The Missionary Review of the World — December 1895
"/01", Livinj{ston Nevius." Copyrij{kt I8qS. by Flemine H. Revell
DR. NevIus AND "FAMINE Boys" AT THE "NAN-Lou." MISSION'ARY REVIEW OF THE WORLD.
VOL. XVIII. No. 12.-0IdSeries:-DEcEMBER.-VOL. VIII. No. 12.-NewSe1ies.
JOHN LIVINGSTON NEVIUS, THE MODERN APOSTLE OF CHINA. * BY THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF.
Thcre is an apostolic succession, in a very unique sense. The Holy Ghost has His apostles, as the Acts of the Apostles proves; for, in the church of Antioch, lIe separated unto Himself and" sent forth" Barnabas and Saul; and, as the word apostle means one who is sent forth, Barnabas is afterward called an " apostle." (Compare 13 : 1-4 ; 14 : 14.) Thus a word, hitherto having the specific sense of one chosen by Christ and sent forth by Him, and limited to such, is now for the first and, so far as we have observed, only time, used of a man who is sent forth under the authority and by the definite commission of the Spirit of God. Christ's apostles were all from those who had seen Him after He was risen, and who therefore can have no proper successors, as even Vhately himself conceded; but the Holy Spirit's apostles may still be among us, for He still sends forth representatives, and we cannot doubt that he who is the subject of this sketch was among them.
For forty years out of sixty-four he was a missionary to the Chinese, and a faithful, loving, devoted, successful missionary he was. From the days of that pioneer, Robert Morrison, until now, it may well be doubted whether anyone man has ever, during so long a term of service in the Middle Kingdom, had more abundant attestation that he was sent forth by the Spirit to that laud.
It is true, Nevius was no common man. He possessed unusual capacity and sagacity combincd, and he filled out a very varied and versatile career, as preacher, teacher, evangelist, pastor, organizer, administrator, gathering converts and training helpers, raising foreign fruits and relieving famished thousands, a botanist and an inventor, an author and a translator, all in one. He was so wise a counsellor that he was looked up to as a sage, so faithful an administrator that boundless confidence was re- * John Livingston Nevius. By his wife. $2.00. Published by F. H. Revell Co., New York.
LIVINGSTON NEVIUS
posed in him, so catholic a disciple that he drew all believers into his capacious friendship, and so loyal a witness to Christ that he never gave an uncertain sound. His death leaves a gap, as an oak of Bashan leaves when torn np by a tornado, and it is a gap which half-a-dozen common men will not fill. Like Livingstone in Africa, Livingston Nevius was a missionary general and statesman in China.
Yet, tho an uncommon man, the secrets of his success are open for the most part to all who will learn them where he did, in the school of Christ. 'Ve shall here onlyad,'ert to some of these divinely taught lessons, referring the reader to that more copious and complete narrative, and graphic profile of his character and career, which his widow has left us, in which she mixed her colors with her own brains and heart's blood.
First of all, Dr. Nevius laid the basis of his lifework in f'egulating resolves. He lived by rule, tho not by rote j and twenty-four such " Rules" are on record, the first dated December 29th, 1850 j the last, April 17th, 1851. Four months, just after he attained majority, seem to have been given to the settling of the great principles by which his life was t.o be governed-in the best sense, t·uled.
It is not needful to transcribe them here, as they are published in full in his life (p. 713) ; but they are the laying of foundations tried by the plumb-line and level, set true and square. It is amazing how comprehen.. sive they are; they show the master builder working at the basis of the structure of character.
He begins by abandoning self-made plans, while seeking to be ready for whatever God wills j he puts life before him as a transaction with God and for God, and sets service rather than scholarship before him as his aim j he proposes victory over evil, Divine daily guidance, and habits of prayer, as to be expected and provided for; carelessness in devotion, covetousness in disposition, and envious and jealous tempers as to be anticipated and provided against; he determines also to study courtesy , of manners, but especially love to God and charity to all men in his heart.
Physical health is not overlooked. Hours of sleep, of exercise; habits of eating and fasting, of holy reflection, and Bible study j diligent use of time and thoroughness of application, avoidance of procrastination, of frivolous and indelicate conversation, and even of careless speech-all these crowned by the solemn purpose in aU his ways to acknowledge God, and to account nothing too trivial to submit to His direction-such are the basal stones which lay at the founuations of one of the purest, truest, noblest lives of this century of missions. What if every young man would lay a similar basis for his own life !What decision of character and what objects in living, deliberately chosen and sedulously pursued to the end!
Such Christian virtue brings its own reward. He shortly afterward recorded that whenever he had attempted to engage in any public service without asking help of God with a sense of weakness and dependence on Him, he had without a single exception made a signal failure (p. 83). But his lifelong success proves so signal, that we need no further record of the fact that he learned to lean and lean hard on the everlasting arms.
Another lesson, learned early in life, was that supreme one of waiting on God (Ps. 130 : 6)-passive receptivity, the attitude of repose, which is the opposite of action, and necessary to the acquisition of strength for action. To get alone with God in the secret place and there wait for the vision of God, as watchers for the dawn; waiting without speaking, in a sense without thinking, just spreading out the soul like Gideon's fleece to drink in the heavenly dew; awed into silence yet blest with expectancy, oppressed with conscious emptiness and impotency, but confident of Divine fulness and sufficiency-this was his second great lesson in the school of holy living, and there is scarce a greater to be learned (p. 99) !
The third grea~ step in this life was taken when, yet scarce twenty-four years old, God taught him the secret of a restful activity. These terms are not contradictory. He observed a tendency, both mental and physical, to hurry, with the usual accompaniments, flurry and worry, which rhyme in reason as well as in speech. He found an " impulsive, impetuous, hurrying, driving, reckless spirit manifesting itself in all intellectual enterprises"-" a restless anxiety to see the end of everything before the time"-" trying to do many things at once." And he marked the resuItnothing ever half done, not stopping long enough to treasure up a good thought or deepen a holy impression, weakening the memory and the heart alike; reluctance to do 'anything save under the pressure of hurry and excitement, and yet suffering from the inevitable reaction, with its depression of spirit. All this young Nevius learned to exchange for that co-labor with God that makes all work so blessed that even waiting on God renews strength. Some disciples have only got far enough to say, " I and God;" others have got further, and say, "God and I;" but blessed is he who has gone even further, and says, " God, and not I," as Paul did. To think of myself as only an instrument, and He the agent or actor-how restful this makes all labor for Him! "Take My yoke upon you, and ye shall find rest unto your souls" (p. 103).
When John L. Nevius reached Ningpo, in 1854, he found a sphere for full application of his resolve to be diligent and thorough. To learn the Chinese tongue was no easy task. It has been said to require " a head of steel, lungs of brass, a heart of oak, the patience of Job, and the lifetime of Methusaleh." He found that some who ventured too soon into public address did themselves more good than their hearers; and that the thorough knowledge of the Chinese" character," the" book language" of the country, was more difficult than to get hold of any other language in the world. But there was another study which exhausted his whole forty years-the study of the contradictions and complexities of the Chinese character in another sense. This remained to the cnd a half-solved problem. Dr. Nevius appears never to have been troubled with scepticism. Perhaps, after all, there is not much" honest doubt." For thirty years and more we have known but one case where scepticism had no obvious connection with the evil hem't of unbelief which departs from the living God. He maintained constant fellowship with God, and, when he could obtain no more favorable hours for devotion, would walk ahead of others to com- 'mune with God. "Without having in him anything of the ascetic bent, he seemed dead to the pleasures as well as to the charms of a sinful world.
In 1859 Dr. Nevius undertook, as pioneer, to open a new station at lIangchow, a city of a million inhabitants, and found a residence in the old Loh-o-tah Monastery. There he was overawed by the multitude of worshipers wending their way to the different monasteries, and, as for the vast throngs of beggars, such a loathsome spectacle he had never even imagined. In one immense hall he found five hundred idols, having cost enormous sums; but what most impressed him was an a.sylum f01' a.nimals, where horses and donkeys, buffaloes and oxen, sheep, pigs, and fowls were honsed by those who wonld secure merit with the gods. Beggars at large, and beasts cared for! A cemetery for asses and swine, and human beings left without burial (pp. 164-73) !
At Hangchow this apostle of China experienced the onerous exchange of courtesies. Every gift received implied another returned, so that even Chinese liberality was found to be organized selfishness. At the same time he had to meet and overcome Chinese suspicion and misrepresentation. lIe found that selfishness could not appreciate self-sacrifice, and he was asked how much he paid converts for becoming Christians, and felt that he was suspected of sinister motives. A book was printed and scattered broadcast, warning the people against capture and a worse than slave's fate. It was reported that girls were gathered into schools to be exported for manufacture into an elixir of life by boiling their bodies and obtaining the oil from them (pp. 186, 244)! To be suspected of monstrous crimes was a new sensation to the Christ-loving, soul-loving missionary ; but he remembered how his Master was reckoned as a malefactor and crucified between thieves, and the servant and disciple was content not to be above his Lord.
Dr. Nevius, in the a)Vful famine that visited Shantung, personally visited the stricken districts, and for three "months disbursed relief in person. He had to carry the heavy bulky copper cask in huge barrows, sometimes as many as five j the amount of money he distributed was about $10,000 j the persons aided, 32,500 ; and the villages, 383. The discretion he exhibited was marvelous. No man could have made so little money go farther. It was a fearfnl tax on sympathy and endurance, but he bore it grandly. and the famine became God's pioneer evangelist, opening doors for the Gospel.
The following is a testimonial from those in the famine district to the work and character of the" teacher Nee" (Nevius) : " Heaven, by means" of rain and dew, nourishes all things. Man, by
FT"'" "./ohn Li'llinpton Nruius." Colyrigltt llils. oy Fleming- H. R ..,,1/
CHINESE BEGGARS PUTTING UP POR THE NIGHT.
JOHN LIVINGSTON NEVIUS
the refreshing influences of kindness, confers blessings upon his fellow- beings. The work is one, and the spirit which inspires it is the same. Therefore, he who exerts all his power to benefit others may be character- ized as acting out of the principles of Heaven.
"The American teacher Nee was born in his own country, and on arriving at mature age came to China. He is thoroughly instructed in the doctrines of Christianity, and familiar with the mysteries of trnth. He prints books and preaches true doctrine for the purpose of enlightening the ignorant; and not only teaches by words, but is able, in imitation of Heaven, to practise what he preaches.
" We, inhabitants of Ching-chiu, from the cycle Ye-hai to the cycle Ping-ts [three years], haye been visited by a prolonged famine. Cries of distress, like 1hose of the wild swans, filled the whole plain, and persons about to die stared at one another on the roads. When the teacher looked upon this spectacle his heart was grieved within him. Heaven-inspired pity was aroused, and he at once desired to institute extensive plans for saving the multitudes from calamity, only fearing that his ability was not equal to the task before him. Fortunately, noble men of like sympathies came to his aid, and contributed of their wealth, so that their beneficence was spread far and wide. Still, without special qualifications for executing this work, it would not have been accomplishcd.
"In disbursing the funds he put forth all his ability. Favors were evenly distributed, without partiality, and extended in every direction, passing by no one.
" Altho the teacher is unwilling to regard himself as having any merit in this .matter, still how can those who have received such favors refrain from a grateful acknowledgment of them ~"
Nevius's work as an author was conspicuous. Before he haa. been in China four years he began a series of papers on " the religions and super- stitions" of the people, afterward enlarged into his volume, " China and the Chinese." About the same time he wrote" The Disciple's Guide,"
his first book in Cltinese, and he translated part of Abbott's" Mother at Home." In 1859 he was appointed to prepare a " Compendium of Sys- tematic Theology" by the Ningpo Presbytery-a sufficient witness to the confidence in which he was held (p. 195). In 1861 he had in press 8ix books or tracts, including notes on Mark, and the first volume of his " Theology" (p. 222). His book on " Demonology," begun in 1880 and recently published, is a monument of patient toil and research ;* and his " Methods of Mission Work" and " Manual for Inquirers" complete the list of his main publications-the former one of the standard books, in- valuable for practical wisdom, a classic in its way.
Nothing was more prominent in Dr. Nevius's purpose for China than the creation of a native ministry (p. 23!:i). This was the hope of the Church. Perhaps his greatest work in China was found in his itinerating tours, sometimes covering six hundred miles. Everywhere he preached, gathered converts, and then set them at work telling the Gospel story.
In one of these tours he found that nameless sect, whose books had all beeu destroyed in times of persecution, but who perpetuated their beliefs by oral traditions embodied in rude rhymes. They held to a supreme deity, * .. Demon Possession," eto. $1.50. F. H. Revell & Co. to a sort of fall, and a coming restoration, when a great teacher should appear. Many of them were persuaded that Christ is the Savior for whom they had been looking (pp. 300, 301). He regarded evangelistic work as secondary to no other, aud in it he was marvelously blest, and pursued the most apostolic methods. On one such tour he baptized two hundred and eight adult converts, and in the intervals of the tours he was equally busy training theological classes.
He made visits home in 1864, 1881, and 1890, but in each his work was unceasing and most blessed, visiting the chnrches and the colleges to kindle and feed mission fires. He always told the truth; however discouraging. His watchword was not enthusiasm, bnt obedience.
Evide~tly when Dr. Nevins got his wife, he got a good thing, a favor from the Lord. She stuck by him while she could, sharing his whole life and labor, and, when health imperionsly demanded her to withdraw, she imperatively but lovingly commanded him to stay and let her go alone, heroically adding, "I would ratIle!' die here than take you from your work." Noble sodl! who never could be thankful enough that, in three instances, she had strength to refuse positively to have the man she so loved go away for her sake. (Compare p. 150, etc.) Mrs. Nevius started an industrial school, her Thread and Needle Club, which soon had a hundred women in it, and she used it as a means of teaching Gospel truth. When her voice failed, she actually studied and mastered the violin, that by it she might lead hel· music classes, herself about as ferlile in expedients as her gifted husband. She has not only written this charming life, to which reference has been made, but has gone back to China now to prepare another in the language of that land of his adoption, suited to the needs of the people for whom he lived and died.
The last two mornings of his life he read, aud with striking comments illumined, the second chapter of First TheRsalonians. Forty-one years before he had recorded his delight in the study of that same chapter, and had written: "I only wish that I may be able to adopt such language with reference to the people with whom God may let me labor"-an unconscious prophecy of his whole life's work and its blessed end.
His death itself was an answered prayer, for his devoted wife had often besought God not to let her noble husband suffer decay of mind or body or long-continued pain ; and so suddenly did God remove him, it was like a translation (p. 466).
Dr. W. A. P. Martin, long and closely identified with our friend Nevius, his alter erlO, _pays iu the introduction a noble tribute to the grand man who had" planted churches through the length and breadth of the peninsula," and was" a pioneer in more than one field;" he attributes to him a "concord of harmonious powers," and characterizes him as one whose "inborn dignity compelled respect from the highest," while " his kindly sympathies" won the confidence of the lowest.
We can only again commend this life story to the careful reading and study of all who would learn the secrets and feel the promptings of one of the purest and truest lives our generation has known.
THE JEWS IN P ALES'NNE AND SYRIA. 88'7
THE JEWS IN PALESTINE AND SYRIA.
BY REV. H. II. JESSUP, D.D., BEIRUT, SYRIA.
The question is constantly asked of one returning from Syria to the United States: What is the nnmber of Jews in Syria and Palestine? Is it true that they are flocking back by thousands and tens of thousands to the land of their fathers, and that soon they will take possession of Canaan, restore their kingdom, and rebuild their temple?
Let us look at the facts in the case, and try to consider them impar- tially. The only way to obtain accurate statistics in Palestine with regard to any particular sect is through the religious heads of the sects. The Ottoman Government has made repeated attempts to obtain an accurate census, but finds it difficult excepting in the case of the Mohammedans, whose male offspring are carefully registered at their birth 011 the military conscription lists. The 'other sects notoriously evade the census-takers, and give false reports in order to escape taxation. Very stringest regnlations have now been adopted by the Ottoman officials, and by another decade they will probably have a fairly correct census.
Owiug to the conflicting and exaggerated reports prevailing in Europe and America with regard to the Jews in Palestine, Her British Majesty's Consul in Jerusalem, Mr. J. Dickson, a most conscientious and worthy man in every respect, and Rev. Selah Merrill, D.D., United States Consul in Jerusalem, made careful and independent investigation in the year 1891 as to the numbers and location of the Jews. Dr. Merrill is too well known to need any word of introduction or praise.
After several months of searching every possible source of information, they arrived at substantially the same result, viz. : Jews in Jerusalem .••……………….••• 25,000 to 27,000 " Jaffa ………….. , ………………… 2,700 " Ramleh…….. …. …. .. …. …. …….. 166 " ,Hebron. . . . . . . . .• . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. .. . . . . 1,200 " Nablus…. ~ …. …. …. …. .. …….. …. 99 " '1'iberias …………………………… . 2,900 " Safed …………………………….. . 6,126 " Acre ………•••..•..•……………… 200 " IIaifa …………………………. " … . 1,640 " all the colonies, less than…….••….•.•..•. 3,000 Total …………•…•.•.•.•••….. , 45,031 These statistics cover Palestine proper. There are Jews in Damascus, Beirut, alld Aleppo (in Syria proper), numbering some 23,000 in all. The Jews of Aleppo and Damascus have lived there from time immemorial, and all of them speak the Arabic language as their vernacular. In Beirut is a small Jewish population, Arabic-speaking, largely connected with the families of Damascus and Aleppo. More recently Jewish merchants have come in from Vienna and Germany, who deal in clothing and are bankers and merchants, speaking the European languages. They arc lax a'.ld liberal in their Jewish ideas, and some of them keep open shops on Saturdays.
The Jews of Palestine proper are largely supported by the European rabbitl' fund, receiving house rent and weekly rations from the common fund, and thus encouraged in habits of idleness. No better means could be devised to demoralize and degrade a people than to support them from a charity fund. The Jews in Europe have a tender sympathy for" the poor saints in Jerusalem," and are taking the very best way to keep them poor aud make them poorer.
The Rothschild colonies arc conducted on the same pauperizing system. An intelligent observer visited the new Jewish colony on the coast near the ancient Cesarea. Each colonist receives land, a house, fnrnitnre, agricultnral implements, and household utensils free, and a daily allowance of at least one franc per heari. Our friend the visitor found the Jews living at ease in their houses on one half of the allowance, and with the other half hiring the Arabs to do all the work. This was largely the case with other colonies, so that Rothschild's agent indignantly declined to continue the allowance, excepting as wages paid for work actually performed. I visited two of the colonies in "May, 1893, one on the west bank of the Jordan, at the J isr mnat Yakob, north of the Sea of Galilee, and the other on the southwestern shore of the waters of Merom.
The first named was an unthrifty and forlorn affair. The colonists looked sickly and dejected. Their houses were built of boards, poorly suited to that hot valley, and their gardens were overgrown with weeds. Several houses were just begun, and they had been forbidden finishing them by the interference of the Turkish Government in Safed. The colony at Lake Merom has a splendid agricultural site, a level plot of hundreds of acres of deep, rich soil; but, alas! it is on the margin of the most pestilential marsh in Palestine. The Greek and Protestant villagers of Merj Aiyun, ten miles north of Merom, live on the hills, but are obliged to go down 10 the IIuleh (Merom) to sow and harvest their crops; and it is notorious that, almost without exception, they all return home with chills and fever. The Jewish colonists at Merom are superior to those at the Jisr, and have beautiful plantations of roses and fruit trees, but they are surrounded by a poisonous atmosphere, and their neighbors south and east arc the wild Arabs, Druses, and Circassians.
The whole impression made upon an observer with regard to these Jewish colonies is that they are forced, unnatural, and of doubtful success. The pauperizing system which has made Jerusalem a great almshouse tends to demoralize the whole system of Palestine colonization. The entire scheme seems to be a kind of fad, which is being pursued with a special object, having none of the elements which made the old Phceni- cian colonies and the modern Anglo-Saxon colonies successful.
Several observations occur to me in connection with this whole subject of the future of the Jewish peopk : 1. The trend of Jewish migration at tlle present is westward, and far- ther than ever from the old land of Israel. There are about four times as Illany Jews now in New York City as there are in the whole of Palestine. Tens of thousands are going to the Argentine Republic in South America. They 8eem to be more aud more torn loose from territorial attachments, and the great future of the Jewish race seems to be about to be wrought ont in the free air of America.
2. The return of tIle Jews is to be a spiritual return to Christ, their Messiah and Lord. The marvelous prophecies in Ezekiel 40 to 48, clothed in priestly language and figures which speak of a readjustment of the con- figuration of Palestine, of a temple a mile square, and a special sacred " oblation" or temple arca fifty miles square, clearly refer in splendid imagery to the fnJure glories of the Church of Jesus Christ, and the " waters" flowing from beneath the sanctuary point to the life· giving streams of the Gospel dispensation, which are destined to vitalize and bless all mankind. A literal fulfilment of those extraordinary prophecies is manifestly physically impossible without the most stupendous miracle ever performed.
3. The literal interpretation of t.he prophecies with regard to the" return" of the Jews is extremely improbable.
According to the New Testament, "he is not a Jew who is one outwardly." "They are not alI Israel who are of Israel." 'When II Jew believes in Christ he becomes by faith a son of Abraham. The Christian Church to day is the Israel of God, and all believing Jews who enter the Church become Israelites.
Two lincs of prophecy run through the Old Testament, one pointmg to tile Messiah and the other to the future of the Jews. If we take one literally, we mnst the other. If we take one spiritually, we must the other.
If wc say that the future of the Jews is a literally material future; that they are to return to Palestine, rebuild Jerusalem, reconstrnct the temple, its altars, ritual, and ccremonies, and that all the world is litcrally to " go up once a year to Jerusalem" to worship, and that the destruction of the temple by Titus was only an incidental matter, a temporary disappearance of the temple, as when destroyed by the King of Babylon, and that it is to be restored in all its details, services, and typical rites, then we are bound to say that the Messiah was to be an earthly king, and that I£e 'ws never come. But if we claim that Jesus of Nazareth was the true Messiah, our atoning High Priest, and that the Epistle to the Hebrews rightly declared the whole Jewish dispensation, with its types, symbols, sacred persons, and rites and victims to have been fulfilled in Christ and done away forever in Christ, the only Priest and Sacrifice, then we must believe that all the figurative glorious language in the Old 'l'estament with regard to the return of the Jews refers to their spiritual return to Christ, their Savior, and their glorious reception by faith into the great company of Christ's disciples, who constitute the Christian Church.
The Apostle Paul says of Israel's future that" when the fulness of the Gentiles shall have come in, then all Israel shall be saved." Surely this is a more glorious future than a deportation to the narrow confines of Palestine, to set up again the old scaffolding of sacrifices and burnt offer- iugs which was torn down forever when the veio! of the temple was rent as Christ our Saviour died on the Cross. Before the times of .Tesus of Naza- reth Judaism led to Christ j since His advent, it leads away from Christ.
God in His providence lias made very clear the duty of the Church of Christ with regard to the Jews. He is locating them in the centers of Christian light and liberty, and preparing the way for their evangelization. Judaism in England and America is undergoing a process of liberalization, if not of disintegration. The traditions of the Talmud cannot stand against the light and education of the nineteenth century.
The Jews here are our fellow-citizens, neighbors, and friends. Many of them are men of true nobility of character. They admit the beanty of the character of Jesus of Nazareth, and need only the enlightening power of the Holy Spirit to accept Him as their Messiah.
Our duty to them is plaiu. 'Ye shonld labor to win them to Christ. We should train our young ministers and evangeli"ts to familiarity with the Messianic prophecies, that they may meet the sincere difficulties of the Jews as well as the specious objections of the caviller. How many among our Christian workers can meet the candid objections of an educated Jew to our Messianic interpretations of Isaiah, Daniel, and Zechariah!
We have sUrI'endered too much the work among Jews to special laborers converted from the Jews themselves. All honor to such men as Hermann Warsawiack and Jacob Freshman and others! May the Lord bless them more and more. They are peculiarly fitted for their work, but let us not leave them to bear the burden alone.
The great fnture ingathering of the Jewish people to Christ will no donbt be on this continent. God is bringing them here in multitudes, and laying the burden of their salvation upon the heart of the Church of Christ.
There is little profit to be derived from counting the few scores of forlorn Jews who find their way to Palestine, to be fed on charity and treated as lionized paupers.
It is far more scriptural, more in the spirit of the New Testament, and more Christ-like to give the Gospel to the hundreds of thousands of Jews in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Cincinnati, and aU our smaller cities. They are not far from the kingdom of God. Some of them are noble examples of liberality and benevolence. Those two eminent Jews, the Hon. Messrs. Strauss and Hirsch, who successively filled
THE BEGINNINGS OF THE EDUCATION OF WOMAN IN SYRU
the post of United States Minister to Constantinople, did mQre to promote American interests and protect American missions in Turkey than many of their Christian predecessors had done.
We may say, in couclusion, that it is violently improbable that the lost ten tribes, now lost to history for about twenty-six hundred years and hopelessly intermingled and intermarried among the nations of the world, are to come forth a distinct people and prove their tribal pedigrees in order to obtain their tribal allotment of territory as described in Ezekiel 47.
The Prophet Ezekiel, himself a priest, described the future glories of the Gospel age in priestly language and in terms with which he was familiar; but his meaning was spiritual, full of Christ and the Gospel in its coming glory and triumph.
Let us draw from it inspiration, hope, and courage. All Israel shall be saved. The Lord hasten it in His own blessed time and way!
THE BEGINNINGS OF THE EDUCATION OF WOMAN IN SYRIA. * BY REV. T. LAURIE.
The mere record of what was done by the ladies of tl1e Syrian Mission could no more convey a correct idea of the work than mere measurements of distance and description of the surface of the country could describe the obstacles encountered by an army in rescuing that country from the power of the oppressor. Before we can get a true conception of the work of woman's deliverance we must understand that from which she was delivered.
Burying their daughters alive was so common among the Arabs, that it is said in the Koran (Sura LXXXI.), "When the girl bur·ied alive shall be asked for what sin she was slain," etc., and an ancient provarb says, " To send women before to the other world is a benefit; The best son·in·law is the grave."
One shudders to think of the social condition that furnished a reason for such an utterance. The only occasion on which Othman is said to have shed a tear was when the daughter whom he was burying alive reached up her little hand to wipe the dry dust of her grave from her father's beard.
The Koran says (Sura IV., line 38), " Virtuous women are obedient, but chide those for whose refractoriness ye have cause to fear-and scourge them." How literally this instruction is carried out in Moslem * The recent death of Mrs. RahiI Bistany in Beirflt led to the pnblication of an interesting episode in her early life in the MiSsWnaTY Herald for May, 1894, and revived interest in the memories of those days led on to the preparation of the present narrative. CO[lntries few in this land can understand. Women are not seldom killed in this way, and none take notice of the crime. Dr. H. H. Jessup tells us: "A Moslem neighbor of mine once beat one of his wives to death. I heard her screams day after day, till one night I heard a dreadful shriek, and blow after blow falling on her tortured body. I could hear the brute cnrsing her as he struck. The Moslem police wonld not interfere, and I could not enter the honse. Next day there was a fnneral there, and the dead body was bnried like a dog. 'When you ask tJJC reason of a scream in the Moslem quarter of the city, you will be told, with a shrug of the shoulder, ' Only some one beating his wife.' "
How far the influence of this Moslem practice is felt among the CIJri3tian sects may be inferred from the following incident: A missionary in Eastern Turkey noticed that no women came to church, and urged the men to persuade them to attend. Next Sabbath they were all there as meek as lambs. "Vhy, how did yon induce so many to come?" "Oh, we beat them till they promised to come I"~ Verily evil commnnications corrupt good manners.
In 1862 Daood Pasha, the Christian governor secured for Lebanon by Europeau intervention, arrested, convicted, and hnng a Druze who murdered a girl of his own village, supposing that the Pasha would never call in qnestion such a time-honored custom, and the women of all sects began to feel that, after all, they had some right to life which the other sex was bound to respect-a right, however, not yet fully guaranteed in Turkey.
The same year a vile dervish, under preteuce of casting out a devil, tied a cord round the feet of an insane woman and drew her up to the ceiling head downward, thrust a red-hot iron iuto her eye, and cauterized her body almost from head to foot, then placing a gallon of pitch under her head, bnrned her to charcoal. The government took no notice of the fact, save that the official journal in Beirut advised the public not to patronize the impostor!
Some soldiers attempted to outrage a woman from Ain Kesoor who was employed to carry water to men at work on the road. Mr. Calhoun's cook reported the case to the Turkish officer, and was beaten with a club for his pains. The colonel at Abeih, however, ordered the soldiers to be beaten with forty stripes, but when Colonel Frazer, the British Commissioner, was authorized, with Omer Pasha, to look into the case, two of the soldiers were shot, aUlI both Drnzes and Moslems began to realize that woman's life and honor had a value that could be appreciated. This was in 1861.
At an anniversary of the Girls' Seminary in BeirUt, Rev. John "Vortabet, Professor of Anatomy and Physiology in the Syrian Protestant College, told the audience of a man near Gaza who yoked together his wife' and his ass to plough his field, and contrasted the public sentiment that tolerated such things with the assembly of educated women before him.
Marriage ceremonies reveal much of the condition of woman. In Syria no bride was ever asked if she would marry the bridegroom. She was simply pronounced to be his wife. Indeed. often she was not consulted at all, but simply required to marry so-and· so. If he pleased her, very well; if not, it was all the same.
In 1863 Dr. H. lI. Jessup was sent for to marry two Protestant couples at lImns. The brides could not be allowed to go to him to get the needful directions for the ceremony, so their male relatives had to go with him to their homes. Even so it required much diplomacy to induce the bride to come in from the next room veiled and attended by several women.
Said one: "I hear that you ask the girl if she is willing to take this man to be her husband g" "Certainly we do." "Vell, I know one woman who would have said no had they given her the opportunity." The surprise of the women that the bride should have the right to say yes or no was most amazing. That one thing gave them new ideas of the dignity of woman under the Gospel.
What was even more contrary to their ideas of propriety, they had heard that the brides were to walk home from church with their husbands, and certain young men planned to mob them if they did so, but ample preparations were made to meet them. Evening brought with it such a crowd as could hardly squeeze into the open court of the mission house.' Men, women, and children were laughing, screaming, and discussing the strange innovations. A way was made throngh the crowd for the brides and their attendants. The parties were arranged before the pulpit, and then the missionaries had to wait till a tolerable stillness had been secured, for in Oriental churches silence and good order are almost unknown. The address to the married pairs called forth more than Methodist responses : "That is true;" "That, is news here;" "Mashallah;" and a woman cried out, "Praise to God, women are something after all. " A Moslem Effendi, who had listened to it all, said: "That is the most sensible way of getting married I ever heard of." The missionaries escorted each couple separately to their homes, and the rioters, seeing they conld not reach their victims without first making the acquaintance of stout missionary canes, were content to let them alone.
Nofel Effendi, an intelligent Syrian Protestant, excuses husband and wife not walking together in this way: "You can walk with your wife in the street, because, being unveiled, men know that she is your wife, bnt ours are so veiled and swathed that nobody could tell whether she belonged to me or to another man, and that is rather an awkward predicament."
Vhen Enropean women walk unveiled through the Moslem quarters <1f Syrian cities it is well for them that they do not understand Arabic. When French ladies first resided in Tripoli, the governor could suppress the insults offered to them in the streets only by the free use of the bastinado.
Arabs are noted for their ceremonious politeness, but a Moslem, empIDyed to teach Arabic grammar to a missionary, when the wife of his pupil had occasion to pass through the room, spat toward her with a look of ineffable contempt, his feeling of scorn for a woman overcoming every instinct of politeness.
In Syria the mother weeps when told that she has borne a daughter, and a proverb in Kesrawan says: "The threshold weeps forty days when a girl is born." Dr. Jessup knew a grandmother in Tripoli who would not kiss her granddaughter for six months after birth. Our American consul at Tripoli was so annoyed hy'the women coming to condole with his wife on the birth of another daughter, that he ordered the American flag to be unfurled as a token of his joy.
So the entire community set itself against the education of woman. The Moslem bitterly opposed it as contrary to all his ideas of woman, and his opposition influenced the other sects. Then the native Christians had other reasons of their own, for though they could not deny the correct lives of Protestants, they held that they were without religion, and were not willing therefore to place their daughters under their control. Some thought that if a woman could write, she would write improper letters to the other sex; others feared that she would write incantations to bewitch or even take away the life of her husband-ideas that only proclaimed the failure of their methods of training and the lack of love in their own homes.
Our missionary ladies, however, had gone to Syria to do good, and were not disposed to despair of success in anything that would advance the kingdom of God. Even though some objected, ' , We are only girls," as though that settled the question of their ability to learn, they confidently expected God would remove every obstacle and answer every objection in His own way. At first establishing a seminary, or even a school, was impossible, and so Mrs. Goodell and Mrs. Bird were content to gather girls and women in their houses for an hour or two each day, and teach them what they could. This was in 1825, but they accomplished so little, that in 1833 the missionaries wrote: "The education of woman is not. merely neglected, but discouraged and opposed. Indeed, as yet it is nearly untried."
On the arrival of Mrs. S. L. Smith, in January, 1834, she found Mrs. W. M. Thomson teaching six or eight girls, who met every afternoon at her room in Beirilt, and Mrs. Dodge conducted a school for Druze girls at Aaleih, a village in Lebanon, 2300 feet above the sea. One morning not a girl appeared, for the villagers had heard that the English fleet was coming up the mountain to Aaleih to carry off all the girls to England ! In 1837 Mrs. Whiting and Miss Tilden had a school for lfoslem girls in Jerusalem, and Mrs. Whiting had several native girls in her own family.
Mrs. Smith soon enlarged the little school for girls, and with help, principally from Mrs. Alexander Tod, nee Gliddon, of Alexandria, built, in 1835, a school-house for it on the mission premises. In 1836 she had as many as forty pupils. From the most promising of these she selected Rahil Ata, and with the consent of her parents took her into her own home to get her away from evil example and be continuously under the influence of a well-ordered Christian home. There could not have been found a better "house mother" or a more promising subject for the experiment.
A word here about this method of working. In some respects it was much bctter than a seminary could have been at that time. When God would bring back a world from idolatry, He began with the father of a family, who He knew" would command his children, and his household after him, and they would keep the way of the Lord." This method brought each young lady into personal relations with her instructor; so Miss Fisk, in Persia, found not only a seminary needful, but one in which the pupils would be under her personal supervision in all things all the while. They were not only taught, but led in every path of righteousness j counsels were given that conld not be imparted in the 8chool-room, and moulded the whole character in every department of daily life. I had almost said that day and night the pnpils were brought in oontact with the highest order of piety and intelligence. Very few children in our own land are so favored. Manners and personal habits were sedulously cared for j their views of life were shaped after the highest ideals, in sharpest contrast to the low frivolity round about them.
Besides the constant influence of a truly religious home, it was no small privilege to meet representatives of ollr best religious families, who visited the missionary on entering or leaving the Holy Land. Pastors of churches, professors in colleges, the cream of both our city and our country life, all left an influence for good on these Syrian maidens.
While their character was moulded under such favorable circumstances, the intellect was not neglected. Mathematics cultivated the reasoning powers j grammar taught them how to express what they knew j geography and history gave them correct views of the world j botany opened up new beauties in flowers, and astronomy unfolded the fulness of the heavens. The library, atlases, missionary and astronomical maps, globes, an orrery, chemical, galvanic, and electric apparatus, made their knowledge more exact and serviceable. Their study of English opened up to them the treasures of English literature, while their native Arabic was not overlooked. Instruction in physiology and hygiene also corrected the errors that had grown strong during the ages.
Above all else, the Word of God held the place of honor. Every morning it occupied the first hour of school. It was explained at family prayer in the evening, when some of the neighbors were usually present, and the Catechism furnished a fitting casket for the treasures of the Word.
They knew the religious condition of the world better than most of the pupils in our academies at home, and could tell when and how the Gospel was introduced where it is known. Every alternate Sabbath evening was devoted to a conference on this subject, to which all, even the youngest, bronght the facts which they had learned. Mrs. De Forest tells of one little girl-not one of the bright ones either-who had studied out the errors of her own church, and could tell at what period each of them had its origin. One day when it priest was telling her mother how sin entered the world, she gave Bible and Catechism on the subject, till the priest angrily demanded, " What right have you to know anything about it 1" Nor must we forget their sweet singing of hymns, for there is in Arabic both a church and Sunday-school hymn-book, and thcre are organs and pianos to accompany the singing.
With all this special care was taken not to get the young ladies out of sympathy with their own people, except in things which shonld not be tolerated. Thus, though their food and clothing conformed to the customs of the country, they did not wear the same clothing night and day, nor were calves and donkeys counted indispensable inmates of their chambers. In all things they were taught to observe the laws of health and propriety.
One lady, whenever her protegee showed symptoms of feeling above her people, used to bring out the old faded dress she wore when she first came to the house, as an object-lesson, that for all which she had received more than others she was indebted to God, owing Him so much more love and service. Noblesse oblige.
This general account of methods of education applies more especially to the family of Dr. and Mrs. De Forest, with whom the writer was best acquainted, but it also applies more or less perfectly to other families engaged in the same work. Mrs. Beadle had taken Khazma Vitwat, a Druze girl, into her home, and Mrs. Keyes had Lulu, from Wady Shahrur. When the writer reached Bcirl1t, December, 1844, Rahil had been married to Butrus Bistany, and had a house of her own. Lulu and Khazma were with Dr. De Forest, and Salome and Melita Karabed, Hannah W01'- tabet, and Saadeh and Rufka (Rebecca) Gregory were with Mrs. Whiting in Abeih. Dr. De Forest afterward had more, at one time fifteen and at another eighteen. Dr. Jessup says of him: "The good wrought by that sainted man in Syria will never be fully known in this world. The lovely Christian families whose mothers were trained by him and his wife will be his monuments in future generations. It is a common remark in Syria that· his pupils have turned out well." Of Mrs. De Forest he says: " Her name is embalmed with that of her sainted husband in the memory of the Christian families of Syria. The list of their pupils is to a great extent the list of the leading women who have tanght or engaged in other evangelical work in Syria."
Mrs. S. L. Smith had written, February 18th, 1835: "With the exception of the three or four native converts, we know not one pious teacher, one judicious parent, one family regulated by the love of God, or one tradesman actuated by the fear of God-no, not even one." It is a terrible statement, and tells how much Syria owes to those who have rendered such a cry out of the depths henceforth impossible. The instruc- tion of these girls was toilsome, their moral training was eveu more diffi- cult, and then as grace rendered them more attractive than the frivolous ones around them in a Moslem land, new dangers arose. Also in a land where each sect believed its own rites the only pasRport to heaven, it is not strange if their relatives felt uneasy at their being trained outside their own church.
The Missionary Herald for 1894, pp. 119-124, gives a vivid picture of the perils encountered by Rahil in 1843 from relatives, who held that sin could be forgiven through priestly absolution.
Take another example. Dr. Jessup says: "If any doubt the utility of labors for Arab women, let him first visit the disorderly aud cheerless homes of the common villager, and then enter the tidy, well-ordered home of Mr. Araman, the husband of Lulu, and in the morning listen to the voice of praise and communiou with God at family prayer. Instead of the father eating gloomily alone, mother and children eating what he is pleased to leave them, he would see the whole family seated together at the table, a blessing asked, and everything conducted with decorum.
Then father and daughter go to give their morning lessons at the semi- nary, and the son sets out for his recitation at college." • That same Lulu, when with Mrs. Keyes, went home to attend the wedding of a cousin, and at night, when her brothers thought her asleep, she heard them laying their plans to force her to the confessional and the mass, and then be married to a villager whom they had selected to be her husband. She gave no hint of being awake, but next day adroitly shunned the priest and came back with a native helper, her brothers having drank too much wine to be able to prevent it. Then, when they heard that Mrs. Keyes was returning to America, and Lulu was 'with Dr. Thomson till the De Forests came back from Jerusalem, they went down by night with an armed company of mountaineers to take her by force, and in this also were unsuccessful. Still they did not abaudon their purpose. Years after, when Luln had joiued the mission church and was betrothed to Mr. Araman, they came up to the summer home of Dr. De Forest, and heaped all manner of abuse on her for what thq called her apostasy and betrothal to a Protestant. More than that, they plotted to seize and carry her off by force when the family should go back to Beirut in the autumn.
Happily the doctor heard of their plan, and took: her down at midnight by another road than that where they intended to waylay her, and so she escaped their hands.
Another case also brings out the care God has for orphans entrusted to His hands. Saadeh and Rufka Gregory had a grandmother whose reputation was none of the best, and when the mother died she came on to Beirut for the children. She was allowed to visit them, and one day she stealthily placed Saadeh in a native boat (skukktoor) to be taken to Jaffa. The poor child, then only six years old, cried bitterly when she found that grandma was not with her, as she had promised, but God moved an Armenian on board, who knew her father, to comfort her, and on their arrival at Jaffa to inform the American consul about the case, who rescued her and sent her to Mr. Whiting at Jerusalem. Not long after Mr. 'Whiting was surprised, on returning from.a call, to find the grandmother and Rufka at his house. She had quarrelled with her associates, and come to him for refuge; so both the orphans were reunited in a Christian home.
Years after the old woman, who had never given up her plotting to get the young ladies into her power for her own purposes, induced a blind brother to claim possession of them as their proper guardian. She had also in some way got into the good graces of the wife of a prominent representative of England in Syria, and as she knew her English friend had some influence with the Grand Vizier at Constantinople, it was so managed among them all that a Turkish man-of-war was being sent to seize the young ladies. Providentially our minister then at the Sublime Porte was both fearless and energetic, and had so much to say about another bombardment of Beirtlt by American guns, that the whole matter was allowed to drop very quietly. Miss Rufka .Gregory was teacher in the seminary for several years while Mr. Araman was principal. This whole narrative shows that whatever means the God of this world may employ against the missionary work, He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh, for there is One who has power over all flesh to give eternal life to as many as are given Him. Blessed are all they that put their trust in Him. These things may make interesting readiNg for us, but at the time they caused our missionary ladies many anxious hours and sleepless nights.
Syria was an excellent field in which to try this experiment of woman's education, it is so cosmopolitan in the extent of its influence. Melita assisted the missionary ladies at Aleppo. Salome taught school in Mosul, on the banks of the Tigris. Hannah Wortabet taught in Egypt. Saadeh, after teaching in a United Presbyterian school in Egypt, died a member of Dr. John Hall's church in New York City. Her sister Rufka also taught in Egypt as well as in Beirtlt, and is 'now in Melbourne, Australia, or was the last time she was heard from, for she married a Scotchman, and after his death in Melbourne resumed her former occupation. A son of a Syrian missionary met a son of Hahil at the Columbian Fair at Chicago; so that good seed sown in BeirUt bears fruit over all the world.
Some will doubtless ask, How many of these young ladies became true disciples ~ Mrs. De Fot'est, who returned home with her husband in 1854, mentions thirteen who had joined the church before that time.
The husband of Khazma failed in business, so that the family depended on her needle for its daily bread. After that she was bedridden for years, but never murmured. Her trusting submission was so manifestly from the Lord that it led a number to prove for themselves the blessedness of faith in Jesus. A girl who had lived with her in more prosperous days insisted
THE DRUSES
on coming back to work in the family, and care for her gratuitously till she died. That must have been the true grace of God in both of them that yielded fruit like that. After her death young ladies in Lakewood, N. J., carried one of her daughters through the seminary in Beirut.
An American lady travelling in Syria wrote to Mrs. De Forest of one of her pupils, Miriam, daughter of Khalid, of Bhamdun, and wife of Naoom (Nahum) Tahit, of BeirUt, as follows: " We went to see her at the hospital, where she will have an internal tumor removed to-morrow. She spoke very sweetly of you. She said: , Those were delightful days when she taught me of Jesus. What could I now do without Him ~ He is my Saviour, aud I am in His hands. He has gone to prepare a hom~ for me, and I leave all with Him. I am not afraid, but without Him I should be in terror all the while.' Her calm face and quiet tones witnessed to the truth of what she said. She died soon after leaving the operating-table. ,. .
Dr. H. H. Jessup says of Rahil: "I was with her almost daily for weeks before she died. Her faith and patience' were beautiful.' The aroma of Christian peace filled her chamber, and all who came to see her were comforted and blessed. The devotion of her children was lovely, and we could only bless God for such a Christian home and such testi- mony to the power and grace of our blessed Lord."
The writer regrets that he has no details concerning others who have entered into rest, btit only a general testimony to their faith and patience.
It is not the design of this paper to give more than the beginnings of that education of woman in Syria that now bears such abundant fruits.
The present large building was provided for the seminary in 1867, three years before the A. .B. C. F. M. retired from Syria. The timber used in its construction was brought from Maine; the doors and windows were made in Lowell, under the direction of Dr. Cyrus Hamlin; the tiles came from Marseilles, the iron bedsteads from Birmingham, and the pave- ments partly from Italy and partly from Lebanon. A good beginning had been made toward making the institution self-supporting; $3220 was paid for tuition that year, counting its value on a gold basis. The num- ber in attendance was 76, of whom 57 were boarding pupils, and the sem- inary was exceedingly popular.
THE DRUSES.* BY A. H. MCKINNEY, PH.D.
In a district of Northern Syria, comprising the whole of the southern range of Mt. Lebanon and the western slope of Anti-Lebanon, is to be • A despatch from Beirflt. dated October 18th, says that there is mnch excitement iu Lebanon, owing to conflicts between the Druses and Mutualis. A number on both sides have been killed. The Mutualis, pleading that it is impossible for them to obtain justice from the TlllkiBh offiCials, found a peculiar people. Independent, proud, brave, handsome, industrious, hospitable, self-possessed, educated, and very mysterious, they form a unique branch of the human family. In addition to the districts named above, they occupy in whole or in part many of the adjacent towns and villages. Their numbers have been estimated all the way from fifty thousand to over one hundred thousand souls.
An old tradition derived their name from the Count of Dreux, and made them descendants of a band of Crusaders who had been left in Lebanon. Later investigations have shown that this tradition is pure fic- tion. The name is derived from Darazi, * a Persian adventurer, who first taught the peculiar tenets of the Druses. These people themselves hate the name of Darazi, and deny the derivation, claiming that their name comes from the Arabic darisa (those who read), or from durs (the clever one). These seem to be fanciful derivations, and it is reserved for the future philologist to determine the exact etymology of the word.
Among other things for which the Druses are remarkable is the mixed character of their ancestry. By many ethnologists they are supposed to have sprung originally from the Cuthites (Kurds), who were brought into Samaria by Esarhaddon to repeople the strongholds, which had been depopulated during the captivity of Israel. In 686 A.D. Constantine IV. brought in the Mardi, a warlike people originally from Persia, for the purpose of repelling the Mohammedan invaders. At different times the Arabs swept through the mountains and left their impress on the people, giving to the Druse his language, which is Arabic. Thus the Druses of to-day are the outgrowth of that conglomeration which had been formed by the eleventh century A.D. It still remains, however, for the ethnologist to determine whether these strange people originally were Semites,. Indo- Teutonics, or, as their own tradition indicates, Chinese. Haskett Smith, who lived among the Druses for many years, is satisfied that they are the direct descendants of the subjects of Hiram, King of Tyre, who assisted Solomon in building the temple.
Their religion came from Hakem Bemrillah of Egypt, who was the sixth Fatimite caliph. He is generally considered to have been insane, and is known as the Nero of Africa. During the twenty-five years of his reign he had eighteen thousand men put to death, and thousands of Christian churches and monasteries destroyed. He was flattered by Darazi into proclaiming himself a representative of God. In Cairo, in the year 1029 A.D., he publicly declared himself to be the incarnation of God. This announcement at first met with violent opposition, and Darazi was obliged to flee for his life. A quieter and more crafty method of propagandism met with suc- have assembled to the nnmber of 4000 men, all armed, in the vicinity of Marghilonm, to march against the Druses. The latter have appealed for aid from their co-religionists at Hanran, who are preparing to send 8000 men to their assistance. The Van of Damascus has thus far prevented the Hauranltes from leaving. The Van of Beidt has sent cavalry to prevent armed men from entering the vilayet.
* MohllllUlled Ibn lsm~il Dnrnzi (or Darazl). cess, and many of the ignorant mountaineers became converts. A Persian mystic, named Hamze, became nrst the disciple, and finally the primeminister of Hakem. With great shrewdness and adroitness he added to the new religion many attractive features; and it is he that is enshrined in the heart of the modern Druse as the founder of his faith.
Five years ago the writer listened to a lecture by a Syrian, a native of lft. Lebanon, who called himself a "Christian Druse," * and who was, supposed to tell something about his people and their religion. The lecture was chiefly remarkable for what it did not tell about the Druse religion. A subsequent conversation with the lecturer failed to elicit anything definite about his faith. Thi3 mysteriousness concerning his belief on the part of the Druse was in keeping with the whole trend of his life. Mystery overshadows everything connected with the Druses. So accus- tomed are they to lie, that a missionary t living among them declares that when an Englishman tells them that there are no Druses in England, they suspect him of being one. Instead of feeling offended at what they consider his deceit, they honor him for it. So esoteric are they, that they do not hesitate to put to death anyone who reveals their secrets, or anyone found in possession of their sacred books.
How, then, do we know anything of their religion ~ Copies of their manuscripts have been found by travelers and explorers, and are in public libraries in different parts of Europe. But the hostile army has given us more than the peaceful traveler has been able to secure. In 1838, during an invasion of Ibrahim Pasha, the sacred books of the Druses were captured, and from them we are able to learn something of their teachings. But even with these books in his hands, the theologian can no more give a clear statement of their religious truths and practices than can the ethnologist speak decisively concerning their origin.
Their doctrines are derived from the Pentateuch, the Gospel, the Koran, and the Sufi Allegories. Intermingled with selections from all these sources are traces of Persian dualism and Indian transmigration. Is it strange that from such diverse sources one of the most remarkable doctrinal systems! that the world has ever known should have been developed 1 The following are their chief doctrines : 1. Monotheism.-The Druses, who rival the Mohammedans in their declaration of the Unity of God, call themselves Muwahhidun, or Unitarians. They believe in one self-existent, eternal God, without parts or attributes, "indefinahle, incomprehensible, ineffable, and passionless." § Belief in this one God is essential to salvation. "Book of Testimonies to the Mysteries of the Unity" is the title of one of their sacred books, composed by Hamze.
* Smith challenges the missionaries to produce a converted Druse.
t The Rev. William Ewing. :I: Milman characterizes the Druse system as "one of the mOlt extraordinary religious aljerrationa which ever extensively affected the mind of man."
i Encyclop81dia Britannica. II. Inferior Beings.-Like the Zoroastrians, the Druses have a number of created beings inferior to God and yet much superior to man. Universal Intelligence, the highest of these beings, alone enjoys communion with God. Next to him are four archangels, who help to support the throne of God. Then comes spiritual agents of various ranks. While many claim that the dualism of spiritual beings found in the Zoroastrian system is not paralleled, Carnarvon* holds that Iblis corresponds to Ahriman, and that the moral conflict goes on between him and Hakem. Re. membering that Hamze was a Persian, it is but natural to find that the dualism of the Zoroastrians should have beeu adopted in whole or in part.
III. Incarnations.-As manifestations of His love to mankind, there have been ten incarnations of God, of which the Elijah of the Old Testament was the fourth and Hakem was the tenth and final one. The latter appeared and held open the door of mercy for twenty-six years, and it was then closed forever, so that there is now no hope for his rejectors. In addition to these incarnations, God has manifested Himl'Jelf in the person of others. Hence Jesus and Mohammed are reverenced as prophets, as are also such teachers as Abraham, Moses, Pythagoras, Plato, Darazi, and many others, who are not regarded as incarnations of God.
IV. The Coming One.-Hakem will come again and conquer the world, tramping under foot those who rejected him and subduing those who oppose him. Whether this doctrine is connected with the Christian's belief in the second coming of Christ, or with the Parsee's hope of the coming of Sosiosh, it is difficult to determine.
V. Souls are individual, but the number never varies. They were all created together, and as soon as a Druse dies his soul enters another body.
VI. Transmigration.-There is a want of agreement among scholars as to just how far this doctrine is believed in. Some claim that the Druses hold that the souls of the virtuous are to pass into the bodies of Chinese Druses, and that souls of the wicked enter the bodies of animals, such as camels or even dogs. Others claim that there is no belief in transmigration into animals. Our most reliable information on this, as well as on all other subjects connected with the Druses, comes from those who within recent years have lived among these interesting people. Sutlh investigators agree in declaring that they believe that after a life of holiness t:'he soul will enter into an angel or other heavenly being, and that a life of wickedness leads to transmigration into an animal, corresponding in nature to the life led by the iudividual. (For example, the soul of a ferocious Druse will enter some sch animal as the tiger.) A missionary testifies: t " At the very moment of his mother's death a calf was born in the herd of a Druse, and he firmly believed that the soul Qf his mother dwelt in that calf. "
VII. Fatalism.-According to Druse theology, not only is God per- * See .. Recollections of the Drnses,.. by the Earl of Carnarvon.
t The Rev. William Ewilli' in The Sunday·School Times, February 4,1893. sona], but His providential government extends to the most minute details of life. Not only is He the great first cause, but all secondary causes are ruled out. Believing that whatever happens is the result of God's immediate action, the Druses are, in theory at least, extreme fatalists. And with some of them it is more than theory, as may be proven by some of their practices. Many of them, acting from motives different from those which influence the faith-enrist of to-day, refuse, when ill, to take medicine, on the ground that to do so would be to interfere with God's work. On the other hand, the good effects of this theory are evidenced in the calmness with which many Druses bear what to others would be bitter affliction. At such times they say, " Hamdillah! Praise be to God! It is the Lord's doing, and we are thankful." "
VIII. The Seven Points of Islam are rejected, and the following are substituted for them : 1. Veracity (only to one another). 2. Mutual protection and resistance. 3. Renunciation of all other religions. 4. Profession of the unity of Hakem as God. 5. Contentment with the works of God. 6. Submission to the will of God. 7. Separation from those in error and from demons. The Druses are divided religiously into two classes, the Akals (Arabic Aki, intelligence) and the Djahils (ignorant). Only the former are initiated into the Druse mysteries, and they are very strict as to religious observances and personal conduct. The latter are uninitiated, and free from religious restrictions. While the Druses must speak the truth to their fellow-religionists, they need not do so to outsiders. Hence their word counts for nothing. All their doctrines are kept secret; they condemn proselyting, and they make outward profession of the dominant religion. Hence they pray with the Mohammedan, or ~prinkle themselves with the holy water of the Maronite. They are Christian to-day and Mohammedan to-morrow should circumstances demand the change. Few esoteric religions have escaped the charge of hiding immoralities under the cloak of religion. Even the early Christians met such charges. Is it any wonder, then, that the vilest practices have been at.tributed to the Drnses? "Habitually marrying their own daughters," " carrying on licentions orgies with promiscuous intercourse in the name of religion," " worshiping the calf," " worshiping the devil," are samples of the accusations which had been brought against them. Those t who have had the best opportunities for knowing the truth have characterized such charges as utterly false.
Some of the practices of the Druses are as strange as their doctrines, while others are worthy of imitation.
* See Haskett Smith in Blackwood's Magazine, vol. 148, p. 700.
t Clmrchlll, Carnarvon, et al. Prayer in the sense of supplication is unknown among them, because their fatalism makes it impossible for God to change His will; and therefore they argue: " Why ask Him for anything? If He is to give it, He will give it."
Fasting is unknown. Almsgivmg is distinctly discouraged j their theory being that if they act with brotherly love toward one another there will be no necessity for charity in the ordinary sense of that term. The Druses resemble the Parsees in that it is said that there are no beggars among them. Polygamy is unheard of. They are strict monogamists. The grave defect in their marriage laws is in reference to divorce. Here the husband has absolute power. He has but to say, "Leave my house, you are no longer my wife," and the moment that the wife crosses the threshold the marriage relation terminates, and can never be resumed by the two who are thus divorced. Illegitimacy is exceedingly rare. The Druse maiden is guarded with care, and great emphasis is plaeed on strict morality. No one has yet seen a male and a female Druse dancing together. Attention is paid to education. Unlike many of their Syrian sister3, the women can read and write. They are said to be admitted to the secret conclaves of the Druses, and even to the priesthood. The traditions of these people are many and curious. The most remarkable is the one that vaguely conneets them with the Chinese. Scholars are puzzled by, and unable to account for, their knowledge of the Chinese. Among their traditions of Jesus Christ may be mentioned the one concerning His crucifixion. They hold " that a second Jesus Christ, the * manifestation of the Divine, passed scathless from the world."
As is to be expected, the influence of these people amounts to almost nothing. But this is not the worst result of their esoteric teachings and practices. They are so shut up within themselves that they have been but little influenced by the outside world. Hence Christian missionaries have made almost no impression upon them. In both these respects the Druse and the Parsee stand side by side.
But what of the future? Will the religion of the Druse ever touch men's hearts as does the religion of Jesus? No. For the former says: " The door is shut; none can enter in, and none can pass out," while the invitation of the latter, offered to every sin-sick, heart-sore son and daughter of Adam is: "Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."
* Ewing.
1895·1 EDUCATIONAL MISSION WORK IN EGYPT
EDUCATIONAL MISSION WORK IN EGYPT.* BY REV. H. W. HOGG, ASSIOUT, EGYPT.
Egypt, as an old center of Christianity and a land subjected to a growing European influence, must differ from many scenes of missionary labor. Even what applies to one part of Egypt may not apply in the same degree to anyother, the Upper country being, e.g., much more simple and primiti"e than the Lower. As the writer's experience of edncational mission work has been gained in the former, while the country wiII be dealt with here as a whole, it wiII necessarily by m'I seen froID Upper Egypt.
The people of Egypt all speak one language-Arabic-the native Egyptian language being just as absolutely dead in its Christian Coptic stage as in its pagan hieroglyphic. The educational advantage of uniformity of language, however, is more than counterbalanced by diversity of religion. No really national system of education exists. The Mohammedan mosques teach boys to recite the Koran, and a certain number of men receive a very thorough if primitive training in Arabic studies at the great Mohammedan school in Cairo. Many Coptic boys are taught to recite the Psalms in Arabic, and Coptic priests are taught to chant the church service in Coptic. The government has for years been trying to develop an educational system OR a Mohammedan basis; latterly, with the help of English inspection and to some extent under English direction, a number of schools have been organized in the more important centers of population. Especially in Lower Egypt there are many schools .supported by foreigners- French schools, Italian schools, German schools, English schools, Scotch schools, monks' schools, nuns' schools, secular schools-many of the pupils being European ; in so~e of them a good many Egyptian. Of these schools, however, I have no direct personal knowledge, and it will therefore be more satisfactory not to include them in our survey.t To show that the problems and principles of educational missions in Egypt may be fairly studied in connection with the American schools, it is enough to say that at present there are, in round numbers, 120 schools, 20 of them for girls alone; 8000 pupils, 500 being Jews, etc. ; 1500 Mohammedans, 4500 Copts, and 1500 Protestants; £3000 received in school fees; the total cost being £5000.
