The Missionary Review of the World — March 1901
MISSIONARY CONFERENCE, TOKIO, JAPAN, OCTOBER
MISSIONARY REVIEW OF THE WORLD.
Old Series. } MAROH. j New Series. VOL. XXIV. No.3. 1 VOL. XIV. No.3.
THE OUTLOOK FOR THE TWENTIETH OENTURY.-II.
SUGGESTIONS FOR NEW METHODS AND MEASURES.
BY THE EDITOR-IN-CRIEF.
A new century suggests new methods and measures. Perfection alone forbids change, because it excludes improvement. Man at hest only moves toward what is perfect, and attains the goal through the lessons taught by repeated mistakes. It has passed into a proverb that success is reached through failure.
One question, of no minor importance, therefore, is this: Whether the new century should not be marked by new features in the administration of ?n1'ssions. We can not shu t our eyes to the fact of a growing dissatisfaction with some methods, long in use, nor to the fact also, that not a few intelligent and genuine friends of missions contend that these should become obsolete, giving place to something better. Without presuming to pronounce upon the complaint as reasonable, or the change as advi"able, all honest criticism should have a fair hearing. Murmurs of discontent betray a spirit that is restlessly chafing under real or supposed grievances. If they be real, they should be remedied; if only supposed, they should be exposed to the light of candid discussion. In any case nothing is gained by repression.
We propose, in this paper, to give impartial statement to a few complaints, some of which have come to us in the form of private remonstrances, and others of which have found expression in public utterances; and to present them simply as suggestions to be weighed in the balances of a calm judgment, for whatever be their value. They may be included uuder seven heads: 1. First, a remonstrance against autocratic management. Undue arbitrary power, it is said, is wielded by mission boards, and undue authority sometimes lodged in one man. Questions, affecting scores and hundreds of intelligent, able, and devoted laborers on the field, who know the needs and conditions of the work as no others can, are settled beyond appeal by parties, hundreds, if not thousands, of miles
distant, who perhaps never set foot upon mission territory. God's government is an absolute monarchy, and such rule is best where perfect wisdom, goodness, and love hold the throne, but no mere man is fit to wield an absolute scepter. An autocrat at the secretary's table inside the mission house is sure to find himself at war with the democrat outside. Free men demand that there shall be "no taxation without representation;" the burden-bearer likes to have a voice in determining what burdens shall be laid on him, and to share in the government in which he is one of the gov'erned, As surely as intelligence displaces ignorance, faith superstition, and liberty slavery, there is a revolt against despotic dictation. The common sense of mankind is felt to be a safer guide than the uncommon sense of one who thinks himself wise enough to rule all the rest.
Missionaries who lay their lives on the altar of missions, and who are at work on the field, naturally claim a voice and vote in matters vital to the success of their work, and justly contend that it may mean risk, if not ruin, to that work, to be compelled to expand or contract, enlarge or curtail, remove or remain, at the will of some man or committee, who survey the field only from afar, and can not see clearly nor judge wisely.
One instance occurs to us of a missionary in Africa, a man of most consecrated zeal, whose work was so blessed of God, that the natives among whom he had founded a mission, burning to bear the Gospel that had saved them to their unsaved neighbors, not only planned, but manned a new mission, and gave all the money as well as men, needed to conduct it; when lo! a veto carne from the mission house at home, with the demand that the money raised by the native church must be turned into the society's treasury to be applied to work already undertaken. The ground of such action was that, as the native church owed its existence to the missionary board, it owed also a debt to that board, and should replenish its funds instead of undertaking new and advance work on its own responsibility. The disappointment of the missionary in this case, and the defeat of the native church's scheme, actually cut his life short in his prime.
2. A second complaint has been made against £nflexibility in method. It is said that there is too little elasticity, undue conservatism, unreadiness to learn new lessons, attachment to stereotyped forms that have the odor of antiquity, if not of decay. The pace of the race is so rapid, that what is practically effete is soon left behind; in every department of common affairs, invention and discovery open up new paths for progress, and demand not only. new machinery, but new motive power. Within fifty years society has undergone more than one revolution. Everything has changed and our fathers would not know the world they lived in. We take strides where they took steps; withiu a century we have exchanged hand-power and horse-
THE OUTLOOK FOR THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
power for steam-power, and steam-power for electric dynamos. Why mount the unwieldy elephant if you can harness the lightning?
Shall mission methods alone cling tenaciously to the eighteenth century fashions, and refuse to recognize the fact that the improvements of the last ten decades of the nineteenth century have made this the golden age of the world? So say some, and it sounds sensible. Perhaps there is a taint of fallacy, if not sophistry, in the argument for change in Ohurch methods, for what we call "religion" does not always improve by innovations, but degenerates. Between truth as revealed by God and truth as unveiled by men, there is a great gulf fixed. And yet, in minor matters, not touching the core and heart of Divine truth and the substance of spiritual life, progress is not only possible, but to be expected; mission methods, being largely devised by men, may by men be revised and improved. It is not well to hang on to any system, financial or administrative, that is behind the age, or unfitted to present needs~ 3. Another complaint is made against the prevailing system of training for mission work. On the one hand, there is too rigid and frigid adherence to a mere scholastic standard. Oandidates become recluses, shut up, from seven to ten years, in academic halls, poring over books. 'fheir first fervor cools, and their early ardor dies out like an unfed flame, and the chronic college chill takes its place. Sometimes losing entirely the mission spirit, they drift into other work; or what is worse, go to the mission field only to do perfunctory work, where above all it is to be dreaded. On the other hand, too Iowa standard of educated fitness may be allowed, and young men and women hurried into the field without any real preparation, a few months in a superficial "training school" being substituted for more prolonged and painstaking mental discipline. Such haste is waste. Emotional enthusiasm invests missions with a deceptive halo of romance, and, under its fascination, would-be missionaries sometimes are hurried into the field, only to find themselves engaged in a death grapple with the anakim-giant foes, ancient superstitions, ironbound caste, fixed customs, and most depraved habits-and awfully conscious of no adequate mental strength or even spiritual stamina for such encounters. A great missionary whose work had fully proven his wisdom, was wont to plead for a partial training on the field, urging that candidates should carryon their later studies while in daily contact with the very people among whom they are to work, as a preventive of the lukewarmness of the mere scholar and the inexperience of the mere novice. He said that imperfectly trained native evangelists often prove more helpful than the honor men from the universities, because whatever training they do get is got while in close touch with those whom they seek to reach and reclaim.
4. Serious complaints are often made against the whole system of
statistics as untrustworthy and unsatisfactory. Some would abolish all statistical reports as misleading. A rather officious man who thought himself very sagacious as a counselor for vacant pulpits, had a unique way of deciding who the" coming man" was. He got hold of the general assembly's minutes and compared the statistical tables year by year, and where he found the roll constantly increasing and the benevolent contributions likewise, he concluded without further search that the minister of that church was a strong and able man and might safely be translated to a more important charge. Anyone who knows how church rolls are often kept, how new members are sometimes secured, or reckoned, or by what methods benevolent columns are filled up, will want some broader basis for his induction as to a minister's real merits.
Mission statistics certainly need much revision. They lack, first of all, uniformity of method. It makes serious discrepancy where one statistician reports as members, all baptized children, and another only adults; where one report gives averages, and another aggregates. Some keep careful rolls and business-like accounts; others supply fancies instead of facts, or make up by hearsay or guesswork for lack of memory or information. The editors of this REVIEW undertake each year to prepare statistical tables as full and exact as possible,* and to assure this result, send out forms to be filled out and returned by the proper parties; and yet they find it almost impossible to get even a reply, much less a satisfactory one, and some columns have to go unfilled, unless the figures of previous years br proximate estimates are substituted for the latest and most exact reports. 'rhis should not be so. We should have a concerted plan for statistics or none at all. "Figures and facts" have been quaintly said to be "reliable, because they first lie and then lie again." A body of reports, based on a uniform system, carefully compiled by those who are authorities in such matters and who know how to conduct business, would be consistent, and helpful because trustworthy.
5. A more serious complaint is made against inaccuracy of statement as to the actual work-on the one hand suppression of the truth, suppressio veri, if not suggestio falsi-and, on the other, exaggeration of results, investing facts with a false and deceptive halo.
This last can not always be prevented and is not always either voluntary or conscious. All men do not see alike and may report only what seems to them real. Vera.city is not a simple but a complex faculty, dependent on observation and memory, imagination and conscience. He who would report with exact truthfulness must first of all be a careful observer, taking note of facts with scientific pre- CISIOn. Then he must have a retentive and ready memory to recall facts, and must be able to discipline his memory to accuracy, lest * See January and February numbers, pp. 66, 148.
THE OUTLOOK FOR THE TWENTIETIt OENTURY
imagination invest them with a false coloring, or facts and fancies, dreams and realities, be hopelessly mixed. He must be a man of conscience, also watchful, keen to sift truth from falsehood, the actual from the imaginary, and much as a matter of moral obligation, guard his statements from even unintentional error. This habit of sifting out the chaff from the wheat must be cultivated, if the narrator is to become accurate. The very power of graphic description that makes na.rration charming, implies risk of too much word-painting, and compels the conscientious writer or speaker to halt, before venturing a statement, to ask himself whether he can distinctly recall what he would report or record, and, 8:S a matter of debt to the truth, divest it of all additions or subtractions into which his temperament might betray him, or his proneness to .carelessness of speech. Every man and woman finds need at times to stop, in the midst of a statement, to recall some unguarded word, or modify some exaggerated utterance until it becomes instinctive to set a double watch at the door of the lips or about the pen. Missionaries whose narratives have proved most trustworthy have been wont to make careful records at the tirne rather than rely on a treacherous memory; and in speaking or writing to confine their witness to what they knoUJ, making no definite statement where recollection was indefinite. Mr. George Muller's addresses were very conspicuous for this studied exactitude.
As to keeping back what is true, it is questionable whether any real good is ever so done. Difficulties, and even disasters and defeats would best be acknowledged. Concealment is a poor policy; for the after discovery of suppressed facts not only discourages the friends of missions, but puts a weapon into the hands of detractors, and sometimes destroys confidence in missionaries and missionary societies. Frank dealing on the contrary inspires confidence, and, even when facts are disclosed which are discouraging, there is this compensation, that sympathetic contact is promoted between laborers in the field and supporters of the work at home, and often a deeper prayer-spirit and a truer self-dedication evoked.
6. A kindred complaint has been made at times that investigation of mission work is not sufficiently independent and impartial.
There is a manifest propriety and necessity in official visits to the field, as when a secretary of a mission board, or a member of a committee having the work under supervision, goes out to adjust controversies, determine questions of method, confer as to existing difficulties, harmonize differences, or give counsel in the many perplexities that inevitably arise for a solution. But in the nature of the case such a party can scarcely be expected to report with absolute impartiality as to the actual condition and progress of the work. He represents a society with its established methods, and is himself prominently connected with and responsible for them. He is naturally
prepossessed in favor of the modus operandi. He is not likely to be clear-visioned. He will naturally look at what is being done "and being effected, through magnifying glasses, and if he sees errors in management or even disastrous mistakes, he will as naturally minify their importance. In any case it would seem very ungracious, if not unwise and unseemly, for him to report unfavorably and censoriously upon the conduct of missions by the very organization that employs him. Can its servant be also its censor? Certainly not, before the public. He must at least confine his criticisms and censures to the confidential meetings of officers and managers.
When, therefore, such official visitors publish their reports as to the work, its progress and prosperity, the reader is prone to discount not a little the glowing descriptions and enthusiastic appeals, and inwardly ask for an unprejudiced account. from some more independent observer. And here such testimonies as those of Mrs. Isabella Bird Bishop have been of priceless value. When a quarter century ago she undertook tours of observation in foreign lands, she, by her own confession, was not only indifferent, but rather hostile to missions. It was a case of apathy bordering on antipathy. Of course she "represented" nobody but herself, and traveled in the interest of no church, society, or denomination. Yet her careful and candid attempt to know the facts, with eyes and ears wide open to whatsoever sonrces of accurate information'were available, compelled her to acknowledge the undoubted value and success of foreign missions, and there is now no living witness whose testimony carries or deserves to carry more weight.
For purposes of independent and impartial investigation it is such observers that are in demand. If prominent churches would for a time give up their pastors, and send them on such tours, with all expenses paid, to gather facts and come back to report to their own congregations; if, better still, judicious business men and men of judicial turn of mind, and clear-sighted women would at their own cost and on their own responsibility make tours of missions and tell what they thus come to know, the benefit would be incalculable. If God's people can go round the world for their own pleasure and profit, surely they might go as far and spend as much for the sake of His work and glory. If the twentieth century does not record many such voluntary visits, unofficial in character and beneficial in result, there will be a serious failure to heed the indication of God's will.
7. Another complaint, deserving a hearing, is that godly women should have more recogniHon in the conduct of mission work.
The basis of this complaint is too broad to be disregarded. For nearly two thousand years woman has, even in the Church of Christ, been kept in the background. Only in the last half century has she begun, as woman, to organize independent mission work. And the
THE OUTLOOK FOR THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
growth of distinctively woman's work has, since David Abeel made his famous appeal to the Ohristian sisterhood of Britain, been almost unparalleled. Women's mission societies and boards have sprung up, until every denomination has its auxiliary, and almost every local church its women's society. These godly women have invented a method of scattering information in the briefest and cheapest formthe mission leaflet; they have taught us how to organize little gifts into great rivers, of beneficence; they have magnified prayer as the first of all handmaids of missions; they have trained up godly children for a holy self-offering, and thus prepared the way for the great young people's crusade; they have multiplied small gatherings for feeding the fires of missionary zeal, and called greater conventions for the consideration of the major issues connected with the work; they have studied and worked, and prayed and given, and written and spoken, until they have come to be authorities in the Ohurch and before the world upon all the mission movements of the day. Not only so, but, not content to go as wives of devoted men of God, and mothers of coming missionaries, they have given themselves to the work as teac.:hers, translators, Bible readers, evangelists, and most conspicuously of late as thoroughly trained medical rnissionaries, finding their way, not as women, but as physicians and surgeons, into communities and royal families, where no man ever had recognition, as a foreign doctor.
And now it is asked, and not without reason, whether it is not time that the Ohurch should recognize godly and consecrated women as both competent and deserving to sit on mission boards as counselors and conductors of the work, and even in secretaries' chairs to keep in closost contact with laborers on the field. It is emphatically asked whether the womanly" instinct" may not be of as much use as the manly" reason," in helping to wise decisions; whether the delicate feminine touch, so tender and sympathetic, might not adjust many an existing difficulty, and prevent many a threatened one; whether, at least women, on the field, might not be glad of a woman's hand and heart in the central home office, 'at the helm of affairs. And, finally, it is asked whether the end might not be that, instead of independent organizations of women working side by side with the others, there might come to be a mingling of men and women, not orily in the work, but in its management, so that whatever qualities of head and heart each possesses might be beautifully blent in the conduct of this great mission and ministry of the Ohurch toward a lost world. If in the Ohurch of Ohrist there were in this sense" neither male nor female," but both" one in Ohrist Jesus," might it not be that, as male and female in creation made the one complete" man," so the union of the two in the Lord's work might make the perfect work. What God hath joined together in His purpose, let not man put asunder in per-
formance. Such is the plea: let it have a hearing; and, on these and all questions, let there be that open mind which, like the open eye, becomes" the light of the body." If Priscilla be the equal of Aquila, let her take rank with him, and if by superiority Priscilla outran.ks Aquila, let us not fear to put her name first. One ha~ but to read the last chapters of Romans to find that so early in Christian history woman was coming to the front; and the Church needs to recognize her Phrebes and Julias, ana. Marys and Priscillas, as God-gi.ven bestowments for the enriching of the Body of Christ, and the enlarging of His Kingdom.
CENTRAL AMERICA AS A MISSION FIELD.
BY F. DE P. CASTELLS, BELIZE, BRITISH HONDURAS.
Agent of the British and Foreign Bible Society.
Central America includes the territory lying between the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Southern Mexico, and the Isthmus of Panama, in the republic of Colombia. It includes the five republics of Guatemala, Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, and was discovered by Columbus in 1502, on his fourth voyage across the Atlantic Ocean. Long before this discovery Central America had been the seat of the highest civilization known in the Western Hemisphere. It had been the home of the most interesting of all American Indian tribes, the Mayan, which is now divided into the Mayas, Quiches, Cakchiquels, Mams, Tzutuhils, Quekchies, Pipils, Tzendals, etc. The remains of that ancient culture, traces of which are still extant, in its temples and palaces, its pyramids and its monuments, tho shamefully neglected, are most remarkable. They take us back fifteen hundred years or more before Christ, to the time when the celebrated empire of Xibalba, founded by Votan, was at its height. The decline of this empire was due to the advent of the Nahoas under the leadership of Gucumatz (the Quetzalcoatt of Mexican history), who, coming from the east in the century preceding the first of the common era, proved a disturbing element, which ultimately brought about i.ts overthrow.
In 1523 Cortez sent Pedro de Alvarado from Mexico, with express orders to conquer these Central American people. The rulers of the Quiches nation, who there exercised a sort of political supremacy over the rest, being apprised of it, proceeded to mass their forces before him, near the Olintepec river, where they fought stoutly to resist the invasion, but it was in vain. Unable to cope with the new-come "children of the sun," in a few weeks their whole country was turned into a province of Spain, and thenceforward became known as the vice-royalty of Guatemala. 'l'his order of things continued until September 15, 1821, when again by the will of the Spaniards (not of the aborigines), and with scarcely any fighting, Central America
CENTRAL AMERICA AS A MISSION FIELD
80 Mission Stations thus: 10 (>111:(' 3.
1. Jamaica Baptist :a.lissiollary Society. 2. Moravian Missionary Society. S. Wesleyan MissionarySociety. 4:. The Wesleyan Methodist Church ot Jamaica. r"r-t;"–'—j,—–L ~T~he~~Firere1:;M:e~th~o~di~st:M~nis~suiorncabry,SNocoitr"tthy.. ~5'..
9. TBhleiUOshhu&rcFhoorfeiE~nnglBainbdle. SOCiety} Itinerant 10. Agencies. 11. Amel'ican Bible Society.
RAILROAD8 _ _ _ _ __ PROPOSED CANAL8 _ _= SCALE OF MILES o~ 10~ 0 20~ 0 aoo PI-, Apulca R. ~?Jld Proyillenee :! 1) I (to Colombia) IWtR..:.
t,·'St. Alldrf' "- (to Colombia '0 Centrnl Amerlea ."—-:'0 Area I,tbmull of Po.namtL. (Colombia) 61,600 sq. m.
Costa Rlea (Republic) ~3.(()() ..
NIeD.ragua .4.,600 ..
llondul"u 46,400 01 Salvador 7,225 U Guatemala " 46,800 "
Chtap&!! and Yucatan (Medoo) 91,700 ,/ British llonduraa: ~n !rot",1. 832,00..5 sq. m.
00 JV Prepared 611 Po dB P. Castell. for The MiBrioMrV &vi4Jw. LoD!1tude WestJrom Gref'nwlch resumed an independent political life. At first all was united in one united republic, but later was divided into the five separate and autonomous states already mentioned.
The present extent and population of the various regions coming under the designation of Central America, are as follows: Isthmus of Panama, ..Area, 31,600 sq. m. Population, 350,000 Costa Rica……….. " 23,000 " " 320,000 Nicaragua……… " . 49,200 Honduras………… 46,400 650,000 Salvador. . . . . . . . . . . . . Guatemala. . . . . . . . . . . 7,225 " 500,000 Chiapas,Yucatan, etc. British Honduras. . . . 63,400 885,000 91,750 7,562 1,800,000 940,000 40,000 Total area……. .. 320,137 sq. m. Population, 5,485,000 As a missionary field Central America offers not a few attractions, chief of which iR that it is still comparatively virgin soil. Situated between the two oceans, the Atlantic and the Pacific, it nowhere exceeds five hundred miles in breadth, has about three thousand miles of coast with numerous ports open to the world's commerce, and can boast an average of fifteen souls to the square wile as against six
or seven of the republics of South America. 'rhe elements composing the population are approximately the following: White people ……………………. ,. 50 per 1,000, or 27<1,250 Pure Indians…………………….. 450" " "2,468,250 Mestizos (i. e., "mixed ")…….. …… 445" " 2,340,825 Negroes (African).. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. 55" 301,675 Central America is emphatically a land of volcanoes, of which there are altogether more than seventy. One of these, the" Irazu "
in Costa Rica, is one of the rare spots on the American Continent from which it is possible to see at once both the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans. On account of the mountains these countries also abound in rivers, twelve or more of which are navigable, and in numerous lakes, five of which have steamboats for carrying passengers along their shores. This, together .with the railroads either com- pleted or in construction, is gradually bringing every district within reach; and when the projected interoceanic canal has been cut, these facilities will be increased a hundred fold.
In these days the principal products of Central America are coffee, sugar, tobacco, coco, bananas, rubber, dye-woods, indigo, mahogany, silver, and gold. The lowlands along the coast are unhealthy; but the bulk of the population live in the mountainous regions of the interior, where they enjoy healthier conditions and a milder climate.
The seasons are two, a rainy one with southwest winds, lasting from May to October, and a dry one with northeast winds, when, except in the coast, no rain falls.
MISSIONARY SOCIETIES AN WORK.* The story of what has been done in the past for the evangelization of this charming field would be most helpful and instructive, but requires more space than is at our disposal; we shall therefore only give a summary of the work now carried on, with a few hints as to the great task that lies before us. In introducing the various organizations which are "provoking one another unto good works" in Central America, we- shall observe the historic order in which they have come.
The British and Foreign Bible Society has labored in Central America ever since 1812, when a grant of the Bible was made to the early settlers of the Bay of Honduras, the makers of the present British colony of that name. At the time it was still a criminal offense to introduce the Word of God into the Spanish territory; nevertheless there is evidence of the fact that large numbers of copies were smuggled into these provinces in various ways. Central America is now a separate agency of this society, and its employees are constantly endeavoring to fix the attention of the people on the Divine * One or two societies, like the S. P. G., that have missions in Central America, are not mentioned here because they work only among English·speaking people and not among the natives.-EDIToR.
CEN~AL AMERicA AS A MISSION FIELD. i71
Message, of which quite a number are put in circulation in the course of each year. We can not say that the society has conquered the will of the people, but there are good proofs of its having won the respect of a large section, having been awarded a gold medal at the Oentral America Exposition of 1897, having been allowed the use of the Guatemala State Press for the pu blication of Scriptures in the vernacular, having been freely eulogized by the Recular press, and having been granted various facilities intended to promote its success.
Next comes the Anglican Ohurch (S. P. G.) with its center in Belize, British Honduras, and presided over by the truly missionary bishop of that see. This work also dates back to the early days of British occupation, when chaplains were sent along with the governors both of that colony and of the Mosquito Coast. The number of the clergymen is sixteen, of whom nine, with eleven local preachers or "lay readers," are distributed along the Atlantic Ooast of the Oentral American republic, doing excellent work in promoting the RAPTIST CHunCH OF EAST INDI.A.NS IN COSTA RICA.
spiritual welfare of the people. Some of these clergymen have done good among the natives as well, especially where they come in contact with aboriginal tribes.
The Jamaica Baptist Missionary Society works in Belize, in the islands of the Bay of Honduras, Ruatan, and Bonaca; in the islands off the Eastern coast of Nicaragua, St. Andrew's, and Old Providence; in the eastern basin of the republic of Oosta Rica; a little further south in the Ohiriqui Lagoon, and on the Isthmus of Panama. The Baptist work was begun in 1822, when the English B. M. S. (the mother society of the above) sent a missionary to Belize. This led to • the formation of a church which, tho left to support itself in 1847,
MORAVIAN SCHOOLBOYS IN BLUEFIELDS, MOSQUITO COAST, NICARAGUA.
These schools were recently closed by order of the Nicaraguan Government because they were not entirely conducted In the SpanIsh language. They.educated the people too well to suit the corrupt government officials.
continued to do this nobly and to act as a missionary force in the regions round about the colony. 'rhe work in the south originated in 1887 by the coming of two ministers from Jamaica, and comprises a score or so of Christian assemblies in as many different localities, and most of which possess already some sort of a meeting-house. One remarkable feature of the work is the East Indian congregation which has been gathered at Banana River, a few miles south of Port Limon. Quite recently this mission of Costa Rica has become incorporated, and is, therefore, the first Protestant corporation that has ever obtained recognition in this part of the world.
The Moravian Brethren entered Central America in 1817, when they occupied Bluefields, and since then they have multiplied their stations along the whole of the Mosquito Coast, on the Atlantic side of Nicaragua. At that time, the coast was a British protectorate, but in 1860 the protectorate was abandoned, and it became an Indian reservation under the suzerainty of Nicaragua. At present the mission has work at fourteen points, with over five thousand converts, and a staff of thirty and more paid workers, the complete evangelization of the Mosquito tl'ibe being thus assured. For some years in Nicaragua, as the Clericals were in power, Protestant missionaries were jealously excluded. But in 1890 the Moravians obtained permission to follow their converts across the limits of the Mosquito Coast into the republic, while in ]893, when the Radicals had driven out the Clericals, a new constitution was adopted which removed all barriers, while the Mosquito Coast itself was turned into a departamento, or "province," of the Republic. One of the missionaries, Rev.
CENTRAL AMERICA AS A MISSION FIELD
W. Sieborjer, has translated the New 'restament into the Mosquito. language, the first edition of which was printed in Germany in 1888.
It was in 1883 that the Wesleyan Methodist Mission of British Honduras (which originated in 1826), began sending preachers to Livingston, a seaport in Guatemala, and to Puerto Cortez, in the republic of Honduras. These efforts were attended with some blessing, and accordingly, in 1887, a minister, the Rev. Owen Jones, was sent for permanent work to San Pedro de Sula, where in a short time he was enabled to open a school under municipal patronage and support. The report of the missi?n for the ensuing year describes the MORAVIAN INDIANS AND THEIR HOME IN CENTRAL AMERICA.
work as promising to be the beginning of an advance which erelong may help to link the Spain of the Old World with its representative in the New. Unfortunately, a few years after, this very successful man succumbed to the yellow fever scourge, and since then the mission has not been able to find him a successor, tho the work in the Bag islands and at Puerto Cortez continues, the former under an ordained minister, and the latter under a local preacher.
The American Presbyterian Olwrch, North, has a mission in Merida, the capital of Yucatan, and another in the republic of Guatemala. The growth of both has been slow but steady. The Guatemala mission originated in 1882, and now it comprises three churches in three very important centers of population, with a staff of two missionaries, with their wives, a lady assistant, and three native evangelists.· The Spanish work was commenced in 1884. President Rufino
Barrios, the Cromwell of Guatemala, offered many encouragements to this mission, giving them land and sending his own children to the Sunday-school, but the missionaries have had to learn that it is "better to trust in the Lord, than to put confidence in princes."
Toward the end of 1891 a new agency, organized by the Rev. C. I. Scofield, D.D., and some business men of Dallas, Texas, under the name of the Oentral American Mission, sent a man to Costa Rica, to learn Spanish, and to inaugurate a new work. This mission has now developed in such a way as to have, in Costa Rica, one married man with three young ladies who assist; in Nicaragua, one married man; in Salvador, one married man; in Honduras, three men (married), and five lady assistants; in Guatemala, two married men and four ladies. Some of these brethren have not been long enough in the field to acquire the language, but already there are small Christian communities organized at eight different points, and according to the latest Bulletin published by the directors, the present outlook is excellent. This mission is worked on independent lines.
In 1892 the American Bible Society also sent two men (its own agents for Peru and Venezuela) to reconnoitre this field, and in the following year one of them was appointed as the society's special representative in the field, with residence in Guatemala. Under him there are at present four or five colporteurs traveling about with their Bibles, apparently with some success.
WHAT REMAINS TO BE DONE.
Having given the above resume of what the Ohristian Ohurch has attempted in Oentral America, we may now be permitted to point out some important features of the task that remains to be done.
, I. English WorTe: We fear that it is not realizeu that the Atlantic coast of Oentral America, tho unhealthy, is destined to become the habitation of the people who are forced to emigrate from the overpopulated islands of the West Indies. Nevertheless it is a fact that even now the bulk of the population along that coast, from Yucatan to Oolombia, is made up of English-speaking negroes from those islauds, of whom there are already three hundred thousand or more, all of them of course professedly Protestants. Where the missionaries have followed them up, tho at first it has been uphill work, we may see them settling down contentedly, only too proud to have their little shanties next beside the modest place of worship. But elsewhere, not being, in any sense, the best samples of the race, but rather the opposite, they exhibit a tendency to develop a sort of pandemonium. Hence the urgent need of religious effort among them, a need which is increasing in the same proportion as the surplus of the population of the overcrowded Antilles continues to flock toward this side. Just now there is room for twenty or thirty more missionaries
CENTRAL AMERICA AS A MISSION FIELD
to occupy as many points where settlements are being formed without any provision whatever for religious teaching.
II. Indian Work: 'rhen there are the poor aboriginal trihes5 the unreclaimed, undomesticated Indians, to be found in the out-of-the- way places, all over the mountainous regions inland. These people have a strong claim on our sympathy, for they have been oppressed and downtrodden as no other people ever were. They number upward of two millions, and the vast majority can understand nothing but their own primitive dialects. Tho poor and uncultured, the writer has found them very susceptible to kindness. At present the British and Foreign Bible Society and the Moravian Brethren are the only Christian agencies working among them. But if any others will undertake the Apostolic work of evangelizing these people, the former has already four different versions of the Gospels at their dis- posal, viz., one for use among the Mayas of Yucatan and Peten; another for the Quiches of Western Guatemala; another for the Cakchiquels, immediate neighbors of the Quiches; and another for the Caribs, who dwell in the settlements around the Bay of Honduras; which versions, it may be added, are already in circulation among those folks. The Roman Catholic Church claims all the Indians as her adherents, but there are at least five hundred thousand of them who have never been christened at all and who have no knowledge whatever of Christianity, being still absolutely pagan.
III. Spanish Work: Lastly, there are the so-called Central American" natives," who have been the makers of these republics, who speak the Spanish language and have more or less Spanish blood in their veins, but who are llevertheless still mostly Indians. These too call loudly for compassion from us, their condition, socially, morally, and politically, being unspeakably sad. "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the tru th in unrighteousness." These people are often described as Ohristians, but being grossly ignorant of the Bible, they present a most shocking spectacle; for, having changed the truth of God into a lie, they bow down before most grotesque images and systematically worship the creature more than the Creator. It would doubtless be more accurate to say that the religion prevailing among them is an adaptation of the fetishism of their ancestors, brought about by the apostate church, which (supported by brute force) imposed its empty ceremonies without any previous" change of mind." The efforts hitherto spent on these natives have already borne much blessed fruit; but what are these in comparison to the great needs of the field?
In Central America there are found at least one hundred towns with a population of from eight thousand to one hundred thousand souls, still to be occupied, as indeed there are a thousand and more
villages where the Gospel has never been proclaimed. And this, too, next door to a British colony, and only three days' sailing from New Orleans! The people have already weaned their country from its former vassalage to the pope, and tho they be not free from bigotry, they yet live under liberal laws which guarantee the preaching and the work of the Gospel. The field is an extensive one, and therefore there is ample scope for the employment of every gift; pastors to organize congregations among the foreign Protestants sojourning in our midst; itinemntpreachers to reach those who are scattered throughout the five republics; men with a knowledge of Spanish to preach in the large cities; Christian teachers of either sex for school work; evangelists with a strong constitution, to reach the Indians in their wilds; medical missionaries and nurses; printers to provide the necessary literature; farmers who will set up industrial missions, for which, indeed, there is a grand outlook; colporteurs that will go scattering the Word.
One can easily find countries in other directions that have as large and even larger populations, quite as needy and perhaps more neglected; but we do not find anywhere a field at once so easily reached, so freely open to missionaries, so fruitful and so inviting as Central America has been shown to be. Why then are there so few who think of this field? The Church can not be blamed if the missionaries do not go to countries from which they are excluded; but not to send them where they are sought for and hailed, is both a sin and a shame. When last year the president of Honduras visited the Bay Islands he told the Protestant workers there that he would be glad to see them come to the interior; and other presidents have been known to give similar invitations in behalf of the other states. Let us hope that the publication of these facts will draw the hearts of some to this very needy part of the Lord's vineyard.
THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR MOVEMENT TO MISSIONS.* BY REV. FRANCIS E. CLARK, D.D., BOSTON, .MASS. Founder and President of the United Society for Christian Endeavor.
The contribution of the Christian Endeavor movement to missions has been threefold. First and least, perhaps, the money contributions of the societies. These have been by no means inconsiderable. In fact in the aggregate they amount to millions of dollars. The contributions which are known to have been given by the societies to missions through their own churches and denominational boards have often amounted to more than two hundred thousand dollars in a single • The United Society for Christian Endeavor has just celebrated its ~Oth anniversary in Portland, Maine, February 2, 1901.
CHRISTIAN ENDEA VOR MOVEMENT AND MISSIONS
year, with a considerably larger sum given for home expenses and other benevolent causes of a local character. These records of gifts have been far from complete and probably do not give one·half the total of contributions of a single year.
During these twenty years, then, it is fair to say that the contri- butions of the societies for distinctively missionary causes at home or abroad have not aggregated less than five millions of dollars. Thai this is largely an "extra asset" of the missionary cause is proved by an exhaustive study which I made two or three years ago of the receipts of many denominational boards, both home and foreign. This study proved that the gifts from all "young people's sources," Sunday- schools, mission bands, Endeavor societies and the like, had during the past fifteen years increased by about the sum contributed by young people's societies alone. In these same boards the receipts from other sources had remained nearly stationary and sometimes decreased, while the money received from young people's sources had very materi- ally increased.
The constant plea with the young people from all Christian Endeavor leaders has been" give, and give freely for the advancement of the Kingdom, give regularly, systematically, proportionately; give as a rule through accredited channels, and of course only as your church approves; not simply when your emotions are stirred, but from a sense of duty and from Jove of Christ."
That these appeals have not been without effect I think is shown by the facts above cited. The society has asked very little for itself, but has always striven to be the modest handmaid of every missionary organization in all the churches.
2. But more important than the amonnt that has been directly contributed by the society in dollars and cents has been the interest that has been awakened in missionary themes. In its spirit and pur- pose from the beginning to the present day the Christian Endeavor movement has been a missionary movement. It was, in a way, the outgrowth of a mission circle. The first society formed in Williston Church in Portland, Maine, on the evening of February 2, twenty years ago, had been preceded in that church by the" Mizpah Mission Circle" of boys and girls, who, under the lead of the pastor's wife, had met week by week for many months at the parsonage to talk about missions, to pray for the missionaries, and to work for their support. Most of the members of this mission circle were among the charter members of the first Christian Endeavor society. From that day to this the society has never lost its missionary character or impulse. Every great convention for twenty years has rung with the missionary motive, and the most eloquent speakers on both sides of the water have found their most congenial themes in this great worlq- embracing idea. . .
In later years other movements within the wider Ohristian Endeavor movement, and inspired by it, have supplemented and reinforced the earlier efforts. Almost every society has its missionary committee. Four times a year, and in some societies every month, a missionary meeting is held which is as regularly provided for as the consecration meeting or any other feature of the society. Ohristian Endeavor Day, the second of February, is distinctly marked by a special contribution for missions, the amount raised being given as the church directs to its own denominational boards. Within the last few years two movements have been started within the society which promise large things for the future. One is called" The Tenth Legion," in which are enrolled those who promise to give at least Olle.-tenth of their income to God's work in the world. Already nearly twenty thousand are recorded in this list, most of them young people with their fortunes to make, whose gifts will grow with their increasing years.
Another effort along this line is called" The Macedonian Phalanx," which records the names of societies and individuals whose effort is to support a native worker or a missionary, either wholly or in part. thus having their representative at work on the other side of the world while they are at work on tbis side. Already many of those who have heard the Macedonian cry "Oome over and help us," are enrolled in this "phalanx." A great many missionaries in different boards are entirely supported by Ohristian Endeavor societies or grou138 of societies at home. Still more native workers are cared for, and the number is constantly growing, and the living links between the missionaries who stay at home and the missionaries who go abroad are ever being forged.
3. More interesting possibly, and certainly more picturesque, is the history of the Ohristian Endeavor movement in the actual missionary field. It was very soon found that the society was quite as weIr adapted to the mission church as to the church at home, that young Ohristians could be trained by these methods in India and Ohina as well as in America, and in mission lands there are very few who may not be classed as "young Ohristians."
The first society outside of America was not formed, as might have been supposed, in England or Australia (tho the growth of the movement in these countries has been very large), but in Ohina. Early in 1885, four years after the first society was formed in Portland, Maine, a young missionary transplanted a graft of the original plant to Ohinese soil, where it has flourished and grown strong during these last fifteen years. Now in the neighborhood of Fuchau (Foochow), where this first society in mission lands was established, there are over fifty organizations of this sort in the churches of the American Board Itnd of the Ohurch Missionary Society of England, and one of the mOl'lt
CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR MOVEMENT AND MISSIONS
inspIrIng conventions that I ever attended was held last April in Foochow, where some fifteen hundred long-queued, slant-eyed, yellow- skinned Celestials came together, wearing their Christian Endeavor badges, and all intent upon receiving the same blessing that the young people of America expect to receive in their annual conventions.
There, as here, distinctive Christian Endeavor themes are dis- cussed, the importance of the pledge and the prayer meeting, the value of the consecration service, and the use of the committees in training the members for practical service in the Kingdom. Above all, the missionary theme was exalted, and the thought of world-wide Christianity and the dominance of the religion of the Nazarene was the inspiring thought there as it has so often been in America.
In Japan t.here is a vigorous Christian Endp-avor spirit in many sections of the empire. The movement is largely under native con- trol, and the prospects for growth are better than ever. In Tokio there are thirteen Christian Endeavor societies, with a regularly con- stituted union, such as exists in nearly every city in America.
In India the society has found a very large field of usefulness. It was early introduced into Ceylon by some devoted American missionaries and from there it has spread into all parts of the empire. There is now a United Society of Christian Endeavor for India, Burma, and Ceylon which numbers in its union over five hundred local societies. A secretary has just been called from America, Rev. F. S. Hatch, the honored president of the Massachusetts Christian Endeavor Union, to lead the forces thmughout this part of the British domain.
In Madagascar there were at one time nearly a hundred societies in the capital city alone and its vicinity. 'These were somewhat disturbed and broken up by the French occupation, but lately many have been reorganized and are apparently doing as good work as ever.
In several of the Marshall Islands, as well as in some parts of Samoa and other islands of the South Sea, the societies have been conspicuously successful in arousing new zeal among the converts, in opening their mouths in testimony, and setting their hands and feet at work for the Master.
At the convention in San Francisco, three years ago, no less than twenty Endeavorers, many of them native Hawaiians, came from the Sandwich Islands to bring their greetings. :From the Laos country, from Turkey, and from some parts of Syria, come reports of exceptionally good work.
In the missions in papal countries, too, the society of late has become a very considerable factor, especially in Mexico and Spain. In the latter country so much is it fe'ared by the fanatical priests that everything was done at a convention which I attended in Sarragossa last summer to arouse the mob spirit to drive the Endeavorers Qut of town and defeat the convention. The fervent appeals of th.e
daily newspapers, however, to destroy this "latest heresy" and the machinations of the priest had little effect, and the convention was declared by missionaries who were present to have been the most important Protestant gathering held in Spain for the last twenty-five years.
Endeavorers can humbly thank God, as they revieV' the past, for the gracious and abundant harvest which he has allowed to spring from the little seed planted twenty years ago, and can take fresh courage for new and larger missionary service at home and abroad in the twenty years to come.
THE EVANGELIZATION OF NEW YORK CITY.
BY MISS HELEN F. CLARK, NEW YORK. Director of the Evangel Band Work, 21 Mott Street.
The evangelization of New York City is a problem of increasing interest and seriousness. The greatness of the city's population and the numerical weakness of Protestant Christians are facts that are beginning to force themselves upon us. According to Greenleaf, the first historian to sum up the numerical strength of the evangelical churches, in 1845 13.5 per cent. or 50,131 of the population, were Protestant church members. In 1890, altho the Federal census showed evangelical communicants to the number of 133,596, yet the population had increased so that this number represented only 8.8 per cent. of the whole number of inhabitants. A later computation, made from the denominational year books of 1896, shows that this proportion has still further decreased to 7.3 per cent. A decrease of five per cent. in forty-five years, and of one and a half per cent. in six years, is sufficient to make us pause and question as to the cause.
When New York was first colonized, the Dutch settlers established a Protestant church when the little village numbered but 270 persons. This was the only church on Manhattan Island for seventy years, and then two new ones were formed, which divided the city's population into one thousand four hundred per church. At the end of the first century of New York's existence there were five Protestant churches, or one for everyone thousand seven hundred of her population. A few years later there was a stimulation of religious zeal, and churches were multiplied so that for nearly forty years this proportion of churches to the population was considerably increased. But in 1800 the proportion of churches had again decreased, and while there were twenty-three evangelical bodies, there were two thousand six hundred persons to each. Protestant effort again awoke, however, and for half a century the evangelicals not only kept pace with the populat!on, but gained upon it.
THE EVANGELIZATION OF NEW YORK CITY
But since 1850 this has not been the case. We have not only failed to gain upon the population in the proportion of churches to the number of inhabitants, but we have failed to even keep pace with the natural growth of the city, so that to-day we have but one evan- gelical church organization to every five thousand five hundred per- sons in the boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx. Protesants are not losing in actual numbers, but the increase in no wise keeps pace with the increase of people. We have nQt to-day as many church members, or as many church organizations to the population, as we had in 1850, and thus in ratio we are decreasing year by year.
What is the cause of all this? One cause is, of course, lack of aggressive effort upon the part of evangelical Christians. But there is a second and very great cause, which is but dimly comprehended by the majority of Christians, namely, the large influx of foreigners into this city. Had New York city not been a port of entry, it is more than probable that evangelical churches never would have fallen behind as they have in the last half century. The following table, compiled from the Federal census of 1890, shows the proportion of Americans and foreigners in New York city in that year: Foreign born. . . . . . . . .. . ……………………………… 42 per cent. Persons, natives, whose parents, one or both, were born abroad………………………………………….. 38 Persons, natives, whose parents were both born in America 19 Foreign born and Americans of foreign ancestry. . . . . . . . . .. 80 Americans of the second generation.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 19 The following nationalities are found in New York: English Hungarians Italians Welsh Bohemians Swiss Canadians Rumanians Fins Irish Armenians North Africans Scotch Greeks Cubans French Arabians South Americans Corsicans Damascenes Central Americans Germans Egyptians .Mexicans Poles Belgians Pacific Islanders Russians Portuguese Chinese Scandinavians Spaniards Japanese Hindus. Turks Etc.
The foreigners have not entered New York in small numbers; scattering through the city, and partaking of our customs and life until their identity as aliens has become obliterated. On the contrary, they have come by the thousands. They have massed together, occupying great sections of the city, nationality by nationality, until the terms " Jewish colony," "Italian colony," "Chinese colony," are familiar words.. They have not adopted American customs and ideas, but instead they have preserved their own speech and teach it to their children, reproducing as far as possible their life in the fatherland.
Except upon the part of the children who enter our public schools, and so imbibe something of the American spirit, there is little movement toward Americanization. To make as much money as possible, and live according to their own idea of comfo~,t, perpetuating their own tongue and religion, seems to be the aim of their life.
Most of these immigrants are extremely poor. Many work for a mere pittance, and in hunger and nakedness save a little, until after years of effort they can at last secure a little business of their own, or a better position, and so rent a separate apartment and buy enough food for satisfying meals. Poverty forces them to herd together and makes their neighborhood objectionable. Americans with more money and enlightenment will not live in lor,alities filled with these poor foreigners. Hence, with the ingress of the immigrants comes the egress of the Americans, and also, unfortunately, the egress of the American church.
CHURCHES MOVING UPTOWN.
Many greatly blame the churches for removing from districts below Fourteenth Street and for leaving these great masses of people with no places of Protestant worship. Upon them has been laid the whole blame for the present deplorable state of religion in New York. So general has this movement become that some, in earnestness and conscientiousness, are asking the question, "Is it not possible for an English church to take root and grow below Fourteenth Street?" In the writer's opinion, it is not. It is not possible because there is not a sufficient population of Americans from which to draw. We slander Ohristian- church-members if we ascribe these removals to hardness of heart and wilful neglect of duty. The English-speaking churches have simply found it impossible to sustain themselves or to increase their membership in such localities.
But if the American church considers itself only as an English church and limits its field to Americans, it does a colossal wrong. The church is first of all the Ohurch of Ohrist, for all time and for all people, and is bound, by the very spirit which gave it birth, to propagate itself among all nationalities. As Ohristians we have unquestionably as strong a duty to the hundreds of thousands of foreigners who have come to New York as we have to those of our own nation.
Many Ohristians have urged that our American churches should reach out and gather in these foreigners, and preach to them and convert them. It is a beautiful theory that all churches should open their doors and welcome these new members of the fold of Ohrist into their bosom without reference to nationality; but it is a theory that does not work, not because of the coldness of the uptown American Ohristian, but because of the mental characteristics of the two people. The uneducated foreigner, tho he be genuinely converted,
THE EVANGELIZATION OF NEW YORK CITY
and endued with the spirit of his Master, does not comprehend intellec- tual presentation of truth, A ,.r.o.l&tlll1 nor will he find the pleas- 4….. , sE; ~),"'~1J:1.4'"
ure in fellowship with a N.t i v~.
cuI t 11 red congregllttion .It.1NutS that he will find among 3'1- , 1-/~ E"<ln~~hL41 C/u,."),, his own simple people .27, ~21 meeting to worship in ('J:tl.r~n ,,"'., .f S~nci..y their native ton g u e. fo,oo() True kindness is to give " " St him his own church, and to wait for a later genera- tion, benefited by our free education, before we ?
insist upon their union £ rNeG;o·;S.
with our Am er i ca n IriSh churches. These poor. foreigners learn the sweet ~ ~ . ~~ lessons of the Gospel, so • wondrously fitted for the ; ~ need of every human. heart, far more quickly: ~ than they put on Ameri- ~ ~ can ideas and customs…. .>Ii The American and foreign churches are almost as dissimilar in New York ~ Ji …… l .t …11. ~ H~; "/J, as they are in the foreign r~: .~;J;1. :'4-" ';'''' fields. w, :;• .T.-·': , ••. '~ ". " ••.
It may be urged that n""…………t- tl, there are still American 6klluy : Icl~l 5$1. (JIll churches below Four- teenth Street which are doing a progressive work.
So far from denying the truth of what has been stated they illustrate and enforce it. Of the seven- ty-five e v an gel i cal churches in this region forty are working among the foreigners and the children of foreigners, or '
are themselves' foreign churches, while the remainder are struggling to exist, and their ministers are preaching to decreasing numbers year by year.
While foreign churches are the greater necessity, there is also a large and far-reaching work which may be done in this locality by American churches, even those which confine themselves to the nse of the English tongue, and that is the work among the youth. The majority of those under fifteen years o(age speak English':'-'-at least, enough to comprehend simple Sunday-school teaching. By means of the modern Sunday-school, or, when inherited prejudices prevent them from attend- ing the Sunday-school, by means of the library, gymnasium, industrial school, or club, a great and fruitful work may be done among these classes. But all these things must be accompanied at every session by simple, tactful Gospel preaching and the presentation of the Word of God, or they fail to accomplish the desired end-namely, the Christianization of the people. Gymnasiums and reading-rooms will yield no precious fruit in the salvation of lost souls without the preaching of the Gospel. Stereopticon lectures may fill a church, but will not convert the audience without the presentation of the Word and its message of grace. Attending a church cIuL will not regenerate a man or woman. These things have their rightful place as adjuncts to Gospel preaching, but should never take its place. They are merely the net which draws a man within sound of the Gospel preaching, and as such they are commendable. The tendency to forego Gospel preaching in institutional churches is too often apparent, and some congregations have spent large sums in this work without any tangible results in the conversions of men and women, or any apparent change in the moral atmosphere of their neighborhood.
There are in Greater New York and Brooklyn over 2,200,000 people who have no affiliation with any religious body, Protestant, Catholic, Jew, ~cientist, Spiritualist, or any other, unless it be with some pagan religion. How are these people to be evangelized? What was the apostolic method, the method divinely appointed by our Lord for the salvation of the world ? We may answer in a few words: To go to the people and to preach to them wherever they might be found.
Peter did not wait to build a chapel before he preached at Pentecost. Paul did not real' a tent or fit up a hall ere he proclaimed free grace to dying men. The Mastel' himself, while He sometimes used the synagog or the temple, never built one, nor commanded one to be built. He went among the people and preached wherever he found them-sowing or reaping, eating and drinking. He stopped to give His healing draught to a sin-cursed soul by a well-side, and He called to a royal service the fishers by the sea. He waited not for careless man to seek Him, but with a grace and condescension only possible to God, He sought out man.
TIlE EVANGELIZATlON OF NEW YORK CITY
Alas, we have forgotten the Master's way! To stand within well- built walls, under the softened light from many-colored windows, with refined natures and the intelligent faces of believers around us, has been easier than the rugged, tumultuous way of Paul. The multitude clamor, and among them are the scornful and unbelieving, and sometimes the persecutors, and we find it hard to stand before them. It is easier to preach to the sympathizing Christians, and if, perchance, an unbeliever enters, we will thank God and do our best to convert him. But to go out, to seek the multitude, away from harmonious surroundings, away from friendly faces, it is hard, it is very hard.
But in this work there is a blessing which no man knows except he who does it, and learns to do it well. This we believe to be the method which must be used to save New York.
GO WHERE THE PEOPLE ARE.
No amount of preaching indoors will ever convert the vast masses whose church is the highway, and whose God is their own fleshly desires. Until their attention is arrested and their consciences wakened they will not enter a place of worship, and it is folly to think otherwise. However advantageous church buildings and chapels may be on the whole, the time for much building in that line in lower New York has yet to come. 1'here is at present no such general turning toward religion as shall justify it. More than this, men and women born in Roman Catholic countries, or of the Hebrew race, are full of prejudice against, if not of hatred for, the Protestant faith, and they can scarcely be induced to enter a Protestant church. The unpretentious missions have been less repugnant to them, and are, to my mind, far better fitted for this peculiar kind of work than the best chapel we can build.
Most emphatically do we believe, however, that the greater part of our Gospel preaching among this class of our population should be done outside the walls of the church or mission. It should be done upon the street, in the courtyards, in the hallways, in the saloons, in the family living-rooms, wherever a man or woman will listen. The mission and the church should be the meeting-place for believers, and for instruction of inquirers. If we limit our evangelization to only that which we can do indoors, blessed as that portion of our preaching may be, we shall never evangelize New York.
Some years ago the writer with a few young friends went to the crowded portions of the larger Italian quarter to test the practicability of such work. We were simply an evangelizing band, with no mission or society behind us, and no minister or evangelist with us. We carried autoharps, hymn books, and a New Testament. We had no license to preach upon the streets, but we went to the tenements. It was summer-time, and we passed through the long, dark hallways, or
down the gloomy alleys, to the courtyards between the front and rear houses. Here we found women washing and sewing, or groups of men drinking and carousing at tables. With the utmost deference we asked permission to sing, and then we steadied our harps on a ~eer keg or window-ledge while we played and sang Gospel hymns. The people listened attentively. Often their games were forgotten, and the cards fell from their hands. Many left their beer glasses and came and stood around us. After the singing we spoke to them, presenting the Gospel message as simply and directly as we could, and they heeded as men who are hungering for truth.
In one place a crowd of women surrounded us, women whose faces wore that settled sadness, that utter hopelessness which we often see upon the countenance of the idol-worshipers of the East. I shall never forget the eagerness with which these women asked repeatedly, "Is it true?" as we told them of the tender love of God and the full salvation wrought out by the Divine Son. They begged us again and again. to return and teach them often, but the prejudices of their neighbors and husbands against our religion soon after shut us out from that courtyard, and we were not permitted to return. 0, Ohristian men and women, this great city is hungering for the Gospel even as are those dark cities of the Orient! Why should we not give it to them?
At another time we had sung and talked until the sun had gone down over the black roofs of the tenements, yet one woman would not let us go. When she saw that we were tired, she took hold of my arm and begged, "Oome into my saloon and preach; come, there's plenty room there. I make you sit down." When at last we left it was with the promise that we would obtain a license and preach on the street in front of her saloon the next Sunday, for the people crowded into the courtyard to suffocation. We kept this promise, and many an hour since have we preached in front of her door, and we have never failed to have an audience. Many times hundreds of men have stood in the warmth of the summer sun or in the snow and exposed to the bleak winds of winter. The people have never refused to hear, and have never been the first to leave. As the fruit of this work there are to-day scores of men living a faithful Christian life, members of Christian churches, and now in turn helping to evangelize their neighborhoods.
If such singing bands should go throughout New York, uptown as well as downtown, preaching upon the street, or in the courts, or in the hallways, wherever men or women would listen; following it up by personal work among inquirers, it would not be long before we would be breasting the current of irreligion in New York. If we would in addition establish a system of inexpensive missions, each costing about one thousand dollars a year, and each the center for an
THE EVANGELIZATION OF NEW YORK CITY
evangelizing band, and multiply them throughout the city, we would soon see little Christian committees in all our places of religious destitution, and even these poor and illiterate foreigners would begin to praise God.
But for such a task among such a conglomerate people special agents are needed. They are-the English-speaking evangelist, the native evangelist, the colporteur, native or speaking the foreign tongue, and the American clergy and lay workers for'the youths and children who understand the English tongue. 'rhese agents need preparation for the work.
I know of no more difficult task than to tell the way of salvation in a few clear, powerful sentences. In a street meeting a certain element stands patiently listening hour after hour, and returns to the recurring services. But hundreds of others come and go, listening for a longer or shorter time. Perhaps they have never heard the Gospel before. They may never hear it again. 'rhe problem that presents itself to the street preacher is, therefore, how to present the truth so that it will lodge in the mind of the listener who may stand but a moment, and be so comprehensible to him that that single message may be the means of his salvation, if he lays hold upon it. There seelllS almost rOOlll for a new school of theology to teach preachers this art. Yet it can be learned, and from such preaching I h/tve known men to be saved who, after months in distant cities, came back to tell us of the one message they had heard in a few moment's pause on the outer edge of the crowd, a message which was still ringing in their ears, and which had become a well-spring of joy in their souls.
But t.his street preaching, while it may be done by laymen, or by the pastors of churches, and may become a blessing both to the workers and the people, is best done by the evangelist. The man whom the Almighty especially fits for this work is the one of all others to go into these broad fields so white to the harvest. Upon the street one may preach to thousands in a day, while but a few score of the unconverted can be induced to come to the church. How much greater is the joy when we stand before a multitude of waiting ones and cast the net out into the deep.
The colporteur also needs his training, and with it he may accomplish a glorious mission in this great city, and by his personal work and the distribution of the Scriptures he may augment to a surprising degree the work of the evangelist.
I knew one colporteur who entered saloons and gambling dens, who sold tracts and Bibles before theaters and dance-halls, and who made his way into dives; and in all places he found men and women who were hungering for the truth, and took it eagerly from his hands. Conversions, some notable conversions, resulted. He was one of the noblest missionaries that ever worked in New York, but the church
that commissioned him found it difficult to raise twenty-five dollars per month toward his support, and recalled him from his field.
Perhaps some may explain, "But these are foreign mission methods." They are indeed, for it is foreign mission work which we have before us in New York. Not only do alien tongues confound us, but alien ideas, alien customs, almost diverse civilizations. Idolatry of the grossest forms, with the horrid slavery and sale of women, as well as the paganism of Eastern Europe, to-day confront the worker in lower New York.
We must view our task unflinchingly, not hiding our eyes from its hard conditions, nor shrinking from its immensity, lest irreligion become lawlessness, and we some day reap the fruit of neglected duty in tears, impotent to stem its awful tide.
THE NEGLECTED FACTOR IN CITY SAVING.
BY REV. SAMUEL ZANE BATTEN, M.A., MORRISTOWN, N. J.
Cities are the strategic points in the world's evangelization. The early disciples of the Lord Jesus gave a great part of their labors to the cities of their day. Name the important cities of the Roman world, and you have named the cities in which the apostle Paul chiefly labored: Antioch, Ephesus, Philippi, Corinth, Athens, Rome. In Ephesus he worked for three years, winning many converts, with the result that" all they which dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord."
Times have changed, but the strategic importance of the city has increased rather than lessened. '1'he marked drift of people toward the cities is characteristic of all nations. Cities are everywhere gaining in wealth and numbers out of all proportion to the gain of the country districts. Thus it is coming to pass that the problem of the world's redemption is fast becoming the problem of the evangelization of the cities.
In the face of these two facts, the strategic importance of the city and the steady and disproportionate gain of the city, we find another fact which may well cause alarm: the Gospel is not gaining in the cities in anything like the same proportion as the population. New York is perhaps hardly a typical American city on account of the large foreign population. But in this metropolis we find the culmination of tendencies that are at work in all our cities. The various evangelical churches little more than hold their own from year to year. The social and political condition of the city is deplorably bad. The doctrine of solidarity shows us that the redemption of the city's life must cover all the relations of man's being and all the spheres of his interest. The religious and the social, the moral and the political
THE·NEGLECTED FACTOR IN CITY SAVING
life of a city must all be improved together. To save our cities we must touch men at all levels and influence them in all relations.
Many earnest and devoted workers are giving their lives and their money to forward the Kingdom of God in our cities, and many patriotic and intelligent citizens are laboring to improve and transform the political life of their communities. But with it all our cities are not being redeemed. Ernest H. Crosby has said that he can take the map of any American city, and, without knowing the local situation, he can name the wealthy district and the poor districts by the one fact of the presence or the absenoo of churches. The uptown movement on the part of churches and church-members has continued without observation until now we find that the wealthy, moral, pleasant uptown districts have large, commodious, and wellequipped churches, while the poor, crowded, neglected downtown districts are almost churchless, having here and there only a poorly equipped mission hall. 1'he feeling is growing among the rank and file of the people that the churches are for the few and the missions are for the many. From many facts that have come within the range of our experience, we fear that there is only too good ground for this complaint. All honor to the devoted workers who are toiling in the downtown mission halls seeking. to win men to Jesus Christ. All honor also to the generous givers in the churches who are making these missions possible. All honor, too, to the brave and patriotic men who are sacrificing ease and comfort in their efforts to illustrate and inculcate a higher and better citizenship. But when we have recognized all these factors there remains another factor quite too generally forgotten or ignored which is the most important factor of all.
THE FACTOR OF PERSONAL CONTACT.
Nothing can ever be a substitute for close personal contact of life with life. When Christ wanted to save the world, He did not draw a check or write a tract, or commission a delegate; on the contrary, He Himself came down to live among men as one of themselves. In all our afflictions He Himself was afflicted, being tempted in all points like as we are, and allowing no line of social cleavage, ecclesiastical prejudice or personal interest to separate him from his brother men. Before this world can be redeemed unto God the men and the women who bear the name of Christ must fulfil in their lives thc same mind that Christ fulfilled when He left the throne and came down to live with us. The highest good is for all meu, and we must never rest till the downmost man is lifted up into the possession and appreciation of the highest good.
How can this great end be attained? City mission societies are doing splendid work; various philanthropic and charitable organizations are attempting to fulfil the mind of Christ. Good government
clubs and citizens' leagues are seeking to create a higher type of citizenship; but over and above these societies and organizations something else is needed: the personal contact of life with life. The effectiveness of these organizations grows out of their fulfilment of this very law. Mr. Charles Loring Brace, whose devotion to Jesus Christ, and whose knowledge of men no one will question, has declared: In religious communities, such as the English and American, there is too great confidence in technical religious means. The mistake we refer to is too great use of, or confidence in, the old technical methods, such as distributing tracts,· holding prayer meetings, and scattering Bibles. The neglected and ruffian classes. are in no way directly affected by influences such as these.
By the means that are now employed our cities can never be redeemed from sin, corruption, and misery, and be established in the righteousness, purity, and peace of God's Kingdom. What can we do that our backward brothers may be lifted up into the appreciation and possession of higher things? What can we do to inspire them to holier living and truer citizenship? Shall we build music halls and art galleries? Shall we multiply missions, and flood the district with tracts? These things are all good enough in their way, but they are neither the best nor the most potent things. What is man's deepest need? Is it not that of a higher ideal, a worthier aspiration, a power that shall hold the will steady in the right way? Nothing is so potent in arousing, moving, persuading men as personal contact and fellowship. Men do not need our gifts as much as they need ourselves. "The gift without the giver is bare." The one factor that is most important in all Christian work is the contact of man with man. Our church people have culture, taste, and strength; they are moral, earnest, and good. It is possible that part of this culture and goodness may find their way to men through the medium of a mission hall or a religious tract, but life comes from life and through life. In a word, that our cities may be saved for God and for His righteousness, there must be this personal and brotherly fellowship between the brother in the slums and the brother on the avenue.
Our cities will not be saved through the medium of charitable societies and mission halls. Nothing short of self-giving can help these men or satisfy the mind of Christ. Among the poor and unprivileged there are many brave and earnest hearts who are rowing hard against the stream, longing for light and wearying themselves to find the way. These men do not want the rich man's loaf or dollar, but their hearts are hungry for a brother's fellowship and inspiration. Men nee(t ourselves a thousand times more than they need our tracts or our money. In order that our cities may be saved it is necessary that thousands of families voluntarily and gladly deny themselves the delights of uptown residence that they may live among their less
THE NEGLECTED FACTOR IN CITY SAVING
fortunate brothers, and by personal fellowship may bring to them the whole helpfulness of God. Is it too much to hope that under the constraint of love many families will voluntarily choose their residence among their needier and weaker brothers? One goo(l, earnest, moral family will do much to change the tone of a whole street. There is nothing in this world so potent as right example. Long range benev- olence can never accomplish the highest results. Not by preaching to men at long range can they be saved from sin and won to Christ, but by personal effort and loving contact. What is demanded by the needs of our cities and the mind of Christ is this voluntary surrender of privileges on the part of the strong and qualified, and their willing and fraternal residence among their weak and needy brothers. There must be personal identification with them, personal contact and asso- ciation, the determination to entl;lr into their lives, and to fin them with the light of God. This association must be full and fraternal, not alone on Sundays in the church, but through the week in social relations. The Master has laid down the principle which may have some application to this problem: "When thou makest a dinner or a supper, call not thy friends, nor thy brethren, neither thy kinsmen, nor thy rich neighbors, lest they also bid thee again, and a recompense be made thee. But when thou makest a feast call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind."
Very suggestive in this connection is the story Prof. Dru mmond records of the young men from the university who went down into the east end of London to live among the people. They went into the most desolate and God-forsaken place, occupied for miles by working people, and took a little house. They gave themselves no airs of superiority, and never declared that they had come to do the people good. They simply went in there and made friends with the people, and in the course of months they came to know a number of the residents. They were fully acquainted with the questions of city government and sanitation, and discussed these topics with the people. One day there was a labor war, and the leaders came to consult these young men. '1'hey talked it over, and the matter was soon settlec1 to the satisfaction of all parties concerned. In the course of time one member of the little group was elected to the school board, another was sent to the county conncil, a third was elected to parliament. In all these positions they labored for the betterment of the districts they represented, and were able to accomplish wonders in a short time. Thus these men have taken possession of this section of the city for Jesus Christ, and are gradually salting and saving it. It is useless to lament the corruption of politics and the power of the boss so long as we stand off at a distance and lecture men. The venal boss gains his power through the law of personal interest and personal contact. The disciple of Jesus Ohrist can gain power oVer men in the same way.
We who want the best conditions for our children thereby recognize the importance of this factor in the lives of others. We must labor to improve the conditions of our neighbor's child. Let a few men and women take their families down into these evil conditions for a while, and they will learn two valuable lessons: They will learn how defective and vicious are the conditions in which thousands of their brothers live; and, secondly, they will learn what are the things that need to be done and the best ways of doing them. This knowledge taking possession of their minds and hearts will rouse them to heroic and unceasing efforts in behalf of better conditions. There are many men and women who~can not offer the objection of families and before whom the way is open.
This principle is finding recognition in college and university settlements in all our cities. '1'he residents of these settlements are gaining a first-hand knowledge of conditions and are making heroic efforts in behalf of improvement. But over and above all this there must be an increasing number of Christian men and women who will gladly choose their residence among the poor and needy that they may fill their lives with all the blessings of the Gospel of the Kingdom. Such association will bring untold blessing to the people who receive and to the people who give. Through this fellowship there will come the outlook into a larger life, and the impulse to rise up and fulfil the larger vision. On the other hand, through this fellowship there will also come a first·hand knowledge of conditions which will arouse us to labor for the betterment of these conditions; and there will come the consciousness that we are doing something toward the redemption of our cities from sin and for their transformation into the city of God.
THE GENERAL CONFERENCE OF PROTESTANT MISSIONARIES IN JAPAN.* BY REV. D. B. BCHNEDER, D.D., BENDAI, JAPAN.
A very important event in the history of missions has been the third General Conference of Protestant Missionaries in Japan. During eight of the most charming of Japan October days (24th to 31st), in the ideally convenient hall of the Tokyo Young Men's Christian Association, four hundred and fifty missionaries were in session. It had been seventeen years since the last general conference, which was held in Osaka, and the time was ripe for a new one. The first and only other one was held in Yokohama in 1872, and it was an inspiring incident when in the course of the session eleven members of that first conference were called to the platform and given the Chatauqua *We regret that the pressure Olj our space coml?els us to omit much of this very able paper.-EDIToR,
CONFERENCE OF PROTESTANT MISSIONARIES IN JAPAN
salute. The conference consisted of Protestant missionaries only, the Roman and Greek Oatholics as well as the Unitarians and U ni- versalists having not been invited. Two of the missions refrained from formally taking part. A number of Ohina missionaries, who are now refugees in Japan, sat as advisory members. It was a dis- appointment that Bishop Wilson, of the Southern Methodist Ohurch, was the only representative of the home boards in attendance. The efficient chairman of a very wise and able committee of arrangements was the Rev. A. Oltmans, of the Dutch Reformed Mission. The ven- erable Dr. J. D. Davis, of the American Board Mission, was president.
The feeling manifested toward Japanese churches and Japanese colaborers was warm and fraternal. A number of leading Japanese workers were introduced to the conference, and took part in the dis- cussions. In response to a stirring appeal from the Japan Evangel- ical Alliance in behalf of a proposed twentieth century evangelistic movement,. a committee of twelve members of the conference was appointed to lead the missionary body in hearty cooperation in this important effort. Sympathy for the Ohina missionaries was expressed with the belief that, as ever before, "the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Ohurch."
It is only too rarely that missionaries working in non-Ohristian lands enjoy the full sympathy of the officials who represent the Ohristian nations in such countries. On this account the conference was all the more profoundly grateful to 001. Buck, United States minister to Japan, for favoring the conference with his presence, for a generous donation toward its expenses, and for a most delightful reception tendered by himself and Mrs. Buck to the members of the conference.
The committee of arrangements planned to make its spiritual uplift the chief aim of the conference. In this their purpose was not unrealized. The first hour of every day's session was given to a devotional paper followed by a season of prayer. These hours were deeply inspiring and helped to give a highly spiri~ual tone to the whole conference. Special devotional meetings also were held in several parts of the city in the early morning and in the evening. Probably no one went away without being spiritually strengthened.
THE GENERAL MISSIONARY SITUATION IN JAPAN.
That Japan has made remarkable progress in material civilization during the past thirty years is known to the world; but the fact which Dr. Greene brought out, as it had probably never been brought out before, is not so generally k.nown-namely, that during the same space of time the country has undergone a no less remarkable moral transformation. The change from an autocratic to a wise constitutional form of government, legal reforms, the development of inter-
national relations, the growth in wealth and power, and the great advances in education have all been indications of the working of two deeper forces-namely, a new national consciousness and a new con- ception of the value of the individual. Of the two, the latter force has been the stronger and more constant, and it is this force especially that Christianity has fostered and stimulated during .the past thirty years. Hand in hand with the entrance of these forces have come new moral sentiments, higher ideals of life, and an increasing "hos- pitality of mind" for Christian truth. Among the higher classes of people the proportion of Christians is abnormally large.
Dr. Thompson, in his paper on "The Progress of the Work," gave much and convincing evidence that in the number of converts gained, in the spread of the work, in better material and spiritual equipment, in closer unity, in reaction and opposition overcome, and in strength, confidellce, and hope, there has been very substantial and satisfactory progress. He made it clear that the progress in the actual winning of converts to Christ has been great, and that the preparations which have unconsciously gone forward for the future Christianization of Japan ,have been very great. Japan is, not diplomatically only, but really, 6pen to Christianity.
1. The Present. There are altogether one thousand five hundred and fifty-six workers, of whom eight hundred and thirty-three are Japanese. Nominally there is one worker to every thirty-four thousand of the population, but actually, making all allowances, there is scarcely one for everyone hundred thousand. Most missions find it wise policy to have their base of operations in the capital. Thus twenty per cent. of all the workers are located in Tokyo, and while this does not give that great city too many, large country districts are practically untouched. The work of-Christianizing Japan has just begun. Only a small fraction of this exceedingly important Oriental nation has bl::'en Christianized, and tho this fraction has an influence out of all proportion to its size, yet now is the time not to relax effort, but to redouble it.
One of the features of the situation in Japan is the "open door" for work among women. The rapid growth in the proportion of women in the church is significant. In 1883 they were in the proportion of a little more than one woman to three men; in 1899 they were in the proportion of seven to eight. In the last twenty-five years nearly twenty thousand women have been brought into the Protestant branch of the church. Moreover, the opposition and difficulties that existed in the' earlier years have almost passed away, and the opportunities are greater to-day than ever before.
On the problem of self-support, the variety of opinion in the conference was great. The situation now is -that the American Board Mission leads with thirty-three self-supporting churches; the churches
of the cooperating Presbyterian and Reformed missions follow with twenty-five; the American Episcopal and the Church of England Missions together have five; the Baptists, Methodists, and Oanadian Methodists have each three; other missions together, eleven. Total, eighty-three. The total number of organized churches is four hundred and sixteen. The average amount of contributions per member for all purposes was, according to the latest statistics, yen 2.48 or $1.24.
That none of the features of the old religions was considered sufficiently important to claim the special attention of the conference is an indication that those religions present but little of a barrier to Ohristianity any more.
2. The EdncaNonal Work. In the earlier years there was great demand for mission schools. Students flocked in in large numbers, there were many conversions, and there seemed to be no better evangelizing agency than these schools. But the reaction against foreign influence, aided by government discrimination against private schools,. was enough to give a serious check to mission schools, and during the past five years all such schools, especially those for young men, have, passed through a period of deep discouragement and trial. But the clouds are beginning to break.
In spite of the higher ethical demands of to-day and the efforts of the well-organized educational system of the government, according to universal testimony Japan is moving in the direction of license and moral degeneration. In the face of this tendency the state system of education is permanently handicapped by its inability to teach a morality that has a religious basis. There are now nineteen Protestant institutions of learning for young men, and about forty-four girls' schools with five thousand pupils. These young women hear the Gospel every day, and nearly all of them become Ohristians.
Perhaps the most discouraging feature ,of the whole missionary situation in Japan to-day is the small number of theological students. The sixteen theological schools last year reported an aggregate of one hundred and thirteen students, or an average of seven in each institution. Alongside of the theological schools there stand a number of schools for the training of Bible women, or lay female workers.
The Sunday-school received the earnest attention it deserves. The influence of primary-school teachers has in many cases been hostile to Sunday-schools, and it is especially difficult to hold the boys. Yet thirty-three thousand children are reported as being in Sundayschools, and probably the majority of these are the children of unbelievers. In the city of Sendai alone one child in every ten is in Sunday-school.
3. Ohristian Literature. In Ohristian journalism the Japanese are to the front. The best Ohristian literature is to be found here; and its influence great and growing. It is estimated tha( two million
Bibles, New Testaments, and portions have been distributed by sale or gift.
4. Benevolent Work and Social Questions. For medical missions in the ordinary sense there is little need, but for charitable medical work there is a large field. In the city of Osaka alone there are said to be over one hundred thousand people who are too poor to bear the expense of sickness. Christianity has established a score of orphanages, three leper asylums, three blind asylums, three rescne honses, three prison gate missions, a score of hospitals, six charity kindergartens, three homes for the aged, one social settlement, and at least two hundred schools for the poor.
The movement against the social evil promises to become even more powerful than the temperance movement. It was a striking incident that this conference of missionaries should be addressed by the Hon. S. Shimada, ex-president of the Japanese House of Representatives, on the work of the Anti-Prostitution Society, of which the function is to assist young women to escape from the slavery of the brothels.
But more significant than all else was the spirU of unity that prevailed in the conference, and the solemn action the conference took looking toward a still nearer approach to outward and inward oneness.
The following was adopted: "Resolved, That this conference elect, upon the nomination of the president and vice-presidents, a Promoting Committee of ten, whose duty it shall be to prepare a plan for the format~on of a Representative Standing Committee of the Missions; such plan to be submitted to the various missions for their approval, and to go into operation as soon as approved by such a number of missions as include in their membership not less than two-thirds of the Protestant missionaries in Japan."
This action was the crowning glory of the conference, that on account of which it will probably be longest remembered, at least by those who were present.
SOME THRILLING EXPERIENCES IN CHINA.
BY REV. JOHN R. HYKES, D.D., SHANGHAI, CHINA.
Very few of the missionaries in Shansi escaped Yu Hsien's mad fury. Those who did had most thrilling and terrible experiences. The full details of what these heroic men and omen suffered will never be made public. Among those who attempted to escape from Shansi was the following party, viz.: Mr. and Mrs. A. R. Saunders and four children, Mr. A. Jennings and Miss Guthrie, from Pingyao; Mr. and Mrs. E. J. Oooper and two children, Miss Rice and Miss Huston,
SOME THRILLING EXPERIENCES IN CHINA
from Lu-ch'eng, and Mr. and Mrs. A. E. Glover and two children, and Miss Gates, from Lu-an. The missionaries were living in peace and quiet at Pingyao (a town about eighty miles south of the provincial capital) up to the 25th of June. On that day they received a letter enclosing 11 copy of a proclamation which had just been issued by the governor, Yu Hsien, in obedience to the imperial edict of the 20th af June, in which he informed the people that Ohina was at war with the foreigners, and that all "foreign devils" must be destroyed. The friendly magistrate informed the missionaries that he had received orders not to protect them, and he urged them to leave at once. In response to their entreaties he agreed to give them an escort to the capital, Taiyuen fn; and they started on their even tful and terrible journey. It is not at all improbable that the magistrate sent them there at the order of the governor, who was collecting the helpless foreigners in the capital for a deed as foul and terrible as the crime of Nana Sahib at Cawnpore. The fact that their escort left them as soon as they turned south, is presnmptive evidence that they were instructed to deliver the missionaries to Yu Hsien. If they had gone into' the city not one of them would have escaped; but fortunately, when they were only six miles from the place, they met a native Ohristian, whom they knew, fleeing south. He implored them to turn back, as the Inland Mission property had been burned, the Roman Oatholic premises destroyed, and the Protestant missionaries had taken refuge in the compound of the Baptist mission, where they were surrounded by a mob that threatened to burn the building and its occupants. 'I.'here was no alternative but to turn back and retrace their weary way to Pingyao. Their escort immediately deserted them. They had very little money, and exorbitant prices were demanded for everything, even for permission to pass along the public highway. They pawned or sold everything that they could spare, and finally reached Lu-ch'eng "safe, but stripped."
At this city they found Mr. Ernest J~ Oooper, and the other missionaries belonging to that statiQ,ll still undisturbed; but two days later they were all compelled to flee for their lives at midnight with only such bedding, clothes, and money as they could hurriedly get together. This was packed on one donkey. They decided to go south, and, if possible, reach Hankow. They had only proceeded Rome thirteen miles when they were stopped at a large village by about two hundred people, who demanded money. As they did not have enough to satisfy them, they seized the donkey, and in sheer wanton mischief tore all their bedding and clothes to pieces. They were stripped of their clothing-hats, shoes, and stockings-and men, women, and children alike were left with absolutely nothing but a pair of native drawers each. In this condition they were driven along the road by men with clubs. The blazing summer sun burned their
tender flesh to the bones. They were harried from village to village (one mob not leaving them until another was ready to take them in hand), cursed, beaten, stoned; being unable to procure either food or water, for days their only support the filthy puddles by the roadside, and the weeds and grass they plucked by the way, more than once led to the place of execution, and the knives with which they were to be decapitated sharpened before their eyes, and the" sacrificial paraphernalia" laid out in full view, the only wonder is that any of them survived to tell the terrible story of suffering and outrage. The fierce heat so blistered Mrs. Cooper's shoulders and breast that great ulcers were formed, which became filled with maggots before death mercifully came to her relief (August 6).
Both Miss Rice and Miss Huston became separated from their companions and fell into the hands of a mob. They were terribly beaten with clubs, and -Miss Rice had a heavy northern cart driven over her to crush out her life. She entered into rest on the 13th of July, twenty miles north of Tseh Oheo Eu, and her poor mangled body lies in an unknown grave awaiting the general resurrection of the just. Miss Huston was in the hands of her persecutors from the 13th to the 20th of July. She was carried to a great temple inside the Ftl city, and after a whole night spent in incantations, the head priest informed the magistrate that the oracle decreed that, seeing the gashes in her head had not proved fatal, she was to be spared the finishing stroke. She fell asleep August 11th at Yunmung in Hupeh, and her body was brought to Hankow for burial. Little Isabel Saunders died July 27th, and her sister Jessie August 3d. Mrs. Oooper passed into the presence of the King August 6th, and her infant son, Brainard, joined her on the 17th, three days after the survivors reached Hankow. Mrs. Glover had a little baby born at Hankow on the 18th of August, and it died on the 28th; she passed to her reward at Shanghai on the 25th of October, as much a victim of Yu Hsien's cruelty as any of the others. One of the survivors says: The crossing of the Yellow Ri"Ver was one of our most trying experiences. The yamen had placed us in carts and promised to send us over. But as soon as we were in the boats the carts drove away and the boatmen ordered us to land again, declining point blank to have anything to do with us. For two days we sat on the bank of the Yellow River, not knowing what to do. We were like the Israelites at the Red Sea. Pharaoh was behind; neither right nor left was there any retreat, and no means of crossing over.
This delay undoubtedly saved their lives; for at the first city after crossing the river, Ohang Oheo, the official, said he was very sorry they had not arrived a day earlier, for he then would have had the pleasure of killing the whole party; but the empress dowager had issued a decree ordering the protection of foreigners, and he must
SOME THRILLING EXPERIENCES IN CHINA
obey. This was doubtless the secon( edict of extermination for the changing of four characters in which two ministers of the Tsungli yamen suffered martyrdom. For the four characters in the edict which meant" painfully extirpate, destroy with fire," they substituted four meaning "protect to the utmost of your ability," and then telegraphed it to the pl'Ovinces. It was thus that the reaffirmation of ·the empress dowager's infamous decree for the painful extermination of foreigners was made an edict for their protection and saved the lives of many refugees from the interior.
From the time that Mr. Cooper's party entered Honan until they crossed the border into Hupeh they, in common with all other refugees, were treated as common felons, lodged in the common jail, fed on prison food, and treated with the utmost brutality. They say that they received no kindness whatever until they reached the last city in Honan, Sin Yang Cheo, where they met the Glovers. They were treated kindly by the officials and people of Hupeh, and they arrived at IIankow on the 14th of August, after a journey of fifty days, which has rarely, if ever, been paralleled. Another party of refugees from Shansi arrived at Hankow about the end of August. Two children of Mr. and :Mrs. Lutley died from the hardships of the journey. Mary, aged four years, died on the 3d of August, and Edith, aged eighteen months, on the 20th.
A party of Swedish missionaries, Misses Emma Anderson, Maria Pettersson, and Segrid Engstrom, left their station in Honan, July 4, with an escort. They were robbed, stripped of most of their clothing, threatened by-ruffians who compelled Miss Pettersson to kneel down to have her head cut off, and only desisted when she gave an hysterical laugh which aroused their superstitious fear; had their boat wrecked, were thirty-six hours without food or water (during which time they walked continuously), were hid in lofts, fields, and bundles of straw for days, and after enduring untold hardship, arrived at Shanghai on the 6th of August.
A MARVELOUS ESCAPE.
Perhaps the most marvelous escape from the Boxers was that of a party consisting of Mr. and Mrs. Green, their two children (Vera, a girl of five, and John, three years old), and Miss Jessie Gregg, of the China Inland Mission at Hwai-Iu, in Chihli. They received news of the massacre of the missionaries in nearly all of the stations around them, and they decided to flee to the mountains. They left their home after dusk on the 6th of July, and walked to a temple near the foot of an adjacent mountain. After three days they were compelled to leave this refuge and go to the mountain fastnesses, where a friendly Chinese showed them a cave in which they lived two days
and three nights. The cave was uninhabitable for any length of time, as it was dripping with moisture, and the only dry spot was a space about four feet by five, on which three adults and two children had to huddle day and night. In the meantime their servant found a friendly farmer whose house was in a deeper and more Aecluded part of the mountains. He took them in and kept them for a whole month. They were concealed in a cave-like hovel, which the farmer and their servant dug in the hill-side for their reception. It communicated with the kitchen of the farm-house by an opening through which they could just crawl. When they were inside the opening was sealed up. The armed Boxers, who accompanied Yu Hsien's imperial troops, searched the mountains for days and nights without discovering the hidden missionaries. On the 9th of August an armed mob of Boxers appeared at the farm-house, and threatened to burn the house and 'all of its inmates if the missionaries were not produced and handed over to them to be tortured and butchered. On hearing this threat Mr. Green crept out of his hiding-place, and while in a stooping attitude was shot in the head and neck by a Boxer. About thirty buckshot were imbedded in the skin, and he fell down stunned and bleeding. The Boxers then dragged the ladies and children from the cave, and took them to the magistrate at H wai-lu, brandishing their knives and swords over their heads the whole way-some three miles.
After abusing them all he knew how, the magistrate ordered them to be taken either to the governor of Shansi at Taiyuen fu, or of Chihli at Paoting fu; but meantime suggested that they should go to the Roman Catholic Mission at Ch'en Ting fu. 'l'he people of that city refused to receive them or their Boxer escort, and they were accordingly taken back to Hwai-lu. The mandarin there ordered them to be conveyed to Paoting fu to the governor, who would dispose of them. During the two days and nights they were in the carts en route to Paoting fu, they were given neither food nor water; they were all ill with dysentery. Mr. Green's wounds were suppurating for want of surgical attention.
When they arrived at Paoting fu they were surrounded by hordes of fierce Boxers and were in imminent peril of their lives. The magistrate put them in prison as common criminals, and the next day, August 14th, they were put on a boat to be sent to Tientsin. The magistrate nrged them to be sure to tell the queen when they got to England, at what great trouble and expense he had been to save their lives; but he ordered their Boxer escort to take them a little way down the river and kill them! The Boxers told them the order they had received from the magistrate, but they said they were ill and sure to die soon anyway, and ordered them to leave the boat and make the best of it. They hid in the tall reeds till night, and then decided to go to Sin-an and throw themsehes on the mercy.of the officials and
SOME THRILLING EXPERIENCES IN CHINA
merchants. On the outskirts of the town they went into a hut to ask for some help, but a young man went out, promising to get them a boat to take them to Tientsin, and betrayed them to the Boxers. The Boxers dragged them all out of the house by the hair of their heads, beat them with spears and swords, kicked them most unmercifully, and threatened them with instant death. They then bound them in a most fiendish way. '1'he right hand was bound behind the body to the right foot, and the left hand to the left foot. A spear shaft was passed between the arm and the body and behind the knee joint; and thus slung, with the other leg and arm and the head hanging down, they were carried a distance of nearly two miles to the Boxer headquarters, in a tern pIe near the city of Sin-an. Even the little children were slung in this brutal manner. Mr. Green was slung by one arm (not leg) only, and he still bears the mark of an ulcer made by the bamboo. They were thrown down in the pools of water in the courtyard of the temple, still bound, and were kept lying there till daylight-about four hours. The Boxers and gentry held a conncil, and decided to interrogate Mr. Green; bnt it seemed so incredible that any Boxers, once having caught them, should spare their lives, that they sent couriers to Paoting fu to ascertain the facts of the case.
Meantime they were thrown, bound, into one of the rooms of the temple. All were suffering from acute dysentery, and Mr. Green's wounds were in a terrible condition from neglect and dirt. They were given two meals daily of uncooked millet and a kind of vermicelli, and water was supplied, but in very small quantity. Mrs. Green was unable to eat the raw millet, and some of the Boxers gave her cash to the value of about two cents a day to buy millet soup. After three days the messengers returned from Paoting fu. They reported that the governor was furious when he learned that the missionaries had not been slain according to his previous order, and he again ordered that they be killed. Mr. Green was arraigned before the official in the presence of two thousand.Boxers, and gi ven this terrible information. They told him that they had decided to spare their lives and would send them to Tientsin. After enduring the most exquisite physical torture and mental agony, they were again sent to Paoting fu, evidently with the purpose of having them murdered en route, or of turning over to the governor to be massacred. During the three months that they were in the hands of the Boxers, they were led out to execution no less than seven times, and the knives were sharpened for their decapitation, but seven times they were miraculously delivered!
On the 7th of September the writer went with the United States Oonsul-General, Mr. John Goodnow, to ask I-,i Hung Ohang, the newly appointed viceroy of Chihli, to use his influence to get these people, whom we knew were in Sin-an, released from the Boxers. Li Hung Ohang replied that he would wire at once, and if the mission-
aries were still alive he would guarantee that they would be saved. Mr. Green says that on the 8th of September they were suddenly and unaccountably treated" no longer as criminals, but as guests." There can be no doubt of the connection between the telegram and the change in their treatment. They were taken to Paoting fu, and on the lOth of October, four days before the allies reached the city, and two months less fOllr days ~fter the relief of Peking, little Vera Green died after an illness of two weeks. The snrvivors arrived at Tientsin on the 27th of October, after more than three months' wandering and privations.
It is believed that one hundred and eighty-one Protestant missionaries, including women and children, have been massacred since the beginning of this terrible anti-foreign outbreak in China. Of this numbel' we know that Yu Hsien iH responsible for the death of at least one hundred and fourteen. Including those who were murdered after fleeing from his province, the number of murders that should be placed to his account is one hundred. and forty-three. For this long series of crimes the Chinese government thinks removal from office and banishment to the post roads (with the prospect of a higher office within a few years) an adequate punishment; and certain of the great powers apparently acquiesce!
I have not the same facilities for learning about the outrages against Roman Catholic missionaries, but the Catholic Church has lost many noble men and women, besides tens of thousands of native Christians. The heroism of their missionaries is beyond all praise. Bishop Hamer, of IVest Moi'lgolia, was seized, his vestments torn off, his body wrapped in cotton, petroleum poured upon it, and then set alight. Five thousand Chinese. Christians were massacred in his diocese alone. Three priests, at least, were burned in the cathedral at Houpa in Central Mongolia. Father Heirman was cut in four pieces, and his heart taken out and nailed to a tree. Father Segers was carried to his station in the same manner that the Greens were slung, and was there buried alive.
The fortitude and heroism of these Christian martyrs is worthy of the closing year of the nineteenth century. If" the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church," there ought to be a glorious harvest in China during the early years of this twentieth century.
NOTE.-We have already published accounts of experiences of other missionaries-Jan., pp. 48-56, and Feb., pp. 99-103. We learn that Rev. C. Friedstrom, of the Scandinavian Alliance Mission, reported killed in our February number, escaped to Kiachta, Siberia; and that in place of the names of Misses A. and M. Lund, of the same mission, should be Misses H. and C. Anderson. The name of miss Gustoofson, of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, should also be added to the martyr roll. Some other missionaries are yet to be heard from.- EDITORS.
THE CONFERENCE OF MISSIONARY SECRETARIES
THE CONFERENCE OF MISSIONARY SECRETARIES.* 'l'he representatives of the Foreign Mission Boards of the United States and Canada gathered for their annual conference (January 16 to 18) in the Fourth Avenue Presbyterian Church. 'rhe sessions were well attended, and important topics were discussed most carefully and earnestly. Reports were presented on the Ecumenical Oonferences, Comity, Science of Missions, Self-support, and the proposed Bureau of Information. Among the able papers read were "The Mohammedan Missionary Problem," by Rev. H. O. Dwight, LL.D.; "The Home Problem of Foreign Missions," by Samuel L. Capen, LL.D.; "The Relation of Missionaries to Governments," by Dr. F. F. Ellinwood; "The Relation of Missions to Religions and Customs of People," by Dr. 'r. S. Barbour, and" Missionary Problems of our New Possessions," by H. K. Carroll, LL.D.
REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON COMITY.
Your committee has been deeply impressed by what appears to be a general consensus of opinion among members of mission boards at home and missionaries abroad that not only is comity highly desirable, but that a good degree of cooperation is quite practicable, especially in those forms of work which lie outside of the directly evangelistic sphere, such as higher education, printing and publishing, and hospitals and dispensaries. Your committee also believe that in evangelistic work, pure and simple, much may be done to prevent the overlapping of fields and unnecessary multiplication of agents, with the consequent waste of means and effort which such a policy entails. It would seem that a time has come when academic discussion of the general question may cease, and some definite proposals on the lines of comity and co-operation may be submitted for the consideration of the various boards. Your committee therefore recommend that a letter be prepared and forwarded to the various boards represented in this conference, setting forth the desirableness of comity and cooperation, and asking the concurrence of each board on some or all of the following points: 1. To instruct its missionaries in the foreign field that the board favors a policy of comity and cooperation with other boards engaged in the work, and desires the aid of its missionaries to that end.
2. To authorize or appoint one or more of its missionaries in each mission to serve on a joint committee of consultation, said committee to consider questions pertaining to comity and cooperation which arise on the ground, and to report the facts, with any recommendations considered desirable, first to the missionaries concerned, and then to the home boards for final action.
3. To instruct its representatives on the aforesaid joint committee to promote in all practicable ways the following objects: (a) Interchange of service between missionaries of different boards, as tending to the increase of brotherly love, and as an object lesson to the heathen on the essential oneness of Protestant Christianity.
(b) Comity in the division of territory, the planting of stations, and the appointment of missionaries, so as to avoid the duplication of * The reports here presented are necessarily condensed.
agencies where those already in possession can meet the spiritual needs of the people.
(e) Comity and cooperation in printing and publishing, either by leaving the work to anyone mission having sufficient plant and resources for the purpose, or by the cooperation of two or more missions for this particular work.
(d) A similar policy in regard to higher education-i. e., the establishment and maintainance of a college, and the opening of hospitals and dispensaries.
(e) Cooperation in the biblical and theological training of native workers by missions holding substantially the same systems of doctrine and church order, thereby avoiding the multiplication of feeble and halfequipped theological schools.
(f) The adoption of an approximately uniform scale of remuneration for active workers in the same field, and, as far as possible, similar regulations respecting their work.
(g) The organic union of native churches established by the missionaries of churches holding similar systems of doctrine and church polity, thus helping to lessen the divisions of Protestant Christianity.
Your committee is of the opinion that while more than this, or even the whole of this, may not be considered practicable at the present time, less will not satisfy the enlightened judgment and conscience of devoted missionaries on the field, or of no less devoted members of our home churches who so nobly contribute to the world's evangelization by their benefactions and their prayers.
A BUREAU OF MISSIONARY IN110RMATlON.
The feeling was widespread at the close of the Ecumenical Conference that something ought to have been done looking to a greater federation of the missionary forces of the Protestant world. The missionary conference in London, 1888, felt the same, and the editor of the report expressed the hope that the next missionary conference would effect something of the sort. It is to be regretted that in the judgment of those supposed to be best able to form an opinion on the subject the time was not ripe even at the dawn of this century to introduce any measures looking to such a world-wide combination, and the executive committe of the Ecumenical Conference so reported at the annual meeting of the missionary officers.
They did, however, see their way clear to suggest a federation for gathering and disseminating information pertaining to all phases of missionary work, and there is a prospect that we may have at least this much in concrete federation. They recommended the organization of a bureau of missionary information, and nominated a strong committee of eighteen* to put it in operation when three-fourths of the * The names of the committee to organize the bureau are as follows: Rev. H. N. Cobb, D.D.; Rev. E. E. Strong, D.D.; Rev. H. C. Mabie, D.D.; H. K. Carroll, LL.D.; Rev. A. Sutherland, D.D.; Rev. A. W. Halsey, D.D.; Rev. Geo. Scholl, D.D.; Rev. R. P. lIIackay; Rev. S. H. Chester, D.D.; Rev. W. R. Lambuth, D.D.; Rev. H. P. Beach; Rev. E.1II. Bliss, D.D.; Rev. J. S. Dennis, D.D.; Rev. S. M. Jackson, D.D.; Mornay Williams; W. Henry Grant; John W. Wood; James Wood.
boards represented in the annual officers' meeting shall have approved the proposal.
The aim of this bureau is indicated in the action of the executive committee in their proposition as follows: It is believed that such a bureau, properly guarded and conducted, would serve uses of the very greatest importance in the prosecution of missionary work. That it would make valuable contributions: a. To the science of missions, by the collection and comparison of policies and methods, and of the manuals of the various boards and societies in which those policies and methods are embodied.
b. To comity, by the study of fields and the preparation of maps, in which different fields and sections of fields could be outlined, their occu- pation and the societies occupying them, the kinds of work carried on in them, could be indicated by distinctive signs or marks. Descriptive letter-press accompanying these maps could give further information. The overlapping of societies, the duplication and re-duplication of cer- tain agencies, such as hospitals, higher schools and colleges, printing establishments, etc., would thus be evident at a glance, and the publicity thus given to these evils would be a step toward their correction. They would be seen to be without excuse.
The like would be true as regards unoccupied fields-showing the extent, the number and religious character of their population, and their relation to fields already occupied, thus giving intimation as to the societies and missions best situated to undertake the work of their evangelization.
c. To the diffusion of general information and intelligence on all these and other subjects connected with the work of missions, by means of regular or occasional pUblications. Some method might be arranged by which all societies could be kept fully informed of and keep abreast with the existing condition and progress of the work in any field or in any department of effort.
d. To the securing of specific information on any desired topic, by response to inquiries addressed to it by pastors and other individuals, boards and societies, missions and missionaries. At present there is no reliable source of information on many subjects to which application can be successfully made.
At present, also, the officers of our various societies are frequently applied to for information of which they are not in possession, and from the nature of the case can not give. In the endeavor to meet the demand, much valuable time and labor are sometimes expended to no purpose. The ability to turn such inquiries over to such a central bureau would not only be a relief to the officers but render more likely the securing of the result desired.
e. Such a bureau might also contribute to the solution of the home problem of missions by the collection of data respecting the best methods of communicating missionary intelligence; stimulating the consciences and enlisting the cooperation of pastors and officers of churches; reaching the individual member, and establishing the tie of acquaintance and confidence between him and the board of his own church; enlisting the enthusiasm and cultivating the intelligence of the youth, and especially developing work among the Sunday-schools.
/. By the interchange of pUblications and the results of investiga,-
tion with similar bureaus in England and on the Continent the result contemplated in the original resolution-of an international committeemight be prepared for and hastened.
The establishment and successful working of such a bureau here would probably lead to the establishment of such bureaus elsewhere. The interchange would tend not only to bind these bureaus and the societies they represent in closer acquaintance, fellowship, and cooperation, but also to put all the wealth of accumulated knowledge and experience within the easy reach of them all.
MISSIONARIES AND "LOOT" * IN PEKING.
BY REV. J. T. GRACEY, D.D.
Everybody who is familiar with the lawlessnes~ of oriental armies will understand that one of the great incentives to Eastern soldiers is the chance that is open to them to add to their soldiers' pay whatever plunder they may be able to seize in or out of battle. They are not supposed to be called to give any account of it, or of the way they obtained it. It is acknowledged as theirs according to the laws of oriental warfare. To what extent civilized warfare has sought to regulate the old personal application of the principle that "to the victors belong the spoils" is not very clear. In the navy it appears that prizes taken on the seas are handeil over to naval authorities, to determine the distribution of their value among those who made the capture. But it is manifest that the prize being in bulk, the individuals could not but adopt some plan of partition. The ethics of "loot" on land or sea have not been reduced much below the old-time war privileges. The truth is that war conditions are abnormal and leave room for General Sherman's definition of what war is. Fundamentally they seem to imply the abolition of property-rights between contestants. Possession of an enemy's property theoretically confers undisputed title. This may be all wrong, but it is war, and civilized warfare has not advanced much beyond that among barbarous tribes in the matter of regulating these titles, tho there has been some attempt to create a sentiment that should reduce to some crude order the disposition of "loot." There will, however, be room for a long time to come for soldiers and others in the disturbed cond)tions of war to be "a law unto themselves." The individual circumstances will admit of nice questions of casuistry, the merits of which can never be reached. Rev. Dr. Martin admits that he had to be judge and jury as to the equity of his using in Peking articles for which no owner could be found, to meet necessities which he could not other- *" Loot" is a comparatively modern wtlrd in the English language, one of many that have come into use from contact of the West with India. It is common enough east of Suez, as Hindustani h,t, from the Sanskrit lotra, plunder. It has been carried far and wide "vel' Asia, into Africa, and in recent times almost wherever Englishmen familiar with India have gone. It is a convenient word, and will probably stay with us.-J. T. G.
MISSIONARIES AND "LOOT" IN PEKING
wise provide for, standing ready to compensate the owner whenever he could be fO.lnd. It is simply idle to think to pursue investigation into the ethics of each item. Honorable and conscientious people must exercise the best judgment they can in conditions of anarchy.
It is not surprising that the lie-ability of that hot-bed of scandalous falsehood during the year past, Shanghai, should have been exhib- ited toward missionaries in this matter of "loot." An anonymous writer of this type wrote for a secular paper in China the charge that missionaries in Pekiug had been the biggest looters during the siege. Like many auother maligner, he has incidentally done good to the cause of missions, in that the abusive article called forth a defense of missionaries from perhaps the man of all others who had knowledge of the facts in the case, and was otherwise able to speak with authority. Mr. R. E. Bredon, commissioner of customs at Shanghai, stands next to Sir Robert Hart in that service, and was, during the siege in Peking, a member of the General Purposes Committee. He wrote to the North Ohina Net()s of Shanghai the following letter, published October 4, and we reproduce it in part, to set at rest this malicious charge against missionaries: To the Editor of the North China Daily News: Sir,-I regret extremely to see published in some papers, and reproduced in others, the following statement regarding missionary behavior during the legation siege at Peking: "Their conduct during and since the siege has not been very creditable. They have exhibited anything but a Christian spirit, and have the reputation of being the biggest looters in Peking." I can not conceive where the writer gets justification for such a statement. I was during the siege a member of the General Purposes Committee, which had surveillance of practically everything but the fighting, and in that position had the best possible opportunity of knowing what was going on, and'I can say that the conduct of the missionaries was in my opinion not only creditable, but admirable. All that went to make our life moderately comfortable and saJe was done by missionaries or under their auspices. The helpfulness and unselfishness shown by the missionary ladies, many of whom had the burdens of heavy family cares of their own to bear, were beyond praise. As to the native Christians, many of whom were men of a class far superior to that from which they,are generally supposed to be drawn, they supplied willingly all the labor we had and without which we could neevr have held out. Their missionary teachers led them in every work and in many positions of danger.
I heard in the legation, before we were enabled to leave it, that the missionaries had taken quantities of loot. I took special pains as a committee-man to investigate' the truth of this assertion, and I found absolutely nothing to confirm it. . • . The missionaries did no looting during the siege, and I believe none after it, for they all had to make their arrangements to get out of the legation as fast as they could, to find quarters for themselves and their flocks, and they had no time then, and the field was quickly occupied by others. . • . I feel that my experience of the legation siege has raised very considerably my opinion of the missionary, Anglican and non-Anglican, English and American,
his capacity and his work, and of the native Christian and the influence of his religion on him.
I may say the above refers, as will be inferred, mainly to Protestants. None of the leading Roman Catholics were with us; they were making a brave defense elsewhere; while as to the Catholic converts, they were principally employed outside the British legation, by the Japanese and French especially, beyond my view.
The veteran missionary, Dr. W. A. P. Martin, says that in Peking more than half of the d weIlings were abandoned and goods of every description were scattered through forsaken houses. For at least a fortnight after the rescue the troops were allowed free range. If, during this time, some native Christians, and even missionaries, appropriated some things it would, in his view, not be strange, and he confesses to one instance in which he himself took part. A grain shop just opposite the new university had been abandoned, and Dr. Martin with two associate missionaries entered it, carried off two hundred bushels of wheat, and stored them up for the poor Christians during the coming winter. There was not even a dog on the ground to protect the property, and when call was made for an owner no one appeared. Dr. Martin left word that if one should ever come forward with a true claim, he would be responsible for its payment. He affirms that the looting charged on many missionaries is simply of this type, and in not a few instances they were placed in charge of deserted houses by the authorities, and instructed to gather there the destitute Christians who had been left at the mercy of the Boxers.
PRINCE TUAN'S PEAOE TERMS.
BY REV. GRIFFITH JOHN, D.D., HANKOW, CHINA.
This very remarkable decree is supposed to have been issued by the notorious Prince Tuan, during the flight of the court to 'faiyuan fu, Shansi, in August last, in reply to a memorial of the infamous Li Ping-heng, who committed suicide on account of the defeat of his army near Peking, at the very battle with the allies whom he is reported to have defeated with such great slaughter. Many will be interested to see the terms of settlement contemplated by the Ohinese in the event of their being victors in the strife. The" peace terms" evince an incredible amount of ignorance and vanity; but there can be no doubt that the Peking court meant business, and that it would have gone hard with the foreigner in Ohina had the Boxer movement succeeded.
Olause XI, the only one that concerns the missionaries, reads: "All missionaries to return to their own native countries. They shall not be permitted to enter Ohina." Observe how completely Prince 'l'uan's "peace terms" bear out the contention that the Boxer mQvement is
PRINCE TUAN'S PEACE TERMS
anti:foreign in spirit and aim, and not specially anti-Christian. The missionary propaganda is one, it is true, but it is only one among many, and by no means the most important. I wish to call special attention to this fact, because the baseless statement that the mis- sionaries are solely responsible for the present deplorable state of things in China is still current in Europe and America.
You will observe also their "peace terms." Reference is twice made to the Emperor Chien Lung and his reputation for the treat- ment of foreign envoys. The following extracts from Williams' "Middle Kingdom" (vol. 2, p. 439) explain the reason why h~ is made model of the reactionists. This is the way he treated the Dutch envoys in 1793: I t is useless to detail the annoyances, humiliations, and contemptuous treatment experienced by the embassy on its overland journey in midwinter and the defying manner in which the emperor received the envoys. His hatred was a befitting foil to their servilities, at once exhibiting both his pride and their ignorance of their true position and rights. They were brought to the capital like malefactors, treated, there like beggars, and then sent back to Canton like mountebanks to perform the threetimes-three prostrations at all times and before everything their conductors saw fit, who on their part stood by and laughed at their embarrassment in making these evolutions in their tight clothes. They were not allowed a single opportunity to speak about business … they received, moreover, a present of broken vituals from him which had not only been honored by coming from his Majesty's own table, but bore marks of his teeth and good appetite; they were on a dirty plate, and appeared rather destined to feed a dog than the repast of a human creature.
This extract will give some idea of the treatment our minister might expect at the hands of the Peking Court and the Chinese officials generally should the days of Chien Lung be restored. The Chinese have a maxim which was translated many years ago by Pere Premare, and which hits off exactly the Chien Lung idea of the foreign and the right way of dealing with him: The barbarians are like wild beasts, and not to be ruled by the same principals as the Ohinese. Were anyone to attempt to control them by the great laws of reason it would lead to nothing but confusion. The ancient kings understood this well, and therefore ruled barbarians by misrule. Hence, to rule barbarians by misrule is the best and true way of ruling them.
Such is the principle which guided the Peking court in its inter- course with foreigners at the close of the last century, and such is the principle which Prince 'l'llan and his pro-Boxer friends would reintroduce at the close of this.
The following translations of the edict is taken from the North Ohina Daily News, November 10, 1900. It is a translation of a copy recently sent to me from Heng Chou, Hunan, where it was pub- lished by one of the printing firms of the place: IMPERIAL DECREE.-218t Augu8t.
With reference to the grand victory over the foreign armies on the present occasion by the combined corps of Li Ping-heng and Generals :)fa Yu-kun and Sung Oh'ing, in which ovel' one hundred thousand of the
allies were slain, we desire to highly commend the bravery and strategy of the three officials concerned, and hereby command that Li Ping-heng be granted the decoration of the double-eyed peacock's feather; Ma Yu- kun, the imperial riding jacket; and Sung Ch'ing, brevet rank of a presi- dent of one of the Six Boards. The Board of Revenue is also commanded to send teals one hundred thousand to Li Ping-heng to be distributed as rewards to the various troops engaged, and he is also ordered to recap- ture Tientsin as a crowning point of his great victory.
At a meeting of the Grand Council before the empress dowager on the 23d of August, the following "peace terms," consisting of twenty- five clauses, were decided upon to be presented to the foreign powers and Japan [here termed" 'Vo-jen" or Northeastern barbarians]: 1. All demands for indemnity by the foreign powers to be void. 2. The foreign powers to pay China an indemnity of four hundred million taels. 3. All foreign ships of war that enter Chinese witters will not be permitted to leave their berths; that is, they will be seized and confiscated. 4. The foreign settlements in the treaty ports to be extended to twice their present size and area. 5. The Tsungli Yamen to be returned to the Chinese government. [NOTE: The Boxers'idea of the Tsungli Yamen is that that institution is a" foreign yamen" and does not belong to China.-TRANSLATOR.] 6. The rebel Kang Yu-wei to be punished should he return to China. 7. The churches of the various foreign nations in China to be confiscated and made common property. 8. Japan to return Formosa to China. 9. Germany to return Kiao-chou to China. 10. Russia to return Talienwan to China. [NOTE.-Talienwan seems to be better known to the Boxers than Port Arthur.-TRANSLATOR.] 11. All missionaries to return to their own native countries. They shall not be permitted to enter China. 12. China to have the chief control of Korea, and Annam. 13. The imperial maritime customs to be delivered over to Chinese control as hitherto. 14. In international relations the ministers of the foreign powers to observe the regulations laid down by the Emperor Chien Lung (1736-95). They shall not be allowed to enter Peking. 15. An indemnity of four hundred million taels to be paid the Boxers. 16. Japan to pay tribute as usual according to the regulations laid down by the Emperor Chien Lung. 17. Chinese whose sympathies lie with foreigners and become guilty of disobedience to the mandarins above them shall be punished by the Chinese government. 18. When Japanese or foreigners meet Chinese officials the former must go through the Chinese form of kowtowing. 19. No Japanese or foreigner shall be allowed to travel in China. 20. The Russian Siberian and other railways must be taken up and destroyed. 21. Great Britain must return Hsinan (Sun on) and Kowloon to China-otherwise the Kowloon Extension and New Territory. 22. Double duty to be charged on all goods imported from abroad. 23. Japanese and foreign merchant vessels arriving at the port must first ask permission of the Chinese general commanding the garrison of said port. 24. The export of rice is prohibited. 25. Goods exported abroad must be charged double duty.
Snch are the terms on which Prince Tnan and his pro-Boxer friends were willing to make peace with the barbarians. The document has been distributed far and wide over the land. It is to be hoped that the foreign representatives at Peking will see to it that when peace is arranged the real terms will be equally widely circulated.
THE RELIGIOUS FUTURE OF SIBERIA
THE RELIGIOUS FUTURE OF SIBERIA. * BY PROF. G. FREDERICK WRIGHT, EDITOR OF THE" BIBLIOTHECA SACRA,"
OBERLIN, OHIO.
Our ordinary thoughts of Siberia are so connected with its penal set- tlements that we fail, to appreciate the vast interests which are gathering about its regular colonists. At the present time the exiles in Siberia proper are less than three per cent. of the population, while the majority of these enjoy a freedom which has scarcely any restriction other than that which prevents them from returning for a period to Russia. Siberia has been colonized much as the United States were before the middle of the nineteenth century. Physical conditions have delayed the full settlement of the country somewhat as they did that of the Mississippi Valley before the advent of railroads. The Trans-Siberian railway, now nearly completed, will hasten the settlement of the country about as rapidly as the transcontinental railways of America have hastened that of the Dakotas and Manitoba. The social and religious future of this vast domain is a subject of great intrinsic interest.
Siberia was opened to Russian colonization early in the seventeenth century. At the same time that the gentlemen of England were colonizing Virginia, the Dutch New York, and the Puritans New England, Russian adventurers and colonists were extending frontier settlements all along the navigable rivers of Siberia, and were meeting with similar obstacles in the displacement of the native pagan population. While the bulk of the original colonizers of Siberia were members of the Orthodox Greek Church, a fair proportion of them were nonconformists of ,one sort or another who left Russia for the greater religious freedom which could be enjoyed in a new country. The communistic character of Russian social life favored such colonization in many respects. The Russian village is one of the most democratic institutions in the world. The lands controlled by these villages are worked in common, under an allotment made by officers elected by the entire adult population, including the women who are property holders, or whose male representatives are absent from home.
With this system it is comparatively a simple matter to send representatives to regions where land is plenty, and then select a situation to which an entire community can transplant itself without disturbing its religious or social organization. Many such Russian colonies can be found in Kansas, Nebraska, and the Dakotas. For the most part, those who have come to America belong to the sects which are unalterably opposed to military service. But the majority of the nonconformists of Russia are sufficiently patriotic to be most loyal subjects of the czar. Hundreds of such settlements of nonconformists are to be found in the best parts of Siberia, especially in the fertile valleys in Tomsk, the southern part of Transbaikalia, and on the Amur. Most of these villages can be readily identified by the absence of the domes and crosses and pictorial adornments which characterize the regular edifices for worship of the Greek Church.
But, unfortunately, these nonconforming communities are so scattered, and in general have so Iowa standard of education for their religious leaders, that there is not much hope of their coming to have a pre- * Written from Batoum, Caucasia, October 15, 1900, and condenRed from the Bibliotheca Sacra, January, 1901.
ponderating influence in any province of the empire. They may fitly be compared to those of the Amish, the Dunkards, and the Weinbrennarians in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and other central states in America. A high state of private morality prevails in them, and an unusually high average of temporal prosperity among their members. But for the most part they are outside the current of modern progress.
