The Missionary Review of the World — September 1896
SAN.JU·SANGENDO. KIOTO ••JAPAN
TF,MPr.;J<: OF 3:3,30'30'3 IMAGES OF THE GOJ>DF.l"'l'o OF MF.RCy-KWASNOK.
j / MISSIONARY REVIEW OF THE WORLD.
VOL. XIX. No. 9.-0ld Beries.-SEPTEMBER.-VoL. IX. No. 9.-Ne!IJ Series.
CHRISTIAN MISSIONS, THE PECULIAR ENTERPRISE OF GOD.
BY THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF.
Every scheme bears the impress of its origin, its originator, and is often known historically by its connection with its founder, taking its name from him. The enterprises of man have been innumerable j their name is Legion. Some of them have been as transient and Qvanescent as the path of a comet across the sky j others have lived for a few years, and then lost their hold upon human I'lympathy and support, while a few yet live and thrive and command cooperation. But of all human plans and schemes, the one fatal defect is, they are human; they have no authority beyond their inherent worth, no recommendation beyond their expediency, and no vindication but their success. Their right of continuance is found in their obvious results. The one questfon with regard to each is utility: does this pay ~ And, being human, they are subject, like all else that is earth-born, to modification, if not abolition. It is ,a question of evolution toward perfection and survival of the fittest, and men do not hesitate t.o alter and amend, to reform and remodel, whatever mau has projected and originated. What man has invented man may improve.
There is just one enterprise that originated solely with God. From beginning to end it is His sr.heme. It was formed in His own purpose, and is to be carried on in His own way, under His instructions, and for His glory. No man knew the mind of the Lord, or being His counsellor taught him, or even had part in his original councils on this matter. God perfected the plan and then simply revealed it, and invited or enjoined believing disciples to take part in it as a Divine enterprise. Hence its authority is unique, the authority of an imperial command j its recommendation is found, not in its obvious expediency but in its majestic authorship and leadership j and its vindication is not dependent simply upon its apparent success. It is not a question of utility, measured by man's standards j and to ask, "Does this pay?" is irrcverent and impertinent. This one Divine enterprise is missions-bearing the Gospel to a lost race.
CHRISTIAN MISSIONS, THE PECULIAR ENTERPRISE OF GOD
Behind this scheme lie the sevenfold attributes of God. Being Divine, not human, it has no fallible elements in it, and so admits no improve- ment. To modify it essentially is audacity; to abandon it is apostasy.
Omniscience assures to it God's wisdom; omnipotence backs it up with almighty power. In it are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowl- edge; it is the expression of God's love and grace to man. It cannot ultimately fail, notwithstanding man's unbelief, disobedience, and disloy- alty. If God's instruments prove useless and worthless, He will fashion others, but His eternal purpose will surely work out its final issue to the shame and ruin of all opposers and idlers. , This view of missions is too seldom presented before us, even by the advocates of a world's evangelization. Christian missions are talked of and written about, as tho, like a thousand other philanthropic schemes, they had their author and authority in man, depended on man for their very continuance, and were subject to man's modification, or even aboli- tion, as imperfect, or no longer needful or useful. Hence the disposition of this utilitarian age to weigh missionary effort in the scales of human policy, with money and human life and labor on one side, and converts and so-called" results" on the other, and then estimate how far the outlay is justified! As tho God had ever annulled His command or asked man to sit in jndgment on the expediency of His plans, or had committed to any human court or commission the right to modify an enterprise which He has originated!
Who cannot see that there is an enormous gulf of separation between the wisest and best of man's devices and this one and only Divine enter- prise revealed to man ~ The whole system of human philanthropy is neces- sarily and eS$entially defective. The Sunday.school, the Young Men's Christian Association, the Young People'S Society of Christian Endeavor, Bible societies and tract societies, hospitals and asylums, charitable organi- zations, schools and colleges, are inventions of man, more or less wise and successful, but having behind them no Divine command or authority, and no divine warrant for continuance. Hence, the right to change their methods or displace them altogether if their mission seems fulfilled. But with Christian Missions it remains true to the end of the age, that to them nothing is to be added, from them nothing to be subtracted, for God is their sole Author, and He knows His own mind. He who meddles with the plans of God insults Him; he who wars against them flings himself upon the bosses of Jehovah's buckler.
How true it is that missions to the lost originated solely in God may he seen in the faet of man's apathy and lethargy, and even resistance, in falling into God's plan as a coworker. For thousands of years the Jew had no real conception of such a world-wide plan. The Old Testament is full of prophetic hints of It salvation for the race. From that first Mes- sianic promise, that the seed of the woman was to bruise the serpent's head, there is a gradual unfolding of God's purpose to provide a salvation suillcient for the ills of the whole race of Adam, and of which the whole race is destined ultimately to hear. Abraham was assured that in his seed all the families of the earth should be blessed. The chosen people of God were plainly taught that they were set as a light to the nations, for salvation to the ends of the earth. But the vast bulk of the chosen nation shut out, frolT' all effort and even sympathy, the outside world, and had no dealings with the Samaritans. Here and t,here one like David breathed a prayer that the whole earth might be filled with God's glory. But even after Christ Himself both taught and exemplified the principle of missions; after He gave His farewell message bidding His disciples bear witness to the uttermost parts of the earth, and sent the Holy Spirit to anoint them for such witness, and, as the Invisible Captain of the Lord's host, guide them in the forward march, they still clung to Jerusalem, following the old policy of centralization instead of the new law of evangelization, and exclusion instead of diffusion, and compelling God to use the scourge of persecution to drive them toward the uttermost parts of the earth. Even then they scattered only a few miles from the sacred city, -into Samaria and as far as Antioch just beyond Galilee, and almost all their witness was confined to Jews. Peter had to have caste prejudices broken down by the vision, thrice repeated on the housetop, before he was ready to bear the good tidings to Romans, though they were actually seeking salvation; and, even after the Pentecost at Cesarea, where it was plainly shown that God also to the Gentiles had granted repentance unto life, the Spirit was compelled by an audihle voice to call and separate and send forth Barnabas and Paul, before tIle first foreign missionaries ever went to the regions beyond. Thus man not only did not devise this scheme of missions, but even in apostolic days was slow to accept it and enter into it, as God's enterprise backed by God's authoritative call and command.
The thought we are seeking to impress is that, from the very conception and inception of Christian missions, there is upon this scheme of a world's evangelization one distinguishing mark-God's patent ri,qht. This enterprise is communicated to man as something matured in the mind of God, and committed to the body of disciples, t,o carry ouf, as His servants. Whatever hints are given as to the philosophy of Christian missions, there is no attempt to exhibit their philosophy as tho their prosecution were in any measure to hang or hinge upon our recognition and reception of the argument in their vindication. Only He who spans the eterni. ties and measures the infinities IS competent to weigh their true value or estimate their real r.:-sults. What do we know of the value of a soul, of the importance of a knowledge of the truth and love of God, or even of the necessity to the Church at home of having this work of witnessing to the world laid upon her as a condition of fellowship with Christ!
Let us hold our mind fixedly to the consideration of this great thought, that this is the one work of God, and that this constitutes the unanswerable argument for the prompt. energetic, incessant, devout, and consecrated endeavor to carry the Gospel tidings to the uttermost parts of the earth and to every creature! Imagine a committee of Noah's generation undertaking to decide upon the expediency of continuing to build the ark, and preach righteousness to an unbelieving race! A hundred years had gone, and the builder still went on with his work, and the preacher stilI went on with his message of warning, altho the boat he was building a~d the threat he was uttering seemed alike signs of a disordered mind. He was met by mockery and antagonism only, and in a hundred years had not won a single convert! How many reports, unfavorable to the continuance of his work, would have been submitted before that man of God would have abandoned a mission committed to him by God's own command!
Note how God Himself emphaRizes the fact that Christian missions must be recognized as a Divine scheme! "Known unto God are ALL HIS WORKS from the beginning of the world" (Acts 15 : 18). Here are seven words in the Greek: iteyev IWpto'; 7rOtWV TaVTa YVW(1Ta a7T' alWVO~. This is probably the most pregnant saying concerning missions to be found in the whole Word of God. It asserts in effect that the command to preach the Gospel to every creature emanates from Him who is working out in this great enterprise the plans known to Him from the beginning.
It is a New Testament quotation and application of the thought rather than the language. found in Isa. 46 : 9-11, which is in the Old Testament a sort of keynote of missions. The prophet had been comparing and contrasting .Jehovah and the false gods, takiug Bel and Nebo, the chief deities of Babylon and Moab, as representatives of idol worship. Speaking in God's name, he challenges men to eonsider the infinite contrast between Jehovah Himself and all these pretenders to Divine honors, and in graphie language. sharp with irony, presents in a fourfold form the absurdity of idolatry: 1. The idol gods are made by men, the worshiper being the maker of his god.
2. The idol gods are borne by men, the worshiper earrying the god he worships.
3. The idol gods are 8peechle.~8 and helpless, the worshiper finding in them neither hearing ear nor helping hand.
4. The idol gods are motionless, standing where they are placed and unable to stir or move, even tho the worshiper needs deliverance.
In contrast to all this well may Jehovah say: " I am God, and none else! God, and none like Me !
Declaring from the beginning. the end. And from ancient times what are not accomplished.
Saying: My counsel shall stand And all My pleasure will I do.
Calling from the east an eagle. From a far country the man of My counsel. Yea, I have spoken, I will also execute ; I have purposed, I will also perform. II Here is a short, majestic, sublime poem. It presents Jehovah as beyond comparison. He purposes from eternity; and from the beginning of the ages forecasts and foretells the end, mysteriously predicting events absolutely without any precedent, not only unaccomplished as yet, but, humanly speaking, impossible of accomplishment. And yet the immutable, inscrntable God, with whom nothing is impossible, confidently says, "My counsel shall stand firm, and all human counsel cannot overthrow it, and all My pleasure shall issue in performance." Jehovah hints that He will not only do incredible things, but will use strange instruments, as when lie calls from the East Cyrus, whose emblem and ensign was the golden eagle, whom He girded for his work when as yet he knew Him not. And so, from the very beginning of the world age, all God's works have been clearly and closely planned in His mind, and man cannot bring them to nought. Even opposers shall be made unconsciously cooperators, and prove themselves raised up, like Pharaoh, that God might in them show forth His power and by them execnte His plIJasure. While heathen gods are helpless and cannot help, silent and cam,ot speak, motionless and camiot come to the rescue, and have to be carried by their blind votaries, God will hear and help, and bear His people as in His own arms and on His own bosom.
The better rendering of the text probably is, "Saith the Lord, doing all things known from the age." But the great fundamental thought is essentially unmistakable.
This verse, as used in the fifteenth chapter of the Acts, concludes a series of emphatic statements intended to present GOD before us as the one and only actor or agent in missions, all other seeming agencies being but instruments. In no one passage of Scripture is the DIVINE FACTOR made so prominent, and in so repeated forms. In chapter 13 : 1-4 we have the birth-hour of missions, and the Holy Spirit is the one foremost personage in the transaction.
.. The Holy Ghost said, Separate Me Barnabas and Paul, For the work whereunto I have called them.
So they, being sent forth by the Holy Ghost, departed. II From this point on, the one great Divine power and presence are continually before us, and even Paul and Barnabas seem insignificant, like stars that fade in the sun's presence. It is the Word of God which is spoken. The hand of the Lord is upon Elymas, the sorcerer, in his blindness, and the doctrine of the Lord astonishes the deputy, Sergius Paulus. It is the grace of God in which r,aul and Barnabas persuade converts to continue. It is the command of the Lord which is urged as the basis of missions; it is the decree of God which is fulfilled in believing Ilouls j it is the Spirit of the Lord which fiUs and fires the witnesses; it is the Lord Himself who gives testimony to His word and grants signs and wonders to be done by their hands.
When Barnabas and Paul return to Antioch from their first tour of missions, observe the uniform humility with which every result reached is ascribed to God, as they bore witness from Antioch to Jerusalem.
1. Thfly rehearsed all that God had done with them. 2. And how He had opened tlte door offaith unto the Gentiles. 3. They declared all that God had, done with them. 4. Peter said: " God made choice among us that the Gentiles by my mouth should heal' the word of the Gospel and believe." 5. God bare them witness, giving them the Holy Ghost even as unto us; and put no difference between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith. 6. Paul and Barnabas declared what miracles and wonders God had wrought among the Gentiles by thcm (15 : 12). 7. Simon Peter declared how God at first did visit tile Gentiles to take out of them a people for His name. 8. After this I will 1'eturn and will build again the Tabernacle of David, and I will build again the ruins thereof, and I will set it up. 9. That the residue of Adam (see Amos 9 : 11, 12, correct reading) might seek the Lord and all the Gentiles upon wlwm my name is called. 10. And now hear the grand finale, the conclusion of all : " Tllus saith the Lord, wllo doeth all these tllings known unto Him f1'om the age." No man can attentively read such a passage of Scripture as this without seeing that here is a work in which it is not man and God, or even God and man, but God, and not man, whom we are to recognize, so constantly is God kept at the front and man thrust to the rear, out of sight. And why, if not to put this whole work of missions before us, as, in a unique sense, the one Divine enterprise in which the whole Godhead is supremely concerned ~ Only three works of God are revealed to us in Scripture: 1. Creation of the universe; 2. Creation of man, as by a special council of the Godhead; 3. New creation offallen man in the restored image of God. Both the others being now past acts, this one, man's redemption, now engrosses the activity of the Divine mind; so that we may say that, so far as this world is concerned, there is just one work decreed by God and to be wrought out by Him-namely, the bringing back of a revolted race to its allegiance to Himself. This work is invested with a dignity, an authority, a majesty wholly its own and shared by no other, as the one enterprise of God. There are other enterprises, benevolent in purpose, beneficent in result, and worthy of our sympathy and support; but, we repeat, they are not originally and essentially divine enterprises. They had their origin in man, were deemed by him needful and planned by him to meet the need. The whole scheme of popular education, in common schools and Sunday-schools ; the whole system of publication of Bibles and religious books and tracts; the vast array of hospitals, asylums, and benevolent institutions; the thousand forms of philanthropic work among the destitute and depraved classesthese, as we have already said, are inventions of man. However wise or good, their origin is human and their methods fallible. If at any time they have answered their purpose, cease to be effective, or need to be modified, man is competent to alter or abolish them, and consequently disciples are at liberty to determine how far they shall give them personal aid and snpport. To criticise them is no irreverence; to change their forms of work or displace them by better is no profanation. " But the canse of missions has God for its original author. It is traceable solely to His wisdom. His eternal counsels are back of it, and His almighty power is pledged to its support. To accept it as His plan and fall into our own place in that plan is both duty and delight to a true follower of God. To criticise or condemn missions is blasphemy; to abandon and abolish this work would be the last step in arrogant apostasy. In fact, we cannot abolish tho we may abandon, for God is behind it. We may drop out of it as His instruments, but He will raise up others, if need be calling another eagle from the far East to do His pleasure. But as sure as God lives, the work of a race's regeneration will go on. His word and His oath are already pledged: .. As I live, saith the Lord, Unto Me every knee shall bow And every tongue shall swear.
The earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the Lord, All flesh shall see the salvation of the Lord. I, the Lord, have spoken it, And will do it."
Such is the sublime and wonderful teaching of this text, and the whole Scripture of which it is both climax and index. Here is the one work of God, known unto Him in eternal purpose, and in which from the very opening of the ages He has been engaged and will be to the end. To take part in it is to wheel into onr orbit, moving about Him as a center, and have share in the sure and splendid triumph which awaits Him and toward which, through all seeming reverses and defeats, He moves steadily onward, as receding waves only rise at the next advance higher toward the final flood-mark, or apparent retreats under a master general are only parts of a larger movement for surrounding and annihilating a hostile army.
This thought is so grand and glorious that it may well occupy closer attention, and happily the context itself suggests some of the details which together exhibit this as God's work even to its minutest details. All its outworking shows His hand.
Careful students of the Word have often found here not only God's authority for Christian missions, but their very pr0!lr~m. Whether the reader accepts it as so designed or not, it is very remarkable that in this passage of Scripture there are indications, very marked, of a definite plan, and a plan which both agrees with the teachings of other Scripture, and which thus far exactly corresponds with the facts, and is indeed their only adequate explanation or s:>lution. To this plan or program of missions,· there appear to be three very conspicuous stages. To a student of the Greek, this is even more apparent than 1Il the English: IIPf.lTON, '0 eeo~ mE(JKt>paTo Aaf3etv e~ e{}vwv Aaov E1rt T't' ovof'an aVTOV META TAYTA, ava(JTpe>pW, Kat avotKoOOP1(JW TTlV (JKTlVfjV llavul TTlV 7re7rTWKv/av Kat Ta KaTe(JKaf'f'eva aVTTl~ aVOtKOOOf'Tl(JW Kat avopBw(Jw aVTlJ'V, OII.I2I AN, eK'TlTfj(JW(JtV Ot KaTaAot7rOt TWV av{}pW7rWV Tal' KVPtoV, Kat 7ravra ra e6vfj e<P' OV~ e7rtKeKATjTat TO (Jvof'a f'OV E7r' aVTOV~, Aeyet KVpto~, 0 7rOtWV raVTa YVW(JTa a7r' atWVo~.
This cannot, perhaps, be presented in the English, so as to show equally 'well the poetic parallelism which pervades its structure, but it may be well to exhibit it as best we may: " Simeon hath declared how, at the FIRST, God visited, to take out, from the nations, A people for His name; AFTBR THIS, I will return And will build again the Tabernacle of David, That which is fallen down, And the ruins thereof I will build again, And I will set it up ; SO THAT, The residue of the Adamic race* might seek the Lord, And all the nations upon whom is called My name, SAlTH THE LORD, He who doeth these things Known from the age."
Here it requires no ingenuity to find three marked steps or stages in God's pIau for this world: 1. The work of this Gospel age, visiting the nations to gather out the ecclesia, a chosen people for His name.
2. The rebuilding of the fallen Tabernacle of David, out of its very ruins, and its restoration, like a fallen tent, to its upright position.
3. The way thus being opened for the residue of the Adamic race to seek after the Lord, a greater body of believers than ever before, will be gathered from the nations.
And if all this outgathering of a believing people ; this ultimate res- . toration of David's Tabernacle, with the reorganization and reconstruction of the Hebrew state, and the final embrace of the nations of the world in redemptive purpose-if all this seems not only inscrutable but incredible, _ • Compare Amos 9: 11, 12, where Edmn should read Adam. _ we need only to be reminded that God knows His own business, and that all we have to do is to remember that nothing is impossible with Him.
Once more let it be put bcfore us in bold capitals- MISSIONS REPRESENT GOD'S OWN WORK, for which He is responsible. 'Ve are accountable only for our part in it, which is ne.ither to judge of its expediency or its efficiency, but to become His submissive instruments, obedient coworkers with Him in carrying out His eternal purpose.
The larger passage of Scripture, of which this is but the conclusion, contains also a pertinent word of warning: " Beware therefore lest that come upon yon which is spoken of in the prophets (notice the plural, as indicating a general drift of prophecy).
Behold, ye despisers, and wonder, and perish; For I work a work in your days, A work which ye shall in no wise believe, Though a man declare it unto you" (Acts 13 : 40, 41).
This is a quotation and adaptation of two Old Testament prophecies: one in 1sa. 29 : 14, and the other in Hab. 1 : 5. One prediction concerns the Jews, and the other the heathen. God foretells that both among Jews and heathen nations He is about to work a work, which shall be witnessed hy competent testimony, but met with incredulity. Men shall wonder at it, while they behold, and despise and perish, while they wonder. And we can see it all true in these very days in which we live. Never was there such abundant and overwhelming witness that God is at work in missions, and yet never more abundant evidence of an unbelieving and even antagonistic' spirit. The very generation that beholds the miracles of missions wrought, despises while it wonders, and perishes in sin while beholding the wonders of grace. God's work among the heathen is declared by competent witnesses, and yet it is not believed in as God's work, and even the Church of Christ is in danger of provoking God beyond endurance by sheer incrednlity, inactivity and apathy. To-day nearly every missionary agency of the Church of Christ is retrenching expenditure where everything calls for expansion; is refusing picked men and women, who are ready to go forth to the field, because debt embarrasses its operations; is seriously considering not how to go forward, but how to go backward without surrendering immense advantages already gained, and sacrificing important strategic points and posts in the world campaign. And, to cap the climax, it is now calmly proposed to equip a commission to go forth and examine the whole work of missions and report, forsooth, whether the results justify the further prosecution of God's own enterprise!
o God, who hast in Thine infinite wisdom planned this work, and pledged Thy presence and power to those who cowork with Thee in carrying out Thy purpose to the end of the age, strengthen Thy servants reso-
THE YEAR IN JAPAN
lutely to do Thy bidding, and, armed with Thine authority and moved by a love likEOl Thine, serve our own generation by the will of God, with untiring zeal, unceasing prayer, self-denying giving, and whole-hearted devotion, bearing the tidings of salvation to the uttermost parts of the earth! Amen.
THE YEAR 1896 IN JAPAN.
BY REV. GEORGE WILLIAM KNOX, D.D., RYE, N. Y.
The year in Japan has been full of interest. If the world has not followed the story with the keen attention given to the year of war, it is not because the events have been less momentous, but because peace seems commonplace and prosaic after the glamour and poetry of international combat.
Politics.-The Government remains master of the political situation. We have followed in the years past the slow development of constitutional and parliamentary government. At first it was the dream of a little group of reformers. Against them were arrayed all the forces of the empire-police, army, official, judiciary, a subsidized press, the great banks. the educational forces as maintained by the Government. But the reformers dreamed on, nothing daunted. They organized a political society. Its head was Mr. (uow Count) Itagaki. The society grew, and gained in influence.· Its leaders, excepting Itagaki, were imprisoned, fined, persecuted. But the society none the less became a power. It finally was organized as the Liberal Party, and its first great end was attained when a constitution was given the empire and a diet promised. Some of the party leaders went direct from prison to leadership in the Diet, and from this party the Government met an opposition which it could not overcome.
The "Liberals" were termed "Radicals" by their opponents, and every destructive and anarchistic pUIpose was ascribed to them. The charges were never true. Count Itagaki and the men associated with him were moderate Liberals, whose ideal was the British Constitution. They fought the Government in the Diet session after session, and the result was a deadlock. Diet and Government opposed, neither could accomplish anything of value. The Liberals were determined to force capitulation to compel the Government to admit the majority of the Diet to a responsible share in the Imperial Cabinet. The Government was equally resolved to maintain its position, it being al! oligarchy appointed nominally by the emperor and quite independent of the Diet. The position became impossible, and three years ago there were indications of an approaching agreement between Liberals and Government.
The war hastened this development. All parties united in the support of the Government, vying with each other in loyalty. And after peace the alliance between Government and Liberals was proclaimed. With a majority in the Diet the Liberals have supported the Government, and Count Itagaki has entered the Cabinet as Home Minister, while another Liberal leader is the new Minister to Washington. So far as one may judge, the fundamental contention of the Liberals has triumphed, and the voice of the people as expressed by the Diet is accepted in the council of the emperor.
The Pinances.-Peace pays the bills of war. Japan, ioo, learns the price of glory. The imperial budget before the war was, say, $90,000,000 silver, and 1his ycar it has more than doubled, being $11)3,000,000 silver, perhaps something more than $100,000,000 in United States gold. That means a large increase in taxation, and with it an increase in the cost of living, another weary step, introducing Japan to the conditions of modern industrial and economic strife. Thanks to Liberal support, budget and taxes went through the Diet with little difficulty.
This large expenditure means a new navy by and by, purposed to be strong enough to measure conclusions with Russia or other European power. It means an immense increase in the army-500,OOO men ready for war, making the empire impregnable at home. It means also, and to the credit of the other side of the account, the building of new railway lines with like internal improvements. Pity it is that the incoming of Christian civilization imposes such heavy burdens chiefly that the nation may be prepared to slaughter men in the most approved way.
The Civil Code.-The Diet adopted the new Civil Code. It marks another important stage in the onward march. It also prepares the way for the full control by the Japanese courts of all foreigners in the empire, instead of the present system of foreign laws and courts. Two years ago the Code was defeated under the pressure of anti-foreign sentiment; but now it is adopted in a somewhat amended form. There were other indications in the Diet that the exaggerated dislike to foreigners manifested offensively in recent years has disappeared,and that the nation is no longer hostile in its attit;Ide. The change is partly due to the removal of the cause by the revision of the treaties, and partly because of the new consciousness that the nation has proved its right to equality. Nowhere is there evidence of the prophesied increase of self-importance and swagger ; but, to the contrary, there is more of self-restraint and friendliness.
Korea and Pormosa.-The Government has not fared well in Korea. Its plans for reform have succeeded only very partially, and there is prospect that the last state may be worse than the first. Most lamentable of all is the fact that the Japanese Minister was implicated in the murder of the queen. He was recalled, tried, and acquitted; but there is a widespread feeling that the verdict was a mil:lcarriage of justice.
Certainly Japan has suffered in influence, power, and reputation. Russia is the gainer. It gathers the fruits of Japan's campaigns in China and in Korea. So at least for the present, for what the future is to unfold no o~e divines. The supremacy of Russia may have dire hlfluence on our mission work. That its supremacy can be lasting we hesitate to believe.
In Formosa t.he situation is trying. If we are not mistaken, its conquest cost more Japanese lives than did the war with China. Savages and disease are more formidable enemies than Li Hung Chang's braves. Besides, there are questions of administration and police, the use of opium, and many other bad customs and manners which tax the highest intelligence. Japan is ambitious of emulating Great Britain not only on the sea, but in the successful, liberal, and just government of its dependencies. It, too, would be a civilizer. And the nation finds that all this costs money. For years to come the Japanese must pay in part for the acquisition it ha" made, as Formosan income by no means equals Formosan expenditure.
Commerce. -The nation prospers exceedingly. It" commerce advances with leaps and bounds. Already its flag is seen in English waters, and it plans new lines of steamers, so that it may have constant service by its own ships to America, Australia, and Europe. Besides the lines of railway projected by the Government, private companies are busy, and erelong all parts of the empire will be accessible by the iron horse.
The increase in the resources of Japan has been great. Statistics for twenty-two years are at hand. Between 1872 and 1894 the population increased more than 25 per cent. England during the same period increased about 20 per cent. In Japan the increase in the production of the staple articles of food has kept pace with the increase in population; and there seems no reason to fear that it, like England, will become dependent on foreign lands for its daily sustenance. In fifteen years the production of silk cocoons tripled, and the production of tea doubled. The increase in manufactures has been most remarkable; and foreign commerce in the twenty-two years has multiplied almost sixfold. In ~he same period there has been a. great development of railways, telegraphs, steamship lines, postal service, banking capital and facilities, and, in short, of all the ways and means of modern indnstrial and commercial civilization. And the increase still continues as rapid as before.
Thus there is a solid basis for the increase of national expenditure and for the growing belief that Japan can maintain by the arts of peace the position it has won through war. Of course prices rise and wages increase. Equally, of course, thcrc is danger of too great extension and too sudden prosperity. There arc not wanting prophets who tell us there are signs already that the boom will burst. It will be strange indeed if Japan escape depression and panics altogether, but there is no ground for the suggestion that the new prosperity IS less solidly founded than the prosperity of Western lands. An increase of population with a steady yet rapid increase in the products of the soil, of the factory, and of foreign trade gives reason to believe that the new ways will be ways that shall last.