All this has grown out of the work begun by the American missiona- * The last annual report of the Egyptian Mission of the United Presbyterian Chnrch of America, which has just reached the writer, contains an excellant account of educational work in Egypt from the missionary point of view by the Rev. J. R. Alexander, D.D.• the man who knows most about it. A copy of this report could donbtless be had by anyone by applying to Rev. W. W. Barr, D.D., 1425 Christian Street, Philadelphia, Pa.
t In what follows, therefore, what is Bald mnst be taken as referring to the work originated by the American Mission. ries in 1854, forty-one years ago. As this work includes most of the departments of missionary labor, we must begin by answering the question: 1. To what extent has the educational side been developed? The 119 schools (the exact number) represent a complete system, embracing 107 that are elementary schools, situated chiefly in villages; and 12 others-namely, 10 high schools, 1 college, and 1 theological school. The last two are for boys and young men alone. Seven of the high schools are for girls alone, and of the 107 elementary schools, 13. Of the remaining 94, 44 have also girls in attendance-a remarkable fact when we remember the treatment of girls in the East, and encouraging in view of the difficulty of procuring female teachers. Thus, while there are 20 schools for girls alone, there are 64 out of 119 where girls attend. The elementary schools give instruction in Bible knowledge, reading and writing Arabic, simple arithmetic, usually a little English, singing, sometimes Arabic grammar, and geography of Egypt, and occasionally a little French. The high schools carryon these subjects to a further point, and add some history-Egyptian and general-some mathematics, and more or less natural science. The college teaches these branches yet more fully, paying great attention to English-many of the subjects being taught through the medium of the English language ; also giving a very complete course in history-Egyptian and general, sacred, church, and secular-and adding courses in a number of physical sciences, mental science, ethics, political economy, Christian evidences, and other distinctively Christian subjects. Essays and debates are freely used. The theological school provides the ordinary courses in ancient languages, dogmatics, apologetics, exegesis, history, and homiletics. Of the 107 elementary schools, 87 are already absolutely self-supporting. Two of these, one for boys and one for girls, have been entirely supported for many years by two wealthy Egyptian families in Assiout, and are quite equal in grade to some of the high schools. The remaining 20 schools received in all during last year £300 of aid, and it is hoped they will soon be self-supporting. The 12 higher schools are entirely under the control and management of the missionaries, and many of the higher classes are taught by them-an interesting fact being that it is now found possible to have ladies teaching young men in the college. In the 107 primary schools, the teachers are almost without exception young men trained in the college or in one of the higher schools, or youug women from one of the higher girls' schools. Their election and appointment is with the cognizance and largely by the management of missionaries, in the largest number of cases the head of the college ; and there is a certain undefinable control exercised over the school. The interdependence of the college and the elementary schools is such that the teachers of the latter are kept more or less in touch with the former. Pupils are in general not received into the college till they have got all that can be got in their native place. A certain uniformity in text· books is thus maintained, and the young teachers instinctively or purposely try to some extent to copy the methods employed in the higher schools. Still much is purposely or of necessity left to local management. Some leading local man-oftenest a clergyman or other officer in the church-is appointed by the community guardian of the school. He signs tIle agreements with the teacher, and in general conserves the interests of teacher and taught. There is no inspec- tor of schools; but missionaries ana native ministers informally do a good deal of such work, and the semi-annual entrance examinations for admission to· the college are by no means without their use in this respect. 'Gradua- tion at the collego takes place after the annual inspection by a committee appointed for the purpose by the General Missionary Association. Gradua- tion at the theological school is dependent on the decision of a special com- mittee appointed by the Presbytery of the Native Reformed Church, with the advice of the professors. '
2. HOUJ far has this department justified its existence?
Most organizations serve several distinct ends, especially at different stages in their history, and not unfrequently their most important service is not quite that for which they were originally brought into existence.
Most of the wants, however, that educational mission work strives to meet are still to be found in Egypt.
It has proved itself an early available and safe means of bringing new area within the influence of enlightened Christianity. The absolute begin- ning at any new town in Egypt is probably made by a colporteur selling Scriptures and other books, religious and educational, or by some enlight- ened tradesman, followed up, probably, by a visit or visits from a preacher or teacher of some kind. But the first formal step, now almost always originating in the people themselves, is the opening of a school. It is iu this way that most of the 107 primary schools have come into existence, and new ones are coming into existence every few months. The school forms a center. Very soon, if not from the first, religious serviceI'! are conducted in the evening and on Sahbath, often 'by the teacher himself.
In time, if not at the outset, children of all religions come to the school, and they and their guardians are brought informally into connection with enlightened Christian thought and practice. The numbers quoted above show, e.g., what a large Mohammedan constituency is influenced in this way, and it shonld be noted that considerably more than half of these Mohammedans are in the elementary schools. In most cases the forma- tion of the school leads eventually to the organization of a more or less formally constituted church. But long before this is accomplished, the religious teaching and the religious and moral tone of the school, imper- fect though it be, make themselves felt throughout a wide circle. It thus, by the interest it creates, reacts markedly in increasing the circulation of the Scriptures iIi other ways than by teaching the people to read them, and the children to understand somethin~ of them. 'Ve have thus arrived at the second great service rendered by the educational work, it is educating the Christian community. The test here i~ the product. The government departments prefer to employ lads trained in these schools to any others, largely on moral grounds. It is hardly likely that anyone who has been brought enough into contact with Egyptians to know the average Egyptian lad-and with the schools we speak of, to know the average pupil-would be unwiliug to testify that there is a real difference. Dr. Alexander, III the article referred to above, says that these pupils "are found occupying positions of trust and honor in the pastorate, in the schools, in the postal, railway, telegraph, police, justice, finance, and war departments of the civil service. They are found among the pupils and teachers of the gQ,vernment colleges. They are servants, laborers, farmers, mechanics, merchants, clerks, interpreters, theologues, teachers, newspaper correspondents, printers, medical students, doctors, lawyers, journalists, authors." From the girls' schools, where there were last year 2332 girls, " have gone forth 50 teachers and scores and hundreds of wives and mothers who are examples to all in the care and cleanliness of their homes and their persons, in the training of their children, in thilir moral, earnest lives." If, on the one hand, this long list means that the Christian influence of the schools is being felt and appreciated throughout the country, on the other hand, it means that the schools have a serious and responsible task. Perhaps the severest test is the home. The fathers, elders though they be in the Protestant Church, cannot restrain their amazement that the missionary should eat with his wife; the children, when they grow up, have in some cases actually succeeded in bringing into existence a domestic life that we English can with a good conscience call a home. This is of incalculable importance. For the European civilization that is seen reflected in the streets of Egypt drives young men from their " homes. " It is the girls' schools that produce the women that make it possible for the men to think of home as something more than a place to sleep in.
The greatest difficulty in regard to girls' schools is to get teachers, i.e., suitable teachers; and this introduces us to a third important service rendered by the educational department-it is training workers. There are 19 ordained native ministers and 308 other native workers in receipt of salaries paid largely from native sources. There are 33 organized congregations, with elders and deacons. A great deal depends on the qualification of these men and women for their work. In fact, this is becoming more and more every year the main condition of success. One duty after another is being assumed by the native church. The possibility of advance depends on the ability of the native community. through its schools, to provide the right kind of men and women. There is now some splendid faithful work being done by these men and women. They hold the key to the situation. But there is also an army of unofficial workers to be trained, the living members of the Church, the leaders of society, the supporters of reform. Rich men need to learn that they may be Christian. :Men of all grades in the social scale need to know that the best intellect and power and social position in the world can be beautified and perfected by being made conformable to the spirit of Christ.
3. What have been found to be the most serious difficulties? The first difficulty is to get the right staff of workers. Among the men and women sent out as missionaries there is not always a sufficient propor- tion of those who are gifted with the peculiar qualities required for making teachers or for managing schools. The work of selection here of course falls on the Church at home. It is a very responsible task. On the field it is the finding of native workers that needs all the skill and tact and perseverance at one's command. In Egypt there has been no little success in this line, but it has cost great labor-labor that can never be known, and, if known, could not be understood by one outside. The arrangement of the course of study presents serious difficulties. The supporters of the mission are deeply and chiefly interested in the religious branchcs of education ; the position of the schools in the country depends on their success as an educational organization ; the tastes and prejudices of the more ignorant of the natives demand, 01', rather, crave, the laying of an undue emphasis on certain showy but secondary subjects. What has been said above as to the moral stuff of the pupils that have passed through the schools shows that a course has been steered that has avoided many snares; but it has been difficult. The finding of appropriate text· books is no easy thing. The mission has itself produced several text-books, but latterly it has found it to be almost imperative to adopt the text·books used in the schools established by the government. There are, of course, difficulties connected with finance. In the expending of money dangers have to be avoided. Excessive economy may lead to inefficiency. The opposite plan may fill important positions with men who have not the moral qualifications needful for true educational work. Then again, in boarding institutions, the style of living must be refined enough to elevate, if possible, and yet must not be beyond the mean~ of the average pupil to maintain after school days. On the other side of the account there are perhaps even greater difficulties. In all but the 12 higher schools the principle followed has been that of absolute selfsupport. There have been exceptions, but they are few. This makes it often very difficult to find a teacher, for the constituency of many of the schools is poor, and the people fancy themselves poorer than they really are. It is not rare to find a rather inferior teacher in a school, because the people cannot or will not pay for a better. What seems to be needed is some feasible way of making a grant in aid which, while conserving the spirit of self-support, would give a certain power of control to some central authority, and relieve constraint where it exists. No such plan has yct been practicably available. In the higher schools self-support is not within sight j but the difficulty is all the greater. The varying circumstances of the pupils have to be considered. A certain number of pupils have to be received free. Even in boarding-schools there are many who pay almost nothing. Many, however, bring their own bread, and they are encouraged to do so j and in the college all who do not pay the full fees required are expected to perform some service for the good of the institution in recognition of the privileges they enjoy. This has often been found an important principle when there has been a scarcity of teachers for village schools. At the theological school there are no charges for regular students. The difficulties of finance are very great; but some of them have been surmounted, altho at the expense of immense labor and worry.
In organization, much trouble arises from the fact that usually moral suasion is the strongest force than can be used. The perplexities involved iu securing the best possible distribution of teaching force over the various schools, when the schools aud the teachers arc all really free agems, are very great. Yet by perseverance much has been done. Frequently the college has had to give up a useful teacher and train another for the sake of some other school.
Competition with other schools is the last difficulty we shall mention. That a Mohammedan school should draw off Christian boys would be a calamity. And yet, if the method or course of study followed in the Christian school does not please the popular fancy, e.g., by supplying the amount and kind of secular instruction desired, this will happen. It has happened when some improvement has been introduced into the Christian school.
We must bring this article to a close. Enough has been said to show that a very important work is being done in Egypt, and, in many respects, with marked success. It will not have been difficult, either, to see what have been some of the conditions the more or less complete fulfilment of which have made that success possible. It seems to the writer that among these are the bold recognition of the educational department as an important institution needing to be managed in a business-like way ; the selection and setting apart of men and women, in the mission or out of it, having the needful qualifications for educational work; the adoption of a carefully thought out and fairly continuous policy, of which the principles of self-support and the training of teachers within the system should be an important part; and the maintenance of a distinctively Christian tone and character, which has in Egypt been a means of strength, and has not prevented 1500 of Mohammedan children from joining the schools, and even Mohammedan parents from sending their daughters as boarding pupils. Some of these principles have been but partially recognized, but apparently with increasing definiteness as the work expanded, and it seems hardly possible that the present encouraging position could have been reached had they been ignored. Friends who make a winter trip to the East have an opportunity of seeing how these things are. Many who have done so have testified that a visit to some of these schools has been one of the most interesting events of an eventful visit to the land of the Pharaohs.
CONVE'N'fION OF THE LONDON MISSIONARY SOCIETY
THE FOUNDERS' WEEK CONVENTION OF THE LONDON MIS- SIONARY SOCIETY.
BY JAMES DOUGLAS, BRIXTON HILL, LONDON, ENGLAND.
This celebration, which has been attended by about a thousand delegates, has been worthy of the occasion, and has been marked by an intensive view of missionary facts over the wide area of the society's operations. Brethrcn from the foreign field were in strong force, and had each his place in the kaleidoscopic views presented of the world's state and needs. It added to the cosmopolitan character of the convention that there were representatives from Basle, Norway, and Holland present; while the brotherhood of the evangelical churches at home was emphasized by the presence and hearty greetings of leading Baptist, Wesleyan, and Presbyterian ministers. What struck us most was the matter-of-fact spirit in- forming the whole line of the proceedings. The day of romance or of sensation in missions seems to be ended, and all is now dead earnest. It would be a mistake to aver that enthusiasm is decayed, but it is now too well instructed to talk seBtiment. The morning conferences especially were characterized by seriousness of tone, and by an enthusiasm that was strictly harnessed to the practical view of mission facts and needs. Doubtless the present outlook in China and Madagascal, ominous enough to make flesh and blood falter, told on the meetings. This was apparent from time to time. But tho the exceptional difficulties of the hour exercised a sobering influence on .the assemblies, there was no sign that they had a repressive effect either on the missionaries themselves or on their supporters at home. On the contrary, courage rose with danger, and pressed on to the goal undeterred by the rough hewing of adverse circumstance.
There was so~ething truly sublime in the Founders' Week Convention, were it only for the chastened spirit which it showed, the ungarnished view of results, and the fortitude oblivious of so much as the thought of retreat. It is grand when faith is such that the will is whole; and when faith under grievous trial has this issue, it is grander still. Prudence may be a virtue, a missionary virtue; but it is not, as Edward Irving felt in his day, the pole-star of the virtues. Prudence does not merit the first, second, and third place. No. 'I'he real Great-Heart is faith. The London Missionary Society, and so far the whole Church of God, is to be congratulated on an exhibition of faith of an approved quality.
Immense public interest centered in the presence of three native Christians from Bechuanaland, two of them chiefs. Khama, the senior chief, a man of spare and stooping frame and impressive mien, gave two brief addresses in his native tongue, which were interpreted, sentence by sentence, by Mr. Willoughby. His attitude to the liquor traffic may be inferred from his description of strong drink as " our common enemy;" while his feelings with respect to Christian missions are portrayed in the following words : " The work we stand iu to-day is the work of goodness, the work that excels all work in real goodness. The work we find in the land is the work that tires men and passes away j the work of God knows no ending, and goes on ever before us. I have been trying to help all my young people to go forward in learning in schools, in things like this; and I say that that town is a town of beauty where the work of God is taken up with both hands."
Interesting papers concerning all parts of the foreign field were sup- plied by the society's missionaries, and in most cases were read by the writers themselves. Thus, one morning was deyoted to an exposition of the work in the South Seas and in Madagascar, while at a similar sitting a many-sided view of the work in India and China was submitted. In the sketches supplied there was an evident desire on the part of the mis- sionary brethren that the friends at home should see things according to the law of true perspective and a just regard for light and shade. Frank- ness reigned. The results were gracious, affording ample ground for grateful retrospect and hopeful incentive, but they were not absolutely phenomenal. Speaking of the Hervey Islands, Mr. Lawrence, of Aitutaki, called attention to the fact that the inhabitants of these regions are a tropical people, and largely display the constitutional failings that usually appear where such climatic conditions exist. They are not conspicuous for moral grit, but rather show a weakness in the direction of luxurious ease and supineness of character. "Indeed," said Mr. Lawrence, "the bulk of the people show a greater aptitude for the taking on of Christianity than they show for the taking of it in." At the same time, without staying to observe that there was home as well as foreign thrust in such a confession, he knew of many native Christians who were stalwarts alike in strength of character and devotion of heart. In his view, a pressing need of the hour lay in meeting the public demand for an English education. The native mind was now on the qui vive for this j and while important results had already accrued from the educational work that had been for years in course, since the greater number of the people could now read and write, and were also expert in figures, still he felt that there was a loud call, with the dawn of their second century, for a forward movement in education. Of late the Roman Catholics had come, together with the Seventh-Day Adventists and Mormons. The times were transitional, and it devolved on the London Missionary Society that, having been first in the field, they should see that the future of the people should not suffer through any unwisdom or slackness in the conduct of the campaign.
The claims of New Guinea found an able and exceedingly popular exponent in the person of the Rev. James Chalmers. Papers were not in his line, but his tongue was " as the pen of a ready writer." He spoke more frequently than any other brother from the foreign field, but not, so far as we could notice, to the disarrangement of the program, or the eclipsing of a lesser light. His words added mightily to the stimulus, power, and life of the meetings. It is not given to all to have a giant soul, or to speak words that literally throb with life-force. As a speaker, Mr. Chalmers is neither eloquent nor ornamental; no more does he strike the ear with the impact of intellectuality. His forte lies in this, that he is so much at home, that his big soul is in all he says, that he speaks not for effect, but to give the truth; he w;}u~2 bring home to another the same incision that it has in his own heart, and that in listening to him all are as much at ease as if he were speaking to a company of friends across a dinner-table.
His general topic was New Guinea itself, one of the newest of missions, but greatly blessed of God. He depictured the introduction of the Gospel into that large island which had been without any knowledge of God whatever. The scene of the landing of the tiny missionary party was sketched, and what a meaning it had, seen by the eye that could see! Did they think what it ~eant thus to disembark on a distant pagan shore, and set to work as best they could to lift up the standard of the Gospel? He himself could best answer that question by bringing before them another picture, by describing a ~cene of which he himself had been a spectator, and in the proceedings of which he had had a share; he referred to what took place eleven years after the original missionary party had landed, when there was a second landing on that shore, this time of a few representatives of the British crown. They came, amid the acclamations of the islanders, to annex a portion of New Guinea to the British crown, and never did he (Mr. Chalmers) feel prouder of what it was to be a citizen of the British Empire than on that memorable day. In that ceremonial they had an emblem-a faint emblem-of what the first landing of the missionaries meant in New Guinea. They had, in fact, unfurled the banner of King Jesus, and annexed the island in Messiah's name. Their object was not to Anglicize, as the s.avants satlrically alleged, nor had they ought to do with native customs which were in themselves decent, still less had they any women's battle to fight, for the women of New Guinea were accomplished in holding their own; their one aim was to Christianize the people and attach the isle to the crown of the King of kings.
As was natural, the affairs of Madagascar had a prominent place in the business of the convention. An admirable review of the whole history of the society'S operations in Madagascar was given by the Rev. James Richardson, F.R.G.S., of Antanan.arivo, from which we learn that there are now 1406 buildings or chapels in connection with the London Missionary Society, the present staff comprising 33 men and 6 single ladies. The Rev. G. A. Shaw, F.Z.S., of Farafangana, followed with an account of work done among other tribes, giving special prominence to the encouraging results that have attended the Betsileo Mission. On the evening of the same day (September 24th) the chairman, W. Woodall, Esq., M.P., dealt with the political aspects of the situation in Madagascar and China as these were likely to bear on missionary enterprise. "In resplilct of Madagascar," he said, "we have to look on while that great island is desolated by the invader, we having to maintain a passive neutrality." The latest deliverance, however, on the subject of Madagascar, and certainly the most cheering one, was supplied on Thursday evening, September 26th, by the Rev. W. E. Cousins, who came fresh from the capital of the Hovas, and succeeded in imparting an inspiriting tone to what had hitherto been a depressing subject. Mr. Cousins's creed, in respect of the future of Christian missions in Madagascar, is that we need fear no evil. He has nQ suspicion that the French will seek to disown treaty rights, and for himself he has faith in the loyalty and toleration of the French civil authorities. Mr. Cousins looks on the bright side. Happily there is ever a bright side to faith, even when it is darkest to sense. May the Hova Christians and their evangelical shepherds have this vision now!
Both India and China were ably represented. According to the Rev. I. H. Hacker, of Neyoor, Travancore, the self-supporting churches, which it is the aim of the missionaries to establish, are both their anxiety in the present and their hope of the future. Nearly all as yet is elementary. There is more of the spirit of the Old Testament than of the New. Historical facts are grasped, but the experimental knowledge is faint. The tendency is to trust in a round of mechanical service, to wage a social rather than a spiritual warfare. In Mr. Hacker's view this leaven infects the native pastorates. Hitherto the native pastors have been left very much to themselves-a doubtful policy. The ponsequence has been the perfunctory round of duty, with no serious effort to deepen the spiritual life of the churches. The need of the hour concerned the overhauling of present methods and the adoption of a more intensive and definite aim.
Four papers were read on China-North, Central, and South. In North China the foreign staff consists of 16 men, assisted by a native staff of 21 teachers. The present membership is 1000, but nowhere is there a strong native church. Mr. Bryson's testimony is that the majority of the converts may be regarded as babes in Christ, with, however, the passions of men and women. Thus far of Tientsin and neighborhood, where practically the field is boundless and the people show no hostility.
In dealing with Central China, Mr. Sparham, of Hankow, described the history of the London Missionary Society mission as " one long forward movement." God had upheld Dr. Griffith John and his companions in labor, so that they had been able both to sow and to reap abundantly. The news from Hong-Kong, in the south, was to the effect that there had grown up an admirable system of itineracy, and that the Chinese were beginning to appreciate Christianity as a moral force.
In what the Rev. R. M. Ross had to say, touching Amoy, there was much to cheer and but little to sadden. Here the Christian type is of a pronounced manly description-robust, aggressive, intrepid, and selfdenying. Some thousands are now Christians, and these, with native money, have started a forward movement of their own, and are now carrying on missionary operations on the mainland in the hope eventually of joining forces with Dr. John. Mr. Ross's speech must have made every Christian heart in the great assembly to rejoice.
Among the speakers whose long service on the field of missions lent the weight of added interest were Dr. Lockhart, the first Protestant medical missionary in China, and Dr. Muirhead, who has been nearly fifty years there. The latter spoke of the opposing forces in the Chinese Empire as threefold: Confucianism, or self-reformation j Buddhism, or self-abnegation j and the worship of ancestors, which may be construed as self-development or rationalism.
In bringing this rough sketch to a close, in which it has been our aim to sample rather than exhaustively chronicle the program of the convention, we should fail in chivalrous feeling did we omit altogether to note the distinguished niche accorded to women's work and place and sphere on the mission field~ Several papers written by lady missionaries were read, tho not by their writers, and many an interesting peep was given into the home life of the heathen world. We learn, so far as the Chinese women are concerned, with how small cares and petty things the web of life is woven j and how volatile the mind must be which can interrupt an earnest talk from curiosity to know if the foreign lady trimmed her own hat. Never probably before have the difficulties been so brought home to the English mind that hedge round the work of Christian women in heathen lands j but as Miss Budden, of Almora, pointed out, what a boundless field is opened for European women! In India especially all things are ready. "European women," said Miss Budden, "can lead native women anywhere, and ,native women teachers can go anywhere." And for the work, not only are health and strength required, but cheerfulness and love to the people also.
We have but to add that to Dr. Stalker, of Glasgow, fell the honor of preaching the sermon in which the proceedings closed, the text being, " Yet have I set My king upon My holy hill of Sion"-,a sublime text and, as might have been expected, graphically handled. God speed the hour of Christ's enthronement amI apocalypse on that holy hill j yea, let that day come and let all other days pass away!
Rev. Edward Storrow also writes as follows concerning this centenary celebration: " In the City Temple for six days, and usually three times each day, the friends of the society met to rejoice, to praise God, to receive reports of what has been accomplished,' and to consider in what manner the so- ciety can in the future best fulfil the great purposes for which it exists.
" It was very impressive to gather from the presence of the mission- aries and the papers read how wide and varied were the spheres occu- pied: India, China, New Guinea, Polynesia, South and Central Africa, and Madagascar-all had their representatives j but in some of these spheres, as in India, a distance not far short of two thousand miles sepa- rated the extreme stations of Kumaon, in the north, from those of Travan- core, in the South. " The forms of labor carried on in these various spheres differ considerably. Direct endeavors to preach the Gospel have properly the first place, but auxiliary efforts were described, and too much stress by several speakers was laid-as we think-on the importance of increasing them.
" The amount and variety of work accomplished by the missionaries and their native helpers was seen to be very great. Islands in the South Seas were referred to where every ves~ige of heathenism has disappeared j 1400 congregations of Christians in Madagascar owe their origin to the society, and hard and formidable as the propagation of the Gospel in Africa, China, and India may be, abundant evidence was given of solid progress.
" The spirit and tone of the speaking and of the papers read were very admirable. 'Without boastfulness or hero-worship, or even a consciousness of having done aught but fulfil a great and solemn duty, missionary after missionary told of work accomplished or needing to be done.
" Their hopefulness was very apparent. They had an amount of faith in God and the power of the Gospel not usually possessed by ministers at home, and even those who had clear conceptions of the tremendous difficulty of combating the great superstitions of the East, showed no signll of weariness and despair. Elation often comes to the true men when so placed.
" While the society has a noble history, a record of great things accomplished' and occupies spheres of remarkable promise, it closes its centenary with not a little anxiety. Its hope to increase its income by £25,000 a year, its missionaries from about 200 to 300, and to raise a special centenary fund of £100,000 have met with but partial success. Is there not great reason to desire that evangelical beliefs and convictions, which feed and nourish the missionary enterprise, may spread rather than languish in all Protestant communities j and that there should be a deeper conviction that our greatest want is not money or machinery, but more of the mind of Christ and of the Divine Spirit? If we had these, men, money, converts could not"but follow."
The following, from the society'S last report, is a clear indication of its high position : English missionaries….•. , …•.••.•.•.•.••..• 196 Female missionaries …•••••..••…•.•.•..•••• 65 Ordained native ministers .•.•…•…….••…. 1,429 Native preachers. _.. _.•.. _•…•.•…•.•••…. 6,708 Christian schoolteachers…. , ……………•.. 785 Bible-women. . …….••….•….•.. _ , •.•… 155 Church-lnembers ……………..•••….•… 94,295 Native adherents •.••………•••.•••..•.•••• 408,147 Scholars, boys ..•…………•…..•…….. 71,562 " girls..•.•………… , •.•… , •….. 55,902 Local contributions. , ………….•.. £22,217 15s. 9d. School fees………… . . . . . • • • . . . . . 8,748 7 9 Total raised at mission stations. • • •• £30,966 3s. 6d.
THE RECENT RIOTS IN CHINA AND THEIR CAUSE
THE RECENT RIOTS IN CHINA AND THEIR CAUSE.
BY HENRY M. WOODS, TSING KIANG PU, CHINA.
American missionaries in China, representing the Protestant Church of all denominations, not long since sent to the United States Government a petition requesting that their treaty rights in this land be more clearly defined and established, and that steps be taken to put an end to the riots which have been occurring with increasing frequency of late years, and which have been so disastrous to missions. H~rdly had this petition time to reach Washington before a melancholy proof of the necessity of such action was given by the stupendous outrages perpetrated on missions in the province of Szechwen, West China. The riots began in Chengtn, the provincial capital, on May 28th; the great Dragon Feast Day. On the three following days the four missions occupying the city, the English, the Canadian Methodist, the Northern Methodist (United States), and the Roman Catholic (French), were successively destroyed. In eight cities the riots broke out, the missions being plundered and burned, and the missionaries barely escaping with their lives.
An account of the riots is best given by the sufferers themselves. A Protestant missionary writes: "At four 0' clock on the afternoon of May 29th our compounds were burned to the gronnd-that is, the dwellings, schools, and chapels in one, and adjoining, the hospital. From our place the rioters went to the China Inland Mission, carrying off every stick on the place. The compound where the ladies of our women's mission lived was also looted, the ladies going over the wall into a neighbor's. Next morning they began with the Methodist Mission (United States), cleaning it out completely, even to the walls and the leaves on the trees. The Catholics had five different stations, at one of which was a cathedral. All these places are utterly wiped out. All the foreigners are at the yamen (official residence) of one of the magistrates. The prefect of the city himself camc and looked at the work of destruction going on, then got into his chair and had not gone forty yards before the rioters were at it again. Mrs. S. and Mrs. K. with four children crawled out of a hole in the hospital gate upon the street. They tried to take refuge in several houses as well as at the fort near by, but were driven off each place, one of the soldiers kicking Mrs. S. and driving them off with curses. These women, with the children, wandered about the city wall till midnight, then went to the China Inland Mission till the early morning, when the mob reached there. At present you cannot calculate the harm done to the mission work, to say nothing of the monetary loss."
This statement is weB supplemented by the account of the Roman Catholic bishop, Mgr. Dunand, who says: "Now the hatred of the Viceroy onght to be satisfied. He has let the mob loose against us, and everything' wo possessed in this city, and, for all I know, throughont the province, has been destroyed. The trouble began with the ill treatment of a medical missionary belonging to one of the Protestant missions. Toward the end of May the Chinese were holding the feast of Twan-yang. One of the foreigners here, a Protestant missionary, went very naturally to see the spectacle, * and as Roon as the mob perceived him they began to shout and throw stones at him. The missionary returned to his residence followed by the mob, and as soon as they arrived at the house they broke open the door and looted the premises, the inmates barely escaping with their lives. When they had stolen everything and destroyed all they could not carry away, they burned down the house.
"On May 29th, just after mass, we received a letter warning us that all foreigners were to be attacked. On hearing this I wrote to the Viceroy, who resided only a short distance away, asking for protection, but no answer was received. On that day the residences and establishments of all the Protestant missionaries were burned and looted, after which the rioters tnrned their attention to the Catholic orphanage, and, seeing there was no help to be obtained from. the Viceroy, I went in my chair to the Taotai general's yamen to appeal to that official for protection. When I arrived at the yamen they would not allow me to enter, bnt received me with insults and stoned me. Afterward my chair was overturned aud my bearers beaten. As I was making off, a mandarin in the crowd tried to strike me with an ax, and had the blow taken effect, it would have shorn off my head. I was hurt and bruised about my body, and my head was cut. During my absence the mob destroyed the Catholic premises. It was all over so quickly that the fathers had time to save nothing but a few papers. While the work of destruction was going on· the Viceroy himself passed, and called out to the mob, ' You can pull down what you like and rob what you like, but do not burn anything, lest you should set fire to the neighbors' houses.' During the destruction of our property the tomb of Mgr. Dufresse, one of our bishops who was decapitated by the Chinese seventy years ago, was broken into. The skeleton of the martyr was torn from its resting-place and the poor hones were carried about the streets by the moh for the purpose of further infuriating the people against us, the rioters crying, ' See, here are the bones of some of the people the missionaries have murdered. We have just taken them from under the foreign devils' houses.' Orphanages, churches, and all our houses were destroyed. There is not one stone left standing on another. At three A. M. on May 30th we were taken in chairs to the yamen of the "Vha Yang Shien (a magistrate), where we found eighteen English and American missionaries, including ladies and children, who were all, like ourselves, poor people-beggars-without anything left to them in this world.
" Here we all remained till June 1st, when we were taken to the Prefect's yamen, from which I am now writing to you."
* A mistake; no missionary went to see the spectacle. Such is an account of the actual occurrences of the riots. The West- ern reader lays down his paper in perplexity, and asks: "What can be the cause of such fierce outbreaks; who is responsible for them I"
Let us try to find the answer. In doing so, first hear the Chinese version of the matter-what they allege the cause of the riots to be. Let the Chinese state their own case. The Viceroy, the chief official of the Szechwen province, in a dispatch of June 22d to the Viceroy of Chihli province, in which Peking is situated, gives as his official account the following: "There was a whay (an idol procession) on the streets of Chengtu, and a foreigner got into the crowd, who hustled him about. Finding himself hustled, he used his stick; whereupon he was attacked by the mob, and took to flight. He got into his house, fastened the door, and, taking a gun, fired on the mob, who had surrounded the honse, killing two persons. Then the crowd gutted and burned the building, the foreign residents escaping to the yamen. Inside the foreign houses the people found two Chinese children kept in a cage of some kind. They were in a state of suspended animation. These children were taken to the yamen and skillful Chinese doctors were then called in, who, on examining them, found some kind of black drug introdnced into their nostrils, which was the cause of their insensibility. By the use of remedies the doctors restored them to consciousness, when the children related how they had been kidnapped by the foreigners, who administered the drug, and they knew no more. Upon this dreadful crime being brought to light by au open examination in a Chinese court of law, the people were fired with indignation, and the di.sturbances were spreading in all directions, much to the grief of the Viceroy, who was powerless to control the disorder." The substance of this statement is at once recognized by anyone conversant with Chinese affairs as the old threadbare plea which Chinese officials have used for the past twenty-five years or more in explaining anti- Christian riots. Their defence is : that the riots are the work of ignorant, irresponsible people, the" stupid masses;" that they are sudden, violent outbreaks which no one could foresee; that the canse is the rumors, the charges against missionaries of committing secret outrageous crimes ; that the officials cannot control the people, and are powerless to prevent the riots. In a word, the Chinese are not to blame for the riots; the fault is wholly with the foreigner. Iu one important respect the statement of the Viceroy differs from any the writer has ever seen before. Usually the officials, in explaining the origin of the riots, say that the people believed the missionaries were guilty of such crimes, but that afterward it was found that the charges were not sustained. In this statement the Viceroy is very bold. He actually states these things as facts: that the missionaries were guilty of the alleged crimes. He states as facts that the missionary began the riots by striking with his cane, by firing into the crowd and killing two men, and that an examination of his house showed that he had kidnapped and drugged children in order to commit vile crimes. These things were proved in a Chinese court of law, and therefore the people could not be restrained !
It is hardly necessary to say that the whole statement is an outrageous falsehood, a horrible calumny intended to justify the riots before the Chinese nation and poison the minds of thousands against the Gospel for years to come. It is simply the case of …..Esop's wolf against the lamb. Every foreigner in China, merchant as well as missionary, knows that the riots are not the work of th( common people. The people are either ft'iendly or indifferent-they are not of themselves hostile. The authors of the riots are the officials t.hemselves, who stir the people up as the priests and scribes and Pharisees did the people in Christ's day; the people are the dupe, the tool of the officials. A close scrutiny of the riots reveals the fact that there is always a preconcerted plan-the riot is worked up. The rumors and charges against missionaries are really the pretext, the occasion of the outbreaks; the true cause is the bitter hatred of the Chinese officials toward foreigners and their increasing anti-foreign propaganda. Whenever missions seem too successful or foreign influence too aggressive, the officials and literati collect the band of ruffians, such as are found in every large city, by the offer of plunder and promise of immunity from punishment, and their grewsome work is easily done. As to the plea that officials are unable to restrain the people, the experiences of the past eight months in China during the war with Japan prove exactly the opposite to be the fact. Under the most trying circumstances the officials all over China have been able to preserve order and to protect missionaries, because they knew the salvation of the empire depended on it. The only exceptions have been in the case of wandering bands of soldiers, and from these the Chinese people havil suffered more than the missionaries. That the Szechwen riots were the work of the officials is proven by the statements of the sufferers already quoted. The Viceroy and otber officials refused protection-nay more, they actually encouraged the mob in the work of destruction. At the time the riots were at their height the highest police official of Chengtu issued a proclamation stating that he had proof the foreigners were guilty of the horrible crimes alleged against them.
Here, then, is the true cause of the riots-the incendiary publications of the officials, charging missionaries with vile crimes, the motive being to drive out Christianity and Western civilization from China. The officials see that Christianity, with its attendant benefits, must revolutionize the empire s:)oner or later, and, above all, that it will put an end to mandarinism and" squeezing"-that system of peculation by which the influential grow rich at the expense of the people.
·What is the reme,:y for the riots? Our government can do much by holding the Chinese Government responsible for the acts of its officials, and by insisting that an end must be put to this whole sale system of slander by the officials. A mere indemnity for the destruction of property does
THE MOUNTAIN WHITES OF THE SOUTH
not touch the root of the evil. A strict investigation should be held, and guilty officials should be punished for inciting riot by false accusation. Moreover, special attention should be called to the province of Hunan. Here is the center of anti-foreign agitation. Hunan is like an ulcer, virulent with slander; it poisons, and has been poisoning for years, the whole body politic. Open and cleanse that ulcer, and the root of the matter has been reached. If the Chinese Government is sincere in its professions, and. desires to stop these slanders and riots, it has an excellent opportunity to show its earnestness. Let it open up Hunan to foreign intercourse, and stop the slanderous publications there. It is to be hoped our government will request this.
Meanwhile, let us work and pray with the greater energy, believing that these disturbances are but the" overturnings" which precede the triumph of HIM whose right it is to rule. "Fear not, little flock; it is the Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom."
* THE MOUNTAIN WHITES OF THE SOUTH.
BY REV. 3. T. WILDS, NEW YORK.
Exaggerated statements regarding a people or a work, whether to their credit or discredit, and the citation of extreme cases of destitution and degradation as representative of the condition of a whole district, always do injury to a cause.
A long acquaintance with the mountain whites of Eastern Tennessee andWestern North Carolina caused me to read with peculiar interest the report of Mrs. Davis's address on the Mountain ·Whites. It is interesting and touching; it shows a zeal for souls that is highly commendable; and yet my experience among these people causes me to feel indignation and regret at what I regard a great misrepresentation of facts. Mrs. Davis has either been misinformed, or her experience is unique. Seventy-five years ago lIlany of the statements might have been true, and map.y of her anecdotes were to~d many years ago in connection with other persons and places. Some of the keenest minds and sharpest wits I ever met I have found in those mountain cabins; they are forever hoodwinking strangers, and commenting among themselves upon the ignoramuses who come from the cities ready to believe everything they hear. I once asked a hunter if he knew of any mugwumps in the mountains. He said, "No, he 11ad not heard of the varments." I informed him that I had seen the tracks of * We have received many communications from various sources (among them Rev. Geo. W. Dutler, D.D., of Roane College, Tennessee), takinll exception to the article upon the" Mountain Whites" Which appeared in Ol1r June issue (p. 422). Mrs. Davis says that she emphatically repeato hel' fonner ~tatements, and that the half has not been told. In fairnesB, however, we give some communications which have come to hand taking another view of the situation. one across the river, and had also seen one that morning climbing the mountain. Away he rushed, saying, " 1'11 bag him ;" but turning around, by the movement of his hand he let me know that of the two fools, I was the bigger.
The stories of Bible texts and ignorance of Divine truth are handed down like coIlege yarns from generation to generation, and I believe are for the most part drawn from a fertile imagination.
I have whipped the streams of these mountains for trout for many years, have spent much time among the people, visiting their schools and churches, hearing their preachers and teachers, and I have been impressed with the great advancement made during the past few years. I have met scores of preachers and teachers, and have not yet fonnd one after the type which Mrs. Davis describes. Schools are needed, better teachers are needed-that is true of New York; but these people are not destitute of schools. There are few districts without the school-honsc ; and I have yet to find one" with the primitive floor of native earth." I visited a school in the summer of 1894 which was attended by about sixty pupils. Some of the scholars walked about four miles, for each district has but one school. The teacher was gentlemanly, bright, and Christian in all he did. He showed a love for souls, and was a consecrated servant. Few teachers in the city of New York have a more gentle manner or are more unselfish in their work. I attended the Sabbath-school and overheard most of the instruction; for a time I was in a Bible class of men; all except one could read, and that one sent all of his children to school. I had the pleasure of preaching that day to more than three hundred men and women. They sang out of books, they read out of their Bibles. I never stood before a people more interesting, more reverent, or more thoughtful. My heart grows warm for them as I write. I lodged in some of their homes, talked with them by the way, and could see nothing of the degradation and illiteracy of which Mrs. Davis spoke. I should, I think, have heard of "crimes committed by them" which would " put to blush enormities committed in the worst districts of our great cities," for I have traveled and sojourned in all parts of these mountain districts, but they did not come to my knowledge. " Their ignorance is deplorable," says Mrs. Davis. Of course it is; but it is more deplorable to represent a whole people as not knowing Jesus and as calling Him" that Mister you be a talkin' about." I doubt if there is one in those mountains who has not heard something of Jesus as the Son of God. The mountain whites are a great many' things, but they are not fools. Sensational statements never sent a worker into a field and kept him there. I have labored day and night on the East Side of New York for ten years. I knew a home of sad destitution; Two children were in the last stages of consumption. When I caIled I asked if I might pray for the dying daughter, and the mother said: "No, He is a fiend; don't talk to me about Him." I pleaded and pleaded, and at last she consented if I would not mention the name of God. She sat upright in defiance; the dying girl gritted her teeth when I prayed. When I arose the older daughter went with me to thc door, clenched her fist, and said, " I want to die, so that I can shake my fist in God's face and call Him a monster." (She afterward called Him her dear heavenly Father, and became a teacher in my Sabbathschool.) I know a home where there is bestial living. Ten are huddled together in two small rooms. They work day and night, and earn a pittance. These are facts, but how much truth would there be in them if I cited them as showing the general condition of the people, instead of as isolated cases ~ The truth is, that some of the sweetest, purest, truest men and women, the shrewdest mechanics, the kindest housewives, the tenderest mothers I ever met live in these tenements. I could lead you into scores of homes where you would find the highest grade of gentility and the truest Chris" tianity. I could, of course, show you ignorance and vice, and tell you of crime and woe; but there is something else-there always has been something else, and always will be-and that something else is not by any means so rare as one might judge from many reports.
What God's people want is to see both sides of a case, and not to hear or read a one-sided description of a people, and to be allowed to infer that isolated cases represent the whole.
Rev. J. H. Polhemus, working under the Presbyterian Board, also writes from Swannanoa, N. C.: "The article on ' The Mountain vVhites of America' is so extravagant in statement that I cannot but inform you of the feeling that it has excited among the workers here. .Almost every statement made is or may be only true of the most exceptional cases J' and to state them as facts about these mountain people as a whole is untrue and unjust. The whole is an extravagance which we fear will do more harm than good. Such statements getting among this people would antagonize them toward the schools and missionaries (that has resulted very seriously already from another like article).
"I have been but nine months as a missionary among this people, but to me and to others much longer in this work that address is not the kind of presentation of this work which gives an intelligent or true idea of the people in which many churches are now deeply interested. "
" Jewish women are considered to have but slight religious responsibility, as their knowledge of the law is small," writes Rev. G. M. Mackie, of' Beirut; "but they bring devotional meaning into household life that more enlightened people might well repeat. When sending a batch of dough to the public oven, the poor Jewish woman plucks off a small piece of dough and puts it on top. It is her tithe, an offering to the Lord from her substance, and is thrown into the fire; so when the baked bread is brought home it is sanctified-a gift from God."
INTERNATIONAL DEPARTMENT
n.-INTERNATIONAL DEPARTMENT.
EDITED AND CONDUCTED BY REV, J. T. GRACEY, D.D.
The Great Evangelistio Development in dia's popUlation. They are in a sense North India, 1888-93. serfs-in some cases, however, being quite independent, in othel's occupying . [J. T. G.] a position of mild slavery. For centu- ries they have been one and all subor·· The India social organization is pecu- dillated directly or indirectly to the liar. Partly from religious causes, partly great social system of the Hindus, and from successive waves of immigration, politically have exerted no power. They and partly from a highly artificial eco· are not Hindus, yet are sometimes nomic division of labor, there exist great spoken of as such, though their religclass divisions of society. The social ious teachers and their gods are wholly league rests on caste, which bas its outside the Brahmanic system. roots deep down in race elements. The Brahmans are the" twice born" high- They are found in all parts of India est caste. The civil and military rulers as individuals, in small communities in are the Kshatriyas; the class who till wards of towns and villages, or in sepaand trade are the Vaishyas. Artisans rated districts. In Norlh India and in and day-laborers are Sudras. Below the Nerbudda Valley they foIlow varithese are the out-caste, with non-Aryan ous occupations, as farmers, weavers, blood current in their veins. Religious· shoemakers, village watchmen, dayly all the four castes are of Divinc ori- laborers, coolies, or personal servants gin, tho with degrees of dignity. These to richer Hindus and Europeans. The castes are subdivided into hundreds of English Govel'llment has released them other castes_ In the course of time it from all technical legal relati::ms which has come to pass that the out-castes could imply a condition of depression, have fallen into social class divisions but, by usage of centuries, they are still among themselves, the classification for a submerged community. Many of the most part following the lines of these are slowly awakening to the division of labor, such as chumars or recognition of their altered relation, leatber-workers, mahters or sweepers, and gradually asserting their indepenand so forth. As they are survivals of dence, exhibiting a disposition to adthe most primitive races who immigrat- vance their culture and condition. Tbey ed from Central Asia into India, they have never been educated, anti are as a are sometimes spoken of as " aboriginal whole positively illiterate, few of them tribes," tho that term is somcwhat more having learned to read or write. comprehensive, including whole tribes which are absolutely segregated from Sir William Hunter estimates them as the Ilindu communi'y and some sepa- numbering 50,000,000. As the British rated from all influences of Hinduism, Government opens to them, in common either social or religious. In Bengal this with every other subject of the empire, general segment of population is spoken all avenues, and they are not hampered of as Nama·Sudra, or below the Sudra, liS others with pride and traditions, if the term Sudra being that of the lowest they should, as they have already done class recognized as a component part of in a small way, make a geIlc~al use of the Hindu social order. In the Bom- these opportunities, India would in a bay Census Report of 1882 they were sense be turned" bottom side up." Sir cataloged as " Depressed Classes," and William Hunter says, " Within the next a not wholly inapplicable designation fifty years these 50,000,000 of human might be the Submerged Sixth of In- beings will incorporate themselves into one or the other of the higher faiths about them," and adds, " speaking hu- caste were baptized at Aon1a, who bravemanly, it rests with Christian missiona- 1y withstood the persecution which fol· ries in India whether a great proportion lowed this act. The police treated them of these 50,000,000 shall accept. Chris- as thieves and arrested them whenever tianity, Hinduism, or Islam." It is any theIt occurred, no matter by whom among these non-caste {leoples that Mu- committed, confining th(;llI, beating hammadanism has made advance in them, and sometimes burning their Bengal, and from them come the follow- houses. At Bilsi, the chumars of four ers of Kabir and Nanak in northern localities gave excellent attention to the India. They are, in many portions of Word. In Budaon they sent their the country, accessible to Christian in- children to the schools. The Bairagis fluences. The great revivals in the and Thakurs followed more slowly, Telugu and other missions in southern and Christian sweepers began separat- India were among such non-caste peo- ing from their unbaptized relatives. There were now Christians in 16 vilples. lages about Krakala. Very soon after the Methodist Mis· In 1881 tokens of very extended sion was begun in Moradabad, several movements of entire castes toward persons came to the missionary there, Christianity were observed, where 80me delegated by their people to secure a of the members of the circle had al- Christian teacher to instruct them in ready become Christians. This meant Christianity, of which they had heard much when it was intimated that there something at a religious fair. These were 500,000 chumars in the Rohnlpeople lived about twenty miles from kund district alone. The missionaries Moradabad city. A teacher was sent_ became confident that faithful pursuit Later a religious teacher among the of the lines on which they had thus far chumars (leather-dressers), who had conducted their work would result in been converted in the Church of England mission beyond the Ganges, was the course of a few years or many thouemployed to teach these old disciples of his in Christianity. As a few lads sands turning to the Christian religion. learned to read they were sent to Mora- Another illustration of the variety of dabad for further instruction, Bnd soon these non-caste communities is furnished there were 50 of the chumar boys there, in the report of an outlying district of being trained, as the sequel proved, for Shahjehanpore in 1886, known as follow- Christian leadership among their own ers of Rae Dass, an ancient bard or people. prince. These were not idolaters; no idol or temple was found among them; Very early in the history of the mis- all belief in devatas (gods) was rejected. sion another low·caste people in the They made no pilgrimage to sacred Budaon district moved in the same di- shrines. Their worship consisted in rection. As early as 1879 the Bairagis gathering round the village fire and as a body seemed ready to turn to singing bhajans (native hymns with na- Christianity, but being a priestly class, tive tunes), accompanied by a simple they would lose their means of support, stringed instrument in honor of Parand they could not see what to do. meshwar (the Supreme Being). These The sweeper caste, however, continued were free from the sensuous doggerel to turn to this new way, and were ris- common to native songs. This people ing in the social scale. Men who ten were not generally easy to influence, but years before dared not enter the pres- they consented to become disciples of ence of the zemindar (land – owner) Jesus Christ. were now cordially invited in; four converted sweepers became themselves 'l'his work in the north Gonda dislanded proprietors. trict under Rev. Samuel Knowles was among the Tharn peoples, a remnant of In 1880 a number of the sweeper the aboriginal race-wave at the foot of the Himalaya mountains north of Luck- 1888 •• surprised and even startled some now. These people were not learned of the missionaries who were engaged in enough to institute any literary com- this work, 8S it then became evident parisons between the several religions of that a steady movement had set in, and the country, but they quite understood that not only more converts had been themselves. They gave as among the baptized during the previous year than reasons that controlled them such as ever before, but that the number of inthese: 1. "We are saved from idol wor- quirers had more than doubled." Dr. ship and many of its customs, which we Parker, at the Decennial Conference, know are bad." 2. "This religion wor· 1893, alluded to, made the following ships God. and we find a Savior of men statements: ".At the end of 1891 they here." 3. "Those of us who have be- had 261 native preachers licensed as come Christian have been benefited and preachers, and 386 preachers of a lower elevated in every way." The greater grade, not regularly licensed; 736 ChrisdeVelopment of this work, dating from tian teachers, 600 schools for Christians 1888, rested on the foundation of thirty and inquirers, with 10,261 Christian years of careful and gradual growth. young people and children, and at least The larger number of converts in the 5000 children of inquirers in these mission were from this class from the schools, making 15,000 children of inbeginning. Dr. Parker. at the Decen- quirers in these schools on the side of niallHissionary Conference in Bombay, Christianity. The number of regularly received members in the church was 1893, gave the following statistics ot the 9487, with 16,913 baptized probationers and many thousands of inquirers. They growth of t,his work: In 1859 there had also 1164 Sunday-schools in which were 2 native preachers, 5 communi- were 45,531 pupils. and they counted 8 cants, 8 Christian boys in the schools, Christian community of 36,055livlng in and no baptisms. In 1868 there were more than a thousand towns and vil- 30 native preachers, 665 communicants, lages. During 1891, and again in 1892, 297 Christian boys, and 168 Christian over 17,000 persons, including children, girls in school, and 187 were baptized were admitted to baptism." that year. In 1878 there were 73 native preachers, 2526 communicants, 424 Beyond the original mission bounda- Christian boys and 715 Christian girls in ries these people were settled in more school, and ·/87 baptisms that year. In than a thousand villages, mainly up 1888 there were 168 native preachers, along the Ganges and Jumna rivers, 7944 communicants, 2027 Christian boys from Allahabad to Delhi. The great and 1327 Christian girls in school, and centers of the work in this section in 1958 baptisms that year, with some 400 1893 were Meerut, .Aligarh, Muttra, Christian teachers in the school. By Kasgauj, Buland"hahr, and .Aligarh. this date many of the children in the These people may have had more or less schools had been converted, and a very thought of their worldly advantage in general interest was taken in the Chris- turning to Christianity, but surely they tian religion. The work extended out- were a part of the" noble army" who side the boundaries of the conference suffered the "loss of all things" for until there were now some 500 villages Christ's sake. Here were those who in which native Christians resided and had gone to prison under false accusasome 200 centers of work, with schools, tions, persecuted for righteousness' pastors, and more than 3000 Christian sake, some even beaten with many children. It was not surprising that stripes; parents lost children and chilwith a spiritual baptism there should dren parents; husbands lost wives and develop in this section an active evan- wives husbands; cultivators were burngelistic "forward movement" of the ed out of their fields; policemen, upon native church. Yet Bishop Thoburn becoming Christians, lost their posideclared that the statistical returns of tions, and village watchmen their hered- and for these multitudes thus turning itary employment. Dr. J. E. Scott to Christ. The Goucher and Frey said that he saw one man killed out- schools are mentioned through all the right, and five Christian villagers, with reports of the work from 1883-93.
the blood streaming down their faces, Still another feature of this careful beaten out of sheer religious animosity. supervision was the selection as teach- But they continued to increase, and ers in these schools of men competent to many rose rapidly. The hcad-mas- be pastors to their people. Thus orig- ter of the Moradabad high-school was inated a growing and important class of from this non-caste community, as were pastor-teachers.
some of the leading graduates of the When Bishop Thoburn arrived in theological seminary; men who but a America in 1890 to endeavor to secure few years before were driving conserva- relief from the financial emergency of tory carts or sweeping streets were now the press in Calcutta, he found awaiting acceptable preachers. him an invitation to attend Mr. Moody's The mission was in less danger of summer meetings at Northfield, Mass.
misplaced confidence in this movement He accepted the call, and stated the na- because they had carefully trained the ture of this work and its obstacles, and generation of native ChristIans on whom referred to what they might do if they this movement had its foundation. As had sufficient money to employ a num- early as 1881 the mission recognized ber of these pastor-teachers. At the that as the work progressed among these close of the address Mr. Moody sprang suppressed people in Bijnour, Morada- to his feet with the proposal that they bad, and Budaon districts, there was an help that work, and in a few minutes increasing demand for schools of a pri. $3000 was pledged for the support of mary grade among them. The people 100 of these pastor·teachers. Bishop themsel ves were asking for these schools. Thoburn said the effect of this on the Dr. Parker, presiding elder of Robil- native Christian community in India kund district, thought schools could was to incite them to greater effort.
be established for necessary primary Converts multiplied and inquirers came instruction at a cost of $36 each, and forward, until in 1891 they were baptiz- that $100,000 would sustain a good cen· ing 50 a day. These little schools were tral high·school and 100 primary schools, the center where the teacher was often from which the most promising pnpils the class-leader and really the pastor, could be selected and transferred for and sometimes also the evangelist.
fnrther instruction; or that 100 primary There was nothing new in any part of schools could be established if some one these methods, as they were only an would give $3600 a year for this pur- extension of a plan of work adopted pose. from the beginning. This work was Rev. J. F. Goucher, D.D., of Balti- snbjected to severe analysis and open more, responded to this opportunity, and criticism. Many supposed these people initiated what were soon known as the would turn away from Christianity as " Goucher schools." These were pri- readily and as rapidly as they had mary schools snpported by Dr. Gouch- turned toward it. "Quick baptisms"
er's contributions which he generously were thought only to mean baptized continued till they were established in heathen. The answer to all this was many villages widely distributed over ready to hand. These were people of a the mission territory. Mr. Frey, of second generation of Christian instruc- Baltimore, joined Dr. Goucher in this tion. Christian schools, Sunday-schools, movement in Lucknow and other dis- and gospel instruction had been main- tricts in Oudh, and at his death endowed tained for thirty years. They were in 17 scholarships in the Bareilly Theologi: most cases, at least partly, instructed as cal Seminary to train preachers from to what Christianity was i and there was a large class among them who had of whom were foreign to the soil. For been educated in the mission schools, thirty-five years the careful and intelliand were sufficiently advanced to be- gent education of the masses now movcome teachers for others. In this sense ing toward the mission had been under the work was not a precipitous one. the systematic training and development There had been graeJ.ual preparation, of this society. In 1893 the schools and it was only the external manifesta- numbered 3361, with 136.106 pupils tion that was at first so sudden and so ex- under 4034 teachers. These were gradtended. This extended to others not thus ed from the rudest village school thro trained or instructed, and the mission- many grades up to the entrance requirearies grew more cautious, limiting the ments of the Calcutta University, and baptisms to their capacity to place the the most thorough theological seminary neophytes under competent instructors. standards. The contributions to the Another criticism made was that the benevolent societies beyond themselves, turning of these low-caste people to reached nearly $2000 per annum, and Christianity in such numbers would for the support of their pastors they prejudice the higher caste people against raised over $70,000. becoming Christians; but the missiona· ries were again prompt with their re- There are no signs of a check to this ply, that by far the larger number of development sa ve as prudence demands baptisms among these upper classes had that the accessions by baptism shall be occurred where this movement of the restricted to the ability to furnish religlower classes was greatest_ ious instruction and guidance.
Besides the regular school training A Message to the Churches of America there were held among all the workers from Missionaries in Japan. a practical literary and theological school once in three months, at what At a recent informal conference of the denomination knows as " Quarterly about thirty Presbyterian and Reformed Meetings." All newly admitted work- missionaries in Japan, it was decided to ers, licensed and unlicensed, women as send the following communication to well as men, were obliged to pursue a the Church papers in America. The regularly graded and prescribed order feeling that a statement of this nature of studies. and to undergo an examina- has become necessary is affirmed by tion in these annually. These exercises them to be shared by many other miswere public and attended by hundreds sionaries in their own and sister denomof Christians besides these workers. who inations. The action comes to us duly thus gained intelligent apprehension of certified by one of the" thirty," a long the Christian religion and were enabled time known to us and gIeatly honto sympathize with the a.cquisitions and ored by us, from Tokyo, under date powers of their teachers. The young October 7th, 1895. [J. T. G.] people were trained in all the activities and intelligent drill of the Epworth During the past year there have ap- League or Christian Endeavor societies. peared in leading religious periodicals A vast literature was issued from the statements and opinions from certain of Methodist press prepared expressly to our brethren who have retired from meet the demands of this rapidly grow- missionary work in Japan, which are ing community of Christians. It may calculated not only to raise the hopes of be doubted if a mass of con verts ever the friends of Christian work in this sought Christianity under a more intel- country to a degree unwarranted by ligent and careful course of training. the facts, but also to prove a serious ob~ By 1893 there were not less than 3660 stacIe to the work itself. The Japanese agents at work in the India mission- Church is represented as having reachfield of ti.is denomination, less than 300 ed an advanced stage of development, its earliest converts having been young men, patriots and scholars fit to lead not unimportant ecclesiastical bodies their countrymen, its present member- the Japanese neither take the lead in ship coming largely from the higher school or church, nor do they resent the walks of life, and including judges, direction and guidance of the foreigner.
editors, authors, orators, also men able Among the early converts Qf all the to maintain a high position in the Diet churches were bright young men, edu- and even in the Imperial Ministry. cated and, for the most part, supported The Japanese are said to lead in schools, in mission schools. As to their fitness in churches, in ecclesiastical bodies; to lead, it is significant that the form the Church as a whole is said to resent of government which offered the most the direction and guidance of the for- unrestricted opportunity for the exer- eigner, and self-supporting, self-gov- cise of such ability-namely, the Con- erning, and self-propagating individual gregational-has suffered most severely churches are reckoned by scores. In from their leadership. The history of short, Christianity is represented as the progress of Christianity in Japan having been born under the most fa- has been marked by the wrecked faith vorable auspices, passed through a and wandering steps of some of these golden youth with ever-growing spirit. enthusiastic and immature "leaders,"
ual, moral, intellectual, financial, and and by their attempted guidance of the numerical strength, and as having al· multitude into untried and dangerous ready attained to full maturity of Chris- paths. The youth and precocity of tian life and thought, and hence as such early converts should have pro- being in a position in which, while tected them from responsibility; but, gratefully acknowledging the work on the contrary, the records of the Of- done by missionaries in former years, it ganization of one of the first of our may now rightfully demand a readjust. Presbyterian churches contain the ment of mission forces-whatever that nallles of two youths, eighteen and may mean. twenty years of age, as elders!
Further, it has been stated in effect There is said to be a Protestant that the intellectual tone of the nation church-membership now of more than is so high that an address suitable to thirty thousand. It must be under- an audience of Japanese would need to stood, however, that this number in- be simplified to come within the com- cludes not only baptized children. but prehension of an audience in America. also adults who are reported as " trav· Regretting the issue forced upon us eling" or of "residence qnknown,"
by the repeated appearance in the pub- "many" who are" weak and sickly,"
lic press of these and similar opinions, and some who have fallen into a sleep we feel that a statement of the condi- resembling spiritual death; and also tion of mission and church work from thll self-righteous brother who sits at the field is imperative. Silence would home declaiming against a "hireling only support and confirm what we ministry," disdaining instruction, and know to be error. denying to the ordinances of the Church It is true that two of the branches of any helpful Influence. Thu8 the nu- the Christian Church in this country- merical strength oj the 0 hurch as an ag- tho only two-have been so organized gressive power must be reckoned jar below as to possess each its own native councils the total u8ually quoted.
or church courts. In those that are epi8. It is true that Christianity counts copal ia government the missionaries among its influeJ;lces some honored and are but cautiously calling their native honorable names; but it is also true brethren to such responsibility, and the now, as of old, that" not many mighty, prospect of essentially native convoca- not many noble are called." The tions or conferences as well as of native Church obtains its adherents chiefly bishops lies far in the future. In these from the middle and higher middle classes ; but these are men and women in the country but little more than a of all occupations and of varying de- decade. Before its introduction the grees of intellectual attainment. There 8arnurai (higher middle) class was are those who may claim to be schol- known as the literary as well as mili- ars; there are many who have received tary part of the nation. Below this only the ordinary elementary educa. rank there was virtually no education, tion, and there are not a few who can whlIe within it there were many who neither read nor write. A member of could not be regarded as either edu· the Diet may occasionally be found cated or intellectual. God in His provi.
who is also an active Christian, ready dence has done great things for Japan; to preach a sermon when one is need- but He has wrought no miracle here of ed ; but there are other Christians in spontaneous intellectual development.
political life who will quite as readily 'rhe Japanese and European languages hold a political meeting on the Lord's are well enough known to serve as day, and there are editors and orators media for the revelation of this won· who eagerly grasp at every new form derful intellectual ability if it existed; of Western "liberal" thought, which but the world yet waits for the Japanese they pour out, crude and undigested, poet, philosopher, scholar, or theologian for the bewilderment of their less" ad· who shall startle it into admiration vanced" brethren. Christian orators either of his power of conception or and editors have spoken and written strength of reasoning.
against the keeping of the Sabbath, the Christian ministers and evangelists value of prayer, the necessity for for- are usually of the higher middle class, mulated religious beliefs, and quite reo but with a moderate representation cently the Christian idea of monoga· from among heimin or ordinary men.
mous marriage has been lightly spoken In education they range from the fortu· of. Since the bishop was to be the nate graduate of an American college husband of one wife, it follows by im- and seminary to him who can boast of plication that in the early Christian but very ordinary attainments in nil.· Church plurality of wives was not un· tive secular learning plus four years'
known, and therefore too much strict. training in a seminary in Japan. What· ness along this line toward the young ever of mental stimulus he who studies Japanese Church is to be deprecated. abroad may be able to secure in the With regard to the assumed intellec· "less intellectual" atmosphere of the tual superiority of the Japanese people, West, there is but little question that we find the following in an address de· he comes back to his native land handi· livered at the last Inter.Seminary Mis· capped for his conflict with the powers sionary Alliance Convention, as report. of darkness. To quote from a Japa.
ed in the Union Seminary Magazine of nese who writes from personal experi· the Southern Presbyterian Church: ence of seminary life abroad, as well as "I am often asked, 'Can you use in from observation: "Many a case do I the United States the discourses pre· know of my own countrymen who pared/o!' the Japanese?' and my 1'eply have adapted themselves to Occidental is' Y68, after simplifying them.'* Our ways of life and thought during such congregations at home on Sundays are trainings, and come home as a. stranger somewhat impatient of careful and ad· to readapt himself to his former sur· equate discussion; but among educated roundings with the utmost difficulty.
