The Missionary Review of the World — July 1895
I~DIAN DWELLI~GS "~D TOTE31 POLES, FORT WR.~GLE
MISSIONARY REVIEW OF THE WORLD.
VOL. XVIII. No. T.-Old Series.-JULY.-VOL. VIII. No.7.-New8eries.
LIFE AMONG THE RED MEN OF AMERICA.
BY REV. EDGERTON R. YOUNG, TORONTO, CANADA.
In 1868, when pastor of a church in Hamilton, Canada, I was asked to go with my young wife as a missionary to the red Indians, northwest of Hudson Bay, north of Manitoba. It was a strange call; we had not been thinking of the Indian work, or the foreign field, and were very happy in our hom~ work. But we made it a subject of prayer. We laid the letter before the Lord, and though all our friends, with one or two exceptions, opposed us, yet as God seemed to call us, we went, and we have never regretted it to this day.
It took us two months and nineteen days of hard travelling to reach our field. You can go around the world in that time now. It was a lonely far-off place, more inaccessible even than the heart of Africa is now. We travelled as far as we could by steamboats and railroads, then we journeyed for thirty days with horses over the prairies and plains of the north, and then for the last fourteen days we went in a little skllf manufactured by the Indians and manned by them. The place assigned us in the skiff was a bit of a slab seat near the stern of the boat. Behind us stood a big Indian with an oar reaching ont behind, with which he steered, and before us were our stalwart Indian oarsmen. When we had gone about forty miles from Fort Garry toward the north, we saw the Indians turning toward the· shore, and we wondered what they were going to do. We soon found out. They took on another passenger, which to our aIllazement proved to be a great, big, lively, struggling ox. His head hung over one side of the boat aud his tail over the other, and for fourteen days in the month of July my wife and I had to sit in that skiff close to that live ox. But we were full of life and anticipation, and enthusiastic in our work, and these little things didn't trouble us much.
We reached our destination at last. We were first stationed among the Cree Indians, four hundred miles from the merest vestige of civilization. We had a good chance of testing the Indians. You know the very conflicting opinions about the red men. After studying them for many
LIFE AMONG i'HE RED MEN OF AMERICA
years, my opinion is that they are just about like the rest of poor humanity. They need the Gospel, and the blessed Gospel is just the thing for them. We had a little log-house, in which to live. A gentleman wouldn't keep a decent horse in it, but it was the best the country afforded; the Indians, were living in wigwams, and we were glad to have that loghouse. V~ thought the best thing was to come thoroughly in touch with our people, so we gathered them together, and stood before them with our Bibles, and said, "Now, look at us. We have not come here to buy your silver foxes, your beavers, your otters, your minks, or your martens; we have not come to make a fortune in the fur trade, but we have come with this book to do you good, and to help you to a better life, that you may be happier here and happier beyond. We know you are sinners, and that you have your fault~, and need the Gospel, but we are going to trust you as well as help you." We knew the majority of white people think that the Indians are thievish, dishonorable, and unreliable. We do not believe that. So we decided to trust them. We took the fastenings off all the windows, and the bolt off of the door, and the keys out of every drawer and chest, and threw them away, and from that day to this we have never fastened a window or locked a door in an Indian country ; we have never had anything worth sixpence stolen from us by the Indians. That is our experience among the Indians, when putting them on their honor and treating them fairly.
We mastered the language as quickly as possible, because I believe in all missionaries being able to look into the eyes of the people and tell them the truth in their own language. We worked and toiled among them, and we had at first the effects of the work of some blessed men who had been before us, and before we had been there five years, in addition to what had been done, we had gathered a congregation of from eight to ten hundred Christian Indians, who used to pack our church every Sabbath, although some of them had to come from their hunting-grounds fifty or sixty miles distant, on Saturday, to be present, and on Monday they would walk back to their distant hunting-grounds. We had the Bible translated into their languag!J by Mr. Evans, one of our missionaries, not printed in the letters of the alphabet, but in syllabic characters. These characters are so easily acquired that in a few weeks an Indian can learn to read the Word of God. It is a marvellous invention, and as a result of it in some of the missions 90 per cent of the people are reading the Word of God in their own tongue. Often have I been made ashamed of the littleness of my love by the devotion of these Indians and by their love for the Bible. Let me give you an iucident. One of our Indians with his son came away down from the distant hunting-grounds to fish on the shores of our great lakes. We catch our winter's supply there in October and November. My good wife and I have lived chiefly on fish twenty-one times a week, for six months, fish and salt with a cup of tea, at times no bread or vegetables at all. We live six months on fish, and the other six months on reindeer and muskrats, gulls and owls, anything we can get, sometimes glad to have two meals a day. I have been in your penitentiaries-not unwillingly-and I have seen the food provided for the worst criminals. My wife and I would have been glad to have had anything approaching what you give to your murderers and housebreakers. I have been for three days without a mouthful. To go on with my story. This man and his son came down to fish, and they made splendid fisheries, put up the whitefish on a staging where the foxes and wolves could n{)t reach them, and one night the father said, " My son, we leave to-morrow morning early j put the book of heaven in your pack; we go back one hundred and forty miles to our distant hunting-ground to join the mother and the others in the wigwam home. " So the young man put his Bible in his pack that they might take it home. Later on, along came an uncle and said to the young man, " Nephew, lend me the book of heaven that I may read a little j I have loaned mine. " So the pack was opened and the Bible was taken out, and the man read for a time and then threw the Bible back among the blankets and went out. The next morning the father and son started very early on their homeward journey. They strapped on their snowshoes and walked seventy miles, dug a hole in the snow at night, where they cooked some rabbits, and had prayers and lay down and slept. The next morning bright and early after prayers they pushed on and made seventy miles more and reached home. That night the father said to his son, " Give me the book of heaven that the mother and the rest may read the Word and have prayers." As the son opened the pack, he said, ' , Uncle asked for the book two nights ago and it was not put back." The father was disappointed, but said little. The next morning he rose early, put a few cooked rabbits in his pack and away he started. He walked that day seventy miles and reached the camp where he and his son had stopped two nights before. The next day he had made the other seventy miles and reached the lake and found his Bible in his brother's wigwam. The next morning he started again, and walking in the two days one hundred and .forty miles, was back home once more. That Indian walked on snowshoes two hundred and eighty miles through the wild forest of the Northwest to regain his copy of the Word of God! Would we do that much to regain our Bibles ~ 0 the pQwer of the Gospel! It can go down very low and reach men deeply sunken in sin and can save them grandly, and make them devout students and great lovers of the Bless~d Book.
The worst class we had were the conjurers and medicine men. Some of these men hated us, and often used to put our lives in jeopardy because they knew that if we succeeded it was the end of their reign. But the Gospel reached even some of them.
These northern Indians are hunters. They roam over a vast country in search of game, and the missionary must follow them. My missionfield was about five hundred and fifty miles long and three hundred wide, and over it I travelled in summer in a birch canoe, and in the winter with dogs. I am sometimes called a " D.D.," and I say if it means anything it is " Dog-driver." I travelled many miles each winter with the dogs, and thus reached bands who had never seen a missionary. I wish you might look in with me upon a company of Indians who have never seen that Book before, who have never heard that Blessed Name. It is a blessed work, this preaching Christ to a people for the first time.
After five years alllong the Cree Indians we went among the Saulteaux. It is so hard to get volunteers for this Indian missionary work ! We had made our log-house among the Crees quite comfortable and cheerful, but the Saulteaux were calling for a missionary. I used to visit them once in summer with my birch canoe, and once in winter with the dogs, but there was such a long interval between these visits that when I went back to them I sometimes found that some who had become Christians were growing cold, for lack of instruction, and so they pleaded for a missionary to live among them. They could not get one, as none would volunteer for such a work. At length I got a dear young minister so far interested that he said, " I know a very nice girl, and if you and your good wife will give us your home among the Crees and go among the wild Saulteaux, we will take your place among the Crees." vVe jumped at his offer, and thanked God for it. We took in a birch canoe and a little skiff only what we absolutely needed. We left the furniture, dishes, table-linen, and a number of dogs, canoes, and other things, and all the home we had for a year was a poplar log-hut twelve feet one way and fourteen the other, with a roof that was covered with mud and grass. God blessed us there, and hundreds carne to Christ. So quickly, so believingly, and so thoroughly did they come that I must say in my ignorance I waS sometimes staggered. When I heard men get up and say, " I know whom I have believed, I know this Jesus is my Saviour, and I will trust in Him; I have a sweet joy in my heart," I would say in my stupidity, " Can it be true g" I had to go out in the woods and sit down all alone, and take out my Testament and read through the Acts of the Apostles. Then I could say: Ye5, it can be true. The Holy Spirit can do its work here as in those apostolic days. If a heart is honestly seeking God there is a wonderful guide and helper in the Holy Ghost. Now, after knowing some of those men over twenty years, their consistent lives have been a testimony of the genuineness of those conversions, even if they had only heard a very few sermons. I believe that if we could send out the right kind of men'and women all over the world, it would not take long to convert the world.
After we had been in this new mission for some time, and the work was going on blessedly, the tribes of Indians around heard about the white man and his wife who had come among the Saulteaux, and they came often to see us. One day there marched into our little home a great big Indian woman, quite different in style from the ordinary Indian woman. These women are the most modest, timid, and retiring people you ever saw. But here was one who came in with her head up and looking at us as though she was sizing us up. lIer actions were different from the other women. This we learned after was because of her position. She was a chieftainess. Her father was a great chief, and her husband had been a great chief, and when he died she ruled her people. She was a clever woman. She lived far in the interior, and she had heard of the paleface and his wife, who, with their wonderful Book, had come to live down there among the Saulteaux. She did not believe what she heard, and had actually come many days' journey to find out whether what she had heard from the hunters about the Book and the Great Spirit was true. I found that of all the inquirers that I ever had, she was the most insatiable in her curiosity and in her desire to learn. She would talk morning, noon, and night. Nor could we seem to satisfy her curiosity. She stayed with us about two weeks. Before she went away, I said to her, "Now, you are going back home, and I want to say 80me things to you. Christians keep one day in seven, which is God's day. We do not attend to worldly matters on that day, but we worship God. I want you to be a Christian in everything, so you must keep this Sabbath day. I am going to give you this big sheet of paper to help you." I gave her a big sheet of. foolscap and a long pencil, and said: "When you get home begin and make six small marks I I I I I I. Those are your days in which to hunt and fish. Attend to your matters with the tribe, your duties as chieftainess on these six days, and then for the seventh day make a big mark, – – – , and leave the gun and the rifle quiet in the wigwam, no hunting or fishing on that day. Work hard on Saturday to get enough food for the Sunday. On that day think about the Great Spirit, and pray to your loving Father, who sees you wherever you are." When she pleaded with me to come and preach to her tribe, I said, " When the eagle moon is filling out, listen for the ringing of the missionary's sledge-bells j then I will go and see you."
My programme of work was so great that six months passed away before I could visit her people. When the eagle moon came I harnessed my dogs and took my guide and dog-drivers, and away we went. It took us twelve or fourteen days to get there. We often had to travel altogether by night on account of the dazzling rays of the sun on the snow, which cause snow-blindness, a very painful disease. We journeyed on amid many dangers and adventures, but at last we reached our destination. The last six miles we had to cross a frozen lake. As we dashed out of the forest, there, on the other shore, was her village. Sharp eyes were on the lookout for us. We were not more thau half-way across before they detected our coming, and had dinner prepared when we arrived. Ookemasquasis, the chieftainess, had some frozen heads of reindeer on the staging ready for us. These are one of the greatest delicacies which thQ Indians can offer as food. She put some of these heads of reindeer on the fire to singe the hair off, and then and there she went at them with her big axe and chopped them in chunks and put them in a , big Indian kettle on the fire. So when our dog trains dashed into her village our dinner was boiling. Soap out there is three dollars and a half a bar, and they don't put much on their faces, and as they don't know much about shaking hands, every man, woman, and child tried to see who would be the first to kiss ns !
I cut short this ordeal and hurried into the wigwam. You never saw a woman so happy as was the chieftainess. She exclaimed, among many other things, "Oh, to think the man with the Book has come to my . people!" A level place was prepared for the dinner. In the centre was piled up these chunks of reindeer heads and in a circle around was placed ~ number of tin cups full of black tea, of which I had given her a pack- age. She put me on her left and her principal chief was on her right. Some more of her prominent people and my drivers and guides were also there. There was not a plate or a fork or a knife visible. As soon as we sat down, the men took out their hunting-knives and at once reached forward for a chunk of meat. " Wait," said I, "we are going to be Christians j Christians thank the Great Spirit for His gifts j Christians ask a blessing over their food. Shut your eyes and I will ask a blessing j we will thank the Great Spirit for what we are going to eat and drink." They shnt their eyes and I asked a blessing, and, being the first, I made it like a little prayer, and said Amen, and opened my eyes. But every eye was shut. I said, "Open your eyes." So they opened their eyes. " When I say amen at the end, although that is not all it means, it means that we have come to the end. Now, eat your dinner." Every fellow leaned forward and grabbed a chunk of meat and took it up in his dirty hands, and cut it with his big hunting-knife with which they fought bears and skinned their game. Some, more hungry than others, would take a piece in their mouth and saw off a little piece at a time. I looked over the pile and saw a piece that had a projecting bone on it. I took hold of that bone as a handle, and, taking out my hunting-knife, began my dinner. How happy my friend the chieftainess was! She reached forward with her great, dirty hands, and, grabbing a great juicy, splendid piece of meat she went at it with great vigor. Then she slapped it down on the ground, and, after drinking a cup of tea, she grabbed it off of the ground again and vigorously ate from it, all the time talking, with her mouth full or empty. Again she threw the piece of meat down, and reaching down in the bosom of her dress she drew out a greasy, dirty paper, saying, " Oh, missionary, I want you to see how I have tried to keep the record of the praying day." It was a dirty, greasy paper now, and I hardly recognized it as the clean one I had given her. With much interest I looked it over, and found that during all those six months she had kept the record faithfully. Here it was the right day for all those six months. Of course I was very much delighted. She said, "Some days a boy would come in and say, 'There is a fine reindeer out in the valley, I am sure you can shoot it.' But I said, ' No, no, it is the praying day, and I cannot shoot on the praying day.' But I think of the Great Spirit, my Father, and try to pray and talk to Him and have Him talk to me." She was so happy, as I said kind and encouraging words to her. Soon she folded the paper up and jammed it down in the bosom of her dress, and then she grabbed up her chunk of meat and chewed some pieces of it, while I was nibbling daintily at my bit. Then she looked at mine and looked at hers, and said, "Your piece of meat is not a very fine one; mine is a splendid piece;" and before I knew what she was going to do she swapped pieces. I did not practice any hypocrisy. I knew the motive that had prompted her giving me her piece was that it was better than mine, and so I took her piece and from it I finished my dinner, and I thanked her for doing it, because in exchanging pieces she had done what is considered one of the greatest acts of kindness an Indian can do -that is, if he sees he has something better than yours, to exchange with you. We had a service in the afternoon that lasted until supper-time, and another in the evening that lasted until midnight, and twenty. two of us lay down in that wigwam, all with our feet to the fire and our heads to the side of the wigwam., God has now given us that people for Christ. Everyone of them professes to love Him, and there is not a conjurer or a medicine man among them.
I had occasional visits from Roman Catholic priests. I never quarrel with them, but I keep my eyes open, and the fish that I have landed I try to get into my basket and have stay there. The priests used to come and visit the Indians, and I was courteous and friendly, but when they had gone away I would say to my people, " -What did these long-coated gentlemen say 1" "Oh, they said a lot of beautiful things to us about the mother of our Lord, and how nice it would be to get her to intercede with her Son for us." Here was my argument to them: I would say, " Suppose that the governor-general of our country should come out here and be in my house as a guest, and he should send out word, 'Now, Indians, if you have any petition or favor to ask, come and see me, and I will gladly listen to your prayer and do all I can for you.' Suppose that John Company (the name the Indians give the Hudson Bay Company) should say, ' Now if you Indians want to have any talk with the governor, tell us, and we will go and speak for you.' What would you say when the governor himself had invited you to come right to his presence 1 You would say to John Company, ' Mind your own business, we are going to the governor.' Now listen, in this book Jesus Christ says, 'Him that cometh unto Me I will in no wise cast out; whosoever will may come ; and I if I be lifted up will draw all men unto Me.' I would not say a word against the mother of our Lord, she was a glorious and blessed woman, but when the Lord Jesus, the Son of God, says, ' Come unto Me,' what is the use of having the mother as your mouthpiece when you can go yourself straight to the Son~" So when these priests came around again and thought they were going to scoop in a great lot of my converts, they found the Indians were offish, and they wanted to know what was the matter, and the Indians said, " Well, it is just this, if you long-coated gentlemen wish to go and say your prayers through the intercession of the old lady go and do it, we are going straight to the Son every time." The result was that I never lost an Indian convert in any of our missions.
These priests are very zealous and worthy of imitation, as to courage and enterprise and push, and their determination to succeed. In one Indian village was a French priest, an earnest worker in his way and very zealous for the ceremonies of the church, especially as regards Friday. The Indians were told never to eat meat Oll Friday; they were to eat fish only. That was all right for six months of the year, when they had any quantity of fish, but the other six months, when the ice was often ten feet thick, it was rather difficult to get the required food. One Friday this priest went into one of the wigwams, and found one of his best Indians, as he had supposed, eating a great piece of venison. The priest, with all the excitability of the Frenchman, flew around and said, "Didn't I tell you never to eat meat on Friday~" The Indian carved off another piece and said, " Him no meat, him fish." The priest said, " Can't I believe my eyes? You are eating venison." "Him no venison, him fish. " The priest was very much annoyed and said, " Are you crazy or am I crazy 1 I say that is venison." "Him no venison, him fish." "How do you know it is 1" said the priest. The Indian replied, "You came to me awhile ago and said, 'I want you to be one of my people.' I said, , What do you want to do l' 'Why, to baptize you.' I said, 'What is me that you tell ~ What will you pay me l' We talked about it and you decided to give me a new shirt if you would baptize me. I said, ' Go ahead ;' so you took the water and went through your prayers and baptized me, and yon said, 'I change you, you not Ookoosketoos any more, you Peter.' So I am Peter ever since. Friday come, and I have no fish, and I feel pretty hungry, and I don't want to go all day without anything to eat, so thinks I, I will fix him, and I get some water and take up that nice piece of venison and I say, ' you venison are you, I fix YOU';' and I put water on him and baptize him, and make him fish, and I eat him." So he went on, and had a good time.
One of the saddest things in reference to our North American Indians of this far north was the cruel way in which they treated women. The men in their pagan state were naturally tyrants. They had such false ideas. They thought if a man was kind to his mother, or his wife, or his sister, or his daughter, there was something weak about him, that he was not a big Indian, a strong, great warrior, so they crushed out all kindly feeling. They were fond of the little boys, but the poor little girls had a hard time of it. A man could cuff his wife's ears because the little baby a few hours old was a girl, and not a boy; and all through life that feeling of contempt for womanhood was manifested. I have seen a big Indian with a rifle on his shoulder come marching into the eucampment. He would look around until over yonder he would see his wife, perhaps chopping wood, and he would say, "Get up, you dog of a wife, and go along the trail and you will see where I have shot a deer. Bring it in quick, I want my dinner." Then he would send a club at her with such fury, that if she had not dodged it her brains would have been dashed out. Away she would go and stagger home with that great deer on her back. Then she would take her scalping-knife and go to work and skin that deer, and cut out a lot of venison and boil it and put it before her husband. He would invite half a dozen of his men friends, and they would sit down and get out their knives and go to work. The wife would go and sit with the girls, and after these fellows had gorged themselves with venison, they would take bony bits, and after they had eaten the best off the bones, would laugh to see the dogs and women struggle for the bones which they threw to them. That is paganism as we saw it first. Oh, how often I had to shut my lips tight and hold my tongue and say, " Lord, give me grace to be quiet now, and to speak the right word when the time comes I"~ It was worse than that, for it was a sin, my sister, my mother, for a woman to grow old out there. I once went to a village where lives a great chief named Mookoowoosoo. Tobaoco among the Indians is like salt among the Ara~s, and I have often brought them to parley. with me because I have given them a little tobacco and tea. I gave this old fellow a plug of tobacco, and said, "Go with me for a walk." Just outside of his village was a pile of blackened ashes, and I said, " What is that ~" " Ah," he said, "that is where I burned my mother to ashes." H Of what disease did your mother die~" He said, " She died of a rope." " What do you mean?" "Why," he said, " she got so she could not snare rabbits and catch fish, and I was not going to be bothered with the old thing, and one day I put a rope around her neck and then burned her to death, so her ghost wouldn't come to haunt me." He boasted that he killed his own mother! But look at the contrast. My wife and I went among that people, and we worked for several years. We preached the blessed Gospel of the Son of God, and I went out a year ago last summer to visit all these tribes, and travelled several thousand miles, holding evangelistic services from tribe to tribe. Look into one of those Indian churches. It is made of logs, a great big roomy Indian church, with one wide aisle down the middle. Let us stand in the desk on Sunday morning as the congregation gather. Look at that man and his two brothers who took their mother out in the woods and killed her because she was getting old and feeble. Look at that old woman who murdered the two little babies of the missionary who followed us. And then look at this other woman. There is brightness on her face, but if you look deeper there is a memory of some terrible crime which she cannot wipe out. That woman has a history. When I first went out there with my dogs in the woods, visiting them, her husband was an old conjurer, a very wicked man. He would not let her come to the house of God, and in the summer time when I went in my canoe he kept her away. I thank God for a voice with which I could send ringing out into the distance the story of God's love, and so while I had a company of a few hundred Indians there on the ground, I knew that in that clump of balsams on the bank of the river, pretending to be making a moccasin or dressing a deer-skin were the wives or daughters or :sisters of some of the intensely wicked people who would not allow them in the company to which I was preaching, and so I would preach for those yonder. One day this old fellow caught his wife out in the outskirts listening, and I learned afterward that he took her and beat h~r cruelly, and then made withes with which he tied her to a tree. The hunters had gone away. They used to come to my meetings, but, the instant I left, away they scattered to their hunting-grounds, and only a few families were left in the village. These were all so afraid of this terrible old conjurer that they dared not untie his wife. Yonder in the wigwam was her little baby girl a few months old, in the hammock. By and by it woke up and began to cry. It wanted mother's care and mother's nursing. But she was tied there to the tree, and the child cried louder and louder, until by and by its shrieks so affected the mother that she struggled free ea.t last, and she rushed for her child, not to nurse it, but to run down to the river, and take it by the heels and dash its brains ont against a rock and throw the quivering body iuto the rushing river. As the child was swept away some Indian women heard her wailing out, " Oh, that my mother had done that to me when I was a poor little babygirl like you, to save me from the life I am living!" Her husband died after awhile, and so there was no impediment in the way, and she came to Christ; but in her heart is the memory of that murder. Oh, if she only knew that there was a river of oblivion into which she could plunge and wipe out the memory of the past, she would go to the eRds of the earth to bathe in such a place !
But look, the chapel doors are thrown open. Ah! there is a sight that brings a lump to my throat and tears to my eyes. Two great Indians, men twenty-eight or thirty years of age, with their hands have made a chair and over their two hands and shoulders there is a blanket thrown, and seated on that chair, with her arms around their stalwart necks, the poor old invalid mother is being carried to the house of God by her own sons. Another brother goes ahead down the aisle. We have no backs to our plain seats, so he folds up a blanket very nicely and puts it down as a soft cushion, and the other sons come along and mother is seated upon it, and one of the big felIow~ siti down beside her and puts his strong arm around her and she lays her head against his manly breast. Ah ! there comes a dimness in my eyes and a lump in my throat as I see that, and I thank God for the transformation. The mother burned to death is paganism ; the mother carried by her own sons to the house of God is Christianity.
Those are some of the things God has permitted us to see in our work among the red men, and it is a joy to tell you; we are glad to tell you that even among the red men God has saved some hundreds of precious souls. Devoted men and women there are toiling on. God is blessing them in the work. Indian converts are being raised up, and now some of our most successful workers are Indians.-Northfield Echoes.
THE INDIANS OF AMERICA: THEIR CURIOUS CUSTOMS, WEIRD WAYS AND STRANGE SUPERSTITIONS.-II.
BY THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF.
The Indians of the Moqui towns retain with singular tenacity the queer customs that antedate the Spanish conquest. In their cliff-cities, for example, even yet exists the most incredible barbaric dance, the rattlesnake dance, one of their secret rites known to have been celebrated three hundred years ago and more.
The snake is with them an object of idolatrous reverence in proportion to the deadliness of its venom. The Pueblos, in fact, keep one species of serpent, harmless to them, as a mouse-hunter, which pursues the housepests to the very remotest hiding-place. The rattlesuake, or chit-ah, is of course peculiarly sacred, and holds a place among the" Trues;" though not worshipped, the Pueblos hold the chit-an worthy of homage, and endowed with extraordinary powers. Every Pueblo town used to keep a huge rattlesnake in a sacred room, and fed it once a year with solemn rites. In Isleta a sacred rattler, said to be as large around as a man'~ body, was kept in the volcanic caves of the Cerro del Aire, and when it got away in 1887 patient and official search was made, in vain, to recapture it. Snaketending has nearly become an extinct custom in all New Mexican Pueblos, but every other year during the August moon the snake dance still survives.
For sixteen days previous the professional "snake men" prepare for the August festival, seated in their sacred rock-chambers; fasting from all food, they drink only a bitter" tea" infused from a secret herb which is an antidote to the venom, and rub their bodies with certain herbs. Six days previous to the dance they go on a hunt for rattlers, which they tickle with the" snake-whip" or sacred tuft of eagle plumes, until the snake starts to run; then it is snatched up and flung into a bag. These hunts must be in the sacred order-on successive days, east, north, west, south -it were impious to transgress this order. The captured reptiles are kept in the kiboa or estufa, the sacred room, until the night before the dance, when they are ceremonially and solemnly cleansed at an altar which the" snake captain" makes of colored sands drawn in a mystic pattern. The place of the snake dance is a small open court facing eastward, opening on the cliff, where are several sacred rooms cut in the rock, reached by tall ladders. At the south end of this 'court is the" dance rock," a natural pillar about fourteen feet high. Midway between this and the north extremity of the court is the sacred kee-si, or booth of cottonwood branches, with a curtain before the opening; and in front a shallow cavity, over which is an old plank with a hole in one side; this cavity, Ski-pa-pit, the Black Lake of Tears, is held by Indians of the Southwest to be the original source of the human race, and even the name is not to be spoken aloud !
The time for the dance is just before sundown, and, for hours before, the approaches to the court are thronged. A score of men of the Antelope Order march in single file thrice around the court, going through religious rites before the booth, their captain sprinkling them with sacred fluid from an eagle feather, while they shake their guajes or gourd-rattles. Then they take their stand by the booth, their backs to the wall of the court, and the seventeen priests of the Snake Order file by, making the circuit of the court four times, stamping with the right foot on the sacred plank as they pass, to let the cackinas, or spirits, know that they are now offering prayer. The captain of the order reaches the booth and the procession halts. He kneels before the booth and draws out of the buckskin bag a big snake, which he holds with his teeth, some six inches back of its head, and rises to his feet. The captain of the A.ntelope Order now puts his left arm around the other's neck, and with his snake-whip "smooths" the angry rattIer; and the two captains start forward in their dance. The next snake priest draws forth another snake, and another antelope partner joins him, and so on until each of the seventeen snake priests has a snake between his teeth and an antelope partner in the hop. These couples thus dance toward the rock, thence to the north, and so circle back to the booth. On reaching a point at the third quarter circle, each snake man by a swift motion of his head to the left flings his snake to the rock floor inside the ring, and dances back to the booth for another rattler and another round. The performers are painted black down to the mouth, then white to the neck, then dark red to the waist, with dancing skirts to the knee and rattles on the legs. The three antelope men, in excess of the snake priests, gather up the snakes and put them back in the booth, and often have five or six snakes in hand at once. If the rattlers show fight, they tickle them with the snake-whips until they uncoil and start to run, when they seize them as before. In one dance as many as a hundred snakes are sometimes used, and three fifths of them, rattlesnakes with fangs unextracted! Mr. Lummis saw a snake dance in 1891, and one performer was bitten in the right cheek. His companion coolly unhooked the reptile and threw it on the ground, and the dance went on heedless of the trivial incident. The bites seem to be powerless to harm these prepared performers. The end of the dance is a rush to the dance rock, where the snakes are hurled into a heap, sometimes a foot high by four feet across. A moment's leaping about the pile, sprinkling the sacred cornmeal j then they each grasp a number of snakes and dart toward the four points of the compass, and reaching the bottom of the mesa, or sacred enclosure usually on a hillside, they release them. These rites continue from half an hour to an hour, ending with sunset, when the performers return to their sacred purifications with mystic herbs. The Hupi hold the rattlcr to be one of their first ancestors, the son of the Moqui Adam and Eve. Hence also the stone fetich carved into the semblance of the reptile.
