The Missionary Review of the World — August 1896
GEORGE MULLER, PATRIAROH AND PROPHET OF BRISTOL
MISSIONARY REVIEW OF THE WORLD.
VOL. XIX. No. S.-Old Series.-AUGUST.-VOL. IX. No. 8.-NBID Serie8.
GEORGE MULLER, PAT~IARCH :AND PROPHET OF BRISTOL.
BY THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF.
Probably Bristol itself has never seen such an imposing sight or heard such an impressive address as when the venerable patriarch, George Miiller, now in his ninety-first year, with eye undimmed and natural force unabated, stood forth, on the evening of March 25th, before an audience that packed even the aisles of the Young Men's Christian Association Hall, and for fifty minutes held the vast throng enthralled by the matchless story of the Lord's dealings with His servant in answer to believing prayer. After thirty years, during which I have been attending great missionary convocations and hearing great missionary advocates on occasions of absorbing interest, I can deliberately say that, for simple, unpretending eloquence-the eloquence of experience extending through seventy years of daily walk with God-that address far surpassed any I hav~ ever heard, as also for awe-inspiring and faith-incentive power.
The whole occasion and surroundings were unique. It was the closing evening of my so-called" mission" in Bristol, and the services of four days, during which such themes as the authority, inspiration, and infallibility of the Holy Scriptures, the personality and power of the Holy Spirit, the secrets of victory over sin, etc., consecutively treated, had prepared the way for the consideration of Christian missions. It was by my own invitation that Mr. Miiller spoke-in fact, somewhat reluctantly, as he shrank from occupying time which he thought belonged to me as a stranger visiting the city. But I was. desirous of impressing most emphatically upon my hearers tbe Divine aspect of missionary work, as an enterprise of God, rather than a mere scheme of church activity and philanthropy; and hence dependent for its success mainly upon the believing prayer that puts and keeps man into contact with God, and makes him a true co-worker with Him. For years the conviction has been growing that here lies the secret at once of all past failure and of all future success: we have not used the power which lies in the prayer of faith, and God is challenging us to put Him to proof in the faithful and believing use of our privilege of asking in Jesus' name. To accentuate and emphasize this thought as it should be done, I knew of but one man living who was in a sense without a peer, and that was my beloved friend and father in God, George Milller.
And he ,. filled the place." Erect, strong, childlike in manner, Saxon in simplicity, mighty in faith and hnmble in spirit, giving all glory to God, with a loud voice and clear articulation, so that everyone might hear, he gave his testimony to the livmg, present, prayer-hearing God. The address cannot be reproduced, even had it been most accurately reported. George Muller's face and form and voice and manner, and the authority of a seventy years' daily experimental proving of God's promises, no printed page can supply. There is a certain evasiveness about such a personal presence that is subtle, and refuses to be overcome by man's mechanical devices like the ethereal perfume of a flower, the aroma of the most delicate natural products. But those who heard that master address will never forget it, not because it was George Mullcr's speech, but because in it and back of it the God of prayer was speaking. There was the majesty of Sinai and the melting tenderness of Calvary combi.ned ; it sounded like the utterance of some old prophet of God who had outlived his generation.
If we cannot reproduce the scene, perhaps we may give a few of the bald facts, without the radiant atmosphere which lent them its holy charm.
Mr. :h!fUller told us briefly of his conversion in 1825, at the age of twenty, when he turned from all the seductive worldly pleasures of the card-table,the dance, the billiard-table, etc., to find his portion in God; and how, in 1829, four years later, he made an unreserved surrender of himself to God, henceforth to have Him ., all in all ;" giving up the love of the world, the love of money, the love of fame, the love of pleasure, the love of applause, for the love of God. At once he felt in himself the desire and yearning to go to a foreign land as a missionary, and particularly to India. Five times in succession he offered himself to God for this service; but for some reason not then apparent, God did not accept him for this form and field of activity, much to his disappointment and surprise. He did permit him, however, in various ways at once to become a helper to others who did go forth, and even to the extent of assisting more than one hundred men to enter the foreign field by aiding them pecuniarily as well as in other ways.
Afterward, from the Church he has gathered, and to which he has so long ministered, sixty persons have been sent to the various parts of the mission field. Again, he has been permitted by prayer and faith, in these later years, to assi.st hundreds of other missionaries both to get to their chosen spheres and to help them in their acti ve service.
Still more marvelously God has permitted George Muller himself to go forth on mission tours, to forty-two different countries, to preach and teach and testify, into all parts of Europe except Spain, Portugal, Sweden, ~Ild Norway i threll times i11 the principal centers of population in. America i twice in .the main cities and towns of Canada ; twice in India ; in the Straits of Malacca, in China, Japan, New South Wales, Victoria, Austraha, Tasmania, and New Zealt!nd. For seventeen years of his later life he, with his beloved and now departed wife, moved about in this manner, traveling in aU over two hundred thousand miles. He was able to speak in three languages-English, French, and German-and in other tongues through an interpreter. What abundant and marvelous opportunities God has thus given to him who in youth wondered that he was not accepted as a missionary to foreign lands! In Russia for eleven weeks he was in the princess' palace, speaking in immense drawing-rooms to the highest dignitaries and estates of the realm ; and thus among the highest and lowest alike he gave his witness to a prayer-hearing God, showing how God delights to use those who are surrendered entirely to His will, and ready to be only instruments that all glory may be His.
At this point of his great address Mr. Muller tarried to emphasize prayer as the one great weapon for carrying on God's war against the powers of evil; urging on his hearers, first, that only God can qualify or select and send forth men and women for such missionary service. Hence, the command in Matt. 9 : 38, "PRAY ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that He would send forth laborers into His harvest." Secondly, he urged believing prayer as the only source of confidence for blessing on tlteir work. In answer to united and believing supplication that God would abundantly own tbeir labors, in the salvation, sanctification, and edification of souls, Divine blessing may be surely expected; and, thirdly, prayer must command supplies for all needful temporalities. Ten times, yes, twenty and even fifty times as much wealth lies at the disposal of God's people as they have ever yet consecrated and utilized; and if they are to show greater liberality, God must move His people in answer to prayer, to completely surrender themselves and their property at His call.
Then this venerable founder of the orphanages in Bristol resumed his powerful argument, drawn from personal experience of God's dealing, and the audience was again electrified by the magnificent testimony to a prayerhearing God. He gave a summary of the results of his life work. The sum total of money received and expended by him has been 1,394,800 pounds sterling, or about $0,974,000 ; and, as he emphatically added, all received from God in answer to prayer, without in a single case directly or indirectly asking any man for a penny. Mr. Muller solemnly challenged anyone in the audience or elsewhere to show any case in which he had sought pecuniary help, even in the greatest difficulties, from man, it being his distinctive purpose to demonstrate to an unhelieving world and a half-believing church that God may be depended upon for snpplies in answer to prayer.
As to the way in which this immense sum of money has been expended, Mr. Muller said: l. Aside entirely from the orphanage work, there have been established schools for 123,000 pupils in various countries-Great Britain, Europe, Asia, etc.-and through the schools many thousands have been converted unto God.
2. The work of the wide circulation of the Scriptures in many different languages has been carried on. For example, as soon as Spain and Italy were opened to the Bible, he entered these couutries at once with the 'Word of God. Up to this time there have been distJ:ibul;ed 275,000 Bibles, 1,426,500 New Testaments, 218,000 portions of the Bible, such as Gospels, etc., and 21,000 copies of the Psalms.
3. Upon direct missionary labors, in various lands, 255,000 pounds sterling ($1,275,000) have been expended, giving partial or complete support to hundreds of missionaries. Thus, during fifty-five years, he has been enabled, in answer to prayer, to give help to hundreds of His servants who have been, in God's hands, instrumental in the conversion of at least 20,000 persons in heathen and Moslem communities.
4. Tracts, pamphlets, books, and various kinds of Christian literature have been scattered in various lands and languages, to the number of 106,500,000! And who shall measure the blessing thus reaped as the harvest of such wide seed-sowing! Lett.ers come to the orphanage day after day, sometimes five and ten at a time, communicating knowledge of the wonderful way in which God has owned the dissemination of Christian literature in widely scattered fields of labor.
5. Then comes, last but not least, the orphan work. Five massive buildings have been erected on Ashley Down, at a cost of £115,000, or some $575,000, for building, fitting, and furnishing. These buildings have a total of 500 rooms, and can accommodate 2050 orphans and 112 teachers and helpers. The average sum expended yearly in support of these orphans is £26,000, or $130,000.
All this colossal work, the like of which no one man in our generation has ever wrought, is all to be traced to believing pmyer. Here is the unique spectacle of a solitary man, himself entirely without money, poor to this day so far as independent means are concerned, undertaking, in simple reliance on the promises of a prayer-hearing God, to support hundreds of missionaries, distribute millions of Bibles and other books and tracts, build five huge orphan houses and support 2000 orphans, himself traveling over forty-two countries, from the rising to the setting sun, and in all of these lands preaching the Gospel and bearing his witness to the faithfulness of God, and yet he has never had any property in lands or money in banks, wherewith to meet these immense daily costs. Thousands of times he has not had enough in hand to provide one day's meals, or even the next meal; and has had prayer-meetings between breakfast and dinner, or between supper and breakfast, to ask supplies for the immediate need j and yet in fifty-five years he has never known one instance in which the prayer has not been answered and the need met, tho sometimes literally only from meal to meal, with no adequate surplus for the next! And let it be noted that Mr. Miiller, in order not to weaken his testimony to a prayerhearing God, has enjoined on all his helpers never to make known the exigencies of the work to anyone outside the institution, but to unite with him in spreading all such wants before God alone; and lest his annual reports might be thought to be indirect appeals, for some three years no report was published, and yet the supplies continued to come with as little interruption and in as great abundance as before.
All this and more was said to that throng in Bristol, not only without self-glorying or vain boasting, but with the repeated and humbling affirmation that it was with the overwhelming consciousness of weakness and unworthiness, simply and only to show that God is a faithful God; and that every believer who wholly surrenders himself to Him and depends on believing prayer, may know God for himself, as the unchanging friend and helper of every suppliant soul, and equal to every crisis of need.
Interviews with Mr. George Muller were accorded me during every day of my stay in Bristol, and are cherished by me as among the most precious memories of my life. It is not once in a century that the world has a chance to enter upon its annals the story of a life such as that of the grcat patriarch of Bristol, and I wished to avail myself of what might be my last opportunity of such converse.
George Muller was born on September 27th, 1805, and is consequently, as has been noticed, in his ninety-first year. He is hale and hearty, quite erect, in good state of preservation, and said to me, as I renewed the precious acquaintance and friendship of eighteen years, in this series of interviews, that he was never better in health or more able to endure the strain of daily work than now. He may be found, day after day, in his office in " No.3" of the great orphanages on Ashley Down, and his hair is not more gray than that of many a man of fifty, while his eye is bright, and his vigor even greater than it was sixty years ago ; and the same serenity of God is on his face as of old-in fact, his dear face and form both wear an aspect of habitual repose, so long has he known the perfect peace of God.
Here is a man-let me repeat it for emphasis-who for sixty years has been living by faith and prayer, and has had under his care thousands on thousands of orphans, without often knowing where the next meal was coming from, or rather always knowing where it was to come from, and so having no care beyond the care which prayer at once carries up to God and leaves at His feet, to be borne by Him, that we ourselves may carry no burdens.
Two of his long-associated co-workers were asked in substance the following question: "You have seen Mr. Muller in all circumstances; when there was plenty of money in the bank and plenty of food in the larder; have you noticed any difference in his COn;lposure and calmness of spirit at these different times~" One of these intimate co-workers responded, "Not the slightest difference ;" the other replied, "If possible, his composure seems rather the greater wheu all supplies of money and of food are exhausted." Then followed another question, " How do you account for this ~ Any father would feel natural and unavoidable solicitude if his entire supplies for his children were exhausted; how much more the father of 2,000 orphans 1" Then came another answer, never to be forgotten: "The only way I can account. for this is Mr. Muller's own philosophy of holy living, which is that the beginning of anxiety is the end qffaith, and the beginning of true faith i.~ tlw end of anxiety."
·What a solution is contained in Lhis pregnant saying for all our doubts and difficulties! We treat the living God as dead; as one who was, but is not, who wrought wonders of old, but has" forgotten to be gracious," or " in anger shut up His tender mercies." 'IVould that we might come to the conclusion of the Psalmist (Psa, 77 : 10) : "This is my infirmity: but I will remember the years of the right hand of the Most High." It was my privilege to hear this holy man of God expound that Psalm at Bethesda Chapel on the morning of March 22d, and that exposition will henceforth be inseparable in my mind from the interviews that followed it, and the great testimony borne in the memorable public meeting of March 25th. He showed, with marvelous insight into the meaning of the Word, how the first half of the psalm down to the tenth verse is the experience of a suffering soul that in unbelief refuses to be comforted even by the promises of God, whose spirit is in rebellion against God, so that the thought of God is not a comfort, but rather a burden, and the spirit complains, is agitated instead of peaceful, so that sleep departs and trouble deepens. Then, at the" Selah," which at the end of the ninth verse bid8 us" Pause and consider," and which marks the turning-point of the Psalm, he confesses, " This is my infirmity;" in other words, I have been a fool! From this point on, comfort comes. God's wondrous doings in the past are recalled, His unchanging and unchangeable fidelity to promise, and new courage takes the place of despondency. He who brought His people out of Egypt can bring them into the Land of Promise, their true inheritance.
·What new power would enter into all our mission enterprises could we but come to this same mind! vVe have been fools to doubt and distrust the God who is able to do exceeding abundantly above all we ask or think; and are slow to remember that, from the time of Christ's resurrection, God's unit of measurement, aR to what He can do for us, is this: "According to the working of His mighty power, which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead."
Mr. Muller's confidence in prayer is boundless, yet childlike in simplicity. He gave this fact shortly since, to his co-workers, as a tonic to their faith. "I have," said he, "only yesterday afternoon received the answer to a prayer daily offered unto God for twenty-five years." And he added in conversation with me, "I have been daily praying to God for fifty-two years for the conversion of two men; and I have no doubt
THE GOSPEL IN SPAIN
they will both turn to God, for God has laid on my heart, and permitted and enabled me daily for over half a century, to hear before Him in faith in the name of Jesus this request, and now I often praise Him in advance for what He is going to do III answer to my prayers."
Bristol will henceforth be forever associated with these three precious reminiscences: that simple exposition of the seventy-seventh Psalm in Bethesda Chapel on Sunday morning, March 22d ; the blessed personal interviews with Mr. Muller and his beloved son-in-law, James Wright, after that S8rmon, and at the orphanage on the three days following, and finally that great word of witness before a vast throng on the evening of March 25th.
The least that I could do-and, alas! the mORt also-for the readel's of the REVIEW was to reproduce as far as possible the main features of this personal experience, with the grand salient points of Mr. Miiller's tes1imony, in the hope that God will deign to use this humble effort to impress His people, wherever these pages may be read, that the one grand key to all the problems of world-wide missions is an alliance by faith and obedience and believing prayer with the God whose work it is to evangelize and redeem this world through the instrumentality of his believing people.
Let prayer be offered as it should be, on the part of a peculiar people zealous of good works, in Jesus' name, and in the spirit of undoubting faith, and every result will follow that is essential to the speedy and glorious accomplishment of the work. God will thrust forth laborers, open the doors of access and of faith to the nations, open the hearts of His people to give money, and will visit with showers of blessing both the fields abroad which we till, and the churches at home which send the workmen and bring ill the tithes.
THE GOSPEL IN SPAIN.
BY REV. WILLIAM H. GULICK, SAN SEBASTIAN, SPAIN.
It is not infrequently asked : "What need is there for sending evangelical missionaries to Spain?" Does not the following simple reply sufficiently answer the question ~ It is the inalienable right of every man to own a copy of the Bible and to have the liberty to read it for himself. Every community in which the Bible is not within the easy reach of every man, or where the" Word of God is bound" is a true missionary field to which the Christian missionary may not only go with propriety, but to which, from the evangelical standpoint, it is his duty to go to make known the truth. The question to be asked, therefore, is: "Are the masses in Spain allowed by their religious teachers to freely read and study for themselves the Word of God?" If they are, I would say: "Let the missionary go elsewhere; let him spend his money and life in taking the Bible and in explaining its message and in teaching its doctrines to people who do not have it."
We who have the Bible in our hands are aware that the Apostle Paul intended to visit Spain, and, so far as anything to the contrary is known, he did so; and we can imagine the Gospel that he must have preached! Spanish Roman Catholic tradition, however, entirely ignores Paul's proposed journey to Spain, and it affirms that Saint James was the first apostle to visit Spain-Santiago-who in sculptures and in paintings innumerable is represented as mounted on his white horse, and, with a lance in hand, prancing over the heads of the hapless Moors. That which interests us now, however, is not whether Paul, or James, or any other apostle or disciple in particular was the first to preach the Gospel in Spain, but, rather, whether" the glorious Gospel," which either the one or the other of the apostolic band must have preached, is the Christianity of the Spanish Church of to-day. Does the " Word or the Lord have free course" in Spain of to-day 1 A few facts taken from a multitude that might be cited will give us the answer to that question.
The archbishop of the see of Santiago de Campostela, the capital of Galicia, one of the most important dioceses of all Spain, on one occasion promised to give to a Protestant of that· parish a Roman Catholic Bible in exchange for his Protestant Bible; but after spending a long time in looking for one, he had to confess that he could not find one in the episcopal palace-that he would" have to send for it to Barcelona," all across the peninsula!
In the city of Zaragoza, on one occasion, one of the canons of the cathedral of La Virgen del Pilar, now and for many years one of the most popular shrines in Spain, took upon himself the mission of winning back to the Church of Rome a class of bright young men, members of our Evangelical Church. All testified to his trained skill as a controversialist, and to his gentle ways and winning manners both in conversation and in debate. Once and again some of these young men-after he had met them in their own hall-accepted the invitation to visit him in his private apartments, where they still further discussed, among others, the questions of justification by faith, Christ as our only mediator, and prayer-our young men ever appealing to the Bibles that they carried in their pockets. This rather piqued our good canon, and it forced him, much against his will, to refer to his Bible, which they insisted he should do. And here was his weak point. He knew that he did not know even his own Roman Catholic Bible. Once he confusedly sou.ght a familiar New Testament passage in the Old Testament, among the books of which he floundered painfully until the Protestant boys came to his rescue. That was the end of his mISSIOn. But not long after this episode he was elevated to a. bishopric, and it was no secret that it was in reward for his active efforts to reclaim the Protestants that infest that district. If the bishops show such ignorance of the Word of God, it is not to be wondered at that the parish or village priest shoul~ be found at a still lower level. A missionary was talking with one of these when the question of the worship of images came up. Allusion was made to the Second Commandment; and when he quoted the words, "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in the heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water nnder the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, . . . " the honest priest, instead of arguing, as an astuter man would have done, tllat Roman Catholics do not worship images, nor bow down to them, bnt only to the being or the spirit that they represent or that they suggest, he frankly admitted that they do worship them, and that their worship was permitted if not taught by the Church; and he declared that he could not believe that the words quoted by my friend were to be found in the Bible, a~Q much less in the Roman Catholic Bible. So a copy of the Bible sanctioned by his Church was produced. He read and reread the fatal words, and could hardly believe his own eyes. At last, with hands clenched and teeth set, he turned on his heel, and with intensest feeling exclaimed: " God made a mistake when He put that in the Bible!" Poor man! he could not believe that his Church could be guilty of deliberately suppressing that part of the Decalogue from its liturgies and from its catechisms; he could more easily believe that God had blundered! "And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch."
The Roman Catholic Church in Spain is not merely ignorant of the Bible-of their own Bible for that matter-and indifferent as to its circulation, it is actively and bitterly hostile to it. Pages could be filled with accounts of the indignities and abuses that evangelists and colporteurs are continually suffering who are engaged in this work.
It is not very long ago, and under a much more liberal government than that of to-day, that the Custom House authorities in the great and liberal city of Barcelona intercepted an invoice of Bibles that had already been examined and legally passed, and without pretence of law-but because advised so to do by the ecclesiastical authorities, who knew that they could control the civil officers to whom the case might be appealedmade a bonfire of them in the open court of the Custom House! The religious press joyously commented on the deed, and boasted with delight of " having revived the auto da /e of Inquisitorial times !"
One of the active colporteurs of the American Bible Society in the north of Spain, a prudent and godly man, is continually reporting to me obstruction to his work, and personal violence on the part of the priests. One day he found himself a fellow-traveler in a diligence for several hours with three women and a village priest, all strangers to him. Under the folds of his ample capa he carried, concealed on his knees, his colporteur's pack of Bibles and Scripture portions. The conversation of his companions was chiefly on the success of a " mission" that had recently been held in the parish of one of the women, the most interesting feature of which seemed to have been the tearing up of several Gospels in the pulpit by one of the " missioners," and a furious attack upon the Protestants, and espe- cially upon a man who was going about through the district selling BiMes and Gospels to the ignorant and innocent people. If it sometimes may do us good to see ourselves as others see us, our colporteur passed an edifying hour that forenoon-for it was of himself that they were unwittingly talking!
The priest was eager to meet him; he only hoped that he would come into his parish, and that he should have the good fortun~ to meet him face to face. "I know how to rid my parish of such vermin. There is no better remedy for such than a pair of revolvers. Oh, yes, I know how to do it! It will not be the first time that I have carried them under my gown."
At last they stopped to change the llOrses, and the priest and the women left the diligence for a few minutes. At that instant the thought flashed across our friend's mind, " Put a Gospel of Luke into the priest's bundle, that lies there loosely folded!" and no sooner thought than done. The travelers take their seats again, and before long the journey is ended and each one goes his own way-the priest with his bundle.
Three months later the colporteur is in the neighborhood of that priest. In spite of the priest's boasting, he has made several friends there and has sold a number of Scriptures. He asks one of his friends if the priest ever talks about the Protestants. " YeR, indeed. Some three months ago he fairly raved against them from the pulpit. He called them ' the spawn of hell. Look at this,' he cried, and he shook a little book in the face of the congregation. 'Worse than Satan they are; for by some black art they ]lave thrust this book upon me. And do you know where I found it ~ On the floor in the middle of my room! I know not who put it there, nor how he did it; but this I tell you and of this I warn him : once I come to know what Protestant has dared to pollute my room with this I will do to him what I now do with it !' And he wrenched the leaves from the precious Gospel, crushed them with his hands, and tore them with his teeth. And he added, 'If ever any of you meet ally of these pests of the earth, anything that you may do to them, even to the killing of them, will be well done ! ' " * But why multiply these cases ~ They are but a few taken from many that show what the attitude of the immense majority of the Spanish priesthood is toward the Word of God-a priesthood without the Bible, ignorant of the Bible, and in many cases hating the Bible.
And "like priest, like people." Right here in this little terrestrial paradise of San Sebastian, so gently nestling by the side of the sea, surrounded by the protecting hills, that one would think that the love and the goodness of God proclaimed by nature would fill and soften every heart; • MtssiDnary Herald, Jannary, 1895. rIght here, so recently that it seems but as yesterday, there occurred a case the memory of which makes one shudder. A member of our church, a daughter of the Basques, loved her Bible and read it as a child reads with love and reverence the treasured letters of a dear frIend, which late in life have been discovered by others and have been placed in her hands. Her fanatical Roman Catholic husband took that Bible, laid it upon the block at the door of their cottage, and with his ax chopped it to pieces. When she died suddenly a little later we were not allowed to know of her illness or death until she was buried. * But, not to make this recital too long, it may be said that the immense distance that all too often separates the intelligent heartfelt. worship of 1he evangelical Bible-loving Christian from that of the Roman Catholic of this country is strikingly manifested in the public processions for prayer and thanksgiving, and iu the relation of the bull-fight to the religious fiestas.
At the time of the last epidemic of cholera in Spain, when the population of Zaragoza was nearly decimated and great numbers died in the country near about us, San Sebastian escaped almost entirely. San Sebastian is the religious center of one of the roost sincere and faithful Roman Catholic communities in the world; and how did it give thanks to Almighty God for 1he unspeakable blessing of having been practically freed from the scourge that had wrought such havoc in so many of its sister cities and provinces ~ The city government, then made up of especially Catholic and devout men, ordered the singing of the Te Deum in the principal church of the city, at which all the government officials and the entire consular force of the city attended, and which was conducted with unusual pomp. This in the forenoon of a Sabbath day; and at noon, and again in the afternoon of the same day, these city fathers arranged sham bull-fights, or, as the public-announcement says, " Se corl'eritn dos bueyes bravos" (" Two fierce bullocks will be baited' ').
The animals are tied with long ropes in the center of the public square and are then tortured by a crowd of men and boys armed with pointed sticks and with goads until, in the effort to escape their tormentors, the bullocks rush one way and another, upsetting those of the rabble who may be entangled by the ropes. And this is the " thanksgiviug" of Christians !
But to go no farther away than the very week in which I am writing this article. Last Sunday, the 24th of this month of May, was the Feast of Pentecost in the Episcopal and Roman Catholic Chris1,ian year. Judging from what we know of the Day of Pentecost, from the tender and stirring narrative in the Acts of the Apostles, one would suppose that any church calling itself Christian would try to celebrate the day, if it thought of doing so at all, in a truly spiritual and devout way. In the morning, it is true, there will be celebrated a mass; in rare cases, and only in the more important cities, will there be preaching; but in Madrid last Sun- .. Missionary Herald. January. 1896. da.y there was a bull-fight, as there is there every important feast day of the year, including the Sundays-with 1he sole exception, I believe, of Good Friday! And the unfortuuate cities that have not the money for so splendid an exhibition of their joy and thankfulness for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the primitive Christians on that memorable day do more humbly and economically show the fervor of their piety by worrying the baited ox in the town or the village plaza. Our dear little San Sebastian can aspire to that degree of emotion.
How far removed fl·om all that is worthy the name of Christian must be the heart that would not be shocked by the matter-of-fact and commonplace announcement in the morning paper, received by telegraph during the night, that" The bulls of Pentecost" (los toros de Pentecostes), of Madrid, proved to be " a poor lot; dull, lazy, and not showing fight until a number of explosive darts had been fired into them which rent great holes in their sides and awakened in them a fine frenzy." The multitude left the bull-ring quite disgusted that the pentecostal feast had been such a failure.
On the other hand, the bulls of the day of the Ascension of our Lord -some days before-were a " brave lot, and disemboweled the horses in splendid style," and well-nigh killed the brilliant torero Reverter, who was " colossal through all the fight. " And this morning I read that in Bilbao they have taken time by the forelock and have already" engaged the bulls for Corpus Christi !"
Only one case more to close this study or the" Christianity of th~ Spain of to-day." For months the country has been afflicted with a drought that has threatened the crops in a great IIlany of the provinces. As the weeks went by and no rain fell the anxiom; people scanned the heavens for signs of relief; at last these appeared, as in the order of nature they were sure to do, and then, and not until then, did the ecclesiastical authorities bring out their miracle-working images, and bones, and relics to bring the rain.
San Isidro is the patron saint or Madrid. They say that they have preserved his bones in that city for centuries. For many years these had not been exposed for " veneration," nor had they been taken out in solemn procession through the streets. Never was there greater need than now that he should work a miracle, for the farms around Madrid were parched and dry. The day was announced when the bones of the saint would be taken out, and all the faithful were urged to swell the ranks of the procession. But the clouds that had been gathering for two or 1hree days broke up and were wafted away, and the sun looked out again from a brazen sky. It was too plain that the bringing of rain out of so dry a sky would be too much to expect of even the patron saint of Madrid. So the authorities announced that it had not occurred to them that a bull-fight had been organized for that same day and hour, and as they did not wish to force the faithful to lose the bull-fight while following the procession, they" had decided to postpone the procession," and all Madrid laughed, and the bones of San Isidro remained undisturbed until a more propitious occa- sion. Travelers waited in Madrid from day to day, wishing to see the great function that would rival the processions of the holy week in Seville. But no, the sun blazed and the saint waited. At last nature came to the help of the sorely tried managers of the show, and the heavy clouds full of water hung over the thirsty land. The procession was formed, the saint was aroused, and the miracle was performed! While they were parading the streets a gentle shower fell, and shortly after the rain poured down not only in Madrid, but in other parts of the country, until in some places the floods have drowned or have washed away what the drought had not killed.