Asiatics one may venture pretty far and Boiled rice and smashed beans do not find a somewhat receptive hearing." now afford him all the nutriment his The common school is an institution newly adapted system requires. and of modern advanced Japan, and has been sittings upon hard straw mats cause 8ynobiti8 and other troubles of his lower • Italics ae found in the quotation. limbs. His throat .sul!ers because native churches have no sleam·heaters to the miasion t'l'etUU'I'1/". other denomina· take off chill from the ail', and his head tions report but four or five; others, rings because the ventilation is poor. again. not even so many as this. Ref- The least he needs is greatest in the erence may be made in this connection eyes of his people. He loses flesh, and to statements frequently seen in Ameri· with flesh spirit. Preaching becomes can papers to the effect that Japanese unbearable. To some other occupa· Christians are about to engage in for- tion he betakes himself, and others eign mission work:. It may serve to hardier than he take his place. Strug- throw some light on this subject that a gle for existence is too much for him. recent address from America to the Then his thought-how incompatible Synod of the Presbyterian Church it, too, has become with that of his (" Church of Christ in Japan"), recom- countrymen! He denounces Hume- mending it to consider and urge the ism and Theodore Parker·ism ; but early attainment of self·support in its Hume and Parker have no existence in churches, was met with the refusal to the minds of the people to whom he is do anything special in the matter at the preaching. The Downfall of the Ro- same meeting in which the synod de- man Empire and the persecutions of cided to impose upon the churches a Bloody Mary sound as "wind to a budget of three thousand yen for home horse's ear," as we term all incompre· and foreign missions. We would place hensibilities. He proves biblical truths no obstacle in the way of any worthy by the Bible; but the Bible is no more effort on the part of our Japanese breth- to these people than some sooty parch- ren. On the contrary, we heartily ments of idle antiquarians. His ~er· commend the zeal for missions mani- mons fly over their heads and vanish fested by them; but the fact remains Into the air. He is disappointed with that they are leaving the financial buI'- his hearers, and his hearers with him. dens of the established church to be Dissatisfaction, grumbling, resignation, largely borne by Christians in the West, separation. while thus devising -liberal things for From the above it will be seen that, others. It is in faithfulness to their viewed at close range, even through best interests, as wcll as to the interests native eyes, the Church in Japan is by of truth, that we call attention to this no means so intellectual as it evidently somewhat incongruous state of affairs.
appears to our sanguine brethren across A healthier comprehension of duty can- the sea. not fail to be developing in its effect One other important test of the abil- upon the individual Christian and the ityof the Church in Japan to under- churches; but this can never be at- take the great work of evangelizing tained so long as they are encouraged the Japanese millions who are as yet to regard themselves as having a statu!!, worshipers of graven images, or whose ecclesiastically and potentially, which lives are influenced by "the non·re· as yet they have not.
ligiosity of Chinese moralists," to quote The magnitUde of the work of evan- a native writer, or who are utterly in· gelizing Japan is seriously underrated different to their souls' welfare either by thosc who regard the Japanese in "the life that now is or in that Church as already sufficient for it, and which is to come," is how far its faith we believe that we could not do this and zeal may be counted on to bear the Church a greater unkindness, or prove financial burdens inevitably connected more faithless to the causc of our Mas- with such work. Churches that are ter, than by holding our peace while really self.supporting are very few. the theory of the Church's sufficiency, One denomination in its published reo notwithstanding the tremendous odds ports claims thirty.nine "80 cla8aed," of heathenism that are still and must meaning those that are not aided from long continue to be against it, is circulating and apparcntly gaining ground " 2. That the present staff of foreign in America, to the natural end of a di- missionaries be not only continued, but minishing missionary force and of the increased when necessary. financial aid which accompanies it. "3. That those who are sent out to Emphasis should be laid also on the Japan as missionaries should be persons fact that the Christians of Japan are of superior equipment, and that they not yet old in the faith. The past few should go with a determination to acyears have been years of especial trial quire the language, and give their lives to those interested in the propagation to the work. of a pure Gospel, and to the yet undeveloped thinkers along tJ1eological and " 4. That increased attention be given other kindred lines among the better to Christian educational work. educated of the Christians. The various forms of "liberal Christianity" "Resolved, That we as missionaries have been urged upon the attention of representing various mission boards the latter by word, book, pamphlet, working in Japan, in conference asand newspaper. Besides this, the dis- sembled at Karuizawa, in view of variintegrating teachings of Plymouth ous reports that have gone forth con- Brethren have made no small inroads cerning the need of more foreign workupon the membership of the churches, ers in Japan, would express it as our and disturbed and unsettled many opinion that not only has the time not where no actual defection resulted. come for the withdrawal of the mis- sionaries already on the field, but we From the foregoing it will be seen believe that there is still a need of many that the Church in Japan is not suffi- more foreign worl{ers in this land." ciently strong numerically, financially, intellectually, or spiritually for the bur- Apropo8 of the contribution from Jadens which the unwisdom of certain of pan missionaries in a block, there chance its friends would lay upon it, and we to be on our desk some notes prepared heartily commend to the consideration by Rev. F. A. Cassidy, of the Canada of all10ver8 of our Lord who are inter- Methodist Japan Mission, on some of ested in the advancement of His king- the questions canvassed In connection dom in this interesting country the fol- with Japan missions, which we take lowing resolutions, passed by the Inter· the liberty to edit into form, much as national Missionary Union at Clifton the secular newspaper interviewer might Springs, N. Y., June 12th, 1895, and do. They contain the following points: also that which obtained the approval of upward of one hundred missionaries [J. T. G.] who met in an interdenominational conference a few weeks since in Karuizawa : 1. The missionary as an educational- ist is indispensable in Japan, and must " Since it has pleased God in the or- be for some time to come. der of His providence to bring the Empire of Japan into such a position of 2. Even when he does not occupy the prominence as she occupies to·day, relation of acting pastor, he may be this International !lfissionary Union important as a preacher and general deems it advisable to urge upon all the adviser among the people and the minevangelical churches the necessity of istry. taking advantage of the present crisis in the history of missionary effort in 3. If the future brings great lind rapid Eastern Asia, and would beg especially increase of church-members, a weIIto emphasize the following points: trained staff of missionaries will be needed. If a period of depression in- " 1. 'rhat no pains be spared in the stead of one of advance comes, a strong development of an efficient native min- sta:ff will surely be required. istry. 4. The only way to have efficient men for both educational and general work this committee during Miss Child's ab- . is 1;0 follow the old method of sending out a fair supply of the best men and sence from America. The committee women, with the idea of their devoting themselves to the service by acquiring made a call for the observance of No- the language and growing old in the work on the field of Japan, just as vember 15th as a day of prayer, in view in other mission-lands. of the disturbing events in four of the 5. The control exercised by the mis- sionary over the Japanese Church varies countries where American missionaries with the several organizations. The Episcopalian has the maximum, the are at work-viz., Turkey, China, Ja- Congregational the minimum, the Pres- byterian the medium. pan, and Korea.
6. The usefulness of the missionary Dr. A. T. Pierson never wearies of is greatly independent of the official searching out the evidences of the su- position he mayor may not:occupy. pernatural supervision of the world in He is needed, and will be so long as the interests of modern evangelical Japan is non-Christian, or largely anti- movements, and it is equally sale to Christian. say he never wearied a reader in writ- ing of the" modern marvels in the his- 7. As to the economy in employing tory of missionary enterprise." Here Japanese because they can be secured is a "second series" of the "Miracles far cheaper, it is not at all probable of Missions." from the Funk & Wag- that the Church which can produce the naIls Company, New York. Formosa, men for pastors, cannot itself produce Hawaii, Banza, Manteke-all pass in the money. If it costs, as claimed, only living review, fresh and forceful from one tenth to support a Japanese that it the pen of the author. The" MeAll does a European, then self-support Mission," "Livingstone's Bodyought to be in sight. When they do Guard," and other captions are necesnot need foreign men, they ought to be sarily attractive. Read, mark, learn, beyond the need of foreign money. It and inwardly digest this and similar is eminently important that the danger phases of the Divine development of be avoided of corrupting a native church the Messianic kingdom, and your Chris· on any field by putting financial aid tian faith will grow bolder for all deforward unduly. partments of Christian life and activ- ity, near or far, minute or extended. 8. In judging of Japan and its advance, it is essential to discriminate be- Miss V. F. Penrose, who furnished tween material progress and religious the article in the October REVIEW on reform. "Maps and Money," writes to ask us to "put a note in the REVIEW to the Miss Abbie B. Child, Secretary of the effect that the beautiful little map Woman's Board of Missions, is absent, published with' The New Acts of the making a tour by official appointment Apostles' may be had also separately of of the missions of that society in India, the publishers? It is an invaluable aid China, Japan, and Korea. Miss Child to mission workers, bands, leaders, Chrisis chairman of the American branch of tian Endeavor missionary committees, the World's Missionary Committee of etc. I should like to see one in every Christian Women, a permanent organi- class-room. Price~ singly, 40 cents." zation which grew out of the World's We called attention t<1 this elaborate Missionary Conference in London, in map, prepared originally at great cost 1888. Mrs. J. T. Gracey, Rochester, for Dr. Pierson's" New Acts of the N, Y., has been chosen as chairman of Apostles," and are pleased to accentuate . its worth by Miss Penrose's note. The Illap may be had from Baker & Taylor Company, 5 and 7 East Sixteenth Street, New York. Miss Penrose adds that two errors crept into the print of her article. 'The" w" for a " t" in the first sentence (page 763) makes the direct op- posite of her meaning and reasoning. It should read" The Christian Church is not everywhere using maps. Hence, etc." Also three ciphers were dropped from the United States drink bill, mak- ing twelve hundred thousand instead of twelve hundred million.
FIELD OF MONTHLY SURVEY
III.–FIELD OF MONTHLY SURVEY.
BY D. L. pmRSON.
Syria.,* Thfil Jews,t Educational Work.t SYRIA AND PALESTINE. Then Rev. Pliny Fisk and Rev. Levi Parsons landed in Smyrna and began Syria, while properly a part of Tur- work in Jerusalem and Beirut. Wars key in Asia, which was considered in and pestilence, intolerance, persecution, our October number, is, from a missIon- and banishment beset these and subse- ary standpoint, a separate field, and is quent missionaries on every side, and taken up this month in connection with made the work of evangelization exceed- the Jews. Syria was so called from its ingly difficult and progress slow. The chief commercial city, Sur (Tyre), and Bible was denounced and proscribed it denotes an historical rather than a po- and burned, and those who read it were litical territory. The extent of the ter- persecuted and excommunicated. In ritory which goes by this nlime is about 1822 the American Arabic press was 400 miles (from the Taurus Mountains founded at Malta, and in 1834 was re- to Egypt) by 200 miles (from the Med- moved to Beirut. This press has now iterranean to the Syrian desert). The printed over 500.000,000 pages in Ara- area is about '70,00u square miles and bic (nearly 23,000,000 in 1893); there the popUlation about 2,000,000, about have been issued over 500 publications one half of whom are orthodox Moham- which bear the seal of the Imperial medans, the remainder belonging to Board of Public Instruction. In 1893, various sects-Nusairiyeh, Maronites, 33,281 Arabic Scripllues were issued Greeks, Papists, Druses, Arabs, Jews, and sent into Turkey, Syria, Palestine, Armenians, etc. Egypt, Arabia, Tunis, Algiers, Moroc- co, India, Persia, Muscat, and Bahrein. Palestine, the Promised Land of the Hebrew and the birthplace of the Chris- The first girls' school ever opened in tian faith, is of peculiar interest to the Turkish Empire was established in the Bible student aud Christian worker 1834 in Beirut by lIrs. Eli Smith, an- of every nationality. This land has other being opened in Aabeih by Mrs. been from time Immemorial the field of Dodge. In Syria there are now nearly political and more especially of relig- 10,000 girls (and as many more men and ious strife. Here Mohammedanism, boys) under Protestant instruction, be- Judaism, Romanism, Oriental sects and sides thousand in the Greek and papal Christianity meet in a common belief in schools. Female education has wrought God and in a reverence for the Holy a palpable change in the status and dig- Land, but here they contend zealously nity of woman; the moral and intel- . to uphold and propagate their different lectual elevation which have resulted creeds regarding God's appointed way nre plain even to the casual observer. of salvation. It was not until 1819 that The mother is becoming the primary in- Protestantism entered upon the field. structor of the children at home, Ilnd by precept and example their moral and * See pp. 339 (May), 847 (November), 891, 899 religious guide.
(December). .. The Land and the Book," Wil- In 1839 a boys' boarding-school was liam M. Thomson; H Syrian Home Life," H. opened in Beirut with 15 pupils, and in H. Jessnp; "Bible Work in Bible Lands," James 1863 the Syrian Protestant College was Bird; .. Encyclopedia' of Missions." incorporated by the New York State Legislature. In 1894 it had 46 collegi- t See pp. 738 (October), 837 (November), 887 ate students, 60 medical students, 134 (December). "Iorael my Glory," Wilkinson; "The Jews," Kellogg.
~ See pp. 281 (April), 526 (July), 586 (Augnst), 005 (December). in the preparatory department; total, missionary. The Oospel is now being 240. In 1848 the first Syrian Evangeli- proclaimed by tl,,:m and to them in cal Church was organized in Beirilt every nook and corner of the globe.
with 18 members. The Hebrew-Ohristianenumerates the There are now 21 medical missionary following principles for carrying on stations, which treat annually about mission work among the Jews: 3000 in-door and 140,000 ont·door pa- 1. Jewish missions should recognize tients. The principal American agency that Jews need a Savior (to sulfer) as at work is the Presbyterian Board well as a Messiah (to reign).
(North), besides which there are 21 2. They should have for their object other American, English, Scotch, and the Ohri8tianizing of the Jew-i.e., Irish denominational and independent bringing them individuaUll to trust in missions carrying on educational and Christ as their Savior.
medical work among all classes. Jeru- 3. They should understand the dif- salem is becoming one of the headquar- ference between Jud'lism and Chris- ters for work among the Jews, of whom tianity. The latter must supplant, not there are now about 50,000 in Pal- simply supplement, the former.
estine (over 2500 in Jerusalem.) Work 4. They should teach and preach the among the lepers is carried on by the fullest revelation of the truth. The Moravians. Divine Fatherhood of God should be Nineteenth· century civilization is emphasizl'd as revealed in the New 'res- rudely changing Lhe character and cus- tament in contrast to the partial revela- toms of the country. The sacred hills tions of God in the Old Testament.
are beginning to resound with the puff 5. They should be based upon an in- and shriek of the modern locomotive, telligent conception of the whole Jew- and the Dead Sea is to be navigated by ish question, including the salvation of freight and passenger boats. the nation, the re-establishment in the land and reign of Messiah as King.
THE JEWS. 6. They should be conducted in view of the mission of Israel-as heralds of The number of Hebrews on the face the Gospel to all the nations of the of the globe is estimated at from 7,000,- world.
000 to 8,000,000 (about twice as many as were in Palestine in David's reign). Gospel Work in La.bra.dor. There are about 6,800,000 iu Europe (3,600,000 in Russia and 1,860,000 in Labrador is politically connected with Austria); the remainder are scattered Newfoundland, and had, in 1891, a over the face of the earth, but are dis- popUlation of 4106 permanent residents, tinguishable everywhere not only by all reported as belonging to some de· their national characteristics, but in re- nomination. The Moravian settlement taining their national name as a sur- among the Esquimaux had then a popu- name instead of as a descriptive adjective lation of 1387. "Besides the mission to -e.g., American·Jews, German·Jews, Deep Sea Fishermen," writes Rev. T. B.
etc., whereas other nationalities take the Darby, of Newfoundland, "the Method- name of their adopted country-e.g., ist Church has two missionaries (in sum- German·American, elc. .mer three); the Church of England one There are over 50 societies in opera- clergyman and a teacher; the Halifax tion for the evangelization of this Book and Tract Society a colporteur at " chosen race ;" they operate in some times; and the Salvation Army a yacht 130 stations, employ over 300 workers, which visits the whole coast during the and have gathered about 150,000 con- summer season, when the large tioat- verts. A Christian Israelite almost in- ing popUlation of fishermen calls for an variably makes a zealous and efficient increase in the number of workers."
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
IV.-EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT.
Prospeotus for 1896. subjectil connected with the Inspired Word, Prayer, the Holy Spirit, Spir- The MISSIONARY REVIEW OF THE itual Life, the Lord's Coming, and Mis- WORI,D will follow the scriptural motto, sions. His address will be, care of Passforgetting what is behind, and reaching more & Alabaster, 4 Paternoster Buildforth and pressing forward to what is ings, London, E. C. He hopes to furbefore-a more advanced goal. nish letters upon matters of great inter- est, and to secure important papers from We beg to remind our readers that the most competent sources. the editor and his colleagues in editorship regal'd this as no me~ money,mak- The labor of which this RETIEW is ing enterprise. Missionary magazines the product is for the whole Church; may be a lucrative investment in the and if onr readers would remember how millennium, but at the present time much each onc can do to bring the REthey are with difficulty enabled barely VIEW to the notice of others, both ento pay expenses, if, indeed; they do not larging the circle of reader. and the become bankrupt. This is to the edi- number of subscribers, the same amount tor's conception simply a means of of toil done for our present circle of hastening the work of a world's evangel- readers might reach tenfold that number ization, and no labor or expense is Ilpared within a short time. One hnmble man to make this REVIEW indispensable to in Scotland secured sixteen additional those who would keep an eye on the friends for the REVIEW, without even whole world-wide field. our knowledge at the time, by simply lending them his copy after reading. If Besides an editorial corps represent- our brethren who read these pages ing fi ve leading denominations of Chris- would remember that our work is untians, and a body of editorial corre- selfishly done for the Lord's sake, what spondents representing all the great help might be rendered us in enlarging nations and countries of the world, we our constituency and extending our inhave a body of contribntors furnishing fluence! These pages might have one special and solicited papers, which for hundred thousand readers before the ability and variety cannot be excelled. close of another year, and new lives To all these attractions we add the cost- might feel the quickening of a new conly charm of illustrations largely unpub- secration. A little effort in extending lished hitherto. our circulation might in effect be the sending out of new missionaries, and Rev. F. B. Meyer, of London, who is the mUltiplying of gifts; and what i3 one of the leaders of religious thought best of all, of intelligent, importunate in Britain, consents to take the place of praying. Dr. A. J. Gordon on the editorial staff, and will act as our English editor. THE GREAT CONVENTION IN LIVER- POOL. A series of articles will appear in 1896 from the best available writers in all The Student Volunteer Union of parts of the field and on every conceiv- Great Britain and Ireland is making able phase of missions at home or preparation on an immense scale for abroad. Biographical sketches and dis- the colossal international convention cussions of delicate questions of mission called to meet in Liverpool in January: policy will form features of the new 1896. It opens Wednesday, January year. The editor· in-chief expects to sail 1st, and continues five days. Over a for Europe before the new year, to attend the great convention of students at Liverpool, and to conduct with Rev. F. B. Meyer and others a series of fourdays' meetings in great centers upon thousand leading representatives from rum of God's house. For example, colleges and universities of Europe are what shall be said of introducing a vio- expected, and such well-known young lin soloist, just before a sermon is to be men, identified with the students' cru- preached, to discourse airs from" Der sade for missions, as Robert P. Wilder Freischiitz"and" Norma;" and a! organ and Robert E. Speer, are invited to take voluntaries during a church oll'ertory, part. Two great ob.iective results are that remind of operas where the shame- aimed at : First, a union of prayer for less ballet is the crowning attraction I a speedy effusion of the Spirit of God Who would not be shocked to find a in all lands; and, secondly, a union of half-drunk Italian introduced into a ell'ort in the speedy occupation of all church service with his hand-organ unevangelized territory. to play the airs of the beer garden?
In our opinion the former is of tran- A.nd yet the writer has preached the scendent importance, for on united and Gospel in a very prominent church believing prayer all else depends. If where a half-drunken German sat there be one lost art which in apostolic at the organ keyboard playing just days was the vital secret of church life such snatches from melodies in favor and activity and the very spring of mis- at the Theatre Comique, and having sions, it is the art of praying so as to not one 'sacred association I What of command a blessing. We use these a Punch and Judy show at a Sunday- words deliberately and intelligently. school festival, where money was to be God Himself has authorized us to do raised for missions, or a raffie where a more than timidly and feebly a8k for white donkey was the prize at a church blessing–" Ooncerning the WQ1'k of My bazaar I These are no doubt excep- llands command Ue Me" (Isa. 45: 11). tions, but they show a drift and ten· Where God's work is concerned, and dency, all but too manifest in our mod- we are working not only according to ern church life, to subordinate the spir- His command but His methods, we are itual to the secular, the ethical to the authorized to claim blessing. There is !esthetical, the things of the kingdom a boldness which is not only reverent to the spirit of the world. The worst but honoring to God; and the holy bold- result of all this is not the lowering ness of praying saints-who, undertak- of our standard of church life, bad ing for God and underIIis orders, go into as that is. but the crowding out of the all the world and preach the Gospel to Holy Spirit by the consent given to the every creature; and who, concerning the presence of unspiritual elements.
work of His hands, command the bless- One of the great unappreciated warn- ing, and plead like Jeremiah, " Do not ings of the Word of God is the sensi· disgrace the throne of Thy glory"-is a tivenes8 of tl16 Spt'rit of God. He forces boldness born of a Divine jealousy for Himself through no unwilling doors.
God's honor, and faithfulness to His He retains His seat of authority and promise. It is to be feared that the control in the midst of no unwilling as- worldliness of the Church has been a semblies. He is easily grieved, like a flood that has drowned prevailing pray- tender-hearted parent,and quenched like er. All prevailing prayer is the groan- a flame that can burn only when it has ing of the Spirit in us. How can the unrestricted freedom to shine. Where Holy Spirit hold llia seat of control the Spirit is not actively in control, while the idols of the world fill His no prevailing prayer is possible, and courts and vex Him with their presence I where ITe is virtually neglected or re- Some things have so far the sanction jected, prayer may become even a of prevailing custom that they have mockery and an abomination.
become entrenched behind impregnable How any intelligent disciple can look redoubts, and yet they are essentially at the present conditions of missions indefensible as violations of the deco- and feel satisfied passes oar compr~ hension. We see fifty millions of Protes- fields, for the victims of superstition and tant church-members, standing face to false religion and tyrannical caste and face with twenty times their own num- custom? Who of us with any godly bers who are yet in as profound persistence appeals for Thibet, the vast ignorance of Christ's salvation as if district of the Soudan, the great basin of they lived on another planet; and spar- the Amazon, the immense plains of Cen- ing only one in five thousand of their tral Asia, and other territory wholly un· own number to carry the Gospel to occupied with evangelical missions r them; and giving on an average Who of us pleads with God for a world- twenty cents a year to the cause. wide revival. an effusion of the Holy There is something in all this that seems Ghost in all lands ? Who of us impor- more like apathy and apostasy than like tunes Him to thrust forth laborers into sympathy and activity. Liberality? a harvest field too vast even to be trod- We do not know the meaning of the den OVe1' in one generation by the few la- word. The money spent on self-Indul- borers now in it, and where all sowing or gence is enormously out of proportion reaping must be but partially done and to what is turned into God's treas- in widely scattered portions, until there ury. is a larger body of husbandmen with seed In the recent addresses of Rev, An- and sickle? In the tilling of nature's drew Murray, at the Northfield Confer- fields machine work has so displaced ence, none made a deeper impression hand work that the latter is no longer than that, at the last meeting conducted profitable, and cannot compete with by him, when hlssnbject wasinte'l'ceSSOrll the former. Immense tracts in our prayer (Rom. 8 : 26, 27). He brought out Western prairies are ploughed and har- with masterly courage and pathos the rowed and sown and reaped by steam.
lack of sympathy with the whole body But God has ordained that no machin· of Christ, the narrow range of our ery, however complete, shall ever till prayers and cven of our yearnings. He the world's harvest fields. Individual appealed to us whether thc Church of hands must continue to the end to sow Christ in all its branches and members the seed of the kingdom; aye, believers is not one body; and whether, instead of must to the end themsel ves be sown as standing apart and coldly criticising the seed of the kingdom. It is the seed the errors, follies, faults, heresies and steeped in tears and watered with tears practices of brethren, we should not and watched with prayers that takes monrn, as Daniel did, over the sins of root and bears fruit. We must love the those with whom we are organically world if we would save the world: love connected, and feel ourselves responsi- must be back of prayer and labor if pray- ble in our measure for the evils we have ar is to prevail and labor is to be effec- indirectly fostered and made little effort tive. And when we love men as Christ directly to remove or remedy. Then, loved them, we shall make sacrifices with tenderne~s and pathos the author for them even unto death as He did, of that marvellous book, " With Christ and it wiII be easy to give money, not as in the School of Prayer," besought us a hush price, It hire with which to quiet to give at least ten minutes It day an accusing conscience, or as a com- to prayer for the whole Church of pounding with self-indulgence. but be- God. cause lo'll8 con8trains us: and we shall And what shall we add as tJ the duty give tenfold, a hundredfold, and ac- and privilege of prayer daily for a whole count it nothing, as Jacob did his four- world that Heth in the lap of the wick- teen years of service for the love he bore ed one? Who among us prays, and to Rachel.
prays habitually, for the unconverted We believe, if the Son of God can masses of mankind, for missionaries in feel vicarious shame, He is ashamed of tbeir difficult and seemingly fruitless His Church in this century; and that He whose omniscient eye pierces " F01' Thanksgiving and Prayer.
through all the glitter and tinsel of a Remember daily deceptive enthusiasm and self-gratula- The Inte'rnational Oonference tion sees our mission work to be super- of the S. V. M. U. in Liverpool, ficial, often artificial, utterly inadequate Januaru 1-5, 1896."
to the wants of a world field, and ut- And on the back the sentence, which it terly unworthy of His Church, with her is asked may be "placed in a promiintelligence, numbers, wealth, oppor- nent position, where it may always be tanities, and resources. seen,"
Great hopes centre and cluster about "HAVE FAITH IN GOD." ~ this new year convention at Liverpool.
A thousand young men, the flower of our college and university life, in the This REVIEW is not a ekronicle of warmth of an enthusiasm not yet cooled daily news, even from the mission field.
aud chilled by habits of worldliness, Before we can get these pages electro- with their future before them, not yet typed, news becomes stale. We seek, entangled in the al!airs of this life and therefore, only to note ehanges which weighed down bybusinesscares, are com- are permanent, and pennanently all'ect ing together to consider the demands of the enterprise of missions. China, a dying world and the commands of a Korea, Armenia, and Turkey-in fact, risen Lord, to organize more completely the whole Asiatic world-is yet in a tur- for the occupation of neglected terri- moil, while Madagascar, Cuba, and Cen- tory. Such a convention ought to enlist tral and Southern America are in the sympathy as broad as Christendom, and midst of war, revolution, and general prayer as earnest and prevailing as commotion. The Queen of Korea has God's promises warrant. It will be the been assassinated, and the plot is traced first time in history that an equal num- to disgraced Korean officials who em- ber of Christian young men have met ployed Japanese soshi and corrupted in Europe for such a purpose, the first the Japanese troops. The colonel of time since our Lord ascended that such the palace guard saw Japanese assassins a gathering has been convoked in the enter the queen's apartment with swords leading nation of Europe. All Protes- and afterward burn the body. Pro- tant Christendom will be represented. curator Kamura with a commission has If, first of all, a spirit of grace and sup- come from Japan to investigate the out- plication should be outpoured, and that break. A usurper, Tal Non Kun, is- vast assembly should be melted into sues a proclamation, and whereunto this one, fused into unity in the Spirit, so will grow does not yet appear.
as to pray as one man, as Samuel, Dan· The French have taken Antanana- iel, Job prayed for others, no human rivo, the capital of Madagascar. The mind ean foresee the glorious outcome. F~ch premier, Ribot, who evidently If the very place were not shaken when thinks it easier and better to pacify the they were assembled together, it would Hovas than to rule them, exiles the only be because the period ot such signs queen's consort, hut leaves her on her has passed with their necessity; but throne under a French " protectorate" I signs and wonders of another sort But from first to last this whole war would appear and follow. Nothing has seems to us without adequate justifica· cheered u.s more than to see tokens of tion or provocation, one of the most a praying spirit in those who Bummon flagrant outrages of the century.
this convention. For example, they Meanwhile, Armenian remonstrances have sent out a call for daily thanks- have provoked new riots and murder$, giving and prayer, in the form of a and the irrepressible Turk shows him- beautiful and striking card, in colors, self more than ever the enemy of hu- with this inscription: manity, capable of any cruelty or vio· lence; and the bitter cry of Armenia in Syria, Asia Minor. Cyprus, and is goes up to God. now establishing one in China. She has missions to the Freedmen, to the Ind· Spain is having no easy task in Cuba, ians, to the Jews, and to the Chinese in and we can only wait for future devel- the home land. opments, with prayer to Him with whom right is the only real might. Rev. J. A. McElwain, pastor at Clar· endon Street Baptist Church, Boston, It may not be generally known that Mass., lately home from Britain, rather Anette Island is in the Alaskan terri· startled his people by the announce· tory claimed by England. To this mont that in England there is the Cirisland William Duncan moved his 1fet- cle of the Sacred Cross, having 1200 siglakahtla settlement by agreement with natures (clerical), and 1400 of laymen, the United States, and has been recent· to turn the Anglican Church over to ly much disturbed by British miners Rome; and that, to offset this movement, who have invaded his territory. eleven Gospel wagons are at work sow· ing seed of truth among the people. Another church falls into line in the direct sending forth and support of mis- A. R. Stark writes from Lima, Sepsionaries on the field. The Central Presbyterian Church, New York City. tember 16, 1895: "Like China and other of which Rev. W_ Merle Smith is pastor, bade farewell on Sunday evening. mission fields, we are now passing September 29th, to Rev. Charles Otis Gill and his wife, about to depart for through a crisis in Peru which we be- Peking, North China, as the church's representatives. The exercises were of lieve is no accident, but part of God's rare interest. Rev. Dr. Arthur J. Brown, the new Secretary of the Foreign Mis- great plan in the opening and the evansion Board, gave a charge to the congre· gation, and Dr. Gillespie and Dr. Smith gelization of this as well as the adjagave parting words. May the day not be long deferred when a church shall as cent lands, Bolivia and Ecuador. naturally support a missionary of its own on. the foreign field as support a " On August 22d Messrs. Peters and pastor of its own on thl. home field. Jarrett, of the Peruvian Mission, were The power of these living links with expelled from Cuzco by m'deI' of the 8Uthe mission field no words can express. preme g01!ernment here in Lima. This unlawful and outrageous persecution, New Mission. without excuse or justification by' the authorities, fomented by the priests, The Reformed Presbyterian Church was not only contrary to the wishes of is about to open a new mission in the educated people, youth, and puLlic China. Two missionaries. Rev. Elmer press of the city of Cuzco, but contrary McBurney and Rev. A. 1. Robb, each to the constitution, law, and justice. accompanied by his wife, were to sail from San Franci~co aLout the middle •• In a letter from the said Government, of November. Their fieJd will probab- they excuse their action by saying ly be in one of the large unoccupied • that there existed a well-founded fear cities. There are many of these, and that the said gentlemen might be subin the "gross darkness" of degrad· jected to some insult,' which is all the ing superstitions. About them are vast more contemptible when we know that stretches of country densely populated: the press and thinking people and University of Cuzco stood by them and The Covenanter Church has, no dou bt, petitioned the Government on their bebeen divinely guided in securing these half. Protestants, mission premises and missionaries. They have qualifications schools here in Lima and Callao are of mind and heart fitting them for the subjected to insult every week; and if work. that is an excuse for expulsion, then aU the missionaries may be banished from This little church, not more than ten Peru, regardless of sacrifice or injustice. thousand strong, has foreign missions "The British}1inistel',who will doubt- less be supported by the Legation of the United States, is now laying this in- justice before the new Government, which we trust will result in more Ilb- erty for preaching the Gospel in the in- terior; and if not, in defining our stand- ing more clearly.
" Let it be known that the pUblicity of Protestant worship is prohibited here in Peru as well as Ecuador and Bolivia. We are here, but we are merely toler~ small meaDS had not the South African ated. The expulsion of Messrs. Peters natives contributed a considerable sum; and Jarrett has brought on a crisis here. the sum derived from South African People's eyes are now being opened to sources amounts to £9000. So the sothe abuses and degradation of Roman- ciety could keep up in China, South ism, and especially of the priests, as never and East Africa 57 stations, with 76 before. More than one of the news- European missionaries, 5 European helppapers have written strongly against the ers, and 6 lady teachers. In China the influence which the priests exercised in this affai r. society has onlr8 missionaries in the neighborhood 0 Canton; her principal " The time is an opportune one, and field is South Africa and German East calls for special prayer and sympathy. Africa. Here she supports 76 Euro- God has given us indications that His pean workers for church and schoolpillar is moving toward Peru. May it the wives of missionaries not includedbe ours to watch and move with Him, and 131 colored agents. The number inspired by His promise, 'Lo, I am of baptized people in the African conwith you always.' " gregations is 27,119 (in China, 784), of whom 12,774 are full members. Tow- At the la~t meeting of the Council of ard the end of the year 1343 adults were under instruction as catechumens, and the South American Evangelical Mission in the schools 4798 children were in daily attendance. It is very remarkable it was decided to send Dr. Bremner, of that the African natives of these con- gregations contributed to the support of Toronto, to the South at the beginning their churches and schools the sum of £6800-that is, more than five shilof the new year, to be accompanied by lings per head, children included. In the South African republic the society has one or more young men, as the Lord by God's blessing done a very extensive work; 30 of their missionaries are stamay open up the way. tioned here, but the work is much ham- pered by the way the natives are treat- It is the intentiou of the Couucil that ed in this country. They are not per- Dr. Bremner shall establish a home in mitted to be proprietors of the smallest Buenos Ayres or Montevideo for the re- area of land or buy an inch of the ground ception of missionary candidates, where that once belonged to their fathers. Not the language may be learned, and from only that, but they are compelled to which, as they are found ready, they work for the farmers for low wages at will be sent out to different stations in fixed rate. This is to be deplored, as the republics of Uruguay, Paraguay, the natives of this country (Basuto) are Argentine, and Bolivia. very fond of cultivating the land, and many of them would be able to acquire At the same meeting applications from a higher position and raise themselves several most promising men and women more and more if they were allowed to were considered. As the Lord opens the way, it is proposed to send all that possess farms. are suitable to the field. This is a time " The mission which this society has of opportunity for the South; the " fields are white unto the harvest," and established on the north end of Lake many laborers are praying to be sent Nyassa, at the foot of the Livingstone there. Mountains, in the Konde country, has prospered in an unexpected way. Eight Deputation speakers will gladly be missionaries are laboring there, and sent by the S. A. E. ~I. to any church since 1891 four stations have been founddesiring it. Apply to the secretary, ed. It is a cause of praise that during Rev. J. McP. Scott, 4 Simpson Avenue, the establishment of this mission not one Toronto, Canada. of the workers has died, altho the cli- mate on the north end of the Nyassa is Our correspondent, A. Merensky, of by no means favorable. A small steam- er, the Paulus, has been sent out and Berlin, writes : is dbing good service, carrying the mis· sionaries fro!ll shore to shore, enabling " The old Berlin Mission Society has them to preach the Gospel in the viljust published her report for 1894 ; she lages lying there. From all sides it is has to thank God for many blessings be· acknowledged that the missionaries stowed upou her by the grace of God ha ve gained the confidence of the native during this period. The revenue of the population in a very remarkable degree, society from home sources has been the and it is a very hopeful sign that at all sum of £16,664 lOs. ; the expenditure amounted to £17.807 2s. ; so that it exceeds the income. It would be impossible for the society to carryon her very extensive work with such comparatively the stations hearers of the Gospel are peril of greater defection. Statements never wanting, and that a few are come from other quarters that the writearnestly asking, What must I do to be ings of materialists and rationalists in saved 1" European schools have been widely read and studied in Japan, and their The Red Orass in Japa.n, effect has been to beget a semi·rational- Some forty governments in all are ism which is causing divisions among church-members, which greatly hinders bound together by the compact known the advance of Christianity_ Creeds are as the Red Cross, or the International often repudiated, and great doctrines loosely held. All of this proves what Convention of Geneva of 1864. we have always urged, that it is of the foremost consequence that the Church The one word neutral signifies the of Christ should not allow Satan and whole essence of this treaty; it defines his agents to get ahead of Christ's discithe condition of all sick and wounded ples in planting seed of skeptical and soldiers, all surgeons, nurses, and at· rationalistic opinion. Before we had tendants, all hospitals, ambula.nces, and set up our first presses, the devil was other appliances while they display the Red Cross arm, badge, or flag duly au· disseminating his literature. thorized and inscribed by the military power of the army to which they are Mr. J. E. Skinncr calls our attention attached; and fUrthermore, all inhah- to the new Home for Medical Missionitants of a country in the vicinity of ary Volunteers, established in Chicago, where a battle is mging, as well as their in the medical schools of which city a buildings, are sacredly regarded as neu- band of student volunteers was formed tral while they are administering to the wants of the wounded and disabled, or in 1800. From the Detroit Convention being employed for hospital purposes. of 1894 this band received a great im- pulse, spiritually and numerically, and Wounded soldiers falling into the enemy's hands are neutral, and must be attention was turned toward the estabsent to the frontier for delivery to their lishment of a home, and a temporary own army, as soon as possible, provided, of course, that the country to which one waS found at 140 Ashland Boulevard. they belong is an adherent to the Red In April, much better premises at 112 Cross treaty. Loomis Street were secured, with the By applying the foregoing principles advantage of time in which to complete one will readily grasp the reason why Japan is doing such effective and com- the purchase. mendable work as a humanitarian na- This building is a three story and tion. She is carrying out to the letter the spirit and obligations of the Geneva basement brick structure, the basement Red Cross Treaty, to which she gave of which, besides the dining-room, her adhesion in 1886, while her emperor kitchen, and servants' room, contains 1 stands at the head of her civil Red Cross laundry, store-rooms, and a boiler-room; Society. and the house is so built that good light and ventilation are assured_ Some In six great wars the Red Cross has twenty-five student volunteers will here been conspicuous. Written history reo find a home. most of whom are preparcords the beneficent work it has done, ing for medical missionary work. but only unwritten history can relate the prevention of untold misery and No city, perhaps, offers better facilisuffering on every field.-E.:cchaniJe. ties for mastering medicine and surgery. The buildings of the various colleges Dr. J. D. Davis, for years an active are large and commodious, equipped with every modern appliance, and missionary in Japan, frankly admits II grouped about the various hospitals, thus guaranteeing unsurpassed clinical seeming failure in missionary work. advantages. In this extensive group are Rush Medical College, the College He confesses to a distinct doctrinal de- of Physicians and Sur~eons. Chicago Homeopathic College, Women's Medifection among the Japanese churches, cal College, Chicago Post-Graduate and expresses the hope that American missionaries and the Japanese ministers would soon come to a comprehension of the emergency, and meet it wisely and bravely. He admits the emergency which is upon them, and the imminent School, and the Chicago College of and tell of about one seventh as much Dental Surgery. The faculties are gathered for missions is somewhat out made up of men of large ability and of proportion, and that nine tenths of scholarship, who have world·wide repu- a cent a week is not a large average tation as inat.ructors, practitioners, and contribution over which to applaud and authors. Suveral of these colleges, to wave handkerchiefs as banners of trithose preparing for foreign mission umph. But we cannot think the Chriswork, remit or rebate tuition, and their tian Endeavorers are alone in this small diplomas give students good standing proportion. We could not expect thebe in any community. young people to outdo their elders, and yet they have done it. This home for missionary volunteers can scarcely be self·supporting. Those Hatuay, a powerful native chief of for whom it has been established can Hispaniola, urged by the Spaniards to pay barely enough for running ex- embrace Christianity before he was penses. While the colleges are closed, burned, and thus " go to heaven, " asked some three or four months of the year, if the Spaniards were to be there, and the students return home or seek em· when told that they were, said he would ployment. But the home must be kept not go where he wonld meet any of the up in readiness for their return. Money accursed, race which had shown snch is needed for alterations to better adapt crnelty as conquerors to the unhappy the new building to the needs of the people whom they so robbed, tortured, home, and to complete the purdlase of and slew. the property. How terrible is it when so-called Friends are earnestly invited to visit Christian nations so conduct in the pres· this home, and here is an opportunity ence of the heathen as to bring Chrisfor Endeavor societies to meet, and, if tianity into contempt! they choose, select some young missionaries, provide for their education, The African never can be a moderate and send them out as their direct repre- drinker; the appetite once formed, he sentatives. has no control, and, under its influence, is maddened. Joseph Thomson, who PREVENTED FROM DOING RIGHT.- led three expeditions into Eastern Cen- tral Africa, writes: "I traveled and Every lover of temperance will sympa- suffered, inspired by the idea that I was doing good in opening new lands to thize with Lady Henrf Somerset, and commerce and civilization; but all sat- isfaction was blIghted as I felt that wonder at the law which forbids her to what little I had done were better unuse her own discretion in refusing a. done, and Africa would better remain the liquor license on her estates. It appears dark continent, if such must be the end of it all. Underneath the cry for gin I that a certain hotel sought the renewal seem to hear the reproach, 'You see what Christians have made us. You of its liquor license, which she refused. talk of peace and good·will, yet put devils into us.' As things stand in The proprietor appealed, and the Jus- many places, I translate this cry of opening Africa to civilization as really tice in Chancery has sustained the ap- opening it to European vices, old clothes, gin, rum, powder and guns. peal on the ground that she is simply Truly, liquor has been well termed 'the devil in solution.' "-Mi8sionl1ll'1J holding the estate as tenant for life, and Outlook.
that her personal opinions must not affect her fiduciary action. That is, if it is for the pecuniary interest of those who come into the estate after her death to ruin men body and soul by liquor, she has no right to stop it.-Religiou8 I ntelligencer.
A Western missl;>nary paper, The G08pel Mes8age, refers to the late Chris· tian Endeavor Convention in Boston, where the Roll of Honor, 500 feet long, was unfolded, with 5500 societies' names as contributing to the cause of foreign missions $150,000. The editor thinks that $1,000,000 spent to come together
GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE. [Del!ember
V.-GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE.
EDITED BY BEV. D. L. LEONARD.
Extracts and Translations from Foreign stranger whom we are forcing upon Periodioals, them, but their own, coming to bring BY REV. C. C. STA.RBUCK, ANDOVER, the fulness of the Father to His own.
MASS. "The Greek of the New Testament violates all the rules of classic elegance, INDIA. and departs on almost every page from -" There has been of late an appar- classic usage; not always nor perhaps ent revival of Hinduism. This is mani- chiefly because the writers were nGt fested by certain spasmodic movements. Greek)cholars, but chiefly because their An outcry is raised, an attempt is made ideas were largely new and their lanto retine and spiritualize the grosser ele- guage labored and marked in broken ments of heathenism, and efforts made steps under the burden of new meanin 0' to prevent Hindus from professing an which they strove to put upon i; alien faith. Such movements will Among modern languages German and doubtless multiply. There are indica- English have been raised to dignity and tions that Hinduism is feeling the at- honor as vehicles of human thought altacks made upon it. The struggle will most entirely by the influence upon doubtless wax more fierce, and dOUbt- them of the Bible. less become more intolerant. The ancient philosophies will be studied anew; ., Returning to Tamil and the Dravid- ian languages, it is well known that bethe new thought ot the West will be yond the names of a few devils these have hardly any religious vocabulary. read into them, and feelings of false The influx of Brahmanical and BudpatIiotism will lead men to reject all dhistic ideas is marked by the absorpthat comes from a foreign source. tion into the Southern languages of a These movements must be studied, so new vocabulary. Theold Hindu teachthat they can be wisely and sympatheti- ers experienced the same difficulty that cally met. There is doubtless in many we experience to·day, and they left quarters an intense antipathy to Jesus time to settle it by clinging stolidly to Christ as the Son of God and Savior of their old vocabulary, until a large part men. We need to learn how to 'present of it became current coin in the new Jesus Christ to the people in a way that current into which they had carried it. will command the response of the con- Their labor has certainly made the way science, of t.he reason, and of the will. less difficult for us. It has created a Careful study of the thought of the kind of spiritual alphabet where there people and close contact with Jesus was not one; but they have by no Christ are needed if the ambassadors of means left the task of the Christian Christ are to accomplish their purpose. teachcr easy. Rcligious tcrminology Much knowledge is still necessury for drawn from Sanskrit bears almost inan Intelligent, vigorous, persistent evan- variably a detinite Hindu meaning, and, gelization of the masses of the people." used incautiously, will often give a -Ha1"Ve8t Field. sense entirely subversive of that intend- –'" Sympathetically.' Gladlyappre- ed. The preacher has to choose be- ciating and acknowledging all the truth tween the use of a Sanskrit word at the which the people know alIeady, and risk of conveying a Hindu meaning und showing them that this is the dawn of the use of a common word which still that Divine reason which in Jesus Christ stands in common use a mere symbol is risen as the sun; that He is not a _ for a natural object, reading into it as
EXTRACTS AND TRANSLATION'S. 9i5
he goes a spiritual meaning by the old this was almost dissolved by theunut- process of metaphor. In any case, he terable miseries of the Thirty Years'
must face the difficulty and overcome it War, during which Germany 10it more as he may by periphrasis, by illustra- than half her popUlation and became tion, by comment. No mere tranRla- the marching ground of swarms of every tion will serve his end. "–Rev. WILL- kind of foreign invaders, the speech was IAM GOUDIL, in Ha1"l!est Field. renewed by a general instinct of rever- sion to Luther's Bibw. It is no wonder -It is perhaps a little too much to say that the Italians regard the German that English owes almost all its dignity Catholics as a species of mitigated Prot- to its translation of the Bible, as Shake- estants, for if by some sudden lurch all speare, Spenser, Bacon, Hooker, and a Germany should revert to the outward great ~hrong of lesser yet noted writers communion of the old Church, Luther's had used it before 1611, and the earlier tongue would still stand between them translations, even that of William Tyn- and any essential appropriation of Latin- dall, can hardly be shown to have very ism.
perceptibly determined the style of -Foreign translators into Eastern these earlier authors. England had tongues cannot, of course, have anyalready a true and copious national thing more than a preliminary work, speech, out of the fulness of which all- but still a profoundly important one. translators, dramatists, divines, philoso- In Malabar (Southwestern India) the phers, and poeta of various kinds-alike Hindu popUlation in the last decade indrew. Yet undoubtedly the version of creased 9 per cent; the Christians, 10 1611, issuing so completely out of the per cent. ; the Mohammedans, 18 per heart of the language, made by scholars cent. The Moslem are a wealthy class who in their work let their scholarship in this burdened and overpeopled land, subside into a simple instinct, while and use their wealth to advance their they thought only how they could bring creed_ their words home to the heart of the people, at once developed and fixed the -The Rev. Howard Campbell, of the language in a remarkable degree. As London Mission, as we perceive from Macaulay says, no one can pretend to the Dansk Missions-Blad, declares that understand the true perfection of Eng- it is an error to suppose that labor lish use who has not the Authorized among the low-castes shuts a man out Version at his tongue's end. Of Lu- from the high-castes. On the contrary, ther's version, it is strictly true that it he anq his associates had found that the created the German language. Pre- more success they had in any place viously it was but a conglomeration of among the low-castes, the more highvarying dialects, the extremes of which, castes they were likely to gain_ Bishop even within the High German range, Thoburn emphatically confirms this seem hardly to have been mutually in- statement.
telligible. Luther laid hold of the -Buddhism, as we know, has long "mandarin dialects," the diplomatic since been driven out of its native India, speech which had grown up between but it is still adjacent to it on the north the various German courts, fixed it, de- in Tibet and on the south in Ceylon.
veloped it, enriched it with treasures Mr_ Sarat Chandra Das, a Hindu schol- from every German dialect gathered in ar, very friendly to Christianity, tho not his vast correspondence, and fused it a professed Christian, is mentioned in into unity and expressiveness in his the Ohurch Miasionary InteUigenCfJl" as a marvelous mind and heart under the great authority on Buddhism. "He power and presence of the Word of God_ regards Northern Buddhism a8 far supe- Indeed, Lllther's version has twice cre- rior to the Southern,. and so much was ated the German language; for when his mind taken up with its wonderful
GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE
system that it was the greatest pleasure that the Mongolians are the people of to sit and listen while he described the the future; that they are destined to :intricacies of its keystone, transmigra- overrun the world? '
tion, and the fine distinctions of its mar- " 'All nonsense. The Chinese are velous philosophy. But he said, •Bud- very unlikely ever to develop into a dhism has no moral governor.' Buddha warlike people.'
gave his followers a law, but the path " , The social condition of the people of rectitude is one of -self-evolution." -is it good or bad? '
-As was lately remarked in the RE- .. 'It is not very bad. There is a VIEW, and as is implied in the nature of great deal of poverty, but their wants the case, the representations of mis- are few, and I should say the mass of sionaries in a country, when disparag- the people are better off than the masses ing, must be received with some re- of India; the country is wealthier.' " serve, since, aiming as they do to substitute a higher standard. they insensibly Dr. Legge does not think that 400,000,- emphasize the darker features of the 000 is too high an estimate of the popUlaalready existing system. Unhappily. tion of China. He declares that after a however, the Hindus themselves use very long experience of the Chinese, he very strong language sometimes. Thus thinks more of them than ever he did. an orthodox Brahmanic newspaper, the " I have found those who had any posi- Hindu, published in Madras, speaks of tion in society for the most part faiththe Brahman class .as follows: .. Pro- ful to their engagements and true to foundly ignorant asa class, and infinite- their word." He agrees with Sir Harry ly selfish, it is the mainstay of every Parkes, who has been British 11inister unholy, immoral, and cruel custom and in both China and Japan, in regarding superstition in our midst, from the the Japanese officials as children comwretched dancing girl, who insults the pared with the Chinese, an opinion Deity by ber existence, to the pining which Sir Harry declares continued exchild widow, whose every tear and perience to have only confirmed, but every hair of her head shall 8tand up which certainly seems very plainly conagainst everyone of us who tolerate it tradicted by recent events, in which the on the day of judgment. And of such Japanese have shown as mnch diplo- matic as military skill.
a priestly class our women are the igno- .. '-The Lord is King, be the people rant tools and helpless dupes."-Har- never so impatient; He sitteth between _eField. the cherubims, be the earth never so unquiet.' Such is the rendering of CHINA.
-The Free Church Monthly quotes Psalm 99 : 1, in the great Bible of Hen- from the Ohri8tian Oommonwealth opin- ry VIII. 's time, preserved to us in ions expressed to its reporter by the emi- our Prayer-Book Version. The famil- nent Dr. Legge, now Professor of Chi- iar words come to us as we think of Dese in the University of Oxford. For China just now. There are more than instance: a thousand English missionaries, men .. , What effect do you think will the and women, in China at the present un- Chicago Congress have on the future quiet time, many of them probably in religious development of both East and peril of life. No wonder if friends at West? ' home are • impatient' day by day for " , None at all.' tidings of them. Yet, after all,' the '" How, then, did you regard the Par- Lord is King ; , that is a real fact; and IIament of Religions? ' His soldiers, if in the path of duty and .. , A piece of nonsense.' " at the post appointed them, are safe in Then, turning particularly to China: His hand, far safer than on board a … What do you think of the notion British ironclad. But, then, safe from
EXTBACTS AND TRANSLATIONS
what? From whatever is not His will Japanese characteT. We know how for them. Do we wish them to be safe little such newspaper eulogies signify.
from whatever is His will fOT them? So Yet we have no reason to doubt that let our' impatience' give place to peace. this book of Hearn's may be a work of " •Peace, perfect peace, with loved ones far away? considerable value. When, however, in an interview he declares that the In Jesus' keeping we are safe, and they.' "
-Ohurc1. Mi8sionary Gleaner. Japanese morally far outgo the Chris- tians, he makes himself somewhat -When we heaT of ManchuTian mis- ridiculous. Considering that some of sions it appeaTs that we must not think UII have lived in our own country for of Manchuria as at present the country near threescore years and ten, and have of the Manchus. The Revue de8 Mis· spent many years in each of its main sions Contemporaines infol"IDs us that parts, and yet do not dare to pronounce siQce the little horde, in 1643, seized the with any confidence which of these thTone of China, the whole tribe have parts morally excels the other, or whether become government officers. Their for- this generation is morally superior or mer country is now filling up with Chi- inferior to the last, it seems a little nese. This explains why it is so easy strange that a young man, on the for missionaries to go back and forth strength of a few years' residence in a between there and China proper. country utterly strange in character, -Dr. Legge has been inclined to history, traditions, languagc, religion, think that in diplomacy the Japanese moral ideals, can become so well ac- would show themselves mere children quainted with the inmost character of compared with the Chinese. It is true, its people, even after having intermar- the open frankness of the Japanese ried among them, as to be able to pro- character might ordinarily be somewhat nounce them greatly superior morally in the way; but now that they have to ChristIans. . Whatever measure of thrown .the sword with so resounding certainty such a man may imagine him- an energy into the scale, they are not self to possess, the only certaInty that likely to have much occasion to wish he can give to us is that he himself is a for any greater measuTe of craft. malignant hater of Christ.
-As to Japanese humanity in this The Japanese are an amiable and galwar, most accounts seem to agree with lant people, highly cultivated, and of the testimony of the German Jesuit, wonderful courtesy. They have also STORR, who remarks: "We have no an exalted sense of public duty, fully occasion to fear the Japanese, for every- equal to that of Sparta, while wholly where that they come they maintain divested of its unnatural austerities. rigorous discipline and order. Exactly As their moral ideals, however, tho the opposite is true of the Chinese fine, are essentially temporal and retroops. They are rather to be called stricted, it is not strange if a very large robber bands, and the people have much proportion of the nation should be found to suffer where they appear. The Jap· capable of fulfilling them. The ideals anese, on the contrary, pay for all that of Christianity lay hold of infinity and they take, and do not burden the poor . eternity, and therefore ·long ages have people."-Oalwe1" Missionsblatt. passed befoTe even the aurora of their fulfilment has appeared; but when it MISCELLANEOUS. comes at last, with its mighty fulness, the coming of the Son of man, it will -There is a certain man, named sweep the light but exquisite Japanese Lafcadio Hearn, who has written a nation into its mighty current, and, lIke book on Japan which is declared by Undine in the story, she will receive some newspapers to excel anything that what she has never yet had, a truly im- has yet appeared in knowledge of the mortal soul.
GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE
-The eminent scholar, Professor of course treats the hope and desire of Rhys Davids, as we know, has been eternal life less as selfishness (which is lecturing in different parts of this coun- hardly a Buddhist idea) than as supreme tryon Buddhism. He disavows the folly. The Gospel, holding the creacharacter of a missionary of Buddhism. ture for the fruit of supreme wisdom Yet to judge by an interview with and goodness, and the rational creature him reported in the Boston T1'(J//UJoript, as destined, in that oneness of love with this is exactly what he is. This inter- the Creator which at once eternally dis· view has been reproduced with a deli· tinguishes and identifies, to be the etercacy of detail which shows clearly that nal expression and organ of the Uncreit proceeds throughout from the great ated Excellence. makes the case of our scholar himself. The faintest allusions personal salvation-that is, of ollr moral show a profound acquaintance with oneness with God-not only our su- Buddhist authorities, as reported by preme privilege, but our supreme duty, other great writers, which confirms that which alone gives to the creation them as authentic. And they show as its essential blessedness and value, both distinctly that Professor Rhys Davids, of which Buddhism denies alike to it as as to all essential points.-is a Buddhist, a whole and in all its parts. As Max and means to commend and propagate MiUler says, Buddhism, though in many Buddhism. He calls himself a Chris- aspects so greatly resembling Christian, it is true, which in the mouth of tianity, is its exactly opposite pole. an Englishman signifies simply that he Therefore Professor Rhys Davids may acknowledges Christianity as the relig- justly be held as an apostle of Budion of his country-something from dhism, and by that very fact far more which he has absorbed many ways of truly a resolute opponent of the Gospel thinking, and against 'Yhich he has no than any preacher of Brahmanism would thought of preaching a crusade. But be. Buddhism is the great spiritual almost at the very beginning he subtly torpedo, deadening the whole religious substitutes Buddhism for Christianity and personal sense, so far as it is capaby assuming. as something which every- ble of being developed and applied in body now allows, that the universe is the fulness of its fundamental assump· so constructed that every inner and tions. outer act is immediately accompanied by the exactly proportioned retribution English Notes. due to it, and that therefore the belief in an ultramundane tribunal is a mere BY JAMES DOUGLAS. superfluity. Herbert Spencer declares the same; and St. George Mivart right- London Missionary Society. – The ly pronounces him culpable of an utter- Founders' Week Convention, held rely unproved and superstitious assump- cently in the City Temple, September tion. Rhys Davids also treats with un· 21st-27th, has been a great success; disguised approbation and sympathy but as we have made this the subject of the fundamental thesis of Buddhism, a special article, which appears in this that individuality is a temporary thing, issue of the REVIEW, we need not enter of little value, a mere bubble thrown into details here. up and forthwith swallowed up by the turbulent forces of universal existence. Madaga8oa7'.-The latest intelligence He speaks with complacency of the from this war·swept island is fairly re- Buddhist contempt of personal salva- assuring. Thus far the Central Provtion as" selfish." Buddhism, denying ince is free from disturbance. " Misthat individual existence has an eternal sion work and the ordinary lives of the worth, or any worth at all, since uni- people were proceeding as usual, and versal existence itself is only an illusion, there was no indication whatever of an anti-foreign feeling." Despite the coun-
ENGLISH NOTES
sel of the British vice consul, all the if it might spread all over that part of .male missionaries, and a fair proportion the country." Also in Ti~m-men an in- of the ladies also, have decided to re- teresting work is springing up. So at main at their posts-a decision in which a place called Peh-ho-kou, from 20 to the representatives of the S. P. G., the 30 are reported as !leeking for baptism.
Friends' Mission, and the Norwegian Amoy.-Rev. J. Sadler cites several Missionary Society concur. cases of good received from their com- South Seaa.-Times of refreshing are mentary on Matthew. A man named reportcd from Apia. A Mr. and Mrs. Lim has thereby been won, and is now Smith, of the Helping Hand Mission, working vigorously for the salvation of of Auckland, were induced, as they souls. .. My younger brother," writes were passing through. to stay and lend one of the native evangelists, " became for a few days a helping hand. "God a Christian last year, .also through the drew near," writes the Rev. W. E. commentary. "
Goward, " and some of our young folks Bechuanaland.-The directors of the who were seekers, and my chief hope, London Missionary Society have accordcame out boldly for God, and others ed a warm welcome to the chiefs Khama, were able to dedicate themselves to Sebele, and Bathoen, and have in the God." Since then the work has en· most emphatic manner espoused the larged, and about twenty have been object of their visit, and have done brought in. Active opposition has been everything possible to them by way of aroused. strengthening their appeal to the impe- Cltina.-Deep regret is felt at the rial protectorate of Great Britain, in trying circumstances which have neces- which they seek, among other things, sitated the early return of Dr. and Mrs. the confirmation of their tribal rights Bennett from Tientsin-namely, illness to the ownership of the land, as also to of Mrs. Bennett from serious aural the administration of justice in accordtrouble. The District Committee has ance with native law, and, further, the put on record" its deep sympathy with control and prohibition of the liquor the dear friends whom it so recently traffic in their territories.
welcomed to its fellowship, and from Centenary Fund.-This fund has now whom, in the cause of God's provi- reached the sum of £76,000.
dence, it is now called to part." Mrs. Baptist Missionwry Society.-Writing from Wathen Station, Congo, the Rev. Bennett is a daughter of the Rev. A. G. G. Cameron says, .. There are some in whose hearts the good seed has found Brown, of the East End Tabernacle, London. .
