The Missionary Review of the World — January 1910
A PART OF REV. DONALD FRASER'S AUDIENCE l N LOUDON, LlYINGSTON1A, CENTRAL
This is part of a Saturday congregation at the Annual Convention. On a Sabbath morning last June over 8,000 were present, and during the preceding months there were 2,000 candidates for baptism examined by the missionaries. At this meeting on Saturday, 459 adults ,,,ere baptized and received into the Church. On the following day 1,176 communicants partook of the Lord's Suppe r. (See paKc 5.)
fAfissionary CJ(eview
of the World Published by Funk II.Dd Wagnalls Company (Isaac K. Funk, Pres., A. W. WAgnalls, Vice-Pres., Robert J. Cuddihy, Treu., Roh.lri Scott, Sec',.), 44-6u E. 23d St.• New York.
VOL. XXXIII. No.1 JANUARY, 1910 VOL. XXIII. No. Old Series New Series SIGNS OF THE TIMES A CENTURY OF PROGRESS IN MIS- There are nearly twenty-two thousand SIONS foreign missionaries in the world.
The story of a century of foreign The Bible has been translated into missionary achievement should thrill about five hundred languages and dialects. us with enthusiasm for the tasks which Total foreign missionary contributions are yet before US: amount to nearly $25,000,000 annually.
1810 Thousands of medical missionaries in the heathen lands treat three million pa- Nearly every country in Asia and tients a year. Africa was closed to the Gospel. There are 400 mission hospitals and The Church did not believe in foreign over 500 orphanages and asylums in formissions. eign lands, operated by missionaries.
There were practically no Protestant There are over six thousand unmar- Christians in heathen lands. ried women missionaries to heathen wo- men and children. Only one hundred foreign missionaries had been sent out. There are about ninety-three thousand native pastors, evangelists, etc., working The Bible was translated into only among their own people. sixty-five languages. There are nearly 30,000 schools and col- Only a few thousands of dollars were leges conducted by Protestant mi~sion given yearly for foreign missions. aries in foreign lands.
There were no medical missionaries. There are over 160 publishing houses There were no mission hospitals or and mission presses, and 400 Christian orphanages. periodicals are published on the mission There was no native Christian min- fields. istry. Missionary work was not recognized Thousands of college students are on in American and British colleges. the mission field, and thousands are pre- There were no unmarried women mis- paring to go. sionaries, and no organized work for women. And yet to-day one billion people There were no mission presses or agen- are still ignorant of the Gospel of cies for preparing and distributing Chris- Jesus, the Christ, the Son of God and tian literature in non-Christian lands. Savior of the world.
1910 THE FULNESS OF TIME IN MISsiONS Practically every nation in the world No student of the march of events is open to missionaries. can fail to see that, in the providence of God, there are simultaneous signs All evangelical churches are interested of 'a present world-wide opportunity in mISSIOnS. To speak against missions for the Church. The pentecosts in is counted a disgrace, and a sign of ig- mission fields, the reform movements norance. in Asia and Africa, the opening of More than two million Protestant Christians have been gathered in heathen lands-besides all who have died in the faith. closed doors, the growing sympathy intelligent knowledge of Christ and with the missionary propaganda at His salvation.
nome and abroad, the active campaigns Dr. Zeller, director of the Statis- among students, young people and tical Bureau in Stuttgart, Germany, women and laymen and the vast in~ estimates that there are 1,544,510,000 crease of missionary literature point people in the world, of whom 534,940,~ to the fact that God's time to strike 000 are Roman, Greek and Protestant has come. Christians, 175,290,000 are Mohamme- Mr. John R. Mott calls attention to dans, 10,860,000 are Jews, and 823,- the present crisis, which he declares to 420,000 are heathens. Of these last, be unprecedented because of the stu~ 300,000,000 are Confucians, 214,000,- pendous changes of an educational, 000 are Brahmans, and 121,000,000 social, economic, moral and religious Buddhists, with other bodies of lesser character actually in progress in India, numbers. This means that, out of Turkey, Persia, China, Korea and every 1,000 of the earth's inhabitants, Japan. The predictions of five years 346 are nominal Christian, 114 are ago have been more than fulfilled. Mohammedan, 7 are Israelite, and The changes in Turkey are almost un~ 533 are of other religions.
believable; Persia's destiny will be How overwhelming these figures, determined in the next few years and and what a loud call they contain for Russia is still in the balance. In Af- prayer and effort. It is evident that rica, pagamsm is doomed and is al- the world is a long way from being ready dying. The contest is between converted, or even evangelized.
Islam and Christianity, fatalism with AN EXAMPLE IN LARGE GIVING the worship of the false prophet The will of John S. Kennedy, Esq., and liberty with the worship of of New York, who died on October 31, God as revealed in Christ. There is recalls a group of the most liberal also a rising tide of nationalism in benefactions that we ever remember South America and a desire to leave to have seen. The departed banker the superstition and formalism of gives half of his fortune of $60,000,- paganized Christianity for the light 000 to American charitable institu- and liberty of the Gospel. tions. To the Presbyterian Boards of There is a "fulness of time" as truly Foreign Missions, Home Missions, as there was in the day of Christ. Church Erection, Presbyterian Hos- God is evidently preparing the world pital, New York, he bequeaths each for a forward movement of the $2,500,ooo-the largest bequest to such Church and at the same time is pre- purposes on record. Then to the paring the Church for advance. Those Church extension work of New York who fail to join in the onward march Presbytery, Robert College, Constan- will be left outside at the Bridal Sup- tinople, and United Charities of New per of the King. York, each $5°0,000; and to the WHAT REMAINS TO BE DONE American Bible Society and Presby- terian Aid for Colleges, each $75°,000.
One-third of the people of the world These are only the major legacies and are nominally Christian, but in reality those to missionary and distinctly re- not more than one in thirty have an ligious institutions. Lesser amounts
OF THE TIMES
to similar purposes range from $10,000 ing-point," led to a sort of symposium to $100,000, with a most discreet in which bishops and prebendaries took and discriminating selection of the ob- part. All admit the decreased church- jects of his benefaction. going; and sevt;ral causes of decline Such an example of liberality seems were assigned, such as "the develop- to us to inaugurate a new era. When ment of locomotion," "love of pleas- before have three great mission so- ure," "irreverent handling of Scrip- cieties received an aggregate .sum of ture," "week-end excursions," "a nig- seven millions and a half? It imposes gardly spirit in rich churchgoers,"
a grave responsibility on these organi- and one party says that "the vocabu- zations to determine how such vast lary of the churches has become sound- sums shall be so disbursed as to avoid ing brass."
waste, and at the same time to escape Of the decrease in church attend- the worse error of promoting a lower ance, admitted by all, one cause, not standard of giving among Christians mentioned, may have more to do than at large. any or all of the others; namely, the THE CHANGING SENTIMENT decline in worship, in its Scriptural Sydney Smith sneered at the early sense. Some one says that "let us go advocates of missions as "apostates of into the house of the Lord" is now the anvil and the 100m" ; he put Carey changed to "let us go to Dr. -'s and his class in the pillory and then church," or "let us go and hear So- shot at them the arrows of a pitiless and-So," the thought of meeting mockery and ridicule. To-day, the God, and offering to Him worship in Church and the world as well do praise and prayer, and reverent hear- homage to the names and memories ing of His word, being almost lost in of the humble working men who left the seeking of entertainment in lis- their shoemaker's bench, weaver's tening to some human orator.
loom, blacksmith's forge, and shep- This is so common and prevalent herd's fold, as the primitive disciples that, in consequence, the elements of forsook their ships and nets and tax- worship proper, reduced practically to bench to undertake the world's evan- a minimum, are treated as unimportant gelization. Verily, the apostates of "preliminaries," performed too often the anvil and the 100m have become in a careless and slovenly fashion, as apostles of a new and grander era in something formal, to be got out of the world-wide mISSIons, and Sydney way. Two inevitable effects follow: Smith himself rather is in the pillory. first, the churchgoer becomes increas- When God turns the wheel, history ingly indifferent and insensible to the makes rapid revolutions, and the claims of divine worship as such, and Nemesis of Providence handles a morbidly bent on hearing some at- scourge of no small cords but of scor- tractive and eloquent speaker, and, pion tails. naturally, if he does not care for hear- IS CHRISTIAN FAITH LOSING ing the preacher that is available, GROUND? either stays away altogether or goes The remark of a clerical visitor con- as the caprice takes him. There is no cerning Christianity in Britain, that sense of obligation Godward.
"it is rapidly approaching the vanish- A second result follows: God Him-
self, dishonored by this loss of sensi- has churchgoing been considered as bility and conscientiousness as to His less imperative? Does not the one 'own rightful claims upon human fact imply and involve the other?
homage, withholds spiritual blessing Were there to-day a general revival and practically withdraws from such of the sense of God's presence in the assemblies as do gather that manifes- assembly, and a hearty return to the tation of His presence which is the worship of the Lord, with a desire and highest charm and power of church determination that it should be in the life, and the only attraction that per- beauty of holiness; were there once manently proves effective. more an exaltation of worship to its It would not be surprizing if this true place as the grand end of meeting were not one cause only, but the main together on the Lord's day, man's cause, of declension in churchgoing. pursuit of worldly pleasure on that So long as proper stress is laid on the day would gradually give place to a worship of God, and this is constantly returning sense of obligation to render uplifted as the grand purpose and ob- unto the Lord the glory due unto His ject of the Christian assembly, the at- name. Let the conscience once again.
tendant becomes more and more a awake, and motoring and cycling, worshiper, and learns to think of wor- golfing and baseball, Sunday travel ship as foremost, and man's utterances and excursions, social visiting and all subordinate. The sense of God is not similar invasions of sacred time, would lost and the sense of duty is not sac- have a new and counteractive restraint rificed. Both preacher and hearer are in a growing and wholesome reverence much the better for thus magnifying for spiritual things. But while the the divine element and minifying the present drift continues, there is no human; and the more God is honored hope of a reform, further downward by a worshiping assembly, the more decline is inevitable, and the question He honors and blesses the worshipers. is one which demands prompt and Another kindred result follows: prayerful attention.
"The Beauty of Holiness"-the only beauty of which God is jealous in WHAT GOD IS DOING IN AFRICA worship is increasingly cultivated; the Fifty years ago Missionary Krapf beauty of architecture and art, music was ridiculed because he dared to talk and eloquence, furniture and garniture, of a chain of mission stations ex- does not engross the mind and dis- tending through Central Africa from place that higher beauty which alone the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean. To- makes the sanctuary permanently at- day the chain exists.
tractive, as a reflection of Heaven A little more than fifty years ago upon earth. David Livingstone was laboring in We are slow to learn that all de- Central Africa with very slight re- partures from a divine pattern react sults, and little encouragement. To- to the degeneration of church life and day the Livingstone Mission holds a the decline of church power. Never, convention attended by several thou- in modern times, has worship been so sand Christian natives who camped in little treated as important. Is it not booths erected in the woods. A few inevitable that in consequence never months ago more than 300 were re-·
19IO] SIGNS OF THE TIMES
ceived into the Church in a single day outskirts of the crowd could be heard and 7,000 were present at one service, over all the gathering, and had to be and twenty-four native teachers removed by its mother to the trees in offered themselves as missionaries. the distance. During the service 1,100 Thirty years ago Uganda was a catechumens took their vows and sang heathen state where cruelty reigned their hymn of consecration, creating supreme. To-day 360,000 of its in- a profound impression upon the gath- habitants, more than one-half of its ered throng. The whole convention population, are Christians. Not long was a mighty demonstration of the ago Dahomey and Ashantiland were triumph of the Gospel and of the won- full of bloodshed and murder. To- derful changes wrought by it in Af- day the message of peace in Christ rica, the land of vast opportunity.
Jesus has penetrated even their gloom THE KONGO QUESTION and hundreds are faithful Christians. With the death of Leopold, King During the first week of June, 1909, of Belgium, on December r6, it the South Africa Dutch Reformed Mission held its annual convention at is hoped that the Kongo question Loudon, in the Angoni hills, west of will be satisfactorily settled. The Lake Nyassa, and immense congrega- verdict of Sir Edward Grey has tions gathered, so that on Sabbath been endorsed by Earl Percy and apmorning over 8,000 were present. proved by the House of Commons. In Nearly 2,000 men and"women applied the Berlin Treaty of 1885, Britain unfor baptism or for entrance to the dertook "to watch over the preservacatechumenate, and they were only tion of the native races and the amethose who had already been examined lioration of the moral and material and passed by the committee of fifty condition of their existence." The elders. More than a score of out- reforms demanded by Sir Edward schools were shut off, because a week Grey are only the minimum of what before the convention the government is essential, but diplomacy has failed applied the sleeping-sickness regula- to secure them, and the Belgian Govtions and declared Angoniland a closed ernment has proved as elusive and country. The many who were already evasive as King Leopold. Despite on their way from the distant villages smooth words, the evils in question reof the Loangwa plain had to be turned main unchecked. The Belgian Coloback. On Saturday 683 heathen nial Minister returned from a tour of adults and children were baptized, and inspection on the Kongo, to laud the it took four hours to complete the achievements of the administration service. On Sabbath 1,176 commu- and flatly deny the existence of the nicants sat down at the Lord's table, alleged abuses! The only "reform"
and at the great public service which of any consequence is a proposal to followed the communion service and throw open to all traders a district of was held in the open air a mass of country not hitherto appropriated to more than 8,000 crowded closely to- any of the privileged companies; but gether (see frontispiece). So rapt for the robbery, enslavement and op- was the attention and so quiet were pression of the natives there is no the hearers, that a baby crying on the promise of redress.
On November 19, a great represent- against consecration of children to ative meeting was held in Albert Hall, lives within the precincts of the tem- London, to appeal to the conscience of ples, which seemed to be considered the nation and of the world not to almost equivalent to lives of immoralabandon the native peoples of the ity, were earnestly urged. Kongo to the tender mercies of the present Belgian administration. CHANGES IN ISLAM Out of all these appeals, by tongue Prof. George Adam Smith exand pen, through the literature of fact presses his belief that the recent liband fiction, hope begins to emerge. eralizing movement in the Moslem What Sir Conan Doyle calls "the countries of the near East means "a greatest crime in the history of the change of the whole atmosphere in world" seems about to be at least re- which Islam has lived and flourished strained, if not stopt. The new Bel- for centuries." This new atmosphere gian King can not disregard the voice is the great opportunity of Christianof outraged humanity. Albert, if not ity-the greatest opportunity which as able as his late uncle, is younger, has ever opened to it in the East since and it is hoped will prove vastly more Carey and his followers began work moral and unselfish as a man and under the Danish flag in Bengal. Are ruler. In his Guildhall speech lately, we ready for such an opening and the prime minister of England spoke such a call? "Shall we be true to our words of assurance that the end of belief that God is in Christ reconthis long history of outrage is at hand. ciling the world unto Himself; that in Let us pray that it may be. Christ's teaching we have a fuller, richer knowledge of God, His nature THE AWAKENING OF INDIA and His purposes for men than Jew, Mohammedan or Buddhist possest?" How much Christian ideas and thought are commencing to permeate One of the great contrasts between the moral consciousness of the people Mohammedan and non-Mohammedan in India, in spite of the earnest efforts lands has, heretofore, been in the stress of the native leaders to hinder it, is laid upon the importance of a liberal remarkable. A social conference was education and the lack of opportunities held in Madras a short time ago, ac- for women in Moslem countries. With cording to the annual report of the the new constitution in Turkey has Leipsic Missionary Society. It was come a complete change, so that it is well attended by Indian women of the possible to-day for a Turkish woman higher classes, and the subjects dis- not only to go to college, but with the cust were of a wide range. The abo- help of the government. When the lition of caste was proposed and edu- American College for Girls at Constancation of women was demanded. Re- tinople began its new school year, marrying of widows and reform of among the thirty Turkish students enthe system of marriage, especially con- rolled were five whose entire expenses cerning the age of the marrying par- are paid by the government, which deties (men to be allowed to marry at mands nothing in return but a pledge eighteen, girls at twelve) , were greatly that they will become teachers for five favored, and precautionary laws years after their graduation. Truly, a new day has dawned in Turkey.
A HALF-CENTURY OF PRAYER, WITH SIGNS
BY THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF In November, 1858, a little over Spain imprisoned a man for daring to fifty years ago, a notable call sell a Bible, or preach the Gospel.
to united prayer in behalf of France was practically infidel, and the world was issued by the Germany permeated with rationalism; Lodiana Mission, in India. This ap- and, over a large part of the mission peal made such an impression or.. the field, the doors were shut and locked Church at large that it led to the by a more or less rigid exclusion and setting apart of the first week of J anu- caste system. Now the changes, on ary, of the following year, for that every side, are so remarkable and purpose; and, tho somewhat modi- so radical that, to one who should fied in observance by the adoption of suddenly come out of this middle a more general and comprehensive period of the last century, or wake program, the annual "Week of from another Rip Van Winkle sleep, Prayer" in January is still kept the world would be unrecognizable.
throughout Christendom, the subjects He who holds the keys of the two- for each day being recommended by leaved gates has been unlocking them, the Evangelical Alliance. opening up all lands to the Messenger Of those who sent forth this call of the Cross. Even in the Eternal to prayer, only one or two survive; City, where, a half-century ago, a but it would be impossible to measure, visitor had to leave his Bible outside or even gather up, the fruit of this the walls, there are Protestant chapels seed-sowing of faith. The Hearer of by the score, and a free circulation of Prayer, who inspired the invitation, the Scriptures.
has crowned it with blessing. It It is a curious coincidence, full of everywhere met a cordial response; it deep significance, that, in 1747, about awoke the Church to new life and one hundred and ten years previous, zeal; and so remarkable and world- Jonathan Edwards had sent out his wide have been the results of this famous Call to Prayer, to which can prayer union, that since this new con- be traced all that marvelous spiritual cert of supplication began to be ob- awakening which marked the whole served, not one nation has remained latter half of the eighteenth century, untouched in its religious life and his- and gave rise to the modern mission- tory; the whole face of the world has ary revival. And it will greatly en- been changed, if not its heart. A courage every devout praying soul to half-century ago, China and Man- cast a glance over the equally marvel- c!luria, Japan and Korea, Turkey and ous results of the Lodiana call. We Arabia, and even the vast continent of reprint in full the original document: Africa, were sleeping-hermit nations, An invitation to prayer, addrest to the locked in the cell of long seclusion and Church of Christ throughout the world; exclusion. Central Asia was com- being an extract from the minutes of the paratively unexplored, as was Central twenty-third annual meeting of the Lo- Africa. In many lands, Satan's long diana Mission: occupation was undisputed and his empire unmolested. Papal countries Whereas our spirits have been greatly were as intolerant as pagan; Italy and refreshed by what we have heard of the Lord's dealings with His people ill America, therefore,
Resolved, First, that we hereby pub- hensive view of those colossal changes licly acknowledge the debt of gratitude which led Mr. Gladstone to remark we owe to Him, and our obligations to that, within a single decade of years, live more than ever, not unto ourselves, there had been more progress in some but unto Him who died for us. directions than during all the ages preceding. This progress it is im- And in view of our own spiritual ne- possible to realize, or even recognize, cessities, and of the wants of the perish- until some leading events are mar- ing millions about us, and in the hope shaled in line, afid seen in their mutual of obtaining similar blessings for this connection, succession, relation. At- land. tempts have been made to frame a chronological table of the main de- Resolved, Second, that we will do our velopments in the missionary field, in best to get union meetings for prayer order to get a view of the links in this for the outpouring of the Spirit, estab- chain of events.* But so many items lished at our respective stations, and also deserve record that any such attempt at other stations wherever we may find must be, at best, only a partial suc- two or three willing to meet together in cess. One table we have consulted the name of Christ. does not even mention this Lodiana appeal, which belongs in the forefront And, further, being convinced from the of such modern events, and it is not signs of the times that God has still unlikely that in our present attempt large blessings in store for His people, at a comprehensive survey, we may and f,gr our ruined race, and that He overlook what some may see as prom- now seems to be ready and waiting to inent peaks in the historic horizon. bestow them as soon as asked, therefore But even a hasty look over this broad landscape of the half-century must Resolved, Third, that we appoint the impress one with the amazing answers second week in January, 1860, beginning to the prayer implied and suggested with Monday the 8th, as a time of special in this circular-letter of fifty years prayer that God would now pour out His ago. At least two hundred and fifty Spirit upon all flesh, so that all the ends of the most memorable advances of of the earth might see His salvation; the missionary host, and of the na- that on the first day, that is, on Monday, tions whose evangelization has been the 8th, be a holy convocation for solemn undertaken, belong to the five decades fasting, humiliation and prayer, and that since the Lodiana letter was pub- on the fast day-that is, Sabbath, the lished to the world. For example, the 14th-be a holy convocation for thanks- very year of the appeal, 1858, was , giving and praise; that the intervening memorable for tha downfall of the time be spent in private and social exer- East India Company, so long a prac- cises of prayer and praise as the cir- tical barrier to missions; for the lay- cumstances of each community may dic- ing of the first ocean cable, that living tate; that all God's people, of every name ligature between transatlantic mem- and nation, of every continent and island, bers of the world's organism; it had be cordially and earnestly invited to unite with us in a similar observance of * Compare "Missionary Annals of the Nineteenth that time; and that from the receipt of this invitation, onward, all be requested Century," D. L. Leonard. in their secret, family and public devo- tions, habitually to entreat the Lord to pour out upon all His people so much of the spirit of grace and supplication as to prepare them for such an observance of the time designated as may meet with His approval and secure His blessing.
Lodiana, November 29th, 1858.
By a rapid glance over this past half-century, we may get a compre- This table includes only Missions to non-Christian and non-Protestant peoples, and so omits work done in non-Papal Europe, while covering that in behalf of Indians, Chinese, and Japanese in the Unit~d States. The figures are derived almost wholly from annual reports, and relate in the main to 1909, tho sometimes the year includes a part of 1908. The aim has been to leave the fewest possible blanks, and hence where the latest official figures were not at hand, conservative estimates have been made, based upo~ former reports.- REV. D. L. LEONARD, D.D.
• NAKEa OF SOCIBTIEI 1 Foreign Countries In Which Missions Are Sustained, and Number of Mi.sions (Abbreviated) en American Board ……………. . 1810 $947,163 $262.764 581 170 186 193 1,130 263 4,564 5,694 1,502 73,671 5,914 132,119 1,483 70,979 S. A~rica, Turkey, India, China, Japan, Micro- Baptist Missionary Union …….. . 1814 1,151,354 8,065 250,000 1,819 'nessa, Mex., Spain, Austria, Philippines (20). Southern Baptist Convention •.••.. 1845 133,590 232 23 238 144 637 340 4,980 5,617 2,777 147,053 2,905 Free Baptistl ……………… . 1833 460,798 35,000 182 55,253 Bur~ Ind!~, ~hina, Japan, Afnca, France, 34,658 40,288 95 9 95 32 231 98 375 606 608 16,596 166 2,375 103 ~patn, PhilipplOes (14).
1,368 9 o 9 9 27 10 109 130 18 1,368 4,596 ChlOa, Japan, Africa, Italy, Mexico, Brazil, Cuba (7).
4,615 India (Southern Bengal), Africa (2).
Nltional Baptist Convention •••••. 1880 23,537 1,000 52 83 104 24 263 47 130 393 40 8,074 300 20,000 35 1)00 Africa, West and East, Welt Indies, South Seventh·Day Baptists ••••••.•••.. 1842 12,000 2,000 3 1 3 2 9 1 14 23 3 120 6 300 America. 6 200 China (1.) Christian (Disciples of Christ) .••. 1875 450,106 54,829 62 82 70 67 281 170 815 1,096 280 16,393 2,537 47,000 113 7,017 Chi!,a, India. Japan, Turkey, Africa, Philip- 15,218 pmes (6). Christian Convention •••….••••. 1.,886 642 8 o 6 2 16 7 25 41 40 913 95 2,000 2 270,998 13 Japan (Tokyo, etc.) (1). Christian and Missionary Alliance.. 1897 708,928 7,700 70 50 90 86 296 30 350 646 103 4,070 594 9,500 95 4,350 W. Cen~ral Afric~, India, China, Japan, South Protestant Episcopal •••••••••••. · 1835 82,000 Society of Friends ………….. · 1871 30,474 89,771 75 50 59 77 261 147 75~ 1,020 391 12,303 1,643 28,000 207 Amenca, PalestlOe, etc. (8). Evanrellcal Association ••.••.••••. 1876 7,928 Africa, China, Japan, Haiti, Mexico, Alaska Lutheran, General Council ••••••• ,. 1869 34,167 9,583 34 10 24 35 103 10 195 298 87 4,166 360 9,000 40 Lutheran, General Synod .••••••. ,. 1837 85,300 (6). 1,185 7 o7 8 22 24 48 70 27 995 111 2,700 3 1,834 MeXICO, Alaska, Jamaica, India, China, Japan, 1,220 9 o 8 7 24 2 327 351 278 7,521 1,000 14,919 188 Cuba. Armenia, Palestine (8). 25 Japan. 19,000 16 o 8 15 39 2 644 683 520 13,500 218 45,000 301 5,598 India (Madras), Porto Rico (2). 8,511 India (Madras), West Africa (2).
United Norwegian …………… ,. 1895 65,187 315 16 3 17 12 48 7 101 149 100 866 299 1,540 11 463 Madagascar, China (2).
Five Norwegian Synods .•…•.•. ,. 63,501 2,130 20 57 14 10 101 12 456 557 135 3,309 900 15,590 61 1,515 Methodist Episcopal•••••••••.••. ,. 1819 2,019,084 19,000 314 58 311 345 1,028 619 8,391 9,419 1,013 247,859' 17,157 165,000 2,318 74,343 China, Korea, Japan, India, Africa, Bulgaria, Methodist Episcopal, South ……. , 1846 831,998 70,362 115 Mexico, Soudi America, Pnilippines (22). African Methodist Episcopal. …. ,. 1847 15,480 48,949 101 8 91 108 308 90 689 997 526 23,454 2,430 10,000 13 9,572 China, Korea, Japan, Mexico, Brazil, Cuba (6). 4,500 5 9 7 o 21 11 68 89 84 2,597 214 750 Africa. West Indies, South America (4).
Free Methodist…………….. ". 1882 53,209 I910 20 10 28 23 81 1 90 171 92 1,004 326 1,034 26 1,232 Africa, India, China, Japan (4). Methodist Protestant ••.•••.••••••,. 1888 24,630 8 2 410 Japan (Yokohama) (1). 990 4 o4 o 8 20 28 22 790 210 2,500 Presbyterian ……………….. ,. 1837 1,487,160 342,483 299 98 327 212 946 263 3,442 4,388 1,927 76,801 14,409 150,000 1,446 101,756 India,. Siam, China, Japan, Korea, W. Africa, Presbyterian, South………….. ,. 1861 412,156 Reformed Presbyterian •••••••••• ,. 1836 36,904 23,260 85 40 86 69 280 12 193 472 453 12,317 2,219 29,000 46 SyrIa, Persia, Spanish Am., Philippines (25). 3,790 China, • Korea, Japan, Africa, Italy, Mexico, BraZIl, Cuba (8). 1,500 14 1 12 7 34 1 53 87 16 458 49 1,200 17 966 Asia Minor, Syna, Cyprus, China (4).
Ulited Presbyterian ………….. ,. 1859 340,935 191,210 44 16 52 65 177 77 1,300 1,477 634 27,662 2,860 67,365 386 27,677 India (Panjab), Egypt, Eastern Sudan (3).
Reformed (Dutch) •••••….••••• ,. 1832 205,373 10,443 32 10 32 37 111 40 72~ 839 314 5,301 308 16,000 223 9,486 India, China, Japan, Arabia (4).
Refo.rmed (German) .•••••..•.••• ,. 1878 95,000 6,840 18 2 18 12 50 13 7~ 128 50 2,250 87 5,000 7 640 Japan (Tokyo, Sendai, etc.), China (2). German Evangelical Synod .•••.•. ,. 1867 28,419 1,137 8 1 5 2 16 o 55, 71 51 1,894 130 3,181 42 1,675 India (Central Provinces) (1).
United Brethren in ·Christ …….. , • 1853 100,459 7,457 23 2 20 10 55 17 12~ 179 190 3,253 874 10,643 31 1,478 West Africa, Japan, Porto Rico, China, Philip. Canada Baptist ……………… ,. 1873 87,313 pines (5). 2,200 27 o 22 43 82 8 22Q 502 184 6,738 671 12,152 136 3,128 India (Telugus), Bolivia, (2).
Canada Methodist…………….. 1872 356,210 8,290 72 16 77 43 209 13 150 359 174 6,230 572 14,000 58 2,630 Japan (Tokio), China, American Indiana (3).
'.
Canada Presbyterian ••••••.•.••. ,. 1844 233,272 14,138 72 23 76 68 239 10 38~ 624 235 7,809 976 15,000 189 12,914 China, India, New Hebrides, West Indies, For.
Other American Societies……… ,. …… 554,396 64,616 203 96 164 81 544 63 59? 1,143 270 32,241 2,360 57,000 245 10,094 mosa, Korea, American Indians (7).
– – · 1 – – – – · · – – – – – 1 – – – – – – – – – –.– – – . ~. – – . – – —–·—–1——-1——·1——- Totals for America ………… ,. …… 1,317,405 1,375,308 2,630 928 2,270 1,848 7,677 2,416 30,47~ 38,347 13,144 769,576 70,992 1,244,480 9,949 437,138 —:—–1——1—· – – – – – – — — —- — — Totals for America………….. 1908 1 10,061,433 1,623,562 2,086 624 2,169 1,754 6,611 2,216 29,11~ 35,704 12,852 736,978 87,075 1,155,789 9,315 360,233 —–1— –. – – – – —- — —- — — 1—–1—- —–1—- Baptist Society (England)……… 1792 452,945 35,670 167 30 120 11 328 58 571 905 1,119 20,319 1,392 ~.: 60,000 185 20,302 India, China. Palestine, Central Africa, West London Society (L. M. S.)…….. 1795 790,555 Inaies (8). 203,860 167 46 179 82 474 971 6,865 7,339 1,730 84,826 1,920 295,530 1,677 80,477 China, India, Africa, Madagascar, Polynesia (9).
Church Society (c. M. S.)…….. 1799 1,938,355 219,360 414 152 386 438 1,390 394 8,394 9,784 2,715 99,680 4,820 351,320 2,556 151,777 Persia, Palestine, China, ,Japan, India, Africa, Propagation Society (S. P. G.)….. 1701 1,023,330 57,240 4,216 248,000 640 North America, Austral.., etc. (30). Universities' Mission………….. 1858 247,330 656 50 380 200 1,286 222 1,640 2,926 1,624 135 200,420 4,890 685 15,000 45,620 India, China, Japan, Malaysia, Africa, West 3,565 32 30 0 59 121 22 263 384 93 Indiee, -. (32).
8,160 Africa (Lake Nyasa and Zanzibar) (2).
South American Society……….. 1844 82,125 102,315 14 17 20 22 73 0 95 168 58 780 0 1,890 21 875 South America (3).
Society of Friends. ………. ….. 1866 167,050 21,320 37 5 34 26 102 460 1,219 1,321 264 3,123 356 14,168 138 7,012 Palestine, India, China, Natal, Madagascar (4).
Wesleyan Methodist Society.. …… 1813 821,570 1,014,560 307 13 166 11 497 305 4,704 5,201 3,284 116,494 4,925 491,011 1,671 112,204 IndIniaalieCs,hIintaaIy,ASfrpiacian (West and South), West (29). 44,210 7,650 20 0 17 2 39 4 26 65 53 2,500 250 4,000 20 700 Africa (1). Primitive Methodist••••.••…….. , 1870 United Methodists (Free)……… 1857 77,590 6,685 48 2 40 8, 98 15 655 753 580 18,464 2,121 39,358 22 1,651 China, East and West Africa, Jamaica (4).
Presbyterian Church of England …. 1847 191,390 22,500 28 19 31 34 112 44 440 554 326 10,098 945 50,000 100 4,500 India, China, Malaysia, Formosa, Syria (5).
Welsh Calvinistic……………… 1840 91,705 11,306 16 0 15 7 38 22 480 518 486 9,258 634 29,277 415 9,158 N. E. India, Assam, France (Brittany) (2).
China Inland Mission ………….. , 1865 406,102 14,457 79 287 250 292 908 15 1,167 2,075 1,001 20,993 2,540 83,972 216 4,076 China (Eighteen Provinces) (18).
Established Church of Scotland…. 1829 264,340 53,320 29 26 32 61 157 14 585 742 230 5,653 776 18,000 290 14,730 India, East Central Africa, Palestine, China United Free Church••••••••••••••• I 1843 661,850 47,211 2,483 27,302 1,672 (4). Prelbyterian Church of Ireland….. I 1840 105,765 481,345 145 63 148 126 482 54 4,205 4,687 1,545 1,249 16,250 3,100 204 95,118 India, Africa, Arabia, Palestine New Heb· 16,380 26 11 23 13 73 9 689 762 205 rides, Manchuria, Japan, West Indies (12).
6,485 China, India (Gujerat), Syria (3).
I Other British Societies •..•••••…. 1,······ 2,265,351 209,150 333 996 887 863 3,079 70 6,800 9,879 1,472 102,150 3,100 155,000 687 41,830 Total Britiah Societies •••••••..• I!~ 9,584.653 1–2-,6-7-0-,7-7-3-1–2-,5-1-8 -1-,-74-7- -2-,-72-8- -2-,2-5-5- —9-,2-5-7- –2-,6-7-9' -3-8-,8-0-4' -4-8-,0-6-3' -1-6-,7-8-5 -6-06-,2-3-9' -3-2,-4-12- 1–1,-90-0-,0-7-8-1–1-0-,6-4-9-1—60-4-,-67-5 1 – – 1 – – – – 1 1 – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – -~— – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – . Totals for British Societies …… I 1908 9,265,447 2,452,320 2,061 1,736 2,433 2,087 8,328 1,915 46,359 54,827 15,016 604,227 37,842 1,364,326 10,229 567,723 1 Basel Society …………………… 11 1815 417,072 1 – – -7-5-,4-18- -1-5-3' –7-1. -1-38- –24- –3-8-6' –60- –1-,5-8-4' -1-,9-70- –72-2 32,863 2,769 59,158 –6-5-7'1—- -,7-02 South India, China, West Africa (3). 32 Berlin Society………………. 1824 225,861 67,182 118 16 107 27 268 23 982 1,250 508 31,369 1,720 52,016 686 12,350 Africa (East and South), Chinl (3).
Breklum (Schleswig·Holstein)…… 1877 51,207 942 17 0 12 0 29 0 99 128 112 1,372 340 6,500 78 1,570 India (Telugus) (1).
Gossner'a Society……………… 1836 81,315 4,622 46 6 37 5 94 37 978 1,072 519 27,673 1,896 . 90,240 194 7,230 India (Ganges, Chota Nag'pore) (1).
Hermannsburg Society…………. 1849 120,150 21,300 65 2 64 4 135 5 518 653 160 39,315 925 74,000 191 9,720 India, South Africa, Persia (3).
Leipsic Society……………….. 1836 123,435 13,490 59 10 52 16 137 18 225 362 325 9,897 219 20,274 349 14,745 South India, Burma, British and German East Africa (4). I ndia (Lad ak), S outh A f Er isckail mAo,usItnrdaliiaan, South Moravian Church……………… 1732 208,450 175,200 156 38 177 14 385 , 35 489 876 1,016 33,079 1,708 102,381 305 26,884 America, We st Indies, . (9).
North German Society…………. 1836 45,494 8,230 16 2 10 7 35 2 63 98 141 3,480 430 15,200 141 5,162 West Africa (Slave Coast) (1).
Rhenish Society (Barmen)…….. 1828 265,140 31,615 171 23 169 25 388 38 2,694 2,898 611 63,562 5,872 137,232 654 34,745 Africa, Borneo, Sumatra, New Guinea, China 285 557 (5).
—zos Other German Societies………… …… 322,840 P 80 272 13. 7,917 9,864- 8,172 721 15,700 118 4,913 31,420 110 45 140 –s:!6 ·167'["2.i31~· Total German Societiel•••••••••• -..-..-.-. 1,869,964 '1—42-9-,4-1-9-1–9-1-1 4,254 -2-50-,7-8-£ -1-6-,6-00– –57-2-,7-0-1-1–3-,3-7-3-1—1-50-,-02-1 Totals for German Societies•••… =~19~0~8=:==1=,=65=0='2=5=0=:::====4=I=l'=73=3=-I–9-2-2 238 862 167 1– 2,341 223 8,094. 10,413 4,693 1_2_4_2_,2_8_9_1_-_-2=4=,1=6=8:1~~-5_-5_7~,-3_-1_4~-:_-~~-3_-,_1-6__-5 __1_4_6,_8~ Paris Society……… .. . .. .. .. .. .. 1822 150,000 45,000 57 26 78 19 180 84 1,680 1,860 900 32,250 620 75,042 500 25,300 Africa (South, East and West), Tahiti, Mad· Swiss Romande…… ………. …. 1875 62,803 agasear (5).
9,640 22 7 21 20 70 0 85 155 77 2,118 180 3,860 86 2,716 East Africa (1).
Netherlands Societies………….. .. … . 140,130 21,250 110 36 80 49 275 10 284 559 138 8,264 590 15,500 115 4,790 Scandinavian Societies…………. .. .. .. 485,650 60,870 179 30 183 68 460 121 2,240 2,700 1,245 55,870 1,846 105,000 1,327 86,250 Australasian Methodist Society….. 1855 101,000 46,460 31 6 27 18 82 98 5,306 5,388 1,776 40,621 2,251 150,000 1,358 30,705 Fiji, Samoa, New Britain, New Guinea (5). I 5,615 332,243 9,650 Asia, Africa, The Islanda, etc •••••• :.::.:.:.: 910,470 200,885 573 275 600 266 1,714 290 6,480 8,194 800,000 1,833 72,400 I~~~~~~~~————-:"-':-:~-~;-r ———~——I————————~- TOTALS FOR CHRISTENDOM _,,_._,,_. $24,613,075 Totals for 1908………………….. $22,846,465 $4,859,605 7,031 3,260 6,833 4,710 I 21,834 5,929 93,272 115,130 43,934 2,097,963 135,141 4,866,661 29,190 1,413,995 1 28,164 1,290,582 $4,843,814 5,995 2,956 -:::- 19,875 4,999' 98,955' 118,901' 41,563 2,056,173 -16-4-,6-7-4- -4-,-28-5-,1-9-9 Totals for 1905 ………………_ …_ .. $_19,661,885 1-$-3-,5-1-6,-01-5-1–5,-9-05- 2,567 5,061 4,3061–i7,839 4,353 89,335 107,174 31,451 1,754,18£ 143,193 4,072,088 -2-7-,8-3-5'1–1-,2-4-6,-1-27 '3.422'r16.21s Totals for 1900…………….. ':'::":::1$15,479,575. $1,833,961 4,738 3,409 4,650 5,263 62,366 78,585 25,108 1,369.42S' 94,562 3,556,140 20,196 1,035,724 Totals for 1895………….. .. …. $13,620,972 1-$-1-,5-4-5,-00-0"'1-4–,0-28- 1,477 3,682 2,578 1–11,765 4,295 55,118 66,883 22,631 995,793 63,081 2,770,801 19,384 786,002 • Including probationers.
A HALF-CENTURY OF PRAYER
been a year of religious revival, so versities Mission to Central Africa, extensive as to prepare the way for a Netherlands Dutch Reformed, Renew missionary advance, and to im- formed Presbyterian, Utrecht, and part new impetus to the work of or- Finland societies were formed that ganization and occupation; memorable very year; from 1860 to 1862, the also for the going forth of that Christian Reformed, Woman's Union, apostle to the New Hebrides, John G. Strict Baptist, Southern Presbyterian; Paton. The Lord had begun to and, in 1865, the Canada Baptist, answer even before His people called, Paris Missionary Society, and, above according to His promise (Isa. all, the China Inland Mission. Then 65: 24). followed the English Baptist Women in 1867, the American Congrega- Progress Round the World tionalist Women in 1868, the Lutheran General Council in 1869, the Primitive From the beginning of this new Methodists and Presbyterian Women's concert of prayer in 1859, the progress Board (U. S. A.) in 1870; the United all around the world was at a more Original Secession Church, and Episrapid and regular pace. copal Women's, and Baptist Women's Boards (U. S. A.) in 1871; the East I. For example, in the direction of London Institute, 1872; the Irish exploration. That was the year when Presbyterian 'Women's, and Free Bap- Livingstone discovered Lake Nyassa, tist Women's, in 1873; the Swissand, in the next, Speke and Grant French Churches', the Mission to reached Victoria Nyanza from the Lepers, African Methodist Women's, Nile. Between 1864 and 1867 Rohlfs and Friends' Syrian Mission, in 1874; had crossed the Sahara to Lake Chad, in 1875, the Women's Board of Disand between 1866 and 1873 Living- ciples, Reformed Dutch Women's, stone, the missionary general and United ~rethren's Vomen's, Assostatesman, had come to "the end of ciate Reformed Synod's Women's, the geographical feat" which, as he and Disciples'; and Cumberland Presforesaw, would be "the beginning of byterian and Breklum Societies in the true missionary crusade." In 1876. Six more women's societies 1875, Cameron crossed Africa, and fell into the ranks from 1877 to 1880, Stanley pressing on to Uganda, met including the Church of England King Mtesa, and issued his famous ap- Zenana Mission; and, in 1881, the peal in the London Daily Telegraph; Christian Endeavor Society began its and, in 1877, he reached the mouth marvelous career, branching out and of the Kongo, after crossing the con- taking new root like a gigantic banyantinent. Since then the work of ex- tree, until it has now overspread the ploration has gone on, till we are be- whole earth. From 1881 to 1885, coming familiar with inland Africa twelve more societies were formed; and China, Japan and Korea, Arabia and 1886 is memorable for another of and even Tibet, and now, at last, even the greatest movements of modern the land of eternal ice has been pene- times, that of the Student Volunteers. trated and the North Pole discovered! To follow these remarkable steps 2. There has been, since 1859, rapid and stages of advance, year by year, progress in missionary organization. The Methodist New Connection, Uni-
would require a volume. It must Japan and Korea; or large districts, suffice to record the amazing fact like Uganda, or populous centers like that, within a half-century after that Cairo and Paris. How important Lodiana letter, we trace the formation some of these movements were,' not of at least eighty-five missionary or- mentioned in detail, is evident from ganizations, large and small, some of the fact that among them were the which now stand out as mountain founding of the Blantyre Mission by peaks in the historic landscape. the Church of Scotland, Coillard's 3. The new missionary occupation work on the Upper Zambesi, and the next claims notice. New countries Presbyterian entrance into Korea by were entered and stations planted. the magic key of medical missions.
For example, in 1859, Japan was en- 4. In the providential administra- tered by the Episcopalians, Reformed tion of affairs may we not trace Dutch and Presbyterians; Brazil by another sign following prayer. The the Presbyterians, and China by the Hearer of Prayer is the governor of Methodist New Connection. In 1860, nations and the ruler of history. The the Baptists also began work in the notable events of this half-century Sunrise Kingdom, and, in 1861, the now under review have some of them Swedish and United Methodist Free been revolutionary, and not only af- Churches in East Africa. In 1862, fected the destiny of nations but the the Universities Mission began in history of missions.
Zanzibar, the Rhenish Society in Su- The remarkable career of Garibaldi matra, and Mary Whately in Egypt. (1860-67) laid the corner-stone of Within three years more, four more Free Italy and broke down the ex- societies had been planted in China, clusive walls of the Vatican. The India and Madagascar, and in 1867 War for the American Union (1861- the Laos Mission of the American 65) knocked the fetters from four Presbyterians began; 186g, which million slaves; the emancipation of completed the first decade, was a the Russian serfs in r861 inaugurated great year of advance-the American a new era in the Empire of the North; Board and Church Missionary Society the cessation of persecution in Mada- in Japan, the Canada Presbyterians in gascar, the same year, closed the Trinidad, the Irish Presbyterians in record of twenty-five years of blood Manchuria, and Clara Swain in India. and fire, horror and terror, and pre- From 1870 to 1872 ten more new oc- pared for the wholesale destruction of cupations took place, prominent among idols eight years later. Brazil, in 1871, them the Canada Presbyterian advance witnessed the end of slavery; and upon Formosa, Gilmour's upon Mon- Stanley's discovery and recovery of golia, and McAIl's daring mission in the great hero of Blantyre, which led Belleville. to his own conversion and opened a Again, brevity compels a resort to new era in African missions. In 1872, a summary. During the half-century the arrival of the Japanese embassy in no less than seventy-five new mis- 'Washington proved another critical sions have been started, counting only and pivotal event in the history not those on a larger scale, as when new only of Japan but of the whole Orient, countries have been entered, like if not the whole world; and that same
A HALF-CENTURY OF PRAYER
year was marked by the organization from 1907; the deposition of Sultan of the first native church in Japan, as Abdul Hamid and of the Persian the year following was by the removal Shah, from 1909. And these are only of the "Edict Board." a part of the events that stud the firmament of this half-century like The Kongo Free State was con- constellations of stars, some of them stituted by the conference of sixteen of the first magnitude. nations in 1885; nine years later, the Chinese-Japanese War was waged, The conventions and conferences of which opened the door to reform in this period merit separate considerathe Middle Kingdom. In 1896, the tion-great gatherings for philanfirst rails were spiked for the Uganda thropic and missionary ends. De- Railway, Africa's new bond of union cennial conferences in India began at and artery of life; in 1898, the Span- Allahabad in 1872, and continued at ish-American War, with its incalcula- Calcutta and Bombay; the Missionary ble outcome of possible good; the Conference in Shanghai in 1890; the same year the capture of Khartum by Student Volunteer rallies since that the British, the completion of the natal year, 1886; the World's Mis- Kongo Railway, and the Uganda re- sionary Conferences at Liverpool, in bellion opened the way to new civil 1860; London in 1888; New York in liberty and gospel victory; and, the 1900; the Peace Conferences at The year later, the British South African Hague, 1899 and 1902; the Y. M. C. War, the completion of the Nile Rail- A. World Conventions, since 1854; way to Khartum, etc. the great assemblies of the Y. P. S. C. E.; of the Evangelical Alliance, the Some events of this half-century W orId's Sunday-school delegations, have been referred to as revolutionary. the Laymen's movement; and, beside Who is sagacious enough to forecast all these, the annual conventions for the results of the Burlingame Treaty Bible Study and the Spiritual Life with China in 1868, the political up- at Mildmay and Keswick in England, heaval in Japan, and the opening of and at Northfield and Winona in the Suez highway to the Orient that America; and the anniversaries of year; of the completion of the Union great societies, and centenary celebra- Pacific Railway, in 1869; the Franco- tions, such as Carey's in 1892, and Prussian War in 1870; the arbitration others now so frequent. of the Alabama dispute in 1872, as of the Venezuela claims in 1899; of the 5. The developments in the line of establishment of the British Protec- education during the half-century are torate over the Fiji group in 1874, another sign following united prayer. over Cyprus in 1878, and over Egypt How significant, for instance, the openin 1882. In 1889, repUblican govern- ing of Robert College at the Golden ment began in Brazil; in 1890, the Horn, in 1863; of the American Girls' first Parliament met in Japan; in 1898, College at Scutari, in 1872; the Kobe the Hawaiian Islands raised the Star- GirJs' College in 1873, and the famous spangled Banner; in 1902, the Hague Doshisha University of Neesima the Tribunal was established; the Lay- next year; the invention of the Moon men's missionary movement began in system for the blind in r840, and the 1906; the Chinese Opium Edict dates Murray alphabet for the blind in 1879;
the work of Dr. Laws, at Livingstonia, pervasive that we hesitate to attempt Verbeck in Japan, Drs. Duff and Mar- either an enumeration or a selec- tin and many others in India and tion. We may, however, mention China; Dr. Post and his fellows in some twenty, particularly con~picuous Syria. The name of these great as the immediate fruits of prayer, teachers in the mission field is legion, since the Lodiana circular-letter was and some of them, less conspicuous, issued: The great blessing bestowed like Miss Fiske in Persia, Miss Agnew on William Duncan's work among the in Ceylon, Miss Pierson in Japan, Tshimshean Indians in his Metla- have left an impress for good that kahtla, from 1859 onward; the great will never be lost, and helped create a revival of 1859 and 1860, especially in native force of teachers and preachers. Britain and America; the arousing of 6. Especially significant, also, are the university students of Britain un- the multiplied translations of the Word der Moody and others, which led to of God since the Lodiana Call to the "China Band"; the awakening in Prayer. Very notable among the ex- North Tinnevelly in 1860; in Egypt isting five hundred translations are the and the Nile Valley, from 1863-70; completed Arabic translation in 1865, in China, specially Hankow, 1863- and the Japanese Bible in 1888, not 88; in the Euphrates district, 1864- to refer to the great achievements of 67, under C. H. Wheeler, etc.; in such as Pilkington in Uganda, Rich- Aniwa under J. G. Paton, 1867-6g; in ards in Banza Manteke, Lindley Southern Tinnevelly, 1871-81; in among the Zulus, and those who, in Japan, 1872-75; in Paris and other the Islands of the Sea and elsewhere, French cities under McAll, 1872- have not only given the Word of God 80; in the Telugu country, 1877-78; in to whole tribes and peoples, but in Formosa, 1877-85, under G. L. Mac- God's book laid the basis of all their kay; in Banza Manteke, under Rich- literature! ards, 1883-90; in Uganda, 1893-98; in 7. What shall be said of great Korea, before our eyes.
moral and spiritual transformations! An A wakening in India The revivals of this period have been specially marked. The appeal of the We give one instance, less familiar, Lodiana brethren was born in a re- perhaps, than many others. The vival era, just begun, which continued spiritual awakening in 1896, in con- for years; the awakening in Mada- nection with the United Presbyterian gascar succeeding the persecution that Mission in the Punjab, was a signal ended in 1871, the moral miracle in answer to prayer and deserves a record the Telugu Mission in 1877-78, when as one of the most remarkable waves 10,000 were baptized in eleven months; of spiritual power that ever swept the awakening in Japan in 1872 and over India.
onward; in Uganda in 1893, and in Three years before the annual meet- our day in Korea. These are only ing of the mission, it was agreed to a few handfuls out of a great harvest. observe every Sabbath evening as a The whole half-century has been one season of special prayer for a new of unprecedented and multiplied spiri- effusion of the Spirit's power,and both tual quickenings, so numerous and so the native brethren in the field and
A HALF-CENTURY OF PRAYER
church at home were appealed to, to for a world's evangelization. When join in these times of supplication. So at the first meeting the question prominent has been the prayer element arose to what object the contribution throughout that there has never been which had been taken should be dea doubt that the blessings that fol- voted, Mr. Ropes, drawing attention lowed were linked inseparably with to a basket of Japanese workmanship such earnest and united entreaty. that chanced to be on the table in the room where this little "monthly con- The work began early in the year cert" was held, suggested that the 1896, and so remarkable was the evangelization of that closed land power attending it, even from the might be the object for which their first, that some feared it would prove gifts should be made. The suggestion only spasmodic; but it continued and was adopted; and tho soon after rather deepened and broadened. The Mr. Ropes left Brookline, a "ladies' first marked manifestation of this sewing society" had grown up in conpower was at the meeting of the nection with this little meeting and Sialkot Presbytery, at Pasrur, March continued, from time to time, to send 24, while in conference on "our work money for this prospective "mission in and its needs," making that confer- Japan" to the American Board-in all ence memorable beyond any other in more than $600. the history of the mission. The whole story is so interesting that it can not When, forty years later, the Board be abridged and we must refer the found the open door to Japan and sent reader to the narrative of Rev. D. S. forth Rev. D. C. Greene, the new mis- Lyte, one of the most remarkable we sion was credited with over four have ever read.* thousand dollars as the sum of these contributions, with interest accrued. One example of prayer in the open- And another remarkable link between ing of closed doors might be cited, as these prayers and the open door in an encouragement to praying souls. Japan is seen in the fact that Mr. When as yet Japan was a hermit na- Greene, this first missionary, was the tion, and the Christianity that was son of a minister who, forty years bebrought thither by the representatives fore, had been one of the little comof the Papacy had been practically ex- pany present at the first meeting held tirpated by persecution-when for two in Mr. Ropes' house in Brookline.* centuries and a half the edict boards against Christianity had been raised Looking back over the half-century everywhere throughout the Sunrise and noting all these developments- Kingdom, and all Europeans were the grand work of missionary explodriven away from the Island Empire ration in the opening up of not only Save as Dutch merchants had a foot- new districts and territories, but whole hold at a trading port on the little continents; the multiplication of misisland of Deshima-William Ropes, sionary organizations until the whole of Boston, about March, 1828, a Chris- church has formed into line, and all tian merchant residing in Brookline, the reserves have been called forth had invited a few friends to meet once into action, men, women, and even the a month at his house to join in prayer * "A History of Christianity in Japan,'· Vol. II, * "Far North in India," pages 242-250. page 73, by Dr. Carey.
young; when we note the missionary means, the appeal for a higher conoccupation of new fields, in a con- secration of person and property, one stantly aggressive forward campaign, supreme need confronts us-the dethe advance in Christian education; mand for united, intelligent, believing then turn to the conspicuous events of prayer. Here is the greater than the half-century, so many of which Archimedes' lever to move the world. are historically turning-points, radical The pivot and fulcrum are supplied, and revolutionary; the conferences at "the point outside" for which he longed horne and abroad that have brought to rest the lever-the promise of an undisciples into closer bonds of mutual changing God. The power is supplied sympathy and cooperation, and pre- wherewith to move the lever-nothpared the way for every form of hu- ing less than omnipotence itself. The man betterment; when, to all these, proof is at hand that God is the living, we add the translations of the Word all-powerful worker, in the moral mirof God, evangelistic activities and ex- acles already wrought. Strange, intensive and multiplied spiritual quick- deed, that the Church of God should enings, which characterize this last need any further incentive to united fifty years, we can not but exclaim, supplication. Here is at once the easiest "Surely, God answers prayer." There and the hardest way to success-easare still signs following united sup- iest because it is by absolute dependplication. ence upon God, content to have His strength perfected in our weakness; A Challenge and for that very reason hardest, be- cause there is nothing to which we We risk successful challenge from are so prone as to trust in ourselves, any quarter of the statement now de- and nothing to which we are so averse liberately made after a half-century of as to hang in absolute helplessness the study of modern missions: upon God's power and grace. We like to act, but we do not like to ask " FROM THE DAY OF PENTECOST, THERE HAS it humors our pride to do something BEEN NOT ONE GREAT SPIRITUAL AWAKENING that looks big; but it is only when IN ANY LAND WHICH HAS NOT BEGUN IN A pride bows in humility, and the "I" UNION OF PRAYER, THO ONLY AMONG TWO OR of self-confidence is inflected into the THREE; NO SUCH OUTWARD, UPWARD MOVE- "me" of simple dependence (Galatians MENT HAS CONTINUED AFTER SUCH PRAYER- 2: 20) that in any work for God the MEETINGS HAVE DECLINED; AND IT IS IN highest achievement is possible. EXACT PROPORTION TO THE MAINTENANCE OF SUCH JOINT AND BELIEVING SUPPLICATION The work of missions is pre- AND INTERCESSION THAT THE WORD OF THE eminently "our Father's business." It LORD IN ANY LAND OR LOCALITY HAS HAD must be transacted under our Father's FREE COURSE AND BEEN GLORIFIED. constant guidance, by His help, His strength, and so for His glory. And This being so, the duty and privilege nothing will bring us and help us in of all who yearn for a world's speedy the right attitude like the habit of beevangelization is transparently clear. lieving prayer, which is the one sure Beside and beyond all other forms of sign that we are "workers together activity, however useful and help- with God." ful, such as the informing of disciples, the supplying of men and BY BELLE M. BRAIN, DETROIT, MICH. Author of "Holding the Ropes," HTransformation of Hawaii," HAn About Japan," etc.
The past year has been crowded So rapidly is missionary work adwith events of unusual importance in vancing in Africa that it will soon the progress of the Kingdom of God, cease to be called the Dark Continent. at home and abroad. Some of these At the recent South African Missionwere distinctively missionary in char- ary Conference, held at Bloemfontein, acter; others were political, yet had seventy-five delegates met, representsuch important relation to the growth ing more than twenty societies, and of the Kingdom that they can not be statistics were presented which showed omitted from a missionary review of that all Africa south of the Zambesi the year. The great national awaken- is practically taken up by various misings of Asiatic peoples, beginning in sionary societies. Dr. MacVicar, of Japan and spreading to China, India, Lovedale, prophesied that within a Turkey and Persia, are resulting in few years at least half of the natives political upheavals which not only pro- would be Christian. But in other foundly affect the history of the world, parts of Africa there remains much' but greatly increase the opportunity land to be possest. It is estimated for aggressive Christian work. The that in the Sudan, a region as large as hand of God is undoubtedly in these the United States, which constitutes new forces that are so strangely mov- the largest unevangelized mission field ing the world. of the world, there are 50,000,000 who have never heard the name of Christ. Sunshine and Shadow in Africa From many parts of this great con- The expedition of ex-President tinent come encouraging reports of Roosevelt has turned all eyes upon progress. In Elat, West Central Africa, for papers and magazines have Africa, and Cape Palmas, Liberia, been flooded with articles on the Dark great awakenings have taken place, Continent. New prominence was and many have been converted. given to missions in East Central Uganda, as usual, has had a success- Africa by the announcement that, be- ful year. The phenomenal growth is fore starting, Colonel Roosevelt had shown by large congregations on the asked for a list of all the American Sabbath, crowded baptismal and conmlSSlOn stations in the territory firmation classes, and gifts larger than through which he expected to pass. ever before. In Egypt, the first con- He promised to inspect their work ference for Moslem converts, held in and showed his sincerity by laying the Zeitoun, near Cairo, was a notable corner-stone of the mission chapel and event. school of the African Inland Mission at Kijabe. The good effects of his In some parts of Africa the work expedition are already felt in the tes- was rendered discouraging by detertimony he has given to the value of mined opposition. In Angola, West missions in Africa. In a recent letter Africa, Roman Catholic neighbors he stated that he was intensely inter- have hindered the Protestant work, ested in all he had seen, including mis- and from all points in German East sionary work, and would have much Africa come disquieting reports of the to tell on his return. encroachments of Islam with its bitter hostility to everything Christian. In currency system is to be developed on Madagascar new outrages have been a modern basis, and for the first time a perpetrated against Protestant mis- census of China's hitherto uncounted sions by the French governor. Many millions is being taken. The army is churches have been closed, permission being drilled in modern methods and to build new ones or repair old ones a new navy has been planned at a cost has been refused, and in districts re- of $roo,ooo,ooo. In Peking watermote from the capital, paganism seems pipes are being laid in the streets, a to have been aided and Christianity new system of sewerage is being indiscouraged. Nevertheless, the mis- stalled, roads are being macadamized sionaries continue in the work, cheered and an American electric company is by the fact that in the face of opposi- equipping the city with an up-to-date tion thousands of Malagasy Christians telephone system at government exremain loyal to the Christ, and new pense. converts continue to be won. N or is the progress in material The forward movement undertaken things alone. It is along social and in behalf of Africa by the Methodist intellectual lines as well. A great Episcopal Church to commemorate the campaign against opium has been inseventy-fifth anniversary of their be- augurated and signs are not wanting ginning there will greatly extend their that Chinese women are coming to already large and prosperous work. their own. Many anti-foot-binding A special anniversary was held in societies have been established, and Washington, D. C, last February, and women's clubs are being formed. the African Diamond Jubilee Commis- Daily, weekly and monthly papers and sion appointed to raise a thank-offer- magazines are multiplying with great ing of $300,000 for the African work rapidity, a new system of public inhas been busy with its task throughout struction is being inaugurated, and the year. schools are springing up all over the empire. The intellectual awakening is New Forces in Old China not confined to any class or section and is said to be the most profound In China, old things are passing and far-reaching the world has known away so rapidly that it seems difficult since the Revival of Learning in to exaggerate the changes that are Europe five centuries ago. taking place. The emperor, through his father, the prince regent, has con- These reforms, however, are not firmed the promise of a constitution being accomplished without opposition. and has set a date for its adoption ten There is a strong reactionary party, years hence. In view of this, orders and China is still in the throes of a conhave been sent to the governors of flict which will either make her a great provinces to give the people instruc- world power with a voice in the tion in self-government. Railroad world's affairs, or sink her once more construction is being pushed with in Oriental lethargy and stagnation. all possible haste to give easy access to Peking by the time the first legisla- To missionary bodies working in ture is convened. Telegraph lines are China the present educational crisis being extended, the postal service is affords an unequaled opportunity for growing by leaps and bounds; the dominating the new intellectual life of the nation. In view of this, special missions in the empire. At the great emphasis is being laid on education. jubilee gathering held in Tokyo in Those societies that have done little October under the auspices of the along this line are opening schools at Evangelical Alliance, an impressive exall their stations; those that have hibit was made of what has already educational plants already in operation been accomplished and of what yet are enlarging them and bettering their remains to be done. Fully half the equipment. Through a great forward speakers were Japanese and the admovement launched in London last dresses were of great interest and year the sum of $500,000 is also to be power. raised for this work. As a result of fifty years' work Churches and schools are reported there are 400 organized churches, full, and many of the students in the more than one-fourth of which are encolleges are offering themselves for tirely self-supporting; between 70,000 the service of Christ. The women, and 80,000 baptized Christians, nearly too, are becoming more and more use- 500 ordained Japanese pastors, and ful in the work. At the Chinese about 100,000 children in the Protes- National Christian Endeavot Conven- tant Sunday-schools; 186 Christian tion in Nanking last May, the quiet- schools of all grades and classes holdhour services were entrusted to Miss ing property valued at $1,5°0,000; and Dora Yii, a modest, unassuming seven Christian publishing houses Chinese girl, who conducted them with issuing 70,000,000 pages a year. The great power. old proscriptions against Christianity have given way to the fullest religious From central and northeastern liberty, the Bible is sold in book- China come wonderful reports of a stores throughout the. country at the great wave of revival, such as was rate of from 200,000 to 300,000 copies never known before in China. This a year. The power and influence of spread from station to station and Christianity is silently permeating and rivaled in power and results the great transforming the nation. Fourteen awakenings in Korea and Manchuria members of the present legislature and the year before. During these meet- a number of other men prominent in ings, which were largely the result of national affairs are Christians. Tho a great evangelistic campaign con- the native religions are by no means ducted by the Rev. Jonathan Goforth dead, they have lost much of their of the Canadian Presbyterian Church, power. The year, on the whole, has men and women were so strongly con- been prosperous, tho a few missionvicted of sin that they publicly confest aries report a backward movement in their wrong-doings with tears-a most their work. The large majority reunusual thing in China, where the port that there is everywhere a great pride and natural reticence of the readiness to hear the Gospel and that people is so great. the number of conversions is steadily increasing. The Year of Jubilee in Japan The anti-Japanese agitation in Cali- The great event of the year in fornia, which early in the year threat- Japan was the celebration of the ened to assume the alarming proporfiftieth anniversary of Protestant tions of two years ago, has subsided, without sufficient compensation, have to the great satisfaction of all lovers resulted in the bitter feeling of resentof peace and of missions. Owing to ment toward the Japanese that found restrictions in the number of pass- such terrible expression in the asports issued at Tokyo, the number of sassination of Prince Ito at Harbin Japanese coming to America during last October. the year was considerably less than the number of those who returned to Notwithstanding the chafing of the J apan-a condition which, according people at the loss of their national to the Japanese ambassador at Wash- power, the great wave of revival which ington, is likely to continue for a few has been sweeping over the land, conyears at least. tinues with unabated power. The mis- sionaries are overwhelmed with work The present attitude of Japan and both men and money are an urgent toward the United States seems to be need. It is a cause for thanksgiving one of extreme friendliness. This was that under the present regime full reevidenced in a delicately courteous ligious liberty is enjoyed and no hinway, characteristic of the Japanese, by drances are placed in the way of the the pilgrimage, last October, of five work. At a recent conference with the members of the Japanese Industrial Japanese, the missionaries received full Commission, then touring the United permission to teach Christianity in the States, to Newport, R. 1., where a mission schools, the officials promising great wreath of laurel was laid on to put the graduates on the same foot- Commodore Perry's grave, and by the ing as those of government schools and congratulatory message of the em- grant them equal privileges. peror to New York City at the time of the Hudson-Fulton celebration, ac- The great missionary event of the companied by an offer of a memorial year was the celebration of the gift of 300 of Japan's famous cherry- quarter-centennial of Protestant mistrees to be planted along Riverside sions in Korea. The union celebration Drive. in Seoul last September was partic- ipated in by all missionary organiza- A Year of Blessing in Korea tions at work in the country, and the dominant notes were praise for what The conclusion of a new convention God hath wrought and prayer that the with Japan whereby the control of the work may continue until Korea bemilitary, banking and judicial systems comes a Christian nation. In August, of the country passed into the hands at the annual meeting of the Northof the Japanese, was an event of im- ern Presbyterian Mission, which was portance in Korea. The country is first in the field, the following results now entirely under the control of the of twenty-five years' work in this one Japanese, who are doing much for its mission were reported: 25,oIO baptized material development, but are leaving Christians, an average of 1,000 for much to be desired in their treatment each of the twenty-five years; nearly of the people. The execution of 100,000 adherents, many of whom are thousands of Koreans in the process of really Christians; 1,000 paid helpers, pacification, the flooding of the country nine-tenths of whom are supported by with Japanese immigrants, and the the Koreans themselves; and a great unjust appropriation of Korean lands
PROGRESS OF THE WORLD IN
army of unpaid helpers who consider that in British rule lies the only hope no sacrifice of time or of money too of peace. Vith the present system of great for winning souls and advancing English military control, there is, the Kingdom of God. probably, little danger of a repetition of the mutiny of 1857, yet the situa- The Korean Church, on fire with tion is serious and the solution of the evangelistic zeal, is aiming at nothing problem difficult. less than the speedy evangelization of the entire nation. With this end in Meanwhile, missionary work goes view, a movement is now on foot to steadily forward, the spirit of unrest put into every Korean home a copy of being at once a hindrance and a help. one of the four Gospels, with tracts The national awakening of the people setting forth the way of salvation. affects the native Christians, and out of it seems to be growing a spirit of The Spirit of Independence in India enterprise which manifests itself in a desire for self-support and self-ex- The spirit of unrest in India con- tension. If wisely directed, this can tinued to be a source of anxiety not fail to be of great value in buildthroughout the year. The conciliatory ing up the native church. measures proposed by Lord Morley, British Secretary of State for India, Tho the revival spirit is not so and Lord Minto, the Viceroy, giving wide-spread as it was a few years the natives some representation in the ago, stirring accounts of great awagovernment, was hailed with joy by kenings have come from many sections. the reformers and was well received by In northern India there were large the Indian National Council in January. accessions in both the Presbyterian But a growing belief that the govern- and Methodist missions, and steady ment favored the Mohammedans and progress was reported in almost every the failure of Lord Morley to repeal field. The World's Christian Enthe partition of Bengal and release the deavor Convention, held in Agra in reform leaders who had been either December, was a notable event and imprisoned or deported without trial, brought thousands of young Indian produced a sullen feeling of discon- Christians in touch with one another tent throughout the empire. The ad- and with a great army of young Chrisvent of bomb-throwing in India, with tians from other parts of the world. its attempt on the lives of Lord and Lady Minto, and the atrocious . A significant sign of the times, inmurder of Sir Curzon Wyllie, po- dicative of the great social changes litical aide-de-camp to Lord Mor- that are taking place, was shown at ley, by an Indian student in Lon- the National Indian Congress at don last summer, seem to point to a Madras last January when delegates wide-spread conspiracy for the over- of every caste and creed sat down tothrow of the British and the estab- gether at a common feast. Had caste lishment of East Indian independence. laws been rigidly enforced, the hun- But the outbreaks during the year be- dreds of high-caste leaders from all tween the Hindus and Mohammedans, over India who participated in the reveal the bitter enmity between these banquet would have been forced two great classes, and make it plain either to lose caste or submit to the most degrading penances. Yet so far
as is known, not a single delegate was those around them. "As for rewards," required to suffer either penalty. says the British consul at Adana, "the people who ought to get them are the The Turmoil in Turkey gallant men and women of the Amer- ican Mission, who worked through The year which opened so aus- the storm, and are still working, re- piciously in Turkey was marked by gardless of their own losses and the revolution at Constantinople, troubles." which ended the long reign of Abdul Hamid II, religious leader of the The reestablishment of the con- 230,000,000 Moslems 'in the world, stitutional government, with the new and by the terrible massacres at Sultan at its head, has, for the present, Adana which cost the lives of two restored tranquillity and order, but American missionaries, a score of the difficulties that confront the Young native pastors and more than 20,000 Turks are so great that no one dare Armenians, including a large number predict what the future will be. With of Protestant Christians. the government still Mohammedan, it is also impossible to predict what the Tho a political outbreak was not effect will be on Christian missions. altogether unexpected by those who The amazing manifesto, recently is- understood the trend of affairs, the sued to the Mohammedans of the revolt of the army on April 12, the world by the Sheik-ul-Islam, with the temporary overthrow of the Young approval of the Ulema, which together Turk ministry, the rally of the Mace- constitute the supreme religious au- donian forces, the brief struggle at thority in Islam, seems to promise full Constantinople, when for the first time religious liberty, but it remains to be in history Moslem fought against seen whether Christian missions will Moslem, the dethronement of the be permitted to enjoy full freedom and Sultan and the accession of his brother Moslem converts to Christianity re- as Mehmed V, came with a sudden- ceive protection of life and property ness for which no one was prepared. under the new regime.
The simultaneous wild outbreak in Rev. James L. Barton, D.D., secre- the district of Adana, 500 miles tary of the American Board, furnishes from Constantinople, sent a thrill of us with the following statement that horror through the world. Not since throws much light on present condi- the Boxer outbreak of 1900 has there tions: • been such a time of anxiety and sus- pense, and rarely before has any Among other things, the manifesto of calamity left such a train of suffering the Sheik-ul-Islam declares that the con- and sorrow in its wake. The response stitutional government is in full harmony to the call for funds was prompt and with the principles of Mohammedanism; generous, and the relief work effective. that true Christians are worshipers of the Yet the need has been by no means true God and will have a place in Para- fully met. The conduct of the mis- dise; that fraternal relationship with sionaries during the whole trying time those not Mohammedan is enjoined by was most heroic. Heedless of their the Koran; that it is the duty of every own peril they sought to stay the havoc Mohammedan government to afford and save the lives and property of equal protection to Christians, Jews and Mohammedans, and that before the law all must be upon the same footing.
PROGRESS OF THE WORLD IN 1909
This introduces a new era of Mohamme- Ispahan by the Bakhtiari tribesmen danism which is in itself revolutionary, of the south, finally frightened the and which, jf accepted by the Moham- Shah into promising to restore the medans of the world, will open a new constitution. But the reformers redoor of approach to their minds. fused to trust him and forced their way into Teheran, on July 13, where, Weare receiving in each mail daily after three days' fighting, they comindications that this is an actual fact in pelled him to abdicate and set his son, Turkey at the present time. Mohamme- Ohmed Mirza, a boy of twelve, upon dan pupils are applying to the schools the Peacock Throne. for admission on equal terms with the Christians; Mohammedan inquirers are With the young Shah a ruler only privately seeking the truths of Christian- in name, and Russia and England his ity, and Mohammedan listeners are in- real regents, the day of a protectorate creasing at public services. The Ameri- over Persia is probably not very far can Board has seven missionary colleges distant. Meanwhile, with the country in Asiatic Turkey. Both Moslems and in a state of bankruptcy and the Con- Christians are bearing testimony to the stitutionalists bitterly opposing the value of these institutions, not only in presence of the Russian troops, who what they have already accomplished, but must, nevertheless, remain until order in what they may yet accomplish in the is restored and the new parliament has reorganization of the new empire, and given proof of its ability to keep the the demand for modern education and peace, the political situation is far the desire for moral instruction is in- from reassuring. creasing. There has never been a time in our eighty-nine years of work in the To the missionaries in Persia, as in Turkish Empire when everything seemed Turkey, the past year has been most to point to so promising a future, and trying. The coming of the Russians call for so marked an advance in every saved Tabriz from the massacre and department of work. pillage that befell Adana, but the mis- sionaries were constantly exposed to The New Regime in Persia danger, and the sorrows and suffering of the people preyed on their sympa- The year which began with tumult thies and called for their help. Notin Persia has closed in comparative withstanding the adverse conditions, peace. As in Turkey, there is a new the missionary work was kept up, and ruler on the throne and a constitu- even during the long siege of Tabriz tional government appears to be it went on as usual, except that evefirmly reestablished, but the country ning meetings were, of necessity, disis not yet in a settled condition. continued. In Teheran six persons united with the church on the first During the first six months, owing Sunday in June, and on July II, when to the abrogation of the constitutio;I the forces of the reformers vvere just by the Shah, a great part of Persia outside the city, the usual Sabbath serwas in a state of insurrection. The vices were held. On the following Constitutionalists held Tabriz for three Sunday, two days after the abdication months against the forces of the Shah, of the Shah, there were sixty in atand here and there throughout the tendance. country were armed bands only lacking opportunity for cooperation to turn the smoldering revolt into a wild tempest of rebellion. The raising of the siege of Tabriz by Russian intervention, together with the capture of
It is too soon to predict the final rule, is struggling toward better effect of this new regime-so much things, as is shown by a renewed independs on the extent of Russia's in- terest in education and attempts at fluence and her attitude toward Protes- practical reform. Yet there can be tant missions. The power of the little real progress while the country Mollahs, the most fanatical class in so largely remains under bondage to the country, has been greatly curtailed, ignorance, superstition and sin. and freedom of speech and of action prevails to a hitherto unknown ex- From the Methodist mission in tent. The intellectual awakening is Ecuador come cheering accounts of a creating an increased desire for edu- revival with more than forty converts. cation, and no sooner was peace re- But here, too, the spirit of intolerance stored than the Mohammedan children was revealed when, incited by the came flocking to the mission schools priests, a mob attacked the church, and and educational institutions of all it was necessary to call on the govkinds are more crowded than ever be- ernor for protection. In the Presbyfore. The greatest immediate need is terian mission in Chili, as a result of a Christian college, adequate in equip- evangelistic meetings held in Valment and with a course of study paraiso, there was a turning to the sufficiently advanced to give fun train- Lord such as has never been known ing to the young men of the land. there before. More than a hundred con fest Christ and were enrolled in The Struggles in South America the catechumen classes.
South America has been described Throughout South America there as a political volcano with as many seems to be a growing revolt against craters as there are states. During the domination of an ignorant and the past year there were at least two corrupt priesthood. 1£ Christian miseruptions and rumors of others. The sions are ever pushed in an adequate revolt of the army in Colombia, during way, the result will probably be one of the absence of the president in Europe, the greatest developments in the hisfollowed the exclusion of Castro from tory of missions. The visit of Mr. Venezuela and put a new man in Robert E. Speer, who spent six power amid serious disturbances months in a missionary tour through there. The violent rejection by Bo- the continent, may do much to arouse livia of the award of the president of the churches of North America to Argentina in his arbitration of the their duty in the matter. Peruvian boundary dispute, threatened to involve these three countries in Uncertain Reforms in Rllssia war, but this calamity has been happily averted. The enactment by the Duma last summer of legislation securing tQ South America continues to be so minors between fourteen and twentypoorly manned by missionaries that it one the right to choose their religion is still the "Neglected Continent." with the consent of their parents, and Yet signs are not wanting of progress to adults both to choose and to in the work. Venezuela, freed from change from one religion to another, Castro's autocratic and disgraceful according to the dictates of conscience, was a promise of progress in Russia. Yet religious liberty in Russia is far liament, and one of the most enlighten- from an accomplished fact. The ed leaders of the Young Turk party, scenes of violence in the Duma during paid an official visit to the chief Jewish the discussion of the bill, and the op- rabbi of Turkey, in the course of position of the conservative papers which he extended to the Jews of Rus- after its passage, shows how intol- sia and Rumania and all countries erant is the spirit of the religious where they suffer disabilities, an in- leaders. So long as the Greek Ortho- vitation to settle in Turkey. At the dox Church continues to be the state same time he promised that all re- church and exercise despotic authority, strictions against Jewish immigration persecution of other creeds will con- would be removed and full citizenship tinue. be granted to every Jew on his ar- Meanwhile, in a quiet, unobtrusive rival in the empire. As the fulfilment way, evangelical Christianity is forcing of this promise would remove the last its way into the empire. Both the obstacle to the settlement of the Jews Methodists and the Baptists have in Palestine, there is, apparently, noth- made a beginning, and in St. Peters- ing to hinder their immediate return.
burg alone there are now twelve The pecuiliar situation is summed up evangelical churches whose pastors by Mr. Ernest Gordon thus: preach to crowded houses. But the We now have these factors: The Jews time has not yet come for a general hated and starved in Russia and Rumania. advance of Protestant missions in The Jews invited to the Turkish Empire Russia. The Young Men's Christian with open arms. The Jews organized Association is a growing power in the throughout the world to purchase Palescountry and the visit of Mr. John R. tine as an "everlasting possession of the Matt made a deep impression on the whole Jewish people." The Jew master students and even on the civil author- of international finance and correspond- ingly influential in international polities.
ities. The Jew apparently unable to colonize elsewhere, the plans for such coloniza- The Zionist Movement of the Jews tion in Uganda, Argentina, Cyrenica, Recent developments in Turkey Mesopotamia, all blighting in the bud. have had an important bearing on the Lastly, a Turkish revolution which de- Zionist movement and the future of stroys all political hindrances to Jewish the Jews. settlement in Palestine.
At a remarkable meeting held in Progress in International Reform London on the IOth of last May, at- One of the most hopeful signs of tended by between 2,000 and 3,000 the age is the increase of interna- Jews, Israel Zangwill and other tional cooperation for the suppression prominent speakers referred to of social evils in the world. The past Mesopotamia, the famous region soon year has witnessed great progress in to be opened up by the Bagdad Rail- efforts of this kind.
way, as the new "Land of Promise" I. The Liquor Trafiic.-The temper- for the Jew. One week later an event ance wave now sweeping so victo- occurred which put a new aspect on riously through the United States is the matter. On May 17, Ahmed Risa not confined to this country, but is Bey, first president of the Turkish Par- part of a great international movement against alcohol. At the twelfth bi- held in the near future at The Hague. ennial meeting of the International 3· White Slavery.-Owing to the Congress on Alcoholism held in London last July, with r,400 delegates, increase in the disgraceful traffic in representing twenty-six governments women known as "White Slavery," and colonial legislatures, the delegates thirteen governments with their colowere, for the first time, appointed by nies entered into an agreement during the governments participating, and the year to wage a united warfare great progress was reported all along against it. Each government agrees the line. Germany, a leader in the to appoint a special officer having the fight, reported eighteen total ab- work in charge, to exchange informastinence societies with 46r members tion with other governments, and keep among the students of her universities; a close inspection of steamer landings Holland has roo,ooo organized tem- and railway stations. perance workers; in Great Britain temperance instruction has been intro- 4. The Kongo Reform.-The conduced into the schools; in Russia half tinuance of the outrages in the Kongo a million people have recently attended Free State, notwithstanding the astemperance lectures and debates; in sumption of control by the Belgian the United States the number of per- Government, called forth renewed efsons living in no-license territory has fort in behalf of the natives there. increased from 6,000,000 to 38,000,000 The governments of the United States in ten years, and the saloon has been and Great Britain refused to recogabolished by law in two-thirds of the nize the Belgian annexation of the total area. State unless satisfactory guarantee was given that the outrages would be 2. The Opium Traffic.-The Inter- supprest; Sir Arthur Conan Doyle national Opium Conference held in took up his pen in behalf of the cause, Shanghai last February, marked an and foregoing pecuniary profit, alimportant step in the war against lowed the "Crime of the Kongo" to be opium. Called by the United States sold to the public for sixpence; a camto assist China in her efforts to free paign of protest was conducted in herself from this obnoxious drug, and England with mass-meetings in every participated in by every nation affected large city; and the Baptist Missionary directly or indirectly by the opium Society held a Kongo exhibit in Lontraffic, the congress accomplished don, one feature of which was a free much along the right lines. Tho rubber stall with a painting, enlarged Great Britain is not yet ready to stop from an actual photograph, of a native the exportation of opium from India, gazing at his dead child which had or allow China to prohibit its importa- been murdered and mutilated because tion, her participation in the congress of his failure to bring in his full tale was a great step in advance. In view of rubber! Nothing, however, did as of the need of further deliberation on much to bring matters to a crisis as the subject, the United States, through the case of the two American misits Department of State, has requested sionaries, Dr. Wm. Morrison and Dr. the participating governments to send W. H. Shepherd, the latter a negro delegates to a second conference to be from rttlanta. These men were com- pelled to leave their work at ,Luebo
and stand trial in the Belgian court at crease glVlllg. A most encouraging Leopoldville, 1,000 miles away, on sign is the increasing cooperation becharges preferred by the notorious tween home and foreign missions- Kassai Rubber Company, of which two branches of one great work which King Leopold himself is chief stock- God has joined but man too often puts helder. The withdrawal of the case asunder. Everyland, the new chilagainst Dr. Morrison and the ac- dren's magazine launched in Decemquittal of Dr. Sheppard in October, ber, covers both the home and foreign closely followed by the announcement field. In two denominations, the Confrom Brussels that the Belgian Gov- gregational and the Baptist, joint camernment is about to undertake ex- paigns were conducted with great suctensive reforms on the Kongo, and cess by all the missionary organizapromises to see that humane treatment tions connected with them, home and is accorded to the natives, gives rise foreign, the object being to wipe out to the hope that the long night of the indebtedness of all. And in the horror is over. national missionary program adopted by the Canadian churches at Toronto The Year in Home Missionary Work last April, equal emphasis was placed on home and foreign work. The need for home missionary work seems to increase year by year. Not The Missionary Uprising in America only winning America for Christ, but keeping America Christian calls for The unparalleled opportunities openstrenuous effort. ing up in all parts of the non-Christian world are being met by a rising tide of Mormonism claims to hold the bal- missionary interest in the home lands. ance of power in five states and is con- The laymen's movement is sweeping ducting an aggressive missionary cam- everything before it. In Canada, the paign throughout this country and great assembly of laymen held at Europe. The religious census com- Toronto last spring the first Napleted last year shows that the great tional Missionary Congress of influx of immigrants from Papal modern times-and the adoption by Europe is dominating the religion of the Canadian churches through their entire states. According to the statis- representatives there of an aggressive tics, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, national missionary program marked a in Puritan New England, are now new era in home effort for the evangel- Roman Catholic. The cities are in- ization of the world. The great camcreasing in popUlation and in sin, and paign of the Laymen's Missionary in the rural districts many of the old- Movement now in progress in the estabiished churches are either dead United States, with missionary convenor dying. In view of these and other tions in seventy-five cities, and a great facts, home missions can only be national congress in Chicago next May, neglected at great peril. is said to be the most carefully planned and extensive educational effort ever The Home Mission Publicity Cam- undertaken by combined Christianity. paign conducted during the first three Great results have already been acmonths of the year by the Home Mis- complished and the tide of enthusiasm sion Council, a federation of all the is rising higher every day. home missionary societies and boards, did much to arouse interest and in-
Inspired by new hope, the Church ing which achieved even greater reis at last moving in a systematic and sults than had been anticipated. Imcomprehensive way to save the world, mediately preceding it was the great and can no longer be accused of play- campaign of Mr. John R. Mott, gening at missions. The various denom- eral secretary of the Federation, inations in the United States and among the students of Great Britain Canada, after carefully going over the and Europe, as a result of which many field, have designated the definite num- students accepted Christ and large ber of non-Christian people in the numbers resolved to devote themselves world for whom they will be responsi- to His service either at home or on the ble, and in order to meet the obliga- foreign field. Everywhere the meettion are preparing for an increase of ings were large and the interest infrom three- to five-fold in workers tense, as was evidenced by the numand gifts. bers who remained whenever a second meeting was announced. Many also Missionary organizations of all sought private interviews with Mr. kinds report their work in a flourish- Mott for the discussion of vital pering condition. The Young People's sonal questions. At Oxford the meet- Missionary Movement put out 150,000 ings were said to be the most largely copies of. study books and three refer- attended of any series of religious ence libraries during the year, besides meetings in the history of the univerfurnishing a large amount of material sity; at London the opening meeting to the editors of Sunday-school period- was held in the Royal Albert Hall, icals for use in connection with the with IO,OOO in attendance; at Cam- Sunday-school lessons. Almost without bridge, the meetings rivaled in power exception, the receipts of the mission Moody's great series that resulted in boards showed a large advance over the sailing of the Cambridge Seven to the previous year, the total increase China in 1887. In the six student aggregating considerably more than centers of Scandinavia the meetings $1,000,000. A new pace was set were largely attended and the interin missionary giving by bequests est ran high. In Christiania, the openof the late John Stewart Kennedy, one ing session was attended by the king, of New York's Christian millionaires, who invited Mr. Mott to a private who bequeathed $3°,000,000 to public audience on the following day. In St. benefactions, and designated nearly Petersburg and Moscow in Russia the one-third to missionary work of differ- largest available halls were .secured, ent kinds. and were crowded at every session, save one. So eager were the students Mis&ionary Conferences for personal help that they followed Mr. Mott on the streets, and went to The number of missionary confer- his lodgings, not only at appointed ences and conventions held during the hours, but at all times of the day. year was larger than ever before, and Vhen he left, they followed him to the they were well attended and full of station and pleaded with him to come enthusiasm. Notable among them was soon again. In Italy, Hungary and the eighth conference of the ';Yorld's Portugal, the meetings were smaller Students' Christian Federation held in Oxford in July-a remarkable gather-
PROGRESS OF THE WORLD IN
than in the great student centers, but Dr. William Ashmore, whose halfwere marked by equal interest and century of work at Swatow had a power. In view of the fact that the profound influence upon the developmission boards are depending more ment of missions in China. and more on the student bodies to furnish recruits for the work, these Dr. William S. Ament, whose minsigns of deep interest in the things of istry during the Boxer troubles Christ are truly encouraging. greatly endeared him to Christians both in the home-land and in China. Another encouraging sign is that the cause of missions, which from time Dr. George E. Post, of the medical immemorial has been the butt of department of the Syrian Protestant everybody's joke, is commanding College, whose medical works won him growing respect as one of the world's honors and decorations in many lands. greatest enterprises. Four presidents of the United States-Harrison, Mc- Dr. Sheldon Jackson, whose work Kinley, Roosevelt and Taft-have for the pioneers of the West, the Morpublicly advocated missionary work, mons, the Indians and the Alaskans, and a great army of British and Amer- gave him first rank among the home ican ambassadors, consuls and gov- missionaries of his 4ay. ernment officials have testified to its value in foreign lands. Daily news- Mr. Egerton R. Young, whose papers give more and more space to thrilling stories of work among the missionary news, and magazines to Indians of the great Canadian Northmissionary articles. The heroine of west have delighted readers of all a recent "best seller" was engaged in ages and won many friends for misforeign missionary work, and a recent drama deals with one phase of SlOns. America's home missionary problem- The noble army of martyrs received the fusing of many alien races into one great united, liberty-loving people. three accessions among the mission- World travelers, newspaper men aries – Daniel Miner Rogers and among them, return home not to sneer Henry Maurer, who were shot at missions and missionaries as in the at Adaan while trying to save old days, but to praise the work and the girls' school; and Homer C. offer criticisms, if they have any, in Baskerville, who fell while leading a a kindly and sympathetic spirit. That sortie out of Tabriz to relieve the all this is a help to missions can not famished city. Tho the latter had be gainsaid; yet it is upon the promises severed his connection with the misof God, not on popular applause, that sion, he was fighting in behalf of a the final triumph of missions rests. sorely opprest people, and few will doubt that he gained a martyr's crown. Notable Deaths of the Year A peculiarly sad death was that of Among the many missionaries that Miss Lilavati Singh, professor of God called home last year were five English literature and philosophy in famous veterans, whose names will the Isabella Thoburn College at Luckever have a place in the history of now, who had come to this country missions: for a graduate course at Radcliffe, and died in Chicago while traveling in the interests of the Women's Foreign Mis- sionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
LAW OF
BY REV. J. STUART HOLDEN, M.A., LONDON, ENGLAND Associate Editor of THE MISSIONARY REVIEW OF THE WORLD Under the figure of husbandry our we may put into the work. Spiritual Lord teaches us many lessons with re- sowing can not be done according to gard to the sowing of that good seed, rate or rule, for what will germinate "which is the Word of God," from in one soil will die in another, and which we look in faith for a harvest hence this necessity of insuring from of living souls for His glory. It is Him the harvest in advance. clear to all engaged in the work of the Vineyard that there are fixt laws Next, we I1!ust remember that the which determine the character and seed sown must be sown "to the measure of all harvestings. It is well, Spirit" (Gal. 6: 8), for "He that therefore, for those whose supreme soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit desire is for the fullest possible bless- reap life everlasting." The deep siging of God upon their service, to care- nificance of this is, that all our seedfully study these laws as far as they sowing must be done with faith in His are discernible, in order to insure the fructifying power. For what is any longed-for result, which is at once seed taken by itself but an undea manifestation of His power to the veloped possibility, which requires for world, and a contribution to the sum its development the disintegrating and total of His glory. reintegrating power of its proper en- vironment and element? So it is with Remembering that "the seed is the the Word of God. Only by His Spirit Word of God" (Mark 4: 14), we must can its latent possibility be in any defirst recognize that it is to be con- gree realized. ] ust as Ezekiel in the tinually ministered to the sower by the ValIey of Dry Bones must needs Lord Himself (2 Cor. 9: 10). It is "prophesy unto the Spirit," for only one thing to speak and preach that so can the dead be quickened, so must which is but the outcome or echo of we "sow to the Spirit," for only He a past experience, or of an old can produce life by means of the seed knowledge of God's truth, but another which we sow in the world. thing altogether to have a continuous ministry of "seed to the sower," from Further, the spiritual harvest is al- Him who enriches us in everything ways in direct proportion to the spiriunto a bountiful distribution. Noth- tual outlaY-2 Cor. 9: 6 and 7: "He ing is of greater importance than that which soweth sparingly shall reap also we should not fail in this particular. sparingly; and he which soweth It is the first and chiefest duty of bountifully shall reap also bountievery sower to faithfully seek from fully." There are workers, both at Him, day by day, the fulfilment of His home and abroad, who know little promise in a ministry of the seed to of the joy of harvest, because they be sown in just that particular patch know correspondingly little of the of his field into which He has sent commensurate toil of seed-time; for us as laborers. To fail in this secret if we would secure a large measure fellowship with the Lord of the har- of result for God, we must see to it vest is to fail altogether, despite all that we bountifully distribute the seed the experience, energy, or enterprise which He so bountifully ministers to us. That this is necessary is not only alike clear to reason, but is directly of our message and ministry. It must enjoined upon us in the direction of be the Word of God, and only the Word Eccl. I I : 6: "In the morning sow thy which is sown in the hearts of men if seed, and in the evening withhold not the fruit is to be urto everlasting life. thine hand; for thou knowest not Mere speculative philosophy, or human whether shall prosper, either this or wisdom, conjecture and thought about that, or whether they shall be alike God, however beautifully and cleverly good." It is the one who regards the exprest, produce nothing but thorns Gospel not only as a treasure but as a and thistles. The quality as well as trust, and himself not only as a ser- the quantity of the seed is a large devant but as a steward also, and who is termining factor in the looked-for harhence constantly scattering abroad, vest, and it behooves us all to be very who himself increases, and insures a certain in this matter, lest by thus full harvest. sowing our field with "mingled seed" we are making such a real harvest as Again, seed-sowing must be con- would be to the glory of our God imtinuously carried on in the appointed possible. season without regard to seemingly untoward circumstances. "He that Further, it must be remembered that observeth the wind shall not sow; and true seed-sowing is very frequently he that regardeth the clouds shall not carried on "in tears" (Psalm 126: 5). reap" (Eccl. I I : 4) . How often in The sower to-day finds himself in the the experience of most workers has direct succession of the Savior and seed, which was sown in the most un- His earliest followers, by the fellowpromising ground, and with apparently ship. of sufferings in which the work the smallest possible promise, after- involves him, but to such there is a ward proved to have been the most wondrous promise of joyous harvestfruitful of many similar labors. Every ing for "They that sow in tears shall one of us knows the temptation to reap in joy." Who is there among us regard our present surroundings as who does not know the significance of the most difficult and unlikely for sow- these words? Who is there who has ing the gospel seed with any hope of not experienced again and again what harvest, and he who, weighing these it means to be kept at the tas~ of considerations against the express command of his Lord, and against Sowing the seed with an aching heart, the great need of the world, conse- Sowing the seed till the tear-drops start. quently withholds his hand, is losing golden opportunities whose importance Opposition, misunderstanding, isois to be measured mainly by the fact lation, privation, and above all, that they never recur. ungracious reception, often cause the sower's heart to be at break- A very striking and significant Old ing-point, but then it is that he Testament ordinance with regard to is in closest fellowship with his Lord the sowing of the land must be laid and Master, who Himself, the Great to heart in this our work-"Thou shalt Sower, sowed not only His words but not sow thy field with mingled seed" His own life also as "a corn of wheat" (Lev. 19: 19). Its obvious meaning into the earth, with a view to the harfor us is as to the purity and character vest of which we ourselves are a small
part. And this fellowship in the sow- sees in us "of the travail of His soul" ing with tears is but an earnest and will forever compensate for all. Let pledge of that assured fellowship of this be our inspiration, when to conjoy when the sower and reaper re- tinue in the field seems almost imjoice together (John 4: 36). He it possible. Remember that "the joy is who will reap all that we have which was set before Him" and for sown, for to us is often lovingly de- which He "endured the cross despinied the joy of binding the sheaves sing the shame" is likewise set before together for the harvest home. He it us, and is forever our encouraging is who, estimating in the harvest the hope as we go out into the world's faithfulness and cost of the work of field, with the divinely-filled seedthe sower, will reward and repay for basket, scattering seed which shall bear everything which has made the service fruit,. "some thirty-, some sixty-, some hard, and caused those bitter tears an hundred-fold." Meanwhile we may with which often the seed has been "rejoice in hope of the glory of God," b~dewed. The glory of the harvest for we have the assurance that our joy and the satisfaction of Him who "labor is not in vain in the Lord."
THE PRESENT CRISIS IN MORAVIAN MISSIONS BY THE REV. PAUL DE SCHWEINITZ, D.D. Secretary of Missions for the Moravian Church in America The foreign mission work of the kening to its responsibilities. Hence Moravian Church has always been it came about that awakened Chris- given a hearty recognition and ap- tians in Great Britain and the Con- proval by the Christian world at large. tinent of Europe who felt the obliga- When the congregation at Herrn- tion to carry out the command of our hut was the only Moravian Church in Savior to preach the Gospel to all the the world, and numbered barely 600 world endeavored to do so through men and women-a large number of the channel of the Moravian Church.
them penniless immigrants from It should be remembered that Mo- Moravia-these people began foreign ravian missions differ from those of missionary work among the negro other denominations in that, from the slaves of the West Indian islands beginning even unto this day, they ( 1732), and since that day this Church have been carried on not by a mishas been carrying on its work in ever sionary society within the Church, but extending fields but with relatively by the whole Church itself as such.
the same inadequate home resources. The Moravians synodically recognize At that time no Protestant Church foreign missions as the wor~ of the was carrying on foreign missions sys- church, as one organic unity through- ~ematically and the missionary enter- out the world. The Mission Board is prise was represented only by sporadic elected by the General Synod of the efforts here and there. Not until six entire Moravian Brotherhood. It con- or seven decades after the beginning sists of five members, one of whom of the work by the Moravians did the . must be a German, one an English- Protestant world show signs of awa- man, one an American, and two
THE PRESENT CRISIS IN MORAVIAN MISSIONS
chosen from the Church at large, begun, which ordinarily the Church usually from the mission fields. As would not have dared to undertake. a matter of convenience, certain fields In the course of time many legacies may be administered from the nearest came to Moravian missions with stiphome province, but eventually the cen- ulations that the principal was to be tral international board is responsible funded. These have been accumufor everything and the accounting of lating during a century and a half and all funds is finally made to the central more, so that considerable income is treasury in Herrnhut. Each home now derived from this source. province has its own mission secretary, who serves without special salary Then large donations and bequests and furthers the work in every possi- were received with the condition that ble way, supervises the missions more they must be used specifically for new directly connected with that province, work and in fields which no other collects, disburses and accounts for Church would enter. In faith in the all contributions coming from his Lord these heavy responsibilities were province. assumed, and thus it has come about that while in Europe, Great Britain The absence of other foreign mis- and America there are only 201 Mosion agencies in the Protestant Church ravian congregations all told, includuring the eighteenth and earlier dec- ding even filial charges, which have adGs of the nineteenth century led no pastors of their own, in the foreign many earnest Christians on the con- field there are 272 stations and outtinent of Europe and in Great Britain stations and 744 preaching-places scatto do their share of this work through tered over fourteen different mission the agency of the Moravian Church. provinces; and while there is a total Thus, for example, in 1817 there was home membership of only 43,127, organized in England the London So- there is a foreign mission memberciety in Aid of Moravian Missions, ship of 102,381. which continues its beneficent work to this day, composed altogether of non- Now comes the critical change in Moravians, and devoting all its income the entire situation. At the present to Moravian missions. day every Protestant land teems with missionary societies and boards of Gifts to Moravian Missions every conceivable description, and none rejoice more than the Moravians The consequence of this historical at this great missionary awakening of development was, that in course of the Protestant Christian world; but time the Moravian Mission Board de- while the old supporters of Moravian rived a far larger income from sources missions remain loyal, as these pass outside of the church than from its away, it seems impossible to supply own church-membership, a condition their places. It has been necessary which exists to the present day. The for Moravians to depend more and Moravian Church has ever furnished more upon their own resources, but the missionaries, but a large part of these are inadequate for the extended the support has come from without work which has been so widely dethe Church. veloped.
Under the pressure of this kind of It appears that the Moravian support, mission after mission was
Church can no longer bear the burden. Mission, 324 per cent.; in the Nic- In 1907 the deficit was, in round num- araguan Mission, 47 per cent.; and bers, $64,000; in 1908, $72,000; and the number of ordained native minis- the present outlook is that the deficit ters increased almost 50 per cent. The of 1909 will be equally large. This Church prays that the fulness of the does not mean that the deficit of 1908 Gentiles may be gathered in; the includes the deficit of 1907, but in each prayer is being answered, the heathen case the figures represent an entirely are corning in, and alas! the Church new deficit in that particular year's is overwhelmed by the answer to its accounts. By strenuous efforts the own prayers.
combined deficits of 1907 and 1908, The second great cause for these $I36,000, have been reduced to about deficits lies in political and industrial $60,00:), but the new deficit keeps disturbances. It was confidently ex- piling up. When it is remembered pected that the West Indian missions that in order to avoid financial ruin would be self-supporting and in- the annual budget must be made up dependent by 1899, or surely by I909, in full and the deficit met in addition, but the industrial conditions caused and that there are only 43,0:):) men, by United States tariffs, as weII as by women and children all told in Europe, natural calamities, earthquakes, hurri- Great Britain and America to do it, canes, floods, and other uncontrollable then the apparent impossibility of the forces, have thrown the work back- task stands clearly revealed. ward. The Nicaraguan Mission on This is the more deplorable, be- the Mosquito Coast was fast approach- cause never in the history of the ing self-support when Nicaragua Church have the prospects for ex- seized the reserve in I 894, and since pansion been so bright; never have so then has carried on a systematic Illany tempting fields been open, never course of persecution, which has has the cry been so insistent to go doubled and quadrupled the cost of forward. To cut off dead or mortify- this mission. It was one of the most ing members is a proper surgical flourishing fields of the Church, and operation, but to cut off healthy, liv- no other church is working among ing members is a terrible thing. these creoles and Indians. The work These deficits, which are crushing in South Africa was practically self- the life out of Moravian missions, are . supporting. Then came the Boer not caused by less liberal giving but Tar, the rinderpest, etc., and now by causes, in addition to those out- this field is a heavy drain on the lined above, utterly beyond the con- Church. Labrador was entirely self- trol of any mission board. supporting, but now trade conditions The first of these is natural growth. have changed, and this field has added Most of the fields worked by the Mo- $10,000 to the annual budget. And ravian Church are occupied by no so on.
other board, and there is tremendous The third and most serious element pressure to go forward and possess in the situation is the one already em- the land. In the last decade the mem- phasized: the disproportion of the bership in the Himalayan Mission in- home membership to the work in the creased 88 per cent.; in the Nyasa foreign field. This has been recognized
PRESENT CRISIS IN MORAVIAN MISSIONS
as coming to be a terribly tragic mat- with figures, but with human souls, ter long ago. At the last General which have been purchased by the Synod the historic field of Greenland, blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, and which had been in the care of the which have been rescued from the Church since 1733 and which gript degradation of heathenism as the rethe very heart of the Church, was ward of His sufferings. none the less turned over to the Danish State Lutheran Church. The As a consequence of· its historical transfer was accomplished in the most development, the Moravian Church in fraternal manner imaginable. The most places is working where no other remnant of the historic work among board has gone. Hence, thus far all the Indians in Canada was transferred efforts to secure a society or board to the Methodist Church of Canada. willing to take over any of these Mo- The home membership woke up to the ravian fields have failed. To withnecessity of making additional efforts. draw without turning the field over In the decade 1898-1908, the gifts of to another board, means delivering the members of the continental these people back to the gloom and province of the Church increased 41 despair of heathenism, after the beper cent.; in Great Britain, 58 per ginning has been made at the excent.; in the American province, penditure of untold sacrifice. To con- North, 143 per cent.; in the American tinue means to plunge the entire work province, South, 237 per cent. But into bankruptcy. Surely the Moravian in spite of all these efforts, because of Mission Board is face to face with a the conditions enumerated, the deficits terrible crisis. have continued to roll up. This retrenchment is like killing the Vhen, therefore, the General Synod children you have borne and nursed of I909 met, it was realized that and reared. It is stopping natural radical steps must be taken to save growth. It is hurling the people back the mission work of the Church from into heathenism. complete bankruptcy. It was accordingly ordered, that the Mission In America there has never been Board must introduce retrenchments, any such organized support of Mowhich would bring about a reduction ravian Missions by non-Moravians as of the annual budget by about $50,000. on the continent of Europe, in Great It is very easy to write those words; Britain, and latterly in Australia. but it is reported that when the reso- There have been highly appreciated lution was finally passed, strong men contributions from American Chrisbroke down and wept. tians, but they have not played any great role in the missions of the Mo- It is also comparatively easy to issue ravian Church. This is not surprizing. such instructions to a mission board, Every American miSSion board but when it comes to carrying them naturally seeks to gain all the conout the problem becomes frightfully tributors for its own causes from its difficult. The board is dealing not own natural constituency.
MISSIONARY PATHFINDER OF
A SKETCH OF THE LIFE AND WORK OF REV. EGERTON R. YOUNG BY MISS LILLY RYDER GRACEY, ROCHESTER, N. Y.
The stories of the journeys and ad- cessful pastorate and a people who ventures of Rev. Egerton R. Young offered them love and every inducein the land of the Cree and Salteaux ment to remain among them and Indians of Canada never failed to journeyed for two months and a half charm an audience. His mode of to Norway House, their destination. living and his unique experiences among these redmen and the tales that On their arrival, Indians who had showed his intimate knowledge of become Christians through the prestheir habits and traditions would in- ence of other missionaries in their terest any listener. Dr. Young went country, crowded to see them, even among these crude people when they some pagan Indians dressing in their were untamed savages, but he recog- wild, picturesque costumes and going nized their stalwart characters and to greet and give a friendly welcome higher possibilities. He saw them to the newcomers. Dr. Young's field exchange savage rites for Christian enlarged until it extended north and worship and subdue their primitive south over five hundred miles, and in passions to conform to the teachings some directions was over three hunof Christ. dred miles wide. Indian camps and villages were visited in summer by This missionary pioneer and path- canoe and in winter with dog-trains. finder was as daring and dauntless as As his missions increased there were the people whom he went to serve. some so remote that he could go to In the spring of 1868, he and Mrs. them but twice a year, and the hard- Young made their first adventurous ships and deprivations endured on journey to the Northland. Leaving these journeys were very like those cars and steamboats behind them, they experienced by searchers for the North used horses and canvas-covered Pole. In winter he was obliged to wagons. At night they encamped sleep in holes dug in the snow with on the prairies, forded bridgeless temperature from thirty to sixty destreams, some of which took the party grees below zero. His companions three and four days to cross. Over were Indian runners and the twenty or routes where parlor-cars now carry more St. Bernard and Newfoundland travelers in luxurious comfort. this dogs that were used to draw his train caravan went in tedious marches, often of sleds. Without them the missiontaking off shoes and stockings as they ary expeditions could not have been bravely waded through wide streams. undertaken and, like Grenfell of Many days they traveled in frail Labrador, Dr. Young gave public canoes, manned by Indians, carrying tribute to the marvelous intelligence with them oxen whose bodies ex- and human instincts of these noble tended over the sides of the little animals. To their sagacity he more crafts. At night they went ashore than once owed his life. Miles of with their tents. They had left a field portages were made on these trips with where Dr. Young had enjoyed a suc- the camping outfit and canoes. Faces and feet were often bruised and the wondrous auroras, which Dr. bleeding from icy branches and ice- Young described as "dwarfing into inpinnacled paths. Attacks of illness significance man's mightiest pyrofrequently made these longer journeys technic displays."
EGE'RTON R. YOUNG Many of his guides and dog-drivers were Indians who had become Chrisadditionally wearisome and dangerous. tians and had the spirit of evangelists. Cold sweats would sometimes drench To some of these he paid the followthe blankets, which would then freeze ing fitting tribute: "Up the shining and become as stiff as leather. The trail, following the unerring Guide, faithful dogs cuddled at his side to they have gone beyond the auroras and furnish warmth, and when this ex- beyond the stars right to the throne pedient failed the Indians would build of God." a fire in the snow while the missionary undrest to his skin that he might As he journeyed over his vast terdry his clothes and warm his body be- ritory he met the Indians at their fore the roaring flames. More than council-fires, and asked their views of once typhoid-fever and other ills fol- God and inquired as to their willinglowed in the wake of these perilous ness to give up paganism for Chris- Journeys. tianity, and to send their children to school. Invariably, the pipe of peace Sometimes he traveled long di s- would be lit, and after the chief had tances to the north, where the sun and puffed at it, would be handed Dr. snow became so bright by day that he Young. Then the plans for chapel or was forced to travel by night. At sun- school would be discust and the work down he would break camp and both would be started. missionary and runners would speed along by starlight, stopping only at Sometimes the missionary was summidnight to cook and eat their frugal dinner. Often they were guided by MRS. EGJ::RTON R. YOU NG moned across great lakes to act as diplomat and representative of the English Government. Tact and ready wit were needed to answer the ques-
tionings as to why the steamboats build small houses for the sake of were rushing through their waters and tidiness and cleanliness. Fields were destroying their fisheries; or why the plowed, with clogs harnessed to imwhite hunters with guns and steel- provised plows and makeshift hartraps were killing off their game, and rows. The first crop of wheat was the surveyors driving stakes into their winnowed by the aid of Mrs. Young, ground. The Indians looked to Dr. who sewed sheets together to hold the Young to protect their treaty rights. grain as the wind blew away the chaff. He was an apt reader of Indian char- From such practical lessons as these acter, and felt deep human sympathy the Indians learned to help themwhich gave him a far-reaching in- selves. fluence and made his efforts among the different tribes have the effect of The Indian women became amtransforming the lives of those with bitious to keep house like "Ookemaswhom he came in contact. Wild and quas," as they called Mrs. Young. At savage Indians under his ministra- Sunday services the announcement tions and teachings became conse- was sometimes made that the miscrated Christians and aggressive sionary and his wife would take dinworkers among their own people. ner on stated clays with members of ~Where he had seen idols worshiped the congregation. At such times inamid horrid orgies, and had heard the teresting demonstrations would be yells, rattles and drums of old con- made in domestic science. On such jurers and medicine-men, he saw occasions Mrs. Young, who had her chapels erected and Indians as pastors own train of dogs, would precede her over flocks. In solitary wigwams and husband to the Indian home and take lonely hunting-camps the Christian with her a table-cloth, dishes and some Indians took such comfort in the provisions. The wife would receive a Bible ~ that nothing would have in- lesson in housekeeping and dinner duced them to leave it out of their would be served picnic style, for there packs. were, of course, no tables or other furniture. Among the practical evidences of the thoroughness and genuineness of Many miles a day were covered by changes wrought was the improve- the indefatigable Dr. Young and his ment in the family life. The sad no less energetic wife, as they visited sights common among degraded sav- the sick and sorrowing among their ages, such as the ill-treatment of different bands. Besides the heroic mothers, wives and sisters and the endurance of exile from civilization aged, gave place to the kindly ways and their primitive mode of living and happy homes that characterized among a wild people, they were the life of the transformed Indians. obliged to endure the hardship of 'Woman was uplifted from the de- being cut off from communication with graded place she held in all the tribes the rest of the world by post, except and was given a Christian position in twice the year. The routine of daily the home. One of the material life included the tiresome and even changes was effected by persuading nauseating diet of fish three times a the people to abolish wigwams and to day. This was only varied by the capricious luck of the hunter who
I9IO] THE MISSIONARY PATHFINDER OF CANADA
might chance to bring in venison or Young gave her Bible lessons, and some other game. The catch of fish marked a sheet of foolscap paper to for the year was necessarily enormous. make a calendar by which she could For their own family use and that of distinguish the Sundays, explaining to their dogs ten thousand fish must be her the sanctity of the Lord's day. As caught before winter set in. These she left the mission and pushed out in were piled up in November to be kept her canoe her last importunate request frozen until April. was that soon the missionary would visit her and her people in their own The success that rewarded the Jand. To her pleadings he replied: labors of these two workers for their "When the eagle moon is filling out, years of self-denial and hardships listen for the ringing of the misseems almost incredible. A people who sionary's sleigh-bells, for then will he were pagans, with superstitious beliefs be coming to see you and your people and debasing habits, became so with his dog train and guide." A few changed that they would come many months later the promise was fulfilled, miles over ice and snow to Christian by a night after night journey of two service, and between two and three weeks, over ledges of ice that overhundred at a time were often present hung the rapid waters of a great on a communion season. The little rIver. places of worship were erected in spite of tremendous difficulties. Men were The importunings of the people are employed all winter to cut down trees, also seen in another incident told with square the logs, saw the timber into eloquence and pathos by Dr. Young boards, make rafts, and then when in the following dialog: spring came to float them down the river to the spot selected for the mis- "Missionary," said a savage, stalsion village. Here every board was wart-looking Indian to him, "gray cut and prepared by hand. Parents hairs here, and grandchildren in the sometimes brought their little ones as wigwam, tell me that I am getting to much as two hundred miles to have be an old man; and yet I n'ever before them christened. The fame of Dr. heard such things as you have told Young and his teachings spread until LtS to-day. I am so glad I did not many individuals and sometimes die before I heard this wonderful whole bands of Indians sought him story. Yet I am getting old. Gray out to learn of the "Great Spirit" hairs here, and grandchildren yonder, about whom he told. One chieftainess tell the story. Stay as long as you can, who, with several of her followers, missionary; tell us much of these one summer came unheralded to visit things; and when you have to go the missionary and his wife, traveled away, come back soon." from her home several days' journey. She had heard from some fur-hunters "He turned as tho he would go about the missionary coming to live back to his place and sit down," said among the Indians and determined to Dr. Young in narrating the story, "but hear for herself. She prolonged her he only went a step or two ere he stay at the missionary's home two turned round and said: weeks, during which time Dr. and Mrs. " 'Missionary, may I say more?' "'Talk on,' I replied; 'I am here now to listen.'
"'You said just now,"Notawenan" people could hardly restrain their ex- (Our Father).' pressions of delight.
"'Yes, I did say, "Our Father.'" "The old man, however, had not yet "'That is very new and sweet to finished, and so, quietly restraining the us,' he replied. 'We never thought most demonstrative ones, he again of the Great Spirit as Father. We turned and said: heard Him in the thunder, and saw " 'May I say more?'
Him in the lightning and tempest and "'Yes, sayan; say all that is III blizzard, and we were afraid. So, your heart.'
when you tell us of the Great Spirit as "Then came his last question, which Father-that is very beautiful to us.' millions of weary souls dissatisfied "Hesitating a moment, he stood with their false regimes are asking: there, a wild, picturesque Indian; yet "'Missionary, I do not want to be my heart had strangely gone out in rude, but why has my white brother loving interest and sympathy to him. been so long time in coming with that Lifting up his eyes to mine again, he Great Book and its wonderful story?' "
said: Returning home after some years " 'May I say more?' . of labor, Dr. Young won fame as a "'Yes,' I answered; 'sayan.' lecturer and author. His inexhaustible "'You say, "Notawenan" (Our fund of information, ready wit, fine Father) ; He is your Father?' presence and an eloquent style, caused "'Yes, He is my Father.' him to be in great demand as a lec- "Then he said, while his eyes and turer in the United States, Canada, voice yearned for the answer: Great Britain and Australia. The " 'Does it mean He is my Father- late Grover Cleveland, after listening poor Indian's Father?' to one of his lectures on his thrilling " 'Yes, oh yes!' I exclaimed, 'He is missionary life, exclaimed that he your Father, too.' could listen to him for hours, and later "'Your Father-missionary's Fa- asked the missionary to be his guest ther-and Indian's Father, too?' he at the White House. Sir Charles repeated. Tupper stated on one occasion that Dr.
" 'Yes, that is true.' Young was Canada's best immigra- " 'Then we are brothers l' he almost tion agent.
shouted out. Dr. Young was the author of many " 'Yes, we are brothers,' I replied. books. Among them, "By Canoe and "The excitement in the audience Dog Train Among the Cree and Sal- had become something wonderful, and teaux Indians," "Stories from Indian when the conversation with the old Vigwams and Northern Camp Fires,"
man had reached this point, and in "On the Indian Trail," "Children of such an unexpected and yet dramatic the Forest," "The Apostle to the manner had so clearly brought out, North," "Algonquin Indian Tales,"
not only the Fatherhood of God, but "My Dogs in the Northland," and the oneness of the human family, the "The Boys in the Wild North Land."
MARTYRS OF OSMANlYE AND SAGH
BY STEPHEN VAN RENSSELAER TROWBRIDGE, AINTAB, TURKEY When the disturbances broke out in they set out upon the Adana road on Adana on April 14, twenty-one minis- the morning of April IS. In the after- ters of the Protestant churches of Cen- noon they were overtaken by a Chris- tral Turkey were on their way to the tian messenger, who warned them that annual meeting of the mission. These pastors and preachers had been chosen after much thought and consultation as representative Christian leaders who should come together for the ten days' devotional and business meet- ings. They were approaching Adana by two main caravan roads, one from the district of Hadjin, in the Taurus Mountains to the north, and the other from the cities of Aintab and Ouda on the east. The massacre commenced in all the towns and villages of the province and out upon the highway simultaneously with the attack by the Turkish mob in Adana. Nothing could be dearer than that a cruel plot had been made by the Turks, and with remarkable stealth and precision had been enjoined upon the entire Mo- PROF. SARKIS LEVONIAN hammedan population of the province. Not one of the pastors escaped. One of the martyrs of ATmenia The circumstances of their death as . there was danger of an attack by the well as the character of their lives are Moslems. It was too late in the day sufficient proof that they were slain, to return to Kozan, so they asked for not because the Turks felt racial or hospitality and protection at the political animosity, but because these mudir's house in the Circassian village heroic and peace-loving men were fol- of Sagh Gechid. The mudir in a Mos- lowers of Christ. In the hour of lem village is at the same time the threatening and peril they did not village chief and the government mag- deny His name; they did not surren- istrate. This mudir agreed to receive der themselves to become followers of the travelers as his guests, which, in Mohammed. So they paid the cost by the Orient, means the most sacred their lives, and were added to the pledge of life and property. A similar goodly company of men and women promise of protection was made by who have suffered martyrdom for the Haji Bey, another prominent Turk.
Savior. But the next day, at three o'clock in The Hadjin party was made up of the afternoon, these Christian guests seven pastors, four women and two were dragged out into the courtyard.
lay delegates. After spending vVed- The Turks first robbed them of their nesday night in the town of Kazan, goods, and then took them one by one
and cut their throats. After this they On Wednesday, the 14th, Rev. H. put to death in the same way the sev- Koundakjian (Hassan Beyli Church), enty-eight Armenian inhabitants of Rev. S. Hovhannessian (Kharne), the village, who, for years, had lived Takvor Khoja (Baghche), and Rev. as neighbors side by side with the Cir- G. Kupelian (Osmaniye) were killed cassians. The women and children hy Mohammedans as they were riding shared the same cruel death. Finally, along the road toward Adana. They the dead and wounded were piled to- were on the highway a few hours west gether into carts, were carried out to of Osmaniye. That night the caravan the edge of a deep ravine and were bringing the delegates from the eastthrown down the bank. All the ern part of the field, reached the town wounded except two died. One of of Osmaniye, and spent the night in these was the wife of Pastor Asdoor, the courtyard of the village church. of Fekke, who was killed. She was As yet there was no disturbance in severely wounded, but saved her life the town, tho alarming messages were by pretending to be dead, even tho the brought in at night. In the morning Moslems tore the earrings from her the Moslem mob surrounded the ears and stabbed her again and again. church shooting into the windows, and vVith wonderful courage she lay per- the following pastors, together with fectly still, and when all the mob had many friends and delegates, were gone away, she, together with a man forced to take refuge in the basement from Hadjin, crawled out from un- of the building in a low room with derneath the heap of dead bodies. vaulted roof: Working their way through the fields far from the road, they reached Kazan Giragos Zhamgotsian, Severek. the next day and told the dreadful Setrak Ekmekjian, First Church, Ourfa. news. The names of the pastors and their churches are as follows: Jurgis Shammas, Syrian Protestant, Istilion Arslanides, First Church, Had- Ourfa. jin. Zakariah Bedrossian, Garmouch. N erses Kouyoumjian, Adiaman. Levon Soghomonian, Second Church, Nazaret Heghinian, Third Church, Hadjin. Marash. Asdoor Topalian, Fekke. Ardashes Boyajian, Shar. Among the delegates was Prof. Melidon Malyan, Kozan. Sarkis Levonian of Central Turkey Samuel Bedrossian, Kara Keoy. College. The mob set fire to the Abraham Seferian (lay preacher), church and as the flames grew fiercer Yere Bakan. and the smoke filled the basement, Constantin Siyahian, Kars. Mary, the teacher of the School for the Blind in Ourfa, ran out from' the One of the women who suffered church and plead for her life. She death was house-mother in the mis- was carried off to the government sionary orphanage in Hadjin. An- house and afterward made her way to other was one of the foremost mem- Adana. But the heartless mob closed bers in the Kozan church, known in ur!on the men in the basement of throughout the community "for her the church, shooting any who apkindness of heart and her pure and peared at the entrance. The last holy life." sound which was heard from the little
THE MARTYRS OF OSMANIYE AND SAGH GECHID
company before the walls and roof ural scientific instincts, but rather his fell in was a prayer offered by the large-hearted and large-minded manwhite-haired and saintly pastor Gi- hood which drew the students to him, ragos. He reached out his hands in and which commanded the respect and blessing to his comrades and in appeal affection of his associates. As an to God. This scene was described by evangelist, he had that rare spiritual Mary of Ouria, the only one of the power which filled the congregation caravan who escaped. Two pastors with the immediate message and presjourneying from the Marash field and ence of Christ. His vacations were the pastors of the Hamiedie and AI- waited for by the churches that they bustan churches suffered in like man- might secure him to preach on weekner at the hands of the Turks. day nights to the crowds of common people. His penetration and good It is difficult to describe in terms of sense in counseling the impetuous Arsufficient for~ and earnestness the menian students in college frequently lives of these men. They lived with transformed their foolish nationalism an apostolic simplicity, and yet they into a sincere and thoughtful patriotwere far from being monastic; they ism. He was indeed a man of remarkloved all men with the deep friendship able gifts and of a most iovable which they learned from daily fellow- disposition. The educated and proship with their Master; they were gressive Turks in Aintab were much courageous and faithful at their posts attached to him. amid frequent persecution and under the stress of poverty. They had had The life of Pastor Ha:gop of Has- "trial of mockings and scourgings, yea, san Beyli, would be well worth remoreover of bonds and impl;ison- cording in full. He was a mountainment." They were cheerful and hope- eer from childhood and understood ful-traits rarely found in the Ar- and loved the homely habits of the menian nature. They were known villagers. For thirty years he served everywhere for their integrity and for in that parish, always ready to go over thoughtful kindness to the poor. Dur- the mountains to the lonely hamlets, ing eleven years spent in America, I where no other messenger of the gosnever found a group of Christian pas- pel ever went. He taught the people tors who were so thoroughly conse- to build their "homes of stone in the crated to the great work of saving midst of gardens and orchards instead men. In a country where constitution- of in crowded blocks of mud dwellal government is not yet com- ings. His sons are now doing eminent prehended and is desired by the more service in the ministry and in mediintelligent only, these pastors had been cine in other parts of Central Turkey.. for a lifetime putting into practise But two days after the mob slew the the principles of brotherhood and de- pastor, they came with hue and cry mocracy which are inherent to the upon Hassan Beyli itself, scattered the true Christian Church. villagers into the clefts of the moun- tains, sacked and burned the houses Professor Sarkis Levonian was, in and destroyed the church. Not being many senses, a leader in the college at satiated with this, they followed the Aintab. It was not simply his educa- fugitives relentlessly and put many of tion in the United States, nor his nat-
them to death in the most barbarous several Moslem inquirers were commanner. ing to talk with them about the life and message of the Messiah. All of The pastors from Garmouch and these pastors were by word and deed Adiaman had been recently ordained. loyal and obedient to the Ottoman In November, 1908, I made the jour- Government. ney to these churches for the services of ordination. The chairman of our How shall we interpret the loss of committee was the veteran of this such good men? Is it true, as many field, Pastor Giragos, who was among of the Armenians feel in their disthe slain at Osmaniye. I shall never tress, that God has forsaken His peoforget the tender and earnest charge pie? Or may we believe, as others aswhich he gave to the Adiaman congre- sert, that God is purging His church? gation. His face was radiant with Do· not these losses mean much more cheerfulness as he exprest his wish than that? As I reflect upon the moral that the new pastor might enjoy the caliber and the high ideals of these favor and loyalty of his people. His men, my conviction grows stronger and benediction at the close of the service stronger that these sacrifices are the left the congregation hushed with a price which must be paid for the sursense of peacefulness and mercy. vival of the Christian faith in the very midst of the Mohammedan world. Everyone of the churches which The fury of the attack upon the Osthese men s'erved had come forward maniye church was not primarily due steadily toward self-support. Ouda to the lust of plunder. What goods First Church had, some years ago, or wealth had these village pastors reached that point. The Ouda Syrian that. the mob might covet? The mocongregation twenty years ago was a tive was not one of political or racial little handful of people whose preacher bigotry or suspicion. Where, in the was engaged and paid by the mission- empire, could you find more loyal and aries. Now the church has come for- more friendly citizens? It was an atward into self-government and has re- tack on the Christian religion. These cently experienced two deep move- martyrs will take their places along ments of spiritual awakening. Last with those Christians of Uganda and winter the people began to give thank of China who laid down their lives offerings in order to prepare for the rather than deny their Lord and Masenlargement of the church building. ter. Ours is that solemn joy of which Abraham Lincoln wrote to a mother Some of these pastors who were whose five sons had been slain upon killed at Osmaniye were deeply inter- the battle-field in the Civil War-that ested in the extension of the Gospel solemn joy "to have laid so costly a among the Moslems. Patient and fre- sacrifice on the altar of freedom." quent efforts to influence Turks had Their blood has not been shed in vain. been made, especially by Pastors Giragas and Shammas, with the result that
SEATED OVER TRENCH FOR THE SACRIFICIAL
PURIFICATION BY BLOOD IN WEST AFRICA BY REV, WM. M. DAGER, ELAT, KAMERUN, WEST AFRICA The people of West Africa believe stituted plantain leaves for their ordithat sickness is due to some occult nary garments. cause, so they make "medicine" in each particular case to find and remove As I came into town the men were the cause of the sickness. On a re- having a "palaver" and seemed rather cent trip to Metet I passed through disconcerted to have a white man ara town where they were making "So" rive just at that time. Some went off medicine to cure a man who had been and conferred together, but soon came ailing for several months. It was mid- back and began to distribute the food. day and the emaciated sick man was I told them that I was not a physician, reclining against a rest made from a but I would like to speak with them forked branch of a tree. He was hold- when they had finished. After the ing a plantain leaf over his head as a noonday meal was over, the men proprotection from the heat of the sun ceeded with their ceremony. The sick and in front of him was a narrow man was seated at the head of the trench about six inches wide, six trench and the women sat on plantain inches deep, and forty feet long. The stocks placed over the trench. They ground sloped gently toward the head were so close that they had to sit of the trench where there were two spoon fashion. Thirty-nine women earthen pots of "medicine," one hold- and the sick man had each one foot of ing about a gallon and the other three space. In the liRe were two mothers gallons. Near by were ten or twelve with infants in their arms and about baskets full of food prepared for a half-dozen girls, the others being those gathered for the ceremony. The mature women. All were wives and women were at one side and had sub- were going through the ordeal be- cause their husbands had so com-
manded them. The women wele sus- the "So" society. She confest that pected by their husbands of having she had murdered and put a slave in done something which might have the grave. The slave was an initiated been the cause of the sickness. member of the "So" society, and this When the women were all seatea, was supposed to be the cause of the the medicine-man took a segment of affliction. After e,ach confession, the two vines which had twined themselves medicine man chanted a half-dozen about each other, symbolical of the meaningless, cabalistic phrases.
way the evil spell had wound itself Then they brought a kid and held about the sick man. The pieces @f it directly over the head of the sick vine were about a yard and a half man while they cut its throat and let long, and after separating them, as a the blood spurt all over him. They sign of the disengaging of the spell then passed up and down the line, let- from the victim, the medicine-man ting the blood come on the _heads of gave two ends to an assistant while everyone of the women, some of he himself retained the other ends. whom seemed to feel the need of They were then rubbed back and forth cleansing, for they wanted to have the while a weird incantation was recited. blood come upon them. Some shrank This mysterious observance has a away as the warm blood spurted out, strong hold upon the people, and they but when they came to the woman who dread doing anything that may bring had murdered her slave, she turned calamity to others and involve possible her face upward to receive the full discovery and punishment to them- benefit of it. The men paused and selves. passed on only when her face and Soon a dozen of the women and shoulders were covered with blood.
the man himself made confession of What a revelation of the workings of violation of some of the prohibitions conscience! What a groping in the put upon the people by the fraternity darkness for some ray of hope!
called "So." Next they took the large pot of Most of these confessions were il- medicine, and with a sop of bark and lustrative of the depravity of human leaves they sprinkled the medicine nature. One was pathetic. A mother over the sick man, and each woman who had lost two children confest that, in turn washed off the blood with the contrary to their custom, her husband medicine. The other pot of medicine was of the same tribe as she. This was poured into the trench, and each was supposed to have been the cause woman was expected to gather up of the death of the children. She some of it in her hand as it flowed past asked that the spell be removed so and cleanse her body with it.
that her unborn child might be spared. Then the women stood up one at a Another confession opened the door of time, each taking with her the piece heathen darkness and let us get a of plantain stock on which she had glimpse of vices of paganism in all its been sitting, lest she bring upon others ghastliness. Another woman of good a spell similar to the one they were physique, middle-aged, said that she seeking to remove. All were supposed had participated in the burying of her to run to some stream in which they husband, in violation of the custom of bathe and return clothed in their ordi-
PURIFICATION BY BLOOD IN WEST AFRICA
nary garments. The sick man was taken internally. Then I showed the carried away. If he should not re- uselessness of what they were doing, cover, it would be thought to be be- in that there was no relation between cause the real cause of his sickness the sickness and what they claimed to had not been con fest and removed, or be the cause of it, nor was there any because some one had not gone reason to expect a cure by their through with his part of the observ- method. I explained that we came to ance properly. tell them of a better and more rea- sonable way of life. I told them of After the ceremony was concluded, THE EMBLEM OF THE {(so" SOCIETY, WEST AFRICA my opportunity came to talk. I told the sacrifices of the Jews, and exhow our physicians gathered knowl- plained how they pointed to Christ. edge of medicines from all over the Then I spoke to them about the Savior, world, and wherever they found a the Lamb of God, whose blood cleanses medicine which was effective, they us from all sin, and tried to tell would study its effect upon the body. that old story so simply and plainly I told them that many of the native that the words would bear fruit. herbs and barks were good for medicine and that they were generally The people listened attentively and seemed to desire to hear more.
ISSIONS MEANS THE IND, THE OTIVE, THE IGHT OF THE ASTER ULTIPLIED BY HIS ESSENGERS.
STEWART, OF
BY REV. JOHN T. FARIS, PHILADELPHIA, PA.
"We have nailed the flag of Africa to our mast, and there it must remain till God Himself takes it down."-Letter of JAMES STEWART, 1875.
"Doctor Stewart and General Gor- captivated by the volume that for a don were to me the two greatest long time he could talk of little else; heroes of the age-the saintly servants his fellow students, who had called of God and of Queen Victoria-the him "Long Stewart," because of his Elijah and Joshua of modern times," height, now gave him the name "Stew- said a steamship captain who many art Africanus."
times carried James Stewart between Stewart began his ministry in the England and Africa. This statement home land, but it was not long before would have been endorsed by thou- he heard the definite call to cross the sands who followed the missionary in sea, and in 1859 he proposed to the his wonderful work during nearly half Foreign Mission Committee of the a century. Free Church that he be sent to Africa The first impulse to become a for- to do missionary work in the region eign missionary was received when made famous by Livingstone. As the young Stewart-then fifteen years old committee felt 'unable to assume the -was following the plow in Perth- responsibility, he organized among his shire. "Leaning on the stilts of the friends "The New Central African plow, he began to brood over his fu- Committee," composed of eighteen ture. What was it to be? The ques- men, "with the view of turning to prac- tion flashed across his mind-,-'might tical account the discoveries of Living- I .not make more of my life than by stone, and to open a new mission in remaining here ?' He straightened Central Africa." The initial expenses himself and said, 'God helping me, I were largely paid from contributions will be a missionary.''' On another solicited by himself, supplemented by occasion, while out hunting with his the gift of his entire inheritance. Then cousins, he said, "Jim, I shall never he gave himself-for he was the man be satisfied till I am in Africa with a chosen by the committee to go to Bible in my pocket and a rifle on my Africa to look over the ground. shoulder to supply my wants." * Stewart's indomitable perseverance Years of business training, necessi- carried him through obstacles in the tated by the desire to help his father, face of which many a man would per- and to provide for his own education, haps have turned his back forever on gave him invaluable preparation for the mission field. He was expecting the life to which he was looking for- to accompany Mrs. Livingstone from ward and taught him to make the most Durban to the Zambesi on a brig char- of his opportunities. In school he was tered to carry another mission party to not a prize-winner, but he devoted a neighboring field, but strenuous ef- himself diligently to the studies which forts were made to persuade him that he felt would be most useful to him. he was not wanted by Livingstone and While a student in the Divinity Hall that he would better return to Eng- of the Free Church of Scotland, he land. When Mrs. Livingstone assured read and made a careful analysis of him that her husband would welcome the life of Livingstone. He was so him and declared to the captain that * "Stewart, of Lovedale." By James Wells. Fleming H. Revell Co. she would not sail unless Mr. Stewart mittee of the Free Church, "for such was permitted to accompany her, he a man as Dr. Stewart there are no inpaid no further attention to the pro- superable obstacles in the way." tests of those who would detain him. During a brief stay at home he com- For five weeks the delay, the efforts pleted his medical course, and gained to pursuade him that he was on a some valuable experience in work in fool's errand, and the assaults on his the churches. Then he was sent by character continued. The time was the Free Church to the missionary inspent in conducting Gospel meetings stitute in Lovedale, Cape Colony, and and gathering information that might there for three years-until 187o-he be of value to him later. Always his labored under Dr. Govan, the princicomfort was gained in reading the pal. When he was free to work out Bible and in prayer. Once he wrote in his own plans the wonderful develophis journal: ment of the institution began. His aim-which was thought visionary by Make me patient under calumny, most people-"was to uplift the native whether it be at home or abroad. Give by touching him at every point, inme patience to labor at details as much structing him in all the arts of civilas if they were the highest work Let ized life and fitting him for all Chrisme not get disappointed with the opposi- tian duties." tion that may be thrown in the way. If it shall prove not to be Thy call to labor One of the first steps was to dishere, help me to take the lesson Thou continue the teaching of Latin and givest for my good. Help me to be con- Greek, the study of English as the tent with Thy work in me if not by me, classic being substituted. Another inand out of all vexation and trial it has novation was that the native pay tuibrought, only let my heart be brought tion fees. Many prophesied failure, nearer Thee. but the fees were soon paid without complaint. Little by little the oppor- Consecrated perseverance conquered. tunity for industrial education was At last he reached Livingstone and presented, Dr. Stewart's idea being to received a welcome that repaid him for give "a practical training for brain, all he had suffered. After a season eye, hand and heart." Business men with the great explorer, he pushed on of the colony and relatives and friends into the forests on his own account, at home furnished the funds required supporting his party by his rifle, fre- for new buildings, which were erected quently nearly dying from fever, and by artizans brought from Scotland. in constant danger of a violent death. The Scotsman in 1899 insisted that The fame of Lovedale spread. In this expedition should be recognized 1873 the Fingoes, living one hundred as sharing with Livingstone the hon- miles to the northeast, appealed to Dr. or of opening the way for the abo- Stewart to give them a similar school, lition of the slave-trade in Central promising to raise :£1,000 if he Africa. would do as much. The promise was more than kept, five-shilling contribu- On his return to Scotland after two tions being received from each Fingo and a half years of wandering, Stew- until £I>450 was heaped up before the art reported that the mission project missionary. "There are the stones; was possible. Livingstone himself wrote to the Foreign Mission Com-
now build!" said a Fingo orator, point- for mission buildings, and superintend- ing to the money. Returning to Scot- ing their erection. Perhaps one of the land, Dr. Stewart raised the needed most important results of the trip was money, and on his return the natives the conception and outlining of the doubled their subscription. Thus "African Lakes Corporation, Ltd.,"
Blythswood was built at a cost of which should conduct stores near the more than £7,000. The debt of £1,600, principal mission stations of Living- remaining on the property, was paid stonia. This corporation has proved a in 1878 by voluntary offerings of five decided help in opening the country shillings by men most of whom lived and carrying on the mission work.
in little beehive huts. On November 26, 1877, the Lord's As a result of this institution, twen- Supper was first celebrated on Lake ty-two years later it was declared that Nyasa, and a few weeks later Dr.
the Fingoes of Transkei, among whom Stewart returned to Lovedale, leaving Blythswood was located, were "half Livingstonia in charge of Dr. Robert a century ahead of their countrymen Laws. Since then only one generation in wealth, material progress, agricul- has passed, but the savages have be- tural skill, sobriety, and civilized habits come civilized. "The war dresses of of life, both in food, clothing and the wild Angoni have long ago rotted dwellings." on the village trees, or been sold as During Dr. Stewart's visit to Scot- curios to travelers. These bloody land and England, he took part in the men are now messengers of the Prince burial of Livingstone's body in West- of Peace, evangelizing the villages minster Abbey. Later, when it was they used to raid." In 1897 a mission- proposed to erect a monument to the ary told of having seen a field of memory of the missionary explorer, he wheat at Mwenzo, and added, "The insisted that the monument should be Ngoni were reaping it with their a mission in N yasaland, in the region spears. Not one of these assagais is which he had explored twelve years now used for war. They have beat before, and that it should be called the iron of some into hoes, which are Livingstonia. The proposition struck the native plowshares. With these the popular fancy; soon £20,000 spears they cut their grain and prune were in hand, given in response to Dr. their trees."
Stewart's personal appeals. Then he At Lovedale Dr. Stewart once more was persuaded that it was his duty to devoted himself to building up the go and open up the new field. school, which had now become almost Work at Blythswood prevented his a university. The range of education joining the first party that went out given was from the alphabet to the- with the little steamer Ilata to Lake ology, and every form of industrial Nyasa, and he delayed his journey till activity that would be helpful to the the summer of 1876, when he led a natives was given a place in the busy party of Europeans and natives to the school. Of course the natives were Murchison Cataract and on to Lake not eager for work and their attitude Nyasa. For eighteen months he re- was illustrated by a new pupil, who de- mained there, exploring, winning his clared that the first commandment way with the savages, choosing a site was, "Thou shalt do no work." But
JAMES STEWART, OF LOVEDALE
Dr. Stewart set them the example by ful Christian influence throughout all working with his own hands at the that region. Guests were entertained tasks they dreaded most. It was a there freely; it came to be unusual to common thing to see him throw off have a day or even a meal go by with- his coat and show a Kafir how to out at least one visitor. One guest make a straight furrow. It was his wrote: "It was Mrs. Stewart's kind- ambition to show the natives-whose ness and winsome graciousness which "highest achievement was to build a made the principal's house the most beehive hut, and that was the work of hospitable in South Africa."
the women !"-how to do any work re- His life won to the cause of mis- quired of them, and this as a nec- sions many who had been indifferent essary part of training them in and even scoffers. He would not ar- Christian character. Most mission- gue with them, but they could not aries would have thought the school resist the argument of his life. One was enough of a burden for one man, man to whom Dr. Stewart sold a but Dr. Stewart preached regularly, horse-soon afterward returning the built a hospital, did a vast amount of price when he learned of the animal's medical missionary work, wrote books, death-offered to be of any service to edited a newspaper, and was busy at the mission, tho he had before de- various other things. clared he had no use for missions.
No wonder he was the man chosen Thus, in active, earnest service, the to establish a new mission in what is years passed until December 21, 1905, now the East African Protectorate. when, at the age of 76, the worker He was at home on his first real fur- was called home. He was buried in lough in twenty-four years when the Sandili Kop, overlooking Lovedale.
request came in 1891; long before the The simple inscription over his grave .end of the year he was in Africa once reads: more, leading an expedition through a JAMES STEWART difficult country to the river Kibwesi, MISSIONARY near Kilimanjaro. There the new sta- There is no more significant com- ment on Dr. Stewart's life than his tion was opened. • With the exception of the months own words, spoken in a meeting at taken for a visit to Scotland in 1898 Lovedale, when he heard something in order to perform his duties as mod- said about the sacrifices made by mis- erator of the Free Church General As- sionaries.
sembly, Dr. Stewart spent the remain- Sacrifice! What man or woman can ing twelve years of his life at Love- speak of sacrifice in the face of Calvary? dale, placing the school on a still bet- What happiness or ambition or refine- ment has anyone given up in the service ter basis, erecting new buildings, es- of humanity to compare with the sacrifice tablishing new industries and sending of Him who "emptied Himself and took out hundreds of men and women to upon Himself the form of a servant"? teach others how to work with the hands and how to live for Christ. "It made some of us feel rather ashamed of our heroics," said one who Not only was the school an influence heard him, "for we knew that, if ever for good, but Dr. Stewart's home was a man since Livingstone had a right a center from which radiated a he1p- to speak like that, it was Dr. Stewart."
CENSUS OF RELIGIOUS BODIES
CHRISTIANITY IS GAINING GROUND IN THE UNITED STATES There were in the United States in ern Orthodox churches, 315; German Evangelical Synod, 245, and the 1906, the period of the fifth United Protestant bodies, as a whole, 104, the latter being less than one-ninth the States census of religious bodies in average number for the Catholic Church. this country, according to the pub- CQMPARATlVE STANDING OF RELIGIOUS HOOlES IN THE lished bulletin, 186 religious denom- UNITED STATES, 1906 inations, 212,230 local religious or- The Increaae in Denominations ganizations, 32,936.445 church-mem- Between 1890 and 1906, 12 denom- inations ceased to exist, 4 were consolbers, and $1,257,575,867 invested in idated with others, and 4 disappeared through changes in classification, leavchurch edifices. The following table ing 125 denominations reported both in 1890 and 1906. By division of deshows the standing of the denom- nominations 13 new denominations were caused, II were the result of iminations: migration, and most of the remainder (37) were the results of the organiza- COMMUNI· tion of entirely new cults. There are 164 Protestant bodies, the Roman DENOMINATION CAN1'S OR INCREASE Catholics, the Jews, the Latter-day Saints (2), the Eastern Orthodox MEMBERS, OVER Churches (4), and 14 others, inclu- ding Armenians, Bahais, Buddhists, 1906 1890 Shakers, the Amana Society, the Polish National Church, the Society Roman Catholic Church …… 12,079,142 5,837,434 for Ethical Culture, the Spiritualists, Methodist bodies ………… 5,749,838 1,160,554 the Theosophists, and the Vedanta So- 1,949,766 ciety, a total of 181 denominations. Baptist bodies …………… 5,662,234 Lutheran bodies…………. 2,112,494 881,422 Protestants Are Increasing 552,704 Presbyterian bodies ………. 1,830,555 501,308 Of the larger Protestant bodies only Disciples or Christians. ~. …. 1,142,359 354,894 three show a decline, viz., the Chris- 187,709 tians (Christian Connection), 3.2 per Protestant Episcopal Church.. 886,942 140,056 cent. loss; United Brethren, 4.9 per 70,769 cent. loss; Universalists, 11.5 per cent. Congregationalists ………. 700,480 loss. The Jewish congregations have Reformed bodies…… … …. 449,514 105,705 90,522 United Brethren bodies….. . 296,050 41,467 German Evang. Synod of 129,006 North America ……….. . 293,137 6,564 Latter-day Saints ……….. . 256,647 Evangelical bodies ………. . 174,780 6,395 Eastern Orthodox Churches .. 129,606 Friends ••……………… 113,772 23,349 Christians (Christian Connec- 32,244 76,993 tion) ……………….. 110,117 60,313 Dunkers, or German Baptist 2,793 Brethren ……………. . 97,144 14,964 13,257 Adventist bodies ………… . 92,735 Church of Christ, Scientist. .. 85,717 Ind.epe!,dent churches .•…: .• 73,673 UmtarIans ……………. . 70,542 U niversaIists ….. , …….. . 64,158 Mennonite bodies . …. _….. . 54,798 Among Protestants, the Methodist bodies rank first in number of mem- bers, with 5,749,838, or 17.5 per cent. of the total, and the Baptist bodies come next, with 5,662,234 members, or 17.2 per cent. These two families together constitute somewhat more than one-third of the entire Protestant membership of the country. If to these be added the Lutheran bodies with 2,II2,494 members, the Presbyterian bodies with 1,830,555 members, the Disciples (or Christians) with 1,142,359 members-each containing more than a million members-the five bodies combined include r6,497,- 480 members, or fully one-half (50.2 per cent.) of the membership of all religious bodies in the United States and more than four-fifths (81.3 per cent.) of all Protestant bodies.
The Catholic Church reported the highest number of communicants or members per organization, 969; Eastgrown from 533 organizations in 1890 capacity has kept pace with the into 1,769 organizations to-day. The crease of population, the capacity re- Adventists have risen from 995 or- maining a little more than 69 per cent. ganizations in 1890 to 1,189; the Bap- of population. Protestant edifices tists have a great gain of Il,971 or- have an average seating capacity of ganizations since the last census; the 317, Roman Catholic of 436. Protes- Primitive Baptists, 612 organizations tants can accommodate three times the increase; Free Will Baptists, 441; average membership, while Roman Northern Baptists, 370. The Christian Catholics have a membership of al- Science Church has had a rapid most two and one-fourth larger than growth. from 221 organizations in the seating capacity. 1890 to 638, a gain of 188.7 per cent. The Lutherans have increased from Catholic Majority in Sixteen States 8,595 to 12,703, or 47.8 per. cent.; the Methodists (including all organiza- In 29 States a majority of the tions of the Methodist Church) have church-members or communicants are added 13,212 organizations in the same Protestants; in 16 States the Catholics period; the Presbyterians report an have a majority, and in one State the increase of 2,035 organizations, which Latter-day Saints. The States where includes the growth of both of the the Catholic communicants outnumber large wings of the Presbyterian the Protestants are New Mexico, Church. The number of churches re- Rhode Island, Montana, Massachuported by all the religious denomina- setts, Nevada, Arizona, New York, tions has increased 47,079 since 1890. New Hampshire, Louisiana, Connec- ticut, California, Vermont, Maine, Males Only 43.1 Per Cent New Jersey, Wisconsin, Michigan. This preponderance, however, is more Of the total number of members re- apparent than real, for the reason that turned by sex, 43.1 per cent. were male the Catholic returns take in alI who' and 56.9 per cent. female. But for the have been baptized, including even Protestant bodies only 39.3 per cent. children, whereas the Protestant rewere male, while for the Roman Cath- turns deal with none under 12 or IS olics and the Latter-day Saints the years. In Georgia, Alabama, Missismembership was almost equally di- sippi, Virginia and South Carolina a vided between the sexes. Lutherans majority of the communicants are Bapshowed 46.1 per cent. males, Meth- tists; while the Methodists hold a maodists and Baptists 38.5 per cent. each, jority in Delaware, the Lutherans in Presbyterians 37.9 per cent., and North Dakota, the Disciples in Ken- Protestant Episcopals 35.5. Christian tucky, Congregationalists in Vermont Scientists had only 27.6 per cent. and and Episcopalians in the District of the Shakers 21.3 per cent. males. Columbia.
Eight New Churches Each Day Numbers of Ministers There was an increase of 5°,308 The census of the ministry shows a church edifices since 1890, repre- total for alI denominations of 164,830 senting approximately 60 new edifices ministers, an increase of 53,794 since a week. The total 192,795 edifices had the last census. Of these 146,451 are a seating capacity of 58,536,830, an Protestant, 15,177 Catholic, and 3,202 increase of 14,976,767, or 34.4 per represent other bodies. The Baptists cent. The seating capacity reported lead the Protestant list with 43,790 for Protestants was 53,282,445, for ministers, Methodists 39,737, Presby- Roman Catholics 4.494,377, and for terians 12,456, Disciples 8,741, and alI others 760,008. Protestants and Lutherans 7.841. The Protestant Roman Catholics had the same in- ministry increased 47 per cent. since crease (about 33 per cent.) in seating the last census, the Catholic 65 per capacity. The increase in the seating cent. The Christian Scientists have 1,276 ministers, as against 26 in 1890.
Our Sunday-school Army scholars, Presbyterians 1,5 II, 175 schol- ars, Congregationalists 638,089 schol- An interesting part of the census ars, Disciples 634,5°4 scholars, Ludeals with the Sunday-schools. In aJl, therans 782,786, Jews 13°,085. 192,000 Sunday-schools were reported, with 1,746,074 officers and teachers, Church·members Increased More Rapidly and a great army of 15,337,8II Than Population scholars. These figures do not include the mission Sunday-schools main- Of the total estimated popUlation in tained by some churches. Moreover, 1906, 39.1 per cent. were church-mem- 14,508 of the schools reported are un- bers. The corresponding percentage denominational and union, therefore for 1890 was 32.7, so that the increase unattached to any particular church. was 6.4 per cent. The relative gain Of the whole number, 165,128 Sunday- was divided among the three main schools belong to Protestant churches classes as foHows: Protestants 1.8, and II,172 to Catholic churches. The Roman Catholics 4-4, and all others to- Methodists come first with 57464 gether one-tenth of I per cent. Sunday-schools, Baptists next with 43,178, Presbyterians 14452, Luth- The Census Shows Progress of Chri.- erans 9,450, Disciples 8,078; these five tianity denominations having more than fourfifths of all the Protestant Sunday- The Census shows clearly that schools and nearly three-fourths of Christianity is not losing ground in the total number. . The Protestant the United States. The Gospel is being more widely preached. The bodies have 1,564,821 officers and country is more strongly Christian and teachers, the Catholic Church 62470 the people are more strongly and officers and teachers; the Protestants numerously attached to the Christian have I3,018434 scholars, Catholics Church than ever before. Protestant- 1481,535 scholars. The Methodists ism in the United States is not decaycome first denominationally, with ing as far as numbers are concerned, 4472,930 scholars, Baptists 2,8g8,914 as some are trying to demonstrate, or growing weaker, but it is progressing.
MISSION PROBLEMS OF THE WORLD * BY BISHOP H. H. MONTGOMERY, D.D. Secretary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel It may be as well if I first enumerate 3. T:.ere is no part of the world some axioms before I attempt to put which is not now tainted by the evils mission problems in some sort of inherent in so-called Christian races. order of merit. If these axioms are indisputable, then what follows may 4. It is doubly necessary, therefore, be reasonable. At all events, some to follow up the evil with the good, to agreement on first principles often place Gospel truth beside the evil. clears the air, and if mission workers are divided in opinion, it may be that 5. Races of the world act and react they are really divided in regard to on each other more and more freely, first principles. and such action is either good or evil.
Seven Axioms 6. If you neglect a race, your sin of omission reacts upon yourself. You I. The Gospel is good news for will suffer from evil because of your man, which it is our duty to spread omission to elevate that race. throughout the world. 7. We have no right to say that in 2. The world has become one, no God's sight one race is more imlonger to be treated in water-tight portant than another. compartments . Based upon such principles, how can we place world problems in the • Condensed from The East and The West. order of their importance to-day? For opportunity of doing so. Therefore example, what continent to-day seems British Christians ought to give India to us to demand most attention? all the good they can. The Christian The first answer seems to be that nation has destroyed the old faith of there are spheres of Christian work India by secular government schools which run in equal and parallel lines. and Western knowledge, therefore For example, the evangelization of ought not to leave the "chamber non-Christian races stands in impor- empty, swept and garnished." Christance side by side with the preserva- tians have poured much of the Gospel tion of Christendom as it extends its into India, but have not yet given it a Church natural to the soil. The way borders. must be shown to build up self-gov- In regard to this duty of preserva- ernment on safe lines, and England should lead the way by dealing first tion I do not think we need very with the things of the Spirit. closely distinguish between white and colored races, between races long China contains the largest populaevangelized and those recently con- tion of anyone kingdom in the world. verted. The two parallel lines of im- It is homogeneous and independent. portance may generally be defined as It is situated wholly in temperate reevangelization and edification. If gions, speaking generally. It is a these are parallel in importance, we highly civilized race and increasing in can take first one, then the other, numbers. Being independent it is a starting from the same point each somewhat incalculable world force. time. Over each as a general motto No one knows what China may do may be written, "The Christian Atti- some day outside its own regions. It tude of Race Toward Race Through- is imbibing Western knowledge as fast out the World." as it can. Is it to get only secular and anti-Christian knowledge? Christian 1. Evangelization. What continent nations have drenched China with stands first to-day in importance? All, evils-With opium, and its attendant I think, would agree that Asia stands evils. Now that China wants everyfirst. Asia contains the enormous thing she can get from Europe and populations. These are "finding them- America, can we refrai~ from giving selves" and are stirring into conscious her all the Gospel we can to save national force; they are imbibing 400,000,000 of a virile race? They Western learning; they ·are civilized are so conservative that, according to races; they are increasing, not dying a law well realized also in Africa, what out; they live to a large extent in temperate climes, and consequently they assimilate in the next ten or possess that force which comes partly twenty years may be held fast for from climate. I,OOO years. The first step from a lower faith to a higher seems the most. If we differentiate within Asia, the critical. The second step to a still problem naturally becomes more deli- higher faith is a matter of much cate. India, China, Japan, each has greater difficulty and uncertainty. claims; these are so strong that probably the supporters of each must Japan does not possess a population by temperament be permitted to be- as vast as China, but by some differlieve their own way. ences in blood she is much more as- similative, and perhaps, as a problem India's Claims.-This land is under of climate, much more electric. No British rule, and therefore it seems to one can tell what her ambitions arebe more the duty of English-speaking at present she is a Far East force. In people than a region under some other twenty years she may be a world rule. India supports thousands of force. Already her men of science British sons in good positions. Great claim first place with any in any land. Britain has poured more evil into If Japan and China really begin to India than into countries not under British rule, because of the greater love each other sufficiently to make foes at the end of this century. She common cause against other races, fears, or desires the aid of, the great Japan will for some time to come fur- virile races of temperate climes more nish th.: thinkers and leaders. Such a than those which dwell in the tropics.
probability makes us ask what Japan Africa is full of surpassing interest may do for or against Christendom. to the Church of God. We owe it She seems certain to be a force in such an immense debt of reparation.
politics outside her own land; may No one expects it to contain a world she not be an equal force in the sphere force equal to those mentioned above; of religion, destructive or construct- but as we have drenched it with our ive? The influence and importance vices and cruelties, we are bound to of Japan is bound up with the future give it of our best with both hands.
of the whole Mongolian or Turanian Speaking generally, the two continents race, and is its present leader. for evangelization to-day are Asia and A word about world forces may help Africa. But besides the duty of quick to make the situation more clear. It reparation, there is also the race with seems certain that in the political Islam. It is doubtful whether Islam sphere there will, ere long, be no more has much future anywhere except in room for nations as against races than Africa; there it meets with animistic there is to-day in London as between faiths which crumble quickly before small shops and universal stores. any higher and more dogmatic re- World forces are simplifying them- ligion. The fact is strange, but, I selves, and this seems to be a natural think, true, that once having risen step toward a higher unity in the end. from animism to any higher religion, In Europe it means a mighty German the next step beyond that is incom- race, a Slav race, a Latin race, an parably more difficult.
Anglo-Saxon race with its old home Which part of Africa is of greatest in Western Europe. In Asia a importance to the Church at this time?
mighty Mongolian race of some 500,- One is sometimes tempted to answer, 000,000. India's future is dark. In "Where there are fewest Europeans Africa a Bantu race, an Arab race, except the missionaries." Which is and so forth. In North America the the greatest hindrance? The non- Anglo-Saxon race differentiated. In Christian living white man or the South America, a Latin race differen- propagator of Islam? Where is tiated. In Australasia the Anglo- Islam most dangerous? On this point Saxon race differentiated. Of these, some experts assert that the mis- how many are in regions where cli- sionary's zeal even of El Azhar may mate gives force? The Slav, the Ger- not be what it was, that the modernist man, the Anglo-Saxon, the Mongo- movement of thought has affected lian; no others with quite equal cer- Islam more than many realize. They tainty. This militates against any assert, also, that the pagans south of world power~ of first rank in Africa, Khartum have no desire for Islam be- and it leaves India in a doubtful posi- cause they have suffered from it. On tion. But it exalts the importance of the other' hand, Uganda fears Islam.
the Mongolian race as a factor of first- So does Zanzibar. So more especially rate rank either as a help or a hin- does Nigeria and the region westward drance to the Church of God. of it. The strong races of Africa, There are sections of Asia not apart from the Arabs, seem to be the touched. It is impossible to do aught best of the Bantus in the south, the but keep to main lines. people of the Upper Zambesi, of From what has been said it would Uganda, of Nigeria. It would be appear that in Asia the Mongolian terrible to think of these growing races races are of first importance, as the as Mohammedan.
Church looks out upon Asia to see If the record of Africa is to be first who are to be her active friends or slavery, then drink, then Islam, we may well hang our heads with shame. the average of self-help in one is three Upon the whole, excluding Arabs or four times as high as in the other. The existence of a small endowment and French territories, the important is sufficient to lower the whole ideal of centers for the Church in Africa seem self-help. Dioceses will lean on a soto be three in number, because there ciety or the mother Church for money is a great future for each-Nigeria, as long as they are permitted to do Uganda and South Africa. Strong so in many cases, and long after they churches in these three centers ought should have given up such external to hold Africa. props. Again, there are regions n. Preservation and Edificalion of where the funds are plentiful, but where there is no desire for spiritual Christendom. – This is a parallel ministration. Are we to consider such problem, one the importance of which regions as non-Christian, however it is impossible to overrate. The tenderly the phrase is exprest? pressing nature of it can be gaged The United States has the same from the fact that it is impossible for problem within its own territory, not those who have once been Christians so much on the Pacific Coast, but in to relapse into paganism-it is some- what they term the Middle West. This thing worse to which they fall. They region was colonized in the days when have tasted of the Heavenly Gift, and the Church for political reasons was they can not relapse into mere igno- at its weakest, with the result that rance. when it gained force it found few members of the Church in the middle (1.) The problem of preservation of the Faith is now no longer a simple regions, and passed over their heads one. It does not refer only to white races of Christendom spreading over to lands in process of colonization. the world, and needing continuous The American Church is now slowly asserting itself in this middle region. Christian education and Christian South America is now winning the ministrations. It also includes men attention of the Church, and none too and women of the second, third, and soon. That continent is receiving even fourth generation of Christians thousands of English-speaking people of many races. in the southern regions. We ought to pay far more attention to this region In India, in the South Seas, in the than we have done in the past. Americas, in West Africa chiefly, but in other parts of Africa, it is of vital The Action of Governments upon importance to keep savor in the salt, World Problems of the Church.-With to keep conventional Christianity from deep regret, I must say that there is stifling the life of the Church. one government which in some parts (2.) But also the old problem in- of the world, from the side of unbelief, cludes the welfare of our own Euro- of aversion to all forms of religion, is pean white races in the course of their a most serious hindrance to the welexpansion through all continents. It fare of Christendom. I mean the is not an easy problem except in its French Government. There are two early beginnings, when men have other governments which on the score of belief in one form of religion are literally to fight the earth for a bare intolerant of all other forms of faith. subsistence. Of course aid must come I mean some parts of the Moslem to them from the older Church centers. But after this stage is past it is ex- kingdoms and some parts of the Porceedingly difficult not to spoonfeed tuguese empire. I trust I am not guilty of impertinence in placing them those who could help themselves if together. they would. I refer to money, not to living agents. These living agents In regard to the help or hindrance must be supplied for a much longer afforded by the State, the action of the time. It is possible to take dioceses British Government in many parts of of similar pioneer character and in the same continent, and to note that the world has, I believe, a result very ceive from the East an invaluable different from what was expected. In lesson for the West. India, for example, it is hard in the abstract to criticize the action of the So important is this question to the State in being neutral in religion. But Church that I was minded to create among Orientals the present neutrality a third parallel-to place "Religious seems to mean unbelief, more than re- Education" in a category by itself as ligious neutrality. They seem to ask, one of such vital importance that it "Does the teaching of no religion ought to receive all the emphasis that mean neutrality?" to us Orientals it such a method could give it. But on seems to mean religious indifference. second thought it is clear to me that The earnest teaching of all religions, religious education is a vital part of of religion necessarily taught to every each of the two parallels already laid child whatever that religion may be, down-vital for "Evangelization," that would seem to be a better defini- vital for "Preservation or Edification." tion for the Oriental of a religious but It is the thread inextricably wound through every part of both parallels, neutral government. What to the vital in the sense that without it both Oriental is anathema, is a non-re- our main duties would die. We must ligious government: and here we re- know God if we would know anything.
WILL JAPAN BECOME A CHRISTIAN NATION?
Hampton's Magazine for December describes the religious demands of has a most interesting article on "Will Japan Become a Christian Nation?" Japan, but he denies that Japan is which question is answered partly in turning to Christianity, "the enthuthe negative by the author, Thomas siastic statements we hear oftentimes A. Green, a well-known lecturer and in America about Japan being eager traveler in the Orient. He claims for the Gospel, about so many emi- "that certain men became Christians nent men becoming Christians, are, with the avowed purpose of seeing unfortunately-I doubt not unintenwhat the result and what the benefits tionally–exaggerated." He mentions might be, much as the 'poison squad' the Japanese objections to Christianity, of modern investigation undertakes among which he considers the multiexperiments with questionable diet, or plicity of denominations at work in as the devotees of medical science in- Japan the chief, saying, "If denominaoculate themselves with disease-germs tionalism is a misfortune at home, it to make certain, for the general good, is the absolute paralysis of foreign of the properties and results of some missions." And, finally, he answers anti-toxin," and "that it was but re- his own question, "Will Japan become cently the decisive intention of the a Christian nation?" partly negatively, government to make the crown prince and says, "Japan will never have a a profest Christian, so that, with the state religion," and, "for the present accession of the next emperor, Japan at least, probably for years to come, would be a Christian power." We are she will maintain an absolute toleraglad that he adds, "this intention has tion so far as religion is concerned, been, for the present at least, aban- and continue to afford complete freedoned," because Christianity is not put dom of belief." on like a garment, nor is it a creed only, but it is life, life in Christ Jesus, But Mr. Green does not deny that the second birth, and no man, not even the Gospel is progressing in Japan. He says, "Christianity is wielding a the crown prince of Japan, can become wide and beneficial influence. It is a Christian by the decision of any coloring and influencing even the government. Mr. Green powerfully things it can not regenerate. When one t"emembers that only fifty years
EXPLORING TOUR IN WEST AFRICA
have elapsed since the days of abso- lofty ideals of their daily lives, in their lute prohibition and persecution, it is contact with the social life of the evident that there are many things be- people, they have earned and held the sides converts to be credited to the confidence of the Japanese." influences of the West. Christian schools have done much for education, Mr. Green seems to think that only particularly for girls and women. . . what he calls practical Christianity has Christian philanthropy has set the ex- a future in Japan and asks for the ample for the erection of hospitals and sending of more men and money to asylums for the poor, the diseased, Japan only "if we are willing to prothe outcast, and the orphan. mote works of mercy and philan- The Y. M. C. A. along its social and thropy; if we really believe that educational lines has made for itself schools and hospitals, asylums and a place of great usefulness." And to refuges, are as really Christianity as the missionaries he pays the following are creed and ritual." But we, who most beautiful and well-deserved know that the Gospel of Christ is the tribute: "The missionaries, as indi- power of salvation are by no means viduals, have done glorious work in discouraged by his discussion; we are rather encouraged by it, because it Japan, not because of their divisions, but in spite of them; not by their shows by his own testimony that our preaching so much as by their lives. missionaries in Japan are doing their Almost without an exception they are duty faithfully and are preaching the sincere, earnest, devoted, consistent in Gospel, and we know that His Word every way. As teachers, as examples shall not return void unto Him and of disinterested philanthropy, in the that Japan some day must bow before the King of kings.
AN EXPLORING TOUR IN WEST AFRICA * BY WILLIAM M. DAGER, ELAT, WEST AFRICA Missionary of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign :Missions The mission at its last annual dry myself before the fire. I sat meeting asked me to make a trip over that fire and steamed. The of about three weeks into a district next day the bearings of my wheel where the others had not been, for broke and by carrying it for the last the purpose of finding a location for hour I reached the town where my a new station. carriers were waiting for me, at about six o'clock. We repaired I had sent my carriers ahead, ex- breakages several times, but had no pecting to get along for one night trouble at all in keeping far enough with such accommodations as I ahead of the boys to have a great might find in the town. I did not number of meetings without retardexpect rain in the dry season, but the ing our progress at all. unexpected happened, and in a forest about three miles from the next In one of the towns where I was town the rain suddenly began to fall. to spend the night, I did a few I t came in torrents, and for an hour stunts on the wheel with the usual I pushed my wheel along, and, of result, that all the men, women and course, everything I had was soaked children in the town were soon chaby the time I reached the town. sing around after me shouting, howl- It was then five o'clock and I had ing and gesticulating. Then we to put up for the night. Not a dry gather about the palace, which is stitch of my own and none to be 15 feet long and 8 feet broad and procured in a Bulu town. I tried to about 7 feet high at the gable, 3 or • Condensed from All the World.
4 perhaps at the eaves, made of could get from the women and boys, bark with a thatched roof. The king we came and sat down with the is there. A loin-cloth is all he men, and after some conversation wears. His claim to royalty is the about the man and his death, we number of wives he possesses. He asked the not uncommon question is seated on his throne, an empty in this country, "Who killed him?"
rum case. This poor man with a The dead man's brother answered, woman at his back rubbing the sand "His sons." Then we told this flies off his body, has an exalted brother, who was a leader in all that sense of his dignity and importance. was being done, that he would be Then, when the people are as- held personally responsible for any sembled, it is time to tell the story act of violence. Fear of the govern- simply., Love and sacrifice, joy and ment no doubt protects some women peace, they do not know. To tell who would otherwise be accused of the story of the love of Jesus that the death of their husbands and these needy ones may comprehend, would be put to death. While much that is what we try to do. has been done by the government to We passed through still another correct this awful custom, still, town where the head man lay dying. women are still liable to be sacri- Just before I reached the town I ficed when the people are some dis- stopt to repair my wheel and word tance removed from a government went ahead that I was coming, so station.
that when I passed through I ob- A slave came to me one night served nothing unusual. They asking my protection. Years ago asked for medicine and I told them he lost in gambling, and as he had I was unable to do anything. But not the money to pay the debt, he my carriers coming on later saw was taken as a slave. He developed what had been concealed from me. skill and courage in hunting ele- A number of women were bound phants, having killed five. These and they were trying to fasten the should have more than paid for his responsibility for the chief's death ransom, but as he was profitable, on one of them. We stopt for the charges were trumped up by which night about five miles beyond this he was kept in slavery. Every ef- town. At 3 :30 next morning we fort was made to keep him from were awakened by weeping and the coming in contact with the white beating of the drums announcing man. I passed his town at noon on the man's death. From what I had Saturday. The Bulu drum had sent heard I feared that one or more of ahead a wireless message of my his forty wives would be accused coming, and straightway his mas- of having been the cause of his ter sent him on an errand to a neigh- death and would be killed. As soon boring town. Some one told him as possible I was on my way to the that a missionary was passing. and town and found crowds were as- though he did not get to see me at sembling from every direction. the place where we spent Sabbath, About ISO were there when I he came in about nine o'clock Mon- reached the town and more than day night, asking if he could go with double that many when I left. The me. We decided to provide work men were seated in front of the for him until he could earn money dead man's house. Their conversa- enough to have the officer decide tion was almost entirely about the his case. He has proved a good distribution of the dead man's pos- workman, and it does one good to sessions. We secured quiet for a see him losing that hunted, servile little while and spoke a few words. look and, broaden out into an ex- Gathering first what information we pression of brightness and cheer.
EDITORIALS
THE SIMPLICITY OF MISSIONARY been in the habit of glvmg it. The DUTY Friends Missionary Advocate gives The matter is, primarily, one of the following quotations from the simple obedience to our Lord's last command. Here are our marching Bible to show that Christians must think in world terms: orders: a true soldier does not hesi- "Let (man) have dominion over the tate, parley, or even delay to ask a earth," said God at creation.
question. An early prophecy was: "As truly as I Secondly, it is a matter of love to live all the earth shall be filled with the glory of Jehovah." man as well as loyalty to Christ. The Psalmist thought in world-terms, Every motive of humanity and piety as witness these expressions: "All the ends of the earth shall turn unto J ellO- unite to constrain us to give the Gos- vah," "Sing unto Jehovah, all the earth."
pel to the world. Huber, the blind The devil thought in world-terms also: "He showeth him all the kingdoms of the naturalist, observed that a wasp will world."
not stop to eat a precious morsel by The Apostle John says: "The whole world lieth in the wicked one," and himself; but goes to the nest and leads "Satan deceiveth the whole world."
others forth to the feast. He that John the Baptist introduced Christ as "the Lamb of God that taketh away the withholdeth corn, the people shall sin of the world."
curse him. No monopoly is so inex- Christ is called the Savior of the world. Jesus came to give life unto the world. cusable and monstrous as that in the "I am the light of the world," said Christ, and "I came to save the world." Bread of Life. He came that the world through Him might be saved. There is nothing either impossible We are told to pray: "Thy will be done on earth." or impracticable in the immediate The Gospel is that "God so loved the world." evangelization of the world. We need Jesus said to His disciples: "Ye are the light of the world." only four conditions: He proclaimed that "The field is the world." 1. The principle of e·vangelism-that His decree was, "This Gospel shall be every believer is a herald, responsible for preached in the whole world." his proportion of the unsaved world; His final command to His followers bound to do directly his share of bearing was: "Go ye into all the world." the good tidings. The curse of the Church is the dependence on proxies. These are only a few of the teach- ings of the Bibl~ that if rightfully ac- 2. The spirit of enterprise. Men of the cepted compel us to enlarge our vision. world, simply to serve worldly interests, have made it possible to go round the Viewing the whole world from God's world in three months; to reach by the mails the remotest quarters inside of six standpoint will enable us to work more weeks, and by telegram all great centers inside of an hour. What might not a intelligently and with a deeper interlittle enterprise do for God! est in the special field where our 3. A holy earnestness, an enthusiasm for God. This is the inspiring soul of all labor is bestowed. Christian effort. It makes one man chase a thousand, etc.; it makes him a William Carey studied the map of hammer to break the hardest; a fire to burn and melt away; a sword to pierce. the world which he kept before him 4. The divine enduement. The power as he worked on his cobbler's bench, that converts can not be described any more than the fragrance or tinting of a but he labored in India. The world rose; but it may be felt. Faith. and prayer are the conditions of this endue- situation was ever before him, and his ment. The means will always be inadequate. Our salvation lies in being in love reached as far as the love of straits. The work can not be done on a mathematical basis. We must attempt Christ went, and the broader visions great things for God, while expecting great things from God; and then the stimulated and inspired him so that victory will come. his work was in reality for the whole THE WORLD VIEW world. So our vision and our pur- The present stage of' world-evan- pose and our effort will embrace the gelism demands of us a larger view whole world if we see and work aright. of the whole question than we have
THE PRIESTHOOD OF BELIEVERS cable one. They drew on the sand a rude image of a cross, and led The Jewish priest performed three their prisoners to it, and bade them, functions. as the price of their freedom and im- munity from death, to tread on it I. At the altar, offering sacrifice. and trample it under foot. With 2. Within the veil, making inter- death and torture facing them if cessIOn. they refused, even in that hour of 3. Outside, pronouncing blessing. terror, thousands of men, women These correspond in the disciple to and even children would not allow themselves to put a contemptuous Suffering-( self-sacrifice). foot upon even so rude a symbol of Supplication-( intercession) . the holy passion of their divine Re- Service-( conferring blessing). deemer; but heroically and unflinch- The first to hands pierced, as in ingly died-not as Anglicans or crucifixion; Wesleyans, or Baptists, or Presby- The second to hands clasped, as in terians; but simply as Christians. It prayer; remains to this hour a sacred mem- The third to hands extended, as in ory that so great numbers of native impartation and benediction. disciples so accepted a martyr's death and won the crown of life. The suffering of saints in all ages is also threefold: THE DECAY OF FAITH I. The temptation of Satan. Distinguished leaders of the Church 2. The inappreciation of men. Universal are blowing the trumpet of 3. The rej ection and condemnation alarm. The Bishop of Durham, for of the world. example, says, "There is with many, Such thoughts as these are most just now, a growing intolerance of the pertinent to the understanding of all revealed and supernatural in every true missionary service at home and form. Not a few speak as if the acme abroad. It is essentially a sacred and of human progress was to prove that sacerdotal service, and identifies the there is neither Creator nor Redeemer, missionary with the Lord Jesus, the but man is all in all." suffering servant of God. How often we shrink from 'service At the late meeting of the Synod from a false humility, from a con- of Baltimore, the following overture sciousness of on "Fundamental Faith" was adopted: 1. Incompetence, like Moses. Exod. iv., 10. The Synod of Baltimore, being imprest 2. Impurity, like Isaiah. Isa. vi., by the prevalent toleration and increas- 5,6. ing assertion of doubts and denials, con- cerning certain Confessional statements, 3. Ignorance, like Jeremiah. Jer. and believing that thereby are encouraged, within the Church, forms of unbelief i., 6. which unsettle the Christian faith in the 4. Rashness, like Peter. John xviii., fundamental facts of Christianity, over- tures the General Assembly of the Presla, I I. byterian Church in the United States of America to consider most carefully this 5. Unsatisfied doubt, like Thomas. critical situation, and to take such action John xx., 25. as may more surely protect and confirm the people of God in the faith, once for AN AFFECTING HISTORIC all delivered to the saints. INCIDENT THE DAY OF PAGEANTS When Dr. J. Campbell Gibson, These imposing exhibitions, procesmissionary at Swatow, gave the sions and parades, with the aid of the synodical address as moderator of spectacular and dramatic element, are the En~;lish Presbyterian Church, he becoming the order of the day. The referred to the fact that, nine years Hudson-Fulton celebration in New ago, in the Boxer crisis, the test they applied to native disciples was not any confession or creed, but a simpler and more universally appli-
TABLE OF JEWISH MISSIONS
THE WORLD ON DECEMBER 31, 1908 Compiled by Rev. Louis Meyer, New York City "> .., a __ t:l !.oj ~ ::l .~ MtSSIONARIES 4-..~ t t<::~>.JJ:;;:"·";:g;: ~ .~ ,.., ~ "''- – h..""..'~ -'."<c-'" 1~:l:'~ .~ COUNTRY .~ ] ~ ;; "'""" '" .~.~ ::tc~..:;: .~ .~ , {.rJ , Cl I Mole Femole ~.!:l 2:~~U ———,I V, ,~ , , ,~ Great Britain. —;;-1-8- ~-1l- ~1-269 1 I I Germany ·· 79 662 166 ..1 29 2 Switzerland… I1 3 I .6. 8 1 18 10 5 8 3 .. 2 4 .. 4 4 I France ……. I 1 I I5 .. 1I 1 2 5 Netherlands .. 3 I 😉 ! 1 .. 4 2 4 ·······1 I I 6 Scandinavia .. 3 I 9I 3 17 12 3 32 I 31 7 I1 8 I .. 7 RAufrsisciaa ……. 41 2 41 I 4 8 ·. 1 I 9 Asia ……… 1 4 I 4 8 · . I 8 I .. 10 Australia ….. 2 I I 2I 2I ·. I 2 I 1 11 United States. I 45 I 6 I 48 1 3 66) 58 23 147 49 I 12 Canada ……. i 3 11~~_1_3__,_~___~ __6_ 2 ) 14 7 13~ Grand total.! 991 24 ! 222 1 19 437 110 914 245 SOME WORDS OF EXPLANATION 1. The specialized statistical tables of which this table is the summary will be published in the "Conference Missions Atlas" of the World's Missionary Conference, Edinburgh, 1910, for which the information was gathered. All the information contained in the "Atlas" will be for the year which closed on December 31, 1908.
2. The lists of societies include large and small ones, and even individual efforts where persons are doing the actual work of a missionary without having a missionary organization behind them.
3. Great Britain occupies the first place in Jewish missions still, tho the number of societies in the United States is larger (45) than in Great Britain (28). The number of stations occupied by the 28 British societies is almost three times as large as that of stations occupied by the 45 United States societies, while the British societies employ 662 missionary workers, and the United States societies only 147. The income of the British societies, which is not given in the summary, was six times larger than that of the United States societies in 1908. Great Britain, through its societies, reaches the Jews of almost all parts of the earth except those in the United States, while the United States societies labor among the Jews in the United States, except that one Lutheran society supports one station with one ordained laborer in Russia. The majority of Jewish missions in the United States are of recent date, and the work is so little established that several of the societies at work in 1908 are at this time out of existence or without a worker, while others have been organized since the statistics were collected (but no change in the total number of United States societies has been caused).
4. For the first time an attempt has been made to find out how many Hebrew Christians were among all the laborers of Jewish missions. The reports gave their number as 245, or 26 4-5 per cent only (in Great Britain 25 per cent, in the United States 33 per cent, in Canada 50 per cent, in Germany 27 3-5 per cent, in Scandinavia 22 per cent, and so on). We add, however, that the percentage of male Hebrew Christians is far greater than of female Hebrew Christians, who are laboring as missionaries. We believe that of the Hebrew Christians found among the missionary workers about 170, or almost 70 per cent, are men. A surprizing number of these men have married Gentile wives.
5. An attempt was made to tabulate numbers of baptisms in 1908, and numbers of inquirers at the close of that year, but some of the Jewish missionary societies evangelize only (without baptizing), others have the converts baptized by the pastors of local churches, and still others refuse to give the information. Thus no numbers of baptisms in 1908, and no numbers of inquirers at the close of the year are given in this summary, while the specified tables will contain sl1ch information as far as supplied.
NOTABLE EVENTS OF THE LAST
(In Gener,,! the Notable Draths Are Omitted from This, Li.t) 1900. Ecumenical Missionary Conference, New York. The B~xer Outbreak in China.
1901. Young People's Millllionary Movement organized. Australasian Confederation formed.
1902. Hague Peace Tribunal established. Uganda Railway c~mpleted. Hunan, the clo..ed province ~f China, opened to missionaries.
1903. United States purchased Panama Canal. Czar proclaimed religious freedom for Russia.
1904. Russo·Japanese war. The great Welsh revival. Colonel Younghusband reaelled Lhasa, Tibet. Panama Canal Treaty signed. World's Sunday-school Convention in Jerusalem. Cape-to-Cairo R. R. reached Victoria Falls. Death of Rev. Francois Coillard, of Africa.
1905. Death of Rev. J. Hudson Taylor, of China. Great revivals in Allllam, India. Russo-Japanese war ended. World Y. M. C. A. Conference in Paris. The Czar's call for election to the Duma_ 1906. Centennial of Haystack meeting. Great revivals in India. First Duma met in Russia. Laymen's Missionary Movement organized. Conference on Islam and Christianity, Cairo, Egypt.
1907. Fifth Sunday-school Convention met in Rome. National Christian Missionary Society of India formed. Anti·opium edict ilULued in ClUna. Death of Bishop Schereschewsky, of Japan. Death of Rev. John G. Paton, of New Hebrides.
191}S. Wireless telegraphy inaugurated. A great revival in Korea. Revolution in Turkey, Sultan deposed. Chinese Centenary Missionary Conference, at Sltanghai. Death of Rev. Jacob Chamberlain, of India. Earthquake at Messina, Italy.
1909. Movement for church union in South Africa. A II'reat revival in Korea. Death of Emperor and Empress Dowager, of China. World Y. M. C. A. COIlference in Germany. World Y. P. S. C. E. Conference in Agra, India. Revolution in Persia, Shah deposed. Federation of States in South Africa formed. Damascus Railway completed to Medina. Semi-centennial celebration of Protestant missions in Japan. Quarter·centennial celebration of Protestant miasion.. in Korea. Thirty·million-dollar bequed of John S. Kennedy to charity, York included some interesting his- of whom perished trying to reach torical features, but involved much Cape Sabine to meet the relief ship useless waste of money. We can not Proteus. Professor McMillan found but feel some risks in attending them, relics of the vain endeavors of Comespecially where historic developments m;lnder Hall in 1871; of Admiral Sir are not faithfully presented. George Nares, 1875-76; of Sir John Lockwood, 1883-84; of Amundsen In the recent church pageant, in in 1905-06, as well as records left Fulham Palace grounds in England, by Commander Peary in 1900 and in on June last, much hostile criticism 1$)06. He found "General Greely's was evoked by the evident Romish coat, card and books, a book of the trend of the whole "open air theat- doomed Lieutenant Kislingbury, phoricals." It was pronounced to be a tographic plates and films," etc. He deliberate suppression of historic facts also tells how Professor Marvin was and a falsification and misrepresenta- drowned. Shall diSciples be less ready tion of history. to search for human souls in captivity to sin and Satan, or less ready to spend Certainly one would not have sup- money to equip missionary explorers posed, jUdging from the scenes of this for their work of soul saving? drama, that there had been any Reformation period. Some of these criti- SOME MISSIONARY HEROES cisms are just and deserved. It is hard to believe there was mere ac- John Williams' life motto was "TRUST cident in the absence of much that AND TRY." John Eliot, the pioneer belonged to the history and the prom- "Apostle of the Indians," not content inence of much else that was very to do one man's work, during nearly anti-Protestant in character. A prom- sixty years of his pastorate at Roxinent writer says: bury, Mass., was also untiring in lab?rs among them. After studying "The pageant emphasized Augus- theIr language from an Indian whom tine as being sent by Rome; but the he took into his home, he began his people were not shown the struggle work of translation-the Ten Comhe had with the British Church, which mandments, the Lord's Prayer and a was not settled till the days of his suc- few Scripture passages; then the encessor. . . . The Reformation was tire New Testament, completing the the end of that struggle. But, instead work in 1661, and two years later the of beginning with the casting off of Old Testament. This translation was the yoke, the pageant gratefully re- the first instance where the entire membered Thomas it Becket, but not Bible was ever given to a barbarous Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley_ It re- people as a means of their conversion. minded of Laud, who turned back toward Rome; but not of Bonner, who David Brainerd's agonizing plea burned the Bibles at Paul's Cross. It was, "0 that God would bring great was a distortion of history, and gave numbers of the heathen to Jesus no place to the Reformation. As a Christ." Then he responded to God's sign of the times it forebodes a loss call devoting himself to work among of Reformation blessings." the Indians of Massachusetts, New York and New Jersey. Among the AN EXAMPLE OF SACRIFICE Delawares-of whom he once said, "Not one in a thousand has the spirit The cost of reaching the North Pole of a man"-a wonderful revival broke was enormous, both in men and in out after several months of faithful money. Professor Donald B. Mc- preaching. In 1747, at the age of Millan, of Worcester University, con- twenty-nine, Brainerd ended his nected with the Peary expedition, sub- earthly work, but when he was dying sisted for days on the abandoned pro- he said, "I would not have spent my visions left twenty-five years ago by life otherwise for the whole world." the ill-fated Greely party at Fort Conger, seventeen out of twenty-five
OCTOBER; 1909 – NAY
LAYMEN'S MISSIONARY MOVEMENT GREATER THAN A PRESIDENTIAL CA),{PAIGN TOUR GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE MISCELLANEOUS 2. Supply the church with the best up-to-date books, leaflets, and litera- Outcome of the Millilion Century ture on missions.
Christian missionaries set out a cen- 3. Conduct each year, if possible, tury ago to bring to bear upon the a missionary institute with courses of multitudes of men and women in the mission study and .a series of confer- East the saving Gospel of Christ, "To ences for leaders, inviting representasave souls" was their mission and their tives of neighboring churches to be commission. Than this no more present and participate. worthy service can be conceived. To this they gave themselves with self- 4. Cooperate with the pastor and sacrificing zeal. To-day, as the results church officers each year in a misof their efforts, we find the Church of sionary evangelistic subscription cam- God widely established in the earth paign looking to heroic consecration among all races; but what is more, of life and funds for furtherance of and what was not expected at the the Gospel throughout the earth. first, we find a strong, aggressive, Christian social order developing in S. Propagate the missionary instiall of those countries, and the entire tute idea by circulating missionary East coming out into fraternal rela- literature, and through personal reptions with the Christian nations, thus resentatives of the church assisting demonstrating the true brotherhood other churches in missionary schools, of man, which proves the genuine classes, campaigns, and lectures. fatherhood of a common God.-REv. A World-wide Tour of Millsionary Fields J. L. BARTON, D. D. Rev. S. D. Gordon, author of the What Every Church Should Do "Quiet Talks" series of books, has started upon a world-wide tour of According to the "Missionary Evan- missionary fields. After a sojourn in gelistic Subscription Method," which England until June, 19IO, he expects means business in missionary activity, to devote six months to Japan, twelve every church should: months each to China and East India, and six months to Egypt, Persia, 1. Establish mission study classes Arabia, Turkey, and the Holy Land. and courses in connection with each Africa and South America will be department of the church. visited later. The purpose of Mr.
MISSIONARY
Gordon's journey is not to see but to field is big enough for four misserve, and he will be prepared to turn sionaries. If we can quadruple our aside from the main centers of activity present force and provide them adewherever opportunity for help is afforded. The work will be with the quate equipment, it is believed that we missionaries themselves, then with the English-speaking natives, but also can overtake the stupendous task. with non-English-speaking natives by Even if you eliminate one-half of our interpretation. Mrs. Gordon is accompanying her husband on this present church-members as either too journey. poor or too indifferent to do anything for this work, it would only require one out of 400 of the balance to go as missionaries. The only other question AMERICA is, could the 399 who stay at home .. , / support the one who goes? We spend Origin of the Laymen, Movement i- more than $250,000,000 a year for re- T?e general se~retary, J. Campbell ligious purposes in this country. One- WhIte, recently saId: fourth, or perhaps even one-fifth, of It was at the conventi~Jn of the ~tude!lt such an amount would support an Volunteer Movement m NashVille, m adequate force of missionaries 1906, that the seed-thought of the move- . ment was planted by the Spirit in the Can We Do Our Part? tnind of a young business man of the city of Washington. As he saw over J Campbell White has recently 3,000 students considering for several days their relation to the evangelization . of the world, this thought came to him said: -If the laymen of North America could If the churches of America can be led see the world as these students are see- to increase their gifts to missionary work ing it, they would rise up in their abroad, until it is equal to one-fourth of strength and provide all the funds needed for the enterprise. The providential op- what they now spend for religious purportunity for testing this idea came a poses in this country, we can probably few months later. The one-hundredth anniversary of the Haystack Prayer- make the message of Christ known to meeting was to be celebrated in New 600,000,000 of non-Christians before the York City by a series of interdenominationa! meetings. It was arranged that middle of this century. Money is not the one of these should be for laymen, and only condition of evangelizing the world, should take the form of a prayer-meet- but it is an essential condition. And just ing, and this was held November 15th, in the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church. now it is the point of greatest weakness. The afternoon was very stormy, and only about seventy-five were present. Mr. In addition to needing money enough for Samuel B. Capen, of Boston, presided. It was really a prayer-meeting, most of the work, we also need workers enough the time from three to six being spent to go, and we need the power of God in in prayer. After an intermission of an hour for supper, the meeting was re- which to do the work. But the workers are offering to go faster than the money has been available to send them, and the power of God is always available to those who obey and trust Him. The mission- ary leaders of all fields believe that it is now possible to evangelize the whole world in our generation. We do not mean by this that everyone will become a Christian, but that an adequate oppor- sumed, consisting mainly of discussion tunity to become a Christian should be as to what practical steps should be afforded to every person.
taken. Out of this discussion came a Votes for Enlargement series of resolutions which called into At recent conventions of Christian existence the Laymen's Missionary Movement. laymen it was voted: In Cleveland to America', Share 600,000,000 advance the giving for foreign mis- America's share of the non-Chris- sions from $53,000 to $r60,ooo, in tian world is about 600,000,000. There Richmond from $30,000 to $60,000, are so many in the fields now occupied Worcester from $r5,000 to $25,000, 1, by American missionaries. But about and Washington from $60,000 to 450,000,000 of these are beyond the $roo,ooo. reach of our present missionary force. What Has Been Done in Canada Each American missionary has a Is the Laymen's Missionary Move- parish of about roo,ooo souls. Such a ment accomplishing anything? The answer comes from Toronto. In- the cost of maintaining a substitute creases in mission contributions are varies in different countries, and even reported as follows: In four Meth- in different p~rts of the same country.
odist churches: from $8,000 to $16,- In India, the price ranges from $25.00 000, from $7,000 to $15,000, from to $85.00 a year. In China, $60.00 $4,000 to $13,000, and from $3,000 to will support a native evangelist and $5,000. In four Anglican churches: $30.00 a Bible woman. In Africa, the $7,000 to $15,000, $5,000 to $15,000, cost varies from $25.00 to $50.00.
$1,000 to $4,000, $200 to $1,000. In Selp-support on Mission Field. three Presbyterian congregations: $12,000 to $15,000, $7,000 to $12,000, The Presbyterian Board has issued $6,5°0 to $12,500. a bulletin which shows what native Model Churches in Philadelphia Christians are doing to help them- selves, and to carry the Gospel to oth- On the best of authority the state- ers. From all native sources the ment is made that the 518 members Board received $350,000, which, taof the three Covenanter churches in king into consideration the different Philadelphia gave $26,000 to home average wages, amount to something and foreign missions last year. This like $2,000,000 in the United States. was an average of $7.25 per member In the West African Mission every to foreign missions, and $3.00 per church is self-supporting, which may member to home missions, which es- not be said of Presbyteries in the tablishes a new record in church be- home land. This bulletin tells the nevolences in Philadelphia. story of 1,013 Koreans who emigrated Men Who Are Rich Enough to Yucatan, Mexico, in 1905, which company counted 4 who were Chris- It is reported that Mr. L. H. Sev- tians. Yet in the last year over 250 -.:rance is to add nothing more to his Christians were added to the church capital, but to give all his income roll, and at the expense of the native above Hving expenses to Christian be- church two evangelists were brought nevolence. In this decision he imi- from Los Angeles, and these Koreans tates Mr. Joseph Shenstone, the Bap- established in Merida, Mexico, a Prestist iron manufacturer of Toronto. byterian home. The Japanese on the Presbyterian Share of the Harvest Pacific Coast gave more for religious In India the native Presbyterian work among themselves than the church numbers 25,000 communicants; board expended upon them.
in China, 40,000; in Japan, 18,000; in The Greatest Achievement in Minion. Korea, 20,000; in Africa, about !O,- 000; in Brazil, II ,000, and in Mexico, Rev. H. C. Stuntz, foreign mis- 6,000. In all these countries the sionary secretary of the Methodist churches are well organized and while Church, expresses the conviction that not entirely self-supporting, they are the most notable achievement in misrapidly becoming so. sions or any other religious effort was the translation of the Bible into 500 The Fruitful Substitute Idea languages and dialects, making it The substitute idea-i.e., the sup- possible to convey to the people of porting of a native worker on the for- these tongues a message from God in eign field in one's stead-founded by their own vernacular. "No such Mr. Henry B. Gibbud in 1897, and energy has been released," declared carried on by his widow since his de- Dr. Stuntz, "since the morning stars cease, has progressed rapidly. The sang together to make for righteous- total number of substitutes to July I, ness in everything that Christ has in 1909, was 3,729, and the total amount His program as this putting the Word of money received was $98,45°. Ow- of God into the hands of the nations.
ing to differences in local conditions, It is the colossal achievement of the
GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE 6S
missionary enterprise and has done Methodist Episcopal mission of Canmore to benefit mankind, drive away ada the work at Chung King, West wrong, and raise the race than any China, and by other processes. other single accomplishment." Activity of British Women Foreigners Flooding the South The Church of England Zenana We hear often enough about the Missionary Society publishes monthly hordes of immigrants from the Old Indids Women and China's Daugh- World which flood the North and ters, which in the November issue tells West, but not nearly as often of the of a farewell meeting to twenty-two tide which sets southward. But we missionaries soon to return to their learn from the last report of the home fields and eleven new workers. Its missionary committee of the Presby- income is more than $300,000, and its terian Church, South, that within three representatives in the two countries years 15,000 have come to Norfolk; number more than 200. in Tampa there are 15,000 Cubans and 10,000 Indians in New Orleans Rome As It Was and A. It Is there are thousands of Italians, Spaniards, Syrians and others. In some This che"ering report appears in one Texas counties the court records are of our exchanges: kept in German; in others the Spanish language alone is heard. While a The chief difference which I note after Mexican Presbytery has been success- sixteen years of residence in Rome is the fully constituted in the Synod of attitude of the people toward Protestants Texas, in the French and Italian fields and our faith. They are no longer afraid of Louisiana little has yet been accom- of us, but treat us as friends. To be plished. In New Orleans there are known as a Protestant would once have only one French, one Italian, and two barred one from contact with many per- German churches. The oldest mission sons; now we are respected and gladly work of the Southern Church is received, even in the best social circles. among the Indians, and it has 19 The king himself, a man of much ability churches and 10 pastors among the and broad views, has not hesitated to re- Choctaws and Chickasaws of Okla- ceive in audiences Bishop Burt and the homa. representatives of our work. To the common people we are not devils or pos- EUROPE sest by the "Evil Eye," but are wel- comed as those who can help them. The The London Society Retrenching sentiment in Italy is rapidly becoming friendly toward evangelicals, who are At a recent meeting of the directors, now occupying many positions of promiby instruction from the board that the nence; these same men would have been expenditure during the year com- ostracized and debarred from public life mencing next April be reduced by thirty years ago, solely on account of $50,000 below the expenditure in the their religion. year 1908-09, the finance committee presented recommendations which Persecution in Portugal represented a sum total of $32,000. This result was to be arrived at by British missionary women are conthe handling over of the Vizagapatam ducting Protestant work in many mission in South India to the Cana- towns in Portugal and Spain and find dian Baptist mission, and further, by their efforts often unmolested. In the relinquishment of the Industrial some districts these remain undis- Institution and the central school at turbed; in others virulent opposition Hope Fountain, Matabeleland, South is stirred up by parish priests. These Africa, by handing over to other mis- can only set going actual persecution sions the work at Barkly West, South in places where they can find sym- Africa, by the handing over to the pathy in the mind of the mayor of a town. Madame Emily Lopez Rod- riguez, the English wife of the Rev. Luis Lopez Rodriguez, director of the mission in the province of Gerona, writes that her husband is still in prison, as also are his brother and
their schoolmaster. They are con- his subjects that for years no outfined in a small room lacking ventila- siders were admitted" to the royal tion, and are suffering at night the mosque, but "the present Sultan is betorment of vermin. The case is one loved of his people, and drives freely of wanton persecution on utterly false among them." The seed planted by charges, but appeals have been in vain, the Robert College and other misnotwithstanding that "toleration" is sionary agencies is bearing fruit. supposed to prevail in Spain.-Homi- "Hope and expectancy are in the air letic Review. everywhere," and "the new Turk is pursuing his way steadily, earnestly, Opening of the Firat Protestant Training- and judiciously." school for Teachers in Ru.sia The Presbyterian College in Teheran In Astrachanka, in southern Russia, was held the annual great con- Rev. S. M. Jordan writes in The ference of Stundists near the end of Westminster: September. It was especially important because the first Protestant The Persian boy is fully the equal of training-school for teachers in Russia his American brother in mental ability was opened during the meetings. A and aptitude to learn. He has good stuff large building with light and com- in him, but for centuries he has been fortable rooms has been erected at an spoiled in the making. Nevertheless, he outlay of about $10,000, which amount is capable of becoming the equal of the was raised by the Stundists them- best the world can produce. The young selves. Missionary Jack, of the Ger- men trained in our school are exerting man Orient Mission, who is in charge an influence out of all proportion to their of the mission's work in Astrachanka, numbers. They are found throughout is director of the training-school, being the length and breadth of the land in poassisted by some Stundist teachers. It sitions of honor and responsibility. They is hoped that means for a theological are under-secretaries in the State Departseminary, which is much needed, will ment, and the other departments of the be forthcoming soon. government. They are chiefs of customs and post-offices and telegraphs in various ASIA-MOSLEM LANDS cities. They are found in the banks, for- eign and native. They are teachers and The New Regime in Turkey physicians. They are contributors to the newspapers, and some of the best text- Mr. Ralph Darlington, whose work books in the language have been prepared for the Royal Geographical Society by our boys. of England is well known, has, after knowing for eighteen years the heart The Truth About the Adana Massacres of Constantinople, formed a very decisive opinion as to the new regime in In the October number of the mag- Turkey. He speaks in a tone of sunny azine of the German Orient Mission hopefulness. Only three years ago a number of heartrending particumen in the Ottoman Empire were lars concerning the recent Armenian saying: "If something extraordinary massacres in Adana and vicinity is does not come soon, we are doomed." published. The author of the article The something extraordinary hap- is Dr. Paul Rohrbach, formerly Gerpened in the deposition of Abdul man commissioner of Southwest Af- Hamid and the enthronement of Mo- rica. He visited the district almost hammed V. The result, Mr. Darling- immediately after the massacres and ton says, is "an air of freedom, of made thorough investigations, so that awakening, of joy and zest, and the his report can be considered reliable. pervasion of hope in Constantinople, According to him, between 20,000 and such as has not been witnessed in 25,000 Armenians lost their lives, living memory." One fact he declares many of them after having suffered is enough to support his statement. most brutal cruelties. Almost all Ar- "Abdul Hamid lived in such fear of menian villages and homes between Tarsus and Adana were plundered and burned. The fury of the Mo- hammedan pillagers was so great that they broke to pieces iron plows and
GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE
farming implements which they could occupied by the Church of Scotland's not use or carry off. Mr. Rohrbach mission, the Church Missionary Sofound complete proof that, like at the massacres of I895, the Turkish sol- ciety, and the American Presbyterian diers partly joined the mob. Absolute mission. The movement began with proofs of the fact that the deposed one man, Ditt by name, who sought Sultan, Abdul Hamid, himself ordered baptism, but refused to leave his vilthe massacres can not be found, but lage. He soon brought his wife and there is a strong suspicion. That the family, and they were baptized. Thus plans for them were made a long time began a work which has added 65,000 before the massacres is well estab- people to the Christian Church, of lished. Dr. Rohrbach calls attention which 32,000 are members of the to the fact that the new Turkish Gov- United Presbyterian Church. The ernment has made quite insufficient writer of this paper has baptized about provision for the sufferers, tho it has one thousand souls this year. The tried to do a little. These homeless movement goes on, and in every misones are insufficiently clothed, and sion baptisms by the hundreds are there is little effort made to provide taking place. at least temporary shelters for them during the cold and wet season. Thus An Ingathering of Shoemakers help is immediately needed, and the German Orient Mission, Gr. Wein- On a recent tour from his station meister str. 50, Potsdam, Germany, at Palni, on the evening of the third appeals for it. day of preaching, at a place called Variapoor, Mr. Jeffery, of the Ma- INDIA dura Mission, had a happy surprize. He write~: Man Movements Multiply I had just put out the light and gone Rev. E. M. Wherry writes in the to bed when a lantern appeared at the Presbyterian: open tent door, and I heard a voice say- ing, "Sir! Sir! may we come in?" I at It is a most significant sign of the once lighted my light and there entered progress of missionary work in India not only the light-bearer, but a body of that, instead of reporting the circum- stalwart men, partly filling the tent. stances surrounding the admission of They were Hindus of the shoemaker single individuals to the Church, the mis- caste. They had come to pledge themsionaries of almost all societies are now selves to Jesus Christ. I stood there in laboring with the problems connected my night-clothes and wrote down the with the admission of great masses of names of 51 persons who that night gave the people to the Christian fold. At a up their bloody idol, Kaliammal, and recent session of the North India Con- took Jesus to be their God. And standference of Christian Workers, held in ing there in the quiet of that consecra- Mussoorie, the whole time of the ses- tion moml'nt, I prayed for them, blest sion, lasting for four days, was taken up them, and sent them, their hearts filled with discussions of questions relating to with peace and with a new sense of bemass movements. ing children of God, back to their homes.