The Navajo Indians, nearest neighbors to the Moquis, will not touch a snake, and have severely beaten a silversmith for making to order a bracelet which represented a rattler.
They, however, give the bear the first rank among beasts, even above man, for man is in mortal fear of the bear's supernatural powers. The Navajo would not reveal to a hunter a bear's den, lest the beast should visit him and his family with condign vengeance. In one case only would he assault a bear-namely, when that particular bear has killed a Navajo, and even then the avengers halt before the bear's cave, to make a solemn apology, chanting the praises of the king of beasts, and begging pardon for the deed of vengeance to which they feel constrained. Then they kill the bear and go back to fast and purify themselves. To us the whole proceeding would seem ludicrously farcical, but it is fact. Prayers and sacrifices to the bear are common, and even his skin is not to be profanely touched.
Witchcraft is a common faith among the Indians; witches are not only believed in, but are put to death in New Mexico, where are 30,000 Indians all firmly holding to this superstition. The Pueblo of Sandia is nearly extinct by witch executions. Among the 1100 of the Isletans, nearly half of the people are believed to be thus possessed. To keep down witchcraft is the main duty of the ., medicine men," and the kum-pah-whit-hah-wen are the guards who execute witches by shooting an arrow entirely through the body from left to right.
Witches are universal enemies; they bring all calamities and keep away all blessings. Disease, drought, famine-all disasters are traced to them. Hence all religious ceremonies begin with the dispersion of evil spirits, and numerous charms are used against them. Births must be guarded lest the babe be appropriated by the witches, and the soul of the dead cannot journey to the hunting-grounds of the blest in safety unless they are thrown off the trail.
Suspicion is easily aroused where such dread is in the air. Red eyes are a presumption of wakeful nights j the sickness of an enemy hints a power to work evil upon him. When anyone is suspected, the medicine men secretly search his house and belongings, and to find an accursed feather there seals his doom, which is inflicted officially after due trial and sentence. It is unsafe to be more skilled than one's neighbors, for anything which cannot be explained, though it be only a photograph, or whatever the Indian cannot account for, he attributes to a supernatural and personal cause, investing both animals and men with these attributes.
And so it comes to pass that, kindred to witchcraft and inseparable from it, is wizardcraft; and the Indian magician not only compels his spectators to believe in his supernatural powers, but believes in them himself.
Few of us imagine the marvellous skill of the Indian juggler. He has to perform before eyes that are amazingly watchful and acute, and he has no cabinets, mirrors, false bottoms, sleeves, pockets, trap-doors, and other appliances and accessories of Anderson and Blitz, Hermann and Maskelyne. These jugglers perform half naked, with a hard clay floor under them and within touch of the auditor.
The medicine men are always magicians, hence their control over the tribe as the real chiefs. They have won their sceptre by the power to work wonders, and they keep the ascendancy as the Egyptian priests did theirs, by keeping their secrets. They form a small and secret class, into which are constantly initiated lads, who are thenceforth inseparable from the order. The life is hard, involving incredible manual practice to acquire their masterly dexterity, and rigorous fasts and self-discipline shorten the average age of this class. Conjuring is with the Indians a means of livelihood, but only indirectly; no money would tempt one of them to perform for a mere bribe. His business is a part of his religion.
Hence the main occasions for magic are connected with the " medicine-makings. " The shamans or medicine men then meet in the sacred rooms or conical huts, never otherwise used, to perform sacred rites, linked with healing, prophecies of the year, etc.
Prayers to those above and charms for dispersion of evil spirits being over, the medicine dance succeeds for cure of various maladies. The shamans during their dance have in each hand a long feather from an eagle's wing. already used to toss evil spirits to the wind; now these serve as medicine chest and surgical case. The shaman hops toward the patient and touches him with the feather tip, while he suckt;; at the other end. The feather seems to swen, as though some large object were passing through, and then shrinks again, a,nd the shaman begins to cough and choke, and draws from his mouth a big rag or stone or branch, which of course the patient believes has been extracted from his own body. Sometimes the shaman, without a feather, with his bare hand plucks out the " disease." Another illusion is the witch-killing, in which the " guards" bring in manikins, not larger than a three-year-old child, which in every respect resemble a dead Indian, and the deadly arrow is seen thrust through the body and projecting from each side, and so complete is the illusion that as they are swung round drops of blood bespatter the spectators.
To see these wizards dance barefooted and barelegged amid hot coals of cedar wood, hold their naked arms in the flame, and eat living coals with seeming relish, is amazing; or hold torches against their nude bodies or those of their fellows for two or three minutes at a time, whip each other with these scourges of fire, and take and give baths of flame; or to behold them, without even a jacket to conceal the trick, swallow eighteen- inch swords to the hilt, or great plumed arrows with stone heads. It is said that these shamans can turn themselves into any animal shape.
The "foretelling of the year" has been referred to. This comes before mid-March. The chief shaman and two assistants go to the Rio Grande, and bring back actual stalks of green corn and wheat, which they claim are brought by the river, and whence they predict the coming crops.
The" seed-giving" is a marvellous piece of sleight-of-hand. " The mother," an ear of white corn, with a white plume bound to the head, is shaken above the throng in token of blessing, and out pours a shower of all sorts of seeds, ten times as abundant as that" mother" could contain.
Another trick is the " moving of the sun," which seems to rise on the east side of the room and pursue its course in an arch and set on the west; and again they counterfeit a thunder-storm, when the roar of heaven's artillery comes nearer and nearer, and lightning darts across the dark room. At times these Navajo jugglers dance with feathers as partners, standing the plumes on end in a flaring basket, the feather swaying toward them and following their movements.
But the chief achievement of the Navajo shaman is the" growing of the sacred corn." At sunrise he plants the sacred kernel, soon the earth cracks and the shoot appears; the growth is some inches an hour, until by noon the corn tassels out, and by sunset the ears of corn appear. The juggler's weird song must not stop or the growth stops. Of course this is an illusion-the" eyes are made the fools of the other senses;" but how it is done the shaman only knows !
It would seem that even in blanket-weaving the Navajo Indians must have some religious scruples or notions to guide them. There is no other blanket beside that is like unto it, and the mode of preparation, the stuff used, and even the colors employed in the original Indian blanket, are all unique. The loom is of three bticks, a rope, and a stonp,. Every thread is rammed home with conscientious closeness, so that the fabric holds water. The Navajos raise their own sheep, shear them, card, twist, and dye the wool. The prevailing color of the blanket is a whitish gray, with cross stripes generally of blue, but sometimes red, black, and yellow. In the patterns curved lines and circles are never used, but straight stripes, diamonds, crosses, diagonals, and zigzags. The crosses and diamonds are sacred emblems of the morning or evening star.
The colors are limited in the original Navajo blanket. Scarlet is the favorite red and indigo the almost exclusive blue. In the best blankets, only these colors appear. Some colors are to an Indian inseparable from witchcraft and accursed, such as violet, purple, dark brown, etc., which reminds us of Ruskin's remarks upon the fact that God has associated certain colors with innocent and innocuous qualities, and others with what is harmful and venomous. Obviously to the Indian even color is a matter of religion, and, above all, red is sacred, sometimes absorbing four fifths of the blanket. It is said that grocer's supplies if wrapped in red paper will sell with ten times the rapidity with which those in other wrappings will be disposed of. The finest blankets are worn by the chiefs, and are thus exalted to the foremost uses, and seldom shown even then save on festal occasions sacred to religious rites.
The Indians have stone fetiches, which they employ in hunting-pretty stones of quartz, agate, jasper, and striped spar, with eyes of coral or blue turquoise, and the hearts always of turquoise, sacred to them as having stolen its hue from heaven's blue. No party of Indians would go on a hunt for deer, antelope, or even rabbits without the aid of this" blind hunter." These fetiches are cut into images of animals of prey rudely carved. An arrow-head of agate or volcanic glass is bound with sinew to its right side, and under the " heart" is a pinch of sacred cornmeal. These stone fetiches are believed to impart to the hunter the strength or cunning or sagacity of the animal whose rude likeness they bear; hence, the favorite image is that of the cougar, which they consider kiug among animals. The hunter puts his mouth to that of the image and" drinks its breath," a ceremony deemed essential to preced~ a successful hunt, and repeated at times during its progress.
The hunter, on striking a trail, places in front of a footprint a forked twig with the fork opening backward to trip the game. Then he draws from the "left-hand hag" or shoulder pouch the fetich, that he may inhale its "breath of strength"-a sort of invocation to the animal it represents to aid him; then he imitates the roar, howl, or cry of his patron beast to smite terror to the heart of the game he pursues. These solemn rites augur success.
Around the bow (as in the Greek, (31Or; stood for both life and the bow as the means of its support) everything vital to life has become associated; hence, to the Indian the most sacred beliefs cluster about the hunt, and the whole matter is a matter of religion, the very animals that are hunted being held in reverence.
One class of the shamans have full control of all matters pertaining to the sacred hunt, and are known as Hoo-mah-koon-those having death in their arms. These, created just after mankind began to be, were first of all branches of medicine men save only the Kah-pee-oo-nin (dying of cold), so called because they appear in almost nude condition.
The night before the round hunt the official crier proclaims it in loud voice. The" drawing" dance is performed to charm the game, and the dancing and chanting are believed to make the wild beasts deaf to the approach of the hunter. The songs sung imitate the cry of the animal to be pursued, and these services occupy most of the night. At a set time in the morning the Hoo-mah-koon, going to a certain invariable starting- point, kindle a fire with solemn rites; no one not belonging to the order dare start that fire, which must be kindled only with the fire drill, or with :fiint and steel. To use a match would be daring impiety deserving instant death.
Around the holy flame the Hoo-mah-koon bow their heads and invoke the fetiches. Then two men are elected, who at the word" Go !" start on a run in divergent directions, followed at intervals by two more, and so on until the whole host of hunters are on the run along the lines of a V; then othey begin to converge toward an appointed spot, thus fnrming a diamond line of hunters. Then at a signal the lines close inward, the hunters hurling boomerangs, and very little game thus enclosed escapes. Of the animals killed the first two go to the Hoo-mah-koon in command, and are taken upon the lap and sprinkled with the sacred meal.
The hunt is closed, as it was begun, by a religious after-hunt song and a present of game to the cacique. The head of the animal is the portion of the hunter who killed it, and he is believed to thus feed on the qualities of the animal.
A true Pueblo will eat no rabbit which is not cooked after a certain fashion, its ears so twisted into a knot, and its forelegs so turued under the arm-pits, and the hindlegs so pinned behind, as to "make it as people. " The Hoo-mah-koon are likewise sought to "give the road" for a journey, and even this favor must be asked with an offering of sacred meal. There is the medicine dance, and then the journey is forecast, sometimes with ceremonies ridiculously trivial, like combing the horse which is to be ridden and delivering auguries over the horse hairs, and the journey is begun only when official permission is given.
Every Indian lad is expected to be an expert in the hunt and in the :fight, and be a walking library of Indian folklore. If he is to be a shaman, he has a long and hard apprenticeship.
For instance, a boy of twelve is to be initiated into the order of Cumpa-hint-la-hwen. Such adoption into another order does not break up the boy's family ties, but adds a new clan bond. On successive days the shamans, in order of rank, visit him, hold him awhile, pray for him, and depart; then the visits are repeated in the same order, through the years, until the time comes for the fnll adoption into the order, meanwhile his tuition going forward. Then after a day's fast, at sundown, he is led to the house of the order. Dropping moccasins at the door, the old chief leads the lad into the dark room, and before the sacred fire he stands while the Trues are invoked in a given order that must on no account be violated-the Trues of the east, north, west, south, above, and centre. Then the lad is declared a member, and squats in front of the semicircle. No chair or bench is allowable; candidates must sit" on what they have,"
MISSIONS IN ALASKA
blanket or moccasins. Then comes the smoking of the sacred cigarette, which he must smoke down to the end and let lIlO smoke escape his mouth. A few whiffs suffice to make him deathly sick, but he must persevere if he is to " win his course." Then the lad stands and prays to the legion of the Trues, and only in proper order of rauk. Then he sits in a given attitude to learn the songs of the order. Night after night this continues until the last song is learned, when the Tho-a-shir, or receiving, completes the initiation, and he receives the P'ah-cuin-pah, or drink of sacred water.
Now he takes a seat in the sell}icircle of Cum-pa-hint-lah-wen, holding their official bows and arrows. For forty-nine hours they recite the history and customs of the order, and he is expected to ask such questions or interject such remarks as show that he is awake and intent; otherwise a thrust with a bow under the ribs serves as a reminder. Then he is again embraced and declared fully initiated. But now his apprenticeship has only begun. Vhat patient practice and self-mastery to acquire that unparalleled sleight-of-hand and coolness and control of even the features, which fit for the guidance and government of an Indian tribe !
MISSIONS IN ALASKA.
BY O. E. BOYD, NEW YORK.
Missions in Alaska previous to its purchase by the United States were carried on by the Russian Greek Church.
In June, 1793, Bishop Josaph and ten monks were sent out by the Russian Government. They established the first mission, and erected the first mission building on the island of Kadiak. Three years later the bishop and all but one of the monks were drowned. During these three years considcrable success attended their lahors, especially among the natives on the Aleutian Islands. A few years later Sitka was made the headquarters of the mission, a church was built, and ever since that time regular services have there been maintained. About 1822 a priest named Venianinof was sent from Russia and made the Bishop of Alaska. He was a man of great missionary zeal and considerable literary attainments. He attained to the highest honors of his Church, and died in 1879, mourned by the whole Russian nation. Bishop Nicholas is now in charge of the diocese. At the time of the transfer of the territory to the United States the Greek Church claimed a membership of 12,140, and stilI claims about that number. They have one cathedral and forty-one churches and chapels. The cathedral is at Sitka, and though not a pretentious building, is, for so small a town, quite rich in decoration, paintings, altar service, jewels, vestments, etc. Several schools were established during this time by the priests, but not much in the way of practical education seems to have been given to the natives, their principal teachings having been the rites and doctrines of the Greek Church. Notwithstanding the appar- ent success of the Greek Church priests, it is really a question whether they ought to be classed among missionary workers, or their followers as true converts to the faith.
The only other Church at work in Alaska previous to the transfer was a small company of Lutherans at Sitka. This mission was abandoned when its support by the Russian Government was withdrawn.
The natives on the southeast shores and islands of Alaska are called Hydahs, Tsimpseans, and Thlingits. The Hydahs live on the southern portion of the Prince of Wales Archipelago. The Tsimpseans came in a body from British Columbia with Mr. WiIIiam Duncan and settled upon Annette Island. The Thlingit appears to be the true indigenous stock from Cape Fox to the Copper River. There are no monuments, memorials, or traditions indicating that any other people were ever located there. They are without doubt Mongolian, and when compared with the Chinese and Japanese who are there, the resemblance is very noticeable. The Thlingits are good workers, and are extensively employed in mining, fishing, and various other industries. The Russians never made. any !Serious attempt to civilize them. The massacre of the Russian settlement at New Archangel by the natives made them extremely cautious and gave them a lasting prejudice. A few, however, were taken and partially educated, with a view to their usefulness as interpreters. At this time Sitka had a strong stockade around it and batteries trained upon the native town where they were compelled to settIe. From 1867 to 1877 the condition of the native Alaskans went from bad to worse. Soldiers, sailors, smugglers, and freebooters introduced disease and wiCKedness in new and more enticing shapes. Each settlement became a pandemonium. In their terrible degradation they were avoided and neglected as if they had been lepers. Their inherited customs incited them to practices of extreme cruelty. Witchcraft with its attendant horrors was universal. Retaliation with all its subtleties had become a sort of native science. . Under Russian domination they had occasionally obtained strong liquor and had enjoyed the aroused and murderous feelings which it ex· cited, hut it remained for them to learn the art of making their own fire· water after the American occupation. About the year 1875 a white man by the name of Lawson strayed to Sitka, and took a native woman to wife on the European plan. He was a dangerous man, for he knew and practised the art of distillation. Nearly all the kerosene which is shipped to the Pacific Coast is put into square tins holding five gallons each. He extemporized a still out of one of these cans, made a worm out of a piece of the tin, and ran h down through a barrel of water. The mash was made of Sandwich Island molasses and yeast; when sufficiently fermented it was placed over a slow fire, when the rum would fall drop by drop from the worm into the cup. It was not long before each house had a still, and some three or four. They would carry them iu their canoes and have them ready for any camp-ground. They were passionately fond of this fire-water. It made them murderously drunk. Nearly all the money received by them for wood, furs, and the lik,e was spent for molasses and converted into rum, The years of 1877, 1878, and most of 1879 were fearful times for the natives of Southeastern Alaska. It was almost a continued orgy of drunkenness and murder. Little children suffered from neglect and abuse. A great number were injured and crippled for life.
The United States purchased Alaska from .Russia, October 18th, 1867. Inasmuch as we have no national church, the responsibility of the spiritual welfare of the natives rested upon the Christian churches of our land. Although the need of missionary work had been pressed upon the churches again and again by that noble Christian soldier, General O. O. Howard, and also by others, nothing was done in that direction until the year 1877, ten years after its purchase, when the Board of Home Missions of the Presbyterian Church sent Rev. Sheldon Jackson, D.D., on a tour of inspection, with a view to the establishment of mission work in Alaska. At Portland, Ore., he met Mrs. A. R. McFarland, the widow of a missionary who had labored at Santa Fe, New Mel!;ico, and also among the Nez Perces Indians in Idaho. This brave woman was willing to go to Alaska, and it was decided that she should accompany Dr. Jackson. On August iOth, 1877, they reached Fort Wrangel. They found there, to their great astonishment and delight, a school and religious services already established by Philip McKay, a Tsimpsean Indian, a convert of the mission carried on by the Rev. A. Crosby, at Fort Simpson, just across the border in British North America. With several other Christian Indians McKay had gone to Fort Wrangel a year previous to obtain work, and seeing t~e ignorance and degradation of the natives, had undertaken the mission, being supported out of the wages of his fellow-Christian Indians. This faithful man, although in failing health, continu@d the work under great disadvantages until his death on December 25th, 1877.
Leaving Mrs. McFarland in charge at Fort Wrangel with Philip McKay as native assistant, Dr. Jackson returned to the East, and presenting the needs of the people secured sufficient funds to enable the Presbyterian Board of Home Missions to establish missions at several points. He also secured several ministers and teachers. Thus the establishment of missions in Alaska was assured.
The position of Mrs. McFarland was unique. For some time she was the only Protestant missionary in all Alaska, and for some months the only white woman at Fort Wrangel. Fitted by her long experience in other missions she soon had her hands and heart full. She became all things to these people. Minister, teacher, physician, nurse, lawyer, judge, jury, peacemaker-in fact, she found herself called upon to act in almost every capacity required by a life in such a community. The place being the headquarteril of the mining interest of this region, there were gathered
BOYS' DOHMITOH.Y. GIRLS~ DORJlITOHY. ClIunCII. ISDU~TmAL PAH:-:()~AUE. IIO~PITAL. MOCSTAIS OF
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MISSIONs lN ALASKA
here at times as many as five hundred white men and a thousand natives. Drunkenness, g1!mbling, and all consequent vices were unrestrained. There was no military control, no law, and no punishment for crime. It became necessary to do something to stem the tide of evil. A convention was called, Mrs. McFarland was made chairman, and drew up a few simple laws or rules of government, which were adopted and signed by nearly all the natives j three of the best of the natives were appointed policemen, and became very useful.
It soon became apparent that if the young girls were to be sa'ed a home or refuge must be established for them, and Mrs. McFarland at once began to provide for such a home. Appeals were made to the women of the Presbyterian Church, telling of the dangers to which the young girls were exposed j how they were being sold by their parents to white men for a few blankets. These appeals resulted in the establishment of a home which was built late in the year 1878. Into this home a number of girls were gathered and cared for until it was burned in 1884, when it was transferred to Sitka.
In August, 1878, Rev. S. Hall Young was sent to Fort Wrangel. He took charge of the mission, while Mrs. McFarland continued the home and school work. Mr. Young from the first exercised a very great influence over the natives. His fearlessness and honest Christian life secured their admiration and love. Thus these two noble missionaries laid the foundations of the work at Fort Wrangel, and made their influence felt in many of the outlying stations.
The summer of 1879 was an important epoch in the history of missions in Alaska. Miss Dunbar was sent to assist Mrs. McFarland in the school. Rev. Henry Kendall, D.D., Secretary of the Board of Home Missions, Rev. Sheldon Jackson, D.D., and Rev. A. L. Lindsley, D.D., pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Portland, Ore., with their wives, made a visit to all the mission stations. They took with them funds for the erection <?f a church building. A church was organized at Fort Wrangel with twenty-two natives and six white people. This was the first church organized in Alaska by the Protestants. It is still doing a good work, and has a membership of ninety-eight. This mission is now under the care of Rev. Clarence Thwing, M.D., and his faithful wife.
The Rev. J. G. Brady and Miss F. E. Kellogg arrived at Sitka, April, 1878, being the first missionaries sent to this station. Mr. Brady describes the place at that time as a veritable" hell upon earth." Every kind of vice was practised and unspeakable cruelties abounded.
The first Christian service was held in the old Russian castle. Mr. Brady preached to a mixed audience in English, which was translated first into Russian and then into the native language. They listened eagerly, and were so much impressed that the chiefs afterward made speeches expressing their joy at the prospect of a school and church. The school was opened in the barracks with fifty scholars, and has been continued with marked success ever since. A visitor to this station at the present day can little realize the condition of the natives at the time the work was begun.
Mr. Brady had special gifts which enabled him to win the confidence of the natives and draw numbers to hear the Gospel.
The following year, 1879, Mr. A. E. Austin and his family were put in charge of the mission. Their good influence upon the people', which at once began to be felt, has grown with each of the years of their continued service until the present.
This mission is the largest and most influential in the territory, with the exception of Metlakahtla. They now have a church with four hundred members, a boarding-school of one hundred and fifty members, an industrial school in which are taught carpentry, shoemaking, cooperage, printing, dressmaking, and cooking, a hospital with a physician and trained nurse, a museum of native curios which is very valuable, the gift of Dr. Jackson, and a number of model homes built for the young couples who have been married from the school. From the surrounding neighborhood the natives came to Fort Wrangel and to Sitka earnestly pleading that teachers might be sent to them also. The sweet old story of the cross seemed to have a wonderful effect upon them, lifting the veil of darkness which had been over them so long. With the new vision came a dawning hope, and hence their appeals that the blessed light might be brought to their families and friends before it was too late. In response to these Macedonian cries our missionaries made a number of long and perilous trips to visit these outlying tribes. The reports of these journeys are ;-ery full of interest. So much were they impressed with the need, and the hopeful outlook for successful work, that t.hey begged that missionaries be sent to several other stations. These entreaties were heeded, and in 1880 and 1881 missions were established among the Chilcats, Hoonahs, and Hydahs. Rev. E. S. Willard and wife opened the mission at Chilcat, the most northern of the stations, and labored under fearful trials of cold, hunger, isolation, and even threats of murder until 1885, when they were oompelled to return East to recover impaired health. Good work had been done, substantial buildings erected, mostly by Mr. Willard's own hands, and that when one of them had been disabled from the effects of exposure and scanty food. The next year they returned, but were soon compelled to leave again. A child of one of the chiefs having died, he claimed it had been bewitched by the missionaries, and vowed to have revenge. For a time the mission was closed, until Rev. W. W. vVarne was sent to reopen it in 1891. The work is again quite hopeful. The church and school are lifting these people into new and better conditions.
The Hoonah mission was put in charge of Mr. and Mrs. Styles. A building was erected, and after a year or more, Rev. J. W. McFarland and his wife were commissioned for that field. Here Mr. McFarland labored successfully until his death in 1893. His heroic wife assisted by her sister still conducts the mission, and will do so until a minister is sent to their relief.
The Hydahs have the reputation of being the best of the natives in Alaska. Their home on Prince of Wales Island is out of the usual steamer course, and for that reason they are not so generally known as the other tribes. Rev. J. Loomis Gould has been the leading spirit of this mission. He has been ably aided in his work by his good wife and by Mrs. A. R. McFarland, formerly at Fort Wrangel, and other mission- aries. A girls' home, a boys' industrial home, and a church have been established. There are many very thrilling incidents of mission life among these more isolated tribes that we wish we had space to record. The work among them has been arduous, many times discouraging, always dangerous, and fearfully isolated.
In 1886 Rev. E. S. Will;trd and wife, unable longer to live at Chilcat, removed to Juneau, which is now the commercial centre of Alaska. Here they found a large number of the Chilcat and other tribes, attracted thither by the prospect of employment in the gold mines, who were exposed to all the direful evils which exist in such a community. They established a church and mission, erected a neat church building, and a large home or refuge for girls. They labored with great success until 1894, when they retired, and Rev. L. F. Jones and wife with three assistant missionaries were put. in charge of the native church and large and flourishing girls' home.
In addition to the above missions in Southeastern Alaska, there are Presbyterian churches for the white population at Juneau and Sitka, and a mission on Douglass Island opposite Juneau, under the care of the Quakers. The Roman Catholics have also a hospital and church at Juneau. Besides these there is the very successful and important work of Mr. ·William Duncan at Metlakahtla. For the history of this mission the reader is referred to the July, 1893, number of this REVIEW, where he will find it in graphic detail.
The Swedish Evangelical Church has three flourishing missions in Alaska, one at Yakutat, one hundred and fifty miles north of Sitka, the others at U nalaklik and Golovin Bay on Norton Sound. Suitable buildings have been erected, and the work is successful and promising.
Kadiak Island and vicinity was assigned to the Baptists in the districting of the territory among the church denominations. They have erected a good building for a girls' home. The greatest foe they have to contend with on this field is thG free use of intoxicating liquor. The main hope is in the children.
The island of Unalaska is a part of the Methodist division of the territory. They have a girls' home and an encouraging work which was begun in 1889. Mr. J. A. Tuck and his family care for the thirty girls in the home and carryon the school. They have also a school of seventy-four pupils, and a home on the island of Unga, under the care of Mr. O. R. McKinney. All the natives north of the Aleutian Islands are Eskimo, with their peculiar customs and habits of life. Their dwelIings are built partly underground; the upper part resembles an inverted bowl with a hole at the top for light and air. The one entrance is so small that a person must go in and out on hands and knees. In these huts from ten to twenty persons live most of the year. They are lighted and heated by oil lamps. To anyone unaccustomed to this kind of life, the foul air and offensive odors would be intolerable. A raised platform serves as the sleeping place for all the occupants of the hut, each person having his assigned place, and like sardines in a box they huddle together under deer-skins for warmth. They have no tables or chairs, and eat from the floor without knives, forks, or spoons. Their food is mostly whale meat and skin, walrus, deer, and birds, all usually eaten uncooked; whale and seal oil are their principal drinks.