The Disaster in the ·North.-At the very end of the year comes telegraphic word of the terrible disaster in the North. Japanese papers with the details are not yet at hand; but by the cable it would appear that the great wave of 1896 exceeded in Its destruction the great earthquake of 1891.
The Work of the Missions.-The table of statistics is the least encouraging yet published. There is a net loss in the membership of all the Protestant bodies of more than five hundred communicants; and almost every footing shows a loss-less Sunday-schools, a smaller number of baptisms, $10,000 (silver) less contributed by the churches-while the only substantial gain is in the number of scholars in day schools and in the number of patients treated in hospitals. It is evident that the check in missionary work is still felt, and that all departments of the enterprise suffer.
There are private reports also of a want of interest in the churches. Some of the strongest congregations state that "the spiritual condition is now what it was two or three years ago." Some missionaries report that" the work has not been prosperous as men would count it. " We take it that the statistics, with all their imperfections, pretty fairly represent the true condition.
The Deputation of the American Boara.-The report of this deputation has been printed in part in the MISSIONARY REVIEW (March, 1896, pp. 219-221), and its summary of the situation may be substituted for an extended review in this place. 'Without accepting all of the statements made, we may yet refer to it as the candid judgment of fair-minded men who had exceptional means of information and who were in deep sympathy with the work. Their conclusions were these: That the number of missionaries be not increased, but that men of established reputation be sent to speak on various subjects ; that missionary work be henceforth evangelistic rather than educational, as the boards cannot compete with the well· equipped government institutions for young men-this decrease in educational work not applying, seemingly, to the work for women; that the churches should be pushed on toward self-support, and that foreign aid should be steadily withdrawn; that more should be done.toward creating a Christian literature.
The Doshisha.-This college has stood first among the missionary and Christian institutions. Founded by the lamented Nishima, it has been well furnished with buildings, library, and apparatus by its American. friends. The American Board has liberally supplied its needs. Its foreign professors have been among the strongest men sent to Japan by any board or society. It has done a great work for missions and for the Church. And now its trustees (Japanese) refuse to hold it to evangelical Christianity, even to a Christianity that professes faith in a personal God, in the divinity of Christ, and in a life to come. The most sincere friends of the Japanese, those who most stedfastly have held them worthy of all trust, are those who are thus most deeply wounded in the house of their friends. No equally damaging blow to the work of missions has beeu dealt
CONFUCIANISM IN KOREA
in all these years. All enemies combined would have failed to inflict such grievous injury.
The Prospect.-Notwithstanding the want of success in the year past, and notwithstanding the defection of the Doshisha, the missionaries do not lose heart. They still hoH fast their faith in the success of their .work, and they have abundant cause. From many localities come words of encouragement. In some, the relations with the Japanese Christians are improved. In others the popular prejudice grows less. In still others there have been many converts gained. On the whole, the sky is bright with hope, and there is faith that the darkest aay is past. The deputation finds more to praise than to blame, more ground for hope than for discouragement. They, as we, find that great things have been done already; they, as we, find abundant cause for thankfulness, abundant rea- . son for the faith that Christ's truth is to triumph in Japan.
CONFUCIANISM IN KOREA.
BY A KOREAN CHRISTIAN.
I approach the subject with reverence. Whatever may be the weak points of Confucianism, it has given the Korean his conception of duty and his standard of morality. My purpose is not to discuss the system from the standpoint of a philosopher-which I don't pretend to be-but as a Korean who has paid some attention to its practical results. A brief outline of the life of Confucius may not be out of place here.
He was born in 550 B. c. Loo, which was in his time a small dukedom • in Northeastern China, enjoys the honor ot being his birthplace. Even in childhood the future sage was remarkable for his sagacity, love of knowl- edge, and for filial piety. At the age of nineteen he married. From this time on we find three distinct periods in his life.
The first period extends from 530-495 B. c. During this time he trav- eled through different States in the hope of persuaiing princes to adopt his system of politics. Upright was his character, pure were his motives, wise were his plans. Notwithstanding these noble qualities, nay, on ac- count of these very qualities, he was rejected wherever he went.
The second period is from 495-482 B.C. Finding that he could not reform the princes, he devoted his time in this period to instructing his disciples, who came to him from all parts of the country. The last five years, which we may call the third period of this noble but in some re- spects sad career, were given to the revision of the classics of China. lIe died at the age of seventy-three, having survived his wife and an only son.
Confucius wrote no books of his own. He only revised and systema- tized the maxims of morality and politics handed down to him from the l!ages of ancient Chin~, His principles are set forth in the conversations his disciples collected in a book called " Discourses and Conversation."
Here we find that he was a teacher of morality and not a founder of a re- ligion. He teaches nothing about God and the future. When a disciple asked him how to serve gods or spirits, he said, " We cannot serve men ; how can we serve gods~" His answer to an inquiry about death was, " We know not what life is ; how can we know death ~"
Loyalty to the king, faithfulness to friends, conjugal fidelity and frater- nal love are inculcated as the cardinal virtues of man. Above all, filial piety is emphasized as being the root of all moral principles. The ances- tral worship every man is enjoined to observe is the result of extending filial piety to the dead rather than the outcome of any positive belief in a future state. .
I am unable to say when Confucianism was introduced into Korea.
However, the credit of having brought the ancient classics of China to Korea belongs to Choi Chi Won, who lived about seventy years B. c.
During the dynasty of Ko Rio, between 917 and 1391 A.D., Confucian- ism gave place to Buddhism. But the abuses of the latter became so bad, that the founders of the present dynasty made Confucianism the national standard of morality to the utter neglect of Buddhism.
Thus Confucianism for twenty centuries, especially for the last five hundred years, has had an unlimited sway over mind and heart of the Korean. It is noticeable that while Buddhism and Christianity are divid- ed into sects many and denominations not a few, Confucianism is practi- cally the same in all countries. The different views which scholars hold concerning certain trivial points in the system are of so little importance that very few people know or care to know anything about them. This uniformity may be due to the early and free citculation of the classics and to the significant fact that the system teaches nothing that goes beyond what is Korean and seen. On the doctrines of predestination, which as- sign a man to heaven or hell b~fore he was born, and of universalism, which maintains the final salvation of the devil himself-on such questions as these, lying beyond the definite grasp of reason, opinions naturally differ, thus giving rise to various schools. But it requires no exercise of faith to believe or deny any of Le matter-of-fact teachers of Confu- cianism.
At any rate, the system is one " ism" in Korea. Its hold on the peo- ple may be seen in the universal practice of ancestral worship, the rever- ence with which all classes speak of Confucius and his disciples, and the essential parts which Confucian principles play in the liturgies, laws, and literature of the nation.
What has Confucianism done for Korea ~ With diffidence yet convic- tion 1 dare say that it has done very little, if anything, for Korea. What Korea might have been without Confucian teachings nobody can tell. But what Korea is with them everyone well knows. Behold Korea, with her oppressed masses, her general poverty, treacherous and cruel officers, her dirt and filth, her degraded women, her blighted families-behold all this, and judge for yourselves what Confucianism has done for Korea.
That I am not irrationally prejudiced against the system I shall show by mentioning some of its glaring faults, anyone of which may injure a people who build their political or social fabric on it.
1. Confucianism enfeebles and gradually destroys the faculty of faith. It is an agnostic system. He who is imbued with its teachings finds it hard to believe in any truth beyond this material world of bread and butter.
2. Confucianism nourishes pride. It tells you that your heart is as naturally inclined to be good as the water is to seek the level. In the name of wonders, where did the first evil come from, then ~ Further, it overlooks the distinction between things moral and mental. It holds that if you are moral-that is, if you love your father and mother-you will know everything under the blue sky. It places no bounds to the human understanding, and thus makes every pedant who can repeat the classics a boundless fool, serene in the flattering contemplation that he is verily omniscient !
3. Confucianism, knowing no higher ideal than a man, is unable to produce a godly or god-like person. Its followers may be moral, but never spiritual. The tallest of them, therefore, does not stand higher than six feet or little over. On the other hand, a Christian, having God to look unto as the author and finisher of his faith, is a man all the way up, however small he may be in himself. In other words, a Confucianist begins in man and ends in man. A Christian begins in man hut ends in God. If through human imperfections a Christian fails to reach God-likeness, the possibility remains nevertheless the same.
4. Confucianism is selfish, or, rather, encourages selfishness. It never says" Go and teach," but" Come and learn." In trying to make men to keep the impossible doctrine of the mean, it makes them mean, narrow, calculating, revengeful, ever ready with specious excuses and never given to generous adventures. , 5. "nile Confucianism exalts filial piety to the position of the highest virtue, and while a Confucianist makes this very common principle hide a multitude of uncommon sins, the whole system saps the· foundation of morality and prosperity by classifying women with menials and slaves. "''ben, a year after the death of the expelled wife of Confucius, his son wept over her loss, the great sage was offended, because it was improper that a son should so long mourn over his mother's death while the father still lived! A woman, in the Confucian morality, is virtuous in proportion as she is dull.
6. Confucianism aims to make people good through legi~lation. It is true that the founders of the earliest dynasties of China were great and good men. But is it not equally true that the majority of princes of even these model dynasties abused their power? Is it not true that during the time of Confucius and of Mencius, the reigning princes were, most of
W. BURNS THOMSON, F.R.C.S.E, F.R.S.E
them, notoriously bad 1 Suppose either of these sages did find a virtuous prince who could carry out the doctrines of the ancient kings, was it at all sure that the succeeding princes would keep them up 1 It is amazing how short-sighted Confucianists seem to be, not to have seen the folly of com, mitting the moral welfare of a nation into the hands of absolute monarchs, whose surroundings and temptations were and have been notoriously unfavorable to the growth of virtues. The idea of reforming a society through the reformation of each individual of the mass seems to have never crossed their mind.
7. The hunger and thirst after office for which Confucius himself set a conspicuous example, is the source of much eVIl. Most readily do I admit that he was actuated by the purest motives to seek after office. Yet as a drunkard throws over his weakness a kind of religious sanction by quoting Paul's injunction to drink a little wine for the stomach's sake, every Confucianist who runs after office for nothing but the squeezing there is in it, sanctimoniously tells you that he is following the stcps of Confucius.
A system of ethics yielding the fruit of agnosticism, selfishness, arrogance, despotism, degradation of women, cannot be pronounced a good one. If other countries can make a better use of it, Korea is or ought to be willing enough to part with it-the sooner the bctter.-The Korean Repository.
W. BURNS THOMSON, F.R.C.S.E., F.R.S.E., MEDICAL MIS. SIONARY.
BY WILLIAM GOULD, M. D.
One of the most striking things in connection with the evangelization of the world, during the last forty years, is the steady development of medical missions. So helpful has this agency proved to the furthcrance of the Gospel, and especially as its pioneer in new fields, that year by year it is being more extensively used by the various missionary societies, and its results, under God, commend it increasingly to the whole Christian Church.
To Dr. Villiam Burns Thomson more than to any other man was it given, by God's grace, to advance this noble cause in. its early days. By personal medical mission labors in the most degraded and needy parts of Edinburgh; by advocacy with voice and pen; by efforts for the fostering and training of medical missionaries, and by the substantial support he secured for medical missions abroad, as well as in some of our large citics at home, he gave the needed impetus to the cause at a time when it was but little known, and was looked on with something of distrust and prejudice as a risky innovation on established methods.
William Burns Thomson was born at Kirriemuir, in Forfarshire, in 1821. His parents, altho not wealthy as regards worldly goods, were yct " rich in faith," and left him the goodly heritage of a holy example and many prayers. He spoke of Psalm 37: 3-7 as his mother's legacy: " Trust in, delight in, commit to, and rest in ,the Lord." While still very young his parents died within a short time of each other. He grew up and was educated under the care of his elder and only brother, a schoolmaster at Golspie, in Sutherlandshire. William showed himself clever, active, and energetic. At the age of seventeen he came out decidedly on the Lord's side, and at once lhrew himself heartily into Sunday-school work. His class, at first numbering only three, grew, till in a few years there was a school of two hundred scholars, and God blessed his efforts to the conversion of some of them. When twenty years of age, he was able, in his brother's absence, to take entire charge of his day school, and proved a very successful teacher.
After leaving Golspie he became an evangelist in the Lowlands, and the spirit in which he prosecuted this work may be seen from the remark of one who knew him well: "The ruling passion of Thomson's life was to win souls to Christ."
At the age of twenty-six he began his college career, having the Christian ministry and especially the mission field in prospect. His studies were pursued under many difficulties; but, with the energy and determination characteristic of him, he succeeded in distinguishing himself as a student. From the first he was a man of prayer and" full of faith." His favorite text was Matt. 7 : 7 : "Ask and it shall be given you; seek and ye shall find ; knock and it shall be opened unto you." An urgent need arose on one occasion for a certain sum of money which he must pay immediately. He spent the night in prayer to God for the needed help, and on the following morning he received a letter containing the exact sum required. By whose hand the Lord sent him the gift he never discovered. One of his oldest and most intimate friends, a well-known minister of the Word, thus wrote of him : "To Burns Thomson prayer was a real dealing with the Triune. He expected answers, and many came to him, and not to him alone. I am indebted to him, under God, in this connection more than to any other man, and more to him in this respect than in any other."
While students, these two were associated in Christian work among the prisoners in the Calton jail, Edinburgh, and their labors were accompanied by many tokens of the Divine blessing. Of Dr. Thomson, his colleague testified: "My dear brother's clear views of Divine truth, intense earnestness, and practical good sense eminently qualified him for this difficult work." It was while thus engaged that he was made the instrument of a gracious work of revival in one of the boarding-schools of the city. He conducted a weekly Bible class with the young ladies there, and many were awakened and converted. This was a great joy to him; and he used to say with reference to his Bible class: ' , Was it not gracious of God to give me a sight once a week of these dear, bright, girlish faces, with their pure, clear eyes, to help me in my sad, painful work in the prison g"
He was a most interesting and impressive speaker both to young and old, and his love for children made him very tender and affectionate toward them. The writer can never forget the beauty and pathos, as well as the forceful, practical lessons of an address on Psalm 23 which he gave to the pupils of a large boarding-school in London during his stay at Mildmay. The attention and interest of the young people was most marked.
A fellow-student, unskilled in Sunday-school teaching, and so disheartened by his want of success as to think of giving it up, got Mr. Thomson to take his class the following Sunday while he sat and listened. " The teaching was so telling," he said, "that the boys were kept spellbound; and the effect on me was, that I never failed again in enlisting the attention anti interest of a class. It was a model lesson for all my future."
Dr. Thomson's interest in children of the poor was touchingly responded to in the case of one of the city Arabs of Edinburgh. Relating the incident, he said: "On my way home I received a gentle tap on the arm, and turning round, saw my youug Arab friend, who said: 'I hear you're gaun awa',' and the tears filled his eyes. 'Yes,' I replied as kindly as possible, and tried to cheer him; but it would not do. He fairly broke down, and ejaculated betwixt his sobs: 'I'll hae nae freen noo to tak' care 0' me !' This exhibition was as unexpected as it was impressive. Those tears have never been forgotten. This was the first real Arab I had encountered, and I discovered that he had not only a human, but a tender heart." Later on in his difficult work among those city waifs he was encouraged by one of the most ragged-a lad about nineteen years of agewho, on going out from the Sunday morning classes, whispered into his ear: "I just wanted to tell you that Christ has been kind to my soul." The two grand lessons of his missionary life he records thus: "None too low to be beyond the Savior's care," and " None too vile to be beyond the Savior's grace."
Before he closed his double work of student and city missionary, an incident occurred iu his district visiting which entirely changed the purpose and current of his life. He had gone through the arts course of the university, with the ministry in view, and China as his field; but he was led to see that the study of medicine might be even more helpful to his future usefulness in the Lord's vineyard. A fresh study of the New Testament, with this thought in his mind, confirmed him in his purpose to enter upon a medical course. "I was amazed," he wrote, "to find medical missions on almost every page of the Gospels, and strong confirmation of them in the Epistles." He accordingly commenced his new studies, and in due time secured his medical diploma, continuing meanwhile to act as assistant chaplain in the prison. During that period he had personal dealing with thousands of souls, among whom his influence for good was very great.
His" Reminiscences" tell us: "The prolonged strain of self-support in the form of teaching, and his arduous prison duties, combined with close study, terminated, in 1856, in a severe breakdown in health." A long and complete rest became necessary, during which he was being prepared in the fire of affliction for more extended and influential service for the Master.
Dr. Thomson's first effort on behalf of medical missions was the writing and publishing of a prize essay on the subject; and he had the cheering assurance that it was helpful in showing that" the medical mission is God's way of missions. "
A feeble beginning of medical mission work in this country was made at West Port, Edinburgh, in 1853, by the opening of Ii mission dispensary. This was carried on in a very limited way for nearly five years, and then, after a brief interval, the Cowgate Medical Mission was commenced by the Edinburgh Medical Missionary Society. Toward the end of 1859 Dr. Thomson was appointed its first superintendent. His own description of the field is as follows: "My pen can give no conception of the terrible depravity, the appalling ungodliness that prevailed round that district. Sometimes on Saturday night and on Sabbath evening it was almost overwhelming. What sights and sounds! The crowds; the din and bustle; the shouting, yelling, shrieking and cursing; the pushing, rioting, quarreling, and fighting! Truly, it seemed a place WITH0U:T GOD, tho not without hope. It was for such that Jesus died. He' came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.' Publicans and sinners get into the kingdom when Pharisees are cast out."
From the first, Dr. Thomson set before himself a high ideal of what a medical missionary should be, both as to professional acquirements and spiritual qnalifications. He gave the following answer to the question " What is a medical missionary?"
1. A legally qualified medical practitioner, 2. Called of God, 3. Wholly set apart, 4. To the twofold work of healing the sick and making known the Gospel. A medical missionary, from his view, was one" called to special service on behalf of our Lord and Master; the work of winning souls to which healing is helpful as an adjunct." He was strongly opposed to medical missionaries being both doctors and ordained ministers. He believed that the medical missionary should be an evangelist and not a pastor. After his retirement from active service his interest in the cause continued unabated, and toward the close of 'his life we find him writing to brethren in the field: "I can say truthfully to all medical missionaries at hom~ and abroad, that I remember all of YOll daily in my prayers; and I watch with paternal interest the development in your hands of our blessed cause. Brethren and sisters, your soul-winning opportunities are simply marvelous, but your responsibilities are correspondingly grea~." It was to him a great joy to watch the steady increase of the work both at home and abroad, having himself been so largely instrumental in its successful development. He was very jealous for the honor of medical missions as a means of bringing glory to Jesus and salvation to men. The writer, on arriving at his field of labor in China, received a letter from Dr. Thomson, warning him against taking too many patients in hand. l~is words were these: " You are commencing work on behalf of Jesus in China. Start on the principle What I do, I shall do well. Never send home, to break our hearts, the intimation that you dealt as a medical missionary with thirty thousand. No, no. Take care, as you value your own soul, not to allow yourself to be dragged into the track of those who treat thirty thou- sand. You would get into a bustle and a whirl and feel a state of con- stant strain and irritation; and what would become of your spirituality and nearness to .Tesus g How can there be spiritual fruit if you pretend to treat thirty thousand g Oh, my dear young friend, what you do, dQ well; it is for Jesus. "
The steady expansion of the Edinburgh Medical Mission, under his care, gladdened his heart. His enthusiasm in the cause found expression in the following words: "The medical missionary's work is It grand work. If my Christian brethren in the profession knew one tithe of the joy we have in this precious service, and if Christians knew one tithe of the blessed services thus rendered by medical missions among the sunken masses, we should never need to plead any more either for money or men." Of the class of patients, Dr. Thomson wrote: "They came and sat at our feet-outcasts, infidels, and papists-and heard of salvation without money and without price." On beginning work, he had three patients the first day, and by the close of the year, 1300. The second year the number rose to 3000; the third, to 5000; and eventually to 7000. The number of his students also increased. The work was sometimes far beyond his strength. In one half year he had to conduct 226 meetmgs in addition to all his dispensary work.
It is needless to say he had his full share of trials to depress him, and at one time he resolved to leave. He wrote: "One forenoon I had just lifted my hat to go and tender my resignation to the secretary when the door-bell rang fiercely-:-an urgent case. As it lay on my way, I went with the messenger. I was surprised to find my patient at the fireside, and not in bed. She noticed an expression of astonishment pass over my face, and, bursting into tears, she exclaimed, '0 doctor, it's not my body at all ; it's my soul! '" He thus wrote of the incident: "She had been at our prayer-meeting on Sabbath evening, and the Divine Spirit had spoken to her. I found her ill great agony; but in a few days she was enabled to look to Jesus as her Substitute and Surety, and she found rest to her soul. I need hardly add I did not go to the secretary. When God was pleased to throw inquiring souls in my path, I judged it safe to turn back." And so, with renewed energy and faith, he returned to his difficult but blessed work, to see, in the years that followed, many of the most hopeless and depraved brought out of the horrible pit and the miry clay, and their feet set upon the rock Christ Jesus.
A convalescent home on a beautiful sunny slope not far from Edinburgh, secured through the help of Christian ladies in Eas~ Lothian, proved an immense boon to the poor patients. The great spiritual blessing given there was a constant joy, and led him to place the highest estimate on this branch of the work.
The Cowgate Medical Mission soon developed into a training home for medical missionary students-the first in existence. Into this part of the work Dr. Thomson threw himself with energy. His efforts on behalf of poor but deserving men were constant and generous. He was not, however, indiscriminate in his help, as the following extract from a letier to the writer, then in China, shows: "There has been much interest in spiritual matters in Edinburgh during the past year (1874). Real good has been done j but there has been a large amount of chaff. Many young men have professed an interest in divine things, and a good nuwber have s~ught to get into my institution; but I am shy. Thc idea that the life of a Christian is a life of self-sacrifice does not stand out sufficiently in their minds. It is a great joy to me to hand a staff to a struggling young pilgrim to facilitate his progress Zionward j but I don't think it is wise to rush up to a youth the moment he makes a profession of Christ, and press on his acceptance a pair of crutches to save him from using his legs. My institution shall never be a factory of crutches. "
He took great interest in the question of missionary nurses. On the eve of sending one whom he had trained to Nazareth, and of beginning the training of auother for Madagascar, he wrote: "This is a matter of great interest to me. See the Sisters of Charity, what good they do ; and why should not our sisters in Jesus get into harness g I pray the Lord may expand the scheme."
In the medical training of ladies for foreign service he also took an active part. In 1875 he wrote: "I have been much interested in my work this winter in being privileged to break ground in a new department -viz., the training of ladies for medical missionary work. I hope to devote more time to this important matter." In the case of those who were young and well educated he urged a full medical course, but those more matured in age he took up for a training of one or two years. After circumstances had arisen to cause his separation from the Edinburgh Medical Missionary Society, he carried on a medical mission in the Canongate. Here he opened a small hospital, which he used for the benefit of the ladies in trammg. Two of them, altho only partialiy trained, did a noble work of healing and teaching in India, and were the means of blessing to mauy thousands of the women of that land.
There are now several magazines issued in the interests of medical missions throughout the world, but in this important department of service Dr. Thomson was the pioneer. His first effort WaS in the form of a lithograph sheet, begun in 1864 and carried on for one year. This was followed by a printed monthly, the Medical Missionary Journal, which for years was most valuable in disseminating information from all parts of the mission field where medical missionaries were then working, and was a happy means of linking the workers with each other and of cheering them· in their various spheres. In 1868 he wrote of it thus: "Its beginning was small indeed, and its pretensions humble; but its influence has not been small. The circulation increases, and it moves in a most precious circle of living Christianity, and it promises to be a real power on behalf of our noble cause. You know that our work is not known, and you yourself are suffering from the effects of that-no man for your new mission. As the cause has been made known men have increased; the number of our students has increased, and we are beginning to get them of a better stamp. Now, it appears to me that each medical missionary has two responsibilities upon him-his own special mission and the medical mission cause. This great work can only be commended by us who are in harness, and we can only commend it by making known what through the Divine goodness we are enabled to accomplish. The Journal is becoming a real power, and I am anxious to bespeak your prayerful assistance."
For twenty years Dr. Thomson carried on his work in Edinburgh with energy, devotion, and success. He gloried in his calling, which he considered the noblest any man could engage in, seeing that it followed so closely the teaching and example of the Savior Himself, who went about " preaching the Gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people." The main foundations of the great work which the Edinburgh Medical Missionary SOCiety has built up so successfnlly were, under God, laid by Dr. Thomson.
His deeply interesting memoir of Dr. Elmslie, the first medical missionary to Cashmere, has been helpful to many; and an address delivered by Dr. Thomson was largely the means of leading the late Mr. Mackay, of Uganda, to decide for the mission field. In addition to his ordinary duties, Dr. Thomson undertook the entire financial responsibility of the first medical mission to Madagascar in charge of Dr. Davidson, a mission which exerted an enormous influence for good in that interesting island. The medical missions also in Nazareth, Travancore, and Bombay owed much to his special efforts.
The last ten or twelve years of Dr. Thomson's life were spent at Mildmay, London, where, according to his strength, he still served the medical mission cause. While in London he was Chairman of the Medical Missionary Association, of which Dr. Maxwell is the able and devoted secretary. Dr. Thomson's remaining years were given chiefly to the biblical instruction of the deaconesses at Mildmay. His expositions of Scripture at morning prayers were greatly valued. He had a quaintly original way of putting the truth, and practical lessons for the daily life flashed out from the W 01'(1 under his deeply spiritual treatment of it.
THE SPIRITUAL OUTFIT' OF THE MEDICAL MISSIONARY
As a wise friend and counselor he was in constant request j and if any of the workers at Mildmay were in perplexity or trouble about either a point of doctrine or practice, it seemed the most natural thing to consult the doctor. Seldom did anyone come away from him without a lightened heart. Many a difficulty vanished before his judicious appeal to God's Word and earnest intercession at the throne of grace. He often thanked God for His goodness in giving him such a congenial niche as " dear Mildmay" for the sphere of his closing years, and greatly valued the opportunity it gave him for the quiet study of his Bible.
When both. Mrs. Pennefather and he were prevented, through weakness, frem going to the house of God on the Lord's Day, Dr. Thomson was in the habit of spending an hour with the" elect lady," as he delight. ed to call her, over God's word, praying for others and talking sweetly of "the way." Within a few months of each other they entered into the rest of the eternal Sabbath.
For the last thirty years, during which it was our privilege to enjoy his friendship, we found him unfailing in his kindness. Tho possessed of a keen temperament, yet he had a most loving and tender spirit. His love for children was great j and, having none of his own, he lavished his affection on the children of his friends.
Delicate from his youth, Dr. Thomson, humanly speaking, could hardly have. reached the advanced age he did but for the constant, tender, watchful care of his devoted wife. In helping to prolong so useful a life, she did a great service to the canse of Christ.
On April 29th, 1893, at the ripe age of seventy-two, he " fell asleep" at Bournemouth, where Mrs. Thomson and he had spent the winter. In the cemetery there his remains are laid, in the sure hope of a blessed resurrection.
THE SPIRITUAL OUTFIT OF THE MEDICAL MISSIONARY.
BY W. J. WANLESS, M.D., MIRAJ, INDIA.