The two leading papers and addresses The next day 30 more names were upon this subject were as follows: added, making altogether 80 new Chris- "The Problems of Mass Movements" tians, in spiritual things feeble as new- born babes, to be nurtured. was discust by Rev. J. N. Forman, in A Buddhist Monk', Disrobing a most instructive paper, which was followed by an address by Rev. Dr. P. The conversion of a Buddhist monk M. Buck. Both of these men have is often reported, but from time to had great experience in village work. time a yellow-robed leader becomes a Christian. In Colombo, Ceylon, on Rev. J. A. McConnellee, of the United Presbyterian mission at Sar- October 3d, in the Maradana chapel gadha, Punjab, gave a brief history of of the English Wesleyan Mission, Uva the mass movement in that province, Kotawera ~tated his reasons for wishbeginning in the bounds of his mis- ing' to renounce Buddhism and emsion, and extending into the regions brace Christianity. He told his story, and then, while the congregation
bowed in silent prayer, he put off his amounted to $II8,ooo ($103,000). The increase in membership was robes in exchange for the ordinary larger among the Telugus than among the Tamils. garments of the Sinhalese man, and Mohammedan Convert in A..am returned as a candidate for baptism. Rev. R. T. Jourdain, S. P. G. mis- As a priest he also practised as a sionary at Sikhar, in Assam, tells of a Mussulman inquirer who came to medical man, and gained a wide repu- his house in Silchar in October, 1907. The earnestness of Chand Mohammed tation for medical skill, especially for (that was his name) made an impres- sion upon Mr. Jourdain at once, but ability to cure snakc-b:te and hydro- he at first suspected him of being really a Christian who had been obliged phobia. He was called in to attend to leave his former abode. However, the suspicion soon vanished. Chand the daughter of one of the Christian had apparently been reading what he could froni a copy of Matthew and sShinehdaildese~uacnhd before she passed away, from tracts given to him by mis- to win him for Christ. sionaries. He received instruction and, together with his wife, was p~e Her testimony to the saving power of pared for baptism at the Oxford MIS- sion at Barisal. Both won confidence Jesus, and her exhortation~ to believe and affection by their humility and earnestness, and were baptized on in Christ and live a good bfe, made a Easter, 1908, in the presence of Rev. and Mrs. Jourdain. Since Chand was great impression on .him. . able to read both Bengali and Hindu, Mr. Jourdain put him at once to wo~k Her Bible was given to him after as catechist in the tea-garden at Sll- char. It seemed an unwise experiher death, and he read it in the light ment, but it turned out well, and Chand has proved faithful and zealous. of the dying girl's testimony and ex- He is another illustration of the power of the printed Word of God. perience, and became convinced that Progress in Jaspur the way for him to tread was not the The King of Jaspur, East India, is eight-fold path of Buddhism, but the by no means favorable and friendly to the efforts of the white missionaries way of Christ. among his people, yet his opgosition can not retard the progress of the This man is no ordinary convert, for Gospel. Missionary John made a journey of visitation through the land he has been a priest for a quarter of last May and 719 inquirers appeared before him and were baptized after a a century and was a novice in the searching examination. A short time later 386 more were baptized by a temple several year" J;efore. that. ~e native pastor. Thus 1,105 heathen were baptized in J aspur within a few is proficient in Sansknt, Pall, and Sm- weeks.
ahnaldesBe~ramnad, he has atsraivnelCedeylionn.Ind~iea Movement Toward Christian Union as well The Missionary Herald (American will be more fully instructed, and III Board) publishes these three items: due time will receive baptism.- THOMAS MOSCROP.
Missionary Forces in Southern India The South India Missionary Union publishes a statistical table for 1908 which clearly shows the steady progress of the Gospel amon~ th.e Tamils and Telugus. We publlsh It and place in brackets the figures for 1907, that our readers may judge of the progress them~elves.. ~here were at work twenty-mne missIOnary so- cieties, which employed 564 (542) male and 339 (317) female E.uropean missionaries, which were assisted by 427 (407) native pastors and 13,683 ( 13,582) native teachers and c~te chists. The number of theological students was 676 (624) and that of the pupils in the schools 230,030 (206,- 734) . There were 490,706 (466,267) baptized natives and 219,413 (207,- 260) adherents, whose contributions
GENERAL MISSIONARY
1. Union continues to suggest the word CHINA for the trend of events in this mighty Denominationaliam at a Discount empire. The process of enlargement and unification under the British rule has In an interview published by the reached its highest mark up to date. Sunday School Chronicle, Rev. F. B. Railroads, postal service, publications in Meyer gave some impressions derived English and vernacular languages, educa- from his recent travel to the farther East. He thinks that denominationaltional requirements of government, and ism is largely a spent force in the mis- sion fields. "There is little doubt that political discussions have all made steady if the European and American misprogress toward the weakening of caste, sionaries were withdrawn to-morrow, the native Christians (in China) would the destroying of religious, racial, and flow together into one great church, commercial antipathies, and the bringing the basis of which would be Presby- terian, with bishops as perpetual modof the people into a closer life together. erators." He cites the success of the Nationalism, especially among the stu- Y. M. C. A. in China as a further dent classes, continues to assert itself, proof of this and adds: "None of us can lament the decline of denominatho held in check as much by the wise tionalism, but we must carefully dis- Hindu leaders, who know the value of tinguish between that and Chris- British Government, as by the inertia tianity." To the question whether of the masses and the protective meas- Christianity is a spent force he gives ures of the government. India is feeling a decided negative. "If ever the hour her oneness as perhaps never before, in should come that the religion of Jesus spite of great racial and religious dif- should become extinguished in these western lands, I believe that reenforceferences. ments from China and Japan would 2. In all this enlargement and unifica- be forthcoming, and that the East would a second time give to the West tion our India missions have taken no the pearl of immeasurable price." unimportant part in that they have helped The New University for China to elevate the lower classes, to honor womanhood, and to provide proper edu- The demand for advanced univercation for the masses. Our missionaries sity education is growing among the are recognized by intelligent men through- Chinese. As many as 7,000 Chinese out India as devoted and successful la- students were recently enrolled in the borers in the work of bettering Indian University of Tokyo, and large numsociety. Nor has this political agitation bers of them are studying in Europe and America. In China itself schools and national impulse toward more self- and universities are being founded, government been without a beneficent in- but are not very efficient in general, fluence upon the native Church. It has and are, alas! of a strongly materialisproduced more self-respect and independ- tic bias. Hence there is special need ence, tho this is by no means an effect of Christian university training. A as far-reaching as one might suppose large commission, with graduates of who has read the press accounts. Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Colum- bia, Chicago, Stanford, and other 3. Our three Indian missions have ever American universities on it, and a local been at the front in union movements commission composed of representa- tives of various missions, met recently. among the foreign boards and churches It was decided to follow the English at work in the empire. Hardly a year plan of a group of independent colpasses without some new union schemes leges, each more or less complete in being reported as an advance upon those itself, but gathered about a common preceding. We in America would do well to study such movements toward organic unity and federation upon this mission field. This can be said even tho all the plans for union proposed and adopted have not yet become fully operative. Last year we reported a union of Presbyterian and Congregational churches into a "United Church of South India." A Union Theological College for South India is to be started within a few months, to be supported by the missions of the London Missionary Society, the United Free Church of Scotland, the English Wesleyan, and the Dutch Reformed Missions, and if possible by our own Madura Mission. In the Marathi field we hear of a proposed scheme of federation where organized union with missions of other churches is not yet feasible. A union paper is now in vogue in Madura.
center, with a common standard, a several of the localities, the women prescommon examination, and a certain ent and partaking of the communion number of common professorships, outnumbered the men. The other was and to utilize already existing institu- the very different feeling toward our tions in China. The movement is re- work on the part of the people generally. ligious and it includes all those who There was no rudeness anywhere, and call themselves Christian. University nothing of the usual curiosity-attracting professors and teachers must be men crowds. The new railroad, made entirely of strong Christian beliefs and with by the Chinese, makes the traveling keen sympathy with missionary ideals. easier and quicker. The center of one The locality which finds most favor field can now be reached in twenty-four is Wuchang, the seat of the vice-regal hours from Canton, whereas it formerly government of the two great provinces took five days. of Hupe and Hunan, with a metropolitan population in three contiguous Fruita of a Revival cities of over two million people. It is a famous seat of Chinese learning The recent revival in the Methodand contains the educational institu- ist Mission in Hinghwa City, China, tions of four leading missionary so- continued for over seven weeks. The cieties. It is also a commercial and remarkable things about the revival geographical center and its mandarin was the steady stream of confessions dialect is understood by all Chinese. of almost every conceivable sin. The following are a few instances: Chinese Home Missions The first confession was made by a Missions in China are no longer Biblical school student. He confest to wholly the work of foreigners, for the smoking tobacco and to having secured Chinese Congregational Missionary $2.20 of "unrighteous money." He gave Society was started by the Christian his tobacco box and the $2.20 to the pas- Chinese at San Francisco in 1884 for tor. A merchant who had been using doing missionary work in the Kwang- morphine to compound pills purporting tung provinces, from which have to cure the opium habit turned over to come most of the Chinese in the the pastor his entire stock of morphine, United States. While independent in valued at $180. Another merchant turned its organization, the society keeps in over his entire stock of cigarets. An old close touch with the A. B. C. F. M., man confest that when a boy he had takes counsel from the American mis- helped his father to bore out the eyes of sionaries, and relies upon them for a a thief who lived in their village. As the certain supervision in both spiritual victim is still living and in great poverty, and financial administration. It has this man resolved to ask his forgiveness one station, five out-stations, one and share his own living with hm. pastor, four evangelists, and one Bible woman, and supports three schools The Record of One Girls' School for boys and two for girls. Its work is most encouraging. The Fu-chau Girls' Boarding- school, the oldest Methodist school Advance in the Canton Region for girls in Asia, celebrates its fif- tieth anniversary thi" year. Some Rev. H. V. Noyes writes in the Her- interesting facts concerning this ald and Presbyter: school have been carefully compiled by Miss Bonafield and Miss Hu, I held communion services at 20 chap- from which the following are culled: els during my trip, and one of the Chinese ministers at three. I found 19 The enrolment for the present term is of our old Fati students at work at these 182, of which 166 are Christians. The different places. There were also some plant consists of four buildings valued Bible women at work who had been edu- at $10,000 gold, and four and one-fifth cated in Canton. Two things imprest acres of land are owned, valued at $5,000 me. One was the number of women who gold. The staff of native teachers conare joining the Church. Twenty-five sists of 4 Chinese professors and 12 inyears ago they were very few. Now, at structors who are graduates of the school. Altho the school was established in 1859, diplomas were first granted in 1888. Since the latter date there have been 117 grad- uates, 4 of whom have gone to Japan for further study, while 5 have been sent to the United States for the same purpose. Eleven of the graduates are physicians;
GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE
8 are kindergartners; 23 have become with a personal invitation to accept preachers' wives, and 40 are teachers. Christ as a personal Savior from sin. Five are teaching in government schools. Prayer and daily personal work by each Christian in Korea. Third. A Rome'. Work for the Celestial. wide circulation of the Word of God. Pray that a copy of the Word may The first representatives of the be carried to every home and reach Papacy entered China before the every person in Korea with its inclose of the sixteenth century. In fiuence.-Christian Observer. 18IO the numbers are given as 215,- 000. In 1906 the baptized Christians Progress in I!(orea connected with all the Roman Catholic societies together numbered Remarkable results have been 952,935-after sixty-four years of the achieved by the missionaries of the freedom of treaty rights. In 1902 Northern Presbyterian Church. A the communicants of the Protestant worker writes that during eleven churches numbered II2,80S, and the months ending May 31, 1909, there baptized were probably over 200,000. were 6,532 adult baptisms; 23,892 There were 1,773 Roman priests, for- catechumens are on the roll; 87,177 eign and native, in 1906; and the are in Sabbath-schools; there are foreign missionaries, including lay- 120 students for the ministry; and men and ladies, of the other societies the mission has 840 church buildin 1902 were 2,785. ings. The members, numbering 25,- The Growth of Thirty Years 057, gave $80.499 in United States gold. This, considering the small in- For our encouragement it is well come of the Koreans, would mean at to recall some statistics published at least ten times what it would in the Centenary Conference, giving America, or $800,000. some idea of the growth of the Protestant Church in China the past The Korean Presbytery thirty years: Rev. W. B. Harrison writes in the 1876 1906 Christian Observer of the recent an- nual meeting of this body: Missionaries …………. 473 3,833 Stations and sub-stations.. 602 5,734 It was composed of about 12 Korean Ordained native preachers 73 and 30 foreign ministers, and 65 elders. Unordained native preachers 511 345 The average attendance of visitors was Bible women …… , . . . . . . . 90 5,722 equally as large as the number of dele- gates. The new spacious theological Churches …………… 312 894 seminary building furnished an admira- Communicants ……….. 13,035 ble place for this gathering. The meet- Contributions, Chinese silver 178,251 ing throughout was orderly, earnest and spiritual. A very interesting session of the dollars …………….. 9,271 301,263 Presbytery was held in the Central Pres- Number of societies at work 29 82 byterian Church for the ordination of 8 candidates to the full work of the min· KOREA istry. The congregation was limited to 2,000 by the size of the building. In re- "A Million Souls for Christ" ply to an earnest call, one of these or- dained men is to go as an evangelist to This is the watchword adopted, to the Koreans in Russian territory just October 9, 1909, by the general coun- north of Korea, where several groups are cil of the Protestant missionaries in already established. The salary of these Korea at the annual meeting in evangelists is paid by the Korean Church Seoul. This is one soul a month for at large. In the case of the other or- Christ for each of the 80,000 Chris- dained men, the church or group of tians in Korea. churches calling them provide their salaries. Already plans are being made for: First. United prayer by mission- Presbyterian Part of the Harvest aries and Christians for the outpouring on all Christians and upon the At the annual meeting of the unconverted, convincing of sin, of Korea mission, and the twenty-fifth righteousness and judgment. Sec- anniversary of the founding of Protond. A house-to-house visitation
estant mission work in Korea, held have a membership of over 70,000, in the city of Chai Ryong, a few and the church-membership was inmonths since, the key-note which creased last year by over ten per cent. There are nearly 500 ordained was struck in all the exercises Japanese workers and over 600 un- ordained male workers, and over 200 seemed to be "How wonderfully God Bible women. Nearly 100,000 scholhath wrought." are are being taught in more than 1,000 Sabbath-schools. Seyeral of the At the close of this twenty-five larger churches have organized misyears of seed-sowing and harvest sionary societies which are extend- ing the work in Japan, and some of gathering there are in Korea, in them are supporting evangelists in Formosa, Korea, Manchuria and connection with the Presbyterian China. Church, nearly 100,000 Christians, of whom about 25 per cent are baptized An independent, self-supporting, self-propagating church has been bemembers of the Church. gun, which is rapidly gaining in There are 1,000 helpers, colpor- numbers and influence. The Prot- estant Christians gave for Christian teurs and school-teachers, tut these work last year nearly 300,000 yen do not include the army of unpaid ($150,000). There are nearly 4,000 students in Christian boardingleaders and unordained pastors schools. There are also nearly 600 Christian kindergartens and other found in everyone of the more than day-schools where 8,000 students are 1,000 groups. Ninety per cent of the being taught. About 400 students are being trained in the theological paid workers are paid by the Ko- schools, and 250 women are being reans themselves. taught in Women's Bible schools.
JAPAN Japanese as Toilers and Givers Jubilee Celebration According to The Pacific, the Jap- anese church of Seattle, Rev. M. Rev. J. D. Davies writes as fol- Kubushiro pastor, has received during the year 21 members of lows in the Advance: whom IS joined upon confession of faith, making a total membership of The semi-centennial conference in 46. The pastor is a graduate of commemoration of the planting of Prot- Pacific Theological Seminary. Reestant Christianity in Japan was held in cently Mr. Mayagawa, one of the Tokyo, October 5-10. This gathering foremost Congregationalists of Jawas characterized by the utmost harmony pan, addrest a number of meetings and was largely attended, especially by repre- under the auspices of this church, sentatives of the Japanese churches. The filling a large hall with audiences of spiritual tone of the conference was of high Japanese, many of whom had no preorder, and its results will be of great benefit vious interest in ChristIanity. The to the work in Japan. These are, in treasurer of the church raised $600 brief, as follows: 1. The conference from the Japanese of the city for the showed that, with a single exception, the expenses of these meetings. Protestant churches in Japan are one in heart, in aim, and in work. 2. It showed Miss Alice P. Adams, of Okayama, the cordial union and cooperation of the Japan, has recently been presenting Japanese and foreign workers. 3. It will to audiences of Japanese in the cities be a help toward the union and federa- of the Pacific Coast the needs of her tion of the different churches in Japan. social settlement work. She has not 4. It emphasized the greatness of the work yet to be done.
The one great hindrance to the perfect success of the conference was the attitude of the bishops of the American and English Episcopal Church. They united in a communication to the conference to the effect that, as some of them were excluded by the name Protestant, they could not come into any formal relation to it altho they extended brotherly greetings.
Growth of a Half-century There are nearly 600 organized churches, of which more than one- fourth are self-supporting, including the pastor's salary. These churches
GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE
appealed to the American churches instruction, the number being limited but to the Japanese themselves; and simply by their strength. It is a most they have publicly thanked her for remarkable record. The urgent need is giving them the opportunity to help for a corresponding work among men. in work for their own country. Miss In Tunis the missionary has done effect- Adams secured recognition for her ive work among both Mohammedans and work and a subscription from the Jews, and the women missionaries have Japanese consul in New York, and not only Mohammedan classes for womfrom the Japanese minister to the en and girls, but also access to about United States. 100 Moslem houses. A more promising opening could not be hoped for. But the A Japanese Institution Berbers or Kabyles are the most reach- able Moslem people-being the descend- In acknowledging gifts toward the ants of the early Christians of Africa, largely European in blood and complexsupport of the Kobe Orphanage, Ja- ion. Independent missionaries, poorly equipped and supported and unorganized, pan, sent by readers of The Christian, have yet won remarkable successes. In Mr. Arthur Stanford gives the fol- one station I visited there was a large lowing information: Christian community. I know nothing like it in Mohammedan lands. The Ber- This orphanage is one of many and bers or Kabyles aTe our opportunityvarious indirect results of missionary la- perhaps the key to the Moslem line. bor. It was started by Japanese Chris- There are a number of qualified Christian tians without suggestion from any mis- Kabyles available for employment as sionary, and during the eighteen years of mission agents. its life has been wholly conducted by these Christians. There is a good plant, How Native Christians Give with healthy' location and buildings; there is a small industrial department, where In a recent letter, Rev. A. F. Hena few of the older boys are taught shoemaking; other older boys are apprenticed sey, of the Foreign Christian Missionto various callings. Older girls are placed ary Society, gives the following inin suitable positions. teresting particulars of the liberality There are about 100 orphans in the buildings-many of whom, boys and of the native Christians: girls, are sent regularly to the public schools. The Christians in charge are The Church at Bolenge understands members of the Kumi-ai (Congrega- that giving is as much a "grace" of the tional) Church. Christian as are brotherly love and prayer and charity, and as such must be AFRICA maintained. The members think of noth- ing else but conscientiously consecrating Assiut Presbyterian College to their Savior and Master a proper pro- portion of their entire income, no mat- A recent report states that the ter from what source it may come. A present session has the large attend- gift is shared even as one would share ance of 600 students. The enrol- a blessing with a friend. There is no ment for the last college year, 1908-09, thought of duty in the sense of an was 787; the enrolment of the Press- onerous burden, but they give because ly Institute~the school for women they feel that it is the only proper way -was 315, making the enrolment and relationship to their Father. for the two schools I,I02, and the indications are that the enrolment Cannibal Now a Preacher for 1909-10 will exceed that of last year. The faculty consists of 27 Royal J. Dye, a medical missionmembership, 14 Americans and 13 Egyptians. Of these the permanent ary of the Disciple foreign board, at American staff now consists of 5 members. work in the Kongo Free State, re- Methodists Work in Algeria lates a story of conversion which is Rev. E. F. Frease reports: worthy to be bound up with the most brilliant chapters of "modern Our women missionary workers in Al- miracles" in non-Christian lands. geria have some 150 French and 150 Kabyle women and girls under regular Bonjolongo, the head of an impor- tant family in one of the most blood- thirsty of the Kongo tribes, served seven years in the native troops of King Leopold. Participant in many of the "puni-
tive raids" ordered by Leopold's of- The Quick and Powerful Word ficials against towns that did not pay the tax, Bonjolongo was especially Kagoma, a native Christian at Luprominent as a leader in the expedi- anza, in the Kongo Free State, can tion against the village of 1saka, be- explain his conversion only in the cause the people there were heredi- quaint words, "I was startled to find tary foes of his own tribe. The raid that Christ could speak Chiluba on that town gave him opportunity (Kagoma's native tongue). I heard to execute a vengeance, that he had Him speak out of the printed page been taught to cherish from child- just as surely as a white man can hood. He feasted gluttonously off hear his father or mother speaking the bodies of his dead enemies. to him in a letter thousands of miles away." When Bonjolongo had served his time in the military levy, he returned While attending the missionary to his own village, and there for the school Kagoma received a copy of first time heard the message of Jesus the Gospel according to John, in his Christ, preached in 1njolo by itin- own language. As he became too erants from Dr. Dye's station at big for the elementary school, he Bolenge. Curiosity led him to visit went his way in sin, but he clung to Bolenge. When he found that he his Gospel as a fetish. Speedily he could not tempt away the native was becoming the usual bleared-of- Christians there to take up the old eye negro in whose unhallowed hut heathen practises again, he was so Jesus Christ is the Great Unmentionimprest that he paid more and more able, but he was reckoning without heed to the Gospel, and finally with God and without the Word of God, his whole heart accepted It. which is not bound, and to which he continued to cling, and which he read. Returning forthwith to his home One day the assertive call, "Follow town, he amazed his neighbors by me!" came from its page to the sinfreeing his slaves, renouncing his stricken heathen. God stared at him plural wives and redeeming at great from every page and shouted in his cost the little daughter whom he ears, until at last, by the power of had sold to be the slave wife of a the Holy Spirit, the simple word of chief-sacrifices that wiped out his God brought about his conversion. wealth. Then he preached to his fellow villagers so earnestly that a An African College Graduate great number of them embraced the faith and joined him in building a Twenty years ago Miss Elizabeth chapel. McNeill, a Methodist missionary at Cape Palmas, Liberia, was the means Opening of the Cairo Y. M. C. A. of rescuing a young woman of the Grebo tribe from a cruel death. The A branch of the Y. M. C. A. was woman was converted and was bapopened in Cairo, Egypt, a short time tized with her baby girl, whom she ago. Its rules and regulations will later entrusted to Miss McNeill with be, as closely as possible, those of the request that the child be trained the Central Y. M. C. A., and the for Christian service. usual activities will be carried on. The membership is confined at pres- Bralah, as she was called, made a ent to men of British and American brief visit to this country in 1892, nationality. The National Council when she was three years old, but of the Y. M. C. A., London, has ap- speedily returned to Liberia and repointed a full-time secretary for mained in the mission until 18g6, organizing the work, who will pro- when she was brought again to this ceed to Cairo at once. The rooms country. After four years in the are at 29, Charia Abd-el-Aziz, in a public schools in Philadelphia, she conveniently central position. went to 1nhambane, Portuguese East Africa, for two years, during
· 1910] GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE
which her education was continued sionary papers call attention to this under the care of the missionaries. increase of Roman Catholic workers, Then she returned to the United because on account. of the well-de- States and attended the High School fined policy of that Church it threatin Monrovia, Cal., and finally en- ens already existing Protestant mistered the University of Southern sions to a large extent. California, from which she received her degree a short time ago. The Fight Against the Sleeping-sickness in Africa Her case is cited by her instructors as "big with promise for those who The Berlin Missionary Society has believe in a future for the negro received a peculiarly valuable and race." She herself has exprest the most suitable gift. Professor Schillopinion that with the same advan- ing, the great medical authority, has tages which she has enjoyed, and presented to it the manuscript of a with the same tender, loving care as treatise concerning the fatal sleepwas bestowed upon her by her ing-sickness, its origin, prevention, friends, the whole Grebo tribe might and cure. The treatise is to be be changed in a single generation. printed in the missionary printing establishment, and copies are to be Henry Henderson Institute at Blantyre sent to every missionary of the so- An interesting ceremony took ciety in Nyasa, Africa, because the place one day last August, at the fearful disease has been discovered Blantyre Mission of the Church of upon the English shore of Lake Ny- Scotland, which is located in the asa also. God grant that a remedy Shire region, south of Lake Nyasa. for it will be soon discovered. Mrs. Bruce, daughter of the great missionary explorer David Living- ISLANDS OF THE SEA stone, laid the foundation-stone of the Henry Henderson Institute. The A Hero in Life and in Death Institute is to provide facilities for the higher education of native young Says the Interior: men connected with the mission, and it is named after Henry Henderson, Captain A. C. Walkup, the missionary who selected Blantyre so wisely for sailor of the South Seas, who died of the site of that important and re- exposure endured during twenty-two days markably successful mission. Mrs. of drifting in an open boat after his ves- Bruce met with a warm welcome on sel, the Hiram Bingham, was wrecked in this her first visit to the scene of her a storm, was a country preacher in Illifather's explorations. nois twenty years ago. He gave up his charge in order to go out under the Roman Catholic Missionary Zeal American Board as a missionary in the islands of the South Pacific, in a region The German Colonial News reports where mails came and went only once a that the steamer Herzog alone year. His wife died after some years, landed 36 missiona.ry laborers in the and he came back to America with his end of August ill German East three little children, but as soon as he had Africa. Of these four only were found a home for them, he hurried away Protestants, the others all being to his voluntary exile again, far too shy Roman Catholic reenforcements. to accept the many invitations that came The four Protestants, nine priests to him to stay and lecture in the churches and eight nuns went to Kilindini, on his work. The Board made him cap- British East Africa; two priests and tain first of the Morning Star and then of one lay-worker went to Dar es Sa- the Hiram Bingham. But his promotion lam, in German East Africa, and the did not make him a whit more able to other ten priests and two nuns were talk about himself. He still went on his destined for Chinde, Portuguese quiet way, sailing from one to another East Africa. Well may German mis- of the myriad islands. Thousands of the natives he knew by name, and he treated them with a genuine personal brotherli- ness. The story of how heroically he cared for his black crew during these ter- rible three weeks adrift, saving at length all lives but his own, will remain for many a generation one of the most noble stories of missionary martyrdom.
Opium Prohibited in the Philippine. scientific research with regard to them.
The spectacle of a nation renoun- Thus he was a valuable and induscing a large revenue on moral grounds has been before the Eastern trious member of the committee of world for more than a year. The ;,merican Government has prohib- the British aAnsdiaFtiocreSigoncieBtyib,leaSnodcietthy~ Ited absolutely the traffic in opium the Royal in the Philippine Islands, and made its use in any form a crime, and the Royal Geographical Society. possession of it by any person a crime. At the same time, the medi- Mr. Cust's services in India were cal use is safeguarded by stringent laws that do not allow indulgence in especially distinguished, and his stedthe drug. This prohibition of opium has now been· in force long enough fast declaration of his faith in the to make it interesting to our readers to know some of the results. In- L?r~ Jesus Christ was a great aid to quiry from reliable sources shows that the law is enforced, that prohi- mmiIssssiIoonnearryofefAfomrtr.itsaOrn, che~ when combition is absolute, and that Ameri- publicly atcan officials in the Philippine Islands have succeeded in largely stamping tended the baptism of several conout the habit, and they are determined to prevent opium entering the verts. The Calcutta Government Islands by smuggling. called him to order for it, but he boldly So it can be said without fear of contradiction that the opium traffic and successfully vindicated his Chris- tian right to be present.
During the closing years of his life he was closely connected with the work of administration of missions, and be- came a vice-president of the C. M. S.
Committee and a member of the Lon- don J~ws Society Committee, at the sa:n~ tIme always ready to help other ~Isslons ~lso. He had a large share m managmg the General Missionary Conferences of 1877 and 1888.
in the Philippine Islands has been Rev. W. T. Gidney, of London supprest, or, at least, is classed as extra hazardous, and is on a par with The cause of Jewish evangelization dealing in illicit firearms. That such lost one of its ablest and most eloquent results have been obtained is cause advocates when Rev. William Thomas for congratulation to the United Gidney died in London on October II States Government. Would that the 1909. He was only fifty-six years of British Government took a similar a,ge, and for exactly one-half of that stand with reference to the opium time he was connected with the secretraffic, but in India Government has tariat of the London Jews Society. the monopoly of its manufacture. It Graduated in 1875 from Jesus ColleO'e will hav.e fi:st to rid itself of being Cambridge, he held the curacies bof accomplIce 111 the fact before it can several congregations of the Church make the traffic illegal.-Indian Wit- of England until he became deputaness. tIon secretary of the London Jews So- ciety in 1881. Soon he became asso- OBITUARY ciation secretary, then assistant secre- Dr. Robert Cud, of England tary, until in 1900 he was appointed secretary, which office he held until The news of the death of Robert his death.
Needham Cust evokes the feeling that ~r. Gidney. was a very quiet and a truly great man has fallen, He was se!'lOus ~an, dIfficult to get acquainted a wonderful linguist, for he had a WIth, as It seemed to the writer when working knowledge of eight European he. first met him. But he was a 'loyal and eight Asiatic languages. His fnend, whenever he gave his friend- great works on the languages of Af- ship, a true Christian, and tireless in rica and the languages of the East his abundant labors for the Master in Indies laid the foundation of modern the sphere of missionary activity to which he had been called. He was an faltered in her work of love and aid earnest student of the Jewish problem, till the Bishop died. Since then she of sound judgment, and of great his- has lived with her daughter in Japan. torical knowledge as far as Jewish missions are concerned. He was in- Charles N. Crittenton, of New York tensely loyal to his Church and to his society, of which loyalty his many The founder of seventy-three Florbooks bear abundant testimony. His ence Crittenton Rescue Homes and latest and most important work was Missions for Girls all over the world, "The History of the London Jews Charles N. Crittenton, died of pneu- Society from Its Foundation in 1809 monia on November 16, seventy-six to Its Centenary." Vve noticed and years of age. After the death of his praised it in our columns at the time youngest child, Florence, in 1882, Mr. of its appearance. Others of his Crittenton, who had built up a large books are, "Missions to Jews," "Sites wholesale drug business in New York, and Scenes," "At Home and Abroad," decided to devote himself to evangelisand "Jews and their Evangelization," tic work and spend his entire time in which all will continue to prove help- endeavoring to better the condition of ful and stimulating to the student and unfortunate girls. He spent the next the friend of Jewish missions. four years in night work in the slums of New York, but, after a trip to the We have scarcely ever met a Gen- Holy Land to strengthen his broken tile Christian who understood the health, he visited all the larger cities difficulties and hindrances of the work in the world, studying the condition of evangelization among the Jews as of the poor and finding out their needs. well as Mr. Gidney did. He was al- A chain of more than seventy rescue ways seeking to remove the hin- homes and missions in various cities drances, to overcome the obstacles, here and abroad, all bearing the name and to enlarge the work. Under his of Florence Crittenton, was started guidance, by the blessing of God, the and the National Florence Crittenton work of the London Jews Society has Mission was incorporated. The homes prospered, while his influence was ben- are for mothers, children, and helpless eficial to the work of Jewish missions girls. There are two in New York in general. His death will be felt by City, one in San Francisco, one in the cause at large, and our sympathy Tokyo, one in Shanghai, one in Mexgoes out to the London Jews Society ico City, and so on in the big cities. in an especial manner, as its chief About five years ago Mr. Crittenton counselor has entered into rest. purchased a private car and fitted it up as a home for himself and co- Mrs. Schereschewsky, of Japan workers, making a tour of visiting the different missions scattered across the The widow of Bishop Schereschew- continent twice a year. While he was sky died in Japan on August 20, 1909· on such a tour of inspection, he caught Miss Susan M. Waring went to China a bad cold in San Francisco. Pneuas a missionary of the Protestant Epis- monia developed and quickly ended his copal Church in 1867, and two years useful life. later became the wife of Rev. Schereschewsky, who was then just Inspector Rappard, of St. Chrischona commencing his great life-work of translation. To him she was a true The Pilgrim Mission of St. Chrishelpmate indeed. Through the long chona, Switzerland, suffered the loss years of his practical helplessness she of its inspector, C. H. Rappard, on supported and cheered his efforts. All September 20. Born in 1837, he was his private letters were written by her educated in St. Chrischona and in and he frequently mentioned her de- Edinburgh and, after brief missionary voted cooperation. Altho nearly blind activity in Alexandria and Cairo, befor the past seven years, she never came director of Chrischona in 1868. HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY IN JAPAN (A). study, both theoretical and practical, By Otis Cary, D.D. 2 vols. Illustrated which are connected with such an in- 8vo, 800 pp. $2. SO, net, each. Fleming stitution. This book contains from H. Revell Co., New York. 1909. eighty to ninety papers, prepared by almost as many writers, and covering Here is a monumental work. It is a wide range of themes, from Semitic an achievement worthy of a man who philology and Oriental archeology, for thirty years has wrought in Japan through the various departments of as a missionary field. Dr. Cary has Biblical study, modern church creeds, spared no pains to give to the public politics, pUlpit and pastoral activity, a careful, candid and exhaustive his- worship, the Sunday-school and young tory of mission work in the Sunrise people's societies, schools, colleges, the Kingdom, and incidentally he has fur- press and its products, the family and nished no small part of the history of social life, home and foreign misthe Island Empire itself. sions, etc. It is in its way encyclo- pedic. Of these two volumes, the first is given to Roman Catholic and Greek Where scores of writers contribute Orthodox missions, and the second to on a vast variety of topics, neither Protestant. The whole work em- unity of sentiment on their part, nor uniformity of acceptance on that of braces nearly 800 pages. When we readers could be expected. Some began to read it, it was not without views, here embodied, are very radical, apprehension of finding it somewhat others equally conservative; some tedious, if only from length, and a re- flavored with extreme "higher crithearsal largely of familiar facts, for icism," and others moderate, reverent, Japan's last half-century at least, has devout and practical. not been hid in a corner. But, despite all that has previously been written THE MISSIONARY MANIFESTO. By Rev. G. Campbell Morgan, D.D. 12mo, 157 pp. on Japan by so many gifted pens, we 75 cents, net. Fleming H. Revell Co., found Dr. Cary to have the rare gift New York. 1909. of clothing much that is old with a new charm, beside bringing to light This is an able exposition of the much that is novel and valuable. great commission of Christ to His dis- dples. Dr. Morgan analyzes the The work is, in a way, an encyclo- words of the Master found in the pedia of the subject it treats, and, so four Gospels and discusses the funfar as we have yet examined, we have damental principles of missions confound these volumes classic in style tained in them-the authority of the and comprehensive in matter, charita- King, the evangel to creation, the bly generous, and judicially impartial, witnesses, the remission of sins and while the author shows exceptional !he resource and responsibility. Here IS an unanswerable statement of the talent in making his narrative spec- duty _of the Church to conduct worldtacular and pictorial in vividness. It wide missions. A pastor who folis not only a great work of reference, lows the argument must of necessity but makes exceptionally delightful become a missionary advocate. The reading.. . cure for lack of interest in world- wide work is a closer fellowship with All lovers of missions will wish to Christ. read Dr. Cary's work, and especially those who are interested in that re- THE ORIGINAL RELIGION OF CHINA. By markabk nation that, more than any Jo~n Ross, D.D. 8vo, 327 pp. Ss, net. other in the Orient, has during the last half-century made mighty strides for- Oliphant, Anderson & Ferrier Edinward toward the leadership of Asia. burgh. 1909. '
RECENT CHRISTIAN PROGRESS. By Lewis In the popular mind Confucianism Bayles Paton. Macmillan Co., N. Y. is looked upon as the religion of China-tho it is in reality not a re- The seventy-fifth anniversary of Hartford Theological Seminary suggested a series of papers on recent developments in those departments of ligion but a system of ethics. Dr. Ross commends most highly the Yale and treats of the early religion which pre- Pennsylvania missions as giving unvailed in China centuries before Con- limited opportunity for influence. The fucius and which forms the basis of five millions spent in missionary work their religious ideas. It is the most each year is held by the author to be ancient religion of which there is any a very small return for the trade which trace-The Chinese ruler Fu Hi ante- Europe and America enjoy with China. dating Noah and the flood by five centuries. The early religion, as it The notes on missionary work are was developed three thousand years few but friendly, for the purpose of ago, gives the first clear idea of their the book is not to show what the religious beliefs. The people wor- Chinese need or what is being done shiped and offered sacrifice to the for them, but to show what the Lord of Heaven-the one and Su- Chinese are in character, surroundings preme God. They believed in demons and customs. and spirits, subject to God, and trusted in the care of an intelligent, just, all- FIFTY YEARS IN CONSTANTINOPLE. By wise, benevolent and almighty provi- George Washburn, D.D., LL.D. Illusdence. They used no idols or images trated, 8vo, 317 pp. $3.00, net. Houghin worship; there was one temple ded- ton, Mifflin Co., Boston. 1909. icated to the worship of ancestors, but none dedicated to the worship of God. Dr. Washburn's history throws a An altar to God could be erected any- flood of light on many features of the where. There were no special priests, situation in Constantinople and the goodness was enjoined and wickedness "storm center" of Europe. Probably denounced. Prayer was made not for no living man is better qualified to pardon but for guidance and for fu- write on Robert College than the reture favors. There was a belief in cent president, who resided in the future rewards and punishments, and Turkish metropolis for nearly hal£ a a heavenly life in the presence of God. century. He has known the college from its foundation. The description Here is no evidence of an upward of Constantinople and the story of evolution of religion in China but Turkish history are merely the backrather a subsequent decay. The book ground of the picture and story of is a distinct contribution to the study the colIege. of comparative religion. In a seventeen-page introduction, THE CHINESE. By John Stuart Thomp- Dr. Washburn gives a brief history of son. Illustrated. Maps. 8vo, 441 pp. the progress of events in Turkey' dur- $2.50, net. Bobbs-Merrill Co., Indian- ing the past fifty years and points out apolis. 1909. their influence on the recent revolu- tion. For sixteen centuries Constan- We know of no very recent book tinople has been an imperial cityon China that is of more general in- first, as the chief city of Christendom; terest in its range of topics and that and now, for nearly five hundred at the same time is of such real value years, the capital of the Moslem world. as an introduction to the study of the In the last half-century it has changed Chinese. Mr. Thompson describes from a free, easy-going city of the the daily life, the humor, the politics, Orient to a commercial center with the art and literature, commerce and modern bondage and bustle. In the business, diseases, superstitions and last fifty years the Young Turks have religions of the Chinese. grown in power and American mis- sionaries have brought in new ideas of Mr. Thompson looks upon the r~ education. This period has been full mission of the Boxer indemnity on the of changes, with bloodshed, riot, part of America as a move of un- tyranny, oppression. A tribute is paid usual brilliance on account of its in- to the ability and energy of the late fluence on China in welcoming Amer- Sultan, Abdul Hamid, while his selfish, ican trade and education. He also cruel and oppressive spirit is recog- CHILDREN OF INDIA. By Janet Harvey Kelman. Illustrated, 12mo, 9S pp. Is, nized. 6d, net. Oliphant, Anderson & Ferrier, The history of Robert College is Edinburgh. 1909.
remarkable and full of interest. It MISSIONARY HEROES IN AFRICA. By John C. Lambert, M.A., D.D. Illustrated, was founded and built up by strategy 12mo, 155 pp. 75 cents, net. J. P. Lippinand perseverance and, for its size, has cott Co., Philadelphia. 1909. few equals for influence on history. THE SPIRIT OF YOUTH AND THE CITY Here have been trained manv of the STREETS. By Jane Addams. 12mo, 162 pp. $1.25, net. Macmillan Company, leaders in Turkey and the neighboring New York. 1909.
countries-Greece, Egypt, Bulgaria, THE CLOISTl:R BOOK. For Shut-in Wor- shipers and Pastorless Congregations. Rumania. The recent bequest of By David James Burrell, D.D., LL.D. Frontispiece, 12mo, 340 pp. $1.00. $1,500,000 by John S. Kennedy will American Tract Society, New York. mean a useful increase in their equip- 190;>.
ment. HELEN E. MOSES, OF THE CHRISTIAN WOM- AN'S BOARD OF MISSIONS. By Jasper T. NEW BOOKS Moses. Frontispiece, 12mo, 192 pp. $1.00, net. Fleming H. Revell Co., New TURKEY IN TRANSITION. By G. F. Abbott. York. 1909. 8vo. Longmans, Green & Co., New York. 1909. CHILDREN OF CHINA. By Colin Campbell Brown. Illustrated, 12mo, 96 pp. Is, 6d, IN THE FORBIDDEN LAND. An Account of net. Oliphant, Anderson & Ferrier, a Journey into Tibet, Capture by the Edinburgh. 1909. Tibetan Lamas and Soldiers; Imprison- ment, Torture and Ultimate Release. PAMPHLETS By A. Henry Savage Landor. 8vo, $3.00. Harper & Bros., New York. 1909. A MODERN PENTECOS,T IN SOUTH CHINA. By William Nesbit Brewster. Introduction LABRADOR-THE COUNTRY AND THE PEOPLE. by Wilson S. Lewis. Illustrated, 56 pp. By Wilfred R. Grenfell. 8vo, $2.25. Single copy 12 cents. Ten for $1.00. Macmillan Company, New York. 1909. Mrs. W. N. Brewster, 64 William Street, Delaware, Ohio. 1909. AROUND AFGHANISTAN. By Major de Bouil- lane de Lacoste. 8vo. D. Appleton & THINKING ABOVE WHAT Is WRITTEN, OR, Co., New York. 1909. THE EXALTATION OF HUMAN WISDOM ABOVE THE WORD OF GOD. By I. M. Hal- NATIVE LIFE IN EAST AFRICA. By Dr. deman, D.D. 30 pp. Ten cents. Karl Weule. 8vo. D. Appleton & Co., Charles C. Cook, 150 Nassau Street, New York. 1909. New York. 1909.
THE CRIME OF THE KONGO. By A. Conan THE NEW RELIGION; OR, ATHENIAN CUL- Doyle. 12mo. Donbleday, Page & Co., TURE AND CHRISTIANITY. By I. M. Halde- New York. 1909. man, D.D. 30 pp. 10 cents. Charles C. Cook, 150 Nassau Street, New York. THE HISTORY OF CASTE IN INDIA. By Shrid- 1909. har V. Ketkar. 12mo. Taylor & Car- penter, Ithaca, N. Y. 1909. THE KINGDOM OF GOD. By Rev. Joseph K. Greene, D.D. 31 pp. Joseph K. Greene, GANGAI'S PILGRIMAGE. By Rev. A. C. Clay- D.D., Constantinople, Turkey. 1909. ton. 2s, 6d. Robert Culley, London. MISSIONS CHILDREN-THEIR TEACHERS AND 1909. FRIENDS. By William C. Griggs, M.D. My TRAVELS IN NORTHWEST RHODESIA. By Illustrated, 57 pp. Baptist Forward Movement for Missionary Education, Rev. G. E. Butt. Edwin Dalton, Lon- Philadelphia. 1909. don. 1909. OUT OF THE DARKNESS. By Andrew D. IN TOUCH WITH CHINA'S SCHOLARS. By Stewart. 3s, 6d. Religious Tract So- Wm. Wilson, M.B., C.M. Illustrated, ciety, London. 1909. 24 pp. 6d, net. China Inland Missions, THE STORY OF ISLAM. By Theodore R. W. Newington Green, N., London. 1909. Lunt. Is, 6d, net. Church Missionary Society, London. 1909. IN TOUCH WITH CHINA'S SCHOLARS. Sup- LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE UNDER THREE plement. Illustrated, 11 pp. China In- CZARS. Struggle for Religious Liberty land Missions, London. 1909. in Russia, 1856-1909. By Robert Sloan Latimer. Cloth. $1.50, net. Fleming H. Revell Co., New York. 1909. THE LIVING CHRIST AND DYING HEATHEN- ISM. Translated from the third Ger- man edition by Nell Buchanan. 8vo, cloth. $1.75, net. Fleming H. Revell Co., New York. 1909.
The Missionary Review of the World — February 1904
ESKIMO ENCAMP~IENT IN
ESKIMO WOMEN OF LABRADUR IN SUNDAY CLOTHES Missionary Review of the World Old Series } FEBRUARY { New Series VOL. XXVII. No.2 XVII. No.2 VOL.
THE NEEDLESS SACRIFICE OF HUMAN LIFE IN MISSION WORK BY THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF There is not a little fanaticism and folly that goes by the name of piety and consecration. The appalling sacrifice of life and health, on the part of foreign missionaries, strikes us as possibly due in part to imprudence and, in some cases, to wilful disregard of danger-signals, and, therefore, as demanding careful investigation and consideration.
It has been truly said, for example, that Africa is the" burial. ground of missionaries." Probably not less than eight hundred or nine hundred of these valuable workers have been buried in the soil of the Dark Oontinent, and there has been a similar, tho smaller, sacrifice of life in India and Ohina, and in some other missionary lands. Without doubt God may call His servants to labor in countries where the influence of climate and surroundings is hostile to health, but this only creates a demand for greater precaution. There may be a needless sacrifice of life, either from ignorance or wilful violation of the laws of health, which God has impressed upon the human body, a,nd which He has laid down in His Holy Word.
The recent paper of Dr. Jessup in the pages of this REVIEW (November, 1903) has revived and strengthe'1ed.in our minds impressions, long since made, that much of the ill·health and the short career of missionary workers is avoidable, and we h been led to careful study, not only of the human body but of tl- Word of God, to see what light the Scriptures throw upon this whole question.
There are several laws which have to do with health and long life which are laid down plainly in the Scriptures.* In almost all such passages of Scripture the dominant thought is the necessity of a surrendered wm-obedience to authority-whether the authority of God, or the authority deputed by God to parents in the sphere of the family, or to magistrates or rulers in the sphere of the State, or to the anthorjties which He has instituted ana constituted for oversight in the Ohurch. A venerable physician of New York State, who has for *Compare Exodus xv: 20; Proverbs iii: 1-2; Ephesians vi: 1-3: Hebrews xiii: 17; I. Peter jj : 13-14, etc.
many years been in control of a sanitarium, has left it as his testimony that he has never known a case of disease which could not be traced to disobedience of the laws of Almighty God, of children toward parents, or of wives toward husbands, or of citizens toward constituted rulers. This may be regarded as extreme, but it serves at least to show that there is a connection between an obedient heart and a submissive will and the health of the body. Wilfulness begets unrest, and unrest is fatal to any healthy action of the human organism. A disturbed condition of the inner life betrays itself in the respiration, circulation, digestion, and in all nervous functions. Excitement quickens the breathing and the pulse, and causes nervous agitation, all of which are hindrances to assimilation of food, rest at night and calmness by day, and adds an element of unnecessary exhaustion to work which otherwise might be comparatively easy and restful. Hence insanity, which by its very term implies an unhealthy menta.l condition, is almost invariably accompanied by an abnormal wilfulness. Insane people are determined to have their own way, their insanity largely consisting in such determination, amenable to no argument from reason and no persuasion from affection. Hence the question arises whether, if the will be thoroughly surrendered to God, and broken as something laid on the altar of sacrifice to Him, it will ever be so obstinately and abnormally self-assertive in its attitude toward human beings. We can hardly imagine a child whose will has been absolutely given up to God, and has learned to merge itself completely in His good pleasure, ever resisting stubbornly and violently the reasonable commands of parents; nor can we imagine a wife as insanely determined to oppose the will of a reasonable and loving husband if she has ever, to her Oelestial Bridegroom, yielded absolutely her whole being. If there be any forms of insanity that are free from this abnormal wilfulness and unreasonable obstinacy, they must be very few; and the question has therefore arisen more than once whether obedience to God, absolute and implicit, is not, in the majority of cases, a preventive of ill health, and especially of insanity.
A second law of bodily well-being is the Law of Faith, by which is meant trust, both in the power and wisdom of God, and confidence in His fatherly love.* The depth of meaning in the nin~ty-first Psalm probably no reader has yet penetrated; there seems to be some inner chamber of close communion and fellowship with God where the darts of the adversary do not reach, and into which the most of us do not enter-where a thousand fall at our side and ten thousand at our right hand, but calamity does no~ come nigh us. If there be such an inner chamber, it is that whose door is unlocked by implicit, unhesitating faith. "My times are in. Thy hand." Weare accus- • Compare Psalm xxxi: 14-15: Psalm xci: 15-16.
NEEDLESS SACRIFICE OF HUMAN LIFE IN MISSION WORK
tomed to say that men go forth, taking their lives in their own hands, but this is not true of any humble, trusting worker of God. Our times are in God's hands, and when it is so, as John Wesley said, "I am immortal till my work is done."
Nothing can be more reposeful to a true disciple than the conviction that God is taking care of everything that pertains to his life. And, while a rational and intelligent care of health is a positive and imperative duty, we must remember that, with all such care on our own part, our ultimate dependence is both upon His provision and His protection. This conviction, when it lays hold of our deepest nature, both promotes and insures health and long life, so far as it is possible.
Freedom from Anxiety Thi;dly, the Law of Freedom from Anxious Oare is closely allied to the others, already mentioned. * There are few things that so burden and shorten human life as the carrying of care, whatever be the source or cause of anxiety. It is not work but worry that kills. And, if a true epitaph were written for many a Ohristian worker who has died prematurely, it would bear witness that the life was ended by anxiety, not by activity. Oare, anxiety, distress of mind, unsettles the whole man. It prevents, as has been said of disobedience, all normal activity both of bodily organs and mental faculties. It has been found that many of the tumors and cancers which afflict the race may be traceable to inward unrest, domestic discord or business perplexities. It seems as tho even the blood will not properly circulate when care burdens the mind. Oertainly food becomes incapable of digestion, and the stomach, of its assimilating office, under such conditions. Hence, all hurry and flurry-which are connected with "worry" by rhyme of thought as well as of words-tend to shorten as well as burden our human life. God is never in haste; His servants g~nerally are. He kept Mnses waiting forty years, after he thought the time had come, before He permitted him to undertake his great work of leadership, and he kept Paul three years in Arabia before he entered upon his great tours of evangelization. Even Jesus Ohrist Himself was in retiracy thirty years, before He undertook the tliree years of His public ministry. These are all lessons to us on the risk of undue haste. We are not, like Moses, to hurry into even our ordained work for God. Quantity is of no consequence in comparison with quality. Hence, God often keeps us many years in His preparatory school of education and discipline before He permits us to enter upon His work. We, on the other hand, are 'prone to hurry precipitately into activity, as if with an insane impression that God's work can not get along without us; and oftentimes we find that we have come to the work without the fitness for it, and become dis- .. Oompare Isaiah xxvi: 3-4; Philippians iv: 6-7; I. Peter v: 7.
couraged and disheartened. A missionary who recently died in India has written a letter in which she said: "Do not go to any foreign field until you know beyond a doubt that God is Himself sending you to that particular field at that particular time." , A fourth law is the Law of Common Sense-the avoidance of fanat- icism and folly, and the temptation to run to extremes. "Be not righteous over much; neither make thyself over wise; why shouldst thou destroy thyself? Be not over much wicked, neither be thou foolish: why shouldst thou die before thy time?" (Ecclesiastes vii: 16, 17).
This is a striking passage of Scripture. Whatever else it means, it meallS that there may be excesses not only in wickedness but in righteousness, and that both kinds of excess are folly. Of excess of wickedness, we need say nothing-it is manifestly suicidal; but that there is danger of being righteous over m'uch few people really think.
'rhey talk about the needs of the" Lord's work," and that familiar phrase degenerates oftentimes into mere cant and rant. Men and women apologize for unreasonable and excessive exertion, and care- lessly sacrifice life and health, as tho they were not intelligent and reasoning beings, for the sake of so-called « service to humanity."
Mr. H. M. Stanley has testified that from half to two-thirds of the lives sacrificed in the Dark Oontlnent are needlessly brought to a close.
He says, for instance, that 'People go to Africa from England, and in a tropical and equatorial climate eat bacon and such like substances which they could use with impunity only in such climates as that of Great Britain; or they risk prostration by a torrid sun by long walks in midday, or make their dwellings or pitch their tents in deadly, malarious districts, and expose themselves before sunrise and after nightfall to these fatal climatic influences, and then their friends wonder that they so soon fall a prey to disease and death. The Liv- ingstone College in London was established by Dr. Harford, with the little magazine that he publishes, called Climate, mainly for the sake of acquainting outgoing missionaries with climatic peculiarities and the laws of health in tropical regions. We believe that a large por- tion of the lives that have been sacrificed might, humanly speaking, have been prolonged, had it not been for gross ignorance of the laws of health or wilful transgression of those laws that were known.
We insist that whenever there is physical weakness that is consti- tutional it should go far to determine the field to which missionaries should go, or whether they should go at all. l'hose who are weak in the pulmonary system should not go where pulmonary diseases are especially prevalent. And so on with regard to other peculiarities: they may become largely signs of the will of God, making other tokens unnecessary. God does not call dumb people to speak, nor deaf peo- ple to hear, nor palsied people to walk. Part of His leading lies in the
physical and mental aptitudes required ~or a particular field of work; and, if any of His servants are engaged in work for which they seem permanently or temporarily disabled, that is all-sufficient reason for cessation from such work-at least, for a time. To prosecute activities which are exhausting and killing is madness, and can not be pleasing to God. It is not needful to be a fool because one is pious, but there is an immense amount of pious fanaticism and foolishness. We have known scores of men and women who have undertaken work for which they had been pronounced absolutely unfit, or to continue in work at a time when they were incapacitated, and we believe that such a course is indirect and virtual suicide, and is, in ordinary cases, without ade- quate apology. Sometimes it even seems to us that such Ohristian workers are guilty of a sort of practical atheism; they seem to think that God will put them iu circumstances where it is ·necessary to do that which is contrary both to common sense and to intelligent con- viction, aU of which is assuming that somehow God has either had no control over circumstances or has in some way lost such control. We- would not have any child of God care for life or health for its own sake; he should count not even his life dear unto himself; but we believe that a true piety demands that every care should be put about hU!llan life and health for the sake of-the Master and of the work in which we are engaged.
We have in mind a dear friend, greatly used of God, who has been multiplying his activities beyond the limit of human strength, and has grown rapidly aged during the ten years past. When once we took occa- sion to remonstrate with him upon his undertaking more work than _ was consistent with his stewardship of his own body, his answer was that he would rather "wear out than rust out," which drew forth a rejoinder that it is never necessary to tear out, which it seemed to us he was doing.
Men and women who have been for years growing in grace, and in knowledge and -experience, have become so enriched, and equipped in such measure for service to God, that one year is often more fruitful in real power than ten years at some previous time of life. Im- pulses become sobered, impetuosity gives place to deliberation, and unwisdom is corrected by further communion with God and with men. God means ordinarily that a life shall so accumulate power as it advances, and become a reservoir filled with knowledge and experience; and it is a pity, to say the least, to make impossible such larger, fuller, wiser, nobler service in maturer life by premature sacrifice of self, not on the divine altar of service to God, but on the human altar of excessive, fanatical, and imprudent exposure. There is need of devout prayer for a new era of greater carefulness and circumspectness even on the 4iart of disciples, that they shall value the opportunities of usefulness 1ll tbis world too highly to run needless risks, and shall consider it a
part of piety to look well after all condition.ll which secure health, prolong life, and fit one to be so strong as to bear the burdens of the weak.
We commend to special study a valuable health primer in the Long Life Series, on Brain-work and Overwork, by George Black, M.B., of Edinburgh. He brings out with unusual clearness and practical power the primary principles of construction and action which govern brain-work, and strongly emphasizes a fact of vital importance-namely, that, when the brain gives way, the fountain of vitality to the whole body runs correspondingly low. It is of the utmost consequence that brain-work shall not be so incessant as to prevent this organ from replacing the process of waste during the night's sleep and the weekly rest of the Lord's day (or of some other day kept as a day of rest when the Lord's day is one or labor), so that construction shall keep pace with destruction. If the outgo is greater than the income, even slight losses ultimately tell in serious results. The brain ueeds but to lack day by day a thousandth part of its normal recuperation to drift toward ultimate bankruptcy. The brain, merely tired, may re-form a million of atoms in a night, but, excessively exhausted, may build only fifty in the required time, and poor in quality as well as deficient in quantity.
Morever, if the brain be normal, it supplies even the diseased organs of the body with recuperative energy. But, if the fountain of energy run dry or low, every other function of the body suffers as well as the brain itself, and because the drain upon this central source of supply is so incessant for vital force to liver and heart and lungs and stomach, the brain itself is slowest to recover from all abnormal conditions.* THE FORCES WHICH ARE MOLDING THE FUTURE OF CHINA BY REV. TIMOTHY RICHARD, D.D., LL.D., SHANGHAI, CHINA For the first time in the history of the world we see the combined forces of Eastern and Western civilization meeting each other in full force, and when we are asked to say what are the forces which are going to mold the future of China we naturally conclude, on mathematical grounds, that it will be the resultant of the present forces in operation. Then what are the chief forces operating on China to-day? The most conspicuous Ohinese ones at present seem to be: I. Multiplication of the species faster than the means of supporting them; in consequence of which four millions die of starvation annually!
i. II. Refusal of all light except reflected light from the distant sages of antiquity; consequently their direct light from moon and stars , See Dr. Black's primer, pp. 51)-52.
FORCES WHlCll ARE MOLDING THE }j'UTURE OF CHINA
very dim, having no rays direct from the great sun of universal modern knowledge; so the people wander in the dark among perilous pits.
III. Arbitrary power of the authorities overriding law or any enlightened principle. 'l'he emperor is looked upon as the only infallible vice-gerent of God on earth, and the magistrates are his vicegerents, whose voice is the voice of God.
IV. Ohinese custom is the standard of morality without any progressive principle to help them, and all the world must follow Ohina or perish. They fought like uncivilized savages. 'rhus the yellow race, Ohina and Japan, has formed an alliance to resist the rising power of the white race, with the purpose of crushing it under foot.
H is true that the Ohinese have high ideals of universal peace to be attained by following the good customs laid down by the sages thousands of years ago. But they forget to make these customs keep pace with the progressive nee Is of man; consequently they have become dead fossils, while the new needs of men are left unprovided for.
Forces from the West To the Ohinese in this pitiable plight comes Western civilivation, and some of their chief factors are the following: I. Unbounded means to preserve people from abject poverty and starvation, if just distribution can be secured. God, when He created this world for man, created the world with infinite treasures and forces which are superhuman, yet to be under the control of His children. With steam and electricity, with modern mining and new industries, with railways and modern conveniences, there open up endless resources for the support of man. In the absence of anything to compete with these, we shall find in a few years the whole land tlooded with these material advantages which will be like a new creation to China. Will present Ohristendom show the way to a just distribution of this property?
II. Light from all quarters of the earth, ancient and modern, with books on the sciences, on government, on education and religion, and laboratories of which the Ohinaman ha-s never dreamed, is pouring in like a flood over China. An intelligent Ohinaman has only to walk through the classrooms and lecture-halls and laboratories cf our universities, and he at once feels that their knowledge is only the groping of children. There can not be any weighing in the balance as to the comparative merits of the two systems of education, for he at once feels that one is like electric light while the other is only a dim tallow-candle light. Hitherto mission boards have been satisfied with starting elementary schools. II they had founded only one grand university instead of the hundreds and hundreds of petty primary schools, Ohina might have been almost won to
Christ by now. Even the translation of Ij, few books, and the starting of a few daily papers with news of the rest of the world, have pro- duced wonders in creating a desire for r8form among millions of the most intelligent. We want more light for the leaders of Christ to save them from the perils of half truths.
III. 'l'he study of sociology is a new world to a Chinaman. In all lands the Western statesman comes with the experience of all lands and of all time to deal with the new problems confronting him. lIe knows the numberless social gatherings which are working out some good for their fellow men. He knows the incalculable benefit derived from the liberty of the press, from getting the views of good and enlightened people made known, from a survey of the growth and improvement of international law. But all these things are danger. ous experiments to the Chinese statesmen who will not tolerate the for- mation of societies, the publishing of any newspaper without the . sanction of the government, who regards mandarin authority like the emperor's authority, and the emperor's authority Divine-not the Pope of Rome, but the Emperor of China as the only representatiue of God on earth! Here is a field where the Chinaman will contest Western civilization at every point, and only after a fierce struggle will he ever yield. China, like Rome, dreads new light. It shatters the theory of finality.
IV. Intercourse with God becomes a new force in the formation of character. While the yellow race alliance is formed with hatred as its chief motive with organizations throughout non-Christian Asia to instil this poison of hatred for the destruction of a race that has some- thing else to guide them than mere blind following of past custom, there are those who have love and good will as the mainspring of their life, and they are organizing themselves into little societies all over China. Besides following the custom of a country which is good so far as it preserves the well-being of the country, ~hey have a Divine model to go by-monotheism versus polytheism-our Father in Heaven, Who is perfect rather than any sages, however good. The highest character must be grafted on the Divine to bring forth immortal fruit. The immanent in China as well as in Asia generally is also divine. – When we use the modern method for the development of material resources of China, when we bring the strong brain of the Chinese to look at things from a universal point of view and with a view to uni- versal good in th'~ individual, in the nation, and in the world as a whole, then shall China be redeemed by the power of an endless life brought to them by the followers of Jesus Christ.
The foreign governments are pressing for political concessions. The foreign merchants are pushing railway, mining, and other con- cessions. The Roman Catholics are urgent in persuading the Chinese that medieval Christianity had reached perfection and finality. Many
OUR OPPORTUNITY IN OHINA
Protestants are equally urgent about the perfection and finality of a Sacred Book more than the mind which was in Ohrist Jesus.
These are the main forces. And the resultant win not be the annihilation of any of these and the supremacy of any single force. Out of all the contrast between East and West and out of the excellencies of each of the forces there will arise a Kingdom of Heaven which the Ohinese sages and the Hebrew prophets outlined, and which Jesus Ohrist came to fulfil. When enlightened Ohristian leaders fully understand the magnitude of the task committed to their care, the gathering up of all truth, Eastern and Western, ancient and modern, and when they are prepared to free themselves from medieval and Reformotion narrowness as well as from Asiatic exclusiveness, and from everything that is temporary or local, it will not be something less than the kingdoms of this world but far greater-worthy of the homage of all rulers, the glory of the whole earth, that will stand out revealed before men as the great resultant-viz., the great work of redemption wrought by God's providence over all mankind.
If we want Ohina delivered from itself and from injuring the world the mission boards should have a few advanced statesmen also on each board; then even the present forces at our disposal could be made to be tenfold more effective! teJzfold more ~tJective!! TENFOLD MORE EFFECTIYE ! I !
OUR OPPORTUNITY IN CHINA BY REV..JAMES SIMESTER, FOOCHOW, CHINA Methodist Episcopal Mission, 1896- Ohina is the center of the world's thought to-day. Oapitalists, merchants, statesmen, and warriors are all looking to that land as being of vital importance to their various interests. Railroads and mining, buying and selling, diplomacy and war-ships seem to· have the right of way just now.
What interest has the Ohristian Ohurch in Ohina, and what should be our attitude at this crucial moment? In addition to the command to go into all the world, the Ohurch has obligations in this land which must be met. True progress results only when Ohrist leads. Ohina may be covered with railroads, honeycombed with mines, the greatest commercial country in the world, with a government as good as any, yet without Ohrist these blessings would prove a CUTse. Twentiethcentury civilization is the result of Ohristianity. To give the results without the cause would be unnatural and, therefore, unprofitable. In advance of Western learning, improvements and inventions, must go the Gospel.
The achievements of Ohristian missions in the past make the obligation still more binding. Experience has shown that the Ohinese
can be saved. One hundred and twenty.five thousand baptized Prot· estant Christians, with as many more probationers or inquirers, attest the success of past efforts. The loyalty of the native Christians dur- ing the Boxer uprising of 1900 attests the thoroughness of the work done. Schools of every grade have been established, and have every- where surpassed the expectations of the most optimistic. Printing- presses are paying their own way, and hospitals are everywhere a wel- comed blessing in a land where disease is common and the art of heal- ing practically unknown.
But every converted Chinese means half a dozen awakened,and every church built means several new fields opened. The schools have awakened a more general and more intense desire for learning, and the presses have created a desire for literature impossible to estimate.
Some Speci~l Opportunities 1. Four hundred and six millions of people open to the Gospel. Ten years ago there were nine hundred walled cities of China the missionary was forbidden to enter, and in five whole provinces missionary work was practically unknown. Now the missionaries have entered every province, and the gates of every walled city swing wide open to the messengers of God.
This vast population is practically a unit. There is no North and South in China, no race problem or intermingling of different nationalities. The Ohinese, whether found in Pekin or Canton, in Kiangsu or Sz-chuan, are fundamentally homogenous. Intellectually and morally the Chinese are the best people in the heathen world. The mis· sionary of the Cross may go anywhere among this people, great in numbers, in attainments, and in possibilities, and deliver his message unopposed.
2. Two hundred and fifty thousand people who might be reached within a year if we had the men to reach them; that is, in every land where missions have be_en established there are those who have given up their faith in heathenism and are open to conviction, but are not yet sufficiently enlightened to accept Christianity. A conservative estimate of this class of men in China is two hundred and fifty thousand.
3. Schools. The desire for Western education is becoming wellnigh universal. The government wants Confucius schools, but the people evidently want Christian schools, for the government schools are poorly attenlled, even tho the students are paid for coming, while the Ohristian schools are crowded to their utmost_ capacity, even tho students have to pay all or part of their expenses. During the past five years more students have been turned away from the Christian colleges in China than have been admitted, and this because of the lack of buildings and teachers. Intermediate schools are many and crowded, but the demand for more is far greater than the possibility
1904J BABISM: A FAILURE
of supply with our present force of workers. Ten thousand day- schools could be opened within a month if we had enough teachers and the money to support them. The Church of Chrjst bas the oppor- tunity of educating the next generation of Chinese. If neglected now the opportunity may never occur again, and the evangelization of China will be incomparably harder.
4. Medical work. China's millions, covered with diseases loath-"
some to the eye and painful to the sense, have begun to realize the efficacy of foreign medicine, and welcome the medical missionary to shop and home.
5. Literature. The desire for literature has grown to such an extent that every Christian press has more work than it can well do, and twice the num ber is needed, or the present plants should be strength- ened and enlarged. • 6. Work among women. While all that precedes refers as well to the work among women as among r,nen) the degraded position of woman in Eastern lands makes the opportunity for her elevation all the more important. Fathers are sending their girls to our Christian schools in large numbers, and the women who go into the homes with the Gospel for women were never so welcome as now.
The greatest field in the world is white to the harvest. "Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he would send forth laborer's into his harvest," Perhaps he will send you, or will ask you to help him send.
BABISM: A FAILURE-I BY REV. S. G. WILSON, TABRIZ, PERSIA Author of ., Persian Life and Customs"
Babism, or Bahaism, proclaims itself a new revelation, and has been heralded by some as a great reform. What has it revealed either of truth or of law? What has it proposed or accomplishea in the way of reform? An examination of Babism will show that neither as a revelation nor as a reform does it deserve a high place among the world's religions.
Theologically Babism is a chaos of Divine manifestation. It has developed and set forth certain doctrines of Shiahism-as, for example, that of the Imams-as manifestations of the Divine attributes and of the Mehti, and certain tenets of the Ismielis and Sufis as to the incarnation of the Divine Will or Reason. In the course of sixty years !!everal claimants to the rank of manifestations or incarnations of God have risen among them. The original founder, Sayid Ali Mohammed (1844), was for three years only the Bab (or Door) of communication with the absent Imam. He then became the Imam Mehti or the Imam Hussain, then the N1~kta or Point of Divine Unity, the center of the circle of existence. After his martyrdom in Tabriz, his
TilE MISSIONABY REVIEW OF '1'lIE WOBLl>
appointed successor was 8ubh-i-Azal or Hazreti Azal (the Dawn of Eternity, or the Lord, the Eternal). In his day there was a "chaos of Divine manifestations," viz., Hazreti Zahib and Janab-i-Azim and a number of others. Later (1864) Mirza Hussain Ali was" manifested" under the title of Baha-Ullah, the" Splendor of God," and supplanted his half-brother Azal, who has lately died in Cyprus. The rank assigned to Baha is evident from a remark made by one of his friends to me: "He is very God of very God, the everlasting Father." An enemy has said: "Baha is not content with being God, he must needs be a creator of Gods." Since he "ascended"-that is, left his mortal body (1892)–his son Abbas Effendi, not content with being" the Son of God" * and with posing as the Master, Jesus, to Christians, and as the Imam Hussain to Shiah Moslems, is forcing a new schism by int.rodncing a new revelation and announcing" I am the manifestation of God. My paps are full of the milk of Godhead; whoever will, let him come aild suck freely." In these quickly succeeding dispensations, salvation-said to be-is by faith in the manifestation.
We are also asked to believe that the holy angels and prophets have come to earth. One of my acquaintances is the angel Gabriel, another is Abbas. Baha says: "Four pmphets come with me," namely, his sons, of whom Abbas Effendi is Jesus, Mirza Mohammed Ali is Mohammed, and the other two are Abraham and Moses. Alas! that these prophets hate and curse each other. Alas! that" Gabriel" should be cursed tmd persecuted because he refuses to accept the latest emendations to the revelation.
A Kaleidoscope of Revelations Of this new revelation i.t may be said, as Jacob said of his wages, "You have changed them seven times." Not only has the Bab altered his declaration regarding himself, but Subh-i-Azal made further changes. "In the hands of Baha," says Professor Browne, of Cambridge, t "Babism has undergone important modifications, and, indeed, has become almost a new religion." Abbas gives the kaleidoscope another whirl and puts ,many of the books of his father out of sight. For example, take their relation to Shiahism. The Bab in the Beyan declares "the substance of truth 'Was confined'to the 8hiahs." Baha declared that ·the Shiahs were always heretics, but Abbas says the Shiahs were true till they gave the decree for the execution of the Bab; after that they became infidels.
The books of revelation succeed each other so rapidly as to be bewildering. The Beyan and many volumes of the Bab have long since been laid aside. Manuscript copies of it can be procured • See" Sacred Mysteries," p. 74. Chicago, 1902. t Author of "The Episode of the Nab" aud "The New History," and a special authority on Babism. The quotatious of this article aud citatiouB of historical facts are mostly from Professor Browne's translations.
BABISM: A FAILURE ·
only at a high price and in ex- purgated recensions. Baha wrote many books, and a number of them were printed in Bombay.
Now all, except the "Ketab-i- Akdas," are let alone, and their readiug is not specially recom- mended. It is rumored that Abbas is now preparing a new revelation for his followers. This will prob- ably be adapted for exportation into the United States!
The Bahais profess to recei ve the previous Scriptures, the Old and New Testaments, and the Koran. They are very familiar with them but use a system of ABBAS EFFENDI , • (Gusn-i-Azam) or Abdul-Baha_ By Persian Bablsts allegorical interpretatIOn whereby he is looked upon as an Incarnation of HUBslan, they can be made to mean any- ::~:~hAmerlcan followers as Christ returned thing. Thus, the day of resur- rection is interpreted as the day in which a founder of a new dispen- sation was manifested. The resurrection of Jesus is called the time when the mission of Mohammed began. The prophecy that Christ will "come in the clouds" is in- terpreted to refer to His human- ity, which conceals His divinity as in a cloud.
What the Bahais believe about the futnre life is a puzzle. I have asked several men who have known the Bahai manifestations. and who have read their revelations, and one said: "In the last analysis they reject the future life." An- other said: "They believe in the transmigration of souls." A fer- vent Bahais of the old school said: " We believe in a future state so unthinkably ecstatic that if its joys were now revealed to men MIRZA MOHAMMED ALI they would commit suicide to (Gusn-I-Akbar), a younger son of Baha U llah, wbo hasten their entrance into it." maintains bla fsther's supremacy The subject remains obscure to European investigators. After twenty years of questioning them, I believe they have no definite teachings on the subject. Some believe
in a future paradise, Qthers in" rijat," Qr return, to. earth as men. Oertain it is, hQwever, that they reject the dQctrine Qf the resurrectiQn Qf the bQdy and Qf the day Qf judgment.
Babism nQt Qnly dQes nQt claim fQr its fQunders the PQwer to. wQrk miracles, but they reject thQse Qf Ohrist and Qf the prQphets. One Qf their preachers strenuQusly argued with me that Ohrist did not give sight to. physical eyes, but simply Qpened the eyes Qf their understanding. He did not raise the dead, but simply" awakened the dormant spiritualities Qf mankind." A sectiQn Qf the Tarikh-i-Jadid is devQted to the denial and refutatiQn of miracles. A blind man in Teheran sent to. Baha, praying that his eyes might be opened. He received answer that it was fQr the glQry Qf GQd that he remain blind. The Bab, at his examinatiQn in Tabriz, was asked to. restore the sick MQhammed Shah to health. He replied: "It is nQt in my PQwer, but I can write two. thQusand verses a day. Who. else can do. that?" Thus he appealed not simply to the quality Qf his PQetry, as did MQhammed, but also to its quantity as a prQof Qf his manifestation. He is said to. have cQmpQsed a million verses, but critics find them faulty in style and grammar, and painfully obscure. In like manner manes, in Qld times, painted pictures in his book, and appealed to. them as a prQQf Qf his inspiratiQn.
Nineteen the Sacred Number This new dispensatiQn makes much Qf the symbQlism Qf numbers, especially Qf the number 19, which is the sum of the numerical value of the letters Qf the Arabic wQrd vahid (unity), and is also. the number Qf letters in " Bism ullah 'ir rahman ir rahim" (In the name Qf God, the cQmpassionate, the merciful). Had the fQunder been content with making a new alphabet of 19 letters, and a new script which nQbody uses, and with chQQsing 19 chief disciples, whom he named by the 19 letters, and with dividing the new revelatiQn into. 19 bOQks Qf 19 chapters each, we shQuld have regarded it all as a harmless fancy; but when he builds the calendar Qn this number, it makes us certain that the GQd Qf Babism is not the GQd Qf Nature. A month Qf 19 days cQrresponds to nQthing in heaven abQve or Qn the earth beneath, and 19 such mQnths still leave fQur Qr five intercalary days to. make up the solar year. Nineteen new names are revealed fQr these days, each being an attribute Qf GQd, the same serving for the months. A sacred cycle is 19 years, after which periQd the furniture Qf every house shQuld be renewed. According to. this rule, I saw a strict Bahai dispose of a carpet softened with age and buy a new Qne with glaring colQrs. The year is made to. begin with the vernal equinQx, in accQrdance witllthe sensible habit of the fire-worshipers, and frQm this date the Bab and Baha bQth fix their manifestations. Lately the number 9 (the sum Qf the letters of Baha) is being treated as mQre sacred than the number 19.
BABISH: A FAILURE 95'
Such are some of the doctrines and peculiar ideas of the Bahais. Where is their superiority over Christianity or Islam? In what are they even original, and where is their utility? The number 19 was already regarded as the number of the Divine Unity by the Persian mystics, and especially by Sheiph Muhiyyu-i-Din, a Sufi teacher of the twelfth century. The Zoroastrians had named the months for the angels. 'rhe titles, "Bab" (Door) and "Baha" (Light)-have been frequently used. Not to speak of Him who said "I am the door" and" I am the light of the world," there are four celebrated Babs of the Imam Mehti in Shiah history, and a pseudo Bab was put to death in the tenth century. The symbolism and incarnations, or manifestations, are nothing new in Persia. They are found among the Ismielis, Assassins, Ali-Allahis, and others. The veiled prophet Mukanna and Bubak and numerous pretenders have declared themselves God. Persia never lacks for an incarnation or two.
One of these, of the Ali-Allahi sect, arrived in Tabriz some years ago, and made an appointment to visit me at three o'clock in the afternoon. My samovar was set to boiling, and I awaited his arrival. But he failed to keep his engagement because the governor-general, the Amir-i-Nizam, heard of his presence in the city, and this God fled, forgetting to send word that he could not fulfil his engagement. The Mutazilites rejected miracles, and some of them taught, as do the Ali- Allahis, the transmigration of souls. In the denial of the resurrection the Bahais have many predecessors. The Persian Mani, the founder of Manicheism, announced his mission at the age of twenty-four, as the Bab did, and on the Festival of Noruzako he invented a new script and named his books after the letters of the alphabet; he also objected to miracles. Thus, Babi ideas have no more a claim to originality than to truth.
Babism's Ritualistic Spirit If we tUrn from doctrines to rites and ceremonies, we do not see any adequate reform of Moslem ceremonial law. The outward forms, such as prayer, fastinf:. pilgrimage, circumcision, etc., were explained allegorically by the Bab, but Baha has laid down a ritual on the same old lines. In most ceremonies there is only a slight modification, bui no essential difference, from Islam. Like other Oriental religions, it prescribes rules and minute regulations, instead of stating principles of worship like Christianity and leaving their application to the believing conscience.
Babism appoints three times a day for prayer with 9 Rakas (sections) instead of the five times a day of Islam with 17 Rakas. There are no public prayers, and no prayers at funerals. In Islam devotion is a strong point, formalism is its weakness. Babism lessens the amount of devotion, without getting rid of the formalism. '1'he Bahais wash the hands only before prayers, not the arms and
feet, as Moslems do. The Moslem rosary has 100 beads, the Bahai only 95 (19 X 5). On rising the Bahai should say "Allaho Abha" (God of lights, the title of Baha) 95 times, hoping to be heard for his vain repetitions. The same words are prescribed to be said on beginning a meal or any business, or as a greeting, just as the Moslem says" Bism 'ullah" (In the name of God), or "Salaam alakum" (Peace be to you). A prayer is also prescribed to be said at the time of washing the hands and face.
As a fast, Babism substitutes the last month of their year, named Ala, of 19 days, for the 30 days of Rainazan. As Christians have carnival week before :tent, following by Easter rejoicings, and Moslems have the Oruj Bayram, so the Bahais have five days of feasting before the fast, and Noruz following. Noruz is consecrated, and its ceremonies prescribed with religious sanctions. The ordinance of fasting says: "Thus ordaineth the Lord of men: abstain from eating and drinking from dawn to sundown." This abstinence includes smoking, as among Moslems. The same exceptions are made as in the Koran-that the traveler, the sick, and pregnant 01' nursing women are excused. The question naturally arises: if obligatory fasting is good, why reduce the time from 30 days to 19; if reform is the watchword, why not have the liberty of the Gospel?
Pilgrimage is retained in this so-called new revelation, and its devotees are encouraged to seek a local sanctuary. Accho (Acre), in Syria, by an undesigned ordering of the Sultan of 'Turkey, becomes the shrine. Here Baha was in exile, and is buried, and his tomb, I understand, is in the custody of Mirza Mohammed Ali, a younger brother and rival of Abbas Effendi. Hence the latter, not to be behind in this, has transferred to Accho, under his own charge, the body of the Bab, which was thrown to the dogs in Tabriz, and afterward carried to Teheran and buried there for more than half a century. Besides Accho and the various mashads or martyr-places, the Bab's house in Shiraz and Baha's in Bagdad, as the places of their manifestations, are held sacred.
Babism and Woman Let us pass to the test question of how Bahaism treats women. It is not gr"eat praise to say that in this there is an advance on Mohammedanism, tho it is far behind Christianity. I have seen no evidence that Babi doctrine teaches communism of wives. Incidents leading to this conclusion may doubtless be credited to the sinners among the Babis. Babism forbids temporary marriage and concubinage and polygamy, which are allowed by Shiahs. It allows bigamy, however.
Baha had two wives at one time, by each of which he had children. When Abbas' mother died, he again joined a "partner" to his remaining wife, thus being a bigamist twice over. The" branches" (broth. ers) who are now quarreling are from. different mothers. Marrhtge
A NEW SECT IN INDIA
among Bahais is on a low Oriental plane. Divorce is allowed at the option of the husband, even for frivolous cames, such as a quarrel. . The parties are recommended not to marry inside of a year, that, if possible, their hearts may be reconciled. The dowry d the divorced wife is a mere pittance of 19 miscals of gold (about $50) in the city, and 19 miscals of silver ($2.00) in villages. If the husband leaves home and neglects to send word or means of support to his wife for one year, she is free to marry another man. Early marriages are discountenanced.
Women are secluded in the harems and from the society of men, as among ordinary Moslems. The historic case of Kurrat-ul-Ayn, of Kasrin, is a solitary exception. She has had no successors. Even she ordinarily delivered her lectures from behind a screen, and only occa- sionally let her veil fall aside in the presence of men when carried away by her enthusiasm. Bahais do not seem to approve of her con- duct. Several Bahai families with whom I am acquainted are allow- ing their daughters to grow up without learning to read, tho the fathers are 'teachers and are educating their sons.
Bahaism, from this view of its doctrines and rites, appears to be simply a Mohammedan sect, with no special superiority to other Mohammedan sects of past ages.
(To be concluded) A NEW SECT IN INDIA BY J. MURRAY MITCHELL, LL.D. Author of "Hinduism, Past and Present"
"Vides t1~mult1tm indies t1tmnltuosius tumultuentem." So said Luther in quaint but vigorous Latinity, when his hot battle with Rome was threatening to become still hotter. Even so may we now say regarding evangelistic work in the mission field of the East.
There is at present a great and growing restlessness among the followers of the chief Oriental religions. Even Buddhism, which seemed until of late quite asleep, is, in Oeylon at least, arming in self-defense. Still more distinctly is Hinduism awaking. We have the Brahmo- Somaj in its various branches and offshoots, and the newer and' more active Arya-Somaj. We have also a new departure in the case of those, not few in number, who seek a purified religion, but who for the most part hold that they·can sit at the feet of Ohrist, drinking in His pre· cious teaching, and yet remain in the Hindu religion. " Oome out, and be ye separate." This is, to a Hindu, perhaps, the most startling of all the Divine commands. Mohammedanism is not less agitated than Hinduism. The Babi sect in Persia is by no means extinct, altho for a time it seemed as if the creed had been quenched in blood.
In Northern India there has sprung up, of late years, a remarkable movement which has gone on steadily extending-at least, in the extreme northwest. In this paper we restrict Qurselves to a. notice of this sect.
The leader is Ghulam Ahmad, chief of the village of Qadian, in the Punjab. He is a man of considerable education, and generally receives the designation of "Mirza." He is about sixty-five years old, but is still full of activity, both bodily and mentally. His family has been noted for its attachment to the British government, and during the mutiny of 1867 his father and elder brother did valuable service in its suppression. The Mirza has been known as a religious teacher for at least twenty years, but of late he has pushed himself forward more energetically than ever.
His surname is Ahmad. This word has the same meaning as Mohammed, and the coincidence has probably had an influence on the Mirza. He calls the sect which he has founded the Ahmadiyyahafter his own name.
Altho Ghulam Ahmad never mentions the name of Mohammed without invoking the blessing of God upon him, yet on very important points he abandons the doctrine oaf the Koran, and in the eyes of a true Moslem is no mo.re than a pestilent heretic. He has had many disputations with mollas and manlavis, and in any Mohammedan state would speedily lose his head. In regard to Christ, he flatly contradicts the Korau in many points. The Koran itself unhappily denies that Christ was crucified, maintaining that he was taken up into heaven without dying; but its language regarding Him is always in the highest degree respectful. Very, very different, in many instances, is that of the Mirza. He denies Christ's power, His wisdom, and even His moral perfection. -His divinity the Mirza passionately rejects. He admits that He was crucified, but maintains that He did not die, but after the crucifixion was restored to life by the use of a wonderful medicine. He says that Christ then traveled to the East, and finally died in Kashmir, where His grave can still be seen! To a Mohammedan, even as to a Christian, all this is gross heresy.
Mohammed said that before the end of the world a truly remarkable prophet called the "Mahdi" would appear, and that finally the Messiah would descend from heaven and come to the help of the Mahdi, overwhelming all opposition. The expectation of the Mahdi's coming is deeply implanted in the Moslem mind, and the great political movements of the world have only increased the hope. We have had already several self-styled Mahdis-the one who perished at Omdurman perhaps the most remarkable, and others are doubtless still to follow. The Mirza maintains that he, and he alane, is the true ¥ahdi; but he adds that he is also the expected Messiah. He does not mean that he is in propria persona the literal Christ, but he affirms that he
is Messiah in the sense that John the Baptist was Elijah-that is, he comes in the spirit and power of Elijah.
But, it will be asked, what proof can the man give in support of his amazing pretensions? He sometimes quotes the Christian Scrip- tures in their support. We shall give no examples. We have no heart to repeat his shocking misrenderings and misunderstandings of sacred texts. But he professes to have various proofs. One of these is his pro- phetic gift. He foretells; he foretells sometimes good and sometimes evil. In many cases he has predicted the early death of individuals obnoxious to him, but as his anticipations have sometimes proved false his ingenuity has been sorely taxed to show how he had mis-· taken the Divine will. He has also predicted blessings as about to descend on the heads of his favorites. In particular, he has foretold the birth of sons; but when daughters came instead, and the disap- pointed father's disgust was great, the Mirza, clever as he is, was per- plexed, and we may suppose that he has now become more chary in his vaticinations.
The Mirza vehemently assails the monogamy which Ohristianity enjoins. He does not seem to be aware that some other systems of belief-Zoroastrianism, for example-restrict a man to one wife. He asserts that the practiso of monogamy is the occasion of many fearful evils, and he points triumphantly to polygamy as practised by Hebrew saints of old. He also dwells with terrible earnestness on the fearful evils which he sees both in the Ohristian and the Moslem communi· ties. In this he would have much sympathy from all true Ohristians, if the condemnation were not made in such tremendously sweeping terms. Thus he dwells on the drunkenness, the gambling, and the uncleanness which exist; and we h:ilve U great thoughts of heart" as we read his burning words. But, with characteristic rashness, he goes on to reason thus: Christ can not be alive, or He would never allow His religion to sink so low. The argUl'll.:mt is naught; but alas! that this man should have been able to employ it!
The Ohrist.ians in the Punjab are discussing the question: Is the Mirza a conscious imposter, or does he really believe in himself? Or is he insane? So far as we can see, he does believe in himself; but no man could speak and act as he does unless he were .partially insane.
Meanwhile, his efforts to propagate his creed are earnest and incessant, He has a press at Qadian, and he publishes in Arabic or English a vast number of books and tracts. Here on our table, ~or example, are a good many numbers of a monthly magazine in English, extending to full forty pages Bvo, which is called the Rem'ew of Religions. ,Hois thirst for notoriety seems insatiable. He is anxious that his claims should be acknowledged in America; and it is said he has challenged, or is about to challenge, Dr. Dowie, of Ohicago, to a discussion. A singular form it would be of the immemorial struggle between East
J,tnd West. Dares would beat Entullus black and blue, and so would Entellus, Dares. 'fhey would demolish each other. So far well; but, on th8 whole, the spectacle would not be edifying; and as Dr. Dowie seems the less mad of the two, he will probably refuse the challenge.
What is to be the final issue of the movement? It has done harm; how long wi1l it continue to do so? Dr. Griswold, of the Forman Oollege, Labore-whose very useful tract lies on our tabie-believes that in all India the followers of the new sect may amount to about ten thousand, illc}uding men, women, and children. The leader him- self would rate tuem at a much higher figure.
The Mirza is about sixty-five years of age. He may live for ten years-perhaplil more, Wben he dies, what then? His claims are at once exploded, his name becomes a byword, and the movement col- lapses. What will becom3 of his followers? Probably some will return to Islam. Dr. Griswold, however, informs us that, among those who were at one time under the Mirza's influence, several have found their way into Ohristianity. That transition will be far more easily made when this extraordinary man is finally dead and gone.
Only one word more. In these perilous times, when false prophets . are so eager in spreading abroad destractive error, what is the duty of the Ohurch of Ohrist? Surely a new departure is needed-fresh energy and effort in proclaiming Ohrist. When, when will the Ohurch lay to heart the great words: "Preach the Gospel to every creature" ?
~ CHURCHWITII A MISSION TO THE NEGLECTED BY J. TAYLOR HAMILTON, D.D., HERRNHUT, GERMANY Member of the Moravian MiSsi,m Board, and author of " A History of Moravian Missions"
When the University t)f 'Prague ranked after Paris, Oxford, and Bologna, then Bohemia and Moravia were lands of larger significance, than now. It was in that era, in 1457, that certain followers of John Hus, weary of the appeal to anns, sought opportunity to live out the principles of their national reformer in the quiet of obscurity, content to ignore the political issues for which their compatriots had been contending. Tho their pious aims involved a practical break with Rome, King Podiebrad was at fiJ;st disposed to toleration, for the land needed rest, and toleration at first suited the crafty primate-elect Rokycana. Thus the Unity of the Brethren was enabled to perfect its organization. In 1467 Stephen, a bishop of the Austrian Waldenses, imp~rted episcopal consecration to certain ministers of the Brethren at the request of their synod, and they steadily gained in numbers through the attractive power of unfeigned piety, simplicity of Scriptural doctrine, and fidelity of discipline.
Prior to this the king and the archbishop had already changed front. Gregory, a nephew of the latter and a leader of the Brethren,
A CHUROH WITH A MISSION TO TIlE NEGLECTED
had been stretched on the rack in Prague. Now arrests became frequent, and conventicles were inhibited. With the closing of their churches, the Brethren betook themselves to the forests-even in the depth of winter, the last man in parties that sought the rendezvous dragging after him a branch to obliterate their footprints in the snow. " Under following sovereigns persecutions were repeatedly inaugurated. The periods of respite were brief. Yet the Brethren persisted-nay, they throve. Men and women of rank became identified with them. Gindely, a Roman Oatholic historian, with reference to this period writes: "The B;ethren hung together like an unbroken chain, from the royal palace to the humblest cottage." Moreover, after the promulgation of the Edict of St. James, in 1508, which aimed at their utter extinction, God interposed so markedly, bringing their foremost persecutors to an untimely and violent end, that the saying arose: "Is anyone weary of life? Let him lay his hand upon- the Picards "-i.e., the Bohemian-Moravian Brethren.
Growth of the Moravian Church Thus originated in what are now Austrian lands an evangelical Ohurch of German and Slavonian stock, whose history was to be broadly comparable to that of the Lollards, the Huguenots, the Wal- / denses, and the Salzburger, tho possessing distinctive features of its own. By the year 1517 it numbered more than four hundred par- ishes, with a membership of from one hundre-d and fifty thousand to two hundred thousand souls. Noble families like those of Kostka, Pernstein, Krajek, Waldstein (Wallenstein), Sternberg, Zerotin~ Bosko- wic, and Kaunitz, took pleasure in placing financial resources at its disposal. The product of its presses testified to the diligence and scholarly ability of its clergy. Of the sixty works of importance pub- lished in &hemia during the years 1500 to 1510, at least fifty were published by the Brethren.
Meanwhile they sought to fraternize with evangelicals everywhere. Waldenses from &andenburg entered into correspondence with their Executive Council, and, subsequently migrating to Moravia, joined them to the number of several hundred. Two of their leaders as dep- uties visited- the Waldenses of Italy and France, at Florence becoming sorrowful witnesses of the martyrdom of Savonarola. An intimate correspondence was afterward maintained with confessors in Italy and , France.
Naturally they followed with keen interest the movement in Wit- tenberg, and welcomed with gladness the light kindled there, and in Strasburg, and in Geneva. Frequent deputations were sent from Bohemia to Luther and Bucer and Calvin lnd their coadjutors. Friendly relations were established. Luther consented to write a Preface for the German translation of their Confession of Faith of 1532,
printed in Wittenberg in 1533, and similarly prepared the Preface for their Confession and Apology, which appeared at Wittenberg in 1538. The Strasburg reformers, Calvin then sojourning in that city, displayed special friendliness to the deputy who visited them in 1540, and on his return to the special sphere of his labors the Genevan embodied in his discipline features which he had admired in that of the Bohemian-Moravian Brethren.
But dark days supervened for this Church, devoid as it was of legal status in the lands of its origin, owing its safety, indeed, largely to the independent jurisdiction enjoyed by its nobles in virtue of tbeir feudal prerogatives. The disastroUliI issue of the Smalcaldic War furnished King Ferdinand I., their bitter enemy, with the pretext he desired. During the war a league had been formed, having in view religious liberty, the rights of the aristocracy, and a diminution of the royal power. The disaster at Miihlberg left these confederates at the mercy of their king. Some were condemned to death, others were stripped of their estates. Leitomischl, the chief seat of the Brethren, and Turnau, Reichenberg, and Brandeis on the Elbe, other important centers of their work, were transferred from the dominion of nobles favorably disposed, and bec.ame property of the crown-to suffer accordingly. A royal edict interdicted the worship of the Brethren. Confiscations, fines, and ill treatment drove Plany into exile, Prussia and Poland in particular being sought by the refugees. By a dastardly treacherous scheme the person of Bishop John Augusta, who stood at the head of the Executive Council of the Brethren, was seized. For sixteen years he languished in prison under particularly cruel treatment, being several times subjected to exquisite torture.
Persecution spread the Church instead of suppressing it. Where the exiles gathered, especially in Poland, new centers of influence arose. Polish magnates, after conversion, extended to them powerful protection. Thus a thirrl province of the Brethren's Church came into existence, and the Brethren became a factor in the religious de· velopment of the Polish kingdom. Here they sought to foster unity among Protestants, and an approach to federation was achieved at the Synod of Sendomir in 1570. With the Reformed they stood jp close fellowship.
Meantime the accession of Maximilian II., in 1564, aroused new hopes in the Bohemian and Moravian branches of the Unitas Fratrum. But his was a vacillating course, and their hopes failed of realization. Yet the Brethren remained steadfast in the fulfilment of their oolling, steadily gaining in numbers a.nd in influence, and in 1593 giving to their country the literary work which constitutes their most enduring memorial-the Kralitz Bible, translated from the original tongues of Holy Writ, and still the standard Bible for Bohemia. Not until the Bohemian Charter was wrested from Rudolph II., in 1609, did their
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Ohurch obtain a legal status. Bohemia was now overwhelmingly evangelical, not more than one-tenth of the population adhering to the faith and practise of Rome. But the counter-reformation had been set on foot. Jesuit influence was already fermenting. Rudolph's successor, Matthias, was encouraged to ignore the rights of the Evangelicals. He foisted upon the Diet as King of Bohemia his cou.sin, Ferdinand of Styria, who when but twenty years of age had vowed in the Chapel of the Virgin, at Loretto, to extirpate Protestantism throughout his hereditary dominions, and had kept that vow. Repeated violations of the charter followed. Inevitable revolution came to a head with the hurling of Ferdinand's viceroys from the windows of the council-room of the Hradschin at Prague. Then followed the ill-advised election of Frederick of the Palatinat~, Bohemia's" winter king." The awful catastrophe of the Thirty Years' War was precipitated upon the German Empire.
After the defeat of the Evangelicals on the White Mountain, three miles west of Prague, in November, 1620, Bohemia lay at the mercy of :Ferdinand 11., and his mercy was implacable severity itself. A systematic uprooting of Protestantism in Bohemia and Moravia, which has its parallel only in the story of the Huguenots, together with the miseries of the war, reduced the population of Bohemia from about three millionI) to about eight hundred thousand. Moravia suffered similarly. Industry and enterprise were blighted for centuries. The nationallife suffered degeneration. By the operation of the dragonade, confiscation, and banishment, Protestantism seemed to have been -suppressed. When the Treaty of Westphalia made provision for the Evangelicals of the empire in general, Bohemia and Moravia were left unconditionally in the hands of Ferdinand IlL, a man after his father's own heart.
This outcome was a terrible blow to the exiles, who had hoped against hope that some day their fatherland might accord them .a welcome. It almost broke the heart of Amos Oomenius, now their leading bishop. Their chief seat at this time was the town of Lissa, in Poland. Nor was this the end of sorrows. In 1656 Lissa, which had been occupied by the Swedes, was taken and burned by the Polish confederates. After the loss of their ecclesiastical center, the Brethren, even more than other Protestants, were made to feel the heavy hand of General Ozarniecki. Their ministers were subjected to cruel tortures. 'fhousands of their members fled-to Silesia, Saxony, Brandenburg, and Holland. Tho Lissa rose from its ashes, and altho their episcopate was maintained in hope against hope, their Polish and Prussian congregations for the most part gradually lost denominational identity, being merged with those of the Reformed. Only a few survived to the eighteenth century-chiefly in Posen.
However, the counter-reformation had not absolutely eradicated
this church of reformers before the reformation in Bohemia and Moravia. A" hidden seed" survived, consisting of such who cherished the writings of Hus and of Oomenius, and who secretly perpetuated the memory of their fathers by holding conventicles and i-mplanting in their children loyalty to the Bohemian Bible. Their number, like that of the faithful in Israel who refused to bow the knee to Baal, in fact exceeded the common estimate. For when, in 1783, Joseph II. issued his Edict of Toleration, granting religious liberty nnder certain restrictions, one hundred and fifty thousand Bohemians and Moravians came forward, desirous to be known as members of the Unitas Fratrum. These, however, were by special decree excluded from the benefits of ,the edict. Not until 1880 were spiritual sons of Luke, of Prague, and Augusta and Blahoslav and Oomenius granted liberty of worship in Austrian lands.
Meanwhile, in the providence of God, a wonderful provision had been made whereby a remnant of this persecuted Church might fulfil its special calling in a manner serviceable to Ohristendom.
Christian David and Count Zinzendorf During the latter part of the second and early in the third decade of the eighteenth century a powerful revival of religion was experienced by the families of descendants of the Brethren in a group of villages of Moravia known as The Kuhlandel. It was precisely for the "hidden seed" of this portion of Moravia that Oomenius had prepared a catechism, which formed one of his last literary works, in the hope of thereby promoting the fulfilment of his own fervent prayers for the resuscitation of his Ohurch. 'rhe chief human agent in this revival was Ohristian David, a converted Roman Oatholic carpenter, who had found a home in Silesia, but who repeatedly risked imprisonment and worse, in order to minister to his own countrymen in Moravia. Priestly tyranny applied the argument of the dungeon and of fines, but in vain. Yet altho the renewed life was not to be suppressed, it longed for free expression.
At this juncture Christian David met the pious young Oount Zinzendorf, whO', on attaining his majority, with the acquisition of a landed estate in Saxony, desired to effect a work in Upper Lusatia patterned after that of Francke and his associates in Halle. Tnese plans of the young nobleman were, however, providentially diverted. In response to the pleas of the evangelist, he promised a temporary asylum to religious refugees from Moravia. Of this offer the family the Neissers, a party of ten in all, first availed themselves at Whitsuntide, 1722. Fleeing on foot, under yover of night, to elude the vigilance of their oppressors, they reached Saxony in safety. Their new home was reared beside the highway from Lobau to Zittau, when it passed through what was then an unimproved wilderness forming
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part of Zinzendorf's· estate. During the ensuing years several hun- dred of their awakened compatriots joined them, abandoning the comforts of a modest competence and remunerative occupations for conscience'sake. Their incipient town received the name of Herrnhut (The Lord's Watch). Hither many p,arnest men and women were also attracted from various parts of Germany, adherents of various creeds, but alike seekers after righteousness. Meanwhile the pious aims of their patron were thwarted. On the other hand, the responsibility he recognized in relation to his new vassals, and the pain he felt at the disagreements which arose in regard to faith and discipline, by reason of tha diverse elements which met in the population of Herrnhut, led him to resign his office at the court in Dresden that he might devote himself wholly to the spiritual welfare of this people. Removing to Herrnhut during the first half of the year 1727, he devoted his time and energies wholly to this task. By laboring personally with individuals, he induced agreement to rules and regulations for the ordering of religious and municipal life. Much study was given to the Scriptures, especially the First Epistle of St. John. A spirit of fervent intercession characterized the early summer. Honest recognition of spiritual pride and of mutual lack of charity was followed by unfeigned self-humiliation and a drawing together of hearts. These experiences culminated in a gracious revival, whose climax was reached in a celebration of the Lord's Supper at Berthelsdorf on the 13th of August. Thenceforth the people of Hernnhut were a changed people. Descendants of the old Brethren's Church and representatives of other confessions were fused together in one spirit. Personal assurance of acceptance with God, throngh the atoning merits of the Redeemer, wrought a profound conviction in these men and women that their lives should be placed unreservedly at the Lord's disposal to work out His will. Zinzendorf came to realize that his life-work must be identified with them, that essentially the spirit of purposes cherished by him from childhood was meant of God to receive realization through the abandonment of his own plans for activity in conjunction with these people. His recognition of God's leading cost him exile, and involved the subordination of family life and of the private interests of his family, as well as the placing of his property, in addition to his time and talents, at the disposal of the Church.
Reaching Out Into Regions Beyond It was impossible that a city set on a hill, as was Herrnhut, where all phases of life were dominated by a joyous religion.-for cheerful, not ascetic, industry characterized the place-should remain hidden. Affiliations were established with those who longed after a betterment of religious life in various European lands, especially where Pietistic institutions had prepared.the way. Student organizations in personal
touch with Herrnhut, especially at the University of Jena, deepened the significance of the movement set on foot by the flight of the exiles from Moravia. Moravian evangelists were welcomed in various lands, the more so because they aimed at promoting spiritual life without detaching any .from membership in state churches. The work thus inaugurated yet remains an agency for incalculable good. Many more persons are to-day ministered to by the Diaspora missionaries of the Moravion Church on the Continent of Europe than are carried in the lists of its communicant members. Moreover, the reflex influence of this contact with and labor for other divisions of evangelical Christendom has caused the modern development of the Brethren's Unity to differ in various respects from the Unity as it existed before, altho its essential spirit remains very much the same.
With the Danish court, Count Zinzendorf stood in relations of personal intimacy. In the month after the culmination of the revi val at Herrnhut he sent two Brethren to confer with pious members of that court, and on returning they brought with them a manuscript account of Egede's labors in Greenland. Even in his scho~ days Zinzendorf had contemplated the inauguration of missions to the heathen. In February, 1728, a memorable day of prayer was characterized by intercessions for Turkey, Africa, Greenland, and Lapland. Twenty-six unmarried men thereupon made it an object of study how they should prepare for service among the heathen when the Lord's call came. The indication of His will was given in connection with Zinzendorf's visit to Copenhagen in 1731, to be present at the coronation of King Christian VI. Returning with the story of Hans Egede's comparative failure, and presenting the needs of the negro slaves in the West Indies, he powerfully moved the hearts of many in Herrnhut on July 23d. Next day two young men volunteered to go to the negroes, and their example was followed by that of two who volunteered for Greenland. In the event Leonard Dober and David Nitschmann set ont for the West Indies on August 21, 1732, and Matthew and Christian Stach and Christian David left for Greenland on April 10, 1733.
Some Notable Features of Moravian Work Within ten years from the sailing of the pioneers, Moravian missions had been attempted also in Dutch Guiana, Lapland, at the Cape of Good Hope, among the Christian slaves in Algeria, among the Samoyedes of Arctic Russia, and in Ceylon. And in 1735 pioneers were sent to the Indians of North America (Georgia). Not all these missions attained permanent success, but even in these years of experiment several features are exceedingly suggestive.
First, a revival of vitaJ evangelical religion gave birth to the enterprise. The vitally evangelical is evangelistic in virtue of inner neces-
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sity. With the restoration of the joy of salvation came an irresistible impulse to teach transgressors God's way. Herrnhut numbered about six hundred souls. Many of the people were very poor. The means of communication were meager. Nevertheless, obstacles were surmounteu in God's name, in recognition of the obligation of the Savior's last commandment.
Second, the message they brought was a simple but comprehensive one-redemption through the atoning life and death of Jesus. Philosophizing was avoided. Details of confessional creed were not imposed. The love of God in Ohrist Jesus was magnified, with the MORAVIAN MISSIONARY R . SCHNABEL AND SOME TIBETAN CHRISTIANS A'I' POO IN BASHARK, INDIA completeness of salvation and the obligation of manifesting grateful love to Him through obedience.
Where failure followed, in the third place, it was due rather to the opposition of nominal Christians and obstacles they placed in the way than to the heathen's lack of receptiveness or to the essential impracticability of missions.
Fourth, this was an uprising of ardent young men to meet their recognized obligation. Zinzendorf himself was only 32 years of age when he sent the pioneers; Dober was 26, Nitschmann, 35; Frederick Martin, Dober's successor in St. Thomas, 31; Matthew Stach, the first volunteer for Greenland, was only 20, and his companion, Frederick Bohnisch, 21. Ohristian Henry Rauch, who began the mission among the Mohicans of New York in 1740, was 22. Spangenberg was 34 when he led the colony to Georgia. George Schmidt, the first to carry
the Gospel to the Hottentots, was only 27, tho he had spent six years in an Austrian dungeon for conscience' sake.
Fifth, the majority of the pioneers were luoravians by birth. It was the" witness spirit," brought from lands of martyrdom and persecution, that gave impetus and persistence to the movement. It is .impossible to resist the conviction that God had wonderfully preserved and brought forth a remnant of the old evangelical Ohurch of Reformers before the Reformation, and had then endowed them with renewed life from on high, for the express purpose of recalling Ohristendom to It sense of its obligation to carry out the last command of the Lord Jesus Ohrist. The Moravian Ohurch must be a missionary church. It has no option here, and finds no merit in recognizing the law of its existence.
Indeed, to its missions it owes its perpetuation as a distinct denomination in respect to its outwarq as well as its inner life. The success of its missionaries in the West Indies confronted it with the problem of securing a ministry whose status others would recognize as conferring upon them the right to administer the sacraments to converts and perform other ministerial functions. Herrnhut itself had not yet been wholly separated from the Berthelsdorf parish of the State Ohurch of Saxony, tho its lay elders preached and exhorted and administered discipline. In 1735 the difficulty was obviated by the voluntary transfer of the episcopate of the old Ohurch of the Bohemian Moravian Brethren, which survived in the persons of Daniel Ernest Jablonski, court preacher at Berlin, and Ohristian Sitkovius, of Thorn, Superintendent of the United Reformed and Brethren's congregations in Poland. Jablonski had beeu watching the rise of ·Herrnhut with interest, and for a'number of years had been in personal touch with the Moravians there. Satisfied that they were representatives of what had been best in the old Ohurch, with the consent of Sitkovius he consecrated David Nitschmann, Dober's companion, to be bishop-primarily for the missions. Two years later Zinzendorf-who had already been admitted to Lutheran orders, after advising with the King of Prussia, whose theological examiners closely scrutinized the count's theology, and expressed their approval, and after conferring with Archbishop Potter, of Canterbury, who cordially advised the step-was himself consecrated a second bishop by Jablonski and Nitschmann, with the approval of Sitkovius.
During the fourth and fifth decades of the eighteenth century the Moravian Ohurch, as it came to be popuhirly known and was denominated in the Act of Parliament of 1749, which recognized it as an ancient Protestant and Episcopalian Church, fully established itself in England, Ireland, Wales, and the American colonies, Bethlehem in Pennsylvania becoming the headquarters for the latter. Scotland became a field of operations at a slightly later date. In the colonies
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prior to 1756 Moravian evangelists effected affiliations with earnest men and women in Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Pennsyl- vania, Maryland, North Oarolina, and Georgia. Indeed, scarcely a colony was overlooked in their itinerations. Yet the establishment of the denomination as such was avoided rather than sought. As on the Oontinent of Europe, so among English- speaking peoples, min- istrations were freely rendered for the pro- motion of spiritual life among existing de- nominations, not for the. spread of a new sect, and in America the conversion of the heathen Indians af- forded peculiar scope for the expenditure of energies. Successfully A MORAVIAN MISSION HOUSE AT RUNGWE, EAST AFRICA inaugurated at ·Sheko- meko, on the confines of New York and Oonnecticut, near the Stissik hills, in 1740, the Indian mission, tho repeatedly thwarted by the oppo- sition of whites, nominally Christians, and tho sadly hampered by the wars of the late colonial period and by the great struggle for Inde- pendence, prospered in Pennsylvania and in Ohio, and demonstrated the capacity of Delawares, Mohicans, and kindred tribes for Ohristian civilization, until in the closing operations of the war the d;portation of the converts from their villages along the Tuscarawas by the British, and the massacre in cold blood of a remnant of the peaceable people of Gnadenhutten by American rangers, in 1782, gave a fatal blow to the undertaking. It survived, indeed, but never regained its former pro- portions, however persistently efforts were renewed at various points.
Meanwhile, Zinzendorf's decree of banishment was revoked in 1747.
In 1755 he returned to Saxony, to make his permanent home at Ber- thelsdorf.Even in the darkest days, when the purposes actuating himself and his brethren had been most completely misunderstood, and in consequence had drawn down upon him and them obloquy and derision and something akin to persecution, he had unfalteringly per- sisted in what he knew to be his calling-the heralding of his Lord's free grace and the efficacy of His all-availing atonement. Repeated failures of plans here and there could not dampen his. zeal, nor that of his Moravian coadjutors-men of indomitable persistence.
He and they suffered providential developments to shape their policy. While a lad at school, in founding his "Order of the Grain
of Mustard Seed," Zinzendorf had covenanted with like-minded comrades in after life to labor for the conversion of the heathen, and espernally in behalf of those for whom no one else cared. Nevertheless, when shaping the missionary policy of his Moravian Brethren, he did not remain blind to the strategic value of gaining a foothold for missions among the more advanced races of heathenism. His acute perception early recognized the desirability of winning China and India and Persia for Christ, and accordingly he made efforts to establish missions in those great realms. Egypt and Turkey attracted him, and more than one negotiation was set on foot in Constantinople, and missionaries went to Egypt. But the fulness of time had not come for those lands. On the contrary, as a rule success attended the inauguration of efforts in behalf of the most degraded and neglected. So it came to pass that when Zinzendorf died, in 1760, successful missions were in operation in Greenland, among the Indians of North America, among the negro slaves of the Danish and English West Indian Islands, along the Rio de Berbice in Guiana, South America, and in various parts of the Dutch colony of Surinam. Schmidt's mission to the Hottentots had been fruitful, but had been prematurely brought to a close by white opposition.
Since Zinzendorf's death the experience of the Moravian Church has intensified this conviction of her specific calling as a missionary Church, to minister to those whom others would otherwise neglect or pass by. Meanwhile it is fully realized that this is not the part of worldly wisdom, and that in various respects, especially in connection with the development of the native church and its achievement of self-support in men and means, this apprehension of a providentially assigned duty involves peculiar difficulties. It imposes a financial burden which would be entirely beyond the strength of the Moravian Church did it stand alone, or did it receive assistance only from those associated with it in the Diaspora circles of the state churches in Europe. It compels members of the Moravian Church to recognize that their missions must remain in the highest sense a work of faith. 'rhat faith God has never put to shame.
Repeatedly heavy deficits have marked the annual closing of accounts, but after a while supplies came in. During the Napoleonic wars the home congregations were sorely impoverished. Then friends in England of every Christian name came forward and voluntarily organized" The London Association in Aid of Moravian Missions," which still maintains its marvelously liberal activity, contributing $475,000 during the ten years preceding 1899. Repeatedly unexpected legacies have been received from friends identified with other households of faith, coupled with conditions like the. following: no contraction, no retrogression, for new work, for the erection of outposts into permanent stations. The very large bequest of the late Mr. J. 'r.
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Morton, of London, for example, which is now becoming available in annual instalments, was designed for the last named of these purposes.
Up to the year 1900 the Moravian Church· had sent out 2,604 missionaries, male and female, exclusive of a number of men dispatched in connection with the management of trades and industries undertaken for the support of the work. Since the commencement of operations, in 1732, attempts have proven unsuccessful, or after partial success have been suspended in the following fields: Lapland, among the Samoyedes, among the Calmucks, China, Persia, the East Indies, Egypt, Abyssinia, Algiers, and the Guinea coast of Africaalmost all of these suspensions dating back to the eighteenth century. During the summer of 1900, by exceedingly amicable negotiations, the transfer of the Moravian missions in Greenland to the Danish Lutheran Ohurch was effected, in order that thus a homogeneous native Ohristian church might develop the fullest measure of self-support. By a similar process the Moravian Ohqrch had a few years before taken over from the London Missionary Society its enterprise in the German colony of East Oentral Africa.
The Moravian Mission Fields At present the operations of the Moravians are carried on in Labrador, Alaska, among the Indians of North America and the negroes of the West Indies, in Nicaragua (the Moskito Ooast), Demerara, Surinam, Cape Colony, Kaffraria, German East Equatorial Africa, Australia (Victoria and Queensland), and among the TibetaDspeaking peoples of the Western Himalayas. Besides, a Horne for Lepers is maintained near Jerusalem, its management, however, being administered by a Board distinct from that which directs the affairs of the missions. The latest published statistics give the number of missionaries in the field-exclusive of members of the Board, secretaries, financial agents, etc., and those engaged in the Home for Lepers-as 397, with 47 ordained native ministers and assistant ministers. Oommunicant members of the first grade, and not under discipline, number 32,028, the total membership, reckoning in the children of communicants, the adult catechumens, and those temporarily under discipline, is reported as 96,877-and it may be added that the methods of keeping church registers are exact. Attention is everywhere paid to education, 234 day-schools being maintained, with 23,998 scholars in charge of 524 teachers. Sunday-schools are conducted as a matter of course. Normal schools exist in four mission provinces, and theological seminaries are maintained in Antigua and KafIraria.
It is recognized that while the immediate aim of all Gospel preaching is to reach the individual, the ultimate object of the evangeliza-
tion'of the heathen is to so affect the national life that it may come under the sway of Christian faith. Hence the formation of inde- pendent, self-supporting congregations is sought, administering dis- cipline for themselve;, and served by men of the native race. As a step toward this goal, the members are at an early stage urged to assist in the management of the spiritual and temporal affairs of the con- gregations by electing officers from their own number, and are taught to act as elders, teachers, and voluntary evangelists, assistants to the the missionary. In the erectiou of its missions into self-dependent churches, the Moravian Church has to face peculiar difficulties inher- ent in the racial peculiarities of her converts. In some fields she is ministering beside the death-bed of a race slowly tending to extinction. Everywhere the native pastor must prove superior to his moral and mental environment, but must, nevertheless, so identify himself with those to whom he ministers as to remain in the truest sense a man of the people. Even where the requisite moral and mental endowments can be found, it is not surprising if heredity has failed to endow him with precision and system of method so essential for the administra- tive functions of the pastorate and for successful leadership. In the West Indies a measure of success has been attained in this respect. Certain of the native t:"aits of the Kaffirs also hold out prospects of a happy solution of the problem in their land. Yet everywhere patience is demanded on the part of the home Church.
Moravian missionaries are drawn from any of the four provinces of the Moravian Church on the Continent of Europe, in Britain, or in the United States, special training being afforded in the Mission Insti- tute at Niesky in Germany, and in the British and American theolog- ical seminaries of the Church. The call to service in any case comes. from the Mission Board, and the great majority of the men and women in the field are Germans. According to the, stage of development attain'ed, each mission province enjoys greater or less autonomy within the limits of the annual budget. In some instances conferential man- agement, largely representative in character, exists, while elsewhere a superintendent possesses complete executive powers. In every instance, however, the Mission Board reserves the right of the initial call to service, the dismissal from service, the grantiug of furloughs, or of permission to retire on a pension, decision with regard to founding or .abandoning stations, and the prerogatives of a court of appeal.
The Government and Cost of Moravian Missions In its personnel the Mission Board, elected by the General Synod, meeting decennially, and constituted of delegates cho!Jen by each province of the Ohurch, represents the entire Unitas Fratrum, fOI' at least one German, one Englishman, and one American must be nominated by the respective national divisions. The remaining
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members may be ex-missionaries of any nationality. The General Synod, which carefully reviews the missionary operations of the entire previous decade, receiving a detailed report from the Board, besides formulating general principles and giving specific directions for future guidance, elects an advisory committee of business men to assist the Mission Board in finan- cial administration,· and makes provision for annual audits of accounts. Extraordinary audits and, examination of cash balances and securities also take place from time to time. Furthermore, the Mission Board confers with the executive boards of the four home provinces of the Ohurch, and ob- tains their decision for its guid- ance in affairs of importance.
Thus the administ.ration of the missionsis brought into close touch with the life of the Ohurch as such.
To meet the cost of its under- takings – for salaries, traveling expenses, erection and mainten- ance of buildings, educational BISHOP CHARLES BUCHNER activity, pensions, education of the children of missionaries, the PreSident of the Moravian Mission Board, training of candidates, and ad- BertheJsdorf ministrative expenses, annually amounting to a total of about $422,- lOO-the Board depends on several classes of resources. All mem- bers of the Moravian Ohurch are expected to statedly contribute in proportion to ability; a pledge so to do is embodied in "The Brotherly Agreement," which forms a bond of union linking all the congregations, and assent to which constitutes a condition of reception into fellowship. Many friends beyond the limits of Mora· vian communicant membership annually employ this Ohurch as a channel through which to do their part toward the evangelization of the heathen. Without this aid, rendered liberally and appreciatively, especially in Britain and on the Oontinent of Europe, and measurably also in America, the task undertaken in obedient faith would exceed the powers of this little brigade of the army of the Oross. The inter.
est of certain funded legacies has been designated by benefactors for definite phases ot the work; in other instances the income of funds thus created is wholly at the discretionary disposal of the Board. The annual grants of auxiliary associations constitute a very important proportion of the sources of revenue, associations within; and others
beyond, the pale of the Moravian Church. The denominational auxil- – iary in Britain is especially identified with the support of the mission in Labrador; that in Holland interests itself in the work carried on in Surinam; that in the United States is specially charged with the sup- port of the Eskimo mission in Alaska, and with the missions among the Indians. Reference has already been made to the noble benefi- cence of the London association, constituted of Christians of almost every name. The Australian mission presents the features of a pleas- ing partnership, being Moravian in respect to the workers and Pres- byterian in respect to the defrayal of current expenses. Finally, a considerahle part of the income is derived from the mission fields themselves, and in a threefold manner. As early as possible the con- verts on principle are taught the obligation of systematic support of the Gospel and the privilege of free·will offerings. Hence, on the one hand, church dues are required, and, on the other hand, gifts for the evangelization of "the regions beyond" are encouraged. But, in addition, in certain fields trades and traffic are maintained for the benefit of the missions, and to assist converts by promoting habits of steady industry and by inculcating the dignity of labor. The indus- trial branch of the work is in charge of men who hold no position involving spiritual activity in the primary sense, but who are, never- theless, appointed by the Mission Board, and are understood to have consecrated their business ability to the Lord for the furtherance of His kingdom.
Moravian Missionary Ideal.
We may add in closing: Moravians do not regard their own as the ideal missionary activity. They are not wholly blind to its defects. Some of these defects they seek to rapidly remedy; perhaps certain other defects they are more cautiously trying to remove, believing that – the processes of a constructive reformation necessarily require the element of time. When others laud their missionary zeal a sense of shame can not fail to be induced, for they know how much of the praise is unmerited. Nevertheless, they would be untrue to the Lord Himself if they failed to give Him glory for so marvelously preserv- ing them among the families of God, when they appeared to be near- ing extinction, or if they were blind to that manifestation of His providence which has so unquestionably marked out for them their missionary calling. They have no option but to joyfully heed their Savior's last command, and it must continue to be both their cross and their crown to labor especially in behalf of the neglected. If they ceased to do this, not only wonld they lose their self-respect in accepting aid from others for the discharge of their own special trusts, they would deserve, and must expect, to have their candlestick removed.
SIMILARITY AND CONTRAST-CHINA, JAPAN, KOREA
SIMILARITY AND CONTRAST-CHINA, JAPAN, KOREA BY REV. GEORGE HEBER JONES, SEOUL KOREA Methodist Episcopal Mission, 1887- East Asia present~ to th!) Ohristian Ohurch a mission field second in importance to no other. Ohina, with four hundred and six millions, Japan, with fifty millions, and Korea, with ten millions of people, gt-re us agrand total embracing about one-third of the human race. '1'0 put this fact in another way: every third babe that opens its eyes in this world looks up into the face of a yellow mother and toddles about in a heathen home. Every third grave on earth is dug in yellow soil, while yellow men gather about it to grieve and lament over a soul that has gone out into a future unlit with a single ray of Ohristian light and hope.
This vast field, continental in extent, possesses some things in common. The people are one in race, o.rigin, history, civilization, and religion. In. a large sense the principles underlying the varied conditions confronting Ohristian missions are the same; that is, we find certain prevailing race characteristics, in spite of very pronounced dissimilarity in many things. It is impossible to write accurately the history of anyone of these three empires without frequent reference to the other two. They cherish in common the principle of filial piety as the corner-stone of their civilization. Oonfucins, Gautama, and the nameless myriad priests and priestesses of Shamanite spiritism have been their religious instructors. Throughout this great area the position of woman, reduced to its final analysis, is much the same. The spirit which animates law and custom speaks in the same tone, and the philosophy of life which controls individual conduct is the same. The hopes, fears, Itlld aspirations of the people are projected out in the same general direction morally. The great yellow race is ill with one malady, and it will find recovery through only one remedy -the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Now, while this is true as a general proposition, at the same time the individuality of the three empires is so pronounced and developed that they stand as distinctly aloof from each other as England, France, and Russia do in Europe. Note the contrast in the respective governments. In Ohina it is patriarchal in form, with the family as the model, and the action of the sovereign in the empire can not be controlled by written laws any more than it would be possible to regulate the authority of a father over his family by a written constitution in that family. Among the people the idea of equality, based on brotherhood and modified by the elements of education and native talent, is held so that the humblest Ohinese boy–:-born, it may be, in a coolie's mud hut, or cradled in a house-boat on the Yang-tse or the Min-may
rise, in spite of these, to be a Minister of State or a Viceroy. This is not true in Korea. While the Ohinese model dominates, the Koreans have added the idea of caste to their governmental system, so that the ruling class and their families enjoy privileges and powers not held by the correspondiug class in Ohina, and which are submissive of the common people's right to life and property. Japan stands to-day in -sharp contrast to the political organization of her neighbors. Her government is a copy of constitutional monarchy as it prevails among white nations, and her people enjoy that peace and security which comes from law equitably administered in the empire.
Another contrast is found in the general spirit of the people. The Ohinese from the dawn of history have been commercial and industrial in their character. They have been manufacturers, to supply the needs of the vast continental hordes under or adjacent to the dynastic rule. .They have been inventors of curious implements and laborsaving devices. They have been traders, carrying out of Ohina its products and returning with the wealth of other peoples. '1.'he cast of mind is commercial. They are a nation of merchants. On the other hand, Japan has ever adored the sword. It is the soul of the Samurai. Their history is a record of battle. The greatest national heroes are Yoritomo, a Japanese Oharlemagne, and Hideyoshi, a Japanese Napoleon, albeit both pansed short or the imperial yellow. The national sports are martial. Modern Japan, in the midst of its abounding and increasing development, preserves the graces, the spirit, and the impulses of Japanese knighthood. They are a nation of warriors. Korea is neither the merchant nor the warrior. Secure in her hills and valleys, just bending her energies sufficiently to produce enough to eat and wear, she has remained a 80rt of recluse. Study and meditation, the poetic frame of mind-these specially charm her. The national ideal is the scholar. The civil or literary nobility take precedence over the military nobles, and both are far above the merchant class. The Koreans are a nation of students. Doubtless when these peoples shall have become welded into one, it will be for Ohina to produce and conserve the vast wealth of the East, ffapan to protect and defend Oriental prestige, and Korea to preserve its literature and literary traditions.
It is to be expected that this diversity will show itself in the history of missionary propaganda in these empires. In Ohina the Ohurch has had to meet the conditions growing out of patriarchal customs complicated with intense materialism. In Japan one of the controlling factors in the situation is that esprit de corps inseparable from militarism. In Korea the prevailing characteristic proves an element of strength in the native Church. Two hundred and :fifty thousand Ohinese converts, under the banner of evangelical Ohristianity, presage the :final conversion of the empire; and if I might assume
THE BIBLE A.ND THE MISSIONA.RY
the role of a prophet, it would be to say that Ohina redeemed will yet lay on the altars of Ohrist the largest offering of material wealth, the most magnificent gift that history will ever know. In Korea the progress of evangelical Ohristianity has been rapid. In fifteen years the Ohurch has grown from a handful of about one hundred souls to a host of thirty thousand converts. Several things have contributed to this more rapid growth in Korea than in the neighboring empires. The successes of Ohrist in Ohina and Japan were not without their effect in establishing the prestige of our religion in the eyes of the Koreans. The Korean Empire is smaller in bulk than either of her neighbors, and has, therefore, gotten in motion Ohristward earlier. There has been an absence of all competition in the way of taking on the outward garb of Western civilization to the exclusion of imbibing its spirit, so that the only thing to challenge attention in Korea has been Ohrist and His Gospel. Ohristianity is the only living thing in sight. In the midst of hopeless despair there has burst into view the star of hope. To the Korean, lost in the cold, dark, arctic night of heathenism, it has come as the dawning day; therefore, he has thronged the doorways of the Ohurch, first single individuals, then in groups, and soon in throngs.
The work already done in Japan is of a lasting character. It possesses length, breadth, and depth, and is at once a presage and a preparation for the final victory. In estimating the movement of Ohristian forces in Japan, the solidarity of the Japanese nation should be reckoned with. The Japanese in great crucial tests like to mo'e as a nation. There is a wonderful power of unanimity among them which puts them into contrast with the Koreans. One of these days Japan, as a nation, will deliberately take the final step Ohristward and accept His truth as her religious faith. Ohina awaits a Ohinese Oonstantine, and when God's purposes shall have ripened He will appear and fill Ohina's laws, institutions, and customs with the spirit of evangelical Ohristianity.
. THE BIBLE AND THE MISSIONARY BY J. T. GRACEY, D.D.
The Bible is in a strict sense the only universal book in the world; the only ecumenical one of all human history; the only one with a world motif. This statement is formulated on two definitions of the Standard Dictionary-" Ecumenical: of or pertaining to the habitable world; universal." "Motif." subject, theme, dominant idea, or sentiment"; possibly this is included in the secondary definition of motive- " having power to move, tending to move, causing motion." Thus it is a sort of dynamic force operating on all men, in aU the world, con-
taining within itself the power of propulsion over all peoples of all time.
The sublime solitariness of this position may possibly be challenged in favor of the Koran. It would carry us beyond present limits to dispute this here; so with a recognition of it, it must be passed at the present writing. But the genius of the two in the matter of their dissemination to all the inhabitants of the world differs totally in favor of the Bible. At its earliest inception, whether by a miracle of tongues or a miracle of ears, the fundamental conception of the day of Pentecost was that in some way the Gospel was to reach men by translation into their vernacular, and everyone "hear in their own tongue the wonderful works of God." It is the motif of the Bible that within the past century has expanded the translations of the Bible from fifty to four hundred, till all the great languages of the world have the whole Bible, defining "a great language," as Canon Edmonds does, as one spoken by not less than ten millions of people.
In distinction from this, the practical eXI-osition of the Koran for a thousand years has shown that the men who ,have drunk deepest of its spirit hold that its text is untranslatable, and any attempt to put it into writing in any other vernacular is a folly and a crime; its very motif is prohibitive of translations. The primary evidence of its inspiration is that it is written in Arabic of such perfection that no mortal can produce the like. The miracle of the text is the evidence of its divinity-evidence necessarily of no avail to the bulk of man- kind. It also carries with it the assumption that the Koran is the least translatable book in the world, which is the fact, while the Bible is the most translatable book in the wQrld.
The modern movement in India which antagonizes this centuries- old Moslem orthodoxy now demands translations of the Koran as essential to competition with ecumenical Christianity. It is discerned that the Christian concept, that all men must have the most hallowed things out of heaven in ~'the tongue .i.n which they were born," has in it the essential elements of final triumph over all competitors. It is worth emphasizing that the movement toward world translations of the Bible, is an evolution of the book itself.' • It is remarkable that this dynamic force should create literatures in which these translations should find a channel. Considerably more than one-half of the languages into which the Bible has been translated within a century were reduced to writing for the purpose of the translation of this Book into them. Canon Edmonds formu- lated the underlying base and inspiration, the motif, if one may once more style it so, when he wrote: "To give men the message of God on lips touched with a live coal from the altar of God is the first true greeting of the ideal missionary as he lays the foundation of a living Church!' This, he asserts, was the policy of Christianity il'om the
THE BIBLE AND THE MISSIONARY
start. But that is not all of it. "To hand to his people God's written revelation, plain, permanent, perfect, as far as anything partly human can attain to be perfect, is when his work is over, his ideal farewell." That is his way of stating that the foundation of the future Church in every land is the Bible in the vernacular of that land, and the vernacular has been defined to be a language" understood by the women and the children, the old and the ignorant, as well as the young, enterprising men of business."
The indebtedness of science, of philology, of commerce, of governments to the impulse that precipitated these translations is a quite too extended theme, however fascinating, to touch on in this connection. It is far from our heart not to emphasize the work of the great universities and lear;ned societies in tbis linguistic expansion of literature, but for most of what we know of the two thousand or more forms of human speech we are plainly indebted to the missionary impulse. This does not ignore the initial literatures produced by commercial agencies, such as the East India companies; but even there the inspiration of the men who did the stoutest service was evangelistic. Marshman and Morrison were dominated by the missionary idea.
The Bible translations were, with rare exceptions, made by missionaries. It was with them, in most cases, original work. They endured conditions which required the spirit which martyrs exhibit to effect this result. It was not to win money, nor distinction, nor place. At risk of too great length this quotation from Mr. Cust must be suffered: Who were the translators? No university, no State Department, no learned society could have supplied men willing to conduct such operations or capable of doing so. It was not abstract knowled&,e heaped up in the study that was required, bub the gift of conversing wIth and understanding the people; it was not a city of Europe or North America in which such work could be done, but the mission stations in the midst of half-coverted natives; it was not earthly honor or high remunertion that would tempt capable men to dwell in noxious climates, often far from the civilized comforts of the age, but the wondrous desire to save souls, the entire consecration of talents, health, and life to the spiritual welfare of their fellow creatures. • • . The work when done" might be rugged, be unpolished, but it must be intelligible and real."
In many cases they proved their work on the spot; the natives who were to use it stood at the compositor's desk and operated the hand-press to produce it, and native pastors or a native Christian flock put it to practical test on the spot. Some of the best translations are entirely indigenous productions.
There has been scant courtesy shown to popes or parliaments in much of this work. It was simply done, and there was no power that could undo it. A Madagascar king fulminates against it, but it is hidden in caves and survives the king and all his edicts. In Tahiti, in Mexico, in Peru, priests have tried to banish, have burned, and anathematized it, but hid in the hearts of the people they preserved the letter of it at the peril of their lives, till, as Mr. Cust says: "It is
beyond the power of a Coosar or a pope to arrest the magnificent progress of the Bible over the world; they might as well try to stop the sun in midheaven. This unequaled book will roll on in its majesty until earthly tongues cease and language has had its day."
Throughout the thousand-tongued Babel of the earth at this hour, to seven out of every ten persons, the Scriptures in whole or in portions is available in speech which they can articulate and comprehend. The American Bible Society alone, which dates its beginning more than a decade later than the British and Foreign Bible Society, has kept tally on its circulation till it enumerates within a fraction of seventy-one millions of its issues. Half of the intelligent readers of its report would be puzzled to tell the meaning of all of the very language-titles given without delving into those of Oceania and Africa. How many, for instance, are familiar with the terms: "Lettish," "Lithuanian," "Reval Esthonian," " Biscol," or " Arrawak ? "
A remarkable feature of this work of Bible translation is its democracy. It literally expunges race and sex, as well as literary distinction; black or yellow or white, living in hut or palace, with a coat of heraldry or unable to name his grandfather, bond or free, male or female, the one standard to which the person is amenable is the efficiencyof the work done in bringing others into touch with this Book. Mr. Cust renders tribute to the women who have contributed to this great world-work. He says: It is also a subject of fervent rejoicing that women have not been behindhand in this work of love. . . . It has come under my knowledge, and it gladdens my heart to record it, that the Bible societies have instances of the sweet yoke-fellowship of the son and the widowed mother, the father ani the daughter, the husband and the wife, in this most precious consecration of intellectual capacity united with spiritual devotion. Single ladies and widow ladies have not been slack in seeking a blessing by being zealous in this service, and at their death they leave behind something more precious than the garments which Dorcas left behind to her weeping friends, inasmuch as they have helped to clothe the Word of Life in a new vesture of words and sentences which will never wax old, nor require change, nor perish, but will be fresh and profitable to generations still unborn.
Of the uplifting force of these many-tongued Scriptures none but a master may write. They purify the very language which they preserve. They constitute the strongest earthly bond of a brotherhood, the existence of which they irresistably furnish the proof. Stronger than any political or commercial forces to establish a universal fraternity is the giving of this one Book to the whole human race. "So deep a Book, and yet so simple; so human, and yet so Divine; so localized, and yet so world-embracing." It proves, as Dr. Charles Cuthbert Hall says, that there is no such diversity of races as prevents a heart- to-heart talk among all peoples and tongues. Its very divinity is proven by the fact that Hindu or Hottentot, Eskimo or Fijian finds here a revelation each of himself to himself, a prophecy written ages
ago of what he would be and think and long for-" tI.e law of his present life, the hope of his future life."
There have been those who questioned the self-interpretive power of the Bible to the human heart. But instances can be multiplied to fill scores of volumes in which the Book, without the aid of any expositor, has proven to be a key fitted to all the wards of the human heart. '{'he late Bishop E.W. Parker, of India,was wont to illustrate this by an instance of a young Mohammedan teacher in a government school of India, who, feeling" out of sorts," said to a fellow Mohammedan teacher: "I wish I had something to door something to read." His Moslem companion said: "Read this; this is the Ohristian's Bible; perhaps this will do you good." That young Mohammedan teacher took the Book and began to read it. He got over his dull feeling, and read all night. The result, Bishop Parker'said, was that" he stands among the leading preachers of the Methodist Ohurch of North India," Numerous cases are recorded where a stray volume found its way into remote regions, or communities, where it was read, and years later a missionary found in the place a quite considerable community who had met regularly to hear it read, and studiously endeavored to govern their lives by its precepts as best they understood them. These cases are not confined to any class or clime.
It was accidentally that Joseph Neesima, in Japan, read in a Chinese Bible: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth," which led him to say: "This is the God I must know."
It was an English New Testament, accidentally found floating in the Bay of Nagasaki, that led Wasaka to search for its Ohinese counterpart, and led him to Ohrist and to baptism by Verbeck. This Book has won its way to influence, to recognition, and to power, where prejudice awakened abhorrence to the missionary and the organized forms of the Ohristian Ohurch.
The very literary currents of the world have been reversed in its interest, and largely through the forces which itself created. A hundred years ago the flow of literature was from Ispahan to Oalcutta, now it is from Bombay to Ba.gdad, and the Bible moves along channels itself has dug.
What the Bible is to the missionary and what the missionary has been to the Bible would furnish a theme for a masterful symposium, with contribuj;.ors from pole to pole.
The Protestant Ohristian world will observe with gratitude the one hundredth anniversary of the British and Foreign Bible Society. The American and the Scotch younger sisters will clap their hands, but all will recognize what the venerable Dr. Gilman wrote for the Ecumenical Oonference in New York: "THE BIBLE WORK OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY IS BUT A BEGIN- NING. AND IT WOULD BE DISASTROUS TO SUSPEND IT AT THE POINT NOW REACHED. LET THE TWENTIETH CENTURY CARRY IT ON TO PER- FECTION."
THE MISSION STUDY CLASS BY BELLE M. BRAIN, SPRINGFIELD, OHIO There are three ways of diffusing missionary iuformation iu use at the present time-the missionary meeting, the reading circle, and the study class; and the greatest of these is the study class.
The missionary meeting is, and ever will be, the best agency for reaching large numbers and sowing broadcast the seeds of missiouary enthusiasm. But the information presented is, almost of necessity, fragmentary and iucomplete, and so little iu the way of individual effort is called forth that the knowledge gained is likely to be the acquisition of the few who take part rather than of the society as a whole. The reading circle is, in some respects, better than the missionary meeting, but it is defective in that it requires but little exercise of the mental faculties, and fails to stimulate individual research. The knowledge gained is rarely a permanent acquisition; like all desultory reading, it seldom makes a lasting impression on the mind. _The study class stands preeminent in that it requires systematic study on the part of every member of the class. Its great value lies in the fact that it possesses the rare quality of producing missionary leaders. Some one has called it the" best of all manufacturies of missionary workers," and such, indeed, it has proved wherever it has been tried under -favorable circumstances. '1'he quantity of seed sown is not so great as in the missionary meeting, but a larger proportion bears fruit. If a church lacks missionary leaders-and where is the church that does not ?-the best remedy is to organize a study class, not to take the place of the missionary meeting, but to supplement it, very much as classes for Bible study supplement the devotional meeting and the public preaching of the Word.
The Origin of the Mission Study Class The mission study class, in its present form, is of comparatively recent origin. In reaEty, however, it dates back to the students of Andover College, nearly a century ago, who, stimulated by the Haystack Heroes, made the study of missions a prominent feature of their meetings. Their example was followed, to a limited extent, by students in other colleges throughout the century. After the organization of the Intercollegiate Young Men's Christian Association the idea became more prominent, and in the year 1891 an impetus was given to it by the publication of a series of ou tline mission studies in the organ of the association.
The honor of establishing organized work in systematic mission study belongs, however, to the Student Volunteer Movement.. In February, 1893, when the Student Volunteer, the organ of the movement, was first Issued, a series of foreign mission studies was begun, and the formation of classes in every college urged. A year later, the THE MISSION STUDY CLASS outline system having proved unsatisfactory, the use of text-books was adopted, and the office of educational secretary created. Since 1895 this office has been filled with rare ability by the Rev. Harlan P. Beach, formerly a missionary to China. The growth of the work in ten years has been phenomenal. Twenty-six courses of study have been prepared, and missionary libraries, costing tens of thousands of dollars, have been introduced into the colleges. An average of five thousand students a year have been enrolled in study classes, and textbooks have been called for at the rate of ten thousand copies a year. 'rhe result has been not only the volunteering of a considerable number of young men and women, but an increased intelligence in missions on the part of candidates offering themselves to the various Boards.
The great success achieved among the students led to the adoption of systematic mission study by several denominations, the text-books being those of the Student Volunteer Movement, with special denominational features added. Next the women took it up, and at a conference of all the Women's Boards of the United States and Canada, the course for women's societies, known as the" United Study df Missions," was decided upon. The sale of more than fifty thousand copies of the first two text-books of tue series speaks eloquently of the favor with which they have been received. Early in 1902 the Young People's Missionary Movement fell into line, and announced a series of text-books for young people, to be known as the" Forward Mission Study Courses." Stimulated by the Silver Bay Conferences of 1902 and 1903, and pushed by the denominational hoards, the work is growing with great rapidity. During the first year ten thousand young people were enrolled in classes, and within two months of its publication Mr. Beach's biographical text-book on China reached a sale of nearly twenty thousand copies. Such a vast army of students, young people, and women, concentrating time and thought on mission study, certainly argues well for the future. Gratifying reports of increased interest and enlarged giving are already coming in, and should the work continue it will undoubtedly usher in one of the greatest revivals of missionary enthusiasm in the history of the Church.
Steps Preliminary to Organization In organizing a mission study class, especially where such work is attempted for the first time, there are many points which should be thoroughly discussed by the committee in charge before the matter is publicly announced.
Time. Experience proves that it is unwise to combine the study class with any other meeting. Wherever possible, a separate session of from sixty to ninety minutes should be devoted to it, the day and hour to be determined by local conditions. The result will be smaller • THE MISSlOl:lARY REVIEW OF THE WORLD classes, but more efficient work. The sessions should be held weekly until the completion of the course, rather than fortnightly or monthly, as this brings the meetings close enough together to sustain the interest, yet far enough apart to admit of thorough preparation. It will be found easier to secure members for a class that meets once a week for a brief period rather than once a month during a large part of a year.
The separate session, held weekly, tho eminently desirable, is not absolutely essential to success, and no society should give up the idea of organizing a class because ideal conditions can not be secured. The Advance Club of Rockford, Ill., an undenominational association of Christian women, organized for missionary study, has achieved magnificent success with meetings held once a fortnight, and many a woman's society has done good work by devoting six of the regular monthly meetings of the year to the United Study of Missions lessons. Witness also the notable work accomplished by the Baptist Young People's Union through the use of the Conquest Missionary Courses, which provide twelve lessons a year, to be used once a month at the regular meeting of the young people's society. Good work has also been done in a few instances by devoting the church prayer-meeting or the young people's meeting to the work for a period of six or eight consecutive or alternate weeks.
Place. The place of meeting can best be determined by the size and character of the class. For small classes a private house, centrally located, is undou btedly best. For large classes the church is better, especially if a well-lighted, well-ventilated room is available If possible, the class should be seated around tables to facilitate the taking of notes.
Membersltip. If the class is too large, actual study is next to impossible. Experts declare that the enrolment should never exceed ten or twelve, and that if more apply, it is better to start another class. Some of the most successful classes have had from three to five members only. It is well to remember that quality is better than quantity, ana. ~dmit only those who are thoroughly in earnest. It is a fatal mistake to urge anyone to join on the plea that little or no work will be required. In order that the nature of the class and the requirements of membership may be fully understood, some pledge, such as the following, may be used: 1. I will be present at every meeting of the class, unless prevented by unforseen circumstances.
2. I will secure a copy of the text-book to be used. 3. I will endeavor to devote not less than – – minutes to the study of each lesson. 4. I will prepare the special work assigned me to the best of my ability. 5. I will pray daily for the spread of Christ's Kingdom in the earth.
The Leader. One thing essential to successful study-class work is
THE MISSION STUDY CLASS
a competent leader. The necessary qualifications for this all-important office are three: 1. A deep and abiding interest in missions. "Let him who would move and convince other"," says Carlyle," be first moved and convinced himself."
2. Ability to teach, rather than to lecture. The class will profit by the work in direct proportion to their own intellectual effort.
3. Willingness to devote time to the necessary study. An extended knowledge of missionary history and a wide acquaintance with missionary literature are not essential, but a good leader must have a thorough knowledge of the text-book chosen. To give opportunity for thorough preparation, both text-book and leader should be chosen long in advance of the organization of the class.
The question of leadership is often a perplexing one. A common error is that of asking the pastor or some prominent church official who is not specially qualified for the work to undertake it. No matter how broad his previous knowledge of missions, unles the leader has teaching ability and time to master the text-book, the result will be a lamentable failure.
Course of Study. For beginners in systematic mission study a text-book should invariably be used. The lists of questions, references to other literature, and outlines of study which they furnish simplify the work both for teacher and class. With experienced leaders and mature classes, especially those having access to large libraries, a syllabus may be used instead of a text-book. Excellent text-books have been prepared by the Student Volunteers, the Women's United Study Committee, and the Young Ptlople's Forward Mission Study Committee. These treat of great mission fields; great missionaries, periods of missionary history, medical missions, and other phases of missionary work at home and abroad.* With such a wealth of text-books available, many classes will be perplexed to know how to make a wise selection. For those who have never before attempted systematic mission study, a short biographical course, such as Beach's" Knights of the Labarum," or Taylor's" Price of Africa," is by far the best. These are less difficult and take less time than the study of a mission field or a period of missionary history, and require no previous knowledge to make them interesting. Biography is the most fruitful of all missionary literature, and is calculated to develop interest and arouse enthusiasm more quickly than any other form of study.
Organizing the Class Having fully discussed the foregoing points, the next step is to secure members for the class. Perhaps the best way to do this is by * For further information, inquire of the Student Volunteers, 3 West Twenty-ninth Street, New York; Mrs. N. M. Waterberry, Tremont Temple, Boston; and Mr. S. Earle Taylor, 150 Fifth Avenue, New York.
personal invitation to those who give promise of future usefulness.
Another good plan is to devote one session of the young people's society to a mission study rally, the program for which should include: 1. An address on the value of systematic mission study, with special emphl!>sis laid in the fact that such study not only raises those who pursue it to a higher spiritual plane, but also develops them intellectually, and brings them into touch with those lands where the most important political changes of the present day are taking place.
2. A review of the proposed text-book, preferably by the one who is to lead the class.
3. A detailed statement, by the chairman of the committee having the matter in charge, of the plan of study, the time involved, and the work expected of the class.
4. The enrolment of those who are ready to join the class.
The organization of the class should follow at once, and the work be taken up as promptly as possible. In addition to the leader, a secretary will be needed to keep the records of the class, announce the meetings, look up absentees, secure prompt and regular attendance, and increase the efficiency of the class in every way possible.
A class artist to draw maps and prepare charts and diagrams is most useful. Maps are the best of all mediums for fixing missionary information, and are a necessity. Each class should have, not only a large missionary map of the world, such as most of the mission boards have on sale, but also a series of smaller maps of the fields or parts of fields under consideration. Many of the latter can be easily made at home. A blackboard is necessary for diagrams, illustrations, outlines, references, spelling of difficult words a!ld pronunciation of unfamiliar names, and should be freely used both by the leader and the class artist. Large sheets of paper and crayons are better than a blackboard for some purposes. Bound together, they have a permanent value and are useful for reviews.
A class librarian is well-nigh indispensable. The best work can only be accomplished where the members have access to other literature in addition to the text-book. The duties of the librarian should be to secure reference books bearing on the general topic of the textbook, and to keep a' watch out for articles pertinent to the subject in current issues of magazines and papers, both secular and religious. The members should be asked to be on the lookout for photographs, curios, or other objects that would illustrate the lessons and add interest to them.
Order of Exercises The program for the lesson hour will depend largely on the length of the sessions, the experience of the leader, and the ability of the class. The following plan, prepated by Dr. '1.'. H. P. Sailor, Educational Secretary of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions, and
an acknowledged expert in study-class work, is probably the best yet devised: 1. Scriptut'e Reading.-Select a brief passage that brings out some one thought connected with the lesson.
2. P'raye'r.-Let the member, who should be notified in advance, seek to be brief but definite.
3. Assignment of the Ne,ct Lesson.-Let the leader state clearly the subject of the next lesson, and the pages of the text-book to be studied. Let him indicate the subjects of most importance, telling upon what to concentrate, and, what to skim or omit. Let him give out questions requiring independent thought. Assignments to individuals (see Nos. 4 and 7) should be made as largely as possible in writing, and given out either before or after the meeting.
4. Review.-Let a member, previously appointed, give in not over three minutes (a) a brief review of the last lesson, mentioning only the points of the greatest importance, together with a conclusion to be drawn from each; or (b) a still more condensed review of the course from the beginning, giving one or two thoughts, rather than facts, connected with the lesson.
5. Personal Imp'ressions.-Let each member mention in a sentence what was personally most impressive in the last lesson.
6. Questions on the Advance Lesson by the Leade'r.-Upon the skill with which this is done success in teaching depends. The assignment at the previous lesson should be closely followed.
7. Pape'rs.-Have two or three (never more) papers or talks by members previously appointed, introduced where most appropriate.
8. Debate.-If it can be ascertained by a show of hands that members have differed in opinion on any point in the lesson, an impromptu debate might be arranged.
9. Closing Imp'ressions.-Let the leader sum up and try to leave a seUse of individual responsibility.
10. Closing Prayer.-A number of sentence prayers may be called for.
A Notable Mission Study Campaign During the winter of 1902-3 the missionary committee of the New York City Christian Endeavor Union carried on a mission study campaign which produced great results, arid is worthy of imitation.
In his annual report of June, 1903, Mr. W. L. Amerman, the efficient chairman of the missionary committee, tells of the work as follows: Last year's successful effort for the "unanimous" reading of several selected missionary books afforded encouragement and preparation for something far more difficult-a campaign for the study of a single book, "The Price of Africa."
To supply the first requisite, teachers or leaders, plans were made immediately after the return of our delegates from the Silver Bay Conference, in August, 1902, which resulted in the formation, in October, of six normal classes, practically one in each district, led by expert teachers. The executive committee of the Union made a liberal appropriation for printed matter and other helps, and for compensating any of these teachers in cases where the use of time was involved w.hich could not otherwise have been available.
An average number of fifty-six students attended each of the eight or more sessions of these normal classes, twenty-five of whom, after J anuary 1st, organized in their own societies a second series of classes, and pursued the same course, enrolling nearly two hundred students, and generating widespread interest. Many details of this campaign, for which we have not space here, may be found in a disseminating article in the June number of the Assembly Herald, published by the Presbyterian Board.
The work of the Sixth District will serve to illustrate that in others, and certainly deserves a special paragraph. 'rhe leader of the normal
class was Miss Miriam L. Taylor, who had formerly been missionary chairman of the district. Six of the nine members of the class later organized circles of their own, teaching the same course, the attendance averaging eight per session. The interest and diligence shown were very gratifying. In two cases these latter students have begun to lead study classes on the same lines, making the third series, popularly known as "the grandchildren." Commencement exercises were held by the normal class with good effect, and another gathering celebrated the completion of the course by the second set of circles. Individual societies report much increased interest in the cause of missions as a result of this work.
Next year's campaign will be upon similar lines. Normal classes may not be required, but two general series of circles will be arranged, one beginning in October and one in January.
Such a mission study campaign could be conducted anywhere.
The work of the Sixth District, as outlined by Mr. Amerman, shows how well the plan can be adapted to small cities as well as large ones.
There are few places where the service of an expert teacher could not be secured to lead a normal class of the representatives of the young young people's societies or the women's societies. These in turn could organize classes in their own churches or societies.
TRAINING-SCHOOLS FOR MISSIONARIES * BY REV. J. W. CONKLIN, NEW YORK Field Secretary for Foreign Missions of the Reformed Church in America Every young man and woman who is physically fit to be sent to the mission field has, upon a life insurance basis, reason to expect at least twenty-five years of active service. How to make everyone of these years most effective is the problem both for the individual and the society which commissions him. His preparatory work must be done partly at home and partly after his arrival at his station. The whole of his equipment can not be secured before reaching the field. But it is surely advisable to gtlt in the home land as thorough a training as possible in those subjects and methods which are essential to the best work.
Adequate Preparat'ion is a needed watchword in the missionary movement. His easily conceivable that a year of special training may double the missionary's power in everyone of those twenty-five or more years of service; two years may quadruple it. To neglect or belittle this truth is foolish and hurtful. That it has been too lightly esteemed in the past is admitted by those most skilled in the science of missions and most experienced in their operations. Dr. Gustav Warneck said in a communication to the Ecumenical Conference of 1900: What we need beside expert mission directors is, above all, missionaries really capable for their great work. . . . The petition that the Lord of the harvest should send forth laborers into His harvest has also reference to their quality.
* Written for the revised" Encyclopedia of Missions," which is soon to be issued by the Funk & Wagnalls Company.
TRAINING-SCHOOLS FOR MISSIONARIES
If appeal be made to the missionaries now in action most of them will complain that, however much general education they may have received, they laoked training to meet most effectively the conditions existing in their fields of labor.
In order to raise materially the standard of missionary qualifica- tions two things are essential-stimulus and machinery. The former must be furnished mainly by the societies which decide upon the qualifications of candidates. These may, at will, raise the sta,ndard of requirements for obtaining commissions. The latter must consist of schools managed and equipped according to the best science and strength of the Christian Church.
Missionary training-schools are numerous. A comprehepsive list of them may be found in Dr. Dennis' "Oentennial Statistics." * Most of these are of great service to the men and women who seek their aid to qualify for mission work-city, home, or foreign. Do these meet the requirements of the time and the cause ? No invidious distinction shall here be drawn, nor dogmatic opinion expressed. A noted secretary of one of the largest American foreign mission boards writes: " The ideal school that we have in our minds has not as yet been realized. .
We feel the need of some institution that will train our young women and laymen satisfactorily, and also give some opportunities ior finish- ing off young men from the theological schools."
An attempt is here made to indicate what" the ideal school" must give to.those purposing to join the missionary ranks. All will agree with Dr. Warneck when he says: "Spiritual equipment is, of course, the chief consideration." This is a matter that can not readily be included in a scheme of subjects. In· one sense too much emphasis can not be placed upon the preparation of heart; yet this further statement from the same eminent authority is no less weighty: "The experience of more than a hundred years should prevent us from fall- ing into the mistake of thinking that this alone suffices without a thorough training." • Quality of the Preparation. The special training needed by missionaries is indicated by the abnormal conditions of the masses of the people to whom they are sent. Asia and Africa are the great missionary continents; most of the world's people inhabit them. In what respects are the people of these continents abnormal-differing from the masses of Christendom?
(1) They are religiously misguided, debased, and lost. They can not find the way to their Father and their Home; they can not find righteousness.
(2) They are socially dwarfed and demoralized. Tested by their treatment of the weak-women, children, the aged, the sickly-and by • We append some of the more important names from this list, with corrections and addi· tions.-EvI'l'ORS.
their domestic, civic and international relations, they are in or near barbarism.
(3) They are educaUonally illiterate. Leaving out Japan,probably not five per cent. of the population of Asia and Africa can read books. Their science is false, their minds warped.
(4) Medically they are ignorant. .rr'heir treatment of diseases and wounds is distressingly inadequate.
(5) Hygenically they are unsanitary. Oholera, plague, and smallpox run along avenues of uncleanly living.
(6) industrially and economically they are backward. Famine is a common condition. Poverty is the general state, because the land is overpopulated, improved methods and machinery are lacking, and thrift is very feebly possessed.
The true missionary can not help striving to cure all of these abnormal conditions. In his preparation he should take them definitely into account, and fit himself as far as possible to handle them. These conditions indicate generally the following requirements for the missionary candidate. He should have special training in- 1. His own religion and non-Ohristian religions. (1) Oompre_ hensive Bible study, including introduction. (2) The Ohristian system of theology and evidences. (3) History and comparison of religions. Is there any sufficient reason why all women, male physicians and other lay workers should not, as well as ordained men, obtain a clear knowledge of these subjects?
2. Elementary and practical Sociology. A study of the origin ana: growth of society, with its various institutions; of the perversions of marriage, family life, social intercourse, labor conditions, government, etc., and of the remedies for these ills.
3. History of Missions, and the established principles on which they are conducted.
4. Psychology and Pedagogy. Most missionaries teach or supervise schools. Many must train native teachers. There are 100,000 pupils in mission boarding aud training schools, most of whom are preparing to be teachers. They should have the best training. All who deal with the abnormally ignorant classes have special need of acquaintauce with the laws of mind and of teaching. Kindergarten training is most helpful. Rev. J. L. Barton, D.D., Secretary of the American Board, has said: " I heartily believe in a pedagogical course for the most of our missionflries."
5. Elementary medicine, surgery, and nursing. There are special schools for regular physicians and nurses. The missionary trainingschool should give to all other students such training as will fit them to render intelligent" first aid" to the sick or injured.
6. Principles of Hygiene or health lectures. 7. Technical Orafts and Business Methods. Women should learn
domestic economy; men should have training in carpentry, photography, stereopticon management, agriculture (or, at least, gardening), book manufacture, and even in blacksmithing. Both men and women should have drill in bookkeeping and in modern methods of filing correspondence and other documents.
8. Music. 9. Language of the people to be 1'eached. It is not practicable to teach many Oriental vernaculars in the home schools. But such comprehensive. languages as Arabic, Ohinese, Hindustani, and Turkish might be given. As showing that such a scheme is not impracticable, two actual courses are here given-one for men, the other for women: A. The Ohurch Missionary Society Training College at Islington. In addition to a regular university and theological course, instruction is given in- (1) Elementary Medicine and Surgery. (2) Principles and Practice of ~reaching. (3) Vocal Music. (4) Oarpentering, Book-making, Printing. Tinsmithing, and Blacksmithing. (5) The religious systems of the pagan world.
B. The Training Institute for Women of the United Free Ohurch of Scotland, Edinburgh, gives instructions in- (1) The Study of Scripture. (2) Ohristian Doctrine. (3) Introduction to the Bible. (4) The Hindustani Language. (5) Theory of Education, Kindergartening Principles, Nature Studies Class Teaching, and School Visiting. (6) Voice Oulture and Singing. (7) Account Keeping. (8) Drill Exercises.
(9) Nursing. (10) Oare of Health. (11) History of Missions. (12) Non-Ohristian Religions. (13) Sociology from the Missionary Standpoint. (14) Evangelistic Theology.
"Missionaries must be weighed, not merely counted," says Dr. Warneck. "Thorough training" is his prescription for their need. The vital question presses: Have the missionaries in the foreign mission service the weight obtainable through a practicable preparation? The ordained men number more than 6,000. Has the theological school given a training specific enough for their needs? The physicians, men and women, are more than 700. Have they been fitted most effectively to minister to the darkened spirits in the sick bodies? Unordained men, not physicians, to the number of about 3,500 are in
the ranks; unmarried women, an equal number; married women, more than 4,000. How many of these are lamenting the lack of a" thorough training" ? The best preparation is none too good for the missionary; it will not be wasted upon the Master's work for the heathen.
Missionary Training Institutions in America and Great Britain LOCATION DESIGNATION DENOMINATION Canada Toronto……… "" ….. Ewart (Women's) Missionary Training Home.. Canada Presbyterian.
Toronto………………Bible Training School.. …………………… Independent.
Totonto……………… Deaconess' and Missionary TrainingIIome…. Church of England.
. England Burgh……………….. St. Paul's Missionary College …………….. Church of England. Clapham …………….. PreJlaratory Institution ………………….. Church Miss. Society. Great yarmouth……… Deaconess' Missionary Training Home…….. Church of England. London………………. East London Missionary Institute…………. Regions Beyond M. U. London (Leyton) , ……..Livingstone Medical College……………….Independent. London………………. Zenana Medical College………………….. Independent. London (Islington) ……. Church Missionary College ……………….. Church Miss. Society. London (Highbury) …… Highbury 'I.'raining Home for Women ……… Chnrch Miss. SOCiety. London (Bermondsey) … Medical Training Home for Women……….. Chnrch Miss. Society. London………………. Medical Students' Training Home…………. Medical Miss. Associa'n London (Clapham) ……. Friends' Missionary Home ……………….. Friends' Foreign M. A. London (Upton Park) …. RedclyfIe "'omen's Miss. Training House …. Universities' Mission. London (Barking) …….. Training Home …………………………..North Africa Missio n. Warminster…………..St. Boniface Missionary College for Men …… Universities' Mission.
Scotland Edinburgh (39 Cowgate) .. Livingstone Medical Mission College ………. Edinburgh Med. M. S. Edinburgh……………. Woman's Missionary Training' Institute…… Free Ch. of Scotland. Glasgow……………… Bible Training Institute………………….. Independent. Glasgow……………… Med. Training Home for Woinen Missionaries. Independent.
United Statea Atlanta, Ga…………..Stewart Missionary Foundation for Africa (Gammon Theological Seminary)……….Methodist (South).
Berrien Springs, Mich…. Emanuel Missionary College ……………… Industrial Institute. Boston, Mass………….Gordon Missionary' Training School. ……….Independent. Boston, Mass …………Oriental Missions Seminary………………..Independent. Brooklyn, N. Y……….. Union Missionary Training Institute ………. Independent. Chicago, Ill………….. Moody Bible Institute……………………..Independent. Chicago, Ill…………..Training School for City, Home, and Foreign Missions ……………………………… Methodist. Chicago, IlL ………….Missionary Training School. ………………. Baptist. Hartford, Conn………. School of Religious Pedagogy……………..Independent. Hartford, Conn ……….Special Missionary Courses……………….. Hartford Seminary. Herkimer, N. Y ………. Folt's Mission Institute (for Women) ………. Methodist (North). Kansas City, Mo ……… Scarriet Bible and Training SchooL ……….. Methodist (South). Los Angeles, California..Training School for Christian Workers…….. Independent. New York, N. Y ………. Deaconess' Home and Training School.. …… Methodist. New York, N. Y ……… Training School for Deaconesses ………….. Protestant EpiscopaL New York, N. Y………. Bible Teachers' Training School. ………….. Independent. Nyack, N. Y …………. Missionary Institute ……………………… Christian and Mission ary Alliance: Northfield, Mass………. Bible Training School.. …………………… Independent. Philadelphia, Pa………Training School for Christian Work……….. Baptist. San Francisco, Cal…….Missionary Extension School………………Independent. Wooster, Ohio……….. Bible and Missionary Training SchooL …….. Presbyterian. Xenia, Ohio………….. Training School for Christian Workers …..•.Independent.
THANKSGIVING AND PRAYER FOR CHINA
THANKSGIVING AND PRAYER FOR CHINA * BY REV. GRIFFITH JOHN, D.D., HANKOW, CHINA In 1907 the Protestant Churches will celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the sending forth of Robert Morrison, which was the commencement of their mission work in China. Following on the lines on which the Church Missionary Society was guided to prepare for the celebration of its centenary year, the missionaries of China desire to bring before the home churches a three years' enterprise in preparation for the right commemoration of the China missionary centenary. The past history, the present circumstances, and the pressing need of the Church in China forId an imperative call for thanksgiving, confession, and prayer.
A Call to Thank God 1. For the many great and good men God has sent to follow in Morri- son's footsteps. Some of these are with us to this day, others have ceased from their labors, leaving names that will never be forgotten, and enriching the annals of the Church with stories of the faith that removes mountains, of consecrated devotion, and of the love greater than which hath no man-for many of them laid down their lives for the Chinese.
2. For the Church in China-a Church which, when called in the last year of the nineteenth century to drink of her Lord's cup and to be baptized with His baptism, furnished hundreds of her sons and daughters who sealed their witness with their blood, and thousands more who bore "trial of mockings and sc,ourgings, yea, moreover, of bonds and imprisonment. . being destitute, afflicted, evil entreated (of whom the world was not worthy) wandering in deserts and mountains and caves and holes of the earth."
3. For the opening up of the whole of China. Even Hunan and Honan are no longer closed against us. It is now a fact that there is not one of the nineteen hundred odd counties of China and Manchuria from which we are shut out, and before the hundredth year of our work we can say that if the Gospel is not preached to every creature in ChiDa, the reason must be sought outside China.
4. For the opportunities of work, varied in their kind, vast in their extent. Never before have men crowded to hear the Gospel as they are crowding now-in the open air and indoors, in our chapels and in our guest-rooms, we have opportunities to preach Christ such as can scarcely be found outside China. Never before has there been such an eager desire for education as there is now: our schools, both of elementary and of higher grades, are full, and everywhere applicants have to be refused. Never before has there been such a demand for Christian literature as , there is now: our Tract Societies, and all engaged in supplying converts and inquirers with reading material, are doing their utmost, but are not able to overtake the demand; and the demand is certain to increase, for it comes immensely from the largest number of people in the world reading one language.
A Call to Humble Ourselves Before God 1. Because of our shortcomings and mistakes. 2. Because that too many of the members of the Chinese churches are "carnal" and not -" spiritual"; "babes in Christ" and not -" full grown • Condensed from The Christian and Missionary Alliance.
men": through lack of use they have not" their senses exercised to discern good and evil."
3. Because the large increase of wealth in the home churches has not resulted in even a proportionate increase in the contributions to the work of GodJn other lands. Sometimes, indeed, a larger sum devoted to foreign missions proves to be a smaller contribution per member than was given when the church was smaller and poorer.
The Need for Prayer Let us look first at the colonial possessions, which occupy a vast area but are thinly populated. They are included in the fields practically unoccupied, and themselves include Tibet-the one citadel and stronghold of heathenism that still keeps its gates shut and barred against the missionaries of the Cross. We suggest as one definite object of prayer, that during the three years Tibet may be opened to the missionaries that are waiting the Lord's good time, on its eastern and southern and southwestern frontiers. We ask for prayer for these missionaries. We ask for volunteers to join them and their too few fellow workers who are scattered in far distant centers in Mongolia and Turkestan.
Such volunteers must needs be strong in body and stronger in soul, and well able to endure hardness as good soldiers of Jesus Christ.
The eighteen provinces are what we mean when we speak of Chinathe real home of China's millions. It is hard to grasp the area that is covered by those eighteen provinces-1,300,OOO square miles; it is harder still to grasp the numbers of the men, women, imd children who live in those provinces-400,OOO.OOO. What is the force which we now have to evangelrze these millions, and how is the force diposed over the whole field of China and Manchuria? From the most recent statistics as given in Beach's Atlas we learn that the force is made up of 2,785 missionaries and 112,808 communicants, of whom 6,388 are picked men and women more closely engaged in the work than their hundred odd thousand fellow workers. Some of the missionaries and some of the converts are to be found in everyone of the provinces both of China and Manchuria. But in the 1,900 odd counties into which the provinces are divided, each with one important town, and a large part of them with more than one, there are but some 400 stations. That is to say, at least four-fifths of the counties of China are almost entirely unprovided with the means of hearing the Gospel.
The Need for Reinforcements 1. Reinforcement of the members. This is at once both the end of our preaching and the start of our reinforcement. We preach that our hearers may believe; when they believe they in turn tell others of the Savior they have found. So that the more believers there are the stronger is our force for evangelizing China. Here, then, lies the first object for prayer: pray for an increased membership.
2. Reinforcement of Chinese workers. We read that before the Savior chose the twelve He spent the whole night in prayer. This teaches us the close connection there must be between reinforcing the workers and prayer. There IS a crying need for more Chinese workers; if we act hurriedly because of the need and select men without waiting to pray, we are in a worse condition than we should be in without workers.
Most earnestly do we ask you to join us in prayer for more Chinese
workers. Pray that God will raise up in the Chinese churches those whose whole hearts shall be aflame with the desire to preach Christ to their fellow countrymen. Continue to bear them up when your first prayer is heard. Whenever you remember us in prayer, remember with us our beloved Chinese colleagues, whose ministry is indispensable.
S. Reinforcement of missionaries. As with Chinese workers, so with missionaries-reinforcement must be preceded by and continued with much prayer. Otherwise we may get additions but not reinforcements. If men be sent whom God has not sent, they can but hinder God's work.
What manner of men are needed as reinforcements? For the old stations, those who can train others; for the newer, those who can lead others; for the unoccupied parts, pioneers who can seek and save others.
Who ·is sufficient for these things? Certainly not the man who has failed at home; neither the man who is confident that he is sufficient o-f himself to succeed abroad. We want men and women strong in faith, strong in hope, and, above all, strong in love-men and women "filled with the Holy Ghost."
For what kind of work are these missionaries wanted? For every good work that the Spirit of God leads us to enter. Some forms of work which are the outcome of the love that God has poured into the hearts of Christians, and which are often met with in the home lands, are almost unknown in China. There is no home for incurables, and only one asylum for the insane; only one school for the deaf and dumb, and only a few schools for the blind, and a few hospitals for lepers in all China. The need of such institutions is great. With what infinite distress must our Lord see any of Risfollowers possessed of wealth and yet having no sense of responsibility for His suffering poor. What a unique opportunity all these institutions present for displaying before the Chinese the symmetry, the fulness, the perfectness of that life which Christ has bestowed upon us in revealing to us the secret of the love of God.
Again in the e4ucational, literary, and medical work we want more men and more institutions. There is not only the actual work in these departments that needs men to do it, there is need to train Chinese in all these branches. For such work the Church should send us the best teachers and the best scholars, the best doctors and the best nurses. Just as no offering is too great for this work so no man is too good for it.
But above and before all we need preachers of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. Men who will preach it in chapels and guest-rooms and city, and carry it from village to village. Men who will preach it in chapels and guest-rooms, or in the open air. For, ohl the number of sinners in China and the greatness of their sinsl And only Christ can save them from sin. With all prayer and supplication, pray in the spirit that God will send forth men who can say with St. Paul: "Christ sent me to preach the Gospel."
In view of the vastness of the field that lies open before us, and of the immense opportunities for good which China offers the Christian Church-opportunities so many of which have been quite recently open to us, and which were won by the blood of the martyrs of 1900.
Is it possible in three years to double the missionary force? Without prayer it is absolutely impossible-as impossible as the enterprise that Morrison commenced in 1807 would have been. But with prayer the entprprise is as possible and as reasonable as was Morrison's. Lift up your eyes and behold our Risen and Ascending Lord standing at the
right hand .of GDd tD make intercessiDn fDr us. Remember that He hilS entered intD that hDly place as .our FDrerunner, and that we have bDld- ness tD enter with Him and jDin .our prayers tD His. Remember that He has sent anDther Intercess.or tD help .our infirmities whensDever we knDw hDW tD pray as we .ought. Then say, Is what we ask in acc.ordance with GDd's will? We believe it is.
And this is the bDldness that we have t.oward Him, that if we· ask anything accDrding tD His will, He heareth us; and if we knDw that He heareth us whatsDever we ask, we knDw that we have the petitiDns which we have asked .of Him (JDhn v: 14, 15).
INDUSTRIAL MISSIONS IN INDIA * BY REV. EDWARD PEGG "The .only perfectly blameless way .of helping a man is tD put him in a pDsitiDn tD earn an independent livelih.ood fDr himself."-BIRJAMEs LA TOUCHE.
The last few years have been years .of SDre trial fDr India, with its tWD famiIl£s, attended, as all famines are, with the sister evils .of dysentery, chDlera, fever, and .other malign diseases. FDr years the peDple have been living in the very shadDw .of death. In all their dire distress the missiDnaries have ministered tD their temp.oral needs by feedingthefamishing, by healing their diseases, by starting industries and SD finding them wDrk, and by taking intD their variDus .orphanages s.ome thirty thousand destitute .orphans. Here these children are, rescued frDm starv/LtiDn; and nDW the further respDnsibility rests up.on U3 .of training them up nDt .only tD be gDDd Christians, but alSD tD be useful members .of the cDmmunity. Famine has a habit .of cramping the intellect, and we find that in the majDrity .of cases a famine waif is abs.olutely unable tD gD bey.ond the mDst elementary stage .of instructiDn. " What are we tD dD with them when they grDW up ?" is the CDnstant questiDn the missiDnary is asking himself, and the .only satisfactDry sDlutiDn .of the prDblem seems tD lie in industrial training. They must be taught tD wDrk with their hands. Thus it has CDme abDut that the prDblem .of industrial missiDn wDrk is .one ·of the burning questiDns .of the present time in missiDnary circles. The "hDur" has indeed CDme; GDd grant that the "men" may be fDrthcoming t.o.o. The" dull, hard stone" .of many hearts has been melted, and they are ready tD gather rDund the strangers WhD have lifted them .out .of their physical misery, and .one can but pray that the gratitude and cDnfidence which s.o many .of India's peDple have at this time in the Christian missiDnary may becDme faith-however rudimentary'-:"in his LDrd.· We must ever keep befDre us the th.ought that these children are fDrming the fDundatiDn .of many a native Church in India t.o-day; and if the fDundatiDn be nDt well laid, it may cause endless difficulties in the future, and in many cases be the means .of hindering instead .of drawing men tD the feet .of Christ. If these children are nDt trained up tD manual labDr. the majDrity .of them will beCDme mere l.oafers, and .our very purpDse in gathering them in will be defeated, fDr, as Dr. PiersDn says, "GDd wants a clean Church, nDt merely a crowded .one; He weighs, and d.oes nDt .only count."
One .other reas.on why this industrial question has bec.ome s.o pr.omi- * CondellSed from the Church Missionary Intelligencer.
INDUSTRIAL MIHSIONS IN INDIA
nent is because of the great increase in the number of converts of late years. According to the last census report, there are now some 2,600,000 native Christians, the total increase in the decade being about 30 per cent. This increase has brought the missionary face to face with another problem. "No sooner," as Gordon points out, "are communities quickened by the new life in Christ, than a desire at once manifests itself to improve their surroundings, and hepce some industrial training becomes almost a necessity." The influence of Christ not only produces a newness of life in things spiritual, but also in temporal matters, and His Church, if she is to retain her hold upon men in whom this new life is bursting forth in varied directions, must' concern herself not only with their spirituallife, but also with all the conditions and surroundings amid which this spiritual life has to be lived.
In many countries the people among whom the missionary works have only the most elementary ideas of smithing work and carpentry, and hence the missionary is obliged to take up industrial work; but while this is not true of India to-day, yet we are confronted with the everpresent difficulty of caste. Caste is a combination far more potent than any of the most powerful trades' unions, and it exercises the most absolute control over each of its members. To become a Christian often means for a mau loss of work, or, what is almost as bad, loss of a market for his goods. Few can realize the difficulties that often beset the way of one who openly professes Christ in aland like India, so that not only on behalf of all our famine children, but also on behalf of the younger members of our ever-increasing Christian community, we appeal to the members of the home Ohurch for their sympathy and help in this branch of our mission work, which provides employment, often at a very critical time, to the followers of our 'Lord and Savior.
For example, on a young man professing a desire to be a Christian, the missionary must have him for some time under his personal supervision; but if during this time he is doing nothing to earn his own living, the good which ~he personal influence of the missionary might have had is often entirely destroyed by the idle life which the youth has learned to love; if, on the other hand, such a youth be sentto some industrial institution, he is not only under the eye of the missionary, but he is learning habits of industry at the same time. Again, there are many Anglo- Indians who view with grave misappr'ehension the ever-increasing class of educated natives for whom no suitable work can be found, and the missionary is often accused of "spoiling them by education." Perhaps the solution of this difficulty lies in educating our Indian youth less in letters and more in industrial and practical work. Then, thirdly, it helps to take away at least some from the "land," which is a very necessa"y thing to do, for the future prosperity of India depends, to agreat extent, on inducing more or its people to engage in manufacturing pursuits.
There are many other reasons for the urgent necessity of industrial education. There is, for example, the popular contempt for manual labor among not only the educated but even the semi-educated classes. It is quite true that many of the existing methods of doing work in India do not inspire one with a sense of the dignity of manual labor. To see a couple of men loading a barrow with stones, one laying hold of the shovel, the other helping him by pulling at a piece of string attached to the lower part of the handle, does excite ridicule. Neither does the ordinary village artisan strike one as being very workmanlike in his methods.
It is for this reason that we need men, experts in their own line, who, for the love of Christ, will come out and take this work off the hands of the clergy-men who by their skill may be able not only to make our indus- trial concerns pay, but also to raise the standard of the various handi- crafts, and improve generally the methods of the various industries along the lines already existing. If industrial work is necessary, then as Christians we ought to do it as well as possible, and to appeal in Christ's name for the men who are best fitted for this work to "come over and help us."
In India, again, we have gained the experience that industrial train- ing is just what is required to develop the Christian character. Mr.
Smith, of Ahmednager, says: "As dependents, they can rarely develop the higher Christian virtues, and can never become a self-respecting and respected community. There never was a community of people who have mlYre to overcome than the poor Christians of India. Weare bound to give them a helping hand, and the only way to help any man is to help him to help himself."
There are some 457,000 boys and girls receiving literary instruction in mission elementary schools throughout the world, while only 5,000 odd are receiving an industrial training. In India there are but 167 indus- trial schools of all kinds. This shows how great is the need of such schools.
What is Being Done At the last meeting of the United Provinces Conference of Mission- aries, I was requested to visit some of the chief industrial institutions, with a view to picking up any hints which might be useful in the working of our C. M. S. industrial school at Secundra. I visited a good many stations and gleaned much valuable information. There are scattered over India many mission institutions where industrial training is taught. They may roughly be divided into three classes. First, we have a number of stations where the missionary in charge is endeavoring, alongside of all his other multifarious duties, to teach a few of his converts some industry, generally without any idea of financial profit. The industries engaged in are generally carpentry, ele- mentary smithing work, weaving, or lace-making. In some cases con- spicuous success has attended the laborious enterprise of the missionary, but in the majority of cases it seems but a waste of time, talent, and money. One can not help but admire the enthusiasm and the amount of work done by our missionaries in this direction, but an outsider is at once struck with the woful lack of organized effort. From such small concerns the spirit of competition is absent, the apprentice is apt to grow conceited and discontented, believing most assuredly that the missionary is gaining a great deal by his labor, and the missionary himself gradu- ally accumulates a lot of ill-made goods which he vainly endeavors to sell, and in despair he is glad to get rid of them at any price.
The second class of industrial institutions are those where not only a goodly number of apprentices, drawn from the surrounding smaller stations, are being trained, but where also numbers of skilled Christian workers are employed in factories, worked on business principles by business men. Attached to such factories, there are generally hostels where the young unmarried men live, and these are under the control of • some particular missionary, whose duty it is to try, by any and every means, to influence the youths for good. This appeals to most people as
INDUSTRIAL MISSIONS IN INDIA
the ideal plan. For each missionary district or conference to have a central institution, superintended by qualified men, to which each indi- vidual missionary can send those whom he wishes to have trained, is surely better than to expend his own time and labor in doing that which might be so much better done by others more fitted for the purpose. Of the institutions worked on these lines; perhaps those connected with the Basel Mission are the best examples. The mercantile branch pays inter- est on capital, but all profits over and above a certain percentage are used for spiritual purposes. Last year, I was told, they paid to the spiritual work some $50,000. Then mention must be made of the excel- lent Industrial Mission Aid Society. Founded in 1897, it has already earned the gratitude of all missionaries. Its object is "to assist the work of foreign missions by the establishment of industries to be carried on in close connection with ordinary missionary operations, but financially separate." Many a missionary's burden has been lightened since the founding of the I. M. A. S., for not only is it ready to step in and take a "going concern" altogether off the hands of the missionary, but it has established depots, both in Bombay and London, at which goods made at the various mission stations are received for sale. This society has an excellent carpet factory at Ahmednagar, which has met with the warmest approval of Lord NOl'thcote, and we hope it will receive the support it so well deserves, for it is to it that most missionaries must look for help to solve these industrial problems, unless they are able to start factories of their own.
The third class of institutions which have to do with industrial training are the hostels attached to the large railway workshops. In connection with the various railways there are central workshops, into which youths, irrespective of the creeds they profess, are admitted as apprentices, and in some cases Christian hostels have been built in the vicinity of these shops, in which Christian apprentices may live. This plan is an excellent one so long as the lads are really under a good spiritual leader, but unless the head of such an institution is a firm, spiritually minded man, the risk of congregating a number of young fellows together in such a country as India is a grave one. It appears, too, that the native non-Christian foremen often put obstacles in the boys' way of gaining any real knowledge of their trade.
Just as formerly supporters were backward in realizing the importance of "edueation" as a missionary agency, so they do not yet seem to have grasped the necessity of industrial training for our more illiterate converts. Dr. Hall, who lately visited India, says of this work: " All that I have seen commands my full confidence. So far from look~ ing upon industrial missions with distrust, I believe that the introduction of the industrial element into missions is as truly a work of the Holy Spirit as preaching or healing the sick."
The first resolution of the Industrial Committee of the recent Decennial Missionary Conference in Madras urges upon the several mis5lionary boards the necessity of giving such work a recognized,place among their agencies in India, and of affording it adequate support. We look for- • ward earnestly to the day when" industrial" will be as integral a part of the society's work as is its "educational" and "medical" departments.
I would emphasize, then, the need of industrial centers for each conference or district. Not only wonld such institutions save the trme of
individual missionaries, but the training would be of a higher order. If all the energy, time, and money so lavishly expended by individual men could be centralized, the success of our enterprises would be assured.
Having, then, established such central institutions, our next step should be to place them under properly qualified business men-men whose skill will enable them to impart instruction upon lines that are adapted to the circumstances of the people, men who will see that the best way of helping India is not by wholly sweeping away Indian methods, but by improving them.
Again, the standard and quality of our work ought to be of the highest. Many complain of the want of a market for their goods. The fault seems to lie rather in the quality of the things made; for ill-made goods it is not easy to find a market, but for all well-made articles we now have, through the medium of the I. M. A. S., the opportunity of selling them in Bombay or London.
There are, however, two very widespread difficulties. First, the dif- ficultyof insuring that the lads and others will follow in after-life the trade they have been taught. In one industrial school it was found that only nine per cent. were following the handicrafts they had learned in the school. It is evident, too, from the government returns of reforma- tories, etc., that quite a small percentage earn their living by means of the trade learned in youth. I suppose the remedy lies in more care being taken in the choice of trades, especial notice being taken of hereditary callings, and also in exercising more care in the general education of our industrial youths. They should, too, be made to begin to learn their trades much earlier in life; indeed, this must be done, if they are ever to successfully compete with their non-Christian neighbors.
The other difficulty is the alleged tendency of industrial enterprises to deaden the spiritual life of our infant Church. One meets with many who say that they have observed this tendency. Almost everything, of course, depends upon the kind of men at the head of affairs. Many com- plain of the difficulty of running a business on a mercantile as well as a reJigious basis. In the former case the work is of prime importance, while in the latter the worker is first thought of. I suppose the educa- tional missionary might also say the same. Industrial work there must be, and it is incumbent upon us to see that the spiritual life of our indus- trial communities does not suffer.
Surely here lies a call to the business men of our home Church-a call to go out to India and do for the industrial classes what others have done for the educated classes. Are there no business men ready to sac- rifice some of the love and sympathy, which is, alas! too much locked up in all our hearts, for the uplifting of these poor souls who have been given into our charge by Christ Himself ?
Dr. Zwemer well says: "The whole problem of industrial missions, which lies at the back of that other problem of obtaining a self-support- ing native Church, will have to be solved by men of business. The cause of foreign missions needs the help of business men in its administration- .• business men who will give their time and talent to this important work, and make it their business to do the Lord's work in a businesslike way."
NOTE.-An Industrial Missions Association has recently been formed in America through the instrumentality of Mr. W. H. Fry. This has the hearty approval of such men as Dr. Charles Cuthbert Hall, Dr. C. C. Creegan, Dr. James S. Dennis, Mr. Robert E. Speer, and-others. A further notice will be found on page 146 of this number of the REVIEW.-EDlTORS.
EDITORIALS
EDITORIALS Higher Education in India cases, their time, talents, and energy to the cause of the Master The Gospel invariably brings a in tbe mission field.
desire for enlightenment. Where This girls' high school in Cal- cutta i,s founded on the Word of Christ is proclaimed and accepted, God, and its hightest and chiefest aim is His glory. From the first there schools, colleges, and univer- Miss Gardner intended to turn the school ultimately into a college as sities spring up. The mind is well. Year by year this purpose was strengtbened as she saw her. awakened, and, if a truly Chris- girls matriculating from the high tian education can not be had, school and joining Bethune College to pursue their studies further, many will go to non-Chril'tian there being no other door open to them. Bethune College is the only schools and graduate with ideas too college for girls in Bengal. It is a government institution, entirely often destructive of their Christian under non-Christian management and influence. By far the majority faith and life. It is for this reason of pupils are non-Christians. To send girls of fifteen or sixteen years that many missionaries are urging of age, before their Christian char- acter has had time to mature, to the necessity of higher education such an institution, is, to say the least, far from conducive to the defor the future leaders of nations velopment of Christian character and spiritnallife. just emerging from heathenism. In connection with this high The Bengali principal of the school, Mrs. Shrome has started a' collegiate class on a small sca.le, Woman's Missionary Union High and they use the same building bo~ for school and college. An School in Calcutta, Mrs. Shrome, is American missionary lives in the school; acts as a mother to the an earnest Chdstian and a rarely girls, and holds daily classes for Bible study. The school has also gifted woman. She has taken her its prayer-meetings, its Christian Endeavor Society, its Young M.A. degree in English and in Women's Christian Association branch. At the last meeting of philosophy in the Calcutta Uni- the Woman's Union Missionary Society Board in New York, it was versity. Of educational work in voted to make of this high school and college for Christian girls a general, Mrs. Shrome writes: memorial to Miss Gardner, and People, both in Great Britain Miss Edith H. May has been apand America, feel, to a great extent, pointed to take up the Calcutta that the only work worth doing in work upon her return to India next heathen lands is that of direct fall. Help is greatly needed to carry evangelization. If one's aim in on this branch of work, which is so imparting education were the fulfiling of an end and not the adoption of a meane, and one of the very best of means toward a desired end, such a view of the work of evangelization would certainly be correct. But, so far as I know, the aim of the Christian educationist is to bring his pupils to the feet of Christ, so to train the young that they may become .. vessels sanctified and, meet for the Master's use." Tbat tbe work of the educationist has born fruit is most empbat~cally emphasized by the converSIOn of hundreds of men in India who to-day are wielding a mighty influence for Christ, and who first learned the truths of Christianity while students in Christian collegejl. Considering the sbort period during which proper attention has been paid to girls, and higher education imparted to them, they have shown their appreciation of advantages received by devoting, in most
necessary in the training of Ohris- Describing Things As They Are tian women to become leaders In our Book Reviews in the Sep- tember (1903) issue we published a both in their own Ohristian com- briefnoticeof "ThingsAsTheyAre," by Miss Amy Wilson Oarmichael, munity and in evangelistic work; and we now wish to add a few words of still more emphatic comandleaders are neededwhen we con- mendation. This book is one which is, we ,think, unequaled in its pecul· sider that there are only 1,000 Eu- iar line. It presents the actual conditions of things in India with· ropean women missionaries to out undue plainness-not to say coarseness-and yet with such skill reach the 100,000,000 women of In- and tact and suggestive reticence that the reader feels that he has a dia. And, as Miss Gardner so often ,deep insight into Indian social life without experiencing any offense said," The women for Christ means to the most delicate sensibilities. It is a book to instruct and arouse India for Christ." In order to missionaries and supporters of mis- sions to pray and to give. There is continue 'the work of the school no false veil drawn over facts, and no false halo put around the work. during the coming year, $2,000 is It will help to send out workers with open eyes and open hearts, to needed at once. But to secure the make others feel the wants and woes which the Gospel alone can relieve future of the school a fund of $50,- or remove. We again urge all dis- ciples to read this book, which 000 is needed. has been pronounced by one critic to be the best missionary book in It may be reme,mbered that this the world.
is the mission to which the edi- Miss Carmichael's book contrasts in one respect with another book retor's daughter, Miss Louise B. Pier- viewed in April last: "By Order of the Prophet." We have' read son, gave her life. * this story with considerable in- terest, but it impresses us as, in No Money for Missions? one or two cases, violating the principles of modesty by intro- A missionary, an esteemed cor- ducing the heroine of the book into situations which are described respondent, writes: so as to offend good taste. These passages prevent this story from I lectured before a Ladies' Mis- having more unqualified praise. sionary Society attached to one of There are many books in which the the wealthiest churches in B— general drift is good, but in which not long since, and while they there is a needless introduction of were conducting the "business" profane or coarse language, or part of the meetiug I estimated the scenes which are in bad ,taste, and worth of the jewelry worn at not which mar any book intended for less than ten thousand dollars. A miscellaneous readers. plea came from a mission church in the West for some money with which to build a little wooden church. After much deliberation, ten dollars was suggested, and after more talk that was etd down to .five dollars! They had asked me to offer a prayer and to close with the Lord's prayer. Each one said " Amen" at the close. They pray- ed "Thy kingdom come," and sub- scribed five dollars toward that work, while at the same time they wore jewelry worth ten thousand dollars! Do you think the Gospel is preached in that church?
At the latest valuation, the Pres- byterian churches of New York Oity alone are estimated to rep- resent a cash value of ten and a half millions of dollm's! and to ''''that material wealth in real estate the present generation has contrib- uted but a very small per cent.
BOOKS FOR THE MISSIONARY LIBRARY THE LIFE OF EDWIN WALJ..ACE PARKER, D.D., more faithfully the Master whom he served, even unto death." These MIssional')' Bishop of Southern As,.., words from the Preface of the book forl;),-one years a missionary in India. are true. The memorial of Horace By J. H. Messmore. With an Introduc- Pitkin was a difficult one to write, tion by Bishop James M. Thoburn. 832 because the material was neither., Pl'. $2.00. New York: Eatou & Mains. large nor, for the most part. of Cincinnati: Jennings & Pye. 1903. unique interest. But the book affords a meeting-place where his This will be a welcome contribu- friends will gather to ~hink again tion to missionary literature to tens of the courageous and consecrated of thousands in India and America. man they loved. The author lias done a fine piece of sensible construction work. He Pitkin was emphatically his was competent for the task. For mother's son. President Eliot over forty years he was associated writes that he retains" only agenwith Bishop Parker in every phase eral impression of his sweet and of work and worship. His pre- sincere character and manner when cision and sympathy with the sub- a boy." His work in academy and ject, as well as his grasp of ques- college and seminary was good, but tions involved in portraying BishoJl not extraordinary. After a year Parker in situ, commend the pro- of immensely influential work duction. It is Bishop Parker, not among our American colleges, he Dr. Messmore, that is outlined. sailed with his wife for China. He reached his field of labor at Pao- It will be many a year yet before tingfu in the spring of 1897, and was the Christian world measures killed by the Boxers in the awful Bishop Parker-the cubits of the summer of 1900. The memorial height, and of the breadth, and of preserves for us, to a remarkable the depth. Plainly, here is a prac- degree, the spirit of the man. Here tical biography within the limits are his breezy characteristic letters of a hand-book of a many-sided, to his chums, with their goodly practical, devout, broad-visioned repertoire of college jokes and "man sent from God." The de- slang. Here are a number of ideal velopment from a Vermont farm missionary letters written to his boy to a bishop, wise in adminis- home church-letters diffuse, detration, at a formative period of scriptive, telling the things that missions in northwest India, the people at home want to know. loving" Great Heart" among all They show Pitkin the worker, missionaries and native Christians, frank, genial, intense, filled with can not be summarized in 300 words ideals, yet practical to his fingerwith the 300 pages of an honest tips. biographer before us cramped to severity to make an etching. We Nothing so perfectly reveals the will return to this at another time. man as his last recorded words, There are ten illustrations, well spoken to his Chinese' helper while the devilish crowd were swooping selected and well executed. ** down upon the mission: " Lao- man, tell the mother of little A MEMORIAL OF HORACE TRACY PITKIN. By Horace to tell Horace that his father's last wish was that when he Robert E. Speer. 12mo. $1.00, net. Flem- is twenty-five years of age he should ing H. Revell Company. 1903. come to China as a missionary."
"This is not simply a story of a life. It is a meeting-place, where many who knew and loved the true man pictured here may gather and compare their recollections, and confirm their purposes to follow
No mere man ever spoke more dians, Porto Ricans, Brazilians, heroic words. The man who, under Japanese, Chinese, Syrian, Per- those circumstances, could say that. ,sians, Africans, Alaskans, etc.
had livedalifewhose~tory is worth There is still room for a book de- writing and worth reading. H. scriptive of children at home and .abroad, with and without Christ.
A FLIGHT FOR LIFE. By James H. Roberts. This would be a great boon to Sun- Illustrated. 12mo, -402 pp. $1.50. The Pilgrim Press, Boston. 1003. day-school workers and leaders of Dr. Roberts fled from China dur- junior missionary societies. * ing the Boxer uprising in 1900, and INDIA'S PROBLEM: KRISHNA OR CHRIST. By was one of ~ party of missionaries J. P. Jones, D.D. Second edition. 8vo, who escaped overland through Si- 374 pp. $1.50, net Fleming H. Revell Co. 1903.
beria. He here tells the story This second edition of a very valu- • graphically. and gives besides It able book contains, besides many large amount of information about corrections to the text, several Mongolia and the Mongols. The valuable statistical tables, religious experiences of the missionaries and missionary. It is an excellent must have been thrilling to them, reference book on all subjects con- and as a record of travel the story nected with the land, peoples, re- is readable, but in no way remark- ligions, missions" etc. * able. The most valuable part of the book is the incidental informa- THE LAND, THE PEOPLE, AND THE BOOK. An illustrated Hebrew-Christian quarterly. tion about the country through B. A. M. Schapiro, editor; Robert Cameron, D.D., associate editor. Pp.64. which the party passed. * 260 St. James Place, Brooklyn. New York. $1.00.
CHILD LIFE IN MANY LANDS. Edited by H. This 'magazine has now existed Clay Trumbull, D.D. lllustrated. 12mo. three years, and every number has 215 pp. $1.00, net. Fleming H. Revell contained valuable information Co. 1903. concerning Israel, its Holy Book, and its land. Such a magazine as This series of articles, descriptive this is useful, and deserves the supof child life in various countries, port of the Christian public. To was for the most part contributed the Christian reader it will prove by some twenty-two writers to the helpful and stimulating by making Su.,nday-School Times. They are him better acquainted with the interesting chapters, but disap- Jews and the Bible, while to the pointing from a missionary stand- cultured Jew it may possibly bring point. A splendid opportunity has the truth as it is in Jesus without been missed to give us a vivid picture of child life in heathen lands, and the difference which the Gos- offending him. as do so many of our pel makes in the home and child modern tracts for Jews. An extraining. Dr. Trumbull in his In- cellent facsimile of the scroll of the troduction strikes a key-note which Law in Hebrew is given with each should have been found in all the succeeding chapters. The descrip- subscription. M. '
tions bring us into closer touch with LEAFLETs.-Comparatively few the children of other nations, but realize the wealth of information most of them do not' throw much and interest that there is in the light on their condition from a leaflet literature of the various Christian point of view. Mrs. Bal- missionary societies. They cover lington Booth writes picturesquely a wide range of topics by the best on" Baby Footprints in the Slums," writers, and make excellent reading and there are other chapters on for young peoples' and women's Immigrant Children, American In- missionary meetings.
GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE
GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE AMERICA with appropriate and excellent A Day of The General Com contents. These are the titles of Prayer for mittee of the some of the articles: "A Historical Students World's Stndent Sketch, 1803-1903," "Serampore Christian Federa- and the Pioneers," "From this tion have appointed February 14, Storied Height" (a view of progress 1904, as the Universal Day of made in Burma, Assam, South In- Prayer for Students. All the dia, China, Japan, Africa, Europe, Christian student movements be- and the Philippines, each article by longing to the World's Student a missionary in the country Christian Federation have official- named), "American Reminders of ly endorsed and adopted this day Judson," ., How the Work Grows" for united intercession on behalf of (charts indicating the increase in students. These movements em- missionaries, native workers, brace over 1,600 separate Christian church-members, and contribustudent societies, with a total mem- tions). bership of 89,000 students and pro- It appears that two other names fessors. What a source of spirit· preceded the present one, The Masual blessing and power such a sachusetts Baptist Missionary world-wide concert of prayer . Magazine, 1801-17, and The Amerishouldbe, provided the opportunity can Baptist Magazine and Mission- ary Intelligencer, 1817-36. Curibe wisely improved I . Never has there been a greater ously, the second number appeared need of definite, fervent, believing not uutil May, 1804, or eight prayer for students. The growing months after the fil'st; in 18Q6.-7 numbers of students in the differ· they averaged three annually; in ent countries, the disproportion. 1808-10 they attained to a quarterly ately great influence which they estate. The number for Septemare to wield in after life, the prev- ber, 1809, contained that epochalence and activity in studentcom- making sermon of Rev. Claudius munities of the forces of evil, the Buchanan, "The Star in the East," remarkable success of the Christian which so tremendously stirred the student movements, the opportu- soul of Judson and many more.
nities on every haud for extending American This society sus- the helpful influence of these move- Board tains in Turkey 8 ments, the urgent call of the Medical Work dispensaries and 6 Church for more students to dedi- hospitals; in India cate their lives to the work of and Ceylon, 16 dispensaries and 11 Christ at home and on the mission hospitals; in China, 10 dispensaries fields-all these and other consid- and 7 hospitals; in Africa, 7 dis- erations constitute an irresistible pensaries and 3 hospitals, and in appeal for prayer for students. * Japan 1 dispensary and a mission- ary physician in a Japanese hos- Centennial of The Baptist Mis- pital. This makes a total of 42 dis- a Missionary sionary Magazine pensaries and 28 hospitals in which Magazine celehrates its cen- were treated last year 253,800 tennial in its De- patients. When we bear in mind cember issue, and pre"ents its read- that these patients are under Chris- ers with a number most attractive tian instruction while in the hos- to the eye, as well as overflowing pital, and that few come to get
medicines without carrying away sionaries. The society named has with them a word of Christian just closed its twenty-eighth year truth or a printed page, and when with receipts above $200,000 and we also bear in mind that for the contributions from more churches, first time many of these people ex- Sunday-schools, and individuals perience Christian sympathy and than ever before. Its largest tenderness, we can get some con- 'single gift of the year was $6,000. ception of the wide influence of It has recently sent additional workthis work. Many of these hospitals ers to Japan, China, and the Philand dispensaries are entirely self- ippines, and has a number of men supporting apart from the salaries in preparation to go out next year. of the missionary physicians in charge.-Congregational Work. Presbyterian During the last Mission Work year no less than Departure of A delightful mis- Alliance sionary farewell 5,227 church-mem- bers were reported added to the Missionaries service was held roll. The previous year there November 30th in were 5,241, this being the largest number, with a single exception, connection with' the departure of 7 in any year in the Board's history. missionaries for India, namely, The native membership now stands Mr. and Mrs. Rogers and their 2 at 46,540. In 1833 there were only children, Mr. and Mrs. Eiker, of 7 American missionaries under the Altoona, Pa., and Messrs. Green- Board. Thirty years later there grass, Carver, and Turnbull, late wete but 99 native workers. In students in the Missionary Insti- 1903 there are 781 missionaries, and tute of Nyack. This party will 1,988 native workers. These figform a valuable accession to our ures indicate a steady growth. brethren in that great and needy To-day there are 127 stations, 1,402 field. The Alliance has now nearly outstations, 764 schools, 27,370 80 missionaries in India. The num- pupils in schools, 38,342 Sunday ber may seem great to us, but as scholars, 693 churches, 122 students one of the outgoing missionaries for the ministry, 10 printingremarked, it seems very small to presses, which last year printed them.-Christian and Missionary 107,938,713 pages, and 91 hospitals Alliance. and dispensaries, which treated during the year 290,103 patients. Missionaries The Foreign Chris- for TIbet tian Missionary So- Industrial Steps were taken to Missions win friends for this ciety, which repre- Association mission in America sents the Disciples of Christ, is sending a band of 3 missionaries to at a meeting in the try to gain an entrance into the United Charities' Building, New exclusive land of Tibet-Rev. A. York, on December 8th. Rev. L. Shelton and wife, of Kansas; and Charles Cuthbert Hall, D.D.• was Dr. Susan C. Rijnhart, of Canada. in the chair, and addresses were Some years ago Dr. Rijnhart and made by W. H. Fry, Esq., Dr. C. her husband explored a part of C. Creegan, and others, on the ur- Eastern Tibet, and the husband gent necessity for the systematic lost his life in the undertaking. development of industrial mission This is one of the "closed lands," work on the best possible commerand the Tibetans can only be reach- cial basis. The existing missionary ed by border missions. It is hoped, societies are not constituted for however, that the British expe- this purpose, and it is not desirable dition may open the way for mis-
GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE
that their missionaries should be A Mission A little steam- involved in commercial work of Yacht yacht called the this nature; so that- the Industrial Dedicated Sentinel, under the Missions Association of America auspices of the Pro- is established to give employment testant Episcopal Missionary So- to native Christians seeking to ciety for Seamen, has recently been enter industrial pursuits, and aims dedicated by Bishop Potter. In to become self-supporting on a addition to ministering to the Christian commercial basis. The spiritual welfare of seamen in association has received hearty New York harbor, it will act as a support from secretaries of mission sort of watch-dog, seeking to pre- boards, missionaries, and others in- vent shanghaing, protecting sail- terested in the development of ors also from land-sharks, crimps, strong, self-supporting Christian boarding-house runners, and the communities in India and else- like. It will also aid in bringing where. .. about more farewell religious ser- vices than are now held on ships Hartford One-tenth of the starting out on long voyages.
Seminary graduates of this The boat is attached to the float- and Missions s e min a r y have ing mission at the foot of Pike found their work Street, and will make four trips in foreign lands. A continuous around the harbor each week, dis- course of instruction in foreign tributing tracts and inviting sea- missions has been provided. The men to attend the mission. Itwill library, now numbering over 82,- make special trips on Sunday after- 757 books and 45,977 pamphlets. noons, gathering sailors on boats contains the Augustus C. Thomp- lying along the rivers and in the son collection on foreign missions, bay and bringing them to the mis- which numbers 7,275 volumes. The sion for supper and religious ser- reading-room, with its more than vice afterward. ..
400 periodicals, is supplied with all the leading missionary magazines. Chinese New York's China- Open-Air town is one of the The missionary museum contains Service in worst sections of New York the city. In it is 240 different missionary versions but one church•. a of the Bible. Opportunity is fur- Roman Catholic, but several mis. sions are doing excellent work. nished for the study of various mis- Among them is the New York Foreigners' Mission, with Miss sionary languages. The seminary Helen F. Clark as director. For several Sundays this institution has arranged for a number of lec- has held an open-air service in the heart of Chinatown, and a contures on the different non-Christian servative estimate gives the num- ber of listeners one Sunday as 5,000. religions, to be eventually devel- Not only Chinamen attended, but Jews, Italians, Germans, and Irish oped into a complete course in were present in large numbers, and different speakers at the meeting comparative religion. Some of the used all the languages of these people. The steredpticon was used special lecturers for 1904-1905 will to show pictures of biblic'll scenes; be Rey. G. W. Fiske, of Auburn, Maine, on "Business Methods in Mission Work"; Rev. W. B. For- bush. of Charlestown, Mass., on "Mission Work Among Young People"; Rev. C. J. Ryder, D.D., New York, on "The History and Growth of the American Mission- ary Association," of which he is secretary. ..
and to display the words of hymns. $75. There are about 150 children enrolled, and the daily attendance The meetings are remarkable even is 76.
in this city of big things, and are BrooklYn The Young Men's Y. M. C. A. Christian Associaso successful that it is planned to Jubilee tion of Brooklyn, continue them into the fall, and to N. Y., has recently hold similar gatherings in Mul- celebrated its fiftieth anniversary, and among other things rejoiced berry Park, the breathing spot over the raising of a fund of $425,- 000 for the erection of three new made through the efforts of Jacob buildings and the paying off of mortgages. About" $600,000 more A. Riis from the notorious Mul- is needed. The Association con- ducts work at 12 centers in that berry Bend. * city, including the Navy Yard, and the barns of the leading street-car Presbyterians and.. the Southern company. It has 6 buildings val- Mountaineers.-The Presbyterian ued at $1,000,000, 5,600 members, Church, North, sust,ains evangeliz- 900 of whom-are in the Bible classes. ing work among the mountaineers Mr. George Foster Peabody, who of the South at some 60 points: 6in as a poor boy obtained most of his West Virginia, 9 in Kentucky, 12 education while attending the evein Tennessee, and 32 in North Caro- ning classes of the Association, has lina. The work of teaching is given large sums for the' erection mainly in the hands of devoted of its buildings at Greenpoint, N. and self-denying women. Y., Columbus, Ga., Salt Lake City, and other places. The finest naval A Tuskegee John T. Hollis branch building in the world was Student's writes thus from erected by Miss Helen Gould at the Armstrong, A I a- Brooklyn Navy Yard. Achievement bama: A Christian A unique and prac- The schoolhouse at this place Health Farm tical form of Chris- was burnt down the year before I in Colorado tian work is the came here, so when I came there Association Health was no place in which to teach. I Farm near Denver. It is fighting was determined to begin the school, tuberculosis among the very large however, and so I opened in one of number of young men who go there, and are without home in- the rooms of a dwelling-house in fluence, without the touch of the community. The rapid in- mother's or sister's hand, and of crease in number of students made father's love. The establishment . it necessary to move to an old log of the Denver Association Health Farm marks the latest develop- house, which would have served ment in Young Men's Christian Association work. First suggested for a while had it not been for the by the crying needs of a mliititude fact that cold weather was on, and of young men seeking the Colorado there was no way to heat the house. climate for physical reasons; it was quickly and practically approved I moved into another dwelling- by generous friends, and to-day the house, where I taught until I was farm idea is an accomplished fact. able to build a schoolhouse. There were so many children that the boys had to remain by a fire outside of the house, and come in only to recite their lessons. I did not have money to buy lumber for the school- house, but I gave my note for it, and after the neigl:!bors hanled the lumber, with the assistance of sev- eral of them, I framed the build- ing. One of my more advanced pupils taught the school while the schoolhouse was being built. but I would hear several of the recita- tions each day. I built the stove flues and the blackboards myself, and in this way the whole build- ing, which is 30 x 20 feet, only cost
1904J QBNl!:RAL MISSIONARY INTELL1Gl!:NCB
The patients live in cottage tents, Lutherans, 44 Methodists, 25 Bap- tists, South, 10 Episcopalians, with because they have proven most several smaller missions supplying the residue. desirable for men seeking health. EUR.OPE Twenty to thirty dollars per month GreatBritain The Christian is charged for tent cottage and and the Union for the sev- board for each resident, deter- Opium Traffic erance of the con- nection of the Britmined, as far as possible, according ish Empire with the opium traffic to ability of the resident to pay has issued a letter with a view to arousing public feeling against the for accommodations. Employ- government's connection with the trade. The official returns show ment will not be guaranteed until that during the l.ast four years the opium manufactured by the Indian the physical condition of the appli- government amounted to 29,155,200 pounds-a yearly average of 7,288,- cant is fully understood. Some 800 pounds. About 600,000 ~cres of the best land of India are used for employment can be secured on ad- its cultivation. The letter ex- presses the hope that knowledge of joining nursery and vegetable the facts will lead to a "general determination that a trade so unfarms. * just and dishonorable shall no lon- ger be carried on in the name of Methodists There is an interest- our country." Many leading Free in Hawaii ing condition of Churchmen sign the appeal, as well as the Archbishop of Dublin and things in Hawaii. the Bishops of Durham, Liverpool, The Chinese are excluded, and the and Norwich. fear of overcrowding has practically shut out the Japanese. The British Among the more result is a great scarcity oflaborers, Baptists prominent features particularly farm-hands. The Aggrenive of the work of the farmers have, therefore, invited immigration from Korea. Not Baptist Missionary long ago 80 Koreans shipped on one Society during the past twelve vessel for Hawaii, of whom it was months has been the occupation of found that 31 were Methodists. A two large spheres of work in India. Methodist church was organized on among the aboriginal tribes of shipboard, which had 50 members the Chittagong Hill tracts and the when they landed. After reaching South Lushai country. The num- Hawaii they sent back to Korea for ber of conversions in India has been a pastor. There are now 600 large, and the native churches are Koreans in Hawaii, of whom 300 growing. In Africa the last links are members of the Methodist Epis- of the "complete chain" of miscopal Church. The American sions right across that country Board has decided not to enter it, from west to east are being forged. and the members of their churches The churches in the West India who take letters to Hawaii are ad- Islands, the Bahamas, San Dominvised to unite with the Methodist go, and Trinidad, havenowbecome Church.-Western Christian Advo- entirely independent and self-supcate.
The Gospel This imperial realm in Brazil includes about half of South America, and contains about 18,000,000 inhabitant who are all practically either Catholics or out-and-out heathens. And among this great host only 200 Protestant missionaries are to be found. Of these, 45 are Presbyterians, 45 are German
porting. The Baptist society has evangelical faith; Waldensian also got a new mission steamer, the chapels and schools being over- Endeavorer, on the Kongo. crowded, and everywhere thel e being a hunger for a Gospel of The C. M. S. Simply because of love and grace. In Sicily alone Forward the necessary en- the Waldensian Church has 30 Movement largement of its churches and missions. work, this great Now, as never before, is resting organization is threatened with upon the Waldensian Church the a serious deficit, and, to avoid this, opportunity and responsibility of calls for an increased incom'e of no giving the Gospel to the 33,000,000 of less than $443,500! And not only Italy. This band of Waldensians, calls for it, bllt proposes to secure poor in the world's goods and few it. For this purpose Dr. Herbert in numbers, but giving liberally of Lancaster has been put in charge personal service and material help, of the Home Organization Depart- is looking with prayerful hope to ment -jointly with Canon Flynn. America for a large part of .much Concerning the method of pro- needed pecuniary aid to enable cedure, he says: "I propose, with them to prosecute the great work tbe cordial cooperation of my col- so wonderfully opened up to her. leagues, to collect at least 1,000,000 This is the day of opportunity for shillings before February 29th, and Italy. Everywhere, under the -this can only be done if large num- liberal laws (If the land, there is an bers help. I am issuing three open door for missionary work. * sheets of small receipts. Sheet A contains 100 for one shilling; B, Interest Among The correspondence 20 for one shilling; and C, 60 for ifve Jewish Rabbis with Jewish rabbis, shillings, 20 for three, and 20 for two shillings." to which reference The Waldensian The field which this was made in THE REVIEW for De- Church native martyr of Italy church, "The Israel cember, 1003, as one of the encour- of the Alps," is aging signs of Jewish missions, is called of God to occupy, is one of unique importance. The evangeli- beginning to develop in a remark- zation of Italy means a wonderful able manner. Mr. Gelbert, superblessing to the whole world, because Italy is the stronghold of intendent of the Wanderers' Home the papal hierarchy. America is peculiarly interested in Italy's in Bristol, England, was from the evangelization, because of the -immigrants from that land, 136,000 beginning the assistant of the Rev. coming to us in one year, almost all of them from southern Italy, J. M. Eppstein in editing the periwhere illiteracy, superstition, and lawlessness have been preeminent. odical and is issuing correspond- W.hile all over Italy, Waldensian evangelists are meeting with most ence with Russian rabbis, and since encouraging success, it is in southern Italy, and especially in Sicily, Mr. Eppstein's death he has been in that the greatest results have been achieved; whole communities turn- sole charge. Some time ago he ating away from Romanism to the tended a congress of rabbis at Cra- cow, where he met several of those with whom he had been in corre- spondence. Opportunity came for conversation with 48, and he was * A contribution of $125 will support the whole band of 145 missionary workers for one day. $1,000 will, in many cases, "ecure a hOllse of worship fo'f<-one of the missions. $150 a year will support a student in the Theological Hall in Florence. The salary of a colporteur or evangelist is from $20 to $-30 a month, and of a pastor from $500 to $800 a year. A Bible woman can be supported for $10 a month, and a teacher for from $10*to $20 a month.
GENlilRAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE
permitted to preach to them from E. B. Haskell's report of his canvass Matthew v : 3. After his return to of the vilayet of Monastir: Burned England an invitation was received villages, 17; burned houses, 1,700; from one of these rabbis to meet houseless people, 7,330; unarmed himself and 5 others in conference men killed, 87; families injured, during the Zionist Oongress in 1,336; women dishonored, 38; 4 Basel (August, 1903), and he reports churches and 1 monastery torn a profitable time with these and down; 14 churches gutted and de- other delegates at the congress. filed.
One of the numerous questions put A Prayer The Bishop of Gib- for the raltar has authorto the missionary was, "Why did Oppressed ized the use of the not the contemporaries of Jesus following petition recognize His Messiahship?" In in his diocese: answer, Mr. Gelbert simply quoted A PRAYER FOR OUR CHRISTIAN 1. Corinthians i:22-24:-" The Jews BRETHREN IN MACEDONIA require a sign," etc. M. o Almighty God, Who art a most Sunday-schools The Rev. Dr. strong tower to all that put their in Hungar)" Moody writes from trust in Thee, behold, we beseech Budapest: Accord- Thee, the afflictions of our brethren in Macedonia. Delivel' them from ing to statistics just collected by injustice and misrule, and from the Mr. J. Victor, for the Sunday- many other miseries by which they school Union, there are in Hungary are compassed. Heal their divi- 128 Sunday-schools. Of- these, 22 sions. Keep them from the I!Ipirit are in connection with the Re- of revenge, and from whatsoever formed Church, including thl;l Scot- else is contrary to the Christian tish Mission, 8 are in connection name and profession. Especially with the Lutheran Church, 92 are we commend to Thy merciful care in connection with the Baptists, 1 and protection their wives, daughis in connection with the Metho- ters, and' children; preserve them dists, and 5 are without special from cruelty, outrage, and dis- Church. connection. The number honor; comfort the mourners; sucof teachers is 398. The number of cor the widows, ~he orphans, the scholars in attendance varies from homeless: restore plenty, quietabout 4,200 to 4,900. The number ness, and the voice of joy into their of schools into which the group dwellings. In this hour of their system has been introduced is 67, sore need, wrong, and peril, be and the number of groups is 343. Thou their Savior and Mighty De- The number of schools In connec- liverer, because there is none other tion with whieh a teachers' prepa- to succor them but only Thou, 0 ration meeting is held is 50. In 94 God. Give ear, Lord, to the cry of schools the "International Scheme Thy suffering people, and save of Lessons" is used. In 94 schools them for Jesus Christ's sake. the language of instruction is Hun- Amen. garian, in 29 German, in 2 Hungarian anil German, in 4 Slavonian, ASIA and in 1 Rumanian.-Missionary Record of Church of Scotland. Medical Work The medical work Turkish Fiends As a fair specimen in Syria of Dr. Harris in in Macedonia of the widespread Tripoli w.as tempo- butchwy and abuse inflicted by the soldiers of the rarily suspended by"his furlough in Porte, read these items from Rev. the United Sootes. Dr. MaryPier- son Eddy has continued h.er clinics at Junillh and itinerated in the in- terior, being everywhere welcomed boy the people. No more in1!eresting sight can be seen in Syria than the medical camp of this American wo-
man, thronged by men, women, at a bishlik (11 cents) a day, and and children of all ages and sects, most diJ,ys they can not find work and even priests, monks, and nuns, at any price. emirs, and sheikf'!, eager to receive medical and surgical treatment at Emigration is the only relief, her hands.-Assembly Herald. and our churches are losing their best young men and many even of The Gospel In a city known to the pastors. and teachers. In the Touching us, 15 or 20 Moslem Presbyterian church of South Beth- Moslems women, even 50 lehem, Penn., are 55 communi- cants from the village of Amar in upon occasions, as- the Tripoli field, of whom 30 were church-members in Amar and the semble regularly in prayer-meet- remaining 25 were received in South ing. In- another city, ladies of Bethlehem upon profession of faith. high rank, upon whom Ii, life of On an average, one-third of our pleasure palls, read the Ne IV Testa- church-members are abroad, .most ment with joy. Here, a military of them in the United States, and man believes. There, a servant. from the United States comes a A humble man addressing his coun- large part of the income of those trymen says, fearlessly: "Your re- who are left in Syria. ligion is the same heathenism your fathers practised. They worshiped The Gospel The report of the golden idols, you a stone in your in Arabia Arabian Mission pockets (holy earth from a shrine). They prayed to an image, you to a mentions its medi- dead prqphet. This is the last word, 'Come to Jesns, who is called cal work as of primary importance. Christ.' " Only a year ago, at the close of a communion service under The number of patients treated at .Mt. Hermon, a Mohammedan pres- ent quietly begged that he might Bahrein has been 15,400, and 8,003 carry home a bit of the bread. He dared not eat it in the public meet- at Busrah-23,403 in all. To the ing, but he would eat it alone and would believe that the Savior com- Mason Memorial Hospital, at Bah- muned with him. No, Islam is a mighty foe to Christ's Gospel, but rein, a present has been made in it is not impregnable.-Woman's Work for Woman. the form of a windmill, an adjunct Drawbacks to Rev. F. W. March much needed, and which will be Work in S,ma writes in the As- gratefully appreciated. By the sembl]J Herald from the Tripo1i field: missionaries and colporteurs 11 The evils of poverty, oppression, tours have been made, occupying robbery, and bad government are greater and greater every year, es- 224 days, and covering 3,300 miles. pecially in the northern part of our field. A prominent church.mem- The sales of Scriptures amounted ber at Hamath, a successful mer- chant for man¥ years, has given to 4,059 copies, in 17 languages. Of up and moved away because he finds there is no longer any money these, 3,362 were sold to Moham- to be made. Beggars are more numerous than ever. Our pastor medans, or 82 per cent. of the said he could go ont at any time to the market-place and hire 100 men whole number. Steps have been taken to occupy Kuweit,.an im· portall't strategic position near the head df the Persian Gulf.
A Statesman's Sir. W. Mackwol'th Testimony to Young, K.C.S.I., India Missions 1ate Lieutenant- Governor Of the Punjab, recently made the follow- ing statement in St. Michael's Church, Cornhill, London: Possibly you mary have some doubts whether the methods adopted in the mission field are al- together. worthy qf approval, and whether the agents are worthy of trust. Is the money which is con- tributed at home to the mission
GENERAL MISSIONARY
cause being properly applied? Do gates or means of access other the missionaries work on right than by a ladder of six or eight lines? Are they really self-denying steps, which brings one to the top and devoted? Are the results at of the wall, and a good jump is all commensurate with the efforts needed to reach the ground on the made? Is the Kingdom of Christ other side; sometimes, however, a being really promoted by those notched bamboo pole takes the efforts? place of the ladder aforesaid, and then the climb is an impossibility I give you the assurance, from to anyone wearing shoes. One some observation of mission work patient I very much wished to see, in India, that all these questions but found no means of entrance to and many more of a similar char- ber abode, except by the bamboo acter may safely be answered in just descriBed. I was told, howthe affirmative. If the work were ever, I might reach the dwelling by altogether a work of faith, going going through a neighbor's comon underground, but not showing pound, but here again I was foiled itself in the open day, this would by a very deep ditch with steep be no reason for abandoning or con- crumbling sides separating the two demning it. For how many years gardens; into this I declined to after the death of Christ was not scramble. When the sick woman the cause of Christianity in an ap- was told of the difficulty she came parently hopeless minority? Cer- out, and, standing on the edge of tainly much longer than the Gospel her side of the gulf, shouted mit has been preached in India. Yet her symptoms to me on the other it bas triumphed in Europe, and it side, with the result that I was will triumph in Asia. And, able to send her some medicine. triumph or no triumph, woe is to us if we preach not the Gospel! In the hospital at Trevandrum But, as a business man speaking Miss Blandford says there have, to business men, I am prepared to say that the work which has been during the past year, been 62 padone, by missiOllary agency in India exceeds in importance all that has tients, 30 of whom were children. been done (and much has been done) by the British government The out-patients numbered 2,595. in India since its commencement. Hope for It is a sign of the * Hindu Widows times that the num- Work of A recent number of ber of Hindu wid- Healing Under In d i a's Women Diffi~ltie5 and Chi n a's ow marriages in different parts of Daughters, the or- India is increasing by leaps and gan of the C. E. Z. M. S., contains bounds, the brides in most cases an account by Miss Blandford of a being virgin widows. This shows visit paid by her early in the year that the resolutions passed year to a place called Koni, about eighty after year at the different social miles from Trevandrum, where conferences are not meant to be there was no medical practitioner nominal ones, but are intended to of any kind. The people were for be carried out in practise. It is, the most part poor, and many were indeed, gratifying to find that the suffering from malarial fever, de- Hindus are becoming more and bility, and anremia, so with the more alive to the importance of medicine-chest which she had with social reform and the pernicious her, she was able to do something nature of some of the social evils for the relief of those who came to which exist in their midst. We her for treatment. She tells of the are accountable to God for our difficulties sometimes encountered treatment of our womankind, and when visiting or' trying to visit unless we treat them with greater patients in their own homes: consideration God's curse will al- The houses are generally sur- ways'rllst'""on us, and our sufferings rounded by high walls with no will never cease. The prevention of early marriage, the education of
our women, and tb.e remarriage at by setting men free from the torleast of virgin widows, should re- ment of sin and also from the thralceive the first care of all those who dom of sin, by giving knowledge to wish our country well.-New Dis- the ignorant, both women and men, pensation (Brahmo-Somaj). in simple terms that all could un- derstand, Jesus had won for Him- Shoes for In view of the fact self a unique place (may we not say it ?) in human hearts. He is a Mohammedans t hat Mohamme- sea of beauty, a bottomless mine o:e moral and spiritual wealth, a store dans ought to wear of mercy, an ocean of knowledge. If you will cast off all the fetters of only sandals to please the Prophet, superstition, and look upon Jesus with holy and earnest intentness, and that Hindus abominate dead you can not but be fully persuaded to believe in His deity. His whole animal skins, it is interesting to life was actively employed in doing good to others, in bettering the note the growing Indian taste for condition of the world, in making earth as heaven. boots and shoes of foreign make, A notable Brahman scholar of shown by the steady increase in the Dacca is quoted as having expressed imports of these articles year by himself regarding this article in the year. In 1900–1001, the number of following terms: " We did not expairs imported was 709,059; during pect all this from a Brahman high priest who is a bigoted Hindu and the succeeding year the figures rose a recognized preacher of our religto 746,099; while last year they ion. The writer seems to me to be jumped up to 853,358 pairs. * a great lover of Jesus Christ, altho A Hindu's A remarkable arti- he is not a Christian. The article Testimony to cle appeared lately is the first of its kind in this coun- Christ in a Bengali maga- try. I do not know if any Bengali Christian could write a better." zine. The writer The Medicine An old Chinese was a Brahman of extensive repu- Needed for woman once came tation as a scholar and a writer. China into a missionary The subject of the article is " Jesus hospital, saying that she would like to see the doc- Christ of Judea," and from a trans- tor. On his asking what she wishlation of it which appeared in the ed, she replied: "The mayor of August number of the Missionary our town has lately been here with Herald, organ of the Baptist Mis- you. He was a very bad man; used sionary Society, the following quo- to cudgel his children, wasted his tations are made: money at play, and had so foul a The adorable Jesus Christ was mouth that all the waters of the born in the hamlet of Bethlehem, situated in the well-known province world could not have made it clean.
of Palestine. The religion He But since he has been with you preached is what is now called the the tiger is transformed into a Christian religion, and those who lamb, and his wife is full of joy and believe in and obey Jesus are called astonishment. He no longer gives Christians. As we contemplate His unique moral beauty, incom- her an unhandsome word, and they parable wisdom and learning, His live in peace together." "Good marvelous and mighty words, His news," replied the doctor; ," but spotless character, meek and lov- what now do you wish, my good ing spirit, His deeds of mercy and words of love, His mighty miracles woman?" "Well," said the woman, wrought by Divine power, the " you are to tell nobody, but I too heart refuses to admit that this Jesus is a mere man, but feels that He is Divine. By His wonderful works of love wrought for the help and the relief of the poor and needy, by His exquisitely tender sympathy with the afflicted, by the light, moral and spiritual, which He shed,
1904J GlliNlllRA, L MISSIONARY INTElLLIGENCE
have an unhappy mouth. and I am to and fro to evade the writ of afraid my daughters-in-law find it ejectment that was ever ready to none too easy to live with me. be served upon the then 'heirs of Therefore, I have come to beg you the empire, and yet inmates of "Hog Lane," as it was then called to give me some of the medicine by the Chinese. Nowhere else were that has cured our mayor."- they allowed to rest the soles of feet. .A few others had come to Monatsbltltter. t help Morrison and be his residuary Chinese Two recent events legatees, if he ever got anything, Opening but they were not a whit bet,ter off.
in Kayin, among They had everybody against them: Their Eyes the H a k k a s 0 f Chinese mandarins, Chinese schol- southeastern ars, and Chinese common people, China, illustr~te in a forceful way and, worse than that, even their the interest in Western learning own country now looked upon them which is universal throughout as crack-brained enthusiasts. The powerful East India Company. then China. One of these is the opening in existence, scourged them and of a free public reading-room in a persecuted them. Men like Sydney portion of the Confucian Temple, Smith cracked their jokes at the where dailies can be seen from expense of the cobbler Carey in In- dia and the bobbin-boy Morrison Swatow, Hongkong, Shanghai, and" in China. No man of .Macedonia Japan also other periodicals in beckoned the~n to come m, no man .• of the Cornehus type sent for them Chmese, and a few books. The to tell a message from the living room is a city institution, being God. They had converts-s~ only supported by the wharfage rates. after a generation of pioneering.
There are many who are regular Friends in Chjna they had none.
patrons of the place, and keep well Christian One of the most ininformed regarding leading events Japanese t ere s tin g items throughout the world. A recent in China from Japan is the visit of the missionary brought a flood of questions from the Chinese missionary w 0 r k present regarding such matters as now being done by the Japanese Church in China. At Tientsin the Venezuelan trouble. the there is a Japanese colony of up- Panama Canal, etc. The other ward of 1,400 residents. There event is the completion of a hospital are a few Christian Japanese in the by a native society organized for number. They have organized a the purpose, where it is proposed to ,young people's society and a have two resident physicians, with primary school, and have taken other helpers. Doctor Witten- steps to organize a church. This berg, of the Basle Mission in Kayin, church is attached to the Tokyo has been asked to give two fore- Presbytery. The first missionary noons a week .for the treatment of is Mr. Dentaro Maruyama. He is eye and surgical cases. The project to work principally amor.g the is entirely a native one. Chinese, but in connection with the China Only Rev. William Ash- Church. 'l'hey have also decided to Sixty Years send a suitable man as pastor of the more puts the mat- church.-Assembly Herald. Ago ter in this startling way: Shall the Nothing could be Missionaries further from the The missionaries had the promise Withdraw truth than to imagof all China as a portion, and yet, from Japan? ine, because there after trying to edge themselves in for'thirty-five years since Morrison are so many difficame, they were allowed only an old cultie5 in propagating Christianity out-of-the-way lodging in a dirty in Japan by foreigners, suggesting laRe in Canton, and had to dodge
the importance of a large employ- Commons) and the Speaker are ment of well-trained native helpers, that therefore the foreign Christians; one of them was chosen missionaries ought gradually to withdraw. In the present state of by a majority of 5 to 1, and reprethings the missionaries ought not to be recalled, but to be increased, as sents a strongly Buddhist district. has been rightly recognized, especially by American millsionary cir- The Christians are likewise repre-. cles. For a long time to come-for a century, aji least-foreign mission- sented in the navy, where the two aries are indispensable for Japan. It is their business to watch intel- chief men-of-war have Christian ligently over sound doctrine, to see to it that Christianity shall not be captains. Of the great Tokyo too deeply Japanized; that especially it shall not suffer by inter- journals, three are in the hands of mixture with ancestor and emperor worship; that it shall not, Christians as managing editors. through Buddhist influences, acquire a pantheistic imprint, or, The most important Df asylums through Confucian influences, suffer infringement of its purely relig- of various kinds are controlled ious or supernatural character. They must, moreover, for long by Christian directors. – Evange· years to come, remain to give the example of a genuine and holy lisches Mission Magazine. t Christian life in a land where most of the Buddhist priests, even up to The Forward Two years ago there the highest prelates, live in oP!ln Movement was an advance concubinage; where marriage is so in Japan movement, which easily dissoluble; where women is gave promise of still so lightly esteemed; and, finally, they are still indispensable for large results and also new courage the training of the native preachers, to Christian workers in various not only in theology and philoso- parts of the country. The final inphy, but also by giving them an gathering has not been what was example of zealous practical mis- anticipated, and it is a matter of sionary labor.-PAsTOR SCHILLER, much thought and interest why in Zeitschrift fur Missionskunde. more fruit is not manifest. One reason is that many of the inquir- 1" ers had a wrong conception of the Eminent The Christian com- nature of Christianity. While Christians munity in Japan they were quite willing to accept in Japan has already fur- the teachings of Christ intellectu- ally, they were not {'eady to be- nished a Cabinet come as little children and open Minister, two Judges of the Court their hearts to the Divine Spirit to of Correction, two Speakers of the be their sanctifier and guide. Others Lower House, and two or three As- were ready and willing to humbly sistant Secretaries, as well as a follow Christ if only there had been series of members of the adminis- the proper persons to instruct them trative courts, Judges of the Court and help in the new way. of Appeals, etc. In the present Parliament, 13 members (of the It has thus been demonstrated that there is an imperative need in Japan of persons who are fitted to care for inquirers, and direct them in the right course. The Chritltian Church needs not only to be plant- ed, but to be trained and nourished. Efforts are being made in some places to prepare Christian workers who will be able to give the de- sired help. With a supply of efficient leaders, the gathering of converts will be speedy and large.
REV. H. LOOMIS.
GENERAL MISSIONARY
A Conference Unless war between be pursued indefinitely, as the of Missionaries Japan and Russia region is absolutely unoccupied.
in Korea interferes to pre- It is understood that the country vent, there is to be becomes more healthy as one goes a week's conference of missionaries farther inward. The Lutheran in Korea next September (18– movement has the sympathy of 25) to commemorate the begin- the Liberian government, which ning of Protestant missions in will make an annual grant of $50 Korea. In 1884 Dr. H. N. Allen to each new school established.
(now United States Minister) en- The Loss of Not many months tered the land from China, and by a Mission ago, at great cost, his medical skill made a way for Steamer the Presbyterian the foreign teacher of the new doc- Church, Sou t h, trine. The general committee having the conference in charge is now placed the steamer Samuel N. actively engaged in pushing for- Lapsley upon the Upper Kongo for ward the plans for a gathering that the use of the flourishing Luebo shall be helpful both to Korea and mission, and now comes the sad to the wide world of missions. The news that it has capsized, that Mr. conference looks to a gathering not Slaymaker and 23 of the crew were only of all the mission force in drowned, and that Mr. Martin and Korea and many from near-by Mr. Vass had been saved. Of the lands, -but notable speakers and details nothing is known as yet.
workers from abroad have been in- Spirit Rev. W. H. Sand- vited to attend and take pa.rt. His- Worship in ers of Kamundontorical papers are to be presented, West Africa go, writes in the showing the growth of God's King- Missionary Herald: .
dom in Korea, and questions of To the thought of the _Ovimpractical import are to be discussed. The study of God's Word and the bundu, as to ours, the spirits of the culture of the spiritual life are also departed are alive. They, howto receive large attention. Among ewr, think of no supreme power those who have already promised attendance are John R. Mott, Dr. restraining them from participa- J. Ross Stevenson, Dr. Hunter tion in men's affairs. While dimly Corbett, Dr. Sheffield, of Peking, and Albertus Pieters, of Japan. * conscious of such a power, they conceive of Him as far off and in- AFRICA different. They strongly believe Pushing in The Lutheran Gen- that the daily affairs of mankind fromJhe eral Synod's mis- are influenced and shaped by West Coast sion at.Muhlenberg, spirits, and that these are persons West Africa, has who have lived on earth, known at length made an opening into the interior, having completed the them, and are toward themfriendlr arrangement for a school 65 miles or unfriendly. The spirit's attIdistant by paths. It is proposed tude is not supposed to be deterto place a succession of new missionaries at Muhlenberg, to remain mined by disinterested benevothere a year and become acclimated lence. The native line of thought and acquainted with the field, and then go further inland and estab- seems to be this: "Death comes lish new stations. This plan is to not by chance. Apart from the doings· of the living, only a spirit initiates the chain of events result.
ing in death. Disease, accident, madness, or wild beast are but the agencies used by it in accomplish- ing its purpose. It acts because offended. Some just claim is un- settled. Perhaps its will is un- known or ignored. Trouble will not cease until the spirit be satis- fied." Such a spirit, with just claims unmet, is an ocWulu" It
will surely cause trouble or death. cided that the disease is scattered After a long time, when relatives, by a fly called kivu. but no anti- dote has as yet been discovered. or whoever are responsible, have Another commission is said to be given in its rightful dues. it changes in prospect to see what can be done to prevent the spread of this alarmto one of a benevolent disposition. ing plague. Segregation seems im- It is then an ekisi. The akisi are possible, and no relief is in sight. guardians of the community. The The first symptoms of the presence of the disease is headache, with important ones, spirits of chiefs, swelling of the glands of the neck, will seek the welfare of all terri- followed by protracted sleeping on tory over which they ruled. the part of the patient. It runs its course in from six weeks to two England's The report of the years.
Gift to Uganda Railway ISLANDS OF THE SEA Uganda Committee for Modem Manila, in many Manila respects, has a 1902–3 has been is- growing attraction sued, and shows that the earth- for Americans. In it are being worked out a number of interesting works of the line are nearly fin- experiments in trade, government. finance, and education. It is reished, that 27 large viaducts wen sponq.ing in an encouraging degree to American ideas. It is a seat of erected during the year, and that power and influence in all that pertains to our distant possessions. all the bridges and culverts' for a But to Christians its moral and religious improvement is of first distance of 948 miles have been concern, and it is cheering to note progress in this direction. Favorcompleted. The station buildings able reports reach us of religious activity and revival. Before our throughout the line are all finished. government came into control, Roman Catholicism was the sole There are 43 stations, including' religion recognized, and the priest- hood ruled with a high hand and Mombasa, the terminus at the great intolerance. Now a differ- ent state of things is observable, coast; Port Florence, the terminus and it looks al3 if Protestantism would in no very distant day be on the lake; the headquarters, and the dominating force. According to the Madrid El Christiano, there 4 engine-changing s tat ion s. are now 17 Protestant chap3ls in the city and the suburbs against Twenty-two small and worn-out 22 Roman Catholic churches. This locomotives have been retired, and paper also concedes that, from 18 new ones, built in part in the present appearances, the Romish organization will, likely, before United States, have been fitted very long, be' in the minority. We are also assured by it that with automatic brakes. All the Protestant worship is being held passenger coaches and a portion of the freight cars are also supplied with the same brakes.-Zion's Herald.
The Deadly Notwithstanding all Sleeping efforts on the part Sickness of the British au- thorities, there is no abatement in the ravages of the •• sleeping sickness" in Uganda. The disease appeared in Uganda between two and three years ago, probably coming from the Kongo region. It prevails on the islands and shores of Lake Victoria, and inland from these shores fol' a dista.nce of a dozen miles. From the lint outbn!ak no less than 68,000 persons have died, some 10,000 of them within the past five months. A commission sent from England, headed by Colonel Bruce. has de-
GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE
in private dwellings as well as in hammedans, and 533 heathen. It the largest theaters, in which the attendance at times has been as may be affirmed with confidence high as 3,000. that the Christians increase more Death of Rev. R. Wardlaw a Native Thompson reports rapidly than the adherents of the Evangelist the death of Rua- other religions. t toka, who was one of the first band of Hervey Island What the In his address as (Cook Island) native teachers to go to New Guinea for pioneer work in Twentieth chairman of the 1872, and of whom the Rev. R. Lovett, in his history of the London Century May C ongr e ga tional Missionary Society says: "No reader of Mr. Chalmers's thrilling Behold Union of England books needs to be reminded of Ruatoka's wonderful career. No and Wales, Dr. higher praise can be afforded him than that he is probably the noblest Robert F. Horton said: of the long succession of Eastern Polynesian teach«:trs who have done It is calculated that the sporadic such grand service for New efforts of the eighteenth century Guinea." Mr. Thompson said that produced 70,000 converts. War- Ruatoka had maintained an un- neck estimates that as a result of blemished reputation all through the nineteenth century there are his missionary career, and had 11,000,000 Christians won from been held in honor by all the mis- heathendom. If we may work out sion. His death meant the removal it proportion: as 70,000 is to 11,000,- of a great landmark from the mis- 000, so is 11,000,000 to 1,650,000,000; sion. After Mr. Ohalmers was that is the probable population of murdered, one of the first offers the globe in the year 2000 A.D. Yes, received was from Ruatoka- to go all the kingdoms of the earth made and see the people who had killed the kingdom of the Lord and of Tamate and Tomkins and try to His Christ. That is assuredly His do some work in their place. design. In a little island of the Southern Seas there is the grave of MISCELLANEOUS a missionary, and an epitaph: " When he came in 1848 there was Religions of The latest statis- not a Christian; when he left in the World tics, given in the 1872 there was not a single heathen." So it will be said of this island Allgemeine M i 8- planet in the ocean of the universe sions Zeitschrijt, represent that of which was visited by the Divine the 1,544,510,000 inhabitants of the Missionary. "When He came earth, 534,940,OUO are Christians there was not a Christian in it; (Roman, Greek, Oriental, and Prot- when He left it there was not a estant); 10,860,OOC are Israelites, heathen." 175,290,000 are Mohammedans, and 823,420,000 are heathen. Of these The Ideal At the Conference last the Confucionists (if theirs may Missionary of Christian Workbe called a religion) are the most nu- ers in Brummana, merous, having fully 300, 000,000. Of every 1,000 human beings, 346 are Syria, each of the 200 delegates Ohristians; 7 Israelites; 114 Mo- was asked to write on a paper on the "three most important char- acteristics of the ideal mission- ary." The following are some of them: Sound in body and mind. Able to eat all'kinds of food. Prepared to rough it if necessary. A natural gift for languages. Bible study, heart study, language study. A student of the problems of his field. The gift of humor, in being able to laugh at yourself and begin again. Able to preach Christianity and not laugh at the superstitions of the people. Earnestness in prayer and soul winning. An overflowing, spirit·filled life.
[February Believer in the possibilities of human had learned before me, and what was the fact there, that for every nature. dollar you give away to convert the heathen abroad, God gives you Tact. courtesy. and kindness to other mis-. ten dollars' worth of purpose to deal with your heathen at home. sionaries and the people. JACOB A. RIIB. Common sense. The Best " Appeals to give to The ability to set others to work. Missionary missions in general, Interest in everyone he meets. Appeal to missionary socie- ties. 'to the cause,' A warm heart, a hard head, and a thick should be made to mature minds, skin. and made without cant or hypoc- risy. If too great emphasis is Selflessness in accepting the station as· placed upon the fact that it is 'the Lord's work' the logical Christian signed. will be tempted to say 'Then let him do it.' That is not where One who lives up to what he preaches. Christ placed the emphasis. He laid the responsibility on the Of a single purpose. Church. Missions are no more God's work than politics or trade or Baptized with the Holy Spirit. sCience or art. Missions are the work of the Church, and the Church A witness of what God has wrought in him. will be held responsible for results." The truth contained in the above Much in prayer and intercession for others. extract is frequently overlooked by the average church-member and Of unfailing faith. sometimes by the average pastor. Brethren, get into line! Get hold Holds on, tho seeing no fruit. of the rope and pull together.- Messenger and Visitor. Belief in God, that he will have all men to OBITUARY he saved.
Sure of the ultimate triumph of the gospel.
Constrained by the love of Chsist.
Perfectly surrendered to God.
Willing to efface self and exalt Christ.
A Christlike humility.
A bond-servant of Christ.
Emptied of self.
A keen ear to detect God's whisper.
Gentle to all.
Apt to teach.
An unadvertised self-denial.
A firm belief in the people, ever striving to find the angel in the rough block of marble.
A life laid down at the feet of Christ.
A Cbrislike lo"e for souls.
Sanctified common sense.
Able to understand the people and win their confidence.
All things to all men.
Patience.
'Power of living at peace with all men.
A Divine sense of proportion, putting things * Jlrst which are ilrst, How to Every once in a Rev. Dr. Stitt. The Rev. Dr. Will- Believe in while I hear some Missions one growl against of New York iam C. Stitt, Secre- foreign missions, taryof the Ameri- – because the money and the strength can Seamen's Friend Society, who put into them are needed at home. I did it myself when I did not know died in New York last month, was better, God forgive me. I know better now; and I will tell you how for years literary editor of the I found out. I became interested in a strong religious awakening in my New York Evangelist. He was own old city of Copenhagen, and I set about investigating it. It was born in Philadelphia, April 23, then that I learned what others 1833, and was a graduate of Prince- ton University. He had for some years devoted himself to the spirit- ual welfare of the Seamen, and edited the Sailors' Magazine in their interest. *
The Missionary Review of the World — June 1893
THIJ! DIVINE PATTERN OF MISSIONS
MISSIONARY REVIEW OF THE WORLD.
VOL-XVI. No.6.-0ld&rie8. JUNE. —VOL. VI. No. 6.-New &ri&.
THE DIVINE PATTERN OF MISSIONS.
BY THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF.
" Thou hast magnified Thy Word above all Thy name." Herein is God's pattern for all true work for Him.
Human life and the history of the race is a problem without a solution until we find the key to its mystery in the Word of God. Bengel's motto is the law of all success in service: "A pply thyself wholly to the Scriptures, and apply the Scriptures wholly to thyself;" and Arthur Hallam gives in one sentence an epitome of Christian experience: "I believe the Bible to be God's book because it is man's book, fitting every turn and curve of man's heart." The more it is stlldied the more its worth is seen and its charm felt. Michael Angelo's devotion to the famous Torso of Belvidere Hercules in the Vatican, sketching it from every point of view, and in the blindness of old age seeking to enjoy, through his touch, the delight no longer possible through his sight, but feebly expresses the joy of the believer in his contact with the blessed Word, in which he sees and feels the marks of a Divine Artist. Even to Ollr Lord, His Father's "Vord was in temptation His sword, in trial His solace, in teaching His guide; His credential as Messiah, His directory as Servant; it was the balm in Gethsemane's anguish, His legacy in death, His theme from His resurrection to His ascension.
No problem presents greater perplexity than that of world-wide missions; and in the attempt to solve that problem well may we reverently approach this Word, perslladed that here again we shall find written, as over the pillars of Hercules on the old Spanish dollar, " Ne pIllS ultra."
A kind of " introductory chapter" to all missionary history is found in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, which is the Gospel of Christ, as set forth by the evangelists, applied actually and historically by the coming of the Holy Spirit.
Luke, in the gospel which he wrote, told what" Jesus began," and in the Acts tells what He " continued, both to do and teach," by the Spirit, through disciples, in building up the kingdom of God. The door of faith is here opened successively to Hebrew, Roman, and Greek believers as in the order of the Gospel narratives. Pentecost links Old Testament prophecy to New Testament history. This book is the book of witness, first of man to God and secondly of God to man. It is the sequel to the Gospels, the basis of the Epistles j the Acts, not so much of the apostles as of the Holy Spirit and of the risen Redeemer in the person of the promised Paraclete. The Holy Spirit first applies the truth and the blood to penitent believers, then anoints those believers for service, and sends them forth as messengers and witnesses to preach the kingdom, to make disciples and organize disciples into churches. And the fact is full of meaning that the period of time covered by this book is about thirty-four years, about the length of our Lord's human life, or the average lifetime of one generation j as though to teach us what can be done and ought to be done in every successive generation until the end of the age. This fact, often referred to in these pages, we once more emphasize by repetition, as it deserves to be written in letters of .gold on the very banners of all true missionary enterprise.
The introduction to this book refers to that forty days of communion between the Risen Lord and His disciples whose object and result was fourfold: 1. To put beyond doubt the fact of His resurrection. 2. To give them instruction as to the kingdom of God. 3. To prepare them for His unseen guidance in their work. 4. To inspire them with the true spirit of missions.
Then follow the outlines of early church history: 1. The witnessing Church in Jerusalem (1 : I3-vii.), including the ten days of prayer, Pentecost, and the enduement for service, persecution by Pharisees and Sadducees, and the dispersion of disciples, voluntary community of goods, division of labor and the institution of the diaconate, and the first marty~dom. All missions must begin at home, as a stream at its spring; but, like the stream, is not to stay at the source and fountain, but flow forth. 2. The witnessing Church in Judea and Samaria (viii.-ix.). A new PentecoRt in Samaria under Philip the Evangelist, the sin of simony, the conversion of the eunuch, representing Ethiopia, and of Saul of Tarsus, the chosen apostle to the Gentiles. 3. The witnessing Church moving toward the Regions Beyond (x.- xxviii.). A new Pentecost among Roman Gentiles at Cresarea and among Greeks all well at Antioch, the first centre of the Gentile Church, and the starting-point of foreign missions; and Paul's three missionary tours, the book closing with Paul at Rome, the third great centre of Christianity. In the latter part of the Acts Paul is more conspicuous than Peter,because Peter went to the dispersion or scattered tribes of Israel, and the main object of the book is to trace the beginnings of missions to the Gentiles (compare Gal. 2 : 9). The Acts of the Apostles thus constitutes the one great inspired book of missions, God's own commentary and encyclopredia for all the ages as to every question pertaining to a world's evangelization. In the main it is the account of the apostolic ministry of Peter and Paul. To the former it was given to hold the mystic key which unlocked, first to Jews and then to Gentiles, the door of faith. That door being opened, Peter naturally disappears from the record, while Paul, as the specially commissioned and typical missionary to the nations, comes to the front. This is no displace- ment of Peter, whose life mission was to Jews, not Gentiles.
We must bear in mind that Luke, the declared author both of the gos- pel bearing his name and of this book, treats the two books as parts of one continuous and complete narrative. What the author thus links together we must consider as a unit. The purpose of the inspired writer is to give, in these two brief sketches, a complete outline of Gospel history from its infancy in its humble Judean cradle to its mature development as a worldwide power, tracing the seed of the kingdom from its sowing in Syrian soil to its wider scattering beside all waters, borne by the various streams of civilization to the heart of the heathen world.
From first to last the combined narrative is the story of missions. In the Gospel according to Luke we have our Lord offering the good news to the Jews, and foreseeing their continued rejection of Him, commanding and commissioning His disciples to bear the message to all nations and to every creature. Then in the Acts we trace the actual carrying out of this commission, the preaching of the Gospel to the Jews by both Peter and Paul, and its repeated rejection by them, with its subsequent and consequent proclamation to mankind at large at great centres of popUlation.
The Gospel opens with the incarnation and closes with the resurrection and ascension, linking on to the after-narrative by the promise of the en· duement of power from on high" not many days hence." Just at this point the Acts of the Apostles forges its new links, and connects with the Gospel its chain of events, beginning with the birth of the Church of Christ on the natal day of Pentecost, and abruptly closing with Paul's unfinished career as a prisoner at Rome.
We have said Cl03inrl rather than ending, for the story is plainly inconiplete, reaching no proper conclusion. The two narratives, reckoning from Christ's entrance upon His public ministry to the very close of the Acts, cover only about the average history of a generation-and no generation ever reaches completeness; it is linked on to the next-nay, interwoven with the next by many threads; and its history passes gradually and insensibly into that of its successor, as to-day into to-morrow. And so above all is it the true work of missions. It is one work, and no man can tell where the mission of one witness for God ends and that of his successor begins. Paul's preaching and teaching has not yet ceased, nor will it while the ages continue.
But in a sublimer sense the Acts of the Apostles reaches no conclusion.
THE GOSPEL IN NORTH AFRICA
When the late Bishop of Ripon had read the story of that" Apostle of the South Seas," he said, "That is the twenty-ninth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles." He was partly right and partly wrong. To that oft-quoted and striking remark History herself suggests one criticism and correction. That was not the ftr8t new chapter added in post-apostolic days, for before the time of John Williams and his apostolic mission many such additions had been made to that unfinished book, and of not a few of those new chapters there is no human memorial. They are written only by God's recording angel in Ilis own Book of Remembrance, to be opened and read in the flaming splendor of the great white throne. But it was sublimely and divinely true that the triumphant advance of that Tottenham lad, who became the great witness to Christ in the Pacific Polynesia, added another new and glorious chapter to the annals of apostolic missions.
To this leading thought we shall from time to time return in these pages, and give it further amplification. Suffice it for the present to repeat that an inspired book which supplies the key to all the intricate, complicated problems of missions should be carefully, constantly, prayerfully studied by those who would find the secrets of success. And in such study, which has occupied the writer for some two years past, he has already discovered principles so fundamental that they furnish a solid basis for the prosecution of world·wide missions. More than this, the devout student of the Acts will find here not only the history of primitive and initial missionary work, but the philosophy of missions outlined as in a text-book, and the indirect prophecy of the progress of missionary triumphs until the consummation of the age. With earnest emphasis would we commend such study to all who love the coming of Christ's kingdom.
THE GOSPEL IN NORTH AFRICA.
BY REV. JOHN RUTHERFURD, B.D., ROTHE SAY, SCOTLAND.
North Africa is mentioned in several· places in the New Testament. Christian hearts can never forget that it was Simon,· a man of Cyrene, a well-known city in North Mrica, who was honored to assist the Lord Jesus Christ when His strength was so exhausted that He could not carry the cross to Calvary; "him they compelled to bear His cross."
In the Acts of the Apostles we read that Philip, the deacon and evangelist, was the instrument of guiding to the knowledge of the truth " a man of Ethiopia, a man of great authority under Candace, Queen of the Ethiopians. " This African nobleman had come from a kingdom situated near to the modern Khartoum, where the gallant, Bible-loving General Gordon only a few years ago fell at the post of duty.
That preacher in the apostolic Church who is described as an eloquent man, mighty in the Scriptures, was a North African, Apollos of Alexandria. North Africa is mentioned again more than once in connection with st.
Paul's voyage to Rome. Such are some of the New Testament references to the Dark Continent.
The first translations of the New Testament were the Syriac and early Latin; both of them date from the second century. The early Latin version was made, not in Italy, as we would have expected, but by the Latinspeaking Christians in North Africa. Latin was their native tongue j and, taught by the Spirit, they instinctively felt that they must have the New Testament in their own lauguage. They felt as John Wycliffe did when he said that the ploughboy following the plough should have the Word of God in his own tongue. In these modern days of Bible societies and Bible distribution let it not be forgotten that the early Christians of North Africa took so noble a place among those who love and who read the Word of God.
North Africa is rich in names of great historical prominence in the early Christian Church. There is Origen, the famous preacher and writer of Alexandria j Tel'tullian, the Christian apologist and defender of the faith j Athanasius, whose life and work will be had in everlasting remembrance for the magnificent stand he was enabled to make against Arianism and in behalf of the glorious truth on which human salvation depends, of the true and eternal deity of the Lord Jesus Christ. Athanasius, it is believed, was a Copt, a native of Egypt. Cyprian, who died a martyr, was Bishop of Carthage. And there is Augustine, Bishop of Hippo-now the town of Bone, in Algeria-the defender of the doctrines of grace against Pelagianism.
The early Christian Church in North Africa furnished many a name to the roll-call of the noble army of martyrs. Take as an example the wellknown story of the two female martyrs of Carthage, Perpetua and Felicitas. These martyrs were put to death in the year 202 A.D., during a violent persecution under the Emperor Septimius Severus. Perpetua was only two-andtwenty years old. Her aged father was a heathen, and he tenderly entreated her to renounce Christianity in order to save her life. When she was about to be tried before the magistrate her father hurried to the prison and said, "Dear daughter, have pity on my gray hairs. • .• Look at thy brothers, thy mother, and thy aunt j thy son, too"-an infant at the breast, whom to nourish in prison was her greatest solace-" who when thou diest cannot long survive. Lay aside that high spirit, and do not plunge us all in ruin." With these word$ the old man threw himself weeping at his daughter's feet. When she was brought before the judge, suddenly her father entered, carrying the infant in his arms, and looking at her imploringly, said, "Have pity on the child." The' judge, too, urged her in a similar manner, but in vain. Perpetua and her companions -three youths and Felicitas-were condemned to be thrown to the wild beaRts. Shortly before the public spectacle her father came again and made a last appeal to his daughter, threw himself on the ground and uttered " words which must move any creature. " Deeply affected and filled with pain, she nevertheless remained true to Christ. The sentence was accordingly carried out, and the martyrs were thrown to the wild beasts. When Perpetua had been wounded she called to her brother and to a Christian catechumen and said to them, "Stand fast in the faith, and love one another, and indulge in no feelings of animosity on account of our sufferings." Such i~ a sample of Christian martyrdom in North Africa.
In the time of the Valerian persecution there were again martyrs in Numidia. During a severe imprisonment, in which they endured much suffering from hunger and thirst, they wrote as follows: "The dark prison soon shone with the illumination of the Holy Spirit j we ascend to the place of punishment as if we were ascending to heaven. We cannot describe what days and nights we have spent there. Weare not afraid to describe the horrors of that place, for the greater the trial, much greater must be He who has overcome it in us. And, indeed, it is not our conflict, for by the help of the Lord we have gained the victory j for to be put to death is easy for the servants of God, and death is nothing, because the Lord has taken away its sting and power. He triumphed over it on the cross. " Such is the heroism of the North African Christians in those early days.
How, then, did it come about that North Africa, a series of countries in which the Gospel light shone so long and so brightly, presents now the spectacle that it does ~ How was Christianity banished from those shores on which it had taken so firm a hold ~ Two causes brought it about: (1) The love of the churches waxed cold j (2) God punished those churches by removing their candlestick out of its place by means of the Mohammedan invasions in the seventh century.
The churches forgot their early devotion to Christ, as well as the mutual love and good feeling which they had once so signally shown. Their attention became occupied with questions of ritual and of rivalry, and of the rights of episcopal ordination. And to such a length did this spirit of divi. sion and hatred proceed that there were actually to be seen Christians opposing one another on the field of battle-Christians with carnal weapons adjusting their theological differences at the point of the sword. When churches sink so low as this, we need not wonder that God sends judgment.
Divine retribution came-came in the shape of the scourge of Mohammedanism. In the year 622 A.D. there took place Mohammed's He~ira or flight from Mecca, the era from which Mohammedans date their years as the Christian era runs from the birth of Christ. Almost immediately after the death of Mohammed the conquering armies led by his successors ex· tended their conquests from Arabia through Egypt along the entire coast of the African continent as far as the modern kingdom of Morocco. Rome, republican and Imperial, had scarcely effected the conquest of those king. doms in some centuries j but Sidi Okba, the famous Mohammedan con· queror, in 679 A.D. and a few years following overthrew all the Christian kingdoms lying between Egypt and Tangiers. Arrived at the Atlantic Ocean, he spurred his horse into the sea, and declared that it was only the barrier of the ocean that prevented him from compelling every nation be- yond it that knew not God to worship Him or die. The Berber tribesfrom whom these North African countries afterward received the common designation of the Barbary States-made some brave but ineffectual at. tempts to resist the Mohammedan invaders; they were forced to submit, and their enfeebled Christianity was not proof against the stern compulsion with which the Arab warriors forced all whom they defeated to adopt the Mohammedan religion.
It is a most interesting fact, and one which forms a very loud eall to the Church of Christ to send the Gospel onee more to North Africa, that there exist to the present day among those Berber or Kabyle tribes various customs which have come down to them through twelve long centuries of Mohammedanism, and which speak of the time when they were a Christian people. For exam pIe, the Kabyle women refuse to wear the veil over. the face, a custom which is universal among the Arab women. It is also said that certain of these Kabyle tribes, although they are Mohammedans, never· theless observe their weekly Sabbath not on the Mohammedan Sabbath, on Friday, but on the Christian Sunday or Lord's Day. The mark of a cross is tattooed on the forehead of many of the boys and men at Biskra, as well as in other places. One such Mohammedan in the town of Setif, who spoke a little English, being asked what was the meaning of the cross on his forehead, answered in the one word" Jesus." Miss Seguin, in her most interesting book, " Walks in Algiers," asserts that the Kabyle women are in the habit of tattooing the form of the Christian cross on their fore. head. Sir Lambert Playfair, consul in Algiers for England, writes regarding the Kabyles of the Aures Mountains, which lie immediately to the n.orth of the Sahara : "Their language is full of Latin words, and in their daily life they retain customs undoubtedly derived from their Christian ancestors. They observe December 25th as a feast under the name of Moolid (the birth), and keep three days festival both at springtime and harvest. They use the solar instpad of the Mohammedan lunar year, and the names of the months are the same as our own."
These customs are relics of a time when the Christian religion permeated the life of the North African peoples. Surely a brighter day has at length begun to dawn, when the croSEl of Christ will not be written in ritualistic fashion on their foreheads, but shall become the inspiration of their hearts. How great will be the change from the miseries of Mohammedanism to the freedom and joy of Christ's salvation!
The history of the centuries which lie between the era of the Mohammedan conquest and the present time is one of stagnation so far as any advancement is concerned, and of continual cruelty and oppression exercised by the Turks upon all the unhappy people over whom they domineered. While the countries of Europe, on the northern shores of the Meditermnean, were advancing in liberty, in civilization, in education, in the knowl~ edge of science, and in the application of Christianity to life in all its phases, so that the Christian religion has virtually created our modern Protestant kingdoms with their world-wide influence during all those twelve hundred years from the seventh century to the present time, the countries lying to the south of the Mediterranean, though more favored by nature than the others, began and continued that downward and retrograde course which Islam invariably brings. Those who have seen the social working of Mohammedanism are compelled to testify that everywhere it has degraded woman and blighted the home. The testimony of Stanley Lane Poole, who often writes favorably of Mohammedanism, is: "As a social system Islam is a complete failure. By degrading woman it has degraded each successive generation of their children down an increasing scale of infamy and corruption, until it seems almost impossible to reach a lower level of vice." When this indictment can be brought and proved against any system, the sooner that system is swept out of existence the better for the world.
The state of religion in Algeria is quite unique. There are no fewer than four established or State-paid forms of worship-namely, the Roman Catholic, the Protestant, the Jewish, and the Mohammedan. Surely such a state of things stands self-condemned. The Gospel is not advanced by such methods-non tali auxilio, nee defensoribus isti8. The religion of the Lord Jesus Christ needs no such props. Its own inherent strength is the strength of God; and in that divine strength it pulls down all the strongholds of sin and ignorance, of wicked social customs and vice. It is mighty in itself, and needs no such State alliance as is found in Algiers.
In the museum in Algiers there is the plaster cast of an Arab named Geronimo, and his history is a very interesting one. In the year 1569 Geronimo, who had become a professing Christian, was taken prisoner along with some Spaniards; the whole party were carried to Algiers. Strong efforts were made to induce Geronimo to return to Mohammedanism, but in vain. He was accordingly condemned to death, and sentenced to be thrown alive into a mould in which a block of concrete was about to be made. After they had tied his feet and hands with cords they laid him, face downward, into the concrete, and covered up the living man with more of that material. The block was built into the wall of a fort then in course of erection. After the French took possession of Algiers, in 1830, many of the houses were pulled down, and among other buildings this fort was demolished. In course of the process of demolition the skeleton of Geronimo was found in one of the blocks of concrete. The bones were carefully removed and re-interred. Liquid plaster of Paris was run into the mould left by his body. In this way a perfect model of it was obtained, showing not only the general shape of the ,body, but even his features. His hands are seen tied behind his back; the cord which binds the hands is there too, and even the texture of his clothing may be made out. Popery in Algiers may be seen in many of its peculiar forms. For example, over a doorway in one of the public streets there is a sign-board with the following inscription in French: "0 Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee." One of the churches is called N6tre Dame d' Afrique. It is situated on one of the spurs of the hill of Bourzarea, overlooking the sea. Above the altar is a statue of the Virgin Mary represented as a black woman, and there is this inscription, also in French: "Our Lady of Africa, pray for us and for the Mussulmans." At Biskra, in the Sahara Desert, there is a large new establishment erected by Cardinal Lavigerie for his soldier monks, lea freres du delert. On the whitewashed walls there is the inscription that the building has been erected in honor of the immaculate Virgin. But it is not by these Romish pretensions that the weary and heavy-laden tribes of Africa will be won for Christ.
How strange is the way in which North Africa has been overlooked by the churches! So recently as 1880 there were only three missionaries at work between Egypt and the Atlantic. Why is it that North Africa has been thus overlooked by the churches of Britain and North America ~ No satisfactory reason can be given. Steamships carrying the commerce of the world sail in sight of those African shores en route for India and China and Australia. Missionaries going to and returning from their spheres of labor have passed along that coast for half a century, yet almost nothing was done, almost nothing was even attempted until some twelve years ago. There is not even the excuse that can be alleged in regard to Central Africa, that we did not know of the existence either of the country or of its inhabitants, for we possessed very accurate knowledge indeed regarding the Barbary States. The different countries of Europe and even the United States of America had made political treaties with the Deys of Algiers long before the coming of the French. In 1816 the British fleet under Lord Exmouth bombarded Algiers, and the Dey was forced to sign a treaty by which Christian slavery-i.e., the enslaving of the subjects of Christian countrieswas brought to an end. Even the thirty-two gun frigate George Washington, of the United States of America, was requisitioned by the Dey to carry his tribute to the Sultan at Constantinople! It was not because nothing was known of North Africa that it has been so strangely overlooked.
Even for many years after .the coming of the French in 1830 no attempt was made to bring the Gospel to the Arabs j but those times of great and culpable neglect are passing away. A beginning of gospel missions has been made. The providence of God has given a wide door of entrance. The country is everywhere open. Communication is cheap and easy. There are railways running both east and west from Algiers, as far west as the large city of Oran, in which there is no missionary to the natives, or as far east as Constantine and Tunis, and reaching even the Sahara Desert on the south. The railway system is being still further extended. The Atlas Mountains are being pierced with tunnels for the locomotive. A railway in the Sahara makes one think of Isaiah's words, and or a fulfilment of them that the prophet little thought of: "Make straight in the desert a highway for our God"-a highway along which no slave traffic shall be carried, a highway to bring salvation ana joy to the unhappy homes of the Moslems.
There is far more openness and readiness among the Arabs and Kabyles to receive the Gospel than is commonly supposed. There is not that hermetical sealing of the mind which may have existed once. The homes of the Arab women are freely opened to the visits of their English-speaking sisters; and the loving touch of a Christian woman and the kindly presentation of the Gospel are made welcome. Though the ignorance is great and the adversaries are many, yet God has set before us an open door, and not all the power of the adversaries of the truth is able to shut it. It is the duty and the privilege of Christians to enter in and to win Africa for Christ.
Morocco, Algeria, Tunis, Tripoli, and the great unexplored Sahara, stretching from Egypt to the Atlantic, from the Mediterranean to the Niger and the Congo-these countries, with their many millions now under the sway of the false prophet, are gasping for the Gospel, and the promise of God is sure; for it is written, " All the flocks of Kedar shall be gathered together unto thee, the rams of Nebaioth shall minister unto thee" (Isa. 60 : 7). The Scripture cannot be broken, and those wandering tribes, the descendants of Ishmael, shall certainly yield themselves unto Christ. Well may Christian hearts use Abraham's prayer as we cry to God for the salvation of the Arabs, " Oh, that Ishmael might live before Thee!" Prayer an'd effort wiII win the day. The sore need of the sons and daughters of the Dark Continent, neglected as they have been for the last twelve hundred years and more, makes us think of the famous sermon by William Carey, with its two divisions: "Expect grcat things from God; Attempt great things for God."
Protestant mission work in Algiers is carried on by various agencies, and with them all it is still the day of small things, but not to be spoken of lightly. The British and Foreign Bible Society have had a depot in Algiers for eleven years, and in that period have sold over fifty thousand copies of the Bible in whole or in portions. The North Africa Mission has a receiving home at No. 72 Rue Rovigo, presided over by a devoted Christian lady, Mrs. Lambert, who acts a mother's part to the young ladies of the mission, who live with her during the one or two years of their residence in Algiers. They occupy their time chiefly in learning French and Arabic, and when they attain some proficiency in speaking these languages they are drafted off to the towns in the interior in which they are to be located.
Much good is heing done by the Algerian branch of the McAll Mission in its various departments. During the winter of 1891-92 a new salle was opened in which to conduct meetings for the French soldiers; it is situated in the Place de la PrMecture. The soldiers come willingly to the meetings, which are very enthusiastic. There are four Sunday-schools held in connection with the McAIl mission, and in these schools some two hundred Algerian children are under biblical instruction. Some of the Sunday-schools are held not on Sunday, but on Thursday, the afternoon on which the children attending the ordinary week-daJT schools have a half holiday. These Sunday-schools are held, one in the Rue Tanger, attended by Jewish children; one in Rue Michelet, attended by Protestants and Roman Catholics; one in the Bab-el.oued, attended by Spaniards and Jews; and the fourth in the Place de la Prefecture, in which the children are a strange medley-Arabs, Spaniards, Maltese, and Jews.
M. Gonzalez carries on mission work among the Spaniards, of whom there is quite a considerable number in Algiers. This work among the Algerian Spaniards is entirely supported by a lady in England, an example worthy to be imitated surely. Dr. Nystrom is a devotQd missionary from Sweden, and works among the Arabs and Kabyles in Algiers. Miss Trotter and the missionary ladies who live in her house carryon much interesting work among the Arab women, whom they visit in their own homes, thus doing work which can be accomplished in no other way, for no man is allowed to enter the houses of the Arab women.
It is said that not even one Arab woman in Algiers is able to read. Hence the Gospel must be spoken to them. Books and even Bibles are of no use at all. But the doors of those Arab houses are wide open for the entrance of Christian ladies, who thus find an unlimited field of usefulness. The leaves of the tree of life are for the healing of the nations, and there~ fore for the healing of the sad lives of the Arab women.
In June of last year, 1892, an attempt was made by the French Government to expel the missionaries of the North African mission from Algeria. M. Waddington's letter to Lord Salisbury ends in these terms: "We hope that the English missionary societies will themselves take the initiative in recalling their missionaries, and save us from the painful necessity in which we should otherwise be placed of having to order them to take their departure from our territory." It is believed that this was intended as a set-off or counter-movement to the position which the French Roman Catholic missionaries were then occupying in Uganda. The political troubles in which those missionaries had involved themselves in that part of Central Africa, and the opposition which they had uniformly shown to the work of Mackay and the other missionaries of the Church Missionary Society at Uganda, had so discredited them in England that the French Government seemed to think that, as the champions of the Roman Catholic mission, they would institute a policy of expelling all Protestant missionaries from French territory in North Africa. The absurd charges of supplying the natives with guns and ammunition and of teaching them to be disloyal to the French were fabricated against the missionaries of the Norlh Africa Mission, most of whom are ladies. There was not a word of trnth in these charges; but any stick is good enough to thrash a dog, and any charge, however untrue, would do to raise odium against those brave men and women who are doing Christ's work among the Arabs. The secretary of that mission wrote, in the end of June, " We do not yet know how things will go, but the outlook is dark. Still God is above all, and kings and governments are subservient to His mighty will." And the cloud passed away; after a month or two the French Government decided that it would permit the missionaries to remain if they would submit to the French laws, which of course they had always done.
During all that summer of perplexity the missionaries were greatly upheld and cheered by the manifest signs and tokens of God's presence and approval of their work-conversions and baptisms taking place just at the time when it was not known if they would be allowed to remain in Algeria for another day.
North Africa is not far from England. Morocco is only four or five days distant by sea. The journey from London through France occupies less than three days.
Many parts of North Africa are very beautiful. Much of the mountain scenery is exceedingly grand. Across the Bay of Algiers, but at the distance of some fifty miles, there rises the Djurdjura range of the Atlas. While Algiers is basking in the sunshine, and while orange and lemon trees are loaded with their ripe golden fruit, and the almond tree is strewing the paths with its pure white blo;;som, the peaks of Djurdjura, 7500 feet above the sea level, are gleaming white with the deep snow. Grand Kabylia lies around those rugged mountains.
Algeria, including the slopes of the "Atlas, has a fertile soil. It produces freely abundance of corn, while the vine, the orange, the fig, the olive, and the date palm flourish and afford a constant supply of wholesome food.
Morocco is still an independent State under a sultan of its own. The population is estimated at five to eight millions.
Algeria and Tunis belong to France. There are very good roads-the French really excel in road-making. The railways have already been mentioned. The population is perhaps six millions.
Tripoli is a province of the Turkish Empire. The people number, it is thought, about a million and a quarter.
The vast Sahara is practically unexplored; no herald of the cross has yet penetrated its recesses to tell the children of Ishmael, those wandering dwellers in tents, of God's great love to the world.
" Arabia's desert ranger To Him shall bow the knee ; The Ethiopian stranger His glory come to see."
Even so is it written in the Scriptures of truth. We can therefore come to the Throne of Grace in prayer for the Arabs; we can give the needful money-support to those who have entered on this most difficult work among the Mohammedans; we can pray the Lord of the harvest that He will thrust forth more laborers into His harvest.
RELIGIOUS CONDITION OF THE NEGRO IN THE UNITED STATES
THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CONDITION OF THE NEGRO IN THE UNITED STATES.
BY REV. A. F. BEARD, D.D., CORRESPONDING SECRETARY OF THE AMERICA}T MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION.
The present condition of the negro people is a part of their past nis· tory. To-day is the child of yesterday. The heirs of two hundred years of slavery, following uncounted centuries of African heathenism, were four millions in number twenty-seven years ago.
At the close of a desolating civil war they were suddenly freed from bondage. Unable to read, they were ignorant of the world in which they lived. As a class they had no intelligent knowledge of the Scriptures.. A few of the more highly favored in Christian families had by t.heir contact come into the possession of certain truths of Christianity, which nevertheless they held in darkened minds. For the most part, the truths which had been told them, ·and which in some degree they had received, were mingled with the grossest superstitions and held without regard to the verities of the Ten Commandments. The overwhelming majority' of the negro population, however, had no such privileges as these, They were in the rural districts as now. The few negroes who lived in cities and who could hope to get some worthy ideas of Christian truth were too few to be counted in the general condition.
The negro preachers-so called-were parrots. They repeated after a fashion what they thought they had heard as they had remembered it. Integrity and purity were not considered. Stealing, lying, and licentiousness were no hindrances to good and regular standing in their religious fellowship. Of chastity they did not know the meaning.
There was not enough of true Christianity to expel the African heathenism which those who were stolen from the jungle had brought with them. Transplanting did not change the tree, nor the mere succession of years its bitter fruit. Their whole life was pervaded by the belief in, and embittered by the terror of, sorcery. Voodooism and fetichism were common. Their intellectual faculties were obtuse and circumscribed beyond a few local associations ; their childish ideas werp rich soil for every variety of superstition.
Among the negroes it is true in towns and cities, and especially among house servants, there were exceptions, and of the more highly favored many were earnest and sincere, as well as fervent Christians. At the same time, speaking of the many and not of the few, practical heathenism was" on every plantation, in every hamlet, among the sands of the Atlantic coast, in the forests of the Carolinas; all through the black belt of Alabama and Mississippi, in swamps of Louisiana, and the bottoms of Arkansas and Tennessee." Slavery gave the African heathen a nominal Christianity, but it did not expel paganism. It did not add to faith, virtue, and to virtue, knowledge.
In the providence of God, twenty-seven years ago this lawful degradation of man came to an end. This is a short time in the history of a race. I have known people under most advantageous conditions to live twentyseven years without having accomplished much in life. Twenty-seven years are both swift and short for a people to emerge from the bogs of servitude, in low-down life, in absolute poverty of estate of body, mind,. and soul, to acquire true ideas of what Christianity really is, to get away from the inheritances of heathenism, to overcome habits of thought and conduct which had entrenched themselves so as to be ingrained and a part of their natures.
The four millions of people have now become more than seven millions. What has been accomplished?
It may be right first of all to observe what has not been accomplished. There is a great residuum of the race which has accomplished nothing. Millions still remain in darkness, whose common lot is poverty, whose intellectual and moral condition is but little if any better than it was in slavery. When left to himseI£ and his old-time surroundings the negro is not improving. The degradation and misery among those as yet unsaved are appalling. 'I'his is so evident that the superficial observer who forgets that the present is deeply rooted in history, and who speaks from a present impression made by seeing the multitudes of ragged, shiftless, thriftless, ' idJe negroes who crowd into towns and cities, will not hesitate to say that the former times were better than these, and that the negro of to-day has in many ways degenerated from the negro of slavery. In some part it is true that his progress is retrogression, and that his last state is worse than his first. In towns and cities saloons prosper through negro patronage. The evil is incalculable. In slavery days there was a law and a lash for black drinkers. Now a thousand dollars are spent by them in drinking and drunkenness where one was before emancipation. In the rural communities, also, in many places the degradation could scarcely have been worse in slavery days, and idleness, which was not then possible, is now so common as to become destructive to the negro and a public peril. Slavery never taught self-care nor promoted forethought, and a more thoughtless and improvident creature than the negro who has been left to himself lives nowhere short of absolute heathenism. The blacks who cannot read to-day are in excess of the original four millions when they were set free. Their churches-so called-which existed before the war can be but little better than they then were. The old-time negro religion, which one could hold without virtue or morality, has not ceased to be. That which so easily fitted in with the generations of slave life continues with the untaught generations. There are millions to-day in density of ignorance, in depths of superstition, poor, thoughtless, mentally and morally weak. It was immediately realized by those who felt called to tnis missionary work, that a Christian faith could make no real gain among this people by merely proclaiming to them that Jesus Christ is the Saviour of the world, and that now God commanded them to repent. It is not possible to save a vacuum. People with vacant minds cannot honor Christ. Curses brood in the darkness. In ignorance virtue withers. Righteousness needs knowledge. Hence, first of all, missionary schools were established by Northern Christian churches of different communions. From these have gone teachers into elementary schools, until now two and a quarter millions of ignorant people have already learned to read and to write. Many thousands have taken a generous education. A few have risen, and are leaders to higher and larger life. There are now one hundred and fifty schools for the training of colored teachers. Sixteen thousand negro teachers are uplifting their people. Twenty-five thousand five hundred and thirty schools are to-day teaching a million and a quarter of pupils, and a large proportion of these are Christian schools. They are Christianizing agencies.
It has been missionary work from the beginning until now, and as necessarily educational in its forms as if it were in Africa. One illustra. tion may stand for many. A church was organized and a school by the side of it in Georgia, in an isolated rural community composed almost wholly of black people. The old-time negroes, untaught and untrained, were ready to accept Jesus Christ as their Saviour, and in large numbers were received into the church. In the course of time the church was left for some months pastorless. During this period a wandering and crazed man, who imagined himself to be the Messiah in His second coming, came that way. Ready with the Scriptures and fluent in speech, his earnestness and assertion soon won to himself great numbers of these professing Christians among the negroes, whose emotions became inflamed and whose imaginations ran away with what sense they had. The most frantic performances took the plaee of their former worship. They acknowledged this crazy wanderer to be their Lord, and rendered him the most absolute worship and servile obedience. Their fields went to weeds and they to starvation until the county authorities arrested this state of things by arresting their supposed Messiah. None of those who had been in the schools fell into this great folly. It was again an evidence that those who will hear the Gospel truly must be able to think and understand.
Most of what has been accomplished has been chiefly organized and sustained by the Christianity of the North. The black churches number at the present time not less than fifteen thousand. The Baptist and Methodist communicants together are two and a third millions. Perhaps there are a thousand ministers who by training and character may be fitted for these fifteen thousand churches. What shall we say to the fourteen thousand churches which remain? A friend testifies, " I have witnessed scenes in the black churches of Baltimore that ought to have been possible only in the heart of Africa." Those who arc acquainted with the South know that this experience is rather the rule than the exception.
At the same time the influence of these Christian schools upon the religious condition of the negro people is immeasurable. The children are being taught what Christianity is. Purer churches are organized. Old. time churches are being leavened. Intelligent preachers are displacing the ignorant and boisterous and superstitious caricatures of ministers. The Gospel is being increasingly proclaimed by ministers whose minds have been somewhat enlarged by the discipline of the schools, expanded by a knowledge of the world's life and thought, and made capable of an intelli- gent apprehension of the significance of the ministry of Christ. Theologi- cal seminaries and Bible schools for the negro have been planted. The churches which refuse to tolerate a preaching that insiRts on purity and integrity as vital tests of piety are gradually but surely growing less in number. The churches which demand morality and will not accommodate themselves either to pagan practices or pagan superstitions are increasing yearly both in numbers and in strength. Their religious papers and maga- zines are worthy of great respect. Christian teachers and preachers are filling positi~ns of great responsibility.
It has been a hard battle in unsympathetic surroundings with long entrenched ignorance and evil inheritances j but after we have taken account of the forces of sin we may magnify our hopes.
The race as a race, above its heredity and hindrances, has been and is growing in self-hood, and there is a steady and an appreciable gain that is full of encouragement.
Twenty-seven years ago, for example, this people had no homes. There is all the difference in the world between a negro cabin in which the slaves herded without legal marriage, without any family name or family permanence, and a true Christian home.' Christianity has not many surer evidences of its divinity nor many better products of its power than the refined Christian home, with its saving and ennobling Christian influences.
The progress of a true Christian faith among the negroes may be seen in the wonderful evolution of worthy and refined Christian homes. They are not abodes of wealth, though some are j but it is simply wonderful to see what new homes with new meanings have been made in a quarter of a century by those who have been brought into the light.
In this consideration one thing is to be remembered. This degradation. and evil is not a question of race. Blindness and sin are not peculiar to the negro. All peoples who remain in darkness do the deeds of darkness. Under the shadows of the cathedrals of ancient Italy there cluster thousands of miserable people without hope in the world. Brilliant Paris has its city of low-down people within its city, and Paris was founded two thousand years ago. England has her " bitter cry" of tens of thousands who cannot read, and who live in degradation equal to that of the negro in the United States. The foremost peoples of the earth have with them great multitudes in pitiable life. The great residuum of negro ignorance, sin, and misery is but another illustration that unsaved souls everywhere need to be saved, and that only the Gospel of Christ is the power of God unto salvation. The religious progress of the negro in twenty-seven years shows what can be done. The religious condition of millions shows what ought to be done.
THE RELATION OF MISSIONARIES TO THEtR GOVERNMENTS
THE RELATION OF MISSIONARIES, TEACHERS, AND COL- LEGE PROFESSORS IN FOREIGN LANDS TO THEIR GOV- ERNMENTS.
BY REV. CYRUS HAMLIN, D.D., LEXINGTON, MASS.
It has been a principle of action rather than of statute that the foreign missionary must take his chance, and must expect little aid when in diffi- cultyand danger from his government. This, however, is peculiarly an American view. No one of the great governments of Europe, Catholic or Protestant, ever asserts it or acts upon it.
It is an unsafe principle, and should be made un-American. Mis- sionaries are scattered all over the heathen and Mohammedan world, and whatever treatment from our Government is accorded to them will be reo garded as the measure of its protection to others. If the house of a mis- sionary is assaulted, his windows broken, or if he is personally assaulted, and no penalty.follows and no reparation is made, the safety and honor of other Americans, whether merchants or travellers, will not be promoted by it. The peoples of half-civilized lands are very quick to make inferences, ' and one act of injustice unrebuked will lead to many more of increasing gravity. , The writoc would urge the following reasons why government should protect missionaries and teachers against all violence, injustice, and abuse, as it would other citizens.
as All other civilized nations do it. France protects her Catholic mis- sionaries with jealous care throughout the world. Italy does the same, does Austria. Germany is more indifferent, but her missionaries, whether Catholic or Protestant, have never appealed to her in vain. Russia has sent out but few missionaries. Those in Japan and 'in Palestine enjoy all the power of her diplomacy and navy for their protection. Her jealousy in this regard was one of the causes that led on to the Crimean War.
But the course of England is more worthy of our approbation. Her principle is to protect every man who is an Englishman, high or low, rich or poor, Jew or Gentile. She has no special regard for Jews, but singu- larly enough, two cases, the most distinguished in the half century in which England has been concerned, have been Jews.
The first, Don Pacifico, was a Jew, but an English subject residing and having business in Athens. The Greek Government took possession of his little store and plot of ground and offered him so small a compensa- tion that ho3 appealed tv the English ambassador, who took up his case with Eome spirit, and demanded a very much larger compensation.
The Greek minister treated the claim with so little respect that the ambassador appealed to his Government at home. In consequence, a part of the Mediterranean squadron took possession of the Pirreus until the Greek Government paid Don Pacifico about five times his original demand and made an apology to the English ambassador. The English demand may have been excessive and unjust, but the object was not to reward Pacifico, but to let the world know that St. Paul's appeal, " I am a Roman citizen," put forth in the form" I am a British subject, " shall secure safety and respect in any part of the world.
The more remarkablc case is that of Rev. Mr. Stein, for some years an English missionary to the Jews in Constantinople. He went to Abyssinia while the Emperor Theodore was already at loggerheads with the British Government. He was seized, thrown into prison, tried, and condemned to death, but not executed. His two servants, or n~tive associates, were so cruelly beaten that they died. The Christian public of Great Britain were intensely excited about him and other prisoners. Theodore scouted all the measures of the English Government for their release, and at length an army of ten or twelve thousand men was sent from Bombay to secure their release. The army accomplished this, and also killed Theodore and destroyed his capit~l, Magdala.
Let it be remembered, this was not done to save Mr. Stein as a missionary. The British Government cared precious little for that; but £9,000,000, equal to '$45,000,000, were expended to protect the Englishman, whoever and wherever he might be.
England has another principle of action that is wise. When an indemnity has been decided upon, it has to be paid without delay. Governments of a cer-tain class are ready enough to promise compensations which they never intend to pay. Spain and Turkey have done this repeatedly to our Government, because they have learned they can do it with impunity. A promise is readily and cheerfully made, and is announced as a satisfactory settlement. The offending power is even complimented and praised, and is thus encouraged to gre~ter boldness in future outrages.
Treaties secure to missionaries rights which in many cases our Government will not enforce. All Roman Catholic nations, as well as England, protect their missionaries with jealous care. Our treaties secure to us all the privileges of the most favored nation. Nations have a certain solidarity of interests in half-civilized and anti-Christian nations. They are morally bound to support each other when Christianity is assailed. When the English ambassador, after the execution of two so-called "apostates," demanded of the Sultan the formal renunciation of the inhuman law, all the other embassies except Russia supported him in it. This principle should be acted upon in every case. No. government so unwise as to disregard legitim'ate claims for redress will persevere in it agaiitst a positive and deter!.llined pressure which will secure the approval, and, it may be, the co-operation, of other powers. Any power that refuses to acknowledge treaty obligations puts itself outside of the protection of international law.
But there is a higher principle of action. Christian nations are responsiblto f6r the Christian influence which they may exert upon the non- Christian nations. Christi::lllity lies at the foundation of their greatness and pre-eminence. They can confer no benefit upon the pagan and Mos- lem nations like that which has made them great. They cannot allow it to be treated with gross and cruel insults without loss of character and without the most serious injury to both parties. There is no occasion for the exercise of warlike force.' It is enough if the preparation for enforc- ing a just claim is made visible. Recently the Sultan sent in great haste to our minister to come directly to the palace. His majesty would settle satisfactorily the Marsovan affair, and there was no need to telegraph for war steamers. Our minister, with great simplicity, denied all intentions of that nature, and refused to go. He might at least have gone and ap- pealed to the Sultan's honor and sense of justice; but the poor man was new in his place, and afraid to move either to the right or left.
A great nation cannot afford to place itself or be placed in such positions. If the mere report of an ironclad can agitate the palace, the presence of one in Turkish waters would be a powerful protection. Such cases demana no v4>lence, but a preparation to enforce respect and secure justice is absolutely necessary in the present condition of the world. If the magistrate bears the sword in vain, or if he have no sword to bear, the rude, the barbarous, and the lawless will be without restraint. American missionaries have a right to expect in every land the protection and the immunities accorded to the missionaries from other lands. The Catholic missionaries from France and Italy are always treated with respect. No indignities are offered to them. Their schools are never interfered with. They are never mobbed or imprisoned. Their books are never destroyed or interdicted or absurdly defaced by the censor. So long as this treatment is accorded to other nations, we have a right to expect the same. Our treaties secure to us the treatment accorded to the most favored nations, and if our Government will not enfor~e its treaties it becomes a proper object of contempt. Its prestige, if it has any, departs, and its subjects will often be subjected to the caprice of bigots. American missionaries have never asked for special favors. They know their rights as citizens of the United States. All they claim is that protection which is secured by treaty and which belongs to them as Americans. It is a violation of all the principles upon which treaties are based that any power should confer special favors upon citizens of one nation and treat with manife'lt disfavor the citizens of another, when common treaty relations bind them all. The Christian public of the United States hopes and expects to see its government take those measures that will place its citizens in foreign lands on an equality with the citizens of any other nation of whatever race or religion. At present throughout the Turkish Empire American missionaries are insulted, mobbed, imprisoned, their dwellings and schools burned, their property seized, confiscated, and no reparation is made with the exception of Mr. Bartlett's house, and that was caused by the mere report that a steamer would be sent to protect American citizens,
CATHERIl"IE PENNEFATHER
CATHERINE PENNEFATHER.
BY JAMES E. MATHIESON, ESQ., LONDON, ENGLAND.
Three links have recently been severed which connected this generation with some remarkable movements of the present century. With the expiring year there passed away, in Glasgow (on December 30th, 1892), the venerable Andrew A. Bonar, in his eighty-third year, best known ontside of Scotland by his memoir of the saintly Murray MacCheyne, a new edition of which has just come from the press. One of three noble brothers, all of whom ha:d attained to fourscore years-John Bonar, minister of Greenock j Horatius Bonar, the Scottish psalmist. Andrew was the last survivor, and of his four hundred and fifty contemporaries who left the Established Church of Scotland in 1843, no one now remains so original as a thinker, so devout in life, or so universally beloved as he. I have before me a letter, written in clearest handwriting and in charming style, dated December 6th, concerning our Lord's premillennial return, which he closes thus: "Keep prayiug, and believe me your ' brother and companion in tribulation, and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ.'" .We look back pensively to that revival time in Scotland fifty years ago, when quickened spiritual life in the Church led the Bonars and so many more to give up their manses and stipends for the truth's sake and for the honor of Christ, the one Head of the Church j and we look around us to-day and we hear of two clergymen of the Church of England only who have resigned their positions because in faithfulness to our Lord they cannot remain in a communion where, by the recent Lincoln judgment, the fuJlblown symbolism of Roman ceremonies opens wide the door to Mariolatry and other abominations which were rejected at the Reformation.
On January 10th there was buricd at Beckenham, in Kent, a sweet old saint, Mrs. Soltau, aged eighty, who has given her three sons to the mission field -one in Tasmania, one in the Neilgherry Hills, in India, one in the McCall Mission, in Paris, and a daughter who ably superintends and trains the female candidates for the China Inland Mission. A happy mother was she with such children, walking in the truth. Her husband, whose books, "The Tabernacle and its Teachings" and" The Soul and its Difficulties," are much valued, was one of the band of devoted and intelligent men-chiefly gentlemen of Devonshire and the "Vcst of England-who originated that quest for more spiritual worship, more scriptural following of Christ, and greater recognition of all the varied gifts in. the Church, popularly known as the Plymouth Brethren, though they themselves disclaimed that appellation. Holding firmly as two of their tenets believers' baptism and the hope of Christ's premillennial appearing. they introduced an era of Bible reading among English-speaking people which probably has kept the Church from a more rapid corruption than that which has actnally sct in, and has 1,y its love of Scripture imparted to a multitude of Christians (many of them unconsciously influenced) a habit of habitual and reverent examination of the truth of God, and this in people throughout all the denominations. No true lover of his Bible will undervalue, and none ought to ignore, the blessing which has come to the Church in these days through the ofttimes despised and misunderstood Plymouth Brethren.
On January 12th, at Mildmay, in the north of. London, there entered into rest, in her seventy-fifth year, the beloved lady whose name I have placed at the head of this notice. 'Tis twenty years since her revered and honored and saint~y husband, William Pennefather, went in to see the King after a life of singular beauty and devotion unreservedly given to Christ, to His Church below, and to the poor and needy of this earth. His father was one of Her Majesty's judges in Ireland, and in that coun· try he commenced his ministry as a clergyman of the Established Church, but transferred his labors to three other spheres on English soil. What stands out prominently in his life as an originator was his conception, when at Barnet, in 1855, to gather together in a conference for worship and mutual edification brethren and sisters from various branches of the Church of Christ. With us to-day, when the idea has long been a fait accompli, it is difficult to conceive of the dissuasions and alarm with which the proposal was 'first entertained even among godly and earnest men. But the invited guests came j "the'number of names together were about one hundred and twenty" (as at the commencement of the Church, Acts 1 : 15) j a sweet Christian harmony pervaded all the meetings, and their repetition was eagerly hailed. Since then, first at Barnet and subsequently in the iron room transferred to London, and since 1870 in the noble Mildmay Conference Hall there have been held meetings full of interest, oftentimes full of power, wherein believers have been edified and multiplied, new' methods of Christian enterprise have been planned, many wearied workers and foreign missionaries have been refreshed and sent forth again to labor more assiduously among Jews and Gentiles.
Fit companion and true helper in all this labor of love was Catherine Pennefather, one of the noble women of our time, who sought no earthly fame or prominence, but could not be hid. On her mother's side she was granddaughter of a former archbishop of Dublin (Cleaver) j her father was the Hon. James King, son of the Earl of Kingston. He was an admiral in the English Navy and an intimate of William IV., who also was an English admiral j they were used to address each other familiarly as " King." The monarch sometimes gave it as his opinion that his successor, the Princess Victoria, would be the last sovereign of England. It was he too who, driving through the streets of London about the year 1830, and noticing placards headed "Reform Bill !" (probably the announcement of a public meeting), soliloquized thus: "Reform Bill, reform Bill; ah ! that means me, I suppose." Mrs. Pennefather was gifted with J. noble presence and with a clear and penetrating mind. A London specialist, called in by her usual medical attendant for consultation the week preceding her death, remarked on coming out of the sick-room, "What a head! Why, it's the head of a judge!" And so it was. Calmness and accuracy of judgment were probably her distinguishing characteristics j but there was none of that usual accompaniment of calmness, there was no coldness, there was deep warmth of love to her Saviour and to all who belonged to Him, and a very special love to those who came nearest to Him in holy living and blessed service ; and the attachment to her person which marked all those who were in any way associated with the varied labors of love in which she was an acknowledged leader and a trusted counsellor was probably unique. As President of the Association of Female Workers, numbering 1700 ladies in all parts of the world engaged in various forms of Christian work, I think I may say she stood pre-eminent, not only in their esteem but in their affections; and to one and all how readily and gladly she gave counsel and help and comfort as often as her ministrations were sought for in these directions! To the immediate circle of Mildmay workers-120 Protestant deaconesses and nearly 100 Christian nurses-she was felt to be a " mother in Israel" in her bestowal of sweet spiritual counsel, but to many of them she was as a mother indeed in her affectionate oversight and thoughtfulness for their needs. The love which radiated from the home of Mr. and Mrs. Pennefather was the love which " beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things." An early incident illustrated this trend of mind and heart even in Mrs. Pennefather's childhood. A bee had stung her badly j she ran to her mother and exclaimed, "The bee has kissed me too hard!" She never thought of the bee as angry and hurtful j and this feeling pervaded her conceptions of men and women acting or speaking injuriously, while at the same time she maintained clear and decided views of truth and deplored error. Though hers was a maste'r mind, she sought not mastery, and had no sympathy with that headship of woman which not a few are seeking after in the preselilt day; and when busily occupied in devising and directing work for the redressing of the wrongs of woman by putting their happier sisters upon right lines of ministry on their behalf, she meddled not with any political nostrum for enforcing woman's rights. In truth, she seemed always to be guided into the more excellent way when a choice of paths was presented for selection, and this because she waited upon God and rested not in her own wisdom, For many of her later years her eyesight had failed, and she enjoyed, without the distraction which hinders many others, ample opportunity for frequent secret, silent prayer, and the great day alone'shall declare how much her intercessions, ascending to and through the Great Intercessor, have availed in ealling down more abundant blessings upon the Mildmay Deacones~ Missions, the medical missions and hospitals, the Jewish mission, the Gospel services, the conferences, as well as upon the individual workers in squalid London districts; upon the nurses watching by sick-beds, that
A VOICE FROM SOUTH AFRICA
they might use the precious opportunity of speaking a wonl in season for the Master j upon scattered workers on far distant mission fields j such intercessory help constituting the uniting bond of the whole association of female workers who are now bereaved of their honored and trusted president, whose place it seems so hard and impossible to fill. vVe way claim, without presumption and without disparagement of others, that Mrs. Pennefather was the choicest embodiment of high-toned spiritual life in combination with that culture which distinguishes delicately nurtured English women, while the woman's work under her guidance and fostering care, in an age remarkable for its development of woman's work in so many directions, has given to thc Church many examples of " daughters as corner-stones fashioned after the similitude of a palace," who had been st.imulated and sustained by the copy which her life set before them. Let a sympathetic cry ascend, dear reader, from your inmost soul that God would comfort with His own strong consolations the many weeping ones who are now realizing a great personal bereavement, and that He in tender mercy will raise up some one to fill the vacant place and maintain in the unity of the Spirit all represented in the Mildmay institutions-that is, reflecting Christ's image. Its motto is, " Grace be with all those who love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity j" and when we sec around us such falling away from gospel simplicity, those who ha'e loved and labored for Him in connection with Mildmay do very truly beseech Him to keep this centre as a stronghold for evangelical teaching, seeing He has permitted it to display for so many years past a banner for the trnth.
Amid many tokens of reverence and love Mrs. Pennefather's remains were borne away after the funeral service in St. Jude's, Mildmay Park, on Monday, January 16th, to their earthly resting-place, twelve miles off, at Ridge, a quiet resting-place indeed, in a typical English churchyard, where rests the dust of her like-minded husband until the glad day when the trump of God shall sound, "and the dead in Christ shall rise first, . . . and so shall we ever be with the Lord." "Even so, come, Lord Jesus !"
And we " comfort one another with these words."
* A VOICE FROM SOUTH AFRICA.
. BY MISS ABBY P. FERGUSON, WELLINGTON, SOUTH AFRICA.
In the June number of the MISSIONARY REVIEW for 1891, under" The Miracles of Missions," was given the story of the Huguenot Seminary at • For the appeal in behalf of the Lord's work in the diamond fields of South Africa, and for the response of Christian friends to that appeal, we retllrn thanks. The aid has come in our time of need, 8IIIl bas been most precious. Miss Anna E. Bliss. who came with me to Africa nineteen years ago, will be in America until November. Her ..ddre.s is West New Bri~hton,8tatenI"18nd. N.Y. Mi.s Bliss has had an important part in the work of the Huguenot !'emioary from it. beginning, and I. prepared to advance its interests in any way that she can riuring tbe y~..r thllt .be is in America. either by corre8pondence, by receiving contributions or by "peaking in its behalf.-A. P. F. Wellington. I will add somewhat as to what the Lord h,.s done for us since that article was written.
The branch seminary at the Paarl haf> grown, until now there are seventy boarders and over one hundred day scholars. Toward the close of 1891 there came requests for two more branch Reminaries : one at Bethlehem, in the Orange Free State, and one at Greytown, Natal. About the last of"
December it was decided to go forward, and our prayer was that the little seminary born at Bethlehem at Christmas time might indeed be the child of the Most High, and that the one at Greytown might also be owned of Him. The Bethlehem Reminary was opened February, 1892, under the care of Miss Catherine Murray, the daughter of Rev. Andrew Murray. The branch at Greytown was opened in July, 1892, under Miss Gates, one of our American teachers. Miss Gates writes of a precious work of grace among her girls, and that she has had the joy of seeing all but one con- verted. Thus God has set His seal upon the precious work. .J Our own work at the mother Huguenot Seminary at Wellington is growing, and we are feeling with the increased opportunities that it assumes new importance. Most of the teachers at our branch seminaries are our own graduates. We have sent out over, four hundred teachers during the nineteen years since our seminary was established. And now lihat Africa is opening so wonderfully, we cry unto God that we may be ready to enter every open door in the name of the Lord, and that these dear daughters of ours may be fully equipped in body, soul, and spirit for the service of the Lord. We number on our own staff of teachers gradu- ates of Mount Holyoke, of 'Wellesley, of Oberlin, besides other vahable teachers from America, Holland, and Germany. The number of our pupils has increased, and for these we are needing increased acco~modation.
With the help of the colonial Government we have been able to purchase a valuable property adjoining ours, and now we are anxious to put up a large building, giving us more room for pupils, and also a library and class- rooms. ,Ye are very anxious also to have a fund to help many girls who are eager for an education and would make good use of it, but have not the means to meet the expense. Our four Huguenot seminaries are for the white girls of South Africa, daughters of European settlers; and closely connected with this work of Christian education, a great mission work is opening. You have an account of the work at the diamond fields in the MISSIONARY RE'IIEW for July, 1892. The work here is not only for the thousands of heathen who come to work in the mines from all parts of South Africa, but a helping hand is stretched out also to the Cape natives, who are civilized in part, and the interest of our workers has been deeply stirred for the whole population gathered here from all parts of the world seeking wealth, and yet so many finding only sin and sorrow. There are eight lady workers here. Two mission houses have been bought; both are nearly paid for; but we are anxious to put up a small hall in connection with one of them for meetings and evening classes. This work is under the Woman s Missionary Union of South Africa. Most of the workers have been at the Huguenot Seminary, ·Wellington, where there is a special class for those desiring training for mission work.
Our Woman's Missionary Society has lady missionaries among the heathen in the Transvaal, and at one station in Bechuanaland. And now the call has come for us to enter new fields. At Johannesburg, the great centre of the gold-mining industries, tliey are asking us to open a work similar to that at the diamond fields, and the need is much the same. There are the thousands of whites who have gone down through poverty, drink, and sin; there are many Cape colored people, and there are tens of thousands of heathen from all parts of Sonth Africa, coming to work in the mines a few months and then returning to their own people. And for these we are confronted by the same question, Shall these men carry back to their tribes the vices of civilization or the Gospel of Christ ~ Another door that is open for us to enter is at Mvera, thirty miles to the southeast of Lake Nyassa, a station under the care of a nephew of Rev. Andrew Murray, and bearing the same name. We are asked to send two ladies to this station to begin work among the heathen women and children, and we are asking the Lord, who has opened this door, to show us whom He has called and prepared to enter upon this important service.
It has been for years my prayer that the Lord would make our work all that it is possible for it to become to His glory, and the advancement of His cause. He is answering wonderfully in ways beyond what we had asked or thought. lIe is showing us more and more that He has planted' us here to do a work for Him that shall be far-reaching in this great dark Africa, with its millions of precious souls waiting to. be told of the great redemption. The work is not ours, it is the Lord's, and it is in His name we lay it before you in all its departments.
I. We need your prayers and Christian sympathy. II. We need Christian teachers having a good collegiate education, who will be able to prepare our girls for the positions of responsibility waiting ":or them. For these we can offer passage-money and a fair salary. III. We should be glad of workers who could be wholly or partly selfsupporting for the various departments of mission work. IV. vVe need help in putting up suitable buildings for our Christian educational work. The Government of Cape Colony has given us to understand that it would help us to the extent of £5000 if we could raise the same amount from other sources. V. We need aid for our buildings at the different mission stations or centres of work. VI. We need help in the education of girls without means who are anxions to enter upon and would be useful in Christian work, and would be glad to receive the training necessary. YII. 'Ye need help in the support of our mission work. Our Woman's Missionary Union is accomplishing much, but without aid from other lands we cannot enter upon the work opening before us.
SAMUEL METHABATHE
SAMUEL METHABATHE, AN AFRICAN EVANGELIST.
BY REV. JOSIAH 'fYLER, NATAL, SOUTH AFRICA.
Sixty years ago a society of Wesleyan Methodists sent Rev. James Alli- son and his wife as pioneer missionaries to the Amaswazi tribe, living on the southeastern coast of Africa, about eighty miles from Delagoa Bay. Not disheartened by hundreds of miles of rough travel in ox wagons, they settled among the wild heathen, and soon a large number came to them for instruction. Then an intertribal war disturbed' their labors. The Zulus, ancestral enemies of the Amaswazi, came and killed many of their people, and threatened them also. They were driven to Natal, accompanied by hundreds of the poor, homeless natives, and the station "Edendale" was founded, which 'is now the largest mission station in that part of Africa, numbering nearly one thousand members and adlterents.
Mr. and Mrs. Allison, unfitted by their age to superintend so large a station, went to Pietermaritzburg, the capital of Natal, to end their days in rest and quiet. But such true missionaries, seeing the Zulu servants loitering about the streets, especially on the Sabbath, invited them to their house for religious instruction, and established an evening school. Having thus won the natives by kind words and loving desire for their good, they soon had another large station to care for. Christian friends among the English colonists aided them, and a commodious chapel was erected which was well filled each Sabbath.
In 1869, while visiting Mr. Allison, I addressed his congregation, and was much attracted by a young man in the congregation who was smaller than the average Zulu, but had an earnest, expressive face and manner. I learned that his name was Methabathe, and he had come seven hundred miles, from the region of the Limpopo River, to earn money to buy a gun and ammunition, but, having found the Saviour, was soon to return to his people to preach Jesus Christ. "Will he hold out, so far away from Christian teachers and religious training~" I inquired of Mr. Allison. " He is a thorough Christian, inflamed with a passion to save souls," replied he. "I have known him for six years. After parting with him I sh~l probably never see him or hear from him again, but am sure he will prove a blessing to his countrymen."
A few months later Mr. Allison set apart this native Christian, and with tears prayed that God would go with him, keeping him humble, prayerful, and steadfast in the faith. Both Mr. Allison and his wife were called to their reward without hearing further of the man whom they had brought to Christ.
Nine years later Rev. Owen 'Watkins, Superintendent of the Wesleyan Methodist missions in the Transvaal, hearing of Samuel Mcthabathe, sent for him to come and tell his story. With three of his converts the evangelist travelled four hundred miles, and in his simple, g-raphic way gave his testimony. He had labored" unknown, unpaid, unvisited, unrecognized by any church, yet remaining steadfast and patiently witnessing for Christ in the midst of persecution and distress as bravely as any of the early Christians."
After leaving Mr. Allison, he had gone back to his country, reported himself to his chief, and asked permission to preach Jesus Christ to his people. This the chief would not allow, fearing that his subjects would rebel against him if told of the great" King of kings," and he threatened Samuel with death or banishment should he be found holding meetings to teach the new doctrine.
In sadness of heart Samuel left the chief, but after much thought and prayer resoh'ed to do what he could. For four years he went about from hut to hut, telling his relatives and friends about the great salvation, praying with them and urging them to believe in Christ. A chapel was built in which the people gathered on the Sabbath for worship, but the chief ordered it to be burned. After his death his wife assumed the reins of government, and proved more tolerant than he had been. Another church was huilt, a school established, and many natives professed Christianity.
As the work grew, educated men· were needed to take charge of the work upon the out-stations. The church selected two men to go to a training school kept by the French missionaries in Basutoland. After two years' study they returned, and the work of the Lord was greatly prospered.
The trial of their faith was not yet ended, however. Aroused by enemies of the Christian religion, this female chief caused the church to be burned, and ordered all Christians to leave the country with their families. With Samuel at their head, two hundred went into exile for Christ's sake. A portion of them settled on a farm which has since been bought by the Methodist Society for them, and which is named" Good Hope."
Soon after hearing Samuel's story, Mr. Watkins visited the tribe and. wrote as follows : " When I got to the foot of the hill on the top of which Samuel's village is now built, some of the people saw me, and at once set up a cry, 'It is ! it is ! the missionary ! our own missionary ! come at last!' There was a great commotion. Then a lot of guns were fired off by way of salute, and then the people rushed down the hill-side to greet me. I stood still at the spot where the first party met me, and waited until all the rest came down. Samuel was away in the bush cutting wood for a schoolhouse, but they sent runners to tell him the glad tidings and bid him hasten.
"I had to shake hands with every man, woman and child until my arms ached again. After that came words of welcome. Tears rolled down many faces as the teacher, Johannes (one who had beel! to Basutuland), told me how for a long time their prayers and cries had gone up to heaven for my eoming, and he concluded, ' Now at last, that we see your face, all the days of our mourning are ended.' I spoke to them very
4'&1 FINAL FACTS RESPECTING UGANDA
gently, for I knew their sorrows for Christ's sake had been very great, and told them God's people in England of the Wesleyan Church would not for- sake them. .
" The teacher thereupon in an ecstasy of joy raised the hymn' Jesus sought me when a stranger,' and we moved forward. In a little while Samnel arrived, and as it was an occasion to be spoken of in coming gen- .erations, he was saluted with three gnns. To see that man's face beami~g with joy as he saw me in the midst of his people, and to feel the grip of his hand in welcome, amply repaid me for all the hardships passed in com- ing to visit him. I cannot tell of the long meeting we held and the many matters we talked of, bnt it was a t.ime never to be forgotten. "
Thus through Divine blessing on the labors of Samuel Methabathe an African wilderness has become a fruitful garden. I still seem to see his intelligent countenance as I first saw him in the native chapel in Pieter- maritzburg, and recall with admiration the faith of the devoted missiona- ries who consecrated him so tenderly to the Lord's service. Eternity alone will reveal the good done in heathen lands of which Christian missionaries have been the unconscious instruments.
FINAL FACTS RESPECTING UGANDA BY REV. CHARLES C. STARBUCK.
The Allgemeine Missions-Zeitschrift for January has an article touching these, on the basis of which it appears worth while to make some statements. We do not reproduce the paper or even condense it, but note some things which may now be accepted as certain.
1. The Protestant missionaries were in Uganda maay months before the Roman Catholic, so that if there has been any intrusion, it has n,ot been on the Protestant side.
2. The Anglican missionaries, though Evangelicals, have been of no malevolent or calumnious schools, but have steadily referred to the Catholics in terms of respect and friendliness. Exceptions to this rule are so slight as to be microscopic.
3. The thorough ventilation of all the facts of the late catastrophe shows Bishop Tucker and the other English missionaries to have had, neither proximately nor remotely, the slightest share in bringing it on. The passionate and exceedingly unhamlsome imputations of Bishop Hirth have dissolved into absolute emptiness.
4. There are more chiefs in the kingdom than places of honor. The religious differences have simply served as a bond of cohesion to the latent, parties. The chiefs on both side!? have fused intense personal ambition with a fiery religious zeal. The masses on both sides, a small percentage apart, have been moved simply bv a spirit of blinu feudal loyalty. The Protestant missionaries have brought this out into full light ; the French priests have thrown a religious halo over the whole of their side, although, being so much the more numerous, it is probably, if there is any difference, even less moved by religion than the other.
5. Bishop Hirth's report, written in the first heat of the collision, is passionate and exaggerated almost to insanity. For instance, he declarea that 50,000 Catholics have been sold as slaves. As the later Catholic accounts do not even allow that there are 25,000 Catholics in all, and as there are many thousands left, the bishop's arithmetic is somewhat delirious.
6. Bishop Hirth and his party-the royal party, moreover-were so far from being straitened or oppressed that the bishop, just before the outbreak of the conflict, expresses the belief that Uganda is about to become " Ii Catholic kingdom." The immediate prelude to the collision was that after the two parties had marched out jointly against the Mohammedans, the Catholics returned without cause. The spark that set the fire was the murder of a Protestant by Catholics, and the refusal of the king to deliver the murderers up.
7. The French missionaries have listened credulously and passionately to accusations of Protestant cruelty which are partly altogether false, partly enormously exaggerated. They have, moreover, thrown imputations of complicity in the actual cruelties on Protestantism because the English missionaries, no more than themselves, have been able to restrain a mass of heathen fighters, most of whom knew little more of Christianity than the name, from showing themselves the barbarians that they were. The Protestants patiently 'awaited Captain Lugard's orders before firing, and he withheld these until the Catholic assault became general. He distributed about one hundred and fifty muskets and rifles on that very morn: ing, but not earlier. He gave no Maxim gun to the Baganda. He urged the priests, as well as the clergymen, to come into the fort, and when there showed them all possible attention.
8. For the fierceness of a civil war, induced, moreover, by their own adherents, the losses of the White Fathers-not, as is often blunderingly written, the Jesuits-have been practically nothing. Most of their goods were in the fort or had been sent south. Most of the buildings had lost only their grass roofs. The" cathedral" was merely of reeds and grass. Had they remained and placed themselves under Captain Lugard's protection, he declares that they would have bcen spared even their partial losses.
Our Roman Catholic friends complain-and some of them optima fide -that the portion of land finally assigned them is out of all proportion smaller than their numbers require. Not knowing how large it is, I cannot undertake to deny that there may be some ground for the complaint. The wortliless Mwanga, having been altcrnately, after some sort of fashion, a heathen, a Catholic, a heathen Ilgain, a Mohammedan, a heathen
PROTESTANT MISSIONS IN nURMA
yet again, a Catholic once more, and for the present a Protestant, would not be his pdious self if he could not contrive to impart some element of injustice into any compact which he favored. Yet when a religious party or a political party under the name of religion stirs up a revolt against a superior authority under religious pretenses, and is defeated, it should not think it unreasonable that it suffers some inconvenient consequences from the attempt. The French priests know very well that England, as Dr. Warneck well says, is the most tolerant nation under the sun. Whether they were moved by national or by ecclesiastical dislike, or more probably by a curious mixture of the two, they must not think it strange if the new order of things sets them somewhat in the background. They are in no manner of danger of being persecuted if they do not foment another commotion; but it would not be strange if, in the distribution of honors and territories, they were a little "discouraged." When a Protestant missionary in French territory expresses dislike of France and regret that England could not have the country-and we know only one such case-we assume, as of course, that he expects his French denizenship to be brief, and is making ready to hand over his work to French Protestants. If our French friends cannot be contented under the English flag, doubtless Cardinal Vaughan or Archbishop Walsh could find them a relief.
PROTESTANT MISSIONS IN BURMA.
BY REV. L. W. CRONKHITE, BASSEIN, BURMA..
These were opened by the Baptists of America, who have been actively engaged in them for the past eighty years. Though they were preceded by a son of William Carey, who after a brief period of labor had retired from the country, permanent work began with the arrival of Rev. Adoniram Judson and wife at Rangoon in July, 1813. They had been led to this field by a series of providences as marked as were the sacrifices by which they subsequently sealed the country for Christ. In 1819 their hearts were gladdened by the baptism of the first convert, Moung Naw. This, however, was speedily followed by persecution. It is noteworthy that a part.icularly bitter persecution followed almost immediately upon the arrival of a reinforcement of fifteen missionaries in 1834. From the first all progress in the work for the BurmanlJ has been in the face of the most serious obstacles; but the determined hostility of the Burmese authorities to the Gospel has been met in the Divine plan by the transfer to the English, first of Southern Burma in 1826, then of Middle Burma in 1852, and of the remainder of the country in 1885. Judson's great translation of the Bible was finished in 1834. To this he subsequently added a dictionary and a grammar, which have never been superseded. The Burmese theological school begun by Rev. E. A. Stevens in 18~8 is Rtill continued at Hangoon, under the care of Rev. A. T. Rose, and important changes are proposed with a view to its enlarged usefulness. In so brief an outline as this one can only note the names of such heroes of the Burman mission as Hough, Comstock, Wade, Kincaid, Hennett, and Haswell, the latter of whom gave some attention also to the Talign race. Cephas Bennett and wifs were connected respectively fifty-six and sixty-one years with the mission. Though Buddhism and the native rulers have done so much to make the Burmese a people peculiarly hard to reach, some real progress has been made. Inplace of the single convert in 1819, there were, in 1847, 200; in 1869, 1000 ; in 1884, 1600 j while to-day the net number,of living Burman Christians is about 2100. The outlook is good for greatly accelerated progress in the near future.
Far more accessible than the Burmese have been the various Karen tribes of Burma, the society's work among whom forms one of the noblest chapters of missionary history. For this the way was prepared by their simpler forms of worship, and by the striking likeness between some of their traditions and the early chapters of Genesis. They had it, moreover, on ancient tradition, that some day their younger brother, a white man, would come by water from the West, bringing with him the lost word of their God. The work for the Karens was begun by George Dana Boardman, and the year 1828 saw the first Karen convert, Ko-tha-byu, afterward famous as the Karen apostle. The Ko-thabyu Memorial Hall at Bassein, given wholly 'by Karens, and the finest building in the Karen mission, was dedicated upon the fiftieth anniversary of his baptism. Francis Mason and others travelled widely through the Tenasserim provinces, and in 1833 Jonathan Wade reduced the Sgau Karen dialect to written form. The Pwo and other Karen dialects followed later. In 1836 the elder Vinton opened work in Rangoon, and was eagerly received everywhere, as was also Mr. Abbott a little later at Bassein. There, among others, a young chief of fine character received the Gospel. Prospective war with England compelled the missionaries to retire from Burmese territory, whereupon Mr. Abbott removed, in 1840, to Arracan. Thither such numbers of the Karens followed him, running the gauntlet of the Burmese, that the latter were compelled to promulgate an order permitting the Karens the worship of" their God." In five years more than three thousand were baptized in the Bassein district by Mr. Abbott and his Karen co-workers. It was in 1848 that the Sgau Karen pastors of the Bassein district decided at their annual meeting to undertake henceforth the entire support of the work in their own field, a promise which they have grandly fulfilled. Their ninety churches now number over nine thousand members. In addition to thcir central school, with its four hundred pupils, nearly one hundred lesser schools are scattered among their villages. During the past three years the contributions of the Bassein Pwo Karen Christians have equalled annually one tenth their incomes for the entire membership. The Rangoon Karen field passed from the hands of the elder Vinton to those of his son, Brainerd, and when both had gone to their reward a son-in-~aw and daughter of the latter were found ready to assist his widow in ministering to the people for whom the family had already done so much. The field is now prospering in their care, with about eighty churches and four thousand members, supporting fifty schools.
The close of the second Burmese war with England in 1853 witnessed the opening of several new stations among the Karens, among which were those at Henthada, Toungoo, and Shwegyin. At Shwegyin 577 were baptized in the first year, while in the first two years of the Toungoo mission 2000 converts were baptized by the earnest evangelist Sau Quala. Through much peril and schism in the native churches, the work at the latter sta.: tion has now extended to several Karen tribes, notably to the Bghais, the Pakus, and the Red Karens, the churches having a total membership of over 5000. Newer Karen stations are those at Maubin (Pwo), at Tharrawaddy (Sgau), and at Thatone, where also work is done among the Toungthoos. The total church-membership of the Baptist mission to the Karens was, in 1833, 292 ; in 1847, 6093 ; in 1869, 20,007 ; and in 1892, about 28,000. These have now the entire Bible in Sgau-since 1853-and in Pwo-siace 1883-together with portions in some other dialects. Dictionaries and grammars have been prepared in the Sgau, in which dialect also are published three papers. At Rangoon is located the Karen Baptist college. The flourishing theological seminary ~t Insein numbers over 100 students.
Work among the Shan tribes was opened at Toungoo by Rev. M. H. Bixby ill. 1860. The Shans are a trading people, industrious and intelligent. In religion they are bigoted Buddhists, and as l?uch have thus far proved largely inaccessible to the Gospel. It has, moreover, been necessary until recently to confine the society's work to the immigrant Shans in Burma proper, with stations at Toungoo, Rangoon, Moulmein, and Bhamo. Much pioneer work in the exploration of the Shan States had, however, been done by Rev. J. N. Cushing and others prior to the recent war between the Burmese and English; and when by this war thc Shan States were opened to foreign influence, the society at once took steps to enter. Rev. M. B. Kirkpatrick, M.D., began labor in the remote city of Thibau in· 1888, and is being greatly prospered in his work. The Saubwa, or native chief, has been strongly attracted by the Gospel, proving his sincerity both by his treatment of enemies and by his large contributions to the work among his people. A station has also been established at Mone, the head of another division of the Shan States. Mr. Cushing has translated the entire Bible into Shan, and has also prepared a Shan and English dictionary and a grammar.
The Ka Ohins occupy the mountains to the north and northeast of Burma, and are supposed to number 5,000,000 souls, grouped into numerous tribes and dialects. They are wicked and lawless in the extreme, while yet possessing a basis for noble and sturdy character when wrought upon by grace. Work was begun at Bhamo in 1877, and has been carried on largely by Sgau evangelists sent out and supported by the Bassein Karens of that tribe. In 1882 the writer had the privilege of witnessing the first Ka Chin baptism, and of assisting in the celebration of the Lord's Supper which followed. The work has been greatly hindered by sickness arnona!' the missionaries and by war, but the present outlook is excellent.
Among the Ohins regular work has been in progress for the past seven years. These people inhabit the western Yomas, being most numerous in Upper Burma. They are nominally Buddhists, but cling strongly to the practices of their ancient demon-worship. Some four hundred have already been baptized, chiefly in Arracan, and the future seems very full of promise.
At Rangoon, Moulmein, and Bassein work is being done among Eurasians and among the Chinese, Tamils, and Telugus, who are flocking to Burma in large numbers. Karen evangelists from Burma are laboring among the Karens of Northern Siam. Meantime, the mission presses at Rangoon, Bassein, and Toungoo are doing much to supply the peoples of Burma with a Christian literature.
To sum up, the American Baptist Mission has in Burma, by its last report, .22 central stations, to which will soon be added Mo-gaung in the extreme north. The work is committed to 139 missionaries and 610 native preachers. The 550 churches, nearly all of which are self-supporting, have a total membership of 30,000, while into the 500 schools are gathered 11,000 boys and girls, bright and teachable.
In 1859 the Society for the Propagation of the. Gospel (Church of England) sent out to Moulmein Rev. Augustus Shears to open missionary operations in Burma. One year later he was joined by J. E. Marks, who has since accomplished so much for the education of Burmese youth, and who has for many years been at the head of St. John's College in Rangoon. In 1869 he established work at Mandalay, then the capital of what was left of the kingdom of Burma. Two sons of the king were among his pupils. The troubles which followed the death of the king rendering the . continuance of the mission impossible, work at Mandalay was dropped in 1879, but was again taken up in 1886, upon the fall of King Thibau and the acquisition of Upper Burma by the English. In 1877 the Rt. Rev. John H. Titcomb was consecrated the first bishop of the Church of England in Burma. Including Port Blair, in the Andaman Islands, the society has now nine stations, chief among which are Rangoon and Toungoo. A schism in the Karen Baptist churches at the latter station resulted in the accession of many to the English society. At several stations work is being done among the Telugu and Tamil immigrants, notably at Rangoon, where 291 communicants of these races are reported. The latest returns of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel for Burma give 12 European missionaries, 8 native pastors, and 83 readers and teachers. Of the 2214 communicants, about 1500 are Karens. The various schools afford instrnction to 2900 pupils, of whom 479 are girls.
AMONG THE LEPERS
American Methodists have recently established a mlSSlon in Burma under the supervision of Bishop Thoburn, with an excellent school for girls and an orphanage at Rangoon. The latest report gives 5 missionaries with 2 assistant missionaries, and in addition to the work among the English, 40 native church-members and 169 pupils in the schools. A Wesleyan mission has lately been opened in Mandalay, one feature of which is a home for lepers.
In con(llusion, there is every reason for an energetic forward movement for the evangelization of Burma. Lying as it does on the great highway between India and China, the country is destined to be of commanding importance as a commercial centre. Already railway projects, connecting it with both empires, are in the air. The country itself is rapidly being knitted together by a system of railways, telegraphs, and river steamers. As an example, it may be mentioned that whereas ten years ago Toungoo was reached from Rangoon by a boat journey consuming from two to three weeks, twelve hours by rail are now sufficient, the trains running both day and night. Even remote Thibau has just been connected with the world by telegraph. Preparatory work in the way of missionary exploration, translations of the Scriptures, and the making of dictionaries, grammars and school-books lies largely behind us. A great plant has been acquired in land and buildings scattered widely over the country. And lastly the complete overthrow of the Burmese civil power, accomplished by the recent war with England, while assuring to the entire country a quiet, enlightened, and humane rule, has also opened to the labors of Christians not only the multitudes of the Burmese, but also fields new and vast among the Ka Chins, Shans, Chins, and several lesser races.
WORK AMONG THE LEPERS.
THE LEPER HOME .AT JERUSALEM.
The woeful appearance of a leper touches every heart. Leprosy embitters the life of its victim j it incapacitates him for business and excludes him from the society of his nearest friends, and indeed of all persons, except lepers like himself. With all the triumphs of human science, leprosy is admittedly as incurable as it was in Old Testament times and in the days of our Lord's ministry upon earth.
At the end of the year 1892 there were 24 patients in the Home- 11 men and 13 women. In general the lepers are contented, cheerful, and affectionate, notwithstanding their sufferings and trials. Their attention is frequently engaged with simple games, and they have entered into these with childlike zest and grateful appreciation. With most, however, the dreadful disease has spread considerably, and at present the majority are suffering severely with open sores. Two have almost lost their eyesight, and a third has for a long time been lying very ill. One of the greatest trials of these poor creatures is their banishment from home. 'Who can know the dreary lot of a father who has been deprived of all connection with his family, or the grief and anxiety of a poor mother at the thought that she is estranged from her beloved ones, never to clasp them in her arms again? Yet these are some of the trials which our poor lepers experience every day. Budrus, one of the patients, says, "Were it not for the comfort that we derive from God's Holy Word, we should have died in despair long ago."
God's abundant blessing has rested on the efforts to minister these comforts to the afHicted inmates of our Home. They have daily practical proofs of the love of Jesus. They are constantly fed, cared for, and made as happy as possible in their physical condition. But there is a further and a higher aim. "Our grand object," says the evangelist, ,. is to win them to the Saviour, to bring them the strong comfort of the Gospel of Divine grace, and to give them in all their misery the message of present peace and an assured future of bliss and glory. In this respect the success has been very marked. Our patients have been wonderfully ready to hail and heed the message of mercy, and the Gospel of Christ has won its way and shed its radiancy into their hearts. Almost all the lepers profess Christ as their Saviour and lead godly and consistent fives. The Word of God is loved and respected by both Moslems and Christians."
Daily worship is conducted at the Home. The Arabic language is very full and rich, and the Arabic Bible uses many terms unknown to the ignorant and untaught Moslems, who are the majority of our patients. The Arab catechist comes on Sundays and Vednesdays to conduct worship in the little chapel of the Home, amI to visit the bedridden in their dormitories. The services in the chapel have been the means of soothing the suffering of the lepers, and of turning their sighs and sorrows into joy and gladness. After the service the lepers are allowed to ask or say anything, and their questions and remarks are sometimes touching and instructive. What hope haye these poor sufferers in this life? Ah! they know that they are the yictims of the most terrible disease incident to humanity, that they are outcasts and have lost everything, that they are dragging on through agony and distress to a weary and inevitable end. But they are fully assured that there can be none too miserable, too degraded, too repulsive for the Master. They will tell you that notwithstanding their terrible disease, they have found their all in Jesus. Some of them even praise God for their misery; they say it has led them to the Fountain open for all sin and uncleanness. "Leprosy is nothing to me," says Hussein, "as long as the Lord is on my side." "Surely," says Smikna, "it is better to be a leper, and have fellowship with Christ, than to be in good health and far away from God."
Three of the best inmates have been called away to their eternal rest during the past year. Their dying testimonies were all to the fulness of joy which they experienced. As one of them, Salieh, was dying, he was asked if there was peace. " Yes," he whispered, "there is peace, there is light, there is joy." Another, a young Greek priest, on whom were dependent for support a widowed mother and her children, said, as his spirit was leaving his wasted body, "Whether we live, we live unto the Lord, and whether we die, we die unto the Lord; whether we live, therefore, or die, we are the Lord's."
There is a Bible woman whose special duty it is to work among the poor lepers outside the asylum, and invite them to share its privileges. Strange to say, neither this invitation nor the Gospel itself has found much acceptance with these outcasts. Beggin~ by the roadside has become a second nature to them, and they cannot give it up, even for daily food or nursing and care. Lepers who are unable to walk any more will be carried out to the roadside on a donkey and lie there displaying their sores to attract the ,pitying gifts of passers-by. In summer they often remain ontof-doors all night with the ground for a bed, a stone for a pillow, and a cloak for a covering. Recently an old man met with a singular accident. He had lain down under a wall to sleep, and put his food on the wall. During the night a dog jumped up to get it and knocked down a large stone on the old man's head. He was terribly injnred, nevertheless he would not consent to be removed to our asylum.
Poor sufferers who are past begging are found in the government house for lepers at Siloam. These accept medicine and food, and permit their visitors to bind up their wounds. They also listen to the tidings of Jesus, the Good Physician. Sometimes those who have been absent begging, come in. Some of these are willing to have their wounds dressed, while others ask for the bandages, etc., saying that they will do it for themselves. But they would probably sell what was given them, and that is certainly not the purpose of those who visit them. Spiritual fruit of this good endeavor has not yet been apparent, but these true friends of the outcast lepers persevere in it, and ask for the support of intercession on their behalf.-Report/or 1892.
THE LEPERS OF JAPAN.
The Committee of the Mission to Lepers has just had an application from two ladies of the Church Missionary Society, at Kumamoto, Japan, asking them to aid in establishing a hospital there for the lepers. The following are a few extracts from the letter of one of these ladies : " I venture to entreat your aid for Japan. It is computed that there are over 200,000 known cases of leprosy. Among respectable people it is regarded as such a disgrace that the person affected is at once shut up in a little room which they never leave until death. Leprosy is more prevalent in this prefecture than in any other in Japan; but the principal garrison doctor here (who has offered his services gratuitously as a consulting physician if we can establish a hospital or aid of any kind) says that from 60 to 70 per cent could be relieved if they bad good medical advice at first. About two and a half miles from this city is a Buddhist temple, to which lepers from all parts of the country come when they have. spent their all, and there they drag out their miserable lives, existing Oil promiscuous charity of the most meagre kind, having no shelter at night, and scarcely any food by day. This island of Kiushiu is semi-tropical, but the winters are severe j a few mornings ago the thermometer registered 28° out-of-doors, and two days ago 26°. The sufferings of these heat-loving creatures must be intense, for in summer we have from 90° to 98° of heat. Very little pity is bestowed upon them, because the Japanese say they-the leperscannot be human beings ; that no human creature could have. such a mysterious and incurable disease-it is not a human ailment, etc. The name for them is Hinin, which means outside of humanity.
"My friend and I wrote home to our society-the Church Missionary Society-offering ourselves as workers among the lepers. Our letter has been very favorably considered, and meets with the heartiest approbation of our bishop here. Our idea is, if possible, to build a hospital by special subscription. Several hundreds would be necessary to build and furnish it. The few Japanese who know of our desire are full of approbation. One of our Christians said to me, ' It will do more for Christianity in Japan than anything that has been done; my people can argue as cleverly as your people about religion, but they know nothing of such love as this. ' The garrison doctor of whom I spoke, said, ' Only Christians would think of such a thing.' He showed us over one of the city hospitals and asked the surgeon-general of the garrison to meet us ; we afterward met others of the doctors j they all offer every encouragement."
RANGOON LEPERS.
Henry Charles Moore (late of Rangoon) writes as follows of the need in Burma: " Forty years of beneficent English rule have changed Rangoon from a collection of bamboo and mat huts, built over a malarial swamp, into a large and wealthy city. Pilgrims, as of yore, flock from all parts of the country, to kneel on the platform of the golden pagoda, and repeat the Pali sentences which they committed to memory while children in the Buddhist schools. They gaze in admiration at the wonders of the famous building-the tall gilded and jewelled spire glittering in the fierce sun with a brilliancy that is perfectly dazzling; the huge images of Gautaina Buddha ; the hideous dragons ; the horrible frescoes, and enormous bells. Truly the place is magnificent in its barbaric splendor; but there is one sight which fills. every visitor, be he pilgrim, tourist, or European exile, with pity. On the steps of the main staircase which leads to the pagoda platform sit, from morning till night, a number of poo( Burmese lepers, who hold up their maimed hands and beg with husky voices from the passers-by. The condition of the lepers there and in other parts of Rangoon is something terrible. Most of them have their faces disfigured by the fearful disease, many are blind, and some that I saw were so muti· lated about the hands and feet that they were compelled to crawl about on their elbows and knees. Unfortunately the number of lepers in Rangoon increases yearly and will continue to do so, for as the railways open up the country, the lepers will quit their native villages, where they are burdens to their friends, and go down to Rangoon to beg at the golden pagoda. The pilgrims as they hurry by respond generously to their affiicted country_ men's appeals; but, nevertheless, leprosy is a subject which a Burman will not readily discuss with anyone, for he dislikes the very mention of it, preferring to forget, if possible, that the fearful disease exists. If by chance he should talk about it, he declares that lepers are being punished for their sins in a previous existence, and that if they lead meritorious lives they will be born again and live free from the terrible taiut. It is quite certain, therefore, that while the Burmese remain Buddhists there is little probability of their ever establishing leper homes j but cannot we at home do something for the poor Rangoon lepers ~ The Mission to Lepers in India would gladly start a home in Rangoon j but their rapidly extending work and the increasing demands made upon them render it impossible for them to do so, unlesR they receive the· necessary funds. If they do open a home, it will do incalculable good, and once started, it wiII receive liberal support from the wealthy merchants, European and Asiatic, who reside in Rangoon. A proof of this has been already received, an English resident hearing of the proposed home having generously offered to give twenty acres of ground as a site for it. This offer, coming from a gentleman who resides in Rangoon, proves unmistakably that the great need which exists for such an institution is recognized in that city, and it will be a great pity if through want of funds no advantage can be taken of it. The home would be conducted on the same lines as the one which the Mission to Lepers in India support in Mandalay. That home was started by Rev. W. R. Winston, of the Wesleyan Missionary Society, who collected funds, and had the place built previous to his departure from the country on furlough. Upon his successor fell the duty of gathering in the first inmates, and this he did by going himself to their haunts and persuading them to enter the home. Now, knowing and thoroughly appreciating its advantages, they come in willingly, and at present there are over fifty inmates. A home at Rangoon would undoubtedly be as successful as the one at Mandalay. "
(Contributions for the above objects may be sent to Wellesley C. Bailey, Secretary and Superintendent of the Mission to Lepers in India, 17 Glengyle Terrace, Edinburgh, who will gladly give any information in his power.)
ANSWERED PRAYERS
ANSWERED PRAYERS.
BY MRS. MARIA J. BULLEN.
Rev. George Dana Boardman, who a year later became the first mission· ary to the Karens, in 1827 established himself among the Burmans of Moulmein, which had just previously come under English control. The Martaban River separated it from the province of Martaban, which was still Burman territory, and the resort of thieves and cnt-throats, from the opportunity it afforded of plying their infamous occupations. Armed companies of twenty or thirty would frequently go over to Moulmein and commit the most daring depredations, and even taking life when resisted, and destroying entire villages when found defenceless and unarmed. They had but to recross the river to be out of reach of the English.
Moulmein had been made the capital of British Burma, and Mr. and Mrs. Boardman were invited to make their home at headquarters, but they declined from a desire to have the freest intercourse with the Burmans. Mr. Boardman therefore built a frail dwelling on a spot which, however lovely, was very lonely, and to Jehovah he committed .himself and family for safe.keeping. In about a month they were visited at night by the dreaded robbers; but the Lord kept watch, and husband, wi£e ahd infant child were held in profound slumber. Not a hair of their head was touched, and no alarm of danger disturbed them, and so the danger passed.
George Dana Boardman, Jr., son of the missionary, at the age of six years was in a native rowboat on his way to the ship which was to bear him to the United States. He was in care of the missionaries Jones and Dcan; but the little company was attacked by brutal pirates bent on securing a box of letters stan.ding in the middle of the boat, which they supposed to contain treasures such as they were seeking. One of the boy's protectors was thrown overboard and the other, not so easily disposed of, received wounds with spear and cutlass. The poor child, hidden from sight behind a-bench, saw Mr. Dean reeling and bleeding on the bottom of the boat. Another blow from a fishing spear with barbed points penetrated the wrist, from which the heavy wooden handle was left hanging! A pale face appeared at the side of the boat, and Jones is dragged in, saved from the waves, but saved for what?
Was it a mother's prayers that made these fierce men stop their attack and by gestures explain their desires ~ The box was gladly given up to them, and the pirates left as suddenly as they came.
Great was the peril of Dr. Jacob Chamberlain, of the Arcot Mission, ,India, in a walled town in Hyderabad. The natives, in a rage at his telling of a different God from theirs, bade him leave at once. He replied that he had a message which he must first give; but they declared that if he should say another word he would be instantly killed. He saw them standing with a'rms filled with paving stones, and heard them say one to another, "You throw the first stone, and I will throw the next j" but he lifted his heart to Him who can subdue man's angry passions, and asked leave to "tell them a story," with the understanding that then, if they pleased, they might stone him.
It was the" old, old story" that he told them, beginning with the birth of Jesus. When he spoke of the cross, and explamed that the agony there suffered was for each one of them, they listened with wonder. Surely God was speaking through the words of the missionary. Their anger ceased j their hearts were touched j they threw down their paving stones. After telling of Jesus Christ's cry, "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken Me~" of His resurrection and ascension to heaven, and of the glorious offer of ialvation for all, Dr. Chamberlain said he was done-now they might stone him. ~~ut he had nothing to fear, for those men, lately so infuriated, were weeping. They gathered around to buy his books, that they might read for themselves of these wonderful things.
Eugenio Kincaid, while descending the Irrawaddy, after an exploring tour in the northern part of Burma, found himself beset with dangers. Civil war prevailed, and bands of banditti were prowling about, robbing, burning villages, taking prisoners, and committing the most appalling deeds of violence. Kincaid, accompanied by four Burman boys who had been under h~s instruction, was in an open boat. At a certain village near the river he was told that his course would take him through a deep ravine where many robbers had their headquarters. He soon s~w a boat of armed men approaching, but the displaying of a musket which he carried, according to the order of the governor, sent the robbers back toward the ehore, and a second boatful was similarly repulsed. Soon, however, the ruffians returned, largely re-enforced j five or six boats came toward him at full speed, their armed occupants looking like fiends and uttering terrible yells. Mr. Kincaid's little crew was in abject terror, and surrender seemed his only course. When his assailants were within hailing distance, he spread out his hands, saying in Burmese, " Come and take all we have." "Sit down! sit down !" was shouted back, and thirty muskets were pointed at him. He answered that" he was a foreigner, and if they harmed him they would suffer for it, for he had been promised protection by the governor." His. words had no effect, and a shower of bullets fell about him. In a few moments these desperate fellows surrounded his boat. He was completely surrounded by steel points, and could not move without feeling the points of their spears. "But," he says, " God was with me. .• In these trying circumstances I lifted up my heart for protection."
Afterward his captors held a council to decide whether they would release him or take his life. At the close of the conference the youngest of the Burman boys came to him and told him the decision, that he was to be beheaded at sundown. As the hour approached the men fell into a dispute, and by their loud, excited talk Mr. Kincaid saw that they were not agreed as to his fate, to which he had resigned himself as the will of God. He took courage, however, and implored protection. The' robbers were on the point of fighting one another in their passion, but quieted down, and all of them, even to a man, departed to make a depredation on a neighboring village, and under the friendly cover of the night their prisoners, though weak and worn, escaped.
During Dr. Eugenio Kincaid's passage down the Irrawaddy he was again captured, and from the very outset treated in a brutal manner. He barely escaped being choked to death. His clothing was torn from him j but when his assailants began to tie his arms as he had seen Burman criminals tied, his brave spirit asserted itself, and he declared he would never be tied j he would resist it till death. The wretches grinned fiendishly, but let his arms remain free. Dragged to a certain spot upon the shore, he was told, if he valued his life, not to step outside a line which they drew around him in the sand. There for six days and nights he was left with no shelter from the hot sun or the night chill. One of his boys divided with him his waist-cloth, and occasionally Burman women passing to and from the river gave him a little food. His boatmen and three of his Burman boys contrived to escape, and the fourth was taken as a servant to a certain chief. Dr. Kincaid's distresses were heightened by the sight of the agonies borne by unoffending Burman women brought from plundered villages. During the sixth day he resolved to attempt an escape to the mountains, although the risk was very great, and discovery would bring instant death. He prevailed on one of the more humane robbers to restore to him his pair of breeches. Night came. His tormentors, after the excitement of the day, slept soundly. Their leader lay but twelve feet from him. Scarcely daring to breathe, Kincaid crept cautiously beyond the guards, and then made his way as fast as his enfeebled state would allow to the entrance of the jungle, and by noon had reached the mountains. He was two hundred miles from Ava. Stiff and weak, often burning with thirst and suffering the pangs of hunger, he was tempted to cease his efforts j but with a prayer to the Lord, he urged himself onward. On the fifth day he came across a man whom he had met before, and induced him to take him in his boat to Ava, where within a few weeks his Burman boys joined him, all feeling that their preservation was almost miraculous.
Bishop Culeridge Patteson was delivered many times from the h!mds of those who sought to take his life before he finally received his martyrcrown. For example, while on a tour, he landed on an island, and inquiring where the chief lived, the natives offered to conduct him thither. From their excited words, some of which he caught, and especially from their expressive gestures, he became convinced that they meant to take his life. He could do nothing in defence. God alone could protect him. Wishing to escape for a little from the burning sun, he entered a small hut. There, on bended knees, he pleaded for his life, adding, " Thy will be done." Knowing that his own soul was safe, he besought the Lord for the souls of these darkened ones. Then, rising, he calmly told the natives that he was ready.
God heard his prayer, granting him such peace and serenity of counte- nance as disarmed his foes. He heard them say, "He does not look like a murderer; he cannot have been a party tt') our brother's death, therefore we will not hurt him." And he received only kindness at their hands.
Nowhere has the offering of human sacrifices and the practice of can- nibalism been carried to such an extent as in Fiji, and consequently the attempt to evangelize its miserable natives was at great risk of life.
In 1839 Messrs. Hunt and Lyth, with their families, stationed them- selves on the island of Somosomo, one of the darkest spots in Fiji. It is hardly conceivable that a refined person could endure the horrid sights and sounds to which they were subjected. They soon passed through a terri- ble experience. During a time of great excitement, when many victims were slaughtered and prepared for their cannibal feasts in near proximity to t.heir abode, they were told that their turn would come. The savages became more and more insulting and defiant, and there seemed to be little reason to hope for escape from this dreadful fate. On a certain night it was felt that the end was near. How helpless they were unless the Al- mighty should interpose !
Mosquito curtains were hung around the room to hide the little band from brutal eyes that might peep through the reed walls, and they gave themselves up to prayer, determined that their enemies should find them on their knees. In continuous audible prayer hour after hour was passed, until wild cries from outside were heard, and " each voice was hushed and each head bowed lower. " But their prayers had been heard. These cries were a call to the savage women to join a dance. God's children again were spared by the interposition of Him who holds the hearts of all men in His hand.
In laboring among the Bechuanas of South Africa, Hobert Moffat at one time had nearly been the victim of their gross superstition. A terri- ble drought had continued so long that many cattle died, and human beings were forced to live on roots and reptiles. A renowned rain-maker was sent for, but his remedies had no effect. Then all, sorcerer and peo- ple alike, charged their troubles upon Moffat and his associate, Hamilton.
They said of these servants of God: "They bowed down their heads and talked to something bad in the ground. The clouds were afraid of their chapel bell, and when they did show themselves the missionaries looked at them and frightened them back."
At last a native council was held, and a chief and twelve of his men were sent to them. He met Moffat with his spear in his right hand, and declared that the missionaries should be tolerated no longer. "They might leave if they would, but if not, they should be put to death." .
Moffat, looking into the eyes of the savage, calmly said, " We are re- solved to abide by our post. . .. You may shed our blood or burn us out. . . . Then shall they who sent us know that we are persecuted in- deed." Mrs. Moffat stood by with her babe in her arms. Moffat threw open his waistcoat, and said, " Now, then, if you will, drive your spears to my heart." The Lord again heard prayer. The chief was confound- ed. He shook his head significantly, and said to his followers, "These men must have ten lives when they are so fearless of death. There must be something in immortality."
How many similar proofs of a Divine interposition might be gathered from the experiences of missionaries! Many and amazing as are the .re- corded answers to prayer, the unwritten history is far more wonderful.
IN'I'EItNA'I'IONAL DEPAR'I'MEN'I'
1I.-INTERNATIONAL DEPARTMENT.
EDITED AND CONDUCTED BY REV. J. T. GRACEY, D.D.
The Status of our Anti-Ohinese Legis- commission to arrange II new treaty. . lation. This the United States did not agree to. The only existing treaty, it would seem, [J. T. G.] then, was that of 1880, shutting out the Chinese till 1890, as no other treaty had We have lived long enough to hear been made. No other was ever made, openly challenged the declaration that hence it would appear that in 1890 we "all men are born free and equal." relapsed to the conditions of the Bur- The Burlingame Treaty with China lingame Treaty. recognizes the "inherent and inalienable rights of man to change his home But further, the treaty of 1880 proand allegiance, and also the mutual ad. vided that the Chinese then resident in vantage of free migration and emigra- the United States should" be allowed tion/of their (the United States and to go and come of their own free will China) citizens and subj ects respecti ve- and accord." In the face of this then ly from one country to the other for the existing treaty Congress passed the purpose of curiosity, of trade, or as per- well-known Scott Bill, excluding all manent residents." Charles Sumner, Chinese who were at that hour tem- William H. Seward, Edward Everett, porarily out of this country, thus wrong- Caleb Cushing, and other great states- fully and cruelly without any warning men of the times accepted, that as the cutting off from their business, propfundamental principle of reciprocity be- erty, or other rights, 20,000 Chinesecititween these two countries. That, too, zens under the treaty. we have seen relegated to the limbo of impracticable politics. In 1892 the infamous Geary Bill was passed, imposing humiliating condi- In 1880 a new treaty was made to the tions on such Chinese as ha.d right of effect that while Americans might come residence after all previous crooked and go ad libitum, no Chinese could legislation. They must after May 5th, eome here for ten years thereafter. 1892, be tagged, ticketed, branded. This treaty was honorably enough se- Fifty thousand, or three times that cured, albeit, as we formulated the number, as the case may be, must com- "eternal fitness" of the first treaty, it ply with what must often prove imposmust have amused the older statesmen sible conditions or be imprisoned and of China to observe that the" inalien- deported. able rights" rule would work both ways only for thirteen years. In 1882 an- It appears that, so far as the internal other restriction bill was passed, shut- regulations of our country go, a law is ting the gates of the country against all of equal authority with a treaty, and Chinese laborers who were unable to whichever bears the later date must be prove a residence in this land dating recognized as controlling; the later prior to the passage of that act. In abrogates the earlier the same as if they 1888 Secretary Bayard and the Chinese were of the same kind. But the law is Minister then at Washington agreed on not unconditional. The Supreme Court another treaty by which the immigra- has decided that the law, in order to tion of Chinese to this country was to abrogate a treaty, must not be arbitrary be prohibited for twenty years there- and unjust. " Arbitrary power, enforcafter. That agreement between the two ing its edicts to the injury of the perministers, the Chinese authorities re- sons and property of its subjects, is not fused to ratify, but instead asked for a law, whether manifested as the decree of a personal monarch or an imperial multitude," is the language of our high. ing with the Chinese, nor even the mis..
est tribunal. The law that substitutes sionary interests involved that concerns a treaty must be within limits set for the usjustatthis moment. It is rather that law-making power; it must not contra- the eternal principles of equity mayob- vene the supreme law of the land; it tain, and specially at an hour when we must be " constitutional." have the nations as our guests. For This is just the quality of our Chinese this let all good men pray.
legislation which is now called in ques- tion. It is said that the" six Chinese companies" have subscribed a large sum The Ohinese Question and International of money to test this-that is, to let this country say for itself what its law is Law.* which they are expected to obey. They say, "Our attention has not been called RY REV. GILBERT REID, CHINAN-FU, CRINA. to. any law which makes it a crime for us to advise our fellow-subjects that The three treatises on international they have a right to disregard a law law by Wheaton, Woolsey, and Sliintwhich is in violation of the constitu- schle have all been translated into Chitions and treaties. " And yet, stl'angely nese for the Chinese Government by a enough, there are people who talk of learned American (Dr. W. A. P. Martin), this action as rebellious because the who is the President of the Imperial Uni- Chinese do not first comply with the- versity in Peking and Professor of Interlaw, the authority of which they wish national Law. The Burlingame Treaty to test. That must look to a Chinese is also especially conspicuous for its laundryman like" flat irony." clear enunciation of the foundation principles of true international rela- But the situation is too grave for tionship. Our modern legislation, at satire. The time for registration of least on the Chinese question, falls far Chinese laborers under the act is May short of what we have taught in other 5th~ Very few have complied with it days. Let us specify a few points. at the time of this writing. The reqoirement that each should be photo- 1. Woolsey, in his "International graphed has been waived by Secretary Law," says, ,. No nation through its Carlisle as necessary before registry. public documents or. by its official per- By request of the State Department, Bons can with right reflect on the instithe Department of Justice will, on May tutions or social characteristics of an- 5th, cause a Chinaman to be arrested other, or make invidious comparison to under the provision of the law and taken its disadvantage, orset forth in any way before the Federal Court. The case will an opinion of its inferiority." This be advanced to the Supreme Court with- principle, it seems to me, has been glarout delay, and a decision is expected ingly violated by this Bill of Chinese before the summer recess. No less a Exclusion and Registration, making cerlawyer than Joseph H. Choate, of New tain uncomplimentary regulations for York, will argue the case for the Chi- certain foreigners, (1) because they are nese Government. The principllilegal Chinese, and (2) because they are labor. ers. That venerable and distinguished statesman of Massachusetts, Senator contention, it is said, will be over the aHernati ve of registry or deportation. • For a fuller presentation of this subject, in The denial of habeas corpus to Chinese its legal, commerCial, national, and missionary bearings, we refer to a pamphlet about to be isattempting to land in this country, and sued by Rev. Gilbert Reid (Warsaw, N. Y.). Mr. the penalty of imprisonment at hard R has been ten years resident in China. He is labor for unlawfully remaining here, the anthor of 8 small volume, "Peeps into will also be challenged. China," which contains fresh and desirable in- formation and sprightly diBcussion concerning It is not 80 much the injury to oor things in that country. Fleming H. Revell Comcommercial interests and national stand- pany, New York, will furni8h It.-J. T. G. Hoar, has said: " These measures not sence of international law and the mak.
only violate our treaty engagement with ing of treaties. Hence it is that China a friendly nation, but they violate the was induced during the Burlingame era principles upon which the American reo of friendliness to begin the policy of public rests, striking not at crime, not sending ministers and consuls to for· even at pauperism, but striking at hu· eign governments, as well as receive man beings because of their race nnd at those from other countries. Hence it laboring men because they 'are labor. was that earlier in its history, but by ers." The Act as passed again and advice of foreigners, China formed a I again refers to " any Chinese person or new office to deal with and consult about persons of Chinese descent," making no foreign affairs. The right of conference distinction between those Chinese who on matters pertaining to more than one are Chinese subjects and those who by country is too axiomatic to meet any de· birth are the subjects of some other fence. And yet in 1888, when the For.
country, as of Great Britain on the eign Office at Peking asked for further island of Hong Kong, or even those discussion of the treaty made that year who by birth are now the citizens of the between the two countries, but not yet United States. That. man is a marked ratified, President Cleveland deemed it man who hilS Chinese blood in his best to refuse that request, but signed veins, no matter to what government he the Act of Congress which placed greater may now be subject. As an English restrictions on the Chinese than even journalist in China bas said: "It is ob. the new treaty under discussion had de..
vious that no European country would fined. It was independent action rather learn with equanimity of the passage of than the conference of two contracting a law singling out its nationals for penal parties. As to the Act of 1892, Wool· legislation. " sey's words may apply: "No State can 2. Sir Robert Fillimore has deduced exclude the properly documented sub- from the principle of equality the right jects of another friendly State, or send of a government to protect its subjects them away after they have been once ad· resident in o~her countries, and it may mitted without definite reasons, which be laid down that a State has cause of must be submitted to the foreign govern- complaint if its subjects in foreign ment concerned."
countries are denied ordinary justice. 5. It is a principle of international The large portion of the Chinese in the law that treaties are a part of the su- United States are still the subjects of preme law of the land, subject only to China, and China, therefore, has a right the provisions of the constitution, and to complain at the partiality of treat. that they are binding on the contracting ment meted out to her people. parties from the day of their date.
3. International comity is another Woolsey. in his "International Law,"
duty of nations. "It embraces," says says : " National contracts are even more Woolsey," not only that kindness which solemn and sacred than private ones, emanates from friendly feeling, but also on account of the great interests in· those tokens of respect which are due volved, of the deliberateness with which between nations on the ground of right. .. the obligations are assumed, of the per- This principle of comity has been in. manence and generality of the obliga- fringed by the insult not only to the tions, and of each nation's calling, Chinese laborers, but the greater inter. under God, to be a teacher of right to national question of insult to the Chi. aU within and without its borders."
nese Government, passing a law against The opinion of a former attorney.gen.
certain subjects of China without regard eral is cited by the State Department as to the national feelings of China. follows: "Not to observe a treaty is to 4. International intercourse by means violate a deliberate and express engage· of international conference is the es· ment, and afford good cause of war. When Congress takes upon itself to dis- things should be notAd if a subsequent regard the provisions of any foreign act of Congress is to prevail over a prior treaty, it of course infringes the same in treaty, and what I here say is also based the exercise of sovereign right, and vol- on the Supreme Court: First, according untarily accepts the causus belli_" Such to another decision of the Supreme is the state, then, in which we find our- Court, if Congress may nullify a treaty selves placed as a nation by Congress, with a foreign power, the nullification in the exercise of its sovereign right, must be express, and not by implication. passing the two bills of 1888 and 1892_ But thus far neither Congress nor the Our treaties with China are broken, and executive has either expressly or impliedthereby one principle at least of inter- 1y abrogated the treaty with China. national law is trampled UpOll_ And hence the treaty is still in force, and not the suhsequent act of Congress. In my younger days of studying in. Secondly, an act of Congress cannot ternational law I learned all this, but pass as law and abrogate a prior treaty, only of late and as a result of studying if it is arbitrary and unjust, as the Suthis Chinese question have I learned of preme Court has also adjudged. 'Thirda modifying principle. Though it makes ly, as according to the Constitution, law rather too complex for an unpro- Article YI., Clause 2, all treaties, as fessional mind, it is still our duty to well as the constitution and laws of the state it as it is. The Supreme Court, United States, are the supreme law of in rendering its decision in 1889 on the the land, so any law which may be Scott Bill of 1888, said: "Although it proved unconstitutional cannot prevail must be conceded that the Act is in over a prior treaty. As the clause encontravention of express stipulationE of joins, the laws must he " in pursuance" the Treaty of 1868 and of the Supple- of the constitution to ,. be the supreme mentary Treaty of 1880, it is not on that law of the land." And this is what the account invalid or to be restricted in its Chinese, under advice of competent atenforcement. By the Constitution, la"s torneys, are wishing to test-viz., made in pursuance thereof and treaties whether the Act of 1892 is constitumade under the authority of the United tional and binding or not. For this States are both declared to be the su- reason the mass of the Chinese in the preme law of the land, and no para. United States are ignoring the regulamount authority is given to one over tions of that act. the other. In either case the last ex· pression of the sovereign will must con- Bnt whatever the outcome, this much trot" So Attorney-General Crittenden, is clear, that it is a lamentable caricain an opinion on certain legislation con- ture on our American civilization that flicting with the Treaty of 1819 with our national government shall even de- Spain, held that" An Act of Congress sire, to pass a law which may break the is as much a supreme law of the land as treaties and the principles of internaa treaty. They are placed on the same tional intercourse. Would it not be betfooting, and no superiority is to be ter, would it not be a sounder and more given to the one over the other. The honorable policy to seek the path of last expression of the law-giving power harmony, either by changing the law or must prevail; and a subsequent act revising the treaty, so that the law shall must prevail and have effect, though be in harmony with the treaty in accord inconsistent with a prior act ; so must with international law, and in pursuan act of Congress have effect, though ance of the constitution? inconsistent with a prior treaty.." What is the bearing of all this on It is not for one like me to argue the missionary work in China? The nummeaning of the law. I merely take it her of American citizens in China are for granted as the right and supreme de- second on the list, those from Great cision. But it seems to me that three Britain being the first- The numher, however, is a small one, being a little ing and estrangement, lind the suspicion over one thousand, both men and worn· of our bad intentions rather than a be· en. Of this number nearly one half are lief that we Americans are all 80 good.
mISSIonaries. Small though the num· Furthermore, there may well be a ber may be, it should not be forgotten ground of shame, to think that it reo that they are all representative men and quired a band of plain Chinese laborers women, delegated to their work by com· and laundrymen to bring our law·mak· petent religious bodies at home. The ers to terms, and that the Chine,se in work they are doing is also a represent. New York should have to raise $30,000 ative work, representing not only the to engage competent attorneys, and five hundred or more who are in China, prove· before the national Supreme but representing the Christian senti· Court that the bill passed by both ment of the people in America. This Houses of Congress and signed by the work thus organized likewise occupied, President is null and void.
as we have mentioned above, places of Suppose, however, that the law will influence, and in some cases strategic be carried into effect next May by or- points of China. Of the twenty.two ders of the Executive, and we shall be capitsls in China, and everyone a very called upon to witness a scene similar centre of influence, half of them are to the expUlsion of the Jews from Rus.
showing to.day the beneficent work of sia or their ancestors from Egypt, or our American missionaries. Already suppose, in a. milder way, the law will obstacles, persecution and riots, all only gradually be applied for the next much as anyone should desire, beset six months, all through the world·wide the work of the American missionaries, Exposition at Chicago, on till the Suo as well as those from other lands, and preme Court shall meet in October- need no additional impetus from the reo what then? We will find ourselves in action in China of our legislation at this position: the United States Con· home. gress can pas!! a bill abrogating a treaty; Whether th'l bill of Chinese Exclusion the Chinese Government will then de· will impair the lives and work of our cide that her treaties with the United missionaries in China, I regard only as States are invalid, and that she, too, a minor matter. The main question is has a right to make la.ws and issue or· one of justice and right. Still the ques. ders contrary to the treaties.
tion of security or peril is interesting Already something of this kind has to those here, as well as slightly so to occurred. According tl! the American our fellow.countrymen in China, I will Treaty of 1880, the same tonnage dues not attempt to prophesy wars, blood. or duties shall be granted to goods car· shed, or martyrdom, but content my. ried by American vessels as by the Chi.
self with plain facts. nese. Well, last autumn the Chinese Let us first suppose that the Chinese began to ship grain to Peking on the laborers, the Six Companies and their China merchants' steamers free of duty.
American attorneys, succeed in carrying under special permits from the Chinese a case to the Supreme Court in the authorities, while duty was still charged United States, and obtain the decision to the grain carried on English steam.
that the bill of May, 1892, is unconsti. ers. By the" favored nation" clause, tutional. This, it seems to me, will be the same favors accrue to England a.s to the probable result, if there can only be America or any other country. Lord the chance to have the case tried. Un. Rosebery, therefore, made a complaint der such circumstances the effect in to Peking on basis of our treaty of 1880.
China. will be nothing da.ngerous or The Chinese Government replied that startling, but none the less there will ex· for the present that treaty was broken ist in ma.nya Chinaman's breast ill·feel· and the right had lapsed. The Oritioisms on the Deoennial Oonfer- A small minority asked the privilege to withdraw the resolution for harmony, ence. lIS it WIIS not unanimously adopted. By We saw it alleged in an India paper a very narrow majority the Conference- some years since, that the India army many members not voting-finally al- was so decimated by disellSe superin- lowed the committee to withdraw it.
duced by vice that it was a serious ques- This action has subjected the Confer- tion whether it could be mobilized to ence to a great deal of grave criticism meet a great emergency. The remedy for lack of moral courage, and even as was sought in a legalized patronage and sympathizing with legalization of vice.
supervision of this vice in military can- By others it is blamed for vacillation, tonments. A great protest of the Chris- and by still others for merely stupidly tian sentiment in India and Great Brit- blundering in procedure. It has been ain resulted in an Act of Parliament asserted that it shows a decadence in dissolving this official connection with ancient missionary enthusiasm under sin. The India authorities have very the domination of "Brahmanized edu.
tardily, if to any important extent, car- cationalists who have ceased to be mis- ried out this decree of the nation. The sionaries." One British editor, who missionaries have in sections where the writes with warmth or does not write at military were quartered protested that aH, says the apology given for the with- great hindrance came to their work by drawal of the resolutions in the light of the presence of this legalization of vice. the Word of God" shrivels into some- All have felt the disgrace of a great thing worse than insignificance."
Christian government sustaining such The criticisms have been so sharp relation to impurity. and so widespread that the missionaries The Government of India carries on have lost no time in making clear their officially the culture of opium for ex- position in relation to the State regula- port, largely to China; and it is claimed tion of impurity. The first meeting of that the revenue from this opium cul- the Calcutta Missionary Conference, the ture is absolutely necessary to balance largest body of missionaries in the world the financial budget of the empire. The meeting regularly at short intervals, India Government has also a license passed a resolution setting forth that system of intoxicants which has many they bad always unanimously con- peculiarly obnoxious features. It fos- demned all State regulation of vice as ters instead of restrains ; forces instead carried on under the now abolished of represses their sale. Contagious Disease Acts, and protest- Itwas anticipated by many. that when ed against any continuance of the sys- the Decennial Conference convened it tem under the Cantonment Act, and re- would express its condemnation of these affirmed their view that the resolution offensive public acts of the Govern- of the British Parliament abolishing it, ment. But the Conference appears to in India ought to be carried out. The have decided not to pass any resolutions two conferences of the American Meth- on any subject Whatever, as it had no odists meeting in Bombay the week pre- power lIS a deliberative body. This vious had declared most positively caused great dissatisfaction, and an- against all three of these vices, and that other adjustment was had that all reso- is quoted as showing the missionary lutions be sent to the business commit- sentiment.
tee, who should present such as com- A great meeting outside the Decen.
mended themselves to their judgment. nial Conference to protest against A very strong resolution was presented opium culture, and traffic is pleaded to against State regulation of vice, which show the real sentiment of the mission- was passed amid loud applause-many aries personally on that subject. It is witnesses say by a vote of " silC to one." shown, too, that a great portion of the agitation against the three forms of vice largest, and in many respects, the fore.
in question has been fostered and led most missionary force of Protestant his.
by missionaries. It is said as an excuse tory.
for non·action by the Conference that It will be more profitable that we de.
the licensed impurity is confined to the vote our attention to their great thoughts military stations, and many missionaries, and ac'tion on the overwhelming oppor· as a consequence, know nothing of it as tunities and responsibilities of the hour an obstruction to their local work; the in India, where there is a condition of practice of opium.smoking is confined things which will not last. It is only within certain areas, too, and its evil is now that the chance of directing Whole not known to many missionary fields. masses and great movements is ours.
These and numerous other statements The lower classes in India will slough and apologies are found filtering through off from Hinduism whether we reach the Anglo.Indian and British press to them or not. They will go to Islam or offset the criticisms. It has even been something else, if not to Christianity.
also said that there was no consistency The upper and educated claflses cannot in the Conference condemning the Gov. remain Brahmans. What will they be ?
ernment while missions continued to reo That is of vital consequence. There is ceive money from the same in support of no reason to believe that the missionary their schools and colleges; the missions force on the field is incapable nor dere.
might better first quit themselves of the lict to duty. They are the best men we charge of being partic,eps criminis. can find. They must be criticised, if We have thus tried to state briefly needs be, but they must l;e trusted. '
lIome of the main features of this case, They deserve our confidence, and will because it is likely to be a subject of honor it. J. T. G.
controversy for SODle while to come, whether and to what extent the Confer- ence shirked its responsibility or mere· The Afro-Mala.gasy Sla.ve TrafBo.
ly blundered for lack of competent lead· BY J. BlIITISH BESIDENT IN MJ.DJ.G.llIC~.
ership under the pressure of its closing hours. There can surely be no neces· Lord Rosebery, at the request of the sity to defend missionaries from suspi. French Government, has issued instruc.
cions of lagging behind the moral sen· tions to the officers of the British navy timent of the age in the matter of social and the British consular agents in this impurity; we will not brook so much as country to in no way concern themselves the suggestion. But the missionaries with exercising a police control over the of India will realize afresh that they dhows of the various nationalities in the have to reckon with a public opinion waters of Madagascar ; in fact, notwith.
among their constituency at home. standing the right of search and seizure That the Conference ought either to of all vessels suspected of slaving in the have stuck to its original decision to waters of this eountry being specifically adopt no resolutions at all-which we stipulated for by Articles 16 and 17 of do not concede to be wise-or having the Anglo-Malagasy Treaty of 1865, his grappled with any form of evil should lordship, according to telegram to hand have gone straight to its mark, will, we here, .. has directed English ships and have no doubt, be the opinion of the the consuls not to search vessels of any Christian world. As it is difficult to flag in Madagascar waters. "
judge of motives and some personal This, in many ways, political as well prejudices at this distance, the proba· as philanthropio, is a very grievoUll bilities are that no more serious damage abandonment of those rights and privi.
will result than grief that an altogether leges the British Government were at regrettable affair marred the harmony pains, in the Anglo.French Convention of so important and noble a body, the of 1890 regarding Zanzibar and Mada· guoar, to reserve to England in their flying flags of different nations, and no entirety; and to avert the censure vessel would be allowed to fly the flag which, I haTe reason to know, is in cer- of any of the great powers without reg- tain qnarterll contemplated being pub- istration and a proper license. They lioly pronounced, at no distant date, on might thank the Government of France England's abandonment of her interest for having conceded what, for some in the suppression of the Afro.Malagasy time, appeared to a certain extent against slave·traffic, the attention of the Gov- their will-the right of search to all other ernment should be called to the spirit nations."
in which the Zanzibar.Madagascar Con- This being the spirit in which Eng- vention was ooncluded. land and France came to an agreement When placing the Anglo.French Con- upon Zanzibar and Madagascar, and this vention before the House of Lords, Lord being the spirit in which both Houses Salisbury stated: "We have taken the of the British Parliament regarded that opportunity on both sides not only to agreement, Lord Rosebery should recon- reserve all rights and privileges which sider his instructions for Her British all subjects of either country (England Majesty's representatives not to take and France) might have in either coun- part in the reduction of the slave traffic try (Zanzibar and Madagascar), but also in Madagascar waters. Under the lax to give the most explicit guarantee to surveillance of France the slave trade missionaries and missions, "nd of free· will assuredly increase with great rapid- dom of religious practice and religious ity, and then attention will be influen- teaching." And Sir J. Fergusson, then tially drawn to the matter, and when it Under-Secretary of State for Foreign is generally known that the increase is Affairs, said during the discussion Mr. due to England having for no purpose S. Smith raised on the convention in abandoned her treaty rights, Lord Rose.
the House of Commons, he thought that bery will be censured for not pursuing all might rejoice with them in what he that "continuity of Great Britain's considered to be the greatest step taken moral policy" which he has recently laid in the last half century toward the ex- such emphasis upon.
tinetion of that accu1"sed traffic (the slave·traffic). Following up the Act of Brussels, a blow had been struck at the The Opium Habit. slave trade in its developments and in its sources. BY BEV. "WILLIAM M. UPCRAFT, SUI-n, CHINA. The statement of Lord Salisbury makes olear that it was not his lord- The opium trade has been called Eng- ship's intention to abandon any British land's sin and China's curse. Both sin right or privilege. And the utterance and eurse it may prove itself to be to of Sir J. Fergusson makes evident that both nations yet, ere their hands are the facility which Anglo.French co- free from it.
operation would give for the extinction The present extent of the curse in of the slave traffic was one of the main China is alarming. but still increasing.
reasons Lord Salisbury had in signing The western province:! produce enough the convention regarding Zanzibar and for home consumption, enormous as Madagascar. Indeed, so strongly did that is, and yet leave a margin for ex· the anti-slavery reasons influence the port to other provinces.
House of Commons that, among other The vice has fastened itself upon all speakers expressing similar approval, classes and all ages. Recently the Mr. S. Buxton said, in the course of the writer was gnest with a responsible same discussion : "It was satisfactory mandarin, and through him was brought to find that careful supervision was into friendly acquaintance with several going to be uudertaken with regard to other officials and students, all of whom smoked the drug. and most of them The Rev. D. C. Gilmore, writing from quite heavily. the Baptist College a.t Rangoon, Burma, The earliest memories of many chilo says: dren, both at home among friends and "The Rnmw for September, 1892, at school, are of opium in its moat sedllc. under the caption' Prayer 1I6rBIU Pray- tive forms. er,' called our attention to the appoint- One of the moat alarming features ment by the Hindus of October 30th as now is the loss of conscience on the sub. a day of special prayer' to the Supreme ject. It is no longer a shame to smoke; Power, that the Hindu religion may be indeed, it is considered a ah·ame not to saved from its present degenerate posi.
smoke when all others are doing so, tion.'
much the same as it used to be consid· " In this connection the REVIEW sug· ered a want of tone in anyone who gested that' It would be a very fitting could not drink his share with the rest thing for the Christian churches of all when drinking was more common in the world . . . to set apart October Westem lands than is now happily the 30th as a day of special prayer for these case. Not to smoke is to be strange. religionists, that God would, in a way In the city of Sui·fu there are said to be they little intend or suspect, hear their over two thousand opium dens, and in cry and answer them.'
the smaller city of Luchow, thirteen "The Burma Bo.ptist Convention as· hundred such places are reported. sembled at Rangoon in October, 1892, To the question, "Do you smoke endorsed this suggestion, and the day opium?" one often gets the reply, .. Who was-to what extent I cannot say-ob- doesn't smok(l1" 0. counter.question tho.t served by the Christians of Burma. It is both reply and comment. was very fervently observed by the Why do they smoke? may be asked Christian students of the Rangoon Bap- o.nd may be answered in 0. sentence-the tist College. It was a beautiful sight to moral deterioration of the people com- see Karen, Burman, and Shan disciples bined with the seductive cho.racter of the (some of whom were themselves converts habit. It begins in play, it ends in grim from heathenism) uniting in prayer on earnest. There is a growing fascina- behalf of the heathen on the other side tion in the way it is taken-this subtle of the !lay of Bengal.
drug. The smoker lies down to it- " But what I particularly want to say bliss in itself to an Oriental. Such a is that one of our heathen young men, position o.ffords an opportunity for the the subject of much prayer, who is now gossip the Oriental lo,es. The opium applying for baptism, says that he was becomes 0. pet to him, he fondles it with led to seek the Lord by the exercises of his fingers, heats it over the tiny lamp, that day of prayer for the Hindus. Our its fumes enwrap him, and finally send prayer for the Hindus of India has been him off to slumber and dreams. answered by the conversion of a Bud.
And who shall measure thll damage dhist in Burma. The hoy ascribes his wrought by this facile agent for suicide change mainly to the long.continued in.
-they can commit suicide and yet die fiuence of Christian schools, but says decently and po.inlessly ! that that day of prayer was the tuming To the lack of adequate medical at· point,"
tendance and accurate medical skill may be traced the large use of opium. Opium THE GAlIOS IN ASILUI.-The Bev.
also is a panacea to a people whose E. G. Phillips writes a note, saying: medical faculty is in the barbarous con· " The state of spiritual life in the na- dition of that of Europe in the dark tive Church in our field is very encour.
ages. The destruction by opium is an aging. The first two of the Garo tribe added plea for the quick evangelization were converted thirty years ago. They of Chiua. begall work among their people, !!oud four years later 40 converts were bap- schools, 240 scholars. The heathen at· tized and a missionary located among tendanta on public worship number them. Since then the growth has been 5790.
steady, until now there. are about 2500 "The Rev. J. W. Mackenzie and wife, communicants, and there have been of the New Hebrides Mission, &fter a probably 4000 baptisms on profession sojourn of several months in New South of personal faith. The work is moving Wales, left in improved health on Feb- on with increasing momentum, and ruary 15th for their work in the illiands.
promises in the near future to bring in They have been for 20 years among the the whole tribe. More than 700 were natives of Ef&te, and have a Christian baptized during the past year. The people around them. Mr. Mackenzie great part of the churches are self.sup- has carried a new school primer and portiJlg in the matter of finances, church hymn.book through the press in Syd.
discipline. and to an encouraging de. ney. There are 80 hymns in the collec- gree in aggressive church work. The tion. He has also reprinted a first cate.
standard of church life is maintained at chism, after the one prepared by the a higher point than in many parts of Rev. John Geddie. There is a cate· Christian lands. chism on geography also in the volume.
.. The Garos are demon.wcrshippers- "The Rev. Joseph Annand, M.A., and one of the many animistic races in wife have been in Tasmania for their Northeast India. Their universal and health before returning to the New constant practice of animal sacrifice Hebrides."
makes them, I believe, specially sus.
ceptible to the teaching of the Atone- Our editorial correspondent, Rev. Al. ment." bert L. Long, D.D., of Robert College, has received from Prince Ferdinand of NEW GUINEA..-Rev. Dr. Steel writes Bulgaria the cross of Commander in the from Sydney: Bulgarian National Order of Civil Merit. An exchange says: " The Rev. James Chalmers has got a steam launch for the Fly River Mission. " It is a much·coveted mark of distinc. It haa cost £1220, raised in Australia. tion. This is the second Bulgarian The Rev. W. G. Lawes, of the London decoration he has received. In both Missionary Society, is soon to return to cases they were conferred without no· New Guinea with the printed New Tes· tice. The first waa from Prince Alexan. tament .in the Motu language. There der, the cross of a commander in the are now 5 European stations of this so· Order of Saint Alexander, an order in. ciety under 6 missionaries. There are stituted by him as a mark of apprecia- tion of special services rendered the national cause. The second is the new order instituted by Prince Ferdinand."
80 other stations. The native teachers from Christian Islands of Polynesia are The Free Churoh of Scotland Monthly 50, and no less than 30 native Christians says: "Dr. Pierson haa been delivering of New Guinea are now teachers. There to large audiences in Edinburgh and are 500 church.members-baptized on Glasgow the Duff Missionary Lectures. profession of faith in Christ. There are The subjects chosen were those with 3000 in attendance at the various which the lecturer had already a special schools. Besides the New Testament acquaintance, and his handling of them printed in the Motu language, gospels was eloquent in a high degree. They or portions of Scripture have been print. will read well, and his book when it is published will certainly prove to be the most popular of the series. ", ed in five other dialects.
"The Wesleyan Mission in New Unoccupied mission territory: to the Guinea has 4 ordained missionaries, 1 extent of 4,000,000 square miles still ex· lay missionary 2 lady missionaries, 26 ists in Central Africll-an area larger teachers, and 1 local preacher. There life ~ Cbllrches, 44 cqmmqnicants, 8 than the whole of Europe. So says Rev. George Grenfell, of the Baptist Congo Mislljon,
DEPARTMENT OF CHRISTIAN El!IDKAVOl. 453
III.-DEPARTMENT OF CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR.
CONDUCTED BY PBOFES80R AKOS R. wmJ.B.
The "First Young People's Memorial ahout six weeks. The course is to be Churoh," whioh Lutheran young peo- obtained, free, and without collections ple are endeavoring to build at San at the meetings, on condition that all Diego, Cal., has obtained from them churches with Christian Endeavor soci- nearly half of the $5000 desired. Only eties in the town petition for the oourse ; 166 Lutheran young people's sooieties, that local missionary societies co-oper- however, have yet oontributed, and 140 ate ; that the Sunday when the address of these are Chril!tian Endeavor soci- is given be made a misaionary field. day, eties. As there are about four hundred pastors preaching missionary sermons Christian Endeavor sooieties in the in the morning, miBBionary workers General Synod branoh of the Lutheran holding a conference and prsyer semee Churoh, it would seem that the SU0088S in the afternoon, and 8 union m……. of the undertaking is essily assured. meeting being held to listen to the ad- The Presbyterian Board of Foreign dress in the evening; that full preBB Missions sends out a ~onthly state- notices be given before and after; and ment. For Maroh this statement that travelling expenses and entertain- showed oontributions from Presbyterian ment be furnished the speakers. This Christian Endeavor societies to the seems to be one of the most praotical amount of $3582.67. For Maroh, 1892, and valuable of the many devioes fOr the Bum received from the BaID.e souroe the popularization of missionary.intelwas $1639.22. This is a gain of $2043.- ligenoe that the Christian Endeavor 45, or 132 per oent! From May 1st, movement has brought into use. 1891, to Maroh 31st, 1892, Christian Dr. Clark fell in with forty Christian Endeavor oontributions to this board Endeavor ~ooieties in India, only about were$6628.25; during the same months ten of which had ever been-reported to of 1892-93 they were $12,710.06 ; a gain the Boston seoretary. This is certainly of $6081.81, or 91 per oent. The board indicative of a general condition of made gains in receipts from Sunday- affairs, and there are undoubtedly schools, legacies, ohurches, and wom- many more Endeavor societies in the en's boards, bnt no gain was anything world than ever appear in the annual like the gain shown by these figures. report of Secretary Baer.
The nlinois State Christian Endeavor The Methodist Christian Endeavor Union, through the efforts of that ar· Society at Allahabad, India, is quite dent missionary worker, Mr. S. L. Mer- suooessful in enlisting in its ranks the shon, of Evanston, has set on foot a British redcoats. Of course this soldier plan which will be adopted, we hope, element is a fluctuating quantity, 8JI the by every Christian Endeavor union in troops are moved he.re and there, but it the world. It is a" missionary exten. is a noble work that this society is thus sion course," and has been prepared in doing. Every aotive member in this connection with the various denomina- sooiety may be depended upon to offer tional boards. Eight or nine promi- public prayer. nent and entertaining speakers have The Christian Endeavor society in been secured. Mr. Torrey is among Bombay, India, is so large that it is dithem. Their subjects will all be mis- vided into four divisions, each of which sionary. Twenty·five places will be is really a separate sooiety. carefully chosen as strategetioal points The Christian Endeavor society of throughout the State, and these leo- the Blockley Baptist Church of Phil,,- tures will be given there at intervals of delphia has established what is called a "propagation committee," which is The president of the New South Wales planning to hold evangelistic services Union writes as follows about the prog.
Sunday afternoons during the sum- ress of the Christian Endeavor move- mer. ment in Australia: "There has been The pastOr of the Christian Church steady progress-more especially among of Lawrence, Ran., was absent for a the Wesleyan denomination-from a month leading a missionary revival in dozen to twenty new .societies being re- another town. During this month his ported each month. The spirit of en- pulpit was occupied Sunday evenings thusiasm is ever on the increase, and by young men from his Endeavor so- devotion to ollr movement becomes ac· ciety, and their ministrations met with centuated every day."
much suooess. Here is an idea.that many a Christian The extensive arrangements for the Endeavor society might carry out for International Christian Endeavor Con- the benefit of some missionary worker vention, to be held in Montreal, July and the cause in general. Rev. E. P.
5th-8th, are well under way. Among Holten, of the Madura Mission in the speakers already secured are Dr. southern India, has a camera, which Cuyler, Dr. Chapman, the Canadian was given him by an Endeavor society Minister of Finance, Dr. Henson, Dr. in Hanover, Mass. This camera he Hoyt, Dr. Burrell, Bishop Arnett, Hon. uses in making pictures of natives and W. C. P. Breckinridge, and many an· of Indian scenery, which he sends back other famous Christian preacher and to the home churches to arouse interest scholar. Two great meetings will be in missions.
held simultaneously, in a hall that will . The Endeavor society in the girls'
seat nine thousand and a great tent boarding school of Madura petitioned that will seat eight thousand. their teacher to allow them to go with.
An excellent Christian Endeavor so- out cocoanut meat in their curry, in or· ciety exists in the Methodist Church in der that they might have something to the historic city of Lucknow. India. give to missions. When it is remem- Two strong Christian Endeavor soci- bered that the girls live on rice and eties are also found in the great Dhur- curry, and that cocoanut is the most amtallah Street Methodist Church of delicious and highly prized ingredient Caloutta. of their curry, the extent of their self- Christian Endeavorers everywhere denial can be understood.
have met a severe loss in the death of a The weekly reports of the workers noble and beautiful man, Rev. A. C. and committes of the Endeavor society Hathaway. Mr. Hathaway was the of Madanapalle, India, are very inter.
ohief promoter of the Christian En- esting. At a recent meeting that Dr.
deavor movement among the Friends, Clark attended, John Yesuratnam re- and was the president of the Friends' ported that, with four others, he had Christian Endeavor Union. preached the Gospel, within two weeks, A Christian Endeavor society has to six huudred people in seventy differ· been formed in the American Church ent villages. Lazarus Marian had start- of Paris, France, whose pastor is Rev. ed a Sunday-school with one hundred Edward G. Thurber, D.D. and twenty members. J. P. Timothy Here is one good result of the Chris- and others had preached the Gospel on tian Endeavor self·denial week of this the railway trains, going from one com- year. The president of a certain Dli- partment to another, as the trains nois society was a confirmed user of stopped at different stations. The cars tobacco. For that week, as hili self- on the Indian railways are built on the denial, he neither smoked nor chewed English compartment plan, and the the weed, and as a result has deter. Hindoos ride. for the most part, in the mined never again to touch it. third·class cars, which are usually crowded. Twenty.five workers from 'Glad are we to Bee you, the society, on the previous Sunday Glad are we to sea you, evening, with a magic lantern, musical Glad are we to see you, instruments, singing, etc., had proclaimed the Gospel to three hundred Glad are we.' people in Madanapalle. The total for the week showed that eleven hundred In front of them was another whitepeople had been reached by about forty robed procession from the girls' school ; members of the society. and they, too, took up the strain- Rev. W. I. Chamberlain, of the Arcot 'Glad are we to see you, (Dutch Reformed) Mission in India, Glad are we to see you,' etc. told Dr. Clark that on one occasion, being asked to show his magic-lantern Thus all the way to the bungalow pictures, he threw them on the white marched these singing youths and wall of a new Hindoo temple which was maidens. Was ever a welcome more being dedicated. So interested were cordial or more unique? Our full the auditors that the dedication services hearts responded, though we conld not were deserted, the· interior of the tem. sing it so well as they, ' Glad ar& we to pIe was emptied, and the priests them- lIee you, dear Endeavorers of Madana. selves, with a throng of hundreds of palle.' For this was the famous sooiety Hindoos, stood for an hour, with won- of the Arcot Mission, a pioneer of Chrisder and interest, while he explained tian Endeavor in India." the story of the crOBS. Perhaps many missionaries in India and other lands, At the decennial missionary confer. if provided with so attractive a sermon ence held in Bombay, India, last De. adjunct, could be as much helped there- cember, the Christian Endeavor Society by. Here is a hint to our societies at received many Warm commendations home. from the speakers, who had tried it, and found it admirably adapted to the Here is Dr. Clark's account of the needs of the young converts. way the native Christian Endeavorers of Madanapalle; India, received him, In four denominations Christian Enas his party approached the mission deavorers are now engaged in raising about nine o'clock in the evening: money to build "Christian Endeavor "When we were within a quarter of a mission churches" under the direction mile of the gate three white figures sud· of their denominational boards. The denly started up from the roadside, fifth denomination to set its Christian peered eagerly into the carriage, and Endeavorers to doing this work is the then started off at a 2.40 pace for the Congregation·al. They wish to raise, mission compound. A little further, from the Congregational Christian En. three other little ghosts suddenly ap- deavor societies of the country, $7000 peared, gazed into the carriage, and for the Philips Church, in Salt Lake were off like the wind. ' They are City. This was the first church (now looking to see whether we have all existing) founded by the New West come,' says our missionary friend, 'so Education Commission. as to give the signal.' Another two minutes, and we hear the mission bell Here is the Sunday programme of one ring out, and when the bullocks turn Christian Endeavor society in France: in at the gate of the mission compound, Church in the morning ; an afternoon a few minutes later, two score of white- service; Sunday-school; Chrstian robed figures, Telugu boys from the Endeavor meeting; then in the even. school. are arranged on each side, sing- ing half of the society holds a service ing melodiously, in good English and in the McAIl Mission braneh, while the with all their hearts and lungs- other half, under the leadership of a young lady, a converted Catholic, con_ ducts the evening service in the church.
The Christian Endeavor society in Monastir, Macedonia, gave its seU-de- nial week collection tQ a struggling church in Bulgaria.
EDITORUL DEPARTMENT
IV.-EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT.
The following letter is one out of many whom the Lord has blessed both many which cause the editors no little perplexity. From the outset we have with the means and with the heart to been seeking to furnish the REVIEW at a give who will gladly joi,n in this goOd nominal rate, or entirely free, to all stu- work. A. T. P. dent volunteers for mission fields who were unable to payfor it, and for a time Death of Dr. Mitohell. our friends have helped us by donations given for this special purpose. For The death of Dr. Arthur Mitchell, t!le every dollar sent us we have, at one.half able and honored Secretary of the Presprice, sent the REVIEW to such students. byterian Board of Foreign Missions, The demand, however, has been so great which occurred in Saratoga, N. Y., on and the fund for this purpose so ex- April 24th, is felt as a great personal bausted that we can no longer cope with loss to the editors of the REVIEW. In the claims of these young men. One of Dr. Mitchell the cause of missions 108.,s the editors has paid for a large number a warm friend and able advocate. The of the REVIEWS thus sent to students. news of his death will be the occasion But unless some benevolent friends of great sorrow. shall give help, this important part of the missionary sernce of the REVIEW Ths Finding of Bishop Hannington's cannot be maintained. And it is our Remains. persuasion that the fact needs only to be known that such applications from Important letters were received from students far outrun all the means at our disposal to elicit both sympathy and Bishop Tucker up to December 18th aid. Any contributions, large or small, sent for this purpose to the editors or last. The most interesting part of them publillhers will be acknowledged on the cover of the REVIEW. refers to the discovery of Bishop Han.
The letter referred to reads as fol- nington's remains: lows: Mumiya's, December 9th,1892.-To. .. DEAR DB. PmBsoN : There are 110 day we came on to a still larger and more populous town, Mumiya's. Our student volunteers who are scattered arrival was expected, and so there were great crowds of people with heavy bur· over the English and Scotch universi- dens of food standing ready to greet ns. I went at once to Bee the chief Mumiya ties, and who are willing to take the -a young man of great intelligence. After talking some time with him, it MISSIONARY REVIEW OF THE WORLD at struck me that he must know something about Bishop Hannington. Accordingfour shillings (one dollar) and postage ly, I introduced the subject. He knew in a moment to whom I referred, and extra. The names were sent to Messrs. spoke of his· having lost a thumb. He told me that he begged the bishop not Funk & Wagnalls, but they reply that to go through Busoga, but that he said it would be all right, and he would the fund for this purpose is entirely ex- reach Uganda safely. I asked if he knew where the bishop'S remains were hausted, and the REVIEW' cannot be fur- buried. He told me in reply that he knew nothing about it; that Mr. Jack. nished at that price without positive son had brought them, but that they had been carried on to the coast. Of loss to tbe publishers. May I ask your course I knew that this was not so, and being convinced .that I was somewhere ~dvice? near the spot, I pressed my question further, but without avail. While.I was [Signed] "L. B." talking to the chief. a young man came np who had been with the bishop on his The editor replied, assuming ihe re- fatal journey through Busoga. This sponsibility for whatever is lacking in man said the chief was with him when the price, that these 110 young men might have the REVIEW. But, as already intimated, he feels confident there are he was killed. I then entered into con- was at s considerable angle. The lid also had been broken. The people had versation with him, and tried to get evidently suspected that something had been buried under the 1l00rof the house, some information out of him. with refer- and my idea is that, believing it to be ence to the place of burial. The re- ivory, they had made an attempt to get mains, Mr. Jackson told me, had been at it. There was no doubt whatever as to identification. We sent for a ooverplaced by himself in an iron box. The ing from the camp, in which the box containing the remains was wrapped. young man told me very much the same Dr. Baxter and I then quietly and rev- erently carried it between us. We took 8S the ohief. Now comes the strange it to my tent, and there left it for a time, closing up the tent so as to stop.my part of the story. I had bidden the idle ouriosity. Mr. Fisher kindly gave me a long tin.lined box, as it was quite chief good-by and had nearly reaohed impossible to remove the remains in the old one. Dr. Baxter assisted me in the oamp when this young man of whom the solemn duty, and then. with a lin. ing of some sweetly scented grass that I have spoken came up to me very quiet- reminded us of the dear home land, we two alone in my tent laid all that WilS ly, and wh·ispered that he knew where left of the dear bishop in the new case.
the remains were-that they were actu. Sunday, December 11th. -We had a very solemn service of oommunion this mornally in Mumiya's village, having been ing, and in prayer for the Church mili- tant specially thanked and praised God buried by Mr. Jackson under a lloor of for His servant, Bishop Hannington, whose earthly remains were with us in a house. He declined, however, to show camp. All in the party were deeply touched, and, I feel sure, have been me the house himself, but said, "There drawn nearer to God by the affecting events of the last day or two. I hope is a man here who was with Mr. Jack- to carry the bishop's remains to Mengo, and with the Churoh's service to bury son, and he will show you the place." them there-the fittest place, it seems to me, for them to await the resurrec- On reaching my tent, I sent for this man tion morning.
at once, and he told me quite freely that Our sympathies are extended to the he knew the spot, and would take me to American Baptist Missionary Union in it. I set off immediately with him, in its losses by the late fire which oon- company of Dr. Baxter, and he took sumed Tremont Temple. We under- us without hesitation to the place. stand that the Missionary Union's .. Here " said he "abisouttheeigshptoe~tn" point- Museum, collected through forty years, ing to'; little bush inches was totally destroyed. That is an irrep. high. I looked around and could see arable loss. Another museum may be traces of the house, which had fallen oolleoted, but there were articles in that, into ruins, and had been taken away. such as Felix Carey's First Burmese It was a solemn moment to us, standing Grammar, a perfect copy. Although as we were by the grave of Hanning- the permanent records were preserved ton, murdered seven years ago. There by the fire-proof vault, yet the loss of is no doubt that in a very little while all the temporarily exposed correspondall trace of the actual spot would have imoe and doouments is more than an been lost, as the people had begun to inconvenience. The offices are at 2 A cultivate the ground about it. As you Beacon Street. Boston.-J. T. G. know, this was not the place of the Pocussing Our Missions, bishop's death, for he fell in Busoga, A suggestiou has been made by Mr. seventy or eighty miles away. The most Hunter, of Liverpool, for awakening appropriate spot for the resting.place of greater interest in the foreign mission the remains seems to be either in Buso- ga, where he died, or in Uganda, which he longed and tried so bravely to reach.
I think the difficulty of laying them in BUioga will be very great. Even if they were buried there, it would be scarcely possible to raise any permanent monu- ment to mark the spot. After consider- ing the whole matter most carefully, I think the proper resting-place will be in Ugimda. At 6.30 this morning, with six men, I commenced the search. The men dug very industriously for an hour and a half, but the deeper they dog the harder the ground seemed to get. We then de- termined to try a few feet further away.
Soon it became quite clear that there had recently been a disturbance of the earth, and we became very hopeful. In half an hour more our efforts were suc- eessful. and the top of the box was dis- covered. But it had evidently been disturbed since it was plaoed there hy Mr. Jackson. Instead. of lying list, it field, and one which, if not original, Mission Board sees fit to do this, in has at least the merit of going into de· order to aid the movement, and, I hope, tails. Recognizing the fact that the gen. give an impulse to others, I propose to erality of people think in the concrete bear the cost of the salary of an addi- tional evangelistic missionary. While rathet: than in the abstract, it is pointed I do not bind myself formally, it is my out that there is very little to take hold intention, if the Board accepts my offer, to continue this contribution yearly of them in the vague expression, "our during my lifetime.
missions in China." It would be other- I also venture to suggest whether the wise, however, if they were personally Board should not either directly, or through the Synod, make an appeal to acquainted in some fashion with one or' our congregations and to our wealthier other of the missionaries out there. As members to become responsible for the we have about fifty missionaries and salaries of missionaries in any of our about three hundred churches here, the fields they choose to select, so that the number of our staff may be greatly inproposal is that each missionary should creased. be allocated to the care of a group of six I am, yours very truly, churches. By a diary and correspond- DUNCAN MoLAREN.
ence from time to time he could keep the home churches posted up in his Rev. Dr. Townsend, of Birmingham, work, and they, on the other hand, would England, in his article on .. Comity and be more likely to take a personal interest Co-operati~n in Missions," in the May in the man and his labors than they do number of the REVIEW, says that" one now. crying want of our mission enterprise ill an organ somewhat resembling the MIS- The suggestion is one which has long SIONARY REVIEW OF THE WORLD, issued been in practical operation in Scotland, in New York, or on the plan of the Rewhere Church or Sunday-schools have view of Reviews, which shall be pan-mis. taken some little dusky child for their sionary in its scope, catholic in its protege – even at times to the nam- spirit, wherein news of all missions can ing of it. A scheme of this kind can al- be reported, plans of extension disways rely on finding a good basis in cussed, candid criticism indulged in, human nature; let us imbibe or stand and fresh enthusiasm kindled in the for what principle we may, the personal heart of the Church. It should become element will always command the great- the most popular magazine of the day ; est interest.
An Exa.mple to be Followed. certainly none would be able to com- pete with it for freshness, romance, or We publish a letter from one who has inspiring power." himself visited many of the mission fields of the East, and knows from ex· Just what our brother here recomperience that foreign missions are not mends the editors have sought to ac- "a failure." We earnestly wish that complish in the REvrEW. We design it his noble example might be far more to be pan-missionary in scope, catholic widely followed. in spirit, and a magazine wherein news of all missions may be reported, plans ST. OSWALD'S, EDINBUllGH, February 27, 1893. of extension discussed, and problems considered. Dr. Townsend could not Secretary of U. P. Mission Board: DEAB MB. BUCHANAN: .The cheering have better outlined our plan from the tidings received from Manchuria as to beginning, and all we need is hearty cothe large number of persons who have applied for baptism, showing the mar· _operation to make this magazine supply vellous progress of the Gospel in that the very place which this programme land;must convince all that the number proposes. We shall welcome any con- of converts is limited only by the num- triblltions under any of'the departments ber of missionaries in the field. It seems to me, therefore, the hounden he mentions, and any requests or sugduty of our Church to increase the staff gestions we will give attention to as far of our agents year by year, and if the ali lieil ill. our power. A. T. P. The Afrioa·Malagasy Slave Traffic. motion of alarm. .' The Malagasy Church," he says, .. has passed through L. M. S. COLLEGE, ANTANANARIVO, two seasons of great trial; out of both of these it has come both stronger and MADAGASCAR, January 17, 189a. better. I do not desire further troubles for it-very far from this; but if they To the J!)Jitor of THE MISSIONARY REVIEW: come again I do not fear them; if only the Malagasy Christians remain firm in SIB : May I, as II. Madagascar mission. their faith in Christ, then all will be well. I believe, not as part of a lifeless aaryl~tctaelrl*thoef attention of your readers to creed. but as the expression of a living a British resident in this truth in the words: ' Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the country, which appears in yo~r pres.ent Lord of Hosts.''' Mr. Clarke writes like one who knows his God and knowllHim oisfsuthe~ referring to the certam reVival too well to fear diplomatic intrigue or slave trade from Africa into this the menacing power of the oppressor. Faith's stillness, or, as some may call island if the extraordinary instructions it, weakness, is greater strength than the might of kings, or, as we should of Lord Rosebery on this subject are al. here say, repUblics.
lowed to go unchallenged by I'arliament "An AmeDican missionary, writing from Arcot, in India, says that the and the country. Church has two missionaries, of which it takes little account namely, the bicy· Is it really the fact that a Liberal Gov. cle and the magic lantern. The former, 'over the admirable roads so largely ernment is going, not only to give up found in India, makes short tonrs, and even long ones, rapid and easy, and is all British interests in this island to the much used by the younger missionaries. Of the other agency, large use is made tender mercies of a French protectorate, in many places.' " -Pree Church Monthly.
but also to abandon the long.continued The Church of England London Mis. sion is now under an eclipse, being at honor England has had of protecting present without a single representative. The" Appeal for Men," issued in April the Rlave? last, has not met with a response. Since then Dr. Battersby has been I am, yours faithfully, obliged to relinquish the work for the third time and has no hope of being JA)'IES SIBBEE, able to return; and Mr. Eric Lewis, amid general regret, has felt obliged to Missionary of the L. M. 8. sever his connection with the society.- British Notes. The Church Intelligencer for February contains several interesting items from BY REV. JAMES DOUGLAS. Archdeacon Wolfo's journal. Tho ex· tracts relate to visits made in connection 'From copies of the Madagascar News with the Fuh-Kien Mission. The follow. which have come to hand. we find ing case of conversion, one of many cit· that the missionaries are being raked ed, we give iIi condensed form. A shop. by two fires. Mr. Henry E. Clarke, missionary in Antananarivo, in a let. ter thml de~cribes the case: "The Par. is papers blame us for not being neu· tral. The Madagascar News, on the other hand, has for months been writ· ing at us for being neutral and for reo fusing to leave our neutrality. Poormis· sionaries I How hard to please every. body-nay, we please neither side I"
In reply the Madagascar News says, in effect: " What the missionaries now feel we foresaw and forewarned them of. We knew that their Christian·like resig. nation to what the future has in store will not save the Protestant Church of Madagascar if France enforces her pre. tensions on the Malagasy."
