence of our societies. This missionary rented buildings and used the houses of those who were disposed to receive him. He took nothing of the Gentiles-i.e., of the unconverted-but gratefully ackll0wledged the gifts of all fellow-Ohristians who ministered to his necessities, and yet was ready to work with his own hands, that he might preach a free Gospel, and maintain his character for disinterested independence. In this spirit he travelled from Jerusalem even unto I1Iyricum, fully preaching by his life and by his words the Gospel of Christ. Fellow-helpers he found or made wherever he went; so that within thirty years after the ascension, the sound of the voice of the first preachers-the music of their message, as the terms imply-had gone out into all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. And I believe it demonstrable that with apostles, messengers of the churches-missionaries, as we call them, of a like spirit-we are able to do for our world, in the way of preaching, more than Paul and the apostles did for the world of their day.
To the extent of our ability we are to preach it, and we can preach it to all. Take the least favorable case. Suppose that this work is to be donp hy members of churches in Christendom only-i. e., in Europe and America.
We might need fifty thousand preachers, and their support might amount to fifty or seventy-five millions of dollars a year for ten years. In that time, and by snch an agency, the Gospel might be preached, and preached repeatedly, to e'ery man and woman and child on earth.
It seems a great company-fifty thousand preachers. And yet the number is less than ten per cent of the Baptist evangelical church-members in Great Britain and her colonies alone. Two out of every hundred mem- bers of Baptist churches alone, in Great Britain and America, would yield more than we need. While if Britain and America and Protestant Europe were to combine, our fifty thousand would mean one Christian worker out of every three hundred church-members only. England sent as many men to the Crimea to take a single fortress and to keep up for a few years a Mohammedan despotism. Ten times this number of men fell on each side in the great American war to set free three or four millions of slaves.
Five hundred years ago the Crusades had cost more lives, and they sought to win from men wellnigh as chivalrous as the invaders a material Jerusalem and an earthly" sovereignty." And cannot fifty thousand redeemed men be found to win back the world to Je~us Christ 1 Have our hymns no meaning 1 " Oh, send ten thou8and heralds forth, From East to West, from South to North, To blow the trump of Jubilee, And peace proclaim from sea to sea."
It seems a great sum-seven hundred and fifty millions of dollars in ten years. Y6t it is only five dollars a year from each member of the Baptist, Congregational, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches of Europe and America. England alone spends nearly as much every year on intoxicating drinks; and the blessings of civil government, imperial and local, cost Britain every year more than two thirds of the amount. The Crimean War cost five hundred millions of dollars; the American War more than ten times as much. An annual tax of three and one-half ceuts on a dollar on the taxable income of Great Britain alone would yield the seventyfive millions of dollars we need. Nay, more; it would be easy to find ten thousand professing Christians who could give it all.
Looking only at men and money, is it not self-evident that it can be done 1 But, in fact, the process is less costly than I have supposed. In America and England, and generally on the continent of Europe, the Gospel might be preached, fully and tenderly, without much more cost than the loving personal labors of our church-members. In India there are, say, one hundred and fifty millions of heathen. Suppose that we could send out at once three thousand men, who should each spend a couple of years in learning one language or more, and go for eight years or ten of work. They might gather around them, or get from existing churches, three thousand more-plain men or women, competent to preach the Gospel with tenderness and power. And then in ten years the Gospel might be preached, and preached repeatedly, to all India. The entire cost of such an agency for ten years, and for six thousand agents, need not amount to fifteen millions of ponnds. Five thousaud men sent iu the same way to China might, in the same time, evangelize the whole country. It can be done. I have not forgotten the difficulties of all kinds that surround this enterprise-travel, health, unknown regions, barbarous tribes, the great wrath of one who perceives that" his time is short." I know, or can imagine, them all. But I venture to say that. whatever these difficulties, they would be overcome if national honor were at stake; if diamond beds or gold fields of sufficient value had been discovered i nay, if even a Nile were to be traced and mapped. Is there a part of the earth that Englishmen could not penetrate-jor a consideration? And shall Christ's command and the world's needs fail to move 1 I repeat it-It can be done!
The recommendations of some such plan, so simple and comprehensive -the preaching of the Gospel, and, nothing more, to every creature, and nothing less-are clear and decisive.
There is, first of all, the Divine command and the Divine example. Education is of value i so is the relief of distress; the alleviation of suffering ; so are canals, and railroads, and commerce the implements of a material civilization. We honor them all i but they are most honored when made subservient to the Gospel. When the blessed God stepped forth from his place, as philanthropist (Titus 3 : 4) He gave His law and prophets, and sent His Son. And now all the improvement He work!! begins in human hearts, and is to spread from within outwardly till all is renewed. There are, be assured, profound reasons, as there is a Divine command, to justify the announcement that the preaching of the Gospel is the first business of the Christian Church.
Some such comprehensive plan, moreover, will have the advantage of proving to the world that we believe what we profess-viz., that the Gospel is God's remedy for human misery and sinfulness, and that it is the Church's honor to make it known. Everyone sees that our present agencies, with their million pounds a year, for the evangelization of eight hundred millions of people, do not mean businels; and there is, in consequence, widespread infidelity in relation to the Gospel and in relation to the sincerity of the Christian Church herself. . •• What an answer it would bc to rationalism, and secularism, and sectarianism, and popery, and infidelity in all their forms i and what a healthy confirmation of our own faith if the evangelical churches of Christendom were to resolve, in God's strength, to preach the Gospel to every creature. It would be the fitting reply at once to papal infallibility and to rationalistic unbelief.
And how our work would simplify and extend if we confined it to this business of preaching the Gospel. Many men would be found, of every class and of various social positions, competent to do this work, but not competent to become pastors, and not caring to take upon them the business-labors of many modern missionaries-good men, full of faith, and of the Holy Ghost. Nay, might not our best men-our laymen and pastors -whether young or old, be prepared to give five years,or ten, or parts of every year, to this specific work, who are not prepared to become missionaries for life, in the common meaning of the term. "'hat enormous anxieties would be spared us in connection with mission.buildings, and churches, and schools-the dead weight of many existing agencies. All thege things would come in time, but they would come independently of those who make it their business to preach the Gospel. Churches would be formed by thousands; but they would be left to their New Testament, and to native pastors, being commended, not selfishly, but from enlightened conviction, "to God and to the word of His grace. " A freer Christian life might be the result of such an arrange· ment; but the life would be more true, more natural, and, I believe, more abiding.
And what a blessing would it be to the heathen to filld hundreds of men in their country all preaching substantially the same Gospel, and all pointing for details of spiritual and ecclesiastical life to the same book!
It can be done. It is our duty to do it, and there will be blessing even in the attempt. Yes, you say, in the attempt j but in anything besides' Can we, without miracles, hope that men will believe' Is a message of human sinfulness, of Divine mercy, and of holiness-in one word, of Christ, and of Christ as crucified for us-likely to win men who have grown old in sin Y Must we not rather keep to our schools and be content to elevate men by the gradual training of a few in each generation, till, centuries hence, the whole are trained? I think not. The contempt of the foolishness of preaching has not yet died out. Signs, miracles, are still deemed essential. Wisdom, education, is still sought for as the precursor of the Gospel or its substitute. Yet is the Gospel more than a sign. It is power itself, and the power of God; and more than wisdom-the wisdom of God. Miracles have their place in introducing a new revelation, but they are not needed to justify us in preaching the Gospel, nor were they the means of the repentance and faith of the first converts. The truths we have to preach-man's guilt, God's free and righteous mercy, the necessity of holiness-still appeal to men's consciences and hearts, as they did at Jerusalem and at Corinth j the preaching is still followed by "greater things" than Christ Himself wrought j and, in short, the meso sage of the Cross, delivered as it ought to be, with prayer and tears, is still the power of God j and our strength is in proclaiming it. Some will not believe, but multitudes will ; and we shall have discharged our con· science and have obeyed our Lord. There will be a blessing in the attempt, and in much belides.
Thill, then, is the conclusion to which I come. If the Christian Church will give itself to this business of preaching the Gospel, it has wealth enough and men enough to preach it, in the next fifteen or twenty years, to every creature. All we need is a " willing mind"-a Pentecostal spirit of prayer, and faith and zeal. Only expect what God promises to give, only attempt what God bids us to do, and the thing will be done.
The Divine method of ruitlsions has been briefly marked out. We are to work to this model j make the preaching of the Gospel to every creature our ambition, our passion, as it was Paul's. Begin with our children and our friends. Continue in our busineils that we may have the more to give. Take it up as work, not as play.
Let the resolution of our missionary boards be to have hundreds of missionary evangelists with simple work, requiring few, though noble qualifications-love, insight, faith. And let our resolution be to give, not single dollars, but fives, tens, hundreds, and thousands-sums we think we can ill spare; and let all give. And soon-the Lord hasten it !-" His way will be known on earth, and His saving health among all nations."
And yet it is not so much men we need, or money! Not 80 much demonstrations of the sufficiency of our wealth and numbers. What we most need in order to use the wealth we have and to send the men is a heart of warmer love-still greater tenderness and simplicity, more faith and more prayer; in short, the Holy Spirit in us and with us. All I have here written on the power of preaching takes as granted that it is not we who speak, but God who speaks by us. The consciousness, the temper. and the reality of a Divine presence-is not this the great need of us all?
Yet is it less accessible than the men or the money ¥ Nay, it is more accessible than either, and the only thing needed for the acquiring of both. If God give us the Spirit-and can we doubt His willingness-nothing else essential will be withheld.
STATISTICAL FACTS.
I. NUMBERS.
BAPTISTS. Ministers and Members or Communicants. Missionaries. 505,090 Briti.sh. Empire, Colonies, and 3,281,500 MlsslOns ………….•.• 2,853 America and Foreign States .. 25,005 Total (a) …. …. .. 27,858 3,786,590 CONGREGATIONALISTS. Ministers and Members or Communicants. Missionaries. 360,000 Great Britain (b) .. ……•.• 2,722 492,000 America (c) •• '" .•.•.•••.. 4,640 Total …•…•••••.. 7,362 852,000 EPISCOPALIAN CHURCH. Benefices. Sittings.
England (d) …•.••…•… 14,250 6,250,000 Ireland …………..• _.. America .••••..•…••….. 1,210 602,300 4,163 (Members) 1,650,000 Total ••••………. 19,623 7,502,300 (a) "Baptist Handbook," 1892. "The Congregational Handbook" (Boston) for 1891 gives American Baptists as a million more.
(b) "Whitaker's Almanac," 1892. A very inadequate view of the influence and working power 9f the body.
(0) .. The Congregationalist Handbook" (Boston) for 1891. (d) This seems the simplest way of giving an idea of the strength of the Established Chnrch. 'fhe ministers are much more numerous than the benefices, and the nominal melDbers than the Eit~ tings. See H Whitaker's Almanac," p. 236. PBlCSBYTERIAN . Ministers. Communicants.
United Kingdom, Colonies, 5,510 1,418,000 and Missions .•••…….. 5,527 469,000 11,918 European Continent …..•.. 1,561,000 America …•..•••……… —– Total (e) . ••••.••••.• 22,955 3,448,000 WESLEYAN AND OTHER Ministers. Communicants. METHODISTS. 7,285 1,362,000 Great Britain, Colonies, etc. 31,365 4,983,000 (7 bodies) ……•……. —— America (14 bodies)…….. 6,345,000 Total (I) …. ……. 38,650 23,000,000 —- Grand Total (about) …… 120,000 The number of commllnicants is equally divided between Europe and America.
It will be gathered from this list that in these five denominations there are upward of 15,000,000 of church. members who are pledged to the spread of the Gospel of Jesus thrist, with seyen or eight millions more who are equally pledged as members or Episcopal churches.
II. WEALTH.
[NOTE.-It is not deemad necessary to alter these figures to represent dollars. We have only to remember that a ponnd is abont five dollars.-ED.] Since modern missions began in 1792, the wealth of England has enormously increased. Ninepence in the pound from income-tax payers alone would now yield £15,000,000 a year. We spend each year on our army and navy £35,000,000. We spent last year on drink £140,000,000.
Our yearly contributions for foreign missions amount to £1,300,000. (g) In 1850 the communicants of evangelical churches in America were wurth £200,000,000 ; in 1880 they were worth £1,800,000,000. The AmerIcans spend on drink £200,000,000 a year; on tobacco, £120,000,000 a year; on jewelry, £110,000,000. Their yeady contributions for foreign missions amount to £1,400,000. (h) Looking at our numbers and wealth, am I wrong in affirming that the Chris~ian churches of Europe and America alone have men enough and money enough to do a11 I have described in a fraction of the time I have assigned for the accomplishment of this great and blessed work?
<el From" Reports of General Presbyterian Council," sent by Rev. Dr. :ltlathewi (f) From" The Wesl"yan Methodist Kalendar," sent by ~bjor Smith. (g) See Church Missionary Intelligencer, January, 1892, p. 64. (fi) See" Report of the Centenary Conference on Missions," ii. 502, 534.
DECENTRALIZATION IN MISSIONS
DECENTRALIZATION IN MISSIONS.
BY REV. A. J. GORDON, D.D., BOSTON, MASS.
In a very able article on missions in the British and Foreign Evangelical Review, the writer makes this startling statement, that" the churches of Great Britain have never as yet made foreign mi.~sion8 a part of their work. ,.
What strikes us at first as being a strange assertion is, however, justified by a further statement, which is almost as true of our country as of Great Britain: "The great missionary societies in England are all outside the churehes, which, as churches, have nothing to do with their maintenance or management. It is true the money comes from members of the churches, and church-members are managers of the societies; but all that the churches do is to manifest a benevolent neutrality, or to bestow a benevolent patronage. Missions to the heathen world are not made the work of the churches; they are a parergon-we had almost said a by-play, or a May holiday-instead of being the Church of Christ's first work, as it was her Lord's final commission-a work demanding the highest talent and most devoted service."
It cannot be denied that this statement is strictly according to fact, and the fact is one of the most serious whith eonfronts us in our missionary operations. Responsibility is the mother of activity. Only as Christians are sensible of their obligation will they be moved to active consecration.
Therefore, how to distribute responsibility for the work of evangelizing the world is the great problem to be solved in the present "crisis of missions. "
Now we do not question for a moment the great value and indispensa- ble necessity of our missionary boards. The splendid work which they have done during the last hundred years has amply justified the wisdom of their founders j and it is to be earnestly hoped that the number and efficiency of such societies may be greatly increased in the years to come; but there are certain perils connected with these great organizations to which we should be keenly alive. .
In the first place, they tend to create a missionary trust, in which re- sponsibility is 'centred in a few hands, funds administered by a few men, and the world's evangelization syndicated in a few trustees. As great emporiums shut up small shops and drive the petty store-keepers out of business, so wholesale missions tend to concentrate the trade in Gospel pearls in a single firm, and thus to create a ~ind of evangelical monopoly.
President Wayland, whose views of missionary policy, expressed more than forty years ago, have been more and, more justified by events, had very strong convictions on this point. He predicted that the tendency would be steadily developed to carryon missions by representation instead of by participation-churches turning over their responsibility to boards, boards relegating it to executive committees, and executiye committees to secretaries. " Thus, in fact," he says, "the work of extending the cause of Christ, which belongs essentially to every disciple, is devolved on some fifteen or twenty men, who, overburdened with business, do. all they possibly can i but to what does this amount in comparison with the universal effort of six or eight hundred thousand communicants, each laboring in his own sphere, each building over against his own house, all animated with the same spirit, each determined to do with his whole heart the whole service which his Master has appointed to him individually 1"
In confirmation of this statement, let us ask how many pastors and churches practically discharge their responsibility for missions with an annual contribution, gathered on one Sunday and sent to the missionary society ~ Those who have an intimate acquaintance with the subject well know that many make this the sum total of their interest in this Divine enterprise. Thus the missionary Christ, with His great commission, is treated as a beggar to be discharged with an alms, and not as a yoke-fellow in the Gospel to be supported in daily co-operation. As a consequence, missionary contributions do not grow with the growth of the churches, and missionary interest does not increase WIth the increase of communicants.
On the other hand, whenever ~ndividual churches have taken up the work of giving the Gospel to the heathen, as their own first and inalienable obligation, the results have been surprising. God is constantly giving object-lessons on this subject: The single peasant church of Pastor Harms, in Germany, sending out and supporting more than three hundred and fifty missionaries within thirty years; Pastor Gossner commissioning and maintaining one hundred and forty-one missionaries i and in our day, Pastor Simpso~ sending out one Imndred missionaries in a single year"and receiving for their support within twelve months more than two hundred thousand dollars ! We may not altogether approve the policy and methods of these leaders; that is not the question. Here are "examples writ large" of what single pastors and local churches can do who make missions their principal business, and constitute themselves wiih the Holy Ghost sole agente, and not silent partners in that business.
A second tendency growing out of our present methods is to produce an undesirable uniformity of method in conducting the work of foreign missions. The method is the man himself. Churches which achieve unusual success in parish work generally do so by absorbing and reducing to action their minister's personality. The Metropolitan Tabernacle is a kind of organized Spurgeon iNorthfield is a sort of incarnated Moody. These types of men and method should be transplanted bodily to the missionary field, instead of being> minted and restamped with the uniform signature of a missionary board. There are churches which are hot, and there are churches which are cold. Pour their missionary spirit into a common receptacle, and lukewarm is the mean temperature. In some way the tn0St fervtfut, most evangelical, most spiritual churches ought to make their influ(mce felt directly on the foreign field through agents who shall properly represent them. Professor Christlieb in his book on missions attaches so much importance to a " variety of operations," in order to the highest results, that he even sees a beneficent Providence in denominationalism, in the partition of Christendom into a multitude of sects.
The versatility of method is really provided for in the wide dissimilarity in churches and in their administration.
Without proposing anything either revolutionary or radical, we do believe that the time has come for decentralization in missionary operations. The way to accomplish thi!l is obviQJls and the reason for it scriptural. Let every church become a foreign missionary society having its own field or station, and its own representatives for whom it is directly responsible. Confederation instead of delegation or of relegation might thus be secured. The local churches could co· operate in the work of missions without funding their responsibility in a common treasury.
The missionary boards would carryon the same work which they now conduct with considerable relief from responsibility. They would be the commission housel of the churches which they represent, doing their banking and book-keeping j transporting their missionaries to and from their fields j building their mission house8 and chapels-in fact, doing everything which they now do except supporting and directing the missionaries. We are profoundly persuaded that this responsibility should be retained by the local churches, and for this reason, that the Head of the Church has fixed it there, and that it cannot properly be transferred. The individual church is a missionary society, complete in itself. So it was ordained to be in the beginning, and so it must continue to be in order to do its largest work for the world.
And what would be gained by this method V 1. It would greatly promote the spirit of prayer for missions. Necessity is the spur to importunity. " Lord, make me sensible of real needs," was the petition constantly on the lips of an eminent saint. One who has his larder filled to repletion finds it exceedingly difficult to plead with intense unction, "Give us this day our daily bread." Christ's constant warnings of the perils of wealth and His strong dissuasions against laying up treasnres on earth are sufficiently explained in this fact. Neither wealth nor poverty are praiseworthy conditions in themselves j but the one begets independence of God, and the other dependence on God. Therefore it is not more wealth, but more need that is required in our churches to increase their missionary power. Let the burden of the support of missionaries and missionary stations rest directly on the local churches j let the trials and discouragements of the foreign field be made an immediate and sole concern of these churches, and what a new and wonderful stimulus to prayer it would furnish. Do we hear the plea that single churches are not able to undertake a foreign mission V Our answer is, let them undertake that which they are unable to perform, if ever their praying and working ability is to be brought out. It is the business of a good teacher to give his pupils problems to work out larger than their present capacity, in order to expand the mind j and Christ would have us undertake more than we can do, in order to throw us upon Himself with strong crying and intercession, and so teach us how His strength is made perfect in weakness. Missions rightly conducted are the greatest school of prayer: they nourish that by which they are nourished j they create a necessity which supplies a necessity. In a word, the most pressing demand of our day is more responsibility for missions in order to greater importunity for missions.
2. It would increase vastly the contributions of the churches j and for this reason, that it would make obligation more immediate and personal. A financial pressure resting on a board a thousand miles away is not sufficient to lift the benevolence of the local church to its proper level. Duty is what is due j hence the more personal a debt can be made to appear, the more obligatory will seem to be the claim. How churches will lift and strain their resources and tax their self-denial to build a house of worship or to purchase a new organ! What lover of missions has not longed for the same energy of self-sacrifice on behalf of this greatest of all works? The secret of the earnestness in the one instance is that the work is counted a personal obligation, and therefore since it cannot be relegated it is heroically done. Let a church have its own missionaries who will starve unless it supports them, and there will be a possibility that some at home will go hungry in order to feed a far-off workman j but there is little likelihood that such self-denial will be evoked where responsibility for a missionary'll support is subdivided among several thousand Christians. The wisdom of Sidney Smith's saying is even more apparent than its wit: " Benevolence is a universal instinct j A cannot see B in need without desiring C to help him." How much of the amiable well wishing and even fervent praying for missions is of this sort, an asking God to move others to do what we ought to do ourselves j a pleading for the cause of missions by those who are daily shirking the claims of missions. Never can the resources of the Christian Church be laid under contribution till in some way the missionary enterprise is understood to be the principal business of the Church, and a business which cannot by any possibility be entrusted to an ecclesiastical commission house.
3. It would vastly multiply the number and the variety of missionary agencies. It is quite common in these days to hear the phrase, the " scandal of a divided Christendom." This condition is doubtless to be lamented on many grounds. Nevertheless, it has unquestionably been overruled to the wider and more rapid propagation of the Gospel. An able article appeared in one of the numbers of this REVIEW, showing conclusively that when the unity of the Church bas been most compact and absolute missionary success has been the least.' All that we would emphasize here is, that centralization tellQs illIJl.9lit always to a waste of energy. A
THE NEW HEBRIDES MISSION
hundred horse-power can be had by hitching a hundred horses into cne team, but a hundred church-power does not and cannot result from uniting a hundred churches into one society. Indeed, the paradox is constantly witnessed of gaining strength by diminishing the numbers, as in the reduction of Gideon's army. Churches which are strong ought doubtless to be yoked up with churches which are weak, and so to share their burdens j but we know of no law requiring churches that are zealous and thoroughly alive to their missionary obligations to dilute their consecration and to lower the temperature of their zeal, by union with those which utterly lack in these qualities. The responsibility of being devoted, and the obligation to be zealous and self-denying ought, in other words, to be thrown upon each Christian and upon each church with no opportunity to shift them upon others.
In the immense call which is now made upon the churches of Christ for multiplied giving and multiplied laborers, it is natural to ask what further methods can be suggested. "Churches to the Front" is the answer of one of the oldest missionaries in China, in a tract now before us. If separate churches will take up the work of missions, he believes that missionaries will be multiplied a hundred-fold within a fAw years. Another eminent laborer in China has for seyeral years been advocating the same view. What is the suggestion but a call for a " policy of missions which multiplies a thousand-fold the eyes that watch for their success, the hands that work for their prosperity, and the prayers that plead for their blessing i"
THE NEW HEBRIDES MISSION.
BY REV. ROBERT STEBL, D.D" SYDNEY.
The first year of the second half century of the New Hebrides Mission witnessed the introduction of steam power to serve the interests of advancing Christianity as well as of progressive commerce in this group of islands. There are thirty islands, most of which have now resident or visiting missionaries, and all of them have native teachers. The first of the interisland vessels was the Columba, a boat of five tons. The second was the John Knox, a larger craft of twelve tons, in which was a little cabin six feet high, where ten persons could sit. and a hold which could accommodate between twenty and thirty persons. This two-masted schooner did good service for a few years, but soon proved too small. The next vessel was the result of an appeal after the martyrdom of the Rev. G. N. Gordon and his wife on Eromanga in 1861, and the perils on Tanna which caused the flight of the missionaries. The Rev. J. G. Paton, who has since become so famous, raised a sum of £3000 by his fervent appeals in Australasia for a new vessel and £lOOO for additional missionaries. A brigantine of 120 tons was built at New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, and sent out to the New Hebrides under the command of Captain W. A. Fraser, in 1864, with a reinforcement of three missionaries, including the courageous brother of the martyred Gordon. In 1866 three more missionaries came from Scotland to occupy stations in the group. The vessel called the Dayspring was supported by the Presbyterian Sabbath scholars in Australia and New ?:caland, with the aid'of £250 annually from Nova Scotia and £250 from the Reformed Presbyterian Church in Scotland. In 1873 this vessel was wrecked on a reef in the harbor of Aneityum during Ii hurricane, but no lives were lost. She was immred for £2000, which was recovered, and formed the commencement of a new fund. The Rev. Mellsrs. Copeland and Paton collected £2000 more, and with this a vessel built in Sydney, New South Wales, was purchased, and adapted to the missionary work. It was a three· masted schooner of 159 tons, and a remarkably quick sailer. For seventeen years this second Dayspring served the mission well, making two voyages snnually from Sydney with stores and mails and mission passengers, and waiting on the missionaries at their several stations. Much pioneer work was done by the aid afforded by this vessel and her master, officers, and sailors, as well as by the native crew always employed in the islands. She was insured for £2000, the premium for which was paid by means of an insurance fund inaugul'l1ted in New Zealand by the Rev. J. Copeland, and completed to a sum of £3000 by Mr. Paton. One of the services of this vessel was the conveyance of the missionaries, and often also their wives, to the place where the mission synod was held, and the entertainment of them during its several sel!lsions. Having had the pleasure of being prellent at one of these synods, I can testify to the happy and comfortable arrangement for the missionaries staying on board and meeting each other at meals. It secured proper attendance and much comfort. The wives of the missionaries were quartered at the mission house. The annual expense of the vessel was about. £1800, of which £1300 were raised by the Sabbath scholars of the Presbyterian churches in Australasia. Indeed, they frequently raised much more, and thus met the necessary repairs required from time to time. It was found, however, that this vessel was too small for the wants of the growing mission in the New Hebrides. The Rev. J. G. Paton, on a visit to Great Britain and Ireland in 1884-85, collected over £9000, of which £6000 were given for the purchase of a steamer for the use of the mission. Negotiations were entered into immediately after his return to Melbourne with a view to ascertain the probable cost of maintaining a steam vessel, and as that was found to involve an annual outlay of some £3000, considerable difficulty was felt in getting those supp-orting missionaries on the islands to undertake so heavy a responsibility. But in Divine Providence an unexpected solution of the difficulty was obtained when the mercantile marine stepped forward and offered to establish a regular line of steamers if encouragement was given. The Victorian and the New South Wales Governments each subsidized a monthly service to the illlands by way of New Caledonia and Fiji. This did not exactly meet the wants of the mission, as the steamers called only at one port on the group. The mission vessel therefore continued its voyages for another year, when the Australasian United Steam Navigation Company offered to place a steamer in the islands, with a view of promoting trade for the main line. The New South Wales Government gave a sub· sidy of £100 per month to this service, and the Maritime Board of the mission entered into a contract with the company to get all the work of the mission done among the islands. The steamer caUs at every station once a month, and conveys all passengers 'and stores. The steamer on this route meets that on the main line, and cruises entirely among the islands. In the early part of this year, and during the hurricane season, she was driven on a reef in the very harbor where the first Dayspring was wrecked. Fortunately no mission goods were lost, and no lives, but the vessel was rendered useless.
A larger and better steamer has now been put on the inter-island trade. The missionaries have greater comfort in travelling, and are altogether more satisfied. The expense has been increased some £500 a year, but no more than £300 of this faUs upon the New Hebrides Mission. The Dayspring has since been suld. In addition to all this, a small steamer is to be provided for the new mission' just started on the most northerly and largest island of the group-Espiritu Santo-hy the Presbyterian Church of Victoria. This is to be provided for by the fund raised by the Rev. J. G. Paton-now D.D., by the University of Edinburgh. The Rev. D. Macdonald, who has been for eighteen ycars at Havanna Harbor, in the island of Efate, is to superintend this new mission, and two other missionaries have been appointed to that work.. Soon all the group will be under missionary care. The evangelistic work is !!preading rapidly. There are cighteen missionaries of the Presbyterian churches now on the group. Bishop Selwyn and his missionaries operate on three of the islands to the north. There are about 180 native teachers employed. On some islands there are o·er 500 communicants; on others, 350, 200, 60, etc. On many there is a large attendance at public worship; on others it is still small. On all the work of the Lord is advancing, but the largest islands are only lately begun to be evangelized. There is still much to be done, requiring faith, prayer, labor, and perseverance. The mission contains agents of six Australasian Presbyterian churches and of the Free Church of Scotland and the Presbyterian Church in Canada. Thus eight churches work together in the cause of missions. It is no wonder that the late Rev. Dr. Duff, of Calcutta, commended this union to the first General Council which met at Edinburgh as an example of what might by done by Presbyterian churches. The same spirit is at work both in India, China, Japan, and Africa, and will doubtless prcvail. May this consummation, devoutly to be wished, soon be realized !
In April last the Rev. VV. Vatt and wife returned to their station after a visit to Europe, Canada, the United States, New Zealand, and New South Wales. Mr. Watt took with him the complete New Testament in Tannese,
WILLIAM CAREY
which he had carried through the press in Scotland. Dr. Gunn, medical mis- sionary, also returned after a short furlough with his wife and family in New South Wales. The Rev. H. A. Robertson, of Eromanga, with his wife and family, came lately to the same colony for their health. Mr. Robert- son had suffered from exposure in aiding the wrecked steamer. The Rev; P. Milne, whose career has been so successful on Ngunna and other islands, is visiting New Zealand and addressing congregations. The Rev. Dr. Paton has been doing similar work in AUlltralia. Altogether this mission, in a very difficult field, is making much progress in evangelizing the dusky tribes of the New Hebrides. A perplexing difficulty has lately been felt. British vessels are not allowed to sell arms or intoxicating liquors to the natives. French vessels are allowed to do both j and the natil'es have been refusing to sell. land unless they receive muskets in exchange. This has aided the acquirement of land by French settlers, and it has hindered purchase of land and other trade to British settlers. American vessels have also, it is said, been trading in these articles among the New Hebrides islands. It is matter requiring some diplomatic settlement, so that all • nations may be on an equal footing, and that the people be protected from trade that tends to their injury and to the injury of thc missionary work. It is high timethat enlightened nations should all agree not to take intoxi- cating liquor to the aborigines of any continent or island. Humanity and religion alike require this course.
WILLIAM CAREY.
IlL-THE TRANSLATOR OF THE 'BIBLE AND THE BENEFACTOR OF ASIA.
BY GEORGE SMITH, LL.D., F.R.G.S., EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND.
When, in his great work, the" Annals of the English Bible," Christopher Anderson, thc accomplished Baptist minister, of Edinburgh, reviewed the principal translations of Holy Scripture which Carey had made into the languages of the peoples of Iudia and Southern Asia, he declared that that generation lived too near the object to be able to descry the proportions or estimate the value of the work. " Fifty years hence the character of this extraordinary and humble man will be more correctly appreciated." Dr. A. F. Cox, the historian of the first half century of the Baptist Missionary Society, wrote about the same time that Carey might have been a Luther or a Newton had he lived in their age, "but his faculties, consecrated by religion to a still higher end, have gained for him the sublime distinction of having been the translator of the Scriptures and the benefactor of Asia." Catholic and evangelical Christendom, after another half century, gratefully adopts as its own the eulogy.
As a man and a missionary William Carey's forty:one years' apostolate in India formed an all-round career. His plodding-the only merit he would admit-his natural genius j his consecration to the highest good of the dark races; his faith in God and personal "ove t~ Jesus Christ; his splendid health and capacity for patient toil; his simple Melf-denial, free alike from consciousness and asceticism for its own sake ; his chivalrous affection to family and friends, and his courtesy to his friends' enemies- for he llad none of his own-all constitute a character nearer perfectness than any since the inspired John died at Ephesus. But if analysis leads us to study each great service that he was called by the Spirit of God to render to the Church and the world, we have no difficulty in selecting these two as the greatest-the founding of his society in 1792, and the translation of the Scriptures into thirty-six Asiatic languages. If Robert Ball could, amid the controversies of his lifetime, declare Carey to have been, even then, "the instrument of diffusing more religious knowledge than has fallen to the lot of any individual since the Reformation," and if the poet Southey could challenge his own Church of England, all combined, to show the like, what shall be the verdict of evangelical Christendom now?
Carey himself estimated his own position when he declared that he was only a pioneer. He meant it modestly, and he would have admitted every' word written down to our own day by English university scholars who desiderate academic tone, microscopic erudition, and college-bred culture. But it is precisely such university gifts, so desirable in themselves and out of reach of the Northamptonshire shoemaker, that unfit their possessor to be a leader of men, an originator of a great movement, a reformer of Church or State. The Spi~it of God prefers the child-weakness of the world, and makes it mightier than all that mechanical training can do to be the spiritual force, the moral regenerator of humanity. Carey was the pioneer translator of the Word of God into the languages of Southern Asia in this sense, that he was the first-cxcept into Tamil and Telugoo-and that, not know. ing how soon he might be called away, he must make haste to give every people the good news of God in their own tongue. He worked night and day for this end, while neglecting no other imperative duty except his personal correspondence. To one lady he excused his silence thus-that eve-ry letter he wrote meant the sacrifice of a chapter of the Bengali Bible !
The providence of God had, unconsciously, trained him for this work far more effectually than if he had gone to college like Claudius Buchanan and David Brown, like Henry Martyn and Thomason afterward. When a thoughtless boy in the church of which his father was clerk and schoolmaster, he knew the Scriptures. When at eighteen he sought food for his new spiritual life among the Nonconformists, he 80 studied the Bible for himself that he "formed his own system" of belief from its self-evidence of self-revealing" contents, and found in it what all the Reformers and universities of the past centuries had failed to seethe missionary call. As the youth learned each new language, he read his daily morning chapter in it, till the number became seven. He might preach with the voice and teach with the lips and the effect might pass away with his own life, which must be brief at the longest. But, his trans- lations of the Scriptures, the first into the Oriental vernaculars, would, if once made, be improved on by others, and would carry the message of God to man far and wide where no missionary could go, and down through the ages when the pioneer was forgotten. Carey loved to preach, but he thirsted to translate; he worked sixteen hours out of ever.y twenty-four, because he hasted to. send out from the press the portions and then the whole of the vernacular Bible, while neglecting no other department of the missionary's duty that fell to him. And God so accepted His servant's work that his holy ambition was realized beyond all his yearning, and in a rapture of thanksgiving he said to Marshman as he lay a-dying: " I have not a wish left uns~tisfied." God so blessed His servant's self-denial and toil that He enabled him to contribute personally £46,625 to the creation and extension of the Serampore Mission, so that he saw before his death "twenty-six Gospel churches planted in India within an area of about eight hundred miles, and above forty laboring brethren rail'ed up on the spot amid them," as his surviving colleague wrote.
Let it not be supposed, however, that Carey neglected either the erudi- tion of scholarship or the delicate variations of literary style and colloquial idiom in his Orientalism. Comparative philology was only coming to the birth as a science in his day, and hill is the merit of having done more to prepare the data for its generalizations, as well as to apply its laws to the mastering of other tongues, than any contemporary ~r predecessor. Sir William Jones, the Christian judge, who died all too early at thirty-four, alone was before him. Sir Charles Wilkins and the elder Halhed had made the first translations from the Sanskrit and the Persian, and the former had cut the first Bengali types. Henry Colebrooke, greater than all, and in- spirer of the German Orientalists, was Carey's immediate contemporary and sometimes fellow-worker. The slightly later scholar, Horace Hayman Wilson, who beca~e first Bodleian Professor of Sanskrit at Oxford, and was no friend of missions, has more warmly eulogized Carey's Sanskrit • scholarship and fluent and correct speech than any other, remarking that " it was not in Dr. Carey's nature to volunteer a display of his erudition ;"
the marvel how even be could find time for his translations of the Sanskrit epics, the Sankhya Metaphysical treatises, and for the texts of the Hito- padesa, the Dasa, Kumara, Carita, and the Apophthegms of Bhartri-pari, still more for his many and magnificent dictionaries and grammars. But the motive accounts for it all when he confesses, in 1811, in reference to his" Universal Dictionary of the Oriental Languages Derived from the Sanskrit," which was burned in the great fire of the Serampore press soon – after, the desire" to assist biblical students to correct the translation of the Bible in the Oriental languages after we are dead."
His knowledge of the many dialects and e'en patois of the widespread Bengali and Hindi peoples was unexampled, and has probably never since been equalled. For he was a missionary who daily worked among them, and among the lowest as well as highest classes of them. He had facilities for learning their very slang and vocabulary of abuse which no one has ever since possessed in Bengal save the revenue settlement officials, who may happen to love languages, and the people in other provinces. That rare book, " Dialogues Intended to Facilitate the Acquiring of the Bengalee Language," with its curious preface, published by Carey in 1818, throws a flood of light on the life and beliefs of the eighty millions even at the present day too long neglected. In one hundred and thirteen parallel pages we have the talk of every class, learned and illiterate j the" grave style" and the" common talk of laboring people," the language of women " considerably differing from that of the men, especially in their quarrels j" the proverbial expressions and the very irregular talk of fishermen. Some of it is almost too coarse for repetition, even in EngliSh j but all, includ- ing dialogues which set forth" the domestic economy of the country," forms a priceless revelation of the inner life of the dumb millions of Ben- gal, and no less a testimony to the wonderfully human tenderness and minute knowledge of the first English missionary to India. William Carey used to exhaust three Pundits daily as his amanuenses and fellow-workers. He had the power, like some great generals, of falling asleep in a moment and for a fixed time. Each Pundit had instructions to rouse him for a new spell of work should he not be awake at the hour, and when the Oriental's reluctance to summon a sleeper back to life prevailed occailionally, t.he eager scholar never failed to reprove him. Only then was the perfect temper ruffled, for the translator had been allowed to steal time from his work for God and posterity.
If the science of comparative grammar had not been formulated in Carey's time, still less was that of biblical criticism in the modern sense dreamed of. Theology, though the queen of the sciences, was then as little studied as the active life of godliness was pursued in Christian churches and communities. The two have a far closer relation than the extreme advocate of each-right in what he asserts, bnt wrong in what he denies- ever admits. Carey accomplished his splendid work with no apparatus criticus worthy of the name in those days, and with the help of no com- mentary more critical than Doddridge's "Family Expositor," which had appeared in 1738. His Greek concordance was always at his side. An interesting parallel might be drawn between him and Henry Martyn, his yoting contemporary and neighbor for a time, at the translating work. As to Hebrew, like biblical criticism, a scholarly knowledge of that on any extensive scale is only now coming into existence j but Carey was at the – level of the best Hebraists of his day. The grammar was known then j but exegetical methods are of to-day. The problem which God gave to the Church in the evangelical revival a century ago, was that of evangelizing the dark races j and to-day there has been added that of consecrating all . recent knowledge and critical inquiry by evangelical fidelity to the true inspiration of the Scriptures. The more that Carey toiled at his translating the nearer he was drawn to the Spirit of God, and the more his faith was fed by the revelation and the testimony of Jesus Christ.
William Carey's two greatest translations of the Bible wele that into Bengali for the blind millions, and into Sanskrit for their blinder leaders. In four years after landing at Calcutta he had made his first experimental Beng~lee version of the New Testament from the original Greek. After four revisions of the MS., read to natives of all classes, he had received his first printing-press. The printer landed at Serampore in the person of William Ward, and there, in February, 1801, the first edition of two thousand copies appeared. Ward himself and Felix Carey set up the types in nine months; four Hindus worked the press. The whole, on rough, country· made paper, cost £620. The rare and precious volume is now a curiosity as it rests on the shelves of Serampore College Library. The first page in Matthew's gospel was struck off at press by Carey himself, and this one Gospel was published at once, that the Bengalees might not for a day want a complete and inspired life of the only Redeemer of men. This first ledition was presented to King George III., at the instance of Ead Spencer, owner of the great library at Althorp; and the king replied: "I am greatly pleased to find that any of my subjects are employed in this manner." The whole Bengali Bible appeared complete in 1809. Fivc editions of the Old, and eight editions of the New, Testament were revised by Carey hefore his death. As the first sheets had been offered to God on the altar or communion-table by prayer in the first Bengali chapel, so thc venerable scholar took the first copy of the last edition with him into the pulpit and addressed his converts from it, from the words (in the Bengali), " Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen Thy sal1"ation," just two years before the Lord lovingly answered the prayer. But to the last he persisted in his ruling passion" now and then to read a proofsheet of the Scriptures."
The Sanskrit Bible completed by Carey, burned in the fire of 1812, retranslated, and therefore not all published when he died, was his answer to the Vedic and Puranic literature of the Brahmins, who" cordially received it." As milk in a vessel of dog's skin, utterly polluted, was truth to them in one of the tongues of the common people. But in its Sanskrit dress, as afterward improved by Werger, the Bible has bem at once welcomed by not a few to whom it has proved the power of God and the wisdom of God. Every Pundit' knows Sanskrit as, of old, every educated European knew Latin; so that "by translating the Scriptures into this language we in effect translate them into all the languages of India." Carey translated and wrote every word of the great book with his own hand. It was his thirty-sixth translation and his last, though he edited and revisea the work of others in other languages.
Space fails me to tell the details or even to generalize the romantic facts of William Carey's manifold services to humanity, Indian administration, science and manufactures, botany and forestry, agriculture and horticulture,
DISCERNING THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES
literature and education, the mo'ral advancement of society and mlSSlon economics. These appeal to the men of science and of society, to the statesmen and atbninistrators, who rule two hundred and eighty-eight millions today, on lines which this friend of many a governor-general marked out, to all who love the progress of man in any upward direction, to unite with the whole Church in grateful commemoration of the founder and the f/lther of missions a hundred years ago. All may adopt the lines of a contemporary verse-writer, a man of the world, who knew him: .. Thou'rt in onr heart-with tresses thin and gray, And eye that knew the Book of Life so well, And brow serene, as thou were wont to stray Amidst thy flowers-like Adam ere he fell."
'But the believing Christian will specially take to his heart the last written message of the dying saint sent to Christopher Anderson on September 30th, 1833 : "As everything connected with the full accomplishment of the Divine promises depends on the almighty power of God, pray that I and all the ministers of the Word may take hold of His strength, and go about our work as fully expecting the accomplishment of them all, which, however difficult and improbable it may appear, is certain, as all the promises of God are in Him, yea, and in Him. Amen." Carey began the first modern missionary century with " Expect Great Things; Attempt Great Things;" he summons us to enter on the second not only fully expecting the accomplishment of all God's promises, but taking hold of God's strength as we go about the work of evangelizing the world.
[EJrrata.-In Part 1. of this series, page 321, for first date, A.D. 51–55, read B.O. 55-A.D. 51 ; also on page 322 under THE THBEE NEW BIRTH EpOOHS.] DISCERNING THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES.
BY THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF.
[NOTB.-Thls.paper gives the substance of au address delivered In City Temple, London, April 27, 1892, before young men in behalf of the Baptist Missionary Society, and as the opening of the centenary celebration.] Deus in historia (God is in history). The undevout historian, like the " undevout astronomer, is mad." If only the fool can say in his heart, as he beholds the universe, with its marvellous arrangements and adjustinents, " There is no God," only the fool can say, as he looks upon the unfoldings and infoldings of the historic mystery, " It is the work of chance."
Yes, events have an articulated pla~ : they are not disjecta membra. As the author of Psalm 139 said of yet unborn life, we may say of the historic ages to come: "Thine eyes did see their substance, being yet unperfect; and in Thy Book all coming events were written, which in continuous succession are fashioned when as yet there was none of them."
Christ said to the imperious demand for" a sign from heaven" that the signs were already in the very horizon, but were not diicerned by that evil and adulterous generation. The red sky of evening was understood by them to be a prophecy of a fair to-morrow; and the red and lowering sky of morning to be a forecast of foul weather. Yet with all their skill in reading the weather signs, they had no discernment for the " signs of the times. " The comparison implies a profound and most weighty analogy, nalIely, that God gives U8 in the Present a prophecy of the Future; and that it is our duty and privilege to watch the historic horizon, note politi- cal, moral, spiritual phenomena, and make abroad and safe induction as to the times to come; and especially developments nigh at hand even 8t the doors.
Another grand truth implied in all this is that, as God has a plan in history, so it is an infinitely wise and good plan.j and that therefore grand historic epochs wait for the fitnes8 and fulness of times. Accident determines nothing; there is no blunder or mistake, no anticipation or procrastination. When everything is ready, and not hefore or after, with the precision of the mO!lt perfect mechanism, everything moves according to His appoiutment. There may be a wheel within a wheel, but there is the spirit of a living creation in the wheels, and they all move in one direction, obedient to the guiding spirit, and the rim of the wheel is full of the eyes of Omniscience before and behind.
Now observe what follows: God having a definite historic plan, and the fitness and fulness of times being the determining law, we have only to study carefully and prayerfully the events of the present day to see the plan revealed and read the forecast of the future, and especially the near future." The current history of mankind constitutes the putting forth of the leaves of the fig-tree, which reveals the summer as just at hand. The prayerful consideration and comparison of events occurring before our eyes thus becomes to the disciple the spirit of prophecy.
How, then, are we to know that the fitness and fulness of times for the vigorous and successful prosecution of the work of I!lissions has at length arrived 1 What, in respect of missionary enterprise, are the signs of the times now appearing on the world's horizon? This question we seek, with God's help, to answer.
There is a grand fundamental principle which underlies all discernment of the signs of the times, namely, the comparison of prophetic scriptures with providential developments. The Word of God and the work of God must agree; and we must know the former to interpret the latter. At all great crises in history it will be found that prediction, inspired prediction, has long pointed as with uplifted finger toward that crisis j and then there has been at that crisis a singular convergence of events showing a presiding genius in history far above man.
For example, take the Incarnation, that new birth-hour of history. How plainly had prophetic prediction foretold God's manifestation in the flesh, and with astonishing minuteness of detail. The Messiah was to be "Compare Matthew 16 : 1-3 and 1M: 12-14,80-34. bmn in Bethlehem of Judea, of the Davidic line, and after the expiration of sixty-nine of the seventy heptades of years from the going forth of the commandment to restore and rebuild Jerusalem. * Devout men like Simeon and godly women like Anna were not taken by surprise when they beheld the Lord Christ, for, like Daniel, they had studied prophecy, and knew that the time must be near. Then there was the convergence of events: a world-wide expectation of the coming of some great deliverer, a sort of prophecy of the human heart; there was a world-wide preparation in the universal empire of Rome and the prevalence of universal peace; and a world-wide destitution in the acknowledged failure of even Greek philosophy to supply a knowledge of God. That wide famine of soul, that altar at Athens" to God, the Unknown," those Roman roads made ready for the messenger of peace-what a gatheri,ng of rays into one burning focal point! And so because prophetically and providentially the fitness and fulness of times had come-Christ came, and as the very hour struck in the belfry of the ages.
Who can deny what Dr. Croly said years ago in St. Paul's, London, that the Reformation of the sixteenth century was another birth hour of history 1 How plainly had prophetic Scriptures pointed to a period of dark ages, succeeded by another new dawn! The long-buried treasure was once more to be unearthed, and the pearl of great price recovered from its depths, and the greatest age of world-wide evangelism to follow. There had been a general decay of evangelical faith, and there must be a revival in that direction before there could be a revival of missions; for there can never bc evangelistic era until there is an evangelical spirit.
And what a strange convergence again of providential eventlil! What can be more signally wonderful! As God's fit and full time came, preparations on a colossal scale were made for the Reformation. In 1453 Constantinople fell, and the revival of learning followed, el'pecially significant because it scattered over the Continent Greek scholars and the Greek New Testament. In 1497 the new passage to India round the Cape of Good Hope prepared the way for closer contact and communication between the centres of Protestantism and the centres of Oriental heathenism, as in 1492 the discovery of America had opened the way to the planting of a grand Protestant republic, a new missionary nation beyond the Atlantic. Then let it be remembered that about this very time the fall of feudalism, after its thousand years of petty despotisms, prepared the way of the development of individual liberty.
Equally marvellous were the marks that God's fit time was come in the theology of inventions. About the beginning of the fourteenth century the mariner's compass, coming into general use, became a guide to thc marinAr over unknown seas; the printing press issued its first book-a Latin Bible-in 1450 ; and the steam engine wag an assured success in 1543. Just at this very time Luther awoke the Church by his hammer, * Daniel 9 : 25. and the Reformed Faith, joint product of the prayers and tears of Huss and Knox, Wyclif and Calvin, Jerome of Prague and Savonarola of Florence, found its full development under the monk of Erfarth. Surely another great birth-hour was reached when William Carey led the way at Kettering, in 1792, in organizing a society for exclusively foreign mission work, and the next year himself in a uobler sense led the way by going to India.
Here again prophecy linked hands with Providence. More than three thousand years before Carey God had called another man-Abraham- " alone, " * and promised that in his seed all the families of the earth ~hould be blessed. Chri3t had distinctly foretold that the Gospel must first be preached as a witness among all nations before the end should come. And now again events converged and pointed to the time as at last arrived for world· wide evangelism. How any candid and careful student of history can doubt that the nineteenth century was distinctly indicated by God as the new century of missions passes comprehension. The whole historic horizou was aflame with an aurora borealis of splendid signals, which even at this distance are still startling and dazzling. The decay of evangelical doctrine and holy living, which made the first half of the eighteenth century seem like a sepulchre of faith and piety, had given place to one of the mightiest revivals of religion the world ever knew under such men as Wesley, Whitefield, Edwards, and a score of others like them. Those trumpet blasts had gone forth from the two Northamptons, summoning all disciples to united prayer for a ~peedy and world. wide effusion of the Holy Spirit, and the new openings for effort in the South Seas and Asia challenged the Church to fulfil her Lord's last command. Corruption in the Church had constrained the remnant who had not bowed to Baal to call mightily on God j and the new life in the Church demanded vent in missions. William Carey could not but be a missionary and an organizer of missions, for the new birth hour had come, and this was the Divine issue.
Has another great birth hour come to u~ ~ Who of us discern~, the signs .of the times 1 While we begin to celebrate this centenary of missions, there are Divine signals on the world's horizon more startling than any which fixed Carey's eye on the signs of the times. It may be doubted whether in all history there hal!! been such a convergence of testimony that the fulness of times has come for the prosecution of God's work.
During this century there has been world-wide exploration, so that now the map of the world is complete-there is no untraversed sea, no undiscovered land. We know what the" whole world" is which is to be evangelized and possessed. There is also world-wide communication. There are no nations, new afar off-the whole world is brought into one neighborhood by steam carriages and vessels, the telegraph, the postal union, etc. Man is in contact with man the world over. There is likewise world-wide fro,ternization. Nation is not ~rJ.'ayed against nation. There are friendly * Isaiah 51 : 2. and even fraternal relations existing j prejudices have been removed, treaties established j there is commercial interchange and mutual acquaintance by travel, diffusion of literature, etc. The year 1884 witnessed the august spectacle of fourteen nations assembled by representatives at Berlin to mature a constitution for the Congo Free State, and in that conference not only Protestant and Catholic peoples united, but even a MohaJJlmedan power was represented! Again, there is world-wide emancipation. Britain and America ~ave made all their slaves free, and RUBBia her serfs i and there is not one civilized and nomigaJly Christian nation to-day that upholds slavery! There is world.wide civilization-i.e., barbarism, savagery, cannibalism, snperstition, and cruelty are fast disappearing before the advance of a new civilization, with its greater intelligence and enterprise, liberality, and humanity. There is also world-wide organization. Every class of men, every calling, however humble, finds strength in association. The world is belted· by these monster zones of associated and organized capital and labor, brains and brawn.
Besides all this invention and discovery seem to have. reachecl their golden age, constraining the greatest statesman of Europe to declare that one decade of years in this century has seen more progress than five millennium~ before it. Who has opened world.wide doors before His Church i pnt in the hands of Christian nations and Protestant nations the sceptre8 of the world j given the printing pres8 and steam engine in wedlock, 80 that their countless offspring should pour into all lands; who has provided the Church with between 35,000,000 and 40,000,000 of evangelical members, and given them thousands of millions of pounds sterling, and organizations that reach round the world' And for what has God done all this if these .are not His signs of the times, which mean that just now the King's business requireth haste, and His swift coursers, even steam and lightning, are yoked to His car!
While the Church lingers and hesitates, behold the activity of the devil, who seems to work with mad haste, as though he knew he had but a short time. See him organizing anarchy to destroy the foundations of all government, pouring his missionaries into every land, to carry their doctrinal demons; see him setting up his printing presses and scattering infidel books41nd tracts, undermining the family, poisoning the fountains of public learning, pulling down the palladium of liberty, the Sabbath, destroyingthe very flower of our society by strong drink, locking up the very will in the chains of opium, and using Christian nations to forge the fetters; if we do not, he does discern the signs of the times !
At this centenary of William Carey j God's signals flash like lightning and boom like thunder around the whole sky. By every mightiest argument and most persuasive appeal j by every motive drawn from a world's need and our opportunity; by every open door and loud cry; by every Scripture prophecy and promise, and by every unfolding of Providence Christ is just now saying to His Church, "Go YB: INTO ALL THE WORLD,
TWENTmTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE McALL MISSION IN FRANCE
AND PREACH THE GOSPEL TO EVERY CREATURE!" He buttresses up the command and commission by the declaration, "All power is given unto Me in heaven and on earth j" and by the promise, " Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the age." His omnipotence, omnipresence, eternity, are on our side. And if this world-wide work were but taken up by the Church with the determination that no creature should be left without the Gospel, it would again be written, "And they went forth and preached everywhere j the Lord working with and confirming the Word with signs following. Amen!"
TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE McALL MISSION IN FRANCE.
REPORTED BY ANNA W. PIERSON.
Special meetings were held in Paris on January 16th and 18th last, to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the McAIl Mission, and the seventieth anniversary of the birth of the beloved president.