King-shan.-Dr. Griffith John writes good soil, and their earnest inquiries concerning this place in Central China: and altered lives give us hope that they " Now for a bit of news that will cheer are being taught by the Holy Spirit of your heart. Mr. Hiung, one of our na- Go~." He also reports the baptism of tive assistants at Hankow, has just re- two converts.
turned from a visit to King-shan. He &mbalpur, India.-District meetings tells us that all the converts baptized last were recently held for the first time in year (when Dr. John baptized 41 adults) Sambalpur. The reporting churches remain strong and firm in the faith. were none of them large, but they had There are now more than 190 waiting each some measure of blessing to re- for baptism, of whom 100 are deemed cord. The following deliverance on the quite satisfactory. The Christians have subject of prayer deserves heart inscrip- bought a large house for chapel pur- tion: " As the amount a cow eats regu- poses, and paid for it themselves. lates the quantity of milk it gives, so About 40 villages have become more prayer is the gauge of a man's ability or less Christian, and the work looks as to display the Christian virtues."
GENERAL MISSIONARY mTELLIGENCE
China Inland Mi88ion.-Many letters Mackay in Africa, of the noble army of have been received giving a graphic de- m'artyrs which Rev. R. W. Stewart and scription of the riots in Si-ch'uen, Ihe his associates in China have now joined, deeds of pillage done, and the providen- has not made the sacrifice of human tial escapes through the abounding lives seem too great even in behalf of mercy of God_ These letters show the degraded savages. Rather has it exult- practical value of that peace which is ed the value of the lives that have been deep set in God_ It is beautiful to see laid down at the hands of those whom such patience under trial, and to note they sought to save and the value of hu- how graciously God has been hearing manityeverywhere. The whole human prayer during the long time of suspense race has been ennobled by these sacri- (even verifying the promise, "before fices."-Oong1'egationalist.
they call I will answer"), and enabling – IlluJJtrated Aj1'ica announces that 4 His servants" to take joyj'ully the spoil- missionaries from New Zealand arrived ing of their goods." at Cape Town after a stormy passage, and proceeded at once to Durban, en The extent of this wave of disturb- route to Inhambane. Think of it! New ance is shown in the fact that in the Zealand sending out evangelists for the western province of Si-ch'uen, as the redemption of Africa I result of a series of riots, some 65 missionaries have been drivcn from their -Backed by the statements of Henry stations, many of them being in the most imminent peril of their lives. Not- Norman in his" The Peoples and Poliwithstanding all, there has been much tics of the Far East," by similar opin- of the dew of blessing on the fleece of ions in Mr. Curzon's " Problems of the service_ In little more than the space Far East," and by editorial assents of of two months no fewer than 160 souls these bold affirmations from the London have been baptized throughout the sta- Standard, the PaU Mall, and the St. tions of the C. I. M. ; and these. added James Gazette8, the New York Tribune to the results formerly given, bring up suggests the new doctrine as a legiti- the total to 401 since the beginning of mate and necessary deduction from the the year. .. acknowledged fact" that the Chinese do not want Christian missions, which THE KINGDOM. Is, that our missions are an intrusion, an -J. F. Willing speaks thus in the international impertinence. – FJoangelist.
Western Christian Advocate of a recent -To. go on a mission to China just visitor to our shores: "The earnest now is, in the estimation of some of the Christian thought of New York has secular journals, .. pious foolhardiness." been arrested by the visit of Andrew The Pall Mall Gazette calls upon the }Iurray, of South Africa, as I have not foreign office of Great Britain to give known it to be during the last half dozen faithful warning to all intending misyears. Scientists have found that there sionaries that if they go they must " go is electricity enough in an acre of fog forth at their peril," and asks the furto destroy all the animal life in that ther question, "Why cannot they, if acre; but it is unknown except to their they persist, as would-be suicides be experiments. Andrew Murray is one forcibly detained 1" of the Lord's electricians, revealing to common people the powers that are -One of the most important addresses dormant and unrecognized within and ever given in Minneapolis was that of around them, that they may be used to General Foster, Secretary of State under light the world gloriously toward the President Harrison, before the General coming of the kingdom." Convention of the Episcopal Church.
-The death of such men as Patteson The successor of Blaine and the adviser in the South Seas and Hannington and of Li Hung Chang, the imperial chancellor of the Celestial realm, has made a which are embraced in his field, and special study of missions. He has had preside at the mceting of the Central peculiar facilities to understand state- Conference of India and Malaysia, craft, and as a peacemaker between which meets at Poonah in March.
China and Japan to know whereof he -Of the 247,000 Indians in thiscoun- speaks. For an hour and a half, in sim- try, 30,000 are engaged in farming, stock- . pIe, straightforward speech, he gave the raising, and other civilized pursuits. evidences that Christianity was doing a During the last year the Indians raised mighty work in all the lands of the 11,722,656 bushels of wheat, 1,878,230 Eaat.-North and West. bushels of corn and other grain, and -" There is no use my trying to be a vegetables in like proportion. They Christian," said an old Chinese woman marketed 30,233,000 feet of lumber; to the missionary's wife; "look at my they own 205,844 head of cattle, 1,283,- feet," pointing to her deformed, band- 633 sheep and goats, and the value of aged feet. "Why, what have your feet products of Indian labor sold by them to do with it 1" asked the lady in sur- is estimated at $1,220,517. Of the 24'7,- prise. "Oh," said the other, "if I am 000 Indians, 189,000 are self-supporting, to be a Christian I will have to go into and 35,000 pay taxes, live outside the the world and preach the Gospel, and I reservations, and are counted in the could not travel with these feet." general population. A.t the last election -Hon. Chauncey :M:. Depew says the about 22,000 Indians voted. About whole tonnage of ocean vessels in the 30,000 are church-members.
world last year was about 140,000,000, -A recent issue of the St. Louis Pres- while the tonnage of the railway of the byterian contained a picture which rep- world carried 100 miles was about resented a group of 13 missionaries, 1,400,000,000. There are 400,000 miles now living, who have given from thirty of railroad in the world, of which 180,- to fifty years of life to the work. Their 000 miles are in the United States, or names are: enough to encircle the earth seven and G. W. Wood, D.D., Turkey, 183B. one fifth times. Of the 1,400,000,000 J. C, Hepburn, M.D., China, 1840. tonnage carried by the world's railroads Mrs. J. C. Hepburn, China, 1840. last year, the roads of the United States William Ashmore, D_D., China, 1850. carried 800,000,000 tons. :MI'. Depew Mrs. William Ashmore, China, 1850. says the internal commerce of the United Henry Blodgett, D.O., China, 1853. States makes it the most wonderful Mrs. Henry Blodgett, China, 1853. market on the globe. John Scudder, M.D., India, 1855.
UNITED STATES. Mrs, John Scudder, India, 1851i. H. H. Jessup, D,D., Syria, 1855.
-Miss Stella Franklin, a granddaugh- J. F, Clarke, D.D., Bulgaria, 1859. ter of Benjamin Franklin, sailed recent· J, W. Waugh, D,D., India, 1859. ly from New York to Bombay as a mis- Benjamin Labaree, D.D., Persia, 1860.
sionary. This is the second of the -Rev. F. B. Meyer makes this an- granddaughters of Franklin now on the nouncement in the London Ohristian: foreign field. "Permit me to state that Dr. A.. '1'.
-Bishop Thoburn was to sail from Pierson has promised to spend six: New York for India November 6th, and months in this country from January, is due in Bombay December 1st. He and it is proposed that he should visit will at once begin an extended tour of several of the larger towns, spending the conferences, but will return again three or four days in each, and holding for the General Conference in May of conferences on the following subjects: 1896. While in India and Malaysia the First day, the Inspiration and Author- bishop will hold the six conferences ity of the Bible; second day, the Personality and Power of tho Holy Spirit; Whole number of laborers sentfrom this 572 third day, the Culture of the Inner country.. .. .. .. . .. .. .. .. .. . … .. .. .. .. 242 Life; fourth day, Christian Missions. 500 There would be two meetings daily." Native pa.tors…………………….. 1,734 Native preachers and catechists….. ..•. 613 -A despatch states that Henry M. Native .chooHeachers…. … ………. 8,107 Stanley, M.P. and explorer, has ac- Other native laborers.. .. .. .. …. . . .. …. 3,679 cepted the nppointment of associate editor of Bishop William Taylor's monthly Total of native laborers…………… pUblication, nlustrated .Africa. It was Total of Americans and natives……. during his recent visit to New York, en route to Canada, that Mr. Stanley be- Churches. came associated with Bishop Taylor in the present work. Churches ……………………. . 461 -The latest report of the American Church-members…………………. .. 44,413 Board, the oldest and among the greatest of American missionaries, is full of Added during the year ……… ,. ….. .. 3,266 eloquent and most suggestive figures, as this brief abstract will show : Whole number from the flrst…….. '" • 131,914 EXPENSES. -At a recent all· day's meeting of the Woman's Auxiliary of the Protestant Co.t of mis.ions ………………….. $661,886 Episcopal Church, held in St. Paul, an .. .. agencies (district secretaries, etc.) .13,964 offering of $54,000 was laid upon the .. .. publications…….. .. .. .. .. .. .. 10,947 altar. During last year the society .. .. administration (secretariell, rents, raised $349,215 in the 52 dioceses and etc.)…………………… ". 28,485 13 missionary districts over which it has spread its network, part of this value Tota,l. .. .. .. . … ………. .. …….. $715,2a'J being sent to the mission fields in the Balance, debt August 31, 1894 •..••••… 116,237 form of boxes, and $23,529 being cred- ited to the Junior Auxiliary. Total. ………………………….$831,469 -Bishop Thoburn estimates that in the Methodi!!t Episcopal Church there ought to be at least 1,250,000 givers to missions, and that they are easily able to give in this fashion: RECEIPTS. 500,000 at $0.05 each monthly. •• . •• ••.. $300,000 500,000 at .10 each monthly……….. 600,000 Donations ………………………… $516,003 150,000 at .25 each monthly. . . . . … •. . 450,000 Legacie… .. .. .. .. … .. .. .. . . . .. .. .. . … 150,435 75,000 at .50 each monthly……….. 450,000 Otis Fund….. ……………………. 41,367 15,000 at 1.00 each monthly.. •.. . .. . . • 180,000 General Permanent Fund…………… 9,Oa'J 5,000 at 2.50 each monthly……….. 150,000 Total …………………………… $716,837 2,500 at 5.00 each monthly……….. 150,000 Debt August 31,!1895….••••..•……•• , 114,632 2,500 at 10.00 each monthly. . ..• •. . ••. 300,000 Total. ………………………….. $831,469 1,250,000 $2,580,000 GENERAL SUMMARY. -The Western Watchman is not cheered by the outlook for Catholic M'U8Wn8. 2" education, and for these cogent rea· 103 sons: "The preachers are now doing Missions…………………………. . 1,163 more for education than we. We are Stations ………………………… .. astonished at the slim attendance at our Out·stations ….•….•.•..••…•..•….. 1,461 boarding.schools. Our convents are not Places for stated preaching. .• ••. ••••• • patronized as they once were. Our col- Average congregations…………….. . 72,000 leges aro not tilled with Protestant boys from the States as of yore. The good Lawrers Employed. Sisters are astonished. The Jesuits and the Christian Brothers are puzzled to Ordained missionaries (16 baing physi· account for the reduced classes. While we men were insensing ourselves the cians) ………………………. .. 187 enemy, the preachers, came and built Male physicians not ordained (besides 11 women)……………………….. .. 13 Other male assistants ……………… . 5 Women (11 of them physicians), (wives, 187; unmarried, 180) …………….. . 367 colleges, male and female, all around professed tbeir faith in Christ during us. There are to-day in this State tens the past year. Some of the institutions of thousands of Protestant and non- may now be considered as wbolly Cbris- Catholic young men and women attend- tian. The income for 1894 was £7752, ing colleges built and maintained by the less than that of 1893 by £1074. The Protestant sects, where thirty years ago new work entered upon includes a home not one could find an education outside near Hankow, at Roha, North India, a Catholic boarding-school." and at Tokio; the erection of a small -Rev_ W. C. Pond writes from San hospital at Kalimpong, DarjeeUng; and Francisco: "Two of our best mission- the transference to the society of a Govary helpers, Loo Quong and Chin ernment leper asylum at Calicut. Funds Quong, left us for their native land are in hand for a new home in Rangoon, about two weeks ago. Another, Gin and another for European lepers is being Foo King, is to follow them next week. subscribed for. It brings a little lightening of the burden of expense, as I shall not attempt -The Chronicle of the London Soto fill their places till our empty treas- ciety in a late issue bas a paragraph in ury is replenished, but it brings, appar- reference to a new organization in Great ently, a great loss to our work. It Britain, to be entitled the Industrial Misseems almost impossible to make it suc- sions Aid Society. The scheme has cessful at the points of greatest need been started by Mr. F. W. Crossley, of Manchester, the idea being to encour- and greatest promise without the minis- age industrial missions wherever there try of men like these." is promise that they can be conducted on a self-supporting basis. Such insti- EUROPE. tutions always need aid at the outset in securing their plant and in starting the Great Britain.-Three African kings industries. It is believed that no at- have been paying a visit to British soil, tempt should be made to foster institu- all worthy men, and were received tions wherever there is no such promise everywhere with becoming respect. of speedy self-support, but where there They were Khama, the Christian ruler is this promise, it is designed to make of the Bamangwato ; Bathoen, chief of loans at a low rate of interest, and to the Bangwaketse; and Sebele, headman afford aid by.such counsels as experi- of the Bechuana. The last named was ence may suggest.
intimately"associated with Dr. Living- -At the recent meeting of the Wesstone. The saddest feature of their leyan Conference a debt was reportcd visit is found in the fact that what they of £30,000 on the Missionary Society, chiefiy desired was the help of the gov- and it was resolved to make a great ernment to protect thefr people from effort to get it removed. A session was the desolations wrought by the rum accordingly given to .. a financial lovetraffic. feast," with the following results: One -The Mission to Lepers cooperates member of the conference after another with 15 different societies, supports 15 rose, giving evidence of approval of the leper asylums or hospitals of its own, effort by a promise to give. By the end and aIds 11 other similar institutions. of" the session nearly £20,000 had al- In addition to these, 12 places are open ready been promised. This amount in- to the mission for Christian instruction, cluded several donations of £1000; Mr.
and 8 homes for the untainted children Morgan Harvey, the treasurer of the of lepers have been opened. In the so- society, adding a second £1000 on be- ciety's homes there are about 800 in- half of his wife and family. Some of mates, and 700 more in the assisted in- the smaller gifts were announced with stitutions. One hundred and fifty have touching details. -At one of the centenary meetings notably the case with South and Cen- of the London Missionary Society, tral Africa and Surinam (or Dutch Chief Khama, whose people had reo Guiana in South America). In all these ceived the Gospel from the missionaries fields new stations have been planted of this organization, being present, said amid heathen populations.
in his own tungue: "I rejoice very -There died recently in Moscow, much to be present here with you in says the New York Tribune, a man who this house of God. I rejoice much to in the last twenty years gave $5,000,000 see so many young children, and I pray to charity. He was State Councillor God that as we have been joined to- Jermakoft, who came from a poor famgether in the body, so He will help us ily. His first public act which excited to join in the one spirit, the spirit to general attention was the purchase of help people. The work in which we the freedom of aU the serfs living in his stand is a work of goodness, a work native village. 'l'his cost him $120,000. which excels all other works in real He came to the rescue of the poor peogoodness. The work that we find on ple time and time again when the harthe earth is a work that tries men, and vests failed. His funeral was one of again it is a work that passes away; but the largest ever seen in the old burial the work of God has no ending. And place of the Russian czars, thousands of I have been trying to get my own peo- the poor of the capital following the ple to go forward in the ways of right- philanthropist's body to the grave. eousness as you are doing. I have not long words to say to you, because I am -According to Russian prison statisnot a man practised in speech, I know tics in 1890, the number of prisoners in how to do things better than to say government jails was 764,373, and for them. But I give you joy with my the suhsequent years 817,945, 855,356, words, the joy that I see in your faces. " and 842,729. The unfortunates in mili- The Continent.-An article has re- tary prisons, the peasants in the village centlyappeared from the pen of Rev. houses of correction, and the prisoners G. E. Hiller in answer to the question, in the 'franscaspian district would make Why are there :Methodist missions in up a total of a million in the Czar's do- Scandinavia and in Germany? The minion who are under loci>: and key. writer finds a legitimate reason for These figures do not includl) the people them, because (1) the origin of these transported to Siberia, w~lO in the years missions was providential; (2) Method- named numbered 18,363,20,106,20,727, ism has the right of way in Europe, as 17,160-a total of 76,356. Nor do they well as in other parts of the world ; (3) include 5328 convicts SC!!t within the they are necessary; (4) they have same period from Odessa to the penal aroused the Lutheran churches from stations of the inhospitable island of their lethargy; and (5) they are justified Saghalien.
by the religious indifferentism and spir- ASIA. ituallethargy of many Lutheran clergy- men. Islam.-The Porte has finally accept- -'rhe Moravian Church also reports ed the inevitable, and under compulsion a deficiency in the missionary treasury, from four ot the great European pow- one amounting to £5745 ($28,725). The ers has consented to radical reforms in causes are, on the one hand, a falling Armenia, relating to taxes, judicial pro- off of income, mainly under the head of cedure, etc. Christians are to have :egacies, and, on the other hand, an in- some real protection from Moslem hatred crease in the expenditure of several and violence. Let us rejoice at the fields. This is largely due to healthy steady waning of the crescent and the growth and necessary extension, .and steady waxing of the cross. -In a recent Nineteenth Century the without either the imperial permit or Hon. Mr. Justice Ameer Ali appears for the stamp !"
the defence of the Turks in " Islam -The Presbyterian Mission in Persia, and the Critics." These sentences give including the Eastern and Western secthe fia vor of the article: .. No country in tions, reports the following statistics for the world has had to contend with such the past year: Stations, 6; out-stations. insuperable difficulties as Turkey. For 91; ordained missionaries, 16; medical the last century and a half every two missionaries-men, 4, women, 4; lay decades or so she has been engaged in missionaries, 1; lady missionaries, inexhausting wars, not of her own mak- cluding wives, 38; total, 63; ordaineu ing, but forced upon her by the crusad- nati ves, 45; licentiates and teachers, ing zeal or the ambition of others. And 244; total of native laborers, 289; yet, in spite of all difficulties, partly churches, 38; communicants, 2838; originating from within and partly added during the year, 173: students from without, all candid observers ad- for the ministry, 11 ; total of pupils ill mit that the country has made consid- all schools, 3470 ; hospitals and dispenerable progress in every direction. Nor saries, 4; patients treated, 20,785; naare wise and patriotic statesmen want- tive contributions, $23,500. ing. Men like Said, Turk.han, Zia, and Tewfik would do honor to any coun· India.-Among the proofs of this try." country's progress in adopting methods -Rev. H. H. Jessup has returned to of Western civilization, it may be noted Syria, and gives evidence that the SuI· that in the year 1894 the money spent tan's change of heart is not entire. on education was 96 lakhs of rupees Read this: "Ten days ago orders came more than in 1888, and that during the from Constantinople to the Beirut cus- six years the number of pupils in schools tom house to allow no books to be increased more than 60,000. The numshipped, even though they have the ber of letters, etc., which passed imperial permit, unless each separate through the post-office in 1888 was 274,- volume is stamped by the Director of 000,000, and in 1894 was 370,000,000. Education. As we have 12,000 volumes The number of telegraphic messages ready for shipment, our work is virtu- sent nearly doubled within the six ally and practically stopped. The Direc- years; the area under irrigation grew tor of Education has written to the Col- from 7,500,000 to nearly 9,500,000 acres; lector of the Port that these books all and the hands employed in cotton-mills have the imperial permit, but he says increased from 72,000 to 130,000.-Indhis new orders are peremptory, and not ian Witne88.
a book can go without the disfiguring -Rev. John E. Clough writes: "The stamp on it. All of our Arabic Scriptures Madras·Bezwada Railway, for which and other books have the imperial im- project I have worked not a little, both print, the official permit on the title- here and in London, has at last been page. More than this no government sanctioned, and work on it is to com- can req uire. But they insist now on mence September 1st. This railway refusing to recognize their own permit, will be 290 miles long, and is really an and oblige us to have a disfiguring, extension of the East Coast Railway, inky stamp put on every volume and on and the two will be about 1000 miles in as many pages as they choose to put it length, and will make as direct a rail- in. The object plainly is to obstruct way line as possible between Madras Bible distribution. And what makes and Calcutta. This railway will pass the order more outrageous and offensive through Nellore, Kavali, Ongole and is that the Jesuit edition of the Arabic BapatIa, and will pass within three Bible goes through the custom house miles or so of Ramapatam and Kundukur. It will be a great boon to UlJ in 99 out of every 100 Hindus. They are our mission work, and in many ways. bound to it by an inexorable Jaw, so Oh, that it had been completed thirty that the Hindu never practically adyears ago !" vances beyond the question, 'Is this act which I am about to do consonant -Read this from the MiBBion Field: with the caste rules and religious rites ., In consequence of the custom of early of my people l' They think over and marriage universally prevailing among are affected by religious truth about as Hindu youths of the plains, it follows much as they are by modern explorathat most of our Christian boys' class tions to the north pole. Moreover, it companions are married men. I had should be remembered that Hinduism heard about boy·marriages before going has accomplished in the minds and lives to India, but neither this nor any other of its votaries a complete divorce of mostrange custom produces much effect rality and religion. The most ' holy' upon one's mind until one is brought and most highly venerated men, religface to face with its practical working; iously, in India to-day are known everyand so, soon after my arrival, I was where to be highly immoral, the moral teaching a class of ordinary-sized school- lepers of the community." boys in St. Stephen's High School, when, on inquiry why a certain youth -The Pasumalai Institution of the had not put in an appearance on the Madura Mission has at. present 351 stuprevious day, I could hardly believe dents, under the instruction of 3 Amerimy ears when he said, ~ Please, sir, my can missionaries and 20 native teachers. son was taken sick and I had to stay Its several departments embrace a col· and look after him.' 'Your son !' I lege, high and middle schools, normal said; 'my dear boy, what do you school, practising school, and theologimean?' • Oh, yes, sir I ' was the re- cal seminary. Its jubilee celebration ply, , you know we marry very early in was on September 19th. The instituthis country.' I said, when I had re- tion is one of the most valuable within covered my breath, • Will all those who the whole field of the American Board. are married men in this class kindly During the half century $30,000 have hold up their hands?' And another been expended in buildings and not less shock was in store for me when all but than $100,000 in its support. 3 or 4 out of a class of 35, averaging about fourteen or fifteen years of age, -Well may Rocwell Clancy send signified that they were husbands: the forth his lament over the case of the minority consisting of 2 Christians and Methodist North India Mission, whose 1 or 2 Mohammedans." prosperity, strange to say, actually threatens its ruin. He writes: " Mis- -Dr. J. P. Jones, of Pasumalai, has sionaries who have been sent to this this to suggest concerning Hinduism: country to preach the Gospel and to .. So far as Hindus are concerned, the lead India to Christ are succeeding in Vedic teachings and the philosophic thiir mission. Every year about 10,000 systems of Brahmanism-of which so converts are added to the Church; and much is said on American platforms- yet, year after year, the missionary sohnve very little, practically nothing, to ciety is forced to keep us at the same do with their daily lives. They have old figures. Our success is proving to the completest legal code and ceremo- be our greatest embarrassment. The nial system of any people on earth. It classes from which our converts are enters every detail of their life. At the taken are for the most part the most root and permeating every fibre of this ignorant and degraded in India. Alis the caste system, to which every Hin- most the only religion they have known du is an abject slave. Thisexternalism is demon worship. When they come to is the alpha and omega of religion to us they are so ignorant that only about 3 persons out of 100 can read and write. lains to Formosa, the authorities at They are like little children, and need Tokyo replied that they were glad to the most patient, loving teaching, or have as many Christian preachers sent matiy of them would relapse into idola- as possible. The 5 who were sent to try. They are sorely oppressed by their the army in China did such admirable relatives and caste people, so that if left service that the more of such work the alone without a Christian teacher among better. Work among sick soldiers in them, they would soon become dis- the hospitals grows in interest. ,So couraged and yield to the persuasions of much is this the case that Miss Talcott their friends to renounce Christianity." of our own mission and her coworkers -Aligarh Anglo·Oriental College is have returned to Hiroshima, braving rapidly becoming the most important cholera and intense heat in order to centre of Mohammedanism in this coun· continue this telling service." try. It is attracting hundreds of Mohammedan youth of the best families; -The Chinese have been accused of and while it seeks to establish them' in not being patriotic. But those who the faith of Islam, it also aims to give make such accusations do not know the them a liberal education abreast of that Chinese. What is it that makes 80 given in any other institution of learn· many of them want to be brought back ing. The school wlIl exert a great in- home to be burled? What makes them fluence upon Mohammedan society. refuse to be absorbed by the countries The young men who have had from to which they go? What makes them four to six years in the college board- refuse to adopt anything that is foring-house and class-rooms will not go eign? It is the same feeling that back to their homes unchanged in char- prompted the Jew to hold to the law acter or ideas of life. The college has and the prophets. Only those who take an annual income of 24,000 rupees from a superficial view of the Chinese, their landed property assigned to it by the philosophy, Jiterature, and history, can Nizam of Hyderabad. Other Moham- attribute it to ignorance, and it is conmedan noblemen will doubtless emulate ceit only if too much patriotism is con- ceit.-T. HEADLAND, in the Independent.
the Nizam's zeal. The college not only -One of our missionaries in a great has money and a good prospect of more, city of China (it may be as well not to but it has students also. There were .mention names) reports that the leading last year 205 students in the college de- officials of the city sent him a request to partment and 360 in the school depart- meet them at a place which they named ment.-Indian Witness. for a quiet conference. Accompanied Cbina.-The Chinese word for medi- by another missionary, the two were recine is " yoh," and the Chinese form of ceived with the honors paid to the govthe word John is "Yohan." In one ernor of a province. Passing through part of China, says the Baptist MUiaion- a double line of$oldiers, a military salute ary Magazine, there has been a great de- was fired, and ceremonies were carried mand for the Gospel of John, as the out according to the" Book of Rites." people thought it was a treatise on After a collation had been partaken of, medicine. It is to be hoped they found the theme of conversation was largely in it healing for their souls if not for China and her relation to the Western world. These officers commented with their bodies. severity upon the evils of the govern- -Rev. J. H. Pettee is persuaded that ment of China, but evidently felt help- in the Flowery Kingdom " Christianity less and hopeless as to means of reform.
as a whole is gainini steadily in intlu- The object of this conference seemed to ence. To cite one proof, when permis- be solely to gain information and to es- ,sion was asked recently to send chap· tablish friendly relations. The incident ia certainly a striking one, and serves to the truth and superiority of the l'elig- show the impression which some at least ion of Christ by intelleetual discourses of our missionaries are making on Chi· and" apologies" aimed at the heads of nese otHcials.-Missiona1'1l Herald. some of the most rapid and acute think- ers and logicians in the world. -Rev. Gilbert Reid continues his efforts to gain access to the highest dig- AFRICA. nitaries in the empire, to make their acquaintance and win their confidence, This continent, the second of all for respect, and friendship, and that so he size, is said to contain the largest forest may help them to see some things from on the globe, having one whose length the Occidental point of view. So would is at least 3200 miles, and whose width he carry blessing to the teeming mill- is unknown, because no traveler has ions. His success is beyond his expec- ever pushed his way from side to side. tations. Besides, the latest evidence goes to show that Victoria Nyanza, if not equal in Japan.-MissG. Nott, of Kumamoto, area to Lake Superior, is not far infe- Japan, an English missionary, says: rior.
.. I was talking one day to a woman of -Joseph Thomson, the African exvery good family, anotlicer's wife here, plorer, who recently died at thirty.six and was telling her that before the one years of age, was the only man who true God we are all sinners. She list- penetrated into the interior from all ened politely, and then, covering her four sides. From Morocco on the north face with her hands, she burst into a he explored Mount Atlas; from the west peal of quiet laughter. 'I do beg your he went up the Niger; from the Cape pardon,' she said, ' but I a sinner! the he reached the great lakes and the spot idea is too ridiculous.' You see it is where Livingstone died; and from the firmly believed in many cases among east he traveled through the Masali men and women, too, that other nations country to the lakes. In all his expedimay need a Savior, but not Japan; tions he never found it necessary to use Japan is the country of the gods, the a revolver or a rifle against a human Japanese the children of the gods, and, being. therefore, they cannot sin."
-The Salvation Army is to make a -The London Freeman (Baptist) says determined assault upon Japan. The that King Leopold, of Belgium, chief (Jonqueror gives this answer to the ques- of the Congo Free State, is very kindly tion, "What are they going to do in disposed toward the Baptist missiona· Japan ," They are going to plant the ries on the Congo. Recently he exflag of blood and fire in the name of pressed in a letter his high appreciation God and the Army, and raise up a na- of the services rendered to the state by tive force of Salvation warriors to con- a grammar of the language which Mr. quer the Empire for Christ. They are Bentley, a missionary, had prepared. going, a band of 15 of them, to make He also knighted another missionary, their attack on what are known in Mr. Grenfell.
Army parltmce as "native lines"-that -Mr. Snyder writes thus jubilantly is, they will dress, eat, and live as the from Luebo, on the Upper Congo: Japanese do, and they expect that the " This mission has been in operation people will, when they come to know some five years, and now comes the an- them, receive them gladly_ They will swer to the unnumbered prayers that not go there as superior beings, con- have ceaselessly ascended to our Father demning all the Buddhists and spirit- since that time, five years ago, when worshippers and free·thinkers as fools Mr. Lapsley and Brother Sheppard left tm or knaT6S, llor will they try to prove America now. Frayer will prevail. On Sabbath morning, March 17th, 12 will ask, how do they collect damages, more were baptized and became mem- debts, etc. Well, the African excels in bers of this church, and on the follow- dunning. The African may quickly tire ing Sabbath, 14, and on April 7th. 2 of almost anything else, but of making more, and on April 14t.h, 1 more. This requests, never. The debtor is met in makes in all 35. What a day of rejoic- the market-place, and publicly remind- ing, when we had our first communion ed of that little debt. He is hailed in with them! Hematuria and death were the path with, "When arc you going nowhere in the presence of this Life! ! to settle?" And at his house he re- Weare all well at this date, and are ceives all sorts of untimely and unwel- hopeful of more converts soon. These come calls from the aggrieved party, were mostly from among our station and life becomes a burden until he pays.
people; out of the 35 only 3 were Then there is a little trick the Congo Bakete, the rest being Baluba." man has, of tying up (the Congo meth- od of imprisoning) the wife or wives of -" There is much illness among the the debtor until the pay is forthcom- natives themselves [of the Congo basin]. ing.-A Mi8sionary.
One physician estimates that 90 per cent have hereditary diseases. Forty- -The railway race has begun even in five church-members have died this Nyassaland. There is now there an en· year, and 46 have been received into gineer surveying for a line from Chiro- the Church. At one of the out·stations mo to Blantyre under the egis of the 25 died in three years. I remember of Lakes Corporation. Hopes are also having seen but one gray-haired person. held out of the speedy completion of They expose themselves unnecessarily, the transcontinental telegraph between and have no idea of sanitary laws. Blantyre and Fort Salisbury. It is said They have poor houses, lie on the that a few weeks will see a direct com- ground, and take no care of themselves munication open with the lIashonaland when ill." office, and so on to England 'Dia the Cape. Meantime, the reduction of the -Avarice is perhaps the most strik- cable rate between England and Cape- ing characteristic of this people. 'fhe town to 38. per word will effect a con- love of wealth is the root of a vast siderable reduction in the cost of through amount of evil in Africa as well as in telegrams from BIantyre.-Life and America. They look upon all things Work.
as property. The state flogged a native so severely that he died. His people -A letter from the Bishop of Ma- were very indignant, and threatened to shonaland gives a graphic account of a join other natives who were then up in page in the life of a modern missionary arms in rebellion against the state on bishop. He says: " I write from Bulu- account of its tyranny. But when the wayo, which I duly reached on Mon- state gave them some cloth, it was all day after a coach journey of 550 miles right. A man was supposed to have from Pretoria across the Limpopo and been killed in an attack upon a state sta- its crocodiles, and on through dusty tion. His friends did not find his body, tracks made through the bush by pio- but according to their custom, buried neers. It was, even to me, a very rough considerable cloth. In time, the man journey, with scarcely any sleep and supposed to be dead appeared. When little food. On Sunday afternoon, after the fact was known, instead of rejoic. many hours' travelling in choking dust ing, a friend (1) said, "What about all and heat, we rested for an hour at a that cloth which we buried 1 Who will wayside shanty of poles and mud.
pay for that? The white ants have Prospectors were lounging about, and eaten it by this time." Perhaps you one man had put on a clean shirt. Every one was hearty and the bishop guages the Scriptures of the Old and was warmly welcomed. Damper was New Testaments into the Niuean lan- ready. and there was turned butter and guage of Central Polynesia. and the bUtung (buck or beef meat dried in the Motu language of the Papuan people, sun). I expect I was the only bishop more than justifies the act of the Scotch in the world on Vtat particular Sunday university.
sitting astride a plank, cutting slices of biltung with my pocket-knife, and -It is a strange fact that the very washing them down with digger tea throne which the French are seeking to out of a billy, a sort of tinpot or mug wrest from the Queen of Madagascar which prospectors carry about. was presented to her by Emperor Na- -The Uganda railway soon to be poleon III. It will probably constitute commenced will extend from Mombasa, one of the trophies of the war now on the Indian Ocean, to the Victoria waged in Madagascar_-The Indepen- Nyanza, a distance of 650 miles. The (Unt.
estimated cost is $8.775.000. The cost -The French have finally, tho with of running one train up and down per great loBS of life. climbed from the week is put at $200.000 a year. The coast to the central highlands; the capi- railroad will, however, greatly reduce tal, Antananarivo, has fallen, the queen the expense of government transport, has yielded and made peace. and Gallic which now costs $900 a ton from the influence Is supreme in Madagascar. coast. For some two and a half centuries -Henry M. Stanley. M.P.• said re- France has claimed this great island, cently in an interview of the religious several times over has sought to gain growth in the region of Lake Victoria possession. and now rejoices in having Nyanza: .. When I was at the lake 18 the prize within her grasp. Of course years ago there was not a missionary the only right in the matter is might. there. Now there are 40,000 Christian Very likely a better government than natives and 200 churches. The natives the natives ever had will be set uP. good are enthusiastic converts. They would order will prevail, roads will be built. spend their last penny to acquire a and all that; but the gravest fears may Bible. They are not like the blacks of well be entertained that a course of the West Coast; in fact, there are no vexatious and disastrous meddling with real Ethiopians among them. They Protestant missions will be commenced. vary in color from light yellow to dark If only these are let alone, and the copper. and are much more intelligent Jesuits are kept within decent bounds, than the blacks." all may yet be well.
ISLANDS OF THE SEA. CHINESE AND JAPANESE IN THE -The many friends of the Rev. W. G_ UNITED STATES. Lawes, of New Guinea. in Australia and New Zealand, will be gratified to There are about 100,000 Chinese resilearn that the University of Glasgow dents in the United States. and more has conferred upon him the degree of than 90,000 attend no Christian service. Doctor of Divinity. He has devoted nearly thirty-five years of untiring work The Japanese in America number to Christian· literature and Christian about 2100. Missions are carried on education in Polynesia and New Guinea. among both of these claBSes by the Presand the quality of the work he has done byterians, Methodists, and others with in training pastors and evangelists, and 'considerable success. The Young Men's in translating from the Qri~n~l ~lAa. Christian Association has been the means of a good work among them on the Pacific slope.
The Missionary Review of the World — June 1895
ARCHITECTURE OF THE
MISSIONARY REVIEW OF THE WORLD.
VOL. XVIII. No. 6.-Old series.-JUNE.-VOL. VIII. No. 6.-New Serie8.
THE INDIANS OF AMERICA: THEIR CURIOUS CUSTOMS, WEIRD WAYS, AND STRANGE SUPERSTITIONS. 'I< BY THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF.
Fact often outruns fiction in novelty and romantic interest. The ab- original tribes of this Western Hemisphere bear study. No people on earth are so reticent and reserved. Beneath an exterior imperturbably placid, features that never betray changing emotions and are almost frigidly rigid, they hide even from acute observers their inner secrets; and their whole personal and social life is a veiled chamber of mystery, behind whose curtain very few outsiders ever penetrate to the arcana.
A book has recently appeared which will be to most readers a revelation, not only of marvellous" wonders of the world" to be found within the Continent of North America, but of unsuspected mysteries of Indian life and character. Its author has spent years in Isleta, New Mexico, Arizona, and other parts of the Southwest, living among this compara- .tively unknown people, studying with rare penetration and patience their curious and occult history and habits. He has not contented himself with any superficial glance or hasty impressions, but seems to have persevered in cultivating such friendly and intimate relations, and in gathering such trustworthy information as might serve to supplement his own kElen observation, and enable him to reveal to the general reader, more fully than we have ever before seen, the real life of these" native" Americans. From his fascinating book we cull a few facts which especially bear upon Indian notions of religion, etc.
The somewhat amazing disclosures of Mr. Lummis have to do particularly with the Pueblo cities of Moqui, well into the edge of the Arizona Desert, and remote from civilization and Spanish influence, like the inaccessible mesas on which they are built.
of • 80me Strlnge Corners oC Our Country. By Charles F. Lummis. New York: Century Com- pany, 18112. T~e a~thor cauti,?ns the writer this article and hill readers, to "discriminate care- ;tully between the ClaSHes :of Iudian.mentioned In • Strange Comera.' 'rhe Puebl08, of course, are Christiana, ·end very .arne8ton~s,though superstitious,"
THE INDUNS OF AMERICA
Pueblo marriages show unique customs. To the groom is given a blue ear of corn, and to the bride, a white ear, because woman's heart is supposed to be the whiter. They prove their mutual devotion by eating every kernel. Then they run a sacred race, and the issue gives to the winner a certain ascendancy or prestige. If neither outstrips the other, the match is annulled as of bad omen. Pueblo etiquette forbids familiarity between the unmarried youths and maidens, under penalty of a whipping. Casual glances and greetings must take the place of walks and talks together. Marriages must have parental consent; and, in fact, the parents do the " courting" in behalf of the suitor.
Three hundred and fifty years ago the Pueblos had a strict separation of the sexes and community houses. Women, girls, and children lived in tlte dwellings, while men and boys slept in the estufa (or sacred room), to which the women brought their food. There was no common family life until the Spanish missionaries introduced it. There is still existing a peculiar fabric of society. The woman has rule in her own home, and to her belong the children, whose descent is reckoned from her, and who take her name and not the father's. The husband and wife must be of different divisions of society. The basis of social life in the twenty-six Pueblo town-republics is the clan, or cluster of families; and there are from six to sixteen such clans· in each of the towns.
The Pueblos have their children baptized in a Christian church, and give them a Spanish name. Some of the more conservative have also an Indian christening, which is performed by some friend of the family, taking the babe to a dance, selecting a name, and putting his lips to those of the child to confirm it; or the intimate woman friend of the mother takes the child at dawn on the third day of its life, and names it after the first object on which after sunrise her eye faIlIl. Hence the poetic and romantic Indian names. Mr. Lummis has a little girl thus named by an Indian friend, " The Rainbow of the Sun," and for a month this "adopted child" received from her Indian friends gifts of eggs, chocolate, calico, pottery, or silver.
After the birth of a child among the Pueblos, the father for eight days must see that the sacred birth:ftre in the fogon, or adobe fireplace, goes not out day or night, and as it can be kindled only in the sacred way, so only can it be rekindled if it does go out. He must smuggle a live coal, it may be in his own bare hand, under his blanket from the cacique's own hearth; otherwise the fire of the' child's life goes out also within the year. The Pueblo fathers, grandfathers, and even greatgrandfathers, and even the chiefs themselves, are not above carrying the babies on their backs and dancing to quiet them when there is need. Pueblo parents are gentle yet not over-indulgent, and the children show obedience to parents and respect to old age.
The death customs are equally unique.· Food is made ready for the four days' journey of the disembodied soul, and a " good start" provided for the unseen world. Some of his horses and cattle are killed for his use there; his weapons of war and chase, etc., are" killed" by burning or breaking, and so he is made ready to carryon his occupations beyond. Hence near every Pueblo town is the "killing place," apart from the graveyard, where the ground is covered with the various remnants of all manner of articles useful or ornamental.
The funeral pyre is not unknown among the tribes of the Colorado desert, and with the body the property of the dead is consumed, with treasures contributed by the mourners. No Navajo will ever again enter a house which death has invaded; hence come hosts of abandoned huts. Nor would he ever, after marriage, look at his. mother-in-law; even an accidental glimpse must be atoned for by fasting and prayer_ To most aboriginal tribes the feather is sacred, and is not only used in decoration, but in all religious rites. A white or bright-hued plume is of good omen, the gay parrot feather being specially valuable; and as to peacock plumes, they are beyond price. Without eagle feathers sicknesli could not be cured, or even witches exorcised, and the Indian religion would have no "prayer-book." Dark feathers are correspondingly of evil omen, particularly those of the raven, owl, woodpecker, and buzzard. To have these in possession is proof of evil designs or of witchcraft, and provokes summary punishment. The Pueblo" prayer stick" is chiefly of feathers, and corresponds to the Thibetan and Burmese" prayer wheel." Over three thousand of these prayer sticks have been counted in a day's ramble, stuck up in the ground as invocations, whittled sticks with downy feathers bound to the top in a tuft.
The Pueblo medicine men not only doctor the sick, but" doctor the year," prescribe for the seasons, and feel the pulse of the corn-fields. Wahr (the Tiguan word for medicine) includes almost all influences affecting humanity. To the Indian all influences, good or bad, are medicines and are spirits, good or evil. The medicine men must, therefore, be endowed with supernatural powers adequate to cope with the hostile spirits and coax the good. The witch is virtually a medicine man, only the power is used harmfully.
The two important doctorings of the year are in the spring and autumn -one to insure, and the other to acknowledge, a prosperous harvest. The spring medicine making is about mid-March. Every detail is not only sacred, but secret. The chief captain of war and his seven sub-captains lead the way, and each branch of medicine men sends a delegate to a common meeting. Chosen messengers-usually the war captain and his next of rank-present the sacred cornmeal to the two heads of all medicine, the offering being prepared by certain women of the family of the senior ambassador, out of the best ears in store, and with much care and prayer after sundown, this meal, wrapped in corn husk and tied with a string of the same material, is carried to the house of the great medicine man, the" Father of Here." After a sacred smoke and prayer to the Trues on all sides, the sacred parsel is handed to the august" doctor of the year," always using only the right hand. Next morning both the heads meet before sunrise at an appointed rendezvous, and as the sun appears, holding the meal in the left hand, and with the right taking pinches, breathing on ,it and then tossing it toward the sun, they meanwhile pray to the Sun Father for rain, grass, crops, and general prosperity.
On their return to the village they summon their medicine orders. Four days of fasting and preparation are" outside days," when the medi- cine men may move ·about keeping faRt; but the four" inside days" whi~h succeed are spent within the medicine house in ri~id fasting, as elsewhere described un,der the " praying smoke." Noone must enter the room or evcn call at the door but themselves, save the ",ife of the head of all, who sweeps it, brings water to fill the tirwja (jar), and tobacco for cigar- · ettes. ·Day and night they sit and smoke, the veterans reciting traditions , .of the order, that the younger may learn them by heart.
On the morning of the last day four pairs of marshals go on their mission in different directions. Once outside the village they cast off their blankets and run swiftly, carrying the" prayer sticK," a small bit of ·wool with certain magical feathers bound to it in a peculiar fashion; ·these prayer sticks to be planted in some sequestered spots at the four cardinal points outside the village; and after praying over them they run wildly over the country, blowing away witches and tossing up all evil spirits with long feathers, to be borne away on the wings of the wind.
Medicine-making must be done only i.n the dark blue breech-clout and with faces painted after a certain fashion; and the two forerunners are indicated by lightning marks on the legs.
The" dance" begins in the room of the fasters, and when the door is opened the people outside stand with bare feet, motionless. Every detail , o{ the performance is relfgiously regulated, and the seats are in the order of · rank~ . In front of each medicine man is the" mother," the ear of .white : com with its feather tuft and turquoise ornaments; and in front of the ; father of all is the cajete (earthen bowl) of sacred water, the mirror of all the world and its events.
The sacred cigarette or weer is used to wreathe the magic mirror in , smoke, when the shaman (medicine man) would foretell the year, or watch ·.the witches in their tricks, or see what is going on in the world, and to blind •-the eyes' of game during the sacred hunt. It is the fee for the services of · the shaman when there is sickness, and is used to cover the trail.of the departed soul, that the witches and evil spirits may not trace its path. •.:The weer is never to be lit at a common fire or with a match, but only "from the sacred fire in the estufa-a coal from the hearth of the cacique '- (chief-religious official), a flint and steel, or the unique old fire-drill, a dry round stick fitting closely in a cavity, and turned very fast, always from right to left.
The iacred song is sung, a rude ode to 'the "mother" of the crops,
PUEBLO INDIANS. AlII INDIAN BABY
THE INDIANS OF AMERICA
then the pinches of sacred meal are blown toward the father of all medicine and the mother-corn,and the eagle feathers are crossed and snapped. The wonderful sleight-of-hand follows, which perpetuates the awe in which the shamans are held.
When the medicine-making is done the sacred "going.out·for-theyear" follow!!, with equally rigid and religious rites. The father of all wears on his left hand and arm a gauntlet of skin of a bear's foreleg with the claws on, and on each foot a similar skin from the bear's hind leg, and in the glove he sticks the eagle plumes. Then the song is twice sung and the sacred mirror is looked into, and three shamans run to the Rio Grande to bring back auspices of plenty, or omens of drought and famine.
The sacred water-giving is the distribution from the cajete of a mouthful to each person, with prayers to the Trues, the recipient blowing the water on his hands or rubbing it on his body in token of strength to be given him, etc. The" mother-shaking" is done by the father of all, who mysteriously rains down on the heads of the audience a shower of seeds from the tufted ears, each kernel being eagerly picked up as a token of a large crop.
After the final benediction abundance of food breaks the long fast. The ceremonial paint is washed off, the ordinary clothing resumed, and the year is now safely begun at least. So curious and complex are the religious customs attached to some of our Indian tribes.
The cigarp.tte, and not the calumet, is the true ,. pipe of peace" among the Indians of the Southwest, and figures conspicuously in religion, wat', and the chase, and more than Arabian salt in its power as a bond of hospitality. The sacred cigarette is, however, a different thing from the familiar object that goes by that name in the East. It is a pinch of granulated tobacco wrapped in a bit of sweet corn husk or a special sort of brown paper.
The sacred smoke is everywhere found among the Pueblos. It hallows birth and death and every experience between. It secures f~om drought and all malign spirits, and makes. every rite and even prayer itself more holy. Its use is rigidly restricted. An Indian woman is not to think of smoking; a slit in the tip of the tongue may be the penalty. Nor dares the Pueblo lad smoke before he is twenty-five, unless he earns the privilege by prowess, or is a member of the medicine men's order, and even then not in the presence of seniors or superiors.
The cigarette is at once a bond of friendship and a flag of truce. The first act of a Pueblo in meeting a heathen Indian is to toss him the tobacco and corn husk for a cigarette, never handing it. To pick up the offering is accepting a peace covenant, and the bitterest enmity must be put aside.
The smoking anteceded the discovery of tobacco, and was then confined to certain aromatic herbs. Ceremonial cigarettes (the weer) are still made as before corn husks were used, by removing the pith from .a reed and filling the hollow with certain sacred weeds or tobacco. The Indian, on lighting the cigarette, sends each of the first six puffs in a contrary direction, but in such a sly way as to elude a stranger's opservation. This is a religious ceremony which reminds one of the Jewish "wave offering," waved toward the points of the compass to declare in pantomime that "the earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof. " Thus the smoker propitiates the Trues and exorcises the witches.
In the spring of the year the medicine men shut themselves up for from four to eight days, smoking weer, to assure rain, and during all this time they neither leave their seats nor eat. They are compelling, by clouds of smoke, rain clouds to yield their moisture.
Scalping is not merely a savage custom of cruelty, but a sacred rite. Among the Tigua tribe the scalp is known as the "sacred hair," or " bark of the oak." In the secret niche in the wall of the estufa the sacred "barks" are treasured and taken out when the season for the " dance of the sacred bark" comes.
The scalp has been snatched from the victim not only as a trophy, but because its possession was believed to imply a transfer of the skill and valor of its previous possessor. It is removed hy a rough, circular sweep of the knife, and a tearing of the skin from the skull. The trophy must be carefully" cured" by the taker himself, for even an accidental touch on the part of another conveys away its magical virtues, at least in part.
A Pueblo party coming back with scalps could not come into town or be met by their flmilies. They must camp outside at a distance and send forward one half of the war party to report to the cacique. After a fortnight the warriors leave the confinement of the estufa, and go to meet and relieve the other half of the party guarding the scalps, while they come to fast in the estufa ; after another fortnight the two parties meet half-way and enter the pueblo, singing war songs and bearing the scalps to the cacique and the estufa. Then another period of fasting and purifying extends from eight to twelve days, every detail being scrupulously regulated.
The estufa is a round, low structure, with a diameter of from forty to fifty feet, with closed sides entered by trap-doors from the roof. Within it has bare walls, the round room having no ornament but antlers or rude representations of sacred animals. Even the mode of entry i~ prescribed. Mounting the ladder, one must approach the trap-door from the west side, back down the inside ladder, and turn to the right at the bottom and make.a circuit of the room a foot from the wall, and then take his seat in the semi-circle around the sacred fire. To turn to the left would be fatal, for the ghost of the scalped victim would chase him with a lasso and touch him with the death to~ch! So when they make their exit from the estufa they approach the inside ladder from the left, on the roof turn to the right, m~ke another circuit, and come down the outer ladder backward. The seat of the cacique is at the west side of the fireplace, and the semi-circles which front the fire are all arranged in rigid order. . All turn backs to the fire until the cacique speaks, and then they rise and face it through the session. The sacred fire must be lit only by the Hoo-mah- Kom, and only in the sacred way.
The Tua-ju-ar, or mad dance, near the estuja, commemorates the victory after all these punctilious preparations. Strangers must not even look on.
The dancers, with men and women alternating, form in two lines facing each other, the men in war-paint, with bows and arrows held in a pre- scribed fashion, and the women gayly dressed, but with nothing in hand.
The chant to which they move is a metrical account of the fight and its issue, droned to the thump of the drum.
At a given time the" bending woman, " or official keeper of the scalps, brings them from their sacred niche, and walks solemnly up and down between the lines of dancers with her buckskin bag, bowed down beneath the burden of her awful responsibility. The dance lasts four days, con- cluding with the Khur-Shu-ar, or round dance, with its ehorus of yells and doleful wails. Sunrise ends the ceremony. All then return to the estuja, where the scalps are again deposited in their hiding place and the slab that closes the niche is sealed with mud. Then the chief gives the signal and the company disperses.
All Pueblos count themselves Christians, and it is a long time since they have taken a scalp ; and it is said they never were wont to scalp any but heathen savages, and even in their case they took scalps from no women.
(To be continued.) FETICHISM IN AFRICA.
BY REV. JOSIAH TYLER, D.D., ST. JOHNSBURY, VT.
Fetich is from a Portuguese wordjeiti20, meaning a charm or talisman. Portuguese settlers in Western Africa, observing that the natives tied to their heads and necks a variety of articles to which their imaginations ascribed magical power, regarding them with superstitious awe, named them jetichists, or fetich worshippers. Long before this occurred in Africa, fetichism, or a form of worship closely allied to it, prevailed in other lands. Indeed, we may call it the oldest and most widely spread religion of the world, having co-existed with every pagan belief of which we have any knowledge.
An investigati<l'n of this subject, though sad, is not devoid of interest, for it helps solve a problem deemed by some insolvable-to wit, "Has a tribe of men ever existed wholly destitute of the idea of a supreme being f" Does it not illustrate in a striking manner a "feeling after
FETICIDSM IN AFRICA
God," which is characteristic of unevangelized millions ~ Herbert Spencer thinks that" if we will lay aside the idea of God and man in which we have been educated, and study the aboriginal ideas of them, we shall see some probability in the hypothesis that they have a conception of a ' supreme being."
Fetiches are supposed to exist in both animate and inanimate forms. If the former, worshippers may punish them, provided they do not favor their wishes. If the latter, they may destroy them. This superstition has dominated for centuries the Ainos of Japan, the wild woodmen of Korea, and the inhabitants of the island of Formosa. It prevails now in China, despite the doctrines of Confucius.
It is often sllid that Buddhism is the religion of China, but if we investigate carefully the subject, we must see that it is the worship of ancestors. Chinese fetiches are tablets, or slips of wood, on which are inscribed the name, rank, age, dates of birth and death of departed relatives.
In all this we observe that there is " a kind of incorporation of the spirit in the tablet as its visible home." That is the" refined idolatry" of the " celestials. " It has an amazing power over them ; hence, when a Chinese is asked to abandon ancestral worship his religious instinct is wounded and scandalized. Buddhism he will abandon much more readily.
In India fetichism is widely spread, notwithstanding the teachings of the Veda. The late Dr. Edward Lawrence, having carefully examined the faiths of that country, remarked, " Under the veil of Hindu similarity there exist all the varieties of fetich worship."
Although we class fetichism among the world's idolatries, it is not confined to the .worship of images made of wood and stone. The same superstitious element underlies and overshadows it, but instead of gorgeous temples and pagodas, noted deities, well-fed priests and costly offerings, it pins its faith to inferior objects, some of which are fearfully disgusting, and to a priesthood extremely revolting.
The prevailing form among Africans is spirit worship, their fetiches being serpents or other reptiles, the bark of trees, teeth of elephants and panthers, various kinds of medicines, etc. We have a survival of it in the legends and songs of negroes who came to America in slave ships, and the frightfnl stories told about the pine log-fires in the cabins of Alabama and other SORthern States. A form in which it prevails is called" voodooism." The voodoo or " conjure doctor" is supposed to be able to cast an evil eye upon a person, causing mysterious pains and diseases. By certain incantations, evil spells can be removed. The hind foot of a graveyard rabbit is supposed to be especially efficacious, and if carried in the pocket iii a perfect protection. If a person has reason to suppose he is face to face with a " conjurer," who is trying to cast an evil spell upon him, he instantly produces his rabbit's foot (if he is so happy as to possess one), and the conjurer is powerless. Voodooism is closely allied to witch- 1895.] FETICHISM: IN AFRICA. 409 craft of old New England days. Before we the sons and daughters of the Puritans, ridicule fetichism, let us bear in mind that some of our ancestors may have been tinged with it or something nearly allied to it. Among the personal recollections of the poet Whittier, we read: "III the days of witchcraft I had an ancestor who helped to k~l1 a witch. She and another woman got a lock of the witch's hair and put it in a hot oven and closed the oven door. Presently the most dreadful moans came from the oven and repeated knocks and thumps against the door, but the good dames stoutly resisted the attack with poker and tongs, keeping the oven , tightly closed. Finally the sound ceased, and in due time news came that the witch had died."
A close examination of African worship shows that objects used as fetiches are vehicles or abodes of the spirits, which they profess to wor- ship. They call them" representatives" .or "messengers" of the spirits. Ask a Zulu man why he supplicates the aid of and sacrifices to a serpent, and he replies: "I do not worship the serpent, but the spirit of my dead grandfather, who comes to me in the guise of a serpent." His faith receives confirmation from the dictum of his priest or "spirit doctor," who tells him that his grandfather is angry and must be appeased, which can be done only by the slaughter of a large fat ox. Thereupon the ox is killed, some of the blood sprinkled on the man (without shedding of blood is no remission), and a part of the beef placed one side for the spirit's use, which soon after' goes down the throats of the natives, the priest having appropriated to himself the lion's share.
Among the Matabele people crocodiles are the representatives of the spirits, hence those reptiles are never killed, any more than the Zulus kill certain serpents.
Fetichism is emphatically a religion of fear. Its poor victims are all their lifetime subject to bondage through fear of death as a result of insufficient propitiation. Evil spirits they think are more numerous than the good, and are constantly plotting mischief against them. Remove from the African his faith in and blind subjection to the unprincipled 'and cruel" priest" or " spirit doctor," and you remove the keystone of the arch of his religion.
An account of the cruelties flowing from adherence to African super- stition would fill a bulky volume. Among the worst are infanticide, kill. ing one of a pair of twins, lest, if it is allowed to live, some calamity may befall the father j sending into the enemy's country before a battle, to steal a child, and sacrificing it to the shades of the departed to make the raid successful (the custom of various tribes) j dividing the body of an enemy after victory with the conquered, and performing over it certain ceremonies, after which the combatants may visit each other in peace (as among the Barwe clan) j cutting off the finger.s of a chief's son and pre- lierving them as charms in a war drum, that the royal kraal may escape fire (as in the Mauritsi country) j flaying a child and placing its body in the
41() e.rune
path, that the warriors may step over it on their way to battle (as among the Baganda). . Temples of fetichism in Africa are not common. Paul Du Chaillll speaks of "devil houses" in Central Africa, into one of which he looked, but saw no idol. Among the Ashantees and Baganda are what are called the abodes of spirits, but no care is taken to make them attractive. Mis- sionary Walker describes a" spirit doctor" among the Pongwe, in West- ern Africa, as marching through a village clad most fantastically and carrying a mirror in which the natives may see the faces of witches, 'who are bound and led out to slaughter. A booth is made for the priest, in which he seats himself, growls like a wild animal or hisses like a serpent.
Among the Ashantees every family is said to have its domestic fetich, to which yams and other fruits are offered. When they drink, they spill a little of the liquor on the ground as an offering to the fetich, and when the master of the house leaves his seat, a servant hastily removes it, lest an evil spirit slip into the master's place.
The Dahomeyans attach great faith to a serpent which they keep in a temple served by priestesses and supported at the expense of their king. At Aniambia, chief town of a tribe in West Africa who call themselves " Gommi," Du ChaiIIu visited two fetich houses; they were said to be the abodes of powerful spirits, one evil, the other beneficent. In one of these houses he saw only a large chest, on the top of which lay some white and red chalk and some red parrot feathers. The chalk, he was told, " is used to mark the bodies of the devout on certain occasions when vows are made. " In Guinea, around a sacred tree called the " tree of the fetichl " festival ceremonies are performed, singing, dancing, beating of drums, etc. A priest is in attendance, who offers up sacrifices. The people of Benin use as fetichcs elephants' tusks, claws of animals, bones and human skulls, and offer up to them boiled yams mixed with palm oil. Du Chaillu counted in West Africa numerous skeletons of slaves who were killed and buried with their kings that their majesties might not go into the other world unattended. Among the Pongwe there is a saying: "The largest tree in the country must not fall alone." This is of fearful import, implying that the servants of the king, on the occasion of their burial, must be strangled and buried with him in the same grave. This was customary among Kaffir tribes till white men went among them.
Since writing the foregoing, a volume has come to me cailed " Demon Possessions and Allied Themes," by the lamented Dr. Nevius, of China. The reader of this volume, if acquainted with the developments of African fetichism, will see a remarkable correspondence between cases adduced in China and India, and those with which he is familiar, all going to show that demonism now exists in Africa as in Old and New Testament times. Indeed, throughout the Dark Continent, as in India and China, the great mass of the people are life-long victims of a mental disease called" demonphobia." But enough on this gloomy and repulsive theme. How strong an argument it presents for Christian missions! And how earnestly we should pray that Divine light may shine in those dark places of the earth, . now filled with the habitations of cruelty !
THE FORERUNNER OF MOFFAT AND LIVINGSTONE BY REV. JAMES I. GOOD, D.D.
An almost forgotten missionary is Theodosius Vanderkemp, yet he laid the foundations for missions in South Africa. 'Vhat a wonderful apostolic succession there was there: Schmidt, the Moravian, then Vanderkemp, then Moffat, then Livingstone-all modern apostles. Vanderkemp was a modern Thomas It Kempis (both names are derived from Kampen, in Holland)-that is, he was just as pious, yet differed from hi~ in being far more practical. His fruits were not a book, "The Imitation of Christ," but living books, souls dedicated to Christ and living in imitation of Him.