That a medical missionary should be a man having a sound body, a good general education, together with approved and thorough training in medicine and surgery, ought to go without saying. This equipment, while it is to be the instrument of his chosen profession, and for this reason should always be efficient, and the more so since he is likely to be far from a consultant and without the aid of a trained staff of assistants, such as hospital physicians are accustomed to at home, nevertheless it is but an instrument, and should therefore always subserve the greatest aim of his missionary career-the salvation of souls. The highest medical qualifications should always be encouraged and never underestimated, albeit the spi.ritual are the more important. In every detail of the medical missionary's work, from the dispensing of the simplest dose to the performing of the most serious operation, he should never lose sight of the fact that he is "first a missionary, and secondly a physician;" that the work of healing the body, both in obedience to Christ's command and after His own example, becomes the more Christlike only as it sen'es to point new men to Him as the Great Physician of souls. The Pharisee and the Levite were so impressed with the spiritual as to forget the physical. In our day, in some instances of magnificent and elaborately furnished hospitals and great charitable dispensaries, this relation seems to be reversed.
It is perfectly possible to be so all absorbed in the salvation of the soul as to forget the cure of the body, the dwelling-place of thc soul and the temple of God's spirit. On the other hand, it is equally possible, if not more so, to be so engrossed with the cure of the body as to fail in supplying the need of the soul.
Christ's is the example we are to follow. The ethics of His practice were the only true ethics. As He was so are we in the world. His works spoke of His Divine power and mission, proving the truth of His claim that God the Father had sent Him into the world. Ours are to speak of the Divine character of our mission by obedience to the command of its Divine Founder to "heal the sick and preach the Gospel," and to prove the claim that Christ, the Son of God and Savior of the world, has sent us into the world, and that His message of salvation to a lost world is the only true message from God to the world.
To thus represent Christ in the work of medical missio~s and with this end only in view, the medical missionary should be, First of all, a man furnished in the Scriptures. As Christ was furnished and taught in the Scriptures, so it should be the aim of the medical volunteer to imitate Him. Medical text-books and journals, while they will furnish him with the progress of his art as a healer, thus enabling him to do his best for the bodies of his patients, his Bible alone can supply him with information as to the progress of God's grace in his own soul, giving him at the same time the spiritual nourishment necessary for the souls of tho!le whom he is to teach as well as to heal. His work for souls will often include preaching. tho it will chiefly consist of teaching. The sword of the Spirit, as contained in a knowledge of God's Vord, will furnish his most efficient weapon. He needs to know the Bible, first, for the sake of its influence upon his own life; and, secondly, because of its influence upon his patients. He should possess such a real love for the Scriptures before leaving home as will ensure systematic daily study after he reaches the field. Just in the measure that he neglects his Bible, even in the midst of the most arduous and exacting toil on behalf of the sick, in that measure will his own life lose the sweet attractiveness by which he is to shine for Christ, and by which also lle is to win those to whom he ministers for Christ. I feel that I cannot too strongly urge the training of a systematic and prayerful study of the Bible at horne, and the absolute necessity of a persistent continuance of this upon the field. I speak from a trying and instructive experience. Let every medical missionary be able to rightly divide the word of truth, thereby declaring his apprenticeship as a workman approved of God.
Study the Bible until you dearly love it, and afterward because you do so love it.
Second. He should be a man full oj the Holy Ghost.-In saving souls, the power of healing medicine and the power of the relieving knife will be but the power of the Spirit behind the drug and the power of the Spirit behind the operation, if these are used by a man who himself is filled with the Spirit. It is a significant fact that the apostle chosen by the Holy Ghost to write the record of the Holy Ghost's work was Luke, the "Beloved Physician." Luke, too, is the only apostle who quotes from the Old Testament (lsa. 61 : 1), the Lord's anointing by the Spirit for His ministry of preaching and healing (Luke 4 : 18). It is, therefore, not surprising that Luke was the medical companion of the first great missionary to the Gentiles. In the medical mission we dispense medicines and perform operations looking for physical results in obedience to the laws of nature and science, but for spiritual results as the outcome of the physical relief thus secured, we must depend solely upon the power of the indwelling and anointing Spirit in our own lives, and the quickening and converting Spirit in the hearts of our patients. The ministry of healing is but a department of the Church's work referred to in Acts 6 : 1, yet only men full of the Holy Ghost were chosen for the serving of tables. Among the chosen was the elder Stephen, whose very face shone for Christ under the influence of the Holy Ghost as he sealed his testimony for Him with his life. Philip, too, constrained by the same fulness of the Spirit, was among the first to carry the glad tidings into Samaria, so that great joy resulted from his testimony as healer and preacher; and ill obedience to the same voice, we are told, that he " ran" to the personal work of saving an individual Ethiopian eunuch. If in the ministry of "serving tables" only men full of the Holy Ghost were selected, then certainly the ministry of healing men of like spirit should be separated.
Third. fIe should be a man of fervent faithful prayer.-The work of a medical missionary is tremendously exacting, and his responsibility sensibly extreme. Over-anxiety for successful physical results, together with increasing interest in the practiee of medicine, in addition to the deadening influences of a surrounding heathenism, unless guarded by persistent passionate prayer and regular Bible study, will inevitably serve to drIve the physician from Christ rather than to drive him to Christ.
It has always been our practice in our daily clinics and at the bedside in India to invoke God's blessing in the presence of the heathen upon the treatment undertaken for the relief of their physical diseases, as well as for the cure of their spiritual maladie8. This has not been without its influence upon our patients, while it has sanctified both the work and ourselves. The missionary physician should be pre-eminently a man of prayer. No operation should be undertaken or no medicines prescribed without first seeking God's blessing upon the remedy used in effecting a spiritual as well as a ppysical cure. Importunate faithful prayer was the secret of Dr. Kenneth McKenzie's success in China, both as regards the wonderful cures wrought and souls saved as the result of his medical work. Faithful prayer in a physician who uses means is to some persons incongruous. It could not have been so with the physician Luke, for he uses the word faith or its equivalent some nineteen times in his Gospel, and fifty times in the Acts. It is not without faith that a fracture is set, splints applied, and with God's blessing a cure expected. It is more than faith, it is faith and works, it is showing faith by works. It requires often thorough dependence upon God to undertake the treatment of patients whose condition at the outset seems well-nigh hopeless. How often, too, have medical missionaries undertaken the most serious operations when far separated from any human consultant, and under conditions wholly incompatible with success, and yet with simple trust in God for His blessing upon the means employed, he has attempted that which for his work's sake and reputation he would not have otherwise touched!
How often, too, while performing a serious operation, medical missionaries have found themselves in positions of critical responsibility-responsibility which without previous prayer for God's aid, and without trust in Him as the Healer, believing the operator and operation to he but God's means to save the body, such responsibility would not have been undertaken. This has not infrequently been my own experience, and I have never found God fail when I have thus undertaken for Him and in His name and strength. We may use means, and at the same time be full of faith. God has chosen means-the foolishness of preaching-to save them that believe. 'Ve have no right to expect God to save the heathen until we go and declare His salvation. Our going-God's means to save the heathen-does not displace our faith, but rather enhances it. God does not do for us what we can do for ourselves. He does not feed us, tho He provides the food. Food can only nourish us when we take it internally. God has given us the science of medicine, He furnishes the remedies, we are to use them. The unsaved without prayer may and do use them with profit, we may and ought to use them with prayer and greater profit, since ours is the realm of the spiritual as well as the physical cure.
The missionary physician should be a man of prayer, especially for the salvation of his patients. The salvation of each patient, especially those regularly taught in the hospital, should be always a subject of special and prevailing importunity. All who receive the physical benefits may not be ready to accept the spiritual truth of our teaching. Thus it was with our Savior; still our prayers should follow them to their homes and efforts be made subsequently to ascertain the result by going or sending to them in their homes. The knowledge of any thus brought to Christ will always stimulate further intercession for others. Let the medical missionary he a graduate of Christ's school of prayer.
Fourth..He should possess a passion jar souls.-The man who has never enjoyed the luxury of winning a soul to Christ in his own tongue can scarcely be expected to enjoy the work of bringing one to Christ in a foreign. How often we hear the expressions, "passionately fond of his profession," " fond of surgery," "his specialty," and thus it should be. The man out of harmony with his profession is out of harmony with success. The medical volunteer should be, first 'of all, a specialist in saving souls. His department should be the department of spiritual cure, while it embraces the department of physical relief. His cure is " the double cure." He shall be passionately fond of soul saving as well as health saving. 'While his general practice will be upon the bodies of men, his special effort should be upon their souls. To this end his heart and life should be in loving sympathy with the great heart of the Great Physician. He should haye a yearning solicitude for the souls of the lost. In the clinic room and at the bedside his cfforts for the physical welfare of his patients should always furnish occasion for a saving remark, a Scripture reference or exhortation. A word thus spoken will often create in a mau concern for his own sah'ation, since he will see that the physician desires not only his physical, hut his spiritual good as well, and a word in season spoken by the physician himself wiII be accompanied Ly far greater influence and will receive a much more kindly reception than when spoken by anyone-be he ever so sincere-who is not concerned in the medical treatment. No assistant, foreign minister, or native evangelist can ever take the physician's place in his relation to the salvation of his patient. It is his chief privilege to point the sufferer to the suffering Savior. His earnest solicitation for his patient should be as Paul's was for his brethren, "that they may be saved." Christ came to heal the sick, His great work was to save the lost. His healing miracles resulted in saving miracles. A heart in line with the heart of Jesus and in harmony with His life is the best guarantee of a successful soul-winner. Seek to be like Him as a soul-saver.
Fifth. He should be a man possessing a patient disposition together with a persevering spirit.-The medical profession, above all professions, is one requiring gentleness, and in no physician is it more necessary than in the missionary physician. A missionary's life, in order to be a drawing power, must ever stand out in contrast. to the heathen who surround him. The heathen cannot always read the missionary's book, but they will never fail to read his life. The medical missionary comes into the closest possible contact with the people, who will have abundant opportunity to judge not only his work, but llimself. His healing touch will serve to adorn his teaching life only as the two are in perfect sympathy. Gentleness should characterize every manipulation and tenderness every solicitation. These are desirable in any physician, but necessary in the missionary physician, since they are to subserve a hIgher aim than the care of the body merely.
Patience, too, if a virtue at home, is doubly so on the foreign field. Here we are accustomed to lengthy strides and rapid speed, there to the slowest kind of progress and motion. Slow pace customs and exasperat- ing procrastinations are real trials to the Westerner; these are more or less the concern of every missionary, but especially of the medical missionary, since the progress of medical science is among the slowest processes of Eastern countries. The missionary physician has generally to begin his work under the most unsatisfactory surroundings. His dispensary at first may be his own house, his operating room a bath·room, his hospital a mud hut without windows, ventilation, or even beds. Such was the writer's own experience. For three years he had nothing better, tho he is thankful now for a hospital approaching Western cleanliness, and the satisfaction of being able to see his patient without the aid of a lamp in the day-time. The medical missionary is constantly hampered at first by native prejudice against the use of foreign medicines, the lack of appreciation among his patients of sanitary laws, the necessity of regulated diet, and the adherence to written or verbal directions regarding medicines. At Miraj patient~ at first refused our medicines, because they contained water. In a case of cholera or small-pox their house would have double the regular number of residents and visitors, and the discharges often spilled about the floor. Advice to eat little or nothing before an operation would be disregarded, and a full meal taken on the subsequent plea of strength necessary for the operation. Doses to be taken three times a day would be omitted in the morning and at noon, and all taken in a single dose at night, or the whole bottle swallowed with injurious if not fatal effect, on the ground of the sooner taken the sooner cured. Refusal to accept advice, especially that of urgent operations, is always a source of discouragement. These are difficulties, and many others might be enumerated which the newly arrived medical missionary will have to contend with. They are not unsurmountable, tho they arc often of the most trying nature. Christlike patience and prayerful perseverance will be necessary to overcome them, but with the victory of conquering them there will be victory over self, the chief enemy, and glory to Christ, by the effect produced upon the spiritual and physical welfare of those in whose behalf the victory has been won.
Dr. McKay, of Formosa, had to plead with his first hospital patient to enter his hospital, and he pried out the first tooth of a Chinese with a bit of a whittled stick. His hospital has since had hundreds of in-patients, and in fourteen years he has extracted 21,000 teeth. It was with the greatest difficulty that the writer could get his first case of decayed tooth submit to extraction, owing to the common superstition that to lose a tooth by having it drawn is to lose the sight also; but this objection is scarcely ever raised now, and the writer has extracted scores of teeth.
ABOUT FOREIGN HOSPITALS AND DISPENSARmS
The medical missionary has need of enduring patience. This is a grace which while a student he should assiduously cultivate at home. If he does not possess it here, he is most unlikely to grow in it there in a trying and ever-irritating climate and among an ever-provoking people. Let him prayerfully and studiously cultivate these gifts at home, blessing God for such opportunities as will make him more Christlike in this regard while a volunteer in drill service, in order that when he may reach the enemy's ground and the field of action, he may in everything effectually obey the commands and imitate the example of the Captain of his salvation and the Great Leader of his medical corps.
ABOUT FOREIGN HOSPITALS AND DISPENSARIES.
BY V. F. P.
Christ Himself is our authority for medical mISSIon work. "When from captivity the forerunner sent to Christ two of his disciples to know could this be He for whom he had prepared the way, " Art Thou He that should come, or look we for another? Then Jesus amnvering said unto them, Go your way, and tell John what things ye have seen and heard; bow that the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, to the poor the Gospel is preached."
At Iehowfu, Shantung Province, China, at the Prm:;byterian hospital, you can read, in Chinese, this sign given by a former patient: "The recipient of this is able both in his own country and in China to bring life out of death, even as does the springtime." Truly all the curative powers Christ posgessed are ascribed to our medical missionaries by those who have experienced their skill.
In each Christless land we see malpractice, butchery, horrors too great to even quietly read of; aud while here we have one physician to 650 people, we have sent but one to 2,500,000, or less than four hundred doctors fo; one billion people. Of these 202 are British, and 90 are women.
There are 40,000,000 women in the zenanas of India alone who can only be reached by women. Do you not remember the medical missionary called to prescribe for one of these purdah ladies? A hand was thrust through a curtain and a tongue, but neither indicated to him aught but health. "Do you think," said her husband, " I would permit my wife to be touched? It was asIave who acted as proxy."
In Africa 75,000,000 are utterly "unsought by any missionary." From all the Christian nations of the" earth about one hundred medical missiollaries have" gone for the 400,000,000 of China, and there the rate of mortality is so great, owing to absolute lack of sanitary knowledge, and even the most ordinary, common-sense treatment of all ailments, that the death-rate is 33,000 daily. No wonder" a million a month in ChiMa are dying without God."
Henry Morrison, who went to China from England in 1805, was a doctor, tho he is best known by his translation of the Bible, etc. China was "opened to the Gospel at the point of the lancet," by Dr. Peter Parker, who began his wclrk under the American Board in 1834. His hospital, at Canton, has continued, being now under the care of Dr. J. C. Kerr, one of the finest surgeons in the world, of the American Presbyterian Church, North. There are now sixty hospitals and fifty dispensaries in this vast land, "but what are they among so many ~"
In 1838 Dr. Parker started the Medical Mission Society, to encourage the Chinese to practise Western methods, and now in connection with each hospital is a training school. To him we must give credit for the Edinburgh Medical Mission Society, whose graduates are in many lands, for it was owing to Dr. Parker's influence and experience the thought of this society was suggested as he was returning home via England, in 1841. Dr. Kerr says that to the influence of medical missions in heathen lands we owe our medical missions in Christian lands, our denominational hospitals, etc.
Of the forty-two societies at work, the American Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, of the North and South, the Congregationalists, Episcopalians, Dutch Reformed, Woman's Union Mission, and Canadian churches have established the Chinese hospitals and dispensaries together with the English Church Missionary Society, London Missionary Society, Presbyterian, United, and Irish Presby1erian, and China Inland Mission. At Canton a boat, under Rev. A. A. Fulton and a medical assistant, renders great aid by touring. A few American Presbyteriau Christian Endeavorers support this. Dispensaries alone are insufficient, for" indeed the universal opinion of those in the work seems to be that the value and cfficiency of their work is in direct proportion to the presence or absence of a hospital." " Even itinerating work is of less value," says Dr. Sims. From a thousand miles away a patient has been known to come, as at Moukden, Manchuria, whither one patient was attracted by a cure of seven years previous. At Madura the American Board hospital iu one year had patients from 216 villages.
Should not all missionary work be purely and chiefly preaching the Gospel ~ Let Dr. Peter Parker himself give reply: "I have no hesitation in expressing it as my solemn conviction, that as yet no medium of contact and of bringing the people under the sound of the Gospel and within the influence of other means of grace can compare with the facilities afforded by medical missionary operations." Witness the results: churches built in new stations because of converts from hospital instrnction, whole villages brought to Christ by means of single converts. At the Canton Hospital, already alluded to, one very ill woman heard of Christ, and learned to love Him. "Doctor, how long can I live if I stay in the hospital~" she asked. "Four months," was the reply. "And how long if I go home?" "Two months." "I am going home." "But you will lose half your life." "Do you not think I would be glad to give half my life for the sake of telling my people of Christ's love ?" And she went home.
Our Christian physicians are telling of Christ to the thronging multitudes in hospital and dispensary. Prescriptions have Bible verses printed on them, in three languages where needed. Powders are often put in envelopes wit~ Bible verses thereon. ·While awaiting the doctor, a Bible reader or missionary tells of the Great Physician. Some medical missionaries hold services before attending to the physical needs. " Oh, I must tell of Christ," said a medieal missionary from Siam to me.
But the cost? That same Canton hospital, in 1888, for its entire support, cost but as much as would eudow two beds in St. Luke's Hospital, New York. The Chinese Medical Mission Society attends to all its expenses except Dr. Kerr's salary. There are, sooner or later, many rich patients who gladly pay, and pay well; who have built hospitals themselves, as did Li Hung Chang at Tientsin, after his wife was cured by American medical missionaries. Self-support is the aim; but even should years pass before the income equals the cost, the thousands that hear of Christ at dispensary and hospital are well worth t,he pittance paid. From many medical missionaries come large receipts to their boards. (Of every dollar given, we are speuding 50 cents for our own church work, 48 cents for the rest of America, and 2 cents for all the rest of the world. Is that a fair proportion? Does it permit much medical work ?) Surely their own medical practice suits their own needs. Do you truly think the two hundred boiled spiders eaten by one sick Chinese girl or the serpent's eggs next prescribed could do her. good? She grew steadily worse, till at last she went to the foreign hospital. " This has so many ingredients it will cure anything," was the remark of a Chinese physician to a friend of mine as he handed her a prescription, in which, among its twenty-five components, I was most struck by a centipede, a scorpion, a horned toad, and a beetle. Do you think a sign makes a real doctor? Is not some knowledge of anatomy necessary? Is not surgical aid often indispensable? Would you like to be relieved of a pain by having a long needle thrust in opposite the aching part? One woman in China had one thrust into the interior of her ear to cure a headache. " Of course the tympanum was destroyed." Another patient lost his eye by this process of cure. Even little babies are stuck all over with red-hot needles, till not an inch of unpunctured skin remains. That old lady near Peking who had bricks piled on her broken leg for six months, to cure it and keep down the swelling, was finally persuaded to seek the American Board hospital, where she not only learned no evil, but at last" drank of the heavenly spring." There are many unutterable horrors that sicken one even to think of. You can read of them elsewhere if you need more details. Women need women physicians, so rigid is Chinese etiquette.
Formosa was largely opened by medical work. Dr. Mackay's hospital there (Canadlan Presbyterian) is doing marvelous work. His recent book, " In Far Formosa," brings vividly before us the life and the needs.
Japan is said to no longer need medical missions. Dr. Wallace Taylor says, "It occupies much the same place here that benevolent medical work in the United States does, being largely humanitarian." In 1892 he individually treated and exerted an influence over 2500 persons, many of them from distant and widely scattered places in the south and west of the empire, nearly 13,000 consultations, with his assistants, all Ch.;stian men, 3500 patients and over 21,000 consultations. The hospital and dispensary at Osaka and Kobe have certainly done good, also the hospital and dispensary at Kyoto, these being Congregational. Tokio has a missionary hospital also. Dr. HepbUl.1ll, American Presbyterian, in 1862 started medical work, and his name to-day is a synonym for philanthropy.
Korea was opened to the Gospel by Dr. N. H. Allen, American Presbyterian. It is truly one of the romances of missions. He was there at the American Legation, no one knowing he was a missionary, for all Christianity was prohibited. In 1882, during a riot at Seoul, the king's nephew, Min Yong Ik, was wounded. Dr. Allen's bravery in crossing the city alone at night to bring medical and surgical aid (the Korean doctors used wax to stop the wounds) won over king and people. The king built the first hospital, Dr. Allen being given charge "with permission to 'preach,' as well as 'heal. ' Soon he was earning $5000 a year, which he turned over to his board." This board now has three hospitals and some dispensaries, and the Methodists one hospital and " several" dispensaries.
The same kind of medical horrors may be found in Korea, with variations, such as a daughter making broth for her sick father from one of her own hands. Deeds like this are highly esteemed. Knowledge is unnecessary here also of anatomy, physiology, surgery, medicine.
Siam was also opened by medical mission work. Dr. Karl Gutslaff, of the Netherlands Missionary Society, in 1828 first visited Siam, remaining there three years. Dr. Bradley, of the American Board, and Dr. House, of the Presbyterian, "were, however, the principal medical pioneers, and for their sakes missionary work was not only tolerated, but encouraged." Only the Presbyterians are at work now for Siam, but the work of medical missions goes on, encouraged by the king, who has given land and thousands of dollars for hospital work. Three hospitals and six dispensaries are in operation in Siam and Laos.
Native practitioners herQ are as deficient in knowledge as in China. The Siamese think the human body composed of elements divided into two classes-the visible and the invisible. The bones, flesh, blood, etc., belong to the former, the wind and fire to the latter. The external elements acting on the bodily elements cause health and disease, as dropsy, caused by too much water being absorbed iuto the body during the wet season. Spirits have great power. To cure lockjaw, the prescription runs : Portions of the jaws of a wild hog, a tame hog, and a goat; of a goosebone, peacock-bone, tail of a fish, head of a venomous snake.
Until lately, in the Petchaburee hospital there were but two or three beds or trestles, spread with grass, with a small cotton pIllow. With a train of relatives the patient would come, and they ministered to him by giving him whatever he fancied. Dr. Toy has been mtroducing iron bedsteads made of tubing, cotton mattresses, pillows, and towels. Twentyfive dollars fit a ward for two persons. A kitchen is contemplated that the sick diet may be controlled.
Do you smile at such a pitiful, petty hospital ~ " Friends, we furnish just what you enable us to," I heard the president of a mission board say at a recent annual meeting. Have you yourself ever helped this medical mission work ~ What did you do for it last year? What will you do now ~ Knowledge brings responsibility. "Your money and your life" is now the need.
Hunt up facts in our mission magazines. Scarcely a number but narrates incidents from this Christ-like medical work. One nobleman, who many years before when in Bangkok had received a Siamese Gospel, came to a Laos missionary asking to be healed, for " Christ healed men, and you preach Christ."
The Malay peninsula and archipelago, with 27,000,000 people, have small medical attention. At Singapore is a medical missionary of the Methodist Episcopal Church, North. In Malaysia, Java, Borneo, Celebes, the Philippine Islands, I find some medical work, but no records of any hospitals. Do you know of any ~ Fiji has medical work, also Madeira, New Zealand, and the Sandwich Islands.
Anam, with 12,000,000, and an area equal to New York, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota, has no Christian help whatever. Nepaul,5,500,000, is in the same destitute state. Burmah and Assam have a few doctors. The American Baptists have two hospitals and two dispensaries in Burmah.
The English owe their present supremacy in India to Dr. Gabriel Bought.on, who, curing the burns of a princess of the court of the Great Mogul in 1636, asked as his only reward the privilege of trade with India for his countrymen. The Danes, the first missionaries to India, sent medical missionary aid to Tranquebar and Madras missions in 1730-32. Carey had been six years in India before there was a single convert. Dr. Thomas, formerly a civil physician, returning to England to press the medical needs, had been sent out with Carey as medical missionary. After six years, a carpenter being hurt, Dr. Thomas cured him and Krishna Pal, the carpenter, the first Hindu convert, was baptized. Dr. John Scudder, of the American Board, began work in Ceylon, afterward removing to Madras, in 1819, the first American medical mis- sionary. To India was also sent the first woman medical missionary from any land, the American Methodists sending, in 1869, Miss Swain to BareiIIy. The first medical mission class for women was begun in 1869 at Nynee Tal by the same board. There now are in India and Ceylon 48 hospitals and 87 dispensaries, 87 men and 50 women medical missionaries, sent out by the 65 missionary societies at work there.
But does India need medical missionaries since the British Government has rule and the Lady Dufferin work goes on? (This association is philanthropic; its employees are pledged not to interfere in any way with the religious beliefs of the patients, but it depends largely on "Christian women, for only girls educated in the various mission schools were found prepared to avail themselves of the opportunity offered.") Perhaps Dr. ·Wanless, of Miraj, can answer that as well as any one. From his" Medical Mission Work in India" I cnll a few facts: "There are thousands of villages in India, varying from 1000 to 10,000, where it is quite impossible to secure aid except from the native quacks. In the most thickly populated district in India less than 5 per cent of the people live within five miles of an educated physician, native or foreign. It is doubtful if 2 per cent live within twenty-five miles of a European physician, much less a missionary physician." (We usually fail to realize that in India's comparatively small area one sixth of the world lives.) Dr. Wanless also says that caste hinders the state work, where no religious influence is permitted. The doctor will be unwilling even to touch the pulse of an outcaste. Vithout any idea of the nature of his disease, a prescription will be written, and even the medicine will vary according to the patient's ability to fee the doctor, who is himself a salaried officer.
Having no hospital in which to practise surgery on his arrival in India, Dr. Wanless sent a man with acute mortification, requiring immediate amputation of the leg, to the State dispensary, which had six beds, all unoccupied at that time. A note to the doctor in charge stated the case, offering his services if required. Being low-caste, the man was put on the floor, the leg was amputated, but below the point to which the disease had extended-a bloodless amputation, and nothing whatever was done for his relief. He actually" rotted to death " upon the floor.
No wonder snch an incident compelled Dr. Wanless to do all possible to secure a proper hospital, and now for but $50 a bed is supported for a year in it, one sixth the cost of a bed here and but one third the cost of the cheapest government hospital in India.
Of conrse the people unanimously seek foreign medical help 1 Oh, no, not even yet, for the Hindu Shastras " teach that any person rejecting the services of the hakim, or native physician, in the time of sickness will, if the disease prove fatal, suffer inconceivable misery in the next world; whereas if the hakim be employed, and all the prescribed rites duly performed, then the patient will assuredly be happy in the future state, even should he not be able to see the Ganges in his dying moments." (Dr. John Lowe, F.R.S.C.E.) A husband let his young wife die rather than break caste by taking medicine from a woman medical missionary. And horrible as well as foolish are the practices of the hakims. Charms, incantations, doses of putrid Ganges water, the fumes of charcoal fires, are the least of the many evils they practise.
But the women-oh, the women, their woes are unutterable! Women of the East, "unwelcome at birth, untaught in childhood, unchenshed in widowhood, unprotected in old age, unlamented when dead," what have been the tortures you have undergone g Surely the Inquisition at its worst has caused no greater. A paper, an appeal for English redress from physicians in India, was shown me a year ago, revealing such depths of women's woes and sufferings, utterly unspeakable, that even yet the bare recollection makes me shudder. And such sufferings are daily, hourly, each moment going on, not only in India, but in all those lands where Christ is yet unknown. The knowledge of the Great Physician shows the " healing in His wings."