But while the papers are telling of this miracle wrought by San Isidro in Madrid, and by other bones or images in other places, how many really believe it? Probably a few, a very few, and those among the most ignorant. And yet the farce goes on ; for no one among them all dares to be the first to voice the belief-the unbelief-in almost all their hearts.
One of the leading Roman Catholic papers laments in bitter terms the widespread national impiety mixed up in these demonstrations of loyal catholicity. It says: " The horrible, the fearful, that which hurts and disheartens, is to see a people that is suffering the calamities that to-day weigh upon Spain, forming part in a procession of penitence and of prayer in the same spirit as they would assist at a bull-fight; to amuse themselves with the show, to laugh at the interruptions and the occurrences, not in the spirit of simple indifference and lack of religious interest, but with ostentatious impiety, the men with their hats on and making coarse fun of everythingone's soul revolts at the shameless speeches and the blasphemies that are heard on every hand and at every step."
The Word of God is first ruled out of the Church and home, so that the benighted conscience shall become the slave of the priest; then upon this ignorance and docili1;y is reared an immense fabric of man-made rites and ceremonies, confessions and penitences, that starve the mind and dwarf the soul. Superstition is heaped upon fable until the soul reacts from the very absurdity and impossibility of the old wives' tales and the ridiculous claims of a worldly priesthood; and then naturally and inevitably follows the baldest irreligion while" following the procpssion" because " our fathers did so," and because the weakened soul dares not face the sneers of a churchly infidelity that finds it easier" to take things as they are" than to commence a struggle that will not end until death.
And does one wish yet to ask, " What need 1S there for sending evangelical missionaries to Spain~" If the picture that I have drawn is painful it is because that is the character of the facts. I have" not set down aught in malice;" I have recited the facts only for the purpose of making clear to the reader the conditions of the country from the religious point of view. No one more quickly than myself wonld deprecate a censorious or polemical spirit in such a matter. It is not onrs to sit in judgment on our fellows; but it is our mission, in all charity and gentleness of spirit, to give to this people the Gospel of Christ; if they do not want it, to press it upon them ; if they revile us and persecute us, to revile not again.
And what has been accomplished during these twenty-seven years ~ This paper is already too long to allow of any tabulated statistics; but some general statements will suffice to show that our labor has not been in vain. Evangelical churches have been organized in most of the more important cities of the country, and the number of preaching stations and of school-rooms where the Gospel is taught and where meetings are held with more or less regularity are about one hundr<ld and fifty. Every Sunday several thousand adults regularly attend the public meetings for Protestant worship, and many more children arc found in the Sunday-schools, and a still larger number of children arc daily taught evangelical doctrines in the common schools. Some forty colporteurs-the larger part of them being under the British and Foreign Bible Society-are continually traversing the whole country, and yearly put into circulation thousands of Bibles, New Testaments, and portions of Scripture, and many thousands of pages of evangelical literature in tracts, pamphlets, and books, and there are some seven evangelical periodicals.
In San Sebastian is the flourishing International Institute for Girls in Spain, incorporated in Massachusetts under the auspices of the Woman's Buard of Missions, connected with the American Board. This" high school," under the care of Mrs. Gulick and a corps of university-educated American ladies, for several years has had yearly some forty pupils, who study on the lines of the government institutes preparatory for the universities. Eight of these girls have already taken the degree of B.A. in the government institute of San Sebastian, five others expect to take that degree in June of this year, and two- of the former graduates last year received the highest marks given in the first year's course of philosophy and letters in the University of Madrid. Each and everyone of these girls, in both institute and university, were known to be outspoken Protestants, and as such they are recognized cmd respected by. fellow-students and by professors. Besides these, several Protestant young men are always found in the different universities of the country.
'Ve are ready to admit that the numbers that would figure in any statistical table of the evangelical work in Spain would in some respects appear small j but we believe that in view of the history of the country and of its customs and of its traditions, and in view of the comparatively insignificant forces that have been brought to bear upon these institutions that are rooted in the centuries, and the comparatively short time that t.hese influences have been at work in the land, the results are encouraging.
Indeed, when we Gowe to review the peculiar circumstances of the peopIe, it seems marvelous that so much has been accomplished, all things considered. A SpallIard who knows his own country well, and is an ardent patriot. as well as an influential Protestant, and than whom no man in the country could speak on thIS subject wIth greater authority, has recently expressed hImself as follows : " Spain is greatly weaned from Catholicism; and this is not the result of infidel propaganda, but it is plainly caused by the influence of evangeli- cal doctrines. Infidel publications leave the heart dry; they leave the boat in the open sea without oars and with no port in sight, and it is not in the serious nature of the Spaniard to accept such a situation. The number of Spanish infidels who maintain their scepticism up to the hour of death is very small. The Spaniard cannot do without God and Jesus Christ; what he can dispense with is Catholicism, which is a sacrilegious trading upon the Christian sentiment.
" So it is that the presence and the labors of the Evangelical Church produce positive results, altho its enemies may try to prove the contrary. This result is not necessarily manifest to the superficial observer; it is not all embraced in the statistics of our churches nor even in the number of those who form our congregations. It is seen in the multitude of persons who openly say of themselves, , My belief is Catholic, but not Roman.' It is seen in that large number of people who boldly deelare, ' I do not want saints of wood-they are for idolaters; I do not want the absolution of a priest who may perhaps be as bad a man as I am ; I do not believe in the possibility of a man being infallible j I cannot accept as apostles or as ministers of Christ men who masquerade before the public in dresses of so many colors, in so much luxury, with such fine coaches with their lackeys and liveries in gold, etc.' I know that a great many of these are evangelical at heart.
" So it happens that in nearly every city and town in Spain to which a colporteur or evangelist may go he finds some sympathizers. So if in each one of the eleven thousand villages iu Spain a Protestant evangelist or colporteur or school-teacher should be placed, we would see in a short time eleven thousand groups of evangelical Christians.
" We very serionsly and earnestly invite the attention of those who in foreign countries are interested in the evangelization of Spain to this condition of things, so that they may not lose their faith in this work. Spain is slow in making np her mind to a new thing j her political and her religious and her social history prove this. But her determination once taken, she is persistent, and does not easily yield to difficulties."
Coming from a thoughtful and able and spiritual-minded Spaniard, these are weighty words, and yet it is to be lamented that the missionary societies, to which must be credited in large part these hopeful results, are, in many instances, withdrawing their help and are reducing their forces in this field. We who are here and in closest touch with those who have dared to separate themselves from the church of their fathers, and to suffet:
WORK AMONG FRENCH PRIESTS
all the consequences, feel that this is most unfortunate, in many cases even cruel, and we would lift up our voices in appeal to the favored churches of England and America not to abandon these their needy brethren.
Especially do we hope that the churches in America will not do so. We feel that just now, while the bitter question of Cuba is pending be. tween Spain and the United States, is the time of all others when we must show ourselves the true friends of all t.hat is good in this country. Every one of the pastors and evangelists and teachers, and of the members of our different congregations and of the writers in the evangelical press has been very true and kind to us who are Americans, and have neither said nor done anything to annoy us. There could be no better proof of their love and esteem. It WillJ..lg. be beyond measure unfortunate and harmful should we now be obliged to"'dls~~ ;tny of them.
WORK AMONG FRENCH PRIESTS.
BY PROFESSOR L. J. BERTRAND, PARIS, FRANCE.
A mission among priests I The mere title is to many a cause of great surprise; even my servants and neighbors cannot understand why Roman Catholic priests in their cassocks, monks of all denominations in their monachal robes, should call al; the house of an old Huguenot like me. Is it true that, as in the time ot the apostles (Acts 6 : 7), ., a great company of the priests are obedieut to the faith?" No, say the few Protestants.
who disapprove that Roman Catholics should be troubled in their faith, tho they are very thankful to Luther and Calvin for having broken with Rome; no, that new mission must be a very aggressive and useless one."
The reality is that we receive a great many Roman Catholic priests and monks, and that our little mission is the least combative of all works of evangelization, for it never made an appeal to priests, but aims only at sav- ing those who leave a church in which they no longer believe. To the drowning man who cries" Help I" we cannot turn a deaf ear.
These shipwrecked ones are legion. It is heart-rending to think of the numbers of priests who daily tread on their couscience while they say Mass. And if they leave the Roman Church, what will they do to earn their daily bread 1 " We know how to say Mass," said one of them, "and l;hat is all we know." • Some are well read; but not one o~t of twenty is in possession of the university degree, which in France is indispensable for all liberal profes- sions. They are not better fitted for commerce or business. "In all practical things," sadly remarked a former priest, "we are mere chil- dren. " If the poor unfrocked priest was esteemed and pitied, as he so often deserves to be, his life would not be such a hard one! But alas! he is looked down upon by Roman Catholics as a traitor in the camp, and by Protestants themselves as an outcast.
I could name a priest who set up a small shop. His affairs prospered at first, but no sooner did Jesuits know his story than his customers mysteriously disappeared, never to come back.
On the other hand, we have heard this sad fact quoted by the principal of a Protestant divinity school in a public meeting: "I am often asked by parents to recommend a tutor for their sons. If I happen to mention a young man, pious and clever, but who, unfortunately for him, was formerly a Roman priest, politely but coldly the parents-a few enlightened ones excepted-decline my offer."
This is why hundreds of priests are now driving cabs in the streets of Paris. Things seen are mightier than things heard. Former priests, who had passed through such sad experiences, were the first to lend a helping hand to their brothers in distress. The example of Father Chiniquy, Father O'Connor, and Father Connellan gave heart to a few French evangelists. They founded the mission for priests, which, tho quite recent as yet, has been the means of rescuing more than fifty.
These men come to us saying, "My conscience forbids me to remain in my Church; help me to earn my bread out of the Church. I am no longer a Roman Catholic; help me to become a Protestant. "
To speak of the present only, we have a Capuchin in our missionary school, a Jesuit and a priest in the theological seminary of Paris, two former priests in the theological seminary of Neufchatel, and are expecting three more; three are evangelists, five are engaged in teaching or business. Through our influence, a Spanish ecclesiastical teacher has been received as a member of the Evangelical Church of Spain, and an Italian cure has entered Christ Mission, New York.
What happened in 1895 happens every year. Most of our converted priests become pastors or evangelists. They feel bound to preach to others the Gospel which has made them other men.
The following remark will surprise many : Heretofore we have sent Protestant pastors to evangelize Roman Catholics; but has our harvest been as fnll as we might have expected? We are obliged to confess it has not, and that our system is to blame.
"Protestants are utterly unable to realize," writes a man of great authority in these matters, "how our own technology seems strange to those honest peasants, who have never heard anyjhing in their lives save the poor sermon of their cure. Can we imagine Luther and Calvin preaching to crowds in the style of our consecration meetings? No; Luther and Zwingli were priests; they had done away with the errors of the Roman Church, but not with its traditional language. There lies the secret of their influence and of their success."
Oh, that we had many priests fully converted who knew both the Protestant and the Catholic shibboleths! Then we might revolutionize France. Indeed, if we have obtained successes, we owe them to proselytes. At St. Aubin de Blaye, the mayor, formerly a Roman Catholic, gave the signal of the reform, and most Protestant mission stations in the Pas de Calais, Monteynard, Soubran, Tonnay-Boutonne, etc., were founded by former Catholics and former priests. Why ~ Merely because they know and understand these people, and that we do not, because we are Protestant by birth.
When Jesus wanted to evangelize the humble, He chose His disciples among the humble; but to evangelize the Pharisees He wanted a Pharisee i for the Greeks He wanted a Grep.k scholar i to avoid crue~ty and danger He wanted a Roman citizen, and therefore He said to His persecutor, Saul of Tarsus: "Thou art My man!" And here is a striking fact similar to the above : Eight years ago a young priest was accused by the Archbishop of Bordeaux of having used" imprudent language i" indeed, he had declared openly that Jesus Christ is the only Mediator between God and men. The priest left France and went to Brazil, but when he came back he was accused once more of having used "imprudent language," for he had preached that the Gospel was the Christian's all in all. However, he was appointed cure in the little village of St. Palais, in the west of France. He had not remained there long when another cure heard him publicly declare his doubts about purgatory and the confessional; and for the third time he was accused of having used" imprudent language." His bishop urdered him to retract publicly or to resign. The poor priest was thunderstruck. He felt bound to preach what he believed to be the truth, but he loved his parishioners so dearly that he was broken-hearted at the mere thought of leaving them. They, on the other hand, could not bear the thought of parting with their cure, and they drew up a petition begging the bishop to retain him at St. Palais. But if the priest Bonhomme was a Protestant without knowing it, the bishop knew it so well that he was immovable. If this unruly son of the Church did not choose to atone for his fault, he ~as to leave his parish on the spot.
In his perplexity M. Bonhomme bethought himself that some years ago a Protestant called M. de Rougemont had asked him to speak on the McAll missionary boat, and immediately he set out for the neighboring town of Pons, where resided a Protestant pastor, M. Robert. The pastor was struck at once by his courage and joyful piety. When he had listened to his story and understood the cruel plight in which he was, M. Robert said: "If your conscience refuses to obey, tell your parishioners that next Sunday you will preach on this subject: 'My reasons for leaving the Ohurch of Rome. ' Theu, as in the days of the Reformation, remain at St. Palais among your flock. I will hire a hall of some kind or other, where you will preach what you believe to be true, and the Mission for Priests will help to support you. " " I may have encouraged him by these words," adds M. Robert, "but I knew, somehow, that he had already made up his mind. The struggle had been a painful but triumphant one. "
Indeed, the following Sunday M. Bonhomme preached a sermon on those errors and abuses which had brought about his rupture with Rome. The parish church of St. Palais was too small to contain the crowd. And the speech was so thrilling, so pathetic, and earnest that all those Catho-. lics thought, "Ought we not to do likewise? "
When M. Bonhomme left the church to divest himself of the cassock (soutane), which he had worn for the last time in his life, numbers of peo- ple, men and women, followed him to his home to shake hands and con- gratulate him. His heroic decision had won for him the respect and ad- miration of all. But the bishop was so indignant that he sent in all haste fifteen priests to purify the sanctuary by sprinkling it with holy water. ·With the exception of a few old women the inhabitants of St. Palais re- fused to attend a ceremony which they called a " popish farce." "Our Cure Bonhomme," they said, "is far more pious and conscientious than those men."
'Vhen I heard of these facts, I hastened to St. Palais to open the new hall. Whereas the new cure, who succeeded M. Bonhomme, had little more than a d,ozen hearers, our meeting was so crowded that I had to tell the men to leave their seats to the women and to content themselves with listening through the doors and windows, which were thrown wide open. Every oue had spoken of Bonhomme for t~enty miles round; everyone wished to hear him and to learn something about Protestants.
After my departure, Pastor Robert, priest Bonhomme, and two other conjerenciers come .from Paris, went all over the country giving lectures in twenty villages. From five or six parishes rose the cry: "Send us a former priest to teach us the Gospel of Christ!" Our committee felt that tarrying was no longer possible, and decided to grant in some measure this request. While we were discussiug that question in Paris, M. Bonhomme was called far away to Bourg du Bose to deliver a lecture. The next day the Maire, the Conseil Municipal, and the better half of the inhabitants resolved to turn Protestants, and begged us to give them a converted priest for a pastor.
Now that a second priest, Abbe Cornelollp, is settled in these parts, the wl)rk is spreading more and more, and Pastor Robert asks us to· send him a third priest. Unfortunately, our funds do not allow us to answer, as yet, in the affirmative.
But the conversion of a priest has not only been the means of bringing the Gospel into twenty villages, it has also awakened the little church of Pons, perfectly asleep till then. Now the members of the church go about the country helping our converted priests in preaching with them the Gospel to the peasants.
Thus the Mission for Priests may not only be a powerful instrument
NOTES FROM PARIS
for evangelizing Roman Catholics, it may also infuse new blood into our Protestant veins. Pastor Robert says: "Give me ten truly converted priests, and I will convert the diocese of La Rochelle." * NOTES FROM PARIS.
BY REV. RUBENS SAILLENS, PARIS, FRANCE.
The present ministry seems to be fairly minded with regard to the rights of Protestants and their missionaries both at home and in the colonies. We have the most radical government we ever had; and it is only from the Radical Party that we can ever expect, in this country, measures which will lead to the separation of Church and State-one of the greatest needs of France.
The Resident-General for Madagascar, now on his way to Antananarivo, is M. Laroche, a Protestant gentleman. Mme. Laroche, tho born a Roman Catholic, lIas joined her husband's religion, and is well known in Protestant philanthropic circles. Several Protestant officials-along with a great many Roman Catholics, of course-have been sent with M. Laroche to the new colony. We may hope, therefore, that the Swedish and English missionaries on the great African island will be impartially dealt with. Of course these appointments excite the anger of the Romish press-a bishop having gone so far as to say, in a public letter, that: "Abroad, Protestant means English and· Catholic means French; and that, therefore, the appointment of Protestant officials is paving the way for English influence in our colonies." Yet French Protestants have ever been loyal to their country, tho it has often treated them very harshly.
The Paris Societe des Missions Evangeliques (French Protestant Missionary Society) has decided to send a pastor (M. Langa) to Madagascar, in order to make inquiries as to the opportunity for French Christians to est,ablish missions and schools in the island. M. Langa will sail very soon.
While trying to carryon, according to their abilities, the great command " Go ye into all the world," the French Christians cannot overlook the fact that their own country needs the Gospel as much as any foreign land. Think of 500,000 or 600,000 at the utmost, nominal Protestants, scattered throughout a population of nearly 40,000,000 ; of these nominal Protestants, only a small proportion being thoroughly converted! It is, therefore, sad to see that, owing to financial difficulties, such valuable work as the McAll Mission and others have been able to do is now reduced rather than enlarged and extended as it ought to be.
Our own mission (Baptist) is greatly encouraged. While seven years ago there were only 9 churches with 900 communicants, we have to-day in '" I have saW nothiug about bad uufrocked priests; they are numerous, but we refuse them all. French-speaking countries (France, Belgium, Bernese Tura) 26 churches with about 2000 communicants. Some of our young men are offering themselves for the Lord's service, whether at home or abroad.
Among the noblest and truest servants of the Lord Jesus Christ in our country, one whom He has taken away from us during the present year deserves especially to be mentioned. I refer to Pastor Ernest Dhombres, of the Reformed Church of the Saint Esprit, Paris. He died a few months ago, aged seventy. He had been blind for several years, but had borne his affliction in a most submissive and even joyful spirit, still preaching and visiting the sick and bereaved ones of his flock. A beautiful preacher, he was faithful to the old doctrines of the Gospel, now disregarded by so many.
Twenty-five years ago, during that cold, deadly winter of 1870-71, which saw the German armies surround Paris like an iron circle, Ernest Dhombres remained with his parishioners, preaching to them with more than his usual vigor the Gospel of peace and love in the midst of the horrors of war. He was a true patriot, and did not shrink from the painful duty of denouncing from the pulpit our national weaknesses and sins, which were the causes of our sufferings, while he heartily joined in the aspirations and hopes of his people.
The sermons which he preached during that eventful period, and which were published at the time, have been gathered together by loving friends in a beautifully printed volume, with an introductory note by Pastor Couve, the well-known moderator of the Reformed Church. The volume contains a fine portrait of the author, and a most interesting account, by himself, of all the religious and charitable work which the French Christians, imprisoned with their fellow-citizens, accomplished during the siege. This is a chapter almost ignored of French history.
Each sermon is accompanied by a historical sketch, written by Pastor Dhombres, relating all the events which had happened in the city and outside during the period preceding its delivery. Fears and hopes, hunger, cold, revolts of the mob, false news soon disproved, desperate attempts to break the iron circle, all that described by a Christian, a minister of the Gospel, who, while belonging to the same creed as the enemies of his country, is intensely at one with the people among whom God has placed him, and who are his own flesh and blood. This makes of the book" Foi et Patrie" a unique work of its kind. We have read it with passionate interest, and recommend it to the readers of French who love our country and would join with us in praying that the lessons of L'.Annee terrible may * yet bring fruit for this poor, deluded, yet noble and truly great nation.
* "Foi et Patrie," vol. octavo, 232 pp., printed on fine paper. Paris, Berger-Levrault, 5 me des Beaux-Art/!. Price, 80 cents (4 francs).
CENTURIES OF J3Um:iHISM
NINE CENTURIES OF BUDDHIS~f.-V.
BY F. D. SHAWE, LADAK, TIBET.
After thus comparing in detail the actual state of a Buddhist country with the claims of Buddhism, we may well ask, " What is the practical outcome of nine centuries of Buddhism?" As il; now stands at the preseut day, Ladaki Bud'::'llism is a mixture of fetishism and demonism. Images, books, and the Six Syllables are nothing more than fetishes, which, properly treated, have the power of warding off the attacks of countless evil powers. Ladaki Buddhism knows no love, no compassion, no gratitude, no reverence, not even fear of punishment for misdeeds, but only a groveJIing terror of malignant spirits, who find their delight in bullying mankind. With all its vaunted compassion, Buddhism has produced a people whose sole idea is self. With all its vaunted morality, Buddhism has caused the disappearance of all moral cons~iousness. "Vith all its vaunted intellectuality, Buddhism has rendered the people intellectually feebler than they were a few hundred years ago, and so unnsed to reflection that they are absolutely unconscious alike of their own state and of that of their priests. ·With all its vaunted purity, Buddhism has allowed the people to lapse into the most debasing idolatry and abject superstition. Self, and nothing but self, is the center of every man's thought. Not even intellectual selfishness has been attained; food, clothing, and sexual delights are the end-all and be-all of the life of a Ladaki. After mature consideration, I am constrained to believe that those qualities which endear the Ladaki people to those Europeans who have intimate dealings with them are not the results of Buddhism, but exist in spite of Buddhism.
James Gilmour wrote as follows: "Mongol Buddhism and holiness have long ago parted company, and it seems possible for men and women, living among and participating in scenes of unblushing evil, to be at the same time experiencing the effectual consolations of religion. This seems, at first sight, incredible; but I am convinced that it is true. And perhaps no more serious charge could be brought against any religion than this, which holds true of Buddhism: that, notwithstanding many excellent doctrines which characterize it as a theory, its practical effect is to delude its votaries as to moral guilt, to sear their consciences as with a hot iron, to call the wicked righteous, and send men down to the grave with a lie in their right hand." This scathing denunciation is, word for word, true of Ladak and Tibet generally. And inquire where you will in Buddhist countries from those who have in lengthy residence acquired some behindthe-scenes knowledge of the real state of the people, the answer is always in similar terms: " Buddhism has not accomplished what it professes to do; it does notsustaiu a moral life among its adherents."
But, it may be said, "Your description is very sad; but really such things as those you mention are not rmknown in so-called Christian coun-
OF BUDDHA . CARVED IN THE ROCK, LADAK, TIBET, A STREET IN LEH
NINE CEN'l'URIES OF BUDDHISM
tries. " I am not concerned at present to contrast Christianity with Bud. dhism; but I may yet be allowed to suggest two points for reflection: Firstly, the evil and immoralIty in Christian countries is not so unblushing as in this Buddhist land. In Christian countnes such things are obliged to keep in the background, while in Ladak they stalk unashamed in broad noonday. There is an immense difference in degree. Secondly, these things happen in Christian countries in direct antagonism to the efforts of Christianity. Not only by words from the pulpit and in the press, but by unwearying efforts, entailing great expeuse of time, money, and men, real Christians are striving to stem. the evil. In Ladak and Tibet not an effort is made to bring about a change, not even a voice is raised in protest. Christianity is engaged in a perpetual warfare ; Buddhism tacitly assents in evil. This is a fundamental difference.
Indeed, nothing else can be expected. As long as the lamas remain unreformed, a salutary influence cannot be exerted from within Buddhism. But the lamas cannot be reformed. An earnest effort was made by Tsongkapa, the founder of the yellow sect; the impetus, however, exhausted itself, and his followers are rapidly disappearing in the slough of iniquity and self-righteousness which represents Tibetan Buddhism. Nor need this astonish us, for Tsongkapa has merely shown by example what was foreshadowed in theory. Buddhism is in doctrine the apotheosis of selfishness. While in othe, religions the commands of a deity are the standard of life, in Buddhism the advantage of self is the center point. All existence in every form brings misery, and selflshness demands that release from this misery be found. All self-denial, compassion, love and charity, enjoined as they are by Buddhism, are merely a means for freeing self from pain. They are not commanded because they are in themselves good, but because they are a profitable investment. No appeal is made to the sympathy inherent in most people for what is good simply because it is good; in Buddhism the appeal lies solely to the selfish advantage of the " ego." True, this is a higher, so to say, aristocratic form of selfishness, and has produced many really deep and beautiful moral precepts, especially as shown in the Ohammapada, ~ ')ok from which apologists of Buddhism draw most of their quotations. None the less, however, selfishness remains the mainspring of action, and it is impossible but that the higher selfishness must deteriorate into self-indulgence and finally sensuality. Tibetan lamas and laymen have arrived at this latter point, and a greater power than sublimated selfishness is required to cause a chauge.
The fact is, that the Buddhism of Gautama as the religion of the people is dead. As the application of electricity produces movements in a corpse, so can Buddhism be temporarily galvanized into action. The intense earnestness of Christianity is having a reflex action, producing at the present day galvanic spasms in the dead body. But that Buddhism is absolutely dead is written plainly enough in the pages of history. Where are Buddhist charitable hospitals 1 Where free dispensaries 1
ROMANISM IN CHINA
Where orphanages ~ Where teachers of the deaf and dumb 1 Where asylums for the idiot or the leper ~ We must go to Christian countries, and to the efforts of Christian people in Buddhist countries, if we would see these. While Christian countries are-very slowly and with many a halt and relapse, yet still surely-advancing, Buddhist countries have been for centuries stationary, or are even, as Tibet and Mongolia, engaged in a retrograde movement.
Let me not be misunderstood. The Buddha Gautama I consider to have been a most earnest and thoughtful searcher after truth ; and I know of no scheme, outside of revealed religion, which contains more of eternal truth and justice, not excepting the Greek philosophies. The Heidelberg Castle is II great edifice, justly exciting admiration ; but it is a ruin, and no longer fit for human beings to inhabit. Gautama reared a splendid building, worthy of all attention on the part of those interested in the spiritual housing of mankind; but it is a hopeless ruin, and has proved itself unable to protect those who have sought shelter in it from the attacks of what was long ago defined as "the lust of the flesh, and lust of the eyes, and the pride of life." " A whited 2epulcher, which indeed appears beautiful outward, but is within full of dead men's bones and of all uncleanness. "
ROMANISM IN CHINA.
BY REV. JOHN ROSS, MUKDEN, CHINA.