Vanderkemp was born. in Rotterdam in 1747. He was finely educated as a physician at the university, and then became a soldier under the Prince of Orange, although he returned to the practice of medicine ; but in religion he was a rationalist until forty-four years of age. Then came the call of God that changed this modern Saul of Tarsus into a Paul the mISSIOnary. While sailing on the river near Dort a water-spout upset his boat. He saw his wife and daughter drown before his eyes, and he himself was saved by a special providence, for the storm drove a vessel from her moorings, floated it to him just as he was sinking to death, and its sailors dragged him from the water. This strange providence led to his conversion; his conversion led to his becoming a missionary. He offered himself to the London Missionary Society, although he was over fifty years of age. They were very glad to get so finely educated a man and polished a scholar in their employ, and appointed him. He was ordained November 3d, 1797, and the next year sailed to South Africa. Before he left Holland he left the missionary influence behind, for his efforts led to the formation of the Netherlands Missionary Society. Without waiting until he ,reached the heathen he began missionary work among the convicts on board his vessel, and a number were converted. When he arrived at Cape Town he was sent as a missionary to the Caffres, a brave race, but as yet dangerous to the whit@S; yet he boldly went alone out into the wilderness to their'chief Geika, and lived among them for sixteen months, although in cOllfiMnt danger of his life from them or from whites, who looked on him with suspicion, because they felt he would break up their evil trade with the natives. More than once was his life attempted, but the Lord preserved him. Thus, on one occasion a Boer farmer poisoned the mind of the chief against him, saying that Vanderkemp would poison him by giving him brandy. The chief came to his hut and waited for him to try to poison
THE FORERUNNER OF MOFFAT AND LIVINGSTONE. [Jun~
him. After waiting a long while he finally asked Vanderkemp for brandy, but the missionary replied he had none. Then the chief made known the secret as he said, "They have deceived me. You do not wish to kill me." Vanderkemp was, however, finally compelled to leave the Caffres, as it became too unsafe for him to remain there any longer. His work seemed to have produced no results j and yet thirty years after a woman was admitted to the Church who received the Gospel from his lips. Nor were his labors lost. The London Missionary Society said he had done more in sixteen months than many missionaries had done in a lifetime, for with his wonderful linguistic skill he had prepared a Caffre dictionary for his successors in missionary work among them. His fame remained among them, for up to a few years ago all Cafi'res who became Christians were called by the name of Ma Yankana, which meant" the men of Vanderkemp."
But Providence shut one door to open another. Like Paul, who turned from the Jews to the Gentiles, he turned from the Cafi'res, one of the best of the South African races, to the Hottentots, the lowest race among them, the" dogs" and" black' cattle" of the Boers, the nearest approach of humanity to the ape. Schmidt, the devoted Moravian missionary, had begun his work among them in 1738, but had been compelled to give it up six years later. A half century later Vanderkemp comes to take· up the work again. He collected a colony of these poor people, numbering about 200, at Graff Reinet. Finding, however, that they would be safer if separated from the whites, he led a colony of them to near Algoa Bay, where the government gave him land. The governor on one occasion visited the colony, and was so impressed with the good it was doing that he ordered them to occupy the vacant Fort Frederick. This he did with 300 Hottentots. When the colony passed into the hands of the Dutch their governors gave them a station which they called Bethelsdorf, which they founded June, 1803. Here his work began to produce wonderful results. The desert land blossomed as the rose. Twenty-two were baptized during the first year. In 1807 they added an out-station at Steurmann's Krall. By 1810 Bethelsdorf had a population of 1000. Vanderkemp became deeply interested for the welfare of these poor Hottentots. With Dr. Phillip he became their champion in South Africa against the oppressions of the whites. He went twice to Cape Town to testify in court for them. Within three years he spent $3000 to redeem slaves. He even went so far as to marry an ignorant Hottentot woman, hoping thereby to be able to identify himself more fully with them, and thus to gain their confidence and bring them up 'to a higher standard of life. He was a thoroughly consecrated man, sacrificing everything to win souls to his Master. A beautiful story is told of him, that when he was on his travels and the oxen were unyoked and the men were preparing his supper, he would go and seat himself among the bushes at some distance j and when anyone passed by they would hear him say as he read his Bible, " Lord, I do not understand this point, this word. Enlighten me." Soon after he would be heard saying, " I see it a little better. I thank Thee, Lord." Then he would begin to write, and his pen would fly over the paper, though darkness began to fall. He was 80 devoted to the cause as to become eccentric. He held that the missionary should live as the natives did; that to lift them up you must go down to their level. This idea has been proven false. The missionary should bring them up to his standard, not lower himself to theirs; but even this eccentricity only revealed the more his entire devotion to the Lord. Only the few missionaries who sold themselves as slaves in order to ga~n access to the heathen have given up more than Vanderkemp did, who sacrificed everythiug but freedom. He was frugal and economical in his habits. He insisted that the London Missionary Society ought to allow only $150 a year to a missionary. He gave up wearing a hat, and on one occasion when he visited Cape Town he had to buy one, but instead of putting it on his head he held it in his hands behind his back, and some street boys, taking advantage of his absent-mindedness, amused themselves by filling .it with gravel. His last act was, at the advanced age of sixty-four, to set out for Madagascar to begin a new mission under the London Society, but Providence called him to a better land than that island. As God called him to Himself his last words were, "It is all good."
One soweth and another reapeth. The ignorant Hottentots under the influences he set at work have developed into noble men and women. From a colony of heathen, Bethelsdorf has become a large congregation of 6000 souls, and raised up more than a hundred preachers. Instead of Hottentot hovels there are· neat 'houses, a church, a school, a printingpress, and all sorts of mechanics. The Hottentots, from being the lowest of humanity, have been developed into the equals of any. No less an authority than Dr. Moffat pays this tribute to him: "He came from the university to teach the alphabet to the poor, naked Hottentot and Caffre, from the society of nobles to associate with beings of the lowest grade of humanity, from stately mansions to the filthy hovel of the greasy African, from the army to instruct the fierce savage in the tactics of a heavenly warfare under the banner of the Prince of Peace, from the study of medicine to become a guide to the balm of Gilead and the physician there, and finally from a life of earthly honor and ease to be exposed to perils of waters, of robbers, of his own countrymen, of the heathen in the city in the wilderness." He was a faint type and an eloquent copy of .his Master,who, though He was rich, yet for our sakes became poor. And when the thousands of those black Hottentots, washed white in the blood of the Lamb, shall come to take their place around God's throne, they will be, as the Caffres said, " Vanderkemp's men," trophies of the man who, like his Master, gave up all that he might win some to Christ. U They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars forever and ever."
ARABIA AND THE ARABIAN MISSION
ARABIA AND THE ARABIAN MISSION.* Arabia has the shape of a man's boot, even to the hole in the top, for it has no northern boundary. It is somewhat stub-toed, though the toes are nearly 400 miles long. That part of the United States which lies east of the Mississippi River might be laid down inside the boundaries of Arabia, and still one third of Arabian soil would be uncovered. Following the course taken by mi&sionaries, and sailing down the Red Sea, we find on the western coast of the peninsula an almost unbroken range of precipitous mountains, barren as the sides of a volcano, and seldom more than 2000 feet in height, yet, owing to their rugged, character, and the refraction caused by the heated atmosphere, appearing much higher than they really are. Aden, in Southwestern Arabia, is a city of 30,000 inhabitants nestled in the crater of an extinct volcano, the black mountainsides being utterly without, vegetation. Near this city is the Keith-Falconer Mission (Scotch). Sailing onward along the southern coast for 1400 miles the view is about the same as before. The eastern coast is less dreary. The mountains of Oman are sprinkled with forests, and the' country is fertile and fairly well cultivated.
Muscat, on the eastern coast, is first sighted. The splendid harbor is protected by dark mountain walls, utterly bare and scorched with the sun, and apparently rising right up out of the sea. The first sight of the city IS Imposing. A Portuguese cathedral, a palace, and a few large buildings, with towers and minarets, are all that are seen of this city of 40,000 inhabitants, with its narrow, crowded streets, its filthy bazaars, tumbledown houses, and palm-leaf huts. The surrounding mountains, like a' concave mirror, focus the sun's rays upon the city, and the heat is intense. The shade temperature in March sometimes rises to 120°, and in summer it may be necessary for the missionary to live in a palm-leaf hut on the beach.
The Bahrein Islands, half way up the Persian Gulf, is a station occupied' by Rev. S. M. Zwemer. The islands are quite fiat, but with a range of hills about 800 feet high. Dr. Wyckoff reported the temperature in April as rising to 117° in the shade. The 50,000 inhabitants of these islands are devoted chiefly to pearl-fisheries. Bahrein supplies the finest pearls in the world.
Busrah, the headquarters of the mission, is at the head of the Persian Gulf, and about 70 miles up the river Shat-el-Arab. This city is a great emporium of Indian commerce, being the terminus of the highway of commerce between India and Europe. The trade is carried west and north by caravans. The surrounding country is fiat. Palm-trees are the highest objects in sight. Busrah is a cosmopolitan city of 60,000 inhabitants, and is in the midst of many large outlying towns. The heat here • An acconnt of the Arabian mission of the Reformed (Dutch) Church and condensed from The MiBsi&n FieJtl for December, 1894. The accompanying map and illustration are kindly loaned'by the same magazine.
is intense and constant; the nearest escape from it is found in the moun- tains of India.
Another voyage will take us to the heart of Arabia. This time it is over an ocean of sand, and embarked on the ship of the desert–the camel. The pitching and rolling, and the corkscrew motion of the ship, are all understood by the camel, and the great waves of sund, piled in huge hills by the winds, and seen through the trembling heat, present the appeara.nce of a storm-tossed sea of fire. Few travellers have the courage to pass through the dangers and horrors of such a desert; but once in the land of Nejd, what a sight is prepared for the eyes! Great and beautiful oases rise up out of the ocean of sand, like islands from the .sea. It is a land of wonderful natural scenery, rich in products of the soil, a land of gardens and flowers and streams, and waving with the finest date-palms in the world; this, too, is the land of the Nejdee horse, the pride of the Arab race and the envy of other nations.
The People.-The population of Arabia is about 11,000,000, chiefly Arabs, but with a good sprinkling of Turks and Jews. The Arabs are descended from Ishmael, son of Abraham, and are therefore coeval with the Jews. They are in many respects a noble people, naturally religious, but not righteous. Physically they have few equals among the unevangelized peop"'les of the world. Trained to temperance and hardihood by their religion, and from time immemorial brought up to generosity and hospitality, they are easily loved for their own sakes. About 2,000,000 of them are Bedouins, sheltered only by tents, dwelling chiefly in the desert, and moving from place to place as they can find pasture for their camels, horses, and flocks. Living by warfare and plunder, they yet will seldom take the life of their victims. Claiming ownership of all their desert habitations, they believe they have a right to strip all strangers of their possessions, unless by passport such· persons are entitled to their protection and hospitality.
Religion.-Arabia is the home of the Mohammedan religion. While there are nearly 200,000,000 Mohammedans scattered over the world, they all turn their faces in prayer toward Mecca, and hope to make at least one pilgrimage thither. This shows what a strategic point Arabia is for missionary work. The fall of Mohammedanism in Arabia means the fall of Mohammedanism in the world. Once convert a Mohammedan, and he is likely to prove a good missionary of Christ, as he has been of Mol1ammed. He is naturally religious, naturally generous, and naturally a wanderer-three great missionary qualifications.
Owing to opposition and prejudice there are few opportunities for street or public preaching, but Bibles are gladly purchased and medical assistance is eagerly sought. The work of the Arabian Mission is therefore pushed along those lines.
Bible Work of the Arabian Mission. – The Bible itself is a missionary in Arabia. Its Oriental character makes it acceptable. Books are greatly valued by the Arabs, and the Old Testament, with its stories of Abraham, Ishmael, and Job, is particularly pleasing. The New Testament is acknowledged as God's Book, as having come down from heaven, and the inevitable result of an honest study of the Gospels by the Mohammedan is at least a logical conviction that the prophet has fearfully misled his followers.. Nothing can be ·more encouraging, therefore, than the fact of continually increasing Bible sales. An example of the Bible's work is given in the following words from Bahrein: "A Moslem who came to us one moonlight evening, said, 'The old man' (i.e., myself) 'feels the sting of death is sin, and then I bought this book, and now I believe that Jesus is the Son of God.' "
The sale of books during the year ending June 30th, 1894, was as follows: tur_e._s_'I~ligiOU~ ___S_T_A_TI_ON_S_'___I__sc_n_.p__ Educational. ~otal._ –=alne~ Bu.rah …………… '" 1,139 306 786 2,231 $313.70 Bahrein …………….. 494 1,185 123.87 339 302 Muscat* …………… .. 521 36.74 300 60 71 —– —————1—– Total… ……. ………. 2,023 705 1,159 3,887 $474.31 * For seven and a half months only.
Rev. Mr. Cantine says: "In our book work the sale of Scriptures is'
the primary object. The religious books have a value of their own, while the educational are kept mainly because we consider them to be a help to the sale of the others. Religious and educational books are nearly all Arabic; as are three quarters of the Scriptures, the remaining one quarter being mostly Turkish, Persian, and Hebrew. As to our Scriptures, they are all 801d, and not given away. These sales have nearly doubled in the past twelve months, being for the previous year 1055, and for the year just closed 2023. Of the total sales of Scriptures seven eighths are to Moslems, at Busrah, while at Bahrein and Muscat they· are almost exclusively so. Three qnarters were sold outside of the book-shops by our colporteurs. All the larger towns on the entire coast, from Muscat to Busrah, and up the Tigris and Euphrates, together with Hassa in the interior, have received in some measure the Word of God. It is our aim to cover as much of this territory as our funds will allow, at least twice a year, and also to seize any opportunity that offers for touring inland."
Medical Work.-In proportion to the need of medical assistance is its power for good. There is great suffering in Arabia, and no native skill to relieve it. The so-called medical treatment by the natives is cruel in the extreme. Burning holes in the body to let the disease out, branding sick children with red-hot bars, chopping off wounded limbs and sealing them with boiling tar, are only an illustration of their methods. They go blind in the fierce glare of a tropical sun, when simple eye-water would save their sight. The medical missionary, therefore, is as a messenger from God. People will travel great distances to meet him, and he is thronged with patients. Relieved or cured, they return. with a Gospel
HOUSE AT BUSRAH
18~5.] AlUlIIA AND THE ARABIAN lIUSSION
message and a portion of Scripture-thus, in a small sense, becoming mis- sionaries themselves and preparing in the desert a highway for our God, where as yet no Christian missionary can go.
Perhaps no testimony of the influence of the Arabian mission can be stronger than the fact that before Dr. Wyckoff had spent two weeks of his first visit to Bahrein Island, and a part of that time on a sick-bed, he had treated about three h.undred patients, " some of them requiring very particular operations." He said: "One can hardly believe the tremendous impression these three young men (Revs. S. M. and P. J. Zwemer and James Cantine) have made in so short a time. It seems as though the whole of Arabia had come under their influence. "
Scarcely any Protestant missionary effort was made for Arabia until within eight years past. In 1882 a colportage station of the Church Missionary Society was established at Bagdad, and in 1887 a medical and Bible mission was organized near Aden, by the Hon. Keith-Falconer, of the Free Church of Scotland. But little aggressive missionary touring, however, had been done, and the interior of the country had not been entered or even attempted. 'Under these circumstances, and this need, the Arabian Mission was fully organized in August, 1889. Although it was deemed best to organize the work on an undenominational basis, its missionary staff and a large majority of the number of its supporters, the Arabian Mission has from the first been the child of the Reformed (Dutch) Church. The actual parentage became apparent and confessed when, by the concurrent action of tile General Synod and the mission, the latter, in June, 1894, was formally placed under the care of the Board of Foreign Missions of the Reformed Church. The first missionaries were Rev. James Cantine (sailed in 1889) and Rev. Samuel M. Zwemer (1890). In 1892 they were reinforced by Rev. Peter J. Zwemer, and in 1893 by J. Talmage Wyckoff, M.D., who, however, after less than a year of faithful and efficient service, has been compelled to return home.
The headquarters of the mission are at Bus1'ah, "a city more commlmding than any other in Arabia from which to carry a missionary work into the interior and up along the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates and along the coast." The work here is in charge of Rev. James Cantine, with three native helpers. At the Bahrein Islands is a station in charge of Rev. S. M. Zwemer, with two colporteurs. These islands form an independent state under British protection, and thus afford unusual opportunities for evangelistic work. Muscat is in charge of Rev. Peter Zwemer, with a native colporteur. It is the chief city of Oman, and, in common with Bahrein, has the great advantage of being under the protectorate of Great Britain. The Scriptures may be freely read in public, and open discussion and preaching are allowed.
Each of these stations has been a centre for evangelistic tours, more or less lengthy and successful according to the freedom allowed, or restric-. tions imposed by the government. From Busrah Mr. Cantine and his
THE OPENING OF EFFECTUAL DOORS
colporteurs have made tours down the Shat-el-Arab and up both the Tigris and Euphrates, Mr. Cantine going as far as Bagdad. Many points were profitably visited, and at least three towns to the north of Busrah were fonnd-one on the Tigris and two on the Hai'-':'which could be immediately and profitably occupied were funds for this work at hand. From Bahrein, Rev. S. M. Zwemer has recently made two tours, one in October, 1893, and the other in July, 1894. This last tour was toward the interior from Aden to Sanaa, but was suddenly interrupted at a point twelve miles north of Sanaa, and by the connivance of the Turkish officials the missionary was subjected to "so much delay, robbery, and extortion," that he was finally compelled to relinquish his purpose and return to Hodeydeh, and thence home. Since this the movements on the mainland of all the missionaries have been more restricted. Tours have, however, been made with some freedom among the towns of the Bahrein islands.
The villages in the neigHborhood of Muscat have been frequently visited, a recent tour along the coast by Rev. P. J. Zwemer proving, first, the possibility of reaching at least the coast of Oman with the Gospel j and, second, that in Oman naught opposes the Gospel but Islam itself.
Finally, of the results of this mission and its work for the past five years it can be said, in the words of one of the missionaries: "An entrance has been made into the very heart of Islam. In faith, Arabia has been pre-empted by the Church, Itnd though fanaticism scorns and ignorance misjudges, the seed is being sown, and the questions of the kingship and sonship of Christ are being discussed by the Moslem pilgrim on his way to Mecca."
Is)t not ours then to do what we can to lead the multitudes of Arabia to acknowledge" that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, that believing they may have life throngh His name" ~ • THE OPENING OF EFFECTUAL DOORS.
BY REV. T. D. WITHERSPOON, D.D., LL.D., LOUISVILLE, KY.
The miracle of all history is the evangelization of the old Roman world in the first century of the Christian era, and almost within the limits of a single generation. The little company of disciples in the upper chamber after our Lord's ascension had no doubt as to the terms of His great commISSIOn. The Church, in its very organization, was a missionary church. It recognized from the beginning the whole world as constituting its parish. Every member was understood to be, by 1;he terms of his enrolment, an evangelist. Every place wl,.ere two or three could be gathered together in Christ's name was to constitute a sanctuary of worship. No rest was to be expected, no halt contemplated until the Gospel had been preached to every creature and all nations discipled into the observance of Christ's commands.
With incredible swiftness, by land and by sea, the messengers !'Iped. Over obstacles seemingly insuperable, through hardships apparently insuf. ferable, they pressed on, until, before the century had closed, the Gospel had been preached and the Church established in every province of the Roman Empire. Had the work gone forward with the same celerity for a century or two more, the Gospel would have been preached to every creature, the Saviour's commission would have been fulfilled, and the way opened for His coming in all the glory of His millennial reign.
But just here emerges a question that calls for profoundest thought. Why did the work not go forward with the same enthusiasm and success ¥ What causes intervened to lay an arrest upon this first great missionary movement~ Why did the beginning of the nineteenth century find !'IO little more of the world evangelized than in Ute middle of the !'Iecond ~ This question is one of the highest practical importance, because of its relations to the spirit and work of nineteenth-century evangelism. Now that the Church has received,as it were, a new Pentecostal baptism, and has set forth again upon the great mission of conquering the world for Christ, the question becomes a grave one whether the present movement shall expend itself as that of the first century did, and whether there must intervene another long period of inaction followed by a third effusion of power from on high, before the Gospel can be preached to every creature.
The reasons usually given for the arrest of the great work of evangelization begun in the first century have always seemed to the writer unl!latisfactory. Church historians are fond of telling us that the Christians began to dispute among themselves over differences of doctrine and of polity, and that, in the wrangles of the various theological schools and parties, the heathen were forgotten, the Spirit was grieved, and so the great work came ignominiously to a close. Was it not rather true that the suspension of the aggressive work of the Church, from whatever cause it may have arisen, rendered inoperative those motives to Christian unity which come from the consciousness of co-operation in a great common work, and that the energies formerly expended in missionary effort, in this time of comparative inactivity, busied themselves, for want of better employment, with wranglings over points of doctrine and discipline ~ Was not the inaction the occasion of the divisions and strifes, rather than the result ~ Do we not find in our day that when the hands and hearts of the people are full of aggressive work for the Master there is little either of time or occasion for church quarrels ¥ May we not then seek the causes of the arrest of the great evangelistic movement of the first century in something less discreditable to the zeal and consecration of the infant Church ~ May it not be that this tide of evangelization, as it swept onward, encountered barriers such as in the earlier. stages had not opposed its course ¥ May not the Church of the • !lecond century have found itself under conditions and limitations different from those of the .first century 1 With the great and effectual doors opened to missions in our day, may we not be in danger of misjudging the early Church and measuring the responsibilities of that age by those of our own ~ It may be well, therefore, to indicate some barriers to mission work in the second century, some seemingly impregnable walls, through which God in His providence has opened for us great and effectual doors.
I. And first there was the barrier raised by the poverty in material resources of the early Church. During the first century the work of evangelization lay largely in those provinces which were in direct com- munication with Rome. For commercial and military purposes there were Roman roads on land and Roman ships on sea that could be brought into the service of the missionaries. At various points along the route of travel were Jewish synagogues in which they could preach without charge, and Jewish communities where hospitality and opportunity of remunera- tive labor awaited the toil-worn travellers. But little money, therefore, in the earlier stages of the work was necessary. But when the effort was made to press the work into the byways and hedges, when, among aliens and strangers, everything must be purchased, and often at exorbitant rates, larger supplies of money were needed, and these the mother churches at home were unable to supply. Indeed, such was the poverty of these churches in this early day, stripped and peeled by persecution, that instead of the missionaries, as in our day, relying upon the churches at home for the means to carry forward the work, one of the first and most sacred duties imposed upon the new converts was that of sending back money to the" poor saints in Jerusalem." The poverty of the early Church, there- fore, constituted the first barrier to work in the remoter and more inacces- sible fields which must be occupied before" the end" shall be. What a " great door and effectual" God has opened for the Church of our day, I need not stop to argue. Look at the wealth of Christendom to-d~ !
Look at its wanton waste! If only one tenth of all that Christian nations spend in tobacco and rum could be poured into the treasury of missions, with the blessing of God" the end" would soon be here. If we fail of our great responsibility of preaching the Gospel to every creaturE!, we cannot measure our failure by that of the early Church. The men of that day will rise in judgment against us to condemn us, for if they had pos- sessed the boundless resources of the Church of to-day, the results would doubtless have been far different from what they were. .
II. A second wall of opposition to the progress of the Gospel in the second century arose from the barbarousness of the tongues that confronted the missionaries as soon as they passed beyond the limits of the territory that had come under the influence of Roman civilization. So long as the work of the missionaries lay where either of the three languages inscribed upon the cross-the Hebrew, the Greek, or the Latin-was understood, or even where languages cognate to these were spoken, the work of evangelization was not difficult. As long as the miraculous gift of tongues continued, there was of course no difficulty, but with the close of the apostolic age all miraculous gifts seem to have ceased. Weare scarcely in position now, with the results about us of the great work of comparative philology and comparative grammar, to understand the difficulty of mastering these barbarous tongues in that early day. To men of those times the true Chinese wall was not the one of massive brickwork that stretched over hill and vale, but the one of a language so foreign in all its elements and characteristics to auything they had known before. Truly, for us to-day a great door and effectual has been opened. The missionary goes forth now with the results in his hand of a literary work that could have been possible in no century preceding our own. The most barbarous tongues of earth have been mastered. With incredible patience and skill their elementary forms have been distinguished and analyzed. Their rude sounds have been represented in a system of vocalization by written characters. The principles of construction have been systematized in grammar and manuals. Spelling-books, primers, readers, etc., have been prepared. The Bible and other needed books have been translated into these tongues. By means of the printed page a missionary may begin to preach as soon as he disembarks from the vessel in a foreign port. By means of the printed page he may multiply indefinitely his' labors, as he scatters far and wide leaves from the tree of life for the healing of the nations. So far has this work of Bible translation been carried that to-day nine tenths of the human race may read the Word of God in " that tongue wherein they were born." What a great and effectual door this is ! Surely if with such facilities as these we come short of the evangelization of the world in our day, we cannot in excuse plead as a precedent the failure of the early Church.
III. One more of these barriers was found in the insecurity of life and property in those remoter regions where the power of the Roman Government was not felt. It might be supposed that to men with the spirit of the first witness-bearers for Christ, who "loved not their lives to the death," and who often inordinately craved martyrdom, the insecurity of life would present no obstacle. But while a man might have a high and holy ambition to offer, if need. be, hi~ life upon the altar of devotion to Christ, he would at the same time desire that some work should be done, some testimony borne, some result accomplished before he passed away from the world. The man who before a Roman tribunal witnessed as a Christian, and was condemned to death as a Christian, had made a testimony for Christ; and even the cry of " Christianos ad leones," that rang upon the air as with his fellow-confessors he was led into the arena, was sweet to his ears, because it published the name of Christ, and identified him as a Ohristian witb the Crucified One; but that was a very different thing from being murdered by savages who knew nothing of him or his
THE .. MOUNTAIN WHITES" OF. AMERICA
religion, and who felled him with a club, or assassinated him with a spear before he had even once spoken in their ears in their own tongue the name of Jesus. The age in which we live is one in which commerce has carried the name and fame of the great Christian nations of this day, where even the name of Rome was never heard. Far out amid the jungles of equatorial Africa and in the remoter isles of the sea, through commercial relations, and the softening influences of systems of barter and trade, the way has been opened for the missionary, so that with comparative safety he may go with the message of salvation. And although in many of the most interesting fields he bears the spirit of the true martyr, for he knows not when he may meet a martyr's death, his situation is immeasurably beyond that of the early missionary, because he knows that if he should be cut down, through the words he has already spoken and the printed pages he has already distributed, seed have been sown which shall only germinate the more surely if watered with his blood. The missionary, therefore, who goes abroad to-day, whatever field he may choose, has reasonable ground to hope that his life will be spared long enough at least to lay foundations upon which others may build after he is gone, and in this respect the door is open for the evangelization of the world as it has never been before.
If there were time, attention might be called to doors of facility and convenience in the accomplishment of the work-facilities for reaching the remoter fields by means of railways and steamship lines, facilities for communication with home by postal service and by telegraph, facilities for comfort in the field by the erection of mission houses, the presence of medical missionaries, the receipt of supplies from home, etc.
Enough has been said to show the marvellous adjustments of Providence .for throwing open " great doors and effectual," for putting it within the power of the men of this generation to win the whole world for Christ. Will the Church of God enter these open doors ~ Shall the evangelization of the world be effected in our day? These are questions that demand immediate consideration. On the answer to them hinge responsibilities such as never rested upon the Church of God in any previous epoch of its history. Never before did the command come more imperatively, " Arise, shine j for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee. "
THE "MOUNTAIN WHITES" OF AMERICA. * Professor Austin Phelps remarks that "five hundred years in the salvation of the world may depend upon the next twenty-five years of United States history." So vast is our land that Montana alone could accommodate the entire population of this country, and give each man, woman, • Outliue of an address by Mrs. S. M. Davis, reported by the Editor-in-chief. and child one and a half acres, or take in the world's population, and yet have but fifteen souls to the acre; yet California contains 12,000 square miles more than Montana; Texas, 107,000 more than California; and Alaska is twice as large as Texas. 'Within one year as many strangers flocked to our shores as there are people in Idaho, Arizona, Montana, Nevada, Wyoming, and Washington.
In the South there are 5,000,000 whites who can neither read nor write. They are in three classes-" bankers," "crackers," and " mountain whites," often called "Scotch-Irish heathen." There are perhaps 4,000,000 of these in North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Kentucky, etc. They arc of Scotch.Irish ancestry, utterly illiterate, and their condition, intellectually and morally, it is difficult adequately to describe. Crimes committed by them put to blush the enormities committed in the worst districts of our great cities.
As to the history of these people: about 1740 there was a large influx of Scotch-Irish blood into our land. These people were driven here by persecution at home; but they would have no complicity with slavery, and hence the slavocracy would have nothing to do with them, and consequently they were crowded into the mountains, which became their fastnesses. They had no teachers nor preachers, and sank into dense degradation. Hundreds and perhaps thousands of them fought their way through obstacles, making a path through the mountain wilds, and settled in and about Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania, where their descendants may now be found. Who knows whether these people be not a reserv~ force that God will bring out of these mountains, saved by Christ, for the coming crisis of conflict, a stalwart band to stand with us in defence of Protestantism !
The visitor among them seems transported backward to the Elizabethan era. The quaint and curious in the language of the mountaineer is the.survival of good old Elizabethan English ; his roads are a fit setting for the polite Sir Walter Raleigh ; his code of honor a f,uvi val of the old feudal, lordly ideas of her reign. Tobacco, as in Elizabth's day, is almost deified; the looseness of morals finds fitting parallel [,t her court, while the position of the woman and girl is identical with the woman of Queen Elizabeth's era.
They who were thus stranded in the mountains had a fearful combat for life. With no adequate means of support at command they were embarrassed by extreme poverty. They had no schools; for of conrse there were no public schools in those districts, and the public school is a slowly growing institution in the South to-day. The monntains are almost destitute of schools. Occasionally there is a so-called schoolhouse of logs, with the primitive floor of native earth, and the "teacher.~' with bare feet and calico gown, and the universal" snuff stiok" in her mouth, knows little more than those she teaches; and as to morals, it were better for~ her pupils if there were no teacher.
A Newcastle pastor, who in one of the cabins of these mountain whites took refuge from a storm, met a young woman-a teacher—-"and having occasion to speak of the" United States," was asked by her, " Whare be the United States 1" He asked her if she did not teach geography, and she replied, " What is the use of that sort of larnin' 1"
Yet of this same stock came heroes in the time of our civil war. Large bodies of volunteers were recruited from these mountain whites, from the first and second districts of East Tennessee, more than from any' other twp Congressional districts of equal population. And however they have forgotten their Bibles in these hundred and fifty years of degradation, they seem not to have forgotten Rome and the papacy. A young woman went there to teach them, and sought to make them learn the Creed, but when she came to this, " I believe in the Holy Catholic Church," they sent her home j no explanation that the word catholic meant" universal" would be received as an apology.
Their ignorance is deplorable. "Who be that man; that Mister Jesus, you be a-talkin' to and talkin' about 1 Is He a-comin' here f' was the question asked by one of them of a religious worker. , Woman's condition is fearfully degraded. She has perhaps a sunbon- net of calico and two calico dresses, one to be worn while the other is done up j a pair of shoes to be worn in meetin' and on state oC<lasions j a shawl for winter wear. In the field it is woman who ploughs and hoes and plants and gathers harvest, as well as cooks at home j and sometimes YOll may see her not only splitting wood for the fire and carrying water, but hitched tQ the plough and driven like cattle, while her husband or son loafs, smokes, and indulges himself, caring no more for her than for a dog or a slave. Elsewhere you find a chivalrous preference and defer- ence exercised toward woman, but none here.
They marry at from twelve to sixteen, have a dozen children and some- times twenty, and are old, worn-out hags at thirty, and consumption commonly carries them off, few of them living beyond forty or fifty_ There is on their faces a hopeless look that cannot be described. It is the hopelessness of despair, more and worse than apathy or lack of intelli- gence j it is the index of a heart in which is no life or hope. Perhaps that woman you meet has never been off that mountain or known an uplift- ing thought. They are like the log-cabins they dwell in-dark, rayless j there is not an attempt at a window in them, not a place to admit a ray of sunshine lest it let in also the cold wind and the rain. When the door is shut you are in the blackness of midnight, and here you find from six to twenty human beings huddled promiscuously together. What delicacy or decency can be nurtured in such a home ~ Such women have no "to-morrow." The vitality is all gone out of the blood j and-what most hurts the heart of a true woman-after all this life of burden-bearing there is no hope beyond-no knowledge of a Saviour.
There is, of course, the comical side even to this degraded life. You meet with children, dirty, forlorn, and half naked, but they have wonder- ful names. In one cabin were two children, "Jim Dandy" and" Stick Candy;" in another" Ruly Trooly, " " Wolfer Ham," "Aristocracy"
and ., Ayer's Sarsaparilla," "Carrie Lee, Bessie See-who but she?"
" Mary Bell, arise and tell the glories of Immanuel," etc.
Dr. W. J. Erdman tells a story from personal knowledge. He says an evangelist in the mountains asked an old woman if there were any "Presbyterians" around there. Her answer was, "Ask myoId man.
He be a powerful mighty man in huntin', and kills all sorts of varmints.
You might go and see them skins a.hanging up yonder, p'raps you'd find some of them Presbyterian critters among 'em." .
They have their own code of honor. Their family feuds last for generations; they feed fat the ancient grudge, until one or the other of the contending families is utterly exterminated. You enter a cabin, and the gun hung on the door is for ordinary hunting; but the bur- nished pistol is kept for murder, it is reserved for killing men.. They have a chivalry of their own. One man who had killed twenty-five others in family feud warfare would yet fight to the death to shield a woman who comes there to teach them, from injury or insult.
The hopeful sign in these people is a longing for betterment. In their very songs is a pathos as if pleading for help. In their degradation, which defies description, they yearn for schools, for some uplifting influence. In a cabin a traveller met a boy of ten, who caught a glimpse of a newspaper in his pocket, and who showed so strong a desire to learn that the traveller taught him the first three letters of the news- paper heading. As the boy went by himself and repeated over and over the name of the letters, who, thought the traveller as he resumed his journey, will ever teach that boy the fourth letter?
At Asheville, N. C., is a school for these classes, and five hundred girls were turned away in one year for simple lack of room. Yet in that same school might have been heard from these very girls from the mountains, one of the finest reviews of the life of Christ, from the manger to within six months of His passion, every question correctly answered; and yet some of these girls'had not been six months out of their cabins.
They are also singularly responsive to the Gospel. They are sin-hard- ened, indeed, but not Gospel-hardened. An evangelist in a. village in these mountains found one who seemed to know something about Christ; but every person in the settlement attended the meetings and manifested interest in the Gospel, and many professed to find salvation. An old man, familiarly known as "Old Man Kline," was very angry at a young fellow for carrying off his daughter. Determined to kill him, he hid near the place of a "gathering" which the young man would be sure to attend. While lying in, waiting two little girls from a day-school under the care of our Board went by singing the couplet, " Jesus died for all mankind, Jesus died for me. "
The old man had perhaps never heard of all mankind, but accustomed to the sobriquet " Old Man Kline," mistook the words, and thought the children were singing, "Jesus died for Old .J.Van Kline," etc., and as an arrow of conviction the truth reached his soul, and instead of the double murder (for had he killed the young man, in turn the young man's relatives would have probably killed him) this man found a saviour in the Jesus who l.ad truly died for" Old Man Kline/' Are these people not ripe for the Gospel when so small a bit of truth will accomplish so much?
These mountain whites will be met not on the open mountain roads, but in secluded places. The moonshiners, or illicit-whiskey distillers, especially, hide. in the more retired nooks and valleys. One party travelled eight miles along the Blue Ridge and saw not a cabin, yet found 3000 people assembled to hear the annual sermon from an old man, who could not read a word, yet who was so godly in life and character that he was an epistle read and known of them all. .
These people have customs quaint and curious, elsewhere obsolete. Their moral looseness is dreadful; but what can be expected where sometimes three generations live, eat, and sleep in one small, windowless cabin. .A bed of boards nailed against the log wall of the hut is almost the only furniture. Everybody uses tobacco, even the babies. Through considerable sections there is practically no law: everyone does what is right in his own eyes. There were seventy cases of murder, only one out of them all being brought to justice. Might makes right, and this is the only law known. In one case of a jury, when a peacemaker had interposed between contending parties and been shot, the juryman delivered his opinion thus, "If he hadn't wanted to be killed, he had orter kept himself out of the fight."
These mountain people are our kiusfolk, of the blood that gave us our Revolutionary heroes, that constituted more than half of vVashington's Cabinet. Even in their destitution among the mountains they sacrificed heroically and fought right manfully to save our Union. They are of Presbyterian ancestry, and yet to-day they are without the Gospel or a knowledge of the Christ. Their very preachers and teachers are so illiterate that in many cases they cannot read a word. One man with the Bible in his hand said to his people: "Now, see yere, between these two lids somewhar you'll find these words, 'Every tub must stand on its own bottom,'" and from those words as text preached his sermon. Is it strange a young fellow-Tom Baker-speaking out in meeting, said to one of these preachers: "See here, the Bible says you uns are to feed my sheep, and you hain't doing it. You fellows are just tolIin' of me around through the woods, and you make a powerful heap of noise rattling your corn in the measure, and just a-shellin' now and again a few grains, and you never give us a decent bite, and we uns be mighty nigh a-sfarvin' " ~ Think of it, 0 Christian child of God, kinsfolk in our own land starving for the Bread of Life!
CONDITION OF RELIGIOUS LIFE IN FltANCE. –
CONDITION OF RELIGIOUS LIFE IN FRANCE."* BY PROFESSOR JEAN C. BRACQ.
Mr. Spuller, the Minister of Education, spoke recently in the French Parliament of " the new spirit" animating the present government. One may with more propriety speak of the new religious spirit manifested everywhere in France. Among Catholics it has taken the form of greater earnestness and of renewed efforts to recall the churchless to the ·churches. Ecclesiastical ministrations are of a more evangelical character, and there is a fairer uuderstanding of the stupendous dangers which threaten Catholicism. Protestants have to a greater degree been affected in the same direction. Their activities have become less literary and theological, and more practical. They have a truer sense of the purpose of the Gospel. As a consequence their own life has become more real, their works better organized, and their preaching more ehristological. While this improvement has taken place within, a great change in their environment, very favorable to their growth, has taken place without. Much of the former hostility and prejudice against them has disappeared. The great organs of the press no longer hesitate, in their own way, to do them justice. Among the Free Thinkers there are many who are still most violent in their antireligion. The intensity of their opposition indicates their consciousness of the importance of religion, and their rites, such as the" civic baptism," which they have inaugurated, show the recognition of something which is religious. The scientists who, only a few years ago, were attempting to substitute science for religion have modified their. attitude. There has been among cultivated Free Thinkers a visible recoil from materialism. Compare, for instance, the scientists and the novelists of to-day with those of twenty years ago, and the difference is amazing. Characters, the embodiment of religious perplexities and struggles, are frequent in novels and upon the stage. The publication of "Jesus Christ" by Pere Didon, and of the" Vie de S. Franc;ois d' Assise," by Paul Sabatier, both representing the evangelical spirit, have excited an enthusiasm in the secular press without parallel in France since the publication of " La Vie de Jesus," by Renan in 1863. The same ncw spirit is manifested in the mystical and religious language wtlich has come to be used even by the materialists themselves. 80 generally has the new spirit spread that on March 25th two hundred lodges and groups of Free Masons held a great meeting in the Salle de l'Harmonie to protest against the invasion of the new religious spirit. A thorough study of the facts bearing upon this interesting sub. ject would reveal the prevalence of this new spirit among the men trained during the early days of the republic. The older men have been affected * We find thiB admirable estimate among the recent iSBnes of the McAll Association. It is too good to lie withheld.-En. only in so far as they were influenced by the new men. The experience of freedom in life, in education and in religion has produced results the opposite of those anticipated by alarmists and pessimists. Religion has regained its dignity and popular favor in the measure in which it has lost its dangerous State protectionism. Negation has come to be adequately gauged. Educated young men have shrunk from VoItaireanism as heartless and shallow. Emile Faguet, a young popular critic, said: "Voltaire has no soul. " These words became the formula of the popular judgment of young" men upon France's most brilliant sceptic. Anatole France exe1aims with sadness, as he is a militant follower of the author of the " Henriade" : "Our young men have ceased to be Voltaireans." Religion is no longer the butt of jokes and witticisms of hostile writers. Almost all the young popular writers have become friendly to the ideals of Christianity, some have expressed beliefs that are the faith arising from honest doubts, the stronger and the purer on that account. Paul Desjardins, Edonard Rod, Melchior de VogUe, Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, Wagner and Paul Bourget, to mention only the best known of young French writers, represent a religious attitude that has never been known in Freuch history. Believers and unbelievers alike are compelled to recognize that ours are times of peculiar religious inquiry. The religious question is at present forced upon all. "Since the time when religion departed from the temples, it has been running the streets," says Charles Morice. "Life has no meauing except for those who believe and love," says Jules Lemaitre. Edouard Rod concludes his beautiful novel "The Meaning of Life" by putting upon the lips of, one of his charact€rs who is grappling with the wrecks of scepticism..and sin the following words: "And in the double effort to revive in my mind lost formulre, and to shake from my thought the yoke of negation, I began to murmur-with my lips, alas! with my lips only, ' Our Father which art in heaven.'" This alas expresses the longing for the presence of the faith which makes this prayer of the lips the deepest prayer of the heart. This new attitude of a large number of Frenchmen is not pre-eminently the outcome of soul searching or of the consciousness of sin. It is the result of investigations and studies showing the ethical and social value of Christianity. " In all lhings, " says Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, the celebrated economist, " we are brought back to 1he same conclusions, that there is nothing truly efficacious, nothing solid and lasting for onr democratic societies outside of the Gospel, outside of the Christian spirit and outside of Christia.n fraternity." The young men of the institutions of learning share the same convictions to a large extent. Professor Lavisse, the most distinguished professor of history in France, said : "Our young men have the nostalgy of the Divine." 'The common schools have replaced the former insipid teaching of the Roman Catholic catechism by moral instruction. This instruction contains a part devoted to the duties of man to God. Even a most sllperficial survey of the principles 1aught wpuld reveal that, though deficient i~ some respects, they are identical with tha1 part of
THE PRESENT ASPECT OF MISSION WORK IN lIADAGASCAR
Christianity which refers to conduct. These morals are, after all, Christian morals. Such teaching is admirably favorable to Christian work; if nothing more, it is, at least, a powerful ally. The young men of France not only offer a most promising field on account of their religious attitude, but also because the work has been prepared by the common schools and the spirit of the times. Moreover, we must remember that the young men whom we reach now will be the leaders of France twenty years hence. If one wishes to understand the character of the public men of the Third Republic. one has only to study the moral and religious characteristics of the students of the Second Empire. Ten years ago Dr. Wyckham, of Leipsic, prophesied that when the students then in the schools should come to manhood the character of Frenchmen would be greatly modified. Facts have more than justified his utterances. The McAll Mission should be able to take advantage of the present opportunities by adding to its work, and in harmony with it, specific organizations for young people. Such work is demanded (1) by the above considerations; (2) by the Sunday-schools whose oldest scholars are often lost by the lack of such provisions; (3) by the necessity of drawing the youthful converts from dangerous amusements and from bad company; (4) by the need of trained young workers; (5) by the successful experiments which have been made in some of the salles where the juvenile work under Mr. Greig has given great encouragement. The only hindrance to such imperative work is the lack of funds. Will not generous Christians take this work in hand, and furnish the means to carry it on as one of the most important departments of the McAll Mission ~ Shall we not make great efforts to form for Christ the generation which will soon be the manhood of France 1 Such a departure would not only bring large and immediate returns of its own, but it, would greatly help the larger work and intensify the power of the Mission Populaire.
THE PRESENT ASPECT OF MISSION WORK IN MADAGASCAR.
BY JAMES SIBREE, MISSIONARY OF THE LONDON MISSIONARY SOCIETY AND SENIOR TUTOR OF ITS COLLEGE, ANTANANARIVO, MADAGASCAR.
In attempting to give a very brief sketch of mission work in Madagascar as it appears to-day, I shall, for the present at least, leave out of view the .difficulties and hindrances which seem imminent in the near future, arising from'the political action of foreign powers, and shall endeavor to show the position of mission work in this country at the beginning of 1895.
It may perhaps be well first to remind the readers of this REVIEW that Protestant missions in Madagascar date from the year 1818, at the close of which year the first missionaries of the London Missionary Society landed at Tamatave, the chief port of the east coast. Interrupted for some months by the death of most of that pioneer party, the mission was recommenced in the year 1820, in the capital city, Antananarivo, in the interior highland, and was carried on with much success until the year 1835, when the persecuting queen, Ranavalona I., began severe measures against Christianity, and all the missionaries were compelled to leave the island. But during that period of fifteen years of steady labor, the native language was reduced to a written form, the whole Bible was translated into the Malagasy tongue, a school system was established in the central province of Jmerina, many thousands of children were instructed, and two small churches were formed. About 200 Malagasy were believed to have become sincere Christians, while several thousands of young people had received instruction in the elementary facts and truths of Christianity. That was the period of planting in Madagascar.
The second period in the history of Malagasy Christianity was that of persecution, and continued for twenty-six years (1835-61), during which period persistent efforts were made to root out the hated foreign religion. But the number of the" praying people" steadily increased, and although about 200 of them were put to death in various ways, the Christians multiplied about tenfold during that terrible time of trial.
In 1862 the mission of the London Missionary Society was re-established, and then began the third period in the religious history of the country, emphatically that of progress. From that date until the present time Christianity has steadily grown in influence, so that now about 1400 congregations and. more than 280,000 people are more or less under the influence of its missionaries. These churches and adherents are found to some extent in all parts of the island, but are chiefly massed in the central provinces of Imerina and Betsileo.
A great outward impetus was given to the spread of Christianity in the early part of 1869 by the baptism of the late queen, Ranav:Uona JL, and her Prime Minister, and the subsequent destruction of the idols of the central provinces, and still more by the personal influence of the sovereign in favor of the Christian religion.
In the year 1864 missions were commenced on the eastern coast, both by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (Anglican) and the Church Missionary Society (Evangelical). The latter of these was eventually withdrawn (in 1874) j and in the year 1872 the former society commenced work in the capital, and subsequently appointed a bishop to superintend its mission, its chief field, however, being still on the eastern coast.
Two years later (1866) the evangelical section of the Lutheran Church of Norway also commenced a mission in Madagascar, which was gradually increased, so that they have at the present time no fewer than 60 missionaries, including ladies in the country. (Eight or nine of these are now supported by the United Lutheran Church of America.) The Lutheran mission work is concentrated in the district of Valrinankaratra, from 60 to 80 miles southwest of the capital, and also in the southern central province of BetsiIeo; and they have also a. number of stations on the southeastern and a few on the southwestern coast.
The last Protestant society to undertake work in Madagascar was that of the Friends (the Friends' Foreign Mission Association). This was commenced in the year 1867, and differs from the others in having formed no new church organization, but in working in close connection and harmony with the London Missionary Society. The Friends' Foreign Mission Association have a press and excellent high schools in the capital, and take charge, as regards teaching and guidance, of a city church with its large district of 140 congregations, which stretches away for many miles to the southwest of Antananarivo. To the Friends' Mission is also mainly due the support of the large medical mission of the two societies, with its spacious hospital, medical, and nursing staff, numerous students, and dispensaries. Besides several missionaries stationed in the capital itself, the Friends have three different centres of work in their own district, with resident missionaries; but all the churches under their supervision observe the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper, and are closely united with those under the care of the London Missionary Society.
It will be seen from what has been already stated, as well as from the tables appended hereto, that the London Missionary Society, to whom the planting of Christianity in Madagascar is due, has by far the largest number of adherents of any Protestant (or other) mission in the country (or indeed of any field in any other part of the world) ; and it has naturally had, and still has, the greatest influence upon the religious and social life of the Malagasy. But this large following has brought its difficulties and disadvantages; and the progress made has been greatly hindered by the large number of congregations under the nominal charge of one missionary, and the impossibility, with the present staff, of exercising sufficient influence, in the way of leadiug and guiding large masses of still ignorant people.
For many years past the London Missionary Society has maintained a staff of from 35 to 40 missionaries, including ladies, but not including missionaries' wives. Of these 20 are stationed in and around Antananarivo, 10 in the Betsileo province, and the others in the Antsika.naka district and on the eastern coast. And when it is remembered that most of these missionaries have, on an average, from 50 to 60 congregations to look after, and that many of these churches are scattered over a large extent of country, some at distances of three days' journey from the station, and in a country where no wheeled vehicles are available, it will be seen how difficult it is to give these numerous congregations the help and guidance they so much need.
To supply as far as possible the lack of European teaching, a college for training native evangeliilts has been carried on for more than twentyfive years; and from this institution nearly 300 men* have been sent out, * Exclusive of about 100 secular students in addition. after receiving from three to four years' training, including, in 'later years, a little medical instruction. These men ha"'e been stationed in various parts of the central provinces, and also in the more heathen districts, as assistant missionaries, each having a small sub-district with from 6 to 8 congregations under his charge. Numbers of these men have done good and faithful service j many of them, after several years' work, haye been taken by the native government and appointed to various positions as governors and other official posts, and about 120 are still at work. From 40 to 50 students are usually under instruction ; and the college building is a large and substantial structure" and one of the most prominent in the capital.
High schools, both for boys and girls, have also been at work for many years, and in the former of these, lads receive three years' training as teachers, in order to supply the needs of the country schools, which num- ber many hundreds. .
Since the re-establishment of the London Missionary Society mission in 1862 a press has been constantly at work, and from this, as well as from that of the Friends, a considerable amount of literature in the native language has been issued, including monthly periodicals, school-books, science handbooks, theological and biblical works, medical books, and others of a more general character. These would amount to nearly 60,000 pages, or, say, 400 books, averaging 150 pages each, a fairly good com- * mencement of a native ltierature. The average issue of various publica- tions-large and small-from the presses of the two societies is about 120,000 copies annually.
But it will probably be asked, What are the spiritual and moral results of the work of so many missionaries laboring for so many years past 1 These are more difficult to gauge aright, and it is not easy to give a satis- factory answer to such a question. So much, however, may be fairly said: The idolatry of the central provinces, as regards any open practice of it, has been swept away, although it is quite true that at times of epidemic disease or any other calamity, there is a tendency on the part of the more ignorant people to practise heathen customs more or less secretly, although all such are prohibited by the native laws. There is a vast advance in education and enlightenment, and probably not less than 150,000 people are able to read and have acquired some familiarity with the main facts and truths of Christianity. Several editions of the whole Bible, besides large numbers of the New Testament, have been put into circulation, as well as a considerable amount of literature in the Malagasy language. Many hundreds of congregations have been formed and meet regularly for wor- ship, and while in all of these a considerable proportion are merely hearers, in almost every case probably there are a few earnest and sincere Christian people, and in the longer established churches these form a much larger * These figures inclnde books from the other mi.sion presses. proportion of the whole 'number, of attendants. We have large numbers of earnest young Christians in our congregations, and these have shown much zeal and interest in the carrying on of Sunday-school work and in the management of societies of Christian Endeavor, many of which have been formed during the last three or four years, since a revival movement passed over our city churches. As already pointed out, some 300 young men have received regular and special training as Christian teachers and leaders; and, in a less systematic way, many hundreds of others have been taught more or less fully, so as to fit them for preaching and teaching the truths of the Gospel. A missionary spirit is being gradually aroused in the Malagasy churches, and from both the central provinces a number of men have been sent to the outlying heathen tribes as native missionaries. Every year more and more money is being raised for religious and benevolent objects, and considerable sums have been expended in erecting substantial (sometimes handsome) church building9; and funds are not wanting to carryon orphanages, auxiliary Bible, tract, and temperance societies, as well as associations for supplying preachers to destitute and ignorant congregations. A number of young men have also received systematic training as doctors and have obtained diplomas, and a number of young women have been taught scientific nursing of the sick. It has always been the aim of our missionaries to develop the self-help of the Malagasy Christians, and to train them to carryon their own church organization and work. For many years past the churches, both of the Imerina and Betsileo provinces, have been banded together in two strong and influential unions for the discussion of church matters, discipline, teaching, etc., and these larger unions, as well as the smaller organizations -a kind of presbytery-have gradually trained the Malagasy Christians to think and act for themselves in all matters connected with their religious life and activity.
Such are some of the many cheering features of our work, on account of which we have to thank God and take courage; but the other side of the picture must also be mentioned very briefly.
The chief blots which characterize ~falagasy society, and show the imperfect hold which Christianity yet has upon the people, may be described under three heads : First, there are the abuses which, markedly in later years, have grown' up in the administration of government, from the oppression of the lower classes by those of higher rank and especially by government officials; This is largely due to the system of janompoana or unpaid service in lieu of direct taxation. This inevitably leads to an immense amount of injus. tice, and nothing but a greatly higher tone of morality, and especially of moral courage on the part of the people generally, will effectually put down this crying evil.
Second, there is the system of slavery; and this, although of a family ,and patriarchal character, and not often showing, to Europeans at least, its most repulsive aspects, is essentially evil and brings much evil to families and to the children of the slave-owners. Almost every family of free people, except the very poorest, possesses its slave or slaves, who, however, are usually treated kindly, as there is little color prejudice. It may be questioned whether fanompoana is not a greater evil than slavery itself–indeed it is slavery under another name.
Lastly, there is the low state of morality, especially as regards marriage, divorce, and the relations generally of the sexes. This is an evil heritage from long ages of heathenism and ign'orance, and while great advances have been made on the former state of things, very much remains to be done to raise the moral tone of native society even in our own congregations.
Much more might be said, but probably the particulars here given are sufficient to show what are the discouraging as well as the cheering prospects of mission work in Madagascar at the present time j and I cannot but remark, in conclusion, that the prospect in the immediate future for our people and our work is now very dark and threatening. A foreign invasion seems imminent in two or three months' time, and how it may affect our work God only knows. When we remember how much injustice has been done by similar influence on our missions in various parts of the Pacific, we cannot but feel much sadness and apprehension for the future; but still of this we may be sure: God will not forsake His people here or allow His work to be destroyed. If the little band of Christians in Madagascar in the time of persecution were enabled by Divine help to hold their own for twenty-six years, and to constantly increase in number against the whole power of their sovereign and the dislike of the mass of their fellow-countrymen, we may be sure that now, with its immensely extended influence and much larger following, Christianity will prove that it has built up in Madagascar a church which shall never be overthrown, and has lighted a lamp that shall never be put out.
PROTESTANTISM AND UmIANIS.f IN MADAGASCAR.
BY REV. GEORGE COUSINS, SECRETARY OF THE LONDON MISSIONARY SOCIETY.
To understand the present position of affairs in "the Great African Island," as Madagascar is sometimes called, it is necessary to revert to a somewhat remote chapter of history. As far back as 1642 France made her first attempt to colonize the island. In that year the Societe .de l'Orient was formed for that express purpose, under the direct patronage of Cardinal de Richelieu, and in spite of COBstant disaster the work of colonization was persisted in for thirty years. It was then for many years abandoned, but by an order in council dated June 4th, 1686, France asserted her claim to Madagascar as a part of her dominions. This claim was formally repeated from time to time, and in the eighteenth century fresh attempts at colonization were made and persisted in for upward of fifty years. War with Great Britain and the rise of the Hov& power greatly m0dified the situation, but the island of St. Marie on the east coast and of NosiM on the northwest remained permanently in French posses- sion. Not only so, but failure to maintain their position on the mainland notwithstanding, France still regarded Madagascar as her own. Prior, however, to the signing of the Franco-Malagasy Treaty, in December, 1885, her claims had never been recognized by the Hova power, but the cession, under that treaty, of Diego Suarez Bay as a French naval station, and the clause recognizing the government of the Republic as the repre- sentative of Madagascar in all her foreign relations, did undoubtedly confer upon France special and peculIar rights.
Throughout this long connection with Madagascar, France has had valuable allies in the persons of Romanist missionaries j and to the honor of the Catholic Church be it said that, long before the Protestants of Great Britain turned their attention to the island, Dominicans, Lazarists, and other religious orders of the Romish Church had toiled and' suffered and died in self-denying efforts to Christianize some of the coast tribes. They accomplished but little, it is true, and after twenty years abandoned their difficult task, leaving few traces behind them, but a few pages of a cate- chism. Their converts lapsed into heathenism, so that when, in 1818, the London Missionary Society commenced 'operations in the island not a vestige of anything Christian was to be found, nor did any Roman Catho- lic missionaries follow them or attempt to interfere with their work. The solid foundations of native Christian churches were laid by British Prot- estants acting as a strong united band, nnchecked by the rivalry or oppo- sition of others. Then came the break-up of the mission and dark days of persecution, during which for a quarter of a century foreigners in gen- eral, and missionaries in particular, were kept ont of the island. A few succeeded in effecting an entrance, one or two permanently to settle, others as passing visitors only. Conspicuous among the former was a Fre~ch IlIan named Laborde, a man of considerable natural ability, who gradually acquired immense influence over the queen and her officers j while among the visitors were one or two Jesuit priests.
In 1861 Ranavalona I., the persecuting queen, died, and her son came to the throne with the title Radama II. His accession secured liberty of worship to the native Christians and brought foreigners back to Madagas- car. To missionaries he at once granted full permission to prosecute their labors witholit let or hindrance. A few dependants of M. Laborde ex- cepted, the entire native Christian community was at that time Prote!'!tant, and when the London Missionary Society resumed operations, its agents were welcomed by the Malagasy Christians as their recognized spiritual guides. But they were no longer the sole occupants of the field. Con- , current with their own arrival came a large staff of Roman Catholic mis- sionaries-Jesuit Fathers, teaching Brothers of the Order of St. Joseph and Sisters of Mercy-and from that day onward Protestant and Romaniat teachers have worked side by side. Even during the· Franco-Malagasy War, when the European staff (which was almost exclusively French, by nationality, and wholly so in political sympathy) was for the time expelled, native Catholic congregations still assembled for worship, and their liberty to do so was in no way interfered with by the Hova Government.
Meanwhile other Protestant missions had been established in the island -viz., that of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, of the Church Missionary Society, which, however, was soon withdrawn, * of the Norwegian Missionary Society (Lutheran), and of the Friends' Foreign Mission Association. Further a remarkable tribal movement in favor of Christianity had carried the Hovas forward on a new pathway, and a& the result of their religious awakening some hundreds of native churches had been erected, congregations for them had been gathered, schools had been established, and throughout the central province, and in one or two outlying provinces, a large proportion of the people had become nominally Christian. Though this was mainly a Protestant movement, the Romanists succeeded in securing a fairly large share of its harvest, especially in districts remote from the capital. Roughly speaking, at the end of 1883, after twenty- one years of continuous missionary labors, there were about 300,000 Malagasy connected with Protestant missions, and from 8000 to 10,000 under the care of the Jesuits. The fignres are only approximately correct.
The Franco-Malagasy Treaty materially affected the political situation; nor can it be denied that many feared that it would have a like influence upon the religious situation. When leaving Antananarivo, on the outbreak of hostilities, the priests boldly aRserted that they would soon return as conquerors, and that, backed by the power of France, they would in future be able to carry everything before them. ~luch of this could of course be set down as idle vaporing; besides which our knowledge of the unique position, which, thanks to the years of persecution, the Bible holds in the est.imation of the Malagasy people was in itself enough to rob the languagp. of much of its force. Still there did seem to be ground for grave concern, and the outlook was for the moment overcast.
More than eight years have gone by since the treaty was signed, and thus far none of the fears entertained have been realized. Protestant missionaries continue their work on the same lines as before; in several districts they have greatly extended their operations; in all they have striven to consolidate and mature their organizations, and the proportion of the population that willingly follows j,heir lead remains what it was before the treaty came into operation.
Two things have directly contributed to this result. The chIef reason * Rarely, if ever, has there been a brighter example of the" Comity of Missions" than this with· drawal, which was due to an unwillingness to intrude upou ground occupied by the London Missionary Society on the one hand, and an equal unwillingness on the other hand to countenance any_ thing like a schism among representatives of two Church of England- Societies.
iS95· THE DEVELOPMENTAL STATUS OF THE AMERICAN NEGRO. 43'7
is th03 failure on the. part of France to make good her political claims. From the first there has been a double reading of the treaty. Great Britain, for a time wisely neutral, in 1890 accepted the French reading, an4 formally signified it by means of the Salisbury-Waddington Convention. But even this cynical and short-sighted act of a British statesman has not yet sufficed to give the French anything approaching an effective control of the Hova Government j indeed it is difficult to see how the Republic can secure such domination of Madagascar as her heart seems set upon, unless she is prepared to make large sacrifices of money and men to achieve her purpose.