The predominant influence of the Orthodox Greek Church .impresses one everywhere throughout Siberia. In fact, in all the large towns there is a superabundance of imposing church edifices, while almost every village is supplied with one which is out of all proportion to the surrounding buildings. On inquiry one finds that the building of a church is a favorite mode for the expression of the pious sentiments of wealthy Siberians. Especially is this the case with those who have become suddenly rich through mining operations. To pacify such givers the clergy have to allow them to have their way. The result is that in numerous cases a church is begun and left in an unfinished state owing to the failure of the builder's business, or it is found to be superfluous and stands almost unoccupied. .
But for the most part these churches are filled every Sabbath with large and devout congregations made up of all classes of people. In all these assemblies the rich and the poor, the highest official and the lowest subordinate, the prince and the peasant, are found mingling together and joining in the common worship. The service, however, is almost wholly liturgical. The sermons which we have heard have rarely been ten minutes long. But when the time for the sermon comes, the people press forward and gather as close to the preacher as they can.
The Greek Church maintains a strong hold upon the affections of the people by the attention it pays to little children. In our first attendance at a typical service in one of the most imposing churches we were surprised to see a large number of mothers present with infants in their arms. Nor did anyone seem to be disturbed by their occasional cries. But at the proper time these mothers, many of them peasants, pressed forward through the crowd and presented them to the priests, who with manifest interest and sincerity administered to them some fluid food which had been consecrated, and was made symbolical of the pure milk of the Gospel. Everywhere we found this to be a regular part of the service, and one in which all seemed deeply interested.
The relations of the clergy of the Greek Church to the people seem to be of the most cordial and sympathetic kind. 'The fact that they are married and live among their flocks with their families frees them from many of the suspicious and flagrant evils of the Roman Catholic Church. The opposition of the church to images is largely rendered nugatory by their excessive use of pictures. The form of the Savior on the cross is so skilfully painted that at a little distance one can scarcely tell the difference between it and a statue. The worshipers kiss the painted feet with all the eagerness with which they do the sculptured form. Even more than the Roman Catholics the devotees of the Greek Church cross themselves as they pass their sacred shrines.
The tide of emigration which is now setting into Siberia is so largely composed of colonies of the Orthodox Church, and their numbers are so overwhelming, that Sibel"ia seems likely to be the stronghold of its most conservative influences. The unity of the national church and the superior education of its clergy will conspire to accomplish this result.
ENGLAND'S DUTY IN AFGHANISTAN
Still there is much in this for hope. The sacramental excrescences which are most objectionable to Protestants are not essential to the unity and efficiency of the church. These may be lopped off through inward reforms coming about through the gradual spread of enlightenment. Indeed, the strength of non-conformists in Russia is not generally appreciated. The population of the Russian empire is now about 130,000,000. These are by no means all members of the Orthodox Church. Something like 12,000,000 of these maintain the general doctrines of the church while asserting their independence of its ecclesiastical control. These constitute a most thrifty and important portion of the subjects of the czar, and are for the most part unfettered ,in the practice of their beliefs.
It is impossible to estimate accurately the number of non-conformists in Siberia. But there are known to be nearly 100,000 in Tomsk, and approximately as many in Transbaikalia, and as many more along the Amur and Zeya rivers. Altogether it is probable that there are 500,000 in the various provinces. These with their more numerous brethren in European Russia have large liberty for the development of their ideas. They can not be aided much by outsiders except indirectly. The influence of Protestantism is being increasingly felt all through Southern Russia, and the nonconformists are particularly numerous and intelligent in the neighborhood of the Ural Mountains. While the educated Russians generally are open to modern ideas, the Greek Ohurch can not ignore wholly the spirit of the times.
The conditions of a new country rapidly filling up with settlers are so favorable to the adoption of new customs and the reception of new light, that the coming century may easily see Siberia leading the whole empire into purer and more spiritual religion.
ENGLAND'S DUTY IN AFGHANISTAN.* BY GENERAL DAVIDSON.
Tibet is often said to be the only part of the world closed against the Gospel. That is a mistake; there is another country which is absolutely closed against the circulation of the Bible and the preaching of Ohrist, and it is England who, by her selfish policy, hermetically seals that land against the spread of the Gospel.
That closed field is Afghanistan, together with all the tribes on the north and northwest frontier of India-roughly, the territory between England and Russia. Besides this, England largely upholds the Mohammedan rulers of Turkey, Palestine, Arabia, Persia, in whose countries, tho there may nominally be some small amount of religious freedom, yet practically there is no liberty to change from the Mohammedan religion, and no liberty to preach the Gospel to Mohammedans.
Afghanistan is bolstered up and subsidized by Britain as a buffer state between Russia and India. Better call it a box of dynamite or a barrel of petroleum; rather than being a security it is a positive danger. We have had several Afghan wars, and much unrest on our frontier. Vhy? For the answer we must look outside man's plans to God's plans. He has given England the power and opportunity of opening Afghanistan to the Gospel, but England has not risen to her privilege and opportunity, and has retired each time after conquering the country, spending * Condensed from Evangelical Alliance Quarterly.
much money, and spilling much blood, subsidizing the bigoted Moham- medan ruler, and leaving the people in utter darkness, ignorance, and fanaticism, without any possibility of hearing the Gospel. It is death to anyone to preach tbe Gospel, or for anyone there to turn from Islam to Christ.
The policy most in favor, especially with the British advocates of "the scientific frontier," as may be seen from the correspondence in the papers and articles in the periodicals at the time of the Chitral campaign, is to leave those parts severely alone. Bigoted, ignorant, and savage as they are, the more so the better according to this theory, so that they shall present, to any ·army desiring to invade India, regions inhospitable and impassable, both by nature and by the hostility of their uncivilized inhabitants.
England and Russia are the two nations controlling Asiatic territory that give the greatest encouragement to the circulation of the Bible. Strange to say, that with all her intolerance and corrupt religion, Russia gives more assistance than any other government to the circulation of the Bible. The following passages appear in the last report of the British and Foreign Bible Society with regard to Russia: Other agencies increasingly active now supply these Bibles. The printing houses of the holy synods have now their own distributing departments with commission agents, travelers, colporteurs, from one end of the country to the other. We rejoice the more that God's Word has free course over this immense empire.
Then speaking of the privileges accorded to our own British and Foreign Bible Society, it is stated that Bibles in any quantity are transported free on the state railway and up to nineteen tons per annum (!) on private lines; besides this a number of first and third class free passes over the lines are given to the society's agents. As a result a very large number of copies of God's Word are annually circulated in those parts lately annexed by Russia, where less than twenty years ago not a copy could be issued; and where the inhabitants were formerly armed to the teeth, and there was no security for life or property, now the population is unarmed, and there is security for everyone. Surely this is a cause for great thankfulness, and presents a strange contrast to British policy which allows Afghanistan to remain in Mohammedan ignorance and intolerance.
God is now rapidly bringing about the fulfilment of His purpose to have the Gospel preached in all lands. Roman Catholic countries began to be opened about forty years ago, the Mohammedan lands are following. England opened Egypt the day Alexandria was.bombarded, and if England does not open up the others to which God is clearly calling her, and still more, if she closes any of these, we believe that God will make use of Russia; it will probably not be done without the spilling of much British blood and much humiliation to Britain.
The matter has not received the attention it deserves from Christian people. In the spiritual interests of these benighted countries, as well as in the interests of the peace and prosperity of England, it is essential that some effort be made to remove all restriction, and to assure the free circulation of God's 'Vord and the preaching of the Gospel, at all events to remove all hindrances on the part of Britain. The case is not so hopeless as appeared the opening up of Roman Catholic countries fifty years ago. "With God all t)lings are possible." WHY MISSIONARIES WENT TO UGANDA.
BY SIR HENRY M. STANLEY, M.P.
I suppose my first idea of attempting something for Mtesa's mental and spiritual improvement sprang from my warm friendship for him, and a feeling of pity that no chance was afforded him of developing himself. At the outset I felt keen regret that Livingstone was no longer alive to exert his peculiar abilities and personal charm upon so promising a character. There seemed no one in Africa, from the Nile to the Zambezi, on whose intelligent sympathy I could rely. Gordon had a big and special task of his own, and it never struck me that any of his staff, who were either military or political officers, would give Mtesa any sympa- thetic attention.
So day after day passed with Mtesa and myself in chat upon trivial and secular topics, until one day in full court the subject of the white man's faith was broached. As I expounded, I observed fixed attention on the part of the king and courtiers, such as I had not noticed before. The rule had been understood by all that talk should be brief and various, but now it became animated and continuous. Gestures, exclamations, and answers followed one another rapidly, and every face was lighted up by intense interest. When we finally adjourned, the subject was not exhausted, greater cordiality was in the handshakes at parting, and Mtesa urged that we should continue the discussion on the next day.
And so we did for several days. It seemed that the comparisons of Mohammed with Jesus Christ were infinitely more fascinating than the most lively sketches of Europe, with its wonders and customs; and truly the description of the accusation of Christ, his judgment by Pilate, and • the last scene on Calvary, was the means of rousing such emotions that I saw my powers of descerning character had been extremely immature and defective; Some one in behalf of the king made the happy suggestion that as I proposed to return to the south end of the lake, it would be well if I left some souvenir of my visit that would keep alive the people's attachment to my words. I discovered that Idi, the king's chief drummer, who was an educated Malagasy native and an expert in Arabic calligraphy, could write out the law of Moses and the Lord's prayer. I also found that Robert, one of my boat boys, could translate my English description of the last scene at Calvary into grammatical Swahili. The" books" in which my sayings were written were thin and polished boards of whitewood about sixteen by twelve inches.
Mtesa was dismayed when the period of my departure had arrived. I had already passed a longer time in his company than was prudent, seeing that I had such a large number of men depending upon me at the other end of the Nyanza. He began to devise various expedients for my delay, and at last, after a firm refusal from me to remain longer, cried out in a voice that had a tone of despair in it: "What is the use, then, of your coming to Uganda to disturb our minds if, as soon as we are convinced what you have said has right and reason in it, you go away before we are fully instructed."
"Mtesa is under a misunderstanding," I answered. " I am not an instructor in religion. I am simply a kirangozi (a pioneer) of civilization. When Mtesa goes to Usoga or to Ankori to make war, he first sends out • Condensed from the Youth's Companion
guides and pioneers to point and clear the way for his army. That is what I do. When I go back to Europe I must tell the white people the way that they should take to Uganda. Then those who may think they would like to do business with your people, or those who would wish to teach them the Christian faith, will come here by the way I have shown. If Mtesa really wishes that lawful instructors should come to Uganda, he has but to say so, and I shall write the people of England to that effect, and I am sure they will send the proper men for that purpose."
"Then write, Stamlee" (the native pronunciation of my name), .. and say to the white people that I am like a child sitting in darkness, and can not see until I am taught the right way."
I gladly consented, and on April 14, 1875, I made two copies of an appeal for missionaries to be sent to Uganda, one of which I enclosed under cover to General Gordon, and delivered to Colonel Linant de Belle- fonds, one of his staff who had recently come to Uganda. ~'he other I intended to send by my own couriers overland to Zanzibar. Three days later I resumed my journey. ….
Four months passed, and I was again in Uganda, to continue, as circumstances permitted, the interesting task I had left unfinished. During the three months I remained with Mtesa, the translations which we made from the Gospels were very copious, and the principal events from the creation to the crucifixion were also fairly written'out, forming a bulky library of boards. When the work was finished, it was solemnly announced in full court that for the future Uganda would be Christian and not Mohammedan. A mission boy named Dallington left my service to become the king's reader, and a Bible and prayer-book were given to him for the purpose of keeping Mtesa in the true faith. Having provided according to the best of my ability for the spiritual comfort of my royal convert, I left Uganda for the last time, to continue my journey across Africa.
It remains to relate the fate of my letter. Colonel Linant de Bellefonds was murdered by the Baris, not far from Gordon's quarters. ~'he letter, however, safely readIed the governor-general's hands, and he sent it on to Cairo by government post. On November 5, 1875, it was published simultaneously in the London Daily Telegraph and New York Herald. Before the evening of that day twenty-five thousand dollars had been sent by an anonymous contributor to the Church Missionary Society. Three days later my letter was read to a crowded audience in Exeter Hall, and subscriptions to the amount of fifteen thousand dollars were announced. Within a few weeks the Uganda fund had increased to one hundred and twenty thousand dollars. Just twelve months from the day I had written my letter at the court of Mtesa a band of five missionaries started from England for Uganda, but twelve months more elapsed before the long-expected clergymen reached their destination.
According to the latest statistics there have been built by native labor in Uganda one cathedral and three hundred and seventy-two churches, which are attended by ninety-seven thousand five hundred and seventy-five converts. Several of the cleverest boys during the twentythree years that have passed since the missionaries began to teach them have been ordained as missionaries. Some of these have penetrated to Toro, the slopes of Ruwenzori and the :ringe of the great Aruwimi forest, founding Christian communities as they went, and proving themselves possessed of the most fervid zeal. Two out of the three regents who represent the new king during his minority were educated by the missionaries.
RO;MAN CATHOLtc AND PROTESTANT MISSIONS
ROMAN CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT MISSIONS.* Among almost all the severe critics of missions there seems to pre- vail a delightful unity on this point, that the Catholic missionaries are much better than the Protestant, and much less apt to do violence to the feelings of the Chinese. Indeed, the authority invoked by the National- tidende declare that" the complaints ought in general not to be directed against the Roman Catholic missionaries." These, it is said, "are one and all finely cultivated," and" their burning zeal in the faith does not exclude intelligent consideration;" while the same correspondent has neither found among the Protestant missionaries "burning zeal in the faith, or at most a possibility for a good deal of religious zeal," or con- siderable intelligence, unless it consist in "a keen sense of worldly advantage."t It would be a cause for joy to hear such news from a man who really understood the matter, and could give us authentic accounts of the wide- spread activity of the Roman Church in China. This correspondent, tho, who knows the Protestant missionaries so little, is not likely to know the Roman Catholic much better.
The work done in the ports and chief towns is the least part of the whole activity, and the accounts from men of both religions who have a closer knowledge of the whole work by no means agree very closely with what is here said. The article in the Nationaltidende says about the Roman Catholic missionaries, "while they are prepared for sufferings, and unterrified by martyrdom, conduct themselves nevertheless with this 'World's 'Wisdom." Nothing could express better than these words the otherwise unintelligible fact that there is such a preference for the Roman Catholic over the Protestant missionaries, even with Protestant critics, and nothing could show better how little such praise is worth from the Christian point of view. How should it be otherwise, when this is the characteristic mark of the church from which these missions proceed, that she seeks a might that is of this world, altho the God, whom she, as we would fain serve, has said: "My Kingdom is not of this world," and His apostle has emphatically renounced all thought of working after "the wisdom of this world." It is this. which at times renders the Roman Church so strong, lifts her so high upon the billows of the time, and so steadily lets her sink down again from the pinnacle of power which seems just secured, as we have lately seen again in France, which is the strongest support of Catholic missions, and which is perpetually tossing back and forth between an unbelieving radicalism and a bigoted clericalism. W orId prudence and calculation have ever been the strength of the Roman Church, and are so even in its missions. It is therefore that she is so praised by all men of the world, and is admired of such Christians as forget that the Lord of the Church will not be served with "the wisdom of this world." But this is also the ~oeakness of the Roman Church and of her missions, something which all the diplomacy and policy of the bishops, and all the self-denial of the priests will not be able to remedy.
* Condensed from the Nordi8k Missions·Tidskript.
t This latter, doubtless, is principally visible in the agents of the C. I. M., one-third of the Protestant missionaries in Chinal inasmuch as they receive no fixed salary, and a good many of them no salary at all. Next we presume in point of worldliness come that considerable and increasing number of missionaries who bear all their own expenses, or are supported by their own relations and friends.-EoITORS.
EDITORIALS.
God's Intercessors. reets Philip to the Ethiopian eunuch is at that moment moving The place of prayer, especially on the eunuch to search the Word intercessory prayer, in missions and inquire as to its meaning; and few if any have ever yet grasped. again, in Acts x, while Cornelius Here and there one nlan or woman is moved to send for Peter, Peter seems to have caught sight of the is prepared to go to Cornelius. fact that the highest privilege of a saint is found in this realm of The Minister's Prayer Union. prayer. It is the closest identi- fication with the great Intercessor Apropos of intercession, the within us, for only as He moves us "Minister's Prayer Union of the can such pleading be possible; Free Church of Scotland" was ad- and it is the closest identification dressed, May 30, 1900, by Dr. J. B. with the other great Intercessor Paton, of Nottingham, England, above, for this brings us into the who advocates a pri1yer union of Holy of Holies, to stand before the a like sort among the evangelical very Mercy Seat itself and become ministry of the English-speaking like Him mediators between God world. He has proposed a definite and men. plan for such union, and is pressing it by public appeals through pen There has been no crisis in mis- and tongue with much efficiency. sions which has not turned upon His printed circular reminds ~s of prayer as a pivot. When the se- the appeal of Jonathan Edwards in crets of all the unwritten history 1747, from which it professedly of the century are unveiled, we draws largely its whole form and shall discover for the first time spirit. Nothing, in our judgment, how the prayers of saints in the is more fundamental, and as Dr. closet have controlled events, as Paton's appeal is now finding place Elijah's prayers held the key of in various religious periodicals we heaven's floodgates and brought commend it to the thoughtful and down the rain from above and the prayerful consideration, not only fire of God! If the facts were but of all ministers, but of all disciples. known, what a chapter might be Dr. Paton presents three special written on God's intercessors! But persuasives to prayer: most of them have been so hidden with God that the veil of this 1. The new difficulty and trial Holiest Place has never yet been that beset ministers in their fore- rent asunder, and they are still in most duty of preaching the Gospel the darkness where God dwells. of grace, and winning men to re- pentance and faith. Now and then one comes to light by God's design, that we may get 2. The new vision and conception a glimpse of what is forever going of the Church of Christ which has on beyond the circle of mortal dawned upon our age. vision, and what marvels are dis- closed ! We discover the union of 3. Our entrance on a new century Divine and human forces in the with its momentous issues, oppor- work of God. The same Spirit who tunities, facilities, and responsibil- moves on the heart of the suppli- ities. cator moves at the same time on .the heart of those for whom he A Guide to City Missions. supplicates, as we see in Acts viii the same divine Power which di- Luke xiv: 12-24. This is perhaps the great Cill! llfission message of the whole New Testament. It seems divinely adapted to supply a complete guide for those who would
EDITORIALS
carryon mission work in towns during his lifetime almost the and cities. necessities of life in order to pro- The Lord always begins at the vide means for spreading the good bottom when he builds, and here is news of God. The things of God the foundation of all such service are ever foolishness to the world; to souls: verses 12, 13, 14. There but they approve themselves by re- must be no caste d'istinctions nor sults, and who can forecast the se(fish spirit. The missionary is unknown blessings that may flow not to go out after friends or kins- out of this bequest to countries yet men, brethren or rich neighbors, unblessed with the sound of the nor to look for any reward or Gospel?
recompense this side of the resur- There was a report that Mr. Ar- rection. Class distinctions para- thington had made his money as a lyze mission work by the false esti- brewer, but it is unfounded. Mr.
mates they imply in the objects Arthington was the son of a brewer, of labor; selfish motives paralyze but for conscience' sake renounced it by the false impulses that exist his interests in the business, and in the subject laboring. In God's started in another direction. His eye all sinning souls are alike in great fortune was honestly made guilt and need, and in the true in legitimate business. Two mis- mi"sionaries' eye they will be on sionary societies alone will benefit the one level. And only the un- to an amount of nearly three-quar- selfish love which seeks not theirs ters of a million sterling. But as but them can ever work wonders these bequests provide for new un- among them. dertakings only, they do not help Then follow the two great feat- current expenses. The subscribers ures of the Gospel: Readiness and to the Baptist and London Mis- Room. "Come; for all things are sionary Societies must therefore now ready." "Come; for yet there strengthen rather than relax their is room." He who labors for souls support if these bequests are to be must believe in his own heart that of lasting benefit.
all things are ready on the part of Specific legacies of a charitable God, and that there is room for nature are announced as follows: every penitent and believing soul. The Free Church of Scotland Mission- ary Society for Indian Missions ….. £~,OOO To have either of these confidences impaired is t~ make hearty work The Leeds Dispensary……………. _ 500 The Leeds Blind Institution …. _… .. . 500 impossible. To believe this with all The Leeds Guardian Home…….. …. 100 the heart is to be filled with the The Headingley Orphan Homes, Cliff Road, Leeds…. _.. _. .. .. .. .. .. .. . .. .. 100 spirit of a self-consuming evangel- Muller's Orphanage, Ashley Down, ism. Bristol. ….. . ….. . ……. ….. …… 100 Robert Arthington's Legaoies. The Teignmouth Hospital……. .. .. . . 100 A few days before his death the testator We expect later to puhlish accu- made gifts of £20,000 to Leeds Medical Char_ rate details of Robert Arthington's ities, and since nlay last he has made other somewhat remarkable legacies, charitable gifts amounting to upward. of £30,000.
which an English paper hints cover Of the" residue" of the estate nine-tenths about a million ofpounds sterling! are bequeathed for missionary purposes, the The bequests are mainly for the scheme of the bequest being as follows: extension of the Gospel among Five equal tenth parts of the residue are to be vested in a committee consisting of tribes that have not as yet heard nine persons, of whom two are to be trustees the good tidings. Some secular of the will, and the remaining seven are to papers seem perplexed that a hu- be appointed by the Baptist Missionary Soman being would deny himself cietyof London.
The remaining four equal tenth parts of I
the residue are to be vested in another com· A Word to Missionary Volunteers. mittee of nine persons, of whom two are to be trustees of the will, and the remaining John xiii: 36-38. Simon Peter said unto seven are to be appointed by the London him, Lord, whither goest thou? Jesus Missionary Society. answered him, Whither I go thou canst not follow me now; but thou shalt follow me The will contains an expression of the tes· afterwards. Peter said unto him, Lord why tator's wishes for the guidance of the special cannot I follow thee now? I will lay down committees to be appointed as before men· my life for thy sake. tioned, as follows: "That if practicable the said shares and legacies and the income Jesus answered him, Wilt thou lay down thereof shall be applied for the purpose of thy life for my sake? Verily, verily, I say giving to every tribe of mankind, that has unto thee, The cock shall not crow tIll thou them not, and which speaks a language dis· hast denied me thrice. tinct from all others, accurate and faithful copies of at least the Gospel of John and the Here is a disciple that loved the Gospel of Luke, together with the book of Lord Jesus, and felt both desirous the Acts of the Apostles printed in the Ian· to go anywhere with him, and guage of that tribe, and to teach some, say ready to follow him to prison or to at least 10 or 12 persons of each such tribe, death. The self-confidence and vehow to read; and in some cases perhaps one hemence of Peter can be seen only tribe of people, some of whom know how to by a careful comparison of the four read and have printed Gospels, may be urged Gospel narratives. The full acto evangelize some other tribe, or tribes, count as combined would read moved by a faithful request, and may teach somewhat thus: them to read; but it is my wish that every· where in all Africa, in South America, in Why can not I follow thee now? I am ready Central America, in Asia, in the Sonth Sea to go with thee both unto prison and to death. Islands, and in the Indian Archipelago, all I will lay down my life for thy sake. tribes and great populations, destitute of the said Gospels in print, should by some means Jesus answered him, Wilt thou lay down be reached promptly (the actual heathen t.hy life for my sake? Verily, verily, I say first) and put in possession of the said Gas· unto thee, I tell thee Peter, that this day, pels, outward indeed it may be, if only in even in this night, before t.he cock crow print, but available to some if God shall give twice thou wilt thrice deny that thou knowest them repentance and faith. But I desire me. But he spake the mare vehemently, that Mohammedans everywhere should be though I should die with thee. yet will I not left to the various Bible agencies, and that all deny thee in any wise. Though all men tribes thus blessed with the light of the Gas· should be offended because of thee, yet will I pel, the light of life as a lamp placed and left never be offended. And the Lord said, Simon, standing among them, should by means of Simon, behold Satan hath desired to have such shares and legacies, hereinbefore be· you (all) that he may sift you as wheat; but queathed, for some considerable period, say 1 have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not, until each tribe has formed a church, be and when thou art converted, strengthen visited at regular intervals by devoted teach· thy brethren. ers of some tribe or people till every tribe in every land shall have the Gospel in print or Possibly the statement about in the bearts of some of,each tribe, and no Peter's denial was twice made by delay should occur in taking the inestimable our Lord, and the second time treasure to every unreached tribe; and wise more explicitly. But the substance economy should be used in the administra· of the whole warning is plain. tion of such shares and legacies. And an Peter was sincere and earnest, early or first labor of love should be to map truly devoted to the Lord Jesus, out the world in its parts unreached by Holy and, as he thought, ready to follow Scripture and to supply such parts with at him any whither, and impatient least printed Gospels of John and Luke and to follow him then and there into with the Acts of the Apostles so far as it may any danger or peril. The one be found practicable to do so. " t.rouble with him was he did not know himself. He needed a "con- We give space to this remarkable version" to understand his own weakness, and a filling of the Spirit document because it is so seldom to be enabled to do the will of God. There is a profound pathos in our that any man bequeaths so large Lord's words: an amount of money to purely mis- Whither I go [to Gethsemane's passion and Golgotha's cross] thou canst not follow me sionary purposes, The nineteenth now; but thou shalt follow me afterwards.
century furnished only three or four parallel cases.
Thou canst not follow me now- can be viewed as coming quite. up not only because God's fulness to vigorous philological reqUIre- of time had not come, but because ments, or as being in their present he himself was unready. It was the can not of an unsuspected shape quite ready for the press, yet inability to bear the cross. Peter was resolute, but his resolution the undersigned agree in pro- snapped like the green withes nouncing the treatise bearing the and new ropes that bound Sam- son, in the crisis of temptation. motto 1 Cor. i: 21, to be worthy of Peter was vehement, but it was the prize. the vehemence of a human energy, and not the momentum of spiritual In opening the seal cover the force and power. That very day, that very night, instead of bravely author of the treatise to which the facing prison and death, he shrank before a servant maid, and denied prize had been adjudged was found all knowledge of his Lord, and denied Him before His own face, to be Herr Missionar Wilhelm within reach of His eyes! So little does the disciple know himself! Dilger, Basel missionary in the The lesson is plain; we must even East Indies. * in following Christ for self-denying service wait GOd's time and To Student Voluteers: An Appeal wait our own preparation, otherwise what we confidently believe frOID China. * would be courageous martyrdom, may turn out shameful betrayal The churches, hospitals, schoolsand denial. and homes of Christians have been generally destroyed by the Boxer Peter's mistakes were these: uprising in a territory five times the size of Great Britain. Thou- 1. Self-confidence and ignorance sands of Christian Chinese have of himself. died for the faith. More than 130 Protestant missionaries have heen 2. Impatience of delay. murdered, and many others have 3. Carnal vehemence. heen incapacitated by their suffer- 4. Unteachable spirit. Unreadi- ings for missionary work. Yet ness to receive warning. we are confident that these days of 5. Ignorance of the Holy Ghost. persecution are soon to give place to an unprecedented opportunity Prize Essay on Religions of India. for a great spiritual awakening in the Chinese empire. The offer of a prize by the Saxon Missionary Conference, which we We have not lost faith in the published in April, 1898, has pro- Chinese, nor in the transforming duced eight prize treatises (three power of the Gospel of Jesus. These from Germany, two from England, awful persecutions have strikingly and three from India). In July of revealed the heroic qualities of the last year these were submitted to Chinese Christians. We believe the judges: Geheimer Hofrath that He would have this people Professor Windisch, Professor Lin- evangelized in this generation, and der of Leipsic, and Professor von that His is the power. In place of Schroder in Vienna, who, after the murdered and invalided miscareful examination, gave the sionaries, and in view of the enfollowing unanimous decision: larged possihilities for work among the educated classes, a large in- Even tho no one of these essays crease of the missionary force is imperative. We therefore urge upon consecrated student volun- teers the opportunity presented in China. We ask each of you per- sonally: Does God desire your help in winning this greatest heathen nation to Himself?
*The former Student Volunteers from the United States. Canada, Great Britain, Ger- many and Scandinavia, who are now mission- aries in twelve different provinces in China, and assembled in Shanghai. December 18th, 1900, unite in this message to Student Volun· teers in our home lands,
RECENT BOOKS ON MISSIONS AND MISSION LANDS.
VERBECK, OF JAPAN. By William Elliot Grif- fitted the octagonal hole into which fis. Illustrated. 12mo, 375 pp. $1 50. it was to be put. God sent him to Fleming H. Revell Co., New York. Japan in those critical years when the island empire was just awaking Dr. Guido F. Verbeck was an- out of centuries of lethargy and other of that remarkable class of exclusiveness to take a foremost forty-year missionaries, led on by rank among the nations of the William Oarey, and embracing earth. Some one was needed just such great souls as Dr. Wilson, of then to train the men who were to Bombay; Dr. Livingstone, of be the movers and leaders in this Africa; Dr. Judson, of Burma; renaissance. Had Guido Verbeck Eliza Agnew, of Oeylon, and many possessed all his other qualities, more whose active period of serv- and yet had he not been a man of ice has singularly covered just reserve, he would have defeated about two score years in the for- the purpose of God. He was coneign field. tent to work in silence, keep his own counsel, and allow his deeds Verbeck was identified with to go unsung. He did not offend Japan from 1859 to 1898. During the Japanese by sounding his own that memorable period he ranked trumpet and magnifying his own as one of the most conspicuous importance. Modesty and not among the makers of New Japan. vanity controlled him. Being em- The first decade of these years was ployed by the government, he idenspent in Nagasaki, the second in tified his interest with his employ- Tokio, the new capital, as an edu- ers-kept their matters to himself; cator and translator in the service and being a citizen of no country, of the Japanese government. Then he became virtually a citizen of followed about two decades more, the sunrise kingdom. in Bible translation and evangelistic work. For more than half of Dr. Verbeck's most conspicuous this whole missionary career he service to Japan was probably as a supported himself and family on 'teacher of the younger class of his salary paid by the government. men who were in God's providence to be the framers of the nation. A This book, written in Dr. Griffis' score of men who from 1868 to this charming style, is mainly of inter- day have directed the destinies of est as the revelations ot a Divine Japan sat at his feet, and over 500 plan in a believer's life. It is an who came to America for educaincontestable proof and argument tional purposes bore his letters of for aGod in history. Verbeck was introduction. Meanwhile in Japan a many-sided man, but his many- he was, by the use of reason alone, sidedness was necessary to the suppressing the persecuting spirit place he was to fill. He was a lin- which broke out anew in 1868. guist and a scholar, a born teacher and a trained preacher; he was by One evidence of both the ability early education a civil engineer, and the industry of this great man and by subsequent study a theolo- is seen in his new method of litergian; by native gifts he had the ary criticism, meant to ascertain capacity of a statesman, and by thE' real authorship of any compothe gift of grace the spirit of a mis- sition. In pursuance of this scheme sionary. Here is a sort of octagon- he analyzed the whole Epistle to al peg, but no other would have
RECENT BOOKS ON MISSIONS AND MISSION LANDS
the Romans, and tabulated every missions, while the author is deal- one of its 9,337 words. ing with the material side, and No missionary library will be closes his book with the sentence, complete without Dr. Griffis' new "Railways will be the best mission- book, and no student of Japanese aries of civilization in China," he is missions will be properly equipped in sympathy with the claims of who does not know Verbeck, of Christianity to superiority, and Japan. does not descend to the cheap flings THE AWAKENING OF THE EAST. By Pierre which disfigure the similar books Leroy·Beaulieu. 12mo, xxvii., 299 pp. $1.50. McClure, Philips & Co., New York. by Henry Norman and Lord Cur- zon. s.
This is a most intelligent and use- CHINAMEN AT HOME. By Thomas G. Selby, ful book. It is positive but not twelve years nlissionarv in China. 12mo. opinionated, bright but not flip- 38. 6d. Hodder & Stoughton, London, pant, fair and considerate in its 1900•• treatment of the Eastern peoples, A book upon China at a time just in its account of Western in- when the reading public is surfeited fluence, its methods and results, with literature relating to that and free from that second-hand country must have decided excel- stereotyped criticism of missions lence in order to secure conscien- which stamps so many volumes of tious commendation. This volume this kind with the earmarks of certainly possesses unusual merit.
open-port gossip and ignorance. Remembering the value of Dr.
The writer has the virtues of the Williams' standard volumes, and French mind without its defects; the scarcely secondary importance he writes carefully and calmly, and of works by Arthur Smith and tho here and there is some minor Archdeacon Gray, as well as the slip as to fact, and tho it is of varying character of a host of other course possible to form different books, we do not hesitate to assert opinions on the basis of the facts, that Mr. Selby's volume excels all there are few books that can be others of the same size in its pic- as cordially recommended. It does turesque, spicy, often humorous, not attempt to cover the whole of always accurate presentation of Asia. It deals only with Siberia, the missionary's environment and Japan, and China, and it does not work in South China.
unearth all the ancient history of The first six chapters deal with these, but sets forth attractively general themes, such as cities and and quite satIsfactorily the present villages and their unique life, the situation. The book was written rough-and-tumble of inland travel, prior to the Boxer outbreak, but the Chinaman's teachers and cere- little needs correction in it, and monial institutions, and his partial- introductions bring the account ity for his own civilization. All of down to date. lH. Leroy-Beaulieu these topics are treated with great is disgusted, as all students of literary skill and from new points China are, with the fossilization of of view.
life and the torpid conservatism of While a large minority of Chi- its governing class. It is whole- nese missionaries would not accept some to have the facts so presented all the theories of the chapter on at a time when His Excellency Wu ceremonial institutions, they would Ting Fang, Chinese minister to the strongly recommend it to candi- United States, is attempting to dates as offering a working hy- whitewash Confucian institutions pothesis of much value. The last before the American people. As to four chapters are fascinating de-
lineations of the missionary at element sinks into a small place work. The reader actually sees the here, and emphasis is laid on Chris- worker outside the treaty ports, tianity as the supreme good for and the Chinese congregations and man in this present life, the only their humors; he hears the native full message from the good and preachers as they deftly meet the loving God, and Christians are objections and attacks made upon bound, accordingly, to make this Christianity, and in the final chap- good and loving God known to all ter he faces the problems of Chris- His children who can only come to tian progress in the empire. Tho their real life in Him.
written last year, it barely alludes To say only this would be mis- to the recent troubles, and it bears leading, for Dr. Clarke has made a internal evidence of no actual ex· thorough study of missions as a perience in China later than 1880. great enterprise, and writes with Yet this fact does not detract from breadth of view, a practical suggest- its value as a series of moving pic_ iveness, a charming style, and real tures of missionary effort in the spiritual uplift of many aspects of middle kingdom. If criticised at the present missionary situation all, it would be along the line of the and the outlook for the future.
limited view given of a very multi- That minister is very dull who can form enterprise, and the lack of not get from this book a fresh the brighter and more hopeful supply of missionary appeals and aspects of the work. Despite these missionary motives for his people.
defects the reader will continue to s.
the end, and will lay down the Monthly Missionary Bibliography.
book with a thirst for more vol- ONE OF CHINA'S SCHOLARS. Mrs. Howard Taylor. Illustrated. 12mo, 280 pp. 28. umes of the same sort. B. {[d. Morgan and Scott, and China Inland Mission, London. A STUDY OF CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. W. N. Clarke. 12mo, 268 pp. $1.25. Charles H,STORY OF CHINESE L,TERATURE. Herbert Scribner'S Sons, New York. A. Giles. 12 mo, 448 pp. $1.50. D. Ap- pleton & Co., N. Y. Dr. Clarke is regarded as one of the most careful and judicious CHILDREN IN BLUE AND 'WHAT THEY Do. representatives of the" new theol- (China). Florence Cadrington. Illusogy." Everyone reading this book trated. Bvo, 77 pp. 28. 6d. Church of on Christian missions would at England Zenana M. S., London. once perceive his general doctrinal position, but it would be hard for THE KINGDOM OF THE YELLOW ROBE. Ernest anyone holding old or new views Young. $2.25. New Amsterdam Book in theology to write a fairer, more Co.,N. Y. sensible book on missions. Dr. Clarke does not say a word that THE PHILIPPINES-THE WAR AND THE PEOPLE. would weaken the missionary zeal A. G. Robinson. Bvo, 407 pp. $2.00. Mcof anyone holding old views, while Clure, Phillips & Co., N. Y. he says many words that make it impossible for anyone holding new NORTH AMERICANS OF YESTERDAY. F. S. Delviews to escape the missionary obli- lenbaugh. Ilhstrated. Bvo, 487 pp. $4.00. gation. If anyone attempts to G. P. Putnam's Sons, N. Y. evade the missionary appeal on the ground that he does not hold the THE AMERICAN NEGRO. Wm. H. Thomas. traditional doctrinal basis of mis- Bvo. $2.00. The lIIacmillan Co., N. Y. sions, this is the book to give him. ln ot]:ler words, the eschatological PROTE8TA~T llrssloNs IN SOUTH AMERICA. H. P. Beach and others. Map. 12mo, 240 pp. 35 cents (paper), 50 cents (cloth). Student Volunteer Movement, N. Y.
THE SANDS OF THE SAHARA. Maxwell Som- merville. $2.00. J. B Lippincott, Phila.
HISTORY OF AMERICAN BAPTIST MISSIONS. E. F. Merriam. 12mo $1 25. American Baptist Pub. Soc., Phila.
Two THOUSAND YEARS OF MISSIONS BEFORE CAREY. Dr. L. C Barnes. $1.50. Chris- tian Culture Press, Chicago.
THE ANCIENT SCRIPTURES AND THE MODERN JEW. Rev. David Baron. 8vo. 68. Hod- der & Stoughton, London. FACTS OF PROGRESS IN THE WORK OF CHRIST AMONG STUDENTS. (Pamphlet)
GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE
GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE.
AMERICA. The Army These additional Protestant In a recent Inde- of the Lord. figures present an- Church pendent Rev. Dan- other encouraging G row t h . iel Dorchester, one of the very best of view of the facts in the case: Of our statisticians in the religious 70,000 young men in American colrealm, gives these encouraging figures in answer to the question, "Is leges 38,000 are church members, the Church still gaining at the close of the century? " and over 5,000 are candidates for Year. Churches. ~1inisters. Communicants the Christian ministry. During 1800 3,030 2,651 364,872 the past century the increase of 1850 43,022 25,555 3,529,988 1870 70,148 47,609 6,673,396 church membership to that of gen- 1880 97,090 1890 151,172 69,870 10,065,963 eral popUlation is as 27 to 9. There 1900 172,406 98.185 13,823,618 126,046 17,784,475 are in the United States over 100,- During the last twenty years 000 Christian ministers, over 145,000 there has been an increase of 75,316 churches and 56,176 ministers. church edifices, over 165,000 church The increase in the communi- organizations, and over $700,000,000 cants: invested in church property. From 1850 to 1870 was 3,143,400 in 20 years. " 1870" 1880 " 3,:392,267" 10 " Anti-Canteen 'I.'he century starts 1880 " 1890 " 3,757,555" 10 Legisill;tion. well at the seat of 1890 " 1900 " 3,960,857" 10 government in the Many have supposed that the last decade would show a smaller in- action of the Senate adopting that crease, but it has far exceeded the previous decades-203,302 more portion of the Army bill which than from 1880 to 1890; 568,590 more than from 1870 to 1880; and 817,457 abolishes the canteen system at all more than from 1850 to 1870. Had the full data for 1900 been obtained, military posts. Rev. W. F. Crafts the gain for the decade would have footed up to over 4,000,000. tells something of how the victory Comparing the whole population was won in these words: with the total evangelical communicants, we have these striking Most important of all I wish to results: ·note this anti-canteen movement, as was shown by the Senate debate, 1800, one communicant in 14.50 inhabitants. very largely devoted to the condi- tions in Manila and the bad influ- 1850, " " "6.57 " ence of the army upon the natives, is closely related to the great 1870 " " 578 world crusade for the protection of native races against intoxicants 188U: " " 5:00 and opium, which was begun by 1890, H •• 4.53 the Reform Bureau at the Ecumeni- cal Conference, and has already 1900, .. H 4.28 won five victories in this Congress. First, the indorsement of the presi- COMPARISON WITH THE ROMAN dent in his message; second, a fa- CATHOLIC CHURCH. vorable vote in the foreign affairs committee, leading to the third, R. C. Pop. Evangelical the ratification of the African communi- Evangel. pop. treaty; fourth, another favorable 100,000 vote in the Senate committee, 1.614,000 cants. or adherents. leading to fifth, the passage of the 4,600,000 Lodge resolution declaring that the 1800 6,367,330 364,872 1,277,052 time has come for the protection of 1830 8,579,966 native races everywhere against 1870 10,129,677 3,529,988 12,354,958 intoxicants and opium by addi- 1880 6,673,396 23,356,886 tional treaties and laws, a resolu- 1890 10,065,963 35,230,870 tion which was supported by a big 13,823,618 48,382,663 roll of petitions from twenty-three 1900 States, which, with many more to 17,784,478 62,245,662 be added, will be carried next year by a deputation, with the declara-
tions of the president and Senate, to A Dream A few weeks since, all the chief governments of the Which Proved at sheriff's sale, the world. Baseless. Christian Common- Now that the army canteen has wealth Colony in been abolished, we earnestly wish that army officers would encourage Georgia, founded in February, total abstinence and that there 1898, near Columbus, ceased to be might be a decided decrease of in- a socialist commnnity, and the land temperance among the soldiers. and buildings will revert, to pri- vate ownership. Most of the mem- The Senate has agreed to the con- bers of the community came origvention to regulate the importa- inally from Indiana, Illinois, and tion of intoxicants into Africa. Ohio. They were of more than The next step should be to legislate usual intelligence, and they started for the protection of all aboriginal with considerable capital. For a races, especially in the New Heb- time the colony prospered, then rides, against the importation of dissensions arose, and now the firearms, opium, and intoxicants. usual fate of such projects has come. The Chicago Receives flowers on Children in Ami s s ion a r y Flower Tuesdays from Puerto Rico. writes: "A great Mission King's Daughters, many native Puer- to-Ricans live, move, and have Christian Endeav- their being like so many sheep. They eat, drink, and sleep, and orers, and other friends outside the have little energy for anything but the necessary needs of life. They city. The boxes are carried free use face-powder, but forget soap. They seem to think the way to be by the express companies. The clean is to cover up dirt with pow- der. Children even come to school flowers are made up into bouquets with powdered faces. Tidiness in the home and school is one of the and sent to hospitals, homes for earliest lessons to be taught. The home is hardly worthy the name aged, incurables and children, po- in many cases, being very poor and having few attractions. The lice stations, rescue and newsboys' rooms are barren, with little furni- ture, no books, and few pictures. homes, homes of the sick, tenement· I can not begin to describe the con- ditions of squalor and need in houses, etc. Over 60 institutions which some of these people live. They are ingenious in schemes for are thus supplied in a single year. doing little work. One afternoon several of us were out for a walk. An opening is made for personal A shower came up, and we ran to It near-by shack for shelter. While work, as it is found to be easier to there we noticed one of the senoras putting dishes out upon the doorgo with flowers than empty-handed. step in the rain-' so the rain would wash them,' she informed us. It A Dream Rev. E. S. Humere- was encouraging, however, that Which Came turned a few weeks she wanted them washed."
to Pass. ago to his mission- ary labors in India.
Just before leaving, he made an address in Center Church, New Haven, Conn. He described the building of a church edifice in Bombay as a dream on which he loved to dwell. At the close of the address, Dr. Newman Smyth, the pastor, prayed that the dream might be realized. Before he sailed, the amount needed, $10,000, was given by members of the congregation, and placed in the bank at Mr. Hume's disposal.
GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELL~GENCE
Chinese The report that River, and, beyond, a trackless Monuments in American officers desert of beautiful, perfectly dry snow. Distance, 8,000 miles from Mexico. have unearthed an- England; upward of 1,500 miles cient records in bevond the outer limit of Canadian frontier border of civilization, and Peking showing that the Chinese our nearest missionary brother fifdiscovered America 1,500 years teen days' journey. Cut off from ago and erected temples in Mexico, white people; shut up among Red has aroused the greatest interest Indian savages. Oh, what vast among the scientific men of Mon- solitudes! 'Vhat extreme loneliterey and throughout Mexico. ness! A rough life, hard fare, and Chinese temples have been found our family in England, call forth in the State of Sonora, on the powers of endurance, good quali- Pacific coast. The ruin of one of ties of heart and head; also much the temples was discovered near physical and spiritual strength are the town of Ures about two years required. The efforts to procure ago. sufficient food and fuel for these regions is no easy task. Other One of the large stone tablets conditions of life are most disadfound in the ruins was covered vantageous. Nothing in nature to with carved Chinese characters, smile upon us for eight months. which were partly deciphered by a No sight or sound of civilization. learned Chinaman who visited the No European Christians to mingle ruins at the request of the Mexican with, or fellow-worker to shake government. This Chinaman made the hand, join in mutual, sympathe assertion at the time that the thetic intercourse, and say, "Go ruins were those of a temple which on, brother; I believe in you apd had been erected many centuries your work." ago by Chinese, but his statement was not believed. Christian The English Church It has long been claimed that the Indians of Missionary Society Indians of the State of Sonora are descendants of early Chinese set- North Canada. has labored since tlers. They possess many traditions and characteristics of the the year 1822 among Chinese.-The Tribune. the remnants of Indian tribes which A Message Rev. W. Spendlove, wander across the vast country from the of Fort Norman, of formerly known as the JIudson's Land of Ice. the Mackenzie dio- Bay territory. And now from the cese, in his annual United States' border to the Arctic letter writes to England as follows, Ocean, and from Hudson's Bay to the missive being five months on the Rocky Mountains, the praises of the way: the Redeemer are sung by thou-. We reside on the northern confines of British territory, on the sand of Indians, and in 11 differents Arctic slopes of this continent, not far from the Arctic Circle and languages. Great Bear Lake, amid wild, mountainous scenery. Either the wild EUROPE. fury of storms rage, or dead calm with intense cold prevails, inter- The Growth The Church Mischanged with bright sun and cheery ice and snow landscape, for eight of Medical sionary Society, bemonths of the year. Ice-blocked and siiow-bound, dense forest cov- Missions. ing the largest of ers the banks of the Mackenzie all, not strangely also leads in the number of men and women trained in the physi- cian's art. These figures are taken from Mercy and Truth, one of the C. M. S. organs: "In the .January, 1894, number of the Medical Mission Quarterly we find the following figures: Medi- cal missionaries, 27; nurses (work- ing in medical missions), 0; hos- pitals, 15, with beds, 527; and
in-patients, 3,800; dispensaries, 8; nity. From the figures given we total out-patients, 252,000. half of learn that nearly 2,5()O,OOO meals whom attended three medical mis- have been supplied at the cheap sions in the Punjab. Now we food depots; 1,567,562 lodgings prohave medical missionaries, 60, of vided fOil the homeless; 11,282 appliwhom 9 are women; nurses, 28; cations for employment registered hospitals 32, with 1,484 beds, and at the labor bureaus; 3,042 men in-patients, 11,457; dispensaries, 22 received into factories; temporary (including the branch dispensaries or permanent employment has attached to some of the larger been found for 9,476; 525 ex-crimmedical missions); and total out- inals received into homes, 182 of patient visits in the year, 668,973. whom were restored to friends or This is a large increase, but of sent to siLuations; 3,569 applicacourse none of the unofficial dis- tions dealt with for finding lost pensaries are included. splendid persons, 1,216 of whom were found; work tho many of them are doing. 2,460 women and girls received into With regard to funds, the income rescue homes, 2,135 of them having of the auxiliary in the yeal' ending been restored to their friends or March 31, 1894, was £1,533; in 1897, sent to situations. In addition to £3,808; in 1898 (after Mercy and this, multitudes of poor sick people Truth had been publisbed for a were visited and nursed or otheryear) it was £5,944; and in the fol- wise cared for. The additional lowing years £8,447 and £10,600 homes which have been established (exclusive of centenary gifts). in London, Plymouth, Bristol, Sheffield, and Dundee bring up the A Chief Justice November 20th a total of instituticms counected with on Missions. great meeting was the Darkest England Scheme in held in Exeter Hall, Great Britain alone to 142. In other lands there are, as an out- London, at which the Lord Chief growth of the scheme, 411 similar establishments, distributed over Justice of England had this to say 47 countries and colonies, making a total of 553 agencie.s. with especial reference to the re- Watching The London Miscent martyrdom of Brooks, Robin- and Prayer. sionary Society fos- son, and Not'man, missionaries in ters interest in its world-wide work through a unique China: organization known as the "Watcher's Band." Its aim is to I sometimes feel that I would give all enlist as many persons as possible my success and prosperity, or a very large in little companies to pray specipart of it, in order to have done one-tenth of fically for missions, circulate literathe good those men have done. I do not say ture, establish libraries, and in it is altogether a right feeling. but the other ways keep themselves and self-sacrifice, courage, and devotion of these others in close touch with the men ought to inspire those whose career in progress of Christianity in foreign life has not yet been chosen to go forward as fields. For eight years it has carsoldiers in the mission field and to give their ried on its modest but useful work, best in the service of Christ. I want to make and now there are no less than 724 a special appeal to young men and to uni- branches, enrolling 34,000 members, versity men. I ask them to prepare them- a gain of 3,700 members during the selves, whilst they possess the priceless gift last year. of youth, to go out and do this work whilst they are, to a large extent, untainted and unspotted by the temptations of the world.
The" Darkest The S a I vat ion England" Army has issued a Scheme. report of its social work in the United Kingdom for the past year. Taken as a whole, the review unfolds a record of successful dealing with the outcast, criminal, and poverty- stricken members of the commu-
GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE
McAll Mission The McAll Mission bishops and bishops. The Society Report. in France publishes of French Jesuits maintains 750 its twenty-eighth missionaries in the Orient, with colleges at Beirut, Cairo, and Alex- annual report. M. Louis Sautter is andria. In Syria it has about 180 its honorary president. Rev. C. E. schools with over 13,000 pupils. Greig, its chairman and director, The French Lazarists have exten- and its finance secretary, Mr. W. sive missions with schools and col- Soltau. In Paris and its environs leges throughout the east and 60 it has 28 stations and a mission or more establishments and 100 boat with a total capacity for about priests in South America. Women 4,700 attendants. About 3,000 evan- have also their own societi~s, main- gelistic meetings have been held in taining 9,150 French sisters with the year, with an average attend- 83 establishments in Oriental mis- ance of 80. Temperance meetings, sions. The French Sisters of Charprayer-meetings, workers' meet~ ity are said to number about 33,000, ings, Bible classes, fraternal and laboring in almost every part of Christian Endeavor societies, med- the world. French Catholics in ical missions are to form part of the 1898 gave, through the Lyons Soci-, noble scheme of work carried on. ety, about $800,000 for foreign mis- sions. Catholics expend nearly Outside of Paris, in from 50 to 60 $1,000,000 annually to maintain other stations, similar work is in schools in Paris alone. progress. The total number of sittings is 10,800, and the total Methodism The American number of religious meetings 17,000. in Italy. Methodist Church The balance-sheet shows a total of opened its Italian 50,000 francs ($10 000) as the outlay, which is amazingly small for a mission in 1871, with Rome as its work so vast. This enterprise cer- headquarters since 1875. With the tainly commends itself for economy bitterest of opposition to meet in its conduct. We can but hope from first to last, its churches now there is equally faithful conser- contain 1,734 full members and vation of evangelical truth in the 548 prohationers, nearly half of very corrupt atmosphere of the whom have been gathered within French republic. eight years. In Rome alone 224 members are found, and in Milan Foreign Mis- According t 0 a 250 members and probationers. sions of French writer in the Catho- The school of theology in Rome has 24 students in attendance, of Catholics. lie World, 7,745 whom 3 are preparing for the Bap- French mission- tist ministry, 2 for the English Wesleyan, and 1 for the Waldenaries, mostly priests, are laboring sian. in foreign missions. More than 100 societies in France are engaged in " Peter's The Italian journal, supporting them and in educating Pence." The Nazione, states recruits, and 60 of these number more than 1,000 members each. that the amount of The Society for Foreign Missions Peter's Pence brought to the pope at Paris maintains about 1,200 during last year, up to September, priests, mostly laboring in India, amounted 'to £320,000, no less than China, Japan, Korea, and Tibet. £52,000 having been presented in It has 340 students in its theologi- the month of May alone. Beyond cal seminary in Paris preparing to this, further amounts of £520,000 enter the foreign field, which in- were handed to him personally, cludes 28 provinces with 33 arch-
and also many valuable jewels and cards, bearing drawings of the works of art. Raaba mosques and other religious buildings, portraits of Mohammed- ASIA. an women, or the names of God and Mohammed. Would that the A Census Turkey has bee n scruples of this monarch might be of Islam. taking a census of employed to prevent the wholesale massacres of his subjects. Islam-from THE MISSIONARY REVIEW OF THE Progress The Rev. C. H. WORLD! This census gives the in Persia. Stileman, the sec- number of Mohammedans in the world as 100,500,OOO-which figures retary of the C. M. can be found approximately in the S. Persian Mission, who is now at REVIEW for October, 1898. Dr. home, told the committee recently Henry Jessup, of Beirut, writes to that during the last five years there Rev. S. M. Zwemer, of Arabia-the had been steady advance in every author of the "census" in the direction. 'Vhile five years ago REVIEW-aS follows (October 15, Julfa was the only station OCCl- 1900): pied, we have now extended to Ispahan, Yezd, Kirman, and I once translated your statistical summary Shiraz, and so great are the oppor- of the number of Moslems in the world-196,- tunities, and so many the openings, 000,000. I showed it to the Mudir elllIaarif. that he pleads earnestly for more He took it, and afterward replied that it medical missionaries and for more could not be published, as the Emperor ,ViII- missionaries to undertake itiner- iam in Damascus had spoken publicly of the ating journeys. One interesting Moslems as 300,000,000! I told him the empe- event in connection with this mis- ror was simply quoting the exaggerated sion must not be left unmentioned: statement of a Moslem sheik at the dinner- Our veteran friend, Bishop Stuart, table. But the Mudir kept it and sent it to has just completed his jubilee of Constantinople, and now it has come out as missionary service, and the comthe official census made by the sultan's gov- mittee have forwarded him a conernment, and published by the Turks. gratulatory resolution 0 n his having been permitted in God's Bridge Europe and Asia providence to labor so long, first Across the are soon to be con- in India, then in New Zealand, and Bosphorus. nected by a bridge now, in his old age, in Persia.- C. M. S. Intelligencer. over the Bosphorus, at a point where the Pel'sian King Hindu Mr. R. P. Wilder Darius crossed with his al'Iny, 513 Students. writes:" There are B.C. It is to be a wonder of architecture, strongly fortified, and will 115 art and 40 profurnish connections for through fessional colleges in India, conrailroad travel from Hamburg to taining 19,000 students. If we Calcutta, and from St. Petersburg include the training schools for to Cape Town, Africa. The build- masters, industrial schools, schools ing of this structure is in German of art, law, medicine, engineering, hands, as is also the railway which and surveying, we find in this is to pass through Konia (the empire 412 higher institutions of ancient Iconium), Marash, Mosul, learning, with 31,884 students. etc., en route to Bagdad and· There are in addition 840 high beyond. schools for boys, with 183,993 pupils, and 1,922 middle English Picture The Sultan is a schools, with 155,841 pupils. The Post-cards stickler for Mo- Prohibited. hammedan propri- ety. An imperial irade has just been issued stopping the growing trade in picture post-
GENERAL MlSSlONARY INTELLIGENCE
inter-collegiate Y. M. C. A. has the sum total of the moneys that 32 branches, with a member- have been spent these two years ship of over 1,400. There are, in on nautch parties, fireworks, and addition, in 22 city associations, the things of the sort, the result 816 past and present students. So will be truly astounding." the full number of students in connection with the Y. M. C. A.'s of India's Dr. Robert A. India is over 2,200. Widows' Hume, of Ahmed- Hindu The Indian Social Heartlessness. Reformer m a k e s Gifts nagar, forwards, this sad confession: for China. t h I' 0 ugh the "Truth is always unwelcome, and we are not surprised that exception American Board, a has been taken by some of our contemporaries to the outspoken re- gift of 1,000. rupees ($333) from marks made in the Viceregal Council by Lord Curzon respecting the ~Iukti church, "to help in the niggardliness with which the well-to-do classes have responded restoring the recent losses of to the appeal for help on behalf of the famine-stricken millions. By the mission and Christian com.- reputation India is of course the land of charity, but the term is munity ill China." This Mukti variously understood by different people, and it is but a few, even church is composed of 300 widows among the best educated of our countrymen, who can show by pre- and others connected with the cept as well as by example what it is to be discriminate in almsgiving. work of Pandita Ramabai, and this If we exclude the large sums contributed to the Famine Fund by our gift is but a portion of this church's rajas and maharajas, the total subscriptions paid by our countrymen "tithing and self-denial fund." sink into insignificance by the side of the enormous funds sent from Other portions are to be sent to abroad. It would, no doubt, be unpatriotic to let, without the other missions in North China show of a murmur, a 'foreigner,' a viceroy though he be, to lecture us which have suffered in like manof all others on our ancient and innate virtue of charity, but at the ner. Think of the poor widows same time it is no use blinking the facts. How many of our wealthy of India, who have done their utmen, we ask, are there who have den i e d themselves unnecessary most for the famine sufferers close luxuries or questionable pleasures during this famine which, as has to them, making such a gift as this been dinned into our ears so often, has proved the most disastrous of for the suffering Christians of the century, in order to transfer their price to the Famine Fund ? China !-i}fi88ionary Herald. If one had the means of adding up Priestly Mary Clement Humbug. Leavitt, of the World's W. C. T. U., writes as follows: "At a temple in Colombo, Ceylon,a priest offered to show me, for the consid- eration of a rupee, then worth about thirty cents, one of Buddha's teeth. I replied that I would prefer to keep my rupee. I had, already, at a temple in Siam, seen one quite as large, in every dimension, as that of a horse. I remarked, looking straight before me, and with a serious face, 'Buddha must have had many teeth.' He turned his face sharply toward me, but I did not stir, not even an eyelash, seeing his movements with that half-sight which takes in a broader sweep than clear, full sight. Then, look- ing straight before him, just as I did, and with a serious face, he
said, 'Yes, Mem, he had about hearse the old story, the usual three bushel.' This statement did evasive drivel about' old custom.' not exceed the fact; that is, if all And if we attempt to discover what that are shown were his." this precious old custom in the matter of education and govern- A Modern The native state of ment is, there will be remon- Miracle. Baroda furnishes a strances on all sides. Old custom is a bugaboo, a password to lying striking example of and deceit. How can anyone bethe progress of female education in lieve it,? India. Twenty-five years ago there "Third, the hypercritics."
were 2 small schools for girls in the " Forward" This word has been state. Now, according to statistics in China. telegraphed to the published in The Zenana, Miss Presbyterian Board Sorabji is superintendent of 108 schools, containing 9,151 pupils; in New York by their representawhile 5,880 girls are actually attend- tive in Shanghai. On January ing boys' schools. 25th another cablegram was re- ceived, stating that the governor Without the Camp lately con- of Shantung "suggests that mistained a touching accQunt of a fast- sionaries return to their stations day kept by the 96 inmates of the and promises full protection." He Almora Leper Asylum. The lepers also reestablishes the legal status voluntarily gave up a day's food of native Christians. This word for the benefit of the famine- has come sooner than was expected. stricken people of Western India, The Church should be ready to reand spent the day in prayer for the spond. Already some of the missufferers. sionaries have returned to the interior, and in many instances A Chinese This is what the have found the people of towns Upon China. eminent author of and villages ready' to make good the loss of property suffered by "China's Only native' Christians and by mission- Hope" has to say of some of his aries, and without a show of a~med countrymen; "In this dynasty force. there have been many innovations introduced in spite of opposition. A Good Word The able and at- The men who stoutly resisted the for Chinese tractive organ of introduction of steamboats and Christians. the Pro t est ant railways would now be the very Episcopal Church, first to resist their abolishment. The anti-reformers may be roughly The Spirit of Missions, speaKing divided into three classes; of a recent gathering of the native clergy, says; "The serious and "First, the conservatives, who are earnest faces, touched with the stuck in the mud of antiquity.
The mischief wrought by these light of Christian faith, speak a obstructionists may be readily per- message of assurance and appealceived. of assurance as they witness to the power' of the Gospel to transform "Second, the slow bell i e s of and ennoble individual life, and to Chinese officialdom, who in case the capacity of the Chinese to reof reform would be compelled to spond to the church's teachingbestir themselves, and who would of appeal as they reveal the victory be held responsible for the outlay that may be won speedily in many of money and men necessary for other. lives if the church will but the changes. The secret machina- rise to the fulness of her opportions of these befuddled, indolent, tunity, and give of her best to win s 1i p per y nepotists thwart all schemes of reform. They give out that it is not 'convenient,' and in order to cloak their evil deeds re-
GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE
China to the service of Christ. be minimized, if not altogether The 7 native priests and 20 deacons avoided, if Christendom should of the mission have made sacrifices avail itself of the present opporfor the church of which Christians tunity for dealing justly and in a in this country can have no ade- Christian way with that great emquate conception. They h a v e pire." broken with an age-long past, they have made themselves liable to dis- Women Mis- C. J. R. Allen, forhonor from their families and sionaries in merly British Confriends, they have faced prejudice and opposition. They speak to China. sul at Foochow, at their own people in their own a recent missionary rather than in an acquired. tongue. They are the living arguments of meeting made these statements, the foreign missionary, the most which are well worth careful conconvincing evidences of the success sideration: "It is of no use to shut of his work." our eyes to the fact that the em- ployment of unmarried women in Two Good F. S. Brockman, in mission work in China constitutes Viceroys. Foreign Mail (or- a serious difficulty, and that it may be necessary to take special steps gan of the Inter- regarding them. Everything that national Committee of Y. M. C. A.), a European woman does is what says of the situation in Nanking: Chinese etiquette says she ought "The Y angste Valley has been not to do. Her behavior in meeting more blessed than most of the men abroad, or receiving them at other parts of China during this her house, is most reprehensible. trouble. We have been fav()red Her dress is indecorous, and even with two viceroys who have proven her manner of walking, especially that not every Chinese official is if she is a strong young woman, blind to the best interests of his with a freedom of limb acquired by country, and ignorant of the laws playing tennis and hockey, and biof civilized lands. Chang Chih cycling, is most improper. The Tung, of Hankow, and Liu Kun Ih, Chinese say, 'Even if her mother of Nanking, have held their people has been too poor or too remiss to with a firm hand, and have been have her daughter's feet properly loyal to the foreigner and the na- compressed when young, she might ti ve Christian. There have been at any rate walk slowly with mincno serious disturbances in Nan- ing steps, with her arms held careking. For a month before we left fully to her sides, instead of strid- Nanking soldiers were stationed at ing along like a man.' Ladies in our house every night, and a guard our lay communities refuse to be kept neal' us during the day." bonnd by the Chinese code, and find, in spite of such disobedience, "The Yellow Much has bee n that they can gain the confidence Peril and the written of late con- and respect of the natives with Golden Oppor- cerning the "Yel- whom they come in contact. But a woman missionary has not such tunity." low Peril," bu t a free hand. Whatever she does it more and more the is sure to be wrong. If she adopts the Chinese costume, she pledges Christian world is coming to regard herself to a strict observance of na·· it rather (to quote Dr. ~faltbie Bab- tive customs, a pledge which she cock) as a "golden opportunity." has the greatest difficulty in keep- "There are undoubtedly great perils ing. Her constant mistakes in tryconnected with the condition of affairs in China, but the perils will
ing to keep up the character of a Pao-ting-fu have lost their lives, Chinawoman expose her to con- and none remain in residence extempt and ridicule, and. often t.o cept at Tientsin and Peking. Nasuspicion; on the other hand, if she tive Christians have been murrefuses to resign her status as an dered in great numbers, and the Englishwoman she remains an out- churches and schools are broken up sider, and can make but little head- and scattered. The mission prop· way with the native women, who erty and the personal effects of the may look on her as a teacher missionaries at Shao-wu have been from the outer world, but never as destroyed, happily without loss of their sister. I admit that I have life; and in other parts of the mismy own opinion, which is that the sion there has been a temporary latter course is the wiser, but the limitation of work.-21fissionary conclusion to be drawn is that we Herald. must not dogmatize. One practice may suit one part of China, and be Christian We find in one of quite unsuitable elsewhere. One Work in the Japanese papers woman ~an do successfully what others may not venture totry. But Tokio. an interesting this I will say, that if it is necessary statement abo u t for a man missionary to temper his enthusiasm with prudence, it is ten the organized Christian work in times as necessary for a woman to the city of Tokio, compiled by Galen do so." lL Fisher, connected. with the Young Men's Christian Association Reconstruc- The Sub-Commit- work of that city. According to tion in Chinese tee on Missions in his statement there are 70 Christian churches, including 62 Protestant, Missions. China, to who m 2 Russian, and 6 Roman Catholic. was referred that These are presided over by 61 Pro- testant pastors and 7 Russian, the part of the correspondence from Roman Catholics apparently hav- China, which pertains to the recent ing no native workers. Of the 61 troubles and losses, and plans for Protestants, 11 have studied abroad. the immediate future, are pre- In addition to the churches there' pared to report in part as follows: are 55 preaching places; 39 Protest- The entire force of the Shansi Mis- ant, 16 Russian, and 6 Roman Cathosion on the field has been cut off, lic. Of Bible women the Protestthe native Christians in great num- ants have the monopoly, 55 out 9f bershave been massacred or impov- 56, the remaining one being Roman erished and driven into exile, the Catholic. The total church memmission property presumably has bership enrollment is 13,711, of been destroyed, and all Christian whom 7,849 are Protestant, 2,000 work, for the time, has been made Russian, and 3,862 Roman Catholic. impossible. The field of the North The average church attendance on China Mission has been filled Sunday is given as 5,426, 3,746 being with disorder, violence, and blood- Protestant, 400 Russian, and 1,300 shed; the mission property at Kal- Roman Catholic. In records of gan, Tung-cho, Peking, Pao-ting-fu single church membership the Roand Lin-Ching, together with the man Catholics and Russians are personal property of the mission- even, with 1,250 each, while the aries on all the stations, has been largest Protestant single church has completely destroyed, and much 377 members. The annual current injury has been done to such prop- expenses, not including foreigners, ertyas J'emains; 3 missionaries at are given as 56,278 yen, of which
GENERAL MISSIONARy INTELLIGENCE
23,278 are for the Protestant names 'Tokyo Christians.' Our churches, 24,000 for the Russian, and host was pleased with our offering, about 9, 000 for the Roman Catholic. and on our return we saw it still When it comes to contributions, floating among the many colored however, Protestant Japanesegave banners. Our host told us that a 10,230 yen to 720 by the Russians, •kanushi' guest had wished to and 500 by the Roman Catholics. talk with the people who left it, Similarly in annual benevolent and he gladly agreed to send tracts contributions the Protestants give to him and to read them himself." 2,705 yen, the Russians 560, and the Roman Catholics about 300.-Inde- Episcopacy An article in the pendent. in Japan. Japan Mail says that of all the mis- Shintoist Miss Alice True, of Friends. the Arne ric a n sionary work carried on in the empire, that of the Episcopalians Christian Mission, stands first as regards rapid devel- Tokio, writes: "I spent last sum- opment. The number of baptisms mer at Nagar, a little fishing village for the past year was 518. This where no foreigner has ever before includes baptisms in the Church of tarried. A 'kanushi,' or shrine- England mission as well as those keeper, whose little shrine was in the American Episcopal church upon the little hill rising from the mission. sandy beach, gave me liberty to preach there. The fishermen A College The Canadian Presthrow their 'rins' there every day in Formosa. byterians hold a as they return from their day's labors. The temple has recently prominent place in been repaired, and there is no in- work for the evangelization of tliis dication of laxity in observing the island, and, as their missionary Shinto forms. But the 'kanushi' organ states, "Oxford College, said to us, 'I have a business, but Formosa, is taking rank with no religion.' He read the Bible those in Canada. At the close of with us daily, and in his house we the last session 13 students finished gave many talks on the truth of their course of study as preachers. Christianity to the people who They all addressed the 'gathered gathered. One woman carne to audience, and they in turn were see us bringing a Bible and hymn addressed by several of the older book, and welcomed us so eagerly preachers who were present. 'They as the first Christians whom she have gone forth tD their work, 6 in had seen during her four years of the Kap-tsu-lan district on the residence in the village. eastern si<ie of the island, and 7 on the western side." "Another 'kanushi' proved an assistant to us in spreading the AFRICA. Gospel at Lubashiri, a village at the foot of Mt. Fuji. Some Bud- Polygamy in The Christian Exdhist pilgrims had become our South Africa. press, of Lovedale, friends through tract-distributing, and the fellow-feeling of mountain quotes these words travelers. They left banners tell- of a magistrate: "The missioning the name of their god and their aries are working reforms, and J' own home, so we prepared a pure am curious to know what the rewhite banner with 'God so loved sult will be. All natives who can the world,' 'God is love,' and the -afford it are polygamists. A na- tive has his three or six wives; the missionary comes along and converts him, and he has now to
be married to one of his wives ac- cation is made. With the New cording to Christian rites before Testament in their native dialect he can become a member of the used as a text-book in the schools church. Usually he chooses the this 100 will soon grow into thou- youngest wife. In any cas e, sands, and they into a multitude, whichever he marries, the remain- who will have the Word of God in der are put away, or sent away, their own tongue. and if they have grown-up children they resent the stigma cast upon Zambesi The chief object of their mother, and there is trouble Industrial the mission is to over the property, followed fre- Mission. evangelize the naquently by litigation, which often ruins the family. Then, again, tives of B l' i tis h one of a man's numerous wives Oentral Africa; all else is a means embraces Christianity, and refuses' to this end. During the past 18 to make beer for him. For this she months about 200 natives have been get s thrashed; the husband is baptized on profession of their brought up and punished for chas- faith in Christ. There are at pretising his wife, who has neglected sent associated with the mission 34 her duties. Or the woman declines schools with an average attendance to live with her heathen husband, of more than 2,400 children. In and lawsuits follow for restoration many villages the people are willing of dowry paid for her, involving to build schools themselves,- and both her husband and her own only ask the mission to supply family in ruin. This is a serious teachers and books. The superinquestion, and affects the most vital interests of the people, whose social tendent, .i1r. 'V. W. Miller, writes: life and family relations are the foundation of their government, "One encouraging feature of the and one which will, sooner or later, school work is that the women now have to be dealt with by legisla- seem to have more desire to be edution." cated and are not so satisfied to re- main in the background as they A Native The Rev. E. H. were. There are sewing classes Translator. Richards, of East held by several of the ladies, which are very well attended by the wo- Africa, writes that men. Scriptural teaching is im- Muti, the native translator, under parted at every opportunity in the his direction will have completed schools, at the dispensaries, in the the translation of the New Testa- sewing-classes and workshops, and ment into the Sheetswa dialect by on the plantations. Last year we Christmas. This same native con- had a good coffee crop, and this vert has translated the New Testa- year we expect 80 tons. I feel sure ment into the Tonga dialect, and that the existing work can be comthis was published by the American fortably supported by the coffee, Bible Society. Bishop Hartzell has except perhaps in very bad years. made application to this same so- However, we do not intend to deciety for the publication of this pend entirely upon coffee, but innew translation of the Scriptures. tend to grow wheat, etc." Dr. Richards writes that there are already 100 converts who can read Growth of In a recent official the Sheetswa, and who will see the the Gospel in report in regard to Word of God in their native tongue for the first time when this publi- Uganda. Uganda, Sir Harry Johnstone pays a high and unsought-for tribute to the results of mission work in that interesting portion of the great
GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE
African continent: "The rapid mission stations, manned by nearly spread of Christianity over the 500 native teachers. The result has kingdom of Uganda and the dis- been about 12,000 baptized Christrict of Taro is one of the greatest tians (to speak only of those now triumphs to which the advocates of alive), with about 12,000 under in- Christian propaganda can point. It struction for baptism. Three voymust not be imagined, of course, ages are made every year, and the that the Baganda or Batoria have whole distance traversed is some none of the old Adam in theircom- 9,000 miles. The present vessel is position since they accepted Chris- very much out of repair. Under tianity, but undoubtedly their in- the most favorable conditions it can telligence is quickened, their ideas only steam at the rate of 4o;i knots, are enlarged, and their harmful while against any sea or head superstitions are s'wept away by weather its steam-power is useless. their acceptance of the new faith. -It can not cope with existing work, The difference between the Uganda still less can it develop new work. of 1900 and the blood-stained, har- Competent na val and nautical assed, barbarous days of Mtesa and experts insist that a new vessel is his son M wanga is reallyextraord- an absolute necessity if the work of inary. the mission is to go on. * A Corona- The coronation of France Rev. R. M. Fraser, tionin the 40-year-old King and the missionary on Epi Uganda. of Uganda took New Hebrides. Island, has been placeat Mengo with exposing the considerable ceremonial. A ban- methods adopted by France to quet for Europeans was served in obtain control of the New Hebrides. English style, even to table nap- Her aggressive policy was defeated kins. Seats were provided for the in 1886, when Great Britain insisted missionaries; 28 bullocks and 128 on the withdrawal of her two miligoats and sheep were cooked to tary stations; but of late there has provide a feed for 15,000 natives. been a slower method of building up French" claims," on the ground ISLANDS OF THE SEA. that French settlers own most of the land on the group, and so the Wanted: A The whole work of islands should be annexed to Ship for the Melanesian France. Mr. Fraser charges the French with getting control of the Melanesia. Island mission de- land in irregular, if not dishonest pends very largely ways, using bribes or threats as the case may allow, to obtain at on its mission vessel. The South- least a nominal claim on lands ern Cross has been at once the belonging to others. We have no pioneer of civilization and the sufficient basis for a jUdgment, but harbinger of Christianity. It has if Mr. Fraser's statements are imwon the confidence of savage partial, there is need of some inislanders. It has been the means quiry into the mode of operation not only of conveying missionaries pursued by France, or French repand teachers to the islands, but also resentatives. Treachery is emof taking native boys and girls to ployed, and the treachery defended their training home at Norfolk Island, and bringing them back to * Contributions may be sent to H. Goschen, the islands as the teachers and Esq., 12 Austin Friars, London, E. C., who is €vangelists of their people. By treasurer for the New Melanesian Mission its means 26 islands have been' Ship Fund. worked, on which are planted 180
by threats, or if need be violence. him in flight. But as soon as the French action in Madagascar is missionary knows that his people, deplorable, but that charged by whom he has left behind, are in Mr. Fraser in the New Hebrides is the same danger, he can not easily far worse. pass over the matter without troubles of conscience. The best MISCELLANEOUS. thing then would be, if the Chris- tians could flee with him, which What are A large number of now and then has come to pass. These Among missionaries in all The general rule, that a Chris- so Many? parts of the world tian ought not to endanger his life were recently asked without need, applies no less inva- riably to the dying for Jesus and this question: "What proportion the Gospel. Christ Himself set it of the people in your district have forth as the proper end of His had a fair opportunity for under- earthly life, that this was a sacri- standing the Gospel message?" fice for the redern ption of the world. Here are some of the answers: He took careful heed of His Fa- "10,000 out of 360,000" (Gond Mis- ther's intimations, and as long as sion); "1 in 100 in the cities, 1 in His hour was not yet come, He with- 1,000 in the country" (Multan); drew Himself from His enemies, "Not more than 2 per cent." and only gave Himself into their (West China); "1 in 2,000," "1 in hands when He could say: "I have 10," "1 in 5," (various parts of J a- finished the work which Thou pan). Of the whole number of mis- gavest me to do." So He told even sionaries only one replied "all." His apostles also to flee, when He is the missionary to a small God's fearful jUdgments should trihe of Red Indians in British Co- come over the land. This was also lumbia. the policy of the first Gentile apos- tle, Paul. As long as His abiding Missionaries "The poor mission- here would bring forth more fruit in Danger. aries," remarks Dr. for the Kingdom of God than His departure, so long He does every- Warneck, "can thing to preserve His life, and never manage to please their ac- shrank not even from fleeing from cusers. If they stay, then it is said one city to another, when persecuthat they are heady, fanatical peo- tions broke out. The name of an ple, and what not besides, and are obedient servant of Jesus counted guilty of suicide. If they flee, their for more with him than the renown flight is turned against them." of a false heroism. But when the This is true: we can never so man- time was at hand, he quietly sufage as to satisfy the world. But fered himself to he bound and led we ought, under all circumstances, to death, saying, "For me to live to seek to satisfy the Lord. Cer- is Christ, and to die is gain."- tainly Herr Eichler is right in M onatsbltitter. saying: The Medical One hundred years I am persuaded that even the friends of missions at home, no less . Arm of ago there was not than such men as the late German envoy at Peking (Herr von Brandt, Missions. a sin g I e medical before von Ketteler), feel it as something that ought not to be, missionary 0 r a when the missionary must leave his people. How many have al- Christian hospital in a foreign ready held out in great danger? As long as a rising is only aimed at field. The record now reads somethe missionary himself, the natives also, both Christian and right- thing like this-702 missionary phyminded heathen, will easily aid sicians are carrying healing and relief to thousands who would othei'wise be abandoned to the mis- ery of a living death, for the non- Christian religions, whatever else may he their supposed excellences, have cultivated in the great mass of their followers no grace which corresponds to Christian mercy and
GENERAL' MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE
tenderness. In 63 medical schools India; (3) in China; (4) in Japan; 589 native students are being train- (5) in Africa; (6) Opportunities and ed for service as physicians and coming conflicts of the twentieth nurses. The 355 hospitals and 753 century. dispensaries, which al'e like oases in the dessert of heathen indiffer- Briefest Eugene Stock, in ence to human pain, are havens of Careers Most the Intelligencer life and strength to the more than 2,500,000 persons who annually re- Thrilling. for December, calls ceive treatment in them. The hos- attention to a strik- pitals alone shelter in-patients to the number of 93,795, while in the ing phenomenon in the literary course of the year not less than world. He says: "It is remark- 6,647,840 treatments are given. able that the missionary biogra- phies which are most successful, and Concert in Some months since wield the deepest and most lasting the Study of a tentative scheme influence, are the biographies of young aspirants for the Master's Missions. was announced to "VeIl done!' whose periods of combine all the service have been short. The memoir of Henry Martyn was for 50 women's missionary societies half a century the one great book of America and Great Britain in of the kind. The life of James mission study. The suggestions Hannington worked a revolution made at the Ecumenical Confer- in the publishing trade, not only ence were placed in the hands of a achieving an unprecedented sale central committee for further for itself, but creat.ing a new maraction. In June this committee ket for missionary books, and ensent circular letters to all the couraging publishers to bring them out; with the result that we all see 'Vorld's Committee of 'Vomen's -an astonishingly rapid growth of Societies, asking for opi:t;lions of missionary literature. Highly popthe plan proposed. Replies were ular, too, have been the memoirs received during the summer from of Ion Keith-Falconer, Haro'ld nearly all, giving most hearty in- Schofield, and George Pilkington. dorsement. From the suggestions The longest of the 5 careers thus received and on further considera- described, Martyn's, only lasted 7 tion the committee recommend the years, and all the rest a much following: shorter time. On the other hand, veteran after veteran has passed 1. That the plan be tried for one away without any record of his year. lengthened labors being given to the world; and most of the biog- 2. That 6 lessons be prepared on raphies of such men which have the history of missions from the appeared have failed to make any time of the apostles to the close of impression. The lives of Bishops the eighteenth century. As many Patteson, Steere, and French, inof the societies had arranged their deed, are classics; but is there any programs for the year, and in order other? Alexander Mackay was to give ample time for the intro- neither a veteran nor a recruit; but duction of the new plan, it seemed he was exceptional in every sense. best to defer the beginning of this Livingstone is thought of more as study till September, 1901. a traveler than as a missionary. Paton's records are those of a liv- 3. That to meet the demand for ing man. Memoirs of women misan immediate arrangement of sionaries are still fewer in number." topics, a preliminary series of 7 lessons on· "Christian Missions in the Nineteenth Century" be prepared, to commence in January, 1901, as follows: (1) Awakenings and beginnings; (2) The century in
If we add the biography of Harriet lator. He was so accomplished a Newell, who died before reaching linguist that there was scarce a any work-field, the fact alluded to language spoken at the Golden will seem even stranger. Horn, numerous as they are, which Healing the It is estimated that he could not understand and more Sick in there are now in or less fluently use. During his stay in New York, in 1858, he Heathendom. the world 355 mis- taught Hebrew in Union Theolog- sion hospitals and ical Seminary, and the writer was one of his class. He was as famil- 753 dispensaries. In the course of iar with the. Hebrew as the class the year there were 93,000 in- was with English. He has transpatients, 2,579,651 individual pa- lated the Word of God into tients were attended to, and 6,647,- Armenian, Bulgarian, and Turkish, 840 visits were paid.
DEATH NOTICES. besides preparing grammars, hymn books and commentaries, etc. In The Bishop The death of Dr. nothing was he more conspicuous of London. Creighton, Bishop than in the beautiful gentleness of London, occurred and uniform loveliness of his Christ- in January. Some considerable like temper. He was to the last solicitude is felt as to his successor. able to use the noble powers of his When (,he prelates generally hesi- mind and his large acquisitions tated to prosecute the extreme for the advancement of the cause ritualists, and the bishops seemed he loved so well. He and Cyrus almost without exception to wink Hamlin were lifelong friends and at, if not actually help on, these colaborers for years in the Levant.
scandalous innovations of popery, Whle in Amherst he prepared a the Bishop of London put four Chaldee grammar. His transla- parishes under the ban; and altho . tions of the Bible into Bulgarian he did not prosecute ritualists, he and Armenian are now the stand- decided not to license their curates ard versions. His literary com- nor hold confirmation services at pilations included "A Manual of their churches. the Chaldee Language," a Bible dictionary in Bulgarian, grammars Elias Riggs, On January 17 Rev. of the Turkish, Armenian and Bul- of Turkey. Elias Riggs, D.D., garian languages, and a number LL.D., the oldest of tracts, hymns, and school hooks graduate of Amherst College, the in various languages. Dr. Riggs oldest missionary of the American was the oldest member of the Eliza- Board, and, we believe, the oldest beth, N .•J., Presbytery. Of his missionary resident on the foreign surviving children the Rev. James field, departed to be with the Lord. Riggs is pastor of the Brick Pres- He was ninety years old, and had byterian Church at East Orange, been in active service in the mission N. J.; the Rev. Edward Riggs is field for nearly seventy years. Be- president of the Anatolia College fore he was nineteen he was gradu- at Marsovan, Turkey, and the Rev.
ated from Amherst College and Charles Riggs ha3 a pastorate in laterfrom Andover Seminary. His Ohio. His daughter, Mrs. Trow- work as a missionary has been bridge, widow of a missionary, and almost without a rivalfor length of her daughter, Isabel Trowbridge, time and variety of service. He had were with him at the time of his been specially valuable as a trans- death. A. T. P.
The Missionary Review of the World — August 1896
GEORGE MULLER, PATRIAROH AND PROPHET OF BRISTOL
MISSIONARY REVIEW OF THE WORLD.
VOL. XIX. No. S.-Old Series.-AUGUST.-VOL. IX. No. 8.-NBID Serie8.
GEORGE MULLER, PAT~IARCH :AND PROPHET OF BRISTOL.
BY THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF.
Probably Bristol itself has never seen such an imposing sight or heard such an impressive address as when the venerable patriarch, George Miiller, now in his ninety-first year, with eye undimmed and natural force unabated, stood forth, on the evening of March 25th, before an audience that packed even the aisles of the Young Men's Christian Association Hall, and for fifty minutes held the vast throng enthralled by the matchless story of the Lord's dealings with His servant in answer to believing prayer. After thirty years, during which I have been attending great missionary convocations and hearing great missionary advocates on occasions of absorbing interest, I can deliberately say that, for simple, unpretending eloquence-the eloquence of experience extending through seventy years of daily walk with God-that address far surpassed any I hav~ ever heard, as also for awe-inspiring and faith-incentive power.
The whole occasion and surroundings were unique. It was the closing evening of my so-called" mission" in Bristol, and the services of four days, during which such themes as the authority, inspiration, and infallibility of the Holy Scriptures, the personality and power of the Holy Spirit, the secrets of victory over sin, etc., consecutively treated, had prepared the way for the consideration of Christian missions. It was by my own invitation that Mr. Miiller spoke-in fact, somewhat reluctantly, as he shrank from occupying time which he thought belonged to me as a stranger visiting the city. But I was. desirous of impressing most emphatically upon my hearers tbe Divine aspect of missionary work, as an enterprise of God, rather than a mere scheme of church activity and philanthropy; and hence dependent for its success mainly upon the believing prayer that puts and keeps man into contact with God, and makes him a true co-worker with Him. For years the conviction has been growing that here lies the secret at once of all past failure and of all future success: we have not used the power which lies in the prayer of faith, and God is challenging us to put Him to proof in the faithful and believing use of our privilege of asking in Jesus' name. To accentuate and emphasize this thought as it should be done, I knew of but one man living who was in a sense without a peer, and that was my beloved friend and father in God, George Milller.
And he ,. filled the place." Erect, strong, childlike in manner, Saxon in simplicity, mighty in faith and hnmble in spirit, giving all glory to God, with a loud voice and clear articulation, so that everyone might hear, he gave his testimony to the livmg, present, prayer-hearing God. The address cannot be reproduced, even had it been most accurately reported. George Muller's face and form and voice and manner, and the authority of a seventy years' daily experimental proving of God's promises, no printed page can supply. There is a certain evasiveness about such a personal presence that is subtle, and refuses to be overcome by man's mechanical devices like the ethereal perfume of a flower, the aroma of the most delicate natural products. But those who heard that master address will never forget it, not because it was George Mullcr's speech, but because in it and back of it the God of prayer was speaking. There was the majesty of Sinai and the melting tenderness of Calvary combi.ned ; it sounded like the utterance of some old prophet of God who had outlived his generation.
If we cannot reproduce the scene, perhaps we may give a few of the bald facts, without the radiant atmosphere which lent them its holy charm.
Mr. :h!fUller told us briefly of his conversion in 1825, at the age of twenty, when he turned from all the seductive worldly pleasures of the card-table,the dance, the billiard-table, etc., to find his portion in God; and how, in 1829, four years later, he made an unreserved surrender of himself to God, henceforth to have Him ., all in all ;" giving up the love of the world, the love of money, the love of fame, the love of pleasure, the love of applause, for the love of God. At once he felt in himself the desire and yearning to go to a foreign land as a missionary, and particularly to India. Five times in succession he offered himself to God for this service; but for some reason not then apparent, God did not accept him for this form and field of activity, much to his disappointment and surprise. He did permit him, however, in various ways at once to become a helper to others who did go forth, and even to the extent of assisting more than one hundred men to enter the foreign field by aiding them pecuniarily as well as in other ways.
Afterward, from the Church he has gathered, and to which he has so long ministered, sixty persons have been sent to the various parts of the mission field. Again, he has been permitted by prayer and faith, in these later years, to assi.st hundreds of other missionaries both to get to their chosen spheres and to help them in their acti ve service.
Still more marvelously God has permitted George Muller himself to go forth on mission tours, to forty-two different countries, to preach and teach and testify, into all parts of Europe except Spain, Portugal, Sweden, ~Ild Norway i threll times i11 the principal centers of population in. America i twice in .the main cities and towns of Canada ; twice in India ; in the Straits of Malacca, in China, Japan, New South Wales, Victoria, Austraha, Tasmania, and New Zealt!nd. For seventeen years of his later life he, with his beloved and now departed wife, moved about in this manner, traveling in aU over two hundred thousand miles. He was able to speak in three languages-English, French, and German-and in other tongues through an interpreter. What abundant and marvelous opportunities God has thus given to him who in youth wondered that he was not accepted as a missionary to foreign lands! In Russia for eleven weeks he was in the princess' palace, speaking in immense drawing-rooms to the highest dignitaries and estates of the realm ; and thus among the highest and lowest alike he gave his witness to a prayer-hearing God, showing how God delights to use those who are surrendered entirely to His will, and ready to be only instruments that all glory may be His.
At this point of his great address Mr. Muller tarried to emphasize prayer as the one great weapon for carrying on God's war against the powers of evil; urging on his hearers, first, that only God can qualify or select and send forth men and women for such missionary service. Hence, the command in Matt. 9 : 38, "PRAY ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that He would send forth laborers into His harvest." Secondly, he urged believing prayer as the only source of confidence for blessing on tlteir work. In answer to united and believing supplication that God would abundantly own tbeir labors, in the salvation, sanctification, and edification of souls, Divine blessing may be surely expected; and, thirdly, prayer must command supplies for all needful temporalities. Ten times, yes, twenty and even fifty times as much wealth lies at the disposal of God's people as they have ever yet consecrated and utilized; and if they are to show greater liberality, God must move His people in answer to prayer, to completely surrender themselves and their property at His call.
Then this venerable founder of the orphanages in Bristol resumed his powerful argument, drawn from personal experience of God's dealing, and the audience was again electrified by the magnificent testimony to a prayerhearing God. He gave a summary of the results of his life work. The sum total of money received and expended by him has been 1,394,800 pounds sterling, or about $0,974,000 ; and, as he emphatically added, all received from God in answer to prayer, without in a single case directly or indirectly asking any man for a penny. Mr. Muller solemnly challenged anyone in the audience or elsewhere to show any case in which he had sought pecuniary help, even in the greatest difficulties, from man, it being his distinctive purpose to demonstrate to an unhelieving world and a half-believing church that God may be depended upon for snpplies in answer to prayer.
As to the way in which this immense sum of money has been expended, Mr. Muller said: l. Aside entirely from the orphanage work, there have been established schools for 123,000 pupils in various countries-Great Britain, Europe, Asia, etc.-and through the schools many thousands have been converted unto God.
2. The work of the wide circulation of the Scriptures in many different languages has been carried on. For example, as soon as Spain and Italy were opened to the Bible, he entered these couutries at once with the 'Word of God. Up to this time there have been distJ:ibul;ed 275,000 Bibles, 1,426,500 New Testaments, 218,000 portions of the Bible, such as Gospels, etc., and 21,000 copies of the Psalms.
3. Upon direct missionary labors, in various lands, 255,000 pounds sterling ($1,275,000) have been expended, giving partial or complete support to hundreds of missionaries. Thus, during fifty-five years, he has been enabled, in answer to prayer, to give help to hundreds of His servants who have been, in God's hands, instrumental in the conversion of at least 20,000 persons in heathen and Moslem communities.
4. Tracts, pamphlets, books, and various kinds of Christian literature have been scattered in various lands and languages, to the number of 106,500,000! And who shall measure the blessing thus reaped as the harvest of such wide seed-sowing! Lett.ers come to the orphanage day after day, sometimes five and ten at a time, communicating knowledge of the wonderful way in which God has owned the dissemination of Christian literature in widely scattered fields of labor.
5. Then comes, last but not least, the orphan work. Five massive buildings have been erected on Ashley Down, at a cost of £115,000, or some $575,000, for building, fitting, and furnishing. These buildings have a total of 500 rooms, and can accommodate 2050 orphans and 112 teachers and helpers. The average sum expended yearly in support of these orphans is £26,000, or $130,000.
All this colossal work, the like of which no one man in our generation has ever wrought, is all to be traced to believing pmyer. Here is the unique spectacle of a solitary man, himself entirely without money, poor to this day so far as independent means are concerned, undertaking, in simple reliance on the promises of a prayer-hearing God, to support hundreds of missionaries, distribute millions of Bibles and other books and tracts, build five huge orphan houses and support 2000 orphans, himself traveling over forty-two countries, from the rising to the setting sun, and in all of these lands preaching the Gospel and bearing his witness to the faithfulness of God, and yet he has never had any property in lands or money in banks, wherewith to meet these immense daily costs. Thousands of times he has not had enough in hand to provide one day's meals, or even the next meal; and has had prayer-meetings between breakfast and dinner, or between supper and breakfast, to ask supplies for the immediate need j and yet in fifty-five years he has never known one instance in which the prayer has not been answered and the need met, tho sometimes literally only from meal to meal, with no adequate surplus for the next! And let it be noted that Mr. Miiller, in order not to weaken his testimony to a prayerhearing God, has enjoined on all his helpers never to make known the exigencies of the work to anyone outside the institution, but to unite with him in spreading all such wants before God alone; and lest his annual reports might be thought to be indirect appeals, for some three years no report was published, and yet the supplies continued to come with as little interruption and in as great abundance as before.
All this and more was said to that throng in Bristol, not only without self-glorying or vain boasting, but with the repeated and humbling affirmation that it was with the overwhelming consciousness of weakness and unworthiness, simply and only to show that God is a faithful God; and that every believer who wholly surrenders himself to Him and depends on believing prayer, may know God for himself, as the unchanging friend and helper of every suppliant soul, and equal to every crisis of need.
Interviews with Mr. George Muller were accorded me during every day of my stay in Bristol, and are cherished by me as among the most precious memories of my life. It is not once in a century that the world has a chance to enter upon its annals the story of a life such as that of the grcat patriarch of Bristol, and I wished to avail myself of what might be my last opportunity of such converse.
George Muller was born on September 27th, 1805, and is consequently, as has been noticed, in his ninety-first year. He is hale and hearty, quite erect, in good state of preservation, and said to me, as I renewed the precious acquaintance and friendship of eighteen years, in this series of interviews, that he was never better in health or more able to endure the strain of daily work than now. He may be found, day after day, in his office in " No.3" of the great orphanages on Ashley Down, and his hair is not more gray than that of many a man of fifty, while his eye is bright, and his vigor even greater than it was sixty years ago ; and the same serenity of God is on his face as of old-in fact, his dear face and form both wear an aspect of habitual repose, so long has he known the perfect peace of God.
Here is a man-let me repeat it for emphasis-who for sixty years has been living by faith and prayer, and has had under his care thousands on thousands of orphans, without often knowing where the next meal was coming from, or rather always knowing where it was to come from, and so having no care beyond the care which prayer at once carries up to God and leaves at His feet, to be borne by Him, that we ourselves may carry no burdens.
Two of his long-associated co-workers were asked in substance the following question: "You have seen Mr. Muller in all circumstances; when there was plenty of money in the bank and plenty of food in the larder; have you noticed any difference in his COn;lposure and calmness of spirit at these different times~" One of these intimate co-workers responded, "Not the slightest difference ;" the other replied, "If possible, his composure seems rather the greater wheu all supplies of money and of food are exhausted." Then followed another question, " How do you account for this ~ Any father would feel natural and unavoidable solicitude if his entire supplies for his children were exhausted; how much more the father of 2,000 orphans 1" Then came another answer, never to be forgotten: "The only way I can account. for this is Mr. Muller's own philosophy of holy living, which is that the beginning of anxiety is the end qffaith, and the beginning of true faith i.~ tlw end of anxiety."
·What a solution is contained in Lhis pregnant saying for all our doubts and difficulties! We treat the living God as dead; as one who was, but is not, who wrought wonders of old, but has" forgotten to be gracious," or " in anger shut up His tender mercies." 'IVould that we might come to the conclusion of the Psalmist (Psa, 77 : 10) : "This is my infirmity: but I will remember the years of the right hand of the Most High." It was my privilege to hear this holy man of God expound that Psalm at Bethesda Chapel on the morning of March 22d, and that exposition will henceforth be inseparable in my mind from the interviews that followed it, and the great testimony borne in the memorable public meeting of March 25th. He showed, with marvelous insight into the meaning of the Word, how the first half of the psalm down to the tenth verse is the experience of a suffering soul that in unbelief refuses to be comforted even by the promises of God, whose spirit is in rebellion against God, so that the thought of God is not a comfort, but rather a burden, and the spirit complains, is agitated instead of peaceful, so that sleep departs and trouble deepens. Then, at the" Selah," which at the end of the ninth verse bid8 us" Pause and consider," and which marks the turning-point of the Psalm, he confesses, " This is my infirmity;" in other words, I have been a fool! From this point on, comfort comes. God's wondrous doings in the past are recalled, His unchanging and unchangeable fidelity to promise, and new courage takes the place of despondency. He who brought His people out of Egypt can bring them into the Land of Promise, their true inheritance.
·What new power would enter into all our mission enterprises could we but come to this same mind! vVe have been fools to doubt and distrust the God who is able to do exceeding abundantly above all we ask or think; and are slow to remember that, from the time of Christ's resurrection, God's unit of measurement, aR to what He can do for us, is this: "According to the working of His mighty power, which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead."
Mr. Muller's confidence in prayer is boundless, yet childlike in simplicity. He gave this fact shortly since, to his co-workers, as a tonic to their faith. "I have," said he, "only yesterday afternoon received the answer to a prayer daily offered unto God for twenty-five years." And he added in conversation with me, "I have been daily praying to God for fifty-two years for the conversion of two men; and I have no doubt
THE GOSPEL IN SPAIN
they will both turn to God, for God has laid on my heart, and permitted and enabled me daily for over half a century, to hear before Him in faith in the name of Jesus this request, and now I often praise Him in advance for what He is going to do III answer to my prayers."
Bristol will henceforth be forever associated with these three precious reminiscences: that simple exposition of the seventy-seventh Psalm in Bethesda Chapel on Sunday morning, March 22d ; the blessed personal interviews with Mr. Muller and his beloved son-in-law, James Wright, after that S8rmon, and at the orphanage on the three days following, and finally that great word of witness before a vast throng on the evening of March 25th.
The least that I could do-and, alas! the mORt also-for the readel's of the REVIEW was to reproduce as far as possible the main features of this personal experience, with the grand salient points of Mr. Miiller's tes1imony, in the hope that God will deign to use this humble effort to impress His people, wherever these pages may be read, that the one grand key to all the problems of world-wide missions is an alliance by faith and obedience and believing prayer with the God whose work it is to evangelize and redeem this world through the instrumentality of his believing people.
Let prayer be offered as it should be, on the part of a peculiar people zealous of good works, in Jesus' name, and in the spirit of undoubting faith, and every result will follow that is essential to the speedy and glorious accomplishment of the work. God will thrust forth laborers, open the doors of access and of faith to the nations, open the hearts of His people to give money, and will visit with showers of blessing both the fields abroad which we till, and the churches at home which send the workmen and bring ill the tithes.
THE GOSPEL IN SPAIN.
BY REV. WILLIAM H. GULICK, SAN SEBASTIAN, SPAIN.
It is not infrequently asked : "What need is there for sending evangelical missionaries to Spain?" Does not the following simple reply sufficiently answer the question ~ It is the inalienable right of every man to own a copy of the Bible and to have the liberty to read it for himself. Every community in which the Bible is not within the easy reach of every man, or where the" Word of God is bound" is a true missionary field to which the Christian missionary may not only go with propriety, but to which, from the evangelical standpoint, it is his duty to go to make known the truth. The question to be asked, therefore, is: "Are the masses in Spain allowed by their religious teachers to freely read and study for themselves the Word of God?" If they are, I would say: "Let the missionary go elsewhere; let him spend his money and life in taking the Bible and in explaining its message and in teaching its doctrines to people who do not have it."
We who have the Bible in our hands are aware that the Apostle Paul intended to visit Spain, and, so far as anything to the contrary is known, he did so; and we can imagine the Gospel that he must have preached! Spanish Roman Catholic tradition, however, entirely ignores Paul's proposed journey to Spain, and it affirms that Saint James was the first apostle to visit Spain-Santiago-who in sculptures and in paintings innumerable is represented as mounted on his white horse, and, with a lance in hand, prancing over the heads of the hapless Moors. That which interests us now, however, is not whether Paul, or James, or any other apostle or disciple in particular was the first to preach the Gospel in Spain, but, rather, whether" the glorious Gospel," which either the one or the other of the apostolic band must have preached, is the Christianity of the Spanish Church of to-day. Does the " Word or the Lord have free course" in Spain of to-day 1 A few facts taken from a multitude that might be cited will give us the answer to that question.
The archbishop of the see of Santiago de Campostela, the capital of Galicia, one of the most important dioceses of all Spain, on one occasion promised to give to a Protestant of that· parish a Roman Catholic Bible in exchange for his Protestant Bible; but after spending a long time in looking for one, he had to confess that he could not find one in the episcopal palace-that he would" have to send for it to Barcelona," all across the peninsula!
In the city of Zaragoza, on one occasion, one of the canons of the cathedral of La Virgen del Pilar, now and for many years one of the most popular shrines in Spain, took upon himself the mission of winning back to the Church of Rome a class of bright young men, members of our Evangelical Church. All testified to his trained skill as a controversialist, and to his gentle ways and winning manners both in conversation and in debate. Once and again some of these young men-after he had met them in their own hall-accepted the invitation to visit him in his private apartments, where they still further discussed, among others, the questions of justification by faith, Christ as our only mediator, and prayer-our young men ever appealing to the Bibles that they carried in their pockets. This rather piqued our good canon, and it forced him, much against his will, to refer to his Bible, which they insisted he should do. And here was his weak point. He knew that he did not know even his own Roman Catholic Bible. Once he confusedly sou.ght a familiar New Testament passage in the Old Testament, among the books of which he floundered painfully until the Protestant boys came to his rescue. That was the end of his mISSIOn. But not long after this episode he was elevated to a. bishopric, and it was no secret that it was in reward for his active efforts to reclaim the Protestants that infest that district. If the bishops show such ignorance of the Word of God, it is not to be wondered at that the parish or village priest shoul~ be found at a still lower level. A missionary was talking with one of these when the question of the worship of images came up. Allusion was made to the Second Commandment; and when he quoted the words, "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in the heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water nnder the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, . . . " the honest priest, instead of arguing, as an astuter man would have done, tllat Roman Catholics do not worship images, nor bow down to them, bnt only to the being or the spirit that they represent or that they suggest, he frankly admitted that they do worship them, and that their worship was permitted if not taught by the Church; and he declared that he could not believe that the words quoted by my friend were to be found in the Bible, a~Q much less in the Roman Catholic Bible. So a copy of the Bible sanctioned by his Church was produced. He read and reread the fatal words, and could hardly believe his own eyes. At last, with hands clenched and teeth set, he turned on his heel, and with intensest feeling exclaimed: " God made a mistake when He put that in the Bible!" Poor man! he could not believe that his Church could be guilty of deliberately suppressing that part of the Decalogue from its liturgies and from its catechisms; he could more easily believe that God had blundered! "And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch."
The Roman Catholic Church in Spain is not merely ignorant of the Bible-of their own Bible for that matter-and indifferent as to its circulation, it is actively and bitterly hostile to it. Pages could be filled with accounts of the indignities and abuses that evangelists and colporteurs are continually suffering who are engaged in this work.
It is not very long ago, and under a much more liberal government than that of to-day, that the Custom House authorities in the great and liberal city of Barcelona intercepted an invoice of Bibles that had already been examined and legally passed, and without pretence of law-but because advised so to do by the ecclesiastical authorities, who knew that they could control the civil officers to whom the case might be appealedmade a bonfire of them in the open court of the Custom House! The religious press joyously commented on the deed, and boasted with delight of " having revived the auto da /e of Inquisitorial times !"
One of the active colporteurs of the American Bible Society in the north of Spain, a prudent and godly man, is continually reporting to me obstruction to his work, and personal violence on the part of the priests. One day he found himself a fellow-traveler in a diligence for several hours with three women and a village priest, all strangers to him. Under the folds of his ample capa he carried, concealed on his knees, his colporteur's pack of Bibles and Scripture portions. The conversation of his companions was chiefly on the success of a " mission" that had recently been held in the parish of one of the women, the most interesting feature of which seemed to have been the tearing up of several Gospels in the pulpit by one of the " missioners," and a furious attack upon the Protestants, and espe- cially upon a man who was going about through the district selling BiMes and Gospels to the ignorant and innocent people. If it sometimes may do us good to see ourselves as others see us, our colporteur passed an edifying hour that forenoon-for it was of himself that they were unwittingly talking!
The priest was eager to meet him; he only hoped that he would come into his parish, and that he should have the good fortun~ to meet him face to face. "I know how to rid my parish of such vermin. There is no better remedy for such than a pair of revolvers. Oh, yes, I know how to do it! It will not be the first time that I have carried them under my gown."
At last they stopped to change the llOrses, and the priest and the women left the diligence for a few minutes. At that instant the thought flashed across our friend's mind, " Put a Gospel of Luke into the priest's bundle, that lies there loosely folded!" and no sooner thought than done. The travelers take their seats again, and before long the journey is ended and each one goes his own way-the priest with his bundle.
Three months later the colporteur is in the neighborhood of that priest. In spite of the priest's boasting, he has made several friends there and has sold a number of Scriptures. He asks one of his friends if the priest ever talks about the Protestants. " YeR, indeed. Some three months ago he fairly raved against them from the pulpit. He called them ' the spawn of hell. Look at this,' he cried, and he shook a little book in the face of the congregation. 'Worse than Satan they are; for by some black art they ]lave thrust this book upon me. And do you know where I found it ~ On the floor in the middle of my room! I know not who put it there, nor how he did it; but this I tell you and of this I warn him : once I come to know what Protestant has dared to pollute my room with this I will do to him what I now do with it !' And he wrenched the leaves from the precious Gospel, crushed them with his hands, and tore them with his teeth. And he added, 'If ever any of you meet ally of these pests of the earth, anything that you may do to them, even to the killing of them, will be well done ! ' " * But why multiply these cases ~ They are but a few taken from many that show what the attitude of the immense majority of the Spanish priesthood is toward the Word of God-a priesthood without the Bible, ignorant of the Bible, and in many cases hating the Bible.
And "like priest, like people." Right here in this little terrestrial paradise of San Sebastian, so gently nestling by the side of the sea, surrounded by the protecting hills, that one would think that the love and the goodness of God proclaimed by nature would fill and soften every heart; • MtssiDnary Herald, Jannary, 1895. rIght here, so recently that it seems but as yesterday, there occurred a case the memory of which makes one shudder. A member of our church, a daughter of the Basques, loved her Bible and read it as a child reads with love and reverence the treasured letters of a dear frIend, which late in life have been discovered by others and have been placed in her hands. Her fanatical Roman Catholic husband took that Bible, laid it upon the block at the door of their cottage, and with his ax chopped it to pieces. When she died suddenly a little later we were not allowed to know of her illness or death until she was buried. * But, not to make this recital too long, it may be said that the immense distance that all too often separates the intelligent heartfelt. worship of 1he evangelical Bible-loving Christian from that of the Roman Catholic of this country is strikingly manifested in the public processions for prayer and thanksgiving, and iu the relation of the bull-fight to the religious fiestas.
At the time of the last epidemic of cholera in Spain, when the population of Zaragoza was nearly decimated and great numbers died in the country near about us, San Sebastian escaped almost entirely. San Sebastian is the religious center of one of the roost sincere and faithful Roman Catholic communities in the world; and how did it give thanks to Almighty God for 1he unspeakable blessing of having been practically freed from the scourge that had wrought such havoc in so many of its sister cities and provinces ~ The city government, then made up of especially Catholic and devout men, ordered the singing of the Te Deum in the principal church of the city, at which all the government officials and the entire consular force of the city attended, and which was conducted with unusual pomp. This in the forenoon of a Sabbath day; and at noon, and again in the afternoon of the same day, these city fathers arranged sham bull-fights, or, as the public-announcement says, " Se corl'eritn dos bueyes bravos" (" Two fierce bullocks will be baited' ').
The animals are tied with long ropes in the center of the public square and are then tortured by a crowd of men and boys armed with pointed sticks and with goads until, in the effort to escape their tormentors, the bullocks rush one way and another, upsetting those of the rabble who may be entangled by the ropes. And this is the " thanksgiviug" of Christians !
But to go no farther away than the very week in which I am writing this article. Last Sunday, the 24th of this month of May, was the Feast of Pentecost in the Episcopal and Roman Catholic Chris1,ian year. Judging from what we know of the Day of Pentecost, from the tender and stirring narrative in the Acts of the Apostles, one would suppose that any church calling itself Christian would try to celebrate the day, if it thought of doing so at all, in a truly spiritual and devout way. In the morning, it is true, there will be celebrated a mass; in rare cases, and only in the more important cities, will there be preaching; but in Madrid last Sun- .. Missionary Herald. January. 1896. da.y there was a bull-fight, as there is there every important feast day of the year, including the Sundays-with 1he sole exception, I believe, of Good Friday! And the unfortuuate cities that have not the money for so splendid an exhibition of their joy and thankfulness for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the primitive Christians on that memorable day do more humbly and economically show the fervor of their piety by worrying the baited ox in the town or the village plaza. Our dear little San Sebastian can aspire to that degree of emotion.
How far removed fl·om all that is worthy the name of Christian must be the heart that would not be shocked by the matter-of-fact and commonplace announcement in the morning paper, received by telegraph during the night, that" The bulls of Pentecost" (los toros de Pentecostes), of Madrid, proved to be " a poor lot; dull, lazy, and not showing fight until a number of explosive darts had been fired into them which rent great holes in their sides and awakened in them a fine frenzy." The multitude left the bull-ring quite disgusted that the pentecostal feast had been such a failure.
On the other hand, the bulls of the day of the Ascension of our Lord -some days before-were a " brave lot, and disemboweled the horses in splendid style," and well-nigh killed the brilliant torero Reverter, who was " colossal through all the fight. " And this morning I read that in Bilbao they have taken time by the forelock and have already" engaged the bulls for Corpus Christi !"
Only one case more to close this study or the" Christianity of th~ Spain of to-day." For months the country has been afflicted with a drought that has threatened the crops in a great IIlany of the provinces. As the weeks went by and no rain fell the anxiom; people scanned the heavens for signs of relief; at last these appeared, as in the order of nature they were sure to do, and then, and not until then, did the ecclesiastical authorities bring out their miracle-working images, and bones, and relics to bring the rain.
San Isidro is the patron saint or Madrid. They say that they have preserved his bones in that city for centuries. For many years these had not been exposed for " veneration," nor had they been taken out in solemn procession through the streets. Never was there greater need than now that he should work a miracle, for the farms around Madrid were parched and dry. The day was announced when the bones of the saint would be taken out, and all the faithful were urged to swell the ranks of the procession. But the clouds that had been gathering for two or 1hree days broke up and were wafted away, and the sun looked out again from a brazen sky. It was too plain that the bringing of rain out of so dry a sky would be too much to expect of even the patron saint of Madrid. So the authorities announced that it had not occurred to them that a bull-fight had been organized for that same day and hour, and as they did not wish to force the faithful to lose the bull-fight while following the procession, they" had decided to postpone the procession," and all Madrid laughed, and the bones of San Isidro remained undisturbed until a more propitious occa- sion. Travelers waited in Madrid from day to day, wishing to see the great function that would rival the processions of the holy week in Seville. But no, the sun blazed and the saint waited. At last nature came to the help of the sorely tried managers of the show, and the heavy clouds full of water hung over the thirsty land. The procession was formed, the saint was aroused, and the miracle was performed! While they were parading the streets a gentle shower fell, and shortly after the rain poured down not only in Madrid, but in other parts of the country, until in some places the floods have drowned or have washed away what the drought had not killed.