They are an industrious people. The men are kept busy hunting and fishing. The women are usually good sewers, especially of skins. Both sexes dress very much alike, in shirts, pants, and boots made of skins. In disposition they are cheerful and affectionate. They are exceedingly superstitious. This the shamans, or doctors, encourage for gain and influence. They never visit a grave after a body has been buried. They are slaves to tobacco, both sexes using it freely. They chew and rechew it, until no taste is left, and then it is dried and smoked. In morals they are not much above the animals, though they are usually exemplary in their married relations, or rather they were until the whalers introduced rum and whiskey among them, for which they seem willing to sell body and soul.
When will Christian nations prevent the manufacture and sale of these vile and soul-destroying intoxicants 1 On the mainland north of the Aleutian Islands the Moravian Church have established their missions along the course of the Kuskokwim and Nushagak rivers. Their missionary society sent out in the summer of 1885 Revs. W. H. Weinland and J. H. Kilbuck with their wives, and also a carpenter. They began work at what is known as the Bethel Mission on the Kuskokwim River. The carpenter was drowned, and these two couples, the young ministers fresh from the seminary, were left to. build their home and prepare for the rigor of an Arctic winter as best they could. The story of their struggles and their successes is intensely interesting. In 1886 the Carmel Mission was opened on the Nushagak, and additional missionaries were sent to care for it and other out-stations which they have since established. There are four in all, with seventeen mIssIOnaries. This is a hard field, but it is worked with the usual zeal and self-denial of the Moravian missionaries, and they have evidently gone there to stay.
Immediately north of the above mission flows the great Yukon River, along whose banks the Episcopal Church began its work in 1887, at what
A OROUP OF ESrUMO AT ST. LAWRENCE ISLAND
MISSIONS IN ALASKA
is known as the Anvik Mission, with Rev. O. Parker and wife in charge. In 1891 the St. James Mission was put nnder the care of Rev. J. L. Provost. This Church had also a mission at Point Hope, far to the north, on the shores of the Arctic Ocean. The school is taught by Dr. J. B. Driggs. Good substantial buildings have been erected at each of these stations. The schools are well attended, and good progress has been made in Christianizing the natives.
The Congregational Church Mission is at Cape Prince of Wales, the point nearest to Siberia, which is only forty-six miles distant. To this mission Mr. H. R. Thornton and Mr. W. T. Lopp were sent in 1890. A home and school-house were erected and a very large school was begun, enrolling as high as three hnndred and four pupils, with an average attendance of over one hundred. After a year spent on the field Mr. Thornton returned to the East, took to him a wife, who returned with him, and also a young lady, who afterward became Mrs. Lopp. The progress of the school was marked from this time on, nntil the sad tragedy which ended in Mr. Thornton's death and Mrs. Thornton's return to her home. The snmmer previous Mr. Lopp had been appointed by the Government as Superintendent of the Reindeer Station at Port Clarence. Mr. Thornton was thus left in sole charge of the mission. There had been considerable drinking for some time by the natives, and some of them had become dangerous. Mr. Thornton was apprehensive of trouble, and was preparing to leave at the next opportunity. About the middle of August, 1893, at midnight there came a knock at his door, and thinking some of the natives needed medical aid, he stepped into the hall to learn what was wanted. A whaling gun had been hauled up to the door and placed ready to fire as soon as his voice Vas heard. When he asked what was needed, immediately the gun was fired, and Mr. Thornton, reeling back into the foom, fell dead upon the floor. After a night of unspeakable agony, in which she dared not make an outcry, Mrs. Thornton called to a neighbor, who immediately became her protector. Later she was taken to Port Clarence Station for safety. The murderers, three in number, were eagerly sought out by the indignant natives, and two of them were shot j the other escaped to the hills, but was afterward caught and killed. The following year Mr. and Mrs. W~ T. Lopp were sent back to the mission, and the work now goes forward as before the awful tragedy.
The Presbyterian Church has established two mif'sions among these Arctic Eskimos. One at Point Barrow, one of the most northerly points in the Territory, and the nearest of all schools to the North Pole; the other on St. Lawrence Island, immediately south of the eastern border of Siberia.
The missionaries in· all these stations among the Eskimos in Alaska are so far removed from civilization that they receive news from the outside world only once in twelve months. They are separated so widely that they can communicate with or visit each other very seldom. The
TRANSFORMATIONS IN NEW GUINEA AND POLYNESIA
manners and habits of the natives are extremely repulsive. The exposure from snow, ice, and cold is terrible. Nevertheless a call for missionaries to go to this isolated and desolate region is more promptly responded to than a call to the more accessible and pleasant places.
Surely the spirit of the Master still dwells in the hearts of His people.
TRANSFORMATIONS IN NEW GUINEA AND POLYNESIA.
BY REV. S. MCFARLANE, LL.D., F.R.G.S., PIO~EER MISSIONARY TO NEW GUINEA.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, I am one of those men who have enjoyed the supposed happiness of gazing upon new lands, ascending mountains, crossing deserted plains, sailing along silent rivers into the unknown, where no white man had been before me, meeting with new races, new languages, new and sometimes nasty customs ; often in scenes of excitement, some- times trying to prevent the attacks of natives, at others prudently running away; watching savages, warriors, and cannibals come under the civilizing and elevating influences of Christianity; reducing lauguages to writing and translating Scriptures; establishing schools and churches 'and training a native ministry.
In order to understand what the Gospel has done for these natives we must consider how it found them. A hundred years ago the Prince of Darkness reigned supreme throughout all those widely extended regions of our globe. Idols were as numerous as inhabitants, and temples as the villages which lined the shores, or were scattered over the hills and mountains. Idolatry abounded everywhere. Oppression, cruelty, and canni- balism were common. Voyagers who knew little of the people, but were charmed with the scenery, were wont to describe the islands as gems that sparkled in the peaceful waters of the vast Pacific-quite a Paradise! But .the nearer the view, the darker the moral aspect became. We, who have lived nearly thirty years among them, know something of their real and terrible condition without the Gospel, and we are also witnesses to the marvellous transformation produced by the Gospel. Intellectually, morally, socially, and spll'itually these tribes were lost. They had been on the down-grade for ages. Ve are all either on the up or down grade, getting nearer to God or farther from Him. The natural run of society under sin must be downward, from bad to worse, unless interrupted by some remedial agency from without. The native races of whom I am speaking had wandered a long way from God, and were lost, for they had no idea of the way back to Him. Their language, legends, and cult provo that they have wandered, and indicate the road along which they have travelled. There is no time to go into these questions now, but I may just observe that if-as our best philologists tell us-all languages in their development proceed from the simple to the complex, from monosyllahles to polysylla- bles, from the agglutinative to the inflectional; then tho languages of Polynesia, through their various dialects, are among the oldest living on the face of the earth.
It does not follow that because a tribe or nation has no written language their speech is merely a kind of gibberish, having neither correct sense, sound, nor grammar. I have lived among Papuans for nearly thirty years, and reduced several of their languages to writing, and can testify that in some respects they are even superior to our own. Some of them have inclusive and. exclusive pronouns, dual and triad numbers, as many as seven words for the pronoun you, all of different grades, also a court and common language ; and the words are all as precise in their meanings as if they had been defineu by Johnson; the grammar is as regular and uniform as if it had been formed by Lindley ~lurray, while the pronunciation is as exact as if it had been settled and phonographcd by Walker, thus clearly pointing back to It higher state of civilization from which they had fallen.
How come the natives in Polynesia and New Guinea'–savages, idolators, and cannibals-to have such a language if they have not brought it down with them ~ If all our civilization is to be traced to a slow but gradual development from a state of primitive barbarism and savage existence, how are we to account for the condition of these people ~ Here we have two large sections of prehistoric men, who are still in the age of stone and lake-dwellings. Where is the evidence that they are advancing in civilization, intelligence, morality, or happiness ~ The fact is that there is abundant evidence that both races are retrograding, and none whatever that they are advancing, except under influences from without. I have found some of the bush tribes in the vicinity of the Fly River practising cremation. If it is true that" the custom of burning the dead was wellnigh universal in remote ages in the countries of the Old 'World," then it is probable that the Papuans have brought this custom with them, as well as others-that of circumcision, for instance. The stone gods and charms among the natives of Polynesia and New Guinea-some standing erect from one to eight feet in height, others portable and carried about by the natives-also point to very ancient forms of worship. Now consider that the first empires that arose in the world were formed by descendants of Ham, and that Nimrod, the grandson of Ham, went into Assyria and founded Nineveh, and the city which he built, and the empire, continued for ages to :overshadow all Western Asia. Mizraim, the son of Ham, founded the Egyptian monarchy and the Philistine Commonwealth. Canaan, the fourth son, settled in Palestine, and his descendants founded, first the Canaanitish kingdoms, then Tyre, and subsequently Carthage.
These were for a long time the leading nations of the world; they possessed its highest civilization, and held all but a monopoly of its commerce. These young monarchies, no doubt, sent forth strong and vigorons colonies, which took possession of the Asiatic Archipelago, Australia, New Guinea, aud Western Polynesia. Thus we may reasonably connect the decaying Polynesian and New Guinea tribes with the oldest civilization of the world.
It is no use talking, as some people do, about leaving the heathen to the" natural progress of the race," and supposing that all the advanced races of mankind began at the level of the savage state, and have reached their present state of culture, civilization, wealth, and liberty by laws of development in mere nature. That there is such a thing as development, we all admit. All the human faculties are capable of development by exercise or training, and every human being will of necessity be developed to a certain degree, both in mind and body, by the growth of years and the necessary struggles of life. But that human society was ever carried forward a single step in the matter of morality under mere laws of natural development we utterly deny. The Greek civilization displayed a high state of culture, but their literature from Hesiod downward is sprinkled with traces of sentiment derived from the Jewish and Egyptian religions. The Roman civilization was but a propagation of the Greek; and the Teutonic race, often named as an example of natural development, is known to have been set forward by the civilizations it conquered and its early conversion to Christianity. What does it mean that so many races, empires, and languages of the world have become extinct ~ Whatever may be said of a law of natural progress, there can be no doubt that a law of natural deterioration is at work, and has been going on for ages among the people under consideration. It signifies nothing to ask for such races more time j time has nothing for them better than extermination. It requires a Gospel . and a faith above nature to lay hold of them and raise them. It is possible for the living and advanced races to go downward, but never for these dead ones to rise, unassisted. We have proofs enough that peoples advanced in culture may become savages, but no example of a race of savages that have risen to a civilized state by mere development. How many great and powerful races have become extinct! We look for the Ninevites with as little hope as for Ninus himself. The Assyrians, Babylonians, and Medes are all vanished. The Egyptians, Phrenicians, Etruscans, Romans, once the great powers of history and civilization, are extinct. We may rest assured that there cau be no hope of a restoration of society, or of a religious uprising of men, except by a supernatural and Divine operation. Progress, nnder sin, by laws of development is a fiction. There is no hope of progress apart from the regenerative and quickening power of a grace that transcends mere natural conditions, and we must thoroughly realize this before we can be hearty workers in the greatest of all reforms-that imposed upon us by our Divine Master-the evangelization of the world.
Although these Polynesian races had sunk so low, and were still sinking when Christianity reached them, we missionaries found a good basis on which to build. They had lost the true ideas of God as revealed to men; but they had not lost the idea of a god, a supreme being. The Bible informs us that God made man after His own image. It is equally true that man makes his god after his own image. These people had become cruel, so their god was cruel. That" God is Love" was a perfect revelation to them. They had lost the scriptural idea of a future state, but had an idea of a future state. Nor had they lost the idea of rewards and punishments after death. So that we found a doctrine of Theism, a doctrine of a future state, and a doctrine of rewards and punishments; and instead of beginning by denouncing their heathen practices, we began by correcting their ideas on these subjects of common belief. As Christianity became known, appreciated, and felt, their heathen practices were abandoned.
Our first duty in landing among these strange and savage tribes, who have no written language, is to acquire their language and gain their confidence, neither of which is so difficult to accomplish as many people suppose. For instance, when they come off to our boat, or we land on the beach, we are on the look-out for the key sentence to their language. Everything about us is new to them-our clothes, umbrella, watch, handbag, boat, sails, oars, etc. They are naturally very rimch surprised, and very inquisitive, and we watch for a sentence which we expect to hear over and over again as they handle or point to different things, and we write it down phonetically, assuming that it means, "What is this 1"
In reducing these languages to writing, we never use the English sounds to the vowels. A vowel with us is a pure simple sound, and if we want the two sounds of the English vowel i we use" a" and" i," or of the English vowel u, we use" in and" u," giving the continental sounds to the vowels. Thus, when I first came in contact with the people of New Guinea, and heard" Nalu peik" repeatedly, accompanied by an inquiring look, I wrote it down, and then tried to find out if it was the sentence I wanted by taking a cocoanut and saying to one of the natives, " Nalu peik ?" The man looked astounded, then delighted at the discovery that I knew his language. He then poured out a torrent of words, supposing that I knew all he said! However, my only reply was, Nalu peik? He soon caught the idea that I wanted the names of things, and seemed most anxious to give me a long list. I had got the key sentence, and the rest was easy. To find out the grammar, however, is more difficult, and often takes many years.
Some people consider that these tribes cannot be civilized and saved. Others say that they are not worth the trouble and expense. My own experience emphatically contradicts both these statements. I am convinced that there is no race so low that Christianity cannot raise, civilize, and save them; and no language into which the Scriptures cannot be translated. My own experience and testimony resemble that of other missionaries in Polynesia and New Guinea, which all go to show that one of the most striking proofs of the truth of Christianity, and of its transforming power, is the wonderful adaptation of the Gospel to the great spiritual wants of humanity.
Thirty-six years ago I went to the island of Lifu, near New Caledonia, and with my wife settled among the savages. The wOlk was not so difficult or dangerous as iu New Guinea, native evangelists having goue before and somewhat prepared the way. Some of the people, however, were still practising cannibalism. Tribal wars, heathen feasts, and the night dance were continned long after my arrival. And yet when we left Lifu, in 1871, to commence the New Guinea mission, the natives had all embraced Christianity. Churches were bnilt throughout the island, to which dayschools were attached. The language was reduced to writing, and the entire New Testament and Psalms, with hymn-book, school-book, and catechism, translated into it. A seminary for the training of teachers for schools, pastors for the churches, and pioneer evangelists for the heathen beyond, was in full working order. European stores had been established in different parts of the island. Education and trade were growing side by side. The native churches were liberally supplying men and money for the extension of the Gospel to the heathen, and it was eight of these converts that we selected from nnmerons volunteers, to be pioneers of Christianity and civilization in New Guinea.
The same revolution whiCh has thus changed three hundred islands in Polynesia is now going on in New Guinea with the most encouraging results. The civilizing and elevating power of Christianity among these tribes is most remarkable. The contrast between a village of savage cannibal warriors in heathen times, and the same village fifteen or twenty years after they have embraced the Gospel, is almost incredible. Before I left New Guinea, the Governor accompanied me on a visit to some of our mission stations. We first of all visited some of the wild tribes up the Fly River, then places where we had had a mission for a few years, and finally spent the Sunday at the village where we commenced the New Guinea Mission.
When I first landed among these people they were at constant war with the surrounding tribes. The village was guarded night and day. The houses were decorated with human skulls-the trophies of war. Before a young man could get a wife he had to show, by the skulls of his enemies hanging before the door, that he had proved himself a warrior. They had murdered the crews of several vessels which had been wrecked in Torres Straits, and were a terror to captains who had to take their vessels through those dangerous waters. Their work was war, and their recreation the war-dance. The Governor now found them neatly clothed, attending church and school, and developing the resources of their country. He expressed himself as amazed at the change in so short a time j and yet for eight years the people of that village declared that they would not embrace our religion of peace. Three times they drove the Lifu evangelist from the place, and twice tried to poison him. Over and over again I re-established the mission; and now they are themselves contributing both men and money to send the Gospel to their heathen brethren.
Their condition is the best answer to those who doubt their ability to rise; and their devotion and self-sacrifice the best answer to those who doubt the sincerity of their professions. They not only give their best young men as pioneer evangelists, but work hard to get money to contribute annually for the spread of the Gospel. I feel sure that if the churches could be made to realize the present salvation which Christianity brings to these people, saving them from the hell of heathenism with its cruelty and cannibalism, and lifting them into a very heaven of peace, happiness, and progress, they would cease to speculate so much about the future, feeling that there is enough in their present salvation to fire our enthusiasm.
Now, briefly, how has all this heen done? or what is the character and ecclesiastical polity of Nonconformist missions? I say Nonconformist missions, because to them has fallen the high honor of beginning, and almost exclusively carrying on, the work in Polynesia and New Guinea. Bigotry, prejudice, and sectarianism may combine to overturn what Nonconformists have accomplished, or Christian zeal may prompt missionaries of other denominations to perform what Nonconformists have left undone, but the future and impartial historian will ever award to them the honor of having been the apostles of Christianity in Polynesia and British New Guinea. In both these great and successful mission· fields, the London Missionary Society began the work. Wesleyans, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and Americans have since entered the Polynesian mission-field and have done splendid service among those islands that are fast becoming to Australia what the West Indies are to England.
The prominent features of these missions have been, and are still, preaching, Bible translation, establishment of schools and printing presses, organization of churches, and the general welfare of the people, including their civil, social, and physical condition.
The plain preaching of the Gospel and Scriptural exposition of Bible truths claim the first place in the programme of a Nonconformist missionary. In order that this work may be successfully accomplished, the great Nonconformist Missionary Societies send out well-qualified men who are able to acquire languages and, if necessary, reduce them to writing, prepare school-books, and translate the Scriptures from the languages in which they were written, and, above all, train a native agency to carryon and extend the work.
Side by side with the preaching of the Gospel goes the social improvement of the natives. Better roads are made, better houses built, which are soon furnished with the useful appliances of civilized life. There are men in both the missions where I have labored who were once cannibals and degraded heathens, but who, when I left, were living in neatly and strongly built stone houses, furnished with tables, chairs, sofas, beds, cooking utensils, crockery ware, and even electro-plated spoons and forks. The missionary's wife plays a very important part in the formation of Christian homes. Let no man presume to assert that unmarried missiona- ries, male or female, could possibly have accomplished for good what may now be witnessed in Polynesia. Christian principles have been exempli- fied in family life before the heathen with the happiest results. Ther.e are now multitudes of homes in Polynesia which are centres of refinement, cul- ture, happiness, and intelligence, presided over by women, officiating in those offices recognized as her sphere of duty. In these abodes it is no , mockery to sing" Home, Sweet Home." I do not hesitate to affirm that Nonconformist missionaries in Polynesia and New Guinea have displayed wisdom and foresight, common sense and sound piety, in the organization and management of churches and the general work of the mission.
If we take the Acts of the Apostles, and the Epistles of Paul, Peter, James, and John, or the New Testament, as a whole, for our guide, we shall find that the churches organized by Nonconformist missionaries in Polynesia will compare favorably with the primitive churches gathered by the apostles in various parts of the Roman Empire during the first century of the Christian era. In many respects there is a most striking resem- blance between the churches organized by the apostles and those which now exist in various parts of Polynesia. The more closely examination is made and comparison drawn, the more manifest the parallel will appear. The very language employed by some ecclesiastical historians respecting the churches of the first century would aptly describe the organization of Nonconformist mission churches in Polynesia. All those great ecclesiasti- cal establishments, and Church and State arrangements, centring at An- tioch, Constantinople, Rome, and elsewhere, were an aftergrowth-may we not call them a fungus growth 1-when Christianity became corrupt.
I maintain that the mission churches of Polynesia and New Guinea have been modelled after the New Testament and apostolic pattern, and that the missionaries have faithfully carried out the spirit of the last com- mand of our ascending Saviour, "Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost." Would the worldly, the indifferent, the sceptical, or even the enemies of missions to the heathen, vote for the churches in Polynesia being pulled down, the church-bells silenced, the Christians turned over once more to idolatry, the schools-week-dayand Sunday-being closed, the school-books and Bibles being burned, and the tens of thousands of simple-hearted worshippers being forbidden to sing the songs of Zion in concert with their fellow-Christians in other lands? Would they rebuild the old temples, rekindle the fires upon their altars, call forth the victims for sacrifice, and make the hills and valleys ring with the shouts ()f mid- night revellers around the burning pile? Or would they summon from heaven those who have died in the faith of Jesus, and are now raising their voices to the song of " Him that loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood" ~ Who that is interested in the welfare and progress of his fellow-men-of what8ver creed or nation-would, if he could, stamp out Christianity, and restore idolatry ~ And if all are thus bound to admit that Christianity has been a great blessing to these tribes, then none can escape the obligation to propagate it. As the followers of Christ we have to face these facts-firstly, that millions of our fellow. men are sunk in the abominations of heathenism, from which Christ came to save them j secondly, that He has commanded us to take to them the message of pardon, peace, and hope j and, thirdly, that He has clearly shown us what blessed results follow the proclamation qf His Gospel. He has also made it perfectly plain that there is a human as well as a Divine side in the work of saving men. "We are His fellow-workers." In the spiritual as in the natural kingdom He has provided the seed and adapted it to the soil. Our part of the work is to bring the two together. We cannot understand the mysterious power of the Gospel any more than we can understand the mystery of life in the seed, but we can see the effect of bringing seed and soil together in both kingdoms. There can be no crops in either kingdom without God. We cannot do without Him, and He will not do without us.
The great work of the Church is, unquestionably, to plant the seed of the Word in the soil of the human heart, leaving results to God. If we do our part, He will never fail to do His. Having provided the seed, and adapted it to the soil, He waits for His servants to bring the two together that He may send His Holy Spirit to create the new life. To talk of Ohri8tianity being played out is, to missionaries like myself, utter nonsense. We feel}hat the sooner some forms of it are played out the better. That such a subject could be discussed in newspapers should quicken our zeal as Nonconformists in planting Christianity in its simplicity and purity abroad, and in tearing off the accretions that have gathered round it at home. The men who argue thus live in a world different from ours. They cannot see with our eyes, nor feel with our hearts. They see God ruling over them, as He does in nature; we feel Him within us. We believe in Christ's promise that He will be with His people till the end of the world.
My own experience is but the experience of other pioneers and workers in the mission-field. In times of darkness and danger, and sickness and suffering, and perplexity and death j in perils from the sea, in perils from savages, in perils from the climate, and, I may add, sorrowfully, in perils from our own countrymen, our blessed Lord has been true to His promise. It is in selfishness and worldliness, in self-sufficiency and intellectual pride, and such things, that He cannot be with us. But He will always be with us if we are seeking to do His will, and I am sure many of us feel our increasing need of Him. We need Him to save us from sin j to help us in the battIe of life j to be our light in darkness j our strength in weakness j and our hope for the future. We need Him in our social life, in our business life, in our political life, and in our church life and work. If Christ
A WOMAN'S MISSIONARY RALLY
was really in all of us who profess Christianity, ruling and regulating our life, we should he more in earnest about the salvation of the perishing heathen !-The Christian World Pulpit.
A WOMAN'S MISSIONARY RALLY.* BY ANNA W. PIERSON.
The Academy of Music, holding 4000, was packed to overflowir:g, more than three fourths of the audience being composed of ladies and young people. Dr. George D. Baker, of the city, presided. With a smiling face he arose and opened the meeting as follows: "This is a , missionary rally,' I should say. This is grand, this is gl()/'iou8, this is inspiring! A friend of mine, very partial to Detroit, said, ' I think that city is just outside "the Gates.'" I think this gathering to-night is 'just outside the Gates.' May this be a Mount of Transfiguration whereon we see 'no man save Jesus only.' Weare never so near Him as when at such an hour as this, in answer to His' Go ye,' we answer, , I will.'
" When I read the story of the twenty-five years of work done under the auspices of these women of the Presbyterian Church, I said, ' Oh woman, great is thy work!' They have provoked the whole Church to good works by their zealous love and enthusiasm. I believe a great impetus will be caused by this rally to-night, and that, as the outcome of this gathering, the Church will say to the Board, 'Send those forward whom the Lord has called.'
" , Watchman, what of the night l' I know of no man better able to tell us than Rev. F. F. Ellinwood, seniur Secretary of the Presbyterian Board. 'What of the night,' Dr. Ellinwood 1"
Dr. Ellinwood replied: " If you had asked me what of this night, and what of this assembly, I feel I could scarcely make answer. VVThen the vVoman's Foreign Mis- ,sionary Society hold their next twenty-fifth anniversary, what building will they have, and what an assembly? "When I came here to-night it was with a sorrowful heart, from thinking of the heayy indebtedness of the Board. Our missionaries have had to cut down expenses to the amount of $115,000. The work in many places has been called to a halt, and the missionaries have had to retrench in every direction. Since I came here to-night my sorrow has been turned into joy. After looking upon the faces of this vast audience I venture to predict that the waiting missionaries will be sent to their fields within six months. I could not have believed that women could * Twenty-fifth Anniversary of the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society of the Presbyterian Churches of Philadelphia, Thursday Evening, April 25, 1895. have brought together such a multitude, and I do not now believe it. God has done it.
" Many motives have been given for missionary work, such as duty, inclination, pity, but the highest one was from the lips of Mrs. Benjamin Douglas, of Chicago. It was caught from the angels who came to announce the birth of Christ-the greatest Missionary. It was this: 'Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good-will to men.' There is the supreme motive for going to the lost millions of our race. I propose we make this our motto to-night. Those angels were missionaries; Christ was a mIssIonary. If we take that song and go with it on our lips and in our hearts and lives we will sllcceed.
" I cannot tell how much joy and satisfaction I have in the report of what has been accomplished in the last twenty-five years. When the women of the Presbyterian Church first undertook this active missionary work, they had to overcome mallY prejudices and obstacles, but as I have followed the work from year to year, I have marvelled to see how it has progressed in spite of these difficulties.
" Women of other denominations have been at work also. God has innumerable forces at His command, and you women have gone hand-inhand with others in lifting up your heathen sisters, and have transformed not only your own land, but India, China, Japan, and other nations. A IE/aven which it is impossible to express in terms has bcen working in all nations.
" One of the greatest works has been done in connection with medical mISSIOns. We have no conception of the suffering in heathen lands. Mrs. Isabella Bird Bishop came home and told of the deplorable condition of those suffering under medical treatment, or medical abuse. When Queen Victoria heard of it, she called to her Lady Dufferin and gave her a special commission to help the cause. The very hardest hearts are melted to sympathy by a recital of the facts.
"The fetich worshippers in India believe in God, in one Supreme Being who made them, but they believe that He has no further interest in them and has left them to the machinations of evil spirits. Oh that the angels could burst in upon them and refute that idea with the glorious Gospel of God's love! A.ngels will not proclaim that fact, however. We must do it. Twenty centuries have passed since Christ came, and the woe and agony still goes on. Let us take upon ourselves the glorious duty of proclaiming this Gospel.
" We ought to have coupons of consecration. Spurgeon told his college of missionary students to 'go wherever Christ leads, to do any service, to be His, and His alone.' Those at home must do the same. These consecration coupons should be given to those who stay at home, then at the judgment the two can be joined together.
"When we accomplish all that is possible, God is still doing more than we. An insect crawling on the deck of an ocean steamer may think it is progressing with speed, but compare its advance with the mighty, rushing steamer! So it is with our work, God is ever in advance of us.
, , We could not throw off the yoke of slavery; God did it, but with a loss to us. There was not power in the United States or France or England to open China, but God has opened her ports in the last few weeks. This event points straight to the kingdom of Christ. Think of the change in Japan in the past month or two. She is no longer jealous of foreign nations, and is proud to show it. Only a year ago Korea was under the heel of China. Now she vies with Japan. She has placed two hundred of her young men under the care of the missionaries for education, and has begun to inquire into the Gospels. China, by force of circumstances, must follow and open her ports and rivers to the missionaries of Jesus Christ.