The other thing directly contributing to the maintenance of the status quo ante as regards religious liberty, and the strength of Protestantism in the island, is the fact that the French officials do not seem in any way to have threatened it. ·Whether lack of power alone does not account for this, may by some be doubted j but there is another explanation, and one worthier of the French. There is reaRon for thinking that their experience in the Pacific has taught the French Colonial Office the folly of attempts to coerce native Christians brought up under the instruction of Protestant missionaries. They no longer seek to force Polynesians to become Catholics, and one would fain believe that the lesson learned in the Society and Loyalty Islands is serving to check the natural tendency of the French official abroad to pose as the patron and supporter of Romanism.
Quietly, patiently, faithfully our Protestant brethren and sisters are building up the native Christian communities in an intelligent, sincere, and consistent love of the Scriptures and of the simple church life which the Scriptures have given to them, and in doing so they, the workers, and we, their sympathizing friends, may confidently rely upon the promise, "My word shall not return unto Me void."-The Mi38ions of the World.
THE DEVELOPMENTAL STATUS OF THE AMERICAN NEGRO.
BY GEORGE R. STETSON, WASHINGTON, D. C.
The great majority of the American negroes are of the so-called Bantu and Nigri~ic stocks, the lowest and the least developed of the great African races. Their anthropologic relation is above the Australian and below the Tauranian, the Hindl and the Caucasian. It is this nearness to a barbarous ancestry which determines so emphatically their religious, moral, mental, and physical character. This proximity is especially indicated in the negro of unmixed blood, by his vigorous constitution, his acuteness of vision, * his quickness of hearing, his keenness of taste, the delicacy of ,. An examination of 420 white and 420 colored minor school children of Washington, by Dr. Belt, gave these results: Normal acuteness of vision-white, 'i'{ per cent; colored, 90 per cent. Myopicwhite, 16 per cent; coillred, 6 per cent. Astigm[ltlc of all degrees-white, 25 per cent; colored, 10 per cent. Diseased eyes-white, 10 per cent; colored, 4 per cent. Choroidal atrophy-white, 5 per cent·, colored, 1 per cent. (Vide Ophthalmic Record.) his sense of smell, his insensibility to pain and ordinary remedial agents, and to danger-characteristics common to all primitive and unde'Cloped races. The faculty of memory is remarkably developed, and in children is superior to that of the white child of the same age. Sir Spencer f't. John speaks of the Haytian negroes as "having most extraordinary mem- ories j" and the fact that native Africans have memories of remarkable tenacity is conceded by all anthropologists.
The negro's environment in this country, especially in the "black belt," tends to strengthen this faculty, as well as that of observation, and because of this heredity and the more perfect development of these facul- ties, the negro child learns much more rapidly by the ear, or by rate, and 'by keen observation than the white. These faculties are, however, not accompanied by a corresponding development of the understanding, which is in great part due to bad instruction and ignorance of the vocabulary of our language.
The imitative faculty in the negro is remarkable and is very largely developed. To conform exactly to the habits, customs and dress of the all whites in phases of society-to imitate their religious, moral, social and humanitarian organizations to the extent of their means, and fre- quently beyond their ability to appreciate or comprehend-is the great aim and solicitude of the negro man, woman and child. The grotesque incongruities resulting from the attempted adaptation of all the social machinery of an advanced civilization emphasize his inferior development. This faculty, which if properly directed and governed would prove invaluable in a well-adjusted educational system, is now a great moral danger, as well as a hindrance to his symmetrical development. Leading men of his race consider the" incubus or imitation a fatal drawback," as " imitators see only results and never learn processes." His superior memory and remarkable imitative faculties are naturally but unfortunately coupled with weak assimilative and imperfectly developed logical powers; and his great advantage in memory and observation is lost in his logical deficiency. In his present status he lacks a high power of continuous logical thought, of sound reasoning, and of persistent, careful application in mental and physical labor.
The negro child, in pursuing at puberty, studies requiring the exercise of reason, has a limited capacity in applying the knowledge it so readily memorizes. Of this difficulty in mental application and digestion, a Northerll. teacher says: "The time required to fix an idea in the negro's mind is far in excess of that spent on the white child of equal age ;" "their mental horizon is narrow." Mr. Greenwood, some time Superintendent of Schools in Kansas City, Mo., has reached a similar conclusion. It will be remembered that Kansas was an objective point in the so-called "negro exodus" from South Carolina several years since, which fact gives Mr. Greenwood's experience especial value, as it relates more nearly to the pure negro. In his experience, he says, " The negro or colored child is apt in imitation. . .. All studies requiring memory are easy for them j but those requiring considerable skill in the use of the reason are the most difficult, and are those in which the least progress is made."
This deficiency in the reasoning ahd logical powers is first observed at the age of puberty, or when before that age he is put to tasks requiring their exercise. This observation of the negro's mental deficiency at puberty is not new, although independently noted. It was remarked many years ago by Filippo Manetta, an Italian author, who, during a long resi- dence on our Southern plantations, observed that the negro children were sharp, intelligent, and full of vivacity, but on approaching the adult period a gradual change set in j the intellect became cloudy, animation gave place to a sort of lethargy, briskness yielding to indolence. "We must," he continues, "necessarily suppose that the development of the negro and white races proceeds in different lines."
Practical observers substantially agree in this opinion, and it is confirmed by my own experience and observation, that while under the limitations of social conditions and ignorance already stated, the young negro child is quite as quick and intelligent as the child of a more highly developed race, and excels them in the technique of memory and in observation, yet on reaching the adult age his progress is suddenly checked. A distinguished educator writes : "I note no broadening of the mental faculties at the age of puberty, such as you commonly see in a bright lad, or even the average lad, of white blood." "Reason in man is not an innate endowment, primitive and enduring, but a tardy acquisition and fragile composition," remarks Mr. Taine. Dr. Blyden, who by his education, observation, and experience is, perhaps, better qualified to judge of his own race than anyone else, declares it to be necessary" to develop in the negro the thinking faculty-to strengthen his brain-to develop and strengthen his reason, and at the same time to govern his imagination by common sense." These observations upon the negro's mental development are generally applicable only to those of unmixed blood.
Of course, no hard and fast line of demarcation or differentiation in mental development can be laid down between those of pure and impure blood. We have many instances of the possession of rare intellectual gifts by negroes j but the exceptions tend to prove the rule, for it is generally ·conceded that in whatever proportion his blood may be mixedgriffe-quarteron or quinteron-his development is superior to that of the pure negro, and his physique and peculiar miasma and disease-resisting power correspondingly impaired. I understand, of course, that these views are directly opposed to those of Blumerbach and Gregoire, as well as to those of more modern theorists, such as Dwight, Garrison. Phillips, and others, but they are not only the result of personal experience and observation, but have the valuable concurrence of the educated negro himself, which is an important point gained.
The negro in America has by no means outgrown the feebleness of the moral sense, which is an inheritance from his ancestry, and which is common to all primitive and partially developed races. He is still too much in bond to the superstitions which enslaved his ancestors, and cannot fully comprehend the. moral and spiritual basis of a highly developed,unemotional, non-imaginative, a!ld impersonal religious faith, and because of his weak initiative, a power which is one of the first conditions of intellectual progress, he fails in the capacity to organize, construct or maintain a high civilization or thrifty economic conditions. His crude physiologic development carries with it a natural deficiency in technic skill, and, as I have elsewhere said, he retains many ancestral peculiarities belonging to a climate in which there was no impulse, and an environment in which every ambition and desire was limited and controlled by his imperative physical needs. In his industrial progress he is hindered by his ignorance of advanced and scientific methods in agriculture, by his imprudence, his thriftlessness, his simplicity, his wastefulness, and improvidence.
The comparative failure of our attempt to properly educate the negro is in great part due to the obstinacy with which a majority has blindly "T maintained the theory of his equality in mental endowment with the race with which he is in contact. e have spent and are spending enormous sums annually in elaborate systems of education ~or the negro without giving the least consideration to the differences in climatic origin, to the consequent variation and differentiation in mental character and development, or to the great chasm of heredity which separates the two races and which can never be bridged. I repeat that a system of education to be of service to the negro must honestly recognize this difference in development along the whole line. It is a common and very unreasonable error to suppose that those who philosophically recognize this separation of the races are inimical to the negro; on the contrary, they are his best friends, for while they recognize his deficiencies they do not in the least impeach, or prejudge, or in any way qualify the possibilities which under favorable conditions the future has in store for him. They demand, and in this demand are in accord with the most cultivated of his own race, that the educational system employed shall be adapted to the idiosyncrasies of his mental, moral, and physical needs.
It is a mild criticism to make, that the education hitherto given him has resulted in imparting false ideas of life and labor. His industrial training has been that of the treadmill; he has, because of his deficiency in mental and physical dexterity and technic skill, been an ignorant hewer of wood and drawer of water. He requires to be led out of this chronic condition by an intelligent, industrial training, which will impart a dexterity of hand, implant a love of and respect for labor, develop his mental and moral character, and train him in atteution, industry, and perseverance. "What the negro needs at once," that great apostle to the negroes, General Armstrong, emphatically declared, "is elementary and industrial education and moral development. "-Public Opinion.
INTERNATIONAL DEPARTlImNT
II.-INTERNATIONAL DEPARTMENT.
EDITED AND CONDUCTED BY REV. J. T. GRACEY, D.D.
The Beginnings of a. Young Mission in than if Christ had never come 1 But the Province of Honan, Ohin&. when they sl1id to the Church of their choice, " Will you not scud us to pro- BY REV. J. FRAZER SMITH, M.D., HAM- claim the Gospel among the millions in the dark regions beyond 1" the Church ILTON, CANADA. too often answered through its Foreign Mission Committee, " We would gladly :Much has been said during the past do so, but all our available funds are few years about the large number of required to support the men who are stndents who have intimated their will- now in the field." As the interest in ingness to engage in foreign mission foreign missions thus increased, some work. Having this fact In mind, it of the studeuts in Queen's College, was thought by the writer that a short Canada, felt that they could not any acconnt of a well-equipped mission, longer stand idly by waiting for the composed entirely of young men fresh movillg of the waters, but that necesfrom college, planted in a new and very sity was laid upon them to. make an difficult field, and almost entirely cut effort to send out at least one man from off from intercourse with other mission- among themselves to proclaim the glad aries from whose experience they might tidings to the heathen. have hoped to derive advantage, might not only prove of interest to the general Consequently, on' January 30th, 1886, reader, bnt also might stimulate student after careful thought and prolonged volunteers to try a similar experiment. discussion, the following resolution was elsewhere. adopted by the University Missionary Association; "That as soon as a mem- The inception of this mission was ber of this association, in connection unique in many respects, snd because with the Presbyterian Church in Canit was, in one feature at least, a new ada, offers himself as a missionary to departure in missionary finance, a re- the foreign field, this association undercital of the facts may prove all the take to support him, and that such more suggestive at the present time, support take priority to all aids to home when so many mission boards are call- mission work." Afterward, however, ing loudly for more money to enable the association, recognizing the importhem to carryon theil' usual work. tance of home mission work, especially in the Northwest, decided to continue In the eady "eighties" an awaken- their endeavors in that department of ing missionary zeal among the students the Lord's work, with the result that of our theological halls was one of the since engaging in foreign work the asmost significant signs of the times. sociation has nearly doubled its con- Numbers of students, as they looked for- tributions to the home field. ward to the life for which they were preparing themselves, began, for the In the following October the students first time perhaps, to ask in earnest it and alumni of Knox College, Toronto, it was right for them to spend their entered into a similar scheme, and very lives competing with half a dozen min- soon they had raised a sum of money isters of their own and other Christian which was strength to them and a denominations for the privilege of healthy stimulus to Queen's. preaching to a handful of people, who already enjoyed all the advantages of a In Knox College Mr. Jonathan Go- Christian community, when two-thirds forth had all through his college course of the population of the entire globe, in looked forward to a missionary career ; this nineteenth century of Gospel light, while J. Frazer Smith, of Queen's Colhad not one single ray more of this light lege, had for years earnestly desired to ties. Some of the lessons learned on go out as a medical missionary to China, this trip, however, were most helpful and with this end in view had combined in many ways, and if the young mis- a full medical course with his theologi- sionaries afterward avoided some of cal work. It was natural, therefore, the more common mistakes of all new that Mr. Goforth should have been ap- missionaries, it was due to the fact that pointed the first foreign missionary of they profited by the good advice given his college association, and that Mr. by their experienced companions on Smith should have had the same honor that occasion. conferred upon hilll by Queen's Uni- versity Missionary Association. In due The kind friends at Lin Ch'ing and time these two gentlemen were pre- P'ang Chuang, 100 and 150 miles re- sented to the Foreign Mission Commit- spectively from the borders of Honan, tee, with Ihe request that, if possible, extended a cordial invitation to the they sho.uld be sent to labor together in memberH of the new mission to move China, the field of their choice. Con- inland and reside at their stations until sequently, the Presbyterian Church in they would succeed in gaining a foot- Canada, which for many years had hold for themselves in Honan. This conducted a most successful mission kind invitation was gladly accepted, in the northern part of the island of and some of the members moved inland Formosa, resolved, at its General As- as soon as possible. sembly in June, 18t!7, to commence a new mission on the mainland of China. In December, 1889, three additional The province of Honan was chosen be- gentlemen with their wives and two cause it was considered one of the most single ladies arrived inland to reinforce needy provinces in the whole empire at the young mission. There they were, that time. Although Honan was con- fifteen souls all told, upward of 100 fessedly one of the most difficult fields miles distant from their chosen field of in the whole of China, neither the For- labor, and as yet not a single place to . eign Mission Committee nor the young call their own. missionaries were at all discouraged, but went bravely forward, trusting in Of the above missionaries two of the the promise, "Lo, I am with you al- married gentlemen, as already stated, way." It was not until March,1888, were supported by the students and that the first party belonging to this alumni of their respective colleges, and mission landed in Chefoo, but by De- had been landed in the field, one of cember of the same year two gentle- them with a complete medical and sur- men and their wives, two single I!;entle- gical outfit, without any additional ex- men, and one single lady were all in pense to the Foreign Mission Commit- China, and hard at work studying the tee. Two other married men and one language. single gentleman were supported by separate congregations, while the two In October, 1888, two of the gentle- remaining married gentlemen were each men, in company with two members of supported by one individual member the American Board, residing at P'ang from two different congregations. The Chuang, a station about 225 miles in- understanding was that these individ- land from Tientsin, made a tour of in- uals and congregations should continue spection through part of northern Ho- their usual contributions to the general nan. The young missionaries returned missionary fund of the Church. At from Ihis tour with many of their pre- the present writing the salaries of the conceived ideas, as to the country, the missionaries concerned, with one ex- people, missionaries, and mission work ception, which was limited to three in general, to say the least, rather upset, years, are still being paid from the from coming in contact with the reali- same sources, and the general funds of the Church have not suffered in the least thereby. The first tour for work was made in were posted up in conspicuous places, October, 1889, when Dr. McClure and charging the foreigners with all sorts Mr. Goforth, accompanied by two na· of wickedness, and for the first time the tive Christians from the stations where missionaries began to fully realize that they resided, visited four or five large they were destined to have a hand-to· cities in North Honan, and spent from hand fight with the devil for possession three to five days in each place, dis. in Honan. The opposition drove us to pensing medicine and trying to preach seek for all our help and strength from the Gospel as opportunity afforded. our great Captain, at whose command On this tour the missionaries were well we had gone forth. We continued to received wherever they went, and one move about from place to place, and at mandarin, more friendly than the rest, ti~es we were very hopeful that prop· invited the foreigners to dine with him. erty would soon be secured. We were When these brethren returned and reo offered suitable property on several oc· ported their phenomenal reception, the casions, but often, when all arrange- hopes for the success of the mission ments seemed about completed, the ran high, and we need not be surprised whole affair would suddenly collapse, if the young missionaries looked for· and a whisper would go around, " The ward to a speedy and peaceful settle· gentry have intimidated tho man, and ment in that hostile province. Our he dare not rent or sell his property to missionary friends with a longer ex· the foreigner." After many disap· perience were not so sanguine, and pointments, in. October, 1890, our pray- when we enthusiastically voiced our ers were answered, and we secured our expectations, they merely cautioned us first property in Ch'uWang, a market not to put too much confidence in Chi· town, about 10 miles from the border nese mandarins, even though they gave in Honan. Two of the brethren moved banquets. in and took possession and commenced Early in 1890 we adopted the Gospel work, and all were happy. Our joy method anq went touring, two and two, was destined to be of short duration, a doctor and a minister, each foreigner for about a month afterward, during a supported by a Christian native of some fair, an angry mob rushed in and loot- experience in his particular line. On ed the entire compound, but fortu- reaching a town of considerable size we nately the missionaries were not in- endeavored to rent two rooms in an jured. Redress was sought from the inn, in some central place; one room local officials, but to no avail, and as 8 for dispensing medicine, and the other last resort an appeal was made to the for the purpose of preaching and sell· British Consul at Tientsin. Through ing tracts and portions of ~cripture. the intervention of the noted Viceroy We remained, if possible, in each place Li Hung Chang, contrary to all expec· from ten to fifteen days, and after hav- tations and to the previous history of ing made an appointment for a future such cases, the whole affair was favor- visit, moved on to the next town. Each ably settled inside of four months.
doctor treated on an average upward From that time to the present, work has of 80 patients per day, and the writer, been carried on at Ch'u Wang with on his first tour, during thirty days of the ordinary difficulties and interrup- such work, performed 105 surgical tions incident to pioneer work in the operations. interior of China.
The so-called gentry or literati were In May, 1891, property was secured at first rather surprised, then they be- at Hsin·ChIln, another market town, gan to look, "with scornful eye ask- some 60 miles farther inland than Ch 'u ance," and very soon they began to Wang. In October we were forced to threaten in order to frighten us away. commence repairs on the houses to reno At one end of the field vile placards der them fit for foreigners to live in. No sooner were the necessary repairs his son were studying the Word of GOO on the houses hegun than the people with delight, and were daily praying, on the street commenced active hostili- not"only- for themselves and the mis- ties against us. Day by day we were sionaries, but also for their poor, be- reviled and our workmen threatened, nighted countrymen around them.
while groups of men assembled to bom- Why this great change? In March, bard our gates. As time went on they 1890, old Chou was led to the inn by became bolder, and soon personal vio· his son totally blind. The old man had lence was attempted. On two or three been a heavy burden to his family for occasions a mob of several hundred six or seven years, and he came to the men assembled around the mission foreign doctor anxious to be cured.
compound and threatened to break in The writer operated on both eyes for the gates, tear down our houses, and cataract with excellent success, and drive us out or kill us. At such times, from that time forth both he and his in vain was the help of man, but our son took a deep and abiding interest in trust was in .Tehovah, God, and He it the Gospel. It was a great joy to the was who mercifully protected His ser· physician to thus restore sight in his vants during all these trying months, first operation of the kind in Honan, and we were brought to realize, as but this joy was as nothing in compari- never before, the full meaning of the son to his joy when, on June 26th, words of the Psalmist when he says: 1892, the privilege was accorded him " God is our refuge and strength, a very of baptizing these two men, our first present help in trouble." converts in Honan. At present we Notwithstanding the continued and have some fifteen baptized adults, with bitter opposition of our enemies, we upward of thirty candidates on proba- endeavored to carryon our work in the tion.
dispensary and street chapel, and the All candidates for baptism, after pass- daily attendance was far above our ex- ing a satisfactory examination before pectations. two of the members of the mission, are During our first year of residence in put on probation for at least one year Hsin Ch~n at least 10,000 people visited before being baptized. This is to pre- the street chapel, and listened to the vent unworthy candidates, of whom, preaching for a shorter or longer period alas! there are very"many.
of time, but, probably, not one dozen For six years now the Gospel has of that vast throng took any interest in been proclaimed far and wide, and we what was said, or inquired with any thank God that here and there we find desire to know the Gospel for its own a few who are willing to listen with sake, or because they felt the need of some degree of interest, and who in- living a purer and better life. Ninety- quire with some appearance of real nine per cent of all who came were ut· earnestness. Last spring, before the terly indifferent. There are people writer left Hsin CMn, day after day who speak of the Chinese as waiting, from 50 to 100 people visited our chapel ready and willing to receive the Gos· and dispensary, and from three to five pel, but if 5 per cent of those who hear persons each day listened to the preach- had any desire to listen in order to know ing of the Gospel with more than ordi- the Gospel, our work would be com- nary interest, and were willing to be paratively easy. Through all these instructed-as many in two days as we trying days God had given His ser- had the whole first year at that place.
vants one little bright spot in that dark In JUly last a valuable property was land as a token of His love, and to purchased in Chang-te-fu, about 30 keep them from becoming discouraged. miles west of Ch'u Wang, and the most In the little village of Ho-tao, about 17 important city in that part of the dis· miles from Hsin CMn, old Chou and " trict. The work in North Honan, however, is scarcely yet begun, and we in China there are over twelve hundred must not expect too much, nor should missionaries, and the annual expenses any person be discouraged even if the of these missions would amount to results are not as good as might be more than one million dollars. Yet in expected. The difficulties to be encoun- the last Whole year the whole number tered are stupendous, and when we take of Christians who have joined ch~rches into consideration the character of the in all missions in China, I believe, does people with whom we have to do, their not exceed two thousand. You would pride and prejudice, their ignorance say one human soul is worth the whole and indifferec.ce, their idolatries and world, and cannot be valued in gold superstitions, their apathy in regard to and silver; and you would say also the everything in the way of improvement indirect influence exerted by mission- or reform, and, above all, their utter aries over the country at large cannot lack of honesty and truthfulness from be measured in pounds or ounces. All the highest to the lowest, we may well this I concede; but I question, as a thank God for what has already been Japanese Christian, whether you are accomplished, and, with renewed en- making the best use of men and means ergy and ~eal, press on in the great -that is, whether there is no room for work. improving missionary methods.
It seems to us that there is no definite The Missionary Problem: from the idea amon~ both missionaries and their Standpoint of a. Japanese Ohristian. home churches concerning the true aim of missionary work. Some seem to lay BY PROFESSOR H. KOZAKI, DOSHISHA great stress on the testifying work of COLLEGE, TOKYO, JAPAN. missionaries, and if they preach and Most of the missionary societies of testify the Gospel of Christ to all crea- Europe and America arose in· the end tures, whether they are converted or of the last century or the beginning of not, then they think their work is the present one. They have achieved done Then, again, others seem to de· the conversion of many tribes and peo· pend solely on the intervention of the pIes. The history of the conversion of Divine hand for the conversion of the the Hawaiian Islands, Madagascar, and people, thinking as though all other some islands in the Pacific Ocean, is as works are not Divine, regardless of hu· wonderful as the Acts of the Apostles. man means or methods. God forbid But when we come to see missionary that I should in any way disparage work in civilized or more or less civil· the work of the Holy Spirit in mission ized countries, such as India, China, work, but to believe that the conver· and Turkey, it seems that they are sion of the world will be done by the making very little progress compared Divine intervention, without human with the number of men engaged and means or methods, seems to us to be the amount of means expended. That dishonoring God and man. Hitherto Christian missions in these countries the most of missionaries seem to have are making some progress, I do not gone to the fields without any settled question. But when we compare the idea of missionary methon or plan, sim- number of men engaged and the amount ply trusting on the Divine power and of means expended with the small reo support. This may do in the conversion suIt of their work, we often wonder at of savages and barbarous peoples, but the patience and faith of missionaries, In dealing with civilized or more or and at the disinterested magnanimity less civilized nations this will not do.
and large heart of Christians; and we I believe in the missionary work of civil· cannot help questioning whether there ized nations there must be some defi- is not room for improving the methods nitely undel'stood method of the work.
of Christian missions. For instance, You have been lately paying great attention to the scientific study of so- 3. Because foreigners as such make cial problems, and found out that an. more mistakes in dealing with the peo- indiscriminate charity or philanthropy ple than the natives themselves.
without any plan or method would do 4. To these causes I must add one harm rather than good. The problem which is little understood by Christian of Christian missions needs similar solu- people in all countries. Every nation tion with that of social evils. I believe has what we may call national spirit or there is at present urgent need of sci- patriotism, which raises more or less entific study of missionary problems. suspicion on the part of the natives We are in the most fortunate time to th!!t the missionaries come to make do such work. The experiences of mis- conquest over the faith of the people.
sionaries in the last hundred years- Thus we often find good and patriotic their failures and successes-are all men among the opponents of mission- most profitably to be studied. aries, which we think is the most un- I have great interest in this problem, fortunate thing in any country.
and hence have been paying some atten- If the foregoing remarks are true, tion to it. The truth yet partially under- the first object of missionary work stood in this latter part of the century by must be to raise up able native wQ1'kers missionaries as well as by churches is, and help tltem do tlte work by tltemael'lJe8, that no civilized nation can be converted and thus educational work in its full solely by foreigner8 __ or, in other words, meaning will become a chief work of that the conversion of a nation mU8t be mIssIOnaries. The missionary may done by ita own agency. I need not enter preach, but he will never be as efficient into details to illustrate this principle, as some of the native preachers. He but I will simply note some of the potent may write books, but he will not be facts in our own country. You see, able to write such able books as some while in India membership in Christian of the native authors do. But he can churches in the last ten years has gain- raise up able native workers much ed only 30 per cent, in Japan it has more efficient than he is. He can give gained more than 300 per cent-that is, good counsel to the native workers, tripled in ten years. In different de- and thus help them in various' ways.
nominations of Japan some of them I can name some missionaries, or rather have gained in membership tenfold in some foreign educators in my own the last ten years, while others have country who did great work in such a gained only two or threefold in the capacity. Among many such workers same period; and here we see clearly two men may be mentioned-namely, the denominations in which mission- Dr. Brown, of the Reformed Board, aries have prominent part are making and Captain L. L. James, who was not smaller gains, while those in which the connected with any missionary board, native Christians take responsible posi- but a zealous worker in Christ. Most tions are making greater gains. of the intluential workers in the Pres- The reason for this state of things is byterian body, which is called the not hard to find. " Church of Christ in Japan," are pu· 1. Because foreigners as such cannot pils of Dr. Brown, and similarly most understand the character of the people, of the intluential workers in what is and thus cannot sympathize with their called the "Kumiai churches," cor- thought and feeling, the difficulty of responding to the Congregational learning the language being not the churches, are pupils of Captain James.
least impediment. To do such work we need the best 2. Because they can hardly get such men as missionaries, first-rate men in confidence from the native people as every way. There is no more false the native people have among them- notion than that any mediocre man with selves, and thus cannot command re- ordinary education can make a good spect of the people. missionary. Such men may do good work in' their own country, but I can- heretofore, and so the evangelization not believe they can do much good in of the world will be very much has- the missionary fields, especially in civ- tened. ilized countries. Of course there are not many such first-rate men to be The evangelization of the world is found in any country, but we do not a great work-nay, the greatest work ask you to send us many such men. the Christian churches have ever come to undertake in the history of man- Now the most of Christian men are kind. It 'is not easy work ; it cannot disposed to believe that if they can send be done in any unsystematic and dis- many missionaries into all parts of the orderly way. It is the problem which world, the evangelization of the world demands to be solved by devout and will be easily effected. We hear a wise men in true, scientific method. great deal of such plan as sending a The evangelization of the world is also missionary to every fifty thousand peo- the great obligation of the Christian ple in the whole world, so as to inun- churches. It is Paul who said that date the whole world with an army of "I am debtor both to Greeks and to mIssIOnaries. I do not believe in such barbarians, both to the wise and to the an easy method of evangelization. It foolish." The Christian Church is now is my firm conviction that the number debtor to the whole unevangelized of missionaries does not count much in world. May the Christians in all lands the missionary work. I believe a Paul feel the same obligation as the Apostle or a Luther is worth tens or even hun- of the Gentiles felt, and execute their dreds of ordinary missionaries. duty as the Christians in the apostolic time did. And the greatest cOIisolation If the work is once started in any we have in this work is the rememmagnitucfe among the native Chris- brance of the promise of our Lord, in tians, it is the wisest policy for mission- gi ving His final commandment to His aries to devolve as much responsibility apostles and others, "Lo, I am with as possible on the native Christians, you always, even unto the end of the and help them in such a spirit as Lafay- world. " ette helped Washington in his War of Independence. It is not only wise for The General Mi8sion~ Oonference at missionaries to help native Christians with counsel and good words, but Toluca, Mexico. I think you can safely help them with some material means in such a BY REV. JOHN W. BUTLER, D,D., CITY spirit as the Christians of Philippi help· OF MEXICO. ed those of Jerusalem, because the native churches have not only to support I send a few notes about the Toluca themselves, but also do aggressive Conference. work in various ways, and thus need very much your helping hand_ Where Toluca is the capital of the State of there are already many independent Mexico, and a pretty city of some 30,000 churches, it is better for you to help people. The governor of the State is them indirectly, doing the work through a pronounced liberal, and in many ways them, rather than to help them directly shows his sympathy with our Protesby sending many missionaries to them, tant cause. He sent words of salutaand thus the work will be done more tion and welcome to the conferenc4i. speedily and more efficiently. We had 141 workers representing the I believe if the Christian churches 12 different missions. The prime adopt such a policy in the future as I mover was the Rev. W. D. Powell, have imperfectly indicated above, they D.D., for fourteen years a Baptist miscan accomplish. even with present sionary in this country. He resided means, ten times greater work than first along the frontier, hut came to Toluca about three years ago. He has acquired considerable influence with er," and stirred all hearts with his tell- the natives in general and with the au- ing stories and practical exhortation. thorities in particular, many of whom are his personal friends, and it was fit- While these two sessions were being ting that he should deliver the address held in the hotel attended by foreign of welcome to the workers in the open- missionaries, similar sessions were held ing session, which was presided over in the Presbyterian chapel, which was by the Rev. T. F. Wallace, a veteran attended entirely by natives. That of over thirty years' standing. He night the natives and foreigners all worked under the Presbyterian Board united together, and the Rev. M. Gassa- for some years in Colombia, and came way presided. The Rev. II. P. Ham- here about fifteen years ago. His son, ilton, agent of the American Bible So- a most promising young man, has reo ciety, read a paper on the Word and cently entered the field. the Spirit, prepared by the Rev. H. B. Pratt, who recently translated the en. After Dr. Powell's welcome address tire Bible into Spanish. This was fol- came the responses from the Rev. I. W. lowcd by another paper by the Rev. Boyce, of Saltillo, and Rev. I. N. Steel- W. H. Sloan, of the Baptist Mission, man. of Orizaba. Then followed a real on the Effects of the Holy Spirit. treat in a half-hour talk by Mr. D. L. Moody, and Mr. Sankey singing" Hllve Thursday morning session was pra. You Sought fer the Sheep 1" in a man· sided over by H. P. Webb, Esq., audi- ner that moved all hearts. It is really tor of the Mexican National Construc- a wonderful thing to see the largest tion Company, a lay worker who is and best hotel in this old Roman Catho· very highly esteemed in this city, and lic town, and to which no Protestant a favorite with the missionaries. He minister had ever' come until about was assisted by our Quaker friend twenty years ago, almost entirely given Purdy, referred to above, and a very over to such a gathering as this; the earnest paper on the Indwelling of the billiard-tables cleaned out, and the Holy Spirit was read by Mr. E. G. large room full of evangelical workers, Taber, associate of Mr. Purdy. And all earnestly seeking a fresh baptism of he was followed by Rev. A. B. Rudd, the Holy Ghost for the great work be· on the Fruits c;>f the Spirit. Then came fore them. an uplifting address by Mr. D. L. Moody. The second session was presided over by the Rev. W. D. King, a presidiug In the afternoon Rev. T. F. Wallace elder of the Methodist Episcopal presided, and one of the best papers of Churoo, South. An excellent paper the entire conference was read by Rev. was read by the Rev. John Howland, H. P. McCormick, on Spirituality the of the Congregational Mission, on the Supreme Need in our Work. Mr. Dispensation of the Holy Spirit. This McCormick is comparatively a young was followed by a paper on the Person- man connected with the Baptist Mis- ality of the Holy Spirit by the writer, sion, and living in Morelia. He is an which produced a very animated dis- enthusiastic and successful worker. A cussion. The first to take part in this very profitable discussion followed the discussion was our esteemed friend, Mr. reading of this paper, during' which the . Samuel A. Pllldy, of Indiana, the old· workers were drawn voery closely to- est Quaker missionary in this country. gether. He fairly electrified the audience by his warm approval of the paper, and At night a large meeting was held in the assertion that his society now fully the theatre. On Friday the morning accepted the doctrine of the Personality session was presided over by the Rev. of the Holy Spirit. Mr. Moody fol· W. C. Evans, of the Methodist Episco- lowed with his" Ten Points on Pray- pal Church, and a paper was read by Rev. J. G. Woods, of the .Presbyterian Mission, on the Spirit's Work as Shown in the Acts of the Apostles, which was Our Mail-Bag. followed by another one of Mr. Moody's characteristic addresses. BIBLE DISTRIBUTION IN NAGOYA.- The missionaries and native Christian The afternoon session was presided workers in the city of Nagoya have over by the Rev. W. T. Green, of the long felt the importance of placing the Baptist Mission. Rev. F. P. Lawyer, Word of God in the hands of the 200" 000 people in this great city of the inot the Cumberland Presbyterian terior, but the undertaking is so great, Church, read a very thoughtful and and the number of workers, and, in devout paper on How May we Have fact, of the whole body of Christians, so More Power with God and }Ian? This few, that until recently the work has not been undertaken on any large scale. brought out a very earnest discussion, It has just been determined, however, and while heartily joining in the'sing- to begin the work at once. Fifty thouing of some of our old familiar hymns, sand copies ot the Gospels are being printed for this express purpose, the there came down upon the assembly cover bearing a. list of all missionaries one of the richest baptisms of the Holy and their residences in the city, of all Ghost it has ever been our privilege to preaching-places and the pastors of the experience. During the singing of a respective churches, a copy to be offered, with brief comment, at each house in second hymn, without any indication the whole city. The Christians have from anyone in the room, people began raised 250 yen with which to begin the to shake hands and speak words of work; pastors, missionaries, and mem- personal encouragement to each other. bers .of churches have met to arrange for systematic work, and have resolved The Baptists, the Congregationalists, to carry the work through to the end, Methodists, Presbyterians, Quakers, though it may take several months to and others aU seemed to be free and complete it. The following were happy as it in attendance upon an old- chosen as an Executive Committee to have charge of the work-viz.: David fashioned camp· meeting. It was the S. Spencer, H. J. Hamilton, A. R. Morunanimous opinion that that meeting gan, W. C. Buchanan, 1. Hayashi, H.
alone was worth travelling a long dis- Yamaka. C. Maruyama, and K. HOBO· tance to attend. In the evening a large kawa. Under their direction the whole city will be systematically mapped out, company gathered in the National The- and workers Indicated for the different atre. Many public men from the city sections.
were in attendance, and a great many Without a doubt this work will draw people also came out of curiosity, but out strong opposition from the Bud- dhists, and the Christians will likely be were treated to one of Mr. Moody's subject to increased insult from the op- plain spiritual sermons on the Way of ponents. These workers need the pray- Salvation. Of course Mr. Moody was ers of all Christians for the success of at the disadvantage of speaking to the this adva::lCe movement in this Budaudience through an interpreter, and dhist centre. yet he seemed to hold the people with- REV. D. S. SPENCER.
out any trouble. Then followed an earnest address by a converted French THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS-SYSTEM- priest, and a most excellent though ATIC GIVING. – Mrs. Esther Tuttle brief address by the Rev. P. F. V!llder- Prichard has been eminently active for rama, of the Methodist Church, and several years as one of the missionary thus eBded this most delightful and workers in the Society of Friends. She successful Holy Spirit COIiference, at- founded and for Ileveral years success· tended by so many workers from all fully edited the paper of the Woman's over the country. Men were there Missionary Society, Friend8' Mi.8ionarV from the Rio Grande on the north, and Advocate. For a few years past she from Puebla and Vera Cruz on the has concentrated her energies on the south, and I believe that they have all development of systematic giving, as returned to their work 'With new life Superintendent of the Department of and inspiration, Proportionate and Systematic Giving of the World's and National Christian AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE KOREAN Temperance Union, as weIl as for the GOVERNMENT AND THE PAl CHAI COL- Woman's Foreign Missionary Union of LEGE.
Friends. Mrs. Prichard sends the fol- 1. The Korean Government will send lowing note : to this college 200 students who are to observe strictly all the rules and regu- " As 1 read the notice of the work of lations of the institution. the Canada Methodist Women's For- 2. The students are to receive instruc- ~ign Missionary Society in the April tion in the English language, geognumber of the REVIEW, I was led to raphy, arithmetic, the sciences, and in compare statistics with the late annual such other studies as may be deterreport of the Woman's Foreign Mis- mined on by the teachers III charge of sionary Union of Friends, and am con- the school.
strained to send you our figures. I 3. The reception, dismissal, and disthink our receipts are exceptionally cipline of the students are entirely engood for the membership. We have trusted to the foreign teachers. 202 auxiliaries and 3562 members, and 4. Beginning with the first day of the support 41 missionaries, the receipts second moon, the Finance Department for last year being in round numbers will transmit $200 to the Board of Edu- $35,982, These receipts include over cation, whence 'it is to be seHt to the $9000 of legacies, but deducting these college for books, stationery, etc., for there is an increase of over $3000 above the pupils. Should the full number of that of the previous year. If we have students (200) fail to attend from the a dollar of indebtedness I am not aware beginning, the sum of $50 is to be paid of it. and we have no salaried officer at once. When the number reaches 50, except the editor of the Advocate. One then an additional $10 is to be added for hundred and fifteen Bible readings, every 10 students, up to the full quota. sermons, and addresses on proportion- Japanese silver or paper money may be ate and systematic giving are reported sent at the option of the government. for 1894, and the returns, which are by 5. On the last day of every month a no means complete, give us 1449 pro- correct and complete list of the stuportionate givers. The latter depart- dents in attendance for that month is to ment gaius new strength, and is doing be seut to the Foreign Department, and much for us. The Oregon superinten- from thence to the Board of Education. dent addressed a large audience re- 6. Students, unless dismissed for incently on the subject, and in conclu- abilit,Y to pursue the course of study or sion, to her surprise, 104 were won to for VIolating the rules and regulations, these methods. The general movement must remain in the college for a period for the advancement of this cause of three years. among woman's boards has had a year 7. Foreign teachers, whether three or of marked progress. We now have four are req uired to teach the 200 stufourteen organizations of Christian dents. are not ~o receive remuneration. women all told committed to the pro- One Korean tutor is to be employed for motion of the reform, among whom every 50 students. The selection of twel ve are missionary societies. One tutors is to be made by the foreign of the latest to come over is the Des teachers. The tutor is to receive from Moines branch of the Methodist Society, the Korean Government a salary of $20 and as nearly as I can judge no society a month for the first year, and an addihas thus far entered upon this w0rk tional $5 a month for each succeeding year. Should the tutor fail to attend under more favorable conditions. diligently to the work, he shall be dis- " KOKOMO, IND." charged by the government.
8. Five copies of this agreement are THE KOREAN MOVEMENT.-Mention to be made: one copy each to be placed was made last month of the interview with the Board of Education, the For- eign Department, the Finance Departof Bishop Ninde with the King of ment, the United States Legation, and Korea, and reference to the proposal of with the authorities of the school. Done in the 504th of the Dynasty, the government to place Korean youth first moon, twenty-sixth day, by under instruction of the Methodist mis- HYEN CHAI, sion. The following document binding 8em·etary Foreign IJepartrrumt, the Korean Government to this course who, having received authority from is not only significant, but will be his- the Foreign Department, entered into toric, and we therefore print the entire this agreement.
text: On behalf of the Pai Chai College.
SEOUL, February 16, 1895.
1895.J FIELD OF MONTHLY BURV:EY' 41)1
III.-FIELD OF MONTHLY SURVEY.
BY D. L. PIERSON.
Afrioa,* Madagasoar,t the Freedmen,:l: NOTES ON AFRICA. Roman Catholics in Africa are se- verely criticised by Rev. Henry Row· The Dark Continent presents a much ley, of the Society for the Propagation more diversified character in races and of the Gospel. After speaking of the nations and languages than is generally ignorant and immoral priests among supposed. Among the 160,000,000 to the Portuguese, he goes on to ascribe 210,000,000 inhabitants scattered over the utter relapse of native Christians an area of 11,556,600 miles, Dr. R. N. into heathenism to the following fea- Cust enumerates six distinct groups of tures of what seemed three hundred languages: The Hamitic of the north; years ago to be successful missions: the Semitic, spoken in North Africa reckless and wholesale baptism; unholy and Egypt; the Nuba Fulah of the accommodation of Christian tr.uth to Eastern Soudan, the negro of Western heathen superstitions and customs; negand North Central Africa, and compris- lect of education of the young; pre· ing 195 languages and 49 dialects; the tended miracles to strengthen waning Bantu, spoken south of the equator in influence; cruel punishment for break· 168 languages and 55 dialects; and the ing church rules; and the countenanclowest in the scale, that of the Hotten- ing of slave trade. Papal missions hav· tots in the south-a total of 438 lan- ing failed in Africa, the duty rests the guages and 153 dialects,of which only 66 more heavily upon Protestants to carry have the Bible translated even in part. them the pure Gospel. The Abyssinian and Coptic Christians are dead spirit· There is not only great variety in the ually, and have departed from their character of the country and in the original faith, if indeed they ever really languages spoken, but in religions also. understood the truth as it is in Jesus. They are approximately as follows: Mohammedans .,. .. ………… .. 77,000,000 The missionary work in Egypt is chiefly Pagans………………………. . 95,000,000 among the Copts; Abyssini!l- presents Christians ……………………. .. 7,600,000 little opportunity for evangelical work.
Abyssinian Christians………… . 5,000,000 It is the hermit nation of Africa. ProtestantS. .. .. .. .. . . .. .. . … . .. . 1,100,000 Islam is one of the most serious ob. Roman Catholic ……………… . Coptic, etc.. …. … ………. .. 900,000 stacles to missionary enterprise in Afri- Hindus ……………………… .. 600,000 ca. This religion permits and encour- 250,000 ages sensualism, thereby permitting * North Africa is considered in our October Africans to remain pagans while nomi- issue. On CentrlLl and South Africa see also pp. nally Mohammeda,ns; in addition to 19 and 47 (January); 327,355,359 and 381 (May), this the converts are gained by force and 407 and 411 (present issue). Literature: where persuasion fails. At Cairo, ~'Africa," KeithJohnston; '~AfricaRediviva," Egypt, is a college where more than R. N. Cust, LL.D.; .. Missionary Landscapes 10,000 are in training to convert Africa of the Dark Continent," Rev. James Johnston; "The New World of Central Africa," Mrs. H. G. to the religion of the False Prophet. Guiness ; "Garaganze," F. S. Arnot; " St9ry of . The pagans are mostly fetich-wor- Uganda," Sarah G. Stock; .. Forty Years shippers and sunk in deepest degradaamong the Zulus," Rev. Josiah Tyler, D.D.
t See also pp. 429 and 484 (present issue) and tion, though occasionally tribes more ., Story of Madagascar," Rev. J. W. Mears; .. Madagascar and France, " George A. ShlLw. English and Dutch, aud are largely confined to :): See also pp. 327 (May), and 422 and 438 (pres- South Africa. The remaining 400,000 have been rescued from paganism by the 'bearers of glad ent issue). tidings from Germany, Britain, and America.
S More than one half the Protestant Christians, Or about 700,000, are European colonists, chiefly Somewhat over 1oo,()()() art) comlIluniclluts, civilized are· found in the interior. France, England, Germany, Belgium, Woman is, as a rule, lightly esteemed Portugal, Italy, Turkey, and Spain, all and readily exchanged for beads or have large possessions or protectorates cattle. Cannibalism is by no means a in Africa; time will reveal whether or thing uncommon. Dr. S. L. Hinde, a not it is to the interest or detriment of member of the Congo Medical Service, their subjects. says of some parts he has visited: "At N'Gandu, the headquarters of Congo Not less than 60 missionary societies Lutete, we found that chief had gath. are uuited in the herculean task of conered together about 10,000 cannibal quering Afrios for Christ. Of these brigands, mostly of the Batatela race. 24 are British, 16 American, 10 Ger- Through the whole of the Batatela man, and 7 are Scandinavian, etc. country and from the Lurimbi north· About one third of the number have ward, for some four days' march, one entered recently, consequently their sees neither gray hairs, nor halt, nor harvest does not yet appear. But in blind. Even parents are eaten by their spite of the seemingly large number of children on the first sign of approach- societies employing about 1200 mising decrepitude. N'Gandu, I may tell sionaries at nearly 1000 stations, many you, Is approached by a very handsome parts of the continent are as yet entirely pavement of human skulls, the top unreached. The Soudan, stretching being the only part showing above across Africa just north of the equator, ground. I counted more than a thou- is one of the most needy and neglected sand skulls in the pavement of one gate dark spots on the Dark Continent. alone. Almost every tree forming the Two societies in England and two in boma, or fortification, was crowned America have lately becn organized to with a human skull." evangelize this country. The Soudan may be roughly divided into three parts Captain Maloney, lately returned -the Western, watered by the Niger; from the Niger, says: Eastern, watered by the Nile; and Cen- , "The Brass natives on their return tral Soudan, comprising five Mohamtook with them about 100 prisoners, medan States lying around Lake Tchad. bound down in their canoes. All of These five States have a population of these, it is believed, were tortured and about 60,000,000, without one ChriBtian killed, and in some cases eaten. A miB8ioitary, though some are preparing scene of a shocking kind was witnessed to enter the field. A pioneer party unat Brass, when the natives, headed by der the Central Soudan Mission (St. King Koka, who had led the attack, Martin's House, 1 Gresham Street, returned to their town. It is related on London) is entering the State of Sokoto the authority of French missionaries via Lagos and the Yoruba and Niffe that the religious festival of 'Ju Ju' country. At present for five months was held. ,Some of the participators in you may walk across this great counthis ghastly rite suspended around their try, and not meet one worker Cor Christ, bodies the limbs of the slain, and danced not a native Christian, nor one who has until exhaustion rendered them incapa- heard of the way of salvation. These ble of further exertion. " people are living and passing away in darkness. One could not describe the If we wait for evolution to lift these spiritual condition of the people more poor people up, we shall wait forever. accurately than in the language of the In a generation the Gospel has changed first chapter of the Epistle to the Rosavages quite as fierce into gentle. mans. The darkness, the sin, the supious Christians. Some Moffat or perstition they live in is in every way Mackay is wanted in these dark places. as dark as that of the heathen of St. Paul's day. The great difficulty in The natiGns of Europe have parti- reaching them is that they have, as I), tioned Africa between them; only a tew trilJes maintain their independence. rule, no sense of sin, becausc they by the Christians of England and think forgiveness is se> easily obtained America. Uganda is now a British by some ceremonial act. protectorate. The native king, Mwan- The Central Soudan Mission is now ga, wavers between Christianity and faithfully trying to reach these people; paganism. The power of sinful habits others luive worked there; Wilmot asserts itself again and again, and for a Brooke, Robinson, Ed ward White, and time he seemed to have abandoned the others have laid down their lives at strng/!;le as hopeless. When he learn- Lokoja and other places on the Niger, ed, however, that if he persisted in the one of the gates of the Soudan; they degrading sins to which he has for were hoping to get into it, but God many years been addicted, the mis- called them ere they succeeded. There sionary would discontinue his visits for are two American brethren seeking also instruction, because there was a danger to get into the country across the Niger. of such visits being regarded as a coun- The Central Soudan Mission has two tenancing at the king's sins, he was training homes, one at Tripoli and one deeply affected, and he invited one of at Gabes, w!th the object of enabling the Christian teachers to dwell in his men to get well acquainted with the house, to be near him and help him language, and to some extent with the and guard him from doing evil. This characteristics of the Mohammedan re- was in lIlay. At the end of July ligion, the obstacles they have to meet, 1IIwanga declared himself a Roman and the prejudices that exist against Catholic. A few days afterward, how· them, so that after eighteen months or ever. he visl.ted the missionary and told two years a man will be well equipped him he had decided not to join the to enter the country. Roman Catholics. The king's insta- Lake Tchad is a fresh-water lake bility necessarily affects somewhat the about 200 miles IOl'.g and 100 wide; attitude of his subjects toward Chris- here are found elephants. lions, hippo- tianity.
potami, crocodiles, deer. fowl, and all Connected with the Uganda Mission kinds of vegetable products. The five of the Church Missionary Society are kingdoms around the lake are ruled by the Sesse Islands in Lake Victoria.
Mohammedan Sultans. Polyg~my and On fourteen of these twenty·seven isl- slavery prevail everywhtre. The clio ands there are churches: one each 9n mate is dry and invigorating-there is ten, two on three, three on one, making little fever. Emin Pasha lived here for nineteen churches in all. The popula- twelve years. The temperature varies tion of these islands is estimated at from 6;j° in winter to 1000 in summer. about 75,000, of whom over 5000 are The great ad vantages of this field returned as .. readers." There are lire: the character of its people, who twenty·one native teachers working on are not savages. hut are fairly civilized these islands. The reports from vari- and courteous; the climate gave rise to ous out-districts of Uganda are most the proverb, "When a man goes up encouraging.
the Einue he lives forever;" the means G. L. Pilkington gives some interest, of transportation via the Niger steamers ing Uganda proverbs, illustrative of the are also advantageous. Against these mental characteristics of these people helps must be put Moslem fanaticism and showing their intellectual kinship an,1 law which decrees death to con- to English brethren. Among others verts from Islam. The Soudan pioneers are the following: claim our men, our mOney, aud our .. Bakusera" iakwazika. (He who prayers. says) .. 'rhey are swindliug you." doeRn't lend you (anything). Cf. Uganda has been a field of especial .. Words are easy as the wind;" interest ever since the thrilling story of "Faithful friends are hard to find ;" Mackay'S heroic labors there was read " Fine words butter no parsnips," Namakabil'11e affl, enjala. The man ism, and witchcraft is fully believed in who has two homeR dies 'of hunger. and is accompanied by much cruelty. The cook at each of the two homes ex- The people believe in an aIter life and pects the master to dine at the other, in a supreme God, the sender of raln, and so he ,. falls between two stools." but know nothing of Him as a God of love. The Baptist Missionary Society, Obutamera kirevu njuba 1/a kikome. the American Baptist Union, the Swe- Beardlessness Is a cloudy day. As on a dish Society, the Congo Balolo Mission, cloudy day you can't tell what time it is (in Africa), so you can't tell the age the American Presbyterians (South), of a man who has no beard. Many Bishop Taylor (American Methodist Africans seem unable to grow beards. Episcopal), and the International Mis- Ekifanan1/i ki'sa ensekere. Resem- sionary Alliance are aU working in blancc is the death of the louse. The this field. Roman Catholics ha ve six lonse you kill is probably not the one stations here. The field is great, but that bit you; for one louse is not dis- the laborers are few. tinguishable from another. This proverb is an indication of the abundance in South Africa covers an area greater Uganda of this pest, only surpassed by than that of British India, 1,250,000 ficas, and lately, alas, by jiggers! square miles. Gold and diamonds have " Naflra ku kinene," ensanafu ku gel'e thus far attracted more men than has a saja. "I'll die for a big thing" (as desire to give the degraded Hottentots says), the biting ant on the big toe. The ensanafu is the fierce, dark-brown and warlike Zulus the Gospel. Conant with huge mandibles, that travels siderable progress has been made, howin vast numbers, and is dreaded by man ever, since Bartholomew Diaz first and beast. "In for a penny, in for a doubled and named the Cape of Good pound." "You may as well be hung Hope, in 1486. The Dutch East India for a sheep as a lamb." Company was established on Table Bay in 1652 ; in 1688, 300 refugee Huguenot Bugubugu si muliro. Splutter, splut· families arrived, bringing Protestant ter isn't fire. Cf. the Irish saying, " Take it 'asy, and if ye can't take it Christianity. The estimated popula- 'asy, take it as 'asyas ye can ;" and, tion is now 4,250,000, mainly composed .. I:!till waters run deep." of aborigines (Hottentots and Bushmen) and Bantus (Kaffirs, Zulus, Matabele, The Oongo Jilree State (under Belgian Bechuanas, etc.), who are fetich-wor- rule) is another field that is of immense shippers; Dutch descendants of Hugue- nots and emigrants, Who are mainly importance and interest. A million but nominal Christians; East Indian and a half square miles is made accessi- and other emigrants, unchristian and difficult to reach, being mainly Mosble by the Congo and its tributaries. lems. Khama and other notable con- verts are examples of What the African .. White man," said a Congo native to native may become. Drink is as usual a missionary, "my heart is hungry for the greatest curse of the country, and something; r don't know what." He stands opposed to the church and school, which seek to lift the degraded savages. was converted, and afterward said: Pray for the colonial churches, that .. Yes, it was hungry for salvation." they may be endued with missionary " Africa's heart" is truly hungering, or zeal; for the schools and colleges, that they may be filled with student volunrather famishing. Its area is 1,508,000 teers; above all. for the outpouring of the Spirit on missionaries themselves. square miles (thirty times larger than and the deepening of the spiritual life of native converts. With these petitions England). The people number over granted, the Word of God will have free course and be glorified in spite of all 40,000,000,* of various tribes, but all obstacles and opposition.
of the great Bantu race, Tattooing is practised largely as a tribal mark; can- nibalism is practised to some extent; liquor is working sad havoc among these people, and the drinking habit is bound to lead them into every depth of abomination. Slave exportation is abol- ished, but domestic slavery is practisE'd to a fearful extent. Polygamy, of course, abounds. The religion,is fetich- * Stanley's estimate. The Freedmen. 30,000 pupils taught by colored teach- ers. They have 1,500,000 children in The total c'olored population in the the common schools, and 24,000 teach- United States, as given in 1890, was 7,- ers. More than 2,500,000 of the race 470.040. The four years' increase would can read and write. There are 21,000 about bring them up to about 8,000,000. schools for negroes in the South, with These negroes, if distributed exactly in 1,357,000 pupils. The number of col- numbers corresponding to the density leges for them is 25; law schools, 5 ; of the population of the States, would mediCftI schools, 5; normal schools, 52, more than cover Maine, New Hamp- and theological seminaries, 25. There shire, Vermont, Connecticut, Rhode are in our midst 7~0 colored physi- Island, Nebraska, North Dakota, South cians and 250 lawyers; 250 newspapers Dakota, Indian Territory, Oklahoma, and 3 ma~azines are owned. edited, and New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, published by negroes. These people Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Wyoming, also own half Ii million acres of land in Washington, Oregon, Alaska, and Cali- the Southern States.
fornia. The proportion of colored peo- These are encouraging facts, and they ple in the South varies from one tenth cannot fail to deepen the interest of the to two thirds (South Carolina) of the friends of good government everywhere whole population. . in the educational work which is achiev- We arll accustomed to think of them ing such large results. With fair play as having doubled in number, and there- and justice on the part of the whites, fore doubled in power. But the 4,000,- nothiug will contribute so much to the 000 that were set free were poor ilIiter· solution of the negro problem along ate slaves; the 8,000,000 have all either right lines as the diffusion of intelligence been free twenty-nine years or are free and Christianity among the masses of, born. With this increase of numbers the blacks and the demonstration of has come also increase of knowledge, their capacity for the duties and re- increase in intelligence, apprehension of sponsibilities of citizenship.
surroundings, of wrongs, of rights, of The late Frederick Douglass's re- limitations, of pOssibilities; increase marks about his race give his view of also of material wealth to no inconsid- the negro problem: erable degree; increase also of moral " It is sometimes said that the comli· power and force twice as strong as they tion of the colored man to-day is worse were. The power is not only growing, than it was in the time of slavery. 'fo but is massed together. The very limita- me thi'! is an extravagance. We now tions of this power prevents for the pres- have the organic law of the land on our ent its scattering, and compels it to act side. We have thousands of teachers, in bulk. 80 great a mass of human and hundreds of thousands of pupils at· beings anywhere is a menace to the tending schools; we can now count our peace of the country, where they are friends by the million. In many of the not restrained by the fear of God and States we have the elective franchise; the controlling influences of the religion in some of them we have colored office· holders. It is no small advantage that of Jesus Christ.
Great possibilities for good and for evil we are citizens of this repub:ic by spe- lie in this large element of negro blood cial amendment of the Constitution.
in our midst. But progresii has already The very resistance that we now meet been made toward turning this stream on Southern railroads, steamiloats, and into the desired channels. Where- hotels is evidence of our progress. It as twenty-eight years ago not one in is not the negro in his degradation that 10,000 of the blacks in the South could is objected to, but the negro, educated, read. now there are 25,000 colored per- cultivated, and refined. The negro who sons who are either professOls or teach- fails to protect himself, who makes no ers in colleges and schools. Three col- provision for himself orbis family, and lege presidents were born slaves. At is content to live the life of a vagabond, the close of the Civil War the negroes meets no resistance. He is just where had not a single church among their he is desired by his enemies. Perhaps whole people. In the past twenty-five you say that this proves that education years they have built 19,753 churches, will do nothing for the negro; but the with a seating capacity of 5,818,459, at answer is that' the hair of the dog will a cost of $20,323,887. Their parish cure the bite' eventually. All people registers now show 2,316,785 communi· suddenly springing from a lowly condi- cants in their own churches, all of tion have to pass through a period of whom are of their own race. They probation. At first they are denounced snpport 7 colleges, 17 academies, and as 'upstarts;' but the 'upstarts' of 50 high schools, in which there are one generation are the elite?f the next. "
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
IV.-EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT.
AN ApOLOGY.-The first article in the war as a trophy of their success.
the May issue, on Siam and the Laos Now the best steamers of the Japanese country, was from the pen of Rev. Government are put at the service of Chalmers Martin, of Princeton, N. J. the Red Cross Society. and as much By some unaccountable omission his care is taken of the Chinese sick and name failed to appear in connection wounded as of the Japanese. What with the article. He and our readers has caused the change but the power have our humble apology. of the Gospel of Christ I A new treaty with foreign powers is The March of Events. in process of negotiation, which if rati- fied, will bring most important results A!ter a long and hard struggle, all to China and Japan, and indeed to the the island forts in the harbor of Wei- world.
Hal·Wei surrendered to the Japanese.
Five of the largest of the remaining The Report of the Third Oonference warships of the Chinese northern naval of the officers and representatives of squadron were sunk by the Japanese the various foreign mission boards, fleet, by means of torpedoes. Of the etc., in the United States and Canada thirteen battleships forming the Chi· has reached us. It is a very attractive, nese Navy at the beginning of the war, interesting, and suggestive pamphlet, five were lost at the battIe of the Yalu of nearly 70 pages. This conference was and five at Wei-Hai-Wei. The Japa- held in New York City, in the Church ese, in spite of the intense cold and Mission House (Episcopal), Fourth Aveviolent storms that drove most of their nue, corner of Twenty-second Street, ships to shelter; stuck magnificently to February 14th, and was attended by their work. From Manchuria came over fifty representatives. who appeared the sad news of the death of the Japan- in behalf of twenty different denominaese General Noqzu, chief in command tions and societies. What an exhibithere, after the retirement, on account tion of mutual confidence, co-operation, of sickness. of Field Marshal Count amity, and charity was such a confer- Yamagata. ence! and what hope it encourages for According to the London Times cor- the future!
respondent in Shanghai, "Li Hung The subjects discussed indicate the Chang's son-in-law telegraphs that the range of discussion and the practical treaty of peace was signed In Shimo- character of the council: The Japan- China War, and its strategic relations noseki, April 16th, and the terms are: , to missions; industrial missions and "First. The independence of Korea. their development in foreign lands; "&cond. Japan's retention of the self-support in mission churches; the conquered places temporarily or per- proposed national church in India, and the proper attitude to be assumed towmanently. ard it : motive in foreign missions, and ! " Third. Japan's retention of the ter- the true point of emphasis.
ritory east of the Liao River. These are vital topics, and they were "Fourth. Permanent cession of For- discussed in a manner that became liv- ing issues. No note of inharmonious mosa. utterance or feeling marred the meet- "Fifth. Indemnity of $150,000,000. ing and the whole proceedings are "Sixth. An offensive and defensive wo;thy of a wide reading and study.
alliance betweeu China and Japan." Dr. Smith's discussion of the war be- Three centuries ago, when the Japan- tween Japan and China is especially pertinent just now. He caUed attenese had won a victory in Korea. they tion to the new conditions which en- sent home the ears of 3600 victims of tered into this modern Oriental conflict, and showed why Japan had so easily made peace with the enemy, and }'fr. Zwemer has returned to Muscat to re- won the supremacy. China clings to sume his work. the past, and is anchored to custom and tradition. Japan is aggressive and pro- The Oongo State, gressive and takes on every modern The proposal to the Belgian Cham- .equipment. China is humiliated but bers for the formal annexat~'on of the Oongo Free State accords with the drift not conquered; is too vast for con· of events for some years. Under the General Act of the Berlin Conrerence quest, but will be compelled by this of 1884-85, the territories of the State are the personal possession of the king series of defeats to abandon her con- of the Belgians, who was one of the servative and defensive policy. Dr. first to interest himself in geographical discovery and commercial development Smith affirms the need of missions in in Africa, having, during Mr. Stanley's progress up the Congo in 1876, founded both fields to be undiminished; he the International African Association.
prophesies China's forsaking of her exclusion and seclusion, and a great enlargement of missionar; opportunity in this last stronghold 0 Oriental suo perstition, and, as to Japan, the aboli- tion 'of existing restrictions upon for- eigners, and the opening of the whole empire to the Gospel.