But while the papers are telling of this miracle wrought by San Isidro in Madrid, and by other bones or images in other places, how many really believe it? Probably a few, a very few, and those among the most ignorant. And yet the farce goes on ; for no one among them all dares to be the first to voice the belief-the unbelief-in almost all their hearts.
One of the leading Roman Catholic papers laments in bitter terms the widespread national impiety mixed up in these demonstrations of loyal catholicity. It says: " The horrible, the fearful, that which hurts and disheartens, is to see a people that is suffering the calamities that to-day weigh upon Spain, forming part in a procession of penitence and of prayer in the same spirit as they would assist at a bull-fight; to amuse themselves with the show, to laugh at the interruptions and the occurrences, not in the spirit of simple indifference and lack of religious interest, but with ostentatious impiety, the men with their hats on and making coarse fun of everythingone's soul revolts at the shameless speeches and the blasphemies that are heard on every hand and at every step."
The Word of God is first ruled out of the Church and home, so that the benighted conscience shall become the slave of the priest; then upon this ignorance and docili1;y is reared an immense fabric of man-made rites and ceremonies, confessions and penitences, that starve the mind and dwarf the soul. Superstition is heaped upon fable until the soul reacts from the very absurdity and impossibility of the old wives' tales and the ridiculous claims of a worldly priesthood; and then naturally and inevitably follows the baldest irreligion while" following the procpssion" because " our fathers did so," and because the weakened soul dares not face the sneers of a churchly infidelity that finds it easier" to take things as they are" than to commence a struggle that will not end until death.
And does one wish yet to ask, " What need 1S there for sending evangelical missionaries to Spain~" If the picture that I have drawn is painful it is because that is the character of the facts. I have" not set down aught in malice;" I have recited the facts only for the purpose of making clear to the reader the conditions of the country from the religious point of view. No one more quickly than myself wonld deprecate a censorious or polemical spirit in such a matter. It is not onrs to sit in judgment on our fellows; but it is our mission, in all charity and gentleness of spirit, to give to this people the Gospel of Christ; if they do not want it, to press it upon them ; if they revile us and persecute us, to revile not again.
And what has been accomplished during these twenty-seven years ~ This paper is already too long to allow of any tabulated statistics; but some general statements will suffice to show that our labor has not been in vain. Evangelical churches have been organized in most of the more important cities of the country, and the number of preaching stations and of school-rooms where the Gospel is taught and where meetings are held with more or less regularity are about one hundr<ld and fifty. Every Sunday several thousand adults regularly attend the public meetings for Protestant worship, and many more children arc found in the Sunday-schools, and a still larger number of children arc daily taught evangelical doctrines in the common schools. Some forty colporteurs-the larger part of them being under the British and Foreign Bible Society-are continually traversing the whole country, and yearly put into circulation thousands of Bibles, New Testaments, and portions of Scripture, and many thousands of pages of evangelical literature in tracts, pamphlets, and books, and there are some seven evangelical periodicals.
In San Sebastian is the flourishing International Institute for Girls in Spain, incorporated in Massachusetts under the auspices of the Woman's Buard of Missions, connected with the American Board. This" high school," under the care of Mrs. Gulick and a corps of university-educated American ladies, for several years has had yearly some forty pupils, who study on the lines of the government institutes preparatory for the universities. Eight of these girls have already taken the degree of B.A. in the government institute of San Sebastian, five others expect to take that degree in June of this year, and two- of the former graduates last year received the highest marks given in the first year's course of philosophy and letters in the University of Madrid. Each and everyone of these girls, in both institute and university, were known to be outspoken Protestants, and as such they are recognized cmd respected by. fellow-students and by professors. Besides these, several Protestant young men are always found in the different universities of the country.
'Ve are ready to admit that the numbers that would figure in any statistical table of the evangelical work in Spain would in some respects appear small j but we believe that in view of the history of the country and of its customs and of its traditions, and in view of the comparatively insignificant forces that have been brought to bear upon these institutions that are rooted in the centuries, and the comparatively short time that t.hese influences have been at work in the land, the results are encouraging.
Indeed, when we Gowe to review the peculiar circumstances of the peopIe, it seems marvelous that so much has been accomplished, all things considered. A SpallIard who knows his own country well, and is an ardent patriot. as well as an influential Protestant, and than whom no man in the country could speak on thIS subject wIth greater authority, has recently expressed hImself as follows : " Spain is greatly weaned from Catholicism; and this is not the result of infidel propaganda, but it is plainly caused by the influence of evangeli- cal doctrines. Infidel publications leave the heart dry; they leave the boat in the open sea without oars and with no port in sight, and it is not in the serious nature of the Spaniard to accept such a situation. The number of Spanish infidels who maintain their scepticism up to the hour of death is very small. The Spaniard cannot do without God and Jesus Christ; what he can dispense with is Catholicism, which is a sacrilegious trading upon the Christian sentiment.
" So it is that the presence and the labors of the Evangelical Church produce positive results, altho its enemies may try to prove the contrary. This result is not necessarily manifest to the superficial observer; it is not all embraced in the statistics of our churches nor even in the number of those who form our congregations. It is seen in the multitude of persons who openly say of themselves, , My belief is Catholic, but not Roman.' It is seen in that large number of people who boldly deelare, ' I do not want saints of wood-they are for idolaters; I do not want the absolution of a priest who may perhaps be as bad a man as I am ; I do not believe in the possibility of a man being infallible j I cannot accept as apostles or as ministers of Christ men who masquerade before the public in dresses of so many colors, in so much luxury, with such fine coaches with their lackeys and liveries in gold, etc.' I know that a great many of these are evangelical at heart.
" So it happens that in nearly every city and town in Spain to which a colporteur or evangelist may go he finds some sympathizers. So if in each one of the eleven thousand villages iu Spain a Protestant evangelist or colporteur or school-teacher should be placed, we would see in a short time eleven thousand groups of evangelical Christians.
" We very serionsly and earnestly invite the attention of those who in foreign countries are interested in the evangelization of Spain to this condition of things, so that they may not lose their faith in this work. Spain is slow in making np her mind to a new thing j her political and her religious and her social history prove this. But her determination once taken, she is persistent, and does not easily yield to difficulties."
Coming from a thoughtful and able and spiritual-minded Spaniard, these are weighty words, and yet it is to be lamented that the missionary societies, to which must be credited in large part these hopeful results, are, in many instances, withdrawing their help and are reducing their forces in this field. We who are here and in closest touch with those who have dared to separate themselves from the church of their fathers, and to suffet:
WORK AMONG FRENCH PRIESTS
all the consequences, feel that this is most unfortunate, in many cases even cruel, and we would lift up our voices in appeal to the favored churches of England and America not to abandon these their needy brethren.
Especially do we hope that the churches in America will not do so. We feel that just now, while the bitter question of Cuba is pending be. tween Spain and the United States, is the time of all others when we must show ourselves the true friends of all t.hat is good in this country. Every one of the pastors and evangelists and teachers, and of the members of our different congregations and of the writers in the evangelical press has been very true and kind to us who are Americans, and have neither said nor done anything to annoy us. There could be no better proof of their love and esteem. It WillJ..lg. be beyond measure unfortunate and harmful should we now be obliged to"'dls~~ ;tny of them.
WORK AMONG FRENCH PRIESTS.
BY PROFESSOR L. J. BERTRAND, PARIS, FRANCE.
A mission among priests I The mere title is to many a cause of great surprise; even my servants and neighbors cannot understand why Roman Catholic priests in their cassocks, monks of all denominations in their monachal robes, should call al; the house of an old Huguenot like me. Is it true that, as in the time ot the apostles (Acts 6 : 7), ., a great company of the priests are obedieut to the faith?" No, say the few Protestants.
who disapprove that Roman Catholics should be troubled in their faith, tho they are very thankful to Luther and Calvin for having broken with Rome; no, that new mission must be a very aggressive and useless one."
The reality is that we receive a great many Roman Catholic priests and monks, and that our little mission is the least combative of all works of evangelization, for it never made an appeal to priests, but aims only at sav- ing those who leave a church in which they no longer believe. To the drowning man who cries" Help I" we cannot turn a deaf ear.
These shipwrecked ones are legion. It is heart-rending to think of the numbers of priests who daily tread on their couscience while they say Mass. And if they leave the Roman Church, what will they do to earn their daily bread 1 " We know how to say Mass," said one of them, "and l;hat is all we know." • Some are well read; but not one o~t of twenty is in possession of the university degree, which in France is indispensable for all liberal profes- sions. They are not better fitted for commerce or business. "In all practical things," sadly remarked a former priest, "we are mere chil- dren. " If the poor unfrocked priest was esteemed and pitied, as he so often deserves to be, his life would not be such a hard one! But alas! he is looked down upon by Roman Catholics as a traitor in the camp, and by Protestants themselves as an outcast.
I could name a priest who set up a small shop. His affairs prospered at first, but no sooner did Jesuits know his story than his customers mysteriously disappeared, never to come back.
On the other hand, we have heard this sad fact quoted by the principal of a Protestant divinity school in a public meeting: "I am often asked by parents to recommend a tutor for their sons. If I happen to mention a young man, pious and clever, but who, unfortunately for him, was formerly a Roman priest, politely but coldly the parents-a few enlightened ones excepted-decline my offer."
This is why hundreds of priests are now driving cabs in the streets of Paris. Things seen are mightier than things heard. Former priests, who had passed through such sad experiences, were the first to lend a helping hand to their brothers in distress. The example of Father Chiniquy, Father O'Connor, and Father Connellan gave heart to a few French evangelists. They founded the mission for priests, which, tho quite recent as yet, has been the means of rescuing more than fifty.
These men come to us saying, "My conscience forbids me to remain in my Church; help me to earn my bread out of the Church. I am no longer a Roman Catholic; help me to become a Protestant. "
To speak of the present only, we have a Capuchin in our missionary school, a Jesuit and a priest in the theological seminary of Paris, two former priests in the theological seminary of Neufchatel, and are expecting three more; three are evangelists, five are engaged in teaching or business. Through our influence, a Spanish ecclesiastical teacher has been received as a member of the Evangelical Church of Spain, and an Italian cure has entered Christ Mission, New York.
What happened in 1895 happens every year. Most of our converted priests become pastors or evangelists. They feel bound to preach to others the Gospel which has made them other men.
The following remark will surprise many : Heretofore we have sent Protestant pastors to evangelize Roman Catholics; but has our harvest been as fnll as we might have expected? We are obliged to confess it has not, and that our system is to blame.
"Protestants are utterly unable to realize," writes a man of great authority in these matters, "how our own technology seems strange to those honest peasants, who have never heard anyjhing in their lives save the poor sermon of their cure. Can we imagine Luther and Calvin preaching to crowds in the style of our consecration meetings? No; Luther and Zwingli were priests; they had done away with the errors of the Roman Church, but not with its traditional language. There lies the secret of their influence and of their success."
Oh, that we had many priests fully converted who knew both the Protestant and the Catholic shibboleths! Then we might revolutionize France. Indeed, if we have obtained successes, we owe them to proselytes. At St. Aubin de Blaye, the mayor, formerly a Roman Catholic, gave the signal of the reform, and most Protestant mission stations in the Pas de Calais, Monteynard, Soubran, Tonnay-Boutonne, etc., were founded by former Catholics and former priests. Why ~ Merely because they know and understand these people, and that we do not, because we are Protestant by birth.
When Jesus wanted to evangelize the humble, He chose His disciples among the humble; but to evangelize the Pharisees He wanted a Pharisee i for the Greeks He wanted a Grep.k scholar i to avoid crue~ty and danger He wanted a Roman citizen, and therefore He said to His persecutor, Saul of Tarsus: "Thou art My man!" And here is a striking fact similar to the above : Eight years ago a young priest was accused by the Archbishop of Bordeaux of having used" imprudent language i" indeed, he had declared openly that Jesus Christ is the only Mediator between God and men. The priest left France and went to Brazil, but when he came back he was accused once more of having used "imprudent language," for he had preached that the Gospel was the Christian's all in all. However, he was appointed cure in the little village of St. Palais, in the west of France. He had not remained there long when another cure heard him publicly declare his doubts about purgatory and the confessional; and for the third time he was accused of having used" imprudent language." His bishop urdered him to retract publicly or to resign. The poor priest was thunderstruck. He felt bound to preach what he believed to be the truth, but he loved his parishioners so dearly that he was broken-hearted at the mere thought of leaving them. They, on the other hand, could not bear the thought of parting with their cure, and they drew up a petition begging the bishop to retain him at St. Palais. But if the priest Bonhomme was a Protestant without knowing it, the bishop knew it so well that he was immovable. If this unruly son of the Church did not choose to atone for his fault, he ~as to leave his parish on the spot.
In his perplexity M. Bonhomme bethought himself that some years ago a Protestant called M. de Rougemont had asked him to speak on the McAll missionary boat, and immediately he set out for the neighboring town of Pons, where resided a Protestant pastor, M. Robert. The pastor was struck at once by his courage and joyful piety. When he had listened to his story and understood the cruel plight in which he was, M. Robert said: "If your conscience refuses to obey, tell your parishioners that next Sunday you will preach on this subject: 'My reasons for leaving the Ohurch of Rome. ' Theu, as in the days of the Reformation, remain at St. Palais among your flock. I will hire a hall of some kind or other, where you will preach what you believe to be true, and the Mission for Priests will help to support you. " " I may have encouraged him by these words," adds M. Robert, "but I knew, somehow, that he had already made up his mind. The struggle had been a painful but triumphant one. "
Indeed, the following Sunday M. Bonhomme preached a sermon on those errors and abuses which had brought about his rupture with Rome. The parish church of St. Palais was too small to contain the crowd. And the speech was so thrilling, so pathetic, and earnest that all those Catho-. lics thought, "Ought we not to do likewise? "
When M. Bonhomme left the church to divest himself of the cassock (soutane), which he had worn for the last time in his life, numbers of peo- ple, men and women, followed him to his home to shake hands and con- gratulate him. His heroic decision had won for him the respect and ad- miration of all. But the bishop was so indignant that he sent in all haste fifteen priests to purify the sanctuary by sprinkling it with holy water. ·With the exception of a few old women the inhabitants of St. Palais re- fused to attend a ceremony which they called a " popish farce." "Our Cure Bonhomme," they said, "is far more pious and conscientious than those men."
'Vhen I heard of these facts, I hastened to St. Palais to open the new hall. Whereas the new cure, who succeeded M. Bonhomme, had little more than a d,ozen hearers, our meeting was so crowded that I had to tell the men to leave their seats to the women and to content themselves with listening through the doors and windows, which were thrown wide open. Every oue had spoken of Bonhomme for t~enty miles round; everyone wished to hear him and to learn something about Protestants.
After my departure, Pastor Robert, priest Bonhomme, and two other conjerenciers come .from Paris, went all over the country giving lectures in twenty villages. From five or six parishes rose the cry: "Send us a former priest to teach us the Gospel of Christ!" Our committee felt that tarrying was no longer possible, and decided to grant in some measure this request. While we were discussiug that question in Paris, M. Bonhomme was called far away to Bourg du Bose to deliver a lecture. The next day the Maire, the Conseil Municipal, and the better half of the inhabitants resolved to turn Protestants, and begged us to give them a converted priest for a pastor.
Now that a second priest, Abbe Cornelollp, is settled in these parts, the wl)rk is spreading more and more, and Pastor Robert asks us to· send him a third priest. Unfortunately, our funds do not allow us to answer, as yet, in the affirmative.
But the conversion of a priest has not only been the means of bringing the Gospel into twenty villages, it has also awakened the little church of Pons, perfectly asleep till then. Now the members of the church go about the country helping our converted priests in preaching with them the Gospel to the peasants.
Thus the Mission for Priests may not only be a powerful instrument
NOTES FROM PARIS
for evangelizing Roman Catholics, it may also infuse new blood into our Protestant veins. Pastor Robert says: "Give me ten truly converted priests, and I will convert the diocese of La Rochelle." * NOTES FROM PARIS.
BY REV. RUBENS SAILLENS, PARIS, FRANCE.
The present ministry seems to be fairly minded with regard to the rights of Protestants and their missionaries both at home and in the colonies. We have the most radical government we ever had; and it is only from the Radical Party that we can ever expect, in this country, measures which will lead to the separation of Church and State-one of the greatest needs of France.
The Resident-General for Madagascar, now on his way to Antananarivo, is M. Laroche, a Protestant gentleman. Mme. Laroche, tho born a Roman Catholic, lIas joined her husband's religion, and is well known in Protestant philanthropic circles. Several Protestant officials-along with a great many Roman Catholics, of course-have been sent with M. Laroche to the new colony. We may hope, therefore, that the Swedish and English missionaries on the great African island will be impartially dealt with. Of course these appointments excite the anger of the Romish press-a bishop having gone so far as to say, in a public letter, that: "Abroad, Protestant means English and· Catholic means French; and that, therefore, the appointment of Protestant officials is paving the way for English influence in our colonies." Yet French Protestants have ever been loyal to their country, tho it has often treated them very harshly.
The Paris Societe des Missions Evangeliques (French Protestant Missionary Society) has decided to send a pastor (M. Langa) to Madagascar, in order to make inquiries as to the opportunity for French Christians to est,ablish missions and schools in the island. M. Langa will sail very soon.
While trying to carryon, according to their abilities, the great command " Go ye into all the world," the French Christians cannot overlook the fact that their own country needs the Gospel as much as any foreign land. Think of 500,000 or 600,000 at the utmost, nominal Protestants, scattered throughout a population of nearly 40,000,000 ; of these nominal Protestants, only a small proportion being thoroughly converted! It is, therefore, sad to see that, owing to financial difficulties, such valuable work as the McAll Mission and others have been able to do is now reduced rather than enlarged and extended as it ought to be.
Our own mission (Baptist) is greatly encouraged. While seven years ago there were only 9 churches with 900 communicants, we have to-day in '" I have saW nothiug about bad uufrocked priests; they are numerous, but we refuse them all. French-speaking countries (France, Belgium, Bernese Tura) 26 churches with about 2000 communicants. Some of our young men are offering themselves for the Lord's service, whether at home or abroad.
Among the noblest and truest servants of the Lord Jesus Christ in our country, one whom He has taken away from us during the present year deserves especially to be mentioned. I refer to Pastor Ernest Dhombres, of the Reformed Church of the Saint Esprit, Paris. He died a few months ago, aged seventy. He had been blind for several years, but had borne his affliction in a most submissive and even joyful spirit, still preaching and visiting the sick and bereaved ones of his flock. A beautiful preacher, he was faithful to the old doctrines of the Gospel, now disregarded by so many.
Twenty-five years ago, during that cold, deadly winter of 1870-71, which saw the German armies surround Paris like an iron circle, Ernest Dhombres remained with his parishioners, preaching to them with more than his usual vigor the Gospel of peace and love in the midst of the horrors of war. He was a true patriot, and did not shrink from the painful duty of denouncing from the pulpit our national weaknesses and sins, which were the causes of our sufferings, while he heartily joined in the aspirations and hopes of his people.
The sermons which he preached during that eventful period, and which were published at the time, have been gathered together by loving friends in a beautifully printed volume, with an introductory note by Pastor Couve, the well-known moderator of the Reformed Church. The volume contains a fine portrait of the author, and a most interesting account, by himself, of all the religious and charitable work which the French Christians, imprisoned with their fellow-citizens, accomplished during the siege. This is a chapter almost ignored of French history.
Each sermon is accompanied by a historical sketch, written by Pastor Dhombres, relating all the events which had happened in the city and outside during the period preceding its delivery. Fears and hopes, hunger, cold, revolts of the mob, false news soon disproved, desperate attempts to break the iron circle, all that described by a Christian, a minister of the Gospel, who, while belonging to the same creed as the enemies of his country, is intensely at one with the people among whom God has placed him, and who are his own flesh and blood. This makes of the book" Foi et Patrie" a unique work of its kind. We have read it with passionate interest, and recommend it to the readers of French who love our country and would join with us in praying that the lessons of L'.Annee terrible may * yet bring fruit for this poor, deluded, yet noble and truly great nation.
* "Foi et Patrie," vol. octavo, 232 pp., printed on fine paper. Paris, Berger-Levrault, 5 me des Beaux-Art/!. Price, 80 cents (4 francs).
CENTURIES OF J3Um:iHISM
NINE CENTURIES OF BUDDHIS~f.-V.
BY F. D. SHAWE, LADAK, TIBET.
After thus comparing in detail the actual state of a Buddhist country with the claims of Buddhism, we may well ask, " What is the practical outcome of nine centuries of Buddhism?" As il; now stands at the preseut day, Ladaki Bud'::'llism is a mixture of fetishism and demonism. Images, books, and the Six Syllables are nothing more than fetishes, which, properly treated, have the power of warding off the attacks of countless evil powers. Ladaki Buddhism knows no love, no compassion, no gratitude, no reverence, not even fear of punishment for misdeeds, but only a groveJIing terror of malignant spirits, who find their delight in bullying mankind. With all its vaunted compassion, Buddhism has produced a people whose sole idea is self. With all its vaunted morality, Buddhism has caused the disappearance of all moral cons~iousness. "Vith all its vaunted intellectuality, Buddhism has rendered the people intellectually feebler than they were a few hundred years ago, and so unnsed to reflection that they are absolutely unconscious alike of their own state and of that of their priests. ·With all its vaunted purity, Buddhism has allowed the people to lapse into the most debasing idolatry and abject superstition. Self, and nothing but self, is the center of every man's thought. Not even intellectual selfishness has been attained; food, clothing, and sexual delights are the end-all and be-all of the life of a Ladaki. After mature consideration, I am constrained to believe that those qualities which endear the Ladaki people to those Europeans who have intimate dealings with them are not the results of Buddhism, but exist in spite of Buddhism.
James Gilmour wrote as follows: "Mongol Buddhism and holiness have long ago parted company, and it seems possible for men and women, living among and participating in scenes of unblushing evil, to be at the same time experiencing the effectual consolations of religion. This seems, at first sight, incredible; but I am convinced that it is true. And perhaps no more serious charge could be brought against any religion than this, which holds true of Buddhism: that, notwithstanding many excellent doctrines which characterize it as a theory, its practical effect is to delude its votaries as to moral guilt, to sear their consciences as with a hot iron, to call the wicked righteous, and send men down to the grave with a lie in their right hand." This scathing denunciation is, word for word, true of Ladak and Tibet generally. And inquire where you will in Buddhist countries from those who have in lengthy residence acquired some behindthe-scenes knowledge of the real state of the people, the answer is always in similar terms: " Buddhism has not accomplished what it professes to do; it does notsustaiu a moral life among its adherents."
But, it may be said, "Your description is very sad; but really such things as those you mention are not rmknown in so-called Christian coun-
OF BUDDHA . CARVED IN THE ROCK, LADAK, TIBET, A STREET IN LEH
NINE CEN'l'URIES OF BUDDHISM
tries. " I am not concerned at present to contrast Christianity with Bud. dhism; but I may yet be allowed to suggest two points for reflection: Firstly, the evil and immoralIty in Christian countries is not so unblushing as in this Buddhist land. In Christian countnes such things are obliged to keep in the background, while in Ladak they stalk unashamed in broad noonday. There is an immense difference in degree. Secondly, these things happen in Christian countries in direct antagonism to the efforts of Christianity. Not only by words from the pulpit and in the press, but by unwearying efforts, entailing great expeuse of time, money, and men, real Christians are striving to stem. the evil. In Ladak and Tibet not an effort is made to bring about a change, not even a voice is raised in protest. Christianity is engaged in a perpetual warfare ; Buddhism tacitly assents in evil. This is a fundamental difference.
Indeed, nothing else can be expected. As long as the lamas remain unreformed, a salutary influence cannot be exerted from within Buddhism. But the lamas cannot be reformed. An earnest effort was made by Tsongkapa, the founder of the yellow sect; the impetus, however, exhausted itself, and his followers are rapidly disappearing in the slough of iniquity and self-righteousness which represents Tibetan Buddhism. Nor need this astonish us, for Tsongkapa has merely shown by example what was foreshadowed in theory. Buddhism is in doctrine the apotheosis of selfishness. While in othe, religions the commands of a deity are the standard of life, in Buddhism the advantage of self is the center point. All existence in every form brings misery, and selflshness demands that release from this misery be found. All self-denial, compassion, love and charity, enjoined as they are by Buddhism, are merely a means for freeing self from pain. They are not commanded because they are in themselves good, but because they are a profitable investment. No appeal is made to the sympathy inherent in most people for what is good simply because it is good; in Buddhism the appeal lies solely to the selfish advantage of the " ego." True, this is a higher, so to say, aristocratic form of selfishness, and has produced many really deep and beautiful moral precepts, especially as shown in the Ohammapada, ~ ')ok from which apologists of Buddhism draw most of their quotations. None the less, however, selfishness remains the mainspring of action, and it is impossible but that the higher selfishness must deteriorate into self-indulgence and finally sensuality. Tibetan lamas and laymen have arrived at this latter point, and a greater power than sublimated selfishness is required to cause a chauge.
The fact is, that the Buddhism of Gautama as the religion of the people is dead. As the application of electricity produces movements in a corpse, so can Buddhism be temporarily galvanized into action. The intense earnestness of Christianity is having a reflex action, producing at the present day galvanic spasms in the dead body. But that Buddhism is absolutely dead is written plainly enough in the pages of history. Where are Buddhist charitable hospitals 1 Where free dispensaries 1
ROMANISM IN CHINA
Where orphanages ~ Where teachers of the deaf and dumb 1 Where asylums for the idiot or the leper ~ We must go to Christian countries, and to the efforts of Christian people in Buddhist countries, if we would see these. While Christian countries are-very slowly and with many a halt and relapse, yet still surely-advancing, Buddhist countries have been for centuries stationary, or are even, as Tibet and Mongolia, engaged in a retrograde movement.
Let me not be misunderstood. The Buddha Gautama I consider to have been a most earnest and thoughtful searcher after truth ; and I know of no scheme, outside of revealed religion, which contains more of eternal truth and justice, not excepting the Greek philosophies. The Heidelberg Castle is II great edifice, justly exciting admiration ; but it is a ruin, and no longer fit for human beings to inhabit. Gautama reared a splendid building, worthy of all attention on the part of those interested in the spiritual housing of mankind; but it is a hopeless ruin, and has proved itself unable to protect those who have sought shelter in it from the attacks of what was long ago defined as "the lust of the flesh, and lust of the eyes, and the pride of life." " A whited 2epulcher, which indeed appears beautiful outward, but is within full of dead men's bones and of all uncleanness. "
ROMANISM IN CHINA.
BY REV. JOHN ROSS, MUKDEN, CHINA.
The history of the Roman Catholic Church in China is one laden wit.h lessons as to the character of that Church, and one which gives the only satisfactory key to open the mystery of Chinese hostility to We,stern peoples. The Jesuits who zealously pushed their way to the foot of the throne in China were men who were guided by wise counsels and men . trained in all the learning of the West. Professors of the Sorbonne, with men of leading minds among the Jesuits of Paris, were seut under royal auspices and with regal gifts. By their mathematical learning they procured for themselves the control of the observatory in Peking, the construction of the all-important annual almanac, and the respect of all who loved learning. Never in any court had they so thorough a hold of royalty as they had during the long reign of Kanghi. Had they been able to get him baptized, as they had hoped, or had they continued the policy which guided them into and retained them in his favor, China might have long ere now been virtually a vassal of the Pope. From among the most brill. iant scholars of the Empire they had numerous converts, and some of the best books ever written in favor of Christian doctrine were the product of high officials converted to Romanism. That Church was not then wholly given over to the idolatry of Mary as it is now. But the Nemesis of Jesuitry, despite that splendid commencement, rapidly followed in the wake of prosperity. The successor of Kanghi did not reverence them with the affection of his father. A younger brother was a great friend of theirs. With other younger brothers the Jesuits conspired to dethrone the Emperor and set this friendly younger brother on the throne. The Em- peror was aware of the treason, but left it alone till some of the leaders retired into Mongolia to take steps to collect an army. Then suddenly the chief conspirators were apprehended. The Jesuits were banished to the west of Kansu. The intercession in their behalf of a special embassy of Portugal, which then possessed the commercial supremacy i~ the East, was the cause of the death of the prisoners. For learning, by overland mount- ed courier from Canton, the design of that embassy, the Government sent messengers to the vVest, and the Jesuits were put to death. Steps were taken to prevent the high-handed proceedings of converts all over the em- pire. The administration of justice was impossible where the Roman Catholics congregated in any numbers-·for they went in a body to the yamen and terrified the magistrate into acquiescence to their will. No Roman Catholic convert, accused of any crime whatsoever, could be brought to justice. Measure after measure was adopted to stop this con- stant overawing of magistrates; and as nothing else availed, the persecu- tion began which put an end once for all to the unbearabie authority which the Roman Catholic Church had arrogated to itself in the interior. From that time the Boman Catholics were under a cloud more or less dark till the French war dispelled the cloud and gave them as much liberty (1860) as ever they had to carry out their will-which they could now do without any fear of resulting persecution. The manner in which they have acted in China since has produced the fire of anti-foreign feeling which has roused every riot which has occurred in this land. The Chinese are as yet incapable of differentiating between the peoples of the West. Americans are as much foreigners as French ; and the hatred is against the foreigner on account of the doings of the French. The Chinese dread the spread of the foreigner into the country-for every foreigner is a center of more or less disturbance. If, therefore, an American missionary is mobbed when building a foreign house or a church after the Western fashion, let no one think that the mob is opposed to the teaching of Christianity. The Chinese have nothing but respect for the Christian system; but thcy hate, because they fear, the foreigner. Not as a missionary has anyone ever been attacked, but as a foreigner. The story is too long to relate why this anti-foreign feeling is so deep-seated and widespread. But it is all to be laid at the door of the Roman Catholics. That Church is said to be semi-political. In China you must omit the "semi" before you can understand the truth. The Roman Catholics never preach to the heathen. They rarely preach to their own people, who are grossly ignorant of the elementary principles of Christ's teaching. They don't preach; but if a convert has a grudge against a neighbor he goes to the priest and tells him that so and so is "reviling the Roman Catholic Church. " If the quarrel is serious, he takes with him the fragments of the cross worshiped by the converts instead of their former idols and accuses his enemy of having broken the cross. In nine of ten cases the Roman Catholic breaks the cross and goes with this story, as the common people dare not quarrel with a Roman Catholic. The priest sends ~ document to the judge purporting to proceed from a high official by imperial authority, stamped with a formidable-looking official stamp. This docnment demands the pnnishment of the offender. That man is imprisoned, and gets out again only after the Roman Catholics are satisfied with the punishment received and the amouut of money paid; for in all cases money is the chief concern. If the judge is slow in carrying ont the desire of the priest, the latter waits upon him in person, and will not leave till his object is attained. In very exceptional cases the jndge is unable to bring himself to carry out the outrageous demand. Then the priest goes in person to the Governor-General, lays his complaint against the judge, who has at last either to yield or be degraded and succeeded by one who will decide according to the pleasure of the priest or bishop. Often, however, the offender is taken to the Roman Catholic Church, where there is a place of torture, which no native ever leaves without bitterly repenting ever having called in question the power of the Roman Catholics.
The Roman Catholic priests are high officials with civil rank. They assume a style and dignity snperior to that of a county judge. The bishop has the dignity of a judge of appeal. The cardinal is " King" of the Church, and the Pope "Emperor." The demands of the Roman Catholic Church-at least in Manchuria and in Szchuen,.not in Shantung, I understand-are the demands of civil officials acting under imperial authority. What know the Chinese of all this ~ They only know that France upholds all these pretensions, and has once and again refused to curtail the action of the priesthood in this dictation to the native officials. These latter are degraded in the eyes of the people because of their subserviency to this foreign despotism which has gradually enveloped them round. The people are indignant that there is no appeal from the unrighteous tyranny of Roman Catholics. Is it speciany wonderful that there should be occasional riots 1 Would such action-and far worse, which I care not to mention at present-be tolerated for a day in America or in any of the nations of Europe? For a quarter of a century I have resided among the Chinese and Manchus. The outcry against them is a libel upon one of the most sober, diligent, gentle races on the face of the earth. My sympathies are entirely with the Chinese, despite the blind folly of the means they take to get rid of the foreigner. They believe the missionary is a teacher of religion only as a pretext under cover of which he carries on political aims to subvert Chinese subjects from their allegiance. However long those have been in China who declare that this hatred is confined to officials and literary classes, they are ignorant of the
1896.j
facts of Chinese present life and past history. In the open ports you can never come to uuderstand the Chiuese. You must live among them and come into contact with all classes. There are few of the poorest families in China who are not connected with or interested in some one or more of the literary and official classes. There is no caste in China. Did the common people not regard the foreigner with at least as great a hatred as the official and literary classes no riot would be possible. They would not run the risk of losing their life merely to act on what they considered the falsehoods of the ruling class. Chinese are exceedingly ignorant of us ; not a few of us, missionaries and merchants, are equally ignorant of the Chinese.
What is the practical outcome of this hurriedly written paper? It is the desire to earnestly entreat everyone directly interested in the conversion of the Chinese to manifest Christian forbearance instead of worldly revenge; to show the Chinese in practical life what is the real meaning of Christ's teaching and of Christ's example. Instead of the ready fault-finding-for which there is reason enough-let there be the quiet sympathy which will endeavor to understand the Chinese mental attitude. Let, above all, the desire be everywhere manifested in our dealings with the Chinese to remove from their minds the root of all the mischief-the belief that we are political agents. Never let anyone lightly move the foreign power. Appeals to Cresar and cries for the gunboat, for ministerial dictation in Peking or consular action in the provinces should be resorted to only in the most extreme cases. There has been lately on the part of many an unexpected eagern()ss to cling for protection to worldly power, instead of leaving all in the Power which is over all. To me it is saddening in the extreme to discover how much it has been forgotten that the " weapons of our warfare are not carnal. " Every resort to carnal weapons is but another proof to the Chinese that we are political agents. Remove this belief, you open the way for the best classes of Chinese-those who most love their country-to become Christian. It is gratifying to know that many in the church are iI'ltensely patriotic. It is still more gratifying to know that gradually the _truth on this matter is making its way slowly but steadily into all ranks. No Chinaman will be found who is ready to object to the teachings of Christianity. The most bigoted Confucianist, in coming face to face with Christian teaching, can but explain, "Jesns is the sage of the West, Confucius the sage of the East; you follow yours and allow us to follow ours." There is but one great seriously mighty barrier at present against the speedy advance of Christianity, and that is the belief that we are political agents. China sorely needs Christianity. Confucianism is an ethical and political system second ('mly to Christian teaching. Buddhism is an atheistic pessimism holding out the cessation of being as the ultimate hope of man's greatest and holiest efforts. Taoism has degenerated into a poor magi?al system worthy, perhaps, in many of its exhibitions, to be placed side by side with the absurdities of
FHOM: l{OMISII MISSIONS
" spiritualism. " These three systems, despite the lunatic attempts of some Westerns to galvanize one or all of them into something like life, are utterly unavailing before the heart-cries of this nation. Heart-sickness everywhere in this land can be cured only by that which is foolishness to the wisdom of this world. Here, as elsewhere, it is true that Christianity alone contains and alone bestows the highest promise and fulfillment for the life that now is and for that which is to come.
LESSONS FROM ROMISH MISSIONS.
BY REV. WILLIAM: FUTHEY GIBBONS, FORTY FORT, PA.
However corrupt the Romish Church may be in practice at the present time, howevcr false as the custodian of doctrine in the past, it is well to recall the fact that she has always been faithful to her missionary principles. It is true there have been ages when the flame burned low; worldliness and luxury have at times been more attractive than hardship and martyrdom; but we must not forget that it was the Roman Church which preached the Gospel to our ancestors in Germany, in Britain, in Gaul, and in the Scandinavian peninsula, and that Rome to-day sends her missionaries to all parts of the world. Let us not despise the experience of the Romish Church in the work of missions, even tho we send missionaries among the members of her communion, while she sends missionaries to Protestant lands. If her methods are bad, let us avoid 1hem ; if they are sound, let us adopt them.
1. The first great lesson that Rome can teach Protestantism in mission work is the law of economy of effort. The Romish Church is divided into more sects and parties than any other church in the world, yet all these discordant elements and interests are held together by one common aimto gain power among the nations of the earth. How much nobler would be the purpose to unite all true believers of one common Master for the sake of advancing His kingdom throughout the whole earth! But if we cannot as yet agree on terms of church consolidation at home or on mission fields, let us at least learn from tlle Roman Catholics not to embarrass each other by multiplying denominational missions in the same district. The plan of apportioning out different mission fields to different societies and orders of monks has been one secret of success of Romish missions. As each new field is opened the Pope appoints as missionaries to it the members of that society which is best fitted to carryon the work.
2. The law of the necessity of self-denial. Dr. George VV. Knox has recently said: "It is not surprising that the heroic missions of the Romish Church win the plaudits of onlookers who are not impressed by the pleasant home life, the wife and children, and abundant comforts of the Protestant missionary. However out of sympathy with the dogmas of the Romish Church, their poverty, endurance, patience, and suffering excite the admiration of us all. Every thoughtful missionary at times is forced to ask himself whether the reformation did not go too far; whether the priestly monastic, militant types are not, after all, more in accord with the missionary spirit. And Protestants turn to the older church for instruction as to the conduct of the great campaign."
Whoever reads the Annals of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith must be struck by the somewhat theatric nature of modern Catholic mISSIOns. The Romish missionary never forgets that he is a spectacle to angels and to men, and especially to Protestants and to heathen. Especially when he is telling his own story does this dramatic element show itself. Yet after all allowance has been made for the exaggerations of heated imagination there is still room for a large amount of genuine self-denial. It is not strange that this shonld be true when we remember the Romish doctrine of the merit of good works.
No one can read many pages of medieval history without finding the story of some zealous Catholic-merchant, monk, or missionary-who sought the crown of the martyr or canonization as a saint through exposure to the dangers incident to carrying the religion of Christ to the savage heathen tribes of Northern Europe. The shores of the Baltic were as many days'journey from Rome in that day as the banks of the Congo are from us, and the means of obtaining a footing for civilization on the new soil were much less efficient then than now. Just as surely as there were many beautiful examples of earnest Christian living in the midst of the spiritual dearth of the Church of Rome during the Middle Ages, so surely were there examples of earnest, self-denying missionaries during the same period.
Of all the records of devotion none is more striking than that of Raymond Lull. It may with truth be said of him, in the words of one of his own treatifles, that he labored afl a missionary" that the blessed name of the Lord Jesus, which is still unknown in most parts of the world and among most nations, may be manifested and obtain universal adoration." The intense energy of the man may be seen from the fact that he traveled more widely, in spite of the inconveniences of thirteenth-century locomotion, than most modern missionaries do in these days of express trains and ocean greyhounds. In addition to, and in spite of his long journeys to preach to the Mohammedans and to appeal to the Pope and councils to establish schools for the teaching of Arabic and to undertake and support missions to the Mohammedans, he was the author of 486 treatises, most of which are still in existence. The great Humboldt speaks of him with enthusiasm as a natural philosopher and chemiflt and as the independent inventor of the mariner's compass. His life, after his sudden and striking conversion, was one long succession of suffering, imprisonment, and banishment, ended by martyrdom. Altho he had been banished from Tunis for disputation and for preaching to the followers of Islam and forbidden to land there again on the pain of death, yet when his work was done in Europe, at the age of eighty he returned to Tunis, went boldly into the open square of Bugia, the capital, and proclaimed salvation through Christ. A erowd gathered; it was known that he was uuder sentence of death by stoning; a few stones were thrown, and he was hustled by the crowd toward the seashore. Yet in the confusion he kept his face toward his enemies, still crying out, " None but Christ!" Once outside the town, the crowd of angry Turks fell upon him with showers of stones. At last he fell, but rallying and raising himself on his hands and knees he shouted again, "None but Christ I"~ It was his last testimony. Left for dead, he was taken on shipboard by a Christian sea captain, only to die. Thus perished a man who did more than any other single missionary, from that day to this, for the conversion of the Mohammedans. The motto of his life might well have been these words from one of his own books: " lIe who loves not lives not; he who lives by the Life cannot die." He advocated, as the most practicable method of missionary work by the Church, the establishment of institutions of learning where holy monks of great wisdom could learn various languages, so as to be able to preach to unbelievers. Had the Church responded to his call, Raymond Lull would have anticip'l.ted William Carey by exactly seven centuries.
Details of similar mart.yrdoms in China and Japan in the Middle Ages, among the Iroquois and Hurons in the early days in our own couutl'y, in the Soudan and the Congo country in our own time might easily be multiplied. Parkman's histories tell of such cases as those of Brebeuf and Lallemant, who, having been tortured with the most exquisite cruelty, escaped from their rescuers to go back to their tormentors in order to preach to them and to administer the sacrament of the Mass. However mistaken or even fanatical such men may have been, we cannot help admiring their lofty courage, their steadfast devotion, and their splendid self -denial.
3. The Law Concerning the Preaching of t,he Word. There are several lessons we may learn from the failures of the Romanists. Nothing they have done is more clearly a mistake than the dependence they have put in other ageucies than the Gospel of Christ. The whole question of the efficacy of the sacrameuts emerges here. Could anything be more pathetic than the wonderful sacrifices made by the Jesuits to baptize Indians who did not know they were being baptized, to sprinkle holy water on sleepiug heathen Chinamen, or to administer the sacrament of extreme unction to dyiug Africans unconscious of what was being done ~ Of course Protestants believe that such methods are not worthy of the name of missionary effort. But some people who ought to know better are advocating other meaus than the presentation of the Gospel as missionary work.
We do not for a moment discount the educational work of the missionary. He must teach the people among whom he labors to use both brain and hand. He mllst do all he can to civilize them. He will reduce their speech to writing if it is not already a written language. He will teach them to till the soil if they are not already an agricultural people. He will teach them all the arts and sciences possible. He will aid them to develop the resources of their country iu every possible manner. He will be the apostle of culture and material prosperity, of literature and enterprise; but first and above all he must be the herald of Christ.
Altho not au example of the most illegitimate methods of Romish mission work, Francis Xavier is the most conspicuous failure because he failed to teach the Word. It is pure extravagance to call him " the Apostle of the Indies," and to compare him with St. Paul, as some historians of the Church of Rome have done. It is pure partisan blindness which does not see that his work amounted to almost nothing that was permanent. To be sure, he opened the way into Asia for other members of the Society of Jesus, of which he was one of the founders; but the lasting spiritual results of his work were pitifully small. This poverty of results was due, we believe, to dependence on other agencies than the Word of God. Xavier always speaks of having made Christians: "Feci Ohristianos" is his constant expression. These people were manufactured into Christians by holding up the crucifix before the multitudes who gathered to hear him and persuading them to bow before it, or by taking the branch of a tree and sprinkling them with consecrated water. His zeal knew no bounds. All day long he toiled to administer the sacraments to as many people as possible, taking neither time for eating nor sleeping, and spending the short remainder of his nights in prayer. "Amplius /" (" More !") was still his cry, even when he was most thronged with candidates for baptism or confession. If snch methods could havc been permanently successful, there was no reason why Xavier should not have succeeded; for he had every advantage of money and power behind him. He could make it profitable to become a Christian in India. The poor and the suffering were liberally relieved. Besides administering to the bodily diseases of all who would come to him, and feeding all the hungry who swarmed to his ministrations, he had the temporal power of the Viceroy of Madras behind him. Four thousand gold fanams were granted by the Viceroy to pay the " priests," so-called, which Xavier appointed from among his converts in each village. When it is remembered that St. Francis spent but a few days, or at most but a few weeks, in each village, we need not be surprised that his converts soon lapsed back into heathenism in name, from which they had never emerged, in fact, even tho they were presided over by the" fit persons," as he calls these priests, who had been selected to draw the salary from the royal treasury. Xavier's failure is acknowledged not by Protestants only, but even by members of his own society, the Jesuits. Abbe Dubois laments that the work was not thorough. Indeed, St. Francis himself felt that he had failed. In a letter to the King of Portugal, when he is about to leave the country for China, he gives up his plan for converting the Hindus through the offices of the Church, and urges that the Viceroy be held accountable for making his subjects Christians by civil power. He says: "I wish that you would mention each of us by name, and say that we are not responsible ; but that the duty of spreading Christianity depends upon the Viceroy and upon him alone." He goes on to urge the King to punish, by imprisonment and confiscation of property, the governors of such provinces where there were few neophytes added to the Holy Church. This he feels it his solemn duty to urge.
It would not be fair to speak thus of the failure of Xavier's work and to seem to cast discredit upon him without going on to say a word concerning his piety and his sufferings. His letters show a wonderful zeal, and his life of self· abnegation proves that his zeal was genuine. One of the most beautiful hymns we owe to him, " Jesus, I love Thee, not because I hope for heaven thereby,"
reveals the pure and beautiful soul of the mau. Notlling was too painful for him if he could move the hearts of men thereby. One of his methods was to scourge himself vicariously in order to make merit for the person whom he was endeavoring to convert, and in whose presence the penance was performed. .
Hough, in his "History of Christianity in India," says: "His personal character appears to have been unexceptionable. His missionary character also in many respects is worthy of admiration. For grandeur of design and diligence in execution; for disinterested love to man ; for unwearied devotion, self-denial, renunciation of the world, intrepidity in dangers, and many other estimable qualities, he has left behind him an example which few have surpassed since the apostles' days."
4. The Law of Separation. The Romish Church is a mighty political engine of power. We may learn that the success of the missionary comes " not by might or by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord." The wholo question of the union of Church and State is involved in the Romish theory of missions. More than once the Pope and his agents have secured the promulgation of a decree by the governments of certain provinces declaring allegiance to the papal see only to find that the people would not submit; or it has been found that if the people have become Catholic in name, they have remained heathen in fact. Men cannot be made Christians by proclamation, even tho they be willing.
The experience of Rome ought to teach us to avoid all political entanglements. One of the most amusing failures which the Romish Church has made to introduce Christianity by treating with the government of a country was in the case of the successors of Jenghiz Khan. Messengers had come from the Tartar empire, which was threatening to overrun all Europe, to the court of Louis IX., "Saint Louis," with stories of the willingness of the Tartars to accept Christianity, As the Tartars were known to be Deists, with little or no religion of their own, and as they looked with equal favor on Buddhism, Mohammedanism, and Christianity, the pious King of France sent an embassy with rich presents to the Grand Khan Gajuk, asking him to make Christianity the religion of his empire. But the barbarian Mongols regarded the presents as tokens of the submission of Louis to their authority, and sent back the messengers. The a famous William of Rubruk was sent by St. Louis at the head of a second body of ambassadors on journey of 5000 miles to be bandied about from one chieftain to another until he reached the Grand Khan himself. But instead of being allowed to introduce Christianity, at the close of a disputation with Mohammedans and Buddhists, the Franciscan monk was sent back with a threatening demand to Louis to tender his submission in due form and become tributary to the Khanate of Tartary.
5. The Law of Unworldliness. One cause of the failure of the Romish Church to do permanent missionary work in certain countries has been the immoralities of those who have followed the missionaries. The Romish missionaries who followed Xavier were expelled from Japan by the indignant natives in 1614 principally because of the flagrant wrongs done by the merchants, sailors, and adventurers who swarmed into the country in their wake. We may learn from the Romish missionaries in another field to labor with the settlers and traders who have gone among heathen tribes. In 1586 the famous Jesuit mission was established in Paraguay. Here the intolerable cruelty of the Spaniards had long rendered fruitless all the efforts of the Franciscans to convert the Indians. The Jesuits wisely judged that the Spaniards needed reconverting first. They turned their efforts toward their reformation with so good effect that before long the Indians, believing that there must be something in a religion which could so change the conduct of the whites, began again to return to Christianity or to seek baptism for the first time.
But the Romanists are not alone answerable for crimes against weak, helpless, uncivilized. nations. It is impossible to estimate how much the liquor trade, licensed vice, and the immorality of so-called Christian nations have done to retard the progress of the world's evangelization. No pages of statistics nor figures of speech can give an adequate idea of the wrong done to China by the opium traffic of Christian England or to WeRtel'll Africa by the liquor trade of Christian United States and Germany. It is of no use to say that the Church does not stand responsible for these evils j the heathen, among whom our missionaries go, look upon the missionary and the merchant as being equally the representatives of the same country. If the missionaries are merchants, if the missionaries make money profit out of their converts, worse still, if the missionaries are cruel or licentious men, how impossible is it that their efforts should be successful, no matter what they teach. While we are far from charging these sins against the Romish missionaries as a class, yet the history of the work of Cardinal Ximenes in the West Indies and Mexico and of the Jesuits in Paraguay may stand as an illustration of the cause of failure to win the natives because of worldly or sinful lives.
6. The Law of Other Worldliness. Closely connected with the last is the failure to do permanent work because the missionaries of Rome have been satisfied with a Christianity that is merely nominal. To secure this outward assent to the doctrines of Rome, her missionaries, but especially the Jesuits, have been willing to make almost any concession to the heathen prejudices of the people they were trying to win. Mosheim gives a very full account of the methods employed by the Society of Jesus in India and China. In these countries during the seventeenth century they won converts by wholesale by adapting the doctrines of the heathen to the teachings of the Church of Rome. Only the more flagrantly wicked practices of the heathen were condemned; whatever could be twisted from a heathen to a Romish significance was kept. The Jesuits of this period concluded that St. Francis Xavier had made a mistake by beginning at the lowest classes. They supposed they could easily win the lower after they had converted the higher classes. So, in order to win the Brahmins, Robert de Nobili, a nobleman of Tuscany and a member of the Society of Jesus, having perfected himself in Sanscrit, Telegu and Tamil, as well as in the social customs of the Brahmins, went to India and declared himself a Brahmin come from the West. He conducted himself after the manner of the most ceremonious of the Brahmins, and would not suffer hims3if to be approached except by men of high caste. He brought with him a parchmentforged of course, which declared that the Brahmins of Rome were descended from the god Brahm, and were of more ancient foundation than the Brahmins of India. The parchment declared, further, that the members of the Society of Jesus were the direct descendants of Brahm. When the authenticity of the parchment was questioned, De Nobili did not hesitate to declare on his oath its truthfulness. He also forged a Sanscrit book purporting to be a fifth Veda, which he and his fellow-Jesuits swore they had received from Brahm. The result of this policy was that in three years seventy high.caste Brahmins had accepted tha Christian doctrines concerning God, the atonement, and the leading teachings of Christian morality. They abandoned their idols, but retained caste distinctions. Angry opposition arose; but in spite of this thirty thousand converts ware gathered. Separate churches were built for the high and low castes, while the outcasts were forbidden even to approach the Brahmin-Jesuit priests. But however successful the work seemed, it is not strange that such a policy of falsehood and accommodation should soon have brought disastrous failure. The noble kinsman of Robert de Nobili, the great Cardinal Bellarmine, himself a Jesuit, protested most solemnly against such a policy. Altho the order compelled him to retract, other orders of the Church had influence enough to secure a bull from Gregory XV. in 1623 which was unfavorable to the Jesuits. To this bull the Jesuits paid no heed; but in time their own falsehood, their mercantile speculations and other secular
1896·1 THE INQUISITION AND ITS" HOLY OFFICES.'"
undertakings, all contributed to the collapse of the order, which was repressed by Clement XIV. in 1773.
Such are some of the lessons whIch we may learn from our friends the enemy. What shall be the outcome of the struggle carried on along such different lines to WIn the world from heathenism? In the language of a modern writer: "The future of Protestantism depends upon itself. Our clergy must show a greater readiness than Catholic priests to go anywhere at the call of duty. The welcome to Protestant houses of worship should be more free and cordial than to Catholic sanctuaries. Our laity must prove that their gratitude to Christ for a free salvation is at all times a larger draught upon their financial resources than the doctrine of penance which supplements the cross by works of personal sacrifice and merit. Our missionaries must swarm most numerously among the millions of heathenism. In the competition with Catholicism we must not depend solely upon principles-we must show larger and richer fruitage than they."
But this is not all. We must not sit down to rest in the hope that Protestantism will survive because it is the fittest to surviv€l. Some meu are questioning whether the Anglo-Saxon type of Christianity is the fittest religion for the Oriental mind. Such a question proves that that man's religion cannot win because it lacks the great force of faith. Our hope is in the promise of the Lord of Hosts, who has said that the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of the Lord and of His Christ. With faith in Him we hasten the coming of His kingdom.
THE INQUISITION AND ITS "HOLY OFFICES."
BY THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF.
Few people, even among intelligent Protestants, are familiar with the infamous history of the Inquisition. When in Rome, few spots more repay investigation than the Palazzo del Santo Uffizo, near the Vatican, the building formerly used for the" Holy Office" as instituted by Paul III., in 1542. The tribunal was abolished by the Roman Assembly after the revolution of February, 1849, but restored in the June following by Pius IX. During the French occnpation of Rome, the old Palazzo was turned into barracks, and the business of the Inquisition was transferred to the Vatican.
When Paul III., seeking to deal a death-blOW at the Protestant Reformation, issued his bull in 1542, creating the tribunal of the" Holy Office," (!) he appointed six cardinals-Caraffa and :roledo being the chief inquisitors-who were clothed with power to appoint successors, and with authority to decide all cases as a court of final appeal. All parties, rich and poor, patrician or plebeian alike, were given over into their hands to imprison on suspicion, to punish on conviction, to torture by way of compelling confession. TIle only power not entrusted to them was the right of pardon-His Holiness reserving that prerogative to himself. And the Inquisition thus became, in a double sense, a court that showed no leniency, and its victims had indeed" judgment without mercy."
The rules of its action are a curious relic of papal equity. Let those who think the papacy needs no " missions" carefully read and ponder them: 1. In affairs of faith there must not be a moment's delay, but on the slightest suspicion proceedings must be taken.
2. No regard must be paid to any potentate or prelate, whatever his power or dignity.
3. On the contrary, the greatest severity must be shown toward those who seek to shelter themselves under the protection of a ruler; only where confession is made are leniency and fatherly compassion to be shown.
4. To heretics, and especially Calvinists, no toleration must be granted. The cardinal chiefs of the Inquisition did full justice to their" Iloly Office" as thus defined. And if Paul III. was a severe superintendent, his successor, Paul IV., out-Heroded Herod for the violence of his persecuting zeal. When he assumed the papal tiara he was already in his eightieth year, yet it was said of him proverbially that he knew not what it was to make a concession; and certainly in his conduct of the " Holy Office" he exhibited an unrelenting hatred of heretics, mixed with a severity which was absolutely merciless, and an intolerance that was absolutely unbending. He was the impersonation of Talus with his iron flail. His very eyes flashed fire, and his tall, erect, spare form seemed wrought of iron with nerves of steel. To one end all his energies were devoted-at any cost to put down heretics and make the Roman Catholic See triumph~ ant over all " reformers," a world-wide power with undisputed supremacy. In fact, so terribly hard was his iron rule that when, on August 18th, 1559, he died, a riot arose, and" hell broke loose. " The prison 0'£ the Inquisi- tion was broken open and fired, the prisoners being released. The rioters went to the chamber of 1he Inquisition and slew the chi.ef inquisitor, burned or spoiled all the archives, and were hardly restrained from bnrning also the convent of Sofia Minerva, where the old court of the Inquisition existed, and where Galileo underwent his famous ordeal of trial for astronomic heresies.
Abont the saddest things there is often a grim humor; and the " Holy Office" is not without its absurd and semi-ridiculous aspects, as when, for instance, in the name of religion, it calmly and systematically countenances the most atrociously irreligious and barbarous proceedings, reminding one of the enormous cruelties inflicted on helpless brute in the name of science, amid the horrors of vivisection, in the interests of eliciting truth, as from victims of inquisitorial tortures.
For example, in the new Palazzo, near the Vatican, one may see the cells lined with reeds, in which a prisoner could not stand upright. A curious advertisemeut appeared iu 1880, offering for sale the" halls of the tribunal, prisons, and dungeons of torture. "
Dr. John Stoughton saw, while in Rome, that unique volume whose title is, "Sacro Arsenale, over oprattica dell' offitio della Santa Inquisitione-con l'insertione d'alcune Regole fatta dal p. Inquisitore, Thomaso Menghini Domenicano, e di diverse annotationi del Dottore gio Pasqualone. MDCCXVI." The sixth part, which treats of the detection of heresy, unblushingly describes methods of interrogation by torture. One would think even the " Holy Office" would hesitate to put such things in print and give such a formidable weapon to the" reformers" and other enemies of the " Holy Roman See;" but the reader must be the judge of the depravity akin to madness that can unhesitatingly commend such atrocities.
Three of these modes of examination by the agonies of torture are specified: Tormento del fuoco, or torture by fire; tm'mento della stangl~etta, or torture with the bolt or bar; and tormento della cannetta, or torture with the soldering pipe! Here, as Dr. Stoughton remarks, is a typical example of "framing iniquity by a law;" and in the pages of this extraordinary volume, with the coolness of the most audacious effrontery, rules are given for the infliction of the most exquisite pain.
And yet, with the most pious conformity to a religious routine, all this holy vivise~tion was inflicted on the helpless human victims in the name of the Church and the compassionate Christ! The inquisitors assembled in solemn fashion, invoking the name of Christ, and prayerfully proceeded to the duties of the Holy Office! Records were put before them of personssuspectos he1·eticaJ pravitatis, as the names of prisoners are entered on the calendars of Newgate, and they summoned before them the accused parties.
Severe questioning, accentuated with exhortation, threatening, persuasion, extorts confession ; if not, then the gentle persuasions of flame and bolt and soldering pipe and other humane appliances are added to elicit the truth, until, to get rid of the intolerable torment, the victim acknowledges anything, however false-for no eonfession satisfies the Holy Office which does not confirm previous suspicion. It is a hall of judgment in which judgment is virtually pronounced in advance, and the examination must confirm the previous decision. Penalties of greater or less severity fonow-a public whipping, confiscation of property, solitary penance, slavery in the galleys for any period, life incarceration; public abjuration is the least of penalties, the auto da fe is the greatest. And all this for what ~ For holding that there is no future purgatory ; that auricular confession is not necessary ; that there is no sin in eating meat on proscribed days; that images and relics are not to be worshiped; that Christ is our sole Advocate with God; that popes who do not live like Peter are not his true successors; that papal indulgences and anathemas are not of any value or weight, and priestly absolutions are not efficacious; that justification is by faith alone; and that the host is not the real body of Christ. How one exults to trace the history of these victims of papal tyranny, who, like the three holy children, could not be intimidated even by torture-like Bartolomeo Bartoccio, who after two years in a cell, doomed to the fires~ walked with a bold step up to the stake, and amid the flames shouted: "Vittoria! Vittoria!" It was said of Savonarola that as the Bishop of Florence threw at him a burning brand, crying, "I cut you off from the Church militant !" he triumphantly replied: "Aye; but you cannot cut me off from the Church triumphant /"
We have not in this brief paper traced the Inquisition either to its beginnings or into its ramifications. Suffice now to say, by way of completeness to the outline of its history, that the first permanent court of inquisition was established in 1248 undeI Innocent IV., the chief direction being vested in the then recently established Dominican order. Previously it had been local; now the tribunal became general, and was introduced successively into Italy, and Spain, and Germany, and Southern France. In France, the Inquisition came to an end under Philip the Fair, tho under Henry II. an unsuccessful attempt was made to revive it as an engine of extermination against the Huguenot heresy.
In Germany, it fell into disnse in the days of the Reformation. But in Spain and Portugal it has a history which has perhaps no parallel in the annals of the race. Early in the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, Sixtus IV., in 1478, revived the organization after a 'long period, during which it had but a nominal existence; the crown, however, both controlling the acts and appointing the actors of the court.
In 1483, a little more than four hundred years ago, the Spanish Inquisition began its terrible c~reer under Thomas de Torquemada. The number of victims, as given by Llorente, the popular historian of the Inquisition, is nothing short of appalling. During the sixteen years of Torquemada's tenure of office alone there were nearly nine thousand persons who were burned! Under Diego Deza, the second head of the tribunal, in eight years over sixteen hundred suffered at the stake. Some have doubted or denied the accuracy of these statements; but after making all possible deductions and reductions, it is impossible calmly to contemplate the amount of cruelty undoubtedly practised. The horror which these records excite finds little parallel except in that awakened by the modern Armenian massacres.
The rigor of the Spanish Inquisition abated in the later part of the last century, after a period of three hundred years, the full history of which can never be written; and if it were, should be written in blood and deposited in the archives of hell.
The whole method of inquisitorial proceedings illustrates the irony of history. A party on mere suspicion could be arrested and imprisoned at will, and kept in prison until it pleased his judges to submit him to exami· nation. The proceedings were secret. He was confronted by no accusers, nor did he even know their names, and, in some cases, not even the
REGt1LA1'En VtcE IN GE~VA
grounds of suspicion! The evidence of an accomplice was inadmissible, and torture was always the dernier ,·esort to extort confession of guilt. If, after the torture ceased, the victim disowned the confession made on the rack, he was put to torture again till he once more "cmifessed the truth" as before. The fact that no such tribunal is in operation to-day proves, alas! nothing but that the Holy Roman Catholic Church has no longer the autocratic power which made such high.handed atrocities possible. When Father Recker can boldly assert that" Heresy should be reckoned and punished in the thought," intolerance is not dead, and only the power is necessary to revive the Holy Office. Rome no more tolerates Protestant heresies today than at any other time since 1248. Let us not deceive ourselves, nor abate our solemn protest against the errors which ensnare human souls in the name of Christianity. " Separation" is the watchword of the day, not" Union," and charity itself demands this separation that we " be not partakers of her plagues."
* REGULATED VICE IN GENEVA.
In a letter to the friends of repeal in Great Britain, an esteemed corre- spondent gives a vivid picture of the course of events at Geneva on 8un- day, March 22d, when by a large majority on a popular vote, the regula- tion of vice was confirmed. The writer says: " ::: have been called to witness a dark page in the history of human life. It is painful to me to have to record it; but its lessons are needful and solemn, and I wish I had a voice to reach to the end of the civilized world, that those lessons might be heard. How many years we have had the hard task imposed on us of trying to show people-good people-the horrible princiids embodied in the State regulation of vice, and the results which must necessarily follow; and they would not, will not, believe us. You already know the result of the popular vote-we had 4068, as against 1;300, a crushing defeat. I must presently explain how the people were misled by the Government; so that this cannot be quite truly said to be the verdiet of the people, tho to all the world it seems so. It will be, and is, a great triumph for our adversaries everywhere. I am glad that the gates of this inferno were thrown open, and that the results of a hundred years of Government organized and protected vice have been fur once fully revealed.
" Sunday morning-the voting day-I went to an early service in a Free church, wher<l most of our friends go. There was great life in that service, at the end of which most of us had the Sacrament together in almost absolute silence. I should rather have liked that we had all received it Rtanding, with a drawn sword in one hand, as the old crusaders did. The spirit of war, however, was there. as well as the Master's benediction, ' My peace give I unto you.' A dozen or more of our bravest Il"lll * This astouudiug article appeared in the London Ohristian of April 16th, and iB to my mind unequalled in its revelation of human depravity by even the massacres in Armenia. It reminds one of Paul's words: "It is a shame even to speak of those things which are done by them in secret," only here it is done shamelessly and openly.-A. T. P. were absent from that service, having to preside from eight A.M. to six or seven P.M. at the different' urns' (polling-places), and as the Aboli- tionist gentlemen were comparatively few, the best of them had to stay all day at that post. .
" When the result of the poll was known, the leading , tenanciers,'
with their banners and following, forced their way into the Church of the Fusterie, at the entrance of which the final result of the voting had been made known; and then began scenes and processions which had been or- ganized beforehand. It is a pain to write of it; but it is well that the worst should be known, well that the Genevese should have had the awful revelation of the vileness of what they had been harboring in their midst.
You may know, perhaps, that every house of debauchery uuder Govern- ment sanction and protection is obliged to hang up a red lamp over the door, as a guide to visitors. So that now, and especially since Sunday night, that powerful institution which rules Geneva is desiguated aR the , Lampe Rouge.'
" They had organized procesRions in case of a victory, with designs and red lamps. They marched through the whole city, a mass of deviltry and obscenity which I suppose could hardly be seen anywhere else except perhaps in Paris. Soldiers had been posted all about the Fusterie ; but, nevertheless, the red lamps rushed into the church and marched round it inside, locking the gendarmerie out. The latter could not even succeed in forcing their way round the outside of the church, so dense was the crowd.
Inside, it seems, the red lamps held a sort of service to the devil, tramp- ing, swearing, and singing songs of the utmost blasphemy and obscenity.
They sang a hymn which is often sung at meetings or street preachings here, addressed to the Holy Spirit, beginning, 'Source divine of light and life' (in French), and they turned it into a hymn of praise of the' red lamps ' – ' Divine source' to them of all they find most agreeable! They had a banner on two poles, with the names in large letters of de Meuron (a prominent Abolitionist) and the' Bon Dieu,' and a red lamp hanging over both names. They cursed and hissed and howled at the names of God and de Meuron. 'A ba8 le Bon Dieu!' 'A ba8 de Meuron!'
, Vive la Lampe Rouge!' They also parodied a hymn which spoke of the Savior on the cross in a way too awful to speak of, and the indecencies were on a par with the blasphemies.
" Having' consecrated' the red lamps in the large church, they went on to all the other churches and filled the air in front of each with their blasphemies. Then branches of the procession went running to the differ- ent places which they hated most, and where they hoped to find some Abolitionists. They went first to the Young Men's Christian Association, but they had an avant-courier in the person of one of our scouts, who ran faster and told that the' red lamps' were coming, so that all the men as- sembled had just time to get out and disperse, and only windows were left to be battered in. They went to our federation office, but it was locked np. So through the long hours deviltry reigned in the city-an open and impudent saturnalia, flaring its own shame before the eyes of all.
" This revelation of the source and nature of the opposition to us, and of the fruit, 'after its kind,' which State protection of vice brings forth, was necessary, and has begun already to bring about a reaction. Most of all, it has opened the eyes of all the good men, pastors, etc., to the moral pestilence in the midst of which they have been living for several genera- tions. It is profoundly humiliating to the proud Genevese ; for they are a very proud people, and they feel it all the more coming just before their
1896.J AN OPEN LETTER '1'0 OUR MISSIONARIES IN TURKEY
great exhibition, and because they are being taunted and exulted over by the press of France and other countries.
" Now to explain, in a degree, the great majority against us. If the question had been, ' Do you desire the abolition or the maintenance of the rnaisons tolerees.2' every man, woman, and boy would have understood, because the maisons tolerees are as much in evidence and known, as the Cathedral or market-place. But the regulationist majority on the Grand Conseii invented the double question in order, no doubt, to perplex the people. Our friends in the Grand Conseil opposed it with all their might for several days, but in vain. The questions put before the electors were: 1. 'Do you approve of the projet de loi de t'initiative.2 Yes or no.' 2. , Do you approve of the projet de loi of the Government 1 Yes or no. ' You can see what a throwing of dust in their eyes this was. Working men were honestly asking, ' vYhat does it mean l' and during the past five weeks our party were not allowed to hold meetings to instruct the p'eopIe. Every meeting was broken up by the Lampes Rouges, and finally every hall and room was closed against us by a police order. Attempting to speak in the streets or roads, our friends were stoned aud assaulted and silenced by noise. Freedom of public meeting and freedom of speech no longer exist in Geneva. If we had had those liberties it is believed that we might have had a majority of votes. Working women told us that their husbands were good men, but meant to abstain from voting altogether because they did not clearly understand the questions. Many hundreds abstained. Then the Gene'vois had worked hard to tell the peo. pIe that we had deeply injured La Patrie, and troubled Geneva, and spoiled the prospects of the exhibition, and that all the agitators were paid by an English lady who had been sent from London with hundreds of pounds in her pocket. The poor people were misled by this kind of stuff. When one considers all these traps and deceptions put before them, to say nothing of the drink, one almost wonders that there were found 4000 who voted for abolition.
" I have many good things still to report, which we should never have known of but for this appeal to the whole people-so many unexpected adhesions, and, above all, such brave and right action on the part of young men at the university. and even boys in schools."
AN OPEN LETTER TO OUR MISSIONARIES IN TURKEY.
DEARLY BELOVED IN CHRIST: During the past few months I have sought to comfort myself by trying to comfort some of you. Unable longer to continue this, I will put my last effort in the form of a general letter, which, tho it may be too broad for Turkish mail-bags, is not too large for the religious paper of a free people. It may show that the situation is appreciated at home without any compromising utterances on your part.
Bible lands are depicted on the pages of the Bible not merely by the descriptions of the doomsday Book of Joshua, but by the highest spiritual utterances of the prophets. Take an example: "He stood and measured the earth." What mere didactic statement could equal the terseness of that? Measuriug the broad earth without moving from his place! " Then he beheld and drove asunder the nations." To appreciate this we must place ourselves at sunrise outside the gate of some city east of the Jordan and see its flocks pour out in one undistinguishable mass. Sudden- ly a shepherd calls his own sheilp by name, and they follow him to their own pastures, and others do likewise, leaving the place recently the scene of so much life t.otally empty. So here the Lord looks on a crowded bat- tle-field of Syria, where the enemies of Israel hasten to His overthrow.
He does not speak. He only looks; and at that look the hosts of each nation gather by themselves and disappear homeward. "Then the per- petual hills did bow," like the moving cloud splendors that resemble them, and yet even while the mountains flow down at His presence, "His wayI'!
are everlasting." No mere didactic utterance could express these truths so forcibly.
Let us look on another picture. When the primal flood of Turkish carnage and devastation left Asia Minor and entered Europe, their organi- zation was so complete and their weapons so perfect for that age that Europe trembled at the battles which were to decide whether Christ or Mohammed should rule in the land. These men judged Islam by its re- sults, and the impression made by them was intense. In the lapse of a years, however, it has faded out, till now scholars, from the text of their sacred books, tell us priori that the writings of Sakyamouni are the best for Buddhists ; KthoeranChainndestehecltarsasdiictsiofnosr*tahraet nation ; and, passing over others, that the most edifying for the Mos- lem. But while they daintily work out their theories, like a thunderbolt from heaven the word:;; of the Master break on the ear: "By their fruits ye shall know them. Do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles ~"
And, 10 ! the fruit lies to-day before the eye:;; of the nations.
All men know what it is.
The first impression may be to make the bloodshed prominent in the picture; but the ethical foundation is so remarkable as to demand our no- tice. To introduce a new religion, the law against murder is set aside that the proselytizer may indulge in it without stint. Then the murderer is re- warded by the property of his victim, while the one he professedly seeks to convert is stripped of every right that a Moslem is bound to respect.
Even the family, tho built up by the most sacred sanctions, is shattered into fragments, and every member of it made to pander to the lusts or the covetousness of his oppressor. Each one may judge for himself whether the perpetrator of such crimes would think more of securing a convert who may reclaim a portion of his goods or of numbering him among the slain.
Nor are the massacres to be measured hy the number of victims nor by the cruelty of the methods employed. We must look at the victims themselves. The Armenians are the New Englanders of Western Asia.
A householder might dwell between an earthen floor and an earthen roof with very little furnishing between; his clothing might be of the coarsest material and bear the marks of much repairing, yet he lived in the house that had been occupied by his ancestors for many generations. There is something about him that commands respect, not in his surroundings, but in himself. He constantly submits to the greatest privations to enrich his * A Moslem tradition of Jerusalem teaches that in the great day Jesus Christ will sit on a pro- jecting stone high np on the eastern wall of the 'l'emple Enclosure to jndge the world assembled below in the yaney of Jehoshaphat. One or twoquestiolls occur to ns. Should a martyr, slain by Moslems, come forward to be Judged and be condemned for not renouncing Christ and accepting Mohammed, what becomes of the prolnise held to in the dying hour: ., Be thuu faithful nnto death, and I will give thee a crown of life." If Christ bestows that crown of life, what becomes of Mohammedan teachings? Again, should a Moslem aPl?roach, claiming to have slain a Christian who refused to accept Mohammed, shall Christ reward him, aud so stultif;V all tbose exceeding great and precious promises that are ours in Him? If He fulfils those promIses, again what becomes of Mohammedanism? Turkish landlord. His submissiveness is amazing to one accustomed to our free institutions. This is the victim selected for a sacrifice on the altar of Turkish fanaticism.
The news of the massacre reached the nations, and on all sides arose one cry of mingled amazement and execration. Many felt ashamed to be related to such murderers, even by the tie of a common humanity. Let Christians see that these feelings do not spend themselves in idle complaint that the dark ages have intruded into this nineteenth century, but let the words of Jesus, " By their fruits ye shall know them," sink ever deeper into their hearts. One day our Savior was conversing with the Jews, and, looking them through and through-for He " knew what was in man"- He said: " Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the trut.h, for the truth was not in him." Christ looked so deep into their 11earts that He saw the connection between murder and falsehood-a connection that existed long before the days of Uriah the Hittite, and shall exist to the end. And what an interweaving of bloodshed and mendacity runs conspicuously through all these recent events! One cannot look on the one without seeing the other. Daniel speaks of two kings" speaking lies at one table;" but here more than two engage in the work, and they would need very spacious parlors for their nefarious councils. This characteristic of the Government filtrated down into the common people,so that the whole land became a nation of liars. When missionaries first went there it was noticed that they were speakers of the truth, and the people gravely decided that it was because they had not the necessary adroitness to make lying a success.
Some may think that the Turks are included in the apostolic teaching, "The powers that be are ordained of God;" but he goes on to describe the powers that he speaks of in saying that they are a terror not to good works, but to the evil-a character which the Turks have not yet learned to exhibit. Still, as at the first, they are an organized banditti, continually devouring the lands that have fallen into their hands by the fortunes of war. Some of their methods of devouring we have seen within the last few months. The Turkish Govcrnment strains every nerve to keep out the truth; but it might as well try to shut out daylight from the land when the sun is risen. The Turks think that they have a monopoly of the art of covering it up, hence their unwillingness to have spectators on the scenes of their intended wickedness; but they forget that Christ said : " There is nothing covered that shall not be revealed ; and hid that ·shall not be known." These, His words, abide true forever. That mythical quarantine in Sassoun, where no epidemic existed, stirred up a more thorough investigation than an honest statement of the facts would have done. Those kerosene cases intended to consume the last traces of massacre only brought to light more clearly the forethought employed in preparation for it. At first the Kurds were employed as a screen behind which the real actors could do their work; but soon rewards and promotions revealed the true agents, and not long after the pet name, "Hamoudiyeh," identified the originator beyond possibility of mistake. This outbreak of evil shall pass away. Its authors and abettors shall soon stand before their judge, but the qniet work of preaching the Gospel shall go on, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it, for Christ has said: "I have chosen you and ordained you that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain." And so it shall remain even after the" earth is burned up and the elements shall melt with fervent heat."
SIXTIETH ANNIVERSARY 011' TIlE COLONIAL MISSIONARY SOCIETY
One of the good tidings foretold of ChriRt, in Psalm 72: "He shall break in pieces (scatter as dust) the oppressor." It is our privilege to turn this promise into prayer until it is completely fulfilled.
There is one topic vitally affecting our missionaries, on which I would say a word with great diffidence. It has been said that the difficulty in some places of protecting an American citizen is so great that they should be forbidden to go to them, and if they persist in going, they must take the consequences. On this topic I am moved to present certain truths. The rights of an American citizen are inalienable. They can be fOlfeited only by crime or extreme rashness. To ascertain whether any course is rash we mURt go back to the authority for taking that course. Now, it is not churches or mis~ionary societies who send out missionaries, but Jesus Christ in person. It is His lips that say, "Go ye into all the world." The Lord Jesus makes very much of this fact, for He says: "As the Father hath sent Me into the world, even so have I also sent you into the world." He also has a perfect knowledge of those whom He sends, for He says: "Behold I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves." He also foresaw that personal violence would be offered. "The time cometh that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service." Were they on that account to turn baek? No; for He says: "Whosoever will save his life shall lose it : but whosoever shall lose his life for My sake and the Gospel's, the same shall save it." "If any man come to Me and hate not . . • yea, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple." " Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a erown of life." Is a missionary to be accounted rash who lovingly seeks to walk according to these words of his Master? Let men ponder well these words of Christ before they make the charge.
Your brother in Christ, THOMAS LAURIE• .SIXTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE COLONIAL MISSIONARY SOCIETY. * Sixty years ago, May 13th, 1836, a number of men were appointed " to manage the affairs of the contemplated mission to the British colonies," among them, John Remington Mills, the first treasurer; and the ReI'. Thomas Binney, Andrew Reed, and Mr. George Gull, the first secretaries of what became the" Colonial Missionary Society." Rev. Henry Wilkes, M.A., was appointed first missionary, and Montreal, Canada, chosen as the sphere of his labors.
A circular, issued immediately after that meeting, stated that the society had been" instituted to sllstain and extend among our fellow-countrymen in the British colonies the ordinances of Divine worship and the blessings of evangelical religion." This it proposed to do by selecting and sending out well-qualified ministers; and by supporting them, partially or wholly, for such periods as circumstances may require. Sixty years have gone since then. All who took part in those early meetings have passed away -but the work still goes on, and its need does not lessen. True, there are colonies which have not the strong claims for help which they presented sixty years ago, but other colonies are opening out, and so the work of the society grows from more to more. Its new " Forward Movement" is ,. Reprinted and condensed from the Christian llJnr1eavl)ur of May 7th, 1896. now to be inaugurated. As to its present-day work, the new secretary (Rev. D. Burford Hooke) says: "Our young people are going out every week to the colonies, and no society ought to receive more loyal support from those who are left behind than the Y. P. S. C. E., which seeks to meet the spiritual needs of young men and maidens far away from home and kindred. "
Recently, when in Manchester, he spoke to the adult classes at Roby School of that city-a school in which there is a strong missionary spirit.
Well there might be, for it was while sitting in one of the pews of Roby Chapel that Robert Moffat resolved to be a missionary, and thus few places more than it interested the Chief Khama, when he recently visited this country. From the 3551 Young People's Societies in Great Britain our younger brothers are going over the sea, and the society which helps them to be true to "Christ and the Church" has surely great claims upon them. Our colonies are making history, and they need the Christian leaven in them from the very foundation-so that the whole after-history may be permeated with the spirit of Christ. .
On the other hand, the young missionaries and ministers who are going forth are mainly Christian Endeavorers. They owe something to societies with which they have been connected in the homeland, and they will doubtless plant branches in the countries to which they are going. Last month two thus went out-one, the Rev. Leonard Joseph Thacker, to be minister of a group of churches in the Kat River Settlement, Cape Colony, and the other, Mr. Herbert D. Whitmore, to do evangelistic work among the fishermen in Fortune's Bay, Newfonndland.
He is the fifth minister who has· recently gone forth, in connection with the Colonial Missionary Society, to South Africa. The first was the Rev. F. Tucker, to Florida Road, Durban, Natal; the next, the Rev. D.
Smith Carlyle, to Graaff"Reinet; then the Rev. Alfred Olver, to W orces- ter, followed by his father, the Rev. Richard Olver, to North End, Port Elizabeth; and he will soon be followed by others to Bulawayo and Johannesburg.
The work of the Colonial Missionary Society has recently been greatly increased by the resolve of its directors to include the supervision in the colonies of native churches, founded by the London Missionary Society, which have not yet reached the robustness of character and sound moral habit needed for spiritual independence. It was in consequence of this that the directors sent their secretary to South Africa, and subsequently the Rev. Dr. Barrett to Jamaica, the latter being accompanied by the Rev. W. J. Woods. The result shows that in Africa there is a field for effort singularly rich in promise and with special reasons for solicitude, while from Jamaica, where more teachers are wanted, there has come the most gratifying testimony, showing that, tho the native churches in that beautiful island are, in some respects, infantile, yet they are growing in numbers and usefulness, tho greatly crippled through the extreme poverty of their members.
In connection with this new departure the society has initiated a Forward Movement in Johannesburg, under the leadership of the Rev.
Charles Phillips, a native of Nailsea, near Bristol. On the completion of his college course, he labored first in Samoa, and later at Graaff-Reinet, in South Africa; but the" vision of souls" has drawn him to Johannesburg, where it is believed his life work will be found. Mr. Phillips' labors will be chiefly in connection with the 40,000 colored people working in the compounds, for whom but little has yet been done.
INTERNA1'IONAL DEPARTMEN'lI
II.-INTERNATIONAL DEPARTMENT.
EDITED AND CONDUCTED BY REV. J. T. GRACEY, D.D.
International Missionary Union. where a blank is found in the second THIRTEENTH ANNUAL MEETING. place, it means such persons are still in The International Missionary Union the active service, expecting to soon convened June 10th-17th in the Tabernacle at Clifton Springs, N. Y. This return to the foreign field : beautiful structure was erected at a cost of some four thousand dollars by 1892- ,Miss Louise A. Babe (Afri- Dr. Henry Foster for the use of this ca); 1872-92, Mfs. B. H. Badley (In- organization. Dr. Foster was the dia); 1890- . Rev. W. S. Bannerman founder of the Clifton Springs Sani- (Africa); 1890- ,Mrs. W. S. Banner- tarium, and he has been its patron man (Africa); 1885-94, Rev. J. L. Bar- saint until now. tho some years since ton, D.D. (Turkey); 1885-94, Mrs. he made it over to trustees to perpetu- J. L. Barton (Turkey): 1879-81. Rev. ate the benevolent intent with which it W. H. Belden (Bulgaria); 1879-81, was begun, of affording medical aid to Mrs. W. H. Belden (Bulgaria) : 1888- , missionaries, ministers of the Gospel, Miss Florence E. Ben-Oliel (Syria): and teacbers. Dr. Foster has thus 1886-87, Mrs. G. A. Bond (Malaysia); handed over for these purposes a plant 1887- , H. J. Bostwick (China): worth six hundred thousand dollars, 1887- ,NIrs. H. J. Bostwick (China); notwithstanding its beneficence of an 1889- ,Miss SURie M. Burdick (China) : annual donation in the form of relief to 1856-86, Mrs. W. B. Capron (India); the classes above specified, of a sum 1890-92, Rev. W. A. Carrington (Braranging from twenty thousand to thirty zil); 1859- , Rev. J. Chamberlain, thousand dollars annually. M.D. (India): 1890- • Miss Sarah Chambers (Brazil): 1896- ,Miss Ella The International Missionary Union Chapman (Burma) ; 1888- ,Miss Ella is an entirely distinct organization, R. Church (Japan); 1887- , Rev. wholly independent of tbe Sanitarium, Cyrus A. Clark (Japan); 1887- ,Mrs. which meets annually for the purpose Harriet G. Clark (Japan); 1883-94, of discussing missionary problems, Rev. J, Thompson Cole (Japan): comparing experiences on different 1883- ,Mrs. Mary M. Conklin (Burma, fields. addresses by individual mission- India); 1881-85. Samuel Cross (Siam); aries giving accounts of their work, 1878-79, Rev. C. W. Cushing, D.D. and for the deepening of spiritual life (Italy); 1888- , Miss Mary A. Danin their own souls, as well as greater forth (Japan); 1883- , Miss A. Daughpersonal acquaintance by social inter- aday (Japan); 1869-~0, Rev. J. A. course. It convened two years at Davis, D.D. (China): 1869-70, Mrs. Niagara Falls, Canada, two years at J. A. Davis (China); 1876-90, Mrs. Thousand Island Park, and at Bridge- Andrew D'Ouseley (India, China); ton, N. J., aud once at Binghamton, 1880- , Rev. J. A. Eakin (Siam); N. Y. Since that it has convened on 1880- , Mrs. J. A. Eakin (Siam); the invitation of Dr. Foster at Clifton 1888- , Miss Elizabeth A. Eakin Springs, chiefly as the guest of the Sani- (Siam): 1886- , Miss Susan Easton tarium, this being the seventh time in (India); 1868- ,}>Iiss Charlotte E. Ely succession it has been thus entertained. (Turkey); 1868- ,Miss M. A. C. Ely (Turkey) ; 1890- , Edward Evans The missionaries present this year (China) ; 1887- ,Miss!'I. Estelle Files were as follows, the dates preceding (Burma); 1892- ,Edwin N. Fletcher the names indicating the year of enter- (China); 1853-55, Mrs. O. }>1. Ford. ing and of retiring from the field.; M.D. (Africa); 1872- , Rev. Daniel O. Fox (India); 1881- ,Mrs. Daniel O. Fox (India); 1882- ,Mrs. A. A. Fulton (China); 1878- ,Miss Frances A. Gardner (Japan); 1879- , Miss Sarah F. Gardner (India) ; 1880- ,Miss Elsie M. Garretson (China); 1861-68, Rev. J. T. Gracey, D.D. (India); 1861- 68, Mrs. J. T. Gracey (India); 1889- , James S. Grant, M.D. (China); 1873-85, Rev. Thomas L. Gulick (Spain); 1885–, Miss Emma ~I. Hall (Italy); 1837-77, Rev. Cyrus Hamlin, D.D. (Turkey) j 1864-73, Mrs. Cyrus Hamlin (Turkey); Grace Tucker (Japan); 1889- ,W. J. 1840-93, J. C. Hepburn. M.D., LL.D. Wanless, M.D. (India); 1889- ,Mrs. (China and Japan); 1840-93, Mrs. J. C. W. J. Wanless (India); 1859- ,Rev. Hepburn (China and Japan) ; 1883- , G. T. Washburn, D.D. (India); 1859- , Miss G. Y. Halliday (Persia); 1879·- , Mrs. G. T. Washburn (India); 1859: ' Miss Emma Inveen (China); 1884- , Rev. J. W, Waugh, D.D. (IndIa); Miss Carrie 1. Jewell (China); 1887- , 1880-91, Mrs. Wellington J. White Rev.Geo. Heber Jones (Korea); 1872-75, (China) ; 1881- ,Rev. M. C. Wilcox (China); 1838-86, Rev. G. W. Wood, :Miss Marr Kipp (Syria); 1888- ,Mrs. D.D. (Turkey); 1871-86. Mrs. G. W. M. B. Klfkpatrick (Burma); 1853- , Wood (Turkey); 1870-73, Miss Sarah Mrs. Lucy A. Knowlton (China); L. Wood (Turkey): 1859- • Rev. 1887- , Rev. W. H. Lacy (China); Simeon F. Woodin (China); 1859- , 1887- ,Mrs. Emma Nind Lacy (Chi- Mrs. Simeon F. Woodin (China) ; 1860na); 1887- , Rev. H. F. Laflamme 95, Rev. B. DuBois Wyckoff (India) ; (India); 1889- ,Mrs. H. F. Laflamme 1860-95, Mrs. B. DuBois Wyckoff (India); 1879- , Miss Margaret W. (India). Leitch (Ceylon); 1881- ,Rev. Spencer Lewis (China); 1881- ,Mrs. Spencer The societies respectively were repre- Lewis (China); 1880-90, Mrs. C. S. Long (Japan); 1886- ,W. L. Macrae sented numerically as follows: Ameri- Crrinidad); 1849- ,W. A. P. Martin, can Board, 42; Methodist Episcopal, D.D., LL.D. (China); 188t!- , Miss 27; Presbyterians, 25; Baptists, 10; Stella H. Mason (Assam); 1887- , Protestant Episcopal, 4; Reformed Miss Mary L. Matthews (Bulgaria); 1889- ,David McConaughy, Jr. (In- (DutcL), 3: Canada Baptist, 2; China dia); 1894- ,Rev. Arthur II. Mellen Inland Mission, 2; Independent, 1; (Cuba); 1885- ,Rev. C. P. W. Mer- United Presbyterian, 2; Woman's ritt, M.D. (China); 1885- ,Mrs. C. P. Union, 2; Canada Presbyterian, 1; W. Merritt (China); 1888- ,Miss Em- Established Church of Scotland, 1; ma Mitchell (China); 1887- , Rev. Reformed Episcopal, 1; Seventh-Day G. W. Morrison (India); 1889- ,Mrs. G. W. Morrison (India); 1869- ,Mrs. Baptist, 1; Southern Presbyterian, 1 ; Charles B. Newton (India); 1874-90, Young Men's Christian Association Rev. A. B. Norton (India); 1880-84, foreign field, 1. The total number en- Miss Helen S. Norton (Hawaii) ; 1880- , rolled in this assembly of Christians Miss Frances E. Palmer (Burma); 1859- , Rev. E. W. Parker, D.D. was 127. (India); 1859- ,Mrs. E. W. Parker The countries represented, as will be (India) ; 1877-83, Rt. Rev. C. C. Penick (Africa); 1881-83, Mrs. C. C. Penick seen from the list, were Africa, Bul- (Africa); 1879-82, Miss Fannie A. Per- garia, China, Cuba, Italy, Japan, Korea, ley (India); 1895- , Horace Tracy Pitkin (China) ; 1868- ,Rev. Theodore Persia, Siam, Malaysia, Syria, Turkey, S. Pond (Turkey and Colombia); Spain, West Indies, South America 1868- ,Mrs. Theo. S. Pond (Turkey and Colombia); 1885-87, Rev. William (Br!ziI, Colombia), India (Assam, Burde Ronden Pos (Africa); 1878–80, ma, Ceylon), Persia, and the Hawaiian Miss Mary Priest (Japan); 1886- , Miss Carrie E. Putnam (Burma); Islands. 1886- ,George M. Rowland (Japan) ; Two thirds of these had never before 1886- , Mrs. George M. Rowland (Japan); 1877- ,Miss Anna Schenck attended one of these annual gather- (Persia); 1873- ,Rev. J. E. Scott, PhD. ings. About that proportion of the (India); 1896- • A. L. Shapleigh, M.D. whole number in attendance each year (China); 1896- ,Mrs. A. L. Shapleigh (China); 1883- , Rev. Frederick A. are present for the first time. The Steven (China); 1886- ,Mrs. Freder- meeting is so unique that none but ick A. Steven (China); 1881-90, Rev. M. Luther Stimson (China); 1881-90, those who remain throughout the week Mrs. M. Luther Stimson (China); come into any apprehension of its 1889- ,Miss Cora A. Stone (Japan) ; worth and power. Salutations and 1878- , Miss Ellen M. Stone (Bulgaria): 1873- , Miss Eliza Talcott communications are annually received (Japan) ; 1868–73, Rev. C. O. Thayer, from members laboring in foreign mis- M.D. (Turkey); 1868–73, Mrs. C. C. Thayer (Turkey); 1869-72, Miss Mary sion fields all over the globe. On the platform on Tuesday evening, June A. Thompson (China); 1890- , Miss 16th, thirty-six missionaries appeared, who made brief addresses of two minutes each about the kind of work which the emperor, he upheld the Jesuits.
they would take up on their arrival on The Dominicans appealed to Rome, their several fields, as they all antici· and the Holy See, after some waver- pated ret~rning before another annual ing, decided in their favor, coining a meeting of the Union. We present a new term for God, or what was more sketch of a few of the addresses: elevating in the place of Shangti- Tienchu, a petty deity, one of eight mentioned in the ancient books, as di- RELATION OF THE CHINESE GOVERN· viding the sway of the universe, and MENT TO MISSIONS. condemning the worship of ancestors.
BY REV. w. A. P. MARTIN, D.D., PEKING, The emperor stood aghast at the pre- sumption of a foreign potentate to reo CffiNA. vise his decisions, and he learned for My recollection goes back to a time the first time that in the event of his when the walls of exclusiveness stretched professing the faith there was a human all around China; and I have lived to authority to which even he must bow.
see the gates wide open. They did not, Tolerant of religious opinions· in gen- however, roll back to the sound of celes· eral, the Chinese Government is not so tial music, but to the roar of Western liberal when those opinions contravene cannon. I shall speak of five periods. its most sacred traditions and imperil 1. A period of persecution by im- the order of society. The Emperor perial power. 2. A period of restricted Kanghi withdrew his favor, and his liberty granted by imperial edict. 3. A successor, in 1723, commenced an open period of religions freedom under the and relentless persecution, expelling protection of treaties. 4. A period of missionaries and slaughtering or ban- popular persecution excited in part by ishing their converts.
the success of the missionary work. 2. 'l'he first war with England, known 5. A peep into the future, when the as the Opium War, changed the rela- Church of China shall enjoy the fullest tions of China to the Western world.
privileges in the sunshine of Imperial The British treaty of 1842 opened five favor. seaports to foreign trade, and Protes- The period of persecution, which tant missionaries were prompt to oc- lasted for over a century, was brought cupy them, tho there was not as yet a on by dissensions in the Roman camp. word of toleration from the throne.
The Jesuits, who were first in the field, In 1844, however, after the singing of were many of them learned, wise, and his treaty, the French Minister pre- devoted. Winning the favor of the ferred a request for the annulment of government by their science, they persecuting edicts, and the recall of profited by their prestige to plant exiled missionaries and converts. The churches in the capital and all over request was freely accorded, and at China. So favorable was the disposi- the instance of a British minister the tion of the Emperor Kanghi, that he same privileges were extended to Protes- and his people appeared to he on the tant missions.
verge of becoming Christians. 3. The wider franchise under treaty Then came the Dominicans, tradi- stipUlations was the fruit of the second tional inquisitors and professional her- war with England known as the esy hunters. They accused the Jesuits " Arrow War," in which France took of complicity with idolatry, because part. At Tientsin, in 1858, the minis- they accepted for God, Shangti, "The ters of the four powers, Great ·Britain, Supreme Ruler," worshiped by the France, Russia, and the United States, Emperor of China, as do a majority of each in his own treaty, inserted full Protestant missionaries of the present stipUlations by which the whole empire day. The question being referred to was thrown open to missionary efforts, a thing unprecedented in the history of lics, who claim that foreign priests acthe world. companied the Japanese veterans of Hideyoshi in their invasion of Korea 4. The period of popular persecution. in 1592. The fruit of this work was by means of mob violence, began with chiefly Korean martyrs, who suffered the massacre of French missionaries at in the persecution following the Shima- Tientsin in 1870. Prostrated by the bara Rebellion. Roman Catholic work iron hand of Germany, France was in dates really from the last decades of no condition to exact suitable repara- the eighteenth century. and was intion, and the people were emboldened augurated by nations interested in to repeat the outrage at sundry times Christianity through contact with and in divers manners. These attacks the priests in Peking. For a generawere s.lways excited by the circulation tion the work was confined to native of tracts and placards containing horri- efforts entirely, and is reported to have ble charges against missionaries and all provoked some persecution. The first foreigners. When the storm burst the foreign priests arrived in 1835, and mandarins generally contrived to be from that time their work has been absent. Some of them, indeed, includ- carried on after their fashion, and has ing a few of the highest rank, have had a checkered and disastrous career. had a direct agency in fomenting these There is danger that we may be unjust troubles. In some instances mission- in any attempt to summarize the work aries suffered from riots aimed at for- of the Roman Catholics. They had eigners as such, and foreign traders made no visible imprint on the charachave suffered from riots aimed at mis- ter or thought of the people except to sionaries. The leading governments call their attention to Christianity_ of Christendom wisely agreed to hold Under their efforts Christianity became the Chinese Government to its obliga- known as a pestilential heresy. the sum tions. Decrees of the most favorable of all immorality and villany, and from character have been obtained from the this charge it was reserved for Protesemperor. Officials concerned in the tantism to vindicate our blessed religpersecutions (in one instance a viceroy) ion. At the present time they have have been degraded. If the great a well-organized hierarchy-bishops. powers maintain this attitude, such priests, schools, orphanages, and 25,000 riots will be of rare occurrence; but converts. They confess that it was they can hardly bj3 expected to cease not until 1885 that the cassock of the entirely, until officials and literati be- foreign priest dared appear in the come convinced. as they will, that streets of Soul, and at that time Pres- Christianity is the one thing needful byterian and Methodist Episcopal misfor China. without which her renova- sionaries had been working for a year tion is hopeless. in that interest. Mission work was carried on in the north province of 5. The growth of the churches to a Korea by the Rev. John Ross, of the hundred thousand members for the Scotch Presbyterian Mission in Man- Protestants, and a million for the Ro- churia, for several years before the first man Catholics who entered the field missionaries arrived in Korea, and into centuries earlier with a vast apparatus his labors we have entered. of schools, colleges, and printingpresses. is auspicious of the final tri- " For the purpose of'temporary clasumph. sification, our history since December, 1884, may be divided into three epochs: KOREA. The period of suspicion; the period of indifference; and the period of dawn- Rev. George Heber Jones, of Korea, ing interest. said: "The Koreans are neither Chines!) "The first attempt to Christianize Korea was made by the Roman Cathonor Japanese, and they are very anx- PERSIA. ious to have the world realize the distillction; but the basal structure of the Miss G. Y. Halliday, of Persia, said: grammar of their language resembles "We sometimes hear it said, • All that of the Japanese, seeming to indicate the world except Tibet is open to the that in some remote period they came proclamation of the Gospel.' Is it? of the Bame stock. There is a large Of what avail is it that the missionary element of Chinese in their vocabulary. is physically present in a country, when 'rhey regard the Chinese as petrified the main body of its population is shut barbarians, who, having periodically off from him by an interdict, and forthrashed Korea into a reverent attitude, bidden to hear his message or to heed are not to be trifled with. They regard it on pain of death? Such is the case the Japanese as mushrooms of an in- with the greater part of the 200,000,000 ferior quality, so short in stature that of Moslems in the world to-day. Do they are even beneath contempt. I we dare let this st.ate of things consuppose this, because Japan, instead of tinue? They outnumber the populafollowing China's example, and dev- tion of the Unitcd States three to one. astating Korea every time there was I! their forces were concentrated, what a shadow of a pretext, only did so a fearful menace to Christianity and twice. civilization, while nothing but oppor· tunity is wanting to repeat in every " The religion is of a triple character. land the • horrors of Armenia.' It is Ancestor worship with the Confucian the worst of the false religions, because code is the State religion; Buddhism intolerant and aggressive. Is there any has a large number of monastic com- other religion that claims the right to munities patronized by the people when slay and plunder and possess the earth they have occasion; Spiritism, a form by force, exterminating heathen and of Shammanism, is the religion of every reducing Jews and Christians to slavery home. and tribute? These people are inclosed in a triple wall of iron. The first de- H Medicine opened Korea to mission- fense is broken when the Christian misary wOlk, and has occupied a most im· sionary gains access to their country ; portant place ever since. Schools close- the second, when they have liberty to ly followed, and held the respect and hear him; the third, when prejudice endorsement of the people. There are and unbelief are vanquished and he at the present time the following mis- yields to the Spirit of God. Within sions at work in Korea: Presbyterian, these walls our brothers and sisters are North, 20; Presbyterian, South, 11; imprisoned, many of them restless, un· Presbyterian, Australia, 4; Baptist, satisfied, groping for the light, saying, A. J. Gordon's church, 5 ; lIfethodist, • Who will show us any good? ' They 24; Anglican, 12; Independent, 4; are not satisfied with what they have, Workers, 80. but they think there is nothing better. We must' remember those in bonds as H Work is carried on at forty differ- bound with them.' An A.rmenian said ent places, and the number of converts last year, • Those massacres are our at the end of the first ten years was own fault. We a Christian nation have 1100. The attitude of the government lived in the midst of ~Ioslems all these has changed. The storm of war and years. It was our duty at any cost to desolation has driven us ten years nearer give them the Gospel. We have not our ultimate g~al. The chief results done it, and God has thus punished us.' have been the relief of Christianity Perhaps Christendom may yet say the from misconceptions of the people, the same. The Armenians have feared to mastery of a hitherto unknown tongue, tell them of Christ, because it was find the successful inauguration of a Christian foundation. Woman's work has been specially successful." against the law; but they have not political society called Vegetarians, feared to sell thcm wine, cqually for- whose animating principle is hatred of foreigners. Their enmity is, therefore, bidden, for the sake of profit. A Roord, in Hamadan, had been invited naturally directed against the present Manchu dynasty, which has ruled to our service. He went to thc Arme· China as a conquered country since nian quarter, and saw a man whom he A.D. 1644. Smarting under the over- whelming defeats inflicted by Japan, followed, thinking he was on his way these so-called Vegetarians thought to church. In a few minutes the man that by murdering" the missionaries said, 'I have some good brandy to sell. they would not only be rid of them, wm you come to my house and drink? ' but would thereby involve China in wal' with Great Britain. During that • May your neck be broken,' answered war the anti-foreign party hoped to the Koord. 'I follow you, expecting throw off the yoke of the Manchus and to be led to the house of God, and you seat a native ruler on the dragon t1lrone. This theory of the massacre is held by ask me to come and get drunk.' If Turkey had closed hcr markets to the well-informed persons, and appears to be borne out by a rlocument fent me trade of Europe, would it have been just before I left China by a seceded many days before the cannon would Vegetarian. Now let us glance briefly at some of have opened them? What can we do? the consequences of the massacre. The power of prayer must bc invoked; For months after that sad event every- the same that opened Japan and China thing looked dark as regards the lutme must open the Moslem world… of mission work in all that part of the province, In many villages the native THE KUCIIENG MASSACRE AND ITS CON- Christians were repeatedly nlarmed by bands of ruffians, who threatened their SEQUENCES. chapels and their lives. In a number Rev. M. C. Wilcox, Ph.D., lIetho- of villages companies of men-Chris- tians and heathen combined-took turns dist Episcopal :Mission, Foochow, said: night after night standing guard with Wherevel' one chanced to be early in the light of torches. 'rhus threatened August, 1895, if within reach of the attacks were averted, and no native telegraph, he was shocked by the news Chl"istian l()st his life or was seriously of i:he sudden and unexpected massacre injnred. But these dangers drove the of English missionaries on the first day Christinlls nearer to the Source of all of that month lit Hua-sang Mountain, help and strength. I do not know of near Kucheng City, which is about one a single Christian who during those hundl'ed miles nearly north of Foochow, months of turmoil and anxiety denied the capital of Fookien Province, South- his Lord and Master. As a rule, the eastern China. Chinese are slow to accept anything Greatly as you were saddened by the new; but when, after careful consider- news, your sorrow could not be as keen ation, they become Christians, they are nor your sense of loss as deep as ours. not easily moved. They furnish good It was my great privilege to know, as stuff for martyrs.
a beloved and devoted fellow·worker, About six weeks after the massacre, each of those whose death has been so the United States Consul, lIon. J. Court· lamented. ney Hixson, who has rendered such , By whom was this awful crime com- vnluable service to the mi~8ionaries, mitted? Not by the people. They wrote me expressing his sympathy at have become more and more friendly seeing the results of years of labor de· toward us, as is shown by the fact that stroyed. I could not even then believe during the last eight years, While I that our work had been in vain. My have served as presiding elder of the faith was I'trongcr than his, and I be- Kucheng District, the lIethodist mem- lieve that God would ().I/errule everybersand probationers have nearly quad· thing for His glory. But I could not rupled, being now nearly 1400. Dur- believe the darkness would so quickly ing that period. the ELgIish workers be overpast, and that such a wonderful have had similar prosperity. The rank interest would so soon be manifest, and file of the Chinese had no sympathy not only in the Kucheng District, but with the murderers; but, on the other in all that part of the province. lland, many of them wept aloud in the Yet reports from various sources instreets when they heard the terrible dicate that prosperity, such as has never been seen, is crowning the labors news. The murderers belonged to a semi- of those representing the three mis· sionary societies operating in the north. tion of such rigMs by our own governern half of Fookien Province. Un- ment as is given by it to other classes usual eagerness to hear and receive the of its citizens residing or traveling in Gospel is everywhere shown. The the same country; as has been well churches and schools are attended as illustrated by the action of the United never before. A letter, received to-day States Government and other governfrom the head teacher of the Kucheng Boys' High School, speaks of the great ments in reference to recent deplorable interest manifest throughout that re- events in China and Turkey. gion. Tieng Ang Dong (the large .. Church of the Heavenly Rest") at While grateful for the degree of suc- Foochow cannot accommodate the cess which has attended endeavors of crowds that come. One hundred persons were received into this church the Government of the United States alone during four months from Decem- to protect the rights of American citiber to March last. zens being missionaries in the Turkish Empire, we are constrained to deplore In contrast to this remember that the much failure to secure them fully, and American Board and the Methodist Episcopal missionaries labored in the to express apprehension of danger of same field from 1847 to 1857, with only greater violation without redress. The one baptism for each society at the end of that period. whereas, in spite of question seems to be at issue whether the massacre, there were last year In Americaus engaged in a lawful calling, the Methodist Mission alone nearly two thousand accessions, or almost six a and guilty of no wroug-doing, shall be day. So the glorious work is going permitted longer to enjoy rights of forward more triumphantly even than before the massacre. The number of which they have had the exercise for Christians in China has doubled during more than sixty years, aud in the use the last five years, and the rate of progress is constantly accelerating. of which they have been benefactors to the peoples of that land. It is to be We mourn for our dear martyred decided whether the duty of the United friends; but we believe as they look States Government is exhausted by down upon the scenes of their earthly securing the lives of such citizens only toll and suffering, they realize that their death, like their labor, was "not in by allowing them banishment from vain in the Lord." As in the early Turkey, and by making demands of years of the Church, so to-day .. the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the indemnity for property destroyed, Church." which indemnity is readily enough The following action was had on our promised, but never paid. Missionaries will under such a blow to American Government and missionaries in Tur- prestige, if it be not averted, not suffer key: alone. American commercial and ma- terial interests will also suffer, and a PRONUNCIAMENTO ON GOVERNMENT damage to American inH.uence in the world, greatly to be deprecated, will PROTECTION OF MISSIONARIES. be sustained. Will American public 1. As missionaries of the Gospel in sentiment allow this to come to pass? foreign lands we recognize as a fundamental principle of action the duty of The International Missionary Union ourselves and all whom we teach to expresses entire sympathy and accord obey constituted Civil authority in those in judgment of all its members with lands, as that duty is inculcated in the our missionary brethren and sisters in writings of the New Testall).ent, and Turkey in their steadfast holding to that we imitate the example of the their position under great perils for apostles of Christ in our manner of themselves, and in the presence of the conduct in all that we do; and awful atrocities perpetrated upon the peoples among whom they labor. They 2. Regarding missionary work as law- thank God for the grace given unto ful where we are carrying it on, we may claim as the Apostle Paul did in them and the ordering of His provirespect to his Roman citizenship to sus· dence in so far preserving all of them tain no loss of rights by reason of our from a violent death ; and we express being missionaries, and that where there our high admiration of the heroic deare rights guaranteed to us by treaties with a forElign government, we are en- votion, Christian fidelity, aud self-sactitled to the same care for the protec- rificing benevolence of which they are affording so eminent an example.
While with the whole civilized world we have been shocked by the unspeak- able outrages inflicted upon Armenians in Turkey, and sympathizing deeply with the stricken people, we recognize a merciful Divine purpose in their per- mit,ted martyr sufferings for the name of Christ, endured so largely with un- flinching choice of death rather than of life by denying Him. which purpose foot, torn into fragments, or tbrown we trust will exalt. them as a people in service to the spiritual kingdom that is into the flames. The contents of our surely to triumph in all the earth. We station book-room were, on the memo- invoke for them richer blessings than rable November 11th, emptied into the the realization of their national aspira- street, and a week later we gathered tions would bring them. while earnestly up precious bits of Sc~ipture to san supplicating for them speedy deliverance from the woes of their present ex- them from the mud and dirt.
perience; and exhort to prompt and This has been a nation of martyrs, generous giving in our own country but probably never having had in the for such relief as can reach them through the channels that are open for past those who so intelligently and sending it. gladly laid down their lives for Christ's Also that in the appalling massacres sake as now in this nineteenth century.
that have occurred, in the systematic Those in past centuries have been woroppressive treatment of Armenian and certain other Christian subjects of the shiped as saints in the Gregorian Sublime Porte, the facts of which are Church. Those of the present century undeniable, and the responsibility for will never receive such homage, I trust, which is beyond reasonable question, but by their death will surely hasten on the longed-for day when "every we see more thau self·excited outbreaks of popular Moslem fanaticism, and are amazed and distressed in view of. the knee shall bow and every tongue shall proofs of a governmental policy having confess that Christ is God, to the glory for its aim the virtual extermination of the ancient and worthy Armenian na- of His name. " The first of the honored roll whom I tionality in Asia Minor and Eastern Turkey, that the so·called Christian shall mention bears the noble name of powers which are pledged to protect Paul.. His face was like the pictures Armenians. and are, if so disposed and united, able easily to counteract that of Luther or Calvin; strong, stern lines about the mouth, and deep, far-seeing policy, should exhibit the apathy and maintain an inaction which allows its eyes. His voice was rich, his manner yet unhindered execution. We fear commanding. There Was a reason for that under just judgments of the Supreme Ruler of nations a terrible retri- 'all this; in his early youth he was a hermit, dwelling on a lonely mountain, bution may be visited upon Europe in which America also may share for the in a cave, in the wild regions south of sin of unjustifiable neglect of so great Mardin. The cave was damp and only a duty of humanity and justice. lighted by a hole in the roof. He had the Bible in the ancient tongue, and "The Noble Army of Martyrs Praise spent his time in reading, prayer, and meditation. His food was roots and Thee." herbs, his bed straw, and he.wore sack- BY MISS CARRIE E. BUSH, HARPOOT, cloth and resorted to self-discipline to TURKEY. chasten his soul before God. Simple It has long been in my mind to write villagers came to worship him, or to you the story of some of our martyred touch and be healed of disease. Rob- pastors and preacbers. I did not do bers on the mountains laid no hand so during the early part of the winter, upon him, but begged for his interces· because I could not endure the sorrow sions.
of the recital. Shall we ever reach a Like the three hermits of whom Lew time when we shall cease to suffer for WaHace tells, he was waiting for a this blow to Christ's work 7 Protes- revelation, and God gave it. A mis- tant chapels and Gregorian churches sionary found him out, gave him the are torn down to the ground. Those Bible in modern Arabic, invited him that are still standing are used as stables to Mardin to study, and he was trained or barracks, or are wilfully and foully there and at Harpoot for the ministry.
desecrated. At the time of the assaults Tho born at Harpoot, being a Syrian all over the land, Bibles, Testaments, and having been long absent, the Ar- and hymn-books were troddeu under menian was a language which he Was
IN'i'EIWA'tIONAL DEPARTMEN1'
obliged to learn, and he did it beauti- two sisters were wounrIed, and one of fully_ He mal'ried a graduate of our the last died of her wounds.
college, and together they did a rare The next in the list shall be PaRtot'
work for the humble village of Hula- SarkiR, of Choonkoosh. He was a kegh. The discipline he had gi ven him- good man through and through, untir- self he was able to bestow upon his ing in his work, faithful in study and people. Everything in church and in the oversight of schools and all school work was doue" decently and church work. Every department was in order." He required even personal under his control. He gathered a large and home cleauliness of his people, congregation. His SR.bbath-school was silence in God's house, and faithful one of the most successful in our field.
study for the Sabbath-school. His He was conscientious in home expenses, wife was a lovely, ladylike woman, and yet most hospitable and generous.
and earnest in study and work with The .. Koords" gathered before the him. city and waited for hours until sunset, Paul and Mary fled with all their and then made their first attack. Pas- people toward Mezereh the day before tor Sarkis soon saw that his house was the attack on their village. JHost of no place for shelter, but wherever lIe them camped down in the fields near went all refuge was refused. Fire was Mezereh, but this young preacher and set to his house, and he was somewhat his delicate wife reached the city, and burned, but ten days later, when the what they supposed was the shelter of " Koords" came for another onslaught Mary's father's house. and robbery, they first demanded of On Sunday, November 10th, there him money, then when he said he had was an attack made on that quarter of none they insisted upon his accepting the city, and Paul was wounded. Islam, or they would kill him. "You They all then fled from that quarter, may kill me if you wish," was his where they were surrounded by Turks quiet answer, and he was felled to the to his father's house. The next day earth with a blow from the guns of the came the general attack. IHary re- ruffians.
ceived a fatal blow. As she Ielt the Pastor Krekore, of the Ichmc Church, blood gushing from her lipq, she looked small like ZR.ccheus, had as childlike at her father and said, " What is this ?" amI loving a heart as St. John. His " Go to Jesus, my child," was thc calm wife was so saintly, that the villagers reply. and her spirit passed on and hlld dropped her real name, :a-Iartha, was set free from these horrors. " Give and called her" Artar," which means the Moslem formula, or die I" was the righteous. The hearts' of both were fierce command to Paul. I cau see his like that of the "Israelite indeed" in eyes, like the martyrs of old, looking whom was" no guile." A couple of into heaven; I can hear his stern voice years ago our good Artar, after years ring out, "Never I" There was a of feebleness, lay down one night to rush, a blow, and he found his Savior, sleep and awoke in heaven, thus being his wife, and the holy ones he had spared the agonies of these later-I had sought to imitate on the other side. almost said" latter" days.