A strong case may apparently be made out for both sides of this question. Faith's power is often more seen in quiescence than in agitation or in what may even look like heroic measures. Mr. Clarke evidently believes in the repose of faith and in stilling the storm by believingly stifling the first • Page 449. keeper of the age of fifty who had made As noted in the columns of the Daily some money and retired was robbed Telegraph, reports have reached London one night of nearly all that he had. It from Mr. Hill, the archbishop'S com- was then, in the providence of God, he missary to the Niger missions, and heard for the first time of the riches 'bishop.designate of that district in suc- that never fail, and he was led by God's cession to Dr. Samuel Crowther, stating infinite mercy and grace to fix his heart that the native Church demands a sec- on these treasures, and at once became ond negro bishop, but will compromise a regular attendant at the church. upon a division of the see with one Eu- Wondering at the fact, now to him ropean and one African prelate. The strange, that he had not heard of these archbishop'S decision is not yet given, things hefore, seeing that Christian and the equally vexing problem con- teachers had been at work in those cerning the bishoprics of Maritzburg parts for many years, he began to go and Natal is still unsolved.
ahout among his neighbors and seek out the ears that were willing to hear the Mr. Eugene Stock, in the Church Mis- precious news of the unsearchable. sianary Gleaner for February, in a paper riches. As a result, several families, entitled" A Month in New Zealand,"
both inside and outside the city, have gives the following summary concerning been won over and are now in attend· the natives of that island: .. Less than ance on the means of grace, their faces forty thousand Maoris remain in New set Zionward. Zealana. Of these the great majority are quiet, professing Christians. About Archdeacon Wolfe, commenting on half belong to the Church of England, St. James's description of the little memo and about llalf the rest are Wesleyans ber, says: "No one who has not lived or Roman Catholics. The remaining in a heathen, country and mixed freely fourth represent the semi-heathen sec- with heatht"n and understanding what tion that either fell away or had never this tongue utters, can have any concep. been brought in."
tion of the vile, filthy, and atrociously abominable language which this little, The Rev. T. Harding, a Church of vile member can give expression to, es- England missionary, has supplied a pecially when brought into play by most interesting account of a preaching heathen women; and it is one of the tour in the Yoruba country, Western surest signs of conversion when the Africa, a stronghold of th'e most degrad- tongue has been' tamed' and its vile ed heathenism. He has evidently taken habits cleansed and purified. It is up the work of missiolllzing these peo- often the case," he observes, "that ples with. both hands and an ellrnest Christians suffer great losses because heart, and has done something, as it they cannot give license to the tongue; seems to us, considerable in breaking and the heathen knowing this, take ad- up the fallow ground. He has utilized vantage of it to harass and defraud them the magic lantern with great effect and of their property." A case is instanced taught gospel truth by eye and ear to of a man who justified his heathenism large multitudes. He says, "Without on this ground. All the members of exaggeration, I have taught thousands the family were Christians but himself ; of people to pray, •Jesus, Son of God but he frankly told the missionary it and Saviour of the world, save me ; for- would never do for no one in the family give me my sins, and show me TI1y to be able to swear and use bad Ian. way.' Who can tell how many of these guage; and aF! Christians could not do will find entrance into the eternal home? this vile business, he remained a hea- Jesus knows, and we can often com- then in self·defence and to protect the mend them to Him in prayer, and His general interests of the household. Holy Spirit can teach them… The Rev. C. W. A. Clarke, M.A., small, I beliQve there is not such a sad principal of the Robert Noble College, sight throughout the eighteen provinces Masnlipatam, contends that the educa. of China as that of which I write.
tional missions of India are fully justi. Here are Whole tribes, whole peoples, fied by the results. Giant trees have without even a chance of knowing about been cut down, the names of some of the Saviour's love. "
the largest heing Caste, Idolatry, Lying, Lust. "From the Noble College," he says, A mail from Uganda was received on "God has brought out men who have December 23d bringing news up to Sepdone great things for Him. One convert tember 26th. The eagerness of the was a district missionary in charge of the Waganda to purchase Scripture portions Masulipatam district; another an evan· was marked. So tremendous was the gelist to the Telugu people, mighty in crush to obtain copies that Mr. Basker. deed and in word; some have taught in ville was obliged to barricade his house our college and our high school in the and sell from the window. In ten min. Telugu country; some are preaohers, utes all the copies of St. Matthew's gos· some laymen, influential and highly re· pel were sold. Mr. Baskerville says, spected by their non·Christian brethren, "We could sell fifty loads, when we striving to bring home the power of only have three to sell." Christ to those who know Him not, by their life and conversation in that sta- tion in life to which God has oalled Miss Holme gives a graphic account them. In everyone of these cases the in Ohina's Millions of the assault on the convert has had to pass through the fiery home of Mr. and Mrs. Huntley, she furnace of persecution and atRiction be· being at the time their guest. Her tesfore he could openly serve Christ or be· timony is eminently God-honoring. .. I come a witness for Him before his caste praise God for giving me the honor of brethren." Mr. Clarke is satisfied with suffering for righteousness' sake. I the theory and the principles and is shall never fear what man can do unto also enamored with the machinery. me ; nor the evil day ; for I know grace " The one thing we, like all other work. will be given, as it has been in this ers for Christ, really do want is more of case. I know the Lord is a very present the power of the Holy Spirit to give life help in time of trouble. Oh, how much and effect to our efforts." I would like to tell you how the Lord showed His goodness! I do praise Him An appeal is made by Mr. John A. for allowing me to prove His sustain. Anderson, in G'hina's Millions, in behalf ing grace."
of the unevangelized aboriginal tribes.
Three are mentioned-the Ming kia, the The tidings to hand in China's Nul- Mo'soh, and the Lo·los. In the Ta·Ii ions from Rih-chan, Shansi, and Hiao·I, valley there are three hundred Ming-kia Shansi, are of more than ordinary in- villages, numbering many tens of thou. terest. 'Many conversions and baptisms sands of souls. Mr. Anderson says, are recorded; and also one or two in· .. So far as I know, nothing has been stances of much heroism under suffer.
done to give them the Gospel in their ing. Mr. Lutley tells of a convert own tongue. They are very aocessible. named Roh who, because he would not Both men and women come freely to pray to the idols, was accused of being me for medicine, although often unable the cause of a drought then prevailing.
to talk Chinese…. Although my " They first beat and kicked him, and knowledge of the oomparative needs of then tied his hands together, and carried other provinces is necessarily very him to a village three Ii distant, where he became insensible, and they had to mation, as to what has been actually acdrench him with water to relltore him; complished, than they can get either but it was not until evening that, bruised from missionaries or from their wouldand stiff, they let him go free. They be critics. So the English Baptist Misalso made him pay a thousand cash to sionary Society sent out two clergymen give a feast to the men who had beaten to visit the Baptist stations in North and carried him. It was good," con· China. Mr. Morris records his imprestinues Mr. Lutley, "to hear the poor sions of what he saw and heard, vividly I fellow relating how, when they were and clearly, showing himself to be a carrying him, he remembered that Ste. careful and shrewd observer, giving us phen, while being stoned, prayed for valuable information as to the country his enemies ; and he began to pray for and the people. He discusses the rehis, asking the Lord to forgive them," ligions of China and the various phases a proceeding on his part which but in- of missionary work, and says that, for creased their rage and brought upon extent, character and work, missions in him worse blows. China far exceed hi~ largest expecta- tions. It is a valuable addition to our Another notable case of sovereign knowledge of the country and the pracchange is that of Mrs. Kia, who was for- tical value and actual accomplishment merly possessed by an evil spirit. ., She of missionary effort. was," says Mr. George McConnell, "a terror to all, even to us. We feared to -Madagascar, its .Missionaries and its see her come into our yard ; but now Martyrs, by W. J. Townsend, D.D. she is so changed, fully saved, out and (F. H. Revell Co., New York and Chiout for Jesus." cago). Dr. Townsend gives the marvel- lous story of Christianity in the island The Moravian Quarterly is marked by of Madagascar in a most vivid and intones of mingled gladness, Aadness, and teresting way. It is a story with which determination. The pioneers in North all Christians, young and old, should Queensland have acquired speedily a be familiar, for it is unique in the hispowerful influence over the natives. tory of missionary enterpriRe. More at- Confidence is won in the highest degree, tention is given at present to the newer some acquaintance with the language and larger mission fields, but the story has been made, and since the natives of the planting and training of the understand a few English words, the Christian Church in Madagascar is one pioneers are able to testify to them ., of which will never los(l its interest and God who is love and of the redemption power. for sin through the blood of His Son. "
Difficulties impede progress in Nica· -Lives and Work of Rev. and Mrs. ragua, ., but the earnest appeal of the Cephas Bennett, by Ruth Ranney (Silver, poor Indians for missionaries will Burdett & Co., New York, Boston, and quicken sympathy and prayer, before Chioago). Sixty years of missionary life which all obstacles must vanish." in Burma are here described graphically and tersely. Miss Ranney has succeed_ Publioations Noticea, ed in narrating the lives of her grand- parents in such a manner as to transfer . -A Winter in North China, by Rev. to the reader the interest which she T. M. Morris (Revell Co., New York and herself feels in their work. Dr. Bunker Chicago, $1.50). It is natural that the says in his introduction: .. The aroma people at home who contribute gener. of these lives will pass upon others; ously for missions shOUld desire occa- and no one can study them without sionally some more unprejudiced infor- being better." The proceeds from the book will be devoted to mission work in Bul'IP!.
THE MONTHLY CONCERT OF MISSIONS
V.-THE MONTHLY CONCERT OF MISSIONS.
Africa,* Madagascar,t The Freedmen,* AFRICA. § Bechuanaland and Mashonaland along the way of the lakes to Uganda and BY J. T. GRACEY, D.D. down the valley of the Nile to AIexan- dria. Only 35 years have elapsed since Africa has been described as .. one the mighty prize of the source of the universal den of desolation, misery, and Nile was wrested from oblivion j and crime." It is a vast country to come more has been done, so far as any susunder such characterization. It is 1500 picions of history reveal, to reclaim the miles long and 4600 miles wide. The .. Lost Continent" within 30 years than equator cuts it, and both tropics cross in the previous 3300 years. it. Lay its western edge at San Fran. cisco, and it would cover land and sea The population of the continent is to the coast of Ireland. Its rivers are roughly estimated at 200,000,000, or its most marked geographical feature. nearly one-seventh part of the people of The Nile sweeps through 37° of lati- the globe. The beat authorities haTe tude; the Kongo has greater volume agreed that the ethnological classificaand basin. Of its great inland seas, tion must, for the present at least, follow Victoria Nyanza and Albert Nyahza be- language lines. The general conclusion long to the Nile, Tanganyika to the is that the cradle of the genuine negro Kongo, Nyassa to the Zambesi. Possi- race is Africa; that of the Bantu. Asia j blythe entire continent was circumnavi- the one living for ages without the tropio gated in B.C. 600; but in the Middle of the East, the other pushing on to its Aries it had already become the" Dark sunny home in the great peninsula. Continent," its coast line being un· There is known to be a wide difference known beyond Morocco. By the close between the negro and the Bantu races. of the fifteenth century the Portuguese The Bushmen and Hottentot are relathad got far round the Cape of Good ed linguistically with Egypt, and have Hope_ For the next century Africa been sundered from the northern eleseems destined to be the wonder of the ment by some great dividing wedge. world. The rapid opening up of its They differ in appearance, manners, and enormous stretches and the marvellous customs from the Bantu. They were way in which Christianity and civiliza- wont to worship the moon, following tion are bringing light and hope and the sidereal worship of North Africa, liberty to the races of the interior are and their gods are beneath, never above. adding fascinating chapters to the his- The Bantu are lighter colored than the tory of the world. Already the whole negro, nor is their hair so woolly. The country is known from Cape Town to indications are that the Bantus originat- Cairo, and soon the telegraphic com- ed in Western Asia, perhaps in Armemunication will be continuous from nia, possibly in the Euphrates. Their mutual relation is traced in language- * See also pp. 48, 64 (Jan.), 136 (Feb.), 196, 226 structure and roots, as close as those of the Aryan family. The Zulu is spoken (Mar.), 370{May), 404, 423, 426,428 (present issne). in Zululand and by half a" million in t Sec also pp. 66 (Jan.), 4t9, 459 (present Issne). Natal. Dr. Bleek makes 13 classes of t See p. 413 (present issne). Zulu dialects. Sigwamba is spoken ~ We draw largely on the following sonrces aa from Zululand to the Sofala, inland 300 miles j the Yao in the region east and lIumorities in this study: "Report of Commer- south of Lake Nyassa ; the Nyamwezi cial Agent Chatelain on the Province of Angola," east of Tanganyika ; the Swahali by half with original map, .. Reports of the Consuls of a million of people in Eastern Africa; the United States, No. 147, December, 1892;" the Umbundu in Bihe and Bailunda; "The Church Missionary Atlas: Part 1,Africa ;" " Africa Rediviva," by Robert N. Cust, LL.D.; "The IaiZlllu," by Lewis Grout; ~~ Missionary L8ndscap~ in the Dark Continent," by Rev. James Johnston, A. T" S.; "Forty Years among the Zulus," by Josiah Tyler. the Kimbundu, Xongo, and Umbundu Marshman's" History of Roman Catho- in Angola; the Xongo in Xongo region ; lic Missions" layll large claim to success the Mpongwe on the Gaboon River; under the Portuguese in Xongo and the the Dikele by 100,000 at the sources of Zambesi. It is scarcely too IItrong to the Gabun (see Grout's Grammar). The say these utterly relapsed into heathen_ .. Atlas" recognizes six groups for the ism. .. Quick baptisms" by wholesale continent: Hamitic, Nuba-Fulah, Semit- brought their natural result. ic, Negro, Bantu, Hottentot-Bushmen. MODEBN PROTESTANT MISSIONS date The religiO'll8 are (1) African pagan, from Moravian beginnings in West with witchcraft. human sacrifices, ahd Africa in 1736, and in South Africa in fetichism; and (2) Muhammadanism. 1792. The Church of England began Chatelain lIByS, and all experienced work in Egypt in 1826. The United witnesses agree with him, that the Presbyterians of America have had the pagans all believe in one God, who made m08t marked 8ucce88 of modem times and maintains all things, inTisible yet in Egypt proper for a dilltance of 400 eTer seeing the thoughts of man, the miles up the Nile. They have 90 staauthor of all the good and much of the tions with schools, or congregations and suffering, who is angry with men and in- schools united, taught by native pasdifferent to the details of their liTes. tors and teachers; 1000 Mos11!m bOYII They do not worship him nor represent and girls are in these schools. The him by image, nor do they believe that North African Mission ill in Tunis, he is contained in any fetich. What Tripoli, Algeria, and Morocco. So are tranllera generally call gods are inferior some others in localities, and numerous spirits, to whom God has intrusted the organizations of Roman Catholics are in administration of the natural forces. all this region and in the Sahara. They fear these and the shades of de- In 1875 Nyassa, "the Lake of the parted spirits. The images are simply Stars," was circumnavigated, and the amulets and talismans. Dying, one goes Scotch Free Church, Established to hades; dying in hades, he goes to an Scotoh, the United and the Reformed utterly unknown region. Muhamma- Presbyterians soon thereafter began danism swept with fire and sword OTer work in this part of Africa. North Africa in the seventh century, In November, 1&75, Mr. Stanley'. and in the lallt two centurills has spread challenge to Christendom to enter over the Soudan, West Africa proper, Uganda appeared in a London paper. and on the eastern coast. It has Beven months later the first mission brought some externals of civilization; party arrived at Zanzibar. The first but the tribes are in little but name Mos- converts, five in number, were baptized lem ; thllY have changed the fetich from March, 1882. Uganda lies northwest of .ticks and stones to Arabic texts from Victoria Nyanza, and is one of the most the Quran. The whole of the vast inland powerful kingdoms in East Central slave trade is in the hands of these Mos- Africa. It is a four months' journey lems. Mr. Cust says that Islam is " in from the coast. To carry 250 tons, possession of the majority of the popu- $250,000 must be paid to 1000 slaTes lation of Africa, with a tendency to in- hired Ollt by slave owners. But by the crease by its own momentum and adapta- prooeeds of the hire of the British East bility to the environment of the pagan Africa Company, 4000 slaves have effect- African." (3) Christianity came to Africa ed their freedom. The railway system through Hellenist Jews. In the fifth cen- of 600 miles building from the coast tury there were 560 bishoprics in North will cover a coast line of 400 miles and Africa. The North African Church was 1000 miles inland, levering the IIlaveswept out of existence by Islam; the caravan-routes. The reverses of the Coptic- and Abyssinian churches have Church of England Mission have been been Christian in little more than name. connected with the political situation ; lItesa's professed aoceptance of Chrill- besi, a strip. of 800 milesin length. The tiatiity; his return to heathenism, his mis!lion history. thougll I!.ot ita wOl;k, death, the succession of Mwanga, his dates from 1877 ; the la~ter begins with hostility and overthrow, his reinstate- 1885. The mission is international, mentunder the influence of the Roman- though under the di:tection of the Paris ist missionaries, his unprincipled con- Evangeliclll Missionary 8ooiet1. The duct-all combined to make a fiery fur- Primitive Methodis~s have recently en. nae,s for the martyr church of Uganda. tered this :tegion. The sacrifice of missionary life has already been enormous. The saintly The missions of Kajaria bave bef'n 80 band of graduat.,s from the English Uni- long familiar to the Christian churches versities who founded a unique mission that we make no further mention of with four bases, on the eastern side of them than, that of 650,000 Kafirs in Cape Lake Nyassa cover a radius of 25,000 Colony, about one fourth have bl'len bapsquare miles in their estimated reach of tized ; and in Zululand. of 50,000 up_ influ~nce. Thirty-six of these young ward of 2000 are Christians; and in men and maidens, the Hower of English Pondoland, of 150,000, 3000 are Chris-, birth, culture, and piety, have found rest tianized. in African graves. The mission h~s nevertheless made marked progress. In Katanga Arnot began work in 1881 by journeying from Natal to Shoehong, Lake Tanganyika was discoverlld less and on to Benguela on the West Coast, than 40 years ago. Until lately thE! and then peaceably forced his way into route thither was 830 miles from Zanzi- the Garanganze country to initiate bar, and took 100 days. Now it is up Christian civilization. The book by the Shire, thence by the missionary Mr. Arnot," Go.renganze: Seven Years' . highway, .. the Stephenson road," unit. Pioneer Mission Work," published by ing the north end of Nyassa and the the Revell Company, belongs, as Dr. A. southern point of Tanganyika. The T. Pierson says, "in the department, London Missionary Society began work not of Apologetics, but of Energetics." here in 1874, inspired by the telegram to London: "Livingstone is really The &uthern missionary region-De.- dead, and his body is coming home in maraland, Namaqualand,. Good Hope one of the queen's ships." Living. Colony, Natal, Orange Free State, etc.- stone's trumpet call, ., Go forward, and needs not detailed reference here. with the Divine blessing you will suc· These missions do not cling to the ceed. Do you carry on the work which coast, but occupy interior positiona. I have begun. I leave it with you," The climate is suited for Europeans, roused England as well as Scotland. A and large colonies have been settled. noble, heroic work, with increasingly en- Islam has never been in the ascendant. couraging result, has been done by Our reference to Mr. Cust's" Redivive." .. running the gauntlet of fiery ordeals, must in nowise be accepted as comenduring the hardship of perilous travel, mendatory of the idiosyncrasies in his surmounting obstacles of transit and opinions and criticisms. They must malarious climates, pelletrating regions stand on their merits. and some of them untrodden by Europeans," but with an have decided merits; others wear an ez ever-widening confidence amollg the cathedra air, as on page 38, aboutmiBsionmotley population of this territory. arr interference with public morals as impertinence, which it mayor may The Upper Zambesi missions in the not be ; but any allusion to their" ex- Barotsi kingdom were inaugurated by pulsion" on this account is ludicrous. M. Coillard. This kingdom stretches If anybody has gone to South Africa to from the Rafu River to 20° east long., stay, it is the missionary_ and from the Quando and Zambesi to the watersheds of the Rongo and Zam- Angolaland is 80 interestingly treated in Mr. Chatelain's" Report," that we would like to transfer it to these columnl!!. It can probably be had on ap- the English Wesleyan!! Penetrated to plieation to the proper authoritie.IJ. The Quarra, a branch of the Niger. The history of Roman Catholic missions Soudan, stretching from 8° of lat. to under the Portuguese is of use for the the borders of the Sahara, and 3500 warnings of their mistakes and the re- miles from east to west, has a popula- sults. They are now stimulated by the tion nearly equal to that df North Amer- presence of the "Bishop Taylor" 80- ica ; but missionary pioneering has be- styled " Self – supporting missions,' , gun. The name of Crowther, "the which extend to many interior stations only colored non-European bishop con- and have cost lives and money. secrated in England since apostolic Kongoland, with its good waterway days," will ever stand connected with throngh all its great basin, is so promi- the Niger region and missions; and nently in the eye of the Christian pub- Wilmot Brooke's memory will be per- lio tliat, vastly important as it is, we petuated in the Soudan Mission.
need bestow only a paragraph on it in The Gold Ooast from St. Paul to Cape this skeleton reference. At Boma are Palmas has much independent territory, 800 more or less resident Europeans, where the English Wesleyan, the Basle 80 of whom are missionaries. The Eng- and Bremen have done noble work at lish Baptists entered the Kongo valley large cost of life and yet with gratify- in 1878. Through 15 years of struggle, ing results. Liberia is patronized only, soldiers and heroines of faith have !l0 far as foreign subsidy of men and sened, suffered, and perished, till " no money goes, from the United States.
Christian church has supplied a nobler Mr. Cust is too emphatic in saying that contingent to the army of martyrs"- Liberia, as well as Sierra Leone, has the Combers alone would make this failed to make any impression on the record resplendent. Various societies surrounding colored men of the same or are at work-the American Baptists, the cognate African race. It is a marked slip Bishop Taylor, the Kongo-balolo; and in ethnological reference, for the Afro- the French Evangelical of Paris pro- Americans represent trihes in most cases poses, if it has not already begun. to from which they are remotely separated, enter French territory. Through 12,000 and to our personal knowledge they miles of coast or river.line villages and have done something, and under their towns are approachable by the mission- oonditions a good deal, to "impress"
ary. the native races adjoining them. Bishop On the Gabun, the coast island of Taylor's line of self·supporting work in Corisco and the Ogowe, the Ani.ericun the Cavallo. River country has been Presbyterians, after years of successful vigorously pushed, and though ham- work, are hampered by the French Co- pered, deserves great commendation.
lonial policy requiring the use of the Bie-.-ra Leone has an English Episcopal French language in educational work. Ohurch, self-supporting. The English In the Kameruns the English Baptists Wesleyans, the United Brethren (at had a good work, but were substituted Mendi), an American mission from Kan- by a German mission solely because it sas behind Freetown, as 1 base for a had be00me a German colony-a narrow Soudan mission, represent the work of policy out of joint with the times, and Protestants. In the Gpmbia region, at :' a I!hameful breach of the recognized Bathurstand other places, the Wesley- law of missions. " ans and English Episcopals have long The Niger basin presents a population sustained work.
•' untainted" by the evil of contact of We have made a very incomplete and European commerce. The Church of not a balanced sketch of the missions England Missionary Society has impor- of the continent of Africa. They are tant station!! in the Delta, conducted till too vast already for an outline of even very r~cently by African missionaries; a dozen pages. We have been obliged to suppress even the names of the Roman to·morrow if there were funds and men Oatholic societies and orders, many of to do it. The Tembu people have whom have shown illustrious heroism pleaded for a long time that a mission.
in self·denial and endurance worthy of ary be sent to them. The headman has high admiration. All of them will be given ground for the missionary to live found named in Mr. Oust's" Rediviva," upon. At a time when rood was soorce which if not complete is the nearest and the people nearly starving because complete reference volume that we can of what befell their harvest last year, he name, and which is invaluable except has supported in his own hut a native where the author makes excursions to evangelist who was sent there during express his notions instead of judgment; the last six months. . . .
but even these are spicy and suggestive, " People at home should know these and of vaJue. facts. In Western Pondoland there are MADAGASOAl AND ZANZmAl belong to probably not fewer than 40,000 people the African system, and should be con· with no one to tell them the Gospel.
sidered in this group of missions, They are a fine stalwart race of men, though the Malagassy belong ethnologi- but they are living in the grollsellt heacaJly rather with Malaysia. Madagas- thenism. Such a fact should surely apcar is the Great Britain of Africa, but peal to those who may know little of three times her size. Ellis's" Martyr the details of foreign mission work, and Ohurch" of Madagascar well-nigh ranks may in consequence have but a languid as 110 Christian classic. The London Mis- interest in its needs. sionary Society, the Society for the Prop. agation of the Gospel, and the Friends, ,. The TembuB have been aSKing tbat as well as the Norwegians, have operated in Madagascar, the pre-eminence a missionary should be sent to them for belonging to the first-named. All of the ten years. In the thanksgivings of this islanders are not yet evangelized. jubilee year the Tembus and Pondos will surely not be forgotten." (The A late number of the London Chronicle money is now provided, and a missionsays: "We have received a printed table ary will be sent to Tembuland. The Glasgow Oollege students are to pro- vide the mission hOllse, and Stockbridge congregation have given the communion plate.)-Rev. John Lennoz.
of statistics, showing that in our Mad- agascar Mission (not including, however, In a recent letter from Uganda, the the Betsileo district) there are 980 Rev. G. K. Baskerville, of the Ohurch schools; that of the 46.501 scholars Missionary Society, gives a striking inpresenting themselves for examination, stance of the eagerness of the Waganda 21,721 brought slates, 19,480 brought to purchase Scripture portions. Some Bibles or Testaments; and that 16,206 boxes of books arrived, and, during the passed in reading, 12,739 in writing, sale, so tremendolls was the cmsh of and 9,334 in arithmetic." those anxiolls to purchase that Mr. Baskerville was obliged to barricade his " There is a chain of missions stretch- house and sell from the window. All ing like a great strong backbone through the copies of St. Matthew's Gospel the country from Lovedale to Somer- were sold in ten minutes. Prayerville, a distance of two hundred and books, reading-books, etc., were aJl dis- posed of, and more than a thousand people were waiting about, "mad to buy a book."
fifty miles. There are two places at which this backbone just now needs The Derlhi Missionary Society is en strengthening badly. It is at that big gaged in six sections in South and Eaflt gap of ninety miles. On the left-hand Mrica, and at the various stations.has side of the direct line there is a large gathered 11,456 communicants. A misunworked part of Tembu1and. On the sionary stationed at Konigsberg writes: right hand there is the vaRt Pondo na- •• Twenty-five years ago the number of tion in wild untouched heathenism. baptized heathen in Natal was 2000 and Both of these places could be occupied now it is 8000. And the Boers, who formerly looked coldly on, now regard the mission with favor."
GENERA!. lIlSSIONARY INTELLIGENCE
VI.-GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE.
, ED~ BY lU!lV. D. L. LBONAllD.
Extraots .iid TiaD8~tion8 from Foreign to an 'African boy to sit still. It is no trouble' to an Afriean to show an ap. Periodioals.
pearanoe of reverence. Africanboys BY 'UT. C. 0. S'UlIllucx. ,ANPOVEB, ;MASS. have not ,the fidgets like English boys AnroA. have, and they have not so strong a -" Our Lessouto field is whitening will to be oontrolled, What we want is to tne harvest. There are 7689 pupils to teach them a religion which will lead in our sohools, ,and 12,460 Christians them· to disoipline their li"es. Somein,our ohurohes. While, formerly, the times when I have heard warmth of ex- Bassuto Christians doubled their num- pression on the part of those natives bers in fourteen years, it has of late who have been brought up differently; I only. taken six years for the aggregate have felt a little sad, as if there was to double itself again. During the past something wanting among us; but my ten years, tbe scholars have quadrupled, oommon sense and my experience have and 'the Christians tripled. Our Zam- alwsys .brought me baok· to this-that besi mission occupies in the missionary we must teaoh them a religion whioh army working for the oonquest of Cen- will lead them to .disoipline themselves tral A~icaa position of inoaloulable in the midst of 'this vast mass of imimportance; what surprise, then, that purity-in the midst of this terrible at- the.prince of this world should defend mosphere of evil in whioh their battle with special fury the poiD.t menaced by lies. Yes, I do not suppose that anyonr work? God has, moreover, per- body here in this protected country mitted that this mission should be a knows what a battle it is to anyone powerful means of edification for onr there in Africa to live a really holy and churohes, stimulating the faith and noble life. We hear of the virtues of courage of many." -Journal des Mis- the 'Doble savage.' Let anybody who sions, quoted in The Ohristian. talks about the virtues of the noble sav- age come and stay in oup country, and -" In the Soudan, stretching from I think then that he will have to correct the Atlantic to the Red Sea, between those theoretical impressions of his. I theeigMh and sixteenth parallels of think that he would soon have to Benorth 'latitude, there is a population of knowledge that for anyone to lead a 60;000,000 to 80,000,000, mostly Mos- really Christian life in t~t oountry lem, and almost untouched bv oission- means a much greater battle than most illY effort."-The Reaper. people have to fight amid that Chris- -" I, am oertain that the people of tianized social opinion and those sur- Africa need not so muoh to be taught roundings of protected life which most an emotionnl as a di~ciplining religion. of us have here. Therefore we ha?eto It is not difficult to work uppn the emo- koep people a long time waiting.before tions of the inhabitants of a tropical we admit tht>m to Christianity. It has oountry~ We may produce, I dare say, generally been supposed that Roman a ..great.appearanoe of outward devo- Catholics are verY easy in baptizing tion., I think that some people in Eng- people, but a Frenoh miBllionBIY told land would be surprised if they came me the other day that Cardinal Lavi- to our, large school at Zanzibar and saw gene, the great head of African mis- the devotion of the boys at the time of sions, had sont out a message that no sei'vioe; but the fact is that it does native was to be baptized under two not D1ean nearly, so much, as it would years' preparation as a catechumen.'
mean in this country. It is no trouble Well, I have tried something of that kind, and I acknowledge that it is too pa.rily in order to guard the yet weak long; but still there must be·a long Ch:ristian.·from the temptations ofe·the preparation first to test their· earnest. great city. In the course. of the year ness and sincerity, and then there must twenty houses were thus ftlledwith be the deepest dealing with individual Christian families, so that now Christ sculs. Call it conf6B8ion or what y{)U Church has a Christian· cOllgregation of like-we must deal'with each individ. about one hundred souls belongiDg,to ualsoul. The spiritual pastMmUstput it. These are partly derived from; the his arm around each individualAfrica.n, Univeraities' Mission itself, partly from and he must fight side. byside with him the stations of the Church Missionary the battle of life. Society in Mombasa and Freretown.
" The Church must not be depressed With these twenty modest Christian to a lower level to meet half.way the abodes the Mkunazini property of the heathenism of .Africa. The Church Universities' Mission forms a gennine must embrace the African, and raise Christian colony in the midst of the him up by her sacraments and means Mohammedan capital. Around the of grace, and spread a network around former slave market are situated, to the him and raise him up to her high lev. north, Christ Church; to the sOuth, the el, not abating one jot in morality or mission house with the missionaries'
spirituality of what she' requires of her dwellings; to the east the Apprentices'
children here at home. Only so, I be· Bome ; to the west the hospital, and lieve, will there be a truly healthy, liv. around these stately buildings the com· ing Church in Africa. Only then will pact array of the Christian homes.
she dare, as we are daring, to try to The whole is a worthy representation, form a native ministry, and to,put be- a mighty sermon in stone, setting forth fore each boy who has intellectual ca· English Christianity in the face of Mos· paeity, and is leading a high moral life, lem bigotry and moral corruption."- that that is the life he is to look for· Pastor RICHTlI:B, in Allgemeine M"tasions· ward to out of gratitude to God; that Zeitschrift.
as our Lord Jesus Christ has chosen him out of the millions of heathen who -The blessing of God, remarks Dr.
are still in darkness to be Bisson" and WABlflI:cX, continues to rest on the little has poured down so many blessings mission of· the Free Church of Canton upon him, so it should be the highest Vaud, at Delagoa Bay. It has three ambition of his life to take the message stations: Lorenzo-Marques, Rikatla, of the boly Gospel to his. brethren, and and Antioka. In six year!!, for the to spend his life in sharing those great three, about nine hundred· convBl'ts blessings which he has received with have been gather.ed. At Lorenzo~Mar· hiB brethren, who will remain in heathen ques a missionary physician has Hen darkness if he dQes not go to teach stationed, with very. happy results of. his them. That is what many of our young activity. To the north of Rikatla, ·in men have in their hearts ; and one day the territory of the ehief'Mahazule, a I am quite sure that ,we shall Bee an en· little Christian community has consti· thusiastic and able ministry extend· tuted itself &sa result of the courageous ing the w{)rk of· the Church far and wide testimony of a converted woman; who in Africa. " -BIBK{)p SKYTEIES, in Central has won anuruber of other women to Africa. the Gospel. .In North Transvaal" where there are also three stations-Valdelia, -In Zanzibar "it was an original Elim, and Shiluwane-there is much to idea of Bishop Steere to gather around -l'etard the work; the gold fever, the the beautiful edifice· of Christ Church ,law forbidding. more than fi'Ve'oolored all the native Christian elements, partly families to reside on one estate' (and the in {)rder to form a parish for the church, estates are large), and. continuous·.warlike commotions. Discontent, insub- delivered Himself up for us and has left ordination, and looseness of living are us His example. A missionary without sadly fostered by these conditions, and enthusiasm would be a oontradiction ; occasion the missionaries much solici- but the solid and consoientious prepara_ tude. tion of a missionary, the clear-sighted and firm direction of his work, may The Berlin Mission also suffers great- multiply tenfold the activity of a man ly from the same causes, especially from who reckons above all things on God, the oppressive Plakkerswet, the restric- and who, before submitting himself to tive law mentioned above. This mis- the direction of men, and before hum. sion, whose field of labor is very exten- bly preparing himself for his sacred mise sive, divides it into six synods, or super- sion, has surrendered himself BOul and intendencies : North Transvaal, hence- body to his God and knows that he is forth divided into ten Dioceses ; South but a torch-bearer of the eternal light. " Transvaal; Orange Free State; Natal; –Professor F. H. KRUGER, in Journal Caffraria; Cape Colony. These six dis- des Missions. tricts comprise 23,841 baptized peraons ; 1489 cateohumens; 11,456 oommuni- THE WORLD AT LARGE. cants ; 4179 scholars_ -The Zeitschrift states that the Eng- " I am only one, but 1 am one; lish oensus of Basutoland shows the I cannot do everything, bnt I can do somepopulation to be 218,324. The number of Christians of the Paris Society was thing; 9662. Adding children and adherents, What I can do, I onght to do ; these form about 11t per cent of the And what I onght to do, by the grace of God I popnlation. Scholars: 1887. 3754; 1891, 7031 ; 1892, 7869. The mission- will do." aries testify to a decided growth among the Basuto Christians of their spiritual -How little we appreciate the might life, their sense of duty. and their spirit of mites when suffiCiently multiplied. of self-denial. For example, if a church of 30 members were to contribute regularly each one – " Mr. Arnot finds himself obliged at cent a day, with an extra cent each as last to do what all missionary societies a birthday gift, and then half a cent do. He has an agency iJl. Europe to each at the end as a thank offering, look after the transport of baggage; he the amount for a year would be the has an agent on the ooast to receive handsome sum of $110, or enough to them in transit. He has seen himself keep 11 girls or boys in a boarding-school obliged to found two intermediate sta- in India. A club of 3 would thus edutions between the coast and Bunkeya. cate 1 heathen child. What a chance This mission, lately ext~lled as repro- for Sunday-school classes! duoing the apostolic type, in contrast with organized societies, assume., more -The Boston Saturday Evening Gazette and more, the habits of these. It oould recently bestowed upon its readers this not be otherwise. Every personal effort eminently sensible and Christian counwhich prolongs itself must needs organ- sel: .. If you are getting lazy, v.-atch ize itself or disappear; but a regular James. If your faith is below par, read and faithful organization does not ex- Paul. If you are impatient, sit down clude the apostolic spirit, self-denial, quietly and have a talk with Job. If self-renunciation, the sacrifice of life, your are just a little strong-headed, go if needful, the ardent love of souls, the and see Moses. If you are getting holy desire of glorifying, by an obscure weak-kneed, take a look at Elijah. If and hidden work of perhaps all the there is no song in your heart, listen to days of our life, our Saviour, who has David. If you are getting sordid, spend a while with Isaiah. If you feel chilly, get the beloved disciple to put his arms around you. If you are losing sight of the future, climb up to Revelation and split in two for me, let me get under get a glimpse of the promised land." one corner.) 't Yes, and also let us add, if you do not -Somebody defines Buddhism to be believe much in missions, and so do not a system which teaches men to pray to give much, sit down for an hour now nobody to be made nothing of. and then and commune with the Son of God and the apostle to the Gentiles, -A glance at some missionary statis- to read, mark, and inwardly digest tics carefully prepared and published their teachings on the subject. in tbe American Q;u,arterly Register for -The first appropriation to send a 1830 is very suggestive, and clearly indi- Methodist missionary to India was made cates what marvels of progress have in 1852. The amount was $7500. The come to the kingdom during a few bishops were requested to select a decades. For the Sandwich Islands proper man for superintendent. Four only 90 communicants are reported, and years passed, however, before anyone for the Wesleyans in the South Seas, with the proper qualifications could be Fiji included, 60 communicants and 165 found willing to assume the task of in the schools. In New Zealand and founding a great mission in India. New Holland (for as yet there was no Bishop Thoburn says that it would sur- Australia) are 7 missionaries and 199 in prise people at the present day if the the schools. Africa has 91 missionaries, whol.! truth were told about the search representing 9 societies, 10 native asfor a superintendent, and expresses the sistants, and 2603 communicants. In opinion that" no other prominent post Ceylon, Hindustan, and India beyond in all the history of the Methodist the Ganges 10 societies are at work, Church was ever declined by so many with 135 missionaries, 424 native assist. nominees." At last, in 1856, Rev. ants, 2864 communicants, and 39,219 in William Butler accepted the post. the schools. Dr. Morrison had been in China since 1807 ; 2 others had just ar· -A missionary to New Zealand who rived from America; Messrs. Bridgman was in the habit of dispensing blankets and Abeel, two natives, have been bapamong the Maoris who attended his tized, and one of them, Leangafa, is meetings, noticed that one native came zealously engaged in spreading the too frequently for these comfortable ar- Christian truth in the interior. At the ticles. He mentioned the fact. "No close 30 benevolent societies in the more blankets ?" responded the Maori. United States are named, including all "Well, then, no more hallelujah 1" And the missionary societies, both home and he departed. foreign, also all the Bible, tract, educa.
-Evidently the Occidental mind and tion, temperance, colonization, sea- the Oriental were not cast in the same men's, peace, and prison societies, and mould; and therefore it behooves trans- asylums for the deaf and dumb; and lators in particular to be careful in their the total receipts for the year preceding choice of language. Dr. Chamberlain is given as $584.084.02. Those days of tells this story in illustration. He one exceedingly small things are not so ve~ day SUbmitted a somewhat close Telugu far distant, either.
translation of the hymn, "Rock of Coming down 30 years nearer to the Ages," to an able Telugu pundit, and present, in the New Englander of Au- asked him to say frankly what meaning gust, 1860, Leonard Bacon said : "There it conveyed to him. After long ponder- are at least 40 societies with an expendi.
ing and much hesitation, he replied: ture of $3,000,000, with 5000 native "Every religion has its mysteries, and helpers, and 200,000 communicants."
this, I suppose, is one of yours. I can- Glancing backward, he added: "In not understand it at all, but this is what 1820, at the end of the first decade of it seems to say, 'Oh very old stone, the American Board, there were not more than 50 oonverts," though he could Boldier who (in Lawrence's last words) not find half so many-oould discover died 'trying to do his duty' has d~ but 1 in Bombay, a Mohammedan, 2 in served better of his country and of man- Ceylon, and 20 Indians and negroes kind than have these brave ~en and among the Chootaws and Chickasaws of women of the Madura Mission, who Georgia. And in 1825 there were but 5 face daily the fever of the jungle and native helpers, 4 in Ceylon, and the cholera, whioh is always present in fifth among the Cherokees. ., Now they India, and are, with heroio self·sacri. are grown to 497, of whom 243 are pas- fice, wearing out their lives silently for tors." the good of others."
-The Ohristian Observer (Presbyte- -In Thibet almost every crime is rian, Louisville, Ky.) heads an editorsl punished by the imposition of a fine, relating to the acceptance of three men and murder is by no means an expen- as miBSionaries " More Foreign Mission sive luxury. The fine varies according Appointments, .. and says: "The secu- to the social standing of the victim-120 lar papers are full of the names of men bricks of tea (worth about 35 cents a appointed to represent the United brick) for one of the "upper c1aBS," 80 States in foreign lands, and we have bricks for a person of the middle class, felt that these men are honored in being 40 bricks for a woman, and so on down appointed ambassadors of this Govern- to 2 or' 3 for a pauper or a wandering ment. .. And then, after naming the foreigner. Almost every grown-up man young oandidates and the countries to in the country has a murder or two to which they are to be sent, asks: ,. Shall his credit. we not feel that they have an honor greater than that of any earthly ambas- -In Afrioa a Masai woman has a sador ?" market ,value equal to 5 large glass beads, while a oow is worth 10 of the -The Kingdom (Baptist Missionary same. Union) declares that since there are thirty times as many heathen as there "It was a girl, you know," was the are evangelioal Christians, it follows reallon given by a man and his wife on that eaoh Christian is responsible for Epi, one of the New Hebrides, who had thirty heathen, and they are his share. unblushingly confessed to having buried one of their children alive. -Charles S. Smith, a New York merchant of eminent standing in the busi- Dr. William Ashmore, of Swatow, on ness world, has been visiting India, and visiting a neighboring village, asked the writing to the Tribune, speaks in the population, and was told, .. about three highest terms of the missionaries he or four thousand." "Does this inolude met, and espeoially of those in the Ma- women?" he asked. .. Oh, no," was dura field, whose work he carefully in. the reply; "we follow the Chinese cusvestigated. Thil!l is the closing passage tom and do not count the women." of his letter: "I have since visited the stirring scenes of the Indian Mutiny at -The Spirit of Missions has been told Lucmo,.., Cawnpore, and Delhi. I have " that when that marvel of business enstood reverently and with uncovered terprise, the Standard Oil Company, head beside the graves of Havelock and would find a market for its products it Lawrence. I have read the tablet of is not content merely to wait on the or- Lord Napier, upon which he inscribed dinary demand, but it proceeds to create the name. of the gallant men who car- a market. Its agents went into Menco, ried the Kashmit gate by storm, and but found the people so averse to ohange gave their lives to save the honor and that they would still hold on to their the empire of the English raoe in India. tallow dips in spite of all that was told I solemnly believe, however, that no them of the excellence of kerosene. What then? Did the company give that up as II hopeless market? Not at all. Their agents went about to con· 'Was no ordinary calamity to us as Bapquer the prejuuice and to overcome the tists, for it was, as' has been said, • the stolid indifference, and they did it at a home of Baptist traditions and treaprodigious outlay. They took into sures,' as well as a c&ntre of our misevery house a lamp, all trimmed and sionary operations, home and foreign. filled with oil, and gave it to the people, Every day brings some fresh experience and immediately the market was made." of loss and hindrance oonsequent uPOn it to the workers of the Woman's Society -An interesting illustration of t,he of the East. " indebtedness of science to Christianity is given in 8 little book descriptive of " We can never recall this calamity " Work for the Blind in China." From without thankfulness that no lives were this it appears that a system of Isised imperilled, that it has called forth such characters representing the Chinese lan- kind expressions of sympathy, ihat guage has recently been perfected, a strength equal to the day has beengiven language which has no alphabet proper, to those whose work was so seriCHlSly but 4000 symbols representing syllables, interrupted. The experienoe has taaght and which takes a lifetime to learn. us new confidence in God asa very The system employed is by an ingenious present help in trouble." reduction of the sounds-as distinct from the syllables-to 408. The inventor is -The women of the Lutheran Church, a self-taught genius, Rev. W. H. Mur- General Synod, have four representa. ray, BOn of a Scotch mechanic, who was tives in the foreign field, all at Guntur, prevented from following his father's India, and one of them is a physician. trade by an accident in which he lost They publish mission studies for each an arm. Becoming an agent of the month, and' the General Literature Bible society, he was sent to carry Committee keeps on hand a varied supon its work ill China. Here the mis- ply of tracts, photographs, etc., to dif.' erable condition of the blind, of fuse information and excite interest. whom there is an unusual number in the empire, attracted his attention, and -The women of the Scottish Free led him to devote himself to the discov- Church publish the Helpmeet and the ery of a method by which they might be ahildren's Record. enabled to read. -The English Baptists have their WOMAN'S WORK. Ladies' Association for the Sllpport of zenana work and Bible women in India -The Woman's Missionary Society and China, and a monthly paper, the of the Methodist Church, Canada, has Zenana Missionary Herald. 501 auxiliaries with 11,557 members, and 221 circles and bands with 6590 -The London Sooiety sends out 60 members. The income last year was women, 31 to India, 20 to China, 5. to $35,790. The number of missionaries Madagascar, and 4 to the South Seas. is 26, of whom 16 are in Japan, and 8 in Mrs. Robert Whyte edits the Quarterly British Columbia at work for the In- News of Woman's Work, and the Juvedians and Chinese, with 2 in China. nile also is published, a neat mouthly full of good things. The April number -Helping Ha:niJ. for May has an im- contains an amusing illustrated poem pressive page, which gives in parallel entitled "The Lament of a Missionary columns first the ., shade" and then Box," whioh had seen better days, but the ., light" of the current missionary is now empty and forgotten, an excelsituation. The first item in each col- lent piece for· recitation. umn will serve as a specimen : -In the 'Home JC'lSsiooary for April "The burning of Tremont Temple Ellen W. Curtis tells of what she calls .. a novel climb in Miehigan," but which is equally good for any State, or territory, or kingdom on earth, and no mat- Bible women of our own country and ter how level the surface may be. After England must number approximately premising that" too many of us are sur- 2000..- Oongregationalist.
rounded by the Mountains of Ignorance UNITED STATES. (ignorance of the missionary work); and closing down. overthese mountains, -Christians in Great Britain or upon and shutting us in from the busy out· the Continent have little conception of side world, is the leaden sky of indif- the peculiar and very heavy burdens ference, and we do not know that Le- borne by their American brethren. For, yond these mountains lies a vast field in addition to the calls to aid in the re- ready to be cultivated by us ;" she goes demption of the heathen world is the on to allege that "in flOnt of every imperative and almost appalling de- church in our land stands a mountain, mand for home mission work in almost which we will call the' Mount of Priv- every community between the Atlantic ilege: and we may all climb it if we aitd the Pacific, in the new,settlements, will." And the sentence which follows and among the Indians, and the Freed· will give an insight into the meaning men, and the Chinese, and the foreign.
of the parable: "First let me ask your ers from every clime. Take a single forbearance if I should not go straight denomination as a fair specimen, which, up the old beaten path that leads to the aftlJr an annual expenditure of $6,790,.
home missionary work, for you know 000 for ordinary church work, gives in on mountain trips Bome of the most addition some $2,500,000 for home mis.
beautiful mosses and ferns are often sions on the frontier, etc., and after found in the little side paths; and if I that $840,000 for foreign missions.
take you into these paths, it will only -It is announced in the Roman be that I may show you some of the Catholic journals that the Rev. WaIter peculiar blessings with which our Elliot is to try" an interesting experi· Heavenly Father has endowed thill ment." He is to give himself to the State. " work of converting AmericaIl "non.
-In the early days of missions the Catholics" into good subjects of the Bible woman was not. She is the prod. Papacy. He is to do this by public ad. uct of years of patient toil. It was dresses, by lectures, by sermons, by necessary first to win her from allegi- wayside talks, by the distribution of ance to heathen gods, then to teach her leaflets, etc. He is of Irish-Catholic to read the Bible, to understand its descent, and is described as " American in all his ideas and aspirations;" an truths, to imbibe its spirit and to shape " eloquent speaker;" and that we may know the Paulist father more perfectly, her life by its laws. Then came years he is further described as a "most enof spiritual growth and of increase in gaging personality, a six-footer, broadnumbers, until now the Bible woman is shouldered, manly, and with a voice recognized an an important factor in deep and resonant, in the prime of life, missionary work. A Japanese pastor about fifty, with a full, reddish.brown said of them, .' I would rather have one beard, slightly flecked with gray." of these Bible readers for a helper than With this Mr. Elliot on the one hand, a man if I could have but one. " Count· and Mr. Webb essaying to win us to ing those supported by Christians in Islam on the other, great will be our foreign lands, the Congregationalists opportunities. have over 200 Bible women, the English Zenana Society has 171, the Baptist Foreign Missionary Society of the Unit. -A church in New York, Methodist ed States over 150, the Methodist For· Episcopal, has among its members the eign Missionary Society in the United following nationalities: English, Irish, States 300, It is safe to state that the Scotch, Welsh, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, French, German, Spanish, beyond Behring Straits, and where the Italian, Greek, Roumanian, Chinese, Presbyterians have a mission, and stu- African, and Hebrew. And these, all dent life must be peculiar: .. The winborn of the same Spirit, having experi- ter term is one long night. The conence of the same pardoning grace, and stant need of lamps in the school·room rejoicing in the same blessed hope, may is a matter of course. But II greater sing together, "All hail the power of difficulty is experienced in the confu- Jesus' name." No other name can I!IO sion of time which arises from the abunite. sence of the sun to mark day and night. Without a marked difference in the light -A Dakota paper gives an interview between noon and midnight, all knowlwith an Indian whose son is in the school edge of time among a barbal'ous people at Carlisle, Pa. In broken English he becomes lost. They know no difference said : "It makes him good boy ; he read between nine o'clock A.M. and nine Bible; he help me chop wood; he cure o'clock P.M. Consequently, when the my leg; he build fence; he make scbool bell rings out into the Arctic house; he make coat; he mend shoes." darkness at nine o'clock A.M., some of This is quite a list of accomplishments, the pupils have just gone to bed, and !tnd shows the young man had not been are in their first sound sleep. Roused among the white people in vain. Fur- up and brought to the school-room, they ther on he said: "He no dance any fall asleep in their seats. Many of the more; he say that foolish." pupils have come to school without their breakfasts; with sleepy bodies -Probably there are from 10,50(l to and empty stomachs, they are not in 11,000 Indian adherents of the Protes- the best condition to make progress in tant Episcopal, Presbyterian, and Con- their studies. " gregational churches in the Dakotas. Last year three large assemblages were -The American Colonization Society held of the Christian Sioux. On July was organized seventy.six years ago, be- 4th a Catholic congress gathered at gan to send colonists to Liberia four Standing Rock Agency, with 2 bishops years later, aided 50 to emigrate thither in attendance, 8 missionaries, and 800 last year, and from the beginning 22,- Indians. Of these 224 were confirmed. 135. Just now one important part of Then the last of August the Episcopal its work is found in agitating for more Convention met on the Rosebud Reser- direct, IDore frequent, and cheaper vation, attended by more than 2000 communication, in order that the Freed- Sioux, all in citizen's dress. They men may more easily exchange the formed their tepees, 470 in number, in United States for Africa. a circle half a mile in diameter, with wagons in the rear, and 2000 to 3000 -These few figures are most eloquent horses feeding on the plains beyond. About $1000 were brought in-offerings in setting forth the marvellous developby the women. The Presbyterian Indians and their missionaries held what ment of the Young Men's Christian Asthe Indians call the Paya Owohdakeunited talk-at Yankton Agency, South sociation: Dakota, September 17th to 20th. As many as 1000 were gathered at one 1866. 1892. time. During the year this Indian board of missions received $1386 from Associations reporting…. . 68 1,372 the Indian churches and kept 4 Indian missionaries in the field. Total membership …….. . 15,498 217,090 -Rev. Sheldon Jackson has this to Secretaries and other emtell of Point Barrow, Alaska, lying far ployed officera… . . . . . . . . 12 1,192 BuildiD~s …… ……….. 1 268 Value of buildings……… $10,000 $11,002,520 Total value pro)crty.. …. 90,000 12,878,595 Annual expenses of local work ………………. 50,000 1,992,328 Associations in college. . .. 1 400 Railroad secretaries em- ployed ……………. .. o 111. These figures, however, tell but part -The Board of Managers of the For. of the story. "Instead of being scat- eign Missionary Society of the Protestered bands, the associations are all or- tant Episcopal Church has sent an inganized into a great army and are work. vitation to Bishop Ferguson, of Liberia, ing together as no other religious or- at Cape Palmas, to visit the United ganization except the Roman Catholic States during the coming summer. Church, and even that is eclipsed in Bishop Ferguson is the only negro many ways." member of the American House of Bishops. He was born in Charleston, -The International Medical Mission. S. C., a little more than forty years ary Society has a charter in sight, under ago, but went to Liberia with his parwhich it can open in New York City a ents when he was five years old. He medical missionary training school, if has been educated wholly in the schools, only its friends will rally and raise $50,- college, and theological seminary which 000, to put with a like sum already the Episcopal Church maintains in that pledged, for a building and endowment. country. A preliminary circular has been sent out to all who may desire to enter such -The African Methodist Episcopal an institution. Church has a. mission in Sierra Leone with several stations, 355 church-mem. -The dedication on April 6th of the bers, 325 in Sunday-school, and lIome great granite Mormon temple in Salt 700 adherents. The mission was opened Lake has received abundant notice in in 1886. the public press; but the statement that this structurc cost $5,000,000 is to -Who says that science is not the be taken cum grano magno. One third handmaid of religion? Read this : of that sum is probably nearer the amount of money actually expended, .. The health of Rev. F. C. Klein, the since the bulk of the work was donated Methodist Protestant missionary at by· the saints. As far back as 1853 Nagoya, Japan, and president of the Brigham Young began to send pitiful Anglo-American College at that place, appeals to the faithful in Great Britain baving become impaired to such an exto contribute liberally for the purchase tent as to threaten his recall, it occurred of .. glass and shingles." Thill is the to one of his friends that his labors might eighth temple built, or founded, by the be lightened and his strength and eye- Mormons for the practice of their secret sight (which was also failing) husbanded rites-one in Ohio, two in Missouri, by the use of an Edison phonograph. one in Illinois, and four in Utah; and An appeal was made through one of the their amazing scheme contemplates the church papers for an offering for that erection of something like two dozen purpose. The next week a check came more-that is, one for each ., stake of from the president of one of the Chris- Zion." tian Endeavor societies for $150, and the instrument has been forwarded." -Our Baptist brethren of the Missionary Union sorrow, and also greatly -The Mennonite Mission Board has rejoice, for when Tremont Temple, charge of an Indian contract school at Boston, was burned March 19th the so- Halstead, Kan., with upward of 30 puciety suffered serious embarrassment pils, is doing work among the Cheyennes and loss; but then, as an offset, though and Arapahoes of Oklahoma, and bethe centennial million was not obtained, sides has in contemplation a mission yet when the books were closed the among the Moquis of Arizona. The sum total of gifts and pledges had amount expended last year was $9901, reached $851,375, with good hope of of which $3913 was received from the large additions later. government.
-In a recent issue of the Central Pres- byterian (Richmond, Va.) a mission arti· cle sets out with a Te Deum and closes ulation oi the district are now nomiwith a Miserere, and because : nally Christian. It is believed that he had just completed the revision of his ,. Never in the history of our church translation of the whole Bible into has the call to put forth every effort in Cree, into which language he had also our foreign mission work been so loud. translated the Prayer Book and> a hymnso inspiring as at this time. The op- book. portunities set before us are unparalleled in our experience, The tokens -The London Society has ordered a of God's favor have never been so steamer, to cost $80,000, for use in the rich. Twenty-seven missionaries are South Seas, and calls upon the young before our E:Kecutive Committee to be people to undertake the serious task of sent out as a new force-the largest providing the funds required. number ever offered in one year. Among them are 4 accomplished medi- -The Propagation Society (S. P. G.) cal men-l for the Congo, 1 for Korea, reports a total income for last year of 2 for China," $635,745.
And the inviting openings are named -The United Presbyterians report in and described through a half column; a single month 95 baptisms in their but over against all this is the report of mission fields: in Manchuria 63, in a " heavy falling off in contributions." Kaffraria 18, and in Old Calabar 14; and a most earnest call has been issued -The United Brethren are passing for 11 additional missionaries, 6 men through a time of sore trial, for not and 5 women, to strengthen and enlarge only has their African mission been the work. sadly weakened again and again by death, but also, on March 9th, Rev. ASIA. B. F. Booth, D.D., the faithful and efficient secretary of the Missionary So- Turkey.-The Hebrews who during ciety, was called from earth. recent years have returned to the Prom- ised Land have not found it flowing EUROPE. with milk and honey, but, on the con- trary, rags and pinching hunger are the -The English Baptists set out to raise lot of thousands, so that their benevoa $500,000 centennial thank-offering. lent brethren elsewhere are compelled which March 20th had reached $555,- to raise large sums for their relief. 000, and later intelligence is to the effect that $625,000 have been pledged. -It is pleasant to know that, after Verily, the zeal and good works of Carey long delay, our Government has taken have not been forgotten. the Sultan sternly to task for the out- rages and destruction of property in -The China Inland Mission sent out Marsovan, and that the costly seminary 57 missionaries between August, 1892, is likely to be rebuilt erelong with and February of this year. Of these Turkish gold. 25 are from Great Britain, 6 from America, and 5 from Australia. For -Rev. H. N. Barnum, of the Amerithree months 113 baptisms are re- can Board, writes to the New York Obported. server of the crushing calamity which has befallen Malatia in Eastern Asia -The Church Missionary Society has Minor. Three years ago the city, of received intelligence of the death of 50,000, was desolated by fire, a year the Rev. John Horden, D.D., Bishop of later a second time, and now an earth- MoosonGe. Dr. Horden went out to quake has killed or wounded some 600 Moose Fort on Hudson's Bay in 1851, and left the bulk of the population desand was consecrated in 1872. Through titute of homes, while the church, the his efforts the whole of the Indian pop- parsonage, and the 4, school buildings are in ruins. The people are heroic, 1890. Taking all the societies together, but desperately poor, and large help is the foreign and Eurasian missionaries required. increased from 479 to 711 ; the native helpers from 1643 to 3278; pupils in India.-It appears that evangelistic schools from 40,897 to 62,414 ; and pu. work, after the American pattern, is to pils in zenanas from 9132 to 32,659. be pursued in heatheI!- lands. The Rev. Dennis Osborne, who became well -A sign of the reviving activity of known in this country while in attend- the Buddhist religion is seen in the ance some years ago in the Methodist work of the Buddha Gaya Maha Bodhi General Conference, "has been ap- Society, the objects of which are the es· pointed by Bishop Thoburn general tablishment of a Buddhist monastery evangelist for all India. During the and a Buddhist college, the publication past year he has given much of his time of Buddhist literature in Indian verto Hindustani evangelistic work, for naculars, and the support of Buddhist which he is well prepared. " missionaries at Buddha Gay a, or Bud Gya, in Behar, India, the spot where –At a meeting of the North India Gautama, sitting under the great ban- Conference of the Methodist Episcopal yan tree, B.C. 588, is said to have re- Church, held at Bareli, 48 men were or- ceived his call. From this place it is dained to the office of the Christian intended to start a gigantic mission for ministry. All save 3 of these were na- the propagation of the faith throughout tives of India. This is in the district the world. It is intended to unite the where, in 1892, 18,000 baptisms were Buddhist countries-China, Japan, Siam, made. These men have been: in train- Cambodia, Nepaul, Burmah, Ceylon, ing for many years, and are believed to Chlttagong, Thibet. and Asakan-in this be thoroughly fitted for ordination. movement; and tho secretary of the so· ciety represents that it has been cor· -The Lodiana Mission of the Ameri- dially welcomed hy the educated Hindus can Presbyterian Church reports a total of India. Our Colonel Olcott is director of 266 additions on confession of faith and chief adviser, and Sir Edwin Ar. during the last year, making the roll of nold is said to have expressed sympacommunicants 948. The per cent of thy with it. increase is far beyond anything hitherto reported. Many of the additions were China.-Dr. Morrison died in 1834, in the districts connected with the sev- after 27 yeari! of incessant toil, and dureral stations. ing all that time had not heen allowed to hold a public service; but yet every -In this vast peninsula only 1 man Sunday, behind locked doors, with a in 10 can read and write, and 1 woman few natives, he had read and expounded in 190, while among the Christians the gospels. With that fact in mind one third of the men cau read and scan these figures, relating to the inwrite and one seventh of the women crease of church-members: and girls. Of the Hindoos 1 man in 10 is possessed of scholarship to this ex- In 1842 there were …………. 6 tent and 1 woman in 267 ; of the Mo- .. , ……… 350 hammedans 1 in 15 of the men and 1 in '. " 1852 … ……… 320 of the women. 1865 ~ 2,000 ……. ~ …… 13,035 -An industrial school for Moham- " 1876 " " ………….. 28,000 medan women, the only one of the " 1886 " kind in Southern India, has been estab- " ……… … 37,287 lished by the American Lutheran Mis- " 1889 sion. " 1892 …………. 50,000 -Woman's work in India had a wonderful development between 1881 and -A gentleman once saw in an out-of.
the.way place about 20 Chinese babies tied to stakes on a patch of green grass.
The length of each rope was about ten feet, and the stakes were far enough it. Latterly the German Government apart so that the babies wouldn't get has been reduuing Arab slave dealers to all tangled up. They seemed very subjection within its sphere of influence happy, and while he stood watching in Southwest Africa, anrl have succeeded them he did not hear one of them cry. in limiting their operations to the The mothers were at work in a rice-field country lying between Stanley Falls and a little way off. Lake Tanganyika. The only outlet left for the IIIave drivers is eastward. Henry -Dr. Legge, the eminent Chinese M. Stanley says in a late Harper that a scholar, now connected with Oxford railway from Victoria Lake to the Ind. Uni,ersity in England, says: " I have ian Ocean would extinguish the traffic, been reading Chinese books for more and would command an area of 150,000 than forty years, and any general re- square miles.of British territory. If he quirement to love God, or the mention can belt the Dark Continent from east of anyone as loving Him, has yet to to west and Cecil Rhodes project a line come for the first time under my eye." north and south, it will ensure its ulti. mate civilization. -The Ohinese Recorde:r hears with deep solicitude that the International -The Protestants in Uganda have Missionary Alliance is to send 200 two thirds of the oountry allotted to Swedish missionaries to China, at the them, the other third being divided berate of 20 each month, and with only tween the Roman Catholics and the $250 a year for salary and expenses. Mohammedans, as they are less numer. ous. The mission work is going on -One of the ablest. native preachers most prosperously, the greatest danger in the Foochow conference, though beiug that the political supremacy of offered $50 a month to enter the con- the Protestants will lead many to prosular service refused, preferring to con. fess themselves Christians from oorrupt tinue preaching with but $3 a month. motives. Within a period of about eighteen months, ending in September, -Thibet continues to be inaccessible. 1892, the Bible Society delivered to the No missionary is allowed to cross its Church MissionAry Society about 25,000 frontier. But its needs are not lost copies of Scriptures for use in Uganda. sight of. In our last, mention was This shows in a striking way the inter. made of a Roman Catholic who had est of the people in the Bible, but is hung about its borders for years, and very far from indicating its full extent. had prepared a dictionary and a trans· lation of St. John. The Methodists -In the report of Lovedale for 1892, have long had a mission immediately it is stated that the church, which was outside the country, and a flank move- organized in 1886, has now a member. ment from the northeast is now being ship of 150. During the year 40 new undertaken by the agents of the China communicants were received, 33 young Inland Society. The Moravians, too, men and 7 young women. Besides have been long watching and waiting, these, 19 Gallas were admitted by bapbusy meantime with a translation of tism, 14 boys and 5 girls, on profession the Scriptures. Those barred gates will of their faith. erelong be seen standing wide open.
AFRICA. -The East African Mission of the American Board is to be moved from -In 1885 the leading powers of the the malarious and unsympathetic neighworld gave their recognition to the borhood of the Portuguese coast town Congo Free State, one of its duties Inhambane to the healthier interior of being the suppression of the slave trade. Gazaland. In its new location it will Zanzibar has done something in this be under English protection, and will direction. Morocco and Tripoli foster start with a grant of a traot of land as earth and straw giving plaoe to edifioes large as an ordinary farm. of stone and briok. One of the first -The Hermannsbnrg missionaries substantial buildings was intended to among the Zulus, after holding a con- hold the fine library of the Universities ferenoe, decided to abolish the prevail- Missions. But before the building was ing oustom- among the natives of ex- oompleted a fire destroyed the 1500 vol· ohanging girls and women for oattle I umes which the missionaries had aoou· Strange to say, the Christian oonverts mulated. Now they are hungry for oy- .are not willing to submit to this inno- olopmdias, works of soienoe, grammars vation, and have dllmanded of the mis- and dictionaries of vario1!" foreign lansionaries to prove to them from the guages, books of travel, poetry, history, Scriptures that it would be unlawful and standard fiotion.
for them to sell their daughters for oat- -Miinzenberger in his" Abyssinien" tle. If the above statement is true, it holds that the regeneration of Abyssinia looks as though some second conver· is the first step toward gaining Afrioa sions were in order. for modem civilization and the Gospel; that in these old seats and oentres of -The promoters of the Zambesi In. Christian culture, literature and learn. dustrial Missions have a plan for mak. ing, the best base of operations can be iDg missions self-supporting after the found, from which the work oould exfirst outlay in establishing them. It is tend in all direotions. proposed to raise $7500 to purchase land-which can be bought in some dis- tricts at the rate of 1000 acres for $250 -In a letter written by Dr. Living- -and by native labor to raise crops, stone in 1870, just brought to light in which when realized would pay the oost England, the explorer oonfesses that if of missionary wO'rk in the district. It he had known all the hunger, toil, and is believed that by means of the project hardship in his exploration, he " might there would be planted in the heart of have preferred a straight waistooat, the Africa; a self-supporting, colonizing and head shaved and a blister on it to under- Christianizing element which would be taking Sir Roderiok's task. My ohilof great value to the people, and which dren, however, will Bee that I have been would help to develop the vast re- a stout-hearted servant of Him who en· sources of the continent. dowed me with the wisdom, taot and -'Siokening accounts oome of deso- pluck of an explorer, as He did the lating slave·raiding in the region lying workmen of the Mosaio tabernaole and to the north of Lake Nyassa. Arabs others in all ages."
are the acoursed aotors, and their plan -A letter received in London from is to surround a village by night, place Sierre Leone says that the vigilant sup. a warrior at each door, order the in- pression of the slave trade along the mates out, spear the men and boys and coast, and the consequent inability of oapture the women. Of the latter 300 the warlike races to dillpose of their oapwere thus taken in a single village. tives at a profit, has oaused a revival in -A pathetio appeal for books comes the most terrible form of the scenes of from Central Africa. In Lake Nyassa slaughter and bloodshed which formerly is Lukoma Island, oontaining only made every chief town of the interior & twelve square mUes, but more densely Golgotha.
populated than many places in Europe. It is universally admitted in the settle.
Missionaries have lived there for years, ments that the approaching extinotion and many of the natives arB able to read of the slave trade in Western Afrioa is and write. The island has recently making warfare more meroiless than it .b~n comple.t.el'y transformed, huts of used to be.
The Missionary Review of the World — November 1892
METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE AS A MISSIONARY CENTRE
MiSSIONARY REVIEW OF THE WORLD.
VOL. XV. No.n.-Old series.–NOVEMBER.–voL. V. No. n.-New Series.
THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE AS A MISSIONARY CENTRE.
BY THE EDITOR-IN-OHIEF.
On the southeast side of the Thames, in London, stands a great church building, for more than thirty years linked with the name of Charles Haddon Spurgeon. The church organization which finds there a home is not only foremost among Baptists, but is, in a certain sense, "mater et caput omnium ecclesiarum, urbis et orbis." .
" See," said God to Moses, " that thou make all things according to the pattern shewed thee in the mount." This principle has been at the basis of the construction and conduct of this noble enterprise. The providence of God, having brought me into intimate personal contact with the Metropolitan Tabernacle during a period of eight months, rare opportunity has been given for the study of the interior workings of this colossal organiz!rt.ion j and it is both duty and privilege to give to the Christian public, some- what more completely than has ever yet appeared in print, an outline of its autonomy and autocracy, its theoretical and practical administration, its spiritual machinery and world-wide usefulness. .
Comprehensively speaking, this brotherhood of disciples, over which C. H. Spurgeon so long presided, is not so much a church as a radiating centre for all city evangelization, public philanthropy, and home and foreign mlSSlOns. The methods here pursued are so silliple yet so complete, so concentrated and yet so comprehensive, so uniform and yet so multiform, so convergent and yet so far-reaching, that they provide and present in some sort a pattern or model for the organization and administration of church life in other parts of the world, and especially in great cities. The basis of the success here attained is laid in principles so scriptural and spiritual, that it challenges instead of defying imitation, and suggests pos- sible reasons for the failure, elsewhere so common.
The church-membership now embraces nearly six thousand, a fact which is the more remarkable, since the drift of the better classes of population has for years been away from the vicinily of the Tabernacle toward the more delightful and healthful residential suburbs. The most conspicuous feature of this great church is not, however, its numerical force, bllt the promi- nence here given for forty years to the preaching of the pllre Gospel of Christ, and to the advocacy and illustration of a simple and apostolic form of worship and Christian life. There is noticeable also an absence of all attempt at worldly art. There is no magnifying of the resthetic acce&- sories; the only beauty cultivated is the beauty of holiness.
The building is almost excessively, though not repulsively, plain; there has certainly been no constructing of ornament, and but little ornamenting of construction. The main objects in view have evidently been commodiousness, convenience, and comfort. The building has been so planned that everyone in the vast audience may both see and hear the preacher, and probably no other building in the world combines such large accommodations with such freedom from acoustic defects. When all available sittings are occupied, in the aisles as well as pews, five thousand persons may be seated; and on a few occasions it is said that more than seven thousand have been crowded into the house.
The area or ground floor furnishes the main seating capacity, but two galleries run entirely around, elliptical in effect, and very convenient and capacious. A portion of the lower gallery, extending forward, provides the platform for the preacher. The actual point where the speaker stands is near to one of the foci of the ellipse formed by the gallery front, and is therefore the best point from which to be well heard. Immediately below this is the baptistery platform, elevated about four feet, and extending still further toward the centre of the area; and here on ordinary occasions are seated children from the orphanage and elderly women from the almshouses, those whose hearing is imperfect, etc.
Mr. Spurgeon's great law in preaching was to combine simplicity with evangelicity. He believed thoroughly in the inexhaustible beauty and power of the old Gospel, when its native Divine attractiveness and effectiveness are unhindered by the vain trimmings and trappings of this world; and he honestly and persistently sought to make every sermon not only a means of edification to saints, but of conversion to sinners. Lest anything should divert attention from Christ as the centre of the message, and God as the centre of worship, he gave no encouragement to organ or choir, and the vast aS3emblage has always been led by a precentor. The service opens with prayer and song; the Scripture reading and exposition are followed by another hymn and prayer, and the benediction immediately succeeds the sermon. So great was Mr. Spurgeon's dependence on the power of the simple Word, accompanied by the Holy Spirit, that he was Dot wont to hold" after meetings," except for prayer; nor did he use the methods so common with modern evangelists of "bringing hearers to an immediate dt'cision." Yet, to the honor ·of God be it noted that the average accession of members for the last thirty-eight years has been three hundred and ninetv per year, and in 1874 and 1875 exceeded five hundred. No presentation of the Metropolitan Tabernacle and its work could be complete without indicating both the departments of activity and the apparatus by which it is carried on. The building itself is very large, embracing twenty or more rooms, large and small, the main space being occupied by the great aS5embly hall. Back of this are some twelve rooms: four of these are in the uppermost story, and mainly used for storage; on the middle floor is the pastor's study or vestry, with rooms for the deacons' and elders' courts, which together constitute a communicating suite, available for pastor's receptions, etc. From the hall leading from the elder's room to the deacon's room a door opens to the pulpit platform. Below this story and on the level of the baptistery are the secretaries' offices, robing rooms for candidates for baptism, etc., and the ladies' room; and in the ,basement, which extends beneath the entire building, are found the large Sunday-school room, the lecture-room, with capacity for about eight hundred persons, and other apartments for all the numerous and various purposes made necessary by such a Christian household.
There is scarce a room among all these that is not sanctified by multiplied forms of service. In the elders' room meets a Bible class of young women ; in the secretaries' 'office are kept church records, lists of members, pewholders, etc.; and here communion tickets and pew tickets are distributed. In the ladies' room meet the Ladies' Benevolent Society, Loan Tract Society, orphanage, working, colportage, clothing, and Dorcas societies, and here adult Bible class and prayer services are conducted. In another room assemble a men's Bible class and Mother's Working Meeting. In the lecture-room a Sabbath afternoon preaching service and a Thursday evening prayer-meeting are held. Near by, the Tract Society has its repository, whence to three hundred homes every week go forth visitors with loan tracts, to be collected and redistributed when the week expires. This building is also a centre for other forms of Christian service-the Flower Mission, Evangelistic Association, Bands of Hope, Total Abstinence Society, Benevolent Society, etc.
Immediately back of the Tabernacle is the college building, with large library, conference hall for five hundred, lecture-rooms, president's offices, etc. Here are the "common room," where the body of the departed pastor was first laid after its arrival from Mentone, the colporteurs' room and bookstore, whence eighty distributers go forth to disseminate Christian literature. etc.
As to the college itself, the aim is to train up a generation of preachers and pastors who hold and teach the precious old truths of the blessed Word; and the main support of this institution, with its seventy or more students, is found in the voluntary offerings, for the gathering of which some sixty boxes are placed in and about the church building. These offerings average from forty to sixty pounds sterling each Lord's day.
Much care is taken as to the choice of students. Applicants are divided into three classes: First, the accepted; secondly, the rejected; and thirdly, the doubtful, whose cases are to be considered and decided more carefully. Each applicant sends his photograph, recommendations from pastor and others, with evidence that he has already been successfully engaged in work for souls j and, if there be further question about him, he is invited to a personal interview, his travelling expenses and entertainment being provided, so that the college authorities may make his acquaintance. If found worthy and needy, his food, clothing, text-books, and lodging in some home round about, will be furnished, so far and so long as he requires; and the homes of students are visited each quarter by an elder, who thus keeps track of the student's peIsonallife. The average time spent in the college is three years, but the students are set at work for Christ meanwhile, and many of them act as pastors in mission halls and chapels, while others go out to preach as occasion and opportunity offer. Having often had occasion to address theological stndents in American seminaries, I have never found among an equal number so many intelligent, earnest, and consecrated men. At least four evangelists are employed and paid by the Pastor's College, and above eight hundred students have been trained here.
The Sunday-schools of the Tal:iernacle entoll about twelve hundred members, and the classes meet both in the Tabernacle !milding and college building, but all under one superintendent. Linked on to the Tabernacle are not a few chapels and missions, such as the Richmond Street Mission j Haddon Hall, with its full complement of Sabbath preaching, Sundayschool and week-night services j Surrey Grove Chapel, Surrey Garden's Memorial Hall, Almshouse meetings, and the Sunday-school, and evangelistic service!! and like meetings at the Orphanage. Converts gathered at these halls join the Tabernacle.
Some forty officers·-elders and deacons-with the pastors, have constituted the governing and directing force of this Metropolitan Tabernacle, the elders having charge of the spiritual interests, and the deacons mostly of the temporalities, but both working unitedly to secure efficiency in all things. The method of election has been very. simple j the pastor has been wont to nominate to each body additional members j and if there were no dissent, these names were reported for the confirmatory vote of the church at large. Then the right hand of fellowship was extended by the pastor, and prayer offered, without laying on of hands, to which Mr. Spurgeon was opposed. Superintendents of the Sunday-school were likewise commonly nominated by Mr. Spurgeon, who thus became the real and proper head of the entire administration. Three elders are set apart to special spiritual oversight, and are so employed by the church, as also are two most competent secretaries, who give up their time to the management of its clerical and business affairs. Two families act as caretakers, one of them living in the college, the other in the Jubilee House adjoining the Tabernacle, and built in Mr. Spurgeon's jubilee year, 1884, from offerings given in commemoration of his fiftieth birthday. Rev. James A. Spurgeon, although himself having a large and influential chapel in West Croydon, has long been associate. pastor with his now deceased brother, and remains the actual and capable head of this great church and its various institutions. He is a man of marked ability and singular fitness for his great administrative trust; and Colgate University has just honored him with the degree of Doctor of Divinity, as also Olivet College has voted him the first Doctorate of Laws ever given in its history. What the Tabernacle, the Pastor's College, and the Orphanage would have done without Doctor James Spurgeon at this crisis it is difficult to say. We may all bless God that so strong a hand was on the helm in such troublous times.
The brief statement here given suffices to show that the Tabernacle is a great missionary centre. First there is the constant and faithful preaching of the Gospel to vast audiences on the Lord's day and during the week. The prayer-meeting on Monday nights is often attended by upward of two thousand people; the Thursday night's preaching service by as many more; and these, with the Lord's day, make the aggregate audience weekly not far from seven or eight thousand different people, of whom one seventh are strangers from every quarter, who from this great centre carry to their distant homes the report of what they hear. In this great house of worship is thus repeated every week some such influence as that exerted by Pentecost, through those who, temporarily dwelling at Jerusalem, went back to every nation under heaven to bear the good tidings. This vast outreach of the Gospel there preached constitutes the Tabernacle a great centre of missions. Moreover, the continued publication of Mr. Spurgeon's sermons, week by week, at a penny each, their translation into twenty-five living tongues, and their perusal by hundreds of thousands constitutes a second distinct branch of missionary influence.
Then there is the dispersion of the members in every direction for the evangelization of the city,for in this church perhaps a larger proportion of Christian workers may be fonnd than in any other church in Christendom ; and here is a third form of mission work. The college, including the present body of students, is training or has sent forth nearly a thousand young men, to engage in either home or foreign missionary work, and they are scattered throughout the world, and this constitutes a fourth branch of missionary influence traceable to this central stock. The Evangelistic Association, which supplies temporary or permanent evangelistic labor to churches and communities in need of such help; the Colportage Association, sending out Bibles and religious books in every direction; the Tract Loan Society, visiting families every week and leaving tracts; the Sunday-schools of the Tabernacle and its connected missions, with their thousands of youth; the various other societies for aiding mothers, poor ministers, orphans; the Total Abstinence Society, and Band of Hope and Flower Mission-these are but a part of this many-branching tree of life. The Stockwell Orphanage has now over four hundred inmates, and has sent out more than one thousand children, and is a missionary centre in itself. Beside these, there are private forms and methods of benefaction, in visiting and relieving the poor, the sick, and the outcast, good works whose history bas never yet been written, because the data have never been supplied ; and all these must be included before a true conception is formed of the multitudinous ramifications which proceed from this one centre of spiritual f<;>rce and impulse.
Mr. Spurgeon was not known peculiarly as an advocate of foreign missions j but the Gospel he preached was so full of the spirit of missions that it kindled zeal in many hearts which impelled them to take up work among the heathen j and Hudson Taylor's recruits always love to come to the Monday evening prayer service to say their farewells and get, as from a mother, a parting blessing before leaving for China's inland regions.
No reference has yet been made to that famous "Book Fund," whose special manager-shall we not say mother ?-was and is the beloved wife of the departed pastor, and of which we need to write a separate paper, if justice is to be done to this noble work. In 1890 £836 sterling (upward of $4000) were spent in books and sermons donated to various parties in home and foreign lands. No one but God knows how many private contributions of money, love, sympathy, and prayer go forth from this congregation every day ; and the gap that would be made not only in the metropolis of the world, but in the world itself, if this church should cease to be, only God can measure. The fact is, the members of this great church and Pastor's College, like the Moravian Brethren, are trained to expect work for God as a necessary part of Christian life j and when the pastor lays his hand on a man or woman, and appoints such to a certain post of responsibility, he feels sure the appointment will be accepted and the workers will do their best.
It will be seen that Charles H. Spurgeon occupied a throne and wielded a sceptre the like of which the world furnishes nowhere else. Yet he was a leader rather than an autocrat. He was so highly esteemed and dearly loved, and such was the confidence reposed in his piety and judgment, that there was conceded to him almost unlimited and undisputed control j but he was a fine example, how safe it is to be guided by a single will, when that will is itself guided by knowledge and love. An archbishop of the Anglican Church is credited with saying that Spurgeon was " the most influential ecclesiastic in the world;" but if he was an absolute monarch inside of his church realm, it is safe to say that he never abused the sceptre held by his hands. He said jocosely to me, that if you want a thing done you must do it yourself, and that the best possible committee is a committee of three, two of whose members are sick or out of town!
~othing impressed me during months of labor here more than the atmosphere of prayer pervading the entire institution. Not only all day Sunday, but all through the week, there is scarce half a day not more or less occupied with religious services of some sort, and at almost all hours the voice of prayer may be heard; and when, at Florence, an American visitor asked Spurgeon the secret of his success, his quiet, hum ble, reverent, truthful answer was, "r have a people who pray much for me."
Never have I seen a people so willing, generous, considerate, affectionate, nor an activity so widespread and universal; never a church so primitive and apostolic. Beyond baptism by immersion, there is nothing which might not be common to the most devout evangelical believers everywhere. If anything could be suggested as an improvement in the administration of this church-any change which would make it seem nearer the apostolic pattern, it would be to throw all pews absolutely open to all comers and trust to voluntary offerings for the support of the minister and the supply of current expenses. This matter has been considered, but many fear that" free pews" would be appropriated by so many now attending other places of worship that non-churchgoer~ would be practically excluded, and such think that a moderate rental secures a more miscellaneous attendance. Upon this I prefer not to retreat from opinions long held, that the only right and best way is God's way, and that there is no foundation in the Acts of the Apostles for any pew-sale or pew-rental. Yet fairness compels me to concede and to confess that strangers have always a cordial welcome and do feel at home, and that the" atmosphere" of the Tabernacle repels no one and makes no worshipper conscious of restraint or constraint.
At the time of Mr. Spurgeon's decease, in January last, it was prophesied by many that the whole church, like a sheaf whose bond is removed, would fall apart; but up to this time the audiences continue as large as ever, and there is no decline of interest apparent; while the contributions for current expenses and the offcrings for benevolent work have rather increased than diminished-a practical proof that when the Gospel is faithfully preached and the Christian life is sedulously cultivated, there is created an esprit du corps that rtlmains as a permanent bond of union and is the abiding secret of vitality and activity, even when so great a preacber and pastor is forever withdrawn.
To conclude, if it be asked what is the secret of the success attained in this church, which makes it pre-eminent perhaps above all others, it seems to me that this secret lies mainly in two things: First, that there has never been anything countenanced here but the simple preaching of the Gospel, unheralded by sensational announcements and advertisements, and nnmixed with worldly leaven; and, secondly, that from the first there has been set up and held up here the simplest, purest type of apostolic worship. Hindrances either to the Gospel's power or the Spirit's working have been practically reduced to a minimum. No needless rites or ceremonies have here surrounded the administration of ordinances and sacraments. Beyond the decency and decorum of the service of worship, art has no place, and there is nothing to interfere with the exaltation of the Lord alone in the eyes of all men, in His house.
Why may not all that is essential in this church life be repeated in any
SAMOAN MISSION OF THE LONDON MISSlONARY SOCIETY
part of the world ~ The same uplifting of Christ, the same magnifying of the Spirit, the same zeal for simplicity of worship and fervency in prayer, the same adherence to a biblical pattern of church order and conduct, with the same renunciation of mere worldly art and attractions, might in any of the centres of Christendom give us other churches which, like the Metropolitan Tabernacle, should be at once witnesses to the power of the truth and centres of all missionary operations at home and abroad.
Charles H. Spurgeon being dead yet speaketh. A monument more lasting than brass and more precious than gold stands to his memory iI} the heart of the world's metropolis, and lifts high the flaming light of a testimony that flashes its beams over the entire civilized globe. May many other churches find in the Metropolitan Tabernacle the suggestion and the impulse of a nobler career of service, and, like it, send forth into dark and desert regions beyond both living rays of truth and living streams of grace!
THE SAMOAN MISSION OF THE LONDON MISSIONARY SOCIETY.
BY REV. J. E. NEWELL, D.D., MANCHESTER, ENG.
The Samoan Mission is the link of connection between the two great divisions of the South Pacific-Eastern and 'Western Polynesia. It was the first link of a chain which now embraces all the principal islands and groups of Western Polynesia, and connects them with the vast island of N"w Guinea.
The man who first carried the Gospel to the ,Samoan Islands lost his life while engaged in the work of introducing Christian teachers to the New Hebrides. As the Tahitian teachers taken by Williams and BarlI carried the torch of life to Samoa, so the Samoans in turn went forth to Western Polynesia-to the New Hebrides, the Loyalty Islands, New Caledonia, and the Isle of Pines. And how Christian teachers from both Eastern and Western Polynesia are united in one grand crusade against the powers of darkness in New Guinea.
Having witnessed the transforming power of the Gospel in his own group, and seen it take root in the Hervey Islands-the principal island of which (Rarotonga) John Williams himself discovered-that man of daring and heroic enterprises conceived the idea of taking the good news of God's love to the Samoans living in islands lying from fourteen to eighteen hundred miles distant. How his ship, the Messenger of Peace, was built and launched; how those bold pioneers-Williams and BarlI-crossed that trackess waste of ocean, and how in August, 1830, they landed in Samoa and located those first eight Tahitian teachers, John 'Williams himself has told us.
The jubilee of that event was celebrated by the Samoans during the year in which the writer of this sketch began his work among that interest- ing and lovable people.
With what thrilling interest did one just entering on his work listen to native reminiscences of that event!
Standing on the spot where John Williams first landed, an old man- one of the first Samoan Christians-recalled the portly presence of the missionary; the grateful and courteous way in which he had received the food which the kindly, hospitable Samoans had taken to the strangers; above all, that first giving of thanks to the Father of all mercies as " Uiliamu" took the food presented to them.
Again, an ever-memorable speech was that made at another of those jubilee meetings by one who had been a priest of that olden time. A priest, and therefore according to the very remarkable belief of the Samoans an incarnation, or at least a representative of the unseen God to men. Said he : "I was supposed to possess supernatural power, and men were ever afraid of me ; and yet I was in my own personal relation to the God even as others. I could provoke the wrath of the deity, and I must pro- pitiate him even as others must. I had a beloved sister who was sick unto death. When naught availed for her recovery, and hope was well- nigh gone, I determined to make a propitiatory sacrifice." And so he had taken the bamboo knife and severed the third finger at the joint from his left hand; and when that did not avail he took off the next, the little finger. Then the sister recovered !
With what a sympathetic thrill one witnessed that old man tottering on the verge of the grave, as he raised his left hand in confirmation of that beautiful story of self· sacrificing love.
Appropriately enough most of the speeches given during that interesting series of meeti~gs were from native missionaries, who had gone forth in the fervor of their self.consecration to preach God's glad news to perishing men in other islands; for Samoa was ever a missionary church. Natives from Samoa were employed in introducing the Gospel into Savage Island, and into the Tokelan, the Ellice, ,and Gilbert Islands (those south of the Equator), and some of these natives were there to tell how the Gospel was· the power of God unto salvation, not only to the Samoans, but also to peoples whom Samoans considered to be much more degraded than themselves. Some, too, who had labored in the islands in Western Polynesia, already mentioned, were present to tell of sorrows and privations endured for the Gospel's sake in the West.
Before John Williams went that last fatal voyage to the New Hebrides he had the joy of seeing the establishment of the Samoan Mission. In 1836 six British missionaries arrived in Samoa. One of the six, the Rev. A. W. Murray-in many ways the most successful and remarkable of the six-has recently passed away. He was the historian of the Samoan Mission, ana has well told the story of the forty years subsequent to his arrival in Samoa. Two or three features of the wOlk of the mission during that period are all that can be touched upon: 1. The education of a native ministry. 2. Bible translation. 3. The extension of the mission by native agency.
1. An event of deep importance to the mission was the establishment of the Malua Institution for the training of native pastors and teachers. This institution was established in September, 1844, by the late Revs. Charles Hardie and the late Dr. George Turner. Mr. Hardie's place was subsequently filled by the late Rev. Henry Nisbet, LL.D. While recog- nizing the extraordinary talents of the latter, especially as the author of valuable commentaries in Samoan on several books of the Bible, and as seen in the multifarious work of the institution, there can be no doubt that the honor of having created one of the most efficient of mission institutions is mainly due to Dr. Turner.
To have laid the foundation of such a trllining institution so securely and so wisely, that for all essentials there should be nothing hereafter to undo or to modify ; to have solved the problem of how to educate the native Christian without robbing him of the faith of his heart; of how to Christianize without Anglicizing the native, was largely the work of Dr. Turner. Under him it was proved that a South Sea college could be reared on the lines ef the communal life of a Polynesian village. The Malua Institution is, in fact, such a village consisting of some twenty· six " families." The heads of each household are the married student and his wife, whose position in the institution entitle them to the dignity. With these young unmarried men are placed, and each family receives a member of the Boys' Boarders' Class.
There are at present in the institution 108 students, of whom 56 are married, and boy boarders to the number of 26, Reckoning all three classes as students for whom the institution has provided education since the college was established, exclusive of those who are still under training. there ha'e been 940 students for the native ministry, 589 women (wives of students), and 307 boy boarders, making an aggregate of 1836 who have passed through the institution.
The students cultivate-the food necessary for their own support and that of those dependent upon them. As this can be done in such a country without much labor, it allows ample time for the strictly educational part of a student's training.
Certainly the training needed by a native pastor or missionary is unique. Every pastor in Samoa must be also village schoolmaster, and for that normal training is needed. To meet that need a normal school has been established. The villages in Samoa are small, and there is very little of the wealth we reckon by money to pay for skilled labor in the erection of village churches, and the pastor who can direct such work is greatly valued; hence an important part of his training as a student must be industrial.
And what a pastor needs, that a missionary in an isolated out8tation in the Ellice or Gilbert group needs still more. The fact that pur village churches and our outstations are locally independent of outside help is proof of the training of the pastor. The native village church may be rude and simple in construction, but at least it was built by the people themselves, and mission funds have in no case been used in erecting it.
With regard to that singular feature of the college-the Boys' Boarders'
Class-it is noticeable that our most successful pastors in Samoa and the most efficient missionaries in the outstations and in New Guinea are those who first entered the institution as boys, and who afterward returned for a further four years' course as theological students.
And with reference to the association in families of peoples as dis- .
similar as Samoans and Gilbert Islanders, it may be safely affirmed that nothing but Christianity could have made such a thing not only possible, but entirely satisfactory in experience.
2. The Samoans possess an excellent version of the Bible. The present edition is the result of more than thirty years' study of the Samoan lan- guage, and is as faithful to the original as it is idiomatic and pure in the vernacular. Both as to knowledge of the original and for Samoan scholar- ship the Rev. George Pratt (now of Sydney, N. S. W.) has been facile princeps; but the work is the result of the combined knowledge of the whole of the mission staff. '
The New Testament was first printed in 1847, and at the close of 1855 the Old Telltament was completed. Ten thousand copies of the Bible were sold at cost price to the Samoans in six years, and each edition of the great Book has been successively paid for by the people.
3. By means of native Samoan missionaries alone sixteen islands to the northwest of Samoa have been evangelized. These islands are in the Tokelau and Ellice groups, together with five islands in the Gilbert group.
The first step in this extension of the Samoan Mission was taken in 1865, when native missionaries were located in the Ellice group. The way in which the missioll was led to take the Word of God to those islands forms, perhaps, the most romantic story of modern missions; the result, however, is all that can now be referred to.
So far as statistics can give that result, we have the fact that 11,000 adherents have been added to the mission; and of these 1916 are profess- ing Christians. The children in Sunday and day schools number 2268.
The people of each island support their own pastor, and for this purpose contribute an average of over $2000. In addition to this, they have built their own churches and pastors' houses, and sent to the foreign missionary fund the sum of something like £300 sterling annually. Si~ce 1883 the Samoans have joined the rest of their Polynesian brethren in the work of evangelizing New Guinea. There are thirteen Samoan native missionaries with their wives in New Guinea, all of them are in heathen districts, and are making full proof of their ministry.
The London Missionary Society keeps up a staff of seven English missionaries in Samoa, and two lady missionaries have been recently added to the number for the work of female education.
The statistics for 1890 show that there are in the whole of the Samoan Mission (Samoa and outstations) 204 native ordained pastors, 173 native preachers; the adherents of the London Missionary Society number 36,459 (out of a population of 46,000) ; church-members, 7943 ; Sunday and day scholars, 11,827. The average annual contributions for the past ten years have been £2010 sterling, of which a little more than half was given for the support of the native pastors, and the rest was contributed to the funds of the London Missionary Society.
Apart from stati8tics, the present condition of the Samoan Church is causing grave anxiety. While numerically as strong as ever, there is only too much reason to fear that there is more formalism and less life than at any previous period of the church. There is a manifest tendency to escape the dominion of the motives which operated even ten years ago to quicken conscience and arouse to spiritual activity. It is. probable that a large proportion of professing Christians have passed from the dominion of spiritual impulse to the formal and lethargic condition which was so disastrous to the Post-Apostolic Church; and yet there is a core of earnest Christian life in the church. Some of the older pastors and many of the Christians in the church are manifestly alive to the dangers and perils of this age of transition. Especially in this connection it is right to mention the Christian heroism of a truly noble band of men and women who have gone forth from the institution to service for Christ in the high places of the field.
Never in the history of the mission have there been better and more efficient native missionaries than those who in recent years have gone to New Guinea; and it seems as if yet again it would be seen that the missionary zeal of the native church, while it can only come as the expression of the loyalty and love of living Christians to their Divine Master, may also be the salvation of the church at large.
As John vVilliams himself felt, Samoa is only the first link of a chain; and the chain is not yet complete. The islands of the South Pacific have been connected with New Guinea as John Williams prayed they might be; but in the South Seas itself, the largest and most populous of all the South Sea Islands is still entirely heathen. The great Solomon group is stilI almost untouched by the Gospel. Can it be that Papua itself is to be the chief agent in the evangelization of that portion of the race to be found in the Solomon Islands ~ However that may be, we ought not in our missionary forward movements to forget our older missions, but" hold fast that which we have t.hat no man take our crown." As it was when the Messenger of Peace first landed native teachers in Samoa, so is it still. God has owned these natives as pioneers of the Gospel, but the vessels that take them and the men that train them and lead them will still for some time to come be European.
1892·1 NATIVE INSTRUMENTALITY IN FOREIGN MISSIONS
NATIVE INS,TRUMENTALITY IN FOREIGN MISSIONS.
BY REV. A. BUNKER, D.D., TOUNGOO, BURMA.
Modern missions have now largely passed their formative stage, and are calling for new or modified methods. As Paul was the model missionary, we do well to study his methods for our own guidance. In this study we find that there were two stages in his work-the formative stage and the orgamzmg stage. In his early missionary life he wrought alone or with some chosen companion, preaching from place to place when able to travel. When converts had been gathered he changed his method. and went about organizing and confirming the churches and appointing pastors. He called into the work native helpers who had been instructed by him, and ordained them in the churches. He also commissioned them, as in the case of Timothy, to do the same work he had done. He thus laid upon the converts he had gathered the work he had formerly carded.
In this example set us by Paul we find a guide in our missionary enterprise. With us the first stage has been passed in many missions. Countries, nations, and tribes have been explored; written languages learned; the unwritten, in many cases, learned and reduced to writing; the Bible translated into many tongues; other useful books prepared; mission plant gathered, and a vast amount of preliminary work completed.
The Gospel message has been proclaimed far and wide, and native converts gathered in many missious by the hundreds and thousands. The calls for men and money are pressing and incessant, and missionary societies are having increased difficulty to find how to meet these calls.
The development of a native instrumentality on the mission fields is one way of meeting these demands, and asks for our consideration.
It is manifest ·that on many mission fields work has reached that stage where it must be done by native agency or not at all. It then becomes all important to know how best to develop that instrumentality.
It will be readily seen that such a development will not decrease the necessity of sending missionaries from Christian to heathen lands. In fact, this demand has been, and is likely to be always in excess of the supply. The necessity of prayer for laborers in the harvest is not likely to pass away. When home churches have done what they can for foreign work, there will still remain a vast deal of work uncompleted, which must be done by native workers, if done at all.
In this stage of mission progress there is an increasing caIJ for peculiar gifts in missionaries. In preliminary and pioneer work among the heathen, men of the highest ability have been required. They were men knowing no fear save the fear of God-men of resources, indefatigable, invincible in Christ.
In the second stage of missionary progress men of no less distinguished ability, though perhaps of a different kind are demanded. The work needs men of large execntive and organizing ability, who can multiply themselves in the native workers whom they find gathered to their hand j men apt to teach, and full of zeal, faith, and the Holy Ghost, like the heroes of the past.
The saying that men of small talent are good enough for the heathen, while those of large endowments are too valuable to be sent abroad, the future is likely to reverse. The mighty works of the Lord are yet to be wrought largely among the Gentiles who know not God, and who are as the sand of the sea-shore for number j and if so, there is to be scope for the activity of the great men of God in the future.
One reason why great importance should be given to the formation of a native ministry, is that the character of foreign mission work is better fitted to native than foreign talent. It requires long experience and much humility for a missionary to learn all he can from the natives in order to enable him to get down to the every-day life and thought of the beathen, and it is only in that low place that he can do his best work and reach the common people. It is often said that few churches in Christian lands really reach the masses. The reason of this does not come within the scope of this paper, but the missionary knows well that he can reach the heathen only as he comes into close touch with them. He cannot deal with them at arm's length. Moreover, he finds himself hedged about, as with a wall, by his ignorance of the language, manners, and customs of the people, and especially of their modes of thought. Through this wall he must work his way, requiring time and much patient labor. His own habits of life, thought, and sometimes even dress must be changed to accomplish his object. The native workers, however, have inherited this knowledge from their birth, and are at once in that place where they can best reach their countrymen after they themselves have found the truth. Best of all, they are in full and intelligent sympathy with their needs. Again, these workers can be more easily lifted into higher thought and life, and equipped for missionary work, than the foreign missionary can learn to adapt himself to these new conditions in which he finds himself. He clln reach his native helper much more easily than he can the masses about him, and thus instead of one, if he has the talent and .grace, he becomes many, multiplying himself in the native converts under his instruction.
This will go a long way in solving the question of how to meet these calls for help from mission fields. This brings us directly to the question before us-namely, how best to train np a native instrumentality on mission fields.
Doubtless one of the most important means at our disposal for this purpose is the training school. This raises the question of mi.ssion schools, much discussed in our day. It is a wide question, and must be settled largely by individual missions on local grounds. In general, however, ,mh'siQn schools have their use as well as abuse. In countries where the government is willing to aid schools, passing prescribed standards in examination, and where mission funds are small and the people poor, there is great temptation to secularize the school in order to retain the pupils under mission influence on the one hand, and to secure the government aid on the other. This is a very insidious temptation, and without doubt has led astray some missionaries and societies even. This temptation should be resisted most strenuously. It should be the aim to leave to the secular powers as much as possible all secular instruction. The preaching of the Gospel is pre-eminently the work of the missionary; but he sometimes finds the necessity of schools laid upon him, and it must not be forgotten that there are many ways of proclaiming the Gospel message. Even Paul had a school in his own hired house for two years.
It may be necessary, in training a body of native helpers, to establish even high schools and colleges, as well as theological seminaries, but such calls should be most carefully studied before being acceded to. We say it may be necessary, but only so, as such schools can be used in training a native instrumentality for mission work. If it is not possible to bend all school work in this direction, be it in primary or higher schools, then the sooner one drops secular instruction and reverts to direct missionary work, the better it will be for the cause of Christ.
Schools, then, which can be controlled in the direction of raising up trained native workers, are a powerful means to the end in view. Here the pupils are constantly under the eye and influence of the missionary, and having been brought to believe in Christ with a saving faith, are in the very best conditions to be prepared for the work before them.
In such school work there is the largest scope for the missionary talent. It has been said that" the method is the man." It is emphatically true that native converts will take very readily the stamp of their much-loved teachers, too readily copying their faults. How often can they be picked out as belonging to this or that known missionary by their mannerisms even, which they have copied from their teachers; but all-important will be the missionary's ability to impart zeal and enthusiasm to his pupils. He needs not only great faith, but Divine enthusiasm for souls, like Jesus and His servant Paul.
A second important method of instruction is by example. If there is any place where an example of Christian living is required, it is in that of the missionary teacher. As an evangeli~t he indeed needs to live the Christ-life daily, or his teachings are lifeless; but as a teacher who must impress his own character and individuality on the' learner, he, above all others, needs to live the Christ-life. It has been said that the heathen need not so much men and money as the Christ.life lived before them as an example. " The heathen shall know that I am the Lord, saith the Lord God, when I shall be sanctified in you before their eyes." Experienced missionaries know very well how sharp·eyed the native converts are, when they have learned to compare Christian living with God's Word. Not only in daily living will example be powerful, but in work also. The missionary must not only teach his pupils to work, but show them how by his own example. He must lead them in teaching from house to house, and from town to town, and in exploring and opening new fields. He must show them what patient endurance means. We have a beautiful type of this kind of teaching in our Lord's training of His disciples, as He travelled and taught and wrought His mighty works before them. Often the missionary is called in like manner to lead a band of native workers, which frequently involves the mission of healing as well, as with Christ. Here is an almost unlimited field for practical training.
A third means for the development of a native ministry, and not the least, is found, first, in impressing upon the converts the fact that the duty of evangelizing the heathen about them is theirs, and not the work of the missionary alone j and, secondly, in laying upon them the responsibility of that duty. The missionary will be often pained to find that the converts are inclined to put him in the place of Christ j that they are ~eek ing how they may please him rather than their Redeemer. They seem to regard the building up of the kingdom of Christ as belonging to their missionary, while they are at most only helpers. This is a great mistake in instruction, if allowed to continue. The missionary 8hould impress upon his people, at all times, that this work is theirs, and that he is their helper only. They must realize, if possible, that the Divine commission comes to them directly, and not through man. In order to this end, all possible responsibility must be thrown upon them as they are able to bear it. It has been said justly that a wise missionary will never do what a native can do. It will often be easier for him to perform the work himself than to teach tho native worker how to do it, yet for the sake of the end in view this rule is safe to follow. It is true that he may need to " keep his hands on the lines," but he can do so "out of sight." He may, if he has tact, lead and not seem to lead. These are the best leaders of men, and the missionary cannot cultivate this talent too highly.
There has been too little of this putting of responsibility on the native Christians, and too much interference with the churches among them in past time. One can easily see how this comes about. After much labor and anxiety some are led to Christ. How dear these first converts become to the weary worker, and how solicitous he is for their spiritual welfare! He is too apt to judge them from his own standard and try to raise them to it; but it is better to imitate Paul, and leave the native converts largely to work out their own salvation. To try is to learn. Fail? Yes, they will make mistakes, but leave them to the guidance of the Holy Spirit to learn by their failures, as the children of God have done in all ages, but always with wise care and help when needed.
Just here comes in the question of self-help. It has been the custom of most missionaries to pay a stipulated stipend to native preachers and others. This plan, unless carefully guarded, is likely to work weakness in, instead of being a help to the native worker. One may leach him never so diligently that he is responsible to Christ alone, but 80 long as he feels that he is dependent on the will of his teacher for his monthly wages, he will with difficnlty learn the lesson of dependence on Christ. He is a child, and, like a child, feels obligation to him from w.hom his support visibly comes. There are many ways of helping native workers and not leading them under obligation to the helper. The practice of standing in the place of helper, instead of principal has, in the hands of tlie writer, wrought wonders in developing a self-reliant native ministry.
What is said here of individuals is also true of churches. These singly or associated, however, form a wider field for instruction, as they have special duties assigned them by the Head of the Church. One of the first lessons to be taught them is the power of organized effort. Heathenism disorganizes. Christianity reorganizes. Hence the missionary will be obliged to teach the new body of converts everything in church work. He will meet prejudices which it may take years of patient effort to overthrow. He cannot lay his plans to be consummated in a day or year even. Faithful, persistent, patient teaching, while throwing all possible responsibility upon the native churches, to enable them 10 work out and digest his instruction, will accomplish wonders in time.
Finally, there remains the dignity of the calling of the worker with Christ, and the glorious mission of the Church, to be impressed upon the native mind. 'Without a due sense of these, no corps of workers is duly equipped for their calling. Here is a call for the highest talent God has bestowed on man. Only Divine wisdom can meet the case. Here the missionary may well pause and tremble, for he is entering the Holy of Holies in his mission as a messenger of God to earth. It is here as nowhere else that the native converts take the stamp of their teacher.
When the native worker has come to realize that the work of the ministry of Christ is the best, the most honorable, and the best paid service on earth, and that the Church is engaged in a warfare with evil and darkness, which will, beyond doubt, result in a most glorious victory; when he can, by faith, rejoice in the midst of trials, as those who have already won the crown, a fire has been kindled on heathen soil which, by the grace of God, all the powers of darkness cannot put out. 'That but Divine wisdom can lead the native churches to such faith! Who but the Holy Spirit can enthuse them with the glory of their mission on earth and reward in heaven, and thus incite them to holy endeavor! The missionary, however, is the ordained channel of this grace, and only as he has fellowship with Christ, can he do the work laid upon him. Only as the workers in the kingdom of Christ in any land realize their high calling can they do their best work. This is the work for the missionary of the future. Using all means for the development of a corps of native workers in mission fields, by the blessing of the Holy Spirit, we shall see the Gospel proclaimed in all lands, and the kingdom prepared for the enthronement of our Lord.
IN OUR MISSIONARY MEETING!!
HOW SHALL THE INTEREST IN OUR MISSIONARY MEETINGS BE INCREASED 1 * BY MRS. ETHAN CURTIS, SYRACUSE, N. Y.
In our larger cities are literary clubs, meeting weekly or semi-monthly, for which papers are most carefully prepared; attendance at them is regular, and many now outside are waiting and wishing to become members. Y,et our missionary societies, in spite of the large number of women in our church-membership, have discouragingly few at their monthly meetings.
Why this difference 1 Is America, Italy, or England preferable to the kingdom of heaven? Is the inspiration of Browning superior to that of St. John, or Shakespeare loftier in thought than Moses, Job, Isaiah, or David 1 Great as are all these, God's direct word to man is greater. Dear is our own country, the land of freedom j precious is Italy, the mother of art; grand is old England, the realm of thought; but the kingdom of heaven, the home of the soul, is better than all other regions.
These literary clubs are fashionable. If we may not make our mis. sionary meetings fashionable, let us at least make them attractive, even if wc borrow from our literary friends some of their methods.
First, let us, like them, make our appointments months beforehand, so that work be carefully prepared. Is not the story of our heroic and selfsacrificing missionary ministry worthy of as much study as poetry, literature, and art?
Let the main feature of the meeting be a strong, vigorous, well-prepared paper, or still better, talk. The subject may be the life of some missionary-biography is always interesting and inspiring. The deeds of the heroes of history make us long to be heroic. There was Carey, educated at the shoemaker's bench, yet becoming the finest lingui8t of India; Judson, a careless, reckless boy, rising to noblest manhood in Christ j Hannington, always human, but always heroic j Paton, working and waiting on the Lord; John Coleridge Patterson, gifted by nature and by race, offering himself to the rudest and roughest people with a supreme joy, because such was the Christ-life ; that other martyr of the South Seas, John Williams, brave in death as in life, giving himself always to forsaken souls; the Moffats in South Africa living there a half century for the Lord. One cannot name or number the biographies that will interest an audience if properly prepared. Then there are romances of missions: our own Oregon story; the Jesuit heroism in North America j the Madagascar mission; the New Zealand transformations; such tales make our best magazine stories pale in comparison. Even the degradation of these human brothers of ours and the dire needs of our fellow-men help us to lose self in longings to help others.
Some such paper should be the central point of the meeting, and there *MN. Cnrtis ill the Vice-President of the N. Y. Woman's Home Missionary Union. is no reason why a missionary paper should not have as much gl"ace of language and vigor of thought as the papers in the literary clubs. Never lose unity or "central radiance," as the old artists called it. The old st.ory is told of Leonardo da Vinci, that while painting the Last Supper, he thought how much" the cup" meant to man, and so lavished his love of detail upon that. When the picture was exhibited many called out, " How beautiful is the cup /" Next day he painted it over, and replaced it by the plainest piece of pottery, saying, " If in a single beholder's mind the cup distracts attention from the face of the Christ, it should have no place in my picture." Such a principle of art we do well to make our creed in missionary meetings.
Singing brightens and belongs to mission work, but be sure that the songs relate to the subject. One sings with peculiar tenderness, "I am coming to the cross" or "Jesus, lover of my soul," after a paper on Hannington. " My country, 'tis of thee" comes with an accompaniment of heart throbs when the story is Whitman's ride.
Instead of always taking Scripture by chapters, it is well to select passages having special application to the subject. A few words at the opening, with responsive sentences, given to individuals to be recited at appropriate intervals, are often very effective. A few phrases learned are better than many chapters read; better to have each member bring home an especial meaning from these Bible words than to have them suggest many and diverting thoughts.
A sacred feature of the meeting is prayer, a knowledge of the needs of the hour expressed with truth and with tendernes~, a right attitude of soul helping to right words and thoughts toward God. "Who can make us comprehend the grandeur, the majesty, the might of prayer~" It is the highest worship earth can show ; it includes the entire relation between man and God; it contains in itself all the longings of humanity fo'r heaven; it changes aspiration to inspiration; it completes all truth, all sentiment, all knowledge. Let our souls be prayerful, our minds earnest our hearts ardent with good wishes, and prayer, like the mist of the morning, will mount heavenward, because that is its natural pathway. Let us think and feel and long earnestly for this meeting, and prayer will be tho simplest, the sweetest, the most sacred portion of the programme. " We do not say prayer; prayer forms within us." Let our souls be wholly absorbed in God's cause, then the prayers of the hour will be a blessing and a benediction.
A map is almost essential to every missionary meeting. A simple outline map may be obtained from the missionary rooms. One can mark with pencil' the route needful to be traced, and pin small pieces of red paper on for missionary stations. If some one says that it looks as if " geography had a sudden attack of the measles," we must not be afraid of such criticisms; we are sending forth messengers of healing, and there may be appropriateness in such appearance. Mention the bound!lories of the chosen country; it is well to know the neighbors of any selected portion of the earth. Let Bome one else give population, that we may know how many hungry, helpless human beings call for us in their awful despair, or are settling into despondency that is worse than despair. Another may give the present material resources of the country, that we may know their outlook for an earthly future, and be stimulated to hasten our slowmoving missionary labors. Shall we allow Japan to grow and gain in everything but the Gospel? or our own West to unearth gold and silver while the heavens overhead are lead and brass? Shall we allow the mountain highlander to grow rich in mines and mills while body and soul are starving? Our missionary countries are not necessarily pauper lands. Some are natural Edens, fragrant with fruit and flower, but morally poisoned by sin. Shall we not seize these riches for the Lord?
What is the intellectual calibre of heathen peoples? Look at the litt;rature of the Orient, where man was first made and where the sun first dawns; some of these are reverent rhapsodies, when man was groping for God with his benighted brain. A sentence may show what they have done and thought, what they are capable of doing. Ages ago were the Vedas written, but still there are sharp wits and sentimental souls in the Orient, and these demand our best and brightest minds to teach them. The Indians of America have spoken many stirring words, well worth recalling. In our Congressional reports is a plea for the Bible from the lips of an Indian as thrilling and as pathetic as Lincoln's funeral oration, and as deserving to be held in memory.
Decorate the meeting-room with the handiwork of these people. Japan has taught pottery to the world. India and Persia and Turkey have almost translated beauty into a beatitude. Religion has been wrought, even by these heathens, in color and harmony exquisite to behold, and rich in suggestions of thought. Can they not also see the beauty of the true faith? If we are studying Africa, a bit of ivory may mean very much when it is known that the first missionaries in Africa lived upon a pittance, built their church and school without aid from the home society, the tusks of ivory larglly paying their expenses; or when we remember that the dead elephants did more than the living men and women of England toward opening the Dark Continent to the Gospel. Dolls dressed after the fashion of these pagan peoples may help us to know more about them and may teach us something of grace and comfort. An artistic lady once said, " I wish the heathen would send us some missionaries and teach us how to dress."
If we are studying home lands, some of the products of the soil, specimens of the ores, grains, special workmanship of the people, picture. of the scenery, may help. Photography may aid much, as the telescope does with the planets in diminishing distances. The nearer we get to these people in space, the closer our hearts will come to theirs.
·Whatever the country, let us have its flag. It is easily made from the dictionary illustrations. Nothing shows the soul of nationality like that country's banner with its device. Many spiritual meanings may be gained from the national emblem. A Japanese flag was used in a missionary con- cert. It was just a red circle sewed on a white ground, and cost only a few cents, and was the work of only a few moments. At the close a Japanesll told us something of the feeling of his nation for that flag. It preceded all processions, was hung before them on all grand occasions, and signified the rising sun. When he expressed a wish that his country should love the Sun of Righteousness as she loved her flag, keep Christ ever before her, the entire audience was stirred to aid Japan in her noble struggle.
Suppose some one writes a letter, imagining herself in some field at work as a missionary. She can give her life, its longings, its joys, its discouragements, and its blessings. This will help her and her audience to be interested in real missionaries; perhaps to do something beyond imagination for those whom she is representing.
Suppose some one brings up the objections to missionary work; a dozen will rise up in answer to them, and they will set Borne one to studying the real value of missions. Hawthorne found a cabin boy on the wharves reading a commentary on the Bible. He asked why he studied t/tat book in that place. The boy looked up with a knowing wink as he replied, "Ther's consid'rable her'sy in our place, and I'm studying up fur 'em." Honest doubts have led to the highest knowledge. Was not Thomas the doubter first of all to cry out, "My Lord and my God"? Strauss published his Life of Christ in 1835, and it looked for a time as if the best of the Bible was to be turned into a myth; but men greater than he set to work to answer him, and an entire literature arose on the one sinless and sacred life that has been given to humanity. After Strauss, the ministry everywhere took up the subject in pulpit and in press. All these have helped to bring the highest humanity into closer and more vital relations with common humanity until the first and the nineteenth centuries have joined hands in fervor and in faith. Thus doubt has become the stepping-stone to surest belief. Thill task of expressing doubts upon missions is good work for the women who neither attend the meetings nor give to the cause. Let a discussion follow. Doubtless even the doubter will be convinced. A sluggish spirit on this great subject is most to be feared. The surging waters are pure; but the stagnant pool gathers poison.
It is good to use the conversational method, even if the questions and answers are all arranged beforehand; but spontaneity is preferable. The greatest power of the leader is not in imposing silence, but in arousing speech.
Appoint watchmen, heralds, messenger girls, telegraph lads, to bring in the latest news from the field. Delivered during the session and in the regular telegraph form, they will awaken special interest and enthusiasm. Children, coming home from school, will be delighted with some such errand, and will not soon forget the message they have brought.
JOHANN LUDWIG KRAPF, A PIONEER OF .A.FRICAN MISSIONS
Vary missionary meetings as much as possible. No garment is so strong as to stand constant wear. No good method is always and everywhere successful. The best thing is for each to expect something new every time. When Joshua Reynolds began portrait painting, he adopted the style of his teacher, and painted all his men with their hats in their hands. It was easier to dispose of hats than of hands. One day he found a subject who had ideas of his own. He wished to wear his hat on the top of his head. The portrait was finished, the original came to claim it, when he found himself possessed of two hats, one on his head, the other in his hand. This cured Sir Joshua forever of fixed and forced attitudes. Repetition may be ridiculous elsewhere than in hats. It is well to find something new each time not only in subject, but in method and manner and in means. Children always call for new things, and we "children of a larger growth" must keep fresh and fervent all the longings of our lives, all the ways of working for the Master, if we would pass the bread of life from soul to soul. Fixed and forced forms are forever fatal to life. Growth is everywhere the law of greatness and of goodness.
These are only hints and suggestions. The use of the inventive powers will add much that will be of vital interest. The attendance in these monthly gatherings might be brought up to the hundreds, instead of standing below the score; and with a greater interest in the missionary meetings the contributions to missionary work would greatly increase.
JOHANN LUDWIG KRAPF, A PIONEER OF AFRICAN MISSIONS.* BY REV. F. WILKINSON, LIVERPOOL, ENG.
Johann Ludwig Krapf was born in 1810, near Tubingen. He would have followed farming, the occupation of his father, had not circumstances induced his parents to give him a superior education. During his school course the future explorer revealed himself in a special inclination to geography ; and at fourteen yearf he expressed a decided wish to be a captain and visit foreign countries. His father was desirous to carry out the boy's wish, if pOSSIble, but the cost was found to be beyond the resources of the family, and the idea was relinquished. A novel incident turned young Krapf's thoughts to the work of the mISSIOnary. The principal of the school one day read before his scholars a pamphlet on missionary work and the spread of Christianity among the heathen, desiring them afterward to embody the substance of the pamphlet in an essay. Ludwig had never before heard anything of missions, but what he now heard was enough, and he asked himself the question, "Shall I be a missionary, and go to the heathen~" This thought never left him, and at the age of seventeen he travelled to Basle to offer himself as a mis- • The pre.ent article is based npon the life of Dr. Krapf by W. Claus (in German). sionary student. The principal of the institution advised him, on account of his youth, to return home for a time, to continue his studies, and to endeavor to grow in the knowledge of Scripture and of his own character, and wait for God's guidance.
The following year found him in the institution at Basle, but the intellectual and spiritual condition of the place did not entirely satisfy .his expectations, while the reading of the mystical writings of Madame Guion and Jacob Bohn so unsettlecl his mind, that he could not with a good conscience remain longer in the institution at the expense of tbe mission. He laid before the committee the grounds of his decision, and left the institution two years after he entered it. Returning home, he continued his studies, passed the university examination, and p.,ished in 1834 the theological course.
His heart had often turned to the mission house at Basle, especially when his cousin-a namesake-entered the institution, but he determined to enter the ministry at home, arguing that thus he could carry on ~ork similar to that which his cousin would prosecute in non-Christian lands. Be accordingly settled at vVolf~nhausen, where the neglected condition of his parish and the work he had to do became the means of bringing more vividly to his mind the needi of the heathen world.
He wrote: "The inducements to mission work appeared to me in a new light. In the needs of my congregation I recognized those of non-Christians in a measure that affected me very deeply; in their sorrow I recognized the wretchedness of the heathen; the cry for help from my own congregation seemed an echo from heathen lands. The grace which I myself enjoyed, and which I commended to my own people. was, I felt, for the heathen as well, but there might be no one to proclaim it to them. Here, everyone may without difficulty find the way of life; in those lands there lliay be no one to show the way. Bere, in almost every house the Holy Scriptures may be found; there, the Scriptures are only scantily distributed. This seems to me a powerful incentive to think seriously of missionary work."
An event soon occurred which left him free to follow his inclinations. Some incautious pulpit utterances gave offence to the ecclesiastical authorities, and he was deprived of the living at Wolfenhausen. A few months afterward he once more offered himself for missionary work, stronger in every respect and better equipped for the work. .Being willing to go wherever his services were needed, and the Abyssinian Mission requiIing another worker, he left for that country in February, 1837, arriving in Alexandria in April, and travelling up the Nile to Cairo, where he had his first glimpse of Africa's greatest curse-the slave trade. In the 1Ihive market he found the poor creatures lying on the bare earth, by day fainting in the burning rays of the sun, at night placed in a stable without any covering except, at the most, a few rags around their loins. There they lay -young and old of either sex-to be examined by buyers, like cattle. This first experience of slavery gave him a new impulse to do his utmost for the sprEad of the Gospel in Afriea, as the most effectual remedy for the miseries of its people. From Suez and Massowa he travelled, with difficulty and danger, to the highlands of Abyssinia, and joined Isenberg and Blumhardt at Adoa, in the hope that their united labora would bring such life into the Abyssinian Church as would make it a missionary church; but soon after priestly jealousy so worked upon the fears of the ruling prince as to induce him to issue a peremptory order to the missionaries to leave his territory and go to their own land. Repulsed in Northern Abyssinia, Krapf resolved to find his way to Shoa in the south. A sudden illness, however, compelled him to return to Cairo. After a time he made a second attempt to reach Shoa, arriving there in June, 1839, in company with Isenberg, who in a few months returned to Egypt, and left Krapf alone. Notwithstanding the geod-will of the king, the work in Shoa was slow and discouraging, and Krapf regarded the neighboring heathen tribe (the Gallas) as offering more hope of successful work than the nominal Christians of Abyssinia.
In 1842 he left Shoa for a short while, partly to meet his flture wife in Egypt, and partly to help on their way two new brethren-Mllhleisen and MUller-who, he was told, had arrived on the Abyssinian coast. Setting out on foot, after considerable difficulty and suffering from robbery, hunger, and the fatigues of travel, he arrived at his destination only to learn that the missionaries he expected to meet had returned to Egypt. It was thus necessary, apart from his private concerns, to visit Egypt to bring back the two brethren who had fled from the difficulties of their position.
While in Egypt he married Rosine Dietrich, that loving, faithful, and steady helpmeet in the difficulties and dangers of his career. With his wife, Isenberg, and Miihleisen Krapf set out to return to Shoa; but on arriving at Tajurrah he receiTed the astounding intelligence that the king forbade him to enter his dominions, an act which, like the expulsion from Adoa, was due to priestly interference.
Isenberg and Miihleisen travelled back to Massowa, in order to reach Gondar, while Krapf betook him8elf, with his wife, to Aden, desirous to gct into Gallaland by the south; but finding this impracticable, he determined to follow his two fellow-laborers, taking with him a number of Ethiopic and Amharic Scriptures, so that he might at least, by the circulation of the Scriptures, do what he could for the spiritual welfare of Abyssinia.
He landed at Massowa, and began the journey to the interior in company with a trading caravan. While passing through the Shoho desert, his wife, who in spite of her state of health had accompanied him, prematurely gave birth to a daughter, having no medical aid, or even the assistance of one of her own sex. The child lived but an hour, yet long enough to be baptized, receiving from its parents the name of Gneba (tears). In the evening they buried the little one at the foot of a tree, the father conducting a funeral service in Amharic. It was only by great e1Iort that Krapf succeeded in obtaining three days rest for the young mother, at the end of which she was obliged to set out again with the caravan.
On reaching the boundary of Tigre, Isenberg and Miihleisen met them with the distressing intelligence that the Prince of Tigre would not allow them to enter his territory. Thus every attempt to establish themselves in Abyssinia was frustrated. The door was closed at Adoa in the north, and at Ankober and Shoa in the south, and Gondar, in the centre of the country, they could not reach. Even then Krapf did not lose heart j his faith rose above present discouragement, as is evident from what he says when writing home: " Abyssinia will not soon again enjoy the time of grace she has so shamefully slighted. Meanwhile we will not cease to pray fof that unfortunate land, especially commending to the Lord the many copies of His precious Word, that He would bless them and make them witnesses of His truth. It is a consolation to us and to dear friends of the mission to know that over eight thousand copies of the Scriptures have found their way into Abyssinia. These will not all be lost or remain without a blessing.
Faith speaks thus: Though every mission should disappear in a single day and leave not a trace behind, I would still cleave to mission work with my prayers, my labors, my gifts, with my body and soul j for there is the command of the Lord .Tesus Christ, and where that is there is also His promise and His final victory."
Krapf determined to atte~pt to gain a footing on the East Coast of Africa, in order from there to reach the Gallas, whose language he already understood. With this object in view, he sailed, with his wife, in an Arab vessel from Aden in November, 1843. Strong headwinds and a heavy sea compelled them to return to Aden. In spite of their exertions, the water gained upon them in their leaky boat, and on reaching the entrance to the harbor of Aden the land wind drove back the vessel toward the open ocean. There was indeed a ship's boat, but it could not carry twenty-five persons in a rough sea. Just then a bumboat coming within hearing, Krapf asked its captain to take them on board. This he at first declined to do, and only by promises and threats Krapf at last succeeded in inducing him to take them off the sinking vessel, which in half an hour after they left it sank. Eight days later Krapf sailed again. and after four or five weeks' journey arrived at Takaungu, north of the island of Mombas. He then went on to Zanzibar, and after a favorable reception from the Sultan sailed northward again to fix upon a favorable position for a mission station. As the result of his inquiries and observation he decided upon Mombas.
Scarcely, however, had he begun work at Mombas when he was called to pass through another sorrow, in the loss of his wife. She was attacked with fever, which was the more serious a<; she was daily expecting to become a mother. A daughter was born, and a renewed attack of fever brought her very low. In prospect of death, she felt for a time disquieted regard- ing her spiritual state; but her husband's words about the grace of God and the completeness of Christ's work had such a consoling effect upon her that she said: "I have obtained grace and mercy from the Lord; He has looked upon me ; I feel His presence as I have never felt it before." She then prayed for relatives, for the mission, and for East Africa, and for the Sultan, that God would incline his heart to promote the eternal welfare of his subjects. The next day she appeared much better, but the day follow- ing much worse, while her husband himself was so weakened by fever as to be obliged to leave the care of her almost entirely to servants. The next day she breathed her last, and on the following morning-Sundaythey buried her, according to her wish, on the mainland in the territory of the Wanika. During the night the little daughter also passed away, and was laid by the mother's side. Krapf, even amid all these trials, writes, in a letter to the secretary of the missionary society : "Tell the committee that in East Africa there is the lonely grave of one member of the mission connected with your society. This is an indication that you have begun the conflict in this part of the world; and since the conquests of the Church are won over the graves of many of its members, you may be all the more assured that the time has come when you are called to work for the conversion of Africa. Think not of the victims who in this glorious warfare may suffer or fall ; only press forward until East and West Africa are united in Christ."
Recovering strength, he continued his work, occasionally making short journeys from Mombas to the mainland among the Wanika, anxious to establish a mission station among this people, especially to open the way into the interior of Africa-al ways a prominent idea with him.
In 1846 he had thc joy of welcoming as a fellow-laborer Rebmann, who was jn one respect the very opposite of Krapf. The latter, restless and energetic, entertained far-reaching plans, and even saw in imagination a chain of mission stations stretching from Mombas to the Niger, and thus connecting East and West Africa; Rebmann, on the contrary, had determined to settle in one place and work there. In spite of this dissimilarity, they were at once drawn to each other, and Krapf, after two years of loneliness, could well appreciate the presence and help of a fellow-laborer. They decided on Rabbai Mpia, a Wanika village not far from the seacoast, as the mission site. In October of the same year they finished a house so far as to aIIow of their living in it, and Krapf remarks, " Every true friend of Christ's kingdom must rejoice over this mission, for it is the first step in the way to the heart of Africa. We have secured a position whence the unexplored regions of the interior can be reached and the ancient bulwarks of Satan assailed by the messengers of Christ."
The people, though keenly alive to the material advantage of having Europeans among them, were perfectly indifferent to the truths they taught. They showed themselves inveterate beggars; the mission house looked like a shop with a crowd of customers, who, however, had no intention to pay. The missionaries naturally felt a difficulty in dealing with the requests of the people. To give them everything they asked for would increase their avarice, and seem like bribing them to become Christians, while to refuse every request would lead the heathen to conclude that, though the white teachers spoke much of love and self-denial, they did not practise these virtues. Krapf was inclined to be liberal in his gifts, arguing that though the missionary cannot heal the sick and raise the dead, he can at least perform the miracles of love, humility, patience, and self-sacrifice, leading the heathen to say among themselves, ""How is it that the missionary submits to so much on our account, and does us so much kindness ~"
Like many other missionaries, in the early period of his work he thought it incumbent upon him to spend much time in attacking the beliefs and practices of the people, in .:onsequence of which the simple presentation of Christian truth fell somewhat into the background. Upon this point he says: "I have a conviction that for some time past I have argued too much against the heathen customs and practices of the Wanika, for their abominations excited my indignation; but I ought to preach to them more of the love of Jesus to the lost erring slaves of Satan. I must pity them more, and speak to them more pitifully and sympathizingly." Still some encouraging signs did appear, for one convert was made, who gave evidence that Christian truth was a power in his life; this man, too, was the means of bringing to the missionaries another, who eventually became a true Christian worker among his countrymen.
Krapf was not tho man to rest long contented with work at one station. His fixed idea was a chain of stations stretching across Africa, and he attempted several times to penetrate farther into the interior, visiting Usambara, to the southwest, in 1848, and the land of the Wakamba in the following year. In both places he received a friendly welcome from chiefs and people, and" everything seemed favorable for the extension of the mission.
Twelve years of unremitting labor in Africa had now passed away, and Krapf thought the time was come to visit Europe for rest and change, and to arouse a greater interest in African missions. During his stay in Europe he secured the promise of three missionaries and three artisans to strengthen the African mission. With the former he hoped to place two stations farther in the interior, and by the aid of the latter to carry out a plan long in contemplation-the establishment of a Christian colony. On his departure from Europe the outlook for the East African Mission was at its brightest. With him were two missionaries, Pfefferle and Dihlmann, and three mechanics. On reaching Aden, Dihlmann, who had scruples about connecting himself with the English Church, remained at Aden. Further, on arriving at Rabbai, Rebmann and Erhardt, who previously had fully agreed to his plans, were found to be opposed to farther extension, without first laying a firm base of operations on the coast. In theory they were perhaps right, but Krapf thought that a disinclination to encounter hard- ships had not a little to do with their opposition to his forward movement.
There grew up also an unbrotherly estrangement between Rebmann and Erhardt, on the one side, and the three mechanics, on the other, resulting in much trouble to Krapf, who had a difficult task in dealing with both parties. Again, the three artisans and Pfefferle were stricken with fever, of which the latter died after a few weeks' illness; thus trouble after trouble seemed to fall upon Krapf. Yet he wrote to Dr. Barth in June, 1851, the following noble, even prophetic words: "And now let me look backward and forward. In the past what do I see ~ Scarcely IU6re than the ren:.nant of a defeated army. You know I had the task of strengthen- ing the East African Mission with three missionaries and three handicrafts- men ; but where are the missionaries ~ One remained in London, as he did not consider himself appointed to East Africa; the second remained at Aden, in doubt about the English Church; the third, Pfefferle, died on May lOth of nervous fever, into which the country fever had developed.
As to the three mechanics, they are ill of fever, lying between life and death, and instead of being a help to me and to Brothers Rebmann and Erhardt, look to us for help and attention; and yet I stand by my asser- tion that Africa must be conquered by missionaries; ther9 must be a chain of mission stations between the east and west, though thousands of the combatants fall upon the left hand and ten thousand on the right.
From the sanctuary of God a voice says to me, , Fear not; life comel!
through death, resurrection through decay, the establishment of Christ's kingdom through the discomfiture of human undertakings Instead of allowing yourself to be discouraged at the defeat of your force, go to work yourself. Do not rely on human help, but on the living God, to whom it is all the same to save by little or much. Do what you can in the strength of God, and leave the result in His hands. Believe, love, fight, be not weary for His name's sake, and you will see the glory of God.'
" Now when I heard this voice I could accompany my departed brother to the grave in the conviction that in spite of this the Lord's work in Africa must and will advance. It does not matter if I fail entirely; the Lord is King, and will carry out His purpose in His own time."
Soon after his coadjutor's death Krapf made a journey to Ukambani, about one hundred miles from Rabbai, to establish a station; but the journey ended disastrously. While travelling in company with a friendly chief, a superior force attacked the chief's party, the chief himself was slain, his followers scattered, and the missionary abandoned by friend and foe. There was nothing left but to retrace his steps, and after much suffer- ing from hunger and thirst, he at last reached one of the villages of the vVakamba completely exhausted. Suspicious that the villagers had designs upon his life, he stole away at night to travel to Yata, but the difficulties of the way-in which he advanced only six miles in three nights-determined him to return to the Wakamba village and surrender at discretion. •, Kill me if you will," he said, "but you must take the consequences." On the other hand, if they allowed bim to leave in peace, he promised them a portion of the property he had left behind at Yata. To this they agreed, and after reaching Yata and fulfilling his promise, he returned to the coast with some Wanika, arriving at Rabbai after nine days' travelling, to the joy of his fellow. laborers, who had heard reports of his death, The following year he. paid another visit to U sambara ; but war having broken out, he was compelled to return without accomplishing anything toward the settlement of a mission.
And now his health making another visit to Europe necessary, he left in 1853 for his native land, in the following year setting out again for East Africa, taking Abyssinia on his way, to endeavor, by an interview with the king, to revive the mission in that country. On leaving Abyssinia, instead of returning to Egypt via the Red Sea, he chose the route by the Nile Valley; but the journey so told upon his weak health that, on arrival in Egypt, he had to embark for Europe-a return to East Africa was not to be thought of, Passing over his life in Europe, we now come to his last visit to his old field of labor. Wishing to open up a mission in East Africa, the Methodist Free Churches requested Krapf to accompany their missionaries-W oolner and Wakefield-to Africa, and to assist them in commencing a mission. He consented, and after seeing Wakefield settled at Ribe, the new station (illness had already driven Woolner back to Europe). he returned home, his health not allowing a prolonged stay. Of the new station he remarked: "The station Ribe will in due time celebrate the triumph of the mission in the conversion of the Wanika, though I may be in the grave. The Lord does not allow His Word to return to Him void, although often our own desponding hearts and the unbelieving opponents of missions will say, You are laboring in vain."
With these hopeful words his life as an African missionary came to an end; he only entered the Dark Continent once more, and that was as interpreter to the British expedition to Abyssinia in 1867, though even then ill-health compelled him to leave the army before the expedition had reached its destination.
From tbis time onward he passed a quietly active life in taking his Oriental manuscripts through the press, and in unostentatious efforts for the spiritual good of others. Africa was still dear to him ; he had the joy of hearing from time to time of the progress of missions in that continent, and especially that the work he began in East Africa had not proved unfruitful.
The closing scene came on November 26th, 1881. In the afternoon of that day Krapf said to a friend: "I am so penetrated by the feeling of the nearness of 'the Lord's coming that I cannot describe it. He is indeed near; oh ! we ought to redeem the time, and hold ourselves in
PRAYER AND MISSIONARY WORK
readiness, that we may be able to say with a good conscience, • Yea, come, Lord Jesus.' It will be glorious when our Saviour appears as a conqueror and His enemies have become His footstool. Then shall we both be permitted to see that our work for the Lord has not been in vain." He spent the evening until 9 o'clock in correcting proofs, and then, after family prayer, visited his sick wife, leaving her with the words, "Good-night, dear mamma; the dear Saviour be thy pillow, thy canopy, and thy nightwatch." Then with a loving "good-night" to his daughter, he retired to his room and, as was his custom, locked the door. Not appearing at his usual hour in the morning, his daughter called him, but receiving no answer, the fears of the household were aroused, and on making their way into the room they found he had " gone home" while kneeling at the bedside.
PRAYER AND MISSIONARY WORK.
BY W. D. mIDLAND, TAl-CHOW, CHINA.
The China Inland Mission was begun and is carried on by prayer. Ea~h member, on being received, is told that he is to look to the Lord to' supply his need, and not to the mission. Mr. Hudson Taylor said to me, when accepted for China, " The mission might become bankrupt, but the Lord never could; difficulties might occur which would hinder funds being sent inland, but the Lord would be inland."
These remarks came with double force to me. I had been lIome months in London, and my stock of savings was exhausted. I was to pay a farewell visit to my mother, some two hundred miles distant, but I had not a penny to buy. a stamp for a letter saying I was coming, and of course I had no money for my railway fare. I had only to mention my need, and friends would have supplied it at once; but we were to look to the Lord in China, and if I could not look to Him now, at home with friends around me, what would I do perhaps alone in a heathen land! I went alone and pleaded with God as perhaps never before. Two days passed; I expected money by letter, but none came. It was Saturday, and I was at the usual prayer-meeting. After the meeting Mr. Taylor asked me to carry his bag to the station, as he was to spend Sunday in the West End. I gladly did so ; and just as the train was starting he said to me that, perhaps, I might need money for travelling expenses, and put a sovereign in my hand. This 80 took me by surprise that I nearly dropped it. How I inwardly praised the Lord for a direct answer to prayer just when I was not expecting it ! My letter was already written and shortly was in the post. The battle was fought, the victory won, and my faith strengthened for service in China.
The next day I was introduced to a gentleman, who on shaking hands lI.nd wishing me Godspeed left a half sovereign in it. Two days later another gave me two pounds, and so, time after time, the Lord supplied all my need until we left for China. Only the Lord knew my need, and it was years before I told anyone of it but my godly mother.
I remember, too, Mr. Taylor telling us that we must join him in prayer for the fundd needed for outfit and passages, if we were to leave in May, as proposed. We had daily united prayer for this object, and the results are told by Mr. Taylor himself in the" Occasional Paper," No.2. "On this day [March 12th] I again examined my mission cash book, and the comparison of the results of the two similar periods of one month and six days eachone before and one after special prayer for £1500 to £2000-was very striking: Receipts from December 30th to February 6th, £170 8s. 3d.
" "February 6th to March 12th, 1774 58. lld. Funds advised since received 200 0 0 Total receipts since February 6th, £1974 58. lld.
This was previous to the circulation of the' Occasional Paper,' and conse- quently could not be the result of it. It was the response of a faithful God to the united prayers of those whom He had called to serve Him in the Gospel of His dear Son. We can now compare with these two periods a third of the same extent. From March 12th to April 18th the receipts were £529, showing that when God had supplied the special need, the special supply had also ceased. Truly there is a LIVING GOD, and He is the hearer and answerer of prayer."
Such direct answers to prayer and supply of all need furnished great encouragement to young workers just beginning their life work to go forward, believing that He who had thus shown His faithfulness would supply all further need when in a heathen land. He had already shown us that we had only to ask and receive.
Twenty-six years have passed, and the Lord has continued to provide in many ways, showing that He is not limited to anyone line of action.
In one case our need was supplied by a heathen prefect. In China all foreigners are supposed to know something about medicine, especially missionaries j so I was sent for to visit the private secretary of the prefect of the city, who was very ill, aud whom the native doctors could not cure. This was rather a trying ordeal, as I was quite ignorant of medicine j but this they would not believe, so that I could hardly refuse to go. After prayer for guidance, I went, taking a native helper with me. We found the patient suffering from fever and ague, while his knee joints were both set fast. After leaving him, I sent a quinine mixture such as I had taken myself for ague and some camphorated oil to rub on his knee joints. Two days after I went again to see him, and found he could move one leg and that the fever was less. He soon got well, and came to thank me mr for kindness. Nearly two months after this, when our funds were so exhausted that we had only 3 cash in the house (less than a farthing), we had a little rice, and were making that go as far as we could. Just after a very frugal dinner there came a sharp rap at the door, two men came in with half a goat, a piece of beef, a large fish, and some sweetmeats. According to the usual custom, I was going to take a part and return the rest, but the men said that they were under strict orders not to take anything back; that the prefect was sorry he could not get a better present to send j but there was still a difficulty. It is the custom to give something to those who bring a present j but the Lord knew we had nothing to give, and had provided for that, too, for they themselves were told not to accept any- thing on any account. This is the first and last time I have had such a present, or 8Qnt without the bearer expecting to be well paid. It being cold weather, the food kept and lasted us till supplies came to hand.
Again our need was supplied for enlarging the house. The native house we were living in-the only one to be had at the time -was very small, and the matting ceiling so low that one could touch it with the hand. This with the thermometer from 96 0 to 1000 in the house in the summer was not conducive to health or calculated to fit one for work. Knowing that mission fnnds were low, we set apart a day for fasting and prayer, that the Lord would enable us to add one or two larger and more airy rooms before another summer. Other difficulties besides lack of money were to be overcome. The house was a rented one, and to add to it without some new agreement was to have our rent raised, nor could we remove the addition if leaving for a more suitable house. We also needed a small piece of ground joining the house, which belonged to anothAr man. We made a note of the date of our prayer, and waited for the Lord to work. Shortly after the landlord came to terms, the needed agreement was drawn up, and the piece of ground was bought. These difficulties being removed, we had not long to wait for funds, as a check came from a friend in England, outside the mission, who knew nothing about our need, which nearly covered the expense of the addition. After thanking God for it I looked at my note-book, and found that the check was drawn on the day we had spent in fasting and prayer-a fnlfilment of the promise, "Before. they call I will answer, and while they are yet speaking I will hear." A prisoner was released in answer to prayer. Our native Christians often go to God in their simple, childlike faith, and ask for things which at times to us seem strange. Some eighteen years ago an aged woman came to one of our chapels in a newly opened station, and asked if this was a Roman Catholic place of worship, but was told that our worship was very different from that. The Gospel was put plainly before her, and sounded very strange to her. She was a devout Buddhist, had visited all the noted shrines and temples year by year, in order to obtain merit. She had already gone to the Roman Catholics, and thought that their religion was a little better than. her own j but now shew as told that her merit was useless j that she niU8t come to Jesus as a poor, helpless, lost sinner j that she could have eternal life as a free gift by putting her trust in the Lord J e~ms Christ. She left, promising to come again erelong.
She came again, but this time bowed down with sorrow. Her husband was constable of the village, and consequently responsible for the conduct of the people. A murder had been committed in the village, and news of it had reached the ears of the magistrate. The murderer had escaped, the magistrate was very angry, and said he would punish the constable instead of the murderer, as is often done in some parts of China j but he was an old man, so the magistrate took his son instead, and everybody said that unless the murderer could be found he would lose his head. So she had come with her heart almost breaking to know if Ah-kying, the native helper, could assist her. lIe told her that to go and plead with the magistrate for her son would be useless j but he could pray to God for her j that God would hear and answer prayer, and help her if they prayed to Him. The mother said she would gladly pray to God if she knew how. So they knelt down together. Ah-kying told the Lord all her trouble, asked God to deliver her son, and also that both mother and son might be saved from eternal death.
She returned to her home, told her husband and neighbors how this Christian had prayed to God, and how confident he was of his prayer being speedily answered. Day after day passed, and still no news of the poor prisoner j but one afternoon, just as hope was beginning to die away, she saw coming toward the house her son, alive, set f~ee from prison. He could not understand it himself, for he had not the least _ expectation of being released. That morning the magistrate had sent for him, had him beaten, then set him at liberty. Great was the joy at his return.
The mother told him about Ah-kying's prayer, and for weeks they walked about eight miles to the chapel to worship the God who had answered prayer, and saved the son from death.
Some weeks after, she, her son, and a neighbor came to see me, and told me the whole .tory. They begged me to send some one to their village with them, as many of their neighbors wished to hear more of this prayerhearing God j but I had no one to send, and when I went that way again no trace of them could be found. I heard afterward that they left the place, and did not wish their whereabouts to be known, lest, after all, they should get into trouble.
We have now an outstation within a mile of this village, and a family of native Christians in the village itself. Had we been able to follow up that case at once a whole Christian village might have been the result.
OUR INDEBTEDNESS TO CHRIST FOR TEMPORAL BLESSINUS
OUR INDEBTEDNESS TO CHRIST FOR TEMPORAL BLESS. INGS.-Ill.
BY REV. T. LAURIE, PROVIDENCE, R. I.
We are SO accustomed to the large measure of our freedom that we seldom thiuk how few nations are so favored. Among them all England approaches tbe nearest to onr liberty, but even there the battles for the rights of the people are not all fought yet. It was at a great cost that our fathers purchased our privileges, not only on the battle-fields of the Revolution, but during that first winter at Plymouth; yea, in the dungeons and even on the scaffolds of England under Queen Elizabeth and her successors.
There is hardly a greater contrast to our institutions than that afforded by the theocratic, absolute monarchy of Turkey. Time and again Ratti sherifs (honored edicts) have been issued promising the speedy enactment of laws to secure life and property with a regular mode of collecting taxes, and time and again have things gone on precisely as before. In Turkey the only limit to oppression is the impossibility of carrying extortion further; and however far it is carried, few of the sufferers think of an infringement of their rights; they are only conscious of greater misery, and passively submit to the inevitable.
It may be said that it is not wise to expose oppression so long as our missionaries are in the empire; but the story of Turkish oppression has already gone forth ou the wings of the wind. It is too late to cover it up. Every traveller adds to the list of facts already published; and standard bo~ks of reference embody the results. From a broad induction of facts the Encyclopr:edia Britannica concludes (xxiii., 654, 9th ed.) : "All its officials unite in their own persons the judicial and executive functions, and are, as a rule, thoroughly corrupt, venal in the dispensation of justice, oppressors of the subject, and emblezzlers of the public re'enues, and wholly absorbed in amassing wealth during their generaIly brief and precarious term of office." A note on the same page gives a specimen of the facts as follows: " Mr. G. P. Devey, Consul at Erzrum, reports that in one place in that province the sheep-tax for 1885 was collected three times over. At first the number was underestimated, only 9000 piastres being paid. So the collector came again, and instead of the difference between that and the correct amount, made the villagers pay the entire 14,000 piastres. Then he came a third time, and because he knew they had no receipt-for he had given them none-he collected the 14,000 piastres again." Row many governments are there whose officials would have dared to do that !
Such extracts might be multiplied, but we hasten to add that the Turkish Government has no truer fflends than our missionaries, or any who do more to promote its prosperity. Though they suffer in the suffering of tbeir people, they suffer in silence. Or if they speak, they exhort to submit to the higher powers, "for there is no power but of God" (Rom. 13 : 1), and while they weep with them that weep, they bid them "humble themselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt them in due time" (1 Pet. 5 : 6), " being in subjection with all fear not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward" (1 Pet. 2 : 18).
They also inculcate that patient industry and thrift, also that truthful. ness in daily life which Turkey needs so much to make her truly prosperous. Turkish officials know that however the prison and the bastinado are prominent factors in the collection of the taxes of other communities, they are never needed to collect those of evangelical Christians. The only fear is lest the enormity of their oppressions prove too strong for the teaching of the missionaries, for we have it on good authority that "extortion maketh a wise man foolish" (Eccles. 7: 7), or, as the old version reads~ " oppression maketha wise man mad."
In 1882 the debt of the Turkish Empire was more than $532,000,000. The annual expense of the seraglio is from one to two millions more. The original cost of the steamers and ironclad vessels in the navy with the annual outlay for their maintenance is immense. The army is a still heavier burden, and is distributed over the whole empire. Though the pay of a private is only 90 cents a month, yet some provinces cannot do much more than support their own soldiery. The government then must have money. Whence does it come? Commerce is mostly in the hands of foreigners. Manufactures hardly exist, and what there are cannot compete with imports from abroad, which are much cheaper. Agriculture is carried on in most primitive methods, and the peasant is so ground down by taxation that every year he has Jess money to pay with than he had the year before. Tax-gathering seems to be the one business of the government. If it sought to develop the natural resources of the country, a much larger revenue might be collected with less trouble both to the people and the tax-gatherer, but so far from doing this it pounces on everyone who seeks to better his estate, and demands more additional taxes sometimes than the improvement produces. So while, on the one hand, it represses all enterprise, on the other, it extorts to the very uttermost all that it can lay hands on.
The Pashaliks of the empire are generally sold to the mghesG bidder, and the buyer must hasten to get back his investment before anothAr offers a larger sum and takes his place. Then, if while hurrying ~~ reimburse himself, he does not keep up large remittances to the capital, he is liable at any moment to lose his place. Money thus flows constantly from the circumference to the centre, leaving provinces continually more impoverished to supply the stream. In such a state of things who expects a pasha to seek the good of his people? I knew one who tried to lighten their burdens, and sought nothing for himself; but as his remittances were small, he was set aside for another who would be a better sponge.
It is a necessary part of this process, that so long as the purses move toward Constantinople there shall be no questions asked as to the manner in which they were filled. Every petty official may add to the sum he is expected to collect-whatever in his modesty he thinks will remunerate him for his trouble-so that by the time the demand reaches the tax-payer it has grown to several times its original amount. I was sitting one day in the salaam luk of the commander of a garrison in Kurdistan, shortly after the massacre of the mountain Nestorians, when one of them brought in the tribute of his small hamlet to pay to the Turk. He began to I:ndo the numerous fastenings of a bag that had heen patched so often. it was impossible to tell its original material. Snatching it from him, the Tnrk ripped it open with his dagger, tore out a gold coin that had been wrapped in many coverings and sewed into one corner of the bag, hastily tossed the remaining coins over, and pronounced the 300 Tcherkies only 277, and thus addressed the astonished tribute· bearer: "Either bring the lacking 23 in two days, adding another 50 to pay me for my trouble, or flee, if your people have a place to flee to, for I will come and take what I want at the mouth of my cannon." What could the man do ~ I presume there was hardly a coin left in the village, and many of those he brought had been pierced, as if the women had given up the ornaments of their head-dresses to pay the taxes-ornaments which they never part with save under the direst necessity.
This oppression is not visited on Christians only; Mohammedans also suffer. On our way to Tiyary, in 1843, Dr. Grant and the writer passed several villages in succession empty and desolate. The climate was delightful, the soil fertile, and water abundant, but the houses Were roofless and the fields generally untilled. One of them was Bastawa, the home of the chief of Mezury, whose wife was there with a few attendants securing the rice crop. Totally different from her coarse companions, her appearance at once awakened our interest. The tassels of a fine silk shawl depended gracefully from the lower border of her head-dress. A green silk saltah (jacket), lined with fur, but. evidently well worn, covered a dress of coarse blue cotton, suggestive at once of former wealth and present poverty. Her face, still beautiful, showed a spirit roused rather than crushed by misfortune. Dr. Grant asked if she could furnish us lodgings for the night. At the question the smouldering fire kindled up. Rising to her full height, while one hand threw back her braided hair, she pointed with the other to the roofless houses and the ruined castle. " Look around; you have stripped us of everything and driven us forth to beg, and now do you ask our hospitality 1 Go to those with whom you have still left something, and God be judge between us." She said more, but this was the substance of her address in Kurdish, as translated by our servant. She did not rave. Gesture, look, and tone were faultless. She seemed to scorn to yield to the violence of passion. There was a dignity of sorrow about her that moved us even more than her words, and made thelll understood eveII Pllfore they were translated. We stood ashamed of our Turkish dress, that led her so to mistake US, and though as !loon as she learned who we were she offered to share with us the food she had brought from her pre~ent home, we had to move on, a<I there was absolutely nothing for our horses, thinkiag as we went much more of her than of our own discomforts.
A Kurdish chief, whom Dr. Grant had visited at his home in Akra on his first entrance into Tiyary, claimed descent from the Abasside caliphs of Baghdad, and was lord of many villages along the valleys and on the hill-tops, but he could not satiate the cravings of the Pasha of Mosul, who, without even a trial, imprisoned him three months, and set another over his estates. He then was ordered to remove his family to Mosul. Long after he had done this he told his old friend, the doctor, "I have been here three years, my means are nearly exhausted, and what I am to do I cannot tell." From sources like these we learned how the Turkish taxgatherer, claiming that a field will yield ten times what it does, demands most of the actual product for the pasha, and enforces the demand without mercy. How, then, are the peasants induced to sow their fields 1 The publican of last year is imprisoned till he disgorges what he had retained for himself, and his successor swears by the prophet to deal justly, only to do the same things over again, till the people either rebel or fiee. It is a righteous retribution that sometimes when a pasha is known to have grown rich, he, too, is thrown into prison till he gives up his ill-gotten gains; but that gives no relief to the taxpayer, .for. his successor follows on in the same steps j but take it all in all, it is a fearful round of sorrow and suffering. When Sherif Pasha sent to collect the taxes of SQIlle villages in the plain of Mesopotamia the poor people, who had hoped that a change of rulers would bring relief, implored some alleviation of their burdens, but in vain ; then placing their household goods on the backs of their cattle they set fire to their fields white for the harvest, saying that that was easier than to reap and thresh it for the Turk, and fled to Kurdistan. The only remark at Mosul was that in the days of Mohammed Pasha they could only have fled singly and at night.
But how do pashas dare to go to such extremes? At that time, whatever may be true to-day, they were a law unto themselves. A firman (royal edict) was sent to the Mohammed Pasha just referred to, reserving to the Sultan the right of inflicting capital punishment. He assembled his subordinates to hear it read, and then remarking that if anyone thought Mosul could be governed without cutting off heads, he knew nothing about the matter, made a sign to an attendant, who threw down before the assembly the heads of those then in the prison, and so allowed them to retire, glad to find their own heads still on their shoulders. Before he came several of his predecessors had Leen assassinated soon after their arrival, and the city was a camp of warring factions j but he not only defied his assailants, he also kil!ed them one after another by his secret agents and confiscated their estates, for his rapacity was fully equal to his energy. The Pasha of Diarbekir had long struggled with a rebellion in Mardin, but he quelled it at once. The Kurds who, instead of robbing others, as had been their custom, were themselves being stripped of their plunder rebelled, and their leaders were soon seated each on a sharp stake just outside the gate by which their friends entered the city, while their shrieks, curses, and groans were heard day and night till death ended the torture. The plundering Arabs were put down no less effectually, likewise the Yezidees, who had been robbers for ages, but the poor people soon found the pasha's tax-gatherers worse than all the robbers.
The city suffered no less than the country. To make his powder he wrought a sulphur mine, and though no one wanted it, the SUI plus sulphur had to be bought by the citizens at an extra price. The same was true of taxes that had been paid in kind; whether men needed the article or not, they had to buy and pay more than current rates.
Then he sold the monopoly of such things as everybody wanted. A Moslem patient told Dr. Grant that he paid more for the right to sell coffee than the cash he received. "How, then, can you live 7" "Last year I made money in building rafts. The pasha heard of it, and this is what follows. "
If the reader counts these as exaggerations, let him study the figures which follow. In 1835 the imports of European cloths amounted to 966 bales. In 1841 they had dwindled to 95 bales. Why 1 The explanation may appear in the fact that the pasha collected in 1841, 3,195,500 piastres -i.e., so much was published as collected. I might add that that sum is equal to $138,935, but it gives a more truthful idea of the case to add that the wages of a groom arc 30 piastres a month ($1.20), and of upper servants, 100 piastres ($4). A Nestorian from the mountains once told me with great gusto that besides his food he got one tenth of a Tcherkie a day (2 cents !), and yet where wages were at that rate the taxes were $138,935. In summer, when the drought leaves the plain of Assyria bare and verdureless, it is refreshing to look across to the dark green of the olive groves of Baashaika. Streams of water are led in turn to every tree, so that the foliage is fresh all summer long, but its owners may not pluck one olive from the loaded hranches, and the villagers must cultivate the whole for the pasha.
Looking day after day on such a state of things, is it strange that I longed for the day when Christians at home should appreciate the debt they owe to Christ for temporal as well as spiritual blessings 1 Ever since my return I have been hoping that a suffering people had reached the lowest point of mlsery, and that their next step would be upward out of the depths, but year after year I have looked and longed in vain. Instead of that, the wanton cruelties and terrible extortions of Moussa Bey have called forth thc remonstrances of united Europe, till the Sultan, who had sided with the robber a!.ld murderer, was compelled, from
FORERUNNERS OF CABEY. 8S9
a regard for his own interest, to banish the offender. Even the dark deeds of Moussa Bey do not seem to be the extreme of trouble.
In the Independent for January 29th, 1891, a missionary says: "I regret to be obliged to report that the condition of the people is daily becoming more pitiable, and our hearts constantly bleed at the tales of rapine and plunder that reach us from every side." As I read that I am grateful that the Holy Spirit furnishes the following language of dl'votion: "My spirit made diligent search. Will the Lord cast off forever 1 and will He be favorable no more 1 Is His mercy clean gone forever 1 Hath God forgotten to be gracious 1" (Psalm 77 : 6-9.) Another missionary adds: "The ministerial office in the increasing stress of poverty reqUIres no ordinary self~denial. Salaries are inadequate and irregularly paid. Not only does the number able to contribute diminish, but there is a corresponding increase of those dependent on the charities of the churches. After the wany taxes are all paid, I always wonder where the money is to come from for even this meagre support of churches and schools, in addition to the support of their own families. ,.
I have heard another more familiar with the capital say that there workingmen cannot buy more than one suit of clothes for the year, and that the material of that grows coarser year by year. In food also they have to restrict themselves to one or two articles, and even of these they have to buy what is less nutritious.
So one land at least has not outgrown the comfort provided in the seventy-second Psalm, which says of the Christ that" He shall judge" (i.e., in behalf of) " the poor of the people. He shall save the children of the needy, and shall break in pieces the oppressor, for He shall deliver the needy when he crieth, and the poor that hath no helper. He shall redeem their soul from oppression and violence, and precious shall their blood be in His sight."
FORERUNNERS OF CAREY.
BY REV. A. J. GORDON, D.D.
As there were reformers before the Reformation-men who sounded out all the essential notes of the coming revival-so there were Careys before Carey-men who foreshadowed all the main principles of the coming age of missions.
What if the Church had not listened to Carey 1 We have often asked ourselves the question. What if the sarcasm of Sidney Smith against the " consecrated cobbler" had suppressed him and put out the candle of his enthusiasm 1 What if Dr. Ryland's peremptory, " Sit down, young man I" had silenced him so that he had ceased to plead with the Church to " expect great things from God and attempt great things for God"? We need not now conjecture " what if r' but rather rejoice that, bavini won a hearing, first by a few, and then by an ever-widening circle of British Christians, it has come to pass that the English-speaking races are now honored to be the missionary army of the world.
William Carey was the pioneer of modern missions indeed; but let us – honor for a moment some of the forerunners of this eminent pioneer.
A writer of high authority on the subject heads a chapter of his book thus: " William Carey, the first Englishman who was a foreign mis- sionary." But our thoughts instantly run from Paulerspury, in Northamp- tonshire, where the great man was born, to another English hamlet, Nasing, in Essex, where, more than a hundred and fifty years before the birth of Carey, John Eliot first saw the light. In missions, as in other enterprises, there is rarely an effect without a cause or a stream without a fountain. .As Pietism has repeatedly proved itself to be the mother of missions, so, in this instance, did Puritanism give birth to a new evangelistic revival. "Godly parents, by whom my first years were seasoned with the fear of God, the Word, and prayer," is Eliot's simple allusion to his Puritan father and mother. .And the eminent Rev. Thomas Hooker says: " When I came to this blessed family I saw, as never before, the power of gOdli- ness in its lively vigor and efficiency." Out of such a home came the first Protestant Englishman who went forth to the heathen as a herald of the cross; and thus a century and a half before Carey became a missionary to the Indians of .Asia did John Eliot become a missionary to the Indians of .America.
From Old England Eliot came to New England in 1631 ; he was settled as pastor in Roxbury, and almost immediately began to be moved with concern for the benighted red men of the neighboring country. With prodigious toil he leamed their language and reduced it to a grammar, closing this difficult work with an inscription which has already passed into a proverb: "Prayer and pains, through faith in Jesus Christ, will do anything. "
As Eliot was the first Englishman to go as a foreign missionary, so he was probably the first to translate the entire Bible into a heathen language. Considering the exceeding difficulty of mastering the Indian tongue and the lack of helps for accomplishing the task, the work is to be regarded as perhaps the greatest achievement, as it was the beginning of efforts in biblical translation. Edward Everett has said, without exaggeration: " The history of the Christian Church does not contain an example of resolute, untiring, and successful labor superior. "
As for Hliot's missionary labors, they were most devoted and unwearying. -By toil an-' hardship, by nunger and peril, by exposure and privation, he proved himself indeed an " apostle." as he is invariably called. He writes concerning his evangelizing tours: "I have not been dry day nor night, although I pull off my boots, wring my stockings, on with them again, and so continue." .And so he did continue until savage chiefs were transformed into childlike disciples, who, gathering their warriurA about their camp-fires at night, rehearsed to them the wondrous story that the white teacher had brought to them; communities of " praying Indians" were established, and Indian preachers were raised up to become missionaries in turn to their neighbors.
It will be interesting for us to take a brief glance at the remarkable life as it has been sketched for us by Cotton Mather. Why did he pour out such prodigious pains and toil npon these miserable Indians? Because he believed them lost, and without Christ destined to eternal perdition. Instead of speculating on their possible chance of salvation while ignorant of the Saviour, he set himself resolutely to make known to them this Saviour. •, It powerfully moved his holy bowels," says Mather, "to hear the thunder-claps of imprecation on the heads of. our naked Indians. 'Pour out Thy fury upon the heathen that know Thee not,' and he thought, ' What shall I do to rescue these heathen from that all-devouring fury 1 ' "
In his daily toil he so sanctified the meanest work, and so " made drudgery divine," that he constantly said, " Were I to go to heaven tomorrow I sh01.tld do what I do to-day. " Working for God and walking with God were wonderfully conjoined in his life; prayer and pains were never unyoked from each other. If the burdens were heavy, and discouragements pressed, then so much the more time did he devote to prayer, "being of the mind," says Mather, " that when he had any great thing to accomplish, the best policy was to work by an Engine which the world saw nothing of." And what a tribute this writer pays to his heavenly mindcdness! Who would not crave such an encomium: " We cannot say that we ever saw him walking any whither, but he was therein walking with God"? His closing days and peaceful end remind one of the departure of venerable Bede or of Colomba of Iona-he was so transfigured by his own work, so glorified by that in whieh he had striven with utmost strength to glorify his Master. Did ever a consecrated career have a more lovely close ~ His body was now bent with the weight of years, his hairs were white as driven snow, yet his zeal was unabated. To his friend and patron, Robert Boyle, he writes: " My understanding leaves me, my strength fails me, but thank God, my charity holds out."
Like most of his Puritan co-religionists in ~arly New England, Eliot was an ardent milIcnnarian, and the hope of the Saviour's glorious appearing seemed wonderfully to cheer and stimulate him in Ilis work; and Dot, as it is often slanderously reported concerning this expectation, to cut the neIVe of missionary zeal.
Cotton Mather says on this point: " While he was thus making his retreat out of this world, his discourses ran from time to time on the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ; it was the theme unto which he still had recourse, and whatever other subject he was upon, we were sure to hear something of this. On this he talked; of this he prayed; for this he longed. . When any bad news arrived, his usual reflection thereon would be: Behold some of the clouds in which we must look for the coming of the Son of Man.' "
Thus he prayed and studied and wrought, declining, though' much urged to do so, to take his hands from the plough, or to look back with self-congratulation on the furrows already turned.
" His last breath," says Mather, " smelled strong of heaven, and was articled unto none but very gracious notes, one of the last whereof was , welcome Joy! ,,, Thus he passed away May 20th, 1690, aged 86.
Eliot preached to a decaying race, and translated the Scriptures into a dying language. His Indian Bible remains as an archreological curiositythere is none to read it now; and his communities of praying Indians have long since disappeared. Therefore we hear the constant lament among the historians of his mission that no permanent result of his work remains. But let us think a moment. Who were the co-laborers and successors of Eliot in this mission to the American Indians ~ There was the noble family of Mayhews-father, son, and grandsons. Governor Thomas Mayhew" devoted his own profits and his son's and grandsons' lives to the conversion of the red Indians." Experience Mayhew, the great-grandson of the governor, was hardly behind Eliot in the devotion and success of his work. Dr. Cotton Mather, in his" Magnalia, " says of him: "A hopeful and worthy young man, Mr. Experience Mayhew, must now have the justice done of him, of this character, that in the evangelical service among the Indians there is no man that exceeds this Mr. Mayhew, if there be any that equals him." Of the fruits of his labor, Mather mentions "more than thirty hundred Christian Indians" and " thirty Indian assemblies."
In this family there was a succession of missionaries to the Indians, extending over a century and a half, the last of the house dying in 1806, at the age of 81. A noble line, who at the appearing and kingdom of our Lord will present such a company of redeemed heathen as to prove that their labor was not in vain in the Lord.
In the same fellowship of New England missionaries to the Indians stands David Brainerd, whom we count one of the very greatest that any age has produced. Wonderful man 1 Who has read his journal without tears and humiliation of heart ~ Those prayers in the depth of the forest so intense that his garments were saturated with the sweat of his intercession ; that insatiable hunger for the souls of these poor savages; those scenes of Gospel triumph where the Indians fell before his preaching like grass before the mower's scythe! What wonder that Murray McCheyne, as he read this life, should have made this entry in his journal: "Most wonderful man: What conflicts, what depressions, desertions, struggles, advancements, victories within thy torn bosom! I cannot express what I think when I think of thee. To-night more set on missionary enterprise than ever." And last and greatest of all in seraphic piety and intellectual power stands..Tonathan Edwards, who joined to his attainments as theolo-
18'2.J FItOM CANNmALISM '1'0
gian, philosopher, lind preacher, the distinction which he counted not the least of laboring as a missionary among the Stockbridge Indians.
Now consider how great were these men as the forerunners and prophets of the coming missionary era! Brainerd was the true successor of Eliot j and Brainerd's" Memoirs," edited and sent forth by Edwards, powerfully influenced William Carey and Henry Martyn to give themselves to missionary service. Not only in the beginning, but continuously was Carey influenced by this wonderful life. In the spiritual covenant into which the Serampore missionaries entered, setting forth the things upon which they thought it right to "fix their serious and abiding attention," this clause occurs: " Let us often look at Brainerd in the woods of America, pouring out his very soul before God for the perishing heathen, without whose salvation nothing could make him happy." Thus did Carey seek to draw perpetual inspiration from this devoted life. Edwards was principally instrumental, as the world knows, in instituting concerted prayer for the outpouring of the Spirit in all lands. His writings and appeals on the subject fell into the hands of Carey, and so a second .fdctor in the making of Carey came from the Indian missionaries of New England.
Thus it is unquestionably true that one of the deepest and most abiding springs of nineteenth century missions is to be found in the Indian missions of America of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
FROM CANNIBALISM TO CHRIST.
Twelve years ago, the Rev. Oscar Michelson landed on the island of Tonga, in the New Hebrides, alone among cannibals. He was broken up with fever. At first he had many perilous adventures, and again and again fled into hiding to save his life. Once a savage, now one of his best teachers, levelled a rifle to kill him, but was stopped by a look. He persevered amid many threatenings and dangers. His house became known as " the Sunday House," and Christian hymns were often heard mingling with heathen !Songs. From heart to heart, home to home, village to village, the Gospel won its way, until now thirty Christian teachers are laboring in as many different villages. Mr. Michelson's field now includes, he writes, four whole islands. The people speak three languages. During the week of prayer he held meetings simultaneously in all the villages. At one meeting 300 rose for prayer. Ten years ago they proposed to eat him. Now he lives in perfect safety. The rifles are rarely used for the purpose for which they were made, but Mr. Michelson often sees them used in pairs over the fire to hold the saucepan. If a coin or some such object is lost on the road, the owner is almost sure to find it stuck up on a post, the next time he passes that way. Peace, love, honesty, prevail in the stead of savagery. Similar transformations were reported by Mr. Richards, of our Congo Mission, and by many another missionary. The Gospel is still the power of God unto salvation.
'844 EXTRACTS AND TRANSLATIONS FROM FOREIGN PERIODICALS
EXTRACTS AND TRANSLATIONS FROM FOREIGN PERIODICALS.
BY REY. C. C. STARBUCK, ANDOVER, MASS.
EAST INDIES.
– " The Christian Patriot (Madras), in a highly eulogistic article on Dr. Pentecost's work, says: 'The most enthusiastic interest continues to be evinced by the public of Madras, Christian and non-Christian, in Dr. Pentecost's tlervices. The very first question asked wheu one meets another is, "Have you heard Dr. Pentecost?" Never before has Madras been stirred to such a longing to hear the Gospel of Christ as during the past few weeks. The popularity of this servant of God who has come in our midst at considerable personal sacrifice is evinced by the crowds that flock to hear him evening after evening at the Esplanade. The audience is by no means confined to the religious set alone. It is thoroughly representative of all classes, and during the past few days in particular the meetings have been attended largely by those who do not care ordinarily to have anything to do with religion. "I must go and hear Dr" Pentecost," said a European gentleman who had never set foot in a church for the past five.or six years; "I hear he has something to say worth listening to." What is most encouraging to us is the appreciative audiences of educated Hindus that Dr. Pentecost has at his daily services. To those who know how difficult it is to attract Hindus to purely religious meetings, this is indeed a marvel. "'What is it that you were struck with in Dr. Pentecost's address f' we asked a most cultured Hindu gentleman the other day, and he replied: "It is hIS earnestness more than his eloquence. " There is something convincing in his utterances. As we said last week, he does not appeal to the emotions III the least. He is no doubt eloquent, but there is nothing studIed about his eloquence. 1t is spontaneous, and is the outcome of his earnestness and zeal in the Master's cause.' " – The Reaper.
-" The Hindus are a people wholly given to idolatry, which, with its endless round of rites and ceremonies, possesses a fascination over the human mind which those accustomed to Christian ideas cannot understand. • •. In the case of women, religion is interwoven with eyery minute particular of daily life. In a word, religion is her own peculiar sphere. After the household work is done she has plenty of time hanging heavy on her hands, which she spends in sleeping, gossiping, or in the performance of some one or other of her endless religious ceremonies. A Hindu lady has no visiting or shopping to do as understood by the Europeans; she has no fancy or plain sewing on hand; and anything like reading is out of the question. Almost every second or third day there is some fast, feast, or ceremony to observe; and on such days she must have some light dish or cake, for each feast has its own peculiar dish. She thus finds something to do to kill time, and has become subject to the' ordinances of touGhing, tasting, handling.' She also gives alms to the Brahmans and the poor in a manner somewhat ostentatious; she must have her adviser by her side to tell her which is the propitious hour of the day to buy, sell, etc. Being thus incrusted in her shell of fancied good works, she does not feel the need of a Saviour's cleansing blood. She is clean and made pure by her rites and deeds of charity; and a sense of sin being absent, the message of a Saviour has no meaning for her. . " Among the Hindus, whatever may be the case with most of the men, there is no denying the fact that most of the women are in dead earnest in their superstition ; and we must take advantage of their strong religious instincts and give them a right direction and turn them into a Dew channel, by giving them an education leavened with the Christian leaven. This will create in them a habit of reflection, help them to think rationally on religion, and to read the Bible with profit to their souls under wise and sympathetic guidance. " -The Helpmeet.
-" Stand with me for a moment in a Hindu village. We are in the centre, and have come to the Hindu temple. The priest comes out and says, 'Stay here, sir; don't go further. I will provide mats and seats for you.' We sit down, and there gather near us 150 or 200 Brahmans and educated natives. In the distance we see women in the verandas. Then a Bengali stands up. I shall never forget that scene. Behind is the Hindu temple. Above is a clear, tropical moon; and as the Bengali teacher tells in flowing, fervent Bengali the life of Christ, and as he comes to the part ",here they were driving nails into His hands, and Christ cried out, ' Father, forgive them; they know not what they do ! ' you can feel the thrill going through the audience. And as the preacher goes on to tell of the death and resurrection, you can see the tears running down the faces of the people. When this man closed, another Bengali started a soft, wild Bengali air, telling how man had wandered away from God, and God had sent His Son to bring him back. When he stopped there was dead silence. You see before you the picture of Bengali Christians convincing by their eloquence and zeal their fellow-countrymen. In another village some of our Bengalis ",ere alone, and by their preaching they converted a rich young man. He, won by them, came forth and confessed Christ in baptism, even though it meant to him giving up a fortune of £20,000 and never looking on his mother's face again. In another village, where one of our old students lived, he, by his learning, was able to convince an English-speaking schoolmaster of the divinity of Christ. By hiR love and zeal he won him so that he and hi;; wife and four children were baptized. You can be proud of your native workers. You may thank God for them, for I believe that, as a whole, they are a band of truly converted men. They are men who know Him in whom they beliel'e. They are men of wonderful eloquence; and I make bold to say that 90 per cent of the baptisms are won first by the natives themselves. They'are the feelers, the outposts of the army of European missionaries behind, by which they are guided and controlled, but they are the real workers among their own people."- Rev. W. II. BALL, in Church Missionary Intelligencer.
– " Come with me to Madras, where there is a great university. You will see four or five great colleges, where they are teaching thousands of students for the university examinations. And the best of all these institutions is a missionary college-the Christian College. Come with me to the Mofussil towns, to the provinces, to Masulipatam, Madura, and Tinnevelly, for example, and what do you see ¥ Large colleges and hi/rh schools, some of them conducted by natives, some of them by missionary agencies. You can go lower down still to the large villages, and you will see middle schools, and still lower and you will see sIIlall primary schools started. What is the meaning of all this intellectual activity? It is this: There is a perfect craze among the upper classes in India to have an English education. The first thing you have to seek, from a missionary point of view, is to use this craving for the spread of Christ's kingdom. You know India is I'ltratified by caste. At the bottom of the social scale you have the outcastes, then the Jaw castes, gradually rising to the high castes, and these are the leaders among the 270,000,000 of people among whom the Queen rules in India. They are not the feet, they are the head-the leaders in Indiathe men who are now crymg out aloud from the national Congress for representative government for themselves, and for many things for which they are not fit just yet, and thcrefore cannot have at present. But these men are, after all, the brain of India, and they come from the highest castes and are being educated in these schools and colleges of which I have told you. You remember that the Lord Jesus, when He was upon earth, made use of a great want that He round among the people. They wanted healIng, and thousands and thousands of them came to Him just for nothing else than to get their bodies healed. Do you think the Lord Jesus does not value the mind as much as He values the body ~ Do you think that these Brahmans-these leaders of the people, who become the judges, and the rulers, and the magistrates, and the barristers-do you think these men, who are saying, 'Give us English education; give it us with Jesus Christ if you like, but we must have it in any case! '-do you thmk Jesus Himself would not have pitied them 1 I believe He would have come to us educational missionaries and said, 'Go on, my brethren, go on lU this great work and win the brain of India for God. ' Yes, India is ripe for this work of Christian university education. "-Rev. C. W. A. CLARKE, in Church Missionary lntelligencer.
– " What wonder that we hear out of the mouth of missionaries in India the severest judgments respecting caste! 'It is our greatest enemy.' , This it is, which hinders the Christianization of India.' 'The might of caste is as unintelligible as unbounded, and its fruits are almost pure evil,' writes J. Murray Mitchell. In fact, India will never become Christian without an adequate solution of the caste question. 'I.'he religious declamations of the Hindus, which often, indeed, are not seriously intended, have not a tithe of the resisting power against Christianity w.b.ich inheres in the wordless tenacity of the sense of caste.
" What now if Christianity in India itself became a caste ~ Nothing would be more fatal to our missionary hopes. And yet there is among the Christians of India a tendency, perhaps not sufiiciently noted, to constitute themselves into a caste. Nothing would be more grateful to the heathen; for with this the claim of Christianity on the conversion of all would be broken. Caste is tolerant, because intrinsically exclusive. We should then share the fate of the Syrian Christians (Thomas Christians) in Travancore, who have attained to the rank of a high caste, not eating with the heathen, but, by the very fact of being a caste, having lost all efficacy toward the rectmstitution of the spiritual life of India. "-GEORGE SToseH, in Allgemeine Missions-Zeitschrift.
– " Under the guidance of a well-known social reformer of Madras, a society has been formed to enjoy and maintain a brotherhood of all persons professing the Hindu religion; to promote the study and knowledge of Vedic and Shastraic literature and religion; to inculcate and practise toleration toward all other religions; to worship God; to be loyal to the sovereign, and to love Bharata Varsha (India).
, " This movement is probably the next stage in India's religious history on the part of the orthodox Hindus, and may be regarded as the last despairing effort to save an ancient and honored institution. Its members are not necessarily opposed to Christianity. Some, no doubt, resent the intrusion of an alien religion, and patriotically defend the ancestral faith; 1>ut others are quite friendly toward Christianity, and admit that it has done much for the country. In many parts of South India there exists a strong feeling, however, that something ought to be done to restore the past. Letters are written to the papers, schemes are elaborated for preaching Hinduism. occasionally a lecture is delivered, but no one loves the past so well as to gIve himself heart and soul to its revival. Spasmodic attempts there doubtless will be here and there, but they are not likely to be either widespread or lasting. We believe there is not sufficient enthusiasm among the Hindus to maintain for any length of time such an organized revival and reeonstrnction of Hinduism. It may be clung to as an historic possession for some time to come, but the national faith cannot satisfy the deflpest spiritual longings of the human heart, and this movement will ultimately lead ou to the reception of Christianity as the fulfiller of all ancient faiths and the satisfier of all human aspuations. "-Rev. HENRY RICE, in Mission Record of the Church of Scotland.
– " Some thoughtful observers believe that the battle of the future will not be so much with Hinduism or with Islam aR with Western scepticism modified by Oriental metaphysics. That such a struggle will take place in the near future is not improbable, but the Hindu nature is far too deeply religious for atheism to take root in the land. The Hindus banished Buddhism because of its atheistic character, and they will never endure a negation of God and faith. When we bear in mind the deep religiousness of the Hindu nation j their instinctive passion for tranRcendental ideas j their spiritual searches after the Divine Essence; and, what is of greater significance, that all modern revivals of Hinduism have tended toward biblical monotheism, we may believe that the present opposition to Christianity proceeds rather from the pride of national inheritance than from any hostility to spiritual truth as such j and that India's best minds will yet surmount their superstitions and prejudices, and turn adoringly to the Light of Life."-Ibid.
– " There is the class of earnest, thoughtful men whom every missionary meets, who are already confessedly Christians at heart. They are far more familiar with the facts of ' Christianity' than they are with their own religion. They admire Christ's characttr and delight in His teaching. Within the visible pille both of Brahmoism and Hinduism there are those who recognize the claims of Christ and His right to their allegiance. There is many Ii Cornelian Hindu who would embrace Christianity at once if an open profession by baptism were not demanded with it_ But so long as the open acceptance of Christ's religion mealls the sharp severance of family ties, social disgrace, and isolation, so long must we 'De thankful for this growing number of secret disciples. The heroic in daring is absent from the Hindu. He dares not' be a Daniel.' Bring him to a crisis and his courage fails. He sees, but stands still. He knows, but will not do. He needs arousal. He stands shivering on the brink, waiting for the leadership of a more venturesome spirit. But may we not claim these timid, silent ones for Christ, and wait patiently ana hopefully for the day when the enormous difficulties created by caste and the power of unenlightened female influence shall have passed away ~ " What is wanted is that a man shall arise among the Hindus themselves, fired with the moral courage and splendid fervor of a Martin Luther, who shall possess the instinct to comprehend the blind outreaching!! of the native mind and the genius to give expression to its common longings. The success of such a leader will be greater than that of any Vishnavite rdormer, because he will appHal to a people waiting for a change, !md because the tolerance of British rule will secure him unrestrained freedom of preaching. The appearance of such a personality is but a question of time j and when he appears, who will deny that his success will be greater than that of Chaitanya, and might equal that of Gautama Buddha himself. " – I b i d .
-Dr. Grundemann decidedly objects to the closed churches of the European style iu India. He found them bad enough in the cooler time, and he does not know how they can be endured at all in the hotter months.
– " With the exception of the United States of America, there is no spot of earth beyond the boundaries of the British Empire where individual liberty and opportunity for personal advancement equals that enjoyed by the people of India. There may be, it is true, greater poverty and ignorance here, and the environment may be unfavorable, but these things are, in the main, beyond the control of governments, and do not vitiate the statement that the native of India has large opportunity for making the roost and the best of the life that is given him."-Indian Witness.
:..-" Dr. Grundemann concludes, in the April number of the Allgemeine Missions Zeit~chrift, his interesting and valuable observations on mission work as he saw it in India. He takes up the questions of architecture, sculpture, painting, and music in their relation to the spread of Christianity. In regard to church building, he regrets that in the large towns and at head stations European styles of architecture are employed. On the score of coolness, so desirable in a hot climate, he doubts the wisdom of putting up Gothic churches, while he thinks it would not be easy to make Hindus enter into the symbolic significance of spires pointing heavenward. As he says. it is exceedingly difficult to arrive at a knowledge of the real thought and feeling of natives with regard to such matters, they are so accustomed to give replies suited, as they hope, to the wishes of foreign questioners. But Dr. Grundemann quotes the words of a Tamil, who expressed that when any of his fellow-countrymen accepted Christianity, they ceased to be regarded as Tamils by the rest. And this may arise in no small degree from the foreign character of the church buildings and church arrangements with which they are henceforth connected. Dr. Grundemann thinks that the attempt should be made to follow, in regard to building and other matters, the Indian ideal of beauty, and so avoid that marked departure from national idiosyncrasies which tends to produce the conviction that native Christians become members of a foreign race. Indian notions of beauty may be distasteful to us, but our ideas are probably equally distasteful to them. On the far more difficult subject of music and singing, Dr. Grundemann throws out some notions worthy of consideration. There is, he says, a Christian Indian national music, and at Ahmednuggur he heard three men, one an aged pastor, sing and play, the subject being prayer-Christian as compared with heathen prayer. He says he could not share the pleasure evidently felt by the crowd in the music and singing j yet the whole scene made a deep impression on his mind. He expresses the wish that, in addition to Christian hymns, harmless and pretty songs could be written, especially for children. In an orphanage he found girls joining in a dance and singing a song on the sufferings of our Lord. Another remark he makes is, and with this we conclude: 'Above all, children should be taught to sing after the manner of their people, and not according to our melodies! "-The Chronicle (L. M. S.).
INTERNATIONAL DEPARTMENT
II.-INTERNATIONAL DEPARTMENT.
EDITED AND CONDUCTED BY BEV. J. T. GRACEY, D.D.
Afrioa. in a. World's Oongress. formulated could scarcely be better out· lined in part than in Mr. Cust's lan- BY J. T. G. guage : •• (1) To develop the self-gov- erning aptitudes of African nationali- In former years Europeans used to ties either as kingdoms or republics. steal Africans from Africa; now they (~) The European powers should be just are trying to steal Africa from the Afri- and unselfish to the populations, which cans. " This, from Dr. Robert N. Cust. have by violence and by brute force been brought like a flock of helpless " How could we combine to become sheep under their influence. (3) The unprovoked aggressors, to imitate, in resources of the region should be de· Africa, the partition of Poland by the veloped by methods not calculated to conquest of Morocco for France, of Tunis destroy the indigenous popUlation. for Italy, of Egypt for England, and (4) The introduction of legitimate comhow could England and France, who merce, exclusive of spirituous liquors have guaranteed the integrity of the and lethal arms, and the gentler virtues Turkish Empire, turn round and wrest of education and social culture." Egypt from the Sultan?" This, from Lord Palmerston, writing to Napoleon Of courso it will be impossible to lay III. the foundation of a true policy without considering Africa past and present, It is impossible to arrest this political the African at home and abroad, Africa's and commercial drift. The only ques- influence on letters and language, comtion in practical politics is, Can this be merce and politics, and the influence regulated-dominated-bya benevolent of the outer world on Africa. What intent? Who shall attempt it, Ameri- Africans have done and can do as manuca who received the stolen goods, the facturers and tradespeople, as agricul- Africans, or Europe, who is stealing turists, in medicine, mechanics or the Africa? fine arts, we judge, are to find promi· nent place and able presentation in the The splendid diplomacy of holding a proposed African Congress at Chicago, great council on this newly revealed and there are some Africans who can Africa is to be tried in connection with forcibly treat these topics. Rev. James the World's Fair in July, 1893. Would Johnson, a member of the Legislature that it might create sentiment that of Lagos, and Bishop B. T. Tanner, of would thunder as a moral army and America, are well furnished to discuss navy, force crowned contestants to ac- the sociology of Africa and the Africans. cept it as a mighty umpire, or create a concordat, not of text, but of a one- African philology is of much wider inhearted master passion, which should terest than the limits of Africa. Dr. hold the nations in leash from greed of Robert N. Cust has already catalogued might and greed of gain, and oblige a upward of five hundred of these Afriregenerated Europe and America to ac- can languages, and if he should present cept the task and seize the opportunity, a paper on the subject in general, it to concentrate all the accumulated ex- will be the rich result of years of special perience, intelligence, and benevolence study of African philology. Then our of the Christian centuries in one gigan- own American, Lewis Grout, the autic effort, to make the noblest and lofti- thor of a Zulu grammar, a man who has est experiment of the race, the creation devoted strength and time to the whole of another ,. New World." The twenti- subject of the relative place and power e~h century should see this experiment of these several families of Afric::n far toward a successful issue.
Perhaps the policy that ought to be speech, Bantu, Swahali, and all the rest, The AdVisory Council of this, which can ably discourse on the relation of is technically termed " an African Eththese severally to the development of nological Congress," numbers a strong Africa. Others eminently qualified to host of able men in America, Europe, discuss allied themes will surely take and Africa. The administrator of part. Bechuanaland, the commissioner for Basutoland, and a large list of other The history .and geography of Africa, important fu'tlCtionaries in South, West, ancient history as well as modern, the North, and East Africa, at Zanzibar, influence of Madagascar on Southeast Natal, the Gold Coast, Algeria, Tunis, Africa, Egypt and the Soudan, the prog. Zambesia, and every other important ress of the modern unveiling of the con· point, are members. of this Advisory tinent, are fruitful parts of the general Board; De Brazza, Wissman, Schweinsubject, and men specially adapted and furth, Du Chaillu, Carl Peters, Sir Samwilling to treat them can be found. It uel Baker, and other eminent explorers is given out as probable that such offi- of the continent, members of the Royal cials as the Premier of Cape Colony, Geographical Society, Capella and Ivens, James Stevenson, of the African Lakes Ministers of Foreign Affairs Rome, Sul- Company, Dr. Ward of the Independent, tans and military men, with many foreand even H. M. Stanley, are to be in- most ministers of America and of Euvited or have already' consented to dis. rope, have all pledged their patronage to cuss important matters of African civili- this council and become members of it. zation, colonization, and commerce; It ought to arrest attention even amid and' that Hon. John A. Kasson, ex- the whirl of the Columbian Exposition. United States Minister to Germany at The anticipation is that t.he papers will the Berlin Conference, may write of the be published hereafter, in full text, function and power of the Congo Free even should the twenty-five minutes or State in the redemption of Africa. so allotted to their reading be too re- Other great sub.departments of the po- stricted for the entire essay. litical and social sphere will challenge the ablest thought of eminent special- Africa is a vast continent. Lay its ists. western edge on our Pacific Coast and it would cover land and sea to the coast The department of religion in Africa of Ireland. It has perhaps four times is quite extensive enough to have a the population of the United States; week to itself, for the African religions it is the coming continent! Great opare of great varieties and marked by portunities are offered the Christian strong characteristics. The ancient Church for its evangelization. Mis- Egyptian religion with its .. Book of sions, and, as it now seems, missions the Dead ;" the ancient Christianity of only can ameliorate the condition of Egypt, Abyssinia, and Nubia; the Mo- the barbarous races of three fourths of hammedanism of the north half of the this vast continent. The African probcontinent; the work of the modern lem is a perplexing one, but its resolumissions of the Roman Catholic and tion is hopeful and assured. Protestant churches in the Dark Continent, are of foremost ·interest. We are Lay Missionaries for the Foreign Field. given to understand that archbishops, biIlhops, and secretaries are among BY REV. C. A. NICHOLS, BASSEIN, BURMA. those likely to present papers on the great subject of the evangelization of Foreign missions are unmistakably Africa; while ex·governors and sena- passing out of the emotional into the tors, jurists and statesmen will present practical stage. Many of the most devarious phases of Afro-American cul- voted among our pastors and laymen ture, opportunity, responsibility, and are diligently studying the problem progress. how most rapidly and effectively the in the very highest state of efficiency Church may fulfil her mission to the while on the field. After arriving, he naVons. All are agreed that a greatly will have to acquire a language as di- increased force of laborers are needed verse from his vernacular as well can for this purpose, and by Bome it is be, and that, too, under very untoward argued that an adequate force can never circumstances. If he has not already be available until recruits are drawn gained fixed habits of study and con- from all worthy sources, lay as well as centration, in nine cases out of ten he clerical, from our Christian artisans, will fail in gaining such a thorough business men, and farmers, as well as mastery of the language as he must from those liberally educated and or- have in order to gain the respect of the dained to the special work of the min- people to whom he is sent. Moreover istry. if he does not have such habits of con, A little over thirteen years of experi- centration and sustained mental effort, ence and observation in the foreign he will be apt to yield to the temptation field, however, have convinced me that, to magnify trifles and chafe in the har- while Carey and quite a number of ness, to. a far greater extent than he others successful in foreign fields have would had he been subject to the severe been men who did not go out thus mental discipline that should be the trained for the special work of the min- result of any training that is contem- istry, still the same success may be pred- plated in what we commonly under- icated of many evangelists and pastors stand by a "liberal course of study."
in the history of the Church at home; Under the new and trying surrDund- and, notwithstanding that fact, the ings amid which his work must be done, great bulk of the most successful work he will in every respect find his re- in the ministry of the Word has been sources tried t'o the utmost, and thus done by men specially chosen of the will on every hand find a ,need for the Spirit, set apart by the Church for that very best discipline available, and with- special work. and educated for that out which so many have failed who work as liberally as possible. By some might have otherwise achieved success.
it is thought that the foreign work It, will be said that failures have not would not call for so thorough an edu- been wholly among the undisciplined; cation as the home, from the fact that but the same may be said with equal the people to whom the worker will be truth of pastors at home, notwithstand- sent are presumably less intelligent than ing which fact, very few people will be those to whom he would minister if at found to-day who would urge our going home; but there are other factors in back to an uneducated ministry for the the problem that are not always taken home churches.
into account_ There is, then, the need of still more One of the exceptional conditions to care in gaining the highest possible be taken into account is that most of efficiency in those whom the Church our foreign missionary operations are sends abroad, because there is involved necessarily carried on among peoples so great an outlay in sending out and who Jive in climates inimical to Euro- returning those who fail; while their pean races, with the result that not only failure will be sure to work so much must the work be prosecuted there with more disastrous results abroad than much less bodily vigor, but that it will here, where the worker is far less con- necessarily be subject to stilI further spicuous, lost as he is among so great hindrance by absences from the field an army of other workers.
on the part of the worker. in order to Some of the friends of missions are regain health and vigor. Hence it is es- almost overjoyed over the fact that some sential that the missionary should come of our farmers, artisans, and business to the work so disciplined that he will be men have begun to go to the foreilln field, many of whom have gone at their gain money. This would be merely to own charges, hoping to be able to live gain subsistence for himself and family, by the exercise of their secular calling without speaking of the time and and preach the Gospel meanwhile. We strength necessary for evangelistic work could only wish that the whole heathen among the people, or to gain a mastery world might be leavened by such ; and, of their language; a task requiring, of on the face of it, the plan would seem itself, several years even for one who to be the most reasonable and easy of has the maximum of his time and the many experiments yet tried in the strength at his command. In the opin- world's evangelization. Still, there are ion of some who have advocated an ex- many things to be fully considered be- tension of this principle upon which to fore any family determines to sell out conduct our foreign missions, the relaand undertake the actual experiment. tion of such lay workers to the ordained 'God will not interpose to save us from men in the field would be that of "asthe exercise of reasonable forethought sistants" or .. helpers," and so under any more than He did in the days of their direction, while reference is frethe crusades, even though the apirit quently made to the example of some and intention of the effort may be solely of the English and continental socithe furtherance of His glory. Those eties ; but it may be said that this sysof us who have b~en many years on the tem is the outgrowth of the social and field have seen some very disappointed class distinctions which enter so largely people, nor have the home boards been into the European habit of thinking, less disappointed, in many cases where and results do not show their organithey have been called on to pay the zation to be superior to ours. On the round trip expenses of some who have other hand, I have often heard the memstarted out with undoubtedly a sincere bers of their missions express their recimpulse, but nevertheless from an im- ognition of the greater fruitfulness of pulse without forethought. Happily our American missions, employing, as such cases are in the minority. but still most of our societies do, chiefly orthey have been frequent enough to dained ministers of the Gospel. serve as a warning. It may be understood, at the outset, that in most cases One of the chief objections that I a European, with his hereditary habits have to this plan of lay .. assistants" and constitution, will find it a hopeless or " helpers" is, that the most valuable task to provide for the support of him- helpers will always be found in the naself and family in an uncivilized or tive converts, who need the benefit of partially civilized tropical country, in the relation in training for their own competition with the natives of the future work. If foreigners do this work country, who can endure exposure and for them, they will never take the relabor there far better than himself, sponsibility upon themselves, and we and who can live on what to him shall only perpetuate a dependent body would mean the ruin of health or loss of converts. of life, ~his is true of any form of manual labor; while, if he engage in Lay workers of a certain kind, howtrade, the habits of mutual distrust and ever, afe called for on the field in greatunreliability, which obtain among all ly increased numbers. Well-qualified heathen people, stand in the way of medical missionaries and teachers are his success, unless he shall descend to still imperatively demanded, and even habits of trickery that are far too com- these will do far better if educated for mon among European traders in such the ministry and ordained to its work lands; nor will the people ever give him as well. their confidence as a religious teacher "'<.1.1 leader, if they think he is there to As to lay workers going out at their own charges, I may say that the above opinions are not brnught forward as speculations as to what might be the case, but from personal observation of substance, which sacrifice will, accord- cases where the experiment has been ing to the Divine law, certainly not tried, under as favorable conditions as only gain the direct end for which she would fall to the lot, on the average, of labors, but will also bring her in return anyone attempting this method. Some a rich fruitage of blessings at hOlDe.
such have been dependent for months together upon the families of those sen~ out and supported by mission boards, Affairs in Japan. and who all'eady had more demands upon their resources than they could BY REV. H. LOOMIS, YOKOHAMA, JAPAN.
supply; some suffered from actual want Few, if any, more auspicious changes and disappointment, to the limit of have occurred in politics than the re- mental derangement; and numbers cent reorganization of the Cabinet and have afterward gladly gone to work un· the return of well,known and honored der appointment from l'egular mission leaders to power.
boards, doing work in the regions to When Count Inouye and Count Ito which they have gone. resigned their positions and retired to There is always a certain fascination private life, the control of affairs fell about the idea of thus going out, inde. into the hands of new and untried pendent of all controlling boards and men, and it seemed inevitable that agencies, which is very apt to captivate, serious and irreparable loss must b"
not only those contemplating the work the result, and all the bright hopes of for themselves, but others, so that they the past were to be disappointed.
can be assured they will get a hearty But greatly to our surprise and relief, amen and Godspeed from pastors and there has been accomplished a happy churches, already burdened by ever-in- change in affairs, and the outlook for creasing avenues for expenditure on ob. Japan to-day is brighter than ever.
jects nearer home, even though the bulk What is evidently needed at this time of that expenditure may be for more is the presence of the best and ablest luxurious services and imposing edi- men at the head of the government.
fices of worship. Constitutional government is an experi- Hence, while we gladly welcome all ment thus far ; and it is inevitable that those devoted men who have" sold all tor years to come there must be a strong they hRd" and laid it at their Master's and wise administrative power to check feet, and have given not only it bu' what is wrong and enforce the right.
themselves to the work of reclaiming a So we have now most happily in the lost world, believing that their sacrifice new ministry the ablest and most popu- will meet its reward, yet it is to be de- lar statesmen that the country can fur- voutly hoped that those contemplating nish. At the head is Count Ito once going out will "count the cost" before more, and associated with him is Count they begin to build, lest they reap for Inouye as Minister of Home Affairs.
themselves disappointment and cha- To these two men more than to any "grin. Such advice will not injure the others does Japan owe her present posi- work any more than similar solemn in- tion and progress; and with years of junctions on the part of Christ Himself experience in the administration, they to those who would follow Him in His are without question the two men to bf missionary ministrations while He was at the head of the Cabinet and the chief yet in the body. advisers of the Emperor.