The first meeting was held on the afternoon of January 16th, when friends and workers were invited to meet Dr. and Mrs. McAlI. The ladies had been busy decorating the hall with wreaths, 11ags, etc., and the place was completely transformed.
As the guests of the day arrived, they were met and escorted to the platform by Pastor Holland, the chairman of the meeting, while all rose and sang in French the hymn, •• Great God, we bless Thee; We celebrate Thy praises."
After reading of the Scriptures and prayer Pastor Holland made 8 brief address of welcome to Dr. and Mrs. McAIi. He explained the object of the gathering, and spoke of the longing they had felt for an opportunity to express the affection and gratitude which filled their hearts toward these two dear missionaries who had " Come over to Macedonia to help" them. He gave glory to the God who had prompted them to leave their native land, had broken down every barrier, and had caused these foreigners to become a bond of union between so many French Christians. He told of the rapid growth of the work and its wide extent in Paris and France.
In the name of the churches of France he thanked them for the good they had done in the community, and for the recruits received into their ranks from his attendants. He thanked them in the name of the missionary societies, both home and foreign, and also in the name of his beloTed country, to whose good they had so generously devoted themselves. He closed by saying: "There is something supremely beneficent-a symbol and prophecy of better times for which we long-in this spectacle of a foreigner who thinks of France only to bring her the most precious gift he possesses, the Gospel of Jesus Christ. May our Lord give you, dear Mr. and Mrs. McAlI, good health, long life, courage and strength ever increas- ing! May He bless you and the Church which ~o generously gave you to us! May He bless you for all the blessings you have brought to us !
May He grant you here below to reap an abundant harvest from your faith- ful sowing, while we wait for that other, better, and still richer harvest which we together shall behold in the light which shall reveal all the fruits of faith and love, and, above all, of the infinite faitbfulnestl of God."
After the singing of a duet, M. Louis Sautter, one of the directors and an attached friend, spoKe in behalf of the co-workers and friends of the miSSIOn. He told how the news of salvation had been proclaimed to many who had never heard it, and spoke of the conversions which had changed the lives and households of so many. He spoke of the love, goodness, de- votion, gentleness, patience, and perseverance which they had never ceased to show to all. Then he said that the friends of the mission in Paris and France had contributed in order to offer them some tangible testimony of their affection as a souvenir of this happy anniversary j that they were much perplexed in choosing a suitable gift, and had finally decided to let him choose for himself. He then presented him with a pocket·book con- taining 4750 francs ($95()) entirely for his own use and personal comfort.
ITe also presented to Mrs. McAIl a beautiful vase and palm plant as a gift of gratitude from the lady workeff) at the mission.
Dr. McAIl then rose, greatly affected, and testified to his surprise and gratitUde, and how deeply he and his wife were touched by these testimo- nies of affection j he spoke of his personal unworthiness, and of the vahi- able co-operation with which he and his wife had been surrounded, and said that the friendship and affection exhibited had made them feel that they were no longer foreigners. He spoke touchingly of those of the workers whom the Lord had called home, and of the attachment and grati- tude he felt for their patience with him, and closl1d by calling upon pastors, Jaymen, and Christian workers to consecrate themselves anew in seeking to advance in this beloved country of France the kingdom of our glorious Saviour. .
After singing, Pastor Dhombres (Reformed Church), now quite blind, addressed a few words to the assembly. He spoke of Dr. McAll's coming to Paris after the Commune and ministering to their spiritual necessities in the time of famine, preaching the Gospel in its ~implicity and power. He referred to the conversion and transformation not only of people and homes, but of whole districts near the missions. In clolling, recalling the fact that twenty years ago Dr. and Mrs. McAB had come as strangers to Paris, he said: "Look around now on this assembly, so full of warmth, so responsive j this host of friends who lIurround you j and then say whether these two foreigners, these two voluntary exiles, have not found in our midst a new home, a new family, a new church, and a new country!"
Mr. J. F. W. Deacon, of London, then rose and presented to Dr.
McAlJ, through the president of the meeting, a resolution from the committee in London, conveying congratulations and assurance of their w/.lrm interest in the work.
Pastor Appia (Lutheran Church) then made one of his characteristic little speeches, so full of terse and brilliant thoughts. He told how, in an un- equalled degree, Dr. McAIl had been able to secure the co-operation of almost all the Christians in Paris. He spoke of the influence of the sacred songs used in the mission, and the solid biblical instruction imparted to both children and adults in the Bible classes and schools. He closed with the prayer that they should soon see a revival in all the churches in Paris.
Pastor HocaIt, on behalf of the Illesleyan Church, spoke of the great success of the mission, contrary to everyone's expectation. Of the future of the work he said: "I see in the present state of the mission a preparation for future work, perhaps very near at hand-a work much greater, much deeper, and much more extensive than we see to-day. A preparation for future blessing is, I believe, being brought about especially by the instruction of the young. Win the children to the faith of Christ and you insure a glorious future. You train up a generation, transf~rmed to grow in the ways of temperance, justice, and piety." He said: "I would also speak of the influence of the evangelization of the masses on the speakers themselves. The evangelists have learned to apeak a new language j they have found the level of their auditors, and have become truly lay preachers. They have made themselves 'all things to all men, that they might save some.' "
Pastor Decoppet (Reformed Church) then read an original French poem. The day's meeting was closed after the reading of a letter from Laura M. Fetterolf in behalf of the American McAll A~sociation, expressing congratulations and good wishes. On Monday evening the great church of the Oratoire was crowded to its utmost capacity. It was the people's meeting. They had gathered to show their affection and gratitude to the two friends who had loved and served them for the last twenty years. After opening with Scripture and prayer, PaRtor Recolin (Reformed Church) retraced the work to its beginnings. He told of how Dr. MeAll was called to the work when he and his wife were in Paris on a visit. He was accosted by a workman, who, strange to say, spoke in English-" Sir, are you not a pastor? Then why not come to speak to us of this religion of peace and love of which you are a minister 1 Ille have had enough of the attempt to impose religion on us j but if you will come to speak of a religion of liberty and earnestness, many of us will listen with joy." This was to Dr. and Mrs. MeAl! like the call to Macedonia, and some months later they left home and friends and took up their abode in Paris. Pastor Recolin stated that now, after twenty years, there are 136 halls connected with the mission in Paris and its environs. "Dr. McAll has succeeded in securing the co-operation of the pastors and Christian laymen in all the evangelical churches of Paris."
ANSWERED PRAYER
Pastor Monod then spoke, and after a few pithy opening remarks he said: "In the name of all the accustomed attendants of these 136 halls, I desire to offer you a lasting memorial of this twentieth anniversary. Don't be alarmed. No heavy burden has been laid upon anyone j the sum contributed by each would not pay for an outside place on the omnibus." He then uncovered an elegant bronze statue of Luther, twenty-seven inches in height, representing Luther as a boy singing in the streets to earn his bread. The pedestal contained a time-piece. Pastor Monod made a beautiful speech, comparing the reforms of Luther to the putting of the Bible into the hands of the people by Dr. McAll. Finally he said: "I arrive now at my third point-that is, at the third souvenir which I have to present to you. It is the humblest of the three, but, possibly, the one you will most appreciate. Do not search in this album for photographs or pictures. It contains only letters-letters in which the frequenters of your mission halls express their cougratulations and their desires for you. Their number is 11 '7, representing 136 halls. The signatures are 5300. They are very diversified in character-in some cases truly touching in their naivete." He then read one as a sample.
The meeting closed after a touching address of thanks by Dr. McAll, who closed with an invitation to the unconverted.
Many letters and telegrams of congratulation were received from friends in different parts of Europe. The occasion was one never to be forgotten. It illustrated beautifully the two sentences which were the only utterances which at the outset Dr. McAll could make in French, but which were the basis of his whole work: " God loves you," " I love you."
To Dr. and Mrs. McAB the whole Church of Christ owes a great debt. He has done immense service in welding the disciples of Christ, both in France and in the whole Christian world, into a " living, loving, lasting union," and although the days of his years are tl;iree score and ten, we hope and pray that they may reach at least four score years, and that then strength may not prove labor and sorrow, but a marvellous experience of the power of God to sustain p,nd the grace of God to reward and compensate work for him.
ANSWERED PRAYER.
BY A. B,UNKER, D.D., TOUNGOO, BURMA.
In the Toungoo district of the province of BurlDa are the Ga-Moung Mountains, the general trend of the ranges being north and south. Travelling east from the Sittang River, you climb range after range, each higher than the preceding, till you reach the watershed between that river and the Salwen. This mountainous country comprises the fields of the Bghai and Paku Kare~ Baptist missions, now numbering about 150 churches, having their village and normal schools-largely self-supporting-associations, pastors' quarterly conferences, newspapers, books, printing pre8s, and all necessary apparatus for growth in Christian civilization and for evangelistic work among their heathen neighbors. Formerly these hill tribes were worshippers of demons, believers in witchcraft, which they punished with death or exile, blood feuds keeping them constantly at war with one another.
In 1866 the churches of the Bghai Karen Mission numbered nine j now they have increased to 81 well-organized churches.
In tours up and down among these villages to the west of the watershed, the missionaries often looked away to that high range of mountains, and wondered what was beyond; In the Bghai Karen Mission ten or more tribes had already been brought under the influence of the G08pel, but information concerning the tribes beyond was small. There were reports of many tribes; and in subsequent years the missionary explored on the south, going round the more savage tribes as far east as the Salwen River, also the great Red Karen tribe on that river. Various accounts, however, located a wild and savage people between the watershed and the Red Karens, called the Brec Karens. So great was the fear of them that their country was seldom entered.
About the year 1866 Dr. Bixby, now of Proddence, R. I., made a brief visit to one of the northern chiefs among this people. He reports them as exceedingly savage and degr~ded, "fond of uncooked meat and blood." Much prayer was offered by this devoted missionary and his fol· lowers for them, but no permanent foothold was gained in their country. God, however, heard prayer, as after-events showed. Little more was learned eoncerning them for nearly ten years after this visit. As the boundaries of the Bghai Mission extended, the missionary reached the top of the watershed range, which is about 6000 feet above the sea level. The view from that lofty elevation over the land of the Brees was most grand. Here and there columns of smoke marked the locality of numerous villages as far as the eye could reach. Broken and craggy mountain peaks, dense fOlests and deep ravines showed the country to be a natural fortress. When would God give this wild people to His Son? From 1870-80 efforts were made from time to time by native evangelists to penetrate the country and plant the Gospel, but the inhabitants repelled all advances, and little progrcRs was made. The people were found to be the lowest morally and the poorest of all the Toungoo hill tribes. Living largely by plunder, their hand was against everv man, and every man's hand against them. The inaccessible fastnesses vf their country enabled them to carryon this predatory warfare with impunity. So fearful was their name, that it was a brave man who dared to go among them. Thus the missionaries were led to bestow their efforts on better and nobler tribes, going around this one as practically inaccessible or beyond Christian effort. How different God plans from man! The missionary in this case sought the nobler races, but God was preparing to display nis power and grace among the despised Brees. Previous to 1879, as has been said, little progress had been made in planting .the Gospel in the Brec country. A few churches only had been gathered on the borderland, while the heart of the country was almost unknown. In that year the Spirit of God rested upon a young man named Soo-Yah, who had recently graduated from the training school in Toungoo, and called him to work among the Brees. He set out on his journey alone, with only his hymn-book and Testament. Climbing the great range of mountains, he soon passed through the narroW' belt of the Brec country, already occupied for Christ, and took his way through the forests over an unknown road into the heart of the country. Losing his way, he finally reached Sau.pe-Ie-cho, a village famed far and wide as the haunt of a notorious band of robbers; but God was with him, and was leading him in answer to his prayers. On reaching the village, he was at once surrounded by a band of savage and angry men, who drew back their spears and lifted their long knives, crying, " KiIl him! kill him! He is a spy sent by our enemies! Cut him down!" Soo-Yah stood unmoved in their midst, and when he could make himsel£ heard, said: "Do men of war do spies go about unarmed and openly as I do ~ See!" and he opened 3 bag which he had hanging on his shoulder, showing bis hymn-book and Testament. "See! Are these the weapons of bad men 1" The people had Rot yet recovered from their amazement when he opentid his hymnbook and began to sing to them one of the sweet songs of Zion.
Never before had this poor people seen a book or heard anything in music but their own discordant battle cries or rude attempts at song; but here was a wonder before them almost as if an angel had descended from the sky and stood in their midst. They listened entranced j and having won their attention, Soo-Yah boldly declared to them thQ message God had given him.
The Gospel of Christ had come to these savages and taken hold of them. As they listened to Soo-Yah's singing, they said: "This cannot be a bad man j we never saw bad men do this way j" and they received him to the best they had, and listened to his message gladly.
Sau-pi-Ie-cho comprised four villages near each other in a natural fortress, numbering not far from 1000 souls.
In 1882, while attending the meetings of the Karen Association, on the western slope of the water-shed, the mission party were surprised one day by the approach from over that range of an armed band of wild men with drum!! and horns, as if approaching for battle. As they marched up the hill into the circle of the encampment they proved to be two chief!! from Sau-pe-Ie-cho, with their follower!!. They said they had heard the Gospel from Soo-Yah, and of this great meeting of the Christians, and had come for !L teacher, that they might learn how to worship the living God.
The spokesman was their principal chief, a man of gigantic stature named Ho-Wee, or" the blessed"-a strange name for a man who afterward told the missionaries tbat he had killed not less th~n ten men, and how many more he could not remember.
In response to their request, a mission party visited Sau-pe-Ie-cho, and after a week's instruction one of the four villages gave up their worship of demons, destroyed their altars, and received a Christian teacher. In 1889 a church of 40 members was formed. and the remaining three villages asked for teachers. About this time the heathen of this tribe began to be envious of the Christians j for since they had taken up the worship of God they had greatly prospered. Instead of eating roots and herbs, and such game as they could trap in the forests and streams, they had rice. Now no longer sacrificing to the demons or engaging in war, they had time for the cultivation of the soil, and food was abundlint. Not so with the heathen. Having destroyed all the weaker villages on their borders which they could reach, food became scarce, and the prosperity of the Christians excited their envy.
They began to discuss an attack upon them. Some, however, opposed, for, said they, " the Christian's God is not like the Burman's god. lie is a living God j and we have heaJ:p. that Be takes care of His people." Others disbelieved, and wished to make the experiment on one of the Christian villages j and " if the God of the Christians did not interfere, ,. they said, " we shall know that He is a dead God like the Burmans', and that He cannot take care of His people. Then we will eat up all the Christian villages. " These plans were reported to the missionary some time before they were put into execution j but it was hoped that they would not come to the trial.
This tribe being outside of English territory, the Christians had absolutely no protection save God alone.
During the rainy season of 1SS9 these heathen put t.heir plans to the trial, raided the village of Than-thee-per, and carried off two children. Messengers were immediately sent to the missionary, four days' journey distant, with a letter reporting this fact. The issue was now clearly drawn by the heathen. It was tIle God of the Christians or the powers of darkness-which would conquer ~ The missionary took the letter, went into his private room, opened and spread it out before the Lord, and pleaded. for help for His name's sake. If these children were not delivered from their captivity the eight churches would be scattered, and the faith of all the native Christians would be greatly shaken, for they had been taught. from the first that God would take care of them. The matter was discussed with the native pastors, and an arrangement made to have the pastors and deacons, with their missionaries, meet at Sau-pe-Ie-cho after the rains, to plead with God for help and deliverance. Sau-pe·le-cho was about a day's journey from the village holding the captive children. At the time appointed they met, strengthened each other with the promises, and with cases of the deliverance of God's people in Bible history; offered much prayer, and chose messengers to go and demand the liberation of the captives. They were told to demand their liberation in the name of Jehovah, the living God. The messengers went, were driven in shame from the face of the chief who held the children captive. Said he, " If you have brought three hundred rupees ransom for each of them, pay the money and take them away j if not, and you are men, come and take them." The mes- . sengers retnrned greatly discouraged, and so were most of the native pas- tors at their report.
The fall of Jericho and other Bible instances of trial of faith were quoted for their encouragement, and a second delegation was sent with express orders to demand the liberation of the captive children in the name of Jehovah, the living God, the God of the Christians. These were also followed by the united prayers of those who remained behind. Again they were roughly refused j but not a few things occurred to strengthen their faith that God would answer their prayers. The fear of the Lord was beginning to be manifest among them.
The next day, moving to the village from which the children were taken, another meeting was held, and in the evening, while yet at prayer, word came from the village holding the children that if the chief of the village where we were assembled and the parents of the children would come for them the children would be given up. To some this message brought joy, but to others-among whom was the chief of the village-it meant treachery, an ambuscade formed in order to seize the chief and parents of the children, to make their success more certain. Among the pastors and deacons, however, were some who believed that God was about to answer their prayers, and these volunteered to go for the capt~ves. They were led by one of the bravest of the pioneer pastors, and were joined by one of the palents of the children. They lighted their torches and set out on their night's jonrney through the forests for the third trial for the cap- tives. Allllight they went on through the woods till the next day, in the forenoon, they reaehed the village where the captives were. They had been threatened that they would be sh'ot if they came again without a ran- som, yet they marched boldly up into the open place in the centre of the village. The women and children, thinking a battle was about to be fought, fled into the jungle. The old chief came out with all his armed men, ready for battle. He took up his position on rising ground at some little distance, and there he stood. The leader of the Christian band then took out his hymn·book and said, "Let us sing," and the whole band united with a will. This brought back the people who had fled. It was to them a new kind of warfare j they were charmed with the sweet song of Zion, which they had never heard before. After singing, the pastor said, " Let us pray." Another surprise for tile heathen j but as he prayed, all his companions kneeling with him, the Spirit of God fell upon them, and the effeet was great. How earnestly he besought God to soften the hard heart of the chief, to open his eyes to see how the degradation and poverty in which his people lived WIIS due to the fact that they had forgotten the living God and joined themselves to the worship of demons. Rising from their knees, the pastor said, " Now I am going to give you a message from the living God. Listen all of you." Taking a hymn they had just sung for a text, he proclaimed the Gospel of Jesus to that crowd of warriors with most remarkable effect. The singing and the prayer had wrought upon the people greatly; but as the speaker described their ignorance, poverty, and slavery to sin, and the prosperity, joy, and happiness of the children of God, the people were melted. During the address the old chief had drawn near, and when the doxology had been sung, while yet seated on the ground, he looked up and said to the preacher, "Take the children; take them; but give me your trousers as a token of good wiII." This pastor seems to have been better off than many of his brethren, for he had on two pairs, which fact th~ chief had discovered; hence his request.
With what anxiety and with what earnest prayer had those who remained behind followed this band of native Christians on their perilous mission!
All the next day, till near nine 0' clock in the evening, they waited in supplication that God would now vindicate His honor among these heathen, and deliver these captives with power, that all, both Christians and heathen, might hear of His mighty works, and be led to fear Him.
About eight o'clock in'the evening two gunshots were heard on the mountain opposite. Directly torch lights came into view, and in about half an hour the band marched up into the assembly, two of the number bearing the captive children on their shoulders.
The scene following was indescribable. One gray-haired old pastor took one of the children and put him between his feet, and solemnly lifting his right hand to heaven, exclaimed: " We never saw it on this wise before. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob has answered our prayers. He has easily done what our might or wisdom could never do. Hehas put His fear upon our enemies, and deli,·ered us from their snares. Praise be to His great name!" Then followed such a praise meeting as is seldom seen.
This, however, was but the beginning of a most gracious answer to prayer. Much had been asked for, but a gracious God gives heaping measure when He bestows answers to the prayers of His children. So it proved in this case. The heathen, as they heard of this deliverance, wrought by the manifest power of Jehovah, the God of the Christians, were greatly moved, and came by villages to the missionary, asking for teachers to show them how to worship this great God. "This is the God we want," said they. "He takes care of His people." Teachers were supplied as fast as they could be procured. Nor was the work confined to the heathen alone, but some of the old churches caught the missionary spirit, and assembled for prayer and contributions for this work. Young men came forward and offered themselves. So great was the fear of God
THE WORK IN THE DIAMOND MINES
among the heathen that in several cases captives were surrendered on demand of native pastors, and in other cases, when chiefs holding captives heard that the Jesus Christ teacher was coming for them, they were sent to meet them in the way. Already some score of captivEs have been surrendered.
In October last a missionary meeting was held at the Toungoo training school, at which about seventy pastora and evangelists were assembled. A good delegation from the Brec country were present. Their reports were thrilling. Said one pastor. "So many villages among the Brees are now asking for teachers that we no longer remember the number." Manyexpressed their belief" that if the churches were faithful, the whole tribe would turn to the Lord." The missionary spirit seemed to take full possession of the meeting, when th!Jleader arose and said, "Indeed, the Lord is doing marvellous things for us. Let us sing 'Jesus shall reign.' "
Said a missionary present, "It moved us deeply to see with what enthusiasm these native pastors, once savages, now joiu in praise to Jesus, who has redeemdd them, and has given such wonderful answers to their prayers.
THE WORK IN THE DIAMOND MINES.
BY MRS. H. B. ALLEN, MERIDEN, CONN.
On the occasion of the first visit of my sister, Miss Ferguson, to the Kimberly Diamond Mines, she was deeply impressed with the opportunities for Christian work among the multitudes gathering there-Europeans, Cape natives, and Kaffirs. In writing of it, she says: " I do not know when my heart has been so stirred. Among the Europeans there is much of sin, much of poverty and suffering. The Cape natives, away from the helps they have had in the Colony, have drifted; but that which has deeply moved me has been the tens of thousands of heathen gathering from all the tribes of South Africa from the Zambesi to the Transkei-heathen bronght in God's providence to our very doors, where they may learn of Christ and carry back the good tidings to their people. It is calculated that 30,000 pass through the Diamond Fields every year, remain for a few months, and then are gone, giving place to others. Mr. Teske, a Dutch missionary, is working among the Colonial natives, and some are much interested in building a church, and it is hoped he will become permanently their missionary."
Miss Ferguson became so much interested in the possibilities of work here, that after nine months' journeying through the mission fields of South Africa she again visited Kimberly before returning to Wellington. She says: "We had a little conference at Beaconsfield, to consider the great need and what was to be done-Rev. Mr. Kriel and Rev. Mr. KeRtell, pastors of Dutch churches here, with their wives, Mr. Teske, and myself. For three hours we consulted and waited before God. It seemed very important that Mr. Teske should be retained for work among the Colonial natives, that a missionary be found to give his entire time to the foreign natives, especially those in the compounds, and that Christian nativee be found to assist in the evangelization of the heathen. We resolved to bear the matter continually before the Lord, to do what we could to find the missionary and the money needed for this most important work-one of the most. jmportant I have seen in South Africa, and promising sl1ch large results.
" Dear friends, will you who believe in prayer and in a God, who hears and answers prayer, pray that the Diamond Fields may become a fountain from which pUl'e streams of living water may flow to all parts of our land ~ " Rev. Mr. Kriel has written to Mr. MabilIe, at Morijah, for six natives from the Bible school for the compounds j only two were found. They had gone into the mines as workmen, as it is the only way they could be admitted. This is a test of a man's love for souls certainly, and it is a question whether the native Christians in our mission churches are willing to make the sacrifice for Christ's sake.
"Mr. Kriel is very anxious several ladies should take up the great work waiting outside, having a mission home, and forming a centre for mission work."
Later Miss F. writes: "You will be glad to hear that Miss Mary Murray, Rev. Andrew Murray's eldest daughter, has offered herself for work at the Diamond Fields. She has visited Kimberly, and was so much moved by all she saw of the need!! for work outside the compounds that she said, on returning: I If there is no one else to take up this work, I must.' She speaks Kaffir well, ha"ing been a missionary at the Moculi station, and is admirably fitted for the work. Two others, also our Huguenot daughters, will go with her, and Mr. Walklett, who has corne from England with the Cape General Mission party, will superintend the work in the compounds."
When the ladies arrived in Kimberly, Mr. Kriel went with them to look for a house. They found one with dining-room, sitting-room, five bedrooms, and a large room which could be used for meetings for £5 a month. It seemed just the place for the work. They were soon settled, and commenced with house-to-house visiting. Then followed Bible-classes, Sunday-schools, mothers' meetings, evening schools, visiting the poor and sick-so much that could be done! One of the ladies writes: "It is wonderful f how the Lord leads us just to t.he places where we are most needed, when we g-ive ourselves to His keeping and guidance. "
Two months later Miss F. visited the little mission home. She says: " We came into the town in the rain and stepped out into a sea of mud. We passed the wretched huts of the Kaffirs, scarcely bigger than the anthills we had been seeing, and found a warm welcome at this little home. Many loving hands have made it bright, attractive, and homelike. This bit of carpet aT that ornament came from kind ladies in Boston; the texts on the wall and table-covers from other friends. It is a sweet resting- place for weary workers.
"'Ve were· greatly interested in visiting among the people with our workers. They are reachinga helping hand to as many as possible. It was a great joy to see the eagerness with which the boys come to the evening school-white boys who cannot read, the eldest seventeen years old! but they are eager to learn, and they will.
" It is such a wonder to the natives in the compounds to see a woman • who can speak to them in their own tongue. It was beautiful to see their faces light up when they heard their own language. The first time they heard it they seemed almost beside themselves. They called others to -come, and soon hundreds were pressing close around our workers, laughing' and shrieking, eager to catch every word that was said.
" The first evening of my visit we met in consultation with Mr. Kriel as to the purchase of a house, either this or some other, as the centre of our work:. It is very desirable that the workers should have a fixed habitation, and in many ways much better to own rather than rent. We are very anxious to have the money in hand before we purchase-no debt!
" Our pupils are taking up the work heartily, and are interesting others in taking shares. Weare searching for something more precious than diamonus. We ask "ur friends not to take shares in the mines, bnt shares in a home for the workers, where we hope many precious souls may be gathered. The shares are one shilling (25 cents), and certificates are given to all who take them; of course, one person may take a number of shares. Some friends have taken twenty each. "
A letter has just come from Miss F., saying: "Rev. Kriel wrote early in February to say that the owner of the mission house had died, and the house was to be sold at auction. How much were we willing to give for it 1 The money for the shares had been coming in, so that we had about £80 in hand. The rent was £60 a year, and it seemed much better economy to buy. , " On the day of the sale Mr. Kriel telegraphed: ' Property bought for £150.' This was certainly very little to pay. A year ago the owner valued it at £800, but property has depreciated in value.
II The £80 has just come of itself, and the Lord knows we still need the £70. He has cared for this precious work most wonderfully. Weare anxious the house should be wholly paid for outside the regular funds of the Woman's Missionary Union.
" We congratulate the shareh alders that they are part owners in this bit of the Lord's work, and will they ask that we may be helped to the money still needed for the purchase of the property, so that it may be quite free from debt 1 "Certificates are sent to all who send one or more shillings, to show tJ!at they are shareholders. In these days of bank failures one is afraid of shares, but this is simply to show that you have a share in the Lord's
A PROTEST AGAINST NEEDLEf'S EXPOSURE IN MISSION WORK
work, and you have no further responsibility excepting to bear the work on your hearts before the Lord, and no dividends excepting such as the Lord gi ves. "
[The editor would add to this statement of the noble work at the Diamond Mines, that he would be glad to have any of his readers take shares in the Lord's stock. A" Lover of Missions" has already sent five dollars, which has been forwarded. 'Viii not the readers of the REVIEW ~ake up the needed $350? Send to Mrs. H. B. Allen, Meriden, Conn.] A PROTEST AGAINST NEEDLESS EXPOSURE IN MISSION WORK.
BY W. R. LEE, M.D.
In the New York Observer of February 18th, 1892 (sixth column, page 54), the following appears: " News has been received of the death of Rev. W. D. Dalrymple, a Presbyterian missionary, at Rampur Beauleah, in Bengal, from leprosy, contracted about two years ago while attending upon the lepers. Rev. W. D. Dalrymple had devoted himself to the service of the wretched sufferers, and he had only been six months in their midst before signs of the disellse made themselves evident in his own frame. Surely this is a noble martyrdom. "
Ever since Father Damien made himself so famous, a few years ago, by exposing himself to leproRY and becoming thereby a leper, the popular mind has been running riot on this martyrdom, so called. It is high time a halt was called by some one, and this dangerous and foolish error looked squarely in the face. Looked at through professional eyes, the report bears some marks of not being well authenticated; but whether true or not, it has served the purpose of bringing to the surface the expression of a dangerous sentiment, and it is this sentiment I desire to attack.
While the best authorities on leprosy disagree on the subject of how close a contact is necessary to transmit leprosy from an infected person to a clean one, yet they are at one in saying that the contact must be close and long continued (such as eating, sleeping, and living in the same rooms), or by direct inoculation (as a fresh wound coming in contact with a leprous ulcer).
This is certainly borne out by the experience of everyone who has had an opportunity of studying the disease from a scientific standpoint.
Further, it is a noticeable fact that in hospitals sustained for the exclusive use of lepers, those who come in daily contact with the dillease yellr after year (I refer to physicians and nurses) do not become lepers.
Under peculiar circumstances, it may occasionally become necessary for a medical missionary to put himself into dangerously close relationship with a leper; yet even then, if he be worthy the name of a nineteenth century. physician, he possesses sufficient knowledge to protect himself from contagion. A PROTEST AGAINST NEEDLESS EXPOSURE IN MISSION WORK.
Under no circumstances that I can think of is it ever the duty of a (medical) layman missionary to come into such close contact with lepers as to make it possible for him to become infected.
While a missionary of the Presbyterian Board at Petchaburi, Siam, and later, as a medical officer of the Siamese Government, I saw and treated many lepers. I also saw, at the same places and time, missionaries (not physicians) preach the Gospel to these lepers; but I never saw the least occasion for dangerous exposure by either myself or them. The life of a missionary, particularly if he has heen on the field long enough to have learned the native language, is too valuable a thing to be exposed to needless dangers; and it is enthusiasm" badly run to seed" for such a person to expose himself on the threadbare plea that lepers are neglected.
With reasonable care for his health, a missionary may last years and preach the Gospel to thousands of heathen whose souls are of equal value with a leper's soul; while by needless exposure he will, probably, not last longer tha~ four or five, the later part of which will be useless to the cause of missions because of the worker's (physical) inability to do his work. vVherever it becomes necessary for a missionary, or any other person, to expose life for the safety of others, let us give bravery its just reward; but that state of things very ra1'ely occurs to a medical missionary in working among lepers, and never to a missionary who is not a physician.
Preach the Gospel to them, my brother, but keep your place, which is far enough away from them that you are in no danger of contagion. If you do not know how many feet that is, ask the medical missionaries of your station.
[Rev. George A. Huntley, of the China Inland Mission, at Chien-kuhsien, China, also writes very earnestly on the subject of proper precautions being taken by missionaries against small-pox. W8 publi.l!h copious extracts.-ED. ] All interested in missions in China must have been saddened by the great mortality among missionaries through that awful disease small-pox. Through it many of our youngest, strongest, and most promising missionaries have been removed from the ranks during the last two years; and what makes the matter more 8ad is the fact that the simple precaution of vaccination or revaccination before embarking had been neglected in the majority of instances.
I will give particulars of a few cases out of the many; and it will be noticed that in each case the sufferer had not been vaccinated successfully for several years before contracting the disease; while the nurses, who had either' been recently vaccinated or had already suffered from the same com· plaint, did not in one single instance contract the disease.
Case 1. Patient had not been vaccinated since childhood. Symptoms of confluent and hlack small-pox developed, and later, hemorrhage, proving fatal on the eighth day. A medical man and traiued nurse were in attendance. Among those who assisted in nursing, one had previously contracted the same disease, the remainder had been recently vaccinated. No one contracted the disease.
Case 2. Patient had not been vaccinated since childhood. The disease assumed a very serious type, !lnd has left the patient very badly marked. There was no medical attendant j and of the two ladies who undertook the nursing, one, a trained nurse, had been recently vaccinated, and the other had previously suffered from the same complaint j neither contracted the disease. The patient believed in "faith healing," and thought it would not be trusting the Lord to be vaccinated.
Case 3. Patient contracted disease while travelling, and reached his station with much difficulty. He had not been vaccinated since childhood. The brother who nmsed him had been recently vaccinated, and did not eontract the disease. Patient was delirious and blind for some days, and took no medicine. The sufferer's hair came completely off, and his face is pitted.
Case 4. Patient had not been vaccinated'for thirty-seven years-viz., in infancy. Duration of disease, fourteen days. A medical man attended. The patent's wife, who did the nursing, had not been vaccinated since childhood, but was revaccinated as soon as symptoms of small-pox were discovered, and did n~t contract the disease.
In addition to these melabcholy particulars I have received the following valuable testimony from medical gentlemen in China: The Rev: J. Hudson Taylor, M.R.C.S., Director of the China Inland Mission, writes: "I quite agree with you that it is most desirable that the home officers of the various missionary societies should not merely recommend, but insist on all candidates being vaccinated shortly before leaving for these shores. Our China Council is urging on our home councils the following rule: ' All candidates who have not been successfully vaccinated within a recent period must be vaccinated before leaving, and must procure a certificate as evidence that this is done.' If I were not so pressed, it would be very easy to collect a large number of cases in which missionaries have taken small-pox owing to this practice not having been carried out. I can only, however, just now refer to the fact that in our Ladies' Training Home at Yang-Tcheou, or the stations immediately connected with it, we have for three successive years lost a lady worker each year by death from small-pox, not to mention other cases in which there has been recovery. The question has been asked by one of our branches, ' In the event of a candidate having conscientious objection to vaccination, what would you advise? ' And my reply was to advise that the candidate work at home, where the danger is less, and where there is sufficient strength to nurse, or hospital accommodation procurable in the event of small-pox taking place. It may be very well for the patient to take the personal risks of the disease, bnt what about the attendants-are they to be exposed? As you know, the work of a station may be seriously interfered with by cases of this kind. " I would like to add that it should not be too lightly assumed that a person is protected because revaccination is not sllccessful. I eould men- tion eases where persons have been unsuccessfully revaeeinated, but who at once took the disease on exposure. A lady missionary reeently arrived' in China, having been three times unsuceessfully revaccinated before em- barking. I recommended her not leaving Shanghai withont being vacci- nated again. This time the vaccination proved very suceessful. '1'he pustules wcre large and fully formed, and showed that there would have been no protcction whatever had she been previously exposed to the disease. May the Lord prosper your undertaking, and precious lives be saved for Chri~t's service 1"
J. A. Lynch, Esq., M.D., Chin-Kiang, sends the following: "I am strongly of your opinion as to the need of vaccination for missionaries coming to China, and wish you every success in your efforts. Small-pox is so widely prevalent in China that no resident can hope to escape being repeatedly exposed to contagion; and my experience has taught me that a single vaccination in childhood is far from being a reliable safeguard. Within a single twelve months I have seen half a dozen cases of small-pox occurring in foreigners, all of whom had been vaccinated as children. Two of these cases were very serious, and one fatal. I know of no instance where a recently vaccinated person has taken tAe disease. It is clearly the duty of missionary societies to take such measures as may secure from needless risk the health of those whom they send abroad. The neglect of such a simple and obvious precaution as revaccination amounts to criminal carelessness. "
Dr. Howard Taylor, C. 1. M., says: "In reply to your question on revaccination, allow me to say that I regard it as of supreme importance that every civilized man and woman should be as completely safeguarded from small-pox as possible. There is no shadow of a doubt as to the efficacy of vaccination properly carried out and repeated twice in diminishing the severity. at least, and in most cases in absolutely preventing the diseases.
" Every candidate who has not thus been thrice successfully vaccinated (unless it prove impracticable, on repeated trial, to do so) ought, I am satisfied, to be refused on that ground alone, if they are unwilling, for their own sake and that of their fellow-workers, to be revaecinated before leaving for the mission field.
"A baby I suecessfully vaccinated a few weeks ago had been thrice before vaccinated without effllct. But in adults it would be enough for practical purposes to attempt inoculation with vaecine three times; if all these failed, the candidate might with reasonable certainty be pronounced immune from small-pox, and might safely come out."
Dr. Randle, C. I. M., Tungshin, Chefoo, sends the following: "Smallpox is one of the most prevalent diseases in China, and I think of the more dangerous diseases it is the most common. It is not specially deadly in its ravages among the Chinese; but Europeans are apt to suffer considerably, mortality among them running very high. We have lost a good many valuable workers in the C. 1. M. through small-pox.
" I don't know how necessary it would be ill England to insist upon each candidate for mission work in China first being vaccinated, for I should have thought that recommendation would be sufficient, seeing that the necessity for protection is indeed great.
" I would urge, too, that the vaccination should be done thoroughly, say in five places at least. It is more important, too, for intending missionaries to China to be vaccinated at home rather than after they get to Chim, for here vaccine is very uncertain, besides being expensive."
Dr. Parry, C. 1. M., Chien·tu, writes: "In reply to your note, I need only say that I am in hearty sympathy and agreement with you in regard to the matter of your appeal to the societies at home in vaccination or revaccination being insisted upon in the case of all their accepted candidates.
"I cannot support this by any experience personally of tQe disease among missionary families, the only case under my own care being that in our own family last year, when among our three children, who were equally exposed to infection, the only one to take the disease was the youngest, who had not been successfully vaccinated."
These facts and testimonies will speak for themselves. Weare ju~t now on the eve of a great influx of Christian missionaries into China, and my earnest desire and praye~ is that this important subject should be at once brought before the committees and boards of the various missionary societies, and intending missionaries throughout the world, and that the simple precaution of vaccination should be insisted upon in the case of every accepted candidate for mission work in the Celestial Empire.
There is, happily, good reason to believe that leprosy is rapidly decreasing in our Eastern Empire. Commissioners have been conducting a Government inquiry into the numbers and localities of lepers; and instead of half a million, as it was believed they would find, they have ascertained that the total number is only 100,000. It is also asserted that the evidence goes far to prove that there is not much risk of contagion, if reasonabJJ precautions are observed by those who come in contact with lepers, and also that the disease is not hereditary. But no such hopeful dil'lcoveries can or should abate our admiration of the saintly missionaries who have been carrying the Gospel, and with bright success, to the miserable victims of what still remains a loathsome and incurable disease.
" The two greatest demands of the hour are the liberal giver and the winner of souls. Given these in the individual church, there will be occasions for a spiritual rejoicing over pastors sustained, church improvements made, and sinners saved. Multiply the number of those who devise liberal things for God and labor for souls until every congregation feels their activity, and what fresh life will be infused into Zion at large, how the Gospel will be extended far and near, and what myriads will be won to Christ I"
EXTRACTS AND TRANSL.T10NS FIWM FOREIGN PERIODICALS
EXTRACTS AND TRANSLATIONS FROM FOREIGN PERIODICALS BY REV. C. C. STARBUCK, ANDOVER, MASS.
THE UNITED KINGDOM.
-During the last twenty-five years the voluntary contributions of the Church of England have amounted to £85,000,000, an annual contribution of a million is made toward Church extension, and three quarters of a million toward foreign missions. Three hnndred mission preachers halTe been appointed in 20 dioceses. In London there are 6000 appointed lay workers of the Church of England. Since 1877, 32 university and public school missions have been founded. When the time of general spoliation of the Church of England comes, under the united forces of political dissent and embittered atheism, the £85,000,000 will doubtless be swept away to secular uses, with no regard to the claims of the donors j but the miosions, home and foreign, being in private ownership, may escape.
-The President of the Edinburgh Medical Missionary Society, at the Annual Meeting, held November 26th, 1891, said that" he thought the jubilee year of their society could not have fallen on a more auspicious time. He did not suppose that in Scottish history there had been a time when Christians were looking forward more prayerfully and hopefully to widespread blessing. They welcomed the visit once more of Messrs. Moody and Sankey to their shores. The requisitions received daily from all parts of the country, urgent and impressive, sent by minist~rs of e,rery denomination, and by Christian workers of every class, meant that all over the land there was a yearning for and expectation of a blessing."
– " We would strongly insist that nowhere within all the range of religious narrowness has such ignorance been illustrated as that which places the whole of man in the crucible of a physical analysis, or reckons the sum and crown of human knowledge to be incomplete without the rightful exposition of the families of the Monotreme. We mnst suppose that the Chair of History will be discredited by the authority of these later days, and the ethical factor in the conduct of human affairs will be eliminated from the treatment of the problem. Yet it will be affirmed, in spite of the confident contention of the physicist, that considerations of justice and equity, however rightly or wrongly understood, are the pivots and bearings on which the axles of socialistic and individualistic ideas revolve, and these ideas appear to be extending their sway over the whole horizon of political life. Nor have we, we believe, uselessly pointed out that neither locomotion nor commerce, with the extension of their several facilities, are any more than the improved instruments of true culture j and we have, we trust, established that it is missions, or, in other words, Christianity in motion, that, seizing upon the central and cardinal points of human nature, implants there the germ of that mysterious growth which, though the fulness of its perfect nature lies out of sight in the far distances of eternity, still lends on earth its lower fruit!'! of culture and the branching shades of its civilization to the sons of men. "-Rev. GEORGE ENSOR, in Ohurch Missionary Intelligencer.
MISCELLANEOUS.
– " Rev. J. B. Gribble, incumbent of St. Paul's, AdeIong, New South Wales, is contemplating a missionary journey to the Bellenden Ker Mountains, in Northern Queensland. He writes: 'The poor blacks in this region are sadly neglected and wronged. There is vast scope for real missionary enthusiasm in Australia, and it is passing strange that such a field should be so overlooked.' "-Bombay Guardian.
-Miss Leitch, the a11thor of" Seven Years in Ceylon," has, with her sister, raised more than $150,000 for foreign missions during her visit to this country and Great Britain.
-Mr. George Smith, of Aberdeen, returning from the East, says: "The secret of Palestine is outside itself. It is something that can be preached and believed on in any spot on earth j something that is not a mere message j something that was and is and evermore shall be a living presence with men. People would mistake the Crusaders if they imagined that their error, fatal as it proved, was anything more than an excrescence on a true life and faith. The soldiers of the cross sought Christ's land because they had first found Christ in their own land. And so with the living pilgrims of to-day."
-IGNORANCE OF THE MISSIONARY ENTERPRISE.-" The type of Anglo- Indian who has ne'er heard of Llissions in India, or who superciliously assures his credulous acquaintances at home ·that they are doing no good, is by this time sufficiently well known to be taken at his true value. But here is a story of ignorance which, if more incredible, is at least naif. In the end of 1890 Herr Buchner, a Moravian missionary director, went into Berlin to transact some 'business on account of the new missions which the Moravians were then establishing on German tel'ritory at the northern end of Lake Nyanza. He called at the office of the German East African Company to' inquire about transmission and exchange of money. The cashier, not being able to give him definite imformation, took the matter before the directors, who happened to be holding a meeting at the time. The directors invited Herr Buchner to their room, showed the liveliest interest in the project of a new mission to East Africa, and asked' whether the Moravian Church had ever attempted any mission enterprise before ~ , It was like asking whether Germany had any soldiers, or Britain any sailors. "-Missionary Record (U. P.).
-An old rabbi perfectly well saw the logical conclusion that Jesus must be the Messiah, but when I pressed the point as a personal matter, he said to me, , Ah, sir! God hath given us the spirit of slumber-eyes that we should not see, and ears that we should not hear.' "-Dr. PRINSKI SCOTT, Smyma, in QUa1·terly Paper of Edinburgh Medical Missionary Society.
-The Ohurch Mi8sionary Intelligencer says that ihe statement sometimes made that India is on the very verge of coming to Christ overlooks the fact that there are tens of millions in India who never heard of Christ at all.
-The Spectator, quoted in the Jewish Herald, says: "While the question [of the return of the Jews to Palestine] has not yet come within the range of practical politics, yet it has ceased to be what it would have been thought to be fifty years ago by aJIbut a few students of prophecyridiculous. "
It also quotes the New York Evening Post as follows: "This is no longer a dream of visionary Bible students, but an actual reality. . . . The question of the return of the Jews to Palestine now seems to be one that interests all nations."
And so it still is; the students of the words of God are" visionaries ;" but their visions come at the last to be practical realities, of which unbelievers have to take heed. The word which has come' out of God'8 mouth shan not return unto Him void.
-The Catholic Government of Nicaragua has given a cordial consent that the Moravian brethren should open a mission within its territory. 'rhey are, however, in hope of obtaining a general permission for the whole of Nicaragua-that is, for the pagan Indians subject to it.
-The oldest Protestant church in Africa, the Moravian church in Gnadenthal (Gracevale), South Africa, now ruinous, has seen its last service, and is to give way to a new one.
-The 48 pages of National Righteousness for May (special number) are filled with the exquisitely painful but very encouraging report of the National Christian Anti-Opium Convention. Sir Lepel Griffin, and his associates, of course, imagine that their ribald abuse is going to bring all this to naught. The haters of Christ have often measured their strength with Him before, but the result has not been encouraging for them.
-A very interesting article on " Religious Movements in the United States," by the Rev. John Smith, M.A., in the November number of the U. P. Record, cO'lcludes: "This is a very cursory view, but it may explain so far the conviction which has come with quickening power into my own life, that America is with us in the van of Christian activity, and tlHlt through h~r co-operation the day of victory is nearer and surer than wc had dreamed."
THE EAST INDIES.
-It 'appears that Bengal alone was lashed into a flenseless fury of opposition to the Age of Consent bilL "The rest of India," says Dr. K. Macdonald, " accepted the position with composure, if not with gratitude. "
– " Dr. Grundemann states that of all the missions he has seen in India, none is more hopeful, none less adequately provided for, none more attacked by enemies and rivers than Gossner's Evangelical Lutheran Mission among the Kols, in Chota-Nagpore. . . . Caste, so formidable an obstacle to the spread of Christianity elsewhere, forms no particularly great hindranco here, and hence it happens that the field of the Kols is ripe for the harvest; they embrace the Christian religion in families, in groups of families, in whole village communities."-Ha1·vest Field (Madras)., – " , A Brave Life,' by Annie H. Small. This sketch contains the personal reflections of a Mohammedan lady. It iii an autobiography in ontline of one who, though not a Christian, yet' had the habit of referring all to God; who cultivated a spirit of meek and sweet submission to His will as revealed to her.' Its mere literary charm is great. The story is told in an artless manner, which is all the more effective from its artlessness. "Vo seem to be in the shaded veranda of a Mohammedan house, and seated upon the razai with the old lady while she recounts the stirring scenes of the past, giving us glimpses of a life which is certainly ~hat of a Christian, though we may not call her by that name. "
-Sir Charles A. Elliott, Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, says, as quoted in the Chinese Recorder: " The mere reduction of the missionary's income would only tend to lower his life to the pitiful level which we sometimes see in a poor white or Eurasian clerk, and would condemn him to a life of squalid poverty, which would undermine his constitution without in any way increasing his usefulness, or making him venerabl~ in the eyes of the people. On the contrary, I believe that the sight of a missionary bungalow such all I have often seen in the midst of a wild and rude population, with its modest comfort, its decent order, and its friendly accessibility to all visitors, is a civilizing agency of a high order."
– " A Bombay news writer, commenting upon the arrival of a large number of missionaries in India, remarks that if their coming has no other significance, it will at least affect the price of one-horse victorias. The missionary and his one-horse victoria are too much for a nnmber of the Europeans in India, though why so it is not clear. The missionary always pays for his victoria, and with his own money, too, and his one-horse victoria has as much right on the Breach KUlldy road as any four-horse drag or two-horse barouche. The missionary pays his debts, and, according to his income, pays his share toward all pnblic institutions and more than his share toward benevolent enterprises. He dres not come into competition with any class of professional men, or take the bread out of the mouths of , the merchant or artisan. The worst that can be said of him in this direction is that his wine bill is very small, and he never l:1ubscribes to a Derby sweep. He is not; a noisy neighbor, nor a quarrehome member of society, nor an officious personage, usurping the rights and honors of other people; but he does sometimes drive a one·horse victoria. We more than half suspect that it is the man in the victoria and not the vehicle itself that is such an eyesore tG our critic. "-Indian Witness.
-" The English language works wonders in India. It gives access to three millions of cultivated Hindus." -Calwer Missionsblatt.
– " The idea prevalent so widely among English Christians, that the world' is thirsting for the Gospel, ' is, alas! as far as possible removed from the truth. The world is not thirsting for the Gospel. Men are not disposed, in India or elsewhere, to accept the terms of God's salvation and to wear the yoke of Christ. Thfl evangelist to the heathen, if he speaks the unvarnished truth and avoids exaggerations, has to record a routine with unwilling souls. He sows the good seed of the kingdom on ground which has long been tramped by the feet of profane and degrading superstitions, and his feelings and experiences find oftentimes their truest expression in the cry, , Lord, who hath believed. our report ~' But, thank God, it is not always fruitless toil."-Rev. T. WALKER, in Church Missionary Intelligencer.
– " The feature that marks this year in the Methodist Episcopal Mission is the great increase in the number of baptisms. This increase is , more clearly seen by contrast. One jubilant over the baptisms of 1888 wrote: 'In our whole Indian work, about 2340 have been baptized;' but this year the baptisms will exceed 15,000, or an increase of about sevenfold since 1888, and thousands refused baptism because there is no provision for the care of the converts. This is a harvest from a part of the field which has been sown with Gospel seed for over a quarter of a century."~ Indian Evangelical Review, January, 1892.
-The Ais~ionary Herald reports the ful and warm acknowledgment lately given by Lord Harris, Governor of the Bombay Presidency, to the American Marathi Mission of the American Board, of the obligations under which it has laid the Presidency as respects vernacular, female, industrial, and normal education. Officially Lord Harris confines himself to the edu- cational aspect of missionary labors.
AFRICA.
-" FRENCH CONGO AND ITS PROSPECTS…..:…MM. Tessieres and Allegret, after spending a year in the French country to the north of the Congo cataract region, have returned and reported to the French Protestant Mis- sionary Society which sent them out on this immense new region, which seems to have such claims on them for the Gospel. They find the sphere a perfectly open and inviting one, not so unhealthy as Senegal, and the people not prejudiced against the French by a long series of wars and fight- ingR, as in AIgiers and Tunis. The tribal organization of the country averts all fear of dangerous combined opposition. Each tribe is anxious to be good friends with the white man, and most are very favorably disposed. The climate, too, is fairly good-better, at any rate, than that of Senegal, where yellow-fever is such a scourge. But, as in the rest of Central Africa, the total absence of roads is a hindrance to the occupation and civilization of French Congo. The Ogowe is very much broken by rapids, rendering any continuous navigation impossible. Commerce cannot at present assume any importance, but there is no reason why missionary work should not be vigorously prosecuted. Our French brethren are making a brave attempt to IItart work in that country, and MM. Tessieres and Alh3gret have volunteered to return as the first missionaries j but large funds are needed to start Central African missions. Protestant~ are not numerous in France, and even the few there are not all true Christians, much less consecrated givers and workers for the world's evangelization. The Societe des Missions Evangeliques will have a hard struggle to add a new and expensive mission to those it is already conducting, none of which can possibly be abandoned. May God Himself move the hearts of French Christians to rise to the level of their responsibilities and opportunities !"-Missionary Record of the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland.
-Dr. R. N. Cust, quoted in Central Africa, says of the missionaries: " The schools, hospitals, and printing presses which have come into existence through their efforts are distinct milestones of progress j but the very presence of a missionary raises the moral standard of all who come into contact with or even gain a sight of his holy life. The spectacle of a holy, self-restrained, chaste, benevolent, and laborious manner of living is a phenomenon which astonishes, attracts, and gradually brings into subjection the wayward, though not necessarily evil, will of the unsophisticated races. Not to be plundered, not to be ill used, not to be robbed of wiffl and children, by one who certainly has the material power to do such things, creates a new sensation. The employment at free work in a mission station is a new surprise, for there is an absence of violence, forced labor, and the whip, and the presence of a day's wage, a kind word and a smile, a careful attention to bodily injuries or sickness. Add to this a continuous respect to old age, a delicacy toward the weaker sex, and a kindness to children-all this would go for nothing in a Christian land j but it opens out new fields of thought to barbarians, and is a living, walking, speaking Gospel, presented to their understandings and hearts. Let no one undcrvalue the civilizing effects of the presence of a self-restrained man of European culture in the midst of an African population. "
INTERNATIONAL DEPARTMENT
n.-INTERNATIONAL DEPARTMENT.
EDITED AND CONDUCTED BY REV. J. T. GRACEY, D.D.