Afghanistan and Beluchistan for their 3,500,000 have two hospitals, a dispensary, and itinerating medical work-Church Missionary Society. During the Afghan war" the only one who could remain among the wild and fierce Wuziris without losing his life was Rev. John Williams," a physician of this society, whom they had learned to regard as their friend because of his medical work among them.
Mongolia, Eastern Turkestan, Thibet, 15,000,000 have no records of hospitals. You travel 3000 miles from Teheran, Persia, till you reach in China the first mission station, Bathay. Russia in Asia has 16,000,000 with but a debased priesthood, and where are the records of any hospitals g Imagine yourself a missionary at one of our many mission stations without a physician. A mother, a missionary at one such place in Western Asia, found hilr two little children ill. One died. She then took the living child and journeyed six days to the nearest doctor. "Too late," he said. She turned and journeyed back. The second day that child also died, and the rest of her way she traveled with her dead child in her arms.
" My brethren, these things ought not so to be." In Persia, an area equal to France, Austria, Spain, and Italy, there are three societies at work, the American Presbyterian, the English Church Missionary Society, and the Archbishop'S Mission. The first has medical missions, three hospitals, a small room so used, and ten dispensaries, all doing such a noble work it is marvelous there are but these. After you leave the Teheran hospital you travel in Persia fifty-seven days, and not a missionary of any kind can you find. Mrs. L. S. Bainbridge says that here "Sickness is generally considered the punishment of God for sins j so all who are diseased or are suffering from infirmIties are esteemed as criminals, and are to a large extent so treated. The people are very superstitious, and are much gIven to the wearing of amulets."
Native physicians are numerous and inefficient, knowing nothing of anatomy, physiology, pathology, and chemistry. They believe all foods to be healmg or cooling; thus the meat of a hen is heating and injurious in fevers j a rooster IS cooling, and soup therefrom good for febrile disorders. Sheep is heating, goat cooling. "The water of watermelons is constantly giyen in large quantities in all inflammatory disorders."
Dr. Asahel Grant, writing of his work in Pemia, says: "As I have witnessed the relief of hitherto hopeless sufferers, and seen their gratefnl attempts to kiss my feet, and my very shoes at the door, both of which they would literally bathe with tears, especially as I haye seen the haughty Moolah stoop to kiss the border of the despised Christian's garment, thanking God that I would not refuse medicine to a Moslem, and others saying that in every prayer they thank God for my coming, I have felt that even before I could teach our religion I was doing something to reco,mmend it and break down prejudices, and wished that more of my professional brethren might share in the luxury of doing such wor:ir for Christ. "
The Church of Christ is surely asleep. In America we spend for our 68,000,000 people $80,000,000 a year, and for all the rest of the needy, sin-sick, suffering world, all our denominations are giving but $5,500,000. No wonder we have so few dispensaries and hospitals and medical missionaries, YET AS MUCH MONEY IS SPENT HERE IN TWENTY- SEVEN DAYS FOR LIQUOH, OR PUFFED AWAY IN TOBACCO SMOKE IN FIFTY-FOUR DAYS, "AS HAS BEEN SPENT IN EIGHTY YEARS TO REDEEM SOULS DYING IN HEATHENISM AT THE RATE OF A SOUL A SECOND." It .would take four years to raise as much money for missions as is spent here yearly on chewinggum.
Syria is better supplied with medical helps than any other of our foreign fields, yet nowhere is the need greater, because it is the only form of work that can break down the Mohammedan fortifications of superstition and prejudice. Thirteen hospitals and several dispensaries are under the Free Church of Scotland, English Medical Mission to the Jews, the Church Missionary Society, London Society for Propagation of Christianity among the Jews, Canadian Presbyt~l'ian Mission to the Jews, Moravians, Jaffa English 1fission, Prussian Sisters, American Presbyterians, and Friends Medical Mission to the Armenians, while the Mildmay Mission, Edinburgh Medical Mission Society, American Friends Mission, make up a total of thirteen societies working for the medical aid of Syria, and in Turkey at Constantinople and a few other places a few hospitals and dispensaries are giving forth " light and life." At Beirut trained native physicians are going forth from all Mohammedan regions to all such places from the medical department of the Presbyterian college. The annual report with its list of undergraduates and alumni is most impressive and hopeful.
Moslem lands indeed need medical aid and common sanitary knowledge. The whole world is yearly menaced by the yearly pilgrimage to Mecca, which the 160,000,000 Mohammedans regard as offering absolute immunity from all ills, absolute salvation. Study up the accounts of the pilgrims from lndia, Persia, Syria, Turkey, Arabia, all North Africaevery Moslem land, in fact-and see how the fearful cholera germs are spread wherever they go, and know that each cholera visitation in any land has its source at Mecca, where every condition fosters the most perfect development of the germs (from the germfull well Zemzem to every other detail of place and people), with most perfect facilities for spreading the contagion at every stage of their return.
Yet despite such awful iacts nothing is done there of any kind medi_ cally, and Arabia, with its 8,000,000 people, has but six mission stations, with a hospital at Aden under the Keith Falconer Mission of the Presbyterian Free Church of Scotland, and one physician for the American Dutch Reformed Mission.
When Dr. Moffat laid the corner-stone of the Livingstone Memorial Medical Mission Training Institute at Edinburgh in 1877, he said (and who had better opportunity for judging from his own experience and that of his distinguished son-iu-Iaw~) : "A missionary was a good thing, and anyone who knew the work they did must say so; but a medical missionary was a missionary and a half, or rather, he should say, a double missionary! It was impossible to estimate tbe value of a missionary going out with a thorough knowledge of medicine and surgery."
There are some medical missionaries in Africa (47 in 1892) for her 200,000,000 people, some hospitals, some dispensaries, but the supply is so small, so inadequate. Here indeed a medical missionary has 1,500,000 more patients than the general average allots elsewhere. Africa-do you know the thousands and thousands of miles there utterly destitute of all Christian and medical aid?
" 0 Chally, Chally," said a dying African woman to Du Chaillu, the great traveler, as he ministered to her, " won't you tell them to send us the Gospel just a little faster 7" And through medical missionaries, we add.
Morocco has at Fez, Tangier, and Rabat-Saleh medical work, and one hospital for all. * At Cairo the Church Missionary Society has a hospital, dispensary, and a dahabeyah for tours on the Nile. The United Presbyterians have work in Cairo also. The Church Missionary Society has also a hospital at Zanzibar, a native gift. The Liviugstone Mission ~~~~n * The German Kaiserwerth Sisters have a hospital at Alexandria. They have one at Capland, one at Keta in West Africa, and one in East Africa, at Dar es Salaam. Lake Nyassa at Bandowe a hospital, and at three other stations there one doctor at each. At Urambo, Central Africa, the king built a house and hospital for Dr. Southon (Church Missionary Society). in gratitude for relief from a painful tumor. In fact, he sent for the doctor when he heard he was to pass through his country, and a most hopeful mission is established, " where the seed of the truth has been sown broadcast"-the growth of a tumor it might be called.
The American Board has a hospital and dispensary for the Zulus, also medical work in its East and West Central Africa missions ; the American Baptists in their Congo Mission have six stations with medical work, at one of which, LeopoldvilIe, is a hospital. The English United Presbyterians have a doctor at Old Calabar; for Matabeleland the Dutch Reformed Church has a doctor. There was a temporary hospital at Bishop Taylor's Mission at Melange, where, as reward for the services of Dr. W. R. Summers, pioneer missionary, during a cholera epidemic, the natives gave him gifts in fish, biscuit, a riding bull, and money to the value of $1117, and the Portuguese governor also offered him $2000 a year to remain as his private physician. In the Livlezi Valley thero are three doctors. In the American Presbyterian Mission at Gaboon the natives recently built a small hospital at Batanga, and presented it to the mission. There is a dispensary also. At this mission Dr. Nassau has spent over thirty years in medical mission work.
Take a large map of Africa and locate these few isolated places, and you wi1l find "there remaineth yet very much land to be pORsessed." " Many suffering ones have to be sent away with these words, ' We can do nothing for you.' "
Madagascar in proportion is far better attended to. At Isoavinandriana, a hospital and a medical academy with fifty students and twenty graduates; Analakely, one dispensary, also one at Ilazaina; on Lake Alootra a hospital; a small one at Fianarantson, and six or seven other medical missions worked by native graduate physicians, also at Vonizongo two former students carryon a medical mission ; these are all under the London Missionary Society. At Antsirabe a hospital is under the Norwegian Missionary Society. At Analakely the Friends Missionary Society carryon a hospital and medical mission work in connection with the London Missionary Society.
South America is almost untouched by medical missions. Three doctors are reported in 1892. Of course the large cities have their own medical work, but it is not at all of a missionary character in "the Neglected Continent."
Mexico and Central America are destitute of such aid. In Mexico, where excellent doctors are found in the cities only, the contrast in the country is pitiable. We hear of a missionary longing to be able to say : " Jesus Christ hath healed thee; take up thy bed and walk." The needs in these papal lands appeal and appal.
REV. WILLIAM JOHN MCKENZIE, OF KOREA
In British Columbia the Toronto Conference have one hospital and one doctor. In Greenland the Moravians have one hospital and medical work in the southern part. In Alaska are a few medical missionaries.
The Gospel means "glad tidings." What tidings so calculated to win hearts as those coming with news of One" who healeth all thy dis- eases, who forgiveth all thine iniquities r'
The only tree in the last book of the Bible is described in the last chapter, " And the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations."
"Dr. Grant," wrote his colleague, "had twenty times more intercourse with the Mohammedans than the missionary who was sent expressly to labor among them. His skilful practice as a physician soon won the respect and confidence of all classes, and contributed very materially to our security and to the permanent success of our mission, more doubtless than any other earthly means."
Can we say with Dr. Grant (when tempted to leave his work) : "I have solemnly vowed in the presence of men and angels that I will consecrate myself and all I have to the Lord; and I dare not go from that altar, to stand impeached before an assembled world of having been an unfaithful steward, of having loved the world more than God, more than the souls of my dying fellowmen ?"
" Who follows in his train 1" With the best medical knowledge, surgical skill, consecrated to go forth like the Son of Man " not to be ministered unto, but to minister;" "and into whatsoever city ye enter, . . • heal the sick that are therein, and say unto them, The kingdom of God is come nigh unto you."
Are you helping in this work 1 "This I saw, that when a soul loves God with a supreme love, God's interests and his are become one. • .. It is no matter when nor where nor how Christ should send me, nor what trials He should exercise me with, if I may be prepared for His work and will. " (])avid Brainerd.) REV. WILLIAM JOHN MCKENZIE, OF KOREA. * BY REV. McLEOD HARVEY.
William John McKenzie was born of hardy Highland stock in Eastern Nova Scotia. He was educated at Dalhousie College and at the Presbyterian College, Halifax. During his theological course the student's missionary association of the college took up missionary work on the coast of * In the November nnmber of the MISSIONARY REVIEW, and in the article on "The work of the Spirit in North Korea," an extensive reference was made to the snccessfnllabors of the Rev. W. J. McKenzie in that land. When that article was written Mr. McKenzie was actively engaged in Korea. Now only his memory works there, while he is engaged in the higher service of the upper sanctnary. I am sure that the readers of the REVIEW will be interested in a sketch of his sbort but inspiring labors. Labrador, and looking for the most suitable agent to represent them amid the hardships of that isolated and dreary region, Mr. McKelll':ie was found to be the man. Strong of physique, courage, and faith, and willing to endure as a good soldier, he there wrought amid much privation for a year and a half, and a flourishing mission at present on a part of the coast owes its existence largely to his energetic and inspiring efforts.
While in Labrador he read an article on the needs of Korea, and in an hour of personal danger, while buffeted by Atlantic waves in an open boat, he dedicated his life to work in that land.
In recalling his life afl a feHow.student, we think at once of his love for the Word of God, of his humility, always wishing to hide himself behind the cross of Christ, of his intolerance of sham, his abiding sense of God'R presence, and a continual looking forward to the great day of account.
After finishing his theological studies the way did not seem open for him to take up the work nearest to his heart, so for two years he engaged in home work, when he was greatly blessed in his labors. He looked forward to going to Korea under the board of foreign missions of his own church, the Presbyterian Church of Canada, but at that time the board could not see its way to engage in work in a new field. Mr. McKenzie believed, however, that he was called by God to work in Korea, and he believed also that there were Bible promises guaranteeing his support. He resigned his pastoral charge, devoted a few months to special medical preparation, and with the financial assistance rendered by a few friends who became interested in his effort he started off as an independent mis· sionary to Korea in October, 1893.
A few days after reaching Seoul he started for the interior of the country, believing that there, away from foreigners, he would have a better opportunity of learning the Korean language and studying the customs of the people. As a result he was able in less than a year to converse freely with the natives in their own tongue. The place he chose was Sorrai, 200 miles from Seoul, and he at once bent all his great energy to putting God's thoughts into a form that might be grasped by a Korean's mind. Let me quote from one of his letters: " Sometimes when reading letters from friends far away tears find their way down my cheeks. Do not imagine that I am sorry I came to Korea. I never spent happier months than these ten I have spent here. So far as I know, there is no foreigner nearer than 120 miles. Not an English word do I hear. When I left Seoul I was told I would be lonesome. That is a word not in my vocabulary.
" I'll describe my surronndings. The roof of my hut is straw. The walls are mud and straw, with wooden posts here and there for support. The floor is mnd covered with paper and then straw mats. The doors are a framework of wood with paper spread on it. There is not a chair or bedstead in my room. A cotton padded quilt helps to lay my bones easier on the hard floor. Here I sit on the floor, day after day, trying to absorb Korean, and now that I can do a little preaching and reading of tracts, I seize every opportunity. Several are getting to know the doc- trine. The idea of a resurrection is new. Heaven and hell are things they never heard of. At first when the torments of hell as related by Christ are told them, they laugh. But a Korean may laugh at what he himself considers most serious. Telling of his father's death he may laugh. As Jesus told us of the tortures of the wicked I believe we should relate them to olhers. We have no right to paint them worse or better than they are.
" So far I have made only friends. My little medical work brings callers, to whom I can speak the words of life. An old man who had run away from a northern city on account of the war was here last night and read a book, 'Guide to Heaven,' till his eyes were so tired he could read no longer. How glad he was when I told him he might have the book! Shall we meet him in glory?
"Oh, the sorrow and woe in this land, much more than in ours! Hearts are just as tender, but there is not a ray of hope beyond an unsympathizing world; no burden-bearer for the weary."
Like other parts of Korea, Sorrai and Mr. McKenzie's work there were seriously troubled by the Tong Hak rebellion. He describes the Tong Haks as follows : "They belong to the anarcho·communistic tribe. Just what they teach is difficult to learn, but it seems to be a mixture of Buddhism, Confucianism, Catholicism, and Christianity. There are twenty. one mysterious letters which the candidate for initiation learns, and then he repeats them again and again as fast as he can until he begins to shake and twist about. A paper with certain hieroglyphics on it is swung about and then eaten. At once all fear is removed. Anxiety of all kinds is gone. No sickness enters the home. The shots from the enemy are powerless. Real good students of the cult are able to leap frog fashion several rods or even miles. There seems to be a community of property among them, which is always, like that of their kin in America, small. The property of the rich is plundered and their houses burnt. Their object, they say, is to reform the laws of the land, and if possible to have a new king. They threaten the lives of all foreigners. The oppression of government officials year after year has become unbearable, and the poor are driven in despair to make common cause against their oppressors. There is no doubt but that this is the beginning of a change that must come. During the last few weeks scores from this neighborhood have joined their ranks. Some who attended Divine service in the morning were in the evening on the war-path. They at once seemed to shun me and the other Christians. A Jesuit priest was killed and my life threatened. They, however, came one evening to warn us of the approach of a lawless band from another district, who were coming with the sole object of showing their hate of the Christians. To hide was impossible, as the Tong Haks were every- where. The boats had all been seized. To escape by land to Seoul, 200 miles away, was impossible, as night and day rebels were on the road. I packed up my few valuables and sent them off by night to a friendly native's house, as they might be of use to some one else who might come here. Several came to visit me in the night, and I was able to witness the power of Jesus to lighten np the darkest hour. One of our Christians started out in the night to see a friend who had become a leader among the rebels. Great was his surprise to find a New Testament in his possession. The rebel began quoting some of the words of Jesus. Saw, the Christian, began explaining the de('per, spiritual meaning of the words. Away on till morning they conversed, when the rebel leader thanked him for his instruction and promised us his protection. Seven Japanese and three interpreters were captured near by and shot, but we were not molested. In the morning, when Saw returned, we met to praise God, and songs of praise went up from grateful hearts. Since then the tables are being turned, for reports come of the arrival of Japanese troops. From far and near the people come to me for advice as to how to conciliate the J aps. Christian books that twenty days ago were shunned are now eagerly bought, and we have the unspeakable joy of seeing many groping after the light of God."
Mr. McKenzie rejoiced in the hope that the war would put an end to China's oppressive rule in Korea. In May last he wrote: " A year ago stupid conceit, the worship of rank and wealth, was a great barrier to our work. Now it is seen that neither rank nor wealth can help in real trouble, but rather become a misfortune. Devil worship was virtually done away with by the teaching of the Tong Haks. In fact, the bottom has dropped out of every old Korean custom and conceit, and they are willing now to listen to the message of God. Last spring I came here to live in this village and learn the language in a Christian homb. There were then two baptized adults and one child here. Then we were shunned, but now and. for the last four months from 70 to 100 meet twice on Sunday, and nearly as many at the Wednesday prayermeeting. So eager are they to have part in the worship of God, that when the room is overcrowded they will sit outside through the whole service, even in the bitter cold and while the snow is falling. 'Vomen also holding their children will stand throughout the service when there is no room to sit down. As a result the people of their own accord have decided to build a church. When they began to subscribe a straw roof was their intention, but so willingly have they contributed, that now it must be a tile roof, making almost double cost. I told them I would not contribute to the building, but would give a stove and pipe. They have also refused foreign aid from Seoul. It is to be built on a beautiful spot, where devils for centuries received homage, and will seat over 250. There is no expense for seating here, as all sit cross-legged on straw mats. Real widows' mites were among the offerings, and little boys gave their few cash.
" The Lord most wonderfully converted oue whom we have secured as teacher of the children. We were convinced of his sincerity before making the appointment. Anything but a decided Christian would be worse than useless. His wages for one year are $17 gold. I pay him this year's wages, as the people are building the church.
" About twenty families now observe the Lord's day, most of whom have family prayers, and all ask a blessing at meals. Over twenty take. part in prayer already. Several men and, strange to say, women, in spite of custom, visit the neighboring villages during leisure to make known the Gospel. Nor dQ they always come home encouraged. The men and women and boys meet of their own accord separately for singing, prayer, and exhortation. What a joy there is in seeing the hot tears of repentance flowing freely from the dark, hardened faces!
" Probably at the dedication of the new church several will be baptized. In this matter I do not wish to be overhasty. ' Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the Gospel.' Another missionary will examine them, as I have had so little experience.
" So many have been the tokens of the Lord's favor that we are assured He is with us. No Christian or friendly person has suffered from the war, while seventeen Japanese merchants and three Buddhist priests were murdered near by.
" I am now going on the eighth month since seeing a white face or speaking a word of English. I have not been a day sick. I find the native dress the best by far and cheapest, tho I am the only missionary who wears it.
" The country is all open and ready to listen to anything false or true. The Jesuits are busy, and the Japanese are pouring in Buddhist priests. And yet God's people are so slow. I have one province of nearly two millions to myself. 'The. harvest is great, the laborers few, pray ye therefore.' Over this troubled people Immanuel must reign."
In the midst of such zeal and success Mr. McKenzie was suddenly cut down. He had always realized that his greatest danger was not from Tong Hak nor lack of financial support. When the consul at Seoul refused him a passport on account of the disturbed state of the country, he started off without one. For financial support he looked to God, and more money flowed in than he needed; but he realized 1hat there was danger menacing him in fever and small-pox. In June the fever seized him, and in a few days" he was not." The last entry in his journal was, "I hope this is not death, for the sake of Korea and the many who will say it was my manner of living like the Koreans. It was imprudence on the part of myself traveling under the hot sun and sitting out at night till cold." .At his own request he was buried in a lot back of the new church.
Dr. Underwood, of Seoul, on hearing of his death went immediately to Sorrai. He found the community stricken with its great loss, fully realizing the sacrifice of the man who, like Christ, had died for them. Dr. Underwood dedicated the church, and baptized ten women and nine men who had been converted under Mr. McKenzie's ·teaching, and of whose intelligence and sincerity he had no doubt. Others applied for baptism, but were asked to wait a while longer. Dr. Underwood wrote, ., The Christian community at Sorrai is a bright spot in this dark land. It is like letters of gold in a frame of lead."
Thus a life of large promise was cut off just when, to human appearance, his greatest usefulness had only begun. The prayers of his friends for him seem to have miscarried; but faith assures us that all is well. Let us learn the lessons that come to us from his noble life, fill up the gaps that God is pleased to make in the ranks, and thrust forth more laborers into the white harvest fields. It is the hope and prayer of the late brother's friends in Nova Scotia that a worthy successor may be found to carry forward the work so well begun.
1896.J INTERNATIONAL DEPARTMENT
n.-INTERNATIONAL DEPARTMENT.
EDITED AND CONDUCTED BY REV. 1. T. GRACEY, D.D.
Miss Clara Barton on Relief in Ar- welcomed to your hospitable salon-are all there are, or have been of us in these menia. immense fields of destruction, desti- [Miss Clara Barton accompanies a tution, and desolation. Altho fully personal note to us with the following one half of all the funds we have reo report of progress to the headquarters ceived has inevitably gone for general of the Red Cross, Geneva, kindly trans- relief in the ordinary channels of food lated for us by herself. Extracts from and raiment, we have, nevertheless, this personal note containing additional aimed to make ours a special relief; information will be found under the taking up the two branches that no one caption" Our Mail Bag. "-J. T. G.] el.se was so familiar with, or so well CONSTANTINOPLE, 5 RUE MEZARLIK, adapted to taking in charge as our- June 20, 1896. selves-viz., the medical and the agri- cultural departments of relief. Few as Monsieur Gve. Moynier, President comite our numbers were, we had still with us de S8COUTS aUiiJ militaires blesses, Ge- our chosen leaders in scientific farm- neva. ing, in medical skill, and in finances.
MONSIEUR: Remembering our de- Dr. Hubbell and Mr. Pullman are hosts lightful reception at Geneva on our in themselves. Each assistant has taken.
way to this field of relief, then so his department, forming four distinct strange and unknown to us, it occurs expeditions in the field; taking at to me that in these later and more fa- first caravans of sup·plies over the miliar days a word of our progress may mountains of snow to the cities where not be without interest to you. I am the destruction has been greatest, and far from being able to give you any- through hundreds of villages where no thing like a report, for we are only in human visitor had reached since the the midfield of our labors; indeed, by fire and sword passed over them months what is needed to be done only along before.
the lines of saving life in the present, They now no longer need caravans and arresting starvation in the near nor supplies, as their method is to set future, we are only on the threshold of the people to work fabricating for require(l relief. It is not within the themselves what they need, making range of our most sanguine hopes that spinning-wheels, looms, providing cot- we shall be able to accomplish a moiety ton, the spinning of yarn for weaving, even of what common humanity would the weaving of cloth for garments, the demand; but such as we are able to do cutting and making of the garments, is always a comfort, and in the face of each person paid for his or her work, the whole world we work patiently on and when done the garments given to in the thought that altho thousands the destitute who cannot work and are perish, still a morsel is a morsel, and a not paid ; the manufacture of farming life is a life. You will understand, tools by the blacksmith for the culti- monsieur, that we have never made any vation of the land, as every implement allusion to the Red Cross in this coun· had been taken away or destroyed in try, not a signature, insignia, nor en· the terrible ravages; the iron is bought velope has ever been used by us ; we in the towns, and tools also, so far as have acted in the simple capacity of in· they exist; the blacksmith is paid for dividuals, as we were admitted by this his work, and the implements distrib- government. With the exception of uted in thousands among the farmers two gentlemen whom we called later, in the villages.
the little party-less one, which you As no cattle were left we are able to supply some thousands of oxen, pur- grapple with. In this condition we chasing them back from the marauding were prayed by them and the British tribes that drove them off, and will not ambassador, Sir Philip Ourrie, as well, return them without pay. to go to the relief of these stricken Our expeditions are nearly through cities. By telegram and post we se- with Harpoot Province proper, com- cured a corps of physicians from Bey- prising some three towns and villages, rout, who, after much delay and and will take new fields in all haste to trouble, succeeded in reaching Marash help the farmers to get the ground under military escort, ordered by the ready for the sowing of seed for the Porte, and on April 19th, after a jour- autumn's harvest. Unless this is done ney by sea and land of fourteen days, there can be only famine in store for weary and worn, their brave surgeon in them. Without some provision for this charge, Dr. Ira Harris, of Tripoli, him- as many will inevitably perish from self in an attack of malarial fever, took hunger in the winter and spring of 1896 up the work of these fearful fields of and 1897 as fell by the sword in 1895 fourfold contagion. Dr. Hubbell with and 1896. Thus it wiIl be seeu that his caravan of supplies had reached our agricultural relief is only in the there before them. A hundred a day middle of its progress; the lack of funds was the average mortality. Temporary will end it long before human sympa- hospitals were made, and so near fam- thy or good judgment would say ine were they that food had to be given enough. before medicines could be retained on A few words of our medical relief the stomach. But kindness, care, food, may interest you, as it has seemed an beds, and cleanliness brought rest and anomaly even to us, who went through hope. Against these and the treatment with the every-day drudgery and per- of skilled physicians even the deadly plexities of obtaining physicians, pro- fevers were no match and fled. For viding medicines, nourishments, funds, once evil was vanquished by good.
all accomplished by Turkish telegrams On May 24th Dr. Harris reported the and post a thousand miles away. You contagion overcome, and took his leave will recall that Zeitoun resisted, and with his band of physicians of the cities became a battle-field and camp. This that owed so much to them. The few generated disease, and in December and local doctors who had survived were January epidemics made their appear- , able to assume the charge of the con- ance. On February 22d we were in- valescents, While it is our pleasure to formed of the terrible state of things provide th" suitable nutrition.
that existed there, and as the thousands I consider the work of those physi- of fleeing refugees had overcrowded the cians and the success of that field as lit- town, they had been ordered to Marash, tle less than marvelous. Ten thousand carrying with them the pestilence that people iII of contagious epidemics, with reeked at.Zeitoun, until in these two a hundred deaths per day, to be in less cities there were estimated to be from· than two months brought on to their 8000 to 10,000 persons ill of typhoid, feet and counted again· in health, is typhus, small-pox, and dysentery. Of something I have not known in the con- the few native doctors, everyone was tagion-smitten cities of civilization.
down with fever; thus, this number Without this check one sees nothing of wretched starving people lay in the but the direct interposition of Provi- throes of agony and death, from the dence to have prevented this scourge clutches of these four terrible enemies. from running riot through the entire A few resident missionaries had stood interior of Asia Minor.