The history of the Roman Catholic Church in China is one laden wit.h lessons as to the character of that Church, and one which gives the only satisfactory key to open the mystery of Chinese hostility to We,stern peoples. The Jesuits who zealously pushed their way to the foot of the throne in China were men who were guided by wise counsels and men . trained in all the learning of the West. Professors of the Sorbonne, with men of leading minds among the Jesuits of Paris, were seut under royal auspices and with regal gifts. By their mathematical learning they procured for themselves the control of the observatory in Peking, the construction of the all-important annual almanac, and the respect of all who loved learning. Never in any court had they so thorough a hold of royalty as they had during the long reign of Kanghi. Had they been able to get him baptized, as they had hoped, or had they continued the policy which guided them into and retained them in his favor, China might have long ere now been virtually a vassal of the Pope. From among the most brill. iant scholars of the Empire they had numerous converts, and some of the best books ever written in favor of Christian doctrine were the product of high officials converted to Romanism. That Church was not then wholly given over to the idolatry of Mary as it is now. But the Nemesis of Jesuitry, despite that splendid commencement, rapidly followed in the wake of prosperity. The successor of Kanghi did not reverence them with the affection of his father. A younger brother was a great friend of theirs. With other younger brothers the Jesuits conspired to dethrone the Emperor and set this friendly younger brother on the throne. The Em- peror was aware of the treason, but left it alone till some of the leaders retired into Mongolia to take steps to collect an army. Then suddenly the chief conspirators were apprehended. The Jesuits were banished to the west of Kansu. The intercession in their behalf of a special embassy of Portugal, which then possessed the commercial supremacy i~ the East, was the cause of the death of the prisoners. For learning, by overland mount- ed courier from Canton, the design of that embassy, the Government sent messengers to the vVest, and the Jesuits were put to death. Steps were taken to prevent the high-handed proceedings of converts all over the em- pire. The administration of justice was impossible where the Roman Catholics congregated in any numbers-·for they went in a body to the yamen and terrified the magistrate into acquiescence to their will. No Roman Catholic convert, accused of any crime whatsoever, could be brought to justice. Measure after measure was adopted to stop this con- stant overawing of magistrates; and as nothing else availed, the persecu- tion began which put an end once for all to the unbearabie authority which the Roman Catholic Church had arrogated to itself in the interior. From that time the Boman Catholics were under a cloud more or less dark till the French war dispelled the cloud and gave them as much liberty (1860) as ever they had to carry out their will-which they could now do without any fear of resulting persecution. The manner in which they have acted in China since has produced the fire of anti-foreign feeling which has roused every riot which has occurred in this land. The Chinese are as yet incapable of differentiating between the peoples of the West. Americans are as much foreigners as French ; and the hatred is against the foreigner on account of the doings of the French. The Chinese dread the spread of the foreigner into the country-for every foreigner is a center of more or less disturbance. If, therefore, an American missionary is mobbed when building a foreign house or a church after the Western fashion, let no one think that the mob is opposed to the teaching of Christianity. The Chinese have nothing but respect for the Christian system; but thcy hate, because they fear, the foreigner. Not as a missionary has anyone ever been attacked, but as a foreigner. The story is too long to relate why this anti-foreign feeling is so deep-seated and widespread. But it is all to be laid at the door of the Roman Catholics. That Church is said to be semi-political. In China you must omit the "semi" before you can understand the truth. The Roman Catholics never preach to the heathen. They rarely preach to their own people, who are grossly ignorant of the elementary principles of Christ's teaching. They don't preach; but if a convert has a grudge against a neighbor he goes to the priest and tells him that so and so is "reviling the Roman Catholic Church. " If the quarrel is serious, he takes with him the fragments of the cross worshiped by the converts instead of their former idols and accuses his enemy of having broken the cross. In nine of ten cases the Roman Catholic breaks the cross and goes with this story, as the common people dare not quarrel with a Roman Catholic. The priest sends ~ document to the judge purporting to proceed from a high official by imperial authority, stamped with a formidable-looking official stamp. This docnment demands the pnnishment of the offender. That man is imprisoned, and gets out again only after the Roman Catholics are satisfied with the punishment received and the amouut of money paid; for in all cases money is the chief concern. If the judge is slow in carrying ont the desire of the priest, the latter waits upon him in person, and will not leave till his object is attained. In very exceptional cases the jndge is unable to bring himself to carry out the outrageous demand. Then the priest goes in person to the Governor-General, lays his complaint against the judge, who has at last either to yield or be degraded and succeeded by one who will decide according to the pleasure of the priest or bishop. Often, however, the offender is taken to the Roman Catholic Church, where there is a place of torture, which no native ever leaves without bitterly repenting ever having called in question the power of the Roman Catholics.
The Roman Catholic priests are high officials with civil rank. They assume a style and dignity snperior to that of a county judge. The bishop has the dignity of a judge of appeal. The cardinal is " King" of the Church, and the Pope "Emperor." The demands of the Roman Catholic Church-at least in Manchuria and in Szchuen,.not in Shantung, I understand-are the demands of civil officials acting under imperial authority. What know the Chinese of all this ~ They only know that France upholds all these pretensions, and has once and again refused to curtail the action of the priesthood in this dictation to the native officials. These latter are degraded in the eyes of the people because of their subserviency to this foreign despotism which has gradually enveloped them round. The people are indignant that there is no appeal from the unrighteous tyranny of Roman Catholics. Is it speciany wonderful that there should be occasional riots 1 Would such action-and far worse, which I care not to mention at present-be tolerated for a day in America or in any of the nations of Europe? For a quarter of a century I have resided among the Chinese and Manchus. The outcry against them is a libel upon one of the most sober, diligent, gentle races on the face of the earth. My sympathies are entirely with the Chinese, despite the blind folly of the means they take to get rid of the foreigner. They believe the missionary is a teacher of religion only as a pretext under cover of which he carries on political aims to subvert Chinese subjects from their allegiance. However long those have been in China who declare that this hatred is confined to officials and literary classes, they are ignorant of the
1896.j
facts of Chinese present life and past history. In the open ports you can never come to uuderstand the Chiuese. You must live among them and come into contact with all classes. There are few of the poorest families in China who are not connected with or interested in some one or more of the literary and official classes. There is no caste in China. Did the common people not regard the foreigner with at least as great a hatred as the official and literary classes no riot would be possible. They would not run the risk of losing their life merely to act on what they considered the falsehoods of the ruling class. Chinese are exceedingly ignorant of us ; not a few of us, missionaries and merchants, are equally ignorant of the Chinese.
What is the practical outcome of this hurriedly written paper? It is the desire to earnestly entreat everyone directly interested in the conversion of the Chinese to manifest Christian forbearance instead of worldly revenge; to show the Chinese in practical life what is the real meaning of Christ's teaching and of Christ's example. Instead of the ready fault-finding-for which there is reason enough-let there be the quiet sympathy which will endeavor to understand the Chinese mental attitude. Let, above all, the desire be everywhere manifested in our dealings with the Chinese to remove from their minds the root of all the mischief-the belief that we are political agents. Never let anyone lightly move the foreign power. Appeals to Cresar and cries for the gunboat, for ministerial dictation in Peking or consular action in the provinces should be resorted to only in the most extreme cases. There has been lately on the part of many an unexpected eagern()ss to cling for protection to worldly power, instead of leaving all in the Power which is over all. To me it is saddening in the extreme to discover how much it has been forgotten that the " weapons of our warfare are not carnal. " Every resort to carnal weapons is but another proof to the Chinese that we are political agents. Remove this belief, you open the way for the best classes of Chinese-those who most love their country-to become Christian. It is gratifying to know that many in the church are iI'ltensely patriotic. It is still more gratifying to know that gradually the _truth on this matter is making its way slowly but steadily into all ranks. No Chinaman will be found who is ready to object to the teachings of Christianity. The most bigoted Confucianist, in coming face to face with Christian teaching, can but explain, "Jesns is the sage of the West, Confucius the sage of the East; you follow yours and allow us to follow ours." There is but one great seriously mighty barrier at present against the speedy advance of Christianity, and that is the belief that we are political agents. China sorely needs Christianity. Confucianism is an ethical and political system second ('mly to Christian teaching. Buddhism is an atheistic pessimism holding out the cessation of being as the ultimate hope of man's greatest and holiest efforts. Taoism has degenerated into a poor magi?al system worthy, perhaps, in many of its exhibitions, to be placed side by side with the absurdities of
FHOM: l{OMISII MISSIONS
" spiritualism. " These three systems, despite the lunatic attempts of some Westerns to galvanize one or all of them into something like life, are utterly unavailing before the heart-cries of this nation. Heart-sickness everywhere in this land can be cured only by that which is foolishness to the wisdom of this world. Here, as elsewhere, it is true that Christianity alone contains and alone bestows the highest promise and fulfillment for the life that now is and for that which is to come.
LESSONS FROM ROMISH MISSIONS.
BY REV. WILLIAM: FUTHEY GIBBONS, FORTY FORT, PA.
However corrupt the Romish Church may be in practice at the present time, howevcr false as the custodian of doctrine in the past, it is well to recall the fact that she has always been faithful to her missionary principles. It is true there have been ages when the flame burned low; worldliness and luxury have at times been more attractive than hardship and martyrdom; but we must not forget that it was the Roman Church which preached the Gospel to our ancestors in Germany, in Britain, in Gaul, and in the Scandinavian peninsula, and that Rome to-day sends her missionaries to all parts of the world. Let us not despise the experience of the Romish Church in the work of missions, even tho we send missionaries among the members of her communion, while she sends missionaries to Protestant lands. If her methods are bad, let us avoid 1hem ; if they are sound, let us adopt them.
1. The first great lesson that Rome can teach Protestantism in mission work is the law of economy of effort. The Romish Church is divided into more sects and parties than any other church in the world, yet all these discordant elements and interests are held together by one common aimto gain power among the nations of the earth. How much nobler would be the purpose to unite all true believers of one common Master for the sake of advancing His kingdom throughout the whole earth! But if we cannot as yet agree on terms of church consolidation at home or on mission fields, let us at least learn from tlle Roman Catholics not to embarrass each other by multiplying denominational missions in the same district. The plan of apportioning out different mission fields to different societies and orders of monks has been one secret of success of Romish missions. As each new field is opened the Pope appoints as missionaries to it the members of that society which is best fitted to carryon the work.
2. The law of the necessity of self-denial. Dr. George VV. Knox has recently said: "It is not surprising that the heroic missions of the Romish Church win the plaudits of onlookers who are not impressed by the pleasant home life, the wife and children, and abundant comforts of the Protestant missionary. However out of sympathy with the dogmas of the Romish Church, their poverty, endurance, patience, and suffering excite the admiration of us all. Every thoughtful missionary at times is forced to ask himself whether the reformation did not go too far; whether the priestly monastic, militant types are not, after all, more in accord with the missionary spirit. And Protestants turn to the older church for instruction as to the conduct of the great campaign."
Whoever reads the Annals of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith must be struck by the somewhat theatric nature of modern Catholic mISSIOns. The Romish missionary never forgets that he is a spectacle to angels and to men, and especially to Protestants and to heathen. Especially when he is telling his own story does this dramatic element show itself. Yet after all allowance has been made for the exaggerations of heated imagination there is still room for a large amount of genuine self-denial. It is not strange that this shonld be true when we remember the Romish doctrine of the merit of good works.
No one can read many pages of medieval history without finding the story of some zealous Catholic-merchant, monk, or missionary-who sought the crown of the martyr or canonization as a saint through exposure to the dangers incident to carrying the religion of Christ to the savage heathen tribes of Northern Europe. The shores of the Baltic were as many days'journey from Rome in that day as the banks of the Congo are from us, and the means of obtaining a footing for civilization on the new soil were much less efficient then than now. Just as surely as there were many beautiful examples of earnest Christian living in the midst of the spiritual dearth of the Church of Rome during the Middle Ages, so surely were there examples of earnest, self-denying missionaries during the same period.
Of all the records of devotion none is more striking than that of Raymond Lull. It may with truth be said of him, in the words of one of his own treatifles, that he labored afl a missionary" that the blessed name of the Lord Jesus, which is still unknown in most parts of the world and among most nations, may be manifested and obtain universal adoration." The intense energy of the man may be seen from the fact that he traveled more widely, in spite of the inconveniences of thirteenth-century locomotion, than most modern missionaries do in these days of express trains and ocean greyhounds. In addition to, and in spite of his long journeys to preach to the Mohammedans and to appeal to the Pope and councils to establish schools for the teaching of Arabic and to undertake and support missions to the Mohammedans, he was the author of 486 treatises, most of which are still in existence. The great Humboldt speaks of him with enthusiasm as a natural philosopher and chemiflt and as the independent inventor of the mariner's compass. His life, after his sudden and striking conversion, was one long succession of suffering, imprisonment, and banishment, ended by martyrdom. Altho he had been banished from Tunis for disputation and for preaching to the followers of Islam and forbidden to land there again on the pain of death, yet when his work was done in Europe, at the age of eighty he returned to Tunis, went boldly into the open square of Bugia, the capital, and proclaimed salvation through Christ. A erowd gathered; it was known that he was uuder sentence of death by stoning; a few stones were thrown, and he was hustled by the crowd toward the seashore. Yet in the confusion he kept his face toward his enemies, still crying out, " None but Christ!" Once outside the town, the crowd of angry Turks fell upon him with showers of stones. At last he fell, but rallying and raising himself on his hands and knees he shouted again, "None but Christ I"~ It was his last testimony. Left for dead, he was taken on shipboard by a Christian sea captain, only to die. Thus perished a man who did more than any other single missionary, from that day to this, for the conversion of the Mohammedans. The motto of his life might well have been these words from one of his own books: " lIe who loves not lives not; he who lives by the Life cannot die." He advocated, as the most practicable method of missionary work by the Church, the establishment of institutions of learning where holy monks of great wisdom could learn various languages, so as to be able to preach to unbelievers. Had the Church responded to his call, Raymond Lull would have anticip'l.ted William Carey by exactly seven centuries.
Details of similar mart.yrdoms in China and Japan in the Middle Ages, among the Iroquois and Hurons in the early days in our own couutl'y, in the Soudan and the Congo country in our own time might easily be multiplied. Parkman's histories tell of such cases as those of Brebeuf and Lallemant, who, having been tortured with the most exquisite cruelty, escaped from their rescuers to go back to their tormentors in order to preach to them and to administer the sacrament of the Mass. However mistaken or even fanatical such men may have been, we cannot help admiring their lofty courage, their steadfast devotion, and their splendid self -denial.
3. The Law Concerning the Preaching of t,he Word. There are several lessons we may learn from the failures of the Romanists. Nothing they have done is more clearly a mistake than the dependence they have put in other ageucies than the Gospel of Christ. The whole question of the efficacy of the sacrameuts emerges here. Could anything be more pathetic than the wonderful sacrifices made by the Jesuits to baptize Indians who did not know they were being baptized, to sprinkle holy water on sleepiug heathen Chinamen, or to administer the sacrament of extreme unction to dyiug Africans unconscious of what was being done ~ Of course Protestants believe that such methods are not worthy of the name of missionary effort. But some people who ought to know better are advocating other meaus than the presentation of the Gospel as missionary work.
We do not for a moment discount the educational work of the missionary. He must teach the people among whom he labors to use both brain and hand. He mllst do all he can to civilize them. He will reduce their speech to writing if it is not already a written language. He will teach them to till the soil if they are not already an agricultural people. He will teach them all the arts and sciences possible. He will aid them to develop the resources of their country iu every possible manner. He will be the apostle of culture and material prosperity, of literature and enterprise; but first and above all he must be the herald of Christ.
Altho not au example of the most illegitimate methods of Romish mission work, Francis Xavier is the most conspicuous failure because he failed to teach the Word. It is pure extravagance to call him " the Apostle of the Indies," and to compare him with St. Paul, as some historians of the Church of Rome have done. It is pure partisan blindness which does not see that his work amounted to almost nothing that was permanent. To be sure, he opened the way into Asia for other members of the Society of Jesus, of which he was one of the founders; but the lasting spiritual results of his work were pitifully small. This poverty of results was due, we believe, to dependence on other agencies than the Word of God. Xavier always speaks of having made Christians: "Feci Ohristianos" is his constant expression. These people were manufactured into Christians by holding up the crucifix before the multitudes who gathered to hear him and persuading them to bow before it, or by taking the branch of a tree and sprinkling them with consecrated water. His zeal knew no bounds. All day long he toiled to administer the sacraments to as many people as possible, taking neither time for eating nor sleeping, and spending the short remainder of his nights in prayer. "Amplius /" (" More !") was still his cry, even when he was most thronged with candidates for baptism or confession. If snch methods could havc been permanently successful, there was no reason why Xavier should not have succeeded; for he had every advantage of money and power behind him. He could make it profitable to become a Christian in India. The poor and the suffering were liberally relieved. Besides administering to the bodily diseases of all who would come to him, and feeding all the hungry who swarmed to his ministrations, he had the temporal power of the Viceroy of Madras behind him. Four thousand gold fanams were granted by the Viceroy to pay the " priests," so-called, which Xavier appointed from among his converts in each village. When it is remembered that St. Francis spent but a few days, or at most but a few weeks, in each village, we need not be surprised that his converts soon lapsed back into heathenism in name, from which they had never emerged, in fact, even tho they were presided over by the" fit persons," as he calls these priests, who had been selected to draw the salary from the royal treasury. Xavier's failure is acknowledged not by Protestants only, but even by members of his own society, the Jesuits. Abbe Dubois laments that the work was not thorough. Indeed, St. Francis himself felt that he had failed. In a letter to the King of Portugal, when he is about to leave the country for China, he gives up his plan for converting the Hindus through the offices of the Church, and urges that the Viceroy be held accountable for making his subjects Christians by civil power. He says: "I wish that you would mention each of us by name, and say that we are not responsible ; but that the duty of spreading Christianity depends upon the Viceroy and upon him alone." He goes on to urge the King to punish, by imprisonment and confiscation of property, the governors of such provinces where there were few neophytes added to the Holy Church. This he feels it his solemn duty to urge.
It would not be fair to speak thus of the failure of Xavier's work and to seem to cast discredit upon him without going on to say a word concerning his piety and his sufferings. His letters show a wonderful zeal, and his life of self· abnegation proves that his zeal was genuine. One of the most beautiful hymns we owe to him, " Jesus, I love Thee, not because I hope for heaven thereby,"
reveals the pure and beautiful soul of the mau. Notlling was too painful for him if he could move the hearts of men thereby. One of his methods was to scourge himself vicariously in order to make merit for the person whom he was endeavoring to convert, and in whose presence the penance was performed. .
Hough, in his "History of Christianity in India," says: "His personal character appears to have been unexceptionable. His missionary character also in many respects is worthy of admiration. For grandeur of design and diligence in execution; for disinterested love to man ; for unwearied devotion, self-denial, renunciation of the world, intrepidity in dangers, and many other estimable qualities, he has left behind him an example which few have surpassed since the apostles' days."
4. The Law of Separation. The Romish Church is a mighty political engine of power. We may learn that the success of the missionary comes " not by might or by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord." The wholo question of the union of Church and State is involved in the Romish theory of missions. More than once the Pope and his agents have secured the promulgation of a decree by the governments of certain provinces declaring allegiance to the papal see only to find that the people would not submit; or it has been found that if the people have become Catholic in name, they have remained heathen in fact. Men cannot be made Christians by proclamation, even tho they be willing.
The experience of Rome ought to teach us to avoid all political entanglements. One of the most amusing failures which the Romish Church has made to introduce Christianity by treating with the government of a country was in the case of the successors of Jenghiz Khan. Messengers had come from the Tartar empire, which was threatening to overrun all Europe, to the court of Louis IX., "Saint Louis," with stories of the willingness of the Tartars to accept Christianity, As the Tartars were known to be Deists, with little or no religion of their own, and as they looked with equal favor on Buddhism, Mohammedanism, and Christianity, the pious King of France sent an embassy with rich presents to the Grand Khan Gajuk, asking him to make Christianity the religion of his empire. But the barbarian Mongols regarded the presents as tokens of the submission of Louis to their authority, and sent back the messengers. The a famous William of Rubruk was sent by St. Louis at the head of a second body of ambassadors on journey of 5000 miles to be bandied about from one chieftain to another until he reached the Grand Khan himself. But instead of being allowed to introduce Christianity, at the close of a disputation with Mohammedans and Buddhists, the Franciscan monk was sent back with a threatening demand to Louis to tender his submission in due form and become tributary to the Khanate of Tartary.
5. The Law of Unworldliness. One cause of the failure of the Romish Church to do permanent missionary work in certain countries has been the immoralities of those who have followed the missionaries. The Romish missionaries who followed Xavier were expelled from Japan by the indignant natives in 1614 principally because of the flagrant wrongs done by the merchants, sailors, and adventurers who swarmed into the country in their wake. We may learn from the Romish missionaries in another field to labor with the settlers and traders who have gone among heathen tribes. In 1586 the famous Jesuit mission was established in Paraguay. Here the intolerable cruelty of the Spaniards had long rendered fruitless all the efforts of the Franciscans to convert the Indians. The Jesuits wisely judged that the Spaniards needed reconverting first. They turned their efforts toward their reformation with so good effect that before long the Indians, believing that there must be something in a religion which could so change the conduct of the whites, began again to return to Christianity or to seek baptism for the first time.
But the Romanists are not alone answerable for crimes against weak, helpless, uncivilized. nations. It is impossible to estimate how much the liquor trade, licensed vice, and the immorality of so-called Christian nations have done to retard the progress of the world's evangelization. No pages of statistics nor figures of speech can give an adequate idea of the wrong done to China by the opium traffic of Christian England or to WeRtel'll Africa by the liquor trade of Christian United States and Germany. It is of no use to say that the Church does not stand responsible for these evils j the heathen, among whom our missionaries go, look upon the missionary and the merchant as being equally the representatives of the same country. If the missionaries are merchants, if the missionaries make money profit out of their converts, worse still, if the missionaries are cruel or licentious men, how impossible is it that their efforts should be successful, no matter what they teach. While we are far from charging these sins against the Romish missionaries as a class, yet the history of the work of Cardinal Ximenes in the West Indies and Mexico and of the Jesuits in Paraguay may stand as an illustration of the cause of failure to win the natives because of worldly or sinful lives.
6. The Law of Other Worldliness. Closely connected with the last is the failure to do permanent work because the missionaries of Rome have been satisfied with a Christianity that is merely nominal. To secure this outward assent to the doctrines of Rome, her missionaries, but especially the Jesuits, have been willing to make almost any concession to the heathen prejudices of the people they were trying to win. Mosheim gives a very full account of the methods employed by the Society of Jesus in India and China. In these countries during the seventeenth century they won converts by wholesale by adapting the doctrines of the heathen to the teachings of the Church of Rome. Only the more flagrantly wicked practices of the heathen were condemned; whatever could be twisted from a heathen to a Romish significance was kept. The Jesuits of this period concluded that St. Francis Xavier had made a mistake by beginning at the lowest classes. They supposed they could easily win the lower after they had converted the higher classes. So, in order to win the Brahmins, Robert de Nobili, a nobleman of Tuscany and a member of the Society of Jesus, having perfected himself in Sanscrit, Telegu and Tamil, as well as in the social customs of the Brahmins, went to India and declared himself a Brahmin come from the West. He conducted himself after the manner of the most ceremonious of the Brahmins, and would not suffer hims3if to be approached except by men of high caste. He brought with him a parchmentforged of course, which declared that the Brahmins of Rome were descended from the god Brahm, and were of more ancient foundation than the Brahmins of India. The parchment declared, further, that the members of the Society of Jesus were the direct descendants of Brahm. When the authenticity of the parchment was questioned, De Nobili did not hesitate to declare on his oath its truthfulness. He also forged a Sanscrit book purporting to be a fifth Veda, which he and his fellow-Jesuits swore they had received from Brahm. The result of this policy was that in three years seventy high.caste Brahmins had accepted tha Christian doctrines concerning God, the atonement, and the leading teachings of Christian morality. They abandoned their idols, but retained caste distinctions. Angry opposition arose; but in spite of this thirty thousand converts ware gathered. Separate churches were built for the high and low castes, while the outcasts were forbidden even to approach the Brahmin-Jesuit priests. But however successful the work seemed, it is not strange that such a policy of falsehood and accommodation should soon have brought disastrous failure. The noble kinsman of Robert de Nobili, the great Cardinal Bellarmine, himself a Jesuit, protested most solemnly against such a policy. Altho the order compelled him to retract, other orders of the Church had influence enough to secure a bull from Gregory XV. in 1623 which was unfavorable to the Jesuits. To this bull the Jesuits paid no heed; but in time their own falsehood, their mercantile speculations and other secular
1896·1 THE INQUISITION AND ITS" HOLY OFFICES.'"
undertakings, all contributed to the collapse of the order, which was repressed by Clement XIV. in 1773.
Such are some of the lessons whIch we may learn from our friends the enemy. What shall be the outcome of the struggle carried on along such different lines to WIn the world from heathenism? In the language of a modern writer: "The future of Protestantism depends upon itself. Our clergy must show a greater readiness than Catholic priests to go anywhere at the call of duty. The welcome to Protestant houses of worship should be more free and cordial than to Catholic sanctuaries. Our laity must prove that their gratitude to Christ for a free salvation is at all times a larger draught upon their financial resources than the doctrine of penance which supplements the cross by works of personal sacrifice and merit. Our missionaries must swarm most numerously among the millions of heathenism. In the competition with Catholicism we must not depend solely upon principles-we must show larger and richer fruitage than they."
But this is not all. We must not sit down to rest in the hope that Protestantism will survive because it is the fittest to surviv€l. Some meu are questioning whether the Anglo-Saxon type of Christianity is the fittest religion for the Oriental mind. Such a question proves that that man's religion cannot win because it lacks the great force of faith. Our hope is in the promise of the Lord of Hosts, who has said that the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of the Lord and of His Christ. With faith in Him we hasten the coming of His kingdom.
THE INQUISITION AND ITS "HOLY OFFICES."
BY THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF.
Few people, even among intelligent Protestants, are familiar with the infamous history of the Inquisition. When in Rome, few spots more repay investigation than the Palazzo del Santo Uffizo, near the Vatican, the building formerly used for the" Holy Office" as instituted by Paul III., in 1542. The tribunal was abolished by the Roman Assembly after the revolution of February, 1849, but restored in the June following by Pius IX. During the French occnpation of Rome, the old Palazzo was turned into barracks, and the business of the Inquisition was transferred to the Vatican.
When Paul III., seeking to deal a death-blOW at the Protestant Reformation, issued his bull in 1542, creating the tribunal of the" Holy Office," (!) he appointed six cardinals-Caraffa and :roledo being the chief inquisitors-who were clothed with power to appoint successors, and with authority to decide all cases as a court of final appeal. All parties, rich and poor, patrician or plebeian alike, were given over into their hands to imprison on suspicion, to punish on conviction, to torture by way of compelling confession. TIle only power not entrusted to them was the right of pardon-His Holiness reserving that prerogative to himself. And the Inquisition thus became, in a double sense, a court that showed no leniency, and its victims had indeed" judgment without mercy."
The rules of its action are a curious relic of papal equity. Let those who think the papacy needs no " missions" carefully read and ponder them: 1. In affairs of faith there must not be a moment's delay, but on the slightest suspicion proceedings must be taken.
2. No regard must be paid to any potentate or prelate, whatever his power or dignity.
3. On the contrary, the greatest severity must be shown toward those who seek to shelter themselves under the protection of a ruler; only where confession is made are leniency and fatherly compassion to be shown.
4. To heretics, and especially Calvinists, no toleration must be granted. The cardinal chiefs of the Inquisition did full justice to their" Iloly Office" as thus defined. And if Paul III. was a severe superintendent, his successor, Paul IV., out-Heroded Herod for the violence of his persecuting zeal. When he assumed the papal tiara he was already in his eightieth year, yet it was said of him proverbially that he knew not what it was to make a concession; and certainly in his conduct of the " Holy Office" he exhibited an unrelenting hatred of heretics, mixed with a severity which was absolutely merciless, and an intolerance that was absolutely unbending. He was the impersonation of Talus with his iron flail. His very eyes flashed fire, and his tall, erect, spare form seemed wrought of iron with nerves of steel. To one end all his energies were devoted-at any cost to put down heretics and make the Roman Catholic See triumph~ ant over all " reformers," a world-wide power with undisputed supremacy. In fact, so terribly hard was his iron rule that when, on August 18th, 1559, he died, a riot arose, and" hell broke loose. " The prison 0'£ the Inquisi- tion was broken open and fired, the prisoners being released. The rioters went to the chamber of 1he Inquisition and slew the chi.ef inquisitor, burned or spoiled all the archives, and were hardly restrained from bnrning also the convent of Sofia Minerva, where the old court of the Inquisition existed, and where Galileo underwent his famous ordeal of trial for astronomic heresies.