China in Paragraphs. The proclamations made this year, he says, are the only effective notification [EDITORIAL, J. T. G.] of the people as to the intent of the im- perial authorities ever given, and even' The Rev. G. T. Candlin, of China, these we know are very limited in the writing to the Manchester Guardian, in very quarters where most needed. In England, says the right of residence and consequence of this ignorance of the real the right to hold property have never rights of the native Chinese Christians been conceded to missionaries in the in- and the absence of any suitable mao terior of China. There is a clause in chinery for enforcing the conditions of the treaty between the French and the the treaty, a species of indefinite Mis- Chinese which declared this right, but sionary Protectorate has arisen, which that is held now to be invalid. Never· Mr. Candlin thinks is irritating to the theless, missionaries do reside and hold Chinese officials and others. He does property in the interior and away from not think well of the missionary becomthe treaty ports. How is this done? ing the guardian of the convert's rights Mr. Candlin explains that it is done in the courts. The foreigner, to begin under the passports granted to foreign- with, claims exemption for himself from ers. These protect the travelle:r, and, as the jurisdiction of the native courts and a matter of fact, are not inquired into, authorities altogether; and for such a and the custom has obtained of allow- person to interfere besides, with the naing them to extend practically without tural operation of the course of justice limit. Right to hold property he has in the indigenous courts having jurisnone other than this, which subjects diction over the native converts, he him theoretically to being told by any thinks intolerable to any government. local authorities to "move on." It is The remedy seems to lie in the fuller under this fiction that all foreigners, as and sufficient advertisement of the enwe understand it, hold property and re- tire population of the treaty rights conside indefinitely away from the treaty ceded by the Government; and the exports. If Mr. Candlin is correct in this, tension of these to the full recognition it is an easy thing for the Chinese Gov- of the rights of residence and property ernment to retaliate the disrespectful holding in the interior; and then let action of the United States Congress the missionary, Romanist or Protestant, without contravening any phase of treaty abandon all claims to protect his concompact with any Western Government. Vel·ts, leaving them entirely in the hands It can thus break up foreign missionary of their constituted rulers with the work in the interior, at leo.st so far as same remedy at law that they would the foreign missionary residence and have in any other case. holding of property go, which would be well nigh destructive of it in places, and Another subject which has found obstructive of it everywhere. some recognition in the preIs of both Europe and China, while it is novel, While we are dealing with this com- seems worthy of more 'than superficial municaHon of Mr. Candlin, we may add examination. It is nothing less tha-n that he thinks a great deal of trouble in the proposition to have a representative regard to foreigners arises from the fact of the missionaries, as Minister of Reof insufficient advertising to the people, ligion, at Peking, with whom the impe· of the concessions which the Govern, rial authorities of China and the acment has made by treaty with foreign credited envoys of the foreign countries countries, and of the protection which shall deal in the matters pertaining to has been promised to native Christians. the missions in all their branches. On should devote his attention to missionathe Chinese side it is thought such a ries, and keep the British Minister admeasure would not seem so unusual as vised on all such questions, that thus on our side, as the Chinese Government he might be prepared to bring up queshas a Minister of Religion as it has a tions before the Chinese Foreign Office. Minister of War, at Peking, with estab- This would form a link at least between lished offices in the provinoes for the the British missionaries and the Chinese express purpose of attending to mis- Government. The French Government, sionary questions. On their side the this correspondent says, has been tried idea would not be novel. It is urged as an intermediary, and has in some rein favor of the proposition to estab- spects failed. The Roman Catholics lish such a missionary representative have representation through their bishthat the leaders of Christian thought op, who has direct access to the Foreign ought to have some way of direct access Office. But the present proposition is to the Government leaders of Chinese quite other than that of the missionary thought in order to understand each secretary attached to a legation. It is, other aright. This is impossible to the if we understand it, to relieve the narepresentatives of the missions and tional ministers of the charge of mischurches severally, but might be got sionary affairs by setting np, as a sort through a single accredited central officer of imperium of their own, the missionacting for them all ; a personal'"1lnit with ary force in Ohina. It is certainly an whom the Government might deal. The interesting and may be a very imporsuggestion, we may say, is not a new one, tant suggestion, and we fancy there it having been broached as long since might be great gain in many respects if as 1883 ; but it has not been considered some Buch arrangement could be effectwithin the range of practical politics ed. hitherto, as it was complicated with representation of the often diverse in- Missions on the Gongo. terests of the Roman Catholics and Protestants, and with the difficulty of the BY JUDGE JAMES w. LAPSLEY, ANNISTON, Protestants agreeing on a representative agent. It is now, however, growing ALA. easier to overcome both these obstacles. In some of the larger cities in China tb e Their importance may be estimated missionaries are organized as evangelical when we observe that they extend over alliances, and it is held that they could a million-and-a-half square miles, an extend this organization over the coun- area thirty times that of New York, and try, and could form a sort of national or- containing fifty millions of souls, ganization and elect a president, and heathen, but now known to be capable perhaps a vice-president, who should be of high development j for from Cape recognized as thereby selected as the Town nearly up to the Soudan the domi- Minister of Religion at Peking, at least nant tribes and races in the interior befor the Protestants. One correspondent long to what has been called goes so far as to mention, by way of illustration, the fitness of Rev. W. A. P. THE BANTU FAMILY, Martin, D.D., now at the head of the Imperial University, as such minister. of whom a recant traveller sayB : Another correspondent, who thinks com- ., The Bantu is a fine, tall, upright bined aotion of the several nations impracticable, suggests the appointment man, with delicate, small hands, an(l of a Missionary Secretary of Legation to well-shaped feet; a :fine face, high, thin the British representation in China, nose, beard and mustache." who might perhaps be a consul who Mr. Lapsley, of the Presbyterian Mis- sion at Luebo, corroborates this descrip- tion, speaking of some of those around him as" magnificent men and handsome ,If women, variously colored, from a.bright a great slave trade carried on by raids yellow to black-brown being the pre· on his neighbors on all sides. Villages vailing shade." He speaks also of their are burned, men are killed, women and handiwork in iron and coppbr, mined children are enslaved. The stockade in and worked by them, as marvels of skill which Msidi lives has every post surand beauty; and 'of the product of their mounted by a skull. He thins out his looms as sometimes like" a compact, hundreds of wives by frequent decimastout, smooth, straw – cqlored linen," tions. Mr. Swan has often Been piles sometimes" soft as satin, of elaborate, of heads of men and women freshly cut. elegant pattern, woven of different col- Slaves are Bold for cloth, beads, and ored threads. You would think it came brass wire. What would cost a half dolfrom Europe." Stanley discards the lar in Europe will buy a boy. Two or name" Bantu," but speaks of .. finely three dollars' worth must be paid for a formed men, tall, warlike creatures, girl. with Caucasian heads and faces." He says they are descendants of Shem. While man is thus vile, every other prospect pleases. The country is 3000 Stanley tells, however, on the other to 5000 feet above the sea. The climate hand, of many tribes in that region who is salubrious and the soil ri<lh, producare at the lowest point of debasement. ing every tropical plant and fruit. It He describes a village of low conical is not very warm during the day; is fresh huts, from which the people thronged in the evening, and cold at night. The out to see him-" a promiscuous popu- country is full of buffalo, zebra, antelope lation of naked men, women, chil- and small game; and elephants are ,hen and infants, over a hundred beings numerous. Some of the Belgian offiof the most degraded, unpresentable cers speak of parts of the country as type it is possible to conceive of. I beautifully wooded and covered with could only comment to myself, ugly, uglier, ugliest." grass like" un v;ritable pare Anglais.' , * But all, high and low, are alike wicked, Their official reports fully corroborate cruel, and miserable, whose very crimes Mr. Swan's accounts. A recent Brusand miseries cry to heaven for the up- sels paper reports the people as "une lifting which the Gospel alone can work. race ires belle, tres forte, intelligent et vail- lanie, se distinguant non seullment par sa GARENGANGE. bravoure, mais egalement par son aptitude au travail." The Arnot Mission has Beginning at the head.waters of the been well established, the children es- Congo, in the southeast corner of the pecially being taught, and a new gen. Free State, 10° south of the equator, and eration is growing up with new ideas about a thousand miles from the Atlan- and principles. Mr. Swan brings with tic, and an equal distance from the Ind- him a grammar and dictionary of their ian Ocean, we find a Scotch Presbyte- language to be printed in England. rian mission, estlbliRhed some years ago by F. S. Arnot, in what he called" Ga- The Belgia~ [Free State] authorities rengange," but which the Belgians name have within a year past sent several the" Katanga" country. It is watered well-armed expeditions to take formal by the Lualaba and other large streams possession of the country, and in a lit· which flow northward and, united, make the Congo. * Le Marinel, chief of the Expedition to the Very recently Mr. Swan, of the Arnot Katanga, reports (February 1892): .. Le pays est Mission, has returned to Europe, afte- d'un bel aspect ..• maio c'cst -certalncment six years in Central Africa. His home dans la region des petits lacs du Samba qu'il est for four years has been at the capital of Ie plus bean. Le paysage n'y a rien d'africaiu ; Msidi, the king of that region-a bloody iI nous rappelle plutot nos sites de predilection despot, who has l<mg been the centre of des pays civili.e: de grands arbres au feuillege epais, nne herbe courte et fraiche, une belle piece d'ean . • . "-UBBile laurier rOBe et une pIllS graude varlete de fleurs que dans Jes autres contries. " tle while Msidi's cruelty may, we hope, THE AMERICAN BAPTISTS. be effectually curbed. Their farthest station is near where From Garengange down the Lualaba, the Congo crosses the equator. They through a chain of beautiful lakes and have also a station at Leopoldville, on past Stanley Falls, we would go for Stanley Pool, and a number of others considerably over a thousand ~iles be- on the caravan road from Leopoldville fore reaching any more Protestant mis- down to Matadi, the foot-path 230 miles sions ; the first being long, by which everything that goes or comes between the Upper Congo and THE CONGO ROLORO MISSION, the Atlantic must be carried on the heads or shoulders of bare-headed, bare- located on the Congo, and some of its footed Africans. They have about thirty tributaries near the equator. These are missionaries, and also own a steamer, English Baptists, Dr. and Mrs. Guinness, the lIenry Reed, and around some of of London, being ~he controlling spirits their churches whole communities have in organizing and directing the work. been brought nnder the influence of They have fi ve or six stations, and are Christianity. Banza Manteka and.Ln. doing good work. although only about kunga have been especially blessed. three years old. It has just lost two of Mr. Richards, their pastor, said of the its best men, John McKittrick and John first named: "The glorious fact is that Luff, both from hrematuric fever, so Banza Manteka is no longer a heathen fatal in that country. country, but more Christian than any I am acquainted with." Dr. Harry Guinness, in Regions Beyond for March, says of Mr. Luff's station at Mr. Lapsley, of the Presbyterian Mis- Lulanga: "After a steep climb of forty sion, was there on his way to the inor fifty feet of river bank we found our- terior, and his diary contains these selves in the capitally laid-out station notes: "Banza Manteka, 300 members, of Lulanga, only seven-months old, yet 28 villages, some of them 16 miles quite a convenient and beautiful spot. away; almost all professors now, though not all received yet. Their church And behind the garden beds with building was given by the Clarendon their sweet flowers there stands a com- Street Church, Boston [Dr. Gordon's], fortable brick house, with outhouses and was brought from Tundwa, 50 and dependencies, including carpenter's miles, on members' heads. Gray corshop and brick.yard. . .. After the rugated iron; Gothic arched windows. evening meal I walked through a string Store and vestry on either side. Ordiof villages two miles long, and must nary platform and desk, plain benches have passed a couple of thousand of for 600 people. People put their confolk in my little walk. . .. The popu- tributions in the big baskets in which lation in half an hour's walk of the women carry their great loads to marhouse Mr. Grenfell estimates at 6000. ket. Two of these go around and Kindly interested and warm-hearted, come back loaded with strings of blue they appealed to me strongly." beads, handkerchiefs, etc." There is no other currency. Again he says: "Tears of joy and sorrow mingled lately as we stood on Mr. Lapsley was also at Lukunga, and two successive days by the grave of Jobn his diary has this description of the McKittrick [at Bonginda], and at the preaching hy a native, and of the apbaptism of the first converts from Bolo- pearance of the congregl'.tion. boland. We rejoiced as we baptized five converts, and wept over 25 of them After describing Mr. Hoste's regular awaiting immel·sion." service, he writes: The C. B. M. have a steamer-the .. Luwawa rose, one foot on a bench, Pioneer-by which they communicate and his body twisting nervously around. with each other and bring up supplies He soon got his foot down, and his from Leopoldville. hands in use, and his tongue loose. first station at Luebo, on the Lulua, a Began slowly, but soon caught fire- tributary of the Kassai, the great south- spoke like his life depended on it. Not ern tributary of the Cbngo. It is about ranting style. Not very loud, but in a 5}0 south of the equator, and 600 miles hot stream of emphatic words; and his east of the Atlantic. It is the initial little eyes back under his forehead effort of the Southern Presbyterians in burned like coals. His gestures were not Africa, the pioneers being a white and extravagant, but natural and animated. a colored man, Messrs. Lapsley and The men had-some of them-a cloth Sheppard working together. Mr. and about the shoulders and another about Mrs. Adamson, Scotch Presbyterians, the loins. Some were stripped to the have also recently joined the mission, waist. Women had bare shoulders and and have reached the field. Luebo is one large cloth to the knees, or two some 1500 feet above the sea. They say aprons, one tied before the breast, and it is never very hot or hot long at a the other about the waist. Strange con· time, and never hot at night.
gregation met for communion ! Yet Belgian, French, and Portuguese trad- '
quiet and attentive, though some eyes ing posts are loclOted there, and it is a wandered, and some did like Eutychus busy centre of population and of trade in the warm room. The bread broken in ivory and rubber. * The location waR was the common bread of the cOl'.ntry made in April, 1891. Native houses -quanga." were bought and put up, and gradually THE ENGLISH BAPTISTS. some better shelters have been erected. Land has been cleared, and gardens and They have five or six stations. Mr. fruit ~rees planted; and all the time the Grenfell, missionary and far·famed ex· language has been diligently studied plorer, has a well·built station at Bolobo, and the materia. for a dictionary and on the river, 2° south of the equator. grammar carefully gathered and record-.
There Mr. Bentley, of Ngombe, on the ed. The following brief extracts from Lower River, has done greut service to Mr. Lapsley's letters give a view of the all African missions by his Kikongo die. country and the work.
tionary. This mission seems especially October 4th, 1891, he writes: .. Your engaged in the work of educating and summer in Alabama is past, but our civilizing the natives, and their stations spring is just on. We have had fonr are models of good and orderly arrange- months of dry, colcI weather, with bar- ment and thorough preparation in the ren-looking hilI.sicIes,rnsty, leafless trees way of building and appliances. They overhanging the dusty road, and almost also have a steamer, the Peace. hiding the more faithful ones that keep their green. 'Dry,' I saicI; yes, from THE SWEDISH MISSION. ten o'clock till sundown, and dead hot This mission has several Btations, all out in the open exposed places. But on the Lower Rher, and about twenty when the dew begins to fall it is a very missionaries, who are doing good work rain. By the last watch before day- both as preachers and translators of the the hour I used to wake often-I could Gospel. Mr. Lapsley says of them: hear the uncanny sound of the wlltcr " Their piety is most refreshing; they dropping, dropping, when there had seem as if they had only just heard the been no rain. And a dense mist fell story of Jesus, and had not got used to then or about sunrise, so you couldn't the new joy and wouder. Such charm- ing simplicity and earnestness !" * These arc the ouly products tradou in, be- cause they alone are valuable enough to staud THE AMERICAN PRESBYTERIA.N CONGO MIS- lJle heavy expense of being carried down that SION. long foot-path to the coast. Ivory is worth say 23,000 francs per ton, and rubber about 7,000 This youngest of the missions ha~ its francs. – .. Then I made a little sketch of what see fifty yards, and it was cold enough for more than my two good blankets. I might say in the town today-largely But a few weeks ago the raiIis began a translation of Paul on Mars' Hill, with nicely – not too much, but a good the clause about the Saviour enlarged drencher every evening – until the till it balanced all the rest of the dis- ground was ready for the seed. Then course.
the women of the town, Bena Kasenga, " Then about 3 P.lIT. I found a quiet held their annual meeting, to assign to corner in town, with a group of women each group of friends their patch to around, whom I knew very well. The plant of the great fields north, east, houses made a screen from the nois9 of south and west of the town. Now the the street, and the subject came np roads are walled with a mass of first naturally. My patient, lounging op· green, like our woods at home in April." posite, repot"ted herself as nearly well.
October 24th, 1891, when he had been " • That's God's doiDg,' I said; and there six months, he writes: "To·mor- asked her what she knew of Niuliuli row I hope to speak to the people. I have (God).
now enough 'Bakata'-as tha natives, the " Bomba, nursing her poor little baby, Bakete, call their language-to attempt which I think will die, and another preaching to them. A Christian soldier woman opposite began to listen and from Zanzibar, who knew Bishop Han- repeat everything, to be sure that they nington and Mackay, has lent me his heard rightly. Milembo, a great friend Kiswahili testament, and owing to of ours, comes up between two of the the similarity of thesa Bantu languages, little houses, and I ask her again abou~ it may help me in the little translation he,· knowledge of God. She answers I intend to make for use to·morrow. right along, and explains fully when I " Weare on very good terms with the stop to breathe.
Bakete of Bena Kasenga. I began to " She said : 'The Bakete know God take a little medicine to the town, and made and preserves us and everything, now I have several cases every day, and, and gives us all things.'
they all have got well so far. My boy, .. , Yet,' I said, 'you don't clap your Shamba Mwana, says they have a song hands softly three timeS-SD-and say in my honor, the refrain of which runs "Wolah," as you do if I give you only like this: a Iittle salt.'
" 'Mutomba Njila, wlltuambika bWllnga " • The Bakete would sing to Him if Watumouekisa mayo.' they only knew how,' said she.
('" Pathfluder [that's me} gives us medicine, "Then I explained who Jesus was, Makes us see health.' ") and they listened earnestly, with some The next day-Sunday, October 25th doubt about His coming again in the -he writes: "The station boys and clouds. But their usual complaint was, women came in for prayers, and we had • We haven't heard this. You white a pleasant little service. . .• Little people know, but we do not. . . .' "
Tumba came in and sat down in front Under a later date Mr. Lapsley writes of an array of ' Children's Friends' with that it is probable that the State has pictures, and went to sleep on the mat. granted his application for the right to Early dinner was brought on and dis- occupy Bolek~ at the junction of the patched-not 'Very plentiful to-day. God Kassai and Kwango. This new station was pleased to answer my prayer. A will make a small ~teamer, such as the few petitions and promises written out other missions use, very desirable to with a pencil and lying before me on keep up communication and procure my little desk took definite hold of my supplies. When necessary, it will doubt- heart, I trust, as I Bat alone in the in- less be given. In the time of need, one tense solitude of tropical noon, when all generous man in far.off Australia was others were gone away. moved to gi ve the mission steamer Henry Reed. now owned by the American Bap. who allowed him to visit them, to state tists. and explain the great leading truths of OTHER MISSIONS. the Gospel. The fierceness of the feel.
There are some voluntary, self-sup- ing against Christianity has been in this way reduced at headquarters, although porting missions, of which Bishop Tay- even now the prejudice of rich Hindus in the city is still so strong that those lor, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Who have CUIne under the power of the Gospel have had to seek employment is the head, and some purely inde. elsewhere. Mr. Hewlett was the Prin· cipal of the Mission Oollege, and in pendent work is being projected. A addition to much educational success he made every possible effort to main. few weeks ago a devout family from the tain its missionary character. The Northwest sold their home and all they had, and are now on their way to the COlIgO. going all of them as missionaries and at their own expense. '
THE ROMAN CATHOLICS Scriptures were read and expounded, also have stations scattered from the and prayer offered daily in the presence Atlantic Coast to the far eastern border, of all the students. The strain of over. and are now about putting a little steam- work has for some time been telling er on the upper river. It is estimated upon Mr. Hewlett. While feeling that that soon they will have as many as 100 the Church can ill spare such wOo'kers priests an~ nuns at work on this great it is a mournful satisfaction to kno~ field now white for the harvest. that this loving and faithful missionary has pursued his course without slack. There is the utmost activity, commer- ness to Itil very end. cial, political. and religious. The dead sleep of centuries is over. The conti· nent is moved from the centre all Great Missionary Conferenoe Next Year around. Ethiopia is at last in very deed in Japan. stretching out her hands unto God. "THE BAKETE WOULD SING TO HIM IF At a meeting of the Central Japan THEY ONLY KNEW HOW" is the plaintive answer that Africa sends back to Chris· Missionary Association, held on the tendom on hearing the first time the Gospel in Bakete. 15th inst., in Osaka, it was decided that God grant that a host of earnest men II general missionary conference, to be and women, full of the love of Jesus composed of Protestant evangelical mis. and fired with a holy ambition to be lik~ sionaries in Japan, be held in 1893 to Him. ma,y hear this sad cry from afar, and be moved by it! discuss the religious interests, p;os.
pects, and other important subjects per.
taining to.the cause of Christianity in Japan. A few present at the meeting were not in favor of II bceoennfepreuntcet~ but after the question had the Death of Rev. John Hewlett, vote and it was fonnd that a large mil.. jority were in favor of holding a confer· The death of Rev. John Hewlett ence, these declared themselves ready M.A.• one of the foremost missiona: to do all they could to further the ob· ries of the London Missionary Society, ject desired by the majority. occurred February 21st last. Seventeen of the thirty years of his laborious life The Anti-Chinese Legislation at Wash· were spent in Benares, the stronghold ington. of Hinduism, and in many respects the most difficult post in India. He wns [J. T. G.] well qnalified for such work, being both The enactment of the two houses of talented and amiable. He knew many Congress relating to the Chinese in this emin,ent Hindu priests and teachers, country has givlln offence to roany mill. ions of our citizens. It is not a case of Foreign Affairs Committee, said this sentiment merely, but one for grave registration was similar to the slave aod dignified deliberation. It is rather regulations in force before the Civil painful to note the ease with which this War, and to the ticket of leave cf the whole subject has been transferred from Australian convict system.
the domain of statecraft to tha.t of poli- The Minister says that these features tics. This whole business ought to have of the bill are in direct violation of the been begun at the other end. It should treaty of 1880, which guarantees to the have been settled long ago by diplo- Chinese laborers in the United States macy; it iR a matter for treaty, not for the treatment of the subjects of the most " municipal legislation." It is with lit- favored nations. He further says that tle grace that the President should be the treaty of 1880 was agreed to by obliged to plead in defence of his 1!aste China at the express request of the Gov- in signing this Bill that there were but ernment of the United States, which a few hours before the expiration of Bent three of its most distinguished citi- existing legislation should be outlawed. zens to Peking to ask for it. He de- Great interests, like those involved in clined to state what course his Govern.
this issue, should not be dealt with ment would take on account of the pas- merely to throw" a sop to the steer. sage of the bill.
ages of the vessels that are being un- loaded at the Battery." It had no The World's W. a. T. U, business to be a political question, which undor the prejudices of a " presi- The World's Woman's Christian Tern.
dential year would almost of necessity perance Union have prepared a polyglot drive noble senators and an unimpeach- petition to the rulers of the world, be- able President to participation in in_ seeching them "to raise the standard iquitous business." of the law to that of Christian morals, The Chinese Minister at Washington to strip away the safeguards and sanc· protested against this Bill for three rea- tions of the State from the drink traffic sons: 1. It renews the Scott Law of and the opium trade, and to protect 1888. 2. It deprives the Chinese ot. the [our] homes by the total prohibition of right of bail in habeas corpus cases. 3. these curses of civilization throughout It requires a registration of Chinese all the territory over which [their] gov- laborers which it is practically impossi- ernments extend." Miss Frances E.
ble for them to comply with. They Willard, the president of this distinct must all prove by white witnesses that organization, informs us that this peti- the~ are lawfully entitled t~ be in the tion has already been translated and Umted StateM, and as the first Exclu- signed in forty languages, and is to be sion Law was passed in 1882, every presented to the different governments Chinaman must produce before the Col- of the world by a commission of wom- lector of Internal Revenue II white wit- en, headed by Lady Henry Somerset, ness who knew him ten years ago and who will go round the world within a can swear that he was in the United year or two for that purpose. The peti.
States at that time. tion is signed by women, but endorsed The law leaves the issuance of the by men, and co·operation is sought on certificate of registration entirely to the the ground that this petition seeks the discretion of the revenue officer, and suppression of opium as well as alco· provides no way of compelling him to holies. They anticipate that the signa- do justice to the Chinaman. He must tures to this petition will swell it to ten register and produce his evidence in the mile!; in length. and as it would not be district where he resides. His white right to go to the expense of carrying so witness may be 3000 miles away. great a bundle round the world, they Senator Sherman, Ohairman of the seek the endorsement of societies, signed by the presidents and secretaries But as so little is known of this part of thereof. For this purpose they have the world, as little as of most interior prepared blanks, which are to be had of parts of Africa of late years, it is of the Secretary, Mrs. Mary A. Wood- great interest to the scientist, and in bridge, Ravenna, O. many ways to the bulk of intelligent Another feature of the movement is people of our time. It is well known under the direction of the Department that few persons have ever been success- of Scientific Instruction in Schools and ful in effecting an entrance into Thibet.
Colleges, of which Mrs. Mary H. Hunt The author of this work, Gabriel Bon- is superintendent. Mrs. Hunt writes valot, is no novice in travel and ex- to us that for several years she has been ploration, he having, on a previons oc- in correspondence with Christian mis- casion, in company with two other sionaries, irrespective of denomination, Frenchmen, accomplished the difficult urging as a means of grace in nominally if not unprecedented feat of scaling the heathen lands the introduction of table-lands of the Pamir, " the roof of physiological temperance teaching in the world," as this region is called.
mission schools. Mrs. Joseph Cook, of The volume he wrote about that adven- B.)ston, recently invited to her parlors ture, "Aux lndes par Terre" (its Eng- the missionary leaders in the various lish title was" Through the Heart of evangelical denominations to listen to a Asia"), made him known as an intrepid proposition that had been privately and wise traveller. The present volume talked over, to the effect that the Chris- gives an account of his journey over tian missionary organizations of the Central Asia, parts of which had hith- world should unite in some systematic erto been u¥traversed by any European.
method that would secure such teaching Starting from the frontiers of Siberia, of the fundamental facts called scien- and coming out at the other end of Asia tific temperance in mission schools. A on the coast of the new French colony third feature of the world.wide move- of Tonquin, M. Bonvalot and his com- ment, we belis"!e, includes the sending panions, one of whom was Prince of missionaries representing their own Henry of Orleans, the eldest son of the body, SCtile of which, if we are correct- Duc de Chartres, traversed not only ly informed, are already in heathen that portion of Thibet which several lands. English travellers and the great Rnssian, Whoever has seen the hindrance of Prje'falsky, had explored, but going be- the mission work from the alcohol habit yond their routes OTer the table-lilnds, he of nominal Christians in heathen lands, accomplished a journey through a coun_ and knows anything of the terrible curse tryon which the eyes of no European of opium among heathen in Asiatic had before fallen. It is to the credit of cOllntrieq, will surely wish these noble their shrewdness and knowledge of women God-speed. If it is not direct, human nature that they sncceeded in it is certainly indirect missionary work doing this without much active hostil- in every land under the sun.-J. T. G. ity, though not without great petIt This volume is charmingly and instruc- New Publications. tively illustrated from photographs taken by Prince Henry, is elegantly [J. T. G.] bound, and is accompanied with a fine map in a pocket showing the route trav- The extraordinary int.erost that at- elled. The ethnographer and student taches to Thibet, as the only land not of religion will find here very interest- open to evangelization, would of itself ing contributions to their stock of spe- gi ve interest to a new book jnst issued cial information-information given in by the Casspll Puhlishing Company a clear and unpretentious manner, (New York) entitled" Across Thibet." which really enhances its value, as there is no evidence of any coloring or .. JodhpOl'e and the Empress Noor Jahan bias from any preconceived theories. (Elioi Stock, London, publisher).
T.he writer simply states what he saw The same publisher has just issued and what was said that throws light on the fifth edition of "The Christian problems of world.wide interest. It is Traveller's Continental Handbook," a not a volume about missions, for mis· small but very helpful book, telling of sions there are none in this part of the the places of Christian work and wor· world; but it shows the religious con· ship in all the principal cities of Eu· dition and the social customs of the peo. rope. Others besides travellers wiI' find pie, and affords a gleam of hope that it of value.
where this intrepid explorer has gone, others may yet be able to go with the -There will be a pathetic interest Gospel of the kingdom. attaching to th" article in this Depart- ment by Judge Lapsley, which was .. Woman's Influence in the East" compiled largely from letters received ny John J. Pool, is a compilation of from his Bon, Rev. Samuel N. Lapsley, stories fabulous and historical, showing engaged in planting the new mission the noble lives of some of the past of the Southern Presbyterians in the queens and princesses of India, which Congo Valley. As we go to press we might be greatly enlarged, and perhaps ha.ve the Bad news of the death of thi~ with advantage, to the impression which devoted and capable young mission. the author seeks to make, that the women ary. Our sincerest sympathy goes ouC of the East are not without influence to the honored father and Church thus even where they are esteemed by West· stricken. 0 Africa! thou art a. great ern people to be very much degraded. prize for the Master, but thou art being That women fail of influence over so- redeemed at great cost by those who cietyand even over public events in the adore the world's Saviour, and thine East, is a figment of the imagination as a part of the whole! only of the thonghtless. Women are J. T. G.
everywhere the conservators of religion, -Rev Dr. George W. Northrup, in good or bad; women mould the child- his address at the Seventy.seventh hood of all the races of the East, and anniversary of the American Baptist throughout the continent of Africa. Union, said: "1. That the Christian What ails them ill, that they have, as a churches of the world should be satisrule, low ideals, I!.nd are content with fied with nothing less than lIending out their place in the social scale. But the one ordained missionary for every illustrious instances which are well 50,000 of the accessible pl!.gan populaknown in Indian annals, of women in tion of the world. 2. That no church high rank having the highest qualities ought to call itself thoroughly aggrespossible to the type of civilization to sive and evangelical that does not ex·' which they belong, command our ad. pend, for the support of missions at miration and suggest the possibilities large, at least one dollar for every five of Indian womanhood when elevated by it expends for itself." Christianity. Quite apart from any moral pmpose, this book is entertain.
ing reading. The Ramayana is the -Among the congresses to be held in " Iliad of the East," and the first char· connection with the Columbian Exposi.
acter presented by Mr. Pool is the myth- tion, one of the most important will bA ical one of Sita, the peroine, the Helen the" Congress of Missions," which will of this, the most popular piece df lit· occnpy eight days-September 10th- erature in all Hindustan. Among the 17tb. Societies of every name, lan- historic characters are the Ranee of guage, and location will be represented.
EDITORIAL NOTES ON CURRENT TOPICS
I1I.-EDITORIAL NOTES ON CURRENT TOPICS.
Ba.ptist Missions on the Oongo. to an address lately given by Rev. R. D.
In justice to all parties concerned the Darby. from the Congo. .. The story following correspondence is published which he told of the privations and in full. It is a matter of sincere regret hardships which he and his companions that the extract from the Christian had endured was a sad and pitiful one. Leader should have appeared in our last His two companions died, and he himissue (p. 464) without editorial com_ self only narrowly escaped. In listenment, explaining- that it did in no de- ing to such a story, one cannot help gree receive our endorsement. We now feeling that there is great and inexcusareprint the extract with the remainder ble blundering somewhere. There is really no need why our missionaries ot" the correspondence, hoping thus to should be left in such straits for the lack of the common necessaries of life. do justice to everybody. We aim at ac- If the mission committee in London, curacy; but while we glean from all who are responsible. would only show a sources, we cannot of course secure in little more business ability in providing all cases" original sources." We should for the wants of their agents, no calamprint little intelligence if compelled to ity of the kind would be likely to over. do this.-A. T. P. take them. The sad thing is that the lack of proper provision for the wants Mr. Grenfell's first letter was dated of the agents sent out has less or more .. Baptist Missionary Society, London, October 10th, 1891."
DEAR Sm : I note that on page 800 of characterized the management of the your (October, 1891) issue you say : committee from the beginning. The .. Grave charges of mismanagement effects of this are shown in the "fact that have been made against the directors about sixty per cent. of the missionaries of the Baptist Congo Mission." If this sent out to the Congo district have died.
refers to the Congo Mission of the above Surely a radical change in the mode of society, it is quite unfounded, and should conducting the mission is called for."
be contradicted. You ought not to ac- Thereupon the whole correspondence cept such statements upon any other was sent to Mr. Grenfell, and from him than the best authority, and should be the following has just been received. all the more careful, seeing that your We think best to print in full : reports are so widely read and accep•. ed. I should be very glad if you would UNDERHILL, CONGO STATE, give me the name of your informant, April 5, 1892. and beg to remain My DEAR DOCTOR : It was very good of Yours faithfully, you to take so much trouble about the GEOBGE GRE"IFELL. paragraph to which I referred in my Dote of October 10th last. The fault is Upon receipt of this letter diligent evidently with the "lfonthly Messenger of endeavor was made to trace the item the Storie Street Church, which has in. to its source, and at last we found it terpreted some remarks as to the hargcame from Rev. James Johnston, of Bol- ships endured by Mr. Darby and his col. ton, England, who sent the following, leagues as an impeachment of the Misasking justification: sion Committee. That hardships were (From The Christian Leader, June 25, 1891.) endured, and more than need have been BAPTIST BLUNDERING ON THE CONGO. endured, had every one been gifted with the faculty of seeing into the future, In the Monthly Messenger of the Storie cannot be denied-such things occur in Street Baptist Church, Paisley, of which every African enterprise-but that the Dr. O. Flett is pastor, reference is made loss of life suffered by our society on the Congo can be attributed to the lack .ward it seemed best to issue it imme.
of "proper provision for its agents," diately in pamphlet form, and by per- or to the want of business •• ability" on mission of author and publishers (James the part of its committee I most dis· Nisbet & Co.) it appears with some tinctly deny, as would also Mr. Darby. slight verbal changes in the present were he here. issue of our magazine.
The statement that sixty per cent of A good word has permanent value.
the missionaries sent to the Congo died "A word fitly spoken" -literally" on as the effects of this lack of business his wheels"-" is like apples of gold ability and neglect will quite account set in framework of silver."
for Mr. Johnston's paragraph; but it is 'l'he discourse is a message on wheels, most distinctly untrue. The total losses and ought to mn round the world.
of the mission, while they are very, very Though first delivered in 1871, twenty heavy, and the cause of great sadness years ago, it is no less adapted to the of heart, are less than forty per cent; wants of the present day than it was for and I assert that no single death in the the time when it was originally con- ranks of our society can be attributed to structed. In fact, it will perhaps stir the causes mentioned. and arouse the Church of God more 'l'hanking you for your courtesy in effectively, as this new century of mod- this matter, I remain, my dear doctor, ern missions is opening, than it could Yours very sincerely, when the interest felt in a world's evan- GEORGE GRENFELL. gelization was less extensive and less P.S.–" Two educated negro women intense, and when the openings for at Vasten have begun to issue the first mission work were far less numerous newspaper in the Congo Free State. It and clamorous. aims to • enlighten the souls of the black-likinned.' " At Ollr earnest solicitation, Dr. Angus now permits us, in this REVIEW, to reo I presume the paragraph above, quot. print this vigorous address, he having brought down th e facts to this centenary ed from, your REVIEW, refers to the Se year of modern missions, 1892. It im- presses us as one of the boldest, wisest, Kukianga, published at the Baptist strongest appeals for immediate and world-wide evangelization we have ever Mission Station, Wathen; but how you read. Years ago it sounded its clarion. call, and the echo of its trumpet-peal is can have got hold of the news of two now heard wherever missions to the heathen are planned and undertaken. educated negro women having anything So far as we know, it was this address from which was drawn the motto of this to do with it is a marvel. I simply call new crusade: .. THE WORLD Fon CHRIST IN OUR GENERATION!" May the Great attention to it, and ask you to be care.
ful of Congo news derived from the same source A paper of the standing of your REVIEW can't afford to make it- self the medium of news so grotesquely metamorphosed. G. G.
II Apostolio Missions j or, The Gospel Head of the missionary host use the new and louder repetition of tbis trum- for Every Orea.ture," * pet.blast to set the whole army of the Lord moving in a mighty assault on The editor obtained a copy of this every fortress of the devil. May the grand article, with which we open this venerable and distinguished author of number of the REVIEW, as it was orig- this pamphlet yet live to see the Church inally delivered, April 26th, 1871, be- preaching to every creature the Gospel fore the Baptist Missionary Society, in he loves. London, and personally besought Dr. Angus to remodel it for republication in the REVIEW. He consented. After. A letter, inclosing five shillings ster- * See lcadin~ article of this nnmber, page 481. ling, and accompanied only by a pseudonym, has come to me, which is too let it go to the heathen." There is a suggestive to be withheld from the pub- wide gulf of dillerence between the five lic eye. shillings amI this, which is equal to £70. But in each case a luxury is surrendered e< GLASGow. April 4, 1892. for the sake of giving the Bread. of "Two or three years ago you ad- Life to lost souls. What immense sums dressed a crowded meeting in the Synod of money would our self denial bring to' Hall, Edinburgh, upon missions, in the treasuries of God were even such which many must have been very deep- self-sacrifice which does not touch our ly stirred. You spoke of giving up lux. actual necessities universal with dis- uries for missions, and suggested that ciples! ladies could give up a pair of kid gloves a year to aid such a work as McAIl's at The Fiji Islands hllve been the great Paris, etc. model field of mission operations in hea- " I thought, 'That does not apply to then lands. At the beginning of the presme; I can't do anything in that way. ent century the people were barbarians. I give one fifth of all my income and In 1835 the Christianization of them was what I earn to God's work, and never commenced, when, in October of that spend anything but what is needful on year, the Rev. W. Cross and Dr. Cargill, dress. I must have decent gloves even Wesleyan missionaries from England, if I have to buy many pairs, and I cannot proceeded from one of the Friendly Islkeep my dress account below £15 [$75] ands to Lactremba, one of the Fiji Islthis year.' ands. The population of the latter num- " However, conscience prevailed, and bered a thousand souls, some of whom next day more than I usually spend on had heard of Christianity in the Friendly a pair of 'four-button kids' went into Islands, and a few understood its charthe collection plate. I had never had acter ; and the chief gave the missiunamany presents of gloves, but at Christ- ries a friendly reception. In a short mas a friend sent me a beautiful lined time a number were baptized and began pair, and shortly after some very good the Christian life. 'rhe missionaries gloves were sold for very little, and so I then introduced the Gospel into other got a supply and lost nothing by the islands, and in 1845 there was a powerprice of a good pair sent to the MeAll ful revival throughout the entire region. Mission. Next year I sent the price of Among the many converts, the Napoleon a better pair, ~ndagain never J.I1issed of an entire island was numbered-a them, for two pairs were given to me. man who had been the most bloodthirsty You see your words were not lost, and of all the people. In 1854 the head their latest fruit is five shillings, which king, with his tribe, embraced Chris- I enclose, and which you will kindly tianity ; and so Divine truth made reforward at your convenience to Dr. markable headway in all directions McAll from one whose interest in mis- among all the people and tribes. Since tiions you have helped to stimulate." that phenomenal period a number of This letter is probably from Bome white peoples have settled in the islands, poor seamstress or woman clerk of slen- and the entire population are now far der means; and it is sent to the REVIEW advanced in civilization; and Christiancolumns simply as a very pertinent illus- ity controls the overwhelming mass of tration of the possible fruits of a little the inhabitants. Out of a popUlation of self-denial. Since that address in Edin- 120,000, 105,000 belong to the Wesleyan burgh many other fruits appeared, and Methodist denomination, Ilond are reguamong others a very brilliant marquise lar attendants in their churches and ring set with Beven diamonds, and halls. The other 15,000 have identified worth probably $350, has been sent to themselves with the various bodies me with the remark: "I can do without that, and never will wear it again; which have entered the field. It was in Summer School of Ohrlstian Philosophy. 1879 that other denominations began their work among these people, Ilnd The school of the American Institute they are helping in raising them to of Christian Philosophy begins July Christian life and civilization. This 12th at Prohibition Park, Staten Island, mission of the Wesleyan body has test· with a lecture by Joseph Cook, on ed the wonderful power of Methodism "Fast and Loose Theories of Evoluwhen permeated by the Divine Spirit in tion." The remainder of the week's converting heathen souls to a practical programme is aa follows : knowledge of Christ and the Gospel. The marvellous success here met with Wednesday, 13th.-G. R. W. Scott, should be generally known among Chris. D.D., Andover, Mass., "Man's Retians and prayerfully considered in con- sponsibility for his Belief." Nightnection with all foreign mission work R. F. Cutting, New York, " Tenementand home mission effort. House Evil."
REV. ANDREW LEES. Thursday, 14th.-George Alexander, D.D., New York, "A Believing Spirit Essential to the Learner." Night- It is proposed to hold a general con· paper prepared by Richard Abbey, D.D., ference of missionaries in Japan. Mississippi, " Where Was Man Before He Was?" Circulars are addressed as follows : Friday, 15th.-William Leroy Broun, To ..••………•…. •• The Progress of Education of the Col- At a regular meeting of the Mission- ored Race in the South." Night-·-Anni- versary. Addresses by Rev. Dr. Deems ary Association of Central Japan, held and others.
in Osaka, December 15th, 1891, the fol- Saturday, 16th.-Professor E. Herlowing minute was adopted, to wit: shey Sheath, Yale University, "Stoicism •, That the Chairman be requested to and Christianity." Night -" Prison Life," by W. M. F. Round, Esq. nominate a Committee consisting of one member from each mission in this dis- Sunday; 17th.-Annual Sermon by trict, to continue inquiries concerning Carlos Martyn, D.D., Newark, N. J. a General Missionary Conference and to Night-" The Brotherhood of Chrisreport to the next meeting of the Asso- tian Unity," Professor Theodore F. Seward. ciation.' ' In accordance with this action, the Monday, 18th. -Hon. Walter B. Hill, Georgia, "Anarchy, Socialism, and the Committee appointed desire to pro· LaborMovement." Night-" Our Shop pound to the missionaries of the various Girls," by Professor Hyslop, of Columsocieties laboring in Japan the follow- bia College. ing inquiries: 1. Is it desirable to hold a. General Conference in the near fu- Tuesday, 19th.-Ethelbert D. Warture? 2. If so, in what year? 3. Shall field, LL.D, President of Lafayette the Conference be composed of evan- College, "The Philosophy of Educagelical missionaries exclusively, or shall tion. " others be admitted? 4, If others a.re to be included, would you be unwilling Persons wishing circulars of the Sumto take part? 5. If they are to be ex- mer School and Prohibition Park, or included? 6. Shall our Japanese breth- formation concerning hotel accommoren be invited to participate? 7. If so, dations, etc., should address Mr. C. L. to what extent? Haskell, Superintendent, West New Brighton, Staten Island, N. Y. For in- The Committee earnestly request all· forma~ion about the Institute, address missionaries to give this matter their Mr. C. M. Davis, Secretary, 4 Winthrop careful consideration and to send in Place, New York. t~eir replies as promptly as possible to eIther of the undersigned.
The Ven. Archdeacon WARREN, Ohairman, No.3 Concession. Rev. T. T. ALEXANDER, Secretary, No. 14 Concession. OSAKA, December 22, 1891.
1892.J THE MONTHLY CONCERT OF MISSIONS
IV.-THE MONTHLY CONCERT OF MISSIONS.
BY BEV. J. T. GRACEY, D.D.
Ohinese Miss:ons in British Columbia. ample facilities for preaching services, prayer.meetings, class.meetings, Sun. BY BEV. E. ROBSON. day and week evening schools, all of wh,ich are now much more successful. The Chinese population of British The missionary is aided by a Chinese Columbia is a very uncertain quantity, assistant, two lady teachers for the evenvariously estimated at from 6000 to ing school, an efficient corps of Sunday- 9000. 'Though some .thousands arrive school volunteer workers and !I care. in the course of a year, yet there is not taker, who is a useful Christian worker a rapid increase in the aggregate num· -a native Chinese. Mr. Gardner him. ber, as many leave the province, some self speaks the Chinese, reads and for China and some, by means best writes it with elegance and fluency. known to themselves, make their way into the United States in spite of the The Woman's Missionary Society of exclusion enactment. The Chinese are this saIDe Church has had, for some mostly located in the towns, but during years past, a Refuge Home for Chinese the fishing season are to be found in Girls in Victoria, by means of which considerable numbers at the salmon can· quite a number of these poor creatures, neries scattered throughout the coast some of very tender years, have been districts; while others are engaged in rescued from cruel slavery and present mining, farming, market gardening, and or prospective social degradation and serving as oooks and laundrymen in shame. The inmates of the home are town and country. There are a few under the care of two most excellent merchants and manufacturers of mod. ladies in the employ of the Methodist erate pretensions among them, but the Missionary Society, and are instructed bulk belong to the laboring class. in everything that is calculated to do them good and render their future lives About fourteen years ago efforts were useful and happy. Most of them have put forth by the agents of the Method· given cause to hope that they have been ist Church of Canada, to bring these converted to God. Some have been reo people to the knowledge of the truth; turned to their parents in China, but but the work did not at that time make the larger number have been married to much headway for want of agents con· Chinamen resident in the province. versant with the language. These generally are doing well.
The present work of the Methodist The spiritual results of the Victoria Church of Canada among the Chinese Mission as a whole have been encourag. commenced seven years ago, in Victoria, ing. Numerous conversions have taken the capital of the province, where there place, and a very marked improvement is a resident Chinese popUlation of, say, has been brought about in the com· 3000 during the winter season, and 2000 munity known as the Chinese quarter. during summer. 'fhe Rev. J. Endicott There are 105 communicants in connec· Gardner, who had the honor, assisted tion with the church, and a good at· by others, of inaugurating the work, is tendance upon the various services still the recognized leader of it as agent especially the preaching of the Word. of the Missionary Society of the Methodist Church. For years the work of In Vancouver mission work was begun the mission was carried on in rented in 1887 by the formation of an evening halls, at considerable disadvantage. class for the study of English and relig- There is, however, now a handsome ious instruction. Under the kind and and commodious church, with school earnest labors of Christian ladies (the and class – rooms attached, affording leader being a daughter of the present writer), not one of whom could speak to, been blessed with gratifying success. or read a word of Chinese, there were, Upon invitation of the chaplain Mr. in a few months, eleven Chinese brought Ch'an preaches to the Chinese in the to a saving knowledge of Christ, all of provincial penitentiary, ten of whom whom were publicly baptized after due have given evidence of a change of examination and trial. The mission was heart and life, and have received Chris. reinforced by the arrival, from China, tian baptism at the chaplain's hands. of Mr. Ch'an Sing Kai, who was selected and sent to our aid by the Rev. Dr. The expenditure for land and build. Wenyon, of the Wesleyan Mission at ings at these three stations has been, Fat Shan.' Mr. Ch'an brought his wife including the Rescue Home, nearly and children with him-probably the $24,000, and the amount paid by the first Christian Chinese family in the society for current expenses was, last. Dominion of Canada. The work in Van. year, $4200, exclusive of the Home. couver is now carried on by Liu Yik Are the results satisfactory? Reason. Pang, who had spent three years in the ably so. The Gospel-preached, sung, study of medicine, hospital practice, and personally explained-is put within and evangelistic work in Canton, and is the reach and pressed upon the atten. a man well fitted for and useful in his tion of the Chinese population in the present position. Dr. Liu is assisted three leading towns of the provinCE> by two ladies, who teach the English every Sunday and during every week. classes and give efficient help in all the Many outlying neighborhoods have been services, which are not by any means visited, and the message of salvation confined to the mission premises, but made known. Scores of Chinese men are also regularly conducted on the and several women have been converted street, in the centre of the Chinese quar. to God. Some of these have been the ter and upon the great steamships of means of winning others of their fel. the Canadian Pacific Railway Company low.countrymen to Christ in other parts plying between Vancouver, China, and of the province, and at least several Japan, the crews of which are princi. have gone back to visit their native land pally Chinese. The society has a suit- fully resolved to do all they can, by able building, comprising chapel, school, God's help, for the salvation of their and reading.room and residence for the friends and neighbors there. The inmiSSionary, and, in addition, a number fluence of these missions has done much of pleasant lodging rooms for the Chris. for the Chinese here, and will undoubttian young men who have no homes of edly be felt in the distant Orient. their own, thus obviating the necessity for their spending their evenings and Though the Methodist Church has nights among the demoralizing associa· had the honor of leading in this inter· tions, sights, and sounds of heathen. esting work, other churches are now ism. taking hold tlnd planning for more ex· tended efforts in the future. May God New Westminster also is favored with give an abundant harvest of souls! a Chinese mission, the history of which is very similar to that just described. NEW WESTMINSTER, B. C., March 30th, Mr. Ch'an, now an ordained mission- 1892. ary, is in charge, assisted by lady teachers and volunteer helpers. On the 6th Ohinese Mission in San Francisco. inst. new mission premises were taken possession of, consisting of chapel, BY REV. F. J. MASTERS, D.D. school, and reading-room and residence for missionary-all very complete and Our first convert was baptized in comfortable and well situated. This 1871 ; since then 394 adults have been mission has, like those already referred admitted to church membership. At least 90 per cent of these converts reo main faithful. It must be borne in mind that the effect of the" exclusion" rather, most of them-come from one bill, passed in open violation of treaty, county of the Canton province). Over and the unfriendly local legislation of $1000 have been raised toward this ob. the State Legislature and municipal ject. councils, as well as the daily instances of brutal ill·treatment at the hands of One of our members, Mr. Lum Foon, white ·people, tend to alienate the Chi. lately gave up a splendid business in nese, and to make them sullen and bit· San Francisco, and has gone to China ter. Then we are working among a com· at his own expense as a self.supporting munity of young men, of whom only mIsslOnary. He has bought land and one per cent are married or have their erected a fine chapel and school, with wiveR with them. prophets' chamber .for the missionary, all at his own expense. There he We have branches of our mission in preaches the Gospel and teaches a day Oakland, San Jose, and Sacramento, school. He has already been greatly where young men are gathered in for blessed in his labors. Scores have been religious and secular instruction. As converted, and he is known throughout most of the Chinese are anxious to learn the district as "the Jesus man," and the English language, numbers have his premises as " the Jesus house… come to our school to learn to read and write, and have there been brought Liberality.-During the six years I have under religious influences that have left been here our Chinese members and an impress that will never be effaced. scholars who, according to San Fran. Of the 5000 scholars who have passed cisco newspapers, are so base, sordid, through our schools, hundreds who have and unsalvable, have contributed $2650 not had the courage to confeRs Christ to the funds of the missionary society. before men have, in theory at least, ac· Besides this they have come up to their cepted the great doctrines of the Bible, apportionment in benevolences, and and have forever broken with idola· have sent $500 to aid in missionary tr.v. work in China. Every year we average $5 per member for missions. The open.air services, in which other missions take a part, are full of interest Steadfastness.-We have received 78 and encouragement. It was an impres. new members during the last three sive scene last Sabbath afternoon to see years, and only three have fallen away. 400 Chinese gathered around our preach. A Chinaman who becomes a Christian is er, the Rev. Chan Hon Fan, to hear the ostracized by his fellow.clansmen even Gospel on the open street. On the very in San Francisco, and cursed as he goes pavement that arew days before had been along the street. reddened with the blood of murder, and under the rooms of a highbinder society, Open-air services in Chinatown are the crowd stood for an hour while this held every Sunday afternoon. About brave young preacher preached on " Re. 30 or 40 Christian Chinamen sing Gos· sist not evil, but whosoe'fer shall smite pel hymns, and the crowd gathers. We thee on the right cheek, turn to him the have kept up these services with unother also," and openly denounced the abated interest for over five years, and murderous societies that had disgraced last Sabbath I preached in Chinese to a their nation and terrorized over China· congregation on the street numbering town. upward of 500. It is astonishing to see the interest and the respect that is Zeal qf Our Members.-We have a shown us, notwithstanding the brutal church of 123 members, and they have treatment theyl'eceive from street hood· just formed a Native Missionary Society lums. What I have said applies to the to employ native itinerant preachers and Chinese missions of other denomina· physicians in their native country. (All tions. The Congregational Chinese the Chinese in San Francisco – or, Church here supports two or three mis· sionaries and doctors in Kwantung. The Japanese in San Franoisoo, and circulated over 3000 tracts each month. These have been prepared REV. M. C. HABBIS, D.D. here, with special reference to the The Japanese community in this city needs. of their people.
and surrounding towns numbers about Many workers now in Japan were con- 2500. This small colony receives addi· verted here, and many more are being tions by every steamer from Japan. raised up to glorify God in Japan, They began to come about fifteen years Weare without a church home. They ago in very small numbers, but latterly live and work in rented buildings, and at the rate of 100 a month. They are have done so for six years. Now they all young men, except a score or two of are trying to buy a lot and build a women, and mostly students, seeking church.
for something from the West to enrich and beautify the far East, their home The Island World. land. Still there are some merchants and laborers among them. Those who Religion in New Zealand.-Census repush out from home into a new and dis- turns recently issued show that there tant country are usually self·reliant, am- are in New Zealand 1197 churches and bitious, and energetic, much above the chapels, being an increase of 134 in five average. years. Two hundred and forty-one school.houses are used for Sabbath ser- For some time this renewing and vices, and 161 dwellings and public strengthening power was confined chief- buildings. These val'ious edifices have ly to church-members, though many sin_ accommodation for 278,114 persons {or ners were being converted all the time. less. than half the popUlation of the About one year ago, however, the breth- colony), and are actually attended by ren, filled with the new wine of the 197,055, or about a third of the popu- Spirit, went forth to testify among the lation. Presbyterians report 40,785 unsaved. They met with startling suc- church-goers; Episcopalians, 37,252; cess, and rejoiced with unspeakable joy. Roman Catholics, 30,525; Wesleyans, Within the past six months more than 27,106; Salvationists, 14,442. There 400 have been hopefully converted. Of are 450 Jews, 200 Free-Thinkers, and this number 188 have been baptized and 3803 of no denomination at all.-Free received into the Church. But few of Church Monthly. these have been converted in the regu- lar preaching services. In private rooms, in class meetings, in the field at work, Rev. Hiram Bingham is at Spring- in the quiet places, the great transac- field, Mass. He went out to the Gilbert tion was done. It is a personal work. Islands as a missionary on the first Two things, the two great facts of the Morning Star in 1856. He brings home Bible. sin and salvation, have been pre- in manuscript a translation in the na- sented and held up to the Japanese, and tive language of the entire Bible, which pressed upon the conscience and the he intends to carry back in book form.
heart. Conviction of sin, and in most Mr. Bingham's father was also a mis- cases intense suffering, followed by sionary, going out to the Sandwich faith in Christ and rapturous delight, Islands in the brig Thaddeus in 1819_ are the usual characteristics of the ra- The son was born at Honolulu in 1831, Tival. and was graduated from Yale in 1853.
