The Missionary Review of the World — January 1896
THE OUTLOOK: SOME SIGNS OF THE TIMES
MISSIONARY REVIEW OF THE WORLD.
VOL. XIX. No. 1.-0Zd &ries.-JANUARY.-VoL. IX. No. I.-New Serie8.
THE OUTLOOK: SOME SIGNS OF THE TIMES.
,BY THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF.
Per~tllal vigilanee, is ll()t only tIle price of 'liberty, but tbe condition of all true intelligence and progress. God made the time-worlds. as well as the space-worlds: in the ages as well as in the stars He has a plan, and only he who watches while, he prays discerns the signs of the times, sees the plan of 'God,' and falls, into line with the march of God's obedient, hosts.
If the best chronology is taken ~s our standard, 'this new year is not, 1896, but 1900, of the Christian era, and' marks the closing year of the century. !tis well known among students of chronology that the familiar letters" A.D." do not originally stand for Anno Domini, but fO,r Aera J)ianysii, the era of Dionysius, surnamed Exiguus, the Little, from his small stature. This Roman abbot, originally from Scythia, who died in his monastery· in 540 A.D., was a man of great erudition, and, among other labors, carried on in chronology researches which gave him great celebrity. To this man, who died in the reign of Justinian, is traced the method of reckoning the Christian era which, since theeighlh century, has been, by so-called Christian nations, universally adopted, and which fixes the year of the Incarnation at the 753d year of Rome.
More careful computations, reckoning from at least six different points of observation, like converging paths all lead to one conclusion, that an error of at least/our years has occurred in the J)ionysian era, and that the Incarnation mllst date back to the year 749 from the founding of Rome, which would, according to the current reckoning, be 4 B.C.
For example, as the birth of Christ was certainly previous to the death of Herod the Great, which was just before the Passover, in the year 750 A. u., the year of the nativity cannot have been later than 749 A. u.
Again,John the Baptist entered on his ministry in the fifteenth year of Tiberius, which, reckoning from the latter's eo-regency, would put the Baptist's birth in the year 748 A. u., or early in the next year; and, as there were but six months' ditference in the ages 'of Christ and of His forerunner, our Lord's birth would occur not later than 749 A. u.
Yet again, our Lord Himself said, "Forty and six years was this temple in building j" and the eighteenth year of Herod's reign, when he began the rebuilding, would coincide with 732 A. u. This would make the forty-six years end somewhere about 778 or 779 A. u. If our Lord was then about thirty years old, His birth-year would carry us back to 749 A. u. Other confirmatory testimony, as collated and compared by Dr. Edward Robinson and others, conclusively fixes this same year as the date, so that the year now opening really is the year 1900, and will thus complete the nineteenth century, and introduce the twentieth, of the Christian era.
Might not a correction of the calendar be made in accordance with these facts ~ If Pope Gregory XIII. could reform the calendar in 1582, taking out ten days in October, to restore to its true place in the seasons the vernal equinox, and if Britain could, after one hundred and seventy years'delay, adopt the new style and count September 3d September 14th, why cannot the calendar of Christian nations be once more adjusted, so as to call this new year by its true name, 1900 A.D., if the conclusions of the best chronologists are to be trusted ~ And if so, what a celebration of the birth of Christ should be kept by all the followers of our Lord, as Christmas Day of this year shall complete the full nineteen centuries since the angels sang the nativity chorus over Bethlehem! What a spectacle might be presented to angels and men if there were a representative gathering of all evangelical disciples in the very land where the Light of the world first shone! What if nativity week could be kept at Jerusalem, Christmas Day itself being observed at Bethlehem! the whole celebration marked by the erection in Bethlehem of some permanent memorial, such as a home for common worship for all true believers, a halting-place for pilgrims to and from mission fields, and a center for missionary operations! 'Vhat if, on successive days, there were devout assemblies, presided over by representatives of the different branches of the Church of Christ, such as the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Richard S. Storrs, Bishop J. M. Thoburn, from India, Cavalier Matteo Prochet, of Rome, Rev. J. Hudson Taylor, of China, the venerable Andrew Thomson, D.D., of Edinburgh, William E. Gladstone, and others who at home and abroad are recognized leaders in missions !What a fit way to us4er in the twentieth century, with prayers and praises to Him who was born in Bethlehem in the days of Herod the king! What an incentive to a united and earnest effort to push the lines of holy occupation to the very outermost ends of the earth !
If this be true, that we are on the very verge of the twentieth century of the Christian era, the outlook is commensurately extensive and important. It becomes us to look about us and study anew our conditions, to Ieok back and review our conrse, to look ahead and be rell.dy for new risks and new duties. Without any attempt to exhaust a theme so vast in stretch and reach, we may well call attention to a few of the mere prominent signs of the times, which may be also to us signals of God, some encouraging, others, it may be, admonitory of danger.
1. First of all, it must not be disguised that this is a very critical hour in missionary history. It is about a full century since William Carey's arrival in India marked the starting-point in organized missionary effort_ There is no question in any candid, intelligent mind that the century has shown advance which is not by steps, but strides. What increase of general intelligence as to mission fields, religious systems, foreign peoples, and the biography of the heroes of mission history! What a new era of sanctified womanhood, now organized so widely for promoting acquaintance and cooperation with the work of a world's evangelization! What a marvelous crusade on the part of our young men and women in Christian associations, Endeavor societies, and last, but not least, the Students' Volunteer movement, now, like the others, belting the globe, and undertaking the occupation of all untilled fields! What a new epoch in medical missions, reviving the apostolic method of uniting physical healing with Gospel teaching and winning a way to the soul by ministry to the body! What a handmaid to the voice of the herald is the pen of the ready writer, made vocal in so many tongues by 1~he art of the translator and the power of the press! Who can doubt the drift of all the best nations, which are also the ruling nations of the world, toward the coronation of peace with the diadem of universal empire, by agreeing to arbitration instead of resorting to the arbitrament of war !
These are but a few of the hopeful signs on our horizon. They indicate both the fitness and fulness of times for the speedy occupation of the whole world for Christ, which never before could have been accomplished within such a brief space of time, and make especially emphatic the motto which should be emblazoned on the banners of the Church, "THE EvAN- GELIZATION OF THE WORLD IN THIS GENERATION."
II. We are in the midst of a general agitation in the direction of Church Unity, as it is somewhat vaguely called. The famous Lambeth platform, with its four planks, is a curious illustration of the whole movement. All other churches will be cordially received into union with the Anglican body, provided they subscribe three articles on which there would be no real disagreement, and concede the historic episcopate, which is the distinctive feature of the Episcopal Church. The Baptists, no doubt, arc equally ready for unity with all other evangelical bodies, if infant baptism is abandon"ed and believers' baptism, and that by immersion only, is adopted. This is Church nnity, not by mutual concession, but by one-sided absorption. "The lamb and lion lie down together, the lamb inside the lion." For one church to say to all the rest, " You must be like us if we are to agree," is what Dr. J. H. McIlvaine caIIed "an immoral tone of mind." More recently the Triennial Council of the Congregationalists submits another proposal, in which the sufficient authority of the Scripture, discipleship of Jesus Christ, the one Church of Christ, and liberty in the interpretation of the Scriptures, are the basis of mutual fellowship, cooperation in missions, and the prevention of unwholesome rivalries. 'It This is, perhaps, as wise and satisfactory a basis as any proposed, yet it embraces no confession of the Holy Spirit as the only source of regeneration, and" discipleship of Jesus Christ" is a vague term, easily perverted, which in these days would be held by twenty different sects in as many different senses.
One noticeable feature about this movement toward outward if not organic unity, which will be objectionable to many, is the widespread tendency to embrace if possible not only the Greek, but Roman Church in the alliance j and, in the popular cry for" charity," there is a new difficulty created-viz., the risk of appearing disloyal to love, in seeking to be loyal to the Lord Himself. Sometimes one is compelled to speak out plainly, at risk of being misunderstood, for a politic silence may be tacit consent to error, or even treason against truth. Ve may at least venture to ask a question or two. First, of what use is an external formal unity with internal division and dissension? The Roman Catholic Church is nominally one, but it represents beliefs widely differing. from the practically Calvinistic Jansenists, to the Jesuits who beheve most of all in their own infallibility. The Anglican Church is nominally one, but there is within it a ritualistic High Church, a rationalistic Broad Church, and an evangelical Low Church, and the fiercest war is waging within the ecclesiastical landmarks. Is not a nominal division, with real sympathy and amity, more the unity for which our Lord prayed, than a nominal umon covering a real division?
Some schemes of Church unity would never embrace all Christians. Some, who must be reckoned among the truest and holiest believers, cannot conscientiously join hands with Romanism ; for to them this is a question not of forbearing with minor differences, but of tolerating fundamental errors in doctrine and practice. To ask them to countenance, eveu indirectly, the worship of the Host in the mass, the intercession of saints, penance, purgatory, the abominations of the confessional, the idolatry of the Virgin and Joseph, the infallibility of the Pope, the surrender of the right of private judgment, and the withholding of the Scriptures from the people, is to ask them to wink at ten of the deadliest errors ever known in Church history, and they simply cannot do It. To them, moreover, the papal power represents not only a church, but a kingdom. A church has • The Committee on Christian Unity, consisting of Rev. Drs. W. H. Ward, S. W. Dike, A. H. Quint, and George E· HaJI reported, recommending as a basis of union: 1. The acceptance of the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments inspired by the Holy Ghost to be the only authoritative revelation of God to man. 2. Discipleship of Jesus Christ, the Divine Savior and Teacher of the world. 3. The Church of Christ. which IS His body, whose great mission it is to preach His GosjlCI to the world. 4. Liberty of conscience in the interpretatiou of the Scriptures and the admiuistration of the Church. Such an alliance of the churches should have regular meetings of their representatives, and should have for its object among others: 1. Mntual acquaintance and fellowship. 2. Cooperation in foreign and domestic missions. 8. The prevention of rivalries between competing churches in the same field. doctrines and ordinances and spiritual laws and a spiritual constituency presumably of regenerate people; a kingdom has a temporal order, with civil laws and subjects, a territory to be ruled and a hierarchy or graded system of dignities. When Protestants are asked, therefore, to acknowl-· edge the papal system, they are asked not only to countenance the very errors against which they once protested unto blood, but to acknowledge as legitimate that wedlock of the Church and State in one body to which may be traced the parentage of a brood of evils of the most accursed character.
Many most earnest believers, who yearn to live in charity with all men and are eager to recognize Christ's likeness wherever found, feel compelled to maintain their separation from some professed disciples, because they seem to them to deny fundamental truths. It seems ungracious to stamp as heresy what so-called Christians hold and teach; but are disciples to be less brave than politicians? Who can withhold admiration from the in- trepidity of Edmund Burke, when he said to the Electors of Bristol: "I did not obey your instructions, but; I did obey the instructions of nature and conscience and truth. I maintained your interests as against your convictions!" If Daniel O'Connell could say, "I am a Cat/tOlie, but I am not a papist," and Pere Hyacinthe could virtually defend the great doctrines of the same Church while sacrificing himself in a protest against its perversions of the truth and unholy practices, why may we not discriminate between the right of a man to hold his religious opinions and our own right to protest against what we believe to be his vital errors!
The whole progress of the papacy, from the days of Phocas until now, has been a process of engrafting pagan errors on a Christian stock. One has only to read the history of Church councils to see how one scion after another was grafted on to the Church, until the original tree was no longer recognizable. Tile growth of papal pretensions may be well illustrated hy the tiara, or triple crown. At first a round cap, John XIII. encircled it with a crown, Boniface VIII. added a second, and Benedict XIJI. a third. And while many Protestants cordially acknowledge whatever truth the Roman Catholic Church conserves, they regard the papacy as a composite system, embracing at least five parts: First, a branch of the Church of Christ, holding much truth and embracing many honest, earnest believers; second, a philanthropic society, abounding in works of charity; third, a political powllr asserting a right to world-wide supremacy; fourth, an idolatrous system, a Christianized paganism; fifth, a Jesuitical organization, using not only secrecy, but falsehood. Now, as Judaism contained within itself representatives of true believers, like Zacharias and Elizabeth, Simeon and Anna, and Joseph of Arimathea, but, alas! also ritualistic Pharisees, skeptical Sadducees, rationalistic ESRenes, secular Herodians; so Romallism is a heterogeneous compound, and any recognition of the faithful few in its communion must not involve sanction of the political pretensions, idolatrous corruptions, and Jesuitical subtleties, bound up with the system as a whole. This is the real position of hundreds who are inclined to charity, but who see that charity is in danger of running into laxity.
To maintain a separation and a protestation for conscience' sake is becoming more difficult, because Romanism is putting on of late years a new front. Witness the attempt at Baltimore a few years since to make it appear that papacy was almost the patron of our republicanism, despite the fact that the allegiance owed by every subject of the Pope to him, as a foreign power, is constructive treason; witness the present advocacy of temperance, popular education, and of civil service reform, in which Roman Catholic bishops are taking the lead, and the widespread activity of the Sisters of Charity-all of which tend in the public mind to obscure the fact that back of all this attractive guise lie doctrines and practices that demand as emphatic a protest as at the Diet of Spire !
If the union of churches could be secured for which so mauy are hoping, what would be the effect on missions? Would not inevitable questions arise on which new separations would be inevitable? Two devoted missionaries in China, one a Presbyterian and the other a Baptist, were so intimate as friends that they determined to undertake a joint evangelistic tour. All was as smooth as a placid stream, until the converts began to multiply and desired baptism; then the tour came to an end, from the simple impossibility of further agreement.
Moreover, it has often been said that a wholesome emulation is promoted by the variety of denominations, and that no one church would ever accomplish an aggregate of service equal to the sum of all now done by many different bodies. And, again, with more force it is argued that variety is the sign and fruit of education; that uniformity is born either of intellectual stagnation or slavery, and that, as soon and as surely as men begin to reason and think for themselves, individuality takes the place of uniformity, as a tree cannot grow without branching, and the larger and fuller the growth the more minute the ramifications. Amid the clamor for church unity it may be well seriously to ask whether any further unity is practicable or even possible than a federation or alliance in which there shall be a cordial allowance for all individual divergences, but at the same time a fraternal cooperation. Thousands of families, with widely differing household life, manners, notions, habits, and preferences may be united in one harmonious state or commonwealth. vVhy may not all evangelical churches, recognizing their agreements as fundamental and their differences as non-essential, work side by side without interference or needless overlapping ~ Meanwhile an opposite tendency, obviously at work, threatens a new schism, or at least secession. Louder and more earnest grow the remonstrance and resistance to the alarming spread of rationalism and secularism in the churches, which is seen even in England and America. Professor Howard Osgood, in the Detroit Baptist Congress a year ago, following an address of a prominent oollege president, wherein the results of the higher criticism were set forth and defended, read a brief statement of the most approved positions now held by this class of thinkers. He then asked if anyone would challenge these positions as unfairly stated j and, after pausing for a reply, astonished his hearers by adding that these statements were drawn verbatim from the writings of the deist Thomas Morgan and the infidel Thomas Paine! He then quoted one more sentence from Paine, which shows to what conclusion these premises led him: "My belief in the perfection of the Deity will not permit me to believe that a book so manifestly obscure, disorderly, and contradictory can be His work. " And yet these identical positions are held and taught tQ-day in Christian colleges and pulpits.
From the days of the Tractarian movement in Oxford, especially, three influences have been jointly operating to compel a new protest and sep&ra- tion of believers from the body of the Church as a whole: First, the ten- dency to rationalism drawn from the German theologians j secondly, the drift toward ritualism and Romanism, as manifested in the Anglican body, and rapidly spreading j and, thirdly, the growing irreverence with which a pretentious criticism is stripping the Word of God of its essential infalli- bility and inerrancy. There are a very considerable body of believers, by no means lacking in intelligence or .piety, to whom this state of things is becoming intolerable j and we greatly mistake if a new secession is not imminent, like that of May 18th, 1843, when five hundred ministers under the leadership of Chalmers laid down their livings in Scotland rather than consent to the interference and control of law courts in church matters. While the air is full of loud clamors for a blending of all churches in one, anotlIer movement, not so superficial, but perhaps even more resistless, is in the direction of separation. There are some left who hold to the 'Vord of God as an inspired Book, an infallible guide j who hold to the Church as composed only of regenerate souls, whose law is to be unworldliness j and who hold to simplicity of worship as the condition of its purity and spirituality j and if the churches as now existing continue to countenance rationalistic teaching, ritualistic encroachments, and secularizing methods j if theological professors are to be allowed to undermine the faith in the Bible, and godless standardR of art and life to displace the Divine ideals even in the house of God, there may be another procession of new Protestants walking some day out of our present Church councils or courts, to rally about apostolic standards and keep alive the ancient faith.
We are not alarmists j but we have seen both in England and in this country influences that are more disintegrating than unifying. When within the very Church of England there is an open and organized movement toward Rome, numbering hundreds and thousands of clerical and lay adherents j when, in dissenting bodies there and their corresponding denominations here, there is an equally open and organized movement toward doctrines which thirty years ago would have ranked any IDan as an infidel, unworthy to teach or even come to Lord's table, it is not a marvel if a discerning eye sees in the sky signs of a new pIotest.
III. The assaults on missions constitute another feature of the times. There are at work two opposing tendencies equally hostile to all evangelical life and evangelistic effort. On the one hand, much that calls itself scholarly criticism is practically the lowering of the Word of God to a human level; and, on the other hand, the various congresses of religions are lifting all religious systems to a Divine level j and between the two the cause of missions is losing hold on the popular mind. For if the Bible be not divinely infallible, its unique authority is gone; and if the Christian religion be not the one and only saving faith, its unique indispensableness is gone j and the command to go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature not only remains no longer imperative, but becomes wellnigh impertinent. Let us boldly confront the dilemma which modern criticism and miscalled liberalism force upon us. The assaults on missions get countenance from this double tendency of our times. Once concede that the Bible is a fallible guide, and that the Christ it presents is not the solitary hope of a lost world, and we may as well recall our missionaries. Why should we send thousands of our best men and women to the ends of the earth, at a cost of millions of dollars annually and a dearer cost of priceless lives, if a Divine command does not both justify and sanctify implicit obedience ~ And if all religions are stages in the evolution of a Divine faith and life, differing only in the degree of their development toward perfection, why intrude Christian ideas and dogmas upon people who have the same Divine upward tendency, and some of whom regard themselves at a higher level than ourselves ~ The disturbances in mission fields, especially China, have given occasion to a number of open or disguised attacks on missionary policy, and it has been boldly affirmed that the whole system of modern missions is a mistake. A prominent Scotchman some years since raised the question in Exeter Hall whether it were even proper to waste so many precious lives in evangelizing the Dark Continent; and more lately frequent newspaper articles appear, arguing more or less pointedly against the right or the expediency of sending Christian missionaries to other nations. Some writers contend that it involves needless exposure to the hostile influences of climate and of foreign peoples j others, that it is an invasion of the territory of another faith that has as mnch as any a right to be ; that it is an interference with what Carlyle called the "majesty of cnstom," a collision with prejudices and superstitions as impregnable as the hills, and calculated to provoke resistance and incite riot. While there is a loud caH for protection to the persons of Christian missionaries peacefully teaching the Gospel, it is replied that such violate the right of asylum and forfeit the right of such protection by forcing their Christianity upon unwilling adherents of other faiths. Such plausible arguments are the more amazing when it is remembered that, had they prevailed eighteen hundred years ago, Christianity would have died in its cradle, and would never have lived to become the mother of such millions of believers, with all the thousanu benignant institutions that are the pride and glory not of Christian churches and nations only, but of the race of man! When the first missionaries landed in ,Britain they found savages, and Jerome Ilays cannibals. Every step toward Britain's present leadership in intelligence and integrity, philanthropy and benevolence, was taken in face of hostility. Look at the transformations of the South Seas, and even of Japan; follow the work of McAll in Paris and the French provinces, acknowledged now even by the government to be invaluable as a police measure; survey the whole field of missionary triumph, and where would there have been one step of advance had such counsels prevailed as are now offered in respect to missions !
These assaults on missions strike at the very root of the tree of all evangelism, and the alarming feature is that, so far as they influence the Christian sentiment of the Church, they imply the abandonment of the fundamental principle of missions. The Word of God makes no doubtful testimony. It acknowledges that men hold lords many and gods many, bnt affirms one only Name whereby men must be saved; and it sends disciples forth to proclaim in unwilling ears the Christ who led the way in a mission to a revolted world, and paid the price of His intrusion and invasion into hostile territory by his own blood. Those who prosecute missions are disciples of one Master, whose sacrifice of Himself they expect if need be to share. The world is in revolt against God, and the proclamation of the terms of amnesty and reconciliation will not find ready reception with rebels. But we are to persevere. Love must qualify boldness, but boldness must give energy to love. A mild, meek, amiable spirit, which has no courage of conviction behind it and no energy of resistance; that cannot look hostile courts in the face and say, We ought to obey God rather than men, and cannot bnt speak the things which we have seen and heard; nay, that cannot rejoice in being counted worthy to suffer shame for His Mme, is not the spirit of apostolic times. When God has another Paul and Silas that will carry the Gospel into Macedonia, even if their only reception is the scourging, the inner prison and the stocks, and yet sing praises to God, there may be other eart,hquakes that shall set prisoners free and convert even hard-hearted jailers. Missions with no martyr spirit are not the missions of the Acts of the Apostles.
Saluting our readers with cordial Christian affection, we invoke npon them all a new anointing of the missionary spirit. What the year before us will bring forth only He knows whose chariot rides amid clouds of mystery. But history is big with great possibilities, when hours and even moments witness stupendous changes and miracles of transformation. Let us watch and pray and stand in our lot till the end of the days.
THE MOTIVE FORCE OF MISSIONS
THE MOTIVE FORCE OF MISSIONS.
BY REV. F. B. MEYER, LONDON, ENGLAND, ASSOCIATE EDITOR.
Gregory the Great, summing up the doctrine of St. Augustine, writes as follows: "The holy universal Church is one body, constituted under Christ Jesus its Head. Therefore Christ, with His whole body, both that which is now ou earth and that which reigns with Him in heaven, is one Person; and as the soul is one which quickens the various members of the body, so the one Holy Spirit quickens and illuminates the whole Church. Therefore the apostle says, , From whom the whole body, being compacted and fitly joined together, maketh increase of the body.'" It is here that we shall find the perennial motive force of missions. Not in cogent reasoning, nor in eloquent appeals, nor in the exposition of the results which have been attained during the wonderful century now drawing to a close, but in the intelligent appreciation and accentuation of. the union between Christ and His Church by the Holy Ghost, in virtue of which each member is subject to direct impulses and impressions from the exalted Saviour.
I. PRAYER FOR MISSIONs.-The missionary enterprise of modern times was conceived and cradled in prayer. As certainly as the sources of the Nile have been discovered in the great lakes of Central Africa can the rivers of modern missions be traced to the prayer-meetings of the early Methodists and the call for prayer issued by Jonathan Edwards. All along the line of history the progress of the Gospel has been in exaet proportion to the strength and volume of the prayers of the Church. It may be truly said that prayer has been the Nilometer which has measured the· extent and wealth of the harvests of which the desert places have been made to rejoice and blossom as the rose.
'Vhat a wealth of prayer has ascended to God on the behalf of missions from lonely souls isolated in sick chambers or foreign lands, which could do nothing else than pray; as well as from the Church, gathered in twos and threes, or in multitudes, but exercising her prerogative to bind and loose. !?till it becomes a serious question how the prayerfulness of the Church is to be maintained and increased; a demand which can only be adequately met by considering the true nature of prayer.
In its essence, prayer is the return tide, from the heart of the believer, of the purposes of God, as they are revealed by the Holy Ghost. The moisture of the ocean is drawn up by the sun, transported in the floating cloud-cisterns to the summits of the hills, there it is deposited as rain or snow, and begins to descend again to the ocean from which it was originally extracted. Similarly the prayer which prevails with God is that which emanated originally in the thought of the Father, passed through the heart of the Mediator, and was communicated to uc through the Holy Spirit. Throughout the Scriptures we have many references to Christ's prayer- fulness on the behalf of the Church and the world. On the pages of Isaiah we hear him saying, "For Zion's sake will I not hold My peace, and for Jerusalem's sake I will not rest." In his last discourse He told the disciples that He would pray to the Father for them, that He might give them another comforter. And in the Epistle to the Hebrews He is depicted as the great High Priest who ever lives to make intercession. The high priest in the old dispensation often entered the presence of God with the names of the people on his heart, the seat of love, and on his shoulder, the seat of power, and once a year, with a bowl of blood and sprig of thyme in his hands, pleaded for the entire nation. Vhat more vivid portrayal could there be of the ceaseless inter_ cession of that High Priest, who was once manifested to bear the sin of many, and who now appears in the presence of God for us !
In the days of His flesh He pleaded for His Ohurch, as in the sublime intercessory prayer of John 17 j for individu,als, as when He said, " Simon, Simon, Satan hath desired to have you that he may sift you as wheat; but I have prayed for thee j" and for the world, as when He first assumed Ilis high-priestly functions, saying from His cross, "Father, forgive them; they know not what they do." Thus· He pleads still. For His Church, for His apostles, whether ministers at home or missionaries abroad, and for the world that lieth in the wicked one He says, "Father, I pray for them." Perpetually from His lips pours forth a stream of tender supplication and eutreaty, which makes glad the city of God.
We have been too much accustomed to think that these pleadings of the Divine Master are set in motion by the strong cryings and prayers of His saints on earth, and that He is simply the intermediary and spokesman of His Church, according to the sublime vision of the Apocalypse, where the mighty angel mingles much incense with the prayers of saintf', which He offers before the throne.. But probably the truth lies deeper. It is quite true that He prays in heaven the prayer we pray on earth, winnowing them of their selfishness, and asking what we would ask had we fuller light; it is also true that all successful prayer must receive His endorsement and authentication ; but it is a deeper truth that our best prayers are borrowed lights, the echo of His voice, the after-glow of His vision, the reflection of His eager desire. The body of Christ is brought into agreement with the Head by the Holy Spirit, who communicates to it by a quick sympathy and intention the thoughts and desires that are passing through the Savior's being.
Ve have two Advocates, one with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and one with us. As the one went up the other came down. As the one sat down at the right hand of the Divine Majesty, so the other sat in emblem on the heads of the twelve and in the Upper Room. As the one ever liveth to intercede in heaven, the other makes intercession in us for the saints and. for sinners, with groanings that cannot be· uttered. This is the clue to the mystery of prayer. It is all important that the Church on earth should be in accord with its Head in His petitions before the throne. And this accord is secured by the Holy Spirit. On the one hand He fills the Head, on the other the members. There is one Spirit of Life between Jesus in the glory and His believing people everywhere. One tide of life-blood, one system of nervous tissue, one ocean washing the shores of the metropolis and of the tiny seaport.
Let us be still, therefore, and listen carefully to the voice of the Divine Spirit speaking in our hearts, turning from all other sonnds toward His still small voice, and He will tell us all. Coming, as He does, from the heart of Jesus, He will impart His latest thoughts and convey to us His mind. In Him we have the mind of Christ. Then we shall know what to ask for. Indeed, we shall be swept along on the mighty current of our Lord's petitions. And when, in obedience to His Father's invitation, the Son asks that the heathen should be given Him for His inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for His possession, we too shall fin~ ourselves praying for the same things in holy unison. Thus prayer goes in an eternal circle. It begins in tIle l1eart of God, comes to us through the Savior and by the Spirit, and returns from us again to its source. It is the teaching of the rain-drops, of the tides, and of the procession of the year, but wrought out and exemplified in the experience and practice of holy hearts.
H, then, prayer for the great missionary enterprise is restrained and formal in the individual or the community, it is symptomatic of some flaw in the fellowship of the member with the Head; let ns not deal with the symptom, but with the disease which is secretly at work; let us seek, above all things, that living union between the Head and the member through which the Holy Ghost can impress 011 us the thoughts that ani. mate the pleadings of the Divine Man on the throne, then we shall ask exceedingly abundantly according to the power that worketh in us. As Jesus pleads for individuals, we shall become burdened allOut them; as He pleads for native churches like those which cost Him so much anxiety in Asia ]finor, we shall plead for them; as He cries of persecutors and murderers, " Father, forgive !" we shall cry aloud for them also, and the result of such united petitioning will be, as of old, a Pentecost, sweeping those very men to the foot of His cross.