Abont the saddest things there is often a grim humor; and the " Holy Office" is not without its absurd and semi-ridiculous aspects, as when, for instance, in the name of religion, it calmly and systematically countenances the most atrociously irreligious and barbarous proceedings, reminding one of the enormous cruelties inflicted on helpless brute in the name of science, amid the horrors of vivisection, in the interests of eliciting truth, as from victims of inquisitorial tortures.
For example, in the new Palazzo, near the Vatican, one may see the cells lined with reeds, in which a prisoner could not stand upright. A curious advertisemeut appeared iu 1880, offering for sale the" halls of the tribunal, prisons, and dungeons of torture. "
Dr. John Stoughton saw, while in Rome, that unique volume whose title is, "Sacro Arsenale, over oprattica dell' offitio della Santa Inquisitione-con l'insertione d'alcune Regole fatta dal p. Inquisitore, Thomaso Menghini Domenicano, e di diverse annotationi del Dottore gio Pasqualone. MDCCXVI." The sixth part, which treats of the detection of heresy, unblushingly describes methods of interrogation by torture. One would think even the " Holy Office" would hesitate to put such things in print and give such a formidable weapon to the" reformers" and other enemies of the " Holy Roman See;" but the reader must be the judge of the depravity akin to madness that can unhesitatingly commend such atrocities.
Three of these modes of examination by the agonies of torture are specified: Tormento del fuoco, or torture by fire; tm'mento della stangl~etta, or torture with the bolt or bar; and tormento della cannetta, or torture with the soldering pipe! Here, as Dr. Stoughton remarks, is a typical example of "framing iniquity by a law;" and in the pages of this extraordinary volume, with the coolness of the most audacious effrontery, rules are given for the infliction of the most exquisite pain.
And yet, with the most pious conformity to a religious routine, all this holy vivise~tion was inflicted on the helpless human victims in the name of the Church and the compassionate Christ! The inquisitors assembled in solemn fashion, invoking the name of Christ, and prayerfully proceeded to the duties of the Holy Office! Records were put before them of personssuspectos he1·eticaJ pravitatis, as the names of prisoners are entered on the calendars of Newgate, and they summoned before them the accused parties.
Severe questioning, accentuated with exhortation, threatening, persuasion, extorts confession ; if not, then the gentle persuasions of flame and bolt and soldering pipe and other humane appliances are added to elicit the truth, until, to get rid of the intolerable torment, the victim acknowledges anything, however false-for no eonfession satisfies the Holy Office which does not confirm previous suspicion. It is a hall of judgment in which judgment is virtually pronounced in advance, and the examination must confirm the previous decision. Penalties of greater or less severity fonow-a public whipping, confiscation of property, solitary penance, slavery in the galleys for any period, life incarceration; public abjuration is the least of penalties, the auto da fe is the greatest. And all this for what ~ For holding that there is no future purgatory ; that auricular confession is not necessary ; that there is no sin in eating meat on proscribed days; that images and relics are not to be worshiped; that Christ is our sole Advocate with God; that popes who do not live like Peter are not his true successors; that papal indulgences and anathemas are not of any value or weight, and priestly absolutions are not efficacious; that justification is by faith alone; and that the host is not the real body of Christ. How one exults to trace the history of these victims of papal tyranny, who, like the three holy children, could not be intimidated even by torture-like Bartolomeo Bartoccio, who after two years in a cell, doomed to the fires~ walked with a bold step up to the stake, and amid the flames shouted: "Vittoria! Vittoria!" It was said of Savonarola that as the Bishop of Florence threw at him a burning brand, crying, "I cut you off from the Church militant !" he triumphantly replied: "Aye; but you cannot cut me off from the Church triumphant /"
We have not in this brief paper traced the Inquisition either to its beginnings or into its ramifications. Suffice now to say, by way of completeness to the outline of its history, that the first permanent court of inquisition was established in 1248 undeI Innocent IV., the chief direction being vested in the then recently established Dominican order. Previously it had been local; now the tribunal became general, and was introduced successively into Italy, and Spain, and Germany, and Southern France. In France, the Inquisition came to an end under Philip the Fair, tho under Henry II. an unsuccessful attempt was made to revive it as an engine of extermination against the Huguenot heresy.
In Germany, it fell into disnse in the days of the Reformation. But in Spain and Portugal it has a history which has perhaps no parallel in the annals of the race. Early in the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, Sixtus IV., in 1478, revived the organization after a 'long period, during which it had but a nominal existence; the crown, however, both controlling the acts and appointing the actors of the court.
In 1483, a little more than four hundred years ago, the Spanish Inquisition began its terrible c~reer under Thomas de Torquemada. The number of victims, as given by Llorente, the popular historian of the Inquisition, is nothing short of appalling. During the sixteen years of Torquemada's tenure of office alone there were nearly nine thousand persons who were burned! Under Diego Deza, the second head of the tribunal, in eight years over sixteen hundred suffered at the stake. Some have doubted or denied the accuracy of these statements; but after making all possible deductions and reductions, it is impossible calmly to contemplate the amount of cruelty undoubtedly practised. The horror which these records excite finds little parallel except in that awakened by the modern Armenian massacres.
The rigor of the Spanish Inquisition abated in the later part of the last century, after a period of three hundred years, the full history of which can never be written; and if it were, should be written in blood and deposited in the archives of hell.
The whole method of inquisitorial proceedings illustrates the irony of history. A party on mere suspicion could be arrested and imprisoned at will, and kept in prison until it pleased his judges to submit him to exami· nation. The proceedings were secret. He was confronted by no accusers, nor did he even know their names, and, in some cases, not even the
REGt1LA1'En VtcE IN GE~VA
grounds of suspicion! The evidence of an accomplice was inadmissible, and torture was always the dernier ,·esort to extort confession of guilt. If, after the torture ceased, the victim disowned the confession made on the rack, he was put to torture again till he once more "cmifessed the truth" as before. The fact that no such tribunal is in operation to-day proves, alas! nothing but that the Holy Roman Catholic Church has no longer the autocratic power which made such high.handed atrocities possible. When Father Recker can boldly assert that" Heresy should be reckoned and punished in the thought," intolerance is not dead, and only the power is necessary to revive the Holy Office. Rome no more tolerates Protestant heresies today than at any other time since 1248. Let us not deceive ourselves, nor abate our solemn protest against the errors which ensnare human souls in the name of Christianity. " Separation" is the watchword of the day, not" Union," and charity itself demands this separation that we " be not partakers of her plagues."
* REGULATED VICE IN GENEVA.
In a letter to the friends of repeal in Great Britain, an esteemed corre- spondent gives a vivid picture of the course of events at Geneva on 8un- day, March 22d, when by a large majority on a popular vote, the regula- tion of vice was confirmed. The writer says: " ::: have been called to witness a dark page in the history of human life. It is painful to me to have to record it; but its lessons are needful and solemn, and I wish I had a voice to reach to the end of the civilized world, that those lessons might be heard. How many years we have had the hard task imposed on us of trying to show people-good people-the horrible princiids embodied in the State regulation of vice, and the results which must necessarily follow; and they would not, will not, believe us. You already know the result of the popular vote-we had 4068, as against 1;300, a crushing defeat. I must presently explain how the people were misled by the Government; so that this cannot be quite truly said to be the verdiet of the people, tho to all the world it seems so. It will be, and is, a great triumph for our adversaries everywhere. I am glad that the gates of this inferno were thrown open, and that the results of a hundred years of Government organized and protected vice have been fur once fully revealed.
" Sunday morning-the voting day-I went to an early service in a Free church, wher<l most of our friends go. There was great life in that service, at the end of which most of us had the Sacrament together in almost absolute silence. I should rather have liked that we had all received it Rtanding, with a drawn sword in one hand, as the old crusaders did. The spirit of war, however, was there. as well as the Master's benediction, ' My peace give I unto you.' A dozen or more of our bravest Il"lll * This astouudiug article appeared in the London Ohristian of April 16th, and iB to my mind unequalled in its revelation of human depravity by even the massacres in Armenia. It reminds one of Paul's words: "It is a shame even to speak of those things which are done by them in secret," only here it is done shamelessly and openly.-A. T. P. were absent from that service, having to preside from eight A.M. to six or seven P.M. at the different' urns' (polling-places), and as the Aboli- tionist gentlemen were comparatively few, the best of them had to stay all day at that post. .
" When the result of the poll was known, the leading , tenanciers,'
with their banners and following, forced their way into the Church of the Fusterie, at the entrance of which the final result of the voting had been made known; and then began scenes and processions which had been or- ganized beforehand. It is a pain to write of it; but it is well that the worst should be known, well that the Genevese should have had the awful revelation of the vileness of what they had been harboring in their midst.
You may know, perhaps, that every house of debauchery uuder Govern- ment sanction and protection is obliged to hang up a red lamp over the door, as a guide to visitors. So that now, and especially since Sunday night, that powerful institution which rules Geneva is desiguated aR the , Lampe Rouge.'
" They had organized procesRions in case of a victory, with designs and red lamps. They marched through the whole city, a mass of deviltry and obscenity which I suppose could hardly be seen anywhere else except perhaps in Paris. Soldiers had been posted all about the Fusterie ; but, nevertheless, the red lamps rushed into the church and marched round it inside, locking the gendarmerie out. The latter could not even succeed in forcing their way round the outside of the church, so dense was the crowd.
Inside, it seems, the red lamps held a sort of service to the devil, tramp- ing, swearing, and singing songs of the utmost blasphemy and obscenity.
They sang a hymn which is often sung at meetings or street preachings here, addressed to the Holy Spirit, beginning, 'Source divine of light and life' (in French), and they turned it into a hymn of praise of the' red lamps ' – ' Divine source' to them of all they find most agreeable! They had a banner on two poles, with the names in large letters of de Meuron (a prominent Abolitionist) and the' Bon Dieu,' and a red lamp hanging over both names. They cursed and hissed and howled at the names of God and de Meuron. 'A ba8 le Bon Dieu!' 'A ba8 de Meuron!'
, Vive la Lampe Rouge!' They also parodied a hymn which spoke of the Savior on the cross in a way too awful to speak of, and the indecencies were on a par with the blasphemies.
" Having' consecrated' the red lamps in the large church, they went on to all the other churches and filled the air in front of each with their blasphemies. Then branches of the procession went running to the differ- ent places which they hated most, and where they hoped to find some Abolitionists. They went first to the Young Men's Christian Association, but they had an avant-courier in the person of one of our scouts, who ran faster and told that the' red lamps' were coming, so that all the men as- sembled had just time to get out and disperse, and only windows were left to be battered in. They went to our federation office, but it was locked np. So through the long hours deviltry reigned in the city-an open and impudent saturnalia, flaring its own shame before the eyes of all.
" This revelation of the source and nature of the opposition to us, and of the fruit, 'after its kind,' which State protection of vice brings forth, was necessary, and has begun already to bring about a reaction. Most of all, it has opened the eyes of all the good men, pastors, etc., to the moral pestilence in the midst of which they have been living for several genera- tions. It is profoundly humiliating to the proud Genevese ; for they are a very proud people, and they feel it all the more coming just before their
1896.J AN OPEN LETTER '1'0 OUR MISSIONARIES IN TURKEY
great exhibition, and because they are being taunted and exulted over by the press of France and other countries.
" Now to explain, in a degree, the great majority against us. If the question had been, ' Do you desire the abolition or the maintenance of the rnaisons tolerees.2' every man, woman, and boy would have understood, because the maisons tolerees are as much in evidence and known, as the Cathedral or market-place. But the regulationist majority on the Grand Conseii invented the double question in order, no doubt, to perplex the people. Our friends in the Grand Conseil opposed it with all their might for several days, but in vain. The questions put before the electors were: 1. 'Do you approve of the projet de loi de t'initiative.2 Yes or no.' 2. , Do you approve of the projet de loi of the Government 1 Yes or no. ' You can see what a throwing of dust in their eyes this was. Working men were honestly asking, ' vYhat does it mean l' and during the past five weeks our party were not allowed to hold meetings to instruct the p'eopIe. Every meeting was broken up by the Lampes Rouges, and finally every hall and room was closed against us by a police order. Attempting to speak in the streets or roads, our friends were stoned aud assaulted and silenced by noise. Freedom of public meeting and freedom of speech no longer exist in Geneva. If we had had those liberties it is believed that we might have had a majority of votes. Working women told us that their husbands were good men, but meant to abstain from voting altogether because they did not clearly understand the questions. Many hundreds abstained. Then the Gene'vois had worked hard to tell the peo. pIe that we had deeply injured La Patrie, and troubled Geneva, and spoiled the prospects of the exhibition, and that all the agitators were paid by an English lady who had been sent from London with hundreds of pounds in her pocket. The poor people were misled by this kind of stuff. When one considers all these traps and deceptions put before them, to say nothing of the drink, one almost wonders that there were found 4000 who voted for abolition.
" I have many good things still to report, which we should never have known of but for this appeal to the whole people-so many unexpected adhesions, and, above all, such brave and right action on the part of young men at the university. and even boys in schools."
AN OPEN LETTER TO OUR MISSIONARIES IN TURKEY.
DEARLY BELOVED IN CHRIST: During the past few months I have sought to comfort myself by trying to comfort some of you. Unable longer to continue this, I will put my last effort in the form of a general letter, which, tho it may be too broad for Turkish mail-bags, is not too large for the religious paper of a free people. It may show that the situation is appreciated at home without any compromising utterances on your part.
Bible lands are depicted on the pages of the Bible not merely by the descriptions of the doomsday Book of Joshua, but by the highest spiritual utterances of the prophets. Take an example: "He stood and measured the earth." What mere didactic statement could equal the terseness of that? Measuriug the broad earth without moving from his place! " Then he beheld and drove asunder the nations." To appreciate this we must place ourselves at sunrise outside the gate of some city east of the Jordan and see its flocks pour out in one undistinguishable mass. Sudden- ly a shepherd calls his own sheilp by name, and they follow him to their own pastures, and others do likewise, leaving the place recently the scene of so much life t.otally empty. So here the Lord looks on a crowded bat- tle-field of Syria, where the enemies of Israel hasten to His overthrow.
He does not speak. He only looks; and at that look the hosts of each nation gather by themselves and disappear homeward. "Then the per- petual hills did bow," like the moving cloud splendors that resemble them, and yet even while the mountains flow down at His presence, "His wayI'!
are everlasting." No mere didactic utterance could express these truths so forcibly.
Let us look on another picture. When the primal flood of Turkish carnage and devastation left Asia Minor and entered Europe, their organi- zation was so complete and their weapons so perfect for that age that Europe trembled at the battles which were to decide whether Christ or Mohammed should rule in the land. These men judged Islam by its re- sults, and the impression made by them was intense. In the lapse of a years, however, it has faded out, till now scholars, from the text of their sacred books, tell us priori that the writings of Sakyamouni are the best for Buddhists ; KthoeranChainndestehecltarsasdiictsiofnosr*tahraet nation ; and, passing over others, that the most edifying for the Mos- lem. But while they daintily work out their theories, like a thunderbolt from heaven the word:;; of the Master break on the ear: "By their fruits ye shall know them. Do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles ~"
And, 10 ! the fruit lies to-day before the eye:;; of the nations.
All men know what it is.
The first impression may be to make the bloodshed prominent in the picture; but the ethical foundation is so remarkable as to demand our no- tice. To introduce a new religion, the law against murder is set aside that the proselytizer may indulge in it without stint. Then the murderer is re- warded by the property of his victim, while the one he professedly seeks to convert is stripped of every right that a Moslem is bound to respect.
Even the family, tho built up by the most sacred sanctions, is shattered into fragments, and every member of it made to pander to the lusts or the covetousness of his oppressor. Each one may judge for himself whether the perpetrator of such crimes would think more of securing a convert who may reclaim a portion of his goods or of numbering him among the slain.
Nor are the massacres to be measured hy the number of victims nor by the cruelty of the methods employed. We must look at the victims themselves. The Armenians are the New Englanders of Western Asia.
A householder might dwell between an earthen floor and an earthen roof with very little furnishing between; his clothing might be of the coarsest material and bear the marks of much repairing, yet he lived in the house that had been occupied by his ancestors for many generations. There is something about him that commands respect, not in his surroundings, but in himself. He constantly submits to the greatest privations to enrich his * A Moslem tradition of Jerusalem teaches that in the great day Jesus Christ will sit on a pro- jecting stone high np on the eastern wall of the 'l'emple Enclosure to jndge the world assembled below in the yaney of Jehoshaphat. One or twoquestiolls occur to ns. Should a martyr, slain by Moslems, come forward to be Judged and be condemned for not renouncing Christ and accepting Mohammed, what becomes of the prolnise held to in the dying hour: ., Be thuu faithful nnto death, and I will give thee a crown of life." If Christ bestows that crown of life, what becomes of Mohammedan teachings? Again, should a Moslem aPl?roach, claiming to have slain a Christian who refused to accept Mohammed, shall Christ reward him, aud so stultif;V all tbose exceeding great and precious promises that are ours in Him? If He fulfils those promIses, again what becomes of Mohammedanism? Turkish landlord. His submissiveness is amazing to one accustomed to our free institutions. This is the victim selected for a sacrifice on the altar of Turkish fanaticism.
The news of the massacre reached the nations, and on all sides arose one cry of mingled amazement and execration. Many felt ashamed to be related to such murderers, even by the tie of a common humanity. Let Christians see that these feelings do not spend themselves in idle complaint that the dark ages have intruded into this nineteenth century, but let the words of Jesus, " By their fruits ye shall know them," sink ever deeper into their hearts. One day our Savior was conversing with the Jews, and, looking them through and through-for He " knew what was in man"- He said: " Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the trut.h, for the truth was not in him." Christ looked so deep into their 11earts that He saw the connection between murder and falsehood-a connection that existed long before the days of Uriah the Hittite, and shall exist to the end. And what an interweaving of bloodshed and mendacity runs conspicuously through all these recent events! One cannot look on the one without seeing the other. Daniel speaks of two kings" speaking lies at one table;" but here more than two engage in the work, and they would need very spacious parlors for their nefarious councils. This characteristic of the Government filtrated down into the common people,so that the whole land became a nation of liars. When missionaries first went there it was noticed that they were speakers of the truth, and the people gravely decided that it was because they had not the necessary adroitness to make lying a success.
Some may think that the Turks are included in the apostolic teaching, "The powers that be are ordained of God;" but he goes on to describe the powers that he speaks of in saying that they are a terror not to good works, but to the evil-a character which the Turks have not yet learned to exhibit. Still, as at the first, they are an organized banditti, continually devouring the lands that have fallen into their hands by the fortunes of war. Some of their methods of devouring we have seen within the last few months. The Turkish Govcrnment strains every nerve to keep out the truth; but it might as well try to shut out daylight from the land when the sun is risen. The Turks think that they have a monopoly of the art of covering it up, hence their unwillingness to have spectators on the scenes of their intended wickedness; but they forget that Christ said : " There is nothing covered that shall not be revealed ; and hid that ·shall not be known." These, His words, abide true forever. That mythical quarantine in Sassoun, where no epidemic existed, stirred up a more thorough investigation than an honest statement of the facts would have done. Those kerosene cases intended to consume the last traces of massacre only brought to light more clearly the forethought employed in preparation for it. At first the Kurds were employed as a screen behind which the real actors could do their work; but soon rewards and promotions revealed the true agents, and not long after the pet name, "Hamoudiyeh," identified the originator beyond possibility of mistake. This outbreak of evil shall pass away. Its authors and abettors shall soon stand before their judge, but the qniet work of preaching the Gospel shall go on, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it, for Christ has said: "I have chosen you and ordained you that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain." And so it shall remain even after the" earth is burned up and the elements shall melt with fervent heat."
SIXTIETH ANNIVERSARY 011' TIlE COLONIAL MISSIONARY SOCIETY
One of the good tidings foretold of ChriRt, in Psalm 72: "He shall break in pieces (scatter as dust) the oppressor." It is our privilege to turn this promise into prayer until it is completely fulfilled.
There is one topic vitally affecting our missionaries, on which I would say a word with great diffidence. It has been said that the difficulty in some places of protecting an American citizen is so great that they should be forbidden to go to them, and if they persist in going, they must take the consequences. On this topic I am moved to present certain truths. The rights of an American citizen are inalienable. They can be fOlfeited only by crime or extreme rashness. To ascertain whether any course is rash we mURt go back to the authority for taking that course. Now, it is not churches or mis~ionary societies who send out missionaries, but Jesus Christ in person. It is His lips that say, "Go ye into all the world." The Lord Jesus makes very much of this fact, for He says: "As the Father hath sent Me into the world, even so have I also sent you into the world." He also has a perfect knowledge of those whom He sends, for He says: "Behold I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves." He also foresaw that personal violence would be offered. "The time cometh that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service." Were they on that account to turn baek? No; for He says: "Whosoever will save his life shall lose it : but whosoever shall lose his life for My sake and the Gospel's, the same shall save it." "If any man come to Me and hate not . . • yea, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple." " Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a erown of life." Is a missionary to be accounted rash who lovingly seeks to walk according to these words of his Master? Let men ponder well these words of Christ before they make the charge.
Your brother in Christ, THOMAS LAURIE• .SIXTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE COLONIAL MISSIONARY SOCIETY. * Sixty years ago, May 13th, 1836, a number of men were appointed " to manage the affairs of the contemplated mission to the British colonies," among them, John Remington Mills, the first treasurer; and the ReI'. Thomas Binney, Andrew Reed, and Mr. George Gull, the first secretaries of what became the" Colonial Missionary Society." Rev. Henry Wilkes, M.A., was appointed first missionary, and Montreal, Canada, chosen as the sphere of his labors.
A circular, issued immediately after that meeting, stated that the society had been" instituted to sllstain and extend among our fellow-countrymen in the British colonies the ordinances of Divine worship and the blessings of evangelical religion." This it proposed to do by selecting and sending out well-qualified ministers; and by supporting them, partially or wholly, for such periods as circumstances may require. Sixty years have gone since then. All who took part in those early meetings have passed away -but the work still goes on, and its need does not lessen. True, there are colonies which have not the strong claims for help which they presented sixty years ago, but other colonies are opening out, and so the work of the society grows from more to more. Its new " Forward Movement" is ,. Reprinted and condensed from the Christian llJnr1eavl)ur of May 7th, 1896. now to be inaugurated. As to its present-day work, the new secretary (Rev. D. Burford Hooke) says: "Our young people are going out every week to the colonies, and no society ought to receive more loyal support from those who are left behind than the Y. P. S. C. E., which seeks to meet the spiritual needs of young men and maidens far away from home and kindred. "
Recently, when in Manchester, he spoke to the adult classes at Roby School of that city-a school in which there is a strong missionary spirit.
Well there might be, for it was while sitting in one of the pews of Roby Chapel that Robert Moffat resolved to be a missionary, and thus few places more than it interested the Chief Khama, when he recently visited this country. From the 3551 Young People's Societies in Great Britain our younger brothers are going over the sea, and the society which helps them to be true to "Christ and the Church" has surely great claims upon them. Our colonies are making history, and they need the Christian leaven in them from the very foundation-so that the whole after-history may be permeated with the spirit of Christ. .
On the other hand, the young missionaries and ministers who are going forth are mainly Christian Endeavorers. They owe something to societies with which they have been connected in the homeland, and they will doubtless plant branches in the countries to which they are going. Last month two thus went out-one, the Rev. Leonard Joseph Thacker, to be minister of a group of churches in the Kat River Settlement, Cape Colony, and the other, Mr. Herbert D. Whitmore, to do evangelistic work among the fishermen in Fortune's Bay, Newfonndland.
He is the fifth minister who has· recently gone forth, in connection with the Colonial Missionary Society, to South Africa. The first was the Rev. F. Tucker, to Florida Road, Durban, Natal; the next, the Rev. D.
Smith Carlyle, to Graaff"Reinet; then the Rev. Alfred Olver, to W orces- ter, followed by his father, the Rev. Richard Olver, to North End, Port Elizabeth; and he will soon be followed by others to Bulawayo and Johannesburg.
The work of the Colonial Missionary Society has recently been greatly increased by the resolve of its directors to include the supervision in the colonies of native churches, founded by the London Missionary Society, which have not yet reached the robustness of character and sound moral habit needed for spiritual independence. It was in consequence of this that the directors sent their secretary to South Africa, and subsequently the Rev. Dr. Barrett to Jamaica, the latter being accompanied by the Rev. W. J. Woods. The result shows that in Africa there is a field for effort singularly rich in promise and with special reasons for solicitude, while from Jamaica, where more teachers are wanted, there has come the most gratifying testimony, showing that, tho the native churches in that beautiful island are, in some respects, infantile, yet they are growing in numbers and usefulness, tho greatly crippled through the extreme poverty of their members.
In connection with this new departure the society has initiated a Forward Movement in Johannesburg, under the leadership of the Rev.
Charles Phillips, a native of Nailsea, near Bristol. On the completion of his college course, he labored first in Samoa, and later at Graaff-Reinet, in South Africa; but the" vision of souls" has drawn him to Johannesburg, where it is believed his life work will be found. Mr. Phillips' labors will be chiefly in connection with the 40,000 colored people working in the compounds, for whom but little has yet been done.
INTERNA1'IONAL DEPARTMEN'lI
II.-INTERNATIONAL DEPARTMENT.
EDITED AND CONDUCTED BY REV. J. T. GRACEY, D.D.