.. Lovely and pleasant in their lives, in Pastor Krekore was preserved alive death they were not divided." Yet it after the first onslaught 0n the village, often seems as if they were in the room but several days later he and some with me as I write or talk about them, twenty-seven others were taken to the so near is the other world in these days. Gregorian church, from which, one By We had had so many beautiful talks one, they were ordered out to decide together about living a heavenly life between Islam and death. He received now I)n this earth. four wounds, and after each. with a.
Paul's aged father and hrother were faith undaunted and a power to be killed, and Mary's father, mother, and looked for in one of sterner mold, he proclaimed his creed, " I believe in the many Gregorian priests who even bore name of the Father, Son, and Holy torture and faltered not in their testi· Ghost," and he and twenty-seven others mony for the faith. Perhaps they were were with those "who have washed ignorant in their lives, and tbeir faith their robes and made them white in the but dim, yet in death a miraculous blood of the Lamb." He was the glory seemed imparted to it for which friend of Turk and Christian alike. we ca.nnot but bless God. Laymen, He never had an enemy. It was Christ too, whose lives had not borne strong in him whom they sought to destroy. testimony for Christ, in that last, sol· Pastor Ghazaros, of Chernonk, had emn hour of testing were unflinching.
borne much persecution for Christ's May we not believe that the Spirit did sake, at the time of his conversion in for them in a moment what we ordi- his youth. He was wild and worldly, narily believe must require years of but the Savior met him in llis way, and chastening and experience?
turned him into the paths of righteous- We would draw a veil over the life ness. His religious nature was of the of that aged bishop and those priestR Puritan type, and I shall never forget and preachers and laymen who, loving how, in his sermons, he was accustomed their life, lost it by denying the faith.
to warn his people against their sins, As some one forcibly expressed it, it saying. "Unless you leave them off, was often because they knew that wife some day they will persecute you. and children would not be massacred Yes, they will per8ecute you." And he also. It is easy to say What they said it as if he well knew what it was should have done; let us be charitable, to suffer from sin and the stings of and remember that we have not yet conscience. He and his two sons were met such an awful ordeal and such an slain together in their home, and his alternative, to be sure that we should wife was four times stripped of all her be "faithful unto death" and "re- garments save two. He also was given ceive the crown of life." Enough that the privilege of life on one condition, our duty should be moved to its depth but "counted not his life dear unto by their present wretchedness. 0 bliged himself" at such a cost. to lea.rn the tenets and the forms of the Colporteur Mardiros, of Ainetsik, new faith, to keep the fast of Ramazan, was a tall, large man with a fine, rich and to use the language and don the voice and a warm, earnest heart. For dress of the other race, they are still some time he has not been in the work, not respected by either Christian or but he was ever preaching the Gospel. Moslem. and with all their compromis- They came upon him with the demand, ing " through fear of death they are all .. Islam or death!" He raised his eyes their lifetime subject to bondage."
to heaven in prayer, and as he stretched They call for our earnest, pleading forth his hands in petition they cut prayers as well as pity. May God them off, then ended his life as he have mercy upon them I breathed it out, like Stephen, in loving We give joy to those who are" gone communion with God. into the world of light." It was one The story of Mardiros, of Keserik, is brief struggle, and now an eternity of one of devoted and self·sacrificing effort peace, while we who are left know not on the part of his wife to save him by what a day may hring forth; but they, hiding him here and there. "He loved "the souls under the altar," and we not his life unto death." His choice yet lingering here and longing" to de- also was heaven rather than an hour of part and be with Christ, which is far life on this earth in denial of his faith. better," unite in ascribing "blessing He was a good man and worker, strong and honor and glory and praise unto for temperance and every right cause. Him that sitteth upon the throne and Time would fail me to tell of the unto the Lamb."
FmLD OF MONTHLY SURVEY
IlI.-FIELD OF MONTHLY SURVEY.
BY DELAVAN L. PIERSON.
Papal Europe,* The Papacy.t THE. PAPACy.t seat of the Emperor. The Saracens Clement III. called the sun the sym- soon wiped out Alexandria and Anbol of pontifical authority, and the tioch. The Turks did the same for moon, shining with borrowed splendor, Constantinople, so that in process of he likened to the secular power. Ac- time the Bishop of Rome found himself cording to this theory, there is, strictly, without a rival. but one ruler upon earth-the Pope; in him all authority is centred; from In 378 came the law of Gratian and him all jurisdiction flows; at his hands Valentinian II., empowering the metrokings receive their crowns and bishops politans to judge the inferior clergy, their miters; to him all are accounta- and the Bishop of Rome to judge the ble, while he is accountable to no one, metropolitans. The Bishop of Rome save God-and sometimes apparently and his subordinates at once acted upon not even to Him. it, but never once claimed a spiritual authority for their newly found juris- It is indisputable that this system, diction. In 445 Valentinian III. and which at one time overshadowed the Theodosius II. called the Roman Ponworld, had a merely human origin. tiff the" Director ot all Christendom," The New Testament is conclusive on and in 606 Emperor Phocas constit.uted the point that Paul, not Peter, laid the Boniface III. Universal Bishop. There foundations of the Roman Congrega- i:5 not in any of these instances a shred tion. During the first Christian cen- of claim to DIvine authority. It was tury the Bishop of Rome had spiritual only when the Western Empire fell oversight only over his own congrega- that the Bishop of Rome began to tion. In the second century a custom search for titles in support of his newly sprang up of regulating the ranks of acquired power, and for the first time bishop by the importance of the cities the Pope claimed universal dominion in which they resided. Rome was mis- because of his succession to the" blesstress of the world. Pagan Rome had ed Peter." Pope Gelasius (492 to 496) exercised sway over all the nations, and informs the world that it became kings her centralized and universal despotism to learn their duty from bishops, but would seem to have suggested to ·the especially from the" Vicar of Blessed aspiring bishops of the capital the first Peter." The same Pope proclaims at . ideas of a spiritual empire alike cen- a Roman Council, A.D. 495, that "to tralized and universal. the See of Rome belonged the primacy in virtue of Christ's own delegation, Under Constantine the empire was and that from the authority of the keys divided into prefectures, provinces, there was excepted none living, but and dioceses, and thesa were presided only the dead." In due time even the over by patriarchs, metropolitans, and dead were brought under the power of bishops. Rome, Antioch, and Alex- the keys, but Rome was in process of andria were the patriarchal sees; then what Newman called" development." Constantinople was added, and placed second in dignity, because it was the But one thing more was wanted- namely, that the" Presbyter of Rome'.' * See also pp. 294 (April); 379 (May) ; 567,576, should step into the vacant throne of the Cmsars, and the "Prince of this 580 (present issue); NcAll's Mission Record and World" soon made even that step easy A Voice from Italy; .. Makers of Modern for his subordinate. Pepin bestowed Rome," Mrs. Oliphant. the sovereignty of Lombardy upon the Pope in 700. Charlemagne enlarged t See also pp. 1 (January) ; 302 (April) ; 321 (May); 584, 588, 595 (present issue); The Oonverted Oatholic (monthly); .. Life of Cardinal Manning, n E. S. Purcell.
~ Extracts frOIll lID. address by Rev. Thomas COllllel.l.llD.. the gifts of his father, and in return sacerdotalism, and the Pope appro- Pope Leo III. placed upon Charle· priately assumed the title of the pa- magne's head the crown of the Western gan high·priest Pontifex Maximus, Empire. Formerly the election of Pope and now calls himself Supreme Pon- was confirmed by the Emperor, now tiff.
the election of Emperor was confirmed In the fourth century images began by the Pope. to be introduced into the churches, and What were and are the secrets by so-called hones of the martyrs were which such a system has been able to hawked about as relics. Pagan festi- captivate and enslave a seventh part of vals were changed, with a thin dis- the human race? The reason is simply guise, into Christian feasts. The Lord's that Romanism offers everything that Supper begau to be dispensed at funer- our carnal nature craves. als, to develop at a future period into Christianity, tho pure in itself, was masses for the dead. Lamps and can- committed to the keeping of imperfect dles burned in the churches at noon- beings. The Jewish, the Roman, and day. Chasubles, copes, mitres, crosiers, the Grecian systems had all to be en- flowers, and incense all were combined countered and conquered by the Gospcl in the worship of God, who seeks to be of Christ. The converted, or semi-con- worshiped in spirit and in truth.
verted, Jew took with him the symbol- "The religion of Constantine," says ism of the synagogue; the Greek at- Gibbon, "achieved in less than a cen- tempted to engraft the philosophy of tury the final conquest of the Roman the academy upon the Christian stem; Empire; but the victors themselves and the Roman, taught to regard poly- were insensibly subdued by the arts of theism as the breath of his nostrils, car- their vanqnished rivals."
ried his ideas and prejudices into the For a long time bishop contended Christian fold. The presbytery upon with bishop about their possessions and the seven hills began to look more to jurisdiction; they imitated the secular the visib,Ie than the invisible church. princes iu their manner of living.
Rome would be all things to all men; Then the chief bishop got his throne but alas! in a very different sense to established by secular authority, and that intended by Paul. Christianity placed his iron heel upon people and soon became the fashion. The funda- bishops alike. Ignorance spread her mental principle of Grecian philosophy dark pall over the world. Corruption -viz., that the flesh is the seat of all infected all classes. The most aban- evil, and that it becomes a sacred duty doned and wicked scourges of human- to weaken and mortify the body-soon' ity were taught that their crimes might found a home in the Roman system, be expiated by donations to the Church and flourishes there to-day. The Jew at the moment of death. To build a took with him his ceremonial observ- cathedral, endow a monastery, or make ances, and fused them with a sensuous a grant of land to the Church was more ritual borrowed from paganism. The meritorious than a Christian life. Sal- Latin polytheist resigned the names of vation no longer was of grace, but by Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn, but found works. To abandon society with its equivalents in the Virgin :Mary and the obligations and duties, and bury one's saints. The statue of Jupiter was self in a desert, surrounded by filth and changed into that of St. Peter, the two indolence, was a proof of the highest keys being SUbstituted for the thunder- virtue. To shirk honest labor and don bolt. Its toe is reverently kissed by the wallet of the beggar gave one the pious pilgrims every hour. The Church right to work miracles here and be can- that had followed Christ faithfully in onized hereafter. The modest maiden the Catacombs emerged therefrom to was forced to tell the secrets of her possess pagan basilica.s. The very past to a man generally a hundred-fold vestments were borrowed from pagan more sinful than herself. But Satan was not yet satisfied. His and every secret of that household is hatred for the seed of the woman the property of the priest. Three popes prompted him t.o go a step farther. have admitted that the confessional has Accordingly even Christ was dethroned been abused, and have enacted penal and a creature put in His plaee. The legislation with the object of guarding Pope arrogated to himself the title, against the scandals arising therefrom.
"Vicar of Christ." The press, and not infrequently the It is a solemn thought that we at the Protestant press, has been inveigled close of the nineteenth century are con- into the service of Rome.
fronted with this same system, still What is the remedy for all this? claiming all its old prerogatives, still The remedy is in God's Word. There sighing for universal domination. In is no pbce in the New Testament for a the Syllabus, approved of by the pres· sacrificing priest. Peter himself says ent Pope. Pius IX. teaches that the that Christ possesses in all His faithful popes of former days, in deposing kings, children "a holy priesthood, to offer and claiming universal supremacy, up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to never exceeded by a hair's breadth their God by Jesus Uhrist" (1 Peter 2 : 5). just rights and prerogatives. The Epistle to the Hebrews tells us that we have also one great High·Priest, Since the decree of Papal Infallibility Jesus Christ the Righteous. That is the entire Roman machinery is moved God's eternal truth. It cuts theground by a single hand. He sits in his very from Romanist and Ritualist. It takes agreeable prison at the Vatican, with the sinner straight to God with Jesus, his Sin-Bearer, his Advocate, and his High·Priest, alone standing between.
the Superior General of the Jesuits whisperiug into his ear, and moves his Those who have traveled in Spain subordinates as if they were pawns know how rigorously the laws against upon the chess-board. This is done Protestants are enforced. Religious secretly, and its effect upon the world liberty is almost unknown in that is not lessened thereby. He is carefully providing for the future also. The couutry. school, the confessional, and the press Started in 1868 under the auspices of are his three great levers by which he hopes yet to sway the world. Get pos· the Free Church of Scotland, the Le· session of a child in its tender years; ganitos Chapel in Madrid has for the isolate it from all contact except your last quarter of a century been familiar own, teach it that darkness is light, to almost every American visiting the falsehood truth, and hypocrisy relig- Spanish capital, owing to the fact of ion; place it in a groove where it can· the lower portion of the building being not possibly measure such notions with devoted to the English service held the views of the world around it, and probably your protege will cling to such there every Sunday. The work was teaching to the death. The Roman organized by the Rev. John Jameson Church all the world over IS fighting aud Don Cipriano Tornos, an ex·priest for possession of the children. of such distinguished eloquence that he had drawn immense crowds while The confessional is the most potent acting as chaplain to Queen Margherita, weapon in Rome's armory. How can the wife of Amadeo of Savoy. After any man afford to quarrel with him to many years of faithful work-part of whose gaze he has laid bare the secrets the time as agent of the Bible Society be would hide from the child of his -Mr. Jameson returned to Scotland, affections, the wife of his bosom? To- and Senor Tornos remained in 80le gether with changing men and women charge of the work not only in Madrid, into slaves, it enables the priest to carry but also in outlying centers, such as in his pocket.book all the secrets of his lIocejon. There, as in the capital, the parish.. Let but a single servant in a congregation is composed almost exclu· household frequent the confession!'>l, sivelyof persons in the very humblest walks of life, and as the Church of Scotland makes it a rule to gradual- ly diminish its support of con)l:rega- tions as they advance in age, Senor Tornos is now constrained to appeal for financial aid to friends in this coun- try. Evangelical work tn Spain since the return of the Bourbons has never enjoyed more than the barest tolerit' tion, anel the recent consecration by the call, which nf'vcr comes, to go and Archbishop Plunket of Senor Cabrera wllrk for the brt'ud, which they do not as bishop seems to have aroused the wish to beg for t.hE!ir starving, weeping bitterest opposition to all Protestant children, whose cries ring incessantly work. While t,he Obra de Leganitos in their ears! The government, not was the first started, and has always having wherewith to provide work for had the largest congregations, yet such a number of people, has consid- Qther missions have since been added, ered it prudent to send troops to main- among them one at Chamberi, and this tain public order, knowing well that had recently to be moved from a most hunger is a terrible counsellor. But central location to one far inferior, ow- never has it been known that firearms ing to the landlord yielding to the have had the power to quell the crav- wishes of the clericals and declining to ings of an empty stomach I Many peo- renew the lease. The Methodist chapel ple think that the pangs of hunger are in the Calle del Gobernador had alto- more easily borne under our sunny gether to close its doors. and yet an- Italian sky. Ah, little can they know other mission, that of Calatrava, is lan- of the horrors of the situation I guishing for lack of funds. What There is no need to explain why the makes the situation still worse is that industries languish altogether. Agri- many tourists who, when passing culture remains; but just in the mining through Madrid, might feel disposed to districts the agricultural life is less ex- aid the various chapels, remain totally tensive, owing to the configuration of unaware of their locations, as the law the land itself. How can furrows be prohibiting all insignia on the exterior made in such a volcanic soil? how can of any non-Catholic religious edifice seeds be sown in such an arid, unkindly has recently been rigidly enforced. All ground? And besides all this, i8 the interested in promoting the evangeliza- agricultural condition or the island so tion of the country whence Columbus flourishing as to induce the miners to sailed to discover a New World have abandon the pick-ax for tbe spade? For thirteen years the Waldensian now an opportunity of doing so.
Church has carried on a work of evan- gelization in Grotte, where there are The Need in Sioily. now 33 church-members, 250 Sunday- school children, 155 night-school and The helpless cry of anguish of the 125 day-school pupils, 1200 casual hearstarving inhabitants of Hussia, of the ers at the meetings. persecuted Christians of Armenia, has Rooms necessary to carryon this found an echo in many hearts in all work have been secured in an old palnations. Will the piteous cry of the ace, which the proprietors now desire suffering, starvin~ children of Sicily for their own use. Another suitable find no answering note in the bosoms place of worship cannot easily be seof their fellow-men? cured. It is absolutely necessary to Stern reality, and not the desire to provide for such an emergency, and touch the hearts of the charitable by there is only one way possible-viz., an exaggerated statement compels us by building a honse which would anto give such a heading to our appeal. swer t.he purpose. The starving in- Two districts of Sicily have especially habitants of Grotte, and especially the been stricken by the sulphur crisis- members and frequenters of the church, viz., Caltanissetta and Girgenti. do not ask for a momentary relief of Of 657 sulphur mines existing in money, which is soon spent, but for Sicily, 587 are to be found in these two work, which thev are willing to do on provinces; of 33,266 miners working very modest terms. By building a in the whole island, 28,038 belong to church and schools for the mission, a these two districts. The almost entire great number of bread-winners would shutting up of the mines, and the gen- be employed, and would thus be eneral suspension of the works has not abled to draw their families out of only struck a blow at the 25,000 or misery. more families of the miners, but has Everyone therefore who holds out a also injured those who got their living helping hand to these his brethren will from the earnings of tbese men, and be doing at the same time good service has especially put a stop to the small for the cause of God. * trade in these places. If we could only lead our readers to the principal ~quare of Grotte, where daily and hourly are • Donations may he forwarded in checks or post-office orders to the Rev. Comm. M. Proto be seen groups of men, who with chet, D.D., President of the Waldensian Compale, careworn faces and anxious, mittee of Evangelization, 107, Via Nazionale, troubled looks stand waiting about for Rome, Italy.
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
IV.-EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT.
:&markable Revival in the North of vaster expenditure, are as legitimate an object for investigation by the State as Scotland. the effects of the existing Company There seems to be a general spiritual Laws or the reduction of the area under impression over the North of Scotland. wheat cultivation in England." In Wick hun1reds of men and women, Could the $350,000,000 spent in the chiefly from eighteen to thirty years of last hundred years on Protestant mis· age, have apparently been converted. sions and the $12,000,000 a year now In one east·coast fishing village the being spent not be better used? Mr. boats have been beached for six weeks, White seems to think the missionaries and as the evangelist passes along the have now too easy a time of it, certainstreet, one and another beckons to him ly an easier life than that of ministers to come and talk about soul concerns. in East and South London. Their readi- One rural village reports some thirty ness to ask for aid from imperial powcases of decision; this is a sample of er, their sectarian divisions, their con· others. In a country parish the crowds flicting message, their opening the door flocking to hear were so large that the to drink and vice, as well as the unrewindows had to be taken out of the buked iniquities of professedly Christian church, that those outside might hear. Powers would, Mr. White argues, form _ From another district a minister re- good material for inquiry. Dr. Cust ports: "Numbers of young and old thinks a c!}nference of missionary exhave been brought in, and the work has perts would be of much more use. This by no means ceased. . " The times proposal is welcomed by Mr. Eugene have been to us all very wonderful, and Stock, of the Church Missionary Sothe 126th Psalm alone can give adequate ciety. Mr. Wardlaw Thompson, of the expression to our feelings. What God London Missionary Society, caustically has wrought is not yet fully known. criticises Mr. White's attitude, and holds From many places a similar message that any examination of foreign miscomes. If the people of God were to sions which affects to judge its results arise and pray, Scotland might once would be an utter failure.-Seleeted. more experience a great revival."
The blessing in Stornoway appears To our minds, this proposition, from to have begun at the Communion sea- whatever sources emanating, involves a son, when Rev. J. McIntyre (successor total misconception of the nature of the of Dr. Andrew Bonar, Glasgow) had missionary enterprise, and might be- gone to assist Mr. Martin, the Free come atrociously arrogant and imperti- Church minister. nent. It seems to be forgotten by some people that Christian missions stand ab- A Oommission on Missions. solutely unique and solitary as repre- senting the one and only Divine enter- The principal feature in the Review prise ever committed to man. All other of the ChurcllMJ for April is Ii series of enterprises, however laudable, are hu- papers on the project, mooted by Chi· man, or at best Christian, philanthro· cago professors, of sending out a world's pists, devout and earnest men in or out commission to investigate into the suc- of the Church, have seen somewhat to cess or failure of foreign missions. Mr. be necessary to the progress of man- Arnold White thinks that" an impar- kind, and hence have come Sunday- tial inquiry into the finance, manage· schools, young men's Christian associa- ment, and results of It century of Prot- tions, societies of Christian Endeavor, estant missions, with ever multiplying Bible societies, tract societies, and the machinery, urgency of appeal, and hundred-handed organizations which are auxiliary to the Christian Church whIch that unhappy struggle gave for and the enlightened State. And what- ministering to the wounded Chinese sol- ever man originates man is competent diers-a service which the Government to discuss. criticise, alter, amend, or have not been slow to acknowledge in abolish. But there is one enterprise a practical way. The work of the purely of God. He took no man into Chefoo hospitals generally has been that His counsels, but matured His own plan of increased and marked blessing to the and committed it to the cooperation of bodies and souls of the people. As to converted disciples. To criticise it is the sulilsequent trials and persecutions impertinence; to alter or amend it is which have been the lot of many in arrogance and blasphemy; to abolish China, they have strikingly proved the it, apostasy. And we may as well under- stedfastness of the native Christians in stand that any commission that should time of adversity.
undertake a survey of missions with In a brief secretarial statement, Mr.
respect to any possible radicaZ change in Sloan dealt mainly with the statistics of their prosecution would be an invasion the year. Ninety-seven new workers of a Divine prerogative. We shall wel- went out in 1895. Nine workers in the come any investigation of the methods field and two at home had died during whereby the commission is now carried that period. It was stated that, owing out. any survey of the progress of the to the rise in the price of Chinese money, work, any attempt to make more effi- the expense of sustaining the work will cient the means whereby the Lord's be increased from 20 to 25 per cent.
plan shall be speedily executed; but we The steady growth in the finances of may not touch the Divine foundation .the mission, through its three decades, of missions, nor even raise the question has been remarkable. Mr. Sloan point- whether it is expedient that this work ed out that the total income of the first of God be carried forward. To do this ten years, from 1866-75, was some £40,- would be the last act of crowning im- 000; that of the second ten years was piety and daring outrage, and provoke £119,000; and that of the third, £309,- condigu judgment. As well undertake 000. Last year's income was £42,925 to abolish God's way of salvation, and (including £9150 from America, Aus· question whether vicarious atonement tralia, and China); this shows a total be not an antiquated notion. increase over the previous year of £9767.
These figures seemed to the chairman Ohina Inland Mission. so eloquent of growing favor with God and man that he called for the singing The anniversary (which was the thir- of the Doxology when the secretary sat tieth of the mission) was held at Mild- down; the assembly joined with heart may Conference Hall. in London, in and voice in this ascription of praise and May, and divided into afternoon and thanks to the Fount and Giver of all evening meetings, as usual. Mr. Hud- good.
son Taylor with Mrs. Taylorwas on the Five short speeches followed-four way home, but the calls of the work in of them by workers from the great China did not enable him to be in Lon- China field. Rev. J. J. Coulthard, who don in time. has worked for nine years in the prov- An interesting letter from him was ince of Honan, took as the burden of read. giving a bird's-eye view of the his theme the native Christian-what past year's work. It has been in many he has to endure because of his con- respects the most remarkable year they fessed discipleship of Christ and the had ever experienced-a year of great readiness with which he counts it all trials and of abounding mercies. Ref- joy to suffer loss for the sake of his erence was made to the. war between Master. Very much the same strain China and Japan, and the opportunities was taken up by Mr. Lawson, a Scotchman of pronounced accent, from the when they become Christians. It was province of Shalllii. He spoke feelingly a black recital, the chief items in the of the small beginnings there, and of indictment being the crime of baby-girl the growth of the work as well as of the murder, well-nigh universal among Chizeal. fidelity, and liberality of the con- nese women, the horrors and mutilaverts_ Then Miss Hanbury gave an ad- tions of foot-binding, the slavery of mirable little address, telling in turn opium, etc. A.ddressing his fellowsome of her experiences, first at Pao- Christians, Mr. Studd called fOI" snch an ning, Szchuen; next in the training intense aud unqualified belief in and home at Yang-Chau; and lastly at the devotion to the claims of J csns Christ schools in Chefoo. Her exposition of as would make them disregard snch the great advantages that accrue to the matters as climate, and personal considyoung lady missionary by a stay in the erations 01 every sort, in tlleir desire to training home must have been deeply carry the saving Gospel to the millions interesting to all home friends who ha ve of perishing Chinese. relatives in the field. It was also most encouraging to hear, with respect to 'fhe meeting in the evening was ad· the school work at Chefoo, that a spirit dressed by other workers from China of consecration to the work of the mis- and by the editor-in-chief of this REsionary is being evidently manifested VIEW, the outline of whose address will among the young people being educat- subsequently appear in these pages. ed there. BOLIVIA.-'l'his South A.merican re- As a representative of the Australian publie, four and a half times the size of auxiliary Rev. Alfred Bird was cordially the United Kingdom, has not one setreceived, and his account of the incep- tled missionary to 2,500,000 people! tion and spread of the missionary interest in that distant colony gave cause for The Nineteen Hundredth Anniversary much thankfulness. It was striking to of the Birth of Ohrist. hear him report so maDY conversions as taking place in Australia in conDeetioll In the January issue of this REVIEW with missionary meetings and farewells. the editor called attention to the fact He told of one young man of much that this year (1896) is, by correct reckpromise who conducted a bel"ies of ser- oning, the closing year of the full ninevices before going to the front in China. teen hundred of the Christian era. The At these meetings over 100 converts subject has since been tllken up by were enrolled, and these young Cluis- others, as the following shows: tians are now furuishing the support in China of their spiritual father. It is an interesting chronological point as to the year of the birth of ,our Lord. Last of all came Mr. Charles T. Studd, Geikie and Edersheim give the date as who unfolded some of the realities and late in B.C. 5. Farrar deals with the actualities of Chinese life, and of work question in the appendix to his" Life on behalf of the Chinese. He said the of Christ," and says that "under no history of the China Inland Mission in circumstances can the nativity have the province of 8hansi is of itself a place later than February. B.C, 4." sufficient confutation of thuse who say Lange adopts that month and year. that missions are a failure. Christian Lichtenstein and others prefer the midmissionaries, lv1r. Studd thinks, ought dle or end of B.C. 5. to be like quacks-believing in one specific remedy for all sorts of ills. Christ Thus the consensus of the best opinhas given His disciples one remedy and ion is decisive that the next anniversary only one, and that is Himself. Then of Christ's birth will be the nineteen the speaker went on to tell something hundredth. Dionysius Exiguus, when of wllat tlle Chinese are saved from, computing the time and making up the vulgar chronology in the sixth century, made a mistake of four years. Both Geikie aud Edersheim accept December 25th as the most probable day and month. The true nineteenth century of Chris- agents take special care to make known tianity will therefore close with this and exaggerate all over the district; year. It will thus, as a matter of bare and so thousands are flocking to the fact, be earlier by a trifle over four Romish Church who have no more years than the vulgar era. knowledge of the first principles of Christianity than they had before; but, Anything in the nature of a centenary unhappily, they have drunk in almost of our Lord's birth transcends immeas· instinctively the first principles of Rourably in importance that of any person manism-viz., persecution and hatred or country. It becomes, therefore, a of the truth. Their priests permit them matter worthy of consideration whether to subscribe the usual amount to the next Christmas should be a period of support of the heathen idolatrous ceremore than usual rejoicing. If it be monies, and thus they escape the perdeemed so to be, will it not be a time in secution of the heathen against our nawhich nineteen centuries of history and tive Christians, who are expelled from work may especially be reviewed, with our communion if they should be found the errors and triumpl}s? Will it not in any way to support idolatry. In be a suitable period for discussing any Hok·chiang these Romanists join the reunion of Christendom, and for con· heathen in abusing the Protestants, be· sidering the work of Christ generally f cause the latter will not subscribe to The nineteenfh century will have been the heathen rites." completed. It may be desirable to think how to make a good start with Japan is Japanizing her Methodthe twentieth century of our religion. ism. She is doing it fast. She cannot The firm resolve may be formed to do avoid it. But this does not mean that what is possible by work and self· sac· she is changing the doctrine and experirifice to make it exceed the nineteenth ence. The discipline and practice adin llll that pertains to God's glory. justed to American life and determined and compelled by exceptional local I write upon tbis subject with all peculiarities and history cannot, in the humility. I would like to foster inquiry nature of things, be exactly adjusted to as to the correctness of the statement Japanese life. American life and Japthat our Lord was born about the end anese life are as distinct as the poles. of B.C. 5; and supposing it to be true Japan is just now the last place for the – and the highest authorities force me .. great Methodist," the" stalwart Presto the conclusion that it is-I think it byterian, " the" rigid Baptist" from the should be fully considered as to any Oceident·-that is, the man or woman honor so strangely important an anni- who is a stickler for the minutire of versary should receive. home forms and practice. Doing God's service in motive it will be hindered in F. B. BOYCE. aet.-Rev. John Wier.
In addition to sums already acknowl· Colston Hall, Bristol, has the figure of a dolphin on it. It is a memorial of edged for the Armenian sufferers, we deliverance. When a vessel at sen was exposed to sinking by a hole knocked have received the following contribu- in the bottom, the founder of Colston Memorial Hall vowed his fortune to tions: God if He would spare tbe ship, and a dolphin suddenly rushed into the aper- Mrs. Julia Waller, Bloomsburg, Pa …..• $30.00 ture and effectually stopped it until the Presbyterian Church, St. Croix, Wig….. 3.25 damage could be repaired.
Archdeacon Wolfe writes from Hok- chiang: "The Romanists also have commenced work, and many have joined them. The priests require nothing in the way of knowledge or instruction in the Christian religion from those who join them, except a promise that those who join shall attend mass four times a year; their names are then en- tered as Roman Catholics, and they are from henceforth entitled to all the pro- tection arising from the influence of the French protectorate of the Romish Church, and which the Romish native
GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE
V.~GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE.
EDITED :BY REV. D. L. LEONARD.
Extracts and Translations from Foreign of the village street destined to receive Periodicals. the ancestral gods. This takes place not only in the lately opened west, in BY REY. C. C. STARBUCK, ANDOVER, the region of the stations of Fadow and MASS. Lahagu, but also in the elder eastern stations, where, for instance, Mission- NETHERLANDS INDIA.
-Pastor EDWARD KRIELE, speaking ary Cramer, working outward from in the Allgemeine jl/issions· Zeitschrijt Gunong Sitoli, can draw one heathen of the mission of the Rhenish Society village after another into the net of his on the island of Nias, a little westward activity; where Missionary Sundermann of Sumatra, remarks: "Notwithstand- is on the poiut of establishing a new ing the comp!lIatively small size of station, some two leagues to the west Nias, it is an important mission field, of Dahana; where in particular Mis- not only on account of its dense popu- sionary Thomas, working from Gumbu- lation, but also because the Niassans humene as a center, has won almost extend into some of the other islands. the whole region around for the Gospel.
Nias promises more and more to be- In the very promising west, where, we come a second Sumatra, and Is at pres- may remark by the way, the mission ent one of the most hopeful terrItories has also contributed largely to secure of the Rhenish Missions, having only to the greatly tormented land outward become so, however, within a very few peace and security against its enemies, years. Inspector Schreiber called to especially from the south, the attempts mind at the last Barmen anniversary, to found a third and a fourth station that when he was still a missionary in have thus far failed when near accom- Sumatra, a government officer very plishment, among other reasons because friendly to missions argued with him no missionary forces were to be had.
at length that the Barmen Board could Here also grave and momentous prob- do nothing more to the purpose than lems await their solution, especially as to recall the missionaries from Nias; between the more thinly peopled north and, in fact, Nias was formerly regard- and the uncommon density of the popu- ed as one of the most difficult and hope- lation in the south of the island, where less fields. Even in 1892, when the a solitary missionary grave reminds mission completed its first quarter of a one of a fruitless attempt made years century, there was little to be heard ago, and thereby of a painful tragedy except admissions of the small results. in the Nias Mission. Thus Nias in the Then it was as if, with the jubilee year, coming years will call for a very pecul- a wholly new spirit from above had iar attention, and therewith also for a begun to breathe over the valley full special enlargement of the missionary of dry bones; the number of the Chris- force. Here also we conclude with a tians has in the last five years risen word out of a 'layman's mouth.' The from 706 to 1813-that is, has almost Java-Bode of September 5th, published tripled-and even as we are writing at Batavia, reprints an article of the thus letters come in announcing numer- Alg. Handelsblad, in which, alluding ous baptisms of heathen at several sta- to the MissWns1'1lndschau (missionary tions. Whole heathen villages, which round) of Dr. Schreiber respecting had long closed themselves against all Netherland3 India in the last number influences of good, now declare that of the Allgemeine Missions-Zeitschrijt, it they wish to cast away their idols. It remarks; is said that pits are dug in the middle .. 'Our best wishes to the mission·
EXTRACTS AND TRANSLATIONS. 625•
aries in Nias. May their expectations Turkish Caliphate. This is as if the not be brought to shame, and may we Italians, for five centuries, bad quessoon be able to say of Nias what can tioned the authentic election of the be said of a great part of Bataland: it Pope. is owing to the missionaries that peace and prosperity have been brought to the What will ensue now when, as must lands, t1lat its inltabitant8 have beeome happen before long, Turkey falls to other and better men, and tl13.t they feel pieces, mostly lapsing to Russia? themselves happy under the Dutch Either an extinction of the Caliphate, Government, which rules them as or its reerection at Mecca, either event Christians should.' involving a profound dislocation and readjustment of Islam. " When the Lord was on earth, the Pharisees came more than once to Him, All talk of any change in Mohamdesiring a sign from -heaven. And medanism must be given up. It shows many friends of missions are so far itself to·day reaJIy more cruel than the like the Pharisees that they want to be Koran allows. The spirit of Mohamalways hearing of striking occurrences, med is more powerful than his limiting powerful conversions, astonishing precepts. events from the heathen world. But as the Lord gave small heed to the crav- All pretence that a Moslem governing for wonders among His contempo- ment can or will protect Christians, nararies, still less does the kingdom of tive or foreign, except under absolute God now come with observation. The coercion from Christendom, must now Gospel, altho it appears in the heathen be given up. worlds as a power of God to salvation, works in the manner of the leaven; The savage dangerousness of Turkslowly but surely does it exercise a re- ish Mohammedanism (Arabian and Innewing and sanctifying intluence upon dian standing considerably higher) can the domestic and social life." Yet in only be kept in check by the proximity the rapid advance since 1831 of the of a watchful Christian power. Rus- Gospel in the Minahassa, or northern sia, by her very hardness and semi· bar· arm of the island of Celebes, until barousness, as well as by her vast exheathenism, out of more than 100,000 tent, seems best suited to this function. souls, has hardly more than 7000 left, We may well recognize the hand of we have a fact which is at once a quiet God, who doubtless knows His own leaven and an open slgn.-Maandbericltt mind, in choosing out a flinty hammer 1,an ltet Nederlandsche Zendelinggenoot. to pulverize a flinty rock. scltap (Netherlands M. S.). Among the Armenians, these martyr- TURKEY. doms, renewing the greatest days of the Church of Gregory the Illuminator, -We wonld call attention to Dr. seem not unapt to fuse together Protes- James S. Dennis' tl1orough and com- tants, Gregorians, and perhaps Cathoprehensive article on the Armeno·Turk- lics, of this eldest of Christian nations, ish question, in the Evan.qelist of JrIay in some great spiritual renewal for 21st. We note a few of the salient some great evangelizing work, against points. the day when orthodox and heretical Mohammedanism alike, held in the When the Arabs controlled Islam, all grasp of a Christian power, shall begin the faithful (not reckoning the Persian to acknowledge, as Julian, in those schismatics) acknowledged the Arabian same regions. found. at least, if he did Caliphs. Now the Arabs, Mohammed's not say, "0 Galilean, Thou hast conown people, in whose language alone quered !" has the Koran any sacredness, question the legitimateness of the barbarous JAPAN.
-A leading Japanese journal, Kok,lt- riun Sltimbun, cited in the Zeitschrijt fUr Missionskunrk, declares not only
GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE
that the cold, abstract moral teaching to us the question, Is not, after all, beer given in the Japanese public schools a main cause why, among us, too, so amounts to little morally, and directly many cannot press through? Through deadens the religious sense (which what? Through all the prejudices and might be said of a great many of our hindrances which place themselves in own public schools, particularly in the the way, so soon as anyone would fain West), but that very commonly the enter devoutly into the service of Jesus teachers take occasion by it to make Christ. In order to overcome these open attacL'I on Buddhism, and of hindrances, such as fear of man, false course still more violent attacks on shame, frivolous company, idleness, Christianity. .. The reasons," it says, and all the lounging ways of our nomias quoted by the Rev. E. SCHILLER, nal Christianity, there needs a clear " why in our day Buddhism is declin- head and a firm will. But here comes ing, and Christianity also is not advanc- in the beer-I mean beerhouse lounging, may in part be found in the fact ing, with all implied in that-obscures that Buddhist priests and Christian the understanding, fetters the will, and ministers are not fully fitted for their so it results that there can be no gencalling, but the main cause, unques- uine conversion, even where the contionably, is the decline of the religious science had been awakened, and had spirit of the nation, and the cause of induced a longing after better things. this is, that the moral teaching of our How many thousand good intentions schools is a teaching hostile to relig- have been drowned in wine and beer! ion. " "Yet if we ask why, among us in MISCELLANEOUS. Germany, notwithstanding all our Christian knowledge, there is so little -" Ambassador Bayard spoke a true Ohristian life to be found, why, in word to the Seamen's Hospital Society, the churches, in the missionary meetin London, when he said: ings, in all labors for the kingdom of God, there are so few men, why the " , At sea there are no such things as youth are becoming so wild, why recktroublesome boundary disputes, coJ.- lessness and greed are growing, piety tested spheres of influence, buffer and contentment waning, we may con- States, or other creations of diplomacy. fidently answer, The Main Cause is Scarcely a day has passed without a Beer. Beer impedes the young people, token of gratitude and goodwill being even the theologians, in their studies ; sent by America to English seamen for beer makes many men, I fear even heroism in rescues upon the high seas. many pastors, sluggish in work and When I was attending to my dnties in sluggish in prayer. Moreover, beer Washington, I remember how there empties numberless purses, so that was a constant current of thanks and there is nothing in them when there is gratitude from Great Britain to sailors 1 call for missions or other good of the United States. Such acts are works. . " And so it is coming to healing differences and strengthening pass that in fact heathenism. and that the friendship between the sailors, and not a refined, but a thoroughly gross, may be the means of binding friendship wild, and vulgar heathenism is coming and good feeling in the homes on both in upon us, and spreading more widely sides of the Atlantic.."-Bailol"s Maga- from year to year."-Calwer Missionszine. blatt.
-" A Caffre Christian made his mis- -J. HESSE, of Caho, in the Evangelisionary many years of trouble. ' It seltes Mis8iomblattfw Wwttemberg, conwas because the beer would not suffer siderE the question how some German instruction to take hold of him.' (and other) societies, with a larger num- " These words have given us much matter of thought. It has suggested
1896·1 ENGLISH NOTES
ber of laborers and larger income, are English Notes.
less successful than others, with fewer BY JAMES DOUGLAS.
workers and smaller means. For instance: Basel, last year, having 157 Olmrch Mis8ionary Society.-Numermissionaries, and spending 1,000,131 ous letters from Uganda furnish a view marks, reports only 30,200 members; of the operations of this society, not the Gossner Mission, having 23 mission- only in Uganda proper, but also in the aries, and spending 162,955 marks, re- extensive districts of Busoga, Koki, ports 40,000. The Bm'men, having 96 and the Sese Islands of Lake N yanza. missionaries, and spending 497,701 All lovers of the Lord must rejoice in marks, reports 56,944. Moreover, the the marvelous blessing given; and, llnitas Fratrum, having 174 mission- despite the things pel' contra, in the aries, and spending 1,610,420 marks, re- manifold tokens of encouragement ports in 1894 only 366 adult baptisms; which the present outlook affords. As Basel, 1418. The Leipsic Mission, hav- Mr. Pilkington points out, the country ing 26 missionaries, and spending 356,- from Mengo is now open to the Gospel 225 marks, baptized 433; the Gossner, for 200 miles east, south, and west; with fewer missionaries, and less than while north ward 70 or 100 miles is open. half the income, baptized 1570. Whether regarded as a field white al- ready to harvest, or as a basis of mis- Whence these differences? Differences of training and economy sionary operations, Uganda is rich in doubtless count. But differences of promise. To,qnote from Mr. Pilkingfields count much more. Manyfold ton: "The country is healthy; native more laborers and more outlay on the help is available as it is nowhere else in the world; the desire for rtading rock will, of course, bring in scant fruits compared with few laborers and has already been carried to some of the little outlay on the good ground. The Brethren, for instance, have chosen of elaxntrgeumageepaonindtssewnittihminentthiasndradmoiuds~' in of preference, the backward, and even'the life the whole region is closely knit todying races, It is not, brilliant results gether-in a word, there is good reason for which they aim, so much as a min- to hope that as far as local conditions istryof life for the forsaken. So, while are concerned, a circle including within its radius of A20l0bemrtileEsdwthaerdth, reaendlaktehs~ Basel has, on the Gold Ooast, a field of the Albert, pestilence, Barmen and G08sner have in Sumatra and among the Kols, com: Victoria-an area (excluding the lakes) paratively healthy lands, requiring also of nearly 100,000 square miles-might less outlay. These two peoples, more- be fully occupied if not evangelized over, are more receptive of the Gospel within three years' time." than any others among whom German To turn this hope into fruition, Mr_ missionaries labor. The Kols had a Pilkington makes the following derude heathenism, burdensome yet not mand: "Wanted. in all, from home, attractive, easily given up for Hindu- 100 additional men missionaries and ism, more easily for the Gospel. Among some lady missionaries, full of the Holy the Sumatrans idolatry was already in Ghost. "
decline. Islam or Ohristianity, coming The Sesse Islands of Lake Nyanza.- first in any district, easily carries the The work, now being carried on, in day. How different in South India these islands has many gleams of en- among the Tamils, even among the couragement and no inconsiderable fruit, Parias! The elaborate system binds notwithstanding various forms of hos- them, even while it curses them. tility. On Bukasa, a Sunday congre- The great difference, therefore, is gation of. nearly 280 are collected in the still, as of old: The Road, the Rock. church built by the Ohristian chief.
the Thorns, the Waiting Grounds. In addition to this there are three other
GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE
places of worship on the island where being of a good family thcy fear the Basese teachers minister to growing conseqnences of a public profession of congrega tions. Christ. "
On Bufumira the work has been car- The Rev. R. Wright Hay, of Dacca, ried on by Adam Musoke, a voluntary writes: "I have baptized four converts Muganda teacher and a small chief. during the year-two Mohammedans, For two years or more he has labored, one Brahmin, aud an Eurasian." He and all who have come forward for also says: " There are many in whom baptism have been instructed by him. it is evident that the Holy Spirit i~ This worker hail now returned to Bu- working, and no small part of our work ganda, but a band of young Basese consists in a laboring in prayer for teachers, numbering eight, are filling these." the gap, and, in the face of the chief's hostility, trying to let their light shine The Calcutta Press. – From the refor Christ. port of translation and literary work, prepared by Dr. Rouse, we learn that The largest island of the group- the revision and printing of the Bengali Kome-has also a band of earnest and Bible is now far advanced. A tentat i ve faithful Basese teachers; and, in addi- edition of the Psalms has been issued, tion, there are 19 Buganda teachers aud the printing of a commentary on .. engaged in reading through the Gos- Genesis is just completed. pels with the candidates for baptism, visiting, and giving a good name to The Outtack Press hs,s issued during the Gospel which they preach." On the year over 35,000 tracts and 6000 this island the work is particularly Scripture portions. hopeful, and has already taken considerable hold, a result largely due, under Presbyterian Ohu1'ch of England.- GoJ, to the labors of the Muganda Concerning }ivrmosa, reports have been teacher, Yoeri Wamala, who, having published by Mr. Barclay and Mr. Ede. lived down much opposition from the Both reports are of a cheering nature. chief and others, has now had the joy Notwithstanding the Black Flag trouof seeing much fruit accruing. At the bles and the Japanese march through large church ou this island there is now the island, "no cases of apostasy a congregation of over 500. through fear occurred at any of the stations." In the hill country the ab- Baptist Missionary Society.-During original churches are being attended the past year there has been 655 addi- by greatly increased congregations, tions to the native Christian Cburch in while at Moatau, "in spite of the mas- India in connection with this society. sacre, the membership at the close of In every case the missionaries have the year is larger than it was at the anxiously sought to ascertain the pres- beginning. " ence of a work of grace in the individual beart. North Africa Mission.-Mr. Eaward H. Glenny, the indefatigable secretary At Cuttack, in Orissa, the church has of this mission, writes: "We have had, during the past year, an unusually had and still have a certain amount of large accession from the ranks of the difficulty with the rulers of the counyoung people. tries in which we are laboring. I have just heard of a plot whieh fortunately An interesting circumstance is re- was discovered, the object of which ported by the Rev. J. G. Potter, of was to incriminate certain missionaries Agra, to the effect" that there are sev- in illegal actions; but, after all, what eral Mohammedan young men who is it we have experienced compared have hired a room where they meet for with the persecutions and atrocities in religious discussion; that most of these Armenia ? • •• Then this year there young men are Christians at heart, but have been several baptisms in Tunis just what the Lord does think oj 1t8 alland Morocco, and Mr. Summers was some of us, anyway?" hoping to baptize a young convert, from Palestine, in Alexandria this -It is said that when the mother of month. Mr. Patrick also speaks of Professor Drummond met a young encouraging services and professed con- friend who had offered his services as versions among the Spaniards, so that a missionary, but was declined, and we have causes for thankfulness as well was obliged to take a position in a comas reasons for prayer." mercial house in a foreign land, shc suggested: "My dear boy, you can THE KINGDOM. be a merchant missionary." In like manner Commodore Perry, when in- -Nobody could express it more hap- troduced to a foreign missionary in· pily than the missionary did who said: Japan, added, "I also am a mission- " When you cannot see any bright side, ary. " polish up the dark side, and look at that. " -How strange! When Jonathan Edwards, one of the very greatest of -And this likewise is a faithfill say- Americans, was dismisaed from his ing. "A dime whispers, 'I will help pastorate, well-nigh with ignominy, save America I ' a dollar says that same and removed to Stockbridge with an thing out loud; a hundred dollars Indian mission as a portion of his field, shouts it. One prayer helps the good a salary was voted him of £6 138. 4d. work on; two prayers help it on a bit and 1UO sleighloads of fire-wood. farther; half a dozen prayers possibly make it go faster yet; and only the -" Nothing but a missionary!" angels know how marvelously the But the man who gave that toss of the prayers of a few millions might acceler· head and that half-scornful look should ate it lOne man or womau saying a cast an eye down the long central aisle good thing or doing a brave thing of the hall at Mildmay Park. Whom somewhere makes America a little bet- do we see coming up the aisle-a son ter; a band of laborers affects perhaps of Anak in stature, erect, his features the development of a whole country; strongly marked, his venerable locks while a host of workers may reap a and long wbite beard adding majesty harvest waving in fields as broad as a to his appearance? On discovering prairie, or mine out nuggets of spirit- him the whole great audience rise sponual ore rare and rich as a thousand taneously to their feet. A Wesleyan mountain mines. " brother with powerful voice is in the midst of an address; yet. no one heeds -Miss Auna L. Dawes also states a him till the patriarch has taken a seat profound truth in terse and impressive on the platform. Who is the old man? form when she says: "If anyone is Is it the Earl of Beaconsfield? Is it willing to go up there and live with Gladstone? There is but one other those Eskimos, I think the rest of us person in the realm to whom, under may well enough agree to help. Noth- the circumstances, such a united and ing has been so good for me for some enthusiastic tribute would be paid, and time as Mr. Lopp's visit. It not only that because she is on the throne. This makes our Christianity (mine at least) hoary-headed man is the veteran among look like a mustard seed, but makes South African missionaries. He went you wonder whether it isn't a dead out to the Dark Continent more than seed at that I I have been to hear Mr. sixty years before. He is now eighty- Moody, but he didn't begin to give me three; his name, Robert Moffat.- such' conviction of sin' as the urgent RM!. A. O. Thompson. and eager interest Mr. Lopp showed in going back to his people. 1 wonder -According to Acts 10: 35, was it not an or~hodox proceeding under the salary. A woman has two sons-one circumstances? .. We went to call on earning good wages, the other a boy at the new Methodist minister and his school. The elder son gets into debt.
wife (Mexicans), and listened to the The mother's salary as a Bible-woman most touching account of her conver- just keeps her and her younger son in sion, simply by the reading of God's food and clothing. The younger son, Word; and how, just following out being clever, should receive a higher the Divine command, she went to a education. Who is to pay? Not the stream and was baptized by her father- elder brother, but the missionary. At in-law, and they all took the juice of least that is the result of a discussion grapes she squeezed from a fresh clus- that occupies nearly a day. We re- ter, and ate unleavened cakes she herself fuse, say. The missionary is then ac- had made. Some time after she found cused of spending his money over the a Protestant church, where she an- heathen to the loss of the Christian."
nounced herself as a member of the church of Christ, and that church was WOMAN'S WORK.
our own in Hermosillo." -A missionary writes that India's -Tho we all knew that the whirligig "new woman" is only one who can of Time brings in his revenges, yet read and write and perhaps occasion- whoever supposed that the Hebrews ally ventures out to a public meeting.
would "get even" with their foes, as .. There are many yet among the upper they have, if the current statement is classes who look out on the world with true which alleges that tho nearly 2500 one eye peeping through the folds of a years ago Babylon took their whole cuddah, and who feel that to allow any nation into captivity, now two Jews man, except those of their own house- have bought all that is left of the fa- hold, to look on their faces is to be mous city. guilty of a heinous sin. We have a -It is a fine tribute to the efficient patient just now whom we wished the and self-denying labors of General civil surgeon to see, and I had to spend Armstrong that the institution which a good part of a forenoon coaxing her he founded suffered only sorrow of to allow him in the room. We made a heart at his death, and has made steady compromise at last, I agreeing that she progress along the lines he laid down. only draw her cuddah far enough aside As a recent visitor to Hampton said: to allow her tongue to be seen. • How .. I never knew of a man'who was less can I go before God if this strange man dead." The last request of the general, looks on my face?' was the pleading " See to it that Hampton does not go entreaty of this poor young woman. down," has been well obeyed.-The In most cases, however, the veiling of Advance. the face is more a matter of social dis- tinction than of religion." -A missionary to India describes a sample day's work: "A child Ilwal- -What a passage in modern history lows a coin. Its mother brings it to is that of the Zeitoun women on guard us. A wife turns obstinate. Her hus- in their mountain eyrie! When every band comes for us. A husband beats boy over thirteen years old was away his wife. The wife comes weeping to fighting, and 250 Turkish soldiers were us. A man in a fit of despair joins the preparing to break out of their prison army. We are asked to liberate him. and fire the town, these women rose in A member of the church loses his char- desperation, killed every man of them, aeter. We have to examine into things, and threw them down the cliff. It and discriminate truth from lies. An was in defense of their lives and the educated Christian man runs into debt. Iives of their children.
His device is to apply to us for higher -There are now, as the result of eleven years' work and growth, 51 dea- How to get our Endeavorers to read coneS!!' institutions in the Methodist more missionary books. Episcopal Church; 590 deacones.~es, including 80 who are still in training Putting the Endeavorers in touch and 100 trained nurses; and property with their denominational mission employed iu this work to the value of boards. $656,950 above debt. In the United States there are 35 institutions; in Ger- How to make missionary meetings many, 6; in India, 8; in China, 1; in interesting. Africa, 1. Who should go as a missionary ? Practical evangelistic methods for Christian Endeavor societies.
-In 1893 the Presbyterian Woman's -The Endeavor News tells about a Boards contributed over $329,000 for missionary committee that managed to foreign missions; in 1894, $324,000; make missions interesting in the follow- in 1895, $309,000; and, now, $302,000. ing diversified ways: At first they in- But there seem to be as many fine feath- vited a few of their friends to meet on ers as ever, as many Christian women a certain evening at the honse of the traveling, as ample home comforts. chairman. There they found a num- No more boasting from us, until we ber of garments already cut and pre- make a new record "concerning the pared for the making. Upon these the collection."- Woman's Work jor Wom- guests and entertainers set themselves an. to work. In the centre of the group sat one of the best readers of the soci- -In Great Britain and Ireland there ety, who entertained the company dur- are 12 women's missionary societies, ing the evening with the reading of an supporting 770 female workers in for- interesting missionary biography. This eign fields, 38 of these being medical biography and the work laid out occu- workers. These societies reach 20 dif- pied the Endeavorers for four evanings. ferent countries, employ 2000 native The last fifteen minutes of each meet- workers, and have over 60,000 girls and ing were given up to business, general women in their schools. discussion, and prayer.
-The Church of England Zenana -Let the missionary committee get Missionary Society has 53 stations in ready a series of scrap-book meetings. India, 8 in China, 1 in Ceylon, 186 The members and their friends gather European missionaries, 90 native mis- scraps on all subjects connected with . sionaries, and 637 native workers. The missions and Christian work in gen- associations contributed £24,299 last eral, and on their scrap-book evenings year. gather about a large table and fill vari- ous scrap-books with what they have -The Female Association of the gleaned, these scraps being appropri- Irish Presbyterian Church sends out ately classified. The scrap-books thus three new representatives this year, formed make a valuable addition to and has under its care in India and their missiouary library. China 18 women, of whom 4 are medi- cal missionaries.
YOUNG PEOPLE. -The Christian Endeavor societies of the Reformed (Dutch) Church now -These are some live questions for number 525, and last year gave to for- Endeavorers (and Leaguers also with eign missions $3909 ; to domestic misthe change of a word or two) to think sions, $2396; to the Woman's Board about and discuss: of Foreign Missions, $609; to the Woman's Executive Committee, $504; How to get a society enthusiastic for and to the Arabian Mission, $535. missions. Other gifts to denominational objects bring the total up to $8286. How to push systematic giving among our Endeavorers. -Some of the most earnest and wide- lowing the pOOl' to use the vacant lots awake young people's societies in the in Detroit for potato-patches has been world are to be found in Australia. copied with success in 19 leading cities.
The Golden Link states that the Wel- In this way in 1895 Boston gave em- lington society has been devoting spe- ployment to 54 persons; Brooklyn, 31 ; cial attention to missionary work with Buffalo, 560 families; Cincinnati, 37 the result that they support 2 native families; Detroit, 1546 persons; Du- teachers in the New Hebrides; con- luth, about 300; Minneapolis, 226; tribute to the support of the Wellington Seattle, 141; St. Louis, 120 families; Chinese missionary ; hold cottage meet- St. Paul, 118 persons; Toledo, 62 fam· ings every Sunday and Wednesday ilies. There were 8 other cities for evenings; have just begun open-air which statistics have not been given.
meetings; have sent 2 boxes to the mis- New York furnished tools, the sweep- sion field; write regularly to various ings of the streets as a fertilizer, and a missionaries, copy the answers reo practical instructor.
ceived, and hand them round among '':''''It is estimated that there are 10,000 the members; have twice circulated Chinese living in New York and adself-denial envelopes, thereby raising a jacent places. Of these 500 are in Sun· considerable sum for missions; have day-schools, and 200 are professed issned a small missionary pamphlet for Christians. The remainder are under the benefit of the members. no direct Christian influence or instruc- UNITED S'fATES. tion. Here is a piece of China within our gates having its joss worship, the- -The financial distress prevalent in atres, opium joints, and other charac- the country during the past two years teristics of Chinese heathendom. It is is set forth in a striking way by the a foreign missionary field within reach fact that the total net earnings of the of every church on Manhattan Island national banks in the year 1893 amount- or in its vicinity.-EvangeZist.
ed to $68,000,000, While during the year -The census for 1890 gives 18 col· 1894 they amounted to $41,000,000, a ored denominations having no connecfalling off in a single year of $27,000,- tion whatever with white church or- 000. As most of the business of the ganizations. These 18 denominations country is done in the national banks, have 18,835 societies, or organizations; such a falling off in earnings indicates 19,631 church buildings, with church a very serious condition of affairs. property valued at $20,318,714, and a During the year 1895 matters did not membership of 2,500,000. The preachimprove to any extent. ers and religious teachers are, with few -The Chicago Flower Mission has exceptions, uneducated and ignorant.
existed for twenty-one years, and the -During the year gifts from the liv· quantity of flowers distributed has in- ing to the American Bible Society creased from 300 bunches the first sea- amounted to $67,102; the amount reson to almost 100,000 last year. The ceived from legacies, $70,977, and the president, Mrs. Frederick Dickinson, total receipts were $204,670. The sureports that" the bright, fragrant bIos· ciety also received $232,552 in return soms sent us by kind friends in the for books and on purchase account. country have qarried light to 'darkest The appropriations for the foreign work Chicago. ' The Ohristian Endeavor so- for the coming year amount to $182,- cieties throughout the State of Iowa 756. For the first time in the society's have organized a flower mission depart- history it is announced that the num· ment, and send immense quantities of ber of volumes circulated abroad for flowers for us to distribute." the past year exceeds the number circu- -Major Pingree's noted plan of 801- lated in the United States. -The fifty· ninth annual report of been vouchsafed to any foreigner, ex· foreign missions contains this general cepting, perhaps, upon the ruler of summary of work done by the' Pres- some friendly power. This honor is a byterian Church from May 1st, 1895, recognition on the part of the emperor to May 1st, 1896: American mission- of the American physician's services in aries, 214, with 54 medical missionaries; connection with the Red Cross Society wi vcs of missionaries, 223 ; other mis- during the late war, and of the success- sionaries, 177; native agents, 2101; ful efforts of Dr. Atterbury in advanc. churches, 387, with 30,882 communi- ing medical and surgical science in the cants, who have raised for self-support empire. His services as a physician $20,085; added last year, 3000; minis- have been frequently in demand at the . terial students, 88; day schools for imperial palace, and when Li Hung boys, 390, with 14,545 pupils; girls' Chang set out on his journey to Russia day schools, 154, with 7310 pupils; to attend the coronation of the Czar Sabbath-school scholars, 21,993, who Dr. A. was invited to accompany him have raised a total sum of contributions as his medical adviser, but declined the of $88,384 ; pages of literature printed, honor. 72,139,832; hospitals and dispensaries under care, 52, with 313,197 patients -American Friends have organized treated. work in various parts of Mexico, Alas- ka, .Tamaica, in India, China and Japan, The financial cxhibit is as follows: in Palestine, and among the Indians. Through members of that church they Receipts from Churches ….•…..•….. S2i·2,OOn are represented in work of other or- H Woman's Boards …….. 302,626 ganizations in Central America, Brazil, " Sabbath-schools……… 30,221 Morocco, and West Africa, and a little " Young People's Societies. 26,694 assistance is given to the Chicago lIe- " Legacies…………….. 146,827 bre w Mission for Jews, and various H Interest, Individuals, and other missions for Jews in large cities. Miscellaneous Sources. 101,369 In addition to these two are on their way to join William Duncan's work in $879,746 Alaska, and another to Sitka.
-Dr. W. R. Lambuth, of the Pres· -Rev. K. Ishisaka, the pastor of byterian Church, South, is quoted as the Japanese Methodist Episcopal saying: "The collections for foreign Church in San Francisco, was in at- missions for 1895 under the assessment tendance upon the recent Methodist of the Board amounted to $240,802, to Conference in Cleveland. He has 340 which we add the sum of $70,348, re- parishioners, and besides the Sunday- ceived by the Woman's Board, making school, his church conducts a night a total of $311,151. With a member· school to teach the English language ship of 1,500,000, tbis makes an avcr- to his countrymen. There is a dormi- age contribution of not quite 20 cents tory in the rear of the chUl'ch, where per member, or less than 2 cents a from 25 to 30 poor people find a place month for foreign missions." to sleep every night.
-The Ohurch at Home and A.broad GREAT BRITAIN. for June gives the names of nearly 50 men and women, and the cost of sending out and sustaining each one, and says they must be despatched.
-The Emperor of China has con- -From the Bible Society warehouse ferred' upon Dr. B. C. Atterbnry, a between 6000 and 7000 volumes go ont medical missionary of the Presbyterian daily. This, however, represents only Board, the Imperjal Order of the Double part of the total output, as a great Dragon. second degree, a distinction many volumes are printed in China, which it is believed has never before India, and elsewhere. The daily cir· culation is about 13.000. Of the an- sion : The total income of the first ten nual output of about 4,000,000 volumes, years, from 1866-75, was some £40,000 ; it is estimated that from 1,000,000 to that of the second ten years was £119,- 1,500.000 are in English. Among the 000; and that of the third, £309,000.
many interesting translations is a pile Last year's income was £42,925 (includ- of Scriptures in Pashtu, the language ing £9150 from America, Australia, of Afghanistan. Each section of the and China) ; this shows a total increase Bible has been written out with a reed over the previous year of £9767.
pen in the Panjab, and been reproduced -The Foreign Mission Board of the by photography in London. For cer- Scottish United Presbyterian Church tain languages photography is found at the recent meeting of Synod reportvery useful in saving compositors' ed that the income of the ordinary forwork and avoiding errors.-Bible Society Reporter. eign mission fund for 1895 was £31,- -Nowhere else in the world are there 378, being a decrease upon the previous under one roof so many copies of a sin- year of £3766. The expenditure was gle book in so many languages as at £34.639, less than that of 1894 by the Bible House in Queen Victoria £2591. In the course of the year they Street, London. appointed 6 additional missionaries, or- dained and medical, 1 missionary teach- -This is concerning the Church Mis- er, and 2 missionary artisans. They sionary Society, and its plans for the have in the field a staff of 154 fullythree years to come: Finally, the com- trained agents, of whom 70 are ordained mittee intend to ask the cooperation of European missionaries, 14 medical misthe archbishops and bishops of the sionaries, 19 ordained native pastors, whole Anglican Communion, and of 12 European evangelists, and 39 r.enana the heads of missionary associations, missionaries, with a contingent of over and other Christian bodies, in making 700 native workers. The total memthis a time, not for the glorification of bership ot their native church is almost one society, but of defin.te advance on 20,000. the part of the whole Church in her divinely appointed task-the evangeli- ASIA. zation of the world. Many other mis- sionary epochs cluster round the close Islam.-The guilty conscience makes of the nineteenth and the beginning of a man suspicious that everybody is try- the twentieth century; the Society for ing to abuse him. The 'rurkish centhe Propagation of Christian Knowl- sors prohibited a chemical book which edge and Society for the Propaga- contained the symbol of water-viz., tion of the Gospel reaching their bi-centenaries in·1898 and 1901, respectively. n.o. These wiseacres read it as sig- nifying, what else could it mean, while the Religious Tract Society and " Hamid II. is naught, a cipher, a no- the Bible Society look forward to the body." No Sultan would stand such celebration of their centenaries in 1899 nonsense in his empire.-Nortl. and and 1904. The committee earnestly de- We8t.
sire that these and all other societies -We learn through the other misand missions laboring faithfully for sionaries that Dr. Kimball is adding to the extension of Christ's kingdom, both her other departments of relief work at at home and abroad. should share in Van the manufacture of plows, shovels, the special blessings which they believe and other agricultural implements, and pray will be granted to them and that the people may have some means to all their work at this memorable time. of raising the next harvest. A priest -These figures will tell something of in speaking of Dr. Kimball called her the growth of the China Inland Mis- " God's little servant." -A remarkable incident is reported burning sun, in a desolate and feverfrom the Harpoot District in Eastern stricken country, and with little appear- Turkey, where on Sunday, at Mezereh, auce of success to cheer them, work three miles from Harpoot, the Protes- steadily on, in faith and prayH. "Howtant Christians were invited to hold a ever little show it may make in the eyes communion service in the Gregorian of men, Sheik Othman is a post of dischurch. Dr. Barnum and other mis- tinction among the strongholds of atsionaries were also invited, and the ser- tack which Christendom has reared vice was crowded, hundreds being amid the heathen world."-Journal des obliged to go away for lack of room. Missions Evangeliques. It is not long since such a mingling of Gregorians and Protestants would have -An affecting incident connected been impossible, and would have been with the massacre at Oorfa was that of deemed a pollution of the old church. a mother, in whose presence her two In the congregation were many whose sons were caught by the mob, while husbands and fathers were among the men with drawn swords, ready to cut recent martyrs for their faith, and also them down, demanded of the young many pastors and teachers from neigh- men that they should accept the Mos· boring villages. The service of song lem faith. But the mother called out was divided between the Gregorians to them, "Die, but don't deny the and Protestants. The Protestant pas- Lord. " They stood firm and were imtor then received some 15 men and mediately cut down. women into the church, and preached a sermon on "Christ our Passover is India.-Some time ago in Calcutta, sacrificed for us." Dr. Barnum fol- there came together 1000 of the most lowed with an address, and with the prominent men of the native races of doxology and benediction the Protes- Hindustan. They were Parsees and tant service closed. But the people Brahmans and Mohammedans and men were requested to remain, aud the of the lower Indian castes. They Gregorian priest spoke most pleasantly spoke the languages of the native races and evangelically, rejoicing in the fel- of the great Indian Empire-the Tamil, lowship they were thus manifesting, the Hindustani, the Hindi, the Telugu, and thanking Dr. Barnum and his fel- the Punjabee, and the rest. But there low-missionaries, who had brought was only one tongue in which they them a new faith and an open Bible, could make themselves intelligible to and were now following up that work each other, and that was the language by bringing relief to suffering widows into which EngIi~hmen have translated and orphans. Other addresses followed the Bible.-J. H. Barrow8. from both Protestants and Gregorians, when this most remarkable service was -The Bengalee, a native Indian pabrought to an end. It is a sign of the per, praises the French administration times in Turkey.-Missionary Herald. in Madagascar, and makes some very disparaging comments upon that of -M. Kriiger, one of the deputation Britain in India in like circumstances. just sent by the Paris Missionary So- This leads the indian Witnes8 to make ciety to Madagascar, took the oppor- this telling rejoinder: "Does the Bengatunityof the steamer's call at Aden to lee really believe that French colonial visit the station at Sheik Othman, administration is more liberal than the where Dr. Mi1Iar and Dr. Young, the British? Would France allow such a successors of Keith Falconer, carryon paper as the Bengalee to be published his mission among the Arabs. M. in Algiers? While France ruled Egypt KrUger writes with enthusiasm of the were there any national congresses work of these two men, who under a there? And how many native gentle-' men are in authority at Tonquin? If France ruled Iudia, would we still have the Nizam ruling at Hyderabad, sionaries, over 50 Christian workers, lind Maharajahs ruling at Mysore, Ba- over 100 students and teachers repreroda, Gwalior, Indore, and a score of senting 16 educational institutions in other places? Verily, prejudice is the province, and over 100 visitors. more obstinate than ignorance. Igno- The hall, which seats about 300, was rance can be overcome, but prejudice crowded at every session, several havis invincible." ing to find seats on the platform steps toward the end." -In some quarters the annual subscriptions to the Dufferin Fund are -A recent visitor to the sehool of nearly all supplied by Europeans, but the Pundita Ramabai at Poonu says: native princes and noblemen have prac- " Of the 57 pupils, 43 are widows and tically provided, it may be said, at 39 are Brahmins. About one half of least four fifths of the sum whiuh has the pupils attend daily prayers in Rama· been given to the Dufferin Fund. The bai's own room, to which the door is last report shows that 4 lakhs have always open and where any may come been spent in buildings in native States, in, and the shy ones are not noticed Baroda, Bhopal, Kapurthala, Kotah, until familiarity has done away with Oodeypur, Mysore, Patiala, Ulwar, the shyness. The Pundita told me that and Tonk have all built and entirely she did not put new pupils at books support hospitals, and Jodhpur has re- for some time, but turned them into the cently declared its intention of also garden to learn of God's wonderful doing likewise. In Gaya over a lakh works. Next they were told about has been lately subscribed for the hos- themselves and their Creator. Then pital by natives. In Dacca the Nawab came the books. "-Woman's W01'k for has given half a lakh for the same pur- Woman. pose, and in 1894-95 all big sums given to the Provincial Committee of Bengal -Only one passenger killed by acciwere entire from nativ!, sources. In dents to trains, out of upward of 34,- the jubilee year, when nearly 5 lakh3 000,000 carried in the course of three was collected in India, Jeypur gave 1 months, is a record that has probably lakh, aud Ul war and the Nizam each not been beaten by any railway system half a lakh, and by far the greater por- in the world. That is the return of a tion of the remaining 3 lakhs was given quarter's working of the Indian railby thousands of natives throughout ways, which ran 17,250,000 of train the country.-EngZi8hman. miles during that period, and carried the enormous number of 1,526,241,428 -A most striking indication of the passenger nnits per mile. The proporchange which has taken place in India tion of passengers injured by accidents as the result of missionary work in that to trains was one to little less than land is mentioned in the Indian Stan- 7,000,000. The total mortality, includdard. Speaking of a three days' con- ing suicides, accidents at level crossvention held at Lahore for the deepen- ings, and deaths resulting from pering of the spiritual life, that journal sonal carelessness, and including accisays: "The conference, which was dents to railway servants, was 160 only, the third of a series of six, was held in while the number injured was 30 more. the Forman Christian College Hall, – Times of India. and was fully attended from the opening session to the closing one. Dele- -In 1880 only one society had misgates from upward of 20 different sta- sionaries in the Nizam's dominions, but tions between Saharanpur and Pesha- to·day 7 societies are represented by 23 war, and representing 9 different soci- men, about 10,000 baptized converts, eties, were present all the time. A and property worth 600,000 rupees. rough calculation gives over 60 mis- -A Presbyterian missionary to Siam pictures the striking difference between the city of Peking is due to the super- .the Presbyterian Mission to the Laos stition that the sacred precincts of the country, Upper Siam, open in 1867, imperial residence must not be contamiand the older mission in Lower Siam, nated by Western improvements. In opened so long ago as 1840. The mis- his decree the emperor says: "Railsionary forces in each region have aver· roads are important to commerce and aged about the same, yet the Laos con- beneficial to the laboring classes. This verts are numbered by the thousand, government having determined upon are constantly increasing, and among its construction, it is desirable that tho them are many ordained native helpers, work be undertaken. " This decree while in the older mission there are also suggests to merchants who have only about 300 converts, and not a means that they build a line from the single ordained native helper. Lu Kou bridge to Hankow.
China.-" Thrifty and patient and -Russel & CO.'8 banking house, in cunning as Jews, the Chinese can ac- Shanghai, whose Chinese loans amountcommodate themselves to any climate ed to $100,000,000 in its fifty years' and to any environment. They can existence, never lost a doUa?' by them. live in Java or in Siberia, in Borneo or This house employed thousands of in Tibet. Unlike the modern Jews, Chinese, and never one betrayed his however, they are more to be feared in trust or became a defaulter. One emindustry than in commerce, for there ploye for twenty-five years never knew is scarcely any form of manual skilled a Chinaman to break his word in a bus:- labor at which they are not capable of ness transaction. killing white competition. Their history in Australia has proved this fact. -The coal-fields of China are said to But in commerce also they are able to be exceeded in value by few in the hold their own against the cleverest world. Some of the richest districts merchants of other races. They are are only about 30 miles from Peking, adepts at combination, excellent finan- the capital. They have hitherto been ciers, shrewd and daring speculators. worked only in the superficial, mole Tho not yet rivals of Europeans in that fashion of the Chinese. As soon as class of production dependent upon the they have penetrated deep enough to application of modern science to manu- encounter water, the Chinese have been facture, they have given proof of abil- accustomed to abandon such mines. ity to master that science whenever the Now, however, stirred by the railway stndy can profit them. They are learn- movement, some of the wealthy, entering thoroughly the commercial condi- prising Chinese have entered into contions of every country which they visit; tracts with foreign engineers to devciop and tho the history of thcir emigration their mines, which give promise of began within recent times, they are al- large yiolds. It may be that the develready to be found in almost every part opment of these immense coal deposits of the world. "-La!cadio Hearn. of China will soon become an impor- tant factor in the commerce of the Far -United States Minister Denby reo East.-Free Ohurch Monthly. ports that the emperor has issued a decree, directing a certain Mr. Hu, a Japan.-In this empire all Christian protege of Prince Kung, to build a rail- bodies together have 111,588 members, road from Tientsin to the Lu Kou 858 missionaries, 331 native ministers, bridge, which is within 8 miles of and 981 catechists. Of the church- Peking. The distance is 70 miles, and members the Catholics have 50,302 (inthe road is to be built at government cluding all baptized children); the expense. That the line does not enter Greek Church, 22,576; and the Protes- tant societies, 38,710. -Christian influence in Japan is in- teaching, and even to some extent de- creasing, and one proof of it is that a cidedly hostile toward it. The very comparatively large number of Chris- success of the decade following 1880 tians belong to the upper classes. One itself awakened a host of active ene- minister, 2 deputy ministers, the chief mies among the adherents of the older judge of the Supreme Court of Justice, religions of the country, who formerly the president, and many members of felt so confident in their strength and the House of DeputiOls are Christians, numbers as to be either indifferent or and many other men of consequence only passively hostile. The most im- are favorable to Christianity. There portant point in Mr. Yokoi's conclu- is a great deal of unrest just now in sions is that the influence of Protestant Japan, and no one knows what changes Christianity on the nation at large is the next year or decade may bring. disproportionately strong compared Perhaps there will be a revolution of a with its numerical strength.-Evangeli- non-political character. Perhaps we cal Churchman.
shall live to see that in the midst of wars and rumors of wars the Prince of AFRWA..
Peace will establish His kingdom in -The circulation of Bibles and por- Japan. – Evangelisches lrfissions-maga· tions issued by the American Bible Sozin. ciety continues to increase. These are -The Nurses' Training School at mainly distributed through the agency Kyoto, commenced and carried on by of the American Presbyterian Mission, Dr. Berry, bas proved an efficient evan- and are all, or nearly all in Arabic. gelical agency. The school now passes Bible circulation among Mohammedans wholly into the hands of the Japanese, in Egypt has but few restrictions. The and Miss Fraser, who has been associ- following figures show how the work ated witb. Dr. Berry, reports that the has expanded within. the last thirty only remaining non·Christian member years: From 1865 to 1874 the number of the graduating class has asked for of copies distributed was 6630; from baptism, and that, including the 13 1875 to 1884 it was 45,586; and from members of this graduating class, there 1885 to 1894 it was 116,474.
will have been sent out 75 nurses, only -Dongola is about 850 miles in a 1 of whom has graduated without being direct line south of Cairo, about 1000 a professing Christian. These nurses miles by river. Wady HaIfa is about are scattered all over t.he country, and 650 miles in a direct line from Cairo most of them are doing excellent work, and Akasheh is 60 miles north of Wady and their influence must be far-reach- HaIfa. This place to which the rail- ing. way is to be built is about 150 miles -A Japanese scholar, Mr. Tokiwo south of Assouan, on the boundary be- Yokoi, has recently written in the In- tween Egypt and Nubia. Dongola is ternational Journal oj Ethics an article 300 miles in an air line north of Kharon the ethical life and conceptions of toum, but quite double the distance by his fellow-countrymen. Passing on to river. The railway at present runs to Protestant Cb.ristianity, which first Girgeh, about half.way from Cairo to gained a footing in the country in 1859. Akasheh. It is difficult to either write Mr. Yokoi says that between 1880 and or speak about distances and directions 1890 most wonderful progress was on the Nile without blundering. The made, the number of converts being river runs the wrong way, and it is alraised from 5000 to 30,000. Since 1890 most impossible to realize northward the revival of the intensely national means down stream.
feeling of the country has made them -The Rev. Charles H. Robinson, less enthusiastic for Western religious sent out by the Hausa Association on a linguistic expedition, returned during from the book of independent nations the year 1895. He first visited Hausa would be a crime at which freemen all colonies in Tripoli and Tunis. Then over the world would stand aghast.
by the rivers Niger and Benne he Now look at a map of Africa, and see reached Kano, the commercial centre what enormous extent of territory al- of Hausa land. The result was 3000 ready belongs to England-most of it new words for a dictionary, materials acquired by her since the last twenty for a Hausa grammar, and native manu- years. The South African Republic scripts containing history and historical and the Orange Free State are, in com- and religious songs. The Hausa, who parison with that territory, mere specks.
occupy the central Soudan, northeast They are surrounded by and englobed of the Niger, are an intelligent people, in those colossal English possessions.
a black race, but not of pure negro They constitute an African Switzer- blood, a people of splendid physique, land. Shall free and powerful Eng- whose manufactures are known all over land be the meanB of annihilating them?
Northern Africa. They were, if their It would be a dark and indelible blot history is correct, at the time of the upon her escutcheon; and all that can Norman conquest of England more be done to hinder the perpetuation of ci vilized than ourselves. so shameful a crime will be a service to right, to justice, and to England's -Dr. W. H. Leslie, of the Baptist own freedom and fame. "
Miisionary Union, writes thus of his work on the Congo: "This work is not -The Zambesl Industrial Mission child's play with over 700 church-mem- has purchased 50,000 acres with which bers, 2 or 3 outside churches, 30 native to sustain a great evangelizing work.
evangelists and teachers, a training school that is continually preparing more, 600 or 700 children in the schools, SLANDS OF THE SEA.
200 in our station schools, 1500 pa- tients a month to doctor, with build-· -We give the following extracts ing, printing, etc. Farther and wider from a letter by a missionary's wife in is the circle of the Gospel light extend- Madagascar: "I have come to the ing from our station. Faster than we capital to attend the first public Protes- can traiu them come the calls for tant service ever held in Madagascar in preachers and teachers. The station the French language. Two pastors of here is like an oasis in a great desert the Reformed Church of France, both the cool waters of which, encroaching truly earnest and consecrated men, upon the waste, change it from a wil- reached Antananarivo three weeks ago.
derness of sin into a veritable garden Their names are M. Lauga, of Rheims, of the Lord." and M. Kriiger, of Paris, who is tutor at the training institution of the Paris -Karl Blind closes his article on Missionary Society. M. Kriiger has " Problems of the Transvaal" in the been laid aside with fever, and it is April North American Review with M. Lauga who has arranged every- these words: "Switzerland, with a thing for this French service, which is population of barely 3,000,000, sur- to be held regularly every Sunday morn- rounded by three great monarchies and ing. There was a difficulty about a republic, possessing enormous mili- hymns, no French hymn-books having tary strength, might be torn to pieces yet arrived, and also about a choir to by them to-morrow if her existence lead the singing. The hymns were were not placed under international taken fro.m a solitary copy of the McAll guarantee. To strike out SwKallr.&ond hymnal waich had found its way into M. Lauga's box, and were printed on being given to the Dayspring Fund.- leaflets at the Friends' printing-press_ ClLri8tian (fu,tlook. 11. Lauga had thought there would probably be only about a dozen wor- -Mrs. Hore, who visited New Guinea shipers, so that he was agreeably sur- on the last voyage of tho John Willprised to find some 25 Frenchmen, in- iafll,8, thus describes the wedding of a cluding M. Laroche, the Resident-Gen- native pastor in a letter to a friend in eral, and several staff officers, and one this country; "We brought the bride French woman, but for whose presence from Mangala to be married to the son I should have found myself the only of a native pastor; she had nover seen woman in the congregation. Six of her intended. She is a very pleasing the Frenchmen-officers, I think-were girl .of about seventeen. and he is a nice Roman Catholics, but had attended M_ youth. On her wedding day, which Lauga's services on board the vessel was the day after we landed her, she during his voyage out, and been so wore a white muslin dress, and her much interested that they took the first headgear was a wreath of artificial opportlinityof coming again on land." flowers, and yards upon yards of rib- -London C hri8tian. bon of all colors. They were much concerned because they could not get -It is said that the substitute for the any mosquito netting for a veil. After marriage ring on the island of Anei- the ceremony, which Mr. Pearse pertyum, New Hebrides, was the" mar· formed, they went to the father's house, riage rope," put round the neck of the where the feast was prepared. All the bride. This she wore all her life, and presents in print which the people had when her husband died she was stran- given her were tied together; no presgled with it by his nearest relative. ent was under 8 yards; they were tied The Rev. John Inglis, who began his at the corners, and came to over 100 work there in 1852. reported that there yards, and the friends took hold, marchwas not a widow on the island, nor any ing round the village, announcing the word in the language for widow. The generosity of the people. Then the law demanded that on the death of her couple were seated in the garden, and husband the wife be strangled, and her the print wrapped round and round body cast into the sea with his. the two, and 6 shirts placed on the knees of the bridegroom. A hat was -A notable mark of progress hIlS then placed on the ground, and money been made in the mission field occupied was thrown into it, lOs., £1, and £2 at by Mr. MHne, in the New Hebrides. a time, and at each fresh gift a man His Christian natives have undertaken shouted out double the value, first givto support their own native teachers. ing an unearthly yell, I suppose to call These number between 30 and 40. The attention. They really got a good bit. full amount for their salaries for the To wind up, they sang hymns and sapast year has been provided on the sev- cred songs for hours." eral islands. The more populous and the richer have helped the less popu- -The Roko of the district at Naboulous and the poorer. Having entered walu. Fiji, has lately erected at his own upon this p!l'th, they will, no doubt, do cost a large Wesleyan church. The their best to pursue it. Should their size of this building is an indication of example be followed by Mr. Michelsen's the congregations which now gather in natives, who are understood to be in once cannibal Fiji. It is 100 feet long even better circumstances than those of by 70 feet wide. About 1000 people Mr. Milne, a considerably less sum will were present at the opening, and the be required to be remitted to the islands services were prolonged throughout an for the support of native teachers, and entire week. the way opened up for a larger support
The Missionary Review of the World — September 1892
THE CENTENARY CELEBRATION 01< BAPTIST MISSIONS
MISSIONARY REVIEW OF THE WORLD.
VOL. XV. No. 9.-0ld &ries.–SEPTEMBER.–VOL. V. No. 9.-New 8erif3.
THE CENTENARY CELEBRATION OF BAPTIST MISSIONS.
* BY THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF.
One of the great milestones of the ages has just been left behind in the onward march of the centuries.
The centennial anniversary of the organization of the Baptist missions under the lead of William Carey marks an epoch in history; we hope it may prove a new birth-hour for a nobler age of missionary endeavor.
Providentially detained, much beyond my expectation, on the shores of Britain, I had the rare privilege of being personally present at Nottingham, Leicester, and Kettering, and taking part in the hallowed celebration of that great week which has already passed into history as among the most memorabl!'l ever known since apostolic missions began at Antioch, with the voice of the Spirit and the call of the Church separating Barnabas and Saul to the work of evangelization in the regions beyond! The arrange- ments were singularly happy, and the programme was well carried out.
New inspiration must have been imparted to all good work for God, and many lives will feel the impulse to a more heroic endurance and endeavor.
As the celehration was one of those great events whieh the scribe of history records in large characters. even the programme of proceedings should be preserved; and we here embody it. – BAPTIST MrSSIONARY SOCIETY.
Oentenary Oelebration, 1892. Nott£ngham, May 31st j Leicester, June 1st; Kettering, June 2d and 3d.
AT NOTTINGHAM.
Monday, May 30th, 7.30 P.M., Introductory Prayer-Meeting, George Street Chapel. The Rev. Dr. Culross to preside and deliver an address.
Tuesday, May 31st, 9 A.M., Breakfast Meeting in the Mechanics' Hall. Chairman, W. Hunt, Esq. Speakers, B. M. Bompas, Esq., Q.C.; the Rev. S. H. Booth, D.D., and Rev. W. Brock. 12 M., Sermon in Wesley Chapel, Broad Street. Preacher, the Rl'v. Dr. Clifford. 3 P.M., Ladies'
* An editorial on this Carey Centenary was sent from England at the time, but has been lost in the mails, after arrival at New York. Hence the delay in the appearance of this artice.-A. T. I'. Missionary Meeting in Mansfield Road Chapel. Mrs. E. Medley to preside. Speakers, Marianne Farningham, Mrs. J. J. Turner (of North China), and Miss Angus. 6.30 P.M., Public Meeting. Castlegate Chapel. Chairman, Edward Rawlings, Esq. Speakers, Rev. Dr. Mackennal, Rev. T. V. Tymms, and Rev. George Hawker. 8 P.M•• Public Meeting in Wesley Chapel. Chairman, William Willis, Esq., Q.C. Speakers, Rev. Hugh Price Hughes, M.A. j Rev. Edward Parker, D.D. j and Rev. T. Graham Tarn.
AT LEICESTER.
Wednesday, June lst, 11 A.M., Devotional Service in Dover Street Chapel. Chairman, Rev. Solomon S. Allsop. Rev. W. J. Henderson, B.A., will deliver an address. 3 P.M., Sermon in Harvey Lane Chapel. Preacher, Rev. Arthur T. Pierson, D.D. 6.30 P.M., Public Meeting in Belvoir Street Chapel. Chairman, B. C. Wates, Esq. Speakers. Rev. Arthur Mursell j Rev. Dr. Stephenson, President of the Wesleyan Conference; and Rev. J. G. Greenhough, M.A. 8 P.M., Public Meeting in Friar Lane Chapel. Chairman, Mr. Alderman Bumpus. Speakers, Rev. F. B. Meyer, B.A. j Rev. S. Pearce Carey, M.A.; and Rev. G. Howard James.
AT KETTERING.
Except where otherwise stated, meetings to be held in the Marquee erected in the Mission House Paddock.
Thursday, June 2d, 11 A.M., Devotional Service in Fuller Chapel. Rev. Joseph Angus, D.D., to preside and deliver an address. 2 P.M., Sermon. Preacher, Rev. William Landels, D.D. 6 P.M., Public Meeting. Chairman, William Richard Rickett, Esq., Treasurer of the Society. Speakers, Rev. W. J. 'Price, of India; Rev. J. S. Whitewright, of China; Rev. W. Holman Bentley, of the Congo; and H. A. Lapham, of Ceylon; and the General Secretary.
Friday• June 3d, 7.30 A. M., Devotional Service in Fuller Chapel. E. B. Underhill, Esq., LL.D., to preside and deliver an address. 11 A.M., Sermon to Young People. Preacher, Rev. R. H. Robert!!, B.A., President of the Baptist Union. 2.aO P.M., International Meeting. Chairman, Dr. George Smith, C.LE. Speakers-England: Rev. Richard Glover, D.D. j Scotland: Rev. Oliver Flett, D.D.; Wales: Rev. James Owen j Ireland: Rev. Hugh D. Brown, M.A.; Australian Colonies: Rev. Samuel Chapman; United States of America: Rev. Arthur T. Pierson, D.D. 6.30 P.M., Thanksgiving Meeting. Chairman, E. Robinson, Esq., J.P. Speakers, Rev. G. S. Barrett, .B.A.; Rev. F. W. Macdonald, M.A. j Rev. J. Monro Gibson, D.D.; and Rev. James A. Spurgeon.
Secretaries, Alfred Henry BayneR. Johu Brown Meyers. Local Centenary Secretaries.-Nottingham. the Rev. G. H. James, 7 Larkdale Street; Leicester, the Rev. R. M. Julian, Loughborough; Kettering, Mr. W. Meadows, Beech House.
Much of the attraction and interest which Invested these exercise~ can- not be conveyed or even caught by the pen of the readiest writer, any more than the subtle, evasive bloom or aroma of a flower; but wHh such an array of names, many of which belong to more than one continent, and are, in fact, familiar to the world; and with such un occasion and theme to evoke the best that was in the speakers, our readers need not to be assured that it was worth crossing the sea to be present when William Carey's grand work had laid upon it the century's capstone. The three great requisites of ull oratory of the highest sort-sympathy with the theme, sympathy with the audience, sympathy with the occasion-were inspired and supplied in very unusual measure. There was no excuse for not saying something worthy to be remembered, and most of the speakers certainly needed no excuse. Where there were so many memorable words uttered, and so many famous speakers took part, it might be invidious to discriminate j and I shall be content simply to portray for and convey to the readers of the REVIEW a general outline of the proceedings as they impressed one who was in attendance.
One of the main features of these meetings was the crowds attending. A list of some three hundred delegates was published, and they represented the whole earth-all parts of the United Kingdom j Africa-the Congo, etc. j various countries of Europe; also Asia-India, China, Japan, Burmah, Turkey j again, the West Indies-Jamaica, and other islands of the sea j America–the United States, the British provinces j and Australia-New South Waies, New Zealand, and other parts of the habitable globe. Delegates and visitors from every section of the earth and every great people were there; but these were a small part of the real attendance. At Nottingham and Leicester the crowds found no building adeqllate j and so it would have been at Kettering. but for a very spacious tent capable of holding five thousand, which was at times taxed to its capacity. The opening meeting at George Street Chapel, Nottingham. was one for prayer, and properly set the key-note for the week. By 9 o'clock the Mechanics' Hall was filled with breakfasters, and up to 10 o'clock at night, in two gatherings that proposed to be successive, but were near being simultaneous, the interest continued unabated; and 80 it was, day by day, the beautiful weather seeming God's smile on the occasion. At the last meeting I attended at Kettering, the enthusiasm seemed still rising to a higher ftoodmark, if possible, than ever.
Another notable feature was the general excellence and high tone of the addresses. We missed Dr. McLaren, of Manchester, and some other illustrious men. What Spurgeon could have contributed to such' an anniversary one could only sorrowfully imagine. There was now and then a playful allusion to the modern advanced notions of theology, to the higher criticism, and the progressive laxity of modern doctrine, and not a few more serious signs that not a little of this leaven of rationalism has pervaded the Baptist body, which we have been wont to regard as a bulwark of the old faith; but these were spots in the sun. W Il prefer to forget them and praise God for the noble utterances which characterized the whole occasion. If there was any noticeable mistake, it was in the line of too elaborate preparation. The literary feature sometimes proved more prominent than the spiritual. Some of the addresses were more like papers written for leading reviews, and will read better than they ~ounded. The conviction grows on me that what is needed on such an occasion is not intellectual and scholarly treatises or essays, but plain, careful, thoughtful, suggestivl', practical, hearty, warm speeches, wherein it is obvious that the man has something to say, not that he has to say something and wants to say something grand. The addresses that made the most impression, and tRe most lasting, were those that had least of the smell of midnight oil and of the savor of exeessive mental toil. The uplift was what was needed, and that comes from the spiritual side rather than t he merely intellectual. We yearned for such utterances as Carey himself would have given had he been there.
The missionary addresses-those by missionaries-were especiallyenjoyable and profitable. As the representatives from India, China, Africa, Jamaica thrilled the vast audiences, one could not but remember against what odds and oppositions Carey himself wrestled as he went forth the pioneer of British missions. To think of the six thousand men and women from Christian lands, and the seven times as many converts from heathendom, now laboring for a world's evangelization-how like the five loaves and two fishes among the five thousand seemed the little band of missionaries among whom Carey stood a leader! And how that "thirteen pounds, two and sixpence" of 1792 has multiplied over one hundred thousand times in 1892! In fal',t, how has the world opened to the Gospel since Carey had to seek Danish protection in India! Where now can we not go ~ How grandly like Pentecost's tongues of fire is that multiplication of the translations of the Bible into at least six times as many languages and dialects as when Carey began translating! One of the main ~lessings of these gatherings was this, that the contrast between 18&2 and 1792 was made vivid and almost visible as the missionary laborers told of the wonderworking of God. The very antithesis of history was a provocation to love and good works, and compei1ed one to feel ashamed at the lack of modern enterprise for God.
The interest of this great anniversary had, of course, three centres- Nottingham, Leicester, Kettering-because in a different way Carey and the work of missions was linked with each place. At Nottingham, May 30th, 1792, in the old Baptist chapel, Park Street, Carey preached that great epoch-making sermon from Isa. 54 : 2, 3. That chapel stands and is as it was, save that the pulpit and pews are removed and part of the gallery. The baptismal font is to be seen, though used now al part of the appurtenances of a pharmacy. As one stands in that sacred room, which may be fifty feet by thirty, and remembers what took place there, the conviction takes shape involuntarily that it ought to be still a place of worship, or at least a museum of missionary relics, sacred to the memory of Carey and his work.
At Leicester the interest gravitates toward Harvey Lane Chapel, where Carey preached, and the little humble home opposite, where he dwelt. It fell to me to preach the sermon at this hallowed place, and, like Dr. Glover in London and Dr. Clifford in Nottingham, before me, and Dr. Landels lit Kettering after me, the old text of Carey was I!till the theme, never more lIeedflll thau now ~s Ii signal-bell for missions. That gathering in Harvey Lane Chapel, on that memorable afternoon of June 1st, none of us will ever forget. The place was crowded to repletion by one of the most devout, prayerful, intelligent audiences ever assembled. Much prayer had preceded; and the place seemed fragrant, almost alive, with God's presence. The sermon was a simple, unstudied address, strictly textual and expository, and aspiring to no literary merit or intellectual display j yet a more beautifully receptive assembly of hearers I never addressed. Such hearing compelled the speaker to do his best, for it e<;oked whatever was best in him. I felt that day more than ever the contribution of a hearer to the power of the pulpit. It was easy to preach where others were praying, and hearing as only praying people can. The silence was awful, and when broken it was only by a faint and indescribable murmur, not 80 much of applause or appreciation, but of what might be called audible hearing, when any precious truth of the inspired Word touched sympathetically the great heart that throbbed in the meeting.
At Kettering the interest largely centres not only on the Fuller Chapel, but on ,"Vidow Beebe Wallis's cottage, still standing, where, on October 2d, 1792, the' actual meeting was held, when those twelve obscure men drew up their missionary compact, and the thirteen pounds and half crown a were laid on the table, and the table became an altar of offerings. That cottage is a kind of Mecca to missionary pilgrims, and it ought to be missionary training school. It reminds one of Antioch and the mysterious voice which said, as those primitive Christians fasted and prayed, "Separate Me Barnabas and Saul, to the work whereunto I have called them." Here, while most of the Church of God slept in indifference, those " apostates of the anvil, loom, and cobbler's bench" undertook to organize a society for a world's evangelization. Think of that first offm/ing-less than sixty-five dollars I-yet that offering probably represcnted more real prayer and self-denial than any similar sum collected since. How touching is the suggestiveness of that verse, Acts 2 : 42, where we are told that those first pentecostal converts" were in constant attendance on the apostles' teaching, and the fellowship [contribution ~], and the bread-breaking and the prayers." Four elements in primitive worship-teachings, fellowship in offerings, the Lord's SlIpper, and prayer! What an apostolic meeting that was at Kettering on October 2d, 1'792 !
May we not well ask ourselves what is God's portrait of a true church, and see what prominence is given in that earliest sketch to the element of praying and giving? They are associated so closely with the teaching and sacrament that they become sacramental; and for one I cannot imagine any act as more truly sacramental in the sight of God than when money, hallowed by prayer, is laid on that altar of missions that so sanctifies the gift. '1.'0 such sacramental praying and giving does not that meeting of a century ago at Kettering provoke us all ! and is there any lesson of the century more vital to the new century now opening!
Such meetings could not well be held without deserving tributes to such men as Secretaries Baynes and Myers, to whom mainly the admirable arrangemenb were due. Of Mr., Baynes, Hugh Price Hughes well said that if he were, like some forms of animal life, capable of being cut into pieces, and each piece retaining the vitality of the original, he would even then hew him into pieces for the sake of other missionary societies, who needed a slice of such inspiring leadership.
Among all the notable th.ings said, the following were conspicuously suggestive. It was shown that missions are as valuable for their refiex infiuence in quickening revivals at home as in promoting conversions abroad. The singular fourfold repetition of Carey's text in the four centenary sermons by Glover, Clifford, Pierson, and Landels served to engrave on the tablets of the gathering the famous motto of Carey as the signal for a new century. Fuller's compact with Carey to "hold the ropes" while he went down into the mine; Carey's humble saying to Dr. Duff, " When I am gone, speak not of Dr. Carey, but of Dr. Carey's Saviour j" God's choice of a poor and uneducated workingman, to leave the cobbler's hench and become a pioneer of missionaries and translators j the prominence of prayer and self-sacrifice in the inception of the missionary work j the personal contribution of Carey himself to miRsions, representing not less than £80,000 sterling in money values j Carey'. waiting, and being willing to wait ten yeard for one convert; Mr. Hawker's vindication of the cost of missions as belonging to a " costly order of things," in which the costliest sacrifice was the inception of all in the blood of JeSllS j the grandeur of a man as hanging partly on the nobility of his message and mission; the grandeur of the opportunity when God sets before the Church an open door to a thousand millions of heathens, and the awfulness of the responsibility to enter the harvest field when the sowing time comes, to sow. and when the reaping time comes, to reap-all these notable sayings, suggestions, reminders, will remain in the memories of all who were present, and we hope may make this second jubilee even more permanent in its hallowed impressions and impulses than the former in 1842, the influence of which has not yet passed away from those who survive to recall it.
At the outset of the meetings Secretary Baynes announced that the centennial fund had reached £78,000 j we felt confident that before the last Kettering meeting closed the s'um of at least £80,000 would be reached. and it was j and if the full £100,000 be not the final outcome, it will be a humiliating surprise indeed j but no present gush of even sanctified enthusiasm will suffice. The work of world-wide missions needs a long pull and a strong rull and a pull all together. Such a work cannot be done by spurts of activity and generosity. We have noticed, and with sorrow, that the most successful special effort, as at some such great jubilee gathering, i.s followed next year by a reaction and decline j and such will be the result next year if we depend at all on the fervor and ardor and zeal of this great centenary to furnish heat and force for 1893. The manna must be gathered every morning or there will be no meat in the house; the stream must have a perennial spring or it will run dry j giving must be a habit, not a response to an occasional appeal, or even a respectable custom, a necessary and integral part of worship and work, a feature of Christian life and ser- vice no more to be omitwd than praying. That primitive meeting at Ket- tering must set the key-note to missions for the new century. Thirteen ponnds ! more than a pound apiece! If the membership of all Protestant churches gave at that rate in 1893, we should have/our times as much as ever was contributed in a year!
It is a very noteworthy fact that the man whom God chose to inaugurate this magnificent work of organized modern missions was not one whom men would have selected. The simple truth is, He never tioes; for Hill own standards of qualification are essentially different from thoBe of men. Carey's election of God to this great trust was an illustration of the grand principles stated in 1 Cor. 1 : 26-29. There were in Carey five great . elements of fitness for this work, and not one of them defies imitation, and that is the blessed encouragement for us all. The five elements were char. acter, acquaintanoo with the Word of God and the facts of man, resolu- tion. education of self, and yielding of self unto God. Let us glance at these five requisites.
Character underlies everything. Reputation is but its reflection and echo, and oftentimes untrue and unfair. The character is the man himself as he is ; the reputation is the man as others take him to be. We may all well care little for the reputation if we take care of the character. No man has ever wrought for God, from the days of Abel until now, who haM not had this corner-stone benef.th his work-cHARACTER. To be rather than to seem, to be what God would have us be, that is the first condition of doing what He would have us do. Carey was a gl1nuine man. He repreBented that sterling worth which we call by the name of character; and instead of his lowly calling or sphere or station in life degrading the man, the man dignified the calling and glorified his humble surroundings.
He next cultivated acquaintance with the Word of God, on the one hand, and the facts about man on the other. He found the remedy before he understood the need j but as he studied Cook's" Voyages Round the World" and kindred books, and gathered information of the destitution and degradation of man, he saw that in that inspired, infallible, universsl Gospel he had the sovereign panacea for all human ills, wants, and woes. Few things are more sublimely instructive in all history than the sight of that humble cobbler at Hackleton and Moulton, sitting on his bench with a shoe on his lap. halting in his work to cast a glance at the open pages of Cook's "Voyages," as the book lay on the end of the bench; then, as the blows of his hammer fell on the sole of the shoe, hii'l mind was reBecting on the misery of the millions of the pagan peoples and the way to reach and remedy their degradation. Absent-minded, indeed! but not idly, indolently dreaming. He was a ~piritual disco,'erer ltnd inventor, planning one of the master enterprises of the ages. The spal'k of a Divine life was in his soul, and the fuel uf facts became just so much inflammable material to take fire and burst into flame, and so that conflagration in Carey's soul has lit up the darkness of a world and started fires burning in every Christian church.
Resolution, indomitable resolution was a third element of his power. The will makes giants for good and monsters for evil-a hero or a Nero; and where there is a will there is found a way, or a way is made. Nothing possible to be done is impossible to him who wills it. Carey's biographers may attribute to him genius, but he diilclaimed genius; he said, "All I can do is, I can P-L-O-D." And plodding was his secret. His firm and fixed resolve made him strong against the ridicule of such as Sidney Smith and the opposition, or what is something worse, vis inertia!, of even his own Baptist brethren. He determined to do, and so he did. He eouId wait, because willing was behind his waiting.
Education, self-acquired, was another secret. What is education! As Professor Shedd says, "Not a dead mass of accumulations, but power to work with the brain j" and, therefor8, all true education is self-acquired. No university curriculum can make a scholar. Is it not the true 8cholars that make the university ¥ It is time we understood that a man may be truly educated, like C. H. Spurgeon, who never saw college halls. What- ever makes the hand cunning and skilful in mechanic arts or fine arts j whatever makes the tongue attractive and persuasive in oratory, or the pen migilty to com–ince and control; whatever enables a man to evoke and then use his own powers for God and man-that is education, and such was Carey's self-knowledge and self-mastery.
Yielding of self to God was the last, not least secret j and I am more and mOle convinced that what in the last analysis determines the measure and even manner of use God can make of a man in His work, is more nearly than anything else self-surrender. Self-will is the subtle factor in us that to the last resists God's will. He who bows and yields, who can honestly ask, "What wilt Thou have me to do~" and then as honestly declare, " My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me and to finish His work," is the instrument, or, better still, agent whom God is ready to employ. From his conversion at Hackleton to his decease in India, Carey knew but one purpose: to do the will of God j and so God found in him a vessel prepared to be used.
In all these five elements of success there is not one that everyone of us may not possess, and hence Carey's life is a universal, eternal lesson to c ery one who aspires to service. And so we bid adieu to the great meetings of that great week. To forget them is impossible, but to remember them is not necessarily to emhody their lessons in our lives. How much Christians need a rachet in their machinery to hold the wheel at the point where the lever brings it, to prevent an unwinding when the cylinder with its spring is wound up, to make conviction and impression permanent and perpetual I Oh, for the wace of continuance! Great gatherings furnish a mighty leverage, a grand momentum, but how soon it is practically lost, unless at the time godly purposes are formed and new steps taken onward, upward, forward! God grant that those who see duty and privilege in a new light may, while the vision is clear, move; for Satan is a master optician, and knows how to embarrass our progress by his magnifying and diminishing lenses and colored glasses j and how to veil and even blind our eyes to the true pros- pect. Let us have a new era of missions, as much beyond that which Carey introduced as that was beyond the epoch which preceded it !
1892.J THE YEAR 1891 IN JAPAN. (Ji9
THE YEAR 1891 IN JAPAN.
BY REV. GEORGE WILLIAM KNOX, D.D., TOKYO, JAPAN.
Sir Edwin Arnold is giving the world a poet's impressions of Japan. He makes its scenery and its art, its customs and its people pass before our eyes like the scenes of some fair drama, poetic, restful, pur-e, and far away, without one touch of rude reality to disturb the fond illusion. For our delight he exercises the poet's unquestioned right and sets forth his own sensations in the garb of facts. May no unfortunate read his poetry as prose and seek in real Japan the substance of these fancies light as air.
Readily as Japan lends itself to artist and poet, it is not fairyland. It has its own unyielding facts, painful and sbarp, which remain, ignore them as we may. It is of our world of sin and sorrow, and has no beauty without the underlying pain, and wins no triumph for which it does not pay. The Japanese are learning this truth, and the time has gone past here, too, when" To be young was very heaven I"
THE GREAT EARTHQUAKE.
"The earth also shook and trembled, the foundations also of the mountains moved and were shaken j then the channels of waters appeared, and the foundations of the world were laid bare." Villages and towns fell with a crash, and from the clouds of dust and smoke the bewildered people, terrified, rushed forth, leaving behind the wounded and the dead. Ten thousand had been killed, fifteen thousand had been wounded, and five hundred thousand were homeless j and all was in a moment, without warning, in the twinkling of an eye. On such foundation rests the beauty of Japan.
The warnings are incessant. Look at the earthquake record in Tokyo for the few years past j in 1885, 51 earthquakes j in 1886, 55 j in 1887, 80 j in 1888, 101 j in 1889, 115 j in 1890, 95 j and familiarity breeds not contempt, but increasing apprehension. The record includes many slight tremblings, but also severer shocks which hal"e thrown down chimneys, cracked walls, and caused the earth to open. Nor has the memory of the earthquake of 1854 grown faint j and the story is often told of the destruction of the great city and the death of an hundred thousand persons. Now again whole provinces have suffered.
" The Nagoya-Gifu plain is one of Japan's great gardens, but it has been devastated. A disturbance occurred in the Mino Mountains, and at once an area greater than that of the Empire of Japan became a sea of waves, the movements being magnified on the surface of the soft alluvial plains. In Tokyo, more than two hundred miles from the centre of the disaster, the ground moved in long, easy undulations, producing in some persons dizziness and nausea, the movement being not unlike what we might expect upon a raft rising and falling on an ocean swell. Near to its origin the waves were short ood rapid, cities were overturned, the ground wafl fissured, small mud volcanoes were created, and the strongest of engineering structures were ruined."
Our leal'lled men are busy with their explanations, saying that, after alI, earthquakes are only the infrequent irregularities of the force on which our globe in its life·sustaining form depends. Were that force to die and the elevation of the continents to cease, the waste of wind and rain and storm would make uninhabitable the earth. The earth is alive and the mountains are thrown up from the depths., Thus was Japan formed in the past, and the process still goes on.
The great forces C'f, sorrow and death call forth the hidden good. Japan were not so beautiful were its physical conditions the placid background of Sir Edwiu's dream; and human nature would miss its highest excellence were there no great griefs, no evil to call forth pity and beneficence. When the foundations are moved distinctions of creed and race vanish. Money was poured out, and philanthropists T'ushed to the stricken region with ready aid.
So do we comfort ourselves in the midst of destruction. " Oh, yet we trust that somehow good will be the final goal of ill." And yet we cannot forget, the deftest poet cannot persuade us to forget, that the 80il which bears camellia, chrysanthemum, bamboo, and pine is formed by forces which in a moment slay ten thousand men and wreck the dwellings of a province.
THE IMPERIAL DIET.
The first session of the Diet ended with a compromise. The government yielded much, a group of radicals sacrified party to patriotism and the crisis was averted; but the second session was less fortunate. The government was not ready to repeat its compromise, and the opposition said" No" to every proposal of the government. Even the grants for the relief of the distressed provinces were opposed on trumpery technicalities. The lower house seemed determined to force the government to resign or to dissolve the Diet. The government promptly chose the latter alternative.
The conflict between the opposition and the government involves much more than the existence of a particular ministry. The government is a faction, the representative of two provinces or clans, Satsuma and Choshu. It won its power twenty years ago on the field of battle, and has strongly entrenched itself. Army, navy, police, judiciary, civil service, the department of education, the great banks, steamship companies, and business houses, all are its own. Its continuance is not compatible with a representative, constitutional government. The gradual transfer of power demands a spirit of concession and of patience on both sides which is not now apparent. An immediate settlement of the question would involve the empire in serious difficulties and dangers. What is to be the solution the future alone can show. THE ELECTIONS.
Upon the dissolution of the Diet a heated political campaign began at once. Ireland itself is not more passionate than Japan. Murders and mobs were many. The turbulent young men found ready employment and seeming immunity. In many of the provinces the authorities and the police were strangely powerless. It is significant that the majority of th03e kilied were of the opposition party. the government adherents taking the lead in violence. This is thought to explain the apathy of the local authorities. The government will be stronger in the new Diet, but no. one can foresee the course of events. The warnings are many that the political world contains seismic forces of unknown power.
THE ATTACK ON THE CZAROWITCH.
The great earthquake agitated Japan no more than did the attack upon the Czarowitch. The assailant found no sympathizer, never was the nation more unanimous in sentiment. The attack was taken as an affront to the Emperor of Japan as truly as to the Czar. No Western people could have expressed more plainly its detestation of the act of a half.crazed assassin. Yet had the deed flomething of exceptional significance.
Beneath their soft and friendly manners the Japanese too often conceal passions that only await opportunity to become deadly. Young men walk the street with the mien of scholars; they delight in books, poetry, and flowers, and yet are ready with dynamite or knife to destroy men whose opinions cross their own; and with desperate bravery the assassin plans to seal his murder with his own blood, while the populace with indiscriminating praise applauds the suicide as a hero. Self-destruction atones for any crime. So statesmen must surround themselves with guards, and public men are in constant danger of murderous assaults. Nowhere does life seem, on the surface, more contented and sunny, and nowhere is it thrown away with such unconcern. The spirit of old Japan remains beneath the modern garb.
LICENSED PROSTITUTION.