" Can we sit down and fold our arms? Spurgeon used to rejoice in the verse, ' All power is given unto Me.' 'We are not called to do anything,' is that what we must say? No, so far as the door opens, so far ought the purses, plans, and interest to open. God means greater things than we have ever yet dreamed of.
"Let us take Mrs. Douglas'S motto for ours. How can we glorify God? What can we do? 'Herein is My Fatber glorified, that ye bear much fruit. ' We can send forth missionaries and be missionaries. In our business, in our bomes, we should write 'Thy kingdom come' over all we have and do, and God shall be glorified in the highest, and His will shall be made known to the dying world."
Rev. Frederick J. Stanley, L.H.D., recently of Japan, then spoke in substance as fol,lows on SIGNAL TROPHIES AT THE FEET OF JESUS.
"As the warriors of an ancient king deemed it their greatest honor and chief joy to lay their trophies from the victorious field of battle at the feet of their sovereign, should not we, as soldiers of the cross, esteem it our chief joy and honor to lay at the feet of our Blessed Lord, the King of kings, these trophies won for Him through His Holy Spirit ~ " , Not by an army [marginal reading] nor by power, but by My Spirit, saiththe Lord of hosts' (Zech. 4 : 6).
" Besides the twenty-five years' total offering of over two and a half millions of dollars this Society has given to the cause, and the Silver Anniversary Thank-offering of $15,000 (threefold the amountasked)-both laid as trophies from these Christian women at the feet of our Lord J esuslet us bring the triumphs from Asia.
" Not only the sixty years' labor in India, not only the fifty-three years' toil in China (since 1842), but also the thirty-five of triumphs God hath wrought in Japan, shall we lay at the feet of Jesus as signal trophies. We are rejoiced above measure in having with us, on this occasion, the battle-scarred and vener!'ble pioneers who opened the work in that crescent island empire of Japan in 1859 A.D., the beloved Dr. and Mrs. J. C. Hepburn, whose lives have always been at the feet of our blessed Lord.
"That nation, during the present emperor's reign of twenty-seven years, has been brought out of the depths of seven hundred years of feudalism, out of twenty-four hundred years of semi-civilization (one thousand years traditional and fourteen hundred years written history). We lay Japan as a trophy of Christian civilization at the feet of Christ Jesus.
" A constitutional monarchy was established six years ago (February 11 th, 1889 A. D.) as the first successful one in the Orient, granting liberty of speech, freedom of worship, and the right of suffrage.
"There are six hundred papers and periodicals at present in the empire, where not a single one existed twenty-three years ago, and th~ have never issued a copy yet on the first or Lord's Day of the week-truly a remarkable trophy from the Land of the Rising Sun.
" The opening of the Chinese Empire, of nearly four hundred millions, to foreign tradal relations with, and the establishment of manufactories by, all the sixteen civilized powers of the world-if the treaty of peace shall be ratified by May 8th, at Chefoo, as the conclusion of this Oriental war -is another trophy. The East India Company for a hundred and fifty years, and the combined diplomacy of the sixteen civilized powers of the world for the past fifty-five years, have been able only to force open twenty-four treaty ports, but God through little Japan in the past ten months, as His 'Gideon and three hundred,' has opened the entire nineteen provinces of that great Mongolian Empire! A marvel in Oriental history! 'Behold, what hath God wrought! '
" The Empress of Japan riding beside her husband in an open carriage, on February 11th, 1889, when he promulgated the constitutionthat was the first time in twenty-four hundred years' history of that empire that the wife had been thus publicly recognized-a result of the diffusion of Christian principles in that land.
" Last year the Emperor and Empress celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of their marriage, the only time in twenty-four centuries a Japanese monarch had thus acknowledged the sanctity of marriage-an unparalleled event, tending to the final acknowledgment of Christian monogamy. This trophy we joyfully lay at the feet of our beloved Lord.
"Unprecedented honor was shown woman when Yajima San, President of the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union 'of Japan, heading the petition of several hundred Japanese women, succeeded in gaining admission for women to the galleries of both houses of Parliament as interested spectators of the political affairs of the nation.
" Another trophy to lay at the feet of Jesus is that venerable, snowwhite-haired saint, Morita San, of Tokyo, now at the age of seventy-seven still laboring as a Bible-reader, who thirty-five years ago was transformed from a despised outcast (baba) to a noble Christian woman. To-day she beholds in Presbyterian and Methodist Episcopal churches several of the first boys she led to Sabbath-school three decades ago, standing as leaders in education and Christian religion of the nation and the Church.
"Not only the 40,000 Protestant Christians eurolled since the first church was organized with 11 members in 1872 A.D., but the 3636 added unto the church this past twelvemonth we rejoicingly lay as eternal trophies at the feet of Him who died on Calvary.
" The first foreign missionary society to spread the Gospel, especially along educational lines, in Korea, China, and other countries, organized last year by such representative men as Iwamoto, Inagoki, Hattori, Ibuka, Honda, and other distinguished native pioneers in the Presbyterian, Methodist, and other Protestant bodies, and is a providential assurance that Christianity is at last finally rooted in Japan, for the Church at home ever thrives when it sends abroad the blessed truth of God (Prov. 11 : 24).
II The Christian work the past year in the army and navy, in hospitals and prisons, has been marvellous, because of the gracious privileges ac_corded by the Emperor and his Cabinet. The first time in the history of the Japanese nation that any but Buddhist and Shinto priests have been allowed to go to the front in times of war was in this present conflict between China and Japan, when the Emperor voluntarily appointed two native Christian ministers of the GosPfll as chaplains to the army in the field.
"The prayer-meeting in the I Jesus-man' house (a missionary's)- from whence the messenger of God had to flee before the battle for safetyat Phong Yang, in Korea, on September 16th, last, by Korean and Japanese Christians the day after the smoke of that great battle had cleared away, is another rich trophy to lay at the feet of Jesus.
" The Empress of Japan is President of the Red Cross Society, which organization prompted the Christian and humane orders last September by the Japanese commanders for the treatment of the enemy's wounded and prisoners.
"' With her own hands Her Majesty has prepared bandages and lint during these past ten months in the palace at Tokyo, and sent them six hundred miles to her husband in Hiroshima, with this message: I Please accept these and use them to bind up the wounds of both the Chinese and J apanese soldiers.' A nineteenth. century miracle! for her ancestors and even she had been taught during the seven hundred years of feudalism (which fell only in 1868 A.D.) to only hate and destroy their enemies, never to show mercy or kindness.
"' Only three decades of Christianity in that land produced this as a trophy-' LOVE your enemies'-that the Empress, although not an avowed Christian, is yet so governed by Christian principle as to bring forth these remarkable deeds of love.
"The magnanimity of the Emperor of Japan and his advisers the past few weeks is without a parallel in history. When dictating the terms of peace this month to China, they stipulated that the five thousand Chinese prisoners to be returned on the ratification of the treaty should be granted full amnesty as to life and property by the Chinese authorities at Pekin..
"Knowing the barbarous custom for ages in the Orient to torture and behead all prisoners or defeated soldiers returning to their home land, the Empire of Japan evidenced the true Christian spirit of our Lord by exhibiting such a humane tenderness for her opponents and inculcating a Christ-like spirit of forgiveness on their part. It must be remembered that Japan is not yet a Christian nation, yet so much of Christian principle has permeated and penetrated the people, from the ruler down, through all classes, that this noble Christian act is recorded of her to be handed down in history;. and w~ lay it as a trophy at the feet of Him who on the cross cried, 'Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.'
" The assured autonomy of Korea, freedom at last from the yoke of Chinese tyranny of centuries, admitting her fully into the galaxy of the independent nations of the earth, is a blessed trophy to lay at the feet of Jesus.
"The remarkable events of the' past few months in Asia all tend to the acknowledgment and final acceptance of Christianity by all the nations of the Orient.
" May the national flag of the Sunrise Kingdom typify the religious sway of our blessed Lord Jesus over the nations of the earth. The red sphere in the centre of the white ground represents the sun rising out of the foaming billows of the sea. May the white banner represent (Song of Solomon 2 : 4) , His banner over me was love,' and (Mal. 4 : 2) , The Sun of Righteousness shall rise with healing in His beams.'
" Then shall that national flag of the Sunrise Kingdom prefigure to us that day fast approaching when the Sun 'of Righteousness shall shine in all His glory over the continents of Asia, Africa, Europe, America, and the Islands of the Sea, and ' the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord and His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever.' "
Dr. Arthur T. Pierson made the closing address of the evening, taking for his subject, WOMAN AS A FACTOR IN THE WORLD'S EVANGELIZATION.
" History ceases to be a mystery so far as insight into God's plan furnishes the key to the succession and correlation of events. He who made the matter-worlds made and framed together the time-worlds also, and through all the historic order one unfailing, unceasing purpose runs.
" Now that the work of woman, in its organized form, for missions completes its first quarter century, it is natural to note the striking development of what may be called the feminine factor in missions.
" This quarter century has been marked by what, for want of a better term, can be called the epiphany of woman-the shining out of consecrated womanhood after long obscuration. " When God made woman at the first, it was the embodiment of His own wise purpose. ' I will make an helpmeet for man'-literally, one over against him, his apposite, his counterpart or correspondent. So far from a suggestion of subordination, that original decree sU:ggests rather completeness. Woman was to be man's complement rather than vassal j his equal companion, not his servile subject. As in the achromatic lens, it is the perfect union of the crown glass and flint glass which insures this triumph of optics, so man is a generic term, including both man and woman as necessary to a complete whole. 'God made man in His own image j in the irnage of God created He him j male and female created He them. ' Man was not complete without woman. If he possessed what she lacked, she also was proficient when he was deficient, each helping totsupply the other's need.
" It was the curse of sin that this crowning act of creation should be perverted from its primal purpose. ' Thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shan rule over thee.' And a sad history it has been of male sovereigntyand tyranny. The original decree has been misread for thousands of years ; it has been construed to mean that woman was made at best to be man's subordinate and helper. He has assumed to be lord of creation, and has assumcd that she was simply tacked on as a kind of supernumerary to his lordship, to be of what help she might. What conception of any independence in planning or working, originating or executing ever entered into the mind of man as to woman's capacity or sphere before the advent of Christ 1 Nay, even in the Christian dispensation, up to a late date, how slow has man been, and even woman herself, to learn that God has fitted her and foreordained her to be in every best and highest sense an operator as well as co-operator in all holy service!
"This last quarter century has been rapidly bringing woman out of her long eclipse to hold her true place as one of the luminaries in the firmamwt of missionary history. And now in the light of modern developments we begin to read the Word of God ancw.
,. From the time of Christ's birth, of a Virgin of Bethlehem, He has elevated womankind in the eyes of men and lifted her more and more toward her true level. It has been well said that the passage in the fifth chapter of Ephesians, where God's ideal of the marital relation is set forth, is Qf itself a sufficient proof of the Divine origin of the Scriptures. Where did Paul get such a conception of husbandly love and duty 1 'Husbands, love your wives,' etc. Here Christ's sevenfold devotion to the Church, His love for and self-giving for her, His washing and cleansing her, His nourishing and cherishing her, and His final presentation of her to Himself as His companion in holiness and glory, is made the type of husbandly affection, consecration, and devotion. Paul could never have written those words had he not been taught of ,the Spirit, for there was not a na-tion in the world, nor a teacher, however advanced, that held such views of the marriage relation. All this was as much beyond any existing usages or even conceptions as the central idea of the Gospel-God seeking man, is ahead of the universal conception of heathen faiths-man seeking God.
" One other sentence in Paul's letter to the Philippians is pregnant with a prophetic sense which even he probably never understood. 'Help those women which labored with me in the Gospel.' Truly in four thou- sand years the order had undergone a radical inversion. For four millen- niums man had been the leader and lord of creation, and woman had been at the very best his helper-and only in a very narrow sphere; now woman begins to take the lead, and man is bidden to come to her help! , Help those women! '
" What a blessed day for the Church of God when woman waked up to her own capacity and high calling! Who shall write the history of these twenty-five years of organized work in missions, whereby woman has been made such a mighty factor in a world's evangelization?
" There are several new lessons which we have all been taught in this quarter century which deserve great emphasis at this' silver anniversary.'
" Our sisterhood have taught us all the value of cheap literature for spreading missionary intelligence. Instead of the cumbrous volumes which it takes money to buy and time to read, look at the missionary leaflets scattered abroad, often without price, and yet in a brief spacc embodying matters of the most attractive sort for perusal, and in the most condensed form that could be inclosed in a letter, read in a horse car, and which stimulated appetite for further research.
" How the women have taught us the power of many little gifts to make a full and steady stream of beneficence! Woman has for the first time accomplished the organization of the littles, depending not on a few large gifts from the rich, but on countless little offerings-a cent a day; $3.65 a year-and what is the consequence! Behold this stream of gifts pouring into the Lord's treasury amid all financial depressions, with scarce a diminution in the most critical years-nay, with a regular advance, from $8000 in 1870 to $76,000 in 1895 !
" These woman's boards have put a new emphasis on the value of frequent meetings for conference and prayer. The Church has been depending too much on annual sermons and great occasions. We need a perpetual impulse and inspiration. The women have undertaken to supply this by a multitude of smaller gatherings, frequently held, where there has been contact with representatives of the mission field, new and systematic dissemination of intelligence, and joint prayer for all the precious interests involved.
" These twenty-five years have revealed the great source of supply of laborers-viz., a consecrated home life. Woman is the mould of the generations to come. The mother's womb and breast and cradle-who shall ever tell how much they mean in the perpetuation of God's seed of servants! Hence, when woman began to come to the front in missions it was natural and inevitable that there should speedily follow a new uprising
MORAVIANS IN ALASS:A
of sons and daughters. And so came, in 1886, the Student Volunteer Movement, the new crusade of missions, which is to my mind the most surprising and maryellous uprising of youth ever known in Church history. It may be directly traced to the higher intelligence and consecration of wives, mothers, daughters, and sisters twenty-five years ago.
" Woman has taught us the value of the individual in mission work. Every member of the body has its own adaptation and adjustment to the body's wants and its own function and office, so that none can say to any other, 'I have no need of thee.' A large part of the unevangelized in heathen, Moslem, and pagan lands have been unapproachable by man. The harem, zenana, seraglio, have excluded men, even as physicians. The comical experience of an American doctor in Syria is an illustration. Being urged to prescribe for the favorite wife of a pasha, he insisted tp.at he must see the patient. This being denied, he must at least see her tongue and feel her pulse. Presently from behind the curtain a hand was thrust and a tongue protruded through a slit. He said, ' This is a healthy pulse and a normal tongue ; there is nothing the matter with your wife.' , That is not my wife's hand and tongue, of course,' said the pasha; 'that we could not allow j it is the hand and tongue of her maid. '
"Did it ever occur to us that God may have permitted the exclusive laws of the zenana and harem to shut out man in order to call forth the energies of woman as the only possible augel of ministry to the sisterhood of the Orient ~ " This quarter century is not a goal, but a starting-point. To rest upon past successes is to forfeit future advance. There must be a new standard of giving, praying, working-a new self-oblivion in God and Ris work. Coleridge wrote of " , The petty done;" the undone vast.' "
MORAVIANS IN ALASKA.
The Moravian mission station at Bethel comprises eight buildings, consisting of dwellings, office, storehouse, school-house, bath-house, and saw-mill. There are at present seven regular preaching-places, with minor out-stations; three native assistants, and a communicant membership of 119. The work is progressing, although the resources have been greatly drained during the long, severe winter. During the ten years since its inception much has been accomplished. "A people who in all probability would have become extinct as a race have been saved, the Gospel preached to them, schools established, members of their own race have become active in the work of evangelization, surroundiug them with the comforts and environment of Christian family life." One of the greatest hindrances to work here, as among all uncivilized natious, is the absence of any written language. In civilized couutries the missionary has access to the literature of the nation, and soon acquires the form and spirit of the language; but here the alphabet and literature have to be supplied before much effective work is done.
INTERNATIONAL DEPARTMENT
II.-INTERNATIONAL DEPARTMENT.
EDITED AND CONDUCTED. BY BEV. J. T. GRACEY, D.D.
The Balkan Peninsula. the Storm- enough, it seems, to fill its cup; and it Oenter of Europe. was ordained that even in this last half BY REV. J. HENRY HOUSE, SAMAKOV, of the nineteenth century this peninsula BULGARIA. was still to be the storm center of Eu- It has fallen to the lot of the writer to labor for nearly twenty years in one rope. Insurrections and massacres, war of the most difficult and at the same time one of the most interesting mis- and famine were still to desolate the sionary fields that the world affords. The difficulties lie largely in its con- land and threaten with similar scourges, tiguity to European civilizations, which are only nominally Christian; in diver- all Europe. This little portion of Southsity of race, language, and faith; in pride of race and religion, and conse- eastern Europe has compelled the atquent stubbornness of prejudice which only patient and faithful Christian labor tention of all the great statesmen of the accompanied by the powerful influences of the Holy Spirit can melt. continent whether they wished it or The Balkan peninsula has had a re- not. Its ethnol!:raphy, geography, and markable history from the earliest times. The southern portion constitutes the political and social conditions have been little kingdom of Greece, witb whose powerful influence upon the history of the subject of European conferences the world and its literature and art all are familiar. North of Greece lie the and congresses. The treaties of Paris, provinces of Thessaly, Macedonia, Albania, Thrace, and ancient Malsia or San Steffano, and Berlin mark political modern Bulgaria. Of its cities, Athens, Constantinople, Adrianople and Sa- epochs in recent European history, and lonica will ever awaken historical memories hardly less interesting than all center around the Balkan peninsula. those awakened by Rome, Alexandria, Jerusalem and Antioch. It may not be without interest, then, to The history of this peninSUla gives a note in the briefest possible manner, long list of rcvolutions, invasions, wars, and political transformations in which some of the reasons of this centering of Greeks, Romans, Gauls, Goths, Huns, Vandals, Slavs, Tartars, and 'furks all European interest upon this little peninfigure, and the very ground on which you tread seems saturated and made Bula, and then to glance at What part fertile by the blood of almost numberless races that have traversed the moun- American missions are playing in this tains and valleys of this wonderfully beautiful and Interesting country, and drama. I then vanished. 1. The first important cause of all The political ferment and the human suffering of the past centuries were not this ferment in Europe, which we de- sire to mention, is the recent rise of national feeling and devotion to native tongue which is observed almost every- where in southeastern Europe. A re- markable movement in this direction has been going on there which has been slightly noticed in the Wtlst, and the importance of which has been largely overlooked. Take, for example, the rise of nationalities in the Austrian Em- pire, a part of which is perhaps rightly included in the Balkan peninsula. Look first at the Magyars. In 1848 the revo- lution of Kossuth and his compatriots was stamped out in blood; but in 1868 the Magyars have again risen to their feet and are able to treat with Austria for the formation of the dual monarchy.
Austro-Hungary. It is true that such patriots as Louis Kossuth were not sat- isfied with what was then gained, but it was really most surprising that a race commerce and civilizations of three that had recently been so thoroughly continents, and by its very position put down should rise so rapidly in im· commands the great land anll water portance as to become thoroughly self· highways of the world. Hardly less governing in its own domain, impose its fortunately situated is the ancient port own language as official upon a large of Salonica, through which already, I portion of the empire and, besides all believe, pass the great mails from Engthis, furnish for the whole country the land to India. Russia, by its traditions statesmen who controlled its foreign and its aspirations, has fixed upon Con· policy. The very recent crisis in Hun· stantinople as its future capital, from gary, however, shows that the Magyars which it hopes to rule, so to speak, two are not content with even this, so rapid continents, and largely influence a third. has been the growth of national feeling England has as firmly set down her foot and national strength. Austria also fur· that this shall not be, and Austria, fur· nlshes us with two or three other ex- nishing as she does most of the manu· amples which, although less understood factures used by its peoples, has al· because not so glaringly prominent, are ready commercially conquered the yet no less important, and promise to peninSUla as far south as Greece, and is be sources of disturbance in the near as much interested as is England in future-viz., the growth of national preventing it. Italy holds with Eng· feeling and national literature among land, and Germany with Austria; and the Bohemians ; the less familiar though even France, who from policy is allied similar, rising of the tide of nationality with Russia just at present, would, I among the Croats; and the patriotic believe, as little desire to see Constanti· ferment among the Romans of Transyl- nople in the hands of Russia as any of vania. Go further south and you meet the other powers. Here, then, you with the consolidation of the Servian have in a nutshell the political problem race and language which is going on in of the East. Any little disturbance in Bosnia, Herzegovina, Montenegro, and the Balkan peninSUla, like the one that Servia proper. Other striking exam· a year ago attracted all eyes to Bul· plea of this same truth are the rise of garia, may be the spark that will set all the Bulgarian nationality and language Europe on fire. in Bulgaria, Thrace, and Macedonia, and the equally remarkable movement tow· S. But the Balkan peninsula is the ard national existence by the bright AI· storm·center of Europe for a third reabanian race among the monntains of the son. Here Christianity stands face to southwestern portion of the peninsula. face with Islam. And the problem is The latter movement is one of especial not as simple as this statement would interest at the present time, as this race seem to make it. The Christianity of is thought to be the aboriginal race of the Greek Catholic rite and that of the the peninsula, and intellectually is one Roman Catholic rite, as far as it is of the most gifted of all in the East. found in this portion of the East, is weakened by ages of bondage, igno· 2. The second reason which we men· rance, and superstition. The tide, how. tion, is the jealousy of the six great Eu· ever, of intelligence and independence ropean powers with reference to this is rising among the various nationaliregion. The importance of these provo ties of Eastern Christians; and here it inces, indeed, can hardly be overesti· is that the important work of the evanmated. They lie in the very track of gelical missionary comes in contact with the highway of the world. Constanti- the great problems of the East. Shall nople, their great metropolis, is one of the saving leaven of an open Bible and the most fortunately situated cities in a pure Christianity be hidden in this the world. It brings together in its nar· fermenting lump? This is the ques· row streets and beautiful waterways the tion of the hour. Of what has been wrought by missionary schools and col- Increased intelligence. together with leges and by missionary effort and the incoming tide of European civiliza- philanthropy only a word can be said tion, is bringing in scepticism at a fear- here. Thoughtful observers who have ful rate, and thus undermining not only given attention to the subject have been the religious belief but the moral stami- forced to acknowledge the enlighten- na or the people. If we cannot pour in ing, liberalizing, and uplifting influ- the light of Christian faith upon these ences of missionary effort in all this re- peoples and forestall these dire influ- gion_ Their schools and colleges have ences, who can predict the sad history moulded minds that were afterward to which lies before them? Already have control national movements_ Their col- the larger cities and towns of Roumania porteurs have carried to the obscurest and Servia become a byword for their village as well as to the largest cities corrupt morals; and the corrupting in- that greatest of all educators-the Bible fluences of an unhallowed civilization, in the vulgar tongue. 'l'heir philan- so attractive in its outward form, so rot- thropic efforts for the sick and the suf· ten at its core, are making rapid strides fering; for widows and orphans, made toward the conquest of other peoples, such by the horrors which follow insur- and will not stop, you may be sure, rections; for prisoners in crowded and until they reach the most obscure vil- unwholesome prisons, and for famine- lages as well as the larger towns.
stricken provinces-these have exhibited Our work has been largely among the to all, the characteristics of a true and Bulgarians, the most numerous race in splrittial Christianity. Such work as the provinces of Bulgaria, Thrace, and this spread over decades and inwrought Macedonia. While the progress ot the into the life and history of individuals, work has been slow, meeting as it has families, and communities, can never be at every step with the greatest difficul- adequately summed up by statistics ties, yet the influence of our schools, however accurately gathered and com- our newspapers, and religious literature, piled. Of one thing only are we sure, of the Bible distributed by thousands that such an agitated condition as that upon thousands of copies, has been which has existed in the Balkan penIn- widespread and pervading, and our sula, is the opportunity of the Christian hopes for the future are in the blessing missionary, and no danger or suffering of God upon the seed sown, and in the or difficulty should ever prevent him power of God's Holy Spirit poured out from taking advantage of it. upon the proclamation of the Word.
The very political ferment, it is tru'l, A work of surprising interest is now has in part hindered the advance of opening up among the Albanians-a evangelical work, but it furnishes the race, as already intimated, of great best of opportunities to exhibit the natural gifts, and yet one which, al- spirit and character of true Christianity. though it is within stone's throw, so to We believe that the problem of uplift- speak, of the great centers of European ing the moral and religious condition of civilization, has never yet had the Bible these Eastern Christians is one of the as a whole in its native tongue. Here, most serious of the age, for we cannot then, you get a glimpse at the mission- Bee how Christianity is to appear at- ary's problem at this storm-center of tractive to Mohammedans until the Europe. It is not-and let me disclaim overgrowth of ages of ignorance and this with all the emphasis that I can superstition has been cleared away command-to favor political agitation from those ancient churches and the of any kind, or to take sides with any light of a pure and spiritual Christian- political party whatever. We have ity is allowed to shine unhampered upon resolutely kept ourselves from such the world of Islam. What is the con- work. This, however, has not prevented dition of affairs in those countries now? our keeping an eye upon the trend of events that we might improve every op· purpose is surprised at the vastness and portunity of alleviating suffering, and complexity of the work. puttin~ in practice the principles which our Lord laid down in Matt. 25 : 31-46. He finds great missionary enterprises For example, in the spring of 1878, springing up all over the world-vast while the Treaty of San Steffano was printing and book concerns; tract sobeing made, it was through the influ- cieties, hospitals, and dispensaries; orence of a missionary that an article was phanages and asylums; every type of added which freed a multitude of ex- educational institution, from the kinderiles. In the same year, during the garten to the university, one society Congress of Berlin, a large body of mis- alone having 375 girls' schools with sionaries signed a memorandum to that 56,'153 pupils. He encounters mission body petitioning that in the organization ships and steamboats on river and sea, of new States the great principle of re- and learns that the various mission ligious freedom should be insisted upon; boards possess houses, lands, and maand Prince Bismarck was kind enough chinery suited to all these activities. to receive this memorandum. After the terrible events that happened in 1876. it He observes that foreign missions. was a missionary that was first on the while ostensibly organized for the direct fieln of suffering. carrying relief to suf- evangelization of the world th"rough the fering peasants, and homeless widows preaching of the Word, have really and orphans. But after all, these have called to their aid all of the most valubeen only wayside services; the great able appliances found in the complex work. has been to bring the light of mechanism of Western civilization. spiritual life and blessing to peoples that were in the ferment of regenera· Does all this naturally grow out of tion ; to stay the tide of advancing scep- and belong to the command to" Go, ticism, and preserve, if possible, from preach the Gospel to every creature" ? its corrupting influences the moral Did the founders and pioneers of misstamina of simple agricultural peoples sions, and do the churches and the peo· -in a word, to lift up Christ and His pIe who support them, contemplate cross in the midst of distressed and agi- such vast and complicated machinery' tated populations, who, when the times of peace and prosperity shall visit these Two questions present themselves at regions. are to bear an important part the outset: First, what is the character in the history of the world. and scope of work of the foreign mis· sionary ? Second, have the Christian Education and the Place of Lay Edu- churches, by whose authority the work cators on Poreign Mission Pields-A of missions is carried on, and have the Proper Division of Labor. boards who are responsible for its ad- ministration, a clear and well·defined BY HORACE M. LANE, M.D.• PRESIDENT policy and plan of action?