at their posts like martyrs, feeding the The seed was well sown for a harvest hungry so far as they could, but this of death.
oontagion was beyond their power to OLARA BARTON. How Best to Inculcate the Spirit of such considerations, I read with amaze- Mission~ in our Theologioal Semi- ment the following in THE MISSIONARY naries. REVIEW OF THE WORLD for the month of April, 1895: "Of the fifty-one semi- BY REV. ADAM MCCLELLAND, l).D., naries none had an individual chair on DUBUQUE, IOWA. missions. The actual status of com- This problem now presented for dis- prehensive scientific discipline on the cussion is no less important, practical, subject of missions is well illustrated and opportune than is its solution at· by the following case: One of the tended with many difficulties. large seminaries of the country is rec- At no time since the opening cen- ognized as a strong missionary semi- turies of our era has the subject of mis- nary in its church. The church is one sions so earnestly and generally en- which prides itself on the thorough gaged the attention of the Church as training of its ministry. Scarcely any now. The missionary zeal, activity, place could be found more suited to a and triumphs of our century must ever favorable test. In this seminary 48 of have a conspicuous place in history. the senior class were canvassed upon On the day of her birth the Christian the following questions: In what for- Church heard, in the sound of a rush- eign fields is our church at work?
ing, mighty wina, a power which Where did Robert Morrison work, and would sweep away all opposition to the what was the character of his work on Lord and His anointed, and she saw in the field? Where did Alexander Dull'
those tongues of fire what would warm work, and what was the character of cold, melt hard, and purify defiled his great work on the field? Where hearts; and so in the name of the tri- did William Cl1reywork, and what was une God she went forth, conquering his great work on the field? Of the 48, and to conquer. The like is repeated 28 failed on all the four questions, 34 in our day. A.t Pentecost, the little failed on the fields of the church, 45 stone which Daniel saw cut without failed on Morrison, 46 failed on Duff, hands began to move, and ever since and 28 failed on Carey. One man who has continued to move, till in our age canvassed 23 of his classmates kept an it has attained a momentum which is account of separate parts of the same irresistible in the overthrow of super- question. Of those 23, 20 could not stition, infidelity, tyranny, and what tell where Morrison labored, 19 could else withstands the reign of truth and not tell where Duff labored, and 10 righteousness. The decree of high were unable to tell in what country heaven has gone forth, "Overturn, Carey worked. No comment is neces- overturn, overturn, till He come whose sary concerning the need of missionary right it is to reign." The gift of Pente- instruction. "
cost in large measure is now upon the One might well pronounce the above Church, as seen in her earnest efforts statement incredible, were it not so well everywhere put forth for the winning supported in the definite and authorita- of men to the Christ, and the provi- tive report just quoted. Such state- dence of God ever and everywhere beck- ment gives emphasis to the practical ons her on to fresh victorIes. importance of the problem now under At such a time as this, when King consideration. In the prescribed limits Jesus, by His spirit and the loud and of thia paper we can only outline some freq uent calls of His providence, speaks of the more obvious ways whereby the to His Church that she go forward, in- spirit of missions can be best inculcated difference to missions is something alto- in our theological seminaries. We gether intoleraole, not to say criminal, shall, therefore, content ourselves with and apathy to His cause and command a few suggestions, in the hope that is downright disloyaJty. In view of others may elaborate and supplement them, and, above .all, that our semina- sure it is a correct one. 'No pains ries may reduce our words to deeds and should be spared to profoundly conembody our principles in practice. vince our young men that missions pay, that labor here brings its rich re- First, the solution of the problem ward, whether at home or abroad. must begin with the several faculties :.They should have indelibly impressed of our seminaries-i.e., if we would on their minds such considerations as ( best inculcate the spirit of missions in the following : our seminaries, all our professors must possess and exhibit an earnest, intelli- Missions have ever been the great gent, and whole·hearted interest in means for the extension of Christianity, Christian missions. with all its civilizing accompaniments and consequences. We cannot expect the stream to rise higher than its source. The proverb, They have been leaders in the work "Like priest, like people," may with- of geographical discovery and of comout any loss of truth assume another mercial enterprise, and this never more form, like professor, like pupil. One conspicuous than at present. professor in the faculty who is known to be half-hearted and indifferent con- They have elevated and united mancerning the subject of miSilions cannot kind by their doctrines of the fatherfail to have a most deleterious effect on hood of God, the common origin, ruin, the students. The greater his genius, redemption, responsibility, and inborn the broader his learning, and the more rights of man. pronounced his personality, the more injurious will be his influence in this They have greatly enlarged the department of Christian work. Such a sphere of human sympathy and develman is like the majestic iceberg. whose opment. presence chills all within its range even while they are delighted and astonished They have diminished human misery by its greatness. The missionary spirit by the blessings they impart. and by is an essential qualification for a good removing or abating many causes of minister of Jesus Christ, and much individual and social evil. And this more in him whose special work is the Christian missions effect not only ditraining of young men for that holy rectly upon the communities immedi- ately under the benign influence of miscalling. r do not hesitate to affirm sionary labors, but also indirectly by warning off such ills from Christian that however great and numerous may lands whither, but for Christian civilIbe the qualifications of a professor, if zation, they should have gone. he is lacking in the spirit of missions, this single defect renders him unfit for Not till the whole world shall have the professorial chair in any of our learned to practise the lessons of Chrisseminaries. Let every faculty be com- tian science will Christian lands be posed of men whose hearts are aglow freed from such calamities as the black with the spirit of missions, and we shall death, cholcra, and like destructive Eoon find all our seminaries on fire with visitors, whose birthplace is the unmissionary fervor. christianized regions of our world. So long as a single tribe remains without Again, if we would best inculcate the the Gospel, there will be a plague spot, spirit of missions in our seminaries, we which in some way will prove a menmust convince our students of the great ace to the rest of mankind. Little did utility of missions. We live in a utili- ancient Christendom think that in negtarian age-an age when principles and lecting to evangelize barren, despised methods are tested by results. This is Arabia, she was preparing for herself the most terrible and destructive enemy well; we would not have it otherwise. " By their fruits shall ye know them," she has ever known. Christian Syria ~!'I the Master's rule, and we may be and Egypt forgot to labor for the Ral- vation of their neighboring pagans, and they paid sore for their terrible sin of without good reason that almost every omission. Here, as in 80 many other science and educational institution pro- things, history may be expected to re- vide themselves with museums for the peat itself. illustration and inculcation of their Our students for the ministry should principles. No field is more inviting be deeply impressed with this solemn and none richer in materials for such thought, that to neglect missions is to museums than our Christian missions.
disregard the last command of our all- My fourth reply to the question now cending Lord, and to part company under consideration is one to which I with the goodly fellowship of the apos- invite the calm, earnest, and favorable tles and other holy workers, who consideration of all the faculties of our thought not their lives dear to them seminaries. I am convinced that a that they might win men to Ohrist. due and unprejudiced examination of Without the missionary spirit they will the interests involved will lead to its be out of touch with the heart of the acceptance with possible modifications.
Master, who was the greatest of all for- That concerted action of some sort in a eign, as He was the most indefatigable matter of such grave importance to our of home missionaries. With good rea- rising ministry, to our Church, and son therefore Be is called" the apostle especially to the cause of missions is of our profession" (Beb. 3: i)-i.e., every way desirable goes without say- the missionary of Christianity, by way ing on the general principle that union of eminence. Our students for the is power, and from further considera- ministry must lay to heart such con- tion that such plan, being the result of siderations as the above. The special combined experience and retlection, calls of Providence, the voice of the would be more likely to present greater Spirit as heard throughout the entire variety and completeness and to secure Church, and their own personal prepa- more general approval than if left to the ration for the pastoral office in pulpit independent arrangement of each sem· and parish should impress upon them inary.
the necessity of a large measure of the Whether there should be formed a missionary spirit, which more than any missionary union of all our seminaries, other one thing is the characteristic and with its constitution, time, and place of glory of the Church of our age. meeting, I will leave to others to de- Third. I would suggest as the third termine. Aside from this, we suggest means for the inculcation of the mis- the following as most likely to promote sionary spirit in our seminaries the es- the spirit of missions in all our semina- tablishment and maintenance in each of ries.
a missionary museum. Such museum Our suggestion in brief is this: Let should be selected with great care, and one day of each month in our seminsry its creators should consider quality year be set apart by all our seminaries rather than quantity in their collection and wholly devoted to missions. Let of objects of interest. each chair so arrange its lecture on Bible and experience alike prove that that day as to have for its theme the concrete has many advantages over some topic properly pertaining to tbe the merely abstract in informing the chair which shall have special bearing mind and impressing the heart. None on missions-e.g., the chair of syste- of us abandoned the underlying prin- matic theology might lecture on the in- ciple of kIndergarten when we entered carnation as related to missions, or each on our manhood. The eye affects the of the mediatorial offices or the work and heart, and often a single touch or view promise of the Holy Spirit as so related.
may, like Moses' rod, evoke streams of In like manner the chair on church refreshIng thought that shall follow us polity mIght find rich and varied sub- to the very Jordan itself. It Is not jects for missionary lectures on that day-e.g., the true ideal ot the Christian sameness. 3. Such convergence of Church as a divinely appointed mis- different pencils of light in a single sionary organization, the several causes focus would be likely to intenSify inof the Church's failure in her mis- terest by the free exercise of the soul sions arising from false views of her in the concentration of its diverse powfunctions, polity, or sacraments, etc. ers. The chair of Hebrew literature and exegesis might well assign for such The seminary missionary day should missionary day the glorious missionary close in a grand rally of faculty and anticipations so numerous in the Psalms, students in a missionary concert of and other prophetic portions of the He- prayer, topic to be that laid down for brew Scriptures. To me no line of such service by General Assembly. Christian apol{)getics is so attractive, Each seminary should arrange the hour and few more convincing than the of such monthly concert, so that all grand ideals of our earth and our race, such prayer-meetings should be exactly as portrayed in these beautiful and at the same time in all our seminaries, soul-inspiring predictions. I can think such time not to be that of each particuof no exercise more profitable or more lar locality, but all to be so arranged as suitable for missionary day than such to be actually simultaneous. study of the ancient seers ot Israel. To none of our chairs does the subject My fifth and last answer in the soluof missions appear more closely con- tion of the problem merits attention, as nected than to the chair of Church his- it presents a stimulus for thought and tory. This chair might well look for- unity among our stUdents on the subward to missionary day as its red-letter ject of missions. It is in brief this : day, for of all the delightful resorts to Let a committee arrange with our which the teacher of Church history Church papers to appropriate a given conducts his disciples none are more space each month to one of our semipleasing than the broad, green, and naries in such order as the seminaries fruitful fields of missions. AU down shall arrange among themsel ves. It the centuries, on continents or islands, shall be the duty of each seminary to among polished Greeks or rudest sav- provide its missionary intelligence or ages, the missionary's pathway ever article in accord with the order agreed leads to scenes Of surpassing interest. on among the seminaries and the differ- ent Church papers, all or one as shall We offer in support of such plan the be determined. following considerations: 1. By this plan, during the usual three years' the- In this way our seminaries would be ological course, each chair would be in touch with the life and thought of able to give twenty-four lectures to our Church, and our students would be the all-important subject of missions, trained for their future work as leaders and that, too, without loss of time from in the canse of missions. any of the several departments of instruction. Hereby a very serious diffi- To sum up the above, we have called culty now generally felt would be re- attention to the importance both to the moved or reduced to a minimum. 2. By Church and to our seminaries of the this plan the great subject of missions live prohlem, "How best to inculcate would be presented in an orderly and the spirit of missions in our seminaries;" thorough manner, from almost every we have suggested five means whereby point of view, and thus aU our students this problem can be in great measure would become conversant with the va- solved; we have insisted on the thought rious aspects of the subject, as seen that the first movement toward the sounder different angles of vision, and lution must begin with the different this without that ennui incident to professors and faculties; it must next engage the attention of each ,student_ We havtl suggested the value of a mis- sionary museum as helpful to this solution ; we have especially advocated one the preaching services is less than half great missionary day in all our semina- the membership of the church. A few ries, whereon every chair devote itself, of the leading pastors have heen carin its own special department, to the ried away by these rationalistic thegreat theme of missions, and the semi- ories, and many among the pastors and naries shall close in one hour's concert, evangelists are discouraged, and some to be lJeld at the same exact time, and of them have given up the ministry. we have closed with the suggestion Low views of the Bible and Unitarian that each seminary have its space in its views of Christ are too common. Then, appointed turn in one or more of our there is a disposition in some quarters Church papers. And all this with the to fellowship everything and everybody deep conviction that some such plain which calls itself Christian, even those will best inculcate the spirit of missions who doubt the existence of a personal in our seminaries. God and the immortality of the soul. "These are simply theological ques- Japan, its Dangers and its Needs, tions and unimportant," they say. The indefinite ideas of love to God and love BY REV. J. D. DAVIS, D.D., KYOTO. to man are made the only tests of fel- lowship. There are many dangers here in J apan. An overweening confidence in This condition is by no means uniherself as the result of the victories of versal in reference to all its categories, t,he recent war; hostility to foreigners but it represents the condition of the as the result of foreign interference rationalistic wing of the Church in Jawith the results of the war ; expending pan, and it affects the whole Church, most of the energy and resources of the more or less, for when one of the memempire during the next ten years on bers of the body suffers, all suffer with armies and armament; and persisting in a system of education which has no it. adequate moral basis. What, then, is the need? 1. A spiritual quickening; a baptism I wish, however, to speak of a danger which hangs over the infant Church of of the Holy Spirit, which shall revive Japan and its necds. 'fhe cducated the whole Church, quicken anew all mind in Japan is steeped in pantheism our hearts, and awake as from the dead or in a worse materialism. There has some who sleep. existed no word in the language for person or personality_It is difficult to 2. A conviction of the importance of get students to grasp clearly the idea making belief in a personal God, in imof the personality of God or that of mortality, and in a Divine Christ essentheir own personality. A man who has tial to admission to the Church and to been a student of theology for three fellowship in the Gospel. years and an earnest Christian worker read an essay on sin the other day, in 3. Such a conviction of the worth of which he argued that there is no soul forty millions of unsaved souls, as shall in man. only a part of God which in- cause all the workers here, Japanese habits the body, and at death returns and foreign, to forget their differences, to and is absorbed in God again, as a cease the discussion of theories and the· drop of water taken from a lake returns ologies, and preach and live Christ and to the lake again. Him crucified with such earnestness as shall lead these millions to feel their Western rationalism, with all its crudi- need, repent of sin, and accept Christ ties, has come into a soil here which was as their Savior. fully prepared for it. It has chilled the church and made it unfruitful. In There are many encouraging signs of many cases the average att6ndance at such a revival here. There is a general seeking in prayer for such a blessing on the part of the Japanese and foreign workers. The chilling effect of rationalistic discussion is realized, and a re- and religious movements of this coun· turn to an earnest preaching of the Gos- try, said that they never saw a series of pel is generally manifest. Pray for meetings with such overflowing houses Japan. and greater enthusiasm from the first session to the last. This Congress Addresses of the Oongress on Africa. marked a new era in the history of the American negro, one of deep vital in- This book, rightly entitled " Africa terest in the evangelization of his fa- and the American Negro,"* contains therland. This is the very object for fresh and reliable information on the which the Stewart Missionary Foundasubjects treated. African exploration, tion, under which the Congress was native peoples, languages, and relig· held, stands. These results were not ion, aud the opportunity, means for an accident. They had an adequate the promotion and the progress of civ· cause in the series of remarkably strong ilization and of Ohristian missions are addresses by some of the ablest Afri- .set forth by some of the best authorities canists and most experienced students on these topics. The industrial, intel- of the American negro. These adlectual, moral, and spiritual progress dresses are all published except one, of the American negroes is a prophecy, and even of this an extensive summary both of what they will become and will by the author is given. Portions of do for the redemption of their father- some of the addresses which were omitland, and also of what the native Afri- ted. for lack of time in the reading becan is capable of becoming. These are fore the Congress are published. Betreated by some of the leaders who have sides a summary of some of the evening given their life work to the evangeliza- lectures and the minutes of the Contion and Christian education of the gress, three important papers which American negro. were not read and a list of Bible trans- lations and of missions are included in In many public discussions, both on the book. It is thus a very full record the platform and in the press, Africa of one of the most notable events of the and the negro have been considered closing years of this century, and besolely or mainly by the Anglo-Saxon. comes a necessity to every public or The negro has not boen heard enough private library which is designed to be in his own cause and in that of his fa- well furnished on these topics. therland. Nearly one half of those giving the addresses at this Congress Space does not allow us to give even were representative negroes, including a list of the titles of the addresses. some of the most highly educated and With scarcely an exception each address cultured leaders of the race and two was excellent for its purpose, and any native Africans. Their addresses were selection for mention here must be simas able and eloquent as any given. ply representative of the whole twenty- six addresses. This Congress on Africa was one of the notable events of recent years. " Some Results of the African Move- The Atlanta Con8titution said of it: ment," by Mr. C. C. Adams, one of the "Atlanta has had many gatherings editors of the New York Sun, gives one during the Exposition, but none will of the best discussions accessible on the carry with it greater significance and most important results in the civilizabe received with deeper interest." tion of Africa. Mr. Reli Chatelain's .. A Bird's-eye View of African Tribes Men of wide experience, reaching and;Languages," and his "African over half It century, in the great moral Slavery: its Status, the Anti-slavery Movement in Europe," give the results *" Africa and the American Negro." Ad- to date of investigations by one of the highest authorities on these important dresses and proceedings of the Congress on Africa. Published by Gammon Theological Sem- inary, Atlanta, Ga. topics, Mr. 0, Faduma's "Religious by Dr. Bowen, the Secretary of the Beliefs of the Yoruba People," and his Congress, who has edited the whole " Success and Drawbacks of Missionary volume; and the introduction is by Work in Africa," give the excellent Bishop Joyce, who presided so admira· views of one of the most highly edu- bly over many of its sessions.
cated and broadly cultured natives con- cerning missionary work. Bishop Hart- From Our Mail Bag. zell's paper on "The Division of the Dark Continent" is a very full and Weare constrained to let others share clear presentation of the political par- the following extracts from a purely tition of Africa by European nations. personal letter from our old and dear Mr. Frederic Perry Noble, Secretary friend, Miss Clara Barton, tho it wa~ World's Congress on Africa at the Co- not intended to be given to the public. lumbian Exposition, has an important It was written from Constantinople, summary of " Outlook for African Mis- June 20th, 1S96.-J. T. G.
sions in the Twentieth Century." "It is often in my thoughts and "Health Conditions and Hygiene in heart's desire to write you and tell you Central Africa," by R. W. Felkin, M.D., F.R.S.E., F.R.G.S., etc., is of something of the life, work, and progthe highest authority. The addresses ress of this wandering band of pilgrims of Dr. A. Crummell and by Dr~ J. Tyler give the matured views of mis- before it shall have folded its tents and sionaries of twenty and forty years', re- made for the world of civilization. But spectively, continuous experience in the work. Bishop Taylor's paper on there is so little time aside from the ab- " Self-Supporting Missions in Africa" solutely occupied moments that I am is an excellent presentation of his work. "The American Negro in the 'rwenti- driven to all kinds of 'shifts' to get my eth Century" and "The Negro in his good intentions worked into any kind Relation to the Church," by Mr. H. K. of realization. Behold f here is one of Carroll, are of unusual authority, as them. they are by the superintendent of the United States census of churches. The " I have just run off a kind of midway addresses of Dr. J. W. E. Bowen, on " Comparative Status of the Negro at informal report to M. Moynier, of the the Close of the War and To-day," and that of Dr. J. W. Hamilton, on" Oc- International Committee of the Red cult Africa," are toWo of the strongest Cross, thinking he might like some in facts and statement, and two of the notes, or the entire, for his next quartermost eloquent utterances on the environment and achievements of the ly issue. As this would be in French, American negro. One of tbese is by a and circulate only among the foreign societies, not a word of it would ever reach America; and it seemed to me that it contained information that the people-I mean the 1'eading and think- ing people-might like to have, and I have directed another copy to be made to send to you, thinking you might make a medinm for it. You will get from the article all the most reliable infor- mation I have to give, or that it is wise or safe for me to give. I will only add that we are well. A dispatch from Dr. Hubbell yesterday, in Turkislt, of course, was as follows; negro and one by an Anglo-Saxon. " , ARABKIR. June 10, 1896. The addresses and papers of Dr. Addi- '" BARTON: Mr. Wood has received son, Dr. J. H. Smyth, Mrs. ~I. French- your telegram. He will go to Drarliikar Sheldon, Miss Boldel'lless, Miss Bacon, next week. Wistar is in Harpoot. Lem· Bishop Turner, Mr. Fortune, Dr. Ham- mi is buying cattle in Arabkir. We remond, Dr. Rust, and Dr. Roy present turn to Barpoot in ten days; afterward much valuable material. The lists of will go to Malatia. Typhus is diminish- Bible translations into the African lan- ing from day to day. We telegraphed you on the 16th and sent a telegram and letter on the 26th. All well.'
gUILges, and that ot missions alphabeti· "I send this to show you how even cally arranged are very valuable. The our most ordinary business has to be minutes of the daily sessions are given carried on. "I have called my force from the nected with the school, and in supervis- field, to be here as soon as possible; but ing the Bible women. " they are nearly a month away at best, and, as you see, they have in their 4. Which is the more important, the minds something to do before leaving; educational or the evangelistic work? but the field has been long and hara, and I feel that I ought to draw them off. "Both are 'more important.' You might as well &sk which leg is more " I feel like sending this Red Cross important, the right or the left. The paper to you because you are in reality educational work needs the evangelistic Red Cross people, and it seems fitting for its support, if real success is to be atthat you should handle it. And it is tained, and the latter cannot live witheminently fitting that any information out the former." that goes out from the land of these Christian missionary martyrs-for such 5. Which are easier to reach, children they seem to me in their nobleness and or adults? self-sacrifice, their fortitude, patience, and forbearance-should go to you who " The young are naturally far easier years ago lived the very lives they to reach than the adults; children are not are living, and know so well how to born heathens-t.hey are made so by appreciate their labors, their trials, and education. There is doubtless truth in their value. . . the idea that religion to some degree be- comes fired in the blood of the race; " CLARA BARTON." but there would be little difficulty in making Chri~tians of all the children if Rev. David S. Spencer, of Nagoya, we could get them into schools and sends us his brief answers to a series of homes under our own control. And the questions sent to him by friends in impressions made in youth last. Com- America: paratively few of the adults become Christians. The hope of the Chlll'ch in 1. Have you the" rum fiend" to con- heathen lands is with the young. This tend with in your work? in no way discounts the power of God."
"Yes; and the shipments of rum 6. When the heathen are converted, from Christian bnds to this form the do they stick, or are they apt to lapse worst element in that battle. Native into the old faith? sake, a fermented liquor brewed from "I believe that, when once convertrice, is intoxicating, but is by no ed, their stability will compare favormeans so violent in its e/l'ects as the ably with converts in Christian lands. foreign damnable stuffs brought in by But in non-Christian lands it is impos- sible that only converted ones shoulrl be. foreign merchants. Rum shops may taken into the Church. Doubtless many be found in every city, town, and vil- are taken into full membership before they are converted. Some have become lage, no special license being required helpers and preachers before really befor the sale of spirits over that of otheI coming converted so that they knew it. goods. Rum does its awful work here But they have cut loose from heathen- ism, have been baptized, and the die as in other lands." with them is cast. In head and thought 2. Have you a large number of Jap- they are Christ·ian. They have 'the form thereof,' but have perhaps not yet anese converts yet? known 'the power thereof.' Time seems to be with many a necessary element." " About 335 in my district, and about 4100 in our Church in Japan. There are A letter from Hev. Dr. McGilvary, some other Christians in this district " the apostle to the Laos," from Chung- mai, May 8th, says: "Of course we besides those counected with our cannot tell what may be iu the future; Church, and in all Japan there are some but it is hardly likely that I will visit the United States again. Should I go 40,000 Protestant communicants, 22,500 again, I fear I would hardly be worth Greek Christiaus, and the Roman Catho- sending back, and I wish to gu home from the Laos land, to which I have lic Church claims 50,000." given my life, and from among our dear Laos Uhristialls. . . . JHy last long 3. How many foreigners have you to tour was mainly to select a new station help you? in the north, the second established since ollr meeting in 1894. So YOIl see " In this district of 3,500,000 people we are still expanding, and hope to do so till this whole field shall be occupied I am the only male representative of and Christianized." our Church. We have two ladies con-
FIELD OF MONTHLY SURVEY
lII.-FIELD OF MONTHLY SURVEY.
BY DEL..v.u< L. PIElISON.
Ja.pan," Korea,t Medical Missions.+ PROGRESS IN JAPAN. The number of religious or semi-re- ligious organizations, formed under the It is probable that there has never auspices of various missions as a rule been a civilized nation more open to the is extraordiniuily great for such a com: acceptation of anything new that they paratively new field, and the number of find to bl] good. than the Japanese. The Christian publications in Japanese, revision of the treaty with England hav- daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly, ing recognized them on the footing of is legion. These number, including a a ci vilized people, one of the causes few Roman and Greek Church publicawhich has for years operated to the ti~ns, six weekly, two fortnightly, prejudice of Christianity-the feeling thIrty.five monthly, one bi-monthly, that they were looked down upon, and and one quarterly periodicals. There were not trusted by their would-be are in addition to a local foreign misteachers-has been removed. Their sionary society, now commencing work success in war, on account of methods in Korea and Formosa, a goodly array learned from foreigners, is likely to rec· of Y. M. C_ A. 's Christian Endeavor ommend to them whatever else the for- Societies, a W. C. T_ U., and other temeigner may teach. perance societies; a flourishing Scrip- ture Reading Union, Police MiSSion, There are now 365 local Protestant Postmen's Mission, Prison Mission churches in Japan, to 72,039 Buddhist Railway Mission, the Salvation Army: temples, or almost exactly 1 to 200.
".'….ro 6b'~ oQ;f~ 'd'; .e. and other kindred agencies. But most ,,~ of these are still in their infancy, and ..:; little more than nuclei for further de- 0;:: Denomination of ..-…"-"'0 :>g"~'''~' velopment. Large and well-equipped Missions . ..:<,:v.:50W3 general and theological schools are at- Zo~ o f0;;('."~ Z~~ tached t'o nearly all of the missions, and 0 Z§ ;:;1 P-<>'1 ;:;1 CI1 – —- 8 Presbyterian§..•….. 138 158 12,000 little is lacking in the way of machinery 5 EPisco~al.. ………. 91 190 6.000 5 Metho ist…•….. ,. 169 2-31 7,000 or organization_ 4 Baptist. …. …..••. 70 92 2,000 Yet with all that has been accom- 1 Con,gregational…… B8 13:3 11,000 7 IvarlOUS……. •….. 51;1 38 1,000 plished, the mass of the people has not Total…. ..•…… 1,132 842 39,000 yet been touched, and a large majority is still ignorant of the Mission of Jesus * See also pp. 46, 55 (January). 81 (February) Christ. Hitherto one great difficulty 219 (March), 52!, 53J (July). 62:3 (August), 650,691 has been the restriction of the residences (present issue). New Book.: .. Diary of a Japan- of the missionaries to treaty ports, unes~ Convert," Kranzo Uckemura; •. Kororo- less in the employ of natives. In fu- ture, however, under the revised trea- Hmts a~n~daErnc.hoes of Japanese Inner Life" Laf- ties, greater facilities will be afforded, cadio Recent Articles: "Japanese which will mean greater responsibilities Women, Midland Monthly (January), .. Japan. for work. e~e Folk·Lore," Lfppincott's (January); "Ethical I,'fe and ConceptlOns of Japan," International At one Hme there seemed promise that JOU1'nq( Of Ethws (February) ; "The Police of the whole nation would speedily accept Japan, Sunday At Home (March)' .. Prison the Gospel, and every little indication Reform in Japan," Mis8ionar'l HerOld (.July) . was exaggerated in expectant minds. Ohurch at Home ana Abroad (September) . (Jos: Then came the reaction of disappoint- WI in Ali Lands (September). ' ment, as it was found that tho the Jap- t See also pp.• 63 (January). 446, 460 (June); anese were ready enough to accept the 6.'i4, 680 (present Issue). Recent Articles' Iiorean Repositor?! (Monthly); Oh?1Tch at Home and . + Abroad (August). Seealsopp. 59 (January), 657, 664, 670 (present Issue). Recent Articles: See Madical Mis,ion Record and Medical Missiona at H()'(JJ,e and Abroad (Monthly).