On the other hand, the Church at The Minister of Foreign Affairs is home must not expect that she will be Mr. Mutsll, who was for several years relieved of her part, as a whole, in car- the Japanese Minister at Washington, rying on the work ; and that at a sacri- and who has thus the experience that fice of her hest taleIJ.t as well aa of her especially fits him for such a position. It is not too much to expect that under sive revivals are reported from many his administration there will be some quarters, and a most hopeful state of better adjustment of the present ques· things has taken the place of the dead- . tion of extra territoriality and the re- ness and indifference of the past. The lations of foreign residents to the gov- greatness of the difficulties and the in- ernment. The recent attempt to force adequacy of human means are being concessions from the foreign powers, felt everywhere, and so there is a turn- by limiting the privileges of the foreign ing to the true source of success in all residents here, and making the situa- mission work, and that is the help of tion more uncomfortable, has not been God. helpful to Japan, and is making the question of coming under Japanese con- Some think that there are enough trol still more serious and questionable. missionaries in Japan to accomplish all' that is needed to make this a Christian The question that will especially in- nation. Others think differently. But terest the Ohristian people in the United one thing is certain, that it is not by States is the probable attitude of the an increase of numbers alone that these present and new ministry toward- mis- hard hearts are to be subdued and won sionaries aIrd their work. I think that to Christ. God chose only three hun. it is the general opinion that we owe to dred to overthrow the Midianite host; the men now in power the liberty that and with His help we shall have suc- we now enjoy; and more than that, cess, whether the helpers be multiplied they have shown a sincere and intelli- or not. gent sympathy with what has been done, No doubt there is still room for many As proof of this I need only mention more good men, and in some places the liberal donation of 1000 yen (about they seem to be sadly needed, but we .$800) toward the Doshisha at Kyoto by need even more_ than all, such a bap- Oount Inouye. Count Ito signified his tism of the Spirit as will make the truth approval of the work and promised his effective in the convincing men of sin aid. No institution in the country hall and their need of a Saviour. That God been more decidedly Ohristian in its is showing His power and willingness character, to save should call forth the gratitude of all hearts. The erection at Yamaguchi, by Oount Inouye, of a suitable building for the The Rev. 1. H. Corrl'll, of the Methuse of Rev. Dr. Beck in teaching his ~dist Episcopal Mission, reports that he Bible class, and his liberal construction has recently been through a large part of the restrictions contained in the pass- of Kiushiu, and the work is in a very ports, are direct and tangible proofs prosperous condition. The people are that missions will not suffer from any very attentive to preaching and the conaction on the part of those now at the gregations are quite large. He has rehead of the government. cently visited the Loochoo Islands, and brings back a glowing account of the The discussion of theological ques- reception given him. He preached sevtions is becoming less prominent, and eral times. At the first service he had the pastors and other Christian workers about one hundred present, two hunare settling down to more steady and dred at the second, and four hundred effective work for the-salvation of souls. at the third. Everywhere he went he It has become e,:ident to many that was most kindly received, and 1'as. there is no new and better method for urged to commence work on the islands. the conversion of sinful men than the The Baptists have a native worker there old theories of redemption through now. Christ, and the necessity of the work of the Holy Spirit in sanctifying the The school for boys connected with heart. the Southern Methodist church at Kobe is soon to be cnlarged, It has shown a And the happy result is that extenconstant growth since its organization pressed with the direct interposition three years ago. In a recent letter of God in the present progress of mis- from the Rev. Mr. Wainwright, he says sions. From his vantage-ground he that" We have been havfng a very gra· discovers secret growth as well as prog.
cious work of the Holy Spirit in our ress that is more tangible. The mix- school. It has been a glorious season ture of evil with good (to be truthfully with us, and we believe there will be recognized) is no more than is going on much fruit unto the salvation of souls all over the world, and the wonder is as a consequence of this blessing." The that from the overwhelming mass of Southern Presbyterian Mission bas re- evil so much of good is forthcoming.
cently opened work in Takamatsu, on "A Divine purpose is being clearly the island of Shikoku, and are meeting evolved." These things are to him ab- with much success. solute fact.s of experience, and in his The conference of the missionaries of farewell address we found enlarged the American Missionary Union (Bap- consolation fitted to fire the heart with tist) has recently been in session at that confidence in God which is the Yokohama. The report says: "The result of a generation of proofs of His work of the year shows progress. About faithfulness. .
twice the number that were received It may not be sufficiently realized the previous year have been baptized that in this distant Eastern land there into the Church." Rev. J. H. Pettee is reason to look for exceptional devel- writes that the late annual meeting of opments of good. So far there have the representatives of the Congrega- been grinding toil, sapping and mining, tional churches at Osaka was the best seed·sowing. If a touch of life is all-round meeting ever held. Kbout granted from above, what is just now eighteen months ago a native pastor feared politically, of any spark setti~g was first stationed by the mission of this province in a blaze, may take place the Evangelical Association at Togane, in a happier sense.
near Tokyo. The work has steadily in- Multitudes of Chinese Christians are creased, so that the present church- praying for the conversion of the Em- membership is forty-five, and ten more peror. Whatever views may be held in are ready to be baptized. Quite are· the West as to the good or evil of rulers vival spirit has appeared in the schools being mixed up with the spi-ead of the of the Methodist church at Nagasaki. faith of Christ, here it seems to be gen- The two churches at Hachoji have re- erally felt among Chinese Christians cently united in holding special or re- that the will of God cannot be fully ac- vival meetings, which have been at- complished while the leaders of the tended with good results. New inter- country are unaffected by the truth.
est has been awakened, the attendance At present Christianity is not even re- at the churches has gradually been in- garded as a legal system of faith and creasing, and a number of applicants conduct, much less understood. It is for baptism are reported. time for the Lord to work to discounte- nance heathen and immoral proceed- ings, which are often tolerated all round Things Ohinese that are Promising. by the great of this world, if not even BY REV. J. SADLER, AMOY, CHINA. engaged in. Christ was weak as re- Dr. Cobb, whom you may soon see- gards the things of this world, but He back in the States, * is profoundly im- never lacked the p~wer of the Spirit.
It transpires that there may be more • Dr. Cobb, the Secretary of the Missionary of indirect success than is imagined_ Board of the Reformed Church in America, com- Tbe Chinese are now known to be keen pleted his tour around the world and resumed on our newspapers (in Chinese), and his dutie. at his desk early in September.- IlOt a little interested in seeing what ill J.T. G. thought of them. They cannot shut Church in Canada, for in that week themselves up any longer. One paper, three missionaries were ordained and called The Ten Thousand (Jouniries' News- designated for service. Our Trinidatl paper, is, we believe, read in high quar- Mission has now reached an important ters. We know of a Mandarin, not era in its history. Twenty-five years mean in degree, who considers it greatly have passed away since the pioneer to his interest to have honorable men- missionary, Dr. Morton, left Nova Sco- tion in this paper. What suggestions tia and commenced work among the grow out of such a fact as to good coolie population. The general work though silent influence. We need not of the mission has been very much en- expect that the turning of this people larged of late, adding very greatly to to God may come about in just our its cost. The Government of Trinidad methods of church life and discipline. passed a new school ordinance which If, as we know to be the case, con- had to be accepted by our staff of mis- sciences are aroused, a moral sense sionaries. The law, on the whole, is deepened and vivified, vigorous sym- favorable to the mission. A number of pathy. however hidden, be called out new buildings had to be erected, which for many kinds of reform, this all is cost the ChUl'ch $10,000. In conse- good. Individual conversions are ever quence of the government's action a taking place. Prayer is constantly debt of over $7000 now rests on the going up for such wot:k of the H01y Foreign Mission Fund, and steps are Spirit. There is nothing too hard for being taken to wipe it out. A Presby- God in regard to turning the tremen- terian college has also been opened on dous forces of heathenism to His ser- the island, with a staff of three profes- vice; and, in answer to prayer, ever sors and an assistant and forty -six stu- being offered, raising up such effective dents in attendance. Several of our native apostles as may, like Moses and Young People's Societies of Christian Paul, lead multitudes into the kingdom Endeavor have contributed nobly tow- of heaven. ard the support of these students, and I have made a suggestion to Dr. the institution will eventually prove a Cobb, as to whether he could have it feeder to the wide heathen field of arranged for important news from your India.
valuable REVIEW bearing on China, to be Forty-seven years ago mission work translated into the Chinese newspaper in heathen lands was first commenced above referred to, and vice versa. by one branch of the present United Presbyterian Church in Canada, The 'Presbyterian Church in Nova Scotia' in Oanada Notes. 1846, Qomprising scarcely thirty con- gregations, sent forth their first mis- BY REV. W. B. DlCKIE, MILFORD, NOVA sionary. Now there are not less than SCOTIA. eight different fields occupied-viz., The Presbyterian Church in Canada New Hebrides, Trinidad, Honan, India, has sent out this year eleven new mis- Formosa, Jerusalem, Indians North- sionaries. Four young ladies, two of west, and Chinese British Columbia.
whom are M.D. 's, are now under ap- Three presbyteries have also been pointment anel have gone to India. formed – viz., Trinidad, India, and Two others have left for Honan and Honan.
Formosa, and Rev. C. Webster, this Upward of $8000 was on hand to Church's first missionary to Palestine, commence operations among the Jews is now on the way to Jerusalem. The in Palestine, and the young man who last week in July was then a most e~ent has gone forth as the first missionary is ful week in the history of the foreign eminently qualified for the work. Tha mission enterprise in the Presbyterian matter of establishing this mission has been under consideration for some its watch-cry: The evangelization of the years. and has lain very close to the hearts of not a few Canadian Presbyte- world in this generation. rian people. The mission has been inaugurated under most favorable aus- Regarding the observance of the day, pices, and it is probable that in a short time another missionary will follow. we further suggest : A Gall for Prayer. 1. That the volunteers be called to- To the Membe:rs of the Student Volunteer gether at t,he earliest possible date, to Movementfor Foreign Missions: hear the reading of this call, and to de- The Student Volunteer Movement has reached a time of crisis. Its mem- termine definite plans. bers include thousands. It has the confidence of the churches and mis· 2. That early in the day a meeting sionary societies, as never before. The missionaries are looking t'o it anxiously for special prayer be held, limited to and expectantly. Never in the history of missions have the calls for laborers volunteers and all oLhers deeply interbeen clearer, louder, or more imperative than those which ring in our ears to- ested in this object. day ; for it is the unanimous testimony of missionaries at the front, that during 3. That a publie meeting be held later the closing years of this century the issue of the conflict will be determined in the day, when there will be given for generations among a vast majority of the unevangelized inhabitants of the brief, carefully prepared addresses perworld. As far as responsibility rests upon the United States and Canada, if taining to the purpose and significance these calls are responded to at all, humanly speaking, they must be answered of the Student Volunteer Movement, largely by the student volunteers. The movement is now over six years old, the crisis in missions, and the individand a great many of the volunteers have completed their courses of study. It is ual responsibility of Christian students. time, therefore, to look for and con· fidently expect larger numbers to hasten 4. That a thank.offering to God be to the fields. To make this possible one thing is pre-eminently necessary. made at the public meeting, which shall It is that which Jesus Christ explicitly commanded: "Pray ye, therefore, the go toward the extension and develop- Lord of the harvest, that He send forth laborers into His harvest. " ment of the Student Volunteer Move- In view of the crisis on the one hand ment. and this command on the other, we, your Executive Committee, most ear- A vast Hindu conference has recently nestly recommend that the volunteers in each institution set apart Sunday, been held at Benares, India, to take October 30th, as a DAY OF PRAYER for the Stndent Volunteer Movement, and steps toward the saving of Hinduism for that greater object wrapped up in from the encroachments of Christian- ity. Among other things the confer- ence recommended that October 30th be set apart as the special day of prayer for the preservation of the Hindu re- ligion. Should not this mighty faet 'attach peculiar significance to our ob- .servance of this day? Let us recall the experience of Elijah with the proph- 'ets of Baal (1 Kings 18 : 19-39); and before a witnessing world, let the day demonstrate in some new measure that, " The Lord, He is God. "
JOHN R. MOTT, Inter-Collegiate Y. M_ C. A., MISS CORABEL TARR, Inter-Collegiate Y. W_ C.A., D. WILLARD LYON, luter-Seminary Miss_ Alliance, Executive Committee.
Book Mention.
-Serampore Letters, being the unpub- lished correspondence of William Carey and others with .Tohn Williams, 1800- 1816, edited by Leighton and Mornay on" and strong, and the rhetoric is Williams, has been issued by G. P. strong. It is an inspiring pamphlet. Putnam's Sons. There is incidental The Heart of the Gospel (Baker, Taylor & information here, which shows New Co., New York). This is twelve ser- York to have had a large share in the mons, delivered at the Metropolitan initiation of the Baptist Missionary Tabernacle in London, by Dr. Pierson. Union. A Baptist society in New York Many thousands of people will be curiantedated Judson's departure, and ear· ous to know what Dr. Pierson preached lier still they had sent Elkanah Holmes under the circumstances. 'rhes.e are to the Indians. plain, helpful, vigorous Gospel sermons; in many respects not unlike Mr. Spur- -Do not Say (F. H. Revell Co., New geon's own sermons in this great Taber- York) is a book of about 100 pages, nacle. They will be widely read, as containing brief answers to the Church's they ought to be. They treat of themes excuses for neglecting the heathen, by which are the" heart of the Gospel," a missionary of the Church of England for they are clear.cut expositions of ex· in mid·China. Price, 10 cents. The perimental Christianity. same publishers send forth Indian Gems for the Master's Crown, a true narrative, -Bishop Tucker, in writing from intended for native Christians in India, Uganda, uses the following language: but helpful to an insight into the way " How shall I find langnage to describe Christianity spreads in India. It is little the wonderful work of God's grace which wonder that it has been translated into has been going on in this land? Truly, many European languages. The diffi- the half was not told me. Exaggeration culties of the men of the East who de- about the eagerness of the people here sire to become Christians are here made to be taught there has been none. No real to the foreign Christian. words can describe the !lmotion which filled my heart as, on Sunday, Decem- -Our Life Among the Iroquois Indians ber 28th, I stood up to speak to fully (Congregational Publishing Society, 1000 men and women who crowded the Boston), by Mrs. Caswell, is a record of church of Uganda. It was a wonderful fifty years of service among that portion sight! There, close beside me, was the of the well-known Six Nations on the Katikiro-the second man in the king- Cattaraugus Reservation near Buffalo, dom. There. on every hand, were N. Y. It is illustrated. The student chiefs of various degrees, all Christian of the red races and those interested men, and all in their demeanor devout in mission work among them will de- and earnest to a degree. There was a light in this book. second service in the afternoon, at which there must have been fully 800 -A really great work is Bibliography present. The same earnest attention of the Algonquian Languages, by James was apparent, and the same spirit of Constantine Pilling, a Smithsonian In- devotion. I can never be sufficiently stitute volume of the Bureau of Ethnol- thankful to God for the glorious privogy. It is full of missionary intelligenc'e, ilege of being permitted to preach to and ought to be largely drawn on for these dear members of Christ's flock." material on the missionary advance of this country.
– The King's Business, speech by Dr. -In 1888 the great Japnnese version A. T. Pierson, at the annnal meeting of of the Holy Scriptures was completed. the China Inland Mission (Morgan & On this monumental work, forty-six: Scott, London), is in Dr. Pierson's best missionaries, under the leadership of style. The facts are strongly grouped, Dr. Hepburn, were engaged for sixteen the movement of thought is " straight years.
DEPARTMENT ·OF CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR
III.-DEPARTMENT OF CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR.
CONDUCTED BY PROFESSOR AMOS B. WELLS.
The cable has announced Dr. Clark's published by The Golden Rule. The safe arrival in Australia. He made stops first follows Dr. Clark across this con- at Hawaii, the Samoan Islands, and at tinent, dealing with such topics as the Auckland, New Zealand. Misappre- Moody work in Chicago, the Utah prob- hension exists in some quarters regard- lem, the money-power of the nation as ing the purposes of Dr. Clark's around- a national peril (this in connection with the-world Christian Endeavor tour. It California), and suggesting books to be is not .intended to start new societies. read and essays to be written. This is Dr. Clark is glad to be able to say that only a sample of the ways in which this he has organized only two societies, and journey of Dr. Clark's will be utilized those in ch urches over which he was for the increase of missionary enthusi- pastor. He believes that societies asm throughout the great army of En- should be organized by no one but the deavorers.
pastors of their churches. He goes Mr. John Willis Baer, the General with two aims-one is to study the Secretary of the United Society, has re- foreign fi elds, and see their peculiar turned from his voyage to Scotland de- needs, that he may be able to judge cidedly improved in health, and able to· what modifications in Christian En- devote himself energetically to his office deavor methods, if any, would better work. He narrowly escaped a twenty- adapt them to changed conditions. He days' quarantine.
will become acquainted with zealous At a recent meeting of the United So- Christian Endeavor workers every- ciety, held in Boston, the By-laws were where. He will give them of his own so amended as to provide for the elec- abounding zeal, and will gain fresh tion of thirty-nine instead of thirty-one courage and good cheer from them. trustees, the present number. The While he will himself organize no new membership of the board of trustees is societies, nor set in motion agencies now quite evenly divided among the for their organization, undoubtedly evangelical denominations, but there many new societies will spring up in are two or three which have zealously all these foreign lands all the result of adopted the Christian Endeavor move- his visit. The second aim is to inspire ment, and yet have had no representa- the societies at home with fresh mis- tion on the board. This body has al- sionary zeal. These societies are watch- ways been a fairly representative one, ing his trip with especial care. By and it is always to remain such. In ac- means of it their interest in missions cordance with this action there have and knowledge of them will be increased been added to the board Rev. J. F.
many fold. Cowan, of the Methodist Protestants, One instance of how this will be done. 'and Rev. William Patterson, of the In many societies it is already proposed Canadian Presbyterians-two denom- to hold regular meetings, keeping pace inations in which Endeavor socie- with Dr. Clark's progress, for the sole ties are now multiplying with great purpose of studying Christian missions rapidity.
in the lands he visits. These are to be Few things done at the New York apart from the regular prayer-meetings. Christian Endeavor Convention have Mr. S. L. Mershon, one of the Christian been productive of more good than Mr.
Endeavorers most prominent and sug- Robert E. Speer's call for a vote show- gestive in tbisline of work, has outlined ing who had read ten representative- a very capital course of study for such books on missions. The eyes of the meetings. The programmes are being thousands of Endeavorers there were opened to their lack, and not in vain. as found in the — Church '-but it From all over the land comes news of a wasn't," Endeavorers are true to their more ardent reading of missionary lit- church, and to Christ wherever He ill erature than ever before. If Mr. Speer found. asks that question at Montreal next year he will get a far better showing. One fruitful work for which Endeavor To aid this increased study, Rev. S. W. societies are especially well fitted is the Pratt gives in the New York Evangelist establishment of Sunday-schools in several lists of the best twenty mission- neglected places. These Sunday-schools ary books, prepared for him by Dr. are sure, if well kept up, to grow into Pierson, Dr. Ellinwood, and Mr. Speer churches. It is pleasing to notice that himself. These authorities recommend here and there, all over the country. the lives of Carey. Burns, Paton, Mills, the young people banded together" For Judson, Williams, Neesima, Brainerd, Christ and the Church" are undel-takini Mackay, Moffat, Livingstone, Hanning_ this gracious task. ton, Duff, Patteson, Martyn, and Morrison. Among the other books they One society in California has pledged recommend are Pierson's "Crisis of itself to labor against the opium traffio Missions" and "Miracles of Missions," and against cigarette-smoking. Of a Strong's" Our Country," Funk & Wag- special train sent to a recent California naH's Encyclopredia of Missions, ., Co- county convention, crowded with Enrea, the Hermit Nation," and" The Mi- deavorers, it was said that it was the kado's Empire," by Griffis, "China and first train ever sent over that road withthe Chinese," by Nevins, and" Mora_ out a smoking-car. The same remark vian Missions," by Thompson. This was made of the train of ten cars that list will make an excellent guide for pulled out of Boston for the New York thousands of young readers. Convention, Probably not one of the thirty thousand Endeavorers at New In many ways Canada is showing a York used tobacco in any form. most vigorous interest in the Endeavor movement, and especially in the organi- A special effort-but only a slight one zation of large and vigorous county -was made among the Congregational unions. The fact that Montreal is to Endeavor societies of the western part have next year's' International Conven- of Connecticut last year, and forty-seven tion is one cause of this access of en- societies contributed to the Woman's thusiasm, and another is the capture of Board of Missions $1800. This sum the two banners' by Ontario and Mani- supported missionaries in India, China, toba-the banners that represent the Turkey, and other heathen lands. greatest aggregate and the greatest pro- Equally good results could doubtless be portionate increase in the number of gained by equally faithful work among societies. the young everywhere. And what rev- enues for missions that would mean! In a large Christian Endeavor Convention held recently in Chicago, Dr. The Methodist Protestants are wisely P. S. Henson said emphatically, .. I adopting a plan of conference unions would not be a Baptist if I could not of the Methodist Protestant Endeavor be a Christian Endeavorer, and I would societies, like the plan of presbyterial not be a Christian Endeavorer if I could unions adopted quite largely b~ the not be a Baptist." Presbyterians. Such unions bind the societies to their denominations, While At the successful convention lately the State and national gatherings give held by the Endeavorers of the maritime them broad outlooks and the blessprovinces of Canada, one speaker sig- ings of interdenominational fellownificantly said, "The motto of the so- ship. ciety, instead of • For Christ and the Church,' might have been, • FOl' Christ The Christian Endeavor pledge has been translated into the Mpongwe lan- guage, of the western coast of Africa. The name of the society literally reo committees obtain and distribute.liter- translated is, .. The Party of Christian ature, get up public meetings to en- Zeal. " force the duty of tithe·giving, and form leagues of those who are willing thus There are Christian Endeavor soci. to share their possessions with the Lord eties in Syria, and some of these carry who gave them. Such committees are on their services in Arabic. very effective.
Sunday.school committees of En· The same young people that gave deavor societies have planned some very Whitelaw Rei-l such a rousing reception shrewd ways of increasing the numbers at the New York Convention have sent and interest of their Sunday.schools. him a petition asking him to stop the Here is one of the best. The commit· publication of a Sunday newspaper. tee gets one class each week to act as a .. recruiting squad" to bring in new Twenty State, Territorial, and Proscholars. The Endeavorers in that class vincial Christian Endeavor Conventions will naturally act as leaders in the occur during the fall and early winter week's campaign. The superintendent months,-Maine, the mother·State of announces publicly the result of the Christian Endeavor, leading the list, as work, and after each class has had its is proper. For these conventions the turn the Endeavor Sunday.school com- greatest preparations are being made. mittee gives a pleasant party in honor Most eloquent and earnest men and of the class that has done the best. women will address them, and many projects for the advancement of the The young people of Lawrence, Kan., kingdom will be set in motion at these have enjoyed, during the summer, the meetings. The splendid fervor of the advantages of the Christian Endeavor New York Convention bids fair to aniinterdenominational fellowship in this mate them all. way. During one week a meeting would be held of the lookout commit- Compared with some denominations tees of all societies belonging to the the Reformed churches have few Chrisunion; during the next week, of the tian Endeavor societies, but here is prayer.meeting committees belonging their record: In 1890 twenty.three soto these diverse societills, and so on. cieties gave to their mission boards The interchange of ideas and the mu- $117; in 1891, twenty. nine societies tual inspiration were very helpful. gave $231; in 1892, eighty-five soci- eties gave $545. Recently a .Christian Endeavor so- ,ciety has been organized among the In Australia, where Dr. Clark is now Chinese in San Francisco by the Con· at work, the first Christian Endeavor gregational Chinese Mission there. society was formed about four years This is probably the first Chinese Chris- ago. In South Australia there are altian Endeavor st>ciety in the country, ready seventy-seven societies, in New if not in the world. South Wales thirty, in Victoria one hundred and thirty, and mauy more in In the Hawaiian Islands, Dr. Clark's other divisions of the continent. first foreign stopping·place in his around-the·world tour, a Christian En- Two significant bits of news come to deavor society was organized early in us from a Christian Endeavor society 1884. Three others have since been among the Sioux Indians. They are formed. All are engaged in aggressive actually running a Sunday.school for Christian work. the benefit of the poor white children who are brought upon the reservation Systematic giving is one of the most by Caucasian settlers, and the other day prominent subjects before the Endeavor they gave $50, as a society, to help plant world, and deservedly so. Committees Sunday.schools among the white chilo on systematic giving are appointed by dren of South Dakota. the societies in some places. These
EDITORIAL NOTES ON CURRENT TOPICS
IV.-EDITORIAL NOTES ON CURRENT TOPICS.
The Improvement of the "Review." to omit altogether notice of current events, or else to abandon all such com- Now and then letters are received petition with the daily press. This REcriticising the editing of the REVIEW, or VIEW goes to the heart of Asia and Afrithe nature of the material here gath- ca as well as of Europe. It may be of ered, or both; though it is but candor consequence to make it a compendium to acknowledge that for one letter of of recent intelligence, even though complaint we have a score in com- months have elapsed; otherwise, to mendation. All such criticisms, and some who are out of commullication especially suggestions aiming at im- with the world, the tread of events will provement, will have an honest and not be known. But we aIe seeking by hearty hearing; for no reader can desire every available means to shorten the inthe increa~ed accuracy, value, and ser- terval between events and their report viceableness of these pages more than in these pages, by arranging for advance those who give so much labor to their sheets of great missionary magazines, preparation. We welcome our readers etc. to a share in the untiring endeavor to make the MrssIONABY _REVIEW OF THE We are annoyed at times by discover- WORLD a storehouse of both exact in. ing inaccuracy. We employ trustworthy formation and spiritual inspiration. parties to send us reports of various matters; but it is not always in our At times the same sort of items have power to verify their statements. appeared in the different departments; Whenever any error is found it is recand as it has seemed best to put these tified, and when we find a correspondsubordinate departments under care of ent careless we get the best man we different members of the editorial ~taff, can to take his place. on account of the extent of the world field and the vastness of the matter requiring The obvious improvement of the Au. to be passed upon, it has been found dif- gust "Monthly Bulletin" over that of ficult to avoid such seeming repetitions. July is to be accounted for by the new But arrangements are now making to arrangement, by which all matter emhave all the pages pass under the final braced in the intelligence department is revision of the managing editor, Mr. submitted to Dr. Leonard, and re-edited Delavan L. Pierson, before electrotyp- by him before appearing in type. ing. One criticism made on the material in One of our esteemed correspondents the REVIEW is that while" good, it is not complains that" the editing is not up timely nor the best." Our correspondent to date," and mstances the outbreaks thinks that most articleB would" suit in the Pirreus, which occurred in Feb- one month as well as another," and ruary, but were referred to as " recent" that only" missionaries on the ground on page 622. can furnish accurate statements of mis- This is an electrotyped periodical; and sions and mission work. " the time needful for preparing each In reply we would say that the REnumber, even with utmost speed, makes impracticable all competition with daily, VIEW is adjusted on a principle of divior even weekly, religious papers that are sion oj the world field. Each number is issued at short notice and with such fre- principally given to a certain country or quency. Even' in the weekly religious grouping of countries, as, for instance, journals the news is often stale, having February is mainly assigned to China, had the eyes of the reading public for a and December mainly to Syria. 'fhis ar_ week previous. But our choice is _either rangement makes certain articles pecul- iarly suitable to certain months. But when any paper reaches UB. which should from its nature have imme- so absolutely without a basis, tl act, that diate insertion, we put it in the next it casts a shadow over whatever else the available issue. writer may have to say in condemna- tion or even commendation. It betrays And as to missionaries furnishing a squmt, a defect of clear vision, or a the only trustworthy statements, it is total misunderstanding of the truth he remarkable that the great body of com- assails. plaints have come from those who have criticised the papers furnished by mis- He says: sionaries themselves. Often a man sees .' Dr. Pierson's views on mISSIons little beyond his own field, denomina. are utterly at variance with those of altion, or peculiar work. For example, most all missionaries. More than once the statements of missionaries in China, it has been said to me that there was etc., as to the China Inland Mission; danger lest he do the cause of missions the statements of parties in India as to !Dore harm than good. The reason for the work of Bishop Thoburn and the this is that he is a strong premillena- " S. P. G." ; the strictures of African rian, and believes that the sole duty of missionaries as to Bisbop Taylor and missionaries is to preach, without any his self supporting missions; the severe reference to conversion or the establishanimadversions upon the articles of Mr. ment of churches. He is opposed to Baldwin, of Tangiers, etc., have made missions having anything to do with the editors hesitate to admit some education, the development of literapapers from the missionaries them. ture, etc. This was brought out last selves; while articles furnisbed by week at Northfield, and every foreign such men as Drs. Ellinwood, Mitchell, missionary that spoke attacked his posi- George Sinith, Mabie, etc., have elicited tion most earnestly. In this opinion he almost universal approval. We have has the strong support of Dr. A. J. Gortherefore chosen to give every article a don, his co-editor. That particular view place upon its own merits as the only safe has, as a rule. been kept in the backrule. ground in the REVIEW. but it modifies its whole tone, and is, I suspect, the One correspondent thinks the REVIEW true explanation of the selection of should furnish " a field for the discus- some articles. Dr. Sherwood kept it sion of missionary problems," and that out entirely; but it is scarcely possible in this" it fails absolutely." This seems that it should not control more and to us a strange indictment. If anyone more. I hear it spoken of constantly will take up any bound volume and go with regret and disappointment." over its contents, he will find the relation of education to evangelism, the The editor can speak confidently, position .of native churches, native pas- both for himself and Dr. Gordon, in tors, etc.• and the demands for a ver- saying that no more complete travesty nacular literature discussed by no less of their views could well be put into distinguished men than Drs. Knox, of language. Japan, Gracey and his coadjutors in the " International Department," and Mur- ]. The view we entertain as to the reray Mitchell. If our readers will send lation of the Lord's coming to missions to us or procure for us first-class articles is stated by Mr. W. E. Blackstone to be on these and kindred topics, the editors in accord with those of the majority of the will welcome each on its own merits, most devoted missionaries, as ascerand gladly pay for such as are used the tained byactaal investigation. highest rates in our power. 2. The so-called " premillenarian One criticism which has reacbed the view" does not hold that it is th., .. sole editor is so absolutely unfounded it duty of missionaries to preach," without should have full space and a distinct reference to conversion or the establish. emphatic rejoinder. This criticism iii ment of churches. If any sensible man, who accepts the Scripture teaching that our Lord's coming is an imminent concentrate our forces there until the event, holds such a preposterous theory, nation is converted, is to disobey our we have not yet met that man. What Lord's command and abandon His ob- we do maintain is just what Dr. George vious plan, while it is to set up a false Smith so compactly writes in· his and illusive standard of success. Wher "Short History of Missions." Refer. ever, as Dr. Smith says-whom we have ring to Constantine's so·called "con· supposed to be one of the post-millenaversion," he says (p. 57) that" from a rian brethren-nationalism displaces inpurely missionary point of view, it be· dividualism in conversion, and concengan a system of compromise with error tration on limited fields displaces diffu. -of nationalism instead of individualism sion over the whole world field, we com· in conversion-which in the East made promise with error, and risk the real the Church an easy prey to Mohamme. success of missions. danism, and in the West produced J eauit missions." The editor-in. chief presided at North- field on the Mission Day, and if " every Dr. Gordon and myself firmly believe foreign missionary that spoke attacked that " preaching the Gospel as a witness his position most earnestly," he failed among all nations" means setting up to recognize the opposition. In fact, all churches, sohools, a sanctified press, that he said on Mission Day was to premedical missions, and, in fact, all the sent a fllw of the marvellous results of institutions which are the fruit of Chris- missions in the hundred years; and tianity and constitute part of its witness; whatever was said on the bearing of the but that our Lord's purpose and plan Lord's coming on missions was said the are that we should not wait in anyone day bifore, when only a few of the speakfield for the full results of our sowing ers had yet arrived! to appear in a thoroughly converted community before we press on to re- As to Dr. Sherwood's" keeping out gions beyond, where as yet the name of such matter entirely," he never inter- Christ has not been spoken; and that fered with the province of the editorour duty is to ROW everywhere and as in-chief. who from the first controlled shortly as possible .the simple message by explicit arrangement the character of the kingdom, that it may everywhere of the articles appearing. Dr. Sherwood's be followed up with every other agency department was the arrangement of dethat helps to transform a community. tails and the make-up of the REVIEW; Missions begin in evangelization, but and only in the absence of the other have everything to do with Christian editor did he control the literature of education, and the printing press, and the REVIEW. But from the first no arti· the organization of churches, and the cle has ever been e>ccluded because it pre. training of a native pastorate. Not at sented a view contrary to the private and Northfield, or anywhere else, "last personal views of any of the editorial week," or any other time, has the editor staff. The question has never been asked of this REVIEW affirmed anything else of any contributor, or even of any sub· than what he here boldly reaffirms, that editor, whether he held a premillennial our duty is to go into.all the world and or a postmillennial view of the Lord's within the limitS'of our own generation advent; nor does the editor know, save preach the Gospel to every creature; in the case of Dr. Gordon. Each writer that our first duty is contact. and that is alone responsible for the view he conversion is something we cannot com- takes; and all we ask is that no grea mand, but must leave to God. To give essential truth of the Christian system every man the Gospel, this furnishes a shall be questioned in these pages. basis for all other work which helps to make a true Christian community. But Now that we have given thus much to lay siege to a nation like Japan and space to the subject of the improvement of the REVIEW, it may be well to add that we desire the best available papers, from whatever authorized and compe- human, with a pathetic love note. There tent sources, upon all phases of mis- is so much new mat!'lrial, that, as Dr.
sionary work at home and abroad, and Smith says, his Life has yet to be written, upon all questions pertaining to the outside of his own precious journals; philosophy and economy and history of and -he proposes to put him and Carey missions. For such articles we shall, side by side, both men of the people; whether personally solicited by us or but one a self-educated shoemaker, and not, whenever we can make use of them, the other an academic scholar. This pay the writer whatever the pecuniary hint of the coming feast will serve to resources of the REVIEW make possible. whet the appetite of our readers for Weare specially desirous of accurate re- Dr. Smith's promised book.
ports of recent intelligence from every fieJd.
If any reader knows of a work, II mission, or a field of labor which has po ade- Nothing unfriendly to Dr. Pentecost quate representation in these pages, we was intended in publishing the stricask his help in furnishing or securing tures of Rev. C. M. Wherry, D.D., on such matter as remedies the lack. The his public addresses about India (May, editors desire to have every intelligent 1891, page 387). Dr. Wherry was for reader share in the editorial care of the twenty years a missionary in India, and REVIEW by thus making it a fuller and . one of the founders of the theological more trustworthy magazine of informa. seminary at Lodiana, and author of a tion. Various changes which experi- noted work on Mohammedanism. Such ence seems to dictate will be made with an authority deserved to be heard on the opening of a new- volume in 1893. questions pertaining to the Orient.
Meanwhile, we welcome any friendly suggestions which may help us in a field where we have had none to precede us A Hint to Oontributors of Artioles and pioneer the way. This is, so far a8 The editor finds it absolutely necessary we know, the only REVIEW that has un- to reject or return many articles because dertaken to cover the world-wide field of they are not in shape to be used in missions, and it is not strange if we these pages without toil in editing, to should have found no small obstacles in which the editor is not equal. A care- ollr path. We invoke Divine help in a less letter is sometimes written which most arduous toil.-A. T. P. cannot all be published, and is not in condition for the printer, and perhaps a report or newspaper article accom- A new contribution to mIssIOnary panies it, and the editor is told biography is forthcoming from the that he may make such extracts as he golden pen of George Smith, LL.D., of chooses. This is no way to insure in- Edinburgh, Foreign Secretary of the sertion of matter. If a paper is worth Free Church. It is to be a life of Henry anything for readers, it is worth being Martyn, and will be II valuable addition carefully written before it reaches this to the marvellous biographies of Duff, office, and should be ready to go into Carey, Wilson of Bombay, Summerville, the printer's hands with as little change etc., from the same gifted author. as possible. If writers will themselves Dr. Smith spares no pains to prepare kindly take pains to send us brief, these masterly volumes. He went last pithy, well-written and legible manu- year to Land's End to get up the" lo- scripts, they will seldom be disappoint- cal color" for Henry Martyn's life, amid ed by finding them returned as rejected the surroundings of Truro, in Cornwall, MSS.
where Martyn was born. That story of the Cornish boy who died at Tokat has Madame Hyacinthe Loyson is now in splendid possibilities in it, divine and this country on a mission for the National Society for the Evangelization of "We receive both boys and girls from France. She comes with the strong their earliest days, keep the boys until endorsement of a Committee, among they are between fourteen and fifteen whom we find such conspicuollS names years of age, when they are apprenas those of Pastors Mettetal, Monod, ticed, and the girls till they are about Lalot, Gout, Duchemin, Prunier, Sail- seventeen years old, when both boys lens, etc.; and such men as Reveillaud, and girls are provided with an outfit, Rougement, CourUa! and Passy. Dr. and with suitable situations also. Up McAll adds a warm personal letter of to the time that our orphans are sent sympathy and commendation. We be- away from the institution, they are speak for her and her caU3e a cordial boarded, lodged. clothed, and educated hearing. There is a wide and effectual entirely free of all expense to their reladoor open in France; but there are tives, and have a most comfortable and many adversaries. happy home_ Mrs. E. L. Ryland Jacques, grand- "When I began the orphan work daughter of the late Dr. Ryland, of fifty-seven years ago, there was accom- Northampton, afterward of Broadmead, modation in this country for 3600 or- Bristol, and President of the Baptist phans only; but since that time, through College, has some manuscript outlines of her famous grandsire's sermons. the blessing of God, which has rested They are written with crow·s quill on so abundantly upon my-labors, such an narrow slips of paper convenient for slipping over the leaf of his pocket Bi- impetus has been given to orphan work, ble, and he being very near-sighted that institutions have sprung up in vacould read them, though the writing is rious parts of Great Britain, by means so fine as to be legible only because so of which more than 100,000 orphans exquisitely neat. Mrs. Jacques offers these for sale at $2 each, the proceeds can now be provided for; and for this reason.it is that we have so many va- cancies at the present time, and find it so difficult to fill them up.
., I repeat, therefore, that I shall con- sider it an especial kindness if Christian friends will take the trouble to seek out destitute orphans, and advise the rela- tives of such to apply to me for their admission, as we have good and abun- dant accommodation for them, and a large number of efficient helpers."
to go to missions. There are only a few The editor regrets to add that in the left, and if any of our readers desire fifty-third annual report of these insti- such a curiosity, it would be well to tutions there appears a d~cit of £3663, write to her at once, at Merrickville, or about $18,000, nearly one half of Ontario, Canada.. which is salaries due to teachers, who voluntarily and nobly relinquish pay Mr. George Miiller's Orphanages at until relief comes. We cannot but Bristol. believe the exigency is only one more trial of faith and incentive to prayer. With no little surprise do we find a For nearly sixty years the work of public appeal from this distinguished George Miiller has stood before the advocate of faith work, stating that world as an example and proof of mighty there are now a great number of vacan- works still possible to believing souls. cies for girls in the Bristol orphan Surely some to whom God has given houses, erected to receive 2050 orphans means will be glad to share in such a both whose parents are dead. Mr. Millier work by relieving the present pressure. says: " 1 earnestly request Christian friends The Woman's Foreign Missionary Sokindly to assist me in filling up these ciety of the Presbyterian Church has vacancies, by seeking out suitable cases published in a revised form the" Hisfor admission into our institution, by torical Sketches of Presbyterian Misletting the relatives or friends of orphan sions," 1334 Chestnut Street, Philadelgirls know that they can be received at phia. We haTe often said that this the Ashley Down Orphan Houses, and by advising them to write to me for their admi6!!iQn. little compendium is one of the very has been known as one of the most reo best books on missions that has come under the editor's eyes; ahd will be markable organizers ever conducting found most helpful to all who study missions in the fields here treated- the work of home missions. A more viz., Africa, China, India, Japan, Korea, extended notice will, we hope, appear Mexico, Guatemala, North American soon. A. T. P. Indians, Chinese and Japanese in America, Persia, Siam and Laos, South By some accident the following letter America, and Syria. Each is treated by a specialist on the particular field. failed to appear earlier. We publish it While referring to recent books we now, with apology for delay.-A. T. P. call attention to four new issues of our TREMONT TEMPLE. BOSTON, MAss., enterprising friend, F. H. Revell, 30 June 15, 1892. East Union Square, New York: "Everyday Life in South India," $1; "Chil- Rev. A. T. Pierson, D.D.: dren of India," $1.40; "Gospel Eth- DEAR SIR: On page 464 of June nology; or, the Gospel for the Race," number of the REVIEW, deaths in Africa $1 ; ., On the Congo," 50 cents. These are wrongly stated as being 60 per cen· tum. are a very useful addition to that cheap Careful statistics show the death-rate and comprehensive missionary library in the Congo missions up to April, 1890. which Mr. Revell seems determined to Since that date the death-rate has been furnish to all willing readers at a merely lower than the average, {or owing to our better houses, improved transport nominal cost. We are also glad to see service, our accumulated experience, that the African News is published in etc., some of the old causes of sickness volume form embracing the year just . have been removed. These figures in- clude all the societies then at work on passed. the Congo-six in number. Percentage of deaths in the Baptist Missionary So. I am told that at Springfield and J ack- ciety (English): Arrivals, 66; deaths, sonville, Ill., about thirty miles apart, 25-percentage, say, 38. Percentage are to be found colonies of Portuguese, in all the missions: Total arrivals, 204 ; driven out from Madeira in 1849, and total deaths, 54-percentage, 26-!- The taking refuge in these cities. The death-rate is higher in the English Bapstreets are wholly given up to these set- tist Society than the average rate, but tlers. They have at least four churches the English Society began work in 1878, of their own. In the Sandwich Islands when the country had not been explored, 12,000 are to be found, where amid a and the missionaries of the English total population of perhaps 80,000,20,- Baptist Society and ours of the American 000 are Chinese, and a few thousand Baptist Missionary Union had the hard more Japanese. To such an extent, task and exposure of exploring for themnot only in our own land, but through- selves the country now pierced by their out the world, the peoples are mixing. chain of mission stations, which now stretches fully a thousand miles into Two deaths, such as not often are the interior of Africa. chronicled, have recently occurredone that of Rev. John Van Nest Tal- Six years of this preliminary work mage, D.D., of Amoy, China, who died had been done, and the two missions August 19th, and the other that of named had already established them- Rev. Henry Kendall, D.D., who died selves far beyond Stanley Pool, ere any September 9th. Both were veterans. of the Qther societies entered. Then Dr. Talmage being seventy-three and came the first attempt made by Mr. Dr. Kendall seventy-seven, and both Simpson. of New York, in 1884. Two very remarkable men. We can in these years later Bishop William Taylor's pages, and at present writing, do no mission was started, and the same year more than record this great loss to the the Swedish Missionary Society (two Church, one in the foreign and the members of which had already done other in the home field, both leaders good service in the A. B. M. U. mis. lind generals. Dr. Kendall particularly sion) was organized (1886). Following those came the Congo Balolo Mission.
The old established missions had al- ready bought a good deal of experience, and some lives were laid down in the learning of the lessons; thosA that fol- lowed had an easier task, and a lower death-rate in consequence.
Yours, JOSEPH CLAllX.
THE MONTHLY CONCERT OF MISSIONS
V:-THE MONTHLY CONCERT OF MISSIONS.
BY THE EDITOR·IN·OHIEF.
South Amerioa.-Brazil. ties for inland navigation exceeding that of the combined Afrioan rivers; and the This being the four hundredth anni· 'Orinooo, though smaller than either of versary of the discovery of America by the others, has a length of 1800 miles, Christopher Columbus, and South and with its branohes supplies 8000 America having been the actual conti- miles of navigable waters. The oom· nent to whose shores he found his way, bined lengths of these three streams is there is a special reason for giving this 8200 miles; the total of their navigable portion of the globe a conspicuous plaoe waters nearly 80,000 miles, and the in our thought; and there is a provi. areas of' their basins cover 3,700,000 dentiallesson of great signifioanoe whioh square miles! is suggested by the history of its disoov. ery and settlement. It is, however, still more remarkable that these rivers are so iocated as to fur. South Amerioa is a vast triangular nish a natural highway everywhere to peninsula; Hs extreme length, 4550 the heart of the continent. A resident miles, and its greatest breadth, 3200 at the eastern foot of the Andes may miles; of its area of 6,500,000 square transport himself and his property in English miles, three fourths lie between less than seven weeks 2000 miles to the the tropios and the other fourth in the Atlantic by floating with the current; temperate zone. and the eastern breeze whioh blows perennially up stream will convey him This superfioial area may be conven· back almost without effort if he spreads iently divided into five physioal regions: sail; nor is the navigation interrupted the low country skirting the Paoifio; by one cataract or even rapid from the the Orinoco basin, espeoially linked Atlantio to Jaen. A glance at the map with Columbus; the Amazon basin; reveals that the great river system con· the great southern plain of the Plata stitutes a natural roadway, with two and other rivers; and the country of main trunks, making it unnecessary for Brazil. From the extreme south to the the poor people to build roads, and Isthmus of Panama runs the Andes affording facility for an extensive inland range, with an average height of 11,000 communioation and commerce, elsewhere to 12,000 feet, and a breadth of from 20 unrivalled on the globe, save in the com· to 400 miles. The vast plains or steppes panion continent of North America. Is of the Orinoco basin are called llanos, not this God's providential provision for intensely hot, and having little wood· the rapid oocupation of South America land; and the open steppes of the La with the Gospel and its institutions? Plata region are known as pampas, with a prodigious 'growth of grass and weeds, The population of South America furon which great herds feed. nishes a study for the ethnologist. As at the northern extremity of this new The Andes have three transverse world we meet the Esquimaux, four and chains or branches nearly at right angles a half feet high, so at the southern cape to the main range, and forming the natu· we find the six·foot Patagoniano The ral boundaries of the three great ri~er tribes ocoupying territory north of Pata· basins. The river system is among the gonia and east of the Andes, St. Vincent wonders of the world. The Amazon classifies as American, and the Neptuniu.n alone pours a flood into the sea that ex· on the west coast he identifies with the ceeds the united disoharge of the eight inhabitants of the Malay Peninsula and prinoipal rivers of Asia, the Indus, the Indian Archipelago. Humboldt Ganges, Yenesei, Oby, Lena, Amoor, thinks that from Cape Horn to Behring's Hoang ho, and Yang.tse. The Plata Straits and the St. Lawrence baain we probably ofIe~ij wit4 ite brllnches facili· have a people from a common stock, ring that nothing less than a continent notwithstanding diverse tongues. Of could furnish such a stream. Dying, the total population of the globe, South still in ignorance of the extent and im- America has about thirty. five parts out portance of his discovery, the name of one hundred and' fifty, or between " West Indies" crystallizes and fossilizes one fourth and one fifth, about as large the impression that the countries he a proportion as Europe, but of course had made known to Europeans were a much less dense. part of the outskirts of India.
From these physical features, etc., we Before leaving this wonderful history, turn to consider the providential history we must place side by side with it the of this great peninsula. Columbus, equally significant fact that John Cabot, with three small vessels and 120 men to whom, with his sons, Sabastian and sailed from Palos, August 3d, 1492. Santius, God gave the immediate suc. From the Canary Isles he entered upon cession in this career of discovery, was a realm of oceanic mystery, borne on by an Italian by birth. John Cabot was the trade winds toward what he believed not only the contemporary of Columto be the coast of Asia. What trifling bus, but a Venetian merchant, but reevents are the hinges of destiny and his- sided in England, and Sebastian was tory! Pinzon's counsel led the great born in Bristol. The discoveries of the Genoese to steer toward t11e southwest. Genoese navigator fired a like zeal in Had Columbus kept to his original young Sebastian; and as Henry VII.. route, he would have met the warm was ambitious to enter the field of mari- Gulf Stream and have touched at Flori- time discovery, when the Cabots proda, and thence, perhaps, gone up to posed to the king the project of shorten- Cape Hatteras and Virginia; and as he ing the route to India by a western represented a Roman Catholic power, course, the king fell in with their prothe result would have been that the con- posal, and on March 6th, 1496, the first tinent of North America would have patent was granted. From all we can fallen under the awful blight now rest- gather, it appears that before any other, ing on the twin continent of the south the Cabols saw the mainland of America, -a semi·pagan Romanism. A Roman the term Terra primum visa being used Catholic Spanish population would have to distinguish the continent. This was spread over this land of ours instead of seen June 24th, 1497, and was probably a Protestant English people! And as Nova Scotia. A second patent, issued Martin Alonzo Pinzon himself formed to John Cabot, February 3d, 1498, led his opinion as to the direction of the to another voyage, but not until after land by observing a flight oj parroquets the father's death. This issued in the toward the southwest, we m.ay say that discovery of 1800 miles of North Ameri- God used the trackless pathway of birds can seacoast; and so-does anything through the air to determine the equally merely happen 1-a Venetian navigator, trackless pathway of Columbus' ships employed by the British Government, through the sea, and to fix the distribu- appropriated for Protestantism the vast tion of this Western world between the territory of North America. Had the Latin and Germanic races! Cabots been in the employ of Ferdinand the whole of the Americas might have As it was, on October 12th, 1492, Co- been to-day under the rule of a civilizalumbus first touched at Guanahani, or tion little above barbarism, and a re- Watling Island; and after about three ligion little above paganism! months in Cuba, Hispaniola and other isles, he returned to Spain. He made Arnold Guyot" in his book on" The three other voyages; on the second, Earth and Man," treats the contour and coasting along the northwest shore of relief of the continents of the earth, the South America, and from the vast vol- shape of the dry land, etc., as a physiume of the Orinoco at its estuary, infer- cal prophecy of a divine providential !'
purpose in the working out of human a fairer land. . .. And now that Brazil history and destiny. has entered into the sisterhood of reo Rev. G. W. Chamberlain, D.D., of publics, now that education has received Br~zil, finely says that the physical a great stimulus, now that slavery has geography of that great land forecasts been abolished, and religious bigotry the acts in the great drama of its fu- has given place to religious liberty, we ture ; and shows that the land shall be are drawing nearer to the realization (1) one and indivisible; (2) a healthy of the possibilities portrayed by the habitation, and (3) a theatre for congre- great naturalist."
gating tbe families of the earth. Dr. We must content ourselves with this Chamberlain's words are so forceful mere outline, not daring to touch upon that we embody their substance. The the history of missions in South Ameri- topography, hydrography, prefiguration ca, which must be reserved for separate of Brazil leave no chance for a division. treatment. We are content to suggest You cannot divide the country-by the philosophy of history found in the eternal forecast it is to be one. A very strange and marvellous facts here slight depression of the earth's surface brought to notice.
would have left the river systems, whose broad arms embrace Brazil, to have made it a vast island. He whose hands formed the dry land raised Brazil high The story of the mission to the Pata- toward heaven, so that even in the inter- gonians and Fuegians, as connected tropical regions it is among the habit. with the name of Captain Allen F. Gar- able parts of the earth. And as the con, diner, has few rivals even among the tour and configuration of the old hemi- most pathetic tales of missionary hero· sphere forecast the separation and seg- ism. Darwin recorded his verdict that regation of the family of man, the new in this extreme part of South America, hemisphere hints concentration and man existed in a lower state of improve- congregation. In the southern half of ment than in any other part of the this new world, in the United States world. Yet just here Captain Gardi- of Brazil, a theatre for history is pre- ner went. Failure could not disap- pared similar to that. where the United point nor disaster dismay him. When States is working out its historic future. the natives drove him from the shore, Vast area, healthfulness, individuality he said, ., the mission establishment must all point to a vast concourse of human- be for the present afloat." Accordingly ity and a vast development in the near two large decked boats were fitted out, future. In pursuance of the Divine and in December, 1850, they bore the plan, this great fertile territory was mission party to Banner Cove. A year committed to the Portuguese in order from that time the letter of Samuel La.
that for a time it should lie j ealou81y fone brought the sad tidings of the guarded and hermetically sealed even to deat.h of these devoted men. Captain all foreign commerce. And now, as the Gardiner's journal was found at Span- northern civilization begins to overflow iard's Harbor. He appears to have died and demand new outlets and a wider September 6th, of starvation; but over area, Brazil, reserved for such a time as his remains was the rude inscription, this, throws open her doors and reaches " Wait, my soul, upon God; for all my out after the means for developing her expectation is from Him." What won- territorial resources. And as Dr. Cham- der that Mr. Despard published far and berlain adds, " should her moral and wide the resolve: WITH GOD'S HELP THE intellectual endowments grow into har. MISSION SHALL BE MAINTAINED! And it mony with her wonderful natural beauty was maintained, and even Darwin con- and wealth, the world will not have seen fessed its grand success.
GENERAL MII!SIONARY INTELI.IGENCE. 871'
VI.-GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE.
Organized Missionary Work a.nd Statistios. Edited ,by Rev. D. L. Leonard, Oberlin, O.
-The usual carefully prepared tables "that now it is the most important of statistics, which many readers of the work for Jews in the whole world… MISSIONARY REVIEW have found so valu- able, may be expected, though at the -Though indifference and guilty beginning of next year, instead of at the withholding are so oommon in the end of this. churches, yet many also are the exam- ples of self-denying consecration. As -Of the 139 missionary societies Dr. A. J. Gordon suggests: "On the represented at th" General Conference staff of the China Inland Mission there of Protestant Foreign Missions in Lon- are 60 men and women who are work- don, in 1888, while only 18 represented ing in the foreign field just as they all other races. 121 represented the would work in their churches at home, Anglo-Saxon race. entirely supporting themselves. A Western farmer has recently sold his -Among the most significant signs house and lands, and with his wife and of increased zeal for missions is to be children-all consecrated to the workset the fact that almost all the leading has gone to Africa to constitute 8 self- religious papers. and not a few of the supporting missionary household. A great dailies, gi ve regularly large space lady of wealth, within the last month, to news from the field. In some cases sailed from New York, taking with her once a month whole pages are covered 8 other missionaries, she providing for with letters from missionaries, or col- the perpetual support of all the party. umns are filled with interesting bits of The widow of one of our honored misintelligence; in others something is sure sionaries is carrying on a work in Japan to appear every week, and in a few cases of the same kind, she providing fcr the the secretaries of the societies use the entire support of herself and her copress to reach the Christian public. laborers."
-Rev. A. F. SchaufHer, of the New The same spirit is found in Britain. York City Mission and Tract Society, For James E. Mathieson, Esq., the forhas recently published a special report mer secretary of the MiIdmay Mission, on the Jewish work, which for two years has renounced his banking business enhas been carried on in that city with tirely to engage in religious work. Lord such remarkable results by the convert- Radstock and his family spend their .od Polish Jew, Mr. Hermann Warsza- lives as evangelists in the slums. A wiak. He visits irom house to house wholesale butcher, one of the Taberamong his brethren, and holds frequent nacle congregation, went to his business services, which are attended by 600 to at half-past five in the morning, that 800. Some 16,000 copies of the New he might come to. the Tabernacle at Testament have been distributed, most- half-past nine to see that the visitors ly in Hebrew. It is estimated that to the pastor's conference were properly 50,000 of the 200,000 Jews in New York housed and taken care of. Another man, have attended the services held in the worth $500,000, adjusts all his busi- DeWitt Memorial Church, Rivington ness so as to act as usher at the Taber- Street. Mr. Schaufll.er says: ., The nacle door. Such consecration to largest male audiences that this city God's work is not very rare in Britain. affords are now to be seen listening to Also, when the Mongolian heart is touchhim." and affirms that, .. not for a thou- ed by the Spirit of God, the same divine sand years has God shown such favor to longing to minister begins to stir within. one preaching to Jews;" and further. For Mr. Lum Foon, a member of the Chinese Mission church, of San Francisco, 1890 there were 142,256, a.n increase of has lately given up a prosperous business 272 per cent. The total value of church and gone to China as a self-supporting property in 1850 wBlf $87,446,371, and missionary. He has bought land and in 1890, $631,221,303, an increase of 621 erected a fine chapel and school at his per cent. The five leading denomina- own expense. tions had communicants as follows, -There are 12 memorial kindergar- viz.: The Methodists, 4,255,377 ; Cathotens at work in San Francisco, and 6 of lics, 6,250,045 ; Presbyterian, 1,278,815 ; them were started by Mrs. Leland Stan- Lutheran, 1,199,514; Congregational, ford. To put them on a permauent 512,771. The increase in the value of basis, she has now set aside $100,000 as Catholic church property since 1850 an endowment fund. She had given has been 1178 per cent, and that of the $60,000 for these schools previously. Lutheran, 1098 per cent.
The one opened in 1884 by Mrs. Stan- -A recent census bulletin states that ford was the first memorial kindergar- of the 7,470,000 colored persons in the ten in the world, it is said. United States, 2,371,100 are church- -A Grand Army mission is conducted members. More than one half of them by Colonel H. H. Hadley, under the are Baptists -1,230,516. Different pension agency on Canal Street, New branches of the Methodists claim 722,- York City, where pensioners' checks are 964. There are 110,000 Roman Cathocashed and remittances made to friends lics, and the rest are divided among without cost. Free breakfasts, lunch several sects.
and coffee are furnished to the pension- -The International Missionary Alliers, 10,000 of whom come to the agency ance publishes the names of upward of every three months to receive their 90 men and women who have gone to checks. A Gospel meeting is held every the foreign field under its auspices, and evening. Major-GeneralO. O. Howard, are found laboring in Africa, Turkey, General Wager Swayne, and other men India, China, Japan, the West Indies, of note serve on the committee of man- Alaska, etc. agement. -The Reformed Presbyterian Church -The Cross Bearers' Missionary Read- (Covenanter) numbers only about 10,000, ing Circle is well worthy of notice by but sustains missions in Syria and Asia all who would inform themselves con- Minor, as well as among the freedmen, cerning the growth of the kingdom. Indians and Chinese in the United The idea of the organization is for each States. The contributions for foreign member to read a certain amount on missions from all sources in 1891, not missionary or kindred subjects each day including a bequest of $8500, were $19,- as designated, to pass a yearly exami- 614, or an average of $1.74 per member. nation, and to recei ve a certificate of graduation. Such books will be read -The Evangelical Association has a ae these: biographies of missionaries; mission in Japan which was established books describing the countries, customs, in 1875, and now contains 18 itinerant and peoples; works treating of God's and 5 local preachers, and a number of purpose a.nd the adaptability of the . Bible women and other native helpers.
heathen to that purpose ; and a periodi- The number of communicants is 488.
cal giving the latest missionary informa- There are 6 church edifices, 2 parson- tion. Further particulars may be had ages, and 6 mission homes. At Tokio by addressing Rev. Z. M. Williams, Sec- is a prosperous theological seminary.
retary, St. Joseph, Mo. -The experience is not uncommon -In 1850 there were 38,183 church with secretaries of the societies, but is edifices in the United States, while in it not strange that even in a church so substantial as the (Dutch) Reformed, so offered for service, as against 179 now. inspiring an announcement as the fol. Thirty.four were accepted then, 118 lowing should need to be introduced by now." a phrase so lugubrious: "If we can get money to send them, 5 missionaries -The Universities'Mission includes expect to sail per steamer Ohina from 21 English clergy, 3 African clergy, 27 San Francisco September 27th; the laymen, 23 women, and 84 native teach. Rev. and Mrs. Harris, Miss Brokaw, ar.d ers and readers. There are 1300 adult Miss Couch go to Japan, and Miss Mor· baptized catechumens, 1071 communi. rison to China" ? cants, and 3000 day scholars.
-The United Brethren have a mis· -The Church of Scotland is repre. sion in West Africa known as the Sher. sented in the foreign field by 77 Euro.
bro·Mendi, whose beginning dates from pean missionaries, women included, 1855. Upon it $225,000 have been ex· and 314 native helpers. In 1891 the pended, and $8725 last year. The mis· baptisms numbered 1129, more than sionaries visit some 350 villages and double those of the year before, and the towns, and upward of 7000 natives have total income-was £46,124 ($230,620), the been gathered into the churches. A largest sum ever reported.
theological training school is doing -This is the jubilee year of the Free good work. Church, and in an appeal for special EUROPE. thankofferings these statements are Great Britain.-The twenty.seventh made: "Our Church has never had anniversary of the Salvation Army was such a year of ingathering in our foreign held in Exeter Hall, London, July 25th. mission work. We have seen the fields General Booth stated that they had ri pening to the harvest for many a year, nearly 11,000 officers, 6000 abroad and but in this year we have been bringing 5000 at home; that since August last in the sheaves. In Central Africa, in there had been an increase of nearly South Africa, and in the New Hebrides 1000 societies; that they had 32 weekly our mission work has been blessed and papers and 6 monthly magazines with a owned of God as it never was before; circulation of over 17,000,000 ; the num· While in India we have been able to ber of languages in which there was count our converts by the hundreds, preaching done by the officers was 24. when formerly we rejoiced in the tens. This is surely a cause for devout thank.
-Only recently John Horniman, of fulness. Nor are we alone in this har.
Croydon, made the munificent gift of a vesting. God is blessing the mission convalescent home to Worthing, Sussex, work of the whole Christian Church in England, for the public benefit; and India as it never was blessed before.
now the same generous donor has put The past year has been one of almost $100,000 in the hands of trustees, who universal rejoicing in the mission field." .
are arranging for the building and open· The Continent.-Besides their 12 ing of a Friends' Missionary Training stations in the Moskito Indian Territory, Home, more particularly for the foreign Central America, the Moravians have missionary students and prospective 14 stations among the Esquimaux of workers abroad. Greenland, Labrador, and Alaska•. 6 -Sir J. H. Kennaway, M.P., Presi. among the North American Indians in dent of the Church Missionary Society, Canada and the States, 50 among the said at the annual meeting: •• Onr or· colored population of 9 West Indian dinary income this year is £23,100 in Islands. 26 among the negroes of Brit.
excess of the year 1887, when I first ish and Dutch Guiana, 24 Ilmong the took office. In that year 82 candidates Hottentots and Kaffirs of South Africa, 3 am ong the Aborigines of Australia, and lem is urgent and alarming, but in India 3 among the Tibetans of the Himalayas. the perplexing question relates rather to They have a hospital for lepers close to the agricultural districts, with their 90 Jerusalem, and their latest enterprise is or even 95 per cent of the population.
a mission to the north of Lake Nyassa. ' The masses are found not crowded into At these 139 stations they have 31,380 cities, and not scattered upon farms, communicants and a total membership but collected in almost countless vil- of 90,544. Their home churches in lages.
Germany, the United I:!tates, and Great -An idea of the vast numbers inhab- Britain number about 21,000 communi· iting the whole of this huge peninsula cants and 30,000 members, including may be gained by considering the fact children. that in Bengal alone the census staff ASIA. employed exceeded 309,000, and the population of this single province is Turkey.-No friend of missions can 9,000,000 in excess of those inhabiting read withont deep solicitude "f the fre· the United States at the last census, quent attempts made of late by Turkish for an area oHess than one twenty-third officials to cripple and fetter the work that of the United States! of the Gospel. And so it was pleasant to read that the Secretary of State, on -The widows of India number four the receipt of a telegram from the Unit· times as many as the entire popUlation ed States Charge d'Affaires at Constan· of London. tinople, stating that the house of Dr. Bartlett, an American missionary in -In the single province of Behar there Konich, Asia Minor, had been burned, are 30,000,000 of people untouched by and that the lives of the missionaries missionary effort, and if 40,000 missionawere in danger, cabled instructions to ries were to be sent to India there would still be only one to every 50,000.
the legation to demand of Turkey effec- -An American missionary, speaking tive protection, indemnity, punishment of the unsanitary conditions in which the of the guilty parties, and reprimand of people dwell, resulting from bad water, the authorities found remiss, and also foul air, filthy food, ignorant quacks, that the cruisers Newark and Benning- etc., does not wonder that" there are ton, now on the way to Genoa, would be 500,000 lepers, that cholera carries off ordered to the vicinity of the outrage to 417,000 in a single year, that in the same support this demand. time 125,453 die of small-pox and 3,486,- -A native Albanian, Rev. G. D. 448 of fever," but thinks the marvel is Kyrias, the first man who ever pro_ that all are not smitten by deadly pesticlaimed the Gospel in the Albanian lan- lence. The British Government is guage, is preaching to his people in doing its best to mend matters by 0. Kortcha, Turkey. vast system of hospitals, dispensaries (1641), medical schools (18), etc. There -The Syrian mission of the American are 25 lunatic asylums, and 23 for Presbyterian Church has a force of 16 lepers. Vaccination is compulsory, men and 24 women; and of natives, 4 much to the horror of all devotees of ordained pastors, 41 preachers or evan- caste, and last year 5,709,462 children gelists, 172 teachers, male and female, 5 were vaccinated.
other helpers-a total of 222. Regular -The need of female education in services are held in 88 localities. In In(lia is shown by the fact that while the 89 Sunday-schools are 5433 children, there are about 18,000,000 girls of a while 192 young women are in training school-going age, a recent return made for teachers. From the mission press by the Government shows that not more 65,300 volumes issued in 1891. than 294,457 are attending school.
India.-In this country the city prob- From this it will be seen that there ill only one in ~very 61 receiving education (of whom some 575 are ordained) 58 are of any kind. The rest are simply left Germans. who also have about 1000 of to grow up in ignorance, heathenism, the 17,000 in the schools, and 2500 of and superstition. the 40,000 communicants.
-In the Marathi mission of the -The Basle mission at the end of American Board, retrenchment in some the first decade had 1 station and 2 mis- form became necessary last year, and sionaries ; at the end of the second, 4 the native preachers and teachers gave stations and 5 missionaries ; ten years up two months' salary, leaving their later, 5 stations and 14 missionaries; vork through the week for that time and fifteen years later still, 13 stations and taking whatever employment they and 5 out-stations, 37 missionaries and could find to keep out of debt. Some 90 native helpers. In twenty years the of them went into the harvest fields as Christians have increased from 668 to laborers, in order to supply their neces- 3600.
sities. Japan.-Reports from Japan indicate -In the Sialkot district (punjab) be- that about 400 people are baptized in tween 1881-91 the number of Christians the Protestant churches every month.
rose from 412 to 9711, and mostly by -The Council of Missions of the baptisms. The Scottish and American Church of Christ in Japan, composed of Presbyterians occupy this field. missionaries representing 6 Presbyte- -A. L. O. E .. the well·known writer, rian and Reformed churches-the Re- is a missionary in India, doing Zenana . formed (Dutch), German Reformed, mission work. Although more than Presbyterian. Presbyterian South, Unit..
threescore'years and ten, she goes out ed Presbyterian, and Cumberland Pres- daily to teach India's degraded and pov- byterian, and the Woman's Union Mis- erty.stricken women. sionary Society-in its fifteenth 'annual -Two Brahmans, father and son, report gives statistius which show 54 were recently received into the Baptist missionaries, 49 wives, and 51 other Church at Rangoon by Rev. F. T. women, a total of 154, aud 10,961 Whitman, who writes that Rangoon is a church-members. There are 70 theomost favorable place for work among logical students in the 5 schools for the caste people of India. There are boys and young men, and of the 120 thousands of them there, and the power pupils in the Meiji Gakuin 87 are Chrisof their caste is greatly weakened. Four tians. There are also 26 schools for have been received into the English girls, young women, and children, with Church by Mr. Whitman. J774 pupils, of whom 315 are Christians.
-According to the statistics in the China.-'I'he Rev. H. C. Knox says annual report of the Japanese mission that Chinese converts are governed by (American Board), there are 109 Congre- the law of self-sacrifice. In illustration gational churches in Japan, with a total he refers to a native bookseller, who had membership of 10,760. The number of been taken up and beaten for reading additions by confession last year was Christian books, and who, when he 1096, an increase of 56 over the precedheard that the Rev. H. S. Phillips was ing year. There are 129 preachers and alone and iu danger, walked forty miles 22 Bible women. The contributions for in order to stand by him. He had church purposes were $25,706, a gain of heard this bookseiIer, after a weary nearly $5000 over the year before.
day's labor, pleading with souls for hours until near morning. -In Korea, the" Hermit Kingdom,"
which is one of the newest of fields, -Of the 1300 missionaries in China with its 80,000 square miles and 13,000,- 000 of population, 8 societies are at work a half was represented by five genera· -the Methodist Episcopal, the Presby. tions, and during that time forty.one terian North, and South, and of Aus. congregations had been established in tralia, S. P. G., and 2 Canadian societies England, of which twenty.one-includ. -in all with 59 missionaries, of whom 22 ing the chief town congregations and are ordained, 17 are wives, 11 unmarried the settlements-were begun before women, and 5 are physicians. 1770.
AFRICA. Association for Promoting Female Education in India. – This society, -In the mission churches established which is wholly sustained by ladies, along the Congo by English and Ameri- was started in 1866 in connection witb can missionaries there are already 1500 the Society for the Propagation of the communicants. Gospel, and seeks to provide teachers -Rev. Taylor Smith, of the Church for the instruction of native women and Missionary Society and canon mis. cbildren, as well as to assist female mis· sioner of the diocese of Sierra Leone, sion schools by providing suitable in describing the changes wrought clothing and a maintenance for board. within seventy.five years, says: "There ers. Funds are raised by establishing has risen a flourishing, self.~upporting branch associations throughout the church-a church, moreover, which country and by sales of ladies' work. maintains its own missionary society. The first teacher was sent out to Mada. We have full churches. It is no uncom· gascar in 1867, which is now the centre mon thing to see from 1000 to 1400 peo· of a large and important work. Zenana ple-English.speaking Africans-in the missions have also been opened all over cathedral at Sierra Leone, and in an· India, and schools in South Africa, Ja. other church at Freetown, in which pan, and China. Lack of funds has pre. place there are !l churches. In another vented speoial medical work being at· tempted, but the teacher who has been i have counted 1000 worshippers on a stationed in Madagascar for twenty.
week.day morning; and in holy week last year there were over 1000 worship. three years spent her last holiday of a pers (everyone African) at seven o'clock. year training in a hospital, with the reo in the morning." suIt that many of the natives for miles round the station come to her for ad.
British Foreign Missions. By Rev. James vice and remedies.
Johnston, Bolton, England. Society for the Propagation of the English Moravian Synod.-At the Gospel.-There are now on tbe society's annual synod in August last at Fairfield list 672 ordained missionaries, includ· the Rev. W. Taylor, bishop of the ing 6 bishops ; in Asia, 225 ; in Africa, church and president, stated that as the 153 ; in Australia and the Pacific, 16 ; London congregation, the oldest in the in North America, 211; in the West Eritish I~les, was about to celebrate the Indies, 36; and 31 in Europe. Of third jubilee of the settlement as a con- these 127 are natives laboring in Asia gregation, the present synod might be and 35 in Africa. The various missions considered to have a jubilee character. have about 2300 lay teachers, 2600 stu· They had reason to praise God for His dents in the society's colleges, and goodness to them, especially in view 38,000 children in the mission schools of the fact that they had enjoyed the in Asia and Africa. The funds in. blessing of spiritual life and union, trusted to its stewardship for the main. and that none of their congregations tenance of this vast work amounted in had severed their connection with the the year 1891 to £116,520.
Unitas liratrum-the church of their Niger Bishopric.-It is announced spiritual forefathers, The century and from reliable quarters that the Rev. Joseph Sidney Hill is the bishop desig- and evangelists, increase, 55 per cent; nate of the Niger to succeed the late 2057 local preachers, increase, 57 per Bishop Crowther. Mr. Hill was trained cent; 33,523 church-members, increase, at the Church Missionary College, 611 per cent; on trial, 12,231, increase, Islington, and served as a missionary 36* per cent; 337 day schools, increase, at Lagos from 1876 to 1878; was sta- 29 per cent; 20,845 day scholars, in- tioned at Wairoa, New Zealand, from crease, 42t per cent; 380 Sunday- 1878 to 1883 ; acted as prison chaplain schools, increase, 50 per cent; 24,959 at Auckland from 1883 to 1890, and for Sunday scholars, increase, 42 per cent.
the last two years has been engaged at The adherents number 135,000, and home on the staff of the Church Paro- the missionary income has grown from chial Mission. Mr. Hill had previously £1500 to between £5000 to £6000.
been enrolled by the society for work At the English Wesleyan Conference on the Niger, and will now at .the arch- last July it was resolved that one of bishop's request proceed immediately the secretaries should visit and spend to the Niger as his commissary to make several months in India during the en- inquiry, to the fullest extent, as to the suing autumn and winter, when the attitude of the native pastors, and on Decennial General Conference of Indian the basis of his report an arrangement missionaries of all Protestant Churches will be made which will satisfy, it is will be held, and also the triennial meet- hoped, the aspirations of the native ing of the society's missionaries. The church. To the difficulties which so financial statement showed that the long beset the Niger Mission the arch- total income was £125.129, and the ex- bishop has given great attention, and it cess of expenditure over income, £4068.
is believed that he will be able to effect To the foreign stations the principal a solution. payments for the past year ",ere: Sierra Leone.-According to custom, Europe, £26,848; Ceylon and Contithe bishop (Dr. Ingham) has arrived in nental India, £34,005; China, £6320; England for his six months' furlough, South Africa, £15,681 ; Western Africa, and is seeking opportunities to plead £6529 ; and West Indies, £7462.
for the pressing needs of the Diocesan Uganda.-The latest letters from Fund. The ordinary departments of Uganda, of date January 31st, come from church organization are actively at the Rev. G. K. Baskerville, an intrepid work, and lately a technical school has young missionary who went out to been established with a view of bene- Africa in 1890. He was in the capital fiting the natives of West Africa. The of Uganda all through the recent fighttask is admittedly a hard one, but a ing, and his communications give the good beginning has been made. Re- first detailed accounts of the unhappy cently the bishop's wife has founded a feuds. It seems that Mwanga has escottage hospital, and these two efforts caped from the Catholic party and atwill tax his resources for some time to tached himself to the Protestants. AIcome. If the bishop carries success in , though the fighting has ceased, private the former department of service he sources of information state that there will have done something toward solv- is much anxiety in official circles as to ing one of the trying problems of Afri- the events of the next four months.
can missionary work. Bishop Tucker, who had been in the South African Wesleyan Metho- neighborhood of Chagga, has now Bet dist Church.-Formally organized on out for Uganda in order that he may its separation from the British mis- advise the missionaries and share with sionary society ten years ago, it has to- them the difficulties of the situation.
day 493 churches, an increase of 60 per Very strongly does the bishop deny the cent on the ten years; 274 ministers charges of the German press, which aeouses British missionaries in Kilima necessary result there has been neither Njaro of selling rifles and ammunition uniformity in practice nor in prin.
to the Moshi. The bishop declares ciple.
that no arms have been sent either to London Missionary Society.-At the mission or to the Moshi from the the request of the directors the Rev. British sphere, whereas the sale of am- R. Wardlaw Thompson, foreign seoremunition in German territory, notwith- tary, will shortly sail for Capetown to standing the Government monopoly, is visit the South African churches and praotically unlimited. stations in the oapacity of special com· Nyassaland.-Commissioner John- missioner. Fresh offers of service for ston's di.spatches touching the suppres. foreign work oontinue to be made by sion of slave-raiding in that region re- English Congregational ministers.
late the oircumstanoes attending the Among the latest names are those of death of Captain Maguire, who wall in Horace H. Theobald, of Kirkham, Lan.
command of the Indian contingent of cashire, and W. Thomas, of Waterhead, the British Central African polioe force, Oldham. Both ministers have relin.
and was shot after leading a gallant at- quished successful pastorates. The tack on a number of slave dhows, and Rev. G. W. Watson, of Wollerton, of Dr. Boyoe and Mr. MacEwan, the Salop, who has completed a ten years'
engineer, while negotiating with the ministry, has been accepted by the enemy for the recovery of Captain Ma- directors, and will prooeed to his ap· guire's body. On April 8th Mr. John- pointment as a teacher in the High ston reported that things were very School at Madras.
satisfaotory on Lake Nyassa, and asks Bishop .Tohn Selwyn's See of Mela.
that the German and Portuguese Gov- nesia, which he has vaoated through ernments be requested to take such ill-health after fifteen years' servioe.
ilteps as to prevent the slave·hunters has been offered to the Rev. Alfred from obtaining supplies of ammunition Penny, vicar of Tunstall, Staffordshire.
from German or Portuguese souroes; -Bishop Smythies of the Universities and such steps have been promptly Mission is regaining strength by his taken. furlough to England, and has reoently occupied one of the cathedral pulpits. An African Council.-In British official quarters there are rumors of the establishment of an African Council on Monthly Bulletin.
lines somewhat similar to that of the -The Divinity School of Yale Uniexisting Indian Council. In recent versity has set on foot a scheme to esyears African affairs have assumed tablish a library of modern missions, to growing importance, requiring the Eng- embrace history, biography, annual relish Government to devote more atten. ports and periodicals, as well as books tion to questions respeoting the" Dark prepared by missionaries for the use of Continent." So enormously have ques. the natives. Professor Day has this tions of civilization and rule oome to important matter in hand. the front, it is felt that the time has arrived when the whole question of -The M'!'ssionary Herald oalls on the England's relations with the native children to supply another and much.
raoes and vast areas, especially those needed Morning Star for work in the under her own influence, demands reo Pacific Ocean, to be called the Hiram oonsideration. It is well known that Bingham, after the missionary who is hitherto British policy in Africa has said to be the first man to reduce to been dictated by the exigencies of the writing a language before unknown, moment and the supposed special reo and then to translate into iit the entire 9,uirements of each sphere j and as a Bible. The call is for $5000. -The punishment of iniquity at India.-It is Dr. Pentecost who de- home is helpful to the Gospel in heathen clares : "You can pick out the children lands. So it is fitting to note that the of the Christian native from those of last of the ballot box stuffers in Jersey the heathen while they are playing to- City have been sentenced. Originally gether in the flame village street. The there were sixty-seven persons indicted Christian children are better clothed, for this crime. All but seven have been better fed, brighter in face, and cheerier tried. Two of these are dead, one is in in manner than those of the heathen."
the insane asylum, one fled to foreign -Ah, the curse of caste! A missionparts, and three the district attorney did ary at Lodiana was preaching to a quiet not think should be tried. audience of Hindus, when a fakir came upon the scene, and became noisy and -Max Limon, until lately a rich abusive. Standing close to the misbanker of Kiev, Russia, recently exiled sionary and gesticulating, by an acciby the Czar's edict against Hebrews, is dent he happened to touch the missionworking in the stock-room of a Chicago ary, when he suddenly stopped, spat clothing house for a weekly salary of on the ground, and with a look of the $7. At one time his fortune amounted utmost disgust, as if he had touched to almost $500,000.
-Mr. Joseph Arbely, a native of some loathsome thing, stooped down Syria, and a graduate of tile Syrian and rubbed his finger in the dust. Then Protestant College at Beirut, has started turning to the crowd he said, " These in New York City a weekly paper in people eat pigs and cows, and they are the Arabic language for the thousands not fit to preach." Then he walked of Arabic·speaking people now in the away, most of the audience following, United States. The title of the paper with exclamations of horror at such de- is the Kankob America (or Slar of Ameri- pravity.
ca). -Whose heart is not touched by the story of the blind man who walked all -Mr. Mellin, a Portuguese lay mis- the way from Lhassa, at least 1000 sionary at Madeira, was arrested and miles, in the hope that Dr. Marx could tried for expounding the Scriptures and remove the cataract and give him sight! singing a hymn at a Protestant funeral When he arrived within a day or two in the Portuguese cemetery on All Souls' of Leh, he heard that the medical mis- Day, when it was crowded with Roman sionary was dead. Sorrowfully he Catholics. A clever lawyer succeeded turned and travelled home again, all in obtaining his acquittal on the ground those thousand miles, over mountain that the service was not an act of public passes and plateaux; averaging 15,000 worship, inasmuoh as Mr. Mellin was feet above the sea. not an ordained pastor. Twelve years' banishment from the islands would have -Mr. Dadabhai Naoroji, lately electbeen the punishment. ed to a seat in Parliament, is a native Indian, and was born in Bombay, 'the Palestine.-The number of blind per- son of a Parsee priest, and was edu. sons in the East is large. There are cated at the Elphinstone Institution, mission schools for them at Beirut, later becoming It professor of mathe- Damascus and Tyre. Blind Scripture- matics and natural philosophy. He readers have the entree of Moslem homes, went to England in 1855, and since was a privilege which blindness confers.
-The Presbyterian reports that Jeru- for years prime minister in the native salem has 135 places where liquor is State of Baroda.
sold, and the license fees, which last -The Gaekwar of Baroda, now trav- year amounted to $2,292, are sent to elling in Europe, before leaving his own constantinople, dominions, gave orders to his dewan to open ten boarding-schools for the sons work extends nearly seventy miles of low-caste people in his territory. northward into the province of Chihli, -The Methodist Episcopal Church is and nearly as far west, and the patients reported as preaching and teaching the who are treated in the hospital have Gospel in India and other parts of Asia come from no less than 1031 villages. in thirteen different languages, and as During the past year 5116 persons have having 29,000 native pupils in India. It been treated, and during ten years no has also established missionary publish- less than 38,306.
ing houses, and from its own presses is -Dr. Hunter Corbett writes from sending out missionary pamphlets and Chufoo, China, that ten men of fine periodicals in nine different languages. education and much promise will soon -There are 330 Bible women taking have completed the course of study in the Scriptures into the Zenanas of the normal school. They will go out, India. t~o by two, to preach at markets and from village to village, on salaries of -At a public meeting in Edinburgh about $50 per year each. Thousands in connection with the Zenana Mission, hear the Gospel at the markets and inns it was stated by Miss Hogg, of Old Cala- and by the wayside. Sometimes 8S bar, that one of the difficulties in her many as five or six men preach at the mission was the love of dress on the same large market. part of the converts, and their insubordination to their Christian husbands. -The Rev. Dr. Mackay writes from The women wanted silks, satins, and vel- Formosa of a wholesale turning from vets, and instead of doing as they were idolatry. By unanimous vote the peobid, as they formerly had to do in the ple of Ka-le-oan handed over a heathen harems, they now had their say in temple for Christian service, and nearly everything. 500 cleared their houses of idols, and a great bonfire was made of the rejected Ohina.-At a banquet recently given gods.
by Li Hung Chang, at which many for- -Dr. Griffith John writes from Haneigners were present, the statesman's kow, China, to the Ohristian World, givson, speaking in English for his father, ing the welcome news that Chan Han, praised Western civilization, and espe- the leader of the recent anti-foreign and cially Western medical science, stating anti-Christian movement in Hunan, that a foreign physician had recently has been deposed from his government saved his life. position by an imperial edict, cashiered, -The Norwegian Evangelical Lu- sent to his home and placed under the theran China Missil:m Society was organ- surveillance of local officials.
ized June 11th, 1890, and already has Japan.-The chapel of the Doshisha twelve missionaries in China. It works College of the American Board's Kyoto in association with the China Inland Mission is filled every Sunday morning Mission. Its headquarters are at Han- by from 500 to 700 young men and kow, on the Yangtse River. women, students in the college and -Rev. David Hill, missionary in girls' schools. This college graduated China, though born to wealth, has this year 83 students, the laq;est num- cheerfully supported himself for twenty- ber on record_ eight years. His brother, a magistrate -Rev. C. S. Eby, a Canadian Methin York, has contributed nobly to the odist missionary, recently gave an exwork, and now his son has gone to labor hibition of stereopticon views at the in the same field. palace in Tokyo, and received in ac· -The report of the Williams Hospital, knowledgment therefor a choice silver at Pang-Chuang, for 1890, states that its cup from His Majesty the Emperor.
The Missionary Review of the World — August 1892
FATHER ANGELICO OF POLLINA
MISSIONARY REVIEW OF THE WORLD.
VOL. XV. No. S.-Old Series.–AUGUST.–VOL. V. No. S.-New Series.
FATHER ANGELICO OF POLLINA.
BY ARTURO MUSTON, PALERMO, ITALY.
Father Angelico was born in the year 1866 in Pollina, Sicily, a small village containing about 3000 inhabitants, in the province of Palermo and the neighborhood of Cefalu, where the celebrated cathedral built by King Roger in 1145 still attracts admiration for its majestic Norman style and precious mosaics. Though Pollina is said to stand on the ruins of tho ancient and famous ApoUonia, ih is at the present time a poor, dirty place, and its people merely peasants. "Can any good thing come out of Pollina 1"
Giuseppe Collosi-the real name of Father Angelico-is the son of a miller there, and was sent to school, going through the elementary classes in Pollina. Then he helped his father in country work, but, at the age of sixteen, his mother, who is a strong Romanist, superioress of a confraternity, sent him to Castelbruno, under the pretext of pursuing his studies in the Convent of the Capuchins, but with the real intention of making him a monk. Giuseppe felt no attraction to the .monastic life, and begged his parents to let him stay at home. But his mother told him, that if he would not enter an order, his home would be closed against him. On May 8th, 1884, he put on the sacred habit as a novice. This was in open contradiction to the Italian law, which forbids the increase of monastic orders. Nine months after, the chief of police in the place entered the convent with the gendarmes, to ascertain if there were only students boarding there (as the monks said) or real novices. The Fathers tried to evade the questions, but, bemg found out, all the novices were sent out. The Superior, for his false statement and for having no diploma or permission to teach, was fined 500 francs, with five days' imprisonment. Giuseppe, much frightened at first, because he expected to be imprisoned also, felt very happy when he knew he was free to go home. But his mother, fearing that if he once took off the monastic dress he would not put it on again, compelled him to hide himself in the house of ~ friend, who had a son in the same condition. Every week, secretly, the (J.uardian went to confess them j and after two months an order came from the GeneIal in Rome to send these youths to the Convent of Sortino, in the province of Syracuse.
Here began for our young friend the thrilling conflict between his conscience and the monastic rules. He was to be reduced to the condition of a corpse in the hands of his superiors, one of whom, the" Provinciale," was especially stern and severe; he had to learn the hypocritical appearance of piety, and to begin by showing himself humble and submissive. His eyes were always to be down to the ground j for raising them he was immediately punished with the" straccio," which is a band going round the head and covering the eyes. For hours and hours, ~ven when going out, he had to wear it j to speak to a !luperior, even to ask permission to drink a little water, he had to kneel down and kiss the floor, remaining in that position until he was allowed to move.
Although they thus moulded his outward man into a good novice, he felt in his heart, more strongly than ever, a repulsion to lIuch a life. But where was he t6 go? what was he to do ~ Having taken there the" voti semplici," he was sent to the Convent of Gibilmania to study philosophy. A year passed when he was called, according to our civil laws, to go through the various forms of military service. He felt the greatest pleasure in bidding good-by to the convent and dressing himself once more as a man, hoping never again to enter those horrid walls. But his bther being seventy years of age, his son was not permitted, according to Italian law, to enlist. He tried to enter the gendarmes brigade, but his parents prevented him and brollght him back to the convent. Being a clever fellow and studying well, in order to bin-d him down they gave him minor orders (August 21st, 1887), and a year after (September 9th, 1888) he made the solemn profession in Gibilmania, and was received as a regular friar, assuming the name of "Father Angelico." His superiors wanted to confer on him also the higher order of the priesthood, that he might celebrate mass and earn money for the convent. He was then allowed to go home for a little holiday. He tried to have himself transferred to the secular clergy so as not to g@ back to the convent, but an order came for him to start immediately for Catania, under threat of suspension "a divinis" (that is to say, prohibition to celebrate mass, etc.) if he did not obey. He was therefore obliged to leave Pollina, and go to Catania.
In the Convent of Catania began the interesting part of his life, for here doubts began to assail him regarding the various dogmas of the Romish Church. He knew nothing of the Gospel and evangelical religion, yet his own intelligence and common-sense rebelled against the supremacy of the Pope, his infallibility, the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin, and he had strong doubts about the power of the priest in transubstantiation and in confession. As he put questions and made objections, they considered him a heretic, and his lecturer and professors reported him to the " Provinciale," who compelled him to remain hours on his knees, repeating the Miserere, and scourging himself with a leather thong called the "dis- ciplina. " It is easy to understand that the flagellation was not an adequate answer to his doubts, and would not dispel them. About that time they made him study ethics, giving him as text-book the celebrated" Speculum Vitre Humanre" (the mirror of human life), by the Spanish bishop, Rodrigo Saurio di Sanchez. It is a guide to the confessor. This scandalous book is the worst teacher of immorality. It is so vile that the lecturer himself did not read the lesson aloud, but said to his pupils, " You will read from such and such a page in your cell, but, to keep the devil from tempting you, you will read it kneeling down!" A new discovery, surely, that it doet! not hurt a ~an to drink poison on his knees, though it would were he standing or sitting !
Our friend was disgusted and shocked. He said openly to his superior that he could never put such questions to those who came to confess to him. He was called "Protestant," and had to recite more Misereres, with tbe scourging. He was known in the convent as an inquirer, and a man of independent mind also. One day a lay friar, Fra Carmelo, secretly took him into his cell, and began to speak of "the Protestant people" who were in Catania; he said he knew the Waldensian minister, an ex-priest, Signor Bellecci, and went on to explain what the Evangelicals believe. He concluded by handing him a Bible, translated by Diodati.
Father Angelico accepted it with eager interest, and read it, comparing it with Martini's translation; he was struck with the untruthfulness of the accusation that Diodati had falsified the text. Although he knew his Latin Bible well, and had read it often, he could find no text which prohibited the reading of it in a spoken language. The reading of Diodati aroused stronger doubts than ever, and not finding the truth in Rome, he would have found it (being led by the Word) in Christ, had not Father Giuseppe, from Nicosia, discovered him and reported him to the Guardian and "Provinciale." For three days he was kept on bread and water, wearing the " libano" (a rope made with a kind of long grass) round his neck, and a crown of thorns on his head. Of conrse, he was more closely watched than ever, and the monks tried to blot out all impression by calumniating the Protestants, and especially Signor Bellecci, upon whose character they poured all the ink of the convent. . The Bible was confiscated, and subsequently burned with special ceremonies in presence of the monks assembled for the occasion. This triumph of the devil was the forerunner of a cruel deception for those hypocritical fanatics.
Father Angelico, although they were very kind to him, was most unhappy. All the kindness of the nuns of a convent in the neighborhood where he was to say mass could not check his disgust; they used to send him quantities of sweetmeats (the sisters in Italian convents are celebrated for their skill in preparing sweets, liqueurs, etc., and they sell an enormous amount of these first-fruits of their piety every year) ; besides, he received presents of beautiful embroidery from the same nuns, who had special sympathy with the Capuchins.
The Guardian had conferred on him the honorable title of " Discreto,"
which means his confidant, and promised that the following winter (1890-91) he should be appointed lecturer on theology in the Seminary of Messina.
All this while Father Angelico desired to visit Signor Bellecci, the Waldensian pastor in Catania; but he was watched (shadowed), and, as opposite Bellecci' 8 dwelling there was a house belonging to the Guardian, Father Spina, he was greatly perplexed how to manage it. One day he decided to go, but was caught and taken to the convent, where he had to undergo severe punishment.
The rules and regulations of the Capuchins allow the monks to go back once a year for a few days to their homa j and on July 27th, 1890, Father Angelico left Catania for Pollina. On the way he stopped in Cefalu, where the bishop, knowing his case, tried to allure him by promising to speak for him that he might be transferred to the secular clergy. He did, in fact, write to Rome, but the answer was in the negative. The bishop, nevertheless, appointed Father Angelico vice-curate in Pollina and kept him there several months in that office, although his Provinciale had suspended him " a divinis !" – Father Angelico's state of mind was most critical. He was more and more dissatisfied with Romanism, having before his eyes the abominable behavior of the priest of Pollina j therefore, although the PlOvinciale promised him a welcome at the convent, and urged him to go back there, while his mother pressed him to resume the monastic life, he felt less inclined than ever to obey them. He had in this manner spent more than four months in Pollina, when he came to the decision to write to Signor Bellecci, since he had always been prevented seeing him. Signor Bellecci, in December last, answered him, giving him direction and encouragement, and advising him to address himself to me, the Waldensian pastor in Palermo. The letters were opened in the post-office of Pollina, and the priests informed of their contents, so that a second stronger suspension fell on the head of Father Angelico on December 23d, 1890.
At length, on January lOth, 1891, Father Angelico called on me in Palermo, asking earnestly to be delivered from his unhappy position. I had an opportunity of speaking to his heart and conscience, and, as I bade him good-by, I insisted on his giving the proofs of his earnestness and sincerity by leaving everything for Christ, and providing for his own living. He took with him some books I gave him to help him in the study of the Holy Scriptures. We continued to write to each other, I doing my best to lead him in the path of righteousness. He tried to get an appointment as a teacher, but Pollina being divided into two parties, and his father belonging to the one which had been defeated in the last election, he could not succeed in obtaining anything. Meantime, he was seized with influenza and laid up for a month, in which he suffered much, because his mother, bigoted and hard-hearted woman, would not nurse him, but constantly reviled him as a heretic, and threatened to turn him out. So, when he began to recover, she refused to light a fire or prepare food in the house as long as he was there. She grossly insulted, and even attempted to beat him. In this extremity, that he might not rebel or cause any more disturbance, he left his home, and immediately his mother had it sprinkled three times with holy water! The poor, ignorant woman declared that her son was possessed by the devil, and was becoming a " Negromante."
Father Angelico came to Palermo, straight to me, last April, declaring his sad Case. An ex· deputy of Levante had offered to help him in opening a shop if only he would have nothing to do with the Protestants, and he was ready to advance 20,000 francs for it. Here, in Palermo, a lawyer, an ex-provincial deputy, promised him that if he would remain a priest, he would guarantee him so many masses. They also tried to speak to him in the name of the archbishop, but his decision was made, and nothing could change him. He courageously came publicly to our meetings, dressed as a. monk, and numbers of priests running after him. A monk of his order stopped him, and tried to take him to the convent, but left him when he had received the answer, "I follow my conscience, and you yours; we will both have to answer before God for it." I felt very much perplexed, however. I had cherished the hope that Father Angelico would find a situation, and then we could have looked after him. But had I a right to arrange beforehand what God in His providence would do 1 Would I be justified in abandoning a sonl who is striving against the darkness and longing for light 1 I put it all before the All-wise and All-powerful One, and stretched out a brotherly hand to Father Angelico. As I noticed from the beginning that he was a clever fellow, gifted with clear intellect and a good memory, I thought that perhaps God could make him useful in His service; and I hope he may be able to take his diploma as a Latin professor, and that he may become a powerful evangelist. With this object in view, my friend and colleague, Signor Bassanelli, and I give him every day a regular course of instruction in evangelical doctrine, in which he shows himself really most intelligent. But, while we feed his soul, heart, and brain, his body also needs food and clothing. Will not some Christian heart join us in this work, which is not charity to a man only, but for the glory of God ~ May the Master Himself choose some co-operator among His disciples!
[The preceding paper is reprinted from A Voice from Italy, in order that our readers may have an opportunity to become acquainted with the life of one who has been led of the Spirit from the darkness of Romanism into the light of the pUfer Gospel of Christ. We hope and believe that it wiII cause many to feel a keener interest in the work which is being carried on in Italy and other Papal lands where efforts are being put forth to dispel the dark clouds of superstition and break the bonds of priest-rule which are upon Papal Europe.-ED.]
BONIFACE, "THE APOSTLE OF GERMANY."
BONIFACE, "THE APOSTLE OF GERMANY." BY REV. HENRY GRACEY, ST. ANDREW'S MANSE, GANANOQUE, CAN.
In an article in THE MISSIONARY REVIEW (August, 1891) a brief account was given of early mission efforts among the Germans. These were con- ducted for the most part by zealous men from Ireland, who by their self- denying labors gave proof of the devotion and piety which in the sixth and seventh centuries characterized the Irish Church. By the methods then in vogue-teaching as best they could, founding monasteries, clearing the forest, and cultivating the soil-these missionaries tried to induce the people to give up their rude and violent life, embrace Christianity instead of idolatry, live in peace one with another, and forsaking th4lir cruelties and vagrant habits, adopt the customs and practices of a higher civiliza- tion.
These mission enterprises were not directly under the control of the Bishop of Rome; nor were the doctrinal views and practices of the mis- sionaries in accord with the great Latin system, which was rapidly extend- ing its influence and control over all branches of the Church, and speedily developing that eentralir.'.ed government destined to play such a prominent part in the affairs of Europe in the succeeding centuries. '
We purpose giving in this article a brief account of the establishment of Roman ecclesiasticism in Germany in the eighth eentury, and of the man who was the agent in bringing this result about, Boniface, the Apostle of Germany, as he has been called; and as we learn the story of this undertaking and compare it with what had been hitherto done, we are impressed with the advantage resulting from organized effort, from effort aiming at some definite end; and of individual effort backed up by powerful sympathy and assistance from the main body of Christianity. And how- ever we may be disposed to question the methods sometimes followed or to dispute the positions sometimes taken, we may yet learn from this story a useful lesson regarding what is necessary to make modern missions suc- cessful-namely, unity of aim and of action among t.he several branches of the Christian Church which are carrying on work in the foreign field; and a strong feeling of sympathy in the whole body at home with the work abroad, which sympathy must show itself in practical support and assistance wherever needed.
Boniface, whose original name was Winnifred or Winfred, was born about A.D. 680 in Kirton, Devonshire, Eng. Very early he showed a . strong leaning toward a monastic life. His father at first opposed this, but finally gave way to his son's eager desire. Young Winfred entered a convent in Exeter, where he received his early clerical education, and where he distinguished himself by his aptitude and diligence. He was noted for prudence and administrative ability to such a d~gree that when still quite young he was chosen by his convent as their agent in difficult cases. He became much interested in mission work, which was then a common ten- dency among devout young men in England and Ireland, anrl. resolved that he would devote himself to the eonvert;ion of the pagans.
In 715, when thirty-five years of age, he set out for Friesland, where he hoped to do something for the ignorant people of that country; but as Radbod the king was then at war with Charles Martel, major dorno of the French palace, the state of the country was so unfavorable that he was compelled to retire without accomplishing anything. He returned to his convent in England, where the monks of his cloister were anxious to make him their abbot; but he declined the office, preferring Bome position demanding greater activity.
Still cherishing the desire to be a missionary, he conceived a plan of procedure which ho thought more likely to be successful than the one he had already tried, or those upon which so many of his fellow-countrymen had carried on their missionary labors hitherto. He accordingly applied ' to his friend, Daniel, Bishop of Winchester, for a letter of introduction to the Pope. Armed with this epistle, he made a pilgrimage to Rome in 718; was introduced to Gregory II.; laid before him his purpose, and solicited his sanction and support.
The Pope readily approved his undertaking, and commissioned him to preach the Gospel to the pagan nations of Germany. He started on his mission, and began work in Thuringia; but he soon found that he could not accomplish much without the support of France, to which a large part of Thuringia was subject. He went accordingly to the French court; had an interview with Charles Martel, who was the practical ruler of France; laid before him his scheme, and Bhowed him the Pope's sanction and commission. What the immediate result of this appeal to Charles Martel was does not appear j but it shows us the determination of Boniface to succeed, and the comprehensive view that he took of the situation. He was a man of res.Qurce. He had the genius to contrive and the resolution to execute. About this time Radbod, King of Friesland, a resolute enemy of Christianity, died, and Boniface at once went back to that field to try again to get a footing there. Willibrord, Bishop of Utrecht, was so favorably impressed with him that he wished to make him his successor. This honor, however, he declined, being strongly of the opinion that it was his mission to carry the Gospel to the Germans. This conviction shaped itself before his mind in the form of a dream, in which he heard a call to go to Germany, and was assured of success in his enterprise. Accordingly, in 722 he went into Hessia, where he was encouraged by the early conversion of two native princes. There he founded a monastery and continued his labors for some time with varying snccess, being hindered a great deal by the prevalence of wars with the neighboriug Saxons.
In 723, in obedience to a call from the Pope, he visited Rome a second time, when Gregory II. consecrated him bishop over the district in which he was laboring; but befl)Tc he was consecrated he was required to, take the oath of allegiance to the Roman See. At the tomb of Peter he made a declaration of the following kind : " I promise thee, the first of the apostles, and thy representative, Pope Gregory II. and his successors, that with God's help I will abide in the unity of the Catholic Church j that I will in no manner agree with anything contrary to the unity of the Catholic Church j and whenever I find that the conduct of the presiding officers of churches contradicts the ancient decrees and ordinances of the fathers, I will have no fellowship or communion with them j but, on the contrary, if I can hinder them I will hinder them, and if not, I will report them faithfully to the Pope."
These latter clauses were designed to check, as far as the influence of .
Boniface could check, the progress of independent missions in Germany, and to bring all under the one central control.
This oath told powerfully upon the organization of the German Church.
Boniface was a man of wonderful integrity, nacrow in his views, but strong in his convictions, and disposed to give a literal interpretation to his instructions. The Pope of Rome never consecrated a man more devoted to his interests or more determined to carry out faithfully what was en- joined upon him. He was just the agent for the time and the place so far as the interests of the Roman See were concerned. The mission work done hitherto among the Germans had not been favorable to the imperialism of Rome. Those Irish missionaries had shown too much independence and too little regard for the peculiar doctrines and practices of the Latin Church. To secure, then, the establishment of the papal power over Europe, it was most necessary that the work of bringing in the pagan tribes should be carried on under Roman auspices and in accordance with Roman methods. To have a rival system spread through Germany was very repugnant to the prevailing sentiments of the Italian Church. Boniface was accordingly bound by the solemnities of an oath to use every means to stamp out this dangeroU!;' leaven, and substitute in its place the ecclesiasti- cism that had taken such deep root in southern and western Europe. The result showed the advantage that organization, system, centralization has in a great enterprise over desultory methods and disjointed machinery; and the method in which this old-time missionary undertaking was carried on has in it a lesson for us in this nineteenth century. If wise plans, judicious management, broad and statesmanlike methods are able to carry the worse cause to a successful issue over the better, surely these same means would redound to the great advantage of the truth and the pure Gospel if we would apply them on its behalf. To-day a missionary spirit pervades the Church as never before. The opportunity is granted her as never before j but the disjointed and sectional method in which the great Protestant family is working puts it at a disadvantage in the great enter- prise. We are overlapping each other, and so wasting men and means.
We are presenting a broken front to the heathen, and so suggesting to thero the idea that we are not sure among ourselves what we believe j land working individually and separately we cannot work upon any wide· reaching plan. The need of our age for success on the foreign field is harmony, co-operation, and a united front before the heathen.
After his consecration in 1723 Boniface returned to his field of labor. His mission was not only to gather in the paganil, but also, and probably chiefly, to bring into obedience to Rome those among the German tribes who had already embraced Christianity. The question was whether a free Christian de-elopment should get a foothold in Germany, or the Roman hierarchy should rule there with a rod of iron as elsewhere. The latter alternative prevailed, and Boniface was the man who by his energy, his devotion to the Pope, his constructive and executive ability, and his unswerving purpose brought about this far-reaching result.
During the lifetime of Charles Martel, Boniface had the assistance which his countenance and protection gave. There is no evidence that he ever employed the authority of the French ruler to compel the people to accept baptism j but he did use it to maintaiu his authority in advancing education, maintaining discipline, and removing idolatry. This latter he made an important point. He suppressed idolatry with a strong hand. The overthrow of pagan rites and the substitution for them of Christian ceremonies were prominent in his method of dealing with pagan peoples. Illustrating his method; the following story is told: At Geismar, in Hessia, there stood a gigantic oak sacred to Thor. It was regarded by the people with feelings of awe, and was a popular rallying-point for idolatrous rites. For a long time it hindered the progress of the Gospel. Boniface determined to bring the matter to a crisis by destroying the oak. So one day, accompanied by several of his associates, he proceeded to the spot with an axe, and began to hew down the sacred tree. The people expected to see him smitten for his temerity, but when no harm came to him, and at length the oak fell, the people became ashamed of their superstition. He ordered the timber of the tree to be used for the erection of a chapel in which to worship God, and so he put an end to that piece of idolatry.
But if he overthrew one kind of superstition and one form of idolatry, he introduced another which developed into practices almost as debasing. When Boniface was consecrated Bishop of Germany he brought with him from Rome a large stock of relics to be used for the promotion of piety among the people. On a later occasion another Pope, Gregory III., sent him a fresh supply when he was created archbishop, so that idolatry was not eradicated wholly; only the grosser forms practised among a rude people were changed for the not less sensuous forms which had received the sanction of the Bishop of Rome.
This method of teacbing the people was in entire harmony with the spirit of that age. Mosheim says, " The whole religion or piety of this and of some subsequent centuries consisted in founding, enriching, embellishing, and enlarging churches and chapels, in hunting after and venerating the relics of holy men, in securing the patronage of saints with God by means of gifts and superstitious rites and ceremonies, in worshipping the images and statues of saints, in performing pilgrimages to holy places, and in other similar practices."
The religious exercises introduced into Germany were in accord with these prevailing views and practices. However, Boniface did not neglect instruction, such as was considered necessary in that age. "That he himself studied the Scriptures may be inferred from the fact that he often imported from England copies of the same, together with expository works, fairly written on account of his weak eyes. There are still extant a few fragments of discourses preached by Boniface, probably after being trans- lated into the langnage of the country." With a view to the instruction of the people he founded monasteries in central spots of the tribes, whence proceeded the culture of the people as well as practical lessons in reclaiming the wilderness. Many monks and nuns from England came over to him when his work had attracted attention and his fame had spread abroad. These he employed as teachers of the people; and they spread among the rude inhabitants of these districts, as far as they could, a knowledge of the various arts and sciences, together with religious instruction. It is apparent that stress was laid on instruction from some of his ordinances; for example, it was directed that no man or woman should stand in the relation of godfather or godmother unless he or she knew by heart the Creed and the Lord's Prayer j that no person should be appointed priest who could not repeat the form of renunciation at baptism, and the confes- sion of sins in the language of the country.
The success of Boniface was very great. He labored with great zeal for the conversion of the people. It is said that up to 739-that is, in about sixteen years-he had baptized nearly one hundred thousand pagan inhabitants of Germany. This was effected, it is said, " by his exertions . and those of Charles Martel." How far the authority a.nd influence of the soldier went in these conversions does not appear; but no doubt the knowledge that he desired and approved the conversion of the people would have not a little effect in making the preacher's appeal successful. Of course where great masses of people are brought into the Church there is much that is superficial j and a great deal depends upon the after dealing with the converts. Boniface exerted himself to destroy the old forms of idolatry, and every monument that spoke to the senses of the old heathen religion. He also labored to give the people some instruction by preaching and by the schools connected with the monasteries.
In 732 Boniface was made archbishop, but without as yet a metropolis. On the death of Raginfred, Bishop of Cologne, in 744, Boniface was anxious to make that the mctropolis. This proposition, however, was not approved; but a little later Boniface was made Archbishop of Mentz. After he was made archbishop the Pope appointed him his legate to visit the Bavarian Church, which had not yet received any permanent organiza- tion. Thh duty he discharged in 739, when he gpent some time in Bavaria, and founded under the papal authority the four bishoprics of Salzburg, Regensburg, Freisingen, and Passau.
During the life of Charles Martel Boniface had received countenance and protection from him that was of great advantage to the missionary laboring among a rude and uncivilized people, who respected might more than right; and in most of his undertakings Martel supported Boniface. Yet the rough warrior had ways of hi~ own that sometimes discouraged the bishop. Boniface forbade the clergy to take any part in war. Martel was in favor of their doing so. The bi~hop, of course, maintained that all Church property was sacred, and could not be diverted to secular uses. The soldier did not hesitate to sequester at will the property of churches and convents. Boniface was eager to crush all independence among Christian teachers within the limits of his jurisdiction, and compel all, from whatever quarter they came, to acknowledge the authority of the Pope as represented by himself, and accept without question Romish doctrines and practices. Martel was not in favor of this. He did not desire the Pope to have such decided preponderance; and hence he would not give 'his consent to violent proceedings against worthy men, whose only fault was some degree of independence in religious views and practices. This disposition on the part of so powerful a friend prevented Boniface from going as fast and as far as he would like in the work of subjugating all to the Pope.
But when Martel died, in 741, his sons, Carloman and Pepin, were far more ready to join with the zealous bishop in his schemes, of reform. Accordingly we find Boniface after this proceeding against certain parties on the ground of heresy. The accounts of these cases that have come down do not enable us to form a very accurate idea of their merits. Of course we have only one side of their case. Boniface carried his point against most of his adversaries; but the hesitation shown by Pope Zacharias in confirming the sentences, and his request that the parties should be sent to Rome for a second hearing, and the fact that one person deposed from the bishopric by Boniface was upon a hearing before Zacharias restored to the office with another see, show that the Bishop of Germany exhibited a zeal that was considered at Rome extreme-that he was mOle devoted to the papacy than the Pope himself. However, great consideration was shown to the views and opinions of Boniface, being very properly regarded as one of the greatest men of that age and one of the most loyal to the Church.
Boniface exerted himself to establish regular provincial synods in the region over which he had control. These synods had been utterly neglected. In the Frankish Church none had been held for a period of eighty years; but with the sanction of Carloman, and indeed at his request, Boniface called a synod, and through it took preventive measures against the lamentable abuses that had crept into the adminbtration of Church affairs. In connection with this Rubject it may be mentioned that" Pope Zacharias had expressly clothed him with full powers to introduce into the Frankish Church a thorough reform in his name. He held in all five synods. In these he caused to be passerllaws whereby the clergy were bound to a mode of life better corresponding to their profession, and forbidden to take any part in war or in the chase on pain of being deposed from office. At these sYllods several persons were tried as teachers of false doctrines, belonging, as may be supposed, to that class whom, in the times of Charles Martel, Boniface had not considered himself strong enough to put down. "
After he had succeeded in getting the affairs of the Church arranged mOi'e to his liking, and having founded bishoprics to meet what he considered the needs of the German Church, he became anxious about a successor to carryon the work. lIe applied to the Pope for liberty to choose a snccessor, which Zacharias at first der-lined to grant, but subsequently he was allowed this privilege; and he selected as the man to occupy his place and carryon his work au Euglishman named Lull, who had been for twenty years trained under his eye and had served as his colleague. Boniface ordained him a bishop, and very earnestly appealed to King Pepin that he might have the royal sanction. His appeal was granted; and now he felt that he had made every provision within his power for the future success of the work he had begun and carried to such a degree of prosperity and promise.
Being now relieved from anxieties about the conduct of his work, he resolved, though seventy-five years old, to set out upon another missionary journey. Friesland, the land of his first mission enterprise, was again his destination. He made arrangements for his burial in Fulda, his favorite monastery, in case he should die in this expedition. With a small retinue, composed partly of clergy and monks and partly of servants, he embarked on a boat by the river Rhine, and landed at the Zllyder Zee. His disciple, Bishop Eodall. joined him in Friesland. They made a pilgrimage through' the country; many received them gladly; they baptized thousands, and founded new churches. Having appointed a certain day for the confirmation of those who had received baptism, all were to meet at a place not far from Dockingen. To this place Boniface with his companions resorted on the day appointed, June 5th, 755 ; but the enemies of Christianity, hearing of this arrangement, resolved to make it a day of mourning instead of a day of rejoicing. They gathered together armed for their murderous wOlk, and coming upon the missionaries, who expected a far different band, they slaughtered most of the company. Boniface thus fell a martyr, and with him his friend and disciple, Bishop Eodau, and most of their companions. So ended the most remarkable career of the eighth century.
In forming an opinion of Boniface we must judge him according to the standard of the age in which he lived. Looking at him as he occupied his place and fufilled his mission, we discover traits of character and capacities for managing men, for organizing crude masses into something like order
THE GREATEST WORK IN THE WORLD
and usefulness, and for exercising discipline, that show him to have been a man of decided ability, a man destined to direct and administer affairs.
Then, as we look at his life work and judge it as a whole, we must con- clude that he was sincere and pious according to the standards of that time. He was a man resolute of purpose, extremely conscientious, pains- taking and self-denying in respect to all duty, and most zealous in main- taining and promoting what he considered the glory of God. He adopted heartily and without reserve the Romish theocratic chureh system; and with all his energy, zeal, and natural ability he tried during his public career to carry that out.
Ris zeal was tempered by prudence. He was not a man to play the hypocrite-to pretend to approve a doctrine or a praetice which in his heart he condemned-yet he could patiently wait for the most suitable time for carrying out his purpoRe. Re never pretended to be a worker of miracles or to the exercise of any supernatural power. He wrought along the lines of ordinary human aetivity. He has been, of course, very highly lauded by his admirers, and very bitterly assailed by the enemies of his reputation. .
Perhaps a fair estimate of this notable man may be given in the words of Dr. Murdock, the translator of Mosheim: "He [Boniface] appears to me to have been one of the most sincere and honest men of his age, though he partook largely in the common faults of his time-an e}.vessive attachment to monkery, and a superstitious regard for the canons of the Church and the externals of religion. With all his imperfections he deserves to be classed with those who followed Christ according to the best light they had, and who did much to advanee true religion among men."
THE GREATEST WORK IN THE WORLD-A PLEA FOR MIR SIONARY ENTERPRISE.
BY JOSEPH BOOTH.
[The writer of this article has a right to be heard, for he has !ltarted for Africa to carry out in person his own convictions.-Eo.] The following statements and suggestions are addressed to believers in the Lord Jesus Christ who accept His words as final, who rejoice in Him as their Saviour, and expect shortly to stand before Him as their Judge.
The ,. greatest work in the world" is that marked out by the Lord Jesus Christ to be accomplished by His followers between His ascension and His return-viz., this Gospel of tbe kingdom shall be preached in the whole world for a testimony unto all the nations j and then shall the end come (Matt. 24: 14) ; and again more definitely after the resurrection His last words were, " All authority hath been given me in heaven and 011 earth; go ye, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, and 10, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world."
We have heard these solemn and definite words so frequently that they have become trite and almost powerless. We do not recognize in them an utterance of the mightiest possible significance to every kindred, tribe, and tongue; compassing a work so large that after eighteen centuries it is far from complete j an utterance, indeed, that may yet have power to rise up in judgment against us.
Gazed at in the light of the great white throne, what do the words mean to present-day Christians ~ Simply this, that if the trust is not yet discharged it is for us, the Christians of this generation, to rise up at once in the strength of the Lord and with loving obedience carry out His great parting command.
Is the work done? No. Eight hundred millions of our fell()w-travellers . to eternity have never heard of Christ or of heaven.
What is being done l Between seven and eight thousand European missionaries are now in the field, and about three million pounds yearly are subscribed for the work.
Can these overtake the work l No j for there still remains eight hundred millions of heathen whom they cannot reach.
Are more laborers willing to go? Yes; ()ver six thousand in America alone are waiting, and probably over several thousand more in Great Britain and her colonies.
Why are they not sent l Because funds are not available, the revenue of almost every society, as shown by the annual reports, being already overtaxed, and some having large deficits.
What is needed to complete the w()Tk and give the " Bread of Life" to all? lR order to give one messenger to every twenty thousand heathen forthwith, forty thousand more workers would be required.
Have the believers in Christ sufficient men and means to send the required numbers ~ Yes; probably so. Then why is it not done? Ah! it is not for us to judge one another. The great day will declare whether we have done our part. Is there any solution of the difficulty? There must be, since Christ has "all power," and He says, "Go," and because He guarantees His presence to the end of time. That we have a right to expect and demand in God's name that every barrier shall give way is manifest from such promises as Isa. 41: 10 ; 45 : 2. 3, 6 ; 54: 2-4; 60; 1-5. There may be many ways of attaining the desired end, but is not one solution found in the principle laid down by Carey (the father of modern missions) a century ago-viz., that each mission station be made self· supporting and self-propagating ~ May not the work of the future need to be done where possible on these lines! Since the work of Carey and his two compeers resulted in their earning over £61,000 and expending the same on mission work in India, planting twenty-six native churches, trallRlating the Bible wholly or in part into thirty-four languages besides supporting themselves in comfort, the prac- ticability and great possibilities of the method is demonstrated. .
That they may not have been ordinary men is probable; bllt who is ordinary that takes full hold of the mighty power at command stored up in the" exceeding great and precious promises," which are all " yea and amen in Christ Jesus, unto the glory of God by us" ?
That great natural gifts, though desirable are not essential, is manifest from such assurances as Luke 10 : 21 j 1 Cor. 1 : 26-28.
Let us review the position for a moment: The work to be done is plain; "the field is the world."
The advance guard of workers are waiting with untold reserves to follow.
God's purpose is plain, " r will give Thee for a Light unto the Gen- tiles, that Thou mayest be My salvation unto the ends of the earth."
The barriers to the Gospel are down or faIling on every hand.
The Christians of this generation have the knowledge, the men, the means, and the responsibility.
The power of God to do the work is at our disposal.
All needed elements are, therefore, at our command to do the work, if we have the will to apply them.
Who will avail themselves of the high calling of God?
Who, with humble thankfulness to Him for being permitted to become co-workers with God in earth's noblest and greatest work, part of His eternal plan (John 3 : 16), the theme of heaven (Luke 15 : 7) and the joy of eternity (Rev. 5 : 9-13), will throw their whole being, body, soul, spirit, experience, and means into this glorious work?
Who will count it higher than earth's highest honor to be the ambas- sador from God to those whom He expressly designs shall hear His message 1 Who is willing to bury their own little will and live only to do the greatwill of God ~ Who is willing to hear the Lord say, " As My Father sent me, even so send I you"? and again, " I will make you fishers of men" 1 and yet again, "Ye have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit" 1 (John 15 : 16.) Who with a holy, heaven-born resolve will determine" that neither things present nor things to come" shall prevent them from taking the part God would have them take in this great work ~ Let us remember that the blood of over fifty ~housand heathen, dying daily without the knowledge of God, will rest upon this generation if we neglect to rise with a mighty purpose to the work He has given us the privilege and responsibility of doing. (Read Provo 24: 11, 12; Ezek.
3 : 18.) Let us look with unaverted gaze at our Lord's searching words, " He that receiveth not My sayings, the word I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day j" again, " Fear not them that kill the body j"
"He that loveth his life shall lose it j and he that loseth his life for My sake shall find it j" again, " Sell all thou hast, and come follow Me j" "-VVhosoever doth not bear his cross and come after Me cannot be My disr:iple j" agaiu, " :Every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands for My name's sake, shall receive an hundred-fold and shall inherit eternal life" (Matt.
19 : 29).
The position of the present-day believer is accnrately expressed in the words of the late Hon. Keith Falconer: "While vast continents are shrouded in almost utter darkness, and hundreds of millions suffer the horrors of heathenism, the burden of proof lies upon you to show that the circumstances in which God has placed you were meant by Him to keep you out of the mission field."
Beware of consulting flesh and blood too much; consult Jesus Christ.
Beware of the wiles of Satan to lull to sleep and apathy.
Beware of the evasive suggestions of our own hearts, since the Word of God declares" the heart is deceitful above all things."
Beware of laying too much stress on education or any human qualifica- tion. Resolve to obey or yield up life in the attempt, and God will open the way to such education as is needed.
Beware of losing the place God would h!we you fill in His great eternal purposes.
Beware of leaning unduly upon earthly props, which may fail you at the critical moment j lean lightly lipon the human, heavily on the Di- vine.
Beware of that false humility which says, " I can do nothing," and forgets that God engages to use" the weak things, and things which are not," " to bring to nought the things which are."
Beware of expecting too much from the wise. the mighty, the noble, or the rich, knowing that they have their special hindrances and tempta- tions.
Beware of finding fault with others or dwelling upon what they might do.
Beware of drinking at human fountains, but take deep draughts at the Fountain-head.
" Quench not the spirit."
Believing that the needed workers will be forthcoming when the require- ments of God are faithfully displayed and calmly considered, how shall the means of support be provided ~ I. As far as may be by the subscriptions of those whose hearts are in the work and sympathize with the method proposed, but cannot from various canses go themselves. n. By planting industrial missions on the prInciple alluded to-v iz., to become" self-supporting and self-propagating." How would such missions affect the problem V Assuming that each worker be helped for a period not exceeding the first two years, in the course of fifty years the same yearly income would put twenty-five times the volume of workers in the field; in the course of a century fifty times the number of workers as compared with the permanently supported laborers.
Doubtless both types, "the sustained and self-sustaining," will be found necessary according to the ground WOl ked and the habits or capacities of the workers.
While" industrial missions" may be harder to plant and permanently consolidate, it must be borne in mind this method opens the door to bring into the work the reserve forces of the rank and file of Christian workers, who are used to the task of toiling at various occupations and handicrafts.
The Apostle Paul, who knew something of the work to be done, approved and adopted this method for the missionary's work of breaking up fallow grol1nd, and continued it during the early stages of church life, as recorded in 2 Thess. 3 : 8, 9 ; 1 Cor. 3 : 11, 12.
Has not the special time come for Christian workingmen to come forward and give their working powers to God and His great redemptive work 1 Farmers, artisans, engineers, miners, mechanics, and tradesmen, who, while supporting themselves, proclaim the Gospel in word and work.
Is not the workingman of the world the great wealth producer 1 Have not the consecrated Christian workingmen of this generation one key in their hands to the great missionary problem, if ready and willing to use it 1 Are they not able under God, and endued with the promised power from on high (" For the promise is to you and to your children, and to all that are afar off"), to rise up in one mighty crusade against heathendom, and so do a mighty work for God and humanity 1 If this be so, does not the onus rest on the Christian workingmen of this generation to make use of the great power and responsibility attached to their position, especially if funds are forthcoming to tide over the initial difficulties for the first two years? It is written, "The earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof: the world and they that dwell therein." Is this a mere figure of speech, or is it a mighty eternal fact 1 Mr. Spurgeon says this title" ought to put the work of missions on a very cheering footing. " Let us go and take possession in the name of the Lord. Our Saviour said, "The children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light." Certain it is that without a command from on high and without the ChIistian's title they take possession of the earth and its fulness, braving all dangers. Psalm 24 : 1 is the Christian's title to do this in the name of the rightful owner.
Take earth's darkest picture, cruel, bleeding, chaotic Africa, with its average of eight to ten thousand victims every day to slave-raiding, tyranny, and cannibalism. What is needed to transform that picture and to develop Africa's vast pastoral, agricultural, and mineral resources, and to rightly apply the earth's fulness God has stored there ~ Is it to be the" children of this world" who, without society aids or a "Go ye,;' will presently take possession, fill their pockets, button them up, degrade the native, .and make the missionary's work the harder 1 Or shall it be what the British and American Christians are able to give and be the better for it-viz.• some thousands of consecrated Chrir,tian workingmen 1 A few Christian workers are resolved to commence work in Africa forthwith on the lines indicated. Two pa~ties have left for the field within the last eight months, with the expectation of more to follow.
Africa is chosen because it presents two special features: First, it is the darkest picture of paganisGl on the earth. Its lawlessness, its tyranny of chiefs, its slavc-raiding, its cannibalism, its never-ending inter-tribal wars, mark it as a most painful picture to the heart of Him " who came to seek and to save them that are lost;" and second, its resources are largely undeveloped and awaiting those who will take possession in God's name and for His work; at the same time training the native to develop his own country and take his rightful place in the universe.
The objects and aims of the mission are as follows, subject to such corrections or amendments as may be found conducive to the work as a whole: (a) To plant industrial mission stations that shall become self-supporting within the first two years.
(b) The first ba!le of operations to be in the territory of the British South African Chartered Company-viz., "on the Zambesi."
(c) To establish a prayer union throughout the British race, if possible, pledged to ask of God daily the speedy evangelization of the heathen throughout the world.
(d) To ask God to raise up an advocate or advocates to itinerate through the churches and Young Men's Christian Associations of Great Britain, America, Canada, and the colonies, solieitingmen and means, and directing particular attention to the recommendation of our Lord, " Sell all thou hast, and come follow Me."
(e) Select and equip parties of two or three families or three to six young men, prepared to work as locality may require or their abilities enable them, at tiiling the ground, food producing, grain growing, irri- gating, seed or fruit growing and exporting, carpentering, blacksmithing, dairy farming, mining, printing, sheep farming, cattle rearing, and espe- cially some light manufacture requiring small capital and suitabJe for native trained workers, easy of transport and export; all work to be combined with preaching and teaching, though all volunteers need not necessarily be speakers.
(I) Candidates to endeavor to become self-supporting from the very first or at the earliest possible moment, and further endeavor to provide funds or products with which to bring other laborers or to plant other stations farther afield.
(g) No missionary to trade or have any private undertaking on his own account; all property and increment to be vested in the mission trustees.
(h) The threefold type of workers-viz., the family type, the youngman-celibate type and the sisterhood type, to be used according to locality and candidates.
(i) Female volunteers not to be expected to become' self-supporting, but to be optional with them.
U) Avail to be taken of the protection afforded by such chartered companies as the British South African and British East African, and grants of land to be sought promptly according to the advantages offered to aid or induce immigration and settlement, due regard being taken to suitableness of locality for Gospel work among the natives.
(k) Aim not only at the conversion of the natives, but at training and educating the young j forming new and industrious habits, taking them on stations to work side by side with white men, that they may realize " One is your Master, even Christ, and all ye are brethren." Specially aim at planting a simpJe form of Christian civilization transparent by contrast with paganism.
(l) Train and cultivate native converts' spiritual gifts, and lead to selfreliant action in preaching and planting industrial missions in the " regions beyond."
(m) When stations become supported by voluntary offerings of converts or congregations, the trading, farming, or manufacturing scaffolding to be either dispensed with and realized, transplanted or continued, as may be conducive to the progress of the whole work.
(n) Such churches not tQ become independent of the mission, but to conduct their pastoral work at a moderate cost j the express purpose of the church's exi~tence-viz., the diffusion of the Gospel of Christ among all peoples and throughout the whole earth, to be kept prominently and permanently in the foreground, and all surplus-giving power or working power to be cultivated and directed into that channel.
(0) If suitable men are forthcoming, plant churches on the same basis in the existing towns in South Africa as opportunity occurs.
(p) Keep in regular and sympathetic touch by circular, periodical, or visitation with the churches and Young Men's Christian Associations, as far as opportunity is afforded, throughout Great BJitain, America, Canada, and the colonies, furnishing the latest news from the front throughout the whole mission field, and offering to take suitable workers of proven Chris-
REV. JOHN INGLIS, D.D., OF THE NEW HEBRIDES MISSION
t.ian character with or without means, to be sent either at the Church'lI, the Association's, or the mission's expense, as may be found expedient; the purpose being to promote a healthy circulation from the centre to the circumference, and relieve the congestion in the more developed spheres of Christian labor, thns providing a legitimate outlet for the many onetalent Christians who too often stagnate in the home circle.
(q) The base of operations in each centre of work to be kept strong, and each outgoing branch well supported and fostered from its local centre.
(r) The ultimate object of the mission to be not only the overtaking of the work in Afriea, but the training and equipping of messengers and the providing or earning adequate funds for the completion of the then unfinished work throughout the world; taking first iu order the lands most Buited to the needs of the system, in point of undeveloped resources or abundance of labor, as also the respective needs of the natives.
(8) In the early stages of the mission special care to be taken to secure good climatic and fair commercial, agricultural, or manufacturing conditions, as far as may be consistent with nearness of native population for mission work.
Finally, work as if all depended upon man; pray and trust, knowing all increase must come from God.
THE REV. JOHN INGLIS, D.D., OF THE NEW HEBRIDES MISSION.
BY THE REV. ROBERT STEEL, D.D., SYDNEY, NEW SOUTH WALES.
The martyrs of Eromanga were for a long time the most conspicuous missionaries of the New Hebrides group of islands of the South Pacific. John Williams, who feU there by the clubs of the savage people in 1839, had already achieved his fame as an evangelist in the islands of Eastern Polynesia, and had published his" Missionary Enterprises," which made so great a sensation. Mr. Williams did no more than land on the island of Eromanga when he fella victim to his zeal for advancing the cause of Christ. The brothers Gordon, who were so cruelly killed in 1861 and 1872 respectively, labored for a few years among the barbarous people, whose animosity against white men had been irritated by the raids of the traders in sandal-wood. The Gordons labored amid many difficulties, and gained a few converts. These martyrs were pioneers, and directed the attention of the Christian Church to the New Hebrides; but it WIlS reserved to other mis~ionaries during a life-work of a quarter of a century to evangelize whole islands. Some of these fathers and founders of the Presbyterian mission II<lVP ended their labors. Dr. John Geddie, the first who settled in the g(()UP, in 1848, died in 1872. He wns the missionary of a small church in Nova Scotia. now absorbed in the Presbyterian Church in Canada. He had very great difficulties and many perils, but he had great success. It was said of the far-famed Gregory of Coosarea, that when he went to his diocese he found only seventeen Christians, and when he died there were only seventeen heathtms. When Dr. Geddie died, it fell to the writer to prepare his epitaph, and, adopting the account of Gregory, he had the happiness of recording regarding Dr. Geddie that when he went to his missionary sphere ,. there were no Christians, and when he departed there were no heathens." This simple record is painted on a tablet of wood beside the pulpit of an unarchitectural church at Anelganhot, Aneityum. The writer has been surprised by the echoes of its testimony throughout missionary literature during the past fifteen years, and as a specimen of the magnifying power of tradition, oue of the repetitions of the epitaph stated that it was inscribed in letters of gold upon a marble tablet in a pretty church !
The Rev. John Inglis occupied the other side of the same island where Mr. Geddie labored, and during most of the same epoch. After twontyfive years' faithful labor he had a felicity similar to that of his colleague; and for his epitaph it is proposed to record that "he came to a heathen people in 1852, and left them a Christian church in 1877." The island by that time had the Holy Scriptures printed in their own tongue, and the natives were all capable of reading for themselves the oracles of God.
John Inglis was born at the village of Moniaive, in Dumfriesshire, Scotland, in 1807. This beautiful rural spot was the birthplace of the last martyr of the Covenant in Scotland, James Renwick, and full of memories of the fifty years' struggle for the crown rights of the King of Zion. Mr. Inglis's father died early, and he had to depend upon his own exertions for the support of his mother and himself. He was apprenticed to a mason, and became a proficient at his trade, which proved of eminent service in his after career as a missionary. He was bronght up in piety, and became a decided Christian. He joined the Reformed Presbyterian Church, a small, though a respectable branch of the Church in Scotland. He was in the habit of reading at meal hours and times of leisure, and thus qualified himself for entering the University of Glasgow. He saved money from his work in the summer to pay his college expenses in the winter, as has often been done in Scotland in thc pursuit of knowledge under difficulties. Lord Elcho, when once addressing the miners in East Lothian, referred to two men who had worked in the pit in summer and had gone to the university in winter, until they finished their curriculum. One of these became ultimately a member of the English House of Commons; the other went to America and became the Rev. John ITogg, D.D., a missionary from the United Presbyterian Church at Assioot in Egypt. He and Dr. Inglis, both of whom I visited in their ~pheres of labor, became cultured gentlemen, fit to associate with the best society, both highly esteemed and both successful. Mr. Inglis must have profited much by his college attendance, since his accomplished professor of Greek in Glasgow, Sir Daniel Sandf~rd, employed him for a time at Rothcsay as tutor to his sons.
Mr. Inglis studied theology under the venerable Dr. Andrew Syming- ton, of Paisley, a man of high attainments, and much respected. When at length Mr. Inglis was licensed as a preaoher, he was appointed a mis- sionary to the Maoris of New Zealand, and after his ordination, in 18f3, sailed in 1844 along with a like-minded wife for his distant sphere. The Rev. James Duncan had preceded him two years before, and had commenced missionary operations among the Maoris on the Manawatu River in the , n~rth of Cook's Straits, between seventy and eighty miles from Welling- ton. There were only 700 natives in the district, and missionary work had been thoroughly organized by the Church and Wesleyan Missionary Societies. Meflsrs. Duncan and Inglis, therefore, wrote a joint letter to their committee in Scotland, advising the selection of another heathen field. Considerable delay occurred in correspondence in those days, but at length Mr. Inglis was authorized to proceed to the South Seas, and make inquiries regarding suitable openings for missionary enterprise. Fortunately, through the kindness of Sir George Grey, then Governor of New Zealand. and interested in all that belongs to man, Mr. Inglis was permitted by Captain Erskine, of H. M. S. Havannah, to take a cruise in that ship-of-war throughout Western Polynesia. It was a great opportuuity, and Mr. Inglis made the most of it. He visited the island of Aneityum, in the New Hebrides, where Mr. Geddie had settled, and, after seeing other islands, resolved, if his committee in Scotland approved, to join him, and take up a station among the heathen there. In 1852 Bishop Selwyn offered the Covenanting miRsionary a free passage in his schooner the Border Maid to Aneityum. It was thankfully accepted. The bishop took all their supplies-furniture, goats, pigs, and poultry. He often called in after years, and on one visit laid on the table of the missionary the sum of £103 16s. 4d•• which he had collected from Presbyterians in New Zealand for the benefit of the mission. Mr. and Mrs. Inglis entered upon their work with much wisdom and zeal, pursued it with perseverance, and succeeded in gaining the confidence of the people. Classes for reading and writing were set up, and as soon as persons were taught schools were opened all over the district. The preaching of the Gospel was regularly carried on, translations of Scripture were made, and portions printed; medicine was dispensed; orphan children were cared for; buildings were erected, the natives being taught to help. In due course it pleased God to bless these labors: converts were baptized, communicants were admitted to the Lord's Supper, and the Sabbath was regularly observed. A great moral as well as spiritual change occurred, and the people presented the aspect of a Christianized community. Mr. and Mrs. Inglis were singularly orderly in their habits, taking advantage of the cooler times of the day for work, and thus avoiding as much as possible the danger of attacks of fever and ague so common to foreigners in the New Hebrides. Mr. Inglis was very riagacious in dealing with the natives, and always got reforms and justice between man and man among natives carried out by the authority of the chiefs rather than by his own command. Chiefs, though petty, are in high respect in the New Hebrides, and when anyone of such rank became a native teacher and went to neighboring islands, he was received with as much respect as people in more civilized countries receive persons of rank or wealth.
By 1859 the New Testament was fully rendered into Aneityumese by the two missionaries. Mr. Inglis was sent to carry it through the press in London. He and his wife got a passage in the London Missionary Society's vessel, the John Williams, and after seven months arrived in London. Mr. and Mrs. Inglis paid great attention to the work of correcting the press. The volume was ready in 1862, and they returned with it to the island in 1863. Mr. Geddie then left for Nova Scotia, where he got the Book of Psalms printed. When all the Old Testament was ready for the press, Mr. Geddie hoped to get it printed under his care at Melbourne; but he died in 1872. After revision of the MSS. Mr. Inglis resolved, on his retiring from the mission, to go to London and superintend the print. ing of the work. In 1877 he had completed twenty-five years' labor. Re had baptized 1168, had admitted 644 to communion during his residence, and when he left there were 713 of a population on his side of the island, of whom 354 were communicants. There were 13 elders, 12 deacons, and 28 teachers. The whole population wa!l professedly Christian, and the Christian people had, by gifts of arrowroot grown and prepared by themselves, paid £1000 to the British and Foreign Bible Society for printing the Scriptures in their language. The moral life of the people was, on the whole, very good. Their changed condition and the translation of the Scriptures are the noblest monument of the missionary labors of Mr. and Mrs. Inglis.
Visitors to the mission-house, such as Bishops Selwyn and Patteson, officers of the British Navy, naturalists in pursuit of science, travellers, among whom was the writer, and young missionaries on their fir8t voyage, were astonished to find in a home in t4e cannibal islands an extensive library of varied literature and such intelligent and cultured people as Mr. and Mrs. Inglis, whose manners were so refined, whose conversation was so rich, and whose beautiful life was a commentary on the Gospel of Christ. There was ample accommodation for a large party in that hospitable" house amid the grove of cocoa-palm, banana, and orange-trees, and it was a treat to see the young orphan maids whom Mrs. Inglis had rescued and trained waiting her bidding on the matted floor. Though so far from civilized life, and with mails only once or twice a year, the weekly edition of the Times, with its able articles, Ilnd Chlistian periodicals were regularly read by the mission family. That home and its inmates was an oasis in the barbarous isles of Melanesia.
After his return to Scotland Mr. Inglis received, in 1881, the degree of D.D. from the University of Glasgow. During his retirement, besides his work ill superinteuding the printing of the Old Testament, Dr. Inglis published his Dictionary of the Aneityumese language. He bad collected all the words in use among the natives, and indeed knew more words than any of them; for the natives on the shore have words for objects met there that are unKnown to residents inland, and vice versa. He also edited the abridgment of the" Pilgrim's Progress" prepared by Mrs. Geddie, the Westminster Shorter Catechism translated by himself, and a number of hymns. He also issued two volumes, one in which be narrated in a very pleasing manncr the work of the mission at Aneityum in all its departments, gave a sketch of Mrs. Inglis, who died suddenly in 1885, and sketches of his coJleague and other friends. In the other volume he collected illustrations of the Bible from the natural history and the manners and customs of the New Hebrides, and gave biographies of some of his converts. These volumes, though not so popular as the thrilling autobiography of the Re,. Dr. J. G. Paton, his fellow· missionary, are full of interest and information. He was able for several years to, preach and address meetings f(1r the mission, and to attend the Committee on Foreign Missions of the Free Church of Scotland, of which he was a member. He died in a good old age in July last, at his re~idence in Wigtonshire, and was buried beside his wife in the grave of his fathers in the churchyard of Glencairn. In the funeral sermon preached on the occasion by the Rev. James Goold, who had known him for more than fifty years, it is stated that his fellow-students, on observing the methodical habits and sagacious counsels of Dr. Inglis, had called him a " Christianized Benjamin Franklin." His whole career illustrated the appositeness of the characteristic. He was a total abstainer, and did all he could to advance the temperance reformation. In this he was helped by Mrs. Inglis; and though they never had intoxicating liquors on their table, their hospitalities were none the less and their guests were always happy.
Devout, affable, wise, and practical, he made a model missionary to a barbarous people. Clear in his convictions and firm to his principles, he was always very cautious in his language. When he gave advil!e, as he was often called to do, he took care not to hurt the feelings of others. He was a man of peace and of charity; hence he was highly esteemed by all in the mission, and by all in the parent Church with whom he came into contact. The missionary cause was dear to his heart; tbe natives revered him as a father, and we can imagine that when at last he died " there were not wanting those whom he had taught the way to Paradise, who in white robes thronged to the gate to hail their shepherd home."
A Paris publisher has undertaken to issue a "General Encyclopedia of the History and Science of the Jews." It will fill twelve large volumes, which are it:ltended to present the main facts of Jewish history, and to show the effects of the Jewish race upon the various factors of civilization. sci€llce, literature, commerce, industry, etc It is added that the work wjll not be finished for BOrne time, and one can easily believe this aSSUlance.
IRELAND AND FOREIGN MISSIONS
IRELAND AND FOREIGN MISSIONS.
THE STORY OF Two OLD MINUTE-BoOKS.
BY REV. WILLIAM PARK, D.D., CONVENER OF FOREIGN MISSIONS, BEL· FAST, IRELAND.
The writer has in his possession two curious old manuscript boob which throw light on the beginnings of the foreign mission movement in Ireland. The first bears on its cover in gilt letters the words, " Down Missionary Society." "In the summer of 1812," so the record begins, " Rev. Alexander Waugh, deputed from the London Missionary Society of London, attended the Synods of Ulster and of Ireland (i.e., the Secession Synod) and solicited their countenance and support in propagating the Gospel among the heathen." Both synods responded to Mr. Waugh's appeals. The members of the Presbytery of Down were greatly stirred by them, and after much deliberation they addressed a letter on April 1st, 1813, to the clergy of the then Established Church and of other denominations. In this letter they tell how the London Missionary Socitlty had been working for seventeen years in spreading the Gospel, and that" their happy success in some of the most uncivilized and darkest parts of the earth furnishes rational evidence of Divine approbation." The letter goes on to say that a branch of the Society" was last summer instituted in the city of Dublin," and asks the ministers to whom it was addressed to attend a meeting on the 29th inst. in the parish church of Ballynahinch. It concludes with these wOlds: "The precepts, 'Go and teach all nations,' 'Preach the Gospel to every creature;' the promise, ' Lo, I am with you to the end of the world j' the superiority of Christianity to idolatry and civilization to the degraded state of the savage; the honor of God; and the promotion of the present and future happiness of our fellow. men of every color and clime, will, we trust, urge your attendance at the meeting, and procure your aid to the good cause in which the Christian missionary is embarked."
On July 13th, 1813, "a respectable number of clergy and others met in the parish church of Ballynahinch," and formed the Down Auxiliary Missionary Society. A subscription list was opened, "and a number of gentlemen were pleased to subscribe for this year the sum annexed to their respective names." Then follow subscriptions amounting to £32 10~d. At the end of the first year it was reported that subscriptions, donations, and congregational collections had been received to the amount of £167 178. 8td., and after paying all expenses the treasurer was able to remit to London £160 58. 5d. British money. Among the expenses is mentioned the sum o£ Is. 10d., being the postage of a letter from Josep Hardcastle, Esq. Evidently the days of penny postage were still far off. Meetings of this Down Missionary Society were hcld at stated intervals, two or more in the year, and in various parts of the county, and the proceedings seem to have been always opened with a missionary sermon. Vigorous efforts were made to awaken the interest of ministers and people in the work of mIssions. In a circular letter addressed to ministers on August 2d, 1815, we find these words: " The Society invite and would fondly constrain you, Rev. Sir, to come to their meeting at the time specified, to favor them with your presence and counsel in support of the difficult, the humane, the honorable, and glorious work of extending the Christianity and civilization of the British Empire to the ignorant and wild savages of Africa, to the American Indian, and to the blinded and superstitious pagans of Asia. "
There is an entry in this book which recalls exciting days in the history of missions to India. On August 31st, 1813, we find it recorded that the thanks of the Society are pre-eminently due" to Viscount Castlereagh, our representative in Parliament, for his steady support of the clause introduced by his lordship into the Indian bill in favor of promulgating Christianity in India." It was in that year, as the readers of this REVIEW doubtless remember, that the charter of the East India Company was renewed by the Parliament of England, and the restrictions removed which had hitherto hindered all mis~ion effort in British India. William Wilberforce was one of the leaders in agitating and arguing for this change. .He declared that it was the foulest blot on the moral character of Englishmen, next to the slave trade, "to allow our fellow-subjects in the East Indies to remain, without any effort on our part to cnlighten and reform them, under the grossest, the darkest, and most depraving system of idolatrous superstition that almost ever existed on earth." As the night of the final decision in the House of Commons came on there was much anxiety as to the result throughout all the churches, and much prayer was offered up to God. Wilberforce wrote: " I have heard that many good men were pray· ing for us all night." That night the prayer of the churches-and in their prayers, as the above extract proves, Ulster had its share-was answered and British India was thrown open to the heralds of the Cross.
The last meeting of the Down Missionary Rociety this minute-book records was on October lIth, 1821. It would seem that by this time County Down did not stand alone in its organization and effort for the mISSIOn cause. "The Society agreed for the present not to write a circular, as had been intended, but were of opinion that a preferable expedient would be to have a general meeting in Belfast on the second Tuesday in June, of the missionary societies of Antrim, Armagh, Tyrone, and Down." The object of this meeting was to be, " to make the proceedings and success of the London Mi~sionary Society better known, and to select a number of ministers as itinerants, who should immediately go forth and plead the cause of missions to the heathen through the several counties of the Province of Ulster." The last sentence in the book tells us that this meeting was closed with prayer by Rev. Mr. Cooke, who in after days was known far and near as Rev. Henry Cooke, D.D., LL.D., a man famous in many waYil, and whose statue now stands in one of the most prominent places in Belfast, but known and honored in the churches chiefly as the great defender of orthodox truth again8t Arian error.
That old book with its simple records, written in faded ink, is a voice from the past which must deeply move every Christian heart. It speaks of the great awakening of the Church of God to a long neglected duty, which the opening years of this century saw, and it testifies that in this widespread awakening the Church of Christ in Ireland had a share. We almost seem, as we read it, to see the Spirit of God brooding on the waters, and new life appearing beneath His almighty touch.
The other old book is a record of the early days of the foreign mission of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, in the handwriting of its first con- venn, Rev. James Morgan, D.D., Belfast. In 1840 the two synods already referred to-the Synod of Ulster and the Secession Synod-were lwite-d and became the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland. The tide of spiritual life had been steadily rising for many years, and manifested itself not only in this happy union at home, but in the beginning of independent mission work abroad. The year of the union (the jubilee of which was celebrated in an appropriate manner in 1890) was the year of the formation of the General Assembly's foreign mission, and at the first meeting of the Assembly the first two missionaries were set apart for India.
It is recorded in the book how these missionaries were chosen, and the plan adopted then might be still followed with good results. " But where are the missionaries ~ How shall these be had ~ Your directors were instructed to seek for them j and it may be important to say how we proceeded. We had before us a list of all the ministels of the Church, and selected twenty whom we considered to be men suited to the work.
To these we addressed letters suggesting to them the duty of becoming mis- sionaries to the heathen, and desiring to know what might be their own views and feelings upon the subject. Six of the brethren left themselves entirely at our disposal. After the most solemn deliberation and prayer, we made choice of two out of that number, and recommended to the Synod to send them forth." "It will thus be seen that, in selecting our missionaries, we have proceeded on the principle that all the ministers of the Church are the servants of the body, and are bound to labor wherever the Church may think proper to send them. (The italics are mine.) We have selected two of our most approved brethren, men beloved and useful in their parishes, fit for'labor in any locality, and richly endowed with gifts and graces."
Dr. Morgan goes on to tell how the Iponey to send them forth was obtained. "On the day of the appointment of the missionaries there were no funds in readiness to send them forth. We had reckoned that if God gave us men He would soon give us money j and our faith was not exercised in vain. A subscription was set on foot in the Assembly, and the members ccntributed about £500. An appeal was made to the con- gregations in Belfast which produced about £600. Several congregations in the country sent forward contributions of their own accord. Our Seces- sion brethren had a little stock of Ilear £200, which they cast into the common treasury, and thus in two months there were raised about £1500 to commence our missionary enterprise."
Great enthusiasm seems to have been evoked, in Belfast especially, by this opening of foreign mission work. When the night came for the first missionaries to sail, the cabin of the steamer was granted to them and their friends for a special prayer-meeting. The 20th of Acts was read, and prayer was offered to Him who rules the winds and waves, consigning the brethren and their wives to His divine protection. "Never shall I forget that scene," writes one who was present. "I believe there was not one in that cabin during Dr. Cooke's beautiful prayer who did not shed tears; nay, I have heard it said since, by some gentlemen who were there, that they thought before this that there was no earthly circumstance could make them weep, and yet they found they were unable to restrain their tears." "The commencement," writes Dr. Morgan, "of the foreign mission forms an era in the history of the Church which, it is hoped, will hereafter be found to have been the dawn of a bright and glorious day."
Pasted into this old minute-book is a poem, written by a well-known Belfast poet of the time, and adorned with handsome silhouettes of the two missionaries and their wives. Two verses of this poem may be quoted here: " Our fathers heard the heathen's cry, But alas! no helping hand was nigh; Our fathers prayed-and the dawn of day Now brightly shines on their children's way.
At the call of the Church, the nobly brave Smile at the dangers of ocean.wave, That Zion's banners may be unfurled On the shores of a far-off heathen world !"
" Away, away, o'er the deep blue sea, May the winds of heaven propitious be ! Brethren await you on India's strap.d, Ready to greet you with heart and hand : WiIson* will train your hands for war, And the mind of Duff, t like an Eastern star, Shall shine on your path, amidst heathen night, With the splendid blaze of a comet's light…
The difficulties which the first missionaries to Gujarat and KatLiaw<l1" encountered were "ery great. It is curious to note how long the jOl1fney lasted. They sailed from Liverpool on September 4th, 1840, and di,l not arrive in Bombay till February 26th, 1841. It wa3 LaId to get snitable * Dr. Wilson, Bombay. houses, and the miseionaries and their wives had to suffer much privation. The infant child of Dr. Glasgow died the June after they landed, and in August Mr. Kerr, the other of the two missionaries, was suddenly taken away; but, as usual, difficulties and losses only evoked enthusiasm and prayer. "This is an event," wrote the convener to the members of the Church, "that has not been lightly permitted. There is good reason to justify it. Even we can see that many important ends are served by it. How it demonstrates the reality of religion when the fear of death does not deter from its service! Ollr friend might, and no doubt would, have been useful, had he been Rpared, in a lengthened ministry at home; but I have no hesitation in saying he has accomplighed more by his death than lIe could have effected by the longest ministry at home. What benefits he has already conferred on the whole Church, in the example he has set, the spirit he has excited, and the labors he has prompted! Our short mission has already been to our Church as life from the dead. "
The book goes on to record that on January 12th, 1842, foul' missionaries were publicly set apart to the work in India. Two of them with their wives sailed at once from Southampton to Alexandria. It is mentioned that" the directors of the Oriental steamers have kindly granted one passage free to Alexandria;" that a free passage was granted to all of them from Belfast to Liverpool, and that the railway company gave them free passes from Birmingham to London. On May 16th, 1843, came the tidings of the first conversion, that of Abdul Rahman, a Mussulman and a Munshi, who still lives and has been a consistent Christian and most useful worker during all these years. To-day the mission, the story of the beginning of which this old book records, has seven central stations and is opening an eighth in Kathiawar and Gujairat ; the Christian community it has gathered out of heathenism numbers more than 2000 ; it employs above 100 native evangelists and teachers, and it has 3500 scholars in its schools.
There is a sweetness and a fragrance about this old book and the rec" ords it contains. The hand that penned them and led the Church in its early missionary efforts, and which has long since crumbled into dnst, was the hand of a man of God, and a spirit of faith and prayer breathes through every page. The best men in the Church were sought out as the first missionaries, and cheerfully obeyed the call. The difficulties that faced the early workers drove them back on God, and when reported to the Church at home stirred up the people to more prayer and sympathy and generous glvmg. Work thns begun-and it is thus that most of our great missionary enterprises have had their beginning-·must go on and prosper. As Dr. Morgan said in one of his early circulars, " Our little hour will soon be gone, but our work will survive us. When we are cold in the grave, the principles we have disseminated will warm the heart of the living; and then the work will be progressive. Our mission will be the parent of many. " We should honor the self-sacrifice, and energy, and holy zeal of these II)en and women of a past generation, who laid so firmly and so well
PRAYING FOIt MISSIOI'S
the foundations of the great foreign mission enterprise, bhrinking not from the greatness and the difficulty of the task, and the fruit of whose life and labors we are reaping abundantly in the ever-increasing missionary enthusiasm of to-day.
PRAYING FOR MISSIONS.
BY REV. JAMES MUDGE, D.D., CLINTON, MASS.
Whoever has attended a farewell missionary meeting must have been impressed by the earnestness and persistence with which those about to set sail for distant lands begged that much prayer might be offered on their behalf: and whoever, with heart drawn out in this direction, has been a constant attendant at the home churches must have been equally impressed by the strange habitual silence coneerning the matter on the part of both pastors and people. Nothing carries more convincing proof of the little hold this theme has yet secured on the souls of Chri8t's modern disciples than the slight, infrequent mention of it at the throne of grace. Even in so-called "concerts of prayer for missions" it is often extremely difficult to secure two or three genuine supplications kept with some degree of definiteness to the subject in hand.
This is no small defect. It is an appalling fact. It is the fundamental lack. If anything of importance is to be accomplished, if far-reaching results are to be reached, there must be more praying for missions in the closet, in the social gathering, and in the pulpit. Few pastors appreciate how much they might do for missions simplV by the indirect influence of their public prayers at the stated Sabbath services. If this theme is regularly, or at least frequently introduced, not with a mere cursory formal reference, but in earnest, heart-felt petitions, the people who listen and unite with such leadership will insensibly catch its spirit, and their own habits of supplication will be gradually sllaped in the same direction. More can sometimes be accomplished in this manner than by the formal discourses against which it is easier for prejudice to arm itself j and each minister, however small the sphere he seems to be filling, may in this way stretch his arms around the globe, and, like the great founder of Methodism, make the world his parish.
To argue that prayer is a genuine power, and not a mere formality with some retroactive effect, is certainly superfluous here; but a few out of many instances of its mighty results in the particular direction .now under survey may not unfittingly be mentioned to stimul~te our lagging faith. From Dr. A. C. Thompson's "Lectures on Foreign Missions" we cull and condense the following: "Dr. C. H. 'Wheeler, President of Euphrates College at Harpoot, writes; 'I have an abiding conviction that much of the wonderful success of the Harpoot work is due to the supplications of persons in the home field. ' " A missionary of the American Board among the Mahrattas, in India, tells of a wonderful revival that broke out there on the first Monday in January, 1833. He could only account for it on the supposition that the Christian friends in America must be praying for them; and sure enough it turned out that, unknown to him, many bodies of Christians in America had appointed that day as one of fasting and prayer for the heathen world.
" A missionary of the Gossner Society in J ava, Mr. Michaelis, wrote to his brother-in-law at home, the Rev. Gottlob Heinrich, detailing the many and great hindrances to the work. Mr. Heinrich gathered a little company together and made the matter a subject of special supplication. After a while came another letter saying that a revival had broken out among the natives, and, giving the date of the first indication of the change, he asked, , Did you not on that evening pray expressly for my work~' The date proved to be the very one on which the company had gathered. "
More prayer for missions, of the kind that moves the arm that moves the world, there should certainly be. It is well to have a map to pray by, and take up the countries and stations in order. It is especially well to pray for the laborers by name, particularly when anything fresh has been learned concerning them or interest in them has been newly alOused.
As a help to definite supplication and intelligent petitioning. perhaps some who have not given careful study to the matter may welcome the following suggestive subjects: That the missionary may have wisdom, patience, love, and tact in presenting the truth to the ignorant, prejudiced minds of his hearers in the bazaars, villages, and fairs.
That the native preachers may be faithful, zealous, and eminently successful in winning their countrymen to Christ.
That the inquirers may have courage to come out boldly in the open confession of the Saviour, and endure joyfully the spoiling of their goods.
That there may be seen on the part of seekers genuine conviction of sin and. manifest proofs of the Spirit's work.
That the native Christians may be moved by a mighty impulse to bring each one his brother to Jesus, aud may be strengthened so to live that the heathen around may be impressed by the manifest change for the better.
That the Bible, wherever sold or distributed, may be illumined by the Holy Ghost, and be the nucleus for groups of believers.
That those engaged in preparing, printing, and circulating papers, tracts, and other Christian literature may be divinely guided and see much fruit.
That teachers in colleges and schools may be able to lead their students to a love of the truth as it is in Jesus, That God would raise up able evangeli8ts to do for heathen lanus sOlI)ething such a wOlk as Wesley and Whitefield did for England.
That the hearts of kings and others in high places of authority may be touched, and their great influence turned on the side of the Lord.
That the women who go to the Zenanas may be able to arouse an intcrest in the true salvation among those so long debased with frivolous superstitions.
That the hospitals may more than ever be made mighty auxiliaries in breaking down opposition and preparing the way for the Gospel.
That the orphanages may be very tenderly watched over by the God of the fatherless, and may turn out many useful laborers.
That Christian villageR may be examples of everything good to the surrounding towns among which they are set as a city on a hill.
That the Sunday-school agency may be still more wonderfully owned of God in turning the minds and hearts of hundreds of thousands of the children and youth of non-Christian lands to Christ.
That God would send forth labonrs into His harvest. That the vast wealth of the present day, locked up in nominally Christian coffers, might be set free to bless the earth. That young men and women debating the question of a missionary vocation might be led to a right decision. That missionary secretaries and editors may have all the strength and wisdom their important and difficult positions require. That missionaries on sick leave may speedily recover their health 80 as to be able to return to their fields. That missionaries' children, providentially separated from parental supervision, may have special Divine watch-care, and receive training for large usefuluess in mission fields or elsewhere.. That the governments of the earth may be restrained from putting obstacles in the way of mission work, and that the time may speedily come when there shall be perfect liberty of opinion and public worship. That white men may cease to oppress the black and colored races, and in particular some way be found to stay the ravages of rum among the defenceless children of nature. That the slave trade may soon become a thing of the past, and that all the intercourse, commercial or political, of nominal Christians with those of other religions may impress them with the superiority of our faith.
We have been understood by certain leaders of newspaper reports to have spoken against revivals; it is a misunderstanding. A revival" got up" we abhor; a revival brought down by prayer we would welcome as life from the dead. vVe know churches which have died of spasms, and others which lead a sickly life, alternating between hot fits and cold shivers. A perpetual condition of healthy life and growth is far better than da~hes and rushes of heated but transient zc_al.-Spurgeon.
THE MAGIC LANllERN IN 'fHE MONTHLY CONCERT
THE MAGIC LANTERN IN THE MONTIILY CONCERT.
BY REV. JAMES CARTER, WILLIAMSPORT, PA.
What shall be done with the Monthly Concert? is an oft-repeated question. In many churches the mere announcement of the Monthly Concert is sufficient to reduce the mid-week meeting to a chosen few. In very despair, many churches have answered the question by ab(Jli&hing the Concert. In a multitude of churches the time honored institutIOn is maintained by the attendance of the faithful who meet every religious appointment, themselves often weary enough of the monotonoas character of the formal presentation of the encouragements and discouragements, and the usual confusion of indigestible statistics.
Not infrequently the pastor comes in for his share of the blame. Twelve missionary talks a year become in time a source of dread, and are recognized as serious interferences with the too scant time for the regular pulpit preparation. The man who composes two sermons a week most frequently regards the approach of the Monthly Concert with a mild degree of terror. Perhaps it would be better to prepare but one sermon a week and do it thoroughly. That would permit a more careful preparation and wider reading-even now and then such a book as " Mackay of Uganda," or " John G. Paton," or " In Brightest Asia. " The minister in all probability has at some time advised his people to substitute some missionary magazine for the Oentury or the Harper on Sunday afternoons. He in all likelihood would be surprised at the restfulness and stimulation which he would gain by taking his own advice. When his nervous force is at its lowest ebb after the drain of the morning's effort, and he feels possibly some measlfre of discouragemcnt in his own work, the record of what others encounter and overcome, of the marvellous fashion in which the Lord is going before His people in missionary work, will produce unconsciously a spiritual energizing that will send him to his evening pulpit with a muscular soul.
Through all this depression of one department in the Church, another wholly devoted to missionary matters thrives to arlmiration. It is significant that the women of the Presbyterian Church in the North gave last year within $11,000 of the amount of the receipts from the churches in behalf of foreign missions, and actually surpassed the churches by $4000 in gifts for home missions. Other branches of the Church have their own instructive reports. The secret of success is not far to seek : consecrated energy, personal enlistment with definite purpose, general participation in the exercises, persistent and interesting advertising by magazines and leaflets sparkling with womanly concreteness.
The present is an age of advertising; and of all advertising, that which arrests the eye by a picture is the most effective. Foreign missionaries have observed the power of pictnres, and during the last few years have been preaching to vast throngs, held in rapt att/ilntion night by night in some open square, by the wonder of the magic lantern. The Bible story has thus been told to those who otherwise would not have stayed to listen. During my preparation for the ministry I was impressed by the possibili- ties of the stereopticon as a missionary agent in our churches, and as soon as the matter of expense was overcome, introduced it in my own evening meetings, first as an illustrator for the informing of the Sundayschool teachers, and then for the instruction of all in missionary matters. Three years of experiment and experience have been most satisfactory. The results have been phenomenal attendance at Monthly Concerts, increased numbers at the weekly prayer-meetings, advance in missionary interest, enlarged missionary gifts, and stimulation in all departments of beneficence.
Like every good thing, this method may be used to repletion. It may attract throngs, as did the song-services lately so common, and ere long pall upon the taste by very frequency. The observancil of three rules may indefinitely prolong the usefulness of the method: First, the use of the lantern should never be announced. The advertising is best done after the event by those who have enjoyed the reward of faithfulness; and people are unwilling to hear more than twice that they have lost a treat. Second, the lantern should be used with studious irregularity. Rarely is it wise to employ it two months consecutively j only when some knowing ones learn to stay away on the month following an exhibition. Then use it twice in successive months to teach the over-shrewd not to set a bad example to the others. It will not be long before the people will understand that, in order to have the pleasure, they must be regular in attendance. Third, the views should not be too numerous. Twenty will serve better than sixty, for they may be kept longer before the eye, and the explanation be clearer, because less hurried. It is not wise to prolong the exhibition to physical weariness. New things are almost always overdone. If possible a .short service of song and supplication should precede and follow, and the accumulated interest at the close should be utilized for the reception of the missionary offering.
Wisely used; the i;lDtern may be made an educator of no mean powers, introducing the people to lands practically unknown, showing the pitiable need of Christian civilization, displaying the contrast between the Christian and the Christless in heathen lands j but let no one suppose that the lantern can take the place of intelligent study and intimate acquaintance with missionary work. The pastor must expect to devote literary labor to the end that the lectures may interest, and he should be careful to know as much of the mission field as do the ladies of the Missionary Society. Indifferent work here, as elsewhere, wUI issue in swift humiliation. Every pastor who deals faithfully with himself and his people will discover that his preparation for the lantern talks has increased his interest in missionary work, given him ~ firmer grasp upon the great subject, and unexpectedly afforded
THE REFLEX INFLUENCE OF GIVING TO MISSIONS
him much fruitful il1ustr~tion for sermonic uses from sources little employed. At the same time a holy enthusiasm will pervade his church as his people come in touch with the childlike honesty of the far-away Christians, unspoiled of civilized casuistry, and with the simple, unselfish devotion of the foreign missionary. The growth of interest in the work abroad will have its inductive effect upon the work at home, to the invigoration of every department of the Church, the deepening of spiritual life, and the wider enlistment of the members in personal work for the Master. The problem of the Monthly Concert may thus be solved, and the whole organization be quickened in spiritual activity by a faithful and consecrated use of that former toy, the magic lantern.
THE REFLEX INFLUENCE OF GIVING TO MISSIONS.
BY REV. PAUL V. BOMAR, VERSAILLES, KY.
When onr Master said it was more blessed to give than to receive, He meant, if He meant anything-and who can point to a single word of His that is not full of the deepest meaning ~-that the giver received greater blessings than the recipient of the gift j He meant that the reflex influence of giving was more blessed than even the direct influence; He meant that he who gave to missions received greater benefits than those to whom the gift!l were sent j that the greatest work of foreign missions is accom- plished at home and not abroad, in the hearts of Christian men and women who give their money and their lives, more than in the heartii of the heathen to whom the Gospel comes j He meant that the herald of the good tidings had a happier lot than the hearer 6f the tidings. Yes, giving to missions is like mercy, " it is twice blessed, It blesseth him that gives and him that takes,"
and, like mercy, it is "an attribute of God Himself j" and men's love is likest God's when they give not only what they have, but themselves also.
Here, then, is a stupendous truth that the Christian world has scarcely begun to realize, for think what this means. The direct influence of mission work-foreign mission!l, for instance-is far from contemptible j the resnlts attained in the last half of a century have been simply wonderful. The treacherous, thieving Malagasy have become a Christian people; Sierra Leone is now reckoned a Christian state; under the influence of the GOMpel the Sandwich Islanders have forsaken their barbarous and brutal practices, and the cannibal pots have given wily to churches all over the land j the Tierra del Fuegians, pronounced by the great scientist Darwin as little more than beasts, have been converted by the power of God into intelligent beings j the low. caste people of India, having given themselves to God, are gradually rising in the scale of being, and the report is that they are now threatening to supplant the high·caste people; the Empire of Japan is trembling in the balance-doors fast closed a few years ago have been battered down or thrown wide open by the prayers and offerings of God's people. Yes, from nearly every place whither the missionaries have gone there come many reports of mighty good accomplished. We bow in thankfulness before Go, that Sl) much has been done by the power of Jesus' name j but bdieve me, God has done more for us at home than we, with His blessing, for Him abroad j the Christian givers have been more honored in their giving than even the heathen people in their recelVlng. The thousands who gladly and willingly received the Gospel have not received more benefit than the thousands who gladly and willingly gave the GospeL Wonderful was the work that the Apostle Paul was enabled to do in giving the Gospel to the chief palts of Europe and Asia, but not more wonderful than the work that God in the meanwhile did in his own heart, filling him with Divine truths and enabling him to give these truths utterance. Had not Paul given himself to the mission work we would not have had his epistles, for they never could have been written in the quiet of the study. As Paul gave himself to God, God gave Himself to Paul. As he gave out, God filled in; as he e~ptied himself of earthly treasures, God filled him with heavenly riches.
The reason why these truth8 are not clear to us is because many of us Christian people have mistaken the end for which we live. We think it is to get heaven. That's not why you live, that's the reason Christ lived and died-to get heaven for you and in you, and it is worse than foolishness for you to try to do His work over again. You do not live, then, to get heaven, out to give heaven. Getting is not the chief end of the Christian life, but giving. God has ordained it thus for our good because it is more blessed to gi,'e than to receive j and especially is this true of giving to missions, for" if there ever was an altar that sanctified, magnified, and glorified the gift, it is the altar of missions."
Giving is the heart of missions j missions is the heart of Christianity. Christianity is as the palm-tree-it has but one bud, 'and that is the missionary spirit. Destroy tbat bud and Christianity witbers and decays, and he who refuses to give to missions is doing much to destroy the power of that reli[;:on which be professes.
Consider three simple facts: 1. We get to gi'ue. He who gets with any other object in view is very foolish; he is acting in opposition to all the laws that God has revealed to us in nature and elsewhere. The only man who gets to hold and keep is the miser, and he is miserable j and we are all miserable misers just so far as we act with the same end in view. The true man gathers in order to give-for something that he values more than his possession, <;If to Bome one whom he loves more than his money, his wife, children, or his Lord and Master. The sun does not'treasure up its light, but pours it in greatest profusion .upon this and other worlds, proclaiming this law of God: We get to give. The tree does not consume its own fruit, but bears it for others; and as others eat let. them learn the law of getting to give. The flower does not keep its beauty to itself, but adorns and gladdens, sweetly saying to selfish man, I get to give. The very grass that grows so richly upon our hills grows to give joy and strength to man and beast. This old earth in the ages gone by has gradually accumulated great riches, but not for itself, but to give to man as he needs them.
Heaven's sunshine and showers fall upon the earth, and the earth gives of its strength to fruit and flower, and the fruit and flower give themselves to man and beast, and man is to give himself with what he has to God, using his material blessings for his spiritual good. God has given to man that which He values most, His own Son, and that Son says to His disciples: "As the Father hath sent Me, even so send I you." The Father sent Him to give Himself for sinful man, and the first step in this selfgiving was a renunciation of all His heavenly possession; even so, if a man would go forth in the spirit of Christ, his first step must be a renunciation of all his earthly goods. "So, therefore, whosoever he be of you that renounceth not all that he hath, he cannot be My disciple. "
The only use, then, a man has for possessions is to give them. " Freely ye have received, freely give."
2. We get by giving. We give our time aud our energies in order to get that which we value more, money; and giving up this in the right spirit and with true wisdom, we get that which is of most value-our spiritual good, perfect manhood. The invariable law is, Give a less good in order to obtain a greater, and as long as we hold on to the less we cannot by any possible means lay hold of the greater good. The t.ree cannot bear fruit next year if it hold to the fruit of this year; it has given of its life to produce that frui~ (mind you, to produce it, not to possess it), for even that must be given up in order to new life.
In truth, there is nothing in this world that is an end in itself; everything is only a means to something better, everything is but merchandise. Whatever we may get in this world, there is always something better to be had by giving that which we now have. Something better in store for you! Yes, but you cannot have it as long as you hold on so tenaciously to your present good. "The kingdom of heaven," says the Master, "is like unto a merchantman seeking goodly pearls," and when he has found one pearl of great price he gives up all he has to get that pearl. This is ever the Christian spirit, seeking something better, and when that is found surrendering the good to obtain it, for" the good (however good it may be) is the enemy of the best;" and thus it comes to pass that only he who loses his life finds it, only he who renounces all he has becomes in the truest sense Chlist's disciple. The law of life, of growth, then is, Give, give, give. So true it is that we get by giving, that what money we have is not regarded by the Lord as our own, but another's; for, it sl'ems to me, that is what Luke 16 : 13 means: "If ye have not been faithful in that which is another man's, who shall give you that which is your olVn ~"
This money, which we call ours, is really a trust fund committed to UR, our real, inalienable possessions are far more valuable; but how shall we get them if we are not faithful here ~ You remember the separation of the judgment-day described by our Lord in the 25th of Matthew. Did you ever think upon the fact that they got the most and the best who gave the best? It was the givers who were the getters; they who withheld the good had the good withholden 'from them.
3. As we give to the Lord we get from the Lord. Giving seems to open a channel by which God's blessings flow in upon us. As we give, it is given unto us.
I do not say we will get of the same kind, although that may be. Glance back over th", history of our own (Baptist) denomination for the past few deeades, and we see as we have given men to missions God has increased our numbers more abundantly; as we have given of onr means God seems to have prospered us; while those who have not given money nor men are gradually hecoming less and less both in numbers and in influence. ,j There is that scattereth and yet increaseth."
r do not say, therefore, that missions is a "boom-town" where you can buy a corner lot for a mere "song," and afterward sell it for one thousalld dollars. I do not say invest a prayer and a penny and the Lord will give you a pound. I do not say it is more blessed to give than to receive because for every dime you give you'll get a dollar, although from a merely commercial point of view missions pay. The mission to the Sandwich Islands is ~aid to have cost $5,000,000, while the trade with this country amounted to $16,000,000 in six years, so that the interest for two years amounted to more than the whole principal.
But the greater blessing consists in the larger man, for in giving he has dethroned selfishness and made his heart a more fit dwelling-place for the Holy Spirit. A man riding along the street dropped a quarter into the outstretched hand of a beggar woman, but as he rode away he began to repent his good deed, saying: "How do I know that the woman is worthy ~ She may take that money and spend it on drink;" and he rode back and asked the woman to return the money; the astonished woman did so, and was more astonished to receive a five-dollar bill. As the man rode away a second time he was heard to murmur: ., There, self, I guess· you wi~h you had kept quiet." I know of no better way to down the selfish man in all of us than hearty, systematic, and prayerful giving to missions.
And, again, the greater blessing consists in the enlar.qed power of the giver for doing good at home; for the farther he canses his light to shine the brighter it is bound to shine at home. Therefore, if you want a revival at home, give to those away from home; if you want sinners saved about you, give to those you have never seell; and as God's blessings come down to accompany the money you have given, it will lift you up nearer Him and sweep those who are near you into His kingdom. For, say what you please, it is not self-interest that moves the people for good, but selfsacrifice. When the unconverted man sees you clinging with death-grip to the money the Master has entrusted to you, he mocks at your religion ; but when he sees you as a faitbful steward give of your means, then he bows before the power of your religion. If I were asked the greatest hindrance to the spread of the Gospel at home, I believe I would say, Not enough given to spread the Gospel abroad.
.. Give thy heart's best treasure, from fair nature learn; Give thy love, and ask not, wait not, a return; And the more thou spendest of thy little store, With II double bounty God will give thee more."
We see, then, that the reflex influence of giving to missions is wonderful for good, that nothing pays like generosity, that" in giving a man receives more than he gives, and the man is in proportion to the worth of the thing given;" but let us not forget that all giving has a reflex influence. What, then, are we to expect as long as we give $900,000,000 a year to the liquor traffic, $600,000,000 to the tobacco traffic, $568,000,000 for jewelry, and $5,000,000, nearly as much as we give to missions, for ostrich plumes ~ But let me not appeal to your selfishness in urging you to be unselfish. Let us away with this calculating of profits. We'll receive no good when we commence calculating how much good we'll get by doing good. The good comes when we lose ourselves in the good work, when we give, not for the sake of the good that will come back to us, but for the 8ake of the Master, because of the love we bear Him. The good comes when the gifts go not alone but are acco~panied by earnest prayers from loving hearts. The message to Cornelius was: "Thy prayer and thine alms are come up for a memorial before God."
" Hands that ope but to receive Empty clolie ; they only live Riohly who richly give.
" He who giving does not crave, Likest is to Him who gave Life itself the loved to save.
" Love that self·forgetful gives Sows surprise of ripened sheaves- Late or soon its own receives."
THE GARMEN'l'S OF CHRIST
THE GARMENTS OF CHRIST.
BY PROFESSOR L. J. BERTRAND, PARIS, FRANCE.
Where are they, at Treves or at Argenteuil1 After long discussions French and German ecclesiastical delegates have decreed that they are at both places. Mutual interests required perhaps that strange solution.
Father Hyacinthe declares that they are nowhere, and accuses those judges and our bishops of deceiving the faithful, of teaching them how to become stupid or hypocritic. Those accusations are so personal and in such plain words, that our political papers print them in large type and even placard them on some walls in Brittany. One says: "The Archbishop of Rennes told me, As bi.~hops we are obliged to say the contrary of what we believe."
I suppose that the high dignitary of the Roman Church meant: " Those relics are a fraud, but as they please and comfort narrow-minded people, revive their faith, attach them more closely to the Church, why should we deprive them of their fetiches? Many places like Treves, Lourdes, N. D. d'Auray receive millions of people who give millions and millions of francs to the Church. Why should we lose so much money ~ Besides," says the Bishop of Poitiers, "we cannot speak against superstition without compromising our situation and offending many priests in our diocese and at Rome. Ordinary preachers alone can express their doubts. "
Father Haycinthe translates thus: "I am obliged to follow my troops, because I am their general."
The former Archbishop of Paris, Darboy: "Brave at horne, cowards in public."
La Bruyere: "Man was born a liar, and all his interests say, Be a liar." It is well known that our Crusaders were very superstitious, and that each of them wanted to bring from the Holy Land relics for his church and others for his family. Indigenes gave them, for cash, all they required -the garments of Jesns Christ when a babe, a boy, and a man, the shroud, the coat, the overcoat. the sandals, the Bible, the tears, the sweat of Jesus Christ, the stone on which fell one of His tears, the socks and some milk of the Holy Virgin, the chalk on which fell a drop, her oil portrait by St. Luke, the gloves and the skull of St. Ann, a finger of St. John, the skeleton of St. Pancras, the four nails and big pieces of the Cross-all perfectly authentic, of course. But now comes a difficulty. We have seven heads of St. Ann, twentyone fingers of St. John, twenty-five portraits of the Virgin by St. Luke, thirty skeletons of St. Pancras, such a heap of nails that a baggage train could • not carry them, such an enormous number of true pieces of the true Gross, that the Bois de Boulogne could scarcely give as much wood. With the stones which received the tear and the chalk on which fell the drop of milk, we might easily build a new Vatican, and with the scattered hones of any saint, we could rebuild the ekeletons of an army of giants. Our priests explain, as they can, that multiplicity and other obscurities. Thus they say that as filings of the true nllils were formerly melted with much iron in each nail, there is something of the eacred nail; that the terra dicta lac virginis was imbibed with the drop of milk, and therefore that thE.' whole was sanctified that the bones being probably taken from the same catacombs, therefore they are ,:orthy of our worship. As for the famous tube containing a few drops of Mary's milk, it is perfectly empty; that is true, but it has white spots, and the tube itself is quite sufficient because of what it formerly contained. I remember that a college friend, a Parisian sceptic, forgot during his holiday trip to bring his fathcr a bottle which he had promised to fill at the source of Lourdes. As he disliked to displease his sick father and to return to Lourdes at his own expense, he bought an old bottle still adorned with the true mercantile label, and filled it, in my presence, at the river Seine. At the sight of the true bottle and the false water of Lourdes the sick man fainted with emotion, then drank with such a full confidence that, to my amazement, he really recovered.
A priest told me that labels had often made miracles, and therefore I am surprised that by the side of collections of stamps we have not collE.'ctions of miraculous labels and miraculous bottles.
Lately the Bishop of Treves and his priests resolved, " that if during the Kulturkampf of Bismarck an exhibition of the garments was impo3sible, the time has come to call the ChIistian world to Treves." Therefore they solemnly opened the casket containinf: the relic which had been hid since ] 844. At this date the most violent polemics led to the formation of " the German Catholic Church," but did not prevent one million pilgrims to worship "the true Holy Coat." German and French communities, together with the priests of Argenteuil, protest against the exhibition, and declare that it is an ecclesiastical and shameful fraud; but the bishop replies that now millions may go to Treves, venerate or worship the garments, because all proofs of authenticity are already obtained.
Mgr. Korum and learned priests have compulsed all the documents of former writers on the subject; many dignitaries and three celebrated archreologues (1) "in the year of Christ 1890 and in the most holy secret" (why secret?) submitted the relic to a scientific and archreologic 8tudy, and now they proclaim that it is authentic and composed of three parts.
1. An envelope of damasked silk, very rich, but so tattered and decayed that even the drawings could scarcely be copied. The background is of a somewhat dark bIlle, but was evidently red or purple. " We declare with certitude that this comes from the fifth or . . . sixth century, ther~fore that at that time people believed in the authenticity of the Coat."
I cannot help remembering that my first schoolmaster spoiled the teachings of my mother and of my pastor with these words: "Voltaire wrote that Crusaders used to stick on their hats shells gathered on the sea-shore of Palestine, that when those of Tours and Paris returned they scattered them in their gardens. Now your ignorant pastor says that the shells of Tours and Paris prove in favor of a deluge, as if science and Voltaire did not declare with certitude that there was never, never a deluge."
Later, as a student, I heard the great s'avant Ste. Claire-Deville say, like Geoffroy St. Hilaire, that Paris and Tours being built on beds of shells of different epochs, we may affirm with certitude that our earth en- dured many deluges. I went away murmuring, " Will not science prove later that my unscientific mother was right when she spoke to me of one deluge ¥"
2. "The Holy Coat has a lining of cotton cloth or linen (doubtful !) of such old ness that we declare it much older than the outside.
3. "The great relic, given by St. Helena to the Church of 'l'reves in 331, and thus protected on both sides, was therefore much venerated at the beginning of our era, and as it is seamless, why should it not be the true Holy Coat of Jesus Christ (why not of Pilatus or Judas~) ~ Scientists object that it is of grayish, yellowish, undefined color, with drawings as old Egyptian stuffs. Weare not afraid of science, and we do not say that it was not made by the Virgin in Egypt for Jesus as a boy or a man, but its length is five and one quarter feet, which proves that Jesus was at least six feet high ; and how a profane coat could do miracles ¥ Is it not well known that Countess Droste·Vischering, when nineteen years old, could walk only with crutches and the help of two servant!> ; that permitted, in 1844, to touch the Holy Coat, she at once threw her crutches down- stairs and walked to a convent, where she now enjoys perfect health ?"
" Nothing of that is known," reply other Catholics. " You say that the Coat was given in 331 by St. Helena, who died in 327, to t.he Church of Treves much before Treves had a church. Figures of birds and fantastic animals were woven in the cloth, and the Jews had a ' holy hor- ror' for them. How is it that your friends alone could see the countess before the miracle and that alone they can see her now 1 How is it that one of the witnesses, the first canon of the cathedral, Wilmoski, repenting in 1876, declared that all was a mere fraud ~ How is it that twenty priests and two thousand witnesses testified the radical cure of another girl at Lourdes, and that now it is well known that the news and the witnesses were all false ~ Why do you invariably refuse to accept official witnesses?, Because fraud is at ;the root of your miracles, and even Catholic papers echo, Fraud ! fraud !"
What becomes of the Argenteuil true Coat? "Learned archreologues"
say that it is composed of four long pieces four and one half feet long and three feet wide, quite insufficient for the garments of a man; but as the relic has always been called cappa, it may have been the coat of Jesus when he went to the Temple, or be the best remnant of the overcoat which soldiers divided into four parts. " The learned archreologues" of Rome, Constantinople, and Moscow lately replied with indignation that all those suppositions are absolutely erroneous, and with perfect certitude they main- tain that their three pieces and the four of Argenteuil together make the seamless Coat which Christ wore at the crucifixion.
How humiliating! Just now Leo XIII. declares that the Holy Coat of Treves has the supremacy, and that Argenteuil, Rome, Constantinople, and Moscow must go to Germany! .
Is it because of that infallible judgment that two thousand Americana "have taken possession of the best rooms of Treves, that fifty thousand Canadians, Irish, English, and Italians, have taken the others~" What I know by our priests is that" Bishop Korum is at his wits' end, because three hundred thouRand Germans and one hundred thousand French an- nounce their visit. Two millions of pilgrims are expected this year at Treves." The archbishop will make an enormous fortune.
For Christians those facts look more distressing than they really are. As Taine says, there are in France thirty-seven millions of people born in the Roman Church, but we have only one million of Catholics and one million of Romanists, not one hundred thousand worshippers of relics. Superstition exists everywhere and among all classes, especially among freethinkers.
When I went to Oran (Algeria), the most irreligious of cities, I found that" believing unbelievers," as Pascal calls them; were too intelligent to believe in their Creator, but could believe, as in the dark Middle Ages, in witchcraft and incantation. I never heard of so many spirit-rappers, ghosts. sorcerers, somnambulists, fortune-tellers. Three well-dressed and intelligent-looking ladies came the very first night to tell me : "Just now the spirit rapped and rapped. Halloe! said we, what is it? 'Go at once to such a honse, in such a street, where a great prophet of mine has arrived.' " , " Well, ladies," said I, ., come to our meeting to-morrow and I will speak on the Holy Spirit."
They" came, and in spite of my discourse, more or less. directed against their supprstition, they published among their friends that the ghost of I do not know what great and holy prophet had taken possession of my own body. Well, Julius Cresar had his Idcs of March, Napoleon 1. his star, Napoleon III. and Gambetta, as· lmperstitious as Hottentots, their regular somnambulist. Our lords, titled ladies, and magistrates of the sceptic eighteenth century swallowed the most stupid stuff of quack St. Germain, emptied their purses before Cagliostro, shivered with terror and horror before the trough of Mesmer, containing only filings of iron and glass; our Minister Maurepas gave Mesmer, dressed in his lilac gown and armed with the conjurer's wand, $70,000 for a German secret which he, of course, never posAessed. Our great authors Ste. Beuve, Th. Gautier, Renan, flew away when they happened to be thirteen at table. Freethinkers, positivists, spiritists, magnetists, laugh loudly at our simple faith
MR. KANAMORI'S NEW BOOK
in an Almighty Ruler, but in secret walk in the dark and enigmatic paths of astrology, necromancy, black art, question augurs, omens, oracles, the flight of birds, the whiz of winds, endure the nightmare in the middle of the day rather than believe in God, because He says: "}{epent, ye poor sinners." I saw lately a French deiBt refusing obstinately to eat of a loaf of hread on which the servant had not made, as in his village, the sign of he cross, and an English Protestant becoming deadly pale because another loaf had fallen upside down.
Never mind all that; the age we live in is one of marvellous evolution, for it rapidly uproots superstition, prejudice, and baubles. As Edgar Quinet said: "Ce qui doit perir, perit. Le grand Dieu marche, marche et entraine avec lui Ie monde moral vers un monde meilleur."
MR. KANAMORI'S .NEW BOOK.
BY REV. F. S. CURTIS, HIROSHIMA, JAPAN.
There has been in Japan no reaction against foreign clothes, liquors, and tobacco, but the feeling against almost everything else foreign has risen high.
Properly the Japanese have begun to see the need of discrimination in their adoption of "things foreign," and in their modifying these things there are some who think that Christianity also must be "japanned," if not materially altered. There are extremists like Mr. Kanamori, who would, in his book, "The Present and Future of Christianity in Japan," " construct a new theology on independent and essentially .Japanese lines."
Mr. Kanamori's views are so radical, there are few, if any, who wonld go as far even among his own colleagues. However, his position seems to me logical and consistent, and since it shows ideas which in a milder form have leavened the whole Japanese Church, I will give you a brief summary of some of the leading thoughts of his book, as found in a review of his work in the Japan Mail of Odober 3d. He begins by sayi!lg that, like ancient Rome, Japan is the meeting ground of all the religious beliefs of the world, and that in the great struggle for existence which is now impending only truth and vitality will prevail j but that trnth, whether in the different denominational channels of Christianity, in Buddhism, Shintoism, or Confucianism, is truth, and that in this great conflict, in obedience to the universal law, that like attracts and unites with like, truth will unite with truth and life with life, and thns will be gradually formed a great religion fit for the twentieth century.
Thus he addresses the Orient: " Thou art poor and depressed. Thou wert left behind thy brother Occident in the race of civilization, but thou needst not grieve j fortune has already turned j thou hast now in thy hands the religions of the wcrld, and it IS III thy power to smelt and recast them into a great new faith. Thou shouldst aspire to become mother of a twentieth-century religion. It is for thee to recompense thy Western brother for his gift of a material civilization by conferring upon him a spiritual civilization. Grieve not, but rejoice and fulfil thy mission."
After considering some of the obetacles that oppose themselves to Christianity in its present form, among which he mentions the incredible stories and incomprehensible doctrines of the Bible, such as redemption and the divinity of Christ, he asserts that the churches are in a whirlwind of doubt and scepticism, and that even many of the Japanese pastors are in a most dangerous state of mind; but this, the author thinks, is only the natural outcome in view of the fact that these pastors learned their theology from orthodox foreign missionaries, and being unable to distinguish the grain from the chaff, were forced to swallow both without discrimination.
The writer then proceeds to discuss the Bible, and gives as his opinion that this book is nothing more than a collection of ancient records of the Jewish race relating to religion. He agrees with the advanced school of biblical students that the Pentateuch was not written by Moses, Psalms and Proverbs not by David or Solomon, and Daniel not by him. As to the New Testament, he questions the authenticity of the Rynpotists, and thinks the Fourth Gospel is not the work of John, etc. For all this, though the Bible is not authentic, and since collected in this manner neither a revelation nor the Word of God, he professes to hold it in special love and veneration as containing the practicat truths of religion, and hopes it will become the comfort and guide of his countrymen.
As to the person of Christ, while Mr. Kanamori believes himself not to be behind any Christian in his love for Christ, he cannot accept the doctrine of His Divine nature. The miracles of the gospels do not prove the divinity of Christ, for if one can accept the Gospel narratives in this regard, Christ is merely proven to be possessed of a power which no other man possessed.
As to the pro(f of prophecy. All prophecies of the Messiah were not fulfilled in Christ. Christ purposely shaped His conduct to accord with the prophecy. Again, the great results of Christ's teachings do not prove Him to be Divine any more than those of Buddha, Mahomet, or Confucius prove the same for them.
As to the perfectness of Christ's nature, a man is not perfect wht'n there are many things which he cannot do or does not know. He was simply a religious teacher of transcendental value, ~ messenger from God, but it is far safer to judge of His character in the light of general historical evidence and in comparison with other great founders of religion than to take the testimony of the apostles and early Christians, who were, perhaps, prevented by the very splendor of His moral glory from forming a fair estimate of His personality.
To accollDt for the peculiar forc() and authority of Christ's words, in tho
THE EMPRESS OF CHINA AND THE MISSIONARIES
chapter following the author dwells upon the extraordinary development of Christ's religious consciousness. By the natural purity and benevolence of His own heart above all other men He felt Himself to be in communion with God. "It was natural and excusable," he says, " in the early Christians to believe Christ to be God, for they were unable to account for His wonderful sayings and actions by any other hypothesis; but men of the present age owe it to the advanced stage of their civilization to make a right use of their reasoning powers so as to form a true estimate of Christ."
In the closing chapter the doctrine of redemption is examined and declared to be incompatible with the love and mercy of Godo The true meaning of salvation is that Christ, by His example, taught men how to commune with God, and thus saved them.
The pamphlet is concluded in the following words: " I regret to say that there are religious people who imitate the retrogressive policy of China. It is my sincere hope that the age of religious perfection may be placed not in the past, but in the future. However grand and noble a personage may appear hereafter in the rdigious field, he cannot but be an imperfect man; consequently it is not an historical personage whom we may accept as our Saviour, but the idealistic Christ embodying the perfection of the human species and symbolizing the communion of God and man." I have no time before the closing of the mail to add any comment other than to ask you that you will beg our churches at home to pray that the Spirit of God may be poured out in great measure upon the Christians here, that such pernicious doctrine may not find lodgement, and that He may lead them into the truth at! it is in Jesus, THE EMPRESS OF CHINA AND THE MISSIONARIES.
Some little time ago the new Empress in Pekin needed a tailor to make part of her wedding trousseau. The one who went happened to be a Christian, and having to be admitted into the presence of her Majesty on account of his work, he took the opportunity to speak for his Master; and being an earnest, warm-hearted man, he told her the GORpel, and then asked her gracious acceptance of a copy of the Chinese New Testamento l'his she was pleased to accept, and read it, seemingly interested in its contents. The tailor seeing this asked if he might bring a friend of his, who was more learned, and could explain it better. The Empress gave him per,mission, and he brought a young Christian gentleman who was studying at the Mission College for a preacher, and he preached very mnch to the satisfaction of his Imperial patroness, who made the remark to the tailor: " You did right to bring your friend. I understand the Christian doctrine much better now. He certa.inly explains it better than you. " We trust that the truth may sink into her heart, and that she may be saved.
EXTRACTS AND TRANSLATIONS FROM FOREIGN PERIODICALS
EXTRACTS AND TRANSLATIONS FROM FOREIGN PERIODICALS.
BY REV. C. C. STARBUCK, ANDOVER, MASS.
AFRICA.
-A writer in Gentral Af1'ica complains of the lack of missionary zeal in the High Church party of the Church of England, and assigns some causes. He says: " We High Churchmen have to face the simple fact that missionary ardor burns far more brightly among our Evangelical brethren than among ourRelves. To the work accomplished by the latter, as well as by Nonconformists, it is needless to point in detail ; it is before the world's eyes.
" When an appeal is made for workers in East Equatorial Africa, Bishop Tucker receives a crowd of applicants. When a similar appeal is made by the Bishop of Zanzibar, there is no response. Who can help drawing invidious comparisons, or resist asking, if not determining, what is the reason of the contrast ~ " I venture to think, moreover, that the affections of the clergy attach unduly to their material sanctuaries. God forbid that I should undervalue reverence for the place where His honor dwelleth; but it is possible for this right feeling to become a weakness, an indulgence in a religious luxury. There is, I think, a strong tendency to the opinion that the people exist for the Church rather tha:l the Church for the people, and congregations are regarded as ornaments for the fabric-an appropriate decoration of the nave-rather than as the' living stones' for whom the dead ones exist. Hence there is some loat.hness to pass out among the people and proclaim the Gospel apart from the adjuncts of the highest ecclesiastical civilization. Vve get too domesticated in our beautiful material houses of worship, too fastidious of all that is outwardly inadequate to face the exigencies of a life where much that we value in the service of God will have to be forgone. To embrace a missionary vocation means giving up , home comforts' in a double sense-a sense which our Evangelical brethren do not feel, or at least not to the same extent.. .
" If the sacrifice be greater for the High Churchman, is not the reward apportionate ~ Those who have made it will aUest that th" presence of our Lord may be realized more intensely in a palm-leaf chapel or a mud hut than in the very' eorrectest ' of town churches, and that the surrender is but a ' leaving Christ for Christ,' and that in the joy of worship there is a ' manifold more' even in this present world. "
-The Livingstonia Mission of the Free Church of Scotland was founded seventeen years ago, just after the burial of David Livingstone in Westminster Abbey. It was suggested by Rev. Dr. James Stewart, F.R.G.S., of Lovedale, South Africa, who had been Livingstone's companion in exploring the lake. It was organized and has since been led by Rev. Dr. Robert Laws, who has had but one furlough in the seventeen years. It is managed by a suo-committee of eight miniRters and twenty-two members of the Free and United Presbyterian Churches of Scotland. The other missionaries are: Of the Free Church, Rev. J. Kerr Cross, Rev. George Henry, Rev. George Steele, Messrs. Walter A. Elmslie and David H. Fotheringham; of the Dutch Reformed Church of South Africa, Rev. Andrew C. Murray. Six of these gentlemen are medical missionaries, three are married-Messrs. Gossip, M'Intyr!', Vlok, Stuart, Thomson, W. Murray, J. and G. Aitken, and Mr. and Mrs. M'Callum. There are 48 native Christians, making a total Chrilltian staff of 65. All the native converts are missionaries. Including the 48, there are 78 native teachers, 3080 scholars, 2422 in attendance at oncc. In one station, in less than one year, Dr. Henry treated 5200 cases-3231 surgical. Arab war and Portuguese aggression have both been compelled to recede, and there is good hope of quieter times.
" The Livingstonia Mission is entering on a new period, even that of the first-fruits of harvest in every sense. Let the Church-that is, every member of it-seek by prayer and sacrifice to prove worthy of the Master who leads, and, in their degree, of the servants whom He has sent, and enableR us still to send, to the front of His army."
-Of the four Moravian brethren dispatched to establish a mission on Lake Nyassa, one, G. Martin, has already been called home. The Unitas Fratrum is publishing very full and interesting journals and letters from the surviving brethren.
-The Rev. G. L. Pilkington, of Uganda, writing in th" /}hurch Missionary Intelligencer, says: "The two facts that impress me most strongly in this country are the smallness of England's efforts for this country and the greatness of what God has been pleased to do in spite of it. Why, if Spurgeon or Moody were to come here they would soon have audiences of immortal souls (faces black, no doubt, if that makes any difference) as large as any they address in England or America, and more receptive" and less hardened, and far more grateful." Gratefulness, as the present writer, from ten years among the West Indian negroes can testify, is peculiarly a negro trait of character.
-The Ohronicle, highly commending Mr. Cust's " Africa Rediviva," nevertheless keenly criticises it in parts. Among other things it says :, " His bitter criticism on the Paris Missionary Society reads like a survival of that unworthy anti-Gallic feeling in which the British were trained a generation or two ago, and is utterly without justification. No more peaceable and loyal occupants of British territory can be found than the agents of the Paris Missionary Society in Basutoland, many of whom are connected by ties of blood or marriage more with England and Scotland than with France, and against whom it is an unjust and unfounded slander to say that they' have meddled with tribal politics in a sense hostile to British interests.' "
-It has heen a matter of surprise that the efforts of Christian missionaries in the barbarous Moslem empire of Morocco have hitherto been so free. It appears, however: from The Christian, that Islam is beginning to move against them. "The Sultan of Morocco has issued orders forbidding intercourse between Moorish women and ladies attached to Christ,ian missions. The workers connected with the North African Mission are specially affected, and having regard to the welfare of inquirers and others, they are prepared to pursue their labors with special circumspection and caution. The Sultan's advisers interpret communications between Moorish and English women as threatening' innovation in the laws,' and' the evil of corrupting religion.' These offences may be visited with the penalty of death in the case of renegades refusing to report in a given time! A definite subject for prayer at the present time is that the Sultan may grant religious liberty to his subjects, so that the Gospel may be proclaimed without imperial hi~dr~~c!3," EAST INDIES.