II. MISSIONARY ACTIVITY.-What a blessing Christ's earthly ministry must have been to thousands of sufferers! He passed through Galilee and Judea as a river of the water of life. In front of Him were deserts of fever blasted by the sirocco, malarious swamps of ague and palsy, and the mirage of deferred hope ; but after He had passed, the parched ground became a pool and the thirsty land springs of water, the eyes of the blind were opened, the ears of the deaf were unstopped, the lame man leaped as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sang. Turning to His disciples before He left them, He told them that similar works should follow them that believed on Him. They should cast out devils, speak with new tongues, take up serpents, drink deadly poison without hurt, and lay hands on the sick for their recovery.
But there were symptoms, however, throughout our Lord's ministry that He did not look at these as the greatest and best results of Ilis mighty energy. He forgave the sins of the paralytic man, borne of four, before He bade him walk ; and told the seventy to rejoice more that their names were written in heaven than that they had cast out a few demons. " The works that I do shall ye do also; and greater works than these shall ye do." That the apostles became increasingly aware of the same distinction i.s clear from the small space given in the Acts of the Apostles to their miracles compared with the greater attention concentrated on their discourses.
There is evidently a parallel to be drawn between the works wrought by the Lord during His human life in the physical sphere and on the bodies of men, and the greater works wrought through His Church during the present age, in the spiritual sphere and on the immortal destinies of men. Did the Lord give sight to the bleared eyes of the blind @ The Church is sent to open the eyes of the spiritually blind, that they may turn from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God. Did He raise the dead ~ The Church may stand at the sepulchre, where the dead soul lies entombed, and cry, " Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from among the dead, and Christ shall enlighten thee!" And as the Father led Him forward to ever greater works, so that the raising of Lazarus was a greater work than that of the daughter of J airus, we may expect that the wonders wrought in the spiritual sphere through the Church will grow in Importance and momentous issues till the close of the present dispensation. We shall yet see a nation born in a day. But what is the source of these greater works 1 In the Lord's ministry it is clear that the source of His never-ceasing activity consisted in the impulses which He was receiving constantly from the Father. He worked out what the Father wrought within to will and do of His own good pleasure. On one occasiol1, when challenged by His critics for working a miracle on the Sabbath, He replied, " My Father has wrought up to this moment of time. I am only working as He bids and prompts." Not only was He ever regarding the evolution of His Father's plan, but was ever conscious of the impulse of His Father's energy. To use His own words, He lived by the Father. This supplies the clew to the possession on the part of the Church of unceasing zeal and energy for missions. "Ve must depend on Christ, our Head, for the forthputting of His energy as He depended on the Father, who is designated by the apostle the Head of Christ.
For the. body of Christ to be stirred up to enthusiasm and endeavor in missionary enterprise by eloquent appeals from missionary platforms, by touching incidents that appeal to the emotions, by all the machinery of the modern missionary board, is like imitating the movements of life by the convulsive twitchings of nerve and muscle under the impulse of electricity. As soon as the current ceases the paralyzed limbs fall back into their former apathy. Where there is health, and the Head can exert its will on its members, there is no need for magnetic appliances. As the Father wrought through Christ for creation and redemption-for the un. folding of the history of Judaism up to the fullness of times, as well as for the works of His earthly ministry-so Christ is prepared to work through His people for those greater works-greater because what affects eternity must be greater than what affects time; greater because the soul is greater than the body, as the jewel than the casket j greater because the worm that never dies is more intolerable than cancer, the fire that is never quenched keener than fever. And where we are in living union with Him there will be no let or hindrance j but the goings forth of His mighty love to the salvation of men will pour through us with irresistible momentum.
Weare now in a position to understand the reasonableness of expect. ing greater works from the Church than were ever wrought by the Head. Clearly the Church has an argument to present to men which even her Master could not use. He could not point, except indefinitely, to the cross, its flowing blood, its testimony to a love that the cold waters of death could not stanch j nor could He count upon the cooperation of the Spirit in His convicting power as we can, but neither of these reasons will account for the greater works that have marked the progress of the Church through the ages.
Perhaps au illustration will best explain this further reason. Suppos. ing the great painter Raphael were to infuse his matchless power, as he possessed it during his mortal life, into some young brain, there is no reason why the genius of the immortal painter should not effect, through a mere tyro in art, results in form and color as marvelous as those which he bequeathed to all coming time. But suppose, further, that after having been for three hundred years amid the forms, souls, and colors of the heavenly world, he could return and express his present conceptions through some human medium, would not these later productions be greater works than those which men cherish as a priceless legacy ~ So, if the Lord were to work in His servants such works only as He did before He ascended to His glory, they would be inferior to those which He can produce now that He has entered into His glorified state, and has resumed the power of which He emptied Himself when He stooped to become incarnate. This is what He meant when He said, "Greater works, because I go to the Father."
The one cure, then, for lethargy of action or apathy of interest on the part of the Church is to be found in that profound word with which the Epistle to the Hebrews closes: "The God of Peace make you perfect to do His will." The better rendering would be " articulate, or put you' in joint." The members of the body of Christ are apt to become dislocated or stiff, hence the need of apostles and prophets, pastors and teachers for the articulating of the saints unto the work of ministering to the world.
A MISSIONARY ROMANCE
If we are in living fellowship with the Head He will work through us to fulfil His divine purposes. If, on the other hand, we are not used for the execution of those purposes which undeniably exercise our Lord during the present age, and which He is hastening to realize, we must attribute the failure to some break in the living union, some flaw in the connecting nerves.
Let it not be said that these considerations tend to quietism. They do, indeed, lead to the cessation of those fussy activities which are always abortive, but they tend to the increase of all those high Christian activities which never fail in their execution or design. The Apostle Paul could not be accused of quietism; he wrought more abundantly than all the apostles, preaching the Gospel from J ernsalem as his centre to Rome as his circumference. vVe have it in his own words that he strove according to the Divine energy which strove in him mightily. Christ wrought in him to make the Gentiles obedient in word and deed.
There is nothing, therefore, so much needed at the present time as a renewal of the belief of the Church in the Holy Ghost, and a larger measure of reliance on Him in its prayer-meetings and activities. Let us wait more persistently and constantly upon Him j let us make more room for Him j silent that He may speak j expectant that He may work j and surely as there was the early rain at the beginning of this dispensation there will be the latter rain at the close. When the whole body is in vital communion with its Head, new inspirations for prayer and work will begin to pour into its being and through its members,for there will be a repetition on a far larger scale of the spiritual results of Pentecost.
A MISSIONARY ROMANCE.-I.
CAPTAIN JAMES VVILSON, THE FIRST VOLUNTEER OF THE LONDON MISSIONARY SOCIETY.
BY GEORGE SMITH, LL.D., C.I.E., F.R.G.S.
Of the long roll of men sent forth by the London Missionary Society, which recently: held its first centennial commemoration, from Dr. Van_ derkemp down to David Livingstone and Chalmers of New Guinea, the first is still the most remarkable. He was James Wilson, ship captain, infidel, prisoner of the French, of Hyder Ali, and then, by the grace of God, the first to volunteer as a missionary to carry the Gospel in the good ship ])uff, which he helped to purchase, to the islands of the Pacific Ocean. The story of Captain James Wilson is unique in the history of Christian missions, so full of holy heroism and romance.
A century and a half ago a Captain Wilson sailed his ship in the trade from the great English port of Newcastle. The father of nineteen chil~ dren, he could not afford to give them much schooling, so he-brought up the boys in his own ship under his own eye from their earliest years. His youngest son was James, who thus lived at sea, amid influences of the worst kind, at a time when the mercantile marine of Great Britain was at its lowest moral point. When the war with America began the youth sought a career on land, in which his love of adventure could be gratified. There he served j there he took part in the battles of Bunker Hill and Long Island. The close of the War of Independence set him loose for other deeds. Returning to England, so good a sailor and fighter found no difficulty in securing a mate's berth on one of the East IndIa Company's famous traders and passenger ships. The high spirits of the youth and his knowledge of navigation commended him to his messmates and his officers alike j but he had not been long at Calcutta when he found that money was to be made, as well as a reputation to be gained, in the local mercantile or transport service j for that he left the East Indiaman.
These were the days of the war with Republican France and with the Mohammedan ally of the French, Hyder Ali, succeeded by his son, "Citizen" Tippoo. The great colonel, afterward Sir Eyre Coote, had defeated M. Lally at Wandewash, had ~aptured the capital of French India, Pondicherry, and had been rewarded by a seat in the Bengal Council, when the bungling soldiership of the British generals in South India summoned him to meet Hyder Ali, then close to the very walls of Madras itself. Captain James 'Vilson again and again ran the blockade which the French Admiral Suffrein for a time established on the Madras Coast, carrying military stores and supplies to Sir Eyre Coote. In 1780, when Hyder Ali burst on the Carnatie, Warren Hastings knew that the very existence of the East India Company was threatened, and spent millions to wipe out the disasters of Governor Whitehill and Colonel Baillie. Thrice Coote defeated Hyder Ali under most difficult circumstances, and all the time Captain James Wilson was running along a dangerous coast and up little known rivers to feed his force with the munitions of war. Courage and skill were never more successfully applied than by this Newcastle sailor, whose marine and military adventures extended from Bunker Hill to Negapatam in the East Indies.
At last, Wilson's over-boldness, when as usual attempting to pass the French fleet with military stores for Admiral Hughes, who had spent all his ammunition in a sea fight with Suffrein, led to his capture. He and his men were carried to the French prison at Cuddalore, where he found the crew of another British ship. Life was tolerable enough for the officers till the French commander received an order from Admiral Suffrein to deliver up all his prisoners to the tyrant Hyder, who had deliberately purchased them for three hundred thousand rupees, or a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The commander and his officers were indignant at the baseness of the transaction, but they had no alternative save obedience. Wilson determined to save his own life. Carefully observing the ramparts of tho fort as they rose from the river, he resolved to drop down at n~ht fall and find his way to the nearest British force. A brother officer and his Bctig'ali servant agreed to accompany him. The place of rendezvous was fixed, and the hour, being seven o'clock, when it became dark and the guard was changed. .
After waiting for the other officer, who did not appear, Wilson let himself drop down forty feet into the water below, striking, however, his chin upon his knees, and making a splash which, he felt sure, must have alarmed the sentries. After a little he found his way to the dry land at the foot of the wall, and there received his slightly-built servant in his arms safely enough; but the lad conld not swim, and the fort is in the midst of a network of rivers and backwaters. Thrice Wilson, with the Bengali on his back, had crossed the mouths of the Coleroon, and thcy were already within hail of Porto Novo at its principal entrance, when they were challenged by one of Hyder Ali's sentries. Plunging into the tidal current, they were soon involved in the breakers, which so frightened the native youth that Wilson returned to the shore, and sent him off to a friend. Again crossing the estuary, he found a canoe, in which he hoped to reach the Danish settlement of Tranquebar. Instead of this he was discovered by a party of Hyder's troopers, who stripped him naked, tied his hands behind him, fastened a rope to them, and drove him before them under the burning Slln some forty miles to his old prison. There he was chained to a British soldier, and thence the miserable band were marched on foot some two hundred miles to Hyder's capital and fortress of Seringapatam.
The horrors of that captivity have been described in more than one of the military biographies and histories of Great Britain. It was there that the famous Dnke of "Vi'ellington began his exploits when, at the close of last century, the fortress was captured and Tippoo Sultan fell fighting.
Only in one other instance have these horrors been exceeded, when Nana Sahib butchered the English officers, their wives and children at Cawnpore in 1857. As if James Wilson had not suffered enough, he had yet to undergo much more misery, compared with which death itself were better.
But God had great designs for him and by him, tho he knew Him not.
First of all, Hyder Ali himself offered him and the other captives liberty and rewards if they would enlist in his army and profess Islam. If not, they were threatened with tortures, long and lingering. Some are said to have yielded. Not so James Wilson. Tho ignorant of Christian truth and religious principles, he was a brave and patriotic man, who had fought his country's battles and valued her civilization. He refused, as the majority did, and was at once ordered to prison with a body of a hundred and fifty-three Highland soldiers of Colonel McLeod's regiment. Irons to the weight of thirty-two pounds were put upon him, and he was chained to a fellow, similarly loaded, night and day, Many a time when one of the two died the survivor remained thus attached to the festering corpse. In an open court-yard, exposed to the cold wind by night and the fierce sun by day, and starved till they feared to put a finger near their mouth lest they should bite it off, hundreds of Christian captives thus lay, and rotted, and died in the gloomy years of war in which, in South India, the eighteenth century closed. To add to his sufferings, Wilson was seized with dysentery, known as the bloody flux, which was a scourge of the foreigner in the tropics till the discovery of the ipecacuanha treatment forty years ago. Death seemed at hand, and he would then have died as do the beasts j but again God's longsuffering prevailed, tho he knew it not. Exchanging his miserable rice diet for a small and cheaper millet, he unconsciously effected a violent cure. -When only thirty out of a hundred and fifty-four survived, after such a captivity of twenty-two months, Sir Eyre Coote inflicted the third defeat on Hyder Ali, the few captives were released, and Captain James Vilson found himself in Madras, penniless and impenitent.
He gladly shipped as a mate to Bencoolen and Java, where, when at Batavia, the putrid fever, which was so fatal to the Dutch, well-nigh carried him off. He never got rid of the effects of his awful captivity, but he persisted in his trading, became part owner and captain of the ship, and at last achieved the fortune for which he had been working so long. After more than one relapse, and all along ignorant of or indifferent to the Divine hand which held his soul in life and was gradually preparing him for the highest form of service to the Master, he resolved to retire to England. It is a curious coincidence that John Thomas was surgeon of the East Indiaman in which he sailed. That first of medical missionaries, who was about to draw William Carey away from the islands of the Pacific, on which the Northamptonshire shoemaker had set his heart, to Bengal, made James Wilson only more determined in his infidelity. Neither by the persuasiveness of his speech nor by the gentleness of his life did he, Dr. Thomas, lead to Christ the man who so closely resembled him in temper and in adventures. The two disputed about religion, and mere controversy seemed to drive James Wilson farther from Christ. Thomas remarked after one of these disputations that he had more hope of converting- the heathen or Mohammedan lascars of the vessel than Captain Wilson. So it is that still, as in the days of our Lord and the twelve, some of His followers would call down fire from heaven. 'What a lesson to missionaries in all ages and lands, at home and abroad! Wilson landed at Portsmouth, bought a house and garden at Horndean, in Hampshire, asked an unmarried niece to be his housekeeper, and soon became known in the country round as "a worthy gentleman who had retired to affluence and ease from the East India service. "
He was only thirty-six years of age, and was so well satisfied with himself that he had no conscience either for the teaching of Providence in his past eventful life and preservation, or for the warnings of Scripture, which he did not believe to be a revelation from God, or for the example of his gentle niece, who sought to win him to faith and service. He was a Deist of the old school, and he gained so easy an intellectual victory over one of his neighbors, Captain Sims, a godly man, that he became confirmed in his scepticism. Vanity and pride so filled his heart that he turned God's goodness to him into an argument for the conviction that he was a special favorite of the Deity. But tho unable to give the self-suffi- cient and worldly captain any other reason for his own belief in the Bible than this, " He that believeth hath the witness in himself," Sims did not cease to care for his neighbor's sou!. Accidentally, as it seemed, Sims had his minister, Mr. Griffin, of Portsea, -with him as a visitor on a day . when he was asked to dine with Wilson, and the minister was)ncluded in the invitation. Sims saw his opportunity. Recurring to former debates, he appealed to his minister as, to a man equal to the controversy. Mr. Griffin deprecated discussion in such circumstances, lest he should be sus- pected of being present by some underhand arrangement. This only stimu- lated Wilson, who said: "I am glad of the opportunity to converse on the evidences of the so-called Divine origin of the Christian Scriptures, and I never met the clergyman yet whom I could not foil in a quarter of an hour." Thus challenged, the young minister accompanied his host to the garden, leaving Captain Sims with the niece and a lady friend, who was also a believer. It was a July sunset in a cloudless sky, when the work of soul-enlightening, soul-winning began. The Holy Spirit was with the young theologian, who had first silently invoked His power, according to promise. Step by step the two wrestled to this conclusion, pressed home on Captain Wilson with singular modesty but assured firm- ness, " If you reject the remedy provided by God, remember there is no other, and you may be finally wrong and finally miserable." As Sims approached them in the evening twilight, he said: "Has he convinced you, captain 1" to which Wilson replied: "I wiII not say much about that, but he has said some things I shall never forget. " He begged for a reading of Major Burns's" Christian Officer's Panoply," which he had before scoffingly returned to Sims, who had pressed it upon him, and he began to search the Scriptures for himself. He went to Mr. Griffin's service in Portsea on the next Sunday, when the prayers and the preachings alike opened his heart to the teaclling of Paul, in the eighth chapter of his Epistle to the Romans, as to how God had predestinated men to be conformed to Himself in His Son. The next sermon showed how those whom He did predestinate He aL'Io called, and Wilson sawall his past life in the light of that revelation. After solitary agonizing from darkness to light, the proud Deist, now a humble and joyful believer, visited Mr. Griffin to tell him this: "I have no language to express the happiness I now feel. The gratitude I owe to God will, I hope, be expressed in the life I have yet to live by my zeal in His service bearing some proportion to that which I 'have manifested in the service' of Satan." The two joined in magnifying the grace of God. In 1796 James Wilson became a member of Orange Street Chapel, Portsea, and the good work was completed under his friend's preaching on the eleventh chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, when he fully comprehended that he had been saved to be the means of saving others. " What," he now ever asked himself, "has my faith induced me to do for others ~"
The London Missionary Society had been founded the year before; its first Secretary, Dr. Love, and his directors had resolved to begin operations in the new island world revealed by Captain Cook in his three voyages, and they appealed for volunteers to go forth as the first missionaries. Captain James Wilson was the first to volunteer. He placed himself, his marvelous experience, and his fortune practically at the disposal of the society. All his worldly plans and visions vanished in the light of the heavenly vision, to which he was no longer disobedient. After continual journeyings to and from London, distant from his home sixty miles, to make preparations for the voyage which he was to conduct, he sold Horndean and went up to London, where he established his niece. On June 28th, 1796, he purchased the ship Duff for five thousand pounds, and on August lOth she sailed from the Thames under this resolution, "That a mission be undertaken to Otaheite, the Friendly Islands, the Marquesas, the Sandwich, and the Pelew Islands, in a ship belonging to the society, to be commanded by Captain Wilson, as far as may be practicable and expedient. " Thus was the missionary sea-captain made for the mission by the Spirit of God, and began the work of Christianizing the islands of the sea, which had so long waited for His law, even during the seventeen Christian centuries since the British Isles first heard the good news of God. The story is told in that now rare quarto volume, published in London in 1799, "A Missionary Voyage to the Southern Pacific Ocean, performed in the Years 1796,1797,1798, in the Ship Duff, commanded by Captain James Wilson. Compiled from Journals of _the Officers and the Missionaries, and Illustrated with Maps, Charts, and Views drawn by Mr. William Wilson. With a Preliminary Discourse on the Geography and History of the South Sea Islands, and an Appendix including Details never before Published of the Natural and Civil State of Otaheite, by a Committee Appointed for the Purpose by the Directors of the Missionary Society. "
How Wilson and his thirty missionaries fared, and what has sprung in the first century from that expedition, we shall see hereafter.
A Hindu woman wrote to Victoria, Empress of India, recounting the many terrible wrongs under which the women of India labored and pleading with her to have them righted. With the recounting, the burden of their wrongs came on her afresh, and in bitterness of soul she crilld; "0 God, I pray thee, let no more women be born in this land."
THE FOREIGN MISSIONAItY WORK OF THE SALVATION AltMl'
THE FOREIGN MISSIONARY WORK OF THE SALVATION ARMY.
BY ROBERT E. SPEER.
The Salvation Army is a missionary movement. It has been so from the beginning. Its leaders were sent of God, and the movement which they established has known but one thing-its mission to the lost; but the lost are in every land, and it is impossible to confine to anyone land any movement which seeks to bring back to God the masses of His lost ones. Every living movement is a missionary movement. As a recent editorial in the Pittsburgh' Times on the missionary enterprise succinctly stated : " A party which should content itself with supremacy in a single State would quickly fall into decay. An idea worth entertaining is worth push- ing, and the more energetically it is pushed abroad the more influence it will command at home." And back of this is the mighty propulsion of the order of the risen Christ.
The Octobcr number of The Conqueror reports in Australasia, 482 corps and 1527 officers; in Sweden, 175 corps and 658 officers; in India and Ceylon, 186 corps and 584 officers; in France and Switzerland, 111 corps and 421 officers; in Denmark, 70 corps and 267 officers; in South Africa, 55 corps and 195 officers; in Norway, 63 corps and 267 officers j in Holland, 61 corps and 282 officers; in Jamaica, 34 corps and 57 officers; in Germany, 21 corps and 68 officers; in Finland, 17 corps and 58 officers; in Belgium, 14 'corps and 34 officers; in Argentine and Uruguay, 10 corps and 41 officers; in Italy, 7 corps and 29 officers; in Japan, 15 officers; in Icelto!nd, 4 officers; in Spain, 3 officers; in British Guiana, 3 officers; in Great Britain, 1217 corps and 4283 officers. In the ,main, fields have been avoided where officers would have to acquire a new language in order to be of service. "A Year of Grace, ,. one of the publications of the Army, declares of China: ",Ve have not as yet seen Ollr way to add to our existing responsibilities by attempting an attack on this vast empire," and suggests, as explaining the slow progress in South America, that the officers sent out from England h!lve to learn the Spanish language.
The most interesting field in which to observe the missionary operations of the Army is Indi!l, where the Army has been at work for thirteen years, and where it reported for the year 1894, 188 corps and 3513 ont.. posts, with 6 training garrisons for native cadets, 322 officers, 184 cadet~ in training, 13,573 soldiers, 73 schools for children, 3 Homes of Rest for sick officers, 4 Rescue Homes for Vomen, 1 Prison Gate Horne, and 1 fll:rm colony.
The Army's supreme method is direct, enthusiastic assault upon the strongholds of sin. It sets about these assaults with the instinct of victory which Bishop Thoburn, in "The Christles.s Nations," declares to pe the only justifiable Rpirit in the missionary army. ",Ve who are at the front," he declares, and Commissioner Ruhani.Bai would agree, " have no other thought than winning the battle in which we are engaged. We never expect to lower the banner which has been placed in our hands, and as the years and ages pass along we confidently expect the strongholds of sin one after another to be beaten down, and temples of righteousness to rise upon the right hand and the left." The reports of the Army work in India are full of this fervor-e.g., "A Year's Advance," page 30 : " Enthusiastic welcome of colonel to the Cape. Huge crowd at two days'
soldiers' meeting. Vadasary feast to 300 village children. Two days'
officers' councils closed with half-night of prayer, everybody wonderfully blessed and cheered. Thalakudi Barracks opened. Three babies dedi- cated to God; 500 people praying and 50 souls seeking salvation at mass open-air meeting." Or this description of a meeling, from the same report, page 25 : .. Soon after five o'clock the troops began to arrive and take up the positions allotted to them. The ground was admirably situated for making a successful demonstration, the meetings had been well announced, and it soon became appar· ent that there would be a large crowd. By eight o'clock nearly all the soldiers were present, one lassie officer whose corps is situated seven miles off bringing in one hundred soldiers with her. Lively singing, the firing of bombs, letting off of fireworks, the beating of drums, and a stick dance were all brought into requisition to fill up the time before the arrival of the colonel. It was quite late when the welcome news reached the waiting crowd of some fifteen hundred people that the colonel was on the ground. She had no sooner taken her seat than tremendous volleys rent the air, and soldiers from each corps marched up to the front, presenting her with garlands, until the colonel was buried in flowers. This over, Ensign Yesu Patham was called to tbe front and gave out a. song which,'accompanied by plenty of hand.clapping and a lively jig from some of the most enthusiastic and boiling-over soldiers, went with a proper swine. Prayer followed, and in connection with tbese meetings nothing has been mOTe remarkable than to see the crowd of men and women, whu until lately were devil·worshlpers, all on tbeir knees, and in audible voices following the leader of the meeting in prayer to tbe living God. The meeting now commenced in real earnest. A testimony from a well-known late devil-dancer, in full Salvation Army uniform, was very interesting. He had been a worsbiper of twentythree different deities. or devils, and was much in requisition by the villagers around when they were visited with an epidemic. and his gainR from these ignorant people were often large. He was also a great drunkard, swearer. and wife· beater. but was now well saved. a Salvation Army sergeant. and living in peace with his wife and all otbers in the village. Another devil-dancer from Ilindiadi, before giving his testimony, made his way to the front and presented the colonel with a quantity of relics from the temple which they had abolished since becoming Salvationists. These were mounted on a board, and consisted of the knife used for killing fowls or sheep, which the people would offer to appease the wrath of the devil. the anklets worn by the devil-dancer when dancing. the temple bell and tripod. This gift was gracefully received by the colonel amid tbe tremendous enthusiasm of hundreds of recently converted devil.worshipers. When this had somewhat subsided, the colonel said she was glad to see them. She had loved them before seeing them. and now she was actually with them, to receive this reception. so much beyond ber higbest expectations, she felt she loved them ever so much more," Mrs. General Keer, whose husband had formerly been for many years . in the Indian service, a daughter of the Rev. Dr. Somerville, who went to India in 1893 to see the work of the Army for herself, testifies to the accuracy of this representation. "The roar-shout of welcome when Muthabaranum introduced me was tremendous. I felt as if I would die of the sudden and overwhelming noise. Native voices and instruments, women's whistles, drums, and all combined and acting from heart-earnest- ness-yon can picture the awful thrill the noise occasions. They placed a lovely wreath round my neck. The contrast between the savage bar- barism of themselves and their customs and these lovely wreaths-the very essence of grace-is remarkable." "After the meeting that night they had a salvation dance with sticks, singing redemption, deliverance words all the time. It was a beautiful thing! A set of eight men with short batons tramped it. They strike their sticks together like swords.
This dancing used to be for the devil, with arrack; now it is for God.
They do it once a week in the moonlight. I never saw the sense before of ' Praise Him in the dance.' It was really eight Davids dancing before the Lord. It was as distinctly native in time and tune and action and style as possible. " The enthusiasm of the Army's work and its distinctive methods are perhaps not better illustrated than in the Boom Marches, of which the following is a description from "Behold their ·Walls," the report of the Indian work for 1894 : .. A Boom March meeting is a very interesting affair, I can assure you, and if you will accompany me in these pages. I will take you to one. The village of C – is selected for an attack, and announcements of our intention are duly made by our pioneers. who go on ahead to arrange the meetings, test the feelings of the people, and in general smooth the way for the troops to follow. By even· ing the head of the march is spied by a sentinel posted on the lookout. Soon some thirty or forty red· jackets, with banners flying and bugles braying, sweep through the narrow streets to the public square. All the village is gathered. The place is lit up, and a cot, covered with some gay cloth, is put in a conspicu· ous place for the chief gurus or officers to sit on, so that the pleased people may look upon them. As soon as the chief gurus enter they are received with a tremendous volley. The meeting is then started by some well·known tune, which every one can join in. Earnest prayer is offered, while all kneel with closed eyes. Definite testimonies are given, with soul·stirring bright singing in between. The interest never flags for a single moment. No yawning, no going to sleep there. Men, women, and children all wide awake, until at last the leader rises and lays the choice before the people of Christ and His service, with persecution in this life, and in the world to come life everlasting, or the devil and his service, with darkness and eternal misery hereafter. A solemn hush falls over the eager, listening faces. Heart strings tighten, for many, many are in the valley of decision. There is no having to ask the people to kneel, • just to please us ,- they understand that if they kneel with us they are ours, to share henceforth our persecutions and our wrongs. It means their ceasing to worship the devil or go to his temple. It means accepting our Christ, to be known from this time forth as Salvation Army soldiers. Hallelujah, the shout rises, as they, one by one, .towly yield. .. Soon every officer is down among the people, praying with some, pleading with others, and pointing others to the cross. Soon shouts of victory are heard everYWhere, for great has been the slain of the Lord. The converts are then instructed, the officers introduced as theirs, and are, if possible, left in the village the same night. And thus we sweep on, in each place leaving behind some one to shepherd the sheep, and rejoicing nightly over fifty or sixty, it may be one hundred, one hundred .and fifty, or two hundred precious souls seeking salvation, until our supply of officers runs short, and we are obliged to stop opening for the time being."