§ These arc collectively designated as" The Church of Christ in Japan." general outlines of Christian teaching, After two years' labor among the they could only with the utmost diffi- desperate characters in the prisons of culty be imbued with any idea of their Japan, the following reforms have been sinful state, and that to bring them to effected, through the efforts of native understand the need of a second birth Christians laboring in behalf of the pris- was a superhuman task. But the Bibles oners: are spreading steadily far and wide, and 1. MoraZ imt1"U()tion by a lecture on there are few towns of any !ize without Sunday to all the prisoners, attendance their tract depots. being compUlsory. Distinctively Chris- Among the women a great lind last- tian teaching is not brought into this ing work has been accomplished; they address, as among the prisoners are Bud- have the advantage of almost as dhists, Shintoists, and Confucianists.
great liberty as in America and Eng- Religious freedom is guaranteed to all.
land. 2. Religious Imtruction on tM Sun- Any attempt to ascertain the cause of day.-The study of the Bible and ex- the progress of Japan and her superior- planation of Christian truth for an hour ity over China in lb.e indust.ries of peace succeeding the moral lecture, attend- and the energies of war must be inade- ance upon which is voluntary.
quate that does not take largely into ac- 3. DaiZy Imtruction in tM (JeZZ8.- count the influence of Christian mis- This instruction is either moral or relig- sions. Nothing but gross ignorance or ious.
invincible bigotry can lead anyone to 4. IndividuaZ Imtruction.-Meeting overlook this aspect of the subject. the men privately for personal advice.
They who do not know what they are 5. EducationaZ imt1"U()tion to those talking about still say that missionaries who need it.
have made no impression in heathen- As the direct results of the preaching dom except upon a relatively small frac- of the Gospel by these two brathren, tion of the lower orders of mankind. Mr. Tomeoka and Taneakera Hara, out They who speak from knowledge say of 1506 prisoners 510 are studying the that Christian ideas have already per- Bible in one of the four great prisons meated the institutions and populations in the Hokkaido. Besides this, there is of Japan to such an extent that, from a large band of praying men. The the Mikado to the humblest laborer at radical change wrought in these Japan- four cents a day, there is no man in the ese criminals has greatly impressed those island empire who does not directly or who have witnessed it. According to indirectly feel the influence of the relig- the testimony of their teachers, they are ion of Jesus Christ, if not as a spiritual " an example to believers…
force, at least as a creative energy in politics, industry, and learning. Statis- tics never can do more than dimly shad- of The Seven Wonders Korea. ow forth the truth of such a matter.
Yet statistics prove that already the According to a Chinese authority, faith of the missionaries has found mul- Korea, like the world of the ancients, tiplied thousands of joyful adherents, has its .. seven wonders." Briefly stat- that the mission schools are edueating ed, they are as follows: First, a hot tens of thousands of Japanese youth, mineral spring near Kin Shanta, the that missionary literature is scattered healing properties of which are believed broadcast over the fertile field, and that by the people to be miraculous. No in all the native professions, in the ranks matter what disease may affiict the pa- of the wealthy and powerful, and in aU tient, a dip in the water proves effica- departments of the Government, Chris- cious. The second wonder is two tianity is deeply intrenched. springs situated at a considerable distance from each other, in fact, they have 3. It is human nature to put confi- the breadth of the entire peninsula be- dence in the physician. The more igno- tween them. They have two peculiari- rant the patient the more supernatural ties-when one is full the other is al· do the abilities of the physician seem. ways empty; and, notwithstanding the Because of the blind reverence of the fact that they are connected by a subter- heathen for the doctor, the medical mis- ranean passage, one is bitter and the other sionary has a great advantage. pure and sweet. The third wonder is a cold wave cave-a cavern from which 4. Frequently the best time to convert a wintry wind perpetually blows. The the soul to Christ is in adversity; in force of the wind from the cave is such sickness, on nearing death. Who can that a strong man cannot stand before do this work better than a Christian it. A forest that cannot be eradicated physician in foreign primitive life ? is the fourth wonder. No matter what injury is done to the roots of the trees, 5. The medical missionary, because which are large pines, they will sprout of his knowledge that disease is the re- up again directly, like the phamix sult of sin. and that much of sin is caused from her ashes. The fifth is the most by the perversion of laws, can better wonderful of all. It is the famous than any other man convince the hea- "floating stone." It stands, or seems then of this truth and readily discover to stand, in front of the palace erected the true remedy. in its honor. It is an irregular cube of great bulk. It appears to be resting on 6. The body and soul are intimately the ground, free from supports on all associated, one dependent upon another. sides; but, strange to say, two men at The medical missionary who considers opposite ends of a rope may pass it them 80 related succeeds better in his under the stone without encountering work than one who regards the body any obstacle whatever. The sixth won- and soul as distinct one from the other. der is the "hot stone," which, from remote ages, has lain glowing with heat 7. The missionary, in traveling on the top of a high hill. The seventh through filth and among dangerous and last Korean wonder is a drop of the diseases in foreign lands, needs'a knowlsweat of Buddha. For thirty paces edge of medicine for self-protection. around the temple in which it is en- 'shrined not a blade of grass will grow. 8. The medical missionary is often There are no trees or flowers inside the wholly or in part supported by the gifts sacred square. Even the animals de- of grateful patients. This condition of cline to profa,ne a spot so holy.-New self-support of the missionary is an item yO"'~ Ohristian Advocate. of importance in missionary work.
Ten Reasons for Medical Missionaries in 9. While there are many native" so· called doctors" among heathen nations, foreign Work. there is only 1 enlightened physician to every 3,000,000 inhabitants. (In the 1. The hetter a missionary is equipped United States there is 1 physician to in all departments of work the better every 540 inhabitants.) his success; lence a knowledge of medicine is II benefit. The sending out of more medical missionaries is worthy of the deepest 2. Medicine has been found to be the consideration, because these native docbest means of brea.king through preju- tors, through their ignorance. superstidices, plowing down old customs, and tion, and barbarity, practise untold opening the doors into the homes of the cruelties. ignorant classes. 10. We should ever try to follow closely the footsteps of the Savior. He sent out 82 men, and to all of them gave this command : .. Heal the sick and say unto them, 'The kingdom of God is come nigh unto you.' "-Selected.
EDITORIAL DEPARTMEl'!T
IV.-EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT.
What a grand result in our lives students at Bangor: "In hitting the would be secured if we should seek nail on the head, be careful not to drive honestly to live every day as in view the spike so as to split the plank." of eternity! Here is a solemn, brief, last epistle frum one of the best beloved of Again: .. The spurt of the spiggot is saints. une hour before death these never higher than the water in the words were written, :March 29th, 1891 : cask, unless there is a pressure of gas."
" I write finally,' I know I can never L!lt critics of missions read Dr. Hamsee you again. I give up my pulpit, lin's story or Avederanagan Miapanoo- I bid good-by to all. God is with me. tiune (Evangelical Union) at Constanti- nople. It was a secret body of twenty- .. Yours faithfully, two. If known, every member would have been in prison or exile. It was a "HOWARD CROSBY." church, in fact, having regular meet- ings and a secretary, and the members Here are some nuggets from Cyrus individually had correspondence with Hamlin's" Life and Times," published enlightened men all over the empire, by the Congregational Publishing and the letters received were read at House, a book of which we have the meetings and lodged with the secmore to say hereafter: retary. The leader was Hohannes Der Sahakian, and the signs of the waking Cyrus Hamlin, ten or eleven years up of the old church all over the emold, had seven cents given him by his pire were marvellous. And yet Dr. mother when going to celebrate muster- Edward Robinson, who had just been day. The money was for gingerbread, there, went home and reported at the buns, etc. "Perhaps, Cyrus," said board rooms that the Constantinople she, "you will put a cent or two into missionaries were doing nothing at all the missionary contribution-box at Mrs. worth the cost. "It takes a great man Farrar's." As he trudged along he to be a great fool," adds Dr. Hamlin. began to ask, "Shall I drop in one cent or two? I wish she had not said At the time of the cxile of Mesrobc one or two." He deoided on two. Taliatine and the protest of the mis- Then conscience said, "What, five sionaries, the Russian ambassador Boucents for your stomach and two for the tineff replied: "The Emperor of Rusheathen! five for gingerbread and two sia, my master, will never allow Protfor souls!" So he said four for ginger- estantism to set foot in Turkey." Dr. bread and three for souls. But pres- Schaufiler calmly replied: " Your Exently he felt it must be threc for gin- cellency, the kingdom of Christ, who gerbread and four for souls. When he is my Master, will never ask the Emcame to the box he dumped in the peror of all the Russias where it may whole seven, to have no more bother set its foot." Russia's measures have about it. When he went home, hun- proved a boomerang, smiting her on gry as a bear, he explained to his moth- her face. er his unreasonable hunger; and, smiling through tears, she gave him a royal Armcnian Fund acknowledgments: bowl of bread and milk_ And he patheticallyasks, " What was the mean- Conservatory of Music MS., Cincinnati .••$15.00 ing of motller'8 teat·s?" Junior Y. P. S. C. E., San Jose, Cal…… .75 Rev. E. J. Werner, Gotha, Minn……. ….. 1.50 Cyrus Hamlin was another example Lucy H. Akin, Joliet, 111. ……………… 5.00 of man's proposing and God's dispos- Rogers Park Fund, TIl.. .. .. . . .. …… .. .. 10.00 ing. He chose Africa and afterward China, but went to Turkey as his field Books Notioed, of labor. From Revell & Co. we have" The Professor Shepperd used to say to Diary of a Japanese Convert," by Kan- 7.0 Uchimura. It is very highly com- Bohemians, Poles, Hungarians, and mended by President Charles F. Thwing Magyars. The actual receipts during and Dr. J. D. Davis. Personally we the year were greater than any previous have not found it equal to the high ex- year. This includes special contribu- pectations we had formed of it. It is tions for the General O. O. Howard unduly verbose and too self-conscious, Roll of Honor."
and has the typical faults of a Japanese biography. But as a revelation of the We are glad to copy and commend process whereby a Japanese Buddhist this.-A. T. P.
finds his way to Christ, and incidentally HEALTH FOR MISSIONARIES AND IN· as an unveiling of the unsatisfying na- VALIDS AT HOME. ture of the best and purest of heathen Once more 1 say, cut this out. It systems, it will prove of interest to a may save your life. All diseases come wide circle of readers. It is a unique from impurity in the system. If the book. no other of its sort being to our blood is kept pure a person cannot get knowledge in the market. sick, for the white blood corpuscles eat all disease germs. Do you tllink that medicines which will make a welt man The life of the sainted Adoniram sick can make a sick man well? 1m· purity gets into the system by what you Judson Gordon, by his accomplished eat, drink, or breathe. The manner of son, Ernest B. Gordon, is issued also eating, breathing and dressing, as well by F_ H. Revell Co. And it is enough as sleep, work, worry, and bathing affects the health. to 'say that it is not unworthy of the If you are sick and are not quite cer· subject, a man who, on the whole, sur· tain what to do, do this: 1. With a passed for combination of many beauti· common syringe wash out the bowels every other day with an injection of one ful traits any other man America has to three quarts of plain, hot water. produced in this generation. This This is good in all diseases and helps book will have a far more extended the bowels, stomach, liver, kidneys, notice in these pages in days to come. nerves and every organ in the body. 2. Give a quick, hot sponge bath daily. Meanwhile, let every lover of Christ and missions read it. This is good in all diseases, even if there is fever. The skin pores being kept open, helps to quickly purify the sys- tem. 3. Allow the patient to eat noth- Referring to the editorial note on ing for twenty·four to forty.eight hours, page 538 of the July REVIEW, touching drinking water when hungry. This is the Congregational Rome Missionary a great help to cure all diseases. Every animal, when sick, will not eat. Fast- Society. Rev. Washington Choate, one ing a little will save many a doctor bilL of its secretaries, calls attention to some 4. Keep the windows open a little day errors and asks a correction thereof. He a.nd night. Pure air alone cures many diseases, and helps all. Night air is as says: go~d as day air in all ordinary climates. " The receipts of this society, as re- 5. Keep the hands and feet hot and the ported at its seventieth anniversary iu head coo1. 6. If the patient has fever, New Haven, June 2d-4th, were $777,- sponge with cool water over the back, chest, and abdomen. If the fever is 747, instead of $148,973, as given in the REVIEW. The number of home mis- high, sponge with cold water down the spine till the fever is reduced. 7. When sionaries aided by this society during you feed the patient, let it be a light that same year is 2038, who supplied diet of fruits and grains, snch as rice, rolled oats, wheat, hominy, barley. regularly 4110 churches and stations in The best food for a stomach too weak 44 States and Territories, with many to hold anything down is to boil two other points where preaching was held heaping tablespoons of rolled oats for at frequent intervals. During the same half an hour in a quart of water. Eat this cool with the Jeast amount of sugar year 208 missionaries preached in for· and salt, but no milk. 8. If there is eign languages, including those men- any throat trouble, keep cold wet cloths tioned in your paragraph, as well as on tile throat and change them every ten minutes, with hot irons to the feet. very outset, and before they are consid- 9. Never use medicines. All sick peo· ered in detail. . . . pIe should avoid (if they wish to get well quickly) meat, tobacco, beer, tea, .. The expediency or the success 'of coffee, alcoholic stimulants, pie, cake, this movement is not to be judged mere- sweet and fried foods. ly by What has happened within the The above nine rules will cure nearlv present generation vI even within the every case. Some cases require some- present century, but by the recorded thing special. For example, sunstroke facts of eighteen hundred Christian cen- needs cold water poured on the head; turies. The progress may appear to be dropsy needs a dry diet and sweating; slow in turning India and China to the severe nose bleed needs cold cloths or Christian faith; but that is not the . ice to the sides of the neck, with the feet whole story. Foreign missions pene- in hot water. trated and filled and regenerated the Roman Empire, even tho it required I am sending to foreign missionaries nearly three centuries to acbieve the of all denominations, free, my book .. Medical Hygiene; or, Cures for all result; and no judgment of their suc- Diseases without Drugs." I have no cess or fitness is valid that builds upon money of my own with which to do one of these facts and ignores the other. this. Friends are helping me. The There was a time when it was as hard book has 200 pages and sells at $1- to find a Roman Cbristian as it ever has been to find a Chinese Christian; but W. FRANK Ross, M.D. that time quickly passed and passed A Defense of Foreign Missions. forever, as it has already passed long since in China. . . . In a paper on "Foreign Missions in "The precept of our Lord. • Go, the Light of Fact," in the January teach all nations,' is clear and unre- pealed; there can be no limit to the North American, Rev. Dr. Judson field. The mission of Jesus Christ is as certainly to the modern world as to Smith, Foreign Secretary of the Ameri- the world of His day, as directly to can Board of Commissioners for Foreign Hindus as to Romans, to Chinese and Japanese as to Americans. It is no Missions, says (we reprint a few para- more presumptuous for the missionaries of our times to attempt the Christiani- graphs) ; zation of the Oriental nations and the African tribes than it was for the apos- .. The criticisms we hear may be re- tles and their successors to attempt the duced to four classes. They assert that conversion of the old Roman world. the aim of foreign missions to Chris- For Christ is the Lord and Savior of tianize all nations is absurd and incapa- India and China and Japan, or He iil ble of execution; or that foreign mis- not Lord and Savior to any man. If sions are in the bands of unfit and in- capable men, who can never carry them we deny that He has any special gift through to success; or that the meth- for the people of the Orient, we must ods employed are so unreasonable, so deny that He has any gift for man at ill-adapted to the end, that they pro- all, and ignore the supreme facts of the voke opposition and hatred rather than eighteen Christian centuries that lie be- confidence and love; or that, at any hind us…. rate, they have accomplished nothing, and can never win any real success. "Compared with other Christian These criticisms are fatal if they are teachers and leaders cf their times, for- valid, fatal not alone to foreign mis- eign missionaries as a class ~re in :co re- sion~, but to the whole Christian scheme. spect deficient or in need of apology. Nothing is more deeply embedded in For strength and clearness of mind, for the Gospel than its universality; noth- balanced judgment, for practical sen@e, ing is more central in Christ's work and for industry and efficiency, for Jlower claims than that He is the Redeemer and in leadership and organization, for suc- Lord of all the nations and generations cess in dealing with men, for magna- of the earth, and that' of His kingdom nimity and courage, for patience and there shall be no end.' If Christ was heroic self-denial, they are the peers of mistaken upon these fundamental points, the best men of their generation. Carey, so that the effort to carry out His pur- with whom our modern movement be- poses and build His kingdom in all the gan, was one of the most remarkable earth is absurd and fruitless, liis au- thority as teacher and His power as linguists of any age, and has put the Redeemer are at an end. A presump- learning of this century under lasting tion, almost overwhelming, is thus obligations. Judson, the apostle to raised against these objections at the Burma, was one of the foremost men of his times in all respects; and his achievements are a standing witness to his power. Livingstone, whose con- means of leading between 3000 and 4000 tributions to geography and science and students in Britain and America to dethe discovery of a continent are in the cide to go, God willing, to the foreign mouth of everyone, did all his great fields. This has culminated in the holdservice as a missionary. And what ing of an International Students' Misshall I say more of Morrison and Bridg- sionary Conference at Liverpool, where man, of Dwight and Riggs, of Williams 24 nationalities were represented. There and Parker, of Jessup and Van Dyke, was an attendance of 700 British stuof Patteson and Bingham, of Hanning- dents, 60 university men from the Conton and Pinkerton, and the hosts of tinent, and 180 missionaries and speakmen and women, who, in many lands, ers from 42 societies. Representatives in many tongues, and through the gen- came from no less than 103 colleges, of erations, have witnessed the Gospel, which 32 were British theological colsubdued kingdoms, wrought righteous- leges. The Conference was marked by ness, and entered into rest? The men great spiritual power, and unquestionand women whom we send come out of ably has opened a new chapter in the our purest homes; many of them are history of the British and continental trained in our best colleges and univer- colleges. These results have been due sities ; they are not mere devotees or in part to the union which has been enthusiasts, but practical, sensible, capa- formed between them. For without ble of the best service that is rendered the strength and stimulus arising from at home and abroad." organized cooperation, work of this kind is liable to become spasmodic and British College Christian Union. ineffectual. But the real secret of the remarkable success of these movements The following Call to Prayer for lies deeper; it is prayer.
Theological Students has been issued, There are neady 70 theological col- leges in the British Isles, with a student having been submitted to and received population of over 2000. This mean!! that every ten years more than 8000 the warm approval of the Lord Bishop men pass through these colleges into Rpheres of unique influence. Amid our of London; the Rev. Professor J. Agar lengthened intellectual training, there is much need to see to it that our spir- Beet, D.D., Wesleyan College, Rich- itual vigor is daily increasing and that our religious activity is spontaneous and mond; the Rev. F. J. Chavasse, M.A., not professional. 'fhe supreme impor- tance of the work that lies before us, Principal of Wyc1iffe Hall, Oxford; and the peculiar circumstances of the Church at the present time, call, if posthe Rev. J. Culross. D.D., Principal of sible, more than ever for a true and full consecration in the lives of those who the Baptist College, Bristol; the Rev. are to be ministers of Christ. Noone can fail to observe the cleavage and Professor Marcus Dods, D.D., New Col- mutual distrnst often existing between the various C.· ristian bodies. The fact lege, Edinburgh; the Rev. J. Oswald is only too apparent that the Church of Dykes, D.D., Principal of the Presby- Christ is failing to reach large multi- tudes at home. and is making but an interian College, London; the Rev. T. C. adequate attempt to carry the Gospel to the heathen abroad. In view of these Edwards, D.D., Principal of the Cal- elements of weakness, shall not we, who are preparing for special service in the vinistic Methodist College, Bala; the Master's cause, earnestly seek for purity of heart, the spirit of self-denial, and a Rev. A. M. Fairbairn, D.D., Princi- holy devotion to save the lost?
pal of Mansfield College, Oxford; the Opinions on Church doctrine or gov- ernment differ, but are we not all one Rev. Professor R. Flint, D.D., Univer- in our devotion to our Lord Jesus Christ and His kingdom? His teaching and sity of Edinburgh; and the Rev. H. example in regard to prayer, we all recognize. "Ye did riot choose Me," C. G. Moule, D.D., Principal of Ridley said He to His disciples, "but I chose Hall, Cambridge. you, and appointed you that ye should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit A week of special prayer for theo- should abide: that whatsoever ve shall logical colleges was observed between ask of the Father in My name, He may February 23d a,nd March 1st, 1896.
The last few years have been marked by two great movements among the students of the world, the one in the direction of an awakening of spiritual life, and the other toward foreign missions. The former has been used to bring hundreds of college men to Christ and to quicken the Christian life of others, while the latter has been the give it you." . With this as a common .. Apart from all outward differences, ground of fellowship, shall we not unit- we invite all workers for Christ, whether edly pray that we ourselves and our in our own or other lands, to join the fellow·students may have a fuller meas- Circle, which only entails time given to ure of the Spirit of God? God in prayer. Times of prayer are at The definite subjects of intercession one or all of the following hours; seven should be: A.M., nOon, or evening, whether collec- 1. A g-reat deepening of personal re- tively or privately. Reunion in an out· ligion amon~ theological students. ward form of all who own the Lord 2. The promotion of the spirit of true Jesus Christ as Savior and God may unity. not yet be practicable, but union in 3. The evangelization of the world. prayer for the increased manifestation To accomplish this purpose more of the presence of the Holy Spirit will effectually. the following methods may surely be in agreement with our Mas- be found useful ~ ter's own prayer, • 'I'hat they all may 1. At daily prayer or the meetings of be one.' " classes mention should be made of these points. This appeal is signed by William 2. The students should meet once Sinclair, Archdeacon of London, and each day for united prayer and the quickening of spiritual life. (These representatives of various Christian de- nominations, including Mr. George Mul. meetings might be made very powerful by including a series of addresses on Ier, F. B. Meyer, etc.
personal holiness.) The circular then continues: 3. Colleges Ilear each other might ar· range to have united meetings during Is THERE NOT NEED FOR PRAYER?
the week. .. The present day is one crowded 4. Ministers should be requested to with influences intellectual, social and spiritual. opposed to the spread of commend theological colleges to the Christ's kingdom. prayers of the Church. .. 1. Among Young Ken.-Opinions " Tarry ye . . . ulltil ye be clothed with power from on high." contrary to the teaching of the Word of God are sadly prevalent at our uni- We shonld like to hear from all col- versities and other centers of intellect· leges in which the students are willing ual training. In a certain college in London. out of about 200 students only to cooperate. eight could be found willing to join a Signed on behalf of the British Col- prayer union.
lege Christian Union. .. 2. Among Business Ken.-The W. GAVIN, standard of commercial morality is New College. Edinburgh. very low, and even attendance in any R. MORRIS, numberE at the professed worship of God is lamentably small. In a suburb Theological College, Bala. of a large English cUy. a man of busi- F. W. S. O'NEILL. ness stated that out of 1000 men thus engaged, as far as the Church of Eng- Presbyterian College, Belfast. D. M. THORNTON, Ridley Hall, Cambridge. Theological.OqUege Oommittee.
land was concerned, 30 was his estimate of attendance. Apropos of this comes a call to the "3. Among l1:finisters oj 0 hrist.-The coldness. lack of zeal. intrusion of self formation of a still wider circle of pray- and absence of likeness to Christ is a er, that has beeu formed for the first great obstacle in the way of true suc- day in every month. cess iu winning souls. How seldom is Isaiah's cry heard by God to-day: • My " Its object is to join in real unity of leanness, my leanness, woe unto me.' heart believers in our Lord Jesus Christ "4. In the Ohurch.-The worldliness in prayer for one definite objcct : prevalent crushes spiritual life and •• The fuller manifestation of the power. So-called members of Christ grace and energy of the blessed Spirit are dumb when sin should be rebuked of God in the removal of all that is con- and never witness to His power to trary to the revealed will of God, indi- cleanse, sanctify, and govern. Self·re- vidually and corporately, so that we gard, inconsistency, neglect of means of grieve not the Holy Spirit, but that Fle grace is eating as a canker into many may work in mightier power in the and many a heart.
, Church for the exaltation of Christ and "5. In the World. (a) At Home.-In the ble~sing of souls. factories, warehouses, and offices, children of God are ridiculed and scorned world, and with which the ori~in of the for the stand the,}' take; and religion is British and Foreign Bible Society is set up as a speCIal subject for scornful closely identified. These meetings cer- mirth. tainlY' contained the germ of the Baptist "The tens of thousands of lapsed MiSSIOnary Society, founded in 1792, to souls and souls fearfully ignorant of be followed in 1795 by the London Mis- sin, 'without God and without hope,' sionary Society, which, it has also been in our large cities, as revealed in their stated, owes its existence, if not wholly, absence from all places of worship certainly partially, to the same source.
when a religious census is taken. The The other great missionary societies lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of also, the Church Missionary Society, God infatuated with things that are and the Wesleyan :lHissionary Society vain and fleeting. The suicides in such and others, such as the Society for the painful numbers that appal us. The Propagation of the Gospel, must surely gambling mania, drinking habits, and have had spiritual fire kindled in them licentiousness that drain homes of good- to some extent by these means.
ness and purity, and sweep tens of thou- " Part of this information is extract- sands of souls, even in ' Christian' Eng- ed from' Is the Spirit of the Lord strait- land, into everlasting destruction. ened? ' (published by Hodder & Stough- "(b) Abroad.-Eighteen centuries ton). Therein the Rev. W. Crosbie bave passed since the word was given: writes: 'The lesson is obvious. The 'Go and preach the Gospel to every time has come for another great prayer creature,' and to·day there are hundreds union with a definite purpose and aim.
of millions who have never once heard A new baptism of the Holy Ghost is our it ; and the fault, more or less, is ours supreme want, and it is conditioned on who name the name of Jesus. agreement in prayer.'