– " India is a vast continent inhabited by. nearly a fifth of the whole human race or nearly four-fifths of civilized Europe. Indian population is made up of many diverse societies in various degrees of human progres5 and distinguishable from each other by their dress, habits, occupations, and modes of life. But notwithstanding the great differences due to caste prejudices, the vast Indian peoples of the present day may well be dividIXI into two main classes-viz., those who understand English and those who do not. The former class is only a microscopic minority. I doubt whether they number even four per cent of the entire population; but as a class they can easily be distinguished from the masses, since their modes of life, occupations and dress are quite different from those of the great bulk: of the people. This new class of men, instead of returning, after their academical career, to the usual avocations of their parents, and improving them by their superior skill, tact and wisdom; instead of mixing freely with their less enlightened brethren and diffusing knowledge among them, and reforming them step by step, have preferred to remain isolated, and deserve to be called' an association of clerks and penmen.' After half a century of British rule in Il).dia this is the result that has been produced.
"It canno.t, however, be denied that though numerically small the English-knowing section of the Indian people is capable of producing grand results, if while waking to a sense of its power it is awakcned also to a sense of its duty. With such revered names among us as Rajah Ram Mohun Roy, Babu Keshub Chunder Sen, Iswara Chandra Vidya Sagar, no one is justified in saying that English education in India has been wholly barren of great results. These three great Indian heroes must find a foremost place among the men of action and the philanthropists of the world. Since the time of the illustrious Sakya Muni, these are the only three whom India has produced; but these three, in their own lifetime, worked with the accumulated strength of three hundred men. "-A Brahmin, in Harvest Field (Madras).
-The same Brahmin, writing, of course, from his own point of view, goes on to say: "Christian work among Pariahs has been a success; it does not matter much from a social standpoint whether the higher classes of Hindus become converts or not. The social advantages of Christianizing Pariahs are very numerous. On becoming Christians, Pariahs become eligible to study in public schools; they come under the supervision and control of enlightened missionary gentlemen. Their girls also are put to school, and soon' many a Hower born to blush unseen' sends forth a rare fragrance which is widely appreciated. "
-The abbot of the Hindu monastery of Gundicha, says the Juvenile Missionary Herald (English Baptist), a Brahmin, who has quite a passion for collecting Christian books, put them into the hands of two of his disciples. Naturally enough, but apparently without his expecting it, they both became Christians and very efficient ones.
– " Our mode of preaching is necessarily very varied-as varied as are the habits, thoughts, conditions of life of the people to whom we preach. A set discourse, delivered in an unemotional manner, is practically useless. Sympathy with the people, knowledge of their difficulties, acquaintance with the sayings current among them, familiarity with their home life, their social life and religious beliefs are absolutely necessary if we would speak to them effectively. Parables, il1ll~trations, proverbs, and pithy sayings must be freely used in commending to them the truths of the Gospel. The preacher must make everything he says real, living, visible before them. He must become all things to all men. He must feel that he has rich treasures of grace and love in Christ to present to every man, and must present them with all confidence and hope. Hesitaney, reserve, will take away all the spirit from what he says." -Rev. E. LEWIS, in Harvest Field.
– " The day whieh I spent, in company with the native preacher Pakiam, in visiting Pariah villages, has appeared to me one of the most momentous of my life. I wished that many friends of missions could do what I did-creep around in the huts of these mOllt wretched of all the wretched, and gain an insight not only into their outward misery, but into the utter ruinousness of their whole inner being. Such an experience might well rectify many a distorted apprehension and many an unwarranted expectation. "-Dr. GRUNDEMANN, in Allgemeine Missions-Zeitschrijt.
-The Church Missionary Intelligencer, in a memorial notice of the eminent native clergyman, William Thomas Satthianadhan, says: "In regard to all th0ge delicate questions which are now and again coming to the front in the misRion field, snch as the relations of missionaries to their converts, and all such questions as might be properly included under the term 'Home Rule,' he showed himself at once in sympathy with his countrymen, and yet fully alive to the unwisdom, not to say absurdity, of the native church thinking it can run alone when it is only beginning to feel its feet. "
– " Last year the English officers and civilians of the Punjab and Sindh contributed $] 3, 500 for the support of mission work. They have seen thl) work of the missionary, and this is their testimony. "-Missionary Reporter (M. E. C., South).
-The Young Men's Christian Association of Madras (whose organ, The Young Men of India, we occa~ionally see) has now a membership of 215, of whom 47 are Christians, 87 Hindus, and 3 Mohammedans, the two latter classes, doubtless, being Associate.
– " When Carey was dying, the Metropolitan Bishop of India, the highest official of the Church of England in India, knelt with bowed head by the pillow of this shoemaker missionary, and asked his blessing, feel. ing that no honor could equal the blessing of this man, whom God had ordained to- be the greatest apostle of modern missions." – Canadian Mis. sionary Link.
MISCELLANEOUS.
-The U. P. Missionary Record for January has an interesting account of the great missionary martyr of the Middle Ages, Raymund Lull. He accomplished little immediately, but his example has always been working since. His words are: "He who loves not lives not; he who loves lives by the life that cannot die."
-The notion that Mohammedan!! are wholly inaccessible to the Gospel begins, as the Allgemeine Missions-Zeitschrift shows, to give way to facts. The Church Missionary Society has II round thousand baptized converts from Islam; the Rhenish Missionary Society, of its 12,000 converts in Snmatra, has received, we believe, almost one half from the Moham. medans; of 12,000 Javanese Christians, nearly al were gained from Islam.
INTERNATIONAL DEPARTMENT
n.-INTERNATIONAL DEPARTMENT.
EDITED AND CONDUCTED BY REV. J. T. GRACEY, D.D.
International Missionary Union. Drake, Rev. D. H., India.
The ninth annual meeting of the In. Dunlap, Rev. E. ·P., Siam. ternational Missionary Union was held at Clifton Springs, N. Y., which has Dale, Miss Annie G., Persia. become its home, through the munifi· cent provision of Dr. Henry Foster, Eddy, Miss Mary Pierson, Syria. who has loved this institution and built them a tabernacle-one of the most Eddy, Miss Julia, " unique and beautiful structures of its Eveleth, Mrs. Fred H.. kind in the world. The first session, Burma. held on Wednesday evening, June 8th, was occupied with the address of wel- Ferguson, Rev. J. C., China. come from Rev. Lewis Bodwell, Chap. lain of the Sanitarium, followed by the Ferguson, Mrs. Mary N., " roll-call, in response to which the indio vidual members stated their field, years Fife, Miss Nellie E., Japan. of service, and made a brief reference to their work. Sixty.five missionaries Folsom, Rev. Arthur, China. responded to this call the first evening. The exercises were conducted by Rev. S. Folsom, Miss Ellen A., India. L. Baldwin, D.D., one of the secretaries of the Methodist Missionary Society. Fuller, Mrs. Jennie, The following missionaries were in Fitch, Rev. G. F., China. attendance on the meetings of the week. They aggregate some fourteen hundred Fulton, Miss Mary H., M.D., years of service on the field. Graybill, Rev. A. T., Mexico.
Gracey, J. T., D.D., India.
Gracey, Mrs. J. T., Hamlin, Cyrus. D.D., Turkey.
Hamlin, Mrs. Mary E., " Harding, ReT. C., India.
Harpster, Rev. J. H., Harpster, Mrs. J. H., Jewett, Lyman. D.D., ,. Jewett, Mrs. Lyman, Jewell, Mrs. C. M., China.
Kennedy. Miss M. J., India.
Kellogg, S. H., D.D., NAME. FIELD. Kellogg, Mrs. S. H., "
Adams, Mrs. S. C., Japan. Lucas, J. J., D.D., Abrahamian, Rev. S. C., Turkey. Andrews, Miss M. E., China. Lore, Mrs., D. D., Argentina. Angelini, Mrs. Arabella, Italy. Baldwin, S. L., D.D., China. Mansell, Henry, D.D., India. Belden, Rev. Wm. H.• Bulgaria. Belden, Mrs. Ellen S., Mansell, Mrs. NancieM., M.D.," Bunn, Miss Zillah A., Bnrma. Mellen, Mrs. L. W., Africa.
McMillan, Rev. J., M.D., Mudge, James, D.D., India.
Miller, Miss L. Ella, Burma..
Bunker, Alonzo, D.D., Nevius, J. L .• D.D., China. Burditt. Rev. J. T., Bushnell, Mrs. Albert. India. Nevius, Mrs. Helen S. C., Calder, James, D.D., Africa. Calder, Rev. Wm. Carey, China. Nichols, Rev. C. A., Burma. Burma. Nichols, Mrs. C. A., Otto way, Miss Annie, Cent. Am.
Carleton, Miss May, M.D., China. Osgood, Mrs. Helen W., China.
CroBs Samnel, Siam. Popoff, Rev. M., Bulgaria.
Cross, Mrs. Samuel, " Popoff, Mrs. M., Cushing, C. W., D.D., Italy. Davis, Rev. J. A., China. Parsons, Mrs. C. J., Turkey.
Plumb, Mrs. N. J., China.
Dowsley, Rev. Andrew,) India and Chi· Perry, Rev. H. T., Turkey.
B.A., l na, Campbel. Perry, Mrs. Mary E., Siam.
Dows!ey, Mrs. Andrew, ford, Ont, ;Can. Po~·ter, Miss Mary H., China. Phillips, Rev. E. G., Assam. Siam, as Journalistic Secretary, whose versatility, ingenuity, and general avail- Phillips, Mrs. E. G, ability throughout the week made him like the eyes in the wheels, when he was Phinney, Miss Hattie, Burma. not some one of the many wheels him- self. He has a high order of organizing Price, Rev. W. I., genius.
Price, Mrs. W. I., " LECTURES.
Ranney, Miss Ruth W., Dr. John Henry Barrows, of Chicago, delivered the first of the set lectures. Richardson, Miss Helen. India. His theme was" The Religious Exhibits and the Religious Congresses of the Roberts, Rev. W. H., Burma. Word's Fair in 1893." it was an elo· quent address, explanatory and argu- Roberts, Mrs. W. H., mentative, mainly aiming at the pres- entation of the ideal of the World's Rolman, Miss Eva L .• Japan. Parliament of Religions. The next morning the Union had a spirited de· Robinson, Rev. J. E., India. bate ou 'his part of the scheme, some stoutly championing it, and others with Rood, Mrs. A. V., Zulularid. equal zeal and intelligent statement condemning it. The general line of Rivenburg. Rev. S. W.• Assam. the arguments on either side were forti- fied by specific information as to the Rivenburg, Mrs. S. W., representative character of the eminent gentlemen from abroad who have been Schneider, Mrs. S. M., Turkey. already named, or of those likely to come. It was thought by these speak- Spencer, Miss M. A.• Japan. ers that no genuine Brahman, Buddhist, or Confucianist could be induced to Sparkes. Miss Fanny. India. take part in such a parliament. Others thought that the outcome of such a Stephens. Rev. W. H.. gathering would be much better and broader than any imaginary form or re- Stephens, Mrs. W. H .• " sult that could be sketched in advance; and that, as it was to be, Christian men Thayer. Rev. C. C.• M.D.• Turkey. might better accept destiny and aid in shaping something that would be of Thayer, Mrs. C. C.• value to mankind. Resolutions and amendments and substitutes found rec- Tracy. Rev. Charles C., ognition, and on some of them the de- cisions could only be announced after a Tyler, Rev. Josiah, Africa. count vote; but it turned out that no final action was reached, other topics Tyler, Miss Susan E., having forced their way to the attention of the meeting, and this not having Wherry, Miss S. M.• India. been taken up again, whether from indis- position to press to an ultimate vote the White, Mrs. W. J., . China. writer cannot say. Certainly a large num· ber will give their individual support Williams, Rev. E. T., to the movement; while the discussion will remain in the minds of those who Willits, Rev. O. W., " were present, as it was a very able one, Wood, Miss Sarah L., Turkey.
Wood, Geo. W., D.D., Wood, Mrs. Geo. W., "
Woodhull, Miss Kate C., M.D., China.
Young, Rev. E. R., 1 North American Young, Mrs. E.R., I Indians.
The summary of the above is as follows: By Societies: A. B. C. F. M., 25; Baptist, 23; Presbyterian, 23 : Metho. dist, 21 ; Lutheran, 2 ; Church of Scotland, 2 ; Reformed Church of America, 1; Woman's Union, 1 ; Disciples, 1 ; Evangelical Church of Italy, 1 ; Christian Alliance, 1 ; Italian Bible Society, 1 ; Independent, 1. Total, 103.
By Fields: Africa, 5; Assam, 4; Bulgaria,4; Burma, 13 ; Central America, 1; China, 22; Hudson Bay, 2; India, 25 ; Italy, 2 ; Japan, 4; Mexico, 1 ; PerSia, 1 ; Siam, 4 ; South America, 1 ; Syria, 2 ; Turkey, 12. Total, 103.
The organization was completed by the addition of Rev. E. P. Dunlap, of The next formal lecture was on " Bul· the Magazine of 'Christian Literature.
garia and the Bulgarians," by Rev. The first was from the pen of Mrs.
Cyrus Hamlin, D.D., founder and ex· Annie Reichardt, the second by Justice President of Robert College, Constanti. Ameer Ali, of Calcutta. .. The Nature nople. It is impossible to summarize of the Crisis in the Missionary Work in and almost as difficult to characterize Turkey," by Rev. William N. Cham.
this Gladstonian lecture by the Mis· bers, D.D., of Erzroom, Turkey, was sionary Gladstone of America. The the theme of another able paper. Rev.
lecturer, in his eighty·second year, Dr. J. M. Allis, of Chili, sent a paper on swept over the past, present, and future .. Work among Romanists." Rev. C.
without losing a fraction of detail or A. Nichols, of Burma, presented and cumbering with over·statement his read a practical paper on •• Lay Mis.
resume of the diplomacy and strategy of sionaries for the Foreign Field." Rev.
this the most diplomatic and strategic J. E. Robinson, of Bombay, read a valu- centre of modern history. We had lit· able essay on ., The Attitude of the Ed· tie wonder that a bishop of a Protes· ucated Classes of India toward Chris· tant church should say, "If Hamlin tianity." Rev. Robert H. Nassau, were a Romanist, that Church would M.D., of the Gaboon, West Africa, sent canonize him as soon as possible after a paper which was read as the opening his death," of the conversation on •• Shall Roman A third lecture was by Rev. J. L. Catholic Priests in Heathen Lands be Nevius, D.D., of Northeast Ohina, on Given Religious or Social Recognition " The Phenomena of Demoniacal Pos· by Protestant Missionaries ?" Dr.
session in the Present Age." The lec. Nassau took a negative position, though turer had bestowed large attention to he recognized certain obligations toward the collection and collation of testi. them as members of a civilized com· mony from many and widely separated munity, in comparison with the claims parts of the East, of alleged or suspected of the native heathen. Another paper cases of possession of the devil. The was furnished by Rev. William K. Eddy, classification of these phenomena was of Syria, on " The Shadeleeyah Sect of made in a strong way, and the lecturer Islam in Syria." Rev. W. H. Roberts, inclined to a belief of the operation of of Burma, presented a paper full of in· Satan, through hypnotic and other abo terest and information on the" Provi· normal conditions of the human mind sion for the Care and Education of and body, It hailed questions when Missionaries Children left in this Coun· the lecturer gave the opportunity to try. " Miss Z. A. .Bunn lind Miss Hat· present them,' tie Phinney, both of Burma, read es· PAPERS. says; the former treated" The Relative The more formal papers of the week Importance of Educational and Evan- were of marked ability. The most gelistic Work," and the latter" Train· elaborate was that of Rev. E. M. Wher. ing Native Bible Workers." Rev. C. C.
ry, D.D., of Chicago, second to no Tracy, of Turkey, treated the lIudience American authority on Mohammedan· to a paper on " Self.Support."
ism, discussing" The StatuR of Moslem SPECIAL SESSIONS. Women according to the Teaching of the Quran." The paper was summarized There were four sessions of promi.
in the absenoe of its author by Rev. Dr. nent interest. One entire evening ses- Kellogg, who proved equal to the task sion was given to the consideration of of condensing what he called already medical missions, and part of the ses- one of the most closely condensed es. sion the following forenoon, both or- says he ever read. It is partially in reo ganized and presided over by C. C.
joinder to two articles which appeared Thayer, M.D., Physician in Superin.
in the Nineteenth (Jentury, reprinted in tendence of the Sanitarium, a medical missionary in Turkey from 1868-73. which he might make a selection, ac- Another, directed and presided over hy cording to the interest sf the hour. Rev. James Mudge, D.D., editor of the Then the other members of the Union Lucknow Witness from 1873-83, was 00- plied them with impromptu questions. cupied with the relation of experiences The compact intelligence given so inof returned missionaries in their efforts terested the Union and the audience, to instruct and stimulate the home that it was subsequently determined to churches on the subject of fOl"eign mis- publish the questions and answers in sions. A change in the demand was pamphlet form. recognized, less of the mere curiosity exhibit, or reference to the customs of the The sessions for consideration of toppeople being desirable, the churches ics of a general interest were made purhaving so generally become intelligent posely conversational rather than in the in these matters, and prepared to form stiff form of debate, that the ladies better judgment of the missionary work might feel the freer to take part thereand results, and the work itself having in. The general outline embraced 8uch developed to an extent which intensi- topics as Governments and Missions; fies the interest in hearing about it. Nominal Christians and Dead Churches; The speech wanted of the returned mis- Immigrants in the United States; Selfsionary ten years ago is no longer in de- Support; Missionaries and Natives of mand. The advantages and difficulties Foreign Fields; Difficulties from Social of the missionary as a speaker on the Conditions of Converts: Training Nahome platform, and how he can make tive Helpers; Education versus Evanhimself most effective, were among the gelization; Work among Moslema, and points presented with advantage. numerous unclassified themes.
The special ladies' meetings, one ex- The platform meetings were well susclusi vely for ladies and one public, tained. Dr. Bunker, of the Baptist were addressed by Mrs. Schneider, for Karen Mission in Burma, thrilled the tllirty years in Turkey; Mrs. Parsons, audience with the recital ~f triumphs for forty-two years in the same coun- of grace and answered prayer within try; Mrs. Jewett, thirty-eight years his mission, like that of which he gave among the Telugus ; Mrs. Angelini, of a brief account in the July number of Italy; Miss Eddy, of Syria; Miss Ran- this REVIEW; Dr. J. J. Lucas charmed ney, of Burma; Mrs. Perry, of Siam. and profited the people with illustra- Mrs. Egerton R. Young, of Hudson's tions of the imminence of God in mis- Bay Indian work, sang in the Cree lan- sion work; Rev. Josiah Tyler, of South guage. and others in Japanese and other Airica, fired with enthusiasm, kindled tongues. by forty years among the Zulus, stirred his hearers with his vigorous recitals; But perhaps the most highly valued Rev. Egerton R. Young-it goes withof these special sessions was one given out the saying-was always the same to the "Dunlap Symposium." This fascinating speaker about the canoe and was a novelty destined to be copied dogsled experiences of missionary life and highly to be commended as a form among the Cree and Saulteaux Indians of missionary meeting where circum- in the far North Land; Rev. A. T. stances render it possible. Some fifteen Graybill, first missionary of the SouthmISSIOnaries, representing as many ern Presbyterian Mission in Mexico, fieldR, were selected to take place in spoke discriminatingly of work among turn on the platform to be "inter- Romanists; Rev. J. Harpster, of the viewed" by Rev. E. P. Dunlap, of Lutheran Church. told of their missions Siam, who suggested and arranged this in Africa and India; Rev. C. Harding, entire session. The parties had previous- of India, unobtrusive, but always sensily placed in the hands of Dr. Dunlap a ble and discriminating, Nevius. Folsom, set of questions about their work from Ferguson, with Willits, Williams, and others of China, with those from other but thirty-three were present at this fields, all contributed to an unllsually meeting. As it may be a matter of high average of platform delineation public interest, we give the following and demonstration with power, while names of those returning: veterans like Dr. Lyman Jewett, whose To Burruo., Rev. Messrs. Roberts and face it is a benediction to behold, graced. Calder and Misses Phinney and Bunn ; the occasion with words which were to Bulgaria, Rev. M. Popoff and wife; like" dew on H·.,rmon." to China, Dr. and Mrs. Nevius, Messrs.
There was the usual Young People's Fitch, Ferguson, and Willio.ms, Dr.
Meeting on Sunday afternoon, and a May Carleton and Dr. Mary Fulton; to rare series of talks on Bulgaria, by Rev. Cree Indians, Rev. E. R. Young; to W. H. Belden and Mrs. Belden, and Italy, Mrs. Angelini; to India, Dr.
Dunlap of Siam and Nichols of Burma, Mansell and wife, Dr. Kellogg and wife, illustrated by stereopticon views; and W. H. Stephens and wife, Rev. Hard- the charming social hour in the Sanita- ing, Mrs. Fuller, and the Misses Fol- rium parlor, known as the President·s som, Wherry, Richardson; to Mexico, reception, for the presentation of the Rev. Mr. Graybill; to Siam, Rev. Boon missionaries to Dr. and Mrs. Foster and Itt; to Turkey, Rev. Mr. Perry and others. wife and Mrs_ Par~ons. When these The Consecration Meeting at 9 o'clock had spoken Rev. Dr. George W. Wood, on Sunday morning, and the truly great formerly of Turkey, addressed them, in sermon at the morning service to a faultless phrase, words of tenderest large throng by Dr. Kellogg, must be sympathy and profound spiritual en- passed with mere mention. couragement, and Dr. Henry Foster, in The morning devotional hour each a prayer so remarkable for its unction day was, as usual, of great spiritual help- and power that all seemed to be in the fulness. One of these sessions was set very presence of God, commended them apart to pray that God would move on to the care of our heavenly Father_ some body or bodies to contribute The scene will live in the hearts as well $30,000, an unprovided balance neces- as in the memory of all who were pres- sary to the commencement of the en- ent, possibly" while life or thought or largement of the Sanitarium buildinga being lasts or immortality endures."
according to plans of Dr. Foster. The We present separately the formulated missionaries caIlle to realize that the action of the body on some great inter- magnanimous donor of half a million ests of the times. Some eminent dele- dollars' worth ot. property, primarily gates from other bodies were by motion for the upbuilding of the health of mis- requested to address the meeting. Mrs_ sionaries, had begun a work which they Ninde, of Minneapolis, Mrs. Hunt and should adopt and carry forward as far Mrs. Woodbridge, of the World's Wom- as in them might lie. Hundreds of an's Christian Temperance Union, were missionaries have been free guests here of the number. The salutations and while under more or less protracted communications of members not able treatment, and the entire institution is tu attend were grateful, and they came given to truetees with this chief intent from seemingly every corner of the globe in its use_ and from eminent men, in Europe as The culmination of interest and pa- well as in America, who are not of this thos and spiritual manifestation was body.
realized in the farewell meeting, held to Nothing could have been more ten- hear a parting word from the mission- der, appreciative, and beautiful than aries present, who anticipate returning the addresses and memorandums made to their foreign fields before another an- at the "Memorial Hour," held for nual meeting. In all there were about members deceased within the year: forty; some had been obliged to leave, Wellington J. White, of China; William Mellen, of Zululand; Naraiyan The following is the text of the me- Sheshadri, of India, and Mrs. Bartlett, morial: of Turkey. .. The International Missionary In responso to the presentation by Union. composed of missionaries of all Mrs. Woodbridge, the Secretary of tbe Christian denominations, and repre- World's Woman's Christian Temper- senting all the great mission fields of ance Union, of the form of petition to the world, assembled in IInnual meeting the several governments of the world at Clifton Springs, N. Y., presents for the suppression of the liquor and herewith its most respectful protest opium traffic, the Union directed the against the reoently enacted Chinese PrAsident and Secretary to sign the en- Exclusion Bill.
dorsement of the same in their name. .. We protest against 'it as unneces- The following officers were elected sary, the whole number of Chinese im- for the ensuing year: migrants having never exceeded 120,.
President, Rev. J. T. Gracey, D.D., 000, and there bEing no probability Rochester, N. Y.; Vice-Presidents, Rev. that any very much larger number Cyrus Hamlin, D.D., Rev. S. L. Bald- would for years come to this country.
win, D.D., Rev. W. H. Bixbee, D.D.; "We protest against it aa unchris- Secretary, Rev. William H. Belden, Clif- tian. We are commanded to deal justly ton Springs, N. Y.; Associate Secretary, with the stranger within our gates.
Mrs. C. C. Thayer, Clifton Springs,N.Y.; This enactment puts them under grave Treasurer, Rev. James Mlldge, D.D., disabilities and subjects them to cruel Clinton, Mass.; Librarian, C. C. Thayer, and unusual penalties. and is, there- i M.D., Clifton Springs, N. Y.; .&ecutive fore, unworthy of a Christian nation.
Oommittee, Rev. J. A. Davis,D.D., Hemp- " We protest against it as a violation stead, N. Y., Rev. M. H.Houston, D.D., of our solemn treaties. The Chinese Rev. C. W. Cushing, D.D., Mrs. O. L. who are here have been guaranteed the George, Rev. E. R. Young. Mrs. Will- same rights as those accorded to the iam H. Belden, Rev. C. A. Nichols. most favored nation. No one would think, for an instant, of requiring Eng- lishmen, Germans, or Frenchmen to go Important Opinions on Current .Affairs, before an Internal Revenue officer and 'J:RE RECENT ANTI-CHINESE LEGISLATION OF take out certificates which they should 'J:RE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT. always have at hand to secure their Resolved, That the following memorial right of being here; and yet this is re- be adopted by this International Mis- quired of the Chinese in flagrant viola- sionary Union, and that a copy of the tion of that provision of the treaty, the same, signed by the President and Sec- advantage of which we always olaim for retary, be forwarded to the President American residents in China.
of the United States Senate, and to the " We further protest against the bill Speaker' of the House of Representa- as being likely to seriously endanger tives, with the request to present it im- the lives and property of missionaries mediately to each of these bodies. and merohants in the Chinese Empire.
Resolved, That a copy of the same be Those who are opposed to the pres- also forwarded by our officers to the ence of foreigners in the Empire are President of the United States, with greatly assisted in their inflammatory the request that htl will use his influ- . appeals aud riotous measures by the ence to have all matters concerning im- declaration that the United States of migration of Chinese to this country America are constantly passing oppres- settled by treaty with the Empire, and sive measures against their people in thus avoid legislation which is cont.rary this land.
to the spirit of Christianity and dis· "Moreover, we call your attention to graceful to the nation. the fact that the Chinese Government has never refused careful consideration MINUTE ON SCIENTIFIC TEMPERANCE EDU- to all modifications proposed by our Government in the treaties, and that it CATION IN FOREIGN MISSION SCHOOLS. would be perfectly feasible to reach all that is desirable and necessary through We rejoice to learn of the success diplomatic measures,. and there is, which has attended the effort to intro- therefore, no justification of opproosive duce scientific temperance instruction legislation. into the public schools and other edu- cational institutions in the United "We earnestly beseech your honor- States and Canada by means of national able body to immediately institute and State legislation. It is a matter of measures for the repeal of the recently sincere thankfulness that twelve or thirenacted exclusion bill, especially of the teen millions of pupils are under comfeatures which deny the right of bail pulsory educational laws in the United and require registration and certificates States, and encouraging to find that of the Chinese now living here." Canada is so rapidly following this ex- ample. ON THE CRISIS IN MISSIONS IN TURKEY. As a body of Christian missionaries, Resolved, That we claim for American representing many lands and languages, citizens in Turkey the treatment ac- we regard it as obviously desirable that corded to the citizens of the " most fa- the rising generation of new Christians, vored nation," and we ask our Govern- for whose temporal and spiritual weI. ment to secure to them these rights. fare we labor, should in the most effec- tive manner possible be fortified against Resolved, That we have indubitable and protected ·from the ravages of inevidence that the Turkish Government temperance, which undoubtedly are beis systematically pursuing It course in- coming more threatening with each hospitable, unfriendly, and unjust, con- passing year. There are few mission trary to its ancient customs, contrary to fields in which the need of stringent the ,. capitulations" and to all princi- total abstinence requirements among ples of the Hatti Sherif and the Ratti the native Christian community is not Humayun. As by this course Turkey more or less deeply felt. In some fields is placing herself outside the pale of intemperance works serious injuries in civilized nations, we petition our Gov- native churches. Sound temperance ernment to concert with other govern- views, strong convictions, and intelliments the means of defence. gent apprehension of the physical and moral evils connected with intemper- Resolved, That the carrying out of the ance are urgently required all along the present systems of action by the Turk_ line of missionary effort. ish Government will reRult in the restoration of the darkest and most bigoted In order to the attainment of these form of Islam; the interests of Christian most desirable objects, we believe the missions, of civilization, of humanity time has fully come for a definite, sysin Asis and Africa are deeply impli- tematic, and well-matured effort to incated, and Christian governments trcduce scientific temperance instrucshould take note of the danger. tion into the national educational sys- tems and curricula of all mission schools Resolved, That as a body of mission· in foreign lands; some countries are aries gathered from all parts of the specially ripe for such an effort. world and from all denominations of . We are strongly of the opinion that Evangelical Christianity, we express in order to the most satisfactory results, our sympathy with out' tried and be. and to save time, that it would be of leaguered brethren in Turkey, and for great advantage if the several mission their relief we look not only to human boards could find it practicable to cogovernments, but to Him to whom is operate in this matter, and respectively given all power in heaven and earth. request their missionaries to introduce upon the glad assembly at Clifton approved scientific temperance instruc· Springs next June, I should find there tion into the schools under their man· some of the bravest and best toiler!;! of agement as rapidly a8 practicable; and our time, representing both hemispheres we further believe that our tract soci- and well-nigh every land of the globe. eties and boards of publication should The delightfulrueetings at the Thousand afford such helpful co operation in pre- Island Park, Bridgeton, Binghamton, paring and publishing such literature and Clifton Springs are not forgotten, as may be approved by properly consti- and we who were there to enjoy them tuted missionary authorities. should the more willingly contribute to the interest and success of the meetings As far as we have examined the that follow them. primers and more advanced text-books commended by the Scientific Depart- Could I drop down for an hour into ment of the Woman's Christian Tem- Dr. Foster's new missionary hall at the perance Union, we accord our approval Sanitarium, the very first thing I should of the same, and our belief that with say would be about the open doors for sundry minor modifications to adapt reaching childhood in India that we them to particular countries they are are finding on every side. Marvellous, suitable for translation into foreign indeed, is the answer to the patient and vernaculars. prevailing pI'ayers of our fathers, offered up years ago, that these barred and Lastly, we appeal to missionaries in bolted doors might be opened. Childall lands to lend their active personal hood everywhere is intelligent, eager, assistance and co-operation in the direc- inviting, and accessible. More calls tion indicated above, so that before than we can answer are reaching us this century closes every land repre- from all sides. Last week I was asked sented in this conference may rejoice to preside at the annual meeting of an that this class of instruction is perma- Anglo-Talliil Sunday-school near Madnently incorporated in its educational ras. The superintendent read a very system, bright and cheering report, from which I take a few lines: Good Cheer in Work for India's Ohil- dren. " At first this was a school for Tamil Ohristian boys only. . . . A petition BY J. L. PHILLIPS, M.D., SECRETARY OF THE was prE-sented to us by a large number of Hindu boys, requesting that they INDIA SUNDAY SCHOOL UNION. also might be allowed to join the Sun- day-school. They did this knowing The Psalmist prayed, "Show me a very well that nothing be~ides strictly token for good," and so say our friends Christian instruction would be imparted at home, who faithfully pray and watch to them in the school." for the coming of the kingdom in this and other dark lands; and it is but On the rolls of this fine school I found fair that we, who are privileged to be at one hundred and eighty-three names, the front in this campaign for the representing Eurasians, Protestant na· world's evangelization, should keep the tive Christians, Roman Catholics, Mo. great army of the reserve well informed hammedans, Hindus, and out-castes. concerning every step of progress, par- The Hindus are in the majority, sevan ticularly every stroke of success. As of them being Brahmans, who sit beside one of the broadly scattered outlook Christian and pariah boys studying the committee of our beloved International same Bible lessons and singing the Missionary Union, I cannot but keep praises of the same Lord Christ; and in mind my promise to report annually so all over India am I finding ample to the convention. Could I look in opportunities for extending our Sun- day-school system. Our only limitation rOIlo11y is within ourselves, for we can· for planning aggressive effort in behalf not find teachers enough for this glad of the millions of children and youth and growing work. Had we five thou· yet unreached, are doing excellent ser· sand new teachers reporting for duty vice, and the good fruit begins to ap.
next Sabbath morning. I'm sure all pear. With only converted persons for could find ready work in our broad teachers, and these better equipped for field. the work, we hope to see a decided im· Our first effort has been to organize provement in our SundaY·ilchools.
the Sunday.school forces here. With a Then, again, in order to meet the de· view to this I travelled more than four. mand for more teachers we must intro- teen thousand miles in India last year. duce normal clai!ses into our Sunday.
Auxiliary Sunday.school unions have schools, in which the larger pupils been organized in Bengal, Bombay, shall be specially trained for teaching, Puujab, Maflras, Burma, Rajutana, Here, as in America and Europe, our Central Provinces, and the Northwest pupils of fourteen and upward, of both Provinces and Oudh. When Assam, sexes, may begin teaching the little Central India, and Ceylon come into ones. Some of the best teachers we line, as they will soon, we shall have a have now began thUd early, and are strong and, I trust, successful system doing finely. By thus giving them a of Sunday.schools throughout the land. share in the work we hope to keep our R~.ch of these auxiliaries has its own hold on them at an age when so many officers, its own languages to provide Cor, boys and girls slip out of Sunday.
its own population to reach. The secre· schools.
taries of these auxiliary Sunday.school As at home, so here we are beginning unions are true yoke. fellows of differ· to have Sunday.school institutes and ent missions, European and American, conventions. Capital conventions have who are organizing and marshalling the been held in the Punjab at Lahore, in forces in their respective fields. One Madras, in Burma, at Rangoon, and the of these noble helpers of mine is a lady, Northwest Provinces at Allahabad. In Miss Abbott, of the American Marathi these carefully prepared papers on prf!.c, ~IiBBion, Bombay, a missionary's daugh. tical Sunday.school topics are read and ter, hence one of our India's own. discussed. These meetings promote These secretaries are ably supported by delightful Christlan fellowship and co- a strong committee in which every operation, and infuse genuine enthusi· church of denomination working in the asm into our work for the children. In field is represented. Best of all, our connection with these a mass-meeting helpers have "a mind to work," and for the children of all the churches is 80 we hope to "push things," as Grant usually held, addressed by speakers wired Sheridan in war time, you recol. known to love the little' ones and apt to lect. teach them. These meetings, where I have spoken of the need of more we have had hundreds of children to· Sunday.schools, but a sorer need here gether, European and native, have is better Sunday.schools. S()me we have proved a delightful feature of our con· are too poor for propagation. The ventions so far. As yet, however, our stock must be improved, then the shoots Sunday·school conventions do not ap.
will be sturdy and fruitful. To this proach those of America or England in end we are introducing preparatiou size or enthusiasm, but we are full of classes for teachers, both English and hope and getting on.
vernacular. In Calcutta and at several Another token of cheer is that Sun.
other points these weekly classes for day.schoolliterature is receiving atten· studying the lessons, for prayer for Di· tion. Last year the India Sunday. School vine illumination and God's blessing Journal was begun, and has met with a on the work of the Sunday·school, and cordial reception all over India. This is our only English publieation. It is India Sunday-schools the past year, and a monthly of thirty-two pages, and be- we look for many more. The two Octosides editorial articles and communica- ber days {If special prayer in behalf of tions and correspondence from our Sunday-schools throughout the world wide field, it has Notes on the Inter- were well observed in India, and with national Lesson written in India by cheering results. Our teachers are men of different churches. As to ver- coming to realize that their chief businacular pUblications. we are making a ness is to bring their pupils to Christ. good start in several of the trunk lan- With a higher ideal we shall see larger guages of India, in the way of lesson. fruitage. I have heard of Hindu girls leaves, brief notes, etc. Each auxiliary in several Sunday-schools who have in. union is expected to keep an eye to the telligently believed on the Lord Jesus bpecial needs of its own section of the Christ, who pray to Him daily, and field. The membership fund of our openly con fess Him in their dark homes, parent Union will be able to make reading the Bible and refusing to worgrants to the several auxiliaries, we ship idols or bow down to the priests. hope, for pushing on this vernacular Some of these little ones will surely department. The annual membership lead their parents out into the light and fee is one rupee for Europeans and four liberty of the Gospel. Cases have alannas for natives, and we hope to en- ready come under observation in my roll many members from all parts of tours over India, where a child has been India and Ceylon, and America. converted first and then brought father and mother to Christ, and we are to It is occasion for rejoicing that the have many sl1ch. If we reach the chilo scope of the Sunday· school idea is en- dren of this generation, how our work larging in India. I well recollect when will tell upon the next generation, when it was thought that only Christian pu- the children will be men and women! pils could attend Sunday-school. Now we have thousands of boys and girls There are other tokens of good of from Hindu and Mohammedan homes which I cannot speak now. We most in our Sunday. schools, and we might earnestly implore the prayers of all have millions had we the requisite teach- God's people, that great faith may be ing force. Our missionary toilers are granted all toilers in this broad field. coming to see how this line of effort Hindus and Mohammedans have been can supplement every department, edu. saying for years, ., We shall live and cational, evangelistic, literary, and die just as we are, but our children will be medical. The Sunday-school is being Ohristians." This is prophetic, and I regarded as a direct and most promising believe true. We should claim these missionary agency; and we are already millions of bright, beautiful children for introducing the home department here our King. In the name of our Lord we as at home. Our home department should set up our banners everywhere, will provide for teaching the Sunday- covering all India with a network of school lesson in the zenanall, in dispen- Sunday-schools. Let much prayer be saries and hospitals, and to companies offered up in the home churches and of domestic servants in cities and sta· conventions for India's children, now tions. The tea-gardens of Darjeeling so ready for Christian teaching, for already have the Sunday.scliool for the teachers to be raised up in thousands children of their coolies, and new open- here on the field for this great work of ings for this branch of Christian en- winning these sons and daughters of deavor are appearing on every side. paganism to Christ, and for all mission- This enlarged scope is something to ary superintendents v.ho are directing thank God for. this Sunday-school campaign for India's complete and speedy evangelization. There have been conversions in our
EDITORIAL NOTES ON CURRENT TOPICS
I1I.-EDITORIAL NOTES ON CURRENT TOPICS.
The Student Volunteer Fund. intendent of the Edinburgh Medical Missionary Society. The sad event took Since the Student Volunteer move- p~ace very suddenly on Sunday night at hIS residence in Edinburgh. Dr. Lowe ment was inaugurated, it has been the was a son of the Manse, his father being a well-known Indf'pendent minister. purpose to furnish the members of that The first event of importance in Dr. Lowe's career occurred in 1861, when he movement with the MISSIONARY REVIEW received his diploma_ During the same year, accompanied by Mrs. Lowe, he OF THE WORLD at a nominal price. In sailed from Gravesend to Travancore to labor there as a missionary, under the order to do this, appeal was made for auspices of the London Missionary So- ciety. During his eight years' residence subscriptions to a distinct fund. The in Travancore Dr. Lowe placed tJ-) Medical Mission on such a sound basis editors of the REVIEW were among the that it has now become an agency of great dimensions, and it i~ acknowlfirst to lead off with subscriptions to edged as perhaps the most valuable aux- iliary to evangelistic work in South that fund. Others followed, with sums India. After his return to this country the directors of the Edinburgh Medical of a variable amount. Some individuals Missionary Society, to whoin his work as a medical missionary was well known have given liberal donations; others offered him the then vacant post of superintendent of their training institusmall sums. Until quite recently these tion. His experience in the foreign field eminently fitted him for such a contributions have enabled us to keep position, and acting upon the unani- mous advice of his friends, he accepted our proposition intact. Just now the the post. Dr. Lowe was a great favorite with the students, of whom many have fund is overdrawn. It is very desirable gone forth and done brilliant service in the missionary cause. Gifted with true indeed that this favor shall continue to eloquence, Dr. Lowe ably pleaded for the advancement and religious improvebe extended to these young men and ment of the great masses of humanity, both at home and abroad. young women whose hearts are moved by the Holy Ghost to this work, that they may be kept constantly in touch with the great missionary movements of the age; and that they may grow in knowledge as well as in zeal. We have esteemed it a work of great importance, and it still remains such.
We do not desire to cut down the list nor to withdraw the offer. There are many persons who will esteem it a priviIege to make a contribution toward this missionary education and training of these davoted prospective mission- aries. We venture to state this muPecrh~ that the situation may be known.
sons desiring to aid in this splendid work may send their contributions di- rect to Funk & Wagnalls Company, 18 and 20 Astor Place, stating that they are for this fund, and the amounts will A Virgin Field in India.
be duly credited on the special account Between east longitude 80' and 82'. 30' and north latitude 17' 30' and 20' kept in this interest. Even small sums lies about 25,000 square miles of coun- try, the home of 600,000 souls, three will aid; but it is desirable that there quarters aborigines and the remainder shall be a quick response on the part of many. J. T. G.
Death of Dr, Lowe, Hindus and a few stray Mohammedans. Four hundred thsusand of the abo- Widespread regret will be felt at thf' rigines are of one original main stock death of the Rev. Dr. John Lowe, Super- or family, speaking one aboriginal Ian goage and having a common religion. able for Lord Salisbury. The whole Yet this people are known by at least four different names in fOllr distinct position, in Europe as well as in Mada- geographical localities. gascar, has been most carefully weighed The aborigines of Central India is there what the Red Indian of America is by Hova statesmen, and the next month here-i.e., the relict of pa~t nations. or so it is more than likely will see the Madagasoar. Government of Madagascar giving notice ANTANANARIVO, April 30, 1892. In consequence of England and to the British Government that the France exchanging Zanzibar and Madagascar, the outlook for British subjects Anglo.MalagaMY Treaty is annulled; in this l'ountry is becoming very gloomy. The Government is determined not to that British subjects, including mispermit France to assume the judiciary control and consular representation of sionaries, are without rights and imforeigners; and so fixed is their resolve, they are considering the advisability of munities in the island, and that the custaking retaliatory measur",sagainst England should she persist in giving France toms on British goods are greatly raised. a free hand in Madagascar affairs. Grave as the prospect is, there is, how- Against this latter step no appeal is posever, no likelihood of the retaliatory measures taking the form of a menace sible to France ; for the French Governto the life and property of Europeans. The Hova are not as generally believed ment do not claim any right to interfere in Europe a horde of savages. It is their civilization, high intelligence, and in any matter affecting the revenues of appreciation of the value of moral pressure which are causing them to de- this country. G. M. H. bate whether England will consider the steps she is taking, if these are shown The following story is told of the Rev. to be taken to be so grievous a wrong Dr. Inglis, of Aneityum, who died a upon a Protestant and progressive na- few months ago. He was asked to make tion of British civilization that political a speech before the General Assembly aggression will be reciprocated commer- of the Free Church of Scotland, and was Cially as well as by fighting to the last told to be brief. He said: should France appeal to arms to enforce her pretensions. The Government of ,. Fathers and brethren, we are told this island continent is also fully aware that missionaries should content themthat retaliatory measures upon British selves with stating facts, and leave the enterprise would be so much to the dis· Church to draw the inference. I wish advantage of the British community to bring three facts to your notice. here thata protest loud and long would assuredly be raised by them against .. First, I place on your table," suittreaties with this country being ignored; ing the action to the word, "the Shorter aud the Malagasy have further taken Catechism translated into the language into account that such an outcry on the of Aneityum. eve of the general election would probably awaken the Nonconformist and Lib- " Second, I place on your table also eral press, and make things uncomfort- • Pilgrim's Progress' translated into the language of Aneityum."
Then taking into his hands a large volume, while he looked longingly on the pages that had cost him years of toil, he laid it on the table and said: " Third, I place on your table the Holy Scriptures, Old and New Testa- ments, translated into the language of Aneityum, and now leave the Church to draw the inference," and sat down amid a storm of applause.
Recent Religious. Riots in the Piroous.
'l'he orthodox priests of the Greek Church have been strongly opposed to the Evangelicals. These Jltter reformers, led by Dr. Kalopathakes, are op- communities. These are from three to posed to the elaborate ritual of the three and a half times stronger than in Greek Church; they deny her exclu- 1871. The number of adherents of the sive right to interpret the Scriptures, Greek Church has fallen very much-a reject the binding authority of tradition, fact which may be ascribed to the great and uphold thll Scriptures as containing diminution in the number of Russia.n the only necessary rules of faith and residents in Germany. A considerable practice. For a long time Dr. Kalopa- increase has been registered in the num- thakes and his followers have had their ber of Buddhists, Brahmins, and Mo- services interrupted. At last he applied hammedans. This is greatly due to the to the police for protection, but only augmented number of Chinese, Japan- three officers were sent, who proved ese, and Turks who come to Germany powerless on the Sunday when the riot for scientific or technical studies.
occurred. The services were conducted The article on " Pseudo-Philanthropy in peace, but as soon as the congrega- in Missions" in our May number should tion began to leave the building the have been accredited to Rev. H. B. Hulmob outside began to stone them, drove bert, of Corea. them back, and soon attacked the church itself. The coolness and bravery The Ohinese Exolusion Bill. of Mrs. Kalopathakes created a diver- sion in her favor, and she and most of Dr. Gracey does not exaggerate when those with her were permitted to de- he says in the July REVIEW that this part unhurt. The building was wreck- bill " has given offence to many mill- ed, Mr. Isaras, the preacher, received a ions of our citizens." A few weeks severe cut in the head, aud Dc. Kalopa- after its passage an indignation meeting thakes was knocked down twice, but was held in Tremont Temple, Boston, was not hurt seriously. such as has not probably occurred since the days of the anti-slavery agitation, just prior to the war. At this meeting The Growth of Religious Life in Ger- the most unsparing condemnation of many. the bill was expressed by all the speak The Statistische Oor'l'espondenz pub- ers, and those who had promoted its lishes somt> interesting figures on the passage were censured by name in a growth of religious life in Germany rising vote, the President of the United since 1871.' For every 1000 members of States not excepted. This gathering religious bodies at that date there were was not called by the friends of mis- in 1880 1099 members of the Evangeli- sions, but by patriotic citizens and cal Church and 1113 Catholics. Five philanthropists, without regal'd to years later the numbers had increased party.
to 1190 and 1164 respectively. In 1890 The recent great Methodist Confer- the Evangelical Church had 1190 and ence at Omaha, we understand, con- the Catholics 1240 members. In the demned the bill in the most emphatic same period for every 1000 persons manner. The Baptists at their Centen without religion in 1871 the develop- nial Convention, in Philadelphia, joined ment had been 4000, 10,955, and 14,355 with their brethren of the South in a -that is to say, there were in Germany public censure of the act, the great as- in 1890 more than fourteen times as sembly in the Academy of Music rising many persons professing no religious to their feet to declare that not only as faith as in 1871. Among the various re- Christians but as voters their condemna- ligious bodies belonging to the Evan- tion must rest upon this act. Consider- gelica.l confession (the Times says) the ing that these two bodies represent at greatest increase has taken place in the least seven millions of Christians, their Presbyterian, Methodist, and Quaker action means much. How needless and wanton an affront Porte set itself to attack missions in to the Christian and patriotic sentiment Turkey, Dr. Goodell summoned his of our country this bill is will appear brethren to the throne of grace, saying, by a single glance ~t the facts. We " The great Sultan of the universe can oopy from the record of the Interior, as ohange all this." And so He can, and given by the Watchman: our first appeal should be to Him ; "During the decade 1850-60 the but as lovers of humanity and pronumber of Chinamen ooming to this oountry was 41,379 ; during the deoade moters of missionll, we are bound to act 1860-70, 68,059; during 1870-80, 122,- 436; and during 1880-90,59,995 The as well as to pray. William Lloyd Gar. falling off for the period 1880-90 was due to the restrictive legislation of rison, a worthy son of a worthy father, 1882. The total number of the Chinese in the United States is less than 200,- calls upon the citizens of Massachusetts 000, or about four tenths of one per cent of the population of the country. to paralyze this anti-Chinese bill as During the last ten years the Chinese population of California has diminished they paralyzed the Fugitive Slave bill, about four and one half per cent." which it so closely resembles. In all The whole number of Chinamen now worthy and Christian ways let us seek in the United States does not equal the to do so, hoping that before the year closes this obnoxious measure will be nullified. A. J. G.
Dangerous Prayers, number of the worst elements of the " I want you to spend fifteen minutes European population who pour into our every day praying for Foreign Mis- country by the emigration of a single sions," said a pastor to some young peo_ year; and yet, speaking from our ple in his congregation. "But beware knowledge of the thousand Chinamen how you pray, for I warn you that it is of Boston, we oan say that they are a very costly experiment. "
among the least offensive and the most " Costly?" they asked in surprise.
industrious and really helpful of any ., Ay, costly," he cried… When Carey olass of foreigners that oome to our began to pray for the conversion of the oity. Why, then, this monstrous legis- world, it cost him himself, and it cost lation against them-pasged with a those who prayed with him very m.ch.
haste that defied all decency, and in Brainerd prayed fo1' the dark skinned such terms as violate the most sacred savages, and after two years of blessed treaty obligations? Why? Everybody work, it cost him his life. Two students knows why. It is another attempt on in Mr. Moody'S Bummer school began the part of our legislators to sell not to pray the Lord of the harvest to send their own, but the nation's birthright forth more servants into his harvest; for a mess of Presidential pottage. and 10! it is going to cost our country The evil effect of their conduot is al- five thousand young men and women ready manifesting itself. In the Sun- who have, in answer to this prayer, day-school of my own ohurch we pledged themselves to the work. Be have one hundred Chinamen. Twenty sure it is a dangerous thing to pray in are members with us. We have no earnest for this work; you will find that worthier, more devoted, and self-deny- you cannot pray and withhold your ing Christians among us than these; labor, or pray and withhold your money; and yet the hoodlums, taking the hint nay, that your very life will no longer from Washington, have renewed their be your own when your prayers begin petty persecution against them, stoning to be answered.
and clubbing them on their passage .. I have often said in my public ad- through the streets. dresses that it is a dangerous thing to What ought the Christians of America pray for a blessing unless you want it.
to do about this bill? They ought cer- What a blessed thing when we are ready tainly to pray. 'Vhen the Sublime to rece,ive!"
1892·1 THE MONTHLY CONCERT OF MISSIONS
IV.-THE MONTHLY CONCERT OF MISSIONS.
DY lIEV. JAMES GOllDON GRAY, D.D., ROME, ITALY.
Evangelioal Work in Italy in 1891. Wherever, in fact, an interest in evan- gelical truth has sprung up in individ· All who know anything of evangelioal ual cases or in small co.npanies, the work in Italy will readily admit that a most strenuous efforts have been put just estimate of results oan be formed forth to stifle it. The Church of Rome only in view of such oonsiderations as has shown quite recently that it ap· these. The country is still in the proves of Buch a line of action on the throes of a serious financial crisis. ThE' part of its priesthood by putting under question of the hour is as much as eVl'r, its ban the" Life of Christ," wrHten by How oan the deficit in the budget be Ruggero Bonghi, who professes himself met? Strenuous efforts worthy of all one of its attached adherents. Such praise have been made to reduce outlay opposition, no doubt, still influences in many directions; but much more re- many timid minds. Secret sympathizers mains to be done to restore the true with the evangelical movement are slow balance between income and expendi. to reveal themselves, although in not a ture. All classes in the community few cases it happens that such tactics have been more or less affected by this really help rather than hinder the crisis, and most of all those that are spread of the truth. On the whole, most within the reach of evangelical in- however, it may be said that the field of fluenoes. Among the poorer classes an work is thereby largely restricted. A unusual amount of misery has prevailed. third consideration that should be noted The times, therefore, have be()n most is the great amount of indifference to unfavorable .to the sale of Scriptures religion in every form that prevails and the support of evangelical agencies. throughout the land. There is no evi- Both the product of such sales and the dence as yet of an awakened interest in amount of local contributions must be spiritual things, affecting many at a looked at in the light of such facts as time. The results that have been gathare patent to everyone living in Italy. ered are owing to much painstaking, Another circumstance tbat must be persistent effort. The vast ontlying taken into account in estimating results, mass remains unmoved. One here and is the widespread and persistent opposi· there only comes to be reached with tion of the Romish clergy to tbe efforts Gospel influences. The features of the made by evangelical churches to relieve wide field, that has been wasted by a the misery and enlighten the darkness spurious Christianity, are such probain which the people are involved. The blY!ls for the present to warrant only Bible is everywhere denounced by them results of a more or less individual charas a falsified Protestant book. Every acter. Many of the better minds of the one who dares to purchase or peruse it country have bean driven away fron: all is threatened with excommunication. religion bi the error and superstition More cases than usual have been re- that ha'l'e become inseparably mingled ported this year in which portions of it with the only Christianity of which anyhave been tOl'n to fragments or con· thing is known. The wide gulf which sumed to ashes in the public squares. the dominant Church has contrived to Here and there the oolporteurs have place between itself and all other met with rough usage at the instigation churches keeps another large section of of the priests. One reports that he was the community entirely beyond onr repeatedly assailed with showers of reach. The best elements within the stones and ,.ariven out of the town. Church of Rome itself can think of us only as unbelievers to be shunned. In land. 1t is to the credit of all the Pres- view of such facts. the wonder is that byterian churches of the world that they progress of a very distinct character can have not attempted to set up in Italy be reported. any mission of their own. What they have done has been to occupy them- The first place in this estimate for the selves with school work and other agen- past year may be given to the actual ad- cies that indirectly help the whole missions of new members into the vari- movement. ous churches. For the sake of clearness we may range all the leading agencies The additions for the past year may connected with distinct churches under be thus stated: The Presbyterian three heads. This will leave out the Re- churches, 734 ; the Methodist churches, formed Oatholic Church, under the guid- 449 ; the Baptist churches, 143-in all, ance of Count Campello, and the Free 1326. 'rhe promise of additions during Churches (Chiese Libere), which last the current year is not less encouraging, a·re more or less in alliance with the as shown by the number of catechumens. Plymouth Brethren. As we are not in The Waldensian Church numbers 751 in possession of the statistics in these two course of instruction ; the Italian Evancases, we cannot compare them with gelical, 492; the Wesleyan, 219; the those of the others, We need only say American Methodist, 237. The Baptist that the Roformed Catholic Church is churches do not give their figures in this certainly still the weakest, as it is the respect. The whole number under youngest, of the churches that have catechetical instruction, if we allow a allied themsel'ves with the Committee of proportionate number to the Baptist the Evangelical Alliance. Its JqembM'- churches, is thus little short of 2000. ship is still under three hundred, and its work is confined to two diRtricts- The work among the young is the next the valley above Terni and the shores of point of special interest. All the San Remo. The" Chiese Libere" have churches believe in the power and uselost rather than gained ground in recent fulness of the Sunday-school. Here years. The Evangelical churches have again the Presbyterian churches are to come in and absorbed to 'a large extent the front with 4160 scholars between the interest that gathered round those them. The othElrs have some 2000 separate and independent congregations among them. Thus 6000 children apof earnest worshippers which the move- pear to be under Bible instruction each Jllent in its earliest stage developed. Sunday. The churches that have day- Apart from these the whole work of the schools enjoy a great advantage over the Evangelical Church in Italy may be others in being able thereby to secure summarized under three divisions, pupils for their Sunday.school. Three These are the Italian Presbyterian of the churches have among them 4800 churches, embracing the Waldensian pupils in their day-schools. A large and Italian Evangelical churches, the number of Roman Catholic children is latter better known under its former thereby reached not accessible otherand more distinctive name of the Free wise. School work, however, forms s Italian Church. There are the Method- very expensive item among the various ist churches, including the English agencies employed by the churches; Wesleyan and the American Methodist and it is no wonder if several of them Episocpal churches. There is also the have not laid themselves out for it. Union of Baptist Churches, under which The Government schools are generally general heading we have both the Eng. well equipped. The children of the lish and American Baptist churches. churches may have an excellent secular Under the title Presbyterian we do not, education through them in many cases. of course, embrace the work of the Besides, the results of school work have Scotch Presbyteri!l~ C!lUfc4efj i~ tbe to be waited for longer than in almost any other case. Of this I bad fl'ther flo striking illustration in my own eXlleri. more of the others. This branch of ence quite recently. A young man work has been as yet too sparingly tried from Naples came to visit me on be. in Italy. That has arisen, no doubt, in half of one of the Young Men's Asso- some cases from the fear that ground ciations there. He tluned out to be might thereby be given for the charge an old pupil of the sohools oarried on that the churches bny their converts.
in connection with the Presbyterian No such feeling, however, can warrant Church. Twelve years ago he had been the Evangelical churches of the land to in t.he infant class, and now he was not leave the poor around them unCtlred for.
only a member of the Evangelical The example of Him who went about Church, but an active member of the healing and preaching the Gospel of the Young Men's Christian Association. kingdom forcibly appeals to every His family had been also gained, and Church that bears His name. Care has he declared that he was one of anum· only to be taken that in tending the sick ber who had been similarly gathered in all are left free to embrace our teaching through the school. These evangelical or not as they feel disposed. More and schools are thus quickly but surely pre· more are we impressed with the fact paring the fruit for the Church of the that the Italian people have need of the immediate future. Wherever they are beneficial aspects of religion to be pre.
carried on in the right spirit and with a sented to them that their sympathies view til distinct results, their fruit is may be won. Too much has been looked sure and lasting. for as the result of unaided teaching, In this particular branch of work we which has largely been of a controversial are happy to be able to report more character.
hearty co . operation between the 'fhe two most important aids to the churcbes than heretofore. This has work of all the churches in Italy are shown itself in the adoption here in found in the two Bible societies and in Rome of the International series of Sun. the Florence Publications Society. The day school lessons. To that there has agent of the British and Foreign Bible been added a joint competition for Society reports that his sales for the prizes provided by a local elder. Then past year have remarkably increased, there have been general gatherings of not only in small .. portions," !IS in aU the Sunday-school children for com- former years, but in Bibles anJ Testa.
mon religious exercises. ments. The increase has been remark.
The Young Men's Associations con· able, especially in Calabria and the nected with the churches are also draw. Abrnzzi. The colporteurs all over have ing together. Recently a resolution sold between 12,000 and 13,000 copies has been come to in favor of union more than in 1890, and the depots 2000 among them. This cannot but have its more. Never, he says, have such fig.
effect in due time on the churches with ures been reached. The actual sales in which they are connected, and draw Italy for the past year are set down at these more and more together. 153,770; and if the sales of Italian A word or two should be said on the Scriptures outside Italy be added, the various agencies that have sprung up in number cannot be much below 200,000.
connection with the churches. All of The work of the National Bible Society them have their colporteurs or Bible· of Scotland, which is included in the women to a greater or less extent. Some above summary, shows an increase in have industrial schools more or less con- all the items as regards Scriptures.
nected with them. Evening classes lire Altogether that society has sold 13,747 carried on with great zeal in other cases. Scriptures and 6521 religious books.
Medical mission work, which formerly An important point now gained is used to distinguish only one of the that our Italiijn Scriptures, which used churches, has been begun by one or to be printed in London,6re now issuing from the Claudian Press, in Flor. selves. The spirit of self-sacrifice is ence. That press is more fully equipped either too little understood or too rarely tha,n ever before. It has begun not only practised by those that have heen to cover its own expenses, but to pl'O- reached by the movement. More care, vide a considerable sum for the mission. it must be admitted, has been taken of ary branch of the enterprise. And it is late to urge this duty and privilege on the intention of its managers to make it the members of the churches. And cer· compete with the best printing estab- tainly it is no small result that has been lishments in the country. Last year obtained by the Waldensian Church there issued from it of books and tracts, from its 4518 members in the mission 112,300 ; its favorite alm~nac, 35,000 ; field in Italy 85,683 francs, and by the periodicals, 117,080; Scriptures, 296,- Italian Evangelical Church from its 000. All the churches, even those that 1631 members, 22,772 francs, and again have their own printing presses, avail by the American Methodist Church, themsel ves more or less of its periodi. from its 846 members, 9953 francs.
cals and books. Henceforth all of them The other churches do not report their will get from it the Scriptures that figures in this respect. In the most they sell or distribute. The society has notable case, that of the Waldensian among its members representatives of Church, somewhat less than one third the majority of the Evangelical churches, of the expenditure is obtained locally; and is not itself identified with any of in the case of the Italian Evangelical them. Church it is only about one eighth Gratifying as these results are, we feel The other churches are far more de.
that all we have said but very inade. pendent on outside aid than either of quately brings out the actual amount of these two. In view of the extension of work done and the fruit gathered. the work, this shows how urgent is the There are efforts of an individual char- need for developing the spirit of self.
acter that do not appear in this sum- sacrifice among all those that can be mary, which, nevertheless, are covering reached by evangelical influences.
a great amount of ground with personal Efforts, too, will have to be made to and zealous effort. These it would be touch to a far greater extent the better impossible to estimate in so far as reo classes of the community everywhere.
suIts are concerned, but all are con· Something has been done in this reo tributing their share to the slowly rising spect, and the results have encouraged tide of evangelical interest and sympa- greater efforts in that direction. In thy. While the work of the churches this connection the higher class girls'
named constitutes by far the largest part schools in Rome and Naples, with some of the whole effort put forth, these 280 pupils between them, deserve hon- others are contributing toward it in orable mention. Religious services many ways and in different lines. What adapted to that class, are called for.
we feel to be most needed is a closer and The men for conducting them are not heartier co.operation among all the lacking. It is the methods that have to various agencies, that the very most may be sought and wisely pursued.
be made of the large sums spent and What is certain is that there is a dis.
the workers be more wisely distributed tinct limit to outside help. That seems over the country. to be almost reached. The onlyalterna.
One of the weakest points in connec· tive is to get the evangelicals themselves tion with the whole work in Italy lies in within the country to contribute on a the fact that the means for carrying on larger scale to the support and spread such wide.spread and varied work come, of the Gospel. While there are Rigns to a very large extent, from outside the of fruit more or less in all the churches, country. The churches thus far are too the felt need is " power from on high. "
little supported by the Italians them· In connection with this we have satis. faction in reporting that in the Walden- without charge, except where the child's sian valleys special services have been friends can contribute so much, or some held of late with a view to the revival benevolent person undertakes his or her of the Lord's work in the minds and hearts of His people. Too long and too support. The distinctive feature of the often it has been the custom to speak of Home is its evangelical character; for the Church of the valleys as if it were living only on its past, and had become which we have a guarantee in the names unfit for the great work to be done in of the Council in Rome, which includes free united Italy, of which these valleys the Rev. Drs. Prochet, Gordon Gray, form a part. Whatever that Church has been up to the time that those great and Teofilo Gay, who act in concert events were preparing, that ha~e given with a Board of Trustees in New York. Italy a foremost place among tbe nations of Europe, there can be no doubt The institution began its work several as to its missionary activity since. Its 13,500 members in the Mother Church years ago, being founded by a bequest can already count its 4500 members in of the late Dr. Gould, long physician to its mission field. Its pastors and churches in the outside field far out- the American Embassy in Rome, who number those in its valleys. It is at left the sum of $25,000 for this object, the head of all the missionary work in and who desired that the Home should the country. But best of all, the signs of a revived life are showing themselves be a permanent memorial in Rome of in its home parishes. These special his wife, who died there in 1875 .. in services have been much blessed. Others are in course of being arranged. the midst of her labors for the destitnte It encourages one to look for like gath- children of Italy." erings in all the great cities of Italy and among all the churches. Nothing would There is a handsome and commodious sooner bring the results for which we building, which certainly has been dedi· have been long looking and laboring than joint services by the churches for cated to a Christ·like purpose. The prayer and conference about the ever- number of children at present in the present need of •• power from on high." These 1326 additions would then be Home is small, bnt there is accommoda· easily multiplied many times, and tion for a number more if funds are throughout the land there would be forthcoming. heard the joyous songs of the reapers and there would be seen the gathered The children are taken to Divine sersheaves. vice in the Waldensian Church of Rome The Gould Memorial Home, Rome. e"ICery Sunday morning; while in the Home itself they are addressed on Sun- Comparatively few, even of those who have visited Rome, know of the inter· day evenings by friends of various esting Christian work carried on in that evangelical denominations. city among poor children at 18 Via Ma· genta, in the Gould Memorial Home and Let visitorsto Rome bearin mind that, Industrial School. besides classic ruins and public galleries, The inmates, almost all of whom are there are other sights to be visited and orphans, are housed, fed, and taught, as well as trained in some industry, admired in the Italian capital; and of these one is the Gould Memorial Home. It is with much truth that Dr. Gray thus writes, in concluding his report: .. There are no institutions more want- ed in Rome to-day than such as mani- fest the beneficent aspect of evangelical Christianity. The young evangelical churches of the country have been strug- gling for existence in the midst of the greatest difficulties. It is not to be ex· pected that an impression will be made on the minds of Italians generally by simply contrasting the truth of one sys- tem with the error of another. The larger number among them are far more likely to be r€'ached by a manifestation of the true spirit of Christianity in pro- viding for the destitute and the orphan."
.. A VOICE FROM ITALY."
GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE
V.-GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE.
Organized Missionary Work a.nd Sta.tistics. Edited by .Rev. D. L. Leonard, Oberlin, ~O.
-The British and Foreign Bible So- and about 300 Christians are connected ciety, the Americlln Bible Society, and with the missions. Their offerings for the National Bible Society of Scotland Christian work for the fiscal year have lately joined hands in Japan amounted to $6,290.40. If funds eould through a United Committee, which has be supplied, a large number of efficient the entire charge of their affairs; and in Chinese Christians could be put in train- China, in connection with the prepara- ing for missionary service in their own tion of the Union Version. The com- land. bined result of this year's work by the three societies may be given thus: -The Roman Catholic Church is mak- ing strenuous efforts in the United Conntry. Income. Circulation. States to win the negro race, and with England, • £217,149 3,926,535 skilful methods, as well as no inconsid- United States, 1,497,637 erable success. Thus an annual collec- Scotland, 103,775 673,862 tion is called for. And on January 1st, 32,436 1891, 21 churches were set apart for the use of colored Catholics, with 34 priests Together, £353,360 6,098,034 in charge. During 1890 baptism 'Was administered to 4883 children and 704 -The total amount received from the adults. From the same report we learn Government for Indian schools during that in 115 schools 8280 children were the last five years by the Methodists has in attendance. Over 20 different sisterbeen $33,345; the Episcopalians, $102,- hoods are in charge of these schools, 000 ; the Friends, $140,000; the Con_ of whom 2 are composed of colored gregationalists, $183,000 ; the Presby- women-the Oblates of Baltimore, and terians, $286,000, and the Roman the Holy Family Sisters of New Orleans. Catholics, $1,989,000. The Methodists There are, moreover, a foundling asy. and Baptists will in the future refuse to lum, 6 orphanages, 3 industrial schools, accept any appropriations from the a guild for servant girls, an academy, public funds. and a home for the aged. The Catholic negroes are put at 152,692. -The statement has a strllnge and ominous sound, that the American -The American Unitarian Associa- Home Missionary Society feels con- tion reports the expenditure last year strained to expend as much in Massa- of $72,998 for work in different sections chusetts, one of the smallest and oldest of the United States, $11,401 for the of the States, as in Washington, one of Japan Mission, $9300 for Southern and the largest and youngest of the States, Indian work. and into which the tide of emigration set last year. -The Reformed (Dutch) Church re- ceived for foreign missions last year -Perhaps no religious sect in this $112,164, an increase of $13,767; not country is more vigorous, considering including a legacy of $12,000 to be addits size, than the Jews. During the last ed to a security fund, gifts to the ten years they have nearly doubled the famine stricken in India amounting to number of their congregations, while $2616, or special gifts to liquidate the the membership has increased from debt. 50,000 to 130,500, and the synagogue property from $3,549,697 to $9,754,257. -The Southern Methodist Church has missions in China and Mexico which -There are now 18 missions of the contain 22 missionaries-20 of them American Missionary Association among the Chinese in California. Sixty. five joined the Church during the last year, with wives-77 native preachers, a total to $1,277,220. The ordinary income for force of 137, and 4421 church members. the past year has not been sufficient to meet the expenses, being only $1,156,- -The Southern Baptist Convention 020. Including spE'cial funds, the gross reports the receipts for 1891 as $114,- expenditure has bE'en $1,256,970, while 326. The amount expended upon each the gross receipts have reached a total, one of the 6 missions is as follows, to- exceeded on only one previous occasion, gether with the number of ohuroh-mem- of $1,346,885, including a legacy of nearbers and of baptisms last year (the last ly $105,000 for extension of work in the in parenthe~es): Africa. $6515, 111 (31) ; society's North American mission. China, $33,425,917 (130) ; Japan, $4386, 25 (16) ; Brazil, $19,386,419 (90) ; Italy, -The Trinitarian Bible Society re- $15,137, 293 (40); Mexico, $28,569, 958 ports a total circulation of 382,362 (127). The total of communicants is Bibles, Testaments, and portions. The 2723, and of baptisms 434. new Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible will probably be completed this year, -Acoording to the thirty-first annual and the issues of Salkinson's Hebrew report, the Presbyterian Church, South, New Testament have reached in 1891 a has 102 missionaries distributed as fol- total of 212,000 copies, chiefly through lows: China, 33; Brazil, 28; Mexico, the agents of the Mildmay Mission to 6 ; the Old Greeks, 4 ; Italy. 2 ; Japan, the Jews. 23; Congo Free State, 49; Cuba, 2. The number of native helpers employed -The British and Foreign Sailors' was 123; native oommunicants, 2702, Society reports an income of $150,365. of whom 391 were received by baptism. Work is done in 87 stations in 8aports, During the year the treasury receipts including institutes, bethels, rests, etc. from all sources were $130,276, being It has 3 floating bethels, 3 steam $17,325 in exoess of any previous year. launches, and 28 sail and row boats.
EUROPE. -When Lady DufIerin began her scheme for the improvement of the Great Britain.-The Church of Eng- physioal condition of women in India, land Zenana Missionary Society, at its seven years ago, it was hardly expected annual meeting, reported an income of that in so short a time such striking re- $179,640, and 22 new missionaries. sults would be achieved. Last year 466,000 women received medical treat- -The Presbyterian Churoh reports ment. The staff now consists of 9 an increase in membership during 1891 women doctors and 31 assistants, and from 65,841 to 66,744; that the Sunday- the number of native and Eurasian schools number 79,697, and that the women under instruction steadily intotal income of the Church was $1,178,- creases. Last year there were 207. The 250., The foreign mission report showed fund has at present an income of £5000 in China 20 ordained European mis- a year, after having erected hospitals sionaries and 10 medical missionaries, and dispensaries at a cost of £120,000. 10 native pastors (supported by their own congregations), ]0 native evange- -The Established Church of Scotland lists, 43 organized congregations with reports for foreign missions for the past 3800 communicants. year a total income of $156,790. The total expenditure was $]57,800, of which -The Church Missionary Society, at $140,800 were for the foreign field. its annual meeting in May, reported These expenditures do not include certhat during the past two years their tain snms transferred from special missionary force has increased in num- funds, such as the Blantyre missionary ber 103, and in spite of this the ordi- fund, East Africa Missions Building nary missionary expenditure has in- fund; there are also the Universities' creased only $21,180, amounting in all Mission fund and the Guild Mission ASIA. fund, which furnish ea.ch an income of a little over $3000. The Jewish Mis- -" There are more missionary socie. sion Committee reports an income of ties represented in India today than in $32,705, which has been expended in any other section of the world. There are Salonica, Smyrna, Alexandria, Constan- more missionaries, more schools, more tinople and B€irfit. churches, more communicants a wider opportunity for every form of Christian Italy.-Tbe object of the Spezia Mis. endeavor, the use of every weapon of sion is to supply "every necessitous Christian warfare, the application of part of Italy and the LIOvant to which every Christian principle." And well we shall be distinctly called by God's may it be so ; for the popUlation num. providence with the Gospel, by means bers 288,000,000', and the idols worof the circulation of the ScriptUl'es, shipped, 330,000,000. Of the women, preaching, and Bible schools." The 40,000,000 are shut up in Zenanas, 23,- twenty-fourth year has been reached, 000,000 are widows, and 79,000 were wid. and the income was £2953 in 1891. ows before they were nine years of age. With numerous sub-stations, 24 stations Only one woman in 800 is under inare occupied by Edward Clarke and struction, and but one Protestant misother missionaries, with 32 native as- sionary is found to 500,000 of the popusistants. The day schools number 8, lation. with over 500 pupils, and the communicants 180. -Among the most interesting enter. prises in India is the Gassner Mission Germauy.-According to a table pre- among the Kols of the province of pared by Pastor Dohler, of Saxony, the Chutia Nagpur. It is a German enter. 17 larger German missionary societies prise, and is manned by 19 missionaries, have in all 4(18 principal stations, 606 7 of whom are married. There are also male and 37 female European agents, 15 ordained native pastors and a large 111 ordained natives, and of other na- numher of other preachers and workers. tive helpers, 2855 male and 731 female; The Kols are among the aboriginal tribes 246,903 converts; 1127 schools, 1607 of India, and are exceedingly degradteachers, and 53,282 scholars. Their ed ; nevertheless, the number of Chriscombined income (in 1890?) was $878,- tians alllong them amounts up to 37,000. GOO, including balances, and in addition $360,860 were collected from the fields. -The Indian Home Mission to the Of the first-named sum, $180,660 was Santals is a Danish organization, which, collected outside of Germany, chiefly however, receives considerable support by the Basle Society and the Moravians. from England; The stations occupied are in Bengal, the head station being at -According to Jewish Intelligence, 135 Ebenezer. There are 6 missionaries Prussian Christians have apostatized to with their wives, 4 Santal pastors, 18 Judaism and 2101 Jews have been con- deaconesses, 80 travelling elders and 5 verted to Christianity since 1875. catechists. Recently there has also been established an Assam colony with 1 mis- Spain binds herself to maintain the sionary, 1 pastor, 9 elders, and 3 cate· worship and ministers of the Roman chists. The baptisms of converts in Catholic religion, and these last control 1891 were 201, and there are now 6300 the schools, such as they are. There baptized members in the community. are enough-30,OOO-or one for every 560 inhabitants; but so inferior that, -The statistics of the India Mission by the last census, it is shown that over of the United Presbyterian Church show 72 per cent of the population were un- 6779 communicants-an increase of 106 able to read or write. over last year. The admissions by pTO- fession have been 592 as against 410 for the preceding year. The Christian many millions in the interior have population has grown from 10,171 in never heard the story of the Gospel. 1890 to 10,830 in 1891, and the number of villages containing Christians has -The Soudan stretches across Afrigrown from 525 in 1890 to 550 in 1891. ca from the Red Sea to the Atlantic, and contains from 60,000,000 to 80,000,000 -The Bishop of Madras is now in the inhabitants. The name Soudan-that is, thirty-first year of his episcopate. This H Blacks"-is given by the light.skinned is the longest record of any bishop in inhabitants of the Sahara to the chain India. It has been his happiness to see of partly civilized kingd oms lying to the the native Christia~s in his diocese in. south of the Great Desert. Their north crease from about 40,000 to 107,000. boundary may be very roughly indicat- ed by a line joining Cape Verde to Khar- -The statistics of the Presbyterian toum, and the southern boondary may missions in Siam and Laos, as recently be said to be about the eighth parallel reported, are as follows: Ordained mis- of north latitude. This gives a vast resionaries, 14 ; medical missionaries, 4 ; gion, 3500 by 500 miles, inhabited mostsingle lady missionaries, 9; native ly by negro nations, nearly all of them preachers, teachers, etc., 54; number calling themselves Moslem, and which of churches, 13 ; communicants, 1113 ; as yet has scarcely been touched with number added last year, 239; boys in the Gospel. boarding-schools, 208 ; girls in boarding-schools, 146; day-school pupils, -The North Africa Mission has 320. opened work in Lower Egypt by send- ing thither recently 5 missionaries, of Turkey.-The present limits of the whom 2 are men. In this portion of Trebizond field, extending some 250 the land of the Nile is found a populamiles along the coast of the Black Sea tion of 4,500,000, mostly Mohammedan, and 60 miles into the interior, embrace and almost wholly without the Gospel. a territory eq011.1 to the three States of There are about 40 towns with from Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode 7000 to 40,000 inhabitants, and 500 with Island. In this field there are, in round from 2000 to 7000. numbers, 750,000 souls, 600,000 being Mohammedans, 120,000 Greeks, and -There are 200 baptized Christians 30,000 Armenians. The following table in Uganda in connection with the shows the progress of the work Bince Church Missionary Society, and about the reorganization of the station in 2000 adherents under instruction. The 1882 : Gospel of Matthew has been translated into the native tongue. The arrival of 1882. 1885. 1888. 1891. 100 copies from England was attended with the wildest joy. —— ISLANDS OF THE SEA, Adherents …….. 170 285 585 867 Chnrch-members.. : : : 26 29 84 181 -Among the newer work of the Lon_ Attendants on wor- don Society is that in New Guinea. 810 515 685 There are now 53 stations along the s::'!fru-s::: :::::::::: 100 140 279 412 sontheast coast, a staff of 6 missionaries, 68 over 30 South Sea Island teachers, and Contribntions…••••• $97 $407 $782 $1,245 some 20 New Guineans. More than Scriptnres 80ld for 2000 children are under instruction, and each three years … …. 1,565 1,586 2,187 there are between 400 and 500 church- members. The whole New Testament AFRICA. in the Motu dial~ct has also been put through the press. Within the :first -In 1890 there were reported by 42 missionary societies working in Africa, 781 male and 387 female missionaries, and 101,212 communicants. These missionaries are chiefly laboring in the oountries bordering on the coast, while year a new station on the Kwato Island port, the Rev. G. Short, of Salisbury, has been occupied by 2 missionaries, said that there were now nearly 100 who have also the use of a small sailing missionary societies in Great Britain, boat, which they find very helpful in Europe. Canada, and the United States, going in and out among the islands with 11,388 stations and out-stations, where ships could not go. 4693 male and 3228 female missionaries, 40,083 Christian native workers, and -The New Zealand Census shows 726,883 communicants. Toward tbe 1197 churches and chapels, and 400 Centenary Fund of £100,000, a sum of other buildings used for worship, with £70,000 had been subscribed or promsittings for 278,000, or about one half ised, and at an early date the remainder of the population. The number attend- was anticipated. The special efforls of ing services is 197,000, of whom 40,785 the Sunday-schools had realized over are Presbyterians, 37,252 are Episco. £11,000. Of this £15,000 will be ap. palians, 30,525 Roman Catholics, 27,106 plied to wiping out tbe debt, some to a Wesleyans, and 14,442 belong to the working fund which will make loans Salvation Army. unnecessary, and the greatest portion to extend mission operations. It is es- British Foreign Missions. By Rev. James timated that the new up-river steamer Johnston, Bolton, England. for the Congo Mission will cost £5000. Sunday, October 2d, will be regarded as Zenana Bible and Medical Mission. a missionary centenary in the Baptist -At the thirtieth annual meeting of churches at home and abroad. A pubthis society it was stated that less than lic celebration of the centennial of the a third of a million of girls in India founding will be held on October 4th were educated. The number of mis- and 5th in London. On July 23d acensionaries was 47, with 26 assistants, 149 tenary festival is to take place at the native teachers, and 54 Bible women Crystal Palace. represented by 85 schools and 2554 pupils. A new hospital had been opened For the past year the expenditure has at Lucknow in memory of the late Lady been £74,935 against an income of Kinnaird, foundress and president of £69,125. Seven missionaries had died the society, and a new medical mission during the year. In view of the great had been established in Patna. The mortality on the Congo the quest.ion total number of patients at Lucknow, was raised whether the Committee had Benares, and Patna was 8904, with considered the advisability of transfer. 24,387 visits to dispensaries, while 1931 ring men from Kingston College, Javisits had been paid to the homes of maica. At the annual soiree Mr. Baynes, patients. The current total annual in- commenting on the report, spoke of it come is £16,687. as a second edition of the Acts of the Apostles. They had 800 baptisms in The Baptist Missionary Society.- India, 550 in China, and a large num- At the centennial annual members' ber on the Congo. The native Chrismeeting it was announced that the tian Church was becoming increasingly colonial missionary societies were pre- active, independent, and aggressive. paring to enlarge their own efforts in There was a large addition of Christian commemoration of the centenary of the schools and a great quest for the Bible, society. It was the aim of the Com. thousands having been sold where a few mittee to make every part of their work years ago they would have been deself supporting, but the cost of freight, spised. Many were the cheering signs etc., connected with the Congo Mission of an approaching noble harvest of souls was three times that of the personal in India. The Baptist Zenana Mission, salaries of the missionaries. In mov- which was never more popular, reports ing the adoption of the hundredth re- 52 missionaries and 130 Bible women and Zenana visitors. Ten women were H. Uffman, of the German Mil:lsion, going to India this year, 5 of them old Perulia. Chota Nagpore, who has charge workers and 3 qualified physicians. of 160 inmates in the asylum supported The year's receipts were £7547. In re- by the Mission to Lepers, writing in sponse to an appeal on the twenty-fifth March last, entreats the humane to enanniversary of the society a Bum of £400 able him to open his doors to receive was collected. Dr. Richard Glover another 40 begging for admission. Says preached the Baptist missionary ser- the Rev. G. M. Bullock. of the London mon, and Dr. A. T. Pierson the young Missionary Society, who has 122 inmen's mission sermon, the latter effort mates in the asylum at Almora, in the being oonsidered one of the finest Himalayas; "There have been 20 apmissionary deliveranoes of the year in plicants since January 1st; but I do not Great Britain. feel justified in admitting any till I find how fllr the Church of Christ is willing Wesleyan Foreign Missions-An- to stand by me." In a most touching nual Meetin&;.-Many oiroumstanoes letter (translated from the Hindustani) oombined to make the yearly gathering the native oaretaker of the Almora Asyin Exeter Hall one of exoeptional inter· lum writes; .. Many have come seeking est. The newly appointed seoretary, admission, but have been obliged to go the Rev. F. W. Maodonald, made a most away again. We are grieved to be un_ able statement. General progress mark· able to help them. Some came who ed the society's operations in its princi- could with difficulty move about; with pal mission fields. The reoeipts, while tears they entreated of I1S to give them showing an inorease, did not meet the a place of refuge. One day a man came expenditure by £4000. The veteran who was very helpless. He remained missionary, Dr. Ebenezer Jenkins, late the whole night in the hope of having of India, spoke of the wonderful changes his name entered on the books, and it which had taken plaoe in that empire was hard to send him away in the mornsinoe he first went there in 1856. A ing." Of another institution a lady notable weloome was given to the Rev. missionary asks ; •• Is it to be enlarged? David Hill, who has labored in China You know there are more than 500 for twenty-seven years. He told the lepers in this distriot alone, and the vsst assembly that China was becoming need for further assistanoe is very great. unified, entering into the comity of Oh, dear! such piteous cases as have to Western nations, passing through moral be refused." There are applications and intellectual transformations, and from other places where extra aoo.mwas everywhere more open to the mis- modation is urgently needed, all of sionary vanguards. At the annual mis- which could be met by a gift of £700. sinnarybreakfast meeting the Rev.James Chapman, of Oxford, spoke of the great Uganda.-Not since August last have call which God was at the present time the directors of the Imperial British giving to His Churoh to mission the East Africa Company had direct news world. He instanced the various open- from Captain Lugard. They have the ings to the Gospel, the multiplied faoili- utmost confidence in his strictly imparties, improvement in means of com- tial attitude with regard to the rival namunication, and the remarkable in- tive disputants, and they also state that crease of English – speaking peoples, the Snider rifles which the natives have whose influence extended to every land. obtained have been introduced in spite of their officers' vigilanoe by traders Mission to Lepers in India.-From from the south of the lake, who are Mr. Wellesley C_ Bailey, of Edinburgh. known to have brought large consignthe secretary ancl superintendent, ear- ments of weapons and ammunition to nest appeals are appearing in the Eng- the intedor. Particulars of a reliable lish press for subscriptions. The Rev. character respecting the outbreak of earliest opportunity moving toward Lake hostilities between the Catholics and Tchad, the objective point of their gal- Protestants and the rumored destruc- lant enterprise. The prayers of God's tion of several Catholic stations are not people on their behalf are desired. It yet available. At the same time, it is is definitely announced that Lieutenant useless to disguise the fact that the Mizon, of the French navy, has failed Jesuit priests, who have for several to reach the lake by way of the Niger years been established in Uganda, look and the Binne, and is returning by the with extreme disfavor upon British Congo. The leaders of the last expediprestige. The influence of these mis- tion, M. Crampel and his officers, were sionaries has been persistently used brutally murdered. By the Wadai Musagainst the company's officers. Mwan- sulmans, who are supreme at the south ga, at the date of Captain Lugard's last end of the lake, undying hostility has report, was much more favorably in- been declared to all white men. So far clined toward the British than he had the attempts to reach the Tchad region ever been before. but theking's extreme confirm the views held by Englishmen fickleness of purpose led Captain Lugard on the Niger, that this vast central track to doubt his entire sanity. He was, as of the African continent, the largest rea nominal Catholic, exposed to a good maining unexplored area, may for Bome deal of influence from the priests. The time be closed to Europeans. Its enlatest news, however, proved that his trance during the next few years deconversion was of the most superficial pends mainly upon missionary exertion character, according to which he was and commeroial relations. plotting with the Mohammedans to regain more territory by their assistance Miscellaneous. -AJIairs in Samoa are and to defeat the Christians. in a critical and unsettled condition. The nati ves in the islands lire strongly It sounds strange to hear that Africa supporting Mataafa, and there is danger is not an unsuitable field, in some of another outbreak against the present parts, for using the bicycle. The in- regime. While the Governmeni's funds trepid missionary, Mr. Ashe, of the are exhausted, the natives are two years Church Missionary Society, who started in arrears with their taxes,-On April last year for Ugand~, has, say the latest 14th the first party of North Africa misadvices, nearly reached his destination, sionaries left England for Alexandria; in accomplishing which the bicycle their names are Mr. and Mrs. Summers, which he took out with him was of the formerly of Morocco, Mr. James Smith. greatest helpfulness. He was able to of Liverpool, Miss Ada Watson, and perform almost the entire journey on Miss Van Molen, from Doric Lodge.- his machine; and he found the long By the London Missionary Society, the narrow paths through the country ad- services of Miss M L. Christlieb, daughmirably adapted to its use. His report ter of Dr. Christlieb, of Bonn, and thus is of such an enthusiastic character that granddaughter of Mr. Weitbrecht, the we may in future regard the bicycle an celebrated missionary, have been acalmmlt necessary part of the equipment cepted.-Dr. and Mrs. Laws arrived in for an African traveller. London from Lake Nyassa in March.
The Central Soudan Mission.-Mr. Monthly Bulletin. H. G. Harris and his 6 colleagues are temporarily located in the city of -Dr. Pentecost affirms publicly that Tripoli, whe:re they are zealously de- there are more ordained ministers in voted to itinerancy among the natives, Scotland than there are ordained misand, in thl' mean time, making them- sionaries in all the world. selves familiar with the Hausa and Arabic tongues. They propose at the -The Western Ohristian Advocate is not pleased with the showing made by one of Boston's Methodist churches, fined to Europe, and chiefly to Italy, which pays $5000 for pastoral services Switzerland, and Germany. and gives only $36 for missions. England.-Some 80 versions of the -Dr. SchaufHer calls attention to the Scriptures are used in the Church Mis. fact that while the Congregationalists sionary Society's field. Of these, 59 have many institutions for training men versions, or 80 per cent., come from the for foreign missions, they have not a British and Foreign Bible Society alone. single school for training women mis- The C. M. S. missionaries have been the sionaries. This refers, of course, to sole translators of the whole or portions theological and special training. of the Scriptures into 52 languages, which, in the great majority of in. -There is an Armenian Sunday- stances, would never have seen the light school in Maine which numbers about if it had not been for the kindly inter. twenty, and is held every Sunday after- vention of the Bible Society. noon in the Second Parish vestry, Port. land. Each pupil has a teacher,' and -The Bible stand at the Crystal Paltheir attempts to master the English ace, London, commenced work nearly language result in much animated chat· thirty years ago, and has disposed of ter. more than 12,000,000 Bibles and Testa· ments, and 11,000,000 Scripture cards. -Justice David J. Brewer, of the Su- This distribution includes both sales preme Court, made an address before and gifts. the American Home Missionary Society in Washington recently. He is an active AJrica.-Africa is three times the size worker in the Church, where he has a of Europe; every pound of ivory costs large Bible class. He was born in Syria, one life; for every five pounds one hut where his father was a missionary. has been -burned; for every two tusks a village has been destroyed; for every -The women are arranging for a twenty tusks a district has been de. Congress of Christian Missions in con· stroyed. nection with the World's Fair, in Sep. tember, 1893. The theme of orators -About one fourth of the people of like Lady Henry Somerset and Mrs. Bal. Africa are Mohammedans and nearly lington Booth will he woman's share in three fourths are pagans. There are the world's evangelization, and histori. about 3,500,000 Christians, of whom cal papers and general discussions will nearly one half are Copts and Abyssin. serve to make this factor in the modern ians, and the remainder Roman Cathomissionary movement still more ap. lics and Protestants in about equal pro. parent. portion. The Roman Catholics include the French in Algeria and the Portu- -In view of the establishment at the guese in Angola and Mozambique. The World's Fair of a department for work Protestants include the English and done by women in different parts of the Dutch of the South African colonies. world, the industrial school of the The people in the countries bordering American Lutheran mission at Guntur, on the Mediterranean Sea and in tho India, is planning to send some of the countries immediately south of these work done in that school to the Exposi. are Mohammedan, while the pagans com· tion for sale, the profits to be applied prise the great masses of the negro, to an endowment fund for the school. Kaffir. Hottentot, and Zulu races in Central and South Africa. -Mr. George Muller, of the Bristol Orphanage, has just completed his six. -Next to cannibalism the most terri. teenth missionary tour, having been ab- ble practice in the Congo basin is that sent from home twenty.one months. of human sacrifices on the occasion of Although eighty.six years old, he is in the funeral ceremonies of important good health. This last trip was con. persons. The richer the family of the ness of the people. The Rev. R. H.
deceased person, the more numerous Walker says: "I have lived with them are the victims. Because far up the for more than three months without tributaries slaves can be bought much spending anything. Many other Chris- cheaper than on the Congo, canoe par- . tian chiefs offer to provide all that the ties are sent for hundreds of miles for country will supply to anyone who will the sole purpose of buying victims for go and live with them and teach the human sacrifices. They are blindfold- people. Let this be known in England, ed, bound to a stake in a sitting or and surely some one will offer to come kneeling posture, and a single blow of and help us. What we want is more the skilful executioner's knife decapi. men. The Christians will find them tates them. Though men form the houses and food."
greater number of victims, wives or -The British Admiralty are having female slaves are often strangled and two small gun-boats built for service on thrown into the open grave, or bu::ied Lake Nyasea, to be used in the suppresalive in it. sion of the slave trade in that region.
-Bishop Taylor of Africa receives These boats will be taken in sections up $6000 salary per year. All but $500 of the Zambesi and Shire rivers, and conit he gives to advancing his missionary structed on the borders of the lake.
work in the Dark Continent. -The great caravan of Dr. Fruisch, -Says Bishop Taylor: ,. I spent a who goes to join Emin Pasha at Lake large portion of one afternoon in the Albert, will include two hundred Souschool-room of Sister Luzia at Malange. danese, well armed, and five trained Her school is composed of the advanced elephants. The latter he purchased in pupils, whom she is instructing in the Bombay, paying $5000 each. He is a Bible doctrine and the catechism, with young millionaire, hall travelled in South instrumental and vocal music. I looked Africa and South America, and personon and listened and quietly wept and aUy defrays the enormous expense of thanked God. Six years ago all these- this expedition, which was to start from teacher and pupils-were enveloped in Mombasi early in July.
the densest darkness of barbarous -At a meeting held in London, May heathenism; but now they are 'par- 5th, to welcome Mrs. McKittrick and takers of the divine nature,' and diligent Dr. Harry Guinness from Africa, and students of the Holy Scriptures." bid Godspeed to a party starting for -The Sultan of Morocco has issued Balololand, Dr. Guinness spoke of the special orders forbidding intercourse deadly climate of the Congo, which has between the Moorish women and the worked such ravages among the misladies attached to Christian missions. sionaries, and gave a glowing tribute to This will affect especially the workers the workers there and the success that of the North Africa Society, a large was already crowning their labors. It number of whom are women, and who was reported that the whole number have made a IIpecial effort to reach the startin!! for missionary fields on the women of the country in their homes. Congo, West and South Africa, India, The Sultan's action is supposed to have and South America was 22, and that been taken on the representation of his there are 145 students in the tliree coladvisers to the effect that communica_ leges of the East London Missionary Intions between the Moorish and English stitute preparing for service in different women threatened innovation in the parts of the world.
laws and the corruption of religion. China.-The Rev_ Gilbert Reid, in an -Letters from Uganda, published in essay read before the Shantung Presby- the Church Missionary lntelligencer, speak terian Mission, urged the obligation of very cordially of the affection and kind- doing more than has hitherto been done by Protestant missionaries for the evan· mained through a service which lasted gelization of the upper classes of China. He suggested that the whole constitu. over three hours. Eighty.four persons tion of Chinese society brings home the necessity of not neglecting them. "Rev. were confirmed, and about 300 received arence to all who are above" is so all. pervading in China that decisive results the Holy Communion. – cannot be expected without heeding it. India.-The hospital whioh was erect· -The Chinese Government has been ed in memory of Lady Kinnaird in so favorably impressed with the educa. Lucknow, India, formally opened in tional work the Methodist Missions afe October last, is already in need of en· doing in Pekin that it has promised to largement. The original design does give positions upon the railroads or in not afford sufficient acoommodation to telegraph offices to all graduates, at a the patients, and funds are solicited for fair salary, and the privilege added of an additional wing. keeping the Sabbath. All gradllates from the Medical Department will reo -One of the Cowley Fathers, who ceive appointments in the army or navy. has been carrying on a successful work To give an earnest of what will be done, in the city of Poona, has withdrawn with a physician from the United States was some of his native converts to a small requested for the Cllstoms Service of village to make a new attempt in the Chung King, the very city from which direction of self.sacrificing labor. He the missionaries were expelled in 1886 ; wishes to see whether he cannot give an and bellides granting a handsome salary, impetus to the foundation of a com. it was agreed that he should spend all munity life among the natives of that his spare time in medical missionary oountry. work. -Rev. Mr. Evans writes to the Eng- -This from the annllal report of the lish Baptist Missionary Society of ana· Presbyterian Church of England: "So tive preacher, Michael Baba, who has rapid is the progress made, that the for some years traversed nearly the Chin·chew Church, although it has been whole of India, making known the way enlarged, is now too small for the con- of life. He is not connected with any gregation meeting in it; freqllently society, and receives no pay from any more than 600 persons crowd it to over· denomination. He dresses in the yel. flowing. many having to stand. To low, flowing garb of an Indian ascetic, meet this in some degree, another place for in this attire he has access to all of worship has been opened in the classes of Hindus. He visits the great southern suburb of the city, but still fairs and festivals, preaching a thorough. the crowding is too great. Then the ly evangelioal message. He never asks hospital is too smaU for the patients for help, unless in actual want. pressing for admission; the congrega. tional school too small for the number -A Hindu conversing with a Church of pllpils attending it; and the premo Missionary Society missionary in India, ises where the missionaries reside quite in answer to the question, " Which of inadequate for the accommodation of all our methods do you fear the most ?" our three brethren." he said: ,. We do not greatly fear your schools, for we need not send our chilo -The Rev. Mr. Sowerby writes that dren ; we do not fesr your books, for he never saw such a sight in Chino. as we need not read them; we do not fear was presented at Hankowon Sunday, your preaching, for we need not hear March 13th. wheu Bishop Hare held a it ; but we dread your women and your servioe there. More than a thousand doctors; for your doctors are winning Chinese orowded t111' l;)1lilding and reo our hearts and your women are winning our homes; and when our hearts and our homell are won, what is there left us?" Palestine.-A Young Men's Christian are seeking to penetrate Tibet from the Association has been started in Jerusa- southwest, the China Inland missionlem, one branch of it to reach Anglo- Hebrews and another to work among aries are hoping to secure an entrance on the young men who speak Arabic. the northeast. They have already estab- -The Jerusalem and Jaffa Railroad will soon be ready for travellers. Al- lished themselves at a Bmall Tibetan ready are the three American-built locomotives, Jerusalem, Jaffa and Ramleh, village on the very border. At first it on hand. Outside of the Damascus was impossible to obtain a house to live Gate stands an electric light, a telegraph pole thro",s its shadow upon Jacob's in, but at last a Tibetan landlord was Well, and a steam mill puffs near the ancient well in Nazareth. This means found whose scruples were overcome, the breaking up of the isolation of the towns and villages and the more rapid and they are already established. An spread of enlightening influences from the hitherto almost unknown world. effort was made to drive them out, but Persia.-The Bagdad Jews have pur- the Chinese officials stood by them and chased in the last eight years 258 Hebrew New Testaments and 729 Hebrew copies they remained. of Matthew or Hebrews, besides many copies of the New Testament Scriptures Australia.-After two missionary in Arabic, Turkish, or other languages. meetings in Melbourne recently, a Twet.-A Scottish Universities Mis- hard-working man sent in the titlesion has been established in Sikkim with three missionaries. "Sikkim is a deeds of a farm of 93t acres, worth wedge driven up from India, splitting apart Nepaul toward the west and £500, to be divided between missions Bootan toward the east, and pointing to Lhassa, the holy city, the heart of Tibet. to India and New Guinea. On being Sikkim lies on the threshold of Tibet. It is more, it is the door to Tibet… afterward spoken to about the largeness -A grant of 30,000 rubles has recent- of his gift, he said, " This is how I look ly been made to defray the expenses of another Russian scientific expedition to at it : Supposing I were a boy, and my the Chinese province of Szchuen and the neighboring tablelands of 'ribet. It will father gave me a sovereign, but afterbe under the care of M. Potanin, the well.known explorer, and will cover a ward wanted me to let him have part of period of three years. the money back to help him in some -For nearly forty years agents of the Moravian Mission have been patiently work he was doing, and I gave him a waiting and working to gain an entrance into Tibet. When missionaries do enter, threepenny piece, what sort of a son however, they will find ready for them a Tibetan dictionary and grammar, and should I be ?" a translation of the whole New 'restament and some of the books of the Old -The Moravians claim that their set- Testament. tlements of Ebenezer and Ramahyuck afford a tangible proof that the degrad- -While the Moravian missions at Leh ed "black fellow" can be reclaimed. In Victoria the race is fast dying olit, but in North Queensland there are still vast tracts inhabited by them alone. The Rev. James Ward, his wife, and Mr. Nicholas Hey have been set apart for work among the latter. The Gov- ernment have lent every assistance. A settlement has belln decided upon in the Cape York peninsula, in the extreme north of Queensland.
Hawaii.-Mr. Okabe, who has charge of Christian work among the Japanese in Hawaii, reports 20,000 Japanese as now living at the islands. They com- prise the largest body of foreigners there. Most of them go from Hiroshima or Kumamoto, two of the strongest cen- tres of Buddhism in the empire, but, as they leave their religion with their pos- sessions behind, they prove very sus- ceptible to practical Christian influ- ences. Gospel work is carried on in seven or eight places, with some 116 Christians as the result of three years' effort_
The Missionary Review of the World — March 1892
CAPTAIN GREAT-HEART AND THE HOLY WAR
MISSIONARY REVIEW OF THE WORLD.
VOL. XV. No. 8.-Old &rie.,.–MARCH.–voL. V. No. B.-New &rie8.
CAPTAIN GREAT-HEART AND THE HOLY WAR: THE STORY OF THE SALVATION ARMY.
BY FREDERIC PERRY NOBLE, NEWBERRY LIBRARY, CHICAGO, ILLS.
In 1661 a "'Jerusalem sinner," nicknamed Bishop Bunyan, dreamed an immortal dream. In his vision he beheld how men and women fare from this world to the world to come. He wist how one little band of feeble folk needed the escort of a mighty man of valor, and tells how the pilgrims went on till they came in sight of lions chained. Mr. Greatheart was a strong man, so he was not afraid of a lion; but the boys that went before were now glad to cringe behind. At this their guide smiled and said: "How now, my boys; do you love to go before when no danger doth approach, and to come behind so soon as lions appear~" Mr. Great-heart drew sword with intent to make a way for the pilgrims. Then appeared one that had taken upon him to back the lions; and he said: " What is the cause of your coming hither ~" (His name was Grim, or Bloody-man, because of his slaying pilgrims; and he was of the race of giants.) Great-heart: These women and children are going on a pilgrimage ; this is the way they must go, and go they shall, spite of thee and the lions. Grim: This is not their way, neither shall they go therein. I am come forth to withstand them. (To say truth, by reason of the fierceness of tbe lions, and of his grim carriage, this way had of late been much unoccupied, and was almost all grown over.) Then said Christiana: " Though the highways have been unoccupied, and travellers have been made to walk through by-paths, it must not be so now I am arisen a mother in Israel." But Great-heart made first his approach unto Grim, and laid on so heavily with his sword that he forced him to retreat. Then said Grim: "Will you slay me upon mine own ground Y" Great-heart: It is the King's highway we are in, and in this highway hast thou placed the lions. With that he gave him again a downright blow and brought him upon his knees. He also broke his helmet, and next cut off an arm. Then did the giant roar so hideously that his voice frightened the women; yet they were gl&d to s~e him lie spr&wling. When old Grim was dead, Great.heart said: " Come j follow me j no hurt shall come from the lions." They therefore went on, and all got by without further hurt. Afterward, too, after passing through the Valley of Humiliation, and quitting Vanity Fair, Captain Great·heart slew Giant Despair, demolished Castle Doubting, and fetched his people to the Delectable Mountains.
THE BOOTHS.
Captain Great-heart-that is William Booth! In his passion for souls, his shepherding of the multitudes and his warfare against the devil, the " General" of the holy war is the incarnation of the hero·saint created by Bunyan. Born in 1829, brought up as a member of the Established Church, voluntarily associating with the Wesleyan Methodists at thirteen, and converted at fifteen, Booth began in 1843 to preach out.of.doors among the poor of Nottingham in all weathers, and at seventeen was a recognized preacher. An American revivalist was the ideal npon which he moulded himself and his methods j and as the Church of England had not then learned wisdom from its loss of Wesley, so it had no place for the only men and measures that could reach the masses. In 18-10 the Establishment repeated the mistake of 1744·-84, and cast away a tremendous religious force. At nineteen Booth was urged to become a minister, but remained a layman until twenty-four years old. Then he married, and entered the ministry of the Methodist New Connection. From the first his preaching had every outward mark of success, lind in 1852-55 he was sent as an evan· gelist to many large manufacturi.ng towns, thousands of hearers professing conversion. From 1856-61 Booth was obliged to serve as a settled pastor; but the bondage of regular church relations irked him, and he believed himself called to be solely an evangelist. It was requested that the minister be restored to revivalism. The request was refused. For conscience' sake Booth, in 1861, resigned from the ministry an.d the Connection, and stepped straight into the on~ work of his life. Dissent had repeated the folly of Episcopalianism, and had furnished the occasion for the rise of practically another sect.
The years 1861-63 saw Booth working back to his earliest methods, but realizing that such religious moverr:ents must be organized if there is to be distinctive teaching beyond that of conversion, and if the work is not to ' die. Always reluctant to form another organization, his first idea was to go to the people, attract them, save them, employ them, and send them into the churches. But the people would not go. They were not wanted, they said, inside the Church. Some, if not all, were needed to save others; thus Booth was obliged to previde 'for his converts himself, In 1865 London drew him 'and held him. On a street corner at Milc End Waste in the East End, Booth and his wife began, no whit distinguishable from the commonplace Methodists to be fonnd by the score in WhitechapeI. Neither had the slightest idca of any such organization as a Salvation Army. As the movement grew they thought their work might be to form a huge workingman's society with branches j but with the growth into the provinces came more correct views. First the workers constituted the East London Christian Revival Society, then they were known as the East London Christian Mission, and from 1870-78 simply as the Christian Mission. From 1865-77 progress was slow.
If the Booths were insignificant units, how came they to found the largest missionary society in the world ~ W. T. Stead claims that he has been brought into close enough contact to form accurate ideas of their capability, range of thought, and force of intellect j and that the father, mother, and eldest son rank as superior in force. capacity, and initiative to all but six of the ablest men and women of our time. Ldtd Wolseley has declared Booth to be the greatest organizing genius of these twenty-five years, while Bramwell Booth has been styled a Von Moltke. In Mrs. Booth the Gen· eral found a rare helpmeet and inspirer. She was an effective speaker, an able advocate, a convincing interpreter of the Faith, and a tireless worker. Through her influence and example as " Mother of the Army," female ministry was pushed to the front, and many other distinctive features became part of the system. Her reasoning faculties were well developed. Her foresight, sound judgment, and seldom erring intuitions made her labors in the war council as valuable as her writings and her speeches in the field. She reared eight children expressly to continue and perfect the work. In its cradle each was consecrated; and to-day each, save an invalid, is holding some prominent position and doing yeoman service. All differ j but each possesses a measure of the parents' gifts. Trained almost from childhood to handle practical details of administration and finance, accustomed to handle people as individuals and in masses, they are better prepared to take the duties of commander-in-chief than the General in 1878 seemed qualified to direct a world-wide order. If marriage was a corner-stone of the army, the children's alliances have doubled the family fighting force. Every daughter-in-law and son-in-law has shared the enthusiasm, their own children being devoted t.o the Lord of Hosts.
THE BEGINNING AND PROGRESS OF THE ARMY PROPER.
In 1875 the Booths slipped into the line of development which ga-e power of adaptation to new circumstances. From the first the mission had accorded equal rights in religious affairs to women; now it solemnly and formally affirmed their absolute equality in all departments of administration, and deliberately utilized their services. That very year opened the era of phenomenal expansion. Accordingly these soldiers of the cross claim to have done more than any other body to reveal the enormous possibilities of church usefulness latent in woman. The mission had become a regularly organized marching force. with printed doctrines and discipline, and settled Methodist government. In 1878, through a happy accident. "Christian Mission" became "Salvation Army." " General Superintendent" had inevitably shortened itself into" General." Booth's helpers, being neither ministers nor teachers, and having no distinctive titles, the people had dubbed them "Captain." Booth had described conferences as councils of war. All these phrases hinted at military organization, and Scripture passages about the Church as an army confirmed the idea. One day the mission was defined as a volunteer army of working people. "Not volunteers," Booth rejoined; "we must do what we do, and we're always on duty." Crossing out" volunteer," he wrote" salva- tion." The phrase struck his colleagues as expressing the mission's nature, and was adopted. Yet Booth had but repeated history in using this name, for Flowgate in 1658 spoke of the Friends as an Army. The newly christened Salvation Ar'lny borrowed its entire ecclesiasticism from barrack and camp. General Booth has the British Army's rules and regulations at his right hand, and tells Mr. Stead they helped him more than all the church constitutions. After long study of the military manuals the order was reconstituted, and has since grown by leaps and bounds.
In 1879 came marked advance. The first War Ory began sounding that weekly trumpet· call whose echoes are now heard the world around in twenty-seven journals and in fifteen languages. Three Salvationists, for " obstructing the thoroughfare" by prayer in a road, were imprisoned in lieu of paying their fine, an alternative which is on principle always rejected. Why should street-preachers be persecuted, and organ-grinders go scot-free? The establishment of training-schools, the use of uniforms and badges, and the official invasion of America also began in that year. In 1881 the war was carried into Australia, Canada, France, India, and Sweden, and the Army began to plan for the conquest of Europe. Between 1880 and 1890 this enterprise, beginning with God and nothing in a London slum, went from New Zealand to San Francisco, and from Cape Town almost to the North Cape; leaped, as if the genii of Arab story, from 400 corps and 1000 OffiCClS, to 4289 corps, or separate religious societies, 10,000 offi0ers devoted solely to evangelization, and 13,000 non-commis- Rioned officers rendering voluntary service; captured 150,000 prisoners from Satan; created ~cores of new forms of religious and philanthropic activity; conquered the respect of the world; and broached a stupendous scheme for the salvation of society.
The Army has the true apostolic succession in being the victim of ceaseless persecution. Its aggressive and extreme character in faith and works, its open-faced, heavy-handed attack upon such sins in high places as " the maiden tribute of modern Babylon," have combined to subject its soldiers to every kind of slander and opposition. Some one member is always in prison for conscience' sake-a boast which no other religious body can makc. Before 1890 the Church rarely spoke a good word in their behalf. The fiercest opposition, and that most frequently expressed in mob violence, come from the publicans. Often they organize "The Skeleton Army," a procession bearing a banner with death's-head and cross·bones. In all methods of malfeasance Great Britain has ever led the van, while to outrage by the populace. the authorities in England, America, India, South Africa, Sweden, and Switzerland have added oppression. But the government of infidel France has never laid hand on one Salvationist.
ORGANIZATION, DEPARTMENTS, AND BRANCHES.
Booth is a Protestant Pope without jurisdiction over conscience. Himself a spiritlial power, he wields a quasi-temporal power. His telegram will in a moment start an officer from London slums to darkest Chicago, or to the uttermost parts of the earth. The Army alone among English religious bodies is based on the principle of obedience, and requires subjection to absolute authority. Without such an organization this vast movement would be a rope of sand. Booth holds that the multitudes should be governed by the wisest and best, and that obedience, unquestioning and constant. is the root of good government and a means of grace. Every man must swear to obey orders from headquarters without question or remark. Such church despotism is fraught with danger j but how much fitness for self-government have drunkards, harlots, and prison-graduates Rhown ~ Moreover, the militarism is modified by the voluntariness of enlistment, the system of weekly corps reports, elaborate arrangements to prevent abuse of authority, and by none being bound to serve one day longer than he pleases. Indiscipline and mutiny are judicially tried by court-martial. Are sucb principles sound ~ Explain the abnormal rate of gain j remember that there have been fewer splits than in organizations where authority is not recognized j and recall the failure of attempts to run rival armies! The sole serious mutiny was that of Major Moore here in 1884.
The Army divisions are these:Wards, stations, sections, districts, divisions, territories. The ward is the unit j several wards constitute a station j two or more stations form a section j a group of sections make a district j a number of districts compose a division j but a territory consists of a country, in whole or in part, or of several countries. The officers commanding these divisions are, respectively, sergeants, captains, ensigns or adjutants, staff captains, majors or brigadiers or colonels, and commissioners. A station is that· region where a single corps operates, and may consist of a group of villages or of a town, all or part. with mission outposts. Corps and brigade are often confused with each other by, non-Salvationists, but differ as class from kind. The corps accomplishes general evangelization, its divisions during engagements against the enemy constituting companies j the brigade is a band for special work. There are rescue, cellar, gutter and garret, drunkard, saloon, workhouse, and lodginghouse brigades. Each corps should contain several commissioned field officers, as captains and lieutenants are called j eight unpaid, non-commissioned, local officers with most burdensome duties: treasurer, secretary. sergeant-major, converts' sergeant-major, band-master, band-sergeant, wardsergeant, color-sergeant, bandsmen, and junior soldiers' officers. Their duties are explained in order-books, each before appointment signing II. bond to be a model of good behavior, uniform wearing, and belligerency. None is at liberty to use tobacco or to attend other services without the , captain's permission. Whatever the size of a corps, at least one man and one woman attend to the penitent form or mercy-seat. Local officers are appointed for twelve months, but field-officers usually hold a post only four or six months. Salvation officers are liable to removal at any moment; but ordinarily commissioners remain four or five years, and division officers about one year.
The General is the commander-in-chief. He appoints his own suc- cessor, making choice solely on the score of fitness; and at this moment the name of the next General rests unknown in a sealed envelope deposited with the solicitors. He is also, 1y a deed-poll in the High Court of Chancery, trustee of all Army property; and if he misappropriate a song- book would he liable to trial. Headquarters may be international, terri- torial, or divisional. The first, or headquarters-in-chief, are the offices where all-the-world Army business is transacted. They are in London, and the centre for the General, chief-of-staff (now Bramwell Booth), secretaries of affairs or heads of departments, the chief secretary and the field secretary. Territorial headquartcrs are the offices of countries under command of commissioners; United States headquarters-e.g., are at New York City, and are supported largely by the 'profits from the sale of the War Ory, other Army literature, uniforms, musical instruments, and other requisites. In national headquarters are usually the offices where is con- ducted all business about property, candidates, the War Oryand its like, appointments of field officers, and financial arrangements. Divisional headquarters are self-explanatory; Chicago headquarters transacting busi- ness for the Northwestern division. In different countries the number of officers and departments varies with the strength of the contingents. The chief branches in England are finance, social work, property and law, trade, publication, and foreign lands; and the head-men are also called commis- sioners.
The Army has the financial sinews of war well in hand, and forms its finances in three divisions-headquarters, divisicm, and corps. Head- quarters finance comprises the general spiritual fund, the foreign extension fund, the training-homes fund, the sick and wounded officers' funds, and the property fund. If Booth is an autocrat in measures, he has never been autocratic in handling the funds. Even in 1866 he had members of differ- ent churches formed into a committee on finance to guarantee that con· tributions were spent as directed by the givers. The method of vouching was the most thorough then possible; yet a system still more thorough is employed to-day. The English accounts are constantly inspected by the auditors of the Midland Railway. The Accountant, a London professional journal, " only wishes the accounts of all charitable institutions were as carefully and clearly kept" as the Army's. The balance-sheet is published punctually each year, headquarters publishing annually, and corps or local bodies quarterly. Non-Salvationist accountants audit all. To no officer is salary guaranteed, nor does one receive more than enough to supply actual wants. Booth has never received one cent beyond repayment of out-ofpocket expenses, his support being provided by friends outside j and the sole member of the family who has received remuneration from Army funds is Bramwell. As chief-of-staff "he toils terribly," yet has only the pit. tance of a postal clerk. Salaries run from $2.88 a week for slum sisters, to $14.58. Male captains and lieutenants receive $4.32 and $3.84 respectively j women of the same rank, $3.60 and $2.88 j married men, $6.48.* Each corps is expected to raise its own income, and P3Y its own expenses week by week, officers drawing no allowances till bills are paid. When the payment of these fails to leave enough for the officers, soldiers and friends usually provide food. Division officers are supported by a ten per cent assessment on the receipts of each corps. One week each year is set apart the world over as Self-denial Week, and in 1891 it yielded $200,000. The annual expenditure for rentals alone amounts to $1,000,000. The Army owns almost. $4,000,000 of property, and has a yearly income of $3,1341.),000. This equals four per cent on a capital of $7(,602,500. An endowment whose cash value is $76,602,500, created from nothing in twenty-five years, is a tolerably substautial miracle. It is almost unique.
DISTINCTIVE FEATURES, PECULIARITIES, AND THEIR RATIONALE.
One Sunday in London half the population, or 3,000,000 people, were absent from any place of worship. In the Establishment over ninety-five per cent of the members belong to the upper and middle classes, while less than three per cent of the working classes are communicants. Those are facts of terrific significance. They show the practical paganism of vast populations in Christendom. They demonstrate the uselessness of holding to parochial limitations and stereotyped methods in evangelizing modern society. 1£ the Army had kept in ecclesiastical ruts, Captain Great-heart could not have helped to lift Darkest England from its Slough of Despond even this little. " The. Army hali even been in danger of dying from dry rot; no prejudice, no regard for old-fashioned ideas and customs is not respectably and strongly represented to.day within the Army itself." But Booth does not want another ecclesiastical corpse encumbering the earth. "When Salvationists cease to be a militant body of red-hot men and women whose supreme business is saving souls, I hope it will vanish utterly." He would be all things to all men. if by any means he might save some. Very well j to multitudes such words as God, Bible, and Church were roch of offence. The Army removed the stone of stumbling; it described its actions as a Church militant by military terms j it adapted measureR and systems to particular needs and tastes of peoples, times, and circumstances j it employed unusual means of attraction. The result is * English rates in " Orders and Regulations," p. 510; American allowances for the same officers appear to be $7 and $6, and $6 and $5. that thousands -.vho would on no account enter churches are in Army halls every week. Some of the distinctive features are these: (1) The promi- nence of woman. Sex is no bar to position, forty per cent of the officers being female; (2) using every individu'll-at least theoretically-in active work as soon as converted; (3) holding meetings every day the year round. Salvationists are the only Protestants with whom devotional meet- ings at seven A.M. Sunday are customary. Each corps is to have ten in-door meetings each week, and at least six out-doors. Much time and strength are devoted to open-air work. In England, e.g., where people are too few to allow the establishment of a corps, seven huge vans or " Cavalry Forts," containing each nine officers on au average, roll from village to village, and enable meetings to be held; (4) visitation-field officers averaging eighteen hours a week; (5) emphasis on t.he claim to complete sanctification or full deliverance, not from guilt alone, but from the power of sin; (6) self-denial week for extending the work universally; (7) loyalty to superiors. A Chicagoan, if transferred to an Australian corps, would be obeyed exactly as would an officer from Sydney; (8) solidarity of the Army; (9) marching, bearing banners, using brass bands, * and always wearing uniform; (10) hallelujah weddings, and marriage within Salvation ranks explicitly for the purpose of raising a peculiar people.
Hear this advertisement: "Salvation Army, Kandy. M·O-N-S-T-E R Hallelujah wedding! Staff· Captain Weerasingh and Brigade-Captain Divia Premia. By Major Tayacody. In S. A. Barracks. Reservcd seatR 1 rupee; others 12 and 25 cents i" (11) youth of the officers, almost all being under twenty-five i (12) the Salvation Navy. But what are the oddities of nomenclature ~ These: The creed consists of articles of war. Early morning prayer-meeting is knee-drill. Sabbath afternoon meeting is a free-and-easy. Commencing work in a place is an attack or bombardment. A field of work is a post or station, and is manned by a garrison. Series of services form battles and campaigns. The evan- gelists are officers; converts become recruits, and candidates for officership constitute cadets. The hall, if formerly a factory, is now the hallelujah factory, or h~liness shop, or Salvation mill-sometimes barracks. Con- tribution pledges on yellow paper are called canaries, and contribution- envelopes with their contents form cartridges. Death is muster-out or promotion to glory. The motto is, " Blood and Fire;" the former term referring to the blood of Jesus, the latter to fire from the Holy Spirit, and His gift of tongues. The banner is often called the Blood-and-Fire colors, and consists of a blue-bordered crimson field, in whose centre shines a golden star bearing the motto and the corps number. Frequently, too, the national * Dr. W. F. Poole has most kindly pointed ont to me, in his edition of Captain Johnson's" Won- der-Working Providence of Sion's Saviour in New England" [the book originally appeared in 1654], that in 1637 the Puritans of Charlestown" had as yet no Bell to call men to meeting." Captain Johnson" hearing the sound of a Drum, demands what the signall ment, the reply was they had no ;Bell; and therefore made use of a Drum." [Condensed from pp.lxxviii. and cHi.] As Salvationists are often sneered at for nsing drums and trumpets, they might retort that they are in the hest of company. • flag accompanies the colors, which are the sole ensign in the world fore,-er flving. The sun never sets on the Salvation standard, and at 12.30 P.M. every day 1,000,000 Salvationists unite in prayer for the world-wide work.
METHODS OF WARFARE.
Study the" battle" of Darlington, England, and it will explain the general strategy employed in 4000 centres, whether in Ameriea or Australia, in Europe, India, and South Africa. A placard was everywhere posted, an- nouncing that" the Hallelujah lasses were coming July 6th, 1879." -With- out friend!', almost without money, came two women, respectively 22 and 18 years of age. The people were in straits financially, the churches distressed to pay their way. Yet these officers maintained scores of services, kept the largest hall filled, paid running expenditures of $2000 a ylJar, brought 1000 persons to the penitent-form in six rronths, added many to the churches, formed a corps 200 strong, each m~mber pledged to speak, pray, sing, visit, march, collect money, or do anything; in short, raised a new cause from the ground and among the poorest, and made it self-supporting. Yet there was no sensatioDalism, extravagance, or tomfoolery. When the mob gathered in the market-place" just to see' em," the officers sang, prayed, and fired such a volley as this: "You are lost, wretched sinners. You are going to hell. Your wickedness is damnable, and deserves punishment in hell forever. But God LOVES you. lIe begs you to love Him; accept Jesus and renounce the devil. Come! Go with us to heaven." Then they marched to the hall-it holds 2500-and the riffraff filled it to the doors. But few quit as the blackguards they had beenfor the ignorance of most Army officers is no hindrance to success when hard work, poverty, and self-sacrifice buttress their testimony. The life is the deciding argument for the Faith.
How did Captain Rose drill raw recruits, "Saved Jack" and" Happy Eliza" into soldiers of God ~ The penitent captured in full fight from Satan' 1'1 army is a "prisoner." When bully and courtesan stand among these, they mURt testify their belief then and there, and that they are on the Lord's side. Names and addresses are taken by the penitent-form sergeant, and sent to the ward-sergeant, who is accountable for every prisoner. If he is satisfied with the captive. his report goes to the converts' sergeantmajor. The latter, if satisfied, endorses it, and the prisoner is· entered in the cartridge-book as a recruit, treated by the captain as a soldier, and set to work. In fact, the converts' confession is not believed unless they become converters and seek to save others. After enrolment of recruits, ensues enlistment of soldiers. When the recruit has been on the cartridgebook one month, and has fought under his captain's eye, his application for full privateship comes before Census Meeting-. It decides whether the probation entitles to enlistment. If his record is honorable, the volunteer signs Army articles of faith. The first eight are theological, and affirm the fundamentals, with the annihilation of sin from out the converted soul, CAPTAtN GREAT-ttEART AND THE HoLY WAR_ [March and also the possibility of the truly converted falling from grace and redemption even into hell. On those points alone has Sah'ation theology any significance for thought. Eight other articles exact utter renunciation of the world, absolute teetotalism, with abstinence from tobacco and baneful drugs, and sheer obedience. Enrolments are held monthly in public, the recruits saying, " I do," as the field officer reads each article, or, if the number be large, simultaneously" fixing bayonets"-i.e., lifting their right arms straight above the shoulder.
All privates may aspire to officership, but must pass a severe examination as to character and stauding-of 3000 candidates in 1889, only 1320 were accepted-and if approved, enter a training home as cadets. The trainiug is slightly doctrinal, largely practical and personal. Six months elapse before the cadet-lieutenants are dispatched to the front and step into the line of promotion. Statistics of each officer's success in soul-saving, money-raising, and soldier-making are sent monthly to International Headquarters. If the figures demonstrate capacity to fill more responsible positions, his division-officCl"s proposal for promotion is accepted, and he rises to an ensignship or adjutancy, thus entering the Army staff. His function now consists of being an aide-de-camp, second in command to the divisionofficer, or an officer over a small division. With enlargement of ability come promotions to starr-captaincy, to brigadiership, even to commissionerhood. That is the highest attainable rank.
In addition to out-door evangelizing, the field officers, whenever practicable, have marches. The soldiers form and march four deep, and sing, usually to stirring or catchy tunes. Ahead are borne the colors, and frequently the national flag; hehind march the commanding officers, the band, and the rank and file. These bands, numbering 8000 musicians, are powerful preachers. To them are due conversions attainable by no other human agency. Care is taken to prevent pride and selfishness. No member receives pay; and as most have never touched an instrument before conversion, it looks as if the devotion of time and toil to learning to play finds its motive and reward in love. Much of the music is composed by Salvationists, though a few national and other tunes are used. Another f~ature of field work is the demonstration, or the public parade of several npighboring corps. The meetings Sabbath morning and Friday night are devoted to inculcating Army views on holiness, while one other evening is gi~'en to spiritual dealing with Salvationists alone. Attendance at the ~unday meetings, seven A. M_, and their character, accurately gauge the religious standing of the soldiery. All other meetings aim at the godless. The total number of meetings weekly is IlO,OOO, or 2,500,000 the world through in a twelvemonth.
In Hindostan, New Zealand, and South Africa the officers become to the Bengali as a Bengali; to the Maori as a Maori; to the Zulu as a Zulu. The Salvation movement ill the Orient, now landed as tlte model for missions, is the application of asceticism as the means of winning men. In Africa and Australia like lines are followed. Salvationists must leave Eng. lish dress and habits forever behind. Male officers evangelizing Bengalese villages wcar red jackets bearing" Salvation Army" on breast in Bengali, loin-cloth worn in native fashion, shoulder-cloth and turban with" SalvationArmy" ribbon, and walk barefoot. Officers even discard English nam'es, and assume native titles j plain John Smith became Tayacody- "Banner of Victory j" Tomkins hardly knows himself as Wecr-a-singh- "Strong Lion j" and Jane Jones is changed to Divia Prcmia-" God's Love." They live in native huts. They beg food from door to door. The cost of support averages $25 a year. They are ranked as fakirs by the heathen. More than half their converts apostatize. Of 114 European officers in Ceylon and India in 1888, only 73 were serving in 1891. Yet in 1891 their organizations numbered 251, a gain of 35 since 1890 j and of the 504 present officers, 360 are natives. The missionaries complain of their proselyting tactics. All the native officers Dr. Ashmore talked with had been trained in mission schools, or connected with mission churches. Burned districts of the worst sort remain.
Until 1887-90 the strategy and the weapons were spiritual, or if at all secular, only so far as a strictly spiritual organization could employ temporal agenci.es as aids in saving souls. Booth said: "Make the man, and he'll soon find himself a home, both temporal and spiritual." But society contributes causes which render almost impossible the reclamation of the lost. The Army has therefore widened its work to include a social wing against the Army of Despair. This wing comprises philanthropic auxiliaries that are the most noteworthy features of Salvation warfare. These instrumentalities are: Rescue work with professional criminals and fallen women j slum work by sisters encamped in the heart of the devil's country ; shelters for the houselcss and hungry; and providing labor for the out-of-works. In October, 1890, there were 10 prisou-gate brigades, whose members meet released convicts and snatch them from their vicious association~; 33 homes .for Magdalens; 33 slum posts, whose officers dress as much as possible like the dwellers in these modern cities of destruction, prove that cleanliness is next to godliness by using soap and hot water as evangelists of salvation, and run day nurseries; 4 food depots wherA victuals are sold at such prices as-soup, two cents per quart; beef or mutton, four cents; vegetables and drinks, one cent j 5 shelters for the destitute, where 1000 people every night get coffee-and·bread suppers and breakfasts and a shakedown for eight cent! per man j 1 factory for the out-of-works, where men willing to work for rations are supplied with materials; and 2 labor bureaus, which regiment the unemployed, and are the nucleus of some future co-operative self-helping union.
In several Australian colonies the Army receives go'ernmental grants for its rescue work among women; and the Melbourne officer holds a colonial position which empowers him to search almost every State institution and all the homes of sin. Salvationists are iu Victoria a moral police. Prison-gate work has been most conspicuously successful in Australia, India, and South Africa. The Victorian Parliament votes a yearly grant to this reclamation of criminals, and places first offenders in the care of Army officers. An officer attends at every police court, and the prison brigade is always on guard at jail doors when convicts are discharged. The Army also has free access to the prisons. In 1889 the Minister of the Interior bore testimony upon the value of its work to the State. In 1890 the colony threw upon the Army the task of coping with the great strike; and in 1891 the plan proposed in "Darkest England" is already operative in Darkest Australia. At Kimberly, South Africa, there is a Salvation corps of prisoner~. At Colombo, Ceylon, the Government furnishes the priilon-gate offieers with liHts of the new departures, containing particulars about them and their offeuces for guidance in handlir.g the men. * HYMNOLOGY AND JOURNALISM.
Salvationiem enjoys the gift of tongues. In 15 languages it publishes 27 weekly and 15 monthly journals, whose total annual circulation equals 43,500,000 copies. The yearly volume of books and pamphlets comprises 4,000,000 copies more. The principal works are Booth's" Orders and Regulations for Field Officers," and " In Darkest England ;" his wife's " Salvation Army in Relation to Church and State ;" Commissioner .Railton's" Heathen England," and" Twenty Years' Salvation Army;" and Mrs. Ballingtoll Booth's" Beneath Two Flags." For junior Salvationists there is the" Young Soldier." Of Salvation monthlies, All the World is largest and best, but the Deliverer, organ of the rescue work, is on its heels, and rapidly gaining in influence. A feature of Salvation literature is that no book, journal, or magazine contains a single outside advertisement. In view of the vast circulations, such sacrifice of immense revenues implies rare self-denial. So alien is the money-making spirit that nearly every War Ory gratuitously publishes at least a column of inquiries for missing kinsfolk or friends. No religious papers are pushed upon the public as are these War Orys. In cities so extreme and typical as Paris and Toronto, Cape Town and Bombay, Melbourne and London, Salvationists take their journals into beer-holes and brothels, and sell them. Of these War Orys, Mr. Stead writes: "It is easy to sneer; but as a school of rough-and- * In the New York Independent, July, 1891, Dr. A. H. Bradford made the following statement: "The Congregational Union, of London, preceded by several years the Salvation Army in its efforts to reach the lowest classes of English life. In 1883 'The Bitter Cry of Outcast London' was pnb_ lished by the Rev. Andrew Mearns, Secretary of the Union, aud the etIect of that little pamphlet was almost as general and beneficent as that of ilimeral Booth's book. It is doubtful if General Booth's book would have been writteu if 'The Bitter Cry , had not first appeared. The Congregational Union of London for a decade has been seeking the solution of this most perplexing of questions: What shall be done with the outcast and the paupers f It would reqnire II whole paper to describe the IIctivities of that society. Hardly anything has been proposed by General Booth which has not been long in operation under the wise and magnetic leadership of Andrew Mearns. The Union has mission halls, Sunday-morning breakfasts, schemes for emigration, plans for reaching the bridge boys, various forms of indnstrial assistance, and, indeed, about every means for nplifting and saving humanity that wise and philanthropic men and women have ever been able to devise." This statement carries weight, and must be regarded as of corrective value in estimating the socilll work lind worth ofthe Army. rllady journalism they have no equal. They are the natural expression of the [English] common man, who but for the Army would never have learneu to write grammatically, express himself concisely, and report succinctly what he sees." In music, too, the Army has achieved more than little. To teach all to sing; to have the soul-hunger of the poor and ignorant voiced according to their desire; to accustom them to music perhaps thl) most inspiriting of our day; to rear people who will spend hours upon hours in learning to play-these are no despicable resnlts.
SALVATION STATISTICS. OFFICIAL FIEI,D-STATE THROUGHOUT THE WORLD, OCTOBER 1, 1891.
COUNTRIES. Societies. (Both corps and posts). Officers.
United Kingdom…. 1758 (inc. 53 slum-posts). 4694 Australia and New Zealand 1003 (inc. 626 posts). 1364 United States ……….. . 510 1335 Canada …………… . 1016 India and Ceylon ……. . 385 504 France and Switzerland.. 427 Sweden ………..•…. 251 515 Holland …….•……… 213 190 Norway …….•……… 181 206 South Africa……•…… 63 196 Denmark………. _. 59 129 Germany …………… . 58 42 75 South America, t 23 58 Argentina and Uruguay 19 Finland .•.•………… 23 Belgium …………… . 10 44 Italy ……•…………. 9 17 St. Helena………….•. 9 2 2 4595 10,795 Countries and colonies, 38. Languages used by S. A., 34 On Nov. 4, 1891, these officers had increased to 10,842.
RESUME BY CONTINENTS.
COUNTRIES. Societies. Officers.
Europe……………… 2367 6320 Australasia. . . .. . . . . . . . . . 1003 1864 America (N. and S.)…… 914 2409 Asia ……………….. 251 504 Africa. . .. . ………… '–_ _-'-6-=..0_ _ _ _ _ _-..!-._ _ _—.:1::9:.::8_ _ Note.-Itcannot escape observation that Enrope has, when the forces in Great Britain and Ireland are deducted, only 609 societies and 1626 officers, or 11 per cent, and 13 per cent respectively, of the world-wid~ whole. For an army that boasts itself the sole English Protestant body making any impact upon the home heathenism of Continental Enrope, such figures show no remarkable success as the outcome of its ten years' campaign.
Meetings held annually. . . . . .. . …………………… . 2,098,631 :Meeting-Halls ………………………………….. . 4,000 Homes visited annually. . . .. . . . . . . . . . .. . …………… . Result of" Self-Denial Week," 1891. ……………… . 2,747,576 Annual Circulation of War Orys, etc.. . …………… . $200,000 Number of persons who sought salvation at the penitent 43,682,596 form in the United Kingdom only during the year ending 96,096 J uue 30, 1691 .. , , .•••••• , .• , •• , , •. , , , ••. , • , •.•• , . , •.••• Booth's scheme has now been a year on " the way out," and the first annual report has just been issued. The expenditures have amounted to about $f)00,000, $170,000 going to the farm colony and $140,000 to the food depots and shelters. The receipts from these institutions have been $130,000. The match factory, set up as an escape from the" sweating shops,'" has more than paid expenses. The report says that the results have been abundantly satisfactory, and that never before was so much poverty relieved with so small an outlay.
At another angle of vision the roster becomes still more instructive. The strength of the force lies almost wholly among English-speaking peoples. The United Kingdom, uniting Australasia, the United States, and disunited Canada, comprise 3656 corps and 8409 officers, almost 80 per cent of the totals. To ascertain how far the Army is specially a British institution, sift the figures again. Exclude the United States, but include mission work in Asia and Africa. The calculation demonstrates that 3457 corps and 7776 officers, or 75 per cent and 73 per cent of each, respectively, wage their apostolic warfare within the British Empire. In Canada, e g. , the Army elaims 17,000 soldiers, but in the United States only 13,000 soldiers in a population of over 62,500,000, our proportion of societies and officers to the whole Army being only 12 per cent. If the statistics of private soldiers not adherents in America be trustworthy. perhaps we might estimate their number throughout the world as 175,000.
SECRETS OF SUCCESS.
It is, of course, implied that to God are due the power and the glory. But the earthly sources of success fall into two classes-environment and instrumentalities.
The environment consisted of an immense need in society, and of an immense defeat. To say nothing of the established evil of a State Church, the English churches had failed to keep pace with the exigencies occasirmed in society and morals by the industrial revolution of the nineteenth century. In the city of dreadful night, and in its score of sisters, the" submerged tenths" had become unreachable by usual evangelism. These people were bored by lengthy services, could not comprehend the spiritual truth in sermons, and found liturgies meaningless. Again, the masses of Great Britain are practically of one weave. Though London is a nation in itself, Booth did not have to deal with polyglot peoples in any such wise as his son has had to do in America_ Finally, the Briton positively loves a soldier, and John Bull has for too lllany centuries been under dukes-i.e., under leaders, for the military instinct yet to have been bred out from his blood. In American civilization, however, the spirit of militarism is an unnaturalized foreigner, and Jonathan, though a capital colonel or a great general, does not take to standing in the ranks. Hence the success of the Army in America, where Church and State are free, has been Jess than in England, though by no means inconsiderable. The instrumentalities have been: Self-sacrifice and the appeal to the hero and martyr in man j woman's ministry j self-support and teaching men to regard giving as a privilege; nsing converts as missioners j Christian brotherliness and the satisfaction of the social sentiment j faithfulness or untiring persistency j and the militariness.
RESULTS.
In twenty-six years this Captain-General and his hosts of the Lord have l>ecome a modern Ten Thousand, more heroic than Xenophon's, and dowered with an immortality outshining that of Xerxes' ten thousand Immortals j have won the world for their parish, and planted their standard in 38 countries or colouies; have brought about 100,000 hopeful conversions at home, and 131,000 abroad j have repeated the feat of the medireval Church in delving into the depths of human degradation, scanning its every social seam, and utilizing its undreamed-of treasures j have made publicans into preachers, and transiormed harridans into helpers; have created hero-saints from the sludge of civilization; have done more, Mr. Stead claims, "to spread a real, rough, but genuine culture among the lowest than Cambridge and Oxford j" have trained the thousands of workingpeople to evangelize and to govern, thus doing almost everything for the poor by the poor; and have taught Catholicism and Protestantism new methods of getting and holding the masses. Bishop Lightioot, the ablest, most cautious, and most intelligent prelate in the Establishment, charged his clergv thus: "The Army has at least recalled a lost secret oj Ohristianity-the compulsion of souls." The Bishop of Winchester has declared that" if ever the masses are to be converted, it must be by an organized Illy body. The Army has set the Church an example of courage." Canon Liddon, the ideal Churchman, confessed: " It fills me with shame. I feel guilty when I think of myself. To think of these poor people with their imperfect grasp of truth! What a contrast between what they and we are doing! When I compare all the advantages which we enjoy, who possess the whole body of truth, and see how little effect we produce, compared with that, palpable at that meeting, I take shame to myself." Archdeacon Farrar declares that the Army" will leave a treasure of valuable experience, and a legacy of permanent good. " In 1880 a leading free-thinker and eminent politician [John Morley~] made this avowal: "We have all heen on the wrong tack, and the result is-less to show than that one man, B90th." Whom did he mp,an ~ "Oh, we children of light-Spencer, Arnold, Harrison and the rest, who spend our lives in endeavoring to dispel superstition, and bring in an era based upon reason, education, and enlightened self-interest! But this man has produced more direct effect upon this generation than all of us put together. Don't imagine one moment his religion has helped him. Not in the least. That's a mere drivelling superstition. What has enabled him to do this work is [that] he hac evoked the potent sentiment of brotherhood, ~rouped human beings in
LONDON AND ITS MISSIONS
associations, which make them feel tbey are no longer alone, but have many brethren." The Ohurch Times, a High Church organ, has acknowledged that, "When we compare the' Cathollc advance' of the Pope in England with the Salvationist advance, the Pope has to be content with a very much lower place. What a very poor story is the glowing chronicle of the 1. ablet in comparison with the glowing chronicle of the War Ory. In the vulgar and imposing category of mere quantity the Pope lags far behind the General. In the spiritual category of quality, if the Kingdom of Christ be especially the commonwealth of the poor, the victories of the General are more stupendously brilliant in every way than the triumphs attributed by the Tablet to the last two popes." Lastly, Mr. Stead maintains that" the Army has deserved well of the State, because training the people in selfgovernment, and constantly asserting the importance of disciplined obedience. " That claim rests, in England, on a basis of truth, for there the consumption of drink is $40,000,000 less than it would be if the people were drinking as much as in 1880, and for this decrease per capita the politicians give the larger share of credit to the Army.
" But," Dr. Guinness objects, " in purely religious or spiritual work its success in East London has been far from encouraging." Besides, does not Commissioner Railton write: "I do not question that a great deal of what appears at first to be genuine is only an appearance. Many a score of true penitents turn out in a few months to be as bad as ever 1" Does not Booth himself state that" great numbers fall away" ~ Yes. The success has its seamy side. But this defed of desertion is not peculiar to Salvationism. It shares this fault with every emotional agency used by the Church to win the world for Christ. So, whether the Army live or die; whether, like the Franciscans, it quarrel over the question of absolute poverty in fifty years after the death of its founder; or, as those Salvationists of the Puritan commonwealth, the Quakers, should become another Society of Friends, now that its martyr-age is passing; or, like the Wesleyan Conference, half a century after Wesley's decease, should vote" evangelistic movements unfavorable to Church order," we can yet cry, "Glory to God for the Salvation Army," and remember: ., God fulfils Himself in many ways, Lest one good custom should corrupt the world."
LONDON AND ITS MISSIONS.
BY THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF.
This is a vast metropolis of 5,000,000 people, the centre of much of the commercial, polItical, and religious activity of the world. It grows amazingly, though not with the startling celerity of movement noticeable in many American cities that seem magically to start up, mushroom-like, in a night. About 90,000 are added to the population annually. It contains more Jews than Palestine, more Scotchmen than the granite city Aberdeen, more Irishmen than Belfast, and more Welshmen than Cardiff. It has 1309 public houses, whose united frontage would reach sixty-two miles, and has enough paupers to crowd every house in Brighton.
Yet, all things considered, it is a well-governed city. Fifty years ago many streets were unsafe even at mid-day. Now, as Shaftesbury said, U if we have not succeeded in making London a city of angels, we have at the least been enabled to save it from becoming a city of demons." The London City Mission, established in 1836, has done fifty-six years of grand work, and has to-day its missionaries scattered in every part and laboring among every class of the varied population.
It ha~ been my privilege to attend, December 18th, a unique gathering at the warehouses of Hitchcock, Williams & Co., in Paternoster Row, of which mercantile house George Williams, Esq., the well-known founder of the Y. M. C. A., is now the sole surviving head. The occasion referred to was the forty-ninth anniversary of the St. Paul's Missionary Society, composed of the clerks and employes of the hOllse. This society, now entering its jubilee year, is a very beautiful example of what may be called " mercantile missions." Organized in 1842, its twofold object is to spread abroad the knowledge of the Gospel, within this mercantile house itself, by efforts of all sorts to bring the unsaved to Christ; and secondly to collect funds to carryon foreign mission work in other lands, and stimulate personal consecration to that work.
Morning worship is daily maintained in the warehouse, where a very con· venient chapel is fitted up, and where large numbers daily gather; Revs. H. Grainger and A. R. Buckland acting as chaplains. On Sunday, when the members themselves conduct the meetings, a morning session at 8.30 and an evening session, are well supported, and during the past year the attendance has increased. Evangelistic meetings have also been held; special occasional services led by such men as Dr. Thain Davidson, F. B. Meyer, and W. R. Mowll, etc. Monday evenings, meetings are held for prayer and Bible study, the subject last quarter being Acts, first ten chapters; one member opens the meeting with an address, and is followed by discussion. During the year past £125 and upward (about $625) have been collected and divided between the London City Mission and variolls foreign mission societies, such as the Baptists, Wesleyan, London Missionary Society, Church Missionary, Chi~a Inland, etc. A loan library of hundreds of volumes is connected with the society's work, and in fact every feature necessary to its best working seems to be found. Mr. Williams looks well, and presided with his wonted cheerfulness and grace,and is the centre of the devoted love of this great body of clerks, both men and women.
Rev. H. K. Moolinaar, of the Congo missions, and Rev. J. Hndson, of Bangalore, India, were the main speakers, and it fell to me to close the meeting with an address. Both the missionaries presented facts of great importance and value. Mr. Moolinaar told us of the more than 4000 miles of Congo waters, with 10,000 miles of navigable affiuents, thus providentially furnishing to the Peace and the Good Will and other mission steamers, a ready-made water highway to 40,000,000 of people lying in the Congo Basin. As is well known, after somewhat over one hundred miles lJave been pasl:Ied, from Banana eastward, there are over two hundred miles of cataracts and rapids; but beyond these lie 1800 miles of navigable riverway in the Congo alone, and "besides the 5000 miles of affiuents already explored there are being constantly added thousands of miles more as exploration goes forward; and the directions of these branches are so varied that the entire basin of the Congo, stretching hundreds of miles each way, seems to be opened by them to the approach of the missionary.
How typical this Congo seems of missionary effort everywhere! At first approach we seem often to find encouragement and smooth sailing; thcn come opposition and antagonism, often violent persecution, like the Congo cataracts, defying all successful endeavor to overcome them; but if these obstacles are surmounted by faith and prayer, we find again a period of comparative placidity and advance. and sometimes, as in the South Seas, a converted people ready to join in effort to reach surrounding territory still in the death shade. Mr. Moolinaar estimates that, of the thirty or forty millions of Congo-tribal peoples one sixth are cannibals. There is no formal idolatry, no temples, no priflsthood; but the name of God is left, and va~ue superstitions and fetich worship complete the awful degradation. Though there is an idea of God, it is not a god from whom any help can be hoped for. He is far off and too indifferent. The first success of the missionaries haR been found in attaching to this God, in the popular mind, the notion of accessibility and the disposition and power to give help.
This endeavor of Mr. Williams to set "eternity in the heart" of his employes, to link commercial enterprise with Christian missions, is unique, and has been uniquely successful. Not only has much interest been awakened in missions, but not a few have left the warehouses to carry the Gospel to the unsaved both here and elsewhere. As in the Old Testament times prophets and kings came from the plough and the sheepfold; as in New Testament times the apostles were taken from the tax- bench and fishingsmack, and the Master Himself from a carpenter's shop, so God is raising up in these warehouses ministers of the Gospel and missionaries of the Cross.
This is bllt one of the multitudinous agencies of this great metropolistheir name is legion-for elevating the standard of religious life.. Never have I been in any place that so cchoes with the sound of rdigious machinery. Activity for Christ abounds on ~11 ~idlls. City rniRsions, open-air services, Dr. Benardo's work among the "Arab'!," Mr. Boyer's work among the" drift children," Miss McPherson's wonderful service to poor and homeless waifs, finding them parents as well as abodes; Charrington's free Tabernacle at the East End~ with its daily services and temperanc~
PERSECUTION OF THE RUSSIAN STUNDISTS
organizations; Pastor Archibald G. Brown's alive, apostolic church of thousands, with its blessed ministry among the poor and outcast classes j the midnight missions for fallen women j the Mildway work, with its score of branches, hospitals, deaconesses, nurses, prayer-meetings, Bible read· ings j the missions to Jews and all other classes; the mission Sundayschools, prison-work, houses of shelter, Y. M. C. A. work in all its forms, not to speak of private and personal efforts, like those of Lord Radstock and his family-we have no space even to mention all the ways in which consecrated men and women seek to pervade society with the Gospel. We must leave to some other communication a further reference to the grand and multiplied agencies for permeating this great centre of life with Gospel power.
LONDON, Dec. 19, 1891.
PERSECUTION OF THE RUSSIAN STUNDISTS.
BY JAMES E. MATHIESON, ESQ., LONDON, ENG.
The Kingdom of WurtcllIburg has for many generations been the home of German piety, and her pastors continue to this day to be animated with the Bible-loving spirit, and have remained orthodox amid widespread de- parture from the faith j and not only orthodox but living epistles and ensamples to their flocks. From VV' urtemburg have proceeded, in the more recent missionary age, most of the foreign missionaries which Germany has furnished to the heathen world j indeed, it is not so long ago that the Church Missionary Society of England was indebted for some of her grand- est missionaries to this fruitful field of Germany. At the beginning of this century the then King of Wurtemburg, pOilsessed with a zeal without knowledge, sought to suppress within his dominions everything in the shape of Nonconformity to the National Church; the result was that large num- bers of the best of his people went into exile, finding homes in other coun- tries. The error was discovered, and as a compromise the remaining Non- .conformists were allotted a district in Wurtemburg called Kornthal, where their descendants are found until this day. Of those who emigrated from their fatherland large numbers found their way to the south of Russia, carrying with them their German ways and the simple worship to which they had been accustomed and on which their sonls had thriven. They held their cnstomary forenoon pnhlic service, and in the afternoon they gathered for an hour round the 'Vord of God and in prayer in one another's houses. This devotional" hour" (German, stnnde) gave rise to the name that was given to them-Stllndists-and which still they bear in the land of their adoption. Their Russian neighbors would sometimes peep into these . ~eetings~ or evell venture with,in "nd take note Q~ the proceedings ~ , ' ,,- and the Spirit of God laid hold of one and another of these inquiring Rus- "Sians while Ris Word was opened up, and many were from time to time con- verted, so that in our own age the Stundists are not only the descendants of German colonists, but embrace large numbers of men and women of purely Russian descent.
Row beautiful is the working of our blessed God in thus making the wrath of man to praise Him. But for the unwise and ungracious decree of the Wurtemburg king these inhabitants of southern Russia might never have tasted the good Word of Life or been brought under the powers of the world to come. "Hallelujah! for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth."
And now another unwise and misguided monarch (or, at least, his political and ecclesiastical advisers) is repeating, but on a lalger scale and with greater cruelty, the error of ninety years ago. As one well acquainted with the country and the people declares, the Stundists for sobriety, industry, and godliness are the cream of the Czar's subjects; but the claim of the Greek Church to undivided sway over the consciences of all Russians is making itself felt in the harshest and most painful way alike by the Jews and the Stundists. Larger numbers of God's ancient people are to be found in the Russian Empire to-day than in any other kingdom of the earth; yet the decree of expulsion, or of what is equivalent to extermination, has gone forth against th(l descendants of Abraham, the friend of God; and as if this were not crime enough for one autocrat to commit during his brief tenure of authority, another imperial fiat has gone forth directed against the inoffensive, law-abiding Stundists, whose removal or extinction means irreparable loss, both material and spiritual, to the realm of which they form a part. It is a repetition of the calamity and crime which in France followed the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, when the Huguenots fled to England and other lands to escape the fury of popish persecutors; they carried with them the industries which enriched the peoples who offered them a shelter and a home; their exile impoverished greatly the unkindly land which had given them birth, but denied them liberty of worship. Wen may the well-wishers of the Czar of all the Russias tremble for the stability of his throne ; and in this grievous famine, which is falling like the chilly hand of death on multitudes of his subjects, may we not discern the finger of God, who cannot see unmoved the oppressions that are done in the earth? At this very time the children of Stundists are being taken from their parents and handed over to the training and tender (r) mercies of the Greek Church priesthood, while fathers and mothers are deported to Siberia.
Much of the animosity displayed against the Stundists has doubtless arisen from the fact that they are German in race to a large extent, and German in their religious worship. The Czar 'md his ministers are bent upon the impossible, exclusive policy of making a Russia that shall be wholly B.ussian iJ,l race alld in reli~ion. Ther send off Jews from Odessa to be landed at Jaffa, in Palestine, or at Constantinople or other ports of the Turkish Empire j but the Turk refuses to have them, and returns them in numbers to Odessa, flnd to wretchedness and cruel repression. They send off Stundists to Siberia j but they cannot abstract from the Stundist his religious belief, his love of God's Word, or his love of proclaiming that "'Tord. So pure and undefiled religion penetrates into the prisons of Siberia, and whole regions of Siberia are simply huge prison regions. Feeble man cannot stamp out cattle plague or small·pox, even in a circumscribed area of a province or town j and can vain man hope to extinguish the light of God once set a-burning in human breasts? No, it must go on illuminating dark minds and warming cold hearts. No skill of monarch or spite of priest can quench the heavenly flame, and even Siberia shall rejoice in the u.;ord of the living God and in the love of our blessed Saviour.
It is not easy .0 see how material help can be extended to these dear Jews, or to the dear Stundists, or Molokans (milk-drinkers, another Russian sect) through the barriers of an empire so firmly guarded and under strict military rule; and the authorities in Russia seem haughtily to refuse the money that is offered for their famine-stricken people. But the windows of heaven are open to let in the united prayers and intercessions of Amerielln and German and English Christians, that by His wonder-working wisdom and power He who sits on high may interpose for the deliverance of all these sorely oppressed peoples, and show Himself to be mightier by far than all the kings of the earth.
That devoted and humble servant of Christ, Dr. Baedeker, to whom we are indebted for most of the foregoing information, has for many years past engaged in Gospel service in Germany and southern Russia, and within the last few years has preached the blessed Gospel to multitudes of prisoners in the Siberian prisons. His last journey extended across the whole Asiatic Continent to the great prison island Saghalien, and he then returned to England by way of China. To-day (November 11th) he is setting forth, in health far from robust, to visit and comfort, with the comfort wherewith he himself is comforted of God, some of these Stundists and others DOW sorely suffering in separation from loved ones, and in the loss of home and worldly goods. And we hope erelong to hear tidings of this mission of mercy to the region between the Black Sea and the Caspian, where the Lord has many of His hidden ones. Let us !lOld up our dear and honored brother with the prayer of faith.
A call to prayer has been issued by the Evangelical Continental Society, in view of the general persecution in Russia of all non-members of the Greek (orthodox) Church. It roads as follows: "In some" aspects, the dire persecution of the Jews is based on economico'political grounds, and the same may be alleged with regald to that of the Lutherans in the Baltic Provinces, of whoRe oppression we have heard for some years past. .' Russia for .the Russians,' alias the Slavs, is the cry, and so other nationalities must become Russian in language and religion, or go. But Church and State are one in the empire of the Czar, and every political movement may be said to have its religious aspect. The Greek Church, headed by the now notorious PobiedonostzdI, have long had a hand in the troubles in the Baltic provinces, nor do they regard with diS£lIea8ure the miseries and losses inflicted on their fellow 6ubjects, the Jews. But latterly they have been giving their attention to the rapid and extended spread of Dissent among the Russians themselves, and in June last a Conference of one hundred and fifty delegates met in Moscow to determine on measures by which, as it is hoped, the increasing secessions from the ranks of the Church may be checked. The following is the gist of the astounding resolutions passed: " '1. As every Russian must hold a passport, those of Stundists (i.e., Protestant Dissenters) are to be marked so that no orthodox believer may take one of them into his employ.
" '2. A priest is to preside at every trial of persons accused of seeking to pervert others and draw them away from the Greek Church.
".' 3. The growing wealth of the Protestant Dissenters is to be checked. They are not to be allowed to secure large properties.
" '4. Their children are by all possible means to be withdrawn from their influence and trained by orthodox priests.'
"Such are the Draconian measures which are now being enforced in order to stamp out Stundism. Surely then, it will be said, these Stundists must be enemies of the State and of religion. But the universal testimony of all impartial observers is that, if they differ from the rest of the Russian people, it is in their being more tl'uthful, honest, sober, and pure. They are simple Bible-readers, and this is the outcome of their reading. They are a living protest against the horrible ignorance, superstition, and corruption of the State (orthodox) Cburch. That is their crime, and for that they must be punished, and if possible suppressed. But they are spreading, and we believe they will spread. It i~ by such people alone that Russia can be saved.
" Now, as we hear of their leaders being banished to Sibp,ria, and of whole families-perhaps without their children-being compelled to migrate to desolate regions in the Ural Mountains or on the Persian frontier, and as we remember that these humble folk are Protestant Dissenters j and again, as the Jewish and German persecutions are forced on us by many harrowing details, are we to fold our arms in despair ~ To appeal to the Czar or to the heads of the Greek Church would be folly, and worse than folly. Recent experience has shown that. " One resource is open to us all. We can appeal to the Lord of Hosts, His arm is not shortened. His ear is not heavy. We desire, therefore, through your columns to urge all followers of the Lord Jesus Christ to unite in earnest and persistent supplication on behalf of these suffering ones in Russia. In presence of the miracle of Bethlehem, soon to be commemorated, and amid the solemnities of the new year, let the Church of Christ in this and other lands lift up its voice to God. This is all it can do j but this surely it ought to do and will do, in the name and in the faith of Him, who has all power given to Him in heaveu,and on earth."
18{)~·1
THE REFLEX INFLUENCE OF MISSIONS.
A PAPER READ BY MRS. ETHAN CURTIS BEFORE THE N. Y. STATE BRANCH OF THE WOMAN'S BOARD OF MISSIONS. AT BROOI{LYN, MAY 20, 1891.
Ever since the world was young the place of woman has been the problem of time. She entered Eden as a. helpmeet. She walked forth from Paradi~e accused and accursed. Ignorant nations, nations that have lost that old Bible record, have clung tenaciously to a faint echo from the great truths. roman is the cause of human woe; hence bitterlll'lss, barbarity, b()ndage, every species of degradation has been her portion. Civilization sought new paths of progress. Greece made woman a goddess, but morality was forgotten in magnificence. Rome honored motherhood and protected purity. but woman's work was divorced from man's, and both ,nations fell. The Church of Rome has fallen down to worship woman in her divinest place-the mother. Up among the clouds, along with saints and angels, they have enthroned her. Thus they have robbed her of her God-given right-the right which came with the curse of Eden-work.
Woman too much exalted has been powerless to purify that resplendent old religion which calls itself Catholic.
America has been called the Paradise of woman. But perhaps her strife for place and power has never been so great as here. She has knocked persistently ~t college doors, until the oldest and best have, at least, creaked their ancient hinges, while new and splendid ories have arisen for her own especial use. She has striven for the ballot until one wom'ln has more influence on the political issues of to-day than anyone man in America. And not for power, or pride, or purse has Frances Willard given her life, her very soul, to this cause; but with the hope that drunkenness might die, because woman would not allow the drink that deadens will, morals, manhood, to be made. Not the college with its culture, not the ballot with its supposed sovereignty, can do so much for woman as missions are doing the world over. There is no organization of woman, iu this nation, to-day so large, strong, pure, earnest, unselfish, wide-reaching, so free from dissension and criticisms, as thelle our many missionary organizations of the great Protestant churches. We ask no favors; our sole object is to confer favors. We make no apologies for our existence; our purpose is above apology. Nowhere do we oppose man. Our first object is to be his ready and willing assistant. This organ;zation is bound to man's in a high and holy marriage-love to Christ and His cause (like that Paradisiacal pair in God's first garden). And their offspring are the countless throng of saved souls in far-off Asia, long-forgotten Africa. and our own precious America. Children we are feeding without seeing, loving without knowing, but whose shining faces and white souls will greet us on the further shores of time.
Rivers, with their sources in the earth, flow but one way j it is always down streams. But the ocean currents, with their sources in the great
THE REF'L:EX INFLUENCE OF' MISSIONS
ocean itself, flow forth forward and backward j the waters of Asia wash our western coasts, while those of Mexico. bathe Europe's coldest countries j then both return to that sheltered basin in their own sun-swept clime. While carrying the tropics almost to the frigid zone, they keep their own southern gulfs from stagnation and evaporation. These missionary organi- zations, like the great ocean currente, are deep and strong and wide. They have their sources in God Himself. They flow on to far-off nations, to • cold, bleak, and barren coasts. After giving forth warmth, fertility, a new growth, they return, bringing vigor, freshness, purity, strength to gain a new fervor and a new faith in the sunshine of God's eternal presence. This reflex current is vital and vitalizing, immense and immeasurable, sacred and sanctifying.
The rogt of all sin is selfishness j the seed of salvation is unselfishness. Intense and strong, and tender and true as is the home life, it has its selfish elements, and every woman, to be her grandest and noblest, needs something to awaken love that is not of her own belongings. These missionary bands are not organized primarily to get something for ourselves, but to give something to others. From base to summit, from centre to circumference, one spirit guides all. Give, give yourself, give your prayers, give your purses, give your gladdest greeting to others, even to unknown and alien nations, and give atl unto God. While home missions seem our first duty, foreign missions are never to be neglected, if for no other reason than this alone-they are the most absolutely outside of self and selfish interests. Our partnership with Christ in the world's redemption has been taken for the entire earth. Neglect not the remotest island of the sea. If we gain by this giving, as we most surely shall, it is only because we have followed one of the truest texts of· Scripture, " He that loseth his life for My sake shall find it. "
Our mission bands are inclusive, not exclusive. Our colleges claim to be democratic, but a strong aristocracy of intellect flavors their democracy. To know all kinds of people is true culture j to touch tenderly the heart of humanity eve,rywhere is real religion. In these missionary gatherings the refined, retiring woman (of wealth, mayhap) meets the sturdy, self-reliant working woman, and learns that real riches are within the character, not tied by purse-strings. The cultured college girl meets here the unread, but not ig;:lOrant shop-girl, and learns that not all knowledge is compressed into books. The woman of fastidious speech hears an English more rhythmic than regular and learns that the tenderness of our tongue is above and beyond rules. Thus all classes and kinds meet under the canopy of Christ in order to gain the highest culture earth can give-soul growth.
Our mission circles open to women an inexhaustible and inspiring field of study. We have an investment in India, and India has a new interest for us. 'Ve are paying some gifted woman for teaching those black and barbarous children of ours in Africa, and we want to know Africa itself. We have pre-empted the" New West" through those superb college-bred
'rlIE CUllAN MISSION
sisters of ours, and its gain and its growth seem our own. Through them we have sat quietly by our own fireside and fought America's bitterest battIe. Mormonism falls without the sword because we are teaching the truth to Mormon children. While men are pondering the Indian problem we are trying, with faith, love, joy to educate that first-born son of our soil into Christ. Only thus will he cease to be a wild and wily savage. Slowly, but oh how surely, are we women helping to change history itself! Until it shall be written not in blood, but from out the blessed book of heaven. Our missionary contributions are giving us an ownership in old earth that makes her most distant lands dearer than the homestead of our childhood. That had belonged to our ancestors. This is the inheritance of -our children-an inheritance that is " eternal and passeth not away."
What a literature is open to our study. Facts before }Vhich fiction pales; truths behind which romance must hide herself. All inspiring to a nobler life. Study the "Romances of Missions," "The Crises of Missions," the lives ,of Carey, J udson,- Duff, the Moffats, Livingstone, Hannington, Taylor, Mackay, Paton. Read faithfully the best of our missionary periodicals with their heroic history of our day, and you will feel that you have trod the borderland of heaven and listened to angel choirs.
On each Sabbath morning one church bell peals forth its tones, another answers and another j the chime~ from off the hi~lside join in, like children's voices freshly tuned to sweeter, softer sound than theirs j the harmony grows and gathers, and roll!'! down the valley and off o'er the distant hills j men hear it and gather unto the house of God. Our mission circles should ring out in clear, strong tones a larger love for Christ, a greater work for God. The children's bands, with tender accents and pure, true tones, should join in the melody. Others, and still others, will come with welcoming words. In all these love answers to love, peace to peace, joy to joy, until men all over this broad earth shall hear the" Glad tidings of great joy," and gather even unto the gates of heaven and hear the hallelujahs from on high.
THE CUBAN MISSION.
BY REV. A. J. DIAZ, HAVANA, CUBA.
[An address delivered in the Clarendon Street Baptist Church, Boston, and reprinted from the stenographical report published in Th.e Watchman, September 3d, 1891.] DEAR BRETHREN : It gives me great pleasure to be before you to-night, and I regret that I have not the pleasure of being able to speak your beautifullanguage as well as I can speak my own, and I beg that you will pardon my mistakes.
I WI)S born and brought up in the Island of Cuba, and received a good education, graduating from the University of Havana as a doctor of medicipe. I had not, however, during my life up to this time, ever seen a Bible on the island. The Catholic priests there will not allow the people to have them, so the people are very ignorant of the religion of the Lord Jesus Christ. I am unable to say now whether I was a Catholic or-not. I do not believe that I had any religion at all.
Soon after graduating from the university the revolution broke out; and though but seventeen years old, I thought it my duty to fight for my country's freedom. Learning that the black flag had been proclaimed agaimt all rebels (which meant that if we were found our lives would not be spared), and being surrounded with some companions by Spanish sol. diers, we decided that it would be better to trust to the mercy of the sea than to Spanish soldiers. All of my companions, with the exception of three. had been killed; and we that were left took a big piece of plank and threw it into the sea, thinking that with its aid we would be able to escape, and reach another part of the country, in which we would be safe. We did not know anything about the Gulf Stream or the strength of its currents, so we went into the sea, and began swimming away from the land !,ith the big piece of plank for our only support. After we had gone some distance we wished 'to return, but notwithstanding all our endeavors and struggles to swim back to the land, we were carried steadily away by the Gulf Stream.
We clung to the plank for twenty-six hours, and in this desperate condition, with no hope of succor, we gave ourselves up for lost. We were, however, picked up by a fishing vessel bound for New York, where we landed. We had no money with us-I being the richest of the three, and I had just ten cents in my pocket. I did not know whether it would have been better to have died on the sea, or to die of want and exposure in New York. We were strangers among a foreign people, unable to l'peak their language, so we began to go around the city to see if we could not find some one who would look like a Cuban, to whom we might tell our condition, and get some assistance. We at last found a man who was a Spaniard, and told him our story, and after hearing us he sent us to the house of his friend, who was a Cuban. You know in Cuba we have no cold weather, and when it is as cold as seventy degrees, we think it is very cold. But on reaching New York, we found it was intensely cold, the thermometer registering two or three degrees below zero, and the result of this sudden change was that I was soon taken sick with pneumonia.
In the house where the Cubans lived there lived also a Christian lady, who, upon hearing of my illness, came to visit me, and brought a little book in her hand (which I now know was the New Testamrnt). Sitting by my side, she talked and read to me from this little book; but I did not understand her, nor did she understand what I said to her, so the only way we could converse waR by signs. Bnt she read to me from hl:'r little book, amI after awhile closed it and began to move her lips. Sbe was praying, but I did not know then what she was doing. You know I never had been
1899.J 1~7
taught to pray like that, and had never seen anyone do it before. f3he came the next day and did the same thing, and came the following day and did the same thing again; and at last I began to think that that lady was crazy. I can now confess, though, that she is one of the best and noblest of women. '
Upon an examination of the book I found many words like Latin, which I understood. While thus engaged, a friend informed me that a Bible could be had printed in my own language. I secured one of these and read it and re-read it all over. But when I came to the passage of the " Blind man," I says, " How is this ~ the blind man ~ame to Christ, and Christ gave him his sight." Now, I had studied especially to be an oculist, and had spent much time in searching for information bearing upon the restoration of the sight, and was not able to do it j but here was this Man, who, by laying on His hands, completely restored the blind man his sight. I read on a few chapters, but could not keep my mind from con- stantly revelting hack to the chapter of the" Blind man," so I turned back and read it over three or four times, and then I understooa it after the Spirit had opened my eyes, and the Lord Jesus Christ had given me sight -for I was the same as the blind man-I had no eyes in my soul. I then knew that Christ was my Saviour, and that I had been as a blind man.
I knelt down and tried to pray, but could not, for I did not know how.
I remember saying, " Son of David, have mercy on me," and since that time He has had mercy on me. He has shown me how to conduct. a church and lead my life j and I am happy to say· that since establishing the church in Cuba we have not made a single mistake.
I commenced to think then how my Saviour waS crucified, and how He .
redeemed us from sin by His precious blood j and I said to myself, " Now I am going to serve this God." And I began to question in what way I could best serve Him j and the first thing that struck my mind was: TheTe are two million people in Cuba, and none of them know about Jesus. I will go back and tell my people who Christ is. and show them the way to Him.
A short time after this the amnesty was proclaimed, and all those who had taken part in the revolution were allowed their freedom j so I went back to Cuba with my New Testament. I reached home at about nine o'clock in the evening, but did not commence to work that night. I did, however; commence t~ work the next morning at six o'clock.
I talked to my peiople, and told them of Jesus, and I rememher that th'ey W{lre astonished to hear me talking of the great truths which I said were to be the salvation of Cuba. None of my family would accept Christ.
except a little child only four years old, and she accepted Him without trouble, saying, " I like that Man and will love Him."
Everyone was against me j even my own mother was against' me. She had the religion of the Catholic Church, and was very bitter against me, and called me a Protestant, Jew, heretic, and said that shll would not speak
TlIE ClJBAN MISSION
to me if I did not come back to the Church and religion she had taught me. I asked her if she did not think tLat.thil' religion was better than the Pope's. But all she would say is, " If you are lliy son, you wilIleave that religion and come back to the Catholic Church, or you do no. love me." She knew very well that I loved her, and that what she said troubled me very much. We lived in the same house for six months, but she would not speak to me, or wish me "Good-morning," or come to me if I was sick. I trusted iu the Lord, and prayed every night and morning for her conversion; and I have the pleasure to say that in six months she came into our congregation.
Vhen I came back to Cuba I commenced to talk to the doctors and some friends, and after a time we would have from one hundred to one hundred and fifty gathered together in this way, and thus we began to organize.
One night, when we were having a meeting, I saw my mother come into the meeting-room and take a seat among the congregation at my left side. As soon as I saw her coming into the congregation I thought she had come there for the purpose of criticising me before the people, and I tell you, I was very much afraid that night.
Well, I addressed the congregation, and when the invitation was given for those who wished to join the church to stand up, four stood up, and my mother was one of them. As soon as I saw her standing I turned my back to her, because I thought she had got up to reprove me, and I spent my time examining the three persons on my right side. Then some one spoke to me and said· " There is your mother standing up over there, why don't you speak to her V"
Then I said: " Well, mother V" " Don't you want me in your congregation ?" " Yes, mother, we want you; but how is it you have changed V" And'she, answering, said: " Through the Lord Je!ms Christ." Thp,n she told the people about the trouble we had at home, and said she had been reading the Bible and had found salvation in it. We knew that she believed, and I began to examine her, putting all the strong questions I could think of, and asked her if she still believed in the Pope, the priests, and the confession, and other questions which I knew she had disliked to be asked; and she answered: " I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ j let all those things pass; I don't care for them now." We wished to organize our church, and have rules and by-laws and articles of faith the same as you have here; so I wrote to my friend who had visited me in New York, requesting her to send me papers, by-laws, and anything which would help us to organize. At about t~is time the priests began to persecute me, telling the people that I was a heretic, and if I put my hands on them they would surely die, and that I was a Jew and a Protestant. This soon deprived me of my practice, and literally took the bread from my mouth; none of my coun- . trymen would have me attend them in their sickness.
Finding myself without an occupation, I started back to New York; and learning there, through a friend, that some ladies in Philadelphia were about to establish a mission in Cuba, I asked to be appointed as one of the mIssIonaries. Securing the appointment, I returned to Cuba-this time to preach the Gospel.
On my return I found a letter in answer to my request for by-laws and articles of faith, saying that the writer knew of no such books. but advised me to get my Bible and to pick out those things which I deemed necessary for the guidance of my church. This was a hard case for me ; nevertheless, we took the Bible and referred to it on all questions.
.We were not in connection with the Baptist Church at this time; we were all by ourselves, with only the Bible for our guide. I will tell you the way we became connected with the Baptist Chnrch.
A little girl from Key West had been visiting.in Havana, and on her return to her home in Key West she reported to the Baptist pastor there that there were people in Cuba that had the same religion as they had. The pastor reported this to the American Board of Foreign Missionaries at Atlanta, Ga., and three ministers were appointed to examine our by-laws, rules, and articles of faith.
So they came and worked with us some time, examining us very carefully, and at the conclusion of their labors they said to us, " Your by-laws and rules are according to those of the Baptist Church."
" Well," we said, " we don't know whether we are Baptists or not; we have taken all these things from the Bible, and if the Bible is Baptist, then we are Baptist too."
When I returned to New York there was a passage in the Bible which I did not understand, and which I could not explain, and that was the passage regarding baptism. We knew we had been ba{)tized when we were babies; but I did not like that kind of baptism. While walking down Twenty·second Street I passed Rev. Mr. MacArthur's church, in which Father Chiniquy was preaching, teIling the. people about the condition of the French Canadians. I went in and took a seat in the very back part of the church, and listened to him, and after the services were over they began to baptize. Then I understood the passage. I was not baptized that night; but the next night, as I wa!'l passing Dr. Montgomery's church in Brooklyn, he was baptizing some people, and I asked him to baptize me. He began to qt1estion me, and I said I did not know anything about baptism, but I was a believer, and must be baptized. He took me into the baptistery and I was baptized.
We don't have any trouble about baptizing our people in Cuba. The first thing they ask after being converted is to be baptized; and I have baptized, since our church was organized-a period of about five yearstwo thousand, two hundred people. When the chutch was organized, three or four believers were baptized, and with these we olganized the Baptist Church in Cuba; and after the ministeHI leturned to Key West I was obliged to commence and baptize my people. I had never baptized anyone before; and the first PQrson that carrie to me was DIy mother. I had learned what I had to say when I was to baptize anyone; but when I came into the baptistery and found one' hundred or more people there, I forgot all about what I was to say. 'When I baptized my mother, all I could say was, "Lord Jesus, this is my mother; ha-e merey."
We have had many persecutions, but so far they have all been for our benefit. We have not only been in jail, but we have been in regular mobs, and have had our lives threatened. I can talk to you without fear, because I have here a friend whom you all know well-Mr. J. S. Paine-and he knows what I tell you is true. My brother and I went to another of the neighboring towns one evening to hold a meeting, and found but one place vacant, which was a store. The priests had been ahead of us, however, and had notified the people not to rent us any place at all. At last we found a building with the roof crumbling and almost in ruins. Now, the law requires that we hold our meeting» inbide of a building, but does not say anything about the roof being over it, so we took the place and pre- pared to hold our meeting.
Soon we had a large congregati'on, and then we began to preach and sing. We were the only Baptists in that town, and the mob cried out that they did not want any Protestants there, and did all that was possible to disturb us. In the course of the tumult we heard the report of a gun, and a little boy who had been sitting in the front was shot. We afterward learned that the priests had gone up into the tower of the church, and ~ad tried to shoot me through a hole in the wall, which was at my back. The soldiers came and put the mob out of the building, and my brother put me in a.room, and told me to hide there, and he would keep the crowd away.
After five or six minutes the noise stopped, and I went out to see where my brother was. We were very roughly handled by the crowd; they tore our clothes and slapped our faces, and we were about torn to pieces when the guard came to take us to the mayor.
When we were presented to him he asked us the usual questions as to where we were from, what we had been doing, etc. '
We told him we had come from Havana to hold a meeting, and had been prevented from so doing by the mob, and that we were American citizens, and produced our papers of citizenship.
'Vhen he learned that we were American citizens he was very profuse in his apologies, and we were allowed to go free.
The Christians we have there are genuine and pure; we are very care- ful about whom we receive into our congrt>gation, and do not take anyone until they have passed a due time of probation, anrl until they give evi- dence that they' have been regeneratrd, and are Jiving Christian lives. We llave a bqQ~ wb,efC el.w4 o~w ~hat is fd~ndl~ to llS 8i~nf hi~ lIlWe, 'l.'he~!f are not all Christians; some are anti-Catholics-that is, those who do not wish to have anything to do with the Catholics, but who have not as yet accepted Christ.
We have very good examples there of how people are converted; there is the one whom Mr. Paine has jUEt suggested. His name is Fernandes. He came into my church one night so drunk that he could not walk, and ~at there during the service8. After the services were over he came up to the pulpit and asked me : " Does that Man love me Y" " What man?" I asked. " That Man whom you just spoke about. Does He love me ?" I told him, "Y€s, Jesus loves you, and wants you to come to Him Bnd be saved;" and I gave him a Bible, and told him to read it. He was in such a bad condition that he tumbled right down there. The next Sunday he came, well-dressed, with the New Testament in his hand, and was so changed that I did not recognize him. He continued to come regularly after that until he professed Christ and was baptized. One Sunday I missed him from the congregation, and thought he was sick, as no member is allowed to be absent unless something of a serious nature detains them. So the next day I sent one of the deacons, and went myself to see him. And I asked him why he had not come to church last Sunday. " I was very sick," he answered, " and could not go out." He kept a bakery. When I called on him I fOUnd him at work, and he had his Testament fastened to the wall, so he could read it while working. While I was there he was called away by a customer, and I asked his wife: " Mrs. Fernandes, how do you like your husband being a Christian and having him read the Bible ?" She said : "He is a very good man now j but before he used to come home at two o'clock in the morning, and beat and abuse me. Now it is all changed j he comes home early, reads his book, and gives me all I 'need. " Well, do you know, brethren, what that woman did every day 1 She did not know how to read or pray, so she would take her husband's New Testament, and 'look at its pages, and then Ids!! it and say: " Oh ! since that Book has come into this house I am a happy woman." This is one of the best conversions we have. Mr. Fernandes came to me one day and asked me if he could not preach. I said: " Yes j you have a bngue j all you have to do, then, is to follow the Spirit and speak right out." He said: " I want to go back to my own country and tell my people of Christ and His holy religion." He i~ now Ii missionary in Spain, and preaches the Gospel every day and night; his wife plays the organ, and she has learned to read and write. l~ couc1usionl let me tell ~ou how we appoint our d,eacons, Ot'~ Cu,bau.
MISSIONARY FELLOWSHIP
people are very jealous in disposition, and owing to this it is impossible to select one in preference to another, so I have to be very careful. I wanted to have a choir, but could not select the singers, for as soon I had one selected some one would come to me and say, " Mr. Diaz, can't I sing too ~ I have a good voice." So I was obliged to let them all sing, right or wrong. Well, when it came to be a necessity to have the deacons, the same trouble presented itself j and I was in a quandary how to select seven. One Thursday night I told them that I wished every member to be present the next Sunday, as we would then select the deacons, and that I was to preach a sermon on the duties of the deacons. When Sunday came I had a congregation of three or four hundred. I gave the strongest sermon that I could, teIling them that it was the duty of a deacon, when he heard of a case of small-pox, to go righ~ into the midst of it, and to do all that he could to comfort the sick; and the same way in cholera or any epidemic, they must be the first to offer aid and the last to come away j that they must always have thcir Testaments with them, and preach in the market-place and anywhere a conversion could be made. After presenting the duties in as serious a light as I could, I then asked: "If anyone here feels courageous enough to ,assume the responsibilities of the position, please to stand up." The whole congregation stood up j and I did not know what to do, so I said: "Go ahead j you are all deacons." Now they all carry their Testaments around with them, and tell of the religion of Jesus j and thus, you see, we have a whole congregation of workers.
Notwithstanding that we have suffered many persecutions, we have been blessed in abundance. Now we want to establish in Havana a female seminary in which to educate our young ladies. We have been praying for it for the last four or five months, and we are going to have it. We have received encouragement from ladies in Baltimore, and hope to have a place established by the coming winter; give us your prayers for our ultimate success. Don't pray to stop the persecutions, because tIley don't hurt ns, but help us j pray that God will bring the Island of Cuba to Christ.
MISSIONARY FELLOWSHIP.
BY REV. WILLIAM H. LISLE, WEST NEWTON, MASS.
To enter the fellowship of any guild is a personal benefit. This is the inducement to join. All human fraternities rest on a selfish basis. Even the Christian Church is not an exception. It gives to its individual members more than it receives. But the foreign missionary service really seems an exception -an instance of pure giving, with nothing in return. To give the hand of fellowship to a missionary with the accompanying words, " More blessed to give than to receive~" seems a keen touch of sarcasm. The blessedness appears decidedly in favor of the giver; but a little deeper thought shows us that the missionary service is no exception. It is, rather, the strongest possible proof of the greater blessedness being on the side of him who gives himself to such service. The following considerations will indicate this: 1. It is a fellowsl,ip with the heathen. Selfishness sees in such fellow- ship only loss. In fact it makes such partnership with paganism in- credible. How can cultivated and refined men and women endure, much less enjoy, and profit by companionship with densest ignorance? How can purity dwell with impurity? Livingstone's description of society in the heart of Africa is brief but expressive. "It seemed as if I were in hell," he said. And yet be had fellowship with it. He loved it. But in doing 80 we think only of Livingstone's loss and Africa's gain j whereas the Dark Continent did far more for him than he for it. More light shone out of the darkness of Africa for the emblazonment of his name on the scroll of fame than went forth from him to make the Dark Continent light. Had it not been for pagan Africa, Livingstone's weary body wonld not now be resting in Westminster Abbey, but perchance in the grave of some" Village Hampden."
The same is true of Judson. In breadth of brain he has been compared with Webster. Pouring out the fragrance of such a life on the reeking stench of Burmah seems waste indeed. But whatever {'minence Judson might have attained in America his star would have burned low and dim beside his" star in the East," which arises higher and higher out of the dense and tangled jungles of pagan Burmah.
What is the explanation of this ~ It is because God in Christ has identified Himself with the human race, however debased. This identification our Saviour confirms by the words at the last judgment: "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it nnto Me." If Jesus and the human race are one, then for our fellowship with the heathen we have Christ's in return. This puts us on the debtor side j as Paul says, " debtors to all men. " We get nearest to Christ by getting nearest to humanity.
II. It is a fellowship of suffering. This is implied in what has just been said. But it needs emphasis. The blessings of this fellowship will correspond with its sufferings. Suffering, after all, is the test of missionary charaeter. The only true definition of love is sacrifice. It is not so much what the missionary does as what he is ; and what he is can be shown only by suffering for the Gospel's sake. Livingstone's endurances for science were great; but Stanley might stand on the saIlle level. What makes the name of the former go deeper into the hearts of Illen than the latter is his sufferings for Christ. It is Livingstone dying on his knees, in prayer for his poor Africa, that moves the world to tears of admiration and affection. It is Judson at Ou-peng-la enduring the pains of pagan cruelty; it is his sainted Ann, as he found her on his release from prison, lying unconscious with fever, and with her new-born child presenting such a scene of filth and wretchedness that Judson himself, on first entering his home, could hardly distinguish it from that of a native family; it is this more than their missionary labors that canonizes them as martyrs of modern mission~. Heathenism is suffering. It is only as the missionary enters into fellowship with that suffering that he shall be blessed. It must be a lack of such painful partnership that makes so few missionary names an inspirationsuch sacrifice" cannot be hid." Even a Romish priest, who voluntarily accepted death by leprosy for the sake of serving lepers in Molokai island, makes the name of Damien a household word of admiration the world over. Such examples are too rare both at home and abroad. Paul declared that he counted all things but loss that he might know the fellowship of Christ's suffering. Such lives arc long, though brief in years. Brainard and Martyn were candles burning at both ends, and gave a corresponding light. No Christian service is effectual that does not involve suffering.
III. It is a fellowship of kinship. This is precisely what it is supposed not to be. Missionary life is separation, not companionship. It is to leave father, mother, brothers, sisters, and often even wife, husband, and children ; to be parted, it may be, for years by wide and stormy seas. This is the crucial suffering in missionary life. But there is compensation; Jesus says it is a hundredfold; and even that seems too low. The missionary shall receive homes, mothers, brothers, sisters, children, and lands. When Judson's ship reached Boston, having with him 11is three motherless children, and as the ship was working up the harbor he felt himself a stranger in the city from which he had sailed away, leaving home and friends thirty-three years before, he was not a little anxious just where he should secure lodgings. How little he knew that thousands of the best homes in Boston and throughout the couutry would be only too glad to welcome him llnd his children. The railroads gave him, without asking, passes over the land. The missionary without country, home, or, it may be, without family, in his distant and lonely tours, is the truest type of the heavenly pilgrim. But he shall have compensation. There is a family which no man can number, on earth and in heaven, of which he is an endeared member. Christ, as Isaiah says, is its "Everlasting Father," holy angels are its kinsfolk; saints, martyrs, apostles, and all the redeemed, both living and dead, constitute its brotherhood; earth is its compass, and heaven is its home. The missionary, most of all men, shares the sympathy and love of this great family. All holy women are his mothers; and· all whose lives are moulded by his spiritual touch, for whom he travails in soul, are his spiritual children. When we consider the rapid expansion of this family through lands and ages, we see JlOw small a measure of the fellowship of kinship is the" hundredfold" of Jesus. True, this fellowship lacks two important elements-speech and sight. So far as these are concerned, the missionary must live alone; but speech and sight can bring us only within a limited circle of companionship-it is a physical limit. The compensation of the missionary is an ever-widening circle of unseen
THE BOYS' BRIGADE AND THE MISSIONARY CAUSE
but intensely real fellowship with ~he good in all lands. There is not a city, town, or hamlet of Christendom in which he has not mothers who love him, and brothers and sisters who are in sympathy with him. All public worship is a meeting of his great family to remember him, and every secret prayer is an aspiration for his good: " These are the tones to brace and cheer The lonely watcher of the fold; When nights are dark and foemen near, When visions fade and hearts grow cold."
How beautifully this is illustrated in Paul's life-the pioneer mission- ary! For Christ he was not only de· nationalized, but de-kinsmanized. He is, apparently, without family connection. Like Melchizedek, who typified Christ, without father, mother, wife, or children, he stands like a solitary oak of the forest; and yet his kinsmanship makes a larger list than all the other apostles together. Wherever he went a new brotherhood and sisterhood were created for him-even went before him and loved him before they saw him. In his letter to the Church at Rome, to whom he was known only by reputation, he mentions a list: "Phebe, our sister; Andronicus and Junias, my kinsmen; Qnartus, my brother; Rufus, chosen in the Lord, and her who is his mother and mine." That noble' matron in the Roman congregation whom Paul could call mother might well be honored by such a designation.
At the head of this ever-advancing family of spiritual kinship, the mis- sionary is the Abrahamic leader into lands which God will give to His children for a possession. It is a great family, migrating heavenward, and the missionary catching the tr~mp of the hosts behind him will find it im- possible to stand in the front" marking time." The fellowship of sym- pathy and co-operation of Israel will bear him, forward.
In this multiplication of the fellowship of kinship which makes the hundredfold of Jesus, there is a noticeable omission-fathers are not multi- plied. Why is this ~ Is it not to crown human fellowship with the Divine ~ Human" fatherhood" has been very disastrous to God's spiritual family. Therefore Jesus said: "Call no mau your fatber upon the earth, for one is your Father which is in beaven." God reserved to Himself the fatherhood, tbat wbere all help of human kind should be far out of reach, He could take His child upon His own loving heart and bear him through _allthe sorrows and sufferings of missionary life.
THE BOYS' BRIGADE AND THE MISSIONARY CAUSE.
BY REV. J. Q. ADAMS, PRESIDEN'i'.
This growing organization, whose origin, history, and present place in Church work have been told elsewhere, has an important relation to the great missionary work of the Church. It is often remarked that the girls and women of almost all our churches are well organized, and, to a great extent, thoroughly interested in the work of missions. Their efficiency . and interest have grown rapidly, but not more so than their contributions.
What would our leading" boards" do to-day without the contributions of the women ~ In the Presbyterian Church, for example, last year more was given to the Foreign Board through the ladies than through the churches.
All this is greatly to the credit of the women; but what are the men and boys doing ~ The largest pocket of the Church is hardly touched. The mass of the boys who are growing up in our churches are having little or no systematic training suited to boys in the teachings of the Bible and his- tory regarding missions. It is in many quarters looked upon as a senti- mental work, only fitted for women and children. So the supreme work of the Church is largely left to them. What ought to be done ~ One thing is certain: it is as easy to interest and train the boys to an intelligent interest in foreign missions as it is the girls, if it be undertaken in the rigltt way. This is not theory, but written from actual experience.
In organizing, therefore, the work of the Boys' Brigade in the United States, a large place was gi~en to missions. Following the Scotch model, in many things, we introduced this among other new features: "The Missionary Socicty is one of the three agencies employed to accomplish our object-viz., the advancement of ChriAt's Kingdom among boys, and the promotion of habits of reverence, discipline, self-respect, and all that tends toward a true Christian manliness." Art. IV. Sec. 3 of the Brigade Con- stitution also says: "The agencies employed to accomplish this object shall be the Drill, Bible Class, and Missionary Society. These three are the essential features of the organization."
Further, all the members of the company are members of the Mission- ary Society. and required to attend its meetings as much as the drill. We quote further from the suggested outline for company by-laws: " ART. VIII. The Missionary Society.
"SEC. 1. This Society shall be called the Missionary Society of the – – Company, and shall include in its membership all the members of this Company.
" SEC. 2. The object of this Society is to develope in its members an interest in Home and Foreign Missions, and to acquaint them with the progress and needs of the mission work, especially that of the – – – – church. .
" SEC. 3. The secondary object is t.o c"Jllect from the members such sums as their interest and zeal may prompt thcm to set apalt each month, and to forward thcm to the Home aud Foreign Boards of our Church.
"SEC. 4. The Officers shall be a President, Vice-President. Secretary, and Treasurer, who shall be elected annually, by ballot.
•, SEC. 5. A regular monthly meeting shall be held upon the – – Sun- day of each month.
GO FORWARD
" SEC.' 6. The President may appoint such committees as he considers best.
" SEC. 7. At the regular monthly meeting, the country for the month shall be taken as the subject, and considered under the following heads: 1. Geography. 2. Government and history. 3. The people. 4. Their native religion. 5. The beginning of mission work. 6. The present outlook of the mission field.
"REC. 8. – – dollars each year is fixed as the least amo'unt which the members of this Society expect to contribute to Foreign Missions.
"SEC. 9. Boys between the ages of 18 and 25 years may become honorary members of this Society upon paying a membership fee of one dollar. "
How, then, has this plan worked in practice? Repeated testimony comes that this meeting is onA of the best attended and most enthusiastic of those held by the company. As a matter of course, when their knowledge of the work and its needs has increased, their contributions have multiplied manifold. Boys who never gave more than" a nickel" or two yearly, find it a pleasure to give liberally, so that the total from some companies astonishes their officers. Moreover, it is safe to say that these boys will go into the Church knowing not only that there are" heathen," but that it is the duty of every Christian to pray, labor, and give in order that the Gospel may be preached to every creature. Readers of THE MISSIONARY REVIEW can learn further of this organization by writing to the Secretary, Mr. A. H. Fish, at the headquarters office, 23 Nevada Block, San Francisco, Cal.
GO FORWARD!
BY REV. A. P. HOPPER, D.D.
When the children of Israel, at the command of Jehovah, commenced their march out of Egypt, they came to the place where their farther advance was hindered by the waters of the sea. There were obstructions to their marching on either side. 'When thus situated, suddenly and unexpectedly the army of the Egyptians came up behind them. They were thus hemmed in on all sides. They cried unto the Lord in their perplexity and their danger; for they were in danger of being forced to return to their former state of bondage. Jehovah, in answer to their prayers, commanded Moses to say unto the people, " Go forward." W'hen, in obedience to his command, the people essayed to go forward, they found the waters were parted before them, and they crossed over on dry land. Their enemies, attempting to pursue them, were overwhelmed by the returning waters and were drowned. The children of Israel were delivered out of the great danger, and were enabled to go on their way rejoicing and in safety. A similar incident has happened to the Christian churches in the pro- posed effort to increase the number of Christian workers in China, and the enlargement of all the agencies for the conversion of its people to the belief of the Gospel. The call had been sent forth for one thousand missionaries in fi ve years. The bands were gathering and preparing to go forth to the work. Nearly one hundred had arrived on the shores of China, giving the assurance that the others would soon follow them to gather the harvest already white, when, as suddenly and unexpectedly as a cyclone from a clear sky, the storm burst upon the missions in the Yangtze valley, carry- ing desolation and ruin to many stations, and interrupting the labors of many for mouths. The hearts of men of all classes and employments were filled with anxiety and perplexity. None can surely declare whence the outbreak bas come, or what was the purpose thereof, or unto what it would grow. Some think it is an effort to drive out the hated foreigners, with all their commerce, their science, ,improvements, and religion. Some think its purpose is to overthrow the ruling dynasty and establish some native fillers upon the throne of China j and others think that some disbanded soldiers are seeking to avenge their own wrongs, and obtain the means of support for themselves at whatever cost of ruin and misery to others.
The calamities experienced and the threatening appearance of impending dangers to the missionaries and their converts are such as properly call the churches to prayer and searchings of heart to know the purport of these terrible troubles and upheavings. We cannot be too earnest in our supplications that God will appear for the deliverance of His people j that He will overrule all things for His own glory, and that He will overturn and overturn till He shall come whose right it is to reign. The churches should call mightily upon God, who is the Ruler among the nations, and entreat His blessing and guidance.
In nature the appearance is not always sunshine and quiet. Winter and frost are necessary for the development and perfection of tho best grains and fruits. So in the spiritual kingdom trials and afflictions are the means of securing the choicest blessings and results. In the first centuries of the Church repeated persecutions were the means of successive advances and increase of Christianity iu the Roman Empire. We may not expect that the churches in China will be exempt from experiences similar to those of the earlier Church. It was a cause of devout thankfulness that, in the tribulations that came to some parts of the Church in China during the French War, the grace of God enabled all the converts to remain faithful to their professions of love to the Saviour. These trials strengthened thflir faith, increased their courage, warmed their love to each otber and their Lord, and gave them more clearly to understand that in their Christian life they may expect trials and tribulations. We may rest assured that similar spiritual blessings have been experienced during the year just closed. These things do and will work good to those who love God. Christianity will take deeper root in the hearts of those who profess it, and in the coun- try by reason of the storms which beat upou it. What effect these troubles will have upon the future facilities of missionary work in China human fore- sight cannot tcll; but, judging of the future by the past, we may say they will result in securing increased opportunitIes for work and in removing diffi- culties and hindrances which have hitherto retarded the spread of the Gos- pel. Such has been the result of thc successive outbreaks of 0PPoflition and hatred during the last fifty years. Each one has re~ulted in removing hindrances and sccuring increased facilities. So it was in 1842, in 1858, in 1870, in 1884; and so, we may rest assured, it will be when this up- heaval shall subside in the present distress.
Weare already able to see some very decided advantages secured. The Christian religion has nevcr before been so commended to the people of China as it has been by the highest officials and the Emperor himself dm- ing these troubles. This testimony to the excellency of our holy religion has been so giver. that the Government cannot go back on it. The Board for Foreign Affairs, in the memorial to the throne ilJ regard to the riots, says: "The religion of the West has for its object the inculcation of virtue, and in the Western eountries it is everywhere practised. Its origin dates a long time past; on the establishment of commercial intercourse bctween Western powers and China, a clause was inserted in the treaties to the effect that' persons professing or teaching the Christian religion should enjoy full protection of their persons and property, and be allowed free exercise of their religion.' The hospitals and orphanages maintained by the missionaries all evince a spirit of benevolent enterprise. Of late years, when distress has befallen any portion of the empire, missionaries and others have never failed to come forward to assist the suffering by subscribing and distributing money. For their cheerful readiness to do good, and the pleasure they take in works of charity, they assuredly deserve high commendation. It is the duty of the local authorities to afford protection at all times to the persons and property of foreign merchants and foreign missionaries, and no relaxation in this respect should be permitted."
On June 13th the Emperor, in response to the memorial of the Board for Foreign Affairs, issned an Imperial Decree, in which he says: "That the !everal nations are at liberty to promulgate their religions in China is set forth in the treaties; and Imperial Decrees have been granted instructing the various provinces to give protection at all times. Many years have passed by, and the Chinese and foreigners have lived on friendly terms. The religion of the Western countries simply admonishes people to become virtuous; and the native converts are Chinese subjects under the jurisdiction of local officials. The religions and peoples ought to exist peaceably side by side."
The discussion in China of the causes and purposes of the rioters has led to the conclusion that the outbreak of popular violence was not against Christian missions, but against foreigners. It has given to the foreign rE'sidents in China a higher and beiter knowledge of the aims and purposes of the missionaries. The North China Herald, in the issue for November 6th, 1891, in its editorial says: "Meanwhile, what we have actually obtained in reparation from the Chinese beyond the money payments is Dot entirely unimportant The Emperor has issued a very favorable decree, in which Christanity is referrcd to in the most satisfactory terms. It has been sent all over China, and it remains on record as an imperial, and therefore sacl'ed testimonial to the excellence of the Christian religion and the merits of its teachers." The two viceroys who control the Yangtze valley from Ichang to the sea have sent to the throne memorials reporting what they have done in punishing the rioters, in which there is nothing to which much objection can be made.
While therA has been an interruption of mission work in various places in the Yangtze valley, in other parts of Chi,na the labors of the missionaries have gone on as usual. The missionaries in China are not discouraged or cast down. The Rev. J. N. B. Smith, D.D., of Shanghai, in a recent letter, says: "Our Presbytery includes the two cities of Shanghai and Sochow. The disturbances through the country have not affected our work seriously round Shanghai. We hope and pray that the matter may be settled peaceably; but in the present state of affairs a very small matter may precipitate a war. All believe that the outcome will be a decided change in the attitude of China, and will result in a further opening up of the country to the Gospel and commerce." Other missionaries express themselves to the same purport and expectation.
In a recent letter from my lifelong friend, Rev. Dr VV. A. P. Martin, LL.D., of Peking, of October 15th, he, referring to his recent return to China, writes: "It is interesting to be in China at this present juncture. The foundations are being shaken. Some predict great changes; but my barometer does not point to revolution. The riots Illay mean rebellion, but they are poorly organized, and have no chance of success. One good result has been to commit the Government more decidedly to the protection of missionaries and their converts. The edict of the Emperor on the subject is almost. Christian. The good cause will not lose ground, I think. On the contrary, after a little while it will be found to have made a distinct gain. It is at such times that God displays His guiding hand, although at first it may be invisible."