The Army faith claims the conversion not of single individuals only, but of villages and communities. The report for 1893 defines this as the proper faith for an Army officer : " A Salvation Army officer In a village, tho apart from the town and all its advantages, feels as happy or more so than anyone else possibly can, and living in a barracks made of mud and thatched with cocoanut leaves, sometimes in a small room attached to it as officers' quarters, devotes his time entirely to the salvation of the whole village. The village is not, among others, uninfested with thieves, drunkards, harlots, cattle-stealers, cock-fighters, devil-dancers, gamblers, etc., so he plans and schemes how he can reach them and point them to Christ, who can change their live8 of sin. The program of work for the week is before him, and before commencing to do anything, he, in the night, gets under a tree in the jungle, and there with his lieutenant, if he has one, spends some hours in close communion with the Lord, and gets a mighty baptism of his power and love, which makes him desperate for Jesus in the fight.
"His whole ambition now is to speak to the people of the love of Christ. Visiting and War Ory selling is a wide door opened for him to accomplish his purpose. He spends at least eighteen or twenty hours in visiting during the week. Of course he cannot visit as many houses as he can in a town, as the houses are scattered about here and there. Yet he does not pass one house without trying, in some way or other, to be a blessing to its inmates.
"Begging is another favorite means of the village officer. This he does almost every day of the week. By this means he reaches the hearts of the people he cannot gain by visiting and War Ory selling, wins their sympathy, and shows them that he is entirely depending upon them, whose spiritual and temporal welfare he is living for. He not only makes the people willingly help the work of the Lord, but makes his corps self-supporting, and thereby lessens the burden of the headquarters."
Of bona fide village conversion, Mrs. Keer unqualifiedly testifies: "Oh, if you could have just seen and heard those givings of testimony, you would not have doubted whether these villagers, converted in a lump, were saved or not I" "I have only one thing to say about the movement here, and that is that it is purely Pentecostal and beyond all human nnder- standing. The whole village is converted I" Of another village the re- port for 1894 says: "To-day in that village every soul is a Salvationist, and at their own desire Christian nallles have been given them." The reports and Mrs. Keer's letters alike are unqualified in their statements as to the genuineness of these conversions. "It is a real movement of God's spirit," writes Mrs. Keer, " as remarkable, and much more so, than the Irish revival, because these are heathen brought to God in fifties and hundreds, and they stand well, and snfier, and give, and astonish their caste neighbors and co-pariahs." In vigorous language" Behold their Walls," page 15, declares: " Tobiah to the front again. God bless you, Tobiah! Howl and gnash your teeth, but it will all be vain: the walls of fair Jerusalem are rising! One of the Nagercoil Tobiahs or Sanballats stated in a London paper that no such con- version of entire villages had taken place-at any rate, none to his knowledge. We take this opportunity of asserting not one but many such cases have taken place, where all the inhabitants have publicly abjured demonolatry and accepted Christianity, joined the Salvation Army, and to-day are not unsuccessfully learning to fully follow Jesus Christ as their God and Savior."
The reports do not suppress, however, statements which are of anxious interest to the careful missionary student. " Behold their Walls," pages 12, 28, and 73.
" Only lately a fearful famine faced hundreds of the poor, helpless villagers ; but their new gurus, the Salvation Army officers, had the satisfaction of obtaining work from the government for them at a very fair rate. By the kindness of friends they were also enabled to give food to many, old and young. They also fed hundreds-I mean, kept them alive-by boiling rice and giving them the congee made into a sort of rice soup." "In the above village (Nairug) every soul reckons as either a convert or soldier. At one of their big national festivals, when it is customary after cooking special food to offer it to the gods before eating it, they all brought their food to the officer instead, and told her to pray and bless it fer them. 'As we have forsaken our gods,' they said, 'you must be to us in their place.' One of t.he men, finding his wife had been to the temple to go through the customary ceremonies at the festivel, thought it his duty to reprove her for it by a good beating." "The wild ;:~&ik soldiers have increased to five hundred; and the Army among them has gained a new name-that is, , Red god8.' "
With all this aggressive evangelistic effort, however, there is not wanting, as the statistics already quoted have shown, an enlarging emphallis upon educational and institutional work. " 'Ve have been forced," says "A Year of Grace," page 54, "to combine a measure of educational work on behalf of our own people, confining ourselves to merely elementary and useful knowledge, and adding to this such a system of warm spiritual influence as to keep the great question of the salvation of every pupil perpetually to the front." And page 5 : "If it be indeed true that the hope of a nation is in the cradle, it is difficult to exaggerate the im. portance of this department of religious enterprise. It has often been remarked th::t in the most sweeping revivals of the world the best and largest results have been reaped among the young." In the Cape Comorin District twenty-one primary schools were reported, which, says" Behold their "Valls," page 14, "strengthen the people's belief in our permanent stay among them, and proves to them that we mean to teach, help, and elevate them, as well as to alleviate their hard condition in life. This assurance was necessary in the face of interested and reiterated statements made by the Tobiahs to the contrary." There are also Rescue Homes, a large and widely sought dispensary, and a farm colony of 557 acres. It is to be hoped that the experience of the Salvation Army in this last particular may be more encouraging than the experience of the missionary societies with the Christian village system has proved. The Army does not share the views of many of its advocates in this country, as to the uselessness of schools. "A Year's Advance" describes the school at Sabamarti as " one of the most promising features of our present work, ",hich bids fair to become one of the best grounds for training the future Indian leaders of the great Salvation Army."
The Army has not overlooked the necessity of the development of selfsupport, as " A Year's Advance" shows: .. The month.of February was made memorable by the launching of a scheme that had long been contemplated by our general and commissioners-that of selfsupport-the success of which Is very largely due to the strenuous and untiring efforts put forth by Staff-captain Isu Charan, who, for the time being, was told off to introduce it.
" The full meaning of self-support is the entire cost of any given work met by the people for whom the work exists, including cost of management and all the expenses of the different headquarters, as well as the supply of food and clothing to the officers in the village corps, and the payment of the corps expenses; but progress has not yet been made so far as this. At present efforts are being directed to get the people of each village, both saved and unsaved, to keep their officers supplied with food and clothing. Much more than this has been done in many corps in various parts, but there is yet much more to be done.
"The system of self-support that was adopted was simple, and in accord with the ideas of the people. Each soldier was expected to give one pice in cash or one sir (about a pint) of grain per week per family for the support of their officers. This was to be quite separate from the usual collections in the meetings. The village was divided into wards, and for each ward a local officer appointed to see that every soldier therein gave his pice regularly. These gifts were to be given to the corps treasurer, by whom they would be delivered to the captaiu after the amount had been entered in a book. Copies of the Jangi Pokar (Gujarati War Cry), containing the rules of the system, were posted up in each ward and in the sergeants' houses, so that the soldiers should become thoroughly acquainted with the scheme. It was found that much more money was given, in proportion, than grain, altho our people are so poor.
.. Staff-captain Isu Charan, writing a few months later on the subject, ' Selfsupport in Gujarat, Past and Present,' gave the following summary of their position in this respect : " , Gujarat is coming out victorious after a struggle long and hard, and of such a nature that those who loved it most had their faith and strength sorely tried. Self-support, or rather support of the stationed officers by the local soldiers, is the thing which was thought impracticable. For even this much, without the support oC superintending operations, the leaders prayed, and toiled to make the thing understood and carried out. The low-caste soldiers are poor, and accustomed to the Idea, In the Christian religion at least, that the rich sahlbs come to give to them. Outsiders said that our Gujarati officers would all clear off and never return if they had not to go to the sahibs for bread and butter, but to the people for bread only, and that uncertain and poor. Those officers have had to suffer to win-many were dismayed, not seeing so clearly as the gener,.l and others the absolute dependence upon these lines of not only the impport of the workers, but the very chance of all the soldiers working out their own salvation (not working for it). Some Gujarati officers left under the first struggle for support; s'till, on the whole, we never knew any people endure so well. We foreigners sometimes thought we saw the turn of the tide, sometimes not. We waited for the people themselves to decide it. That is what they are now doing. Hallelujah! Family officers have returned. Cadets are coming in again, and our total is higher than ever it was.
" 'The people of the villages, saved and unsaved, never before showed so much confidence in God's army, or listened in such numbers to its teachings. In the Bhll districts the officers have food given them and laid up for the monsoons, and they are preparing to do without even clothing allowance. With the increase of the work, as great a mountain as ever remains to be faced in the carrying on of its superintendence; for the local needs the soldiers have to add works to their faith, and for the general supervising operations, that rupees may come fast enough, we have to add faith to our works.' ..
Even among these poor, the blessing of self-denial has been earnestly taught. The feature of Salvation Army work in India which has received most attention has been its adoption of the manners and customs of the natives, with the self-sacrificing devotion necessary for this purpose and the econ- omy in the conduct of mission work which has been supposed to result from it. "Behold their 'Valls" tells of the introduction of the Army's work into India by Commissioner Tucker, who at the outset set the ex- ample of attempted identification with the people.
" The year 1882 stands out star-like in the annals of our glorious Army's history, dawning as it did a new epoch in its ethics, eternizing the Pauline doctrine of ' all things to all men,' as was emphasized in the person of our beloved Commissioner Tucker, who, like St. Francis of Assisi, wandered about barefooted, a voluntary outcast from wealth and pleasure, till he became to India's people what St. Francis was to his-that is, an embodiment of holy, consecrated humanity. A. little drop of the same Divine love had fallen in the commissioner's heart, and constrained him to become poor for India's sake, to take upon himself the garb of a poor fakir, that, by being an Indian to the Indians, he might happily win a few."
Native names were adopted by the foreign officers. Miss Booth, now Mrs. Booth-Hellborg, is called Ruhani Bai j Miss Barrington became Cap- tain Adarawanti, and Major Grundy became Major Eshwar Das and mar- ried a Hindu wife_ Mrs. Keer is especially enthusiastic over this adoption of native customs: "I watched a Salvation Army officer wash his clothes in a river where sometimes tigers come to drink. It was moonlight, and I could easily see how the practiced hand brought the cloth heavily down at a particular angle on the stone, so that the work was rapidly and effectually done. It struck me that. I had never seen or heard of a settled European missionary in India washing his single change of raiment before. Why need such an elementary style of life be adopted? Then I had a new view of the elastic and wonderful devotion of the Army. In particular districts its officers wash in rivers or tanks, be they clean or foul, that they may the more effectually become one with the poor people, who have so washed their clothes from time immemoriall The simple cloth and jacket and turban are hung up to dry 'and put on again without any ironing."
One of the fruits of this poverty is the necessity for begging, of which Mrs. Keer writes without concealment. "The Army begs at each port on board the ships, and is so poor in its headquarters that it would really be a cruelty in me to misrepresent them. The men-officers, and frequently the women, if not in ill-health, coming from India to Ceylon, travel steerage-deck-entirely, and it is awful with a lot of coolies on board in a storm! The hardships of the Salvation Army in India no one can fathom in imagination. I am glad I bave seen a little of their sufferings. I am ever increasingly filled with wonder at tbe Army." She berself wrote on October 30th, 1893, that she had not had a shoe or stocking on since she arrived on the 13th, but that, however, she was unable to eat the hot curry of the people, but had cold fish and tea. After a few days' experience in the work, and having slept two nights in a mnd hut, Mrs. Keer wrote: "By this time I utterly and forever had decided that this was the way to do, if you wanted to get at the people." All this, however, she believes to be worth the cost. "Wholesale crucifixion to likes and dislikes, and a determination never to come down from the cross, would be the only way to begin and continue. Yet, certainly, Europeans can't do continuously all that natives do. The Army has had to modify much, but it still is, far out of sight, a native thing beyond any other mission in the land." "As Ambai said to me: ' No one knows what they will haye to go through when they come to India j but all who do the work say it is lovely, and worth the cost of personal feelings. The life at headquarters, being sort of English, none of the village officers enjoy.' For my own part, I do think village life in some ways less unpleasant than life at these headquarters in a sort of a fifth-rate European style, mingled with some objectionable native conditions." "The Salvation Army is the hope of India because it lives crucifixiou and holiness."
The Army in India would seem not to be overlooking the necessity for proper training. Village young men and women are gathered into the training garrisons or are stationed out in villages under the immediate eare of some experienced officer, and weekly or oftener are gathered at some district center for regular instruction. The understanding, at least in Gnjarat, is that cadets will receive no salary, and only such sustenance as can be raised among their own soldiers. Of course the organization is monarchical. "A ride of some twenty-eight miles from Poona," says "Bchold their ·Walls," page 26, "brings us to Major Yuddha Bai's headquarters, where she reigns and rules as Queen Ahsolnte. Her division contains at present 4 sections, with some 13 corps manned by 24 officers, 10 candidates, 149 soldiers, and a miscellaneous following of some 305 recruits.' , This would seem to he in miniature the organization of the whole Army, over which the general is supreme, and throughout which his jnftuence is unmistakably felt. "Behold their W aJls/' page 8. " Throughout the whole of our Indian territory rang the battle-cry: • General expects evel'y man to do his duty.' So Madras answered the call by gathering her forces together and starting the campaign with a half night of prayer. And it was this little muster, while hearts were melted and weighted with the load of eternal tlIings, that formed the daring plan of capturing one hundred prisoners from the enemy. God was great, their cause righteous, so they must expect great things, yea, do great things; so they resolved to add to their jubilee honors by raising fifty soldiers and bringing fifteen cadets to the Training Home. So with faith that laughed at impossibility, backed by prayer and hard work, they led an attack on the forts of darkness, capturing 124 prisoners, recruiting 71 soldiers, and swearing in 22 cadets. Glory to God !"
The optimism of the Army's work finds ample expression in its reports, as does also its consciousness of self-sacrifice. " Behold their Walls," page 6. "Between that ever-memorable year 1882 and this 1894, stretches a vista of twelve years. If the area of those twelve years could be focused on paper, brought panorama-like before the eyes. of the world, what a sublime spectacle would it present! What spanless oceans of unselfish, loving service, what spanless seas of victories, gilded and garnished by unvoiced sufferings! How full of those tender sunlight and shadow touches, that waken music in our hearts, when we read the story of Him who walked by Galilee." Or" A Year of Grace," pages 49 and 50 : "No one who has given any time to examining the fabric of heathendom, colossal tho it be, can hesitate to believe that it is daily approaching a complete and universal collapse. In a few decades at most Buddhism, Hinduism, Mohammedanism, and fetishism will be as completely wiped out of existence as the Druidism of Great Britain. Looked at from a lteathen standpoint, Christianity has somewhat lacked the enthusiasm, the coloring and demonstration which the Oriental mind associates with ilie declaration of his religious convictions, and it has maintained a foreign element, or aspect, which has been distasteful to the national prejudice. In these respects the Salvation Army has appeared wonder· fully to supply the missing link, and has presented Christianity in such a manner as very largely to obtain non-hostile consideration."
These quotations from the official reports of the Salvation Army are set down out of kindliest sympathy with the Army, to give a clearer under- .standing of its work, with which all friends of missions have great sympathy, and for which they desire every success, however solicitous they may be as to particular features of the Army's operations and methods. It must be borne in mind that Major Jai Bhai, who has been in India about thirteen years, has had a longer experience than that of any other Salvation Army officer in India ; so that there has in reality been time for no one of the leaders of the Army in India to enter very fully into an understanding of the thought of India and the life and language of her people. And there are some features of the work of the Army which, in the judgment of many, it would be desirable to have modified. One objection made in India to the work of the Army, writes a careful observer from Calcutta, is that " it does not insist on baptism (and that is the only thing that keeps back many natives. Hindus can do everything Christian except be baptized or take communion without breaking caste). In their reports of conversions, they count everyone who says he accept.;; Christ asidl:l from his willingness to be baptized. It is a question whether in native communities the Army does not do distinct harm by recognizing as Christians those who refuse to obey so ,definite a command as to be baptized." In his little book on " Christian Service among Educated Bengalese," Rev. Robert P. Wilder speaks of an interview with Mrs. Booth-HcUborg, in which he told her of the way in which many students who seemed to be on the threshold of making an open Christian confession, fell back on the plea that the Salvation Army does not baptize, and asked: "Are not the friends and members of the Salvation Army Christians ~ If they do not regard baptism as essential, why should I regard it so~" Mrs. Booth· Hellborg's defence was: "If baptism were so important, God would have revealed its importance to my sainted mother and to my good father. "
"I do not think," adds Mr. Wilder, " that the Salvation Army leaders and sympathizers in Europe and America realize how seriously they injure Christ's cause in India by disobeying His plain commands concerning baptism and the Lord's Supper. Missionaries in India are practically unanimous in the belief that baptism is the test for educated Hindus. A Babu mar cease worshiping idols; he may neglect the Hindu Shastras and read the Bible; he may believe in Jesus and confess Him openly by word of mouth-all this will not make an outcast of him; but the moment he is baptized persecution begins; then, and only then, he Is regarded as really a Christian by his Hindu friends. "
Complaint has been made against the Army also because of its trans- grelilsion upon territory already comparatively well occupied by other mis- sionary societies, and for its apparent willingness to enter into competition with these other societies, even to the extent of diverting their converts and native helpers, while there are still large regions wholly unoccupied.
The report for 1894 states that" the Tittuvilli District has been the most successful of our fields so far." And yet of this very district Mr. Duthie, a missionary of the London Missionary Society at Nagercoil, writes : " Tittuvilli. let, me remark, is a small district under a native pastor, whose head station is six miles from Nagercoil. It is a rice·growing part of the country, with a considerable number of pariah villages. The IJondon Missionary Society has been working there for many years. The pariahs there were in slavery when the missionaries came, and were set free by them many years ago. Much labor and money have been expended upon these people. Every village has been visited by our preachers hundreds of times, and great numbers in the courS6 of these years have been brought under the influence of the Gospel. We have now in Tittuvilli 15 congregations, 1773 adherents, and upward of 1000 children in our schools. Tittuvilli and Nagercoil districts have had more Christian workers for many years than can be found in any other country districts of India of the same size. Let this fact be noted. Yet this is the locality upon which the Salvation Army has been concentrating its forces for the past three· years, their work in numerous other places having been abandoned.
" But I proceed to state a few particulars illustrative of their methods of working in Tittuvilli; and, that there may be no mistake, I give names of places and people as far as possible. At present the Salvation Army work is carried on there by about fifty·seven officers or agents in fifteen villages, only four of which were purely heathen. In every one of the other eleven the London Missionary Society has been working for many years. The people of one village, called Velankadu, consisting of sixty-seven adults, was reported in the War Cry two years ago as having become entirely Christian. According to the 0'1"1/, they had all become Salvation Army' heroes j' but when inquiry was made, soon after the statement appeared in print, not a Ollristian could be found in the place. Up to this time, also, that village is entirely heathen. The headquarters of their work is at a village called Talikudi, which has been a London Missionary Society center for many years. They have a meeting-house there within two hundred yards of the London Missionary Society chapel. Fifty-six of our people have joined them, of whom fifteen are employed as ' gurus,' or agents, and in that one village, while the London Missionary Society has one evangelist, two schoolmasters and two Bible-women, the Salvation Army officers are nineteen in number.
" In Puliady there are no heathen, all are London Missionary Society Chris· tians; yet recently the Salvation Army went in there also and conducted meetings. At South Arasankuli, which has but one street, where the London Mis· sionary Society has been working for a long time, meetings were held on October 3d by Major J aikodi. Flags were displayed in three places. one fiag being opposite the London Missionary Society chapel. The two 'gurus' working there were formerly in London Missionary Society employ. One, called Asseer, got four and a half rupees j present pay in Salvation Army, seven and a half rupees. At Chekkadi the London Missionary Society has forty Christians. The heathen there number about thirty-seven. The Salvation Army has begun work in that village also. In fact, as our native missionary states, where there is a Christian congregation, and eRpecially where there are people who have backslidden or have been excluded from the London Missionary Society communion from any cause, there the Salvation Army goes and begins operations.
" As to their methods of working, a favorite plan is to visit just before the London Missionary Society worship begins; to express a desire to have prayer in a house; and in this way to make attendance at the regular service a matter of difficulty or impossibility. Sunday work, after worship, is allowed, which no doubt is a recommendation to some. Moreover, efforts have been made which have been successful in several instances, 1 regret to say, to entice our London Missionary Society agents, as in Coimbatore, to join them on promise of higher pay. A dis· affected deacon (Varempettan) of one of our churches has been taken on as a • guru,' and draws seven and a half rupees per month. Rival schools are established in some parts within a. quarter of a mile from the London Missionary Society schools.
" Our native pastor complained 0. short time ago to Yesubatham, staff-cap. tain, of some of these things, and particularly about their enticing away our agents by offering them higher pay. The reply was that he was not aware that anything of the kind was going on, and that he should make his complaint to officers of lower grade.
" As to TittuviIli, truth compels me sorrowfully to say, after two or three years' experience, that instead of being what Christian workers everywhere would rejoice at, a valuable evangelistic agency to' raw heathen' in thousands of places in India as yet untouched by the Gospel, the whole method of Salvation Army proceedings there is well calculated to provoke strife, to cause divisions in Christian congregations, to unsettle Christian workers, to foster the caste spirit. to lead to the disregard of the Lord's day and the ordinances of the Lord's house, Christian people at home and elsewhere, who support the Army, being mean. while led to believe, by a system of reporting which has been &hown over and over again to be utterly hollow, and worse, that the Salvation Army is gloriously marching on to victory, • raw heathen' in t7wu3ands being swept into the Chris- tian ranks, when, in fact, no such thing takes place. But to collect a crowd by means of torches, a band~ shouting and dancing, is, in this country, and espe- cially among the easily excited pariah people, the easiest thing possible. The abandonment of idolatry and becoming steady, patient disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ is a different matter altogether."
This same difficulty and other possible perils of the Army's work are kindly but firmly treated in an earnest and dignified letter, which was issued in 1889 by the missionaries of the nine societies at work in Madras.
.. The work of the Salvation Army in India has been much extolled by some , critics, and attempts have been made to claim for it a measure of success far greater than that which has followed the missionary work of the societies; but such attempts have been made on wholly insufficient grounds.
.. The statistics of the Army for India have not been tabulated with exactness, and its official reports have not placed before the public all the facts on which a true verdict should rest. While we earnestly desire the success of every mis- sion agency, which in the spirit of Christ seeks the salvation of India, we are compelled to state that in South India the work of the Army has not been suc- cessful. Recent statistics, and statistics are the approved and applied test of the Army itself, show that its adherents, few of whom are really the result of its own work, are decreasing in number. It has swelled its ranks with the converts of other churches, who have not been improved by the transition, and many of them hltve again returned to their own folds. The whole of its work has been done within areas under process of evangelization by other societies, and only where churches have been planted and work firmly estabIlshed by other mission agencies have Salvation Army agents planted themselves, and only to exert a disturbing infiuence on existing churches. By such a course only, unjust and objectionable as it is, has it been possible for the agents of the Army to exist in India. Compelled by their rules to seek local self-support, they have found it easier to exhibit their need and appeal with success to Christians than to appeal to Hindus, and in this way they have diverted funds from other Christian work. Only the merest fraction of their support has ever come from non·Christians. Tho there are many districts in which from want of laborers no missionary work is done, the Army has carefully avoided these. It has been compelled to seek the common necessaries of life first of all, so that the choice of fields has been determined not by the spiritual needs of Hindus, but by the material needs of the Army.
" It has been affirmed that the agents of the Army have been able to come into closer sympathy with the natives of India than missionaries do, and that they have done this by discarding the dress and customs of Europeans. Both these statements are incorrect. For at least two centuries the Englishman has been a familiar figure in India. To this generation he is now almost as familiar as the Mussulman. To Hindus his dress seems to be even attractive. While no Hindu dreams of adopting the Mussulman costume, thousands of Hindus are now adopting the English dress; it is impossible, therefore, that what is familiar and attractive can at the same time be specially repellent. All who know anything of human nature will agree that not by a particular dress, but by intelligence and true sympathy, do we find access to the hearts ot men. Soul must touch soul. And eating curry and rice with one's fingers and wearing long hair are poor substitutes for a knowledge of the language and thought of Hindus. We are certain that the weight of intelligent testimony entirely confutes the Salvation Ai'my statements on this matter.
.. Following the assumed success of the Salvation Army, the question has been raised, 'Could not a cheaper European agency be employed with advantage in the mission field?' To this we reply that any European agent who is efficient and who is duly maintained will be useful. With regard to the Army, however, we would point out that the cost of its European agents in India has never been made known. Further, it should be noted that the number of deaths among them has been exceptionally large, and the number of those laid aBide by sickness very great as compared with other mission agents. By death, by sickness, or by retirement from mission work, the number of its agents has baen terribly reduced, and we attribute this alarming waste and unnecessary wear and tear to the way of living imposed on the agents of the Army. Again, the average stay 'of these agents in India is notoriously brief, and since most of them have never become acquainted with the vernacular, their value as effective agents is more than doubtful. The plan of operations which the Army has adopted, and according to which its agents are compelled to work, is such that while all the disabilities and risks peculiar to life in India are needlessly multiplied to them, there has been no compensating gain in efficency or in power; and since Christianity is not Hinduism, why an English evangelist in India should resemble a Hindu beggar is not evident.
"In eaprit de corp8 and in completeness of consecration to the work which they are sent to do, the agents of the Army have our sincere respect; and because we desire to see the Army no longer a parasite, but a powerful and permanent missionary agency, we would urge attention to the following points-viz.: " 1. That a higher standard of intelligence be fixed for its European agents. "2. That begging, as now practised, cease to be compulsory. " 3. That they be not compelled to denationalize themselves by renouncing European dress and customs. " 4. That its work be dune in fields chosen in consultation with other societies, so that unnecessary friction and waste may be avoided. " 5. That its agents receive an allowance sufficient for their support. " 6. That, since influence is cumulative, the itinerant system be less violently practised, and agents be permitted to remain for a longer period in places where they are calculated to be useful."
The Army is not unaware of these criticisms, as passages like the following from "Behold their Walls" indicate: "Vith a heart broken, melted, and permeated with this Calvary love-this Christ essence-Commissioner Tucker was commissioned by General Booth to build a wall of salvation around India. And in spite of the caviling, envious Sanballats (critics), Tobiahs (churchmen), the Ashdodites and Arabians, of difficulties, sicknesses, hatred, and persecution, a fair and goodly wall is being raised, a grand portion of which already encircles sun-bedazzled Hindustan, and embraces many a village in storied Ceylon. So the walls are rising, the burned stones from the heaps of rubbish are being revived, while our poor little two-legged Sanballats (critics) waste their precious God-given time and talents in writing columns for the devil's manual of misstatements and distorted truths. We wish them joy in their dirty work."
NEW FORCES FOR MISSION WORK
It· is greatly to be desired, however, that the Army will not so flatly refuse advice kindly proff!Jred to it by men of as great earnestness of spirit as its own officers, of much deeper acquaintance with India, her languages, her religions, and her people, and with a much longer missionary experience. The true friends of missions believe that the Army has a place in missionary work, that it stands for some valuable principles. Some of them agree with Mrs. Keer that "sad harm has been done to converts by missionaries who taught natives European ways. A harvest of extravagance and worldliness is now being reaped in native Christian circles in cities, directly traceable to this mistake. " The Army stands for neglect of hampering conventionalities, for the instinct of victory, for simplicity of method, for the need of a present and complete salvation from sin, for an indigenous, self-denying, self-supporting, selfextending Christian organization. It needs to be careful, however, lest its divine impulse degenerate into martial enthusiasm j its self-sacrifice into self-satisfied and pharisaical asceticism. It should work with the other missionary societies rather than as their competitor and antagonist. It should beware of mistaking a change of clothing or of song and dance for a living faith in Christ. It should inquire whether much of its militarism is not as European as the ways of which Mrs. Keer complains, and is not likely to be as fruitful of harm. It is felt by many, also, that the Army needs in India wiser and stronger management. The discipline of the Army needs to be better adapted to the needs of the country, and there seems to have been wanting that harmony of view among its Euro. pean officers which is the condition of the fullest blessing of God. Many friends and helpers of the Army's work, also, have been unable to suppress a feeling of regret at the boastful tone of "Behold their WaIls j" and while they pray that the Army's work may be ever more and more successful in every land, they do not fail to add the petition which has been the strength of the Moravian Church, "From the unhappy desire of being great, good Lord deliver us. "
NEW FORCES FOR MISSION WORK.
BY ERNEST B. GORDON, BOSTON, MASS.