CANNOT THE NEED BE MET? " The spirit of the Lord is not strait- ened where there is union in real pray- " In ~fay, 1'736, Bishop Butler VI rote : er, so that the great need of the present , It is come to be taken for granted by day can be most fully met. 'Not by many persons that Christianity is not so might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, much a subject of inquiry, but it is now saith the Lord of Hosts. ' "
at length discovered to be fictitious, and nothing remains but to set it up as a A very important evangelical move· principal subject of much ridicule.' "In 1737, Dr. Watts wrote: 'There ment is going on among the Hebrew has been a great complaint for many race in London. It is a mission con- years that the Spirit of God and His ducted on clearly definite Catholic prinsaving infiuence is much withdrawn, and there are few that receive the report ciples. In a single church (that of St.
of the Gospel with any eminent success Paul's, Haggerston) more than four upon their heartR.' hundred Hebrews, most of them adults, " In 1744 a document was drawn ul> have been baptized within the last seven by some godly ministers in Scotland on years. This will provc that the num- the subject of united prayer for the Holy Ghost. A copy of this reached ber of converts is not so scanty as is President Edwards, who wrote a trea- ordinarily represented, and we are in a tise supporting its proposals, entitled , A humble attempt to promote an ex- position to produce abundant evidence of sincerity and self-sacrifice. There plicit agreement and visible union of God's people throughout the world in are 4 bishops and 120 clergymen in extraordinary prayer.' It is stated that the Anglican Church, converted Jews, many entered into the concert. We know the great awakening of spiritual and, like St. Paul, preaching" the faith life in the United States and in our own they once destroyed."
land subsequent to this union.
"In 1784 the treatise fell into the Heathenism is characterized by two hands of Andrew Fuller, of Kettering, in whose biography appears this testi- words: Helplessness and hopelessness ; mony: 'Periodical meetings were held it has no power to help and no inspira.
among the ministers in their immediate tion for hope.
neighborhoods, setting apart the first Monday evening in every month for On " Great Paul," the big bell of St. prayer for the extension of the Gospel.' Paul's cathedral, is the inscription, This union in prayer, perhaps, gave the " Woe is me if I preach not the Goaimpetus to that missionary spirit which extended itself throughout the Christian pel. "
G&NERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE
V.-GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE.
EDITED BY REV. D. L. LEONARD.
Extracts and Translations from Foreign Then, and not till then, they began to P eriodioals. invent these stories hbout an immemo· BY REV. C. C. STARBUCK, ANDOVER, Iia! antiquity. The possession of an MASS. episcopal succession by the Bohemian (or rather the Moravian) Waldenses THE UNITAS FRATRUM. was an accident. These were, after the -The last winter in Greenland was time of Huss, in good repute both with uncommonly mild and favorable to the the Roman Catholics and with the Utra- fishing and sealing expeditions of ,the quists, and, availing themselves of the Eskimos. Health has also been gener- favorable opportunity, they, in 1433, ally good. procured three of their ministers to be We observe on pp. 610, 611, of the ordained priests by a Roman Catholic August number of the REVIEW, some bishop of Bohemia named Nicholas, extracts from an interesting paper :of and then sent them to the reforming Mrs. W. H. Belden, on Moravian mis- Council of Basel, some of whose mem- sions. Her claim, however, for the bers consecrated them bishops. Thus Unitas Fratrum, of being the oldest their succession, like that of the Church Episcopal Church in existence, cannot of England and of Sweden, did not be maintained. It is founded on the come through any undiscoverable reo assumption that the Waldenses, from cesses of church history, but down the whom they derived their episcopate, broad, open current of Western Catholi- had themselves an episcopal succession cism.
going back to the apostles. But the In 1467, when the eIder Brethren's Waldenses originally made no such Church was constituted, it was decided claim. As their learned representative, to introduce the episcopate. Accord- Dr. Emil Comba says, who -furnishes ingly Michael Bradacius and two other the exhaustive compendium of their priests were sent to the two surviving history for Herzog's Encyclopedia, all Waldensian bishops, who advanced early Roman Catholic and all early them to the episcopate. Thus the Mora· Waldensian accounts agree, in deriv- vian succession is just the same as the ing the movement from Peter Waldo, Roman Catholic or Anglican. As of Lyons, and in dating it from about Bishop De Schweinitz remarks, the 1170. Waldo, being a layman, of course Brethren ascribe to it an historical, but could give no ordination, and being no essential value. They have never, joined by no bishop, of course could like the Anglicans, called in question procure no episcopal succession. The the ordinations of other Protestant notion that Waldo simply revived an churches. Bishop De Schweinitz, we earlier Alpine church, is, as Dr. Comba may remark, fully agrees with Dr.
remarks, without a shadow of evidence. Comba, that the Waldenses have no The stories ,to this effect, which are claim, as a separate body, to an im- spread everywhere in our language, memorial antiquity.
are, he says. not worth the paper they The Unity is seriously considering are written on. Indeed, the Waldenses the question, whether it may not be tho not friendly to the Pope, regarded best to make over its Greenland Mission themselves as simply a mere evangelical to the Danish Church. We continually party within the Catholic Church. It hear the Moravians spoken of as if was not till many years after the Ref- Christianity was first introduced into ormation that they decided to make Greenland, and is principally main- common cause with Protestantism. tained there by them. Neither is true.
EXTRACTS AND TRANSLATIONS
EIans Egede was not a Moravian, but a had obtained permission from the Caliph Lutheran pastor of Norway. Indeed, of Egypt to build a hospital for peor when the first Moravians came, altho sick pilgrims. This hospital of St. he had solicited their help, there was John became well known, and rich cruso wide a divergence of sentiment be- saders gave money to endow it. Others tween him and them in various respects, joined its medical or nursing staff, and as resulted in alienation. This estrange- without laying down their crusading ment has long been overcome, but the badge, fought now a new fight against two churches remain distinct, the Mora- the ravages of disease and death. And vians still sustaining an auxiliary and the order of St. John being a religious secondary part. The Lutherans have one, the spiritual concerns of the pasome 8300 Eskimos under their charge, tients would be remembered. Even at who are rather increasing; the Mora- the present day in Prussia there is a vians something over 1600, who are de- Protestant order of the Knights of St. creasing. Some use this as proving a John of Jerusalem, which unites the want of wisdom on their part. They care of the stricken body with that of point out, however, that by far the the sin·sick soul. greater part of the Danish Eskimos are of mixed blood, descended from mar- "With the close of the eighteenth riages between the inferior Danish offi- century, science, Christian life and its cials and merchants and Greenland humanities, and the missionary instincts women. They therefore share largely of the churches awoke from a profound in the superior vitality of the European and protracted slumber. One result of race, as well as in its superior forecast this awakening was the stirring into and energy. Besides, it is impossible life of what has been called the crusade that they should not largely monopo- of the nineteenth century-the Red lize the better situations directly or in- Cross movement, which followed the directly connected with the government signing of the Genevan Convention in service. The Moravian Eskimos, on 1863. This convention, which provided the other hand, are of the pure native for the protection of the sick and blood, sluggish, improvident, inferior wounded in time of war, commanded in reasoning power and in forecast, less the sympathy and adhesion of every fruitful, and very much less favorably civilized nation. It adopted as its situated for taking care of themselves badge, out of compliment to Switzerand their children. The Danish Gov- land, a red cross on a white ground-the ernment is thoroughly kind and help- Swiss colors reversed. And so it .comes ful, but cannot in the nature of the to pass that it is under the old crusadcase be quite as closely in touch or do ing sign that present-day deeds of mercy quite as much for these outlying sta- are done on the field of battle, both by tions as for those of the Danes. The the regular army ambulance corps and Unity has not as yet decided to give by the various volunteer Red Cross soover its work to the Lutherans, but cieties which have started up as auxthe Missions·Blatt speaks of it as by no iliaries. means impossible that this may come to pass within five years. This uncer- "Yet another and nobler crusade tainty is an added burden to the many arose out of the above-mentioned woncrushing burdens which the faithful derful stirring of dry bones just a cen- Moravian missionaries in Greenland tury ago. As medical science and mishave to sustain. sionary enthusiasm deepened, men, taught by the spirit of Christ, began to MEDICAL MISSIONS. discern how best to follow in His steps who went about doing good and heal- -" Two hundred years before the ing those that were oppressed by the Children's Crusade merchants of Amalfi devil. Medical missions sprang into existence. There are now rather over
GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELI,IGENCE
two hundred professionally and spirit- , Thou shalt keep the feasts;' and the ually qualified men and women from tenth commandment is divided into this country who are waging holy war two to make out the number, the sec- against satanic strongholds of heathen- ond command as given to Moses being dom, which to the ordinary missionary wholly omitted, and the fourth distort- had been practically inaccessible. ed into the injunction to observe the " Two hundred, yet barely more than feasts." As to the distortion, there is two hundred medical missionaries; nothing to be said, except that the Ro- while there were last year 26,790 of our man and the Lutheran Church appear doctors at work in Great Britain and to agree with John Calvin, that the Ireland, and over 5500 engaged in vari- Sabbath is no longer directly binding ous departments of foreign service. It on Christians, but only so far as the seems a forlorn hope. But we remem· Church sanctions it, and that therefore ber also that there are two hundred stu- its observance rests on the same ground dents who at present are preparing to as that of the great festivals. We have join the medical mission ranks. We been told that in Protestant Germany will thank God, then, both for the no- the law punishes working on Sunday ble advance guard of veterans already with neither more nor less severity than in the field, and for the little band of working on a festival. But the assump- young men and women who are mov- tion that the omission of what we call ing on steadily after them. And we the second commandment frQID. the will take courage for the future."- shorter catechisms (and from them Medical Mission8 at Home and Abroad. only), is designed to suppress the -The Rev. F. M. ZAHN, in a valu- knowledge of it, and that the tenth able article in the Allgemeine Mi88ion- commandment is divided to cover up ZeitBchrijt, on Nationality and Interna- the suppression, is an utter mistake_ tionality, remarks that if a German There has never been unanimity in dishould name as characteristic virtues viding the Decalogue, either among of his people, industry, simplicity, Jews or Christians. Our usual division thoroughness, respect for other national is the oldest known, going back at least peculiarities, other nations would be to Philo. But in the Talmud there is apt to protest. Bow could they? another division mentioned, which These are specifically German virtues, makes the first of the' Ten Words'- and why should other nations object to the Old Testament designation of the having them designated for what they Decalogue-to be what we call the inare? troduction: 'Bear, 0 Israel,' etc.; what we call the first and second coa- -In Mr. Robert E. Speer's exceed- lescing as the second. This division is ingly valuable article on Mexico, in the still preferred by various scholars, Jew- March number of the REVIEW, in which ish and Christian. A third early Chris- he shows, from Roman Catholic e~i tian division fuses the first and second dence, what a sad caricature of Chris- (which have always been hard to keep tianity Mexican religion for the most asunder), thus securing for the first part is, there is one serious misapprc- table the number of the Trinity. The hension, which it is imperative to cor- tenth commandment is then divided, rect, the more so as it is continually re- according to Deut. 5 : 21, thus securing appearing in all quarters. Mr. Speer the advantage of detaching a neigh.
says: "Idolatry is not forbidden by bor's wife from among his chattels.
the Ten Commandments, as given to The solid and the mystic reason moved the people by the Church. In ihe St. Augustine to cast his great author- Mexican decalogue the second com- ity in favor of this third division, which m'andment is, 'Thou shalt not take the has always remained prevalent in the name of God in vain;' the third, West, the Calvinists alone, at the Ref-
ENGLISH NOTES
ormation, reverting to agreement with cases prominent members, of the church the Greek Church in accepting the and country, are a great source of pain elder Philonian division. The division and regret to us. . . . Immorality is the had not the slightest relation to image- prevailing sin here, and is very lightly worship, of which St. Augustine was a thought of. . . . But we do not despair.
stern opponent. Gregory the Great, Weare determined at aU hazards to also its stern opponent, confirmed in the fight the Lord's battle, and in His own West the division into three and seven strength. "
for the two tables respectively, which London Mis8ionary &ciety.-Active most of the Lutherans stilI approve steps have been taken by the directors equally with the Catholics. The im· of this society, with a view to secure age-worshiping Greek Church divides the cooperation of French Protestant as we do. The shorter Lutheran cate- brethren in the future carrying on of chisms, like the Roman Catholic, giving the work in Madagascar. The idea is only the opening sentences of the longer that the Paris Missionary Society should commandments, omit what we call the take over one of the districts now occusecond, but what both churches regard pied by the London Missionary Society ,as only the conclusion of the first. in the neighborhood of Antananarivo. The longer catechisms, which the young people are encouraged to study, Kidderpore.-The Rev. J. Levitt, of give the Decalogue in full, but of course Calcutta, reports the conversion and in the same division. The Catholics baptism of B. V. Mookerjee. the first render extravagant honor to images, Hindu convert of the Kidderpore Misthe Lutherans render none at all, using sion. He had a terrible battIe with them merely for ornaments; but their Adam the first, but was obliged at last agreement as to dividing the Decalogue, to yield to the dictates of conscience which rests on utterly different grounds, and go to Christ outside the camp.
exposes them to the same accusation, A Foothold in Hunan, Ohina.-This which in both cases is utterly unhis- society has just received the gilt of a torical, and therefore unconsciously but house and land in Hunan. Some seven gravely calumnious." years ago Dr, John baptized a convert name Li Yeukeng. All these years he has been busy among his own people; English Notes. and now there are four whole families BY JAMES DOUGLAS. who have given up idolatry and are seeking baptism. Mr. Li has handed Ohurch Mi8Bionary Society. – The over his house and a large piece of land Thirty-third Annual Report of the to the mission, the deeds being now in Sierra Leone Native Pastorate Auxil· possession, The London Missionary iary Association has been received. Society is the first Protestant mission to The accession is recorded of .. four hold property in the Province of Hunan. more ordained men," while satisfaction is expressed that for five years in suc- KU1'uman, &uth Africa.-The an- cession the work has been carried on nual gathering of the different branches without any debt. Thus far, however, of the Kuruman Church was held dur- the net result when spiritually tested is ing the first week of January. The far from encouraging. Concerning the huge district of Morokweng, about'
SheJrbro district, the Rev. M. Wilson 14,000 square miles in extent, has only writes: "The general moral and spir- one missionary, the Rev. J. Tom oitual tone of the church and of the Brown. "I believe," says Mr. Brown, country is very far from what it should "that the declension from the faith be-in fact, it is confessedly low. The and the low state of spiritual life among inconsistent lives of members, in many our people are largely due to the fact
7(18 GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE
that they are left without spiritual su- tho small at present, is interesting and pervision, for years at a time, save such hopeful. as can be given by one of themselves." Mr. Brown also draws attention to the China's Millions.-Mrs. Samuel R. horrible cruelties practised throughout Clarke, of Kwei- Yang Fu, contributes the district, and. to the malign influence an interesting article on the Tsong-kia of the chief,who is" not only a heathen, tribe. This tribe is the most numerous but a drunkard, and is guided entirely of all the aboriginal tribes in Kweiby the worst characters in his town." chau, and it is said that in Kwang-si, The treatment of slaves is said to be the Tsong-kia are also very numerous. barbarous in the extreme. Of these Unlike the Miao, another aboriginal slaves" some are good Christians, and tribe, the Tsong-kia men cannot be disone of them has for many years been a tinguished from the Chinese. For six teacher even of their masters. " years efforts have been made to reach the people of the five villages of Shui- English Presbyterian Miaaiona. -Early gan-pa with no visible result, except last year, the Amoy Cl.urch News an- that the people are less timid and~sus nounced the conversion of a Chinchew plCIOUS. There are, however, five or literary gentleman, Mr. Iu ChuM, I"ix Tsong-kia baptized in the Kweiwhich excited great interest in the city. chau Province, brought in principally A few months after Mr. Iu's conver- through Chinese Christians. At pression, he was the means of leading a ent two missionaries are engaged in the brother-in-law, Mr. Chhun-peng, to be- study of the Heh Miao dialect, which lieve in the Lord Jesus. The path of has been reduced to writing; but two Mr. Chhung-peng has been beset by fresh missionaries are needed to set to many difficulties, but he has steadfastly work on the Tsong-kia language. gone forward, and is now assistant teacher in the Middle School of Amoy. Wesleyan Mi8sionary &ciety.-The A younger brother who went to Amoy, third South India Provincial Synod intending, if he would not renounce met in Bangalore on January 15th_ Christianity, to kill him, has been won There were cheering increases in all the over by Chhung-peng's gentleness. districts, the largest being in Madras. " I did not know," he said, "that the which reported an increase of 12 Engdoctrine was so good. You did not lish and 80 native members. The total make it plain to me how good it is ; increase of members was 198, all of now I will stay on here, and study the whom were natives, the English mem- Holy Book and learn about the doc- bership being stationary. The number trine. " of members in the whole area is 3780, of whom 3304 are nlltives. The adult Bo;pti8t Mis8ionary &ciety. -Writing baptisms were 452. The total Chrisconcerning work in the Shantung Prov- tian community is more than 11,000. ince, China, the Rev. R. C. Forsyth says: "We have added to the native THE KINGDOM. church in this district (Tsing Chu Fu) 120 by baptism, and in the Chou·ping -" I have long since ceased to pray, district between two and three hun- • Lord Jesus, have compassion upon a dred, tho accurate statistics are not yet lost world.' I remember the day and to hand." Among other branches of the hour when I seemed to hear the outside work, to. which Mr. Forsyth Lord rebuking me for making such a makes reference, is a weekly class prayer. He seemed to say to me, • I which he holds with the Manchu sol- have had compassion upon a lost world, diers from the permanent camp about and now it is time for you to have coma mile from Tsing Chu Fu. This class, passion. I have left you to fill up that which is behind in Mine afflictions in the flesh for the body's sake, which is all the customs. and institutions, in the the Church. I have given My heart; thought and heart and inner life of that now give your hearts."-A. J. Gordon. people, and a new law is given to their social and civil development. The -Nothi.ng could be better for rousing Bible alone has set man on his manthe spiritual life of a congregation, and hood, created a people and popular leading it on to a higher life, than the freedom and intelligence, and set the cultivation of the spirit of missions. whole new world it has thus created The progress of the kingdom of God in revolving around that new center, pivthe world is a study well calculated to oted on a people. Just all there is in enlarge the mind and soul, and rescue our progressive humanity, in legitimate torpid congregations from their self- liberty and popular enlargement, is satisfied ease. What a power for good wrapped up in that-and just all that would be our home millions of Chris, we owe to the Bible.-Bible Society tians, if really alive to their privilege Record. and duty in helping forward the work ct God inalllands.-Mackay, oJ Uganda. -The July Ohurch Mi8sionary Intel' ligerwer has an article 'from Seton . -Bishop Mallalieu writes of the Churchill, whose title, .. The Christian found~r of Gammon Theological Semi- Gambler, " fairly startles one. Phil. nary: "Yonder, in far-away!Iaine, is 2 : 30 supplies the text and a basis for a young man who heard the call of the phrase, especially the words, " Not God to preach the Gospel, and in due regarding his life." He affirms that time commenced what he supposed Epaphroditus "was a gambler in the was his life work. But a throat trouble truest and highest sense of that term, disabled him. He was obliged, with whose faith enabled him to stake all on deepest regret, to leave the ministry the cause of his Master, as he believed and go into business, and in due time it to be a winning cause." He finds a became possessed of hundreds of thou- similar hint in Acts 15: 26 in these sands of dollars. He decided to lay his words: "Men that hazarded their iives wealth upon the altar of service for the for the name of Christ." That same education of young men for the min- .. hazard" refers to a game of chance, istry, and selected Atlanta as the seat in which" it was no uncommon thing of the institution he would found. for a gambler who had lost all his Hence we ha ve this school of the proph- goods, to stake one more thing, his own ets, with a plant and endowment of not life, and to sell himself into slavery." less than $600,000; and Elijah Gam- The entire article is most impressive in mon, disabled, discouraged, and thwart- its appeal for disciples, both abroad ed in what he had thought God had and at home, who are ready to risk called him to do, has laid the founda- everything for Jesus' sake, as so many tions and provided for the needs of a like Judson, Moffat. Mackay, and John seat of learning where tens of thou- Williams have gladly done. sands of young men shall be trained to 1-.-<::Dme able ministers of the Gospel." -What shall be [thought of the American Methodists if they heed not ·-Wherever the Bible has gonl', a the call to pay the missionary debt, tho great and blessed change has come. It it amounts to $220,000, since a dime has created the Pllople. It has given a from each one will complete the unnew aim to government, a new char- dertaking? And what shall be thought acter to literature, and diffused free- of the saints in general who suffer the dom, intelligence, and comfort among Lord's work to drag slowly on, or even the masses. At once, upon the dis- go backward, when a mere trifle from semination of God's Word among any every individual in the host oftered people in their own language, a new power has begun to work deeply under regularly would secure abundance for carts and bullock carts. and now and the Lord's treasury ~ then in a Studebaker express wagon, in – A writer of some repute, in a some- .rapanese jinrikishas and Chinese wheelwhat lavish commendation of a native African of noble character, acknowl- barrows, in water craft of many a groedges that this character is the direct tesque model, and then a long procesresult of missionary work. and yet sion of men and women on foot, besays; "We candidly admit that mis- grimed with the dust of hills and plains, sionary literature has no attractions for or soiled from the sloughs of mud or us, and that to listen to the dry details bridgeless rivers. A.nd could we folof church work among far-away tribes low them in their toilsome way we is a severe trial." But without this should see them entering alike the church work, the details of which are abodes of Korean royalty, Hindu rajahs, stigmatized as dry, the character which Chinese noblemen, and the huts of povis applauded would not have existed. erty of all nations, telling to the few We are quite sure that there is little in and the many who gather to listen of missionary literature more stupid than the blessed' Only Name.' " is this remark, taken iu its connection. The writer wants rich fruit without WOMAN'S WORK. any care for the tree or the ground or the process by which the fruit is pro- -The women of the Society of duced. Why not dispense with trees Friends are growing steadily in the altogether? They arc dull things; we grace of missionary activity. In 13 want only fruits. We have seen a man Yearly Meetings there are 2059 who go into ecstasies over a gorgeous plant practice proportionate giving; in all of chrysanthemum, but he was not some 30 missionaries and 20 native silly enough to disparage the work of evangelists are supported. the gardener, who for months had watched and watered and trimmed and -The eleventh annual announcement fed the plant, eucouraging it here ,and of Chicago Missionary Training School checking it there. until, in all its sym- shows an enrollment for 1895-96 of 14, metry and brilliant bloom, it was ready students. Since the establishment of for exhibition. The beautiful products the school 769 women have pursued its both in plant life and human life are courses. Of this number 94 have ennot to be secured without hard and tered foreign mission fields, 66 have enlong labor. To disparage the process gaged in some form of home or evanwhile lauding the results is childish in gelistic mission work, while 212 have the extreme.-Missionary Herald. engaged in deaconess work, 32 women are sent into the field this year as dea- -Dr. Jones, of Madura mission, re- conesses, 6 enter some other form of ports that a public meeting was held at home-work, and 11 look forward to which the people, notwithstanding the foreign work. their own great poverty, contributed most liberally for the purpose of send· -The spread of the Woman's Foring some relief to their suffering breth- eign Missionary movement among Presren in Asia Minor. byterians is well illustrated by the re- ports which were presented to the -In Tlte Ohurch at Home and Abroad Woman's Missionary Conference of the Rev. Benjamin Labaree exclaims: Union of Presbyterian Foreign Mis- " What a motley company we should sionary Societies held in Glasgow, in have could all the itinerating parties of connection with the meeting there of many lands be massed into a single the Pan-Presbyterian Council. Reports picture before us, on their elephants were submitted by Mrs. Bell, London; and their donkeys, in Hindu camel Miss McNeill, for Mrs. Duncan Love, Victoria; Miss Adam, of the Ladies' Kaffrarian Society; Mrs. Barnes, on behalf of Mrs. Forbes, Canada; Mrs. ciations along the lines of their roads; Lindsay, Free Church Mission, Glas- 46 buildings, valued at $560,000, are gow; Mrs. Hislop, Brisbane, in con- owned by or held for the use of the nection with the church of Queenland ; railroad associations.