Prostitution is licensed by the government, and sections of the towns and cities are given up to vice without concealment or thought of shame. Parents ~ell their daughters with the sanction of the authorities and agents travel through the provinces and return with troops of young girls. The destruction caused by the great earthquake gave opportunity for this traffic and prices ruled very low. At the railway stations agents from these establishments openly seek guests, and the newspapers display advertisements as a matter of course. The sentiment of the people begins to show symptoms of revolt. Years ago some Christians began an agitation and formed a society which is already large and influential. Its membership is not confined to Christians. In several provinces it has already attained its end~. and even in Tokyo 1hl' Hdverse majority diminishes year by year. THE ANCIENT RELIGIONS.
The moral condition of Japan continues to excite apprehension. It is apparent that Confucius and Buddha have no reserved forces for the present emergency. "Buddhism," said a priest recently, "is the best of religions, but its priests are the most degraded of their class." The Imperial Government in the summer publicly reprimanded the leaders of the chief sects, but though the disgrace was keenly felt, I hear of no refor- mation. Whatever moral power this religion may have exerted in the past, it is not now an active influence for good.
Shinto has been proclaimed to be ., no religion" -by the government itself during the year past. Its rites are declared to be strictly traditional and commemorative, and thus the consciences of Christian officials have been relieved.
Confucianism teaches that benevolence and righteousness are the powers that govern the universe and constitute life. As a philosophy it satisfied the chosen few j as a code of morals it met fairly well the needs of a rigidly conservative society; as a religion its morality was sufficiently touched with emotion to satisfy those who knew neither the true Father- hood of God nor the personality of man. Its devoted adherents were the bitterest opponents of the opening of Japan. They knew that their philosophy could not continue should Western learning prevail, and they foretold thirty years ago the present moral interregnum. They were true _prophets, and the young men of to-day know little and care less for the philosophy that ruled their fathers' lives.
CHRISTIANITY.
The nation needs Jesus Christ as Redeemer and Lord j but the Tapid advance of the Church has been checked, and numbers no longer incrcase as a few years ago. The congregations do little more than hold their own, and the story of 1890 is repeated in 1891.
But there is a change for the better. The forebodings of disaster are gone. The Church faces its work with renewed faith and patience, knowing that Japan is not to be won in a brief campaign. It is recognized, too, that the fruits of Christian work are not all recounted in tables of statistics. Christianity has entered into the nation's life and manifests its power. No check to the numerical increase of converts checks the permeation of the nation with Christian life and truth. Already are these the strongest forces for righteousness in Japan, and would remain should every congregation disappear.
If the kingdom of Christ comes with less of observation, still does it come. Never, perhaps, were the congregations more intelligently in earnest. Though the people do not gather so readily in great crowds, still the preaching of the Gospel gains a hearing, and there are many inquirers. From some parts of the country there is especially encouraging news; never before were there so many earnest seekers after the truth, we are told. The Christians continue to give liberally, and their contributions to home missions show no diminution. The number of candidates for the ministry step.dily increases.
The mis$ion of the American Episcopal Church is especially encouraged, reporting better prospects in the provinces than ever before. The mission has been reorganizing its methods of work under the energetic leadership of Bishop Hare, of South Dakota. It is now in harmony with the Congregational and Presbyterian missions in giving a large share of responsibility and control to the Japanese in all departments.
No table of general statistics has been prepared this year. The Nippon Kirisuto Kyokwai (Presbyterian Reformed) reports 960 baptisms and a net increase of 350 members during the year. The total is now 10,961 members The contributions for the work of the Church during the year were 16,628 silver dollars. The Kumiai churches (Congregational) report 1040 baptisms, a net increase of 668, and a total membership of 10,037. Their contributions during the year were 20,895 silver dollars. These two communions include almost two-thirds of the Protestant Christians in Japan, and from their reports we may fairly judge the condition of all.
While thus the increase is much smaller than in years past, still is there great cause for thankfulness. The Gospel has been preached; the congregations have gathered in their churcheR Sunday after Sunday; Bible and Tract Societies have distributed their supplies; the schools have been maintained in spite of many discouragements; orl'hanages and hospitals have cared for the bereaved and suffering; in public and in private the seed has been sown besiile all waters. All the varied forms of Christian activity are carried on with faith, hope, and increasing dependence upon our Saviour-Lord.
THE LIBERAL CHRISTIANS.
One of the Congregational mini~ters, a member of the well-known "Kumamoto Band," withdrew from his Church in the spring. He printed a book based upon Pfleiderer and Keirn. His secession was the sensation of the hour, and the first edition of his book sold out at once. His congrcgations, however, refused, to follow him, and his friends hastened to announce their want of sympathy with his position. He was welcomed by the Liberal Christians, but has not identified himself with any branch of their force.
The theological unrest of a year ago has Rubsided. The presence oi the Liberal Christians has not been without its benefits, for it has given shape to that which was undefined and in the air. Men have seen that they must choose, and thc Christians have examined the foundations of their faith. Never was the divinity of our Lord so firmly and intelligently held. The theological unrest has given place to an earnest desire for His presence and blessing. Not in controversies or in novelties, but in the outpouring of the Spirit would the Church know and do the truth. APPEALS FOR REINFORCEMENTS.
Some of the missions are asking large reinforcements from the United States. As the Church learns that Japan cannot be won in a rush, but that mission work is of the nature of a siege, the Japanese themselves become desirous of continued missionary co-operation. They have learned, too, that the missionaries desire to remain not as masters, but as fellow-workers.
At the request 'of the Japanese the mission of the American Board again seeks a large addition to its force. It would equip five new stations. This mission is already the largest and most thoroughly equipped mission in Japan. The policy of the American Board has been admirable from the beginning. It early appreciated the needs of the field and has freely given funds and men. This last request receives the same immediate and cordial attention as those which had preceded it.
The American Baptist Mission also repeat!l its request for twenty-five more men, most of them to serve as evangelists. This mission in the past has clearly shown. how this work should not be carried on. The Baptists early sent their representative to Japan, one man, and he most unfitted for the place. The early years were worse than wasted. When, later, opportunity came for a harvest the Baptists were not prepared to take advantage of it. This first mistake was partly rectified, and missionaries were sent who commanded respect; but they were too few in number and pursued no general or united policy. There was no efficient school, not even for evangelists. Tokyo was manned with one missionary, and his health failing it was left without a man. The men on the field were not adequately sustained; and now at last, when the work is entering upon its final stage, when there is not a town of any considerable size without one or more foreign missionaries, the Baptists appeal for a large reinforcement and seek to do the evangelistic work by foreigners which Congregationalists, Episcopalians, Methodists, and Presbyterians are more efficiently doing by Japanese ministers and evangelists. If the Baptists purpose to participate in the Christianizing of Japan, it is high time that they should maintain an adequate force. Nothing is more discouraging than work half manned and half done.
MORE MISSIONS.
Still new missions appear. The Lutherans in the United States have sent out one man. Has the Church no mission field that needs reinforcement, and can it find no unoccupied field that it adds to the confusion in Japan ~ Must it send its little force, too small for efficiency and yet large enough to increase our denominations already far too many ~ The new missionary zeal in the United States has another illustration. Our missions have been increased by one called the Scandinavian Mission.
It is composed of nine unmarried men lind sil< lnmarriE!d WOIDE!n, H represents no board or church and has no organization. Its members are of different denominations and are supported by different congregations in the United States. The salaries paid are altogether inadequate for even a scanty living when the missionaries cease to live together in two large families. No theological training, no careful education, no peculiar adaptation to the field and work has been thought necessary. In dense ignorance as to the condition of Japan, in ignorance even as to the language spoken and the ordinary ways of life. this mission has been undertaken with the zeal that is not according to knowledge. There may be mistakes in missions as in other enterprises that are little short of crimes.
MISSIONARY POLITY AGAIN Three such illustrations of method tempt a return to the subject of missionary polity.
The American Board sent its mission when the times were ripe for aggressive work., Strong meu were sent; enough men were sent, and money was not grudged. The Board sent strong men and trusted them. The men on the field shaped the policy of the mission and the Board sustained it. When schools were needed they were established. When more mis-. sionaries were asked for they were sent. When the mission was ready to tru~t the Japanese Christians with larger responsibilities and powers the Board had no policy of its own to enforce. Strong men, enough men, adequate equipment, complete confidence in the men upon the field, a harmonious policy firmly carried out, these are the conditions that make success when success is possible at all.
Such a policy demands large resources freely used. That is merely to say that the missionary work demands large resources. Few men, weak men, inadequate equipments, a priori methods invented in the United States, will win no empires for Christ.
Missions, then, demand large expenditures from single societies or the union of missions representing several societies. Side by side with this great work of the American Board has been the equally successful work of the United Missions of the Reformed and Presbyterian churches. With smaller cost to each mission the united force has been larger. Small societies by combination can make their forces as effective as the missions of the strongest. Combination is a more difficult problem for missions and for boards. Japan is an illustration that it is a possible and an effective policy. It doubtless demands in a high degree mutual confidence between missionaries on the field and between missions and Boards. I can say nothing higher in praise of all concerned than this. that during fifteen years of trial the combination of forces has occasioned no serious difficulty on the field or at home.
An adcquatc policy does not demand endless resources. There is a natural limit to the force that can be effectively employed, 1'00 large, "
DEATH OF REV. B. W. CHIDLAW, D:D
forces may be as injurioU!1 as forces that are inadequate. There is no call for a large increase of miRsionary force in Japan.
The wrong policy sends a man to begin work in an empire. It does not reinforce him at the right time or adequately. It loses the golden opportunity, and only awakes when other bodies h;lve ministers and evangelists, heads of colleges and theological professors who are native born..
It is possible to go a step further in the wrong direction, send out men and women for this most difficult of all forms of work who are not adapted to successful work at home, and who have neither the education nor the peculiar qualities demanded by the field. Let faith and zeal attempt to supply the place of all else and carryon a mission that shall be futile in Japan and identified with fanaticism at home.
Strong men, enough men, a policy carefully studied on the different fields and adapted to them-this is not too much to ask for foreign missions at the close of a century of experiment. Missionary stateRmen are needed to head the enterprise. Rflstraint is needed on the part of strong churches and societies that they undertake work only where they can adequately carry it on. Combination is needed by weak societies every- where and by strong societies of kindred churches in the great strategic fields.
A missionary league is necessary. If still the proposal is thoug-ht premature a missionary council, composed of the representatives of the different societies, is surely practicable. Information and connsel, discussion of plans and purposes of work, a study of the whole field, this would be profitable, and preventive of waste, ineffective experiments, and the useless duplication of agencies. The uprising of the Church, the great outpouring of men and money, demand such consultation that the work may be done efficiently abroad, and that the missionary spirit may be nourished at home.
What Board will take the lead in proposing a council for conference and advice ~ DEATH OF REV. B. W. CHIDLAW, D.D.
This remarkable Vlelshman was born July 14th, 1811, and died on his eighty-second birthday, in his native land, where he was visiting. He was a singular example of usefulness. Brought by his parents to this country seventy years ago, ho studied in a log-cabin school in Radnor, 0., a copy of Webster's spelling-book which he had bought for four pounds of butter; was converted and joined a Presbyterian church at eighteen years; and the same year was gradnated at Miami Universit.y. He studied theology at Oxford, 0., and was ordained at twenty-five; and a. year later enteren on the long period of service as missionary of the American SUIlday-school Union, wh08e representative he was at the Robert Raikes centenary in 1880. He has literally founded thousands of Sunday-schools in remote districts, and given the first impulRe to new churches. For twelve years be was n Commissioner of the Ohio Reform School for Boys at Lan- ~aster, and during the war did much good service in connection with the Christian Commission. He was a devotedly pious man and a very effective ~peak'r.-EDrTOR,
A STORY OF THE MARVELS OF MISSIONS
A STORY OF THE MARVELS OF MISSIONS-REV. JOSEPH HARDY NEESIMA, LL.D.
BY J. D. DAVIS, D.D., KYOTO, JAPAN.
Among the miracles of this nineteenth century the Divir.e leading and the life and work of Dr. Neesima should be recorded as one.
Mr. Neesima was born of Samurai parents in Tokyo, February 12th, 1843. He was ten years old when Commodore Perry first entered the Bay of Yedo. He was early taught to read and write Chinese, and later the sword exercise. He was also taught to worship the family gods which stood upon a shelf in the house. From the time he was about fifteen years old, however, he refused to worship these idols. He could see for himself that they were only" whittled ones," and that they never touched the food and drink which he offered them.
When he was fourteen years old he began the study of the Dutch language and continued it for a year with a native teacher. When he was sixteen he borrowed a geography of the United States, written in Chinese by Dr. Bridgman of China, and also an abridged Bible history in the Chinese language. The opening sentence in the history was, " In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." In II brief description of this experience written in broken English, Mr. Neesima says: "I put down the book and look around me, saying, Who made me, my parents ~ No, my God. God make my parents, and let them make me. Who made my table, a carpenter ~ No, my God. God let trees grow upon the earth; although a carpenter made up this table, it indeed came from trees; then I must be thankful to God, I must believe Him, and I must be upright against Him." He at once recognized his Maker's claim to his love and obedience, and began to yield to it; he prayed, " Oh, if you have eyes, look upon me ; if you have ears, listen for me."
Again he says: "I found Ollt that the world we live upon was created by His unseen hand, and not by a mere chance. I discovered in the same history that His other name was the 'Heavenly Father,' which created in me more reverence toward Him, because I thought He was more to me than a mere Creator of the world. All these books helped me to behold a being somewhat dimly yet in my mental eye, who was so blindly concealed from me during the first two decades of my life.
" Not being able to see any foreign missionaries then, I could not obtain any explanations on many points, and I wished at once to visit a land where the Gospel is freely taught, and from whence teachers of God's words were sent out. Having recognized God as my Heavenly Father, I felt I was no longer inseparably bound to my parents. I discovered for the first time that the doctrines of Confucius on the filial relation were too narrow and fallacious. I said then, 'I am no more my parents', but my God's.' A strong cord which had held me strongly to my father's home was broken asunder at that moment. I felt then that I must take my own course. I must serve my Heavenly Father more than my earthly parents. This new idea gave me courage to make a decision to forsake my prince, and also to leave my home and my country temporarily. "
His decision was made, and with an unwavering purpose he waited and watched for an opportunity to put it into execution; after four or five years it came. With great difficulty he obtained permission to sail in a ship bound to Hakodate in the spriug of 1864. "Not thinking," as he wrote in his diary, "that when money was gone, how would I eat and dress myself, but only casting myself on the providence of God."
After months of waiting in Hakodate he at last found an American brig which was to sail for Shanghai. Making a confidant of a young Japanese who could speak a little English, this friend rowed him out to the brig at midnight and the captain received him on board.
Althongh the ship was searched by JapancRe officials the next morning before she wcighed anchor, to make sure that no Japanese were secreted on board, for it was then a capital offence to leave the country, Mr. Neesima was not disco'i'ered, and in due time he reached Shanghai, where in the providence of God he secured passage in a sailing-vessel bound for Boston, and owned by Bon. Alpheus Hardy, of Beston, Mass. It was many months, however, before the ship set sail for Boston, and in the harbor of Hongkong he exchanged his sword for a copy of the New Testament in Chinese, and he studied this on the voyage, and when, reading it in course, he came to the sixteerrth verse of the third chapter of John, he felt that this was just such a Saviour as he needed. The ship on which he came was owned by Mr. Hardy, and when he had learned from Mr. Neesima through a brief statement which the latter wrote of his reasons for coming to America, Mr. Hardy decided that it was of the Lord, and he adopted him as his own son, as it were, and gave him the best education which New England afforded, in Phillips Academy, Amherst College, and Andover Theological Seminary. His faithfulness in his studies and his high character won for him the love and respect of all his teachers and classmates. When asked for a letter of recommendation at the time of Mr. Neesima's appointment as a corresponding member of the Japan Mission of the American Board, President Seelye of Amherst College said, " Yvu cannot gild gold."
When he had been less than one year in the theological school at A.II'l.on.'f the first great Japanese embasRY visited the United States. " This was composed of four Cabinet ministers, of commissioners in the several administrative departments, and was under the conduct of one of the most di:;fillguished of Japanese statesmen, Iwakura Tomomi." Its leading memberR were Iwakura, Okubo, Kido, Ito, Terashima, and Tanaka. These were the men who were to be at the head of the government for many years to come, and the providence which brought Mr. Neesima into
REV. JOSEPH HARDY NEESIMA, LL.D. Uli9
personal relations with them was one of the most striking providenc"s in his life.
When this embassy reached Washington, they sent an order to all the Japanese students who were then studying in the United States, some twelve in number, to appear before them, and among others to Mr. Neesima, Mr. Neesima replied that he was an outlaw, and that he acknowledged no king but the King of heaven, and that he could not obey a mandate to come, but if they asked him as a friend to come he would do &0. He wrote to Mr. Flint, one of his teachers, at this time: "I expect to stand up for Christ before the heathen embassy; I think it is a good opportunity for me to speak Christ. I wish you would make special prayer for me, and also for the embassy." They sent the request, and when Mr. Neesima reached Washington he told Mr. Mori, the Japanese minister, that he could not consent to meet the embassy as a vassal, but only on terms of equality. When Mr. Necsima first met the embassy there were twelve other Japanese students present in the same room, who were being supported by the Japanese Government j these made the old Japanese bow, but Mr. Neesima stood erect behind them in the corner of the room, and not until the Commissioner of Education came forward and extended his hand to him did Mr. Neesima bow, and then in the Western way.
From this time on for a year or more Mr. Neesima was with this embassy, and at their request he accompanied them to Europe, visiting all the European capitals. He writes of this decision: "I would not go abroad unless I feel it may be a good opportunity to promote Christ's kingdom to the heart of heathen noblemen and Japan." As Professor Hardy says, in the excellent" Life and Letters" of Mr. Neesima, recently published by Houghton, MifHin & Co.: "In Europe, as in America, he gave all his time and strength to the study of the best methods of instruction then prevailing, the organization and conduct of schools and institutions of learning of all grades, and it was on the basis of his reports that Mr. Tanaka, appointed, on his return to Japan, Vice-Minister of Education, laid the foundation of the present educational system of Japan. His personal influence was also felt by all who were associated with him; for his character marked him off from all others connected with the embassy in a like capacity, and won for him that sympathetic esteem and respect which was so valuable to him in later life. Travelling in close companionship with others, he never failed in his private devotions, in his conscienti,ms resolve to rest on the Sabbath, in his effort to speak for Christ." Often did he stop off in Europe Saturday night, spend the Sabbath alone, and go on Monday and overtake the party.
As the time drew near for the departure of the embassy from Europe, to return home by way of India, Mr. Neesima was pressed to accompany them to Japan, and it seemed that it would be almost impossible for him to r;efuse to do so, but he decided to return to his studies in Andover, and a severe pttack of rheumatism coming on at this time compelled him tQ
A STOny OF 'rHE MARVELS OF MISSIONS
remain behind in Europe, among strangers, until long after the embassy had sailed for Japan, but on his recovery he returned to his studies. He graduated in the summer of 1874 and was ordained as an evangdist, the first of his race to take upon himself this office.
He was also appointed a corresponding member of the Japan Mission of the American Board. Mr. Hardy also arranged to have sent to Mr. Neesima each year what he needed for his support, so that he was placed above anxiety on that point. His farewell speech at the meeting of the American Board at Rutland, Vt., in the fall of 1874, just before he sailed for Japan, and its outcome may best be described in Mr. Neesima's own words in a letter, the last one in English which his hand ever penned, written only a few days before his death: "Fifteen years ago I had a day-dream to found a Christian college. I used to express my intense desire to found it, especially to raise up Christian workers, to Dr. Clark, Secretary of the American Board, and also to some other friends, but none of them gave me any encouraging words. However, I was not discolll"- aged at all. I kept it within myself and prayed over it. In the fall of 1874 I was invited to attend the annual meeting of said Board, which was held at Rutland, Vt., to bid my last farewell to my friends. I wail asked to appear on the platform on the very last day of the meeting. In the evening of the previous day I called on Mr. and Mrs. Alpheus Hardy, my benefactors, and consulted with them about the advisability of my bringing out my long-cherished scheme-that is, to found a Christian college in Japan, in my farewell speech. Mr. Hardy was rather doubtful about my attaining any success j however, I was rather insisting to do it, because it was my last chance to bring out such a subject to such a grand Christian audience. Then he spoke to me half smiling, and in a most tender, fatherly manner said, 'Joseph, the matter looks rather dubious, but you might try it.' Receiving that consent, I went b'ack to the place where I was entertained and tried to make a preparation for the speech. I found my heart throbbing and found myself utterly' unable to make a careful preparatioR. I was then like that poor Jacob, wrestling with God in my prayers. On the following day, when I appeared on the stage, I could hardly remember my prepared piece-a poor, untried speaker; but after a minute or two I recovered myself and my trembling knees became firm and strong; a new thought flashed into my mind, and I spoke something quite different from my prepared speech. My whole speech must have lasted less than fifteen minutes. While I was speaking I was moved with most intense feeling over my fellow-countrymen, and I shed much tears instead of speaking in their behalf; but before I closed my poor speech, about $5000 were subscribed on the spot to found a. Christian college in Japan. That generous subscription of our American friends became the nucleus of our present Doshisha, which is now recognized as the best and largest Christian college in Japan. "
Mr, Ncc8ima reached Japan un his retllrn in Decemberl 1874. He
REV. JOSEPH HARDY NEESIMA, LL.D. 66l
round great changes had taken place during his ten years' absence. The Mikado was reinstated, his capital was changed from Kyoto, where his ancestors had ruled for a thousand years, to Tokyo; the Daimios liad relinquished their feudal rights, and the pensions of their retainers were capitalized; the Julian or Gregorian calendar had been adopted, and the Sabbath was made a holiday; the post office with a money order system, a savings bank system, and a postal delivery system were established i newspapers were being printed !lnd circulated; an army and a navy on a foreign plan were formed ; a mint was established; the coast was being surrounded with light-houses; the first railroads were opened, and a net· work of telegraphs was unifying the old feudal kingdom. Most of these changes had taken place one or two years before Mr. Neesima returned. The great question of constitutional liberty was beginning to be agitated, and the men whose confidence and love Mr. Neesima had gained in his intercourse with the embassy three years before were at the head of the government. Their prejudices had been removed and their minds broadened by their intercourse with Western nations, and they were ready to encourage the adoption of Western civilization in their own empire.
Mr. Neesima was offered, again and again, places of high position under these men and urged to acc~pt them, but he steadily declined them. He allowed nothing to turn him from the great purpose of his life, to establish a Christian college in his native land.
Soon after landing in Yokohama he visited his aged parents, who had gone back to their native province and were living in Annaka. There were at this time small churches in Tokyo, Yokohama, Osaka, and Kobe, but it was hardly safe to profess Christianity, even in the open ports. Away from the open ports there was very little, if any, effort on the part of any Japanese to teach the forbidden doctrines; but no sooner did Mr. Neesima reach Annaka, seventy-five miles from Tokyo, than the people began to beg him to tell all about foreign countries, and he took that opportunity to openly tell them about Christianity. He did this so boldly for several days that the governor of that province became troubleJ. Mr. NeeBima was plainly violating the old law, but yet be was no ordinary person; he had been attached to the Iwakura embassy and was already a widely known man. To arrest or even caution him might have some unknown results; so the governor went hastily in person to Tokyo and aid the matter before some of the men who were at the head of the government. They replied, "If it is Neesima, it is all right, let him lllone;" so the governor returned satisfied, and the work was begnn which resulted in the organization of the Annaka church a few years later under the labors of Mr. Yebina, and the Annaka church, with the five other churches, within a very few miles, which have sprung from it, make it probably the most thoroughly evangelized community in Japan, Several of the members of that provincial assembly and a majority of the Standing Committee are Christian men, and two thirds of the members of the
A STORY OF 'ERE MARVELS 01' MISSIONS
Imperial Diet, elected from that province, are Christians. From the time of Mr. Neesima's visit to Annaka dates the entrance of Christianity into the heart of Japan, and that was the beginning of the fearless preaching of the Gospel in the interior. The same count who gave to the governor the reply mentioned above, himself told Mr. Neesima of this fact a short time afterward.
After a few weeks spent with his friends in Annaka, preaching the Gospel, Mr. Neesima came on to Kobe and Osaka to confer in regard to the establishment of the Christian college.
A short time before Mr. Neesima's return, our mission received a letter from Secretary Clark, telling us that $5000 were waiting to found a collegiate and theological training school to train Christian workers for Japan. We had not yet begun to think of such a school, or, at least, we felt that it was far in the future; our first two churches had been organized that year,. one in Kobe with eleven members, and one in Osaka with seven members; a few young men were found ready to listen to the truth, also, in Sanda, twenty miles from Kobe, but the villages about Kobe and between Kobe and Osaka were so much opposed to Christianity that it was impossible to even teach a few men in a hotel or tea-house.
Mr. Neesima tried for several months to secure permission from the governor of the Osaka-Fu to establish the college in that city; he saw the governor many times and urged his plan; the governor told him he would approve the establishment of the school there, but that no missionary should teach in it, so Mr. Neesima reluctantly gave up hope in Osaka, and then our thoughts were turned to Kyoto; but Kyoto was an interior c!ty where foreigners had never been allowed to reside; it had been the centre of Buddhism and Shintoism in Japan for a thousand years, and, moreover, was away from the centres of work which our mission had opened.
The mission, however, gave a reluctant consent to the location of the school in Kyoto, if permission could be secured, and in the summer of 1875 Mr. Neesima went to Kyoto to see what could be done. The Lord had prepared the way before him j the city had been opened for one hundred days during the three previous years while the exhibition was held there, and Rev. O. H. Gulick had spent three months in the city during the summer of 1872, and had made the acquaintance of Mr. Yamamoto Kakuma, a blind man who was then a private counsellor to the Kyoto-Fu. Others of our mission had met him during the next two summers, and he had become greatly interested in Christianity. When Mr. Neesima presented his plan for the establishment of a Christian college in Kyoto to Mr. Yamam0to, he was ready to give it his warm approval from the first, and he used his strong influence with the governor ·of the Kyoto-Fu in the same direction, so that the governor also gave his approval to the scheme.
The writer made a hasty visit to Kyoto in June of 1875, and with Mr. Neesima, looked at a lot of land containing five and one half neres,
REV. JOSEPH HARDY NEESIMA, LL.D
situated in the northern part of the city, jllst above the old palace grounds, and with a large temple grove of one hundred acres on the north side of it. This land was the former site of the palace of the Satsuma Daimio, the last resident being Shimadzu Saburo. It was now in the possession of the blind Yamamoto, and he gladly sold it to us for the school for the sum of $550. Thus the site for the school was secured. What should be its aame ?
Many names were thought of, but finally the name "Doshisha" wall decided upon; t.his means one endeavor or one purpose company. Mr. Neesima was in Kyoto all the summer of that year except during 8 hnrried. visit to Tokyo. Although the approval of the local government had been secured for the location of the school in Kyoto, the approval of the central government was necessary. A building must also be secured for the school, and permission for a family to reside in Kyoto, and for a missionary to teach in the school. Mr. Neesima was busy with all these plans, and his heart was stirred also to find some way by which the Gospel could be freely taught in the school and in the city and all over the empire.
– There is not room here to speak at length of the wonderful training of the "Kuma~oto Band," in the heart of Kiushu. where Captain L. L. Janes taught an English school from 1871-76, from which a band of over thirty young men took a decided stand for Christ which broke up that school; but they came to the Doshisha at the beginning of its second year, and brought new life and spirit into it, and among them were a class of fifteen who studied theology in the Doshisha and have been among the most efficient workers for Christ in Japan, laying Christian foundations as pastors and teachers.
We cannot speak at length of the five long ycars of trial and difficulty which followed the opening of the school; it seemed again and again as if its very existence hung in the balance, but Mr. Neesima's faith never wavered; though nothing was left" but heaven and prayer," he held on to God.
The strain of these years, however. told upon him and laid the foundation of that heart trouble which later ended his life.
In the spring of 1883 Mr. Neesima began to think and plan actively to enlist interest among Japanese friends in the establishment of a university, or in the broadening out of the Doshisha into a Christian university, and a year later he issued the first printed appeal for it. In the spring. of 1884, by the advice of physicians, he left Japan to go to the United States by way of Europe, and it was in Switzerland that he had the first attack of heart disease which came near terminating his life then. From this time till the end came he had to work carefully and avoid as much as possible all excitement. He spent nearly a year in the United States, and his mind was wholly absorbed in plans for his Christian university and for broadening the evangelistic efforts in Japan.
A STORY OF THE MARVELS OF MISSIONS
At the close of a letter urging a broadening of the work, he says: " I cannot write such a letter as this without shedding many tears. My heart is constantly burning like a volcanic fire for my dearly beloved Japan.
Pray for me that I may rest in the Lord." Before leaving the United States 'he wrote another strong appeal for the university. On his return to Japan in the autumn of 1885, although still suffering, he began to work quietly for the university, and in the summer of 1888, at a dinner given one evening by Count Inouye to men of rank and wealth, over $31,000 were subscribed.
The autumn of 1889 found Mr. Neesima far from well, but his intense desire to work for the university led him to go to Tokyo and vicinity, where he worked privately for his plan and received many promises of aid.
A severe cold, however, coming upon him in his extreme weakness brought on the disease which ended his life at Oiso, on the coast west of Yokohama, January 23d, 1890. With the words, " Peace, joy, heaven" on his lips he fell asleep. When the body reached Kyoto it was nearly midnight, but abollt one thousand persons were at the depot to receive it, including nearly the whole of the teachers and six hundred scholars of the Doshisha.
The latter carried the body two and one half miles to Mr. Neesima's home.
No private citizen has ever died in Japan whose loss was 80 widely and deeply felt as that of Mr. Neesima.
He lived to see the foundation of the university laid. The Lord moved Mr. Harris, of New London, Conn., to give $100,000 to endow the Department of Science, and with the endowment of about $60,000 secured in Japan, the Department of Jurisprudence has been opened this fall. The Department of Theology numbers over eighty members, and the College Department about two hundred and forty, and the preparatory one hundred and forty-over five hundred young men in all. There is also cOl;mected with the Doshisha a girls' school of about one hundred members, and a training school for nurses with twenty-five students. Nearly thirty build- ings have been erected for these schools. Nearly one hundred men are now preaching the Gospel in Japan, who were educated in the Doshisha, and many others are engaged as Christian teachers, editors, etc, Mr. Neesima's meekness was remarkable. When he was informed that his Alma Mater had conferred upon him the degree of LL.D., he wrote to a member of the mission that he was not worthy of it and asked what he should do with it ? '
It is difficult to analyze the great secret of his po}Ver and su'ccess, but we may mention a few point!l.
1. Loyalty to duty. From the day he read of the Creator in the Bible history in Chinese to the day of his death his loyalty to duty shines out.
As soon as he gained an idea of God he felt his obligation to Him and he began to discharge it, and as the months and years went on and his vision of duty broadened, hi~ sense of obligation broadened with it, and efforts to discharge that obligation kept pace with his enlarging vision. No
1892.J REV. JOSEPH HARDY NEESIMA, LL.D
matter what were the circumstances, and no matter how great the loss, he was always loyal to the higher duty. Take the example of his travels in Europe with the embassy; he would stop off and spend the Sabbath alone.
2. He took a great aim and one which was in harmony with God's great aim. He did not take a low aim, he did not take a selfish one j he took for his aim the establishment of a great Christian university for the sake of lifting up, so far as he could through that, his whole nation toward God and a Christian civilization. His great aim was not education for its own sake, but for Christ's sake and as a help to lead the millions of Japan to Christ and eternal life. The results of that school are already changing the history of the empire. .
3. He had a holy, absorbing ambition to realize his great aim. This ambition led him to forget himself and devote his whole being and all his powers to secure the great aim of his life. He counted not his life dear to him if he could accomplish his great object. When, a few years before he died, the question was raised of his going to the United States a third time to try and secure money for the endowment of the university, and his physicians told him it would be almost certain death for him to go, he replied that that would make no difference with him, if he felt that by going he could lIecure the'money. His going to Tokyo and working during the last months of his life were done in a similar spirit. He wanted to die in the harness, and he did.
4. He committed himself and his great plan and all its details to God, with a firm faith that God would give him success. He never seemed to waver even in the darkest days. In the last English letter which he wrote this faith shines out. After speaking of the gift of $100,000 for the scientific school, just as Professor Shimomura was ready to return to his work in the school, he says: "Is it not wonderful that when he was about ready to come home the way to make himself useful was opened before him. Oh, dear friend, I am a strong believer in the most wonderful dealings of Providence with those whoever believe in God. As for me, I am a man of delicate health and am not permitted to do much now. However, He has employed this poor and helpless instrumentality to bless others in His behalf." And then in that letter he tells of his" day-dream to found a Christian college," and how he received no human encouragement, but he says: "However, I was not discouraged at all. I kept it within myself and prayed over it." Then the night before he made his appeal for money at Rutland he could not sleep. and says: "I was then like that poor Jacob, wrestling with God in my prayers." Then, later, when he took up the larger work of founding a university, he says, in the same letter: "The matter seemed to myself and also to my friends that I am hoping for something altogether beyond a hope. However, I had a strong conviction that God will help us to found it in His name's sake ;"
A STORY OF THE MARVELS OF MISSIONS
and again, " I have a full hope that my vague day-dream for a Christian university will sooner or later be realized, and in some future we shall find occasion to give thanks to Him who has led us and blessed us beyond our expectation. "
5. His heart was greatly interested in direct mission work. Deeper than all other thoughts, more important than all other plans, was the thought and the planning to bring the millions of Japan to Christ. This was fundamental to his whole plan for a Christian college and university. When compelled to rest in the United States, or in lbo, or in Oiso during the last weeks of his life, he never could rest from thinking, planning, writing, and praying over the great problem of the speedy evangelization of Japan.
When the writer visited him for an hour in lbo, where he rested in great weakness during the summer of 1888, he was no sooner seated than Dr. Neesima said, "l have something I want to show you," and he went to the adjoining room and brought out a map of the province of J oshu, and on it he had marked every place where there was a church, every place where the Gospel was regularly preached, and other places for which he was praying and planning to secure evangelists.
He was always doing personal work also. Before he had been in America two years he was asked to sit a few minutes with an old lady who was seventy-two years old, not a Christian, and on her death-bed. While sitting there alone with her he so spoke to her of Christ that she gave herself to the Saviour. So, in the shoe factory at North Adams, or at Green River, Wyoming, when he stopped off to spend the Sabbath, he talked with the Chinamen, writing his words of Christ to try to lead them. When in Berlin among the eighty Japanese students, he led one to earnestly study the Bible with him. Once when travelling near Tokyo, he talked so earnestly to the mall who pulled him in his jinrikisha, that this coolie went home and spoke of the truth to his friends, and they called an evangelist, and Mr. Neesima helped to support him until his death, and now there is a flourishing church there.
Those who would read this wonderful story more fully would do well to get Dr. Neesima's Life, written by the author of the foregoing article. It is printed at Tokyo, by Z. P. Maraya & Co., and can be ordered also at Shanghai and Singapore. I believe there is also an American edition, though I have not seen it. Few books of a biographical nature have ever fallen under my eyes which have so interested and delighted me. The riches of missionary literature more and more increase. No man or womall can read this book without a positive addition to heart-wealth.-EDITOR.
Divisions of'
HOz,l/ses (I) Seoul.. ……".Kyeng -Key _ _ _……_……_ _ _ 'S6. 600 ……._ .. Wkang-Ra. 138,000 ………… Choung- Chen.g.._ …_…~.._ … _.~…..244. 080 Tot:u-i .. 568. 680 (2) Fusan_= .. Kyeng-Sang _+21.500 _ _.C'h-ul–La-_~_ ……….__……………_Z90, .556 Tot at .. ",Z"056 (3) on.esa~..~~::::;.IJf::!!::::~…………………………..~~Ji,1liPo Toea/. _196.200 (4<) Wee.choo…..,pye't.-.§f-An._………………….. ……….. 293, ~OO
STRATEGIC POINTS IN KOREA
STRATEGIC POINTS IN KOREA. (lfith Map.) BY REV. JAMES G. GALE, SEOUL, KOREA.
I have divided Korea into fbur districts, according to the points already partially occupied. Whatever the changes of the future may be, these four -Seoul, Fusan, Onesan, and Weechoo-will remain the basis of missionary work. and from these even at this early day we are safe in drawing plans.
Seoul, the centre of the kingdom, is also the centre of the first section. With its official record of 568,680 houses it ranks second in populatio~. It is four days' journey from Hachoo, the capital of Whang Ha, and also four days from Kong Choo, the capital of Choung-Cheng. The 'roads through each of these, though nothing to boast of, are the hest in the kingdom. We may say that it is within five days of any part of the district.
The climate of the capital, given to extremes somewhat. more than the seaports, is yet suitable in every way to a western constitution. During the two summer months the neighboring mountains are sufficient for any number of people who may wish to escape the heat and carryon their work there.
The natives of the capital have more !!elfish ambition than those of the country, which makes them a harder class to rllach. Their worship of " rank" excludes all other thoughts of time and eternity, while their limp, aimless lives forbid expectation of vigor in either the natural or spiritual world. Korea as a nation is asphyxiated with tobacco smoke, ha!! been inactive for centuries, is dead, long sinee dead, and Seoul the deadest and most putrid of it all. The nation as a whole is thus; viewed individually the people have hearts like our own, they know of joy and pain, of hope and fear, are kind and lovable, poor, lost mortals who need the prayers and sympathies of everyone of us !
Seoul is the best place to learn the language. Those in the country or open ports should have Seoul men as teachers if they would escape provincialisms.
The Seoul district has been the centre of mission work now for seven years. The people are beginning to know the name Yesow (Jesus), and to recover somewhat from their first shock in seeing mortal man in any but white habiliments. There are three other points in the district where foreigners may, perhaps, expect to live in future-Hachoo, Kong Choo, and Song-to.
Fusan is the sad-looking settlement at the far south of Kyeng Sang. Notwithstanding its uninviting prospect, it is the gateway to the two largest provinces, Kyeng Sang and Chulla. The .Tapanese have a town here of some three thousand inhabitants. A grove or two of pines somewhat relieves the barrenness of it all. To this shipping port come wayfarers from all parts of the south, through whom the missionaries hope to reach many of the inland cities. The language here is explosive in sound and unpleasant to the ear. The people are less ambitious and infinitely more stolid than those of the capital. They are an ignorant, tough-hided race, and the most difficult to approach of all the " hermits."
The climate is pleasant, being tempered by the sea. Fruits grow in abundance, while the sea swarms with fish. The air is purer than in Seoul, and better suited to a delicate constitution. I say this notwithstanding the fact that on the hill overlooking the harbor there are two missionary graves, of Mr. Davies and Mrs. Mackay, both from Australia. There are some five or six missionaries already settled here from Canada, United States, and Australia, with whom rests the problem of these southern millions.
Onesan is a port on the east coast. It is touched by all ships bound for Russia, and being exposed thus to the open sea, the climate is not unlike the northwest. Opening from it is the emallf'st district of the four. Though smaller in numb~IR, it stretches over a wide territory away to the Siberian frontier and the land of the sacred mountains. The capital of Ham Kyeng is three days from Onesan, through a beautifully cultivated country. This district is drawing numbers of people from Pyeng-An, which has been losing its trading class since the opening of the ports. The dwellers in the ports are in intelligence the lowest of the low. Our hopes are not centred so much in them as in the quiet country people inland. Onesan is yet untouched by the missionaries. Roman Catholics have been here for a few years and have a great following, so the natives say. The language is colored with provincialisms, which neither add to its ease or beauty of expression. The people of this northern district are more vigorous and, as ,far 8S I have seen them, have more character than those of the south.
Weechoo is the old gateway to China. Before the opening of the ports it was the first eity of the north for life and commerce, but it has fallen away, and but few traces remain of its old· time vigor. Its public buildings in ruins, its walls crumbEng, its citizens idle, are symptoms of the same disease that we find through all the rest of Korea. Its peopllhave heard the Gospel for some fifteen years through the new Chang missionaries, and from that number come the best helpers that we have. One is delighted to find, away in that lonely, far-off city, so many who know of. a Saviour as well as of sin. Even though nothing can be hoped for Weechoo from a commercial point of view, we yet expect great thingf from its Christians. Though not an open port, it is visited by itinerating missionaries many times a year.
In all Korea there are 1,770,336 houses. Some estimatll the average inmates to a home at ten, which would make the population over seventeen millions and a half. It srems to me that seven would be a high Ilnough average, bringing the population to about the estimate of Von Moellendorff, the first foreign adviser of the king.
FOREIGN MISSIONS ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO. 66J
FOREIGN MISSIONS ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO.
BY REV. EDWARD STORROW, BRIGHTON, ENG.
The era of modern missions dates from 1792. Since then the Bapti8t Missionary Society was formed, followed in 1795 by the London Missionary Society, in 1799 the Church Missionary and Religious Tract Societies, in 1804 the British and Foreign Bible Society, these being the precursors of the more than two hundred societies which now represent the Protestant missionary force for the conversion of all heathendom to the Christian faith.
It will interest many to sketch the conditions of the missionary problem at the commencement of this era, when the society first named was formed, and Carey and Dr. Thomas had been accepted as its pi(lneer missionaries.
But the missionary idea did not originate with the last decade of last century, though then it assumed a more definite and combined form. For almost two centuries it had shown itself here and there in personal desires and efforts, or on the part of small groups of influential individuals, or in vague connection with schemes of conquest and colonization.
It was, therefore, unsystematic, intermittent, and unproductive; much good seed was sown, but the grain grown was neither plentiful nor strong, and was subject therefore to deterioration and even destruction under ad"erse circumstances. Into the history of these early efforts I cannot enter. The purpose of this article is rather to describe how the missionary enterprise stood in 17g2 in agency, methods, and results. There were then but four missionary societies, all very restricted in their resources and spheres, for their aggregate annual income did not reach £12,000. The oldest, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, confined its efforts almost entirely to the colonists and few aborigines in the British possessions. The Danish Society labored solely in South India.
The Moravian Society confined its operations almost exclusively to the scattered and uninfluential races of heathendom, and the Baptist Missionary Society was formed on October 22d, 1792, but with no missionaries in the field until the following year.
The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel had 38 missionaries thus located: Newfoundland, 4; Nova Scotia, 14; New Brunswick, 7; Canada, 6; Cape Breton, 1 ; the Bahamas, 4, and on the Gold Coast, Africa, 1. These were assisted by about an equal number of schoolmasters.
Their joint duties were to instruct the colonists and the Indian aborigines, but apparently the former received the greater part of their attention.
The Moravians counted 137 missionaries, distributed as follows, though of this number 25 were wives and 4 widows of missionaries : St. Thomas, St. Croix, and St. Jans, 29; Antigua, 11; St. Kits, 5; Jamaica, 6; Barbadoes, 4; South America, 18; Greenland, 15; Labrador, 25; Canada, 6 ; Cape of Good Hope, 3 ; Tranquibar, 15. A small Morayian mission established in 1765 on the Volga, near Astrakan, for the conver- !;ion of the Calmuc Tartars, was abandoned at this time. Also Stocker then died, after a most romantic and perilious career, extending over forty years, commencing with an attempt to settle as a medical missionary in Persi/!, then in Abyssinia, and finally in Egypt. Here, too, from 1769 for almost twenty years another remarkable Moravian, John Antes, labored, seeking to find a sphere in Upper Egypt and then among the Copts in the lower Nile Valley.
Two more groups of laborers demand notice. The first Protestant mission in India commenced at Tranquibar, in the first decade of the century, had extended to some important centres before its close j but in 1792 there were but twelve missionariel in all India-some of them very old veterans-aU Daues and Germans, though mainly sustained by English money through the Christian Knowledge and Propagation Society. Schwartz had been in India forty-two years, and was at Tangore with a very young colleague, J. C. Kolhoff. Konig and John had been at Tranquibsr for more than a quarter of a century, and had now some younger colleagues. Gericki was at Madras, and J anniske at Tangore. The only missionary away from the south was Kierwander, who went to Cuddalore in 1740 and to Calcutta in 1758, where after a romantic life, most varied labors, and not a little success, he died in 1794.
The Dutch with much earnestness, but no great judgment, attempted to evangelize theIr heathen subjects. In Ceylon, Java, and some adjoining islands they placed several ministers, a part of whose duty it was to see to the education of the young and the Christianization of the people generally. A few were devout men with spiritual instincts, but the majority were mere officials and formalists, who appealed only to the worldly side of human nature, and were content with the merest profession of religion based on the most mercenary motives. The result was a huge, ignominious, and most disgraceful failure. Even as early as 1722 the native. Christian population of Ceylon was officially declared to be 424,400, but in 1813, eigllteen years after the Engli8h had swept away the temptations to hypocrisy, the number had fallen to 146,000, and this in subsequent years was yet further reduced.
Two spheres in America require some notice. The work 80 nobly begun and 80 unselfishly prosecuted at various places among the Indians, by Eliot, Jonathan Edwards, Brainard, and the Mayhews, after a season of promise now languished through want of suitable missionaries. In the West Indies there were more laborers, more zeal, and more success. This was mainly owing to the indomitable energy and wise influence of Dr. Coke.
In 1786, in company with three other preachers, he went to America, and in Antigua, St. Vincent, Jamaica, and other i~lands either breathfd new life into efforts struggling with difficultie~ or gathered llew,congregatians in which were the elements of vigorou~ life, Thus the total number who in 1792 could in the widest sense be called missionaries to the heathen was less than one hundred and ninety, and of these more than half gave but a part of their attention, in several instances but a very small part of their time to direct missionary effort.
Nor were they or their predecessors very successful in consolidating such success as they had or in supplementing their own by native agency. There were about forty thousand converts in South India, but excluding those in the Dutch possessions, who were Christian only in name but Buddhists in reality, there were nO,t six thousand converts elsewhere. Nowhere was there a strong, intelligent, self-supporting native Christian church with its ordained native ministers. The decline, indeed, of some missions toward the close of last century and the little progress made far into this was largely owing either to the defective quality of the converts generally or to the reluctance of the miRsionaries to train for service the most promising of them. Both causes, I think, were operative. However it was, the native laborers were singularly few and inefficient. A few were school-teachers, but there does not appear to have been an aggregate of even fifty native evangelists, and of those not four who had received ministerial rank and recognition.
What a contrast between] 792 and 1892 !-a contrast which proves the splendid progress of the milSsional'Y enterprise, and which should inspire all its friends with elation and confidence.
In 1792 not 190 missionaries-four only in all Africa, 12 only in India, but not one in China, or Japan, or Burmah, or all Central and Western Asia, with not 50,000 reliable converts around them or 50 of these converts to give them efficient aid. Now there are 3000 ordained missionaries, with 2500 lay and lady coadjutors, with no fewer than 30,000 native evangelists, one sixth of them ordained and for the most pal't well tried and trained. Around them have been gathered a nati.ve Christian population of three millions, far in advance of their heathen neighbors in intelligence, morals, and bDterprise.
Into every non-Christian country with but three exceptions the missionaries have entered and converts have been made, in some cases numbering their thousands, their tens of thousands, and even their hundreds of thousands, and what is equally significant and important, the Bible and its conceptions of God, of a Saviour, of a future life, and of morals is rapidly Rpreading everywhere. During the past one hundred years Christianity has spread more widely and won more triumphs than in any three centuries during the previous fifteen hundred years. These are facts which make it absurd to speak of missions as a failure.
The philanthropic Mr. Quarrier, carrying on Christian work in the worst part' of Glasgow, has just received $10,000 for building an orphanage, from unknown friends.
OUR INDEBTEDNESS TO CHRIST FOR TEMPORAL BLESSINGS
OUR INDEBTEDNESS TO CHRIST FOR TEMPORAL BLESS- INGS.-PART I.
BY REV. T. LAURIE, PROVIDENCE, R. I.
The truth that there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby they must be saved, constrains us to preach Christ to the race. Comparatively few, however, are aware that we are equally dc- pendent on Him for temporal blessings, and that this also is an urgent motive for preaching the Gospel to every creature, gratitude for our own blessings leading us to impart both them and salvation to others.
When the writer was a resident in Turkey, one of the strongest impres- sions made upon him by daily occurrences was this of our great indebtedness to Christ for every good thing in the life that now is as well as in the life to come, and he often wished that he could let Christians at home look through his eyes, if only for a few days, for he felt sure that in that case the love of Christ would constrain them to labor for the conversion of the world as they had never done before. More than forty years have passed since then, but the impression of those days has never been effaced, and he feels that he cannot more effectually deepen interest in the missionary work than by recounting some of the facts that moved him then.
The impression was made by no one event or line of things, but it was the result of many things in all departments of daily life. Others, who . have toiled in different portions of the one field, may contribute other facts i but, however they may differ in detail, all corroborate the one truth that everything which makes this life desirable we owe to Christ.
No doubt, isolated facts might be discovered at home corresponding to those observed abroad, but so exceptional that, instead of representing the general condition of things, they are in sharp contrast to that condition, whereas that which makes missionary facts so terrible is that they truth- fully describe the ordinary state of affairs.
There is no more reliable measure of the material condition of a com- munity than the houses of the common people. I say the common people, for the magnificent castles of the nobility may only serve to make-more conspicuous the wretched abodes of the poor.
Here in New England the traveller is struck by the neatness of its homes. In the villages hardly two houses are alike. Each reveals both the taste and the resources of its owner. Even the buildings erected for the operatives in our factories are pleasant cottages lining well-paved· streets in picturesque valleys; or they are goodly brick blocks, as in Lowell or Lawrence, Holyoke or Lonsdale.
In Turkey we find an entirely different state of things. True, different regions have different styles of building, and in Mt. Lebanon and some other places they are often well built and of good appearance, but this is exceptional. Generally in the interior the variety is only a variety in poverty and discomfort. In some villages a stranger is riding over the ~oofs of the houses without being aware of it, for they are under the surface.
Sometimes on steep hill-sides the flat earthen roof of one house forms the front yard of the next above. Often windowless wall!! are the only things visible to a stranger. AmOl;g the mOllntains of America the family often occupies a raised comer in a stable or a dark cabin opening out of the stable for the sake of warmth j add to this tlmt the whole is either partially or entirely underground, the light struggling down through the smoke that escapes from a hole in the earthen roof. The writer hall wakened in such a stable-home, to find a cow chewing her cud over his head or a horse munching barley and straw at his side. Often has he spent the night in a hut built of loose stones, so low that in moving about one must take good care not to hit some twig projecting from underneath the roof, and so start I:ltreams of dry earth from a dozen apertures. In a rain the stream of earth becomes mud.
In Berwer he lodged in a Nestorian house, the roughness of whose mud floor reminded him of the surface of a New England barn-yard when a frost follows a January thaw. Lying in one corner, with nothing under him but a Turkish rug, he envied the calf in the adjoining corner that lay on some soft, green grass. Half way between a door opened into another apartment_ I say opened, for there was nothing to close it, only some round sticks were so arranged as to shut in a cow that stood up to her ankles in a semi-liquid mass, whose material it is not necessary to specify. Every sound from my four-footed room-mate called forth a maternal response, and a restless movement hither and yon that stirred up the odorous mire. As the night was cold, I had asked the landlord before retiring if he could not in some way close the outer doorway, and in reply he unearthed a rough door from the floor of the inner apartment and, set it up, with barely the semblance of a scraping. The picture may perhaps provoke a laugh, but it was no laughing matter for a family to live in such a place day in and day out through all the year, and for children to be educated in such a school.house for the duties of future life j and the question is, Could such a home exist in a community leavened by the Gospel ~ If there is anything at all approaching to it in our land, it must either be in some corner where the Gospel was never known, or where men have broken away from it and are on their way back to heathenism.
In the swamp at Scanderoon I looked into sereTal native houses, and saw that the damp, black surface of the soil formed the floor, enclosed by a wall of reeds or sticks not much larger. What must be the life spent in such a home-in a place which is the headquarters of fever and ague !
True, I found in some cities palatial residences whose courts are paved with marble varied with beds of flowers and shrubbery, while inside of lofty halls the gilded stars of the ceiling look down on soft Persian carpets and divans covered with brilliant satin j massive mirrors reflect the elegant arabesques on the walls, and large Arabic inscriptioM, with their bright colors and graceful curves, extend round the room; but the question is, How are the people lodged who support these luxuries of the nobility q Amadia represents an ancient city. Its position on the broad top of a steep, rocky hill is just the place that would have been selected for a city in ancient times. Then the deep road excavated up through the rock at the gate, and the wells sunk for more than one hJlndred feet in that same rock, are not the work of modern times. The spacious ruined halls in the serai are also a relic of former glory; but how shall I describe the houses of the people to American readers so that the account shall be received as credible and at the same time be truthful f We read of the heathen so called in our own cities, but nothing that I ever saw or read concerning such things at home can compare with Amadia.
The house of one of the leading men I mistook ~t first for an abode of poverty, but the homes of the common people seemed more like dens of wild beasts. The only door in some cases was a hole in the wall half choked with rubbish, down which we scrambled as into a dungeon. When the e}:e became accustomed to the gloom, in one we saw only a cradle and an earthen jar, and in another two jars and a heap of rags. The clothing of the inmates hardly served the purposes of decency, much less of warmth, so that we could understand how women on the plain of the moosh to the north hid themselves on the approach of visitors, and did not come forth from their hiding-places till after they had gone. How these found shelter from the cold either by day or by night we could not see. Fifteen years before the population had been two thousand houses; now it was only two hundred and twenty.
The floor of the selamlik (reception-room) of the Mutsellim was coated with mud, the divan was in tatters, and with a dozen guns, swords, and pistols constituted its only furniture.
An Armenian showed the wounds made by the fetters in prison, where 3000 piasters were extorted as the price of his ransom. It explained the misery around us to see seven huudred soldiers over against those two hundred and twenty houses of peaeeful citizens. These force the people to toil not only without pay, but without giving them a morsel of food to sustain them under tasks sometimes imposed for days. While we were there several Nestorians were forced, like beasts of burden, to carry wood for the troops up the steep hill-side. One applied for medicine for an eye destroyed by a blow from the soldiers. The priest and even the women were compellcd to do the same. One shudders to think of other wrongs perpetrated on defenecless women for which there was no redress. Many. of the people had died of starvation, and-something very unusual in Turkey, where men expect wrong and suffering as their alloted fate-others had committed suicide. Is it strange if amid such scenes the writer felt that Christians at home did not appreeiat~ how much they owe to Christ for tpmporal blessings ~ But this is only one of many things, all teaching the same lesson. In another number the subject will be continued.
PRESENT OUTLOO;;: IN JAPAN
PRESENT OUTLOOK IN JAPAN.
The two years from July, 1888, to June, 1890, were years of deep solicitude in Christian work in Japan. The year 1888 was the climax of Christian effort, and results that year marked the largest increase of any year in the history of Protestant missions in Japan. Since 1888 the progress has not been so rapid-discouragement and difficulties have arisen. The cause of this decline-rather standstiiI-in Christian work was twofold. The anti-foreign feeling that arose on the failure of the treaty-revision negotiations with foreign powers, and the presence and teachings of so-called Liberal Christianity (the Unitarians of America and the Hationalists of Germany). Without discussing the working of the Unitarians in Japan the past three years, it can now be safely affirmeu that they have already had their day, and already the tide is turning in favor of evangelical Christianity. Even from the standpoint of Japanese Christians, judging from expressions heard frequently among them, the Unitarian movement has oeen " weighed in the balance and found wanting." Its teachings do not satisfy the wants of the human heart. While some have wandered away from the faith-a few, perhaps, hopelessly lost-it is a matter of devout thanksgiving that the many are stronger in their allegiance to Christ to-day than when the Unitarians first set foot on the soil of Japan. They may not be as demonstrative or emotional, but they are deeply in earnest and are planning for larger work and more aggressive movements. A series of meetings was held in the city of Tokyo, continuing for five months-meetings designed to arouse the dormant energies of the Church, and awaken deeper interest in the truths of Christianity among the people. A committee of eight-four foreign missionaries and four JapaneJe preacherR-had this matter in hand. One day was set apart as a day for special prayer to God, that He would pour out His Spirit upon the churches and people, and make these meetings a great blessing to all. On this committee are two Presbyterians, two Congregationalist.s, one Episcopalian, aud three Methodists. Weare looking and praying for great results.
Since the spring of this year the work of Christian missions in Japan has greatly improved. I have specially noticed this in my fall trips in the country, as well as my late visits to our Tokyo churches. Never did the country work look more hopeful and encouraging. The Tokyo congregations are not so large as they were several years ago-notably in 1888yet the attendance is good and gradually improving.
On Saturday, December 11th, at the invitation of the pastor of our Shirakawa Methodist church (one hundred and twelve miles north of Tokyo), I left the city and spent five days in Shirakawa and vicinity. I never had a more encouraging trip into the interior. For five days I was preaching, holding religious conversations, and explaining the great truths of Christianity day and night. I delivered six addresses or sermons, besides holding a large inquiry meeting. At one place the crowd that filled the theatre numbered eight hutldred. At two of the other places about five hundred each. These services usually lasted from seven to ten o'clock in the evening, averag-ing three hours, The inquiry meeting held on the night of December 8th, lasting from six to ten o'clock, was the most interesting of all. There were about sixty persons pre~ent, gathered in the hotel where I put up. When they first spoke of an inquiry meeting, I thought a few of the friends and neighbors would assemble, and we would have a kind of Bible class; but to my great surprise they went into the very dp-pths of Christian doctrine. They asked all sorts of questions. I was on the" witness stand" for over four hours answering their questions and trying to make them plain with suitable explanation and illustration.
The following are the main questions they asked, mostly at the mouth of two of the company (one a Christian). who actcd as its mouthpiece. These two were well acquainted with the doubts and difficulties existing in the minds of those present.
THE QUESTION DRAWER.
1. What induces the Christians of the West to expend so much money annually, and the missionaries to lIeparate themselves from their kindred and native land, and labor on from year to year, for the spreading of their religion in foreign lands ~ 2. Will you give us a short account of the life of Christ ~ 3. You say Christ was" conceived of the Holy Ghost and born of the Virgin Mary"-that is, that He had no human father; will you explain this-it is difficult of comprehension. 4. What proof have you that Christ -was a Divine being ~-that is, that He was the Son of God 1 Doubtless, He was a superior being (personage), the greatest of the world's great men j but, how He could be the Son of God is most difficult to understand. 5. What proof have you that the Bible is inspired of God ~ 6. What relation does the atonement of Christ have to mankind 1 7. Why cannot men be virtuous and be saved without trusting III Christ 1 8. What becomes of those who die without the knowledge of Christ- some of whom, at least, are trying to lead virtuous lives ~ 9. Suppose a man. after studying Christianity, comes to the conclu- sion that Buddhism is better, what have you to say of such an one 1 10. How can one become perfectly satisfied in religious matters, and find true peace to his soul 1 11. What explanation can you give of humiln suffering ~ 12. Why should Christ have suffered, as the Bible declares He did 1 What need was there for ~uch suffering ~ 13. Why is it that so many die while young-before they reach maturity and the full development of their powers? 14. Why are the rewards and punishments so unevenly distributed in this life -the wicked seeming to flourish more than the righteous 1 15. Are there degrees of rewards and punishments in the future world ~ 16. What is the origin of evil-did not God create evil ~ 17. Does God directly or indirectly inflict punishment on a lost soul, or is punishment the inevitable result of the violation of law ~ 18. Why did not God make man so as to be incapable of sinning, and thus have avoided all the Ulisel'Y, woe, and suffering in the world?- TVorld- Wide Missions.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF CO-OPERA'l'ION
THE DEVELOPMENT OF CO-OPERATION.
BY W. A. FARNSWORTH, CESAREA.
Our great secretary, the late Dr. Anderson, is credited with a remark to this effect: "W~ have yet much to learn as to the best methods of carrying on missions." This is an acknowledgment of the truth of the adage, "Practice makes perfect." The Reformed churches look back scarcely more than one hundred years to find their first systematic efforts for the enlightenment of those who "sit in darkness." It would be strange, indeed, had not serious mistakes been made. The work was both new and very difficult. The workers must have been very dull pupils had they not learned much from their ample experience. We should not, however, credit to experience that which is simply development. System- atic co-operation is a natural result of healthy growth. Co-operation is not new. Systematic and efficient co-operation is new. From the time when the first evangelical church was organized in Turkey and the first pastor ordained there was a kind of co-operation.Where, as was the case several years in Cesarea, there was but one missionary, it was perfectly natural and easy for him to co-operate with the pastor, and they consulted freely and fully.
When other missionaries came that kind of co-operation was no longer practicable. It could not fail to cause friction in the circle of missionaries.
As a natural result the work was carried on too much as if it was, the work of the missionaries. There was this in favor of its being conducted thus -viz., the missionaries alone were and still are responsible to the Board.
As time went on and the work enlarged a band of fellow-worker~ was raised up-pastors, preachers, teachers-many of whom were, in some respects at least, the peers of the missionaries. These could not fail to see that in many important matters pertaining to our common work they were apparently quite ignored. Jealousies and heart-burnings arose. Some of the missionaries, if not all, saw that there must be a readjustment of our ways of working. Just how to make it was a serious question. The trouble became acute, and showed itself unmistakably at the meeting of the Board in Portland in 1882. The result was the visits of the two com- mittees in 1883, tho one representing the Board and the other the Pruden- tial Committee. Representatives of the four Turkey missions met them in convention at Constantinople. Eight topics are given as occupying the attention of the convention (see Missionary Herald, 1883, p. 289), but the one subject of prime importance was the third: "The best methods of co-operation between missionaries and native pastors and churches."
In this meeting it was fonnd that, from nearly all quarters, there was an earnest call for some formal and efficient co-operation. On this subject the report presented at the next annual meeting of the Board (Herald, 1883, p. 435) said: "It was left to the conference to formulate such general principles as should secure the greatest harmony of action, without trenching on the privilege of the different stations to exercise their best judgment in their own field." All the missionarie8 of the Cesarea station were present at this conference. Immediately on their return they adopted the following: "Desiring to give practical effect to the suggestions made in the fourth resolution adopted at the Jate conference" (Herald, 1883, p. 291), "resolved that all matters of business relating to the edncational and evangelistic work of the station shall be decided, after full and free discussion, by the approval of a mixed conference con8isting of the missionaries of the station and such pastors and licensed preachers as may be present at IIny regular meeting of said conference." A second resolution guarded the station llgainst IIny action that might seem to contravene any rule of the Board. As Jet there has been no occasion to even allude to that resolution. At the third meeting of this mixed conference this was adopted: "At any regular meeting of this conference two missionaries and two other regular members shall be considered a quorum for the transaction of business." From that time to the present, almost nine years, our efficient working force has been this couference. In the first nine months it held eighteen formal meetings. Fre· quently it meets once a week, and on an average once in about two or three weeks. Usually there are present three missionaries, two native pastors, and three or four preachers. This is our 8tation or mixed conference. Besides this we have a special meeting once a year, to which all the pastors and preachers in all the field are specially invited. At this general conference reports are presented from each of the thirty-eight congregations, the needs of each are considered, and a schedule of estimates, subject to revision by the station (but never yet altered), is prepared. It has just closed its ninth annual session, and a most delightful and encouraging meeting it was. Nearly every station in the four Turkey missions has now adopted some form of systematic and efficient co-operation. As was anticipated in the conference of 1883, plans differ according to the varying conditions of different fields. Perhaps no missionaries had a more competent or a more sympathetic band of fellow-workers with whom to eo-operate than did those of Cesarea. Weare glad to know that in some places, if not in all, the results of similar efforts have been equally successful. A trial of nine years has demonstrated the fact that the time had fully come for systematic and efficient co-operation.
A Syrian convert was urged by his employer to work on Sunday, but he declined. "But," said the master, "does not your Bible say that if a man has an ox or an ass that falls into a pit on the Sabbath day, he may pull him out~" "Yes," answered the convert, "but if the ass had the habit of falling into the same pit every Sabbath day, then the man should either fill up the pit or sell the ass."
OUR GOD IS A PRAYER-HEARING AND PRAYER-ANSWEutNG (jOn. G7!J
OUR GOD IS A PRAYER-HEARING AND PRAYER-ANSWERING GOD.
A PERSONAL NARRATIVE.
BY MRS. S. G. WEEMS, MEXICO CITY.
I left my native land and all I loved best on earth except my husband, with whom I came to this beautiful and historic capital of the Montezumas -as a missIonary. Iii a short time I was prostrated on a bed of pain, being strangely afflicted. After weary days and weeks of suffering the physicians decided that my last and only hope for life was removal from the city. Before this could be effected I was so low they feared I'd die on the way. My husband persisted in trying it, while the native Chris- tians prayed without ceasing, begging God that I might not lay down my life for them, but Jive to work in the Church in this field. I stood the journey to another city, and the nativ€s continued to have spilcial prayer for my restoration. After five months of snffering I began to recover, to the astonishment of many; but it seemed I was destined to be a cripple. The natives then asked God that I might lay aside my crutch6s, never doubtrng that He would regard their petitions. In a short time I was on my feet, and now do as much mission work as anyone in the field. I feel that I live and am able to work in answer to their prayers.
This year my husband was given a very important work, though hig ignorance of the language caused him serious difficulties; however, he asked this faithful band of Mexicans, who prayed so persistently for me, to join him in asking. the Lord to give him three hundred sonls for his hire. They did so, and he has received three hundred and twenty and the year is not ended.
Brother G–, a missionary in our church here, while living in San Luis Potosi had a fearful attack of typhus fever-was given up by his physician to die. A glass was held to his lips to see if the breath had left him, and all things were arranged for his expected death. However, the natives continued to pray and ask for his life. When he rallied the physician (not a Christian) said, " It is a miracle; not my medicine, but the prayers of those people saved you."
Some years ago, when to labor in this field was even more difficult and dangerous than now, the life of our missionary, Rev. D. F. W., in Guadalajara, was threatened by an infuriated mob. ITe, with his wife and little babe, were clinging together, etpecting the next moment they would have to die. Brother W– said to his wife, "God is able to save us ;" but his wife replied, "Though He has brought us safely through many _ dangers and difficulties in the past. I can see no chance for Him to save us now. Hear the cries of the advancing mob drawing nearer." She and her husband knelt together, clasping their babe to their hearts, to resign themselves into the hands of God. Suddenly the cry of "Death to the Protestants!" was changed, as there was heard an awful, roaring sound. The would-be murderers fell on their knees in the street crying for mercy, for the Lord had sent an earthquake to save His servants. The hou~e in which they prayed was sound, but every other in the city was more or less injured.
Again, this same servant was stricken with disease, and all hope of his recovery was given up. His wife says she saw him die three times. The poor people of his charge gathered and prayed, offering their children to the Lord in place of their pastor. The dear Lord saw the earnestness of their hearts, and restored the shepherd to the flock.
There came into our church a poor little ragged girl asking membership. When examined, and the pastor satisfied that she understood the importance of the step she was taking, she was duly received. When she returned home it was to meet severe persecution from her Catholic mother, who was most cruel to the child. She came to me asking that my husband and self would join her in praying for her parents. We agreed to do so. In a: little while, so unhappy was her home, I asked for and obtained the child, and got her in a good school. The first Sabbath after her departure the mother was at church, and after my hU8band preached she rose in the congregation and asked to be received into the church. The father came forward, too, and was received with his wife, and has been faithful since j all in answer to the prayers of this little Mexican girl, who is now mine, having been given to me by her parents.
Several months ago, after I had employed as a Bible-woman in Toluca, a poor widow, who had a family of children, her relatives and friends began to persecute her in various ways to force her to give up her work, which she refused to do. As she had no means of support, she had to be separated from her children. So, failing in other ways to make her surrt:nder, they began to try to force her daughter, a girl of fourteen years, and her son of eight to go into a school of nnns. They refused, and were turned into the street. They managed to find their way to their mother. She came at onCe to me, with her children clinging to her skirts. When she entered my room she fell on her knees and said, " Let us ask our God for light and help j I know not what to do." After we had wept and prayed I told her I would write some letters and see if I could not get the children into a Christian school. The poor mother said, "Oh, if God will only hear this prayer, I'll bless Him for the trouble caused me by my children being cast off." God did hear. The little boy is in our college in San Luis Potosi, and the girl in the college at Laredo, both well and happy, and the mother more successful as a Bible-woman. She is supported by friends in Livingston, Ala., one of whom is Mr. C. K. Pickens, who is posted in regard to the experience of this woman.
A few weeks ago one of our natlVe Protestant Episcopalians, Rev. Luis G. Prietor, was telling us his experience as a Christian, and how God had answered his prayers. He said he married a Roman Catholic, and he began praying at once for her conversion, and for three months he wearied heaven with his petitions. God mercifully heard and answered him in giving him a Christian helpmeet in his work. Her family were still out of the ark of safety, and at our last conference he Raid he felt that he ought to be near to talk to them constantly and pray for them, lest they die soon and be lost. Instead, he was appointed to an important work far away. Though grieved to be away, he prayed for them. On coming to the city on business he called to see them j found them. converted and in the church, and he was taught the Lord could answer prayer without his personal help. He went home, stronger in faith, to tell his wife the good news, who shouted, "Glory to God !"
The Bible-woman in this city related to me a remarkable experience she had with a Mrs. P–, who was a Roman Catholic and seriously ill-indeed, sick unto death. She visited her, began praying for her conversion and restoration to health, though that seemed perfectly hopeless. She seemed to grow weaker and approach nearer the grave, though this faithful Christian nurse did not falter in her petitions for the apparently dying woman. At last the priest carne to offer such consolation as he gave the dying, but she waved him off, and in a faint whisper called for a Protestant minister. This woman, who had watched for this moment, went as if winged to call our missionary to the bedside of her charge. He went and prayed with and for her, had special prayer-meetings, etc. The Lord heard, converted the soul of the feeble creature, and her health began to improve. She is living to-day, and the Lord raised her from a bed of affliction, and from Romish idolatry and superstition several years ago, in honor, as I believe, to the simple, child-like faith of these native Christians.
About three months ago, while my husband was in an Indian town called Tecalco, holding special services, where were many who had not heard the Gospel preached before, eighteen persons presented themselves for membership, among the number an old man over sixty years old and his wife. When they were all on their knees ready to receive baptism, this old man asked if he might be permitted to pray that the baptism of the Holy Ghost would come with the water. He prayed very earnestly for the descent of the Holy Spirit with the water. When he concluded his aged companion began to pray, when the Holy Spirit descended with power from -on high, lighting the countenances and causing many to cry aloud. There was but one person in the congregation who was not visibly moved by this strange, wonderful power, and she was a poor Indian woman who could not understand a word of Spanish. All t!:Jese incidents occurred in our mission in Central Mexico, and will serve to show that our God does not disregard the cry of the humblest of His creatures.
CltEED FORl{ATloN IN JAPAN
CREED FORMATION IN JAPAN.
The Synod of the" Church of Christ in Japan"-composed of the various Presbyterian bodies – was marked by two significant features: First, the controlling influence of the' native ministers and elders j and, second, the refusal to express their faith in the statements of the "Re- formed Confessions," and a return to the primitive Apostles' Creed.
In the Confession of Faith will be observed a significant silence upon the subject of retribution and of the future state. It reads thus: " The Lord Jesus Christ, whom we worship as God, the only begotten Son of God, for us men and for our salvation was made man and suffered. He offered up a perfect !!acrifice for sin j and all who are one with Him by faith Ilre pardoned and accounted righteou!!, lind faith in Him working by love purifies the heart.
"The Holy Ghost, who, with the Father and the Son, is worshipped and glorified, reveals Jesus Christ to the soul, and without His grace, man, being dead in !lins, cannot enter the kingdom of God. By Rim the prophets lind the apostles snd holy men of old were inspired, and He, speaking in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, is the supreme and infallible judge in all things pertaining unto faith and living.
"From these Holy Scriptures the ancient Church of Christ drew its Confession j hence we, holding the faith once delivered to the saints, join in that Confession with praise and thanksgiving."
Then follows the Apostles' Creed. Dr. Knox wrote to the New York Evangelist: "Small bodies move swiftly. While the Presbyterian Church in the United States lingers hesitatingly on the outskirts of revision, its youthful . sister in Japan covers the whole territory from centre to circumference, and boldly revises name, constitution, and confession. 'Boldly' may be thought too mild a word. Conservatives substitute' rashly,' and for , revision' they say' revolution.' But boldly or rashly, revision or revo- lution, Synod made no delay and did its work with a thoroughness rarely witnessed outside the land of the Rising Sun. "Revision was imperative. To 'attempt it may have been' rash,' but to postpone it would have been folly. The problem was already compli- cated, but delay would have added to the difficulties. Years ago the mis- sionaries gave full heed to the counsels of conservatism when in 1877 they tried their hand at Church making. Then foreigners had their own way, but now the Church thinks itself of age. The revision is the work of the Japanese. "
EXTRACTS AND TRANSLATIONS FROM: FOREIGN PERIODICALS
EXTRACTS AND TRANSLATIONS FROM FOREIGN PERIODICALS.
BY REV. C. C. STARBUCK, ANDOVER, MASS.
AFRICA.
– " TRADE PROSPECTS IN UGANDA.-These, from a lecture of Mr. Jephson, one of Stanley's companions, delivered at Edinburgh, are very favorable: 'The healthiness of its climate for Europeans, the richness of its soil for cultivation, the vast superiority of its people over the surround- ing tribes, its central position, and its command of a great waterway-all marked it as the country of the future in connection with the trade of equatorial Africa.' In coffee it might become a second Ceylon, while it had valleys also excellently fitted for tea cultivation. It was also a great up-country depot for ivory, and in the equatorial provinces farther north there was an abundant supply, as Emin Pasha had shown. In the large forests at the headquarters of the Nile there was also an unlimited supply of rubber, and the trade in ostriches might become a large one. As to minerals, there was abundance of iron ore, and copper and gold were found. The great difficulty was the expense of transport. • •• This, as well as the great value a railway would be toward the suppression of the slave trade, are convincing arguments for the construction of a line betwixt Mombasa and Lake Nyanza. "-Church Missionary Intelligencer.
– " Central Africa continues to deplore the lack of missionary zeal among High Churchmen. 'Nine years ago we had as many priests working in Africa as we have now,' although the lay helpers, male and female, have increased to 54. Three urgent letters on the subject are published, in which' the other great Anglican party' and the response to Bishop Tucker's appeals are contrasted with their own lukewarmness. However, two new ordained missionaries have been accepted, and have already sailed with Archdeacon Jones-Bateman and his party for Zanzibar."-Church Missionary I ntelligencer.
– " In early ages the whole of North Africa, from the Red Sea on the East, to the Pillars of Hercules on the vVest, was mainly Christian. Here lived Clemens and TertulIian, Origen. Cyprian, and Augustine-men mighty in faith and love, who, being dead, yet speak. Here were flourishing churches, and here the Truth seemed established beyond all the vicissitudes of time. To-day all this is changed : North Africa is now Mohammedan j the crescent is now waving where the cross once stood, and all Christianity – ' save an oppressed remnant '-is gone.
" The question cannot but present itself, Why was this sweeping judgment allowed ~ . No answer can be given except that the Church of North Africa had lost her first love, and had ceased to let her light shine. Careless of the great commission of her Lord, she had ceased to be missionary, and so provoked His indignation that at last He utterly removed her candlestick and submerged all her glory beneath the wave of Saracenic woe. And He who did all this still walks amid the golden candlesticks and still tries the children of men."- Canadian Church Missionary Magazine.
CHINA.
– " Sir Monier WilliamR, in his work on ' Buddhism,' says: 'Christianity demands the suppression of selfishness. Buddha demands the suppression of self. In the one the true self is elevated. In the other it is annihilated.' "-Spirit of .J.fissions. -Archdeacon Moule writes, as quoted in the Spirit of Missions: "Twenty-nine years havs passed since I arrived in Shanghai, and my acquaintance with the country and the people makes me wonder less and less at the title given to China by the Chinese-the Glorious or Brilliant Land. China is often called the Flowery Land. This is not exactly a misnomer, for the hills and plains of China are fair and fragrant with both wild and garden flowers. The chrysanthemum and the peony j the olea fragrans (changing for a few short weeks the air, heavy with the evil odors of earth, into the sweetness of Eden) ; the azalea, red and yellow, covering the hills for thousands of miles; the sheets of wild but almost scentless white and blue and red violets carpeting the banks of river and canal-all these belong to China j but they are not sufficient to give her the distinctive name of the Flowery Land; for European wild flowers are sweeter and fairer than those of China, and the Himalayas are more bowery and beautiful than Chinese hills. Her true name is, rather, the Glorious Land; the same word in Chinese meaning both flowery and glorious. And gloriolls the land is, indeed, with its wide boundaries and enormous area. The region of Western China alone, that magnificent new world now fast opening to exploration and commerce, a region comprising the three provinces of Szchuen, Yunnan, and Kweichow, is larger by 20,000 square miles than Grrat Britain, Ireland, and France, and contains 80,000,000 inhabitants. The gigantic uplands of Thibet, from which the rivers Brahmaputra, Irrawaddy, Mekong, Seluen, and Yangtse all take their rise, own China's supremacy; and the' roof of the world' in Nepaul is in theory, at any rate, under China's jurisdiction. Her outer rim is as long in mileage as the overland route from North China to England."
-The Manchu Christians say of their late missionary, Mr. Gilmour, that he fulfilled all the eight beatitudes, and enjoyed the blessedness belonging to them.
– " The charge of the New York Times, that missionaries have frequently been the aggressors in controversies that have arisen, cannot, in our judgment, be supported by the facts as developed by judicial investigation."-Chinese Recorder.
MISCELLANEOUS.
-Nachrichten aus dem Mm'genlande has a report from the German Hospital in Constantinople, in which the good sisters express the great satisfaction they had enjoyed in receiving a visit from their empress. Augusta Victoria is known to be deeply interested in all works of Christian evangelization and benevolence.
-The Rev. A. H. Kelk, of Jerusalem, in reference to the statement that the latter rains are recommencing, says that they have never ceased. The average rainfall, however, which up to 1881 was 22 inches, has since then risen to 28 inches. So that if the chosen people are to be brought back God seems to be making the way ready for them.
– " The fourth annllal report of the Medical Mission and Orphans' Home at Scutari, Constantinople, conducted by Dr. and Mrs. Alexandrian, states that during the yoor about ~ix thous~nd of all ages have attended at the dispensary, and over three hundred have been waited on at their homes. Jews and Mohammedans, Armenians and Greeks were among those who came under instruction and care. Dr. Alexandrian continues to realize the great power of kindness in commending the Gospel. He writes: 'True kinclness, through Christian hands, is powerful enough to open the Mussulman mind to the truth as it is in Jesus. Onr visits to the patients' houses are welcomed everywhere with no sign of dislike for the Word of God. In the house of a Turk, every time of my visiting, the rooms were half filled with the household and neighbors.' "-The Christian.
– " If cities be determined by the majority of their inhabitants, Jerusalem iR at last again a Jewish city." -The Spectator (quoted in Jewish Intelligence) .
– " At Chigakhor, a chief of the Janniki tribe came to my tent to ask me to go with him a three day!!' journey, to cure his wife's eyes. He had brought baggage and saddle-horses, a tent and e~cort, and said that I should have neither expense nor risk if I would go. He was greatly disappointed when I told him that, from his description of the symptom8, his wife's eyes were far beyond my simple remedies. A question he asked led to Christ the Healer being mentioned, on which he became very thoughtful, and after a time said, ' You call Him Mastel' and Lord; He was a great prophet; send us a hakim (physician) in His likeness,' the briefest and best dQscription," added Mrs. Bishop, "of a true medical missionary which was ever given."-Quarterly Paper Edinburgh M. M. S.
– " It is touching to think of the last of an ancient and proud line of nobles dying as a simple missionary of Christ far away in obscurity and solitude; but to the spiritual eye the greater glory rests upon such a close. , What to me,' said Von Weltz himself, in his farewell address, 'is the title" well born," when I am one" born again" of Christ? What to me is the title "lord," when I desire to be a servant of Christ? What to me to be called" your grace," when I have need of God's grace, help, and aid? All these vanities I will away with, and everything besides I will lay at the feet of Jesus, my dearest Lord, that I may have no hindrance in serving Him aright.' His was a rare devotion. His life, indeed, seemed to issue in total failure; his toil seemed fruitless, his great endeavor completely frustrated, his sacrifice of rank, property, life itself, to be all in vain; but such a surrender in the service of God could not be in vain. 'Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.' His words and his example are finding now a growing fruitage; and ont of long obiivion and opprobrium the name of Justinian Ernst von Weltz is emerging like a star from behind a cloud, to shine with growing lustre as that of the pioneer of Protestant missions in Germany."-Missionary Record (U. P. C.).
– " David Livingstone could say: 'People talk of the sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa. Say, rather, it is a privilege. I never made a sacrifice.' "-Spirit of Missions.
– The Moravian Church being of German origin, we should naturally suppose that its German publications were the eldest. It appears, however, that the Periodical Accounts, published in London, are some fiftv years older than the Missions-Blatt, published at Herrnhut.
– " At a missionary meeting recently the venerable Rev. Edmund Worth, of Kennebunk, Me., stated that he well remembered hearing Adoniram Judson preach while he was still a student at Andover. It seems almost incredible that the great development of modern missions has occurred within the space of a single lifetime, and yet such is the fact."- Baptist Missionar'!l Ma[Jazine. -'rhe Syrian Orphanage, to the northwest of Jerusalem, continues to flourish under the direction of the venerable House-father, J. L. Schmeller.
It has at present 136 inmates. Its 550 former inmates, dispersed over Palestine and a part of Syria, are regularly visited, at least once a year by two native evangelist colporteurs. '
– " The United Presbyterians are said to be, next to the Moravians, the mOi;t missionary Church in the world. Their returns show that they raised £41,602 for foreign and £17,725 for home missions during the past year. Most of their work is done in Jamaica, Rajputana (including a Bhil Mission) and Manchuria. Dr. Gray, whose ill-treatment during the recent anti-foreign riots will be remembered, is a member of the U. p, Manchuria Mission, The U. P. Missionary Record has a cir{mlation of 63,000."- Church Missiorwry Intelligencer. ..
-The Netherlands Government has declared that, in view of the high importance which attaches to the beneficial results of missions for the advancement of civilization in the Dutch East Indies, it shall hold itself bound to see that the forces of missions are not weakened by the competition of various societies in one place. The Dutch are a sensible race.
-Edward Hicks, Jr., of London, has published an excellent essay by an unnamed author, which, while warmly vindicating that doctrine of the indwelling Spirit of God, granted to every man who will receive it, which the Friends have stood for, yet shows how far this is from excusing indolence in missions, since it is, after all, compared with the historic revelation of God in Christ, as twilight to noonday.
-The catalogue for 1892-93 of Anatolia College, at Marsovan, Pontus, Asia Minor (American Board), shows 3 professors, 6 instructors, 40 college and 77 preparatory students, of whom 92 are Armenians, 20 Greeks, 2 Germans, and 2 OsmanIies (Turks). The whole number from the opening, in 1886, has been 356. The official language of the col!ege is English. Robert College is ChristIan, but not distinctively Protestant j the colleges of the American Board are Protestant, but not acrimoniously so. The object of the Board is to propagate sound knowledge and pure religion in the Ottoman Empire, and leave it to determine its particular forms of manifestation for itself. It is sufficiently natural that its most welcome home is usually found in Protestantism.
-There are about three hundred Protestant Germans in the Holy Land. They have lately been holding a reunion in Jerusalem. The Roman Catholics and the Greek Church are both showing so large a foresight of the necessity of maintaining their influence in Palestine, that it highly behoves German and British Protestantism to do the same.
-The Medical Missionary, of the Seventh-day Adventist brethren, is a large and very agreeably edited periodical, published at Battle Creek, . M~~ -Mrs. Bishop, in a recent book, quoted in The Church Missionary Gleaner, of travels in Persia, says: "So much has been written lately about the' style of living' of missionaries, their large houses, and somewhat unnecessary comfort in ll:eneral, that I am everywhere specially interested in investigating the subject. . • . The mission-house here is a native building, its walls and ceilings simply decorated with pale brown arabesques on a white ground. There are a bedroom and parlor with anteroom giving access to both from ttle courtyard, a storerooll and i kitchen. Across the court are servants' quarters and a guest-room for natives. Above these, reached by an outside stair, are a good room, occupied by Mr. Carless as a study and bedroom, and one small bedroom. Another stair leads to two rooms above some of the girls' school premises, having enclosed alcoves, used as sleeping and dressing-rooms. These are occupied hy two ladies. One room serves as eating· room for the whole mission party, and as a drawing-room and work-room. Books, a harmonium, Persian rngs on the floor, and just enough furniture for use constitute its • luxury.' There are two servants, both, of course, men, and all the ladies do some housework. At present the only horse is the dispen- "ary horse, a beast of such rough and uneven paces that it is a penance to ride him. The food is abundant, well cooked, and very simple. • I ha~'e told facts and make no comments, and it must be remembered that some of the party have the means, if they had the desire, of surrounding themselves with comforts."
-Speaking of Argentina, Bishop Walden, in Harper's Magazine (quoted in the Missionary Reporter), says: "In several of the cities there are hospitals, orphanages, and other humalle institutions incident to Christianity. Many of these are under the charge of the Sisters of Charity, some of them built through their instrumentality. These devoted women have schools also at several points. The services in the churches being so largely ritualistic, the impression seems to be warranted that the charitable ministrations of the women in the Roman Catholic orders are doing far more to illustrate the true spirit of Christianity, and perpetuate the hold of the Church on the better classes in Argentina, than all the offices of the altar and sanctuary maintained by the priests." The bishop, however, praises the kindly and elevating influence of the Church toward the natives. Argentina is at once cordially Catholic and cordially tolerant, and it should seem from Bishop Walden's article that the clergy has not been so factious in opposition to this broader policy as in some other countries.
-" Jewish history is not only fascinating in itself, but remarkable in its characteristics. Some of these are well indicated by Rev. T. Pryde, of Glasgow, in the current issue of The Old and New Testament Student: " , When we review the history of the Jews, from the call of Abraham to the persecutions in Russia, we can truly say, "God hath not dealt so with any nation" (Psalm 147 : 20). There must be something veryen. during that can keep them alive through five thousand years, in the midst of such vicissitudes. The empires of Asia, such as the Chinese and the Hindu, may be as old, but, properly speaking, they have no history. There seems to be no progress, but only stagnation for millenniums, in the same social and religious state; but the Jews have alwaYil been in the van of progress. They have been able also to adapt themselves to all times and to all climes. They multiply in Egypt and Babylon under taskmasters and a burning sun, and they can now live and thrive in the midst :1f Siberilln snows. This power of endurance and this power of adaptation tOo changing circumstances have not been given to all. They belong to the: favored people.
" 'The dispersion of the Jews was not only effected by God, but has. by Him been made effective to an important end. Wherever they have, been, these people have borne a passive, but still undeniable testimony to. the truth of the Holy Scriptures, which set forth God's love in Christ, and: also declare, in varied tones and on many grounds, that He " l},,0W, ~()w..-. mendeth all men everywhere to repent." , "-The Ohristian., THE UNITED KINGDOM.
– " Reviewing the present position of the Friends as a !'ociety, The Friend calls attention to thelact that sixty years ago they were OIle of the most self-contained sects; to-day they have become one of the broadest III Christian sympathies and philanthropies. The change is shown to be from that of a religious recluse to that of an active citizen."-The Ohristian.
-Archdeacon Moule says: "The formation of the Gleaners' Union of the Church Missionary Society is another very remarkable evidence of the revival and growth of missionary zeal in the Church of England.
The Union numbers more than 40,000 members. Though only five years old, my own ticket is numbered 36,841. Very many of the recent missionary recruits are drawn from the ranks of this Gleaners' Union."
-" We take the opportunity'~f congratulating Sir M. Monier-Williams on the success which his Indian writings have secured. We believe that even much larger praise would have been accorded to them, and without question a larger circle of readers would have been secured, had not Sir M. Monier-Williams been content to be orthodox. Had he professed to have discovered, in the course of his Sanskrit investigations, independent evidence for rejecting the Christian scheme, or had he set himself to prove that the whole of Christian morality had been forestalled in the Vedic hymns, our author would have enjoyed a popularity whose dimensions would have been in exact proportion to the measure of his abilities, the ignorance of his readers, and the degree of contempt he had been able to cast upon the Christian name. This temptation, we are thankful to say, has not prevailed with the author of 'Brahmanism and Hinduism.' He is mnch too candid to avail himself of such short cuts to literary fame. He seeks no monument of such perishable bras~. He has laid his finger with no sparing force upon the darkest feature in the whole compass of heathen life-namely, the perpetration of vice in the name of piety, and the clothing of the vilest degradation with the sanction of a sacred service to the gods."-Rev. GEORGE ENSOR, in Church Missionary Intelligencer.
– " Nor must we omit, in our estimate of the Indian theism with its various societies, reformed and revised and reformed again as they are, one serious element of consideration. We believe that they serve to receive multitudes of India's seeking souls who else would not have rested until they had found themselves within the fold. These theistic societies meet the souls awakening from the superstitions of idolatry, and promise them a salvation without a Christ. While they welcome the soul which seeks a refuge from the burden of innumerable deities, and promise a return to the ancient monotheism of the Veda, they deny that such a deity is intelligible only in Christ. The heart that is yen ling after rest from sin is pointed to the perfect example presented in the life of Christ, but that pardon alone can be procured through the shedding of His blood, and power only can be received through the gift of His Spirit-this, in spite of much effusive and meaningless laudation, is emphatically and firmly denied. Meanwhile full tolerance is accorded in its ancient paths of error to the sin-stricken soul, and the one decisive step of the confession of Christ as the sole Saviour of the world is denounced as unnecessary and condemned as a mistake, "-Jbid,
INTERNATIONAL DEPARTMENT
I1.-INTERNATIONAL DEPARTMENT.
EDITED AND OONDUCTED BY BEV. J. T. GRAOEY, D.D.
The Missionary Issue in the Ottoman found in the article of Rev. W. N. Cham- Empire. bers, in this number of the REVIEW. The obliteration of ethnological and [EDITORIAL, J. T. G.] political differences being sought, the We have noted in a previous number, Armenians are prohibited from usi.ng the the serious character of the actual and word Armenia. But this name is found proposed interference of the Turkish in the Bible; and on this pretext the Government with evangelical operations subordinate officials seek to prohibit the of the Protestants, which have been circulation of the Bible, notwithstand.
li.itherto supposed to be protected by ing it is officially sanctioned. Another treatyrights, and which have so longbeen illustraHon is seen in a regulation that permitted as to have not only become foreign colporteurs shall sign a bond, custom but that the very custom stands certified to by the embassy of their Gov- as commentary on the text of the capitu. ernment, whereby they agree to be treat· lations. The encroachments on the re- ed as subjects of the Ottoman Empire.
ligiousliberty hitherto enjoyed, became This prevents their appealing for pro· so alarming to the missionary work of tection from their governments under Protestants throughout the empire, that the treaties. These regUlations are the British and American missionaries ostensibly to secure a legitimate super.
at Constantinople issued a pamphlet vision of the sale of books. The pro· complaining of them, and of other pro. posal was that the Sublime Porte should posed encroachments. These related to legalize many of these restrictions, from the circulation of books, and the use of which the societies had suffered-mu- property other than strictly houses of tilation and destruction of their litera· worship for public religious services. ture, and imprisonment of their agents.
The publication matter may be briefly. The other exhibition of recent intoler- outlined. No books .are legally circu- ance relates to the use of ordinary prop- lated in Turkey until they have been erty as places of religious worship.
sanctioned by the official censor of the During 1891 an edict was promulgated Government. This itself puts a severe which restrains missionaries from limitation on the manuscripts of Chris· "transforming" dwelling. houses .. into tian writers. But that is not now at churches or schools" except byauthor- issue. The missionaries suppose them- ity or imperial firman. This strikes selves to have complied with theseregu- also at holding schools in dwelling.
lations, and to have offered for sale or houses-the subordinates, for instance, put into circulation only such puhlica. claiming that a dwelling, if used as a tions as were properly sanctioned by school, becomes thereby a church, ana the State authorities. But in 1890-91, must have the sanction of an imperiai for instance, we are informed, the offi· order. When the attempt is made to cials in Erzroom confiscated five hun· secure such official sanction, it is de· dred volumes of officially authorized nied on the ground that the building is books consisting of hymn.books and a not a church. The edict may have been Bible dictionary; and in June,1891, a defended on the ground that it was colporteur was imprisoned twelve days necessary til prevent the unlawful trans- for selling authorized Bibles. The his- fer of dwellings into the category of tory of these encroachments is greatly permanent churches and schools, which involved. A striking illustration· is by law are freed from taxation; but itu application is to private dwellings, on The Nature of the arisis in Missionary Work in the Turkish Empire. which the taxes have been duly paid. It is not said that the Imperial Govern- BY REV. WILLIAM NESBITT CHAMBERS, ment has instigated nor authorized these restrictions of its subordinates ERZROOM, TURKEY IN ASIA. throughout the empire; but it is claimed that the Sultan sbould suppress them. If it be true that .. possession is nine points in law," Turkey has a right to The several governments who have voice and put into execution the printreaties with the Ottom>'n Empire, se- ciple which has silently influenced her curing these long. used and well·under- in all her national life. Spurred on by stood privIleges of missionaries, are the example of her neighbors, she hILS called on by the nature 'ilf the case, to begun to emphasize as a working policy, interfere for the observance of these and urge with considerable aggressive " capitulations." zeal, the thought that the Government should be administered in the interests We are gratified to read ill the Mail ana of the ruling race. So" Turkey for the JJ1r,press, of New York, the statement from 'furks" becomes an emphatic voicing. Rev. M. T. Bliss, of Beyroot, Turkey, with a new application, of the old spirit that the imperial firman of January last, of Mohammedanism. " Islam, tribute, ordering the closing of the schools, was or the sword" is just as much a foundain a very summary way" suspended tion principle to-day as it was twelve temporarily," owing to prompt appeal centuries ago. Any apparent mollifica. of the American Minister Hirsch, at tion of this principle has come about by Constantinople, to the Government at the force of circumstances, and not be- Washington, and the equally prompt cause the spirit is changed. This new action of President Harrison and his way of expressing it is more in accord associates. Mr. Hirsch's contention was, with the custom of nations around, and that no obligation can be laid on mission is more popular in form. Outside comschools to exclude Moslem pupils, as plications and the changed conditions was demanded; and that nothing but of national life have made it impossible non· compliance with the Turkish school for the Moslem to enforce it in the manlaw can justify the prohibition of Ameri- ner observed in the days of his vigor. can schools. Mr. BliRS says the end is The spirit is there, nevertheless, and not yet, although France and Great only needs opportunity to manifest it· Britain have re-enforced the American self with ancient severity. ,. Jan chttcmovement for the protection of mission. maienja, khtti chuJcmaz" is a Turkish ary interests by instructing their ambas. adage which the subject races are accussadors to pursue a similar course. The tomed to quote with the conviction of " end" is far enough away; for it will hopelessness when speaking of the nanot be till Islam cl;tanges-which is an ture of the ruling race. It may be freeimpossible supposition-and Christian. lyrendered," Until the giving up of the ity, through political, social, and re- ghost the nature changes not." It is ligious influences, elevates the masses about equivalent to the saying in Eng. of the land into true notions of liberty lish, "The ruling passion strong in of conscience. We do not think the death." Trne, there have been changes, American Government ought to be sum- but they have been, to a great extent, moned as a religious propagandist; but superficial. So long the" sick man,". we do think its self· respect requires thlt the Turk has lost much of the wonderit demands the observance of treaties. ful vigor manifested in his early con- The interests of individual Americans, quests. Hurled back from the walls of whether in Turkey, Samoa, China, or Vienna, he was effectually arrested in anywhere else on the globe, ought to be his onward march, and bounds were set protected; and we hope there will be to the farther enlargement of his em· no failure of this result in this case. pire. He settled down to enjoy what he must not be considered for a moment. had gained in luxury, sensuality, and The few concessions—–some of them in indolencc. From that ti~e no progress the interests of .Proteiltant Christianity has been made in the development of -were effected at a time when the Mosthe rich empire of which he became lem had not come to realize the danger master. The conquered races became a which thre!l.tened, and also when, even source of revenue of .no little impor- if he had fully realized it, he had not tance. That, with the fact that the the power to resist. Christians and Jews possessed their sacred books, gained for them some con- During the last decade or two he has sideration at the hand of the conqueror. begun to appreciate the influences at They were rnled, however, in such man- work which threaten his cherished inner that they were unable, or at least stitutions. He is, therefore, forced from failed to exert any influence in modify- his position of indifferent and coning, to any appreciable extent, the con- temptuous tolerance to one of aggressi ve stitution of the empire. Because of this intolerance. Among the various reathe Moslem's contempt grew into in- sons for this change of attitude we will difference. Their religion was not mate. mention two which are of importance. rially interfered with, and they were protected in its exercise, and some civil 1. l!lcternal pressure on the Government. privileges were accorded to them as long -The international relations of Turkey as they endured the oppression and paid present questions of the gravest nature. their taxes. Indeed, in one sense, it She has become aware of the fact that may be said that the Government has she owes her political existence to-day been tolerant. The tolerance, however, to the jealousies of the European Pow. has been that of cont6mptuous indiffer- ers. She knows that if those interested ence. could agxee on a plan of partition, her lease of life would be measured only by Let it be remembered that the Turk- her own power of resistance, which would indAed be small as compared with ish Government is founded On 'the that arrayed against her. Aside from her geographical position, which sub- Koran. The sacred law-sheriat-is suo jects her to international envy, this conpreme. The Sultan is the Khalif-the dition is largely due to her inability to head of the Khalifate. One most im- administer properly the financial affairs portant part of the ceremony of his coro· of the empire. Her enormous debt is a nation is the girding on of the sword of crushing burden. To carry this weight the prophet. He is nothing if not the and provide for current expenses conprophet's successor. The religious idea cession after concession has been made overshadows everything in the concep- to foreign monopolies, until much of the tion of the State. The civil power is revenue has passed out of the hands of simply the handmaid of religion, and is the Government. The Turk finds him_ to be used to its utmost extent in the self in the humiliating position of havdefence and preservation of the Gov- ing to purchase a stamp from what is ernment as a religious organization. A virtually a foreign agent, in order to Turkish pasha expressed the idea in a legalize a travelling permit issued by the conversation when hesaid that the Gov- local governor. The salaries of those in ernment should be paternal in its nature Government employ are very greatly in and function. It should rule the peo- arrears. The result is increased oppresple in the interests of the established sion. Trade is but a small fraction of religion. That religion must of neces- what it might be. Progress is impossisity be protected, and the people obliged ble. In fact, such is her condition that to conform to it. No defection from it in any other country the result would should be tolerated. Anything, there- be revolution. Even the lethargic Mosfore, that contemplates radical change lem himself galls under the burden, in. either' threat0ns injury to both, and The only way the Government can sus- Turk begins to realize as threatening tain itself und maintain its hold is by lies in the institutions which have been appealing to the religious sentiment, established and the movements which which is equivalent to developing a have been set on foot within tho empire. patriotic spirit. To this end religious These threaten to shake the very foundarights and ceremonies are emphasized, tion of the politico-religious fabric. Turkish national days, such as the birthday of the prophet, the coronation of These are the results of the efforts of the Sultan, the Bairam festival, aro oelebrated with considerable elaborate- foreigners, and so are, in a sense, from ness~ Feasts are given, cities are illu- without. But they have become essenminated, exhortations are pronounced tial features in the development of the in the mosques, and military displays country. These institutions have beare made. And, what is in the eyes of come rooted to live and grow. They the Turk of equal importance, he does have started to gather force and influall he can to repress national sentiment ence. As they do so, they challenge the in the minds of the subject races. For opposition of that organillation which instance, the Armenians of the province they threaten. An eloquent senator, in of Erzroom may not lawfully use the the course of a speech on the Indian word which racially distinguishes them question, delivered in Philadelphia -the word Armenia. The Bible dic- some time ago, said that if he were tionary, published by the American asked to name the three things that in Mission at Constantinople a Bcore of his opinion are calculated to solve the years ago, may not now be sold because Indian question and make the India.n that word occurs in it once. what he ought to be, he would answer that" the first was education; the sec- The discussion raised by Canon Tay- ond was education; and the third was lor concerning the respective merits of education. " Taken in its best sense, Christianity and Mohammedanism as a there is here a vital principle enunciatmissionary religion was made much of ed. One of the greatest factors in the in Mohammedan circles. It became the progress of civilization is education. absorbing topic of conversation in gov- When that becomes a liberal Christian ernment offices, even to the hindering education, the force of it can scarcely of the proper work of the courts. The be overestimated. When the uneducat- JiJ:J,stern Light, the local paper of an east- ed a.re started in the path of education ern city of the empire, contained lists a great change is inevitable. When a of converts made during the year to :Mo· man, accustomed to think only within hammedanism, with suitable comments the narrow lines of a great overshadowthereon. All this and much more was ing and uncompromising organization and is being done to magnify Moslem in which change is abhorrent, begins to ism, and to arouse the people to re- think for himself, or in any way quesnewed loyalty to their religion and so to tions what he has been taught, a most their government The wonderful con- serious problem confronts the organizatrast presented in the comparison of the tion in which he is found. It is forced material condition of the country with either to suppress the individual or that of any of her Western or Northern make concessions most fatal to its own neighbors is apparent to the most life. We take education in the broad lethargic and fanatical, and causes much sense of being the effort to arouse peodiscontent and envy. The only cry that ple to think and investigate for themwill arouse the people to the defence of selves. It is Done the less educatioD, the Government is the cry, " For Allah whether that effort is put forth in the and his prophet." school·room or chapel, in the homes or OD the highway, by the distribution of 2. Institutional forces developed within books. The essential point is to arouse the empire.-AIother danger which tho JP.cn to think and question-in othor words, if you plAase, make sceptics of If the American Government does not them. Then they begin to realize the strongly assert the rights of her citizens desirablene-<~ of enjoying their rights of conceded by treaty, other acts of a freedom of thought, liberty of con. similar nature will follow. The represscience, and outgrowing privileges. The sive measures in reference to chapels concession of this to any extent would be and schools and book distribution are fatal to the Mohammedan system. The of the same nature. The opposition to Mohammedan finds that he has com· aggressive Gospel work must of necesmitted a great error in granting the few sity be bitter and uncompromising so concessions already made. He perceives far as that is possible. It will be charthat the influences at work in the em· acterized by the methods peculiar to pire threaten fatal injury to his religion, that people. The same spirit that con· and so to his civil life. In mere self. fronted the Crusaders of Europe eight preservation he is led to vigorous op- centuries ago confronts the crusaders of position. He follows the method of at. the Churches·to-day. In another way tempting to fortify the faithful by a the Christian sword is crossed with the revival, and at the same time to repress Turkish cimeter. The standard of the the causes of the danger. He is deter. cross is over against the standard of the mined now to nndo, if possible, the star and crescent. The conflict is on. first mistake. It may be that the ruler The issue cannot be doubtful. It be. of Turkey is a liberal·minded man; but comes the Church to put on the whole I much donbt whether he may be claimed armor of God, and taking the sword of as a " higher critic" of his own sacred the Spirit, to do her part in vindioating book. I imagne he knows that evan. the claim of our Lord to be the true gelical Christianity and its concomi. prophet of God. tants, the Church and open Bible, the school and college, etc., are his greatest Australian Notes. enemies and most uncompromising foes. He realizes the force of the advice which BY BEV. ROBERT STEEL, D.D. it is reported an official offered in the declaration that the giving of a " fir. Australia has been visited by Mr. man" (order) for the erection of a chapel Eugene Stock, the editorial secretary of was equivalent to ordering the destruc. the Church Missionary Society in Lon. tion of two mosques. The Turk is in· don, and the Rev. R. W. Stewart, M.A., tensely conservative; his life is bound missionary to China. They were deputup in his religion. Anything that ed to stir up the congregations of the touches his religion touches his life. Church of England in Australia. They So nothing can be expeeted but opposi. have held many meetings, and have had tion. The Mohammedan iM not like the enthusiastic audiences. Much good is people of Japan, for instance, progress- likely to result. The Melanesian Mis· loving and ready to investigate. Be sian has celebrated its anniversary on has attained the summum bOllum, and St. Barnabas Day. Divine service was no change can be tolerated. If he can held in the cathedral; the annual meetprevent it, none will be. ing was held in the Chapter House, and a garden party at the residence of I doubt very much if the prcsent at- the Bishop of Sydney. The income for titude of the Turkish Government is a the year 1891 was £5256, of which £500 reaction. There never was a really in- came from the Melanesian Trust. The telligent sympathy with progress. It is Southern Cross has been replaced by a a result of what might be called a re- fine and commodious steamer. The vival, or an awaking to see the dani(ers year has been one of trial and anxiety, that threaten. In the arrest of Ameri- as the health of Bishop Selwyn has can citizens the Government is but feel. necessitated his resignation. The Rev. ing its way to greater acts of (lp!10~ition. J. H. Plant has died. The work of the mission extends over five Solomon "To go -into the details of the his.' Islands, where there are 45 schools, 118 tory of the Uganda Mission would be teachers, and 1580 scholars. The Rev. beyond our limits. Certain facts, how-' R. B. Comins has superintended the ever, stand out mOilt prominently, and work. In the Banks Islands, 9 in num- must be kept in mind in forming any ber, there are 40 schools, with 981 teach- opinion on the present condition of ers. Three northern islands of the New affairs. The missionaries in Uganda Hebrides, under the care of the mission, have had to battle against three influhave 15 schools with 530 scholars. The ences, each of them most powerful. mission operates also on the Santa Cruz The first was the heathen character of &Ild Torres Islands. The head station the people themselves, their love for is at Norfolk Island, where there are 127 heathen superstitions, the power of male and 39 female scholars collected whose hold upon them it is scarcely from 20 islands. There are 6 European possible for us to realize. Second to and 8 native clergymen, a medical or- this was the hostility of the Arab tradained missionary, and 2 lay European ders, influenced by Moslem pride and workers. The Rev. C. Bice, who has greed of gain. They early saw that the been twenty-five years in the mission, Christians furnished the sole obstacle is now organizing secretary in Australia. to the extension of their slave trade, and they have watched every oppor. The New Hebrides Mission of the tunity of hampering and even destroy- Presbyterian churches is working vigor- ing their work. At times they have sue. ously. Two brethren have just sailed ceeded, but only for a period. Never for their spheres of labor after a fur- discouraged, however, they have waited lough in the Colonies. One of them, on the outskirts and done their best to the Rev. P. Milne, of Nguna, has been increase any discords which appeared twenty years in the group. He went in the community. Less open but not among cannibals. He has now 800 less potent against the mission work communicants on 6 islands, while near- have been the French Catholic priests. ly all the inhabitants are under Chris- 'They first appeared upon the scene in tian instruc.tion. He translated and 1879. after Wilson and Mackay had printed the Gospels; Acts; and 1 John; broken the ground and made it possible Genesis and half of Exodus also; a book for Europeans to enter Central Africa, of Scripture extracts, and a hymn.book. and at once commenced their work of His labors have been much blessed. neutralizing, by every possible means, The other, the Rev. J. D. Landels, has the work of the Protestant missionaries. been a few years at Malo, and has They went to Mtesa, who was as yet broken ground and gained some con- very weak in the faith, and told him verts. He took back a church with that the Christianity of these teachers him. A valedictory meeting was held was a false Christianity. What to make prior to the departure of these hrethren, of that he hardly knew; but it is most and addresses given by Mr. Eugene probable that to the doubts raised by Stock, of the Church Missionary So- this hostility, and to the constantly opciety, Rev. G. Brown, of the Wesleyan posing intrigues of the priests, is due Society. Rev. Dr. Wyatt Gill, of the Lon- the fact that, not long after he redon Missionary Society, the Rev. C nounced Christianity and return ed to Bice, and others. his heathen superstitions.
"The Crisis in Uganda." "In 1882 the priests retired, appar- ently with the idea that their work had We find a task ready done, to our failed. The Protestant misaionaries hand, which we had purposed doing, held firm. Then followed a period of and avail ourselves of the work of the great distress, until the death of Mtesa Independent by using its resume of the in 1884 left the throne of Uganda to sitnation in Uganda.. Africa.. hiH son Mwanga, a weak and cruel char· bitter, and the captain was in a very acter, an easy prey to influences of difficult position. Great excitement every kind. The Roman Catholics saw prevailed, and arms and ammunition, their opportunity. Three priests start- which had been brought into the coun- ed at once for Uganda, and on Easter try against Captain Lugard's earnest Sunday of 1885 Cardinal Lavigerie con- protest, were secured on both sides and secrated forty new missionaries for that a conflict seemed inevitable. The cap- country. Immediately on their arrival tain met with the Freneh priests, and they succeeded in bringing Mwanga endeavored t"O secure their co·operation completely under their control and in- in persnading the king to abide by the spiring in him a bitter hostility to the agreement that had been made. On English and the Protestants. During one pretext or another this was post- the interim the natives, Protestant and poned, and again a contest between the Catholic, had stood shoulder to shoulder two parties seemed inevitable. The against the Arab invaders. Now the Catholics were greatly in the majority, Catholics were embittered against the and the only hope for the Protestants Protestants. By every means the lat- lay in the support of the British East ter, who were inferior in numbers and African Oompany. The captain felt without the support of the king, were that he was there in the interest of all, dispossessed of their estates, and on and by superhuman exertions succeeded every hand felt a tyranny that was un- again in averting a disaster. Such was endurable. Political influences also the condition of things on the occasion came into play. Thc German annexa- of sending the last dispatches that have tions in East Afrioa necessitated ar- been received from Captain Lugard.
rangements between Germany and Eng- " The Catholic statements claim that land. German rule, it was felt, would Captain Lugard and the Protestants be more favorable than English to the have turned upon the Catholics, and by Catholics, and every effort was made to bringing in the aid of the Mohamme- include Uganda in the German prov- dans have driven Mwanga from his ince. That failed, and the trade ar- capital, destroyed the mission premises, rangements that followed the delimita- and massacred the priests and native tion of the German and English spheres, Catholics. The French Government resulted in increasing the bitterness has taken lip the matter and demands and hostility manifested by the Catho- protection at the hands of the English lics toward the Protestants. At last Government. The latter has replied Bishop Tucker himself secured an in- very properly that it cannot act until it terview with Pere Beard, and an agree- hears from Captain Lugard, whose dis- ment was arrived at between them that patches there is reason to believe have complaints in regard to ejectment from been intercepted on their way to the estates should be referred to Captain coast. The latest reports are that the Lugard, the agent of the British East fighting has ceased, that Captain Ln- African Company, who was then ap- gard hopes to effect an arrangement prilaching, while they would bind them- with Mwanga, and that the British Gov- selves to arrange personal difficulties ernment has ordered the British East between the natives. It seemed as if African Company to withdraw. Mean- aU would work well, and Bishop Tucker while the Catholic papers on every hand left for England. are loud in their condemnation of the " When Captain Lugard arrived Protestant missionaries and natives.