International Missionary Union. where a blank is found in the second THIRTEENTH ANNUAL MEETING. place, it means such persons are still in The International Missionary Union the active service, expecting to soon convened June 10th-17th in the Tabernacle at Clifton Springs, N. Y. This return to the foreign field : beautiful structure was erected at a cost of some four thousand dollars by 1892- ,Miss Louise A. Babe (Afri- Dr. Henry Foster for the use of this ca); 1872-92, Mfs. B. H. Badley (In- organization. Dr. Foster was the dia); 1890- . Rev. W. S. Bannerman founder of the Clifton Springs Sani- (Africa); 1890- ,Mrs. W. S. Banner- tarium, and he has been its patron man (Africa); 1885-94, Rev. J. L. Bar- saint until now. tho some years since ton, D.D. (Turkey); 1885-94, Mrs. he made it over to trustees to perpetu- J. L. Barton (Turkey): 1879-81. Rev. ate the benevolent intent with which it W. H. Belden (Bulgaria); 1879-81, was begun, of affording medical aid to Mrs. W. H. Belden (Bulgaria) : 1888- , missionaries, ministers of the Gospel, Miss Florence E. Ben-Oliel (Syria): and teacbers. Dr. Foster has thus 1886-87, Mrs. G. A. Bond (Malaysia); handed over for these purposes a plant 1887- , H. J. Bostwick (China): worth six hundred thousand dollars, 1887- ,NIrs. H. J. Bostwick (China); notwithstanding its beneficence of an 1889- ,Miss SURie M. Burdick (China) : annual donation in the form of relief to 1856-86, Mrs. W. B. Capron (India); the classes above specified, of a sum 1890-92, Rev. W. A. Carrington (Braranging from twenty thousand to thirty zil); 1859- , Rev. J. Chamberlain, thousand dollars annually. M.D. (India): 1890- • Miss Sarah Chambers (Brazil): 1896- ,Miss Ella The International Missionary Union Chapman (Burma) ; 1888- ,Miss Ella is an entirely distinct organization, R. Church (Japan); 1887- , Rev. wholly independent of tbe Sanitarium, Cyrus A. Clark (Japan); 1887- ,Mrs. which meets annually for the purpose Harriet G. Clark (Japan); 1883-94, of discussing missionary problems, Rev. J, Thompson Cole (Japan): comparing experiences on different 1883- ,Mrs. Mary M. Conklin (Burma, fields. addresses by individual mission- India); 1881-85. Samuel Cross (Siam); aries giving accounts of their work, 1878-79, Rev. C. W. Cushing, D.D. and for the deepening of spiritual life (Italy); 1888- , Miss Mary A. Danin their own souls, as well as greater forth (Japan); 1883- , Miss A. Daughpersonal acquaintance by social inter- aday (Japan); 1869-~0, Rev. J. A. course. It convened two years at Davis, D.D. (China): 1869-70, Mrs. Niagara Falls, Canada, two years at J. A. Davis (China); 1876-90, Mrs. Thousand Island Park, and at Bridge- Andrew D'Ouseley (India, China); ton, N. J., aud once at Binghamton, 1880- , Rev. J. A. Eakin (Siam); N. Y. Since that it has convened on 1880- , Mrs. J. A. Eakin (Siam); the invitation of Dr. Foster at Clifton 1888- , Miss Elizabeth A. Eakin Springs, chiefly as the guest of the Sani- (Siam): 1886- , Miss Susan Easton tarium, this being the seventh time in (India); 1868- ,}>Iiss Charlotte E. Ely succession it has been thus entertained. (Turkey); 1868- ,Miss M. A. C. Ely (Turkey) ; 1890- , Edward Evans The missionaries present this year (China) ; 1887- ,Miss!'I. Estelle Files were as follows, the dates preceding (Burma); 1892- ,Edwin N. Fletcher the names indicating the year of enter- (China); 1853-55, Mrs. O. }>1. Ford. ing and of retiring from the field.; M.D. (Africa); 1872- , Rev. Daniel O. Fox (India); 1881- ,Mrs. Daniel O. Fox (India); 1882- ,Mrs. A. A. Fulton (China); 1878- ,Miss Frances A. Gardner (Japan); 1879- , Miss Sarah F. Gardner (India) ; 1880- ,Miss Elsie M. Garretson (China); 1861-68, Rev. J. T. Gracey, D.D. (India); 1861- 68, Mrs. J. T. Gracey (India); 1889- , James S. Grant, M.D. (China); 1873-85, Rev. Thomas L. Gulick (Spain); 1885–, Miss Emma ~I. Hall (Italy); 1837-77, Rev. Cyrus Hamlin, D.D. (Turkey) j 1864-73, Mrs. Cyrus Hamlin (Turkey); Grace Tucker (Japan); 1889- ,W. J. 1840-93, J. C. Hepburn. M.D., LL.D. Wanless, M.D. (India); 1889- ,Mrs. (China and Japan); 1840-93, Mrs. J. C. W. J. Wanless (India); 1859- ,Rev. Hepburn (China and Japan) ; 1883- , G. T. Washburn, D.D. (India); 1859- , Miss G. Y. Halliday (Persia); 1879·- , Mrs. G. T. Washburn (India); 1859: ' Miss Emma Inveen (China); 1884- , Rev. J. W, Waugh, D.D. (IndIa); Miss Carrie 1. Jewell (China); 1887- , 1880-91, Mrs. Wellington J. White Rev.Geo. Heber Jones (Korea); 1872-75, (China) ; 1881- ,Rev. M. C. Wilcox (China); 1838-86, Rev. G. W. Wood, :Miss Marr Kipp (Syria); 1888- ,Mrs. D.D. (Turkey); 1871-86. Mrs. G. W. M. B. Klfkpatrick (Burma); 1853- , Wood (Turkey); 1870-73, Miss Sarah Mrs. Lucy A. Knowlton (China); L. Wood (Turkey): 1859- • Rev. 1887- , Rev. W. H. Lacy (China); Simeon F. Woodin (China); 1859- , 1887- ,Mrs. Emma Nind Lacy (Chi- Mrs. Simeon F. Woodin (China) ; 1860na); 1887- , Rev. H. F. Laflamme 95, Rev. B. DuBois Wyckoff (India) ; (India); 1889- ,Mrs. H. F. Laflamme 1860-95, Mrs. B. DuBois Wyckoff (India); 1879- , Miss Margaret W. (India). Leitch (Ceylon); 1881- ,Rev. Spencer Lewis (China); 1881- ,Mrs. Spencer The societies respectively were repre- Lewis (China); 1880-90, Mrs. C. S. Long (Japan); 1886- ,W. L. Macrae sented numerically as follows: Ameri- Crrinidad); 1849- ,W. A. P. Martin, can Board, 42; Methodist Episcopal, D.D., LL.D. (China); 188t!- , Miss 27; Presbyterians, 25; Baptists, 10; Stella H. Mason (Assam); 1887- , Protestant Episcopal, 4; Reformed Miss Mary L. Matthews (Bulgaria); 1889- ,David McConaughy, Jr. (In- (DutcL), 3: Canada Baptist, 2; China dia); 1894- ,Rev. Arthur II. Mellen Inland Mission, 2; Independent, 1; (Cuba); 1885- ,Rev. C. P. W. Mer- United Presbyterian, 2; Woman's ritt, M.D. (China); 1885- ,Mrs. C. P. Union, 2; Canada Presbyterian, 1; W. Merritt (China); 1888- ,Miss Em- Established Church of Scotland, 1; ma Mitchell (China); 1887- , Rev. Reformed Episcopal, 1; Seventh-Day G. W. Morrison (India); 1889- ,Mrs. G. W. Morrison (India); 1869- ,Mrs. Baptist, 1; Southern Presbyterian, 1 ; Charles B. Newton (India); 1874-90, Young Men's Christian Association Rev. A. B. Norton (India); 1880-84, foreign field, 1. The total number en- Miss Helen S. Norton (Hawaii) ; 1880- , rolled in this assembly of Christians Miss Frances E. Palmer (Burma); 1859- , Rev. E. W. Parker, D.D. was 127. (India); 1859- ,Mrs. E. W. Parker The countries represented, as will be (India) ; 1877-83, Rt. Rev. C. C. Penick (Africa); 1881-83, Mrs. C. C. Penick seen from the list, were Africa, Bul- (Africa); 1879-82, Miss Fannie A. Per- garia, China, Cuba, Italy, Japan, Korea, ley (India); 1895- , Horace Tracy Pitkin (China) ; 1868- ,Rev. Theodore Persia, Siam, Malaysia, Syria, Turkey, S. Pond (Turkey and Colombia); Spain, West Indies, South America 1868- ,Mrs. Theo. S. Pond (Turkey and Colombia); 1885-87, Rev. William (Br!ziI, Colombia), India (Assam, Burde Ronden Pos (Africa); 1878–80, ma, Ceylon), Persia, and the Hawaiian Miss Mary Priest (Japan); 1886- , Miss Carrie E. Putnam (Burma); Islands. 1886- ,George M. Rowland (Japan) ; Two thirds of these had never before 1886- , Mrs. George M. Rowland (Japan); 1877- ,Miss Anna Schenck attended one of these annual gather- (Persia); 1873- ,Rev. J. E. Scott, PhD. ings. About that proportion of the (India); 1896- • A. L. Shapleigh, M.D. whole number in attendance each year (China); 1896- ,Mrs. A. L. Shapleigh (China); 1883- , Rev. Frederick A. are present for the first time. The Steven (China); 1886- ,Mrs. Freder- meeting is so unique that none but ick A. Steven (China); 1881-90, Rev. M. Luther Stimson (China); 1881-90, those who remain throughout the week Mrs. M. Luther Stimson (China); come into any apprehension of its 1889- ,Miss Cora A. Stone (Japan) ; worth and power. Salutations and 1878- , Miss Ellen M. Stone (Bulgaria): 1873- , Miss Eliza Talcott communications are annually received (Japan) ; 1868–73, Rev. C. O. Thayer, from members laboring in foreign mis- M.D. (Turkey); 1868–73, Mrs. C. C. Thayer (Turkey); 1869-72, Miss Mary sion fields all over the globe. On the platform on Tuesday evening, June A. Thompson (China); 1890- , Miss 16th, thirty-six missionaries appeared, who made brief addresses of two minutes each about the kind of work which the emperor, he upheld the Jesuits.
they would take up on their arrival on The Dominicans appealed to Rome, their several fields, as they all antici· and the Holy See, after some waver- pated ret~rning before another annual ing, decided in their favor, coining a meeting of the Union. We present a new term for God, or what was more sketch of a few of the addresses: elevating in the place of Shangti- Tienchu, a petty deity, one of eight mentioned in the ancient books, as di- RELATION OF THE CHINESE GOVERN· viding the sway of the universe, and MENT TO MISSIONS. condemning the worship of ancestors.
BY REV. w. A. P. MARTIN, D.D., PEKING, The emperor stood aghast at the pre- sumption of a foreign potentate to reo CffiNA. vise his decisions, and he learned for My recollection goes back to a time the first time that in the event of his when the walls of exclusiveness stretched professing the faith there was a human all around China; and I have lived to authority to which even he must bow.
see the gates wide open. They did not, Tolerant of religious opinions· in gen- however, roll back to the sound of celes· eral, the Chinese Government is not so tial music, but to the roar of Western liberal when those opinions contravene cannon. I shall speak of five periods. its most sacred traditions and imperil 1. A period of persecution by im- the order of society. The Emperor perial power. 2. A period of restricted Kanghi withdrew his favor, and his liberty granted by imperial edict. 3. A successor, in 1723, commenced an open period of religions freedom under the and relentless persecution, expelling protection of treaties. 4. A period of missionaries and slaughtering or ban- popular persecution excited in part by ishing their converts.
the success of the missionary work. 2. 'l'he first war with England, known 5. A peep into the future, when the as the Opium War, changed the rela- Church of China shall enjoy the fullest tions of China to the Western world.
privileges in the sunshine of Imperial The British treaty of 1842 opened five favor. seaports to foreign trade, and Protes- The period of persecution, which tant missionaries were prompt to oc- lasted for over a century, was brought cupy them, tho there was not as yet a on by dissensions in the Roman camp. word of toleration from the throne.
The Jesuits, who were first in the field, In 1844, however, after the singing of were many of them learned, wise, and his treaty, the French Minister pre- devoted. Winning the favor of the ferred a request for the annulment of government by their science, they persecuting edicts, and the recall of profited by their prestige to plant exiled missionaries and converts. The churches in the capital and all over request was freely accorded, and at China. So favorable was the disposi- the instance of a British minister the tion of the Emperor Kanghi, that he same privileges were extended to Protes- and his people appeared to he on the tant missions.
verge of becoming Christians. 3. The wider franchise under treaty Then came the Dominicans, tradi- stipUlations was the fruit of the second tional inquisitors and professional her- war with England known as the esy hunters. They accused the Jesuits " Arrow War," in which France took of complicity with idolatry, because part. At Tientsin, in 1858, the minis- they accepted for God, Shangti, "The ters of the four powers, Great ·Britain, Supreme Ruler," worshiped by the France, Russia, and the United States, Emperor of China, as do a majority of each in his own treaty, inserted full Protestant missionaries of the present stipUlations by which the whole empire day. The question being referred to was thrown open to missionary efforts, a thing unprecedented in the history of lics, who claim that foreign priests acthe world. companied the Japanese veterans of Hideyoshi in their invasion of Korea 4. The period of popular persecution. in 1592. The fruit of this work was by means of mob violence, began with chiefly Korean martyrs, who suffered the massacre of French missionaries at in the persecution following the Shima- Tientsin in 1870. Prostrated by the bara Rebellion. Roman Catholic work iron hand of Germany, France was in dates really from the last decades of no condition to exact suitable repara- the eighteenth century. and was intion, and the people were emboldened augurated by nations interested in to repeat the outrage at sundry times Christianity through contact with and in divers manners. These attacks the priests in Peking. For a generawere s.lways excited by the circulation tion the work was confined to native of tracts and placards containing horri- efforts entirely, and is reported to have ble charges against missionaries and all provoked some persecution. The first foreigners. When the storm burst the foreign priests arrived in 1835, and mandarins generally contrived to be from that time their work has been absent. Some of them, indeed, includ- carried on after their fashion, and has ing a few of the highest rank, have had a checkered and disastrous career. had a direct agency in fomenting these There is danger that we may be unjust troubles. In some instances mission- in any attempt to summarize the work aries suffered from riots aimed at for- of the Roman Catholics. They had eigners as such, and foreign traders made no visible imprint on the charachave suffered from riots aimed at mis- ter or thought of the people except to sionaries. The leading governments call their attention to Christianity_ of Christendom wisely agreed to hold Under their efforts Christianity became the Chinese Government to its obliga- known as a pestilential heresy. the sum tions. Decrees of the most favorable of all immorality and villany, and from character have been obtained from the this charge it was reserved for Protesemperor. Officials concerned in the tantism to vindicate our blessed religpersecutions (in one instance a viceroy) ion. At the present time they have have been degraded. If the great a well-organized hierarchy-bishops. powers maintain this attitude, such priests, schools, orphanages, and 25,000 riots will be of rare occurrence; but converts. They confess that it was they can hardly bj3 expected to cease not until 1885 that the cassock of the entirely, until officials and literati be- foreign priest dared appear in the come convinced. as they will, that streets of Soul, and at that time Pres- Christianity is the one thing needful byterian and Methodist Episcopal misfor China. without which her renova- sionaries had been working for a year tion is hopeless. in that interest. Mission work was carried on in the north province of 5. The growth of the churches to a Korea by the Rev. John Ross, of the hundred thousand members for the Scotch Presbyterian Mission in Man- Protestants, and a million for the Ro- churia, for several years before the first man Catholics who entered the field missionaries arrived in Korea, and into centuries earlier with a vast apparatus his labors we have entered. of schools, colleges, and printingpresses. is auspicious of the final tri- " For the purpose of'temporary clasumph. sification, our history since December, 1884, may be divided into three epochs: KOREA. The period of suspicion; the period of indifference; and the period of dawn- Rev. George Heber Jones, of Korea, ing interest. said: "The Koreans are neither Chines!) "The first attempt to Christianize Korea was made by the Roman Cathonor Japanese, and they are very anx- PERSIA. ious to have the world realize the distillction; but the basal structure of the Miss G. Y. Halliday, of Persia, said: grammar of their language resembles "We sometimes hear it said, • All that of the Japanese, seeming to indicate the world except Tibet is open to the that in some remote period they came proclamation of the Gospel.' Is it? of the Bame stock. There is a large Of what avail is it that the missionary element of Chinese in their vocabulary. is physically present in a country, when 'rhey regard the Chinese as petrified the main body of its population is shut barbarians, who, having periodically off from him by an interdict, and forthrashed Korea into a reverent attitude, bidden to hear his message or to heed are not to be trifled with. They regard it on pain of death? Such is the case the Japanese as mushrooms of an in- with the greater part of the 200,000,000 ferior quality, so short in stature that of Moslems in the world to-day. Do they are even beneath contempt. I we dare let this st.ate of things consuppose this, because Japan, instead of tinue? They outnumber the populafollowing China's example, and dev- tion of the Unitcd States three to one. astating Korea every time there was I! their forces were concentrated, what a shadow of a pretext, only did so a fearful menace to Christianity and twice. civilization, while nothing but oppor· tunity is wanting to repeat in every " The religion is of a triple character. land the • horrors of Armenia.' It is Ancestor worship with the Confucian the worst of the false religions, because code is the State religion; Buddhism intolerant and aggressive. Is there any has a large number of monastic com- other religion that claims the right to munities patronized by the people when slay and plunder and possess the earth they have occasion; Spiritism, a form by force, exterminating heathen and of Shammanism, is the religion of every reducing Jews and Christians to slavery home. and tribute? These people are inclosed in a triple wall of iron. The first de- H Medicine opened Korea to mission- fense is broken when the Christian misary wOlk, and has occupied a most im· sionary gains access to their country ; portant place ever since. Schools close- the second, when they have liberty to ly followed, and held the respect and hear him; the third, when prejudice endorsement of the people. There are and unbelief are vanquished and he at the present time the following mis- yields to the Spirit of God. Within sions at work in Korea: Presbyterian, these walls our brothers and sisters are North, 20; Presbyterian, South, 11; imprisoned, many of them restless, un· Presbyterian, Australia, 4; Baptist, satisfied, groping for the light, saying, A. J. Gordon's church, 5 ; lIfethodist, • Who will show us any good? ' They 24; Anglican, 12; Independent, 4; are not satisfied with what they have, Workers, 80. but they think there is nothing better. We must' remember those in bonds as H Work is carried on at forty differ- bound with them.' An A.rmenian said ent places, and the number of converts last year, • Those massacres are our at the end of the first ten years was own fault. We a Christian nation have 1100. The attitude of the government lived in the midst of ~Ioslems all these has changed. The storm of war and years. It was our duty at any cost to desolation has driven us ten years nearer give them the Gospel. We have not our ultimate g~al. The chief results done it, and God has thus punished us.' have been the relief of Christianity Perhaps Christendom may yet say the from misconceptions of the people, the same. The Armenians have feared to mastery of a hitherto unknown tongue, tell them of Christ, because it was find the successful inauguration of a Christian foundation. Woman's work has been specially successful." against the law; but they have not political society called Vegetarians, feared to sell thcm wine, cqually for- whose animating principle is hatred of foreigners. Their enmity is, therefore, bidden, for the sake of profit. A Roord, in Hamadan, had been invited naturally directed against the present Manchu dynasty, which has ruled to our service. He went to thc Arme· China as a conquered country since nian quarter, and saw a man whom he A.D. 1644. Smarting under the over- whelming defeats inflicted by Japan, followed, thinking he was on his way these so-called Vegetarians thought to church. In a few minutes the man that by murdering" the missionaries said, 'I have some good brandy to sell. they would not only be rid of them, wm you come to my house and drink? ' but would thereby involve China in wal' with Great Britain. During that • May your neck be broken,' answered war the anti-foreign party hoped to the Koord. 'I follow you, expecting throw off the yoke of the Manchus and to be led to the house of God, and you seat a native ruler on the dragon t1lrone. This theory of the massacre is held by ask me to come and get drunk.' If Turkey had closed hcr markets to the well-informed persons, and appears to be borne out by a rlocument fent me trade of Europe, would it have been just before I left China by a seceded many days before the cannon would Vegetarian. Now let us glance briefly at some of have opened them? What can we do? the consequences of the massacre. The power of prayer must bc invoked; For months after that sad event every- the same that opened Japan and China thing looked dark as regards the lutme must open the Moslem world… of mission work in all that part of the province, In many villages the native THE KUCIIENG MASSACRE AND ITS CON- Christians were repeatedly nlarmed by bands of ruffians, who threatened their SEQUENCES. chapels and their lives. In a number Rev. M. C. Wilcox, Ph.D., lIetho- of villages companies of men-Chris- tians and heathen combined-took turns dist Episcopal :Mission, Foochow, said: night after night standing guard with Wherevel' one chanced to be early in the light of torches. 'rhus threatened August, 1895, if within reach of the attacks were averted, and no native telegraph, he was shocked by the news Chl"istian l()st his life or was seriously of i:he sudden and unexpected massacre injnred. But these dangers drove the of English missionaries on the first day Christinlls nearer to the Source of all of that month lit Hua-sang Mountain, help and strength. I do not know of near Kucheng City, which is about one a single Christian who during those hundl'ed miles nearly north of Foochow, months of turmoil and anxiety denied the capital of Fookien Province, South- his Lord and Master. As a rule, the eastern China. Chinese are slow to accept anything Greatly as you were saddened by the new; but when, after careful consider- news, your sorrow could not be as keen ation, they become Christians, they are nor your sense of loss as deep as ours. not easily moved. They furnish good It was my great privilege to know, as stuff for martyrs.
a beloved and devoted fellow·worker, About six weeks after the massacre, each of those whose death has been so the United States Consul, lIon. J. Court· lamented. ney Hixson, who has rendered such , By whom was this awful crime com- vnluable service to the mi~8ionaries, mitted? Not by the people. They wrote me expressing his sympathy at have become more and more friendly seeing the results of years of labor de· toward us, as is shown by the fact that stroyed. I could not even then believe during the last eight years, While I that our work had been in vain. My have served as presiding elder of the faith was I'trongcr than his, and I be- Kucheng District, the lIethodist mem- lieve that God would ().I/errule everybersand probationers have nearly quad· thing for His glory. But I could not rupled, being now nearly 1400. Dur- believe the darkness would so quickly ing that period. the ELgIish workers be overpast, and that such a wonderful have had similar prosperity. The rank interest would so soon be manifest, and file of the Chinese had no sympathy not only in the Kucheng District, but with the murderers; but, on the other in all that part of the province. lland, many of them wept aloud in the Yet reports from various sources instreets when they heard the terrible dicate that prosperity, such as has never been seen, is crowning the labors news. The murderers belonged to a semi- of those representing the three mis· sionary societies operating in the north. tion of such rigMs by our own governern half of Fookien Province. Un- ment as is given by it to other classes usual eagerness to hear and receive the of its citizens residing or traveling in Gospel is everywhere shown. The the same country; as has been well churches and schools are attended as illustrated by the action of the United never before. A letter, received to-day States Government and other governfrom the head teacher of the Kucheng Boys' High School, speaks of the great ments in reference to recent deplorable interest manifest throughout that re- events in China and Turkey. gion. Tieng Ang Dong (the large .. Church of the Heavenly Rest") at While grateful for the degree of suc- Foochow cannot accommodate the cess which has attended endeavors of crowds that come. One hundred persons were received into this church the Government of the United States alone during four months from Decem- to protect the rights of American citiber to March last. zens being missionaries in the Turkish Empire, we are constrained to deplore In contrast to this remember that the much failure to secure them fully, and American Board and the Methodist Episcopal missionaries labored in the to express apprehension of danger of same field from 1847 to 1857, with only greater violation without redress. The one baptism for each society at the end of that period. whereas, in spite of question seems to be at issue whether the massacre, there were last year In Americaus engaged in a lawful calling, the Methodist Mission alone nearly two thousand accessions, or almost six a and guilty of no wroug-doing, shall be day. So the glorious work is going permitted longer to enjoy rights of forward more triumphantly even than before the massacre. The number of which they have had the exercise for Christians in China has doubled during more than sixty years, aud in the use the last five years, and the rate of progress is constantly accelerating. of which they have been benefactors to the peoples of that land. It is to be We mourn for our dear martyred decided whether the duty of the United friends; but we believe as they look States Government is exhausted by down upon the scenes of their earthly securing the lives of such citizens only toll and suffering, they realize that their death, like their labor, was "not in by allowing them banishment from vain in the Lord." As in the early Turkey, and by making demands of years of the Church, so to-day .. the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the indemnity for property destroyed, Church." which indemnity is readily enough The following action was had on our promised, but never paid. Missionaries will under such a blow to American Government and missionaries in Tur- prestige, if it be not averted, not suffer key: alone. American commercial and ma- terial interests will also suffer, and a PRONUNCIAMENTO ON GOVERNMENT damage to American inH.uence in the world, greatly to be deprecated, will PROTECTION OF MISSIONARIES. be sustained. Will American public 1. As missionaries of the Gospel in sentiment allow this to come to pass? foreign lands we recognize as a fundamental principle of action the duty of The International Missionary Union ourselves and all whom we teach to expresses entire sympathy and accord obey constituted Civil authority in those in judgment of all its members with lands, as that duty is inculcated in the our missionary brethren and sisters in writings of the New Testall).ent, and Turkey in their steadfast holding to that we imitate the example of the their position under great perils for apostles of Christ in our manner of themselves, and in the presence of the conduct in all that we do; and awful atrocities perpetrated upon the peoples among whom they labor. They 2. Regarding missionary work as law- thank God for the grace given unto ful where we are carrying it on, we may claim as the Apostle Paul did in them and the ordering of His provirespect to his Roman citizenship to sus· dence in so far preserving all of them tain no loss of rights by reason of our from a violent death ; and we express being missionaries, and that where there our high admiration of the heroic deare rights guaranteed to us by treaties with a forElign government, we are en- votion, Christian fidelity, aud self-sactitled to the same care for the protec- rificing benevolence of which they are affording so eminent an example.
While with the whole civilized world we have been shocked by the unspeak- able outrages inflicted upon Armenians in Turkey, and sympathizing deeply with the stricken people, we recognize a merciful Divine purpose in their per- mit,ted martyr sufferings for the name of Christ, endured so largely with un- flinching choice of death rather than of life by denying Him. which purpose foot, torn into fragments, or tbrown we trust will exalt. them as a people in service to the spiritual kingdom that is into the flames. The contents of our surely to triumph in all the earth. We station book-room were, on the memo- invoke for them richer blessings than rable November 11th, emptied into the the realization of their national aspira- street, and a week later we gathered tions would bring them. while earnestly up precious bits of Sc~ipture to san supplicating for them speedy deliverance from the woes of their present ex- them from the mud and dirt.
perience; and exhort to prompt and This has been a nation of martyrs, generous giving in our own country but probably never having had in the for such relief as can reach them through the channels that are open for past those who so intelligently and sending it. gladly laid down their lives for Christ's Also that in the appalling massacres sake as now in this nineteenth century.
that have occurred, in the systematic Those in past centuries have been woroppressive treatment of Armenian and certain other Christian subjects of the shiped as saints in the Gregorian Sublime Porte, the facts of which are Church. Those of the present century undeniable, and the responsibility for will never receive such homage, I trust, which is beyond reasonable question, but by their death will surely hasten on the longed-for day when "every we see more thau self·excited outbreaks of popular Moslem fanaticism, and are amazed and distressed in view of. the knee shall bow and every tongue shall proofs of a governmental policy having confess that Christ is God, to the glory for its aim the virtual extermination of the ancient and worthy Armenian na- of His name. " The first of the honored roll whom I tionality in Asia Minor and Eastern Turkey, that the so·called Christian shall mention bears the noble name of powers which are pledged to protect Paul.. His face was like the pictures Armenians. and are, if so disposed and united, able easily to counteract that of Luther or Calvin; strong, stern lines about the mouth, and deep, far-seeing policy, should exhibit the apathy and maintain an inaction which allows its eyes. His voice was rich, his manner yet unhindered execution. We fear commanding. There Was a reason for that under just judgments of the Supreme Ruler of nations a terrible retri- 'all this; in his early youth he was a hermit, dwelling on a lonely mountain, bution may be visited upon Europe in which America also may share for the in a cave, in the wild regions south of sin of unjustifiable neglect of so great Mardin. The cave was damp and only a duty of humanity and justice. lighted by a hole in the roof. He had the Bible in the ancient tongue, and "The Noble Army of Martyrs Praise spent his time in reading, prayer, and meditation. His food was roots and Thee." herbs, his bed straw, and he.wore sack- BY MISS CARRIE E. BUSH, HARPOOT, cloth and resorted to self-discipline to TURKEY. chasten his soul before God. Simple It has long been in my mind to write villagers came to worship him, or to you the story of some of our martyred touch and be healed of disease. Rob- pastors and preacbers. I did not do bers on the mountains laid no hand so during the early part of the winter, upon him, but begged for his interces· because I could not endure the sorrow sions.
of the recital. Shall we ever reach a Like the three hermits of whom Lew time when we shall cease to suffer for WaHace tells, he was waiting for a this blow to Christ's work 7 Protes- revelation, and God gave it. A mis- tant chapels and Gregorian churches sionary found him out, gave him the are torn down to the ground. Those Bible in modern Arabic, invited him that are still standing are used as stables to Mardin to study, and he was trained or barracks, or are wilfully and foully there and at Harpoot for the ministry.
desecrated. At the time of the assaults Tho born at Harpoot, being a Syrian all over the land, Bibles, Testaments, and having been long absent, the Ar- and hymn-books were troddeu under menian was a language which he Was
IN'i'EIWA'tIONAL DEPARTMEN1'
obliged to learn, and he did it beauti- two sisters were wounrIed, and one of fully_ He mal'ried a graduate of our the last died of her wounds.
college, and together they did a rare The next in the list shall be PaRtot'
work for the humble village of Hula- SarkiR, of Choonkoosh. He was a kegh. The discipline he had gi ven him- good man through and through, untir- self he was able to bestow upon his ing in his work, faithful in study and people. Everything in church and in the oversight of schools and all school work was doue" decently and church work. Every department was in order." He required even personal under his control. He gathered a large and home cleauliness of his people, congregation. His SR.bbath-school was silence in God's house, and faithful one of the most successful in our field.
study for the Sabbath-school. His He was conscientious in home expenses, wife was a lovely, ladylike woman, and yet most hospitable and generous.
and earnest in study and work with The .. Koords" gathered before the him. city and waited for hours until sunset, Paul and Mary fled with all their and then made their first attack. Pas- people toward Mezereh the day before tor Sarkis soon saw that his house was the attack on their village. JHost of no place for shelter, but wherever lIe them camped down in the fields near went all refuge was refused. Fire was Mezereh, but this young preacher and set to his house, and he was somewhat his delicate wife reached the city, and burned, but ten days later, when the what they supposed was the shelter of " Koords" came for another onslaught Mary's father's house. and robbery, they first demanded of On Sunday, November 10th, there him money, then when he said he had was an attack made on that quarter of none they insisted upon his accepting the city, and Paul was wounded. Islam, or they would kill him. "You They all then fled from that quarter, may kill me if you wish," was his where they were surrounded by Turks quiet answer, and he was felled to the to his father's house. The next day earth with a blow from the guns of the came the general attack. IHary re- ruffians.
ceived a fatal blow. As she Ielt the Pastor Krekore, of the Ichmc Church, blood gushing from her lipq, she looked small like ZR.ccheus, had as childlike at her father and said, " What is this ?" amI loving a heart as St. John. His " Go to Jesus, my child," was thc calm wife was so saintly, that the villagers reply. and her spirit passed on and hlld dropped her real name, :a-Iartha, was set free from these horrors. " Give and called her" Artar," which means the Moslem formula, or die I" was the righteous. The hearts' of both were fierce command to Paul. I cau see his like that of the "Israelite indeed" in eyes, like the martyrs of old, looking whom was" no guile." A couple of into heaven; I can hear his stern voice years ago our good Artar, after years ring out, "Never I" There was a of feebleness, lay down one night to rush, a blow, and he found his Savior, sleep and awoke in heaven, thus being his wife, and the holy ones he had spared the agonies of these later-I had sought to imitate on the other side. almost said" latter" days.