Other matters embraced in this report, which space forbids us here and now to review, we may advert to in subseq uent issues.
The formation of the International News has just reached us from Per- C<>ngo Association, some three years sia, that the German missionaries from later, and the opening up the Congo Delitzsch's Institution Judaicum have valley by Stanley, suggested the foundbeen ordered to leave the country, on ing a great African State, free to the the ground that they contemplate work trade of all nations. and operating as a among Moslems. They arrived only a civilizing force in the Dark Continent. few months ago. It indicates an atti- The Berlin Conference of 1884 was held tude of the government toward such for the adjudication of all African work. The order was based on state- questions, and the Congo State was ments in their publications at home. formally recognized, and a few months later its sovereignty was vested in King The sad intelligence reaches us by Leopold. Since then the king haa cable that Dr.' Cochran, of Persia, is largely borne the cost of administration dead-a great loss to missions. out of his private fortune, having ex- War a.nd the Gospel in Arabia. pended not less than $8,000,000,; but the annual revenue being less by $200,- There appeared in the daily papers 000 than the expenses, he is no longer in the latter part of February, a Lon- able to meet the deficit. A proposal don telegram of the 25th, that the city is, therefore, to be made to the Belgian of Muscat, in Arabia, had been captured ParIhment to annex the territories, and. by Bedouin rebels, the Sultan having it is believed, it will be accepted. tied from the palace, but eventually reo gained part of the town. Muscat is the station occupied by the' Rev. P . •T. Russia attempts It gigantic rndertak- Zwemer, of the Arabian Mission of the ing to unite het·. European domi~ions Reformed Church. Letters previously with her Pacific Coast. The great received from him had foreshadowed Siberian railway is now approaching the outbreak of Sl1ch hostilities. Later completion, over oue fifth of the entire tidings from him have, therefore, been distance having been laid with rails.
anxiously awaited. A letter, recei"ved Large quantities or plant and material on April 4th, gives information of his are being sent forward both from Eu- personal safety, and still later intelli· rope and from the Pacifie port of Vladi- gence reaches us that the Sultan has vostock. The vessels which leave Odessa, during the spring and autumn, their mission. Their staff consists of are laden with railway materials, and carry engineers and other skilled work- Mr. Hodberg, a Swede, an Armenian men to aid in the construction of the great railroad. Some writers in the caUed Aveteriantz, two Swedish ladies, Russian press prophesy that the last rail will be laid before the summer of 1896. and two native assistants. This mis- They say: ""When the line is opened, the golden Orient will pour her treasures sion is likely to have an important bearinto the lap of Russia. Japan, China, and the isles beyond India will send ing on mission work in Western China. their ships freighted with spices and tea and rich merchandise into the Its headquarters will be Kashgar, a crowded havens of Siberia. The Thames and Mersey, Amsterdam and most important meeting-place of vari- Hamburg, will sink into third-rate importanee; even San Francisco will be ous nations, where in the bazars may sacrificed when Russia has obtained the practical monopoly of Eastern trade." be seen Turkish Sarts, Kirghiz, Mon- HAWAII HAS BEEN MAKING HISTORY gols, Chinese, "Thibetans, Jews, and RAPIDLY.-Ex-Queen LiIiuokalani was Hindus. The Chinese in authority are " arrested and guns and bombs found in her house. 'l'his news was swiftly fol- tolerant, and the Sarts or Turkish lowed by the announcement that she had formally resigned all claims to the townspeople kindly and well-intention- Hawaiian throne, and tbat her abdication had been followed by her taking ed, among whom European or Amerithe oath of allegiance to the repu blic. The reasons for this extraordinary ac- can missionaries must exercise large intion are very clear. The searching of her house not only revealed a large fluence. God bless the new pioneers! quantity of warlike material, but by the seizure of numerous documents it As to Korean affairs. the Christian was discovered that the ex.Queen was Intetligencer says, referriug to a prethe inspiring cause of the recent un- vious account of leaders called back to successful revolt, that she had ordered Korea: "Our Church has a special the arms, and had already made ap- interest in them through their conpointments of Cabinet officers. nection with representative pastors. Now the Rev. Dr. J. B. Thompson The Swedi8h Mission A8sociation has writes us that an unsuccessful attempt struck a field of work hitherto untouch- was made to kill Pak Yong Hio, on his ed. Beyond the Thian Shan llioun- return to Korea from Japan. He and tains, separating Russian from Chinese his associate, Soh Kwang Pom (for. territory, lies Chinese Turkistan, merly members of the Liberal Cabinet stretching from Kashgar to the table- of Korea), have both been formally parlands of Thibet. For the most part doned, and their rank restored by the this is" a desert, but has such oases as king, and they have again been made Kashgar, Yarkand, Khotan. The in- members of the Cabinet. Pak Yong habitants are mostly of Turkish origin, Ilio is Minister of Home Affairs, and Mussulmans, and speaking a Turkish Soh Kwang Pom, Minister of Justice. dialect. Here the Swedes have planted Both these men learned the principles of Christianity from Dr. Thompson, and Soh Kwang Porn was for years un- der the training of our Dr. Corwin. The opportunities for usefulness before these men can hardly be estimated. The present counsellor to the Korean Cabinet is a Japanese Christian. It is the Lord's (loings, and it is marvellous in OUf eyes."
'Ihe Thibetan Pioneer Mission.
Mr. Polhill Turner, at Gnatong, found Mr. Jensen very ill with typhoid- fever, from which two days later he died. Pon(so was also ill with the same fever; Miss .Taylor herself was weH, though tired with nursing.
Mr. Polhill-Turner will undertake the sole trainin~ and leadership of tbe men. while Miss Taylor continues alone with Pontso at Gnatong watching for any opening into Thibet that may occur. The band will henceforth be known ary without delay, provided the funds simply as .. The Thihetan Mission," and secured do not trench upun the ordinary consists of Mr. Polhill-Turner as leader, sources of the B.lUrd's income. Mr. and Mrs. Evan i1a~kenzie and two children, Messrs. William Soutter, J. " 3. The Board reserves to itself the Johannsen, T. Sorrensen, E. Amundsen, H. M. Stumbles, James Moyes, and right of making exceptions to the gen- James Neave, twelve in all. eral line of policy above indicated in cases where very special reasons may ,Mr. Polhill-Turner has made a good warrant a departure from it." impression; he finds the men have been making good use of their time in study This action affects 13 young men and of the language, and in taking oppor- 10 young women, 2 of whom are phytunities of speaking to meetings of sicians, and will necessitate leadng va- Thibetans when possible. He feels Kalimpong more suitable for present cant some posts where physicians and purposes than Darjeeling or Gnatong. missionaries are urgently needed. The They have a house placed at their disposal, where they can all live together, recording secretary states that. even with Mrs. Mackenzie as housekeeper. with this retrenchment, the work on There seems some likelihood of the the foreign field will be limited and door into Thibet opening in the course hampered more than at any time for of the year. many years. . Amid its troubles Madagascar is ask- The Presbyterian Board is $250,000 ing the British and Foreign Bible So- behind; the Baptists, $125,000; the Methodist Episcopal, $440,000; and ciety for more Bibles. Ten thousand the Congregationalists are also largely copies of the Gospel of St. Luke have in arrears.
been sent to the Northern Committee in What is involved in a foreign mission- .
Madagascar, and five thousand more to aTY society's being encumbered with a serious deficiency at the close of the the Southern Committee. The society year's accounts? "A debt will mean reduced appropriations, the shutting has just now under consideration a re- up of schools and chapels, the forcing queat for a reference Bible in Malagasy. of the missionaries to bear burdens which are alrer.dy breaking their hearts, and the leaving ot fields unoccupied which will cry to heaven against us."
,Retrenohment in Foreign Missions. The week beginning April 7th, 1895, was observed as a special season of The Presbyterian Board of Foreign prayer for foreign missions. to be ob- served in the closet, in the family, and Missions has felt constrained to take a in the usual public and social religious services of the Presbyterian churches backward step. On April 4th it was and missionary societies, and that it was affectionately urged upon the peodetermined : ple to mingle self-denial with prayers, and to present the fruits of this special " 1. In view of the serious financial self-denial as an offering to the Lord on embarrassment of the Board, because Sabbath, April 14th, 1895. of the heavy deficit with which the fiscal year opened and the entire inad- The Ohristian Workers' Oonvention equacy of receipts during the year, met at the Baptist Temple in Philadelami in view of the Board's recent action phia, Pa., on March 21st. There was a fixing the limit of the total appropria- large gathering of those engaged in vations for the fi~cal year beginning May rious sorts of Christian labor from all 1st, 1895, at $900.000 as against $1,1115,- parts of the country. The addresses 000 for the present year, involving an were uplifting, and the conferences on almost disastrous curtailment of the the topics introduced most profitable. work, Dr. 'f. M. Pierce welcomed the Con- vention to the" City of Homes and of " ReMlved, To notify all missionaries Churches." lIe stated that while under appointment that the Board does not see its way clear at present to send them to the field.
"2. Should special funds be secured by or in behalf of any missionary under appointment sufficient to meet the expenses of outfit, travel, and the pro rata salary to May 1st, 1896, the Board will gladly consent to send such a mission- Brooklyn has 382 churches, Chicago Wilbur Chapman, Rev. Theodore L. Cuyler. D.D., Ht. Rev. Arthur C. A. 500, and New York 534, Philadelphia ~Eall. Bishop of Vermont, Mr. Robert· E. Speer, Mr. Frank Anderson, of Oxhas 634. The arrangement and opera· ford University, Professor W. W.
tions of the various organizations con- White, President Patton, of Princeton, Professor James McCoDaughy, Mr. W. nected with the Temple Church were H. Sallmon, and Rev. H. P. Beach are explained by Rev. Dr. George A. Peltz, to make addresses or conduct classes. the associate pastor. Different phases From Saturday, July 20th, to Tues- of church work, the sufficiency of the day, July 30th, will be held the Young Gospel to meet the needs of the people, Women's College Conference, and from Saturday, August 3d, to Thursday, Authe pre-eminent need of personal ser- gust 15th, the General Conference of vice and kindre'd SUbjects were spokeJ;l Christian Workers. upon by Rev. Dr. W. II. Hubbard, Jllr. D. L. Moody will be present,and Rev. Dr. A. G. Lawson, and others. personally conduct many serVICes, preaching from time to time. On the evening of the day of meeting a Between the conferences in July, Prosermon was preached by Rev. Dr. T. fessor W. W. White, of the Bible In- De Witt Talmage. stitute of Chicago, will give Bible read- The Christian League of Philadel- ings or lectures. After the General Conference. Dr. R. A. Torrey, of Chi· phia, recently formed, announces its cago and Rev. H. W. Webb·Peploe, purposes as follows; of London, will conduct similar ser· 1. To organize and carry forward vices. with vigor and enlarged power, in the The Northfield Echoes, which last year city of Philadelphia, the great work committed in common to all Christians, reported these conferences, and was in co-operating therein with other soci- such demand that sufficient copies could eties wherever practicable. not be had, will be issued again, under 2. To confer and act in concert Witll the editorial care of Delavan L. Pierson, the civil authorities of the city, in all matters which may promote the moral as before. and physical welfare of ~he peop~e, especially in the suppressIOn of vice Rev. Dr. W. B. Boggs writes, in reand immorality, in public and in pri· vate. ply to certain strictures upon his for- mer communication, as follows; 3. To provide increased facilities, and secure Christian workers for carrying " I notice in the April MISSIONARY on the work of the League in those parts of the city where the need is the REVIEW OF THE WORLD, page 297, greatest and the laborers are few. Lord R–'s criticism of my article on 4. To provide proper homes, especially in the country, for children sur- the Outlook in India, in the January rounded in the city by the most depraving influences. REVIEW.
5. To devise ways and means where- " I have again carefully read what I by to assist in the preservation and ob- wrote in the article complained of, and servance of the Sabbath or the LOI'd's Day;. to discourage the liquor traffic I cannot see in it anything false or misand mitigate its evils; to prevent the publication of impure literature and leading. I wish Lord R– bad pointthe exhibition of demoralizing pic· tures ; and generally 10 promote sl~ch ed out definitely and particularly the measures as will make aud keep Phlla· statements which are considered false delphia a Christian city in name and in fact. and slanderous. A general contradic- At Northfield, Mass.. there is to be a tion is point1ess~ .
series of con ventions Ihis summer, of "Let us go over the statements In which a partial programme is pnblished. my article and see if they are not true.
From Satnrdav. June 29th. to Tue~ " 1. There i8 a contlict between the day, July 9th. will be held the World's Student Conference, where Hcv. J. a(lvocates of purity and righteousness and those of the opposite party. That cannot be successfully denied. "2. Mr. Dyer and a number of mis- sionaries wel'e imprisoned. That also is lIDdeniable, " 3. I think I have correctly stated the real cause of t('ir imprisonment.
Ost.ensibly it was for defamation. iu re- spect of the business of an opium con- tractor, but anyone conversant with alfair~ in India can see the real cause behind that, "4. As to the connivance of the po· . difficult to find such an a&,ent as the lice at the abominations in that horri· latter.
ble street in Bombay, and the brutal .. The great financial depression still treatment of the midnight missionaries tells upon our funds here, but the Lord there, and the protection of their assail- is,blessing the work, and the missionary ants, I have no reason to doubt the spirit is spreading.
veracity of the repeated reports which .. P.S.-Our Corean }1ission has SUB- have been published. Of course the tained another serious loss in the death enemi€s of the Bombay Guardian and of Mr. Sim Sye Bang, the teacher of of the Banner of Asia and of the mis· our ladies, and the first convert of our sionaries will say that the reports are mission. He spoke 'four languages, false ; but there is abundant reason to was clever and really earncstly Chris- believe them true. tian, and died suddenly. His consistent "5. That the government in India life has made a deep· impression on manufactures and sells opium, and dis· some of his kinsmen and fellow-coun- tills and sells intoxicating liquors, on an trymen. I am not quite sure whether enormous scale, is simply afact. Mr. Adamson's name is Alexander or " 6. In the evidence taken by the reo Andrew, but it is A. Adamson. Our cent Opium Commission in India, it is mission to the Queensland aborigines a well· known fact that the great. ma- at Mapoon, Batavia River, has also jority of non-ojJicial witnesses testified lost its admirable head, Rev. Mr. Ward, against opium, and the great majority Moravian missionary, who died after of ojJicial witnesses testified in favor of twelve days' illness (fever), and about it. It was, indeed, humiliating to see two years of splendid service."
most of those witnesses who are in the government employ giving the evidence which they knew the government According to a census of Great Brit· wished them to gi ve. ~ ain, lately published, the population of .. I think the above six points include her African colonies and dependencies all the statements in that section of my is 4,035,669, while that of her protecarticle which refers to these matters. .. Possibly I used one expression torates, or spheres of influence, is 25,- which is a little too sweepiug-viz., 504,374, making a total of 29,540.043. • Those whose living comes from the government are, almost to a man, apol- In Central Africa, 4,000,000 square ogists for and defenders of these abomi· miles of territory are at present unoc- nations.' But I have seen so much in cupied by civilized people. India, these twenty years, and hllve talked with so many officials of various Of the 202 medical missionaries in grades, and have so long marked the tone of the press which is supposed to the foreign missionary field, 101 have ret:lect official opinion, that the state- been trained in Edinburgh, and in the ment seems to me substantially correct. I have seen but few officials in India Medical Department of the famous uniwho would not try to defend one or versity. It is not the unskilled, or the other or all of the evils referred to. medical adventurers, who are going on .. So, in view of all the facts, I do not missions to the heathen world. Gifts think that I misstated the case in the article referred to." and acquirements which would com- mand fine positions and large pecuniary returns at home are freely consecrated Rev. Andrew Hardie writes from to the service of Christ in the healing Richmond, Victoria, February 15th: of the bodies and the guidance of the .. I notice on page 69, of January souls of men, and this as freely by number, re Corea, • the Australian young women as by young men.
Presbyterian Church with one man and The best explorers are missionaries, eleven 'l/JOmen.' I think I have seen the as Dr. Livingstone demonstrated in himself. Lately two Scotch missionmistake before, though I do not know aries, Dr. Laws and Dr. Elmslie, went out into the wilderness from their stahow it has arisen. We have only one tion on Lake Nyassa, and found II country almost depopulated by the man-a married missionary-Rev. Alexander Adamson, and three lady mis· sionaries as yet. With Mrs. Adamson there may be said to be four women.
We hope soon to send out another lady, and if possible a medical doctor (male) beside. It has, however, been very slave raiders, and so bereft of all sub· New Books. stance, that 'the lions attacked them at night, driven by hunger. They saw A new book of extraordinary impor- one caravan of slaves, bearing ivory tance to the theologian, physician, psy- tusks, and all bound together in one chologist, and all persons interested in group by ropes; man's inhumanity mythology, folklore, witchcraft, and everywhere visible; sin dominant, and .spiritualism has been issued, its lament- the misery which follows it. ed author being the late John L. Nev- ius, D.D., for forty years a missionary to the Chinese. "Demon Possession Efate. and Allied Themes" is an inductive study of phenomena of our own times.
From a private letter received from The introduction is by Rev. F. F. Ellin· Rev. J. W. McKenzie we learn that he wood, D.D. It was edited by Henry had been laid aside by a severe attack W. Rankin, Esq., of East Northfield, of bronchitis and influenza, but at the Mass., who also added some chapters, time of writing was able to resume work. The majority of the natives with extensive bibliographical notes had also been ill with influenza. He and various indexes.
was rejoicing in the prospect of seeing "This book," say the publishers, his children back from the colonies for "is based upon no speculative premises, some weeks at Christmas. The mis· but upon a large collection of thorsionaries had shown their esteem for the late Mrs. McKenzie by erecting a oughly sifted and authenticated facts, beautiful marble monument to her showing tha. d~mon possession is a memory. As to his work he says: common experience of our own day; " The good work is making fair prog- that the modern instances can be clearly ress at our station. It was a happy day distinguished from cases of insanity, for her when I admitted some natives epilepsy, and other forms of disease; from Mele to tbe church. Several that they present twellty.four points of more are attending the candidates' class." As to the other missiouaries, he. exact correspondence with the New mentions that Mr. Watt was not feeling Testament cases; that the demoniac very strong, that he had just returned and the spiritual medium, so·called.
from a visit to his nephew, Mr. Leg. differ only as voluntary and involun· gett, missionary on Malekula. While he was there Mr. Leggett formed a tary victims of possession. " church and four members sat down at the Lord's table for the first time. This It is issued b! Fleming H. Revell Company, of ChICago, New York, and Toronto, at $1.50 a copy. We have been greatly interested in its perusal.
island is, except Santo, the largest Lorenz & Co., music publishers of in the New Hebrides. Mr. Gray, Dayton, 0., send to the REVIEW editor who has been laboring for twel ve years in the field. is about leaving for a copy of "Missionary Songs" and the sake of his family. In regard to " Missionary Treasury." No doubt our the volcanic eruption on Ambrim, he readers will be glad to know of these pUblications. "Missionary Songs," so writes: " The missionaries on Epi and Malekula were somewhat alarmed about a fortnight ago by a succession far as we know. is the only collection of violent earthquakes, and now it of the kind that has ever been issued, turns out that the volcano on Ambrim has burst out in four places, and that and the price is but 20 cents per copy, several natives have lost their lives by or $2 per dozen. The" Missionary it. In one place there is said to be a Treasury" is 15 cents per copy, or $1.50 stream of lava 12 miles long. This is per dozen, and is meant to aid those said to be in the vicinity of Dr. Lamb's station, and will be very discouraging who are preparing for missionary con· to him. When on the island, his premo certs, etc. All such literature we weI· ises were laid waste on two occasions. come as helpful to the great cause of first by hurricane and then by fire. At missions, and from such examination present he is away in Scotland. This as we have been able to give we judge is the second time that that volcano has broken out during the last five or six these cheap books :well adapted to their years. " purpose.
EDITORIAL
The Congregational Year Book for cial Programme of the Evangelical 1893 has been subjected to interesting Church" and" What is Christian Soanalysis, by W. H. Rice, of Chicago, cialism?" Some of his utterances have Ill., showing what was given and who been considered even by the Reichstag. were the givers. The followin&, is one of his utterances: "I am convlllced that if Jesus w;ere A summary of the contributions of among us now He would deal less with the Congregational churches of the the blind than with the unemployed, United States to foreign missions in for the misery of the workless is greater than the misery of the blind_" This 1893 is presented with the following re- German pastor feels that the Church suIts: Total number of churches, 5213 ; has not in the past discharged its full total membership, 561,631 ; number of obligation to the poorer classes, but churches contributing to foreign mis- that it is waking up to its responsibili- ties and taking hold of its duty in a sions, 2783; active membership, 406,- genuine and commendable way. He 518; total contributions, $410,070. urges ministers to make a profound study of industrial questions. He says Of the amount ($410,070) contributed that dislrust of progress is want of faith bl the Congregational churches of the in God. He is not detftructive, but United States in 1893 for foreign mis· seeks the solution of the terribly presssions, nine States gave a total of $338,- ing social problems by bringing to bear upon men in a vital way the great doc- 861, or 82t per cent of the whole contri· trines of the Christian revelation. He bution, distributed as follows: says: "We must be in Christ before we can work with Christ… Mem- Per We gladly print a brief communica- bers Gave cent. tion, revealing the means whereby was Connecticut …. with 50.459 .. $65,333.00 or 15!u forged the living link between the Illinois……. ….. 20,692.. 34,271.00" 8% Iowa ………… " 21,720.. 11,285.00 ,. 2~ Montclair Methodist Episcopal Church Maine …. , " … " 13,658.. 11,9~1.00" 29 and the world field: 10 Massachusetts .. " 102,644.• 139,208.00" 34 "The missionary revival had its in- New Hampshire." 14,097.. 10,926.00" 2% ception in the conviction of the pastor, Rev. J. A. Owen, inwrought by the New york…….. 31,437.. 37,862.00" 9l Spirit, that the Christ-life of the Church, as well as of the individual be- Ohio………… " 25,488.. 12,852.00" 3 liever, is 10 be found in the willing Vermont. .. • …." 15,083. • 15,113.00" 3!1i death of the self-life. The relation of the believer to the Son of Man, in re- The active membership of these spect of loyalty, submission, joyful serchurches was 304,827, making an aver- vice, and patient waiting for the' bless- ed hope' of His appearing. was preachage for each member of $1.11. These ed for two years before it bore this fruit. nine States constituted 75 per cent of the contribnting membership. The re- " To the church-members the story reads like a new chapter of the Acts, maining membership, amounting to an inevitable outcome of the' preach- ing of the kingdom of God, and the 102,231 in number, contributed $71,209, teaching of those things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ with all confior 17-1 per cent of the whole, an average dence,' for the factors which combined of 71 cents per member. to do His good pleasure were chosen. empowered, sustained, and made fruit- The total contributions to all causes, ful by the same risen Jesus. This exclusive of legacies ($947,311). amount- church had been accustomed to the. methods which prevail with other ed in 1893 to the large sum of $9,408,- churches, and had similar relations to the boards and the apportionments, 017. Of this and those relations were considered sat- isfactory and praiseworthy. The an- Avera~e nual mIssionary sermon was endured with good grace, and brought in about per active $1000 per annum. lllcmber.
Home expenses re- ceived…………. $7,065,338.00. . …. $17.23 Home benevolences received ……….. 1,992,609.00……. 4.90 Forei~ missions re· celved………. '" 410,070.00…… . 1.00 These figures, if not mathematically correct, are very nearly exact. Cer- tainly, in the Congregational denomi· nation there is little opportunity for fault-finding because so much money is sent abroad.
Friedrich Naumann, pastor at Frankfort-on-the-Main, has during the last three years come into much promi- nence and power. lIis two books have awakened much thought-" The So- 464 EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT. [JuDe " But with the inspiration of a wider "Just at this time the Missionary horizon, a clearer view of God's pur- Committee of the Montclair Church poses in and through believers, they decided to emphasize the appeal of had begun to feel that. instead of an their miRsionary circular, and the pas- annual tide of sentiment, missions were tor preached upon the subject, Feb- intended to be a necessity of church ruary 19th, 1893. The Drew Quartette life; not a mere addendum, but a test from the Seminary were present, heard of loyalty to the risen Lord; and that the explanation and vindication of the the assurance, • Lo, I am with you al- proposed new departure, and one of way,' was coupled with the only com- them reported the matter to Mr. Schill- mand He ever gave touching active ing, knowing his anxiety to enter the duty, • Go ye into all the world.' fQreign field. The outcome was an .. The first crystal of the new method agreement that Mr. Schilling should be formed around a suggestion of the pas- at the missionary service on the follow- tor, that the Committee on l1issions ing Sunday as the church's candidate, propose to the church the' living link and adopted as their missionary in case idea ___ and after careful consideration the church responded financially to the the committee acted upon the sugges- appeal of t)le circular. This arrangetion, and at their request the pastor ment was carried out. Rev. J. H. sent to every member of the church a Pyke, of North China, at home on leave circular letter, setting forth the ' great of absence, preached and Mr. Schilling command' in its relation to the Great told the simple story of his Divine call.
Commander; the abundant capability The offerings of the people aggregated of the millions of Christians to fulfil $2300, more than $1200 over the mis- the commission within the next twenty sionary offering of any previous year I years; the unprecedentedly great op- And this was the gift of tlUJ wlwle portunity of the present age, and he church, not of a few, the two largest then outlined the plan substantially as offerings being $2(;0 each. The mem- follows: bership at this time numbered 340.
" lie counselled the church to adopt " But the increased offering was the as special representatives in the world smallest result of that day's new de- field two missionaries already in the parture. More vital than that was the work, one in the home and the other in new conception of the great commission the foreign field, becoming responsible which took hold of the people. Giving for their financial support as part of money to missions became only one the church's working force; to corre- form of • going into all the world.'
spond regularly with them, and thus .. Mr. Schilling married Miss Eliza- know the work and learn at first hand beth Bull, of New York City, and a its opportunities and needs while mak- short sojourn in Montclair enabled the ing mention in prayers of these living church to become persollBlly acquainted representatives. with their representatives, and on July "The plan being approved by the 1st, 1893, they took their departure for Missionary Committee, the pastor for- Rangoon, Burmah.
mally presented it to the church for "Letters have been passing to and adoption or rcjection. The Lord's fro ever since. Photographs of their hand now became plainly manifest. surroundings, their associates, and their Four years before a young German, a converts have come, bringing even commercial agent in Bombay, India, closer than words could bring the liv- had been converted under the preach- ing realities in the experience of those ing of Rev. J. E. Robinson of that sta- who ' go into all the world,' and im- tion. His house, manufacturers of pressing more deeply the blessedness of specialties in Bohemian glass, seIi't him a vital relation to the evangelization of a consignment of glass idols which he the world.
refused to sell, and a prompt dismissal "Nobody was surprised when the followed. At the suggestion of Bishop total missionary offering of the second Thoburn, Mr. Gerhardt Schilling turned year of the' living.link ' method was toward the mission field. He worked found to aggregate the sum of $4363, his own passage to New York, there to an increase of about $2000 over the fit himself for the service by a course offering of the year before.
of theological training. ' Four years at " This stor! of a missionary revival Drew Seminary brought around the is made public in hope that the results time for beginning his life work, when accomplished by this new method in it was found that the Missionary Board one church may lead to the adoption was without means to send an addition- of similar methods in all other chnrches.
al missionary into the field. It looked that the wealth of spiritual blessing as if Mr. Schilling must walt a whole which followed may be speedily claim- year before he could return to, India. ed by other believing brotherhoods."
GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE
V.-GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE.
EDITED BY BEV. D. L. LEONAllD.
Extraots and Transla.tions from Foreign of intruding. However, a Boer named . Periodioals. Greiling lately urged the Berlin mis- sionary During to baptize two of his BY REV. C. C. STARBUCK, ANDOVER, children, in a protracted absence of the MASS. Reformed pastors, which finally Mr. During consented to. Not long after, The March number of THE MISSION- however, Greiling's neighbors" who had stood sponsors for his children, ARY REVIEW contained in this depart- came to Mr. During, insisting that he should strike their names out of his ment some severe criticisms upon Herr baptismal register, 'that they might not be disgraced by standing in the Marensky, of Berlin, one of our highly same book with a lot of negroes. ' Greiling complains that since the bap· esteemed editorial correspondents, from tism his neighbors call him' The Caf- fre, , and will not shake hands with him. the pen of Rev. C. C. Starbuck, and And yet these people call themselves Christians, and pride themselves on based upon statements found in Mis- their doctrinal soundness. Evidently Matt. 25: 31–46 is not found in their sionsblatt, the missionary periodical of Bibles. What multitudes of Christians there are of us who have occasion to the Moravian Church, relating to his dread the Saviour's simple rule of final juagment I We can stand almost any alleged views of missionary policy. test better than that." -From Berliner Missions- Berichte. Mr. S. properly waxed indignant that – This society has suffered a great a word should be said in favor of the los8 in the death of its venerable and able director, Dr. W ANGEMANN. conception held by divers European -A Miss Rosa Dietrich, of Erfurt civilians in higli station concerning (famous in Luther's life), dying in June, 1894, has left the Berlin Society missions, to the effect that they may be a legacy of 300 marks, the interest of whicll: is to continue the payment of her employed to almost any extent for the yeart;j contribution.
furtherance of schemes of state. But such perversion and profanation Herr M. also holds iJl abomination, as he vigor- ously protests in a communication re- cently sent to this office. Nor would he reproduce Germany in auy foreign territory. And, further, while his con· viction is that the German churches are under obligations peculiarly solemn and urgent to evangelize the heathen found under the rule of the empire, and pos- sess peculiar advantages for the per- formance of this task; if they are un- able or neglectful, he would welcome missionaries of any country or denomi- nation. D. L. L.
AFRICA. -A young missionary of the Berlin Society had, after the country fashion, -" The Dutch Boers of South Africa slaughtered an ox and invited a great begin to show some faint signs of a thiong of Caffres to his wedding-feast. change of mind for the better toward " After it the Christians march home the colored population, but they are singing, heartily thanking us for the still very deeply involved in unchris- delightful feast, which we have made tian prejudices. It is known that they ready for them. I also rejoice. My belonged to the Reformed Church, into feast-ox also delivers his sermon; he 'whose exclusive rights of pastoral care diseourses of the untroubled joy of the our Lutheran Mission is very careful Christians. Heathen feasts mostly end in wailing and woe. The Christian en- nor yet the pastor, nor even the sum joys himself before, during, and after of acquired theological knowledge, use- the feast-that is, if it is really cele- ful as this is; it is the spiritual energy brated in the Lord. The heathen also and the personal consecration to God, openly declare so many men they had then the call of the Church, which never before seen eating together. And alone make the ministers of Jesus what astonished them most, all, they Christ."
said, had been so joyous and like mind- Professor Kruger, lamenting the ed. One heathen does not trust ao- death of Bishop Charles A. Smythies, other, not even him who has bidden says: "His episcopate was marked by him to the feast. Therefore when they an apostolic zeal whose ardor, pru- slaughter, the flesh Is divided and dence, and perseverance were never re- shared out, and everyone cooks and mitted." A Catholic missionary says eats at home. Th()re with us now all of him: "An angelic character I"
the flesh was cooked at once and con· -King Lewanika, of the Barotsis, sumed in brotherly fellowship. One with whom the heroic Coillard is labortrusts the other. Even the heathen ing, shows as yet no sign of spiritual forget with Mynheer their fear of the awakening, but has become at last atfood of strangers, and eat and trust tached to the missionary, and, in a cer- Mynheer and his Christians. Whoever tain sense, to ,his message. He never, has eyes to see, may see that God's if well, fails at a Sunday service, and Word is something that has a working has lately given forth a formal ordiof its own; whoever has ears to hear, nance, de par le roi, the terms of which, may hear what a cooked ox has to to our uninstructed ears, appear to depreach." nounce capital punishment against any _" In 1898 a Hamburg firm had the parents who shall neglect to send their audacity to export, in chains, hundreds children to the mission school. We of slaves from Dahomey to the Congo, presume the sense of the edict is nO.t under the name 1)f 'free laborers.' "- quite so sanguinary as the sound. At Allgemeine Mission8-Zeitschrijt. the recent dedication of the new church -which in Barotsi eyes is a miracle of -The Germans seem now ambitious architecture-the king made a little to equal the bygone wickedness of na- speech, in which he said: "Where are tions that led in commerce before them. the white Illen that before this have ever taken the pains to construct build· -Professor Kruger, in the Journal ings like this, not for their own exclude8 Missions, comments approvingly on sive use, but for us? Do you not see, the synodical action of the Universities' then, that there is something in the Mission, in determining that the native breasts of these men, the missionaries? converts should understand it to be What do they make by fatiguing themtheir duty to support the native c1ergy, selves so for us? Tell me! And you, and that to this end the latter should Barotsis, who despise their instructions be decisively discouraged from affect- and refuse to send your children to ing the more complicated and costly their scho~l, are you then so wise and European ways of living. Profes;or intelligent? Perish our customs and Kruger remarks: "There seem to be our superstitions! They hold us envery few who foresee the difficulties chained in darkness and conduct us to and future complications which we cre- ruin. I see it, I !" ate, and which are sure to paralyze the Let us pray that Lewanika, now a life of the native churches, when we friend of the missionaries, may soon be undertake to cut out the native pastors .a friend of their Master. on the pattern of the European clergy.
It is not the frock. that makes the monk, -The brethren of the Rhenish Mis-
EXTRACTS .AND TR.ANSLA'l'IONS
sionary Society in Namaland (South- seems to have gone by. Let us pray western Africa) have at last the great for theae brethren, who have been 80 comfort of reporting that the rebel long prophesying in the valley of dry chief, Hendrik Witbooi (we believe a bones, and at last see bone coming to half-breed) has definitely made his bone, and the reanimated frames be- peace with the German Government, ginning to stand up on their feet, the which has acknowledged the surrender first-fruits, we hope, of an exceeding in fiattering terms, expressing the con- great army.
fidence in view of his well-known stead- fastness of character, that as he has al- – " The use of alcoholic drinks among ways been an honorable foe, so he will the converts of the American Baptist henceforth be an honorable friend. and Missionary Union at its station of Ban· a helper for the good of the people. za-Manteke, has been made the subject It is reported that the government, of severe prohibitive measures, applywhich has already restored to him his ing alike to imported brandy and the ancestral seat, and confirmed him in the palm wine manufactured in the country chieftainship of his own tribe, has also itself. Total abstinence is found to assigned him a salary sufficient to se- offer the only efficacious barrier against cure him against the straitnesses which excess, and its compulsory observance first tempted him from being a church has materially increased the infiuence elder, to become a plunderer of the of the Church. The mission stations, neighboring tribes, He seems to be a 10 in number, extend chain-wise along man of remarkable intelligence and en· the Congo's course, from Matadi, situergy of character, and to have retained, ated at the mouth of tM river, to Bo- amid all his aberrations, deep traces of lengi, lying beyond Equatortown. The Christian instincts. Besides his dis- converts at the Lukunga station give tresses, he seems to have been led astray cheering evidence of their sincerity in' by the hope of securing a sovereignty the readiness with which they contribover the whole Nama people. Now ute toward the pecuniary expen~es of that he is restored to the ways of peace, the work. A seminary here supplies a we join with the Rhenish brethren in home to many a native Congo pastor in hoping and praying that he may be re- embryo, while printing, carpentering.
stored to the ways of God. and the cultivation of the sugar cane have been introduced.
-After the ycars of weariness and "With such facts before us one is discouragement, neglect and hardness somewhat struck by the renewed ad- of heart, which have weighed down mission of a Roman Catholic missionary the hearts of M. Coillard and his breth- on the French Congo, that the conver- ren of the French Zambesi Mission. the sion of adult and aged natives is a harvest seems to have burst out into practical impossibility. Children alone sudden fulness. Sixty conversions at repay the toiler. "-Church Mi88ionary , Sefula, 37 at Kazungula, a number lnteUigencer .
also at Tealuyi and at Shesheke, and everywhere the awakening advancing. INDIA.
Litia. the king's son, who was for awhile a zealous Christian, but then -" A Brahmin gentleman, Mr. V.
relapsed into heathen ways (never into Nayan Aiyar, has compiled a report on formal heathenism), shows great inter- the recent census of Travancore, the est in the work, and has taken the first value of which the Maharajah of Tra- step toward return by dismissing his vancore has recognized by presenting second wife. Many others will doubt- him with an honorarium of Rs. 2000.
the. less fall away, at least for a time, but The following remarkable testimony to the season of deadness and indifference the work of missionaries among de-
GENERAL MISSIONARY INTBLLIGll)NCE
pressed classes is quoted from this reo English Noteso port: 'By the unceasing efforts and self-denying earnestness of the learned BY JAMES DOUGLAS.
body of the Christian missionaries in Ohurch Mi88ionary Society.-A prom. the country, the large community of inent feature this month is the general native Christians are rapidly advancing report of the Persia and Baghdad Mis- in their moral, intellectual, and mate- sion for the year 1894, together with rial condition. . :. Those who have extracts from the pri vate letters of directly come under their influence, Bishop Stuart, of Persia. The general such as n3tive Christians, have nearly account is strongly confirmatory of doubled the number of their literates what the Master has said concerning since 1875. But for them these humble the mode of the kingdom of God's ad- orders of Hindu society will forever re- vance. No startling note is sounded- main unraised. ·Their material condi- the Divine kingdom has not come tion, I dare say, will have improved " with observation"-but signs of prog- with the increased wages, improved ress are widespread wHhout. bulking labor market, better laws, and more large in the public eye. From the generous treatment from an enlightened biShOp's letters in particular many facts government like ours: but to the Chris- can be gleaned which, as seen in their tian missionaries belongs the credit of setting, have quite an idyllic character, having gone to their humble dwellings, and show the simplicity and fervor of and awakened them to a sense of a bet- Gospel principle in a pastoral light. ter earthly existence. This action of Man y of the inquirers are in reality dis- the missionar'ies was not a mere im- ciples who keep up Bible·reading and provement upon ancient history, a kind prayer among themselves; and to of polishing and refining of an existing whom, as the bishop observes, Christ's model, but an entirely original idea, teaching as to the world's hate of His concelved and carried out with com- people comes feelingly home. Those . mendable zeal, and oftentimes in the who at heart or avowedly are the teeth of opposition and persecutiou. I friends of Jesus and His missionaries, do not refer to the emancip[ltion of the are, for the most part, from the two slave, or the amelioration of the labor- heterodox sects, the Bilbis and Behais. er's condition, for those always existed No true-hearted Christian can read this more or Iffis in our past humane gov- report without gratitude to God for the ernments. But the heroism of raising gracious results which have accrued the low from the slough of degradation from the sowing of the Gospel seed in and debasement was an element of civ- these lands. The best part of service, ilization unknown to ancient India. statistically speaking, is in this case un- The Brahmin community 01 Southern derground; but undoubtedly the Lord India are not doing to the lowcr classes Jesus is calling ont a people for Himwhat the casteless Britisher is doing to self in Persia and Baghdad, and that them. The credit of this philanthropy manifestly to an extent which far exof going to the houses of the low, the ceeds the baptismal roll. distressed, and the dirty, and putting the shoulder to the wheel of depraved The Mission in Mombasa.–The Rev.
humanity, belongs to the Englishman. W. E. Taylor's annual letter concern- I do not think the Brahmins, or even ing"the progress of the work in the isl- the high-caste non-Brahmins can claim and of Mombasa, East Africa, speaks this credit. It is a glory resorved to of growth of aggressive effort and of this century of human progress, the the wane of the scoffing element by epoch of the bappy commingling of the which it was largely met. While there civilization of the West with that of the is more now of the private" tolerance"
East.' "-Ohurch Mi88ionary Gleaner. of the Word, but few as yet, through
ENGLISH NOTES
grace, have given it any real" accept· and while thousands of heathens have ance. " An interesting account is gi ven been won, the great attractive force has of the Lanue people, whom l-Ir. Taylor been the organized churches themselves.
visited, and who, while of a more po- To-day Christianity is the great out- lite and intellectual cast than are the standing force in the island, and no- people of Mombasa, are more deeply where is the fact more patent than in degraded in sins. Among them Mr. and around the capital, Antananarivo.
Taylor inaugurated market services, " Anyone standing," says Mr. W. E.
which have since been continued by Cousins, "on the higher parts of the the Germans conducting the German .city may count well-built village chap- mission there, but who, prior to Mr. els by the dozen. Indeed, almost every Taylor's visit, had conducted opera- village around Antananarivo has its tions on the "private reception" sys- Protestant place of worship." Then, tem at their own houses. These breth- schools of all kinds ha ve come to the ren expressed themselves as consider- front -medical, normal, colleges, etc.- ably cheered by the visit thus paid to and are important factors in the moral them, and especially at the new way of and spiritual elevation of the people.
"reaching the masses" in which they In view of the baleful shadow that now had received their first object·lesson. lies athwart this island, let all who can pray remember Madagascar.
London Missionary Society.-A spe· Presbyterian Ohu1'ch of England.- cial number oC The Ohronicle was is- The Swatow missionaries are rejoicing sued in April, devoted mainly to Mada- in a very considerable increase during gascar. A melancholy interest at- 1894 in the membership of the churches taches to this great island in view of under their care. The gain, as shown the French expedition which bodes in 120 adult baptisms, is the largest ingravest disaster alike to the indepen- crease of any year in the mission's hisdence of the Hovas and the future of tory. A further encouraging fact is Protestant missions. In the latter, the that of 25 lads in attendance at the London Missionary Society has a large grammar school of the mission, nearly stake. It is not too much to say that 20 are applicants for baptism. "the moral and spiritual progress of an intensely interesting people, the pros· Formosa.-The Formosan member- perity of hnndreds of native churches, ship stands at fully 1400, whose con- the religious education of many thou- tributions for all Christian objects sands of Malagasy children, the rever- amounted during the year to $2140. A ent observance of the Lord's day, the cheering growth of interest in the truth freedom enjoyed under the Hova Gov- is reported in the northern part of the ernment by Protestant as well as Catho- Formosan field. In the city of Chiang- lic missionaries, and a very extensive hoa a genuine spiritual work is going and varied Christian work, are all im· on under the guidance of an earnest perilled by this crisis in the island's young preacher, Lan Bo-khun. Here history." Hitherto Madagascar has Mr. Campbell recently examined no been one of the most fruitful fields of fewer than 28 catechumens, of whom foreign missionary labor, and one can- he was able to receive 14 into the mem- not contemplate, save with deepest sor- bership of the church. In this district row and indignation, the almost certain there are now 10 c~ngregations, with overthrow of a liberty-loving race and an aggregate membership of 345. A the disruption of existing Christian or- book that promises to be of great ser- ganization and work. vice has been prepared by Mr. Ede, Since 1862 the work of the London Presbyterian missionary teacher in Missionary Society has been essentially Formosa. It is a "three-character the care and guidance of converts j classic," or Christian commentary on
GENERAL :MISSIONARY INTEJ,LIGENCE
the tirst reading book generally put -Bishop Goodsell writes: "I am into the hands of young Chinese read· among those who expect to win this ers, combining the Chinese text with world for Christ. I have no sympathy sound and meaning of each character, with those who look merely to the herand also a translation of each· clause alding of Christ everywhere, and then into the Formosan vernacular, followed expect His second coming to set up His by a commentary which is especially kingdom by an act of power in the full in the historical parts. The work new heavens and the new earth. This is unique, and in addition to its service is not the parousia I look Jor. I bein schools it will be found a useful lieve that the winning of hearts to Him manual for any missionary beginning in a life of love and sacrifice, the penethe study of the Chinese character. tration of international and commercial relations by His Spirit, the assimilation Wesleyan Missionary Society.-An ac- of all natural forces to the sustentation count is to hand of the Mysore District and development of His kIngdom, will Synod, which was held early in Jan- bring His millennial reign. Even the uary and continued for nearly twelve dark forces of greed and war are undays. For the tirst time in the history consciously driving his chariot wheels." of this mission. Seringapatam, with a population of over 12.000, is to tind a -" The first thing the Protestant place in the list of stations. Judged missionary does among the heathen is by the inadequate test of numbers, the to establish a home," says Rev.. E. A. report for the year leaves, as is con- Lawrence in his" Modern Missions in fessed, much to be desired. There has the East." "He approaches them not been a net gain of 58, which brings up as a priest, not simply as a man, but as the membership of the district to 1477. These form the inner circle of the the head of a family, presenting Chrischurch, but what may be regarded as tianity quite as much in its social as in the wider circle of professed Christian i1 s individual characteristics. The adhesion numbers 4072. Christian home is to be the transform- ing element in the new community. Badulla, Oeylon.-An encouraging Into the midst of pagan masses. where report of work done in this circuit is society is coagulated rather than reorsupplied by the Rev. E. A. Prince. ganized, where homes are degraded by During 1894 there is about a 20 per parental tyranny, marital multiplicity cent increase in membership. The re- and female bondage, he brings the sults of past efforts are seen in what is leaven of a redeemed family which is believed to be the genuine conversion to be the nucleus of a redeemed society. of some of the native village Singhalese. Fruit has been found, too, in connec- -Dr. Griffith John has declined the tion with the English-speaking popula- invitation of the London Missionary tion. On the other hand, Buddhist op- Society to come home this year, alposition has never been so strong as it though it is the society's centenary; is at present. "Our work," says Mr. he has .thus also declined, for a second Prince, "is delayed at present, but we time, the honor of being made chairare certain, of ultimate triumph." man of the Congregational Union of England and Wales. He feels that his THE KINGDOM. duties in China have the tirst claim. This example of steadfastness will be a -" Let this mind be in you, which gospel in itself to the Chinese, and a was also in Christ Jesus." If all Cllris- stimulating force among missionaries. tians had in them the mind of Christ they would cease to think of missionary -Here, too, is a case of heroism. work as an abnormal service. Rev. J. E. Abbot.t, when written to by the American Board about the need of retrenchment by the closing of schools and the dismission of teachers and bring upon Japan any such tidal-wave preachers, replied: "I do not propose of nominal Christianity.
to trouble the treasurer to draw more -" Forget that he is an Indian and than I am allowed, or to complain or remember that he is a man." This is ask you or others for exceptional help. the theory on which Captain Pratt, I accept the situation cheerfully antI, Superintendent of the Carlisle Induswith trust in God, shall go on as if trial School, deals with the 750 Indian there was no such thing as a word of youths under his care. And the sugreduction. Every teacher and preach- gestion is just as pertinent if we insert er will go on with their work as bereto- instead African, Eskimo, Chinese, Mafore, until a louder voice than I now lay, etc. hear tells me that the Lord wants less effort put forth to bring men to the -On the face of the whole earth, knowledge of His power to save." when Christ and Paul were here, there was not one single humane institution -According to the Intelligence?', there devoted to the purposes of our modern has been growth in good sense and hospitals. Such institutions are dis- Christian charity within a generation or tinctively the outgrowth of the lesson two, and the late Rev. J. Y. N. Tal- of the good Samaritan. There is truth mage, missionary in Amoy, was in au- and beauty in these words of a patient vance of his time, for it says: "To in a Chicago hospital: • I never again him more than to any other it is due, expect to experience the feeling of conthat the Reformed [Dutch] Church, tent with which I fell asleep the first which at first and for years refused to night there, whispering to myself: yield to the representations and pleas of • This is my Father's house, and I can its missionaries, now stands prominent rest now.' "-Hm'ald and Presbyter. if not foremost among the advocates and asserters of that true, scriptural, -Though not always infallible in the divinely inspired, and divinely bleilsed realm of fact, probably Joseph Cook is policy of missions which seeks, by not far out of the way when he affirms union of effort and co-operation on the that nine tenths of the contributions to part of missions of like faith and order, missions come from one tenth of the at once to diminish the number of members of our churches.
competing denominations on mission -A rector inquires: "Can I have ground, sink out of sight the non-essen- our Lenten offerings go to any partials (often distinctions without a differ- ticular work I may designate 1" To ence) which separate them in Europe this we replied: The voluntary prinand America, and hasten the establish- ciple in missions is sacred, and any ment of churches native to the soil, one may designate where his contrigrowing to strength anti independence bution shall be applied; but if the trom their own root. principle of designation were thor- -Editor Dana is no doubt a wise oughly carried out there would be man after the fiesh, but according to no use of a society or board of misthe Gospel standard he goes far astray sions, and there could be no appropriawhen, in the New York Sun, he ad- tions.-Spirit of Missions.
vises the missionaries to convert the -When the first missionary society Mikado, and "that 50,000,000 of his was started in Tahiti, a rule was made people will follow him out of the pagan that a subscriber was one who gave camp into the Christian camp." We every year a bamboo full of cocoanut of course should pray and hope for the oil, or 3 balls of arrowroot, or a hog, or conversion of the Mikado as well as of 4 baskets of cotton. At Griquatown, any of his subjects; but it would be a South Africa. the first contributions more than doubtful blessing if it should were .30 pounds of elephants' teeth, 1 ox, 9 young bulls, 23 sheep, 4 heifers, woman in the country, where there and 5 goats. were few white people-and heroically -If proof were needed that THE served Christ as a minister, teacher, MISSIONARY REVIEW OF THE 'WORLD magistrate. nurse, and undertaker.
is read and highly esteem.ed, the same -Every way worthy to stand with would be found abundantly in the fact that of Mrs. Mary R. SchaufHer. lately that it is so extensively quoted. For deceased, is the name of Miss Jane S.
example, the April Ohunh at Home Williamson, also recently called from and Abroad reproduces (with due ac- labor to reward, at the age of more knowledgment) not less than 12 items. than ninety-two years. Minnesota was the scene of her missionary service, WOlIAN'S WORK. which began in 1843. She was in ac- tive work teaching the Indians at Lac -This is the queer way t1J.ey do in qui Parle and Kaposia (now West St.
Egypt: "A woman outside who knew Paul) and Yellow Medicine for nineteen ihe doctor called him to come and see a years, until the massacre of 1862. At sick child. We went into a dark room Kaposia the mission house was more with no window,and only a tiny door; than once assaulted by drunken Indians as soon as I got accustomed to the dark- with clubs and knives. From Yellow ness, I asked where the child was. Medicine the missionaries fied for their 'In the oven,' was the reply. Hurned lives at lhe time of the massacre.
to the'large mud oven and stretched " Aunt Jane" with her brother and his out my hand to feel for her. To my wife wcre tbe last white people to flee, horror I found the oven was' hot, and going alone hours after the rest had the woman calmly told me that they fled.
had been baking in it that day, and that there was fire underneath I We . -Dr. Mary Pierson Eddy, of Sidon, exclaimed, but they said, as if it were in the Star in the Ea8t, gives this acthe most natural thing in the world for count of herself: "A year ago, after people to live in hot ovens, that there receiving the first license to practise were two children in there, and that medicine and surgery ever accorded that was where they lived, and would to a woman in the Turkish Empire, I not come out as it was so warm in- returned to Syria from Constantinople side !"-The Gleaner. to begin a new departure in missionary -And this statement from the same medical work. My aim being to reach source well sets forth a phase of life in the Orient. A missionary writes from the women of non-Christian sects the land of tbe Nile: "I often ask the mainly, I decided upon itinerating half women if they ever pray. Most of the year among the villages in the them laugh at the idea, and say, ' We mountains, the other half among the pray I We do not know how to pray; cities along the coast. 'fhe number of only the men pray. Do you pray?' our patients is limited only by my When I say, 'Yes,' they say, 'Truly, strength. Monday, Wednesday, and truly, how wonderful! Teach us to Friday I receive pay patients. Satur· days and Wednesday, anyone who prlLY.' " brings a sealed paper testifying to her poverty is treated free. My clinics -Through the efforts of the Rev. average 40 daily, about 200 new pa- Sheldon Jackson, the first of the 9 Pres- tients every week. The sad part of my byterian missions in Alaska was estab- work is that I cannot give more time to lished at Fort Wrangel in 1877. Mrs. each place I visit, for each has features A. R. McFarland, upon five days' no- of special need or peculiar interest.
tice, accepted this post, where she was The other saddening spectacle is the .
willing to remain alone-the only white many who have to be sent away. They sit for hours on ihe stairs awaiting their colored population of 265,000, 80,000 turn; some return three and four suc· are Roman Catholic.
cessive days before they can get in. -The United States supports in Others come from distant villages, and return without seeing me. Alaska 14 day schools, and there are 15 mission schools, while the Greek Church of Russia maintains 6 additional AMERICA. schools. The great drawback to the higher advancement of Alaska is the United States.-The. Chu1'ch Mis- hold which the liquor traffic is gaining. sionary Intelligencer, a most competent Efforts to suppress it have met with English authority, says: "America is little success, and liquors are imported, providing for us almost all the books landed, and sold without stint in every that treat of the principles, objects, and white settlement. In many cases this history of missions on anything like a evil counterbalances the results of mis- reasonable scale. Weare far behind sionary work.
our brethren in the United States in -A missionary at Point Barrow rethe systematic study of the subject. ceives mail !JUt once a year, and it Our American cousins give us hand- sometimes occurs that the ice pack prebooks of missions, not necessarily ele- vents the revenue cutter from getting mentary, but in the best sense educa- so far north, so that letters are nearly tional. Such are the works of Dr. two years old when they reach their Pierson, Dr. Gordon, and Dr. Dennis." destination.
-Of $50 lately contributed in Provi- -The Presbyterian native church at dence, R. I., for the relief of the suffer- Sitka is now ten years old, having been ers in Eastern Turkey, $20 were the organized in September, 1884, with 49 gift of Chinese who have been associ- members, and now numbers 483. Mr. ated with some of the Armenians in Austin reports having baptized 951 perthe same Sunday.school. Certain Uhris- sons. Services are held in a commoditian Chinese in San Francisco gave last ous and attractive edifice, built by the year for the support of the Gospel boys of mission training school, among themselves and elsewhere at the under the direction of the carpenter. rate of $8.62 each. And at the Santee Agency a number of Indians gave $5 -Of the 300 native residents of Fort and $10, and many gave smaller sums Wrangel over 80 are members of the to assist in paying the debt of the Presbyterian Church. Since Dr.
American Missionary Association. Thwing took charge of this station two -The annual report of the mission years ago, 46 new members have been work of the Roman Catholic Church added, just doubling the membership. among the negroes and Indians shows About 20 neat new cottages have been that the collections for this work dnr- erected, and a substantial plank walk ing 1894 amounted to $57,840. The constructed by the natives along the total number of Catholic negroes was water front for a half mile. Improve- 156,683; the number of pupils in ments in the way of paint and new roofs schools was 8610; the number of bap- have also been made on 9ther homes.
tisms during the year 4394, of which -Mr. Albert J. Nathan, a Christian 3760 were of children. The negro Jew, who some time since left this Catholic popUlation is strongest in country for Morocco, as the representa- Baltimore and in New Orleans. In tive of the Friends' Society, to preach Baltimore out of a colored population the Gospel to his own brethren in that of 218,000, 36,650 are Roman Catholic. land, has nt!lw reached his field. Says They have 5 churches ministered to by The Friends' Missionary Advocate.- 14 priests. In New Orleans out of a "Ilis large endowments, natural and spiritual, give promise of a future of churches with 4462 communicants and great usefulness. The momentum of 1221 pupils in schools, a theological spiritual power that moves through seminary and a mission press. The . him it! resistless." City of Mexico alone has 7 Presbyterian churches, all in charge of native -A Carleton College Asiatic Club preacheli. was recently formed at Marsovan, Tur- key. It is intended to keep the repre- -The Episcopal work in this repub- sentatives of the college who are en- lic, under the direction of the Cuerpo gaged in missionary and educational Ecclesiastico, 90nsists of 30 congrega- work in sympathy and communication tions, served by native 'workert! as fol- with one another. The membership lows: presbyters, 5; deacons, 2: stu- embraces not only alumni, of whom dents for holy orders, 3; readers, 11; there are 9 or 10 in Asia, but anyone teachers: male, 4: female, 6. The who has been connected with Carleton communicants number about 1350; the for one year or more, and has been for members about 2500, and adherents a year or more in the field. The total about 4000. There are 10 mission number will be 15 or 16, residing in schools, with about 375 pupils, nearly Turkey, Persia, China, and Japan. A equally divided between the sexes, and club letter will be kept in perpetual in addition the Mary Josephine Hooker circulation.-Advance. Memorial Orphanage and Church School, employing 1 American and 2 -Oberlin is pal' excellence the mis- native teachers, and lIas 38 boarding sionary institution.. Not including and 11 day scholars. those at work among the freedmen in the South since the rebellion, among Greenland.-It is a common impres- the Indians and in the foreign field sion that the Christians of Greenland nearly 250 of its students have done are mainly under Moravian care. But yeoman's service. About 50 children the Allgemeine Missions-Zeitschrift gives of missionaries are usually to be found the whole popUlation (except on the in attendance in the various schools of thinly peopled east coast) as now Chris- the village, and it is common for a half- tianized. Of these 8175 are under the score of missionary families at a time care of the Lutheran Church of Den- to be making this their headquarters mark. There are 3 Danish and 4 native during their furlough. pastors, working at 12 stations. There is at Godthaab a semiuaryfor the train- Mezico.-A. Catholic gentleman who ing of native teachers and preachers; is quite intelligent said to one of our the latter, mostly half-breeds, complete missionaries: .. The Catholic Church their education in Copenhagen. The made a very poor showing in its three Moravians at their 6 stations have the hundred years' dealing with the Mexi- care of only 1591 Christian Greencans. You look for education and you landers. In Labrador there are 1329 do not find it, you look for intelligence Eskimo, all under their' care. and you do not find it, you look for industry and you do not find it, you look. EUROPE. for morality and you do not find it. This Church has had the sole chance to Great Britain.-During the twentymake the Mexican people, and they eight years that have elapsed since Dr~ have failed. If they lplve done noth- Barnardo began his work he has resing in three hundred years, what would cued, trained, and placed out in life they do in three thousand 1"- 0 hUTch some 27,000 children; he has educated at Home and Abroad. and partly fed and clothed in free day and night schools children not actually -There are now under the care of destitute to the numl>er of 63,000; he the Presbyterian Church in Mexico 93 has provided outfit, passage money, and one, if the following statement in the effectual supervision for 7200 emigrants New York Sun is correct: "Peter's to the colonies; he has established 4 pence in France used to be 3,000,000 free lodging·houses, and given home· francs a year. In 1893 the sum con- less women and children 200,000 free tributed was 1,800,000, and last year it quarters and 560,000 free rations; he was less than 1,000,000."
has established four industrial brigades, -From Constantinople comes the and aided to an independent livelihood good news that after waiting in vain 6200 of the boys who have passed through them. He has spent on build· for about tbree years and a half for ings £200,000, and in addition to this has freehold land and buildings in permission to publish a new edition of Canada to the value of £22,000. the Albanian Psalms, during which time repeated but fruitless efforts were made through Her Majesty's Embassy -A work quite similar to that done to obtain the necessary sanction, a fur- by Dr. Barnardo is carried on in Man· . ther petition was presented a few weeks chester, and dates from 1870. when a since, which has resulted in permission door was opened in a poor street near being granted by the Turkish Govern- a leading thoroughfare for the immedi· ment not only to publish the Psalms, ate and free reception of homeless and but the whole Bible in the Albanian destitute boys. Says the London language.-The Ohristian.
ahristian: "That single house, with its 30 hammocks, was soon filled, and ASIA..
has been the precursor of a work which Palestine.-Behold, how good and for thoroughness, completeness, and pleasant, etc. Says the Free 0 hurch manifest tokens of God's blessing, has Monthly: " The cradle of Christianity had few equals in the annals of Chris· promises to be the nursery of Christian tian and philanthropic enterprise." co-operation, so far as Scotland and Since that date a great institution has Presbyterianism are concerned. Dr. come into being with no less than 18 Carslaw of Schweir has charge of varied departments, to supply all sorts of needs for all sorts of people, and schools which are supported by an unamong them a prison-gate mission, where last year 10,724 discharged pris· denominational Scottish committee. oners received a free breakfast, and Dr. Vartan, of Nazareth, and Dr. Macwhile appeasing their hunger listened kinnon, of Damascus, representatives to the glad tidings. of the Edinburgh Medical Mission, are in closest alliance with our missionaries. -The Primitive Methodists have re- Dr. Webster, at Haifa, from the Cancently commissioned 5 missionaries for ada Presbyterian Church, is so identi· Africa, 2 of them men with wives, di- fied with our agents that the two misviding them between Fernando Po and sions present themselves to the commuthe trans-Zambesi Mission. nity as one. Dr. Torrance is called the" Charles Russell missionary," be- The Continent.-The distribution of cause his salary is provided by a memprinted sermons in Berlin has reached ber of the Australian Presbyterian 130,000 copies a week. Some of them Church, in memory of a beloved Bon. go to Russia, Egypt, America, and The Rev. John Soutar represents at many other countries. Ou the last Tiberlas the United Presbyterian Sunday in the church year 450,000 Church, by whom his salary is paid. copies were distributed. At its last meeting our committee ac- cepted an offer of service from the Rev.