OF THE PROTESTANT COLLEGE, sIo To this last query the answer, either from within or among the boards and PAULO, BRAZIL, S. A. churches, if not wholly negative, is at least unsatisfactory. Foreign missions have reached a point in their development where a more To the first he finds two distinct recareful classification of the forces en- plies: one which agrees with his own gaged-a reorganization, or, at least, a conception, and which is still very com· new co-ordination of the elements- mon in the churches and among the must be seriously considered. people-that the missionary is an evan· gelist, pure and simple, whose first and The traveller who studies modern chief duty is to preach the Gospel of missions honestly and with friendly Christ as widely as possible in the brief- est period of time; the other, which is held by a very large number of Chris. tians, is that the modern missional'y stands charged not only with the duty He Is convinced that for strictly misof carrying the holy evangel to non- sionary purposes all lands and all non- Christian peoples, but also with that of Christian peoples are practically the giving to them the education and cuI· same j that the problem of evangelizature which are the outgrowth of Chris- tion is the same in lands where Christianity. He is not only to organize tianity has become buried in ignorance churches, but hospitals also and all and idolatry, where, knowing someforms of Christian charities; to create thing of Christ, the sufficiency of His a Christian literature and provide for its atonement is openly denied, as in condiffusion; to found great educational fessedly heathen lands where the people institutions and secure their support; to are in the gloom of a pure paganism-sin remodel society generally and bring it is the same; ignorance and superstition up to a Christian standard of living. bear the same fruits; the minor circum- stances of race, climate, social and po- There is no doubt in his own mind, litical restrictions may modify methods and he finds little elsewhere, about all and progress, but cannot affect the real this being Christian work; the question issue. is, does it come within the legitimate scope and purpose of foreign missions? The time must come, sooner or later, in all nelds, as it has already in some The foreign missionary. considered which our friend has visited, when by himself, should be a very simple Christ having been preached to all in a character. He is a strictly New Testa- given locality, a certain number of the ment product, a minister of the Gospel people will have accepted the Gospel of Christ, the anointed emisiary of the and have banded themselves together Christian Church, chosen to carry out to form a church. Then some spirituthe only great and unquestioned pur- ally-minded man of this number, prepose of its organization. viously trained by the missionary in a knowledge of the Scriptures, will be set The command is also very plain and apart to lead them and minister the truth simple: "Go, preach the Gospel to to them. If proper1y directed up to this every creature. .. If this primitive view point they will naturally assume his o:f the missionary and the work should support. obtain, the function of the various boards would be clearly circumscribed There will then be a selj,suppO'l'ting to sending out and providing for the church with a native pa8tor. support of preachers of the Gospel pure and simple. This must be the end of foreign mis- sions as an evangelizing agency in that If, on the other hand, the broader particular place. view should obtain, and it should be held that the work of modern missions Self-support in the native churches is must embrace all that goes to make up the crucial test of all missions. If the a Christian civilization, then our candid spiritual standard has been set high traveller is led to suspect that more is enough, not only will the new church being demanded of the boards on for- be self.supporting, but the missionary eign fields than they could possibly ac- spirit, that constant accompaniment of complish or would be permitted to at- true conversion, will soon show itself in tempt at home. a desire to undertake the evangelization of the regions near them. The whole matter seems quite simple to our observing friend. It appears to The missionary}s sent to do a spehim that in foreign missions, as in every- cific work, with the expectation that it thing else, there must be a natural proc- will some day be completed. This must ess of development, a sort of a historic be the accomplishment of his work in sequence, some outcome of evangelistic that region. If he have grace given work, common to all fields, which deter- him to recognize the fact, and move on lDines its limits. to new fields, he may repeat the proces!! indefinitely: if, however, he linger to front there is necessarily a readjustment direct the life of the new church, that of some of the work; part of it is adspirit of independence and self-reliance justed on strictly economic grounds, a which grows so rapidly in Protestant portion follows the missionary, but edusoil, and follows self-support so natu- cation remains, a vexed question, whose rally, will soon create a line of friction, place is not yet accurately determined. and, a little later, he will be constrained to move with perceptible loss of pres- It seems logical and just that all ectige. clesiastical matters be left entirely in the hands of the new churches, with This is the natural line of cleavage such light as they can get from the Gosbetween the tutelage and support of for- pel; but if these Neo-Christians be also eign missions and the independent life charged with the education of the peo· of the native church. pIe, there is great danger that, uncon- sciously, they will be guided by old They now need that education which habits of thought and motives of action, can only come from assuming full re- and thus imperil the Whole work. The sponsibility for the organization of their ability to do this work aright cannot be churches and the development of Chris- acquired by the tirst generation of Christian work within them, without the material aid that enervates or the med- tians; it is not an acquisition, but Ii dling which irritates. growth, which comes only from Chris- The great central work, to which the tian principles long applied under Chris- Christian Church stands pledged, is ac- tian influences; it is, in fact, very largecomplished in a limited area; its emis- ly an inheritance. saries must push forward into new tields The argument presented sometimes till the whole work Is tinished. by native Christians who seek mission aid for education is not without force. Two important stages of mission de- They claim that when the Christian velopment are now passed-that of di- missionary enters their country uninvitrect evangelization and that of church ed and secures the adoption of a reorganization, and the work enters upon ligion which revolutionizes society, the third and last stage, that of the es- overthrows old systems of thought and tablishment and development of the life, introduces new methods and momuch-talked-of "institutions of Chris- tives, establishes new relations and cretianity." Who is to be responsible for ates new conditions, the Church which them? Are they the legitimate work of sends him assumes 8 certain responsithe Boards of Foreign Missions? Can bility, and must, in simple equity, prothey be considered a part of the great tect the results of its work and help the central work of evangelization to which people adjust themselves to the new the Christian Church stands directly order of things. pledged? It seems not only right, but eminently The highest types of Christian insti· wise for the older churches to assume a tutions, those which occupy so impor- large share of the responsibility for the tant a place in our Western civilization education of the people on these new and are fostered with such zeal by lines. Christian communities, may and do elevate, retine, and mould character for the It seems to the intelligent traveller an reception and highest use of truth, but idle waste of time to discuss the value they canrwt evangeliu. The saving truth of Christian education in any part of must be preached by men with special the world. Every argument that is pregifts, whose hearts are aflame and sented to support any form of education whose faith takes hold on the unseen, in our own land applies with equal whose minds are not perplexed with force to these lands now coming, under 'Worldly matters. Christian influences. There is even an additional argument-that the develop- When the missionary passes to the ment of the highest type of Christian tian work. It is a Eoregone conclusion, schools in these lands will tend to keep based upon large experience, that this their youth at home and prevent the work cannot be E)ntrusted entirely to loss of that sense of duty to their own the evangelistic missionary or the na- country which is too often the result of tive Christians. Can it be legitimately an education abroad. classed with evangelistic work, and It would be absurd to claim that:a does it belong to foreign missions? Is system of schools in the sense of courses it prudent or wise to burden the already of instruction, graded according to mod- overloaded foreign boards with the su- ern methods and leading up to a " lib· pervision of systems of education, with eral education," ever entered into the all the appliances, which the modern plans of the churches that support for- school and college demand? Is it not eign missions, or that it can be consid- rather the work of Christian people at ered a part of strictly evangelistic en- large outside of denominational lines ?
terprise; still all over the world mis- The commercial world is fast recog- sionaries are clamoring for schools. nizing its debt to Christian missions.
They find that without education of a They have opened new markets and Christian type their work does not en- brought nations closer together; they dure, any more than did that of the ear- develop new resources wherever they liest missionaries. From the force of go, and they go everywhere.
this pressure he finds that the number Protestant Christianit.y breeds thought, of schools and colleges is rapidly in- thrift, and enterprise; it teaches men creasing in nearly all mission fields, and to fear nothing but God, and gives them that the distinguishing feature of the courage to strike out for themselves; modern missions of the Christian Church hence we see them colonizing success- is likely to be the great educational in- fully everywhere.
stitutions which follow in their wake. Why should not the great commer- There is really nothing peculiar about cial world that supports education so these institutions to distinguish them generously at home be put under con- from the best secular products of our tribution for its support in mission Western civilization, except their pur- fields? If the work were detached pose. Mission hospitals are not mere- from ecclesiastical direction, would ly charitable enterprises, and mission those who believe in education at home presses are something more than busi- be likely to discriminate against lands ness ventures. These mission schools where there are already sucb. important and colleges are not primarily to fit men moral and material interests? Many for business or civil service. though in- who take a narrow view of missions and cidentally they may do it better than refuse to contribute to their support any others; the great purpose of all recognize the claims of education, and these forms of activity is to draw all give liberally to it.
men toward Christ in knowledge and in Our friend finds another question on life. On· mission fields the educator which the Christian, or, rather, the ec- stands where the high spiritual and clesiastical world is divided-that is, as material interests touch each other. His to the scope and character of this edu- work forms the connecting link be- cational work, which follows al~ success- tween the missionary and society at ful evangelization in foreign lands. To large, representing Christianity in its limit it to the training of preachers and broader relations to the nations. teachers, as some zealous evangelists Our traveller cannot see that there is desire, would be to go round and round any question as to the desirability of in a very narrow circle and practically education of the best Christian type on defeat the very end in view.
all mission fields. There is, however, a In the course of his travels, our friend serious one as to its exact place in Chris- happened into a great gathering of A.merican students, and there heard freedom of thought, and the develop- from the lips of a foreign missionary ment of a sense of personal responsi- this statement: " Mission schools should bility. " It enjoins the duty of self-de- accept only Christian pupils." He was nial, sobriety, temperance, and only the astounded, and felt that if this were the right use of all the powers that make a correct view he had misinterpreted his- man; at the same time it encourages tory, had mistaken the whole trend of him to the most perfect development of Christian thought, and had even mis- intellect and the acquisition of all graces understood the Gospel injunction. He and accomplishments. It gives him the could not understand the purpose of Holy Scriptures as a book that will task such a statement in such a place, and and invigorate the intellect, that will was glad to learn that the speaker repre- kindle the better feelings and elevate sented a very meagre minority. and purify the imagination."
A.s Protestants, we may remember In these Christian schools no purely with satisfaction how strongly the Ref- utilitarian theory of education should ormation was felt in educational princi- ever find lodgment-" no mere elabo- ples and methods. Much that is best in ration of raw hrain material into a more modern pedagogics can be traced to the marketable and higher-priced article."
early Reformers. We must not, how- The whole work must be touched by a ever, forget that other historic fact, that the subtle influence of skilled hristian in the early days of the Reformation, teachers, and so moulded to a high pur- " While Protestants were bickering over pose as to become an elevating and illu- doctrinal formulre, the society of Loyola minating power, transforming every boy founded that marvellous system of and girl whom it reaches into a true schools through whose influence the missionary in the practice as well as the tide of reformation which was sweeping theory of life.
over Europe was stemmed and the lt has been objected that in these boundaries established which to-day schools where so much importance isat- mark its geographical limits; under tached to methods and principles of whose sway half-Protestant Belgium teaching and so little doctrinal work is was made the most subservient of Ro- done, there are few conversions. This man Catholic countries; that at the end is probably as true of them as it is of the of the first half century, after Luther's best of our own Christian colleges and revolt, a Roman Catholic historian was schools. We must not, in our evangel- able to say of the Jesuits, ' They were istic zeal, lose sight of that gradual masters of the present by the men whom leavening of the whole mass of society they had trained and disposed of the which can be traced to these institu- future by the children who were yet in tions, bringing it imperceptibly nearer their hands.'" This tremendous lesson to Christian truth, and making it possi- of history should not be .lost to the mis- ble for the small evangelistic work, done sionaries of the modern Protestant in isolated places and touching only a Church. The same insidious foe is at few of the humbler members of society,- work to-day on C'rery mission field. to spread throughout a whole nation.
The distinctive value of Protestant It has been gravely objected, also, schools lind colleges is that they aim at that there is danger, in opening these something more than the mere intellec- schools and colleges to unbelievers, of tual discipline of mind and will which giving them weapons with which to as- characterized the Jesuit schools; they sail Christianity. If there is anything seek to develop the power to know in a sound Protestant education that aright and to cultivate that character will enable an Oriental or a Romanist to which leads up to Christian ideals of defend a false philosophy or II perverted life. The very pith of Protestant edu- faith, against the simple truth of the cation is the cultivation of conscience, Gospel-if the champions of Christianity have no adequate defence, then there mission development: the former is a must be something radically wrong in special denominational agency, accessory our religion, in our home schools and to and dependent upon evangelistic colleges, or in the selection of our mis- work; the latter, broadly evangelical, sionaries. but undenominational-the one an ad- junct, the other an in3titution. Our traveller observes that there is a spirit abroad which feels that" high- He concludes that if modern miesions er education" is not to be narrowed fail of their full purpose and drag along to mean only instruction in higher another century before giving the Gosbranches of learning, but must em- pel to the whole world, it will not be for brace all work done with higher pur- lack of devoted men and women who pose and more scientific methods. In are willing to give their lives to the this sense the kindergarten belongs to work, nor for want of the moral and higher education. It demands the clear, material support of Christian people, intellectual, moral, and religious percep- nor yet because there is a larger propor- tions that are the distinctive features of tion of Inefficient and self-seeking men Christian culture, and it embraces the on mission fields than is found in simi- essential philosophy of all teaching. lar work at home; it may be, however, for want of a discriminating division of Manual training is also a branch of labor on the field, resulting in the keephigher education, if used for the pur- ing back of trained evangelists in purely pose of giving a broader and more sym- secular· work, instead of pushing the metrical development to .the powers of lines rapidly forward, leaving that work the individual. for laymen, or for lack of discipline or misdirected energies and consequent These schools and colleges must be loss of force. the best of their kind-they must be models. If they attempt to educate He can see no reason why an evanwith antiquated methods and incompe- gelist should spend months or years in tent direction, letting the personal piety a printing office when a skilled printer of the teacher stand for special training could manage it better. and ability to teach, they will be inevitably crowded out by schools that edu- Nor yet why an ordained minister of cate for profit and care nothing for the Gospel, whose heart is aflame with a Christianity. desire to preach the Word of Life, should vex his spirit in a poor attempt All these considerations, and many to teach" the rule of three" to unwillmore, force themselves upon the mind ing urchins; nor why a man who can of our honest friend as he travels speak and write words that will stir through many lands, converses with men's hearts, but who cannot keep his veteran workers in the whole field, and own cash account correctly, should canvasses the views of canuid and spend his energies over the finances of friendly observers from the outside. some great school or mission boarding- house, or any other purely secular The great question of education is work. discussed everywhere with increasing interest. He can find no warrant for the em- ployment of an ordained missionary, In its consideration he has been forced who was selected with special reference to differentiate broadly between the lit- to his ability to preach, in any secular tle parochial or elementary school which work whatever, unless he have proved the evangelist must make a part of his unfit or unable to preach, and volunearliest work, and which the native tarily take up the lesser work. churches often keep up at their own expense, and the larger and more com- It is clear to him that the administrapletelyorganized work of a later date, tion of a large school or college has a which come up from the little school, business side that must be managed on but which represents a separate stage of strict business principles; an educa- and find eventually liberal local sup· tional side that must be conducted on port. BOund educational principles; that such establishments ought to be under boards Much could be said of the influence specially organized for their government -boards of educators, and not evangel- of the normal schools of the missions ists, who serve perfunctorily, but whose hearts are elsewhere. in elevating and renovating society In these days of fine specialization through the teachers which they pre·· the demands of life are too precise and exacting to enable the average man to pare for other than mission schools. do his best in many directions. The evangelist and the teacher are both spe- Our Mail-Bag. cialists. The great evangelist is rarely a good teacher, the great teacher is Rev. M. D. G. Collins, in a note at often that because he could not be the hand, says: "Let me say concerning other. Laos people that they are progressive. Eight years ago we had four churches Our friend returns to his home and and about two hundred and forty memchurch with a plea for a di vision of bers; to-day we have thirteen churches labor; for the appointment of profes- and about eighteen hundred members. sional educators in educational work on Our Laos people make good evangelists, all mission fields-men and women who and are carrying the Word all over the have made special preparation for it country. At the meeting of the Presand who give themselves to it on pre- bytery last December six men were orcisely the same terms as the ordained dained. Our schools are being well atmissio/lary gives himself to evangelistic tended. The people are making some work; for the grading and improving of progress toward self-support. We mission schools, bringing them up to need reinforcements badly; we also the intellectual no less than the moral need the prayers of God's people." advance of the world by the introduction of the best educational ability, Rev. Jacob Hendricks, Vinukunda, methods, and appliances; for the es- India, writes: "One of the most entablishment of normal and manual train- couraging features in connection with ing schools in every mission field, where my work is the desire on the part of practicable; for the organization, either our native ministry and church·memwithin the boards now existing or inde- bers for greah~r spiritual power. The pendently of them, of educational bodies necessity of the indwelling power of having full supervision of all educa- the Holy Ghost is recognized more than tional interests, making it a separate ever before. In January last our new department, but on a basis that will not church was dedicated, and three native clash with evangelistic work on the brethren were ordained. The native field, or interfere with the missionary Christians made liberal contributions spirit in the churches. toward this their house of worship. Eight persons were baptized at this This would relieve ordained missiona- time, and sili:teen on a subsequent tour." ries of the quasi secular cares which now engross many of them, and give educa- lIr. C. H. Yatman, the widely tional room to expand and occupy the known evangelist of Ocean Grove whole of the great field open to it. celebrity among young folks, expects to visit the Hawaiian Islands, Australia, Under proper direction these schools New Zealand, and South Africa next and colleges would become as nearly fall and winter for evangelistic labor. self-supporting as similar institutions Mr. Yatman is unique in manner, in are in our own country. They would methods, and in success. attract the attention of the better classes A note from Oroomiah, Persia, of April 19th, tells how deeply the 10s8 by Dr. Shedd's death is felt. He was a veteran with great wisdom and worth, whom the people loved after long ex- perience. He had been out of health for six months prior to his death, April 12th. Mrs. Shedd will not return to America, but find her home with her son, Hev. W. A. Shedd.
FmLD OF MONTHLY SURVEY
III.-FIELD OF MONTHLY SURVEY.
BY D. L. PIERSON.
Islanda of the Sea.;* Alaska,t Greenland,j: and Labrador; North American Indians,§ ISLANDS OF THE SEA, of Polynesia, 1800 to 1300 east longitude.
Oceania, with a total land area of about The principal groups are the New Heb- 3,725,000 square miles and a total pOpu- rides, Loyalty, Banks, Fiji, Ellice, and lation of 6,000,000, may be divided into Solomon. The societies engaged in evanfive groups, in addition to isolated gelizing these islands are the Presbytegroups and islands, such as the Ha- rians of Scotland and Canada, the Weswaiian and Galapagos. leyans, the Church of England, and the London Missionary Society. In the Polyne8ia includes the islands lying New Hebrides, 12 islands are already between 10· north and 30° south lati- Christian, and the Bible has been transtude and 180· to 130· west longitude. It lated in Whole or in part into 15 lanembraces the Samoan, Society, Austral, guages and dialects. In the Fiji Islands Tonga or Friendly, Hervey or Cook, a greater proportion of the popUlation 1tiarquesas, Phrenix, and other groups. attends church than in the United States. Among islands of special interest in The Paris society also works in the missionary annals are Tahiti, Raratonga, Loyalty Islands. Rev. James Hadfield and Pitcairn. They were native teach- writes of the persecutions under French ers from Samoa who first carried the rule: Gospel to the New Hebrides. Since Tahiti and a few other of these islands .. I have never known the Jesuit have come under French control, the priests to show greater zeal and activity Protestant missionary work has been than at present. While we have been transferred from the London Society, reducing our staff of missionaries they who first carried on the work, to the have been increasing theirs. If you Paris Evangelical Society. The Lon- could but see how ardently our staunch don and Wesleyan societies are still at but sadly neglected Protestants long work in this portion of the Pacific. and pray that they may again have a resident missionarv to stimulate their Melanesia includes the section west faith, and guard them and their little ones against the machinations of the * See pp. 81 (February); 462 (Juue); 506 priests, I am certain many large-hearted volunteers would be speedily forthcom- (present issue). Literature:" John G. Paton's ing. Since Mr. Jones was unjustly ex- Autobiography;" U The Hawaiian Islands," pelled from Mar€l six years ago, our so- Rufus Anderson; "Esehol," Dr. Humphreys; ciety (L. M. S.) in this group has been "Life in Hawaii," Rev. Titus Coan; "Story represented by one missionary only. of the South Seas," Rev. George Cousins; Nominally Mare is under the charge of " Among the Cannibals of New Guinea," Rev. the Paris Missionary Society ; but for Samuel MacFarlane; "Fiji and the Fijians," the past year I have been the only Eu- Thom~s Williams and James Calvert; .. The ropean representati ve of PIotestantism in Southern Cross and the Southern Crown," A. L. the group. Here we have a popUlation O. E. (Miss Tucker.) of 13,OOO,out of which 10,000 are Protest- ants and only 3000 Roman Catholics, and t Seepp. 498, 522 (present issue); "StoryofMet- yet these latter have nine or ten ordained lakahtla," H. S. Welcome; .. Alaska and Mis- priests. not to mention European/reres sions on the North PacifIc Coast," Sheldon and sisters. We are constantly being Jackson; .. Life in Alaska," Mrs. E. S. Willard. SUbjected to persecution lind official op- pOSItion, while the latter are petted and :I: "Amid Greenland Snows," Jesse Page. supported by the Government. Sev- § See pp. 102 (February) ; 167 (March) ; 401,458 eral months ago the brother of the head (June); 481 and 491 (present issue). Literature: chief of the district in which I live re- .. Life of John Eliot," J. B. Calverly; "David nounced his faith and came over to us, Brainerd," J. M. Sherwood; U Mary and I," Ste- thereby threatening the very fabric and phen R. Riggs; "By Canoe and Dog Train," foundation of popery in the island. and" Stories from Indian Wigwams and North· ern Campfires," E. R. Young. The priest, in great alarm, ordered the chief to seize his brother 'at once and lated groups, the total area of the South keep him in prison until a steamer could Sealslands is about 420,000 square miles, convey him to N oumea. The poor and the population 1,300,000. Less than man, filled with terror, fled into the 150 foreign laborers are at work here, bush, thinking they meant to kill him, besides about 800 native evangelists. despite any assurance to the contrary; Communicants number about 100,000. and for weeks he was hunted about the Some 350 islands of the Pacific, inisland like II wild beast by a French cluding 14 groups, may be said to be policeman and a mob of armed men. Christianized, but there are still 1600 These men had been instructed by the almost or wholly untouched, where priest, in the hearing of some of my over 6,000,000 await some one to bring them tidings of a Saviour. people, to fire on the fugitive if he tried to elude them. They did not succeed CIRCUMPOLAR MISSIONS. in capturing him, and one day he surprised me by walking into my study, Ala8ka has an area of 531,000 square miles, and a popUlation of 32,052, comsaying he was going to give himself up, posed of Indians, Eskimos, Thlingets, as he got no rest night or day. He was Aleuds, and some white traders, educasoon exiled to the Isle of Pines, and tors, etc. Most of the Aleuds are adthere he remains. As the bishop (brother herents of the Russian Greek Church. The other natives are barbarians, and of the priest who sent him into exile) many are fetish-worshippers, practising often interviews him, we may expect polygamy, child marriage, infanticide, him back, only if he is willing to sub- slavery, witchcraft, and sometimes canmit again to the priests_ nibalism. The story of mission work among them is told on another page of " I have long been fully persuaded this issue. that Protestantism hag nothing to fear from Jesuitical intrigues and the false doctrines of popery if only a fair field is opened to it. 'Truth is great and must prevail; , but truth, to pre- vail promptly and effectually, should be backed by at least as much zeal and enthuilasm as is expended by its enemies In the propagation of error."
Microne8ia lies to the north of Mela- Greenland, with an inhabited area of nesia, and includes the Gilbert, Caro- about 47,000 square miles and a popu- line, Marshall, and Ladrone Islands. lation of 10,516, has been evangelized Work: was begun here by American by Lutherans from Denmark and by Board missionaries from Hawaii, and Moravians. The western coast is prac- has been largely developed by native tically Christianized. The Lutherans Hawaiian laborers. The Caroline Is- count 8175 adherents at 12 stations, with lands have been claimed by Spain, and 3 Danish and 4 native pastors. They the work of the American Board has have a seminary for the training of na- been much hampered by the Spanish tive pastors and teachers at' Godthaab.
priests and Government. The Moravians number 1591 communi- Australasia comprises, besides the cants at 6 stations. They have within continent of Australia, New Guinea, a year established the first station on the New Zealand, Tasmania, etc. Austra- east coast among a people whose exist- lia is home mission ground; New ence was unknown until 1883. The Zealand and Tasmania are practically new station is on the Tessinyak Bay, Christianized, and New Guinea Is occu- near Cape Dan. There is a good har- pied by the London Society In the Eng- bor and a stream abounding with fish.
lish section, and by the Rhenish and The Moravians have also recently estab- Utrecht societies in the Dutch section. lished a new station among the Eskimo At Bon,where there may been seen thirty seal-fishers on Blackwell's Island, Cum- notches in a tree to commemorate as berland Sound.
many cannibal feasts, there is now a The work in Greenland is beset with flourishing Christian church. difficulties due to the cold climate, with MalaY8iawas treated of in our May a winter temperature of 26° below zero issue. Exclusive of Australasia and iso- (New Herrnhut, 1894), and to the consequent scanty means of support, as well With those transferred from the Lien as to the dulness and lack of receptivity Chow church and those received at the in spiritual things generally shown by time on profession of their faith, the or- Greenlanders. A great safeguard to ganization was effected with 40 com· the morals of the people has been, how- municants. Two elders Wire elected ever, the treaty forbidding any el(cept and ordained. Since that time about 10 Danish traders to land in the harbors more have united with the cl1urch. except by special permission. Through With the baptized children included, the enforcement of this treaty the na- there is a membership now of about 60. tives have been largely shielded from A building has been rented for 10 years the contaminating influences which usu- for a chapel and school building, with ally come from the immorality and in- the privilege of renting it for 100 years. toxicants introduced by traders. I have the deed and lease in my posses- Labrador has a pnpulation of about sion, and as yet there has been no 6000 in winter and over 50,000 during trouble about the property. I made the four months of the cod·fishing sea- three journeys into the province last scoon~ewtohecnatfcihsheernmoeunghanfidshthteoirpafaymtihlieeisr year myself, and, so far as the people debts, which most of them have con- were concerned, I believe I could bave tracted during the winter months. The stayed indefinitely. It was my purpose to spend this year only Christian work among these is car- in Hunan, encouraging and instructing ried on by the Mission to the Deep-sea the Christians and in studying their lan- Fishermen. The Moravians have 6 sta- guage, preparatory to pushing the work tions, with about 600 communicants and farther to the interior; but my colleague 1400 church-memberli, among the Eski- in the work at this station has gone to mos of that region, and have been the Canton for the year, gO that I cannot means of establilihing Christian law lind leave at present. In the mean time, I am order in Northern Labrador. studying the Runanese language, so that The First Ohristian Ohuroh in the Prov- I may be ready to go when my col- ince of Hunan, Ohina.* league returns. My teacher is a man This church it was my privilege to organize in Hunan last June. There who was formerly a fortune-teller, but may be others of which I do not know. Hunan is said to be a closed land so far who iii no~ a verl earnest Chr,istian. as Protestant missions are concerned, and that the fifteen or twenty millions He burned up all hIS books and Impleof people are entirely without the Gos· pel. This iii not altogether true. The ments for fortune·telling before I bap- American Presbyterian Mission of Canton has had a native evangelist working tized him. One member of the church in the southern part of the Hunan province for several years. More than a at Lam Mo is a Sin Tsai, a literary score had become 'Christians and united with the church at Lien Chow, in the graduate. His home is near Ka Wo, northwestern part of the Canton province. Last year it was thought the time another Hlen about 25 miles from Lam had come for organizing a church in the province of Hunan itself, In the Mo. He is the head man of his village, midst of tha people. A.ccordingly the Canton Presbytery appointed me and and is now teaching a school in hill own two native helpers as a committee to go to IIunlln aud organize a church if we house, with about 20 scholars. As yet thought best. The committee was of the unanimouii opinion that the time he has had no financial assistance from was ripe, and accordingly organized a church at Lam .Mo, June 24th,1894. the mission. The ancestral hall of his place was offered to us as a gift for a.
church building, but it wail not accept- ed, because it was too large for the pur- pose. We have two native preachers or colporteurs workin$ all the time in Hunan. They have vi~lted a. great many places and sold a great deal of religious literature. The native palltor from Lien Chow is spending a month now with the Christians at Lam Mo and Ka Wo.