The believers carry forward the work Soon afterward he married Clara M.
with great energy, both in the city and, Brewster, of Northampton, daughter of country. They meet and welcome the the late Jonathan Brewster, whom he comers by every vessel. All the clubs persuaded to accompany him to the Gil- nnd lodging houses are regularly visit- bert Islands.
ed. For months past they have printed Soon after their arrival on the island of Apalang their first child was born monthly mail steamers plying between Il.nd died, for there was no physician Sydney and Fiji. This is a great im- nearer than 1000 miles. While Mrs. provement on the old arrangement. Bingham was ill, one of the most thrill- The Dayspring often took several days ing experiences of his life came. The to do what is now done in a few hours. king rushed into his house one day, and It several times took three days to do seizing his spy-glass, looked over toward forty miles, and what is now accom- Tarawa, the nearest island, whose palm- plished in a night was often formerly tree tops were just visible. He soon accomplished with difficulty in a week. dropped the glass and ran. In a short This change enables the missionaries to time hundreds of warriors rallied about be present at the annual meeting of the house, and about 100 war canoes Synod without being more than a month :filled with hostile Tarawas approached absent from tbeir stations, instead of for battle. The boats seemed to single three or even four, as formerly. It also out the conspicuous cottage, and made enables the missionaries more easily to straight for it, so that Mr. Bingham help one another in times of sickness, fully expected to be in the centre of the or to take a change to another island battle. He barricaded his house and when required. It enables the native prepared for the worst, being especially teachers to move about from island to distressed concerning his sick wife. island, and promises to make the whole But just before they reached land the group of islands much more accessible war oanoes tacked and headed up the to mission work. The little steamer is coast. The army of savages followed a great favorite, and is known among with a yell, and the battle was fought the islanders, like the Dayspring before about five miles away. The Tarawas it, as the missionary or Christian ship. were routed and the Apaiangs victorious, It is also called the sacred ship, as set although the Apaiang king was killed apart for God's work, and sometimes and the prince terribly wounded. The the good ship, as those on board do young man was nursed in the cottage, nothing but good to the natives. and became a firm friend to the missionaries.
Recently a Chinese convert, of San Within fifteen years from the entrance Fra~cisco, who refused to reveal his of the missionaries on Aneityum, New name to Rev. Dr. Masters, handed him a Hebrides, the entire population em- little package, directing him to expend braced Christianity. A similar change the amount in securing a native China· has taken place on several other islands. man to preach the Gospel in China. It The missionary ship has been an im- embraced nearly all of his earthly posportant factor in this work. In 1862 the sessions. The package contained $100 first Dayspring was built, and did good in gold coin. service for about ten years. It was wrecked in Aneityum harbor by a fear- Sm NEWS FROM THE NEW HEBRIDES.- ful hurricane, which visited the islands Mrs. Lawrie, of Aneityum, had a sunin 1872. A second Dayspring having stroke, and her mind has become serio been procured and the money raised, it ously affected. She is quite helpless, continued to serve the mission till 1890, and requires the constant watchfulness when it was found necessary to intro- of her husband. Mr. Lawrie has taken duce steam power. The sailing schooner her to Sydney, where, by medical ad. Dayspring could only visit the islands vice, she has been placed in the con. twice a year, but now a little steamer, valescent ward of the asylum. Truganini, sails every month between The wife of the Rev. T. W. Leggatt, the islands. Its headquarters are of the Victoria Mission, died while tem- Aneityum, and there it meets the porarily insane. A young Englishman, Mr. Sawer, who instance for a writ of habeas corpus by had been only two days married to a a Chinese person seeking to Jive in the lady who went out to become his wife, United States, to whom tbat privilege was killed by cannibals. They shot has been dellied, no bail shall be al. lowed, and such application shall be him through the heart, and murdered heard and determined promptly, with.
and feasted on the bodies of two natives out unnecessary delay, SECTION 6. And it shall be the duty of who were with him. His body was reo all Chinese laborers within the limits of covered and brought to Tungoa by the the United States at the time of the Rev. Mr. Annand. The sympathy and passage of this Act, and who are entitled prayers of friends of the New Hebrides to remain in the United States, to apply Mission will not be lacking to the be. to the Collector of Internal RevE-nue for their respective districts, within one reaved survivors.-Free Church of &01- year after the passage of this Act, for a land Monthly. certificate of residence; and any Chi.
nese laborer within the limits of the United States who'shall neglect, fail, or GOVERNMENT MONEY AND :MISSIONS.- refuse to comply with the provisions of The .1!lcaminer says: "A resolution was this Act, or who, after one year from unanimously passed by the Methodist the passage thereof, shall be found within the jurisdiction of the United Episcopal General Conference that the States without such certificate of resi- Church should hereafter' decline either , dence, shall be deemed and adjudged to make a petition to or to receive from to be unlawfully within the United the national Government any moneys States, and may be arrested by any United States customs officer, Collector for educational work among the Ind. of Internal Revenue or his deputies, ians.' In the arguments for this action, United States Marshal or his deputies, telling appeal was made to the example and taken before a United States Judge, of the Baptists, 'the only evangelical whose duty it shall be to order that he be deported from the United States as denomination in this country,' said Dr. hereinbefore provided, unless he shall J. M. King, ' who have never consented establish clearly to the satisfaction of to take one dollar from the Government said Judge that by reason of accident, for education.' We should, perhaps, sickness, or other unavoidable cause, he better deserve praise for our consistency had been unable to procure his certifiin this respect if we had done as much cate, and to the satisfaction of the Court and by at least one credible white wit.
in the cause of Indian education as our ness, that he was a resident of the Unit.
friends of other communions, but we ed States at the time of the passage of this Act, and if upon the hearing it shall rejoice that the powerful Methodist in- appear that he is so entitled to a certifi.
fluence is henceforth to be thrown in cate, it shall be granted upon his pay· the right scale." ing the cost. Should it appear that said Chinaman had procured a certifi.
The" Chinese Exclusion Bill. cate, which has been lost or destroyed, he shall be detained and judgment sus· The sections of the Chinese Exclusion pended a reasonable time to allow him to procure a duplicate from the officer Bill against which Senator Sherman and granting it, and in such cases the ,cost others most rigorously protested-pro. of said arrest and trial shall be in the tested, we may say, in representation of discretion of the Court. And any Chi.
the judgment of many millions of the nese person other than a Chinese lllbor. er having a right to be and remain in people of our country-we herewith reo the United States desiring such ce;tifi. produce, in the faint hope that after cate as evidence of such right, may ap.
November next the United States Con. ply for and receive the same without gress may be in a better judicial mind charge.
to weigh the arguments and recognize A Chinese clergyman was asked.how the indignation against them. They many clergy he thought there were in are: England, "Perhaps 1500," he said. When he heard that there were 24,000, SECTION 5. That after the passage of "Can you not," he asked, "spare 100,0 this Act, on an application to any Judge for China?" or Court of the United States in the first
GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE
V.-GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE.
Organized Missionary Work and Statistics. Edited by .Rev. D. L. Leonard, Bellevue, O.
THE WORLD AT LARGE. workers, and expend annually not less -11'1:. Ravenstein has published in the than $7,500,000." Prooeedings of the London Geographical It is certainly within bounds to say Society his calculations about the time that the Protestant churches of Ameri.
that it will take to fill the world with ca, Great Britain and Europe are repreall the people it will hold. The pres· sented in their work for other lands by ent population of the globe is supposed 9000 missionaries and more than 50,000 to be about 1,467,000,000 ; and he esti. native workers, and have expended durmates that the maximum of the inhabi. ing the past year about $12,500,000. tal,lts that can be sustained on the en· But this is not all. During the past tire land surface of the earth is 5,994,- half century a considerable proportion 000,000, and that this figure will be of the annual expenditure of these soreached A.D. 2072, or in about 180 years, cieties has been in the form of investat the present ratio of increase, which' ments in churches, schools and colleges, dwelling-houses, printing-presses, bindis eight per cent per decade. eries, manufactur!>d volumes of Scrip- How Muoh and How Little.-Says the In- tures, educational and religious books dependent: "There are to-day in the Unit- -pretty nearly all the machinery and ed States, including Bible, tract, and apparatus of modern aggressive Chrismedical societies, 51 Protestant general tianity. The total of this investment societies or boards, engaged either ex- has never been even estimated, but clusively or partially in the work of for- could it be done it would open our eyes eign missions. There are also 30 wom- as never before to the tremendous force an's boards, which work through the that the churches have put and are putgeneral boards of the denominations ting into the work of foreign missions. they represent; and an uncertain num- ber, not less than 10, probably not more -The cost of the McAl! Mission in than 20, of individual enterprises, in- France last year was $89,563, of which cluding the various faith missions, so- $33,910 came from the United States, called-the Plymouth Brethren, the $37,671 from EnglanJ and Scotland, and Pentecost Bands of the Free Methodist $13,340 from France and other coun. Churches, and the Pioneer Soudan Mis- tries.
sion. These all employ in the field not THE UNITED STATES. far from 3000 missionaries (male and female) and about 11,000 native agents ; -Mr. Moody's Bible Training Insti.
and at home a force of officials, includ- tute is represented on the foreign field ing secretaries and clerks, of which by 24 workers, among the North Ameri.
tl<ere i8 DO published record, but which can Indians by 4. while 19 are engaged cannot fall short of 1000; and they ex- in work in Chicago itself. The foreign pend annually in the whole work an workers are in Africa, India, China, amount not less than $5,000,000. In Japan, Turkey, Persia and South and Great Britain, Germany, France, Scan- Central America. The officers of the dinavia, etc., there are about 130 regu- Institute can locate 37 men and 9 wom- larly organized independent societies, en who are engaged in evangelistic 30 woman's boards, and perhaps 30 in- work; 31 men are engaged in pastoral dividual enterprises. These are repre- work, including many ministers who sented on the field by nearly if not quite came for further study, and 29 men are 6000 missionaries and 40,000 native now in other schools and colleges. City mission work emJ!!loys 9 men and sides other institutions, educational, 10 women; 5 men are engaged in Sun- theological, and industrial. In the day.school missions, 2 men in home Indian work aa:e 76 schools, against 51 missions, 7 women in church visitation, schools three years ago, and 87 churches.
7 men in Young Men's Christian Asso- -The" American Baptist Year-Book," ciation work, 2 women in Young Wom- which is just out, shows II total memen's Christian Association work; 18 bership of 3,269,806, an increase over men and 2 women are teachers, 5 wOmen the last year of 105,579. The number have positions in charitable institu. reported as baptized has risen from tions, and 8 are now wives of minis· 140,058 in 1890 to 160,247 in 1891 ; the ters ; 5 men and 1 woman are singing total contributions were $11,886,558, evangelists. only a slight increase on those for the Fbr the Freedmen.-Beginning in the previous year, which were $11,215,579.
dark days that followed the war, with The endowment of the seven theological 15 pupils, sheltered in the rude bar- seminaries has risen from $2,000,088 to racks bequeathed by the" Freedman's $2,259,346, and the total value of the Bureau," Hampton now houses and property from $2,992,728 to $3,269,723 ; teaches 960 students in a settlement of the college endowments, not including fitting and permanent dormitories, the University of Chicago, have risen school.rooms, and workshops. It has from $6,097,270 to $9,784,526, and the sent out 723 graduates. almost all" of total value of property from $11,074,327 Whom are teaching their own people. to $16,037,133.
At Hampton and III the various off. -The American Baptist Missionary shoots of Hampton 120,000 pupils have Union closed its financial year March been taught. not only the contents of 31st. The total receipts for current books, not only industrial knowledge, work for the year were $569,172.93 as but the elements of manhood and wom- against $472,174.21 for the preceding anhood. And from these 120,000 pu- year. The Society commenced the year pils has been drawn a body of 2000 with II debt of $61,593.94, and has 'made teachers. Its plant has cost $550,000, during the year appropriations which, free from debt, the gift of friends. The with the debt, amount to $635,927.24. school requires an income of $100,000 Thus, notwithstanding the advance of a year. Of this sum $40,000 is annually nearly $100,000 in receipts, the new year assured from regular sourcef'. The re- commences with a debt of $66,754.31. maining $60,000 General Armstrong has raised year after year, from churches, -The Rev. Dr. Hitchcock, District Sunday-schools, and private individ- Secretary of the American Board at uals. From $25,000 to $30,000 of this Chicago, has proposed a plan by which sum is contributed in annual $70 schol- the young people shall take care of the arships, each of which pays the ex- young missionaries. An annual fund penses of one pupil for one year, in the of $25,000 is to be raised in the Chrisacademic department. But more of tian Endeavor Societies and Sunday. these scholarships are needed. The schools in the form of 1000 shares of permanent endowment fund, which is stock at $25 each. The missionaries slowly growing, should be at least supported by it are to be young mis- $500,000, and will have reached the sionaries of three years' service or less, sum of $300.000 at the end of this year. and not otherwise supported.
-The American Missionary Associa- -The Roman Catholic Mission among tion (Congregational) in July of 1890 es- the colored people and the Iudians re- tablished a mission in Alaska. It is ports $361,000 r.eceived during the last situated on Cape Prince of Wales, the five years. There are now 115 colored extreme western point of the North schools. against 98 two years ago, be- American Continent, only 46 miles from East Cape Siberia, about 1000 miles $16,870,000 to unsectarian societies. north of Sitka, some 3000 miles north The amount contributed through soci- of San Francisco, and just south of the eties of the Established Church of Eng. Arctic Circle. The importance of this land was about $46,100,000; through station is seen in the fact that it is the societies of the Establishecl Church of largest Eskimo settlement in Alaska, and Scotland, $3,018,000 ; through Protestant the third largest native settlement of any Non-conformist societies in England and kind. And the school is already much Wales, $32,600,000, and through Presby- the largest in Alaska. For the first terian Nonconformist societies in Scot. school year the total enrolment was land and Ireland, about $13,000,000. 301 ; the average daily attendance for He claims th us that the societies of the the whole nine months, 109; for the two Established Churches of England last five months, 156. and Scotland contributed at least $3,160,000 more than the societies of -The Missionary Society of the all the other Protestant denominations Methodist Episcopal Church has in its of the British Isles put together. From foreign missions the following members his twenty years' study of the subject, and probationers: In heathen lands, he states his belief that of the ~16,870,- 45.745 ; in Protestant lands (in Europe), 000 contributed to joint societies of 41,413 ; in Roman Catholic lands, 5967 ; Churchmen and Nonconformists during in Greek Church lands (Bulgaria), 171 ; the past twenty years, at least $10,000,- a total of 93,296. In 1891 there were 000 was contributed by members of the expended from the regular appropria. Established Church of England. tions for these missions: In heathen lands, $315,627.50; in Protestant lands, – The Church Missionary Society's $93,380.19 ; in Roman Catholic lands, income has exceeded that of the pre- $147,655.83; in Greek Church lands, vious year, but the expenditure is great. $17,539.28 ; a total of $574,202.80. er, so that there will be a deficit of something like $20,000. The total reo -At the annual meeting of the Gen. ceipts have been about $1.157,645, of eral Executive Committee of the Wom· which $807,880 wer", received from aSb,)- an's Foreign Missionary Society of the ciations, $98,165 from special gifts, Methodist Episcopal Church, held in $146,495 from legacies, and $105,105 Kansas City, Mo., receipts were re- from other sources. The expenditure ported of $263,660.69, being an advance or the coming year is estimated at over those of last yeer of $43,330.73. $1,177,700. The estimates for the coming year were announced as $368,000. -The London Missionary Society calls for 4, men more than are at present -'rhe Southern Presbyterian Church available to fill vacancies in the staff in has decid~d to open a mission in Korea, India and China, and for 15 new mis. and two members of the senior class in sionaries, some of them ladies, to com- Union Seminary, Va., have been com- plete the first year's contingent of the missioned to commence it. They will additional 100. The Evangelical' Union sail probably in August. of the Scotland Foreign Misiion Com· mittee calls upon the churches repre. EUROPE. sented by it to ilupply 10 of the required 100 missionaries, aud notes with grati. Great Britain.-Canon Scott Robin. tude that 2 from their number have al· son has estimated that during the last ready been accepted by the Society. twenty years the sum contributed by the British Isles for foreign mission -The Unitad Presbyterians of Scotwork has amounted to $112,790,915. land raised last year, for foreign mis· Of this total about $840,000 was contrib. sions, £41,602, and for home missions, uted to Roman Catholic societies and £17,725. Their foreign work is being carried on in Jamaica, Old Calabar taught. The English Protestants have (West Africa), Rajputana (Central India), 5 schools-1 for boys, 2 for girls, and 2 and Manchuria (Northeast China). It for small children. Then there is II was their mission that suffered most in school for girls, conducted by the Dames the recent riots in Manchuria. Next to de Nazareth, who are Roman Catholic the Moravians, they are said to be the nuns; and, lastly, a school for small most missionary church in the world. children, conducted by the Loonor de St. Joseph. In most of these manual -The British missionary societies training is also a fixed part of the currichave 139 physicians engaged in mission ulum. There are a number of charitaworks, of whom 13 are ladies. ble institutions, such as the Syrian Protestant Orphanage for girls, con- Sweden.-The Swedish Missionary trolled by the Presbyterians; the Aus- Society is actively at work among the trian Hospital, and the Hospital of the Laplanders. They have an orphanage Scotch Mission. at Ange, and 6 mission schools in other parts of Lapland, in which 173 children India.-Says Professor J. R. Seeley: have received instruction. The king " As time passes, it appears that we are granted them 2000 crowns; but during in the hands of a Providence which is the past year their expenses were 1500 greater than all statesmanship; that crowns in excess of their receipts. this fabric so blindly piled up has a chance of becoming a part of the perma- ASIA. nent edifice of civilization, and that the Indian achievement of England, as it is Palestine.-Selah Merrill, United the strangest, may after all turn out to States Oonsul in Jerusalem, says that be the greatest of all her achievements." the effort to colonize the country with Jews has been a signal failure in spite -Some idea of England's grave reof the generous encouragement given by sponsibility in India may be gathered such capitalist:> as the Rothschilds. The from the latest reports of the popula- Jewish immigration is only sufficient to tion of that country and its rapid inmake the number of Jews at Jaffa 2700 ; crease. In 1881 the popUlation was Ramleh, 166; Jerusalem. 25,322 ; 257,000,000 ; in 1891 it was 288,000,000, Hebron, 1200; Nablous, 99; Taba- showing an increase in a single decade reeyeh, 2900; Safed, 6126; Acre, 200 ; almost equal to that of the whole popu- Haifa, 1640, or a total of 40,353. The lation of England and Wales. Of these, agricultural families added to this will 207,000,000 are Hindus, 57,000,000 are make a total of about 42,000-less than Mohammedans, 7,000,000 are Budhalf the number of Jews that live in dhists, while as yet only 2,284,196 can New York City. be spoken of as in any sense Christians. The increase of population in ten years -Nazareth has a population of 7419. is equal to thirteen times the number The Latin Christians have 4 churches of those who" can be spoken of as in or chapels; the Maronites, 1; the Or- any sense Christians." thodox Greeks, 4; the synagogue in which Christ is claimed to have taught The Host oj Hindus.-It is said that so is now in the hands of the United many are the millions, that if all should Greeks; the Protestants have 1 church; take hold of hands the line would reach the Moslems, 5 mosques. Then there three times around the equator; that are 7 cloisters. The Moslems have 1 there are women enough to form a collarge school, recently erected; the Or- umn, sixteen abreast, reaching across thodox Greeks have 3 schools, all taught this continent from New York to San by Russians, and only 1 for girls; the Francisco; such a host, that if each Latins have 2 large schools, in 1 of one should pick up a pinch of dirt and which several European languages are cast it upon the 100,000 Englishmen who rule them, they would be buried the people is fetichism of the lowest under two feet of Indian soil! The grade. The whole of the Congo Valley land contains 25,000,000 widows, with is now freely open to missionary operaall the woe unepeakable that word rep- tions. In this vast region the American resents. Baptists have established 10 stations.
-In the Telugu Baptist Mission, in On Lake Nyassa.-Dr. Lowe reports India, during 1891 there were about the baptism, on September 13th, of 10 8000 baptisms. There are now 60,057 men and boys and 2 women, and on Baptist members in the Telugu Mission September 20th of 17 men and boys.
in 75 churches. On this last Sabbath, 64 communicants, China.-The needs.-Says a mission. including 6 Europeans, sat together at ary : "Turn to your arithmetic and see the Lord's table. From the north end bow long it will take the 1270 missiona- of the lake we learn that Dr. Cross and ries in China to reach the 400,000,000 Mr. Aitken have selected a new station, heathen, if they use the personal meth- which they think will, in the course of od. And really, nearly all the converts years, be one of the finest places in all in China are made in this way. Sup- Africa. It is in the Uwandala country, pose you seek the aid of every Chinese at an altitude of about 6000 feet, well Christian, and then you would not have watered, free from marshes, with plenty a force of 50,000. Let.these 50,000 visit of good clay and rock lime. The letter each one person a day and talk to him speaks of a valley in which there are two hours, and let them labor in this five miles of gardens.
way for 365 days in the year, and only -The Government census of Basuto- 18,250,000 persons would be reached in land shows that the people have in- one year. At this rate, it will require creased one third during the last sixteen more than twenty years for every person years, thus illustrating the great vitality in China to hear the Gospel once. But of the African races. Tlie nnmber of is one hearing sufficient? Go and adult Christians connected with the preach the Gospel to the Chinese, and French stations of the Paris Evangelical you will find that it requires days and Society in that section is 9662, or about weeks of teaching before they really one eleventh of the whole adult popula- know what the nature of the Gospel is. tion. The mission has 13 stations and And the native Christians of China can- 116 places of worship.
not yet be relied upon for this work."
-There are 109 medical missionaries AUSTRALIA.
in China, of whom 38 are women; and of -Societies of Christian Endeavor are these last, 36 are Americans. In all but only at their beginning, but already four of the provinces medical missions number 223, and are rapidly increasbave been established. ing. 'l'hey are divided among the va- -Miss Madden bas travelled 2000 rious sections as follows: about 53 miles on horseback on her mission for societies in South Australia, 6 in Tas- the lepers of Siberia. She has secured mania, 5 in New Zealand, 20 in New $5000 for a hospital. South Wales, 13 in Queensland, 1 in AFRICA. Western Australia, and in Victoria 125, ~ith an aggregate membership of over –The Congo Valley contains 1,300,000 4000 members.
square miles, or one tenth of Africa, -The Roman Catholic mission among and an estimated population of 39,000,- the Dyaks of North Borneo has now 8 000. From above the Livingstone Falls stations with 600 Christians. There are it is easily accessible to commerce and 14 priests, 2 brothers and 9 Franciscan civilization. The religious condition of sisters. The sisters have 2 convents where they instruct the girls and small From the annual review of the progboys. One of the missionaries-the ress of education in India the figures Rev. Thomas Jackson-is if this coun- are highly encouraging as a whole. The try seeking to arouse interest in the public and private institutions for in. mission. struction increased from 134,710 to 138,054, but the increase was wholly in Bntlsh Foreign Missions. By Rev. James public institutions, those under private Johnston, Bolton, England. management having decreased from 40,547 to 38,279. The number of pupils The Niger Mission.-At a meeting has risen from 3,626,390 to 3,682,707, of the Correspondence Committee of the and the scholars who study English are Church Missionary Society on April 5th returned at 353,515. Young India's rethe question of a successor to the late ligions and races are thus represented Bishop Crowther was introduced. Arch- scholastically: Of Hindus, 2,512,916, or deacon Hamilton and the Rev. W. Allan, 68.24 per cent; of Mohammedans, 836,. who went out to Africa last year as a 389, or 22.71 per cent; of Europeans deputation from the Society (to whom and Eurasians, 25,568, or 0.69 per cent; l'eference was made in the March issue of native Christians, 86,314, or 2.34 per of the REVIEW), presented their report. cent ; and of "miscellaneous races and After a long discussion the matter was religions," 221,520, or 6.02 per cent. referred to the General Committee. The Government of India, in speaking Whether an Englishman or a native of the results as "generally satisfac. should be recommended for appoint. tory," regrets that municipal bodies do ment is causing much division of opin- not contribute more liberally to educa.· ion. Some of the members are strong- tional institutions. Possibly when Inly in favor of a black man, and, were dia's "dumb millions" are permitted this desire to prevail, one of the most to have a greater share in moulding the likely of the native clergy to be selected national policy on which their interests would be the Rev. Isaac OIuwole, a essentially depend, a more generous regraduate of Durham University. The sponse will be made in this direction. general feeling appears to favor an English bishop with a native assistant at a Wesleyan Foreign Missions Relater date. port.-With a comparatively small sum annually contributed, the Society was Education in India.-The endeavor sustaining a vast missionary system of the National Indian Association to represented by 338 missionaries, and promote female education in British 2163 paid agents besides-interpreters, India is bearing remarkable fruit. In catechists, day school officers-as well aid to girls' schools, scholarships for as a staff of 4234 unpaid a.gents. The promising students. facilities for the missionary stations number 363, with training of native teachers, and similar 1572 places of worship. The mission advantages, the special movement of church membership was 34,722, with two years ago is commending itself both 5250 on trial, and the number of schol. to native and officiai support. English ars in mission schools, 65,803. In France women graduates are being earnestlyre- and Germany the work, both among the quested to go out to India. Special people of those countries and the Engcongratulations are offered regarding the lish, had been fruitful and cheering. success attending the effort to train Ind- By the action of the governing powers ian widows as teachers in native schools. in Vienna operations there had been The marriage of Indian girls at an early seriously hindered. From Italy good age stops any supply of young unmar- reports came, and in Spain the staff had ried teachers, but the system which cre- been re-enforced. To the Wesleyan solates the difficulty provides the remedy diers stationed at Cairo constant spirin t,he very large body of young widows. itnal ministrations were given. If the crease had reached the remarkable rate Society were to take its place as one of of 250 per cent;" and then he adds, the leading missionary societies of South " The growth of Christianity in India Central Africa, this vast field, reaching has been a solid fact, and sufficiently to the Mashonaland border must reo rapid to give all needful encouragement ceive a far larger share of help than was to the supporters of missions."
at present granted t-: it. The mission- Dr. Harry Guinness.-After a year's ary staff in India needed immediate absence in Africa, in perilous journey. reinforcement. In the Madras district ings to the heart of Congoland, where alone 300 new converts had been re- he was smitt{)n by serious fevers, this ceived during the year; and in the heroic servant of God has safely reached Hyderabad district the number on trial English shores. He reports that in the had risen from 448 to 795 in addition to Upper Congo regions, where he was 482 baptisms. In China there was great often in imminent danger of death at hope )f opening up the province of the hands of the N'Gombe savages, the Hunan, with its 22,000,000 heathen. spiritual work at the Balolo stations, London Missionary Society.-From both in the cataract region and in the all sources the income of this society is depth of the continent throughout Ba.
£11,000 more this year than it was lololand, is making steady and most twelve months ago. The recent self-de- surprising progress. At the Missionary nial contributions amounted to £5375. Training Institute, London, for whose At a meeting of the directors the follow- support and management Dr. Guinness ing were accepted for service in the for- is responsible, there are nearly 150 mis.
eign mission field: Rev. R. J. Ward, St. sionary students, men and women, Helen's; Mr. W. J. Edmonds, Hackney under his care. For the maintenance College; Mr. T. W. Ingram, Cheshunt and equipment of these future missiona- College; Mr. R. C. Porter, Nottingham ries a sum of £300 is needed every week Institute, and Miss Mary Harris. The decision of the first-named gentleman FALLEN STANDARD.BEARERS.
-Mr. Ward-to go abroad has caused Rev. James Calvert.-By the demuch surprise and admiration among cease of this eminent man at Hastings, English Congregationalists. He is one on Mar~h 9th, at the age of seventy. of the most honored and successful of nine, British Wesleyanism has 10Rt a Lancashire ministers, whose career at conspicuous missionary figure. Trained home has always been marked by a spirit at Hoxton College, he was sent out, in of self·sacrificing devotion. A prayerful company with the late John Hunt, to study of the call of the millions in dark- labor in Fiji; and, nobly aided by his ness has constrained him to take up the heroic wife, he toiled for eighteen years cross very literally in order that he may among cannibals. He succeeded in share the joy of reaping on India's winning over King Thakomban to the white fields. Christian faith, whose influence after- Welsh Calvinistic Methodist Ind- ward was a powerful factor in the Chris· ian Mission.-An eloquent testimony tianization of the people. Returning to to the success of this work has just been England for five years, Mr. Calvert borne by Sir Charles Elliott, Lieutenant· superintended the translation of the Governor of Bengal. While the general Scriptures into the Fijian language, and popUlation of India increased from afterward sailed again for Fiji. In 1866 1872-81 by 8 per cent, and Christians he again arrived in England, and in 1872 by 30 per cent, yet he says, .. In the was sent to South Africa, where for Khasia Hills, where a devoted band of eight years he rendered invaluable ser- Welsh missionaries-with whom I am vice throughout the diamond fields and well acquainted-is at work, the in- other parts of the colony. In 1882 he lost his honored partner, who with him· Brooke at rest March 5th-black water had spent nearly thirty years in active fever." His demise adds another to'
mission service abroad. . When in 1885 that swiftly lengthening list of English- the jubilee of missions was celebrated men who have died in attempting to in Fiji, he went out by general request, evangelize Africa. Born twenty-seven visiting Australasia and the South Sea years ago, he was the son of Lieutenant- Islands, and was everywhere received Colonel Brooke, of Redhill. For some with great joy and affection. Since his years he had been passionately interest- final return to England he had been ed in the salvation of the Dark Conti- diligently employed in translation nent, and had tried to enter the Soudan work, in revising the Fijian Bible, and from the Co~go and Morocco before he in various ways aiding the Bible Society joined the staff of the Church Mission- and the cause of foreign missions. ary Society as an honorary member in Rev. Percy E. Comber.-The death 1890. Mr. Brooke had clearly defined of this young and intrepid missionary ideas about missionary methods, and from the terrible African fever termi- the courage to put them into execution. nates a pathetic episode in the story of It was his conviction that by adopting the Congo mission. Surviving his native habits of life and dress he could youthful wife only some twelve months, remove the antipathy of natives to Euro· he himself forms the last of a noble, self- peans, which had done so much to hin- sacrificing family, three brothers, one der the work on the upper waters of the sister, and two wives-six in all-who Niger. He tried his experiment, and 'have found graves, sacred indeed, be- with admitted success. It is said that neath the palms. Such an example of of late French movements had stirred a family's consecration to the claims of Mohammedan feeling to a dangerous missions has probably no parallel in the pitch, and consequently it was feared annals of the history of the Church of that Lokoja, Mr. Brooke's station, might Christ. .Finis coronat opus-the end become untenable for Europeans. Send· crowns the work. ing away the ladies of the party, he himself stayed at his post, and shortly Rev. Joseph J ohnston.-Intelligence afterward died. has been received of the death at Fremantle, Western Australia, of this Mr. J. H. Redman.-News has been worthy in his seventy.eighth year. Mr. received at the Church Missionary Johnston was appointed to Tahiti as a House, London, of the death of this normal schoolmaster, and was one of missionary, another victim to the clithe band of missionaries who sailed in mate of East Africa. Toward the close 1838 for the South Seas with Rev. John of last year he sailed with Bishop Tuck- Williams. In Tahiti Mr. Johnson con· er, and it is presumed that he ~as actinued to labor, with the exception of a companying the bishop up country, as few months, until the close of 1849, and it is stated that he died at SaadanL on resigning his connection with the Monthly Bulletin, society, accepted the pastorate of the church at Fremantle. -The first subscription for mission Mr. Graham Wilmot Brooke.- purposes in modem days was made by Great sorrow will be felt throughout Sir Walter Raleigh in 1589, when he the missionary world that the beloved gave £100 to the merchants to whom he and devoted leader of the mission on resigned the Virginia patent, ., in spethe Upper Niger has been taken" home" cial regard and zeal of planting the by the Lord of all service. The tele- Christian religion in those barbarous gram received from Brass, West Africa, places."
on March 19th, by the Church Mission- -Some one wrote Chaplain McCabe, ary Society, briefly read: "Wilmot asking him to take stock in a silver mine which was to be worked in the interest of duced seven languages to writing, and missions and church extension. His re- have done a large evangelistic work.
ply was as follows: "We have two mines The Dutch Reformed Church mission- already:, which we are working with great aries now work with this mission.
success. One of them is ' self·denial, ' Thirty.six chiefs have each offered to situated in the valley of Humiliation; provide a home and food for as many the other is • consecration,' which is en- European missionaries if they will come tered on the heavenly side of the book and reside with them.
Peniel. These are glorious mines! -Missionaries of the Norwegian Mis- Their riches are inexhaustible. There sionary Society have established a leper is enough in them to bring the world to settlement at Autsirabe, in Madagascar, Christ." containing besides 30 cottages, a chapel -The following, from the pen of Mrs. and a hospital. Ninety-eight lepers are Mary Clement Leavitt, who has trav- now at this asylum. A number of them elled much in mission lands, will be have been baptized, and there is a painful reading to not a few-the last church for lepers only.
sentence in particular: "Not more than India.-Among the recent accessions half the British misRionaries are total to the force of evangelists is Mr. James abstainers. It is a cheering sign, how- Monro, C.B., late Chief Commissioner ever, that nearly all young missionaries of Police in London. Mr. Monro for- from the British Isles have adopted this merly held a high position in the civil principle and practice. There is more service of India, and has always been than one British mission station in especially interested in mission work India, where all gray-haired missiona- there, being a member of the Corre- ries, male and female, are regular, daily sponding Committee of the Church drinkers, and every young one is an Missionary Society at Calcutta for many ardent abstainer. In all my journey I years.
have met with but one total abstaining Moslem ConverI8.-The Church Mismissionary from the continent of Eu- sionary Intelliqencer contains a report of rope, and I have heard of only two the conversion of the number of Moothers. Most, if not all, of the conti- hammedans who some months since nental boards send out wine and beer to were baptized at Poona. Among them their missionaries as openly and as free- was a Maulvi, who was said not to have ly as they do other supplies. " his equal in Poona. He has lived in Africa.-Among the centenary con- Arabia eighteen years, made 16 pil- tributions received by the English Bap- grimages 1;0 Mecca, and was for a time tist Missionary Society was one from the interpreter for the English Consul at native Congo church at San Salvador, Jedda. He has been a great student of amounting to £33 148. 3d. (about $165), the Koran, knows Arabic well, and is an forwarded by the deacons of the church, eloquent speaker. All this gives him with a letter thanking the Society for the great influence ove~ his people. He has Gospel, which has done them so much come to abhor Islam, and rejoices in the good. The subscription list contains the light of the Gospel. He has about him names of 45 native men and women, in Poona, as Maulvi, 200 or 300 disci- whose offerings were all in goods, the ples whom he is seeking to bring to largest being" one pig and one piece of Christ.
cloth." -Four methods of giving are prac- -The Livingstonia Mission, founded tised by the Christians of Ceylon, it is by the Free Church of Scotland in 1875, said : first, the tithes of their earnings ; at Dr. Livingston's request has opened second, the setting apart by each of a up for Christian work a field as large as tree, the produce of which is for benevo- Scotland. The missionaries have re- lent purposes; third, an offering of labor; fourth, a handful of rict! from . -An extraordinary turning from every day's meal. idols on the part of the people of Kale· van is reported by Dr. Mackay, from -Steps were taken last fall for open- Formosa. Nearly 500 idolaters cleared ing a new Burman mission station at their houses of idols in his presence, Miubu on the Irrawaddy. It is the and they also gave the missionary, as a residence of a commissioner and the place of worship, a temple built for centre of political influence for the idols. southern sections of Burma, and is also well stationed for access to a large Bur- Japan.-An orphan asylum is being man population. At a school at Bassein established in Tokio, Japan, by a Chrisa " do without" band has been organ- tian teacher, who devotes to it all his ized, with a membership of 100, who own property. It is designed for girls pledge themselves to do without some- under six years of age, that they may be thing every month. In one month 36 trained for Christian service. rupees were realized and given to religious work. "':"'A missionary writes: "There are many very poor people in Tottori, and -About forty years ago Dr. Bradley, there is very little money among the one of the earlier medical missionaries, Christian people here. In Okayama the went to labor in Siam. •• Have you girls pay 60 sen (a sen is 8 mills) per come here with your little chisel of month for tuition, while here they can Christianity to try and uproot our great only afford 30 sen. The teachers here Buddha?" was sneeringly asked of him receive only 8 yen, while in Okayama soon after his arrival by a priest. they receive 12 yen a month. (One yen is 75 cents.) The officers of the girls' Uhina.-An English Church mission- school came in the other day to see if ary in Ningpo says: .. Never have I we could do anything to help them pay heard a missionary address a heathen off a debt of 67 yen. They had been Chinese audience without the opium falling behind recently, and are much question being brought up. Often and troubled about it. One .of the teachoften have I been interrupted by the ers whose pay was 5 yen per month has sneer, • Who brings the opium?' 'Do taken no pay for the past three months, not mention that name again!' in- though he is poor and needs the money, dignantly cried an old Chinese woman but says the school must live for the -an eager listener in the crowd-to the sake of the Christian work here." preacher from whose lips had just fallen the blessed name of Christ. 'Do not New Guinea.-At a meeting of the namention that name again. I hate tive Christians held at Port Moresby re- Jesus; I will not hear another word. centiy, the collection (which was for You foreigners bring opium in one missions) consisted of $37 in money, hand and Jesus in the other! ' " 320 spears, 65 shell armlets, 92 bows, 170 arrows, besides drums, shell neck- -An important statement carrying laces, feathers, and other orpaments, all an equally important confession is made of which have, of course, a marketable by Commander F. M. Barber, of the value as curios. This, as Canon Scott U. S. Steamer Monocacy, the gunboat Holland said, at the meeting of the Uni. maintained on the Yangtse – Kiang. versities' Mission, in a similar case, .. Fourteen years ago," he says, •• I may well remind us of those three kings thought that China was a country where who knelt to offer gold and frankincense even the continued dripping of the and myrrh; for we believe and know water of Christianity would never wear that these offerings of New Guinea are away the stone of heathenism, but now as valuable in the eyes of God as those it is apparent to my unprejudiced mind rich gifts of the kings. that the stone will ultimately be forced bodily from its bed."
The Missionary Review of the World — July 1891
MISSIONARY MONEY-QUALITY AND QUANTITY
MISSIONARY REVIEW OF THE WORLD.
VOL. XIV. No. 7.-Old&ries.–JULY.–VOL. IV. No. 7.-New &ries.
MISSIONARY MONEY-QUALITY AND QUANTITY.
BY REV. A. J. GOJVlON, D.D., BOSTON, MASS.
"Not more men merely, but more man" is the way a thoughtful writer puts it, in speaking of the needs of the field. By this language it was evidently intended to discriminate between quantity and quality in Christian laborers. Has it ever occurred to us to make a similar discrimination in missionary contributions ~ .. Show me the tribute money" is the word of our Lord, as He points to what has been gathered in the boxes. "Whose image and superscription is this r' is His pressing question, as He inspects our gifts. II it enough that we are able to answer, "Cresar's~" In other words, is hard cash the only requirement of our missionary treasuries ~ I contend not. There is money and money; and it is perfectly certain that coins of exactly the same denomination may differ a million per cent in evangelical value, according as they bear only Cresar's image, or with that also the image and superscription of Christ. * More consecrated money~ money which has passed through the mint of prayer and faith and selfdenial for the Lord's sake–is the greatest demand of o~r time. Does any one doubt that the two mites of that" certain poor widow" have brought a perpetual revenue into the Lord's treasury through the centuries, and are still yielding a large income to the Church 1 Christ must have computed the spiritual interest of her gift when He said: "She hath cast in more than they all." In her offering there was sincere and whole-hearted consecration. She gave her all when she might have given a generous proportion-two mites, when she could have done her duty in giving but one. " By the divided state of her purse," says one, "she showed the undivided state of her heart." Her small gift, because representing entire consecration, has been reaping compound interest throughout the centuries, till it has become the greatest of which we know. It is not a bare question of pounds, shillings, and pence, therefore, with which we have to deal in getting funds for missions, but of securing gifts which are quoted at par value in the exchange of heaven. "Oornelius, thy prayers and thine alms are come up for a memorial before God" (Acts 10 : 4). Do we believe that the alms would have come up without the prayers to wing them ~ Gold * "By doing good with his money a man, as it were, stamps the image of God npon it, and makes it pass current for the merchandise of heaven."-Lord Sl!aftesbury. and silver are heavy metals, and the attraction of gravitation is bound to carry them down unless faith and love and consecration shall impart to them a heavenly gravitation. We never have been able to believe that money earned at church fairs, or ecclesiastical raffies, or vestry junketings has any upward tendency. And we are bound to warn those who devise such things for the aid and promotion of foreign missions, that though they raise a large amount thereby, they may fail to be credited with it in the" Book of Remembrance." We have such a growing sense of the importance of sanctified offerings in our missionary treasuries, and such a strong conviction of the tendencies now operating to check this kind of revenue, that we are led to consider some of the conditions of consecrated giving: 1. Gifts for the Lord' s trea.~ury should come from a living hand, and not from a dead hand. Legacies and bequests we gladly receive, as they are sent into our missionary treasuries, and we sincerely thank those who have left them to us. But we are sure, nevertheless, that this is not the best kind of giving. A Christian's obligation is first and before all to his own ·generation. Why, then, should he studiously arrange to bestow his largest contribution upon the generation following 7 Besides, post-mortem gifts lose vastly in that sympathetic value which ill such a precious element in Christian charity. To extend help to lost men from the skeleton fingers of a corpse, when one might have given it from the warm hand of a living compassion, is a vast loss both to giver and receinr. Dr. 'Wayland used to complain of what he called" a long-tailed benevolence." Is it not better to lay hold of our generation with the grasp of a present and living sympathy, than to reach back to it, after we are gone, with the cold touch of a residuary bequest? Moreover, experience shows that the first is the only safe method of giving. By a strange irony of custom we call a man's legacy his" wilL" But, as the history of such instruments goes, it would be truer to say that a legacy is an ingenious contrivance for getting one's will defeated. What humiliating swindles are perpetrated on welilthy Christians by this last-will-and-testament device! We well remember a millionaire to whom we ministered in sickness-an orthodox Christian, who trusted in the blood of Christ, and dreaded, more than anything that coulQ be named in his presence, that Unitarian denial that tramples on the atonement of the Son of God. But he was a bequeather instead of a giver; he made death his administrator; and Esquire Sepulchre so managed the estate that the bulk of it went to further what, during all his life he had most disfellowshipped and dreaded, and to defraud the missionary treasury of what he might and ought to have done for it. We recall another friend of evangelical missions whose large property, since his decease, has lent its entire support to a church of Free Thinkers. Such grotesque perversions of Christian funds must be the theme of infernal laughter among the dark spirits in perdition who are ever plotting to obstruct the work of the Gospel. The only remedy against ail this is for the Christian to be his own executor. In our giving, as in all things else, " God worketh in us both to will and to do;" not to will only, leaving others to undo after we are gone, and to thwart our most cherished intentions. The Christian's calling is to be beneficent rather than benevolent, a well-doer rather than a well- willer. So solemn is the obligation at this point that we desire to enforce it with all the emphasis of entreaty and persuasion which we can command. Whatever men may do, God does not "accept the will for the deed." On the contrary, those who bequeath to Him only the good intentions of their wealth may have to wait in vain and forever on the other side for their alms tf) come up " for a memorial before God." We believe th~t our Lord meant literally what He said when He gave the commandment, " Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth." To deposit our wealth in the safety vaults of this world, and expect the interest thereof to be remitted forward to us after we have entered into heaven is a delusive expectation, though thousands of Christians are aiming to accomplish this by the provisions of their wills. The Lord's requirement is that we lay up for ourselves" treasures in heaven," drawing interest therefrom now, in the joy of implicit obedience, and the peace of a good conscience, assured that when we are called home we shall go to our wealth instead of waiting in vain for it to come to us. We do not affirm that the Christian is forbidden to lay by anything in this world's banks. Here we must interpret Scripture by Scripture; and the solemn admonition of Paul concerning the Christian's duty to "provide for his own, especially for those of his own house," is by common consent taken to refer to a reasonable provision for one's family. But this provision should not be sumptuous if, indeed, we are " strangers and pilgrims on the earth." It should not be such as to secure either luxury or exemption from the necessity of labor for our children who come after us. "Having food and raiment, let lIS therewith be content," says the Scripture. This is the pilgrim's portion; and we may do well to secure this much to the aged or invalid of our families who may be left behind. But beyond this we are clearly forbidden to lay up on earth. "All men cannot receive this saying, save they to whom it is· given. " Blessed are they who can and do receive it, for such make a provision' for themselves and for their children, and children'l! children, of which the prudence of this world knows nothing.
If all disciples of Christ would give while they live, and give according as God has prospered them, what an impulse would be imparted to missionary work throughout the world! Edersheim, in his work upon the ministry of the Jewish temple, dwells upon the rigid requirement of the law that the offerer, in depositing his gift in the treasury of the Lord, mllst bring it " in his hand;" not in his purse, not by proxy-so sacredly personal was the transaction. In like manner, we believe, should Christians give-directly, and from a living palm, and not circuitously, or from dead fingers. To make death our almoner and the distributor of our gifts is a worldly and unsanctified custom, invented, we seriously believe, by Satan. Death's most intimate friend, in order to defraud the Lord of His dues, and to cheat thfl Christian out of his reward. Is it not distinctly stated in Scripture that" we must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ, that everyone may receive the things done in his body according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad ~" (2 Cor. 5 : 10). Why, then, should Christians so industriously plan that their ·best deeds should be done after they get out of the body ~ Is there any promise of recompense for this extra corpus benevolence ¥* "Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost ~" asks Paul. Let your worship of giving be carried on in that temple, then, and not relegated to the narrow house of corruption. "For whether is greater, the gold or the temple that sAnctifieth the gold g" asks Jesus. We press His question concerning the subject now under consideration. If our bodies have been consecrated by the indwell- ing of the Spirit, the wealth which they have earned has thereby been made holy unto the Lord. Then let that wealth be offered up upon the altar of a living heart, and by the agency of a living hand. Let it be personal, and not by proxy. Now, and for meeting the present exigency, le~ us cast our offerings into the treasury of the Lord; for the dying millions of our own day, let us give and give abundantly, singing as we do so, ., The grave cannot praise Thce; death cannot celebrate Thee; the Jiving, the living He shall praise Thee as I do this day."
II. Gifts for the Lord's treasury should have in them the element of selfsacrifice.
The temple of the Holy Ghost, of which we have just spoken-the believer's body-has its worship and its sacrificial offerings as truly as the Jewish temple. To the latter Sl)ripture distinctly refers in the injunction: " But to do good and to communicate, forget not: for with such sacrifices God is well pleased" (Heb. 13 : 16). The worship of giving is here plainly indicated. But there are methods of raising money for missions, very widely in use in our time, whose tendency is to eliminate the element of sacrifice from the gift, and to replace it with the element of luxury. Fairs, concerts, suppers, entertainments, festivals, etc., in which the principle is" somcwhat for something," or "pay your money and get your money's worth"-these are among the means in almost universal use in our churches for securing missionary funds. Cash is cash indeed; but is not a dollar worth more to the Lord when cast directly into His treasury, than when finding its way through the circuitous route of a church restaurant or an ecclesiastical fair ¥ Weare very bold to say it is so. And yet here is a principle of spiritual economics, so fine and far-fetched in the estimation of many Christians, that it needs to be very patiently expounded.
Why, asks a devout Christian housewife, may I not bake a loaf of cake and carry it to the church to be sold as my contribution to foreign missions, .. "We often read in the papers of • munificent bequests.' To my mind it is a phrase that has no meaning at all. I see no munificence in beqneathing your property to charitable purposes when you are gone out of this world, and have not the possibility of longer enjoying it. What I like tIl'e munificent donations."-Lord Shajtesbury. and in this way render just. as acceptable an offering as though I put my money directly into the contribution-box 1 But notice the needless in- direction of the gift. The frosting and flavoring of the loaf are skilfully adjusted to satisfy the taste of the eater, when in the true worship of giving the mind ought to be free to be occupied with God, to whom the gift is brought. The direct giver careth for the things of the Lord that she may renner unto Him an acceptable offering; the indirect giver careth for the things of the world-how flhe may please. her customer. Then when her loaf is sold, he who buys it gives nothing into the missionary treasury, though he mistakenly thinks he does. He simply makes a purchase so sweet to the taste and so satisfying to the palate, that self-sacrifice is com- pletely swallowcd up in self-gratification. Thus the charity, instead of being" twice blessed," has been twice defrauded-once by her who baked, and once by him who bought. It may seem like a fine-drawn objection which we are urging, oh, candid reader; but we must strenuously main- tain, nevertheless, that the widow's mite is worth vastly more to the treas- ury of the Lord than the widow's muffins. In giving, as in everything else, we are to take up our cross and follow Christ. We strongly believe that money sanctified by self-denial and prayer will go farther and buy more in the great missionary transaction than the same amount passed through the Church victualler's clearing-house. Sarah Hosmer worked in a cotton mill, lived in an attic, and prayed in her closet for missions; and when she died the Lowell factory girl rejoic6ld in six missionaries preaching the Gospel among the heathen whom her hard-earned money had pnt into the field. Does it not look as though the God who multiplied the widow's meal and cruse of oil in order to feed a prophet, did likewise with this working-woman's contributions that they should accomplish so much? Would that our churches might study the object-lesson in Christian giving, which the Salvation Army is holding up before them! The poorest of the poor, they have now and then thei~" month of self-denial" in which, by stinting their narrow living, they are enabled to put their fifty thousand dollars at a time into their missionary treasury. If for one year the icecream suppers and strawberrl festivals, which so abound in our churches, conld he abolished, and the aggregate of time bestowed thereon put into a month of self-denial, we question not that there would be an inpouring of sanctified offerings of which we have yet known nothing.
If we must speak thus of our luxurious methods of giving, what shall be said of our luxurious manner of spending 1 Leave out of the question now personal and family extravagance, and consider simply that of the Church. We have, on inquiry, found repeated instances of congregations spending five times the amount on quartet choirs which they give to missions. Commenting on this fact, not long since, in a missionary address in a large city, and giving instances of the extravagant cost of artistic choirs, a gentleman said to ns at the close: "You have understated it, sir; our church papl twenty-fiOe hundred dollars per annum for a single singer." On further inquiry it appeared that the same church gave less than three hundred dollars that year for foreign missions. Upon a recent Easter Sun- day it was estimated that the churches of New York expended one hundred thousand dollars on floral decorations for their sanctuaries. And all this in the face of a perishing world, with its thousand millions who have not yet heard the glad tidings that Christ is risen from the dead; and in sound of the cry which comes up from the fainting laborers on every missionary field for immediate reinforcements, and the reinforcements not sent for lack of money to support them. Worship, is this? We have an altar and a sanctuary. "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you q" writes the Apostle to the Church of Christ. But what are the sacrifices prescribed for this temple q "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye preseut your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is yonr reasonable service." Does this seem to enjoin the sweet odors of rose, heliotrope, and lily, floral displays of wreaths and crosses, and garlands procured at extravagant cost to minister to our carnal senses? As for the ecclesiastical mnsic, hear the Scripture again: "By Him, therefore, let us offer the 8ftcrifice ofpraise to God, continnally-that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to His name." Can the sacrifice of praise be interpreted to mean costly musical delicacies, dainties of song and sound iu which art has the first place and the thought of what is pleasing to God the lastl? We trow not. On the contrary, if it be true -as wise commentators suppose to be implied in 1 Cor. 11 : lO-that the angels are invisible spectators to the worship of the Church, we are constrained to wonder how they must be impressed by our sanctuary self-indulgences. Can we not easily imagine them shutting their ears to these voluptuous strains of sacred song, and holding their noses at these sickening odors of Easter flowers, and eagerly searching through the whole elaborate scene for the coveted opportunity of rejoicing" over one sinner that repenteth more than over ninety-and-niue just persons that need no repentance ?" If, as some are telling us, there is a lamentable decline in the giviug of our American churches, considering the vast and rapid increase in numbers and in wealth, the secret of the falling off is not difficult to discover. Ecclesiastical luxury is rapidly throttling missionary self-denial. It has come to be so generally accepted, for example, that paid singing of the highest quality within reach is absolutely indispensable to the success of a church, that many congregations have to lift to their utmost to meet this tax, and have comparatively little left for sending the Gospel t~ the heathen j and we predict that, just in proportion as this costly style of worship increases, our missionary resourceM will dry up. In the beginning it was not so. The Reformed Sects, as they are called-Presbyterian, Congregationalist, Methodiit, and Baptistall started out on the line of plainness and godly simplicity of Christiau life and worship. But as wealth has increased, they have, one after auother, yielded to the temptation of ecclesiastical extravagance, sumptuous churches,· sumptuous furniture, sumptuous music, till their original Puritanism is fast fading out. The Moravian Church forms a notable exception to this tendency. So far as we can learn, it has kept its primitive simplicity, and exhibited little tendency to ecclesiastical extravagance of any kind; and, as might be expected, it has not flagged in the missionary consecration that marked its early history. Let Christians of every name look for a moment at this impressive object-lesson. The Moravian Church sends out one of every sixty of its members to the foreign field, and raises twelve dollars per member annually for foreign missions. In contrast with this, look at the American Protestant churches as a whole. Their increase in financial resources within the last fifty years has been enormous. It is estimated that the evangelical Christians of the United States hold eight 'billions of wealth in their hands-an amount so great that it staggers our mathematics to compute it. Yet the highest estimate of their gifts for foreign missions which we have heard is twenty-five cents per head annually. Shall we invite all our churches to look at their little sister, the " United Bðren," to whom we have just referred, and humble themselves ~ We can present a more startling contrast than even this. China reports 32,000 native Christians, who gave, year before last, $38,000 for missionary work. Thus the Church of China, out of her deep poverty, gives annually more than one dollar per member for the same sacred object on which the billionaire Church of America bestows twenty-five cents per member!