Mwanga and the Catholics utterly re- It.is impossible, until we receive Cap- fused the arrangement that had been tain Lugard's statements, to know the agreed upon. The Catholic leaders condition of matters there; but in view claimed that they had no power over of the fact that the Protestant mission their followers. The strife grew very and the British Government have had to meet through all these years the de· soul and be satisfied-His will being termined, unwavering hostility not only done on earth as in heaven. of the heathen and Mohammedans, but of the French Clttholic element, we "The members of the Synod make cannot ItCcept the stlttements that have this request with a deep sense of their been made. That Captain Lugard, the own need of such a spirit of importunate English missionaries, or native Protes. prayer and supplication. They make tants have led in any ma.ssacre we do it in full reliance on the Head of the not believe. It is far more likely that Church as present with them. and they all alike have suffered from a Baganda send it forth in His name to His people or an Arab invasion. If so, the respon. the world over." sibility must rest with those whose in. trigues and persistent hostility have Prayer versus Prayer. furnished the opportunity." We follow the call for daily prayer A Oa11 for Daily Prayer. with another call for a day of prayer. One of the most significant occurrences The Presbyterian missionaries in of recent times in India was a great Northwest India originated the sugges· Hindu conference. held at Benares. tion to the Evangelical Alliance of a This conference on what to do to pre· world's week of prayer for the conver· serve Hinduism from the encroachments sion of the world. 'I'his same mission being made upon it. appointed a com· now sends forth a call to universal mittee to formulate their decision. An Christendom for a world's daily prayer immense cr!'wd is said to have assem· to the same end. The following is the bled to hear the report of this com· text of the appeal: mittee read by four pundits, standing at the corners of the great pavilion in "The Presbyterian Synod of India met which the conference was held. in Lodiana, November 19th, 1891, and was in session until the 24th. By reo The conference recommended that quest of the presbyteries of Allahabad prayers be offered at fixed times to the and Lahore, part of the first day was Supreme Power, that the Hindu religion devoted to prayer. From the first to may be saved from its present degener. the closing session of the Synod a spirit ate position, October 30th being speciof prayer and supplication prevailed- fied as the special day for the whole so much so that at the closing session country. Branches of this conference the following call to prayer was sent out are to be organized in all the provinces ; to the members of Christ's body the preachers are to be sent over the land world over: to preach the sacred truths of Hindu- ism; Sanskrit books containing the reo "We, the members of the Synod of ligious rules are to be published, and India, met in Lodiana, unite, in the schools are to be established for the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, in ask· study of Sanskrit. This shrewdness in ing our brethren throughout the world copying Christian methods is natural to to join with us in daily prayer that a the imitative Asiatic. It is an indirect spirit oj constant, importunate prayer and compliment to the methods of the Chris· supplication may be given to every member tian Church, nevertheless, and an ac· oj Ohrisf s body the world over-to the end knowledgment of the felt force of Chris. that the Spirit may be poured out on all tianity in the land. flesh; that laborers may be separated by the Holy Ghost and sent forth by It seems to us that it would be a very Him to the work to which He has called fitting thing for the Christian churches them, and that speedily our Lord and of all the world, so far as information Saviour may see of the travail of His can be extended in time to admit of it, to set apart October 30th as a day of special prayer for these religionists, that God would, in a way they little intend can further the mov.ement by its official or suspect, hear their cry and answer sanction and guidance, certainly any misthem. A power for organization is al- sionary board can do so. Now is the ways present with thc Aryan race in all time, it appears to me, for all of us to of its branches, and hence a great move- join hands. I do not believe any sepament is possible. In the spirit of Eli- rate organization for this object WIll sucjah's contention with the priests of ceed, as it involves the weight gf ma- Baal, it seems we might cry to the Lord, chinery and its specil1lmeetings, but we on October 30th to show Himself as the can add a wheel to existing machinery and give it supervision and scarcely feel it."
,. Supreme Power" to whom these peo- ple are called to pray. If the Lord be God, may He not thus show Himself to A Ohinese Mandarin on the Situation.
our brL1thers ? Let October 30th be re- Rev. T. Richard, in translating for membered as a special day of prayer for the Messenger, of Shanghai, from" Jeu these Hindus. Yuen Ri," gives the view of the author, an eminent Chinese mandarin, on the Systematic Giving. attitude which the high class of Chinese ought to assume toward the aggressiTe We take the liberty to present to our Christian forces of the empire. In the readers the following personal note re- third chapter of the work the author ceived some weeks since from Esther says: Tuttle Prichard, well and widely known .. Now we find the Roman Catholic and Protestant religions scatt'lred as a Bible expositor, an earnest evange- throughout our provinces and increas_ ing daily. If we forbid them it is list, an editor for years, as well as founder against the treaties; if they are let alone, it is a sore grief to our heart. of the woman's missionary paper of the Moreover, depraved religions are numer- ons everywhere in China; fortunately Society of Friends. and at present, added those who join them are mostly igno- rant people; few of the intelligent and to other offices, Superintendent of the scholars are deceived by them.
"National Deparhhent of Systematic .. Commands should be issued order- ing all the viceroys and governors Giving" of the Woman's Christian 'tem- throughout the empire to issue instruc. tions to all prefects, sub-prefects, and perance Union. Mrs. Prichard says: magistrates in their respective jurisdic- tions to establish charity schools in " I am mailing you a copy of ' superintendent's reports' (W. C. T. U.) that cities and market towns. Let the ex- I may call your attention to the begin- penses come from the Government or ning which has been made in my depart- by subscriptions without troubling the mentof systematic giving, p.127. Since the national meeting the New York poor people, and let the magistrate seunion has fallen into line, and appoint- lect Siu tsais of learning and virtue to ed a very efficient woman as State teach in them. Let all the children, superintendent; other States will follow, for this thing is • in the air.' the laborers, tradesmen and agricultu- Everything seems ripe for the move. ,rists who cannot afford to pay, be adment. I have often quoted your en- mitted to the schools to learn. Let couraging remark to me a year ago, that them study the Siao Hao and the Conif systematic giving were pushed it fucian Analects and have them exwould win its way in five years, and we plained as they commit them to memintend to • push' it. Can you not help 'ory, and at the first and fifteenth of me push it through the REVIEW? If the each month let the Sacred Edict be woman's missionary boards would add a preached to them, so that the pupils department of this kind, or create a may understand what is right and not chain of committees, it would give a be led astray by heresies (Christianity). grand impulse to the work. The wis- This is really of very great importance dom of this course need not be ques· to the minds and morals of the peotioned, since it is already succeeding in the Friends' Women's Temperance Mis- ple. . . . Let those who refuse to send sionary Union, and the Women's Home thei~' children to school be punished Missionary Society of the Methodist without mercy. " Church has made a beginning. If the Women's Christian Temperance Union James Oalvert. tellding the work, and the bitter oppo· sition of the powers that were, never llY THE BEV. JORN WALTON, M.A. shook his confidenoe with regard to the issue. To sceptical doubts, such as the JAMES CALVERT is a great figure in situation might naturally Bugge8t, he missionary- history. He ranb with gave no place-no. not for an hour. those heroic pioneers who hazarded On the oontrary, when the forees of their lives for the name of the Lord darkness raged around-like hell let Jesus among the cannibals of the Pa· loose-he construed the position hope. ciiic. The story of Fiji has been well fully, rightly interpreting the terrible told. It could not fail to strike the struggle. Indeed, upon a review of imagination, confirm the faith, and those early years of that mission, the kindle afresh the missionary enthusi. veteran says, .. We had no night of toil ; asm of the churches. Christ indicates to His Church the men He has desig. God was with us from the first, and nated for hazardous posts; and JameR all along." 'fhe breaking up of the Calvert was manifestly separated for ser· ground, the sowing of the seed, early vice in the field in which he achie'fed so and late, the faithful preaching of the conspicuous a success. His sound can· Word and patient waiting for the gra. version, his fervent spirit, his robust cious result, were necessary processes. frame, and his special business train. ing, marked him as the right man for Certain it is that Christ was with Hili Christian enterprise among the races in servants in their toil. The Holy Spirit the Southern Seas. was striving powerfully with the gen. eral population. The very chiefs were A man of strong common sense, troubled, and their councillors with shrewd and practical in his methods, them. At length the morning broke. and fearlesa in duty, he could readily The sowers began to reap. The har· adapt himself to new and difficult situ· vest was on a scale that transcended ations. He was a fine.tempered, loving their utmost expectations. Conviction and lovable man, tender as a woman, seized Thakombau himself, and swept and soon moved to tears. But he did through the general population. " A not lack the courage of his convictions. mighty revival broke out, and the Politic he was, as a missionary among young ehiefs. in the ardor of their first savages must be ; but he never com· love, were sent forth to tell what great 'promised truth or principle; he always things God had done for their souls." went straight and did his duty-as his It was a genuine breakdown, marked Church expected him to do-with un· by Pentecostal characteristics. Every. flinching fidelity. He was indeed a where the "lotu" spread. People of man of resource, and not soon at his all ages-men, women, and childrenwits' end. In dealing with the chiefs were crying, " What shall we do ?" A he displayed wonderful tact. While he nation was born in a day, and stood up properly recognized their position, and before Christendom a new people. Do on all occasions treated them with due not let us readily forget what those respect, he never flattered, never feared poor islanders" were before," and so them. When occasion required he fail to realize the mighty transformation could be bold as )lathan. Once and which then took place. Poor canni. again the cannibal despot has been bals they were-of every age, and every turned from his murderous design by type, and every degree of moral turpi. the brave expostulations of this herald tude. Hard and hoary savages, with of the Cross. He stood up manfully almost the last spark of what is hopeful for the oppressed and defenceless peo· in human nature snuffed out of them; pIe. Poor women and innocent chilo these were lifted out of the darkness of dren, already doomed to be strangled that horrible pit into the light of God. or clnbbed to furnish the cannibal That victory of the Gospel over the feast, have been rescued by the cour· poor savages in the Pacific was cele. ageous intervention of the man of God. brated by angelic choirs, as well as by By his wise address and Christian con· our churches of every Christian name. ciliation fearful war was averted and James Calvert and his colleagues had peace restored. their reward. Theirs was the honor of gathering into Christ's Church, and This great missionary was never left into the comity of civilIzed and Chrisalone. The personal presence of Christ tian nations, a new race; who, indeed, with him always was not a mere article were not a people, and hardly human. of James Oalvert's creed; it was an Now are they the people of God, and ever.present, vital, and experimental Christ Himself is not ashamed to call verity. Hence,it was that the long and them-brethren.-Methodist Recorder. trying delay, the unique difficulties at-
EDITORIAL NOTES ON CURRENT TOPICS
I1I.-EDITORIAL NOTES ON CURRENT TOPICS.
Grea.t Openings in Eastern Lands. round the world to 11.11 Christian young men in other lands, " Let us make J eaus Mr. L. D. Wishard, who has returned King," and these young citizens of from a "forty-five months' tour round Japan took solemn oath before Heaven the world in the interests of the inter- that they would undertake to exa.lt Jesus national and collegiate movement of the to the throne of their own native land. Young Men's Christian Association," gave an address of singular interest at From Japan, Mr. Wishard went to the Northfield Students' Summer School China, Ceylon, India, Persia, Turkey, on Sunday night, July 10th. etc., and found a similar state of pre- paredness in these lands. He thinks He first defined the object of this China is, in' some respects, a more movement as being threefold: to im- promisin~ field even than Japan. The press on young men the duty of being persistence and earnestness of the Chifaithful tel their obligations-first, to nese character is remarkable. The Chithe-ir felbw-students in their own col- nese are conservative and slow to move, leges; secondly, to those in their own but when they do move it is with great country; and, thirdly, to others in for- momentum. They take hold cautiouseign lands. Mr. Wishard went abroad ly, but hold fast tenaciously. A most to examine personally as to whether the interesting insta.nce of self-denying work time was ripe for extension of this in- for God was detailed by Mr. Wishard ter-collegiate movement in Asia as well iIi the association at Ceylon, that details as Europe. a committee of twelve to cultivate a ba- nana garden, the proceeds of which go He began with the Sunrise Kingdom, year by year to the evangelization of a and his advent to Japan was singularly small island in the vicinity. timed by God's providence, for it fell in the very year when Japan adopted con- It is a most significant fact that tostitutional government, and was thus day there are in foreign lands some 3000 taking her great stride forward in the students gathering in some twelve of direction of progress. He found a warm these summer schools for Bible study welcome even in Government schools. and culture of the Christian life. A larger percentage of students were found to be Christians than in Ameri, Six years ago, in the summer of 1886, can colleges a century ago. As the his- at Mt. Hermon, Mass" some 250 tory of the students' summer confer- young men met to hold the first of these ences was unfolded to the Japanese they summer schools_ Out of that meeting clamored for a similar gathering, which grew the Student Volunteer Movement, was with some hesitation called to meet now enrolling over 7000 in this conti- June 29th, 1889 ; and, although it would nent alone; and one of the direct outhave been gratifying to find a hundred comes of that gathering was the extenor more assembled, some five hundred sion of this Intercollegiate Movement students and mercantile young men, and Mr. Wishard's round-the-world tour. representing twenty-five colleges, came But, as Mr. Wishard says, the pedigree together, some from great distances, reaches much further back, to the hayand on foot. So marked were these stack meeting in 1806 at Williams' Colmeetings by the power of God's Spirit lege. One of those three students pub. that seventy.five of these young men lished a pamphlet on the" Salvation of devoted their entire summer to volun- the Heathen ;" that pamphlet was read tary labors for the eva.ngeliza.tion of by and determined the career of John their own countrymen. From that sum- Scudder, and so of James Brainerd Taymer school went out the ca.blegram lor, who founded the Philadelphia.n So- cie~y of Princeton College ; from that grew the Young Men's Christian Asso. and the Young Men's Christian Associa· ciation movement among the colleges, tion, and the Young People's Society of and so the international gatherings and Christian Endeavor together, and let a affiliations with all the student volun. zeal according to knowledge fire these teer crusade and its world wide influ· great hosts, and the Spirit of God come ence. The last six years since that firRt on them us on Gideon, and what is not Bummer school at Mt. Hermon have wit. possible to their united forces in the nessed changes and developments more practical conquest of the world?
stupendous than probably any similar Dr. Andrew Thomson's Jubilee. period in history. Who can tell what another six years may develop? He writes from Edinburgh : " I may tell you that my congregation The eleventh Christian Endeavor con· held a very interesting meeting on Tues· vention closed in New York City on Sun. day, June 28th. My jubilee as a minis.
day, July 10th. t~ had been celebrated five years ago, Its proportions were colossal and its when ministers of all denominations interest absorbing. It was probably the were prcsent, as also all our civic dig.
largest single gathering of Christians nitaries and representatives of the uni.
that ever met within one building, and versity and benevolent' institutions.
especially of young disciples. The But this was my jubilee as minist~ of selection of topics, speakers, and pro· Broughton Place Church, and the meeting gramme generally impress us as very was restricted to it. And one thing sagacious and successful. which the congregation determined to The rapid and unprecedented growth do will please you. They agreed to of this Young People's Society of Chris. undertake the support of another for.
tian Endeavor is one of the phenomena eign missionary. We already support of history. We know nothing to com· four. But this is to be identified with pllre with it except the Salvation Army, my name and jubilee, 'The Thomson and even that shows less remarkable ex· Jubilee Memorial Mission.' No pro.
pansiveness. Rev. F. E. Clark, D.D., posal could have pleased me more. I in the Williston Church of Portland, prefer it to a monumentum perennius Me., February 2, 1881, a little over rere, and so would you. I continue to be eleven years ago, organized the parent blessed with good health, and to preach society, and now there are over 22,000 once. every Lor s day.
such soCieties, with 1,250,000 members, " Ever affectionately yours, and the organization belts the globe. " A~')BEw THOMSON."
The last year distanced all others in growth, and in one week more societies Rev. Baring Gonld (Church Mission.
have been formed than in the first four ary Society) says that thongh the private years, from 1881-85. The possibilities income of England is as much as £1,300"
of snch an organization with such prin. 000,000 per annum, only about £1,250,.
ciples at bottom and such a membership 000 is given by that country toward for.
at top are' herculean. The responsibili. eign mission work. He believes that 99 ties involved are not less overwhelming. out of every 100 Christian people in To my mind, the grand ultimate end England have not the shadow of an idea of such an organization of yonng people of the horrors of heathendom. Many of must, in God's eyes, be nothing less the temples in India are often used for than a world's speedy evangelization. immoral and obscene purposes. Ont of This is the age of organizations, and dis· GOO native newspapers there, all are tinctively Ohristian organizations. Can it hostile to Christianity. The Free bl) any less than a world's enlightenment Thonght depot in Madras contains 124 which lies back of these providential de· separate works, of which 34 were writ- velopments. Take ~he Salvation Army, ten by Bradlaugh, 19 by }frs. Besant, III by Ingersoll, and others by Paine and for services there is not a room large Voltaire. enough to hold twenty persons; and Mr. George MUller, of Bristol, though over and over again ninety have crowdover eighty·seven years of age, on his reo ed into the car, which seats seventy; cent return from a missionary tour in and often the congregation is larger than Europe preached with his old·time the whole popUlation of the village. vigor and intensity. Eighteen years Not only the people of churchless neighsince, a.Uer forty -three years of pastoral borhoods, but the railway employes work, he determined to give himself to are described as asking affectionately preaching in foreign lands ; and since when" their cathedral" is going to arthen has made 16 tours, preached 3000 rivEl. times, and travelled 150,000 miles. His last tourwaa beguu in August, 1890, and The bishop adds : "My custom is to extended into Austria, Germany, Switz- do all the work necessary in the car erland, France, and Italy, His son-in- with my own hands. It would be very law, Rev. James Wright, one of the unlike a missionary in this new Northpurest, noblest men I ever met, super- west to bring a uniformed porter on my intends the orphanage work. journeys. It would give unreality to the work. So I prepare the lamps and light them; I sweep the Hoor and make my own bed, and distribute the leaflets, While we are celebrating the Carey and make the fires, and put the seats in Centenary, we must not forget that one order. About half the time it falls to hundred and fifty years before Carey my lot to play the organ. I find all started his missionary enterpriRe, John this no hardship; often I have three or Eliot left England to begin his work of four hours on my hands while waiting preaching the .Gospel to the Indians of for service time on a Side-track, and North America. He was the first Prot- many come to see me then, and feel dis- estant missionary that ever left Britain posed to look on me as a working.man too work among the heathen in foreign like themselves."
lands. His father was a man of good This looks to ue like the right kind estate, and lived at Nazing, Essex, a vil- of work done in the true spirit of the lage on the borders of Hertfordshire, Master. Knowing the Bishop as we do, and close to Hoddesdon, Herts. Naz- it is no surprise to find him thus at ing was the home of not a few of the work.
Puritan fathers, many of whom left their native village two hundred and fifty Bimlunanda Nag, a recent Hindu conyears ago, went to America, and became vert, at a meeting of the Young Men's the founders of influential families Religions Association of the" New Disthere. John Eliot's father gave him a pensation Brahmo Samaj at Dacca,"
good university education, and had the lately read a paper, now published means to start him well in life ; but .he under the title of .. My Sin and My son forsook all, and at thirty years of Saviour." , age devoted himself to mission work. He says: ,. Sin is the combination of He endured untold hardships in that Satan and •I,' while faith is the com- desolate and trying region, but remained bination of the Father and' I.' I must at his post till, at eighty. three years of tell you how this thought came to my age, he died. Probably he was the first mind. In English there are two ways to translate the JJJnglish Bible into a heathen of abbreviating words: one is by put.
language. ting the first and the last letter, as Rs.
for ' rupees,' and the other by putting That .. cathedral car" in North Da- a few letters from the beginning of the kota is a great success. At many places word, as Marq. for' marquis.' Accord- along the line of railway where it is left ing to this rule, Sn. is an abbreviation of ' Satan, I and when' I • is joined with 1856 a meeting had been held in Glasit, it becomes sin-s-i·n. And again, gow in this Zenana interest. There are on the other hand, Fath. is an abbre- those now living in London, Harrpw, viation of • .Father,' and when 'I' is and Edinburgh who were in Calcutta in joined with it, it becomes faith-f-a-i-t-h. 1855, and knew the facts of the then al- In both the cases' I' is exactly in the ready begun Zenana visitation.· Up to middle, showing' I • seized by Satan is 1860 it is said no man had so often sin, and ' I' yielded to the Father is pleaded for India's daughters as John faith. " Fordyce, who had made their condition and history his speciftl study. This On the tablet which has been erected matter may Beem trifling, but nothing in London to the memory of General is small which is pertinent to historic Gordon are these words: .. Major· Gen- accuracy. And this REVIEW will gladly eral George Charles Gordon, who, at all give honor to whom honor is "due, and times and everywhere, gave his strength correct any errors of statement, even to the weak, his substance to the poor, though, as in thifl case, the editor himhis sympathy to suffering, and his heart self may need to be more fully informed to God." and to retract statements based on im. perfect information. The Origin of Zenana Work.
A letter has been received from a very When the Oxford honors were behigh authority that a faithful historical stowed upon Bisbop Potter, of New statement must place the origin of Ze- York, Dr. Ince, adverting to the pronana missions farther back than 1858, posed cathedral in the American metropand before Mrs. Mullens or even Mrs. olis. stated that Divine service is to be Sale made their visits to the iron-barred said in seven different chapels in as homes of India's women. many tongues, among them Chinese and Armenian. It seems that as long ago at least as 1855 Dr. George Smith and Rev. John A Paulist father, at a public service .Fordyce and others had been engaged in which certain pretended relics of St. in the work of reaching hy organized Anna, the mother of Mary, were exhibitefforts these millions of wives, mothers, ed, exclaimed: "Here are relics of lhe and daughters. The conference of grandmolher of God, bone of His bone, which Mr. Sale was a member set its flesh of His flesh;" whereupon the conseal of approbation on the work of these gregation are said to have prostrated pioneers in 1855, and the proceedings themselves in an agony of awe and were printed in different forms at the adoration. " It would be difficult," says Baptist Mission Press. The idea that a the Church Standard, "to find anything little" needle-work embroidery opened more revolting or more profane in any long-shut doors" does not, therefore, form of heathenism." Surely this is a represent the earlier opening, however " crazy monk !" true and interesting in later cases. It was the grand work of English educa- Archbishop Whately says: ., If our tion, as Dr. Duff predicted, that pre- religion is not true, we are bound to pared the educated men. He himself change it; if it is true, we are bound to was not in Calcutta in 1855, but Mr. propagate it." Here is in a nutshell Fordyce's appeals went far and wide the whole of the argument for foreign over India and moved many, and the missions. few doors opened that year prepared for wider openings in 1858 and later. In One of our correspondents thinks jus- 1868 a paper was prepared by the late tice to General Booth and the Salvation Lady Kinnaird and her friends, and pre- Army demands that the UEVIl);W shall (It sented to the Queen, and as early flS least refer to the fact that Henry Labou· tioal oontempt of the sacraments is a chere who has been understood to re- radical evil. gard 'Booth as a shllm, has signed the appeal for funds for the Salvation Army I received the following letter, which work, and says he has satisfied himself may serve to explain somewhat the in. that the money raised by Booth is prop- difference to the state of the heathen in erly spent. Labouchere recently visited some parts. Dr. Briggs is credited with the farm colony near Hadleigh, and saying that "no man in his heart befound an enormous work had been ac- lieves in the condemnation of the complished-a complete village built heathen, and that any man who does up in thirteen months. The colony deserves damnation more than the possesses 300 acres of land under crops, heathen do!" The first chapter of Romans and 1200 acres of land is being reclaimed ought settle that.-A. T. P. from the sea by the dumping of London refuse. Thirty-seven acres are devoted LONDON, May 14, 1892. t~ fruit· trees. There are 600 chickens, DEAR DR. PIERSON: In visiting various 600 cattle, and large numbers of sheep parts of the country on deputation work, and pigs. A rabbit warren is a novel our missionaries have been struck by and useful part of the stock-raising es- the remarks of many friends concerning tablishment. the state of the heathen after death, showing that there is a very widespread The colony also boasts of a saw.mill, a idea that in some way they will altogether brick-yard with a capacity of 30,000 per escape the judgment of God, and be liS well day, a chair factory with a daily output off in the end as others, from th~ fact of 600 chairs, and other manufacturing that the Gospel has not been proclaimed plants. Mr. Labouchere found the to them while livillg. Inmost illstances " submerged tenth" working hard and this is, no doubt, due to the teaching of proving themselves deserving of the their minister rather than to any serious help Booth, by the aid of the generous thought on the subject themselves. public, has extended them. Booth's I am allxious, therefore, to publish theory that by giving these poor something in North Africa, our month· wretches a little encouragement and a ly record, bearing upon the subject; in· start they could be redeemed, seemed deed, I should like to seG a symposium to be substantiated by the results ob- on this question which might afterward tained. Men are constantly leaving the be published as a tractate. May I ask colony to accept good situations. The you, therefore, as a special favor, to moral effect upon the beneficiaries seems kindly write me a few lines embodying like a physica tonic. Labouchere con- your thoughts on this subject, or refer siders Booth's enterprise an honest, me to something you hal'e already writfruitful, and successful one. ten. I should be glad to have them at your earliest convenience. The editor would add that the REVIEW With kind regards, believe me, has never discountenanced Booth and the Salvation work he has been doing, Sincerely yours, but, on the contrary, was among the first WILLIAM T. FLOAT. to bid him Godspeed, and say a word in favor of his great experiment. Yet The Bible as a Missionary. loyalty to the Master demands that we record our conviction that the Army cairn Island is a solitary islalld in provides no proper teaching or training the Pacific. about seven miles around, for its members in Christian doctrine, having elevated districts, one peak risand our disapproval that it ignores ut· ing over one thonsand fl'et above sea.- terly the two great sacraments of bap- level, and the north coast presenting a tism and the Lord's Supper. Idiosyn. sort of natnral amphitheatre of thick orasies ,we oan tolerate, but this prac- woodland, flanked by steep cliffs. It was here that the famous settlement in destitution of all clergymen., waH. The island was discovered in churches, and ordinary means of grace, 1767 by Carteret, and named after Pit- and amid the most unlikely classes to cairn, one of his officers, who caught the be reached by saving influences, a sin- first glimpse of it. The mutineers of gle copy of the Bible and the Book of the Bounty and their descendants lived Common Prayer, so largely permeated upon this island for more than sixty with the Bible, became the missionaries years. In 1790 nine of these mutineers of God to convert a whole community.
land6d there, and with them six men We have been wont to emphasize the and twelve women from Tahiti. At need of personal agents in the work of that time the island was uninhabited, conversion, and that need can scarcely though remains, discovered later, prove be made too emphatic; but there is a that at some previous time a native growing evidence that God honors His population had li ved there, and had own Word, and sometimes even wheJ;,e either migrated or become extinct. there are as yet no believers uses that Among these settlers of 1790 quarrels Word to convey the first blessing.
violent and bloody broke out, fed by What of early parental or other relig- the use of spirits distilled from vegeta- ious training may haTe left impressions ble products of the island, and within on the mind and heart of John Adams, ten years after the original settlement, we know not; but the Word of God all of the Tahitian men and all the Eng- was certainly in this case the conspicu- lishmen but one had perished. The one ous, if not the solitary cause of a great surviving mutineer, John Adams, had change.
a Bible and prayer-book, saved from "Servioe for the King." the Bounty, and it was by reading these that the Spirit of God awakened in him This beautiful and instructive record deep remorse for his crimes; and be. of Mildmay work, issued by those dear coming a true Christian believer, he be- servants of God whose good works and gan, with the aid of these books, to in- alms deeds have done so much to illu- struct the Tahitian women and the chil- mine the darkness not only of London, dren of this mixed parentage, with the but of far distant lands, is now issued result that upon this lonely island there in an enlarged and illustrated form; ·grew up a very remarkable community. and we are very glad to recommend all All travellers visiting the island have our readers to subscribe for it. Ad- borne testimony to the gentleness and dress Colonel Morton, Garden House, kindness of character and virtuous Mildmay Park, London, N.
simplicity of conduct which marked this community. As the population James Gilmour of Mongolia.* grew the island became insufficient to The story of this consecrated life, ae assure the subsistence of the increasing told by Rev. Richard Lovett, is a new community; and in March, 1831, the addition and a very fine one to the lit- British Government conveyed the Pit- erature of missions and the biographies cairn Islanders to Tahiti. Their new of heroes. This extraordinary man situation did not prove satisfactory, and went out in 1870 to revive mission·work sickness made inroads into their num- in Mongolia, and labored with devotion ber, so that they soon returned to the among Chinese and Mongols. He had island, from which, in 1856, however, to endure many. disappointments, but they finally and as a body removed to was a man of large practical resource Norfolk Island, where proper proYision and child·like Christian faith. He lived had. been made by Great Britain for their permanent abode. * "James Gilmour of Mongolia: his Diaries, The story of the Pitcairn Islanders is Letters, and Reports." Edited and arranged by the more impressive from the fact that, Rev. Richard Lovett, liLA. (7s. 6d. Religions Tract Society.) as a nomad among a benighted people, ary; he was a generous missionary and inspired the regard of all. giver, making God his banker. He urged his children to give at least a He married, in 1874, Miss Emily tenth of their money to the Lord's Prankard, sister-in law of a Chinese cause. In a letter of brotherly remonmissionary, Rev. S. E. Meech. He pro- strance to one who, in a moment of deposed to her by letter, and she went pression, and without adequate cause, out to be the wife of a man whom she thought he was slighted, he said: had never seen; but it was a marriage "What you do is don,e, not for the L. made in heaven. After her death, in M. S., but for Him; and he sees and 1885, the children being under guar- knows, and won't forget, but. sympadians in England, Mr. Gilmour with thizes and appreciates, and at the end undiminished ardor carried on his work. will speak up straight and open for His With strong faith in God, his attitude true men. I often lug portmanteaus, of life was one of absolute dependence walk afoot, and, as the Chinese say, upon and submission to the will of • eat bitterness' in China and in Eng- God. He wrote: "The great object or land. I am not thanked for it, but He my life is to be like Christ. As He was knows. No danger of being overlooked. in the world, so are we to be. He was Now, don't be' huffed' at my lecturing in the world to manifest God; we are you, and don't think I must think a lot in the world to manifest Christ." of myself to suppose that I am running up a bill of merit, like a Buddhist, and In a letter to a missionary in a dis- think I am Jesus's creditor. My dear tant field, he wrote: " All alone I have fellow, you know better than that. I gone on the 'headlong for Christ' way point out to you and remind you of the of things here, even when preaching to only way I know to be persistently usethe most intellectual English and Ameri- ful and at the same time happy." can audiences, and they have received me royally. God has waked me up When he died last year, Christians these last years to such an extent that who had been gathered from among the I feel a different man. I sometimes people whom he labored to enlighten wonder now if I was converted before. bore touching testimony to his faith I suppose I was, but the life was a cold, and character. Moreover, all who knew dull one. Just the other day Jesus, so him mourned the loss. The life is full to speak, put out His hand and touched of inspiration, and we cordially comme as I was reading a hymn, something mend the book to our readers. Mr. about desiring spiritual things and pass- Lovett concludes: "James Gilmour, in ing by Jesus Himself. I wanted His season and out of season, in almost conblessing more than I wanted Him. stant solitude, in super-abounding phy_ That is not right. Lately, to.!', I have sical labors that often overburdened become calm. Before, I worked, oh! him, and once nearly broke him down, so hard and so much, and asked God to in the long disappointment of the most bless my work. Now I try to pray cherished hopes, and under the conmore, and get more blessing, and then stant strain of what would have crushed work enough to let the blessing find its any but a giant in faith, lived a life way through me to men. And this is which, if it taught no other lesson, was the better way. And I work a lot even now-perhaps as much as before; but yet well worth living to teach this–that I don't worry at the things I cannot overtake. I feel, too, more than I did, Jesus Christ can and does give His serthat God is guiding me. Oh! some- vants the victory over apparent nontimes the peace of God flows over me success, after the most vehement and like a river. Then it is so blessed; long. sustained effort to secure success, heaven is real, so is God, so is Jesus." and that this is the greatest victory possible to renewed and sanctified hu- Mr, Gihj:lour wal;J !lot only a mission- man nature." , So writes the Ohristian, and we say "Amen."
THE MONTHLY CONCERT OF MISSIONS. [S(.ptember
IV.-THE MONTHLY CONCERT OF MISSIONS.
BY BEV. H. G. UNDERWOOD, D.D., KOREA.
Medioal Missions in Japan and Korea. there, if it is not accompanied by some- thing else, if it is not done witl;l a view ~ From the very inauguration of the to the greater work of soul-healing and second dispensation by the head of the soul·saving, it cannot properly be called Church, the great Physician, the allevi- medical mission work. Only so far as ation of suffering, the eradication of the work of healing is accompanied by disease, as in a large measure typifying efforts toward and has for its ultimate the work for and on the soul that was object the winning of the soul to Christ to be done by the Holy Spirit, has gone can it properly be called the work of hand·in-hand with efforts toward the medical missions. renewal of the spiritual man and the sanctification of the soul. This leads naturally to the statement Our great Pattern in all Hill journeys, of the second advantage to be derived in all His attempts to win the people from medical missions, which is, in around Him to His cause, was ever fields that are open to the heralds of ready to let His heart go out in pity to the Gospel, and where women. are easily the suffering and the sick, and was ever reached, the winning of the individuals spending all the power that had been one by one through the benefit that given Him by His Father in lessening they have derived from the earthly pain and relieving from disease. physician to look for greater and more " Great multitudes followed Him, and abundant help to the great Physician. they brought unto Him all sick people The winning of souls and the spread of that were taken with divers diseases, the kingdom throngh the agency of and those which were possessed with medicine is the true aim of the medical devils, and those which were lunatic, missionary. Medicine is but the means and those that had palsy, and He healed to an end, and the evangelization of the them." world is that end. Medical mission- In like manner should the Church to- aries, however, state that through the day go forward in her work of evangel- interest that they naturally feel in their izing the world, and, copying her Master, profession, there is a danger of that should use all the power that God which by rights should be only the through the knowledge of medicine has means toward something higher becom- placed in her handl> for the alleviation ing the end itself, and that where it has of suffering, and should see to it that been attempted to combine the two the physician and evangelist, either professions in one, ofttimes either the combining.the two in one or going hand- physician has become lost in the evan- in-hand, should travel the world over, gelist or the evangelist in the physi- and carrying joy and happiness and cian. Here we see need of care to ward dispelling pain should proclaim, ,. Peace against this danger, and here we see and good-will to men." the advantage of the physician and The special advantages to be derived evangelist going hand-in-hand in this from medical missions, taking them in- work. versely in regard to their importance, are as follows: First, and least of all A third and very great advantage to we would mention the physical benefit be derived from medical missions in conferred in alleviating suffering and countries already opened to the Gospel, the healing of diseases. This is by no but where women are secluded, is to be DleaDS a small bluefit, but if it stops found in the power of the woman physi- cian to open the doors (closed to all others) of harems, zenanas, and anpangs, and thus to carry the Gospel to the most medical missionaries have had no small secluded, where its benign influences share in the successes that have attend- are in truth most needed. Many and ed the Gospel in that marvellous land.
many a woman has thus been brought The first resirlent missionaries to both under the influence of the Gospel; many Japan and Korea were very rightly and many a mother's heart thus won to meJical men, Dr. Hepburn reaching the Saviour; many and many a home Yokohama in 1859 and Dr. Allen arriv- thus made bright that would otherwise ing jn Seoul in 1884. That grand veter.
be dark, dreary, and out of Christ; and an missionary, Dr. Hepburn, together thus is medical mission work bearing a with his noble wife, as now in their noble part in that steady winning of ripe old age they look upon modern individuals one by one that will bring Japan and see what Christianity has the world to Christ. done, can look upon a work in which . But a fourth and by far th-! pre.emi. they have had no small share, and can nent advantage of medical missions is feel assured that God was in it when He to be found in the ability of the physi- sent the physician first. Western medi.
cian, through his knowledge of medi. cal science has completely supplanted cine, to gain admittance to the homes the old and almost useless medical su· and win the friendship and confidence perstitions of that country; medical col.
of tb.e people in hostile fields and lands legesof no mean standing are to.day grad- otherwise closed to .the Gospel. This uating yearly scores of native doctors has been and will be for years to come that rank well with tlle hest graduates the pre·eminent advantage to be derived of our medical colleges at home. Some from medical missions. God ha.s most of the first men of that land, however, wonderfully opened to the physician now tell us that medical missions in villages, towns, cities, and even nations that country have had their day, On that were otherwise closed. Villages the last two counts they are most cer· that had been closed for years where tainly no longer needed in modern Ja- the evangelist had apparently been try. pan, and though on the first two there ing in vain to gain a foothold have might still be a place and work for been opened by but one visit from the them, the native physicians are so physician, and Christianity has been many, so well qualified to do their welcomed almost with open arms. work, and object so bitterly to the for.
Prejudices that seemed iron bound and eigners who injure their practice and hatred that seemed bred in the bone take bread from their children's mouths have been broken and cast out by the by doing gratuitously what they must practical Christianity that has been ex· do for a living. that it is thought best emplified by medical missions, and at by many of the missionaries to carry on this late date many and many is the city their Christian work in other lines. where the evangelist is excluded by This is the opinion of a large number legal restrictions, but where the physi. of the missionaries now in Japan, and cian would easily earn a ready welcome from our acquaintance with the field not only for himself, but for the minis. and knowledge of the facts (gained ters of the Gospel as well. But in through several lengthened visits and a these pages we are to consider medical careful study of the problem) it seems missions in Japan and Korea; let us to us well grounded. With reference then see how the statements made to Japan, therefore, we conolude that above apply in these two lands. First, medical missions have done a noble then, work in that land; that to them belongs no small share of the reRuts in this in. JAPAN. teresting country, bllt that her~~here is Medical work in Japan has made it· self felt in a very marked manner. A now no more need for mission work noble work has been done, and the -along these lines. There may be sOmc who will take issue with us, but even till the fall of 1884 that Dr. Allen, who the most positive of them will agree was transferred from the Presbyterian that on the last two counts at least mission in China, reached Seoul-the medical missions are no longer needed in first to arrive there of the Protestant Japan; and when there are so few work- missionaries appointed to Korea. Here ers of this class, it will surely be agreed in the most marvellous way we seEl the by all that it were far better to send the hand of God in sending as the first mis- men to lands where the conditions are sionary a physician. God bad been such that if possible all or at least three preparing him for his work by over a of the great advantages to be reaped from year's missionary labor in China, and medical mislions will be gained. at the critical time had him providen- KOREA. tially waiting in Shanghai ready to go, so that a cable message consenting to Such, then, is the status of affairs to- the transfer placed him in Korea sooner day in Japan. In Korea the case is al- than it would have been possible for together different. The hermit nation any of those already appointed in has been opened to foreign countries, America to reach there. Brilliant op- the influence of civilization, and the portunities awaited him, and they were Gospel for barely a decade. A scarce brilliantly availed of by the doctor.
ten years ago it was not only death to Scarcely had he reached Korea when the Christian, but death to any foreign- the emeute of 1884 took place. The er landing on her shores, death to any story is too well known to need repeti- Korean harboring a foreigner. Then it tion. 8uffice it to say, Prince Min Yong was generally conceded that Korea was Ik was, as the Koreans expressed it, a closed nation, and but a few years brought to life again by the doctor's previously the London Missionary 80- skill, and thus at one stride a vast ciety, though refusing to send a mis- amount of prejudice and hatred was sionary to Korea, had given its consent overcome, the foreign missionary was to one of its agents in China, who felt brought from ignominy and distrust called to go, to make th& attempt. He to prominence and favor at the court embarked for the Korean shore, and, it itself, and once more medical missions is believed, effected a landing, but has had been used of God to open a wholu never been heard of since. Here was a nation to the Gospel. Property was at country entirely shut in, steeped in once set apart by the king for a govern- prejudices, and yet one from which came ment hospital, to be under the charge back wonderful and most marvellous of the missionaries, which to this day reports of the successes that were attend- retains the high favor of the govern- ing the Romanists, who had entered the ment. From the very start medical land by stealth. Attempts had been work has been a most prominent fea- made by force of arms on t1e part of ture in all the Protestant missions in two of the great powers to open this Korea, so mnch so, that for some years country, but had failed. The arts of the physicians outnumbered the min- diplomacy had had no better success; isters. Medical work among the women Korea was still the hermit nation. has been started, and found wonderful Christians prayed earnestly that the acceptance throughout the whole coun~ barriers that hindered the entrance of try. Three or four other hospitals have Christianity might be broken down, and been opened in the capital, and in in 1882 the prayer was answered; the these thousands of patients are an- negotiation of her first treaty with a nually treated, nearly all of whom at Western power took place, and Korea the same time receive Gospel instruc- was open. , tion.
The Christian Church, however, was Many Koreans in Seoul to-day can slow to heed GOd's call, and it was not oear witness to the power and influence which a devoted physician can wield heathen countries, he can be of service over the hearts of the people, as illus- in Korea. With a system of medicine trated in the life of Dr. Heron, one of and surgery so crude and inefficient, in the pioneer missionaries, who has since a country where diseases are so preva- laid down his life in the service and lent, and where sanitary rules and regu- among the people he loved so well. lations are so poor that pests of every Although at the start the work was description run riot, the amount of confined almost entireJy to Seoul, two physical suffering that these poor Ko.
new missi.'n stations with resident reans are forced to endure cannot be esti.
physicians have since been started, and mated.
two more will be opened as soon as the Then, too, the women of Korea are medical men can be found, for their more secluded than those of either presence is deemed so essential that China or Japan; in fact, among certain most of the missionaries in Korea hold clasBes the Korean anpang becomes as the opinion, and the Presbyterian much a Iiving tomb as are the zenanas Board of Foreign Missions has decided, of India. In times of sickness and that no new station should be started trouble scarcely one of these but would without the aid of a pioneer medical be at once opened to the woman physi.
missionary. cian, and thus an entrance for the Gos- Medical science in Km·ea is extremely pel, which could be gained in no other crude, if indeed it can be called a sci- way, would be effected into the very ence. The native physicians know ab- heart of Korean home life. The truth solutely nothing about anatomy, physi- of this last statement has been most ology, therapeutics; they have a mate- conclusively shown in the reception ac- , ria medica, such as it is, of their own; corded to the women physicians who and they know the results whioh follow up to this time have labored in Korea.
the administration of certain drugs; They have been cordially welcomed in but their whole system of medicine the homes of the people from the high.
seems to be nothing more than a some- est to the lowest. A most royal wel- what skilled use of certain herbs, to come has been accorded two of them by which they frequently add the flesh of their majesties, who have continued to some of the lower animals. Everything load them with favors. No door has is, however, of the crudest and often seemed closed, and the extent of their the most loathsome, and those parts of work has been limited only by the time animals considered unfit for use by civ- and ability of the few on the field.
ilized people form not uncommonly the In relation to the fourth point that bulk of a remedy prescribed by a native was made, as to the advantages to be physician, for with this tolerably accu- derived from medical missions, we find rate knowledge of the action of certain that in Korea the conditions are such herbs upon the system is mingled an that this benefit also will accrue to the immense amount of superstition and cause of Christ in this country through ignorance. Of surgery they have no medical work. True, it cannot be for knowledge, and a Korean surgical caRe one moment claimed that Korea is a will contain nothing but a few sharp hostile country, or that it is any longer pointed lancets or needles and dull closed to the Gospel; but we must not irons for puncturing and cauterizing. forget that this land has been but re· It will at once be seen that under these cently opened; and while the physician circumstances the advantages to be de- and minister of the Gospel can with rived from medical missions are mani- perfect right take up their abode in fold, and that the conditions of the Seoul ,or anyone of the other open country are such that in every respect ports; while the natives in these parts to which we have referred, by which and wherever foreigners have gone the physician can be of service in seem kindly disposed, it must also be borne in mind that to a large extent the an evangelist in his trips to the interior confidence of the people is yet to be is incalculable. Were it possible to re- won, and when all the ports, together late simply the medical side of a three with the more than five hundred square months' trip, when a physician and miles around each one of them, which evangelist travelled together in Korea, are open to the foreign missionary, his it would fill a tolerably good-sized book medicines, and tracts without passports and make an interesting chapter in the shall have been reached, there will still history of medical missionary work. remain large cities and vast provinces Starting from the capital, they had not untouched. It is here that the physi- gone far before the news that a foreign " eui uon" (wiwon) was coming preceded cian is most needed, here that he will them. At almost every village scores find the widest field for usefulness. It were awaiting their arrival asking to be has been stated that there are in Korea treated. In the ancient capital, Song Do, where they spent geveral days, the three hundred and thirty-seven large crowds were so dense that the only way cities, with from ten to three hundred by which they could proceed on their journey was to arise very early in the and fifty thousand inhabitants in each. morning and leave the city before it Of these three hundred and thirty-seven was noised abroad that they were going.
cities, when all the treaty ports have Christian books were always spread out been entered, three hundred and thirty- on a table near by, and without offering them for sale hundreds of them were three will yet remain without a mission- sold daily to the sick who came for ary of the Gospel. Legal barriers stand medioine and to their friends. Such was in the way of any minister of the Gos- the beginning of the trip, and such a pel taking up his permanent abode in sample of the work that met them day after dllY, village I!.fter Village. Euiju, these cities. He can visit them in his on the extreme north, was reached just itinerations, but when he reaches the at dusk, and nnder shadow of the night interior prejudice, superstition, and dis- they crept in, as they supposed, unob- trust will be met nearly everywhere at served. Crowds of Illl classes thronged the threshold, all of which could be dis- the gates continuously during the ten pelled like morning dew before the ris- days spent there. Medioines and books were distdbuted, and sold as fast as ing sun were there at his side the tired hands could perform the service.
Christ-loving physician to show practi- The diagnosing of cases, the prepara- tion of medicines, and the selling of cally that Christ came to bring good books were interspersed with long and will to men. Then, too, these three earnest talks conoerning the welfare of hundred and thirty-seven cities are di- the soul and services of prayer and vided among eight provinces, and clus- praise. This was continued till the stock of medicines was exhausted. The tAr around, as their eight centres, the history of this trip might be the history capitals of these provinces. With the of hundreds like it were there but the exception of Seoul, which is the capital physicians to do the work; but when one of onr largest boards, after nearly a of the Province of Kyeng Ki Do, these year and a half of careful searoh, fails capitals are closed to missionaries, but to find two physicians who would be it has been stated on the highest au- the right men to act as pioneer medical thority, both native and foreign, thl!.t if miHsionaries in two out of the fOllr open ports, how can we expect to find the thA Protestant Church stands ready with men to occupy the seven other centres, the men, not only could permission be much more to do this itinerating work.
obtained for a physician accompanied Time and space will not permit me by a minister of the Gospel to settle in further to enlarge; it is simply my deeach one of these capitals, but in all sire to present before Christ's people probability the central government the fact that He is calling loudly for medical workers in these fields, and to would stand ready to bear a large share ask His Churoh that they obey the com- of the expense of opening and sustaining maud of their Master when He said, a hospital in each one of these centres. .. The harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few; pray ye, there- The amount of good that is to be fore, the Lord of the harvest that He will gained by a physician travelling with send forth laborers into His harvest."
GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE
V.-GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE.
Organized Missionary Work and Statistios. Edited by Rev. D. L. Leonard, . Oberlin, O.
The Darker Side.-As an incentive to of 110,000 Chinese, some 7,000,000 Ger.
mOl'e earnest effort in spreading the mans, French Catholics in New Eng- Gospel, the following figures are given: land increasing at the rate of 1000 per .. Thibet has 6,000,000 inhabitants; month, and already 160,000 of them in Manchuria,12,OOO,000; Nepaul, 2,000,. Massachusetts alone, 2,000,000 Scandi· 000 : Hunan, 16.000,000, and Kwangsi, navians in America, one ninth of the 5,000,000, without a single missionary Norwegian nation on our shores, one station. One district in Northwest fifth of the Swedes, one tenth of the India has 6,000,000, and only 3 Euro· Danes, 54,000 Bohemians in Chicago, pean missionaries. The State of Bhope 3,000,000 Celtic Irish in onr country, has 10,000,000, and only 2 mission. the Italians increasing with fearful rae aries." pidity-only 44,000 four years ago, to.
-There were 363,935 public.school day there are 300,000 !
teachers and 204,913 liquor.dealers in Gleams of Ligltt. -Since its organiz~ the United States last year. tion, in 1799, the Church Missionary -According to the New York Sun, Society has sent out more than 1000 there is in that city a square mile which missionaries, wives not included, and contains a population of more than since 1812 the American Board has sent 350,000. This area contains one block out upward of 2000 missionaries an I so densely occupied with human beings assistants, and has gathered more than that the rate of population is more than 100,000 into churches.
a million to the mile. It is the most -Twenty.five years ago there was thickly populated area on the earth. not a Women's Foreign Mi~sionary So.
Neither Chinatown in San Francisco, ciety in America; now there are in nor the lowest quarter of an Asiatic Great Britain and America 19.500 auxili- city, nor the slums of London or Paris, aries and 5200 bands, with an aggregate hold so many people to the acre. income of $1,250,000. The 20 of these -Some features of the .. American societies in the United States, managen problem" are presented in this table: and supported by women, support 757 missionaries. They contributed $1,038,- NATIONALITIES COMPRISING THE POPULATION 233 in 1888, and since their organiza· OF THE CITY OF CHICAGO.
American …..• 292,4631 Hnngarians ..••• 4,827 tion $10,325,124. At the beginning of German …….. 231854.,5935481RSwouisms .a.n.ia..n.s…. … 2,735 this century the way of life could be Irish……. , .. … 4,350 studied by but one fifth of the world's Bohemian. . . . . . 54,209 Canadia"s…..••• 6,989 population. Now the Bible is trans· Polish ………. 52,7561 Belgians . …… 682 lated into Janguages that make it acces· Swedish…. … 45,877, Greeks ………. 698 sible to nine tenths of the inhabitants Norwegian….. 44,6151 Spanish………. 297 of the globe. English…. …. 33,785, Portugue~e …… 34 French……… 12,963i East IndIans….. 28 -The cost of the 14 Presbyterian Scotch…. ….. 11'9271 West Indians….. 37 churches erected for the Sioux mission Welsh……. ~.. 2,966 Sandwich I~land· Russian. …… 9,977 ers.. .. .. .. .. … 31 Da'!es…. …… 9,891 Mongolians……. 1,217 Itahans . …. . .. 9,921 — Hollanders.. … 4,9121 1,208,669 And these facts and figures will work was a.bout $15,000, of which portray a portion of the task laid upon amount the Sioux contributed one fifth the shoulders of American Christians: of the whole. In only one instance Eight million colored people rapidly was a church erected where a native increasing, 230,000 Indians to be in. contribution was not the beginning of corporated into our civilization, upwllrd the work. Of the 17 Congregational buildings, the Indians were contribu- -The Western Recorder (Baptist) tors to all but 4, and 2 were buil t almost vouches for the accuracy of these fig.
wholly by Indian contributions. It is ures, which are for 1890: In that year estimated that the 1400 native members the Baptists of the United States had of the Congregational Church contribute in the foreign field, not including Cuba for benevolence and church expenses or the Home Mission Society's work in an average of $2.50 each! The native Mexico, as 'follows : missionary society raised $1386 last Ordained missionaries …. . 170 year, and the native Y. M. C. A. $328. Ordained natives ……… . 579 Church-members on fields .. 141,313 -In the Independent, Dr. J. E. Rankin, Money contributed for the President of Howard University, draws year..••………….. $707,135 a cheering contrast: "Twenty-seven The other denominations in the years ago the negro in the South was United States, regarded as evangelical, forbidden by law to learn to read; now had as follows in the foreign field: there are among them 2,250,000 who Ordained missionaries…. . 815 have learned to read. Then a negro teacher would have been a rare curio Ordained natives …. _…. . 860 osity; now there are 20,000 teachers of this race. There are 66 academies and Church-members on fields .. 146,053 high schools taught by colored teach- Money contributed for the year…………•….. $3,315,870 ers. Then the colored preachers were And, after making certain corrections uneducated; now there are about 1000 and adjustments, the writer's conclu- college-bred preachers among them_ sion is that" the Baptists of the United In 1865 there were 2 negro attorneys ; States have more than half the converts now there are 250. Then there were 3 on foreign fields. Our denomination colored physicians; now there are near- furnishes about one sixth of the men ly 750 of them. In the universities of and about one sixth of the money fur- Europe to-day there are nearly 250 col- nished by the evangelical Christians of ored students. Of course twenty-seven the United States for foreign missions, years ago the colored people had very and yet we have more converts than all little taxable property; now they own the rest put together."
taxable property to the amount of -The Woman's Foreign Missionary $264,000,000. " Society of the Methodist Episcopal -A remarkable work is being done Church received for the work $263,- among the Jews in New York by Her- 660, of which only $12,000 came by mann-Warsawaik. He preaches in"De- bequest or donation. The society supwitt Memorial chapel, which is sur· ports 120 foreign missionaries. rounded by 50,000 Jews. At the first meeting, In 1890, there were 16 present; -The African Methodist Episcopal now he has an audience of 1000. Church reports a bench of 12 bishops, Forty-five have been baptized. and 9 general officers, 4150 travelling preachmany more are believers in secret. ers, 9913 local preachers, 475,565 mem- bers, with 1,484,000 followers, 53 an- nual conferences, including the United -The total regular Baptist member- States and Territories, the Canadas, ship in the United States, including the Nova Scotia, British West Indies, Brit- Northern and the Southern Churches, ish Guiana, a conference in Hayti, San is reported as 3,269,806, an increase Domingo, and 2 in Africa. The amount over the previous year of 105,579. expended annually for religious !Ind This includes about 1,000,000 negroes educational purposes is $1,583,353.
in the South. The total of the contri. -The Reformed Presbyterian Church butions for the year is $11,886,558. (Covenanter) numbers only about 10,000, but sustains missions in Syria and Asia recently been in session. The foreign Minor, as well as among the freedmen, work is conducted in 5 fields, the New Indians, and Chinese in the United Hebrides, Trinidad, the Indian fields States. The contributions for foreign of the Northwest, Formosa and Honan missions from all sources in 1891, not in China, and Central India, and a new including a bequest of $8500, were mission is to be at once established in $19,614, or an average of $1.74 per Palestine. Five new missionaries have member. gone ont since last Assembly: 1 to India, 1 to Honan, 1 to Formosa, 1 to -The Southern Presbyterian Church Palestine, and 1 to the Chinese in Britis about to open a missio~ in Korea by ish Columbia. sending thither 8 representatives (instead of 2), 2 men with wives, 2 men Says the report: "We have 67 misunmarried, and 2 unmarried women. sionaries, Canadian, in the field, 30 of One of the number goes at private ex· whom are ordained, and 37 appointed pense. Two are from Missouri and 6 as doctors and teachers. Besides these from within the bounds of the Synod we have 4 ordained natives. Native of Virginia. preachers and teachers: Formosa, 58 ; Central India, 73 ; New Hebrides, 34 ; -·At a recent meeting in New York, Trinidad, 44; in all 209 native agents, denominated a " Great Eastern Demon and a total force of 280. Or, adding 29 stration," and incl uding some 900 rep- Canadian women (wives), the number resentatives of the Army east of Chica- is 316. The Presbyterian Church in go, Commander BaUington Booth and Canada has sent out 47 male mission· Mrs. Booth spoke to an enormous audio aries in all. The first was the Rev. ence concerning their work. During John Geddie, who went to the New the five years that Commander and Mrs. Hebrides in 18i6. Of these 24 have Booth have been in this country, the either died or resigned Two suffered work of the Army has extended to 500 martyrdom at the hands of the natives cities and towns. The" Salvation of Erromanga, New Hebrides. Sevenlasses," who work in the slums of New teen unmarried women of the Presbyte. York City, have visited during the same rian Church have gone to India, 9 to period 4891 saloons, 662 disorderly Trinidad, 3 to Honan, China. The rehouses, and 4500 tenement-houses. ceipts last year for missions were $94,- Their" shelter," which provides a sup- 702. per, bath, bed and breakfast for 15 cents, has harbored 9000 unfortunates, -The Canadian Presbyterian Church many of whom had been converted. has appointed Rev. A. B. Winchester, In the last 12 months 25,287,000 people late of Fungchow, China, to commence have head of Christ through the Sal- work among the Chinese in BritIsh Covation Army, and 28,750 have been con- lumbia. The Canadian Methodist verted. Church has had a mission to the Chi- nese in the city of Victoria about seven -In Canada the Roman Catholics years under the care of Rev. E. J. Gardtake the lead with 1,990,465 adherents, ner, who speaks Cantonese like a native. the Methodists have 847,469, the Pres· Since the opening of this work 116 byterians 755,199, the Episcopalians Chinese have been baptized and 25 644,106, the Baptists 303,749, the Lu. women and girls rescued from a life of therans 63,979, and the Congregational. slavery and shame. The Baptists, too, ists 28,155. are working for the good of the Chi- nese ; and the English Church has a -Seventeen years ago the union of school of about 25 Chinamen, and is the various branches of the Presbyte. making strenuous efforts to extend the rian Church in Canada was consum- work. In all there are more than 200 mated in the city of Montreal, and in the same city the General Assembly has Chinese Christians in British Colum- Bibles and prayer.books, and over bia. A few of these were convert.erl in 6,000,000 other volumes. The Prayer. China, California, and Oregon. book is published in 90 languages; it was first transl!lted by the society in EUROPE. 1709 into Arabic, when an edition of 10,000 Arabic Testaments was issued. -The fund which George Peabody, The society began with a capital of 25 the wealthy London banker, gave, thirty shillings; its present annual income is years ago, to build homes for the poor, £40,000. Ims increased from $750,000 to more than $5,000,000. Up to the end of -At the eighty.eighth annual meet- 1891 the trustees of the fund had pro- ing of the British and Foreign Bible vided for the artisan and laboring poor Society the statement was made that of London 11,273 rooms, besides bath- 13,000 copies of the Bible, in whole or rJoms, laundries, and wash· houses. in part, were issued every working day These rooms were comprised in 5070 of the year by that society alone. Verhouses. The average 1'ent of these sions of some part of the Bible in 9 new houses was $1.20 a week. languages appeared this year for the first time on the lists of the society. -At the annual meeting of the Lon- There lacked only 11,000 of 4.000,000 don Missionary Society the treasurer's copies of Bibles, Testaments, or porreport showed that the ordinary con- tions, distributed during the year, tributions reached $50,000 more than which is an advance of 62,000 copies ever before; $47,500 had come in in over the previous year. Since 1874 the special gifts for the Forward move· society had issued a little short of 132,. ment; the Week of Selt-Denial yielded 01)0,000 copies. Since 1884 the circu- $48,000, making an increased income lation of the penny Testaments has exof $145,000, or, with additional legacies, ceeded 5,000,000 copies. One of the $175,000. In ten years the native striking facts hrought to view is that Christian community, in Travancore, the Bible is circulated as never before has increased 19 per cent, while the in Mohammedan lands; the IIgency at population has grown but 6 per cent. Aden, with its branches, sells 20,000 At the present time the missionary in copies; Algiers takes 8800 ; in Morocco charge has the oversight of 17,000 na- there is a circulation of 6000; and tive Christians gathered in 134 congre- there is a call in almost all Mohammegations; 4 additional European mis- dan lands. sionaries are needed, and increased church accommodations. In Madagas- -The Belgium Missionary Christian car there are between 1300 and 1400 Church reports 45 chapels and halls, 28 congregations, including 276,000 peo- churches, 60 annexes, and 58 Sundayple, and 108,490 children in the schools. schools. The growth has been very marked in the neighborhood of Liege, -The Society for Promoting Chris- in Lize Serning, at Namm, and Charle_ tian Knowledge was founded in 1698 roy, where there are now 3 new churches by 1 clergyman and 4 laymen, and to- with a number of annexes and a total day numbers more than 10,000 mem- of 2000 members, including children. bers. In the last twenty-five years it At Brussels there are 2 churches, one has endowed 38 colonial bishoprics, French and the other Flemish; the helped to build 6 colonial cathedrals work of evangelization is increasing and 2100 mission churches, educated and has made it necessary to hire 2 new 430 native clergy, built Church colleges halls. On every hand the churches and schools ~t home and abroad, cared show commendable liberality, but in for emigrants, endowed medical mis- their poverty it is impossible for them sions, besides conducting an enormous to meet all the demands upon them. and growing publishing business. Last year the society issued over 5,000,000 -Rev. Dr. McAll, speaking at Liver- burn, addressing the Methodist General pool recenlly in behalf of t,he French Conference iu Omaha: "In 1891 I ven- Mission, said they had 136 stations in tured to say that I hoped to live till I France, of which 40 were in and around should lead an assault upon the gates Paris, the remainder being scattered of hell with 100,000 Indian Methodists through the provinces and Corsica, with at my back. The remark was ap- 4 or 5 in Algiers. The total attendance plauded and widely quoted, but, al- at their services during th8 past year though made only a year and a half ago, was 1,280 000, or more than 73,000 over I have long since become ashamed of any previous year, and they had 10,000 it. If I were to make that address children in the various mission schools. over again I should deliberately say ASIA. 1,000,000."
China.-Twenty-six years ago the -The Canadian Baptists are meeting Rev..J. Hudson Taylor inaugurated the with signal success in their Telugu Mis- China Inland Mission, sailing from sion. They have among the Telugus England for China with 15 missionaries. 7 stations, 15 missionaries, a theological The income, which for the first ten seminary, and about 6000 members; years ayeraged about $25,000,18st year and among this same people the Baprose to nearly $133,000. The number tists of the United States received 7905 of missionarielil has increased at a sim- to church membership last year.
ilar rate and now numbers 432, with -No less than 56 villages are now about 526 workers in connection with included in the (S. P. G.) Toungoo other societies, acting under the direc- Mission in Burma. Distributed among tion of the mission. The breadth of these there are more than 5000 conits platform has been steadily main- verts, the number of the catechumens tained, Presbyterians, Baptists, Con- being 1020, and that of the baptized gregationalists, Church of England, 4179, while there are 1;46 communi- Wesleyans and Brethren working har_ cants. Besides the 4 European mismoniously together. Of these, some sionaries, there are in this vast district have gone out entirely at their own ex- 6 native clergymen, 8 sub-deacons, and peOlle, and have, besides, liberally con- 43 village catechists. tributed to the general fund; some are university men, and some have re- -Benares, the religious centre of all ceived only a plain English education, India since countless generations be- and some are from the humblest posi- fore Christ, is.described as a city which tions. The mission has now more than bears the same relation to Hinduism 100 stations in which there are' resident (or Buddhism) that Bethlehem did and missionaries, reports 407 baptisms in does to Christendom. Its origin can- the last year, and there are now 3000 not, it is said, be traced by man. It converts. was occupied by hundreds of thousands -A Chinese cl~rgyman was asked of people over six centuries hefore our how many clergy he thought there were Christian era. There are 500,000,000 in England. "Perhaps 1500," he said. people in the world who bow to the When he heard that there were 24,000, Buddhist faith, worshipping as de- " Can you not," he asked, "spare 1000 voutly as ever Christian worshipped for China?" Christ.
India.-In Northern India very large -In Burma there are but 18,757 numbers of converts are pressing into Europeans and Eurasians. In Ranthe churches. During 1891 nearly ill,Ooo goon, 7163 return their parent tongue heathen were baptized by the Meth- as English. There are 22 Chins, 439 odist mission alone, and 40,000 more are Kareus, 1950 Shans, 7592 Chinese. seeking admission. Said Bishop Tho- Those who return Burmese as their parent tongue number nearly 10,000 less The gain in membership was 1010 for than the natives of India. Of the na- the year. tives of India, :M:adras supplies two thirds, Chittagong and Bengal, which Turkey.-:M:iss Mary E. Brewer, of are nearly equal, coming next. The Sivas, has charge of 1 high school, 4 birthplace of 1725 persons is returned other schools of from 30 to 60 scholars as England, cf 300 as Scotland, 161 as each, in Sivas, and 6 other schools in Ireland, of 173 as Germany, and Wales 5 other places, the nearest of which is only furnishes 10. about 60 miles away. The high school in Sivas supplies teachers for the other Japan.-The number of schools now 10 schools. in operation in Japan is reported to be 28,000, controlled by the local authori. British Foreign Missions. By Rev. James ties, 26,000 of them elementary; nearly Johnston, Bolton, England. 72,000 teachers, while the scholars number 3,410,000. Free Church of Scotland Foreign Missions.-For the year ending :M:arch -The first Christian building in 31st the whole sum raised and spent Tokio was erected twenty.five years ago. by the Free Church on foreign. missions There are now 92 Christian churches to the heathen and Mohammedans was and chapels there. £100,400. The other missions con- nected with the Church raised £7923 -Native converts in Japan, with for conversion of the Jews, £7130 for average wages of less than 25 cents a the continent, and £2662 for the British day, contributed last year $27,000 to colonies, making the total missionary mission work. revenue of the Free Church £116,759. In the India :M:ission are comprised the -An orphan asylum is heing estab· four great missions of Bengal, Western lished in Tokio by a Ohristian teacher India, :M:adras and Centra India, the who devotes to it all 'his own property. Santal and :M:edical :M:ission. The It is designed for girls under six years Christian colleges continued to develop of age, that they may be trained for in work and usefulness and in their Christian service. elevating influence on the better class of Hindus, Parsees, and :M:ohammedans. -:M:issionary statistics for 1891, given Probably the United :M:adras Christian by deno~inations, are as follows; College was the first in all Asia, in the train of which came the Wilson ·:M:is- w *~ ~ ~ ~ t; 0 l0 _ sionary College, the Duff Missionary 1i 0 College at Calcutta, and the Hislop Col- 0§ ~ '" '" !.; lege at Nagpoor, in the heart of India. t In the extension of schools, raising edu- ""0>, .~ cational standards, the baptism of many …..,… of the people of different tribes, and 2 ~o ,~ the inter·tribal pacification of the Nyassa Highlands, the Livingstonia :M:ission );l -l:l was bearing fruit, but was passing through a serious time of transition j~ ~ s>0 '8"i ~ § 8 ~ from native to British administration. .&"",5 The Keith·Falconer Mission is being re- ." ." 00 inforced by the departure of Mr. J. C. "0 Young, of Glasgow, to Shaikh Othman, ~.g !Q ~ ~ ~ .0..0. >0 § in Southern Arabia. In support of the <n ~ :M:edical Mission of Dr. Torrance at Tiberias, and especially toward the ~ .8- .g , 0 8 '" :<;g-., ~ ~- m ,0 ''"" .;l ~ ~ ~ IS "~ 8 ;:i ",- 0"" ~" s:l " ..~ ·O0il !il r: ~ (it '~" ~ ~ ~ ~ '" .S .; ..; j .; o~ s ~ ~" ~ ~ i ~"""0 ~ i j.,., """0[" ~ ~ bJl ~ Eo< '&"l ~ ~ """ 1'""1 to 0 "u0 Eo< 't * ::<: erection of a new hospital to cost £2500, another bishop to have control of the the students of the Glasgow College Nyassaland stations, as the area em- have subscribed 500 guineas. The braced in his diocese is far too large for Free Church has missions at Budapesth, the energies of one man. It took him Breslau, Tiberias, Safed, and Constanti- six months to go from Zanzibar to nople. Nearly 10,000 cases of a medi- Nyassa and back and transact the neces- cal character were dealt with in 1891 at sary business. A rearrangement was Tiberias, and in Constantinople 9D55 further necessary, since the British Gov- were treated in the dispensaries. Mis- ernment is placing gunboats on the sionary operations in the Turkish Em- lake to suppress the slave trade. The pire had been much hindered by the bishop speaks in appreciative terms of proscriptions of the government. the kindness of the officials with whom Church of Scotland Foreign Mis- he has been brought into contact in sion Agencies.-In the various mission German East Africa. The mission had fields during 1891 the number of bap- also been aided by the determination tisms was 1129, of which 638 were of German officials to put down the adults, making a total of 5000 baptized drink traffic. Respecting the prevalent persons at the stations. Ten years ago slave-raiding by the Arabs, he says: there were less than 1000. Five new "So long as the Arabs remained in missionaries had sailed for Africa, and Africa with any power, so long would the opening of the Blantyre Church had these evils continue, for slavery, as the been attended with great rejoicings. Arabs themselves declared, was their For the evangelization of the tribes on very life." The future of African misthe Shire a new steamer would soon be sions lay in the Europeans training an launched. On the European mission- efficient native staff as ministers of the ary roll were 22 ordained missionaries Gospel, who would become the very (2 of whom were also medical), 3 unor- best instruments for the work. On dained medical missionaries, 7 lay this point Dr. Laws also speaks quite teachers, etc., 1 engineer for missionary emphatically. steamer, and 2 industrial missionaries -in all 35; and 18 women, wives of Madagascar.-A correspondent in missionaries, were in the mission field, Antananarivo says that the efforts of a making altogether 53 Europeans. There nation to preserve its independence dewere about 213 Christian natives in ser- mand attention, and especially so when vice in various capacities. The stu- they are made by a Protestant and dents numbered 507, and the younger progressive people of British civilizascholars 6886. From all sources the tion. The Hovas, brought to a high total fund at the disposal of the com- state of civilization by the educational mittee, including the income from the influence of British missions, are Ladies' Association, amounted to £46,- struggling to maintain their political 124. In the propagation of missions freedom. At present the dispute has to the Jews the Church of Scotland not got beyond diplomatic contention, has vigorous organizations at Alex- but if England persists in giving France andria, Smyrna, Constantinople, Bey- a free hand in Madagascar war will ultirout, and Salonica. mately result, as France wonld be com- pelled to enforce her intentions. In 1890 France and England agreed by Universities Mission to Central convention to exchange Zanzibar and Africa.-Bishop Smythies, who super- Madagascar. Zanzibar was willing to vises the missions in Nyassaland, at be exchanged, but Madagascar, never Zanzibar, and on the East Coast is in consulted, was opposed to it. A stigma England, mainly with the object of ,cQnsequently attaches to the British, conferring with the committee in Lon- and to bring this home to them the dOll on the desirllbility of appointing Hovas contemplate taking a step which will prove to Englishmen that a great Burma for putting do;wn the opium wrong was committed in bargaining vice.
away Madagascar as though her sub- jects were a horde of savages. In offer. Uganda.-Early in June intense ex- ing resistance to France, having judi- citement prevailed in Europe, notably ciary control and consul representation in France, England, and Germany, over of foreigners, they propose to take re- ·the letters and messages received from taliatory measures on England by an- Catholic sources respecting the alleged nouncing shortly that the Anglo-Mal- outrages committed by the East Africa agasy treaty is annulled. This would Company's officers, countenanced by deprive British subjects of all rights the Church Society'S agents. In Eng- and immunities in the country, and lish quarters, awaiting intelligence from leave France, should she ever establish Bishop Tucker and Captain Lugard, the a protectorate, free to deal with ,British sensational news is doubted, if not enterprise as she does in her colonies; flatly denied, upon the data of letters British missionaries would be excluded , received at an earlier period. The 0.0- from their former pri vileges, and the curacy claimed by the Review of Catholic customs on British goods would like- M'tSsions, to the effect that the attack wise be raised. on the Roman Catholic missionaries and their converts was incited by Protes- A Canadian Bishopric.-An inter. tant missionaries, is contradicted. All esting gathering has been held in Lon- through the troublous years that have don for the advocacy of dividing the passed since the accession of Mwanga see of Saskatchewan and Alberta. The to the throne, the influence of the Prot- area of Salikatchewan is about 200,000 estant missionaries has been exerted on square miles, and of Calgary nearly the side of peace, and urgent efforts 100,000. A steady flow of immigrants made to repress the hostile feeling that into both territories makes it imperative the two native parties have manifested.
to provide better spiritual ministra- The workers of the Church Missionary tions. To endow a bishopric for the Society are expressly prohibited from Province of Alberta, to be called the interfering with the political concerns Diocese of Calgary, a sum of £10,000 is of any country where they may be labor- needed, toward which handsome dona- ing. In the last letter, dated December tions are being made by societies affili 14th, 1891, which the Church Mission- ated with the Church of England. ary Society received from Uganda, Mr.
Baskerville said that they were sitting Suppression of the Opium Traffic. on the edge of a volcano, and that the -During the year, 181 meetings have Protestants were acting with great for- been held in connection with the Eng- bearance.
lish Society's work in various parts of the United Kingdom, and others organ- The African Slave Trade.-Major ized by the Women's League. The vote von Wissmann has left Cairo for Quili- taken in the House of Commons on mane, East Africa, where with 20 Euro- April 10th, 1891, condemning the opium peans and 200 picked African followers trade as "morally indefensible," had he will travel vii/, the Zambesi and already produced results full of encour- Shire rivers to Lakes Nyassa and Tan- agement. Endeavors are being made ganyika, There it is intended to estab- to suppress the cultivation of the poppy lish fortified stations as the bases of in India except for medical purposes, operations for the two steamers, and a.
and protests have been raised against flotilla of steel sailing-boats for service the decision of the Indian Government on the lakes. The major states that refusing to accept the only too modJ:~te his sole object is to suppress slave-trad- proposals of the C.hief Commissioner of ins, a~g f<?r t!:Jil! re~so~ he hopes tq :r~" ceive all necessary assistance from the not so much Christian seed in the world British Commissioner in the Nyassa that we can afford to put it in heaps in district through which he must travel. any place.' On the evangelization of He expects also to work conjointly with the world pray over this: • Of the the anti.slavery.expedition of the Congo world's inhabitants, 1,440,000,000 have State on Tanganyika. Major Wissmann not accepted Jesus Christ: "
has received leave of absence'from the -It plainly appears, from an item in German army for his expedition, which the Independent, that at least not all foris so far a private undertaking that the eign missionaries are pampered by lux. two lake steamers are his property, ury ; for the Rev. George A. Stuart, of while the expenses are being provided the American Methodist Mission in by the Anti·Slavery Committee at Cob· China, affirms: •• I know of two young lenz. In a year's time he believes the ladies, alone in an interior station, who steamers will be launched and the forti· live on a. very poor quality of Chinese fied stations erected on both lakes. A food, and not too large a supply of that. Berlin telegram at the end 'of May stated They are so much reduced in l1esh and that 17 Arabs had been sentenced to be strength that the friends of a neighborhanged for holding a slave market on ing mission are alarmed about them. A German territory. On the awakening lady sent them a few potatoes, and found zeal of Germany in crushing the traffic, that these were the first potatoes, and a London journal observes: "The par.
tition of Africa by the great powers has almost the only foreign food, found in a very ugly look of spoliation about it, their house for over two years. It is but if they take the slave trade by the the opinion of the neighbors that they throat and strangle it, such a deed will will not survive the summer unless they atone for much. The African slave leave the place and change their man· trade means wholesale massacre, cruel. ner of life. I know of another lady, ty, and torture, and the exposure of going as fast as she can with II. wasting helpless children to die. In tropical difficulty, and who should be having Africa more than elsewhere the slave the best of care and the most nourish.
trade is' the sum of all villainies.' The ing food, but who is in an interior town prospect of stamping it out almost rec. with barely enough to subsist upon.
onciles us to the employment of the gib. Beef is not to be had in the place in bet. " which she lives, and sbe told one of her friends that her husband WBS trying to Monthly Bulletin. make her some • beef tea out of lean pork.' " In General.-Theodore Parker was not a special friend to evangelical missions, -Mr. L. D. Wishard. the well-known but he said: ., If the modern mission. Y. M. O. A. secretary, who has spent ary enterprise had done no more than the past two years in stUdying the mis.
produce one such character as Adoniram sion fields of Europe and Asia, recently Judson, 'it would be worth more than all said: .. I have never met young man .the money which has been spent upon who have more thorough appreciation it. " of the practical points of Christian work -In a recent address at a convention than the Chinese. Out of the Y. M C. A. at United Presbyterian young people in at Jaffna, Ceylon, fourteen other associa- Ohio, it was well suggested: "Those tions have grown." Mr. Wishard sewho are trying to maintain two or three cured a pledge of $1600 from the secrelittle struggling congregations that taries to pay the expenses of an assistant might unite in one strong one that could to Mr. David McConaughy in Madras.
be a power in mission work, would do United Btates.-Dr. John G. Paton, the well to ponder these words : • There is well·known missionary tQ ~h!! N!!"" Hebrides, is a delegate to the Pan Pres- carrying on work among the lepers in byterian Council that meets in Toronto, different parts of the world. Canada, next September, and will spend a few weeks in the United States, seek. – Within two years the Church Mis- ing to influence our Government to act sionary Society has sent one hundred in accord with other great nations in and fifty new missionaries into the vari. preventing the traffic in slaves and rum ous foreign fields ; and there is said to at the New Hebrides. be so great a desire on the part of many young men and women to go that this -Among the students in the Chicago society is overwhelmed with applicants, Theological Seminary are three Chris- and has been driven to formulate a tian Jews, one of whom (Rabbi Freuder) statement of its requirements for service. was converted in the Hebrew Christian Mission, Chicago, conducted by Rev. B. -Miss Leitch, the author of" Seven Angel, a graduate of this institution. Years in Ceylon," has, with her sister, raised more than $150,000 for foreign -Rev. Y. Asada, of Japan, who took a missions during her visit to this coun· full course at Garrett Biblical Institute try and Great Britain. and a special course in the Semitic branch at Union Theological Seminary, -It was announced to the Free Church will enter Chicago University in the fall Assembly of Scotland, at its last meet- for advanced work in Hebrew. His ing, that the sum of $115,000 would be purpose is to translate the Scriptures paid to the church by the representa· into Japanese. tives of the late George B. McKenzie, of New York City. -The American Bible Society is tak- ing advantage of modern science to The Oontinent.-It is estimated that enter new fields of usefulness. Photo- Europe is $1,000,000,000 poorer every engraved plates for the printing of the year by her system of armed peace. Scriptures in Zulu and the languages of the Gilbert Islands are being made. -A Roman Catholio church origi- This makes five foreign languages that nally built for the Hussites has been the society will be printing this year. ceded by the Town Council of Laun, in Bohemia, for the use of the Protestant -Dr. Daniel Dorchester has intro· congregation gathered in that town. duced the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Com· The event is evidence that religious lib- mandments, and the twenty-third Psalm erty is making headway even in Austria. into the religious services of the Gov- ernment schools among the Indians. -Rabbi Lichtenstein, of Tapio.Szele, Hungary, who some years ago, simply -The Presbyterian Board of Homs through reading the New Testament, Missions has authorized the Woman's came to a knowledge of the truth, has Executive Committee to raise $5000 for "endured many trials and persecutions, the enlargement and establishment of but remains steadfast, and many Jews the work at Juneau, Alaska, where a have, through him, come to know the firm footing has been gained, and con- way of life. Maintaining that as a rabbi fidence has been established. Fifteen he has a more potent influence than he : tribes are there, twelve of them speak· would have if he joined a Christian comi ing the same language (the Thinket). munion, he has yet witnessed with joy More than fifty applicants were refused the baptism of Israelitish converts. admission to the school home between September and March of the past year -The Russian Cabinet has decided for lack of room. that Hebrews who are desirous of emi- grating shall be provided with a permit, Great Britain.-There are now about free of charge, and be relieved of mili. twenty-five missionaries of the Church tary service. Other immunities will be of England alld of various other bodies granted.
The Missionary Review of the World — October 1889
THE EVANGELISTIC EARL
MISSIONARY REVIEW OF THE WORLD.
VOL. XII. No. lO.-OldSerie.._-OOTOBER.–VoL. II. No.IO.-NewBerie..
I.-LITERATURE OF MISSIONS. SHAF'l'ESBURY, THE EVANGELISTIO EARL.
[EDITORI.A.L.-A. T. p.] WREN Oonstantine, in 330, resolved to build the New Rome on tht> site of Byzantium, he was himself marking out the boundary lines on a scale of more than twice the magnitude of the old city. One of his followers ventured to remonstrate against so iDl.practicable a scheme as to inclose within walls such an extent of territory. But the founder of Oonstantinople replied, {( I am /ollowinJ Him who is leadinJ me."
When we laid down those two imperial volumes* in which Mr. Hodder has so graphically portrayed the most many-sided life of the century if not of history, we felt overwhelmed by the magnitude of the scheme on which that life's activities were projected. But the coster~ earl built more wisely than he knew. He followed One who led him, and who had for that life a sphere so wide and so varied in its service. The story of such a man is peculiarly valuable at this crisis of history. It illustrates what a single man can be to his own generation directly, and to all coming generations remotely, by simply giving himself to every work in the spirit of a true evangelism. We are reminded of Admiral Foote, who, when the King of Siam came on board his flagship to dine with him, asked a blessing on the food; and when the king said, "You do just like the missionaries," the Ohristian commander beautifully replied, "Yes, I, too, am a missionary."
It is well worth while to glanp~ at this career of an English nobleman, whose nobility was less that of the garter and the escutcheon than of the Ohristian and the universal benefactor. We may learn from it one grand lesson: that he who hallows life with a consecrated missionary spirit and purpose may work out a truly missionary service wherever he goes and whatever he does. Shaftesbury had the marvelous power of· turning every employment and environment into a new opportunity for evangelism. In even so unlikely a place as the Houses of Parliament he preached the gospel. His pen and his tongue were constant tonics and stimulants to the work of missions both at home and abroad. Robert Morrison in Ohina, William Oarey in India, Robert Moffat in Africa, Eli Smith in Syria, Justin Perkins (."Life of the E~rlof Shaftesbury." by Edwin Hodder. 2 vols•• 8vo. London.) in Persia, Adoniram Judson in Burmah, never did a more thorough missionary service than did Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury.
During a public life spanning a period of more than fifty years he was identified with more organizations and measures for the uplifting–of humanitythan any other man who ever lived. Though heir to titles and estates, he found no man so poor and degraded, no child so filthy and repulsive, no place so dark and dismal, as to dishearten him in his errands of mercy. Wherever he went he found existing evils which were a disgrace to a Christian civilization. The condition of the insane patients in hospitals, of wage-workers in factories and mines, of dwellers in tenement-houses and lodging places for the poor, of the outcast population in towns and cities, of bootblacks and chimneysweeps, drew out the sympathies of his soul. But he neither wasted his energy in remonstrance, nor exhausted his emotions in sentiment, but he set himself personally to reform every abuse and to remedy every evil. Michael Angelo cQrrected one of Raphael's mistakes, not by criticising his work, but by simply sketching another wall-figure on a larger scale, and writing over it, "ampUus"-broader. Shaftesbury likewise criticised" by creation rather than by finding fault." And, in all his herculean labors, among the seats of the highest or in the slums of the lowest, one purpose moved him: loyalty to Christ and the gospel.
So absorbed and engrossed was he in his mission for humanity that he seems almost omnipresent. To-night he is at the vagrant's hidingplace, the Victoria Arches under Holborn Hill, rousing the poor sleepers from their damp bed of rotten straw filthy with vermin, and leading them to the Ragged School, to sit by their side and by loving counsel stir in them hopes and longings for a true life. To-morrow, at Exeter Hall, he takes the chair and thrills a host of veterans who are holding a council of war, in the interests of the life-long conflict with human wrongs; he inspires new zeal, kindles new enthusiasm, provokes new emulation. Again he stands in the midst of five hundred acknowledged criminals, without weapon or guard, and calmly and courteously advises them how to get out of the clutches of evil habits and into an honest livelihood. Yet again, in the House of Lords, he draws aside the veil, and discloses to the peers of the realm the actual, factual tragedies enacted daily within a few squares of Westminster Cathedral, or among the operatives in the foremost factories of the land. That tall, pale, thin, careworn man puts his shoulder to the wheel where others would think humanity hopelessly bemired, and instead of waiting for some Hercules to come and help him, lifts with all his might. And that one man carries through Parliament scores of relief bills, in the face of opposition, and what is worse-inertia. He shortens hours of labor, secures sanitary provisions and educational opportunities, better wages, better homes, and whatever else can improve the condition of the poor working-people. There is nothing, near or far, that is wrong, oppressive, unjust, unmerciful, in which he is not personally interested. He does not, like Mrs. Jellyby, look past the misery at his side to dream of some philanthropic scheme in Boorioboola Gha ; nor, like too many other small souls who claim that "charity begins at home," does he exemplify the sordid selfishness that begins at home and stays there.
No wonder that when, as the autumn leaves fell in 1885, his bier stood in Westminster Abbey, a nation wept. Throngs of the common folk leave scant room for the simple funeral cortege to pass through the streets. There they stand-the men with bared head and mourning badge on the coat-sleeve; the women with crape on the bonnet and tears in their eyes; artisans and seamstresses, factory hands and flower girls; they come -from homes, refuges, asylums, tmining-ships, ragged-schools; costermongers and bootblacks, reformed criminals and reclaimed women, stand without. Within the great Pantheon of England's dead, royalty and nobility, dignitaries of church and state, the leaders and the literati, lords and ladies, crowd to pay the last honors to the illustrious man, who, being human, like Terence, counted nothing human as alien to himself. When before was there ever such a burial sceue? where prince and peasant met in an equal sorrow, and where on the same coffin there lay side by side ~he flowers sent by a crown princess and by London's flower-girls!
To give a complete review of such a long and laborious life would consist neither with our space nor our aim. But, if we may get some point of view from which to command the whole horizon, we may get some conception of the bolder, more conspicuous features of an almost limitless landscape; and so we shall seek to discover some secrets of the power and success of this singularly consecrated life, which is perhaps the greatest lesson on missions which the nineteenth century has yet taught us. We incline to emphasize it the more because it illustrates the great fact that the sphere of our service is comparatively inconsequential. Not where we go, but how we go, is the all-im- . portant matter. He who has within him the love of Christ and the love of soul!':, the divine enthusiasm of humanity, the passion to do good, cannot be placed amiss. He will transform any work into a divine ca.lling.
Shaftesbury was a man of one idea. Early in his career he laid down the law which ruled his life, that the English nation's best policy was to declare Christia.n principles the basis of its government and the law of the land. That was his" one idea." He determined, whether that declaration was openly made or not, to regard it as a fact that Britain was a Christian land, and that everything unchristian and inhuman should, at leaFA, g~ I?ol!lvelled to face the light of investigation and exposure. One of the Erskines used to call God to witness that he had done his best to bring on a definite issue between Christ and the adversaries of the truth. Shaftesbury did the same in his parliamentary career. He compelled what was wrong to confront exposure; he tore away every curtain of concealment. He compelled those who claimed to be virtuous and defenders of right to see what was vicious and unrighteous, and then disregard it if they dareu. As Voltaire shamed papal France out of persecution for religious opinion, he shamed even political partisans and demagogues into righting great wrongs. He first went himself to explore abuses; then he set himself to expose them; and, with characteristic intensity, tenacity and pertinacity, he held on to his manly and godly purpose till he wrought reform. He believed in the double power of light-to reveal and heal, to expose and transform; and was confident that life would follow light.
Costermongers especially interested him. They constituted a community by themselves, and the donkey is a member of the family with family privileges. Poor and improvident and untidy, they needed help and comfort, and he called himself a coster, bought a barrow and donkey, and then lent them to those who had none. He mingled with the costers, joined their society, and insisted that, when they communicated with him by letter, they should not forget the honorary titles, "K. G." and" Coster!" He encouraged them to Sunday rest, and by donkey shows and prizes stimulated a wholesome pride in the care of their beasts. The costers loved him; and on one occasion presented him with a fine donkey duly decorated. With rare tact he rose to receive the gift, and, with arm around the donkey's neck, said that he would ask no epitaph beyond this, that "with a patience as great and a resignation as unmurmuring as his, he might have done his own duty;" then, as the donkey was led from the platform, he humorously begged the reporters to state, that" the donkey having vacated the chair, his place was taken by Lord Shaftesbury." This scene of itself is a revelation of the man: his singular simplicity, sagacity, tact, freedom from all lordly airs; his remarkable union of a dignified manhood with a flexible adaptation to his environment, are all here exhibited and exemplified.
The best part of such a life is found in what it stimuZates others to do. In 1861 he plead for an asylum for the middle classes. Thomas Holloway then formed a resolve to found such an institution; and twenty-five years later the" Holloway Sanatorium" was opened by the Prince of Wales. Another of Munchausen's "frozen tunes" had thawed out into the music of action.
Nothing is more important in this life of many-sided philanthropy than the fact of his soundness of doctrine. There is a current impression that laxity of doctrine and the '" enthusiasm of humanity" are somehow linked; that orthodoxy is narrow, unsympathetic, uncharitable; and that it is the liberal thinkers who a,re the liberal givers., Here is a standing refutation of the idea that a man must be a heretic to be a worker for men and a winner of men. The Earl was from deepest conviction an old-fashioned believer, and belonged to the extreme wing of that evangelical party from whom have sprung the great philanthropic movements of the century. His orthodoxy was of no compromise pattern. He held to the total depravity of the human heart, the need of the new birth and of simple faith in the inspired Word and the atoning blood; he believed in prayer and Providence, in the resurrection of the dead and a coming judgment. His theology had three vital points; a divine Christ, an atoning sacrifice, and a coming kingdom. Notwithstanding its unpopularity he believed in the literal return of Christ as the only hope of humanity. To him all things move toward that event. The world cannot be saved by human agency. We may and we must preach this gospel "for a witness in all the world; and then shall the end come." For all this misery "the only remedy is in His r6turn, for which we should plead every time the clock strikes! "
Shaftesbury's identification with the poor was not formal but real. When in 1860 the Ragged Schools of London presented him with their testimonial, he replied that he would rather preside over the Ragged School Union than command armies or sway empires.
Nothing in the character of this superb man attracts more than his habit of discriminating if at all in favor of the most degraded and destitute: To have seen him at St. Giles' Refuge, talking to ragged, barefoot, homeless boys, drawing out from them frank confessions as to their vicious and criminal habits, kindling in them new hopes of an honest and industrious life, and planning for them a way to such a goal-this was to see him at his best. For thirtytwo consecutive years he presided and spoke at the meetings of the Ragged School Union. It was his habit to look at every question from the point of view of the poor and the outcast. The shoeblacks, like the costers, called him" our Earl;" ragged urchins and half-starved gamins during one winter were fed with 10,000 basins of soup and bread, made in his own house and sent to supply their needs. He had boundless faith in the power ofthe gospel to uplift, save and sanctify. In the worst and lowest h(sawa genIi of good that could be made to grow into a heavenly plant.
He was an aristocrat by lineage but a democrat by principle. He believed with Burke that the condition of the common people is the condition of the commonwealth. We may call the great lower stratum of society "the masses," as though it were only an aggregation or conglomerate of dead matter, but these masses have marvelous powers to heave and shake and cleave the upper crust. There the volcanic fires burn and thence the earthquake shocks come: The base of the pyramid is much broader than the apex, but if it be laid in the marsh or the quicksand the whole structure sinks. Sbaftesbury's tastes, like F. W. Robertson's, were with the elect aristocracy; but, like him, his principles were with the mob. His great aim was to lift the common people to a higher level, and, because the only way to find a solid fulcrtlm for his lever was to get down to their plane, he would not accept any honor or office which put them at too great a distance. When, in 1855, Pal- merston urged him to take a place in the ministry of the realm, he answered: "I cannot satisfy myself that to accept office is a divine call; but I am satisfied that God has called me to labor among the poor." Of one-half of bis life that sentence is the key. When again, in 1866, Lord Derby urged him to accept a high office, he said, "1,600,000 operatives are still excluded from the benefits of the Factory acts, and~ so long as they are unprotected, I cannot take office. "
Much of his public work bore directly on evangelism. As late as 1855 he found an unrepealed law, forbidding gospel teaching and worship in private houses where, besides the family, over twenty per- sons were gathered. Under such an enactment any religious gathering, not under the protection of the established church, might be dispersed as an unlawful conventicle! Shaftesbury moved for the repeal of this relic of barbarism. He presented the facts: millions of non-church- goers; all the churches together unable to cope with prevailing immorality and infidelity; the need of using every agency to per- vade society with the gospel; and he showed now if literally construed that law would shut up every Bible class, Sunday school, cot- tage lecture and ragged school, and make the 25,000 annual meet- ings of the Oity Missio)1 unlawful.
Of course he met opposition. Indifferentism said the decree was a dead letter; he replied that a dormant reptile is not dead, and may be warmed into life when occasion serves. * Ecclesiasticism fought him, but he insisted that" permission" to breathe is no more absurd than permission to pray or praise, teach or preach; and that, with no limits save those demanded by public morality or safety, every Englishman . should enjoy his right to worship God when, where and how he pleased.
He was a man of many sympathies. The unity of his purpose was not more conspicuous than the multiplicity of his. labors and interests. If he was narrow at the point, he was broad at the blade. While he was fighting the "Improvement Oompanies," that, while displacing old tenements by newer houses, drove the poor into overcrowded dwellings or compelled them to lodge at a great distance from their workshops or else pay excessive rents, he could originate a sanitary commission in connection with the war in the far EaRt.
*Lord Brougham. Florence Nightingale equally with the sewing girl called llim " our leader." The tortures to which chimney sweeps were subjected in hot, sooty and narrow flues; the sufferings of children while training for the circus-shows; the snares lai'd for the vIrtue of young girls- all these drew out his sympathy. .
Shaftesbury's evangelism was of the individal sort, private and personal. Never did he lose a chance of bringing the subject of religion before either a community or an individual. There are some people who are forever talking about evangelizing the masses, but who never attempt the work of winning souls one by one. Somebody quaintly says that the priest and Levite who passed by the wounded man were on the way to preach to the masses and could not stop to take care of one man even if he were dying.
He protested that in a country where 100,000 souls were every year added to those who had neither church, pastor, nor sacraments, and 500,000 persons were absolutely without any religious instruction, the church that restricted evangelism, nay did not lead in evangelism, would soon die of dry rot, if not by divine judgment. .That sentiment is one text from the Earl's life that might well be cut in stone upon the walls of every church building in Christendom!
Of course such a man took the lead in every effort to evangelize the cities and gather in those who go to no church. He rejoiced when thousands thronged Exeter Hall and thousands more went away un- able to get in,' during the special services held there for non-attend- ants. When the metropolitan theaters were opened for Sunday even- ing meetings, he was there often, Bible in hand, facing the motley throng; and he, like Ezra, "read in the Book of the Law of God distinctly, and gave the sense and caused them to understand the reading."* The study of Scripture was his habit and delight. He searched the Word of God and knew how to use it. He was appalled at the prevailing spiritual destitution of the people, and put forth every effort to supply it.
His self-oblivion was the fruit of a cherished principle and a culti- vated habit of self-forgetfulness. He esteemed nothing his own, ex- cept his conscience. To pride he became b.,y simple habit an alien.
He helped a hobbling old woman to his place in the carriage while he mounted the box and drove up to receive military honors as Lord Lieu- tenant of his county; or bent to kiss the little girls who won the prizes at the hllillble flower shows; or went into the worst districts to carry toys to poor little children, or read and pray at the bedsides of the dying.
The Countess was a noble helper to the Earl. He said with tearful emotion that in every crisis of his life when timidity or infirmity • prompted him to hesitate, she always and promptly said, "Go for- "Neh. viii. ward and to victory!" From the time when in 1833, a few years after his marriage, he set before her, and in no rose-colored tints, the career of self-denying service to which God seemed to call him, she never wavered. She bade him follow his dnty, and resign honors of state and comforts of home, yea, even intellectual culture, to place himself on the side of the children of want and woe. And so he did!
One additional fact must be noted. The primal inspiration of all thIs heroically unselfish life came not from his parents, nor wife, but from Maria Millis, a humble nurse, who, before he was seven years old, taught him to pray, to study God's Word, and to love the poor. To her he attributed that first touch that set all the chords of his being vibrating at the story of the cross, and the old watch which she left him as her legacy was the only one he ever wore. When his heart was attuned to such a key, it needed only an occasion to waken life-long harmonies; and that occasion was furnished when, at fourteen years, he saw a pauper borne to burial in a rude coffin by staggering drunkards, who actually let their burden fall, and then cursed and swore. Not a mourner was following the bier, and the thought of flinging It human being into a hole without decency or humanity, simply because he was a friendless pauper, set his heart-chords trembling; and henceforth they never ceased vibrating in that minor key. Just before his death he said, « I feel age creeping on me, and I know I soon must die. I hope it is not wrong, but I cannot bear to leave this world, with all the suffering in it."
Of his activity in promoting the" Water-cress and Flower-girls' Mission;" the" Flower Shows," where prizes rewarded the faithful care of household plants; the reform of lunatic asylums, factory abuses and sanitary science; in espousing the cause of chimney-sweeps and workers in mines and collieries; in relieving the sufferings of the blind, the crippled, waifs and orphans; in fighting opium and Sabbath labor. we cannot speak in detail. His life illustrated the inexorable law of vicarious suffering. The disciple is not above his Mastel', who" saved others; Himself he could not save." His dedication to the cause of the friendless poor was costly; it cost pain of body, and more exquisite pain to his sensibilities; it left on his face the lines of care, it marked him as an old man when yet in life's prime. His was an alabaster flask of ointment very precious, bnt he broke it lavishly upon the feet of his Lord, and of His poorest and least creatures.
Of course Shaftesbury was tL habitual giver. He despised the selfishness that expends itself in ample indulgence and then seeks to atone for a life of luxury by "munificent bequests." He said there is no such thing, but there are munificent donations. He could not keep money in the face of human want, and only his frugal habits kept him from insolvency. He knew no value in money save its power to confer good; and he held that to put it to an unselfish purpose stamps
WILLIAM CAREY. '729
on human coin the image of God and makes it pass current for heaven's own merchandise.
Shaftesbury, in preparing addresses, always followed a few rules. He neither wrote nor trusted to notes. He gathered and arranged '~acts and quotations. By investigation and then rumination he made himself master of his theme and its great outlines, and then trusted to the inspiration 01 the occasion. In the House of Lords, where the very atmosphere stifles enthusiasm and affords no inspiration, he sometimes, though rarely, committed a speech to memory. But he used to say that how a speech begins is of little moment, but not so how it ends; and he often committed to memory his entire peroration. But his life was one grand oration. The golden pen of heroic action, held in the hand of sublime resolve, wrote out its sentences in living deeds. No wonder it was grandly effective. Its echoes may still be heard and will long stir to similar action like the clarion peal of a trumpet along the lines of battle.
WILLIAM CAREY.
B~ JAMES M. LUDLOW, D.D., EAST ORANGE, N. J.
ONE hundred years ago this sign hung over acottage in aNorth- amptonshiro village: "Second-hand..shoes bought and sold. William Carey." Within sat a cobbler, twenty-eight years of age, careworn, burdened with the support of himself and a sickly, half-crazed wife. On a pile of leather chips, the leaves held open by lasts and awls, were books in Hebrew, Latin, Greek and French, which languages he was trying to master. On the wall was a map which he had rudely draw~ and scribbled over with the statistics of the world. Some years later Lord Wellesley, the English Governor-General of India, hearing this man commend his course, said, "I esteem such a testimony from such a man a greater honor than the applause of courts and Parliaments."
The evolution of such a life from insignificant obscurity to worldfilling influence and renown is a subject of study for this age. It was an evolution, not a change through mere environment, for we can detect the germ of that great after-life in its earlier years.
Carey was born in 1761, the son of a poor weaver. His early education was such as, with his marvelous powers of observation, he picked up from men and things. When a mere lad his garret-room was stocked with specimens of bugs and botany. As Solomon in more elaborate address, so the ragged boy whose genius for discovery led his playmates to call him" Columbus," "spake to them of trees, even unto the flower that springeth out of the wall; he spake also of beasts and of lowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes." He devoured the few books that came in his way. For language he had such a natural gift that he learned to read F'rench in three weeks from a French translation of an English work, and that without grammar or dic- tionary. But though a genius, he had no natural endowment of piety. He learned to lie, and once he stole. He was converted at eighteen; married at twenty; cobbled, peddled shoes and studied during the week'days, opened a school at night for those poorer than himself, and preached for the Baptists on Sunday.
There were no foreign missionary meetings, magazines, or interest in those days. But, bending over his Bible and his last, the cobbler student felt himself swayed by the conviction that the church must go to the heathen. At a meeting of preachers he brought up the subject. The presiding officer, as wise as his age in these matters, rebuked him: "You are a miserable enthusiast; nothing can be done before another Pentecost, when an effusion of miraculous gifts, including the gift of tongues, will give effect to the commission of Christ as at first." But the Pentecostal effusion was already in Carey's soul, and it almost took the form of the gift of tongues, such was his marvelous facility for acquiring languages. He sent out from his cobbler shop a pamphlet, which, as it was the first, is still about the best missionary prospectus in the English language. Its chief suggestions were united prayer and a penny a week from every communicant. His genius in putting the matter and his devotion to the idea soon won him some grand friends, among them the distinguished Andrew Fuller. They at once started the" monthly concert" of prayer for missions, which is still observed so largely in England and America. In 1792 Carey preached a grand sermon, a direct result of which was the fouuding of the Baptist Missionary Society. As the chief projector of this grand scheme, the devoted man did not hesitate to offer himself as its first missionary.
He stndied his maps. Iudia, with its hundreds of millions, seemed to be the most needy, and, at the same time, the most promising field accessible, in that the English flag was already there. Fnller eloquently'described the meeting where Carey volunteered. ,. We saw there was a gold mine in India, but it was as deep as the center of the . earth. Who will venture to explore it?" "I will go down," said Carey, "bnt remember that you must hold the ropes." "We solemnly engaged to him to do so, nor while we live shall we desert him," was the pledge with which the little band practically launched the scheme of modern English missions.
Taking John Thomas, who had once been in India, as a medical helper, Carey sailed in 1793. That vast land was then without a ray of clear Christian light, except that which lingered with the reme;nbrance of the German missionary Schwartz, and the glimmers in the homes of certain English army and civil officers. The land was divided between the various forms of Hinduism in its densest superstition, its most horrid crnelties, and the equal bigotry of Mohammedanism. The British influence being that of the camp, the trading station or the political office, showed the vices of Christian lands rather than the virtues of Christian life. The East India Company dreaded the attempt to evangelize the land lest It should awaken the religious prejudices of the people and imperil their gains. Such was the hostility of even English merchants that the missionaries were denied passage to India in an English boat, and sailed in a Danish ship. Arriving at Calcutta, they were not allowed by the East India Company to engage in religious' work. For five mohths they lived in abject poverty. Carey finally went inland, built a bamboo house in a neighborhood infested with tigers, hired out as an assistant in an indigo factory, and while thus engaged studied the Bengali language, talking the gospel in it as fast as he learned the equivalent of the sacred words. He set up in a corner of the factory a rude printing press, to which he was so devoted that the natives thought it was his god whom he worshiped. On this he printed with his own hands portions of the Bible as he translated it.
Able to earn some money in the factory, the self-sacrificing man declined to receive any salary from the friends in England. He soon fell a victim to the fever. His children sickened; one died. The insanity of his wife developed into actual mania. But he worked on without abatement of zeal. Beside his house he built a chapel and preached to the natives, though such multitudes came that they congregated outside more frequently than inside. He visited two hundred villages, everyone he could reach in his boat, which was his sleeping place and his library; for all the while he was studying Sanskrit, the mother tongue of the various Indian languages. He saw that the Bible must be laid beside the Shastras of the Hindus; that it, the divine light, could evangelize India-he could not. This great soul thus faced the immense problem of making himself to India what Ulphilas had been to the Goths, and Jerome to the Latin world, giving those vast millions the Bible in their own tongue. In the meantime the letters of Carey to friends in England electrified the home church with his own spirit. To his personal influence we trace the formation of three great missionary societies: the London Missionary Society, representing various denominations of dissenters; the Scottish Missionary Society, representing Presbyterianism, and the Chu1'ch Missionary Society in the Established Church. Individual Christians, too, caught Carey's enthusiasm. After reading the account of his project, Robert Haldane sold all his possessions, and gave $200,000 to establish a similar work in Benares, which, however, was prevented by the cruel timidity of the secular authorities.
Soon Carey was joined by those grand men, Marshman and Ward. The East India Company not allowing them in their bounds they settled in Danish territory at Seram,Pore. On Christmas day, 1800, after seven years'labor, Carey baptized his first native convert, Krishna Pal, whose hymn translated by Marshman has become an heirloom of aU the modern church: " 0 thou, my soul, forget no more The friend who all thy sorrows bore; Let every idol be forgot, But, 0 my soul, forget Him not."
Krishna was a high-caste Brahmin; he became a gifted preacher, and with his own private fortune built the first house of Ohristian worship for natives in Bengal.
The same year witnessed the publication of the entire New Testament in Bengali, a work which made Oarey's reputation as the foremost of Oriental scholars. The British Government now found it necessary to establish a college at Fort William for the instruction of their own officers in the languages and" literature of India. There was one man only in India, or the world.. if we except Lord Oolebrooke, who could fill its chief chair. Oarey became a professor, but really he became the university. One who had seen him at work writes: "Here was for nearly a whole generation a sublime spectacle-the Northamptonshire shoemaker training the governing class of India in Sanscrit, Bengali and Marathi all day, translating, too, the Raynayana and the Veda; and then, when the sun went down, returning to the society of the maimed, the halt, and the blind, and many with the leprosy; to preach in several tongues the glad tidmgs of the kingdom to the heathen of England as well as of India, and all with a loving tenderness and patient humility learned in the childlike school of Him who said, 'Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?' "
It was in lR04, when Oarey had thirty years of life still before him, that the Governor-General of India declared· that he esteemed the commendation of such a man a greater honor than the applanse of courts and Parliaments." The occasion of this praise was a notable one. In a brilliant assembly of European officers and native scholars Oarey had welcomed Lord Wellesley in a speech in Sanskrit, at the time an almost unknown tongue to Europeans. It was an exploit of a great genius, at which the Sanskrit scholars of to-day marvel, although they have the aid of Oarey's dictionaries and grammar, and more recent works based upon them, with which to acquire that language, while Oarey had to make these tools for himself. That the following thirty years of such a man's life would be of immens@ influence we could predict, but the full greatness of his work no man can estimate. With the corps of scholars he brought about him he rendered the gospel into between thirty and forty different tongues, and thus brought it within the reach of over three hundred millions of human beings to whom it had been unknown. It was a beautiful custom of these translators, when a volume was. completed, to place it on the communion table and dedicate it to the service of Ohrist. And why not? It was the offering of intellect and heart and body, of which the volume was the product. But Oarey's work was wider than this, although this alone would have warranted the praise given him at his death by Robert Hall, as "the instrument of diffusing more religious knowledge among his contemporaries than has fallen to the lot of any individual since the Reformation;" if not that of another who pronounces him "the most honored and the most successful missionary since the time of the Apostles." (Dr. John Wilson.) We can only indicate the side work of this wonderful man. He was distinguished as a botanist and edited the journal "Flora Indica." He founded the Agricultural Society of India. He made the first dictionary of Oriental languages. He translated parts of the Hindu sacred books and made Europe fa- miliar with the Eastern religious thought. He established the first dis- tinctly Ohristian college in heathen lands, having won the patronage of the King of Denmark. He started the first newspaper in the East, the Samaohar Darpam. His was the first clear and potent voice which the British authorities heeded, in suppressing the cruelties of infanticide, the murder of widow-burning, and the living sacrifice to Juggernaut.
Oarey died at the age of seventy-three. At that time English mis- sions had become established in India, and all sects recognized him as the divmely appointed pioneer. When on his sick bed the Metropolitan Bishop of India, the highest official of the English Ohurch in the land, visited him, and bowing his head by his pillow asked the dissenter's ben- ediction, feeling that no ecclesiastical honor could equal the blessing of one whom God had ordained to be the great apostle of modern mis- sions. The learned world went into mourning when the news floated to the universities of England, Germany and America that Oarey was no more. 'rhe secular authorities did .well to recognize his departure as if he had been one high in political or military life, by dropping the flag to half mast, for he had accomplished more for European influ- ence in India than any single man who represented only the State. But Oarey himself seemed during his life to be the only one who was ignorant of his greatness. The humility of this sublime iloul was beautifully illustrated during his last illness. Dr. Duff, then a young man, visited him. As he was leaving the chamber the sick man re- called him, and said, "Mr. Duff, you have been speaking about Dr. Oarey, Dr. Oarey; when I a~ gone say nothing about Dr. Oarey- speak about Oarey's Saviour."
Where ninety years ago Oarey was the only ordained Protestant missionary are now about seven thousand. That single convert, Khl'lshnu Pal, has a goodly following of two-thirds of a million. This is the commentary on Carey's early sermon that led to the establish- ment of the society which sent him out as its first missionary. His text was Isaiah liv.: 2, 3. "Enlarge the place of thy tent," etc. Un- . der this he made the two points-the heart lobes of his own life: 1. Exped great thing8 from God. 2. Attempt great things for God.
VIEWS AND PRACTICES OF THE ZULUS
RELIGIOUS VIEWS AND PRACTICES OF THE ZULUS.
BY REV. LEWIS GROUT, WEST BRATTLEBORO, VT.
WHEN I received my appointment to labor as a missionary among the Zulus in South Africa one of the Secretaries of the Board in Basion expressed to me the wish that I would give special attention to the language of that people, as little or nothing had been as yet done in that direction. In following out this request, I found it necessary to go directly to the more intelligent of the Zulus, if I would have genuine samples of the language as they speak it, since among themselves they had neither a book nor even an alphabet with which to write or print one. Having learned the language, as best I could, from their best speakers, I set about getting from them the needed material for preparing a Zulu grammar.
Among the extended sketches of various kinds which I wrote out verbatim from the lips of SGme of the older and best informed that I couid find among them, a good number had respect to their religious views, their divinities, their modes and objects of worship. These objects I found to be the spirits of their departed friends, the shades of their ancestors, and especially the ghosts of kings and other men of rank and renown. Of these they speak as the amahlozi (singular, ihlozi). To these they are wont to ascribe eyerything, good or. evil. For the good, they are praised; for the evil, they are propitiated by sacrifices. Sometimes the departed spirit is spoken of as reappearing in the form of a snake, whenever the departed thinks it necessary to commune with those he left on earth. Sometimes, or at least among some of the tribes, the divinity or shade is spoken of as an itonga (pI. amatonga), a defending or preserving power. And sometimes the departed spirit is spoken of as an isitunzi, a shade, the soul after it has left the body. Ask the people about the end of man, where he goes when he dies, and they generally reply that he becomes an ihZozi, and goes off to live somewhere under ground, there to build and abide with his ancestral friends.