The Hunan province, then, is not en- tirely closed against Protestant missions on this side. We have had to enter, as it were, by the back door; but we thank God for this entrance, and will hope by His further blessing and guidance to push on into the interior and toward the front door. W. H. LINGLE.
LIEN CHOW, CANTON, CHINA, March 11, 1895.
* Correcting note In Febrnary, 1895, issue, p.138.
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
IV.-EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT.
The March of Events. of the intricate problems which confront him; and though no great improvement Of course, the main interest of the will be possible until Japan can free past month has centred about the issue enough of her army to thoroughly ocof the Japan-China War and the new cupy the kingdom, some important, treaty, etc., with the prospective effect measures of reform have bcen decreed. on Korea and the other nations in this Among these are the equality of all pertriad. sons before the law, the abolition of slavery, freedom of petition to the coun- It is now reported that Japan yields cil of state, the abolition of the old to the demand of European powers,'and Chinese system of literary examinations abandons her claim to the Liau.Tong for office, payment of taxes in money peninsula, including Port Arthur. A instead of in kind, and the reorganizadespatch from Berlin (May 6th) likewise tion of the finances. Still further measstates that Russia invites Germany and ures have been promised by the king, France to unite in guaranteeing the notably taxation by fixed laws, thereguregular payment of the Chinese war lation of the expenditures of governdebt. ment by receipts, the education each year in foreign schools of a certain num- At one time there seemed to be a cer- ber of Korean students, punishment of tainty of open rupture between Japan crime under a carefully prepared crimand Russia and France unless this inal code, and the appointment of ofclaim were abandoned. It was publicly ficials from different classes of society. affirmed that Japan's insistence upon The chief difficulty at present in exethe Shimonoseki treaty would lead Rus- cuting any reforms Is the reluctance of sia to declare war; and Russian ships the people to move in anything and the were leaving Japanese ports for VIadi- lack of revenues; but it is hoped that, vostock. in a few months, the latter at least may be overcome by a Japanese or other for- If the war is thus brought to a close, eign loan, and Korea be given a .fair and another and perhaps more serious start on the road of progress and enconflict on a more colossal scale pre- larged intercourse with the rest of the vented, we have cause for devout grati- world." tude; but even more grateful will intelligent Christians be if the treaties The Korean Reposit01'11 (March 1st), awaiting ratification shall be put into just at hand, which reflects the opinions full operation. of the Christian missionaries in Korea, says: "The general opinion among Korea, for instance, seems on the way both Koreans and foreigners is that the to a peaceful revolution and reconstruc- king is one of the most urbane and gration. Japan began this war ostensibly cious sovereigns that ever sat on the to rid her neighbor of the galling yoke throne. " Its analysis of the recently of Chinese supremacy. In face of all adopted and formally acknowledged the difficulties encountered in the igno- new principles which are to govern the rance and apathy of the stolid Koreans, Korean king and ministry is, on the and their passive submission to offi- whole, favorable. The same journal cial classes that know no principle of chronicles the significant fact that since right but the law of might; and in face the appointment of the new ministry, of the inevitable disorder and general on the recommendation of the prime disintegration which a state of war has minister, government offices are closed brought about,with an impoverished and half-famished people, "Count Inouye, the energetic and statesmanlike representative of Japan in Korea, has accomplished something toward the solution on Saturday afternoon, and are not of Dr. K. Chunder Bose, who estimates that 10 per cent of the residents of Cal- opened again until Monday morning. cutta take opium. Another Indian wit- His Majesty, likewise, does not hold ness calculates that 20 to 25 per cent of court on Sunday. the grown-up population in the villages The controversy on the opium ques- of the Umballi district consume opium. tion, which has been long and bitter, Further, an Indian pleader (solicitor) in especially in England and India, has the Judges' Court at Assam is quoted, developed a new and somewhat unique 'I believe fully a third portion of the phase in the shape of a .. Royal Com- population of Kamrup is given to the mission on Opium" to inquire into the vile habit, and in Upper Assam it is physical and moral effects of the use of worse.' And this section of the sub- the drug, etc. ject is concluded by an extract from the Mr. Joshua Rowntree (late lI.P.) has evidence of Mr. D. D. Gildar, a Parsee undertaken a huge task in the analysis educationalist and moral reformer, and of the evidence taken before this Royal editor of the Student" Friend, BomlJay, Commission. Mr. Rowntree's pamphlet, who submitted statistics to show' that of a hundred pages, contains the gist of while the population of Bombay has in- the contents of five volumes, containing creased by only 6 per cent, the consump- 2000 pages of closely printed double tion of opium has increased by 84 per columns, with the expressed opinions of cent and that throughout the Bombay 900 persons, in answer to over 28,000 presidency while the popUlation has in- questions. creased 14 'per cent, the sale of opium Of Mr. Rowntree's pamphlet on the has gone up 60 per cent during the last " Opium Habit," the London Ohristian decade.'
says: " Similar contradictions meet us in the "The evidence is dealt with calmly medical evidence. Sir William Moore, and with Impartiality, revealing Mr. Rowntree's legally trained mind. The late Surgeon-General in the Bombay result of the study of the evidence, amply quoted, is a splendid vindication presidency, declared that ' o~ium-smo~ of the position of the anti-opium party. The pamphlet is full of surprises to the ing was practically harmless. But Bnreader. One of the earliest specimens gade-Burgeon J. H. Condon, M.D., who of this occurs on pages 18 and 19, concerning poppy·growing. After a high is still resident in India, and is one of official of the Indian Government had declared that 'official' compulsion to the best-known Christian laymen in that cultivate poppy is unheard of, a native land·owner was asked about his own country, said, 'I never met a confirmed village. He replied that the zilladars (petty officers) 'go and threaten them opium·eater or smoker that did not hate with persecution, and they instigate the police officers to do something to them. the habit, but the only cure any of them There are different ways of tyrannizing over them. Lately I received a com- seemed to think of as being of any use munication from the Opium Department to make my ryots (tenant farmers) grow was to stop the supply of opium. I more opium.' have gone into the history of Bome hun- " A little further on we came to an extract from a memorandum submitted dreds of cases. My experience is that to the Opium Commission by Sir John it is only a matter of time. All break Strachey, an ex.Anglo-I.ndia.n official. down.' In this he says: 'Speakmg III general terms the consumption of opium in " No fair-minded reader, and, above all, India'is so infinitesimally small that I may say, w~thout. eaJaggera~ion, that. no no reader with a conscience enlightened opium questwn extstB at all. Followmg this, lIlr. Rowntree quotes the evidence by the Holy Spirit, will be able to rise from the perusal of this pamphlet in any doubt as to where the truth is amid the maze of contradictions. No difficulty will be found in agreeing with Mr. Rowntree's conclusion that, , whether as regards India, Burmah, or cCahrienfua'lltyhecsoemfpi ivleedvaoslutmh~eys of evidence, have been. in the main, through the InstrumentalIty of an able government fighting for its revenue, as necessary for its life, yet leave an unmistakable conviction that the opium habit, apart from any medi· cal use, is physically injurious an~ mor- ally indefensible, just In proportIOn to the extent to which it prevails.' "
Rev. Robert P. Wilder, of Kolhapur, India, writing from Norheim, April 5th, says of the Thibetan Pioneer Mission, now under leadership of Mr. Pol- revision of the Judeo-German New hill-Turner, that the night before they Testament. Nearly half a million por- left Darjeeling for Gnatong, he (Mr. tions of this edition have already been Wilder) gave them a short address on circulated in Russia and elsewhere. The the power of the Spirit, from Acts 1 ; 8, March "Occasional Pa.per" of the and that it was a most impressive fare- "Prayer Union for Israel" is by Mr.
well meeting. "The mission, " he adds, Adler. It is a statement of Christian "has had many discouragements from truth, presented in a way that should without and within, but prospects are appeal with special power to Jewish brighter now." Mr. Wilder. himself readers. A large number of copies have the leader of the American Student been disseminated. Mr. Adler's address Volunteers, incloses ten dollars for the i3 43 Poet's Road, Highbury New Voluntee1' Fund, and adds, " I want all Park, N. London, England.
our volunteers to read the MISSIONARY REVIEW. The late articles on the' Pen- Hon. Cecil Rhodes, Prime Minister of teeost at Hilo ' and' A Half Century of Cape Colony, South Africa, has given Faith Work' (of Miillerat Bristol) have $2500 toward the building fund of helped my wife and me much. You Huguenot College, Wellington, so that must," he continues, "feel Dr. GOI'- now $35,500 is waiting for $14,500 be- don'sdep:uture. I regarded him as the fore the college can be built. Mr.
most Spirit-filled man in America." Charles Hopkins is the financial agent of the Huguenot College and Semina- News reached us by cable, April 12th, ries, at the Equitable Building, 120 that Rev. J. H. Shedd, D.D., thirty-six Broadway, New York. Are there not years a missionary in Persia, has de- some stewards of God who would be parted. No one can properly estimate glad to aid in a work that is perhaps in: the loss which this implies, not to Pres- directly doing more for Africa's evan- byterian missions only, but to the uni- gelization than any other?
versal work of a world's evangelization.
What a comfort that God is on the French troops are now in 1IIadagas- throne I car, "to win the great African island."
There are now 2000 Protestant churches It might be added to previous notes there, with 300,000 adherents, and they on the Arabian Mission that Rev. P. grow steadily. What effect the inva- Zwemer was driven out of his station sion may ha ve upon the work of the and the mission property looted; but missiouaries remains to be seen, but a now the Sultan promises protection, and great disturbance of Christian work is Mr. Zwemer has started back, though feared. The London Missionary So- matters are still far from being in a set- ciety, which has done most of the good tled state. work in JIa61agascar, utters an urgent appeal for much prayer in behalf of The Buddhist Magazine, of Japan, " the great African island."
says; "The greatest movement of the In the midst of almost universal debt twentieth century will not be a com- of missionary societies, it is refreshing mercial one nor yet a military one; but to read that the Foreign Missionary the nationlil of the West will invade the Committee of the Southern Presbyterian East with great armies of Christian mis- Church ended its year of labor with all sionaries, backed up by the wealth of debts paid, and a balance of $1650 in Christendom. We must arouse our- selves to meet them." the treasury.
Rev. James Adler, of the Mildmay The third annual conference of the Mission to the Jews, has completed the Christian Endeavor Missionary League of the Reformed Church in Amcrica deed, whole provinces like those of was held at Somerville, N. J., on April Hunan and Kwangsi, will then be 25th, and was not only most interesting, opent)d to mission work which are now but most stimulating to missionary zeal. closed against us." 'fhe Christian Endeavor societies now number 457 (377 Senior and 80 Junior). Dr. Griffith John, of Hankow, China, and out of the 625 congregations 363 writing to Mr. Woods, says of the peti. are found blessed with one or more of tion: "I am glad the American mis· t.hese societies. During the past year sionaries are making this effort. and $3206 have been contributed by them to pray that their effort will be crowned foreign and $1902 to home missions; with success. What you want is to 109 societies are now united in the above open Hunan. Open Hunan and the whole empire will be open. I am look· league. ing forward to seeing very definite reo sults spring from this war-that is, if One of our valued correspondents and the empire can hold together during the friends, Rev. Arthur JI. Smith, author conflict, which, after all, is very doubt· of "Chinese Characteristics," that ful. It is impossible to procure any unique book which has no rival in anti-foreign books at present. 'The its peculiar excellence, favored the Death·Blow to Corrupt Doctrines' is in editor with a personal visit a little be· circulation, and ought to be includedfore sailing for his home in North i.e., in the list of incendiary books China. He also spoke at Boston, in con· brought to the attention of the govern· nection with a conference on missions, ment. I wish I had an extra copy to just before taking ship, and his audio send you. But take it for granted on ence found the speaker as racy, as inter· my authority-an authority resting on esting, as vivacious, and as brilliant as well·known facts-that this infamous the author and writer. Mr. Smith production has been circulating in leaves his family behind him, in defer- Hunan and Hupeh ever since its first ence to questions of health and educa- appearance. Of all the pUblications, tion-another example of the rare sacri· not one has done more mischief than fice of God's servants. this. "
From Tsing.kiang.pu, China, Uarch [In view of the importance of this 30th, 1895, Mr. Henry lIL Woods encloses a copy of a petition which American document we print it entire.-EDI'l·OR.] missionaries of all denominations are preparing to send to the United States PETITION Government relative to their rights in the interior of China. He says: To the President and Senate of the United "The questions involved vitally affect State8 of Ame1'ica: the progress of the Master's kingdom in this empire, and Christian people at We, the undersigned citizens of the home ought to be awakened to a sense United States, engaged L missionary of the great importance of the matters work in China, and representing the treated of in the petition, and should Protestant Christian Church of all de· join with the hundreds of their brethren nominations in the United States, would and representatives laboring in this land respectfully present the following state· to put missionary work on a better·de· ment and petition: fined and securer basis. I. We beg leave to call attention to " If this petition is granted. it is be· the ill·defined and unsatisfactory status lieved mission work in China will be of the rights of missionaries under the advanced a quarter of a century. Preju· treaties now existing between the United dice lind hostility will be in large part States Government and China. For removed, the residence of missionaries twenty·five years or more United States in the interior will be shown to be a citizens, believing that they were acting lawful act, and scores of cities, or, in· in strict accord with the spirit of the treaties, with the approval and assist· ance of the United States consular rep· resentatives, and with the consent of the Chinese Government, have settled in the interior of China to engage in mission work, until now there are hundreds of United States citizens residing there and holding property valued at several hun· dred thousands of dollars. Now the cause of complaint which your petition' ers would earnestly present is, that while they have, as they believe, a clear constructive right to resideuce in the in- to define these privileges clearly." And terior, the treaties do not, as they again: •• The spirit of our treaties rather should, guarantee them this right in ex- than the letter affords Americans the plicit terms. That the missionaries privilege to live in the interior of China have such a right to reside in the inte- as missionaries. The right is not quesrior of C4ina appears from the following tioned by the Chinese, it being specially considerations : mentioned in the Chinese text of the French treaty." (a) While the language of the United States treaties is silent on this point, the (c) For two or more centuries before words of the British and French treaties the present treaties were made, French give ground for it. In the British and Italian missionaries had resided in treaty of 1858, Art. XII_, occur these the interior and held property with the words; "British subjects, whether at full consent of the Chinese Government. the ports or at other places, desir- This privilege was accorded them at ing to build," etc. . ., "in which the time the treaties were made. As every port and in every other place"- the treaties did not withdraw the priviwould seem undoubtedly to mean lege it still remains in full force. Now, the interior, although the British au- Art. VI. of the additional articles to the thotities do not press the point_ In the United States treaty of 1858, called French treaty of 1858, Art VI., the "the favored nation clause," provides Chinese text has a clause not found, it that .. citizens of the United States, is true, in the French text, which reads visiting or residing in China, shall en- "It is permitted to French mission- joy the same privileges, immunities or aries to rent and purchase land in e:x:emptions with respect to travel or all the provinces, and to erect build- residence as may be enjoyed by the citiing-s thereon at pleasure." It has been zens or subjects of the most favored charged that this clause did not regu- nation." Therefore the privilege of relarly belong to the treaty, but sufficient siding in the interior granted for centuproof for this assertion has not yet been ries to missionaries of other countries, given. On the contrary, "the Chinese according to this article of the treaty, Government has in no case denied the clearly belongs to citizens of the United authenticity or validity of this clause, States engaged in mission work: in but has only applied its own interpretation ;" nay more, it has distinctly ac- China. knowledged this clause in the Book of (d) The right of missionaries to reside Precedents issued by the Government for the guidance of local officials in in the interior of China is recognized by their dealings with foreigners. (See numerous Imperial decrees and procla- Book of Precedents, pp. 11, 12_) mations of recent years. Witness the Imperial proclamation of 1891, after the (b) The spirit of the treaties warrants riots, the proclamation of the Governorit. The treaties, while as commercial General of the Min-cMh provinces, documents they limit American com- quoting the Imperial edict, and that of merce to certain ports, are not maniiest- the Shanghai 'faotai. Witness also the ly intended to restrict to the treaty ports recent memorandum of the Foreign Ofhumane and charitable wOlk, such as fice a1 Peking addressed to the ministers that in which missionary work mainly of the various foreign countries, on the consists, as, moral and religious instruc- occasion of the declaration of war betion for the vicious and ignorant, hos- tween China and Japan, requesting the pitals for the sick, and schools for the ministers to notify missionaries to rechildren of the poor. It is a well- main at their posts, and promising all known principle of international law such the protection of the Chinese Govthat" clauses which favor justice, hu- ernment. (See translation of pI'oclamamanity and equity are to be interpreted tions furnished herewith_) Many others broadly." Thus it seems to be in full might be cited; these all recognize that accord with the spirit of the treaties to the residence of missionaries in the ingrant to missionaries right of residence terior is in accordance with the treaties in the interior on account of the humane and with the Imperial sanction, and on this ground they are guaranteed procharacter of their work. United States Consul-General Kennedy, in an official tection. document dated March 19th,1888, takes This right then is implied in the this ground when he says, "It would be taking an extremely narrow view to treaty and is otherwise acknowledged infer that the privilege of locating in by the Chinese Government. Now the the interior for the purpose of prosecut- fact that it is not explicitly stated in the ing missionary work is denied Ameri- treaty has caused and threatens to cause cans from the fact that our ,treaties, great injury to us and to work in which which are commercial documents, fail we are engaged. It has been tor years the cause of much dispute and lItiga- tion between the Chinese and foreigners when the latter were attempting to se- against this restriction as clearly in cure propertl' (See Note on Govern- viulation of both t.he letter and spirit ment Book 0 Precedents.) It furnishes of the treaty.
a pretext to malicious people to charge (IJ) A third oppressive condition is us with unlawful intrusion into the in- requiring missionaries to hold property terior and to stir up riots, and also a only in the name of the native church.
pretext to hostile officials to withhold This condition puts the property of protection from missionaries in time of United States citizens completely at the danger. A clear, explicit statement of mercy of the Chinese officials_ Prop- the right of missionaries to reside in the erty procured in the name of the native interior inserted In the treaty, would do church no longer belongs to the Ameri- much toward putting an end to litiga- cans who paid the money, but to the tion and to riots and toward securing native church. So the Chinese Govern- full protection for United States citizens ment has declared in the Book of Prec- resident in the interior. edents. (See Vol. 22, No.5, p. 13.) II. Another cause of complaint is, As such it is liable to confiscation at that while the Chinese Government has any time by the local officials. In case acknowledged our right of residence of confiscation there would be no re- and of holding property in the interior, dress, as the deeds were made out in yet it hedges us round with such condi- the name of the native church. In tions and restrictions as practically de- many parts of China the ordinary senti- stroy our rights in many instances, and ments of justice and humanity, which violate the spirit, if not the letter, of would protect the property of a heathen the treaty. Such restrictions are: Chinaman, would not avail in the case (a) Frivolous and extreme objections of a Christian, as public sentiment, mis- on the ground of Jung·ahui. While mis- led and inflamed by,the slanders circu- sionaries from the United States desire lated against Christianity, would justify to show all proper regard for the feel- such an act. Regarding the holding of ings and opinions of the people among property. the United States Contoulwhom they dwell, and do not desire to General referred to says: •• If deed. are secure property near public temples or regularly granted to foreigners by local ill other places where their presence authorities, such land may be held with may be imagined to interfere with the security. In general I would say that good influences of "wind and water ;" it is not advisable for land to be held in stlll it is our duty to call the attention trust by native converts for missionary of the Government to the fact that in societies. "
the majority of cases this opinion re- Such then are some of the evils which garding " wind and water" is made an result from lack of fulness and explicitexcuse to deny us our rights and to pre- ness of statement in the treaty. We vent us from securing property alto- believe it to be our duty. as well as our gether. (See cases.) right, to acquaint you with them, and to (b) Another unjust condition imposed petition you to remove the burden which 'is: Notifying the Chinese officials be- for years has weighed heavily upon us fore a bargain for property can be Jegal- and upon our work. It is believed that ly consummated. This condition gives prompt, definite action taken in a con- the local Chinese official the opportunity ciliatory manner by the Government to forestall every effort the missionary will secure all that can be desired, and makes to secure property. The official that the effect of such action will be to can simply send out his subordinates cement, rather than to strain, as some and forbid the people everywhere to fear, the friendly relations which have rent or sell to foreigners, and thus land- existed and still exist between the two lords and middlemen are deterred from Governments.
consummating a bargain. This we We would then respectfully petition know is frequently done, sometimes the United States Government: even by open proclamation. (See case I. To have explicitly set forth in the of Rev. D. W. Nichols, Nanking.) words of the treaty the right of mis- While we are glad to record many hon- sionarieil to reside in the interior of orable exceptions to the rule, and that China, and to hold property for mission some officials have shown great fairness use, either in their own name or in that and kindness in granting missionaries of the society they represent.
property, still, observation shows that II. To remove all unjust conditions in the great majority of cases this re- and restrictions imposed by the Chinese striction is a mere handle with the aver- Government, which practic&lly destroy age Chinese official, to prevent foreign- our otherwise acknowledged rights and ers from securing property in accordance thus far violate the treaties.
with the provisions of the treaty. Your Particularly, regardingJung-shui, Sec. petitioners would protest strongly lI. (a) above. Let it be distinctly stated in treaty (See Art. XII.) .. that it will save China many an outburst if for any reason the local Chinese of· among her people, with the bitter conficial refuse to allow United States citi- sequences of indemnity and punishment zens to rent or purchase property desired necessary after every riot; and it will by them~ it shall be obligatory upon him protect the lives and property of many to negotiate for them the rent or pur- of your fellow-citizens resident in the cliase of other eligible property as near as interior of China. practicable to that originally desired."
Let it be distinctly stated, .. that as The American Tract Society bas for a Chinese subject so for an American citizen, it shall be legal to purchase passed its threescore years and ten, and property without first notifying the gives to the public a very brief and com- Chinese official; and natives thus selling property to American citizens shall prehensive summary of its grand work.
not be liable to punishment therefor." Summary for the Year Ending March III. To urgently request the Chinese 318t, 1895.
Government to suppress certain widely circulated books, which, if not regularly Publi8hing Department.-The new authorized by the Government, are pub- publications added number 128, of lished by high officials of the Govern· which 62 are volumes; 66 have been ment, and in the eyes of the people have issued at foreign mission stations, and all the weight and authority of Govern- only 44 are in the English language. In ment pUblications, and which contain addition to the new publications, many foul calumnies against foreigners and new editions of hooks and tracts pre- Christianity, such as taking out the eyes viously issued have been printed during of persons to make medicine. kidnap- the year.
ping and mutilating children, dishonor- The periodicals of the Society are ing women, etc., with details too re- seven in number. Two of them are in volting to appear in print. These books German and five in English; four are are calculated to greatly inflame the illustrated; two are weekly, five monthminds of the people, and to such pub. ly; the Deutscher Volksfreund, the lications are largely due the riots which American Messenger, the Amerikani8cher endanger the lives and property of Botsc1Lafier, the Ohild's Paper, the American citizens. Your petitioners Morning Light, the Apple8 of Gold and beg that all such books be suppressed, Light and Life. The aggregate circula- and that it be made a grave offence to tion of periodicals has been 2,192,100, be- publish them. Such are: sides 1,615,000 copies of Lig/tt and Life.
1. Record of Ourrent Events in tlw Im- Oolportage.-The 209 colporteurs, emperial Dynasty. ployed in 36 States, Territories, and 2. Notes on 0 hina and tlM West. 3. Sketches of Foreign Oountries. Manitoba, visited 131,633 families, cir- culated 99,137 volumes, and found 14,420 In conclusion, your petitioners would families destitute of religious books, ask you to weigh carefully one all-im- and 5827 families without the Bible, portant fact, that in this petition we are 11,296 Roman Catholic and 1194 Mor- asking no new right or privilege. Right mon, and 36,533 attending no church.
of residence in the interior has for years Gratuitou8 Di8tribution.-The grants been aecorded missionaries by the Im- of publications amounted to $20,936.18.
perial Edicts and proclamations. What They were mainly distributed in con- we ask is that this right be inserted in nection with personal work for souls by plain language in the treaty, and that chaplains, pastors, home and foreign thus all ambiguity and ground for mis- missionaries, voluntary workers, or by understanding be forever removed. We the agents, colporteurs, or members of ask this not in a spirit of hostility but the Society.
of true friendship for China; in the in- Foreign and Pagan Land8.-The cash terests of peace between the two nations. grants for printing at foreign mission Grant this petition, removing on the stations were $8550.47; electrotypes, one hand the books published by Gov- $635 ; total, $9795.84. ernment officials of China with their Receipts and Expenditure8.-Benevoslanders against Christianity and for- lent Department: Donations and legaeigners, and correcting on the other this cies, $84,527.03; sales by colporteurs. fatal defect In our treaties-viz., silence $27,950.54, and April 1st, 1894, $21,- as to right of residence in the interior, 466.06; total, $133.943.63. Expendiand we believe a decisive blow will be tures: Colportage, $26,131.23; district struck at the riots of China and the anti- secretaries, $10,004.39; foreign cash foreign agitation which inRtlgates them. appropriations, $8550.47; publications Such action on the part of our Govern- purchased, $32.799.39 ; sundries, as per ment will save the Government and its treasurer's report, $20,604.46; trust representatives in China untold trouble; funds invested, $1999.76 ; special legacy reserved, $23,019.23, and cash balance, The Wesleyan Church has a member- $10,834.70. ship of nearly 24,000, and nearly 1900 Mission work in New Mexico com- probationers; 15,000 scholars in its Sunmenced in 1866. There are now 25 day·schools; 232 churches and preach- schools, more than 40 ministers and na- ing places. On the Sabbath of the tive helpers, and over 800 communi- census of 1881 there were present at the cants. There are about 40 missionary morning services in 100 places of wor· ship 24,000 worshippers, giving an avteachers on this field. erage attendance of 240 persons to each From the Wesleyan College, Mon- congregation. The total value of the church property of this denomination treal, Canada, May 1st, 1895, we have is somewhere in the neighborhood of a communication, signed Theobald A. $1,000,000. It has also 45ministersand2 foreign missionaries; a high-school and Smythe, from which we print copious extracts. Mr. Smythe takes exception theological college which it supports. The Methodist Free Church has a to the article in the issue of March last membership of 3527 communicants and entitled the "West Indies," finding 371 probationers. The Church of the Disciples of Christ fault with both its accuracy and its has 8 ministers, 1604 members, 1056 honesty; quoting, for example, these Sunday-school and 815 day-school schol- words: "One is wont to think of Ja- ars.
maica as a thoroughly Christian country. The Moravian Church has 6429 com- municants, 5528 scholars in its Sundayat least in the ordinary sense of the schools, 77 day.schools with an attendword. But it is not so," etc. ance of 7311. and an annual revenue of Mr. Smythe rejoins: "I am a native over $30,000 and 17,000 adherents. of Jamaica, and have lived there all my The above figures show that there is life up to within three years ago, and a total membership (communicants), not am in a position to give the actual facts simply adherents of the different Prot- as to the religious status of the island. estant churches, of 131,000; 286 minis· According to the census of 1891, there ters, and 85,000 Sunday·school scholars. was a population of 639,491, of whom (The two first-named churches having the Church of England has a member- a following of nearly 250,000, or more ship of 40,395, au average attendance in than one third of the island's popUla- Sunday-schools of 14,000 scholars, 88 tion.) The actual ratio of membership clergymen, 160 churches and preaching to the island's popUlation, it is clear, is places, 300 day schools, a high scbool greater than 1 to 5. Where is a better and a theological college, a lord primate showing found? The writer takes the and a bishop. The capital invested membership as representing the adhefunds, besides churches and parsonages. rents of the churches as a whole. Sup- amount to nearly $370,000. pose a like reckoning was to be ob· The Church of Scotland bas 5 served in the United States; how would cburcbes, 4 clergymen. 1500 communi· it maintain its title to a Christian nation, cants, 10 week·day scbools and 8 ::lun- when of 70,000,000 souls less than one day-scbools with over 900 scholars. eighth are members of Protestant The Baptist Churcb has its own train- churches? ing college for teachers and preachers; Jamaica is a thoroughly Protestant 57 ministers, whom it supports without iilland, although 200,000 persons were any extraneous aid; a membership of not yet converted. A great portion of over 40,000; 8 foreign and 8 home mis- these (less than one third of unconvertsionaries, for whose support an average ed persons*) are Coolies and Chinese, annual amount of $12,000 is raised; who are very difficult to reach with the Sunday·schools with 2518 teachers and Gospel. " 28,617 scholars; 215 day-schools, with an enrolled attendance of nearly 17,000 Mr. Smythe must have noticed that scholars. both views of the island were prellented The Presbyterian Church has 30 or- in the REVIEW in giving Pastor War· dained ministers, 53 congregations, 20 catechists, 10,000 members, 65 Sabbath- neck's statements. The figures given schools, and 83 week-day schools, with were correct, though the conclusion its own theological college for the train- that all the 400,000 non-communicants ing of ministers. are degraded may have been erroneous.