Now, how shall we restore the element of sacrifice to our missionaT~T giving, and so lift our contributions out of the shameful parsimony which now characterizes them ~ 1. We must begin with ourselves, and set apart weekly a fixed proportion of our income, and hold it sacred to the Lord. When the Hebrew brought his gift to lay it on the altar it was his; but when he had withdrawn his hand from it it was God's; and thereafter it woul~ have been an unpardonable sacrilege to have devoted it to common uses. Christians will never give as they ought until they begin to keep two purses-one for their own necessary expenses, and one for the Lord's work-from the latter of which they would no more draw for their own use than they would purloin from their neighbor's pocket.
2. We must so increase the proportion and frequency of our Church contributions that it shall be seen that we regard missions as our principal business, not as an outside charity. We have constantly maintained that a church should at least raise as much annually for missions as she spends upon herself. But in order to do this there must be proportionate and weekly giving. The custom so widely prevalent of making an " annual effort" for the foreign work," and then shelving the subject for the year, is simply a humiliation inflicted upon the great commission. If we may speak of – our own experience in the pastorate, we have long since reached the ideal of an every" Sunday contribution for foreign missions, so that now, during the y"ear, no Lord's day passes without the claims of the heathen world being brought before the congregation, and an opportunity gi~en to contribute for sending them the Gospel. By this method it has been found possible to reach the other ideal mentioned above. And we cannot overstate the blessing which has come to the Church through the practice, not only in arousing and sustaining an interest in foreign missions, but equally in deepening the spiritual life of the membership.
3. We must lay aside the unsanctified methods now so widely in use for raising our missionary money. Luxury is a fatal foe to charity. Attempt to yoke the two together in the service of Christ, and the first will be sure to grow fatter and fatter, and the second to grow leaner and leaner as the years go on. Eating strawberries and cream in the interest of foreign missions stands in immeasurable contrast with foregoing butter and sugar for a season, as the poor" Salvationist" does, in order to save thereby to help the Gospel. The Bible knows nothing of the former method; it is full of encouragement to the latter. Let fast days take the place of feast days in our churches; let Christians set apart a week or a month now and then when they Ilnd their household shall live on the plainest diet, and so, by their abstinence, gain an extra contribution for the Lord's work. In the name of the cross and sacrifice of Christ, in the name of the fundamental law of Christianity, " Except a man deny himself and take np his cross daily," we plead whether this method is not likely to bring larger and more fruitful contributions into our missionary treasury than tha other.
4. We must return to the plain and primitive style of sanctuary services that characterized our early history.
The difficulty here is confessedly great. Ecclesiastical fashions are even more tyrannical than society fashions. Fine organs, stained windowil, elaborate architecture, and "frozen music," these modern accessories of Christian worship, have come to be regarded as so essentiaJ that he would be counted a bold innovator who should suggest that they might be .entirely disused. And yet we are bold to declare our belief that worship " in spirit and in truth," and singing" with the spirit and with the understanding also" are entirely possible without any of these things. We speak from the most positive knowledge when we say that the strain of keeping up with the fashions in such directions so .cripples many churches as to afford them a perpetual excuse for giving nothing, or almost nothing, to the cause of foreign missions. If it be asked : "And how about costly ministers 1" we will not wince under the question. "Even so hath the Lord ordained that they which preach the Gospel should live of the Gospel" (1 Cor. 9 : 14). But this can signify no more than an humble aDd modest support. It gives no warrant for sumptuous salaries or palatial parsonages, or the accumulation of clerical fortunes. * Is not the teaching of Church history sufficiently solemn on this point? And are there not tendencies visible among the ministry in our great cities which should occasion deep * Accompanying the announcement, a few years since, of the death of an eminent clergyman in the Church of England was the record that he left wealth to the amount of ninety tkO'lt8and pounds. Is this not a melancholy jnstification of the phrases, "The deceitfulness of riches" and "saint· .educing gold" ~ On the contrary, is not the saying of BiShoP Butler worthy of all approval, "I
HERRNHUT: THE HOME OF MORAVlAN MISSIONS
heart-searchings ~ Like priest, like people; and we have no doubt that our missionary contributions would soon reach the high-water mark if in every pulpit the Christlike humility of becoming poor in order to make many rich should reach the low-water mark. But we forbear, with only the added suggestion, viz., if, in any instances, affectionate congregations insiBt, out of their wealth, in paying inordinate salaries to their pastors, in spite of the unwillingness of these pastors to receive so much, there is a way of relief. Let what remains above a modest support be cast into the treasury of the Lord that the poor laborer in the Lord's vineyard may share his more prosperous brother's bounty.
In closing we beg to urge these three questions: If, as we believe. the carrying out of the great commission is the first and highest obligation of every Christian, ought not the Ohurch to forego the luxuries of worship at home in order that she may provide for the necessities of missions abroad?
If, as says the Talmud, "almsgiving is the salt of riches," is it not to be feared (haUl Ohristian8 wait to give their alms from a dead hand their salt will have lost its savor, and their riches, which might have been preserved, will become corrupted, and in turn entail corruption upon children and children's children?
If, as we believe, there is no second probation for the heathen who have died without hearing the Gospel, can we 1'easonably expect that there shall be any second probation for Ohristians who have passed through tltis life and done practically nothing to give the heathen the Gospel?
LETTERS FROM ABROAD.-II.
HERRNHUT: THE HOME OF MORAVIAN MISSIONS.
BY DELAVAN I". PIERSON.
Nestling in a little valley in Saxony lies the picturesque village of Herrnhut, the birthplace and centre of the modern Moravian Church. Here. more than one hundred and sixty years ago, came the first settlers, fugitives from the persecutions of the Catholic powers in Moravia, to seek a haven of peace and rest in which they could worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences, and in days to come grow into a centre from which to send the Bread of Life to all nations. The village is a quaint old town, and its inhabitants have the simplicity and honesty of quaint old Christians. Walking through its narrow streets one meets many a foot passenger walking leisurely along, and each one, man, woman, and child, utters a greeting of a kindly" Good-day." The children returning from school carry each a small knapsack on the back which seems quite in keeping with their usually grave demeanor. Everything is quaint, every- slwuld be ashamed of myself if I could leave ten thousand pounds behind me"? And onght not this example of Wesley to be kept before every minister of the Gospel, " When John Wesley's income was £30 he lived on £28, and gave two .. and when his income rose to £60 and afterward to £120, he Btilllived on £28, and gave all the ,'emainrle,' " ?- Vd. Strrmg'8 "Ou'/' Ooun/,'y," pp. 196, 198. thing is picturesque, from the long avenues of lime-trees, trimmed flat at the top, and the antiquated houses, to the canopied wagons passing along the one and the peasant people inhabiting the other.
On the afternoon of my arrival, I was shown through the old Schloss or Castle, where Count Zinzendorf, the patron of the first settlers, lived. It is now used as the farm-house for the estate, and in it are the conference rooms in which the" Unity's Elders' Conference" meets to discuss the methods for the government of the Church. Around a table are twelve chairs for the members of the conference. There is still in the old ink- stands the sand in use before the days of blotting-paper, and there is about the whole an air of the mingling of the ancient and modern which gives it both authority and practicality. Three of the elders compose the COlli- mittee to look after the educational department, three have charge of the financial, and three of the missionary matters j each separate committee has its secretary, and there is, besides, one for the whole body. The thir- teen compose the Unity's Elders' Conference for the general government of the Moravian Church, and all but the missionary committee compose the Provincial Elders' Conference for the care of the secular departments espe- cially. Each settlement has its own conference committee or conncil, but that at IIerrnhut is the chief. Its duties are especially to preserve the doc- trines of the Church in truth and purity, and to keep a general watch over all its affairs. They have the power to appoint missionaries to certain fields ' and to nominate ministers for vacant charge8 and offices. They are also in- spectors of education and trustees of the financial interests. The principal doctrines of the Church are: the natural depravity of man j the Divinity of Christ j the free atonement for our sins by tho death of Christ, and the sanctifying power of His blood j the operation of the grace of the Holy Spirit, and the fruits of faith; while the special emphasis is laid on the belief that" there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby ye must be saved" than that of Christ Jesus, our Lord.
Not far from the Schloss of Bertheldsdorf is the Lutheran church which the Moravians first attended after their migration to Herrnhut. It is a plain building, but one where they could" worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness," and it was here that the wonderful revival took place in 1727 . -August 13th-which thrilled the worshippers with a new life which has never died out, but has come down through a century and a half, trans- • mitted from father to son, and has enabled them to do a work which will never die out. The day is kept as a spiritual birthday and one for special thanksgiving and prayer. The church, too, is considered sacred, though they have long since erected a church of their own in Herrnhut. There was a service in the Moravian Church every evening during the Passion week. IIere come the Brethren and Sisters to hear the reading of the story of the death of our Lord, and to drink from the Fountain o{Life. The" Sisters" occupy one side of the meeting-house and the Brethren the other. It is interesting to see the small caps of the women and note the white ribbons of the widows, the blue of the wives, pink of the maidens, and red of young girls. The officers of each church are the pastors, deacons, and acolytes, and over these the elders, bishops, and co-bishops. The name of "United Brethren" was adopted by them about the middle of the fifteenth century, when, after the persecution following the death of John Huss, they left Bohemia and sought a home in the borders of Silesia and Moravia. They were then, as now, a people who denounce worldly amusements, and strive to live only for the glory of God and the good of their fellow-men. They made it the duty of individuals and families to preserve in its purity the worship of God, to banish idleness and worldly amusements, and to wear none but the most siniple dress. Afterward, in their dispersion through Prussia and Poland, their trials and persecutions for conscience' sake, till their migration to IIerrnhut, in 1722, they maintained much the same principles and habits of life. In a little grove not far from the village is a monument which marks the spot where the first tree was felled for the building of the first house for the settlers. It is marked with a short inscription and reference to Psalms 84 : 4, "Blessed are they which dwell in Thy house j they will be still praising Thee." With what thankful hearts must the Brothers NeiRser and their one or two friends have considered the prospect of a home under the patronage of the earnest Christian, the young Count Zinzendorf, and how gladly must Christian David have carried the news of this new" Fortress of God" to the Brethren in Moravia. There are now about a dozen Moravian settlements in Germany alone. Each has its own council, schools, church, and societies. They are all connected by a common bond of brotherhood. In many places there are houses of the Brethren and of the Sisters where each can find a good home if they have none of their own.
The cemetery, or, as the German beautifully puts it, the" Field of God," is a picturesque and interesting "pot on the Hutberg, near the town. Here, under the shade of immense lime.trees, lie the remains of Count Zinzendorf and the members of the Moravian Church. Each grave is marked by a small stone slab lying upon it, and each body lies with its face toward the east in readiness for the last awakening, when" joy cometh in the morning." Here, as elsewhere, the sexeR are separated; the graves of the Brethren being on one side, and those of the Sisters on the other of the central path. An odd appearance is given to the burial-ground by the t1attopped lime-trees which enclose the several parts like hedges, and in summer, when the leaves are out, have the appearance of immense walls of green. An observation tower crowns the summit of the hill, as though to remind the people that they are to be "ever watching, waiting, waiting till the Lord shall come."
But, to judge more clearly of the power for good which this Church has become, we must look at the missionary side of their work. Besides secular schools in many parts of the world, they have missions in all quarters of the globe. In the museum at Herrnhut are shown the curious articles gathered from the various mission-fields of the society. Here we find huts from Greenland and Labrador, with canoes and arrows from Africa; articles of dress and implements of warfare from the Indians of North, Central, and South America, and from Australia and Central Asia. The first missionary interest was awakened among the Moravians by the tales of distress of a negro from the ,VeRt Indies, who had come on a voyage with his master to Denmark. lIe told of his own dissatisfaction with an evil life, and of his struggle after the light without the help of a Christian teacher, and he pictured the neeufI of his countrymen so vividly that those who heard him decided that they would not keep their Gospel to themselves, but would carry it to those who had need. So it was, that in 1731 two pioneer missionaries were sent out-with the promise of protection from the Danish Government-one to Jamaica and one to Greenland. The story of trial and hardship of these two first missionaries is a thrilling one. In Jamaica they made themselves as one with the slaves, were suspected of treachery to the Government, and imprisoned; and it was only through the energetic action of Count Zinzendorf that they were again given their freedom. Now the mission work has grown, until there are forty-two stations, sixteen of whieh are settlements, aqd a new mission has just been opened in Central Africa. Each station seems to be prospering, being blessed of God. Periodicals containing accounts of the work of the Church are pub. lished in German, French, and English, and tell wonderful stories of the work of Grace at hom~ and abroad.
HERRNHuT, March 24, 189I.
[We add to this letter from Herrnhut an extract from letters written from Berlin, before leaving for Italy and from Florence] : .
" We went to the American Church in the morning, and enjoyed a very good, homelike service by Dr. Stuckenberg.
" In the evening we went to another meeting for Americans and Eng- lish, at his house, which is just around the corner from us.
" Mrs. Stuckenberg is a charming lady, and does a great deal of good here. .
" They need a church very much. The hall they have is only a very small one, and can only be had for Sunday mornings, so that their house must be used in the evening. The meetings are always crowded in both places; and only those who have been here know how Uluch is owed, by English-speaking visitors, to the Stuckenbergs. They go to any amount of tronble to make it pleasant and easy for strangers, and have a wonderful hold, especially on the young men, which is a great thing in a city so full of anti-religious influences as Berlin.
" The evening meetings were started in order to keep the people from the theatre; but the house is far too small to accommodate the crowds who come to them. The church seats are free, and the church is supported entirely by voluntary offerings. " They have now some twenty thousand dollars raised for a new building, but it will take sixty to buy the lot.
" Certainly the need is most urgent; and everyone who feels an interest in the endeavor to keep hold of young men, especially, should try to help on the cause.
"I wish that some of the people in America would take hold more readily and help to raise the amount needed immediately."
Of the Rev. Dr. J. II. W. Stuckenberg, pastor of this American United Church of Berlin, a recent issue of the London Christian World says: " He has charge of the American Church-and no pulpit speaks with manlier or Christlier voice-and most of the timc not taken up by spiritual duties is devoted to sociological studies. No man is able to speak with greater, few, if any, with equal, authority on the social questions which now agitate Germany, while no man brings to the consideration of the present day problems a readier ear, a kindlier heart, or a broader sympathy. The seed which he has sown by his pastoral discourse, and still more by his writings and his private influence, is having no insignificant part in the leavening of his country's pulpit!! and churches with the spirit of Christian socialism. In short, Dr. Stuckenberg is a man at once vf powerful intellect and large heart, of rare earnestness of purpose and lofty devotion to duty, whether as shepherd among flock, or as man among men, a man whom to know is to esteem and admire. "
This is high praise, but every word of it is richly deserved. ['Ve have another later co~munication from Florence, Italy.] Last Saturday evening I went to the opening meeting of the E.vangelical Alliance. The" Teatro Salvini," where all the meetings were held, was crowded, and we had a fine address from Dr. Geymonat, the President of the Florentine Reception Committee. Telegrams in English, German, French and Italian, were sent to King Humbert expressing the satisfaction felt by the Alliance that in the last fifty years such great changes for the better had taken p.lace in Italy, both in regard to the political and religious liberty enjoyed here. There were some interesting !!ubjects considered, and papers read by able men. There were meetings conducted in all the lan- guages, but the most were in English and Italian, though many French and Germans were present. The meetings were all well attended and interest- ing. It was interesting to hear the versions in the various languages of one and the same thing in the general meeti ngs, and I tried to see how much I conld follow in each of the four languages, and found I could tell of what they were talking, but not always exactly what they were saying.
In the farewell meeting on the last night, Signor Prochet spoke in six lan- guages-Italian, French, Spanish, English, German, and Dutch-and apolo- gized for not being able to speak in more. Everyone seems pretty well satisfied with the result of the Alliance. D. L. P.
FLORENCE, h,ALYr April, 1891, [With these" Letters from Abroad" the editor adds extracts from cor- respondence of Ernest B. Gordon, Esq., the beloved son of our co-editor.] " Everywhere I go I make it a point to visit missionaries, and to make inquiries as to the success and operation of missions. They are the be8tinformed men iu the East, because coming into closer relations with the people and residing longer in the country than civil officials or army officers.
"In Agra I met Mr. Jones, a devoted English Baptist, who sings Hindu music with Christian words, to draw the crowds, accompanying himself with the tambourine. He makes the criticism on his own missions in India, which might be made in regard to ours in Burmah-viz., a lack ofensemble and organization. There is too much individualism-not sufficient mutual understanding. The remedy would be the establishment of a lOcal board, with executive powers under the board at home.
" The Methodist Mission in Rohilkund and Lucknow is a wonderful one. They have snap and perfect organization; are baptizing about five thousand low caste Rohillas each year; have a powerful printing-house in Lucknow, and splendid schools for both girls and boys. The young women's school, which Miss Thoburn has charge of, is about to be raised to the grade of a college, able to grant B.A. degrees. Bishop Thoburn is the head and front of this mission.
" Things are loosening greatly in India. If you can get the first bricks out of a wall the rest will come tumbling down shortly. Mission work in India-in fact all work along progressive lines as well-has been prosecuted systematically only since the meeting closed, just a generation ago. Yet, in 1866, Sir John Lawrence, Viceroy, sa"id that the missions had done more for India thau all other benevolent agencies combined.
" By the way, Sir Henry Harrison issued an order recently, forbidding street preaching by missionaries in Calcutta. Only Protestants preach in the streets. Harrison is a Roman Catholic.
" The vice-regal board vetoed his mandate. The same spirit in Boston and Calcutta! Dr. Mabie met in Singapore a Spanish Protestant missionary to the Phillipine Islands, who had been driven out, his co-laborer having been poisoned. The same spirit in Manilla and Cuba! Rev. William Haslam, the evangelist, told me that he was convinced that the masked hand was behind the ritualist movement in England, and that he was sure that there were priests of the Romish communion who had received a dispensation to go to work in the English Church. I had a long and frank talk with a Jesuit recently, who expressed his satisfaction with the mo"ement, since it meant the certain disestablishment of that Church. He said that disestablishment would mean a general unsettling of Protestantism in England, and that then their chance would come. I think the upheaval would surely come, but I draw a flifferent conclusion as to the result. The High Church would be left high and dry. It depends now on State help. Contributions to missions from the Church MiRsionary Society (Low Church) are ploportionally, as well as in the aggregate, much greater than from the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (Ritualistic). The Protestant elements in the English Church would come out of the fire purged and freed from the present distracting element.
" While in Delhi, I met Mr. "Vhite, of the S. P. G., and other mem- bers of the Cambridge Mission-a brotherhood of six young men from Cambridge University. I wish you could have seen one of them preach. ing to the Mohammedans yesterday. To see a High Churchman preaching in the streets like an ordinary Plymouth Brother or Salvationist seems rather startling; but they are on their mettle in the East; they could make no progress if their Puseyism did not bend somewhat to Methodism. Day 'before yesterday there was a joint discussion in the yard attached to their bungalow between a Uohammedau mullah and Mr. La Froie, one of the Univcrsity men, at which three hundred Musselmans were present. Each had a half hour to start with, and fifteen minutes apiece for rejoinder. Everything was decorous; the fanatical followers of the Prophet kept their tempers lUuch better than ordinarily. Afterward the Christian apologist was invited to speak in a mosque! So there is some comity between the antagonistic parties in Delhi. These Cambridge men are fine fellows, cultured, zealous. Their influence has essentially modified the S. P. G. Mission here. That has generally a disreputable name for proselytism among Protestant bodies, etc. Here they have schools, with 1500 boys, and a college with 60 students.
[A letter dated April 11th ult., from Rev. Dr. Marshall Lang, a nephew of Rev. Drs. J. Marshall Lang, of Glasgow, Gavin Lang, of In- verness, J. Parsley Lang, of Sterlmg, and of Mrs. Dr. John Pagan, of Bothwell, Scotland, states that he has removed from Osaka to Kumamoto, Japan, where his address is care ef Rev. J. B. Brandram. He speaks highly of the Life of Dr. Neeshima, whom he calls" the apostle of Japan." We hope that an edition of the life of this remarkable man, who had so much to do with moulding the religious fulnre of the Sunrise Kingdom, will soon be published in this country. His conversion and career are among the most remarkable events in connection with that island empire which is the cynosnre of all eyes in this last decade of this eventful century.
Mr. Lang's sister has just gone out to China under the China Inland Mission, and is now training at Yang Chow. The Lang family, so well known both in Scotland and America, have a large representation in the Christian ministry and the missionary work. Their venerable mother was a woman of marked character, as her portrait indicates. Her sons have found their way to the pulpit, her daughters are preaching through their husbands, Drs. Pagan, Gloag, etc., and now the grandchildren are fast joining the same noble army of Christ's witnesses in the parishes at home and ;missions abroad. How much a sanctified parentage and home-life have to do with frling up the ranks of the ministry and the missionary host! That blessed mother has already nearly a score of preachers and' Christian workers among her children and grandchildreu.-ED.]
THE PRESENT CRISIS OF lIISSIONB
THE PRESENT CRISIS OF MISSIONS.
[EDITORIAL, A. T. P.] There is a great crisis in missions. But it is the result of the very successes, not failures of missions j and it is strange that thinking, intelligel't men should fail to see this, and that despondency and discouragement should exist where hopefulness and even thankful-ness arc the more natural to one who discerns the signs of the times. Growth always brings a demand for new conditions, new accommodations, new provisions. A growing plant must have larger space, more room j the old flower-pot must be discarded for a new and more spacious one. The growing boy must have new clothes j and often, too, the growing family a larger house, a better supplied table. A growing business needs new shops or factories, a larger stock, more hands, a costlier outlay. No sensible man ever finds fault with such increase, though it demands more care, more cost, more labor, more vigilance. How comes it to pass that when the Lord's work outgrows all past provision for its successful prosecution, demands more room, more men, more money, more churches, schools, colleges, preaching stations, Bibles, medical missions, etc., we should begin to be heavy-hearted because what was adequate ten years ago is entirely insufficient to-day g This is another anomaly and paradox in modern missions.
These crises of what we call danger and discouragement are, in fact, God's own challenge to new prayer, faith, heroism, and consecration. And if so accepted, they always introduce periods of unprecedented triumph. Let an example or two be adduced. At Tahiti, for sixteen years the missionaries, Mr. Henry, Mr. Nott, etc., seemed to have expende.d their strength in fruitless and hopeless toil, spending themselves for naught. Their tireless zeal, their constant journeys, their faithful testimony, seemed like blows of a feather against a wall of adamant. Not one conversion took place j the idolatries of the natives were an abomination, and their wars a desolation. The directors of the London Missionary Society seriously thought of abandoning the work. But there were a few who rightly read the lesson of this apparent failure. God was rebuking unbelief, and challenging faith in His unchanging Word of promise. Dr. Haweis sent another £200 sterling to the missionary treasury, remonstrating against giving up the mission. Rev. Matthew ·Wilks, John Williams' own pastor, said, with characteristic zeal and devotion: "I will sell my garments from my back rather than that this mission shall be given up j" and instead of a cowardly withdrawal, he proposed a special season of prayer for the blessing of the Lord of the han'Cilt. His proposal was accepted j letters of hope and encouragement were written to the disheartened laborers, and prayer went up to Almighty God with tears of sorrow for past unbelief that had made mighty works impossible. And now mark the result. While the vessel that bore these letters was on her way to Tahiti, the ship that crossed her track on the way to England carried the news, not only of a beginning of a work of grace, but of the entire overthrow of idolatry i and, with thelie tidings of the new Pentecost, bore also the rejected idols of that people! "Before they call I will answer, and while they are yet speaking I will hear." No promise was ever more literally fulfilled.
One more instance. In 1853, at Albany, the American Baptist Mis- sionary Union held its anniversary; and the question of the. abandonment of the mission among the Telugus in South India was discussed. Here again was a field without any adequate fruit of the long tillage. The missionary (Rev. Mr. Jewett), already there, refused to abandon the field, and Rev. Dr. S. F. Smith wrote a poem, unconsciously prophetic, " Shine on, Lone Star," etc.
Dr. J. E. Clough, then a civil engineer, went out to the" Lone Star" field. The famine of 1877 came, and his services as a civil enginecr came strangely into play in the completion of a half-built canal, by which hungry men got work, wages, and food. In the evenings Mr. Clough would gather his gangs of workmen and preach to them the simple gospel of John, 3 : 16 j then encourage the converts who accepted it, to go and tell the news to others. And 80 God used even famine as His evangelist. Next year, in one day, 2222 were baptized; in thirty days, 5000, and within a twelvemonth, 10,000. Here again it was darkest just before day. God withheld fruits to try the faith and persistence of His pAople. To have given up the work: would have been to have forfeited the greatest pentecostal harvest of all modern times. And it would seem as though juse now the Lord of the harvest is proving the faith of His own people; and if faith triumphs there is in store a world-wide blessing. . How shall such an exigency and emergency be met 1 We give answer that, first, there are great general principles which must always be kept pr:ominently before the mind. The tabernacle in the wilderness was a remarkable object lesson, setting forth, as Professor W. W. Moore says, " the terms and forms of communion with God." The terms were beautifully represented in the outer court, in the altar of sacrifice and the laver j one standing for the remission of sins through the shedding of blood, and the other for the renewing of the heart through the washing of regeneration. We come to God by the blood of Christ and by the new birth from the Holy Ghost. The Holy Place beautifully shows the forms of communion, with the three articles of sacred f~rniture, the candelabra, the table of shewbread, and the altar of incense. The Sermon on the Mount may give us the key to these three symbolic lessons: "Ye are the light of the world j let your light so shine," etc. "Take heed that ye do not your alms before men: let thine .alms be in secret." "Enter into thy closet j pray to thy Father which is in secret." These are the threefold forms of communion : a burning, shining light of testimony; a consecration of substance; and unceasing prayer. That is the way to prosecute missions. Let every child of God accept the privilege and duty of being Christ's witness to the world by lips and life. Let our offeringll, individual, sys- tematic, habitual, proportionate, constantly keep the Lord's house as con- stantly supplied with meat. And le.t us remember that, as the work and the power are God's, the only way to command success is to be unceasingly in prayer. A church universally witnessing to the Gospel; a church sYII- tematically giving; a church perpetually praying-that is the church per- petually conquering, before whose banners every stronghold of Satan must fall. And it is because in everyone of these departments, world-wide wit,nessing, church-wide giving and praying, there is such ,a lack, that our missions are hindered for want of laborers, our treasuries depleted of funds, and our missionary converts have become a thing of the past, especially in respect of earnest and prevailing prayer.
Particularly are we mortified at the decrease of gifts. Think of the great American Board announcing twenty per cent reduction in the appro- priations of the current year! And of the wealthy Presbyterian Church working for two years under the burden of an enormous debt, unable to expand, and even to maintain, without reduction and contraction, the work already in hand among the great unsaved peoples of the world I We must have, and we may hav~, greatly increased gifts. There is a financial basis of evangelization, and money must be furnished if men are to be sent into the field and supported in it.
Not.hing is plainer than this, that we have not yet begun to touch the possible, available resources of the Church. We have never yet, as we have often said, sacrificed even our luxuries and our superflmties. There is enough jewelry and ornament on our persons and in our homes to supply all the needful money for a world's needs. In 1867 one prominent Presby- terian paid as much for a lot on which to erect a house as the whole Board of Missions appropriated that year to its foreign work! If Christian men and women would imitate. the patriotism of the people of Germany in the Napoleonic wars, and give up their gold and silver adornments for the wars of the Lord, as those Germans did for the campaign of their country, what vast sums would be realized! Let us form a new "Order of the Iron Cross," and vow not to wear any more superfluous jewelry until the needs of a dying world are met.
And would to God that we might impress every member of the Church of Christ with the privilege and obligation of even the poorest to take part in this universal offering.· How many a poor seamstress might find, like Sarah Hosmer, the factory woman of Lowell, the means to lay up enough to educate six natives as preachers of the Cross in Oriental lands ! Yes, and how many a poor widow, like one of Rev. Dr. W. M. Paxton's humblest . members, might raise chickens on the roof of a city tenement house, and bring her five dollars a year to the missionary treasury! How many a work- ingman's household would find a way to lay aside a portion of every day's expenses, as the Ceylonese converts diminish their quantity of rice at every morning meal that it may be put aside as the Lord's portion! Self-denial ~ There are very few who know the meaning of the word. What we give to the Lord costs us nothing. We do not diminish our food, our raiment, our home comforts, or even our luxurious adornments, to give the Gospel to the world. We scarcely miss, if at all, the money given in missionary collections. With the majority there is no calculation of what the cause demands and what their own ability justifies. It is a mere chance, what the Lord gets as His portion. What if it were a mere chance what is reserved for house rent, or for food, or for clothing ~ Never will the needs of our mission treasuries be met until provision is made on a business basis, until we mako our honest reckoning with the Lord as to what His cause needs, and what we ought to do as our share-more than this, until we get some high conception of the duty, not only, but the privilege of laying consecrated offerings at the Lord's feet as Mary broke her alabaster box for His sake.
But, specifically, there is a duty which is particularly to be done in this critical and pivotal hour of missions. The Church must be set on fire with an intelligent missionary interest, a " zeal according to knowledge." vVe need a widespread information about facts, as well as principles, of missions. Disciples must become familiar with their duty as witnesses, and with that inspiration to duty found in the past triumphs and present demands of tho missionary work. And to whom shall we look for this educating process but to the pastors? ,Vhere did you ever know a burning flame of missionary zeal in a church whose pastor was cold and indifferent ~ He is generally the vestal whose hand lights and keeps burning the sacred fires. Give us a properly aroused, intelligent, active, spiritual body of pastors, and we shall have a new missionary era in the churches. Nay, we shall ha'e almost no need even of missionary secretaries, save as the mere channels of communication between the great body of churches and the mission fieM. The pastor, who is the most natural and the most effective pleader for any benevolent cause when his head, heart, and tongue are full, will become the self-appointed and omnipresent agent of every good work, and the Church will follow such lead as an army follows where its heroic captains lead the way.
During recent mission tours, I am sorry to confess that I have found not a few ministers of Christ who have told me that they" would not goad their people to more giving; it is all they can do now to get their own salary!" What a fatal mistake, not only for the Lord's cause, but for the minister's own interest! A people learns to give by giving; and the more they give the more and the easier will the gifts be. Selfishness grows by indulgence. The man who hoards and keeps, wants to have more and to give less. The man who learns to bestow finds the bliss of giving. and his purse-strings relax more readily as they are the oftener untied. The grace of giving ill one to be cultivated. Everything that restrains it tends to kill it. NothinK but constant care keeps such a delicate, sensitive, celestial 'plant alive. Many a man's salary comes b,aJ,'d because he does not train his people to appreciate the duty and luxury of an open hand, an open heart, and an open purse. But even were it not so, loyalty to Christ and His cause is our first obligation.
Missions stand vitally related to the Church. The very word is significant j it represents tltat whereunto the Church is sent. Thill is the savor without which the salt is good for nothing; this is the shining without which the light is no longer a light, but a burned-out lamp. Bishop Thoburn therefore says, that if the Church of God should deliberately determine to turn her back on a perishing world, and abandon her mission and commission, it would not be one hour before the Church would be swept from the face of the earth. We talk about the peril of missions at this crisis j it may be questioned whether the peril of the Church is not even greater. The salvation of the heathen hangs on the Church's fidelity; but what about the salvation of the Church herself ~ What if, with a thousand doors of access standing open, a thousand calls from Macedonia inviting, a thousand interpositions of God encouraging, a thousand victories over idolatry and iniquity inspiring, and a thousand voices of God sounding the trumpet call, " Advance !" we now turn back faithless, unbelieving, heedless, and leave the world to perish ~ There is a curious fact in botany. The exogenro receive their increase of matter by external accretions of outermost layers. Buds, which are the organs supplying materials constituting the stem, exist in the oxogenous plants in indefinite quantity, and so the destruction of one 01' more does not in the least imperil the life of the plant or tree. But in the endogenous growths, one bud alone keeps up the supply of matter needful to perpetuate plant life; the newly formed fibre descends into the innermost part of the stem, and hence any injury here is a fatal one. For example, if a large sea snail is. laid on the crown of the cocoanut tree and left there to rot around the tender sprout, or if with a stone the crown is crushed, the tuft of plume-leaves which adorns the top of the tree fades and falls, and the trunk stands leafless and barren, never more to sprout. The Church of God belongs to the endogenous order, and its solitary vital bud is the missionary spirit. Upon this depend its vitality, its energy, its fertility, its increase. And the blow that injures that bud is fatal to the whole tree. Kill the missionary work of the Church, blast her service for souls, destroy her delicate zeal for the perishing, and her life languishes and perishes also.
Once more we feel impelled to write that the charm of missions, to our mind, is this: It is God's march, through history; and he who is most engrossed with the work of giving the Gospel to thll destitute millions is therefore most closely linked ~ith God and in line with His march. The modern Enochs and Elijahs whose close walk with God invites translation, are the Careys, and Morrisons, and Livingstones, whose absorbing pas~ion is to win a world for Christ, and who join the Triune God in the holy walk and war.
Our Lord~ in His last command, accompanies the injunction, "Go ye into all the world," etc., with a remarkable preface and an equally remark- able conclusion. First comes that declaration: "All power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth;" then, last of all, stands that marvellous promise, " Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the age." Be- tween these two, and by no accident, stands the grand, perpetual command, "Go ye, therefore, and make disciples of all nations," i.e., because" All power is Mine, and My All-Presence is assured you all the days, go into all the world." You see, the logic of missions lies in that word" there- fore." And so far and so fast as the Church goes everywhere with the Gospel message, will that All-Power and that All-Presence be realized and manifested. For ourselves, we claim no wide acquaintance with the history or the progress of missions, but are rather oppressed with the sense of igno- rance. But all investigation of this great theme, whose very ext.ent baffies our utmost industry, hM left on the mind one overwhelming impressionviz., that the story of modern missions is, as the Bishop of Ripon finely intimated, a continuation of the .Acts of the .Apostles, with all its essential supernaturali8m. No exhibition of manifestly Divine power, no proofs of a peculiarly Divine presence, have ever been furnished mankind more unmistakable in their way than those found in this world-wide evangelism! The devout student of missions, and pr~-eminently the consecrated worker in missions, finds himself overwhelmed with evidences of a Providential interposition and a spiritual intervention which simply defy contradiction.
What a new era of missions would come to the Church of God if His people could but read these new chapters in the Acts of the Apostles, which prove God to be yet present and powerfully working in the missions of the world!
John Williams' progress through the South Seas was a triumphal maroh. There is nothing in the life of Paul as he went from Antioch to Athens, and from the Golden Horn to the Pillars of Hercules on his great commission, that more proves God's power than John Williams' voyages, from the shores of Eimeo to the fatal coasts of Eromanga. The missionary career of this Apostle of the South Seas extended over twenty-two years, from 1817 to 1839. In the course of these years he went like a flaming messenger of God with the Gospel torch, from island to island and group to group-Aitutaki, Atiu, Raratonga, Mangaia, Raiatea, Samoa, Eromanga -and one continued and unbroken series of successes crowned his labors,; island after island, and group after group, in rapid succession, came under the sway of Christ's golden sceptre, until he could calmly say, in 1834, " At the present time we do not know of any group, or any single island of importance, within 2000 miles of Tahiti, in any direction, to which the glad tidings of salvation have not been conveyed."
There is nothing to prevent similar triumphil in our day but the apathetic indifference of the Church. God is not straitened save by the unbelief and inaction of His people. Where is the trumpet to be found that shall sonD': a loud enough and long enough peal to awake God's sleeping saints?
THE YOUNG PEorl,E'S SOCIETY OF' CRlnSTIAN ENDEAVOR
THE RELATION OF THE YOUNG PEOPLE'S SOCIETY OF CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR TO THE ·CHURCH.
BY REV. F. E. CLARK, D.D., PRESIDENT.
It is a very agreeable task to write on this subject of the relation of the Young People's Society of Christian Endeavor to the Church.
The attitude of the society to the Church has been from the beginning so entirely and unequivocally loyal that there is nothing to explain away or apologize for. It is simply necessary to state the plain factI'. The society has alway;; spelled the Church with a capital C, and has written itself in small letters. It has existed from the beginning as a handmaiden of the Church, and has no other object or purpose in its life now that it has grown to be a vigorous and a large organization. Its yery inception shows its character, and the purpose which brought it into being. A church and pastor in Maine, after enjoying a season of revival which especially blessed the young people, were casting about for some means of training these young Christians, and thus fitting them for greater usefulness in that church. There was no other objeot contemplated. This purpose shaped the organization in all its parts. Its thought inspired the first constitution, which has since been adopted, in its essential features, by all the societies. It made much of the prayer-meeting pledge; it provided the two classes of members-active and associate-so that there might be a clear-cut dividing-line between the Christian and non-Christian young people; and it devised the different branches of committee work so that the young disciples might learn how to look out for each other; how to prepare for the prayer-meeting; how to provide for the social needs of all; how to enlarge and increase the efficiency of the Sunday-school; how to improve the music in all the serviceR of the Church; how to beautify the sanctuary with flowers on Runday ; how to look after the sick and t~r}e stranger within the gate.
If the so-called" model constitution" is studied, it will be seen that in every part, well-nigh in every sentence, it is designed for this sole purpose: To aid the Ohurch in looking after and in training its young people.
That same purpose which framed the' constitution has been adhered to rigidly, and every amendment and addition has been made with the view of cementing more closely this relationship.
Such sentences as these are continually upon the lips of the leaders of this movement: "Do not attempt to form a Society of Christian Endeavor unless the pastor desires it and sympathizes with it." " Wait until the Church doors are thrown open before you enter with the society." " Always yield to the wishes of your pastor and church officers in every particular, even if to you they seem unreasonable," etc.
For this reason Union Societies have' not been encouraged, since the organization is to work, not for the city, or town, or community as such, but for the local church. If there a!e~aQozen churches in a town there ought to be as many societies, one connected with each church, and working for and through the young people of that church.
It may be a very serious question whether there should be a dozen or half dozen, or even two churches in a particular town j but if, in the judgment of thll elders, so many churches are needed, then, on the same ground that a Sunday-school, or a prayer-meeting, or a missionary circle is needed, is a Society of Christian Endeavor needed in each church.
Because of this idea of absolute loyalty to the Church, so early ingrained into the movement, so steadily kept in. mind, and never obscured, the organization has grown with such marvellous rapidity from the one society with 60 members in 1881, to more than 14,000 societies, with over 850,000 members in 1891.
And yet all this time it has been vigorously asserted and reasserted by some that any organization of young people would necessarily draw away from the Church and create division between the old and young in the Church. Every now and then some good brother makes this discovery once again, and brings it forth, as though it had not been refuted by practical experience a thousand times at least during the last ten years. It is noticeable, however, that most of the brethren who make this discovery make it from the standpoint of theory alone. " They will never have such a society in their churches," they say, "which will draw a line between old and young, and keep the young people out of the weekly prayer-meeting." In hundreds of cases, when some friend has prevailed upon them to find out just what the society is and does, and to try the experiment for themselves, they have made, from the standpoint of experience, the far more pleasing discovery that their alarm was false and their fears unfounded, and that the society was a loyal and devoted helper of the Church.
A few facts in the later history of the society will show that it has insisted on this close union with the Church with ever-increasing persistence.
When the "model constitution" was ,revised in 1885 the following clause was inserted : "ARTICLE IX.-RELATION TO THE CHURCH.
"This society, being in closest relation to the Church, the pastor, deacons, elders or stewards, and Sunday-school superintendent shall be exofficio honorary members. Any difficult question may be laid before them for advice."
When I was called to leave my church in Boston to devote my time to this work as President of the United Society, I did so on the following condition, as given in my letter of acceptance to the societies. This letter was received as a kind of platform of principles, and, so far as I know, met with the approval of all the societies. The following are three of the principles upon which the acceptance was conditioned. As will be seen the first of all relates to its inseparable union with the Church: "First. The Society of Christian Endeavor is not, and is not to be, an organization independent of the Church. It is the Church at work for and with the young, and the young people at work for and with the Church. In all that we do and say let us bear this in mind, and seek for the fullest co-operatiou of pastors and church officers and members in carrying on our work. The Society of Christian Endeavor can always afford to wait rather than force itself upon an unwilling church.
"Second. Since the societies exist in every evangelical denomination, the basis of the union of the societies is one of common ioyalty to Christ, common methods of service for Him, and mutual Christian affection rather than a doctrinal and ecclesiastical basis. In such a union all evangelical Christians can unite without repudiating or being disloyal to lIny denominational custom or tenet.
"Third. The purely religious features of the organization shall always be paramount. The Society of Christian Endeavor centres about the prayer-meeting. The strict' prayer-meeting pledge,' honestly interpreted, as experience has proved, is essential to the continued success of a Society of Christian Endeavor."
Four years ago the motto, which has now very generally been adopted, was proposed to the societies: "For Christ and the Church." This has been inscribed on their banners, printed on their constitutions, engraved on their badges, and received by the societies universally as expressing their only purpose and design.
At the great Convention in Chicago the following amendment to the " model constitution" was proposed and accepted with great heartiness and unanimity: "Since it would in the end defeat the very object of our organization if the older active members, who have been trained in the society for usefulness in the Church, should remain content with fulfilling their pledge to the society only, therefore it is expected that these older members, when it shall become impossible for t~em to attend two weekly prayer-meetings, shall be transferred to the affiliated membership of the society if previously faithful to their vows as active members. This transfer, however, shall be made with the understanding that the prayer-meeting pledge of each affiliated member shall be binding upon him for faithful attendance and participation in the usual church prayer-meeting, instead of the society meeting. It shall be left to the Lookout Committee, in conjunction with the pastor, to see that this transfer of membership is made as occasion requires. Special pains shall also be taken to see that a share of the duties and responsibilities, both of the prayer-meeting and of the general work of the society, shall be borne by the younger members."
To show that this is not simply the opinion of an " interested party," I will quote the views of some eminent clergymen on this point-men who have tried the society in their churches, and speak of that which they do know.
These opinions might be multiplied indefinitely, and a whole issue of THE MISSIONARY REVIEW OF THE WORLD might be filled with such testi- monies j but these few will suffice. The first I will quote is from the Rev.
Wayland Hoyt, D.D., pastor of the First Baptist Church of Minneapolis: " I am frank to confess I have become an enthusiast in the Christian Endeavor movement, and the more I know of its principles and workings the more fervent is my enthusiasm. And for reasons like these: 1. Be- e·ause of the emphasis the movement puts upon the local church. Its beat- ing heart and centre is the special church with which the young Christian is in personal relation. The steady song of the movement concerning the local church is : • For her my tears shall fall ;' etc.
"No pastor, especially in the large cities, but must have often felt that there are frequent and great temptations nowadays presented to his young people for main service at some other centre than their own particular church home. "
The second is from Rev. C. F. Deems, D.D., pastor of the Church of the Strangers, of New York City: " An earnest pastor brings all his powers to bear upon stimulating all his people to employ their energies in the advancing of the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus. In this the young will be included, and probably the strongest stimulus will be administered to them, because they are young, in the freshness of their power, and in the morning of their life. When so stimulated, young people must have vent for their energies. If they do not find it in their own church they will find it elsewhere. In former years they have found it elsewhere. It is not to be deplored that they have worked outside the Church. It is to be deplored that work is not furnished them inside the Church.
" As a pastor, coming now to be one of the oldest pastors in the American Church, I hail the Young People's Society of Christian Endeavor with delight. Because of its being formed in the Church, by the young members of the Church, and finding its field in the Church by reason of its function as a training school, it will be repairing those wastes of the Church which necessarily occur by the aging of its members, by their removal to other parts of the country, and by their departure to the upper glory."
Here are one or two more similar testimonies, which perhaps will fill all the space which can be allotted to them in THE MISSIONARY REVIEW OF TH~ WORLD; but if others of a similar nature are desired, they can be furnished by the thousand from well-known pastors in all evangelical denominations.
Says· Rev. John H. Barrows, D.D., pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, Chicago : " The happy marvel of Christian Endeavor work is its surprising success. It is thoroughly adapted to the Christian training of the young, not only in prayer and testimony, but in all wholesome social life and in benevolent activities. It is so completely identified with the Church that every pastor in the land should welcome its aid in advancing his own church's welfare. This new movement in modern Christianity, springing from the soul of a consecrated pastor, deserves the most grateful co-operation on the part of the pastors. Guided as its national and international development is by wise and broad-minded men, the path of its future progress appears luminous with splendid victories for Christ. "
Says Rev. A. J. Gordon, D.D., pastor of the Clarendon Street Baptist Church, Boston : " Christian Endeavor has done much to solve the difficulty with us. It has turned the energy and activity of our young people into a better channel. Instead of amusement, it is now solid Christian service. Instead of a laborious effort to draw in by questionable entertainments, there is now a diligent and earnest going out to bring in. A little channel of Christian effort has been opened, and it has been clearly demonstrated that there is nothing that attracts like the earnest and hearty meetings in which our young people pray and sing and bear witness for Christ. The society has done us excellent service in just this way."
The recent history of the society may be summarized in a few sentences. It has been marked by a more extraordinary growth during the last few months than ever before. Last June there were found to be 11,013 societies, with 660,000 members. On January 1st, 1891, there were known to be 13,068 societies, with 784,000 members, and now, in the middle of March, there are over 14,500 societies, with 870,000 members. The growth seems to be as healthy as it is rapid, and the testimonies from pastors and other Christian workers are continually more and more encouraging in regard to the downright spirituality of the young people and their fidelity to all forms of Christian service. The conventions have from the beginning been most notable gatherings, the Convention at St. Louis, in June, 1890, being the climax of all that had hitherto been held, when something like 8000 young people came together from all parts of the land, and the whole tone of the meeting was productive of the deepest spirituality, and was calculated to send the young Christians home to do better work in their own churches than ever before.
The idea of fellowship also has evidently been coming to the front, and while it is no part of the work of the Christian Endeavor Society to break down or weaken denominational lines, it has a mission, I believe, in bringing young disciples together for an interchange of views, and for a most delightful interdenominational fellowship.
The celebration of the foundation of the first society at Portland, February 2d, 3d, and 4th, 1891, which marked the close of the first ten years of the Christian Endeavor movement, was in every way a notable gathering. Something like 1800 delegates were present, and the spirit of profoundest thankfulness to God for His blessing upon the work of the past ten years, and an earMst reaching forward to better service in the future characterized the gathering from the beginning to the end. Thousands of young Christians are now looking forward to the International
THE EPOCH Oi' ORGA'NIZATION. 00'7
Convention at Minneapolis, which will be held next July from the 9th to the 12th of the month. It is expected that this will be the largest, and, it is hoped, the most profitable and soul-stirring meeting that has yet been held. If it proves to be like the conventions that have gone before, it will bring a revived spirit of consecration to hundred!! of churches, and will lead thousands of young disciples to devote their lives more fully than ever before to the work of " Christ and the Church."
THE EPOCH OF ORGANIZATION.
The foregoing article was prepared by Dr. Clark at the request of the editor. He cannot fo: bear to add to this record of one of the most startling developments of the age, that this seems to be the epoch of organization.
During the last half century the Young Men's Chri8tian AS80ciation, Young Women's Christian Association, Women's Christian Temperance union, guilds of all sorts, women's foreign and home missionary boards and societies, Helping Hand, and numberless other similar organizations ~ave sprung into being and multiplied with unexampled rapidity; and none have shown such amazing vitality and reproductive force as the Christian Endeavor movement. The hand of God must certainly be in this. He means that all this organization of individual power in association shall be the signal for new advance along all the lines of missionary work, at home and abroad.
We are particularly glad to see that the Young People's Society of Christian Endeavor have begun systematir, work for missions. The greatest peril is that of prosperity. Numerical growth, popularity, enthnsiasm, rapidity of expansion-all these are the snares of the devil to betray us into self-complacency and selfishness. To have an object outside of ourselves and sedulously labor for the salvation of the lost is God's antidote to all destructive and hurtful tendencies.
In a prominent community of New York State, in 1866 and 1867, there developed suddenly a temperance organization which attained such amazing popularity that at least one third of all the best people in the town were actively identified with it. In fact, it became a reproach not to be, for the ontsiders were left in bad company. At that time there was such power resident in that organization that by simply acting together, every drinking saloon conld have been swept ont of existence, for the laws were such that they had but to be enforced to banish the grogshop. Hitherto few had dared to prosecute because there was not sufficient backing to insure immunity from personal revenge. But now, with a temperance organization numbering 800 active members, and embracing the foremost men and women of the community, the drink-venders began to tremble, and some actually left the town for fear of coming prosecutions!
Just at this time a sudden discord in the organization developed into division and hopeless disintegration, and the grand opportunity was lost and never has been regained. In face of a united foe the temperance host split hopelessly, and the grave question that was the wedge of division was this, wheth,er they should use an organ or a piano to lead the singing at the meetings!-[EDITOR.]
THE OPIUM CURSE
THE OPIUM CURSE.
BY JAMES E. MATHIESON, ESQ., LONDON, ENGLAND.
During three days, March 9th, lOth, and 11th, 1891, a Convention wall held in London by Christians from various branches of the Church, includ- ing delegates from Ireland, Scotland, and the Provinces, and a representa tive from Holland, concerning the awful traffic in opium which is bringing a curse home to millions of our race in the two most thickly peopled countries on this globe-China and India-as well as in Burmah, the Straits' settlement, and the Dutch colony of Java. Happily the Empire of Jap'an has been saved from the devastation which has been wrought in the countries we have named, and which year by year is spreading further.
It is on record that the infamous Warren Hastings, first Governor-Gen- eral of India under the old East India Company, sent a private venture of 2000 chests of the drug to Canton. In referring to the great crime which Great Britain has now so long and so persistently perpetrated against China, be it remembered that it differs in toto from the accursed drink and gunpowder traffic with Africa, inasmuch as the latter is carried on by private individuals or by trading companies, for whom Government has no special responsibility. It is unlike our drink traffic at home, inasmuch as our Government does not grow barley or hops, nor carryon breweries or distilleries, nor sell their products; on the contrary, it taxes these heavily, and puts certain restraints upon the licensed vendors of strong drink. But in India the Government advances money to enable the ryots to grow the poppy, receives and manufactures the juice into opium for the market, takes care that in quality it has the proper " smack" to make it far preferbIe by consumers to the coarser article prepared in China, sells it at public auction in Calcutta, and makes it, in fact, a Government monopoly, from which it derives a net revenue of about five millions sterling, or twenty-five millions of dollars annually. Vast breadths of land in every province of China are now devoted to poppy culture, where not so ,very long ago rice and other cereals were grown; and in days to come this state of things may aggravate intensely the oft-recurring Chinese famines. But the increase of production by the Chinese has diminished the consnmption of Indian opinm in China; and therefore the Indian Government, by an inspiration which comes from the pit, has been creating a taste for the drug and extending the area of human misery and utter destruction by the issue of licenses for the sale of opium all over India and in Burmah. Remonstrances and motions in Parliament have heretofore failed to move successive Secretaries of State for India to face the question of replacing this revenue, wrung from the vices of Chinamen, and now of our fellow-subjects in India ,and Burmah ; nor have the long-continued endeavors of the Anti- Opium Society succeeded in arousing the consciences of Christians to a sense of the awful wrong we are inflicting on' peoples who have done us no injury j indeed, the ignorance and apathy upon the subject throughout the churches it is woful to contemplate. The conveners of the Convention just closed felt that their resort must be to the arm of the Almighty, as there seems no hope but in His mighty help, in attempting to overthrow this gigantic evil. There may be-let us hope there is-in Great Britain sucl1- a sufficient reserye of moral force as, if aroused, would triumph over all the obstacles in the way: the non possumU8 of Government officials; the vested interests and prospective interests of the vast number of families who have relatives in the civil and military services of India, or are looking forward to occupy such posts. But, as John Bright once said, " It cannot be expected that India is forever to remain a rich pasturage for the younger sons of British families." The probable sacrifice which must be faced on this side to fill up the void, were the opium revenue to be cut off, in increased income tax at home, will make unpopular the effort to shift the burden from India to England j and it is to be remembered that India is already taxed to the utmost eapacity of her people, multitudes of whom are always on the verge of starvation. These and other difficulties in the way of those who go for the total abolition of the iniquitous traffic, led the committee to dedicate the first four sittings of these three days to prayer j and we had a precious outpouring of heart in each of those four meetings, men and women spontaneously risiug, one after another, with no cessation, except while the Honorary Secretary read, in each of the meetings, letters from various parts of our land expressing the deepest sympathy with our purpose, and giving thanks for the pamphlets and appeals which had been mailed to 45,000 ministers of all denominations during the month of February, calling attention to our country's shame, and the curse wrought in the great Asiatic empires by our wrongdoing. The prayer-meetings were followed by four meetings for open conference, in which there were no < discordant notes, and much valuable information was elicited. The closing meetings (in two halls) the last night were addressed by notable speakers. A resolution was passed in the closing meeting of conference, appointing an Urgency Committee of Seven to carryon the 'war, and calling for £20,000 to provide the sinews. Before the break-up on the last evening, two donations of £] 000 each had been promised. It should be mentioned that the whole of the meetings were held upon the premises of the Friends' historical meeting-house in Bishopsgate Stre~t without j and it was inspiring to stand within walls where Elizabeth Fry and generations of the Socicty of Friends had met in conncil to agitate against great wrongs, as well as to worship God in spirit and in truth. One of the rooms lent to the committee is that in which " the Committee for Sufferings" was wont, in a past age, to meet, to consider the claims of those who were persecuted for righteousness' sake, and to help the families of such as went to prison and to death rather than deny the name of Jesus.
May we claim from American Christians much believing prayer for the speedy and complete success of this new endeavor to rid our country of this dark blot, and to deliver millions in the far East from the temptation to the fatal indulgence in the opium habit? It may be that some of the Lord's stewards will come to our worthy Honorary Treasurer's help in this crisis; his name is George Gillett, Esq., 9 Birchin Lane, E. C., London.