lV1rs. Burchfield, Pittsburg, United -The annual report presented by Presbyterian Church of America; and Secretary Baer at the Christian En- by Mrs. Candlish, New South Wales. deavor Convention in Washington gives -The W. C. T. U. Polyglot Petition the total number of societies as 46,125, has been photographed-at least that with a membership of 2,750,000, and part of it which includes names from all but three or four countries on the any country or colony pertaining to globe represented. Canada has 3292 the British Empire. It is to be pre- societies, and in foreign and missionary sented to Queen Victoria in three large lands there are 6399. The United and beautifully adorned volumes. The Kingdom has over 3000; Australia, petition was composed by Miss Willard, over 2000; France, 66; West Indies, represents 7,000,000 of persons, and 63 ; India, 128; Mexico, 62; Turkey, asks for the abolition of the liquor 41; Africa, 88; China, 40; Germany, traffic and the opium trade. It .has 18; Japan, 66; Madagascar, 93. On been circulated by the World's W. C. this side the Atlantic Pennsylvania T. U. in 50 countries. leads with 3273 societies; then New York comes with 2971, Ohio with 2311, YOUNG PEOPLE. and Ontario fourth with 18'17. Over 8000 societies have asked to be placed -One of the most interesting devel- on the missionary roll of honor. They opments of the Student Volunteer Mis- include 5869 Young People's societies sionary Union is a plan formed by and 2331 Junior societies from 35 States, women students at our Universities for 7 Territories, 7 Provinces, 4 foreign a Missionary Settlement of University lands, and have given $154,022.68, Women at Bombay-a kind of deacon- through their own denominational ess institution for evangelistic, educa- boards, to the cause of home and fortional, and medical work. It is not eign mISSIOns. In addition to this like a society which sends missionaries. amount $206,150 has been given by Those who have projected the scheme these same societies for Christ and the are going themselves, mostly at their Church in other ways, making a total own charges. Two women, the Misses of $360,172, the largest amounts given Stone, one of them a graduate of Newn- by anyone society being $1107, by the ham College, Cambridge, are already Clarendon Street Baptist Society, of at Bombay, and 4 others sail this year. Boston, and a little over $1000 by the Calvary Presbyterian Society, of Buf- -Here is an example worthy of imi- falo, N. Y. tation by large commercial corpora- tions: The Wells-Fargo Express Com- -Here are some cases of Christian pany, of San Francisco, for the tenth endeavor which bear the stamp of reality consecutive year, has made the clerks -genuineness. The Cherokee Indian of its city office members of the San delegate traveled 800 miles in order to Francisco Y. 1'1. C. A., taking out 136 get to the Colorado convention. Across memberships at $10 each, and giving the burning, broiling plains of Mexico its check for $1360 in payment. In two plucky Endeavorel's traveled. afoot connection with this bit of news, it is for eight days in order to attend the interesting to know that the American first national convention of Mexican railway corporations contribute $131,- Endeavor societies at Zacatecas. Other 000 annually to the work of the local delegates did almost as heroically. The Railroad Young Men's Christian Asao- societies of Laos (Siam) held their first eonvention a short time ago. Since and often antagonistic citizens into J~nuary, 1895, 20 societies have been homogeneous Americans." formed in a community of 3000 Laos Christians. The character of the con- -In Oberlin on June 23, the cornervention may be inferred from the state- stone of J ndson Cottage was laid with ment that one delegate took an eight appropriate ceremonies. 'l'his home days' journey to attend it. He walked for the children of missionaries will -be all the way over mountain and plain, a source of comfort to many anxious through forest and jungle, carrying his parents when called upon to endure own food and bedding, and sleeping the trial of separation from their chilwhere night overtook him. It was at dren at an age when the boys and girls this gathering that one of the delegates most need the influence of a Christian inquired, Will one who is not an En- home. deavorer get to heaven? -At the anniversary exercises of AMERICA. Yale Divinity School in May, the mem- ber of the graduating class who aroused United States.-We need not be the most enthusiasm in the audience surprised to learn that the death-rate was a colored man from Massachusetts, of New York is diminishing. With a graduate of Boston University. His the clean streets of the past year it subject was" The Preacher as a Social ought to decrease. No statistics have Reformer," and tbe vigor and good been issued, but President Wilson of sense of bis presentation of tbe needs the Health Board says that the death- of his race would have been apprecirate of the past six months is much less ated by tbose who imagine that colored than in any corresponding period for people are not the peers of their white years. Thatsomany down-town streets brethren.-Tke Independent. have been asphaJted no doubt contributes something to this result, as aiding -The editor of tbe Ledger (Calloway cleanliness. And now that the war County. Ky_) has taken this brave against the rear tenement is declared, stand: "All contracts for whiskey adwe may expect even better things in vertisements in the Ledger have expired, the matter of health, and no less in and from this date no whiskey advertisethat of morals. Dr. Jameson, instruct- ments shall appear in these columns at ing the summer corps of doctors last any price. If saloon people desire to week, told them that they would be expatiate on the merits (?) of any peculexpected to note down and report the iar brand of their damnation, they can position of every rear tenement in their look elsewhere for a medium through several districts, with direct reference which to extol their virtues. The Ledto the final abolition of this menace to ger makes no claims to sanctification, health and good order.-E1Jangelist. but when a saloon-keeper tells ns that a $6 advertisement in the Ledger "has sold -Out of a population of 338,000, the for him $1200 of whiskey, it makes us city of Buffalo has only about 175,000 feel that we have been, in a small meawho own English as their mother sure, responsible for the damage done, tongue. The Germans number 100,- and we promise ' to sin no more.' " 000, the Poles 59,000, the Italians 7,000, and 19,000 are classed as speaking -The American Board announces "every language under heaven." the receipt of a generous legacy by There are 35,000 Irish in the city. which provision is made for several of The welfare of the city, as of most its institutions. J. W. Porter, of Chitypical American cities, depends upon cago, a trustee under the will of Mrs. " the changing of these heterogeneous C. L. A. Tank, of Fort Howard, Wis., has remitted from Mrs. Tank's estate the noble sum of $55,000. Of this amount $35,000 are for North China de Janeiro. Mr. Tucker writes in the College, Tung-cho, for present needs BWle Society Record: "Some of the and endowment; $5000 for the Tank Arabs in Brazil come from parts of the Chapel and Bridgman School at Peking; world where there are Protestant mis- $5000 for the Williams Hospital at sions, for many of them already have Pang-chuang, and $2500 for buildings some knowledge of the Bible. Most of at Pang -chuang; $2500 for the Inter- them appear to be peddlers about the national Institute for Girls at San Se- streets. Some of them frequent the bastian, Spain; and $500 for Euphrates churches, a few of them having be- College. The remainIng $4500 are for come members of the Presbyterian general work in Papal lands, Mexico churches in Rio, San Paulo, and else- and the city of Pr&gue being men- where. Our colporteurs find them al- tioned. most everywhere, and have no dim- -After many years of most devoted culty in selling the Scriptures to them. and efficient service in Harpoot, Rev. Two young men, Arab merchants in C. H. Wheeler has returned to this Porto Allegro, one of whom was educountry, probably to pass the residue cated in Robert College, have been of his days. He easily takes rank with waiting some months for the books Cyrus Hamlin among the heroes of the which they want to sell to their fellow- Turkish Mission. countrymen in the State of Rio Grande do SuI." -The 142,089 Sunday-schools of the United States and Canada have 13,033,- -The Presbyterian Church, South, 175 teachers and scholars. gives these figures concerning its work in Brazil: Stations, 8; out-stations, 37 ; Mexico.-Amissionarywrites: "The nusslOnaries, 25; native ordained Salvation Army is not in Mexico. preachers, 5; candidates for the min- They are prohibited by the laws of the istry, 6; colporteurs, 3; other native country. Religious processions of all helpers, 5; churches, 19; communiclasses are forbidden; even priests are cants added in 1895, 178; total commuforbidden to go on the streets with nicants, 1075; houses of worship, 13 ; their robes, altho it is done in some day schools, 7; pupils in same, 138; parts. I nnderstand they are on the border in Texas trying to devise some girls' boarding schools, J; pupils in means by which they may enter. same, 10; native contributions, $2450.
-At a recent meeting two historic -About five years ago a Chilian Bibles'were shown by Rev. F. M. Gil- picked up a loose leaf of the New Testachrist, who said that from the reading ment from a pile of rubbish, read it, inof these Spanish Bibles had grown quired what it was, and, being told 4 Presbyterian churches and 1 ~lethod that it was a part of the Bible, he inist church among the Mexicans of quired where a Bible could be bought, Southern Colorado. One of these was and, having been offered one for $10, published in 1826. Forty years later, he was saving his money to buy it, a Mexican gave $10 in cash, a fat ox, when a colporteur passed his house, and traveled 350 miles to make pur- thrust a Bible through the partly opened chase of the prized volume. The sec- doorway, and asked if they wished to ond was also obtained at much cost by buy it for 20 cents. Quiroga could a Mexican who read it diligently, and hardly believe that the man was in lived and died with faith in Jesus. He earnest. He eagerly bought one. He never saw a Presbyterian minister ex- soon saw the light and began to hold cept on one occasion. meetings. When Rev. Francisco Jor- quera went to the north of Chile, look- South America.-A shipment of ing for the most promising place for Arabic Bibles has btlen received at Rio opening work, he found that Quiroga, in Taltal, had formed a group of about -The Universities' Mission statistics 50, who were all anxious to have a pas- for the year 1895 show receipts from tor. He immediately decided to locate all sources amounting to £24,621 and there, and, by his active endeavors, the expenditure £22,754. There were on work has spread in many parts. an average 83 English workers, 15 on furlough. The missionaries who were GREAT BRITAIN. in the field drew for personal expenses, in addition to the maintenance by the -In 1897 the thirteen hundredth an- mission, not more than an average of niversary of Augustine's landing in £9 each. Those who were at home on Kent, with his 40 missionaries for the furlough drew an avefl~ge of about £93 evangelization of Britain, will be cele- a year each. It is claimed that the brated. home expenses of the mission did not amount to more than 9 per cent of its -The British and Foreign Bible So- receipts. In the Zanzibar diocese there ciety distributes on an average over were 10 stations and 3 out-stations; in 13,000 copies of the Bible daily, nearly Nyasaland, 13 chief stations. The to- 4,000,000 a year. Its influence is cou- tal number of hearers, catechumens, tinually extending more widely over and baptized converts, in both dioceses the whole world, the Bible being now combined, number 5560. There are translated into the languages of nine 1173 boys and 523 girls in their schools. tenths of the human race. At the beginning of the century it had only been -After four years' work in Egypt, translated into the languages of one the North Africa Society rejoices in the fifth. baptism of its first convert, in the per· son of a young Arab Mohammedan, re- -The Church Missionary Society has cently come to Alexandria from Pales- 38 medical missionaries in East Afri- tine. He first heard the Gospel in the ca, Palestine, Egypt, Persia, India, English hospital at Jaffa. China, and British Columbia. In its hospitals 6432 in·patients were cared -Bethesda Church, Bristol, has a for last year, 417,000 visits were paid band of earnest young Christians who to out-patients, and 15,400 operations are joined together under the name of were performed. the Missionary Cheer Committee. This church, with some 1300 membars, has ,-To individuals, churches, etc., the 11 representatives in China, 7 in India, society named above propounds this 3 in South America, 3 in Spain, and 10 pertinent and very solemn question: in North and Central Africa, all wholly " Besides our 63 honorary missionaries, engaged in missionary work. Two of -no less thau 161 are now specially sup- the number in China are fully qualified ported by particular individuals, par- physicians, while several of the brethishes, unions, and associations. Of the ren and sisters scattered throughout 70 probably sailing this year, 9 have these countries have received various been already adopted. Why should courses of training in the healing art, not all the rest be taken up? Here is so seeking at the same time the help of good practical work for the next three the body with the healing of the soul. months. Holiday time, does some one The "M. C. C." have banded themsay? Well, here is a very good holi- sel ves together to collect from their felday task. Those who perform it will low church-members good current add a fresh and lasting happiness to Christian literature, and post the same their vacation. 'But,' says another, week by week to those in the foreign • I should have to stint myself.' Pre- field. cisely so I That is the true way to be happy. ' It is more blessed to give than -'fhis from the Ohurch Mi88ionarg to receive.' " Gleaner would seem to be not far from the truth: "Scottish foreign missions being 107 men, 48 wins, and 97 un- are among the most important in the married women. Of the men 53 are world, particularly in India and in ordained and 26 are physicians, and Southern and Central Africa. The 1 of the unmarried women is a phy- great Scotch colleges at Calcutta, Mad- sician.
ras, and Bornbay holu the front place " The population of Syria and Pales- in educational missions. Excellent vil- tine is not br from 2,600,000. This lage work is done in Bengal and the gives, on an average, 1 foreign laborer Punjab. The most successful of all to every 10,000 of the people. But it industrial missions is Lovedale in South should be borne in mind that a large Africa; and in Nyassaland, Blantyre, part of these laborers are engaged in and Livingstonia are famous mission educational work, having under in- stations. Scotchmen have been the struction not far from 19,000 children leaders also in medical missions. And and youths. For this reason certain if Scottish missionaries are named, a centres, like Beirut, Damascus, and long list of eminent ones can easily be Jerusalem, have more than their share given. of foreign laborers, while some of the ASIA. outlying districts have none. Beirut has 52 foreign laborers with a popula- Turkey. -Hafore the massacres, there tion of 100,000. Of these, 22 are in the were in Turkey, in connection with the Syrian Protestant College, and almost work of the American Board, 21 kin- all of the rest are in the various instidergartens, with an attendance of be- tutions, American, English, Scotch, and tween 850 and 900 children. All but German. Jerusalem, with a population 2 of these are carried on 'in the Arme- not half that of Beirut, has 28 laborers, nian or Turkish language. The one at who have charge of schools, hospitals, the Girls' College in Constantinople is and general evangelical work. Probtaught in English, and Greek is used ably few, if any, of the missionaries in with the little Greek chiluren at the Syria and Palestine would ask for any Smyrna Girls' School. increase in the number of foreign la- -The Rev. H. H. Jessup, in the borers, unless the restrictions of the MisBion WOl'ld, gives the following in- Turkish Government were relaxed, teresting statistics of mission work in and the two prohibited districts of Syria and Palestine: ,. One fact ap- Houran, south of Damascus, and the pears very plainly from a directory of Nusairiuyeh Mountains, north of Tri- foreign Protestant missionaries just poli and sou'theast of Antioch, were going through the American press in thrown open once more to missionary Beirut, and that is that this little sec- effort. "
tion of the' mission world' is well sup- plied with laborers. I include in Pales- India.-Professor W. W. White, tine the cities of Safed, Acre, and Gaza, now of Chicago Bible Institute, is soon and all the region between these points, to depart for India, to begin two years with the trans-Jordanic region south of of service in behalf of the many thou- Houran. Syria includes all north of sands of students in Calcutta. This Acre as far as the Taurus Mountains. city is one of the greatest educational There are in Syria and Palestine 252 centers of the world. It contains up- ..foreign la borers, men and women; 168 ward of 20 colleges and about double being in Syria and 84 in Palestine. Of that number of high schools. In these the 168 in Syria, there al'e men, 73; colleges are about 3000 students, and wives, 34; unmarried women, 61. Of in the senior classes of the high schools the 84 in Palestine, there are men, 34 ; about 2000 more who have an acquaint- wives, 14; unmarried women, 36. The ance with English. The actual con- totals of the 252 in Syria and Palestine stituency of students in Calcutta at any one time numbers about 5000. Of this elared that she had kept her-promise ; number, 3000 are strangers in the town, she had not sought to bring undue in- not living with parents or friends, but fluence, but that the l'esults were due in lodgings. In addition to the men to the power of the truth of God.
actually in college, there are at least There was much excitement, but no 50,000 English-speaking and non-Chris- manifestation of disturbance. Appar- tian natives. A very fine building has ently her fl.rm, heroic bearing overpow· been purchased by friends in Britain ered those who would have been glad and America, and an auditorium will to oppose her.-Independent.
soon be in readineSs seating 1000, and here Professor White will give instruc· -Mr. Holton writes from Manama- tion upon the Word of God. dura: "There is something peculiarly -The Guntur (American Lutheran) attractive about the work of the itinermission reports these seven great stumbo aey. It is a purely evangelistic work, lingblocks as characterizing the native going systematically from village to church: A non·observance of the Sab. village, and telling to all the good news bath, an indifference about the Lord's of the kingdom; like John the Baptist Supper, late coming to worship tho • in the wilderness' preparing' the way called, chattering and laughing during of the Lord.' It is the nearest to Jesus' service, misrepresentation' under the own way of life that we come-the prospect of present profit or loss, quar- early morning prayers, the start at rels arising from local affairs and petty . dawn, the long tramps over glaring lawsuits, and prevalence of caste out- sands, scorching rocks among patches of thorns, along the narrow paths upon side the house of worship. the dykes dividing the wet paddy- -Pundita Ramabai and her home for fields, under spreading banians or stin"
Hindu widows, near 'Bombay, has just gy, shadeless palms-proclaiming the had a peculiar experience. While she word of the Lord to the ever-ready herself is a pronounced Christian, in listeners, but hopelessly indifferent to starting her institution she preferred the truths they hear. One gets thereby to place it upon a foundation such as an insight into Christ's life, and realizes would not antagonize the Hindus. how He came to feel the need of nights This aroused considerable criticism of prayer and communion with God, when she started her work. The result to shake off the hopelessness, the de- has been that while making no effort spondency, the crushing sense of sin for direct Christian conversion, the gen· and neglect which lIe, the Holy One, eral influence of her own life and of the would feel so infinitely more than we home has been such that twelve of the do who are so sin-stained ourselves.
child widows have announced their ac· As one sees the dark and sordid lives, ceptance of Christianity. This aroused as one comes so frequently upon smoky, a great deal of opposition, and the stu- greasy images of rats and elephant.
dent class is reported as particularly headed gods, elay horses, and temples, Ivehement in its denunciation. She reo all bespeaking a debasing idolatry, solved then to go straight to them and when one sees the whole lives of thou- make her defense. In front of the hall sands bound up in the matters of food, a mob of these young men gathered, raiment, and property, the seventh day and there was fear of a disturbance. of the week one dead level of worldli- She addressed the audience with bold· ness, and the indifference with which ness and faithfulness, affirmed that the all turn from things celestial to the degradation of the community was due weak and beggarly elements of time to Hinduism, and that Christianity and sense, one's heart sinks within him, alone was able to lift them out of moral and the Satanic question springs up, degradation and helplessness. She de- , What is the use of all this foolishness of preaching, anyway?'" But, on in Siam does not seem to have affected the whole, he concludes that the task is unfavorably that portion of the work profitable and full of privilege. of the Laos mission which falls east of the boundary line agreed upon between -There was a Church Missionary the French and British territory. Dr. Denman writes from Chieng Mai that Society congregation in the Punjab the French influence at Chieng Saan, to the north, seems to have had no bad oofnfceer~owrhy.ebraesakeltivien kid was put into the effect on the work, the authorities hav- the Sunday serviee, ing said that the people will not be in- terfered with in their religion, and have and promptly jumped out again. Sun- even appointed a Protestant Christian as head man in one of the villages. All day, October 27th, was a great day in but four families, however, have crossed the river into Siamese territory in prefthe history of our work in Buland- erence to becoming French subjects. At Nan, the newest of all ihe stations, shahr. It was self·support day. From and the only one that falls in French territory-aItho some of the reports all parts of the district had been brought question this-Dr. Thomas writes that he was told that the French agent had in the gifts of the people during ten made it clear while he was at Nan that our mission work was to be allowed to months of this year. A procession, go on uninterrupted, and that he had even countermanded orders to the bishcomposed of young women and girls op concerning the sending of priests to Nan for the present.-Ohureh at Home carrying banners with appropriate and Abroad.
mottoes. marched into the tent singing, China. – The Dowager Empress, Tson Hsi, died June 19th, aged sixtyaccompanied by music from a brass two. She was the aunt of the present Emperor, whom she adopted and placed band. The young ladies sang a hymn on the throne in 1875, upon the death of her son, who succeeded his father as on self·support, which had been com- Emperor in 1850. It was she who made Li Hung Chang the Premier and posed for the occasion, and at its con· sustained him against the long intrigues with which he had to contend; and elusion they poured out their offerings her death may mean his permanent downfall. of silver, copper, and shells on the ta- -The Ohinese Recorder states that ble. After that the congregation were just before he left Shanghai for Eu- rope, Li Hung Chang was presented asked to bring up their offerings of with a copy of the Imperial New Testa- ment, ajalJ8imile of the copy presented money; and for several minutes the to the Empress Dowager. He received it graciously, and promised to read it pile of coins and shells in the center of daily on his voyage. He also expressed a kindly interest in the work of misthe table grew rapidly, amid shouts of sions, and said that on his return to China he would be pleased to do more " Yi8u Masih Ki Jai" (" Victory to to facilitate the cause.
Jesus Christ"). The name of each cir- cuit in the district was then called; and huge sacks of flour, grain, and Ilry bread were carried in. As each circuit brought in its gifts, the preacher in charge of the circuit read out the gifts presented. I made a note of the fol- lowing things which were given: Cash, Rs. 494: 7 : 3; flour, 1343 pounds; grain, 3180 pounds; dry bread, 849 pounds; red pepper, 20 pounds; fowls, 42; eggs, 113; pigs, 28; 1 pony, 5 pigeons, 1 goat, 1 buffalo calf, 1 lamb, 1 cow calf, 3 pieces of cloth, 1 brass lota, 8 wicker baskets, 13 winnowing- fans, 3 iron sieves, 1 broom, 1 coat, 1 earthen cup, and l' cap. The total value of these gifts is about Rs. 670, all of which was given by the native Christians, nearly all of whom are very poor."-Ohurch Mi8Bitmary Intelligen- oer.
-The extension of French influence -When any of our friends are sick would be seized for his past misdeeds. or injured, when one is born lame or Dr. John has written inviting both blind. when we pass in the street a per- Chou Han and Teng to visit Hankow son deformed in any way, our hearts and study Christianity for themselves. are filled with pity for them, and we -The ahristian. try at once to think if there is anything that we can do to make their lot in life -The city of Peking contains the oldless hard. But in China the case is est university in the world. It is called. different. Mr. Smith tells us, in his the Kwotszekien, or Schools for the "Chinese Characteristics," that there Sons of the Empire. The duties of seems to be no sympathy bestowed the faculty are somewhat difficult, for upon such unfortunates. Tho they in addition tu the instruction of the may not ue treated with absolute cruel- Ilcholars, they have to admonish the ty, theyai"') avoided and often twitted Emperor of that which is just and with their deformity, and are always good, to reprove him for his fauIts, and looked upon as being punished for have the hereditary privilege of schoolsome sin. It is quite the proper thing ing the members of his family in the for people in the street to stop and sciences and arts. A granite register, sneer at them, pointing out to others consisting of stone columns, 320 in their maimed limb or twisted back, number, contains the names of 60,000 calling them names, etc. graduates of the highest degree. These inscribed columns constitute the uni- -Dr. Griffith John, of Hankow, who versity roll of honor, and the record played a prominent part a few years goes back more than 600 years. ago in disclosing the true origin of the anti-foreign placards disseminated in -Our mission in Peking is benefiting the Yangtse valley, has recently pub- from this new and wonderful system lished in China an interesting statemeut of teaching reading invented by the in regard to Chou Han. This individ- Rev. W. H. Murray. This missionary ual was proved by Dr. John to be the has for some years worked among the author of many of the violent and ob- blind of the Chinese capital, altho the scene attacks on foreigners and on the war last year brought everything to a Christian religion which incited the standstill. This system appears to be mob to outrages on Europeans. The equally suited to blind and sighted Chiforeign ministers in Pekin demanded nese. It is so simple that the most ighis arrest and trial, and after a long in- norant and dull men and women learn terval the Chinese autharities reported to read and write fluently in periods of that he was insane, and he was accord- from one to three months. Farm womingly released. Dr. John now reports en, who had gone into Peking for the that two native Christians, who went winter, and who had joined our mission into Hunan preaching and selling there, have returned to their own homes, bQoks, entered Changsha, and there after two or three months, rejoicing in got into communication with Teng. being able to write as fluently as their who was one of the chief printers and clever countrymen can do after years publishers of Chou Han's writings. of hard study. The 408 sounds of Teng stated to his visitors that Chou Mandarin Chinese are represented by Han had greatly changed of late, that numerals, and the system is therefore he was now studying Christian books, called numeraltype.-L. M. S. ahronand had renounced Spiritualism and icle. his former anti-foreign associates. He would like to visit Hankow, and there ]apan.-A monthly magazine in the Inquire of the missionaries concerning English language, called The Far East, Christianity, but was afraid that he for Japanese readers, has just been started in Japan_ This willingness to adopt and be influenced by our modes of thought should stimulate to greater interior of the Dark Continent. Our diligence in bringing to Japanese knowl- plan, in brief, is to plant a chain of edge seekers in this country the founda- stations running northeast from Tuba- tion principles of the Gospel. budugo, 780 miles along the upper -Once more terrible earthquakes Niger to Timbuctoo, and another chain have shaken Japan, and this time the due east 550 miles to the same longiisland of Yesso, the extreme northern tude as Timbuctoo. This advance part of the empire. The latest official means invading French territory, on report places the loss of life, princi- the border of which we already are. pally from tidal waves following the Permission for this must be obtained earthquakes, at more than 30,000 ! from the French Government. This also means 24 new stations and 100 new -The evidence of the success of missionaries, each new station to erect, foreign missions in Japan is not to be and run one year. Including' outfit, found merely nor mainly in the addition passage money from New York, salaof 20,000 converts in ten years, but far more powerfully in the unseen but all- ries, and all transportation will cost pervading moral influence which they are exerting upon the people of Japan. $3063. Of course it will not be possible If it is true that, through the faithful to make all this advance in one year. preaching and holy living of the mis- Step by step we will follow Him. Two sionaries and their converts, the Jap- main departments of work are included, anese are adopting the ethics of Jesus itinerating and the training of native agents for future evangelization.
Christ, then the Japanese are very prac- -That a cry for funeral reform, in.
tically taking Christ for their Master. dited by a native pen, should reach us . Since they do it under no sort of con- from the Gold Coast, is oddly in keep- straint, they must do it willingly; and ing with the agitation, so familiar to if they are" willing to do the will" of us at home. for the same object.
the Father, it will not be long before .. Brandy," complains a native in one they shall •• know of the doctrine," of thc English West African papers, both of the Father and of the Son."- .. is present in excessive measure at Ohurch Stanaard. every heathen funeral." Two barrels of rum is the average outlay at the AFRICA. burial festivities of a fairly prosperous -A new Bishop of Africa! Bishop man. Public opinion, a fear of the Taylor for over fifty years has been displeasure of the deceased and the fean untiring itinerant evangelist in many tishman, lend their support to a funeral lands, heroic in spirit and in achieve- custom, which our native writer (a mfmt. Honored and beloved, and with heathen) earnestly desires to see brandthe weight of seventy-five years upon ed by the official veto.
him, the General Conference believed -For miles around Efulen the people he had no longer the strength needed have ceased to believe in witches, and to attend to the work required of a three witph doctors havc given up their Bishop for Africa. Dr. J. C. Hartzell calling gracefully and gone to work was elected and consecrated as his suc- building bark houses. It was only in cessor. He has shown himself a wise, the summer of 1892 that Dr. Good, faithful, and successful leader as Secre- making his preliminary exploration, taryof the Freedmen's Aid and South- struck the first blow at witchcraft in ern Education Society. He will fulfil 'Efulen.- Woman's Work/or Woman.
the expectations of those who elected -India has a large surplus populahim Bishop of Africa. tion, some of which has found its way -M. Francis writes thus of the effort already into Africa. The labor of Na- of the Missionary Alliance to reach the tal is performed in great part by natives of India, there being 51,000 of sets up as a tailor. Some now build them in that colony. Indian soldiers square houses for themselves, and a are the protection of Nyassaland. The number have bedsteads and chairs, so merchants who do a large part of the there has been some progress. We also business at East African ports are from do a little medical work-binding up India. sores and wounds, etc. When I Went -Mrs. Laura II. Bates writes thus in there first, after perhaps spending weeks the Missionary Herald: "The Chris- treating a sore or wound, we were fretian homes scattered up and down the quently asked by the patient for paywhole colony of Natal; the family ment. But this last year in three cases life, no longer mere animal existence, the natives offered to pay a fee. but a circle where love reigns and Christ is the 'unseen Guest;' the W~ have about 500 regularly attendchanged faces, marking the inward ing schools in the various stations of transformation; the gradual undermin- the district. The scholars are not very ing of degrading social customs; the far advanced. About 150 can read and development of wants which force the write. We have 15 teachers-R boys indolent native to wholesome exertion; and 7 girls-receiving an average pay the elevation of woman, no longer a of one shilling per month, able at least drudge, a slave, a piece of :property to to read their Testament, etc. The be bought and sold, but an individual, chief has actually got in his employ two a treasure, ' a crown to her husband; , scribes who have run away from the mission.
the awakening of a thirst for knowl· -M. Coillard, who is returning from edge which packs 130 girls into build- the Zambesi broken down in health, ings planned for 60, which fills the girls' writes thus from Kazungula, where he school at Umzumbi so full that the crossed the Zambesi: "What a differdoors must be closed against other ap- ence between the voyage to-day and plicants for lack of funds; the arous- that of 1884 I Then there was not a ing of a feeling Cof dissatisfaction with soul in this immense country who knew heathen homes and surroundings, which the name of the Lord, much less prayed compels the opening of :a home for to Him. We sang our hymns in the scores of runaway girls who flee for desert, and they were lost without echo. succor to the missionaries-these are Now, the Lord hath done great things some of the signs that the leaven of for us, and we give Him thanks. This the Gospel is working in the hearts of very station of Kazungula, with its the people of Natal, and will work large village, where all is so prosper-', until the whole lump is leavened." ous, bears witness to it. We count -Says W. G. Robertson, in TIle 5 flourishing stations, and in each of Ohristian, concerning a station of the them a greater or smaller number ot'
Livingstonia Mission to Nyassaland: Zambesians who profess to have found " When I first went to Livlezi, there the Savior. But what fills me with were no Europeans nearer than 120 joy and gratitude toward God is our miles-viz., Blantyre. So you can un- school of evangelists with its 10 pupils.
derstand that the natives knew little of And now M. and Madame Mercier are Europeans or European workmanship. going to build again the ruins of Sefula, We had to build our own houses, first and to open there at last our industrial of wattle and mud, but latterly of school. Are not these the .rays which brick. We had to teach brickmaking announce the dawn of that day when and building, and we have now 6 or 7 the glory of God shall shine in this land, who C{Ul saw timber or do simple joinery and the darkness of heathendom melt work. We have some brickmakers and away?"-JO'UrnaZ des Missiom l&an- builders, and also one little chap who geUques.