.. Lovely and pleasant in their lives, in Pastor Krekore was preserved alive death they were not divided." Yet it after the first onslaught 0n the village, often seems as if they were in the room but several days later he and some with me as I write or talk about them, twenty-seven others were taken to the so near is the other world in these days. Gregorian church, from which, one By We had had so many beautiful talks one, they were ordered out to decide together about living a heavenly life between Islam and death. He received now I)n this earth. four wounds, and after each. with a.
Paul's aged father and hrother were faith undaunted and a power to be killed, and Mary's father, mother, and looked for in one of sterner mold, he proclaimed his creed, " I believe in the many Gregorian priests who even bore name of the Father, Son, and Holy torture and faltered not in their testi· Ghost," and he and twenty-seven others mony for the faith. Perhaps they were were with those "who have washed ignorant in their lives, and tbeir faith their robes and made them white in the but dim, yet in death a miraculous blood of the Lamb." He was the glory seemed imparted to it for which friend of Turk and Christian alike. we ca.nnot but bless God. Laymen, He never had an enemy. It was Christ too, whose lives had not borne strong in him whom they sought to destroy. testimony for Christ, in that last, sol· Pastor Ghazaros, of Chernonk, had emn hour of testing were unflinching.
borne much persecution for Christ's May we not believe that the Spirit did sake, at the time of his conversion in for them in a moment what we ordi- his youth. He was wild and worldly, narily believe must require years of but the Savior met him in llis way, and chastening and experience?
turned him into the paths of righteous- We would draw a veil over the life ness. His religious nature was of the of that aged bishop and those priestR Puritan type, and I shall never forget and preachers and laymen who, loving how, in his sermons, he was accustomed their life, lost it by denying the faith.
to warn his people against their sins, As some one forcibly expressed it, it saying. "Unless you leave them off, was often because they knew that wife some day they will persecute you. and children would not be massacred Yes, they will per8ecute you." And he also. It is easy to say What they said it as if he well knew what it was should have done; let us be charitable, to suffer from sin and the stings of and remember that we have not yet conscience. He and his two sons were met such an awful ordeal and such an slain together in their home, and his alternative, to be sure that we should wife was four times stripped of all her be "faithful unto death" and "re- garments save two. He also was given ceive the crown of life." Enough that the privilege of life on one condition, our duty should be moved to its depth but "counted not his life dear unto by their present wretchedness. 0 bliged himself" at such a cost. to lea.rn the tenets and the forms of the Colporteur Mardiros, of Ainetsik, new faith, to keep the fast of Ramazan, was a tall, large man with a fine, rich and to use the language and don the voice and a warm, earnest heart. For dress of the other race, they are still some time he has not been in the work, not respected by either Christian or but he was ever preaching the Gospel. Moslem. and with all their compromis- They came upon him with the demand, ing " through fear of death they are all .. Islam or death!" He raised his eyes their lifetime subject to bondage."
to heaven in prayer, and as he stretched They call for our earnest, pleading forth his hands in petition they cut prayers as well as pity. May God them off, then ended his life as he have mercy upon them I breathed it out, like Stephen, in loving We give joy to those who are" gone communion with God. into the world of light." It was one The story of Mardiros, of Keserik, is brief struggle, and now an eternity of one of devoted and self·sacrificing effort peace, while we who are left know not on the part of his wife to save him by what a day may hring forth; but they, hiding him here and there. "He loved "the souls under the altar," and we not his life unto death." His choice yet lingering here and longing" to de- also was heaven rather than an hour of part and be with Christ, which is far life on this earth in denial of his faith. better," unite in ascribing "blessing He was a good man and worker, strong and honor and glory and praise unto for temperance and every right cause. Him that sitteth upon the throne and Time would fail me to tell of the unto the Lamb."
FmLD OF MONTHLY SURVEY
IlI.-FIELD OF MONTHLY SURVEY.
BY DELAVAN L. PIERSON.
Papal Europe,* The Papacy.t THE. PAPACy.t seat of the Emperor. The Saracens Clement III. called the sun the sym- soon wiped out Alexandria and Anbol of pontifical authority, and the tioch. The Turks did the same for moon, shining with borrowed splendor, Constantinople, so that in process of he likened to the secular power. Ac- time the Bishop of Rome found himself cording to this theory, there is, strictly, without a rival. but one ruler upon earth-the Pope; in him all authority is centred; from In 378 came the law of Gratian and him all jurisdiction flows; at his hands Valentinian II., empowering the metrokings receive their crowns and bishops politans to judge the inferior clergy, their miters; to him all are accounta- and the Bishop of Rome to judge the ble, while he is accountable to no one, metropolitans. The Bishop of Rome save God-and sometimes apparently and his subordinates at once acted upon not even to Him. it, but never once claimed a spiritual authority for their newly found juris- It is indisputable that this system, diction. In 445 Valentinian III. and which at one time overshadowed the Theodosius II. called the Roman Ponworld, had a merely human origin. tiff the" Director ot all Christendom," The New Testament is conclusive on and in 606 Emperor Phocas constit.uted the point that Paul, not Peter, laid the Boniface III. Universal Bishop. There foundations of the Roman Congrega- i:5 not in any of these instances a shred tion. During the first Christian cen- of claim to DIvine authority. It was tury the Bishop of Rome had spiritual only when the Western Empire fell oversight only over his own congrega- that the Bishop of Rome began to tion. In the second century a custom search for titles in support of his newly sprang up of regulating the ranks of acquired power, and for the first time bishop by the importance of the cities the Pope claimed universal dominion in which they resided. Rome was mis- because of his succession to the" blesstress of the world. Pagan Rome had ed Peter." Pope Gelasius (492 to 496) exercised sway over all the nations, and informs the world that it became kings her centralized and universal despotism to learn their duty from bishops, but would seem to have suggested to ·the especially from the" Vicar of Blessed aspiring bishops of the capital the first Peter." The same Pope proclaims at . ideas of a spiritual empire alike cen- a Roman Council, A.D. 495, that "to tralized and universal. the See of Rome belonged the primacy in virtue of Christ's own delegation, Under Constantine the empire was and that from the authority of the keys divided into prefectures, provinces, there was excepted none living, but and dioceses, and thesa were presided only the dead." In due time even the over by patriarchs, metropolitans, and dead were brought under the power of bishops. Rome, Antioch, and Alex- the keys, but Rome was in process of andria were the patriarchal sees; then what Newman called" development." Constantinople was added, and placed second in dignity, because it was the But one thing more was wanted- namely, that the" Presbyter of Rome'.' * See also pp. 294 (April); 379 (May) ; 567,576, should step into the vacant throne of the Cmsars, and the "Prince of this 580 (present issue); NcAll's Mission Record and World" soon made even that step easy A Voice from Italy; .. Makers of Modern for his subordinate. Pepin bestowed Rome," Mrs. Oliphant. the sovereignty of Lombardy upon the Pope in 700. Charlemagne enlarged t See also pp. 1 (January) ; 302 (April) ; 321 (May); 584, 588, 595 (present issue); The Oonverted Oatholic (monthly); .. Life of Cardinal Manning, n E. S. Purcell.
~ Extracts frOIll lID. address by Rev. Thomas COllllel.l.llD.. the gifts of his father, and in return sacerdotalism, and the Pope appro- Pope Leo III. placed upon Charle· priately assumed the title of the pa- magne's head the crown of the Western gan high·priest Pontifex Maximus, Empire. Formerly the election of Pope and now calls himself Supreme Pon- was confirmed by the Emperor, now tiff.
the election of Emperor was confirmed In the fourth century images began by the Pope. to be introduced into the churches, and What were and are the secrets by so-called hones of the martyrs were which such a system has been able to hawked about as relics. Pagan festi- captivate and enslave a seventh part of vals were changed, with a thin dis- the human race? The reason is simply guise, into Christian feasts. The Lord's that Romanism offers everything that Supper begau to be dispensed at funer- our carnal nature craves. als, to develop at a future period into Christianity, tho pure in itself, was masses for the dead. Lamps and can- committed to the keeping of imperfect dles burned in the churches at noon- beings. The Jewish, the Roman, and day. Chasubles, copes, mitres, crosiers, the Grecian systems had all to be en- flowers, and incense all were combined countered and conquered by the Gospcl in the worship of God, who seeks to be of Christ. The converted, or semi-con- worshiped in spirit and in truth.
verted, Jew took with him the symbol- "The religion of Constantine," says ism of the synagogue; the Greek at- Gibbon, "achieved in less than a cen- tempted to engraft the philosophy of tury the final conquest of the Roman the academy upon the Christian stem; Empire; but the victors themselves and the Roman, taught to regard poly- were insensibly subdued by the arts of theism as the breath of his nostrils, car- their vanqnished rivals."
ried his ideas and prejudices into the For a long time bishop contended Christian fold. The presbytery upon with bishop about their possessions and the seven hills began to look more to jurisdiction; they imitated the secular the visib,Ie than the invisible church. princes iu their manner of living.
Rome would be all things to all men; Then the chief bishop got his throne but alas! in a very different sense to established by secular authority, and that intended by Paul. Christianity placed his iron heel upon people and soon became the fashion. The funda- bishops alike. Ignorance spread her mental principle of Grecian philosophy dark pall over the world. Corruption -viz., that the flesh is the seat of all infected all classes. The most aban- evil, and that it becomes a sacred duty doned and wicked scourges of human- to weaken and mortify the body-soon' ity were taught that their crimes might found a home in the Roman system, be expiated by donations to the Church and flourishes there to-day. The Jew at the moment of death. To build a took with him his ceremonial observ- cathedral, endow a monastery, or make ances, and fused them with a sensuous a grant of land to the Church was more ritual borrowed from paganism. The meritorious than a Christian life. Sal- Latin polytheist resigned the names of vation no longer was of grace, but by Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn, but found works. To abandon society with its equivalents in the Virgin :Mary and the obligations and duties, and bury one's saints. The statue of Jupiter was self in a desert, surrounded by filth and changed into that of St. Peter, the two indolence, was a proof of the highest keys being SUbstituted for the thunder- virtue. To shirk honest labor and don bolt. Its toe is reverently kissed by the wallet of the beggar gave one the pious pilgrims every hour. The Church right to work miracles here and be can- that had followed Christ faithfully in onized hereafter. The modest maiden the Catacombs emerged therefrom to was forced to tell the secrets of her possess pagan basilica.s. The very past to a man generally a hundred-fold vestments were borrowed from pagan more sinful than herself. But Satan was not yet satisfied. His and every secret of that household is hatred for the seed of the woman the property of the priest. Three popes prompted him t.o go a step farther. have admitted that the confessional has Accordingly even Christ was dethroned been abused, and have enacted penal and a creature put in His plaee. The legislation with the object of guarding Pope arrogated to himself the title, against the scandals arising therefrom.
"Vicar of Christ." The press, and not infrequently the It is a solemn thought that we at the Protestant press, has been inveigled close of the nineteenth century are con- into the service of Rome.
fronted with this same system, still What is the remedy for all this? claiming all its old prerogatives, still The remedy is in God's Word. There sighing for universal domination. In is no pbce in the New Testament for a the Syllabus, approved of by the pres· sacrificing priest. Peter himself says ent Pope. Pius IX. teaches that the that Christ possesses in all His faithful popes of former days, in deposing kings, children "a holy priesthood, to offer and claiming universal supremacy, up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to never exceeded by a hair's breadth their God by Jesus Uhrist" (1 Peter 2 : 5). just rights and prerogatives. The Epistle to the Hebrews tells us that we have also one great High·Priest, Since the decree of Papal Infallibility Jesus Christ the Righteous. That is the entire Roman machinery is moved God's eternal truth. It cuts theground by a single hand. He sits in his very from Romanist and Ritualist. It takes agreeable prison at the Vatican, with the sinner straight to God with Jesus, his Sin-Bearer, his Advocate, and his High·Priest, alone standing between.
the Superior General of the Jesuits whisperiug into his ear, and moves his Those who have traveled in Spain subordinates as if they were pawns know how rigorously the laws against upon the chess-board. This is done Protestants are enforced. Religious secretly, and its effect upon the world liberty is almost unknown in that is not lessened thereby. He is carefully providing for the future also. The couutry. school, the confessional, and the press Started in 1868 under the auspices of are his three great levers by which he hopes yet to sway the world. Get pos· the Free Church of Scotland, the Le· session of a child in its tender years; ganitos Chapel in Madrid has for the isolate it from all contact except your last quarter of a century been familiar own, teach it that darkness is light, to almost every American visiting the falsehood truth, and hypocrisy relig- Spanish capital, owing to the fact of ion; place it in a groove where it can· the lower portion of the building being not possibly measure such notions with devoted to the English service held the views of the world around it, and probably your protege will cling to such there every Sunday. The work was teaching to the death. The Roman organized by the Rev. John Jameson Church all the world over IS fighting aud Don Cipriano Tornos, an ex·priest for possession of the children. of such distinguished eloquence that he had drawn immense crowds while The confessional is the most potent acting as chaplain to Queen Margherita, weapon in Rome's armory. How can the wife of Amadeo of Savoy. After any man afford to quarrel with him to many years of faithful work-part of whose gaze he has laid bare the secrets the time as agent of the Bible Society be would hide from the child of his -Mr. Jameson returned to Scotland, affections, the wife of his bosom? To- and Senor Tornos remained in 80le gether with changing men and women charge of the work not only in Madrid, into slaves, it enables the priest to carry but also in outlying centers, such as in his pocket.book all the secrets of his lIocejon. There, as in the capital, the parish.. Let but a single servant in a congregation is composed almost exclu· household frequent the confession!'>l, sivelyof persons in the very humblest walks of life, and as the Church of Scotland makes it a rule to gradual- ly diminish its support of con)l:rega- tions as they advance in age, Senor Tornos is now constrained to appeal for financial aid to friends in this coun- try. Evangelical work tn Spain since the return of the Bourbons has never enjoyed more than the barest tolerit' tion, anel the recent consecration by the call, which nf'vcr comes, to go and Archbishop Plunket of Senor Cabrera wllrk for the brt'ud, which they do not as bishop seems to have aroused the wish to beg for t.hE!ir starving, weeping bitterest opposition to all Protestant children, whose cries ring incessantly work. While t,he Obra de Leganitos in their ears! The government, not was the first started, and has always having wherewith to provide work for had the largest congregations, yet such a number of people, has consid- Qther missions have since been added, ered it prudent to send troops to main- among them one at Chamberi, and this tain public order, knowing well that had recently to be moved from a most hunger is a terrible counsellor. But central location to one far inferior, ow- never has it been known that firearms ing to the landlord yielding to the have had the power to quell the crav- wishes of the clericals and declining to ings of an empty stomach I Many peo- renew the lease. The Methodist chapel ple think that the pangs of hunger are in the Calle del Gobernador had alto- more easily borne under our sunny gether to close its doors. and yet an- Italian sky. Ah, little can they know other mission, that of Calatrava, is lan- of the horrors of the situation I guishing for lack of funds. What There is no need to explain why the makes the situation still worse is that industries languish altogether. Agri- many tourists who, when passing culture remains; but just in the mining through Madrid, might feel disposed to districts the agricultural life is less ex- aid the various chapels, remain totally tensive, owing to the configuration of unaware of their locations, as the law the land itself. How can furrows be prohibiting all insignia on the exterior made in such a volcanic soil? how can of any non-Catholic religious edifice seeds be sown in such an arid, unkindly has recently been rigidly enforced. All ground? And besides all this, i8 the interested in promoting the evangeliza- agricultural condition or the island so tion of the country whence Columbus flourishing as to induce the miners to sailed to discover a New World have abandon the pick-ax for tbe spade? For thirteen years the Waldensian now an opportunity of doing so.
Church has carried on a work of evan- gelization in Grotte, where there are The Need in Sioily. now 33 church-members, 250 Sunday- school children, 155 night-school and The helpless cry of anguish of the 125 day-school pupils, 1200 casual hearstarving inhabitants of Hussia, of the ers at the meetings. persecuted Christians of Armenia, has Rooms necessary to carryon this found an echo in many hearts in all work have been secured in an old palnations. Will the piteous cry of the ace, which the proprietors now desire suffering, starvin~ children of Sicily for their own use. Another suitable find no answering note in the bosoms place of worship cannot easily be seof their fellow-men? cured. It is absolutely necessary to Stern reality, and not the desire to provide for such an emergency, and touch the hearts of the charitable by there is only one way possible-viz., an exaggerated statement compels us by building a honse which would anto give such a heading to our appeal. swer t.he purpose. The starving in- Two districts of Sicily have especially habitants of Grotte, and especially the been stricken by the sulphur crisis- members and frequenters of the church, viz., Caltanissetta and Girgenti. do not ask for a momentary relief of Of 657 sulphur mines existing in money, which is soon spent, but for Sicily, 587 are to be found in these two work, which thev are willing to do on provinces; of 33,266 miners working very modest terms. By building a in the whole island, 28,038 belong to church and schools for the mission, a these two districts. The almost entire great number of bread-winners would shutting up of the mines, and the gen- be employed, and would thus be eneral suspension of the works has not abled to draw their families out of only struck a blow at the 25,000 or misery. more families of the miners, but has Everyone therefore who holds out a also injured those who got their living helping hand to these his brethren will from the earnings of tbese men, and be doing at the same time good service has especially put a stop to the small for the cause of God. * trade in these places. If we could only lead our readers to the principal ~quare of Grotte, where daily and hourly are • Donations may he forwarded in checks or post-office orders to the Rev. Comm. M. Proto be seen groups of men, who with chet, D.D., President of the Waldensian Compale, careworn faces and anxious, mittee of Evangelization, 107, Via Nazionale, troubled looks stand waiting about for Rome, Italy.
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
IV.-EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT.
:&markable Revival in the North of vaster expenditure, are as legitimate an object for investigation by the State as Scotland. the effects of the existing Company There seems to be a general spiritual Laws or the reduction of the area under impression over the North of Scotland. wheat cultivation in England." In Wick hun1reds of men and women, Could the $350,000,000 spent in the chiefly from eighteen to thirty years of last hundred years on Protestant mis· age, have apparently been converted. sions and the $12,000,000 a year now In one east·coast fishing village the being spent not be better used? Mr. boats have been beached for six weeks, White seems to think the missionaries and as the evangelist passes along the have now too easy a time of it, certainstreet, one and another beckons to him ly an easier life than that of ministers to come and talk about soul concerns. in East and South London. Their readi- One rural village reports some thirty ness to ask for aid from imperial powcases of decision; this is a sample of er, their sectarian divisions, their con· others. In a country parish the crowds flicting message, their opening the door flocking to hear were so large that the to drink and vice, as well as the unrewindows had to be taken out of the buked iniquities of professedly Christian church, that those outside might hear. Powers would, Mr. White argues, form _ From another district a minister re- good material for inquiry. Dr. Cust ports: "Numbers of young and old thinks a c!}nference of missionary exhave been brought in, and the work has perts would be of much more use. This by no means ceased. . " The times proposal is welcomed by Mr. Eugene have been to us all very wonderful, and Stock, of the Church Missionary Sothe 126th Psalm alone can give adequate ciety. Mr. Wardlaw Thompson, of the expression to our feelings. What God London Missionary Society, caustically has wrought is not yet fully known. criticises Mr. White's attitude, and holds From many places a similar message that any examination of foreign miscomes. If the people of God were to sions which affects to judge its results arise and pray, Scotland might once would be an utter failure.-Seleeted. more experience a great revival."
The blessing in Stornoway appears To our minds, this proposition, from to have begun at the Communion sea- whatever sources emanating, involves a son, when Rev. J. McIntyre (successor total misconception of the nature of the of Dr. Andrew Bonar, Glasgow) had missionary enterprise, and might be- gone to assist Mr. Martin, the Free come atrociously arrogant and imperti- Church minister. nent. It seems to be forgotten by some people that Christian missions stand ab- A Oommission on Missions. solutely unique and solitary as repre- senting the one and only Divine enter- The principal feature in the Review prise ever committed to man. All other of the ChurcllMJ for April is Ii series of enterprises, however laudable, are hu- papers on the project, mooted by Chi· man, or at best Christian, philanthro· cago professors, of sending out a world's pists, devout and earnest men in or out commission to investigate into the suc- of the Church, have seen somewhat to cess or failure of foreign missions. Mr. be necessary to the progress of man- Arnold White thinks that" an impar- kind, and hence have come Sunday- tial inquiry into the finance, manage· schools, young men's Christian associa- ment, and results of It century of Prot- tions, societies of Christian Endeavor, estant missions, with ever multiplying Bible societies, tract societies, and the machinery, urgency of appeal, and hundred-handed organizations which are auxiliary to the Christian Church whIch that unhappy struggle gave for and the enlightened State. And what- ministering to the wounded Chinese sol- ever man originates man is competent diers-a service which the Government to discuss. criticise, alter, amend, or have not been slow to acknowledge in abolish. But there is one enterprise a practical way. The work of the purely of God. He took no man into Chefoo hospitals generally has been that His counsels, but matured His own plan of increased and marked blessing to the and committed it to the cooperation of bodies and souls of the people. As to converted disciples. To criticise it is the sulilsequent trials and persecutions impertinence; to alter or amend it is which have been the lot of many in arrogance and blasphemy; to abolish China, they have strikingly proved the it, apostasy. And we may as well under- stedfastness of the native Christians in stand that any commission that should time of adversity.
undertake a survey of missions with In a brief secretarial statement, Mr.
respect to any possible radicaZ change in Sloan dealt mainly with the statistics of their prosecution would be an invasion the year. Ninety-seven new workers of a Divine prerogative. We shall wel- went out in 1895. Nine workers in the come any investigation of the methods field and two at home had died during whereby the commission is now carried that period. It was stated that, owing out. any survey of the progress of the to the rise in the price of Chinese money, work, any attempt to make more effi- the expense of sustaining the work will cient the means whereby the Lord's be increased from 20 to 25 per cent.
plan shall be speedily executed; but we The steady growth in the finances of may not touch the Divine foundation .the mission, through its three decades, of missions, nor even raise the question has been remarkable. Mr. Sloan point- whether it is expedient that this work ed out that the total income of the first of God be carried forward. To do this ten years, from 1866-75, was some £40,- would be the last act of crowning im- 000; that of the second ten years was piety and daring outrage, and provoke £119,000; and that of the third, £309,- condigu judgment. As well undertake 000. Last year's income was £42,925 to abolish God's way of salvation, and (including £9150 from America, Aus· question whether vicarious atonement tralia, and China); this shows a total be not an antiquated notion. increase over the previous year of £9767.
These figures seemed to the chairman Ohina Inland Mission. so eloquent of growing favor with God and man that he called for the singing The anniversary (which was the thir- of the Doxology when the secretary sat tieth of the mission) was held at Mild- down; the assembly joined with heart may Conference Hall. in London, in and voice in this ascription of praise and May, and divided into afternoon and thanks to the Fount and Giver of all evening meetings, as usual. Mr. Hud- good.
son Taylor with Mrs. Taylorwas on the Five short speeches followed-four way home, but the calls of the work in of them by workers from the great China did not enable him to be in Lon- China field. Rev. J. J. Coulthard, who don in time. has worked for nine years in the prov- An interesting letter from him was ince of Honan, took as the burden of read. giving a bird's-eye view of the his theme the native Christian-what past year's work. It has been in many he has to endure because of his con- respects the most remarkable year they fessed discipleship of Christ and the had ever experienced-a year of great readiness with which he counts it all trials and of abounding mercies. Ref- joy to suffer loss for the sake of his erence was made to the. war between Master. Very much the same strain China and Japan, and the opportunities was taken up by Mr. Lawson, a Scotchman of pronounced accent, from the when they become Christians. It was province of Shalllii. He spoke feelingly a black recital, the chief items in the of the small beginnings there, and of indictment being the crime of baby-girl the growth of the work as well as of the murder, well-nigh universal among Chizeal. fidelity, and liberality of the con- nese women, the horrors and mutilaverts_ Then Miss Hanbury gave an ad- tions of foot-binding, the slavery of mirable little address, telling in turn opium, etc. A.ddressing his fellowsome of her experiences, first at Pao- Christians, Mr. Studd called fOI" snch an ning, Szchuen; next in the training intense aud unqualified belief in and home at Yang-Chau; and lastly at the devotion to the claims of J csns Christ schools in Chefoo. Her exposition of as would make them disregard snch the great advantages that accrue to the matters as climate, and personal considyoung lady missionary by a stay in the erations 01 every sort, in tlleir desire to training home must have been deeply carry the saving Gospel to the millions interesting to all home friends who ha ve of perishing Chinese. relatives in the field. It was also most encouraging to hear, with respect to 'fhe meeting in the evening was ad· the school work at Chefoo, that a spirit dressed by other workers from China of consecration to the work of the mis- and by the editor-in-chief of this REsionary is being evidently manifested VIEW, the outline of whose address will among the young people being educat- subsequently appear in these pages. ed there. BOLIVIA.-'l'his South A.merican re- As a representative of the Australian publie, four and a half times the size of auxiliary Rev. Alfred Bird was cordially the United Kingdom, has not one setreceived, and his account of the incep- tled missionary to 2,500,000 people! tion and spread of the missionary interest in that distant colony gave cause for The Nineteen Hundredth Anniversary much thankfulness. It was striking to of the Birth of Ohrist. hear him report so maDY conversions as taking place in Australia in conDeetioll In the January issue of this REVIEW with missionary meetings and farewells. the editor called attention to the fact He told of one young man of much that this year (1896) is, by correct reckpromise who conducted a bel"ies of ser- oning, the closing year of the full ninevices before going to the front in China. teen hundred of the Christian era. The At these meetings over 100 converts subject has since been tllken up by were enrolled, and these young Cluis- others, as the following shows: tians are now furuishing the support in China of their spiritual father. It is an interesting chronological point as to the year of the birth of ,our Lord. Last of all came Mr. Charles T. Studd, Geikie and Edersheim give the date as who unfolded some of the realities and late in B.C. 5. Farrar deals with the actualities of Chinese life, and of work question in the appendix to his" Life on behalf of the Chinese. He said the of Christ," and says that "under no history of the China Inland Mission in circumstances can the nativity have the province of 8hansi is of itself a place later than February. B.C, 4." sufficient confutation of thuse who say Lange adopts that month and year. that missions are a failure. Christian Lichtenstein and others prefer the midmissionaries, lv1r. Studd thinks, ought dle or end of B.C. 5. to be like quacks-believing in one specific remedy for all sorts of ills. Christ Thus the consensus of the best opinhas given His disciples one remedy and ion is decisive that the next anniversary only one, and that is Himself. Then of Christ's birth will be the nineteen the speaker went on to tell something hundredth. Dionysius Exiguus, when of wllat tlle Chinese are saved from, computing the time and making up the vulgar chronology in the sixth century, made a mistake of four years. Both Geikie aud Edersheim accept December 25th as the most probable day and month. The true nineteenth century of Chris- agents take special care to make known tianity will therefore close with this and exaggerate all over the district; year. It will thus, as a matter of bare and so thousands are flocking to the fact, be earlier by a trifle over four Romish Church who have no more years than the vulgar era. knowledge of the first principles of Christianity than they had before; but, Anything in the nature of a centenary unhappily, they have drunk in almost of our Lord's birth transcends immeas· instinctively the first principles of Rourably in importance that of any person manism-viz., persecution and hatred or country. It becomes, therefore, a of the truth. Their priests permit them matter worthy of consideration whether to subscribe the usual amount to the next Christmas should be a period of support of the heathen idolatrous ceremore than usual rejoicing. If it be monies, and thus they escape the perdeemed so to be, will it not be a time in secution of the heathen against our nawhich nineteen centuries of history and tive Christians, who are expelled from work may especially be reviewed, with our communion if they should be found the errors and triumpl}s? Will it not in any way to support idolatry. In be a suitable period for discussing any Hok·chiang these Romanists join the reunion of Christendom, and for con· heathen in abusing the Protestants, be· sidering the work of Christ generally f cause the latter will not subscribe to The nineteenfh century will have been the heathen rites." completed. It may be desirable to think how to make a good start with Japan is Japanizing her Methodthe twentieth century of our religion. ism. She is doing it fast. She cannot The firm resolve may be formed to do avoid it. But this does not mean that what is possible by work and self· sac· she is changing the doctrine and experirifice to make it exceed the nineteenth ence. The discipline and practice adin llll that pertains to God's glory. justed to American life and determined and compelled by exceptional local I write upon tbis subject with all peculiarities and history cannot, in the humility. I would like to foster inquiry nature of things, be exactly adjusted to as to the correctness of the statement Japanese life. American life and Japthat our Lord was born about the end anese life are as distinct as the poles. of B.C. 5; and supposing it to be true Japan is just now the last place for the – and the highest authorities force me .. great Methodist," the" stalwart Presto the conclusion that it is-I think it byterian, " the" rigid Baptist" from the should be fully considered as to any Oceident·-that is, the man or woman honor so strangely important an anni- who is a stickler for the minutire of versary should receive. home forms and practice. Doing God's service in motive it will be hindered in F. B. BOYCE. aet.-Rev. John Wier.