The present century is westering to its close. It has been, by com· mon consent, the very culmination of all the centuries, prolific beyond previous conception in all fields of human activity. It has been also a century in which the Divine hand has made itself felt as never since the apostolic era. It has been a century of opportunity. It has been a century of expansion. It has been a century of intensive religious experience, too, as well as of extensive missionary operation. It rose upon a world lying in the shadow of death. Darkness was upon the face of the deep'. Whole continents were not so much as explored, t4I say nothing of being opened and evangelized. It closes upon a world clear in every direction to the advance of Christendom-a world the farthest points in which can be reached in a few weeks by Christian agencies. It closes with a missionary movement unparalleled in its successes-a movement whic~ is yearly gaining strength and tidal propulsion; for India is trembling on the brink of a landslide; Japan, after reaching the farthest point of reaction, is turning again with redoubled energy toward Christ; Africa is ablaze in a hundred points-in Uganda, in Basutoland, in Madagascar ; Russia is being honeycombed with a vital nonconformity; China is entering upon an era of Renaissance in which the patient labor of a generation of missionaries will doubtless now reap its full harvest. World over the fountains of the great deep are breaking up. 'VorId over one finds indications of great, solemn, incomparably important changes. Christianity, in fulfilment of the Divine program, is becoming a universal religion. The Gospel of the kingdom is being rapidly witnessed to throughout the world.
When we turn, however, to the home agencies in this earth-wide work of evangelization, we find much that is discouraging. America and England, in common with the commercial world at large, have been suffering from serious and long-continued financial depression. From such epidemics Christians are, of course, not quarantined, and the practical effect on the operations described above has been that which naturally results from shrinkage in income and retrenchment in plans. Not a missionary board but has been aftlicted with the incubus of deficit. Not a local church but has received its quota of circulars describing the pressing urgency and sore need of the executive committee directing at headquarters. The resources of the churches are ample. The wealth of Christia~s has been too often dwelt on to need restatement here. It is in sense of obligation and in extent of spiritual vision that their poverty lies. Without an enrichment in these directions it is doubtful whether the repeated recurrence of these periods of distress can be warded off.
Pending such an enrichment of the inner life of present-day Christianity, we must cast about for other means of carrying on the appointed work. It is an open question to the writer whether or not, in view of the extraordinary changes in the world since the days of J ndson and Martyn, the method of conducting Christian missions is not in a large degree archaic. Conditions were such in the early part of this century as to make unavoidable the substitution of "send ye into all the world" for the received version of the passage. Such an interpretation is by no means so pertinent nowadays, when the whole world is open to alien residence and accessible at the shortest notice. To distribute Bibles in Rome fifty years ago meant imprisonment or worse; to disembark on Japanese soil meant the loss of one's head; to undertake mission work in three countries out of four was equivalent to martyrdom. Long distance w.ork was then a necessity. It behooves us now, however, in view of these changes, to inquire whether we are really working with the right end of the lever. Is it not possible that the distressful financial situation has a lesson in it for the Christian Church ~ And may not that lesson consist in a new emphasis on the personal equation, the return to a literal and personal interpretation of the great commission ~ This doubtless may seem hazy and impractical to many readers. Consider a moment. The last federal Congress passed legislation looking to the imposition of a tax on incomes. This, as all know, was set aside by the courts. Suppose, however, that the law had stood, that the assess- ments had been drawn up, and that one could have gotten free access to the lists. What a story would they not have told us! 'Ve should have there read of hundreds of thousands of incomes contribnting less to the work which Christ set us to do than to the Government at Washington for its new ironclads and improved ordnance. If we could get more precise information, we should learn that all up and down the land are scattered Christian men and women, with incomes little or large, yet sufficient for support, whose interest in this great epoch- movement is confined at most to an annual subscription and to a diligent I attendance upon missionary meetings. To such we address ourselves. They constitute the reserve force, the landwehr, which should be called into immediate action. The representative system cannot last much longer: A missionary propaganda conducted solely by proxy will soon be felt to be an anachronism. We need a new RefOl'mation, which shall emphasize the universal missionary function as the German Reformation did the universal priesthood of believers. A general movement, a Christian diaspora, can alone cope with the gigantic needs of the situation. The destruction of Jerusalem scattered'the brands which.fired the whole Roman world. The exile of Stundists has in our day been instrumental in the diffusion of the Gospel through much of Central Asia, Siberia, and Asia Minor. Is it possible that Christians of England and America need the heavy hand of persecution before starting on the mission which has been entrusted to them as to chosen children ~ The paid missionary should be to the Christian Church what the picket is to the main army. Steadily has he advanced; farther and farther has he pushed toward the enemy's lines. Has he now the requisite support- ing column at his back? Have the numerous outlying regions which he has reconnoitred and cleared been occupied 1 Is the work of the Chris- tian Church accomplished when she has thrown far out in front her thin line of missionaries ~ Are there not thousands with sufficient to support themselves comfortably in Palestine, in Japan, in Egypt, and elsewhere, who are instead taking their ease in the quiet and safety of the home Church? Now and then one finds independent workers in the field-in the Church Mission in India, for example, and in the China Inland Mis- sion ; but could not these be multiplied by hundreds if the situation were clearly brought before the minds of home Christians? Would it not be possible to establish a League of Self-supporting Volunteers, to organize a Bureau of Information which should supply intelligence of the particular needs of different fields,. and advice concerning cost of living, safety of person, climatic conditions, opportunities for Christian companionship, etc.? Could not volunteer substitute teachers in this way release for more distinctly evangelistic work those engaged in teaching history and mathematics and English in mission schools? Could not such enlist for short terms-five or ten years-not committing themselves necessarily for life residence?
Everybody knows how ubiquitous is the trader in the remoter regions of the earth. Scarce a tribe in Africa but has rued his coming; scarce an island in the South Seas that is unacquainted with his cheap manufactures and illicit liquors. It is not so generally known how largely men of culture, wearied with civilization, have betaken themselves to the wilderness. We know how Stevenson loved Samoa, choosing it as both home and burial-place before his Scotch birthplace. Tahiti offered for years a like refuge to the brilliant Pierre Loti. Madagascar became the adopted home of Le Conte dc Lisle. Olive Schreiner lives with her husband far up in the great Karoo of South Africa. Lafcadio Hearne has married a Japanese wife and settled down in a Japanese village, and Count Tolstoi has left the brilliant life of Western Europe for the isolation and monotony of Russian village life. Surely Christians have a higher, a more urgent motive to expatriation than the nefarious profit of the trader or the caprice of an ennuied litterateur. Surely, if the Pauline spirit has not entirely died out of the Christian Church, some may be found who without the entanglement of official connection stand ready to reinforce as volunteer anxiliaries the impaired regular forces of Christian missions.
Such a movement could be greatly facilitated if we could disillusion possible volunteers of the supposed universal formidableness of the missionary life. It is a mistake to suppose that missionaries are always and everywhere subject to hardship and suffering. Undoubtedly this was so in the inception of the missionary movement of our century. Doubtless it is so in many quarters now-along the fever-haunted coasts and riverbottoms of Africa, in the intolerably crowded cities of China, and in the thrice-heated plains of Southern India. On the other hand, there are fields for missionary labor which have a charm and attractiveness far surpassing that of the home-land itself. Of the uplands of Ceylon, for example, one could say, in the appropriate words of an Arabic inscription upon the Taj : "If there is a paradise on earth, it is this, it is this, it is this." Indeed, this fact is now so generally recognized that Ceylon is becoming one of the favorite resorts of the idlers of winter-time, a sort of Asiatic Riviera or California. And speaking of France, where could one find a more promising field spiritually than among her people, weary of Romanism, disenchanted of the Sodom.apples of pleasure-seeking, ready to consider and accept the way of life 1 What would not the McAll Mission give for a contingent of one hundred newly enlisted self-supporting workers for the evangelization of French cities-a sort of lay order like the Tertiaries of St. Francis 1 And from the point of view of personal expenditure and personal discomfort (tho it may seem unheroic, indeed, to dwell on this), where would one suffer less than among the kindly peasantry of Normandy and the Limousin 1 Then consider Italy, with its multitude of unfolded and uutaught. Why should Christian men and women, who perchance are without especial cares and responsibilities, prefer taking an interest in missions at home, in New York or Chicag9, to taking a part in missions in Florence or Rome 1 Are there not great possibilities of usefulness here 1 Could we find a sturdier stock than the peoples of Piedmont and Lombardy 1 Could we find more necessitous ones than those of Sicily and Calabria 1 Are there no Christians wintering in Asheville and St. Augustine who could spend their spare months in Naples and Girgenti to the greater glory of God and to the hastening of His kingdom? The ·Winter Mission of English Christians among the English-speaking people of India is a precedent which could be followed elsewhere. And, not to mention other European fields, what shall we say of Greece and of Spain, so long closed to missionary effort by religious exclusiveness and bigotry 1 Are not these countries purposely open for those unable to undergo the dangers and hardships and persecutions of the back provinces of China and the Hinterlands of Africa 1 If one should draw up a list of places fitted for such volunteer effort, what a category of Edens he would have! Not to recall again the numberless European fields, there would be the lovely islands of the Hawaiian group; Samoa, with its great hotels at Apia ; Darjeeling and Simla and Naini Tal, in the foot-hills of the Himalayas-of gloriously even clime, under the shadow of the gigantic Alps of Asia j Utacamund in the Nilghiri Hills, with its marvelous rose-hedges and sunsets; Hakone, Kyoto, Nikko, and a hundred other places in Japan-for Japan should be a veritable stronghold of the independent mission. No mission-field has a more tractable people, none is more delightful iu climate, in historical association, in present-day interest j none has a larger community of Englishspeaking people (save India), and missionaries are-we speak from personal acquaintance-of all people, the most neighborly, the most Christian, the best informed. No country has a smaller criminal residuum, in no place is life safer. European women can go through the loneliest roads in the country wit.hout fear. What opportunities at every tea-house to teach the way of Jesus, as Jesus Himself taught it by the well of Sychar ! Where could a volunteer colporteur, with bag and bicycle, find better openings for effective work than along the great highway of the Hokkaido, with its innumerable villages, its passing traffic, its journeying wayfarers 1 Further, it is a peculiarly opportune time for such enterprises in the Sunrise Kingdom. The new treaties have made the interior accessible as never belore since the first opening of the country, and recent events have resulted in a gratifying subsidence of the anti-foreign feeling of the J oi faction. Nowhere, again, could one have a greater choice of climate, if this should happen to be a consideration. The cold and snows of Yezo and the sub-tropical vegetation of Kiushiu indicate the wide stretch of the climatic arc. We can, indeed, conceive of no happier place for a joyous missionary service than in this land, under the long shadows of Hiyesan and of Fujiyama.
We have pleaded for a new exodus, an outpouring into the ends of the earth of those who are able to go, like the medireval vavasor, who furnished his own horse, lance, and armor. Yet there is a final reserve (we say it in spite of traditionalists of missionary policy) which has been brought into play with little success as yet perhaps, but which with proper management can be used with real effect. We refer to the mission supporting itsclf on the field. Objection will be immediately taken j yet we have high precedent, for did not the greatest of all apostles write that his own hands ministered unto his necessities ~ And if Paul could sew tentcloth in the intervals of his evangelistic work at Thessalonica and Athens, might not, for example, men trained at Princeton and Amherst write correspondence for American papers while laboring in the high places of infidelity in Paris and Vienna ~ The writer knows of a Russian journalist, converted in a Baptist mission in the former city, who is an efficient coworker in his spiritual birthplace, and even succeeds occasionally in introducing the Gospel surreptitiously into his contributions to the home papers, spite of the keen surveillance of Orthodox censors.
And, again, in more distinctively pagan lands are there not opportunities which American ingenuity could avail itself of for the futherance of mission work ~ We speak not of China and India, where the illimitable ocean of economic competition would soon drown all such efforts. Yet even here, in outlying dependencies, much might be done. Why, for instance, could a self-supporting mission, organized by Christian farmers of Kansas or Nebraska, not be established in Korea V One could hardly want better conditions-an inexhaustible soil, high prices for products (for butter, cheese, potatoes, and such supplies generally are imported to the East from California, Switzerland, and Australia), a ready market in the treaty ports of China and Japan, and the Nippon-Yusen-Kaisha steamers to carry produce to these points_ When the land has finally quieted down after its experiences of yesterday, and has become straightened out by the efficient administrators of Japan, it will be, in the writer's thinking, no worse a home for Americans than the alkali, drought-afllicted, storm-torn prairies of our country. Surely in the interim of five years which men require for the mastery of their new language, such employment would be welcome to many and a source of sufficient income to defray the outlay of the preparatory period. There is no Quixotism here. We believe the farmer has his place in the missionary economy as well as the physician, the school-teacher, the translator, and the theologian. This is especially true of South Africa, It is a common enough thing for a brace of Scotchmen to settle in the highlands of Pondoland or Gazaland, there to build houses and plant vineyards. This they do with no ulterior purpose beyond the m,ere getting of a living; but surely 1here must be Christian artisans and farmers who could do the same thing, while making their final aim the evangelization of the populations of degraded blacks all about. The Cape General Mission and the Baptist Mission in' South Africa have both received, we understand, from Sir Cecil Rhodes, large tracts of land for such colonization. We doubt not, if Bishop Taylor's experiment could be tried in these temperate and lovely highlands of South Africa, it would meet with a success besides which that of the Congo Mission would be accounted partial and meager. And finally, to say nothing of the possibilities of such enterprises in Argentina and Chili, we believe that before long the most beautiful spot on the planet, the Yale of Cashmere, will be opened to a movement of this sort. One envies the life of the twentieth century, Protestant, Benedictines, who shall organize a self.supporting community for the evangelization of the Mahommedans of this Avalon? Life in partibu8 infidelium would then be (whatever it may be in the fetid cities of India and China) full of the accessory joys which nature brings.
We throw out these suggestions because we believe the times ripe for a forward movement of this character. The dawn of the new centuries is to nations what the opening of the new year is to individuals. We are about to burst, with hearts of expectation, as Magellans and Drakes of time, into the silent, undiscovered sea of a new century. Christianity must prove to the world that she is of the future as well as of the irrevocable past. If the world shall see in tM Church a mere congeries of social clubs, as it too often is in English-speaking lands, or a State official supported for semi-police purposes, as she evidently is on the Continent of Europe, woe, then, to Church and to world, for the one has failed in her appointed work, and the other has lost its unspeakable opportunity and hope. If, on the other hand, by her activities, by her self-sacrifice, her other worldliness, she shows herself conscious of her mission as the representative of Christ before all men, as the temporal agency of the Holy Spirit in the evangelization of the world, new recognition will be accounted to her and to her Lord in the years that are upon us. No legitimate means to such ends, therefore, are to be contemned. The Salvation Army-so bizarre, so uncouth, so all-conquering-is before our eyes, an omnipresent warning to any who may be hidebound in their worship of conventional methods. It will not do to deter recruits, to object to experiments. It will not do to refrain from encouraging and stimulating both. Every form of effort in every field is the program of the new years, for repentance and remission of sins must be ,preached in His name among all nations.
BARElLLY THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY
INTERNATIONAL DEPARTMENT. 4.1
II.-INTERNATIONAL DEPARTMENT.
EDITED A.ND CONDUcTED BY BEY. J. T. GIIA.CEY, D.D.
The Bareilly Theological Seminary. ished his education and was much in- terested in mission wOl'k, but was early BY REV. T. J. SCOTT, D.D., BAREIJ,LY, called to the better world. In this hall INDIA. is a large beautiful symbolical paint- This institution is situated at Bareilly, ing, six by eight feet, consisting of five a city of 180,000 inhabitants, and the emblems-the Bible, the cross, an olive capital of Rohilkund, one of the North- branch, a crook, and over all a crown, western Provinces. It is the first suspended in radiance. This painting Methodist theological seminary found- and a life·size portrait of Ernest Kip- ed in Asia. The need of an institution linger were sent out by the parents.
for training native preachers was soon This seminary has at present a small manifest in the history of the mission, endowment of $50,000, with buildings but not until 1872' was the mission able valued at $16,500. The institution is to undertake the work. A timely gift chartered or .. registered," as it is of $20,000 from Rev. D. W. Thomas, called in India, under the Government then of the India Mission,·and who for- of the Northwest Provinces, and has tunately had some private means, en- its legal Board of Trustees, who care for abled the old India conference to take the institution and its funds.
this enterprise in hand. A small na- The course of three years' study is tive preacher's house was used for the substantially that of any such institu- lecture·rooms, while some cheap build- tion in the United States, except that ings that had been erected for some not so much is made of Hebrew and native Christians employed in an ex- Greek. The teaching staff at present perimental industrial school, were util- consists of two foreign missionaries and ized for students' dormitories. The five nati ve professors and teachers.
school opened with a class of eleven. Connected with the seminary is a Four years later Mr. Philo Remington, normal department for training teach- of Ilion, N. Y., gave $5000 to aid in ers for the mission primary and higher the erection of more permanent build- grade schools. The preparation of ings, and with this sum duplicated by Christian teachers for the mission the Mission Board, Remington Hall, schools is an important work. The full the central building, WIIS erected. It is course of study takes four years. This a brick structure consisting of a cen- normal department also serves as a .tral cruciform hall, surrounded by four preparatory department of the semi- class-rooms filling in the building as a nary for such students as may be de- square, with a large library and read- ficient in secular knowledge. Many ing-room on the top. To the left of pastor.teachers have gone out from this this building is Butler Hall, erected in department.
1890, in honor of Dr. Wm. Butler, the An important part of this institution founder of this mission, by funds con- is the Woman's Training SchooL Most tributed by many admiring friends. of the students who enter the theologi- This structure is one story, uniform in cal seminary, from the cnstom of early style with the central building, lind marriage, are married men. Early in consists of two fine lecture halls. To the history of the seminary the experi.
the right, in 1898, Ernest Hall was built, ment was successfully tried of training uniform in style and size with Butler the wives of the students to cooperate Hall. It was erected by Rev. E. S. with them in evangelistic and pastoral and Mrs. E. R. Kiplinger, in memory work. The wives who cannot read are of their son Ernest, who had just fin- taught and then trained in what is callcd the Bible·readers' course. This fits dents come from tracts bordering on them to enter the homes of Hindus and the Hindustani territory, and such men Moslems and give instruction in Bible can preach in at least one more lan- truth to women and children. They guage, thus reaching at least 50,000,000 can also aid the pastor in instructing more. The energy with which the the women and children of his charge. work of this mission is spreading 'l'he importance of the training given among these millions makes more mani- to the wives of the students cannot be fest the importance of this school. In over·estimated. In India women espe- the year 1894 more than 17,000 souls cially must work for women. In the were added to the Christian community towns and villages the preacher cannot in North India alone. The workers address mixed audiences, as in Chris- who have gone out from the school are tian countries. Men alone assemble to scattered in a population equal to that hear in public places as a rule; and in of the United States. }Ien are needed the homes pastoral ministration cannot well trained in doctrinal and pracbe as unconstrained as in Christian tical morality, who can act as pastors countries. Hence, the great need of for the incoming multitudes of Chriswomen trained to reach women in India. tians. Striking evidence is to be met indicating that caste is fast losing hold This department of the seminary is on the more intelligent classes. The beset with some difficulties. The wives great deep of this vast population of not only manage their domestic duties India must soon break up. Antiof caring for children and preparing Christianity stands ready to capture the food of the family, but they have the multitude who must soon abandon their regular school hours. The diffi- the old faith. Hence the need of such culty of managing the children when an institution in training evangelists to the mothers are studying suggested the meet the crisis. An intelligent faith kindergarten department in more recent ready to give an answer for its hope years, which is suitably organized and must meet an intelligent skepticism. is under trained teachers. Now, While The Church should make of this school the mothers are at their studies, the something worthy of this great opening. children are being trained in kinder- Some testimony to the importance of garten drill. Here, then, is the en- this institution is here recorded : 8emble of a unique theological seminary, where the husband is trained as preach- Bishop Foster pronounced this the 'er, pastor, and evangelist, or as a teach- most important missionary enterprise er and lay evangelist, and his wife is in India. Bishop Ninde said he was trained so as to cooperate with him in strongly impressed while in India with evangelistic and pastoral work, and the invaluable aid this school affords their children have the advantage of a the workers. Bishop Thoburn, " Our regular kindergarten. theological school has become more than ever a necessity to our work." At the present date the attendance at Dr. Ellenwood, Secretary of the Presthis institution is about 80 men and 50 byterian Board of Missions, says: "A women. There have gone out 205 friend said to me, of all the higher ingraduates of the three years' course, 77 stitutions he had seen, the one belongon a partial course, 61 from the nor- ing to the Methodist Episcopal Mission mal school, and 192 from the woman's at Bareilly seemed to him best adapted department, making a total of 535 to meet the widespread wants of a mistraip.ed mission workers sent out. This sion. " Bishop Mallalieu was most proseminary has a great opportunity in the foundly convinced of the immeasurfield represented. The students are able importance of the Bareilly Theotrained in the Hindustani language, logical School. which is understood by 100,000,000 people. Besides this, some of the stu- The endowment so far has mostly taken thc form of permanent founda- dead wall. One is almost afraid of tions for scholarships. A thousand dol- men becoming nominal Christians when lars invested gives the support of a hard put to to avoid the trouble of argu- man and his wife. A few endowments ing it out."
of $500 for single students have been The best material is the Siamo·Chi- given. At present the Board of Trus- nese race, which has sprung up as a tees are calling for a few thousand dol- result of the abundant immigration of lars to build additional dormitories, and Chinamen who marry native wives.
$40,000 to enlarge the endowment to These, whose devotion to ancestral meet urgent present need. In no place worship and other forms of Chinese can a suitably endowed theological superstition has been naturally weak· seminary accomplish more than in this ened. still retain much of the Chinese great mission field. energy and grit, and what work has been done among them has afforded the best results. The Japanese have been Gospel Work in Siam. compared to plastic clay which can be molded; the Siamese to sand, which BY J. E. BUDGETT MEAKIN. lacks in itself the cohesion necessary for the sculptor, and the Chinese to .. I believe there is no country more granite. which withstands all tools but open to unrestrained missionary effort the best, but which lasts forever. For than Siam, but I believe that there can many years the American Baptists car- bardly be a country in which it is hard- ried on an intermittent and desultory er to make an impression." work among the Chinese in Bangkok, Such was the summary by one of the forming also several outlying stations, workers in Bangkok of what he had and altho they seem now to have aban- been telling me about the special fea- doned the field, the native converts tures of the task before him. Complete are going ahead themselves; but un- religious liberty is guaranteed by gov- til the Baptists formally renounce ernment, and missionaries can with lit- operations here, tho they have no tle difficulty settle wherever they will, representative on the spot, others while traveling is free to all, and the hesitate to enter the open door. They treatment that well-behaved foreigners need at least a dozen workers in receive at the hands of the natives Siam, and the cause is losing ground as leaves nothing to be desired. The real long as they hold back. The Roman difficulty is to make an impression on Catholics have extensive missions here, the lethargic minds of the people, and it is from among the Chinese that whose impassive inactivity is never most of their converts are drawn, but more marked than in connection with while the Baptists are nominally at religion. None but those who have work among them, the American Pres- tried it know what it means to address byterian Mission, the only other society.
II crowd or II succession of individuals engaged here, has a most commendable without an objection being raised, but hesitation to take up this important without the leas.t signs of an impression branch. The Chinese in Siam are not having been made. "It is like bom· a mere handful; the whole country is barding an earthwork," said one of the saturated with them, and in their hands missionaries; "one's shots are buried, is almost all the trade and commerce and nothing is seen. It would be are· but that with Europe.
lief even if one hearer' got mad' about What Siam owes to the missionaries it. There is a point to which the already it would be difficult to state.
Siamese will yield, as if they would do Half a century ago she was one of the so to any extent, but when you get to most backward of Asiatic countries, the important moment of all you find a ruled despotically, and unbenetited by the progress of the outside world, to as well as at one or two stations nearer which, with the exception of China, the Gulf of Siam. To a great extent her doors were absolutely closed; but their work has been educational. and the messengers of the Gospel, who were by no means one of the least important waiting to enter China when that results of it was the request, many should become possible, who reached years ago, for one of their number to her shores in Chinese junks, succeeded assume the direction of the schools in so impressing the people and their which the government was then estabrulers that in due time treaties were lishing. Hospitals have also held a willingly entered into with their gov- prominent place in their operations, so ernments, and Siam was opened up. that most of their men are styled doc- Then there came to the throne a king tors by the natives. Street preaching who, while a Buddhist priest had and colportage are likewise employed sought a missionary for a tutor, and with success, however meager the imhad proved no unapt scholar, under mediately apparent results may seem. whose rule the old order fell, and Siam In several places a very real work is entered the race of nations. She has being done by independent workers yet far to go to take her place from among the brethren, and I had among the foremost, but she has made the pleasure to meet with one good rapid strides, and is distanced only by Christian doctor adding mission preach· Japan among the nations of the farther ing to the labors of a private practice. East. That her progress has not been '1'he Roman Catholics are hard at work what it might have been can only be in many parts, and that with apparent attributed to an increased experience good success, for the natives see no of Western ways and Western men, great difference in calling the goddess who do not commend themselv~s as of mercy Mary, and in changing one men who love dollars and hate the no.· set of priests and rites and superstitions tives. It is the same old story here as for another. The Romanists are, not, in every newly opened country, the however, liked, and make but poor greatest obstacle to the spread of the headway among the Siamese them- Gospel is the example set by men of selves, tho the self-denying and devoted the oationalities with which the name lives led by many of their missionaries Christian has unfortunately become place them in great esteem personally. identified-men who cannot sufficiently Their popular name is "Big-foot peo· run down the missions and missionaries, pIe," by one native explained to me as whose presence CWits reilections on the having reference to their custom of Iives they waste ('n wine and women kissing the toe of the Pope, and by anand wagers. I feel that as an indepen- other as indicative of the way in which dent resident abroad I both can lUld they tread down the people, for in Siam must say what the missionaries do not the foot is considered the most unworoften care to, much as I deplore the thy member. One of their methods is facts. Exceptions to the rule there are to make settlements of converts, acindeed, and mission work owes more quiring the land, and making it unto them than folks at home imagine. pleasant for all but their own people, The really Christian man of business or or those who are willing to join them. the official wields an imiluence quite They also mingle in political and legal distinct from that of missionaries. questions when these serve their pur- poses, thus getting into very bad odor. Mission work in Siam is practically Wherever they are they erect fine in the hands of the American Presby- churches, a necessity in a creed in terians, who maintain a considerable which the ceremonial plays so imporforce iu Bangkok, and have a most im· tant a part. portant work some distance up country in the tributary State of Cheung Mai, The favor with which the Protestant missions are regarded, on the other whatever to be of the nature of sin, re- hand, is very evident. They have all garding perfection as the destruction of along shown themselves the true friends every natural inclination, can easily be of the people, and quite recently one understood. Work among such people of them was asked to make special in· is like building in a swamp; there is quiries during his travels into any no ground to go upon, no moral basis, causes of local complaint, and to report no fulcrum. With many there is not them at headquarters, a task which for even a belief in God, while Buddha obviotJ.s reasons he felt bound reluc- himself is not considered as a personal tantly to decline. While calling with influence. Sin is regarded as entailing a missionary on the Minister for the In- its own punishment, and evil is only to terior, His Royal Highness brought up be averted by the propitiation of con· the question of a site for a new mission trolling spirits. Even when a man has station in a distant province, about got so far as to believe in the sacrifice which the local authorities had raised of Christ, it is difficult to make him see difficulties, offering to personally se- the necessity of a moral life, if not to cure the best available place on an ap- work out his own salvation.
proaching visit to that part. He then Though the more liberal education went on to express his opinion on the of the late king did not make him a methods employed. "I think that a Christian, it enabled him to see the great many missionaries make the great folly of much that was bound up with mistake," he said, "of abusIng the re- Buddhism, and as its head in this coun- ligion already existing. If instead of try he instituted a reformed creed, this they would bring their philan- closely approaching that of the mod- thropic and medical work more to the ern Japanese and of Buddha's Western front, and show what the love of Christ admirers. Its followers are practically has led them to do for the poor and atheists who acknowledge Buddha only suffering, they would not fail to gain as a great moral teacher, whose system the people's real esteem, and then of ethics they adopt, while they dis- would be the time for them to listen to card everything supernatural, and all the words of Jesus." the intermingled cult of spirits. But The religion already existing in this this has only affected the few, and su- case is a corrupt inheritance of Bud- perstition of every sort is as rampant dhism mingled with a little Brahman- as ever. The one prevailing idea is the ism and a good deal of spirit worship. necessity 01 "making merit" byerect- It was said by one of the king's broth- ing temples, feeding the priests, mak- ers that 80 per cent of the people were ing pilgrimages, liberating captive ani- ignorant as to what Buddhism really mals, etc., but practical deeds of kind- was, for to begin with they make an ness and self-denial, or of provision for idol of Buddha, presenting worldly pe· the sick and poor, as met with in China, titions as to a god to one whose highest seem hardly known. Ancestral wor- virtue was that he knew nothing of ship forms no part of the Siamese creed, this world. Were they genuine Bud- but its place is in some measure taken dhists, they would at least make some by the necessity under which sons are attempts to follow the moral precepts of making merit for their mothers.
of that creed, but of these they know This is one of the real difficulties the next to nothing. having received it only missionaries have to meet, as men con- as im ancestral legacy, and the grossest vinced of the truth of Christianity can immorality prevails. Even the exter- see no hope for their mothers, espe- nal observances of Buddhism are but cially if they are already dead, and imperfectly known, and the benumb· some who have been convinced have ing, deadening results of a religion yet refused baptism on this account.