The ordinary and more formal method by which the people are accustomed to communicate with their divinities, the spirits of the departed, is through the inyanga, doctor, medical priest, or diviner. It would take long to describe the way in which he prepares himself for this most important profession; nor is it necessary. From the artful, ambiguous language he employs, when his services are required, one would think he must have studied the ancient Delphic oracles. In case of sickness, death, loss of property or other great calamity, a deputation is sent, with a cow or other present, to consult this medical priest, the inyanga, and find out the cause and cure of the sickness or the calamity. If the present is wanting or insignificant, the doctor or medical diviner is quite likely to excuse himself by saying that the divinities are not at home to-day, and so nothing can be done till they return. If the deputation comes again, on the morrow, and brings the desired cow, they will find the divinities at home and the doctor ready for service.
The following is the substance of an account of going to inquire of the inyanga (priest), in a case of sickness, first taken, as above described, from one of the older and more intelligent of the Zulus, and then translated from his own words, with some condensation, into English: When sickness comes, someone takes something and goes to the priest to inquire about the sickness. When they arrive at the priest's, he comes out, sits down, passes the compliments, and remains silent for a time. Then he says, Come, let us go yonder. What have you brought? They say, Sir, we have brought nothing-here is a trifle. Then he says, Come, speak, that I may hear; smite (the earth with your rods), smite ye, that I may hear. They say, hear; he says, sickness. They say, hear. He says, it is in the chest; and the people say hear. He says, it is the lungs; they say, hear. H{f says, his paternal shade wants something. They say, hear. He says, it is the shades of his ancestors. His ancestral shades say, why is it that he (the sick man) does not care for us? Why does he no longer recognize us, since we have preserved him from his infancy? The people say, hear. Will he never build a large kraal for our sake? Why does he not recognize us? Then the people say, There, that is it. And he says, they ask, Why is it that no offering is made to them by the slaying of an animal? Then the people say. there, that is just it. Then he says, smite again, that I may hear; and they say, there, there, he is coming nearer to the seat of the difficulty. Then he says, his paternal shades are angry with him; he is diseased, he is sick; the shades are calling him. And the people say, Who told you?- hear. Then he says, Should an animal be slaughtered, he will recover. They say, hear; he says, the shades require that particular cow of theirs.
And so, when he has finished, the people give him the present which they brought, and go home. Arriving at home, the people there at home say, come now, tell us, that we may hear the words of the priest. What did he pretend to say? How did he inquire and perform? Oh! the priest performed thus: He came and followed the omen of the occasion; he came and said, he is sick, he has a disease, he is called by the shades of his ancestors, who reproach him, saying, Why is it that he acknowledges them no longer? since, long ago, they went and delivered him from great suffering, while other people died? and have they not delivered him from great evil? Why, then, does he not continue to acknowledge us and give us what we require?
And now the sick man admits it all, and says: Oh, since that which they require is thus required by themselves, who can refuse it?
then the people say: Oh, yes/ ~s lOU sa,!, who could refuse a thing when it is thus demanded by the owners themselves? How can the priest be mistaken, since he has gone so evidently according to the omen? Do not ye yourselves perceive that he has run according to the omen? Then let them have their cow, the very same which they have demanded, and then we will see whether sickness will leave me. To this they all assent. And now some one goes out, and when he has come abroad without the kraal, all who are within their houses. keep silence, while he goes round the kraal, the outer inclosure of the kraal, and says: Honor to thee, Lord. Offering prayer to the shades, he continues: A blessing, let a blessing come, then, since you have really demanded your cow; let sickness depart utterly. Thus we offer your animal. And, on our part, we say, let the sick man come out, come forth, be no longer sick, and slaughter your animal, then, since we have now consented that he may have it for his own use. Hail to ~hee, 0 King! glory! Come, then, let us see him going about like other people. Then he goes back into the house, takes a spear, goes out with it, enters the cattle-fold, comes up to the cow, gives it a stab, and as the cow bellows, saying y-e-h, he says, Yes, an animal for the shades ought to show signs of distress; it is all right, just what was required. Thus the offering is made. But if the sick man fails to recover, he goes to his neighbors and says; How is this, that I have slaughtered my cow, which was said to have been required by my pa~ ternal shades, and yet I have never recovered? And they say: It cannot be so; there must be some mistake; it must have been just a device of the lips to get a man's cow. If it had been required by the shades, then why has the sick man never recovered? The priest has been fabricating a lie. He does not know how to inquire of the oracle. Let us go to another priest.
So they go to another priest, salute him, and say: Hail, friend, good news. And he says: What present have you brought? And they say: We have brought a present, so and so. And he says: Oh, the shade is not willing; he is absent. Then the messengers return, and go to another, a.nd after the usual salutations the priest proceeds to inquire of the shades as to the trouble in hand, its nature, cause and cure, as did the other priest. After a long-continued consultation, much smiting, and hearing, and reporting, the priest comes out to say: The sick man's paternal shade is calling him to an account, saying, Why does he abuse me by acting in this manner? I am weary. The shade of }lis mother compla.i.ns also, and says to her son, What art thou doing there yonder? I am displeased with you. The deputation returns and reports to the sick man: The priest says your father demands that particular cow, thy favorite, and says, Since the cattle are mine, being given to you by myself, why have you never made me a decent offering? To this the sick inan replies: Oh, since the owners themselves decide thus, why, what can I say? so, then, let them have an offering, and then I will see whether or not I shall recover. Perhaps beer is included in the offering, with the understanding that some might like beef and beer. Then some one goes out, and there talks, while all within keep silence and listen to what he says, to wit: o ye dwellers below, shades, ye our fathers, there is your cow; we of- ferthe same. Now, then, let this your sick one recover, let disease depart from him; the cow is already your own. Then he goes back into the house, gets a spear, and stabs the cow; and when she bellows, he says, Let your cow ~ry, then, and bring out the evil which is in us; let it be known abroad, then, that it is your cow, which is reqUIred by yourselves. Thus it is slaughtered, thus it dies, and the rest of the cattle are put out to pasture, while this remains dead in the fold, and is left alone for a time. Then they dress it, cut it up, and put it away in a hut by itself for the night. The sick man takes the gall, pours it upon himself, and says: Yes, then, good work is this; let all evil come to an end. The contents of the larger stomach of the slaughtered animal are also strewn upon the house and the premises of the sick man. Noone is allowed to open the hut while the beef is there, until they are ready to take it out, lest the shades be disturbed in their feasting upon it. On opening the hut in the morning, a portion of the beef is said to have oeen consumed. The rest is brought out, cooked and eaten; all the neighbors having gathered to have a share in the feast. As they take their leave they thank the man for the rich entertainment they have had, assure him that it was a very fine animal, an offering with which the shades ought to be satisfied, and express the wish and hope that the sick man may soon recover.
One party, of whom the writer inquired, put it in this way: When they are sick they slaughter cattle to the shades, and say: Father, look on me, that this dise3se may cease from me; let me have health on the earth and live a long time. They have a long talk (with the shades) in the cattle-fold, and praise the spirits, saying: Hail, friend, thou of such a place, grant us a blessing, beholding what we have done, what an offering we have made. You see this distress; may you remove it, since we have given you our animal. We know not what more you want, whether you still require anything more or not. May you grant us grain, that it may be abundant, that we may eat, of course, and not be in need of anything, since now we have given you what you want. Yes, for a long time have you preserved me in all my going. Look here; you see I have just begun to have a kraal. This kraal was huilt hy yourself, father, and why should you now be willing to diminish your own kraal? Build on, as you have begun; let it be large, that your offspring, still here above, may increase, increasing in knowledge of you, whence cometh power.
If one is on the point of being injured by anything, and yet escapes, he says: I was preserved by our shade, which was still watching over
THE NEW ERA OF COLONIZATION
me. Perhaps he slaughters a goat in honor of the same, and puts the gall on his head; and when the goat cries'out for pain of being killed, he says: Yes, then, there is your animal; let it cry, that ye may hear, ye our gods (ye of ours) who have saved me. I myself am desirous of living on thus a long time here on the earth; why, then, do you call me to account, since I think I am all right in respect to you? And while I live I put my trust in you, our paternal and our maternal gods. The writer's informant says they slaughter only goats and cattle, and, not sheep, because sheep never cry when they are slain. They want something which will cry when it is about to be slaughtered.
THE NEW ERA OF COLONIZATION AND ITS BEARING ON CHRISTIAN PHILANTHROPY.
BY F. F. ELLINWOOD, D.D., NEW YORK. NONE can look upon the progress of civilization by the powers of Europe with greater interest than the friends of missions. The question how the dark places of the earth are to be brought under civil government, through what agencies this is to be done, and under what Christian or unchristian influences they are to be placed, is one of the greatest moment as affecting the progress of Christ's kingdom in the world. The spread of that kingdom has from the earliest ages been more or less connected with the great enterprises of colonization. The occupation by God's chosen people of the countries lying on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, considered as a radiating point of influence upon the nations of the world, was of vast consequence. The dispersion of the tribes of Israel through the Babyl~nian Empire, until in the time of Esther the exiled people, with their knowledge of the true God, were represented in aU its one hundred and twenty provinces, greatly enhanced their influence. The numerouS' Greek colonies that were formed in the East, carrying with them that language which became the vehicle of the New Testament revelation, became still another factor in the spread of Christianity. The enforced dispersion of the early Ohristian believers by persecutions at Jerusalem was in the same line. The extension of the Roman arm!:! over all Europe furnished also highways for the messengers of Ohrist, and the settlements which were extended to Spain, Gaul and Britain became centers al1d sources of Ohristian influence. The occupation of the North American Oontinent, and, later still, various portions of the East, by the Anglo-Saxon, has started great forces, whose results we are not even yet prepared to estimate. How, then, can the student of the Bible and of the history of Christian civilization look without deep interest upon the great movements which are being made just now by Britons, French, Germans, Italians, Portuguese and others for the possession of hitherto uncultivated regions of Africa and the Islands of the Sea. It is an encouraging consideration for all those who love the cause of missions that side by side with the small and inadequate work of prelchers and teachers are the great movements of God's providence. The most important element in the missionary work is the fact that by obeying the great commission of our Saviour the church comes into the sweep of those vast and omnipotent forces which move the world by divine behest.
We do not overlook the many and serious hindrances which have been interposed by commerce, especially the contact and influence of those evil-minded men who resort to all mission fields with sinister aims. We do not forget the almost disheartening discouragements of the opium trade, and the still more devastating liquor traffic; but rising high above all these are the supreme purposes and powers of Him who has promised to be with His people" alway, even unto the end of the world."
It has been a matter of just pride throughout Protestant Ohristendom that the Anglo-Saxon has had so prominent a place in the colonization of the waste places of the world. Leaving Southampton one finds the Briton dominant in the great natural Fortress of Gibraltar; he is also at Malta, and at Oyprus, with his stores and naval equipments. He is dominant in Egypt, in Natal, ,and Oape Oolony ; he has established a British Empire in the heart of the Asiatic Oontinent ; Australia, New, Zealand, Fiji, are under his power and influence, not to speak of Singapore, Hong Kong, and various smaller island groups of the Pacific. Wherever British power has obtained a footing a degree of permanence is found in the institutions of government. of education, of economic and political enterprises. The Bible, the school, the eleemosynary institution spring up ; the work of missions by Protestant or Oatholic is impartially protected, though it is fair to say that in India particularly it was by a long and hard lesson that British authorities were taught to deal justly with the missionaries and their converts as against the popular demands of prevailing heathemsm.
It has often enough been said' that the Spanish and the French have never proved to be good colonizers; that on this continent the Spani!3h saw their powers swept away as a result largely of their own blundering, and as a reaction against their remorseless rapacity and oppression. The French colonies on this North American Oontinent were largely lost by the mistakes or weaknesses of bigoted French sovereigns; and where their influence still prevails, as in Lower Oanada, stagnation, the handmaid of superstition, is still too palpable to be hidden.
But a change seems to have come, The Germans, not hitherto inclined to colonization, and the Italians, occupied until within a recent period with their struggles against French ambition, Austrian tyranny, and papal repression, have only just wakened to the spirit of 740 THE NEW ERA OF COLONIZATION. [OCT., colonial enterprise, and a good beginning certainly has been made in Abyssinia. Among those explorers who in the last two decades have helped to open the secrets of the Dark Continent are found names like Caserta and Piaggia, who are proving themselves worthy of the raceof Marco P<>lo and Carpini.
Some recent events have seemed to indicate that possibly Great Britain is in danger of losing her laurels. It is claimed that the splendid opening of Zanzibar, which was accomplished by the enterprise and humanity of Great Britain, under the lead of Sir Bartle Frere, has virtually been snatched from her grasp by Germany; not by force of arms but by a more vigorous utilization of the advantages which were gained when Sultan Borgash had been compelled to treat for the suppression of the slave trade. And now Germany is in possessian of a vast territory which is a key to the,Great Lake Region.
The Egyptian campaign of Great Britain five years since was brilliant and worthy of the British arms, so far as it went. But in the wretched delays and indecision which resulted in the sacrifice of General Gordon, and in much of the policy which has been pursued since that time, there seems to be a lack of that energetic and humane statesmanship which has so long been the glory of the British flag.
A recent editorial article in the New York Tribune condemns, very justly, we think, the short-sighted policy which has been pursued in connection with what it calls the massacre of the Dervishes in the Nile Valley. It justifies the measure as a necessity, but one which when once accomplished should have been followed up by such measures as would prevent a like necessity-for just as soon as another horde of blood-thirsty fanatics can be gather6ld in the desert, it may sweep down the Nile and again fill the whole country with disorder and alarm. It complains that Dongola, Khartoum and the Soudan are still left to govern themselves, and with such a rule one cannot tell what to expect. At the time of Gordon's death the capture of Khartoum would doubtless have been justified by the European powers; now it may be a question. But certainly some measures should be taken to establish authority and permanent peace along the upper Nile, and not only destroy the slave trade, but afford protection to those more peaceful tribes which have so long been devastated by fanatical raids. The fact that Massowah, and other coast towns of Abyssinia which have come under Italian rule, have increased their population more than tenfold in a half dozen years, affords evidence that what the people of all that vast region most desire is stable government and protection. What more significant refutation could be given to those recent pleas which have claimed that Africa should be given over to the superior control of Islam?
The article referred to gives English rule in Egypt much credit over against its failures and mistakes in the Soudan. It has done much to relieve the burdens of the Khedive's subjects; the fellaheen have been delivered from the injustice of arbitrary conscription; the military budget has been rescued from spoliation and extravagance ; taxation has been reduced, and the floating debt has been paid; the system of enforced labor on public works has been' abolished; progress has been, made in irrigation; prisons have been reformed, etc., etc.
But with all this a damaging contrast is still drawn between these results and those effected during a corresponding period of French occupation in 'l'unis. "There," says The Tribune, "the public debt has been refunded at a low rate and carried up to par; surplus revenues have been obtained; a new and radical land system has been introduced; new industries have been established and old occupations revived; commerce has been doubled; municipalities have been created and law courts opened; school-houses have been built and the French language is rapidly spreading through the country. All these results have been accomplished because the French Government, having conquered the country, has justified its continued occupation of it by governing it well, and civilizing it without delay." An important qualification of this contrast must be admitted in the fact that in Tunis capitulations have been withdrawn and a French protectorate has been construed as excluding other EUl'opean nations; while in Egypt the reverse is trne ; international complications have hampered the English at every turn, and the permanence of foreign occupation has been left in doubt.
But the question is : Are these evils insurmountable? In a strategic point of view Egypt is tenfold more essential to African civilization than Tunis. More important than all tho Barbary States together is the Nile; it is the key to the Soudan and all Eastern-Central Africa, and it is along the line of the Nile and the connecting links of navigation through the Lake Country that the fatal blow must be struck to the African slave trade. There is, therefore, a power of motive in connection with diplomatic progress in Egypt far greater than can be found in any other country now waiting the influence of humane I I statesmanship and philanthropy. When Cardinal Lavigerie appeared in London with his stirring appeal for an international movement aimed at the suppression of the African slave trade, whose atrocities he so eloquently portrayed, there appeared in some of the London papers an expression of surprise, amounting almost to a sneer, that a French Catholic should deem it necessary to exhort the countrymen of Wilberforce and Clarkson on the subject of human slavery. Nevertheless, the verdict of Christendom seems to be in favor of Lavigerie; it justifies the pertinence if not the necessity of his appeal. 'rhe horrible traffic goes on, and whoever may be to blame, it cannot be said that anything like adequate efforts are being made on the part of any of the great powers for its suppres-
INTEREST IN MISSIONs
sion. But individual efforts are being put forth, and men of benevolent impulse are associating and conferring with reference to the subject, and it is to be hoped that the sympathy of Christian people on both sides of the A.tlantic may be awakene(j. in this great matter.
There is now in this country a gentleman from London (Mr. Francis William Fox) who is most deeply interested in the establishment of a line of police stations extending from Suakim on the Red Sea to Berber, the most easterly'point of the Nile, thence to Khartoum, and up the Nile to the Lakes, Victoria, '.ranganyika, Nyassa, etc., to the' mouth of the Zambezi. This would complete a cincture which, it is believed, would sever the roots of that foul cancer which Livingstone caned the" great open sore of Africa." Mr. Fox is encouraged by the prospect that a meeting will be held in New York in October which will enlist some of our influential classes of citizens in favor of the project which he has at heart. There should be found a hearty sympathy with it on the part of all friends of missions and all others who love humanity.
'rhe time seems to have come when the Government and people of the United States should begin to cherish a more active interest in the great geueral movements of the world and should seek to exert an influence worthy of their power.
The policy of avoiding" entangling alliances" with other powers has been carried to the verge of absurdity and contempt. When Mr. Kasson in the Berlin International Congress on the affairs of the Congo cast his influence against the introduction of liquor into the African Free State, he was reprimanded by our Secretary of State. When Earl Granville, moved by the reports of devastation produced by the trade in liquor and firearms in the Pacific Islands, sent a circular note asking the great powers to unite in repressing it, France, Austria, and even Russia, gave a favorable response, while Secretary Bayard humiliated the United States by a shuffiing declinature.
It was doubtless well for the infant Republic when scarcely recovered from her long struggle with Great Britain to avoid an entangling alliance with France, over which the clouds of a European war soon gathered, but to parade that old threadbare doctrine as a pretext for standing aloof from every joint enterprise of humanity in these days of our security and strength is to bring on us the contempt of the na":' tions. We certainly have had something to do with slavery, and if now we can make atonement by helping to sweep it from the face of the earth it is worth the effort.
-~—- INTEREST IN MISSIONS.
[The following brief and pertinent thoughts come from a source which entitles them to more than ordinary consideration.-EDB.] THAT the interest in missions is on the increase is manifest in this country by many signs which cannot be mistaken, some of them of a character which may be called in question by the" wise and prudent," but all indicative of life and vigor. I have seen not fewer than five new missions to Africa alone started within the last twelve months by as many new organi- zations, besides fresh efforts by old societies. This tendency to start new and independent schemes is one of the signs of-vital energy welling up from the spiritual quickening of new life in numbers of the churches, too exuberant to be kept within the old limits and forms of church order, and too independent and self-conscious to be restricted by the rules of our old societies. That many of these enterprises will fail in accomplishing what their ardent but inexperienced originators so earnestly aim at is painfully cer- tain to anyone familial' with the history of missions. But we cannot but follow them with interest and not a little hope. They have a vitalizing ten. dency and are the signfl of a rising tide of missionary life inside the churches out of which they have sprung; and they help to get us out of the ruts in which all old institutions have a tendency to run. We shall learn many a lesson from the failure of some and the success of others.
Another hopeful sign of the increasing interest in missions is the interest with which not only enemies but friends are sifting and in no measured terms denouncing the missionary methods and operations of. the past and present. The impatience for tangible results, even where unreasonable, is hopeful and expresses the intensity of desire which gives rise to impatience.
The long series of lessons by "a missionary" in the Ohristian, and fol- lowed up by vigorous lessons in the Wesleyan Times by "A Friend of Mis- sions," have led to a great discussion in the recent meeting of The Wesleyan Oonference in Sheffield.
Neither of these writers, when stripped of the lions by means of which they made a loud voice widely heard through the important organs in which their strictures appeared, were found to be men of weight or experience', but both have arrested attention, and we doubt not good will come of their ill- advised utterances.
The charges brought against the missionaries of the writer's own church, as well as those of all societies, in the Wesleyan Times were so severe as to compel all the missionaries of the denominations in Southern India to sign a memorial to the Conference, demanding a searching investigation of the charges made, or that they might be recalled. The writer, who turned out to be a young man who had only been a little more than a year in the mission field, and had cost the society seven or eight hundred pounds and had never done a stroke of work, charged his brothel' missionaries with living in the greatest luxury and fashion; keeping their butler and coachman and fine -clothes for presentation at the mimic courts of the viceroy and governor, and with a retinue of servants which would outnumber those of a merchantprince in England or America. And this without any adequate explanation of the climatic and social conditions of life in a country like India, which compel and facilitate a mode of life very different from what they would desire, if life is to be maintained and health preserved for the Master's work.
Of course no man who knew anything of the facts of the case attached the slightest value to such baseless and cruel charges; but as there are many of the warmest friends of missions who knew little or nothing of these facts, the missionaries did well to demand an inquiry. They were ablv defended in the Conference and an unanimous vote of confidence pa;sed, but it remains to be seen whether they will be satisfied with the resolution. It is expected that they will insist on a thorough inquiry by an influential deputation, and it will be for the interest of missions that their demand be complied with.
One outcome of the discussion is most satisfactory. Mr. Hugh Price
THE CHRISTIANIZATION OF MONEY
Hughes,in whose paper the accusations appeared-a true-hearted missionary, equally able and ardent as an advocate of missions at home and abroad- urged the church then and there to resolve to raise £20,000 as an addition to the income of her foreign mission income.
One unpretentious outcome of the Missionary Conference in London of last year is the resolution of the" Christian Vernacular Education Society"
to devote its efforts in future to the preparation of a Chriatian literature for India. The great need for this was strongly expressed at the Conference by missionaries from all parts of the mission field. The constitution of the society precludes the extension of their operations beyond India, but as this includes a popUlation of 200,000,000 it is large enough for a beginning. The Secretary of the Conference, Mr. Johnston, has been induced to take the work in hand and important results are looked for. A WATCHMAN.
LONDON, Aug. 16, 1889.
THE CHRISTIANIZATION OF MONEY. BY REV. W. HARRISON, CHARLOTTETOWN, P. E. I., CANADA. THl? rapid increase of wealth among the present progressive peoples of the earth is a fact which stands broadly out in the times through which we are passing. In some of the leading nations this growth has assumed proportions of an extraordinary character, and is compelling recognition in quarters the most representative and infl.uential. Mr. Gladstone, everywhere recognized as one of the highest financial authorities of the age, stated recently that the present income of the English nation is more than five thousand million dollars a year, and that more money had been made in England and Scotland in the last century alone than from the days of Julius Cresar to the year 1800, and more money had been made from 1850 to 1870 than from 1800 to 1850. The annual savings of the country are estimated at six hundred and fifty millions of dollars.
In the United States the unprecedented expansion of the nation's money capacity has been one of the growing wonders of the times. The President of Rutgers College, Dr. M. E. Gates, from extensive and reliable data, reck- ons the wealth of the country at fifty billions of dollars, and the daily increase at six millions. The marvelous development of the wealth of the United States, by decades, has been officially reported as follows: 1850……………………………………………. $ 7,135,780,228 1860……………………………………………. 16,159,616,068 1870……………………………………………. 30,068,518,507 18BO…………………………………………… 43,642,000,000 1887, say ……………………………………….. 60,000,000,000 Government officials estimated some years ago that the annual income of the entire population was a little over seven billions of dollars. Having ascertained a fair and reliable showing as to the financial resources of the two leading nations of the world, it is now in order to approach more directly the subject which this paper has specially in view.
How far, then, has the process of converting some fair proportion of this enormous wealth to definitely Christian objects been achieved? What are the present demands, and the prospects for the future? As an example, we select the following statements, exhibiting as they do the present extent of Christian liberality in the United States. The figures have been carefully prepared, and are sufficiently correct to enable us to form a pretty definiteconelusion as to the present-day religious application of the wealth now in the hands of Protestant Christendom. Our firm opinion is that the current givings of the Christian popUlation of the American Republic to deflnitelyreJigious objects are above rather than below the average of the other nations coming under this classification. Bearing this in mind, the present attitude of Protestant Christendom toward this question of money comes into view and suggests considerations which will claim in the near future a deeper and wider attention than they have ~et received. Taking the total wealth of the UnIted States for 1887 at sixty billions of dollal's, it is in place to inquire as to what proportion of this vast wealth is now held by the members of the evangelical churches, and to what extent this proportion is applied to purely Christian uses and ends.
Dr. Dorchester, awidely recognized authority on the special lines we are now discussing, has stated the matter as follows: "Having submitted the above inquiry to many thoughtful persons, they all agree that the share of the nation's wealth possessed by the members of the evangelical churches may safely be estimated at their pro rata share numerically.
•• For instance, if the communicants of these churches in 1880 were one- fifth of the whole population of the United States, their wealth may be safely estimated at one-fifth of the total wealth of the country."
Figuring on this basis, the total pro rata wealth of the churches named would stand as follows: 1850………………………. : .•.••…•…………. $1,084,803,490 1860…………………………………………… 2,693,269,344 1870…………………………………………… 5,202,184,274 1880.. .. ………………………………………. 8,728,500,000 1887, say ……………………………………….. 12,000,000,000 Before pt'oceeding to inquire as to what proportion of this enormous wealth, now in professedly Christian hands, passes over in some form into the treasury of the Lord, we call attention to the powers and responsi- bilities of wealth in general. It is almost impossible to overestimate the immense influence which the money-power of the world carries within its strong and imperial gt·asp. To say that it constitutes one of the principal in- struments by which the aifait-s of the age are turned is simply to state a fact which is evident to all. This agency of wealth, which holds in its hands the golden scepter of such a wide and varied dominion, becomes increasingly powerful as the march of civilization proceeds j and, other things being equal, the people possessing this money-capacity in its largest • form, carry that by which they can make themselves a felt and command- ing figure among the nations of the earth. Without this universally- recognized and almost sovereign power very little of all the vast and com- plex machinery of the age can be worked a single day; the grand stimulus and attraction to the busy and toiling millions of the race would be re- moved, and one of the prime forces now pushing onward the material, political, social, and ever-multiplying improvements of the age would sink out of sight. The value of this one item of money in all the departments of this constantly expanding century is increasing with such marvelous rapidity that the financial condition of a people has become the index to their prosperity, and their influence and authority in the councils of the world are largely determined by it. National bankruptcy means na.tional impotency, deterioration and decay, and all the proud pages in the past history of that people suffering such financial ruin cannot save them from being stripped of those qualifications which are regarded as among the prime passports to honorable rank among the powerful, progressive nations of the time. Financial supremacy involves responsibilities of the most in- fluential kind; it may become a far-reaching and beneficent power, or a ruler of the most tyrannical and despotic kind. If, then, in the realm of • commerce, and in all the multiplied departments of national life, the money question is such a mighty engine in the way of motive, influence, and achievement, it is .surely worth while to inquire as to the moral bearings and possibilities of this universal and princely power. If the great secular .enterprises of the age and all the splendid lind myriad-sided machinery of this nineteenth century are bare impossibilities without the aid of gold, it is quite in place to ask as to what part God intends that this money-power of the age should take in the enlightenment and evangelization of the world.
It is safe to say that never before did the money question occupy so much of the attention and prayerful solicitude of the Christian Church as at present, and never before did the moral and religious capabilities of wealth stand out so distinctly and vividly as they do to-day. It is becoming more and more evident that the very agency which is the grand essential in all the secular movements of the world, and without which they would immediately collapse, is also one of the divinely-appointed instruments by which, in the hands of a consecrated church, many of the great spiritual undertakings of the period are to be sustained, perpetuated and brought to their predicted and beneficent consummation. The broad outline of that plan which contemplates the capture of this world for truth and righteousness is coming into greater clearness, and the responsibilities of wealth in connection with the realization of that plan cannot now for a single moment be pushed out of sight. Gradually the importance of money as a necessary power·in the establishment, support and universal diffusion of Christian agencies has been coming to the front; and, so far as the evangelization of the millions of heathendom are concerned, all at once, or nearly so, the financial question has rushed up to an unexpected, indisputable and burning climax. This climax is the undoubted result of God's providential hand in the history of His church, a searching test and challenge of His people's sincerity, and marks a comparatively new stage in the onward march of that kingdom which is yet to win for itself a final s~premacy over the mind and heart and conduct of this fallen but redeemed world. When we state that the Christianization of earth's 1,000,000,000 or hitherto unreached pagans has been 'educed largely to a matter of dollars and cents, we are but stating what is rapidly becoming the deep and powerful conviction of all branches of the Church of God. The appeals for a larger liberality, coming as they do from every quarter, and marked by such intense urgency and such a weight of sacred obligation, only confirm too well the somewhat startling statement just made. We now return to the inquiry raised in a previous part of this article as to the proportion of wealth now in Christian hands which is being applied to objects of a purely religious character.
Just here it is well to recognize the fact that the grasp of Ohristian principle on the money power of the world was never so great as at present. It is estimated that the amount contributed annually by the Christian population of all lands for religious purposes of every kind is about two thousand rnillionsoj dollars, being an average tribute of about $1.50 for every man, woman and child on the face of the earth to-day. At the Evangelical Alliance, held at Washington in 1887, it was affirmed that "Probably since 1850 more money has been raised by the Protestant churches of Christendom for purely evangelizing purposes, aside from current church expenses and local charities, than was raised for the same object in all the previous eighteen centuries." This is clear when it is remembered that the aggregate receipts of the Protestant Foreign Missionary Societies of Europe and America, from their origin to 1880, calculated on the basis of numerous data.. cannot be less than $270,000,000, of which nearly or quite $200,000,000 have probably been raised within the last 30 years. The increaiile in contributions to home missions and the various local charities is just as striking. Taking the givings for all pUl'poses of Chl:istian benevolence during the past 50 years, it will be found that there has been a very substantial improvement in this direction, and in this increase we have but the commencement of that process which must finally result in the Christianizing of those vast treasures of wealth in which there slumber moral and spiritual possibilities of the sublimest kind. Let the demands for a larger consecl'atioB of the money ability now possessed by the church be presented to the Christian intelligence of the age with all the force of an ever-increasing obligation, and let the issues be clearly stated, and our conviction is that the deeper fountains of generous and grateful emotion will be stirred and a new era of a more Christly appropriation of our temporal possessions will then be inaugurated. While, however, recognizing the marked advance in the amounts placed in the treasury of the church, and the wider and more earnest recognition of the doctrine of our individual stewardship, we must not overlook certain facts which still stand out with painful prominence and call loudly for the immediate and solemn consideration of the whole Church of God. The time for congratUlation over the victories of Christian principles as they relate to the capture of the money power of the church has not yet arrived, as the following statements will plainly show. That there is a lamentable deficiency in the givings of professing Christians ii clear when we look at theil· comparativelyinsignificant contributioni toward those divinely-appointed agencies which are. working for the evangelization of the world. The figures which are to follow will at once show this matter in its true light, and bring out the fact that large numbers of communicants are at present doing little or nothing in helping forward the most important undertaking in which the church is now engaged. It is from this cause of an utterly inadequate appropriation of the wealth now in possession of the evangelical churches that the highest designs of God are hindered, and the measureless blessings of the Christian redemption are being held back from the larger half of the human race today.
Lest we should be charged with a too passionate and extravagant statement as to the inferior response now made by the church at large to the pressing claims for foreign missionary effort, we ask attention to the following significant facts. We select, as fair examples, the amounts contributed by the Protestant churches in the United States for home and foreign missions during the past 30 years, viz.: FOREIGN MISSIONS. HOME MISSIONS. TOTAL.
1850………………… $ 675,000 $ 587,123 $1.232,123 1860………………… 1,075,070 1,450,479 2.525,549 1870………………… 1,753,T06 2.472,246 4.225,952 1880………… .. ……. 2.600,000 3.389,845 5,989,845 When we come to compare these figures with the membership of the evangelical churches, we find the amount per member very small indeed. Taking the averages for the same years and the givings for the two objects named will stand as follows: MEMBERS. AVEIU.GIll PER MEMBER.
1850………………………… . 8,529,988 3458 ce.n.ts. 5,240,554 68 .. ~~.:::::::::::.:::::::::::::::::: 6,673,396 59~ .. 10.000,000 1880 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
It is, however, when we come to analyze the contributIons for foreign missions alone that we are almost startled by the infinitesimal giving in the dil'ection for which so much sympathy has been aroused, and apparently so much effort has been expended in recent years. We are at first incredulous and are ready to declare that there must be some serious miscalculation somewhere; but a little patient examination of the bare facts will convince tlul most skeptical that the money capacity of Christian communities has just been touched and nothing more. "The annual expenditures of the Protestant church members in the United States fOI' religious purposes of every description at home are about eighty millions of dollars, while for foreign missions the amount is about four millions of dollars. While the need is from five to six hundred and fifty times greater in the heathen world, we spend twenty times as much in our own work at home. This eighty million is expended for the Christianizing of sixty millions of people, 01' an average of one dollar and thirty-three cents each, while the four million dollars are expended for the spiritual welfare of eleven hundred millions of utter heathens, or one-third of a c~nt each." The average contribution per communicant, throughout Christendom, for the conversion of the myriads of totally unreached pagans does not amount to fifty cents each per annum. In some of the wealthy British churches it is as low as twenty-five cents each, and the Continental churches range from two to six cents per membet'-always excepting the little Moravian Church, which stands out a conspicuous example to all the world of the splendid results which may be achieved by a willing and consecrated people." In 1888 it was ascertained in England, that out of seven thousand titled members of the nobility, including all branches of the Royal family, only about five thousand dollars altogether was given for missions. (MISS. REV., April.) One-tenth of a cent per day, or one cent in ten days, is the present average contribution of the membership of the Christian Church throughout the world for the recovery of a thousand millions of heathen to a knowledge of that gospel which we deem to be the bearer of boundless blessings to our race. And the fact is that the real average is much less than one-tenth of a cent per day, foritis to be borne inmind that quite a number give to the cause of missions who are not included in the membel'ship of any of the churches. It is therefore evident that many professing Christians are doing absolutely nothing. or next to nothing, toward the advancement of those missionary agencies to which has been committed a duty and responsibility of the most momentous and solemn kind.
We have now reached a stage in our investigation which enables us to arrive at an estimate of the amount contributed to definitely religious objects, both at home and abroad, by the Evangelical communities in the United States for a single year.
Taking the aggregate wealth of thp. nation at sixty billions of dollars, and allowing that one-fifth of this amount is III the hands of evangelicalchurch members, and that the annual giving by this part of the population to Christian purposes of every description is something below one hundred millions of dollar8, we reach the conclusion that about one per cent. of the gross total of twelve billions of dollars is about the extent of the Christian liberality of one of the most religiously progressive nations of to-day. The percentage or church membership of the total population of the United States is larger, we think, than of any of the other great nations that can be named. We do not claim absolute cOl'rectness for our statements; but as an approximate showing of the present whereabouts of the gold power of the age in its relation to Christian influences and claims, we believe the representations here tabulated to be within sight of the facts as they now stand. We have selected the United States as a fair example of the other Protestant nations, and if there is a difference we are of the opinion that the higher average of Christian liberality will be in favor of the nation selected as the basis upon which our calculations and inferences in this article are largely drawn. From the above conclusions, drawn from a pretty wide outlook of the facts within our reach, it will be quite clear that the Christianization of the money ability of the professedly Protestant peoples of the century is a work only fairly commenced, and that extensive territories of wealth now in possession of the evangelical churches stil1remain to be brought into subjection to the dominion of the Son of God, whose suffering, hindered cause cries out as never before for that financial help which a thoroughly-consecrated church cannot long withhold.
'!'he present givings, especially to the work of foreign evangelization, are out of all proportion with the urgent, burning demands of the hour. There is no lack of money-our preceding statements have placed this beyond a doubt-but there is lack of deep, intelligent conviction respecting the claims which God has upon us and ours, and an apparent unwillingness to face the dollar-and-cents question upon which there is now laid in the religious opportunities of the age the solemn emphasis of unparalleled importance, and which the providence of God is every day pushing to the front. So evident and wonderful al'e the present day moral and religious possibilities of money that to ignore them is simply to come into collision with one of the plainest purposes and plans of God as to the means by which the message of redemption should be published to the race. No subtle reasoning, no manipulation of the conjurer's hand and no "paralyzing cant of an unfelt devotion" can for a moment substitute fOl' generous, enlarged Christian giving any other agency that can accomplish the work which a consecrated wealth alone is fitted to perform. The main difference between the financial position of Christian and heathen peoples is explained, very largely, on theological grounds alone. But for the undoubted and now grandly historic advantages secured by the movements of Chl'istianity among the leading nations of the world, is it probable that those nations would possess the unequaled money capacity they now enjoy? For what great cause, then, has God, through various means, poured this river of gold into the coffers of His peopIe? Is it that they may live only in pleasure and ease, transform the world into a brilliant saloon, and abandon themselves to selfish luxury, while teeming millions of their bl'ethren are dying for lack of knowlede:e and passing into an eternity for which they are ill-prepared? Surely the end to be a.ccomplished by this agency of wealth is something nobler than this. The finger of God points most distinctly to this higher object, and the most ordinary intelligence can now see what that object is. The citadel of human selfishness must be captured, 01' the mterests of Christ's kingdom must be cramped and betrayed before a perishing world. The battle has already commenced, and one of the grandest triumphs possible in the near future is the destruction of this giant of selfishness within the church and the consecration of some fair proportion of her immense treasures to the' cause of the gospel and a shipwrecked humanity. The sincerity of Christian men and women is being tested before the gaze of watching multitudes, and the religion of a spurious sentimentalism can no longer pass unchallenged in this time of reality and need. With the late Dr. Bushnell we may say that "the great problem we have now on our hands is the Christianizing of the money power of the world. What we wait fOJ' and are hope-
HISTORICAL OUTLINE OF MISSIONS AMONG THE JEWS
fully looking to see is the consecration of the vast money power of the world to the work aud cause and kingdom of Jesus Christ. For that day, when it comes, is the IJIorning, so to speak, of the new creation."
HISTORICAL OUTLINE OF MISSIONS AMONG THE JEWS.
BY RBV. B. PICK, PH.D., ALLEGHENY, PA.
(Concluded frOm page 673.) BUT we return again to Germany, where, with the eighteenth century, a 'new era commenced for the mission among the Jews. The first quarter of the eighteenth century was a period of great religious excitement in Germany, owing to the indefatigable labors of Spener and A. H. Franke (especially by the" collegia pietatis" of the former), which quickly spread far and wide, among high and low, poor and rich. The Bible, which had been entirely neglected and forgotten, was taken in hand and read again; and how extreme the desuetude into which the word of God had fallen may be gathered from the fact that Spener had to procure a special order from the elector for the practical explanation of some part of the Bible at the universities. A fruit of this new life in the church (for it was a complete regeneration) was the foundation of the University of Halle. Bible and missionary societies were also called into existence. Nor were God's ancient people forgotten. An interest for the Jews was evinced to a degree exceeding anything known in former periods of the church. It seems as if rulers, magistrates, professors, the clergy had been alike ani- mated with zeal for the conversion of Israel, for we find that Reineccius, in one of his works published 1713, says: "The general topic of conversation and discussion of the present day is about the conversion of the Jews." This new-born zeal for the Jewish cause was so great that we are told that many Christians learned to read Jewish-German in order to make them- selves better acquainted with Jewish books and more efficient for conversion with Jews. Prof. Callenberg lectured on that language and had an auditory of 150 persons. The Rev. John Muller of Gotha, who very often came in contact with trave~ing Jews, and took a lively interest in them, wrote a tract .for the Jews, entitled "The Light at Eventide," in dialogical form, which was in- tended to prepare the Jewish mind for the reception of Jesus Christ the Mes- siah; and through the extraordinary exertions of Dr. Frommann, a physician and Jewish convert, it was published in Jewish-German for wider circulation among the Jews. This tract produced the greatest sensation. For soon it was not only reprinted and translated into Hebrew, but also a German (1'736), Dutch (1735), Italian (1732), French (1748), and English translation was published, the lattel' by the" Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge" in the year 1734, and it is still used for missionary purposes. Even Roman Catholic priests took an intereflt in its circulation, and sent subscriptions for promoting it to Prof. Callenberg. This tra.ct is the more remarkable be- cause it became in fact the foundation stone for the well-known Oallenberg .Institution, or Institutum Judaicum, established in 1728, the object of WhICh was the conversion of the Jews, and also of Mohammedans. This institution, however, was closed in 1792. But the interest in behalf of God's ancient people was not confined to Germany alone; it also spread beyond the continent, for the well-known Jewish missionary, Stephen Schultz, tells us in his" Leitungen des Hochsten" (iv. : 74), that when he visited England in 1749, he was told that there were many laymen in London zealous for the conversion of the Jews. Next to Spener we must mention the early efforts made by the Moravian brethren. It was in the year 1738 that Leonhard Dober, who had established the first mission amongst the negroes in the West Indies, felt an ~arnest desire to labor for the conversion of the Jews. For this purpose he repaired to Amsterdam and hired a lodging in the so-called Juden-Hork. In 1739 Samuel Lieberkuhn succeeded Mr. Dober in Amsterdam, who devoted himself entirely to the service of the Jews. On account of his knowledge of Hebt'ewand his lov,e to Ist'ael the Jews called him "Rabbi." For 30 years Lieberkuhn labored among the Jews with great success.
The CallenbergInstitute, as we have seen, was closed in the year 1792, but in the providence of God, soon another way was to be opened for the mission among the Jews. It was only a few years after the first great thunder-clap of the French Revolution,. when three German stUdents, in whose hearts God had begun a work of grace, were assembled together, for mutual consultation and direction, in a room in the metropolis of northern Germany. They were pondering in their minds what they should do, and whither they should go, that they mig-ht be successfully employed inthe cause of missions. Berlin, their native metropolis, was at that time the stronghold of rationalism, the center of religious infidelity; and evangelical religIon, or pietism, was above all things hated and almost universally spoken against. Where, therefore, were the three German students to go? Pastor Jaenicke, and some few other pious Christians in Berlin, who had established a seminary where six or seven students were trained for missionary enterprise, were often in the greatest straits for want of funds. Their cause met with little sympathy, and they were almost in despair, when one day help came in time of need from another great metropolis, with a demand for three missionaries to occupy an important missionary post amongst the heathen tribes of Africa, This was in the autumn of 1801. Our three students went to London, in oi'der to enter the service of the London Missionary Society, and one of these was a Christian Israelite, C. G. Frey by name, who died some years ago in our country, a member of the Baptist denomination. During his stay in London it was put into his heart to visit his brethren after the flesh. He found them in a state of total darkness and bondage, worse than that of their fathers in Egypt. He spoke to them of Christ and His salvation. He engaged a few Christian friends to feel a concern for their spiritual welfare. He made known to thE' directors of the London Missionary Society his earnest deRire to be permitted to preach the gospel to hiS own brethren, This application was favorably considered by the directors; they acceded to his request, and some three years having been consumed in the needful preliminary preparation, we find him in 1805 commencing in earnest missionary work, under the auspices of the London Missionary Society. It was soon, however, discovered that the work required distinctive and peculiar machinery. Accordingly after the brief existence of a few years in 1808 a separate society which contemplated Jews exclusively as its object, the present "London Society for Promoting Christianity Among the Jews" was founded in the begining of 1809. The main promoter of this society was the nobleman Lewis Way. It was in the year 1808 that Lewis Way, while riding with a friend of his in Devonshire, passed a park where some very fine trees attracted their attention. His friend told him that the owner of this park in her last will forbade the cutting down of these trees, until" the Jews would again have come to J erusalf)m." These words so deeply impressed themselves on the mind of Lewis Way that he never forgot them. From that day he devoted his large fortune as well as his talents to the conversion of the Jews. At first the newly constituted society was composed both of churchmen and dil:lsenters. In 1815. by an amicable arrangement, the dissenting members retired from its management, and its liabilities having been discharged by Way's munificent donation of £10,000, it entered on the present phase of its existence as a Church of England Society on the 11th of March, 1815. In the year 1814 the Duke of Kent, the father of Queen Victoria of England, laid the foundation stone of the Episcopal Chapel, in Palestine place, in which up to this day divine service is held in different languages. This society, which was so small at the beginnin,!(" has not ouly its own printing establishment of Hebrew Bibles, tracts, etc., but has also its stations in Europe, Asia and Africa, occupying, according to the annual re- port for 1889, 37 stations,* with a staff of 138 laborers, of whom 84 are ~hris tian Israelites. We have now reached that period in the history of the Mission among the Jews from which time on the mission work is carried on systematically. In speaking of the missionary societies we must commence with England, as the mother-land of the present Protestant Jewish Mission.
A. Great Britain and Ireland.
1. The London Society for Promoting Christianity amongst the Jews. This society has stations as follows: in England 6, in Holland 2, in Germany 8, in Austria 3, in Russia 2, in France, Roumania, Italy, European Tur~ey, Persia 1 in each, in Asiatic Turkey 5, in North Africa 3.
Of the many missionaries of this society we mention some few Christian Israelites as Mich. Sol. Alexander, afterward first Protestant Bishop of Jerusalem, Christ. F. Ewald, D.D., M. Marjoliouth, S. H. Deutsch, H. Popel', Henry A. Stern, D.D. (for many years a captive of King Theodor of Abyssinia), J. A. Pieritz, ChI'. W. H. Pauli, J. A. Hausmeister, F. J. Rosenfeldt, Joseph Wolff (father of Sir Drummond Wolff, the English states- man),tetc. 2. The British Society for the Propagation of the Gospel among the Jews, founded in 1842 by Ridley Herschell, a Christian Israelite, father of the present Lord Chancellor of England, with 6 stations in England, 5 in Germany, 3 in Russia, 2 in Austria, 1 in Italy, 1 in Turkey, 1 in Palestine.
3. The Jewish Mission of the Presbyterian Church of England, founded about 1871 with one station in London.
4. The Parochial Mission to the Jews' Fund, founded in 1879. 5. The London City Mission, which for the last twelve years also employs missionaries among the Jews. 6. The MildmayMiS'Sion to the Jews, organized in 1876, with the purpose of preaching Christ to the Jews everywhere, and of distributing the Hebl'ew New Testament (Salkinson's translation).t 7. The Barbican Mission to the Jews, located in the eastern centpr of London, and founded in 1879 by Rev. P. Warschawski, a. Christian Israelite. 8. The Jewish Mission of the Church of Scotland, founded in 1841, with stations in Constantinople, Salonichi, Beyrout, Smyrna, Alexandria. 9. The Jewish Mission of the Free Church of Scotland, founded in 1843, with stations in Amsterdam, Breslau, PI'ague, Budapest, Constantinople, Tiberias. One of the most prominent missionaries of this society was the Rev.
• For details concerning some of the stations, as Patestine, Poland, and Tunis, see my arts. in McClintock & Strong.
t With the exception of the first, compare my biographical sketches of these men in McClintock & Strong's Cyclop.
:I: On the different Hebrew versions of the New Testament see my arts. Hebrew Version a.nd Sa.lkinson in McClintock & Strong's Cyclop. Dr. Charles &hwarz,* who on Sunday morning, Aug. 1, 1858, while in silent prayer in a pulpit at Amstel'dam, was stabbed by a fanatical young Jew, without, however, being killed. • 10. The Jewish Mission of the United Presbyterian Church, founded in 1885.
11. The Scottish Missions to the Jews, founded in 1887.
12. The Jewish Mission of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, founded in 1841, with stations- in Europe and Asia.
Altogether these societies have a staff of 312 missionaries scattered over 81 diffel'ent stations, as follows: England, 214 missionaries on 55 stations.
Scotland, 71 " "17"
Ireland, 27 '! "8"
312 81 B. Germany.
Owing to the influence of Lewis Way, who came to Berlin in 1818, there was founded in 1822 : 1. The Berlin Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews. The late '
Prof. August Tholuck was for many years the secretary of the society; and one of its earliest missionaries was the Jewish Christian, Jacob Brerling.t Since the year 1859 this society receives the church collection taken up on the tenth Sunday after Trinity throughout the Kingdom of Prussia. It has 3 missionaries.
2. The Rhenish-Westphalia Society for Israel, founded in 1844, has 4 mis· sionaries.
3. The Evangelical-Lutheran Central Association for the Mission among the Jews in Saxony, Bavaria, Hessen, etc., founded in 1849. Its main seat is Leipsic, and the soul of this association is the venerable Dr. Franz Delitzsch, whose masterly Hebrew translation of the New Testament has become the best means for the mission among the Jews. Another means fOl' furthering the interest in God's ancient people are the so-called Instituta Judaica, ,first organized after the pattern of Callenberg's institute by Mr. Faber in 1880 while a student at Leipsic, and now to be found at almost all universities of Europe. In this" Instituta" the students hear of the Jews and the mission among the Jews, and thus the future ministers of the gospel are interested in behalf of Israel.
4. The Wirttemberg Society for Israel, founded in 1874. Altogether we have in Germany 13 missionaries on 6 stations.
C. Switzerland.
In Switzerland exists the Society of the Friends ofIsrael at Basle, founded in 1830. D. Netherlands.
In the year 1844 the missionary of the London Society, Mr. Pauli, inter- ested some friends of Amsterdam in behalf of the Jews, ,and a society was formed under the name: 1. De Nederlandsche vereenigung tot medewerkung aan de witbreiding van het Christendom ender de Joden. The object of this society is to care for the Jewish Christians of the London Society.
2. De Nederlandsche vereenigung voor Israel, founded at Amsterdam in 1861. It has 2 missionaries. 3. Christelijke Gereformeerde Zending onder Israel, founded in 1875. It em- ploys 1 missionary• .. See my art. in McOlintock & Strong's Cyclop.
t See my a.rt. in I. c. of E. France.
In 1885 the Rev. Gustave Krueger of Gauber, in the middle France, started a monthly, Le Relled d'l81"ael, and by means of this paper he reviv~d the interest in Israel. F. Scandinavia.
1. Centralkommitteen for Israelsmissionen, founded in 1844 at Stavanger, in Norway. This formed the nucleus of other societies. At the instance of Prof. Caspari, himself a Christian Israelite, a Central Committee was formed in 1865 at Christiania, which regulates the finances of the different auxilia- ries. Not having a missionary itself, the Committee supports the different 'missionary societies in Germany and Russia.
2. Foreningen for Israelsmission, founded in 1876, with its headquarters at Stockholm. It employs 4 missionaries at 2 different stations.
3. Svenska Missionsforbundel, founded in 1877, has 2 missionaries at 2 stations.
4. Forening fer Israelsmissionen, founded at Copenhagen in 1885.
Thus in Scandinavia 6 missionaries are directly employed at 4 stations to work among the Jews. G. RU8sia.
1. The Jewish Mission in St. Petersburg, founded in 1881.
BeSIdes, there is an asylum for Jewish girls at St. Petersburg, founded in 1884, where they receive a Christian education. Some of these girls are now employed as deaconesses.
2. The Baltic Mission among the Jews, founded in 1870.
3. The Mission of Paster Faltin in Kischinew, founded in 1860.
4. The Mission of Joseph Rabinowitsch at Kischinew, founded in 1883.
In Russia are directly employed in the mission among the Jews 8 mission- aries at 5 different stations. H. Nortk Am-ema.
In our country different societies exist for proclaiming the gospel to the Jews. The oldest is that of the Protestant Episcopal Church, which com- menced missionary work as early as 1842. Since that time the work has been carried on directly and indirectly by differ,ent denominations or indi- viduals.
It may be safely stated that there exist at present about 50 missionary societies, with about 400 missionaries. Taking the number of Jews scat- tered over the world at about 6,400,000, we have 1 missionary to 16,000 Jews. We have thus far sketched the mission among the Jews as carried on by the Protestant Church, but our sketch would be incomplete were we not to speak in a few words of the mission of the Roman Catholic Church.
Starting from the prinCiple that" extra ecleaiam nulla eat salu8," i. e., outside the church (of Rome) there is no salvation, the Church of Rome re- garded the Jews also as an object of her special interest. But there were not wanting such Jews, strange as it may appear, to whom the Church of Rome had an especial attraction, and who, when once a member of that church, exerted their influence upon their former co-religionists. This cen- tury is especially rich in such conversions. Thus, in 1876, died at Prague Johann Emmanuel Veitk, * cathedral dean, who belonged to the order of the Redemptorists, and for some time one of the most celebrated preachers of St. Stephen's in Vienna. In France especially the Church of Rome re- ceived large accessions from thEe' synagogue at Paris. David Paul Drach,* a rabbi, joined the church in 1823 with his son and daughter. The son be- came a priest, the daughter a nun, while the father acted as Librarian at ~ See my a.rts. 1. c. the Propaganda in Rome, where he died in 1865, highly honored by popes – and the French Government. By word and writing he labored for the conversion of his former co-religionists. He was the ·means of bringing many Jews into the Church of Rome, and in 1828 Drach could write that" never since the destruction of Jerusalem so many Israelites have adopted the Catholic faith."
One of Drach's spiritual children was Jacob, afterward Maria Paul Francis Libermann, who was baptized in 1826, and received holy orders in 1841. He founded the" Congregation of the Sacred Heart of Mary" for the conversion of the negroes. Cardinal Pitra, his biographer, cannot speak highly enough of this priest, who died in 1853, and whose beatification the congregation of rites in Rome had decreed a few years ago. Especially important for the mission among the Jews was the conversion of Theodor, afterward Maria Theodor Ratisbonne, son qf the rich president of the Jewish Consistory at Strasburg, who. in 1827, joined the Church of Rome. His conversion he owed to Louis Bautain, author of "Philosphie du Chrisiianisme." Besides Ratisbonne, Bautain was also the means of the conversion of Isidor Goschler, afterwards director of the Collegium Stanislaus in Paris, and Jules Lewel, afterwards prelate and superior of St. Luigi dei Francesi at Rome. Ratisbonne received holy orders in 1830, and for many years he acted as director of the fraternity" of the Sacred and Immaculate Heart of Mary for the Conversion of Sinners," till the turning point in his life came in 1842, when his brother Alphons became a convert to the Church of Rome, owing his conversion, as it is said, to the; appearance of St. Mary. Alphons, who had joined the Jesuits soon after his baptism, wrote his brother, asking him to establish a Christian institute for Jewish children. On the very same day Theodor was notified of the sickness of a Jewish lady. He had the joy of converting her before she died. Her two daughters he took under his care. In the same week another Jewish lady brought her ,three daughters to him, and these five girls he put temporarily under the care of the Gray Sisters. Ratisbonne now went to Rome to get the papal authorty for his new activity. Pope Gregory XVI. blessed him and appointed him" Apostolic Missionary" for Israel. Pope Pius IX. granted to him in 184'7 important privileges. In the meantime his brother Alphons had received holy orders, and through the efforts of his brother he was permitted to leave the order of the Jesuits in order to assist Theodor. In 1855 Alphons conceived the idea of founding a similar society at Jerusalem. In 1856 he commenced his labors there; in 1862 the monastery and in 1868 the" Ecce Homo" church was completed. In 1874 he erected a similar institute for boys. Both brothers are dead. Theodor died in 1884, January 10, and a few months later, May 6, his brother died. Their work is still carried on in different parts of the world. Of those who were baptized by the Ratisbonne brothers, one Hermann Kohen, afterward Augustin Maria, joined the Carmelites in 1849, and died in London as prior of the Carmelite monastery. A sermon of Hermann Kohen was the means of converting the painter, Bernhard Bauer, who also joineti the Carmelites and became the confessor to the Empress Eugenie of France.
The noblest representatives of the Romish mission to the Jews are the two brothers Augustin and Joseph Le1nann, both converts from Judaism and both priests and canons at Lyons; the former doctor and professor of theology at the university; the latter apostolic missionary. Both joined the Roman Ca.tholic Church in 1857. Their special work is mainly literary, and by means of their writings which they publish from time to time to
TRANSLATIONS FROM FOREIGN MISSIONARY MAGAZINES
endeavor to impress upon the Jews the truth of Christianity. When the Vatican Council was assembled in 1870, the two brothers came before that assembly to plead the cause of their Jewish brethren. In fine, it may be said that whatever efforts the Church of Rome makes for the conversion of the Jews, they are to be traced back to France. It were an easy matter to bring before the reader a galaxy of Christian Israelites, who have distinguished themselves in church and State, t9 prove that the gospel is still the power unto salvation to the Jew first; but in spite of all it must be acknowledged, with a modern writer of the Church of England, when he says: "Missions to Jews I know are not popular; I suppose they never will be fashionable; but for men or women professing the faith of Jesus, the question' can never be, Are they popular? nor even, Are they what I like? The only question must be, • A~c they right?' Are they according to the mind of Christ? St. Peter and St. Paul must ever remain to us two of the greatest interpreters of Christian duty. Where they are both, there seems little room for us to differ from them. The whole life of one was spent in winning Jews to the Saviour; and if the whole life of the other received a different mission, it WaH from no lack of earnestness or zeal in thiS behalf. His most impassioned prayers were for this work, even when he was not in person permitted to take a leading part in it• .. Our own sweet church poet, George Herbert, has caught some little of this fervor of St. Paul, and in his own quaint way pleads earnestly to God for the welfare of Israel, the actual nation of the Jews. I cannot do better than close with his lines, which may appeal to some whom words of mine would hardly reach: ". Poor nation, WhOSA sweet sap and juice Our scions have purloined, and left you dry: Whose streams we got by the Apostle's sluice And use in baptism, while ye pine and die, Who by not keeping once became a debtor, And now by keeping lOSe the letter.
Oh that my prayers I mine, alas I o that some angel might a trumpet sound At which the Church, falling upon her face, Should cry so loud until the trump were drowned, And By that cry of her dear Lord obtain That your sweet sap might come again l' "
TRANSLATIONS FROM FOREIGN MISSIONARY MAGAZINES.
BY REV. CRAS. C. STARBUCK, ANDOVER, MASS.
The Evangelisch.Lutherisches Missionsblatt says: "That the Hindus have, in fact, gone astray is proved by their religion, Brahmmism. This religion lays claJm to our deepest interests, not only because it is the most magnificent or the most huge and monstrous heathen system of religion that exists, but also because in it is revealed the greatest energy of heathen religiousness, consuming itself in seeking and striving after peace. The religiosity is a salient trait of the Hindu character. There again appears their relationship to the Germans, of whom the depth of feeling with its disposition to meditate and ponder, its longing for peace, is characteristic. Even yet, although the long dominion of heathenism has externalized aud ossified everything, the whole life of a Hindu, from his birth to his burial, nay, long after his burial, is controlled by his religion. And the whole people have devoted their energies to adorning their religion as magnificently as possible. The whole land which they inhabit bears the stamp of religion, it is a La.nd of Temples. If now we look away from the blinding glitter and noisy pomp of the idol worship and ask, • What is the real essence and aim of the Hindu l'eligion. the answer is: Self-redemption.' ..
"The ancient Greeks," says the Missionsblatt, "contended for their freedom, the Romans, for universal dominion-but the Hindus, for the prize of communion with God. The former two were great in combat with the outward foe, these took up the strife against the foe within, their' sin,' and set their life at stake, to control it, or as they express it, 'to bind the unruly ape in the heart.' True, the spiritual energy of the old penitents is now almost vanished, but yet there is in the people and in individual per. sonahties, a ~emnant of this intense impulse after self-redemption and the effacement of sin, which still breaks out afresh at the idol-feasts, under the force of great calamities, 01' at other times. Indeed, in this our own time, when the preaching oCthe word of God knocks at their hearts, when the youth of India have been brought in contact with European education, this religiou8 spirit of the Hindus has first-since of old-come to a revival. There is stirring among the people a spirit of inquiry and seeking, which implies a longing for something better. In some places, especially in the larger towns, the religious question has become so burning a question that it is dealt with even by the heathen.. in lectures, discussions and dissertations. And thus the missionary in India, almost everywhere, where he opens his mouth to bear testimony, in the markets, as in the streets, on journeys, as at home, in shops and offices, by day and night, finds people who are ready to enter with eager interest upon a religious conversation, even though it were only to ad'ance objections.
.. What a mission, to bring to so religiOUS a people the gospel, which alone has the power to bring to wounded souls refreshment, which sets forth the true whole burnt-offering of the God-man as the only way to redemption, and offers the true and complete communion with God, without requiring the dissolution of the individual personality'"
The province of Tanjore, comprised in the Kauvery Delta, is the most fruitful province and the corn, 01' rather the rice, granary of South India. This" Waterla.nd" is, year by year, twice overflowed by the Kauvery and fertilized by its fine mud, so that it yields a rich double harvel'lt. Every spot of this belt is cultivated. Six thousand and twenty-five settlements lie strewn iIi the river delta, concealed in thick groups of trees, only the pagodas rising out of the dense green wood which surrounds them, for the land is full of pagodas and shrines, almost oeyond any other. "Water from above, water from beneath, and mountains neal' at hand," these according to the Tamil minstrels, are the choicest blessings of a land; their land, accol'dingly, belongs to the pre-eminently favored lands. Hot and yet free of fever; fruitful, yet only when irrigated and tilled in ihe sweat of the brow; rich in rice, cotton, sugar-cane, indigo and palms, in herds of cattle, but also in snakes and scorpions; covered with populous cities and villages, devoted to idols and serving them in numerous pagodas; securing to its inhabitants a certain seclusion, which favored the peculiar development of their national life, but yet more aCcessible to intercourse with the world abroad than most other regions of India; this is the character of the land of the Tamils.
.. The Tamils, a race highly endowed, of rich sensibilities, joyous, laborious, distributed into many branches. although, in the middle classes not belonging to the Aryan, but to the Turanian or Scythian stock, nevertheless, soon assimilated the Aryan culture in a remarkable degree. Although they hold fast to their ancestral usages and to the rigorous division of castes, yet. being the most mobile and mo~t disposed to wander of all the Hindus, being found diffused over all India, and indeed beyond it, they have the most quickly unclosed themselves to foreigners and the most generally appropriated the Englishculture. Among the 14 millions of this race Protestant missions soonest found entrance and bave had the greatest success."
Madras, the capital of South India, has 400,000 inhabitants, of whom 39,- 094 are Christians, and 50,000 Mohammedans..
Islam and'the gospel are rivals for the dominion of India, and this fact gives to Christian descriptions of Mohammedanism an occasional pungency which is a refreshing contrast to the fantastic idealizations of Canon Taylor. This, from Missionary Baierlpin, is much to the point. It is easily verifiable throughout, with some tempering down, and may fairly be styled" Moham- medanism in a nutshell."
"Mohammed became at last convinced that Abraham, at all events, must have had the right religion. But the Jews had corrupted his religion. Therefore God sent Jesus, to restor~ the religion ot Abraham. Bnt the Christians had not understood Christ, and had become idolaters 01 him.
Therefore God had now selected him to restore the religion of Abraham. He bimselfwas a proph· et of God and the last. God has no mother, no wife, and no son. He Is alone, a great unit. That the Divine being, One, can yet be Triune, as already Indian philosophers, lIf1teen hundred years before him, had dimly conceived. this high thougbt could find nO place in his unlearned hea!!. So then he made his God, his Allah. into a wooden unity, and therefore immovable. It is trne, he repeats Incessantly, in place and out of place, tbat God Is compassionate, but in fact there is no move· ment in the inner being of his God. Believers, i. e., those who believe his prophet "-more proper- ly his apostle -" Mohammed, and honor him according to the prophet's precepts, are rewarded by him with Paradise, which is full of shady trees, springing founts, and beautiful young women, named houris. All others go straight to hell. The women of the Mohammedans have no access to their mosques "-not true of all mosques-" and no" specified" place in Paradise; there are women there already. There i~ a Kismet, a Fate, and this is absolutely unalterable. With this fate man is born into this world. And in this neither prayer nor mercy makes a change. The service of God consists in the repetition of certain forms of praise and other sentences at certain precisely appointed times of the day, towards a certain point of the horizon, Mecca. the position at each prayer, whether standing, kneeling, crouching, or lying prostrate, being also imperative. Of a conversion of the heart to God there is no mention, no more than of a love of God to man, and therefore there can be no mention of a love of all the heart and all the mind to this stllf, cold cipher, one Allah. And therefore among the Mohammedans "-so far as respects any influence from their reUglon-" there is lacking all love to men, all true humanity, such as extends to whatever is called Man. Robbery and murder are the order of the day, and among no people do children so orten rise a/(ainst the parents, as among the adherents of this false prophet."
True, in the main, though needing here and there som.e softening down.
'fhe Journal des Mission8 Evangeliquea for November, 1888, has an interesting article on the various ways of training missionaries. Among us, of course, and largely in Great Britain, the ordinary colleges and seminaries. Buton the continent, where so few university men become missionaries, the societies have to depend on training-schools of their own. We select a few facts. The Moravians, who have sent out among the heath~n about 2,300 missionaries, male and female, have a theological college at Fairfield, near Manchester, in England, under the care of Rev. R. Elliott; a German seminary at Gnadenfeld, in Prussia, under care of Rev. P. Beckel'; at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, a college and seminary under care of Rev. A. Schultze and Rev. J. F. Hamilton. "The great Moravian Society indicated its methods from its very beginning. Its purpose was to send, above all, into the bosom of the pagan world, faithful witnesses of the Saviour, capable of ~laking Him known and loved by the heathen, whether they were artisans, like its heroic pioneers, potters like Dober, or carpenters like Nitzschmann. The society, nevertheless, now lays out 9,000 francs a year for the }:reparation of its missionary workers."
The Baptist College in Regent's Park, London, appears to train indifferently pastors and missionaries, comprising the classical and divinity course into a shorter time than ours. The London Society has no training.school. Nor has the Wesleyan Board. The Church ·Missionary Society, of 1,000 missionaries sent abroad has received only 200 fl"om the universities, and has trained 500 in its own Islington College. Most of the lesser English societies get tkeir missionaries where they can, a good many, probably, from the East London Missionary Institute, founded in 1872 by Rev. Grattan Guinness. This has already received 800 pupils, of whom 506 are now at work.
.. On the continent of Europe the method followed has been altogether different; not only had Wala.eus, as early as 16%2, a missionary college at Leyden. and the Dutch Society one of its own at Berkel, in 1810, and a.fterward, since 1821, at Rotterdam; but the Basel80ciety, founded in 1815, and that of Paris, in 1822, were established in the expectation that their first duty was to train missionaries for the great societies which had arisen before them. The example of the aged Jaenike, of Berlin, whose missionary school was closed after hi. death, in 1826, doubtless infiuenced the Berlin Society, which opened it.. institute in 1829 or 1830. Pastor Gossner, finding the new mission hou!/> of the society too sumptuous,left it, and toward 1840 trained his laborers in his own seminary or missionary school. Barmen opened its house in 1833; that of Hermannsburg began in 1841l with 12 pupils; the school of Reval was opened in 1882, and in 1884 pastor Janssen commenced a prepara.tory school for the Lutherans of Eastern Friesla.nd. Leipsic, in fine, which had wished at first. to recruit its missionaries solely among the pastors graduated from the universities, has been obliged by the Ia.ck of laborers to reopen its missionary semInary in 1879. We do not speak of the seminary of Neuendeltelsau, which prepares pastors for the colonies• .. As to the High Church Society (S. P. G.), it maintains or assists 28 theological seminaries where ecclesiastics are trained either for home or abroad. The Danes, in 1875,amalga.mated the two semina.ries intended to supply native pa.stors to Greenland."
The Journal has a letter from M. Henri Bertschy, of South Africa. Speakmg of his school he says: .. My neighbors, the Ba-Thlokoa, have sent some boys, but turn a. deaf ear whenever I raise the question of girls. • They have no need of knowing how to read,' they say to me. 'Let them once get a better educa.tion tha.n their husbands, and they would soon refuse to be married to pagans.' The fear of these people is, that in learning to read theirdaughters might possibly come to be converted and no longer choose to be bought by a heathen for twenty or thirty head of cattle. • Our daughters,' they say, • they are our bauk; it is on them we reckon to brinll' us cattle.' From that position you cannot move them. The daughters of the Ba-Thlokoa, then, will not come to schoQI until their parents shall have been converted. Is not this an illustration of the fact that Christianity will have to precede civilization?
.. Twice this past year the chiefs, especially Nkoebe, have demanded that we should hold prayer-meetings to obtain rain. The first was in September, at sowing-time; then again about New Year's, when the intense heat seemed likely to spoil the crops which had been doing well thus far. Both times the rain came while we were assembled, which bas been a veritable benediction."
Our Moravian brethren are disturbed lest it should be supposed that their mission work has everywht're transformed itself into a simple pastoral care of converts already secured. M. E. A. Senft, in a letter addressed to the Journal des Missions for November, 1888, points out some inadvertences of statement in a recent artice of The Journal. "For instance, the article in question, speaking of Greenland, forgets to add that God, and tha~ very lately, has brought to our brethren a whole troop of pagans from the east coast, hitherto inaccessible to our missionaries." In South Africa, again, the work" at various points" has passed into a home missionary stage, but not at aU of them. So, inSurinam, the work has largely become one of purifying Christian communities from ayet remaining pagan taint. "Butanother vast missionary field remaiJ;ls open before us at Surinam, and we have this very year been using all our strength to meet this work. In the ranks of our missionaries this marching order is heard ever more resoundingly: 'The Bush country for the Saviour! Let each one strive his best to accomplish this end.'"
The West Indies are the eldest mission field of the Moravians. Here, as they themselves say, "the mission work, properly so called, has long since reached an end." "This mission, numbering 44 stations, is in a fair way of coming to ripeness of age, and of forming, by the side of Germany, England and the United States, a fourth province of the Church of the Unity. It already has its normal schools, and its school of theology; and a considerable number of its parishes are served by native pastors."
There ar€ at present 3S6 hrethren and sisters in the missionary service of
GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE
the Moravian Church, 28 being- natives. There are, besides, 145 native evangelists and 1,468 native helpel's of various kinds.
The Moravian missionary stations, by industry and commerce, have thus far been able to contribute toward the annual expenses of the work from $130,000 to $150,000. Friends at home have, therefore, only needed to contribute, at most, about $95.000.
H.-GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE.
Afrlca.-At a recent enthusiastic gath- what is meant by Arab power in Africa., East ering in Liverpool to bid God speed to the and Central. For generations the Arabs have intrepid African missionary, Graham Wil- been the skilled traders with the natives; they mo~ Brooke, who has made three unsucceSS_ have traveled in powerful companies, and they ful attempts to reach the tribes in tbe Cen- have made some localities in the interior almost tral Soudan, and IS now en routefor the same entirely their own. It is they, not the natives, region, via the Niger and Sokoto, a stirring who are at the bottom of the opposition to re- address was made by Mr. J. Spencer Walton form work, western enterprise and the canse ou mission labor iu South Africa. This in- of civilizatiou generally ou the east coast and in defatigable herald of Christ, who is proceed- the interior. German policy on the east coast ing under the auspices of the Cape General has greatly irritated the Arab traders; and Mission, to undertake evangelization work they have been in various ways taking their re- in that portion of the globe, asserted that venge. Of conrse, they are opposed to the en- Englishmen in South Africa had been a tire movement which is represented by the greater curse than a blessing. The track blocka.de ; but somehow the British element of the white man has been followed by abom- contrived so to manage things that the peace inations in the garb of religion. It waR this was not seriously distnrbed. fact which rendered missionary effort abor- ti"e. Denominational rivalry was likewise The Arabs haveso long had things their own frequently a cause of hinderance. Every way in East and Central Africa that they takeit one seemed to be trying to plant his own ill to 1lnd themselves beset by a policy and by special little ftower in bis own littledenomi- forces which mean the extinction oC their nefar- national ftower-pot. For the success of ious trade. They are engaged in a kind of missions it was necessary to sink sects and death-strnggle. Germans. French and English multiply undenominational lines of action. on the east coast are all pledged to a. strict Missions were primarily for salvation and blockade. so far as slavery and the introdnction •. only secondarily for education. of 1lrearms and otber weapons of war are con- cerned. Tbe repressive force of this arrange- On the 9th of March last the Cape General ment can bardly be overestimated. Tbe Congo Mission was launched, which, without con- Free State schemes tend in the same direction. sideration of sect. was seeking to spread the The railroad, which is to connectthe lower and gospel thronghout every part of Cll.pe Col- the npper Congo, will have the effect of opening ony. In SWll.zilll.nd, where there was a up the whole interior of Africa to civilized splendid race of natives Il.nd a chief well trade, and to bring it under civilized in1lnences. di$poRed to white people, a visit from a mis- The African slave-trader is well aware that his sionary was unknown:· It was a deplorable special business is doomed. In a few years revelation that of the 12,000 nativesworking from now it will be dead. Hence his despera_ in the mines at Kimberley not a hundred tion; but his desperation will not prevent the were Christians. In that town alone in the inevitable. Tbe poor African has suffered long. year 1888 no less than 580 natives were picked We already seem to see the dawning of a better np dead by the slaughtering evil of intoxi- day for that unfortunate rsce.-Xnil and Ex- cating drink. Mr. Wll.lton himself had preBB. eounted by the side of the ra.ilwa.y from Cape Town to Kimberley a broken brandy -The Imperial British East African Com- ftask every 25 yards. The natives, who pany. The first general meeting of this com- ftocked to these mining industries compara- pany WIIS held In London, June 6, and from the tively sober in habit, returned to their reports then given we gather some definite krll.~ls drunken and irredeemll.bly depraved. statements in regard to what the company pur- In the gold-mining centers the same havoc poses to accomplish. As yet little trading has was being wrought among the native tribes. been attempted, and it Is not expected that any With pll.ssionate fervor the speaker ap- pecuniary proftts will be reallzed at once, but pealed for the sympathy and prayers of the the directors of the company are con1ldent entire Church of Christ.-Our Englisl. eorre- that in due time good returns will be secured. BpOfIdent. :Mr. Mackehzie. who has been in charge on the East Coast of Africa, declares that tralllc is -The Arab Traders In Centra,l Africa. It is capable of enormous development, and that it diftlcult for the reading public to understand is the purpose of the company to establisa itself by planting stations, first along the cORst, -Another African Hero. The heroes are and then toward the interior, so that the na- not all recognized by men. Some do ".reat tives shall be under kindly control, and be en- things out of sight. and the world is long in couraged to raise those prodnets which wlll discerning them. The following para;:-raph stimnlate trade. Mombasa will be the port. describes a man evidently of heroic mold, and it is amrmed that before long this place though it is not wise to make comparisons will rival Zanzibar in its commerce. The ad- to the disparagement of such men as Livdress of the president of the company shows ingstone and Stanley: plainly that it i. expected that Mr. Stanley on returning from the interior will come to the .. Rev. James Scott, Free Church mission- East Coast through the territory of the British ary of Natal. speaking in Edinburgh lately, company. A project has been presented for declared that the greatest African hero, the construction or a railway, to be built in surpassing Stanley and even Livingstone, sections, Victoria Nyanza being the objective is Mr. Alexander M. Mackay, of tbe Church point; several caraVans having already been Missionary Society, who thirteen years sent out to the north and northwest,one ofwhich since went out to Uganda, in Central Africa, will establish a station at Lake Baringo. This and though left long alone has never ceased East African Company is composed of leading to work. He has reduced the native language commercial and philanthropic men, who have to writing. and printed the 1J0spei of Mat.. in mind what has be<on accomplished for Brit- thew with his own hands." ish interests by trading companies in India and North America, and their hope is to open Chlna.-The Chnstian College in Can- Africa to British commerce. It is proposed to ton. Rev. A. P. Happel', D.D., writes us that increase the capital from £250,000 to£1,OOO,OOO. he has hopes that ground will soon be pro· -MiB8. Herald. cured for the college, as the Viceroy of Canton has at last designated a plot of gronnd which -Mahdists and Abyssinians. To the Lon- he was willing to have sold for that purpose. don Time. the Secretary of the British and The attendance on the college is BOW as great Foreign Anti·Slavery Society recently commn- as can be accommodated, there being 66 scholnicated a letter from Herr Flad, the well- ars in attendance, and the work is em inently known German missionarY, which fully con· satisfactory. Tbe hours for recitation lire from firms the fears that have been expressed that nine till four, and on Sabbath the scholars are the recent defeat of the Abyssinian army by expected to attend religious s.rvice In the Mohammedan Mahdists or dervishes, will be chapel. We notice that this latter requirement the early addition of Christian Abyssinia to the has been made the object of criticism by the list of countries desolated by the African slave Canton correspondent of The Ohina Mail, who trade, unless such a result is speedily averted says that this renglous featnre of the work wlli by the proposed Conference of the Powers. be likelv to cause suspicion and keep desirable The dereat and murder of the Abyssinian King, students from attending; in the same letter he as will be remembered, was one of the sad states that the college is fnll to overfiowing. events of the last year. It followed successful and thns proves the futility of the objection. invasions of Abyssinia, and the slaughter and As the college is avowedly a Ohristian one, we enslavement of large numbers of AbysslDians do not see how the "venerable Professor" can do in 1885 and 1886 by the Mabdists; and their de- otherwise than fu1fill the trnst placed In him by feat by King John and his people in 1887. With striving to do everything In his power to his own commuuication Herr Flad transmitted .. proselytize" the stndents who attend. a letter from Christian Abyssinians, which is a most earnest and pathetic appeal for help from In anSWer to nnmerous inqniries whicli have their fellow Christians, and such help as wUl been made of ns, as to the conrse of stndy prevent their enslavement and the entire deso- and expenses necessary for a stndent in the lation of their country. Very pertinently these college, we give the following facts: The 8es· people, whose liberties and lives are in such im- sions of the college co.nmence on the 15th of minent danger, inquire of ChrIstians in other the Chinese first month and close on th" 15th of lands, after depicting the desolation of their the twelfth month, with a vacation in summer own; the selJing of thousands of people into or not, as may seem best in the future. The slavery, and the cruel butchery of other thou- charge for tnition is $12 a year. The stndents sands," Why should fanatic and brutal Moslems form a club and board themselves, the cost of be allowed to turn,a Christian land like Abys- which is about $2 a month. The students bave sinia into a desert. and to extirpate Christi· to snpply their own bed-room fnrniture (in their anity from Ethiopia f" They close with this case very simple) and clothes and bOoks; the earnest plea: .. For Christ's sake make known cost of these varies according to taste, but $50 our sad lot to our brethren and sisters in Cbris- in gold wUl cover all these very comfortably. tian lands, who fear God and love the breth- The course of stndy inclndes three years of a ren." While Abyssinian Christianity may not preparatory conrse and the regular four years' be witsout spot, Abysslnians are God's men college course in addition. As soon as ground and women.-N. Y. EvangeUst. can be procured and the necessary buildings erected, the attendance on the college wlll easily be 200, as many have al'plied who cannot now be accommodated. In spite of the number. Unfortunately the year's accounts lack of accommodation, Dr. Happer writes that closed with an adverse balance of £1,500. he will always find a place for any of the students from the Sabbath schools in this country It appears from the return presented by the who may wish to return to continue their stud- Paris Council that the ladies conducting the Ies In this college.-Chi1le86 Evangeli8t. work In the various homes fulfill their duties with economy and marked efficiency. The home and France.-Miss Leigh's Paris Romes. institute, Washington-house, 18 Rue de "Milan, in- A shower of congratnlations greeted Miss Ada augurated with a view to befriend young men Leigh, the dlstingnished fonndress of the as they enter Paris had received 70 of these British and American mission homes and Chris- from Great Britain, the United States, Canada, tian associations in Paris, who was lately mar- and New Zealand. It is regrettable thatasnm of ried at the English Embassy in the French £8,000 has still to be paid to completl the paycapital to Dr. Tarver Lewis, the Bishop of On- ments upon the land. A special appeal Is being tario. It Is the intention of this esteemed made to raise £500 for the purpose of increasing Christian lady, so widely known in Europe and the accommodation for the Exhibition. The read- America, to visit annually the institutions ers of the MISSIONARY REVIEW Ol!' THE WORLD which have 00 long enjoyed her able superin- will not fall on visiting the World's Fair at tendence and direction. In her absence the or- Paris in 1889 to visit some of the Institutions, ganizations will be uuder the mauagement of including the British Free Episcopal Church, a an assistant who hasbeena co-worker with the Brlhsh Orphanage and Homes for British GovprinCIpal npward of fifteen years. The many ernesses established by the unremitting exerfriends who are acquainted with the noble work tions of Mrs. Lewis.-OurEnglish CO'I'reapondaccomplished by Mrs. Lewis will join in the ent. wish expressed by the Bishop of Ontario that her residence on the other side of the Atlantic may Indla.-Child Marriage. It is intended not Interfere with the progress and continued shortly to select a child-wife for Scindiah, who benefactions of the movements identified with is himself 8 mere child. The marriage will be her name. A pleasant feature in the bride's celebrated during the next cold weather. In cortege, and eminently characteristic of her life- the case of a feudal minor subject to direct mission, was the presence of a number of Government infinence it has been suggested bright-eyed, rosy-faced children from the Or that the Government shonld endeavor to disphanage. These little girls dressed in dark-blue countenance such a marriage. The antiCipated cloth frocks, mantles, and hoods, with posies In union will be nsed throughout India as the their breasts evoked a compliment on their strongest argument for maintaining such charming appearance from Lady Lytton, who abUSES. with her danghters attended the wedding cere mony. After the marriage, at which the Bishop A Times' Calcutta telegram of July 7th conof Quebec officiated, accompanied by the Hon. tains the following intelligence: "Application Hector Hare, the Canadian CommiSSioner in has been made to the Bombay High Court, on Paris, and other Canadians, the Bishop of behalf of the child-wife of Holkar's son-in-law, Ontario and Mrs. Lewis received their friends to direct a new trial on the cbarge of cruelty. at the Orphanage erected in the Boulevard The case was adjonrned. A Bombay news- Bineau. paper announces two marriages. In oue case the bride was aged two years and in the other The importance of the operations in which 15 months, while the bridegroom was 30 years Mrs. Lewis has been engaged may be realized old. Pundita Ramabai is giving a series oflecfrom the report which has just been read at the tures to thronged andlences on female educa- 17th annual gathering held at 77 Avenne Wa- tion." gram. Around the Chairman, the Bishop of ,Quebec, were observed the Countess of Lytton, -In May lastthe city of Bombay WaS honorthe Bishop ofOntario, the Revs. R. McAn, and ed with the first public lecture ever delivered in T. de Carteret, Drs. Chapman and Barnard, Mr. India by a native lady. Doctor Miss Ratanbai Sewell and other infiuential friends. The re- Ardeshir Malbarvala lootured in the FrlLmjee port stated that during 1888 no less than 401 Cowasjee Institnte to a crowded audience, young women had beeu received into the home, which IDcluded 200 native ladies. Lung phy~i making an aggregate of 5,229 since It was ology was the subject dlsconrsed upon in a opened. Situations to the number of 196 had modest, able, and Interesting manner. The been obtained by means of the free registry. lady's courage and ability were cordially The applications from governesses had been greeted. 3,080 and for governesses 912. The home for young women employed in' shops, 26 Faubourg -To meet the growing evil oCleprosy in India St. Honor6, had been full, while its outdoor the Government has decided to introduce a bill members numbered over 500. The governesses' giving district magistrates power to order the and artists' in~titute and home had been re- arrest ofany leper fouud begging or wandering moved to larger premises at 153 Faubourg St. about without means of subsistence. Such Honore, and Its members were more than 200 In lepers may be detained in a retreat for life or until their discharge Is sanctioned, and if they escape may be re-captured by the police. No rdlreat will be sanctioned unless provision is made for the segregation of the sexes. The every denomination in Bengal, the Pnnja!,., the local governments may establish retreats, make rules for the management, discipline, aud in· Dekkan, Bombay, and Madras Presidencid8. spection of them with any moneys placed at their disposal for hospitals, dispensaries, and We bave stayed in tbeir bouses, lived close to Innatic asylum., and complete religions freedom will be assnred to lepers in such institutions. them for many months, bave known the details Contrary to tbe returns made by the sanitar· of their expenditure, and I can bear unqnallfied ians of India that leprosy was decreasing, to which the past apathy of the Government is testimony to their self-denying economy and simtraoeable, the eminent civil service officer, the Hon. Sir H. Ramsay, of Kum;J.on, in the Hima- plicity of living, and to the ricbes of their liberlayas, considers that the outbreaks of leprosy are rapidly multiplying in that empire. ality to the poor'in times of famine. Nothing can The condition of these poor creatnres is mis- be more unjust or ungenerous than to charge erable, turned out from family, village, and all that makes life dear. "If there are objects on them with' self-indulgence,' 'luxury,' or 'worldearth;' writes Dr. Pringle,formerly for SOyears Surgeon-Major to Her Majesty's Bengal Army, liness,' of any kind. The' gulf' between them .. that claim Christian charity more than others it is theBe lepers. Now help has come, and the and the' station people' is tbe gulf between ~he Jubilee of the Empress of India, • The Maha- Ranee,' will ever be known as the 50th year of church and the world. Men like Dr. Duff, or the rule of her who desires to be known, not only as the defender of the faith, but'" the fol- Mr. Hislop, of Nagpur, may occasionally be lower of Him who had compassion on the leper and whose religion welcomes tbe leprous out- sought after by high otlicials fortheir knowledge cast cf otber religions with' Come unto me, and I will give you rest. ' or their gifts, but very few civil or military offi- " The last of the tbree great orders promul- cers, and .till fewer ladies, ever visit a missiongated in the Punjab of old, viz., • Burn not widows, kill not infant girls, bnry not (alive) ary's family unless they are one with them in lepers,' bas now not only its fulfillment, but adequate provision supplied for carrying It into the faith. Missionaries are not • in society.' effect with love and mercy, and henceforth tbe bomeless, friendless, religionless leper will find They have neither time nor inclination to be so. a home and a friend, and, if he will believe it and accept it, a religion which will take him I never met a missionary at Government House. just as he is." I never beard of one staying with a Governor, Dr. Pringle read a mastetly paper, Jnne 12th, before one of the most influential assemblies except Mrs. Ingalls, ortbe Burmah mi.sion,witb ever gathered in London on" The Increase of Leprosy in India, its Causes, Probable Conse- Lord and Lady Lawrence. At tbe same time, quences and Remedies." their own houses were always open to anyone In this connection we should not omit an expression' of gratitude to the promoters of mis- seeking their society, their bospitality genersions who bave sent ministrants to the 135,000 lepers in India, chiefly from Scotland and Ire- ally taking the'form of evening tea. They were land, for the last 15 years. The stations may be traced on the leper maps of India, and also on universally respected by the natives who knew those of Burmah and Ceylon. them, and hy all those Europeans who kept -From Bombay a painful case of suttee by opium is reported. The wife of a wealthy aloof from them. I have not spoken of tbe real Brahmin, in order not to survive her sick bus- band, whom sbe was ,nursing, committe!! sui- hardness they endure in teaching, hazaarpreach- cide by taking opium,-Our English {Jorre- spondent. ing in the hot winds, and in itinerating often on '
-Missionary Life. The widow of the late foot. As one instance, all the Basle missiona- ' General Colin Mackenzie writes to Tlte Ohm- tian (London) a8 follows: .. Dear Sir: Allow ries engaged in the revival among tke J nlus in me to confirm the testimony of Miss McInnes (in your issue of May 31), as to the' simplicity of 1870-71 were invalid from the hardships they life' and devotion to their great work of Indian missionaries. DUring more than thirty years went through. Faithfully yours, my busband (General Colin Mackenzie) and I were intimately acquainted with missionaries of I., HELEN C. MACKENZIE."
-India would seem to be practically unedu- cated. The total number ofscbolars in schools and colleges of all sorts is only three and a quarter millions, or one and a half per cent. of tbe entire population. These are mainly confined to the cities and towns; and out of 250,000,000 in all India,less than 11,000,000 can read and write. A census of tbe illiterates in the various conntries of the world, recently publisbed in the Statistische MonatsBchrift, places the three Slavic States of Roumauia, Servia and Russia at the head of the list, witb ahout 80 per cent. of the populatiou unable to read and write. Of the Latin-speaking races, Spain heads the list witb 63 per cent., followed by Italy witb4S per cent., France and Belgium having ahout 15 per cent. The Illiterates in Hungary number 43 per cent., in Austria 89, and in Ireland 21. In England we find 13 peT cent., Holland 10 per cent., United States (white population) 8 per cent., and Scotland 7 per cent" unable to read and write. When we come to the purely Teutonic States 'we find a marked reduction in the percentage of illit- erates. The bighest is in Switzerland, 2.5; in the whole German Empire it is 1 per cent. ; in Sweden, Denmark, Bavaria, Baden and Wur- temberg there is p~actically no one wbo cannot read aud write. -The latest and most baseless accusation humanity in the bresBts of their oppressors. brought against PrQtestant missions in India Debarred from carrying on the ordinary trades is found in a home paper. and is to the effect oflife, they have been compelled In many inthat the natives were so afraid of medical mis- stances to earn their living by debased occupa. sionary ladies that they would not admit them tions. Taught by bitter experience to feel how to their houses, and other ladies had to be sent unequal they Invarisbly are to cope with the for. The well-knowu truth is that missiouary aggressions of the Mnssnlman population, they ladies made the Lady Dnfferiu movement possi- adapt their speech and conduct to their unforble. They entered India when very many Enro- tunate condition. They passively submit to peans regarded them with disfavor. and proved the vilest Insults, whilst the petty acts of perseby successfal practice in many parts of India cution gradually become habitnal on the part of that the ladies in the zenana could be reached. the Mussulmans. A :Mussulman child may They were gladly received by the natives. The with impunity pull a Jew's beard snd spit into first lady doctor who came to India landed in his face. The poor Jew makes no complaint, 187(), and came to India as a missionary. So and his resignation, taken as cowardice, is not far from exciting fear or suspicion, she gained calculated to act as a deterrent. It is impossiimmediate access to royal houses, and when ble to form a conception of the sentiments of a Lady Dufferln landed In India this medical lady Persian toward a Jew. Taught by tradItion was established in the capital of a Rajpoot and custom to despise the Jew, as being an inprince, and was not only generously'supported by fidel and an impure and defiled creature, it is no him, but had full liberty to carryon her mission- wonder that the Mussulman acts toward him ary work in whatever way she chose. Here and in a disgraceful manner. The word "Jew" is there a noudescrlpt without missionary creden- considered as a term of disgrace, and is never tals may have failed, but as a class the medical used by a Persian without an apology for giving mlsslouary ladies have been eminently success- utterance to it. Their cry for help will assur- edly not fall ineffectually upon the ears of their ful, aud but for them neither India nor China brethren in lands where the blessings of educawoald have had a medical lady. or a female tion have rendered our co-religionists peaceful student in a medical school, to the present and prosperous. day.-India Witness (BmnlJall.) Russla.-Daybreak among the Kirghlz. -Christianity in India.-It is the peculiar To Russian civilization the varied tribes and distinction of India that it has beeu the peoples of Central Asia have readily assimilated; theater of four great religions-Hinduism, the Kirghiz alone have hitherto remained 0 b· Buddhism, Mohammedanism and Christi- stinately wedded to their semi-barbarism. Evianity. The first three have each had many dence, if not overwhelmingly strong, indicates centuries of opportunity, and yet Christian. a tendency to adapt civllized customs and the itv has done more for the elevation of In- elements of education. 'A century and a half ago dian societ,, in the last fifty years than the Kirghiz, who at that time inhabited nearly duringall the long ages of their domination. one·half of Central Asia, surrendered them- Neither Buddhism nor Mohammedanism selves willingly and without bloodshed to the made any serious impression upon caste, domlnstlon of the White Czar. The Russians neither W80S 80ble to mitigate the wrongs have persistently, by every rational means, which h80d been.heaped on women; Moham- striven to remove antiquated prejndlces and the medanism rather aggravated them. The eradication of Kirghiz superstitions. Not until horrors of the suttee and the murder of fe- recent years have Ru.sian persuasions issued maleinfants, those bitterest fruits of super- in Imore than partial success. When the free stition, were left unchecked till the British schools were instituted and tolerance toward Government, Inspired by Christian senti- religion and language exercised the children ment, branded them infamous and made shunned the doors. As determinedly the Kirgthem crimes. Eveh the native sentiment of hlz declined to allow their young men to accept India. is now greatly changed, and the gen- vacancies offered to them in the Rnssian cadet eral morality of the better classes is raised corps. Latterly, however, the Rnssian authora.bove the teachings of their religion.-Dr. ities have overcome the scruples of the Kirghiz EUinwooa, in Ohurch at Home and Abroad. parent. by the gift of premiums. The induce- ment has been successfuf in attracting to the PerSla.-The Jews. Several representa- schools numbers of boys. An earnest endeavor is also being made to break through the pretives of the aggrieved have approached the Per- viously impenetrable wall of prejndice which sian Shah' now visiting in London. The Armin- excludes all female children from the advanians, the Engli.hJewsand the Parseesthere res- tages of educational training and discipline. It ident, have presented addresses. Thefollowing is reported that the wife of s Kirghiz chief i.interestlng just now touching the cruel op- named Galschevskaya has finally overborne all pressiou of the Jews in Persia: :Mr. Morris native opposition, and, with the permission of Cohen of Bsgdad writes in the last report of the Government, a few months ago opened a the Anglo-Jewish Association that centuries of school for young girls in the little town of Jrgis. persecution have not failed to stamp their effect Already she has succeeded In bringing together in deep. broad characters upon the Persian Jews. Despised and persecuted, they are unable to commaud respect, or to arouse feelings of 15 girls. These are entirely the daughters of United States.-From The Exa.miller native Sultans. There is likelihood of tAe we gather some facts respecting Rev. Grattan lady's example being followed shortly by the Guinness, head of the great London Institute establishment of similar schools in more popu- for the training of missionaries, who has been lous centers. The girls attending the Irgis • traveling for months through Mexico and the School are described as wonderfully good Southern States: pupils. In spite of much criticism abroad of the From MeXICO he went through Texas. Lonisi- Russian manner of treating the popular senti- ana, Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina, and ments and traditions of the subjected Central others of the States. His purpose was to visit Asian races there is no donbt that the Rnssian the oolleges for colored students. In a single Government is becoming more permeated with month he addressed 3,000 colored stndents, re- the princjples of educational rights and relig- ceiving offers of service for the Congo missiou ious liberties. ·More acquaintance with the in- from thirty of them. Dr. Guinnes8 finds that ternallife of the Emph'e of the Czar as shown a new movement is begun among the million in Dr. Lansdell's writings proves that Russia colored Baptists-as he puts it: .. Africa in in her own way is a civilizing not less than a America is beginnin::- to move towards Africa conquering power in Central Asia.-Our Eng- beyond the seas." After seeing the colored lish Correspondent. I people, Mr. Gninness went among the white Syrla.-Dr. Lindsay, of the Free Church chnrches, taking with him his bright Congo ofScotland, is now visiting the missions of that boy, N'koiyo. N'koiyo nsed to be at Ilarley church in India, and he gives in The Free House nnder Mr. Gulnness, bnt is now stud,.
Ohurch Monthly an account of the Syrian Ing in one of our Sonthern institutions. Mr.
Christians who dwell chiefly in Travancore. Guinness's plea was that indlvidnal chnrches One authority states that there are about 100,000 should support each a miasionary on the Con- of these Syrian Christians. Dr. Lindsay re- go in connection with onr Missionary Union, gards them as probable descendants of the bnt in addition to what they at present are Nestorian Christians who were banished from doing for missions. Nine Baptist churches in the empire by Theodosius. The Church Mis- Phlladelphia promised to support ten fresh sionary Society of England has labored among missionaries on the Congo. The American them, and oftentimes with promise of much Colonlzation Society has promised to transport snccess, but while there has been a reforming all these missionaries free, and Mr. Guinness party among them, the majority hold very has secured a suitable house in Monrovia, LI- rigidly to some of their ancient tenets. Dr. beria, where the missionaries can wait until Lindsay now reports that the reform party, they can be sent to the Congo. He will be which is headed b~ the Bishop Mar Athana- bnsy:in September seeing to the start of these sius, has endeavored not to secede from the new miSSionaries, and In October is to be at aucient church, but to secnre an evan- the opening of the new missionary college In gelical reformation within it. The chiel Boston. Mr. GlJlnness shows how great pleas- points they insist upon are: The repudiation of nre he takes in thus forwarding the work of prayers to the Virgin or paints and tor the our missions on the Congo in all his letters.
dead; and of the doctrines of transubstantia- His is a crusade for missions wisely and eco- tion and the mass, and of compulsory fasting. nomically condncted, and carried on without They protest also against various superstitious any llourish of trumpets, or appeals (or help rites, such as kneeling before the cross, the for his personal expenses.
lighting of candles for forty days at the graves The first Congo-Balolo mission party sent of the dead, and the offering of sweetmeats at out by Mr. Gninness and the East London In- the temples. They demand that worship shal! stitnte to the Congo above our farthest sta- be in the vernacular, and that the old Syrian tion, arrived safely at the mouth of the Congo.
litnrgy be translated into Malayalam. They In 1878 the first Congo missionaries (establish- desire to be associated with other Christians, Ing the mission which has since been conveyed and especially with evangelical Protestants. to the American Baptists) arrived. There is a This reform party is engaged in a protracted wonderful contrast between then and now.
lawsuit with the nnreformed section for cer- As the missionary party reached the Congo'. tain property belonging to the chnrch, the mouth, they found every provision made for courts hitherto in their decisions having fa- the comfort oC arriving missionaries, wnereas vored the old party. The reformers are antici- ten years ago the pioneers had to endure many pating defeat in their suit, bot are building discomforts. Shortly after this party of Congochurches, and are resolnte in their purpose to Balolo missionaries arrived, they wlilre met by maintain evangelical Christianity. It seems a representative of Dr. Simpson's (ol New that the impulse that led to this reformation York) faith-healing missi01l". She talked in an is dne to the" work of the Church Missionary Indignant strain of the "awlul country," the Society, and to the Christian College at Ma- "terrible people," that '.' It was not right for dras. Mar Athanasius, the present leader, ladies to go to snch a place," and mnch more was a student in the Madras College-Miss. In the same strain. The next morning an Berald. Irish woman connected with the American
MISSIONARY CORRESPONDENCE FROM ALL PARTS
Methodist· (Bishop Taylor's) mission met the it wa.s committed in lta.ly a.gainst one Jew- party and gave them the bright side of the pic- ish child. Many become sick. and some die tnre. She was fnll of enthusiasm for the work in the school away from home and kindred.
on the Congo. After remaining five days at Those who live to gradnate become" camp Banana, the Congo State steamer took them up Indians" again,little better for· the" edu- to Boma. cation" they have received at the expense -The Indian political problem as viewed of the GovernmeQt.
by a missionary. A life of fifteen years Our present policy is unjust in pauperiz- among the Indians has shown me some light ing the Indians and then making their pau- on the Indian problem which it seems to me perism an excuse for invading family rights.
importa.nt to bring before the citizens of on the plea that their children must be the nation which is trying, vainly thus far, taught to support themselves. And the to solve it. I lived among the Ottawas in Indians' hearts are broken and our money Michigan more than two years before and is spent in vain. To educate Indians under nearly five years after their reservations present conditions is to enable a few of were opened to the white settlers. I have them to support themselves and to leave the been more than eight years among the rest to fall back into pauperism.
Sioux on reservations in Dakota and Mon- .I refer to the Government plan of whole- tana.. I have seen the working of both poli- sale education. There a.re mission schools cies a.nd become convinced that the follow- where a limited numberof Indian youth can lng truths contain the key to the solution of obtain a better educatiou than in Govern- the problem: ment schools. The supply of those who ob- I. The Indians are men and cannot be tain this higher education is not equal to saTed without recognizing the rights of the demand. But graduation at a Govern- ma.nhood. The longer they are trea.ted a.s ment school gives no assurance of self.sup- children the inore childish they become. port.
They are sinking deeper in pauperism. At The only wa.y in which the reservation this a.gency it costs the Government as system benefits the Indians is by enabling much to support them as it did when there the agent to keep liquor away from them.
were three times as many. If the traffic in liquor was suppressed 2. What they need is not speciallegisla- among white people, their settlement among tion in their behalf, but the protection of the Indians would not be an injury, but a laws securing equal justice to all men. The benefit.
Government appropriates money to feed 3. A homestead should be given to every them, but that does not teach them to earn Indian, and the rest of the reservations their own living. The Government under- should be open to other settlers. As far as I ta.kes to give their youth an education, both know their feelings, the Indians would be literary and industrial. A few learn to read glad of the change. There would be district and write English to a very limited extent. schools, a.nd their children would not be ar- Some have acquired considerable skill in rested like criminals and put into boarding some kind of work. The Government hires schools by force. Partly by cultivating a.
a few laborers, and the rest are left to eat little land for themselves, and partly by the bread of idleness, as before. Thefavored working for their white neighbors, they laborers receive wages, a.nd the rest get could sup·port themselves and dispense with …bout rations enough to save them from be- Government rations.
ing sta.rved to death. The Government sets 4. All distinctions of race should be abol- apart reservations to protect them from the ished and the laws a.dministered impa.r- intrusion of white people and keep out set- tially. A crime against an Indian should is tiers who would give them employment. meet with the same pnnishment as when the The India.ns are induced to scatter with a victim a white person.
view to farming, and the oilly result is that How will these principles solve the Indian their time and strength are consumed 10 problem? Apply them, and the Indiaus will coming to the agency for their rations. solve it themselves. They are made of Children are educated by forcibly kidnap- human nature as well as we, and all they ping them, in utter disregard of parental want is a fair chance, equally with our- rights, theanthorities thus repeatedly com- selTes. GEORGE W. WOOD, JR., mittin&" the crime which a.roused the indig- Presbyterian Missiona.ry. _, nation of all Europe a few years-a-g-o.-w-h-en—-F-OR-T-P-EC-It AGENCY, MONTANA. ilL-MISSIONARY CORRESPONDENCE FROM ALL PARTS OF THE WORLD-FIELD.
Mrica· of May .49 converts were baptized at the A. B. M. U. Station of Ranza Mauteke. P ALABALA, CONGO FREE STATE, On the 4th of JUDe one young man was bap- 12 June,1889. tized at Underhill Station of the Eng. Rap.
EDITORS MISSIONARY ReVIEw.-On the 25th Missy. Socy. At Lukunga Station of A. B. M. I write the above notes about Bishop Union 4 were baptized on Jnne 9th. At Banza Manteke Station of A. B. M. Union 20 were Taylor's work, not to clog the wheels of the baptized on June 11th. gospel chariot, but rather that the truth By the steamship .Afrikaan the Congo Balo Mission party from London arrived lBay be known. I long to see chnrches essafely; there were two ladies and six gentlemen In the party, all of whom are new tablished-I care not by whom they a.re to the country except the leader, Rev. J. McKittrick, who was for some years in the built up-Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist A. B.M. Union and held the Equator Station of the A. B. M. U, for some time., or otherwise, so long a.s h the Kingdom"
By the same steamer three new mission_ comes, and men are led to follow Jesus. aries came for the A. B. M. U.-Misses Gordon and Royal and Rev. W. A. Hall. But people are giving" gospel money" to The Portuguese mail of 26th May brought what professes to be the cheapest and best four returning and six new missionariesone for A. B. M. U., five for the Eng. B.M. mode of spreading the knowledge of God, Socy. and four for the· Swedish M. Socy.- total for May,21. (3 American, 4 Swedish, and what can be seen at a glance tobe a tail- 1 German and 13 British.) ure on the Congo up till nolO. A new station has been opened by the A. B. 11. U. at Bwemba (Nchumbiri's) fully At Oivi. the base station, no school is es- 200 miles above Stanley Pool. tablished and no one can speak the' lan- Rev. J B. Murphy reports from Equator Sta.tioll that, though there are no known guage. Messrs. White and Ra.smnssenhave conversiuns, the people are inquiring about the gospel and seem very much interested. both worked hard and' are able to converse, There has been fighting amongst some of and to tell of Jesus, in the native language. the Interior tribes, the people themselves saying that since the white men sold them At Kimpoko, I believe, no practical knOWlguns there has been much more lighting. The Statewiselyforbids saleofrifleand capguns. edge of the language has been attained by Good reports as to health and work come any of those established there, yet they from all the A. B. M. U., B. M. S. and S. M. S. stations. have been there for over two years. Mr.
Bishop Taylor's steamer is still in transitu Burr works very hard and earns a good deal and will not probably fioat this year, and if things go on at present rate it will not float by hippopotamns shooting. The two ladies next year. at Banana no doubt do a good work; there In Congo Free State there are four points held by the Bishop's people: (1) Near Bana- the natives understand a good deal of Eng- ns-Misses Kildare and Collins. (2) Oivi (houses built by State)-held by Mr. and Mrs. lish and Portnguese languages. Mr. Burr Teter and Mr. Briggs. (3) lsangila-only a grass hut for temporary purposes-lIessrs. can almost support himself with his gnn, White and Rasmussen. (4) Kimpoko (State houses)-Messrs. Burr, Harrison and Elkins bitt nODe of the others attain "self support," and Mrs. Elkins. No other places are held by the Bishop'8people, though I see repeatedly and even if they were to do so, they, like longer lists of stations. Mr. Burr, wonld be almost completelY cut The list of,missionariesof the Bishop Tay- lor mission, as recently published in the olf from school work and evangelistic ef. pamphlet he edits, Is also incorrect. The names of two trader8 (Evans of Mayumba fort. Yours in the Lord's work, and Fontaine of Banana) are given as .. mis- slonaries;" and fnrther, the reason given JOSEPH CLARK, Missionary of A.B. M. U. for delay of trarurtt of the .Anne Paylor is in- complete and incorrect. LUCKUNGAN, CONGO, June 10, 1889. Forty-flve converts were baptized at It is now over nine years since I came to Banza Mantike (A. B. M. U.) on 2d of this this country, and I have no desire for a month. Fifteen new mission!l.ries and fonr ," better fleld." I love Africa and my desire returns arrived here during the past month. is to see the Cross of Christ planted In A new mission, to work among the Balolo, every village. I daily pray for the spread have arrived on the Congo under the leader- of the knowledge of the name of Jesus, and ship of Mr. J. McKittrick, who did elfect- 1 daily work for that end. ive work and ~ained considerable expe- rience a few years ago while working nn~er theL.E.M. Nearlyall members of the Bishop Taylor mission have either died, gone home, or connected themselves with other missions here. Self-supporting missions are regarded as a failure, and we are very sorry for this; the Bishop is going to !rive it another trial; we wonld rejoice greatly if he suc"eeds, but we ha.ve no ground to hope.
CHAS. JAMES LA1i'J'IN.
Ohile.
AN appeal to Christians for prayer in behalf of Chile: We, the Chile MisSion, assembled Cor oonsu!ttr tlon and prayer concerning our Master's work in Chile, unitedly call upon our fellow-cbrls- tians here and in other lands to join us In c0n- certed and continued prayer to the God of all grace for a special blesSing npon His work here. We gratefnlly acknowledge past blessings, The work of this latter is largely among the and are thankful for the achievements and cou· cesllions of a liberal government, for the marked Chilians. In connection with its work are five spirit of tolerance recently shown toward the propagation of a pure Christianity among this Chilian churches, three schools, one theolOgical people, for the preachim; of the gospel many years to the foreign communities on these department, seven foreign missionaries, three shores and more recently to the Chilians and to a few Indian trihes, for the many copies of the Chilian ministers, besides other helpers and Scriptures scattered among various classes, for the seed sown by tracts and papers in thousands teachers. Among the special indications of of human hearts, for the little companies of be: lievers here and there who have not been God's providence are the rapid movements of ashamed to own the name of Him who called them luto His own marvelous light, for those the past few years toward religious freedom in 'Who have been led by the Divine Spirit to consecrate themselves to Chr istian work in Chile the spirit of the people and in governmental for all the manifested tokeus of the presence and power of God in Christian life and work, acts. The Evangelical Union, which issues this and, finally, for the providence of our Father overall. appeal, has recently received articles ofincorpo- Yet, while mludful of these things, we cannot ration granting the right to hold property, libshut our eyes to the pressing needs around us, and we are constrained to ask you to become 'erty of worship and permission to propagate fellow-helpers In prayer with us in the work oC the gospel of Christ in Chile. Romanism has the Reformed faith throughout the country_ blighted these shores and Inthralled this people for centuries. A reaction is taking place; but, Other tokens of providential favor are seen in excepting In a few Instances, it is not toward the religion of the Bible. The great trend is the large number who now gIve the gospel a toward infidelity and indill'l'rentism. The naturaI'frnlts of hoth are seen in the confused and hearing, and in the Cact that sever..l ChllIans sad state of opinion and practice regarding religion and morals. It would be possible to men- have just entered upon or are in the active tion facts which would prove how important it I. to have a pure gospel preached in Chile. preparation for the gospel ministry. This progressive people, once brought to love and obey Jesus Christ, would show that divine The demands of the hour may be expressed trnth conquers slu and brings to a more perfect development qualities naturally excellent. In- by two wordS, immediate occupation qf the fiuences adverse to a true religious life are felt also by foreign Christians residing here. Yet entire j!eld and a gracious and mightll outit is cause for gratitude that so many avoid these dangers, and, by engaging in Christian pouring oj the HollI Spirit. Pray that the meswork, by consecrated giving, and by their sympathy and prayers do promote the blessed gospel sengers of Christ may be speedily sent to the in Chile. Stili let prayers ascend that their nnmber may be increased, that foreigners and large colonies of foreign peoples on these Chilians may become, under the blessing of our covenant God, trne sons and danghters of the shores, to the dominant Spanish Chillan race King. and to the untonched aboriginal tribes. Nor The present is a time of opportunity. A beginning has been made and special indications can we pass by the fields north ofus, the United of Providence have been vouchsafed. The agencies at work in Chile are the following, States of Colombia and Pern, in which there are viz.: thirteen Protestant churches among the foreign communities, five boarding and day very few laborers; also Bolivia, Ecuador and schools and three Spanish preaching stations under the Taylor Mission of the American Venezuela, almost entirely unoccupied. Plead Methodist Church, a seaman's mission in Valparaiso harbor, the ValparaiSO Bible Society with our God that these nllglected fields may employing several colportenrs, a mission to the natives of Terra del Fuego under the care or immediately hear the gospel. Pray that the the South American Missionary Society of England, and the Evangelical Union or Chile Mis- Spirit may convict of sin this whole people. .1011 of the American Presbyterian Church. Pray that He may make fruitful the widely scat- tered seed. Pray that he may give courage to confess Christ and to openly avow allegiance with.His chnrch. Pray God that He may conse- crate more Cully to Himself the Chilian and for- iegn Christians, that the testimony of a whole- handed and whole-hearted service may aid the witness of God's truth. Pray the Lord of the harvest for godly native ministers, teachers and other workers, and for a marked enduement of the spirit of Christ upon His mmisters here, both Chilian and foreign, for harmony, for wis- dom, for love, for power. Pray for the church of Christ in ChUe that it may be powerfully re- vived. Pray for the Christians of Protestant Europe and America that they may appreCiate their vast responsibilities for money, men and practical interest, also their wonderful oppor- tunities for 1WW undertaking and carrying out our Lord's gre..t command to disciple all na· tions. The one comprehensive blessing which we de&lre is the presence of the Holy Spirit working in all the plenitude of Hisl(race and power.