Some friends of Israel, in London, lately tried to gain access to the Czar of all the Russias with a petition that he would not oppress the ancient people of God. I wish your President, Senate, and House of Represent- atives would memorialize our gracious Queen about our oppression of Asia's millions with this bondage of opium; it is to be feared that her Majesty does not know that she is, as Empress of India, the greatest poison manu- , facturer the world has ever seen.
And now let me give you a few reflections upon God's moral govern- ment of this wicked and rebellious world. It is a trite observation that while men individually have to answer to God for their 'sins, here, in the world that is to come, nations are judged and dealt with in this age. Some of us are old-fashioned enough to lament tne abandonment of days of humiliation and days of thanksgiving, which characterized the more rev- erent ages which preceded our own. But whether men acknowledge God's intervention inhuman affairs or no, Christians are forced to see, by His Providential dealings, that" verily there is a God that judgeth in the earth." Where, some one will say, are the wars, and famines, and pesti- lences which have afflicted Great Britain as judgments on her persistent crime in the matter of opium ? Well, it might be answered, look at the Afghan War and Kyber Pass disaster, and later on, the Indian Mutiny, as God's rebuke of this national crime; or the repeated Indian famines; these together swallowing up as much revenue, perhaps, as we had unholily gained by our opium manufacture and sale. But calamities far away in India do not burn into the souls of people dwelling at home at ease, and I think we must go deeper than this. The Almighty and wonder-working Jehovah has other plagues wherewith to chastise the impenitent nations- plagues which touch, not so much persons or property, but which affect tl,e moral and spiritual sphere of human beings, and determine their eternal destinies. And I note, and ask your readers to note, some ominous conjunctions of dates which, to my own mind at. least, carry the conviction that their mention cannot be dismissed by the customary post hoc non propter hoc, but that the finger of God is here. In 1840, the year of our first Chinese war, we compelled the Government of China to pay the cost of the opium they had right~ously destroyed, and 'to give us the cost of the war besides; by superior force and weapons we easily overcame this partially civilized people, and compelled their submission to an awful injus, tice. In 1841 there appeared an ecclesiastical portent, a cloud no biggel than a man's hand, in the issue from Oxford of "Tract No. 90," whi'ch wast he prelude to the deluge of ritualism and Romanism, which, after its course of just fifty years, now threatens to submerge the once Protestant Church of England. Be it marked well that this spread of sacerdotalism and sensll,OUS ceremonial" and the substitution, of the ChuIch in the NOm of Christ has chiefly been among the governing classes in our land. What next? In 1857 we had our second nefarious war with China. Lord Palmerston, then Prime Minister, was defeated in the House of Common~ in a debate concerning this opium war, * appealed to the constituencies, and was restored to power by a great majority. The middle and lower classes thereby endorsed the crime, and made it their own. What followed ~ In 1860, scarce three years later, appeared another sign, not in heaven, but from beneath, in the publication of the celebrated" Essays and Reviews." From that time there bas spread and spread, like a canker throughout the nonconformist churches of Great Britain and among the middle and lower clasaes, the spirit of insidious unbelief, undermining the authority of God's Holy Word in this once favored land of Bibles, putting a diminished value upon the atonement of our blessed Saviour, and giving rise to all sorts of unscriptural views about human destiny. Our' old supremacy among the nations rel:ted upon tbe moral and ,religious character of the people, and that character was formed by implicit belief in, and reverence for, God's Holy Word; when these are abandoned, our national characteristics disappear, and our strength will depart from us. " Verily there is a God that judgeth in the earth!" There are hundreds of ministers in our land to-day who, deluded them!!c1vcs in their religious beliefs and disbeliefs, are unconsciously" the scourge of God" in leading multitudes into similar delusions, inflicting judicial blindness, as the plague upon us for our crime and impenitence. Accompanying the eclipse of faith is the corruption of morals, the introduction of the gospel of amusements, multiplication of theatres, and the spread of gambling; the Lord looks down from heaven to see if there be any fresh green thing for His holy eye to rest upon; but" That which the palmerworm hath left hath the locust eaten; and that which the locust hath left hath the c'ankerworm eaten; and that which .the cankerworm hath left hath the caterpillar eaten" (Joel 1 : 4).
Yet there is hope. If we repent of our sin and forsake it, and attempt to make some restitution to China and put an arrest upon the plague in India and Burmah, God may still make this" a delightsome land," where His glory may dwell and shine forth brightly through His people. "I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the cankerworm, and the caterpillar, and the palmerworm, my great army which I sent among you" (Joel 2 : 25). Brethren in America, we are in an evil case. Pray for us! We need your prayers.
But why this statement and appeal in a missionary magazine 1 Because the opium vice, and, back of that, the cultivation, manufacture, and sale of opium, is the most gigantic stumbling-block in the way of the Gospel of the blessed God our Saviour. In India, Burmah, and China, American missionaries and British with one consent will concur in giving this testimony. It is one of the devil's masterpieces. "He knoweth that he hath but a ~hort time" (Rev. 12 : 12) ; and, as one fal5e system of religion after * Among the opponents of the war were John Bright, Richard Cobden, and W. E. Gladstone. an'other begins to totter to its fall, the arch enemy of God and of man de- vises some new and insidious snare for the race of Adam. It would be well worth the while of all mission boards in Protestant countries to con- centrate attention upon this great crime of Great Britain, to create a public opinion which would compel its termination; it would be well worth the while of all the temperance associations in Great Britain to throw their energies into the anti-opium war, if only to secure the subsequent blessing upon their home endeavors to overcome the drink interests. J. Hudson Taylor, of China, a man who" dwells in the secret of God's presence,"
remarked to a friend some years ago, "I,do not think your temperance crusade at home will triumph until you have redressed the wrong done to China in the matter of opium." This witness is true. What says the prophet Isaiah 1 "When ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you; yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood" (Isa. 1 : 15). Hear the psalmist's cry, "Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, 0 God, thou God of my salvation: and my tongue shall sing aloud of Thy righteousness" (Ps. 51 : 14). Why is there so much barrenness in the churches at home 1 Why such very partial success in philanthropic endeavor 1 Why are the results even on the foreign mission fields so incommensurate with the expenditure of human life and energy, and other outlays 1 "Your iniquities have turned away these things, and your sins have withholden good things from you. . . , Shall I not visit for these things 1 saith the Lord; shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this 1" (Jer. 5 : 25, 29). There has been a guilty silence in the pulpits of our land; for very shame men may have shrunk from dwelling on the dreadful theme; we have to knock away all props, such as apathy and ignorance of the subject, which have enabled our rulers to persevere in a course of criminality and injustice; and we go into this new campaign with trust in the living God, with appeal to all true-hearted men and women, and with resolve to spend and be spent in this holy, just, and patriotic effort to clear ourselves and our fellow countrymen from the shame and the sure punishment of the opium traffic and its base motive-the creation of revenue by the degradation of millions of the human family.
[The writer of the above article is the well-known ex-superintendent of the Mildmay mission work in London. Few men in Great Britain are better known or more loved. For many years he presided over the many departments of evangelistic, missionary, ho~pital and other work, of which Mildmay is the centre. There, in the heart of the world's metropolis, is the great. Mildmay Hall, seating its three thousand people, consecrated by countless gatherings, and especially famous for its June meetings. All about it are its hORpital, deaconess houses, school-rooms, etc., all in a roomy and convenient park. Mr. Mathieson tore down the old garden houRe and built a new and more commodious one, which with characteristic self-forgetfulness he put at the disposal of his successor, as he retired from his arduous labors. And now he is devoting tongue and pen to the advocacy of everything good. We commend not only the foregoing article to our readers' careful examination, but likewise the organ of this new protest against the opium traffic, to which Mr. Starbuck refers, " National Righteousness," which with no uncertain sound thunders out its remonstrances.- Eo.]
THE MIRACLES OF lIlISSIONS
THE JHRACLES OF MISSIONS.-NO. XIX.
MIDNIGHT ON THE HAWAIIAN ISLANDs.-I.
[EDITORIAL, A. T. P.] The popular name, "the Sandwich Islands, "was given by James Cook, who discovered them in 1778 ; but the proper name, which alone is used by the inhabitants, is " Hawaiian," derived from the lar~est of the group. They lie midway between Panama and-China, and their united area is about 60,000 square miles.
Their origin is volcanic, and coral reefs are found along the coast. The vessel that enters the fine harbor of Honolulu takes shelter in one of these coral reefs; the sloping walls which enclose this bay were built by the slow labor of centuries, and the builders were innu;:nerable minute zoophytes.
The tragical fate of Captain Cook in 1779 for seven years kept vessels from touching at the islands, but in 1786 Captains Dixon and Portlock stopped at Oahu, and La Perouie visited Maui.
Kamehameha was then king, and his settled policy favored foreigners. When the natives on the west shQre of Hawaii plundered a vessel and slew the crew, sparing the lives only Qf Isaac Davis and John Young, the king took them under hi!;! protection and subsequently admitted them to the eouncils of the nation.
Vessels were attracted to these shores partly to obtain sandal-wood, for incense to the idols in Chinese temples; and thus these idolaters contributed to idolatry elsewhere. Of course the features common to idolatry were found among the Hawaiians, and human sacrifices were customary, especially in case of the sicknes~ of a monarch; and, when Kamehameha would not permit th~m, three hundred dogs were offered at his funeral obsequies. The islands were filled with wailings ; the people shaved their heads, burned themselves, knocked out their front teeth, and both sexes, young and old, gave free reiu to their bad passions, in robbery, lust, and murder.
Idolatry here was of the lower order; the idols were of their own making, roughly and hideously carved in wood and in stone. Again were the significant words of Scripture fulfilled: "They that make them are like unto them," for the Hawaiians had become almost as stupid and senseless as the images they worshipped.
Kilauea, the great volcano, was among their gods. Its crater is 4000 feet above ~ea-Ievel, and 10,000 feet farther is another active crater, not connected with thill, which is three miles in diameter. Jets of scalding steam may be seen all over the field, and the burning l"ke rises and falls as the mighty power beneath heaves the molten mass, whieh every now and then swells into a vast dome, or is tossed up in jets from 60 to 80 feet hig.. Here the god Pele was adored with prayers and offerings. When the volcano poured forth its rivers of fire the wrath of Pele was no longer tf) be restrained j and when the seething crater wa~ comparatively quiet. he was appeased. Kalaipahoa, the poison god, was made of wood, curiously carved into hideous deformity; and no idol was so dreaded save the deities believed to preside over volcanoes. All deaths from poison were traced to his malign power, and even the wood of his image was believed to be poisonous.
The war god, Tairi. was borne in war near the king's person. It was about two feet high, of wickerwork, covered with red feathers, and having a hideous mouth. Lono, another of the most popular and powerful idols, consisted simply of a pole with a small head on the end, probably carried in battle. One of the largest temples was dedicated to this god. It was over 200 feet long and 100 feet broad, and built of lava stones, and upon it stood the idol, surrounded by images of inferior deities. Thilil temple still stands, a melancholy monument to what the Hawaiians once were. There was the court of idol deities; there they met for superstitious worship and licentious festival. There they poured out human blood and burned the flesh and fat of human sacrifices, every humane instinct blotted from their natures by ages of increasing degradation and deterioration.
No intelligent view of the heathenism of the Hawaiians can be had without a knowledge of the tabu system of restrictions and prohibitions, inseparable from the national idolatry, and embracing sacred places, persons, and things. To violate these restrictions was a capital offence. A husband could not eat with ~is wife, nor could women eat certain choice articles of food; and those whose high social position could defy the death penalty were threatened with the wrath of the gods. What was enjoined or prohibited was more tyrannically trivial than the injunctions of the ancient Pharisaic code; yet their very insignificance made them more intolerably oppressive. The tabu laws left the people at the mllrcy of a corrupt priesthood, and under a yoke of the most galling servitude, destroying personal liberty.
Ignorance of course prevailed. The Hawaiians knew not the meaning of a grammar, a dictionary, or a literature, and the simplest operations of arithmetic were inexplicable mysteries. Ignorance is the mother of superstition as it is the twin sister of idolatry. The ignorance of the Hawaiians was as extreme as their idolatry was degrading. They were savages without the Gospel. They lived in grass huts, and were almost destitute of clothing; the arts and sciences were unknown to them beyond thoae which are most primitive and essential to the preservation of life. Even language often shows the degrading influence of idolatry. As a people sink into depths of moral ruin, they lose higher and more spiritual ideas, until they have no longer any words with which to aSllociate elevated and ennobling sentiments. The missionaries to the Pacific Isles found no word to express thanles, as though gratitude were unknown; and many other instances might be given showing the influence of idolatry upon language.
The influence of superstition could be seen conilpicuously in the treatment of disease by native doctors, and the apprehension of being prayed to death, implying a belief in a species of witchcraft. The most absurd and foolish notions had all the importance of most certain facts and most weighty issues. The people lived in terror of their own thoughts, and malignant influences were believed to be all about them, shaping them and their destinies as by an inexorable fate.
It is but seventy years ago since there was one ruler, and his word was law, and his beck determined even life and death. If a chief placed a stick of sugar-cane in the corner of a field, not even the owner himself dared take his own crop away. If a person refused to obey his chief, or perform any service, his house might be burned, and his family left deititute. Hawaiians were ruled with a rod of iron.
There were formerly two cities of refuge on Hawaii, to which all might flee even to escape the penalty of crime, and those gates were never shut except against the pursuer. Thus even the provisions of mercy favored the destruction of all equity and justice. Mercy meant leaying crime to be unpunished, and sometimes even rewarded. Guilt was no assurance of penalty, nor innocence, of security. There were no forms of trial, no judges, juries, nor courts of law. The chief was sole arbiter of destiny.
Vancouver's visit and sojourn at the Hawaiian Islands (1792-94) marks an epoch. He was sent out by the British Government on a voyage of exploration, and introduced domestic animals, such as goats, sheep. and cattle from California. He had been with Captain Cook on his fatal visit, and found the population greatly decreased since the time of his first landing. As this could be accounted for but in part by the war'! in the early part of Kamehameha's reign, some deadly influences were obviously at work.
Among these were two-intemperance and licentiousness, which had been in a large measure introduced by so-called civilized foreigners. It was these vessels from Christian lands that touched at the Hawaiian group and first introduced there the damnable liquid fires of alcohol, and whose licentious crews first made the harbors of Hawaii the hells of the most abandoned and shameless vice.
Infanticide was also the fatal plant growing in the death shade to destroy the very existence of the nation. With the exception of the higher class of chiefs it was practised by all ranks of the people. Few parents spared more than two or three children, and many allowed but one to live. Shortly after birth, or during the first year, two thirds of the native children actllally died a violent death; and many different methods were used, some of which proved fatal to the mother also. Having failed, through lack of a " higher civilization," to nnderstand the modes of prenatal murder so common in Christian lands, the poor Hawaiians had no alternative but to permit nature to bring to birth, and then to strangle, or bury them alive. Think of a mother thrusting into the mouth of a helpless babe a piece of tapa to stop its cries, then deliberately digging a hole in the earthy Hoor of her hut within a few yards of her bed, and of the spot where she ate her daily bread, and there burying alive her own child! And for no other motive than to indulge indolence, or save the trouble of bringing the child up!
Parents were wont thus to put out of the way not only weak and sickly children, but even the brightest and healthiest. During the forty years, between 17';8 and 1818, the population had decreased from 400,000 to 150,000, nearly two thirds, so that a nation 'Was saved from extinction by the gospel, for in twenty years Illore, at the same rate of decrease, the Haw- aiian Islands would have been an uninhabited waste.
The governor, Kekuanoa himself, in an address Honolulu, in 1841, said: "There were, a few years ago, three laws, all dcsigned to deliver criminals from justice by the protecting favor of the chiefs. Offenders were not then brought to trial, and even legislation set a premium upon crime. Both polygamy and polyandry were common, no law of marriage being known, and property and rank settling the question of the number of wives a man should have or the nu::nber of husbands a woman should have, and hence came the attendant evils of infanticide, quarrels, and murder.
" The lines of distinction between right and wrong seemed well-nigh obliterated. Good and evil were alike j the rights of others were not re- spected j they abused the maimed, the blind, the aged, and the chiefs ground the poor into the dust. Gambling, drinking, and debauchery found in the rulers rather their leaders than their rebukers and punishers. The chiefs themselves became rich by seizing the property of their subjects j and at the death of his father Liholiho made a law which sanctioned wholesale rum-drinking, dancing, stealing, adultery, and night carousing, consuming whole nights in the most shameless debauchery, and turning whole villages into brothels."
Modesty there was none j even among the gentler sex all sense of shame seemed dead. .Nakedness brought no blush.· As to virtue, what chastity could be expected where these barriers were broken down? Parents gave their daughters, and husbands their wives to a fate worse than death for the sake of gain j and this traffic in virtue became a systematic thing upheld by law and sanctioned by universal custom. Every foreign vessel was turned into a floating Sodom. The facts defy language ; and, if language could be found, refined taste would forbid the repetition of such shocking details.
Of course the whole social fabric was decayed and rotten from the foundation. The tie of marriage was dependent on caprice. One day a man might have as many wives as he could feed and take care of j the next day he might turn them all adrift, as it suited his pleasure or fancy. A woman could have as many husbands as she pleased, and the relation was equally uncertain. The king himself had five wives, and one of them was his father's widow, and two others his father's daughters. Each one had her day in which to serve her lord, following him with a spit dish and 1 fly-brush. Conjugal concord or affection was as unknown as though they had no existence. and so of parental authority or affection, or filial love and obedience. (To be continued.)
THE POLITICAL CIlECK IN JAPAN
THE POLITICAL CHECK IN JAPAN.
BY REV. D. S. SPENCER, NAGASAKI, JAPAN Recent political movements in Japan and their immediate influence upon missionary operations here demand thought. Only a brief resume will now be attempted, and 1Il0re interesting things must be omitted. My object in writing is simply to show the trend of ., things Japanese."
On February 11th, 1890, the Emperor gave to his Japanese subjects a Constitution, according to promises made some ten years ago. In accordance with the provisions of that ConRtitution, the imperial parliament of thiR nation was opened by the Emperor on November 19th, and Japan then began her first experience with parliamentary institutions. The necessary preparations had, of course, been previously made, and the political machinery of the country, such as it is, had been set in motion. Representatives of the people had been chosen aCQording to the Constitution, which provides that persons of certain age, and paying above a certain amount of direct government tax, shall have the right to vote. Temporary parliament buildings, costing over 300,000 yen, had been built. Now, for the first time in their history, the Japanese people began to have direct hand in the government of the nation. The outside world has looked on with intense interest to see what kind of work the Japanese would make at handling institutions, the names of which they but yesterday learned, nnd the meaning of which they perhaps to-day do not well understand. The people had at least some idea of the new responsibility that had come iJ I'on them, perhaps a very crude idea, and an overwhelming sense of their own importance and power. This was to be expected. It would Dot be vaHtly different under similar circumstances in any land. At any rate the people generally felt that when the Diet met something would be done. The taxes exacted by the government of the people have been somewhat high, but not excesRively 80. There haR doubtless been here as everywhere official blunders, political corruption, and such a lording it over the people by the official class as might have been expected under the existing circumstances. But on the whole the government has done well.
It will be remembered that just as preparations for the new Diet were being actively made, the treaty revision scheme fell through, and this caused in some circles intense disappointment. A conservative feeling, for which thoughtful men had looked as a reaction from the intensely progressive spirit which had possessed the people, now set in with much force ; and the treaty revision failure only added new fuel to the conservative fires.
The representatives sent by the people had, in the elections in which they were chosen, pledged their constituency that great reforms should take place in the goYernment, among which reforms was the reduction of taxes. As soon as the budget containing the estimates of the government for the ensuing fiscal year had been presented to the House of Representatives for approval the fight began. The extreme RadicalR, strong enemies of the present government, have done all in their power to swamp the government and force a resignation of the Ministry. This has been carried on till the relations between the government and the House have become very much strained. A class of hair-brained youth called soshi, whose policy is to carry out their plans by force instead of reason, the nihilists of Japan, have been used by some of the party leaders to carry out their plan~, and threats, intimidation, personal assaults, and even murder have been the result. On January 20th the parliament buildings were totally destroyed by fire, said to have been caused by the over-heating of the electric wires with which the Diet is supplied with li!!ht. But thcre i,: /1 strong suspicion that they were set on fire. To put the matter briefly, Japan is passing through a crisis, and never since the restoration has there been a time when greater skill and calmer judgment were needed than now.
As a result of this conservative reaction, foreigners who were yesterday looked up to by the people generally are now looked down upon. This applies to all nationalities with perhaps little distinction. If one nationality is hated more than another, it is the subjects of her Majesty the Queen of England. Foreign teachers formerly employed in the government schools are being dismissed as fast as their contracts expire. So also with those holding other government positions. Passport regulations hRve become very strict. All foreigners are watched as they have not been before. Our mission schools, especially those for boys, suffer severely, in some cases having to fight for an existence. Missionaries are often insulted when speaking in public, and when passing along the street often hear invidious remarks made by the people about themselves, or have dogs set upon them, or are stoned, or meet with other annoying things that until a few months ago were never heard of as against a missionary. Police protection has been necessary in many cases. Dr. Imbrie was stabbed in Tokyo, Dr. Worden's life threatened in Nagoya, and the Rev. Mr. Perin driven from a public meeting by a mob in the same city, and many other less dangerous, but equally insulting things have occurred. With the foreigner, of course, the foreign religion must suffer. Pastors of the churches have had and are having a hard time. Rev. Mr. Miyama, in Nagoya, has had to endure hard persecution, but he is brave, calm, and hopeful-a hero. Members have left some of the churches because of the anti-foreign feeling that has ruled them. Buddhists, seeing their chance, have been most active in this persecution against native Christians. In the Union Church of Japan, composed of the Presbyterian churches working here, a Synod was recently held in Tokyo, to which, of course, Japanese Christians were sent as members together with their foreign brethren. These Japanese Christians being in the majority, voted to 5ubstitute the Apostles' Creed for the Presbyterian symbols, adding a brief statement concerning the Trinity, and making this the creed of the Union Church. Even this confesKion, drawn by Professor Ishimoto " was submitted. only to be almost immediately challenged on the ground of its evident foreign authorship. Mr. Ishimoto assured his numerous questioners that not till half an hour before the meeting, when he had shown it to Dr. Imbrie, had any foreigner suspected its existence. Opposition to it vanished, and it was unanimously and enthusiastically adopted."
Without further details it will be seen that this reaction will affect all church work, aud seriously the question or self-support. Now what is to be the probable outcome of all this? Will it permanently injure the cause of Christianity in Japan ~ The writer is of opinion that it will not. It will multiply the difficulties of the missionary for a time, will sift the Church, perhaps reducing the numbers, but not the real power of the Church, will necessitate help from home in order to keep up the work, and may discourage some who had been led to think that the battle in Japan was about over; but to those who have studied Japan, who have measured the power of Buddhism, and who have faith in the all-conquering power of the Gospel, it will not be discouraging. It may be a long battle, and may take more men and money than some enthusiastic persons have thought, but the victory is ours. God is with us, and the battle is not ours, but His. .Tapan needs the hfllp of the foreign churches to keep up the work, but more than all else she needs the Pentecostal baptism of the Holy Ghost. That is the supreme need of the hour The Church machinery is here and well established; such a baptism as came upon the early Church would put life into this machinery, and solve these difficulties as nothing else can do.
RUSSIAN MISSIONARIES IN JAPAN.
It is not yet known whether the Japanese who attempted the life of the Czarewitch is a religious or a political fanatic. He may belong to the latter class, for the anti·foreign movement is strongly developed in Japan, on acconnt of the agitation created by the proposed revision of the European and American treaties. The United States Government was the first to conclude a treaty with Japan, in 1854, its example being followed by various European Powers. In 1886 Japan proposed a revision of those diplomatic arrangements in a spirit somewhat unfavorable to foreigners. The negotiations were abruptly stopped by the Mikado's Government, which reopened them in 1889, curtailing still more the privileges granted formerly to foreign residents. Still, it is probahle that the would-be murderer of the Czarewitch has obeyed the impulse of religious rather than of political and patriotic fanaticism.
Russian proselytism has been of late more prominent and more puhlic in Japan than any other, though it must not be forgotten that three Ameri- Cltn missionaries have had to suffer during the last year at the hands of Japanese. Christianity was introduced into Japan by the Portuguese in 1549, and there were soon m:my thousands of converts, 40,000 of them being sentenced to death under the pretext that. they had taken part in a political conspiracy. The teaching of the Gospel was forbiuden. Neverless, when the French landed in Japan in 1860, they found there 10,000 natives secretly adhering to the Christian reli~ion. It is only ilince 1872 that Christianity has been recognized officially by Japan as a tolerated religion. In that year, too, the Russian missionaries openly pursued their work. They had a peculiar method of teaching sacred history. They gathered the native pupils in front of the holy images, and used the latter as explanatory figures, thus aiding the pupils in remembering the lessons.
The Russian mission in Japan was founded in 1861, but its official life dates only from 1870. All its member~ must be " exceedingly learned people, speaking perfectly the language of the country, and able to conqner, by their irreproachable life, the respect and affection of all the natives. " Such is the language of the regulations. U nti! 1880 thos6 missionaries did Rot have large funds at their disposal and were able to erect only one church building, though they had made already 5000 proselytes. Bnt the Japanese Orthodox Christians addressed a petition to thc Imperial Procurator in St. Petersburg, begging him to increase the subsidy given to the mission by the Russian Government. Their request was immediately granted, and besides that, the Missionary Association in Moscow agreed to furnish $20,000 a year to the Japanese Mission. The labors of the Russian priests were then pushed in earnest, and in 1885 thRy had 12,000 Japanese as members of their church. The membership now is a little more than 20,000, and in the single year 1889, 1800 natives were converted to the Orthodox faitb.-N. Y. Tribune.
EXTRACTS AND TRANSLATIONS FROM FOREIGN PERIODiJALS
EXTRACrS AND TRANSLATIONS FROM FOREIGN PERIODICALS.
BY REV. C. C. STARBUCK, ANDOVER, MASS.
THE W ALDENSES.
-An interesting little pamphlet has been issued, giving a sketch of Waldensian history since the Glorious Return. After that the Vaudois were, within their valleys, quietly allowed to practice their religion. But down to 1848 they were persecuted, though 110 longer unto blood. They could not buy any new lands, and only by tacit allowance could they even carryon any business outside their own valleys. Civilly they could not rise above the office of syndic, or common councilldr. Having neither lawyers nor jndges of their religion, they almost always went into suits with Catholics with the expectation of having the worst of it. Their land tax was a third higher than that of the Catholics. Their physicians, who received a mere certificate, were only allowed to practice among them. All their religious books were strictly supervised, and JIli,ght, under no pretext, pass into Catholic hands. In some placeli, once or twice a year, the Catholics claimeJl the right of going in procession around their temples, singing hymns before thc ministers had withdrawn. A refractory child had hut to say that he wanted to become a Catholic, and, like a Catholic child in Ireland under the laws of William and Mary, he was thenceforth independent of his parents; indeed, still more completely exempt. No Vaudois worship eould be celebrated beyond the valleys, and propagandism, by word or writing, was rigorously forbidden.
But at length signs of deliverance began to multiply. Generous Catholic voices began more and more to be heard in their favor. The Sardinian kings granted dispensations from restrictive laws in increasing measure. D'Azeglio and Cavour became the powerful champions of their rights. At Tnrin a petition of 600 leading persons, of whom 80 were priests, attacked intolerance in its citadel. Count Sclopis reminded the king that, for moral and domestic virtues, no other population of the State could he compared to the Waldenses. The king himself, coming among them to attend the consecration of a spleudid Catholic church, refused a guard, and was greatly pleased when the Waldenses themselves, donning their antiquated uniforms and grasping their old flint-locks, discharged this loyal office.
At. last the Statuto, which transferred the centre of authority from the will of t.he monarch to the deliberate purpose of the nation, opened the way for the Decree of Emancipation, by which, on the 17th of February, 1848, Charles Albert raised the Waldenses to the full civil rights of Sardinian subjects. This final deliYerance was received with indescribable enthusiasm and gratitude, both to God and the king, throughout the Vaudois valleys, and swept the Catholics likewise along in the tide of generous feeling.
But the crown of honor was put on the headR of the long-proscribed mountaineers when, on the 27th of Febrnary, 1848, the various populations of Charles Albert's kingdom, who by the Statuto, the Magna Charta, not merely of the Subalpine kingdom, but of the Italy that was to be, had been rai~ed from the humiliation of mere subjects into the dignity of free citizens of a crowned commonwealth, regalis respublica, assembled at the capital to render to their sovereign and to each other the tribute of joy, gratitude, and fidelity. In the great square of Turin, where in old time the Vaudois Varaglia had suffered at the stake, Ligurians, Sardinians, Savoyards, Piedmontese of various provinces, poured out before their king and his household a wealth of festal display and a wealth of enthusiasm such as Italians know how to lavish. And among them the mountain band of 600 men, those Waldenses whose name had never before been in Turin anything but a by-word, marching under a banner which bore above the royal arms the simple inscription" A Oarlo Alberto, i Valdesi riconoscenti," " To Charles Albert, the grateful Waldenses," divided with the king himself the honors of the day. Every class of their fellow-countrymen, but above all the generous university youth, thronged to cheer them, to embrace them, to condense, as it were, into one day the amends for centuries of proscription. And the sons of the valleys 80 received it. "When the Lord turned our captivity, we were like them that dream." From this dawn of a delivered and united Italy they went back to "the strength of the hills" to forget the past, and to address themselves to a worthy share in that work of spiritual regeneration for which, as they say with some sadness, the civilly regenerated Italy shows little longing, but without which her civil Iegeneration will either stiffen into a sordid materialism or perish in the bloody waves of an anarchical enthusiasm of atheism, the worship of La Madre Natura, whose one regulative impulse will be the murderous hatred of God, of Christ, of all the sanctities of Christian life.
AFRICA.
-The Bulletin Missionnaire of the Free Churches of French Switzerland, whose mission is in the Transvaal, and in the Portuguese territory, remarks: "As we are laboring to fashion men, the missionary will be hated so long as the sentiments which refuse to the blach equal rights with the whites shall prevail in this country. Meanwhile our Christians are extremely appreciated as policemen, confidential agents, and domestics."
-The Free Church of Scotland Mission at Main, Tembuland, South Africa, has 412 communicants, and 124 candidates.
-Bishop Tucker writes of Uganda that the whole country seems literally thirsting for instruction. He says that a man will willingly work three months for a copy of the Suahili New Testament.
INDIA.
-The Rev. W. B. Simpson, English Wesleyan, writes in the Wesleyan Missionary Leaflet: "The deadness, lethargy, the flatly indifferent toleration of any creed in heaven or earth, the inertia of Hinduism, is far the mightiest force we have to contend with."
-The Madras Standard, as quoted in the Bombay Guardian of February 14th, 1891, calls attention to the persecution of Christians in the Travancore State, alleging that though the British resident there-Mr. Hannyngton-could wipe out these disabilities by the stroke of his pen, he takes no interest in the subject whatever, and only exercises his interest in supporting the present maladministration. It seems that the Rajah has been prevailed on to revive a forgotten law, making it penal to build any Christian church, chapel, or school without special license, after due inquiry whether the susceptibilities of neighboring Brahmans or priests will not be offended. The law appears to be meant as virtually prohibitory. One would think that a gentle intimation from the Empress to her royal vassal might not come amiss.
– " In the' Vishnu Smriti,' to sell salt, to commit fornication, to abuse the Vedes, to kill cows, and to let your younger brother marry before you, are all sins of the fourth degree, not nearly so awful as stealing from a Brahman or getting drunk, but condemning an offender to becomp, a seabird in the next life. And it is no doubt due to this absurd mixture of serious and trivial offences in their sacred books that the ordinary Hindu cannot distinguish between the moral well-being of the people and the accidental benefit of a class. "
Again: "In modern Hinduism things the most grand and the most grotesque ~tand side by side. Regulations about food stand side by side with moral precepts. The three handfuls of water are as important as the Gagatri at the bathing tank, and to sneeze is worse than to tell a lie. "
-Sir Charles Aitchison, in a speech in England, quoted from in the Standard, says: "In the large and important town of Islamabad, in Kashmir, we are told that most of the wealthy Mohammedans posse~s a copy of the Bible j many of them read it j and one native gentleman acknowledged that he was goh;g th,rough it for the eighth time, and liked it more and more. In the south of India we read of a juvenile society being formed in one of the colleges for the study of the Christian Scriptures. all the members of which are high caste lads. In Bengal we read of school-boys choosing copies of the Bihle for prizes, and begging that their knowledge of Scripture may be specially noted on their school certificates. "
-The examination of the Indian work of the Free Church of Scotland by a deputation of the church, and the criticisms of its report by the missionaries, have resulted in the passage of a resolution by the Foreign Mis· sions Committee, acknowledging a wise providential guidance when the Church was led, by educational work, " to deal with that great central core of the people of India on which Christianity had up to that time made small impression j" declaring that this work still deserves cordial support, and addir;g, that, as always urged by the missionaries, this pra!pamtio evangelicil mllst always, and now more than ever, " be supplemp,nted and completed by the simple, earnest proclamation of saving truth," and" that the two sides of the work should always be in visible connection with each other."
-The Fifty-second Annual Report of the Wesleyan Mission in the Mysore Province (South-western India) remarks: "The Mysore is an epitome of India, as India is of the world. Nowhere is caste more tenacious of its privileges, or religion more bigoted in its prejudices. Saivites and Vishnaivites here discuss the tenets of their respective faiths. The Lingayats, numerous and powerful, claim a proud position. The Jains, a people of peculiar Buddhistic doctrines, have a stronghold here. The followers of Mohammed meet us at every turn j and though as yet we have scarcely approached them with the Gospel, the most determined of our Hindu opponents are not so violent or dangerous in their extreme antipathy to Christianity as they. In the Mysore the proportion of low caste people is less numerous than in many other parts of India, but all the social strata, from the lowest to the highest, may be here discovered."
The report says: "Life wears an altogether new aspect to a Hindu woman in her unromantic home when the visits of the Zenana teacher take away its monotony. Often with strong anti-Christian prejudices, but always with unfeigned pleasure, do the women receive these visitors. The welcome thus afforded helps greatly in removing prejudice. Then when this is followed up by systematie instruction in both religious and seeular subjects, the mental and spiritual faculties of the women are marvellously aroused, and their sympathies are brought into play on behalf of that which is pure, noble, and Godlike."
JAPAN AND CHINA.
-Dr. Daly, port-doctor at Ningpo, China, says: " Years will show whether opium is the great curse it has so often been described to be." His final conclusion, however, is that" it is possible and probable that opium will prove' the curse of China' by diminishing the population to an injurious extent., producing an unhealthy race, and turning millions of these peaceful, sober, industrious masses into a degraded and vicious peo- ple, with what effects on this great nation time alone can show."
-The Rev. H. J. Foss, of Kobe, Japan, a missiouary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, speaking of the patriarch of the Episco- pal Church in that place, who was seventy when baptized, and is now seventy-eight or nine, remarks that his great ambition was to see fifteen Christians arot:nd him ere he died. There are now forty-nine, including nine catechumens. This outstripping of anticipation is thus far a characteristic of Japanese missions.
-The Rev. Murdo Mackenzie, of the English Presbyterian Church, writes an interesting letter from Hak-ka, China. The following two paragraphs give vil'idly the two sides of the Chinese chameter : .
"Mountain lands are very barren, but John Chinaman can make even bare hills fruitful. High up in the mountain we come suddenly upon a little cottage ensconced between two rocky precipices, and there, by the side of a little rivulet, lives a thriving family, and there they have made a habitation for themselves out of what would seem to most people but' airy nothing.' The palm-tree is transported here and flourishes. It decorates the frontage of the little house. In variety of produce they rival their neighbors in the plains. The inevitable garlic is there, and a variety of green cabbages and other vegetables.
" Notwithstanding his pluck and perseverance, the Chinaman is a terribly ungetatable ereature. You cannot get him interested in anything else than worldly affairs. When you remind him of other important matters which ought not to be overlooked, there is a look of blank astonishment on his face. It is difficult to get him to higher things. There is a little shrine by the roadside not far from his house, and under a sturdy old oak. Thither he hies sometimes, aud pays his tribute to the Spirit of the hills. He does not seek after God, for he knows not God. He knows not that Hod or man has any interest in his welfare. HiB experience of man has led him to distrust him, and it is a harder task than we can accomplish to get him to realize that God loves him, and that God is worthy of his trust. We shall not fail in accomplishing much if we are the means of bringing into his life the element of trust."
–The Rev. Gilbert Reid, of the American Presbyterian Chu!"ch in Shanghai, China, has lately published three interesting and able articles on three aspects of Chinese society, of which he thinks advantage may well be taken in the promulgation of the Gospel. The first respects the hierarchical gradations of official authority; the second, the almost unexampled influence of the higher classes; the third, the hierarchical gradations of the rank of cities, of which, he thinks, enough has not been made. In this respect China, Mr. Reid remarks, is extraordinarily like the Roman Empire, and we know how almost everywhere the apostles struck for the cities, especially for the central ones, so that the whole government of the Church was developed out of this fact, of which" Metropolitan" is a reminder over vast regions where its present application may seem somewhat artificial. China seems, according to all accounts, to be like Wordsworth's cloud" that moveth altogether, if it move at all." The very opposite of t.he weltering chaos of India. Mr. Reid's articles are in the C'hinese Recorder.
-The Rev. T. R. Stevenson says, in a sermon quoted in the Ohinese Recorder of February, 1891 : "During a recent visit to Japan I met with a gentleman who meutioned an incident which I can never forget. One rarely hears anything more impressive. He knew a missionary in China who one day encountered a Chinaman. The latter had been in the habit of watching the conduct of the former, and that very narrowly. He said, , I want your God to be my God.' The missionary answered, ' 'Vhat do you mean r 'I wish to be of the same religion as you.' 'Why do you ?'
, Because if your God is like you, He must be good. ' "
-A pamphlet, published by Morgan & Dyer, London, entitled ])evastation of India's Millions, says pungently: "It iR a British axiom, and has been an Englishman's boast, that British law is equal for all British subjects. But in the British opium administration in the East, there is th" principle of slavery, viz., that the rights and welfare of men of one race may be disregarded and sacrificed by men of another."
-Another pamphlet, Britain's Crime, published by Dyer Brothers, say,;: "Few things in Chinese history are more pathetic than the experience of the Emperor Tao Kwang. Three of his sons had died through the opium habit; and finding the curse stealthily spreading among his subjects, he ordered Commissioner Lin to proceed to Canton in 1839 to stop thc smuggling of opium into China. The monarch wept as, recounting the dire effects of the drug, he sent forth Commissioner Lin on his momentous mission. Then followed, in the interests of rapacious and criminal greed, and in defiance of the elementary principles of morality, one of the blackest pages in the history of Britain's dealings with other nations-the first opium war. The emperor died, while the plague which had laid waste his own family was still forced upon his people at the point of British bayonets. "
MISCELLANEOUS.
-What better ground conld there be for an appeal than that of the Brethren's Unity, as we find it expressed in Service for the King? "Existing missions are being so blessed they must be extended. "
-Service for the King has· a letter from Mr. Barnett, written from Jaffa. He speaks of visiting the Jews in Port Said. "Among the 300 Jewish families there are many RURsian and Roumanian Jews. They seemed full of hope of the nearness of restoration to Palestine, and of the coming of the Messiah. One Jew said: ' The persecutions of the past have worked for our good, and so will the present troubles; if it were not for these the hearts of the Jews would never be toward Palestine.'
"On December 22d we landed at Jaffa. Miss Cresswell met us and took us straight to the hospital, where we met Miss Marriott also and found the spirit of MildmllY in Jaffa."
-The .Tewish Herald for March, 1891, gives a communication from Mr. Rabinouich, giving information that after long and painful suspense the Russian Government has at length given permission for the opening of Somerville Hall, Kischeneff. "An inscription in golden letters, both in the Hebrew and Russian languages, adorns the portal, and is well calculated to aflest attention. It is in the words of Acts 2 : 36 : ' Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made that ~ame Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord ant! Christ.' Surely a most striking and significant fact that this word of Scripture should be thus proclaimed in Hebrew to the Jews, and be inscribed on the door of a synagogue in which the Gospel is proclaimed. Mr. Rabinouich writes that the inscription made a profound impression. "
-The Herald says, speaking of Jerusalem: "Every building of any importance has to do with religion, church, mosque, monastery, synagogue, or hospice. Religion is in the atmosphere. But one cannot help feeling that religion may playa great part in people's lives without the people themselves being truly religious. Devout Christians there are in Jerusalem ; but;. religionism is a greater force than religion. Not in Jerusalem, where the externalities of Christianity have almost choked its spiritual life, and where the spirit of Christ is so deeply sinned against in the hatreds which are cherished by His followers toward each other, and toward .Tew and Moslem-no, not there Bas the religion of Christ any longer its special seat." In that city, it goes on to say, where the lives of men and women are fullest of Christ, there is Christ nearest; while of Zion He may still say: "How often would I have gathered thy children together, and ye would not." But perhaps the day of redemptIOn is at hand.
-The Greater Britain Messenger speaks of the diocese of Algoma as "the one missionary diocese of the Canadian Church." "The work of the c1/lrgy is at times a great physical hardship. In a recent trip to Nepigon, the bishop had only for five nights the luxury of a bed." Dr. Sullivan may fairly claim a larger share in the apostolic succession than some of his mitred coileagues, in having the privilege of ,. enduring hardness" for Christ's sake.
-National Righteousness, which, unmoved by the sneers of the Guardian at Exeter Hall eloquence, continues to set forth the abominations of the opium traffic, says: "Again and again we have heard the question, 'Shall I not visit for these things, saith the Lord; shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this l' and the answer we have heard, ' By fearful things in righteousness.' Yet again it is repeated. We have listened and seemed to get no answer. It may he because when the thunderbolt next falls it will be from clouds that have been longer in gathering. It may be because it is not to be by the thunderbolt. As in the individual sinner, his iniquities are sometimes visited by the stroke of apoplexy and sometimes by a creeping paralysis, so may it be with a nation. The answer to that solemn question may have to be watched for by an observant eye, rather than heard by an attentive ear. Do we see it in the stealthy spread of the opium vice in India, Australia, and other colonies, while w.e hear the prophet's whisper, ' Thine own wickedness shall correct thee l' "
-The Queensland Kanaka Mission has presented its fourth annual report. The mission aims at the evangelization of the Polynesian laborers on the Qlleensland plantations, of whom there are 2500 it:. the Bundaberg district alone. It is evangelical and nndenominational.
INTERNATIONAL DEPARTMENT
H.-INTERNATIONAL DEPARTMENT.
EDITED AND CONDUCTEI? BY REV. J. T. GRACEY, D.D.
Shall we Have Another General Missionary Oonference? [J. T. G.] The subject of utilizing the Colum· can societies. '1'hey might hold a gen. bian centennial occasion in the inter. eral convention to review the work they e~ts of missions has received only casual have in hand and plan to co-operate in thought. It seems desirable to get a different fields. I should like that. more general expression of the opinion The time may come in 1898 or 1900 of those who should direct any move· better for a World's Missionary Conment of the kind and awaken thought vention. In the mean time, a convention in others. In connection with work of the American missionary societies that has fallen to the writer to do for might be held earlier to ad vantage, as the International Missionary Union, above suggested." opinions have been solicited from a few representati ve persons on the desira- Rev. Dr. J. O. Peck, Secretary of the bilityand practicability of attempting a Methodist Episcopal Missionary So- World's Missionary Conference in 1892 ciety, says: or 1893, or of a General Conference of the American missionary forces, to reo ,. I would like to Bee a World's Misview the work that has been done by sionary Convention held in this counthe churches of North America for other try in 1892, but I have not clearly been countries; and for planning for co·opera. convinced of its expediency or desiration and stimulating zeal among us to bility quite so soon after the great Lon. proaecute this work more efficiently and don meeting. I think, perhaps, at the extensively in the future. We desire present juncture that an American to know from many persons, at home Protestant Missionary Convention for and abroad, what their thought is on the continent might be as desirable and the subject, and solicit volunteer opin- profitable just now as a World's Mis· ions and statements of facts pro and sionary Convention, and that a few con.* Meanwhile, as many of the per- years later, perhaps ten years after the sons from whom we have tmlicited opin- London Conference, it would be deions kindly put us at liberty to treat sirable to have again a Congress of the World's Protestant Missionary Soci. as their replies of a public nature, we eties. I am heartily in favor of any movement which will increase the in. venture to print some of those received telligence and zeal of the Church of from secretaries of societies. Christ in the great cause of missions."
Rev. Dr. N. G. Clark, Secretary of Rev. Dr. Henry N. Cobb, Secretary the American Board, says : of the Board of Foreign Missions of the Reformed Church of America, writes: " In regard to the expediency of having a World's Missionary Conference in ., I presume that I may find myself 1892, my own thought is, that while in a minority. nevertheless I have grave such a convention would be very pleas- doubts on the subject. It seems to me ant to many persons, I am still in doubt that once in ten years is quite often as to its desirability and expediency. enough for such a convention, and It requires a great deal of labor and 1892, therefore, quite too near the Lon. care, and there seems to be hardly oc- don Conference of 1888. casion for another great convention so soon. It will be only four years after " I have often thought, however, that the great London Conference. I should it might be well to have a national or think better of a meeting of the Ameri- American convention at a five-year in. terval from the World's Convention, * Address J. T. Gracey, Rocbester, N. Y. and should be inclined much to prefer that course to the other. Much good might be expected from such a conven- sionary societies would seem too narrow tion, and a great impulse be given to to be attractive, unless, indeed, it had the work of foreign missions among our for its chief object the consideration of American churches." methods for arousing the American churches to new activity in the foreign Rev. Dr. Mabie, Secretary of the Bap- mission work. It seems to me that the tist Missionary Union, says: methods of work in the foreign mission field have been so fully discussed, that ., I have considerable doubt. So far now it only remains for the missionas we Baptists are concerned, plans are aries in each section of the broad field already on foot whereby important to determine for themselves what the meetings, embracing both bodies North true result of the discllssion is. But and South, as well as Canadian, are to for the development of the latent rebe held in commemoration of the cen- sources of the Church at home, all the tennial of Baptist missions. I fear we skill, tact, and courage of the true oon scarcely manage to do justice to friends of the Master are demanded. more in the same year. A World's Convention or an American Convention that would assemble in the U Besides, it is 80 soon after the spirit of Isaiah 58, with fasting and World's Conference of 1888 in London. prayer-a convention that would • cry There is vast expense about such meet- aloud, spare not, lift up their voice like ings to have them often. Moreover, a trumpet, and show the people of God from a personal tour right round the their transgression and their sins' world among all the missions withiu might be a great power for God… the past nine months, I am deeply persuaded that long existent and conserva- Rev. Dr. John McLaurin, Secretary tive methods in mission work need of the Baptist Foreign Missions of Onstrong reinforcement along well-e!ltab- tario and Quebec, says: Iillhed lines. There are no new methods to be discovered of much value that ,. I believe a World's Missionary Conour frequent general conventions can vention should be held in America in invent or improve. I should say, let us 1892. I firmly believe it ought to be a keep right at the work already laid out World's Missionary Convention. I beby the various branches of the Church lieve more Missionaries and more Native of God. A deeper spirituality and con- Brethren than took part in the last secration within these several bodies should take part in this. Trophies of touching the broad work is the chief missions should be there from all lands ; need rather than improved methods." they should not be thrust into a corner because they cannot thrill an audience Rev. Dr. M. H. Houston, Secretary like an Anglo-Saxon would. If there be of the Board of Foreign Missions of the an American one, let it be an annex. I Presbyterian Church in America (South- was at the one in London in 1888. ern), says: Blessed results flowed from that one, and more will flow from another." ,. My opinion is that the London Conference is so recent that it would not be Miss Abbie B. Child; Secretary of the well to attempt another World's Mis- Woman's Board of Missions (Congresionary Convention in 1892, at least for gational), and also Chairman of "The the discussion of those general subjects World's Committee of Women," which which were before the London meeting. grew out of the London Conference, I would be glad, though, to attend a says: World's Convention at any time to consider the urgent practical question, ., The committee for the "'"arious What can be done more than we are woman's llilsslOnary societies had now doing to evangelize the present thought of a similar convention. Last generation of men? autumn I sent a letter to the members of the committee asking their opinion "I am inclined to think that a call tor a convention of the American mison three points-viz., 1. As to whether The fund will be devoted to the ontfit, such a meeting would be desirable; passage, and probation expenses of one 2. Whether it should be held in 1892 or hundred new missionaries, mainly for 1893 ; 3. The place in which it should the India, China, and Congo missions. be convened. Part wiIl be used for a working fund to obviate the necessity of borrowing •• The majority of the replies-I think money on the part of the society, and all but one-thought such a meeting part wiIl be used in new work in the would be desirable; most of them men- mlSSlOns. A centenary volume is also tioned 1893 a8 preferable to 1892, be- to be published. cause of the attraction of the World's Fair that might bring foreigners to the "These plans promise to give our country; the place most favored was English Baptililt friends a great mis. Chicago. sionary year, and it is hoped that what. ever shall be done in this country in "This is as far as we have gone. the same direction will have the effect Since it seemed best to wait till 1893, I of greatly increasing the interest in mis· thought we would make no special sions among all peoples." plans till next autnmn. If others are planning for a World's Convention, I II Shall Islam Rule Afrioa?"* think it would be much better, of course, for the woman's societies to join BY REV. LEMUEL C. BARNES, D.D., NEW· with them. We have no very definite TON CENTRE, lIU.SS. plans, but I should say we should need two or three days for a woman's meet· Whether Africa is to be, as some one ing, either before or after the General has said, " the continent of the twen· Con vention. ". tieth century" or not, it is likely to be the continent of studious attention dur- Apropos of this discussion, we quote ing the last decade of the nineteenth from the Baptist Missionary Magazine century. At any rate, it is bound to the following: be, is already beginning to be the arena of a desperate struggle between Islam .. The year 1892 will be a year of cele- and Christianity. It is needful to take brations in this country. The four iii calm, if possible unprejudiced view hundredth anniversary of the discovery of the situation. of America by Christopher Columbus will be celebrated by II great' World's * * * ** Fair' in Chicago; and Christians of all denominations will be interested in the The distance ncross the continent is centennial celebration of the formation the same north and south between of the English Baptist Missionary So· Tripolis and Cape Town, and east and ciety at Kettering, October, 2d, 1792, west between Cape Verde and Cape when £13 2s. 6d. was subscribed to send Gardafui, Borne forty.six hundred miles William Carey and Dr. Thomas to In· each way. But the Gulf of Guinea dia. A movement is on foot for a gen· sweeps into the middle of the continent eral celebration of the centenary by from the west BO far that it is only all the Baptist missionary societies of about twenty·three hundred miles from America, but the plans are not yet suffi· its waters, on a line running north of ciently matured for publication. eaitward to Massawah. the port of Abyssinia on the Red Sea, which has .. The English Baptists have arranged recently come into possession of the for a grand centennial missionary year in 1892. In connection with these ser· *We obtained permission from the author of vices, it is proposed to raise a special centenary fund of £100,000, and to the small booklet bearing this title to use whatever take measnres to increase the current parts of it we pleased. We only wish we could income of the Baptilit Missionary So· reproduce the whole essay. It can be had of the piety to £100,000 (or about $500,000). American Baptist ~fis8ionary Union, Tremont Temple, Boston, MMs. Price 10 cents. Italians. By such a line the continent sional'y societies in the world, is be is divided into two nearly equal por- coming Muslim much faster than Christions, the northern or northwestern tian. In the twenty years between with its longer diameter lying east and 1865 and 1886 its Muslim population west, and the southern or southeastern increased from twelve hundred to with its longer diameter lying north thirty thousand. and south. It is as if the continent had been girded in, half-in-two, and The whole northern half of Africa is looped on to Southern Arabia. The as thoroughly Islamic as Turkey or distance from Massawah is almost ex- Persia, if not more so. It is by far the actly the same to Cape Verde anu to the largest continuous area on the globe Cape of Good Hope. under Islam. There are more Muslims under the government of England in The northern half of the continent India than under any other single govhas, in fact, been attached to the Ara- ernment. But they are only a minor bian prophet; all its roaus lead to fraction of the population there; while Mecca. By actual count it sends 14,000 in the northern half of Africa they are pilgrims a year. It consists of three the bulk of the population, and are zones. North Africa proper is best more numerous than in India. From known, and longest Islamized. The Tounis to Youla, two thousand miles population of the Mediterranean states north anu south, from Cape Verde to of Africa, as given in tho" Statesman's Suakim, three thousand six hundred Year.Book, " aggregates 18,123,846. west to east, millions of Muslims, The next zone is the Sahara. In tho though under one government, are all oases of this vast desert region there under Muslim governments, and are in are hundreds of thousands of people, one cODscioUIl brotherhood of Islam. according to the German statistician The number is, of course, variously esti- HUbner, 2,500,000. With symbolic fit- mated. A low estimate is fifty millions. ness Islam has long ruled Sahara. Be- Cardinal Lavigerie estimates sixty-five low that the Soudan stretches clear million Muslims for all Africa. If the across the continent and swarms with great authorities are correct as to the humanity. HUbner reckons 83,800,000 total popUlation of the northern lobe people in the Soudan. These thl'ee of the continent, its Muslim population zones. which contain considerably more is over, rather than under, seventy-five than half the population of the conti- millions. nent, are thoroughly Islamic. But Islam has made large advances There are some tribes in the Soudan also in the southern half of the contiyet clinging to paganism, but they are nent. Starting from Ahyssinia, tho comparatively insignificant and are fast eastern seaboard is in the hands of succumbing. West of the lower Niger Islam for more than two thousanu is a small region yet largely pagan. miles, reaching inland some five hun- But Islam is taking possession of it far ored miles, much of the way. There more rapidly than Christianity. The are believed to be five millions and a city of Abeokuta, exceeded in size on half of Muslims in that territory, and the continent only by Alexandria and as many more in tho samo and adjacent Cairo, has a few hundred Christians, territories who are more or less under but thousands of Muslims. But sixty the Islamic influence. Thus Islam is miles away is another city, Ibadan, of the prevailing religion throughout near over one hundred thousand population, ly two thirds of the peripbery of the more largely Muslim than Abeokuta. whole continent. In the remaining These towns are less than one hundred third there are two regions of active miles north of the Guinea coast. Even Islamic propaganoism, Mozambique and the English coast city, Lagos, occupied Cape Colony. In the year 1880, Cape by some of the stron&est Christian mis- Cobny sent ene hl111ox:ed lind fifty pilgtims to Mecca. There are mosques in the whole Congo basin at this moment Cape Town and Port Elizabeth, and is Muslim. some proselyte>! are being made. In a population of only six hundred thou- Islam has reached considerably more sand, thirteen thousand are Muslims. than half way from the Indian Ooean to the Atlantic. Still farther west, south. From Zanzibar, MLlslim influence ex- ward on the wllter-parting between the tends westward half way across the con· Congo and the Zambesi basins, some tinent. In the now famous kingdom of of the Lunda people have learned, at Uganda, north of Victoria Lake, Islam least, to use the werd "Allah" as an has much of the time recently held the exclamation. upper hand, bringing native Christians to the stake by the score, and even an But without reckoning any such, or English bishop to martyrdom. How other millions who are actually somefar the Mhadists are at this moment in what under the influence of Islam, it sway about the head waters of the Nile seems to be within bounds to count five is not clearly known. They are cer- million Muslim!! south of Abyssinia. tainly in possession of the former Equatorial Province. But whether there is The interest of the competition beto be an effective junction of these tween Islam and Christianity in Africa MLlslims from the North and their is intensified for the student of combrethren from the East Coast or not, parati ve religion, by the fact that the Stanley has brought Emin and the last contest has now reached a point where representatives of Christendom from it begins to be for a new race of men, the upper Nile. For eight hundred Islam has captured Nigritia i but there miles so'uth of Uganda, till you come is much land in Africa besides Negroto the region between the two great land. lakes Tanganyika and Nyassa, Muslims exert a large influence. Even further But the forces of genuine Ohristian south between Lake Nyassa and the .faith are to be, are already being, Zambesi River, the Maviti natives con- thrown into the newly opened regions duct their fLlnerals with Muslim i1'ites, of Middle Africa. Toward these same and the grave is always turned toward regions Islam has long been pushing its Mecca. Thill is some fOLlr hundred front. Now, after twelve hundred miles in the interior, and in crossing years of contact, for the first time Islam the continent from north to south is and Faith afe to meet face to face for a much more than half way from Massa- trial of strength on a fa.ir field. For wah to Cape Town. But somewhat the first time, also, it is to be purely a northward, twice as far inland, directly trial of moral strength. The European west of Zanzibar, on the Upper Congo Powers will not long leave Islam to itself, not far apart, are two Muslim propagate itself by gunpowder in the towns of some ten thousand population Great Lakes region. The Congo Free each, Nyangwe and Kasongo. In fact, State is already guaranteed religious Muslims hold the country for three liberty. These two regions span the hundred miles down the river as far as continent. If Islam moves farther Stanley Falls. In one of Stanley's let- southward in Africa, it will be because ters written since he approached the it has moral power for conquest. East Coailt, he admits tha.t when he went in, three years ago, he did not be- Again, the conditions are altogether lieve the Congo Free State able to cope different here from those in India. or with Tippu Tib, or even hold him in China, where Islam and Christianity check except by a subsidy. Develop- have to contend with e~tablished, highly ments coming to light since, make it cultivated, literary religions, which so m.ore evide~t that the strongest power in far hold their own, and are even making more converts from the remaining ab- original tribes, than ei ther Islam or Christianity are. But in Central Africa the unlettered, unorghnized fetichism is sure to yield, and that rapidly, to serted the year round, except at this one or the other of the noble monothe. season, when the boats for miles around iSills whieh are about to aUack it. come laden with incense-bringing pil- grims and stop at it a8 the nearest land- Some phases of African ethnology are ing-place to the famous temple. On in no end of dispute. BIlt all agree the busiest days probably one thousand that south of the Soudan, or land of the boats containing, it may be, ten thou- blacks, nearly down to the Cape of sand pilgrims arrive at, o.nd as many Good Hope, there are many tribes, but depart from, this little village. The all of one allied race, now commonly little village is converted into a minia· called the Bantu race. Their language ture oity or active bazaar stocked with id prefixional in its inflections, and very all kinds of goods attractive to the elaborate in some respects; yet so clear country people. Early in the morning that it is generally spoken with great the pilgrims who have arrived during grammatical accuracy. The Bantus are the previous day and night start with a far nobler type of men than the ne- their candles and incense, etc., to worgroes. There are probably seventy.five ship in the temple. After walkmg about millions of them. The bulk of their a mile they come to the northern end territory is in the region of more than of a little lake, where those who are willing to pay one and one half cents twenty inches of rainfall, i. e., in the re- may t.ake a boat and be ferried to the southern extremity, a distance of two gion of natural cultivation. The Great and one half miles. The great major- Lakes, larger than our North American ity, however, prefer to save the money, lakes, the Zambesi River and the Congo and walk the whole distance of six or River, with its lately discovered im- ~even miles. .A few of the more wealthy mense Lranches, are all of them already hire sedan chairs or horses for the navigated by steam. The interior round trip. The road that winds steam navigation shore line is longer around the edge of the little lake and than the sea-coast around the entire at the foot of a range of hills, at this continent. Reason covered with wild flowers, is quite picturesque. At intervals of a The Bantu race of men, so situated, mile at most, and often separated by is the prize which now lies open be- only a few hundred yards, there are tween Islam and Faith in Africa. Is- temples and shrines where the pilgrims lam has a considerable following in the are invited to stop and pay their devonortheast, and Christianity perhaps an tions, and also their money as they equal following in the south among the move on toward the grand temple, Bantu people. The battle is now set. which is their main object. The road Which is likely to win? One or the is thickly populated with beggars also, other substantially before 1950. who set up their little huts and spend the season at their profession ; for the A Glanoe at Chinese Worshippers, greater part of the road they are sta- tioned ten feet apart. Many of them BY REV. J. L. STUART, HANGCHOW, CHINA. are really objects of pity, blind, halt, lame, etc., but many of them are im- The city in which I live contains postors, with a good hand hid away unabout seven hundred thousand of a der the ooat and a false arm with a population. It was the imperial capi- festering sore or ulcer exposed to view, t.al for two hundred years, is beautiful looking horrid enough to drfW pity from for situation, and is famous in many the hardest heart. The pilgrims come other respects. It is especially noted prepared to give, and they are not paras being the location of many famous ticular abo~t the objeot, as thll merit temples in the hills, one of which draws crowds of worshippers for six weeks in March and April.