Wllich holds all affections and emotions A feeling based on so noble a trait is not to be rudely uprooted, but it has to up under Christian infiuence, on acbe reckoned with. count of the baneful effect on the whole character of a life spent beneath the Yet, after all, these questions will pall of Buddhism, notwithstanding that have to be ultimately faced by the na· one of the most active converts had tive workers as they are raised up, for been for years a priest. .no country has ever been thoroughly evangelized except by its own people, Incident!! of the Struggle in Ja.pa.n. and all the foreigners can hope is to be made the means of setting the work on BY DAVID S. SPENCER, NAGOYA, JAPAN. foot and to welcome the first· fruits, the seeds from which will furnish the wait- It is my purpose to record UDder this ing soil. So the question as to the heading some facts and incidents which quality of the native converts becomes have come under my knowledge, in of even more importance than their order that others may the better undernumber, and I was glad to find that a stand the nature of the work of win· fair proportion of the Siamese became ning Japan to Christ. It will be seen soul·winners, especially in the province that heathenism dies hard; that the of Nakawn, where I was assured by bringing of a country to accept the one who had just returned from a visit teachings of Jesus as its guiding princi· to them, "the converts take to evangel- pIe is not a small task. There is nothing istic work as ducks take to water." A whatever in these incidents which curious feature, however, is the way in would at all discourage a Christian' which a Siamese on conversion, at once man, for the battIe is not ours, but the hands in the name of his wife also, Master's. A thoughtful worker says even tho she has never yet heard a again and again to himself, ., Why do word of the Gospel. One good man of the heathen rage 1" In spite of .perse· whom I heard had been so impressed cutions, boycottings, mobs, riots, and with the way in which a certain con- the machinations of bad men and devils, vert enjoyed his new·found faith, that and even the mistakes, the unfaithfulwithout going into details he at once ness of professedly good men, the cause put down his name as a convert, to- of Jesus goes right on conquering the gether with those of his absent wife worl:l. "Our God is marching on." and family. The jubilant convert himself had not yet been bapti7.ed, but I On October 8th, 1893, I dedicated the was told by a Presbyterian missionary church at Komaki. The morning ser· that he had" alreaiIy developed Meth· vices passed off without event, there odist proclivities," bursting out in his being but few present, and of these near· prayers with responses, repetitions, and ly all were Christians. A few Buddhist exclamations, an additional proof, add· lookers-on lingered about the door; but ed my informant, that denominational a crowd of Buddhists gathered in the distinctions were greatly matters of evening in a house they had secured for temperament. the purpose on the opposite side of the street, and as soon as our evening ser· During my stay in Bangkok I have vices began, they began to show signe had the pleasure of intercourse with of life. While Hatanoshin Yamaka was several of the Lord's own people gath- speaking a crowd of them came in, ered from among this nation, and the filled the room and sat down, mixed traveling Christian knows no greater with the Christians and those who did joy. Space will not permit my recall· not oppose us. They frequently inter· ing the pleasant times I spent with rupted hy remarks, questions, and the some, or what I learned from them, but like; but as they could Dot throw Ya·. the opinion was strongly expressed to maka off the track in this way, they tried me by a foreigner that for future work- another pIau. At a preconcerted signal ers we must depend on men brought all arose, caught the lamps and extin- ing and correction. The last I knew he guished them. scattered the oil on the was still in the hands of this priest, worshipers, smashed the lamps, the practically a prisoner for his faith. in windows, the doors, and the front of the Lord Jesus. Nothing is yet known the house, wrenched the clock from of him, or of what the outcome is likely the wall, and broke up the meeting. to be. I could give many similar cases.
There being an insufficient number of The workers in the Methodist Prot- policemen present to control the mob, estant Church desired in the fall of 1894 it was thought best not to try to go on to rent a building in Nagoya for use as again that night. But the police were a chapel or kegisho, in addition to what advised that a meeting would be held they were already using. The section the next night, and that violence must of the city in which they would locate be controlled. The police came, and so was chosen, and a house was finally did the Buddhists, in large numbers. rented of an old man living in the The latter tried to disturb the meeting neighborhood. Of course all business again, but they were completcly out- had to be done through native workers generalled, and we won a victory. of that mission. The contract was Two young men had for a long time drawn, signed and sealed, and the been secretly attending our Christian money paid over. The man was of a services at the Shinsl1iro Church, hiding Buddhist family. The Buddhists heard in a back room in the dark to hear the of his transaction, and came to him to preaching, and quietly withdrawing protest that such a thing was wrong ; thereafter_ They had had an earnest but the owner took the ground that desire to know the truth, and our work- under the Constitution he had the right, ers there had taught them. Finally the as a free man, to rent his house for any young men asked me to baptize them. lawful purpose to any law-abiding man This could not be dOlle publicly because or set of men. Then the persecution '
of the opposition of their friends. I began. These Buddhist opponents held talked with them carefully upon the a consultation meeting in the temple, to possible consequences of their receiving which they called the owner, and there baptism, and warned them that they argued, threatened him, and used all would have to meet persecution. They efforts except force to compel the man declared that they did not fear on ac- to yield, but to no purpose. He held count of possible persecution, but were that the renting of his house for Chris- prepa.red to receive it, even to the dea.th tian. purposes was within. the class of if necessary, but thought that they allowable actions under the constitution, should be permitted to receive Christian and he would not yield. Then stronger baptism. I baptized them one night measures were adopted. A house op· last fall in the hotel where I was stay- posite his was secured by the Buddhists, ing. The next day they announced to and an indignation meeting held of the their respective families that they had people of the neighborhood to decide become Christians indeed, and had set- what should be done. It was proposed tled the matter by receiving Christiau to deport the old man, but some thought baptism. Both were subjected to per- this a wrong thing to do, as it would be secution, in one case severe. The fa- a mean thing on their part to inflict such ther of this young man was unrelenting, a man on any community. Another vicious. He demanded that the son proposed that they get a large kettle recant at once and come back to the and soak him or boil him in it till he family faith. Threats were made, dif- would do as he ought, and follow the ferent forms of penalty were imposed, dictates of their pure and holy religion.
and finally the father brought the son This meeting was continued for some to Nagoya and put him in the hands of time, and served as a sort of boycott of a noted radical Buddhist priest for train- the owner from all around him. Finally 80shi (a class of ruffians hired to intimi- hood, capable of being manipulated by date by forceful measures) were hired the priests, the Christians lost all they for the purpose of systematically perse- had expended, and were compelled to cuting the old man till he should yield. give up the project for the time. Tbe These 808hi followed the old man, search- battle has to be won on some lines inch ing his house with clubs in hand, so that by inch. he was obliged to hide with his friends in the country for safety. But he did Makoto Komatsubara ("Little Pine not yield, and this method of pressure Woods)" and his wife, Tazura, became falling to accomplish what the priest Christians in the city of Shizurka some wanted, they approached the old man's ten years ago, and joined the Canada wife and compelled her family to say Methodist Church. In youth this man that if he did not repent and take the had been a heavy drinker, and had sufhouse back from the Christians they fered a heavy penalty of his sin. Faith would take from him the wife with in Christ changed him, and he became whom he had lived for years. the moth- a temperate man. His family and er of his children, the companion of his friends, however, did not favor his beyouth. The storm grew so thick that coming a Christian. Better go on the old man could stand it no longer. drinking and die Ii drunkard than have He could endure personal inconvenience, anything to do with Yasu Kyo. He even ;mlIering ; but to lose his wife was recently removed with wife and chilmore than he could bear, and the oppo- dren to Nagoya, and united by letter nents, through her friends, had control with our Second Methodist Church. of the situation. He finally came back The intense summer heat has caused to the missionary weeping, threw down him to become ill, and his ailment has the money and asked for the contract. taken the form of brain disease, resultbegging them to ask no questions for ing in insanity. I have watched the conscience' sake. The Christians took poor man with intense pity. Perfectly the m(mey, gave up the house, and harmless in action and physically well, marked the strength and the methods he is a strong ,man paying the price of of the Buddhists. sinful pleasure. The older brother and older sister of this man have, since his In Nagoya, a city of 200,000 people, all sickness, turned against him because of burying grounds are connected with his profession of Christianity. They the templcs, of which there are some declared that unless he would openly 2000 Buddhist with some 5000 priests. renounce his faith in Christ they would exclusive of Shinto temples and priests. not own him as a brother. In Japan Up to the present, when a Christian dies an older brother has certain rights and he must be buried in a potter's field, a power over a younger. They greatly answamp Bome distance from the city, in noyed him. but neither he nor his wife which only beggaIs were formerly would yield to their demands. The buried. Though a man may be a legal brother became furious, said the whole owner of a lot in a Buddhist burying· cause of trouble was Christianity. ground, he cannot be buried there ex- When he could no longer afflict the sick cept as a Buddhist. The mother and man because of his insanity, they, the child of our devoted pastor, Brother H. brother and sister, violently persecuted Yamaka, a graduate of Drew Theologi- his wife. She was compelled to cease cal Seminary. together with all Chris- attending church, tho she stoutly detians dying here, have had to be buried clared her faith in Jesus. She conin that swamp. At one time the Chris- tinued for some time to send the chiltians purchased a plot of ground for a dren to our Sunday-school, but finally burial·place ; but as it requires the con- the opposition became BO great that she sent of three different parties, one of could not even do this without danger, which is the people of the neighbor- P FUHKIEN PROVINCE o CHINA FORMOSA Copyright, 1895, by Hun & EATON, New York.
From" Missions and Missionary Society of the Methodist Epis copal Church." and the children ceased to come. I province. Archdeacon Wolfe has won called to see her recently, but the house distinction; the two Drs. Baldwin, one she had occupied was vacant. Her of the A. B. C. F. M. and one of the troubles had multiplied, her husband Methodist Board, together with Dr.
probably hopelessly insane and in the Maclay and Bishop Wiley, were found- hospital for confihement and treatment, ers and leaders here. The hospital and her little child had died, and the perse- general medical work of the two Amer- cution for Christ's sake had become so ican Missions are of great value.
strong, that she had been compelled to take the remaining children and go back to her father's house for shelter Notes from the Field.
and protection. Her husband's family CHINA.-Rev. W. M. Hayf's, writing has money enough to care for her and from Tungchow, near Chefoo, China, the husband well, but she can get none under date October 7th, 1895, says: without renouncing her faith in Christ. .. The events of the past five months Three days ago I saw Mr. Komatsubara, are almost the reverse of what nearly a harmless lunatic, his family driven everybody expected and predicted last away, and he in the hands of strangers. spring, and should I have written of the outlook at that time, it would only October 1, 1895.
have been another confirmation of THE MAP OF FOOCHow PROVINCE.- Paul's conclusion that .. prophecies shall fail." Progress seemed imminent The map which we present of the Foo- last spring, but the intervention of Rus· chow Province,or Fukien Province more sia, France, and Germany convinced precisely, will be of interest and use to all China that change was not yet a neceswho desire to locate the scenes of the sity. The Conservatives are in power massacre of last summer, and the sta· again, anti-foreigners are being pro· tions where missions of the Methodist moted to office, and many of the people Episcopal Mission and others are at are trying to persuade themselves that work. It is placed at our service China beat Japan, after all. The streets by the courtesy of the publishers of of this city last week were placarded Missions and Missionary Society of with immense pictures presenting the the Methodist Episcopal Church, for high dignitaries of China meting out which work it was specially drawn, justice to the despised Trojan. aud which is nea.rly ready for market.
It consists of three volumes, an exten- BURMA.-Mr. F. D. Phinney, Super- sion by Rev. J. T. Gracey of the original Intendent of the American Baptist Mis- work by Dr. J. M. Reid. The new vol- sion Press, Rangoon, Burma, in a per· umes comprise the history of seventeen sonal note under date of September 1st, years of work, 1878-94, not in the orig- 1895, says: .. There is a turning tow- inal publication, and cover a period of ard Christianity on the part of the Bur- astonishing development of the Society mans that is as pleasing as it is surpris- and its work, both at home and abroad. ing. There have never been as many Hunt & Eaton, 150 Fifth Avenue, are baptisms right along as ~here are now.
the publishers, and will receive orders It is the custom of the Burman church for this work at once. to have the ordinance of baptism ad· The American Board, the Church of ministered at the close of the morn- England Missionary Society, and the ing preaching service, between that zenana mission of the latter church all and the Sunday-school. These bap- have Buccessful missions in this prov- tismal services come with marked fre- ince, which contains a population of quency, and the candidates are nearly 15,000,000. Some eminent names are aU adult converts from Buddhism, one found in the list of missionaries of this here and another there in the villages in this district who come in to the That is something which is almost un- city to join a church. The reports are known in Burma. coming from a.ll over the field that the way in which the Burmans listen is Every American, irrespective of re- different from all the past. They have ligious preferences, must have intense more of interest, read and talk more in- interest in the missionary force in East- telligentlyand with less of bigotry, and ern Turkey, and every Christian should' more priests are throwing off the yel- be given much to prayer for the preser- low robes than ever before. You want- vation of the lives of such noble men ed to have me tell you what the people and women in peril. We say in peril, are doing and what they are thinking not because they will probably be delib- about, and I have told you. Fifty vil- erately assaulted, but because the Sul- lages in a lump on the frontier, the most tan is unable to keep the police of the degraded of the peoples of the country, empire if he WOUld, and the fleets of the are asking for teachers and preachers. Dardanelles are paralyzed because Eu- The Roman Catholics have tried their ropean Christian powers are incompe- best to get teachers into these villages, tent, and we use the word deliberately. but have been told most emphatically They are incompetent to devise a way that they will have Baptist teachers or out of the imbroglio that will not in- none. The Catholic villages in this part vol ve their flying at each other's throats. of the country are not creditable to The ~ame of empire from the Grecian the name of Christianity. Our native ArchIpelago to the North Pacific shore churches are doing more for themselves line is the most extended known in cen- than ever before, and home and foreign turies, and it is pretty plain that if the mission circles and societies are being kingdom of Christ IS advanced it will formed among them, and are doing be because political powers as lIsual good work. A few years ago a mis- will be driven along the paths of the sionary party, a Karen preacher and his Divine purpose despite the lack of moral family, were going over into Northern principle or any other principle domi- Siam, and when past the frontier were nating them. .. It is not by might nor simply blotted off the face of the by power" that Christ's kingdom makes earth. It was many months before a advance. trace of them could be found. They had been murdered for their money, and It is a matter of regret that we find buried. The local missionary society our space too limited to present a be- (Karen) which had sent them out called coming review of several timely books for volunteers to take up the work to which will help on the kingdom of our which they had been sent, and had to Lord. Revell Company have just issued choose between the volunteers, for there .. Persian Life and Customs," by S. G. 'were more volunteers than could be Wilson, the best book of general infor- sent. mation on the subject within our knowl- edge. It is lucid in style. comprehen- U This morning I witnessed the bap- sive in the ran&,e of topics, and as tism of two pupils in our Baptist col- entertaining as it IS instructive. .. From lege here. The spiritual tone of the far rormosa," by Missionary Mackay, college is decidedly good, and the pro- is a revelation of that island by the most portion of professing Christians in the eminent authorities, living or dead, on upper classes probably above that in things Formosan as a whole. .. Ram- some American colleges. This is Chris- bles in Japan," by Canon Tristram, is tian education for a certainty. We are an entertaining account of what this not troubled here, as are the missionaries eminent divine saw and learned in the among the Hindus of India, with organ- land of the Rising Sun, with the aid of ized opposition to bazaar preaching on his daughter, a resident missionary of the part of those who have received all some years in that land. He seeks to their education in mission schools. compare Buddhism of Japan with that of Ceylon and of China. All these books are well illustrated.
A. better book to study at the begin- ning of the NewYear, to get a forceful. fresh and inspiring survey of the past and outlook for the future, than Rev. Dr. D. L. Leonard's" A Hundred Years of Mis~ions" (Funk & Wagnalls Com- pany) it would be difficult to name. It is a thoughtful and unique treatise worthy of permanent place in mission- ary literature.
FmLD OF MON1.'HLY SURVEf"
I1I.-FIELD OF MONTHLY SURVEY.
BY D. L. PIERSON.
Monthly Topios for 1896.* Russia and the Greek Church. Abyssinia and Eastern Sects. JANUARY. NOVEMBER. Outlook. General Survey. South America. The Mormons. FEBRUARY. Young People's Work.
The Chinese Empire.t DECEMBER. Confucianism and Taoism. Formosa. Syria and Palestine. The Opium Traffic. The Jews. Educational Work. MARCH. NOTES HERE AND THERE. Mexico. Central America.. There is at present a state of unrest West Indies. throughout the whole world, Christian City Missions. and heathen, civilized and savage. .. Wars and rumors of wars," outrages, APRIL. financial instability, and in many cases the half·suppressed mutterings of a India, Burma, and Ceylon. general anarchy are disturbing the Hinduism, etc. peace and prosperity of nations the Woman's Work for Woman. world over.
MAY. In the United States the financial crisis is scarcely over, the missionary Siam and the Laos. boards are still weighed down with a Malaysia. heavy load of deht, and the Christian Buddhism. church-members are slow to respond to Unoccupied Fields. their earnest appeals. Strikes and gen- eral friction between labor and capital JUNE. are every-day occurrences. Utah, just entering upon statehood, seems to many Africa t and Madagascar. to bring forehodings of an unhallowed haven for polygamists and those of The Freedmen in America. loose moral principles. Many fear The Slave Trade. strained relations with England he- cause of the Venezuelan difficulty and JULY. the Alaskan boundary dispute. All these things affect missions directly or The Islands of the Sea.§ indirectly. The mission boards are en- Circumpolar Missions.~ deavoring to hold their ground, tho North American Indians. lacking sufficient support; in some cases The Liquor Traffic. there is even an advance to new terri- tory. Foreign missionary rallies arc AUGUST. awakening many slumbering Christians, and are scattering information as to Papal Europe. the great work of God in the world's Roman Catholicism. evangelization. Bihle Work. Dr. Ebenezer Erskine says, in regard SEPTEMBER. to the future of the negro, that four facts have come to be regarded as quite Japan. settled : "1. That the negro is here to Korea. stay, and that his future home is to be Shintoism. Medical Missions. Chinese and Japanese in the United States.
OCTOBER.
Mohammedan Lands, and Relig- ion.
* It is our intention to have one or more arti- cles on these subjects, in the months to which they are assigned, together with references to other articles in previous number.. Those desiring to contribute are requestsd to h~ve their article in our hands two months previous to the month to which their subject is assigned.
t Including Tibet. t Except North Africa and Egypt, which are assigned to October.
§ Including Australasia.
,I Alaska, Greenland, Labrador, etc.
,. Turkey, Greece, Arabia, Persia, North Afri- ca, and Egypt. chiefly in the Southern States, all plans hold the government, of which they for his transportation to other countries have for a. time gained the upper hand. being regarded as impracticable. 2. Should they succeed, we may hope that That the negro is capable of improve- the last closed door of the Neglected ment. He may be educated and Chris- Continent will be opened to the Gospel. tianized. 3. That the negroes are im- Venezuela is in difficulty with England proving in their worldly circumstances; and Peru, and other republics are by that many of them are becoming land- no means at rest. owners; that others are entering into business, or becoming mechanics or The whole civilized world is stirred tradesmen. 4. That the negroes as a with indignation and horror at the class have not improved in morals as massacre of thousands of Christians in they have in their material condition. Asia Minor. Rumors of a partition of To save this race and to save the nation Turkey, the deposition of the Sultan, from their demoralizing influence, Chris- etc., are occasionally heard; but while tians of all Evangelical denominations it seems that order is being gradually must take hold of the work of their restored in the disturbed districts, the Christianization and the moral and in- solution of the Armenian problem has dustrial elevation of the race with a by no means been reached_ The Turk strong hand and a firm and persever- and the Kurd have not paid the penalty ing faith. " for their active and passive criminality. and judgment will doubtless descend Less than 250,000 Indians arc now to upon them from heavenly powers if not be found in the United States (exc1usive from earthly. of Alaska). They are scattered through 20 States and 5 Territories, of which As everyone knows, the situation Indian Territory contains the largest iG critical in the extreme. The Mosnumber (71,856) and Texas the fewest lems seem determined upon the de- (290), The Indians are susceptible to struction of the Christians, and only the religious impressions when they can be providence of God and the fear of the protected from contaminating outside results has prevented the massacre of influences. They are willing to be civ- missionaries and all en masse. 'l'he ilized and Christianized; they have limit of Armenian patience seems to at least fair industry and capacity for have been reached, but they are for the self-support. Over 32,000 Indians are most part powerless. The causes of now taxable and self-sustaining citi- their dissatisfactions with Turkish rule zens. These do not include 5 civilized are many and long standing. Besides tribes, numbering 68,371. Educational personal extortion and outrage, the mission work is being carried on among burden of taxes has brought the Arthem by Methodists, Presbyterians, Bap- menians to poverty and famine. A tisl.S, Congregationalists, Episcopalians, Russian officer, Colonel Lazareff,* gives and Friends, in addition to Government some facts relative to the" varied and and independent schools. The missions original" sy~tem of taxation imposed on are situated chiefly in Arizona, Indian Armenia. Here are a few of the as- Territory, Oklahoma, the Dakotas, Mon- S€ssments: tana, Washington, and Nebraska. Interesting and successful work is being 1. An exemption task paid for redone by the Methodists and Church lief from military service, amounting to of England among the tribes in British about $1.50 per year, imposed on every America. member of the family-children, aged and crippled not exempt. If a head South America is for the most part, of a large family is unable to pay the as usual, in a state of unstable equilib- tax, he is punished by arrest and flogrium. Colombia has experienced civil' ging, and his household goods or cow war. Liberalists in Ecuador seek to " Translated in the Literary DigeIJt_ must be sold to satisfy the tax collec- tent recognized leader. There seems, tor. however, little probability of any im- mediate disturbance on a large scale. 2. A tax on the land and crops-from The future is still uncertain; but the $1 to $6 per acre, according to the qual· outcome will doubtless be overruled ity of the land.,. and one eighth of the to the glory of God. We expect a value of the harvest. widened opportunity for the spread of the Gospel as soon as the immediate 3. Everyone having an orchard pays effect of the war-the excitement, ani· about $22 annually. mosity, and general disquiet of the peo- ple-has passed away. 4. Hay tax: $2 for eight loads. 5. For each cottage a tax of $1.50. The Japanese Christians are still 6. For a stable, from $1 to $3. somewhat inclined to break loose from 7. A mal'riage tax of 50 cents on the the guidance of foreign missionaries, and bridegroom. to conduct the evangelistic work without 8. A sheep tax, 20 cents each. outside aid. The missionaries are con- 9. A tax on every male over fourteen vinced that this would be a mistake, as for the maintenance of roads, fortresses, the native Church is not yet estab· and barracks. lished on firm enough doctrinal basis. There are also numberless taxes ou The new treaty opening the empire almost every conceivable occupation more freely to foreign residents is a and on each tree standing in one's lot. great gain, and will doubtless be speed- Besides these there are excise taxes on ily taken advantage of. Japan's danliquor and other articles of consump- ger from infidelity and over self·confitilln. The Kurds are free from nearly dence is great, but the people are not all of these taxes, paying only for one unaware of the benefits of Christianity, third of their sheep and being allowed and the Christians are advancing to forto make their own returns to the asses- eign missionary work in their dependens;)rs. These facts fully expJain the de- cies. A war is threatened with Russia crease in the Armenian population and which it is earnestly hoped will be Armenian emigration. With such a averted, as this would probably be more system, manifestly designed to ruin and injurious to missions than the conflict Bta1"1!6 out tIM Armenians, Turkey hard- with China. ly requires, in order to attain her object, recourse to such additional meth· Siuce the war has ended, the prosods as the late wholesale massacres. pects of missions in Korea have been The years 1894 and 1895 have cer- brightening. The Government is still tainly been most eventful in the history somewhat unsettled, but is friendly to of Ohina. While she has held together missionaries, who are constantly and for more than forty centuries, and has confidently praying for reinforcements by her conservatism defied the modern of workers and greater harvests of ideas of progress and civilization, she souls. The former indifference of the has now lost a part of her territory, and people has given way to a Willingness may be compelled to open her doors to to hear the Gospel, which amounts ill the advance of the heralds of a Chris· Bome cases to eagerness, and large contian civilization. The war with Japan gregations can be gathered without diffihas proven a serious matter to China; culty. Some of the leaders in the Gov- Japan seems on the road to prosperity, ernment have declared their conviction while her neighbor and old enemy is that only as the Christian religion pertorn with riots and even rumblings oi meates the mind of the people can Korea rebellion. The whole empire seems to expect to be lifted out of ber deplorable be honeycombed with secret societies, condition. The king, in an audience which are ready to rise in open rebel- with Bishop Ninde, expressed his gratifilion, massacre the foreigners, and seize cation that so many American missiona· the government had they but a comparies had been sent to Korea to teach and apologize for or to urge the importance to heal his people. New centers are of medical missions. He who is ignobeing occupied by the small mission rant of their claims is either so lacking force on the ground. Japanese Bud- in information as to scarcely belong dhism is beginning to assert itself at to this century, or is so oblivious to the capital, which has been invaded by the sufferings of his fellow·men in a large number of Japanese, and a new heathen lands as to make him beyond Buddhist temple will soon be seen aris- hearing or beneath notice. The teach· ing on the site of an ancient marble er, the preacher, and the healer should pagoda in the center of this city. In conquer heathenism together in the view of the present opportunity, the name of Christ who combined in his missionary force in Korea is lament- work these three spheres of activity. ably small. But while Christians may believe in medical missions, the practical results Work in Formosa was interrupted do not evidence a realization of the for some time by the excitement of the great need for more medical missionpeople at the cession of the island to the aries-not while it remains true that Japanese. Quiet has, however, been in the United States there are 4090 restored, and the work is progressing physicians to every 2,500,000, and in quietly but certainly. We may confi- China only one to the same number. dently hope that before many years the whole island will not only be civilized, The missionary outlook, however but Christianized. The story of the dark and lowering the clouds may seem marvelous transformations here is of in the immediate horizon, is brightthe most intense interest.* bright as the promises of God. It is hoped and believed that the Christian The outlook is bright for Tibet. The world is becoming more aroused to the disagreement between the members of duty, the necessity, and the privilege of the original Tibetan Pioneer Mission is witnessing in the uttermost parts of th" being used by God to set two missions earth. While there are attacks here instead of one watching and praying and there upon missionary purposes and for the opportunity to preach the Gos- policy, there are, on the other hand, pel in this Buddhistic stronghold. The many honored and capable witnesses negotiations between Great Britain and from secular circles who are giving no Tibet give hopes for an open door in uncertain testimony to the value and the near future. need of missionary work. There is a call at home for more men and more One result of the impotence and fail- money, and abroad for new stations ure of the Chinese Government has been and increased facilities for work. that the Dalai Lama, who, contrary to the usual Chinese custom, has been al- The broad facts of the state of the lowed to attain the age of nineteen, has world require to be often placed before claimed for himself the temporal as us, and they utter their pleadings as we well as the spiritual supremacy in his look at them. There is about one own country, and has informed the Christian minister for every 900 persons Chinese minister resident at Lhasa that in Great Britain. and to every 800 in the he owes no allegiance to the emperor. United States; one for every 200,000 in This may have an important influence Japan, one for every 250,000 in Africa, on Tibetan missions, as it has been one for every 300,000 in India, one for greatly owing to Chinese power and every 400,000 in South America, and one authority that Tibet has been hitherto for every '700,000 in China. Are the closed against foreign travelers and forces of the Christian Church wisely teachers. distributed? If all Christians lived for the worid's conversion, great residential There is now little need to either changes would shortly take place.
* Read ." From Far Formosa," by G. L. Mc- :Kay. F. H. Revell, New York, $2.00..
IV.-EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT.