The London Missionary Society has The information was drawn from what 9 ministers, 9 catechists, 3163 members, was considered a reliable source. 521 probationers, 223 Sunday-school teachers, 31 day-schools with 3005 pu- • The" Statesmen's Year Book" gives 10,597 pils. Coolies ancl Chinese,
GENE:RAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE
V.-GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE.
EDITED BY BEV. D. L. LEONARD.
Extracts and Translations from Foreign May, 1843, has increased in May, 1893, Periodicals. to 155 men and women-ordained, medi- cal, and unordained-sent out from Scot- BY REV. C. C. STARBUCK, ANDOVER, land, besides a Doble band of 43 mis- sionaries' wives. The whole staff of MASS. Christian agents, Scottish and native, is 975, or nearly as many as the congrega- UNITED KINGDOM. tions of the Church in Scotland. These are at work in India, South Arabia and -" In connection with the jubilee of Syria; in Cape Colony, Natal and Britthe Free Church of Scotland, and con- ish Central Africa; and in the New trasting 1893 with 1843, Dr. George Hebrides group in the Pacific Ocean.' .. Smith thus writes in the Free 0 lturclt -The Ohronicle. oj Scotland Monthly: 'The sum raised by the old historic Church of Scotland, -The following clear statement, in after Dr. Duff's personal efforts for vindication of the Free Church of Scotnearly five years, was not above £8000 land against the haughty and impUdent in the year befote the Disruption. The falsifications of the Times, is from the Free Church of Scotland began, in 1843, Harvest Field of Madras, and from the with only £321 in its treasury to sup- pen of the Rev. E. Monteith Macphail, port thirteen missionaries, their fami- M.A., B.D. : "Scotsmen are sometimes lies, and the native assistants, and to laughed at for their fondness for theobuild, and equip colleges, schools, and logical controversy, and persons who native churches. Such was the loyalty have no small admiration for their own to Christ of that generation of its work- intellectual acuteness in other matters, ers, and such the catholic sympathy of often profess that they cannot fathom evangelical Christians in India (led by the mysteries of Scottish ecclesiastical Sir William Muir), in America, and politics. There is really but little diffiother lands, that the Indian mission culty in understanding the church hisstarted almost full fledged as to the tory of Scotland; but some of those who finance, no less than as to the spiritual profess to speak as authorities do make staff of missionaries and converts. lamentable exhibitions of their igno- These fifty years have seen the pre-Dis- rance and their prejudices. Thus the ruption £8000 increase to £13,433 in Times, in its article on the jubilee, with 1843-44, and now to upward of £108,000 the faculty for misrepresentation that it a year from all sources, of which £18,- so skilfully combines with a tone of 209 alone is from the collections of com- omniscience, states for the benefit of its municants in Scotland. The missions readers that the controversy of 1843, possess sums amounting to about £142,- 'on the ecclesiastical side was a strug- 000, capitalized chiefly by the donors to gle for the maintenance of priestly asendow certain stations and meet the re- cendancy,' and that 'all the jargon pairs of buildings, besides annual en- about spiritual freedom and the headdowments of at least ten missionaries' ship of Christ meant really the consalaries. This is exclusive of the mis- tinual tyranny of the Kirk Session, and sionaries' part of the Widows' and Or- the uncontrolled interference of the minphans' Fund. Of the sum of £108,004 ister in all that concerned the life of the raised and spent last year on the mis- people. ' Misrepresentation could not sions, two thirds were from Scotland go farther. It was 'the rights of the and one third from the countries in Christian people,' and not those of the which the missionaries labor. The personal staff of 13 Indian missionaries in
EXTRACTS AND TRANSLATIONS
clergy, that the Church of Scotland pastor. Here, instead of an exaggera- championed in the years preceding the tion of clerical authority, as the Timea disruption, and the abolition of patron- impudently asserts. we have a sharp age in the Established Church by the restriction of all authority whatever Conservative Government in 1874 was which invades the rights of the Chris- a tardy acknowledgment of the fact. tian people in the spiritual sphere. But It was just this kind of unintelligent in England. Scotland, the United States, talk. just this same want of perception and everywhere else, there are those on the part of English statesmen, that who, in the name of civil authority, are led to what was at the same time a for depressing the moral and spiritual catastrophe and a blessing-the Disrup- principles of the Gospel to the lowest tion of the Church of Scotland. level represented in the Government.
" The questions involved in the con- Till the second coming of the Lord, troversy that lasted from 1833-43 were Cresar will never give over his efforts to no new ones for Scotland. They have subdue Christ to his own standard, been agitated in many countries, but in whether Cresar embodies himself in a Scotland they have been the staple of king, a parliament, a congress, or a its church's history ever since the Ref- legislature.
ormation. The Reformed Church of INDIA. i:lcotland came into existence not at the command of the rulers of the land, but -In the Ha'l''Dest Field a few months in defiance of them ; and all through since the Rev. J. H. WYCKOFF, of the its career, when there has been life in it, Arcot Mission, has an exceedingly sound it has boldly asserted the independence and broad article on the obstacles to co- of the Church in spiritual matters. operative missionary work. It seems a Christ-to use the old phraseology-is, pity that such a man could not be made it maintained, head over His own house, Pope in India for awhile, with author- and His Church must be left free to be ity to break down some of these obsta- guided by His will. Its contention is cles. Yet as our sharpest missionary summed up in Andrew Melville's fa- alienations are as nothing to the cat-and- mous saying to James VI., that there dog fights of Jesuit and Dominican in were two kings in Scotland, King James China, which the utmost power of and King Jesus. At times, perhl1,ps, Rome could not appease, we may, on the Church may have intruded into re- the whole, be content with our Prot- gions where it had no business to go, estant way of depending on the gradual but, in the main, it fought only for its increase of brotherhood for the removal undeniable rights. The form that State of the obstacles. lir. Wyckoff says: interference took might vary. It might "The first hindrance to co·operative order, at one time, certain ceremonies work which naturally suggests itself is to be performed or certain festivals to that which arises from our denomina- be celebrated, or, at another time, cer_ tional differences. Whether the exist- tain doctrines to be believed or a par- ence of so many divisions in the Church ticular form of Church government to of Christ is fraught with more good be adopted; but the Church consistent- than evil, I am not now to consider_ ly and steadfastly refused to acknowl- That such divisions, however, with the edge the right of the State to dictate to narrowness and traditionalism that they it in religious matters." encourage, interpose a mighty barrier It must be remembered that the to union in mission work, no one of us French Church came out in 1843 in probably in his calmer moments will vindication of the principle that the deny. For while each denomination laity are not to be coerced by session, loyally holds to the cardinal principles presbytery, synod, assembly, or State, of our faith, each with equal loyalty into the acceptance of an unacceptable emphasizes its own distinctive doctrines
GENERAL MISSIONA.RY INTELLIGENCE
and polity. and conscientiously labors various mission boards_ Nor can we to promote them. I do not know wbat missionaries prevent this, even if we may be the case in other countries, but would. So long as we receive our supin A.merica the rivalry that exists among port from and retain our connection the various cllUrcll extension boards is with the home churches, so long must often most ullseemly. It would be al· we reflect more or lesi the spirit that most amm,;ug, if it were not 60 sad. to there prevails. Not one of us is a free see the representatives of some balf-a- agent in the matter. The question put dozen churches contending for priority at the London Missionary Conference in establiilhing their particular organi· by a missionary brotber when this subzations in some new colony in the West· ject was under discussion is quite to the ern or Soutbern States. It is no un· point. 'Suppose,' he asked, ' your miscommon thing to find from six to eight sionaries out in tbe field set about carrychurches in a community not large ing all this good advice into practice, enough decently to support one, and will you sustain them?' However much each of these churches dependent in we missionaries may desire to co·operturn upon its respective missionary ate in our work, we can scarcely take board. I have recently spent a number so much as a single step without the of years at home, during two of which sanction of our own board." I was engaged as a missionary under the Presbyterian Domestic Board, and !Ir. Wyckoff then remarks upon the I know whereof I affirm when I state divergencies. sometimes becoming anthat thousands of dollars are literally tagonisms, of nationality, and on the wasted in America simply to gratify frequent exaggeration of Protestant in· denominational pride and sectarian sen· dividualism into "conscientious obsti· tlment. How this immense waste can nacy." On the other hand, be points be prevented, and the result consocved out various noble examples of missionfor sending bread to the millions in ary co-operation, conspicuous among pagan lands, is a question that has often them being tbe Young lIen's Christian been before our Cburch councils; but A.ssociation, "with branches in every no plan of co-operation has yet proved part of the world, uniting young men in successful; and, in the mean time, each the freshness of their manhood into denomination goes on multiplying its closer fellowship, and enlisting tbem in churches wherever some half·a-dozen common work for the Master. Mighty families can be found to subscribe to its as has been the influence of this associa· creed. tion during the last fifty years, its power is to become even greater in the future, ., 'Wbile our foreign mission boards and with its vigorous sister organiza· are organized on a broader basis, yet tion, the Christian Endeavor Society, it even they cannot escape being infestlid is destined to encircle tbe whole earth with the contagion tbat surrounds them. with the network of its associations, and No nobler body of men can be found to bring the youth of every clime in than those who as a rule compose our closer touch with Christ and with one various mission boards, Yet not one another." of them can forget that he represents a particular church, whose interests he is AfteI speaking of various excellent bound to consider. A stream will not examples of missionary union in China rise higber than its source, and hence and Japan, lir. Wyckoff adds: "But we see the same divisions that exist at there is no need of OUI' going so far bome carried into heathen lands, and away for examples of union in mission llere in India we have' Presbyterian work. Here in !Iadras we have a magcburches,' •Episcopalian seminaries,' nificent specimen of co·operation in the • Baptist colleges,' and • :Methodist Cbristian College, which, thougb found· printing presses,' all supported by our ed by the Free ChUI'cb of Scotland, is conducted now on a broader basis, and
EXTRACTS AND TIUNSLA'l'IONS
receives the support of several societies things that are in sharp contrast to his and the patronage of all. It was a Western experiences. He wants to see noble thought that inspired its present all the graces of the Christian life develhonored principal to make this institu· oped in Indian Christians in a day, and tion the representative of Chriatian edu- forgets the point of Carlyle's fable of cation in Southern India, and only the oak and the larch-viz., that the equalled by the liberal and magnani- , quickest and completest of all vegemous spirit with which the Church and tables is a cabbage.' Jonah's gourd Wesleyan Missionary Societies have cor- grew in a single night; an oak tree reo dially contributed to its support. And quires a century for its growth. How not less interesting and hopeful is the is the tree of the Lord's right hand illustration of co-operation that our planting in India? The London Misnative brethren are affording us in the sion branch"-the writer is speaking of Madras Native Christian Association, the London Missionary Society cenand its able journal, The Cl.ri8tian Pa- tenary-·" is strong and vigorous totriot, which have done so much to unify day. Ninetyyears ago the London Misthe Indian Christians and develop among sion had not a single Indian Christian; them a true esprit de corps. It is matter the number this year stands at 71,350, for rejoicing that native Christians are distributed over Travancore, South bound so little by sectarian ties, and are India and North India. God has blessed able to exhibit a broad, albeit evangeli- the work of His servants-to Him be cal Christianity to their countrymen. the glory."-Rev. W. ROBINSON, in We shall expect them soon to find other Harvest JIlield. lines upon which to unite, which will tend greatly to the further development MADAGASCAR. and strengthening of their community." -Sir Charles Dilke is proposing that -" Ringeltembe described the Chris- France should concede to England the tians he showed to Bishop Middleton at neutralization of Madagascar and some the entrance of the Aramboly Pass in other claims of her foreign policy, and 1815 as ' a poor, ragged lot; , but the life that in return England should consent of the Spirit was in them, and their de- to the neutralization of Egypt. He scendants are to·day strong men in remarks that it is strange that the re- Christ Jesus. They are educated, man- ligious leaders in England should be so age their own church affairs, have been much excited over French aggression in patient under persecution, and compare Uganda and so perfectly apathetic over favorably with any Western Christians French aggression in "Madagascar, which we have yet seen. In South India, too, has more than four times as many Protthe Church has been healthily progres- estants as Uganda. Perhaps the fact sive, but we stand too near it to take in that the leading missionaries in Madaits great perspective; we are making gascar are Dissenters, and in Uganda the ecclesiastical history of the near fu- churchmen, has something to do with ture, and the story will find expression this. as time goes on. -A new high-school for girls has U Bishop Caldwell withdrew his lec- been opened in Antananarivo by the tures on the Shanars of Tinnevelly be- queen. "Three hundred pupils in their cause what was true in 1848 was no spotless white garments, with small longer true in 1878. Over the penin- bouquets of flowers, went out to meet sula changeli like this are silently hap- the queen, walking in procession and pening, and it must be remembered that chanting a song of welcome. On meetcriticism of Indian Christians comes ing the royal party the girls formed in most frequently from the newly arrived lines and the queen passed in her grand mis2ionary, who too often only sees , Jilanjana,' borne by great men of the
GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELIJGENCE
court, another walking beside her hold· 1200 by 500 miles, are adapted by cliing on a pole a bright red umbrella-a mate for the white man. In South Afsign of rOYlllty. 'The queen (we are as- rica alone this society has now nine diosured) looked magnificent in her gown ceses lying between Capetown and the of mauve·colored satin, richly embroid- Zambesi as the results of its efforts, its ered and made in the latest European bounty, and its prayers. style. On her head she wore a sort of coronet. Queen Ranavalcna, we are In Asia there are 19 dioceses, ranging reminded, was herself a scholar at the from North China to Jerusalem. The old school. . . . Nearly at the close of most recent is that of Kiushiu (South the meeting the prime-minister made a Japan), founded 1894. The earliest diospeecb, and afterward the queen spoke. cese, Calcutta, founded 1814, has 3081 In a clear, distinct voice, she thanked communicants. The number of comthe missionaries for leaving their native municants in the diocese of Chhota land to work in Madagascar, expressed Nagpur, founded 1890, is 6480. Ranthe hope that their labors would not be goon totals 1083 ; Madras, 16,734; Luckin vain, begged the girls to be diligent, now, 214; Lahore, 248; Bombay, 1183; and appealed to them earnestly to be Colombo, 1263, and North China., 61. Christians.' "-Madagascar New8. In Manchuria and Korea the work is very slowly taking hold. English .Notes. In Africa and the islands adjacent BY JAMES DOUGLAS. there are 18 dioceses; in Australia and Tasmania, 14; in British North Ameri- &ciety for the Propagation of the G08· ca, 21 ; in the West Indies and South peZ in Foreign Part8.-We have just America, 10; and in New Zealand and been favored by the report of this so- the Pacific. ciety for 1894. The gross income for the year amouuted to £122,327 ls. 4d. This society has also a European The year is memorable as one in which work in Malta, in Constantinople, and wars have filled an exceptional place in in various parts of Austria-Hungary, the story of missions. This society has Belgium, France, Germany, and Switza special interest in Corea and in North erland. China and in Manchuria, where all the missions of the Anglican Church are of Baptist Missionary &ciety.-The one its founding; and the like applies to hundred and third report of this so- Madagascar, where the French invasion ciety, now issued, without supplying darkens the prospects. But no quail is statistics in detail, furnishes a general heard from any of these fields-the view of the entire field of operations. brethren in patience possessing their The work in India is still slow, but the souls. In the infant diocese of Lebom- laborers are hopeful, and the indications bo the bishop is arrested by a Kaffir ris- are numerous that the seed sown is seing; while, taking a long step from cretly germinating in many hearts. The this, the youngest diocese, to New- Baptists have now 178 stations in India, foundland. the oldest colony, the mis- the number of missionaries, native and sion shares in the general paralysis of European, being 77, and native evanthe island brought about by the cessa- gelists, 108. tion of the whole banking business and the withdrawal of trade. The Ceylon mis& on has 99 stations, 4 missionaries, and 24 native evangelists. But there are the brighter as well af) Encouraging reports of evangelistic the darker scenes. Mashonaland and work in Kandy, Kalugastota, Kadu- Matabeleland are now in a state of quiet- ganuwa, Gampola, and Matale have ness-regions which, with their area of been received. Numerous baptisms have taken place, and Christian ele- mentary school work has been well maintained. There are also a consid-
ENGLISH NOTES
erable number of inquirers awaiting bap· count amounted to £60,OOO-an increase tism. of £3219 on previous years; but the In China there are now 198 stations, expenditure exceeded that sum, the 21 missionaries, and 53 native evangel- actual debt for the year being £8753, ists. Despite the disturbed state of the which, added to the debt already country, the year has been one of special existing, swelled the defiCiency to blessing and progress. The number of £14,183.
conversions has been LARGE, and there Wesleyan Missionary Society.-An achas been a marked development of ag- count is given this month of the Indian gressive self.supporting church life in district synods Madras, Hyderabad, and the converts. Thus the Rev. Percy Lucknow. Madras reports "a steady Bruce, B.A., of Tsing Chu Fu, in Shan- development of agencies, and in almost tung province, writes: "The total every case a corresponding return in the membership now stands at 1340. Since progress of the people." 'l'he Royathe last report 88 have been baptized, pettah circuit now takes upon itself the and there are now 144 candidates under support of its pastor. In Hyderabad instruction with a view to baptism, be- there are now 501 full and accredited sides 821 other inquirers who worship church-members, with 549 remaining regularly with us." Surely such tidings on trial-a net increase of 48 on the call for thankfulness. year. A Christian community exists of In Palestine there are 7 stations and 1 some 1800 souls. The total number of mIsSIOnary. Among other items is the members in the Lucknow circuit is 586, following: "The little church in Jeru- of whom 440 are English and 146 Indsalem still holds on, and every Lord's ian, being an increase under each head Day they meet together in their dwell- of 57 and 13. The vast area flxtending ing." from Peshawar to Bombay, having been found unworkable, it was decided to On the Congo, Upper and Lower, the form a new district, to be known as the work of the mission has made steady Bombay district, which, in addition to progress. The Gospel is taking hold of Bombay, would take in Jabalpur, Mhow, the people and producing results in Poona, and Kirkee. their lives and habits of a most cheering character. Valuable work, too, has In addition to the above, an account appears of the Oolombo District Synod, been done in translating and printing, which reports a net increase of 27 over and t!tis witllOut cost to the society. The last year. There have been 25 adult press of Lukolela may, therefore, be baptisms from Buddhism, and 19 from designated the Serampore of the Congo Mission. Concerning this press, Mr. Hinduism. The school returns showed an increase of 309 in the number of chil- Whitehead writes: "I have aimed at dren under instruction. economy in the office, and nothing is wasted ; the work is not by any means a drain on the society; IT FULLY PAYS ITS Mashonaland.-The Rev. George H_ OWN WAY, and this point-self-support- Eva has been paying a visit on foot to is always kept in view. Even the books the southeastern Wesleyan stations, sold to the natives are purchased at Mashonaland. The walking done was prices enabling us to cover the cost of great, and careful inspection showed printing them." how uphill and under-manned the work Substantial progress is recorded in was. "I feel," says Mr. Eva, "our the West Indies Mission. Several of native work is increasing in size and the churches have of late become self- importance, and that more men are supporting. The Jamaica churches, needed to carry it on. Our native IItaff, which for long have been self·support- in comparison with the extent of the ing, have now a membership of 36,777. district, is very small. During the wet The total receipts upon general ac- season we cannot extend our borders,
GENERAL MISSIONARY INTEI,LIGENCE
but have to concentrate our efforts on with the Epistle to the Romans. There our present possessions; at the same are now 11 missionaries on probation time. the seMon of I!lickness will soon be studying Arabic at Barking, England, over, snd the time for advance be back besides 3 others who are hoping to go to again. " the foreign field-VI, in all. These, with the missionaries in the field and their The Oollege, Amoy.-At this college helpers in the Lord's work, amount to 28 students have been studying for the nearly 100. native ministry. 16 of them belonging to the Presbyterian and 12 to the Ameri- THE KINGDOM. can Reformed Mission. A knowledge of the Mandarin language is imparted -Duty makes us do things well, said by a native of Pekin resident in Chin- Phillips Brooks; but love makes us do chew. Mr. Macgregor, on whom, with them beautifully. the college tutor, the work of tuition has mainly devolved, tells of the con- -General Armstrong has put this version of a Chinese graduate who spent query, and in his life he gave the Gossome time daily with the students, read- pel answer: What are Christians put ing the Chinese classics. "For more into the world for except to do the imthan a vear he has avowed his belief in possible in the strength of God ? the unity of God and the folly of idolatry. But he did not feel his need of a : -This was the sageconc1usion of the Saviour, and he could not admit the late Dr. Muhlenberg: "The man who divinity of our Lord. Toward the close finds no interest in those beyond his of last year, however. he passed through own family will soon have a selfish an experience which drove him to pray- household; the rector who confines his er, and led to his avowing himself a be- appeals and labor to the work of his liever in Christ as a Divine Saviour, own parish will soon have a selfish conand his acceptance of Him as his Lord. gregation; the bishop who, by absorp- At the Ohinese new year he went home tion in his particular field, becomeR Into visit his family in Chinchew. He different to every other claim, will eoon has thus far bravely stood the trial of have a selfish diocese. Selfishness, when- ever and however fostered and devela confeSSion ot Christ among kinsfolks oped, must eventually work the ruin of the home interest which it attempts to and friends. He has attended the Lord's- serve by this narrow policy." day services, and given publicly in the church an account of how he was led -And the editor-in-chlef of this magato accept the Lord Jesus as his Saviour. zine instructs us that " one of the fore- His avowing himself a Christian may, most incentives to missions is found in we trust, be the means of arousing to the blessedness of giving. Christ spake inquiry many of his friends in Chin- II. new beatitude, recorded and preserved chew. by Pllul, who said to the Ephesian elders: • Remember the words of. the North Africa Mi8sion.-From the Lord Jesus, how He said, It is more latest letter of the indefatigable secre- blessed to give than to receive I' The tary of this mission, Mr. Edward II. full meaning and truth of that last beati- Glenny, we learn that the work in Al- tude is yet to be known, and can be giers is hindered by official opposition, known only as thl8 work of missions is and that ~everal bitter articles about the done as He meant it should be done. " mission haTe appeared in some French Algeri!tn new~p!lpers. We are glad to -N'atiTe preachers in New Caledonia, learn from the aame source that Mr. say's the Mi:8sionary Gleaner, after giv- Cuendet in Algiers is working on dili- ing the text, walt a moment to let the gently with his translations into the words settle upon the heart and mem- Kabyle lan~u!lge, and is now occupied ory, and tl;ten they cry out again: .. Christians, do you hear? It is God's woes, which happily are now well-nlgh word. Listen. " And they repeBt the past, it is interesting to recall that in words. 1843 It could be stated that Sierra Leone contained 20 Wesleyan chapels whose -From the following it would ap- wood-work was wrought out of timber pear that the Malagasy are nothing if taken from slave ship.s captured by not practical. A novel but apparently British men-of-war. effective way of disciplining a church choir that did not cond net itself prop- -Missionaries in the foreign field are erly was adopted by a congregation in compeJled to wrestle with some pera Madagascar village. When the mis- plexing questions relating to mora~s sionary asked the native pastor about and religion. Thus, the synod of IndIa the progress in the village, his pastor re- has sent up It memorial to the General plied, "Oh, we are doing well now. ASgembly by a vote of 43 to 10 in favor Those singers cause us no more trouble: of liberty under some circumstances to we punish them for their insubordina- baptize a man who has more than one tion by making them stand with heavy wife. Some years ago a Mohammedan stones upon their heads." with two wives was admitted to com- munion, and another case is pending. -According to Rev. Henry Jessup, It is not a question of allowing a con- "it doesn't cost very much to carryon vert to enter into polygamous relations, foreign missions. A single chapel (Epis- but what shall be required of him who copalian) in New York spends more is found in possession of more wives money annually than the whole Syria than one, and which were tBken by him Mission, with its 40 mis~ionaries, 44 in keeping with a general custom in ex- istence from time immemorial. And preachers, 183 helpers, 26 churches, then more and more the conviction is deepening that the matter of self-sup- 152 schools. " port must be emphasized continually with the utmost persistence and skill ; -Not long since three delivery above all things else, for the good of the wagons of the New York World car- native Christians themselves. ried strange loads one day. Instead of bundles of newspapers piled high, there WOMA.N'S WORK. were twelve baskets heaped with the freshest and finest cut flowers in the -The vote has passed in the Pre!lbymarket, which required six trips be· terian missions of Canton, Shantung, tween the uptown florist'l!! depot and and Africa, as well as of Mexico, that the twelve hospitals. Not that the women shall vote upon all mission quesroses and violets and carnations and tions. The manual Bent out by the Aspansies weighed so much, but because sembly's board leaves this matter to be two baskets completely covered the adjusted by each mission for itself. floor of a wagon. The drivers left their flowers at each hospital door with the -The Florence Crittenton Home and simple message that the World wa!! cele- M.ission, No. 15, was opened not long brating its twelfth anniversary. since in Philadelphia, at 531 Lombard Street, whose object is to foster fallen -Not even yet have many fully colored girls, being the first institution of its kind in this country. Mrs. Charlearned that the Bible societies take lotte Draper WI! the originator of the Idea, and will have charge of the instirank among the very foremost of the tution. Mrs. Mary Conick, the well- known New Orleans evangelist. is maworld's evangelizing agencies. Three tron, and undenominational mission and of the ,;reatest of these sent forth last year on their errand of light.giving in dark: places some 2,000,000 Bibles, or portions thereof. . .