The Rev. Dr. Y. .T. Allen, LL.D., of Shanghai, President of the Anglo- Chinese College, of the Methodist Epi~copal Church South, writing on October 6th, says: "I look upon the whole thing as one of the inevitables of hi~tory, and I am not disposed to regard these troubles as obstructions, but rather as inviting the destruction and overthrow of many old and inveterate hindrances to the progress of our Western civilization, and particularly of the promulgation and acceptance of the Gospel. The times are really prophetic, and we may look for the beginning in China of the fulfilment of the promise-viz., Psalm 2. Be of good courage. Your length of service and fulness of years have lifted you up, as on a tall mountain', to see in these last days, as Moses from Pisgah, the outlines of the prom- ised land. ' Jesus Christ is the purpose of God in history,' and every movement of Providence is but a fuller revelation of the glory of God, which is to fill the whole earth."
The letters of missionaries in China to the papers in this country state that in all other partR of China outside of the Yangtze vallr.y the missiona- ries had pursued their usual labors without any interruption, and with the usual attendance of the people at their services. The missionaries and the native preachers travelled through the country in peace and safety. In the Chinese Recorder, published at Sbanghai, for November, 1891, the reports and letters of the laborers inform us that the missionaries were pursuing their labors everywhere except in the disturbed districts without interruption, and with the usual manifestation of interest and attention on the part of the people.
As intimately connected with this matter, it is proper to say that those who are best acquainted with the character of the Government and the high officials agree in the opinion that there are no serious grounds to fear there wiIl be any rebellion in China which wiII lead to a change of the ruling dynasty. This is the opinion which Sir Thomas Wade has expressed, who was till recently the British minister at the court of Peking, and who resided, in various official capacities, in the country for a period of forty years. A similar opinion as to the stability of the Government and the loyalty of the highest official to the throne has been expressed by the Hon. J. Russell Young, who was for a number of years United States Minister to China.
All students of history must regard it as a very serious state of affairs when the Government of so great and populous a nation is in the hands of a youth of twenty years of age. It is, however, reassuring when it is considered that he is supported and assisted by the same high officials who have conducted the administration so successfully during the past thirty years. Those who are best acquainted with the Government are hopeful for the future of China.
When we consider that the peace and comfort of three hundred and fifty miIIions of his subjects are connected with the stability of.the Government in China, as well as the safety of the life and property of several thousands of people from Western lands in the country, we may well pray that wisdom and long life may be given to the young Emperor j and when we consider the immense interests of the Christian religion as connected with more than two thousand missionaries, Protestant and Roman Catholic, their converts, churches, schools, and pupils, the churches should be led to pray with· unceasing importunity that God would avert the calamity of war and bloodshed from " the land of Sinim."
But as bearing on the matter of sending forth missionaries in answer to the call of the General Missionary Conference of 1890, the indications of
'rHE ENTHUSIASM OF JESUS CHRisT
God's providence are, as indicated above, to " go forward" in the work. Send forth all properly qualified laborers that offer themselves for the work in China. Multiply all the instrumentalities and agencies for prosecuting the work with increasing efficiency, trusting that the shield of God's protection will be around them. He goes before His people " in a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night. " They need not fear to follow when the Lord of Hosts leads. Let prayer and supplication be made without ceasing, that great grace, mercy, and peace may be multiplied to all the Israel of God, and that the kingdom and the greatness of the kingdom may be given to His dear Son.
THE ENTHUSIASM OF JESUS CHRIST.
BY REV. A. C. MURRAY, LIVINGSTONIA MISSION, LAKE NYASSA.
It is said repeatedly, and with truth, that nothing great has been accomplished without enthusiasm. Certainly the Christian religion was not established, nor will it be promulgated without it. Jesus Christ Himself was an enthusiast; so were His disciples. Paul burned with a magnificent enthusiasm ; the love of Christ constraining him, pleading with tears night and day, beseeching men in Christ's stead..
It is even so to-day. What the Church of Christ needs is being set on fire. What individual Christians need is being roused ont of their callousness and coldness as with a voice of thu.nder: "AWAKE, THOU THAT SLEEPEST!" What all workers in the field, ministerial as well as layyes, what we missionaries need is enthusiasm, a burning, all-consuming enthusiasm, that men may see that we hlwe been and ever are with Jesus; and even-as did His brethren of the Master Himself-think us mad.
Let us take up the gospels and briefly study the enthusiasm of Jesus Chri~t.
I. At the very commencement of His ministry we see it blaze forth. I often wonder how He could have restrained Himself and remained silent for thirty long years. It was because He knew His Father's will, and was obedient not only unto death, but all through life. It requires more grace to restrain one's self wisely than to act rashly. But what must it not have cost Him to see iniquity, hypocrisy, injustice, and not be allowed to burst forth in burning words of denunciation !
'Twas on the first occasion that He went up to the feast at Jerusalem after His baptism. EI'en in His twelfth year His" soul longed for the courts of the Lord." How much more now ! Was it not His" Father's house f" A.rrived there, what should He find but cattle merchants, sheep dealers. money-changl:>rs carrying on their noisy and unholy traffic within the very precincts of the temple. Buch a sight roused within Him a holy indignation, and with a Divine majesty and burning enthusiasm He cleared the sacred courts, while His awe-struck disciples whispered one to another that it is written" The zeal of Thy house shall eat me up." But not only was it the zeal of God's house that consumed Him, it was likewise the zeal of His will and His work.
We read of enthusiasts forgetting in their zeal the needs of the body. It was so with Christ; but more, His enthusiasm seemed to take away His very appetite for food. "Master, eat," said the disciples by Samaria's well. "I have meat," was the reply. The food we eat is sometimes compared to fuel, which is consumed within our system to keep the vital spark burning. In the soul of Christ the flame of enthusiasm to do the Father's will was burning so fiercely that He felt not the need of casting fuel on the other and lesser fire.
It was on this occasion, while awaiting the return of the Samaritan woman with her friends, that lIe pointed to the extensive corn-fields spread out before them, and said: "Is it still four months to the harvest 1 No! I say unto you, the harvest is come! Behold the fields are already white," and Himself longed to press forward and reap. But the time was not yet. "One soweth and another reapeth." It was His to sow.
II. Let us turn to another scene. It was after the sending forth of the twelve. They had just returned and" told Him all things whatsoever they had done."· They were all wearied, and both Master and disciples needed rest. "Come apart into a desert place and rest awhile," Ee said. Accordingly they took boat and crossed the lake. But in vain; the multitudes ran and intercepted them, and, wearied though He was, His heart burned within Him, and " He was moved with I)ompassion, and taught them many things" until, as evening drew on, before sending them to their homes, He wrought one of those wonderful miracles which must ever remain to us a beautiful emblem of the Master's power still to feed a multitude with our insignificant loaves and fishes.
Then, surely then, He went to some neighboring village Himself to seek a place where to lay His wearied head. Not so. He had forgotten His weariness, and spent that night in prayer, and even on the day following we find Him no less busy. He seemed never to tire of healing, teaching, inviting, or remonstrating, while there were any to listen, such was His holy enthusiasm. We sometimes wonder how He could have slept in the boat during that storm. It was of exhaustion His wearied frame demanded repose, and even the howling wind and roaring waves could not waken Him until the trembling disciples aroused Him from the much· needed rest.
III. On one occasion, when speaking of His sufferings, He said: "I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished." He had likewise a work to finish; and how was He straitened until that was accomplished! " We must work the work of Him that sent me," He said, " while it is day; the night cometh when no man can work." When the night did corne He could say: "I glorified Thee on earth, having accomplished the work Thou hast given Me to do."
We mentioned above His sending out of the twelve to heal and to preach. Let us notice the occasion of this mission. It was while itinerating through the villages, "teaching in the synagogues, and preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom, and healing all manner of disease and all manner of sickness," that, seeing the multitude, " He was moved with compassion with them, because they were distressed and scattered as sheep not having a shepherd." As He stood looking upon all those wandering ones He burned with a de8ire to reach them all, to multiply Himself, as it were-what could one do amid so many ~-then turning to His disciples, those humble fishermen who were so often the recipients of His deepest thoughts and desires, He said: "The harvest truly is great." It!:! magnitude was overwhelming Him j but His Father had other resources, " pray the Lord of the harvest that He send forth laborers into His harvest." Was it in answer to this prayer that we read in the very next verse that He was authorized by His Father, as it were, to divide His power and give each of His disciples" authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all manner of disease and all manner of sickness" (Matt. 9 : 35i!) ~ IV. But let us notice that though burning with an all-consuming enthusiasm to do the work that was given Him to do, He was never in a hurry. We have noticed His thirty years of silence. Even during His three years of labor He always found time to converse with single individuals. Ht! attended weddings, feasts, and neglected no social duties where these opened the way for delivering His message. He always found or made time to go apart to hold communion with His Father.
In His whole life we find no trace of that worry which, alas! is too often seen in zealous workers. He was always calm. When His message was rejected He was not worried. lie was saddened, and with yearning heart would say: "Ye will not come to Me that ye may have life;" or again, His tender heart swelled within Him and the tears trickled down His cheeks as He cried: "Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered thy children together even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!" Who has not noticed and admired the enthusiasm of an anxious hen calling together her wayward chickens in the presence of some real or imagined danger 1 And what is this to the enthusiasm of the Son of Man seeking to save the lost!
V. This last sentence leads us into the secret of His enthusiasm. "The lost." He knew as no one ever knew or can know the awful significance of that term. It was to save the lost that he lived and labored and died with so Divine an enthusiasm. It is the value which he attaches to the lost sheep that sends the shepherd searching for it over hill and dale. How shall we compute the value of one soul ~ The enthusiasm of Christ suggests to us His estimate of the infinite valne of a soul; His deatb, His" precions blood" proves it.
It is in His enthusiasm that all soul seekers must follow and imitate Jesus Christ. The patience, perseverance and skill of many an angler pnt to shame us "fishers of men." And they for a corruptible prize, but we
CENTRAL AMERICAN MISSIONS
for an incorruptible. But let us not think that this is a flame to be kindled by ourselves or by our neighbors. We must go into the sanctuary, and go often, to light our lamps at the fire on the altar, or the storms of life will quench the self-lit flame. What is more painful than to see men who have begun well, who inspired others by their burning words, gradually fall back in the contest, and even disappear. It is because their fire was not Divine, their enthusiasm not heave,n-born. Of Jesus Christ we must learn, close to Him we must abide, for it is only by keeping the eye fixed on Him by pressing on in His footsteps, by close communion and constant fellowship that we shall share His enthusiasm, for He alone can " Kindle in our hearts the flame Of never-dying love."
CENTRAL AMERICAN MISSIONS.
BY REV. JOSHUA H. TOBEY, PORT SIMON, COSTA RICA.
Central America claims and loudly calls for Christian workers; we daily pray the Lord of the harvest to thrust forth laborers into this part of His vineyard. But there are Christian workers already laboring in these parts. For nearly forty years. in the little Protestant Church at San Jose, the Gospel has been proclaimed. Several ministers during those years have resided there. At present the Gospel is preached, and Sunday-school work is carried on by two gentlemen from England who reside in the city.
In our work among the Jamaica negroes, as a missionary society, we do not allow the question of color to come between us and our Master's command to preach the Gospel to every creature. As a matter of fact, we preach the Gospel to black, white, and brown people here. After some years' residence in Costa Rica, while we find many people intemperate, we do not find them indolent. Indeed, comparing them with the inhabitants of some of the islands around, they are an industrious people. In Nicaragua, the next republic to Costa Rica, at Greytown there is a Protestant church, where the Gospel has been preached for years, and where we hope soon to see more done for the people's welfare. Along the same coast-at Bluefields and all along the" Mosquito Coast"-our Moravian brethren have been laboring for many years, and under God have done a splendid work. Hundreds have been brought into the Church of Christ. Their Sunday and day schools are working a wonderful change among the people. What we have seen we can testify. Then there are other places along tho coast where the Gospel is occasionally preached by men from adjacent islands, who believe in letting their light shine. In British Honduras there are many missionaries faithfully at work pushing their way into the interior. In Costa Rica, at Port Limon, the centre of our operations, amid much difficulty and opposition God has wonderfully opened our way; for four years we h&'<e toiled on; some sixty have joined our fellowship, and hundreds every Sunday listen to the Gospel preached. Five years ago we did not know two persons who were walking iu fellowship with God. There was no missionary, no place for prayer. During the past four years hundreds of portions of God' s Word, and many thousands of books and tracts in English and Spanish have been circulated. There are numerous openings for evangelistic work, including colportage work in these republics. We hope and pray that the Christian Church in the United States, in Jamaica, and England will rise up to their duty and give the Gospel to Central America.
EXTRACTS AND TRANSLATIONS FROM FOREIGN PERIODICALS
EXTRACTS AND TRANSLATIONS FROM FOREIGN PERIODICALS.
BY REV. C, C. STARBUCK, ANDOVER, MASS.
AN EMINENT MISSIONARY GONE.
-The Ohurch Missionary Intelligencer for October, 1891, says: "The committee heard with much regret of the decease of Bishop Caldwell, for fourteen years the coadjutor bishop in Tinnevelly, and for the greater part of the time in conjunction with his friend and colleague, Bishop Sargent, who was consecrated at the same time, and whose senior he was by one year. Bishop Caldwell commenced his missionary labors in Travancore in 1838 in connection with the London Missionary Society. In 1841 he joined the Church of England, and was ordained by Bishop Spencer as a missionary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and from that time till a few months since he continued his labors in Tinnevelly, making his headquarters till 1877 at Edyengudi, and subsequently as Bishop at Tuticorin. He lived to see the S. P. G. native Christians multiply tenfold, from 4000 in 1841 to over 40,000 in 1891, while the Edyengudi district, of which he hlld for so long the exclusive charge, grew from 400 to over 7000. Throughout the whole of his career Bishop Caldwell's relations to the Church Missionary Sociflty and its missionaries were of thc happiest and most intimllte kind, and since Bishop Sargent's death he last year laid the society under great obligations by confirming their native Christians, notwithstanding their advanced, age and increasing bodily infirmities. The bishop was not only pre.eminently successful as a missionary, but was also widely known in the world of letters as a learned Orientalist, his,' Comparative Grllmmar of the Dravidian Languages' having been long acknowledged as a standard work on the subject. Be was also the author of several missionary and theological pamphlets and two valuahle historical books, one on the political history of Tinnevelly, and the other a history of its mission."
-Heel' L. V. Ledeboer, who died at RotterdalIl, January 4th, 1891, at the age of 95+ years, had been a member of the Netherlands Missionary Society since 1824. His father and grandfather had been the same before him.
-Dr. James McKinnon, writing in the ChUl'ch of Scotland Record for March, on "The German Method of Missionary Enterprise," says: "The thoroughness which is characteristic of the German, whethcr engaged in writing a book or drilling a regiment, is carried by him into the sphere of Christian missions. This is specially observable in the training of the mIssIOnary. The various German agencies for the conversion of the heathen, such as the Berlin or the Rhenish Missionary societies, act on the principle of thoroughly equipping the workman for his work. They do not rest content with simply shipping off to Africa or China any candidate for the mission-field who may have hurriedly satisfied the demands of some board of directors, but they subject him to a systematic and testing preparatory course of training, extending over seven YGars, and then assign him some sphere of work for which his qualifications and character mark him out. We had the pleasure of becoming personally acquainted with this thorough system on paying a visit lately to Barmen, the headquarters of the Rhenish Missionary Society. The town itself, which lies in the charming vale through which the W upper finds its way to the Rhine, adjoins Elberfeld, and they form together one of the wealthiest centres of German industry. Both have the reputation of harboring an active evangeli- cal spirit, which unfortunately tends too much. as in Scotland, to waste a part of its energy on sectarian differences. Unlike many other German cities, where the denominational variety limits itself to Catholic and Lutheran or Reformed, we find in Barmen and Elberfeld the endless divisions and subdivisions which become the proverbial distinction of our insular Christianity. Be this as it may, the fact that Barmen is the head- quarters of the Rhenish Missionary Society is of itself a proof that, along with much of the bumptiousness of sectarianism for which it is notorious, there is no small amount of Christian philanthropy of the noblest sort."
It is known that few German missionaries are university men. They are largely artisans, and of such applicants there is sometimes a perplexing abundance. " The test by which the society seeks to discover the sincerity of each applicant affords a characteristically thorough trial of patience. As they are usually young men who have learned some trade or other, they must find work in the town and attend the mission-house one evening in the week during a whole year. If after this lengthy test they have satisfied the inspector as to their sincerity. they are admitted to the Vorschule, or preparatory school, where they receive for two years instruction in Latin, general history, etc. Only then are they admitted to the~ Missionshaus, where the course of instruction is more theological and practical, including the study of the Dible in the original tongues, and a course of medical training in the town hospital. In addition to this, opportunity is furnished to each one of pursuing his trade in connection with the establishment, so that at the close of the four years' residence in the mission house, the missionary is a good artisan, a fair scholar, and a respectable physician all in one." Speaking of the work of the society, Dr. McKinnon says: "Taking down a large map, Dr. Schreiber explained in detail the extent and success of the various missions which the society maintains throughout the world. It was one of the first to grapple with the question of the evangelization of the South African tribes, and from Cape Town to the vast tracts beyond • the Orange River in Namaqualand to Hereroland it can count a native con- gregation in almost every village, which are mostly beyond the stage of mere missionary effort. We can speak from personal observation of the vast amount of good which for nearly half a century it has accomplished among the Hottentots and Kaffirs. Within the last dozen years it has sought openings in other parts of the world, notably in the East. In Borneo, Sumatra, China, and New Guinea it is rapidly accomplishing the task which it has so successfully carried out in Southern Africa. Pointing with a pardonable pride to Sumatra, Dr. Schreiber tells me that they can hardly supply the demands of the Battas for missionaries and teachers." As Dr. :McKinnon remarks, the thoroughness of their training seems to have met with a good reward.
-JeUJish Intelligence for March, 1891, shows that from 1875 there have been 135 apostasies of Prnssian Christians from Christianity to Judaism, and 2101 conversions of Jews to Christianity. Apostasies are steadily diminishing, conversions steadily increasing. The conversions, we may safely assume, have not been brought about by the sight of Christians meekly sitting by, while rationalistic rabbis pourea out malignant contempt upon the Redeemer.
-The Missionary Record of the U. P. C. of Scotland for March has a remarkably thorough and well-balanced paper on "Religion in Italy," by Rev. D. ·W. Forest, M.A. It entirely agrees with the presentation made by the learned Father Curci, in his Il Vaticano Regia, that the Italian priesthood of to-day is very much inferior, both spiritually and intellectually, to that of France or Germany. As Father Curci (himself an orthodox Catholic priest) says, in Italy they preach about all the saints and madonnas, past, present, future, all the miracles and impossible, against the Protestants, who are doing them no harm, and against the unity of Italy; what they preach least about is Jesus Christ, His miracles and His doctrines. But, as Mr. Forest says, when an Agostino comes up, who preaches as if "outward authority requires an inward witness for its efficacy," then the alienated men of culture throng to hear him.
-The Journal des Missions EvangUiques for March, referring to the death of Pere Simeon Lourdel, three months after Mackay, and, like him, of fever, remarks: "The names of these two men will remain ineffaceably engraved on the annals of Uganda. I have the portraits of both before my eyes. They were of nearly the same age; the one born in the little Scotch village of Rhynie, in 1849; the other at Arras, in 1853. Their eyes denote the same energy; an equal decision may be read in their features. Mackay's face shows greater mobility and fire j Lourdel's has an expression more tranquil and obstinate. They aimed to serve the same cause, and they spent ten years of mutual antagonism in the lwart of the African Continent. around them the deepest darkness of heathenism. Ah, why did Cardinal Lavigerie, in April, 1878, send ~he White Fathers to Mtesa, at whose capital the Anglican missionaries had established themselves June 30th, 1877?" Mr. Cust went post-haste to Algiers to remonstrate with the archbishop against the scandal of giving to a heathen monarch and Moslem witnesses the spectacle of French Catholics and English Protestants disputing over the religion of Jesus Christ. The cardinal declared himself to be thoroughly of one mind with the representative of the Anglican Society, and a few days later despatched his White Fathers to Mtesa's residence.
-The English Wesleyans, at the suggestion of the British South Africa Chmtered Company. have decided to establish a mission in' Mashonaland, to the south of the Zambesi: The company guarantees £100 a year toward it.
-The Rev. Friedrich Redslob, President of the Moravian Himalaya Mission, has been obliged by chronic illness, after twenty years of labor, to withdraw from it.. Besides his constant activity in long preaching journeys and the distribution of Christian literature, which so peculiarly distinguishes the work of this mission, Mr. Redslob has brought the work of Bible translation, begun by H. A. Jaschke, a good deal nearer its completion. The Rev. Julius Weber will take his place at Leh.
-The Allgemeine Missions Zeitschrijt, while dissenting- decidedly from the particular views of the editor of this REVIEW, as to missionary methods, remarks: "Nevertheless, it is beyond all doubt that by his means a mighty forward movement has been brought to pass in the missionary life of both England and America."
-The Zeitschrijt remarh that a fresh breath of missionary interest is going through Great Britain, although the missionary contributions for 1890 were not quite up to 1889. The falling off in the Wesleyan, London, and Baptist societies shows that the churches of these three denominations have not maintained themselves on their former height of missionary liberality. On the other hand, the Zeitschrift designates as the three leaders of advance in the work, the Evangelicals of the Church of England, as represented by the Church Missionary Society, and in Scotland the Free Church and the United Presbyterians. AlI the three Scottish Presbyterian churches are alive with missionary zeal, and the Church of Scotland Record notes with grateful interest the blessing which Dr. Pierson has brought home with him from his work in Scotland.
-Mrs. A. J. P. Newcomhe, who is making an appeal in New Zealand, for missions in India, says, most pertinently, in the New Zealand Baptist: " Let us remember that home missions trace their descent from foreign, and not foreign from the home." She opens to us in her letter an interesting glimpse of the Australian missions working in India.
-The Proceedings of the Synod of the Presbyterian Church of Otago and Southland contain a letter from the Governor of New Zealand, in which His Excellency says: "I was much interested to see the manner in which the religious spirit of our forefathers continues to live and flourish in their descendants, and how great an agent in the peopling of the earth by the Anglo-Saxon race has been the desire for freedom to worship God according to the rites of their creed, which actuated the Pilgrims of the Mayflower in founding the great Repu blic of the Atlantic."
-The Wesleyan Missionary Leaflet remarks that the Tamil work at Bangalore, conducted by the English Wesleyans, has in ten years increased almost cent per cent in every direction. The Rev. W.E. J. Picken is in charge of it.
-It is remarked in the Church of Scotland Record that the attendance at all the English churches of Calcutta has fallen off. Increasing secularization of the Lord's day is one reason.
-The Harvest Field, of Madras, a Methodist Episcopal magazine, says: "There is no society at work in India which attempts so much or so systematically for the blessing of women as the Church Missionary SocietY". From Tinnevelly to Peshawar and from Calcutta to Bombay its devoted workers, many of them honorary"-i.e, self-supporting-" are to be found in dusters, speaking different languages, busy in different departments, and trying a variety of important experiments."
-The missionaries of Shanghai have decided to invite the Y. M. C. A. of this country to establish a secretary there, primarily for work among the Chinese young men of the city and settlements.
-The Rev. David Hill, the British President of the late Shanghai Conference, remarks that the C. 1. M. attracts workers by its offer of hardships instead of ease. "Large demands are often more attractive than large concessions," as some German writer has said.
-The Rev. Gilbert Reid, in an interesting and able essay, read before the Shantung Presbyterian Mission, urges the obligation of doing morc than has hitherto been done by Protestant missionaries for the evangelization of the upper classes of China. He reminds us that the whole constitution of Chinese society brings home the necessity of not neglecting them. "Reverence to all who are above" is so all-pervading in China that decisive results cannot he expected without heeding it. -The Messenger, of Shanghai, in an article by Rev. J. Edkins, D.D., says: "The use of images in worship is eomparatively recent in China. The age of imaf!:es was preceded by Monotheism, and monotheistic faith promotes morality." Dr. Edkins appears to connect this with the fact that the later degeneracies of Confucianism, Tauism, and Buddhism are all pure from either cruelty or obscenity.
THE OONTINENT.
-A t a civil funeral in Paris, some time since, attended by a free·thinking society, a gentleman connected with the McAlI Mission was requested by some of these to speak at the grave. He did, emphasizing the vital truths of sin and redemption, and one man in the name of all then said to him: "Sir, we thank you; you have done us good. It is true that we have broken entirely with the' ceremonies of religion"-meaning, of course, the prevailing religion-" but these have nothing in common with what you have said to us. We approve it, and, like you, we are and shall remain religious men. "
-The Paris Society has in contemplation the establishment of a mission in French Oongo, and the assumption of our Presbyterian stations on the Gaboon. But it is embarrassed by a serious deficit in its funds. Some have suggested retrenchment of some of the missions already established. But the Society rightly refuses any such policy. It is willing to simplify and, in Lessuto and Tahiti, to urge on the converts a growing enlargement of their contributions, as well as to accept English help for the English territories of Lessuto and Zambesia. But, as the Oommittee says: "We have taken possession of our present fields only because we have believed that God was calling us to them, and nothing indicates that' He that openeth and no man shutteth, and shutteth and no man openeth,' invites us to give up to-day anyone of them. SU'ch an abandonment would not be calculated to draw down upon our new enterprises the blessing of God. Moreover, it is our deep-rooted conviction that it would bring no enlargement of resources for them, and would be dangerous for our Society itself, which would see its unity compromised on the day that it should disa,'ow that largeness of Ohristian interests which is one of its best traditions and one of its principal forces. "
-M. de Brazza has shown himself very helpful to the young French missionaries, Teisseres and Allegret, in their exploring tour through French Congo.
-The Quarterly Record, of the National Bible Society of Scotland, for October, 1891, has an article-" France Returning to the Bible." It cites M. Sorel an" independent critic" who. speaking from a strictly academic point of view, loudly proclaims it to be the Book of the people, and its dissemination a 'social duty. The Abbe Garnier is said to have exclaimed: "We have given up the Gospel! In trying to combat Protestantism we have overshot the mark, and have abandoned the Book of books, written by inspiration of God for our instruction and edification." A popular edition of the gospels in French, issned by him, under episcopal sanction, has the inscription: "Let France return to my Gospel." M. d'Hulst, Rector of the Oatholic Institute of France, deploring the present ignorance of the Bible in France, recalls the large use made of it in the Oatholic preaching of the seventeenth century. He declares the reservation of it to the clergy to be a novelty in the Ohurch,
INTERNATIONAL Dll::PARTMENT
n.-INTERNATIONAL DEPARTMENT.
EDITED AND CONDUCTED BY REV. ;T. T. GRACEY, D.D.
The Brussels Treaty and State-Building companied against our being dragged on ~he Oongo, into any of the t,erritorial complications, possible to arise among the powers who [EDITORIAL, ;T. T. G.] claim territorial jurisdiction on that Continent. We have no lot nor part, It can be Ii. matter of no little gratifi- nor do we want any, in the grab for cation to the bulk of the Christian pop- land in Africa. B~t we do want, and ulation of the United States that the now have, a part, though not to the Government has become a signatory to fullest extent, in the measures which the great treaty for the suppression of may be necessary for the suppression the salve·trade in Africa. The writer of the slaye.trade, the limitation of the of this article was from first to last in importation of fire-arms and of rum, not sympathy with the caveat which was only into the district of the Congo Free finally incorporated in the Senate's ac- State, but into the whole region over 'tion, to the effect that nothing they did, which this contract of the nations is should be held to imply that our Gov- meant to be felt-an area twice as great ernment beeame thereby a party to the as all Europe, with a population of 125,- compact of the European powers, for 000,000 souls. recognition of provisional governments or protectorates in the Dark Continent. Now that the action of the United We did not understand thereby that we States Government in ratifying the necessarily condemned those compacts Brussels Treaty calls attention afresh to and enterprises, but that our Govern- the Congo Free State, it may be well ment stood in no relation to that bl1.r- to ask how far it has become a bonafide gain which made it incumbent on it to state, and what are its prospects. That endorse or recognize it. It is well it is the most unique specimen of stateenough for us to recognize governments building known in history is true in in Africa when they are de facto, and not theory, but is the theory being materialprospective and provisional merely. ized, or likely to be? In noticing this The writer maintained this position at we may begin with its most vulnerable the International Missionary Union last point. Rev. Dr. Elyden is reported to summer, in the debate which preceded have said, in an after-dinner speech the adoption of their memorial to the down at Lagos, that the State was bank- Government at Washington. So far as rupt, and to have intimated that it was we now remember the Union had the only a question of time about its having first action of the kind. It earnestly to be abandonAd. We happen to be of asked that the several missionary soci- II wholly different opinion, and we proeties of the land would exert their rec- ceed to state some of the rellsons on ognized influence to secnre the ratifica- which that opinion is grounded. As to tion of the treaty by the Senate. There its exchequer, it is true that the immense is reason to think that the earnest action expenditure incident to the initial gov· of the American Board, and some other ernment had to be disproportioned to missionary boards, had great weight at its revenue. That was to be expected. Washington in the matter. We know To have saddled it with its cost would the missionary force in Africa, as else- have been suicidal. Thus in 1890 the where, will heartily rejoice at the out· tax of the State was not levied with a come. For all practical purposes for view to meeting more than one-fourth which the ratification by 'the United of the budget of expense. We all know States was desired, it loses no whit of how the remainder was provided for: force by the guard with which it is ac- the Belgian Government gave two·thirds of it and Leopold II., the King of the community for settlement of their own Belgians, Sovereign of the Free State, disputes. The Penal Code was comgave the other thiId. It is not antici- pleted in 1888, and a Superior Council pated that this is to be the permanent as well as a Court of Appeals has been course of meeting the deficit. The ex- erected. The central Government con' ports from the Free State in 1888 were sists of two departments, that of Foreign largely in exceSIl of those of 1887, and Affairs and Justice; the other of 1889 nearly doubled on 1888, and, again, Finance and Interior, which looks after 1890 almost doubled on that of 1889 ; police and transportation. There are and 1890 exhibited fifty per cent more officers of state, as follows: A Governorof imports than of exports. Now all General with a Vice-Governor-General, this indicates a wholesome growth of State Inspectors and three service mantrade, with prospects of a much better agers. revenue in the near future. But we have not to stop with this. The num- Now, if we go one step further we ber of ships enter~d at Banana showed shall see the possibilities which tempt a tonnage, in 1890, of more than the enterprise of the foreigner to co- 30,000 tuns in excess of 1888, and at operate for the development of the State, Bomo there were entered 22 ships of besides that furnished by this increased 25,995 tons in 1881, and these had in· security to property and order. Four creased to 52 ships with 69,096 tons in times as much of the river is open to 1890. Six Belgian Companies have navigation to-day as there was in 1885. been established in the Congo State The total river navigation now extends within the past four years. But there to over 1800 miles. in 1885 all the priis the local river portage also which has vate stations beyond Matadi-5 in allbeen greatly increased. The marine were those of missions; now, outside service has on the Lower Congo 7 steam- of government stations there are percraft besides 10 lighters and barges, and haps 100 such private establishments, the navigation stores have doubled in or stations on the river. two years. On the Upper Congo the government has 16 steam vessels and 7 It is possible that some of our readers lighters and 2 more vessels building. have already dropped off and have not The over 3060 troops, under 121 followed us thus far, but those who have officers, are divided among the twelve will be in position to form some appredistricts and constitute a strong police ciation of the importance of the acceptline of defence for the protection of ance of the signatory powers of the trade and the maintenance of good Brussels Treaty, which forever shuts order. This police service is telling out from this gigantic State both firewherever it extends, on the slave-traffic. arms and fire-water, Bnd also declares The carrier service along the cataracts for the suppression of the slave traffic from Matadi to Leopoldville has in- in this vast territory. creased nearly sevenfold since 1883, and since 1886 the postal matter has more But there is perhaps no force likely to than doubled, reaching about 75,000 make the slave trade inoperative more postage transmissions in 1890. The than the railroads which are prospected foreign population has quite trebled or building. The builders of the Congo since 1885. A land system is estab- Railroad are in the midst of their greatlished on a legal basis, which is thought est difficulties at the present moment. to afford all the guarantees furnished in Nine-tenths of their difficult engineering civilized communities. A judicial sys- problems meet them in the firAt fifteen tem is in full working, which is extended miles. They are, near Matadi, obliged over the Lower Congo, and, we are in- to blast rock for every yard of the confopued, il:l even attr~ctive to the native struction, and for three miles they have to cut through solid rock for the whole roadbed. In going up the Mposi Val- le~ the t~ck; 4alj to be carried across the river on bridges at every quarter of a Fifty Years in South Ohina. mile. The first five miles may be said to be completed, and by the end of this BY REV. JOHN G. FAGG, AMOY, OHINA. year the engineers expect to have all their bridges in place and to have a "No place in all the world compares completed road to the summit of the with the province of Fuhkien," is a cur- plateau at Palabala, and then they can rent Amoy proverb. Another proverb push on rapidly to Stanley Pool. The equally current is even more 'specific, significance of these rail schemes is two- " In all Fllhkien no place compares with fold-as bearing on the development of the districts of Ohangchiu and Ohin- trade, and as tending to the destruction Ohin." of the traffic in slaves. The African slave.hunter goes not so much for slaves If these proverbs are true, the Persian as for ivory; the man-hunting is inci- ParadiRe, or the North Pole Paradise or dental. He captures men in one place, both have issued a new edition of them- to trade them for ivory in another part selves on Celestial soil. of the country, and to secure them as carriers of his ivory to the coast. It The favorite character in the Ohinese does not require statement, that the rail language, the character for happiness, will be a competitor with the caravan is the leading one in the name of this for the transportation of ivory, which province. The sub-districts about Amoy the natives will soon recognize as more have the most mellifluous names- than a match for them. These rail-beds United Peace, Southern Peace, Peaceful are being built east and west, and it Harmony, Decided Peace, Southern will be only a question of time-and not Stillness. These sayings are not wholly a great time, either-when the man- figments of the imagination. Fern- capture will be superseded by a cheaper covered mountains, luxuriant valleys, mode of carriage. orange and mango groves, sugar-cane and banana plant~tions, endless rice We wish our Government at Washing- fields are enough to put the Amoy dis- ton, while it declares against territorial trict out of the lists of the Nazareth acquisition in Africa, would more fully regions of creation. recognize that we have, nevertheless, most important commercial interests to The grandiloquent titles of the sub- be looked after in that continent. If districts are titles only. There is no our word can reach far enough to influ- corresponding reality. The places with ence the case, we would like to heartily the sweetest names are the scenes of second the memorial of one of our perpetual discord, of constant fights boards of trade to the Postmaster- and brawls. General, to include in his ad vertisements for mail by coastwise steamers the car- Indeed, this region is no excepti0Il. to rying of the mail monthly, or twice a the rest of Ohina. It is a part o( the month, between our Atlantic coast and great moral wilderness co·extensive with the west coast of Africa. That is a the Empire. The year 1892 rounds out measure, which the writer urged on the fifty years of prayer and effort by the Government thirteen years ago, and he American Reformed Ohurch to reclaim has seen no moment since, when he did it for Ohrist. It was fifty years last not believe tbat the nation was suffer- February since the saintly Abeel turned ing loss by the neglect to make such the first furrow and sowed the first provision. handful of Gospel seed.
-There are already 1500 commuui- Amoy had been attack'ld by the Brit- cantR in the mission churches estab- ish forces in August, 1841, and the small lished along the Oongo by English and island of Kolongsu just opposite was • American missionaries. held by them. In the treaty ratified with Ohina soon lifter, Amoy was de- clared one of the open ports. Under the auspices of the American Board David Abeel had made two voyages of exploration among the Chinese settle- was formed. Both the American Rements in Java, Singapore, Siam, formed missionaries, and the English Borneo. He had preached and dis- Presbyterians, who had sent their first tributed books and tracts for a year herald, W. C. Burns, in 1850, were repamong the Chinese traders and sailors resented in this joint organization. at Bangkok. He had ministered at Not only was it a union presbytery, it intervals to the Chinese at Canton. No was a Chinese presbytery. It was an sooner was there a gleam of hope for the independent presbytery. It has conopening of Amoy to foreign trade and tinued so to this day. It has a constisettlement than Abeel embarked from tution of its own. It has drawn up Macao, and in six months after the standards for the Chinese Christian bombardment he had hired rooms on Church that is and that is to be. Its the island of Kolongsu and was preach. officers are native pastors. The foreign ing and administering medical aid. In missionaries are advisory members, 1844 William Pohlman and Elihu Doty, but with the full rights of regular memfrom the mission to the Chinese in bers. The foreign missionaries are not Borneo, eame to join AbeeI. Only a few amenable to this Presbytery, but remain months after their arrival Dr. Abeel, on members of their home Classes or Presaccount of long-protracted ill-health, byteries. was compelled to sail for the United States, where he died soon after. In Being one of the earliest efforts for 1816 the first converts, two old men church union and separate autonomy, from Amoy, were baptized. In 1848 the the home Church strongly opposed these first Protestant church edifice for the measures in successive Synods. But special and exclusive use of the Chinese many of the strongest opponents then are was built. A strongly. built brick struc- the warmest friends of the union and ture, it still stands, in all probability autonomy not/,. Dr. J. V. N. Talmage's the first Chiuese Protestant church. name will ever be remembered as the building in the Empire. It was built champion of the mission, both by word in faith. In 1850 there were only six and pen, in this most important dechurch-members in Amoy. But the parture from old lines. Thirty years church was built to accommodate three of happiest experience, of hearty en.' hundred. Ten years later the congrega. dorsement by native pastors and foreign tion was large enough to call for a sec- missionaries are sufficient testimony to ond organization and a new building in the wisdom of the steps then taken. another part of the city. In 1854, under the labors of Dr. W. C. Burns, the Evanqelism.-The policy of the misdistinguished Scotch evangelist and sion was indicated by Mr. Pohlman, in missionary to the Chinese, a gracious 1846, in these words. Urging the new revival refreshed the churches of Amoy missionary to be satisfied with nothing and a little compa~y of believers at a but correct and intelligible utterance, market town twenty miles inland. he says: "Be sure you are understood; Twenty-eight members-in those days then, preauh, preach, PREACH." " To considered a large accession- were ad- win souls to Christ, and to build up mitted to the church at Amoy. One of souls in Christ, " that is our prime work. the most touching appeals for more We have emphasized the "building foreign missionaries was sent to the up." We have sought to seek and save churches in the United States from a that which is lost. We have endeavored company of nine believers in that inland to feed the lambs and sheep. Not much market town. is to be hoped for from a scattered flock. The first church was organized In 1861 the first two native pastors in 1856. The first pastors were called were chosen and ordained ovel' the two in 1861. We have urged seJf:support. Amoy churches. In 1862 a presbytery We now have 9 self-supporting churches. The avel'age contribution per member for church purposes and find it a sealed volume without this new general benevolence last year was $3.25. verRion. This is not exceeded by any mission ill China. In 1891 we reported 9 na- Medical Work.-When our mission tive pastors, 18 helpers, 8 teachers, 23 was first founded the medical depart- preaching places, 855 members; con- ment was the strongest factor for a short tributions, $2900. time. In 1843 there were two regularly certified physicians – Drs. Cumming Education. -Our educational work is and J. C. Hepburn-connected with the carried on jointly with the English mission, and Dr. Abeel had studied Presbyterian Mission. In 1880 a Mid- medicine for the greater part of two dle School was started under joint man· years. Dr. Abeel left Amoy in 1844, agement. Last year a choice site on the Dr. Hepburn in 1845, Dr. Cumming in island of Kolongsu was purchased for 1847. This work was not taken up the school. Plans for the erection of a again until Dr. T. May King, an edunew, substantial building are maturing. cated Chinese lady-phy~ician, came to It is hoped the school may erelong Amoy in 1887, and Dr. J. A. Otto, a few blossom out into a vigorous academy or months after in January, 1888. well equipped college. Dr. Otto opened a hospital at Sio-ke, A new building for the theological a market town sixty ruiles from Amoy, seminary is now in process of erection. in 1889. Thirty-three hundred and fifty- Hitherto our educational work has been four patients were treated last year. The solely with a view to raising up compe- hospital proves itself a most valued tent teachers and preachers. There evangelistic agency, disarming preju- 8eems to be no immediate prospect of dice and bringing hundreds under departure from these lines. The ladies Christian influence. Ours has never maintain two girls' schools, a woman's been a large mission. Until 1888 there school, and children's home. were seldom or never more than three missionaries conversant with the Literature.-Owing to the widespread language, on the ground at the same ignorance of the Chinese character and time. We enter 1892 with the largest the great difficulty in mastering it, or force ever at Amoy-6 missionaries, 4 even getting a working knowledge of it, assistant missionaries, 4 single lady misthe Romanized colloquial has been sionaries. made a prominent feature in the education of the people. As early as 1853 a The day of Chinese redemption does booklet of simple Chinese sentences and not hasten. It is still a land of darkstories in Roman letters was published. ness and the shadow of death. For fifty A scholarly dictionary of the Amoy dia- years we have been heralding the dawnlect in the Romanized colloquial was ing of a better day. And we rejoice that prepared by Dr. Douglas, of the Eng- the people sitting in darkness are seeing lish Presbyterian Mission. The whole a great light. The streaks of light Bible has been translated in this version. shimmering on the horizon are shooting Our mission has coutributed its share higher and intensifying in brightness in bringing out school-books, cate· with every succeeding year. So we conchisms, hymn-books, Christian narra- tinue to watch and wait and work and ti,es and stories under this form. We pray for the coming of the all-illuminatjointly edit and publish a colloquial ing day. Monthly Ohurch Magazine which has a circulation of 600. No church in any -It is estimated that if the money of the three miasions at Amoy-London, spent for superfluities and luxuries in English Presbyterian, Reformed – but Christian lands were simply tithed it has a goodly number of readers of the would bring into the Lord's treasmy for Romanized colloquial. Hundreds who Christian work not less than four hunnow find the Bible an open book would dred million dollars. A Glance at Burma. land, the Methodists, and the Baptists ; but they are not dependent on us for BY PROFESSOR D. C. GILMORE, BAPTIST the Gospel in the ~ame sense that the heathen are. They also speak the Vel'· COLLEGE, RANGOON, BURMA. naculars. When themselves Christians, they can, and in many cases do, work In order to have any correct idea of faithfully and intelligently for the con· the missionary situation in Burma one version of the native population. And must have some idea of the ethnological they do this, unemployed by any mis· situation. Burma is the home of many sionary body, out of pure love for Christ different races and tribes. The Ameri. and those for whom He died. Thus, can Baptist Mission Press handles books in the centres of English population in ten or a dozen different languages. there begins to be a work done in the evangelization of the heathen by the To understand this state of things English.speaking population of the you must imagine a fertile and thinly country entirely at its own charges. settled land, situated between two over· crowded countries. What will be its This bids fair largely to increase in fate? It will be overrun by successive amount and efficiency. Thus the work hordes of immigrants from these two of the American missionary societies will countries. Such a land is Burma, lying be extended and supplemented with no between China on the northeast and In· increase in their expenditure; thus, too, dia on the west. As a result Burma has their fostering care of the English.speak. been overrun by race after race and has ing churches will react most favorably now an extremely diversified popula. upon their proper work among the na· tion. We find comfortably domiciled tives; and a long step will be taken here Burmans, Karens, Shans, Chins, toward the time when the Christian Kachins, Talaings, to mention only the forces of Burma will suffice unaided for more important. I shall say little of the evangelization of Burma. these races, as they have been long settled in Burma, and are more or less The English Baptist Church in Ran. known among students of missions. goon, through its members, does mis· But I wish to call attention to the fact sionary work in Rangoon, in Burmese, that this tendency to immigration con· Hindustani, Tamil, and Telugu. And it tinues unabated·-to tell you that Burma pays the expenses of its work, too. is even now receiving a large influx of population from China and a tremen· I have referred to the great influx of dous one from India. And I wish to Chinese into Burma. From their own point out the possible influence of these overcrowded land they pour into ours. facts on missions in Burma. In Rangoon the greater part of the artisan work and much of the commerce But before doing this I would call at- is in their hands. In Upper Burma, tention, in passing, to what ,may be de. where they are naturally more plentiful, veloped into an important missionary a friend informs me that they monopoforce-the large and increasing Eurasian lize the commerce. Does this necessipopulation. 'These people, of mixed tate the establishment of Chinese mis. European and Asiatic parent,age, are in sions in Burma? Hardly. A China. many respects well fitted to act as a con· man seldom comes to Burma with the necting link between the Christian intention of settling permanently, Anglo.Saxon race and the heathen though he may do so ultimately. He Asiatic races. They speak English. therefore brings no family with him. If Christian work is carried on among he wants a wife he marries a Burman them by ,themselves and by some of the woman. His children may possibly pure English, very much as Christian talk a little Chinese, his grandchildren work i~ carried on in our own country. certainly will not. Hence there is no Certain missionary help they need !lnd tendency permanently to introduce the are receiving from the Church of Eng. Chinese language into Burma. The in- tion, though the mlsslonaries on the fusion of the Chinese blood will, in the field are keenly alive to it. We can long run, be felt ma.inly in the greater build for the future in few more solidity and steadiness which it will im- effectual ways than by reaching these part td the Burmans. Some of our people; and they must be reached most intelligent and faithful mission through their own languages, not workers are of OhinoBurmese stock. through the Burmese. They intermarry There is another aspect of Ohinese im- but little with the Burmans. They migration which must be noticed_ With bring over their own women, marry the progress of evangelization in Ohina, among themselves, and teach their chil- . Ohinese immigrants might become a dren their own language. As a consevaluable force in Ohristianizing the Bur- quence the Tamil, Telugu, and Hindumans. stani languages are being permanently introduced into Bmma; and the per- A more important and far-reaching manent introduction of these languages fact is the rapidity with which the would seem to warrant the vigorous Kulahs-that is, the natives of India, pushing of mission work in them. chiefly Tamils and Telugus-are pouring into Burma. An East Indian hates Between the advance of these races a sea voyage; yet so great is the over. and the great uprising of the Karens, crowding in India that every steamer the Burmans are being steadily pushed which comes across to Burma is loaded into the background. They are disapto its utmost capacity with immigrants. pearing from the cities. Whether they What the amount of immigration will are dying out of Burma I should not be when the projected railway from In- venture to say. In any case, there is dia to Burma has given us cheap, easy, no ground for diminution of missionary and rapid transportation, one cannot effort in their language. For the Bureven guess_ The Tamils and Telugus mese language lives and spreads. It is are the laborers of Burma, for the in- the language of the country, officially digenous races do little labor except recognized as such by the Government. in agriculture_ The Mohammedans Al! the races of India, however tenafrom the north of India are the great ciously they may cling to their own traders of Southern Burma. Rangoon languages, tend to speak more or less is no longer a Burman city, it is an Burmese as a secondary language. A Anglo-Indian city. The future of Burma few of them even know Burmese better is inseparably bound up with that of than their own languages. How comthe Indian Empire, and its population pletely the Ohinese get Burmanized I is becoming more and more Indian. have already shown. Shans and Karens also are found who speak Burmese as a Obviously, if the future of Burma is vernacular, notwithstanding their own to be Ohristian we must lose no time in proper tongues. Indeed, there is a gengrappling seriously with the Kulahs. eral tendency among the Karens to Something is done. There are a num- speak Burmese very well indeed. ber of Kulah Ohristians, some converted here, some in India; and many or these In this general knowledge of Burmese do noble work for the Master. Mem- by the Karens we see a sign of great bers of English-speaking churches do promise in the evangelization of Burma_ more or less_ Some work is done by The Karens show the greatest zeal in the Methodists and Baptists of America; preaching the Gospel to their own race. by the Lutherans: by the Ohurch of The Sgau Karens at Bassein and England; also by Rome. But the im- Henzada have resolved, at their last portance, and, by consequence, the annual gatherings, to carry the Gospel needs of this part of Burma's popula. to every heathen Kar'en 1,il/age in their distion are increasing in a way of which tricts. As far as they are concerned, Christians in America have no concep- the great condition antecedent to Christ's coming will be soon fulfilled. General Li Hung Ohang. The Karena have also done grand foreign [J. T. G.] missionary work among the non-Bur- mese races of Burma. They have not We do not publish an illustrated mag.
as yet attempted to preach the Gospel azine, but we have thought it might to the Burmans, who are their hereditary afford our readers peculiar pleasure enemies, and by whom they have for at this time to have a representation generations been despised. of the foremost native of Asia, who is Now, however, their missionaries are filling at this hour a large place in the urging them to preach to the Burmans. public affairs of the civilized world. Our They know the language well; they live cut represents him as he appeared when among the Burmans, and their progress some bix years younger than he is now- in education, civilization, and prosperity he is at present about sixty-eight years is beginning to earn them the respect of age. He is described as a large man, of the Burmese. bold of mien, with a handsome cast of It is hard for a Karen to regard it as countenance, though now growing possible that Burmana should listen to wrinkled and otherwis& jooking old.
his preaching; but the counsels of the He is Viceroy of Chihli and Prime Min- missionaries are having their effect. ister of the Empire. R.ev. Mr. Hykes The Henzada Karens have resolved to in last month's REVIEW reminded us make the experiment; and some of us that General Grant esteemed him one confidently expect to see the day when, of the three great men of the world with as Dr. Mabie said, in Rangoon, " The whom "there were none to compare,"
Karen race, with the Burmese language, Gladstone and Bismarck being the other will be the great evangelizing force in two of this triad. We need not recount Burma." his life story at this time. It is very Such are a few of the forces which well known. He has been suspected seem likely, in the near future, to be of sympathy with the rioters in the late decisive ill our Burman mission work. disturbances, so far as they clamor for Now. if you would ask what is our great- the expulsion of the Tartar dynasty.
est need, I would say, " Not men, and Perhaps that is not without ground.
not money; but a fuller possession of He is himself a native of China. Years the native Christians by the Holy ago he was asked to place himself at the Ghost." Many of the missionaries in head of a new party, the object of which Burma seem led to feel very deeply on was to displace the Manchu Government this subject, and to pray very earnestly by one distinctly Chinese. He said the for an outpouring of God's Spirit. We two factions of the court were too evenly want a "revival of religion," such as balanced to justify revolution at that you have in America -and we want it to time. He has, however, never ceased begin (as all true revivals do) in the to be looked upon as in sympathy with hearts of the Christians-for we in no· the revolutionary party. He is said to wise separate ourselves from our native be enormously wealthy, his fortune brethren in this. If the Ohristians of being estimated, by some who claim to this land were more sensitive and re- know, at $50,000,000.
sponsive to the leadings of God's Spirit, At Tientsin, where he sits as and more filled with the joy of His sal- Governor-General of the province as vation, I feel that sinners would, in far well as Foreign Minister and Inspector- greater number, be converted unto Him. General of the fleet and Generalissimo Pray for us. • of the army, Li Hung Chang lives in a -It is said that during thA first six state becoming his rank, but his habits months of 1891, 21,000 copies of the pub- are marked by some asceticism, though lications of the Bible Society were sold probahly no more than is to be looked in Rome and its environs. for in. an. old man of enfeebled diges. GENERAL LI HUNG CHANG.
tion. A feature of Tientsin is the hos- solid force did not number one half as pital which Li Hung Chang erected and many as the foreign missionaries the endowed as a memorial of the superiority Buddhists had in China at the period of English medical skill as displayed in we name. the treatment of his own wife by the English pbysician, Dr. Mackenzie, who -The writer will surely never forcalled to his assistance Miss Dr. Howard, get the pleasure with which he first of the Methodist Mission, and in recog- gazed on the benignant face of Bishop nition of which service, Lady Li pro- Crowther down on the West coast of vided hospital apartments at her own Africa in 1877, nor the delightful and charges, for the Methodist lady doctor. profitable interviews which he had with one who was easily the most conspicu- -By an infelicity of expression in the ous native of Africa from Senegambia Monthly Concert of last month we to St. Paul de Loanda. We had long seemed to say that China received from been familiar with the weird story of India 3000 Buddhist missionaries in one his marvellous life, and had therefore year. We did not wish to make the im- the keenest delight in personal friendpression that they all went thither in one ship with the strangely interesting year; neither do we wish to lose the man. And now that it falls to us to force of the fact that at the beginning record his death, we do it with someof the .sixth century there were three thing of the feeling of having lost a perthousand Indians in China propagating sonal friend, with whom we had been their religion, while all the Protestant much more and intimately associated, churches of all the world could npt, at than was the case. We need not now the close of 1890, count six hundred repeat the story of the strange life of missionaries in that vast country. In- Adjai. In the January number of THE cluding the wives of missionaries and MISSIONARY REVIEW for 1890 will be single ladies who are missionaries the found an admirable likeness of the great chief of the English Church on the gentleman of Massachusetts, whose Niger as we knew him, and also an ex- name he subsequently received; educellent sketch of him, which will be well cated at Andover College; employed as worth re-reading at this time. translator for the Embassy from his own country to America; with them exam- -The" American BoarclAlmanac" is ining' the educational institutions and always within touch in our office. We scientific appliances of America and would be lonely without it. It is not Europe; returning to his native coundevoted to "Old Probabilities," but is try and establishing the now famous full of statements of facts about mis- and powerful Doshisha College ; dying sions. It costs but 10 cents. before he was fifty, having exerted a mighty moulding influence on the in- -" A Portfolio of Programmes" for stitutions and men of his country-all Missionary meetings of Christian En- this marks a wonderful career. Neesima deavor Societies, which is suggestive was everywhere and at all times the same and bright, has been gotten out by their saintly, manly, progressive, and earnest publishing department at Boston. Christian; respecting himself without egotism and gaining the respect of his -" Princess Dandelion's Secret," by opponents without sycophancy or com- Martha Burr Banks (D. D. Merrill Co., promise, and he will stand out in history St. Paul), is declared by some young as one of the most conspicuous men in lady critics to whom we submitted it the renaissance of Japan. " a very charming missionary story."
_co A Winter in India and Malaysia International Missionary UnioD. among the Methodist Missions," by Rev. Dr. Knox (Hunt & Eaton, New The next session of the International York), Bishop Hurst says is so well written, so full of life and movement, Missionary Union will be held at Clifton and has so sprung out of the very experience and needs of the pastor at Springs, N. Y., June 8th-15th. It home, that they who read will hardly cease until they reach the end. There promises to be a very interesting meetis a great amount of accurate and interesting information in this book which ing. A new feature will be the delivery is fresh. and told so naturally that it is pleasant reading. of several set lectures by persons com- -We have from the press of Hough- petent to give counsel and knowledge ton, Mifilin & Co. "The Life and Letters of Joseph Hardy Neesima," by of signal importance to missionaries. Arthur Sherburne Hardy. The author has so deftly done his work that the R JV. Dr. Mabie, Secretary of the Bapbook is well.nigh an autobiography. It is a fascinating tale. Everybody knows tist Board, will tell of his observations of Neesima, one may say, so widely has the fame of the little Japanese stowaway in his Round the World Trip among the spread over the world. The young lad, teaching Japanese to a Russian Bishop; Missions. Dr. Cyrus Hamlin will lechidden under vegetables and smuggled ture on Bulgaria and the Bulgarians. on board a ship for China at the peril Dr. A. P. Happer on Forty-seven Years of his life in the event of discovery; in China, and some others will probfloating, by a singular providence, into ably be added to this list. Dr. Thaythe home of an admirable Christian er, of Clifton Sanitarium, formerly of the missionary force of Turkey, will conduct one entire session on medical missionR with the aid of other medical mISSIOnaries. Dr. E. P. Dunlap. of Siam, will in one session conduct a symposium, drawing out special in- formation about eight or ten fields from as many missionaries. Dr. .Tames Mudge will organize a whole session on the relation of the missionary to the stimulation of the Rome Church. Special provision is being made for the entertainment of other than mission- aries at a cost of $6 to $8 ,per week. All missionaries are urged to come and will be entertained free.
EDITORIAL NOTES ON CURRENT TOPICS
1II.-EDITORIAL NOTES ON CURRENT TOPICS.
A Voice from Ohina. truth is not a thing of a day. A Chris- There is no more satisfactory reply to tian visited his home, some five miles the question, " Are Mission Converts a from the city, and was very warmly re- Failure?" than the accounts of the prog- ceived, and we learn from this city visit ress of the Gospel received direct from that the inquirer's wife was also in the foreign field. We publish the fol- favor of the Gospel. lowing letter as giving many evidences that God is working with His servants, Thank God, as another result of the and will not suffer His Word to retUlm meetings, and in answer to prayer, He unto Him void : has bestowed blessing on the native Christians, and the way has opened up for them to engage in Christian work CHIN CHU FU, SoUTH CHE.KIANG, which, in a large measure, helps to September 1, 1891. maintain their spirituality. Again, I It is very pleasing and encouraging would urge special prayer on behalf of when inroads, however small, are made these Christians – they have much to upon the kingdom of Satan, especially contend with·-for, as you may imagine, in this land, where his power is so well it is not an easy thing to stand up in the known and felt. midst of their own people-themselves Entering the central part open to vis· once heathen-and day by day testify itors of the house now rented by the not only by word but by life for Christ.
Mission, some three months ago, one It means the need of a strength far be- would have seen a picture representing yond their own, and which, if they are three gods, and to the left of it 0. large to stand, must daily be perfected in ancestral tablet – both the objects of their weakness.
heathen worship. Now, thank God, Perhaps there is another evidence we there is 0. change; in their place there might take of God working in our midst.
hang the Ten Commandments, written It is said, when a good work is going in large Chinese characters, and two on the devil is busy. A little time ago Chinese tracts pointing out the way of there was written on one of the walls of salvation, not to speak of other tracts, a magistrate, "Don't believe the some pictures, and two large Bcrolls foreigner." Thank God it has done us around the hall, which betoken that 0. no harm, whatever good may result.
very thorough change has taken place- The devil generally defeats himself.
0. change that might make all heaven One thing we know, if the work be of and earth rejoice-for where once the God it cannot come to naught. It idol and ancestral tablet were worship. never has and it never shall. " J eSllS ped, may now be seen the worshipping shall see of the travail of His soul and be of the only living and true God. satisfied. "
For some three weeks now meetings On Lord's Day, 31st ult., rwas at an have been held each evening, except on out·station-Oii-and had the joy of say- Saturdays, and we have much reason to ing 0. word for the Master, God helping thank God for the number who have me above my expectation. The preachheard the Gospel. Those who corne are ing of the Gospel was commenced in chiefly of the poorer class, reminding this station about nine months ago, and one of the words, "To the poor the thank God it has continued ever since. Gospel is preached." About three As a result of the work there are four weeks ago we had the joy of speaking baptized converts and, it is believed, to an inquirer, who had, we believe, there are fourteen more who believe on unrest of soul. He has since come again the Lord Jesus, and add to this the deto hear the Word, and brought two sire on the part of others to hear the oth(lrs with him. so th&t hilj desire IItfter Word-leaving their work in their fields that they might h~ar the Gospel ye into all the world and preach the preached-an unu$ual thing on the part Gospel to every creature," may there be of the many. the loving response, " Here am I, Lord, That the faith of these Christians send me where Thou wilt, and do Willl is real may be seen from this fact. It me as Thou wilt."
is well known that the besetting sin Yours, in the coming Lord, of the many is money; so when the W. J. GILMER.
tax-gatherer comes round the farmer As has been stated formerly, the edidoes all he can to avoid paying his tors do not hold themselves responsible dues. But not so with these Christians. for, and cannot always fully endorse, the I believe, this year, instead of trying to personal views of contributors to the evade him or avoid paying as formerly, columns of the REVIEW, but they seek they plainly asked the amount due and as far as possible to present trustworthy said they were willing to pay. information and leave their readers to form their own opinions, moulded by For this work and that in the city their individual experience and judgmight we request earnest prayer that ment. God would graciously perfect what He has begun in stirring up the Christians Systematic Self-Denial, even more, so that they may become really aggressive, and that many in city The Doncaster "Do-Without" Mis- and country may be gathered into the sionary Society is a new organization to fold. The difficulties to the advance_ promote self.denial for the cause of ment of Christ's Kingdom are many, and Christ, did we look to them " the hands would ,. When the Saviour was upon earth, soon hang down, and the knees grow a centurion one day said to Him, ' I say feeble ;" but, thank God, we need not, unto one' soldier, 'Go, and he goeth.'
for" Who art thou, 0 great mountain: But the humiliating fllct now stares us before Zerubbabel tho11 shalt become II in the face that the Lord Jesus Christ plain." Yes, before the true Zerubbabel does not find such ready obedience in our glorious, IIll.conquering Lord, His followers. His {lomma;p.d, • Go ye heathen nations shall yet bow lind into all the world and preach the Gospel "crown Him Lord of all." to every creltture,' is still printed in May we urge more prayer, that God every Bible that leaves the press, but would graciously seud out many more for one church. member that goes to the workers to this land to pro(1laim a foreign field 4999 stay at home. We Saviour's love. We rejoice to know sing, 'Onward, Christian soldiers, that some are coming out this year from marching as to war,' but somehow or England. Oh, that many more, clothed other scarcely any of us do march. with the Divine Spirit, may come! Agltin, I would say, there are ten citieR " God has clearly blocked the way for in this district, not to speak of mltny some; others are not fit for the work, but there must be many thousands of towns and Yillages still waiting to be young men and women wilfully missing 'eyangeJized, and this, too, in one of the the inexpressible privilege and honor oldest worked provinces in China. of being Christ's ambasoodors to the Oh, if there be anyone who hears heathen,"
these words and who, maybe, God has How great is the neei! of workmen!
called to work out here, delay not to .. Thibet has 6.000.000 inhabitants; obey the Divine call, for by your delay Manchuria, 12,000.000 ; Nepaul, 2,000,- souls may be eternally lost who might 000; Hun!lJl, 16,000,000, and Kwangsi, otherwise be saved did they hear the 5,000,000. trithoul a sinl/le missionary words of life from your lips in time. ..fatinn, One i!iAtTi~t in North West In- To the command of our Lord, ,. Go dia has 6,000,000, and only three European mIssIonaries. The state of fold. Africa, India, Australia, and Bhopal has 10,000,000, and only two America all received evangelists from missionaries. the Hermansburgh Church, and the more she gave the richer she grew; the "The 'Do·Without' Society was more she obeyed Christ, the more He formed last year, for the express pur- blessed her. So it will always be. pose of sending out and supporting Selfishness withers the soul." Let us evangelists in heathen lands, and by push for the regions beyond. every possible means spreading the Gos- pel in 'the dark places of the earth.' " Thy Kingdom come" is the daily Being formed in connection with the prayer of many; but, reader, what are Young Men's Christian Association. and you doing to hasten it? "The fields are the Railway Mission, it is unsectarian, white already to harvest;" "the har- and works with the established mis- vest truly is great, but the laborers are sionary societies. few; pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that He send forth laborers "So far, the sympathies of the So- into His harvest." ciety have been chiefly directed toward China's millions, but they are not con- The triune Jehovah asks, "Who will fined to that country, for India and go for us 1" Will you, Christian reader, Africa are not forgotten. from your heart pray on your knees, " Hefe am I ; send me 1" " There are now more than 400 mem- bers, who are expected to pray every On the same subject we publish a let- day for God's blessing on the Society, ter advocating a more general and or- and on each evangelist; and every week ganized body of Christians, who are willto ' do without' something they really ing to renounce self to advance the like, and give through one of the twelve cause of Christ. colleetora, atleast a penny a week, with· out reducing their regula~ offerings. By 15 STOKE ROAD, GUILDFORD, special gifts and regular contributions November 30, 1891. upward of $850 have been received this year. DR. PIERSON: DEAR SIR : I write to you asking for your opinion on a pro. •, Two or more missionaries are likely posed week of self-denial in >IIid of to go this year, so that a large increase foreign missionary societies. My idea of members is required, and Christians is that one week be put apart for the who cannot possibly go themselves special object, and that general commit. ought to count it a privilege to send tees be formed in London, New York, their own representatives to the and Melbourne who should draw up an heathen. appeal and insert in religious papers and generally circulate. Helpers should "If the 'Do – Without' principle- be asked to assist in personally circulat. prayer and fasting -were adopted by ing the papers, and leaving them at every church, Y. M. C. A., Y. W. C. A. friends' houses and calling for them and Adult School, within two years in a few days. The money should go to thousands of missionaries would be sent any Christian missionary society that , to the uttermost part of the earth.' In the giver may wish to notify, or to a thirty yeftrs the little Hermansburgh special self-denial band of young men Church-composed exclusively of poor and women that may be formed. fafmers, peasants and laborers-had no less than 357 missionaries in the foreign This is, of course, only an outline, field. These were working in thirty but I shdnld be delighted to draw up a stations and had 12,000 heathen gath- more comprehensive and complete ered around them. The home parish form. I believe it might be made the enjoyed one long revival throughout the means of getting thousands of pounds life of Pastor Harms, and 10,000 mem- for this tremendous work and, wh~t bers were successively gathered into its would be still better, would rouse pub_ tirement, in the last seven years of his lic opinion about it in a practical sense. Of course, I do not think it would be life, he did as much work of this kind very big the first year, but surely if the Salvation Army, composed mainly of as in any other seven years of his life. poor people, can raise so much by a single week of self·sacrifice for their He was a delegate to the great mis· Lord, the middle and upper classes can do something of a similar nature. sionary conference held in Exeter Hall, Yours truly, London, in 1888, and read a paper on JOHN R. WILLIAMSON. " The Place of Education in Missionary Notes about Dr. Turner, late of Samoa, who died May, 1891. Work. " His published works are, He was a prince among missionaries. "Nineteen Years in Polynesia," and It was fifty.one years in the month of August last since he went out to the " Samoa a Hundred Years Ago." He New Hebrides, and Tanna was the sta. tion he went to, thirteen years before was strong in character, strong in varied Mr. Paton. He was only there for six months when he was obliged to fly from intellectual gifts, strong in the sympathe island, with his wife and another missionary, to Samoa. The party took thetic tenderneSS of his nature, singuto sea in an open boat, not knowing whether they should ever reach the larly modest and unassuming, someisland of Samoa. Just after they started a frightful storm arose and their boat what reservetl in manner, of a most was driven back to Tanna. Just then, most providentially, a ship came in affectionate disposition and firm in all sight, who~e errand was to find out if any missionaries were on the island, alive Ohristian doctrine; clever with his or dea/l This was a merciful deliver. ance for them in answer to their hands as well as his head, and most prayers. The ship took them to Samoa, and Dr Turner was privileged to labor methodical in all his works and ways. on that island from the year 1844 to 1883. He organized a native college at Would there were many more like him, MalU1~, and trained a goodly number of young men and women in the knowl. possessed of such sterling qualifies and edge of the Ohristian religion, who have gone out among the islands and helped ready to go forth to the same honorable to Ohristianize and civilize their brethren. work. O. E. D.
Very few missionaries have done so OSBORNE BANK, EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND, much literary work for the islands in translating fot' them not only the blessed August. 1891. Bible, which he did four times over, so that it is now considered a perfect An Earnest Oall for Immediate Help. translation, but many other books, such as commentaries, histories, and educa. .It will be remembered that some tional books for use in the college. And months ago The Transit and Building Fund Society, of Bishop Taylor's self· it is worthy of :note *hat <luring his reo supporting missions, called for $50,000 to erect churches and parsonages in Chili, S. A., whel'e we have so good a mission foundation laid. We have the sttti'1faction to announce that $15,000 of that amount has been contributed, and that many preachers and teachers have offered themselves for the work. The present is the most favorable mo· ment to purcbase ground in Chili. The war and the pressure for money have 80 reduced the price of land that much can be done with small capital; this with the extraordinary openings for evangel. ical work press our missionaries to call for means to respond to these denmnds and make the most of these providential advantages. All things, however ad· verse in themselves, work together for good to ihem that love the Lord. We have a gratifying illustration of this Divine truth in the troubled condition of affairs in Chili. The attendance in Itlss men to indllstry and waste places our schools is diminished antlliving is to fruitfulness; whereas, when spent on high, bm no hostility to our work is de- luxuriolls livil1g and equipage, a smaller velopeJ. Our missionaries being wisely l1umber oj' beneficiaries at high wages non-political and engaged in a pursuit are employed mostly in building up be- universally regarded as uplifting to the fore the eyes of emulolls aspirants in nation, both parties are our friends. every grade of society an extravagant We hope to be able to send out ten standard of living that already lltmins missionaries by April 1st. It will be the ability and the integrity of every necessary to have $5000 to put them to individual link in the social chain, work in their field of labor. After from the millionaire down to the me- reaching there, self-support is at once chanic, and tantalizes the laboring class assured. Hitherto the Lord has helped with a display of splendid waste that us through His faithful followers, and mocks their poverty and exasperates we know He will do so now. them to blind rage against property and Contributions may be sent to Richard the institutions that protect it.
Grant, Treasurer, 181 Hudson St.reet, Brethren, glut your desires more or New York. ASBuny LOWnEY. less if you must, but away with the im.
pudent pretext of usefulness in so One of the Refuges of Lies." doing! "The hail shall sweep away the refuges of lies." W. C. C.
There are Bome pleas for the appro· priation of Christian wealth to selfish The New Australian Mission. indulgences, great or small, which, how.
ever unworthy. are not essentially dis. Rev. J. 'faylor Hamilton, Secretary of ingenuous. But this cannot be said the" Society for the Propagation of the of the pretext of doing good by a munifi- Gospel" of the :Woravian Church at Beth.
cent employment of labor and art in the lehem, Pa., kindly furnishes us with the service of the luxury and pride of life. following interesting facts in regard to No person who plea ds this excuse for di. the work lately started in Australia: verting supplies from a perishing world "The Federal Mission to the abo- to the indulgence of his own lusts, rigines of North Queensland, for which coarse or fine, can help know that along the Presbyterians of Australia supply with this awful sin he is also not enlarg- the means and the Moravian Church ing but diminishing his employing the missionaries, has been fairly start· munificence and, to a large extent, di- ed at the mouth of the Batavia B.iver, verting it from the classes at once most Cape York Peninsula, with good pros.
useful and most needy to uses superflu. pects of success. An excellent house ous or even harmful, without giving to has been built, and about forty acres of labor a single day's wages that would land cleared, and sweet potatoes, ba.
not be given both to labor and to Christ nanas, and cocoanuts planted. The if the money were put into Christian missionaries, Rev. James Ward and work. In the latter case the money wife. who gave up a congregation in the would support a larger number of men North of IrelBnd, where they had been and families on the modest pay and in serving acceptably for soveral years, and the purely useful labors of missionaries, the Rev. Nicholas Hey, a recent gradu.
evangelists, Bible printers and distribu· ate of the Moravian Missionary Insti.
tors, producers and carriers of all kinds tute, were in good spirits at last ac· of necessaries for the work and the counts. in spite of their isolation in a sustenance of such laborers, and with tropical country in the midst of savages an absolutely incalculable addition to reputed to be cannibals. The latest the productive and paid labor of the tidings bear Mte of December 23d, world through the redemption of worth. 1891."
THE MONTHLY CONCERT OF MISSIONS
IV.-THE MONTHLY CONCERT OF MISSIONS.
]Jy REV. D. L. LEONARD.
Mexioo, Central Amerioa, amI the West low-lying plains along the coast, and Indies. whose general elevation is from 4000 to 8000 feet, Then from this table-land " In form Mexico is shaped like a cor- vl}rious mountain ranges rise to 12,000 nucopia whose mouth opens toward feet and upward, at least ten extinct the United States. As seen on the map volcanoes surpassing 15,000, and some, it hangs as a receptacle below the great like Orizaba and Popocatepetl, ap- sister republic, and not as a ripening proaching 18,000. Not a river is to be fruit above, destined to fall into its pos- found of any considerable value for nav- session." These sentences suggest why igation. Silver is Mexico's prime pro- American Christians should feel a duction. A metaliferous belt of ex- special interest in this their near neigh. traordinary richness extends 1200 miles bor upon the southwest, with whom southeastward from Sonora to Oajaca. also we are drawn year by year into Zacatecas is the leading silver state. It closer commercial relations. Sir Ed- is estimated that from all these mines, win Arnold 'Would reject the idea since 1540, not less than $3,000,000,000 contained in the " cornucopia," for in have been taken, or considerably more glowing prophecy he tells· of the day than one half of the world's supply. certain to dawn when these two nations will be one. The population numbers 11,632,000, and is composed of Spaniards, 2,200,- New Spain, the Mexico of former 000; Indians, 4,420,000, and about days, was a viceroyalty of imperial pro- 5,000,000 a mixture of the two. The portions, extending along the Pacific Indians of Mexico differ widely from from the Isthmus of Panama to Puget the aborigines of this country and Sound. But two thirds of this vast ter- British America, being far more peace. ritory was lost by the separation of Cen- able, docile, and industrious. This, tral America, the secession of Texas, and however, may result in large part from the war with the United States in 1845- the rigid diSCipline of three hundred 47. The present'Brea is about 750,000 years received under Castilians and the square miles, or one fourth that of the Catholic Church. For long generations Union, Alaska not included. The ex. they were esteemed only for their silvertreme length is 1900 miles upon the producing capacity for the benefit of the western side, while the width varies Crown, and by a ruthless system were from ]000 miles at the north to but 130 distributed to the plantations and the at the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. mines. And, whether held to hard ser. Though the coast-line stretches out to vice above ground or below, their conalmost 6000 miles it is broken by but dition was but little better than that of few bays or inlets, and affords only slaves. In order to know the ignorance three or four good harbors. The boun- and general degradation of the mass of daries lie between 15° and 33° north the people we have but to become aclatitude; the Tropic of Cancer divides quainted v.ith the same class in Southern the land into two nearly equal parts, and California, Arizona, lind New Mexico. thus one half is contained in the temperate and one half in the torrid zone. The earliest European settlements were founded almost a century before But the climate is determined less by the first upon our Atlantic coast, And distance from the Equator than by cer- Spanish domination lasted just three tain features of the relief of the land- hundred years, or from the death of mass. The surface of Mexico consists Guatemozin, in 1521, to the departure mainly of a plateau to which the ascent sf the last viceroy. in 1821. The be· is quite abrupt and by terraces frg~ the . ginnings of the struggle for indepen- sion. No priest dares to wear a cassock dence, in 1808, were curiously connected in public, and in politics the clergy are with the Napoleonic wars. But when powerless, while parish schools are pro- that revolution had reached a successful hibited." termination another long and dreary period followed of confusion and strife, Though it may well be that the orig- though, on the whole, with steady and inal inhabitants of Mexico received important gains for liberty and national some benefit from their long and inti- prosperity. In 1857 a liberal constitu- mate association with a superior race, tion was adopted, which after radical and from the partial fusion which re- revision, in 1873-74, is now the organic sulted therefrom, certain it is that the law. Mexico is a federal union modelled religion introduced and perpetuated by after our own, and so with a supreme the conquerors has lifted them but lit- central authority is coupled local inde- tle above their former estate of heathen- pendence. The confederated states ism. With a thin varnish of Christian number twenty-seven, with two territo- names and forms, the grossest ignorance ries and a federal district. These sub- and superstition and moral corruption divisions vary in size from Chihuahua, abound. 'foo many, even of the clergy, with 83,700 square miles, to Tlaxala, are drunken and licentious. As an.im- with but 1600, and the Federal District, portant step toward better things a pub- with 463, and in population from lic school system was long since estab- Jalisco, 1,160,000, to Colima, with 70,- lished, and as far back as 1886 there 000. Among large cities the capital were in existence 11,000 primary contains 330,000 inhabitants, Guadala- schools with 600,000 pupils, and it was jara, 95,000, and Puebla, 78,000. estimated that not far from 2,500,000 persons could read and write. The revolution of 1808-21 meant far more than mere casting off subjection Missionary work did not begin beto the Spanish Crown; it also involved yond the Rio Grande until within the overthrow of the native Castilian twenty-five years, though Miss Melinda aristocracy and the ascent of the ple- Rankin and Rev. Mr. Thompson had beian Indiltns to their place, as well as earlier crossed the border with the Gosthe end of the tyrannical and demoraliz- pel. In 1869 Rev. Henry A. Riley ening sway of the Catholic Church. Un- tered the city of Mexico and found the til 1857 no other faith was tolerated. harvest ripe. He purchased, at a nom- The Jesuits had been supreme, and the inal price. an old and famous church Inquisition was an honored institution. which had lately been confiscated, and One third of the real estate of the coun- ever since it has been used for Protestry was in the hands of the priesthood, tant services. In 1872 the Presbyterians and one half of the city of Mexico is said sent three men and four women to octo have consisted of churches, convents, cupy San Luis Potosi and Zacatecas, and and other ecclesiastical structures. The later entered the capital city. Next year law of 1857 securing religious lib- the Methodist EpiRcopal Church sent orty remained for years a dead letter, its representatives to take and hold variand it was not until after Maximilian ous strategic points; the Methodist was dethroned and executed, in 1867, Episcopal Church, South, began to lay that the victory was really achieved. foundations the same year, and the All ecclesiastical orders were sup- American Board in 1874. Later still pressed, and all superfluous church es- four other denominations have taken a tablishments were appropriated by the sbare in the task of evangelizing this state. These wholesale confiscations benighted comer of the kingdom. Opamounted to upward of $300,000,000. position has often been bitter, persecu- " The Liberal Party has strangled the tion even to mob violence has been fre- Church and stripped it of every posses- quent, nor has martyrdom been un- known. But still truth and righteousness are steadily winning their way and Blachly has followed the trails over the the outlook is full of hope. Sierras to find villages that never heard of the Bible and many poor people who are glad to reoeive it.
The Amerioan Bible Sooiety has its agents in Mexioo, and gives this aooount Foremost among the twenty.seven or· of their work: dained native preaohers employed by Mexioo is an extremely mountainous the Presbyterians is said to be Rev, Ar.
country. From the nuoleus of Zem. cadioMorales, pastor of Divino Salvador poaltepeo (twenty peaks), in the State Churoh, in Mexico City, Thefollowing of Oajaoa, extend northward and west· is the aooount of his oonversion given ward the three great Sierras-Sierra by himself: Madre of the East along the Gulf, Sierra ., In the year 1863 I began to learn the Madre of the South, and Sierra Madre trade of a gold.thread spinner with Mr.
of the West along the Paoific. At the Franoisoo Aguilar. Thill gentleman more complete breaking apart of the had, among other books, a Bible with· two greater ranges stands the majestio out notes, although it contained the Popocatepetl, between the Valley of Apocryphal books, and was probably Mexioo and the plains of Puebla. Be· printed at the beginning of our century.
tween these arms, opening wider and When my daily task was done I would, wider, and extending to the Amerioan from time to time, examine that old I:)tates, are the elevated plain of the great book of whioh I had heard so many cities and the great railways to the beautiful things said by my mother north. There are several roads to the when I was a ohild. However, that Gulf, but frozq this plain there is not, precioull reading of the book did not as yet, a railroad reaohing the Paoific. enable me to comprehend as yet the For the thousands of towns and villages difference between the teaohings of and ranches on the western slope we Christ and my Catholioism, to whioh I have to send the Bibles by way of Pan· was inveterately attaohed. Two years ama, or take them through the Sierra more passed, when I was told that an passes on mulebaok. With exoessive English gentleman was selling Bibles hardship in travelling and great expendi. both beautiful and cheap. The next ture of time, our oolporteur at Oajaoa Sunday I went and bought of him my reaohes the ports on the southern coast New Testament. How preoious it and the important towns of Tehuantepec seemed to me! And I can say that the and Jamiltepeo. Mr. Diaz from Chilo first passage 1 read in it made an im.
panoingo visits Aoapuloo (whioh oity, pression which I have never forgotten.
fifteen years ago. drove away the follow- I kept on reading with freqnency, nntil ers of the Gospel at the point of the at last I understood what idolatry was; sword), and aU the ooast plain north as but even then I was not converted to far as Michoacan. Mr. Gomez, from Christ. At last, at the beginning of Guadalajara as a oentre, goes southwest February, 1869, I attended for the first to Colima and northwest to Tepic and time a Protestant service; I trembled as San Bias. Just now he should be on I drew near to the house of prayer.
, his way with other workers and fonr When I heard the singing I felt as I large boxes of Bibles, making a trip though I was not treading on solid , almost entirely oonfined to the moun- gronnd. At last I fonnd myself in the tains from Colima northeastward to Du- ohuroh, heard the reading of the New rango. The mission at Mazatlan being Testament, and for the first time under- without a resident missionary, and our stood that for quite a while I had been resident colporteur having failed us, we a Protestant. From that moment I walJ are now reaohing that part of the ooast .. a Christian, and eight days after my first of Sinaloa from Chihuahua. Mr. 'attendance at an evangelioal service I begin to preach, and up to the present way is open for the missionary. In re- hour I am thankful to say that sickness mote regions or villages, where the Ind- is the only thing which has deprived me ian population is under the control of of this spiritual joy." the priesthood, the' wisdom of the ser- pent and the harmlessness of the dove, The Presbyterian religious paper, El joined with the courage and faith of St. Faro, has enj')yed from the first a grow- Paul,' on occasion, may be in demand. ing popularity, 'lnd' has extended its cir- At every point, however, an appeal to culation till not less than 16,000 souls the Government in the City of Mexico have been reached fortnightly by its will ensure protection or redress. In messages of saving truth. It bas the 1876 we had in the entire Republic 1 mislargest circulation of any of the Protes- sionary, 2 native preachers, and 83 tant papers in the Republic, and contin- members. We now have in Mexico 3 ues to maintain a high standard for its annual conferences, 11 missionaries, 7,3 literary qualities and letter,press. The native preachers, 63 local preachers, and subscription list now numbers about 3811 members."
4000, about one half of which represents The Mexican Border Conference of paying subscribers at the rate of $1 a the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, year. including the Mexioan states of Tamau- Statistics of the Presbyterian Mexican !ipas, Nueva Leon and Coahuila, and Mission: Ordained missionaries, 8 ; fe- the Mexican population in W9st Texas, male missionary teachers,4; ordained south of the Pecos River, at its last sesnatives, 27 ; licentiates, 24; native teach- sion in Laredo, reported 3 missionaries, ers and helpers, 53 ; churches, 92 ; com- 27 nati ve preachers in the regular work, municants, 5323; added during the 27100al preachers, and 1468 membersyear, 294 ; girls in boarding-schools (2), a gain of 107. The Northwest Con- 89 ; boys and girls in day-schools (38), ference, embracing the states of Chi· 1089; total number of pupils, 1178; huahua, Durango, Sonora, Sinaloa, and students for ministry, 32; pupils in the territory of Lower California, re- S~bbath-schools, 2073; contributions, ports 4 missionaries, 15 native preach- $3131.94. ers, 10 local preachers, 615 members-a gain of 145-23 Sunday-schools and 573 scholars.
Says the last report of the Southern BaptiRt Convention of their work in The Methodist Episcopal Church has Mexico: 4 missionary districts in Mexico con- taining 101 preaohing appointments, 9 "Our mission in this Republic, since missionaries, 8 assistants, and 7 under the day it was planted by Bishop Keener the oare of the Woman's Board; 10 orby the purchase of property for a house dained natives and 131 other native of worship in the City of Mexico, has helpers; 1308 church – members, 1129 been among the most successful in the probationers, and 6106 adherents. annals of modern missions. Many at that day doubted the success of a mis- sion in that land of revolutions, and es- pecially in a land so long dominated by The American Board says of Mexico the priests of Rome. In 1877 Bishop and its work in that country: "The Keener reported: 'There is no diffi- masses are intensely ignorant and big- culty in our occupying any place in the oted, and though other forms of religion states of Mexico, HidAlgo, Morales, Gu- than the Roman Catholic are tolerated anajuato, Tuxpan, and Tampioo.' Now by law, they can hardly be said to be the whole Republic is acoessible, and tolerated by the people. Yet light is in every city or 'own of importanoe the breaking in upon the darkness. British and American companies have built teristics and people it differs but railways, so that there are nearly 6000 slightly from its next neighbor to the miles of railroad in operation. Owing north. The five little republics of to the facilities of intercourse the two which it is composed are sometimes in.
missions of the American Board in Mex. dependent and sometimes joined in a ico have now been consolidated. The federal union. Their names, with size one mission has now 16 missionaries, 7 and population, are ae follows: Hon.
of whom are ordained. There are ten duras, with 47,000 square miles and 432,.
churches with a membership of 456. 000 inhabitants; Guatemala, with 46,.
A training school for evangelists has reo 800 square miles and 1,400,000 inhabi.
cently been established on the northern tants; Nicaragua, with 50,000 square border, which will be located just across miles and 400,000 inhabitants; Costa the river at EI Paso, in Texas, where Rica, with 23,200 square miles and 213,- Spanish-speaking young men from Mex. 700 inhabitants, and San Salvador, with ico and the south western section of the 7200 square miles and 665,000 inhabi United States will be trained for effective tants. The total area is 175.,000 square service." miles and the total population is 3,000"
000, composed of Spaniards, Indians, A recent and well·informed writer says and an admixture of Negroes. The estab· of the general state of religion in Mex· lished religion is Roman Catholic, ico: "The educated classes conform to though in most of the states other faiths the outward ceremonies and ordinances are tolerated. Only two denominations of the Church while inwardly believing are engaged in spreading light in the little or nothing of its dogmas. The midst of the deep darkness which pre· lower grades of society are, on the other vails-the Moravians, who sent their hand, steeped in the most grovelling pioneers to the Mosquito coallt in 1847, superstition, intensified by many tradi· and the Presbyterians, who made their tional Indian reminiscences. This sec' advent only about ten years ago.
tion of the community yields a blinC obedience to the clergy, notwithstanding the severe laws with which the Gov· Th'3 Presbyterians have sustained a ernment has endeavored to counteract mission in Guatemala City, about sixty the influence of the priests. Even so miles from the seaport of San Jose, since late as 1874 a genuine case of witch. 1883, and now consisting of Rev. Messrs.
burning occurred in Mexico." Haymaker and Iddings and their wives, and two unmarried women. The first .. Between 1821 and 1868 (only forty. missionary, Rev. John C. Hill, of Chiseven years !) the form of government in cago, was sent at the request of Presi. Mexico was changed ten times; over dent Barrios, who also paid the travel· fifty persons succeeded each other as ling expenses of himself and family, the presidents, dictators, or emperors, and, freight charges upon his Jurniture, as according to some calculations. there well as purchased the equipment neces· occurred at least three hundred pronun· sary for the establishment of a mission ciamentos." From which it plainly ap· and school. Says the report for 1890 : pears that even the social, intellectual, and political forces of that region are " The past year in Guatemala has been volcanic in their nature and liable on one of intense excitement and turmoil. short notice to take on earthquake en· The war with San Salvador, although of ergy. short duration, stirred the little republio from centre to circumference. Life was CENTRAL AMERICA. abruptly turned out of its ordinary chan. nels; commerce was interrupted; busi· Of missions in this country not much ness was prostrated I family circles were can be said, and as to physical charac. broken,' and everything was thrown into the utmost confusion. The sudden ter- of 2,276,000 ; Great Britain claims ownmination of the strife averted, or at least ership in Jamaica, the Bahamas, Barbadiminished, the results of a more pro- dos, etc., with 12,000 square miles and tracted and bloody conflict, but it 1,213,000 inhabitants; France is mas· necessarily left everything in an un- ter of Guadaloupe, Martinique, etc., settled condition. Moreover, scarcely with 1100 square miles and 352,000 inhad the troops returned from the front habitants; the Netherlands of four until a scourge of small-pox swept over islands, with 434 square miles and 4.5,- the country, claiming hundreds as its 000 inhabitants, and Denmark of St. victims. Still later la grippe visited the Thomas, Santa Cruz, etc" with 223 republic with fatal effect in very many square miles and 34,000 inhabitants. instances. Happily our missionaries were mercifully preserved in the midst 'l'he original Indian inhabitants have of the excitement of the war and from entirely disappeared. For years they the pestilence which walketh in dark- were enslaved and shipped over seas by ness. Naturally enough, however, the their Spanish masters, and then, rising mission-work suffered severely, 30 that against the oppressors, were annihithe progress during the year has fallen lated. In Hayti alone 2,000,000 short of what otherwise I:1ight have aborigines were found, but in thirty years been realized." scarcely one was left alive. Then Negro I.'laves began to be imported in their WEST INDIES. place, the Portuguese setting the nefari- ous example, and then later every na- A name given by Columbus, and tion possessing colonies in the islands standing for what a world of tragedy, of shared in the iniquity to the full, Ins depravity, and of shame! "From the estimated that to Jamaica alone between second visit of Columbus until the pres- 1700 and 1786 not less than 600,000 ent century these islands have been the African bondmen were brought. The scene of sorrow and oppression. Their Negroes now far outnumber the whites. waters have been dyed with human Hindoos and Chinese (coolies) also conblood. • .. Piracy was rife, and the stitute no inconsiderable part of the commerce of Europe suffered from the popnlation. marauding buccaneers who smarted from the wrongs they suffered and re- The Moravians were the first to carry taliated on the innocent as well as the the Gospel of bght and hope to this guilty. The slave-trade had its origin most degraded and wretched people. here, and the hardly less cruel impor- And to the West Indies went, in 1732, tation of coolies has left its curse. For the first heralds of the cross ever disyears these islands were England's patched from Herrnhut. They set forth penal colonies. Into this lUoral sewer expecting and willing to be themselves was swept the refuse of Europe. Is it sold into slavery as the price of their strange, then, that these lands should mISSIon. In their churches are now have been sunk in the lowest depths of found 16,547 communicants, and the sin and degradation ./" number of adherents is almost 40,000, Among other denominations engaged in The total area of the West Indies is missionary work are the English Bapnot far from 100,000 square miles, and tists, with about 40,000 church-memo the inhabitants number between 5,000,- bers, the Wesleyan Methodists, the 000 and 6,000,000. Various European United Presbyterians of Scotlam1. and nations have parcelled out the islands the Methodists and Episcopalians of this among themselves. Only Hayti is in- country, In all there are engaged about dependent, with its 29,000 square miles 120 ordained missionaries, with nearly and 1,150,000 inhabitants. Spain pos- 500 ordained natives, while the memo sesses Cuba and Porto Rico, with an area bership of the churches is not far from of 50,000 square miles and a population 75,000.
GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE
V.-GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE.
Organized Missionary Work and Statistios. Edited by Rev. D. L. Leonard, Bellevue, O.
-The report of the first year's work all adherents, scholars, and communi. in carrying out the plan proposed in cants. The territory included within General Booth's" In Darkest England" the three missions of ARiatic Turkey has been issued in England by Mr. embra.ces abont 330,000 square miles, Bramwell Booth. It is a bDok of 160 eight times the size of the State of pages. From this authoritative state. Ohio, and includes a population of per· ment it appears that about £25,000 has haps 20,000,000, of whom about one been expended on the over·sea colony. third are Armenians and Greeks and the Nearly £40,000 has been absorbed in the remainder Moslems, the latter as yet purchasing and leasing of land for city inaccessible to missionary work. This refuges and workshops. The sum of work has well deserved all the interest £41,000 has been expended on the farm that has been drawn to it in the past; colony. The food and shelter depots it never more worthily challenged the have been self.supporting. There has zeal or rewarded the labors of the Chris· been a small deficiency in the anti. tian world than it does to.day. Thc sweating workshops. The match factory Board nowhere has so much at stake. has given profits of £475 in four months. Of the 530 missionaries now on the lists, The knitting factory and bookbindery 157 are in Asiatic Turkey; and of the have each earned profits. The opera. total sum expended by the Board upon tions of the farm show a loss of £116. the foreign field, one fOU1'th is devoted To establish the Labor Bureau cost to these missions. £335, but it is reported to have been a great success. There have been 15,000 -The Japan Mission of the Methodist applicants during the year. There have Episcopal Church was commenced in been supplied 2,381,148 cheap meals, 1872, and reported in 1890, 23 foreign of which 1,097,866 were halfpenny din. male missionaries, 41 female mission. ners, 96,555 farthing dinners. and 25.- aries, of whom 19 are wive~ of mission· 000 free meals. Three hundred and aries, 2815 members, and 718 proba. seven thousand cheap lodgings were tioners. In all of the Japan Protestant furnished at fourpence and twopence missions the first of this year there were per night. The work produced in the reported 175 married and 39 unmarried refuges in the labor factories realized male missionaries, 189 unmarri ed female £15,191. missionaries, and 32,380 members.
-The Turkish Empire is largely -The Australasian Wesleyan Meth. given up to the care of the American odist Church, according to the minutes BoaI'd, and constitutes its most impor. of the General Conference, held in tant mission. Divided into four parts- May, 1890, had 593 ministers and European, Western, Central, Eastel'n- 4636 local preachers, 2619 churches and each part is sufficiently small to secure 1748 other preaching places, 73,310 fully careful supervision and control, each accredited church-members, with 7364 part is sufficiently large to receive on trial, and 417,460 attendants on pub. largest, finest equipment to quicken lic worship. These statistics were enthusiasm. It receives one third of made up from the returns of the four all money received; it contributes one Annual Conferences, which comprise third of all money given on mission within their boundaries the Australian ground; it enrolls one third of the colonies, Tasmania and New Zealand, working force; it numbers one third of and the missions in the South Seas. Omitting Polynesians, Maoris and Chi- children's offerings, for the fiscal year nese, there were 41,649 full members, were $57,184. Tll.e ['mount appropri- 297,393 attendants on public worship, ated for domestic mission.,; was $232,745, 483 ministers, and 1560 churches. and for the foreign field, $177,005. The counciIlast year asked from the Church – " Nine missionaries, 11 assistant an aggregate of contributions of $500,- missionaries, 30 churches, 1180 commu- 000 for general missions. The gross nicants, contributing a little over $5200 receipts amounted to $604,361, of which for all purposes, represent the force sum $41,421 were the proceeds of lega_ now at work under the American Board cies. The aggregate of contributions in Papal lands-in Austria, Spain und was $353,897, of which $150,108 were Mexico-and the results which have designated for domestic missions, inbeen secured_ The story is not im- cluding the work among the colored pressive by its proportions. But as an people, and $131,006 for foreign misexhibition of courage, patience, and de- sions, leaving at the discretion of the votion in the face of tremendous odds, Board $72,782, which sum was equally and as a plea for the pure and primitive divided between domestic and foreign Christianity of the early centuries, it miSSIons. As compared with the predoes not in dignity fall below the more vious year these figures show a gain in splendid achievements in India, Japan, contributions as follows: Domestic, Africa, and Asia Minor. Especially $2372 ; foreign, $8538; general, $20,- cheerful is the report from the capital 902. Total increase, $31,813. of Bohemia, where Huss paved the way for the great Reformation a century – Canon Scott Robinson has just comlater. The mission has been cheered pleted his twentieth annual summary of by a great revival, and the ingathering British contributions to foreign misof 123 converts." sions, covering the financial year 1890- 9:. He finds the total to be $6,507,- -The United Presbyterian Church 875, divided among the different classes sustains missions in Egypt and India, as follows: and is represented by 28 ordained and one unordained man, 21 wives and 25 Church of England Societies……… $2,776,690 other women, 24 ordained natives and 495 other native helpers. The churches Joint Societies of Churchmen and number 39 with 9832 communicants, 725 of whom were received last year. Nonconformists…………… . 1,075,700 In the 252 schools 10,480 children are taught. Not long since a missionary English and Wdsh Nonconformist Soforce of 16 sailed from Philadelphia, 10 going out for the first time, anJ 3 cieties ……………………… . 1,658,015 being unmarried women_ Scotch and Irish Presbyterian So- -The Episcopal Missionary Council held its annual meeting in October in cieties….. 0 ••••••••••••••••••••••• 900,590 Detroit, and these are some items from the report: In June $40,000 had been Roman Catholic Societies ……….••. 46,900 appropriated for the colored work, the money being taken from the general TotaL ……………………. $6,507.895 funds. The commission having t.his work in chl<rge had distributed $55,590 These represent home contributions between 17 dioceses in the South. simply, not the entire income, which in- Since the last report $8728 had been cludes foreign donations, dividends, inadded to the enrolment fund, making terest, rents, etc. the total, with interest, $139,030_ The -That the Baptists of England are a vigorous folk may be gathered from these statistics: In 1851 their great Foreign Missionary Society had 40 mis- sionaries on the staff and an income of less than £20,000. Last spring the staff was returned at about 130 missionaries, and the income was some £75,000. The 118 native helpers or evangelists have increased to nearly 600. In 1851 the Baptist Union hacl scarcely a name. year for the spread of the Gospel in 'fo.day it includes 1000 churches, 900 their own land. And there is a church ministers, and 330,000 members. The in San Francisco with 350 members, of Bible Society then in its 47th year, whom 125 are Chinese. The total beissued the Bible in whole or in part, in nevolent contributions of the church for 148 versions. To.day the number has last year amounted to $3000, of which grown to 292, and the circulation has the Chinese paid $2000. From all the sprung from 1,137,617 copies to 3,926,- Chinpse missions in the State come 535 ; the foreign agents have increased $6000, of which a part goes t,o help sup_ from 7 to 27, and the- receipts from port their laborers in China. £128,023 to £285,437. -The Baptist missionaries of Japan, -The English Baptist Handbook for at their recent Conference, voted to re- 1892 shows the following summary of iterate their appeal for the twenty-three atatistics for the United Kingdom; 2812 men for Japan. They note especially churches, 3798 chapels, 1,225,097 sit- the facts that there are more than 63,- tings, 334,163 members, 47,784 teachers, 000 Shintu preachers, and 92,000 483,921 scholars, 4155 local preachera, Buddhist preachers and priests; there and 1841 pastors in charge; represent- are more than 65,000 heads of temples, ing an increase of churches, 10 ; chapels, not counting the females, who alone 17; sittings, 1571; m9mbers, 4000; out-number the Protestant missionaries acholars, 1029, and local preachers, 155. by over 100; the increase of Shintu New chapels with 15,668 sittings have preachers from 1884-89 was greater than been built at a cost of $269,580, mostly, the present membership of all the Prothowever, takjng the place of old build- estant churches. There is also a specific ings. Debts have been paid off or di- appeal for Northern Japan, where tb:ere minished by the sum of over $313,000. is only one Baptist' worker to 500,000 The admissions to the ministry have people, and where they wish especially been 52, of whom 32 received collegiate to occupy the city of Hakodate. trlining, somewhat of a falling off from last year, which showed 83 new minis- -Out of the 300 members of the ters. House of Representatives in Japan 13 are baptized Christjans. Of these 7 are -The National Bible Society of Scot- classed as radical, and 2 as independent. land has its headquarters at 5 St. An- If this average were preserved throughdrew Square, Edinburgh, and 224 West out Japan it would signify that Chris- George Street, Glasgow. The Secretary tianity had gained over 1,500,000 conin Edinburgh is W. H. Goold, D.D., verts. But aside from any such compuand in Glasgow, William J. Slowan, Esq. tation the figures are interesting as The income for 1890 was £34,912. Of showing the success that Christian this £15,877 came from sales of Scrip- preaching has met with among the uptures. During 1890 the circulation of per orders of the Japanese as well as Bibles, Testaments, and portions among the lower, notwithstanding the amounted to 673,017 copies. Of these contrary claim of !!ome persons. AR- 214,572 were circulated at home, 30,776 Buming the total number of Christians in the colonies, and 427,669 in foreign of all denominations in Japan to be 100,- lands. The foreign lands in which the 000, or 27 in every 10,000, the percent- Society has agents are Africa, Austria, age in the class from which members of Belgium, Brazil, China, France, Ger- the House of Representatives are drawn ruany, Holland, India, Italy, Japan, is 433. Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Turkey and Syria, Tanna. -At the beginning of this century attempts were made by English Baptists -It is said that the 35,000 native to Christianize the Batta people in the Christians of China gave $44,000 last island of Sumatra. When England restored that island to Holland the mis- Society, the Society for the Propagation sionaries were forced to retire, and no of the Gospel, the Society of Friends, further effort was made till the Ameri- the Norwegian Mission, etc. In South can Board sent among them the ill·fated Africa also the Protestant missions are Lyman and Munson, who were killed stronger and more numerous.
by the cannibal nati ves whom they went -The district now known as Zulu. to save. In 1861 the missionaries of the land was formerly called the Zulu Re· Rhenish Society took refuge in Sumatra serve, and is north of Natal, covering from persecution in the island of Borneo an area of about 9000 square miles. and began a work there which continues The population of the whole region is to the present time. The I'esults are estimhted at about 180,000. It is under summed up in a recent number of the the British Protectorate, administered Revue des Missions Gonternp()raines. There by the governor of Natal. In this region were at the close of 1890, among the there are 17 mission stations, of which Battas, 18 missionary stations and 86 6 belong to the English Church; the out-stations, numbering about 17,5(10 other 11 are Lutherans, 8 of them being Christians. In 1890 about 2500 were Norwegians, 1 Swedish, and 2 belonging baptized, of whom 250 were Mohamme- to the Hermannsburg (German) Mission. dans. At the close of 1890 there reo mained 5000 candidates f"r baptism un- -On July 21st, 1841, the training inder instruction, of whom 400 were Mo- stitution at Lovedale, South Africa, was hammedans. By means of moneyad- established, beginning with 20 pupils. vanced by the Rhenish Society, to be At last accounts the number in actual repaid in the course of a certain num- attendance was 660. The institution has ber of years, 41 churches now support accomplished so much, and bas been themselves and their native evangelists, so favorably regarded by all intelligent who labor among the surrounding observers, that the British East Africa heathen. In 1889 6 preachers were or- Company has determined to open an indained, and 17 new evangelists began stitution in the interior not far from work. Fifty-nine young men applied Mombasa, on the same plan. Four years for admission to the theological sem. ago the presses of Lovedale printed a list inary, but only 21 could find room. of all the young people who had gone -The Annuaire des Missions for 1890 forth from this institution. They then furnishes the following information as to numbered about 2000 former pupils stil~ the Roman Catholic Missions in Africa living, most of them natives, and occuconnected with the Propaganda: In pying honorable positions; some of Northern and Central A£rica there are them distinguished men. But that is 191,805 Roman Catholics, 127 stations, not the whole of it, as said a colonial 191 churches, 349 priests, 197 educa. journal of that time; "these thousands tional institutions, 65 institutio us de- of young people, to.day useful men, voted to charity. In Southern Africa paying taxes, consuming and producing there are 40,555 Roman Catholics, 97 all kinds of commodities, would be, stations, 139 churches or chapels, 211 except for LovedalE!, naked barbarians, priests, 129 educational institutions, 32 daubing themselves with red ochre."
charitable institutions. In Insular Africa -New statistics of the Lutheran (including, evidently, Madagascar) there Church in America have recently been are 166,580 Roman Catholics, 68 stations, collected. According to these the grand 414 chapels or churches, 140 priests, 361 total is now 61 synods, 5028 pastors, 8388 educational institutions, 37 charitable congregations, and 1,187,854 confirmed institutions. As regards Insular Africa, or communicant members. This is an these numbers are far exceeded by those increase in twelve months of 209 pastors, connected with the London Missionary 205 congregations, and 34,642 communi· cants, the ratio of increase being some- poisoned by it. Women who earned as thing less than it had been for several little as six cents a day spent half of it years past. upon opium and after~ard endured starvation because they had Dot enough to provide the necessaries of life. Fre- British Foreign Missions, By Rev, James quently Indian women had said that if Johnston, Bolton, England, the English people would stop the opium Corea.-A most encouraging letter _trade the natives of India would worship has been sent to England from Bishop Englishmen as if they possessed Divine Corfe stating that the Government of power.
Corea has allowed him a piece of land at Chemulpo sixty feet square, in an ex- Wesleyan China Mission.-Much cellent situation, for the nominal price interest gathers around the very recent of twenty dollars. This will be used arrival in England of the Rev. David for a hospital building, and the bishop Hill, who has spent twenty.seven years regards the favor as a mark of apprecia- as a missionary in the" Flowery Land." tion for the successful medical work He states that the principal wave of redone among the people. The mission bellion is passing over Central China, dispensary is always crowded with pa- and doubts whether because the Christients-a proof that there is need for the tian missionaries are the chief sufferers hospital. Before the bishop left for that the Chinese have the strong dislike Corea he was 0. highly popular naval to Christianity which has been atchaplain, and in connection with his tributed. It was more probably an inmission there is a hospital naval fund tense hatred of all foreigners, and the which is largely supported by officers in outcome of a widespread movement for the British fleet. These scattered con- . their expulsion. Had merchants been tributors will learn with pleasure the as much to the fore in the unsettled dis- tricts they would have suffered equal fruits of their generosity. persecution. In the course of the ten Anti·Opium Crusade.-Mr. Cheok riots which had taken place at intervals Hong Cheong, Superintendent of Church the Wesleyan missions had borne the Missions, Melbourne, Victoria, and Miss most serious losses, and the outcome of Soonderbhai Powar, an Indian Christian the present disturbed state of the COUD- lady of Bombay, are visiting England try was practically to stop all missionary to protest against. the continuance of effort, inasmuch as they were compelled the British opium traffic in China and to withdraw for a time their mission- India. At a great demonstration iii aries, their wives, and families to British London Mr. Cheong said that the only protection. A sad feature was the indi- remedy for the terrible evils which re- rect connivance of the Chinese Govern.
sulted from the vice was either to place ment. The Pekin authorities objected, the victims in strict confinement until of course, to outrages, while they were they were cured, or to entirely prohibit agreeable that the foreigners should be the opium trade. He advocated the lat- excluded from the pt·ovince in question.
ter course, and further remarked that Hunan, with its popUlation of 22,000,- the opium trade, which was the plague 000, where the Protestant missionaries of Asia, would soon become the plague had not yet been able to get a footing, of the world if it were not promptly was the province most hostile to foreign- overtaken. Miss Powar called attention ersand the seat of the recent riots. Dr.
to the "dreadful dens" in India where Griffith John and other missionaries opium was smoked. The same drug assert that the troubles emanate frl)m the was habitually given to children only Hunan literary and official classes and three or four days old, and hundreds not from the secret societies. Possibly of thousands of children were annually the issue of the present troubles will be that the foreign governments will in- tion to their own extra £25,000, has been sist on the opening of Hunan. Loud practically subscribed for the Uganda calls are made for lady missionaries, es- Protection Fund by supporters of the pecially on account of the ignorance and C. M. S., which means that the com· seclusion of the women of China, who pany will remain in the protectorate were only now reached through the and lend its countenance to Protestant agency of their sons and husbands. missionaries and their converts. AI. though the C. M. S. cannot see its way Universities' Mission, Central Af- to provide and keep a steamer on Vicrica.-There is much disappointment toria Nyanza, for which SO much money that the health of Bishop Smythies has has been contributed to the Stanley and been SO enfeebled by toil in the Dark Record Funds, the missionaries will have Continent. In letters from Likoma, the use of a steel sailing vessel which Lake Nyassa, which he had reached after is now en route for the lake. Bishop a journey of six weeks, he remarks that Tucker sailed for Africa on December his fatigue had been exhausting. He 4th, after a sucoession of hearty fare· had overrated his physical powers and, wells from English friends. The bishop at last, could not climb any hill. A is keenly disappointed that a steamer severe attack of malarial fever subse. cannot be launched on Nyanza, and just quently had left him almost powerless. before leaving for his African diocese The bishop formerly held a living at he wrote a powerful appeal through the Cardiff, in Wales, where before going press to his fellow.countrymen to give abroad he was marked out for early pre· generously on behalf of the Uganda oc· ferment. It is much to his credit, in cupation fund and the Victoria Nyanza face of a comfortable prospect at home, steamer. that he should have accepted one of the most arduous posts in the modern mis. The last letter to hand in England sion field, a position which he has filled from Uganda, dated June 1st, states that with distinguished service. no mail from home had been received since those written in November, 1890. The African Kaffir Choir.-Apart With Captain Lugard's defeat of the from the object for which this moat en· Mohammedans the natives were return. tertaining body of people are visiting ing from the war. Mr. Pilkington, one the United Kingdom, the members of of the C. M. S. agents, had, with the the party have done eminent service on help of Henry Dutil., completed the behalf of missions in showing by their translation of the Acts of the Apostles, own presence, refinement, and Christian and also composed about twenty hymns bearing what missionary enterprise has based on popular English hymns, while done and is accomplishing in reclaiming other interesting literary work was in the South African races for the Kingdom progress. The Rev. R. H. Walker was in of Christ. Thousands of English listen· Budu working with some of the lay ers, who seldom see or hear a mission- evangelists, and enjoying the support ary, have been much impressed by the of the lord of the district. Writing dusky visitor~ from South Africa. These privately, Mr. Walker says that the pop. unassuming strangers are welding a ulation of Uganda is not more than 200,. strong link of good will between Britain 000, and also adds that the Roman Cathand Africa. olic converts are now sixteen to the Protestant four in proportion. Captain Uganda.-·This important missionary Lugard has been successf~.iil: seeking field has excited unusual attention for the pacification of Uganda ahd Unyoro, several weeks, and providentially the and telegraphs to England: "Assistprospects in England and in Africa are ance urgently required. State of affairs now more cheering. The sum of £15,. Uganda improving, prospec.s are en- 000, which the British East Africa Com· couraging." pany required to be forthcoming in addi- The Niger Mission.-The Church dangerous position of the Church Mis- Missionary Society is sending out II sionary Society's missionaries, and be a deputation to try and heal the unhappy pledge of peace among the natives.
differences on the Niger The dele- -Bishop Tucker, of the English gates are Archdeacon Hamilton, a Churc!> Missionary Society, fresh from worthy man who, after doing admirable Uganda, at a late meeting in Exeter work on the West African coast, is assist. Hall pleaded earnestly for forty good ing in secretarial duties at home and men and true to go to that field, and in reply to certain critics who asked why the Rev. W. Allan, of Bermonds~y, II he had come home, he said that if they gave him the men he asked for, he successful vicar of a very large and poor would return to his diocese to·morrow. parish in South London. It will be "I plead," he said, "for 20,000,000 sincerely hoped that a mission, at one souls. " time with so promising an outlook, may be lifted out of its present disorganized and divided condition.
Central Soudan Mission.-During Armenia. – The great revival which Mr. Harris's brief furlough in England has taken place in connection with the he has secured two fresh volunteers for Turco-American Mission at Aintab, in this youngest of evangelical missions- Armenia, has resulted in the addition of namely, Messrs. Loynd and Holt, who 534 new members to the Church. About will sail for Tripoli in January, 1892, and . 2,000,000 of Armenians live in Armenia. join Mr. White, at present studying The rest are scattered over the East. Arabic and the customs of the natives There are altogether about 4,000,000. in the city of Tripoli. The object of Mager, " The Servant of Jesus Christ by this daring enterprise was stated in the the Grace of God," is the" Catholicos . July issue of the REVIEW. In a visit of all the Armenians and Patriarch of to the writer Mr. Harris gave many the Holy Convent of Etchmiadzin, in interesting details of first efforts in Russian territory, near Mount Ararat." Tunis and Tripoli preparatory to ventur- There are four other patriarchs in the ing far inland for Bornu and Lake Armenian Church-the patriarchs of Tchad. The four missionaries are part- Constantinople, Jerusalem, Sis, and ly supporting themselves by following Aklitamer. The last two are only bish- their own trades and also by private ops, with the honorary title of patriarch.
subscriptions forwarded through the Assam.-Recently special attention Y. M. C. A., Bolton, Lancashire, Eng- has heen called to mission work in land. Assam. The first society to enter that country was the American Baptist Mis- Monthly Bulletin. sionary Union, now numbering about Africa.-The expedition of the Berlin 30 churches, with nearly 2000 members. Missionary Society to Lake Nyassa, The next society was the Welsh Presbywhich started in June from Natal,is com terian' now nllmbering 72 tlhurches, posed of ten persons, the general mission with 1869 members. A number of the superintendent, four missionaries, one churches in both missions are self-supcarpenter, one joiner, one steward, and porting.
two Christian Zulus. The superintend- China.-Dr. Ashmore, a Baptist misent expects to remain at the station for sionary in China, writing in the Chinese a year and a half or two years. RecrYrder, quaintly says of missionaries'
-The British East Africa Company wives that their work is not always re- have cancelled the order which was ported, and is not always reportahle, issued a short time since to Captain but it has to be done all the sBme.
Lugard to withdraw from Uganda. They are busy at something all the time.
This will relieve much the difficult and They look after schools and teach Biblewomen, send them out, and take their including also a Rhirt factory employing reports. They look after the women of 250 hands, a church, a school-house, the churches-old folks, young folks, and a public library, is to be created; feeble folks, well folks, and all sorts of and several outlying farms of 30 acres folks. They have the care of their each are to be laid out. No intoxicants Lmilies, and provide for the strangers. will be permitted in the new colony, and The husband is to do a little civilizing, every head of a family is to be encouras a sort of secondary work, but the wife aged to purchase, on the instalment has to keep her eye on him to prevent plan, his own house or farm. his being barbarized while he is about it. Every time he comes back frOID the -There is considerable suggestivejungle, his wife has to look after him to ness in th~ fact that a young J ewess who make him presentable. In fact, she does has embraced Christianity has expressed a thousand things which are of no great a desire" to read Church history to find account in making up a " report,'" but out how and when Christians came to all of which are valuable items of solid be so different from Christ." missionary usefulness. -It is said that the constitution of -An· editorial in the Ohina Mail of the Christian Endeavor Society has Hong Kong, relating to the disturbances been translated into the German, in that country, gives the decided French, Swedish, Norwegian, Spanish, opinion that the trouble is not an anti- Chinese, Tamil, and Fiji languages, and missionary movement. The writer says it is being translated into Armenian, that he has travelled through a number Turkish, and other foreign tongues. of the provinces and has never anywhere found the common people any- -At the Grande Ligne Sohool a thing but friendly to the missionaries, French Testament was given to a little except when stirred up by false rumors girl of Romanist parents, who was for or other influences. The Chinese have four months at the Grande Ligne nothing to say against the doctrines of School. She went home still a Roman- Christianity as such. The missionary 1st. Her father asked her if she had a question has been introduced in these Bible. She said she had. "You must disturbances to serve a purpose. give it to me or put it away, never to take it out." She put it in the bottom General.-The Russian State Coun('·il of her trunk, and the treasure remained has decided that all Protestant pastors hidden for ten or twelve years. Then must in the future pass an examination she was married and had more liberty. in the Russian language, and from the She began to read the Testament in the first of May, 1892, only the Russian family; she and her husband were conlanguage shall be used in the Protestant verted. Their zeal led them to labor pulpits of the German Baltic provinces. for one of her brothers who was at her father's hous'3. After many months of -The Is¥i.nd of Corfu is rivalling labor and prayer the brother was con- Russia in its cruel persecution of the verted. The three united iu labor for Jews. a sister. She was led to Christ, and so on until the whole family of sixteen -About 150 Russian Jews are hard at children besides the parents were conwork converting the 5000-acre tract of verted. A brother wrote in 1886; wooded land near Cape May, N. J., " Through that little Testament, given which was purchased by the trustees of to Julia at Grande Ligue thirty-five the Hirsch fund for colonizing purposes, years ago, and in answer to the prayers into a habitable domain. Others will of Madame Feller that followed it, our speedily join them. The land must be families, numbering eighty-five Bouls, cleared, roads laid out, and wells dog; a~ all in the light." a village of 50 cottages (to begin with), lndia.-The nev. S. B. Fairbank, sionary, work. He was a native Indian, D.D., has a unique manner of attracting named Musuwa, and was a leper.
groups of listeners at Ahmednagar, Nearly fifty years ago he was uefriended Dedgar, and the other towns through by an Englishman, and at the time of which he travels with a "tent on the opening of the present Leper's wheels," a contrivance of his OlVn, while Asylum, at Almola, he was admitted as on his evangelistic tours in India. He one of the members. From that time has a magic lantern and uses the pictures to this he has suffered constantly from for his texts. A chromatrope, wi th its the ravages of the disease, and for bright-colored pieees flowing into the twenty.four years has been blind. He centre or out from it, according as the was early converted, and from that time crank is turned, teaches beneficence- he has been one of the most faithful flowing in, the centre gains nothing; so, and earnest workers among his afflicted increasing worldly goods does not add associates. Although sightless, he was to man's happiness-flowing out, the always cheerful and Beemed fully con- centre loses nothing; so a generous scious of all that was going on around man, ever giving and blessing others, him, and it was a real pleasure to con· has still all he needs. The story of the verse with him. He was full of gladness Prodigal Son, in a series of nine pic. and spiritual joy, and his popularity tures, holds an audience for twenty or made him by common consent the head thirty minutes. of the community in regard to all mat- -Dr. Pentecost writes of the National ters affecting them. For Borne weeks Indian Congress: "An astonishing before his death he became feeble and feature was that there were lady dele. weary and helpless, yet never comgates present ; and on the last day one plained, and his influence over the com· lady, a native of high caste. appeared munity by his unfaltering faith and conon the platform unveiled, and delivered sistent Christian life was most powerful.
an address, extemporaneously, in pure – Miss Soonderbai Powar, an Indian English. This is an innovation so Christian of high caste, who has been marked that it will do much toward engaged for fifteen years in missionary shaking the foundation of the hateful work in Bombay, has had a welcome enand terrible zenana of India. Once the trance into a large number of zenanas women are set free in India, then away and thus has gained a thorough insight go the iron fetters of caRte, lind the into the sad lot of her non·Christian whole empire will he freed from super- countrywomen. She is laboring for the stition." abolishment of the opium traffic. The -Among the recent accessions to the women of India have long suffered in force of evangelists in India is 'Mr. silence in consequence of the opium James Monro, C.B., late Chief Commis- evil, but they have at last dared to ex- sioner of Police in London. Mr. Monro press their hatred of it. In Lucknow, formerly held a high position in the in October, there was a semi. public Civil Service of India, lind has always meeting of Mohammedan women e8ger been especially interested in mission to send Miss Powar with messages to . work there, being a member of the Cor- England condemning strongly the sale of i responding Committee of the Church this drug. What wiII be the answer of Missionary Society at Calcutta for many the English nation to the pleading cry ?
years. -At Lucknow, where so many were -On September 4th last, in the city murdered during the Sepoy rebellion of Almora, North India, there died a thirty years ago, two thousand children, man who for many years accomplished , nearly all of Hindu-Mohammedan a wonderful amount of good and held a parentage, recently marched in a position uniq.ue in the annals of mis- Sunday-school procession.
The Missionary Review of the World — July 1889
~ERVING OUR OWN GENERATION
IISSIONARY REVIEW OF THE- WORLD.
VOL. XI. No. 7.-Oid Series._-JULY.-_VOL. II. No. 7.-New Seriu. , I.-LITERATURE OF MISSIONS. SERVING OUR OWN GENERATION.
LEDITORIAL.-A. T. p.] PAUL, in the Antiochan Synagogue, significantly said of David, "He served his own generation by the will of God." * If anything especially distinguishes those foremost missionary disciples of our day-the Moravians-it is the sublime purpose to reach their own generation with the gospel. Count Zinzendorf led in this unique consecration to present service, when he chose as his motto, "That land is henceforth my country, which most needs the gospel."
To this thought we would now give emphasis: the lifetime of our generation bounds at once our work and our opportunity. What we are to give we must impart while we are living; what they are to receive from us they must get while they are yet living, We owe to our Lord an infinite debt; we can never pay it ; all we can do is to acknowledge it by service to our generation according to His will and in His name. Obviously 80 far as that debt can be paid, it can be paid only during the period which limits the generation of which we form a part. This proposition seems so simple and obvious as to need no argument. Yet, practically, it has never been accepted and acted on by the church in modern times, nor at any time since the apostolic age.
There are two sorts of service we may render to humanity: one is immediate and transient, the other is remote and permanent.
For example: a confbgration sweeps over some great metropolis, consuming every conbustible dwelling and leaving thousands of families without clothing, food or shelter. Manifestly, every true fellow-citizen owes to the naked, starving, homeless, an immediate and imperative duty which can be done only now. The first necessity is to rally universally to put out the fire, save those now imperilled and perishing, and feed, clothe and house the destitute. After these present and pressing needs are met, it behooves us to make permanent provision against like calamities hereafter, preventing such catastrophies by securing a more adequate water supply, a better equipped fire department, and a fire-proof class of buildings. But only fools or monsters * Acts xiii : 36. would meet to consult about such permanent preventive measures while the fire was yet raging or the multitudes were yet starving or freezing! Humanity and philanthrophy instinctively impel us to re- lieve immediately the peril of the perishing. '
God has committed to the church a double work. Undoubtedly there are remote and permanent results at which we are to aim, even the laying of broad and firm foundations for the evangelization and edifi- cation of future generations. We are to erect Ohristian homes, churches, schools, colleges, seminaries; provide translations of the Word of God and a Ohristian literature, thus simplifying the work of each succeed- ing generation, lessening the labor, facilitating the process, accelera- ting the progress of the work, for all time to come. But, me:1nwhile, we must not overlook what is even a more pressing duty and'privilege, viz.: 1.oe must not permit this1!eneration to die unsaved, so far as our consecrated labor can prevent it. No activity in providing for future generations can atone for our inactivity in providing for our own generation, which first of all we are to serve, by the will of God, with the gospel.
We pray God that this one thought may press with mighty and resist- less weight upon the heart and conscience of every believer. When Ohrist said, "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature," he must have meant that those to whom he spoke should go forth and reach those who were then living. That command is of perpetua.l force. It applies to every new generation of believers; and it means that, in every successive age, the church shall both undertake and overtake this great work. If it seem too great, he reminds us that omnipotence is His: "All power;" omnipresence is His: "Lo, I am with you;" eternity is His: "Alway, even unto the end of the age."
And, if the church will take up this work faithfully, He will supple- ment all her efforts with His omnipotent, omnipresent, perpetual co- operation.
How the church may serve its own generation has an example in Scripture history. The so-called Acts of the Apostles is a book, the very frame work of which has a strange meaning. It covers just about thirty-three years, the average lifetime of a generation. It reveals the infant church, receiving its" infant baptism," its anointing ofthe Holy Ghost for service; and then undertaking to reach every "nation" and "every creature" with the proclamation of the gospel. The book covers only the period of a single genemtion, as though to show us what was possible even then, with a few disciples who had no wealth, no learning, no social standing; no modern facilities for travel and transportation, for translation and publication and distribution of the word of God, for acquiring and utilizi"!1g foreign tongues; and, as though to demonstrate to each succeeding generation of believers what could be done and what should be attempted, as the progress of the ages should put at their disposal new and marvellous helps to the work.
How did .those primitive disciples undertake the work of serving their own generation by the will of God? As John Wesley said, they were" All at it and always at it." The first glimpse we get of the apostolic church reveals the disciples, men and women, meeting for ten days of continuous prayer, waiting before God for the gift of the Promised Spirit. They had from Christ a verbal commission; now they tarried for that enduement and endowment which were to become a new and actual and dynamic commission: they had the message; now they waited for the power. The only time that was "lost" for the direct work, was the time" saved" in getting the divine preparation for the work. Then, at once, on that very day of Pentecost, the actual business of bearing the message of life to every nation and every creature was systematically begun. Peter's unfolding of pruphecy and of the history that fulfilled it, was the means of bringing 3,000 hearers to the immediate acceptance of Christ as Messiah and Saviour.
That was' the first step. What was the second? Those converted souls became witnesses for God and the gospel unto the uttermost parts of the earth. Read this explicit narrative. Why is the Inspiring Spirit so careful to leave on record the wide representation gathered in that Pentecostal assembly? Four verses in the second chapter are given to the brief delineation of the Pentecostal Descent of Power: the fulness of time, the one accord in one place, the sudden sound from heaven, the three symbolic expressions of the Holy Spirit-the wind or breath, the invisible secret of communicated life; the fire, that represents light, or knowledge, heat, or love-that purifies what 18 most precious and consumes what is worthless; and the cloven ton.tue, that represents the VOICE, that sign and signal and symbol of intelligence and affection, multiplied to meet the ears of all strange peoples.
The next eight verses are given to the delineation of the wide territory represented in that Pentecostal gathering. "There were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven." And subsequently minuter particulars are added: they are from the remote East, Parthia and Media; from the north, Pontus, and the shores of the Black Sea; from the south, Arabia and Egypt; from the west, Crete and even Rome. In other words, every quarter and almost every portion of the known world is represented in that audience and in that anointing. Ears accustomed to strange tongues hear in those foreign dialects the story of redemption, and tongues accustomed to foreign speech begin to tell the story to others. What is the Spirit doing? Not simply bringing the message to the ea.rs of all nations in one gathering, but raising up and equipping a great body of heralds to bear the good tidings back to their own peoples. Let lis not attach too narrow a meaning to that phrase, "dwellinJ! at Jerusalem." * These were probably not permanent inhabitants, otherwise they would not have been more familiar with foreign tongues than with their own Jewish language, or the current Hellenistic dialect; they were proba- bly either Jewish proselytes or foreign Jewish residents, who were tem- porarily residing at Jerusalem to keep the sacred feasts, and who would, sooner or later, return to their own homes, going to all points of the compass to carry the good news of salvation. The Eunuch of Ethiopia has generally been regarded as such a proselyte, who, on his return from the sacred city to Ethiopia, was reading Isaiah's prophecy, deeply absorbed in what he has heard at Jerusalem, and who, on be- ing taught by Pl:;tilip, and illumined by the Holy Spirit, went on his way rejoicing; and, as traditon states, together with the evangelist Mark, founded the church at Alexandria.
But we autictipate. The natural, conservative, concentrative ten- dency of the Hebrew converts would lead to their prolonged iltay at Jerusalem. On the one hand there was the old exclusive jealousy of Jerusalem as the capital city and only nucleus of the Jewish state and church; and on the other hand there was the exclusive spirit of Judaism that shut in all Jews, and shut out all Gen- tiles as common and unclean. God interposed to prevent the church from u tarrying at Jerusalem" after being "endued with power from on high." First, He dispersed those disciples by persecution and while the apostles were still at Jerusalem, the great body of be- lievers were scattered abroad, and went every where preaching the word. t And, secondly, He taught Peter, who was both a leader in evangelism and in exclusivism, a threefold lesson on the house-top, that what God had cleansed no man must call common. Here, then, were the three grand conditions of universal evangelism: a universal commission and endl1ement, a general scattering of disciples in all di- rections, and a rebuke of all exclusive Jewish prejudices.
The church of apostolic times heeded the voice and finger of God, and took up, straightway, the work of preaching the gospel to their generation. They all undertook to reach all men God gave suc- cessive Pentecosts, as He always will when the work is done in His own fashion. The outpouring in Jerusale~ was followed by another in Samaria nnder Philip, and another in Oornelius's palace under Peter, and another in Ephesus under Paul,-and so Jew, Samaritan, Ro- man and Greek-all had typical blessings.
Another step must be noted: the division ofthe world-field. So vast a terriiory could not be covered 'in one generation without system There wert several conspicuous" pillars" of the church, leaders of the Lord's host: Peter, James, John; and, later, Paul was added.
*KilTou'oiJV're~. tActs viii : 1-4; xi : 19-21. There were at least four classes of peoples to be looked after-converted Jews in Judea, dispersed Jews in the East, Greeks and Romans. A glance at the Acts of the Apostles and at Galatians 1 : 7-10, will show that there was a distinct und~rstanding entered into and acted upon that there should be a divisiou of labor. James seems to have become the guardian of converted Hebrews in Judea; Peter, to have gone eastward to the Dispersed Tribes about Babylon; John, to have nourished the church in Ephesus, the center of Greek civilization and Diana worship; and Paul to have set his face toward Rome and Gaul. There were doubtless minor subdivisioJ).s of labor, but these cardinal points in the compass of the work are conspicuous. In the book of Acts, after the first ten chapters, Peter disappears from view, because the book is mainly designed to tell us how the doors were opened to the Gentile world, entered by the apostle of the Gentiles. But we are not necessarily to suppose Peter to have been any less active or successful among the circumcision than Paul among the uncircumcision.
Now we have no record of Peter's activity in evangelism, but we may take Paul's as a specimen of how one believer in the early church served his own generation. We find this one man going within thirtythree xears over most of the known world west of the Golden Horn, from Antioch to Athens, from Jerusalem to Rome, and, as some think, to Spain and Britain. And the astounding result of such evangelistic activity on the part of th~ whole church is that Paul is able to write to the Oolossians, before his death, which must have been, of course, before Nero's death, which was in A. D. 68: "The gospel is come unto you as it is in all the world;" and again, "the gospel which ye have heard and which was preached to every creature (or, in all creation, R. V.) under heaven." * Making all allowance for a legit- imate generality of I:'tatemen t, we find it difficult to get away from this fact that, within thirty-five years after our Lord ascended, the gospel had been carried throughout the known world. That generation of believers gave the gospel to that same generation of unbelievers as it has never been done since!
There has been a long, a criminal delay of the church in taking up the enterprise of a world's evangelization. While we have been" playing at missions," fifty generations have come and gone, without one generatiou of them all being overtaken with the gospel! It is believed that, since the days of our Lord, the average of a generation has been from about one-third to one-half of the present popUlation of the globe, say 600,000,000. If so, the aggregate of these fifty generations has been 30,000,000,000 or twenty times the entire present population of the globe! Of course we can form no conception of such a vast host. To march by us in procession, day and night, ten abreast • Colossians i : 6-23; 1 Thess. i: 6·7. passing each second, such a multitude would require nearly a centur,y! Each generation thus perishing without Christ has gone to accuse the church before God of the double crime of unfaithfulness to the Saviour and neglect of souls.
Meanwhile, during all these fifty generations, the church has been suffering injury in every vital interest. The connection between evangelistic activity and evangelical purity is natural and necessary. Dr. Duff rang out this as with a voice of thunder. Shaftesbury testified that the most potent remedy for current unl:>elief, skepticism and ungodliness, is to be perpetually busy in work for souls. And Dr. Hitchcock, almost with his last breath, declared that the church that has no missionaries will soon have no ministers. The primitive church still stands a model and a pattern of purity of faith and fidelity of work. Never was evangelism so universal, both as to those who undertook it and as to those who were reached by it. Ever since, and down to our day, the best churches in every respect have been those which are foremost as aggressive missionary bodies. In fact, the guage of church life has come to be, what we are doing for lost souls outside of ourselves.
But, most of all, this thought oppresses us, that for fifty generations Christ has been waiting to see of the travail of His soul and to be satisfied. Missions have an intensely vital relation to the person of our Lord. He left certain representative commands-commandswhich center about His own personality: "Follow thou ME 1" "Do this, in remembrance of ME"; "Go ye: and 10, I am with you." Weare identified with Him; we are to share His travail, His yearnings, His sorrows, His vicarious agonies;* yes, and His conquest, His satisfaction, His coronation, too. How can we be Christ's, and yet have none of His passion for souls? How escape travailing in birth for souls until Christ be formed in them ?t Upon the banners of the church let us emblazon, as in letters of light, our motto: THE WORLD FOR CHRIST IN OUR OWN GENERATION; and let us take up the work anew, with a firm purpose, by God's help, to overtake eveOry living soul with the message of the Gospel before this generation shall pass away 1 God is in haste to cut short this work in righteousness. In a reverent sense, Dr. Gordon has reversed the old adage, and says, "God's extremity is man's opportunity." We, who are His disciples, must come up on higher ground. Our platform must be one of abso- lute self-surrender to Him for service to our own generation. We must be willing, now and here, to say, "Lord, I am ready to do what- soever Thou shalt appoint." In simple obedience to that last command, without a secular spirit, a calcula:ting hyper-caution, a dependence on worldly patronage, a distrust of adequate support, without wait- *0010s8. i:24. tGal. Iv: 19. ing for the whole church to recognize her obligation or attempt to"
discharge it, those who do feel the mighty pressure of these great facts and truths must covenant with God and each other, that this generation shall not pass away till all this work be done I This conception of evangelism grows upon the writer until it is difficult to think of anything else. God has given to the church of our day a material equipment for this work which is as far in advauce of apostolic days as the speed of steam and lightning is ahead of camels and horses. Every resource is divinely at our disposal. We can go round the earth in ninety days, and girdle it with electricity in ninety seconds. Steam cars wait to carry us wherever engineering can construct a track, and steamboats are ready to float us wherever rivers run. The printing press will multiply the healing leaves of the tree of life as fast as we can scatter them, and the common school, now fast becoming universal, offers to fit every man to read the Scripture in his own tongue. God has flung all the doors open, and every land is now a Macedonia whose voice is, "Come over and help us/' Back of the missions of a century there stand results so amazing that even unbelievers confess the finger of God. In front of the mission band lie unoccupied territories, inviting the plowman and the sower, and white harvest fields demanding the reaper with his sickle. .AJ3 to money, if one-tenth of the treasure now in the coffers of Christians in England and America were put on the altar of sacrifice, it would suffice to multiply all that is now spent on the entire mission field~ two hundredfold. Do we realize what that means? It means twelve hundred thousand missionaries in the field, or one to every eight hundred of the unevangelized; it means churches, schools and colleges in every heathen, pagan, papal, and Moslem community; it means the blessing long since promised, when all the tithes are brought into the store-house,-a blessing poured out until there be none left to pour ouf; 1* Here is a magnificent material equipment, but it is a machine without an adequate motor. All the combined energy of the flesh will never set this huge mechanism in motion. There is bnt one Power equal to the emergency; it is the vital spark that flashes from above, and only prevailing prayer can bring that spark down. The whole church of Gou should be on her knees, pleading and waiting for the celestial fire. Let that descend, and every wheel will move and every lever play; money will be outpoured like water; life will offer its vitality and vigor, and, better than treasure or life, LOVE will count no cost dear, no toil hard, no load heavy, when Jesus leads and souls are dying! We write these words with the conviction taking hold like a taproot upon the depths of our being, that it is both practicable and *lIIalachI3: 10. See Hebrew.
MUSTARD SEEDS OF MISSIONS IN SOUTH AFRICA
possible to preach the Gospel to every human being before this generation passes away!
THE MUSTARD SEED OF MISSIONS IN SOUTH AFRICA.
BY REV. LEWIS GROUT, WEST BRATTLEBOROUGH, VT.
IT was a little more than 150 years ago, or in 1737, that George Schmidt began to tell the story of the cross to a little company of darkminded Hottentots at Bavian's Kloof, 130 miles out from Cape Town. This little nook at length took on the more beautiful and appropriate name Genadendal. or "Vale of Grace." Having built a house, planted a garden, set out a few fruit trees, taught some of the people to read the Scriptures, and gathered a few of them into the fold of Christ, the Dutch settlers began to put such hindrances in the way of his work that, at the end of seven years, he was obliged to give up and leave the field. And yet, the seed he sowed, though much of it laY" buried long, was neither lost nor forgotten. After a lapse of 50 years the way was opened for others to come in and renew the work. Reaching the same field, "the Vale of Grace," to their great joy, in a few remains of the old mission walls, a few fruit trees still in bearing, and, most of all, in a few praying souls, they found glad mementoes and proof of the good work there begun in the years of long ago, and among the rest an aged Hottentot woman, whom SchmIdt had baptized, who still remembered her beloved teacher, had, indeed, a Bible he had given her, and rejoiced exceedingly when she was told that the new missionaries were his brethren. This new mission, though for a time greatly opposed by the Dutch, was greatly blessed of God. The enterprise, there and thus begun, has continued to grow until that" Vale of Grace" is now able to show a large and prosperous settlement, and a congregation of more than three thousand members, and from this blessed center the good work of theMoravians has gone on to prosper and extend till it now includes two South African provinces with 16 stations, 60 missionaries, and more than 12,000 converts to the Christian faith.
It was not long after Schmidt's immediate successors revived his work, that the London Missionary Society was formed (1795) and began to seek some one who should be suited to the same pioneer work of carrying the light of the Gospel to the benighted tribes of Africa. Nor was it long before they found such a man in the person of John Theodosius Vanderkemp, of Holland. Having pursued a five years' course of training at the University of Leyden, distinguished himself as captain of horse and lieutenant of dragoon guards in the army, taken a course of study in the classics, both ancient and modem, in the natural sciences, and in philosophy, at Edinburgh, and then risen to great repute in the practice of medicine, and been subject, meantime, to much severe discipline at the hands of the Lord, at the age of fifty he responded to the call to be a leader in raising the standard of t116 cross in one of the darkest parts of the earth, and entered upon his work in 1799 at the Cape of Good Hope. Having labored for a time among the slaves, Mohammedans and Hottentots here at the Cape, and awakened a deep interest in his mission on the part of the colonists, he set forward for the regions beyond; and then to the northeast, among Hottentots, Kafirs, and other tribes, shrinking from no labor or peril, however great, he did a marvellous work for Christ and his poor. Often opposed, often persecuted, yet never yielding, he devoted himself with great diligence and fidelity, for 13 years, to the cause he loved; and then, with a few farewell words, went suddenly to the rest his Lord ~ad prepared for him in "the better country." The station which Vanderkemp founded at Bethelsdorf continued to prosper, and the work he began under the auspices of the London Society went on to develop and extend until it has already raised up more than a hundred native preachers, brought about 6,000 souls into the church, and won to its instruction about 30,000 adherents.
'1'he Wesleyan Missionary Society began work in South Africa in 1814. Extending its operations by degrees from the Oape Colonyinto, Kaffraria, Natal, and the Bechuanaregions, it now numbers 40 stations, 60 missionaries, and more than 6,000 church members. The Rhenish Society, which commenced operations in this field in 1829, now numbers more than 10,000 members. The Berlin began in 1833 and has 8,000 members. The American Board, which entered the field in 1834, has grown into three missions, the Zulu, the East African, and the West African, and now numbers 30 stations, 48 laborers from America, more than 40 native assistants, about 2,000 under instruction and 7,000 adherents. Besides these, the French Protestant Missionary Society is doing a large and blessed work among the Bechuana and other tribes. The Norwegians are laboring among the Zulus, the Scotch among the Kafirs, the Hanoverians and the Ohurch of England in Natal and Zululand.
These, with a few other organizations, make more than a dozen societies at work in South Afri~a, occupying more than 200 stations, and employing about 500 foreign laborers, besides a much larger force of native helpers. Of the success and value of these labors we get some idea when we find it estimated that not less than 40,000 souls have been brought in this way into the Redeemer's fold, 50,000 children gathered into Ohristian schools, and 100,000 men and women blessed with the direct teaching of the gospel of Ohrist.
Similar labors have been bestowed upon other parts of the continent, and similar results achieved. Well nigh every Christian nation is coming to have a mission, one or more, in some part of that long-neglected land. The mustard seed which the Lord used George Schmidt to plant 150 years ago, in the Southern angle of the continent, though it lay, in
HE BOOK OF ACTS AND THE WORLD'S EVANGELIZATION
a measure, hid for half a century, has taken deep root, sent up a vigorous stem, and sent out many a strong and fruitful branch. The successes of the past, the openings of the present, and the demand for the future should awaken a redoubled devotion to the blessed work. In no age of the world, in no history of continents, can anything be found so surprising as the discoveries and developments made in Africa since the days of those pioneer missionaries, Schnirlt and Vanderkemp. It would take long to tell how her bays have been sounded since their time, how her plains have been spanncd, her mountains scaled, her rivers threaded, lakes discovered, diamonds found, and a goodly number ' of grand highways projected into even "';he remotest parts of that, till of late little known, yet most marvellous land of the sun; and all under the gracious ordering of the Lord, that men freighted with the blessings of the gospel of God's own dear Son might enter and occupy. EthIopia, all Africa, is on tiptoe of expectancy, only waiting to know who God is, that she may stretch out her hands unto Him, and be lifted into His truth and grace.
THE BOOK OF AOTS AND THE WORLD'S EVANGELIZA- TION.
BY PROF. A. W. PITZER, WASHINGTON, D. C.
THE Book of Acts was written by a Gentile physician, who was the intimate associate of the special Apostle to the Gentiles and his companion in the work of evangelization. It is not a record of disconnected facts and incidents in the lives of the Apostles, but an accurate and scientific history of what Jesus continued to do after His ascension, through His spirit, His word and His servants. The principles and patterns of all missionary work, in all lands, among all peoples, until time shall be no more, are contained in this precious book; and as the church addresses herself more and more eagerly to the great and blessed work of preaching the gospel to every creature, she will also turn with ever-increasing delight to this noblest of all missionary records for guidance, for strength and for comfort.
Until our Lord shall return in bodily presence from the heavens, the elements of the missionary problem will never be essentially different from what they were when Luke prepared this record: A risen Lord on his Father's throne in glory; an omniscient and omnipresent Spirit; a living Word, written by men inspired by the Holy Ghost; living men and women, filled with the Spirit and thus endued with power to be witnesses for Ohrist; a lost race, without God and without hope either for this world or the next; the command of the King, H Go ye"; and the limit of labor-Ci into all the world."
In this Apostolic constitution and by-laws of the First Missionary Society there is a conspicuous absence of elaborate and intricate machinery, of minute rules and regulations for the guidance of the missionaries, ot endowed colleges and seminaries for training ministers, of multiplied scholastic requirements before anyone should preach the gospel-in fact, many things now thought to be indispensable, were not, at that time, even so much as thought of.
And yet the old Roman Empire extended from north to south more than 1,500 miles, and from east to west more than 2,000 miles, and included Medes, Parthians, Syrians, Ethiopians, Egyptians, Cretes, Arabs, Greeks, and many other tribes and tongues of Europe. ChrIst was the Captain, the Word was the instrument, believers were the agents, power was to come from the Holy Ghost; the only waiting to be done by the missionaries was for Him: He would endue them for their work, then they must start, and never stop until the gospel had been preached among all nations as God's witness.
Not the apostles only, but all disciples, were to go everywhere preaching the gospel. The duty of evangelizing the world was not laid upon a chosen few, with superb scholastic attainments, who could discuss gnosticism and polytheism with the scientists of that era; but every disciple who felt in his own soul the power of the Holy Ghost, was to go forth, and as the one supreme business of his life tell his fellow-men what he personally knew of Jesus of Nazareth; they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and went everywhere evangelizing.
We hear much in these days of new and difficult problems, and of new and special difficulties in the missionary work. But there are no new problems, and no special difficulties. The problems and difficulties that confront the missionary of to-day confronted the missionary of the Apostolic age. Heathenism, polytheism, philosophical speculations, sacramentarianism, polygamy, drunkenness, licentiousness, prize-fights, theatres, party spirit, persecutions, unknown languages, different tribes, tongues, races, slavery-these were in the world then, they are in the world now. The Book of Acts is a perfect Manual of Missions for all Christians, in all lands, among all peoples, through all ages, until the gospel has been preached to all nations as God's witness and the end shall come, and the Lord shall return.
The gospel proclaimed by apostolic Christians came in contact and conflict with every phase and form of human existence; in contact and conflict with Jewish bigotry, with Grecian idolatry, with Roman cruelty, with Cyprian licentiousness, with Ephesian magic, with Corinthian luxury, with Lystrian barbarism, with Sadducean skepticism, with Epicurian agnosticism-in contact with race prejudice, caste, polygamy, slavery, the drink traffic and the social evil; and the testimony oJ the humble witnesses, under the power of the Holy Ghost, was indeed the power of God unto salvation; and the men and women of all classes and conditions, of al~ races and tongues, turned from idolatry and vice to serve the living God and to wait for his son, Jesus Christ, from heaven. What problem or difficulty can meet the evan-
THE MIRACLES OF MISSIONS
gelists of to-day that did not meet the evangelists of the first Christian century? Within the pale of the church, then, there were mistakes of jndgment, and sins in conduct; there were legalism and Antinomianism; excesses and excitements; false teachers and bad doctrine; dissentions and factions; backsliders and apostates; but in spite of all these evils, the work went on, believers were multiplied on every hand, churches were organized and Christ was honored.
After eighteen centuries, the church of this age finds itself engaged in the evangelization of the world; and we call this the era of univerversal missions, when many questions of urgent interest cry aloud for answer; the sphere and functions of Missionary Boards, the powers of the evangelist, the relation between the home and foreign churches, the status of heathen converts, churches and ministers, the erection and support of schools and colleges, female missionaries, medical missions, the uses of cI,"eeds, denominational comity, increase of heathen populations, Mohammedanism and Buddhism. Whatever answers may be given to these questions, the fact remains that all the essential elements of the missionary problem are precisely the same to-day that they were in the apostolic age of the church. As regards evangelization, there is no new thing under the sun. In every perplexity and difficulty the disciple of Ohrist may turn with confident hope to this Missionary Manual for light and guidance; he will not here search in vain for either principle or practice, for example or illustration.
THE MIRAOLES OF MISSIONS.
. WORK AMONG THE WY'NDS IN IJLASGOW.* [EDITORIAL-A. T. P.] LOVE is omnipotent. Wherever passion for souls burns there we may find a new mount of transfiguration, where the earthly takes on the complexion of the heavenly. Let us find an example of the power of such love and holy passion in one of the citief: of Scotland.
It is now a little more than forty years ago since a young man of 23 undertook work as an agent in the Glasgow Oity Mission. Even before he was fully accepted as a missionary by the directors of the work, he began his apprenticeship by visits at every house in one of the lowest districts, and by conversing with every person there encountered, as to eternal things. The whole salary he was to receive for a year's work was less than two hundred dollars; and the section of the city appointed to him was especially needy and destitute, and particularly difficult as a field of labor. It had never yet been occupied and was in the worst respect pioneer ground. It has been well said that he who is not ready to preach the gospel everywhere and anywhere is fit to preach nowhere; and we are more and more persuaded that if every candidate for the office of the ministry were first tried in some such field it would prove a training in its way more profitable than any • John G. Paton, missionary to the New Hebrides. London: Hodder& Stoughton. discipline in the classroom, and would "shake the napkin at the four corners," and disclose whether or not there were in it even "one talent" for winning souls. What a preparation for practical dealing with men and women and children; with people of every variety of temper and temperament, of thought and opinion, of character and life, would such an experience be !
But we anticipate. The young man, who took up that work in that most degraded district in the great Scotch Manchester, was John G. Paton; afterwards the devoted missionary to the New Hebrides, a man whose biography, just issued from the press of Hodder & Stoughton, is uusurpassed for stimulating and inspiring narrative by any existing story of heroism. Mr. Paton found that many families around the Green street of Oalton had never been visited by any TYbinister; and there were lapsed church members who, for ten and even twenty years, had never been in a church building, and had been called on not even by a Ohristian visitor. Of course, in such classes and courts the worst conditions of society were to be found. Drunkenness, infidelity, licentiousness, blasphemy, ran riot; and there was no religion to set up any barrier against them save Romanism in it~most ignorant and superstitious form. Sin and vice walked about openly, naked and not ashamed.
Four hours a day were spent in house-to-house visits. Little prayer circles, or larger evening meetings, with personal sympathetic contact, were the means mostly used to reach and relieve all this misery of soul and body. A Sabbath evening evangelistic service was very needful; but the only available place for it was a hay-loft, with cowstalls below and a rickety wooden staircase as an outside approach. After a year's hard work Mr. Paton could show only six or seven nonchurch goers whom he had persuaded to come regularly to this rude assembly room, besides about as many more who on a week night met in a humble room of a house of the poor. That very house was a scene of gospel triumphs. The hardworking Irishwoman who lived there had a husband whob the demon of drink turned into a monster, and who cruelly beat her and pawned for accursed rum everything of value. Through the influence of these night meetings this man became a total abstainer, abandoned his evil doing, and not only attended Sabbath worship regularly, but urged others both to become abstainers from drink and attendants at worship. '.rhis man and thi!:! woman became the first real helpers of Mr. Paton in his self-denying work in the wynds of Glasgow.
Still the results of twelve months' work were so small that the directors inclined to abandon Green street as a hopeless and fruitless field and try some other section of t.he great city. But Mr. Paton's heart had become enlisted, and he who afterward at hourly risk of life persisted in abiding among the cannibals of Tanna, pleaded for another six months among Green street heathen. He obtained permission; and at the next meeting told his little congregation that if he could not induce more non-church-goers to attend he would be sent to work elsewhere. Few as they were, they had already learned to believe in Mr. Paton and to love him, and they remembered that first lesson in arithmetic, "two times one is two; " and so each one present agreed to come to the next meeting and bring one more. Of course that simple and easy method at once doubl~d the attendance. When people learn this practical multiplication table, it is surprising what wonders are wrought. From this time forth no house that could be had in that whole district was big enough for the meeting. A Bible class, singing class, communicants' class, Total Abstinence Society, Mutual Improvement Society, etc., were instituted. Beside the usual services, two prayer-meetings were opened for the policemen, one for those who were on day duty, and one for those on night duty. Mr. Paton now found every evening in the week occupied with his work, and every Sabbath brought two public services.
And now the hay-10ft had to be abandoned, for the owner required it, and the poor people were at a loss for any other place of assembly. The hostlers and other servants of a certain coach-hirer, lIfenzies by name, got permission to clear out another unused hay-loft, and at their own cost built an outside stairs for approach, to the great relief of the little congregation. Mr. Paton shared the general joy, but felt that if the work were to prosper, a permanent building of some sort must be had which they could control; and with the help of Thomas Binnie, Esq., secured not only a good site, but a Mission Hall was projected at Mr. Binnie's own expense. Just then a block of buildings being offered for sale, singularly adapted for the purpose, this generous benefactor persuaded Dr. Symington's congregation, in connection with which this mission work was carried on, to buy the whole block; and so, at the crisis of the work, God's providence put at the disposal of Mr. Paton and his mission buildings suitable both for evangelistic and educational work.
Of course the time had now come for reorganizing aud enlarging this work. At 7 A. M. on the Lord's Day. Mr. Paton held a class for BIble study, where from seventy to one hundred of the poorest young men and women of the vicinity were gathered. They came in their workclothes, for they had but one suit, all without coverings for their heads, and some without shoes for their feet. Mr. Paton remarked with joy how contact with the gospel brought improvement even in dress and manners. Gradually the attendants began to come in better and more complete attire, fitter for such assemblies; then they were emboldened to "go to church; " and then to bring others with them. Their teacher's joy in his work was ecstatic, but it was not reached by any dainty and delicate steps. At six o'clock every Sunday morning this indefatigable worker might have been seen running from stl'eet to sheet and from door to door for an hour, drumming up his recruits. He kuocked and called, till he roused the careless and the sleepy; and by dint of such perseverance he got together and kept together that early morning Bible class. At a later stage in its history, a band of voluntary visitors from the class itself undertook to relieve him and loolf after the irregular, indifferent and tardy members.
On Monday nights this devoted city missionary held a sort of Bible ;reading for all who chose to come; on Wednesday evenings a combined Bible lecture and prayer service that half filled the church; and on Thursdays an Intending Oommunicants' class for the instruction of those who wished to confess Ohrist and join anyone of the Protestant churches in the city. Friday evening brought a singing class for church music, and Saturday, a total abstinence meeting, in which the members themselves conducted the varied exercises. Mr. ,Paton testifies to the great influence and power of Temperance as the handmaid of the gospel. He himself being a total abstainer both from liquor and tobacco, he found himself the more able to influence others to forego these injurious indulgences.
Thus this mission, which began with so little promise, became a feeder to all the churches, training active and useful members for neighboring congregations; not only so but it became a kinll of theological seminary in which eight lads got their first lessons in Latin and Greek from Mr. Paton's little stock, and their training for the work of preaching the gospel and winning souls.
And now this Oalton Mission grew rapidly to unrivalled dimensions. From 500 to 600 were in weekly attendance, exclusively poor wageworkers and very largely mill-workers. The results were wide-reaching and far-reaching. Habits improved, personal appearance and the whole environment; many removed to better localities. But Mr. Paton kept watch and hold npon them nntil he saw them safely housed in some church. Often his four hours of daily labor which were "nominated in the bond," expanded to double that time. He trained eight or ten devoted young men and twice as many young women as visitors and tract distributors, and twice a month they went on their rounds of visits. At monthly meetings of workers, reports were made and matters of importance brought to notice. Mr. Paton fou.ud himself the head of a sort of Bureau of Tract Distribution, Relief and Employment.
All this work for God and His poor could not be carried on without antagonism. The keepers of the public houses saw the Total Abstinence Society making fearful inroads on their destructive business, and they were ready for any act of undcrhanded or openhanded violence. Mx:. Paton held, on summer nights and Saturday afternoons, Evangelistic and Total Abstinence meetings in Thomson's Lane. The top of an outside staircase furnished a ready pulpit, and the audiences were large, though the gospel had no meretricious charms of art and resthetics by which to "draw." Oomplaints were made by these tavern keepers to the captain of the police that these meetings were hurting their trade. l!'ortunately the complamt was true, though in another sense frpm that intended by the complainants. The captain happened to be himself a pious Wesleyan, and he informed Mr. Paton of the complaints and of the attendance of his police force, but bade him go on and conduct the meeting as usual. A large crowd gathered, and among them many of the dram-sellers and their minions, expecting to see the police break up the meeting and humiliate the missionary and his helpers. The police appeared in force, headed by Oaptain Baker, and the foes of the mission were jubila.nt in anticipation of a row. But the meeting proceeded in so orderly a fashion that Oaptain Baker himself surprised both friends and foes by mounting the platform and devoutly listening till the close. Thus the whiskey ring had to "wait out" the service and hear the gospel-which was not a frequent experience. And at the end of the service Oaptain Baker, instead of breaking up the meeting, or prohibiting others like it, spoke warmly in favor of the work and wished it God speed.
So the enraged dram-sellers planned another assault. The next Saturday evening, a spirit-dealer ran his van in front of the iron gateway of the church which was the only place of egress for the assembled multitude. Two young men were sent by Mr. Paton to drag away the wagon; they were seized and marched off to the police office for "injuring the whiskey-dealer'S property!" and when Mr. Paton ran after them to ask their offense, he was threatened with similar arrest if he did not cease his interference. He went with them to the station. The rumor flew that the missionary and his young men were being" taken up" by the police, and a crowd ran to the rescue; but Mr. Paton begged them to refrain from all disturbance. The lieutenant on duty was manifestly in league with the conspirators and no justice would have been done but for the interference of some gentleman who threatened to expose the whole outrage, and the accused parties were suddenly set at liberty.
Romanism and skepticism likewise opposed the work; and Mr. Paton at first tried to offset their influence by lectures with free discussion at the close, but he became satisfied that he was only advertising the devil's wares, and he abandoned all defensive methods for the simple preaching of the gospel.
We cannot close this remarkable chapter of city missions without an example or two of the wondrous power of the gospel in these Wynds. An infidel lecturer in that district was very sick and Mr. Paton was called to see him. He found him in the midst of a library of infidel publications which he eagerly circulated to poison the minds of the linwary. Whatever little he knew of the Word of God, was only sufficient to feather the arrows of his ridicule. But now he felt himself to Qe taking that awful" leap into the dark," and his mind was full of terror at the "unknown." Mr. Paton's visits were so blessed even to .that hardened sinner, that another wonder, like that of Ephesus, occurred. With cries and tears for pardon and peace, he became a penitent believer and called in all the infidel works he had set in circulation, piled them together after his wife and daughter had torn them in pieces, and he himself struck the light that turned the pile to ashes. * That man was so completely transformed by that simple gospel message that he not only abandoned his infidelity and ceased to be a panderer and procurer for the devil, but till the close of life continued to wit- ness to souls and thereby to win souls.
The district where Mr. Paton labored was so degraded and depraved that he not unfrequently came upon those who seemed to be possessed of a demon. He met an infidel whose blasphemies made even his vile neighbors shudder; and who even as death approached would not hear a word of gospel comfort, but foamed with rage and even spat at Mr. Paton when he mentioned the name of Jesus. His hatred to God seemed to drive him mad. He yelled like a demoniac, and tore to pieces his very bedclothes, till he had to be bound to his iron bed, still foammg out curses and blasphemies. When the humble missionary asked if he might pray for him, he shouted with all his remaining strength, "Pray for me to the DEVIL!" And when Mr. Paton re- minded him that he had declared that he did not believe in either God or devil, he shouted again in terrific rage, "Yes, I do believe in a devil and a God, and a just God, too; but I have hated Him in life and I hate Him in dea.th I "
Yet, even into such a "mouth of hell" went this fearless young mis- sionary, even there to rescue souls; and he did it I He was called to see a doctor who was both an unbeliever and a drunkard. In hi.s at- tacks of delirium tremens he had tried one and another method of suicide. At one time the watchers barely succeeded in dashing from his lips, after a fierce struggle, a fatal draught of prussic acid; again they caught a glimpse of a shining lancet hid in the :folds of his shirt with which he would have bled himself to death. In one of these fits of suicidal madness Mr. Paton, at his request, took his seat beside him, alone, he having first promised that he would do anything the mis- sionary would ask if everyone else might be put out of the room. After a long conversation Mr. Paton took down a dusty Bible that had long lain neglected in the closet, and after reading said: "Now, shall we pray?" "Yes," said the doctor; and kneeling beside him, the missionary whispered: "You pray first."
*Oompare Acts xix: 17-20.
NOTES FROM OUR ENGLISH CORRESPONDENT
"I curse. I cannot pray; would you have me curse God to His face? "
"You promised to do all that I asked. You must pray or try to . pray, and let me at least hear that you cannot."
"I cannot curse God on my knees; let me stand, and I will curse him; I cannot pray."
Mr. Patou gently but firmly held him on his knees, saying: "Just try to pray, and let me hear you cannot." Instantly he cried out: "0 Lord, thou knowest I cannot pray," and strove to rise up as though Satan were struggling within him to turn that beginning of prayer into a curse. But the noble winner of souls took up that unfinished prayer and continued it as though it were his own, till the old blasphemer was subdued and quiet at the feet of the Master. Then inducing him to lie down and sitting beside him till he fell asleep, Mr. Paton commended him to the care of the Lord, and slipped away to other duties. Returning later in the day, the poor victim of delirium was found in his right mind; nay, running to meet the missionary, he hugged him in his arms, crying, "Thank God, I can pray now! I rose refreshed from sleep, and for the first time in my life prayed with my wife and children; and now I shall do so every day and serve God while I live, who hath dealt" in so great mercy with me !" And so he did, joining Dr. Symington's church, and giving his medical skill to a holy ministry to God's destitute little ones, as anxious for their souls as their bodies, until he, who once could not pray, but only curse, fell sweetly asleep in Jesus, to wake where there is "no more curse."
What wonder that even anonymous letters threatening his life, and the public curses from the altar by Romish priests, and the advice of directors of the mission could not induce this brave city missionary to leave a work attended by such supernatural power of God. For ten years he struggled patiently on, though he was at one time felled to the g.round by a stone hurled.at him by a malignant Papist, and mar- vellously escaped assault after assault upon his life. While we sit quietly at home, in our easy chair, or making rousing addresses or write with burning pens on city evangelization, or the estrangement of the masses from the church, here is one man who dives into the depths of all this depravity and degradation, and demonstrates what love and the gospel can do to rescue drowning souls!
NOTES FROM OUR ENGLISH CORRESPONDENT, REV. JAMES JOHNSTON, A. S. A.
I. RELEASE OF EAST AFRICAN MISSIONARIES.
AFTER months of suspense there is rejoicing among the frIends of the English Church Missionary Society over the telegram from Zanzibar of May 5: "Mr. D. A. L. Hooper, the last of the missionaries detained by Bushiri, has arrived here safely." In conne"ction with the release of the entire band of missionaries, special acknowledgment is due to the British Consul- General, Col. Euan Smith, at Zanzibar. His energy and tact in effecting the safe arrival of the missionaries recalls the generous aid tendered to Dr. Livingstone by Sir John Kirk some 25 years ago. Since the outbreakofhos- tilities between. the Arabs and German traders, the missionaries have been imprisoned at the mission stations of Mamboia and Mpwapwa, about 160 miles from Bagamoyo. Early in February the British Consul deputed the Arab Commissioner to re-open the negotiations for the safe conduct of the missionaries to the coast. Meanwhile, March 11, a gleam of consolation was given by the French missjonaries securing the ransom of the German missionaries, numbet"ing six men and one lady, on payment of 6,000 rupees and the sunender of 12 slaves captured by the German war vessel, the Leip- sic. Subsequently rumors reached Zanzibar that the missionaries belong- ing to England were in daily apprehension of a catastrophe at the mission station. A letter from Mrs. Roscoe, a missionary's wife, dated Mamboia, March 11, and received in England April 28, showed the danger to which the brave band was exposed. The raids of the hostile natives compelled them twice to retire to the hills. In vain they tried to obtain a travelling escort. From this neighborhood Mr. Brooks, at his own risk and against the wishes of his friends, attempted at the cost of his life, to make a pas- sage. The lady correspondent had slight faith in Bushiri, which was speed- ily vedfied by his demand for a ransom as soon as he had the missionaries in his power.
Late in March the French missionaries, by request of the British authori- ties, prevailed upon Bushiri to grant the English missionaries protection from Mamboia and guaranteed arrival into Bagamoyo. Thh. port and mis- sionary station is COining in to rapid prominence. From Bagamoyo, which lies to the southwest of Zanzibar, runs the main trade route inland to Lake Tanganyika. A telegram was dispatched to England April 24, fromZanzi- bar, stating that Mr. Roscoe, of the Church Missionary Society, and his . wife, who were on their way from Mamboia to the coast, had been released by Bushiri and were then receiving the hospitality of the French mission station at Bagamoyo. This good news was darkened with the intelligence of the retention in Bushiri's camp of the Rev. W. E. Taylor, Dr. C. S. Ed- wards and MI'. D. A. L. Hooper, three of the society's missionaries, as hos- tages, for whose redemption 10,000 rupees were demanded. With commenda- ble decision the acting British Consul, Mr. Hawes, authorized the Ft"ench missionaries to pay the entire required amount.
A message dated Zanzibar, April 28, intimated that Bushiri had allowed the Rev. W. E. Taylor and Dr. Edwards to leave his quarters. Without de- lay, the missionaries, in the company of Mr. and Mrs. Roscoe, proceeded from Bagamoyo to Zanzibar, en route for Mombasa. Bushiri still detained 111'. Hooper, on the plea that he was not a missionary and did not hail either from Mpwapwa or Mamboia. Fresh negotiations resulted in his release as announced in the first telegram. Happily, the reported death of Mr. Stokes is untrue. Despite his very critical situation, he has passed through the country safely, and is now on the Victoria Nyanza, arranging for commu- nication by water with Uganda.
The unwearied efforts of Col. Euan Smith throughout the negotiations }Iave made him popular on the East African coast and in England. His de- parture from Zanzibar on a short visitto London was a signalfor an ovation at Zanzibar. In this the fOI"eign representatives, the native community, and even influential Arabs participated. Captain Wissmann cordially bade the Consul a temporary farewell, expressing his intention to encourage British Indian commerce on the German seaboard, and forthwith to open and . protect the caravan routes into the interior !rom Bagamoyo, and Bwam- bara.
Since Col. Euan Smith's arrival in England he has paid visits to the For- eign Office. He has freely communicated his views to the Church Mission- ary Society with regard to the outlook in East AfrIca. With Great Britain the Sultan remains friendly. In suppressing slavery the combined blockade of Germany, England and the other powers had been most effective. The conveyance of slaves by sea had been almost entirely checked. A less fa- vorable statement is made respecting the stoppage of the importation of arms and ammunition. These were landed among general cargoes in large dhows. The Colonel denies the truth of the charge made in the English House of Commons, that slave dhows carried the French flag, or that let- ters of marque were given to such craft by French Cousuls. With reference to German colonization, the Colonel spoke of an interview with Captain Wissmann at Zanzibar. He believed him to be a man of great power and I knowledge, whose experience would undoubtedly help him in hi,; mission.
The latest telegram, May 5, states that the hostilities between Captain Wissmann and Bushiri are imminent neal' Bagan-lOYo. The German force numbers about 400 men, composed of Europeans, Soudanese, Tomalis and Zulus. His purposed by the Germans to restore law at Lundi, Kilwa, Dar- as-Salaam, Pangani and Tonga, and to make a re-conquest of the stations Usagara, Usegua, Ukami and Nguro, belonging to the German East African Company. Along the coast-line from Wanga to Rovuma Bay a pax Ger- manica will, if possible, be impol'ed. Gl'ave apprehensions are felt regard- ing the issues of the ensuing conflid on the mission centres situated in East Central Africa.
P.S.-We append the following telegrams, which are creating much ex- citement in English missionary and colonial circles: " ZANZIBAR, May 9. .. There was a decided engagement yesterday between Captain Wissmann and Bushiri, the former being assisted by a detachment of 200 German sailors. Bushiri's camp was captured and destroyed, and his followers dispersed. His loss was 70 killed and 20 prison- srs. One German naval officer was killed and several of Captain Wissmann's officers were wounded. Forty black soidiers were killed. Bushiri has escaped."
"BERLIN, May 10. "Captain Wissmann's victory over the Arab insurgent leader, Bushiri-a victory though achieved with considerable superior forces-bodes well, think people here, for the future tranquility of German East Africa. . The Imperial Commissary's forces numbered about 900 men, iucluding 200 marilles from the blockading squadron, while Bushiri's in- trenched camp was defended by only 600 of his followers. The fight was short and sharp. Bushiri. himself, managed to escape, according to one account, even before the stormers advanced on his position, his loss being 80 killed and 20 prisoners. while Captain Wissmann had 40 of his black troops killed and one German sergeant of the naval contingent,one offi- cer-Lieutenant Schella of the Schwalbe-and a marine, of the Leipsic, were killed. What effect this defeat of the Arabs will have on the future of the missionaries and other Euro- peans in the interior, remains to b~ seen, but the opinion here is that the insurrection on the East coast will now collapse."
The London Times' comment on the conJecture is as follows: "The escape of Bushiri renders the issue uncertain, nor is it possible to avoid apprehen- sions for the safety of Europeans in the interior. There is a solidarity among the so-called Arab traders of Easters and Central Africa, arising from the con~iction that the advance of Europeans into the country is fatal to their interests."
II. THE BAPTIST MISSIONARY· SOCIETY.
Rev. C. H. Spurgeon has recently spoken in tones of strong encouragement on missionary matters. He remarked that it was wonderful how much was being done for the conversion of the world by Christian people of all sorts, in aU sorts of ways. He believed their missions would yield a glorious harvest tor Christ one day, whether they lived to see it or not. Sometimes it took a. good while to prepare for a great work, and a vast amount of material had to be expended in order to make the foundation solid and good. He had no doubt that by and by they would be well repaid for all their labor and sowing of seed. In a similat' vein of congratulation his brother, the Rev. J. A. Spurgeon, urged all Christian toilers to remember that love was the secret of success in foreign missions.
It is noteworthy that notwithstanding the criticisms which Mr. Caine made upon the methods pursued by the Baptist Society in India, and also the severe strictures to which Canon Taylor subjects the Church Mi5sionary Society, both societies are in receipt of unprecedented incomes for 1888. Secretary Baynes, of the former society, announced at the annual meeting thatthe receipts for the yeal' just closed amounted to £80,818, as compared with £66,- 209 for the previous year, an increase of £14,609. A special sum of £3,800 had likewise been contributed for the relief of sufferers in the Chinese famine. Still thet'e was at the close of the year a deficit of £2,800, caused by increased expense in connection with the Congo Mission. Part of this deficit had been made up. The river Congo rates for transportation were excessively large. Mr. Baynes stated that the contract for the new Congo railway had been signed. On its anticipated completion four years hence the cost of mission freights would be much reduced. This railway will have a length of 265 miles, at a cost of 25,000,000 francs. It will start from the Underhill Baptist Station on the Lower Congo and terminate at Kinshasha, Stanley Pool. By this communication Central African commerce, civilization and Christianity will be enormously benefited.
From the report of the society (ninety-seventh) we learn that six missionaries have died and eleven new ones gone forth during the past year. On the society's staff are now 125 English missionaries and 334 native preachers. The numbers of unpaid native agents and self-supporting native churches formed a promising outlook. In 1888 the converts baptized represented 317 in India, 113 in the Bahamas (and upwards of 240 awaiting baptism in the out-stations), 70 in the Shantung province of China, 40 in Japan and 22 at San Salvador. Marked progress was noted III the Congo Mission. In China there were 21 Baptist missionaries who for some months had been mainly engaged in ministering to the famine-stricken Chinese in Eastern China. Two of them were credited with keeping ~live 2,000 at a station in the city where they resided and over 10,000 others in the neighborhood.
Educational and literary agencies had been vigorously maintained. The sale of bibles, religious books and tracts during 188£ in India by the Baptists had never been exceeded. Issnes of portions and complete copies of the Scriptures from the Calcutta Mission numbered 34,535. Testimonies of missionaries and civilians demonstrate that the preaching of the gospel and the translations of the Bible are working a revolution in that empire, and inevitably, is gradually undermining the degraded superstitions of the Hindoos.
'1'he Baptist Zenana Missionary Society drew as usual a crowded assembly. Financially the year has been exceedingly stimulating. Receipts were £9,- 641, which leaves in the treasury a balance of £1,100. Miss Angus, of the Ladies' Home, Delhi, delivet'ed a notable address, from which we quote a single passage: "The map of India is now dotted over with mission stations. Butit must be remembered that these are, for the most part, situated in the large cities, and even there the work to be done far exceeds the strength of the workers. There are literally thousands of smaller towns and villages as yet unoccnpied, hundreds of thousands who have never heard the name of Christ. Day by day the cry goes up to God from many a heart, 'Refuge bath failed me, no man careth for my soul.' For' the millions of India still lie untouched.' Dr. Pierson's words in THE MISSIONARY REVIEW OF THill WORLD snould ring in our ears: • We are not responsible for conversion, but we are for contact.' When will the church of Christ rouse herself to the duty of contact with these millions?"
III. MISSIONARIES FOR CENTRAL AFRICA.
Toward the last of March a splendid ovation was given in'Exeter Hall to the eight pioneer missionaries departing for Central Africa in connection with the new Balolo Mission. This mission has been formed for the evangelization of the Balolo people dwelling in the Upper Congo, and is a continuation and extension of the Livingstone Inland Mission, begun in 1878. The chairman of the meeting, Mr. J. E. Mathieson, held that it was obligatOL'y upon England to let Africa occupy a large place in the affection and intecests of the church. In deprecating the sever-ely critical attitude taken by so many toward missions, the speaker endorsed the action of five or six of the great missionary societies in London whose methods were being revised in orner to open their doors to young men who had not gone through the regul.ar college curriculum. In sending forth this class of missionaries the directors would command the sympathies and gratitude of the churches. Dr. Grattan Guinness followed with a panegyric upon thL'ee men by whom Central Africa had been opened up to Christianity and commerce, viz.: Livingstone, Stanley and Leopold, King of the Belgians. On the banks of the Upper Congo, where the mission was to do its work, one tribe alone nuPlbered over ten millions, among whom only two missionaries labored. The mission was originally started by a gift of £800, and in a very short time more than £1,500 had been subscribed by friends interested in the enterprise. A rousing speech was delivered by that gifted and eminent representative of young Wesleyanism, the Rev. Hugh Price Hughes. He maintained that the antidote for drunkenness, gllombling and all forms of crime and infidelity in these days was foreign missions. England ought to be active in this branch of service, as there was probably no nation now existing that had done so much mischief as Great Britain by the liquor traffic, and in many other ways, and also by shedding innocent blood in almost every corner of the globe. He held that at the present time there were too few evangelists abroad and too many English ministers at home, a state of things which ought certainly and speedily to be reversed. The devoted leader of the mission, Mr. J. McKittrick, and some of his fellow-workers subsequently addressed the large gathering of friends.
IV. PROTESTANTISM IN HAMBURG.
In Hamburg, one of the gayest and most licentious cities In Europe, a bazaar liberally supported in aid of the maintenance of the Church Fund and, if possible, the early erection of a new English church in the city, realized £1,700. .This amount, raised by the combined efforts of English, American, German and other nationalities, chiefly of the Protestant faith, far exceeded the expectations of the small colony of British and American SUbjects. The l:iympathy which this worthy undertaking has elicited has been confirmed by the unanimous praise accorded to it in the local press, which describes it as the most tasteful and brilliant enterprise of the kind ever attempted in Hamburg.
At the opening ceremony, April 4, the reigning BUrgomaster Dr. Petersen, expressed the genuine sympathy in which Hamburgers held the English people. As the head of the Hamburg Government, he remarked that between England and Hamburg an unbroken friendship had continued for upwards of 600 years, commencing as early as 1266, when the King of England bestowed valuable land and commercial rights upon Hamburg subjects in London. These rights the Hanse factory in the metropoHs was privileged – to enjoy undiminished until the beginning of the nineteenth century. On the other hand, the company of British merchant adventurers received a grant of land, the permission of living under English law with inulluUlty from taxation, and religious freedom in the shape of an English church a.t lIam- burg as early as 1567. Notwithstanding hard times of fot"eign religious in- tolerance, Hamburg alone, perhaps, of all states, can point with pride to the fact that the English church of evangelical profession had been allowed un- mterrupted toleration for three centuries.
V. ROMAN CATHOLIC MISSIONS IN INDIA.
In the voluminous replies which Mr. Caine's attack on Indian missions has provoked, there will be some advantage in recording the results oC the mission work in India, with which the Roman Catholics credit themselves. The editor of Illustrated Catholic Missions in England has published various statistics bearing upon Roman Catholic missions in India, chiefly based on the figures published in the new edition of the Imperial Gazateer of India, compiled by Sir W. W. Hunter. An English correspondent who has spent 20 years in the Indian Civil Service recently asserted that Catholic and Protestant missions were equally failures in that Empire. He held that in an especial deg-ree this was true of Catholic missions since the beginning of the eighteenth century, while in view of the increase of population Catholicity had been declining for many years. Challenging Mr. Caine.'s implied assertion that Roman Catholics were more successtul than Protesta.nts, he quoted in his proof the official returns of 1881. These show in round numbers as follows: Catholics, 936,000; Protestants, 435,000; Nestorians and others, 456,000; total, 1,827,000. From the number of Pl'otestants 100,000 might be deducted for Bt'itish-born and foreign Christians, though they are not all Protestants. This would leave 335,000 Protestants, a far more satisfactory number in less than 100 years than 936,000 in the 350 years since Xavier began the gt'eat work in India.
It is admitted by Roman Catholic wt"iters that the census of 1881 returned the total number of Catholics as 963,058 (excluding French and Portuguese territories, which contain 285,703 more). The census returns they regard as erroneous to the extent of 100,000 Christians, quoting from Sir W. W. Hunter to the same effect. He writes (vol. vi., p. 265) : "The Roman Caiholies were under-estimated in the census returns by the exclusion of about 100,000 Syrian Christians who acknowledge the jurisdiction of the Vicars- Apostolic of Verapoli and Quilon, andby their inclusion among the Jacobites, who are unconnected with the Roman Catholic Church." Adding, it is said, these extra 100,000, and also the Catholics of Portuguese and French India, which practically all form one mission field, there will be a grand total of Catholics in India numbering 1,349,441. According to the" Madras Catholic Directory" for 1885, the returns at"e estimated at 1,356,037 for British, native and foreign India, some four or five years before the inauguration of the Indian hiet"archy. Mulhall supposed the Catholics in India to number 1,318,000, and another estimate, which appeared in the Deutsche Reich8 Zeitung, gives 1,600,600 as the probable total.
In reply to the charge that the Catholics are steadily diminishing, the advocates of Catholic missions quote the following passage from Sir W.W. Hunter: "The Roman Catholics in India steadily increase, and, as in former times, the increase is chielly in the south, especia.lly in the missions of Pondicherry and Medura. The number
A FmST YEAR'S IMPRESSIONS .oF JAPAN
of Catholics in British and French India and the native states, but exclusive of the Portu guese possessions, rose from 732.887 in 1851 to 93~,400 'n 1871, and to 1,103,560 in 1881. The Pondicherry Mission lately performed over 50,01 ) adult baptisms in three years. In British India. and the native states the children in Catholic schools increased from 28,249 in 1871 to 44,699 in 1881" (p.259).
The Catholics contend that they do not possess a tithe of the funds which the Protestant missionary societies have at their disposal. In verification of this the evidence of Sir W. W. Hunter (in the Imperi:J,l Gazetteer, vol. vi. p. 260) is again adduced: "The Roman Catholics work in India," he writes, .. with slender pecuniary resources. Theyderive their main support from the two great Catholic organizations, the Associa- tion for the Propagation of the Faith, and the Society of the goly Childhood. The former contributes £24,4M yearly to Indian missions, and the latter £12,300, making a total of £-36,- 764. This is exclusive of the expenditure within the Archbishopric of Goa; but it repre- sents the European contributions to the whole vicariates under the Pope. In 1880 they maintained 16 bishops and 1,118 priests, teaching 1,288 schools, 40,907 pnpils, and giving instruction to 1,002,379 native Christians. Tbe Roman Catbolic priests deny tbemselves the comforts consid- ered necessaries for Enropeans in India. In many districts tbey live the frngal and abstemious life olthe natives, and their inlluence reaches deeply into the social life of tbe communities among whom they dryeU."
This Important chain of testimony relating to metbods of operation and principles of teaching, so distinct from the great Protestant sections in the Indian mission field, will nevertheless receive re- spectfulattentlon when associated witb the authoritative imprimatur of tbe foremost living Indian statistician.
A FIRST YEAR'S IMPRESSIONS OF JAPAN.
: BY REV. FRED. S. CURTIS, HIROSHIMA.
As a mission field Japan is doubtless second to nonein regard toits present results and promise for the future: but, judging from a purely human stand- point, the coming of the kingdom of God in Japan is yet in the dim future. The eighty million;; of gods in the" Flowery Kingdom" cannot receive their . deathblow in a day. In the houses of all who are not.either Christian 01' agnostic you may stilI see the little shrine with its offering of flowers. Every- where-not only" on every high hill and under every green tree;" but in the shops and boats, by the wayside, at every turn in the road, these symbols of idolatry meet the eye.
Hiroshima is a stronghold of Buddha. The street on which we live has a continuous row of temples for an eighth to a quarter of a mile. And though the worshippers at these tern pIes seem very scarce the strong Buddhistic prejudice of the people renders them unreceptive to Christianity. The Hiroshima people are looked down upon throughout the Empil'e as being hard, indifferent and unreliable. On arriving we were much disappointed to find tbat, aside from the regular attendants at the Presbyterian and Methodist churches established here-some two or three hundred people- there were but few who manifested any particular interest in Christianity, or who would even come to the preaching places from curiosity. We had expected to see iarge crowds flocking to hear the word of God, and inquirers coming from all parts of the interior, and that anywhere and at any time a large audience could be gathered. This last is true when a large hall or theater is thrown open for a popular lecture on Christianity and prominent speakers are advertised.
I find that the people differ greatly in different localities. For instance, in Koohi the people are exceedingly impressible and embrace the Christian re- ligion readily, while in Nagasaki the old prejudice against the Christian and the" Christian's God" still lives, making it perhaps a more difficult field than Hiroshima. Here it is very difficult to induce the people to enter a otlurch building j they seem to think that in so doing they would commit themselves to Christianity. Since this feeling exists, I am strongly in favor of establishing out-statiorls or preaching.places which at present shall not themselves become churches, but act as feeders to the churches already established till the prejudice is overcome.
As to the government, while it t~lerates Christianity, it clings to idolatry. A recent report shows $150,000 as given in one year to Shinto temples, and year before last $50,000 was given to one single temple. The Mikado himself is an idolater and worships his ancestors.
What the government wants is not so much Christianity as Western science and institutions, and just now, perhaps, more than anything else, treaty revision; and to bring about the last is doubtlebs their motive for keeping foreigners out of the interior. If it permits freedom here, there is no privilege left which it can grant to foreign nations in the future. The various fOl'eign powers have certainly taken advantage of Japan, obliging her to admit aU their products at a duty of five per cent. or less, while she has to pay enormously on her exports. Then, too, no foreigner is amenable to Japanese law, all cases being tried before the consuls.
Some time since I saw quite a melee in front of the hotel at Kobe. A Japanese boatman was being very roughly and to all appearance unjustly treated by a crowd of Chinamen, while not ten feet distant stood a Japanese policeman, his sword hanging by his side, for the treaty laws do not permit any interference with foreigners. Now the time has come when it would seem that the Japanese government does not propose to remain longer in leading strings; but the other nations cannot seem to agree upon any satisfactory revision of the treaties regarding "exterritoriality." What can Japan do to bring about the desired change? If it absolutely forbids foreigners to travel, reside and teach in the interior, "the people would probably become disaffected, so to go outside the treaty ports is being made as difficult as possible. Heretofore the government has permitted foreigners to go to different parts of the interior on passports for" travel, health and scientific observation," also when employed by the Japanese. These purposes have been regarded as mere technicalities by the officials, and many missionaries have lived on such passports.
Having tried every other expedient, the government, while continuing to issne, enforces the strict letter of the law, thus making them very difficult to obtain. One of our missionaries waited at Kobe fOI" his passport from Thanksgiving time till the middle of January. Then, too, after a passport has been once obtained the trouble is not over, for it must be renewed, with greater or less frequency. When the time for which it has been granted is about to expire, the passport must be brought to a treaty port and surrendered and an application made for the renewal. The passport is then sent to Tokio, and after a longer or shorter time the renewal is granted.
There is a missionary who has waited three months, and is still waiting, in Kobe, for her passport to be renewed. This lady is a teacher in a mission school, which may account, at least in part, for the delay, for the government having taken such pains to establish its own schools throughout the empire, naturally wishes them to be well patronized: hence, all private schools are discouraged. Recently it was desired to start a Christian school in Kochi. The Japanese engaged by a missionary was obliged to write "almost a volume to the authorities in regard to the matter," after which, says a missionary, in writing home of the action of the authorities, "they sent this communication back as not correct, wanted to know the number of feet in the school-house and around, the name of the school, etc. All this was written out at full length, when again the paper was returned, asking , what books would be taught, who were the publishers, when and where were they published, how far in each book the pupil must get in a term and at what age a pupil could enter the school.' " .
These questions were duly answered, but sometime after came the query: "If you get two hundred pupils at 35 cents each pel' month, how will you use all that money? If you do not get that number of pupils, where will the money come from? "
Viewed in the light of a determined purpose to secure treaty revision, such seemingly puerile actions are significant. I trust the time is not far distant when propel' treaties will be made, giving Japan her ri~hts and a footing more nearly equal to the otb.er great nations of the earth. For sev- eral months there have been rumors afloat to the effect that Japan had made a new treaty with America, which will give us liberty to go anywhere in Ja_ pan, but whether this is true or not remains to be seen. That some sort ola treaty has been concluded with a certain foreign power, is all that we can now be sure of.
Let mesay a word in regard to my personal work so far. Although I cannot yet preach in the vernacular, I have established a temporary preaching place at the girls' school. My teacher has done the preaching while I have read the Scriptures and led the singing. This tl'acher is a young Japanese student, who is working to obtain funds that he may resume his studies for the ministry in the Congregational College at Kyoto. Though but twenty- two years old, he has already, we think, shown a gift for preaching, but he lacks power, and seems to have very little realization of the meaning and responsibility of the sacred office to which he aspires. I am very glad, how- ever, that he does not think it necessary (as many of the native preachers do) to use the classical Chinese words, which are unintelligible to the unedu- cated. The services which we have carried on together have had an aver- age of about twenty-five attendants, half of these being heathen. Were the preaching place on some large thoroughfare, instead of being near the outskirts of the city, no doubt many more would come in and heal' the gospel.
By the time I am ready to preach, it is my hope that the Lord will open the way for the establishment of a preaching hall on some main thorough- fare, where large numbers may readIly be reached. The people are so ex- ceedingly curious to see foreigners that I am sure they would listen, could some prominent spot be secured. When any of the missionaries enter a store on one of the principal streets, a large crowd invariably collects to watch their every movement and catch their every word. 0, that this same spirit of investigation might be transfel'l'ed to the Gospel of the one true God! For there are in this city a hundred thousand souls who know Him not. Of equal urgency is the need of the handful of Christians here who must be" instructed in the way of God more perfectly." Were I asked what I consider to be the most vital needs of the church of Hiroshima, I should say.
a deepel' heart experience and life, and a realization of the lost condition of the souls of their countrymen, prompting to earnest effort for their speedy evangelization. With many their Christianity seems largely a matter of intellectual belief, and in this section of the country I have failed to see any marked spirit of evangelism.
As to ihe people of Japan, as a race, it may indeed be said to be favorable towar(1 Christianity, but it is, like its rulers, much more favorable towal'd western civil~ation and its accompaniments. .Witb the multitude it mat-
FATHER DAMmN THE LEPER PRmST OF MOLOXAI
tel'S little what it is, if it be but American or European, whether to wear foreign clothes, to eat foreign food, to drink fpreign liquors, or to learn the English language. All these things are done to a most remarkable extent; for our language there is a perfect "craze." The highest ambition of the Jap1.nese youth is to go to America, and next to this to speak Engbsh.
Many Christian teachers would lack for pupils, were the teaching of English done away with.
The superficiality, fickleness and" happy-go-Iuckiness" of this .people, with an impressibleness that is only" skin deep," :O,re the greatest trials of the missionary who seeks to labor among them.
But there is another side to this picture which is so well presented in the recently published report of" The Council of Missions co-operating with the United Church of Christ in Japan," that I send you a brief extract from it• * .. The United Church of Christ in Japan has enjoyed a year of constant growth. * In no previous year have the additions been so many. The adult members of the Church number 7.551. The infant members number 1.139. The total membership is 8.690. The increase during the year is 1.831. The churches are sixty-one. The ministers number thirty-six. The contributions for churCh purposes were yen 20.315.82. A comparison with longer periods is instructive. The United Church of Christ was formed in 1877 by the union of eight churches and 623 Christians. including the children. In 1882 there were twenty- five chnrches. with 1.728 members. Three years later. in 1885. the churches were fifty and the members were 3.922. In the past the church has doubled 10 membership in each three years. and in eleven years the incrl'ase has been from six hundred to nine thousand. A like progression for the remaining twelve years of the ceMtury will make the· membership in the year 1900. one hundred and forty-four thousand.
"Such a hope should notbe too great for our faith. The future may well be richer in blessing than the past."
And there are some of us who are hoping and praying for still greater things-the evangelization of this Empire before 'l,e present century closes.
FATHER DAMIEN THE LEPER PRIEST OF MOLOKAI.
BY REV. EDWIN M. BLISS, NEW YORK.
ON the little peninsula of Kolowao, on the island of Molokai, Sandwich Islands, is the famous leper community established by the Hawaiian Government in 1864, after the ierrible scourge of leprosy that committed such fearful ravages among every class of the people. It is not an ideal place of residence, cold in winter, hot in summer, absolutely isolated from the rest of the island by high mountams. Here the unfortunates were placed. So terrible was their fate deemed that many families sought to hide their afflicted members from the officials, preferring to l"Un every risk themselves rather than condemn loved ones to such hardships and privations. Suitable dwellings were not provided, fo.od was insufficient, there was no medical attendance or nursing; the outcasts were practically condemned to death, with no hope of even the last sad offices or sympathy of friends. It was little wonder that every evil passion rose triumphant. A root growing in quantities at the foot of the mountains furnished a highly intoxicating liquor and drunkenness became almost universal. With this came'licentiousness, until prostitution was the only resort of women who sought a living fOl' themselves and their children. The hula dances were seen on every hand and the whole community became a mass of corruption of every kind.
Into this community, in 1873, went Father Damien, a Roman Catholic Priest, of Honolulu, a native of Belgium, of great talents, wealthy, and with every prospect of success in life. It was no rash act, but a carefully considered purpose, with full recognition of all that it mean~complete isolation from all associations such as he had held deal', fellowship with those who were lower and more degraded than the brutes, and the certainty of the most horrible dise;tse and death known to the human race. • The Government, unable to understand his purpose, thought he would soon seek to return, and gave strict orders for his immediate imprisonment should he stir from the community. They refused him counselor assistance of any kind, and he was compelled to rely upon the lepers themselves for support. He found the dead and dying on every hand, and was so absorbed in his care for them that he could find no time to build him even a plain hut, but slept under the trees. His kindly words and efficient aid won him the confidence of the whole community, and little by little his influence became unbounded. Recognizing that in their condition, spiritual counsel was of little avail without temporal help, he was not only priest but" magistrate, school-teacher, gardener, carpenter, joiner, painter, housekeeper, cook, and often grave-digger and undertaker." He lived with the people, shared their experiences in every way; he persuaded them to care more for cleanliness, comfortable houses, good food, so far as practicable. Soon thE' Government, recognizing his real spirit, changed their attitude, gave him greater privi.
leges, allowed him counsel and assistance, at his suggestion provided bettel'
dwellings, and more suitable food; sent medical officers and nurses, fur.
nished medicine, and sought to alleviate, instead of increasing, the suffer· ing of the poor unfortunates.
The natural result has followed. The hula dances are no more heard of.
Licentiousness has almost disappeared. Intoxication has given place to sobriety, and the company that seemed given over to everything evil has become peaceful and happy, so far as there can be happinE'ss with so much suffering. Even much of the virulence of the disease has disappeared.
Better dwellings, good ventilation. healthy food, sobel' lives, and quiet minds and Christian faith have had their effect to lessen suffering, to pro- long life, and make death itself less dreadful. When, nine years after Da- mien's voluntary exile, the queen visited the settlement, and saw the neat houses, the fields and gardens, the well-dressed, orderly people, her officers, pointing to Damien, who stood humbly at a dtstance, said, "He is the father of it all."
Already the dread digease had taken its hold. A few months later the fatal tubercles appeared, and the devoted priest knew that he was to pay the penalty of his self-sacrifice. In 1886 he was joined by Father Conrardy, a young priest from Oregon, and after initiating him into the work, Da- mien himself yielded to the progress of the leprosy. April 10, 1889, he died, leaving a record of as noble work as that achieved by any martyr of the early church.
There are not a few who claim that the heroic age of the church has passed. The lives of Henry Martyn, David Livingstone, James Hannington, Adoniram Judson, Father Damien, are eloquent witnesses to the fact that this is not true. Yet, while they are conspicuous by reason of their position and public office, they are no whit more heroic than many a faithful laborer among the slums of our great cities, in the dugouts of the Western prairies, or the out-stations of China, Africa and Abyssinia.
One healthy sign of the church's life is the universal recognition of Damien's service as a Christian service. To the great body of Christian believers his creed is lost sight of in admiration for his work. "As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God."
EVANGELIZATION OF THE CHINESE IN AMERICA. I
EVANGELIZATION OF THE CHINESE IN AMERICA.
BY J. STEWART RAPPER, NEW YORK, EDITOR "CHINESE EVANGELIST."
THE marvellous way in which God ans weI'S prayer is contin uaUy shown to His children in a manner which humbles their pride and rebukes th('i1'
unbelief. There is no more wonderful instance in modern times than the way in which prayer for the work in China has been ans wered. The barriers of. supel'stition, bigotry, political seclusion and national conceit have been broken down, and now the gospel can be preached in every province. But the answer IS ovedlowing in its abunda,nce of opportunity; and not alone in China is the privilege given to the faithful preacher of the word, but in this la.nd also the Chinaman is found, and those who are unable, for any reason, to go toa foreign land, have the opportunity offered them in their own city, nay, at their own street corner or in their near vicinity.
Thb large number of Chinese who came to California, early attracted the attention of the church, and efforts were made to reach them by the establishment of Missions. Of the work on the Pacific slope I do not in- tend to write at this time, but shall confine myself to the work which is being carried on throughout the Eastel'll and Middle States.
Twenty years have now elapsed since the work among the Chinese in the east was started by the efforts of the Rev. Lycurgus Railsback, at tne New York" FIve Points House of Industry." Since then the Chinese Sun- day-school is found inevel'Y large city, and in almost evel'y place where ~he industrious Chinaman is found, there are also found those who look at the boul in the uncouth mati and try to save it.
So peculiar is the work of evangelizing these heathen in our midst, that it may be of interest to many to speak of the methods and the character of the work in general.
The Methods.-Af> will be readily seen, the work is necessarily at first of teaching the alphabet and the rudiments of our language. Given a China- man who understands little or no English, and a teacher who understands no Chinese, and the conditions of solving the problem of educating the for- mer will at once be undel'stood to be difficult in the extreme. The methods of instruction must necessarily be those which are employed in the primary schools,and picture and pencil are used to express what words fail to convey.
In its first stages a Chinese Sunday-school differs little from a primary school for teaching English. .
The arl'angement of classes is different from the usual manner, for each teacher has but one pupil. This seems at first an unnecessary waste of ma- terial; it would be so, were all the godly people who take this field of labor skilled in teaching languages, for then more than one pupil might be taught; practical experiment, however, has proved that it is hard for the avel'age teacher to manage more than one at a time, until the pupil is far enough advanced to read the Bible. The writer is endeavoring to secure a reform in this matter wherever it is feasible, and urges that the ol'dinary manner of arranging classes of three or four be adopted wherever the pupils.al'e suf- ficiently advanced to make it possible.
Anothel' feature of this work is the fact that the teachel's are (01' the most part ladies, and much trash and scornful comment has appeared in the secu- lal' newspapers in l'egard to the fondness of the Chinese for the pretty Sun- day-school teachers. I would like to express my deliberate opinion that the reason why the Chinese pl'efer lady teachers is because the ladies are more willing to teach the Chinese, and, in fact, are often the only ones who will teach them. If you find a young man who has the patience, the dogged determination, the persistency and tact which are displayed in such a mal'ked manner by lady teachers, you will find that the Chinese will accept him as a teacher just as readily, and treat him with the same consideration. The fact is, that as the work resembles the work of the primary school, so the teachers must possess the same qualifications; and we find most of the teachers of the yonng to be ladies.
Difficulties of the W07'k.-The greatest difficulty often arises from the op- position of supposed Christian people. Some have been known to say that the Chinese never could be converted. As though the grace of God, which can reclaim a South Sea Islander, could be baffled by the Chinaman! Others say the Chinese are such low, degraded creatUl'es that we ought not to ass<>1(iate with them even as teachers! Did not Christ die to save sinners? Others seem to be infiuenced by sentimentality in their religion, and will give freely fOt' the cause of foreign missions, and weep tears over the thought of .. the heathen in his blindness, bowing down to wood and stone;" but fail to see a fit object for their benevolence or effort in the heathen on the avenue, bending all the day over the wash-tub or the ironing-board! Then the charge is made that the workers are actuated by sentimentalism in taking up the work. If sentimentalism consists in coming Sabbath after Sabbath, rain or shine, t!,spend an hour in the hardest kind of teaching, then we must admit the truth of the charge, though I should call that the hardest kind of prosaic work. The most plausible, yet illogical objection, is the one which is made against teaching the primer and against the school, because the Chinese come merely to learn English and not to learn anything about Oul' religion. No one who has been in the Chinese work will attempt to deny that at first the impelling motive, perhaps the only motive, which leads a Chinese into the Sunday-schoolis the desire to learn Eng'lish. We know that, we recognize that desire, but it does not prevent us from using that motive to the good of the man. Soon after he comes he begins to understand that the teaching is done from a spirit of kindness; he begins to look for our motive, and when he has at la!>t comprehended that it is Christian unselfishness, he realizes that here is something he knows nothing of, and he wishes to learn of Christ and His doctrine. Even if he should be so bigoted as to care nothing for these things, he receives a lesson of practical Christianity which does more good than many hours of preaching and theoretical instruction.
Another difficulty, and a most serious one, confronts the teacher of the Chinese when at last they know enough of our language to read and understand the blessed truths of the gospel. In a so-called Christian land, among a professedly Christian people, the observant Chinese is immediatelyoverwhelmed by the difficulty of reconciling the practical Christianity (as he imagines it to be) which he sees around him six days in the week, with the blessed maxims and truths he is taught on the Sabbath. If you tell him that the people who break everyone of the commandments almost every day of their lives are not true Christians, it does not make the matter much better, for, thinks he, why do they not accept such blessed truths? Will a man offer good gold to a stranger when his own kindred l,ave it not? There must be a false ring a bout the gold! It is for this reason that those who have labored both in the foreign field and in this land, unanimously concur in saying that the work is much harder, more discouraging in this land on account of there being" too many weekdays for one Sunday."