There is a little village abuut a milo ~rom the north ~ate that is alnwst deconsists in giving, not in giving intelli- nese music (?) goes before them and va- gently. The beggars have a fine time, rious banners and mottoes are borne and reap a rich harvest during the sea- above them, to let the guds and men son. One day I thought that I saw a know what a great act of filial piety dead beggar lying in his hut and began they are performing. Among other to investigate, and soon found that it shops in the little ecclesiastic village was a man that I was exposing. The there are quite a number of opium beggar in the next hut began to abuse shops, where priests and pilgrims are me for interfering with his business not ashamed to indulge in the drug. arrangements ancl told me to go on my business and let him alone. After Now we have got to the temple itself. walking five miles they come to a beau. It is a magnificent structure for China. tiful grove of large trees through which The huge pillars which support the flows a clear stream of water, and hun- heavy tiled roofs are pine-trees imported dreds of idols are carved in the solid from Oregon. The temple was burned rocks which form the sides of the hills by the rebels thirty years ago, and has overhanging the stream. There is one been rebuilt since that time. The first large and famous temple here, and one building is the gateway, where im- of the rooms in it contains five hundred mense figures scowl upon you and im. idols, all more than life-size. These press you with the fact that they are idols are made of a framework of wood the guardians of the temple. The pil- over which clay is daubed until it as- grims ar3 hurrying up the steps and sumes the shape of a man, and then the offering their incense and bowing down whole idol is covered with gold-foil and before these horrid-looking figures. looks like an image of solid gold. In Passing through this building we enter the back of every idol there is a little a large court paved with flagstones and hole where some living creature, as a surrounded by buildings ocoupied by toad, a centipede, snake, etc., has been the priests. On the other side of the put inside the idol; then the hole is court is the maintemple, where the im- stopped up and the Jiving creature dies, age of the famous Goddess of Mercy is. and that imparts life to the idol itself. In front of the door is a large iron in- cense urn, and the pilgrims are tossing From this temple onward there is a their lighted incense sticks into it so succession of houses and temples-in rapidly that a priest is stationed there fact, quite a village, where several thou- to throw water on the flames when they sand priests live. All sorts of things rise too high. Right inside the temple needed by worshippers are kept on sale. is a long low stool, and the worshippers The crowds grow thicker and thicker as crowd up to kneel on it before the im- we draw near the famous temple. The age of the goddess. This image is air is full of incense; a cloud of smoke placed high up in a shrine and curtains from the incense overhangs the temple. hang about it so, that it can be only Here passes a devotee, who stops at seen after close inspection. every third step and bumps his head on the hard stone pavement. Here The worshipper lights two candles comes a procession of persons enduring and sticks them on a railing in front of .penance, probably on account of a siuk the altar, then lights his incense and mother, whose disease they hope to throws it into the incense urn, thon have removed. There are four sons; oomes reverently and kneels on the everyone has his breast. and arms bare, stool. He bends forward until his head and four little incense urns, weighing bumps the floor three times, and this is about two pounds each, suspended repeated three times, making nine from his outstretched arms .by means bumps of the head on the ground. of little hooks piercing the skin of the Then he rises and mutters a Tery short arms and the breasts. A band of Chi- prayer. Then he looks around with a relieved and satisfied air, and his deTo_ tions are over-worship is done. Others 2 inches wide on a large map. For crowd up to take his place and go through the boundaries of the different coun- the same mummery, and thus it goes tries, States, or districts use differen t on all day long. After worship they walk around, look at the temple, the colored ribbon or tape about t or ! i mages, the curtains. They will probably buy prescriptions for medicine, and inches wide. Let the colors be strong, draw lots for the particular one, and and "bound" each geographical dis- then go away to the city, look around, trict entirely with its own ribbon make purchases, worship at other tem- stitched close up to the ribbon bound- ples, etc. They generally spend two ing another district, country, or coast- days, one in visiting the temples in the line. hills outside the city, and one in visit- ing the temples of the" Rulers of the 5. For rivers use blue ribbon, tape, city." On the city hill they pray for or strips cut from blue material; for good crops, success of the silk worm, lakes" bound" with blue ribbon as if peace and plenty during the year. For a country. For cities or any special special objects they go to special temples to pray where that object is a spe- place use red ribbon It or 2 inches cialty. The worship season lasts about six weeks, and several hundred thou- square, or any other mark desired. sand pilgrims visit the city in tcat time. 6. Names of countries, rivers, cities, The Ribbon Missionary Map, etc., should be of large letters cut from stiff, black linen or cotton goods and BY REV. G. L. WHAIlTOl!;, LEXINGTON, KY. stitched on evenly. Letters for the Bay of Bengal on map of India should be at There ought to be a missionary map in every church. It is scarcely worth least 3 inches square. For mountains while to say it cannot be afforded. AI. use "spatter work" of India ink, or most anyone can make a very useful invent something better. map with very little labor or expense. 7. Around the map, 8 inches from the DIRECTIONS. edge of the cloth, stitch a line of black tape, the same as the lines of latitude 1. U5e ordinary white muslin or and longitude. Outside of this line "sheeting" from 6 to 9 feet in width, leave a space of 3 inches for the figures as required. To make a map of Africa, showing latitude and longitude, and India, or South America the cloth stitch black tape about one inch wide should be 9 x 12 feet. all around. Bind the edge of the cloth 2. Spread the cloth on the carpet, and with pink or any light-colored material from a good atlas determine how many times wider apart the lines of latitude Ii inches wide_ and longitude must be than on the atlas. With lead-pencil trace the lines tn some unoccupied space stitch the of latitude and longitude on the cloth, name of the map iu black letters at least upon which stitch narrow black tape t 6 inches square. Do not place much more on the map than you desire to call or i inches wide. especial attention to. 3. Either by measurement or the eye, This will give the whole quite a finor both, trace with lead-pencil the seacoast line, boundaries of countries, ished and mappy appearance. principal lakes and rivers, and such cities, Iltations, etc., as you wish to use. REMAIlK.
4. Upon the sea-coast line stitch by This map requires no mixing of paint hand blue" graduated ribbon" at least or artistic skill to make it, while the colors are better than the best printed ones. You can' alter the map at pleas- ure. It does not rub off, break, or stick together by close folding or rolling. The. making of such a map will be a fine exercise for mission bands; the proper use of it will make thousands "see with eye, hear with the ear, and understand with the heart."
This plan is dne to A. T. Magarey, Esq., of Adelaide, South Australia.
EDITORIAL NOTES ON CURRENT 'l'OPICS
IlI.-EDITORIAL NOTES ON CURRENT TOPICS.
The Proposed Exposition of Missions. sions far more impressive than any words. In this REVIEW (Vol. II., p. 173) the editor ventured to suggest a grand ex- Meanwhile, Principal S. M. Hill, of position of missions or a visible pres- the Luther Academy, Wahoo, Neb., adds entation in material forms of the prog- another suggestion, which is on a scale ress of the Gospel in many lands, some- even more colossal. He calls it what after the manner of the internation- al exhibits in London, Paris, Glasgow, THE NINETEENTH CENTENNIAL OF CHRIS- etc_ Subsequently (Vol. III., p. 627) he ventured to add the suggestion that TIANITY. a great missionary picture or cyclorama might be painted, somewhat like If the United States Government suc- the grand picture in the garden of the ceeds in assisting the Jews back to their Tuileries, Paris, L' Hisioire du 8iilCle_ native land, the next great thing would be to inaugurate a celebration of the These suggestions have been taken up nineteenth centennial of Christianity at and embodied in part in the scheme of its birthplace in Jerusalem! Then, every Mr. William G. Douglas, of the local decade during the twentieth century, staff of the Baltimore American, who universal Christianity should meet on proposes, in connection with the the centennial grounds at Jerusalem for World's Fair at Chicago, some such a World's Chautauqua Assembly. The exhibit of world. wide missions. Mr. work of evangelization would be greatly Douglns has laid his proposal before the hastened by such jubilees. The grand managers of the Exposition, and Secre- conquests of Christianity in the moral, tary Butterworth has recommended the intellectual, and material progress made exhibit to the district general. It iB through its agency could there be disproposed to exhibit the idols of the played as in no other way_ world by specimens, casts, and photographs, the work of missionary publish- The centennial should be absolutely ing houses, medical missionaries, and interdenominational. All parties recog> industrial schools; and the mission sta- nized by the name of Christian-i.e., all tions and missionaries connected there- acknowledging the three oldest confeswith. The exposition would include sions, should there have the right of mission work at home and abroad, in nll representation. All languages in which its branches. The harems of Turkey the Gospel is preached or has been and the zenanas of India; the alphabets preached should there be heard. All and literature of missionary lands, cus- Christian nations and peoples should toms, and manners; Buddhist praying thtJre have at least one man. Relics wheels, and models of Juggernaut's car, from heathen worship and superstition and the fanes and shrines of idol gods; should be there, and all idols supermonkey temples of Benares, charms, seded by the God of the Gospel should etc., will be presented to the eye; and be shown as trophies. the ?ontrast between what was and what Some of America's millions could be is will be rendered as complete as possi- well spant in snch an undertaking, of vastly more practical value to humanity ble by the models of Christian villages than any polar expedition or digging over against those which the GOBpel has expedition on old classic grounds. The not yet lifted to a higher level. plan certainly is practical. A railroad is being built to Jerusalem. A direct We repeat, what we -have put on record steamship line conld he put bEltween before, that if properly managed this New York and Jaffa. There would be may be a most instructive and impres- no lack of passengers to make it a pay. sive exhibit, and an argument for mis- ~~g ~nterprise. Will it be done? Who will go ahead? when the chart appeared in the REVIEW, It would be an undertaking worthy of a that the author was one who had intelmissionary century and of a missionary ligently studied and compared th"Re two country like the United States. systems, and knew of what he was pic- torially dilicoursing. S. M. H. 2. The editor' would say, again, that Ohristianized Paganism. such a chart, like any article puhlished in these pages, does not carry with it In the May number of this REVIEW the endorsement of the editorial staff, was published a comparative chart or unless so expressed. Every writer is pictorial representation of the similarity alone responsible fur the sentiments he exbetween" Buddhism and Romanism. " presses " the editur's province is to judge whether it is expedient to admit the article to As was foreseen, this startling ex- the REVIEW. This rule we state now, as hibit has provoked a few hostile criti- the criterion for the futurGl. Had the cisms, though in the large majority of editor prepared this sketch he would cases we have received rather the cor- have put in something left out by Mr. dial support of our readers for printing Mason, and left out something which he these" twin monuments." has put in. But the chart was judged worthy to be published as the author It occurs to the editor that this affords had made it, and was left to commend a fit opportunity and occasion for stat- itself to the judgment of the reader for ing the attitude of the REVIEW as to mat- whatever of worth it contained. ters of this kind: 3. The question has been raised by 1. First it may be proper to say that some of our readers as to whether it is this "chart" was found among the becoming a missionary review to assume manuscripts left by Dr. Sherwood at his an attitude of antagonism toward a large death, to be published in these pages, section of the nominal Church of Christ, and it was admitted to the May number and in which, with all its admitted because in that, Buddhism, was especial- errors, charity bids us hope there are ly considered. The origin of this striking many true believers. sketch it may be interpsting to our readers to know, and the following let- In reply, we would Bay that we make ter will explain. Rev. G. L. Mason, of in our own minds a broad distinction the American Baptist Mission, Huchow, between Catholicism as a form of religious Chekiang Province, China, is the author belief and church polity, and Romanism of the cartoon, and the writer of the let- as a religio.political sYlitem, a sort of ter. He sayli : Christianized paganism. We accord to all others the liberty which we claim for "This chart was suggested at the ourselves, of following their own re- Shanghai Conference, as I was meditat- ligious convictions and preferences. ing one morning on the forthcoming But it is plain to an observing mind paper by Dr. Martin, urging missiona- that, upon primitive Christianity, there ries to tolerate ancestral worship. It have been engrafted from time to time occurred to me that the underlying rea· conceptions and customs borrowed from Bon for ancestral worilhip was the same heathen and pagan nations, and which as that in Buddhism and Romanism, as have no right to be treated as any part regards the dead-viz., a belief that the of Christianity, even by the most liberal living may benefit the dead, and that charity. As we distinguish hetween the dead may benefit or injure the liv- Episcopacy and ritualism, between ing; and the thought took shape in Protestantism and rationalism, between these monuments, a copy of which was a reverent scholarship and a destructive given to every missionary at the coufer- " higher criticism," so we can separate ence." between an honest believer in Catholi- It will b8 seen, as the editor remarked cism and" jeHuitical and hypocritical, that if this REVIEW is to treat worldor even misguided, Romanist. wide missions with comprehensiveness and candor, we cannot avoid an ex- It may be a matter of regret that we posure of this system of Christianized have not a term to express what, for lack paganism or paganized Christianity. of a better term, is called Romanism. Within this world·wide field are em- But we mean by it, in the sense now braced missions in Roman Catholic used, that system of priestcraft which countries. No intelligent student of withholds the Bible from the people, papal lands needs to be told that misputs man in the place of God, teaches sions are needed there. The editor, by that even a lie is j Ilstifiable in the inter· no little reading, and personal travel in ests of the " Church," puts penance in those parts, has become painfully opplace of repentance, interposes the con- pressed with the fearful destitution of fessional between God and the sinner, these peoples as to the pure Gospel. and even between husband and wife; Thousands of inhabitants of papal Euteaches prayers for the dead and to de- rope and South America are as much in parted saints; makes a woman queen of need of the Bible and the knowledge of heaven, and addresses to her direct wor- salvation by faith, as the dwellers in ship; and which in some parts puts her pagan Africa or heathen Asia. What husband practically above not only her, should be the policy of THE MISSIONARY but her Son, who is also Son of God; a REVIEW OF THE WORLD? Shall we, in system that makes the seven sacra- treating of papal lands, encourage exments necessary channels of grace, fiiUb- posure of the superstitions, falsehoods stitutes a sensuous and elaborate ritual, and impositkns, vices and corruptionil, with man millinery, postures, and im- petty tyrannies and absurd pretensions postures, lighted candles and crucifixes, of Roruanism; or shall we forbear in banners and processions, chanting of deference to those who, on the one hand, Latin prayers, and the adoration of a are tinctured with these errors, or, on wafer, in place of simple Christian wor- the other. carry their liberality to the exship; that appeals to superstition by the treme of laxity? use of holy water, sign of the cross, worship of r",lics ; that sets a premiuIll For our part, we feel that it is no time on sin by the vending of indulgences to keep silence. John Knox said, "I and masses for the dead, and so on to am in that place where it is demanded the end of the chapter, never yet con- of me to speak the truth, impugn it who cluded I list." And we shall dare to follow the same heroic motto, " with charity for all This system is, we repeat, an engraft- and malice toward none." ing of paganism upon the stock of Christianity, a perversion of the name 5. While a very few of our readers of Christian, a reversion toward heathen- have remonstrated, the great majority ism. And the student of church his- have congratulated us on the publication tory can trace the very periods, and of this chart. And we venture to add oftentimes years, when these new feat- two testimonies from very high sources. ures were transferred from pagan sys- One eminent brother in the Methodist tems to the so-called Church of Christ. communion writes: "That diagram is This system has no exact name. It has all right. Cartoons are not scientific been called Jesuitism, but that means statements. If it makes a ripple, let the more and less. Gambetta called it ripple go on. It is not worth while to " clericalism," and denounced it as run a magazine that hits–nothing. The .. the foe of France," but that term is general policy toward Romanism (not inexact. The author of thiil cartoon Romanists) cannot vary long from the called it Romanism because he thought general basis of the great American misthat term nearest to the " concept." sionary societies, ~ quite decided, per- sistent, and well-defined antagonism to 4. The editor is constrained to add Romish superstition and ecclesiastical Behold five thousand young men standcorruption. Abuse has no place in this ing at God's missionary altar ready to contention; ill feeling is weakness al. go! Send them, and see what will folways, but steady shedding of informa- low." tion and statement of certified facts is essential to the very life of such a re- So writes Chaplain McCabe in that view." alive paper, World- Wide Missions.
Another correspondent, eminent in The editor of this REVIEW has often another great Christian body, writes: Deen asked to give to the public the story of the way in which he was first " I approve of your' deadly parallel' led to Bound out this trumpet call, between Buddhism and Romanism, and which is now, thank God! becoming think it should be followed up with fur- the signal shout of God's army. ther illustrations. There is a man now returning to this country who might be God moves in a mysterious way. As asked to prepare an article on •Reversion nearly as can now be remembered, it to Paganism,' for he has been great- was in or about the year 1870 that the ly struck in his world-tour, he says, writer of these lines saw a paragraph with the tendency of Romanism and from the pen of the venerable Joseph Rationalism to reaffiliate with the old Angus, D.D., of London, calling on the heathen religions. It is a subject which Church to do nobler things for the cause needs to be set forth, especially con- of the kingdom. Dr. Angus affirmed sidering the rage in Ilome parts for that the Church could easily raise a band • Esoteric Buddhism.' The chart in the of 50,000 missionaries, and that such a May number is most telling and instruc- body of evangelists could preach the tive. By all means take that line and Gospel to the whole unev:mgelized pordevelop it. How striking that, just as tion of the race in a quarter of a censoon as Christians drift from evangelical tury. This was at least the substance moorings, they begin to CODrt fellowship of Dr. Angus's challenge. with Rome !" This and other similar thoughts took What has been written above has possession of my mind, and, like other been calmly put on record for all time thoughts in which lie the seed of the to come as the policy of this REVIEW. kingdom, began to germinate. What If any Jesuitical hand shall seize the was at first a vague conception grAw editorial pen to write diluted statementS into a definite and practicable enterin the pale ink of half truth, or in- prise. It became apparent that if the sidious presentations of a corrupt and Christian Church in Protestant commiscalled Christianity in the purple ink munions, numbering perhaps 30,000,- of a fascinating apology, it will not be ODD, would send out one in a hundred, our pen that will be so used. And, in it would give 300,000 missionaries; and this course of Christian candor, whether that if an average contribution of even against rationalism, ritualism, or a bap- one dollar a year could be obtained tized paganism, we invoke the blessing from all Protestant communicants, it of the God of truth and the prayerful would yield $30,000,000 annually-an support of every truth lover. immense sum, obtainable without any real sacrifice at so Iowan average. The Signal Cry of the New Crusade. The conception seemed so practical ., 'Let us evangelize the world in this and practicable that, as it was reflected generation! ' Let us be thankful that upon, it took deeper root until the even one man has been found to send autumn of 1877, when, as the pastor of forth such a cry as that. It has stirred the Fort Street Presbyterian Church, in the heart of the Church to its depths. Detroit, I gave public utterance to it in the prayer-meeting of the Church. From that day to this the thought has grown upon me, Bnd wherever by tongue or pen it has found utteranoe it has found salvation, the blessed hopcl, and the also, both in Amerioa and Great Britain, duty of witnessing to a lost world. and especially on mission fields, a sympathetic response in other Christian .. It was near to our plaoe of meetin~ that, in 1747, lit Northampton, Jona· hearts; and RO, like a trumpet. blast, than Edwards sent forth his trumpetechoed from hill to hilI, the cry, " Let peal, calling upon dililCiples everywhere us evangf'lize the world in Ollr genera- to unite in prayer for an effusion of the tion, " has found wider and wider rever- Spirit upon the whole habitable globe, beration. No one man oan olaim the That summons to prayer marks a new honor of starting that thought on its era and epoch in the history of the way. It was God's thought and signal Church· of God. Praying bands beg!n to gather in this and other lands; ory, emphasized py His providence and mighty revivals of religion followed; Spirit, and only oaught up and echoed immorality and infidelity were wonder- fully ohecked ; and, after more than fifby human lips. teen hundred years of apathy and leth- On no oocasion was this sentiment argy, the spirit of missions was reawa- kened. In 1784 the monthly concert was more devoutly'responded to than at begun, and in 1792 the first mis8ionary societ,. formed in England; in 1793, Northfield, Mass., in the Believers' Con- William Carey, the pioneer missionary, sailed for India. Since then, one hunference, presided over by D. L. Moody, dred missionary boards have been organthe evangelist, in August, 1885, and it ized, and probably not less than one may be interesting to our readers to see hundred thousand missionari"R, includa copy of the original resolution which ing women, have gone forth into the harvest-field_ The Pillar has moved beled to the call for a world's missionary fore these humble laborers, and the twoconvention_ Here it is : leaved gates have opened befor., them, until the whole world is now accessible, " Resolved: As those gathered in the The ports and portals of pagan, Mossolemn presence of Almighty God, this lem, and even papal lands are now eleventh day of August, 1885, that this unsealed, and the last of the hermit conference appoint a committee of seven, nations welcomeil the missionary. Reto prepare and issue a circular letter sults of missionary labor in the Hawaiian addressed to Christian discipIes of every and Fiji Islands, in Madagascar, in name, calling them to united prayer for ,Japan, probably have no parallel even a mighty effusion of the Spirit on all in apostolic days; while even Pentecost ministers, missionaries, evangelists, is snrpassed by the ingathering of ten teachers, and Christian workers, and thousand converts in one mission stasuggesting that, at some great world tion in India within sixty days, in the centre, at an early date, a great world year 1878. The missionary bands had oounoil of Christian believers be oalled scarce compassed the wallM and soundwith referenoe to the immedIBte dis- ed the gospel trumpet, when those tribution and ocoupation, and to the walls fell, and we have but to march speedy evangelization, of all districts of straight on and take possession of Sathe earth's population now destitute of tan's strongholds.' the Gospel." " God has thus, in !nswer to prayer, This resolution was unanimously opened the door of access to the na- tioD~. Out of the Pillar there comes passed, and a committee appointed to once more It voice, 'Speak unto the issue a oall for such a convention, and children of Israel, that they go foron the third day after there followed a ward_' And yet the Church of God is unanimous adoption, by a stauding vote, of the acoompanying " Appeal to Disciples Everywhere.
Issued by the Northfield Convention: .. To Fellow-believers of 81!ery name, scat- tered throughout the world, Greeting; "Assembled in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, with one aocord, in one place, we have continued for ten days in prayer and supplioation, communing with one another about the oommon slow to move in response to the Provi- to angels and men, could believers of dence of God. Nearly a thousand mill- every name, forgetting all things in ions of the human race are yet without which they differ, meet, by chosen the Gospel; vast districts are wholly representatives, to enter systematically unoccupied. So few are the laborers, and harmoniously upon the work of that, if equally dividing responsibility, sending forth laborers into every part each must care for at least one hundred of the world-field! thousand souls. And yet there is abundance of both men and means in the .. But, above all else, our immediate Church to give the Gospel to every liv. find imperative need is a new spirit of ing soul before this century closes. If earnest and prevailing prayer, The but ten millions, out of four hundred first Pentecost crowned ten days of millions of nomInal Christians would united, continued supplication. Every undertake such systematic labor as that subsequent Ildvance may be directly each one of that number should, in the traced to believing prayer, and upon course of the next fifteen years, reach this must depend a new Pentecost. We one hundred' other souls with the Gos· therefore earnestly appeal to all fellow. pel message, the whole present popula. disciples to join us and each other in tion of the globe would have heard the importunate daily supplication for a good tidings by the year 1900 ! new and mighty effusion of the Holy Spirit upon all ministers, missionaries, " Our Lord's own words are, • Go ye, eVllngelists, pastors, teachers and Chris. therefore, and disciple all nations;' and, tian workers, and upon the whole earth; 'This gospel of the kingdom shall be that God would impart to all Christ's preached in all the world for a witness witnesses the tongues of fire, and melt ,mto all nations; and then shall the end hard hearts before the burning message. corne.' Peter exhorts us both to ' look It is not, by might nor by power, but by for and hasten the ooming or the Day of the Spirit of the Lord, that all true suc· God;' and what if our inactivity delays cess must be secured. Let us call upon His corning? Christ is waiting to ' see God till He answereth by fire! What of the travail of His Houl ;' and we are we are to do for the salvation of the lost impressed that two things are just now must be done quickly; for the genera· of great importance: Hrst, the imme. tion is passing away, and we with it. diate occupation and evangelization of Obedi~nt to our marching orders, let us • go into all the world, and preach the every destitute district of the earth's Gospel to every creatm'e,' While from our very hearts WEI pray, • Thy kingdom popUlation ;, and, secondly, a new effu· come,' sion of the Spirit in answer to united prayer. "Grace, mercy, and peace be with you all. " If at some great centre like London or New York, a great council of evan· " Done in convention at Northfield, gelical believers could meet, to consider Mass., August 14th, 1885, D. L. Moody the wonder-working of God's Providence presiding. and grace in mission fields, and how fields now unoccupied may be insured .. Committee: Arthur T. Pierson, from further neglect, and to arrange and Philadelphia, Presbyterian, Chairman; adjust the work so as to prevent need· A. J. Gordon, Boston, Baptist; L. W. less waste and friction among workmen, Munhall, Indianapolis, Methodist; it might greatly further the glorious ob· George F. Pentecost, Brooklyn, N. Y., ject of It world's evangelization; and we Congregationalist; William Ashmore, earnestly commend the suggestion to missionary to Swatow, Chino., Baptist; the prayerful considerlltion of the vari- J, E. Rquaston Studd, London, Engous bodies of Christian believers, and land,Church of England ; Miss E. Dryer, the various missionary organizations. Chicago Avenue Church, Ohicago." What a spectacle it would present both Probably in all parts of the world Christians had by the same Spirit of But nothing written about the events of God been made to feel the importance 1887 ean give an idea of that seminary of a simultaneous movement in the now. I quote the language of Rev. Mr. direction of a world's evangelization; Rankin, agent of the American. Bible and the consequence was that, in July, Society, just after a visit to IJaredo : "I 1888, a World's Convention met at Lon- go there often, and never fail to visit don, whose influence on foreign mis- the seminary: There the ragged, neg- sions was simply incalculable. The lected children of the poorest Mexicans "student volunteer movement," like- are taught everything a Christian woman wise originating at Mt. Hermon, and in ,ought to know. .. In the spring of 1890 a convention called by Mr. Moody, nearly all the pupils were converted. caught up this cry, and made it the sig- Six of the former students are now doing nal for the" Modern Crusade." faithful missionary work in Mexico. It has, as results, a school for boys in the This conviction of the duty and feasi· same city, also mission schools of its bilityof giving the whole world the Gos- own type in Saltillo, Durango, and pel in the present generation has taken Chihuahua, all these on the Mexican possession of countless men and women border. Their influence has extended as in all parts of the globe. Hence the fast as their means would permit, and simultaneous calls for increased labor- Miss J-,oland, one of our first and most ers, enlarged means, and higher con- successful missionaries in Laredo, has secration. Let us keep this cry echo. advanced into Central Mexico, and es· ing, and let us press the Lord's enter- tablished a similar work in San Luis prise until not a lethargio churoh or Potosi. apathetio dIsciple remains-until not a child of Adam remains without the Miss Frances Williams was appointed knowledge of the Second Adam, who is to report to the REVIEW the doings of able to repair the ruin wrought by the the late Conference in West Africa. first. No believer can tell how much depends upon his actively joining in She writes: this crusade of the ages. Every voice and pen, every heart and hand and purse, ROTUFUNK, W. AFRICA, Feb. 10, 1891. should be enlisted constantly and un- The Mendi, Sherbro and Bompeh reservedly to secure the immediate missions of the United Brethren Church proolamation of the Gospel to every met in their eleventh annual meeting at soul. To this end the pages of this Rotufunk, West Africa, on Wednesday, REVIEW are pre.eminently and prayer- January 21st, 1891. There were present fully devoted. fifty-three workers, including missiona- ries, teachers, and helpers. We have a communication from Mrs. Bishop E. B. Kephart, D.D., LL.D., S. PhilP'>tt, as follows: who had recently arrived from America, presided. The bishop opened confer- DEW, FREESTONE Co., TEXAS. ence by reading and commenting on the The friends of evangelical work in fifth chapter of Matthew. He expressed the "Land of the Aztecs" were much himself as being glad to be present, and pleased to see, in the March number of to bring greeting from the Church at the REVIEW, an article by Miss Brown, home. All rejoiced to hear him speak of Tuscaloosa, Ala., on "Faith Hall, .. of hope and faith for the spread of the Lerado, Mexico. It should have been Gospel in dark Africa. His wise coun- Laredo, but the mistake involves no sel, given in the spirit and power of the ambiguity. There is but one such in- Master, gave to all a new inspiration for Htitution. It is a parallel to Mt. Hol- the work of saving souls. yoke, and many think its superintend- The reports of the workers for the ent the only living peer of Mary Lyons. past year show the year to be the best the conference hils ever known, there among the heathen than Adoniram Judhaving been gracious revivals at some of son and his associates; but the rocky the appointments; and ruany wer.. hearts of the Burmans did not readily turned to righteousness. The plans and yield to the fire and the hammer of Diresolutions adopted gave all hope that vine truth. They were arrogant, conthe coming year will be marked with ceited, and proud beyond any other even greater success. The reports given nation on the face of the globe; they by those who, during the year, had gone had a religious system <lating back into the interior, where the Gospel was about 2500 years, and a written language, never heard before, were so encouraging with an abundance of literature, exthat we longed to go and possess the plaining and defending their doctrines, " goodly land" for our King. and they were contented and at rest in their religious and their social position. One evening was given to temper- It is no wonder that the missionaries, ance work, when the Loyal Temperance who were few in numbers, and who had Legion of Rotufunk was called npon to to prepare their books and tracts and instruct and entertain the people on their translations of the Scriptures by this subject and work. Earnest sermons long and painful labor, in one of the were preached on the other evenings, most difficult of Oriental tongues, should ani! sinners were invited to accept have found their progress slow and at Christ. A nnmber began seeking the times almost disheartening. Dr. Judliving way, and fonrmen were hopefully son understood this, and recognized the converted. fact that it was much easier to bring souls to Christ among a people who had On Sunday morning the bishop no written language, no literature, no preached an able sermon, after which religious system, but who had a deep he ordained the following persons to consciousness of sin, and of their need preach the Gospel: Mr. Jacob Miller, of a Saviour. Jr., Mr. S. B. Morrison, Mrs. Lida M. West, Misses Ellen Groenendyke and In regard to Ko-thah.byu, there is no Frances Williams. doubt that he was baptized by Mr. Boardman, and was the first Karen con- A spirit of love and unity was mani- vert, or that he accompanied Mr. Boardfested throughout the conference ses- man to Tavoy, preferring to be baptized Mions. And as the workers separated, it there, among his own countrymen; but was with a consciousness of having his conversion took place in Moulmein, come nearer the first and greatest mis- and under Dr. Judson's own labors. sionary, and also nearer to each other. Dr. Judson had redeemed him from " In union there is strength." slavery, and labored with him long be- fore he was willing to abandon his Dr. L. P. Brockett also writes: wicked life and pecome a Christian. (See Dr. E. Judson's" Life of Adoniram BROOKLYN, April 20, 1891. Judson," Carpenter's" Self·Support in I find in the May number a com- Bassein," etc.) municationfromRev. H. Morrow, Karen missionary at Tavoy, taking exception We know that" God has chosen the to some statements of mine, in the No- weak things of this world to confound vember REVIEW. Mr. Morrow has in, the mighty; and things that are not, to this communication, fallen into some bring to naught things tLat are. " If it errors very natural in his position, but had been possible for the earlier Burwhich should be corrected. He errs in mese missionaries to have understood supposing that I attributed the scanty and acted upon this principle, and to success of the Burmese missionaries to have given their first" labors to the their schools, or to a lack of preaching Karens and the affiliated tribes, they {In their part. No more devoted and might have endured ev-en fiercer perseearnest missionaries have ever labored cution than they did; but after seve4ty. and soundness of doctrine. Yet those seven years of labor, they would have had a very much stronger Karen can· churches as a whole need an Americun stituency than they now have, and the Burmans would very largely have hum- missionary Buperintendent. bled themselves before the cross. Bnt our Lord, in this case, as among the P.S.-As to the.number of missiona- 'l'elugus, saw fit to bring His people into Canaan after half a century of doubt and ries. both to the Burman and Karen trial, and in the end IIi:,; way will be shown to be the best. Mr.·Morrow is missions, we do not differ materially. undoubtedly in error in estimating all the Karen churches by the standard of My statistics were taken from the offithose in Tavoy. After the large in. gathering under the labors of Ko·tbah- cial hand-book of the Missionary Union byu and his associates, with some superintendence by Dr. Mason (who, how- for 1890-91, and they show the comever, soon removed to far-away Toungoo), the Karen churches in the lower Tenas· parative success of the Karen missions serim province were left for nearly forty years under the care of native pastors, over the Burman to have been as fifteen nearly all of them illiterate, without the Scriptures, and most of them unable to to one. No doubt there should have read them if they had them, and isolat. ed from the other Karen churches. bden ten times as many missionaries in They had no schools except the most elementary ones, and these were sus- each. L. P. B. tained by government aid. A few of the churches partially supported theil' Baron Hirsch is probably the greatest pastors, but the pittance they gtlve was philanthropist in Europe, if not in the so small that they could only maiIitain w Jrld. He has established a special an existence by hunting and fishing. once with a corps of clerks for the What wonder that their condition was management of his plans. He has so low, and that the degeneration was o'fered $2,000,000 for the public schools so great that it was a 1uestion with the of Russia, on condition that no distincmanagers of the Union whether there tion shall be made in the application of was enough left to be worth saving! the fund as to the race or religion. The offer was declined. He now proposes Contrast these neglected churches to transport to the river Plate half a with the intelligent, devoted Christian million of Russian Jews. His recent churches of the Sgau Karens in Bassein, beneficAnt appropriation for Jews in this described in the May number of the RE- country is well known. And we believe VIEW; churches whose poverty abound- that the aggregate of his gifts to benevoed to the riches of their liberality, and lent purposes cannot be less than from whose benevolence, education, and so- $10,000,000 to $20,000,000. We would cial position mighb be fairly compared gladly have any trustworthy information with those of our rural churches at as to this remarkable man-who he is, home, and then say whether Mr. Mor- where he was born and has lived, how row was justified in judging all the his great fortune was acquired, and how Karen churches by the Tavoy standard. it is expended.
There are certainly among the Bas- The following, says the Australian sein pastors some who are not behind Sunday-school Teacher, is from a boy's most of our' American pastors in elo- essay on total abstinence. It is a whole quence, l.l;nQwledge of the Scriptures, volume on temperance in a nutshell : "I abstain from alcoholic drinks be- cause, if I would excel as a cricketer, Grace says, • abstain ;' as a walker. Wes- ton says, 'abstain;' as an oarsman, Hanlon says, • abstain ;' as a swimmer, Webb says, ' abstain ;' as a missionary, Livingstone says, • abstain ;' as a doc- tor, Clark says, 'abstain;' as a preach. er, Farrar says, • abstain.' Asylums, prisons, and workhouses rel?eat the crJ', 'abstain t' '" A Remarkable Farewell. these parts. Actions I!Ipeak louder than The readers of the REVIEW have been words, hence much does not remain for informed in regard to the remarkable us to say as to what valuable service ingathering among the Telegus in India. you have rendered the country in which Dr. Clough, the leader in this great you have faithfully worked for the last movemlmt, arrived in this country on quarter of a century, since the results the 18th of May, being compelled, from of your hard and honest labor are them- ~heer exhaustion, induced by his im· selves monuments of the standing evi- mense labors, to lea"e the field for a dence of the good you have done in the season of rest. He comes with the im· improvement and elevation of thhl portunate cry for twenty.five new men place. We feel that YOll have been a to be sent out at once by the Baptist powerful instrument in God's hands in Missionary Union to reap the harvest the accomplishment of His great pur- which is now ripe for ingathering. Eight pose. The poor downtrodden people thousand converts have been baptized who were grovelling in darkness and on this one field since the first of Janu- sunk in ignorance have been brought aryof the present year; and Dr. Clough to the light and knowledge of the living believes that these are only the first- God," etc. fruits of the coming ingathering. Noth. ing like it has occurred in the history Tho address continues in this strain, of missions. It is, however, of a significant event in connection with Dr. closing with a commendation of the de- Clough's return that we are now writing. When he went to the field twenty-five parting missionary to the care and keepyears ago. the caste preJudice was such that Hindus meeting the missionary on ing of God during his voyage, which the street would make a long detour, lest his shadow falling on them, or the odors almost reminds one of Acts xx. After of his person being wafted toward them by the wind, might defile them. Such the reading of the address, several native has been the change in a quarter of a century that the Hindu citizens of the gentlemen spoke, among them Mr. D. highest position in the city gave a farewell meeting to the departing mission. Markundayulu Sastry, who said that ary, inviting Christians, Mohammedans, and Brahmans to join in a public "according to the Shastras he should expression of gratitude for the great blessing which the missionary's labors not have stirred out of his house that had brought to their country. The Madras "l£ail, in recording the day, as there was a ceremony to be perevent, gives a long list of the distin- formed by him; but whatever the Shasguished representatives present, and a verbatim report of the farewell address tras could have prohibited him, they could tendered to the departing missionary. not pr'event him being present to do hOrlor The address says : to one who had done so much good to the "REVEREND AND DEAR SIR: We, the people arul the country." Surely all this people of Ongole, consisting of all classes and communities, have come from an assembly of Hindus is remarktogether here to.day and asked your presence for awhile, that we may bid able.-A. J. G. you farewell on the eve of your departure to America. We take this opportunity The Mission to the Ohildren. of tendering yon our deep gratitude for the many obligations you have con- From March 1st, 1890, to March 1st, ferred OIl. llS !Utd the people at large in 1801. the missionaries of the American Sunday-school Union in the Northwest, under the direction of F. G. Ensign, Superintendent of Chicago, established 650 new Sunday-schools in destitute places, and induced 2759 teachers and 20,705 scholars to attend them. Be- sides this, the!' visited and aided othpr.
schools in 2745 cases where 14,020 teachers are giving Bible instruction to 135,389 scholars, heU 7522 meetings, made 26,245 visits to families, distribut- ed 5532 Bibles and testaments, placed in circulation $5070 worth of religious reading, and travelled 191,685 miles.
Already 2982 conversions have been reported from tbis work during the year, and 85 churches have developed U;OIll the Sunday-school,
TH]jJ MONTHLY CONCERT OF MISSIONS
IV.-THE MONTHLY CONCERT OF MISSIONS.
BY REV. D. L. LEONARD.
A glance is to be taken at missionary tion men; are found to some extent in work among the Japanese and Chinese the mines, though having no fancy for in this country, among the American toil underground; are expert gardeners Indians and the Mormons, and in the and laundrymen, and when trained islands of the sea. The theme has no excel as cooks als-o. lack of either length, breadth, or variety, and includes points not a few of pro. The Chinese are industrious and found interest to every Christian pa- economical in the extreme, and, IDore triot. than anything else, it is their ability to make so little go so far that tends, wher. JAPANESE. ever they are found in considerable numbers, to cheapen and degrade labor, The census return~ for 1890 are only and so stirs the fear and the wrath of in part available; but enough is known other toilers. From several causes they to make it certain that this class of our are compelled to endure an endless population is but small, and does not amount of opprobrium and insult, are constitute a very serious " problem." the butt for jokes, and a mark for the The few thousands we have are scat· mob. Though Bret Harte's" Heathen teredfarand wide, some in almost every Chinee," Ah Sin, with ., ways that arc large city, though about 1500 are found dark" and" tricks that are vain," may upon the Pacific border; Louisiana can. occasionally be duplicated in real life tains 39, Florida 14 ; Virginia, 13 ; Ten. among the Celestials, yet the represen tn. nessee, 10, etc. Wherever found they tion is a slander nevertheless. The are intelligent and polite, and readily ,vorst feature of the Chinese question is adopt the ideas and manners and cus· found in the fact that those who come to toms of their neighbors. Nor is the us take no interest in American affairs. task specially difficult of persuading They journey hither only to make them to accept the Gospel with all their money and return, and hence keep the heart. Not much organized work has way open by clinging to their old ways, been begun or is possible in their be the queue, their peculiar dress, etc. To half. But the Methodist Episcopal lay these aside is not only to be treason. Church expends some $5000 to enhance able to the emperor, but also to aposta. their spiritual well being in California, tize from Confucius. dividing it among several missions, and reports 4 missionaries, 3 helpers, 160 Missionary work is carried on largely members, 21 probationers, and 44 bap. by means of evening schools and Sun. tisms during the last year. Not many day.schools, advantage being taken of cnter the United States intending to reo the fact that many-it may be only with main, and q aite a large proportion of a business motive-are eager to learn to the converts sooner or later return to speak and to read the English language. Japan to strengthen the missions there. In the early stages of instruction it is found necessary to supply each indi- CHINESE. vidual Chinaman with a teacher. Many of them are found to be possessed of They number not far from 130,000, bright and inquiring and impressible of whom the census reports 71,681 as minds, most are models of good deport· residing in the single State of Califor. ment, as well as generous and grateful nia. They are found also in all the for favors. principal cities West and East; in the flourishing mining" camps ;" in the reo In all the large cities missions are gion we~t of the Rockies they constitute carried on, and are not especially disthe force of railroad builders and sec· couraging, but bear fruits which am substantial, and, all things considered, Methodist Episcopal Church South refairly large. Muny are found in Chris- ports a church-membership of 3909 in tian churches who in every way adorn the Indian Territory. Bishops Whipple tho Gospel of .Tesus Christ, lind whoso and TIare of the Episcopal Church find godly and self-denying lives rebuke abundant ground for thanksgiving and their white brethren. The American hope. The Congregationalists have gath- Missionary Association alone Bustains ered 9 churches with 438 members, and 18 schools in California, with 33 teach- 16 schools with 527 scholars, and supers and 1310 scholars. Of these 204 port 87 missionaries and teachers. have given up idolatry, and 159 give Twelve theological students are in trainevidence of conversion. In all, from ing for the ministry. The Roman Caththe first, 750 are counted as having been olics were first in the field, beginning led to Christ in these schools. The nearly 300 years ago, during the French Methodists also and Baptists ani Pres- regime in Canada, and even yet maintain byterians are doing work. their self-denying zeal. It is much to be hoped that with civil service intro- INDIANS. duced into the Indian Bureau, and the churohes encouraged by the past fruit Well may Americans blush when they of their prayer and toil, a brighter meditate upon the Indian question. Not day for the American Indian is at hand. including Alaska, we have to do with 249,273 red men who are found scat- MORMONS. tered through 35 of our States and territories. The Indian Territory holds The Mormon Church was founded in 66,289, of whom most ar61 civilized. In Seneca Co., N. Y., in 1830, or more than New Mexico dwell 20,521; in South 60 yoorll ago, and sprang from causes in Dakota. 19,845; in Arizona, 16,74,0 ; in whioh is found a strange combination Oalifornia, 15,283, and 10,000 each in of iniquity and folly, boundiesil false- Montana and Washington. Upon the" hood and trickery, on the one hand, and various reservations 133,382 are gath- credulity to match on the other. Its ered, of whom 98,707 are self-supporting, origin was in. a generation famous for and the land contains 32,567 Indians isms, and it was but one of a half hunwho are tax-ed or taxable. dred patent schemes for the hastening of the dawn of millennial bliss. From The government, after expending for the first it was a shining mark for ridiforty years an annual average of $10,- cule and hate, and within 15 years was 000,000 in fighting him, and at a cost of compelled five times to change its habi- $1,000,000 for every one killed, is now tat, and finally, after its prophet and at length devoting $500,000 a year to high-priest hBd falJen victims to mob educational work; and the churches Tiolence, sought refuge in the wilderhave found that for the average ex- ness 1000 miles beyond the Missouri. penditure of $1000 the red man can be Already its emissaries had crossed the converted. Though the facts are all th61 sea, and recruits began to pour in by other way, the conviction is yet wide- the thousand froll the Old World and spread that the Gospel and the Indian to cross the great plains, lured on by have next to nothing in common. And specious but deceitful promises. this though Eliot and Edwards and Brainerd met with abundant success; Meantime polygamy, which ,for ten and th61 Moravians civilized and Chris- years had been praotised in secret, was tianized the Delawares and the Mohi- openly proclaimed and defended in cans by hundreds, and powerful revivals 1852. A little later, made bold by sucwere Touchsafed in Pennsylvania and cess, and during a reign of terror orig- Ohio; and triumphs of grace are to be inating in II dreadful outburllt of fanatiseen among the savage Sioux, and al- cism, Brigham Yonng felt himSelf strong most every tribe in. tbe West. The enongh to defy the Government, and it became necessary to send an army in own against its foes. It is more than 1857 to brine; him to reason; and then likely that the gains from conversions began a contest for supremacy, in which in foreign lands are more than noutral- for 25 long and disgraceful years the ized by apostasies at home. By a series hierarchy was aMe to hold its own. of defeats extending over ten years the Nor was it until the passage of the Ed- spirits of the leaders begin to be broken, munds law in 1882 that the haughty and finding the Government and the moral defiant priesthood began to be brought sense of the whole nation united against to terms and feel compelled in any their schemes. Though not ready yet measure to obey the law of the land. to' yield heartily and thoroughly, even But since then every year has witnessed upon the point of polygamy, their faith solid gains against polygamy and the begins seriously to stagger. It there- rule of the priesthood. But even yet fore remains to continue the momentous constant watchfulness is called for. It struggle. Let the courb. withhold not will not do to trust the wily leaders, and a whit of their stern pressure of penin particular not for years yet will it alty ; and let the churches sustain and answer to bestow upon Utah the boon multiply the toilers in school and pulof statehood. pit, and to mea-sures hitherto employed add wise and vigorous and persistent For nearly 20 years no Christian mis- evangelistic effort, and ten years hence sionary appeared in Salt Lake, and the yet greater marvels of improvement will Great Basin was as effectually closed have been wrought. against missionary work as were China or Japan. Nor was it until after the ISLANDS oj' THE SEA.. discovery of rich mines of silver, and more, after the completion of the Pacific The isles shall wait for His law; and, Railroad in 1869, that the churches of alas! for shame, that the countless the land began in earnest to endeavor islands of the ocean, with their millions to win the" Saints" from the error of of souls benighted and depraved, should their ways. Indeed, the last decade have been compelled to" wait," in a contains the bulk of the educational and sense not at all scriptural, and for religious victories which have been eighteen centuries before an opporwon. It was soon found to be as good tunity was supplied to hear the Gospel as impossible to reach the adult popu- command. True, many of. them were lation, and hence great emphasis has not known until times quite modern, been laid upon Christian schools, and 11. and only reoently have they been extroop of consecrated and heroic women plored and made accessible. were despatohed to the scene of strife and have been there maintained, and It is worth recalling that the first forgroot have been their achievenrents in mil.! missionary undertaking set on foot breaking down barriers of prejudice, by the Christian Church had an island letting in the light of intelligence, and for its object; and when the Holy Ghost leading hundreds to better lives. Prog- said, " Separate me, ;Barnabas and Saul, reBS is slow, the field is as full of dis- for the work whereunto I have called couragements as any in foreign lands, them." This was ten years before the and yet the changes which have trans- continent of Europe received the Gospired within the decade are amazing. pel. It was also to the West Indies that By the development of mining and the Frederick IV. designed to send Ziegenincrea8e of railroads such an influx of balg and Plutscho. The Moravians denon·Mormon population has taken place spatched their firilt representatives to that. three of the largest cities have been St. Thomas, and the second company wrested from Mormon hands, and a turned their faces toward Greenland. fourth will soon be redeemed. where Egede had already been long at work. It was Captain Cook's discov- The church is now scarcely holding its eries in the South Seas that first fired Carey's Boul with zeal for the world's into the churches, which now are indeevangelization, and for years he thought pendent, almost self – sustaining, and the Lord had called him to labor for the earnestly engaged carrying the Word souls of the heathen in Tahiti, while it of life to other islands. What dismal was the enthusiasm stirred by those tragedy was enacted for a generation in same explorations that led to the forma- Madagascar after thousands had chosen tion of the London Society, and gave to the way of life! The whole company it such an astonishing initial impulse. were called to endure the fiery trials of The American Board occupied Ceylon relentless persecution, and not a few to at an early day, and soon after seventeen be faithful even unto death. But the men and women were en route for the Church came forth from the furnace Sandwich Islands. with scarcely the smell of fire upon it, and to-day the London Society, God's The earth's islands have never been most honored instrument, can count 670 numbered, nor has an accurate census ordained and 3785 unordained toilers in of their inhabitants ever been taken. that fruitful field, with upward of 50,000 But they doubtless hold from thirty to church-members and 250,000 adherents. forty millions. Often possessed of cli- The Church Missionary Society entered mate nearly perfect, and of wondrous New Zealand as far back as 1814, but natural beauty, they also in many cases waited and toiled eleven years for the supply a flora and fauna most remark- first con vert, and then five years longer able-birds and blossoms decked in for the second. But then ensued such array most gorgeous, and fruits and a remarkable religious overturning that flavors delicious beyond comparison. in 1842 Bishop Selwyn could write: Behold the peculiar treasures of the ., A whole nation of pagans has been Spice Islands, and the pearls, and ebony, converted to the faith." And now, out and satin-wood, and coffee, and cinna- of about 45,000 Maoris. 18,000 are Chrismon, and cocoa-nuts of Ceylon! And tians by profession, with 38 of their how strange that where nature has number ordained clergymen. And Fiji, wrought many of her chief marvels, and under the wise and patient and self-sacso is seen at her best, man is often found rificing care of the English Wesleyans, at his very worst! The islands of the has become at length to all intents Pacific stand for the lowest type of .bar- and purposes a Christian nation, and barism and shocking savagery, for the with perhaps a larger proportion of unspeakable horrors of the tabu, canni- the population in regular attendance balism, universal lust, and endless war. upon religious services than can any_ Fiji, New Zealand, New Hebrides, Rara- where else be found. And it may be tonga, and Tierra del Fuego have long that Japan will speedily prove herself been names with which to conjure up the queen of all the isles, because of her scenes most forbidding and loathsome. ready and eager and thorough accept- High among the names of martyrs, too, ance of Christ and His salvation! stand those of Williams, and Patteson, and Gordon, and Gardner, the latter The secret of these distinguished congladly laying down his life in a land as quests for the kingdom of heaven is dreary as any under the sun, and in be- doubtless to be found in part in the fact half of a people as brutal and God-for- that the insular races, as a rule, are of saken as can anywhere be found. But, a make more gentle and docile and imover against all this, perhaps nowhere pressible than that of the Chinaman or elso have the triumphs of the cross been the Hindoo, and this because, never more numerous or more glorious. Upon having been burdened and enslaved by the Hawaiian Islands there were toiling any form of civilization highly wrought and waiting and watching with weeping and hoary with age, or by any religious for twenty long years, but after that system elaborate and fortified by cenwithin aix years 27,000 were gathered turies of learning and culture. The people, thereiore, were more like chilo age. In Jamaica alone 20 stations are dren, were ready to look up to thei!." held by 26 missionaries, and the teachers and to learn, were far leslI churches have 6444 members and 16,936 proud and self'Bufficient, and so, with adherents. In the 74 schools 7444 chilo all their base superstition and measure. dren are taught. In the other islandsless depravity, like the pUblicans and St. Thomas, Antigua, Tobago, Barbados, sinners of our Lord's time, were much etc.-are found upward of 10,000 com- nearer the kingdom. And only let those municants, and 6500 in schools, with 23 who have received the knowledge and missionaries and 21 trained native help- hope of salvation, and who also, in a ers. The Episcopalians have a church sense, love and prize the unspeakable in Hayti with a bishop, 9 presbyters, gift, make haste with all their might to and 4 deacons. Its communicants num· evangelize, and so far as possible to ber 402, of whom 84 were confirmed convert, the millions who even yet are in 1890. altogether unreached, and another sub. lime Scripture will presently inspire our The London Missionary Society has a glad song. The Lord reigneth, let the Polynesian mission with 20 English mis. earth rejoice; let the multitude (or the sionaries, 347 native ordained minis· many, or great) isles be glad thereof. ters, and 216 native pr,mchers, 13,663 church.members, 40,651 adherents, 13,. The figures which follow will give de. 445 in Sunday.schools, and as many finiteness and point to the more general in day-schools. The principal work is statements which have preceded: done in the Heroey, Samoan, and Loy- alty grflups, and in New Guinea. In The Presbyterians are carrying on Rarotonga a training institution was mission work in 28 towns outside of Salt established as far back as 1839, and in Lake City and Ogden, and have 21 min. it hundreds of natives have been fitted isters, 58 teachers, 30 schools, and about for preaching and pastoral toil, and from 2100 pupils, 75 per cent of which pupils thence have gone out through all the are from Mormon or ex-Mormon fami. vast region of the South Pacific. lies. The summary of the work done by all the Christian denominations in A treaty has just been concluded Utah is about as follows: 85 mission Christian schools in 78 different towns, between Japan and the Hawaiian Gov. employing 172 Christian teachers, and educating about 6500 pupils, three ernment for the unrestricted immigrafourths of whom are from Mormon families. tion of Japanese subjects into the In Micronesia the American Board is Hawaiian kingdom. Special inducedoing work in the Caroline and Gilbert groups, and with Ponape and Ruk as ments are offered to Japanese coolies nentres. In this field Robert W. Logan was the apostle, and in labors abundant and farmers-a free paRsage to the wore out his life. The mission con. tains 3 stations and 49 out·stations, with islands, exemption from taxation, and a 19 American missionaries and 86 native helpers. The 51 churches have 4475 bounty of seventy-five Mexican dollars inembers, of whom 496 were received on c;onfession of faith last year. given to each bonafide immigrant. The The first Moravian missionaries were first steamer, carrying one thousand sent to the West Indies and to the negro population, then in terrible bond- farmers, sailed for Honolulu February 27th. J. T. G.