-As a reminder of grievous sins and Gospel meetings will be held every YOUNG PEOPLE. evening. Mr. Crittenton, 'the founder of 15 missions in various cities of the -The thirty-first international con- United States, is one of the trustees. vention of Young Men's Christian As· lirs. Draper founded two institutions in sociations of North America was held at New York. Springfield, lIass., May 8th-12th. Dele- gates to the number of about 700 were -The Union Woman's Missionary enrolled, being the best representation Society has its representatives in China, ever known at an international Conven- Japan, and India, engaged in hospital, tion. 'l'he number of associations rezenana, and general evangelistic work. porting show a membership of 244,077, against 245,809 in 1893; with an active -The women of the Reformed Epis- membership of 116,761 as against 114,- copal Church raised $4533 last year for 088 in 1893. The value of association missions in India and Syria. buildings and real estate, deducting debt, is $13,439,555 as against $11,316,- -The Cumberland Presbyterian wom· 180 in 1893. The receipts were $75,218 en raised $15,267 for missions in 1874. last year, of which $18,535 were for and with it gave aid and comfort to toil- work in Japan, India, Brazil, and Mexers in Japan, Mexico, and among the ico. Chinese of California.
-The Presbyterian women of Canada -The Y. M. C. A.. of Philadelphia work through a society which has 585 has become the fortunate possessor of a auxiliaries and 250 mission bands, raised farm of 465 acres, part of it timber land, $42,911 last year, and expended that with three farm-houses. a supply of examount in China, India, New Hebrides, cellent water, and at a convenient dis- Trinidad, and Manitoba. tance from the city. As a camping- ground and summer resort for young -In twenty-five years the Presbyte- men and boys, where the influences will rian women of the parent Woman's be healthful, the location and oppor- Board have raised $2,690,956, and have tunities are said to be almost ideal. 163 missionaries and 1100 native readers and teachers now in the field. -The Golden RuZe promises the fol- lowing in connection with the July -The Baptist women of the East are meeting of Christian Endeavor societies able to report $92,000 bestowed for mis- in Boston: "To begin with, there will sions last year, and those of the West, be more missionaries from foreign lands $43,278. The latter say of themselves: at this convention than have ever be- " We have on the field 47 missionaries; fore honored one of our international 2 are under appointment; we have 110 gatherings by their presence. All of mble·women, 37 schools, with 2050 the three Monday morning sessions will pupils and 100 native teachers, and 110 be devoted entirely to the one central baptisms are reported." thought, 'The world for Christ.' A.t this time, in addition to the long array -Life and Light for May is devoted of missionaries, a number of men who largely to medical mission work. The have been greatly blessed in their labors value of the articles is enhanced not a at home on behalf of missions will set little by divers portraits of several wom· forth the needs and claims of the field. " en physicians.
-The Congregational Woman's Board – When somebody rashly charged has started a circulating library in the that the Christian Endeavor movement rooms in Boston, and already nearly 100 was robbing the "regular" church volumes are ready for circulation. The prayer-mesting and Sunday evening terms are two cents a day and return service, Dr. F. E. Clark made an expostage. tensive and most thorough canvass for the facts in the case, and found an aver- him the name Kiwichimahkiyu, which age attendance at the Sunday evening means "Prayer Master." He found service of 76 per cent., and at the mid- two small Indian boys and taught them week meeting of 57 per cent; while the to say, "0 God, give me Thy Holy peroentage of .all the church-members Spirit for Christ's sake." They became on Sunday evening was 46 per cent, missionaries afterward, and now there and at the mid-week meeting 28 per are 10,000 Christian Indians there. cent. Of course if an average had been taken of church-members exclusive -A recent addition to the missionary force in Alaska says; "I tind the naof ahristian Endeavor member8, the dis- tives a peculiar people. At times you think you know all about them. and parity would have been still more strik- again you know that you do not. While ing. you are trying to study them they are studying you. " -The Endeavor Society at Muhlenberg, in Liberia, has been the means of -The American Bible Society, at its the formation of 5 others, which have recent annual meeting, reported that done valuable missionary work. The there were during the year 1,581,1£8 societies in Routh Africa have formed a issues of Bibles, Testaments and porunion, of which the well-known author, tions, of which 735,221 were circulated Rev. Andrew Murray, is president. in foreign lands. The total issues to date are 59,955,558. During the last -The children of the DiscipJe year the gifts from the living amounted churches began to give for missions to $59,533; about $20,000 came from in 1881, and raised but $754 the first church contributions; $6000 from indiyear. In 1887 their offerings had grown viduals, and the remainder from auxilto $10,513, and last year they reached iary gifts. There had been lately dis- $23,587. tributed to Japanese and Chinese 148,- 000 copies of the Gospels. -The Presbyterian Church, South, has a Olbildren's Missiona1'Y well on its -The annual statement of the Bapway through the first volume. Both tist Missionary Union shows that the for contents and typography it easily total receipts for the year were $577,- ranks among the best. 842; the debt on April 1st, 1894, was $203,596 ; the appropriations were $564,- UNITED STATES. 200, making a total of $767,796. The debt, thus, is $189,954, a reduction from -Of the 260 cadets at West Point, that of last year of $13,642, of which about one third are professing Chris- amount $9374 is from the Gordon tians; 20 of them being Roman Catho- Memorial Fund. Of the total ampunt lics. In addition to the regular Sunday received, $331,086 was from donations~ morning services under the chaplain, a $77,043 from legacies, and $109,658 prayer and conference meeting is held from the woman's societies. on Sunday evening. A mid-week prayer-meeting is also conducted by the -Out of 5236 Congregational young men, who have organized a churches in this country, 2347 gave Christian Association and reading-room. nothing to foreign missions in 1894. There occurred recently the annual presentation to the graduating class of -The annual report of the American copies of the Bible, the Roman Catholics Board states that New England conreceiving the Douai Version. tributed more than one third of the total income, which was $705,133. Massa- -In Prince Rupert's Land, which is chusetts contributed more than all the the far northern portion of America, rest of the New England States com- 200,000 Indians live. The first mission- bined. The donations other than those ary paddled his way up north in a birch bark canoe in 1820. The Indians gave from New England and New York amount was £271,971 ($1,359,855), or amounted to $144,000, of which $4000 nearly one tenth of all the gifts of all came from the Southern States, and the churches in Christendom for the $125,000 from the West. The contri- evangelization of the world. This same butions from Canada were over $6000. noble society has now on the way a re- inforcement of 10 for the Uganda Mis- "":'The financial statement of the Pres- sion, of whom 5 are women, the first of byterian Board of Foreign Missions of their sex to be called to enter that realm the American Presbyterian Church, of savagery. And well may more labor- North, for the year ending April 30th, ers be dispatched to that field" when 1895, shows that the total receipts were we read of 1000 baptisms in the past $866,378 against $841,553 for the pre- year, of 130 nati ve evangelists at 85 sta- ceding year. The total expense~, in- tions, of 200 buildings for public wor- cluding appropriations for the fields, ship in the country districts, with an church at home and abroad, etc., were average attendance of 4000 worshippers $1,015,757. To this must be added the daily and 20,000 on Sundays (not in- deficit at the begiuning of the year, cluding the capital); and when we find $102,597, making a total liability of that this is almost entirely the exran- $1,118,354. Deducting the income, there sion of the one year 1894, we see the up- remains a deficit of $251,976, which springing of the seed of the Word of through other sources of one kind and God so long and patiently sown, and another is lessened to $174,883. we look back with hearts full of praise to that gracious rain from heaven in the -Not many of our exchanges devote closing weeks of 1893." relatively so much space to missions as the Presbyterian Review (Toronto). In -The China Inland Mission statistics particular, every month it contains a are as follows: Stations, 123; out·ata- page or two of matter setting forth the tions, 105; chapels, 204; missionaries, contents of the latest number of the including 47 undesignated, 611 ; native helpers, including 104 unpaill, 365: MISSIONARY REVIEW OF THE WORLD. churches, 135; baptisms, 821; com- municants, 4234; pupils in school, (}29 ; EUROPE. 7 hospitals, 28 refuges for the cure of the opium habit, and 26 dispensaries. Great Britain.-The North Afd· ca Mission dates from 1881, and has -The British and Foreign Bible So- established some scores of stations in ciety, with characterIstic readiness, has Morocco, Algeria, Tunis, Tripoli, and taken advantage of the Chino-Japanese Egypt. The latest published statement War, not only to issue a pocket edition says: "We have now 11 missionaries of St. John for the soldiers, but more on probation studying Arabic at Bark' recently a New Testament uniform with ing, besides 3 others who are hoping to it. These new editions are readily ac- go to the foreign field, 14 in all. A few cepted, especially in the military hos- others are offering their services. These, pitals. This society has a very pretty with the missionaries in the field and custom of holding a birthday gather- their helpers in the Lord's work, amount ing for children at the Guildhall. On to nearly 100, and with our office staff the last, which was its ninety-first birth- to over 100." Of the missionaries, 22 day, a birthday cake, weighing as many are men, of whom 16 have wives, and pounds as there were years in the age of 48 are unmarried women. Medical work the society, was cut by a little boy, hal!! great prominence. great-great-grandson of Thomas Charles of Bala, and afterward every child pres- -The Church Missionary Society re- ent had a little piece, not to speak of a o ceived last year an income larger by good tea down in the crypt. The city more than £20,000 ($100,000) than ever before came into the treasury. The magnates were there in their robes, so phia supplied the engines.-TMngs to delightful to children's eyes, and an Come.
old missionary from Fiji made a capital -Bishop Blyth, of Jerusalem, writspeech. There must have been nearly ing to a rector in New York, says he 2000 children present.-Intelligencer. has just received a letter from a lady ASIA. in America, whom he does not know per· sonally, enclosing $5000 for building a Islam.-Anatolia College, Marsovan, permanent hOUile for his" Home for Turkey, has just been granted special J ewesses." He acknowledges the money privileges by a decree of the Porte. with the deepest sense of gratitude, The announcement was made ina cable· recognizing, as the gift does, the fact gram from Minister Terrill to the State that he represents the American as well department. as the Anglican Church in the Holy -In Asia Minor the Mohammedans City. .
are ~eeking the Word of God, but hid· -The Leper Home at Jerusalem con· ing it for fear of persecution. One tains 22 inmates, of whom 8 are Chris- bought the Scriptures in Spanish and tians and 14 are Moslems.
learned the language that he might read -A Jewish colony from Yemen, it In safety. Another walked one hun· Southern Arabia, settled near the Mount dred miles lind paid $1.50 for a copy, of Olives, east of Jerusalem, and there all he could spare from a year's work. learned from Christians the facts of The Syro-Phcenician woman in our Christianity, which were entirely new Lord's time was a monument of faith. to them. A rabbi in Yemen, to whom But another of her nationality reap· they reported, sending a copy of the peared in the land of the Canaanites. New Testament, wrote in reply: "The She walked all the way from this Christians, you say, are pious and Canaanitish land to Latakia and asked benevolent people. We cannot sayany- Dr. Metheny to remove a tumor. He thing on the subject, as we have never told her that she would probably die, seen Christians. There are none in and that her people would blame him. Yemen. As for the book you have sent She !laid: " No, I am a Christian, and us, we never saw anything like it. This many believe as I do. A. pupil from religion is quite new to us, and we have your school went home and took a com· never heard speak of such things since pany of women into the woods and told the destruction of the first temple, and them that there was a salvation for our departure from the land of Isrllel." women, and that Jesus Chrillt died for -Ohurch at Home and Abroad. them, and many believed. Take it away, doctor, I am not afraid to die." -The school opened at the request of After the operation she did die, and her the Jews in Dizza, in Gawar, Kurdis· soul went as sweetly to God as music tan, by a representative of the Ameri· flies from a throbbing string.-Rev. can Mission at Oroomiah, Persia, has S. A. Mutchmore. been closed by the Government without warning and on a trivial and unfounded -An interesting fact has come out in charge. connection with the J afl'a·Jerusalem Railway. Turkey gave the concession. India.-The Rev. James Johnston is France found the capital. Belgium fur· authority for the statement that" India nished half the rails and coal, and Eng. is now the best educated of the non· land the other half. Poland and Switz· Christian countries of the world."
erland sent engineers and laborers. China, with a population of 400,000,000, Greece furnished the cooks. The United has between 12,000,000 and 14,000,000 States shares with Germany the man who can read intelligently, while India, who first surveyed the road. Phlladel- with 300,000,000, has between 14,000,· 000 and 16,000,000 readers, most of on continually increasing, so that we them taught in the modern methods of have about 3000 new inquirers every the Christian world. The various mis- year. To instruct, teach, and guide sionary, tract, and Bible societies print- our large congregations we have taken ed last yearfor India 1,133,115 volumes. care to train up native assistants, of -This testimony, taken from the Mis- which there are at present 19 ordained 8ion GWnM', speaks volumes for the pastors and 322 catechists, teachers, and value of British rule: "She said, in colporteurs…
answer to my question, • My work has -" The pastor of a village church in been among the Telugus in the Madras North India reports that the celebration Presidency. It is only a little mission- of the Lord's Supper in the villages is ary settlement, very far from any Eng- beneficial because it tends to the eman- lish colony or English garrison. There cipation of woman. It would probably have been weeks at a time when my puzzle a European to prove just how fellow-workers were away on journeys, this particular service tends to the ele- that mine has been the only white face vation of woman; but the explanation within fifty miles. Afraid? Never I is easily given. Most Europeans know My color was my safeguard. Where that Indian women eat after the men the English govern they govern. Since have eaten; but foreigners cannot com- the mutiny of 1857 there is not a Hindu prehend the full significance of this fact who does not believe that the eye of the until they understand the native idea Government is so ever upon him that to concerning food that has been touched strike down a white man, though it was by another_ Jutha khana-that is, food at midnight, in the jungle, were to feel left after eating, is only fit for inferior the noose about the neck. It is won- persons and menial servants; and there derful-the safety the English have is no more emphatic assertion of wom- bought in India for themselves and all an's inferiority than the fact that she of their color.' .. always gets jutha khana, that which is -A Calcutta paper publishes the fol- left after the men have eaten. As men lowing: .. Some months ago the home and women partake together of the of a wealthy Hindu family was on fire. Lord's Supper we perceive that this ser- There were nine purdah ladies in the vice most significantly affirms the Chrishouse, all of whom resolved to meet tian idea of the equality of man and their fate in the flames rather than ex- woman."
pose themselves to the crowd which -The Methodist North India Mission surrounded the building. Six of them has 1575 paid workers, of whom 21 are perished and the other three were Europeans and 60 are native pastors ; dragged out by force, terribly burned." 11,847 full members, and 21,204 proba- -One of its missionaries writes to the tioners ; and 15,838 pupils in the schools. London Chri8tian: .. Gossner's mission The baptisms were 6937 last year, of works exclusively in India. In the divi- which 4083 were of adults.
sionof Chota Nagpurof Bengal, among -The following report relates to one the Kols, we have met with great suc- of the stations of the London Mission- cess ever since our operations com- ary Society in the Quilon district: menced there in 1845. Besides this we .. There were 800 adults present, repre- have another field-viz., at Ghazipore senting about 500 families, and the col- and on several stations in the province lection was as follows: Small handfuls of Behar. It is, however, chiefly among of rice tied up in little leaf bags, 352 ; the Kola that the Lord has blessed the eggs, 7 ; large yams, 11 ; small yams, work of our missionaries, there being 14; cashew nuts, 2; laurel nuts, 10 ; now upward of 40,000 native Christians pumpkins, 2 ; arrowroots, 16; British under our care; and the work is going rupee, 1 ; small silver ring, 1; British copper pie, worth about one eighth of ed it, and will be all the better for it.
a penny, 1 ; Travancore copper cash, God is dealing with these nations in each worth about one sixteenth of a His own way, and I, for one, am look- penny, 81; silver chuckrams, each ing to the future with boundless hope.
worth a halfpenny, 36-in all 524 arti- Be prepared for the new era in the Far cles-and the total value was about 10 East. Your missionaries are doing a rupees. This will give some idea of the noble work in the north, but believe me, poverty of the people, and also of their you will soon have a louder call from willingness to give out of their little China, and you will have to obey, finan- store. " cial difficulties notwithstanding. You -The statistics of the Siam Mission will have to enlarge the place of your for 1894 are as follows: Ordained mis- tents."
sionaries, 8; medical missionaries, 3; -The Rev. R. W. Stewart writes wives of missionaries, 10; single lady from Fuh-Chow: "The Fuh-Klen missionaries, 6 ; native licentiate preach- Christians seem, as a body, thoroughly ers, 2; native teachers and helpers, 25 ; to understand that their business is to number of churches, 7 : communicants, spread the doctrine" (i.e., the Gospel) 292; added during the year, 7 ; boys In " as soon as they know it themselves. I boarding-schools, 134 ; girls in boardlng- overheard some of them talking on the schools, 57; boys in day-schools, 69; subject, and they came to the conclu- girls in day-schools, 56; total number sion that not to do so was to break the of pupils, 316 ; number of schools, 15 ; Eighth Commandment, for it was keep- pupils in Sabbath-schools, 257. ing back what rightfully belonged to -The Laos statistics for 1894 are as another."
follows : Ordained missionaries, 8; mis- -" The missionaries are frequently sionary physicians, 5: wives of mis- charged here with not understanding sionaries, 11 ; single lady missionaries, the people with whom and for whom 5; ordained Ilative evangelists, 2; na- they are working. The phrase is often tive helpers, 57; churches, 11; com- used, 'You are a foreigner; how can municants, 1841; added during the you tell what is best for us ?' The year, 305; boys in boarding-schools, Chinese at Hong Kong during the 147; girls in boarding-schools, 135; plague said to the English soldiers who men in training class, 24; children In were cleansing their hands: • Dirt may day-schools, 10 ; total number of pupils, be )ad forforeigners, but it is necessary 316; total number of schools, 7; pupils to the health of the Chinese!' "
In Sabbath-schools, 987. -The March number of The Ol!urch China.-Griffith John, the veteran in Ohina contains some interesting ex- missionary, not long since wrote as tracts from an article on " Medicine in follows of the outlook: " We are, I con- China," by Dr. Suvoong, a Chinese fidently believe, on the eve of very mar- gentleman who received his medical de- vellous developments. The old civili- gree in the city of New York. He says zation is about to break up, and a new medicine, as practised by the Chinese, order of things Is at our doors. Should is in a deplorable condition. If a man it be my privilege to be at home in dies, it is not for want of medicine and 1896, and able to declare the fact that drugs, for the druggists conscientiously the whole of China, not excepting collect, with much expense and labor, Hunan, was really and truly open, and tigers' bones, bears' legs, harts' horns, that the gates of Thibet were no longer etc.! Tigers' bones ground into pow- shut, it would indeed be intense glad- der are used in plaster for internal inju- ness to me. This war is going to be a ries. Bears' paws are boiled to a jelly source of great blessing to China. It is and used as a powerful alterative for an awful chastisement, but China need- the weak and aged. Harts' horns are sawn into thin disks and boiled down that they have as yet but entered the and given for renewing wasted vitality. road to civilization, and warning all that no countenance will be given to -The Chinese have an exceeding any who, through conceit, may offer faith in "round medicine," and hence insult to another itate or injure friendly pills hold a high place In their esteem. relations, especially as regards China.
-Archdeacon Moule, writing of Bud- "The Church of Christ in Japan" dhism, says that in one large Chinese (the Presbyterian Church) has just ap· city alone $10,000,000 are spent annu- pointed a missionary to work among the ally in offerings to the dead, and if the Yeta, the pariahs of this land, a degradsame enthusiasm and devotion marked ed people of uncertain origin scattered the giving of Christians to the work of through the Japanese Islands. The missions there would be little fear of a Japanese hold them in' utter contempt, deficit in our great missionary societies' and they have suffered a good deal of incomes_ He also commends the zeal oppression. Buddhism shuts them out of the Buddhist in his love of prayer. from all hope of a future life. In some It is a Buddhist saying that" prayer is places as tanners, butchers, and hunters better than sleep," and on one occasion they have accumulated considerable when he ascended a mountain in order wealth, but in others they are in a most to see the sun rise over the sea, he found degraded condition, poor, ignorant, the priest going the round of a great dirty, and half naked, given to thiev· monastery below him as early as three ing, lying, and all sorts of wickedness. o'clock in the morning, waking his The new mission is to be established in brethren for early morning prayer.- Usabori, where the Yetaare very miser- The Oh1JJrclhman. able and sunken.
Japan.-" While men slept," intotbe -There is a preaching station in April number of the REVIEW a wild Tokyo just at the entrance to Uyeno statement crept concerning Sunday Park, that was established at the time papers in the Land of the Rising Sun. of the National Exposition, and has Let It be exactly reversed so as to state been kept open ever since. In order to that about every paper issues a Sunday attract people to the services as they edition. chance to be passing by, a verse of the Scriptures is copied on a large sheet of -Three centuries ago when the J apa- paper, and this is suspended in front of nese had won a victory in Corea they the place. Then there is added a nosent home the ears of 3600 victims of tice of the meetings, and perhaps the the war as a trophy of their success. names of the speakers. It is the cus- Now the best steamers of the Japanese tom to select a new text of Scripture for Government are put at the service of each day, and a policeman living just the Red Cross Society, and as much across the street began to notice these Cale is taken of the Chinese sick and changes, and was gradually interested wounded as of the Japanese. in reading these various texts. By this means he became acquainted with the -The Emperor of Japan has issued a way of salvation; and then he went to proclamation outlining the future policy the services and professed his faith in of the Government, which is character- Christ as his Saviour. istic of the spirit of progress Japan has shown since het awakening. Without -Rev. H. Loomis, of Yokohama, has vainglorious commendation of what compiled the missionary statistics for has been accomplished, it states the 1894, lind he finds that the church-memfacts of the war with China, and calls bers now number 39,240, with an addiupon all classes to strive for the purpose tion of 34;22 for the year. The number of laying the foundation of permanent prosperity, calling attention to the fact of misilionaries is 226, of unmarried open school with the assistance of & women, 210; and a total, including French-speaking African, WIves, of 625. There are 364 organized churches, 258 native ministers, and 536 -The latest attempt to enter and other native helpers. evangelize the Soudan has met with crushing disaster. Some young Ameri- AFRICA. cans conceived the idea of making the attempt by way of the Yoruba Country. -Dr. Dunnillg, of the Oongregation- They succeeded, but now two of them alist, with a company of tourists spent have laid down their lives. Mr. Gowa Sunday recently in Assiout, Egypt, ans was found, exceedingly iII and aland writes a glowing account of what most destitute, at Loko, and died three he saw and heard there concerning the days afterward. He had been continuwork of the United Presbyterians in the onsly ill since leaving Lagos. Four Nile valley. others reached Bida, where they were stranded, unable either to advance to -All you need to possess in Tangier Kano as they wished, or to retreat. to enable you to marry is a drum, a There Mr. Kent died, his companions box, and to be able to borrow a mule. being likewise prostrated with illness. Weddings take place after dark. The The whole attempt seems to have been groom sits at home drumming. He characterized by great personal piety drums for ten straight days prior to his and devotion, but not by proportionate accepting the bride. The bride is caution or experience. Bishop Tugplaced in a box, which is securely well, in the gentlest manner, hints as strapped upon a mule. All her friends much. He gives an interesting anecand relatives follow her around the dote of Mr. Gowans: "When the body streets for an hour or two, all the while of dear Bishop Hill lay in his room hammering on drums or playing flageo- awaiting burial, Gowans begged to be lets. They then dump the bride on the allowed to come and kneeland pray by groom's doorstep. the sleeping form; for more than an hour he knelt there in prayer, until I -It is not often that a foreign em· felt compelled to come in and gently bassy is greeted on its arrival in the lead him out. Together they' followed country of the government to which it the Lamb,' now together they sleep in is accredited with such a message as Him."-Ohurch Mi88ionary InteUigenthat which was delivered to the envoys cer. of the King of Ashantee on landing at Liverpool. They were officially. in- -From Banza Manteke, Mrs. Richformed that their king was "not a ards reports: "It is a joy to teach in ruler of sufficient importance to be per- the beautiful new school·house you mitted to send ambassadors to Queen have given us. It is built on iron pil- Victoria," and that, "under any cir- lars, 3 feet from the ground, and furcumstances, Her Majesty could not reo nished with writing desks and forms. ceive a mission from a ruler who, there At the station is a school for women, is good reason to believe, allows and 2 for children, and 17 in the towns. All countenances the practice of human together register 656 names, but there sacrifice. " are many hindrances to town schools. At Banza Nkazi, a chief opposed to -The French governor at Gaboon Gospel teaching threatens to beat and has had an interview with Dr. Nassau kill the children whO go to school. He and Mr. Marling, and the happy result has just put aU children of non-Chrisis a reversal of the injunction against tian parents in the Nkimba, an instituschool-work in the vernacular. The tion where t.hey are' taught fetichism ladies at Benito have permission to re- and every impurity. In spite of all op- position, the chapel is crowded daily with those who come to hear about scarcely fail to note a brief article, with "God's palaver," and 43 of the schol- three illustrations, relating to the tree ars have been baptized.-Baptist Mis· hard by which the heart of Dr. Livingsionary Magazine. stone was buried.. Upon it was chiselled these words by the boy Jacob Wain- -Bishop William Taylor reports that wright, who read the burial service over his Angola rpission has acquired prop- the spot: "Dr. Livingstone, May 4th. erty to the amount of $37,484.31, and 1873. Yazuza, Muiasere, Vchopere. " that the net profits last year, after sup- In the spring of last year E. J. Glave porting the mission, were $762.11. It paid a visit to this locality and took is planted in a region peculiarly favor- photographs of the tree. able to the system of self-support.
-The Huguenot Seminary at Wel- ISLANDS OF THE SEA. lington, Cape Colony, during the twenty-one years of its existence, has -The mission vessel for the New sent out 500 teachers and 40 missiona- Hebrides will be finished in September ries to the farthest parts of South and -a steamer to be called the Day8pring. Central Africa. It was founded by Rev. She will be built on the Clyde, of steel. Andrew Murray, the South African Length, 140 feet; 23 feet breadth of evangelist, and is under the management beam; 11 feet depth of hold ; 3 masts; of Miss Abbie P. Ferguson, a graduate schooner rig; triple-expansion engines. of Mount Holyoke. An etIort is being Ordinary speed of S knots. made to obtain funds to put the institution on a collegiate basis. -Bishop Cecil Wilson, of Melanesia, the successor of John Coleridge Patteson, -The Bishop of Zululand, among the martyr bishop, writing of the island other things, reports as follows in the Malanta, says: "This is such a black gpot. Mi38ion :Field: "Part of· collections It is about 100 miles long and 40 broad, during the year 1894 at St. Augustine's, swarming with people, the bravest, Rorke's Drift: Cash collections, £201 fiercest, most ingenious of any in Mela- 138.6id. OtIertory in kind: 1 horse, 7 nesia. And added to this they are cancows, 6 sheep, 13 goats, 52 sacks nibals beyond all the rest. They are almealies, 2i sacks amabele (Kaillr corn), ways fighting, and among the Melane- 105 fowls, 30 mats (isilebeeli); value, sian islanders they stand alone as those £74 158. Sd." who disdain to use shields in warfare. The Christians were very glad to see -A monthly report of the Johannes- us. They are going through a severe burg Chamber of Mines gives the pro- persecution for their faith, a price duction of the Witwatersrand Mines being set on the head of most of them, for the month of February as follows: and an attack at any time being feared. Mill work, 110,601 oz.; concentrates, Theirs is the only school in Malanta, 7314 oz.; tailings, 4S,771 oz.; other and they form a mark for every zealous sources, 2610 oz. ; total, 169,296 oz. At heathen tribe in the country. For the usual rate of Witwatersrand gold, months these Christians have been in a O.SOO fine, this would make 135,437 fine state of siege, sometimes holding their oz. gold. To obtain this production service with scouts in the bushes, with- 236,425 tons of ore were worked at the out lights, lest they should form too ditIerent mills, which had altogether good a target for bullets. Still, not- 2250 stamps running. The average withstanding all this, they keep brave yield from mill work was 0.47 oz. per hearts. They go to school regularly ton. The quantity of tailings work, with rifles and spears in their hands, nearly all by the cyanide process, was and so keep the enemies at bay."-The 221,552 tons. Churchman.
-Readers of the May Century can ~