In addition to sums already acknowl· Colston Hall, Bristol, has the figure of a dolphin on it. It is a memorial of edged for the Armenian sufferers, we deliverance. When a vessel at sen was exposed to sinking by a hole knocked have received the following contribu- in the bottom, the founder of Colston Memorial Hall vowed his fortune to tions: God if He would spare tbe ship, and a dolphin suddenly rushed into the aper- Mrs. Julia Waller, Bloomsburg, Pa …..• $30.00 ture and effectually stopped it until the Presbyterian Church, St. Croix, Wig….. 3.25 damage could be repaired.
Archdeacon Wolfe writes from Hok- chiang: "The Romanists also have commenced work, and many have joined them. The priests require nothing in the way of knowledge or instruction in the Christian religion from those who join them, except a promise that those who join shall attend mass four times a year; their names are then en- tered as Roman Catholics, and they are from henceforth entitled to all the pro- tection arising from the influence of the French protectorate of the Romish Church, and which the Romish native
GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE
V.~GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE.
EDITED :BY REV. D. L. LEONARD.
Extracts and Translations from Foreign of the village street destined to receive Periodicals. the ancestral gods. This takes place not only in the lately opened west, in BY REY. C. C. STARBUCK, ANDOVER, the region of the stations of Fadow and MASS. Lahagu, but also in the elder eastern stations, where, for instance, Mission- NETHERLANDS INDIA.
-Pastor EDWARD KRIELE, speaking ary Cramer, working outward from in the Allgemeine jl/issions· Zeitschrijt Gunong Sitoli, can draw one heathen of the mission of the Rhenish Society village after another into the net of his on the island of Nias, a little westward activity; where Missionary Sundermann of Sumatra, remarks: "Notwithstand- is on the poiut of establishing a new ing the comp!lIatively small size of station, some two leagues to the west Nias, it is an important mission field, of Dahana; where in particular Mis- not only on account of its dense popu- sionary Thomas, working from Gumbu- lation, but also because the Niassans humene as a center, has won almost extend into some of the other islands. the whole region around for the Gospel.
Nias promises more and more to be- In the very promising west, where, we come a second Sumatra, and Is at pres- may remark by the way, the mission ent one of the most hopeful terrItories has also contributed largely to secure of the Rhenish Missions, having only to the greatly tormented land outward become so, however, within a very few peace and security against its enemies, years. Inspector Schreiber called to especially from the south, the attempts mind at the last Barmen anniversary, to found a third and a fourth station that when he was still a missionary in have thus far failed when near accom- Sumatra, a government officer very plishment, among other reasons because friendly to missions argued with him no missionary forces were to be had.
at length that the Barmen Board could Here also grave and momentous prob- do nothing more to the purpose than lems await their solution, especially as to recall the missionaries from Nias; between the more thinly peopled north and, in fact, Nias was formerly regard- and the uncommon density of the popu- ed as one of the most difficult and hope- lation in the south of the island, where less fields. Even in 1892, when the a solitary missionary grave reminds mission completed its first quarter of a one of a fruitless attempt made years century, there was little to be heard ago, and thereby of a painful tragedy except admissions of the small results. in the Nias Mission. Thus Nias in the Then it was as if, with the jubilee year, coming years will call for a very pecul- a wholly new spirit from above had iar attention, and therewith also for a begun to breathe over the valley full special enlargement of the missionary of dry bones; the number of the Chris- force. Here also we conclude with a tians has in the last five years risen word out of a 'layman's mouth.' The from 706 to 1813-that is, has almost Java-Bode of September 5th, published tripled-and even as we are writing at Batavia, reprints an article of the thus letters come in announcing numer- Alg. Handelsblad, in which, alluding ous baptisms of heathen at several sta- to the MissWns1'1lndschau (missionary tions. Whole heathen villages, which round) of Dr. Schreiber respecting had long closed themselves against all Netherland3 India in the last number influences of good, now declare that of the Allgemeine Missions-Zeitschrijt, it they wish to cast away their idols. It remarks; is said that pits are dug in the middle .. 'Our best wishes to the mission·
EXTRACTS AND TRANSLATIONS. 625•
aries in Nias. May their expectations Turkish Caliphate. This is as if the not be brought to shame, and may we Italians, for five centuries, bad quessoon be able to say of Nias what can tioned the authentic election of the be said of a great part of Bataland: it Pope. is owing to the missionaries that peace and prosperity have been brought to the What will ensue now when, as must lands, t1lat its inltabitant8 have beeome happen before long, Turkey falls to other and better men, and tl13.t they feel pieces, mostly lapsing to Russia? themselves happy under the Dutch Either an extinction of the Caliphate, Government, which rules them as or its reerection at Mecca, either event Christians should.' involving a profound dislocation and readjustment of Islam. " When the Lord was on earth, the Pharisees came more than once to Him, All talk of any change in Mohamdesiring a sign from -heaven. And medanism must be given up. It shows many friends of missions are so far itself to·day reaJIy more cruel than the like the Pharisees that they want to be Koran allows. The spirit of Mohamalways hearing of striking occurrences, med is more powerful than his limiting powerful conversions, astonishing precepts. events from the heathen world. But as the Lord gave small heed to the crav- All pretence that a Moslem governing for wonders among His contempo- ment can or will protect Christians, nararies, still less does the kingdom of tive or foreign, except under absolute God now come with observation. The coercion from Christendom, must now Gospel, altho it appears in the heathen be given up. worlds as a power of God to salvation, works in the manner of the leaven; The savage dangerousness of Turkslowly but surely does it exercise a re- ish Mohammedanism (Arabian and Innewing and sanctifying intluence upon dian standing considerably higher) can the domestic and social life." Yet in only be kept in check by the proximity the rapid advance since 1831 of the of a watchful Christian power. Rus- Gospel in the Minahassa, or northern sia, by her very hardness and semi· bar· arm of the island of Celebes, until barousness, as well as by her vast exheathenism, out of more than 100,000 tent, seems best suited to this function. souls, has hardly more than 7000 left, We may well recognize the hand of we have a fact which is at once a quiet God, who doubtless knows His own leaven and an open slgn.-Maandbericltt mind, in choosing out a flinty hammer 1,an ltet Nederlandsche Zendelinggenoot. to pulverize a flinty rock. scltap (Netherlands M. S.). Among the Armenians, these martyr- TURKEY. doms, renewing the greatest days of the Church of Gregory the Illuminator, -We wonld call attention to Dr. seem not unapt to fuse together Protes- James S. Dennis' tl1orough and com- tants, Gregorians, and perhaps Cathoprehensive article on the Armeno·Turk- lics, of this eldest of Christian nations, ish question, in the Evan.qelist of JrIay in some great spiritual renewal for 21st. We note a few of the salient some great evangelizing work, against points. the day when orthodox and heretical Mohammedanism alike, held in the When the Arabs controlled Islam, all grasp of a Christian power, shall begin the faithful (not reckoning the Persian to acknowledge, as Julian, in those schismatics) acknowledged the Arabian same regions. found. at least, if he did Caliphs. Now the Arabs, Mohammed's not say, "0 Galilean, Thou hast conown people, in whose language alone quered !" has the Koran any sacredness, question the legitimateness of the barbarous JAPAN.
-A leading Japanese journal, Kok,lt- riun Sltimbun, cited in the Zeitschrijt fUr Missionskunrk, declares not only
GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE
that the cold, abstract moral teaching to us the question, Is not, after all, beer given in the Japanese public schools a main cause why, among us, too, so amounts to little morally, and directly many cannot press through? Through deadens the religious sense (which what? Through all the prejudices and might be said of a great many of our hindrances which place themselves in own public schools, particularly in the the way, so soon as anyone would fain West), but that very commonly the enter devoutly into the service of Jesus teachers take occasion by it to make Christ. In order to overcome these open attacL'I on Buddhism, and of hindrances, such as fear of man, false course still more violent attacks on shame, frivolous company, idleness, Christianity. .. The reasons," it says, and all the lounging ways of our nomias quoted by the Rev. E. SCHILLER, nal Christianity, there needs a clear " why in our day Buddhism is declin- head and a firm will. But here comes ing, and Christianity also is not advanc- in the beer-I mean beerhouse lounging, may in part be found in the fact ing, with all implied in that-obscures that Buddhist priests and Christian the understanding, fetters the will, and ministers are not fully fitted for their so it results that there can be no gencalling, but the main cause, unques- uine conversion, even where the contionably, is the decline of the religious science had been awakened, and had spirit of the nation, and the cause of induced a longing after better things. this is, that the moral teaching of our How many thousand good intentions schools is a teaching hostile to relig- have been drowned in wine and beer! ion. " "Yet if we ask why, among us in MISCELLANEOUS. Germany, notwithstanding all our Christian knowledge, there is so little -" Ambassador Bayard spoke a true Ohristian life to be found, why, in word to the Seamen's Hospital Society, the churches, in the missionary meetin London, when he said: ings, in all labors for the kingdom of God, there are so few men, why the " , At sea there are no such things as youth are becoming so wild, why recktroublesome boundary disputes, coJ.- lessness and greed are growing, piety tested spheres of influence, buffer and contentment waning, we may con- States, or other creations of diplomacy. fidently answer, The Main Cause is Scarcely a day has passed without a Beer. Beer impedes the young people, token of gratitude and goodwill being even the theologians, in their studies ; sent by America to English seamen for beer makes many men, I fear even heroism in rescues upon the high seas. many pastors, sluggish in work and When I was attending to my dnties in sluggish in prayer. Moreover, beer Washington, I remember how there empties numberless purses, so that was a constant current of thanks and there is nothing in them when there is gratitude from Great Britain to sailors 1 call for missions or other good of the United States. Such acts are works. . " And so it is coming to healing differences and strengthening pass that in fact heathenism. and that the friendship between the sailors, and not a refined, but a thoroughly gross, may be the means of binding friendship wild, and vulgar heathenism is coming and good feeling in the homes on both in upon us, and spreading more widely sides of the Atlantic.."-Bailol"s Maga- from year to year."-Calwer Missionszine. blatt.
-" A Caffre Christian made his mis- -J. HESSE, of Caho, in the Evangelisionary many years of trouble. ' It seltes Mis8iomblattfw Wwttemberg, conwas because the beer would not suffer siderE the question how some German instruction to take hold of him.' (and other) societies, with a larger num- " These words have given us much matter of thought. It has suggested
1896·1 ENGLISH NOTES
ber of laborers and larger income, are English Notes.
less successful than others, with fewer BY JAMES DOUGLAS.
workers and smaller means. For instance: Basel, last year, having 157 Olmrch Mis8ionary Society.-Numermissionaries, and spending 1,000,131 ous letters from Uganda furnish a view marks, reports only 30,200 members; of the operations of this society, not the Gossner Mission, having 23 mission- only in Uganda proper, but also in the aries, and spending 162,955 marks, re- extensive districts of Busoga, Koki, ports 40,000. The Bm'men, having 96 and the Sese Islands of Lake N yanza. missionaries, and spending 497,701 All lovers of the Lord must rejoice in marks, reports 56,944. Moreover, the the marvelous blessing given; and, llnitas Fratrum, having 174 mission- despite the things pel' contra, in the aries, and spending 1,610,420 marks, re- manifold tokens of encouragement ports in 1894 only 366 adult baptisms; which the present outlook affords. As Basel, 1418. The Leipsic Mission, hav- Mr. Pilkington points out, the country ing 26 missionaries, and spending 356,- from Mengo is now open to the Gospel 225 marks, baptized 433; the Gossner, for 200 miles east, south, and west; with fewer missionaries, and less than while north ward 70 or 100 miles is open. half the income, baptized 1570. Whether regarded as a field white al- ready to harvest, or as a basis of mis- Whence these differences? Differences of training and economy sionary operations, Uganda is rich in doubtless count. But differences of promise. To,qnote from Mr. Pilkingfields count much more. Manyfold ton: "The country is healthy; native more laborers and more outlay on the help is available as it is nowhere else in the world; the desire for rtading rock will, of course, bring in scant fruits compared with few laborers and has already been carried to some of the little outlay on the good ground. The Brethren, for instance, have chosen of elaxntrgeumageepaonindtssewnittihminentthiasndradmoiuds~' in of preference, the backward, and even'the life the whole region is closely knit todying races, It is not, brilliant results gether-in a word, there is good reason for which they aim, so much as a min- to hope that as far as local conditions istryof life for the forsaken. So, while are concerned, a circle including within its radius of A20l0bemrtileEsdwthaerdth, reaendlaktehs~ Basel has, on the Gold Ooast, a field of the Albert, pestilence, Barmen and G08sner have in Sumatra and among the Kols, com: Victoria-an area (excluding the lakes) paratively healthy lands, requiring also of nearly 100,000 square miles-might less outlay. These two peoples, more- be fully occupied if not evangelized over, are more receptive of the Gospel within three years' time." than any others among whom German To turn this hope into fruition, Mr_ missionaries labor. The Kols had a Pilkington makes the following derude heathenism, burdensome yet not mand: "Wanted. in all, from home, attractive, easily given up for Hindu- 100 additional men missionaries and ism, more easily for the Gospel. Among some lady missionaries, full of the Holy the Sumatrans idolatry was already in Ghost. "
decline. Islam or Ohristianity, coming The Sesse Islands of Lake Nyanza.- first in any district, easily carries the The work, now being carried on, in day. How different in South India these islands has many gleams of en- among the Tamils, even among the couragement and no inconsiderable fruit, Parias! The elaborate system binds notwithstanding various forms of hos- them, even while it curses them. tility. On Bukasa, a Sunday congre- The great difference, therefore, is gation of. nearly 280 are collected in the still, as of old: The Road, the Rock. church built by the Ohristian chief.
the Thorns, the Waiting Grounds. In addition to this there are three other
GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE
places of worship on the island where being of a good family thcy fear the Basese teachers minister to growing conseqnences of a public profession of congrega tions. Christ. "
On Bufumira the work has been car- The Rev. R. Wright Hay, of Dacca, ried on by Adam Musoke, a voluntary writes: "I have baptized four converts Muganda teacher and a small chief. during the year-two Mohammedans, For two years or more he has labored, one Brahmin, aud an Eurasian." He and all who have come forward for also says: " There are many in whom baptism have been instructed by him. it is evident that the Holy Spirit i~ This worker hail now returned to Bu- working, and no small part of our work ganda, but a band of young Basese consists in a laboring in prayer for teachers, numbering eight, are filling these." the gap, and, in the face of the chief's hostility, trying to let their light shine The Calcutta Press. – From the refor Christ. port of translation and literary work, prepared by Dr. Rouse, we learn that The largest island of the group- the revision and printing of the Bengali Kome-has also a band of earnest and Bible is now far advanced. A tentat i ve faithful Basese teachers; and, in addi- edition of the Psalms has been issued, tion, there are 19 Buganda teachers aud the printing of a commentary on .. engaged in reading through the Gos- Genesis is just completed. pels with the candidates for baptism, visiting, and giving a good name to The Outtack Press hs,s issued during the Gospel which they preach." On the year over 35,000 tracts and 6000 this island the work is particularly Scripture portions. hopeful, and has already taken considerable hold, a result largely due, under Presbyterian Ohu1'ch of England.- GoJ, to the labors of the Muganda Concerning }ivrmosa, reports have been teacher, Yoeri Wamala, who, having published by Mr. Barclay and Mr. Ede. lived down much opposition from the Both reports are of a cheering nature. chief and others, has now had the joy Notwithstanding the Black Flag trouof seeing much fruit accruing. At the bles and the Japanese march through large church ou this island there is now the island, "no cases of apostasy a congregation of over 500. through fear occurred at any of the stations." In the hill country the ab- Baptist Missionary Society.-During original churches are being attended the past year there has been 655 addi- by greatly increased congregations, tions to the native Christian Cburch in while at Moatau, "in spite of the mas- India in connection with this society. sacre, the membership at the close of In every case the missionaries have the year is larger than it was at the anxiously sought to ascertain the pres- beginning. " ence of a work of grace in the individual beart. North Africa Mission.-Mr. Eaward H. Glenny, the indefatigable secretary At Cuttack, in Orissa, the church has of this mission, writes: "We have had, during the past year, an unusually had and still have a certain amount of large accession from the ranks of the difficulty with the rulers of the counyoung people. tries in which we are laboring. I have just heard of a plot whieh fortunately An interesting circumstance is re- was discovered, the object of which ported by the Rev. J. G. Potter, of was to incriminate certain missionaries Agra, to the effect" that there are sev- in illegal actions; but, after all, what eral Mohammedan young men who is it we have experienced compared have hired a room where they meet for with the persecutions and atrocities in religious discussion; that most of these Armenia ? • •• Then this year there young men are Christians at heart, but have been several baptisms in Tunis just what the Lord does think oj 1t8 alland Morocco, and Mr. Summers was some of us, anyway?" hoping to baptize a young convert, from Palestine, in Alexandria this -It is said that when the mother of month. Mr. Patrick also speaks of Professor Drummond met a young encouraging services and professed con- friend who had offered his services as versions among the Spaniards, so that a missionary, but was declined, and we have causes for thankfulness as well was obliged to take a position in a comas reasons for prayer." mercial house in a foreign land, shc suggested: "My dear boy, you can THE KINGDOM. be a merchant missionary." In like manner Commodore Perry, when in- -Nobody could express it more hap- troduced to a foreign missionary in· pily than the missionary did who said: Japan, added, "I also am a mission- " When you cannot see any bright side, ary. " polish up the dark side, and look at that. " -How strange! When Jonathan Edwards, one of the very greatest of -And this likewise is a faithfill say- Americans, was dismisaed from his ing. "A dime whispers, 'I will help pastorate, well-nigh with ignominy, save America I ' a dollar says that same and removed to Stockbridge with an thing out loud; a hundred dollars Indian mission as a portion of his field, shouts it. One prayer helps the good a salary was voted him of £6 138. 4d. work on; two prayers help it on a bit and 1UO sleighloads of fire-wood. farther; half a dozen prayers possibly make it go faster yet; and only the -" Nothing but a missionary!" angels know how marvelously the But the man who gave that toss of the prayers of a few millions might acceler· head and that half-scornful look should ate it lOne man or womau saying a cast an eye down the long central aisle good thing or doing a brave thing of the hall at Mildmay Park. Whom somewhere makes America a little bet- do we see coming up the aisle-a son ter; a band of laborers affects perhaps of Anak in stature, erect, his features the development of a whole country; strongly marked, his venerable locks while a host of workers may reap a and long wbite beard adding majesty harvest waving in fields as broad as a to his appearance? On discovering prairie, or mine out nuggets of spirit- him the whole great audience rise sponual ore rare and rich as a thousand taneously to their feet. A Wesleyan mountain mines. " brother with powerful voice is in the midst of an address; yet. no one heeds -Miss Auna L. Dawes also states a him till the patriarch has taken a seat profound truth in terse and impressive on the platform. Who is the old man? form when she says: "If anyone is Is it the Earl of Beaconsfield? Is it willing to go up there and live with Gladstone? There is but one other those Eskimos, I think the rest of us person in the realm to whom, under may well enough agree to help. Noth- the circumstances, such a united and ing has been so good for me for some enthusiastic tribute would be paid, and time as Mr. Lopp's visit. It not only that because she is on the throne. This makes our Christianity (mine at least) hoary-headed man is the veteran among look like a mustard seed, but makes South African missionaries. He went you wonder whether it isn't a dead out to the Dark Continent more than seed at that I I have been to hear Mr. sixty years before. He is now eighty- Moody, but he didn't begin to give me three; his name, Robert Moffat.- such' conviction of sin' as the urgent RM!. A. O. Thompson. and eager interest Mr. Lopp showed in going back to his people. 1 wonder -According to Acts 10: 35, was it not an or~hodox proceeding under the salary. A woman has two sons-one circumstances? .. We went to call on earning good wages, the other a boy at the new Methodist minister and his school. The elder son gets into debt.
wife (Mexicans), and listened to the The mother's salary as a Bible-woman most touching account of her conver- just keeps her and her younger son in sion, simply by the reading of God's food and clothing. The younger son, Word; and how, just following out being clever, should receive a higher the Divine command, she went to a education. Who is to pay? Not the stream and was baptized by her father- elder brother, but the missionary. At in-law, and they all took the juice of least that is the result of a discussion grapes she squeezed from a fresh clus- that occupies nearly a day. We re- ter, and ate unleavened cakes she herself fuse, say. The missionary is then ac- had made. Some time after she found cused of spending his money over the a Protestant church, where she an- heathen to the loss of the Christian."
nounced herself as a member of the church of Christ, and that church was WOMAN'S WORK.
our own in Hermosillo." -A missionary writes that India's -Tho we all knew that the whirligig "new woman" is only one who can of Time brings in his revenges, yet read and write and perhaps occasion- whoever supposed that the Hebrews ally ventures out to a public meeting.
would "get even" with their foes, as .. There are many yet among the upper they have, if the current statement is classes who look out on the world with true which alleges that tho nearly 2500 one eye peeping through the folds of a years ago Babylon took their whole cuddah, and who feel that to allow any nation into captivity, now two Jews man, except those of their own house- have bought all that is left of the fa- hold, to look on their faces is to be mous city. guilty of a heinous sin. We have a -It is a fine tribute to the efficient patient just now whom we wished the and self-denying labors of General civil surgeon to see, and I had to spend Armstrong that the institution which a good part of a forenoon coaxing her he founded suffered only sorrow of to allow him in the room. We made a heart at his death, and has made steady compromise at last, I agreeing that she progress along the lines he laid down. only draw her cuddah far enough aside As a recent visitor to Hampton said: to allow her tongue to be seen. • How .. I never knew of a man'who was less can I go before God if this strange man dead." The last request of the general, looks on my face?' was the pleading " See to it that Hampton does not go entreaty of this poor young woman. down," has been well obeyed.-The In most cases, however, the veiling of Advance. the face is more a matter of social dis- tinction than of religion." -A missionary to India describes a sample day's work: "A child Ilwal- -What a passage in modern history lows a coin. Its mother brings it to is that of the Zeitoun women on guard us. A wife turns obstinate. Her hus- in their mountain eyrie! When every band comes for us. A husband beats boy over thirteen years old was away his wife. The wife comes weeping to fighting, and 250 Turkish soldiers were us. A man in a fit of despair joins the preparing to break out of their prison army. We are asked to liberate him. and fire the town, these women rose in A member of the church loses his char- desperation, killed every man of them, aeter. We have to examine into things, and threw them down the cliff. It and discriminate truth from lies. An was in defense of their lives and the educated Christian man runs into debt. Iives of their children.
His device is to apply to us for higher -There are now, as the result of eleven years' work and growth, 51 dea- How to get our Endeavorers to read coneS!!' institutions in the Methodist more missionary books. Episcopal Church; 590 deacones.~es, including 80 who are still in training Putting the Endeavorers in touch and 100 trained nurses; and property with their denominational mission employed iu this work to the value of boards. $656,950 above debt. In the United States there are 35 institutions; in Ger- How to make missionary meetings many, 6; in India, 8; in China, 1; in interesting. Africa, 1. Who should go as a missionary ? Practical evangelistic methods for Christian Endeavor societies.
-In 1893 the Presbyterian Woman's -The Endeavor News tells about a Boards contributed over $329,000 for missionary committee that managed to foreign missions; in 1894, $324,000; make missions interesting in the follow- in 1895, $309,000; and, now, $302,000. ing diversified ways: At first they in- But there seem to be as many fine feath- vited a few of their friends to meet on ers as ever, as many Christian women a certain evening at the honse of the traveling, as ample home comforts. chairman. There they found a num- No more boasting from us, until we ber of garments already cut and pre- make a new record "concerning the pared for the making. Upon these the collection."- Woman's Work jor Wom- guests and entertainers set themselves an. to work. In the centre of the group sat one of the best readers of the soci- -In Great Britain and Ireland there ety, who entertained the company dur- are 12 women's missionary societies, ing the evening with the reading of an supporting 770 female workers in for- interesting missionary biography. This eign fields, 38 of these being medical biography and the work laid out occu- workers. These societies reach 20 dif- pied the Endeavorers for four evanings. ferent countries, employ 2000 native The last fifteen minutes of each meet- workers, and have over 60,000 girls and ing were given up to business, general women in their schools. discussion, and prayer.
-The Church of England Zenana -Let the missionary committee get Missionary Society has 53 stations in ready a series of scrap-book meetings. India, 8 in China, 1 in Ceylon, 186 The members and their friends gather European missionaries, 90 native mis- scraps on all subjects connected with . sionaries, and 637 native workers. The missions and Christian work in gen- associations contributed £24,299 last eral, and on their scrap-book evenings year. gather about a large table and fill vari- ous scrap-books with what they have -The Female Association of the gleaned, these scraps being appropri- Irish Presbyterian Church sends out ately classified. The scrap-books thus three new representatives this year, formed make a valuable addition to and has under its care in India and their missiouary library. China 18 women, of whom 4 are medi- cal missionaries.