Matches and kerosene seem strange mission factors, yet the extent to which they are being imported into China makes an item of considerable interest in the increased intercourse with Chris. tian countries, and Western ideas flow in with these light.giving articles.
J. T. G,
GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE
V.-GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE.
Orga.nized Missionary Work and Statistios. Edited by Rev. D. L. Leonard, Bellevue, O.
-Dr. Kerr, who has been for 36 years en are at work, sent out by the Swedish in charge of the missionary hospital in Woman's Missionary Society. Canton, has treated, during that period, 521,000 patients, has written 27 medical -More than 100 Waldensian delegates and surgical works, and educated 100 assembled recently at Torre Pellice, native physicians. And yet an unbe- near Turin, in Synodical Convention. lieving and ill-informed world continues The 17 mountain oongregations have 78 to ask in wonder: .. To what purpose Sunday-schools, with 3270 scholars, is this waste upon missions ?" some 40 lay sooieties for practioal. Chris- tian work, and 13 societies for mission -The great Church whose seat is work, home and foreign. There lire upon the Seven Hills is neither dead now found in Itllly 43 Waldensian oonnor sleeping. During the last four gregations, with 53 stations for preachmonths of 1889 no less than 49 Roman ing with referenoe to the formation of Catholic missionaries, male and female, congregations. In all, 4228 oommuniarrived in East Africa, and 15 of the cants and 511 cateohumens have been number were destined to the mission gathered, and mostly from the Catholio which is rival to the Protestant Mission Churoh, in Dar-es-Salaam. -Though it is but a few years since -One of the most powerful private Protestant missions were founded in associations to which the recent anti- Mexioo, already 20,000 have been gathslavery movement has given birth is the ered into the churches, and a few of African Association of German Catho- these are already large and even selflics. L' Afrique reports that this asso- supporting. The M. E. Church, South, dation holds many publio meetings in is expending $105,000 annually upon different oities, publishes a journal- this field, the Presbyterians, $90,000, Gott will es-and has 10 diocesan com- the M. E. Church, North, $50,000, and mittees, comprising 1500 oiroles and the American Board, $24,000. Besides about 200,000 members. The oentral these the Episcopalians are at work, the oounoil at Cologne has received more Associate Reformed, the Cumberland than $130,000 in money. This is to be Presbyterians, and the Friends. spent in African expeditions, in founding safe retreats for threatened negroes, -The Hawaiian Islands, though long in missions, orphan houses, etc., all over since substantially Christianized and the German Afrioan possessions. Six left to oare religiously for themselves, thousand dollars have been given to aid still find mission work in abundance on in the transport of the first German hand. Upon the islands, among other steamer for the Victoria Nyanza. foreigners, are found 12,000 Portuguese, 13,600 Japanese, and 20,000 Chinese, -The Swedish Congo Mission, dur- and work in behalf of all these is oaring the last 10 years has opened 5 sta- ried on. The Hawaiian Evangelical Astions, whioh are oooupied by 18 mis- sociation raised $47,857 last year, and sionaries. The Swedish Church Mission was sustaining 9 missionaries with their Bustains 8 ordained missionaries in wives upon the Marquesas and Gilbert Natal and Zululand, 2 of them natives. Islands. The Swedish National Evangelioal Assooiation supports 12 Swedish and 14 -For large, Tisible, and tangible renative missionaries in Massowah and sults the Baptist Ongole Mission among Abyssinia. And in Algeria several wom- the Telugus takes rank with the North India Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and the Hawaiian Islands, -The Free Church of Scotland, with 1838-43, when 27,000 were received to 335,000 members, raised last year from the churches in 6 years. In 1878 in all sources, a total missionary revenue Ongole over 9000 were baptized, and for the evangelization of the world out. 2222 in a single day. A revival has side the United Kingdom of £113,431 continued ever since. One church has 16s. 3d ($567,155). Its native communi_ reached a membership of 12.000. Last cants in all forfign fields aggregate year was ·fruitfnl in conversions, 2023 6620. It supports 51 ordained mis- receiving baptism in three months, 1671 sionaries, 8 medical missionaries, and in one day, with 2000 candidates. 23 professors and teachers.
-It is saiJ that 4000 parishes of the -The provinces of Alsace.Lorraine, Established Church of England are so acquired by Germany in 1870, have a uninterested in the foreign missionary Roman Catholic popUlation of 1,191,974, movement as to put forth no effort served by about 3000 priests and prelwhatever in its aid. There is a growth, ates, while the Protestants number however, of foreign missionary interest 288,895 souls. These are divided into in the English Church, as evidenced by 238 parishes and 118 preaching places. enlarged receipts of money and the in. Of the former 199 are Lutheran and 39 cre!1sed number of missionaries sent Reformed. The Lutheran pastors numonto The London Ch mch Missionary ber 226 and the Reformed 139. In addi- Society, for example, sent out no less tion to these there are 25,000 soliliers than 82 new missionaries in 1890. in the provinces, served by 12 clergy- men. -Bishop Potter, in a recent sermon in behalf of New York City missions, -In St. Petersburg there are 83,000 said that the Church he representeJ was Protestants. Of these 42,000 are Gerpreaching the Gospel in that city" not mans, half of them Russian subjects. only in almost all the tongues of Eu- They are organized into 14 congregarope, but in those of China, Armenia, tions, served by 30 pastors. The church Turkey, and Persia." A certain parish work among them receives no support has promised him $3000 a year, and the from the State, the voluntary contribudaughter.in.lawof Robert Browning has tions of each member averaging about promised to build a $40,000 chapel. six or seven dollars annually. One of these co~gregations is building a church -In Belgium one out of every 200 of costing $250,000. The same congrega. the popUlation is a monastic brother. tion has a gymnasium which graduates These 32,000 monks, notwithstanding its pupils into the university. Another their vow of poverty, have property congregation has also a gymnasium of valued at $26,000,000. In France there its own, one of the best in Russia, exare fully 10,000 Sisters of Mercy, who pending about $20,000 a year for this upon entering the 800 cloisters of that institution. The city mission work of country, resign all claims to their prop- the Protestants of the Russian capital is erty. Yet the property of these orders being energetically prosecuted. is worth more than $5,000,000. -From thQ last statistical Year Book -According to the Gospel in all LandB, of the Protestant Church in Prussia, it the benevolent contributions of the dif- appears that in 1889 no fewer than 3125 ferent Evangelical denominations in the persons became converts to the Evan- United States for the year 1890 were as gelical Church. Of these 2317 were follows: from the Roman Catholic Church, 525 Baptists. __ •. . . .. . …. .. .. $1,362,488 had been Dissenters and 283 had been Protestant Episcopalians .. . 1,689,401 Jews. During the same year 107 Prot- Congregationalists……… . 2,398,837 estant pastors had died, the average age Methodist Episcopalians… . 2,769,172 Presbyterians …• _•.••….. 4,783,657 being 60 years and 6 months, the average foreign missions are disproportionately time of service, 30 years and a few large.
months; 98 were placed upon the re- -The fact is well known that for tired list, receiving a pension from the years the Roman Catholic Church has Government. The average age of these been vigorously pushing itself Rmong was 71, and the average service time 40. the Freedmen of the South, and among -Gossner's Mission. founded by Pas· the American Indians, in the latter case tor Gossner, of Berlin, in 1844, is a securing the lion's share of Government most vigorous missionary body. They appropriations. According to a late are at work among the Kols of Chutia· church official report, 81 priests have Nagpur, India, and are wonderfully suc- established 108 churches and 58 schools cessful. Within the last twelve months among the Indiamt, have the care of 10,073 have been baptized and 2796 have 87,375, and last year baptized 3807 chilbroken caste and come under Christian dren and 245 adults. ,The same authorinstruction. There are now in the mis- ity reckons up 151,6a Catholic negroes sion 167 churches, with 11,552 full who are taught by 33 priests in 27 members, and a Christian community churches and 110 schools. The sum of over 35,000. The leper asylum of the contributed last yea.r for these two forms mission has been recently blessed with of mission work was but $74,664.
many conversions. -Mr. Stanley has recently said: "At -The thirtieth anniversary of the the present time there are over 1000 offi- Woman's Union Missionary Society was cials administering the laws of civiliza. held recently in New York City, Mrs. tion in the Kongo State, where 23 years Henry Johnson, President, presiding. ago there was but one white man. The report of the treasurer indicated reo Thirty steamers now ply the waters of ceipts the past year of $60,027. The ex· the Kongo, and innumerable steam penditure~ amount to $48,681, leaving a launches now cleave the waters of the balance on hand of $11,346. The board great lakes. This year a navy will be of managers comprises representatives placed upon the lakes; railways are now of eight different Christian denomina- being constrncted by the Belgian and tions, namely, Protestant Episcopal, German Governments, and an English Congregational, Presbyterian, Reform- road has already been completed for a ed, Methodist Episcopal, Baptist, Re· distance of 40 miles. Over 50 missionformed Episcopal, and Friends. ary stations have been established, that precept and example may not be want- -It has been pungently affirmed, and ing for ~he regeneration of Africa. The apparently with truth, that if the Unit- old continent will never become what , ed States, Canada, and Great Britain the new is, but the new taate of Kongo were supplied with ordained ministers will become the nursery of the dark na- in the same proportion to population tions. And he speaks of the time when that the pagan world is supplied, Cana. he wrote a letter urging that missiona- da would have 20 snch ministers, the ries be sent, which was published in the United States 200, and Great Britain London Telegram, and nearly 400,000 and Ireland 100. As it is, "there are copies of the paper containing the let· 400 ordained pastors in Christian lands ter were sold, and in a very short time to everyone on the foreign shores, and money was subscribed toward equipping there are 600 Christian workers to every the first missionary station in Central one abroad." The same writer also ac· . Africa. Now there are scores of stations cepts the estimate that $98 are expend. and over 6000 converts after years of ed in Christian work in Christendom to ignorance and darkness."
every $2 sent to the foreign field. Yet -The following table, taken from the there are those who say that gifts for MISsionary Herald, sets forth the .. ex· travagant" expenditures of the churches redemption of the Dark Continent with of these United States for the spiritual its ~OO,OOO,OOO of pagans- WORK 0)' .AKBBICA.N 1(J8fHOJ(A1I.Y IOClETIES 11J AFRICA..
'O~ rg Annual " " " E x p e n d i t u r e eOCIlIITIEil. ~I ~ <Xi o~ ~~ 11.1.1 ui ·~.~~l ",o. z~ SOl .90.9 S1:l ~~ – -0 – rn .. rn o·~ Z" .~0 0" —- —- 3]3 in Africa. •…. J.I ~ ~ ::iil"~~ – – – — – – – – – Bapti.t Missionary Union, Congo …….. $48,746 iQ 5 5 386 4 Protestant Episcopal, Liberia….•••.•.. 44,093 8 48 17 709 69 United Brethren In ('hri.t,Mendi. ……. 10,818 7 43 55 317 61 United Pre.byterian Vhurch, Egypt…. 29 2,m 112 42,000 35 2IJ6 American Board, Natal.. ……………. 45,265 Methodist Episcopal Church, West Coast 5.~ 137 17 1,174 37 BishopTaylor'sMlssion,Congo andAngola 7,500 3 57 38 2,755 38 Evangelical Lutherans.•••…………… …. i3;000···· 27 38 141 10 4 9 —————— ——– Presbyterian Board… . ……………. 31,156 3 WO 3 Total……………………… …. $237.077 – – 28 24 204 —- – 17 – 1,898 25 617 – —– — 181 10,Oil 359 MISSIONARY WORK IN JAPAN FOR THE YEAR 1890.
CONDENSBD FROM STATISTICS PREPARICD BY REV. H. LOOllIS, YOKOHAMA..
~ E"'" '"" " ~.. .. — — "",od.)(I28IOlfARIEB.
<Xi .S :cai. ",8 – ' " -;;~ lfAlIIE 0)' lIrIIBIiIOl(. "d d 'O~ .0 ; t'"l ",.g ~o.mg .::l .~ E0o.<0S :";"s .SIi ~ ~~ ~;:::: 0 r!n! ~ rn" " ~S~o 3~.S.. ~p. rn ~ oS zs -0 ~ 0 – f-i1 – – – – — — – – – 0- – – -0 – Church of Christ in Japan" ••….. 44 48 150 23 <t'z 71 1,077 9,314 1M 1,409 Nippon Sel Kokwai t …………… 40 37 110 17 66 56 466 4,000 110 669 American Baptilt Missionary Uilion. 16 15 45 9 43 13 121} 1,027 34 222 American Boord ……………….. 28 32 84 9 73 61 1,615 9,146 109 3,240 Methodist Episcopal Church, North. 20 29 68 9 39 53 492 3,923 75 2,144 Methodist Episcopal Church, South. 12 5 27 4 15 6 77 318 18 136 Canada Methodist Church•..••…. '110 11 29 5 12 15 287 1,446 50 348 – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – 'l'welve Smaller Societies. . . . . . . . . . . . 28 12 62 18 34 21 289 1,623 51 526 — —- 297 -I 4,431 3,082 584 8,758 Total. . .. …. …………….. 214 189 577 93 423 *In the" Church of Christ in Japan" are jomed the Unit"d Presbyterian Church, Scotland' the PresDyterian Churche., North and South, aud the Cumberland Presbyterians; the Reformed Chul'ch In America, and the Reformed Church In the United States, and the Woman's Union Missionary Society.
t In the "NIPRon Sei Kokwai" are joined the Protestant Episcopal (,hurch, the Wickliffe College ~llsRlon, Canada, the Church Missionary Society, and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel.
STATISTICS OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS IN CHINA. FROM TABLES PREPARED BYREV,J. W. DAVI8,D.D.
FOREIGN NATIVE I~ S .; 1lISSIO:NARIES. HELPERS. .0g . =" I"i 3 .E .". .~~ "'.""- ~]~ :siS "d N AllE OF SOCIETY. .~ OJ) .; rn § 0 …..:.9 rD II .S 0 ~~ !!<O ~ <i :S;So 0; ~ 'So Z".!~l – . I-'<- – – – – – – – -~- – – ————–~~- 'E -0 – 0 – -E0o< – 0 – – -0- – — London Mi••ionary Society…….. 30 14 65 11 75 62 !,124 4,078 $ 5,673 American Boord………•……•.. 36 15 83 4 91 20 1,074 1,549 1,6111 American Baptist ……………… 14 7 34 7 75 14 325 ],479 American Baptist (South) …….•.. 14 8 35 8 21 13 338 808 715 American Protestant Episcopal …. 11 11 760 American Presbyt9rian ………… r,s 100 American Presbyterian (South)…. 12 … ….. 318 19 '44' 1,123 450 548 British and Foreign Bible Society. 12 122 9 2,482 4,041 2,372 21 ..2.0.. 128 7 28 72 18 …2.. .. 300 ….1.0.0.. Vhurch Missionary Society …….. 27 15] 2,695 "3;100 English Ba~tist. …..•…••…….. 20 8 56 17 18 ..1.9.. 2,000 36 1 177 1,1M 360 Methodist plscopal. ………•…. 37 27 99 76 167 148 2,708 3,888 7,341 Basel Mission" ……•…………. 19 ….. 33 6 45 38 848 2,0211 1,237 English Presbyterian ………….. 26 10 51 8 197 40 628 3,471 6,935 Wesleyan Missionary Society …… 17 3 31 2 48 15 534 1,079 1,300 I China Inland Mission . .. . …… 161 135 366 10 82 80 182 2,1137 67~ -Tw-e-nt-y–six-s-m-al-ler-s-oc-ie-tie_s …..-..-. -95- 58 221 22 298 271 993 7,529 4,176 16,836-'37,287-'$36,884 Total… ….. …. ……. . .. ' 589 316l,'296 20l,'446 522 Protestant Missions in Spain.- of the life of Howell Harris, the founder ThQ Rev. William H. Gulick haB recent- of the Connection, the same year, is ly prepared the following summary of highly appropriate. societies engaged in evangelical work in Spain, and of tangible results achieved: Primitive Methodist Missions.-At Of churches and societies engaged there the approaching May missionary gathare no Jess than 15, of which 4 are erings. the London churches hope to Scotch, 5 are English, and 3 are Ameri- raise not less than £1000, which will be can. And, after 15 years' toil, these equally divided between the new misfigures can be given : sions in London and the denomination's operations on the West African coast Foreign Missionaries, men. .. 22 and the recently established Zambesi women 28…… … 50 enterprise.
Spanish Pastors. . .. •• •……….. _. . . . . 37 United Methodist Free Church.- Evangelists… _. . . . . • . . . • . .• . … 39 With the completion of their training in 9,220 Manchester the two colored students, Attendants on public worship. "" •.•.. 3,516 Messrs. E. D. L. Thompson and J .. B. Commnnicants . _•.. __ .•••..••…. _…… 119 Nicholls, have returned to Sierra Leone Day-schools………. •••• ..•…•. •… …. to assist in mission work, the colony School-teachers, men ..• 74 156 according them a public reception on their arrival. Disquieting news has women 82…. •… .. …• been received from the Free Methodist station in East Africa. The Golbanti Pupils. .• . ……•..•…. _•.•…•..•.. _.. 4,880 Mission station is located in the Witu SundaY-Bchools…. ……..••••••…. .•.• 82 country, where several Germans were Teachers in the Sunuay-schools…. .. … 192 massacred last September. When the Scholars in tile Suuday.schools………. German missionaries were attacked they 3,500 fled for protection to the station of their Free Methodist brethren, and ultimately Missionary Items. By the Rev. James the whole of the missionaries left for Johnstoa, Bolton, Lancashire, England. the coast along different routes. One of the missionaries, the Rev. W. Howe Free Church of Scotland Modera- (Free Methodist), travelled alone across torship.-In missionary circles much the open country for three days, and pleasure was expressed at the choice of afterward reached the seaboard in safety. Professor Thomas Smith as moderator- What may befall the mission premises elect by the Free Church Commission in and the native converts can only be sur- Edinburgh. His eminence, as a mis- mised. The latest intelligence stated sionaryof the denomination in India, is that Golbanti would again be occupied worthy of recognition, in addition to by the missionaries at the first opporwhich his professorial work in the New tunity, notwithstanding that missionary College, Edinburgh, and his marked blood has already been spilled there. ability as a leader in the ecclesiastical courts presented further claims for the Steamer for the Congo.-A commisnomination. sion for a new mission steamer on the twin-screw turbine system has been The Nyasaland Missions.-The re- given by the Baptist Missionary Society ported endeavor of Consul .Tohnston to to Messrs. John L 'fhornycroft & Co., of subsidize the Arabs against the natives Chiswick. It will replace the Peace, is naturally causing the disapprobation built by the same firm in 1882, which of the directors of the missions in that the Congo Free State lately forcihly region. ProfeBsor Lindsay, of the Free requisitioned. The vessel will be con- Church and an official of the Estab. siderably larger than the Peace, being lished Church of Scotland have visited 84 feet long and 13 feet beam, and London to lay before the Foreign Office drawing 2 feet 2 inches when laden with the views held by their respective cargo. In launching her at Stanley churches respecting the administration Pool the society will not be destitute of of Nyasaland. Their action has, it is means of communication at any time understood. the approval of the Uni. with brethren at dist.ant stations. The versities' Mission. able missionary, Mr. George Grenfell (who unfortnnately is in England, suf- Welsh Calvinistic Methodist Jubi- fering from ill health), has drawn up the lee. -It is fnlly probable that the Mis- specifications, and will superintend her sionary Jubilee Fllnd of this vigorous building. Not unlikely Borne of the body will reach the sum of £50,000, or mission boys, by whom the boiler in tho twice as mu('h as the amount originally Peace was completely put together, and suggested. The anticipated early issue steam raised on the third day aHer re- party is that the Greek Church is defec- erection was begun, will be asked to tive in its teaching of " the Gospel" as give once more their intelligent co- understood by Low Churchmen. It is operation. disappointing to see that the Church Missionary Society, alter thirty years of Contributions for English Church labor, cannot reckon more than 600 Missions.-Corresponding with the in. communicants, 2000 adherents, and creasing subscriptions for home mis. 2000 children, whose interests are cared sions are the large sums contributed on for by ten ordained and five lady mis- behalf of the foreign field. ThiM is sionaries, besides sixty or seventy lay specially characteristic of High Church. workers. The question bas heen put to men. }<'or example, the income of the the Church Missionary Society whethel' Society for the Propagation of the Gos- it might not devote some thousands of pel, distinctly belonging to the High pounds annually to needier and more Church party, exceeded in 1890 all pre- promising fields. I learn that the vious years. The grand total reached Archbishop of Canterbury bas had the was £164,382, an increase of nearly matter of settlement referred to him- £40,000 on the year 1889. From the self, and everyone will hope that a , subscription list it is apparent that a modus vivendi may be discovered. steady advance is being made in the regular subscriptions. Equally surpris- The Niger and the English Uni- ing is the progress ot the sister organ- versities' Missions.-Doubts of the ization, the Church Missionary Society, Rev. F. N. Eden, the English secretary whose accounts, which do not close of the Lower Niger :Mission, not being. until March 31st, will doubtless show a prepared to return to his sphere of toil similar gratifying return. in Africa, owing to the Special Com- mittee of Inquiry appointed by the Church Friction in Palestine.-No Church Missionary Society, exonerating solution of the quarrel between Bishop from blame most of the native clergy against whom he had made charges, are Blyth and the Church Missionary 1:10- dispelled. Mr. Eden will, to the joy of many in church missionary circles, go ciety has yet been found. The London back to his post. Though a young man, Guardian, representing the bishop, urges he is a rising missionary force, whose the society to withdraw and transfer its services to the cause of African missions agencies to the Society for the Propaga- may be of increasing value. The clouds tion of the Gospel, a recommendation which have been hanging over the Niger which a majority of the supporters of the stations are quickly vanishing. Church Missionary Society decline to accept, believing that such a course Archdeacon Maples is addressing Eng- should be taken by the bishop, who lish audiences on the Universities Mis- came second into the field and was sion at Zanzibar, on the Rovuma, and aware of the nature of the society's Lake Nyasa. He says that they are operations. To the letter of the Church training a native ministry which in time Missionary Society secretaries the An_ will enable the English missionaries to glican Bishop of Jerusalem replies that withdraw and leave the work in the the society's missionaries are prose- hands of African teachers and preach- lytizers, inasmuch as they win over ers. Progress is slow; nevertheless, in converts from Eastern Christian connection with the mission, there was churches, and "a general policy of a large band of African workers, hoth men proselytism endnngers," he says, ., not and women formerly released slaves, only your own, but all our English work who were n~w doing excellent service. in these lands, and is against Church A native ordained minister was at pres- order," He asks what is the use of the ent working with much greater success Archgishop of Canterbury desiring fra. than any of the white missionaries. ternal rehttions with the Eastern hie- rarchy when this kind of missioning is Mashonaland.-Speedily in tbe track practised by the society under his of the snccessful British encampment patronage, and further observes that in Mashonaland, missionaries are being although the society professes to have dispatched. In response to the Rppeal centres of work among Mohammedans, of the Rev. Owen Watkins, a WeRleyan thesB are, jn reality. as a rule, members Sonth African missionary pioneer of of the Greek Church previons to their deserved reputation, the Wesleyan Mis- entrance into the church mission fold. sionary Committee have decided to es- His sympathies, he says, are with gPll- tabli~h a mission in this lately opened uine missionary work wherever carried territory To meet tb& expansion of on, and if the society proceeds on these English in this and adjoining regions, a linps it will command his aid. Obvi- new bishopric, known as the Bishopric ously the answer of the Evangelical of Mashonalat.d, is about to be created, in Senegal, he sets in contrast the de- the nomination and consecration resting praved condition of things, notably in with the Archbishop of Canterbury. Freetown, under the British. The un· Since the death of Bishop Colenso there cleanliness of the plaoe is a crying scan- has been no real tie between the dal, the streets in many directions Church, England and that of South grass.grown and reeking with smells of Africa, "'hich is perfectly autonomous. deoayed fish and vegetables. Trade and The Situation in Uganda.-Heroism enterprise are practically dead. More for G( . marks every stage of this much- appalling are the numbers of Govern. checkered East African Mission. The ment licensed grog.shops. 'rhese haunts Hev. E. C. Gordon, writing from Mengo, of degradation are crowded day and the capital of Uganda, on November 1st, hall, after four months' solitary occupa. night with hundreds of natives, who tivn, been gladdened by the face of the afterward stagger through the streets in a ragged and helpless state. The con- Lev. R H. Walker. On Bishop Tucker sequences are terrible. These vi<:ltims either fall into the holes or man·traps and party arriving at Usambiro, October which abound, until they are sober, or 13th, they were detained six weeks they are oarried off to the lookups, pending the return of the mission boat, where horrible barbarities are perpetrat. which Mr. Walker had taken across the ed upon them. "I found," says Mr. lake to secure canoes for transport to Buxton, ,. our English Freetown a filthy, Uganda. Mr. Walker carried to Mwanga a letter from Bishop Tucker, and a copy forlorn, and uncared·for Darkest Engof the treaty relating to the spheres of in. land in Darkest Africa." It is not fluence agreed upon by England and surprising that self.respecting na· Germany. It appears that the French tives say of British rulers and traders, priests had strongly advised Emin Pasha •• From whence come these white savto take Uganda in the name of Ger. many, but of course he scorned the no· ages, who are more savage than ourtion. Mwanga dispatched twenty canoes selves ?" These poor creatures, united to Usambiro for Bishop Tucker, who, testimony says, are now much more de. together with the Rev. D. A. L. Hooper moralized than they were before seeing and Messrs. G. L. Pilkington, G. K. a white man's face. For the purposo Baskerville and F. C. Smith, started on of making a rich revenue, Government December 4th for their voyage across allows the Gambia and Sierra Leone to. the lake leaving the Rev. J. O. Dermott he deluged with this fearful eurse. Mr. and Mr: D. Deekes at Usambiro with Buxton speaks of If, ship in which ho instructions to move to Nasa, on Speke had a passage, carrying from Rotterdam Gulf. Sadly unfortunate was the delay to the West C0l18t 100,000 cases of gin, of the little band at Usambiro. By fever worth two shillings a case, while it is both the Rev. W. Dunn and Mr. H. J. common to witness dhows laden with Hunt died, and from the same cause the huge carboys of poisonous rum slipping bishop had suffered four successive at- up the rivers. These diselosures are in tacks from the last of which he was the main confirmed by other writers, barelY-recovering when Mwanga' s canoes and the hope is expressed that as soon hove in sight. Th9 followers of the as the civil governor is withdrawn the Protestants and Romanists are frequent. primary remedial enactment will inly in antagonism in Uganda, though elude the total prohibition of drink in thA:y invariably combine against their the colony. Shocking detajls of the common Mohammedan foe. It is cheer· traffic in spirits and its results on the ing, how~ver, to note that many natives native races may be gathered from the hac{ been baptized, the majority being Aborigine,,' Protection Society's Annual young men, with a sprinkling of older Report, from Book C 5740 in the Sierra men and women. The e.atechumens had been carefully prepared, had attended Leone returns. classes three times a week, read most of the Actfl of the Apostles, and ap- New Mission to the Central Sou· preciated the" Pilgrim's Progress." dan.-Great interest has been excited in the religious community of Bolton, British Misrule in West Africa.- Lancashire, by the departure, on Feb- Lurid nnd deplorable revelations of the ruary 10th, of Messrs. Hermann ~. vices of English government in Sierra Harris, B.A., and Edward Whiteformls. Leone hnve been sent to the Daily sionary work in the Soudan. 'rheir des Graphic, a London paper of good stand. tination is one of the five or six remain· ing, by Mr. F. Buxton. Complimenting ing countries which are ignorant of the the French on their laws, f"lnitn Li on , Gospel, and continue totally unevangel. business, and the morality of the people ized. The region measures a thousal:d miIeR in length and five hundred III hrp,vUh, and is quite distinct from the E~yptian Soudan on the east and the Western Soudan to the west of it. It perience recently that no one could contains five negro kingdoms, each envy. They were "ttacked by river larger than Great Britain, with popula. pirates, who, after opening their trunks tions of many millions. With both gen· and seat·ching their persons, robbed tlemen it has been the writer's privilegt' them of many articles of yalue. "Perils to have intimate friendship, and of their by water, and perils by robbers," it Christian life, enthusiasm, and capacity seems, were not confined to the apos. it is a pleasure to bear unequivocal tes· tolic age. timony. The missionaries intend to tarry in Tunis until they have mastered -The work done among the Chinese the elements of Arabic, and then joiu on the Pacific Coast is now beginning one of the c,uavans fn rmde from Tripoli to bear fruit of a very hopeful kind. to Lake rrchad, in tho Central Soudan. Here are two illustrations: One thou· Miss M. F. Harris, a devoted lady mis. sand Chinamen, members of tho Con. sionary in Tunis, connected with the gregational Church in CAlifornia and North Africa Mission, is the sister of Oregon, have sent two missionaries to Mr. Harris. The tlVO missionaries are their native land, organized a Foreign depending in faith npon the sympathies Missionary Society, with one thousand of God's people for temporal assistance. dollars to start with, and have also con· tributed twenty.two hundred dollars to Another Anti-Slaverr Conference. home missions. Lun Foon, a member -Announcement is made of the next of of the Methodist Mission Church in the series of anti·slavery conferences, San Francisco, gave up a good business which owe their origin mainly to the and returned to China to do missionary activity of Cardinal Lavigerie, and will work at his own charge. He has built be held in London. The British and a mission property in foreign style of Foreign Anti.Slavery Society, which architecture, with preaching hall and conveyed the London invitation to the school·rooms. Cardinal, is exerting itself energetically to make the gathering what it promises -Dr. Judson Smith says the Chinese to be-an important event. One of the are manifestly the governing race of features of the previous conferences at Eastern and Central Asia. They evi· Brussels and Paris was their absolute dently hold the key to the future of al. freedom from political and sectarian most one half the unevangelized people coloring, which allowed men of every of the globe. So long, therefore, ao the shade of politics and phase of religious Chinese remain without the Gospel, belief to unite on a common platform. the great bulk of Asia will be pagan; This wise arrangement will be observed when they become Christian the conti· at the forthcoming demonstration. nent will be Christian, and the worid will be won for Christ.
Monthly Bulletin. -The medical missionaries in China appear to be making a deep impression Brazil.-A movement has been started upon the people. The physician is at Rio Janeiro to founn a Protestant hos; well-nigh worshipped; his person and pi tal. The new hospital will receive a work are sacred. A remarkably healthshare of the taxes levied on the shipping, ful and uplifting influence flows from and will be under the care of skilled phy. the labors of the female physicians and sicians. It will increase the field of of the native nurses trained by them. Christian work and the responsibility Their work has opened the eyes of the of the Protestant missionaries in Rio Orientals to the capabilities of women. Janeiro. There are said to be 109 medical mis- sionaries in Chino. at the present time, Buddhism..-Rev. Dr. Happer, the vet· 38 of whom are women, all but two of eran missionary of China, writing to the whom are from America. The Medical Presbyterian, estimates that instead of Missionary Record says: .. It is not al· four to five hundred millions of Buddh- ways easy to obtain entrance into a ists, as claimpd or conjectured by many Chinese city. The man who gains the writers, there are not more than seventy· good.will is the physician. With a hos· fi ve millions. Dr. Happer gives reasons pital, a daily clinic, and 0. large country for these figures, furnishing in comdder· field, the most skilled surgeon would able detail the statistics of Buddhism in always find his hands full. We ask our the different countries where it has ad. friends of the medical profession to herents. come over and help us. There are about 100 miRsionary doctors in China; 1000 Ohina.-Miss M. M. Phillips, M.D., and are neetled." Miss Smithey, of the Soo.Chow, China, M. E. Mission, while retnrning by boat -One thousand men in the next five from Shanghai to Soo.CholV l,ad an ex· years, is the call from China. Of course and throwaway What will require years 1000 men will mean nearly, if not quite, of labor, perhaps, to regain. My help. 2000 workers; for many of the men ers here have come to the rescue of th" will bring their wives, and a good wife work very nobly, and have assumed over doubles the power for good of a mis- three hundred rupees of the reduction., sionary in the field; and unmarried so that the work here may not suf. ladies in increasing numbers are volun- fer. • .. If the school is cut down, it teering from time to time. It is hoped must be cut down from the top. If it that this number will respond and be is cut down from the top it dies. If it dies, what is to become of all our Chrissent by the Church. tian labor in this community? If the children of Christian parents grow up -The most recent statisties of the ignorant and not grounded in Chrismissions in China are 1296 foreign mis- tianity, they will be a curse to the comsionaries, including 316 single women munity." The American Board is and 391 wives; 211 ordained, and 1235 obliged to retrench the next current year other native laborers; 522 churches, twenty per cent. 37,287 communicants, and 16,836 pupiIR in schools. -As another evidence of the extent of the influence of Mr. Spurgeon, it is -China's production of tea la8t year stated that Miss Tucker, known liS A. was 43 per cent of the world' B consump- L. O. E., reads three of his sermons tion. This shows the commercial im- every day with native converts in India. portance of China. -Dr. Pentecost is spending the hot -Mr. Trow Ahok, a prosperous meI- season in Simla, which is a centre of chant of Foo.Chow, lately gave $10,000 fashion, society, and godlessness, but to found an Anglo-Chinese College in not idly. A wealthy friend in Scotland that city. has purchased, for his use in India, a tent capable of seating 1200 peoplo. -One hundred Australians have vol- Dr. Pentecost will use this in his camunteered for service in connection with paigns in various parts of the 'country, the China Inland Mission. A domestic owing to the difficulty and expense of servant in Tasmania has given $100 of procuring suitable halls. her savings to this mission, and $20 for the work in Africa. This is an illustra- -The recent great revival in the Baption of the earnest missionary spirit of tist Mission at Ongole, in the Telugu these people. field, is one of the most remarkable in the annals of missions. In exactly three Hawaii.-The largest congregation in hours and five minutes two native the world, numbering 4500 members, is preachers are said to have immersed on the island of Hawaii. 1065 persons! Rev. Drs. Clough and Johnson immersed 606 in one hou-r and Iceland.-The Icelandic Lutheran con- twenty minutes. gregations of Manitoba and the Northwestern States recently celebrated the Ceylon.-A Christian convention of three hundred and fiftieth anniversary great interest was recently held at Jaffna. of the translation of the Scriptures into Its specific aim was the arousing of Chris- Icelandic. tians to greater earnestness and conse- cration, and it is believed that much lndia.-It is pathetic in these days of good resulted not only in the reviving of believers, but also in impressing those emptied missionary treasuries to read not believers.
such a letter as the following, received N. A. Indians.-The total Indian pop- ulation of Canada is about 120,000, aud by Secretary Clark of the American of these about 30,000, it is said. are more or less under Christian instruction at the Board, from a missionary in Bombay: hands of the Methodist, Episcopalian, and Presbyterian churches. There arfl " I have collected a band of superior in the United States 243,000 Indians. Of these only 58,000 receive any assistance Hyoouwn~"amn eI n as workers in this field. whatever from the Government, and a suddenly dismiss them with- large proportion of these are only slight- ly dependent. There are 64,871 includout great wrong to them? Again, if I ed in the five chiIized tribes of the Ind- ian Territory, and there are, besides, close any of my schools now it will be 35,287 uot living. on reservations Who at the expense of prestige, which, at this especial juncture, will be most un- fortunate. Our work here is beginning to bud after these nine years of labor.
The Church has been organized; two admit.ted from this place to the Church; a Brahman young man-a former pupil -has just come out for Christ, and the whole district is stirred up about it.
To diminish our work now is to lose are counted in with the general popula- ing Christians, whose beginning in the tiun. The main disturbances in the Christian life was in this church. recent uprising have been among the Sioux, who number about 28,000. -Con- -The Rev John L. Dearing, a Bapgregationalist. tist missionary, gleans from the lnde- pendent some significant facts from the Japan.-The Synod of the Church of ststistics of miHsions in Japlln in 1890. Christ in Japan adopted the following as One is that Japan is not a field for its Confession of Faith: "'I.'he Lord medical missions, the reason being that Jesus Christ, whom we worship as God, that. country is so well supplied with the only begotten Son uf God, for us men competent physicians trained abroad, and for our salvation was made man and and that the Government provides hossuffered. He offered up a perfect sacri- pitals and medical attendance for the fice for sin; and all who are one with sick. Another fact noted is the great Him by faith are pardoned and account. advance in Sunday-school work. Buddhed righteous; and faith in Him working ism ignores the children, Christianity by love purifies the heart. The Holy gathers them in. There are in Japan Ghost, who with the Father and the 514 SundaY-Achools, with about 21,000 Son is worshipped and glorified, reveals members. Another encouragt'ment is Jesus Christ to the soul, and without in the increase in students for the min- His grace, man being d.ead in sins, can- istry. not enter th6 Kingdom of God. By Him the prophets, and apostles, and holy -Woman's Workfor Woman says that men of old were inspired, and He, one of the Presbyterian missionary speaking in the Scriptures of the Old ladies in Tokyo invited the newly Alectand New Testaments. is the supreme ed Chri.tian members of the Japanese and infallible judge in all things per- Parliament to her house to tea, and that taining unto faith and living. From out of fifteen members thirteen acceptthese Holy Scriptures the ancient ed the invitation. Church of Christ drew its Confession: hence, we, holding the faith once de- Judea.-Professor Sayce, in his article livered to the saints, join in that con- on .. Excavations in Judea," dwells parfession with praise and thanksgiving." ticularly on the mutability of ancient Here follows the Apostles' Creed. names in the East, and the necessity of renewed excavation for discovering the -The Doshisha University at Kyoto arcbreologyof the Holy Land. He BUYS: is putting its theological stUdents into " We have dug up Homer and Herodopractical evangelistic work by sending tus ; we shall yet dig up the Bible." them to points in and about the city. They preach the Gospel in places where Madaqascar.-This island, with its most of the people hear it for the first queen and 200,000 of her subjects, is time. In this way their own hearts are ranged on the side of the cross. kept warm, and they gain a valuable experience. The catalogue for the pres- Manchul·ia.-This country presents a ent year, illustrated with cuts of all the good instance of Presbyterian union. college buildings and containing much Here the Scotch United Presbyterians information regarding the institution, have already 956 communicants, and gives the number of those in the differ- with them the Irish Presbyterians have ent courses as 570. President Kozaki is agreed to unite in forming one Presbytireless in his efforts to Improve the tery. school, and largely through his influence the theological students are push- Mexico.-The missionaries in Mexico ing forward more aggressive evangelistic have much to contend against. At work. Guadalajara, the headquarters of the Northern Mission of the American Board, -From 32 members at its organiza- the Romanists are very bitter, and are ention, the church in Okayama, Japan, deavoring to get possession of the chapel has increased, in ten years, to a mem- site, thus creating an unpleasant combership of above 550. Five churches in plication for the missionaries, who afe the province, and two in adjoining prov- liable to insults and injury from the inces may claim to have sprung from it. armed rowdies. A girls' school, with 52 students, a boys' school, with 34, and an orphan -There are 97 Presbyterian churches asylum, with 90 occupants are Bome of in Mexico. Twenty-nine converts are its outgrowths. Not one communion now able ministers of the Gospel. Over has passed without additions, and hard- 5000 converts are in full communion. ly a year without the formation of a new church. It reckons 1300 profess- Trinidad.-Rev. John Morton, D.D., the pioneer missionary of the Pres- byterian Church of Canada in Trinidad, and who has been in the field since rian and Reformed denominations early in 1878, was offered by the throughout the world have 20,265,500 last General Assembly the position adherents. of permanent Secretary of the For- eign Missions Committee, Western Sec- -An English missionary was recent- tion. Dr. Morton, in view of the de. ly heard to remark: •• If there was more mands of his present field, has made up .abiding in Christ there would be less his mind to decline the offer, and to reo abiding in Britain. .. The same may be main preaching and teaching the East said of America. Indians of Trinidad. His decision, while disappointing to the Committee -The Presbyterian Record, of Canada, of Foreign Missions will be extremely says: .. The problem of Christian union gratifying to the members, the friends seems likely to find its solution in the and supporters of the mission in Trini- foreign field. Christians at home do dad. Dot realize the wickedness of sectarian- ism, nor feel the need of united forces Turkey.-The burning of the college and united action as do those who are building of Central Turkey College, at called to apologize for the divided Aintab, on December 26th, is a /levere Church in the face of perishing blow to the mission work in that locality. heathen." Strenuous efforts were made to stay the progreils of the flames; but the building, -The impression left by the great aswith the exception of the west wing, semblage at Cleveland of 500 students was destroyed. In the face of many pledged to the foreign missionary ber· adverse circumstances the professors vice was that the possibilities of this and other Christians on the spot have remarkable uprising are hot yet fairly promised financial aid, and contribu- estimated. So stirring were the scenes tions from all fields are earnestly asked in this convention, in which 100 mis. to help the cause of rebuilding. This sionaries participated, that two local is the second disaster which this mis- pastors are reported to have decided to sion has sustained-the burning of the go to the foreign field. The meetings woman's college a year ago hindering were admirably conducted, and it is the work for a time. Dr. Fuller, the hinted that the regular yearly anniversapresident of the college, writes very ries of denominational societies would hopefully of the outlook, and a new and be made more effective if some of the more commodious building ought soon methods used at Cleveland were adoptto replace the one in ruins. ed. One specially successful feature was the opportunity given to ask ques- Bmyrna.-An idea of the manner in tions of the speakers, fifteen or twenty which missionary work is done now in minutes being reserved at the close of regions in which St. Paul once wrought each address for this purpose. may be gotten from the following pltragraph from a letter in the Independent: -The Missionary Herald tells of a .. A missionary from Smyrna writes of Scotchwomhn whose practice it was to his winter tour through a field of some give a penny a day for missions, to 40,000 square miles in extent. He went whom a visitor gave a sixpence to proeastward from Smyrna, stopping at cure some meat, on learning that she hopeful placet! a day or two, 01' prolong- hlld not lat~ly enjoyed that luxury. She ing his stay for two or three weeks where thought to herself: •• I have long done there was special interest; visiting men very well on my porridge, so I will give in their shops, receiving calls from in- the sixpence also to God." This fact quirers, preaching every night, travel- came to the knowledge of a missionary ling by day under circumstances that re- secretary, who narrated it at a missioncall Paul's description of his adventures ary breakfast. The host and his guests in the same regions; and all this is in the were profoundly impressed by it, the bitter winter weather, because it is the host himself saying that he had never season when men can be found at home. denied himself a chop for the cause of This sort of work has the most imme- God. He therefore instantly subscribed diate results. The man who preaches $2500 additional, and others of the party to a stated congregation, or teaches, or followed his example, till the sum of writes books, is sowing seed for others $11,000 was raised before they sepato reap. But the man who tours much rated.. in his district returns with joy, bearing his sheaves with him." -The Young Men's Christian Asso- ciation of Chicago is to erect a magnifi- -Bev. W. H. Roberts, D.D., Ameri- cent building at a cost of $1,400,000. can Statistical Secretary of the Presby- The building will have fourteen stories, terian Alliance, lIays that the Presbyte- three of which will be devoted entirely to the work of the association. Mission to the Australian Aborigines, been eighteen years at Havl<nnahHarbor, Fate, was appointed to pione!'r the new Rev. Dr. Steel, Sydney, N.S. W., writes work. He has left the islands for Mel- Sept. 30; it has been proposed to es- bourne, where he is to make necessary tablish a mission among the aborigines arrangements, and it is hoped to get in northern Queensland by the Federttl a steam launch to be of service to the Assembly of the Presbyterian churches new enterprise. Mr. Macdonald is marof Australia and Tasmania. Adeputation ried to a daughter of the late Rev. Dr. from the Mission Committee, consisting Geddie, the first Presbyterian missionof the Rev. Professor Rentoul, D.D.• of ary in the New Hebrides. The Rev. Ormond College, Melbourne; the Rev. Joseph Armand, M.A., missionary of Samuel Robinson of St. Kitto, Mel- the Presbyterian Church of Canada, has bourne, the Rev. F. A. Hagenauer, already estahlished a station on a small Superintendent of the Aborigines in island to the south of Santo, and from the Colony of Victoria, and for more which he operates on the larger island. than thirty years a missionary among A new edition of the Gospels and Acts them, along with the Rev. Robert of the Apostles in the Erromangan Steel, D.D., of Sydney, went to Bris- language has just been printed in Sydbane, Queenslaud, in July. They were ney, at the expense of the British and there joined with the Committee on Foreign Bible Society. A thousand Missions to the Heathen appointed copies, bound, have been sent to the by the General Assembly of the Pres- island, where the Rev. H. A. Robertson, byterian Church of Queensland, and who superintended the printing, lately had an interview with the Premier of returned to resume his work. J. J. the Government respecting reserves for the mission. The Premier promised Dr. Edith Pechey-Phipson.-In Janall that was required, and as already gi ven to the Lutheran Mission among uary, at a Convocation of the Bombay tne Aborigines. The deputies preached ill various Presbyterian churches in University, Mr. Justice Birdwood, the Brisbane and Ipswich, and held 1 public meeting on the mission. They also Vice-Chancellor. announced the appointlectured in different churches. A meeting was held in Sydney on their return. ment of this distinguished lady physi- It is expected that two Moraviall breth_ ren will be secured from Germany to cian as a member of the Senate. He undertake this mission on behalf of the Presbyterian Church. It has always remarked that, although for six centubeen a difficult work to carryon missions among so migratory a peoplc. ries ladies had held the office of Pro The most successful has been when the Aborigines were induced to settle on fessor of Medicine at the Cologne Unireserves gral'lted by the Government. In the course of a year it is hoped that versity, he believed this to be the first this mission may be commenced. J. J. instance of a lady being appointed a Tl'le New Hebrides Mission.-A deputation from the Federal Assembly member of the governing body of any of the Presbyterian chmches of Australia and Tasmania visited tho New University. He added that the Senate Hebrides in Mav and June last. It consisted of the Moderator, the Rev. James would recognize the propriety of ap- Lyall, of Adelaide. the Rev. Andrew Hardie, Convener of the Committee on pointing a lady who had bravely fought Foreign Missions, Melbourne, and Mr. M. McGillivray. an elder. Professor woman's oause in the face of much op- Drummond, of Glasgow, also joined the party. They all went round the group. position and obloquy. J. J. visited the different stations, and addressed the Synod at Aneityum. They From a letter sent by a student volwere much gratified with the progress unteer to the Missionary Echo we gather of the mission everywhere. The Synod the following items: resolved to begin a new mission on Espiritu Santo, the largest and most "Miss Lucy E. Guiness has been northerly island in the group, and Working in colleges in this country for appointed three missionaries to the three months under the direction of the work. The Rev. D. Macdonald, who has Student Volunteer movement. She has recently returned to London. Miss Guiness is tha daughter of Hon. H. Grattan Guiness, F.R.S., who superin- tends three missionary training schools in England.
"Miss Guiness visited many of our western colleges, and through her direct instrumentality over 200 names were added to the volunteer liRt.
•• She expressed herself as greatly sur· prised at finding many Christian girls in our colleges without the habit of daily Bible reading and unfamiliar with Scripture. Things are not so in Eng. land, she says. She has been the means of awakening fresh interest in Bible study among lUany college girls."