In view of the conflict of statements ism has taken possession of them. The as to the Sunday issues of newspapers men from Bach, from Gossner in Ber- in Japan, from a private letter of Rev. lin, from Hermannsburg, from the Mora.
H. Loomis, for twenty years agent of vians, have rarely been university men."
the American Bible Society at Yoko- Mr. Allan W. Webb writes from hama, dated August 21st, 1895, we make this extract : Geeling. Victoria: "In regard to the publication of •• Within the last ten years the inter- Sunday newspapers in Japan, I am in- est in foreign missions in Australasia formed by one of the staff of the Japan has increased immensely. Prior to that Mail that the Nippon and Yomiuri there were but few of the children of Shimbun issue a paper every day alike; our own land in foreign tlelds. The but the others print an edition Satur- Wesleyan missions in the South Seas were recruited from Australia, but be- yond that the Australian churches had day afternoon or evening, and there is hardly any if any representatives. no issue Monday morning, because Sun- Since then our own sons and daughters day is a day of rest (underscored by Rev. have gone to China, India. Korea, New Mr. Loomis). My informant gives his Hebrides. New Guinea, and Equatorial opinion that this is the custom through- Africa and South Africa, and the enout Japan (as in Tokyo and Yokohama). thusiasm grows instead of diminishing. He also thinks that this has been the course adopted by the publishers of Had the funds of the respective socieach newspaper from the time it was eties been larger, many more would first started" (in these twenty-three have been sent out. The financially years). crippled state of the colonies tells upon missionary enterprises as well as upon others. Yet there are evidences of the fact that our faith in the God of mis- sions is strong enough to face growing The authority of Rev. Mr. Loomis, a responsibilities.
cautious man in all his statements, is " The training home for female for· sufficient; but this from one of the eign missionaries, under the charge of staff of the Japan Mail, the largest Mrs. Warren. has in it at present eight paper in Japan, should settle the ques- or nine young women destined to protion. Virtually the 550 papers and ceed to different parts in the service of periodicals in Japan these twenty-three the churches. years observe the day of rest. .. The Australasian branch of the China Inland Mission has just accepted eight young men candidates to go out in September. " The Ku Cheng massacre awakened Professor Howald Osgood, of Roches- universal grief throughout Australia. ter. promises to say something to our While the secular press was crying out, readers soon on " the electric connection .. Wherefore this waste?" the heroic between a belief in the Bible as the veritable Word of God and a belief in the mother of two of the martyrs (Mrs. duty and success of missions." And Saunders. a resident in Melbourne) was rejoicing in the honor the Saviour had put upon her and her daughters in per- mitting them thus to suffer for His he well remarks that "when a man name. begins to doubt the possibility of foretelling, and the foretelling found in the The Australian Board of Missions has Bible, there is no possible basis for mis- charge of the work of the Church of sions except in a desire to improve the England in Australia and islands admorals of others; but that is not strong jacent. Its last report says: .. One enough to move his purse. If mis- word fittingly describes t1).e work of sions, home and foreign, are the ther- this board-the word progress." A self· denial effort in the year 1894 con- tributed largely to the cheering results mometer of the state of the churches, reported. The most important mission is the New Guinea Mission. In 1891 it it would be a good idea to compare all suffered a serious loss in the death of that has been done by graduates from its pioneer leader, the Rev. Albert tije Qerp}an universities since rational- Maclaren. It has now a staff consist.
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
lng of two ordained ministers and four "During the past five weeks some lay workers, with five South Sea Island five hundred Moors, Jews, and Spanevangelists. The Rev. C. King, M.A., iards have died in Tangier from cholera. its head, appeals for more workers. He The Moslems say that a little man is requires at least half II dozen European riding about on a white horse shooting missionaries aud forty colored teachers. arrows at different people, and those who are wounded suffer from cholera. The BeHenden Ker Mission is devoted Very many of them refuse to take any to the aboriginals of Northern Queens- medicine, saying it is useless, and addland. The Rev. E. R. B. Gribble is at Ing that the followers of Mahomet who its head, assisted by three lay workers die of this sickness are sure to be aud two colored laborers. The success saved." of this mission and the prospect of its extension lead to a pressing of its Oentral Ohina Ohristian Missionary claims: and the aboriginal mission is that on Lake C.)ndah under the Rev. Oouvention. J. H. Stahle. The religious results of this mission are not very striking, but The seventh annual convention of the the Gospel is elevating morally and so- missionaries representing the Disciples cially this degraded people. of Christ in China was held in May last The Melanesian Mission has its own in Nankin. bishop, Dr. Cecil Wilso? In t~is .mission there are 8929 baptIzed ChrIstIans, This society supports work at five of whom 1111 have been confirmed; there are 12,183 persons under instruc- stations, all in the valley of the Yangtion in 122 schools with 381 teachers. tse: Shanghai, Nankin, Wllhu, Chll- The staff consists of the bishop, 10 white clergy and 9 native clergy and Cheo, and Luh-Hoh. 3 European lay workers. In spite of the war, the cause of Christ In addition to these the board carries bas made good progress. At its comon mission work among the Chinese mencement cOUldderable hostility was resident in the Australian colonies. The agents include Mr. Cheok Hong shown toward all foreigners. One of Cheong, an educated and refined gentleman, who has passed through a regular our missionaries, while traveling theological training, and who speaks through the country, was stopped by a English with perfect purity and ease. In addition to Mr. Che3ng there are group of soldiers and rather roughly nine other missionaries to the Chinese. Night schools are vigorously and suc- handled. After debating the propriety cessfully worked in connection with this mission. of throwing him in the river, they finally The Baptists of Australasia have released him. Later, by the efforts of chosen East Bengal as the field of their the officials and the wide circulation of operations. About twelve years ago a revival of missionary interest resulted their proclamations, the people were in the sending forth the first ladies for zenana work, and since then these mis- made to understand that there is more sions have gl'own year by year. There than one foreign country, and that none are over eight millions of people in the district in which they work. South but Japan had rebelled-so the procla- AustraJia has Faridpur, Victoria, Mymensing, New South Wales, Noakha:li, mations read. Tasmania, assisted by South AustralIa, Paboa, and New Zealand, Tippera. Even many of the officials bave ap- There are twenty-five European la- parently not yet learned that American borers six of them men, the rest wom- and European countries do not pay en, with a full stall' of native assistants. tribute to the .. Son of Heaven" at The work among the Garos has been most successful. Last year 144 were Pekin. Now that peace is declared, baptized. There are now about 350 converts connected with the mis3ions. some are saying that the Americans haeI The Rev. Silas Mead, M.A., and the injured t.he .. great country's" people Rev. W. T. Whitley, M.A., are about to visit this field. in aCapluifnoirsnhima eanntdtheelseEwmhpereer,oranbdadthuai-t as Our correspondent in Tangier, Mo- rected them to put a stop to tbe ravrocco, Rev. N. H. Patrick, writes: ages of the Japanese; that the Amed- cans were unable to do so by force of arms, and so had bought them oft' with several hundred millions of dollars.
The ease with which the mandarins have quieted the suspicions of the peo- ple in this district and turned their hos- tility into friendliness is proof that their statements of four years ago and since were false, that they could not control the people and prevent riots. The few instanc.es of ill will since t.he proclamations are the exceptions. One of our number, on visiting an inland The latter during the year provided for 257 in-patients and 86 opium pacity. was seized as a Japanese spy. tients. At the two dispensaries there were seen 4012 new cases and 6512 old The offer by our viceroy of fifty taels ones.
for every Japanese bead made some We have prayed most earnestly that God might overrule this cruel war for people very patriotic. Thll gentleman the furtherance of the Gospel. We believe we are entering upon a new era placed in this unpleasant predicament in the history of mission work in this land. had his passport with him, however, The governor-general, Chang Chihand as soon as the magistrate heard of Tung, has already taken steps to reor- ganize the army of this region on Westthe alIair he took: prompt measures for ern models. lIe is also building a ma- . cadamized road through his capital his release, and caused the informer to (Nankin), and seems determined to in- troduce many improvementR. We trl}st make a public apology. that as the Chinese adopt Western ClV- ilization they may be led to see that There were twenty-one baptisms dur- that which is the source of all that is best in Western civHization is the reing the year, and there are in addition ligion of Jesus.
between twenty and thirty inquirers. E. T. WILLIAMS. NANKIN, CJJINA, May 19, 1895. One old gentleman, sixty-two years The editor owes it to himself and his of age, is a retired official. For many readers to say that the sentiments of years past he has been an earnest seeker Dr. Jessup's article In the December after truth. He read a great many number do not represent his own, as to Buddhist books in search of peace and the fulfilment of prophecies touching hope. but found nothing satisfying un- Israel, etc. til a few days ago he accepted Christ. As this is a Re1JieUl, there is n, manifest A native physician living on a small propriety ill allowing contributors to island in the mouth of the Yang-tse present their own views, even when on Kalng came all the way to Shanghai to minor matters they do not altogether urge one of the missionaries to visit his accord with those of the editor; and home and preach the Gospel there. He this has been the policy pursued, unless was first interested in Christianity by the divergence touches fundamental reading a copy of "Martin's Evi- truths. But while giving Dr. Jessup thus full dences, .. and was led to the present step opportunity to represent his own opinby reading in the Ohung-Si-Kiao.HlIJui, ions untrammeled, the editor cannot for- Pao an account of the conversion of the bear to add at least a demurrer. This leader of a vegetarian sect on the neigh- method of dealing with prediction, in boring island of Tsung·mlng. our opinion, makes havoc of all proph- A certain Mrs. Liu, of Shanghai, was ecy. Dr. Jessup seems to us to contraa most violent persecutor of her daugh- dict himself. In one paragraph he ter, who had become a Christian. Last makes Israel only another namefor tlle year she wag taken ill, and a Bible- ohU'I'ch of God, and on the next page he an refers to the final salvation of Israel, woman, Mrs. Lee, visited her frequently. as a body now maintaining its separaand showed her much kindness. But the thin~ that softened Mrs. Liu's heart tion, etc. Again, he says that if the was seemg the Bible-woman kneel on prophecies referring to His kingship are her dirty floor and pray for her. Her to be taken literally, then, as •• Messiah was to be an earthly king, He hall never prejndice being removed, it was not come." Of course He has never yet long before she had followed her daugh- ter into the church. A more curious case is that of Miss Young, who was said to be possessed of a devil. She was a terror to the whole nei.ghborhood. I shall not attempt to explain her con- dition, as Dr. Nevius's book, just pub· lished, goes very thoroughly into the wlwle question. It is sutlicient to say that the Chinese all regard it as devil possession. This girl was chained itl her hDme; yet the fil'st time she heard the message of the Gospel she was won- derfully calmed, and restored to her normal condition. She is now sitting at the feet of Jesus, "clothed and in her right mind," and has also led her younger sistm; to Christ. These are some of the triumphs ot the Gospel during the past year. En- couraging reports were also received from the boarding-school and the hos- pital. _…. come as an earthly king-that is re- of the secretaries, that always form the served for His second coming. staple of the diet, did not fall behind the usual standard of merit. The No- For ourselves we have found it abso- vember MiBsiona;ry He'l'ald is always a lutely necessary to observe the distinc- thesaurus of missionary literature-a tion Paul makes between" Jew, Gentile, volume in itself. and Ohurch of God," which are never confused in the New Testament; and Dr. Palmer's report on finance, of to observe also the distinction between course, awakened great interest, urging the offices of propbet and priest, what that before March 1st, 1896, the $115,- Christ fulfils from His incarnation to 000 debt with which the fiscal year His second advent; and the kingly began be wiped out-a pity, indeed, which He is to fulfil in the glory of His that such a grand board should be half second coming. paralyzed by a debt that equals one fifth of the annual appropriation to its Probably some of our readers will be work! stirred up to present more fully the counter argument under the impulse of A " Disciples Union of the Order of Dr. Jessup's paper. the Double Cross" is now organized-a movement for world-wide medical mis- The Maroh of Events. sions. The name is taken from a device representing two crosses, one overlying The eighty-sixth annual meeting of the other, and the extremities of which the A. B. C. F. M.. in Brooklyn, in Oc- bear respectively the initials of the tober, under presidency of the vener- words" body" and" soul." able and beloved Dr. Storrs, was, of course, largely attended. The presi- This new International Order has dent announced a conditional gift of been recently established by Dr. George $25,000 from a nameless giver for the D. Dowkontt, of New York, and condebt, and thns early a stimulus was sists of four guilds: the Physicians', given to the subscriptions for this ob- Students', Nurses,' and Helpers' guilds. ject. The board mectings have been The purpose is to affiliate all Christian models in their way of interesting and physicians, with those who are studying inspiring missionary gatherings. Tho the art of healing for both body and soul, presence of such men in the chair as and all who are disposed to aid by pray- Dr. Hopkins and Dr. Storrs, the ad- er, work, or gifts, in a great internadresses and papers of such masters of tional association. F. G. Strickland, missions as Drs. Anderson and Clark of Hiram, 0., is corresponding secreand Smith and Treat and Means, and tary, and will reply "to any inquiries. the noble addresses of the fOIemost mis· We have thus one more organization to sionaries from the great fields of the be known as the D. U. O. D. C., the world, have combined to make these oc- main end of which is to send medical casions like the annual gatheriugs of missions to the foreign field. the tribes in the Holy City in ancient times. Since the Andover controversies The map and chart used in our Nocame in to interrupt the harmony, these vember (1895) issue were kindly loaned meetings have never regained their for- by Miss Guinness from her very valuamer prestige and spiritual power, bnt ble book, "The Neglected Continent." they are still a noble contribution to the The book is now so well known that cause of missions. On this occasion Dr. acknowledgment is scarcely necessary. Farnsworth, of Turkey, Dr. Chauncey Goodrich, of North China, and others The Church Missionary Society, like them gave variety and charm to which represents the evangelical porthe meetings; and the splendid papers tion of the Church of England member· ship, gives in its latest report details of of the late C. H. Spurgeon. Anyone world wide operations during the ninety- who Is disposed and qualified to enter sixth year of the society's existence. on this work may communicate with 'fhe total receipts amounted to £272,000. Mr. Duncan at Metlakahtla, Kitchikan, One way in which the increase in the Alaska. missionary force has been effected is by the addition both of honorary missiona- The thirteenth Mohonk Indian conries and of missionaries specially main- ference, again meeting at Mr. Smiley's tained by their own families, or by in- Grand Hotel at Lake Mohonk, had one dividual friends, or by small societies. hundred and fifty guests this year to 'fhese now number one hundred and consider the needs of these much-negfifty-four. In most cases, these con- lected and long.oppressed natives of our tributions to support the donors' " own country. This modest annual confermissionaries" are independent of, and ence is quietly doing untold good in additional to, their regular subscrip- moulding private opinion, public sentitions, and they come chiefly not from ment, and even governmental legislathe wealthy, but from the rank and file tion in behalf of the Indian trioos, and of the society's supporters. helping them upward in their manly struggles toward education and Chris- This, the greatest missionary organI- tianization. The Indian problem is one zation in the world, has impressed us, of the perplexing questions of our day, after much observation of Us methods, demanding the utmost resources of as deservedly outranking all others philanthropy, statesmanship, and Chrisamong all the denominational boards in tian wisdom. The Y. M. C. A. is doing the apostolic character of its methods noble work among them; various eduand spirit. It has a very large num· cational institutions, like those at Carber of missionaries in the field, and yet lisle, Pa., and missionary efforts put keeps out of debt; its prayer services forth in their behalf, have all been are most frequent and fervent, and its greatly owned of God, notwithstanding harmony wonderfully maintained. No the prejudice awakened in the red man reader of the Ohurch Missionary Intel- by political and commercial wrongs. ligencer needs to be told what a power that pamphlet is in its intelligent. advo- These Mohonk conferences gather tocacy of missions, or how pure and ex- gether such men as President Gates of alted is its tone. Amherst, ex-Commissioner Morgan, Commissioner Browning, Superinten- Annette Island, Alaska, given to dent Hallman, General Whittlesey, William Duncan for his New Metla- Herbert Welsh, Dr. Riggs of Santee, kahtla by the United States, is now in· Captain Pratt of Carlisle, ex·Senator volved in the boundary disputes, as was Dawes (author of the Dawes Bill, stated in our previous issue. providing for lands in severalty), Gen- eral O. O. Howard, Dr. Sheldon Jack- There is great need of a fully qualified son of Alaska, Commissioner Harris, medical man, who should be married, Superintendent Skinner-in fact, the and who with his wife would be willing best counsellors on the Indian question heartily to throw themselves into the which the country can provide; and a evangelistic work of that most interest· few full-blooded Indians add a practical ing mission. Mr. J. D. Bluett, who proof of what can be done by education from 1884-94 was associated with Mr. and piety in making the red man a rep- Duncan as medical missionary, was with resentative citizen and Christian. great regret obliged to go back to England. There need be no difficulty as to —, stipend if a suitable man can be found. An American would be preferable. Mr. The Zenana Bible and Medical Mission. Duncan's views aro identical with those At the annual meeting, at London, Eng., in April, under the presidencyof Lord Kinnaird, a most encour- is a serious blow to our work. This republlc. said to be the most advanced aging account was given of tile year's in Central America, seems in religious liberty to be putting the clock backoperations. Progress and blessing were ward. The Central American Mission has agents in the interior, some learnmanifest in every part, while fresh ing the language, others doing good work. openings were arising all round. "Surrounding republics are in a de- The Rev_ A. R. Cavalier gave a brief plorable spiritual condition. Fields abstract of the report. The medical ready for the seed, but very few to work at Benares, Lucknow, and Patna sow. Why this part of the continent Las grown wonderfully. Baptisms has been so long neglected by the Protare reported from many stations, while estant churches of the States is a questhe government inspectors report most tion often asked by visitors from Eusatisfactorily of the educational work. rope and other parts.
Mr. W. T. Paton's financial state- "In connection with the Jamaica Baptist Missionary Society we are seek· ment showed that the society has now ing to give the Gospel to the people in reached an annual income of £20,000 ; this place and along the railroad, as with twenty-four new missionaries, fur- also the coast. At Bocas del 'I'oro we ther funds are now required. have a mission, also the lH.ethodist Free Church. But thenatives are in igno- The Dean of Norwich moved a reso- rance of the pure Gospel of Christ. Oh, lution of thankfulness for the extension that some Elijah would arouse the of the work, which was seconded by churches in the States to nriae and take Mrs. NikambC, a native of Bombay. possession of these countries I A more needy or promising field cannot be The Rev. G. H. C. Macgregor moved found. B,r all means prevent overlapa resolution in favor of extending the ping at thIS time of day. The field is village mission work in India, and Miss too large, time too precious for this to Fallon, from Allahabad, sp()ke from be continued. Our business is to cover personal experience regarding the value the field as speedily as possible_ Alas I of such work and the need to extend it there is still a tendency when new among India's villages. ground is broken to rush in. All the churches would do well to pause before .Joshua Heath Sobey, Baptist mis- Paul's words: "Not where Christ was IIlready named, not building upon ansionary, writes from Port Limon, Costa other man's foundation. They shall see where no tidings of Him come. And Rica, C. A., September 22d, 1895 : they who have not heard shall under- stand." .. We have been in this country now over seven years. For some years I In her annual address to the World's was the only Protestant missionary in the country. Woman's Christian Temperance Union, .. Our work has been chiefly among in London, June 19th, Miss Frances E. the English-speaking. My helper. Rev. J. Hayter. is learning the Hpanish with Willard spoke in pari as follows: a view to work among the natives. Before either the British or American Bi- " The missionary societies are our ba· ble societies had agents in this country sis of hope, and will be for many years to we were privileged to circulate thou- come. There are 280 of these associasands of copies of the Scriptures, both tions with 9000 missionaries from for· in Spanish and English. eign lands, and native preachers and teachers to the number of 55,000. Four- " The British and Foreign Bible So- teen million dollars are annually inciety kindly responded to our appeal. vested in missionary work, and in round The bishop and priests don't like the numbers 3,000,000 of human beings are Bible, and do their utmost to keep the directly associated with these missions people from possessing a Cl'py. 'Vhen either as members or close friends. possible they burn the book. In places The Scriptures have been translated where we have labored for years, and into 220 languages spoken by Dlnc with some degree of success, the bishop tenths of the human race, and 160,000,- threatens to build a Roman Catholic 000 copies of the Bible have been circuchurch in every such place. Four are lated sin(',{l this century begsn. Four already ordered, so you see we have fifths of the Continent of Africa are alprovoked them to works. A system ready under European control. Forty which produces results such as we see compels to the conclusion that the papal church needs the Gospel of Christ as much as the so-called heathen. One great need with us is suitable places to conduct worship in. The government l1as prohibited open-air services. This missionary societies, 700 foreign mis- the same stupid, God-dishonoring thing sionaries, and 7000 native preachers are as of old, when the people of Lystra deat work, and about 1,000,000 of the clared that the gods "had come down population are already under Christian in the likeness of men. " As the bishop passed through Pungo Andongo, a king influences . ft'Om the interior came to open up trade; .. The opening of China and the in- so he arranged a cot in his own room for the repose of his majesty. Next dependence of Korea are events of great day the king said to Mr. Shields, the significance in the work we have be- missionary: "I heard in my own counfore us. Japan has risen like a star try of the bishop with the long beard. from the horizon toward the zenith He is not a man at all ; he is a god come among modern nations. Her Red down to men. Last night when he Cross Society and the army order in- came into the bedroom I saw him take viting the missiollaries to furnish every off Ws head (wig) and lay it down by soldier with a copy of the New Testa- his bed, and yet he had a head same as ment are indications that the Japanese before. I was scared nearly to death, are not lovers of war, but may_ be ex- and trembled all over. If he had pected to combine with the Western touched me then I would have died. powers, so much admired by the Island He is the god that piled up these great Kingdom of the East, to substitute ar- bitration for the sword. .. The least-known country of the world has been Thibet, but by a new treaty with Great Britain through her Indian Empire, the first open treatyport has been established beyond the border of that mysterious realm, whence the Mahatma will soon vanish under Pungo mountains. If I could have got the light of Christian civilization. gut of the room I would have run for my life, but the god was between me " A young Englishwoman, a physi- and the door, and I couldn't get out. cian, has been escorted from India to When I go home to my people I will Afghanistan by a special embassy from tell them that I saw a god, and came the Ameer, and has made an impres- near to the end of my life." He could sion so favorable by her ministrations not be induced to risk his life in that among the women of the court, that room again. there is every reason to believe that she will be followed by others of her class, There is a tree of death in Java. and that mountain kingdom will come The natives call it the Kali Mujah. Its into touch with the electric shock of breath would kill birds and even huthe new century. man beings. One day when Rev. E. S. Ufford was chasing a bird of paradise, "This heritage of ours, the planet he noticed that it dropped suddenly to earth, has now been practically explor- the ground, under a tree. He examed in every nook and corner, and every ined the tree, and began himself to feel place will soon be so near to every strangely, as the odors from its leaves other place that communication can be began to be inhaled by him. His head had from the centers of civilization to swam, and ringing sounds came to his the circumference. The darkest, sad- ears as though he were being chlorodest spot, the' open sore of the world.' formed. He hastened away from it, is the Turkish Empire, from which but procured a specimen and sent it to happily many branches have alreadl America, which, it is said, is the first been knocked off, and others are practi- one transplanted in our soil. .. What cally sure to be-first of all hapless Ar- a striking illustration this is of the tree menia and Macedonia. Whatever evil of death, which has been planted in our tends to its own cure heaps up its own fair America by the distiller I It has retribution-prophesies its own remedy; leaves for the blighting of the nations. the blood of the Armenians revealed I see the young, the middle-aged, the the wound. The sick man of Con- old, chasing the birds of pleasure, and stantinople will find its territory closing closely round him, his maligned power will recoil upon himself, and Christian education and civilization may be trusted to lift even the Turk, the most malevolent member of our great family circle, to the level of decencv and afterward decorum among the nations of the earth. "
Bishop TaylorarraJgns heathenism as then falling down beneath the dark shadow of this baleful tree, to die there, victims to the treachery of a few. Mrs.
never to rise again. Would that we Stewart (wife of Rev. Mr. Stewart, who was killed), with her children and maid, might lay the ax at the root of this were up the mountains, where my daughtree !" ters and their friends usually spend the l!ummer, and I suppose the maid and Among the victims of the Chinese some of the children have escaped. I think, from what I know, they were massacres were the Misses Saunders, most likely attacked at night."
and their mother shows the martyr " The elder Miss Saunders found her medical knowledge very useful. She spirit in rejoicing to be accounted studied further in China under Dr.
worthy to suffer in giving them up to Gregory, a medical missionary. From death for the Lord's sake. Her con- eight to twelve daily she received pa- tients, dressed their limbs, and preversation about it is beautifully saintly. scribed for them. Then after lunch she A few facts about these heroic daugh- went out with Miss Elsie Marshall, a ters may interest our readers : friend, who used to preach, and my daughter to prescribe for the listeners. They were born at Brighton, Eng- By this means they got hold of the peoland. At the time of their confirmation ple. Then they always took a Biblp- they began to seek a field to work for woman with them, because she had the Lord. Mr. Beauchamp and Mr. more ready command of the language, Hudson Taylor fired their hearts with and the Chinese trusted her more, and the stories of the woes and wants of the so they worked from day to day."
heathen, and they both decided to dedi- This elder daughter passed her second cate their lives to this work of missions. examination in the language last May, In 1892 they got the chance they had after being out fifteen months. The been waiting for, and were accepted as younger daughter passed her first ex- workers if they would first qualify amination last Easter, and was prepar- themselves by some additional study. ing for the other. The elder was This they consented to. The eldest twenty-four and the younger two years daughter spent six months in the Mel- her junior. Great success has attended bourne Hospital gaining medical knowl- the work of the Christians in China.
edge, which has been invaluable to her. At this particular place, Kucheng, there Then they got training in theology. On are five hundred Christians. Mr. Stew- October 16th, 1893, they left Sydney for art baptized eighty last time he held a China. Their home has been at Ku- baptismal service. It is a glorious work.
cheng. Of course little is known yet Miss Gordon worked with the Misses of the actual massacre, but something S':mnders, and shared their fate. She of the state of affairs prior to the event. should have been away during the mas- Those Vegetarians, the avowed enemies sacre, July and August being the holito law and order, have been causing day months. Mrs. Saunders'S daughmuch trouble. They are the rabble, the ters hoped to come home on furlough, scum of society, the nihilists of China. but had dedicated themselves to their The morning papers stated that they work. Indeed, if the mother could acted under the direction of the man- have sold her property she would darin, but these ladies have testified have gone herself, aud has not given that the mandarin was very kind to up the idea of going even now_ She them, and promised to protect them. declares she would go to-morrow if " May not the seeming kindness, and she could dispose of her property. the assistance in their murder, be just Mrs. Saunders frequently referred to another instance of the duplicity of the the "glorious deaths" of the victims, Chinese character?" was the question anti counts them" privileged to die for put to the mother. the Lord." She says: "I do not think " The duplicity of the Chinese char- of their bodies. I think of them in acter is no worse than the duplicity of heaven. If I had two other daughters some Christians' character," she replied I would send them to follow in the footwarmly. "I stand up for the Chinese. steps of their sisters," was her noble at- They are not to be judged by the work testation. One of the last sentences of their rabble any more than we should penned by Miss Lizzie Saunders to her if the strikers had perpetrated outrages. mother was as follows: The respectable Chinese are a fine peo- " Lord Jesus, Refiner and Purifier of ple, and I exonerate them_ My daugh- souls, cleanse and make holy for Thyters and their friends had onl,t returned self; and in the trial of faith which is home, after going away tIll it was more preciou8 than gold which perish- thought safe to return, and bave fallen eth, we can remember that He said, ' If it be possible, let this cup pass from Me.' nothing except to indoctrinate Korean But it was not possible. If it had youth in a new and composite faith in been possible where would all those which Buddhism, Shintoism, and fraghosts be that will rejoice because their ments of other beliefs and unbeliefs are robes are washed white in the blood of heterogeneously mingled, the Koreans the Lamb? They could not be in glory would be as well off without such teachshouting Hallelujah to the Lamb that ing. Christian missionaries, like Dr. once was slain, and if the cup could Baird and his fellow-workers, can at pass from our lips we would go empty- least give to Korea a positive and defihanded to the gate of heaven. We nite gospel of salvation. The missionwould never know the joy of living ary in that country is hedged about alone with Jesus. He is unspeakably with peculiar difficulties, no doubt, but precious. He comes so near. I love this is nothing new. We have only to Him so. He draws one with cords of study the acts of the Apostles to see all love that never fail, never break, never the hindrances of modern missions long hurt. " ago exemplified. It will never be easy work to convert men from sin to God, Anyone seeing the comfortable home but the salvation of a single soul is the young ladies abandoned when they priceless in God's sight. left" The Willows" to labor in China would know that only devotion to their A very prominent and discriminating work would induce them to make the change. Both were beautiful girls. The elder was an excellent pianist, and both were well fitted to shine in society, and had every inducement to give themselves up to a life of pleasure.