Results.-The direct results of the work have been such as greatly to encourage the workers. Nearly everyone of the different denominations working in New York City among the Chinese have several Chinese connected with the chUl"ches, who have proved themselves to be worthy of their profession and excellent examples to their heathen brethren. In many respects they put other Christians to the blush. They are characteristically slow in professing their faith, but that slowness arises often from their deep sense of the responsibility involved. 1 have often been told by an inquirer that he wished to profess faith in Christ, but he did not know enough to lead in pI'ayer, or to give a few minutes' talk in prayer-meeting, The first Chinaman who was converted under my instruction was quite perplexed over the question whether it was right for him to shave his head and plait his queue on Sunday I A Chinese Christian asked me recently whether I did not think that having a fair in the Sunday-school rooms of a church did not resemble the sin committed by those who sat at the tables ot the moneychangers in the temple. Another Chinese, who is soon to be baptized, was very much troubled because the writer did not ask a blessing at an evening gathei·ing where a few Chinese were entertained by their teacher, and icecream and cake were passed al'ound. It was a difficult matter for his teacher to explain to him the reason for the omission, but finally he looked satisfied and said, "0 I I see, ice-cream no count with God."
Space fails to speak of the many notable examples which have proved that the saving grace of God is not confined to any ('ace or people, but wherever sin abounds grace doth much more abound.
The results of this work are wider and reach further than we would at first suppose. Not only do those who are converted in this country return to be messengers of good to their brethren, but on account of the friendly feeling engendered in them toward the Christian people, they are made the means of introducing a minister 01· an evangelist to their neighbors or friends, who would not gain a hearing were it not for their friendly intervention. Even if a man has not been converted, he respects Christians after he has been an ob- ject of their kindness, and he is able to assure the villagers in China that the "Jesus man" has no ill designs on them, but is a harmless person who does good, even though he preaches a lot of nonsense, and thus the reflex in- fluence of the Sunday-school here opens the door for the preacher in China. So no one can estimate the results of this work, except Him who hath said, "My word shall not return unto me void," and in the day when He maketh up His jewels we shall be amazed at the harvest. We sow blindly, but we shall reap abundantly, for it is God that giveth the increase.
I have not attempted to give any statistics as to the number of schools and of those attendant thereon. The simple reason for this omission is that it is hard to get such statistics. As editor of The Chinese Evangelist I have made great efforts to get a complete list of the schools for the Chinese, but every day we hear of some new one, and new ones are continually being started. Since the establishment of The Chinese Evangelist we have en- deavored to systematize and tabulate the work, but such is the difficulty of getting accurate information that so far we cannot indicate the extent of the work except in this general way. The Chinese Evangelist is now being taken in schools all over the land from Maine to Oregon, and from Canada to Florida, and even in the Sandwich Islands and China. From the letters which come to the editors, it seems that the work is being carried on with increased vigor, and the Christian church is awakening to the responsibility resting upon it, and is improving the opportunity now presented. There are still 100,000 Chinese in America, and in spite of the Exclusion Bill more are
TRANSLATIONS }!'ROM FOREIGN MISSIONARY MAGAZINES"
coming, and hardly any are returning. The opportunity now is great, the need is pressing, and no one can overestimate its importance, when we consider that the best way to reach China is through the Chinese themselves. In our land we can infuse American pluck and energy into the slow-moving, phlegmatic Chinaman; and these, united with the love of God and his fellow-man, will enable the Americanized Christian Chinaman to be a power in his own land, and he will be able to do a work which none other can do. H anyone cannot go and work directly for China, here is a field, hard, stony, comparatively uninviting, but one which will yield a rich reward in God's own time.
TRANSLATIONS FROM FOREIGN MISSIONARY MAGAZINES.
BY REV. CHARLES C. STARBUCK, ANDOVER, MASS.
THE Rhenish Missionary Society, as is known, has a very important mission in Sumatra. We give some extracts, which make this great island seem more like a real country to us than it has seemed before. From the station of Bungabondar: "In the last yea.r ninety have been led to the Saviour and received into the church by baptism." It is known that in Sumatra Mohammedanism is very strong. Yet, as remarkable exception to the general fact, almost half the converts are from Mohammedanism. On the other hand, a good many unstable Christians flo.at over to it. The following narative from the Berichte for January, 1889, casts a new light on the mental attitude of Moslems in the face of death. We often heal' of their contempt of death. But this appears to be only in the fierce fanaticism of a religious war.
.. Here I must make mention of the faithful Asenath, whom on the last day of the old year we committed to the bosom of the earth. After an illness patiently endured for two years "he felt her end approaching. As the last provision for her way she wished yet once more to enjoy the Holy Supper. I administered it to her in her roomy house before a large assemblage. As Iwas about to give her the bread she said, • Let me first pray.' And now the woman, who for weeks had not been able to sit upright, straightened herself up, and prayed for full ten minutes, as if she would fain pray away every earthly care out of her heart. I have seldom heard a woman pray in snch wise. Thereupon she recei ved the sacred elements. The next day I found witlit her a Mohammedan chieftain, who at taking leave wished her health and long life. •What say you?' she replied, •after that I have no further longing. My wish is now to go to heaven, to my Lord. Death has no longer any terrors for me.' Astonished, the Mussulman replied: 'Such language is strange to us. We shrink and cower before death, and therefore use every means possible to recover and live long.'
.. Even so I think of our James, whose only son had died. When at the funeral I pressed his band, with some words of comfort, he Said: • Only do not suppose that r murmur and complain. All that God does to me, is good and wholesome for me. I shall hereafter find my son again in life eternal.' So vanish little bylittle the comfortless wailings of heathenism; the beams of a living hope penetrate the pangs and the terrors of death, as the. beams of the sun the clouds of the night. And, as the hopelessness of heathenism is disappearing, so is also its implacability. When Christians contend, and at the communionl say to them: 'Give each other your hands,' they often say: 'Natureisagainstit; but how can I withstand the graciou~ness of mv Sa.viour ?' Such words are not seldom heard. And am Inot well entitled to hope, that they, as a grea.tgift of my God, warrant a confident hope in the final and glorious victory ot the Prince of Life, and of his great and righteous cause? "
On Palm Sunday, at this station, Missionary Schutz Qaptized 18 fOl'mer Mohammedans, confirmed 18 Christian children, and restoi'ed one apostate.
THE Rhenish Missionary Society has in all over 150 native trained helpers, of whom only foul' are ordained. The Society has also in all, in Sumatra, China and Africa,250 native elders, and remarks that it might easily be that these" signify as much, perhaps, indeed, even more, than the salaried assistants, for the development and healthy growth of the general cause." The government of the Transvaal Republic, in .South Africa, has suddenly put in force atainst the mission stations a law which forbids more· than five native families to live together on anyone estate. This harsh statute, harshly applied, has already broken up five Hermannsburg stations, and at least one Berlin station.
The MonatsbUitter remarks that in Africa it is not the Mohammedans who have introduced slavery, though it is they who. are fast depopulating lal'ge regions of the unhappy continent by their ruthlessness in conducting the hunting of slaves. Slavery itself is aboriginal in Africa. As no one in Africa has any hope of protection unless he belongs to some one of the few great men, the poorer freemen have gradually reduced themselves to servi- tude, until now, in some n~gro tribes, out of evel'y 100 persons, 80 or 90 al'e slaves. In Igonda the traveller, Paul Reichard, out of 500 or 600 inhabi- tants, found only six free persons. Of his own caravan of 650 there were only five freemen. An institution so deeply rooted cannot, of course, be otherwise than gradually done away, remarks the MonatsbUitter. But the horrors of the Arab slave trade are to be at once attacked. And it is to be remarked that Christian Europe was the first great offender, and not Mohammedan Arabia. Christianity, however, is against the iniquity; Islam fully sanctions it. Christendom, therefore, could be moved from within to abandon it; Arabia will have to be coerced from without.
The MonatsbUitter remarks that the best known emporium of the Arab slave trade is Ujiji, on Lake Tanganyika, and quotes the following descrip- tion of it from a Catholic missionary: .. This is the meeting point of all the caravans of slaves who, captured in the interior, are to be brought to the coast. There are gathered all the Waguana and Mohammedan reprobates to con- cert in what direction and against what tribe the next foray shall be nndertaken-a veritable Sodom, a theatre of all sorts of crimes, excesses, shamelessness of vi~. What a day of calamity for Africa. on which the Arabs first set their foot in its interior I For with them they have brought into the land also their immoral religion. their Vices, as well as the foul contagions dis- eases, which previously were wholly unkuown among the negroes. Towards the end of 1887, when I was in the city, it waS regulu!y flooded with slaves. You saw in hideous medley men, womeu and children, some bound together with cords, some with chains. Some had their ears pierced to admit a small cord, for the sake of fastening them together. At every step which one took along the streets, he encountered living skeletons, painfully dragging th"mselves along by the help of a stick: they had been released from chains, as being too weak to flee. It was not Sickness, but hunger, which had thus reduced tbem, aud the great scars which appeared on tlieir backs su1llciently dis- closed that their masters had not spared blows to urge them along. Others you might see lying in the street before their masters' doors or elsewhere, awaiting the end of their comfortless existence. The heart bled to reflect that these unhappy ones had uot eveu the hope which helps a Christian to bear his misery.
•• An uncultivated plain, growu up with grass, which separates the marketplace from the lake, Is the graveyard of Ujiji, or more accurately the trench, into which are thrown all the bodies of the deceased slayss, and even of those who are still in the last agonies. The wild beasts are their only sextons. A young Christian who did uot set know Ujiji set out to go from the town to the lake shore,but came back in dismay at the view of the numerous corpses, which, gnawed by hyenas and birds of prey, lay along the footpath. Then I asked au Arab why the corpses here were so numerous, and why they were left so near the town, at the risk of a geueral pestilence. He replied with the utmost composure and nonchalance: • From of old we have been used to throw the bodies of our slaves iu this place, and the hyenas would come every night and carry them away; but this year there are so many dyiug that the wild beasts can't get through with them; they have come to have a loathing for human flesh.' It is plain then that blockading the coast is but a small part of the work."
The Evangelisch Lutherisches Missionsblatt says; "We read here and there, e€pecially in English missionary magazines, that the Indian temples are falling into decay. 'rhis may be here and there the case, indeed it is some- times so In the Tamil land; bnt in general our Tamils, especially those who live in the Cauvery deta, are still thoroughly zealous in the temple-service, standing, as they do, wholly under the influence of a. numerous priesthood, for which the maintenance of the temples is a matter of life and death. Here, as in all reports from Ind'ia, we must remind our readers how needful it is to abstain from unadvised generalizati07l/l. For India is a mighty land. Conditions differ enormously from region to region within it, so that It Is only seldom that what may be said of Olle place or district applies to another. What traveler could pronounce a trustworthy judgment respecting the religions condition of all Europe? And if he could it is still more difticult in India. The visible decay of the temples will be in India, as It was in Greece the last 8taqe of heathenism."
.. Here In Shiall the modern schooling has not yet undermined belief in the ancient gods. Here there still prevail" the same zeal in their worship which the Apostle Paul recognized among the Athenians. New temples are still built and the old ones repaired. Wealthy merchants give hundreds of thousands of rupees for this end, and the people work themselves weary for half-wages. The festivals are celebrated regularly, and on their account the most important labors are interrnpted. Even the State must still recognize the heathen holidays, at least as respects its heathen officials. The Brahmans not only claim divine titles for themselves, bnt are also in fact addressed by the people as gods. They, are not only the intellectual and spiritnallea.ders of the people, but as wealthy landholders, are in various ways their secula.r lor:ds.'· .
"Yet worse "-in Shiall, in South India-"the heathens force the Christians into the idol festivals In order to drag through the streets the great car on which the idol. with his tram of attendants, is placed. One would think that for such a work of honor to the god the heathen themselves would gladly offer and be proud of the toil. But this is not so. The wealthy do their part bV deputing their servants and dependents. And almost all our Christians here are depeudE'nts of theirs. At alate festival they came in great numbers to me, showing me their masters' orders. I dissuaded them from obedience. Some followed my counsel and hid themselves in the church or the garden. Others followed their orders and went to take their place at the ropes. What the consequences are likely to be for the disobedient I have not yet learned. One who had refused from the first showed me the marks of a seVere beating."
We have all'eady given a description, from the Mi88ionablatt, of the great temple of Trlchinopoli. We here give a description of the city itself: .
.. Trichinopoli, or, in Tamil, Tirisiril.palli, that Is,' City of the Three-headed Giant,' formerly the capital of a mighty Nabob, with 76,000 inhabitants, among whom are many skillful and industrious Hindus, fanatical Mohammedans, and some 15,000 Catholics, is also a garrison town for a regiment of Sepoys, that Is, nativetroops in English pay. It lies near the ri ver Canvery, which here diVides into two grea.t a.rms, forming the long and fruitful island of Soi-r..ngam, that is, ' Holy River isle.' This island, the paradise of the Vishnuites, is renowned for the magnificent temple of Vishnu, whose external inclosure is some four miles and a half ronnd, and comprises 21 gopurams, that is, p..godas, in fact, a whole city of tcmples. No wonder that the smothering atmosphere of idolatry prevailing here weighs depressingly upon our missionaries, even more tha.n the solar heat augmented by the rockY soil. Yet even as early as 1762 Protestant missions gained a firm footing here. The simple church built by 'Father Schwarz' in the next neighborhood of the' Prichi-rock,' and his modest dwelling-house, keep up even here the memory of this blessed missionary. Southward from this rock the slender spire of our Zion Church, built upon the' Elephant hill,' nea.r the market, points the heathen to a better heaven than the stone god Ganesa, enthroned upon the rock, has power to give."
Herr Kahis then speaks of their girl's school: .. Twenty years ago no heathen girl was yet to be seen in our school. Now many are coming. There is no more grateful task than the instruction of little ~L'ami1 girls. Quiet and yet joyous, easy to guide and of responsive intellects, they make the work of their teachers light. What joy it affords us to scatter the seeds of life in their childlike hearts, and through them to see it borne into families which are otherwise inaccessible to our preaching."
The Caho MonatsbUUter, quoting the text Proverbs xxiv: 11, Which, in the German, reads, "Delivel' them, whom one will kill, and withdraw not thyself fl·om them whom one will strangle," refers to the dangers in East Africa, which since then have been terribly realized: .. This word applies to E..st Africa in a two-fold way. First, to the poor natives who live yet under the curse of superstition, discord and the slave-trade, and whom we may not withdraw ourselves from the duty of delivering out of the hand of him who is a murderer from the beginniug. Secondly, to the missionaries themselves who are laboring there, and who would have cast their lives into the breach in vain unless we send the requisite force of men to support them. Some of them are absolutely in danger of being put to dea.th. TRANSLATIONS FROM FOREIGN MISSIONARY MAGAZnmS. M5 Missionary Gordon at Uganda lies there, as it were, in a den of lions; the Scotch mission- aries live every moment in expectation of an assault from,their Mohammedan foes, and the Neukirchen brethren on Toka river have no assurance of their lives."
"The Anglican and High Church Universities' Mission," says the MonatsbUitter, "has passed through grevious years. Once, or rather more than once, it was a fire, then a hurri- cane, then a plundering irruption of savage heathen, and more than all, a succession of sud- den deaths which appeared to imperII the continuance of the work. But the undaunted sol- diers of the cross, all of them unmarried brethren and sisters, have yielded tono discourage_ ment. They go on unweariedly with teaching, with preiLching, with building, with jour- neying, with care of the sick, with singing and praying; and now they are able to show a.s visible results, not only handsome churches, schools, workshops, gardens and fields, but alsu Christian flocks, amounting in all to about 1,000 souls. All their ways, it is true, are not after our taste. They lay more stress than is easily reconcilable with the New Testa- ment on outward forms. genuflections and vestments, on liturgies and sacraments, on churches and tapers, on eucharistic functions and altars. And when Bishop Smythies went out he took with him, uot only a costly crosier in an oaken futteral, but a set of vest- ments as highly tinseled as you need look for in Rome. • A droll bishop I ' we thoull'ht then. But for all that the mnn has shown himself a workman that needeth not to be ashamed. Worthy of all honor in these years past have been his achievements in journey_ ing and visiting, in care spent on all his stations, in sacrifices of bis own strength and com- fort. It is true while he has been about this the poor crosier has fallen a prey to the flames. But though the shepherd's crook has perished we do not learn that the sheep are any worse cared for."
The Monatsbliitter, as well as the Allgemeine Jlfissions Zeitschrijt, thinks , that the present craze in Germany for colonial possession is of veryambig- uous benefit to missions. "Bishop Smythies complains that since the terri- tory in which most of his stations lie has become German, he enjoys neither the protection of the Sultan of Zanzibar nor of the English Consul, but has to endure passively the plunderipg attacks upon the missions. This then is the shady side of the' colonial policy.' And who forgets the sad end which befell good Bishop Hannington under Mwanga's fears of the' land- eaters.' " Those people who imagine that men go out as missionaries in order to have an easy time of it among a simple people who half worship them, will be profited by reading these words of Mi.3sionary Posselt, among the Caffres: .. After having worked myself weary through the week, when there, on Sunday, I saw these wild men of the wilderness sitting before me, absolute obtuseness towards everything divine, together with mockery and brut2,1 lusts written on their faces, I sometimes lost all disposition to preach. Those fluent young preachers who not only like to be heard, but to hp.a.r themselves, ought to be sometimes required to ascend the pulpit before such an assemblage. There is not the least thing there to lift np the preacher of the Divine Word or to come to the help of his weakness. As when a green, fresh branch laid before the door of a glowing ovp.n shrivels up at once, such has sometimes been myex- perience when I had come full of warm devotion, before the Caffres, and undertaken to . preach. I have sometimes wished that I had never become a missionary. Once the hour of Sunday services again approached. The sun was fearfully hot, and I felt weary in body and soul. My unbelieving heart said: • Your preaching is for nothing,' and Beelzebub added a lusty amen. The Caffres were sitting in the hut, waiting for me. • I will not preach to-day,' said I to my wife; but she looked at me with her angelic eyes,lifted her finger, and said gravely: • William, you will do your duty. You will go and preach.' I seized Bible and hymn·book, and loitered to church like an idle boy creeping unwillingly to school. I began, preluding on the violin, the Caffres grunting consentaneously. I prayed read my text, and began to preach with about as much fluency as stuttering Moses. Yet soon the Lord loosened the band of my tongue, and the fire of the Holy Ghost awakened me out of my sluggishness. I spoke with such fervor concerning the Lamb of God, that t&keth away the sin of the world, that if that sermon has quickened no heart of a hearer yet my own was profoundly moved."
Yet Herr Posselt lived to baptize 1,000 Caffres.
Rev. Victor Holm, Director of the Daillsh Evangelical Missionary Society.
STUDENT VOLUNTEER NOTES
in announcing the appointment of a young parish clergyman, the Rev. Nils Peter Hansen, as a missionary for India, remark!!: .. This will undoubtedly be received with general delight. We have so often complained that no clergyman already proved and found to be a faithful servant of the Lord and possessed of the requisite culture offered himself to serve the Lord as a missionary among the heathen. It has also been the them" of many prayers, that the Lord would provide and send out such a man. That this has now come to pass, that our prayers are heard and fulfilled, is, we are sure, no matter of doubt to all who kuow Pastor Hansen, whose circle of acquaintance is far from being a narrow one."
A German nobleman, quoted in the Missionstidning for Finland, Count Limburg-Stirum, writing from the Dutch East Indies, avows that he had been greatly prejudiced against missionaries, but adds: "But God brought a missionary in my way. And now I could not say, like Cresar, veni, vidi, vw~. True, I came and saw, but instead of conquering I was conquered. I can no longer deny the good fruits and blessed influence of missions."
The Finnish Society first sent out missionaries 20 years ago to King William's Land in South Africa. For more than 12 years they baptized no one, then they baptized 6. At the end of the fourth year there were 80. During the fifth year there were baptized on Whitsunday, 51; ten days later, 23; and subsequently 11. So durlllg the fifth year the number of the baptized was just doubled.
In Germany, hitherto, it is known, the leading classes have been, for the most part, very disdainful towards Missions, and the journals, largely conducted by Jews who had ceased to believe in their own religIOn, and were bent on the destruction of ours, have exhibited towards them a virulent hatI'ed. But in a recent debate on the colonies, held in the Reichstag, a great change was noticeable.
.. We must note as a great matter of satisfaction," says the Allgemeine Missions Zeitschrijt, .. that this time missions have been discussed without being attacked, indeed, withont even the jocularity commonly thought to be due to such a subject. On the contrary, one had only honorable recognition for them ou all sides of the house. 'Missiouary testimonies' were designated as the 'most uuimpeachable,' the aims of the missiouaries as 'undeniably ideal,' their' work of Christian beneficence as rich in blessings,' 'the mission·stations as the true points d'appui of Christianity and civilization,' and all this by men, from whom, hitherto, we have been wont to hear a very dif- ferent language."
Especially significant, in the German Parliament, was the testimony of a social democrat, Sabor, who, of course, occupies a position of incompatibility with Christianity. He says: "We acknowl- edge that there has been a healthful activity developed by the missionaries in Africa. They have shown how much everywhere in the world is to be accomplished by patience and love; they have pi'oved that even with uncivilized tribes hearts which have a fund of goodness, can accomplish mnch without the lash of compulsion."
Spain and France both, from a regard to the political value of the Catholic missions in their colonies, contribute large sums from the public treas- ury for the support of these, doubtless to the great detriment of their spiritual character. But, as the Zeitschrift remarks with just satisfaction, Herr Windthorst, the leader of the Ultramontanes in the Reichstag, has distinctly disclaimed for his party all expectation of such subventions from the imperial treasury. There is no reason, as the Zeitschrift remarks,. why the government should not afford aid to the schools and presses of the mis- sions, Catholic and Protestant, but every reason why it should not inter- fere with their properly spiritual work, even by affording aid, since aid soon establishes a claiI!l. of supervis-ion-. – – – – STUDENT VOLUNTEER NOTES.
THE volunteers who were at the Northfield Summer School in '87 will remember the In- spiring words of Mr. H. F. La. Flamme, who but six months before, when Mr. Forman was in Toronto, had decided for the foreign work and was thAn on his way to his field in India. During the summer of '87, Mr. La. Flamme and Mr. Davis made a tour of Canada and secured about $3.000 for India. Then they saIled together.
After sixteen months spent in the study of the language they set out in February last on their first tour" to breathe out the new words in an old, old storv." Mr. Davis was given permanent charge of 500,000 souls. Mr. La. Flamme will work with him until joined byaB- other man from America, when be will push up north and open a new station. The people rush together in crowds to hear them preach, at times literally mobbing- them by pressing around tbem for the tracts they distribute. A strong appeal is made by the missionaries of the district for 52 men at once, and the third of April Was observed as a day of special prayer for tllis end. The same need is felt all over India, as IS indicated by Dr. Chamber- lain's trumpet-call in THE MISSIONARY REVIll:W OF THE WoaLD for 5,000 men. In the central provinces a work is being originated similar to the China Inland Mission to get out young men on a salary of $300 a year to evangelize Central India. Until they learn the language they will all live in a central horne, BaJaghat, with food and cloth..s only provided. Then they are to go out two and two throughout the land proclaiming Christ.
It gives us pleasure to present a letter from Mr. La. Flamme to the volunteers: My Dear Fellow Volunteer.: CORANADA, INDU., April 8,1889.
As one of you I wish to give testimony that Jesus Christ fully satisfies. That promise, .. Lo I am with you a.lway," is a living- promise, and is fully wrought mto life only when we leave all to follow Jesus. One of our number said at Northfield in IM87: .. Perhaps you think we men who are about to start for the foreign field are sorry men. I tell you we are the happiest men here;" and he spoke the truth. We prove a problem by working it back- wards. The problem of "'peace on earth and good will toward men" was worked out from God to us by the death on the cross of the Son of Man. The proof of It is found in Luke ix: 23 : .. If any man will come after me, let bim deny himself and take up his cross dally and follow me." .. Whither, Lord?" ., To crucifixion," he a.nswers. Self-crucifixion, na.iling the old man to the cross, leaving all to follow Christ, that only brings to the soul the" peace of God that passeth knowledge." Self-devotemen~ to God, and that only, works the prob- lem back from us, in our peace with God, to the full peace of God in us, which proves" the good and acceptable and perfect 1"ill of God."
And now we have proved the problem, we hav.e given ourselves. not our belongings only, not a portion of our time only, but ourselves to God himself-not to God's service merely, but to God himself. We are ready to go anywhere for Jesus, and we have peace in our souls. Bu t let us not rest there. Let us apply the problem. 1 Tim. ii : 3-4: .. This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour: who wllleth that all men should be saved and corne to a knowledge of the truth." And how shall they be saved? .. Whosoever call- eth upon the name of the Lord shall be saved." .. How, then, shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? and how shaH they beheve m Him whom they have not heard ?
and how shall they hear without a preacher? and how shall they preach except they be &ent?" The voice of God cries. "Whom shall I send 1" "Who will go for us?" The WIlling response comes, U Here am I, send met"and with it the question, "'Whither, Lord? "-many volunteers stand just there-willing to go, but wanting to be sent, and asking… Whither, Lord?" And as they wait, expecting a special call, the great need of the foreign field is lost sight of. God's proTidences are the indications of His will.
And what are these indications? (1) Christ means each generation of Christians to give the gospel to each generation of unbelievers. Marl< xvi: 15. And the special providence for all the essentials of this vast enterprise Is found in Acts i: 8 : .. Ye sh..l1 receive roWER, after that the Holy Ghost is COrne upon you • • . to witness unto the uttermost parts."
(2) Though in some generations the carrying out of such an enterprise might have seemed like a march up to the Red Sea with the command to cross. it is not so in this. Every door is wide open. all peoples can be reached, all mission boards are calling for more men.
(3) God has established a law which makes It .. more blessed to give than to receive." If you would see the home church largely blessed,let her send you out to the foreign ser- vice according to that unfailmg promise, .. There is that scattereth and yet increaseth."
(4) One other striking indication of God's will in thIS matter is that be has informed you of the need of these destitute parts. Is that not significant? See John iii : 17. Of India's immense population, 288,000,000, fully 8,000,000 die every year, 24,000 every day. To reach these millions with the gospel the present staff of missionaries is 'Utterly inadequate. A call for 5,000 men (there are now some 600) has gone ringmg through tbe home land without contradiction or response.
But why no response? It Is because the great and perishinll:" need of India's millions Is l!Iot realized. To impress this need upon thIS home church Is the duty and the hIgh privilege of you volunteers. Urge the young men and women by the love and death of Christ, by the worth of souls and by the awful condition of the heathen world to devote their lives to the work and cry in an agony of love, .. Here am I, send me."
Mr. Wm. M. La.ngdon, another volunteer, writes from Pekin, Qhma. :
NOTES ON NEW BOOKS OF A MISSIONARY CHARACTER
"The needs here are oTerwhelming, and yet are not to be compared with those inland. With more than 200 foreigners in this city, we still sometimes attract curious, gaping crowds; and If the preacher is so strange, how unknown must be his gospel of salvation I Eleven months ago I learned of my appointment to North China, and was a little less pleased than if it had been to Japan. To-day I am glad it was China. Japan seems attractive to young America (and may the volunteers crowd that country), but tell them _ they will not regret giving their lives for Christ's work in old China."
NOTES ON NEW BOOKS OF A MISSIONARY CHARACTER.
Garenganze,. or, Seven Years' Pioneer Missionary Work tn Central Africa. By Fred S. Arnot: Fleming H. Revell, 12 Bible House, New York. Victor Hugo predicted that m the twentieth century, Africa would be the cynosure of all eyes. In this story of seven years in the Dark Continent, Mr. Arnot has given us a son's letters to his mother and the home group; a story of strictly pioneer work, fer he undertook to cross the contment on foot. The journey was marked by supernatnral savor so sweet to a believer; as when, for example, . In a terrible thunder storm, an electric ball rell crasbing at his feet hke a cannon's shot, yetlefthim unharmed; or as, when III reptlated Illstances food and water were found to reo lieve extreme hunger and thirst, just whell the crisis came and behevlng prayer had made appeal to God. The book reveals a passion for souls.
With his whole heart Mr. Arnot loved those poor Africans and yearned for their salva- tion. He was divinely restless so long as his tongue was forced to be mute amid such spiritual destitution; and love quickened his mental powers and well nigh became to him a. gift of tongues, so that after but four months he began to use the Sechuana dialect in reading, conversation and prayer. The gospel still proves its power. The converted chief Kama not only forbids the traffic in stron!" drink, but the right of way for it throngh his dominions; he puts down revolting heathen customs, and sets an example of self. denial; yet while warring against their pagan practices, he wins the hearts of his people so that, almost to a man, they would die for him. One might see more shameless vice and immorality in Glasgow 111 one day than in Shoshong during a twelvemonth. It will take more than an English canon or M. P. to shake our confidence in Christian missions while such resnltsare wrought in the very homeso! thedeathshade and the habitations of cruelty.
Mr. Arnot's secrets are open secrets. A faith that made God's promises verities, real- ities, certainties to go by; a felJowship with God that would not be satisfied Without the holy llltimacy which reveals the secrets of God to the meek; a fidelity to the lower law bf duty and.higher law oflove, that turns our groveling into pimons that bear these secrets of this apostolic traveler's success-any disciple may learn and follow… There are eudless fresh beginnings in Christ." We have not yet begun to sound the possibilities of missions, because we have not yet proved the full power of prayer and faith and obedience. When believers trust the promises, learn of Christ and fully accept the great truth that the whole world is thejield and the whole church is the foree, many more will go forth with seed and with sickle, ready both to sow and to reap; and no part of the wide field shall re- main destitute of laborers, and given over to the Harvest of Death I-A. T. P.
F. H. Revell has also published a new Imperial AUas of the TVorld in convenient folio form at the amazingly low price of one dollar. We recommend all students, and espeCIally stu- a. dents of geography, history and missions, to procure copy to place on their tables for constant reference. We have found it invaluable. It has some thirty-three maps repre- senting every continent and country in colors, with a copious index by which easily and rapidly to find any city or town or distrIct; and one great excellence of this atlas is that the maps are not encumbered With too much matter, which sometImes makes an otherwise first-rate map obscure by multipliCIty of details and lessen its utiiity.-A. T. P.
The Missicmary Library. Chicago and New York. Eight charming volumt's, of moder- ate compass, ha.ve thus far appeared in this series, viz.: the lives of Robert Morrison, Rob- ert Moffat, Jas. Chalmers, Thos. Comber, Wm. Carey, Griffith John, Bishop Crowther and Bishop Patteson. Mr. Revell's aim is to put into brief form the most interesting and a.rousing narrative" of missionary heroism. These are not pans of milk, but little pitchers of cream. compact a.nd condensed from bulkier volumes. They can be read in few hours, and easily borne ill memory. because they do not burden the reader with details. If some benevolent person would put a set of these books into every college library or within reach of students in our theological seminaries and Y. M. C. ASSOCIations. not to say the children m ourSunday-schoels. they would become the seeds of many a devoted form of service on fields both at home and abroad. We rejoice to see cheap and available mis- sIOnary biography multiplying, and have seen none that more fully suits the growing de- mand.-A. T. P.
Missionary Enterprises, South Sea 181ands. By John Williams, Presbyteria.n Board, Phil. adelphia. The name of John Williams, the martyr of Erromanga, is a sort of talismllol1 of mlSSlOns. He who knows nothing of Williams has yet to learn the alphabet and primer of missionary literature. He went to the most hopeless field in the South Seas, and found tile isles waiting for God's law. He dared all perils for the sake of Christ aud souls. His career became a triumphal one. Before he died he had the satisfaction of sowing Polynesia wiGh the gospel, and of seeing in most of the islands the seed coming to ripeness in the harvest. 'this Is another chapter in .. The Acts of the Apostles." Williams burned with it Pauline fire and God granted him a Pauline success. This book is one of the" Evidences of Christianity," an unanswerable argument and appeal for the truth and power of the Gospel.-A. T. P.
Ohri8tian Womanhood. W. C. Black, Nashville, Tennessee. There has been need for a. longtime of some monograph upon woman's position in the ancient and modern civihza.. tions. Without endorsing eVt'ry statement or opinion of Dr. Black we consider his book a. very valuable contribution to the literature of the subject, and calculated to throw much light upon some of the most important questions of the day. HIs disc~ssion of the female Diakonate is especially thorough and helpful. He shows woman's position in the ages bafore Christ, ber domestic thraldom, her social status, her systematic ignorance.alld degradation, and the wonderful reversal of all these condItions after Christ came. No ·'coman, especially, should be WIthout the stimulus this work imparts. The place woman holds and is to hold in modern evangelizatlOn is emphatically brought to the front. The book wlll prove a great help in stimulatingmissions.-A. T. P.
The Romance 01 Mis8ions. By Maria A. West. Boston: Ara Kelyan. This book is well named. It is from the pen of a most accomplished woman, Whose imaginative pen invests the work of missions with a romantiC, but not illusive or deceptive coloring. Her experi_ ence in the La.nd of Ararat we have not only read in tilese pages, but hear4 from her own lips with not only interest but fascination. She sees and hears with singular acuteness ot observation,and then with graphic power paints what she observes. We should think our misslon~ry library very deficient without Miss West's delightful and instructi ve book. Missions would not be barren of mterest if such volumes were more read. Few novels compare with this narrative of bcts.-A. T. P.
Bits about India. By Mrs. Helen H. Holcomb. Presbyterian Board of Publication. The writer of this beautifnl book has long been a missionary resident in India, and is thoroughly familiar with the things of which she writes so pleasantly. The title of the book indicates its character. It is fuJI of interesting facts about India, its people, Its customs, its wor. ship, its prlva.te and social life-the very things that really tell most concerning a. country, and yet the very things which most writers are apt to overlook.-J. M. S.
Twenty Years of the Woma.n's Foreign. M"Ul8ionary Society of the Methodist Episcopa.l Church. By Mrs. J. T. Gracey.
Sketch 01 Mr8. J. C. Doremus, by the same author. The first of these brochures is an Intel. lIgent, compact and comprehensive outline sketch of the history, the work and the results of twenty years-from 1869 to 1889-of the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society of the M. E. Church, published bV the Heathen Woman'8 Friend, Boston. It is a sketch of remarka.- ble Interest and full of information and of inspiration.
The other Is a graceful and most touching tribute to the memory of one whose name Is like preclOus ointment ponred forth-a name lJIustrious in the annals of philanthropy and ChristIan work. She Was the first President of the first Woman's Missionary Society- "Woman's Union Missiona.ry Society "-and made her blessed infiuence felt at home IIilId abroad through a thousand channels. We wish this sketch, which costs but three cents, and is published at the same place as the one above, could be read by every woman in the land.-J. M.S.
Memoirs of Mrs. Augusta Tullis Kelley, late missionary to East Central Africa. By her husband. "In these memoirs the reader will find nothing fictitious, exaggerated or highly colored, but a plain, faithful record of the work and sacrifice of a woman of God of more than ordinary ability, wholly consecrated to his service It is a deeply interesting volume. It is charming for its simpilcity. It is the record of a holy symmetrical lire. Her own writings contribute an attraFtive pa.rtof the book. It will encourage all who pernse It to holy living. It will, we trust, awaken new zeal in the missionary cause." rhe book is deeply spiritual, bntisnot narrow or sectarian. $1 sent to Rev. W. W. Kelley, Paxton,Ill., wllIse- cure a copy.-J. M. S.
The M"l8IJionary Year Book for 1889, containing historical and statistical accounts of the principal Protestant Missionary SOCIeties in Great Britain, the continent of Europe, and America. London: The Religious Tract Society. New York: F. H. Revell. 12 mo, 428 pp. Prlce,1.25. We barely announced this work in our June issue,anda.reglad to saythat it is now upon the ma.rkilt. A similar volume was published last year, but we note a decided
GENERAL MISSI,ONARY INTELLIGENCE
improvement in the present, especially in the American department, which last year was very meagre and imperfect. Fortunately Dr. J. T . Gracey, who conducts the International Department of this R&VlEW, collated and edited the matter in the American section -<lver one-fourth of the book-which is a guarantee that this part of the work has been intelligently and thoroughly done.
The design of the Annual is to give a bird's-eye view of all the important missionary operations of Protestant Christendom. Each society in turn is briefly sketched, its field and work described, and the latest statIstics presented. So tbat within the space of a moderate volume the reader can learn just what each missionary society or agency in the wide world is doing, ",here it is laboring, and with what success. The statistics given-often tabulated-are official and invaluable. It is justsuch a work as thousands of those engaged in missionary work need for information, and it ought to have, and we believe will have, a large circulatiou. And If the success of this volume warrants it, a similar one will be issued each year hereafter.-J. M. S.
H.-GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE.
Afrlca.-Prof. Calderwood, in an able -Diffusion of the English language. The article in the Unzted Presbyterian Magazine, fact that at the recent National Congress shows conclusively that concentrated effort in India all the speeches and the entire prohas proved far more effective than desultory ceedings were in English, is a striking illusenterprises. He contrasts for example what tration of the wide diffusion of that tongne. has been done by the China Inland Mission, There were gathered at Madras seven huna.lId by the Presbyterian Church of England. dred dele::a.tes from all parts of India, Af- "Wilham Burns went to China," he says, ghanistan, Nepaul, Bnrmah and Scinde. .. in 1847: Hudson Taylor in 1>l55; Burns had They spoke nine different languages, and thus the advantageo! eight years m ad- the English was the only medium throu&'h vance. The Presbyterian church has con- which the proceedings could be satisfactocentrated in Amoy, Swatow, and in the rily conducted. Great Britain's colonial island of Formosa. This mission has now 16 enterprises ha ve been probably the largest missionaries, 7 medica.l missionaries, 13 wo- factor in spreading a knowledge of English. men wboare zena.namissionaries-36agents It is found also that in countries like Java, m all ; whereas the China Inland Mission where Great Britain has no control, the has 339 agents. How then do resnlts stand? knowledge of English IS steadily growing. The Presbyterian Church of England Mis- Not long ago the French language was the sIOn reports at the end of 1887, 3,528 commu- medium invariably employed in all internanicants. The China Inland Mission, with its tional conferences. At the last Berlin connoble examples of seJr-consecration, cannot ference, however, English and German as show results to compare with them."-Free weIl as French were employed. The other Church 01 Scotland Monthly. leading languages of Europe have graduaIly been insisting on recognitiou on an equal -We must be aggressive. We neglect the footing with French in their proper domain. work of missions at our peril. Look abroad. It was Mr. Canning who led the way when The multitudes of India and China are fast at the foreign office he ordered that certain becoming possessed of the instrnments and correspondence, hi thertowritten in French, appilances of Illodern civilization, while should be sent in English. .. The time will vice and Infldelity from the West keep pace come:' said Bismarck in 1863," when I inwith the advance of art and commerce. If tend to have all my dispatches written in Christianity fails to s~bdne these people, If German, and when I shall find means to the Christian church fails in her duty to make them understood even ill FranCe." He them, and selfishly Ignores the splendid op- kept his word, and both the English and portunities before her, she Is preparinl';' German tongues have profited by the cona.:vengers of her guilty negligence and sel- siderable decline of French as the interns.- fish apathy more cruel than the harbarlan tionallanguage of diplomacy and polite soscour&,es that deva~tated Imperial Rome. ciety. Look at h"me. Infldeilty, socialism, anarchy, the outcome of the neglect, oppression -The Scriptures are now accessible, as to and unfaithfulness ofChristendom,are rally- languages, to nine-tenths of the world's ining their forces, and preparing certain judg- habitants, while in the early part of this ment for a worldly and apathetic church. century they could be stndied only byabout Whatcanavertlt? Communism must come one-flfth. Shall it be the commnnism of the devil, or the communism of Christ? Under God, our _. Are our foreign missions a success? salvation as a church, and as a. people, de- Though the direct results of the propa- ·pends npon revived faithfulness to that ganda of the various Christian missions great aggressive work Which Christ has which have long been at work in Africa may not show an extraordmary num- Iiven us to do. ber of baptized and professing Christians in their pnblished statistics, yet their vastated." At the close of 1887 the Arab Indirect inlluence has had really remarka- traders attacked Karonga, one of the com..
ble effect in educating and humanizing can- pany's stations at the North end of Lake nibals and fetish worshipers, and the mere Nyassa, but a body of native allies came to fact that numbers of savages have been their help, and after five days the siege was taught to read, write and speak good Eng. raised. The company are appealing for lish or French, is alone one result of mis- funds to enable them to send a force of ex- sionary enterprise which should secure the perienced and equipped men to undertake sympathy and support of European Goveru- the work of repelling these Arab aggressors.
ments for these painstaking societies. In- -ReVIved HindUIsm. TheBharatDharma deed, though the converted barbarians may Maha·mandal (Iiterally"theGreat Assembly afterward grow slack in observing theprac- of the India Religion"), Hindooreligiou8 con..
tices of our religion, no one can deny that ference, concluded its second annual meet- they have been very much benefited by ing at Brindabun on the 29th ultimo. About their studies at the mission. No doubt if 200 delegates from various parts of the Pun- the great missionary propaganda of Britain jab, the northwestern provinces, Oudh and confined itself to being a kind of School Behar, including Dewan Ramjas, C.I.E., and Board for savages, it would save time and Dewan Mathuradas Bahadnr of Kapurthala, money spent in installing into low-grade were present. The conference upheld im- minds dog-mas and doctrines which these age worship, the incarnations, sbl'addha barbarians are scarcely capable of turning and pilgrimage. It was resolved that to the practical purposes of life, but inas. branches of the Maha·mandal (Great As· much as that is the original motive-power sembly) be established in places where they of Christian missions, and one must utilize do not already exist, also to promote all forces as one finds them, political ec·ono- over the country religious education, and mists should be content to let the missiona- that Hindoo boys sl,ould be taught :rI:indi, ries dogmatize and indoctrinate without let Sanskrit and the principles of the Hindu or hindrance, on account of the education religion before they begin to learn a foreign and civilization which they laterally intro- language; that no boy be married below 16, duce. The trader civilizes, but he does not and no girl belOW 10 or above 12. The con· go to savage countries for that purpose; he ference closed with prayers for the Queen- goes to trade. In like manner the bait Empress under whose benign rule, as the which draws these good men and women of Secretary remarked, they enjoyed that Ro~an Catholic and Protestant missions to mo.t invaluable boon, namely religious free- Africa, Polynesia, North America, India, dom. Prayers were also offered for Lord China aud Persia, is the desire to instUl into Lansdowne, Sir Auckland Colvin and Sir the minds of the backward races of these James Lyall; but to which of the 330,000,000 'savages of semi-civilized lands their own Hindu divinities the prayers were offered, views of Christian faith and hope, but they our authority does not say. We take it to accompany their care for the spiritual well- be to Krishna and his mistress Radha, the being of the pagan or Mohammedan with a local divinities, who, we suppose, presided very practical intention to improve his over the "Great Assembly."-Indian Evan· bodily life and to educate his mind, and in gelical Review, April.
this they do, and have done in the past, an -Results of a Christless Civilization. Grat- amount of good that has never as yet been tan Guinness lately said: .. All along that sufficientlyappreciated.-H. H. Johnston in West coast of Africll. we have built great Fortnightly Review for Aprtl. warehouses stocked with guns, gunpowder -" The African Lakes Company was form- and murderous drinks. We have built them ed in 1878 to assist the various missions at every river's mouth, and far up every then established and to work out Living- navigable rlver in the interior of the coun- stone b schemes." James Stevenson, of try, wherever European capital and power Scotland, is chairman of the company, and could reach. Where the Senegal, the Gam.
the road known as the Stevenson Road, con- bia, the Niger and the Congo roll their be- necting lakes Nyassa and Tanganyika, was neficent waters to the sea, there we have b'lilt at his expense. This is said to be one set up the man-murdering fa.,tories, and of the most important roads in Central there we land our cargoes of deadly poison.
Africa, commercially considered; but the Look at the green boxes in those factories, Arabs have begun to appropriate it to their packed with gin-infamously bad gin, too, own use, and to block the way with their scarcely lIt to make paint with; gin boxes caravans. Mr. Stevenson has just issued a by the l'Illllion I Look at the demijohns of pamphlet containing a slave-trade map of rum, great glass jars enclosed iu wicker Africa, and bringing together facts to show work, filled up to the brim with burning, that "within the last five years the ravages maddening liquor; rum jars by the million I of the Arabs have increased in area and in- Look at them in every African village and te,sity, so that a territory West of the town all along the coast, positively for thou- G~t Lakes,l,OOO miles by (O(), llle been de- sands of miles, and far away in the interior. See how the deadly trade eats like a cancer that it was fun of interest, a.nd that the into the very vitals of tbe dark continent." road is perfectly open; but being a white man, I had to pay' right of way' to the .. In wandering through some native vil- principal chiefs, who, by the way, are anxla.ges on the Kru coast," says Thomson, ious for white men ~o live with them. We "one feels as if in a kind of hades, peopled a.ri ved here in a. hundred marches, the by brutalized human beings, whose punish- marches averaging six hours. Here my ment it is to be possessed by a never-ending head was overwhelmed at the reception I thirst for drink. On all sides you, are fol- everywhere got from the BashiJange. Every lowed by eager cries for gin, gin, always hUJ dotted with large and beautiful vilgin. I had travelled and sulfered in Africa, lages; the couutry teeming with people who inspired by the idea that I was doing some ha,ve abandoned fetishism and are waitillg good in the world in opening up new lands for what the white men can bring them; all to commerce and civilization, but all my a.nxious to'learn, intelligent, have now some satisfaction was blighted as I felt that what idea of God, want to know about everything. httle work I had done had better have been faces all smiling, and everyone polite. Go undone, and Africa still remained the dark anywhere over the country, and great vilcontinen t, if such was to be the end of it all I lages enconnter tbe eye. The population is For me, as things stand in many places, I enormous and is marvellously thick. Trnly, am inclined to translate this cry of the • the harvest is great, but the laborers are opening up of Africa to civilization as really few.' Few I one only, and that one worth being the opening of itupto European vices, almost nothing."-Baptist Mis.ionary. old clothes, gin, rnm, gunpowder and guns." Ch i na.-A good book. A Chinese mer- -An Italian traveller, Signor Cechi, has lately published, in his work on East Africa, chant came into the American Baptist Misa.n interesting account of the degenerate sion Chapel in Shanghai, and, after talking representatives of ancient Christianity with him for a short time, Dr. Yates sold whom he found among the peoples inhabit- him a copy of the New Testament. He took ing the region South of Abyssinia. The Mo- it home, ;;00 miles awa.y,aud, after about hammedan invasion has driven these de- three months, appeared again in the chapel. scendants of the primitive African Chris. tians to the more mountainous parts of the He came back to say that he was uuder the country, where, .in sequestered vales, scat;.· impression that the book was not complete, tered communities of them have churches that surely it must have other parts, and so adorned with double crosses, and dedicated he came to get the Old Testament as he tosnch names as the" HolyEmanuel." They read and studied the New. What had he profess the old heresy that our Lord had only one nature, the divine. But Signor done with the New Testament r He had Cechi found them so staeped in ignorance that their doctrine can be little more to taken it to his home and shown it to the tbem tban a traditional formula. schoolmaster and the readiug people. They said: .. This is a good book. Confucius him- -Dr. Robert N. Cust, in a recent number self must have had something to do with it." of Ohurch Work, says: .. After a careful As there was only one copy, they unstitched consideration of the subject for many years I have come to the firm conviction that a this one and took it leaf by leaf, and all missionary in Equatorial Africa, East or those who could write took a leaf home. West, at a distance of, say fifty miles from Tbey made twelve or fifteen complete copies the coast, .hould not be encumbered with a of the New Testament, and introduced it family. He is like the captain of a ship, the into their schools without any" conscience soldier on a campaign, the explorer of un- clause." It was introduced as a class- known countries, and should not be weak- book throughout that district for heathen ened in the hour of peril by personal and schools.-Selected. home considerations calculated to unnerve him. It should be a rule absolute that as England.-A missionary exhibition. regards Equatorial Africa no woman should The Kensington Town Hall, London, has be allowed to be sent to a station in the in- been the scene of a very interesting exhibi- terior. I have seen a procession, as it were, tion and bazaar. A perfect museum of arti- of young women pass from the committee- cleg, illustrative of native life in India, room into African graves, with no possible China, Japan, Africa, North America and advantage as rega.rds mission work to com- Palestine, has been brought together under pensate for the frightful sacrifice of life." the auspices of the Church of England Mis- sionary Society; whilst lectures, with dis- Central Africa:-Dr. Wm. R. Sum_ solvIDg views, au the society's various fields mers, who died ,at Luluaburg, in the Congo of foreign labor have helped to render the Free State, wrote as follows to Dr. Sims re- exhibition still more instructive. Manyob- garding the people among whom he found jects of great interest, including idols, himself in that remote station: models of temples, weapons of sa.vage war- fare, and numerous specimens of native .. Of the journey I will sa.y notbing but mauufactures have been lent, and in each division of the exhibition a missionary well acquainted with the country from which the articles came was generally to be found have asked for a re-enforcement of Ii2 missiona- ready to alford all needed infotmation. ries. By the same proportion our own force Qught Relicsofa personal character, too, attracted to be enlarged by more than 100. Bnt they do much attention. Among the latter the most pathetic was the diary of the late Bishop not ask that. They ask this year for sW: new Hannington, with the last entry on the men. Let the young ministry see that the men day he was murdered, October 29, 1885: .. I can hear no news, but was held up by the are found, and the chnrches be sure that tho 30th Psalm, which came with great power. means are provided to respond fnlly to this A hyena howled near me last night, smelling modest request.-Baptist Mis8ionary. a sick man, hnt I hope it is not to have me yet." -The Pandita Rambai has met with a kind reception from all parties in Bombay, and her -The income of the Church Missionary So- experiment of opening a training school lor ciety is larger this year than it has ever high caste widows will have a fair trial. Dur- been before, and the Kensington exhibition ing her prolonged visit to America the Pandlta must materially increase it. Mightnotother met with great favor, and received more liber· missionary societies imitate with advantage al assistance than, we think, had ever before such a good example? been given to any person for missionary pur- poses. We have not been sanguine by any I ndia.-The American Baptist Telugu means in hopes for her success, knowing as we Mission. The Telugn Mission presents a cu- do the character of some of the barriers wb;~h rions 'anomaly in the missions of American Bap- rise in her way, but every such experiment Is tists. It was the most hopeless at the first, worth a trial, and every elfort, whether suc- and is now the most prosperons. From the cessful or not, which aims to ameliorate the least illteresting and encouraging, it has ad- hard lot of Indian widows, deserves the sympa- vanced, in less than twenty-five years, to the thy of all good people. The Pandlta has en- most marvellonsly successfnl mission on the thusiasm and persistence of pnrpose, and we face of the earth. The history of Christianity trnst that her success will be snch as to silence all donbters. As to opposers, she has none.- in all ages and countries shows nothing which Indian W,tnes8. snrpasses the later years of the American Bap- tist Telngn Mission in spontaneous extension, .Japan.-A College Revival. In the Chi- in rapidity of progress, in genuineness of con- cago Watchman, Mr. L. D. Wishard tells a very ver.ions. in stability of results, or in promise for the fnture. The missionary marvels of the interesting story of work in connection with his Sonth Sea Islands cannot parallel it. Only in visit to'the leading Christian college in Japan: the tragic and romantic annals of Madagascar can we find anything to compare with it; and " The Doshisha, as it is called, contains 700 , in the missions of to-day, when the amonnt of students, about one-half of whom are members elforts pnt forth, and the reality of personal ex- of the college church. The institution Is not perience is taken into consideration, not even only the largest Christian college in Japan, bnt the wonderfnl progress of Christianity.ln Japan is one of the very largest Christian institutions can he placed beside it. . . . And yet the Tel- In Asia. It has done more for the spread of ugn Mission occnpies no such place in the af- Christianity in Japan than any other agency, fections and aspirations of American Baptists, and has a national reputation for its literary as as Its wonderfnl history and success would well as its religions standing. We pursued ex- warrant. Here is one man who has under his actly the same course wbich we had followed care more than half as many native Christians so often In American colleges, and the work as there are In all Burma, ann we haven't sent from the beginning to the end of the visit was so similar to an American college revival that any even one man from Am~rica to reinforce the special description Is scarcely necessary. One Telugu Mi8sion jor near,v three veal's. .•. subject which especially interested the stndents was the place which Christianity holds in the Bnt the crisis has come. The mission cannot colleges and among the highly educated of the and must not go longer in the way it has been West_ Many of them had been led to think going. These thousands of converts, most of that Christianity was losing its hold upon onr whom are less than ten years in the Christian intellectnal classes. This outrageous falsehood life, must be trained for Christian manhood has been circulated in Japan by skeptical pro- and womanhood. The appeals of these hun- fessors from England, Germany and America. dreds, and even thousands, who are asking for the missionary to visit their villa~es, and bap- "One of the most interesting and the most dif- tise taem, must be responded to. The over- ficnlt features of the work consisted in the in- worked and overburdened brethren mnst be qniry meetings. It was an imposing sight to see relieved and enconraged by seeing re-enforce- a score of gronps of from three to six students ments coming to their help. We have other gathered about a professor or experienced great and pressing works which must be done, Christian student eagerly discussing the plan of but the re-enforcement of the Telnga Mission salvation. The meetings for personal work presents claims npon our young men, and upon were generally held In onr private rooms. Dr. the gifts of the people, which cannot be longer Davis gladly tnrned his parlor and dining-room into an inquiry-room, and sometimes forty or Ignored. The Canadian Baptist TeluguMission more stUdents would crowd in and spend from ODe to two hours. It was a joy indescribable to answer their eager questions, and lead them we left. The same evening fifty men in a meetstep by step into the light. One of those meet- ing for the unconverted announced their deterings I shall never Corget. The company was mination to begin praying for themselves, and pretty evenly divided-about half of them skep- to seek Christ, as it was expressed, untll they tical concerning the inspiration of the Bible, the found Him." Divinity of Christ, the immortality of the soul, &c.; while the balance were settled upon these Iu this connection we add the words of a mispoints, and were willing to accept Christ as sionary who writes to the ilfiBsionary Herald their Savionr. I di vided the crowd, leaving- the that on March 24 103 students from this instituskeptics with Mr. Bartlett of Dartmonth, '87, tion, 98 young men and 5 young women, received who was one of the first of the pledged mission- Christian baptism and were welcomed to church ary volunteers to reach the foreign field, and fellowship. Last year 141 of the students wbo has a special knack for meeting skeptical made public profession of Christ. And still objections. I took the others into an adjoining further: room. There were abont twenty-two of them. After talking for some time about the plan of .. It is with great pleasure, " says the Mis8ionsalvation, I asked those who had already ac- ary Herald, "that we are able to announce that cepted Christ, or were willing te accept Him a Christian gentleman of New England, who there and then, to aunounce it. Fnlly seventeen desires that his name should be uUknown, has did so, and the reasons which theygayefortheir been so impressed by the value of the work hope in Cbrist were as satisfactory as you will done by the Doshisha Institution at Kyoto, and ordinarily hear iu an American college. by the caU which Mr. Neesima has made for its enIargementasa university,that he has contribut- .. Four or five fellows listened earnestly and ed the noble sum of $100,000, of which $.5,00 are iadly to the testimonies of their companions, to be for an endowment, and $25,000 for the but were unable to grasp the fact of his gift of erection aud furnishing of a science haU. " eternal life. So I said to them, 'Fellows, what will convince you beyond a doubt that the gift PerSia.-Mission Movements. A recent is yours?' They did not answer at once, so I letterfrom Persia speaks of the rapid move tosaid, 'If I should come to you and teU that you wards religious liberty to Moslems, which has had fallen heir to a maguiflcent estate, what been taking place in the capitol, Teheran, and iu would convince you beyond all question of the the part of the field where our American truthfuluess of my word?' , We may be satis- brethren are at work. A few facts will illustrate fied if we could see it,' one. of them replied. this: (1) At Tabreez, an American medical mis- • Would that really satisfy you f' I asked. They siouary was asked by the Vali Ahad, or heir-apdidn't grasp my meauing, so I continued, ' Sup- parent to the throne of Persia, who is also Govposing you saw the legal document-the re- ernor of the Province of wbich Tabreez is the cord? ' , Oh, yes, that would settle the ques- capital, to give up his connection with the mistion,' they exclaimed. 'Well,' I continued, • we Sion, and become his private physcian on a large are 80 fortunate as to have the record. Turn salary. The doctor had no wish to accept it, but to John v: 11, aud let us read, .. And this is the was urged by· his brother missionaries aud the record, that God hath given us eternal life, and Mission Board to doso. He told the prince that he this life is His Son." , could do so on the condition only that he should bequite free to teach and preach his own religion, " I bhall never outlive the memory of the and to this the prince agreed. The appointment scene of that room. They fairly snatched their was considered so important that it was dis- New Testaments from their pockets, and eag- cussed by all the Legations, and oppo,ed by erly searched for the record. And bending low Russia only. The strangest thing was that tho over the pages they seemed to drink in the Mullahs approved of it, and said they could trust words like thirsty men. It was a pathetiC a man to attend to their women who was not sight, those boys beuding anxiously over the ashamed to stand up for his own religion. (2) record, which probably none of them had ever A convert from Islam in another city has not seen before. I could see their faces brighten, only made a public profession of Christ, but has althougb my eyes were becoming somewhat also acted as a mission agent under the American dimmed. Presently one of the boys looked up. missionaries there, and was lately married tothe His face glowed. He reached out his hand. daughter of the native pastor. Great opposition • Is the qnestIOn settled f' I asked. 'Yes, it is was raised to the marriage by the native Chrissettled,' he replied; and they all said the same. tian community (Armeniaus), but none whatever There was joy in that room. The iuterpreter by the Moslems. (3) Not many years since an said, 'L.t us pray'; alid while he prayed I order was given by the Shah, through H. B. M. thought of the joy with which heaven was ring- Minister, that the missionaries should not allow ingas any Moslem to enter their church, or attend any kind of service. Iu December, when Dr. Bruce The angels echoed around the throne, was returning to Julfa, he preached in Persia in .' Rejoice, for the Lord brings back his own I ' Teheran to a crowded congregation of Chris- tians, Jews, Parses., and Moslems. After the "So the work continued day after day. As service the whole congregation stayed for Sunsome indication of the progress of the work, I day-school, and one of the missionaries had a wi11 say that fully one hundred men attended a class of some 25 lloslems, Jews, and Parsees. meeting for new converts, held a week before
MISSIONARY CORRESPONDENCE FROM ALL
chiefly Moslems, whom he taught the word of Sabbath, with a total attendance of about one God, just as in any Sunday-school clas~·. (4) thonsand. In the qnarters ot Haskeuy and Scu. After service one of the missionaries went out tari and in the rear of the Bible Honse, there are with, a catechist to two Moslem villages, and commodions chapels, bot for more than torty preached quite publicly to attentive congrega- years the evangelical Armenian chnrches in the tions in the street. (5) There are now several great quarters of Pera and Stamboul have converts from Islam In Ooroomiah who make 8 snffered severely in their growth and influence public profession of their faith. These five facts for the lack of church homes of their Own. The are significant signs of progress, and give ground brethren of the Pera and Stamboul churches are, for belief that God's time to favor Persia, of now about to make fresh efforts to secnre hOllses which Dr. Bruce has so often spoke, is at hand. of worship, and we bespeak for them tbe sym- -Christian at Work. pathy and aid of American Christians. The preachers of the gospel have never been so nn- T hi bet.-Mr. Andrew Wilson says that the merous and strong as at present, and the spirit of love and union among the brethren has sensi- Thibetans are the most pre-eminently praying bly increased. By means of our station conferpeople on the face of the earth. .. They have ence, genuine co-operati~n in carrying forward praying stones, praying pyramids, praying flags the evangelical work has been secured, and the flying over every bouse, praying wheels, praying differences of former years have quite disap· miJJs, and the univereal prayer, 'Ommani padme peared.- M!88ionary Herald. haun,' is never ont of their mouth," A German writer on Lamaism says of this sentence, which United States.-A fearless Missionary. literally means" 0 God 1 the jewel in the lotus," Dr. Otis Gibson, who died recently in SanFran. that these six syllables are, of all the prayers of cisco, was a noted missiona.ry among the Chinese earth, that which is most frequently repeated, in that city from 1868 to 1886. Dr. S. L. Baldwin written, printed, and conveniently offered up by in the Chinese Evangelist gives a thrilling acmechanical means. .. They constitute the only count of hisebaracter and work. We give,an exprayer which the common Mongols and Thihetans tract. "He soon gained the entire respect and know; they are the first words which the stam- confidence of the Chinese residents; and when mering child learns, and are the last sighs of the the hoodlum spirit became rampant and truckdying. The traveller murmurs them upon his ling politiCians catered to it for personal advantjourney, the herdsman by his flock, the wife in age, so tbat a public sentiment was engendered her daily work, the monk in all stages of con- very inimical to the Chinese residents, Dr. Gibtemplation-that is to say, of nihilism; and they son with that lofty courage cbaracteristic of him, are the cries of conflict and triumph. One meets stood firmly and resolutely in defence of the opwith them everywhere, whereever the Lama pressed Chinese. He was once burned in effigy church has established itself-on flags, rocks, in front of the City Hall, while the mayor of the trees, walls, stone monnments, utensils, strips City was making an anti-Chinese speech within, of paper, human skulls, skeletons, etc. They and conniving at the doings of the godless mob are, according to the meaning of the believer, without. On appearing once in the Legislative the essence of all religion, of all wisdom and RaHat Sacramento, a motion was promp~y revelation; they are the way of SIllvation and made by one of the hoodlum members that Otis entrance to holiness." Gibson he expelled from the hall; but there was a majority of rational and dece&! men in the Turkey.-Constanti~ople. Arnerlean Chris- body large enongh to prevent the passage or the tianity has three grand institutions in Constanti- resolution. Sometimes it was necessary to senople, namely, the Bihle House in Stamholll, cure police protectiou for the mission house, which is the centre of literary work for the Em- and on many occasions Mrs. Gihson was in seripire; the Female College, called the .. Home," ous donbt when he left the building whether she on tbe heights of Scutari, on the Asiatic shore, wonld ever see him again alive. In the midst and Robert College, on the bluff of the Bo~pho of such conflicts and trials he pressed on unrus, six miles above the city. There are thrEe daunted in his work until three years ago, when native evangelical churches, namely, two Arme- he was stricken with paralYSiS, undoubtly the niau and one Greek, with a total membership result of the long nervous strain to which he of over two hundred, and eleven religious ser- had been subjected." services in eight different quarters of the city and in three different langnages lire held every I1I.-MISSIONARY CORRESPONDENCE FROM ALL PARTS OF THE WORLD-FIELD.
Africa. of a year now accessions have been constant E. F_ Baldwin's Work in Southern and everyone haptized has renounced Moham- Morocco. medanism. For a time the work was seemingly much hindered by severe persecntion. Impris- MOGADOR, MOROCCO, March 21, 1889. onment, be3ting, disowning, banishment-these DEAR BROTHER: Some of your readers know are all too familiar to the converts here in somewhat of the precious work of grace in pro- Southern Morocco. But when it was impossible gress here among Mohammedans. For upwards to longer work here in Mogador we travelled and preached, going literally on the methods gospel brings them. May not all thia encourage laid down in Matthew x, which we hold with, the zeal and faith of scattered workers toiling we find, increasing numbers of God's children in these bard Moslem fields? to be of perpetnal obligation. We have found them to contain the deep and matchless wisdom Some new workers, all committed to Mat- thew x lives, have just jOined us. Tbere are of God for missionary etrort.* Several others now six of us bere, all mrn of course, with onr lives given up to toil for Lurist nnder bis primbesides myself, inclllding recently converted itive instructions. A band is forming in Ayernatives. are so travelling. The natives knowing shire, Scotland, of others. who will come to us no other methods, have gone glad)y forth, with- soon, we trust. Others in different places are ont purse or scrip. on foot, taking uothing and greatly interested. We hope to have many namarvellous blessiug in the way of conversion tives together here in the summer months for has followed the steps of their simple faith. trainiug in the Word, that they may afterwards They go with no thought of payor salary. The go forth two by two, without purse or scrip. Father makes their simple needs His care. lily own position as an unattached missionary, de- E. F. BALDWIN. pendent only on God for temporal supplies (which, blessed be Hie name, He ceaselessly Brazil. supplies), enables one to consistently instrnct these native Christians in the principles and THE MISSIONARY BUREAU,LoNDON, methods of .Matthew x, and encourage them to go forth npon them. April 8, 1889. DEAR DR. PIERSON:- I enclose It is to this retnrn to these first principles of mission work I attribute the constant :!low of copy Qf a letter received from Brazil, blessing we are having. and which is so except- 10~1 in Mohammedan fields. I earnestly rec- on the subject of "Self-Supporting ommend them to others who may have the faith and are so circumstanced as to practice them. Missionaries." As it is the phase of I say this without any reflection upon the more ordinary and accepted lines of mission endeavor. the subject <in which we are most The field is vast and the need great, and by all and every means let the gospel be.preached. deeply interested, and one in which Jnst now the vigilance of our persecutors and very much more can be done than adversaries has somewhat relaxed, and our fre- has yet been ~ttempted•. I thought quent meet:!Igs (sil<teen in Arabic and eight in English per week, are well attended, and we you might find room for it in your are cheered by more conversions. Several are jnst presenting themselves for baptism. Last excellent REVIEW. night one of the most intelligent and best educated Moors I have ever met,:pnblicly confessed JOHN M. PAMMANT, Secretary. Christ for the first time-both speaking and praying (as all the native Christians do from the Self-Supporting Missionaries: honr of their conversion) in onr meeting before "GREAT BRITAIN, tbrough her vast commercial many witnesses. He is one of the few" honor- and colonial relations, sends men to all parts of able" ones who have been won. We trnst he the habitable globe. These men are natnrally may become a veritable Paul. He was··some energetic and enterprising or they would not months since arrested and thrown into prison on offer for foreign service. the suspicion of being a Christian, which at that ,. Is it not possible to transform this splendid time he was not. His feet, like Joseph's, .. they army of yonng men into repres~ntatives of hurt with fetters," the scars of which he will Christ? I sincerely believe it is. The church never cease to carry. Poor fellow' He was of Christ in England has within its fold the very then withont the comfort that comes to a child flower of manhood, ready for service In any part of God in a1Hiction, and yet enduring reproach of the world. What then is necessary? That for Christ. But God blessed his dreary sojourn for every foreign post a Christian man should in prison to his soul, and it contribnted to his be forthcoming, a man with every qualification conversion. Pray for him. necessary, and equal to any that may be fur- nished from the world's ranks. But how are Some from among the few resident Europeans these men to be brought into contact with the and from among the Jews also have turned to companies who are to employ them? Anassoclthe Lord and confessed Him in baptism. ation might he formed of Christian merchants and others, who would, by their infiuence and Tidings from different places in the interior, known integrity,be nble to select men ofguaranwhere tbe word of life has been carried from teed ability antI general suitableness. But what here, tell us of many turning from Mohammed's wonld be the ~ractical gain to the church by all cold, hard. false faith, to the love and light the this? The gain would be sim ply incalculable. In the first place a great stumbling block wonld –*A series ofpapers dealing witb the qnestion be removed, fornothing impedes the spread of the gospel abroad more than the lives of godless of mission methods and entitled The Question Englishmen. All missionaries will attest this. 01 the Hour-Foreign Mis8ions, is appearing But the greatest advantage of all will be that now in The Christian of London, and are at- thousands of seU-supporting missionaries will tracting wide attention. be located all over the world, for every living Christian is a missionary, whatever his private , calling may be. The opportunities of spreading I hear Miss Pilditch is this moment bnsy giv- the gospel which lie within the reach oC every ing a singing lesson to our school children.
Englishman abroad are very great, and this Santhals are hill people and good singers.
without in any way interfering with his private Thank God for liberty to praise the Lord in the dntles. While laboring abroad I have had the midst of heathendom.
constant fellowship an 1 help of several young Last Sunday about 150 were at the Lord's Englishmen. One who ,vas ever ready to help table to remember His death; it was the won- was the manager of a foundry; another was the der of the RItes, the Son oC God dying for sinful director of one of the largest companies in this men. Eleven men and women were baptized city; and in the same way every Englishman in November, and one man l'lst month, on who fills an engagement abroad may do good proCession of faith in Christ. There is hope oC work for Christ, providing he be a living Chris- many more to Collow. Pray for them.
tian. Famine is tormenting thousands of people i I ask, should all this power for good be left daily heads of families, men and women, come to unapplied f Surely heroic young Christians will me, saying we have nothing to eat; give us some be forthcoming to fill any post that others work, rice or money; the children are crying.
would accept for the salary. The love of Christ The Santhals are a brave and hard-working.
should be stronger than the love' of enterpri.e people, but this famine is a great trouble, and or lucre, and as to fitness, who shall say that the Government does not Ceellncllned to help.
the man of God is inferior to the worldling f " Come ye blessed.-For 1 was hungry and ye Joseph and Daniel proved themselves not one gave me food. Inasmuch as ye did it unto one whit behind their godlesR compeers in worldly of these, my brethren, even the least, ye did It knowledge, tact and business capacity. unto me." Matt. 25 : 14-40. How can we see All that is wanting to put this scheme into these people starving before Our eyes f This is practice is the formation of an association of a time of need. Pray lor them, and afterwards Christian merchants and philanthropists, and see how mnch you can deny yourself to help its results will be universal. them. If friends knew their need, they would " JAMES F ANSTONE." cheerfully send a few pounds to help them.
India. A Ohristian Baba. Interesting letter from Secretary From Rev. J. A. B. Cook, Singa- Haegert, of the Bethel Santhal Mission. pore, Feb. 21, 1889.
BETHEL. 21st March. 1889. MR. TAlIl KONG WEE was born In Singapore, DEAR EDITORS: of Christian parents, in 1842 i he was thus a Baba. To explain this word, I cannot do better We left England in October, '88, with six new than quote the following from Vaughan's" Chi- missionaries for onr mission, and arrived here nese of the Straits Settlements": "The term safely on the 2d December. Our services on Baba Is used by the natives oC Bengal to board were a joy to os and a blessing to others. designate the children oC Europeans. and it Is Oor missionaries learned 500 Santhal words, probable that the word was applied by the and attended 24 lectures on diseases, their Indian convicts at Renang to Chinese children, cause, their course and treatment on board. No and so came Into !(enerai use. The word is time was lost; since their arrival they have given in Donglas's Hokien Dictionary as mean- continued their study. and made good progress Ing a half·caste Chinese from the Straits. In in medicine and the Santhallanguage. Mess1·s. the Straits, however, the term Is applied to all ,Panes and Hearn are at Bethlehem, 20 miles Chinese born there, half-caste, or otherwise." east; the others are here. We trust Mr. The term, moreover, is applied to adults as Rowat will go 20 miles north by and by. well as to children.
D,n:ing the last four months, patients from Mr. Kong Wee's father was a gambler 25 villages were attended at Bethel. Our and pepper trader. who sent him to school at the ulne dispensaries are busy at this time, as Rame's Institution, where he was taoght Eng- the prevailing heatlays many aside. (It is 8 P. lIl. lish. Like all Babas he knew Malsy better just now. and we have 95 degrees on our veran- than Chinese, though he also knew Chinese, dah, in the shade.) Oor nine dispensaries re- which some Babas do not. He left school when move moch misery and woe from many a home, sixteen to enter a lawyer's omce, where he and this they do all the year rouud. As a rule, remained until about three years ago, when he patients from more than 150 vill"ages receive removed to Madras for the education of his two treatment every year. sons. He had saved sumcient to enable him to. retire and do this. The reason why he went Since January, '89, we visited four melas there I will give further on. (heathen feasts) and disposed of 1,850 gospels. May the bleSSing of the Almighty rest on His His parents, brothers, sisters, and indeed all word, printed and preached, and may He guide his relatives were heathen. He also remained a the people to the feet of Christ. heathen Cor some years after leaving school, un- til he came into contact with a Chinese Chris- Last week our preachers, two and two, visit- tian, one of the earliest converts oC the London ed ftfty villages. M18si(!nary Socie.ty, which nnfortunately aban- children the best training they could under ~ most fayorable conditions. Their hope was that doned the Straits altogether, so long ago as both the lads might not ouly become earnest Christians, but also like the f:tther, preachers of 1847. By this Chinese Baba he was induced to the gospel, to the Babas of Malayrla. I am thankful to add that both the BOns are now cast in his lot with the Christians. He after- members of the church, and we hope to. see them more than filling their father's place in wards married one of his daughters, and she the coming years. May God grant it.
had much to do with the after life and usefulne.s PerSia.-The American Presby;'
ot her husband. She still survives, and intends tcrrian Mission.- From one of the missionaries: to return to Madras, until her sons complete The missionary work of Oroomiah Station is their education there. . in some respects unique, and iu many ways it is di1llcult, but full of promise. We area band The whole of Mr. Kong Wee's relatives stood of missionaries set down among a remnant of ancient Christendom in the midst oC Moslem out against his becoming a Christian. He was conquerors. It is a journey of nearly two months' travel to our field-so Car inland and so afterwards on visiting terms with them, and Car isolated that very few Americans other than missionaries have eyer yi"ited tbe region. The supported his mother nntil the last, but he was band of missionaries are four Presbyterian min- isters and their wives; one physician, his wife never forgiven by them for leaving the" cus- and mother; one secular missionary, and tbree single ladies. toms of his fathers," i. e., idolatry. While in The location and extent ofthe field.-To the India he often wrote, urging Mrs. Cook to visit north is Monnt Ararat, at the corner of Persia, Russia, and Tnrkey. The eastern boundary hi… de",rest mother" and sis ters. This we for nearly a hundred miles is the inland Ses of Oroomlah in ancient Media. Then the field extried to do, but apparently with little good tends westward to the Tigris, over the rugged region of the mountains and valleys in Kurdi.. result. Yet snrely God will hear his prayers on tan to the Tigris, as it passes the site of ancient Nineveh. The territory to be evangelized by their behaIr. When he first became a Christian, our station is nearly as large as the State of OhiO, partly in Persia, partly in Turkey, and is he once told me, thongh he had made a clean one of the oldest abodes of man.
break with idolatry, he knew very litt:e of the The Population and Nstionalities.-The first people Cor special efl'ort are the Syrians, or steps he had taken. Bnt by the teaching o~ his Nestorians, a remnant of the once great church of the Far East, that had its missions even in wife and others, by prayer, and the constant China a thousand years ago. This remnant nnm- bers about 150,000. There are probably 30,000 stndy of his Malay New Testament, he came to Jews on the site where they were carried cap- tive twenty-five centnries ago; there are as see "trnth as it is in J esns." He became a many more Armenian Christians; nearly a mil- lion and a quarter oCKurds, Moslems and Devil trne disciple, and was ever found ready to worshipers, aud over half a million of Persian Moslems; a total of near two million souls. speak for the Master, in his own house, at tbe There are many reasons why we should expect the Nestorians to be won over rapidly, as a cbapels, tbe prison, and elsewhere. He was people, to pnre Christianity, and the other peo- ples more slowly. certainly tbe most hearty and enthusiastic Chi- History of the Miasion.- The Nestorian naman I ever came across. So frank and out- remnant were first fully made known to the Protestant world in 1830, by exploring missionspoken. It was qnite refreshing to meet with aries. The mission was begun in 11l35, and called the Mission to the Nestorians. The him. first missionaries were Rev. Justin Perkins and Dr. Asahel Grant, very noble and euthnsiastic He preached freely at his own charges, and pioneers. Others, of a like spirit, ,followed them, of whom the Messrs. Stoddard and Rhea, gave regularly of his means to the cause of the and Miss Fidelia Fiske (as well as the two piO- neers) furnished subjects of bioll:raphy. In 1870 gospel, and even when away in Madras, where he also gave, he always had his monthly sub- scription paid in Singapore, and when he heard of the new chapel at Bukit Timah he sent twen- ty-five dollars towards the building fund. For years he and a few others went regularly once a quarter to communion services, and thus helped to keep things going tbere, after the founder of this station, Mr. Keasberry, had passed away; and it was largely owing to him and two or three others that services were maintained at tbe Malay chapel from the time Mr. Keasberry died, until our mission took over this station also, with its much reduced congre- gation. We shall continue to miss him in many ways. I shall always be thankful I knew him, and learned to love him as a brother. I shall remember his pleasant, hearty manner, his readiness to take a service or help in any way he could.!
A severe liver complaint brought him back with his wire to Singapore, but it was too late to save his life; he died in February of last year in great sufl'ering, but" in peace."
The reason why the parents took their sons- their ouly surviving children-to Madras was· that they might be witb them tbere, away from the debasing influences of Chinese idolatry, and the example and practic~s of heathen rela- tives. He knew too well what heathenism was.
So these loving parents wished to give their the name of the mission was changed to The Church has four Presbyteries -and a Synod; MiSsion to Persia. Since then it has enlarged also a native Board of Evangelization that meeta its sphere to embrace half Persia, or near 5OO,()(,0 monthly. By combining funds and counsels square mUes, in its efforts. Stations have been with the miSSionaries, a system of pastoral care established in Tabreez, Teheran, Hamadan and and itinerant labors is in operation which aims, a8 fast as possible, to reach all the Christian Salmas. population, and to carry the gospel to all other 1835, the work was hegun, and the mission- population. about us.
aries warmly welcomed by the Nestorians; The people are very poor in worldly goods, 1836, the Shah of Persia gave a firman to the but are able to do much for their own support, missionaries, and severely punished ruffians and for the spread of the gospel. The average that tried to kill them; 1838, the Roman Catho- amount given is about a dollar to a communilic mission was begun in the same field; 1841, cant-$2,000 per annum. This sum stands for the first printing-press ever seen in Persia began much real devotion and self-denial. Tne wages its work at Oroomiah in printing the Bible; of a laboring man is ten to fifteen cents a day, 1844, the training-school was removed to Seir, and of a skilled laborer, suob as a carpenter, and the Female Seminary was fairly opened; never more than thirty cents a day. Money is 1845, was the massacre of thousands of Chris- very scarce, and the sum that passes the hands tians by the Kurds, and follo wing this was a se- of our Christiaus is very small and very bard to vere persecution; the Patriarch and the Persian Governor beat and imprisioned many of the earn; but all give, and some conSCientiously missionaries' converts; 1846 to 1849, remarkable revivals; 1852, Persia was at war with Enl(land, give their tithes. and the missionaries were under Russian .pro- The Special Needs.-These are numerous; tection; 1855, the Reformed Church began; 1862, the Presbytery formed; 1862 and 1866, the one most pressing at this time is to provide years of cholera, and many thousands of people larger accommodations for our college. The swept away; 1870 to 1871, years of famine iu present building (two stories and basement, 110 many parts of Persia; 1871, the missiou trans- by 45 feet) gives ns chapel, library and recitation ferred from the American Board to the Presby- rooms, aud accommodations for sixty students, terian Board; 1877, extensive revivals; 1878, This building cost about $5,000. The demand is the Reformed Church more fully organized; very great to double the number of students, 187~, the new college built, and hospital begun; and give to half of them industrial educatiou. 1880, terrible famine, also insurrection of the It is an opportunity we must avail of, and thus Kurds; 1885, prevailinl!: revivals in the congre- bring the active and leading young men into the gations; 1886, High Church ritualists sent out evangelical Influence. In a few years these by the Archbishop of Canterbnry and began a young men will be the pillars of the church. If miasion; 1888, new Female Seminary built; we fail, these young men whom we reject will 1889. a new station nndertaken in the Kurdish fall Into the hands of Roman Catholics and Mountains. other errorists. While we sleep the enemy will sow tares. Three thousand dollars will bnild The first yearl, from 1835 to 1845, were years the needed accommodations for seventy addiof preparation in teaching, preaching and trans- tional students and provide shops. lating the Scriptures. From 1845 to 1855 there were many blessed revivals in the boarding- DEAR DR. SHERWOOD:-I have just schools, and the young men and women con- received particulars of the murder of verted carried the love of Christ with them to the villages, and many souls were spirituaJly of one of our converts in the Reformed renewed. From 1855 onward the Reformed Church was gradually formed, necessitated by Presbyterian Church, Antioch. persecution and other causes. The converts Yours faithfully, were first invited to meet with the missionaries R. M. SOMMERVILLE. in the Lord's Supper. As the members increased. separate congregations were formed in The following extractfl'oma private the villages, and native pastors placed over letter, recently received at Mersine, them. As pious young men were trained, they from Mrs. James Martin, of Antioch, were sent outaa teachers and evangelists. Thus should drive the churches to more the work has grown, and several thousaud souls are annuaJly reached. There is the stated importunate prayer in behalf of the preaching of the gospel in 120 places. The devoted brethren who are laboring largest congregation numbers 600 ; the smallest there in the face of such violent only ten or fifteen souls. opposition: The communicants in 1S:>7 were 216; in 1867, 697; in 1877, 1.087; and in 1887, 2,003. The .. We are now in deep grief and aftliction. whole number from the first is over 3,000. The Two weeks ago yesterday Abd EI Maseeh Telroll of ministers shows 40 fully ordained, and fort, one of our members, a yonng man of about 30 others, licentiates; also 87 elders and 91 dea- twenty, who joined our church in company with conesses of the congregations. The Reformed his mother three years ago last October, was set on by the Greeks in the shop where he was learning dyeing. Being at leisure, he was reading in the Bible, when a man standing on the other But the Persian Consul brought to court lve side of the narrow street said to another, 'See men, Greeks, who Baid they were in the street that fellow I He is still reading the gospel.' all day, and no assault occurred. We had Fast- Then the man attacked Abd Et Maseeh, striking day yesterday. The Greeks say, •That is the him on the head and kicking him, and cursing first of you only; we will settle you all.' Yeshim, his religion, and hook. A brother of the terday our cook was out in the evening, when young man roshed on him too, aod they dragged one of several men cursed his religion and made him oat of the shop, beating and kicking him. to strike him. Another caught the man, and He appealed to his master for help, but the mas- Yusef got away. The Lord is on our side, and ter took up a stick and made to strike him, and we shall not be moved." others coming np, Abd Et Maseeh got off. This is what the witnesses iestify. The father of Tahiti.-We gladly give place to the yoong man says that his son came home with blood flowing from his ears and nose. The this communication. father, a Greek, wanted to complain to the Government at once, but Abd Et Maseeh replied, In the midst of this dark financial 'No, my father, leave it to Christ, the Judge.' crisis of the London Missionary Society, Tile Ioung man ate a little supper, and went out we have been favored with the sight of a recent to an evening meeting where he and some others letter from Tahiti, well known and remembered were discussing Bible truth. He Boon returned by some of us as Otaheite, as the earliest part home, and after vomiting lay down, and falling of the field of the labors and of the signal sucinto coma, never spoke again. It was near noon cess of this mission. next day before they came for the doctor. When the doctor saw him and heard his story, he got the The remarkable importance of this intelligence futher to call in the Greek doctor and Immanuel, at the present moment is that it shows in a well the Bon of the Turkish Protestant pastor here, authenticated and most interesting detail the who had just returned from Stamboul with a fresh fruit that still remains on the old field of diploma, having .todied in Beirnt. The Greek Pomare, even after the French aggression. and Protestant doctors quarreled at once, the Greek saying it was meningitis, and the other We think we are noW warrented to print and saying it was impossible-it was from violence. to circulate privately some sentences of this let- The family dismissed the Greek, and the doctor ter, which is addressed to a lady in Edinburgh got there just as he was leaving. The doctor who was once herself a foreign missionary, and and Immanuel examined Abd EI Meseeh, and who presided at the Edinburgh Ladies' Associthey came together here, and in this room Im- ation of the London Missionary Society the manuel declared it could be nothing but violence. The young man died Friday evenin!(, and the other day: doctor asked the family to get a paper from the "I have always been hopiug to have a great Government for a post-mortem. Dr. Garabet Hagopian, of Aleppo, who studied in New York deal of missionary news to give you, but, though under Dr. Post's father, is here, and the doctor it is now nearly seven months since we left Sanasked the family to call him, and with Immanuel Francisco, I have not seeu a single European and his brother Yakoub, who studied in Aintab, Protestant missionary. All the IslandS that we and Is the agent of the city, made a post-mortem have visited are in the hands of the French, and examination and declared all the signs were of the English missionaries have been gradually violence to th~ head. That was On Saturday, driven out. Both in the Marquesas and the and on Tuesday they met to arrange their re- Panmutos we saw a great deal of the Roman port, and the sons of the Protestant pastor, Catholics, and I am glad to say that they seemed though not daring to deny that death was caused much less bigoted than they are with us. They by violence, said that there were many enemies, read the Bible in churcb, aad preach sermons, and they dare not say in the report to the Govern- and where there was only a catechist to conment that it was so, and they, too, actually drew duct the service, it seemed quite like our own, up a report in the Interest of the murderers_ as, of course, he could not celebrate Mass. At Dr. Garabet was besieged and offered bribe~ and Tahiti, though I found no missionaries, I am intimidated to compel him to pui his signature to very·glad to tell you that I found that the work their report, but he refused. The assault oc- had been so thoroughly founded that it is going curred In open day, in the street, and the wit- on quietly in the hands of native missionaries, nesses are numerous; but Greek and Turk have and very few have joined the church of Rome. united to kill the case. Three Moslems and two • . • After leaving Papeete we were detained Fellaheen gave testimony, but the Government by broken masts for two months at a very beausaid it would be wrong to write down that they tiful village in the southern part of Tahiti, called cursed his religion aud his book. The murder- Tantira, and it was there that I saw most of the ers are hidden in the house of the Persian Con- people, and loarned to love them. They are so sul. He is a Mason, as also are the pastor's loving and hospitable, and so cheerful and sons. The do«tor telegraphed home and lI:ot au happy. The fir~t Sunday, when I went ashore answer, and the pressure on the Turks is strong. to church, I found the table spread for the communion, and all covered with a white cloth. I asked leave to jOin, and was welcomed by the officiating minister, who was dressed in a dark blue and whIte narin (a cottou kilt), white shirt, and black paletot coat. All the ministers and deacons 'll'ere dressed in this fashion, and
INTERNATIONAL DEPARTMENT
had bare feet. In fact, my shoes were the only ship on Wednesday. On the appointed day ones in the chnrch I thirty women and three children came dn .. When the covering-cloth was removed, I fonnd that the wine was in black beer bottles, board, and not satisfied with what they had the cups were of very coarse earthenware, and the bread was baked bread-fruit cut in very already given me, they brought twenty-five small pieces. It was very touching to me to keep the feast with the Mi.sion congregation cocoanuts, fowls, and six pillows stuffed with so recently rescued from heathenism,-touching, too, to realize how the simple rite is silk cotton from the cotton-tree. I asked them snited to all climes and peoples, and may be nnderstood and partaken of although you do to sing a hymn before we went downstairs, not nnderstand a word of the language. When the service was over, I fonnd that I had put my_ which they did; and then, to my great surprise self in a much more conspicuous position than I had any idea of. First, all the ministers and they proceeded of their own accord to make deacons shook hands with me, aud ~hen all my fellow-communicants, of whom there must have speeches and prayers. An old sailor on board, been more than 280. who speaks the language, told me that one wo- .. That afternoon the chief called on me, and begged me to come ashore early on Monday man, who prayed fervently, prayed much for the morning, to receive a gift which the people wished to give to their new member. I went, captain, that he might be guided to do all that and here is a list of what I call •the gains of godliness' in Tahiti :-six fowls, one hundred was necessary for our safety. I was strnck with cocoanuts, bananas, ripe and green, breadfruits, sweet potatoes, taro, pine-apples, eggs, that when I heard it, and still more when the capand a lobster. These were all carried by men on poles over their shoulders, and laid on the tain discovered the very next day that the mast ground in front of our house. ,The chief preseuted them in the name of •Tws/ell religieus.. ' was in a bad state, and must be repaired before of the village. I returned thauks through the chief, and invited the givers to come and see the we could continue our voyage. Was it not a wonderful anSwer to prayer? and don't yon think the Christian kindness of these people might be a lesson to many professing Christians at home? I was a little vexed with the very common look of the vessels of the sanctuary, and have promised to send them Communion cups from Scotland, much to their delight."
Being personally acquainted with the writer.
I can confidently commend this unexpected testi- mony to encourage and stimulate all friends and supporters of Foreign Missions to contribnte to the funds of the London Missionary Society, ihat commenced in Otaheite at the close of last century. G. D. CULLEN.
EDINBURGH, 16th March, 1889.
INTERNATIONAL DEPARTMENT.
CONDUCTED BY J. T. GRACEY, D. D.
Mr. Oust's" Notes." country, as a member of the Indian Civil Service, has been supplemented A CLERGYMAN who was a very by extensive travel in Turkey, Transbrilliant writer but not equally at- Caucasia, Syria~ Egypt, Tunisia, AItractive speaker, said to a brothel' gel'ia and Morocco. He has been for minister whose qualities were direct- many years associated with the conly the reverse of his own: "When trol of the British and Foreign Bible you write people go to sleep, and Society's interests and operations, when you speak they keep awake; as well as with those of the Church but when I speak they go to sleep, of England Missionary Society and and when I write they keep awake." other prominent and important evangelistic a~d learned associations. But if Mr. Robert N. Cust, of Lon- The Royal Asiatic Society designadon, speaks he is sure of a hearing, ted him as an Honorary Secretary. and if he writes he is sure of a He has contributed most valuable reading. He is entitled both to speak stores of knowledge on the languages and write on missionary topics. He of the East Indies, Africa, the Cauhas had to do with missionaries and casus and Oceanica, being the author missionary societies for> almost half of separate works on each of these, a century, and for over thirty years besides linguinistie and Ol'lental has made a close and careful study essays and other more popular topof missions and collateral subjects. ics. He has, besides, taken promi- A large personal acquaintance with nent part in the missionary discusthe people of India, gained during a quarter of a century's residence in the sions of the last quarter of a century, In his annual tours, made volun.- and is well and widely known as a tarily at his own charges, inconnea.
man of strong opinions, which he tion with the Bible Society's work, holds independently and champions he has visited many parts of Europe, fearlessly, according to others the Western Asia, and North Africa, right to exercise the same pdvi- except Tl'ipolitana. One year he lege!3. was in Norway discussing the Lapp We are favored with the second translation; the next year on the and enlarged edition of his valuable cataracts of the Nile, listening to contribution to missio)lary literature, men speaking in the language of which he has modestly entitled Nubians; then on the shores of the Notes on Missional'Y Subjects. The Caspian Sea, or the Sea of Galilee, volume consists of four parts, which or down III the Sahara of Algeria, or though published and procurable at Cape Spartel in Morocco.
separately, are here gathered in one Such a writer, were he far less large and comprehensive book. Part learned than our many-sided scholer I contains (1) Obsel'vations and Re- and literateur, would challenge at- flections on Missionary Societies,and tention; but when there is super- (2) Language Illustrated by. Bible' added a devout sympathy with the Translation. Part II treats of The progress of Christ's Kingdom in the GreatProblems Outside the Orbit of world, he commands it. He told the Pure Evangelistic Work, but which under-g-raduates of BaIliol College, the missionary has to face. Part III Oxford, in an address on "The Duty is devoted to the Relation of Mission- of the Youth of Great Britain," that aries to the Outer World. Part IV when, in 1838, he went to that col- is composed of missionary addresses lege, they knew as little about mis- delivered by the author under vari- sions as they did about Chinese mu- OilS circumstances, and what he sic. On repairing to Calcutta, styles " Pictures" and," Notices," through conversation with Bishop composed in omnibus and railway Wilson, he became interested in mis- trains or elsewhere, as reading, con- sions, and found "a new world"
versation ot' observation have sug- open to him, and missions have since gested the train of thought. They are been the" leading object of his very a layman's utterances on these great existence."
themes. Part V is to follow on " The But Mr. Cust pre-eminently de- ,Missions of the Romish Church." serves attention as one of the com- Mr. Cust's wide experience and ex- paratively few laymen of large abil- tended acquaintance in the depart- ity who have not only lent an ab- ments of geography, philology and sorbing attention to the subject, and ethnology, together with his promi- aided intelligently in missionary nent relation with practi'!al politics, counsels, but who have devoted have been all laid under contribution their enel'gies and literary skill to in the production of the several parts produce a literature on the subject.
of this volume; and the relation of It is surprising what stores of all these to missions has been con- knowledge and thought are gathered stantly present in' his thought dur- in this large and importantcontribu- ing all his life in the saddle, on the tion to curl'ent evangelistic litera- judge's bench, and in the student's ture. We are enthusiastic and ap- retreat; so that the consideration preciative to a degree which will of these themes is not something he scarcely be accredited to be sober, in has taken up, as he says, as the our estimation of this volume; and: "craze" of his "old age," but has yet, there al"e some whole chapters, been almost a life-long study. and plenty of paragraphs and sentences, which do not command our where after the festival is over, one judgment;' and there are manystate- might purchase hundreds ofcarcasses ments of facts from which we would of little pigs at a pice apiece. But dissent, and of opinions which we we do not wish to distract attention judgemustbe greatly modified before from the estimable qualities of this they can be accepted as the last or book by the correction of incidental even the best analysis of the subject statements, norby giving expression in hand. Some of the statements to any diversity of view on the subare, to om· personal knowledge, too jects treated which we, or others, to sweeping, both as to facts in India our knowledge, hold. and in Africa, while the ex cathedra This volume, as a contribution to manner in the utterances of opinions missionary criticism from one of the is not indicative of the essential mod- stoutestfriends and ablest champions estyand broad charity which really ofall evangelisticlabor,has a peculiar pervade the volume. The wisest value. It is a sad fact that the gencounsels are divided upon subjects eral church has not been until of late, on which Mr. Cust does not hesitate intelligently acquainted with the isto write, in the rhetoric at least, of sues and problems of practical workan ultimatum; and though large lib- ers enough to either pass judgment erty be conceded him as a "Christian upon their merits or become intereststatesman." there are other eminent ed in their presentation; and it has Christian statesmen, with long ex- only been when some secular or ecperience and careful judgment, who clesiastical adversary antagonized will differ from him as much as he them in press or on platform, that will from a multitude of missiona- they came to know of the existence ries, who he thinks take a less sym- of some of the most vital problems. pathetic view of human affairs than Friends and administrators of mis- the secular student does. But Mr. sions have discussed thf'se questions Cust does not expect uniform concur- too esoterically. But we hail the rence with his views; he distinctly day when friends and advocates are says so about some chapters of the to assnme the role of frank and book; and though he says all per- friendly critics; and, taken all in all, sons acquainted with the subject we do know not where we will find will agree with his views as express- a warmer friend and abler aU-round ed in "Islam," it is more than proba- critic of missionary matters than the ble that he overestimates the gen- honorable gentleman, the product eral unanimity even there. We do of whose pen has afforded us such not know, for instance, if we appre- great delight, and yet, from whom we hend him aright as meaning to say and so many others; we repeat, will that after li·ing with Mohammedans on so many points widely differ. in India for a quarter of a century, But there is so much that is valua- he never heard of their offering ani- ble in the book that .we must have mal sacrifices; but if so, it seems in- done with our dissertations about it, explicable to us. The "anachron- and regale our readers with some ism" to which he refers may be wit- extracts, though should we even se_ nessed at the Devi Pathan Mela, at lect the samples that tempt us, we Tulsipur, near Gondah, any year, would quote enough to fill a whole where the Hindoos sacrifice sheep and number of the REVIEW. goats; and close by a long line of Few persons appreciate the au- Mohammedans can be seen, each thor's reference to the variety of reo with a squealing, suckling pig under sponsibilities devolving on Mission his arm, waiting their turn to pre- Boards, which have to sent their animal sacrifice; and .. Discharge the duty of a Quarter-master General, the head of a great ~ommission, a. * * .. The last two decades have been ex- Boa.rd of Architects, Shipbuilders and Engineers, a Board of Finance, a Council of ceedingly propitious to the extension ofmis- Education. a Committee on Geographical sions ; the expansion has been marvellous, Exploration, a Superintendent of a Trans- but mnch of it imprudent. The next two IMing and Publishing firm, as well as other decades may prove periods of trial and peril secular duties." by the close of that period the Europea~ octopus will have closed over the continent He adds: of Africa as it has already over Oceanica. and America." .. I have been for more than forty years a witness and a studier of the conduct of hu- :Mr. Cust invites" dowlll'ight critiman affairs, bnt I never realized such puri- cism," he says, a.nd he will surely get tyof motive, such'simplicity of conduct, it sooner or later, though the high and on the whole, such practICal wisdom as respect in which he is held may deis found in such a body." ter some, and others will forbear lest the friends of missions be thus Mr. Cust thinks-and with the hIgh- apparently set over against each est esteem for the missionary force other, in the estimation of the of Great Britain and the eminent thoughtless and indifferent members qualities and immense labors of of the societies themselves, or be many of them, we yet, on the whole, flaunted as sectarians and dessenticoncur with his statement-that the ents by those downrightly antago- 'American churches send out their nistic to the cause. But like Calbest men" to foreign fields, while' vin's Institutes, Mr. Cust's "Notes" might take as their symbol a flaming "Great Britain keeps her best at sword. Missionaries may, themhome." But this must be taken in its selves, not concede the justness of broadest sense or we shall be asked the criticisms on their personal conto show who Great Britain's" best" duct toward the heathen, but they men are, with the record of Pat- will find no public test to exceed the teson, Hannington, Griffith John, high standard to which they hold Dr. Duff and othe1's before us. Still themselves as a class, to be amenawe appreciate Mr. Cust's compliment ble; and our autho1"S beautiful imi- -not to the missionaries, but to the tative extension of the XIth chapter of Hebrews will be as oil to the estimate put by American churches wounds made by Mr. Cust's free on foreign mission service, as de- lance. "By faith the United Mora- vian Brethren at Herrnbut, in Germanding the richest contribution of many, more than a century and a talent they can command. Mr. Cust half ago," &c. "By faith the London thinks missionary operations legiti- and Wesleyan Societies," &c. "By mate subjects of criticism. He says: faith Moffat's son-in-law Livingstone abandoned his home, his chapel ano '" We can no longer treat missionaryop- his school/' &c. " By faith Krapf and erations as above or below candid criticism Rebman sat year after year at the when t4ey are forced up<¥> tbe public notice watch tower of Mombasa, waiting till in the public papers, in Parliament,on plat- the day should dawn, calling to each forms and ,an abundant literature. Mis- other: Watchman, what of the sions like those of tbe Moravian Missionary night?" and thusonandon through a Society,or of the Americau Societies to their galaxy of heroes of whom time would indigenous wild tribes, might be conducted fail us even to mention the names for centuries without public notice: but selected by our author. It was with the evangelizing warfare all round Africa much sadness we read the almost pa- all over Oceanica, into the heart of India; thetic closing paragraph of the vol- China and Japan, by at least two thousand ume in which the author concludes: agents, at a cost exceeding two millions [pounds] annually, cannot escape notice." .' I have said my say. This is probably my '" '" It must needs be that mistskes-are made, but tl:ey need not be perpetuated.
'" * Hard words are often spoken against missions, and whole classes of the commu- nity, from deep prejudICe, hold back from their support. It is in their interest, their positive advantage, that the tendencies should be exposed, that the blots should be hit, and the dangers pointed out." ast contribution to missionary literature. self of the former, and the latter could be If I have written what is not true, let this of no use to him in the social circles of the paper be consigned to the fire. If there is leper colony. a scintilla of truth, think over it. It cannot now be said that we must travel onward, as "Father Damien had resided among tbe if in mist, and that, as nobody criticized lepers for sixteen years when death came to there wa.s no error." his relief, and be had seen the population of Molokai renew itself three times, as the Missions to Lepers. average duratiou of a leper's life is about se ..en years. Years ago he became affiictep THE death of the Roman Catholic with leprosy himself, and for a long time bepriest, Father Damien, popularly fore his death Was a painful sufferer from styled" The Apostle of the Lepers" the scourage. The latest letters from the and now" The Martyr of Molokai," leper colony stated that his health was so which occurred on April 10 last, at broken that h;s death was likely to occur at Kalawa, Hawaii, has called popular any time. Father Damien had for assisattention to a form of Christian tants two men as beroic as himself. One of heroism which may well be exalted these was an Irishman natned Walsh.· He in the public mind in an age quite was a mason by trade, and had been a soldier too justly characterized as supremely in the English army. Walsh reached Honoselfish. lulu III broken health and reduced circum- stances just at the time a supermtendent As the daily papers of the country was needed to keep the colony in order. He generally gave large space to the accepted the position with the result that facts of the self-surrender and self- he is a leper himself to-day and pining for immolation of this Romish priest, relief in death. Father Damien's other we will only give so much of the nar- helper was the Rev. M. COJlrardy, a Catholic rative as is essential to our general priest formerly connected with the Archditreatment of the theme in hand. The ocese of Oregon, who volUntarily went to account before us says Father Da- Molokai about two years ago to become mien was a native of BQlgium and Father Damien's assista.nt." was born in 1840. Mr. Ed ward Clifford, of England, .. He was ordained to the priesthood in writing of " Father" Da.mien during 186~, and SOOB. after went to the Sandwich a visit to this leper island, said: Islands as a missionary. About sixteen years ago the Catholic bishop of the islands "He is just what you would expect him to wanted a priest for duty at the leper set- be-a simple. sturdy. hard-working, devout tlement at Molokai, and Father Damien man. No job was too memal for him-bnildpromptly volunteered for the work. Both ing, carpentering, tending the sick, washing he and his bishop knew what the end would the dead, and manr other such things form be, but these heroic men did not hesitate- part of his daily work. He is always cheerthe one to give the order and the other to ful, often playful, and one of the most truly obey. Father Damien was landed at the humble men I ever saw. The leprosy has leper settlement on the ,eland of Molokai disfigured him a good deal, but I never feel and allowed to provide for himself as best he it anything but a pleasure to look at him." could. There appear to be a thousand or .. From the time of his taking up his resi- more lepers on the part of the island, dence among the lepers Father Damien had occupied by the leper settlement, so much to do in simplyatte.nding to the shut in from the other parts of the wants of dying people that he was unable to island by enormous cliffs, which renprovide shelter for himself for .. long time. Once placed on the island, he had to resign der it almost inaccessible from the his liberty. The sheriff had orders to arrest land side. This touching story and him if he crossed to any of the neighboring the pitiable condition of this portion island.. He became physician and teacher as well as priest, the children born of lepers of the human race, deserves more depending on him for all the education they than a passing glance of the curious could expect to receive. Kiug Kalakaua or sigh from the sympathetic. When soon learned to admire the martyr priest, we learn that there are 40,000 idiots and a rew years ago bestowed on him the in the United States, the first quesprivileges of the medical inspector at!d the tion that occurs is why they should decoration of Knight Commander of the not all be chloroformed out of exist- Order of Kalakaua I. He did not avail bim- ence. What is it that makes that sort of life and life of every sort sacred, when it.cannot be seen to be valuable to it!! possessor or to man- they congregate oCten in latoge numkind? When we learn that in India bers. alone there are half a million of our fellows who are lepers, with no hope The disease may begin anywhere of recovery, deformed and decaying on the body, or at more than one before they are in the grave, suffer- place at the same time, and then, ing a living death, the first thought loathsome, painful and offensive, it again is, why is it any mercy or duty progresses till it reaches some vital to prolong their existence? As Chris- part, and the wretched subject is retianity throws the halo of sacredness lieved. When it commences at the over this wretched and ghastly mock- extremities the first joints of the eryof life, it is not far to see why it fingers, or toes as it may be, fall off should be held responsible for the and then the next joints part, and so amelioration of the condition of on till you see them in all shapes those who carry about this body of from this horrible disease. It is too death. revolting-this rotting alive-to jus- tify more minute description. Leprosy as a disease is in all its varieties in all lands and in all ages, We turn rather to note what the the most repulsive, protracted and kindliness of Christian charity has painful of human maladies. It is attempted in the way of relief to this scrofulous in its character and is helpless, hopeless and suffering portransmitted from parents to children, tion of the human family-vexed and though the offspring of lep~rs with the unsolved problem, Who may be apparently free from the did sin? they or their parents, that taint for many years after birth, the they were born thus? which presses disease is sure to develop sooner or npon them and upon othel·s. We later. Whether leprosy is contagious, cannot attempt any comprehensive and if so, whether alone by contact, summary of the ope:"ations of the are questions about which there is Christian chul"ch to afford relief to considerable diversity of opinion, yet these sufferers. We take from what in all countries contact with lepers is is at hand a few facts sufficient to avoided. After the disease is devel- show that Protestants have been oped so as to render its character active in this department of eleemosmanifest, the subject of it is removed ynary labor in several quarters of from social life and obliged to dwell the globe, as Father Damien and his apart from the community. Though associates were in Hawaii. In 1823, at all stages of the disease they are owing to a request of the Governnot unable to work, yet, except as ment, Hemel-en-Aarde, a leper hoscared for by Christian charity, all pital in South Africa, became a mislepers, so far as the writer knows, sion station of the Moravians. i'his lead a pauper life. They become in was removed to Robben Island in various parts of India quite a commu- 1846 and placed in the charge of the nity and beg in groups. They resort church of England in 1867. Rev. Dr. Augustus Thompson, writing of to places most frequented that they this mission, says: "A less inviting may appeal to the benevolence of the field can hardly be imagined than this refuge of wasting sufferers, and mere passers-by by the exposure of their relics of humanity-deformed, cripdisgusting sores or helpless deform- pled and loathsome beyond expresity. They build for themselves some sion. For simple garden operations flimsy shelter by the roadside in In- one patient would supplement andia, whence they make their exit to other. A man who had no hands petition for the inevitable "bak- might be seen carrying on his back sheesh." Along the trunk roads, another who had lost his feet, but at the ferries, near holy places, who could drop seeds into the ground wOl'k among the lepers at qmb~l)a, with the member which was want- in the Punjab, where their last ing to his fellow, sufferer. report mentions the bapti5m of fif- The institution has a large space of tt-en of this class of pE'rsons. The gl'Ound enclosed with a high wall, and only one entrance, which was accomplished Dr. John Newton, .Tt-., strictly guarded. The leper who entered that gate might never return." labored among these poor sufferers Mr. Thompson says the mistake has for years and wrote a work on leprosy gone abroad that the missionaries which was published in England. who went into this leper enclosure His estimable wife, Mrs. Sarah Wigwere never allowed egress; that he fall Newton, conducted this work for went in there, as Father Damien did a season after her husband.'s death. to the island of Molokai, but this he contradicts positively. But there was At the time when the Moravians still quite sufficient self-denial re- handed over their leper work at Cape quired in the service rendered to these Town, South Africa, in 1867, the poor sufferers. Lord opened to them a' similar work The London Missionary Society has long conducted a leper asylum in in the Leper Home at JerusaJem. the Himalaya Mountains at Almora. which was founded by a Christian which we believe has usually about baroness. Froln its commencement 150, though at times we think as the missionaries for the hospital many as 300 inmates. These are not have been supplied by the Moravian necessarily restrained within the en- Church, and in 1880 they assumed its closure. They also marry and are directiol'l. In 1887 they erected a new gi"en in marriage among themselves. building, which accommodates about A little farther east, at Pithoragarh, twenty-five patients. is another asylum for lepers in charge of Methodist Episcopal missionaries In 1875 an independent societ.y was from the United States. Here an es- organizcd in England, styled "Mistimable Methodist brother, Rev. M. sions to Lepers in India," which B. Kirk, of Ohio, who was educated seeks to alleviate their sufferings by in Mount Union College, for some medical aid. It is at pl'esent carrying months before his death waited on on work at eighteen different centers these wretched sufferers. However and in connection with eight differloathsome their condition, that de- ent missionary societies. It seeks to voted servant of the Lord never utilize asylums already established shrank from ministering often per- and aid them with mean!:' to carryon sonally to their wants. It was while their work. It makes grants of money , collecting funds for a chapel for these for new asylums, and in some cases lepers that he was suddenly called to provldes entirely for the support of his reward. The chapel has since lepers. Mr. W. C. Bailey, a misbeen completed as a memorial of this sionary of the Church of Scotland, devoted servant of God, and on the was the founder of this organization. opening day, after the service, twelve It is at present carrying on work at lepers were baptized, thus raising the Kashmir, Rawal Pindee, Chamba, number of Christians in this institu- Sabathu, Dehra, Rurki, Almorah, tion to slxteen; and a new building Pithora, A~lahabad, Calcutta, and was ordered to accommodate twenty- other places and aids the American five more inmates. Presbyterian and Methodistmissiona- ries, and three of the principal mis- The American PresbytE'rmn Mis- sional'y sociE'ties of Great Britain, as sion has for many years QQl,lducted well as Gossner's Independent Mis- sion.
It must be gratifying to friends supporting this work that it is not only l!eIeVQ!ent, but evangelistic. The record of the Christian experi- with nine evangelic"l churches: Presbyterians, ence of many of these sufferers is two branches of Methodists, and Baptists. most affecting. Not all, but many of these who seem ." baptized unto Denominational lines bad been drawn rather death," enter bto most gracious closely about these churches.. They met one Christian life. One man in India, anothsr at union meetings once a year, on the being pitied on account of the loss of afternoons of the" Week of Prayer," but be- his eyes, said; "I have lost my eyes, yond that hardly knew one another in any way. but with the eye of faIth I have seen Probably it was noc realized that Christian the Lord Jesus, and shall soon go to union was really under discussion in the minis- Him." The testimony from South ter's meeting in the form of a proposal to invite Africa is similar; "Amongst the a pandenominational body of missionaries to poor suffp.rers in that lazar-house," work their will upon the city for a week. But writes one of the missionaries, they determined to invite the International Mis- "there are many dear souls who re- sionary Union to their city. A representative joice in the Lord their God and the meeting of the churches-a remarkable novelty assurance of a better world, and re- -was called, and proved of the same mind with lyingon their Saviour's merits watch the ministers; and in the preparations which their diseased tabernacles falling to all the churches shared together, there began to pieces in the hope of soon being with be the dawn ofa better day. Him in glory. It makes one Hhudder to visit the patients in their dwell- Contemporaneously with this undertaking, ings, such pitiable objects do they the pastors asked all the churches to unite in a present, and so offensi ve is the efflu- complete visitation Of the city for evangelizing via j yet when you enter into con- purposes, and obtained from them all a body of versation with them on the concern visitors, four to each hundred of each church. of their souls and find these poor As might be supposed, the public interest in cripples full of faith and joyful COI1- missions had not been on a much higher plane fidence in the Saviour's merits, it than that in Christian union. The invitation to makes you feel ashamed of your the missionaries was favored, perhaps as much . fastidiousness, for they exhibit only yom other considerations as from love for ' too often in their helplessness and Foreign Missions. And when the International .hopelessness the fun measure of that Union arrived, forty-five strong, the city was at other more dire leprosy of sin. They first disposed to feed them and sleep them cour- are often as repulsive morally as teously, and leave them to carryon their own physically. They need cleansing in meetings by themselves. the blood of Christ." But gradually the spiritthat animates mission- That this is a direct work of grace aries of thc Uross bAgan to make its impression. and of change of heart is abundantly People who dropped in at their meetings were proven by the testimony as to the greatly surprised at their earnestness. It so selfish sordidness and innate deprav- happened that the Union came at the hottest ity which so manifest themselves in time of the summer, and when the native mos- those not the subjects of these gra- quitoes were masters of the town; but people cious influence. who looked in found the missionaries so busy at their conferences, that they sounded their The International Missionary Union praises abroad. "These men and women," they said, "have not come here for a holiday; and the Revival at Bridgeton, N. J. they are doing good hard work studying the questions which concern them." The Upion be- REV. WILLIAM H. BELDElif, A. M. gan its sessions on Thursday, July 5; by Monday evening they began to be crowded, and from that BRIDGETON, New Jersey, was the first place time until adjournment on the 12th missions be- not a summer resort, which invited and enter- came the theme of the town. Tuesday evening tained the International Missionary Union. Re- was occupied by J. Hudsou Taylor, founder of snits can be traced from that meeting, among the Chiua Inland Mission, and Wednesday by the most recent of which has be~n a revival of Cyrus Hamlin, founder of Robert College of religion affecting the whole community. Bridge- Constantinople. The impression made by these ton is a mauufacturing cit;v 9f 12?OO(lj~h!lbitants, two mighty men of God, exceedingly different, but one in testimony to the power of God as dis- played in the missionary work, will never be forgotten in Bridgeton. They lifted Foreign Missions from being a H cause" to receive un- willing pennies or dollars, to a living and boly reality endeared to the hearts of awakeuing Christians. Not, of course, that all needed this advance, but as a change of the general public mind on this great theme, the International Mis-
1889.] THE MONTHLY CONCERT OF MISSIONS
sionary Union bad its way witb tbe town. A affections and convictions, that when a8 Presinumber of young persons consecrated tbeir dent of onr Ministers' Association I' had to lives to tbe missionary work. New missionary make the parting address to Mr. Mills, my felsocieties began to be formed; and in tbe old low-pastors, with remarkable agreement, reones the subJect took thence forward a 'real quired me to include in my acknowledgement aspect nnknown before. of the divine work among us some careful refer- ence to the infiuence of the visit here In 1~88 of So spiritual an effect did not, naturally, stop the International Missionary Union. witb the revival of missions. The cburcbes bad enjoyed their work in commo)! of entertaining THE SIXTH AN,mAL SESSION OF THE INTERthe Union. The Ministers' Association had become a recognized and trusted organization. NATIONAL MISSIONARY UNION, as we have al- Plans for furtber work in common were ready announced. will be held in Binghampton, broacbed. The "Week of Prayer" found tbe N. Y.. July 5-12. The prosPect is ofa meeting of cburches in new sympathy with one another; great interest_ Important papers have already never before was there such a "Week" in been received from the outlook Committee in Bridgeton. At last the suggestionstook.hape; foreign parts. to invite Rev_B. Fay Mills, the evangelist. His first demand, of absolute fellowship of all the On the last day of the meeting special attenevangelical churches of the city, could not have tion will be given to aiding missionary candibeen complied with before those blessed days dates appointees and others inquiring as to of the Missionary Union; but now tbey could their duty regarding personal service abroad. and they were, and be came. Mr. Wilder, wbo has so successfuliy with others stirred the students of the country in this mat- We have just risen from bis two weeks visit. ter, will be present, and veteran missionaries of Six hundred persons bave signed his cards, say- almost all fields and churches will be there, with ing: .. I desire bencefortb to lead It Christian whom these persons can take council. Nothing life." The cburcbes bave called themselves for could be better for persons seeking light on this many weeks" The united cburches of Bridge- line of personal duty, than to spend the week ton;" and are studying now how to perpetuate with this noble band of returned missionaries, their harmony. Some of tbem bad been t""ns- and listen to their discussions of practical matformed from a conservatism wbich was threat- ters. ening their spiritual existence into a practical piety which is the wonder of tbe town. The Railroad certificates can be bought of any whole city has been shaken with· the power of ticket agent at point of starting on paying full the Holy Ghost, as it never was befor~. fare, and when countersigned by· secretary of the meeting the return ticket will be one·third It is a significant testimony to its place in our the usual mre. Tickets procurable on the 3d, and good tilIthe 14th of July.
V.-THE MONTHLY CONCERT OF MISSIONS.
BY ARTHUR T. PIERSON, D. D.
SUBJECTS for July: Islands of ea, in the Hawaiian group. This the Sea, Java, Greenland, Utah, crater is three miles in diameter, a Alaska, North American Indians level bottom with three cones rising and the Chinese and Japanese in from its center hundreds of feet high, America. and onl) of which, hom its ceaseless Java, which we select for this activity, is called Brahrna.
number, is the third island in area Though a Dutch colony, two native and first in importance of the Malay kingdoms were suffered to retain a archipelago, 666 miles long and from nominal existence under Dutch offi- 36 to 126 miles broad, with 50,000 cials, namely the dominions of the square miles of surface and a coast Senaan or Emperor of Surakarta and line of 1,400. It is shaped like Cuba the Sultan of Jokjokarta. The rest and about as large. The geological of the island is split up into twenty formation is highly volcanic, a range residences or provinces, ruled by of mountains traversing the central Dutch residents, six of which belong line from end to end with peaks to the country of the Sundese and reaching from 4,000 to 12,000 feet. the rest to that of the Javanese, the The most remarkable of these is Mt. two distinct nations comprised in the Yenger, whose crater is 1,000 feet be- native population. The Sundese hold low its summit and the most remark- the west end, are inferior both in able in the globe, except only Kilau- numbel' and civilization to the J avanese and speak a distinct language, ninth or tenth centul"y when the but both nations are Malayan. , They are docile and peaceable, so- J ains had ascendancy in Guzerat ·and ber and industrious. Crawfurd pronounced them the most straightfor- westel'll parts of India. ., ward and truthful of all Asiatic people. Java is densely populated, hav- In some respects Javanese civilizaing about 18,000,000 of people, and Buddhism still sways multitudes of tion is an advance upon that of Brit- Javanese. In the central district this story is told on stone: The famous ish Ind~a. The Dutch rule here dates ruins of Borobodo, or Bol'o Buddor, are among the most imposing re- from 1623, with five years interrupmains of religious structures. A pile of masonry, pyramidal in form, 525 tion. Batavia,on the northwest coast, feet squat'e, nine stories h;gh in the center, is covered with figures of is the capital and commercial depot, Buddha. To descdbe this extraordinary group of buildings, the temples with over 100;000 inhabitants. Moof Bramb~nam, mO'e exactly: the great temple is a square building 45 hammedanism is mixed up with feet square, 75 feet high, terminating upwards in an octagonal, straight- Buddhism and heathenism as the relined pyramid. On each face of this is a smaller temple of similar dimen- ligion of the island. Annually the sions, joined to it by corridors. The whole five thus constitute a cruci- natives go in crowds with priests up form building raised on a square base very elaborately ornamented. One the Bromok volcano to propitiate of the minor temples serves as a pOI'ch. Two hundred and thirty-nine with offerings the Fire Spirit. Cocoasmaller tempIes surround this central shrine. Twenty-eight of these stand nn ts, pineapples, rice, cakes, fruit, just beyond the square terrace of the central fane, eight of course standing coins, are cast into the crater. This on each side of the square, and each corner one counting for two sides; ceremony has probably been sugbeyond these 35 feet off comes a second square or court with 44, 12 on gested by the ten"Hic and fatal vola side; then comes a space 80 feet wide, with 6 more temples; then two canic outbreaks that have abounded. more rows o( temples, standing close, Java has near Batour a VaUey of back to back, 160 in numbel', forming another square, each face of which Death, of an oval shape and half a measures 525 feet. All thes~ 239 temples are similar, the lesser ones mile in circuit, in which the exhala- 12 feet square at base and 22 feet high, all richly sculptured and each tions of carbonic acid gas make imhaving a small square cell, within which originally was a cross-legged possible plant or animal life. It also figure of a Jaina saint or Buddhist image. The date assigned to these has its Poison Tree (antiaris macro- most remarkable monuments is the phylla), an ornament to the woods, but from the bark of which flow poison juices.
The Evangelical Mission in Java is in a very destitute condition. There are at most only about 4,GOO Chris- tians, a fact whIch reflects no glory on the Dutch rule and the Christi- anityof the Netherlands. The few luminous points in the meagre mis- sion history of Java, says Dr. 'War- neck, are the Watchmaker Emde in Surabaya, the Missionary J.ellesma, the newly-founded and nationally- aided institute at Depok, an " Oasis in the Desert," and the work of the Nethedands Missionary Society of Rotterdam among the Soudanese.
NEW GUINEA.
S. McFarlane, LL.D., has recently published a story of missionary labol's " Among the Canm'bals of New Gui- nea." It is published by the London Missionary Society. We advise any one who wishes to know what are both the difficulties and the triumphs
1889·1 THE lloN'lHLY OOlWER'l' Oli'1.USSIONS
— ofmissIDn,ary life among the worst eluding the immediate~y adjoining savages to read this book. We give islands, of 311,958 square miles. Con~ space to a brief resume of its· con- sequently its at'ea is about the same tents: as the united area of the Britisn Mr. MacFarlane first had experi- Islands with France, or the British ence of savage life on Lifa, a charm- Islands, Italy, Turkey in Europe and ing South Sea island. Greece. And this vast region has to Three months after his arrival, in be won to Christ and to humanity.
1859, he could preach to the people in What an object of holy ambition I their own tongue. The first years' of If the Christians of the nin~teenth danger, toil and loneliness were also century rose to a perception of .their years of great blessing, useful expe- duty they would follow the example rience and encouragement. Before of the Christians of the first, and he left, at the end of twelve years, count nothing that they possess their "a marvellous change had taken own if only they might acquire the place Il'om idolatry, cannibalism and glory of gathering the outcasts of constant wars to the worship of the New Guinea into the church of the true God, peaceful industry and a living God.
growing education. Schools and In their mission in New Guinea.
churches established throughout the they had to contend with difficulties island, and the New Testament and quite peculiar to the place; to sail in Psalms translated; the teachers' unknown and dangerous waters in seminary in good working order, order to reach the natives; to con- supplying native teachers and pas- tend with savages and cannibals, tors and pioneer evangelists; Euro- who regard strangers generally as pean stores established in different enemies to be killed, cooked and parts of the island, and the people eaten; to pass through sickly swamps not only paying for their books and and be exposed to deadly fevers in providing for their pastors, but also planting and superintending mission making a very handsome contribu- stations; to reduce the languages to tion to the London Missionary Soci- writing and translate portions of the ety to help to send the gospel to the Scl'iptures, school-books and hymn- heathen beyond." books into them; to battle with the In 1870 Mr. MacFarlane began a evil influences of abandoned sailors; mission in New Guinea, "largest, to guide the natives in making and darkest and most neglected island in administering laws, in developing the world." He laid the matter be- the resources of their country, in fore the students, native pastors and building houses, making roads, and, churches of Lira, and asked for vol- in fact, in everything connected with· unteers, giving them to understand their material as well as their spirit- the dangerous character of the ual progress. They opened up about climate and the savages. Every na- six hundred miles of coast line, tive pastor in the island and student gained the confidence of the natives in the seminary offered himself for and established sixty mission stations the' work! Four pastors and four along the coast. They formed six students were selected, and in July, churches, which contain an aggl'e- 1871, the party started for that great gate of between six and seven hun- land of cannibals. dred members, I'educed six of the New Guinea is larger than any languages or dialects to writing, and country III Europe except Russia. It translated portions of the New Tes- is 1,500 miles long and from 30 to tament, a school-book, catechism nearly 500 miles wide, containing an and hymn-book into each. They area of 303,241 square miles, or, in- have two institutions at work for the training of native pioneer evangelists ture's children the comforts and the and pastors: the Papuan Institute at decencies of humanized life, ex- Murray Island, in Papuan Gulf, con- claimed: "Oh, ye orators and phi- taining over fifty students; and the losophers who make the civilization institute at Port Moresby, containing of the species your dream, look to ten or twelve. Twenty-five have been Christian missionaries if you want to sent out from the former and eight see the men who will realize it! You from the latter as native pioneer may deck the theme with the praises teachers, and are located at stations of your unsubstantial eloquence; but in the interior, on the coast and on these are the men who are to accom- islands off the coast, and are doing plish the business! They are now excellent Christian work amongst risking every earthly comfort of ex- the people with whom, in many in- istence in the cause, while you sit in stances, their fathers used to fight, silken security and pour upon their As an illustra,tion of the change holy undertaking the cruelty of your from cannibalism to Christianity, scorn." These words were spoken in compare father and son in the fol- what seems a past age, the age when lowing passage: "The old chief the highest organs of literature Mamo was our friend all along, al- treated missionaries and their work though he had a weakn{'ss for cutting with contempt. The more than seven off the heads of his enemies, and de- decades that have passed since then clined to embrace Christianity' be- should satisfy the most rigid experI- cause its pr{'cepts forbade him this mental philosopher that the words of pleasure. The last time I saw him the preacher were words of tru th and (he died two or three years ago) he sobemess, and that the only power was sitting, as usual, cross-legged on that will redeem degraded nations is a mat in front of his house waiting the power of the gospel of Jesus to receive us, and looking as dirty Christ.
and as ugly, and as great a'savage, "There is a change seen even in as when I first saw him thirteen the appearance of all the natives of years before. He was getting too old New Guinea. They were a wild can- to pursue his favorite sport, skull- niballot a few years ago. One of the hunting. His son and successor is a natives spokea little English. Peat'se fine, tall, powerful man, who at- asked them if they eat man, and was tached himself to the teachers from answered, 'No. No eat man now; the first, and by whom he was edu- all follow missionary now.' In the cated. He has been for many years evening, at seven, a bell rang, and an earnest Christian and indefatiga. soon hymn-singing was heard; they ble local preacher." May we not say, were having evening prayers. You look on that picture and on this-the cannot realize it-savages, cannibals, savage cannibal skull-hunter, and the murderers-now seeking to worship loving, kind-hearted Christian, who God. It was strangely pleasing to is indefatigable in his labors to save hear an old hymn tune in such a both body and soul. Hear this, ye place," A New Guinean, preaching, who prate about the service of man 'I said: "The time has come for us to Where are Yl1ur missionaries ? Where be up and doing. Foreigners have are the savages converted into men brought us the gospel, many have and brothers of whom you can say, died of fever, several have been " These are our epistles"? Echo an- speared and tomahawked; now let swers, Where? us carry the gospel to other districts, Dr. Thomas Chalmers in 1812, after and if we die 'tiS well, for we die in describing the missionaries as ex- yhrist ; if we are murdered, 'tis well- tending among the wildest of na- 'ms carrying His name and love, and 'twill be for Him. Motu, let us do and sacl'ificed thousands of lives, it I" "He knows only a 'little, so Canada, with a larger proportion of vel'y little; yet he loves, and he is Indian population, has not spent a , willing to endure for Chl'ist. I saved dollar on such wars nor suffered that lad a few years ago from being from one such massac!'':l.
attacked, perhaps murdered, by his It is commonly supposed that the own people. Did I LeU you at Vab- Indians are rapidly disappeal'lng and ukori, neal' here, there are forty- almost extinct. This is a. great mis- three catechumens, and at Tuyuselei take. The total number was estimated fifty-six? The prayer of faith is be- by Schoolcraft in 1855 at 350,000. In ing answered. The greatest power Mexico there are at least 4.000,000, in of the mission-house is that monthly Central America 1,5@0,000, and in prayer-meeting. " South America 7,000,000.
NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS. The Puget Sound Indians have no THE question of the N. A. Indians literature. Hieroglyphic emblems and is too big to discuss in this limited signs and pictures take the place of space. Our Indian record is not an books. But, the exigencies of kade honor to us as a nation. Our gov- have created a sort of commercial ernment has made hundreds of trea- dialect, which, after a century, has ties with the redman, and seldom if largely displaced the many Indian eve~ kept them. Bishop Whipple dialects aB a vehicle of communica- asked scores of brave officel's if they tion. With only about 450 words in knew of one instance in which Indi- its vocabulary, it is capable, by into- ans were the first to break these nation and vocal inflection, of a wide treaties, and they Il.nswered, in every range of expression, and can be used case, "No." to impart gospel truth.
In 1828 we solemnly guaranteed to No more remarkable work has ever the Cherokees their lands forever. been done among any people than by Ten year later, at the request of Wm. Duncan in his Metlakhatla, Georgia, 18,000 of them were dl'iven the story of which has been so well from their homes and tilled lands told by Mr. Wellcome.
into an unknown wilderness. In Who in the United States shall an- 1876,700 Poncas were similarly robbed swer before God for the sad fact, that and exiled. In 1878 a remnant of in this second century of the life of the Cheyennes, driven to a new this mighty Republic there are still home, were compelled to attempt to 200,000 Indians unchristianized with- return, to avoid starvation, and were in its borders I It is stated that there pursued, captured, and imprisoned, are only eighty-one missionaries at until the chief and his wife escaped work among 184,000 Indians, or one tortnre by snicide. Foul' times in a miSSionary to 2,000 Indians; "17,000 century the Stockbridges and Dela- Navajoes whom Christianity has not wares have suffered the horrors of touched; 5,000 Apaches in Arizona "removaL" absolutely destitute' of Christian The manner in which we have, as light; 17,000 Indians in Washington a nation, paid our Indian debts, the Tel'ritory still heathen." In our In- violation of our express pledges, the dian Territory murder and crime 'are provocation of Indian wars, the mas- rampant, anditis impossible to obtain sacres to which our unfaithfulness justice, owing not only to wickedness a,nd injustice and cruelty have been of government officials, but to the the incitements, all these have come drunkenness and lawlessness of the up for a memorial before 9-od to call Indians. Driven from home by land- down His wrath. While 'Ye have grabbers, they are the victims of the spent $500,000,000 upon Indian wal'S, very officials to whom they look: tor protection, whose character is so vi- says Mr. Egerton Young, missionary orthe Cancious that the Indians say: "If this ada Methodist Church there, .. a number· of Inis civilization and Christianity we do dians came into my room, noiselessly, aCter their not want them." In the southwest- fashion, so that the room was filled with them before I knew it. When I became aware of ern part of Indian Territory is a their presence I asked whence they were.
much more neglected tribe, number- • From a journey of fourteen nights,' they reing about 1900, living in teepees and plied; for they reckon distance by the number tents. They have had the worst of of nights they are delayed to sleep. • We have got the Kessenaychen (the Great Book), but we agents since the administrations of don't understand it, although we can read it.' I Grant and Hayes, whose bad exam- thought they were joking, for the Indians canple has done much to debauch and not read unless some one has taught them, and discourage them. One of these a- I knew from their accoont they must live far away from any missionary, but I asked them: gents is said to have stolen $14,000 'From what missionary did you learn f' • We from these Kiowas and Comanches. never saw a missionary nor a teacher.' I took There is a government school, to down from my shelf our Bible, printed in the beautiful syllabic character for the Cree lanwhich only about fifty Kiowa chil- guage, and opened to Genesis; they read it with dren are admitted, when there· are ease and corr~ctness. I turned the pages and nearly 400 anxious to be educated. they read in many places. I was amazed, and asked them again where they lived. They de· '·The Kiowa,s are eager to lea.rn agricul- scribed it to me; it was far away, north of tural arts aud housekeeping. aud some have Hodson's Bay, hundreds of miles from any mis· taken up land and are trying to improve sionary. Their honting-gronnds, it seems, adtheir methods of tilling it. One woman join those ofsome Christian Indians-they cover about fifty years of age. visited a returned great distances in huuting-and, continued my student of the Carlisle school and saw the visitors, •We vislte~ your Indians and found famliy hving in a house with land and us- that they had the K688enaychen. We got them ing agrICultural implements and living a to read it and then to teach it to us ; and we CIvilized life. She returned home. sold two were so pleased with it that we all learned to horses and a mule. bought a set of harness. read it during the Winter.' Every soul in a a plow. hoes. several thousand feet of wire village of three hundred population had thus fence, and went to work with her two actually learned to read the Bible without ever daughters. They went into the woods, cut having seen auy white teacher; and having rails, and fenced in fifteen acres, not know- providentially come into possession of some ing the use of the wire which they had pur- copies that happened to be in the hands of the chased; neither did they know the use of Hudsou'~ Bay Company's agent, these heathen the tools after obtaining them, but they put Indians had journeyed through the snows fourup a log cabin and raised a fine crop of po- teen nights' distance that to them might be tatoes and melons. While the woman was given instruction in the Book they had thus a.t work a rough man from the Texas border learned to love." was riding by and sa.w her, He dismounted and asked her what she was doiug, and Ohinese in America. hearing of her ambitions, showed her the use of the harness and plough, and from The new Chinese temple, the second Chinese that time she has steadily improved in cir- place of worship in America, was dedicated in cumstances and surroundings." Mr. Her- New York, January 7, and Joss duly installed bert Welch says: .. The two wants of the in his new quarters. The unique dedicatory Indians are tools alld schools.•, services were conducted by the Chairman of the Among the Indians, as among the Chinese Mnnicipal CounCil, acting High Priest ·Africans, the rum traffic has intro- of Joss. Woug Siu Nam and Ah Hi, both being duced evils that actually more than well·to-do merchants of Mott street, and acting as assistant priests. and the Chinese Council, in overbalance aU that thus far Chris- full Mandarin costume, attended. Among the tianity has accomplished for their curious proceedings were the carrying of a big good. The New York TribuniJ, re- roasted pig, painted and decorated, and many ferring to the illegally licensed liquor chickens, pigeons. cakes, etc., to Joss.
A Chinese gambling room was lately raided shops of Alaska, says: by the police. The Chinese when brought be- "The result of the immunity to these grog fore the poliee eourt contended that they were shops is s great spread of immorality among but imitators of the best American society in the natives who will sell their offspring or the National Capital. The keeper of the room, wives for whiskey." Kwong Chong Lee, said he had heard of the "At Norway House, on a certain occasion," clubs incorporated by " the Mellcan man," who
1889·1 ];:i)I'f'OIUAL
can play poker and not be molested, and, ac- the children. The preachllr on the Sahllath cording to his statement, the "Celestials' Pleas- afternoon will often consecrate the elements- . ure Club" meets at .the house raided. He they administer the sacrament every Sabbathshowed Policeman Costello a book in which then preach a sermon, retiring immediately were written the names of the officers of the afterwllrd to bet on a horse race that takes club. The incorporation purported to have place the same afternoon. Last :week I heard been sworn to before Justice Clark. The Chi- one of the elders say in the pulpit, at one of their nese on their arrival at the police station were conferences, that he would as soon have his taken into the sitting room to the rear of the children read Dickens's works as the Bible. office, where there was a pack of cards on the table. Some of them evidently thought they The missionaries sent into" the world" to ' had struck another Chinese joint, fOt' one ofthem preach" the gospel" are often renegades ofthe picked npthe cards and started a game of poker, wildest nature and lowest character, who are but the police interfered before much progress sent ont to see the world. I know of several was made iu the game. A curious commentary young fellows of the higher classes, however, is all this on morals among certain Americans. who were sent" on missions" to Europe sim- ply to procure better edncations. One of them, Morman Morality. The term morality as the son of an nnderground apostle, did the Holy known among the Christians of the world, is an Land in that way; while another, the son of a nnknown term among the Latter Day Saints- German professor, simply went as a guide Mormons. Upon becoming a Mormon no one is through Switzerland for a party of Salt Lake required to lay aside his cupidity, evil heart, young blood. From a town to Southern Utah foul month or beer bottle. A Latter Day Saint there w,ent in 1886 a young man to Nebraska on is not known from other men by the testimony a missiou. He is one of the most notorious of a spotless life. Many a father sits down to gamblers in the whole country, and the night the dtnner table, asks a blessing, and before the before he left lie won a team of horses and a meal Is over is cursing and sweartng at one of wagon at the gambling table. Of such is the kingdom of the Mormons.
VI.-EDITORIAL NOTES ON CURRENT TOPICS.
Strange Doctrine. judged fairly in isolation from their surroundings. The text is often ex- .. Da. PIERSON is reported as saying' I be- plained by the context. but above all lieve that, all the time. men and women are by the drift and tenor of a man's going up to heaven from heathen lands, who whole book of life and testimony. never heard of Christ.' Such a hope would Whatevertruth lies back of the above afford as grateful exhilaration to old mis- professed" quotation" is connected sionaries, whose work is almost done, as to with the teaching of a class in the Y. Dr. pierson-if it can be shown to rest upon M. C. A. Hall of Philadelphia, where a solid foundation. •Take the case of Cor- on Saturday at 4 P. M. from 500 to nelius,' says Dr. Pierson. 'He was a, 1,200 of the most earnest and evanheathen; he had not heard of Christ; and gelical Sunday-school teachers and yet his prayers and his alms came up before adult disciples of the city gather. God. Do you believe that Cornelius would And it may be sufficient to say that have been lost if he had died before he saw whatever was said by the writer, Peter?' I have been face to face with the who has the honorto lead the studies races of Bui-ma for thirty-five years, and of that great class, it awakened no have not yet fonnd a Cornelius, nor have I murmur of disapprobation. So met or heard of a missionary who has found much for the orthodoxy of the a Cornelius among any af the heathen races teacher and of the class. of Asia. It is true that I have found some,· to my great joy, who somewhat resembled But as to the sentiment itself. We Cornelius; but it was soon found in every were studying Matthew xxv. and case that the person had read and pondered the last judgment. The question a ChristIan tract, or a portion of God's arose as to the grounds of final conword." demnation. And one of the princi- ples affirmed from Scripture was that Such paragraphs as this have been no man is held accountable except flying about in the newspapers. We for the light he has. And again, do not often consider it worth while that if the measure of knowledge to chase up our" good name," be- lieving that a reputation which needs much looking after is. not worth looking after-no man's utterances, whether of tongue 01' pen, can be
NOTES
given him is improved, he will not found in the depths of the jungle be condemned. ,Those principles we who had fur years been living in a regard as self-convincing, like axi- state of discontent with his own oms. There is no question in our ancestral faIth, and had been led in mind as to the condemnation of the a strange way to trust to some other heathen world. The first chapter of plan of salvation, of which till then Romans settles that. But it settles he had never had distinct informa- also the grounds of their being tion. Dr. Nevius of Chefoo has just "without excuse." "They held written of Yang-yin-shin, whom he down the truth in unrighteousness," met in a market town of China, and "they did not like to retain God in who, as soon as he heard the gospel their knowledge," " when they said, "This is the very truth Iwant, knew God they glorified Him not as this is what I have been waiting for God." for twenty years. I have been earn- estly seeking for light and guidance, Now it follows from the same inex- but without success. This is the orable Logicthatif a heathen man does very truth that meets and supplies use thelightandknowledgegiven him my want." And his embrace of the hewillnotbejudgedguilty. Weven- tru1tl was immediate. He proved tured to say to those teachers, that If himself one of God's elect by the God saw any man in a pagan land avidity with which he immediately . honestly endea..voring to live up to welcomed redemptive truth. the light he had, he would if neces- sary send to that man an angel as he Now, we have no sympathy with did to Cornelius. We did affirm that universalism, restorationism, second it was not conceivable that if Cor- probation, post-mortem opportunity, nelius had died before Peter reached preaching to spirits in prison, or any him, he whose "prayers and alms other of the hundred modern extra- came up before God" with accept- scriptural expedients to get men ance, "for a memol"ial," would have saved without compliance with the been driven into outer and eternal terms of the gospel within the limits darkness. And we did also venture of the life-time. But no man is com- to say that there may be those who petent to affirm that it is impossible out of every nation go up from time for any heathen man to be saved to time to a saved state, exceptions without the knowledge of the historic to the great mass of the heathen, as Christ. The grace of God is wider proofs that there is no fatality about than our creeds or our philosophy. this wholesale perdition, and alil jus- The love of God is broader than our tifying the condemnation of the rest. narrow theology, Arminius did not This is scarcely an article of faith, know everything, nor Calvin either. for it is not revealed. Yet we cannot And if O'u:f; of every nation some shall but feel that "in every nation he join the redeemed, who, never having that feareth God and worketh right- heard of Christ as a historic person, eousness is accepted with Him," and have been led and taught of God's that in some mysterious way, un- Spirit to rest upon a method of sal- known to us, God may lead a. poor vation only dimly revealed to their pagan who is feeling after Him if yearning souls, not only will God's haply he may find him, to rest upon justice and grace be vindicated and the merit of a mediator, of whom as glorified, but the condemnation of a historic personage he has never aU other lost heathen will be maqe heard. to appear consistent with human freedom and responsibility. While A most beloved missionary in the we suggest this relief to the dark Orient has told us of a white-haired picture of the wOl'ld's condition and and venerable patriarch whom he
EDITORIAL
prospects, it must be remembered paper; I beg leave to quote one par- that, as a practical question of duty, agraph giving my views: this hope does not affect the respon- .. Evangelization-the proclaiming of the good sibilityof the church. It still re- news of salvation to all who are ignorant oC a mains true that without the gospel Saviour's love and intereession-'-is our part in proclaimed among them by believers. the Divine economy of redemption, on whieh is conditioned the conversion of men by the Holy the vast multitude of the heathen Spirit. The work includes the Christian colwill actually perish. This we cannot lege and seminary for the education of a native but believe. While some may be agency, since every country must be evangelized speculating as to the future of those by its own sons, duly prepared by divine grace, through miSSionary instruction and example; who die unsaved, we prefer to give and it includes a Christian literature for the demen the gospel here and now, assured velopment and nurture of Christian life and on the authority of God that "it is eharacter in new-born souls; but more than all else, it includes the preaching of' the word.
the power of God unto salvation to • How shall they believe in Him of whom they – everyone that believeth." have not heard, and how shall they hear with- A.T.P. out a preacher, and how shall they preach THE editors are more and more except they be sentf' No miraculous power is to print the Scriptures and scatter them broad- cast among the tribes of men. No voice from satisfied that the views presented in heaven is to proclaim the message of Ufe in the the leading article of the May num- ear of assembled mnltitudes. This work has ber, on the "Mission and Commis- been committed to the church. The final glory sion of the Church," are not only is not promised till the gospel has been preached for a witness to all nations. The way must be unassailable, but fundamen tal to a prepared for the coming of the Lord, for those right conception of our work and its grander workings of the Spirit, which have success. We venture to print a let- been the hope and the joy of the people of God ter from one of the greatest of the in all the ages, when Christian institutions shall cover the earth, and Ch"istiau homes shall be leaders of the missionary host. the common heritage of all the children of DEAR DR. PIERSON :-1n the May men." number of the MISSIONARY REVIEW OF THE WORLD, 1 read with much Grateful for your valuable services interest your editorial on the matter in your present field of labor as conof "evangelization" as distinguished nected with the progress of the kingfrom "conversion" in the foreign dom of God. field. 1 was very glad to see the article, as 1 hope it will correct a good Very sincerely yours. N. G. CLARK.
BOSTON, May 10,1889.
deal of improper lan~uage, which THE HELL GA'fE EXPLOSION of Oc- we hear in the pulpit and through tober 10, 1884, caused the most in- the press. 1 have for years been tense excitement in New York City.
very careful never to speak of the The Brooklyn Bridge was crowded, conversion of men as in any sense a every available space on the house- human work. That is the preroga- tops, the horse cars, the river banks; tive of the Holy Spirit. Evangeliza- all the world was on the streets. The tion is our work; when that work is explosion took place at 11.13 o'clock well done we may hope and pray for A.M., and the progress of the vibra- the conversion of men. Of that the tion was found to be' 1,700 feet per Holy Spirit will have all the honor. second. There was great fear that As long ago as at the annual meet- the shock might cause disaster to the ing of the American Board, in 1877, foundations of buildings, and even I presented a paper entitled" Claims the towers of the East River Bridge.
of the Un-evangelized," in which I Just before 11 o'clock a small band endeavored to set forth the truth on of engineers stood about a small bat- this subject. I should be glad to terynear the Astoria Ferry slip, with call your attention to the entire General Newton, theil'chief, who frequently looked at his watch. At revolutionary. He would have m'i~ 11.12 precisely, a baby's hand was laid upon the little key of the bat- sionaries go out without purse ,Ii# tery and instantly 13,286 dynamite scrip, without human patronltgeQl" cartridges, protruding from as many dependence, without stated salary,Ol' holes in the mine, exploded, and a settled habitation, precisely as did second later the 240,000 pounds of those primitive disciples. With l'ackarock, packed bacl~ of the car- many of Mr. Baldwin's principles and tridges. Flood Rock was blasted sentiments we confess ourselves in away. The report was not loud, but very hearty accord, while we feel a second before it was heard a great confident that he has carried those mass of foam white as snow shot principles to the extreme of applicainto the air 200 feet, and fell back in tion. wild confusion to meet new upheavals. Great masses of rock were We believe that there are some flung upwards in a giant shower, but truths which belong to the realm only seen here and there through a not of obligation, but of privilege• mountain of shining foam. The elec- .. He that is able to receivli}t, let him tric current moved over a single wire receive it." And to all Mr. Baldwin's beneath the river to a heavy bichro- papers we have one answer-a scripmate battery on the rock, which dif- tural one; it is found in 1Corinthians fused the current through twenty- ix.,3 to 19. Paul, to those who critfour independent circuits, the ends ically examine His course, insists of those wires being bridged and upon certain rights, while at the joined by a fine platinum wire. Big same time he waives them. To rewaves were driven shoreward, and duce all the self-denials of a devoted vessels rocked wildly to and fro. The life to the level of cold duty and newater settled slowly, yellowish in cessity robs them of theil' beauty. hue, and emitting an odor of car- But when a life is lived in peculiar bonic acid gas. The crowd on land closeness of faith and fellowship, and river cheered lustily and waved leaning absolutely on God, and votheir hats and handkerchiefs, while luntarily choosing to have no interthe steamers whistled their salute. mediate dependence on man, we con- The channel was deepened from five fess there is about it a sublimity and feet to five fathoms. What an illus- beauty that are without a rival. tration of the work of God in mis- SIOns, long undermining great sys- A.T.P. tems which some day shall suddenly upheave and disappear.-A. T. P. REV. GEORGE STOTT, of the China Island Mission, fell asleep at Cannes, OUR friend and correspondent, Rev. April 21, 1889, aged 54. He and his E. F. Baldwin, of Mogador, Morocco, beloved wife were the companions has been furnishing a series of letters of Drs. Gordon and Pierson on their to The Christian (London) on "The tour of missions in Scotland in 1888, Question of the Hour-Foreign Mis· and Mr. Stott was one of the lovelisions." These remarkable papers est disciples we ever knew. He had take Matthew x., etc., as the basis of for years had but one leg, but he did all foreign mission work. Mr. Bald- as much work as most !pen with two. For some time he had been troubled with his lungs and a complication of diseases.-A. T. P.
win regards our Lord's instructions THERE was recently held the great to the twelve and the seventy as per- centennial of Wasl~ington's Inaugumanent and authoritative guides in ral Oath. No such celebration has the work of evangelization. His po- eyer been seen on American soil, but sition,is of course both radical and it may be doubted whether any spec-
1889.J ORGANIZED MISSIONARY WORK AND
tacle equally disgrltceful with the utterly inadequate; but ample means are EaIl at the Academy of Mu~ic ever at the disposal of our 75,000 Baptist breth disgraced and dishonored such a fes- ren iu the Dominion of Canada; tive occasion. What a contrast between the morning service of wor- That to every 50.000 of the population of ship at St; Paul's and the evening this land one missionary and fifty native worship of the world, the flesh, the Christian helpers are the least possible devil and the drink demon I number of evangelizing a.gents necessary; The Speedy Eva.ngeliza.tion of the Te- That nntil the country is thoroughly lugu People. evangelized, the home churches must pro- vide the support of missionaries and the AT the Thirteenth Annual Cana- higher traiuing of native agents, leaving to dian Baptist Missionary Conference, the Christians of this land the support of in Bimlipatam, India, January, their own pastors and teachers. 1889, the following resolutions were adopted: Therefore we now urge upon the home churches the pressing necessity of at once That the commission of our Lord Jesus grappling with this work by sending out Christ means that this generation or Chris- immediately fifty-two men. and additional tians in the world is commanded to give the lady·missionaries as the work demands' gospel to this generation of heathen; and providing for the consequent extension of the evangelizing agencies; That the one thousand million who are in spiritual darkness. the three millions of We will impress more fully upon the Telugus dependent on us for the Bread of native churches their responsibility in this life. are a share proportionate to the num- work; ber of our brethren in the Canadian Baptist churches; We request both the hotne and native churches to unite with us in steadfast and That for the evangelization of these continued prayer to the God of Missions, for people, the means at present employed are a large output of laborers into this His har- vest field; for an abundant out-pouring of His Holy Spirit, that the workers be filled with power, and their hearers bowed with conviction; and for the speedy triumph of the cause of Christ throughout the world.
VII.-ORGANIZED MISSIONARY WORK AND STATISTICS.
Wesleyan Methodist Mission (English) of a native minister, who seized the oppor- in the Mysore District, Madras, India. tunity to dwell upon the spiritual life of Christianity. Another most important and STATISTICS FOR 1888. useful work is that accomplished by the temperance societies• ., .,riJ cO …;. .; ';' …;. '" ., " ''".""", """ . " ." ~".'" t"": . :5 " " '" 6 ss ::iiij '-·'5§Io~;"w:si ~~''E;§"0~;::'· oZ.,~~…"..,;..~£,<,:.:;~rQ.t~";I.t0.'!,-'Ij'l.a<,.=8l~3.0!:.,lI. ~ "~ ~ .; ",!l .0 The North India Oonferenoe of the Meth- .; c III 0 odist Episoopal Ohuroh. S 'i:l THIS conference met at Bareilly on the 9th .; ~z January under the presidency of Bishop ~ Thoburn. General delight was expressed " .s 'r::-" " '" <J at the bishop'S presence, because his ea.rli- 'a 0 .; .; ~ '0 est field of labor was North of India. The ~ .<:I 0 following table indicates the position of the 0 " ~ rIl '0 Q) rIl work: ~ 0 0 " :g ai S '0 S -" -oj rIl ai .cI rIl '" Q) rIl Eo< E-I u1i – – – – – – – —- – – 84042 912 109 28 1,068 136 8,621 24 1.030 THE field covered by this mission is larger DEPARTMENT. Increa.se than Scotland, and has a populatiou of over Total. on 4,000,000. Except Mysore and Bengalore, there are no large cities. the headquarters Year. of the different districts being towns of about 10,000 inhabitants. Among the most Church Members………… 7,944 1,924 important phases of the work is that among Nat. Christian Community. 10.828 1,602 the Kolar gold fields. The most effectual Baptisms. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 1,952* evangelistic work is accomplished at the Sunday-schools…………. ' 703 520 time of the idol festivals, which are univer- Sunday-school Scholars,… 26,585 109 sal holidays. One special instance is noted 2,672 where a quarrel between two rival idols resulted in marked attentIon to the preaching *Of these 1,201 are adults.
That is a grand record for a year's work.
In the day schools there are 16,000 pupils, 5,000 of whom are girls, and over 3,000 Chris- tians. Deaconesses' Homes are to be openeO at Mathra and Lucknow. Bengal Mission of the Methodist special lecturers, one American on physi_ Episoopal Ohuroh. ology and sanitation, and two native on methods of theory and practice of mission REpORT for 1888. See Statistics Page 314 work. In the theological department there MISSIONARY REVIEW for April. are 37 students, and in the normal depart- ment 30 students. The course of training The reports of the presiding elders of the includes specially Bible study, togetherwlth four districts, Ajmere, Burmsh, Calcntta and practical instructions in evangelistic work. Mussoorle, bring very forcibly before the reader The classics are those of the country, though the need of the great work. In some places, occasionally Greek and Hebrew are taught where there was urgent need of advance and increased elfort, the word came to retrench, and General Synod Evangelical Lutheran the problem became a serious one how to hold the ground already occupied. The laying of Mission in India. Baptized in 1888 by: the corner stone of the J abulpore Mission buildings brought some grateful words from Rev. E. Unangst { Adults, 311 the chief commissioner, Mr. A. Mackenzie, Chtlctre:1, 318 C. S. The times have greatly changed in India 629 since the day when the first American mission- { Adults, 11 aries were peremptorily ordered out of the Rev. L. B. Wolf, Children, 14 country. At pr.esent there are no warmer sup- 25 porters of their work than mallY of the oftlcials { Adults, 140 of the Indian Government. Rev. B. John, Children, 271 411 Bareilly Theologioal Seminary of the Adults, 9} Methodist Episcopal Mission, N ol'th { Rev. M. Nathaniel, Children, 117 India. 216 REPORT for 1888 shows two missionary professors, with six native assistants and three Total, 1,281 These statistics show that our work here is a graud success. Who will come to help to carry it on ?
Malayalam Mission, Travancore, India..
LONDON MISSIONARY SOCIETY, COMMENCED 1805. STATISTICS FOR 1888• .; ..",; ..",; ….,.;. .; ….;, .; M …., . """…. ~ ….;, "tS.~ ",.c:I ~ .c:I "o· """".c:I -;; .; .; oj't:l ..;.0.:.,:, .,0 0 "oj A ., …. ~ oj ~ 't:I oj "'>< "0 ~" – "'"0 " o";o;f!j oj ~ "oj ..c."".:,I "E-o M 'a0 0 .c:I o0.j..", "",Il< ~Il) .c:I ".o~ j o "0 "…. "ee ",.c:I 0 r:0n .~…, o~ …. 00 't:I.~ 0 bo 0 "..q, ' " "g..q zoj 0 .c:I 0 ;;: o,-.;!";l: 0 "0 00 0 — —- ———————- —- — 6 6 19 213 1163 266 44.633 5,356 g56 295 13.229 27.657 Trevandrum station, including the city those sold by the colporteur Bible women and with a population of 57,611, and the district, at the depot. covering 632 square miles, with a population of 253,280, has 48 congregations with 1,200 The Medical work Includes 1 MiSSionary, 9 church members, 7,719 adherents, 59 schools Medical Evangelists in charge of Dispensaries, and 1,712 scholars, new adherents 584. 2 Dispensers, 1 Evangelist, 1 Catechist, 1 Bible woman, 1 Colperteur. The patients included Among the chief features of the work are 10,503 Protestants, 2,694 Roman Catholics, 13,- Gospel lectnres to caste Hindoos and 930 Heathens, 530 Mohammedans. others; open.air preaching and private conversation with enquirers; dissemina.- Zenana Work in India.-The Zenana Mistion of Scriptnres, religious books and sionarv Society of the Church of England tracts. reports that in 1888 it had 106 missionaries in the home connection, 189 Bible-women, The chief hindrance is from the high caste and 349 native teachers. Under this mis- Hindoos, alarmed for the safety of their sionaryforce 3,118 houses have been visited traditional religious usages, and hostile to in which there are 2,797 pupils. This method the low cast people who are glad to come of reaching the women of India is proving to the preaching, so that care has to be taken successful, and those who could not possinot to open more places of worship than can be bly be brought together in any public aseared for. 1,439 Scripture portions, chiefly sembly are glad to welcome Ilo Christia.n Gospels, were sold by the preachers, besides teacher in the home, United Ohuroh of Ohrist in Japan.
TWELFTH ANNUAL REPORT, 1888.
~..".,.. STATISTICS.
9o · MISSIONA.RIES, ! . .n..; as 0"""0i''."-" FOREIGN. " I '" '""§ Sil .n (!)~t ~al .. Sl" ,!.-~ "CIS000"O-, "M D.S ~ ~" .; 6 ;;" z"'''….. f ~.~~,!:,g..= '" – <S»l § o§o.Jd3'fi ,.,~"Qg-.".:a2'e0dgen-j ~ .; .; rJ2 ~~() – – ''"" – – 0 0 Po< ,; ."8o"s' o Po< zg ".d – – – – .S :c ~ ,; PPo< " !l ~ :~:;: ~ I: ~ 44 ~ rJ2 0 8 rJ2 411 : ~ ~ "~ —— 0 -rJ2- 1$:,;;00 8,690 1,831 80 24 2,260 4,000 39 38 36 THE whole report is one of encouragement Missionary Society are calling for men and and hope. An increase for the remaining twelve money to enter the doors open on every side. years of the century similar to that of the past The great desire i8 to increase the power of the year would give for 1900 a membership of 144,- union by the addition of the Congregational 000, a token of the evangelization of this great churches, which will nearly double the effectempire. ive force of the union, adding to it 45 churches with 7,093 members. With such a compact Several more churches have become self-sup- body of Christian workers, animated by such a porting, and it is a question whether many of those still receiving aid are not hurt more than spirit of self-consecration and earnest purpose they are helped. The principle laid down is to work for Christ; there is no obstacle too tbat any church of a hundred members should great. In union is strength. We earnestly be entirely self·reliant. The chief growth is in hope that there will be nothing done to kamper the chnrches, but the fields on every hand are or hinder that union. white to the harvest, aud the native Home -~– Statistios of the Egyptian Mission. (Frbm 1865 to 1887.) ESTABLISHED IN 1854. 1865. 1870. 1875. 1880. 1887.
—-.——-_._-.—————- Ordained Missionaries…………………………. . 8 7 8 8 11 Unmarried Female Missionaries……………….. . 3 3 7 8 10 Native Pastors…………………… , …………. .. 1 3 6 10 Native Licentiates…………………………….. . 5 Organized Congre:oations……………………… . 1 3 8 12 7 3 24 Stations Occupied ……………………………. .. 5 10 6 48 21 85 Communicants …………………………. , …… .. 79 237 676 1,036 2,307 Average Sabbath Attendance ………………….. . 125 513 1,133 1,837 4,747 Pupils in Sabbath-schools…………………….. .. 236 658 1,494 4,438 Number of Schools…………………………….. . 5 49 82 8 23 Pupils in Schools ………………………………. . 815 520 1,040 2,219 5,601 Books Distributed (volumes) …………………… . ? 5,506 1l,8PO 25,534 33,609 $655 $797 $4,863 $13,083 Tuition Fees…. :………………………………. . 1,037 2,795 5,541 7,815 Proceeds from Sale of Books……………………. . Totals paid by Nat's for Prc'h'g., Schools and Books 2,788 4,840 14,986 27,173 Baptist Foreign Missionary Society of The Woman's Baptist ForeIgn Mis.ionary Ontario and Quebec. Societies of Ontario and of East Ontario and Quebec report for their Zenana work MISSION FIELD, TELUGUS, MADRAS, INDIA. expenses additional to the sums paid to the General Society of $2,315.32. STATISTICS.-TwENTY-SECOND ANNUAL RE- The work of the Societies has been ham· PORT, 1888. pered by changes necessitated throughsick- ness and retirement of some from the field. …. " . ".- " " … ;1ui't:! .u..i .n .u.,i Yet they go on their way with good cour- age, "300,000 sonls with a single missionary, :s .-" . " " <II"d~~.~~~c.'g..",.:. 't:!.n ..e- .n .; ::l ::l and he 35 miles distant," calls for help• .':~-t:l:Q."!c~) '0 " " A::l'~" ~~ "'~ Ci~ ~… ."c ~ ~ The Leper House at Jerusalem, 1888. "~ 0 't~::!:ol 80 :te:l'Ow :J .d ~ ';":; The Seventeenth Annual Report of this Insti- Ci'~ E-< tution, under the care of the 1I0ravian Society, ",.- S.:!i 0 "rJ2 ".O..r "S shows an e'lCpenditnre of £435-3-0, $2,176. The Sil new asylum, built at a total cost of about ~dl ~, S $21,C-00, and unencumbered by any debt, has 19 inmates, 13 males and 6 females, 8 Christians Sil ~::. <= 0 and 11 Moslems.· Three died during the year, _. — — — — — — — – 0 aU haviug the Christian hope. 0 0 4 5 4 4 5 46 40 40 13 1.947 Increase from collections, legacies, etc ………………………….$14,67648 Received from Woman's Societies (less $325 returned).. .. .. .. .. .. .. • 4,605 Do 'l,'ota.l income …………… $19,281 48
Missions in the Dutch East-Indian
From the latest reports received during the year 1888, prepared jor THE MISSIONARY REVIEW OF THE WORLD by Rev. N. D. Schuurmans, Haarlem, HoUand.
Name of the So- Stations. Receipts European Native As- Adherents. Schools. Scholars. during the ciety. Missionaries -s-i s t-a n-t s . – -l-as-t y-ea-r.- Notes. 8.- 74.- — – – – – – The Netherland ModjowarnQ-Java. 5,me, (on Ja- 135 8,472 on Java $37,706 In the Minahassa (Celebes) are a great . .(founded in the Kendal-pajak, llilissional'Y Unlun Kediri, h The number va) 221 (be. and Celebes; many native churches (communions) for- year 1797 at Rot- ~~:~b~~~Cele~~s. teachers and longing to of Savoo the merly founded by the missionaries of the lterdam). catechists the resort of N. M. S., now under the pastorshlp of Euro- Tanawan~ko .. in the lIiina- Seba (Savoo) number is pean associate preachers, who in connec- hasia prov- not known. tion with the Dutch Protestant Church in Seba-8avoo. inee is 115. Neth. India and under pay of the Dutch Government, yet greatly act asmissionaries for the propagation of the gospel,. Thenum- ber of native Christians is reported abont 120.000 souls. Notwithstanding two mission- aries. properly so-called, are at work in the niinahassa, the one is placed at the head of a training school for native assistan ts, the other occupied witha printing press for the sake of the missions on this Island. – —– .. Missionary Socie- Cheribou, The Netherland nieester-Cornelis-Ja va 7 24 874 11 146 $17,846 Of the 874 adherents 251 may partake of .. ty II. (founded in Indramaju, .. ,he year 1858 at niadjalengka, the Holy Communion.
. Rotterdam). . Sukabumi. Sumedang, .. 1'jiandjoor, .. Pangharepan, . Buitenzorg, —– —- ———- –~~— This year (1889) one Missionary more will Foreign Mission Batavia-Java. 3 6 200 4 224 $8,000 c f the Christian Surbaga, U be sent to Sumba.
Reformed Church Melolo and Cabernero, in the Netherlan<ls Sumba. (founded tn the ear 1860 at Leyen.) – – – – – – 125 Missions Church Salatiga-Java.. 6 8 500 5 $1,892 Only one missionary is sent by tbe Erme a t Ermeloo (found- 'Vonoredjo. ,. (during 1887.) 100 Mission; the other by the Neukinchan Mission. which are united on Java. under .. e d in the year Klampok, the name of h Salati;;a Mis8ion."
1856 at Ermeloo.) Kali<lJeret, ..
.. Tjem~h,
Un- Mergoredjo-Java. 3 16 491 5 200 I $8,479 The three old missionaries, thonlth
ion, for the propa- Pakanteu-Sumatra. (during 1887). directly on the mission field, are yet occugation of the gos- pied wi th working for the missionar~ cause; pel in the Dutch the first by translating the Bible lDto the colonies (founded Javanese language, the second by means of in the year 1847 at writmg, the third by preaching (Reise- Amsterdam). 1——— —– —— —- – – – – – '- – – -…- – $2,127 prediger.) Dutch Lutheran Pulo Tel;o. 2 This mission but just begun.
Society for Home Batuv Islands.
and Foreign Mis- sions (founded in the year 1882 at Amsterdam).
Java Comi te Batavia-Java. (2 on Java. 13 on Java. 115 3 ..t200 $11,911 Missionary I. Esser, of Bondawosso. is at 5 80, present in Holland for the translation (branch of the So- Bondowossa" 1 all Sum",-.J 011 Suma- 450 of the Bible (New 'l'estament) into the Maciety for Home Uta Rimbaru-Suma- tra). tl'a.) durese language. and Foreign Mis– tra.
sions at Batavia, Java) founded in the year 1856 at Amsterdam. —— —– Utrecht Mission Mansinam-N.Guinea. 8 total. 7 180 6 U38 $21,940 Union, founded in Andai, •• the year 1859 at Doreh, Utrecht. Rhoon, Duma, Almaheira. Soa, Konora, •• – – – – – – – – -Ka-w-ir-i. B-u-ru-. —- ——-, —– —– Rhenish Mission Bandjarmassin-Borneo 8 {on Borneo)i26 {on Bor- 1,120 {on Bor- 136 (on Su- $83,362.56 An auxiliary society tor the Rhenish Mis- Society, founded Kwala Kapuas, .. 15 (on Suma- neo). neo). matra). for year end- sian was founded at Amsterdam in the year in the year 1828 at llIandomal, tra). 220 (on Suma-12,702 (on Su- – – – 373 (all Bor- ing Easter 1869. Barm en (Ger- Pangkoh, 5 (on Nias), tra). matra). many). Telang, 9 (')n Nias). 616 (on Nias). neal. 1888. * We have valued thejlorin at 50 cents, Amer- 48 (on Nias). Tameanlajang, U ican money, in these jigures. The Dutch guild- , er is equivalent to 40 cents our money-EDS. Sipirok-Sumatra. Bungabonder, U Pangaloon, U Sigumpu]an.
Pantjarnapitu-Sum. Stations (Continued). Simorongkir, " Pearadja, Sipokalon, Sibtoga, Sum. Lobusircgar, Gunougsitoli-Nlas. Lagubati, Dahana.," Balije, Ombalata, I Sipahutar, Padang, I
ORGANIZED MISSIONARY WORK AND STATISTICS
SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. On the Sangi and Talauuer Islands are 6 As already mentioned in the a.bove Tables, several native churches, founded in stations and 6 missionaries (under pay of former times, are now under the care of European association preachers, not only in government) with about 20,000 native Christhe Minahassa (Celebes), but also on the other islands of the Dutch East Indian tians. One of these missionaries, Rev. Kel- Archipelago, as on Java, Timor, Amboina, Ternate, etc. Their number (i. e. of the ling, on the Sangi Islands, preaches at preachers) amounts to 26. Likewise there are a.bout 80 native teachers. All these are 21 different places (villages), while 15 schools paid by the Dutch Government. At Depok (Batavia) is a seminary or are entrusted to his care. trainiug school for native assistants of missionaries. Dnring the year 1888, 10 pupils, The Netherland Reformed Mission Union, being well taught and examined, have left this institution in order to begin their founded in the year 1860 at Amsterdam, has work among their fellow-countrymen. At Madjowarno (Surabaya) Missionary Kruyt 2 stations on Java, with 3 missionaries. has also founded a training-school with about 14 pupils. The number of native The number of native Christians is about Christians at D6pok is about 600 souls. The Netherland Bible Society. founded at 6,000 distrtibuted in 47 churches or lo- Amsterdam in the year 1814, has 122 branches in the Netherlands and also in the calities. Dutch East Indian Archipelago at Batavia, Depok, Samarang, Surabayo, Padang, Aug… For the evangelizatiou in Atjeh (North kola, l'Iakassar, Tondano, Bandjarmassin, and in the Dutch West Indian colonies Sumatra) a comita last year was founded (South America) at Paramaribo. With the aid of this society the Bible has at Zeist. Probably this year (1889) a misbeen translated into ten different languages of the Dutch East Indian Archipelago, viz.: sionary will be sent out to that country. the Dajak, the Javanese, the low Malay of Surabaya, the low Malay of Samarang, the The Union for the Propagation ofthe Gos- Sundanese, the Alfurese, the Batta (Toba), the Buginese and the Macassar languages. pel in Egypt was founded in 1886, at the Two new translations of the Bible have been made, namely, one into the Sun- Hague (Holland). Its missions-field is at Caldanese langnage by Rev. S. Coolsma at Bl1ndung (Java), and another into the Madurese iub, which is i:lhabited by Mohammedansand language by Rev. J. Esser at the Hague. During the last year 57,405 copies of the Hoptish Christians. According to the report, Bible, or parts of it, have been sold or distributed. The receipts of the society dur- 1887-'88, there are seven adherents and a school ing this year (1888) amounted to 53,267florins. Likewise the" Society for Home and For- with sixty pupils. The miSSionary working eign Missions" and the uUnionforspreading Christian literature,"both at Batavia (Java) there will be joinml by a European schoollargely contribute for the propagation of the gospel into the Dutch East Indian Arch- teacher, in May. Receipts, 5,052 florins. ipelago. Total receipts in Holland for the Prot. Mis- Mission of the Christian Reformed Church sion in the Dutch E. I. Archipelago, about $150,000; total native Christians, 240,000 among Israel, began in 1875. Report, August souls.-Two mis~ionaries of the Neth. Miss. Society had arrived on Java for the Missions 1, 1885-Julv 15, 1888: Missionary HORter held on Savoo and Soemba. The Java-Comit" intends to enlarge its mission-field, namely: meetings in several towns and villages that to found five stations more in East Java and Madura; also the Dutch Ref. Union were frequented by the Jews; at many intends to send as soon as possible missionaries to Tegal and Rembang and Madiun, places he visited Jewish families in their houses. Java.-To the mission on the Sanggi Islands, Rev. P. Helling departed Feb. 2. At present this missionary has been honorably discharged, and several members of the Board occasionally hold meetings. Many religiOUS writings or tracts were spread among the Jews.
Receipts, 5,7€2 florins. '
The Netherland Union, for the propagation of the gospel among the Jews, in connec- tion with the English Episcopal Church, began in 1£84, Leist (Holland). Report, 1887: The missionary has his mission-field at Amsterdam, and another at Rotterdam, who visited also sev- eral provinces of the Netherlands. The evan- gelization met with mnch opposition from the Jews; the iOlOrance of this people with regard to the Bible, was very breat. Notwithstanding this opposition, many of them accepted' and read the religious tracts, that were spread among them. Though the resnits of the preach- ing of the gospel are not clearly visible, the labors of the missionaries can be considered as pr<)paring the way for the children of Israel to receive their King. During the last year thirteen Jews asked religious teaching, and fonr of them were baptized. Receipts, 2,724 florins.
Dutch, East Ind.an Arch.pelago.-In the Bottom-lands (North Snmatra) the progress of Christianity is stated to be very hopeful. The missionaries of the Rhenish Missionary Society have their station near to the lake of Toba, at Lagubati, and Balige. In their efforts to spread the gospel into this eDnntry they receive much help of the native Christian churches, and of tbeir assistants. SociE)tyfor the Propagation ofthe Gospel 5, Druze 1. .. All Lhese, evening a.fter even- in Foreign Parts. ing, have heard the Word of God read and very simply and earnestlv explained, many EsTABLISHED 1701. Report of the year 1888. of them joining, with every appearance ~f THE SOCIETY'S INCOME FOR 1888. reverence in' Christian prayer." In this as ,in so many other cases the most interesting I. GENERAL FUND- £ 8. d. features of the work can be known only to Subscriptions, Dividends the workers themselves and to God. The supporters must be content to await the and Contributions…… . 105,910 1 1 open answers to their prayers and dona- Legacies ……………… . 8,552 11 5 tions, until there is more perfect liberty granted to searchers after truth. Reuts, Divideuds, etc ….• 3,222 2 6 Totalreceiptsgeneralfund 117,684 15 0 II. SPECIAL 1<'uNDS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21',982 2 6 Total income …………. £]38,666 17 6 American Seaman's Friend Society. The sixty – first annual meeting was held in the In addition to the above, the society's chapel of the Sailor's Home, 190 Cherry street, . treasurers had received for invested funds, New York, on the afternoon of the 6th inst. held by the society as a corporation for The annual report shows that 27 chaplains or specific trusts by request, the sum of £1,- missionaries have endeavored to promote the 429 Os. 8d. spiritnal and temporrl welfare of seamen in ports extending around the world. During the In this sum of £105,610 Is. Id. are included year 501 loan libraries have been sent out, contwo gifts of securities, worth £25,296 and sistine: of 18,036 books, 7,524 being new, and £2,263 respectively. The former was U a supplying crews of 7,781 seamen. On U. S. thankoffering to almighty God for the ex- Naval vessels and in U. S. Hospitals, 993 libratension of the church in the colonies and ries, of 35,742 books, )lave been maintained dependencies of the British empire and be- within reach of 114,267 men. The heroic U. S. yond it." The latter w..s a memorial of one Life Saving Service has been remembered by 117 who had long been a munificent supporter libraries of 4,220 volumes. The Sailors' Home, of the society. on Cherry street, N. Y., accommodated 1,351 sailors during the twelve months, and took Oentral Ohina Missions of the Methodist good care of more than $10,000 deposited tem- Episcopal Ohurch. porarily with the lessee. Shipwrecked and destitute seamen were relieved by gifts amount- REPORT for 1888. See Statistics Page 314, ing to $653.70. The income of the year MISSIONARY REVIEW for April. amounted to $27,832.89, and the outgo to $34,- 971.05. One of the most important minor reports presented is that in regard to Land Tenure. It American Bible SOCiety. The sixty-first should be followed up in every mission of every annual meeting was held Thursday aftersociety. The necessity of owning and develop- noon at the Bible House. The annual reing real estate in connection with mi.sionary port shows that the total cash receipts for genwork makes it of the highest importance that eral purposes were $499,823.56. The disbnrsethe laws of Land Tenure should be well under- ments for general purposes amounted to $555,- stood. The Brother who makes the report 979.78, leaving a deficiency of $56,166.22, which seems to feel as if the time spent upon it was of was provided for j'l part by aloan and in part by little value. We would reply in the words of the sale of certain securities. The following the venerable Father Goodell of Constantinople were elected to the Board of Managers for four to one who made a similar complaint: "The years: John H. Earle, S. V. R. Cruger, Elbert disciples were serving the master just as much A. Brinkerhoff, James G. Levett, Charles H. wheu they went to get the ass as when they Trask, William Hoyt, Robert W. De Forest, J. preached at Pentecost." D. Kurtz Crook and T. G. Sellew_ The Philander Smith Memorial Hospital at The seventy-fifth anniversary of the Nanking reports in all 10,100 patients treated, a American Baptist Missionary Union began grand record of good work done. at Boston, May 15. The following statistics were given: Missionaries appointed dnr- The Woman's Foreign Missionary Society has ing the year, 30; missionaries sailed to the b~en very successful in its medical work among field, 31; missionaries retnrned, 9; total the Tartar women of Chiukiang and good re- appropriations for the year, $423,318; total sults are already evident. receipts, $415,144; balance against the treasury, $8,174. The Foreign Secretary's. Jaffa Medioal Mission and Hospital. report shows that in all the missions there are 279 missionaries,l,316 churches, 134,413 The annual report for 1888 shows expen- members-an increase of 17 missionaries, ditures of £1,209, $6,046. The number of out- 20 churches, and 7,205 members. In misdoor cases has heen 13,217; 138 on a single sions to the heathen are 62 stations and day. 511 patients have been received to 1,179 out-stations, the hospital; 307 men and 204 women and children. The various religIOns represented have been, Mo~lem 414. Greek 44, Je~ish 23, 11aronite 13, Protestant 10, Roman Catholic
~~ . r r
556 [JULY, PROGRESS OF MISSIONS-MONTHLY BULLETIN.
l"
VIII.-PROGRESS OF MISSIONS: MONTHLY' "
BULLETIN.
What a stimulating Btudy follows the lower Rownma, three in Zanzibar and three footsteps of Jehovah through these forma- in the Portuguese interior. Besides there tiveyea.rsofmissionaryenterprise I Mighty are the East Africa. station. of the London obstacles removed; a missionary spirit de- and Scottish societies.-In~pendent.' veloped; over 200 general missionary societies and boards organized; woman's work ·-Rev. E. F. Baldwin, writing from Mogafor women inaugurated and already a phe- dor, Morocco, in April, says: The, work nomllnal success; many of the sons and goes on well, now. There is a. lull In persedaughte~s of ~he church in our educational cution: hence many meetings-five on Suninstitutions pledged to service In the foreign days, fonr on Wednesdays a.ud Sa.turdays, field; medical missions securing gratefulre- a.nd three on other days. We are trying to cognition; the .Bible printed in 300 tongues; make the most of our opportunities. On our a vernacular literature created, and schools last trip Mr. Nairn and I were reported for the lowest grade to the well-equipped killed, and the statemeut was believed by college and theological seminary estab- all except my family. True.wewere roughly lished. handled, but not a. bail' of our heads per- ished. Rosine Is back. and Abraham is on -The most effective reply to pessimists his way. They were separated by Abraham like Canon Taylor and Mr. Caine will be being in prison and put in irons nine days. found in the MISSIONARY REVIEW oJ!' TliE his outer clothes heing also stolen. For WORLD. and more especially in such a paper about six months they were away on a jouras Dr. Pierson's in the April number on ney. on the lines of Matt. x.; many believed. .. Further Testimonies to Missions." Itsets and many were baptized. The work grows forth an array of well attested facts, so in other ;>laces. We hope to devote the weighty that all the accusations and in- summer months to systematically training sinuations of professed friend. or open foe, in the Word the most promising converts. will be but a feather's weight in comparison. in order to their doing service as native No Pl'Stor who desires to keep his congrega- evangelists. Blessing has begun among the tion up to the mark In missionary fervor Jews. I have recently baptizcd three Jewa should fail to procure this hest of all the and lour Moslems. One of the Jew8 Is just missionary magazines.-OhriBtian Leader out of irons for his faith; one or two others (Scot/and). await baptism. The last steamer brought Mr. Sheehan. s. non-commissioned olHcer Africa.-The Missions ofthe German and from Gibraltar, to join us on Matt. x. lines. English societies cover a considerable part Thank God. there are six Matt. x. missionof the countries around the back of the ter- aries (men) here in actual work; one is Mr. ritories of the Sultan of Zanzibar, on the Martin and two natives. I am just olf …. east coast of Africa. The Nenkirchen So- another trip, going first to Cass. Blanca. ciety has had since 1887 a station at Ngao wearing Moorish clothes. which we all (men) on theTana. in the Suabalicountry with two now wear, finding it much better tor the missionaries; a third missionary died short- work, and more comfortable every way. lyafter his arrival. On the other side of Blessing and trial continue intermingled. I the Tana is the station Soldanti. of the hope in tbe coast towns to visit and os- United Jllethodist Free Churches, who also tablish several ~roups of believers who have two stations, Joursee and Ribe, in the have never seen the face of a foreign mis- Mombasa. district. The Evangelical Lu- sionary. therau Missionary Society for East Africa of Jla,varia. has stations at Jimba and at -The Romish Church is pushing for the Mbungu among the Wakamba, six hours in- open regions of the upper Congo. Two Porland, with three missionaries; a fourth mis- tuguese steamers recently carried from sionary died at his home, whither he had twenty to thirty Jesuit priests and nuns to retUrned for his health. One bour from labor in Africa for the propagation of their Jimho is the station at Kisulutini, or Rabai, faith. foun!ied by Krapf and Rebmann in 1876, which with Mombasa, Freretown and Kam- -Rev. George Grenfell, Ia.tely returned likene. torms the Mombasa district of the from the Congo, reports .. Cbristianity English Church Missionary Society. The spreading even where missionaries had not Evangelical Missionary Society for German labored. As he approached one town in East Africa. has a station at Dar-es-Salaam, which no Baptist missiona.ry had ever lawith one projected in Kisserawa, on which bored. he saw a band of native eva.ngelists are two European missionaries, one Abys- coming out of it to preach the gospel to sinian teacher and a deacon. The English their native brethren, and that town. a few Universities Mission has five stations In years a.go, wa.s sunk in hea.thenism." Usambara, oPpol'ite the island of Pemba, four farther south, in the !iistrict of the -Inspector Harms, in his tour among the Rerma.nnsburg missions in South Africa. last year, also visited the Norwegian mis-
PROGRESS OF MISSIONS-MONTHLY
sion at Umpupulo, Natal. The stationed celve all who apply; 70 applicants have "missioo!lory had seven 'preaching places, a.t been declined. A Training Cla.ss from the which his helpers preached, ha.ving heen school visits female patients in the Hospispecially prepared for the service on the tal, There are six native teachers at work. Saturday. .. This is a matter of which we do not take thought enough," the Inspector -The Baptist Mission in the' Sbantung remarks; .. yet the Norwegians are lacking Province, have, in the districtofTsing-cheu in emcient evangelists, while we are much Fo, 55 chUrches, all self-supporting, minisbetter provided through our Seminary at tered to by five native pastors maintaining Ehlanzeni, with its 16 pupils." themselves and not drawing any of their support from the society. Belglum.-The Missionary Church of Belgium (EvangelicalSociety) reports a rich -Tho Chinese Inland Mission has been enspiritual growth within the past year. A abled to send $20,000 for the reliet of the letter from Pastor Brocher says that this sufferers from the famino in China. missionary church is composed largely of -The ratio of the gain in converts In all the poor miners who have come out from Ro- Protestant missions In China during the manism. There are 22 ordained minIsters, decade is about 140 percent. ; and In Japan four evaugelists, eight Bible readers, and It is over 300 per cent. four colporteurs, but a large portion of the work Is rendered by the workingmen who, Central Amerlca.-In the latter from the mining and manufacturing dis- part oflast year tbe Prt'sbyterian Bo~rd of tricts, return to the village. There are now Foreign Missions made a liberal appropria- 27 churches, with sixty-one preaching sta- tion of funds to help the mission in Guatetions and 84 other localities where ihe gos- mala, Central America. in purcha.sing proppel has been preached occasionally, besides erty and huildlng for mission purposes in 000 placas visited by colpoteurs. Nearly the city of Guatamala. Ground was imme- 8,000 religious services have been held dur- diately bought and building begun, and ing the year, with a regular attendance of now a house is almost completed and a from four to five thousand hearers. Of the church well under way. 00 Sunday-schools 18 are called .. Missionary Sunday-schools "; that is, composed -City of Mexico, May S.-News has heen reexclusively of children of Roman Catholic ceived here of a discovery of great archfamiliee. This certainly is a cheering re- reological importance in the State of Chia.· port, and the appeal for financial aid which pas, near the ruins of Palanque, being no- Is made by this Missionary Church of Bel- thing less than a large city hidden in the gium should have a generous respoDse. depths of the forests. Some buildings are five stories high and in a good state of pres- Chlna.-In Canton, with its 1,500,000 in- ervation. There is a well-paved road sevhabitsnts, are fifteen Christian chapels, wbere eral miles in length still perceivable in the missionaries and the native ministers preacb midst of a tropical fOl"est. Very few partie. the gospel, not on Sunday only, but daily, and ulars bave reached kere, but the report from two to four honrs each day, to audiences comes from good sources. Palanque is said varying from fifty to several bundred. After to be S, mere village in comparison with tbls the sermon, Chinese Evangelists continue the lost city of prehistoric times. services. Free conversations and discussions tollow; rooms are at band for private confer- Egypt.-Miss Whately's work in Cairo. ences, and Cbristian books and tracts are kept The schools and mission established in in readiness, and disposed olin large numbers. Cario by the late Miss M. L. Whately will The preaching halls are tbronged during the hot- be carried on by her sister, Miss E. Jane test montbs–July. August and September-and Whately, who is well known as the biografrom noon till tbree o'clock-tbe hottest part of pher of. her father, the late Arcbbishop the day. Tens of tbousands of visitors to the Whately, and as a frequent contributor "to city bave beard tbe gospel in tbese cbapels and various periodicals. She will have the valhalls, and have carried It hundreds of miles uabie aid of Mrs. Shakoor, the widow of a. into the interior. The missionary encounters Syrian gentleman. who voluntarily assisted tbese in the most remote places on bis inland Miss Mary Whately in her work until his tours, and sometimes listens with surprise death some years ago. Mrs. Shakoor had while tbey repeat the substance nfthedlscourse for many years been tbe devoted friend and which tbey have beard. The dialect used by companion of the late Miss Whately. most of the miSSionaries, in preacbing, 1s the Punti, or pure Cantonese. by wbicb tbey have England.-English Presbyterians now access to twenty millions of people. number 64,000. according to reports submit- ted to the annual meeting of synod held in -Letters just received from Dr. Happer at Regent Square Church at the beginning of May. This shows a gain of 1,500 communi- Canton, speak of the encouraging Increase cants for 287 congregations in the past year' of students In the Anglo-Chinese College. -a small total and a small average. We The number at the beginning of May was had hoped for better things after the meettrT. The Girls' Boarding School cannot reo ing of the Presbyterian Alliance in London last year. -Dr. Dale, ofEnglan4, thinks that India is to be Christia.nized by her own sons, and cumbent of the Established Church, in the therefore he believes in sending out edu- enjoyment of a remarkably good living, with cated Christian men, capable of training a very small charge, who dwells at ease in Indian converts for the work of teaching England during its pleasant snmmer, and the gospel. There can be no question that enjoys himself in Southern lands during its the native element in missionary work has winter, and who does not even subscribe not been utilized as it should be, not in the con ventional guinea a year to the C.M.S., India only, bnt in other regions, as not- is hardly the man to·hold up a. high standably in Armenia. ard to his fellows I"
-The Wesleyan Missionary Society, with France.-Interference With Missions.- headquarters in London, has missions At a missionary breakfast at Birmingham established in Europe, India, China, West recently, at which Rev. J. Jones, who was Africa, the Transvaal, British Honduras expelled from the Island of Maro, iu the and the Bahamas. It reports ::36 central South Seas, was present, Dr. Dale uttered a stations or circuits and 1,338 chapels and timely protest agaiust what has the appear_ preaching-places. It has a staff of 833 mis- ance of French vindictiveness against Britsionaries and assistants, with 2,000 other ish missions in heathen J~nds. .. It is all paid acents, such as c",tcchists, interpre- the same," said Dr. Dale, .. whether the Emters, etc. It enumerates::;,::::J unpaid agents, pire, the Monarchy, or the Republic obtain such as local preo.chers and 3abbath-school iu Frauce, her officials, goaded on by priests. teachers, and a el:urch membership of 32,- repress Protestantism, wherever possible." 325, with 4,674 persons on trial for admission And he added: "When M. Paul Bert. the to the· church. The method pursued by the bitter opponent of Cleric",lism at home, society is to send to the field English mis- went as Governor of Tonquin, he remarked sionaries for the purpose of organization that their free thinking aud liberty of conand supervision or to gIve instruction in science views were not for exportation. training institntions. All subordinate po- In Tahiti and several other South Sea sitions are occupied by a trained native Islauds, in Madagascar, and wherever our agency, While it is understood that every missionarie~ have been signally successfuh convert, according to his ability, should be the French have. if opportunity offered, a voluntary worker for Christ. The total tried to damage them." income for the past year was nearly £132.- 000. The report for the year expresses -The Paris Missionary Society has a wongreat discouragement because of a debt of derful missionary work in South Africa. In almost £17,000 which has been accumulat- connection with its mission amoug the ing for the past three years. In addition to Basutos it has 176 native workers and 6,000 the above is the work done by the Ladies' church-members. The Zambesi Mission, of Auxiliary connected with the society. and which M. Coillard is in charge, is an offreporting an income for the year of almost spring of the Basuto Mission. The society £8,000. also has missions on the Congo, in Senegam- bia, and in Kabylia. -Rev. James Johnston, F. S. S., in a recent letter to us, speaks of the attacks which India.-Rev. J. E. Scott writes from have been made by Canon . Taylor and Muttra: others on the missionary societies of Great Britain, and says: .. These recent attacks .. There are 90,000 people just around me, on our missions in this country are encaur· and more than 700,000 iu the district. The aqing ! ! They are made by men whose sound of the hammer and trowel has comtrade is sensation and can only gain it by menced. A mission house half finished, a attacking what is great and popular. Not training-school (Woman's Foreign Missionone society has suffered. The Church Mis_ ary Society) just commenced, a schoolsionary Society never had such an income house and a hall and chapel in prospect. as this year. The London Mission Society The fincst temple in North India is here. A have in a few weeks made up their chronic temple covering 10 acres and costing $2,000.- deficit of £15,000; and the number of new 000 is here. 'l'here are 8,000 widows, all bad, schemes started by independent societies is at Brindabon, in the vicinity. They are the another sig.. of life. though it takes erratic so-called' Brides of Krishna.· .. forms and tends to weaken old societies."- The Missionary. -From Dr. Fry's report of the Travancore Medical Mission for the past year, we learn -Canon Isaac Taylor's attack on the mis- that at Neyoor. and in the eight branch dissions is the subject of a brief but powerful pensaries now opened throughout the provarticle in the January issue of Regions Be- ince, 27,657 patients were treated during yond, by Mrs. H. Grattan Guinness. Agree- 1888. Of these 1,255 were received into the ing with the Canon that" the work would Neyoor Hospital as in-door patients… The be better doue if the missionaries were year 1888," writes Dr. Fry, .. is one of faultless, unselfish. devoted, heroic saints," special interest, as being the jubilee year Mrs. Guinness tersely says: .. But au iu- of the South Travancore Medical Mission. Fifty years have' now gone by since Dr. Ramsay, the first medical missiona.ry, began his work in Nagercoil. Drs. Leitch, whole Waldensian church of Italy, of which Lowe and Thomson have successively sus- the present statistics are 42 churches, 38 tained the burden and increased the influ- preachini' stations, 124 pastors and other ence of the enterprise, and it is gi ven us to workers, is the outcome of that return of .. reap where others have sown, and to wit- few hundred, Who were all that were left of ness in the present developments of this the 3,000 to 4,000 that had been expelled by branch of service the results of half a cen- Victor Amadeus II. of Savoy. Without that tury of faithful toil. We have every reason return the Waldensian Church would have to bless God and go forward in firm depend- been wiped outof existe'lce in Italy. In the ence on His power who has so markedly minds and hearts of this people it is the most supported His servants in past days."-Ed- glorious event in their eventful history {nburgh Medical Missionary So~iety. which they are this year celebrating. Dr. Emil Comba, probably their best known -Arcot American Mission. At Katpadi a itterateur, compares it with the return of new chapel wasopcned January 10, on which the ten thousand Greeks, and draws special occasion twelve children and two adults attention to the fact thltt the skill of were baptized. The mission was established leadership had called forth the warm adat Katpadi 1.1 Rev. W. W. Scudder, D.D., miration of Napoleon Bonaparte.-The ["'- who occupied the station for five years and dependent. baptized fifty person~. At the close of his pastorate there were fifteen commnnicauts. -Count Campello, who was a canon in the There are now 164 communicants and a con- Church of Rome tiil1881, when he placed his gregation of 485 Teluga and Tamil ChriA- resignation in the hands of Pope Leo XIII., tians. A native minister, the Rev. A. Wil- has lately been addressing immense meetliams, is assisted by two deacons and two ings in various parts of Italv. He does not elders. call himself a Protestant, but a Catholic Reformer. His latest meetings were at -In the Northwest of India and of Qude San Remo, where, a correspondent of the missionary physiciaus are coming promi- Christian says, .. the Italians turned out in neutly into nutlce. Nearly 75,000 cases were thousands to hear liim. He told them plainly treated at eleveu dispensaries, and 11,000 that he left the Vatican because he was women sought relief at Mrs. Wilson's dispen- wearied of hypocrisy and of slavery. He sary at Agra; 18,850 women and children were left itobecause he wished to profess himself treated at the Thomas Dispensary at Agra. a believer and follower of Jesus Christ. He The women doctors in charge. successfully called upon the Italians to drive the papacy performed some very important surgical from their consciences aud minds, and operations. hearts, and homes, and, if one day an oppor- tunitv came to do so, out of their country. -The Moslems of Delhi have opened a And then, in most earnest and impressive seminary in which preachers are taught all words, he urged them to put Christ in the the objections of Western infidels against place of the pope, and the gospel in place of Christianity that they may go forth to op- the Syllabus. In all he -said he was suppose the Christian preachers in town and ported by the applause of his audience. count.rv. Even when preaching Christ there was not raised one cry of opposition. The local press -The Waldensians are eagerly preparing is strongly supporting Count Campello and for the celebration of the second centennial his movement, and some of the young Italof the" glorious return" of 16~9, when after ians waited upon him before he left the Umuntold sufferings aud banishment from the bria to beg his return." historic valleys as one of the results of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, they, Japan.-Opposition to the proposed unwith sword in hand, and led by their war- ion between the united church of Japan, like pastors, Janavel and Arnaud, forced which is composed of all Presbyterian bodtheir way back to their ancestral homes. ies in that empire, aud the Congregational- The contest was against fearful odds. On ist missionaries, comes from a new quarter. the mountain fltstness of Lit BalsiJIe, Where, Theaid of the Southern Presbyterian church of the 900 Waldensians that returned, about has been invoked to hinder consummation 400 held at bay more than twenty thousand of the union. The Presbytery of Greenbier, Savoyan soldiers, a school is being erected. in the Western part of Virginia, has OVer- In Sibltourd, where, when surrounded on all tured the General Assembly of that church Sides by the hosts of the enemy, the Walden- to take measures to protect the infant sian Christians took a solemn oath either to churches formed by its missionaries from conquer or to die, a pyramid bnilt of blocks the dangers which it believes to be involved of stone is being erected, the number of in this union. These dangers the Presbytery blocks corresponding to the number of Wal- declares to be both doctrinal and ecclesiasdensian congregations existing at present. tical-that is, a danger that fundamental At Torre Pellice, the centel' of the literary truths of the Christian faith may be ignored, and educational work of this people, a new and a danger that principles of church order theological hall is to be dedicated. All these memorials are now abo;]t completed. The which are manifestly scriptural may be moa of the invasion of that troubled king- dom by a band of Mormon missionaries. Six abandoned. ' of them have appeared and six more are on the way from Utah, and they say they are -The number ofconverts in the Japan Mis- going to carryon a vigorous campaign in every viJIage in the group. They appear to sion of the American Board has increased have plenty of financial support., The na- tives receive them coldly, but they have in fifteen months from 4.226 to 7,098, a gain made an impression on European traders.
of 2,867. This is the most remarkable record Thlbet.-Thibet is the only known coun_ tryon earth not open to missions. It has an in any mission connected with the board, area of 750,000 square miles, about as large as the United States East of the MiSSisSippi with the exception of tbe great gathering River. The greatest length from East to West is 1,500 miles, and the population is esin the Sandwich Islands. timated at 8,000,000. It is the stronghold of Buddhism. Lhassa, the capital, is the -At the service in the Doshisha church, .. Rome" of the Buddhists, and the Dalai Lama is the Buddhist pope. He is supreme Kobe, Japan, March 24, there were 100 of in both temporal and spiritual things. One monastery has about 5,000 Buddhist priests, the pupils who united with the church. Five and there are about 60,000 in the country. Thibet is virgin soil for missions. The counwere from the girls' school, 62 from the pre- try is tributary to China.-Illmtrated Chris- tion Weekly. paratory department, 20 from the first year -Mr. and Mrs. Turner, of the China Inland collegiate, and 16 from the second and third Mission, have begun work in Thibet from the Chinese side. They travel in Chinese clothes. years. This fact is a most important one. Thibft is inaccessible to Christian missionaries -The Japan" Mail," of Yokohama, in a from the Indian side, the natives supposing that the British Government have designs series of ILrticles on thc rising generation in to annex the country whenever a missionary in European costume enters their State Japan, says that the young reformers agree from the South. If the China Inland Mission .. keeps low, keeps believing and keeps going that there must be a new moral system for forward," it has a still mightier future be- fore it than in the past. The society that Japan, and that it must harmonize with the opens up Thibet to the gospel deserves the hearty thanks of the whole Christian church spirit and aim of modern ciyilizatior: ; but throughont the world.
they are divided on the question whether it United States.-Dr. Talmage, ofBrook- lyn,says: "The church, if it would do its shall be the Christian system of moraJity or duty, could convert the world in ten years. Ithas the men and money." On which The Inthat which is based on science and philoso- dependent makes this cutting and deserved criticism: "Perhaps so, but it must turn phy. The MaU goes on to say: over a new leaf of generosity very soon if it is going to undertake so great and speedy a "That in recent years a wonderful change task. The Brooklyn Tabernacle last year, with 4.126 members reported, gave $151 to has taken place in our attitude toward home missions and $138 to foreil:'n missions."
Christianity is now a well-known fact, and -Romanism. Father O'Connor, the con. verted priest, is said to have led 800 Romanneed not be dwelt upon here. Only, how- ists into light in five years in New York City ever. within the last two or three years, or, -Gift to United Presbyterian Board. An- other l,OOOcopies of the" Crisis of Missions" in other words, since the awakening of the has been given to the United Presbyterian Board, the author and publishers uniting rising generation, has the new creed become with Rev. J. B. Dales, D. D., in the gift.
a vital element of the nation's civilized life. -Woman's work. The Woman'& Execu- Its inlluence is now felt through the rising tive Committee of Home Missions ot the generation, not only by reason of the fast Presbyterian church announces that its re- ceipts for the year just closed amount to increasing number of young converts, but S320,OOO, an advance over last year of $94,000. Well done. also, and perhaps to a greater extent, by means of the creation of a powerful litera- ture thoroughly imbued with Christian spirit."
-"The Twelfth Report of the Council of Missions co-operating with the united church of Christ In Japan," publislled at Tokio, January, 1889, says: .. The united church of Christ iu Japan has enjoyed a year of constant growth. There has been no excitement and no extraordinary efforts have been put forth." Yet it says in no previous year have 'the additions been 80 many. The adult members of the church number 7,551. The" infant members" num- ber 1,139, the total being 8,690, an increase of 1,831 during the vear. The churches num- ber 61, three having been added during the year. This church was formed in 1877 by the union of eight churches and 623 Christiaus, including the children. In the pa.st three years the church has doubled its member- ship, and in eleven years has progressed from 600 to 9,000. A like progress for the remaining twelve years of the century will make the membership in the year 1,900, the nuinber of John's vision, 144,000.
Samoa.-Monnon InvaSIon. The Lon- don Missionary Society has news from Sa-