Dear brethren, what is to be done must, be done quickly. This generation is fast passing away. May we all quit ourselves like men, praYIng while we labor 'and laboring while we pray, as those who look for the Lord and His divine approval.
Those who are willing to nnite in a weekly observance of prayer in behalf of ChUe and the other darkened papal hnds of America are re- vations is to have nothjng to do with Christians as servants, when they can get Hindu or Moquested to send their names to any member of hammedan domestics. I do uot agree with the , Old Colonel' in his sweeping denunciations of the Evangelical Union. These are not Intended our native Christian brethren in. India. But I am compelled to admit, that he has often pracfor publication, but that we may be encouraged tical experience in support of his views.
by the knowledge that some are joining us in .. The low state, moral and social, of these • Portuguese Christians,' Is the direct historical this requeet, and that we may be able to com- result of a system of conversion without educa- tion. The Roman Catholic authorities have municate with them iu the future. themselves perceived this; and in our day they are second to none in their efforts to educa&e Rev. J. M. .Allis, Casilla 912, Santiago, Chile. the people. I would speak of the existing Catholic missions and missionaries in India " S. J. Christen, "6tH, " with the highest respect. • • • " W. H. Lester, 231, "The fact. however,remains that the low social and moral status of their converts is the histori_ " W. H. Dodge, 202, Valparaiso, " cal result of the old-world methods of conver- sion without corresponding efforts at education " J . .F. Garvin, 904, on an adequate scale. These methods have now been abandoned for more enllghteued ones " W. H. Robinsou," Copiapo, by the Roman CathOlics in India. "
" W. B. Boomer, Ooncepcion, " Iu comparing the number of converts'by the Roman Catholic and Protestant missionaries we In session at Valparaiso, Chile, January, I88)' ought never to lose 'Sight of the fact that not only were the former 300 years sooner in the 1 These. iii: 1,2. field but that they had the Nestorlan Mis- sions on which to draw for many of their England. early converts. as all were called who left the weak and unprotected followers of the early FROM REV. JAMES JOHNSTON, F.S.S. church for the powerful church of their Portu- guese conqnerors who did not scrnple to nse Roman Catholic Missions in In- strong measnres for their conversion. dia. It is also necessary in speaking of the increase KDS. 011 THill MISSIONARY REVIEW 011 THE WORLD: of Roman Catholic converts in India, to em- Dear Sirs.-Your correspoudent in this Jlhasize the fact that the Increase is largely due to the natnrallncrease of the mnch larger numconntry, who happens to be a namesake of ber with which the comparison is made. mine, and for whose communications I find myself credited, has in your July Issue given the I am, dear sir, most truly yours, nnmber oC Roman Catholics in India derived JAMBS JOHNSTON, F. S. S. Cram their orgau, Illustrated Catholic Missions. The numbers are probably near the truth; but India. certain quotations from Sir W. W. Hunter as LETTER from a Methodist misslOnto the comparative cost ofPopish and Protestant ary in Monaffarpur, India: missions, and as to the self-denying way in which the agents of the former carryon their I read in THE REVIEW a short time ago an work, are apt to mislead, when not accompanied account of the Lady Dnfferin Hospital, by other passages from Sir William's writings. opened at Darthanga and built by the Ma.- harajah. I see the building often and enjoy The following passages are from one of his the hospitality of the lady in charge, who is most recent ntterance., as to the character an East Indian from Madras. Already the of the converts made by the Roman Catholic enterprise is a success; the wards are filled Chnrch ; and as they may not COme under your and much good is being done. Miss R., an correspondent's eye, and will certainly not be excellent Christian lady, told me of a very given In the nlustrated Oatholic Missions, I successful treatment in removing a cataherewith give them: ract from a native lady, who, after years of darkness, has returned to her home and Referring to the danger of the withdrawal of people. It is great misfortune that theladies Protestant schools and co~leges, Sir William engaged in these hospi tals, by a stipulatIOn says: accepted by Lady Dufferin, "annat converse with theIr patients on the subject of Chris- "The Roman Catholics in the sixteenth and tianity. Either these institntions in time seventeenth centuries made the great mistake must pass into the care of ladies of an of converting without educating. Their con- acknowledged creed or the Christian la,di!llil versions were on an enormous scale, and they must stullif,y tb/lm.,, VIIS, have left behind a hereditary caste of Christians, numbering abont one and one-third million of the two millions or native Christians in India. It is not too much to say that the native Christians thus left behind by the rapid conversions of Roman CatholiCIsm were for long a reproach to Chrlstiauity. It is these' Portnguese Christians' who have given rise to the popular idea in India, that a native Christian is a drunkard and a thief. There are many thousands of exceptions to this rule. But the rule Is so general that an 'Old Colonel' .when he Writes to the Time8, usnally speaks of it as universal. Yet the class of Englishmen represented by senior military officers are both truthful and accurate ~lls~rvers,. and the ~eneraI rllswt Of th,eit obse~- The field which our ehurch. the Methodist "The mission on which I started has proved successful beyond my expectations. Episcopal, has just entered has been occu- Our friends will be glad to know that we have begun a, mission in Jerusalem, and ba.ve -appied-for some years by the members of the pointed a missionary. Not only was I myself actively occupied during the whole period Gossner Mission. For want of men and of my stay at the ]'[oly City, but I also en- gaged a. Hebrew convert to continue the funds it ha.s for several years been almost work as an evangelist among the 30,000 Isra- elites at Jerusalem. I am sure that your at a standstill. The mission has bnt two earnest prayers will go up for this new branch of our work. There are in other cities men, one of whom is to be removed to an- of Palestine 50,000 more of God's ancient peo- ple, making 80,000 in all, or more than in the other field. A 1l0urishing Zenana mission days of Ezra and Nehemiah, for then there Were only 50,000. 1 may add that the number a.nd a press, which aided the mission greatly, is constantly increasing and that there are signs of renewed prosperity. I believe the have both been abandoned. Lord is preparing the land for the people and the people for t{ie land; for just as the Provision has been made by which we curse haB been fulfilled so all the bleSSings foretold by Israel'" prophets shall assuredly hope soon to put half a dozen native helpers come to pass and be fully realized." From Paris he writes: "Many of you will know in this field. It will be something of an ex- that three years ago I was enabled, with the aid of Pastor Hirsch. to start a work among periment with us, as we have only one the Hebrews of this city. I am anxious While here to strengthen and enlarge the foreign missionary to represent the work. work." It has been assisted by the contri- butions of Mr. Freshman'S little Hebrew There is but one town in Lirhort, and that Christian Churoh and congregation of St. Mark's Place, from which have also ema· is where We have established ourselves. nated, directly or indirectly, missions to the Jews in Philadelphia and Chicago. besides Here we hope soon to have a dispensary incipient work in PIttsburgh, Des Moines. Toronto and other cities, as opportunities with a lady doctor in charge, a very mnch have offered, by Mr. Freshman personally,or by missionary converts from the little needed auxiliary to mission work. mother in St. Mark's Place, ten or more of whose sons are already in the field or pre- Your accounts of the increasing interest paring in theological seminaries.
taken in the Lord's work, and your own United States.
eO'orts to create and foster this interest, [COMMUNICATION from Dr. L. P. Brockett: Corrections in article on are very encouraging to us. We are satis- ·'Madagascar."] fied that the Lord will make known and EDS. MISSIONARY REVIEW OF THE WORLD: I glorify Himself among the nat'ions, but we have received from foreign sources some communications in relation to my article on ask, When will the church be willing, nay, " Madagascar" in the May and June num- bers of your REVIEW, and I beg leave to make anxious, to give the millions of India an op- a few not very important corrections sug- /!rested by t,hese criticisms that your many portunity to see the light and enjoy the readers may not be led into even trivial er- roneous impressions. blessings of our glorious gospel? May article, p. 352, lines 22 and 23, for We have a station as near Mt. Everest as "lemurs" (which helong to the monkey fam- ily) read "'emeers" (which belong to the we can get in the plains of India. When not Same natura.l class and order as the monkey which they replace in Madagascar.) obscured by clouds and mist it can be dis- Page 858, line 28, for" the great province tinctly seen, and appears to be but a few of Imerina • • • is the larl!"est of all the provinces," read" which is the chief of aJl miles distant,while it is not less thau eighty. the provinces."
Bishop Thoburn, our recently appointed Page 858, line 8, for "and the Bt!tsileas"
bishop of India and Malaysia, has just ar- rived. On the 7th of January he presides at his first conference, to meet at Bareilly.
northwest provinces; on the 17th he will meet the Bengal Conference at Allahabad, and on the 31st the South India Conference at Bombay.
Hoping you may be Interested in a few items from these gatherings. I will endeavor to send them to vou as early as I can obtain them.
We trust you have every encouragement in your noble work. We join in prayiug that yOU may he aided, both by the Lord and by the church, for you need grace,and you cannot work without means. Tell the churches in America we are waiting on their prayers; our eyes are lifted unto Him who has promised to hear and answer prayer. Yours very sincerely, (Rev.) H. JACltSON.
Syria..
THE FRESHMAN JEWISH MISSIONS. [REV. JACOB FRESHMAN writes to his congregation in New York of the enterprise for Jerusalem for which he has been for some months absent, as follows:1 read .. the Betlmmena and the Betsimisa to be prepared. based on the best codes of raka." England and America.," read .. caused a re- vision of the MallloG"asy laws to be prepa.red. June article. p. 425. line 24, for "1863." read approximating them in some degree to the "1868." Sa.me line, for .. in Imerlna. " (the codes of Western nations." land of the Hovas) read" iu the island of llada.gasca.r. " Page 428. line 11. for" the Scriptures" read .. religious books." Same page. line 14. for Page 425. line 29, "they had only the New .. she greatly multiplied copies of the Scrip- Testament in their own langua&-e, and the tures " read" she greatly promoted the cirtranslation of'this was not perfect." The CUlation of the Scriptures." and refer to the following toot note should be appended to new note on page 425. this page : Page 428. line 25. for .. to the levying of * .. The New Testament and the Psalms taxes" add" to diminish the burden of the jarwmpoana or per90nal service." had been translated and circulated prior to 1834, and 5,000 copies of the former and 6,000 In the note at the foot of P. 428. line 12. of the latter had been put in the hands from the bottom. for" spent three and a of the natives. The Old Testament had half months." read .. spent thirty·eight also been translated and a small edition da.ys" printed in the summer of 1835; but in Februaryof that year the Queen (Ranavalona I believe these are the only pa.ssages or I.) had prohibited her subjects (under pen- phrasesrequiringcorrection or modification altyof death) from reading or having in to which my attention has been ca.lled. I their possession copies of the Scriptures or will add two verba.l substitutions which I any religious books, and had caused a vigor- ha.ve noticed. Page 433, line 21. from bottom ous search to be made for them, a.nd the of page, for U voice" substitute ., utterpenalty to be inforced fer the possession of auce." and eighteenth line from bottom. for even a ~ingle leaf. Under these orders "voice" substitute "sound." nearly every copy of the Old Testament and many thousands of the Psalms and New Tes- L. P. BROCKETT. tament were seized and sent to England and BROOKLYN. July 25. 1889. their retnrn prOhibited. No other New Testaments were to be had till 1869, when the Letter from New Jersey: British and Foreign Bible Society sent a revised edition of 5,000, and in 1871 an edition MARLTON, N. J., July 8; 1869. of the Old Testament. Even these editions, DEAR DR. PIERSON: I was greatly pleased with through revised, were not perfect. and a your suggestion that the church should undermore thorough revision ha.s just been com- take to evangelize the world within the present pleted. It was a stray copy of the first edi- generation. I have been impressed for seversl tion of the entire Scriptures which was years with the same thought. that the world placed at the side of the Queen when she could be evangelized before llJOO. Four years was crowned." ago I expressed this thought to Bishop Taylor of Africa. He replied: .. I think it can be Page 426, mnth line from the bottom, for done in 20 years." In conuectlon with this I .. the coronation oath was adminis$ered to have been forcibly and sometimes pa.infully imher with her hand on the sa.cred volume," pressed that the average church co,uld and rea.d .. as she a(!dressed her people, on this should support two pastors: one at home, her corona.tionday, she stood with her hand one abroad, and the weaker churches. paying upon the sacred volume." from $400 to $700 salaries, should unite, two or more of them, in supporting a foreign pastor, Page 427, second line. for" and united with whUe the richer churches should multiply one of the mission churches " read hand their pastors abroad as the Lord should prosper united with the Independent Palace them. And all this without diminishing in the Chnrch." least their annual contributions to the general cause. This cmdd be done if properly set before Pa.ge 427, line 6, for" the beautiful Mala- the churches and urged upon them. Their gasy marble" read u the massive Ma.laga.sy missionaries could be under the supervision of granite." Line 23, for" a beautiful marble the parent boards of their respective denomichurch " rea.d u. a bea.utifulgranite church." nations. But such a worl< needs a pioneer, like yourself.to travel amongthe churches, aud also A note may be appended as follows: through the press to stir them up. Why not. dear Doctor. tske this upon your shoulders as, *.. There is a very fine Malagasy white a part of the precious burdeu you are carrying for the swift subjectiou of the world to our marble, used to some extent n Madagascar Lord ? Very sincerely yours. for building, but the churches and palaces of the capital were either built of hard na· W. MaK. BRAY. tivewood,painted whlte,of a native granite Psstor M. E. Church. which.' from excess of felspar. is nearly white. or of tae native blue rock, a gra.y or [A remarkable movement is on bluish basalt abounding in that vicinity. foot in Kansas, in response to Dr. H. The fioors of some of the palaces are of white n&'tive marble."
Page 428. line 5, for" caused a code of laws
"'~' ;:"y"''''
7'12 INTERNATIOll'AL DEPARTMENT. [OcT.; Grattan Guinness's appeal for the and others carefuUy explain to the pastors and Soudan district. We willingly give business mell that the associations are not going place to this circular, and trust it into a general missionary work, but ouly take will lead to similar movements else- up the work of sending pionee~s to prepare the way of the Lord, and open up lIelds for the where.-EDS.] church societies and others.
TOPEKA, KANSAS, July 17, 1889. We advise that a committee of from three to DEAlI FmENDS: At the last meetiug ofthe State five be appointed from your association for Executive Committee, after careful aud prayer- the Soudan Pioneer Mission. That the officers ful consideration, the following resolution was be a chairman, set'retary and treasurer. unanimously adopted, viz: RetlolfJed, That the State Executive Commit- Sample blanks, with electro map of Africa, tee approves the appointment of missionary will be furnished at an early day. committees bylocal associations for the purpose of aiding the Soudan pioneer missionary move- A number of good men have volunteered to ment or other pioneer missionary enterprises. go, and Kansas will probably send from five It was also agreed that some member of the to eight men to the Sondan about October 22d State Committee should be designated as a -immediately after the State CODvention. member for the Soudan Pioneer Mi.ssion, who should act for and represent the missionary Asking your earnest prayers and hearty cobands ofour associations in this State. operation in this great work, we are, on be- We should be glad to have the secretaries half of •• every creature,"
Faithflllly yours, JAlIIES D. HUSTED. Chairman. GEO. S. FISHER, State Secretary.
IV.-INTERNATIONAL DEPARTMENT.
CONDUCTED BY J. T. GRACEY, D.D.
How Shall Returned Missionaries Render attentions for which he has, orshould the Best Service to the Oause of Mis- have, no desire as being more his sions While at Home? due than to home workers for Christ. Any seeming complacency in being BY REV. GEO. W. WOOD, D.D. lionized he should avoid by'a care- ful cherishing of his conSCIOusness FIRST by being in spirit, manners that many a laborer at home is more and conduct an honor in the highest approved of his Master than himself possible degree to the missionary deserves to be. name. The cause of missions receives damage from anything in the Secondly, if the missionary is at missionary which tends to excite home for nefded rest and restoration suspicion as to his motives, and of health, let him, next to spiritual lower respect for him as a man. culture, make it his first aim to be- Whatever helps to raise him in the come able to return speedily to his estimation of intelligent Christians work abroad. If he is at all an efand other candid observers as a man fective public speaker, the demands of intellectual ability, good sense, upon him will be incessant for labor firm principle, broad and generous beyond his strength. Whether the sympathy, charity and other traits call come from secretaries of socieof the best style of Christian char- ties and boards, or, in more numeracter, brings advantage in every way ous cases, from pastors and others to the object which he seeks to pro- in the churches, he must Jearn, when mote. A model missionary is a he ought, to say No, and insist upon crown of glory and a tower of it. If his desire to excite interest in s~rength to "the cause" which he miSSIOns, or his inability to resist represents. pressure. leads him to prevent the physical recovery for which he came Especially, and in all ways, should home, or much to delay it, he makes the foreign missionary show him- a mistake which is harmful to "the self in accord, as a fellow-worker, cause." with every form of evangelistic and benevolent activity in the great Thirdly, in order to render the best home field. He sometimes receives
INTERNATIONAL DEPARTMENT. 7'78
service to the cause of missions Butin respect to the pen, as also to while at home, the returned nlis- the voice, we do well to resolve that sionary must well consider his pecu- .. every missionary returned from liar adaptations and circumstances. his field, and so withheld from his work abroad on account of impaired "Not all men can do all things." health, should be subject explicitly to the advice of his physicians in ':!. witty correspondent of the New undertaking any missionary service York Evangelil;lf, "Ambrose," once at home." Giving lectures and wrote: "Missionaries are of two mll-king addresses from the pulpit, classes-those that can talk, and in Sunday-schools, and in missionary those that can't talk." Now, we and ecclesiastical meetings, may well know some scholarly and other men employ such measure of strength as in our own country who nevel' went a judicious physician will approve. abroad, who are very useful in their In rendering this service, let not own proper spheres, but who have zeal override judgment; and let care not the gift of eloquence; and some be taken not to harm by mistakes in who can be interesting and instruct- the manner and length of speaking. ive to auditors of'a certain kind, and Missionarielll are like other public yet fail when called to face audi- speakers, needing to know how to ences of a dIfferent sort under differ- begin, what to say and what not to ing circumstances. David Living- say, and how and when to stop. stone was not a Dr. Duff in speech, Painfully conscious of my own defibut hewas David Livingstone never- ciencies, and that I can present mytheless. Some men can do better self not so much an example as a than they can describe, and some beacon, may I not, nevertheless, recan use the pen more effectively than mind my brethren and sisters, with, the tongue. Ready writers may do myself, that the three s's are an exmuch for missions through the cellent general rule, viz. : "Be short, press. They may do this not only by spirited, spiritual" 'I " Spiritual," sketchy and more elaborate articles not in the way of cant, sanctimoniin magazines and the religious press, ousness, affectation of piety, faith, and by books, but by watching op- self-denial, but from the spirit of 'portunities for useful statements Christ in the soul of the speaker, that will be welcomed by conductors which cannot but pervade aU his utof local newspapers and secular city terances; "spirited," from depth of journals. Some missionaries abroad, conviction and feeling, not of a and some when re~urned, have, by spurious oratory, and this, though thei.r facile pens, communicated in- it may cost effort; for often the formation of great value to thinking missionary is so exhausted from minds, and, bringing honor to them- feebleness, the fatigue, it may' be, selves, have honored and aided" the of traveling. and the social intercause" to which they are or were course with kind Christian friends, devoted. The late Rev. Dr. Robert not always considerate in their de- Baird repoded that M. Guizot said sire to entertain and heal' from the in his hearing: "If ever the world visitor from a foreign land, how can is to be well informed respecting he help being dull? But let him be itself, it will be done through the as spirited in the best sense of the efforts of missionaries." Of the con- word as he can; and th€'n, unless he tributions of missIOnaries to several is to be the only speaker, and is debranches of science, and to general SIred to occupy more time, let him knowledge and literature, the most for the sake of his hearers and himgratifying appreciation has been ex- self, and efficient service "to the pressed by men of highest eminence in learning. cause," be short, above all; never The Anoient Ohuroh of Persia. a.nd its spoiling a meeting, and vexing the Reform. arrangers of a programme and those who are to follow him by overrun- BY REV. J. H. SHEDD, D.D. ningthetimeallowed to him I Learn THERE were present on the day of to speak, if, you must, with your Pentecost, Parthians and Medes and watch in your left hand, and don't Elamites and the dwellers in Mesoforget to look at it in season and potamia, devout men from the Car obey its monitions I East and forerunners of the great church of Pt'rsia that flourished from Unless one is a Christian Daniel the days of the Apostles for twelve Webster, like Alexander Duff, he centuries, and that planted its misdoes well not to occupy much time sioJ:s in Eastern Persia, Turkestan, in a missionary address by discussing China and India, while Europe was scriptural principles of missions; still a wilderness. The fruits of these this may better be reserved for other missions were all destroyed 600 years times or left to other speakers. Mis- ago by the exterminating sword of sionary facts are eagerly asked from Tameriane, except the Syrian Chrismissionaries. Let these be selected tian community on the Malabar to illustrate principles. The most coast in India; the monument of unprofitable thing that a mission- Singan fu in China and a few similar ary can do is to scold the churches. relics. There are extensive grave_ He can quicken consciences by yards on the western borders of touching hearts in well-selected, China, recording on the tombstones truthful narrations concerning con- the fact that they buried their dead verts in missionary fields or Chris- in Christian hope. tian supporters at home. The church which sent out these missions, now commonly called the Much of the returned missionary's Nestorian, has dwindled, from Mosmost effective service when at home lem oppressions and inward decay, to may be rendered in prayer-meetings a little more than a hundred thouand social circles, in which, without sand souls. Half as many more of obtrusion, he may, by suggestions, the same race and language are anecdotes and illustrations, give en- united to the Church of Rome. largement of thought, and make a This remnant of the oLd Syrian 01' favorable impression in relation to Nestorian Church was first reported missionary topics. He will some- to the Protestant world in 1830 by times find himself in company with Messrs. Smith and Dwight, Ameridisbelievers in missiom; and thus, can exploring missionaries. Their by exhibition of the Christian spirit, report was so favorable that the tact in parrying an objection or a American Board soon after began a sneer, self-respecting dignity and mission to the Nestorians. The first knowledge, refuting assertions of missionaries were Rev. Justin Perignorance, he may worthily defend kins and Asahel Grant, M.D., very the cause against assailants. By noble and enthusiastic pioneers. communication of information in an Others of like spirit followed them, easy and natural way he may, in and since the mission was begun in personal intercourse, be useful in in- 1835 a strong station has been maincreasing interest in the cause in pas- tained at Oroomiah, and unwearied tors and private Christians, and es- efforts have been made to promote. pecially in helping the young to be- a revival of pure Christianity. The come recruits for its service abroad means used are the translation of or at home, and "he that winneth the Bible into the spoken language souls is wise." of the people. the introduction of a. Christian literature, the teaching of ~ possible nearer the currup.t churches thousands to read in schools and of Greece and Rome. .
Sabbath schools, the training of But we anticipate. Let us llrst teachers and ministers, the preach- mention the nature and history of ing of the gospel everywhere and the the reform in progress and then planting of a reformed church with add a few thoughts on the opposi- its congregations and schemes of tion, difficulties and hopes that at- beneficence. tend it.
In 1841, thefirstpl·inting-press ever The Nestorian controversy carries seen in Persia began its work at us back to' the decisions of the coun- Oroomiah in printing the Bible. From cil of Ephesus, A.D. 431. Nestorius 1846 to 1851 there were remarkable was condemned on two charges. (1.) revivals in the mission schools and For refusing to call Mary theMo- in some of the village cong-regations ; ther of God. In this certainly no also severe persecutIOns by the Nes- Protestant would accuse him of torian Patriarch and the Persian heresy. (2.) For saying that there Governor. In 1855 the Reformed com- are not only two natul·es, but also munion was begun, twentyyears after two persons in Christ. Students in the founding of the mission. In 1870 church history recall to what con- the name of the mission was changed troversies the Greek words uVUla, to The Mis8ion to Per8ia. In 1871 the lJ1r6U'T'autu, and 'TrpOUoJ1rov and the corre- work was transferred to the care of sponding terms in Syriac gave rise.
the Presbyterian Board. Since then The difficulty of definition and of ad- it has enlarged its sphere to embrace justing their meanings to each other not only Nestorians, but all the other gave the opportunityfor endless mis- peoples-Armenians, Jews and Mos- understandings. Nestorians have al- • lems in half of Persia and a large ways held to the true diTinity, the part of Kurdistan in Turkey. Sta- true humanity and the true incarna- tions have been established in Tabriz, tion of our Lord. In their contro- Teheran, Ramadan and Salmas, and versy with other churches on the a station in the mountains of Kurdis- term Mother of God we are their al- tan undertaken. lies. The same is true of many In 1838, three years after the Amer- other points at issue between them ican missionaries, French monks be- and the papacy. The unscrlptural gan their work on the same field. dogmas and practices of the Greek, They have for the basis of their opera- Armenian or Latin churches, such tions several thousands of the Syri- as the refusal of the cup to the laity, ac-Persians who are nominally at- purgatory, confession, the mass as a tached to the Church of Rome. They real sacrifice of Christ and image have fought the Protestant reform worship never entered this church.
at every step and with all the weap- The errors of the fourth century ons that the Romish hierarchy know and some later ones are found, but so well how to use. In 1885, fifty the people are not bound by the years after the Americans entered councils and traditions nor are they the field, the Archbishop of Canter- under a hierarchy as the other cor- bury, at the request of some ecclesi- rupt churches. They hold the Bible astics and in pity for the old Syriac as the full and only rule of faith.
Church, determined on an Anglican They have a liberal spirit toward all mission, and in 1886 he sent out his who teach the Word of God. They agents from Protestant England to- confess that the teachings of the oppose the Protestant mission in American missionaries agree with Persia and to confirm the people in the primitive doctrines of· their their formalism and bring them if church and that errors have crept 776 INTERNATIONkL DEPARTMENT. [OcT., into their system inlater times which deacons, all of whom had received orshould be reformed. dination in the oldchurch, metin con- ference with the -missionaries. The The missionaries in 1835 were wel- first of these conferences was held in comed by the people, and for many 1862, and adopted a brief confessiml, years an honest effort was made form of government and discipline. to reform the old body without de- Some things were taken from the stroying its organism. This effort canons and rituals of the old church, failed. God was pleased to pour out others from the usages of Protestant His spirit, many souls were renewed, churches. The confession and rules and a new church was gradually were enlarged in 1878, and the name formed for the following I'ea- adopted was" The Evangelical Syrisons: (1) Per8ecutions. The patriarch ac Church." The missioitaries and did all in his power to destroy the the evangelical bishops have someevangelical work. He threatened, times joined in the ordination serbeat and imprisoned the teachers vice and it would be difficult to draw and converts, and thus did his ut- the time when the Episcopal ordinamost to alienate the spiritually mind- tion ceased and the Presbyterial beed and to drive them from his fold. gan in the Reformed body. (2.) Lack of discipline. Theconverts could no longer accept unscriptu- The relation of the American misral practices and rank abuses that sionaries to the old ecclesiastics has prevailed, and it became evident been somewhat different from that that there' was no method of reform- found in other missions to Eastern ing those abuses and practices. The Christians. The patriarch in office missionaries and converts alike gave fifty years ago was at first very up the hope of such reform. (3.) Lack friendly to the missionaries. and perof teaching. The converts asked for sonally aided them. Later he did all better care and for purer and better in his power to break up the mission. instruction and means of grace than His most able brother, DeaconIsaac, they found in the dead language and however, accepted the evangelical rituals of the old church. The sepa- doctrines, and till his death, in 1Be5, ration, however, was made in no spir- was the foremost man in the Reformit of hostility or controversy. There ed communion. The Patriarch now was no violent disruption. The mis- in office h&8 taken the attitude of sionaries published nothing against neutrality, with frequent indications the policy or ecclesiastics of the old of fairness and friendliness to the church. Their efforts were not to mission work. proselyte, but leaven the whole people with the Scripture truth. The The next in ecclesiastical rank is new life was not forced into a western the Metropolitan, the only one left of mold, but left to adapt itself to the the twenty-five mentioned in the peculiar character and wants of the thirteenth century. The present inpeople. cumbent, recently made distinct avowa16f the scriptural character of The method was guided by Provi- the Evangelical Church, and expressdence. The conveJ't:;, were first in- ed a strong desire to come to an unvited to unite with the missionaries derstanding with it. Of the bishops, in celebrating the Lord's Supper. As three have united with the reform the numbers increased, and societies and died in the Evangelical Church_ were formed in the sevel'al villages, Of those remaining, the two in 01'00native pastors were placed oVll'r miah, to the extent of their ability, them. In time these pastors and oppose th,e light, beca.use their deeds their elders, and the other preachers, are evil. The three bshops in Kurdincluding bishops, presbyters and istan are friendly, and give their influence in favor of the mission instructed in Bible truth by a l'eg'eu- schools. Alarge numberof the priests erate church that rescues what is.
or presbyters of the old church, in most precIOus :from a system that Persia. at least, joined the reform decayeth and waxeth old and is movement, aRd as large a proportion ready to pass away. The members of the deacons. In Kurdistan, fur- of the Reformed Church revere and ther from the mission station and in- love much the history of their fath- fluence, the number is smaller. In ers and appeal to their examples of all, nearly seventy of the presbyters zeal and piety; and desire to conserve have labored with the mission as their true doctrines and their virtues.
teachers, preachers or pastors, more The preaching p~aces vary some- than half of whom continue. Many what with the season of the year, others acknowledge that the reforms numbering about 120 in the winter of the Evangelical Church are scrip- and somewhat less in summer. The tural and sal.utary, but for worldly roll of ministers shows 40 fully or- reasons adhere to the old party. dained, several of whom are mission- These facts as to ecclesiastics (and aries iII distant parts of Persia and similar facts might be giveIl: as to in Russia. There are 30 licentiates or the leading laymen) show that many preaching deacons, 87 elders and 91 leading minds of the people have been deaconesses of the congregations.
enlightened by the missionaries and In some places the reform has gath- toiled with them for the reform of ered nearly all the population with- the whole people. Still more has in its influence, and in many places the work been for the common peo- it is not unusual to find half the pop- ple. The mission has been true to its ulation in the winter services. Many aims to embrace the whole people in blessed seasons of awakening and its plans for spiritual and temporal refreshing from the Holy Spirit have improvement. The medical work been enjoyed. In all, over3,300 have has been for all, and also the relief been received to church fellowship, in time of famine. In civil affairs of whom two-thirds are living and there is no Protestant community, the others passed beyond the veil.
alld any relief obtained through mis- The people are poor in worldly sionary influence is shared by all. goods but are able to do much for The schools are open to all alike, and their own support and to spread the as barriers have given way before the gospel. In a few congregations all increasing light, whole villages, and the expenses are paid by the people every house in them, have been open and in all they share according to to the Christian workers as truly as their grace and ability_ All con- can be said of any community in tribute to a missionary fund from America. which the native board pays one- The Evangelical Church has its fou'rth of the expenses for advance Mission Board that meets mont~ly, work. Thus the foreign work has and by combining funds and counsels become to the church of Persia a with the missionaries a system of home work and upon this native pastoral care and itinerant labor isin church is laid the responsibility of operation which enables the forty- winning the land for Christ a.nd of five preachers in the Persian por- preaching the gospel to every crea- tion of the field to carry the gos- ture. The American missionaries pel statedly to every hamlet. In go hand in hand in helping the na- Kurdistan the same system is ex- tive Christians to realize their re- tending,annually. The earnest hope sponsibilities and privileges, to plant and aim is to see this people brought and train self-supporting and ag- fully under evangelical influlO'nce and gressive local churches. There is a system of education that Mussulmans have regarded Chrisembraces 120 village schools, in- tians as unclean infidels, worthy only creasing in number as the demand of contempt and violence. After all increases, an orphanage,. a female the ages of contact with nominal seminary and a. college with indus- Christians, the true religion of Christ trial department and medical class, is now, for the first time, revealed to as well as the COUl'ses in science, Persian Mohammedans. This revelanguages and theology. To fro-, lation is made in the translated Word vide books a printing press is con- of God, and still more truly in the stantly at work, and to meet the lives and worship of true Christians. needs of the sick and needy, a dis- There is a purity in Protestant worpensary and hospital have long been ship, and a manhood and intelligence attended annually by thousands. and character of love and integrity To complete the agencies needed to in Protestant Christians WhICh IS inevangelize the Nestorian field a new deed a revelation. Christians are no station for the mountains has been longer to be despised, but they are to organized and the labors of a tnedical be respected and trusted, and it is and an ordained missionary begun, the turn now for Mussulmans to assisted by native helpers, and these stand on the defensive and to listen, labors much blessed in the winter and of some to accept of Christ in the past. face of persecution and threatened death. From the door of the sepul- The question is often asked, What cher the stone of a corrupt and idolis the effect of this reformation on atrous Christianity is rolled away. the faiths and peoples about us? In The way is fast preparing and the reply the reflex influence on the old evangelical Christians in the midst of church is as marked as upon the Ar-. the Moslems are the leaven for the menians in Turkey. The leaven is rapid dissemination of the gospel. working in the old body and some of the congregations have preaching For fifty years this work of Amerand Sunday schools, and we may ican missionaries, in the reformation hope, many truly enlightened and of the Syriac-Persian Christians, has renewed souls. been recognized with gratitude by all who look for the kingdom of The tide of Roman influence was God in Persia. In one of the leading fast overwhelming this remnant of cyclop::edias the opinion is expressed Nestorians a generation ago. Now that" probably no Christian mission the tide is turned and Protestants of modern times has been so satisfacare on the aggressive everywhere. torily conducted and so decidedly A large body of living Christians, happy in its influence and results." with the Bible in their hands, are not This is an extreme statement, for the only able to hold their own but are missionaries are fallible and have constantly advancing, and thus is made many mistakes; but notwithsecured to the true faith a body of standing all mistakes the Great Head Christians as important to Persia of the church has wonderfully owned and Kurdistan as the Waldenses are and blessed the effort. Multitudes of to Italy. It is planting the batteries souls have been saved and a true and of the ChristIan faith at a strategic lasting reformation begun. point far within the enemies' country. An awakening among God's It was to be expected that the Roancient people in the land of their man Church would oppose such a long captivity has already begun in work and would set up her rival mismany places. sions. But it was not to be expected, and is greatly to be lamented, that The effect on Islam is more impor- the Archcishop of Canterbury has tant still. For hundreds of years the followed in the s~eps of Rome, and ',zation. ~he Ritualists have l'allied has sent his mission, consisting of the opposition to close the mountain foul' English priests, to arrest the valleys against aU missionary work, Protestant reformation in this old and exclude evangelical teaching Eastern" church, to turn back the from every church and house. The progress of free thought and turn all effect is to stir up a great deal: of bad movement, not to the New Testa- feeling and some violence, that ren- ment type of Christianity, but to the der very difficult a work that before corrupt church of the sixth and sev- was easy and to retard the true enth centuries which God permitted reformatIOn, that was so rapidly and Islam to smite. quietly advancing before the Angli"
This new mission of the Archbishop cans came. What an infatuation of Canterbury, planted by the side of and fatal errol' to array missionaries the American mission, and in rivalry of the same race and speech against with it, is greatly to be deplored for each other before Moslem rulers I many reasons. In trying to drive back the evangel- 1. It disregards aU mIsslOnary ical work, this is done. It is equal comity. If the English Church had folly to expect to affect Islam favor- led the way half a century ago in ably by perpetuating the corrupt and exploring the field and planting a semi-idolatrous forms of Christian- mission for the Nestorians, Ameri- ity in the East. There is no hope can Christians would not be there that the Moslem will ever turn to to-day. But in God's providence the that Christianity he has abhorred in pioneers were Americans; and now the Eastern churches. There must the toil, the meeting of the brunt be a purer and more spiritual religion of Roman and Moslem opposition, than worshiping- of crosses and the work accomplished, and the keeping of fasts. No greater dam- blessings God has given are not re- age can be done to Christianity in garded in the least. The Anglicans the eyes of Moslems, and no greater coolly step in and claim the field. advantage given" to Islam, than for The American mission is an obstacle Englishmen to come to Persia in the to be brushed away, otherwise the interests of the formalism and idol- field is entirely unoccupied and open atry of Oriental churches.
to a mission from the Anglican 3. 1t is an effort in thE! direction of Church to the "Old Syrian Church. Rome. The Nestorians in their an- England has been known through- cient books and modern thought out the East as the bulwark of fail' know nothing of the exclusive play and of Protestant missions; yet claims of prelacy and apostolic suc- here the agents of England's primate cession, nor do they accept the coun- are using the power of England to cils after the first General Council of trample on the claims of a Protest- Nicea. They in some sense have ant mission and to destroy its work. been the Protestants of the East in Protestant Episcopalians" of New greater sympathy with Protestant York are aiding the archbishop in teaching than With Roman. Now this great mistake and wrong to the come these Anglicans to warn them cause of Christ in Persia and Kurd- against all Protestant heresy, to tell istan. them that Presbyterians have no 2. It is an effort of obstruction and church, nor ordination nor ordin- reaction, and must do great harm to ances, and to teach and exhort them the real missionary work. Painful to drive out all such heresy, to mul- discussions and the clash of hostile tiply their prayers and ritualistic parties take the place of the peaceful worship in a dead language"; to en- work of enlightenment and evangeli- force the binding nature of fasts and traditions and saints' days; to teach Both papist and Anglicans ask them the efficacy of baptism to secure re- to regard NestorlUs as an arch-heregeneration,of the Eucharist to convey tIc and the patriarchs and fathers of atonement, of the priests to sacrifice, theil' church in Persia as outside the and of the bishops to convey special true church and faith. The efforts apostolic grace; and of the councils to change the fossil churches of the to pronounce the creed which it is East or to revive them in any way necessary for aU Christians to be- but by the simple gospel have been lieve. This mild form of Romanism failures. They have a tenacious has really the very essence of the conservatism that clings to the tragreat apostasy of all the corrupt ditions of the past and renders illuchurchel!<-the ap~stolic succession; sive the dream of the reunion of the priestly nature of the New Christendom by any method of con- Testament ministry; the sacraments cessions. The effort of Rome for as necessary and initial means of centuries, and of the Anglicans saving grace; and the councils as among the Copts and in other parts authoritative interpreters of the Holy of the East, tell the same story. A Scriptures, whose dogmas are bind- case in point is that of the Syrian ing. On this basis they wish to re- Church in Travancore, South India. form the Nestorians away from the Rome tried her hand of persecution real faith of their fathers and lead and failed. This church is a branch them to accept what is called the 01' offshoot of the old Nestorian Catholic Apostolic Church. But Church, using the same rituals and such unscriptural teaching, so fal' as language, and like the Nestorians it is accepted, has the same effect in lapsed into corrupt practices and was Persia as elsewhere. It lulls the dead to all spirituality rather than sou1 to trust in forms instead of deeply heretical in doctrine. Prior Christ, blunts the conscience and to 1886 the Church Missionary Sohardens the heart. It is the same ciety persisted in trying for eighteen old story: "My people have com- years to resuscitate this old church, mitted two evils; they have fOl'- and the effort ended in complete saken me, the fountain of living failure. Then the plan was adopted waters, and hewed them out cisterns of separating from the corrupt body, that can hold no water." and since then a true Protestant church of thousands of members has· 4. The effort in the end must be in been gathered. vain. After all the evil it may accomplish, or the goad, if God so over- Thus, in Persia, the current evanrule it, it must result in failure. It gelical reform may be obstructed lacks the vital elements of true very seriously but cannot be stopped, evangelism as found in the Word of by the ritualists. The words of Dr. God. The theory is very seductive Perkins, written twenty-one years no doubt to the Archbishop and ago, are still true. "The progress of those of like mind, that the true om' work is steadilyonward,and prob- method is to preserve the old organi- ably as rapid as would consist witb zation, and that gradually thepeopJe its highest prosperity. Theprogress may be taught to express their creed is not always a uniform current. It in the same words as other churches resembles a succession of circling of apostolic succession and all at last eddies caused generally by obstacles become one. But beautiful as the in the stream, but sometimes by the theory is, the practice is full of dIffi- accelerated speed of the current, culties. The Anglicans are so near which but for these self-regulating the papists that the people fail to see checks might bring' on the work the difference in their teaching. serious disaster. Such eddies are
THE J(ONTHLY CONCERT 01' lIUSSloNs. '181
often the best missiona.ry regulators, the true evangetic~ refOlim has correcting mistakes and undue haste doubled itself in the past ten years. and giving our converts occasion and We may expect history to repeat i ttime to examine the foundations of self, and the time to be near when the their faith." One of these eddies is heralds of salvation from Persia will now formed, but the river of salva- again evangelize theTartartribes,and tion flows on. Under God's blessing enter Thibet or China from the We8t.
V.-THE MONTHLY CONCERT OF MISSIONS.
BY ARTHUR T. PIERSON, D.D.
Persia. a.nd its Missions. Koords, between Semnite and Shi- PERSIA and Assyria in Eastern hite sects of Moslems-victims of Turkey-the country occupied by the rapacity and persecution on every Nestorians-constitut(>s one of the hand-seem to represent the tradi- most interesting mIssion fields in the tional lot of suffering and outrage world. It is the Original cradle of which for centuries have character- the human race. If it does not in- ized the country. 4-nd yet there is clude the site of Eden, it certainly nowhere a more beautiful land.
embraces the resting-place of the .. About two-thirds of the country," sa.ys Ark of Noah; and it still has repre- the late Justin Perkins, D.D., .. the westsentatives of the descendants of ern portion, lies In Turkey, cOlllprlsing Shem, Ham, and Japheth in the much of AssyrIa. or modern Koordista.n ; various nationalities now found in and the eastern third is in old Media, the the country. It is the land of northwestern province of modern Persia.. Abraham, and of Job, and of Jonah. now called Azerbijan. The forlller portion The ashes of Mordecai and Esther is physically one of the wildestand roughest lie buried at Hamadan. It was in regions on the globe, abounding in scene'll this land that Daniel became instru- of llt&rpall8ing grandeur and sublimity, and mental in one of the greatest moral ts inhabited by the not less wild Koords, revolutions ever wrought in any among whom, and in proximity to WhOlll, nation by a single man. The Magi are many of the Nestorlans dwell. till lately believed to have come from there to subject to lawless extortion and violent Bethlehem, and according to tradi- plunder from those redoubtable neighbors. tion are buried there. The evangeliza- The Nestorians betook thelllseives to these tion of Persia began with Daniel. mountams at an early period, as'an asylum Nebuchadnezzar IS held to have been from deadlypersecution,havlng less to fear. a true believer. Great empires and a.dvanced civilizations ha.ve arisen in the violent outbursts ot Pagan and Moand passed away on this broad field. Nineveh and Khorsabad are repre- hammedan fanaticism, from the savages of sentatives of their buried grandeur, the mountain" than from the 1II0re civilized while thousands of ancient inscrip- inhabitants of the plains on either side. In tionsfound on rocks and tablets con- the lull of persecution, during the few past stitute their epitaph. centuries,they have gradually spread them- selves down into Persia. The Persian part The country has been rendered of their country is one of the most beautimetnorable by many of the great ful on which the sun ever shone,consisting conquests which have affected the of several of the most charming Persian destiny of the whole human race, plains; bounded on the east by the Lake of and it has been invested with pathetic Oroomiah, which is ninety miles long and interest by mournful captivities of thirty miles broad, while the towering Jew~ and others, in various ages. ranges of Koordistan rear a lofty. snflW- Even in our day the Nestorians, liv- capped barrier on the west. Oroomiah, ing between Persians and Turkish lying on the middle section of the lake, and separated from other plains by bold ridges that run transversely from the higher moun- tain ranges quite to its margin, is the larg- est district occupied by the Nestorian•• and is the principal seat of our missionary operations. The atmosphere of all that region is so clear that the naked eye with ease traces objects distinctly, at th", dis- tance of a hundred miles, which woul4 ha.rdly be visible one-fourth that distance best, and when drought is added, in America, and'readlly descries 'Celestial thousands must perish. bodies, seen elsewhere only by the aid of a telescope. Indeed much of Persia, under "Still worse," says Rev. J. H. its brilliant sky, is so fair a .. to be al- Shedd, " there is no Joseph in Persia most fairy; abounding in luxuriant fields, to make any systematic provision for vineyards, and orchards, and smiling with such a crisis. There is no public chantasteful gardens of bright and fragrant flow- nel of supply. On the contrary, the ers,studded wlthgurglingfountainsand sha- tender mercies of the wicked are dy arbors, and vocal with the notes of warb- cruel. The king sets the example Iiug nightingales and other musical birds." -locks up his granaries, and with- holds every kernel of wheat except Famine often wastes the land, es- at famine prices. Every nabob and pecially the Moslem districts, and its land-owner who has a stock on havoc must ever recur at intervals hand follows this example. Rapacuntil there shall be such a govern- ity and cupidity rule. Money is ment as shall protect and encourage coined out of the sufferings of the irrigation, instead of speculating in poor. The imbecility, avarice, crubreadstuffs while the people perish. elty of the ruling class are sometimes The government is an absolute des- beyond belief. Depravity is satanic. potism, in the hands of a Sultan or Persia is ruined by depotism, mis- Shah. He has two chief ministers rule and cruel feudal oppression. -one a sort of deputy executive in peace and in war, and the other a "No lover of humanity can regard lord high treasurer. The latter of such a land but with feelings of these is much more diligent than the profound pity. We long for the day' former. There is vastly more of tax when civilization will build highgathering t.han of civil or military wa:ys and railroads by which charity protection. The sole end for which at least can be conveyed to the famthe Persian Government exists is the ishing. A proper system of roads, collection of the revenue-the fleec- and one or two railroads in Persia, ing of the people. Large portions would make such famine impossiof the land, confiscated from time to ble. The country has natural retime, belong to the sovereign, and sources which only need developing are farmed out on terms well-nigh to make her, as in ancient times, a ruinous to the tenant. Even where great nation. Places supplied with property belongs to the subject, itis water yield every kind of fruit and taxed to the last degree as a starting grain in abundance. These beautipoint, while the successions of sub- ful, favored districts can be exrulers and collectors make still fur- tended. By opening again the anther drains upon the moiety that cient water-course, by sinking artemust save the laborer's family from sian wells, by proper aqueducts for absolute want. The whole burden the mountain streams, irrigation can of taxation thus comes really upon be greatly extended, and the rain the laboring class. Added to this supply increased. But before this extortion is the constant uncertainty physical renovation comes, and war as to whether the planter will be and famine cease, there must be a pe"mitted to reap his crop at moral renovation. At present the all. Downright "o1:Jbe"y of fields or earth itself, under a despotic govel'nhouseholds by the retainers of petty ment and false religion, is cursed for chiefs is of frequent occurrence, and man's sake. It refuses to yield its the poor are liable any day to be de- harvest for the use of man, because prived of their very last resource. man refuses to yield himself to the Agriculture and other industries so glory of God." discouraged and paralyzed, barely sustain the lives of the people at the There is reason for the degradation and real moral darkness of to the fteld that she was ftJled with love but she could not 10Te these women, and' these people for the last three had to be converted over again. and hum- ble herself before God to labor with them. centuries. They have been crushed They act like monkeys, chatter and gig_ gle, and take hold of every part of one's by invasion and slaughter and con- dress without any sense of shame. When- ever a son marries he brings his wife tolais stant tyranny, and subjected to the father's house. If a man have twelve sons. all the families will be under one root, and immediate contact of all the sen- as there isbut one room under that roof the suality and debasement of the domi- in state of affairs may be imagined. No won- nant Moslem races. der the word home is unknowB Persia. When the women gathered in she asked We add a few words as to the per- them if they could read. They a.nswered, • We are women.' She told them she was sonal and domestic life of the Per- a woman, but could read, and might she read to them? Arter reading one of the sians. Mud or clay huts are their parables, she asked them if she should sing. They had never heard anyone sing, and did houses; with one room, the oven in not know what it meant. She sang.' Hap_ py Day,' and they laughed and giggled and the center, a hole in the roof to let feU down and rolled, but when their children laughed, the mothers took their sandals. out smoke. Privacy and cleanliness shod with iron, from their feet, and drove them from the house. Surely this was a are impossible. hard place, hnt she did not give it up. A school was established there. She visited Mrs. Rhea, many years a mission- it after some time, and found the children able to reply to her questions, heard them ary in Persia, thus graphically de- sing sweet sacred songs, and the ·bright boys in one winter learned to read. There scribes social life : were openings for sixty such schools, and the entire outfit. books, house and al1 of .. The mud-wall houses, wit.hout windows each would not cost more than 560. She visited the villages,. meeting from two ot or chimneys, would not be used by Chris- six hundred women. When she looked these women in the faces and found them han~ tians for pig-cities. The children are so ing on her words, she felt herresponsihilit;. and not daring to use the words she ha.d prescantily clad that less clothing would ren- pared for them, she instead would read from the New Testament without comment. der them more comely. what they have Whole days they would stay and listen to the talk, and linger late Into the night, and serving onlyas a nest for vermin. The sad- when exhausted she told them to go for she eyed. depressed women are beasts of bur- must sleep; they went saying,' We'll come a.ga.in in the morning.'" den, and are classed with t.he donkeys,and as The Nestorians are of the old Sethey pass by. donkey and woman alike hid- miticstock. Dr. Gl;antbelieved them den by their loads, it Is only a glance at the relics of the lost ten tribes. They rep- feet that tells which is the beast and resent the oldest 8eet of Christians, which the human. Oroomiah is a walled and claim origin from Thoma8, the city and the ditch about it filled with stag- Apostle, and an army of 160,000 marnant water poisons the air so that nearly tyrs In one province 1,500 years since. all the children die, and yet the heathen governor, when a. missionary suggested They have a remarkable missionary history-patiently enduring persecuthe draining of the ditch, said it should tion, and remaining spiritual in the midst of prevailing worldliness. be done • to-morrow,' and has let years pass with it still untouched. The traveler Gibbon says, once theirl¥1mbers exsees by the way the desolate Mohammedan ceeded that of the Greek and Latin graveyards, with never a trace of love in communions. They derive their name them, the tombstones bearing the emblem from Nestorius,$ho was condemned· of whatever craft the sleeper followed, the mud-walled vel{etable fields and unfenced grain fields, the plows of the pattern found on Egyptian monuments, and drawn by twelve yoke of oxen.
.. Entering the first house we found an earthen fioor, a bit of mattinp for a sbeyat~ and a woman baking bread. She sits hole in the ground the size of a barrel, with coals at the bottom. She takes a piece of the leavened dough. passes it from hand to hand, and kneads it on a cushiouat her side until she has a cake three-fourths of a yard long, half a yard wide, and half an inch thick. Then she throws It into the hole, it catches on the sides. and is baked in an in- stant. The baking done, the missionary can have religious services, a.nd sends out for the women to come in. These women are not attractive."
Mrs. Rhea thought when she went out for heresy by the Council of Ephesus gospel from Persia, Syria and India.
A. D. 431, and who died in painful among the barbarous nations inhabit– exile in Lybia. Though holding some ing the deserts and remotest shores peculiar vie",s in regard to the of Asia. In particular the vast em- '
Trinity, his real offense was'his early pire of China was partially enlight- Protestantism. He refused to call ened by their zeal and industry, with the Virgin Mary the "Mother of the light of Christianity." From the God," and he opposed many of the fifth to the ninth century the Nesto_ corruptions of the church. " His rians had churches among the moun- followers, though greatly debased, tains of Malabar in India, and in the stIll reject all image worship, con- vast regions of Tartary from the fession to priests, the doctrine of Caspian Sea to Mount Imans and purgatory, etc. Altogether the Nes- beyond, through Chinese Tartary, torians number about one hundred and even in China itself.
and fifty thousand, of whom one- Early in the eleventh century a third are in Persia and two-thirds Mogul Prince in Cathay (Northern in Turkish Koordistan. They stand China) was converted to the faith, in the rela.tion of oppressed ten- and taking at his baptism the name ants toward the Mohammedans of John, gave his royal influence to among whom they dwell, being cul- the Christian cause. Some of his tivators of the soil, and artisans in successors also were at least nomi"
the more common and useful me- nally Christian, a son-in-law of Pres- chanical trades. One continuous tel' John, the well-known Ghengi8 people, while living in the two con- Khan, gave his support to the Chris- tiguous Empires of Turkey and Per- tians as late as the early part of the sia, they partake much of the re- thirteenth century. But toward the spective local peculiarities of the two close of the fourteenth century the parts of their country; those in the sword of the Moslem Tamerlane de- Turkish portion, Koordistan, being stroyed the Tartar churches and rude, untutored, bold and defiant, overthrew the Nestorian Christianity and those in the mild and sunny in the principal seat of its power.
clime of Persia possessing nlUch of It was not till thec1oseof the fifteenth the blandness and suavity common century, howe vel', that some un- to all classes in that ~enial country. kndwn persecution and massacre de- They are a noole race of men; manly stroyed the Nestorians in China.
and, athletic, having fine form8 and good There is still found at Si-ngau-fu, in complexions. They are al80 naturally a Northwestern China, a large stone 8hrewd, aeti'IJe, and intelligent people, tablet, giving an account of the faith yet remarkably artleH3, affable, and, 11,08- and history of the Nestorians. It pitable, and peculiarly accesswle for presents their doctrine of the Trin- mi8sionary purp08es." ity, and some account of the books of That which gives to the Nestorians the Old and New Testaments, and a peculiar interest is the missionary records their progress for 140 years.
character which they have once The ancient glory of the Nestorian borne, and which it is to be hoped Church is gone. "Ichabod" is written they may bear again. The Oriental upon it. Tamerlane in the fifteenth churches as a whole were not as act- century slaughtered them. Seven- ive in the spread of the gospel as the • ty thousand heads were piled up at Latin Church; but the Nestorians Ispahan and 90,000 more in the city were an exception. "In the East," of Bagdad. The church itself became says Mosheim, "the· Nestorians, locked up in death spiritually.
with incredible industry and perse- Messrs. Smith and Dwight found verance labored to propagate the among them: 1. Liberality to othet sects. 2. Rejection of confessional. ran, Ispahan and Hamadan are in this 3. Reverence for Scripture-though, district. locked up in Syriac, they knew little of its contents – but endless fasts Henry Martyn was the pioneer in and the doctrine of baptismal regen- this land of Esther. In June, 1811, eration, etc. Christian work in Per- he rode into Shiraz, already broken sia must begin with Nestorians, for in health, for eleven months work- Mohammedans could not be led to ing at a Persian translation of the Christ while a dead church is among New Testament and Psalms, subsethem. But the early history of the quently, for four months at Tabriz, Nestorians of Persia bears upon the with raging fever he then ~tartedfor question of their future relations England, and died at Tocat; but that to Tartary, and even China. Why New Te.tament is still doing service may they not again be useful in car- for the Master. rying the gospel even to Mongolia and Korea? They have physical Rev. Justin Perkins and wife were energy and hardihood; they are the first missionaries of the American capable of a high civilization; and Board, and reached Tabreez August their susceptibility to the power of 23, 1834; in October, 1835, joined by religious truth has had numerous Dr. and Mrs. Grant, all together proattestations in modern as well as in ceeded to Oroomiah : ancien t times. "We arrived," says Mr. Perkins, It is this view of their character " in a furious rainstorm. The tardy and position that gives to the mis- jomers had no place ready for us to sion among the Persians a peculiar lodge; so we sat down among them interest. They are at the western in an open room, upon the shavings, gateway of China and India. They of which we soon kindled a fire to I are stationed along a great high- dry our drippmg garments; and, way of nations which must ere long Bending to the market for bread and be opened. They are, moreover, kebab (boiled meat) we ate our repast in the center of Asiatic Mohamme- there, and afterwards laid our8elfJes danism, where they only wait in sore downfor the night on the same shafJings, dIstreSS for some great overturnillg with as lively gratitude and joy as often in the providence of God which shall swell the hearts of mortals. The 20th give them ~overnmental protection of November was long observed by and tHe conditions of prosperity. us as our Pilgrim8' Day. Meanwhile it is our duty and privilege to promote among them the "Having the broad, common resurrection of a dead and buried ground of Scripture on which to meet Christianity. the Nestorians, and the most ready access to them, we at once addressed We need greatly to extend the ourselves to the work of their ameliwork among the Armenians as well as oration and salvation. For, while among the Nestorians. They have their knowledge of the Bible was so elsewhere shown themselves pecu- vague and meager, they cherished liarly accessible. The largest com- for the sacred oracles a reverence pact body of the Armenians, about amounting almost to adoration. Dr. 10,000, is found in the district of Grant soon acquired a commanding Salmas. Its center is Tabreez, where influence over all classes, by his skill- 5,000 Armenians reside among 130,- ful practice of medicine and his ac- 000 Mohammedans. The other great tive devotion to their welfare. At·menian region is 400 miles farther east. This is a captive colony whose "The missionary work soon took history has been most tragic. Tehe- the three-fold form of education, the press, and last, but pre-eminent, oral preaching.
"The first missionary school was commenced in January, 1836, in a 92 whom she had led to· Ohrist! _ cellar (apt emblem of the moral state In 1845 a revival simultaneously al·ound), for the want of a more broke out in the boys' and girls' comfortable place, it being winter, schools. Mr. Stoddard, the boys' with seven small boys. It was the teacher, called to say to Miss germ of our flourishing Male Semi- Fiske that four or five boys were nary. The number of pupils soon seeking Jesus and found her with increased to fifty; and from learning jive girl8 who were in the same spir- theiralphabeton manuscript cards at itual condition. the beginning they rapidly advanced, till they have long graduated with The conversion of Deacon Guergis very respectable attainments in lit- took place in this revival; and he be- erature and science, a remarkably gan the work of an evangelist among familiar knowledge of the Holy the Koords,continued uptohisdeath. Scriptures, and most of them with His history-converted while on a considerable acquaintance with the- visit to his daughter at the girls' ology as a system. From this semi- school-is a religious romance. His nary have gone forth nearly a hun- spontaneous, self-denying, and per- dred graduates, about sixty of whom severing labors among the cabins of are able and faithful preacher8 of the the Koordish Mountains deserve to g08pel, not a few of them partaking stand high on the annals of Christian much of the holy unction of the sainted devotedness. In 1849 another revival Stoddard, under whose self-consuming blessed the mil!lsion, which spread to toil8 and prayers they were trained. the village of Seir. I have" never Other8 have gone forth hopefully pious, seen even in Holyoke such scenes," who, in other avocations, are hardly l688 wrote Miss Fiske. usefulco-laborer3 in the work of evan- gelization. Dr. Grant came from Utica, N. Y., and his wife was pioneer of female " About two years after open- education in Persia. She began with ing the male seminary, a few little four girls in a barn; after two and a girls formed the nucleus of a female half years of labor, she died at 25 seminary. The term Topsy would years of age, so revered that she was then not inaptly have described the char- "buried by the bishops in the church acter and appearance of th08e little girls; and they dug her grave with their not that they were black, the people are own hands." Dr. Grant then gave nearly as light as ourselves; but for un- himself up to journeys, going unat- cleanline88, disorder, and propen8ity to tended among the Koords, daring mischief. Yet in a few short years all perils, and surviving the great those same individuals appeared edu- slaughter of 10,000 mountaineers cated, intelligent, refined young la- only a year or two, he died, leaving dies; and what is yet far more, de- a name like precious spiees for its voted, active Christians. About a fragrance. Ten years later came the hundred pious young women have harvest, which was in part owing to gone forth, who, in the various re- the power of Mrs. Grant's death, as a . lations of wives, and mothers, and testimony to the pure faith of Christ. teachers, are doing a work not at all second to that of the graduates of the Justin Perkins was a tutor in Am- Male Seminary, for advancing the herst, and was carried to the vessel gospel among their people. 20 miles on a bed. "We shall soon throw him overboard," said the cap.- Miss Fidelia Fiske left South Had- tain. But the Lord had for him 36 ley, Mass., to found this new" Hol- years of work yet. After wintering yoke" in Persia; and 13 years after at Constantinople he arrived at Ta- she sat down to the Lord's table with bris and was welcomed by Patriarch Mar Johanan, the earnest friend of
EDITORIAL NOTES
the mission. Next year he, with the church, and constitute an exam- Dr. Grant, was stationed at Oroo- ple of great encouragement to those miah, birthplace of Zoroaster, and whose future labor shall be bestowed seat of ancient fire worship. Oroo- on the same field. The work of grace miah is like Salt Lake Valley in fea- in Persia in connection with missiontures, with a salt sea and a clear air, ary effort has been very remarkable. through which Jupiter's moons are Eleven or twelve revivals of great seen. Dr. Perkins' dying words were, power have been experienced in the " How will even Heaven be Heaven, high schools at Orcromiah and Seir: where there are no Nestorians to be Some of the most apostolic men and led to Christ." What passion/or souls! women have been numbered among the native preachers and other This mission to the Nestorians has Christians. The work of Mr. Stockbeen favored by the presence and la- ing, Miss Fiske and others in the bors of some of the most devoted of schools was pre-eminently a work of all the laborers who have gone to the prayer. It constituted a power beforeign field. The names of Stod- fore which even the ~ild Koorddard, Stocking, Lobdell, Crane,Coch- armed to the teeth and "breathing ran, Rhea, with a goodly number of threatheningand slaughter," became heroic and devoted women, must transformed to a lamb. ever be embalmed in the memory of VI.-EDITORIAL NOTES ON CURRENT TOPICS.
ONE of the editors was calle,d to sity has ta.ken a great stride onsit as a member of the Examining Committee when, in May last, Dr. ward. P. F. Ellinwood conducted in the chambers of the N. Y. University These classes are not composed of his examination of his classes in comparative religions. This chair ordinary men. They include pastors, as is generally known has recently been erected and when it was deter- professors and students in theologimined to have such a department, the Regents could find no man in cal seminaries and medical colleges, this country more admirably adapted to fill it than its present accom- etc. In ten years similar courses of plished incumbent. study will be established in all the Dr. Ellinwood had for years been a close and careful student of the theological sohools, and perhaps uni- Oriental religions when called to this new lectureship in the university. versities. It would be well if the Thus far he has had splendid men in his classes and may well feel proud younger ministers would take up of their attainments and his own success. He has two courses of these studies, not only as a means of perhaps twenty-five lectures each. At the late commencement ten men re- qualifying them for service, but as a ceived the degree of Ph.D. in consequence of their attainments; and diversion, for the subjects are fascifrom what we heard of their recitations we were satisfied that in the nating in interest. Dr. Ellinwood erection of this chair and the election of this instructor, the univer- has had rour professors in his classes, taught by correspondence. He fur- nishes copies of abtracts of lectures, references to books, etc., for cognate reading, etc.
One of the best features of the course is the requirement that each student present a weeldymonograph on some salient matter of the course.
This makes all the knowledge his own, and gives it fixedness of im-!
pression and crystalline form. We have asked Dr. Ellinwood to furnish for these pages a series of articles on BuddhiSm, etc. A. T. P. MR. MOODY has issued an "AN- the English Bible, and all matters NOUNCEMENT " to the public of his pertaining to practical evangelism new training school at Chicago. and missions; and, by offering abun- dant opportunities for actual work There is a. very marked growth among the neglected masses of the of interest in mission work both at people, to apply the practical test of home and abroad. The problem of both fitness and willingness to serve evangelizing our great cities is espe- God and souls; and so sift out the cially coming to the front and de- chaff from the pure grain. manding a practical solution. The Lord of the harvest is likewise send- Applicants for admission to the ing forth laborers into His harvest. Training School must furnish writ- Never has there been so·wide-spread ten certificates of their church mema desire among both young men and bership and character, and forward women to get at work for Christ and them to F. G. Ensign, Esq. Much souls; and we are glad of this new attention will be paid to musie as a. training school. most important help to evangeliza- tion, and the aim will be to furnish All workmen need training, both evangelists, home and foreign mis-. inthe theoryand practiceoftheircall- sionaries, lay readers and parish vising. No demand of our times is more itors and pastoral helpers to train imperative than the need of a train- more efficient Sunday school teaching school for Christian workers, ers, consecrated singers, and workwhere they can learn how to work ers in every department. We see and at the same time put their knowl- no reason why every great sectIOn edge to the test by engaging in of this country, if not every great work. Doing is one way of learn- city, should not be furnished with ing. such Training Schools. Chicago is the metropolis of our great Nortb- Our colleges and theological semi- west, easily reached from all parts of naries are sending out mer;. equipped the United States and Canada, and is for leadership, fitted to plan and a grand place to make a start. conduct the campaign. But hundreds of volunteers, who have nei- A.T.P. ther time nor money for a full course of education, are asking how they The Turkish Government and American can get ready to do the humbler but Schools; equally needful work of the common soldier in the ranks. THE following is a translation of the order we referred to in O1,lr last To help meet this want this train- issue, for which we are indebted to ing school for both men and women The Missionary Herald.-EDS.] will open in Chic3go, on Sept. 26, and continue the year through. In- TRANSLATION OF VEZIRIAL CIRCULAR OF RAMAstruction will be furnished free to all students, who will be thus at no ex· ZAN 16,1306 (MAY 16. 1889) • pense except for board, which wili .. The American Legation has made comcost from $4 to $6 a week. Every plaint that although the programmes and morning will be spent in study under the ~eachers' certificates of the American the best trainers which this country schools in the Vilayets were transmitted in and the world can supply. The af- accordance with the special law at the time ternoons will be spent in visiting the schools were opened, yet the offi cial pafrom house to house, and the even- pers containing authorization have not been ings in evangelistic meetings of va- given, and the teachers' certificates have rious kinds. It is the purpose of this also been detained at the Government of- Evangelistic Training School to fur- fices; and that on the occasion of investinish the best practical instruction in gations after eight or ten years had passed, nothing contrary to law having been ob- served in the schools, the schools have been closed solely on account of the absence of permits or of teachers' certificates, and further. that the reopening of suchlschools en sionaries to such wild and troubled counters much difficulty. regions. Assigned first to the most northern outpost of the Livingstonia. .. Although it is known that some of these Mi.ssion of the Free Church, he conschools have been closed fol'lawful reasons. quered the difficuties of a warlike it is not permissible for schools opened of tribe with a strange language, reold to be closed arbitr!trlly and when no cir- ducing it to writing and giving them cumstance or conduct contrary to law pro· a literature, building and teaching' duces a necessity. Hence, hereafter, when them to build, suffering with the >!chools newly to be opened have conformed hardships of inferior food and cloth. to the special law, permits will be given to ing, tramping the wilderness baretheir directors by the ViJayet Government. foot, rising from the bed of fever to and the certificates of the teachers, after bury a dead companion. Yet his letverification, will be returned to them to be ters are always cheerful, and often kept. And it there is a reason which de- even humorous, and he was always mands the closing of schools which have on the lookout for an advance movebeeuopened of old, the matter will be report- ment of some kind. ed to the Ministry of Public Instruction a,nd the necessary steps will be taken in accord- A year and a half ago the Arabs ance with the answer which is received. raided Lake Nyassa. Mr. Bain and This course will .be pursued toward other six other Europeans defended Kaforeigll schools also." ronga for a week against the'heavy Arab fire. Durmg a lull in the Arab James Alexander Bain. war came the time for his first fur- lough. He was terribly weakened ANOTHER of the brave young pi- by the pain and anxiety of fever, oneers in Central Africa has finished pestilence and war, and started for his course. He has laid down his home; but a few days' I'est at the life fora bottom foundation-stone for mission headquarters before starting a future civilization to rest upon. improved him so much that he de- The' names· of such men should be termined to let others have the furmentioned with honor among us, al- lough and stand by the natives though their fields of labor may be another year in answer to their far from sight and sound of our pitiful pleading as they knelt upon busy, noisy marts. Such names as the shore after he and his baggage Rev. James A. Bain will be sought were on board the steamer. He out and prized by those who a ought to have come homll, as It century or two hence shall search seems, for that year of fever and for the forces which molded the anxiety for the poor people forced states and institutions which shall him to confess in his last letter that then be the pride of Central Africa. he was "shattered in mind and A half-dozen great names are known body"; and the end followed very and honored by all, but after these soon. are a company of missionary pioneers, not so very numerous, by With God and a few such men as whom the early, diflicult and re- this to fight with them, the poor sponsible work is done. Among Africans will soon be able to rise out these may properly be named this of their deep woe and make peace to eighth in a line of north-of·Scotland be their government and righteousministers, who has justsuccumbed to ness their magistrates. the fever at Bandawe, Lake Nyassa. W.J.MUTCH He was educated at thl' Gymnasium, Old Aberdeen, at Glasgow A Misa.pprehension. University, and at the Free Church D~nity School in the latter place. "A MISSIONARY" takes to task one He was ordained in 1883, and soon of the editors, on the ground that in sd out for Lake Nyassa.'
His life was a heroic one, even beyond the measure o~ ordinary mishis little book, "The Crisis of Mis- Christian!!, not even the Moravians, sions," he "ignores the place and are brought into prominence, much power of intellect in missionary less any individual. God alone is ex- efforts," and suggests that, "won- alted. To have magnified the power derful though the results of the last of educated intellect or denomina- half century of missionary opera- tional organizations, or sanctified lit- tions have been, there is little rea- erature, would have been to call at- son to doubt that if all the mission- tention away from the glodous Cen- aries" were men who stood on a ter about whom all the history of higher intellectual plane, etc., the modern missions so conspicuously results would have been much revolves. . greater. ,The writer of that book-more conscious of its defects than any of Now the author of that book, with- its critics-still feels confident that out caring to defend either .himself the God whom he specially sought to or his book, would simply say to "A glorify in that sketch of missionary Missionary" that nothing was far- developments has especially owned ther from his thought than to ignore the humble effort. Only so can he or depreciate the power of sanctified account for the unusual sale, which intellect in missions. So long as must now have reached some twenty William Carey, Dr. Duff, Dr. Liv- thousand. There has been an undue ingstone, as well as Mrs. Grant, tendency to write up missions as the Fidelia Fiske, Drs. Riggs, Stoddard, work of the church and the triumph Fiske, Eli Smith, Bishops Patteson of organization. This may glorify and Hannington, Schwartz, Cyrus the church, but it dishonors the Hamlin, William Goodell and a Master. And it is strange that any legend of others are inseparable from of us can forget how little a time has missionary history, such ignoring elapsed since Dr. Ryland rebuked and depreciation are out of the ques- Carey for his holy enthusiasm; since tion. Sydney Smith shot his arrows of rid- icule into the nest of sanctified cob- But it is a little surprising to the lers; since the Scotch Assembly de- author of this book to find so many nounced missions as impracticable intelligent brethren who have appa- and absurd and dangerous, and the rently read" The Crisis of Missions" A. B. C. F. M. timidly ventured to without discovering the main object, send foul' men to the foreign field. which, like a thread, runs through We can only say: "What hath GOD the entire argument, viz. : to demon- wrought!" strate that the whole work of modern missions is conspicuously a work of Weighty Words. God'8 providence and grace. The purpose of the writer was to show NEARLY fifty years ago the vener- that when the whole church was able Heman Humphrey, D. D., wrote asleep and practically denied all obli- these stirring words to one of the gation to a dying world, God moved three sons whom he gave to the in a most remarkable manner and ranks of the Presbyterian ministry. aroused a sluggish Christendom- The names of these sons were John, that by astounding developments He Zephaniah M. and Edward P. We precipitated a crisis upon the church, echo the wish that these words could and prepared the church for that be copied. framed and hung on the crisis in a measure, and that now, wall of every pastor's study through· by marvelous signs and signals, He out the church. They describe the is inciting to a new spirit of holy en· one great want, the one hope, also, terprise. With such a motive guid- of the cause of Foreign Missions in ing the writer, no denomination of our time, and show the quarter from galion, and will make the salvation of the heathen a subject of prayer every Sabbath which deliverance must arise: day, from the beginning of the year to the end of it. Tnese, my son, are some of the "Those great Christhn enterprises which ways in which you can make your influence are the glory of the present age will have felt to the ends of the earth. to the end of imperative claims upon you as a, minister time, and through everlasting ages. and a Christian. You may not be called upon by your Divine Master to go and set IN the June REVIEW the editors up the standard of the cross on a heathen shore, and the utmost you can give will be published a letter from Rev. Fred. S. but a· mite in comparison to what is de- manded for the conversion of the world. Curtis, of Japan, that he says was But remember, my dear son, that God will hold you responsible for whatever influence intended to be a private letter, and in you can exert to bring up the church to the standard of her duty. The ministers of which he wrote with the freedom of that glorious gospel which they are com- missioned to preach at home, and which first impressions, unguarded as they must be preached to all nations before they can be converted, have it in their power to would not have been if meantforthe do more toward raising the necessarll funds than any other class of men-might I not add, public eye. We had supposed the more than all other classes put together. Perhaps this would be extravagant; but let letter to be at our disposal, and beg anyone consider the position which pastors occupy, the access which they have to the pardon if we have overstepped the hearts and consciences of the whole Christian community, and the influence which bounds of privacy. Mr. Curtis says they actually wield in all the religIOus movements of the age, and he may perhaps that at the time theJapanese tongue be convinced that I should not be far out of the way. Point me to the churches which did not seem to him so difficult to atare doing most in proportion to their abllity for the spread of the gospel and, without tain as he had supposed; but that knowing the names of their pastors, or ever having heard of their moving a finger, I am further study shows him that the preparejl to say that it is greatly through their influence, or that of those who imme- language is no easy one to master. diately preceded them in the sameofllce. If ministers were to do their whole duty, and He was then studying under a bright exert all their inflnence, I have no doubt that the contributions of the church would young Japanese, who proved very be doubled in a skort time. much more helpful than the average .. Do you ask me how this mighty influence is to be exerted? I will tell you. If you teacher, and what had seemed before have a truly benevolent and missionary s!,irit yourself, you will infuse it into others. an ini?urmountable barrier began to You will press the subject upon tlie members of your church inprivate conversation; seem a comparatively easy task to you will advise and persuade them to take religious magazines and newspapers; you overcome, and in this somewhat will Induce as many of them as you can to attend the monthly concert; and in order to elated frame of mind he wrote, but make it as interesting as possible, you will diligently collect and arrange the latest not for the somewhat critical pubmissionary intelligence; will exhibit maps of various countries and stations where the lic eye. He says the language is light begins to shine, and will lay yourself out so thoroughly in preparing for the con- hard, and requires very close study cert, as not only to show how deeply your own to g~t hold of it, and th~t his use of' heart i. interested in the cause, but to make wery Christian feel that he sustains a great it thus far has been confined to cerlos8 tn staying away. You will also frequently plead the cause of the Bible and of tain formulre for baptism, etc., and missions, with all the eloquence of which you are master. before your 'IdIole congre- a moderate use of it in colloquial forms. We owe this explanation to one who is a soncin-Iaw, and who therefore wrote with family free- dom. A. T. P.
Dr. Dorohester on Romanism.
DR. DORCHESTER presents figures to prove that While the Catholics in the sixteen years from 1870 to 1886 increased four-tenths of one per cent., the evangelical population- by which it is presumed he means the Protestant-increasedtwelveand five-tenths per cent. He believes that, instead of the 20,000,000 Cath- olics which the Sun predicts will be
lIlISSIOSARY wORK AND S'I'A'I'ISTlCS. [OC1'
found in this country in 1900, the used very carelessly and actually evangelical population will then be mislead and deceive. For instance, eighty pel' cent. of all the inhabi- take this paragraph: "One hun· tants. Dr'. Dorchester calls atten- dred years ago the world's population to the amazing discrepancies be- tion was rated at 731,OOO,000,ofwhoro tween the figures of two Catholic 174,000,00:) were Chdstians. No IV Year-Books, one published in New the population has doubled, anu the York and the other in Mil waukee. Christians trebled." According to Sadlier's, for instance, estimates the that there are now 522,000,000 Chris- VathoIic population ofthe diocese of Hans in the world. In other words Hartford at 35,000, while Hoffman's every third person, taking the whole puts it at 200,000. population together, is a Chris- tian! Speaking of figures, they may be VII.-ORGANIZED MISSIONARY WORK AND STATISTICS.
Moravian Missions.
THE Moravian Almanac for 1889 gi~'es the Cull statl~tics only for the year closing Dec. 31. 1887.
Receipts.
I.-FROM MORAVIAN CONGREGATIONS AND SOCIETIES.
1. In fne German Province ………………………………. £ 924 110 2. British ……………………………….. 1.177 8 7 3. •• American" ………………………………. , 2,252 Ii 1 4. West Indies and Surinam.. . .. .. .. . .. .. .. .. .. . .. .. . .. .. 229 6 2 £ 4,582 16 e n.-FROM: FRIENDS OF OTHER CHRISTIAN CHURCHES.
1. In the German Province ………………………………. £5,124 1 7 2. British….. …………………………… . 1,995 9 3 3. American…. ………………………. :…. .. 68 17 5 £1,188 8 3 m.-Legacles ……………………………………………………………. 2,205 2 2 IV.-InteiestCromendowments …………………………………………….. 2,009 5 11 V.-From mite societies…………………………………………………… 707 9 10 VI.-Interests. more received than paid… …………………………………… 109 18 6 Total receipts………………….. .. ………………………………..£16,808 1 4 Balance deficiency on the year's account…………………………. ….. …. …. a,390 4 8 Total. ………………………………………………………………£20.193 6 0 Expenditures.
I.-For the several missions ………………………………………………..£ 8,948 10 10 n.-Tralning of missionaries……………………………………………….. 868 6 3 m-Snstentatlon.
Pensions to 150 recipients ……………………………….£5,975 I) I) Less interest of sustentation Culids……………………….. 3,759 17 8 £11,215 l~ 1 lV.-For edncation.
1. For 239 children at school. …………………………….£5,880 15 I) 2. Apprenticing. etc. (65 youths, 48 girls). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . .. 1,417 2 1 – – – £6,797 17 10 'V.-Expenses oC management……………………………………………… 1.707 0 6 'VI.-Grants in aid and offtcial journeys. .. .. .. .. .. .. …. .. .. . .. . .. .. .. . .. .. .. .. . .. .. 165 18 6 Total expenditure ………………………………………………….. £20,193 6 0
OF MORAVIAN MISSIONS. =~
~ o~ !£ :o=~..~~ -~"-"aJt;.::::~. ~• . Z~ ;g ~ IS 5 ~'t1 rn !R f g ~ ~-g tI:: ~~ ~ :§ ~.£a: gtt3 . -5 .
cq g : : . 1 MISSIONS. ~.9 ~.a ~ -g . E~ :o~ § g ~00 t .g ~E ~ ~ C':I W .~ = = :=.~~ ~~ ~ ~ :g. ;g g :g. ~ :=§. ~ CD ~ d< ….. 0 ~ e!P-c. ~ ~ Go) l;tl 00 421-771 -az – -6- -17 –.-.- Greenland……………………………… ·d Z A d .::I "0 :;:: Z ~ 0 ill 0 ~ Il< Eo< ttl .0~ ..: Eo< 396 -1091-2tl2- —a4 – -"- . – -.-:::- –.-.- E: Labrador.. .. .. … .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. . 6 40 60 480 223 121 427 6 208 4 Eo< ~ Alaska………………………………….. 16 2 Ul North America………………………….. . 5 9 12 80 31 6 108 17 19 s· 4 .<:i 27 12 275 5,792 I 2,739 215 I 7,259 68 6,459 68 23 2,6g4 I 2,020 860 ~ West Indies (West) Jamaica ……………… . 20 ~ West Indies (East) ………………………. .. 5 .2 6 50 1,239 125 59 ' 824 7 388 7 5 511 488 70 ~ St. Thomas and St. Jan …………………. .. 3 3 3 73 1,363 340 63 661 3 460 365 87 :>0 St. Croix……………………………… ..
~ Antigua…………………………….. , .. .. 9 13 6 136 3,482 ] ,220 127 2,634 14 1,629 23 15 1,316 1,160 175 Zo St. Kitts ……………………………….. .. 4 3 .2 70 1,480 841 146 1,572 7 354 16 6 707 1,309 98 til i'" Barbados ………………………………… . 4 4 2 47 1,525 242 59 1,415 20 2,362 29 9 598 175 61 3 2 ~ Tobago ……………………………….. .. 2 62 1,124 336 27 1,257 5 437 5 7 267 883 50 I'il :Demerara ……………………………… .. 2 2 27 341 34 4 293 .2 179 3 2 111 126 28 N ~ Moskito Coast………………………….. . 12 20 4 33 490 1,036 320 1,448 10 545 10 10 630 50 36 ~ Surinam ……………………………….. .. H n m ~~ ~~ U~ 46 3 271 6 South Africa (West) …………………….. . U ~ 6 ~ ~ ~ ~~ m~ 42 6 45 174 9 South Africa (East)……………………… .. 12 18 3 123 877 294 1,117 1,007 15 683 21 6 220 20 Australia……………………………….. . 2 6 31 10 23 48 2 24 2 24 23 2 j .
~ C_e_ntr_al_A.s_ia_…………………………….. – -3- – -8- – -.-. – -.-. – – -11- – -4-.-.-..- – -2-7 – 18 – – -661 – _ 1 – – 1 – – – 1 – – – ~ Total……………… ………………….. 127 288 48 1,613 29,707 16,722 5,908 31,869 223 18.280 310 ~8 7,653 I 6,446 I 1,006
ORGANIZED :MISSIONARY WORK AND STATISTIOS
The statistics tor the North American Indian Mission and of that in St:Thomas and St. .Tan ~ essentially those of the previous year on account ofincomplete returns.
Each number of tbe Moravian Almanac contaius an account of some special branch of work That for '89 describes tbe work among the lepers, wbicb has been carried on for 67 years. It commenced at Cape Colony in 1822. and was continued until 1867, when it was handed over to the care of the Government Chaplain of the English Church. .Tust before that, in 1865, the Leper Home at .Terusalem was established and that is still continued under the special care of ten German and two English sisters.
Seventh Day Baptist Missionary Society.
BlIPORT FOR YEAR ENDING SEPT. 20. 1888.
Receipt•• Balance Sept. 12, 1887 …………. .. $24735 Donations and interest………… . M,633 01 Received on Loans•…••……….. 3,800 00 Total. .. .. .. .. .. .. . ….. .. …. $12.680 36 ExpenliitureB.
:Mission expenses………………. $9,700 98 Paid loans ………… , .. . .. ….. . .. 2,800 00 Cash in hand,Sept. 20, 1888………. 179 38 Total……………………. $12,680 36 The foreign work of the society is carried on in China. by one missionary and wife with a la.dy physician at Shanghai, reinforced during the past year by another missionary. There are 5 native teachers and helpers, 2 schools with 36 scholars, 3 preaching pla.ces, 1 church with 2S members, 5 of whom were added during the year. Total number of patients treated 4,220, of whom more than half paid their fees.
There is a.lso some work in Holland and among the .Tews in New York City.
American Baptist Missionary Union. J I -~..:~..:":~"?:~..:~..~..:I . "
REPORT FOR THill YEAR ENDING MARCH 31, 1389. This year closes 75 years of the organic Receipts. life of this society. and the report makes special reference to the fact that the society Balance on hand April 1, 1838…… $248 91 was founded and celebrated its jubilee a.mid Donations……………………… 183,475 83 scenes of distress and anxiety, in marked Woman's Bap. For. Miss. Societies 96,754 4S contrast with this a.nniversary. Then Lega.cies ………………………. 51,60827 follows a retrospect over the last 25 years. Judson Centennial Fnnd……….. 38,000 00 Income of Funds………………. 19,773 75 :Miscellaneons…………………. 6,465 07 Government grants in aid, etc., India and Africa……………… 7,068 51 Total receipts………….. $398,394 77 Ballnce against the Union April 1,1389……………………… 8,173 56 Tota.l. ………………….. $406,568 38 Expenditures.
For the Missions………………. $355,197 79 Annuities from Funds. •.•.•.•…. 11,486 97 Publlca.tions ………………….. 2,261 75 Executive and Agf'ncy Dept…… 32,971 12 General Expenses. Rent, etc…… 4,650 70 Total …………………..$406,568 33 Special attention has been paid to educa- Liabilities. Loans on call…….. 82.150 21 tiou, and the founding of high-grade colle- Less cash on hand…………….. 814 97 giate and theological schools in Burmah. Siam, Japan a.nd Europe. Four new mis- Total deficit……….. $1.335 24 'sions in Sweden, Spain, Japan and Africa The statistics are 00 in<;omplete that it is Ihave been started. Among the more notice- scarcely just to give them. So far as can able items in the growth of the work are the be made ont from the report they are as increase of the members in the South China follows: Mission from 30 to 1,150; in the Telugu Mission from 31 to 30,659. The number of mis- I ~!!:~:s: sionaries actually sent to the foreign field during the time has been 347, including mis- g0,31=.~… ~1_'.~1"~ gCtlD. sionaries' wives and unmarried women. I···.~ II ….~ ….j…..~ …~. .German Baptist Brethren. I ~ ~t-l~~ Sta.tions. REPORT FOR YEAR E~DING Al'RIL 2, 1889. THE Missionary Committee report in regard I . . I ~ ~ "'~ Outstations. to foreign work that the expenses have been $1,055.54, expended entirely in Denmark and ""I ~ I ~ 0) ~P'J..:( 1 M l,SSi onar.les Sweden, where 5 evangelists have labored, holding 75t meetings. TwentY-illght conver- !.1l1 CO"",.", I Missionaries' Wives. sions are reported. The same committee have charge of Home I I a; :=~ …'" Other Female Missionaries Mission work and church erection. The total income for the three pnrposes was I.. "'''' I <;:Ordained Native Preachers. $6,237.16. I ..: ! ~ ~"' Other Preachers and Helpers. Baptist General Associa.tion of the Western States and Territories. I"'… I ~s: Churches.
THIS society carries on its foreign work in I ~~I,8i«1i81i ,Members. Africa in connection with the Baptist Mission- ary Union. It bas two missionaries on the I I i «1",~~ Baptized. Congo, who act under general superintendence of the Mission of the Union, but receive their I lSI ~~: ~ Pupils. support from and make their reports to their own Society. IIContribntions.
The Oonsolidated American Baptist The report calls special attention to the Missionary Oonvention fact that one-third of the annual receipts came in during the last months of the year. is engaged in no active work at present, Simply and nearly one half of that during the last holding on' to its legal existeuce and guarding two days. The result has been that tile its ouly foreign interest at Port au Prince, Board has had to borrow money and carry Hayti. A native Haytian, a man thoroughly' a heavy interest account. This ought not trained in this country and Paris, is ready to to be. Better late than never, but better take charge of the work there as soon as the still, never late. way may open. An earnest appeal is made for the re-es- Southern Baptist Oonvention. tablishment of the Japan Mission inaugn- rated in 1859 but never really established on REPORT FOR YEAR ENDING APRIL 30. 1889. account of the death of the first mission- Receipt,.. aries by the loss of the ship in which they .ailed. Balance of April 30. 1888.. ., •….• $3.609 63 Donations (total income)…….. .. 99,023 75 Bills payable (borrowed money).. . 46,50000 Loans and interest…………… . 45126 Total………………. $149,584 64 Expenditures. For Missions………………….. $87.188 32 Executive and Agency Depts….. 14,931 35 Borrowed money repaid.. . . .• . . . .• 46,500 00 Loans.. .. .. .. .. .. …. .. … .. …. .. . • 150 00 Balance cash In Bank…………. 814 97 Total……………….$149,584 64
PltoGRESS OF 1l1SSlONS-MONTllLY BULLETIN. [OCT., r
VIII.-PROGRESS OF MISSIONS: MONTHLY BU~LETIN.
Afrlca.-Arabs in East Central Africa. prospering at Nyassa.. The Free Church of Scotland has opened a. new station at Mal- Tidings from a mission of the Free Church indu, on a high plain at the north olthe of Scotland in Nyassaland indicate that lake. Malindu is surrounded by 17 villages, though the Arabs are by no means over- embosomed in gardens of magnificent bacome, their vower is decreasing. These Ar- nanas. abs are cruel and treacherous; they shoot down the natives without any compunc- -Along the valley of the Nile from Alexan· tions; villages have been destroyed and drla to the first cstaract are 79 mission stations parents and children killed; but at the lat- and 70 Sabbath-schools. numbering 4,017 ter part of April matters were quiet. No scholars, while the day and boarding-schools news bas been received from missionaries have over 5,200 pupils. There has been an in· on Lake Tanganyika, the road between that creasing demand for Bibles, 6,651 having been lake and Nyass.. having bAen closed by tbe sold the last year, with 8,933 volumes of relig' Arabs. A letter from Dr. Kerr Cross at ious literature and 17,179 educational books. Karonga. April 20, gives much credit to Captain Lugard, who has so managed his 150 – TheCongo Railway. Th~Beglan Chambers poorly armed natives tbat they had pre· have voted a snbscrlption of ten million francs vented the Arabs from advancing, and had toward the cost oCthe Congo railway. This does saved many natives from massacre. Dr. not mean that Belgium and the Congo Free Cross had been driven from his home in the State are to come into any political relations, highlands, but at Karonga they were hold- bnt the subscription is made iu the luterests of ing two services on the Sabbath, at one of Belgian commerce. A Zanzibar mercirant has which they had 600 people present. contracted for the transport along the Congo of the material for the construction of the rail· -Congo MiSSIOn. Mr. Richards, of the way.- AmericanBa.ptistMissionary Union, reports that the work at Ba.nza Manteke, the place -A new station on the upper Congo River whereso many converts have been baptized, has been opened by the American Baptist Mis· is still prospering. The young church has sion. It Is 170 miles above Stanley Pool. Lieut. been greatly tried by persecution as well as enant Taunt, U. S. commercial agent on the by sickness and death. Notless than twenty Congo, says this is the only mis&ion oli. the river of those baptized have died, and the fatality which has been successful. has been a great stumbling-block to the heathen,whohave asserted that the sickness -A navigable channel has been discovered was sent by their gods because t,hey have in the delta of the Zambezi River, Southeast been neglected. This has prevented many Africa, by which vessels can enter the main from accepting the Christian faith. The river. This will greatly faciliate the advance of heathen are bitterly opposed, and would missions and civilization in that region. take the lives of the Christians if they could. Recently 17 were baptized, and others are Chlna.-One of the missionaries of the asking for the ordinance, and the knowledge of the truth is spreading'far and wide. China Inland Mission, a Scotch gentleman worth a million, is living in China on twenty·five cents -Mr. F. S. Selous, the South African trav- a week, using all his fortune in the work. eler, in his recent expedition. visited the French mission on the Zambezi, where he -In Pang-Chuang, a missionary from North found the families of Messrs. Jeanmairet America teUs the story of a mission there, al· and Jalla at Sesheke. He says that the most entirely depending on the work of a mission has passed through the greatest slugle woman. She seemed to have inspired the difficulties, and that their situation is rar women, for some of them are said to sit up half from agreeable. They are shut out from the night working, in order to rsise sufficient communication with the outward world, funds to build 8 chape. .They have already col· t"" receipt of letters depending entirely lected $15. upon chance travelers or merchants. The crocodiles devour all thAir domestic ani· -American Citizens. Our miulster in China mal… The kindness of the missionaries is officially reports that there are in China 1,022 having great effect upon the people. but American citizens resident within the empire, Mr. Selous says that the Barotse valley is of whom 506 are entered as missionaries, though in a deplorable condition on account of the the 400 resident in Shanghai are not classified as periodical inundations of the Zambezi, and to their occupation. The extension of the Tient· the fevers Which reeult therefrom. sin and Tonshan railroad to Tung·cho has reo ceived the imperial sanction, and It is expected -Stanley puts the population of Africa at thst notwithstanding aU opposition to Its con· 250,000,000. strnction work will be Immediately begun. The journey from Tientsin to Peking can then -In the midst ofserious dangers, says the be accomplished by rail in,three hOUrs, instead Presbyterian Messenger, the missions are of as many days, as now.
-Work among the Hakkas In Southeru China Is very encouraging. Says a missionary : " The Hakkas will be evangelized sooner than
PROGRESS OF MISSIONS-MONTHLY BULLETIN. 797 any other Chinese." Tbeyare devoted to let- quelled the riotous spirit, and the Car was pulled ters, and are opposed to foot-binding. as usual. .
-The English Presbyterian missionaries in -In addition to the number of convertD China, after 17 years' persistent effort, have which are reported, and the considerable number Becured an eutrance into the important city of of secret disciples among the men, it is believed Chiang-pu, and arrangements have been made that there are thousands of women in the zena- for building a church there, the cost of which nas ofIndia who are Christians. They are un- (about $3,000) is to be met by Rev. A. Gregory, able to declare their faith, but the inlluence of one of the missionaries to occupy the new their Christian lives will be powerfnlly felt in station. , their homes.
Cuba.-The Roman Catholic Bishop of -The income of the British Government In Havana appealed to the Governor of the Island to close the cemetery which the Baptists had India last year from the opium monopoly was opened in that city, but the Goverument in Spain has decided that the Baptists were acting $30,000,000. according to the laws, and may have their place ofburiaI. -Mr. George Muller is stUI In India, where he has been preaching and addressing a large number of meetings, calling upon the uncon- verted to turn unto the Lord, and inciting England.-The report read at the ninth Christians to increased love and good works. annual meetiug of the Church ofEngland Zenana Missionary Society held on May 3d stated that the -A wonderful work of grace is in progress European missionaries of that society in home connection number 105, that there are 57 assist- at Sealkot. Some four years ago the Scotch ant missionaries in local connection, and 507 native agents. Four new stations have been Mission began to baptize inquirers among the opened during the year. The Committee reported also the acceptance of the following calls low caste people In the villages. The IIrst year for new work: A normal school for female teachers at Amritsar ; a boarding school for the the missionaries registered about 80 baptisms, village girls in the Krishnagar district; a boarding-school for Christian girls at Kandy, in Cey- the following year about 400, the next year near Ion; and the establishment, in conjunction with the Church Missionary Society, of the Buchanan 700, the next nearly 800-that is to say, about Institution for training female workers in the Diocese of Travancore and Cochin. The gen- 1,900 baptisms in less than four years, all in one eralillcome of the society is the largest ever received, being 24,866l., an increase of 1,688l. district. Neither is there any abatement of the The total expenditure was 25,802l., an increase of 1,240l., 28. 2d. In addition to the general in- wonderful movement now. The opening month come, there was 2,7861. from various sources. of the year witnessed nearly 200 baptisms, and -Great Cities and their Dangers. Thirty years ago in Great Britain 24per cent. of the it is hoped that a harvest of 2,000 will be gathwhole population were occupied in agricultural pursuits. Now, ouly 14 per cent. of the ered in before a new decade opens on us. population are so occupied. -The Moslems of Delhi have opened a sem- inary in which preachers are taught all the ob- jections of Western infidels against Chri.tianity that they may go forth to oppose the Christian preachers in town and country.
-A few years ago the offerings at the temple at Monghyor, India, amounted to $50,000, dur- ing the two days of the annual festival; now they are only $20,000. The priests say to the missionaries, H You are the reason. Your preaching and your books have taken the fear of us and of our gods from the hearts of the people."
Ireland.-High Ritualism is not con:/in- -The Madras Bible Society, the largest of ed to England. The" Protestant" rector of Donegore,Ireiand, Rev. J. Hunt, has recently the Indian auxiliaries, was established in 1820. advocated the efficacy of the masses for the living and the dead, the supremacy of the Under its auspices the entire Bible has been trans- Pope, and has stated that he believes that the only church in the country which has lated into the Canarese, MalayaJam and Telugu real orders is the church of the Roman obedience. languages, the New and parts of the Old Tesla- ment into Decanl Hindustani, and the Tamil Bible has undergoue revision. It also publishes the New Testament in Tolu, and portions in Koi, Konkani, Badaga and Sanscrit. In t888 it distributed by sale over 130,000 copies. In ad- I ndia;-A fact ofsignificance in India is the dition to the central depot at Madras branch appointment oftwo native Christians in Travancore as magistrates by the Maharajah. Former- depots are maintained in the principal Mofnssil ly magistrates had religions as well as secular duties, and conservative Hindus raised an out- towns, while some 60 colporteurs either supcry against the innovation. A protest was signed and seut to the Maharajah, stating that ported or aided by the society's fonds are emunless the Christians were dismissed the petitioners, who were of the high castes, wonld not ployed to sell the Scriptnres chielly in the pull the car at the coming car-festival in Padmarabapuram. Ii. serions revolt was threatened. country districts. Distribution is also effected but the native sovereign held his ground and among the natives of South India, resideut in Burmah, Ceylon, South Africa, the Mauritins, the Straits Settlements, the West Indies, British and Dutch Guiana.
-Mr. Caine, M.P., sends a letter which speaks of a most remarkable movement in
'798
PROGRESS OF MISSIONS-MONTHLY BULLETIN. [OCT., Banares. A meeting was summoned In that tures concerning the trne Messiah are exgreat center of Idolatry in consequence of what pounded to them. Some Rabbis, says Mr. had been said In the British House of Commons Feingold, have become convinced of the trnth on the liquor traffic in India. A distinguished of the New Testament. Brahmin, who had been trained in a mission college, and is the head of a large Hindu Judaism and Ethics.-There isno doubt that brotherhood, took the chair. Throughhis pow- the more thonghtfo1 adherents of Judaism are erfnl inlluence the caste of Ahlrs, and other gradually drifting away. They do not care to smaller castes, have, as the result of t·he strong carry out the ceremonlallawbecauge it does not feeling of the meeting, decided to prohibit all speak to their hearts. and since this Is all they liquor drinking in their caste regulations. By have been tanght of their religion, if they neglect the inexorableness of such regulations from 40,- it, there seems to he nothing left. Their souls 000 to 50,000 of the people of Benares have be- cry aloud for truths that shall sustain them in come total abstainers. The drink-sellers are their hour of trial and temptation, that shall now appealing for a reductiou in the price of teach them how to live and how to die; and all their licenses on the ground that the sale of that is given them is more or less unmeaning liquor is stopped. Such a unique movement rites. Will not those who love their ancient among idolaters ought to furnish a lessou to our faith, who feel that its doctrines embody all the statesmen. elements of a morally beautiful life, come for- ward now when ,danger threatens it, and zeal· Japan.-" The Independent" says: "A ously labor to show forth its more spiritual trnths P-Jewish Messenger. Japanese Christian church In Seto recently had occasion to build a house of worship. The -There are 47 organizations engaged In the building was completed in May; then it be- evangelization of the Jews, with 377 workers came necessary to report It to the Government and 195 stations. At least 150 of the mission· for registration. Hitherto every church build- aries are converted Jews. ing in Japan has been registered as private Kore~.-Progress of the Gospel. The property in which Christian service would be work in Korea has been abundantly blessed of held. No recognitiou being given to Christi- God. The country was opened to the world by anity, its churches could not be registered as treaty in 1882. Dr. Allen, the first missionary, arrived in 1884. Others, Including the two Chisuch. But as the Constitution makes all re- nese missionaries from the Fnh·Kien native ligious equally lawful the pastor, Mr. Kato, church, followed In 1885. In July, 1886, the and the local omcial, agreed that there was no first convert was baptized. In the autnmn of reasou for not registering this as a Christian 1887 the first church, a Presbyterian, waS orchurch, exempt from taxation, with all the ganized with ten members. In February, 1888, rights and privileges of a Buddhist temple. a union week of prayer among the natives was Such a request had never gone up to the Gov- held. In May, 1888, "the check In Korea" apernment before, but they decided to try it. It peared. In J o1y, 1888, all signs of the .. check, • was granted immediately. So this little coun- as far as the land Is concerned, have disaptry chapel is the first building ever registered peared, and it is stated that during the past year in Japan as a Christian church." (1888) the chnrch in Korea has mo1tiplied five- fold-there are now over 100 Christians In the -In Japan, in 1714, the number of temples laud. Ei~ht native Korean workers spent a was 395,087. The latest enumeration, made month just before the close of the year at two years ago, showed that the whole number Seoul, in receiving instrnction and praying for had been reduced to 57,842. the power of the Holy Ghost, before returning to their homes and work. Doring their month's -Bishop Fowler has just made an extensive stay there were 28 applicants for baptism, 19 omcial tour of Japau. He reports an encouraging vitality in missions, and a disposition on the helng received. part of leading men to embrace, or at least encourage, Christianity. Russla.-Twelve hundred converts have -In Nagoya, with a population of 350,000, heen baptized in the Baptist Mission in Russia he found 8 vigorous church only three years the past two years. The mission is principally old, and in tbe past year Increased from 35 to among the German colonists in South Russia. 70 members. One of these is an eminent law_ There is also B snccessful mission in Roumania yer' another 8 physician trained in German methods, and a third is an in1luentlal editor. and Bnlgaria. The Mayor of the city said to him: "I have observed the reform wrought III Christians. I Scotland.-The mission of the Free think if Christianity were established over the city, and accepted by the people, it wonld Church of Scotland on the Lake of Gallilee, make government easy, and the people much in Palestine, IS prospering. A liberal friend better. I will do all I can to help yonr work." of the ca.use in Scotland has promised $6,500 to build another house for the mis- JeWS.-Jews in Paris. Mr. Solomon Fein- sionaries at Tiberias. This is chiefly a med· gold, Jewish missionary in Paris, writes that ical mission. his work is marked by tokens of encouragement. Many Jews visiting the Exhibition find Syrla.-Dr. George E. Post, in an article their way to the mission room, where the Scrip- on the outlook in Syria, says: .. Little by little the light is stealing in. Men of all re- ligious opinions are inclining to toleration.
PROGRESS OF MISSIONS-MONTHLY BULLETIN
The Bible is being circulated among the bodies-Presbyterian, Methodist, Episcopalilln. masses. The number of readers is multI- Quaker, Roman Catholic-which have received plied. Those who believe are bolder, but at Government support since General Grant's first the same time more discreet. Those who administration under the contract system. This do not believe are forced to concede that is done on the ground that the Government canthe Bihle is the source of religious knowl- not sustain sectarian institutions. The system edge, and the referee in all cases of donbt was a mere makeshift, and it must be abandoned. or dispute. Those who are far from the The purpose to abandon it, however, is not spirit of the New Testameut claim to be original with General Morgan. It was broached evangelical. Everything is ripening for a under the Cleveland administration and was grand demonstration of the power of the one of the things for which Mr. Cleveland was Holy Spirit." roundly abused. The Government cannot, of course, abolish the mission schools of these re- Tu rkey.-A concession has been gran ted ligious bodies. Tiley have a perfect and equal by the Sultan of Turkey for the constrnc- right to maintain them, but not under cont~act tion of a railway between Jaffa and J eru- with the United States.-Springjield RepubUsalem; and a still more important railway scheme has been approved by the Imperial can~ Conncil, and only waits the sanction of the Chancellary and the signature of the -The Indian Industrial School recently Snltan. That scheme includes a line from established in Tucson is one of the most Acre (Ptolemais) to Damascus, running pro:nising Institutions in Arizona, and althrough Galilee, crossing the Jordan near though it has been organized only about the waters of Merom, and passing by the one year it has 70 Indian boys and girls. all at>cient Cresarea – Philippi, leaviI!g Mt. of whom appear to be making remarkable Hermon on the left. The projector craves, progress in conforming to the habits of civalso, the sole right to run steamers on the ilized life. Sea of Tiberias. -The Roman Catholic Plenary Council ot1884 authorized a revision and rearrangement of the -The total imports of Damascus for 1888 Catholic prayer-book. This work has just been were 83,056,670, against $1,991.215 for the pre- finished, and will shortly take the place of the vious year; and the total trade rose to $4.- books which have been in use hitherto. It is so 746.825, against 83.698,585 for 1887. The only arranged that the entire service of the mass for industries intheprovince worth noticing are every Sunday iu the year can be followed by the bitumen wells on the western slopes ot the congregation just as it is said by the clergy- Mt. Hermon. for which a concession has man. Every page in proof sheets was sent to been granted netting 65 per cent. to Govern- every Catholic bishop and archbishop in the ment, and 35 per cent. to the contractor. United States, and, 8S issued, it will have the unauimous indorsement of the hierarchy.-The United States.-Departure of Mis- Independent.
sionaries.-A memorable meeting, on the oc- -There are 1,000 Christian Cbinamen concasion of the departnre of a large number of nected with the Congregational missions in Calimissionaries to different parts of the world fornia and Oregon.-Spirito! Missions. under the care of the A. B. C. F. M.. was held in Boston August 29th. The missionaries -Chan Chu Sing, a converted Chinaman, has number 49 in all, of whom 19 are return- been licensed as a local preacher in the Methoing to fields of labor which they have already dist Episcopal Church, and will engage in misoccupied, some of them for a long term of years, sion work among his own people in Los Anwhile 30 are going out for the first time, several geles, Cal. of them 'being chUdren of missionaries. Of the whole number, 20 are going to Turkey, 8 to -Missi.mary Interest in America. Rev. Japau, 17 to China and 4 to India. One of the H. Grattan Guinness is still in the United new mi.sionaries is a granddaughter of the Rev. States, and (writes Mrs. Guinnees) is being William Goodell, D.D., of Constantinople, graciously prospered in his efforts to belp whose life was spent in planting the institutions poor Africa. After completing his tour in of the gospel in the Turkish Empire. Ohio, with Dr. Ashmore, he traveled 'West to Kansas, taking Nkoiyo, the Congo -The appropriations of the American Bap- youth. with him, and held missionary tist Missionary Union for the year ending March meetings in the towns of Marion, Pea- 31, 1890, amount to $402,785.71. Much new body, Newton, Arkansas City, Wellwork is provided for, and the schedule is more ing-ton. Wichita, Hutchinson, Florence.. nearly in accordance with the estimates from Emporia, Aveline and Topeka. Many the missionaries than for many years. noble-hearte<l Western pioneers were led in these meetings to volunteer for mis- -Non-partisan Indian SChools.-It is an- siona.l"Y work in Africa. A neW mission nounced that Commissioner Morgan has deter· was founded, bearing the name of .. The mined to substitute as rapidly as possible on the Soudan Pioneer lIission." and a branch es- Indian reservations non-partisan puhlic 8chools tablished, with enrolled members, secreunder the supervision of the Indian Bureau, for the schools under charge of several rrligions ta.ry ll~ treasurer. ¥>. ~Qh Wwn. This work promise~ to spread over the entire of the press is a. significant element In the State of Kansas. Arrangements have been advance of Christianity. made for Mr. Guinness to visit Kansas City, and also to address the assembled sec- -The Home Mlasionaryworkwhlchlssusretaries'lf the Y. M. C. A., in the States of tained by the women of the Presbyteria.n Nebraska and Minneseta. There is an church, and which consists largely in the earnest missionary spirit awaking in the eataltlishment of Christian schools, is meet- West, and the prospect of the utilization of ing with great favor. The new buildings at its pioneer energies in the work of opening Tucson, Arizona, a.nd Albuquerque, 'New the dark Soudan to the light of the gospel. Mexico, aJ:e complete a.nd in use. The work among the" Mountain Whites" in Western Miscellaneous.-The iastissue 'lethe North Carolina is rapidly developing, and annuaistatement in regard to Roman Cath- just now promises great enlargement. The olic missions has just been sent out from school nea.r Asheville has done good work, the Propaganda press, and from it we but the necessity has constantly been felt gather that in Ireland the Roman Catholic for,one of a higher grade, where girls of fine estimated number of Romanists is 3,792,357, promise might continue their education. with 3,251 priests and 2,547 chapels. In This is now made possible by special England the Roman Catholic population is gifts from parties who have visited the stated to be 1,353,455, with 2,340 priests and region and examined the work done. The 1,261 chapels, and in Scotland 338,643 Ro- gifts already made are as follows: One manists, with 329 priests and 295 chapels. of $35,000, two others of $10,000 each, and It is not by any means likely that these fig- several of $2,000 and $1,000 eacb. A beauures have been understated, and they may, therefore, be taken as a fair basis for any .0 tiful and extensive property, now known as comparative statement with reference to the spread of- Rowanism in these islands. the Oakland Inn," just Ioutslde the And yet many Christians" see no cause to limits of the city of Asheville, has been fear that Popery will ever gain ground in secured and will be devoted to the pur- England again"! poses of a higher Christian education.
-In heathen countries Protestants occupy -john Newcombe, of the English army, 500 separate mission fields, containing 20,- went out to Cumbam as a missionary of the ()()() mission stations, supplied by 40,000 mis- American Baptists, unordained, and unsionaries. In these 20,000 mission stations trained as a clergyman. La.st year he bapthere are 500,000 Sunday-school scholars- tized 1,400 converts. In three or four years an average of 25 to each station. In the he has gone over a. circuit of 3,400 miles 20,000 Protestant mission stations there are preaching a.nd baptizing. 1,000,000 of native communicants, or an average of 50 to each station. There are -The Bishep of Moosonee (says The Church., also 2,000,000 of adherents who are friends Worker) exercises jurisdiction over an area of the evangelical faith and hearers of the as large as Europe, extending all round the gospel preached from the Bible-an average Hudson's Bay territory a.nd reaching up to of 100 to each station. the North Pole. The distances are enor- mous, and the shortest way to the northern -Missiens and the Eastern question. An part of the diocese is to come to England English' officer of distinction said: .. The first, and then go out in the yearly ship American missions alone are doing more for which enterslHudson's Bay. The Bishop the satisfactory settlement of the Eastern has everything to do for himself, and Is a question than all our governments. By their &,ood printer, bootmaker, carpenter, brickcontact with peoples of all nations they are layer, etc. He ha.Il been a worker in that teaching them mutua.l interest, respect and far-away locality for nearly forty years. confidence, and so doing mOre than any other force to make the whole world one." -These are years ofdAstiny. We aremak- ing history. The first century of Christian- -The mission press is a. power rea.ching ity was proved by miracles. This latest cenfar beyond the personal infiuence of ihe tury of Christianity is proved by achievemissionaries. Portions of the Bible, .. Peep ments. We must work faster or we wil gQ of Day," hymn books, tracts, and sermons down. God haa planted this nation and translated and circulated among the na- gil'en Christianity here the J:'l'eatest opportives give evidence of the patient study of tunity. The way to bring more money to intricate languages, and these will bear this society is to plant wider. Fill the land fruit an hundred fold. The Religious Tract with your publications. Money must come Society also has a part in the foreign field; or the missionaries ca.nnot &,0 out. W. want besides scattering the good seed abroad, men equal to the work. We want strong, its own enormous circulation is largely in- earnest men. God is here working out the creased by the issues from foreign depots. problem of the ages with us. If we trust in In Java the" Union for SpreadingChristaln the Lord God omnipotent all will be well.- Literature" aids in the propagation of the Dr. Goodell on. Home Mission•• sospel, and in most mission fields the work -Persecution ofdissenting Christians seems to be increasing in ali the countries of Cen- tral and Eastern Europe. Their rapid prog- ress has alarmed the clergy of the estab- lished churches, and they are putting forth every ell'ort possible to suppress them.