They chose differently.
friend of missions writes: About Korean Missions.-Rev. Mr. "I have been reading Henry Nor- Baird, of Fusan, says the new Bud- man's' People and Politics in the Far dhism of Japan takes all it can from East. ' It is very brilliant and instruc- Christianity and other sources to arm tive, but of course from the point of view of a ' Britisher ' and a club man; itself with new aggressive and propa- and his criticisms of missions and mis- gandist methods. Emissaries, of the sionaries are ignorant, prejudiced, and new Buddhist creed in Japan are visit- untrue. I will just indicate the pages ing the old Buddhist monasteries in on which they are found, as others may want to turn to them and refute them- Korea, endeavoring to persuade, them I saw in the Outlook a protest against to adopt the m~thods in use in their own them-pages 280, 281, 282-304, 305, 306, country, and offering to take Korean 307, 308. " He quotes the phrase as applied to youth thither to be educated. 'fhese them, 'ignorant declaimers in bad Chioffers have been accepted by some of nese,' and endorses it. 'Protestant mis- the Korean officials, and when the sionary tracts are distributed bearing young men are suitably indoctrinated, coarse illustrations of such biblical inci- dents as the swallowing of Jonah by they are to return as propagandists of the whale and the killing of Sisera by that faith among their own people. Dr. Jae1.' 'Moreover, … the Protestant Baird does not think that there is a sin· missionaries have circulated the whole gle Japanese Christian in Fusan, and Bible in Chinese. But they have re- cently seen their error.' 'There are says that the entire Japanese influence some men among the Protestant misthere is anti-Christian and immoral. sionaries of the highest character and Japan owes to the introduction of devotion. . •. These, however, are a Christianity, and of the civilization small minority.' 'At any rate, in con· sidering the future of China, the miswhich owes all its greatness to Chris- sionary influence cannot be counted tianity, its elevation to a new level as a upon for any good.'
nation. Yet, with the perverseness of "This is his conclusion of the whole human depravity, there is a tendency to matter, and with this last he dismisses the subject. It makeE any intelligent blend all religions into new combina- student of missions very indignant, and tions, which certainly never has worked vitiates his testimony on every branch well. If missionaries of Japan can do of information upon which he wrote."
GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE
V.-GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE.
EDITED BY BEV. D. L. LEON.UlD.
Extracts and Translations from Foreign twelve centuries been under the civil· Periodioals. izing power of the Buddhist religion and the Confucian philosophy, while BY REV. C. C. STARBUCK, ANDOVER, the Malagese have been worshiping rude idols, the Tribune pronounces MASS. these a hopelessly savage people, and gives the French carte blanclw to work MADAGASCAR. their will on them! France is very much obliged to it, and as for truth, -The New York Tribune informs no one looks for it ou such a subject, the public that great interest has been in such a quarter. felt in Madagascar since the official and wholesale acceptance of Christian- Our English race has professed Chrisity by its people, and that many have tianity for about thirteen centuries, and looked upon it as a fulfilment of the this has exercised a powerful and adprophecy that a nation shall be born in vancing influence on the softening and a day, and that hopes have been enter- puriflcation of our manners. Yet are tained that lbdagascar might become we to·day in reality anything more an enlightened and progressive power than imperfectly reclaimed barbarians? like Japan,but that her people, not- The Germans have been called Chriswithstanding their acceptance of Chris- tians for something over a thousand tianily, have made no real advance in years, and can anything better be said civilization, and remaining savages of them? A work thnt is laid out for have met the fate which seems reserved eternity may well require an reon to acfor all savage peoples, by falling under complish. Therefore if the Malagese, the dominion of a civilh.ed power_ in a body, were to accept Christianity to-morrow-and that not to please the This is a specimen of the kind of in- Queen, but of their own motion-they formation as to missions that may be would remain less than half civilized expected from one of our great news- for genera.tions yet. The declaration papers. The" official and wholesale" of the Tribune, however, that they acceptance of Christianity consists in have made no real advance in civilizathe more or less nominal adherence of tion, signifies nothing whatever except about 600,OOO-largely computed-out that the editor wishes to please the of a total population of about 3,500,000 French and the unbelievers. It is ut- -that is, of about one sixth. It is terly contradicted by facts. To say true, the real and nominal Christians that the two central provinces-which belong almost exclusively to the ruling almost alone come in question-have races of the Hovas and Betsileos, form- made no real advance in civilization, ing about one third or perhaps one half even though weighed down by slaveI'Y of these. There has, therefore, been and despotism, under the influence of no "official and wholesale" acceptance a thousand schools, and the constant of Christianity even by the dominant proclamation of the Gospel of purity, race. And yet because the barbarous righteousness, and humanity by sev- Hovas and BetsiUios, surrounded and eral thousand preachers, is to contrainfluenced by an equal number of far dict the nature of the human mind, and more barbarous tribes, over whom they the testimony of scores of observing and exercise a little more than nominal au- conscientious men. However, as it is thority, have not, in a single generation, at present of much more consequence themselves remaining half heathen, to please the French than to tell the made Madagascar a highly civilized nation like Japan, that has for some
EXTlU.CTS AND TRANSLATIONS
truth about the Hovas, the Tribune is the J()Urnal des Mi88ionl, referring to wise in its generation. the proposition made by some English CHINA. men-heathen, evidently, not Christians -" Turning from the [Kucheng] massacre to its causes, the question be- -to guard against trouble with China comes a little perplexing. Indeed, It will be wise to suspend our judgment by forbidding Englishmen to go to until the results of the commission are made known. But the theory wbich China as missionaries, very justly reat first found favor in the public press, that this sanguinary plot was due to re- marks, that it is for the governments, ligious fanaticism, will not bear eXlUIlination, and must be dismissed as untena· and not for the missionaries to deterble; for religIous fanaticism in Chinn is conspicuous by its absence. Race mine how far they will concern themfanaticism is strong; contempt and hatred for foreigners are common enough, selves with outrages upon the missionand are almost universal among the cultured gentry and official classes, the aries, but that the question whether li~at£ and the mandarins; but, as the Rev. George Cockburn, of the Church Christian men and women shall proof Scotland Mission at Ichang, now at home, In a letter to the Abe,·dun. Free claim the Gospel throughout the world Pres8, says: "No people are so latitudinarian. You may have any relig- depends on the authority of Christ, and ion, or no religion, and you will offend none of their prejudices. This is the not of human governments. No Christestimony of all who come into close personal contact with the Chinese. tian man could possibly hold himself Anti-foreign and not anti-missionary feeling is the potent influence at work. bound in conscience to obey a law of Gradually, the best-informed organs of opinion in this country are coming to his government forbidding him to go see this-notably, the Times, in an article which appeared on August 13th. abroad as a missionary. It would be Indeed, the indignation meetings held by the foreign communities in various beyond its legitimate competency, It treaty ports in China disprove this theory of religious fanaticism. The entire might as well be proposed to forbid community, as with one voice, has de· clared its conviction that it is the safety, the preaching of Christianity at home. treaty rights, and liberties of foreigners generally that are threatened, and that That will probably be the next step. it is the mandarins who are the offenders and need to be taught that their The old pagan worship of the State a3 wily plots can hoodwink no one. This will grow clearer to the treaty powers supreme in everything is making rapid as they proceed to investigate the situation, and we may safely leave this side progress; but England will probably of the question in the hands of the British Government."-The Oll/ron.ick. be the last country of Christendom to -Professor F. HERMAN KRUGER, in succumb to it, the last in which the reign of AntiChrist will be established.
However this may be, the history or the Church is one long series of ad- vancements won against the will of the State, and she would cease to be the Church if this should cease to be true of her. "We ought to obey God rath· er than men." When Christians cease to be refractory fanatics in the eyes of the world, they are no longer Chris- tians. In everything temporal, they are bound to be submissive and obedi- ent, but when Cresar undertakes to check the very essence of the Church, which is diffusion through the world, he becomes the deputy of the great enemy. .
.. , It is very singular," said a learned Chinese, who believes in Christ, 'that foreign ships came here, and all said they were better than ours. Foreign steamers came, and all are glad to travel in them. Kerosene came over, and all. sal9. "This light is better."
Foreign calico was imported, all round
GENERAL lUSSIONARY INTELLIGENCE
about began to use it for clothes. For- tal.phrases."-Dr. FABER, in Zeit8clwift eign needles were imported, all agree fUr Misswnakunde. that they excel ours; but the foreign doctrine came, and nobody wants it. It -" The Western powers are greatly is very singular.' "-Da'TUJk Mi88io'TUJ- indebted to Japan for having destroyed so many illusions as to China, illusions Blad. kept up for years back by interested foreigners, and which unhappily have – " It appears that it is the sex of not been seen through by their excelthe adult victims of the tragedy of lencies, the foreign ministers. Facts Kucheng, who, except Dr. Stewart, now speak a distinct and very serious were all women, that has particularly language. for such ears as can hear. provoked criticisms in certain circles of The missionary work"-this was writthe United Kingdom. It was also a ten before the outrages in Fuh-klen genuine consolation to learn by testi- and Sze-chuen-H has thus far not been mony of Dr. Gregory, that they died hindered by the war. Since the murinviolate; but the predominance of the der of Mr. Wylie in Manchuria at the feminine element in many of the Eng- beginning, we have nothing of simila'r lish and· American miBBions is none the occurrences. There are even indicaless an abnormal thing. The woman tions that the miBBionaries are beginought to remain the helper of the man ning to be regarded by the mandarins in missions in heathen countries as well with more intelligence and therefore as elsewhere; it matters little whether with more respect than formerly. The as wife or transient inmate of a family; French patronage of the Roman Cathobut to confide to young women quite lic missions may appear to involve alone, whatever their number, an evan- some danger to China, but Protestant gelizing post in a heathen city, appears miBBions cannot appear so, divided as to us decidedly opposed to the part they are among several treaty powers. which Providence has assigned to the The repJesentatives at English and weaker sex. On the other hand, the American diplomacy have foresight and good which ladies, placed in these cir- tact enough to recognize and also to accumstances, accomplish, is undeniable, knowledge the great political signifiand it would be hard to refuse their cance of some 1500 Protestant missionservices for the simple reason that there aries, whose sphere of influence emare too many of them compared with braces the whole empire. A transforthe numbers of the stronger sex in the mation of China is only possible with work. We see then only one way of help of the energetic cooperation of meeting the difficulty, it is that the Christian missions, for nothing else will men go abroad in sufficient numbers to ensure a speedy and extended influence re-establish the equilibrium. God on the masses of the people. May God grant that this may come to pass soon!" direct all to the salvation of the mil- -Revue des Mi8sions Contemporaines. lions. "-Ibid.
-" To me it seems impossible that -In a later letter Dr. FABER remarks: China should flourish again unleBB the "Meanwhile, peace has been concludpalace can be delivered from the gov- ed, but on neither side do the armed ernment of women and eunuchs, and preparations which are going on seem unless polygamy among the mandarins to indicate any hearty confidence in its and men of rank can be abolished. continuance. Perhaps these prepara- Moreover, idolatry and ancestor-wor- tions are In view of the possibility. ship are cancers that consume the mar- that M Hung Chang may be overrow of the land. This is true, notwith- thrown and the old conservative party standing the opposing assertions 01 the come to the helm. At this distance we antagonists of missions, who endeavor can get no trustworthy accounts of to veil their malignity under;sentimen.
EXTRACTS AND TRANSLATION••
what is going on in the palaee. The world is their pat"lsh, for whieh they Emperor is stlll too young not to be are O/flMJJerabl6. We are neither lack- dependent on those around him. The ing in the capacity of religious enthu.
Empress dowager appears to be more siasm and the courage of self-sacrifice, taken up with herself and her own nor are we lacking in the necessary glory than with any thoughts of moth· money in the land; we are lacking erly care for the 400,000,000 of the only in a right organization of our people. Prince Kung also appears evangelical strength for aggressive de- powerless. ,Li Hung Chang has more velopment, and in a recognition of our enemies than formerly. Despite the missionary obligation to the whol6 world, great services which this great states· an obligation to be restrained by no man of China has rendered to his na· patriotic limitation. We Germans come tive country, there now allpears in his late into the mission-field, yet we CO'lm, past policy one portentous failing. He and that with so much the greater has not. known how to train for the weight. May God graciously so order higher range of the public service men it !-Pfarrer KRANZ, in Zeitsclvrijt fU1'
of professional skill and of firmness of MiBBionskunde.
character. There is a lack everywhere -Considering that the Unitas Fra· in the cabinet, among the imperial offi· trum and the Halle missionaries went cials in the provinces, in the army, in out so long ago, it can hardly be said the navy, in the technical schools, of that the Germans come late. What is serviceable, reliable men. II evidently meant is, that German Protes· -" Some days ago I received from a tants are late in coming to a general rec· friend In Hongkong a letter in which ognition of their duty.
he related that a secretary of the Church "If we will bear well in mind the Missionary Society, who was there on vices and irregularities which deformed a tour of inspection, delivered in a the Gentile churches of Paul's time, great hall a discourse on the missionary especially the Corinthian Church, we obligation. In it he portrayed the should be spared many temptations needs of the heathen and the enormous and disappointments. The apostle's greatness of the missionary field, and deep intelligence of human nature, and then said that England and America his knowledge of the natural life, even must do the work commanded by among the Christians, shows itself in Ohrist, 'for what can we expect from the following passage: 'Lest, when I Germany?' We German missionaries come again, my God will humble me feel this criticism bitterly, above all, among YOIl, and that I shall bewail because, measured by what has yet many which have sinned already, and been achie'Ded, there is much truth in have' not repented of the uncleanness, it; but yet is not wholly true. I can· and fornication, and lasciviousness, not give up the hope and the faith that which they have committed.' We mis- we in the future can yet expect grest sionaries out of the Western lands are things from Germany even for mis· too much Inclined to treat the Chinese sions. Only let the land of Luther converts as if they were of our sort.
first rightly recognize her missionary Doubtless we are to regard them a8 our obligation, let the genuine Christians brethren in Christ, but we should Done in Protestant Germany gather them· the less learn from the apostle to dis· selves in a decisive confession of the tinguish children from those of full one Lord, and recognize one another age. For thousands of years the Chi· mutually as brethren, and over against nese Inheritance has been Idolatry and the world as responsible bearers of the worldliness. It is unreasonable then Gospel, then they will soon become to expect of them that strength of faith conscious that not the narrow bounda- and spirituality of view which may rea- ries of Germany, but the whole great 80nably be required of us. It is ex-
GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE
traordinarily difficult for them to reo room, the house being then set on tire. nounce superstition in every form, .. The nurse and Miss Nellie Saunders when everything about them is steeped died endeavoring to protect the chilo in supeNt.ition, not. easy to be open and dren. 8.Jld their bOOies also wale left in honorable, pure and clean, where every· the burning house." By the heroism body is just the opposite. We must of the second girl, Kathleen, the eldest first convince ourselves whether there girl, who was badly wounded, and the is any Christian life at all in them, and three young ones were rescued from thon we must follow the example of the flames, being carried or dragged to the great apostle of the Gentiles, and the house where the American lady, have confidence that this inner life Miss Hartford, was staying. " The will grow, and that God is faithful, younger Miss Saunders was killed out· through whom they have been called side; and the five C. E. Z. M. S. ladies into the fellOWShip of His Son. He were attacked outside their own house, will fulfil His work among the Chi· Miss Codrington alone escaping death. nese, as He fulfilled it among the Co· rinthians. The Gospel is A POWER of Since apparently all Is quiet now at God; and so long as it abides among a Fuh·kien, Mr. Lloyd, Mr. Martin, and congregation, this will also reveal this Miss Boileau return to the mission at power in the renewal of the heart and once, and the two new men appointed to life of every member. "-Dr. ERNEST it, the Revs. F. E. Bland and J. A. Cut· FABER, retranslated from Zeitschrift fillr ten, accompany them. For the present MiMiomkunde. the nine new ladies designated for the work are detained, tho it is hoped they -Pfarrer KRANZ remarks that a man may yet sail this year. who can both speak and read the Chi· nese of cultivated conversation (Kuan· In response chiefly to urgent requests hoa) is no nearer ability to read the from Ireland, where Mr. and Mrs. written classical Chinese (Wenli) than Stewart were so well known. a Xu· a man who can speak and read French clteng Mem01'ial FUnd has been opened. 1Iuently, is able to read Latin, of which Funds have freely come in; but no ap· the French is a profound modification. peal for money has been made or will There are, moreover, three grades of be made. Wenli, the most compressed of which cannQt be read without a commentary. West Indies.-Accordlng to the Bish· The least compressed is that of novels, op of Sierra Leone. who has just reo which seem to be as popular In China turned from the West Indies. good as with us. The middle Wenli is offi· openings exist there for the enlistment cial and commercial. of missionary recruits for Africa from the negro population. An earnest ap· English Notes. peal for Europeans to lead parties of African evangelists into the Temni and BY JAMES DOUGLAS. Mendi countries has been received, and the committee of the Church Mission- OhU1'ch MiBBiona'l'1J &ciety.-Details ary Society would welcome three or have arrived from Fuh·chow of the four men of suitable gifts should they Ku·cheng massacre, which were de· be led to offer themselves for this exlivered in London at mid.day on Satur· tensive work. day, September 14th. Happily the ac· tual murders had not combined with West Africa.-In sequence to what them the nameless horroN suggested we have just written, it is pleasing to by some of the wild telegrams. Mr. find that as the result of a missionary and Mrs. Stewart were not burnt alive, Tccruiting comps.ign undertaken by the but were killed instantly in their bed· Rev. W.·'E. Humphrey, Principal of the Fourah Bay College, and the tutor, the Rev. E. T. Cole, about 100 young
ENGLISH NOTE••
men offered themselves for missionary PrCflbyterian Ohurch of England.- work and were interviewed. After An interesting account Is given of Dr. deductions were made on various Lyall's farewell address, given recently grounds, 60 were left, 9 married and in his native village in Berwickshlre, 51 unmarried. Among these it is hoped prior to his leaving for China once a few at least will be found suitable to more. He explained who" the Black occupy under tried teachers some new Flags" are, the Chinese bravoes, who, stations either in the Temne or Mendi in contrast with their countrymen on countries, or both. the mainland, have been able to put under some kind of arrest for the mo- W68tern India.-Two Parsees, a ment the march of the Japanese from brother and a sister, have been baptized the north to the south of Formosa. and ha ve renounced their Zoroastrian- These men are villagers for the most ism. The sister first came to the knowl- part who have become habituated to edge of the truth; and as far back as war because of the necessity imposed November, 1894, applied for baptism, upon them of being ready at any hour but was deterred by her brother, who to repel the incursions of the mounthreatened to put an end to his life, taineers that watch their opportunity to should she carry out her purpose. The prey upon the villages. scales have fallen from his eyes, and together with his sister he has made Dr. Lynll also gave an account of the avowal of his adhesion to Christ. mission hospital in Swatow-the largest in China-which has an average of 180 The Bhit Mi88ion.-Ditllcult and slow in-patients all the year through, and de· exceedingly is the work among the tailed the growth of the native churches Bhils in the Bombay Presidency. The in that region, three of which are selfrecord as it now stands is 24 baptisms supporting, each baving an ordained after fourteen years' labor. pastor.
Society for the Propagation of the Gos_ Wesleyan Missionary Society. – A pel.-This society is doing its best, brief sketch is supplied in the "Misamid much that is discouraging, to hold sionary Notices" of David Tonga, now the fort in the extensive and sparsely with the Lord. In the little kingdom populated province of Manitoba. An of Tonga, for a quarter of a century, endeavor is made to place a clergyman he has been the foremost Tongan, the wherever needed if a guarantee be late King George alone excepted. He given of £60 or £80 toward a salary of was a born leader of men; and his rank £140 or £160. The total amount raised as II BOul-winner is illustrious. When in the diocese itself was £14,250. It is very young he began to preach, and deeply to be regretted that the mission his first convert was his own father. college has a debt of £9500. Early in the seventies he became a dis- trict minister, receiving a circuit ap- Bloemfontein.-The work of the So- pointment in 1876. He had numerous ciety for the Propagation of the Gospel seals to his ministry, He was also one in this diocese, while subject to excep- whose faith shone grandly forth under tional fluctuations, has its clear quota trial. Neither persecution, nor the of encouraging results. Fifteen Basu- spoiling of his goods, nor the breaking tos have been received into the mem- up of his beautiful home, nor banishbership of the church recently after a ment made him to swerve or so much most careful test. It is felt by the as dimmed his hope. Such men are workers that these have come to them bright lights in their day, nor has their to call them forth to seek that others shining ceased when they theIDSelves in Basutoland may hear and receive the are lone. words of life.
&ENJil:&A.L HIlI8rONARY INTBLLIGJilNCJil_
ltatUt1C1 of the JUllionary Soo1et1el of·the [TlI'II811 tabl. blelude only Mieeionl to non-Christian and non-Protestant peoples, and 80 they omit the United States_ The tlgures are derived almost wholly from annual reports, and relate in the main blanks, and hence where official tlgures were not at hand, conservative estimates have been made_] ~ Missionaries_ Native Laborers. – J… N£JIlIIl OJ' SOOl1IITI'JliI. !.;i 'el_ l ! 0 ~ i g .; .sa~ 'E +l ~ 0 a 'E ~ ~~ 0 ~ ~ ..g"… 3 0 ~ ~~ )l ~ r,..
——————- American Board _…………….. -. _. _… -. 1810 $716,837 187 17 187 180 572 242 2,847 Baptist Missionary Union ……..•….•..•. 1814 681,256 185 34 157 115 491 255 1,680 southern Baptist Convention ………••.• ,. 1845 …. 125,417 40 35 16 91 80 89 Free ~aptist …………………………… 1886 25,611 9 23 10 12 54 28 218 20,000 3 5 2 3 13 1 6 ……….. Seventh·Day Baptist…….. ,… 1842 Christian (Disciples)………•…•.•.•••.••• 1875 88,514 19 3 18 9 49 3 60 American Christian Convention •..•…..••. 1886 27 3 15 Lutheran, General Conncil ……..•…••.• ,. 1869 5,000 4 …. 1 3 19 2 145 Lutheran, General Synod•…•…………. 1837 5 19 3 203 20,892 8 …. 8 50,000 10 …. 4 Methodist Episcopal …………………… 18U 992,807 242 46 2'Jl 148 687 323 S,S46 Methodist Episcopal, South…•.•..•….••. 1846 214,324 53 4 47 5 111 57 201 Methodist Protestant……..•………..• , . 1882 15,806 I; 1 6 3 15 3 17 3,200 2 …. 2 ……… Wesleyan Methodist ………… 1887 3 7 …. 10 …….. .. Protestant Episcopal .••…•.•• 1885 269,491 42 27 22 19 110 81 424 Presbyterian………………………….. 1837 865,709 248 48 260 168 724 241 1,996 132,338 Presbyterian, South.•….•. …………… 1861 50 7 41 30 128 29 141 24,06lI cnm~rland Presbyterian•..•.•……•….. 1828 4,034 5 …. 56 16 3 24 17,168 . 8 Associate Reformed Presbyterian, South..• , 1879 3,900 .. 33 9 4 10 Reformed presbyterian (Covenanter)…….. 1856 ~ 18 … 84 Reformed Presbyterian (Gen'l SyLod) …… 1836 5 II 6 I; 8 …. 37 5 …. 3 ….
United Presbyterian…………………… 1859 132,807 32 1 80 31 94 25 498 30,620 Reformed (German)…………………… 1878 111,288 6 …. /; 2 13 9 41 Reformed (Dutch) ……….. , ………….. 1836 9,608 Evangelical Association …•••••••••.•••..•. 1876 ,8,600 27 5 26 18 76 43 348 20,000 German Evangelical Synod.. ………….. 1888 32,661 3 …. a …. 6 …. 14 36,488 11 …. 53 United Brethren………………………. 1863 :1,416 7 …. 31 237,497 Society of Friends …………. …………. 1871 135.120 16 10 4 6 36 14 26 Canada Baptist……………………….. 1866 11 34 11 19 75 9 82 Canada Congregationalist……………… 1881 11 …. 11 10 32 10 162 Canada Methodist…………………….. 1873 1 …. …. 1 2 4 33 …. Canada Presbyterian………………….. 1844 " 23 32 88 82 80 33 13 80 35 111 6 61 – – – – – – – – – – – Twenty-Six Other Societies………………… 35 95 -171 9, 435- – 10 -360 434.711 126 Totalll ………….. ……. i'I ……….. …… $5,472,772 1,441 365 1,280 1,0701 4,129) 1,46613,177 United States and Canada for 1894-911.
work done in non-Catholic Europe, while covering that in behalf of Indians, Chine!!e, and Japanese In to 1895, tho sometimes the year includes a part of 1894. The aim has been to leave the fewest poBBible ~ ~ :i .~ . ..J. o" . I">< ot ~ ~-;;- ;j~ ",,'" .~.. !S~ .8 l!lS i'" ""<".""",: t~ Countries in which ~ .; j Missions are Sustained. o ell 0 1jO '0 0 :p ill "<": ~ ~ ~ ell ;e; E-t — – – —- —- —- – 3,418 1,266 44,413 3,~66 141,129 1,165 48,874 Africa, Turkehi India, China, Japan, 2,121 1,054 102,351 244,000 1,240 25,321 4,484 10,000 BuMrmicarohn, eIsniadia,exCichoi,nSap, aJianp, Aanu,stAriaf-. 180 199 3,493 581 15 707 272 14 729 51 1,519 94 3,216 rica, France, SEaln. China, Japan, A rica, Italy, Mexico, Brazil. India (Southern Bengal), 19 2 100 8 140 2 37 Ohina (Shanghai).
109 30 875 101 1,750 10 919 India, China, Japan, Turkey.
22 28 220 10 800 2 40 Japan (Tokyo, etc.).
164 198 1,763 350 4,484 102 1,893 India (Madras).
222 12 5,905 1,200 14,370 199 5,393 India (Madras), West Africa.
4,033 510 43,855 8,855 97,000 1,446 40,813 China, Korea, Japan, India, Africa, 312 Bulgaria, Mexico. South America. 136 7,804 1,277 16,332 45 1,116 China, Japan, Mexico, Brazil.
32 14 87b 47 800 14 648 Japan (Yokohama).
17 2 250 10 600 5 208 Africa (Sierra Leone).
584 206 7,762 241 17,000 142 6,082 Africa, China, Japan, Haiti, Greece.
2,720 719 37,065 3,897 105,000 912 32,942 India, China, Ja~an, Korea, Africa, 270 931 ChSiynrai,aK, Poererasi,aJa~paan,nlAshfrAicma,eGricreae.ce, 40 38 2,653 160 8,000 27 Italy, Mexico, raz!l.
10 617 40 1,200 4 150 Japan, Mexico, Indians.
19 11 245 54 500 4 91 Mexico (Tampico, etc.).
52 10 ~ 8 500 10 596 Northern Syria, Asia Minor.
4.~ 9 582 274 1,317 11 283 India (Northwest Provinces).
592 247 10,901 1,283 23,000 247 12,608 Egypt, India (Northwest Provinces).
54 41 1,960 235 4,500 2 218 Japan (Tokyo, Sendai, etc.).
419 269 5,197 408 12,000 155 5,694 India, China, Japan, Arabia.
20 17 727 118 1,200 1 25 Japan (Tokyo, Osaka).
64 12 460 25 1,165 17 572 India (Central Provinces).
62 23 6,491 280 17,000 15 1,250 China, W1lst Africa.
157 40' 793 77 1,800 27 834 Mexico, .Alaska, Jamaica, Ohina, Japan. 194 35 3,215 408 10,000 68 1,086 India (Telugns).
8 1 20 8 250 2 95 Africa (West Oentral).
168 106 6,070 225 12,000 556 2,812 Japan (Tokyo), Indians.