YOUNG PEOPLE. -The Christian Endeavor societies of the Reformed (Dutch) Church now -These are some live questions for number 525, and last year gave to for- Endeavorers (and Leaguers also with eign missions $3909 ; to domestic misthe change of a word or two) to think sions, $2396; to the Woman's Board about and discuss: of Foreign Missions, $609; to the Woman's Executive Committee, $504; How to get a society enthusiastic for and to the Arabian Mission, $535. missions. Other gifts to denominational objects bring the total up to $8286. How to push systematic giving among our Endeavorers. -Some of the most earnest and wide- lowing the pOOl' to use the vacant lots awake young people's societies in the in Detroit for potato-patches has been world are to be found in Australia. copied with success in 19 leading cities.
The Golden Link states that the Wel- In this way in 1895 Boston gave em- lington society has been devoting spe- ployment to 54 persons; Brooklyn, 31 ; cial attention to missionary work with Buffalo, 560 families; Cincinnati, 37 the result that they support 2 native families; Detroit, 1546 persons; Du- teachers in the New Hebrides; con- luth, about 300; Minneapolis, 226; tribute to the support of the Wellington Seattle, 141; St. Louis, 120 families; Chinese missionary ; hold cottage meet- St. Paul, 118 persons; Toledo, 62 fam· ings every Sunday and Wednesday ilies. There were 8 other cities for evenings; have just begun open-air which statistics have not been given.
meetings; have sent 2 boxes to the mis- New York furnished tools, the sweep- sion field; write regularly to various ings of the streets as a fertilizer, and a missionaries, copy the answers reo practical instructor.
ceived, and hand them round among '':''''It is estimated that there are 10,000 the members; have twice circulated Chinese living in New York and adself-denial envelopes, thereby raising a jacent places. Of these 500 are in Sun· considerable sum for missions; have day-schools, and 200 are professed issned a small missionary pamphlet for Christians. The remainder are under the benefit of the members. no direct Christian influence or instruc- UNITED S'fATES. tion. Here is a piece of China within our gates having its joss worship, the- -The financial distress prevalent in atres, opium joints, and other charac- the country during the past two years teristics of Chinese heathendom. It is is set forth in a striking way by the a foreign missionary field within reach fact that the total net earnings of the of every church on Manhattan Island national banks in the year 1893 amount- or in its vicinity.-EvangeZist.
ed to $68,000,000, While during the year -The census for 1890 gives 18 col· 1894 they amounted to $41,000,000, a ored denominations having no connecfalling off in a single year of $27,000,- tion whatever with white church or- 000. As most of the business of the ganizations. These 18 denominations country is done in the national banks, have 18,835 societies, or organizations; such a falling off in earnings indicates 19,631 church buildings, with church a very serious condition of affairs. property valued at $20,318,714, and a During the year 1895 matters did not membership of 2,500,000. The preachimprove to any extent. ers and religious teachers are, with few -The Chicago Flower Mission has exceptions, uneducated and ignorant.
existed for twenty-one years, and the -During the year gifts from the liv· quantity of flowers distributed has in- ing to the American Bible Society creased from 300 bunches the first sea- amounted to $67,102; the amount reson to almost 100,000 last year. The ceived from legacies, $70,977, and the president, Mrs. Frederick Dickinson, total receipts were $204,670. The sureports that" the bright, fragrant bIos· ciety also received $232,552 in return soms sent us by kind friends in the for books and on purchase account. country have qarried light to 'darkest The appropriations for the foreign work Chicago. ' The Ohristian Endeavor so- for the coming year amount to $182,- cieties throughout the State of Iowa 756. For the first time in the society's have organized a flower mission depart- history it is announced that the num· ment, and send immense quantities of ber of volumes circulated abroad for flowers for us to distribute." the past year exceeds the number circu- -Major Pingree's noted plan of 801- lated in the United States. -The fifty· ninth annual report of been vouchsafed to any foreigner, ex· foreign missions contains this general cepting, perhaps, upon the ruler of summary of work done by the' Pres- some friendly power. This honor is a byterian Church from May 1st, 1895, recognition on the part of the emperor to May 1st, 1896: American mission- of the American physician's services in aries, 214, with 54 medical missionaries; connection with the Red Cross Society wi vcs of missionaries, 223 ; other mis- during the late war, and of the success- sionaries, 177; native agents, 2101; ful efforts of Dr. Atterbury in advanc. churches, 387, with 30,882 communi- ing medical and surgical science in the cants, who have raised for self-support empire. His services as a physician $20,085; added last year, 3000; minis- have been frequently in demand at the . terial students, 88; day schools for imperial palace, and when Li Hung boys, 390, with 14,545 pupils; girls' Chang set out on his journey to Russia day schools, 154, with 7310 pupils; to attend the coronation of the Czar Sabbath-school scholars, 21,993, who Dr. A. was invited to accompany him have raised a total sum of contributions as his medical adviser, but declined the of $88,384 ; pages of literature printed, honor. 72,139,832; hospitals and dispensaries under care, 52, with 313,197 patients -American Friends have organized treated. work in various parts of Mexico, Alas- ka, .Tamaica, in India, China and Japan, The financial cxhibit is as follows: in Palestine, and among the Indians. Through members of that church they Receipts from Churches ….•…..•….. S2i·2,OOn are represented in work of other or- H Woman's Boards …….. 302,626 ganizations in Central America, Brazil, " Sabbath-schools……… 30,221 Morocco, and West Africa, and a little " Young People's Societies. 26,694 assistance is given to the Chicago lIe- " Legacies…………….. 146,827 bre w Mission for Jews, and various H Interest, Individuals, and other missions for Jews in large cities. Miscellaneous Sources. 101,369 In addition to these two are on their way to join William Duncan's work in $879,746 Alaska, and another to Sitka.
-Dr. W. R. Lambuth, of the Pres· -Rev. K. Ishisaka, the pastor of byterian Church, South, is quoted as the Japanese Methodist Episcopal saying: "The collections for foreign Church in San Francisco, was in at- missions for 1895 under the assessment tendance upon the recent Methodist of the Board amounted to $240,802, to Conference in Cleveland. He has 340 which we add the sum of $70,348, re- parishioners, and besides the Sunday- ceived by the Woman's Board, making school, his church conducts a night a total of $311,151. With a member· school to teach the English language ship of 1,500,000, tbis makes an avcr- to his countrymen. There is a dormi- age contribution of not quite 20 cents tory in the rear of the chUl'ch, where per member, or less than 2 cents a from 25 to 30 poor people find a place month for foreign missions." to sleep every night.
-The Ohurch at Home and A.broad GREAT BRITAIN. for June gives the names of nearly 50 men and women, and the cost of sending out and sustaining each one, and says they must be despatched.
-The Emperor of China has con- -From the Bible Society warehouse ferred' upon Dr. B. C. Atterbnry, a between 6000 and 7000 volumes go ont medical missionary of the Presbyterian daily. This, however, represents only Board, the Imperjal Order of the Double part of the total output, as a great Dragon. second degree, a distinction many volumes are printed in China, which it is believed has never before India, and elsewhere. The daily cir· culation is about 13.000. Of the an- sion : The total income of the first ten nual output of about 4,000,000 volumes, years, from 1866-75, was some £40,000 ; it is estimated that from 1,000,000 to that of the second ten years was £119,- 1,500.000 are in English. Among the 000; and that of the third, £309,000.
many interesting translations is a pile Last year's income was £42,925 (includ- of Scriptures in Pashtu, the language ing £9150 from America, Australia, of Afghanistan. Each section of the and China) ; this shows a total increase Bible has been written out with a reed over the previous year of £9767.
pen in the Panjab, and been reproduced -The Foreign Mission Board of the by photography in London. For cer- Scottish United Presbyterian Church tain languages photography is found at the recent meeting of Synod reportvery useful in saving compositors' ed that the income of the ordinary forwork and avoiding errors.-Bible Society Reporter. eign mission fund for 1895 was £31,- -Nowhere else in the world are there 378, being a decrease upon the previous under one roof so many copies of a sin- year of £3766. The expenditure was gle book in so many languages as at £34.639, less than that of 1894 by the Bible House in Queen Victoria £2591. In the course of the year they Street, London. appointed 6 additional missionaries, or- dained and medical, 1 missionary teach- -This is concerning the Church Mis- er, and 2 missionary artisans. They sionary Society, and its plans for the have in the field a staff of 154 fullythree years to come: Finally, the com- trained agents, of whom 70 are ordained mittee intend to ask the cooperation of European missionaries, 14 medical misthe archbishops and bishops of the sionaries, 19 ordained native pastors, whole Anglican Communion, and of 12 European evangelists, and 39 r.enana the heads of missionary associations, missionaries, with a contingent of over and other Christian bodies, in making 700 native workers. The total memthis a time, not for the glorification of bership ot their native church is almost one society, but of defin.te advance on 20,000. the part of the whole Church in her divinely appointed task-the evangeli- ASIA. zation of the world. Many other mis- sionary epochs cluster round the close Islam.-The guilty conscience makes of the nineteenth and the beginning of a man suspicious that everybody is try- the twentieth century; the Society for ing to abuse him. The 'rurkish centhe Propagation of Christian Knowl- sors prohibited a chemical book which edge and Society for the Propaga- contained the symbol of water-viz., tion of the Gospel reaching their bi-centenaries in·1898 and 1901, respectively. n.o. These wiseacres read it as sig- nifying, what else could it mean, while the Religious Tract Society and " Hamid II. is naught, a cipher, a no- the Bible Society look forward to the body." No Sultan would stand such celebration of their centenaries in 1899 nonsense in his empire.-Nortl. and and 1904. The committee earnestly de- We8t.
sire that these and all other societies -We learn through the other misand missions laboring faithfully for sionaries that Dr. Kimball is adding to the extension of Christ's kingdom, both her other departments of relief work at at home and abroad. should share in Van the manufacture of plows, shovels, the special blessings which they believe and other agricultural implements, and pray will be granted to them and that the people may have some means to all their work at this memorable time. of raising the next harvest. A priest -These figures will tell something of in speaking of Dr. Kimball called her the growth of the China Inland Mis- " God's little servant." -A remarkable incident is reported burning sun, in a desolate and feverfrom the Harpoot District in Eastern stricken country, and with little appear- Turkey, where on Sunday, at Mezereh, auce of success to cheer them, work three miles from Harpoot, the Protes- steadily on, in faith and prayH. "Howtant Christians were invited to hold a ever little show it may make in the eyes communion service in the Gregorian of men, Sheik Othman is a post of dischurch. Dr. Barnum and other mis- tinction among the strongholds of atsionaries were also invited, and the ser- tack which Christendom has reared vice was crowded, hundreds being amid the heathen world."-Journal des obliged to go away for lack of room. Missions Evangeliques. It is not long since such a mingling of Gregorians and Protestants would have -An affecting incident connected been impossible, and would have been with the massacre at Oorfa was that of deemed a pollution of the old church. a mother, in whose presence her two In the congregation were many whose sons were caught by the mob, while husbands and fathers were among the men with drawn swords, ready to cut recent martyrs for their faith, and also them down, demanded of the young many pastors and teachers from neigh- men that they should accept the Mos· boring villages. The service of song lem faith. But the mother called out was divided between the Gregorians to them, "Die, but don't deny the and Protestants. The Protestant pas- Lord. " They stood firm and were imtor then received some 15 men and mediately cut down. women into the church, and preached a sermon on "Christ our Passover is India.-Some time ago in Calcutta, sacrificed for us." Dr. Barnum fol- there came together 1000 of the most lowed with an address, and with the prominent men of the native races of doxology and benediction the Protes- Hindustan. They were Parsees and tant service closed. But the people Brahmans and Mohammedans and men were requested to remain, aud the of the lower Indian castes. They Gregorian priest spoke most pleasantly spoke the languages of the native races and evangelically, rejoicing in the fel- of the great Indian Empire-the Tamil, lowship they were thus manifesting, the Hindustani, the Hindi, the Telugu, and thanking Dr. Barnum and his fel- the Punjabee, and the rest. But there low-missionaries, who had brought was only one tongue in which they them a new faith and an open Bible, could make themselves intelligible to and were now following up that work each other, and that was the language by bringing relief to suffering widows into which EngIi~hmen have translated and orphans. Other addresses followed the Bible.-J. H. Barrow8. from both Protestants and Gregorians, when this most remarkable service was -The Bengalee, a native Indian pabrought to an end. It is a sign of the per, praises the French administration times in Turkey.-Missionary Herald. in Madagascar, and makes some very disparaging comments upon that of -M. Kriiger, one of the deputation Britain in India in like circumstances. just sent by the Paris Missionary So- This leads the indian Witnes8 to make ciety to Madagascar, took the oppor- this telling rejoinder: "Does the Bengatunityof the steamer's call at Aden to lee really believe that French colonial visit the station at Sheik Othman, administration is more liberal than the where Dr. Mi1Iar and Dr. Young, the British? Would France allow such a successors of Keith Falconer, carryon paper as the Bengalee to be published his mission among the Arabs. M. in Algiers? While France ruled Egypt KrUger writes with enthusiasm of the were there any national congresses work of these two men, who under a there? And how many native gentle-' men are in authority at Tonquin? If France ruled Iudia, would we still have the Nizam ruling at Hyderabad, sionaries, over 50 Christian workers, lind Maharajahs ruling at Mysore, Ba- over 100 students and teachers repreroda, Gwalior, Indore, and a score of senting 16 educational institutions in other places? Verily, prejudice is the province, and over 100 visitors. more obstinate than ignorance. Igno- The hall, which seats about 300, was rance can be overcome, but prejudice crowded at every session, several havis invincible." ing to find seats on the platform steps toward the end." -In some quarters the annual subscriptions to the Dufferin Fund are -A recent visitor to the sehool of nearly all supplied by Europeans, but the Pundita Ramabai at Poonu says: native princes and noblemen have prac- " Of the 57 pupils, 43 are widows and tically provided, it may be said, at 39 are Brahmins. About one half of least four fifths of the sum whiuh has the pupils attend daily prayers in Rama· been given to the Dufferin Fund. The bai's own room, to which the door is last report shows that 4 lakhs have always open and where any may come been spent in buildings in native States, in, and the shy ones are not noticed Baroda, Bhopal, Kapurthala, Kotah, until familiarity has done away with Oodeypur, Mysore, Patiala, Ulwar, the shyness. The Pundita told me that and Tonk have all built and entirely she did not put new pupils at books support hospitals, and Jodhpur has re- for some time, but turned them into the cently declared its intention of also garden to learn of God's wonderful doing likewise. In Gaya over a lakh works. Next they were told about has been lately subscribed for the hos- themselves and their Creator. Then pital by natives. In Dacca the Nawab came the books. "-Woman's W01'k for has given half a lakh for the same pur- Woman. pose, and in 1894-95 all big sums given to the Provincial Committee of Bengal -Only one passenger killed by acciwere entire from nativ!, sources. In dents to trains, out of upward of 34,- the jubilee year, when nearly 5 lakh3 000,000 carried in the course of three was collected in India, Jeypur gave 1 months, is a record that has probably lakh, aud Ul war and the Nizam each not been beaten by any railway system half a lakh, and by far the greater por- in the world. That is the return of a tion of the remaining 3 lakhs was given quarter's working of the Indian railby thousands of natives throughout ways, which ran 17,250,000 of train the country.-EngZi8hman. miles during that period, and carried the enormous number of 1,526,241,428 -A most striking indication of the passenger nnits per mile. The proporchange which has taken place in India tion of passengers injured by accidents as the result of missionary work in that to trains was one to little less than land is mentioned in the Indian Stan- 7,000,000. The total mortality, includdard. Speaking of a three days' con- ing suicides, accidents at level crossvention held at Lahore for the deepen- ings, and deaths resulting from pering of the spiritual life, that journal sonal carelessness, and including accisays: "The conference, which was dents to railway servants, was 160 only, the third of a series of six, was held in while the number injured was 30 more. the Forman Christian College Hall, – Times of India. and was fully attended from the opening session to the closing one. Dele- -In 1880 only one society had misgates from upward of 20 different sta- sionaries in the Nizam's dominions, but tions between Saharanpur and Pesha- to·day 7 societies are represented by 23 war, and representing 9 different soci- men, about 10,000 baptized converts, eties, were present all the time. A and property worth 600,000 rupees. rough calculation gives over 60 mis- -A Presbyterian missionary to Siam pictures the striking difference between the city of Peking is due to the super- .the Presbyterian Mission to the Laos stition that the sacred precincts of the country, Upper Siam, open in 1867, imperial residence must not be contamiand the older mission in Lower Siam, nated by Western improvements. In opened so long ago as 1840. The mis- his decree the emperor says: "Railsionary forces in each region have aver· roads are important to commerce and aged about the same, yet the Laos con- beneficial to the laboring classes. This verts are numbered by the thousand, government having determined upon are constantly increasing, and among its construction, it is desirable that tho them are many ordained native helpers, work be undertaken. " This decree while in the older mission there are also suggests to merchants who have only about 300 converts, and not a means that they build a line from the single ordained native helper. Lu Kou bridge to Hankow.
China.-" Thrifty and patient and -Russel & CO.'8 banking house, in cunning as Jews, the Chinese can ac- Shanghai, whose Chinese loans amountcommodate themselves to any climate ed to $100,000,000 in its fifty years' and to any environment. They can existence, never lost a doUa?' by them. live in Java or in Siberia, in Borneo or This house employed thousands of in Tibet. Unlike the modern Jews, Chinese, and never one betrayed his however, they are more to be feared in trust or became a defaulter. One emindustry than in commerce, for there ploye for twenty-five years never knew is scarcely any form of manual skilled a Chinaman to break his word in a bus:- labor at which they are not capable of ness transaction. killing white competition. Their history in Australia has proved this fact. -The coal-fields of China are said to But in commerce also they are able to be exceeded in value by few in the hold their own against the cleverest world. Some of the richest districts merchants of other races. They are are only about 30 miles from Peking, adepts at combination, excellent finan- the capital. They have hitherto been ciers, shrewd and daring speculators. worked only in the superficial, mole Tho not yet rivals of Europeans in that fashion of the Chinese. As soon as class of production dependent upon the they have penetrated deep enough to application of modern science to manu- encounter water, the Chinese have been facture, they have given proof of abil- accustomed to abandon such mines. ity to master that science whenever the Now, however, stirred by the railway stndy can profit them. They are learn- movement, some of the wealthy, entering thoroughly the commercial condi- prising Chinese have entered into contions of every country which they visit; tracts with foreign engineers to devciop and tho the history of thcir emigration their mines, which give promise of began within recent times, they are al- large yiolds. It may be that the develready to be found in almost every part opment of these immense coal deposits of the world. "-La!cadio Hearn. of China will soon become an impor- tant factor in the commerce of the Far -United States Minister Denby reo East.-Free Ohurch Monthly. ports that the emperor has issued a decree, directing a certain Mr. Hu, a Japan.-In this empire all Christian protege of Prince Kung, to build a rail- bodies together have 111,588 members, road from Tientsin to the Lu Kou 858 missionaries, 331 native ministers, bridge, which is within 8 miles of and 981 catechists. Of the church- Peking. The distance is 70 miles, and members the Catholics have 50,302 (inthe road is to be built at government cluding all baptized children); the expense. That the line does not enter Greek Church, 22,576; and the Protes- tant societies, 38,710. -Christian influence in Japan is in- teaching, and even to some extent de- creasing, and one proof of it is that a cidedly hostile toward it. The very comparatively large number of Chris- success of the decade following 1880 tians belong to the upper classes. One itself awakened a host of active ene- minister, 2 deputy ministers, the chief mies among the adherents of the older judge of the Supreme Court of Justice, religions of the country, who formerly the president, and many members of felt so confident in their strength and the House of DeputiOls are Christians, numbers as to be either indifferent or and many other men of consequence only passively hostile. The most im- are favorable to Christianity. There portant point in Mr. Yokoi's conclu- is a great deal of unrest just now in sions is that the influence of Protestant Japan, and no one knows what changes Christianity on the nation at large is the next year or decade may bring. disproportionately strong compared Perhaps there will be a revolution of a with its numerical strength.-Evangeli- non-political character. Perhaps we cal Churchman.
shall live to see that in the midst of wars and rumors of wars the Prince of AFRWA..
Peace will establish His kingdom in -The circulation of Bibles and por- Japan. – Evangelisches lrfissions-maga· tions issued by the American Bible Sozin. ciety continues to increase. These are -The Nurses' Training School at mainly distributed through the agency Kyoto, commenced and carried on by of the American Presbyterian Mission, Dr. Berry, bas proved an efficient evan- and are all, or nearly all in Arabic. gelical agency. The school now passes Bible circulation among Mohammedans wholly into the hands of the Japanese, in Egypt has but few restrictions. The and Miss Fraser, who has been associ- following figures show how the work ated witb. Dr. Berry, reports that the has expanded within. the last thirty only remaining non·Christian member years: From 1865 to 1874 the number of the graduating class has asked for of copies distributed was 6630; from baptism, and that, including the 13 1875 to 1884 it was 45,586; and from members of this graduating class, there 1885 to 1894 it was 116,474.
will have been sent out 75 nurses, only -Dongola is about 850 miles in a 1 of whom has graduated without being direct line south of Cairo, about 1000 a professing Christian. These nurses miles by river. Wady HaIfa is about are scattered all over t.he country, and 650 miles in a direct line from Cairo most of them are doing excellent work, and Akasheh is 60 miles north of Wady and their influence must be far-reach- HaIfa. This place to which the rail- ing. way is to be built is about 150 miles -A Japanese scholar, Mr. Tokiwo south of Assouan, on the boundary be- Yokoi, has recently written in the In- tween Egypt and Nubia. Dongola is ternational Journal oj Ethics an article 300 miles in an air line north of Kharon the ethical life and conceptions of toum, but quite double the distance by his fellow-countrymen. Passing on to river. The railway at present runs to Protestant Cb.ristianity, which first Girgeh, about half.way from Cairo to gained a footing in the country in 1859. Akasheh. It is difficult to either write Mr. Yokoi says that between 1880 and or speak about distances and directions 1890 most wonderful progress was on the Nile without blundering. The made, the number of converts being river runs the wrong way, and it is alraised from 5000 to 30,000. Since 1890 most impossible to realize northward the revival of the intensely national means down stream.
feeling of the country has made them -The Rev. Charles H. Robinson, less enthusiastic for Western religious sent out by the Hausa Association on a linguistic expedition, returned during from the book of independent nations the year 1895. He first visited Hausa would be a crime at which freemen all colonies in Tripoli and Tunis. Then over the world would stand aghast.
by the rivers Niger and Benne he Now look at a map of Africa, and see reached Kano, the commercial centre what enormous extent of territory al- of Hausa land. The result was 3000 ready belongs to England-most of it new words for a dictionary, materials acquired by her since the last twenty for a Hausa grammar, and native manu- years. The South African Republic scripts containing history and historical and the Orange Free State are, in com- and religious songs. The Hausa, who parison with that territory, mere specks.
occupy the central Soudan, northeast They are surrounded by and englobed of the Niger, are an intelligent people, in those colossal English possessions.
a black race, but not of pure negro They constitute an African Switzer- blood, a people of splendid physique, land. Shall free and powerful Eng- whose manufactures are known all over land be the meanB of annihilating them?
Northern Africa. They were, if their It would be a dark and indelible blot history is correct, at the time of the upon her escutcheon; and all that can Norman conquest of England more be done to hinder the perpetuation of ci vilized than ourselves. so shameful a crime will be a service to right, to justice, and to England's -Dr. W. H. Leslie, of the Baptist own freedom and fame. "
Miisionary Union, writes thus of his work on the Congo: "This work is not -The Zambesl Industrial Mission child's play with over 700 church-mem- has purchased 50,000 acres with which bers, 2 or 3 outside churches, 30 native to sustain a great evangelizing work.
evangelists and teachers, a training school that is continually preparing more, 600 or 700 children in the schools, SLANDS OF THE SEA.
200 in our station schools, 1500 pa- tients a month to doctor, with build-· -We give the following extracts ing, printing, etc. Farther and wider from a letter by a missionary's wife in is the circle of the Gospel light extend- Madagascar: "I have come to the ing from our station. Faster than we capital to attend the first public Protes- can traiu them come the calls for tant service ever held in Madagascar in preachers and teachers. The station the French language. Two pastors of here is like an oasis in a great desert the Reformed Church of France, both the cool waters of which, encroaching truly earnest and consecrated men, upon the waste, change it from a wil- reached Antananarivo three weeks ago.
derness of sin into a veritable garden Their names are M. Lauga, of Rheims, of the Lord." and M. Kriiger, of Paris, who is tutor at the training institution of the Paris -Karl Blind closes his article on Missionary Society. M. Kriiger has " Problems of the Transvaal" in the been laid aside with fever, and it is April North American Review with M. Lauga who has arranged every- these words: "Switzerland, with a thing for this French service, which is population of barely 3,000,000, sur- to be held regularly every Sunday morn- rounded by three great monarchies and ing. There was a difficulty about a republic, possessing enormous mili- hymns, no French hymn-books having tary strength, might be torn to pieces yet arrived, and also about a choir to by them to-morrow if her existence lead the singing. The hymns were were not placed under international taken fro.m a solitary copy of the McAll guarantee. To strike out SwKallr.&ond hymnal waich had found its way into M. Lauga's box, and were printed on being given to the Dayspring Fund.- leaflets at the Friends' printing-press_ ClLri8tian (fu,tlook. 11. Lauga had thought there would probably be only about a dozen wor- -Mrs. Hore, who visited New Guinea shipers, so that he was agreeably sur- on the last voyage of tho John Willprised to find some 25 Frenchmen, in- iafll,8, thus describes the wedding of a cluding M. Laroche, the Resident-Gen- native pastor in a letter to a friend in eral, and several staff officers, and one this country; "We brought the bride French woman, but for whose presence from Mangala to be married to the son I should have found myself the only of a native pastor; she had nover seen woman in the congregation. Six of her intended. She is a very pleasing the Frenchmen-officers, I think-were girl .of about seventeen. and he is a nice Roman Catholics, but had attended M_ youth. On her wedding day, which Lauga's services on board the vessel was the day after we landed her, she during his voyage out, and been so wore a white muslin dress, and her much interested that they took the first headgear was a wreath of artificial opportlinityof coming again on land." flowers, and yards upon yards of rib- -London C hri8tian. bon of all colors. They were much concerned because they could not get -It is said that the substitute for the any mosquito netting for a veil. After marriage ring on the island of Anei- the ceremony, which Mr. Pearse pertyum, New Hebrides, was the" mar· formed, they went to the father's house, riage rope," put round the neck of the where the feast was prepared. All the bride. This she wore all her life, and presents in print which the people had when her husband died she was stran- given her were tied together; no presgled with it by his nearest relative. ent was under 8 yards; they were tied The Rev. John Inglis, who began his at the corners, and came to over 100 work there in 1852. reported that there yards, and the friends took hold, marchwas not a widow on the island, nor any ing round the village, announcing the word in the language for widow. The generosity of the people. Then the law demanded that on the death of her couple were seated in the garden, and husband the wife be strangled, and her the print wrapped round and round body cast into the sea with his. the two, and 6 shirts placed on the knees of the bridegroom. A hat was -A notable mark of progress hIlS then placed on the ground, and money been made in the mission field occupied was thrown into it, lOs., £1, and £2 at by Mr. MHne, in the New Hebrides. a time, and at each fresh gift a man His Christian natives have undertaken shouted out double the value, first givto support their own native teachers. ing an unearthly yell, I suppose to call These number between 30 and 40. The attention. They really got a good bit. full amount for their salaries for the To wind up, they sang hymns and sapast year has been provided on the sev- cred songs for hours." eral islands. The more populous and the richer have helped the less popu- -The Roko of the district at Naboulous and the poorer. Having entered walu. Fiji, has lately erected at his own upon this p!l'th, they will, no doubt, do cost a large Wesleyan church. The their best to pursue it. Should their size of this building is an indication of example be followed by Mr. Michelsen's the congregations which now gather in natives, who are understood to be in once cannibal Fiji. It is 100 feet long even better circumstances than those of by 70 feet wide. About 1000 people Mr. Milne, a considerably less sum will were present at the opening, and the be required to be remitted to the islands services were prolonged throughout an for the support of native teachers, and entire week. the way opened up for a larger support