172 283 2,774 141 7,000 88 5,210 China, India, New Hebrides, West Indies. – -795- – -127 – – -4,0-04 – -31-5 – -8,5-00- – -56- -2-,73-8 17,306 5,669 304,111 28,437 761,936 6,683 203,402 THE KINGDOM. the Christian scholar-from the strong woman, who could lift a patient from -At the Episcopal Triennial Con- one bed to another, to the refined and ference held in October in Minneapolis highly trained lady, capable of setting Bishop McLaren preached a sermon the standard of woman's morality and which may fairly be called tremendous intellectual life at a high and sacred upon the Mission Love of our Lord pitch." Jesus Christ, from the text: "But when he saw the multitudes, he was -The same speaker remarked that moved with compassion on them, be· " he was often discouraged at missioncause they fainted, and were scattered ary meetings by hearing prayers offered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd" for the opening of doors-when during (Matt. 9: 36). Here he found the the last thirty years no less than 700,- Christian motive, and held with great 000,000 people, formerly inaccessible to vigor and earnestness that such love the Gospel, had been made accessibleshould throb in every breast. and by the prayer for labor(lrs, when the Volunteer Student movement had -The House of Bishops, in their let· provided the workers. These were, ter to the Episcopal Church, declare therefore, not prayers. Prayer was that the large gifts of a few laymeu asking for what you have not got and cannot stand as the measure of the gen· want to get. What, then, is the real erosity of the Church, and make the honest prayer for 1895? '0 Lord, statement: .. We can never hope to open my purse.' That is what you are rise to the measure of our opportunities wanting; what you have not got." and of our obligations to meet their., until every baptized man, woman, and -Just such weak-kneed pastors can child shall give freely, systematically, be found by the score and hundred in conscientiously. to the support of the every denomination as the Assembly Gospel and kingdom of our Lord Jesus Herald had in its eye: "A Presbyterian Christ. " pastor notified his congregation re, centIy that he felt that the church was -Dr. John Talmage, who died not not called upon to do anything in the long since, after forty-five years of present emergency of our missionary missionary life in China, when asked boards. At the close of the service one about the sacrifice of a foreign mission- of the members of the church came to ary, replied: .. The missionary of him and said that her mother desired Christ knows no sacrifices. His work to make an offering for the Relief Moveis all joy, nothing but joy. It is a sac· ment of $200, and wanted to know rifice to be shut up in this land away whether it should be sent independently from my foreign field and the blessed or through the church. and said tbat service of offering salvation to the there were others in the congregation heathen." who felt that they also ought to give for this cause." -At the centennial anniversary of the London Missionary Society Dr. -Our colored brethren are waxing Lindsay, of the Free Church, suggest- practical, and are proving their faith ed that .. mission work should cover a by their works. for at a negro confervast variety of men's and women's ence recently held in Selma, Ala., the powers and gifts consecrated to the ser- following questions were discussed: vice of Jesus Christ. But one depart- "Evils of Excursions," "The Mort· ment of the work should not 'blow gage System and Its Evils," " Do the cold' upon another. In these days we People Practise their Religion through were learning that a missionary might the Week 1" "How can we Secure be man or wQman, evangelist or educa- Better Homes among our People?" tionalist, hospital nurse or high-school " Are the People Wasting their Money mistress-from the Christian artisan to in Useless Lawsuits?" "Hindrances school for little Arab chndren on the to Success." Nne.
-And Booker T. Washington, of -Rear-Admiral Kirkland, who not Tuskegee Institute, is helping them long since put himself on record as esforward in the good way, for he says: teeming the missionaries in the Levant "I have recently spent several weeks "a bad lot," has himself since been with the senior class in studying men found so lacking in capacity, or so instead of books. Each member of the " derelict, " as to be detached from duty class has gone into the country and and ordered ,home.
studied a family I finding out the num- -" The day that I arrived to receive ber and age of the family; whether in consecration, when that venerable pia· debt or free from debt; whether or not neer bishop, Bishop Kemper, was the the crop was mortgaged; whether the presiding bishop, and my heart melted land was owned or rented; how many into tenderness, after the consecration acres cultivated; the kinds of crops, he laid his hand upon my head and whether or not it was one or a variety; said: 'My brother, do not forget those the kind of food consumed; whether wandering red men whom Jesus Christ or not the cultivation was poor or wishes us to bring home.' That after- good; the number of fowls, cattle, noon, by another singular providence pigs, dogs, cats, etc., owned; the ed- of God, the Rev. Mr. Hoffman, that ucational conditions and opportuni- pioneer missionary of Africa, came to ties; the moral and religious condi- me and said: 'The last thing before I tion, noting especially to what ex- left Africa our African Christians tent poverty atIected the moral and re- placed in my hands $75, the result of ligious life. Some of the class have their own earnings, and they send it to gone into the city of Montgomery and be their gift to any heathen people of made the same kind of study of 27 fam- America for whom the Church should ilies there in the lower strata of life, establish a mission.' And the first dol- making a special study of the methods lar ever received by me for Indian mis- of religious worship in certain churches sions came from converted 1>lack men in Montgomery, especially with a view in Africa. "-BiBkop Whipple.
of finding out how much connection there -Truly, in Jesus Christ we are all of i8 between the loud ',Amen&' and' Hal- one spirit. The news of the Ku·cheng lelujahs' in elturch and the mural, in- massacre created a great sensation in dustrial andfamily life oftheindi'Didual. Australia, which had given to the mis- This whole study has proven intensely sion two of the martyred women. One interesting and profitable, especially of the most remarkable meetings held the sound, healthy remedies that indi- in Sydney was that of the Chinese resi. viduals in the class suggested for pres· dents there, heathen as well as Chrisent weakness and evils. It.is proposed tian, which filled one of the largest to extend the investigation next year halls. The speakers were all Chinese. stm further." Their aim was to express a sense of -According to Robert E. ,Speer: their feeling of shame, sympathy, and "This [missions] is the world's one determination to erect a public memocertainly triumphant movement. It rial to the martyrs. It is said that the cannot fail. Emerson declared, forty memorial wm take the form of a capiyears ago, that what hold the popular talized sum to provide for spreading faith had upon the people was ' gone, the Gospel among the Chinese in AU!!- or going.' He asked why we should tralia and in China through the Church drag the dead weight of the Sunday· Missionary Society. school over the globe, and lived to see his own daughter holding a Sunday. -One who ought to know declared publicly the other day that Presbyte-
MISSIONARY INTELLIGENOE
rians constitute one fourth of all "the -Mrs. Charles Green, of Baltimore, evangelical missionaries who are striv- is having built at Old Orchard, Me., a ing to spread Christ's kingdom in the "seaside rest" for missionaries of all world. " If this be true, what honor churches when recruiting from their and what responsibility are accorded to labors. They will be expected to pay that church. 75 Cents a day for lodgings, with every comfort. Their meals will be free. -The occupation of the explorer is The place is being beautifully fitted up, not yet by any means gone, for affirmed and will probably be dedicated early in Professor 1. L. Tobley, in an address June next year. before .the London Geographical Congress: .. Leaving out of account the -Upward of 500,000 of the native very imperfectly known regions of women of India were relieved last year Central Asia and the interior of the by the medical staff and appliances of northern parts of both North and South the Lady Dufferin Fund. The number America, as well as the similar areas of has gone on increasing annually at a Africa and Australia, there is an aggre- rapid rate. It is nearly ten years since, gate area of about 20;000,000 square in obedience to the charge laid upon mUes of the surface of the globe as yet her by the Queen-Empress, the govquite unexplored. This aggregate is ernor-general's wife formed the fund made up as follows: which bears her name. It has in that time employed 73 women doctors of vari- Africa… . •. . •. . . . •. . . . . 6,500,000 square miles. ous degrees of qualifications, has estab- Au.tralia ……………, 2,250,000 .. lished 57 hospitals and dispensaries in North America………. 1,500,000 various parts of India, and has trained 262 South America. .. . •. •… 500,000 women in the several medical colleges. A.la……………….. 21;0,000 I.land….. • •.• .. … •• .. 500,000 -In New England, notably in Ver- Arctic regions………. 3,500,000 mont, women are increasingly employ- Antarctic regions•……. 5,000,000 ed as evangelists and pastors for desti- tute fields. They go in couples, they Total …………… 20,000,000 live among the people, visit much, and have charge of all the services during WO~IAN'S WORK. the week and on Sunday. Among the number during last year was one of the -A widow of Cleveland, 0., pos- daughters of the editor-in-chief of this sessed of wealth and deeply interested In missions, supports 13 foreign mis- REVIEW. sionaries, and now she is making a mission tour around the world, thus deep- -In October last the Lutheran ening her own interest in the work and Church, General Synod, set apart 6 cheering those who in every land must deaconesses who had completed a course receive her with joy. of training to take charge of the Mother House in Baltimore. Five of the num- -When the native Christians at ber were trained in Kaiserswerth, Ger- Benito, West Africa, were dismissing many.' their three missionaries, they prayed: .. May they be preserved from storms ~ -The Methodist Woman's Foreign at sea, be kept in health, have moon- Missionary Society met in St. Louis light on their journey, meet their October 27th, to hold the twenty-sixth friends in peace, and may their friends annual meeting. Eighteen returned be willing to let them return. " missionaries were present, and 20 had been sent out during the year, 8 going -A woman of the Danish nobility, to India, 10 to China, 1 to Japan, and Duchess Schimmelmann, has renounced 1 to South America. Six are medical the pleasures of the court, and is labor- graduates. The report of the treasurer ing as an evangelist among the poor was as follows: Received from . and destitute fishermen along the coast. She proceeds from place to place in her own yacht.
1896.J GENERAl.. HISStONAlty tNl'Et.t.lGENCE
New England branch •………..••……,4O,1fa1 people's societies of the Lutheran Church in Illinois. In addition to this, New York " ………••••……. 50,000 the society paid $150 toward the build· ing of its church. Philadelphia ……………….. 28,089 Baltimore .. … .. .. . .. …. …. 11,886 Cincinnati …. .. .. .. .. .. .. …. 37,~ Northwestern" ………………. 66,404 -The Roger Williams Free Baptist Des Moines ……………….. 24,116 Society of Providence, R. I., raised Minneapolis …. .. ………. . .. .. 8,908 more than $250 the past year, over half Topeka …. …. …. .. .. …. 13,m Paclllc .. .. …. ……. .. •.. 5.938 of which was given to foreign missions.
Colnmbia River" .. .. .. .. .. . .. . .. .. .. 2,891 This society has 60 members, and the Total………………………….$289,227 money was raised by the envelope srs- -The New York branch of the tem and by personal subscription. No above·named society issues this pledge " pay socials."
to be signed by its members: "Because -Even the hens in Tennessee are to I believe it to be my Christian duty to be given the privilege of adopting the Inform myself of the spread of Christ's Harris plan of a weekly contribution to kJn,gdom in the world, I hereby prom- missions, for a number of Junior En· ise to spend at least one half hour each deavorers in that State have obtained week in reading missionary literature. " per~ion from their parents to have for missionary objects the proceeds YOUNG PEOPLE. from all the eggs laid on Sunday.- -TheEndeavor societies of New York CongregationaZiBt.
City contributed nearly $50,000 to mis- -The Epworth Leagues of Texas sions last year. The SOCiety in the Six· have pledged themselves to support 3 teenth Street Baptist Church supports married missionaries of the General 3 foreign missionaries. The largest Board this yeai'. The Leagues ot Ala· amount reported is from Mount Morris bama. will support Miss Worth, who is Baptist Church-$1425. The Navy now on her way to Japan. The St.
Yard society reports a large number of Louis League Union assumed the ex- missionaries working in the uttermost penses of Miss Willie Bowman at the parts of the earth without money and Scarritt Bible and Training School for without price. One band of 15 on the ODe year; the Epworth League of St.
United Slates steamship Cluwleatun has Paul's Church, St. Louis, paid Miss Ida very recently raised among themselves Worth's expenses for two years; the $500, and are about to open a Christian Kansas City Union met the expenses of Endeavor home at Nagssski, Japan, one student last year, and has pledged the first in Asia. Many of the societies itself for an equal amount this year; have adopted the Fulton plan of 2 cents while the leagues in Nevada and Lex· a week,. and are giving regularly. ington aided still another student.
-The Congregational Juniors of Brighton, Mass., had a good time at UNITED STATES.
their thank·offerlng meeting, October -Scan the appended table and learn 20th, when 23 mite-boxes were brought how it .. happens" that New York in, containing $18. This sum was in· City is such a moral storm center. creased by the CODtents of the birthday jug, $21.50, making $39 in all that Germans…………………………. 403,784 these Juniors have given within seven Irish…. …. …. . .. . .. . •• … . •.. … … . 399,348 months for missions. Unclas8i1!ed and miscellaneous……… 173,120 Bnssians and Poles… …………….. 80,235 -The Lutheran Y. P. S. C. E. of ltaJiBJUl.. .. .. .. .. .. •.. • .. .. .. •.. .. .. . .. 114,324 m., Lena, French… ……………………….. 16,289 is pledged to pay *75 an- Hnngarians.. .. …. .. …. …………. 15,555 ( nually for five years for the support of Bohemians. … …….. .. .. …. •… . .. .. 12,287 Rev. Will M. Beck, who expects to go Total foreign popnlatlon.•••.•.••••• 1,154,900 to Africa as a mi88ionary of the young American born, including nejp'oes.. 300,299 – Utah hal gone Republican by a and held as a part of the Dominion of Small majority, though as it appears, Canada, and so he and his much-enonly because of the preference and In- during converts are still under the vexfiucnce shown for that party by the au- atious rulings, to escape which a few thorities of the Mormon Church, whiCh years ago they forsook home and all holds the balance of power and wields they had.. it only to further its own schemes. The cloven foot was revealed during EUROPE. the campaign, when the ruling priesthood Issued an order that no .. saint" -Last year £28,454 was raised and should accept the candidacy for any expended in the London Missionary office without having tlrst gained the Society's mission·tlelds abroad,· the permission of the ecclesiastical authori- larger part of this representing direct ties. contributions for the support of church ordinances and the propagation of the -The American ltfiB8W'IWIf1J (Congre- Gospel. gationalist) for October is a delight to the eye, as well as a feast to the heart -The Chinese Christians of Hankow of a lover of his kind. sent· their congratulations to the Lon- don Society to which they owed the -The Presbyterians have been be- Gospel, on the occasion of its centenstirring themselves most vigorously of ary, in the form of an address and motlate to payoff their great miSSionary toes in four pieces, worked in gold debt. In particular the synods of D- cord and variegated silks on satin scrolls linois and Ohio have each been holding or banners, and these of the largest a congress of missions, and in New size ever known to be used. York City, November 15th, was held a great gathering, which was addressed -A new temperance socIety, under by ex-President Harrison, ex-Secretary the supervision of leading medical of State J. W. Foster, and Rev. F. E. men, has been formed in France, the Clark. members of which propose to study the means of extirpating alcoholism, to -Major W. H. Clapp, who is an exterminate its effects, to propagate a army officer, and for several years has knowledge of the evil in all social cenbeen in charge of Indian agencies, holds ters, to group the greatest possible the red man in high respect and esteem. number of citizens together who wish He declares: ., I never saw nor heard its disappearance, to raise public opinof a drunken Indian among the three ion against it, to set an example of temtribes over whom I have charge," perance by abstaining from alcoholic and yet they have abundant op- drink, and to teach children the prinportunity to obtain drink. They do ciples of temperance. not seem to care for it. The tribes of which I speak are the Arickarees, the -Alas, the poor prisoner of the Vati· Gros Ventres, and the Mandans. The can, how grievously he is cribbed, cab· Arickarees have never been at war with ined, and confined! For, as the Weltthe white people, and their boast is minater Gazette has it: .. The Pope's that they have never killed a white person is sacred and inviolable. Any man. They are very honest, and noth- attempt upon his life is punishable in ing has ever been taken from stores that the same way as an attempt upon that have been left open and temporarily of the king. The Supreme Pontilf is without an occupant." entitled on all Italian territory to sov- ereign hOllors. He is allowed to retain -Recent intelligence is to the effect his own guards, a sum of $625,000 is that William Duncan's New Met1akaht- paid for his civil list. He retains inla, on Annette Island, which was sup- alienable sovereignty over and possesposed t. be in Alaska, is to be claimed .&ion of the Vatican, the Lateran aud Castel Gaudolfo and all their appurte- interwoven with the woof. Magnifi- nances and precincts.. •. The Pope is cent it is in its extent, in the variety of accorded a private postal and telegraph its resources, in the wonderful history 5enioo under his own control, and en- which has been "Wtought upon it. It tirely free from that of the civil power. is a robe of Oriental magnificence that All tbe papal training-schools and col- has been dipped and soaked in blood.
leges in Rome arc exempt from the In- But it is. to bear, as certainly as God terference of the State." liveth, as certainly as the cross was -The Hungarian House of Magnates, raised on Calvary, as certainly as the after having deliberated for the fourth human soul remains sensitive to Divine time on the Freedom of Worship Bill, inspiration-it is to bear by and by, and and by 118 against 112 votes, adopted not far hence, the monogram of Christ the provision whereby it is rendered on all its glittering expanse.-Dr. R. S. permissible to leave or join any com- Storr3.
munion, ·or to make declaration of not -It is a new experience for us old professing any particular creed. The residents in Syria to look out upon rail- House then passed by 120 to 113 votes way trains passing in the distance and tbe clause permitting conversion to see the French locomotives dragging Jude.ism, thus removing the last ob- their burdens up the cogged track over stacle to Liberal legislation dealing Lebanon toward the Bukaa and Damas- with ecclesiastical alfairs.-Reuter. cus. The passenger train is ten hours ASIA. in passing over the 120 miles, scaling Lebanon at an elevation of 5000 feet Islam.-Atrocious slaughters in Sas- above the sea. The road. was opened soun, in Trebizond, in Constantinople, August 4th, and already the freight and now in Harpoot, in which the tratHc is so great that three freight Turks are the butchers and the Ar- trains a day cannot meet the demand. menians are the victims! Then, as if As we arrived August 12th from New this wholesale bloodshed were not suf- York, we have not yet been over :the ficient, in the last-named city these road to Damascus; but Dr. Crawford Bame furious fanatics must needs fill to tells me that the ride from Damascus the brim the measure of ill-desert by up the river Abana to the fountain of destroying the bulk of the buildings of Fiji, and on to Zebedany, under the the American College, inflicting a loss dense shade of poplars, and by the roarof some $100,000 I Lord, how long? ing river, is most refreshing and de- Ah, that united Christian Europe lightful. The ride over the heights of might smite and subdue and compel Lebanon is no less so, with its bold to decency at least; and if need be, scenery and magnificent views of the set up a joint .. protectorate" over the distant sea and the rocky mountain entire Turkish Empire. It is high time gorges_-Rev. H. H. J688Up_ that the feet of these savage and red- India.-Indian Mohammedans are handed intruders ceased to profane the loyal subjects of the Queen-Empress, and sacred places of our faith. they also sustain close relation to the -Men think that Turkey is to put Sultan, who is in a sense the head of an end to the propagation of the Gos- Islam, tho not exactly the representa- pel in that great empire. The Turkish tive of the caliphs or successors of Mo- Empire always seems to me, as I look hammed. The loyalty of the Moham- at it on the map or in its history, like a medans of India has been quickened vast. magnificent Oriental rug. stamped and strengthened by England's long- with splendid and stately figures, em- continued friendship with the SUltan.
blazoned on every side with heroic com- Should trouble arise bctween England bat, and with threads of gold and silver and Turkey the Mohammedan subjects of the Queen will regret the occur- lessors by the educated young men of renee; but they are too well aware of Bengal."
the advantages of British rule to risk -During the past year the railways much for the sake of the Sultan. The of India carried over 130,000,000 pasquestion has already occupied the at- sengers and 20,000,000 tons of goods. tention of Mohammedan papers in India, Their aggregate receipts were 280,000,- and the intelligent and temperate style 000 rupees, or nearly $100,000,000. of discussion is an assurance that England's just advocacy of the cause of -The last report of the Arcot (Re- Armenia will make no trouble in this formed Dutch) Mission tells what large country.-Indian Witne88. anfi solid gains have been made in thirty years. Between 1864 and 1894 -Let a man lose caste, and his pun- the out-stations have increased from 6 to . ishment is at once banishment from the 118; the churches. from 7 to 23; navillage well. Let that be inflicted, and tive pastors, from 1 to 9; catechists, the temptation to purchase readmis- readers, and teachers, from 37 to 172; sion into caste, with its privileges of the communicants, from 291 to 1996; free access to water, is very great. Let while the adherents have increased a man become a Christian, and from nearly sevenfold. The native contributhe attitude of his neighbors toward tions have increased from 175 to 275'7 ' him you would think he had committed rupees, and the pupils from 322 to 4856. matricide. From the day of his bap- The past year has also been one of prostism, he or his wife will have to tramp perity. The out-stations have increased through the blazing sun, with a heavy by 13, the communicants by 37, and waterpot, to some distant supply of the total gain In the Christian commuwater whenever they want to bathe nity has been about 500. or cook. Sometimes it happens that the man will have secret friends kind – Writing from Kalimpong, the head- ' enough to bring him water now and quarters of the Thibetan Mission, Mr. again after dark, and save him his jour. Cecil Polhill·Turner gives us a very inney for that evening; but no one out teresting account of the progress of here will endure that sort of help for events. The little party of missionaries long. In their eyes it is only empha- is still waiting patiently for the opening sizing the fact that they are pariahs, of the country, and fully occupied and they will leave a village rather than meanwhile with the study of the sustain treatment to which they, as Thibetan language. Kalimpong is de- Hindus, are peculiarly sensitive. scribed by Mr. Polhi1l·Turner as "a quiet, little country village, admirable -Principal Morrison thus writes re- for study, and, in the winter especially, garding the large number of students frequented by Thibetans bringing wool who have enrolled themselves in Church straight from the closed country." of Scotland Mission College for the ses- sion 1895-96: "Our numbers are again China.-A missionary asserts, that up, our total being considerably larger some of the Chinese have such wonder· than that of any other year in the his- ful memories that they can recite chap- tory of the college. There are in the ter after chapter, and some of them First year class, 137 most of the New Testament.
Second 183 -During the past year, the Ameri. can Bible Society sold and distributed Third 60 In China Bibles and portions thereof' to the extent of 385,875 copies. Fourth" 170 550 Ours is the largest mission college in -This is the statement of G. S. Mi- Bengal, which shows the confidence ner, of the Foochow Methodist Mission: that is placed in our missionary pro- .. In 1893 I had 3 day schools, in 1894, 16, and now I have just 100, with about WorId; and his book in behalf of 3000 pupils. Within the past six Western civilization, which he wrote ·months we have brought fully 2000 from his studies and travels in Ameri- children under Christian influence for ca, had a considerable effect in restor· the first time." ing the dynasty to the throne, of which -Some two years since two Swedish the present Emperor is a member. Permissionaries were slain by a mob at haps his greatest benefaction was the Sung'pu, China. A report now given founding of a school, known as the in Ohina'8 Millions shows that the blood Kewgijiuku University, which is secof these martyrs was not shed in vai!!. ond only to the Imperial University at It seems that a Ohinese woman read of Tokyo, in point of numbers and rank the faith and patience of these mission- of scholarship. Mr. Fukuzawa comes aries, and was so impressed by what from the common people, and is known she was told that she traveled to an- as the" great commoner;" and What other city in order to ask the mission- shows above all the character of the aries about the religion which could mlln is that he has never allowed himproduce such fruits. "What is it," self to be carried away by his success, she asked, "that makes you Jesus and has modestly refused to accept decpeople so different from us? We call orations, honors, or even the peerage you' foreign devils;' our people have from the Mikado.-.New York Intkpenmartyred two of your teachers who dent; only did good to our people, and you -The Presbyterian Church in Japan show no revenge and receive me as a is about to undertake foreign mission- friend." She was told that this was ary work. At the recent meeting of the teaching of Jesus, who died for us the synod, the mission board was di- when we were enemies. This woman. rected to begin work in Formosa as who was termed" the Chinese Queen soon as possible. President Ibuka, of of Sheba," continued for two weeks Tokyo, and President Ogimi, of Steele with the missionaries to learn of their College, Nagasaki, were appointed to faith and doctrine, and then returned visit Formosa, examine the field, and to her own city to tell her neighbors: report to the mission board, while $3000 .. These Jesus people know how to love are to be raised among the Japanese their enemies." churches for this new work.
Japan.-Yukichi Fukuzawa is the -Rev. J. D. Davis writes thus to the .. Grand Old Man of Japan," tho he is Pacific of one of the darker phases of some twenty years younger than the the situation: .. A few of those who members of that more famous trium- have been among our most earnest, virate-Gladstone, Bismarck, and LI faithfnl workers are resigning their Hung Chang. More than any other places and leaving the ministry. We man, he has brought Japan to that posi- have not a single pastor at present in tion which she now holds among the the great centers of Tokyo and Kyoto. civilized nations of the world. Thirty- Our Doshisha University ha&.'opened five years ago he visited America, and with about 400 students, but the classes on his return home introduced the in the higher departments are all small. 'Webster Dictionary to his countrymen, We have only 25 in the theological dea book that is considered the founda- partment, as against 85 three or four tion of Japan's intellectual power; he years ago. There is, however, a growalso introduced English into all the ing conviction of the barrenness of these ' schools. In days when Japan was di- extreme views and an earnest seeking vided into two parties-one for and the on the part of many of the pastors and other against foreigners-he advocated evangelists for the presence and power the opening of his country to the New of the Holy Spirit." -Mr. La.fcadio Hearn in the Octo- British South African Company has yet ber .Atlantic has an impressive article to pay its first dividend, but its capital on .. The Genius of Japanese Civiliza- stock, held at £2,000,000 to start with, tion. .. He finds nothing permanent, is now £16,000,000.
everything shlfting-sa.ndals of straw, -The new Moravian Mission in East dwellings cheap and frail, the greater Central Africa grows apace. The part of the 60 capitals the empire has fourth station in Nyassaland has been had have completely disappeared, etc. fairly commenced. Mr. Theophil -Advlces from Formosa. are to the Richard reached Utengula, Merere's effect that the Japanese are gradually present capital, on March 18th. He subduing the tribes that are opposing was alone, for Mr. Kootz, his compan- occupation of that island. The natives ion, had been det.alned on the road by are making a stubborn resistance, but an attack of fever, and did not arrive are steadily being overcome. until the 21st. Meanwhile, Mr. Richard AFRICA. had several Interviews with the" Sul- tan," who gave him a friendly recep- -The Congo Railway continues to tion, and permitted him to choose a site make steady progress; trains are now for the mission. running 65 miles inland toward Stanley Pool. -The Universities' Mission is severely stricken by the recent loss of three of -The Christian Alliance proposes to its statt-Blshop Maples, Its gifted and plant a line of stations 1000 miles long, devotejl leader, who, with Mr. Joseph from Matadi to Lake Tanganyika, on Williams, was drowned by the capsizthe eastern boundary of the Congo Free Ing of the steel boat on Lake Nyallsa, State. This will require the opening and Rev. G. W. Atlay, who was killed of 40 stations, and the sending out in by the Owangwara. the next three years of at least 100 new men to open them. -The stroke of lightning which end- ed the career of Menelek II., Negus of -The transcontinental telegraph line Abyssinia, removed one of the most inproposed by Mr. Rhodes several years teresting and energetic of African ago-to cxtend from the Cape to Cairo princes. He was of the Sholl. tribe, and -was not, when first proposed, regard- claimed lineal descent from King Soloed seriously by the general public; but mon and the Queen of Sheba. When it already extends, it seems, from the King John was killed by the Mahdists Cape to Blantyre, in the Shire High- In 1889, !Ienelek, who had long ruled lands, and during his present visit to the Shoas, achieved the sovereignty over England Mr. Rhodes wlll probably or- the other Abyssinian tribes, and was der, he says, .. a further 500 or 1000 recognized as Negus by the Italians miles" of poles and wire. The south- when they advanced inland from Mas- ern end of Lake Tanganyika is to be Bowah. Menelek was friendly to Eurothe first objective point, and thence the pean arts and civilization. He Importline will proceed along the western ed Swiss engineers and artisans, who bank of the lake, through Congo terri- built stone houses, bridges, wagon tory, to British posts in Uganda and roads, a flour mill, baking ovens, and a. along the Nile. blast furnace for smelting iron. He in- -Mr. Stanley sa.ys that more than duced his people to engage in various 200 English companies are operating in handicrafts by his personal example.
South Africa, and largely on the capi- While he lived, the Italians met with tal furnished by the subSCriptions of many difficulties in their colonial humble investors. Some of these com- schemes; now that he is dead, there Is panies hllve not paid dividends yet, but no one to: ettectively dispute their ascen- not one of them has made shipwreck in dency In the Abyssinian hlghlands.- the bankruptcy court. The great Zibn', Herald.