-Peter's pence is falling off, and the J. E. H. Thomson, a probationer of the revenues of the Vatican are shrinking United Presbyterian Church. His wife in prop'brtion, The process is a rapid is to be the honorary agent of the Glasgow Ladies' Society. Their sphere is windows, two chairs, and about 20 girls, Safed, and they are to live at their own from six to twenty years old, sitting on charges, with the exception of travel· the floor. Each rose and said, first to ling expenses and house rent. The Mrs. Ewing, then to me, Salaam. share of the sister church in our Galilee They then all began in a perfect jabber Mission will thus be increased." to ask about me. 'Is she Miss or Mrs. ? '
-A lady missionary of the Church 'Has she children r' 'What Is she Missionary Society in Palestine writes to The Gleaner to correct the opinions here for?' When told that I came to of those who regard Palestine as an un- help they all said, ' Good, good.' They fruitful field. She states that the peo· were dressed in calico of the loudest pIe themselves bear witness to the im- colors, and wore only waists and drawprovement, telling how different it was ers. The streets are full of women in twenty-five or thirty years ago, when the same costume. Everyone had on no one could read or write, and hardly anklets, several bracelets on the left a Bible was to be feund anywhere; arm, big toe rings, 5 or 6 rings in the whereas now a large proportion of the nose, and in the left ear 10 or 12 rings men can read, and in the towns many all around the rim and so heavy that women also; and anyone, if he wants the ear lopped over. Mrs. Ewing said : it, can get a Bible for a small sum. 'You must come with me Friday. The people where she lives used to They have their bath, wash their hair, shoot at each other from their houses; put on clean clothes and wear all their now one feels as safe as in England. jewelry Fridays.' I thought if what they had on was not all I should like -Rev. Selah Merrill most emphati- to behold the Friday parade. They use cally denies that there has been any boards for slates, write with a pointed considerable increase of Jews in Pales- stick dipped in ink, and clean the tine during' recent years. Jerusalem boards with mud." has but 27,000 ina population of 47,- 000, and the whole land but 42,000. -It will be welcome news to many He affirms that the reports of a rapid that the Pashtu Bible-the gin of Enginflux of the seed of Abraham originate lish Christianity to Afghanistan-is apin the minds of good people in America, proaching completion. The New Tes- Great Britain, and Germany, who judge tament was issued in 1889. that from prophecy thus it ought to be. -The Rajah of Sirmur is eager to India.-In British India there are have a Christian mission established at something like 500,000 of blind people. Nahan. He has promised the same lib- How are they to get the Word of God ? erty to carryon work and to preach as Well, Mr. Knowles, a missionary, has is enjoyed in British territory. He has invented an alphabet for them, in which offered land and timber for building, 87 of,the languages spoken in this penin- and is willing to remit the duty on sula may be printed. It is proposed to limestone. He will give 400 rupees a found an institute at Bangalore, where year toward repairs, and 2000 rupees the blind will be taught to read.- toward the building of a church. He Re'lJU(! des Mi8sions Oontemporaines. is particularly anxious to have a lady physician stationed at Nahan, because -Mary C. Bandy, of Lodiana, in so many little children, and women Woman's Workfor Woman gives a racy also, have died, whose lives he believes account of her first visit to a school in might have been saved had there been that city, which is in part as follows: a qualified physician to attend them.- " After winding through narrow, badsmelling streets we went into a mud ahurd. at Home ana Aln·oaa. hut. Room 15 by 18, ceiling low, two -An interesting movement has been started by the students of Girton and Newnham colleges, England." It is proposed to form a missionary settle- opinion: "There are at present In ment in Bombay, in which women China about 55,000 communicants, from the universities may live together which shows a remarkable increase and unite in educational, medical, and since 1889. There can be no doubt as evangelistic work. to the marked increase of these five years. If the next five be as prosper- -The Baptist Telugu Mission, noted ous, our China communicants will, at for its sudden and wonderful growth, the close of 1900, number not tar short has found it imperative to provide for of 90,000. We are on the eve of great 'the training of the native Christians. changes, and great changes for the bet· While new converts continue to be ter also." made, the chief attention of the missionaries is now turned toward the es- -It is said that there are 120 Budtablishment of educational institutions. dhist temples in Canton. They are A college has been founded at Ongole, mostly dingy in appearance, the chose,n and now it is decided to establish a abodes of bats and of spiders, whose medical training institute and hospital webs are black with the smoke of the for wcmen at Nellore, and a technical ever·rlslDg incense. In the courtyards institute at Ongole. outside congregate fortun£-tellers. huck- sters, and beggars in sackcloth full of -So various is the nationality in sores. Even gambling.booths are not Singapore that the city has been called forbidden in the temple precincts. a bundle of samples. The Methodists have a school which contains Chinese, -A Chinese official of a certain dis· Japanese, Siamese, Malay, Tamil, Eu- trict in the city of Canton had been ex· rasian, English, these seven divisions amining and reading Christian litera' of the human family. ture, with the result that he was favor· ably impressed with the truth. Being China.-Says Rev. A. H. Smith: desirous of benefiting his people mate· "The entire freedom of the Chinese rially, he asked t~e missionary in charge classical works from anything which of the mission work in his district to could debase the mind of the readers is devise a scheme to aid the people to de· a most important chRracteristic which velop their agricultural resources. has often been pointed out, and which When the plan had been properly de· is in the greatest possible contrast to vised he invited a number of the gen· the literatures of India, Greece, and try, a Berlin Chinese profess:>r and the Rome. 'No people,' says Mr. Mea- missionary to a dinner, at which the dows, 'whether of ancient or modern whole scheme was discussed. After tio;1es, has possessed a sacred literature some deliberation three of his friends so completely exempt as the Chinese offered 1000 taels or $1400 apiece, while from licentious descriptions and from the mandarin himself pledged 3000 every olIensive expression. There is taels, or $4000. to the work. When not a single sentence in the whole of the the officer said something about the sacred books and their annotations that benefits of Christianity, they replied may not be read aloud in any family that they wished this scheme to have circle in England. Again, in every no connection with it. To this the offi· other non·Christian country, idolatry cer responded by saying: " You may has been associated with human sRcri' devise the best of schemes, but it will fices and with the deification of vice. fail unless you adopt Christianity."- accompanied by licentious rites and The independent. orgies. Not a sign of all this exists in China." -Charles Denby, Jr., secretary of the United States Legation at Pekin, -Dr. Griffith John, one of the great· says of that city: .. It is without water· est of living missionaries, expresses this works, gas, or electricity, and yet every· body likes to live there, this being espe- Dr. Dale, one of the leading Congrecially true of the Chinamen. Pekin gational ministers of England, whose has but an imperfect sewage system, death has recently been announced, reand the sanitary conditions are very lated, in one of his sermons, an incibad, yet there 'is little disease there. dent as to a Japanese gentleman of edu- Pekin is at the same time one of the cation, a man of force and thought, dirtiest and healthiest cities in the who sat in his house one night and world. In striking contrast to Tokio, talked with him of many things, chiefly Japan, where there are water-works, of the hopes and joys which had come gas, electricity, and modern improve- to them both through the faith of ments, with good sanitation, yet which Christ. Dr. Dale asked his visitor how has frequent cholera epidemics, and is he came to leave the religion of his famfar from being healthful. " ily and his country and become a Christian. He replied: "The Bible -Half a century ago, as one of the came into my hands through a friend, results of the opium war, a small tract a Japanese friend, and by chance I of land just north of the native city of read, first, the chapter in the Epistle to Shanghai was set apart for the resi- the Corinthians in which the excellendence of foreigners. It was not antici- cies of charity are set forth. I was pated that this tract would be occupied fascinated; there was a morality taught in any part by the natives, but 200,000 therein with which I was unacquaintof them have settled within it, and vol- ed. I turned back the leaves, seeking untarily submitted themselves to the other parts as novel and striking, and jurisdiction of the "foreign devils." read the Gospel of John, and then I Here some 5000 Europeans enjoy the was subdued. The words and the ch~r highest fruits of Western civilization acter of Jesus compelled II surrender of under a government founded on a writ- my heart, and won my faith. " – tell constitution. It would be difficult to find a city of the size anywhere in AFRICA. Europe or America possessing in so high a degree as Shanghai the manifold -Mr. E. H. Glenny, secretary of tte elements of civilization.-1vI. B. DUN- North Africa Mission, properly finds NELL, in Overland Monthly. occasion for thanksgiving in the fact that, whereas fourteen years ago not a -The Christian press is a tremendous missionary to the Moslems could be power in the Celestial Empire. Thus found between Alexandria and Gibralfrom the Methodist publishing house at tar, there are now 120, of whom some Foochow were issued 26,600,000 pages 70 belong to his society. This same orlast year; from a similar Presbyterian ganization has 7 medical missions and establishment in Shanghai, 82,000 hospitals in which about 30,000 were coyies of the Scriptures and 36,700,000 treated last year. pages of other books, tracts, etc.; and the Central China Religious Tract So- -Rev. Jean Paul Cook, writing to ciety issued about 1,000,000 copies of the London Christian from the French publications. mission house, II Mathen par EI' Kseur, Kabylia, says: "Eight years ago the Japan.-A Japanese foreign mission French Methodist Conference decided board has been organized, with the aim to start a mission in Kabylia, and sent of working first in Korea. The presi- out Mr. Thomas Hocart, a young and dent and one of the treasurers are of the zealous pastor. After staying two Church of Christ, the vice-president is of years with his wife at Bougie, to learn the Methodist Church, and the secre- the language and get" knowledge of tary and a treasurer are of the Kumi the country, he came to take up his ai chnrches. abode in this place. It was thought best to begin with the young, and sev- • eral Sunday and Thursday schools have new Training and Industrial Institu- been established. In this way are gath- tion which the Livingstonia 'MIssion ered together, in 5 different villages, intend starting in British Central Afri- about 120 boys and 30 girls, who are ca. The place chosen is in the neigh- taught to sing hymns and to repeat borhood of 'Mount Wallen, not far verses from the Scriptures. He has from the Deep Bay Station, Lake some knowledge of medicine, and in Nyassa, and it is possible that the Brit- one month treated 654 patients; in one ish South Afdca Company will assist day 107. the Livingstonia Mission by a grant of land. One of the chief objects of this -Rev. A. W. Marling, going out to Industrial Institution will be the train- the Gaboon Mission, has this to say of ing of natives in large numbers to dif- one feature of his journey: "What at- ferent trades, such as carpentry, black- tracted our attention more than any- smithing. printing, and bUilding. thing else among the passengers ~as a band of 24 French Roman Catholic Madagascar.-When in the Norwe- missionaries, of whom 7 fathers and 1 gian Mission recently all salaries had to brother landed at Dakar (Cape Verd), be lowered and work to be cut down, to join the mission in the French prov- the missionary was disheartened, and ince of Senegal; 4 fathers and 3 nuns said so before his helpers. But a na- disembarked at Cape Coast Castle, to tive pastor reminded him of the state of go thence to the Niger, far np which is things on his arrival twenty.seven years their mission. One father is to land at before-no helpers at all, the natives Libreville, to join the mission of the indifferent, hardships and difficulties at Holy Spirit and the Holy Heart of every step. Now the mission has 250 Mary; 3 fathers are to land at Loango, helpers and some 10,000 converts. near the southern limit of the Congo " Let us thank God," said the grateful Fran9ais on the coast, where they will native pastor, "for His mercies, and be appointed to their stations by the if our salaries have to be reduced, we Bishop of Loango; and finally, 3 fa- hope that the work will still go for- thers and 2 brothers are to land also at ward, for this work is laid upon us ; Loango, but to go thence overland to we have chosen it out of full hearts. Brazzaville on Stanley Pool. where they May the Word of God have full course, will receive appointments to their sev- and the Church of Madagascar soon be eral stations from the Bishop of Uban- able to support itself." gi." -The London Missionary Society's -" Rhodesia" is a new name in ChronicZe for April gives an account of geography. It describes a great Afri- the "Christian interests in the island of can territory which will bear witness to Madagascar," and states 'hat there are the work of Mr. Cecil Rhodes. The 2000 Protestant churches, with more capital of the country is Buluwayo, in than 300,000 adherents. More than which so lately Lobengula ruled. The 1300 of these churches are connected city has already undergone a transfor- with the London Missionary Society, mation. One hundred brick houses and have 280,000 adherents and 60,000 have taken the place of the Matabele church-memhers; 803 congregations huts, and nearly 2000 white people are are in the central province of Imerina, settled in the neighborhood. Dr. Jame- where Christian work was begun in Bon; who took so prominent a part in 1820. the war, gives a glowing account of the agricultural and mineral capacities of THE ISLANDS OF THE SEA.. the region.-Jilree Olturch Monthly. -" What a difference between now. -Dr. Laws has fixed on the locality and thirteen years ago " says the mis- suitable for the establishment of the sionary of the Rhenish Missionary Society from the Toba district in Sumatra. communion. They were all very at- Then everything was unsafe: no one tentive and reverent; and a solemn still- dared to go half an hour's distance ness fell upon all as they took in their from his village; war, robbocy, piracy, hands the symbols of their Saviour'S and slavery reigned everywhere. Now dying love. I don't think many of us there is a free, active Christian life will forget the scene-the little table in everywhere, and churches full of atten- the centre with the bread and wine, the tive hearers. We have 8 head stations missionaries at one side, and round the and 30 off stations, more than 30 evangel- other side of the square the dark faces ists, and many active elders and Sun- of our people and teachers, while, all day-school teachers. And the faith of round, seated on the earth or on fallen our young Christians is seen in their logs, were the rest of the people. It was deeds. They have renounced idolatrous quite interesting to think of the differ- customs; they visit the sick, and pray ent nationalities who sat down togeth- with them; they go to their enemies er-Australian, Scotch, Eromangan, and make conciliation with them. This Ngunese, Emai, Efatese, and Maleku- has often made a powerful impression Ian from Anlua, Pangkumu, Urupio, on the heathen, because they saw that and a man from one of the Banks the Christians could do what was im- group." possible to heathen-they could forgi ve injuries. Many heathen have been so -For half a century after white men overcome by this conduct of the Chris- had made acquaintance with the fierce tians that they came to us and said : and murderous disposition of the Sa- "The Lord Jesus has conquered 1"- moans, the island of Samoa was left to Herr Pilgram. itself. Traders shunned it. Yet within twenty.eight years of the landing of -In the New Hebrides" pigs are the the missionaries the islanders were im- great commercial commodity, and a porting goods from England, Austra- wife is valued by her husband accord- lia, ~nd America valued at £35,000 per ing to the number of pigs he gives in annum-not a bad market for so small exchange for her. One morning, while a community. busily engaged at his desk, :Ur. Armaud was called out to an adjoining room, -Speaking of Methodism in Fiji, the where his wife sat sewing, to see a man Recorder says: "Now you may pass who had urgent business with him, who from isle to isle, certain everywhere to was uneasy and impatient to make find the same cordial reception by known his errand. He was a man of kindly men and women. Every village great influence among his people. Tak- on the 80 inhabited isles has built for ing Mr. Armaud one side that his wife itself a tidy church, and a good house might not hear, he said in an undertone, for its teacher or native minister, for 'Missy, I thought I should like to have whom the village also provides food a white wife, and have come to see how and clothing. Can you realize that many pigs you take for Mrs. Armaud.' " there are 900 Met.hodist churches in Fiji, at everyone of which the frequent -In the Australian Weekly Rev. services are crowded by devout congre- T. W. Leggatt tells of the first com- gations; that the schools are well at- munion on Malekula, one of the New tended, and that the first sound that Hebrides: .. We found a shady spot on greets your ear at dawn and .the last at the beach in quite a natural temple, night is that of hymn-singing and most overshadowed by three' birinber ' trees. fervent worship, rising from each I spoke from the words, 'I am the dwelling at the hour of prayer?" bread of life,' and dispensed the ele- . ments. Mr. Gillan gave the address -A Micronesian convert employed . before, and Mr. Paton that after the on the missionary ship Robert w: Logan has left $700 to the American Board.
The Missionary Review of the World — May 1895
PALACE, BA~GKOK, SIA)I
MISSI'ON'A'RY REVIEW OF THE WORLD.
VOL. XVIII. No.5.-01d Serie.5.-MAY.-VOL. VIII. No. 5.-NMJ1~.
SOME HINDRANCES AND HELPS IN EVANGELIZING LAOS LAND.
The great hindrances to the spread of the Gospel and the conversion of men are the same in all ages and all lands. " The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God j neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.". "And men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil." "The God of this world hath blinded the eyes of them that believe not, lest the light of the glorious Gospel of Christ should shine unto them." These statements are as true now as when Jesus and Paul uttered them, and in them are still to be found the chief obstmcles to the triumph of the Gospel. Not caste and the slave trade, but the evil heart of unbelief departing from the living God j not Buddha or Confucius or Mohammed, but Satan, the enemy of God and man-this is still the J ebus that holds out against the Son of David, this still the Goliath whom He must meet and slay. And as the most obstinate difficulties, so the highest encouragements of the mission enterprise are the same to-day as at the beginning. It was the truest missionary instinctthat led Judson, when some one wrote to him inquiring what were the prospects for the evangelization of Burmah, to reply, "Bright as the promises of God." The cause of missions will always be at its best when the" Go ye" and the" Lo, I am with you always" of Christ outbulks and outweighs every other encouragement in the esteem of Its supporters. But while all this is true, it is true too that each field presents difficulties on the one hand, and sources of encouragement on the other, which are to some extent peculiar to itself. In these, not in geographical situation or climate or productions, lie the true differentia of mission lands j and of these we must have some right conception if we are to enter into intelligent and prayerful sympathy with missionaries, and not simply to feel a vague interest in missions. The writer hopes, therefore, that it may be to the purpose if in this month of May, when so many prayers will be put up for Siam and Laos, he speaks of " Some Hindrances and Helps in Evangelizing Lsos Land. "
e<>ME BlNDltANCE8 AND DELFS IN EVANGELIZING LAOS LAND
HINDltANCES.
1. Power 0/ Ou,tom.-And, first, let him advert to the power of cus- tom among the Laos as a hindrance to the progress of Christianity. If the world were to be divided as we sometimes divide the churches in our own land, into conservatives and radicals, the Orient would be set against the Occident. Custom has power in the West, it is true j on the other hand, " old fashioned" is more often than not a term of reproach, and the love of novelty is so great that the mere fact that a thing has long been done in a certain way is counted by many a sufficient reason for beginning to do it in some other fashion. The temper of the Orient is the opposite j there the customary is the sacred; the thing that hath been is- that which shall be, and also the thing that ought to be. And in this respect the Laos are true Orientals. It is some time before the missionary can realize the force which this matter of custom exerts among them. He goes into a wayside temple j he seeks out the head priest and courteously salutes him j he is invited to seat himself upon the mat that is spread for him, and a pillow for his elbow, a jar of cool water and a cup, and a tray of the inevitable betel-nut are provided for his comfort and refreshment. After a few commonplaces on either side the real business of the hour is taken up, and that all the more eagerly because the presence of the foreign teacher has drawn every member of the monastery, ,every casual loiterer in the temple grounds, perhaps even ~~score or more of persons from the village, into earshot of the conversation. " Your reverence," begins the missionary, "is a religious man; are you acquainted with that which is called the religion of the Lord Jesus~" The answer will probably be this: " Noble doctor, we have heard of this religion of the Lord Jesus, but we do not understand clearly what it is." This the missionary feels is the very opportunity for which he has prepared himself. He has thought out his statement of Christianity j he has chosen his illustrations with great care j not only the terms he will employ, but the very tone and manner he will use j as not in the way of harsh and initiating polemic, but in that of calm but earnest reasoned appeal to heart and conscience, he sets the new system from heaven before thE> minds of those who know only the old that is of men. There is much to encourage him as he proceeds j there is earnest attention j the head priest interrupts now and then to ask a wellchosen question j not infrequently an auditor ejaculates under his breath that what the teacher says is true. The missionary ceases speaking, and awaits the reply of his fellow-teacher in the yellow robe. What will he pitch upon as the weak point in the argument ~ What will be the line of his attack 7 Listen:" Noble doctor, what you say is good j truly you speak to our hearts j but, haw pen heet paw, hoy maa" (these are not the footsteps of our fathers Rnd mothers). lifissa est! The assembly is dismi!l!!ed. The old priest's answer is conclusive to everybody except the missionary, and he departs wondering if it can really be tht an argument SI) stauch has gone to pieces on a rock Sl) small, 2. WOTship of Evil Spirits.-While Siam is called and is a Buddhist country, yet along with Buddhism there flourishes everywhere, and espe- cially among the Laos tribes, the worship of spirits. You may call them ghosts, demons, devils, genii, sprites, elves, or fairies. If you listen to the talk of the people you will at first think that now one and now another of these is what is meant by the ever-recurring word phee ; but you will come at last to the sad conclusion that if you are to find an equivalent in English, it must be something not very different from " evil spirit." For whether the phee in question be thought of as the soul of a dead man, or the presid- ing genius of a family, or the invisible guardian of some brook or cave, or the inferior deity who has special charge of some natural phenomena like rain or thunder, or some event in human life, such as the weaning of a child or the marriage of a maiden, it may become at any moment and on the slightest provocation a malignant foe. And therefore one of the main anxieties of a Laos man or woman is to keep on friendly terms with these invisible powers. It is only by degrees that the foreigner can come to understand how large a part of life this is for the people about him; for this devil cult has no temples and no priests except as every house, from the carved and gilded palace of the ., Lord of Life" to the thatch-roofed bamboo cottage of his humblest subject, is such a temple, and every man and every woman a priest or priestess of this worship. Go where you will and when you will, in city or country, by river, through forest, to the caves of the mountains, across the smiling rice fields, in wet season or dry, at rice planting or harvest, at birth or death, at wedding or funeral, when contracts are signed, when houses are built, when journeys are undertaken, when sickness or storm or drouth befalls, and you will find in charm and spell and offering the tokens of the sway of this dark superstition as to the presence and activity of spirits. And just in that word superstition lies one chief element of the power of spirit worship as a hindrance to the acceptance of the Gospel. It is not merely that for a Laos man to change his religion will surely offend the spirits of his ancestors and provoke the enmity of all those demons who have in the past been pleased by his worship ; it is not merely that the heart in which the missionary sows the seed of God's Word is already preoccupied with a rank growth of weeds; but it is the peculiar character of this religion as a superstition which constitutes it an obstacle to the truth. An historical religion can be attacked in its history; a philosophical religion can be attacked in its philosophy; but how shall we attack a superstition 1 It is fighting with a ghost. We cut it in twain only to find that the impalpable substance of which it is made up closes behind the blade and suffers no harm. Not based on reason or fact, a superstition like this refuses to yield to reason or fact. And superstition embrutes men's minds; it teaches them to count fact and fancy, truth and falsehood as of equal worth, and at last makes them incompetent to distinguish the one from the other. Much of wha.t is believed by the people is so absurd that even they themselves, when the sun shines and all goes well with them, will make jokes about the" spirits somewhat as the children of America do about the " brownies i" but let the night fall, let misfortune overtake them, and all doubts vanish. Ignorant of the laws of nature, knowing nothing of Providence; rebelling unconsciously against the" Buddhist dogma that the experiences of this life are the resultant of conduct in some previous state of existence, the Laos finds in the activity of these spirits his easiest explanation of· all theiUs that overtake him. And thus this belief and worship roots itself in every event and relation of his life, and constitutes, like the idolatry prevalent in the Roman world in. the first century, at once one chief difficulty in the way of his accepting the Gospel, and when he has accepted it, one chief source of temptation to apostasy.
3. Buddhism.-Buddhism is in Siam and Laos the most obtrusive of all facts. The missionary, as he enters the mouth of the Meinam, gets at the same moment his first sight of the red flag with the white elephant flying over a frowning fort, and of the glittering roof and spires of a Buddhist temple; and every day he spends in the land through whose gate his stj.lamer. is passing will teach him more clearly the significance of the scene that lies before him. And, first of all, Buddhism bars the way to the entrance of the Gospel into men's hearts because it is a religion of self~righteousness. Buddhism has three keywords-misery, transmigration, merit-and the greatest of these, the one most often uttered, is merit. Existence is. essentially wretched, but there is no escape from it ; nothing can stop the endless revolution of the wheel of birth and deAth j all that can be done is to make future existence less wretched than the present; and this can be accomplished only by personal merit. What we are is the result of what we have done, and what we shall be depends upon what we are doing now-this is the short creed of the Buddhist. There lies before the writer some rough memoranda of a conversation with a brother of the King of Siam. He had read the Bible, he said, in English and in Siamese, and always kept it by him. He admired much that was in it; he believed Christ to have been a good, wise, far-seeing man, and a great teacher, though not divine; he regarded Christianity and Buddhism as far superior to Mohammedanism, because the former appeal, as the latter does not, to direc1ly religious motives; but there was one thing in Christianity that he could never be brought to believe-it is that there can be any way of escape from the consequences of our own actions. " There can be. no Saviour," said he, "except as every man can save himself by doing good deeds. If any man can believe Christianity, he will no doubt be happy. I would be glad if I could believe it mYElelf j but I and ttll the higher classes of Siam hold firmly to the belief .that every man mUllt receive according to· his deeds. We cannot believe that God can be bribed to release any orie from his responsibility." And in deference to this conviction the Siamese have made"a vast investment in what they regttrd as work:s of merit. They have c8vered their land with temples and pagodas MISSION PREMISES, CHIENG MAL MISSION CHURCH, CHI ENG MAl, LAOS COUNTRY, and images of Buddha. More than half the men in the kingdom have spent some years at least in the priesthood. Not a household but has furnished one or more sons to the monastery ; not a woman but contributes to the daily support of the priests, and spends her treasured coins for gold leaf to make the idols spleBdid. It has not been enough to supply cities and villages with temples more plentifully than those of our own land are with churches; the very hilltops must be crowned with pagodas and splendid flights of stairs built to make access to them easy; the caverns of the mountains must be sought out and turned into temples for Lord Gautama. No nation under heaven can better than these Siamese Buddhists sympathize with Paul as he catalogues his grounds of confidence in the flesh, and his works of righteousness which he had done j and none knows better what it costs to say with him, what everyone must say who becomes It Christian, " But what things were gain to me, these I counted loss for Christ."
HELPS.
1. Religious Toleration. -But over against these hindrances to the progress of missions in Siam and Laos there are some helps that do not exist, or do not exillt to the same extent, in other fields. And, first, there is entire religious toleration, and that by law. The very prince whose views were quoted above began the interview in which he gave utterance to them by informing his missionary callers that he had just returned from a visit to Lakawn, a principal city of the Laos provinces, and that while there he had purchased and now wished to present to the mission a site for a mission station in that place. The same man afterward paid to the writer as mission treasurer the sum of two thousand rupees, a gift from his royal brother for the purpose of erecting a dispensary in this same city of Lakawn j and it was just this encouragement and help from the highest in the land that led to the establishment there of what has since become a flourishing station, with churc1es, schools, and hospital. And this only illustrates what for many years has been the attitnde of the ruling classes toward the efforts of the missionaries on their educational and medical sides. There are few incidents of modern missions that more strikingly exhibit the providential guidance of God than the oft-told story which reveals to us the fountain.
head of this tolerance in the influence of amissionary over the future King of Siam, then a refugee in a Buddhist monastery from the hatred of a usurper. It is because in 1845 Rev. Jesse Caswell became tutor to Prince Chow Til. Mongkut, that from the time of the latter's accession to the throne, six years later, the missionaries have enjoyed increasing liberty to preach and teach, acquire property, open schools and hospitals, and make converts. The one serious exception occurred in 1869, when the then King of Chieng Mai (the most important of the Laos provinces) put two native Christians to death. But the persecutor's hand was stayed by his OWIl death, and in 1878 the King of Siam issued his proclamation of religious liberty for the Laos States, and to-day the missionaries are as free to prosecute their work as ministers are at home.
2. Position of Woman.-Along with religious toleration, the position of wo~an in Siam, and particularly Laos, deserves to be mentioned as one of the conditions favorable to the success of missions. There is perhaps no heathen land where women occupy a better position than in the Laos States. Monogamy is the rule among the common people. There are no harems or zenanas. The women wear no veils. They are to be seen everywhere-at their homes, on the streets, in the fields, keeping stalls in the markets, worshipping at the temples. The missionary may address them as freely as he does their husbands, sons, and brothers. Though Buddhism makes no provision for the education of girls, no prejudice is felt against allowing them to attend mission schools, and the Church in Chieng Mai has more than once availed itself of the talents of her native Phrebes and Priscillas, sending them out two and two into the villages to teach the women and children especially, but the men too as they had opportunity.
3. Spirit-worship ])riving People to Christ.-Buddhism has its weak points; it has even rendered some services to Christianity. Its false cosmogony is easily shown to be false; it was the prediction by Dr. McGilvary of the exact day and hour of a coming eclipse that attracted the attention of the man who became the first convert of the Laos mission. The monasteries and temple schools have made the men a nation of readers, into whose hands Christian books may be put. The burden of maintaining the great hosts of priests in idleness, coupled with the dissolute lives led by some of them, has here and there disgusted a community with the ancient faith. The elaborate system of merit making fails to satisfy the consciences of the really earnest; the vanishing prospect of some time attaining in Nirvana escape from the weary round of birth and death sometimes appears as mere heartless mockery; and thus a man here and a woman there is prepared to welcome the proclamation of a Saviour, and eternal life through Him. And yet, when abatement has been made for all these things, Buddhism must still be pronounced one of Satan's masterpieces for deluding men's 80uls. But the writer is inclined to raise the question whether in spirit worship, as in the phenomenon of possession by demons in the days of our Lord, the wily Prince of Darkness has not overreached himself. For the worship of evil spirits is wholly a religion of fear. It brings no salve to the conscience; it makes no ground for self-righteousneRS; it offers no hope for the future, not even such hope as Buddhism gives. "What do you do when anyone dies~" the writer once asked of a group of Moo Surs, a mountain tribe whORe only religion is spirit worship. "We cry and put him in the ground," was the answer. This faith contains no single element of hope or comfort for this life or the life to come. Incantations, charms, offerings, pilgrimages serve but one endthey make the spirits propitious for the moment, and that is all. We
THE NEGBO AS.A )lISSION.ilty. &27
have heard our grandparents talk of a " dark day," when the sun seemed to shine through an inky haze. Every day is a dark day for the adherents of this superstition. They live under a pall of dread, and he who offers them a way of escape from this bondage is likely to have earnest listenel'll. Think what the Christian doctrine of God's providential care must be to such. And, as matter of fact, a large number of those who make up the Laos church have been driven to the missionaries by this very superstition. For in Siam, as everywhere, belief in spirits leads to belief in witches. The Laos man whose child has become suddenly ill, or whose buffalo has fallen into a pit, has a short and easy method of reasoning. " Thii hai befallen me because the spirits are angry with me. But why should the spirits be angry with me, who have taken such pains to appease them? Must not some witch have set them upon me 1" And who is the witch 1 Alas for his enemy, if he has one! Alas for his neighbors, if he lIas no enemy! For his suspicion of witchcraft once aroused will soon light on some hint of the witch, and forthwith the accusation is uttered. A jury of the village elders is impanclIedto hear his complaint; but the jury is as superstitious as the plaintiff, and the verdict will generally be guilty. And what will be the penalty incurred by the innocent victim of this accusation ~ He will be driven from the village, his house will be pulled down, his garden rooted up. And where shall he go? There are cities in Laos land wholly inhabited by such supposed witches, who have been herded together as though they were lepers. But some hundreds at least have gone to the missionaries for help. They have heard that the missionaries are not afraid of spirits; at any rate, the missionaries are foreigners, and a refuge may be found with them; and so they have come under the power of Gospel truth, and found Him who was manifested to destroy the works of the devil.
THE NEGRO AS A MISSIONARY. * BY THE REV. J. R. BRIDGES, SALEM, VA.
William H. Sheppard, the subject of this sketch, was born in 1865 at Waynesborough, Va. He grew up after the manner of his race, not much cumbered by cares or clothes. A pious lady said to him when a boy, " I have been praying that God may make you a Christian and send you to Africa." This boy is now a man who, after a strange experience in Africa, has been speaking to crowded houses, capturing all by his eloquence, fund of humor, and histrionic qualities. At the age of sixteen years he studied for four years at Hampton, Va., and then spent three years at the Colored Theological Seminary at Tuscaloosa, Ala., under the • The following I. a brief sketch of a most remarkable colored man, who .pent .ome time Ipeaking throul:h the South, and at the lalt meeting of thu Synod of Virginia received a mOlt enthnlluUc hearing. control of the Southern Presbyterian Church. He spent two years in Atlanta, Ga., in charge of a church, but his success was so poor that the committee under whom he was working hesitated to recommend him to the foreign work, when he proposed to accompany the late Rev. S. A. Lapsley to Congo Free State.
The Foreign Missionary Committee at Nashville, Tenn., under the guidance of the Spirit sent him, however, and February 26th, 1890, he and Lapsley sailed from New York for Africa. One was the son of an Alabama jurist, a fine type of the ante-bellum South, the other the son of an enslaved race, yet they proved kindred spirits in the Lord. LandinI{ at Matadi, on the Congo River, and going by Stanley Pool, they rea.ched Luebo, 1000 miles from the coast, where they established a sta.tion. Many are the incidents related of -Lapsley once preaching so tenderly concerning God's love for men that the women said, " If the Bakete women knew your God, they would sing to Him i" or at another time, awakened at midnight by a weeping mother, who begged him to take her dying child in his arms and" tell your God about him i" or at another time, buying from slave-traders a little girl whose mother they had slain and eaten, and had also compelled the child to feed upon her mother's flesh. At times their position was one of peril, but by using the African telegraph system they escaped. This system consists of two oblong bells welded together, which being struck with a stick produce certain notes, each meaning a certain thing. Every canoe in passing must report at each village, else these beHs are sounded and the next village is notified to look out. Once word was brought that the Mechoka, a fierce tribe, would come at night and destroy the missionaries. Instantly the missionaries had the alarm sounded,. and this message went from village to village. "The Mechoka are coming to destroy the missionaries." Armed bands came running in from every quarter, butthe enemy, taking the alarm, had fled.
While in Luebo Lapsley met some natives of fine form, high insteps, broad foreheads, and tall figures. Upon inquiry he found that they belonged to the Bakuba tribe, a people under the great King Lukenga, who, driving out all other tribes, now inhabited the most desirable region in the interior, into which no foreigner had ever entered, as the penalty was death to the foreigner and destruction to the village showing the road.
The traders and Belgian officials for nine years, and even the king of Belgium, had tried through presents to gain an entrance, but in vain. These two brave men, feeling called of God to the work, made necessary preparations. While Lapsley was at Stanley Pool forwarding the goods, Sheppard, Jacob-like, made savory messes, with which he enticed the passing Bakubas, and thus, while eating with them, he learned many words of their language. Lapsley died suddenly at Underhill, a station at the foot of the Livingstone Cataracts, and the news of his death fell like a thunderclap upon the station at Luebo. Sheppard now regarded the contemplated work as a legacy fro~ his departed friend, and it is a striking proof of the heroic faith of the man that, though alone in Africa, deprived of the man upon whom he had always leaned, he started the following day on his perilous journey. Out of forty only eight men and a small boy responded to his call for men whose hearts were strong. When he reached the first Bakuba village he was royally entertained, but no one would point out thc road farther on. They agreed that his servant should go with a trading party to the next market-town for eggs. This man re1,urning guided him to the next village, where he was kindly received, but the people were publicly warned against showing the foreigner the road upon the pain of death. Again he man- aged to get permission for his man to go to the next town for eggs, and thus reached the next village. Here he was in' a quandary. The egggame would not work, for they offered to supply his wants at home. In his efforts at cornering the home market he performed wonders at eggeating, managing to di!lpose of thirty eggs at one meal; the eggs, however, were small and he was hungry and desperate. While seeking in the woods Divine guidance, three women came from a village ahead. When they returned home he quietly followed and reached another stage on his journey.
He had now been on the road thirty days, losing it often and often unable to travel at all. At M'Boma he remained one month, unable to advance or to go back, as the rains had washed away his marks. Finally three ivory traders on their way to Lukenga's capital passed by. Sheppard sent his headman to follow them at a distance and to mark the crossroads, he with the caravan following behind. Through five villages they passed, and finally reached Bechebing, 40 miles from the capital. The traders, giving them the slip. reported at the capital that a foreigner was on the road. In the mean time the people of the village refused to receive him for fear of their own destruction. That night he spent in the woods, and the next day the king's son, N'toinzadi, with fifty warriors camc to bring the villagers and the foreigner to the king to be beheaded. They seized the people, put ropes around their necks, and then seized Sheppard's men. Sheppard sat on a stool praying and not knowing when his turn would come. In despair he called to the leader in the Bakuba tongue, and assured him that he alone was to be blamed. " You speak my language," said the prince. " Yes. " "And you have come this journey without a guide~" " Yes. " "But did you not know all these paths years ago~" "No; this is my first trip." He then consulted with his men, and coming back said, " Remain here till I return from my father."
The villagers were released on parole, and for three days he waited in anxiety and prayer, not knowing whether the issue would be life or death. The villagers passed him with averted faces, as if blaming him for their threatened ruin, and he imagincd that he could read reproaches in his own men's eyes. In the mean time the king had consulted his wise men, who decided that Sheppard was PO Pay M'Cobba, who reigned before Lukenga, and that he had passed into the body of Sheppard. The prince and other nobles were sent to bring this resurrect-ed ancestor to the capital. On their way to the capital Sheppard was received with marked honor and free-will offerings of sheep and goats. Reaching the capital, they were put in houses different from any they had seen in Africa. Each house had an attic, in which corn and ivory were stored. It was surrounded by double fences ten feet high. In the house were carved bedsteads, tables, clothes-racks, and mats. The city was laid off in squares separated by broad streets.
Three days he remained in the house, while hundreds crowded the yard. The fourth day the king received him in the great square. Escorted by four princes, he passed through thousands of children, some rolling hoops and others running ahead playing leap-frog.
On the public square a large circle had been formed of blanket cloth with leopard skins for a carpet, and there he found the aged sister of the king, his Majesty with seven hundred wives, which number, however, did not represent the full complement. The king was borne by stalwart men. He was dressed in blue robes trimmed with cowries and beads, and his crown was ornamented with blue and white beads surmounted by a white tassel. Around his neck and legs were small brass rings. He presented Sheppard with a knife which had been handed down through the reign of seven Lukengas, and upon the butt end is a seal, which has been the deathwarrant of many thousand lives. The king is nearly seventy-five years old. He will be succeeded by his eldest son, who lives in his own house, nev.er to be seen by anyone till he ascends the throne. Between the heirapparent and Mr. Sheppard pleasant messages have been exchanged. The king has granted him land, houses, and stock, and given him permission to labor among his people.
Mr. Sheppard, in an interview with the king, endeavored to convince him that he was not PO Pay M'Cobba, but the king only smiled pleasantly. The civilization of this country is far beyond any yet found in the heart of Africa. Their code of laws is simple, clear, and rigidly enforced. Polygamy is prohibited except in the royal family. Adultery and fornication are punished by death. Gambling or drunkenness entails slavery upon the man's family. No loud noises are permitted after a certain hour at night. A thief confessing is fined, but denying, he must submit to the ordeal by poison. Every third day is a day of rest from labor. Dancing consists of a movement with music, one standing behind the other, no one touching the other. They dress in flowing robes made of native cloth. They are very particular about their personal appearance. Said a native, " Sheppard, you have no knife." "Yes, why do you say so ?" "Because your finger-nails are dirty." They only believe in an evil principle that brings storms and death. Slaves are slain to accompany their dead to the spirit-land. One thousand slaves were buried with the king's mother.
ON IDOLATRY. "THOU SHALT NOT-" S31
Mr. Sheppard obtained liberty to leave after promising to return in twelve moons. While in London he delivered a lecture in Exeter Hall, and was made a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, an honor conferred upon Mr. Stanley when he returned from Africa. A Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, evolved from a Virginia negro through the power of Almighty Grace, is our hero.
ON IDOLATRY. "THOU SHALT NOT-"
BY THE LATE REV. SAMUEL MATEER, OF TRAVANCORE, INDIA.
Among the Ten Commandments uttered amid thunders and lightnings and awe-inspiring signs by Jehovah Himself from Mount' Sinai, and engraven by His own finger on tables of stone as of perpetual obligation on all mankind, the second commandment is very full and express and particular. Its importance is thus evident, and the design that the injunction should not be violated, as if the fact that men would ill every possible way seek to infringe or evade it was present to the Divine mind, which, no doubt, it was.
The first commandment refers to the object of worship-none other but the true and living God, the same who chose the Israelites and l;evealed Himself to them as His peculiar people for the preservation of His revealed truth and the ultimate enlightenment of the nations, and who brought them up out of the land of Egypt and established them in the Holy Land. The second refers to the manner of worship : it must not be through images or visible representations of any kind or under any form. Idolatry denotes the worship of the Deity in a visible form, whether intended to represent the true God or false divinities. The meaning is so plain that Roman Catholics habitually omit this in all catechisms and summaries of doctrine, and to help them in so doing, they do not count it in the number ten, but divide the last commandment into two to make np the total of the Ten Words spoken of in Scripture. But in India we can refer them to the ancient colony of Jews in Cochin as authorities for a genuine copy of the Law, for as God committed the New Testament to the keeping of the Christian Church, so He committed His oracles of the Old Testament to the guardianship of the Jews, who also have been faithful to their trust; as testified by our Lord and His apostles; and our preachers sometimes relate to the Romanists a story of an image of St. Anthony and that of one of the Hindu gods made out of the same piece of timber and regarded by the carpenters as elder and younger brothers. Roman Catholics therefore are unable to join us in open-air discussions against Hinduism, for they are at once confounded by being charged with their image-worship.
Idolatry does not signify merely the worship of a material image as itllelf a living and powerful god, though e'en that is done by ignorant millions of the common people in India. There is a ceremony of COll!!ecration by which the gods are invited to take up their abode and inhabit the image. In Travancore the eyes of the image are sometimes opened by painting in the pupil on the background left by the workmen. There are some images, as the Salagram, a fossil shell found in rivers, which are supposed not to require consecration, being of themselves inherently the habitation of the indwelling deity without its being put in by any consecration ceremony. But few Hindus think of the consecration or distinguish between the image and the spiritual being represented by it. Indeed, the pantheism of India, which deifies the universe, rQgards all things as God and God as all, and declares the highest attainment of spiritual wisdom to consist in a poor, miserable, naked, half-civilized man's coming to say, "I am God." The idol is practically worshipped as itself God. It is bathed with water or milk, and anointed with oil, and carried to the sea or a river in state procession for a bath. This is one of the great periodical ceremonies in Hindu temples. The image is cooled in the hot season by water in a pot hung over it and dripping constantly upon it. It is clothed, and fed, and fanned, and regaled with the sweet scent of flowers and sandalwood. It is married, put to sleep, wakened in the morning by the blowing of the shell trumpet. Female images are said to be at times defiled; others catch cold and are sick or benumbed by enchantment. At Madura one opened the left eye to look in displeasure on a Mohammedan. And when the idol has shown itself disgracefully careless of the prayers and ungrateful for the offerings of the worshippers, it is beaten, contemptuously sat upon, broken up. or cast away. A man in Travancore erected a small temple on government land without leave. He was ordered to remove it, and delaying, a fine of a hundred rupees was imposed. He destroyed the whole, exclaiming, "What is the use of worshipping dumb idols that cannot help me in my time of need~" In the apprehension of the people in general the idols are real deities. They occupy the place of God and receive all the homage and honor He justly claims.
What said Rajah Rammohun Roy, a distinguished Hindu reformer ~ " Many Europeans feel a wish to palliate and soften the features of Hindu idolatry, and are inclined to inculcate that all objects of worship are considered by their votaries as emblematical representations of the Supreme Divinity. The truth is the Hindus of the present day have no such views of the subject, but firmly believe in the real existence of innumerable gods and goddesses who possess in their own departments full and independent power, and to propitiate them, and not the true God, are temples erected and ceremonies performed."
Only by the statements of the worshippers themselves can we ascertain whether the material idols themselves are worshipped or not. Some years ago a stone idol, a Salagram, was the subject of litigation in a eourt in Calcutta, and the judge consulted his Brahman interpreter and the Brahman agent of the plaintiff whether the idol could not be brought into the court for identification. They answered that it could not be brought in- side the court-house because matting is regarded as a conductor of cere- monial pollution, but it might be brought into the corridor of the building, which was done.
A great indignation meeting, however, was held by the Hindus of Calcutta, about ten thousand being present, headed by their leading priests and scholars. A distinguished Pundit addressed the meeting. " An idol," said he, " which was worshipped with all their heart, mind, and strength had been polluted. An object of worship was always kept in a sacred place, and for it to be moved into a court of justice was worse than sacrilege."
The next speaker said: "The God of heaven is an object of worship. He is the creator, preserver, and destroyer of things on earth, and now it occurs for the first time in the annals of British Indian history that a creature of the earth could order about a god of heaven as he liked. It was, therefore, their duty to take steps to prevent a recurrence of such sacrilege. " Here it is distinctly assumed that the idol itself is identical with the God of heaven, not a mere memorial or sign of His presence.
The natural desire of man is to see God-to walk by sight rather than by faith. To such it may seem desirable to have an image, an emblem, a reminder of God constantly before them to guide and help their conception of God, a visible symbol representing an invisible power. This might seem to some men a reasonable expedient as a first step to the knowledge of God. The Parsees now claim to be Theists, notwithstanding their worship of fire and the sun, taking these as the noblest emblems of Almighty God. The Israelites, when they worshipped the golden calf, said, " These be Thy gods (Elohim) which brought Thee up out of the land of Egypt. To-morrow shall be a feast to Jehovah." So also Jeroboam, 1 Kings 12 : 28. The Romanists tell us they only give an inferior worship to their images of the Virgin and saints. The Hindus perhaps had the idea in their mind of representing great power by the four arms of Vishnu and the sixteen of Siva and other representations.
But this is the very thing absolutely prohibited by God-any attempt to give men the knowledge of God by images or visible representations. It is emphatically forbidden in the Word of God, both in the Old and New Testaments. It is condemned by practice and precept, by prohibition and threatening. To bow adoringly to any image is a plain violation of God's law. It is not acceptable worship, but unbelief and disobedience. It is abomination and an insult to the living God. He is jealous of any attempt to worship Himself by any medium. "God is a spirit, and they that worship Him must worship in spirit and truth." However expedient and desirable it may seem to men to use images and pictures in divine worship, Scripture is the only standard and authority upon the subject. In the Word of God there is much about idolatry, and it is condemned and deprecated and rebuked with all the argument and scorn and vehemence of which human language is capable.
Idol worship does not as a matter of fact and experience aid men in the worship of God. It is unprofitable and useless. It does not remind the Hindus of God their Creator, Father, and Ruler, nor supply any aid or incitement to moral excellence and virtue.
" To whom will ye liken God, or what likeness will ye compare unto Him 1" ,, We ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold or silver or stone graven by art and device of man." It is impossible to convey any conception of God by an image of anything in heaven or earth or under the earth. On the contrary, idols are deceptive, and convey false and ruinous ideas of God. " Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself." The idea of God is obscured and de. graded. Such gods have been compared to the Brocken spectre seen at dawn on one of the mountains in Germany, but the magnified and distorted shadows of the people themselves, human frailties and passions and virtues projected -and magnified upon the heavens. These gods are simply immortal men. The stories told in the vile mythology of India about the crimes of their gods and the depraving legends of their amours are derogatory to God, dishonoring to His perfections, and virtually a blasphemy of the Divine Being, who cannot lie and is of purer eyes than to look upon iniquity. The votaries of such gods "feed upon ashes, a deceived heart has led them astray. " "They that worship idols are like unto them. " Men will imitate the character of the gods they worship. Indeed, according to the highest teaching of Hindu sages, idols are not worshipped for anything but temporal benefits and prosperity. We are accustomed to appeal to the Hindus when some attempt to defend idolatry- Do these idols lead you to God 1 Do they aid you in virtue 1 Are your people godly, truthful, righteous, chaste, good 1 We appeal to their own consciences as to the general character of those who worship idols, and the abominable fables related of their gods, and can boldly compare all this with the history of Jesus Christ and the character inculcated in Holy Scripture and exemplified in the native Christians around them.
Take again the testimony of the learned and enlightened Rajah Rammohun Roy. He says: "Idolatry, as now practised by our countrymin, must be looked upon with great horror by common sense as leading directly to immorality and destructive of social comforts. For every Hindu who devotes himself to this absurd worship constructs for that purpose a couple of male and female idols, sometimes indecent in form, as representatives of his favorite deities. He is taught and enjoined from his infancy to contemplate and repeat the history of these as well as their fellow deities, though the actions ascribed to them be only a continued series of debauchery, sensuality, falsehood, ingratitude, breach of trust, and treachery to friends. There can be but one opinion respecting the moral character to be expected of a person who has been brought up with sentiments of reverence to such beings, who refreshes his memory relative to them almost every day, and who has been persuaded to believe that a repetition of the holy name of one of these deities, or a trifling present to his image or to his devotees, is sufficient not only to purify and free him from all crimes whatsoever, but to procure for him future beatitude."
Idolatry invariably degrades, belittles, and corrupts the mind. The worshippers as well as the images have eyes, but they see not; ears, but they hear not. An elaborate and debasing ceremonialism takes the place of spiritual religion. In the earliest of the Hindu Vedas we seem to find something of a monotheistic faith, and there is no mention of idols. Then came the worship of the elements, then of the deities supposed to preside over the powers of air, fire, water, and earth, then the worship of innumerable gods, and within the last thousand years the wicked and monstrous fables, the elaborate ritual, the cruel asceticism, the outward meritorious ceremonies of the Puranas and popular Hinduism, down to the worship of the cow and monkeys and snakes, of the mint and the linga-yea, of the meanest objects in creation. Monotheism is utterly lost in the multitude of divinities. It was by such degrees that the Hindus" changed the glory of the incorruptible God for the likeness of an image of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed beasts and creeping things. Wherefore God gave them up in the lnsts of their hearts unto uncleanness." As Matthew Henry says: "Whoever thinks one God too little will find two too many, and yet hundreds not enough." Truly, their sorrows are multiplied that hasten after another God. Idolatry is utterly useless for the purpose for which it is now defended, as leading men's minds to God and His service.
Again, idolatry is not only an insufficient system of worship, but the Word of God declares that it is injurious; it is rebellion, high treason against the Divine authority. It springs from disobedience and rejection of God. The genesis of idolatry is sin in the heart.
Whatever theories may be held as to the lower animals (and the theory of evolution is far from being proved), we know from Divine revelation that men at first knew God, but fell. "Since the creation of the world God's everlasting power and divinity are clearly seen, being perceived by the things that are made, that they may be without excuse. Because that, knowing God, they glorified Him not as God, neither gave thanks. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator." Men shut their eyes to the light they had. They" refused to have God in their knowledge. " They were not willing that He should be King, should be a spirit and worshipped in spirit and in truth. Judged by their own natural light they are to blame. Like the rich man who hinted that the Scriptures were not enough for the salvation of his brethren without some one rising from the dead and becoming visible to their sight; like the Israelites who cried, "Make us gods that they may go before us," the frequent demand of the heathen is for a material vision of God. Show us God. Let us look at Him with our eyes and not be troubled to exercise faith in an invisible being and to exercise our hearts in spiritual meditation and loving communion.
Hence it is that the living God is the one being whom Hindus do not worship. There is not a single temple in the'whole of India to the one God. The heart that feels not the want of the living God as its proper nntriment will feed on the ashes of idolatry. Men will worship secondary causes instead of the great First Cause, the Author and Giver of all good. The fisher, we read in Hab. 1 : 16, "sacrificeth unto his net and burneth incense unto his drag, because by them his portion is fat and his meat plenteous. " So in India the implements of war, learning, arts, and agriculture are worshipped annually-the sword of the warrior, the tools of the artisan, the books and pens of the scholar, the almanac and accountbooks of the merchant. We have known Christian officers in India lend their swords and subscribe toward the cost of these ceremonies. Distrust in God and His power and grace, and reliance on the creature, are at the bottom of idolatry. "When one god is asleep another can help us," they say, "but as for you who worship but one God, when He is asleep, there is none to help you."· "One god is good for one thing, another for other things," is their doctrine. The omniscience of God is hidden from them. " Can you tell us of a god whom we can worship in the house without travelling so far and getting so fatigued~" The worship of the sun or the moon is declared by Job to be a denial of the God that is above, to whom we owe life and breath and all things. We are, therefore, specially anxious, in these days, to show the Hindus not only the folly and uselessness of idolatry, but to awake their consciences to a sense of its sinfulness and criminality before God.
Idolatry is a great sin against the majesty of the God of heaven, and is so spoken of in Scripture. Godly men would rather lose their life than yield to it. "We have no need," said the three godly Jews to the king of Babylon, "to answer thee in this matter. Be it known unto thee, o king, that we will not serve thy gods nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up. " The early Christian martyrs were asked but to cast a pinch of incense into the fire before the image, but would rather die than do so. Were they right? Certainly-rather die than deny the God that made us and loves us and redeemed us by his dear Son Jesus Christ.
Therefore it is that God has so often and so warmly declared His displeasure against idolatry. God must rule the universe, there is no other way possible. God is love, but He must love righteousness and hate iniquity. "My glory will I not give to another, nor My praise to graven images." He cannot transfer His supremacy to another, else the world would perish, righteousness would perish. No sin is more offensive to· God than thus to rob Him of His glory and give that glory to the finite creature. He is provoked to wrath by the rejection of Himself and perversion of His gifts to evil. " My bread which I gave, the fine flour and oil and honey wherewith I fed thee, thou did set before the imagel!l fora sweet savor." "I gave Israel the corn and the wine and the oil, and multiplied unto her silver and gold, which they used for Baa!." "The idol is a shameful thing." "It is an abomination to the Lord, an iniquity which shall be visited upon the third and fourth generation of them that hate Him." It is ingratitude, contempt, and rejection of God's rnle and dominion.
The Israelites were ordered to destroy all images and not to intermarry with idolaters. Idolatry in the nation was to be punished with death, and three thousand were slain for the worship of the golden calf. " If ye shall go and serve other gods and worship them, then will I cut off Israel out of the land which I have given them." For their idolatry and crimes the Canaanites were destroyed from the face of the earth. The Jews themselves suffered many national disasters, and ultimately a long captivity as a punishment for their idolatry.
Again, idolatry is in Scripture classed with the grossest sins, as one of them and leading to them. Neglect or abandonment of God must lead to sin. It is a fruitful source of superstition and vice. " Images," said Augustine, " are of more force to pervert the soul than to instruct it. " The gods that men invent are suited to their taste- " Gods changeful, passionate, unjust, Whose attributes are rage, revenge, and lust."
Gods not abhorring sin and easily pardoning vice, pleased with an external ritual without the veneration of the heart, under the power of their worshippers by their offerings and incantations. None of the Hindu deitiel!l represent any virtue.
Fearful cruelty and crimes which it is a shame even to speak of usually accompany idolatry. Its chief seats have always been cesspools of immorality and vice, and its allurements sensual pleasure. Missionaries are often at a disadvantage because they are unable to explain to a general audience the horrors of evil with which they are acquainted. In India almost every large temple has numerous priestesses engaged in vice, religious courtesans. These are spoken of as the servants and the wives of the god. We have known a melancholy case of a young woman who had been for some time under Christian instruction, but became irregular in attendance, and, when asked the cause, confessed that she was about to become the twenty.first wife of the god Bhuthanatha-" the wife of a stone," said she j "that is, the wife of anybody that wishes. Who can help me," she mourned j "it is settled by the gods, and I must submit to my fate."
It is all this indulgence in sensuality and pleasure that attracts and retains the worshippers, as it did the Israelites formerly. Idolatry exercises no restraint on vice, but rather encourages it. "In heathenism we can do as we like," some tell us, " but if we become Christians we must keep the ten commandments." The very carvings on temples and idol cars are often abominable, obscene, and bestial. From idolatry sprang human sa.crifices, formerly pra.ctised in India, the hook swinging, not yet effectually put down by government, and other sanguinary rites, widow burning and throwing of children into the idolized Ganges, weary penances, and toilsome pilgrimages. From idolatry and its distrust of Almighty God springs the resort to evil spirits for pretended divination, sorcery, magical arts, and demoniac possession. In the Tamil tractate Subhradipam, written by a native Christian, an argument against Hinduism is adduced from the fearful imprecations and magical charms and rites sanctioned by it for the destruction of enemies. Hence sorcery as well as sensual lusts are usually associated with idolatry in Scripture. " The works of the flesh are manifest, which are these: fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousies, wraths, factions, divisions, heresies, envyings, drunkenness, revellings, and such like, of which I forewarn you that they which practise such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God."
Lastly, it is but reasonable, as it is certainly scriptnral, to declare that idolatry is fatal to the souls of men. The Word of God declares the future punishment of idolaters. Everywhere in Holy Scripture it is spoken of as destructive to the souls of men. We must either give up the inspiration of the Word or accept the lost condition of the world. God says that men are perishing, and there is but one way of salvation for them. " This is life eternal, to know God," and men do not care to know God or to retain Him in their knowledge. What multitudes have withIn the last century heard the preaching of the Gospel and rejected it! Idolaters are under the" power of Satan," and many expressly worship devils as more prudent and profitable and more urgently necessary than the worship of God.
Ve read in Rev. 9 : 20 of those who "repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship devils, and the idols of gold, and of silver, and of brass, and of stone, and of wood; which neither see, nor hear, nor walk." So idolaters need to repent of this sin, and few do so.
Observe the connection in 1 Thess. 1 : 9, 10 between idolatry and the wrath to come, from which Jesus had delivered the Thessalonian converts, " Ye turned unto God from idols to serve a living and true God, and to wait for His Son from heaven, even Jesus, who delivereth us from the wrath to come."
See also Rev. 21 : 8, " For 1,he fearful, and unbelieving, and abomiooble, and murderers, and fornicators, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, their part shall be in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone, which is the second death."
Thus if we accept the testimony of Holy Scripture, and view idolatry in the light in which we are told God views it, we cannot rest; with the poor, cold, feeble, inadequate argument for missions that some are now resorting to, that the heathen must somehow be saved by the mercy of God, but
RAILROADS IN TURREY
we should add to their happiness and spiritual privileges by sending them the Gospel. That principle is one of mere philanthropy. No! They are living in sin, and to a great extent, in India at least, knowingly and wilfully, against the law written in their hearts and consciences, in the love of sin. They are responsible and guilty. They have such acquaintance with duty as is essential to accountability. They cling to heathenism even after hearing of God. They need therefore the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and not only from love to our Blessed Saviour and from obedience to Him, but from love and compassion to millions of perishing souls, should we send the Gospel to rescue them from their misery and danger. May God prosper the glorious work !
RAILROADS IN TURKEY.
BY REV. DR. HENRY H. JESSUP, BEIRUT, SYRIA.
It is well known that the present ruler of Turkey, His Imperial Majesty the Sultan Abdul Hamid Khan, is in favor of the material improvement of the Empire. He is a friend of railroads and wagon roads, and more has been done during the eighteen years of his reign in this direction than in all preceding reigns.
The accompanying sketch map has been prepared to show the various railways already built, and others under construction and proposed.
I. The Jaffa-Jerusalem Railroad, about 50 miles long, of standard gauge, constructed by a French company. This is eminently a sentimental railway, as it can hardly be expected to pay dividends to the stockholders. It may pay the employes and running expenses, and thus be saved from collapse. The tourist and pilgrim seasons are short, and during the greater part of the year it resembles the railways to the American mountain summer resorts during the winter. The last Arabic official journals just received from Beirut deny that this railway has been purchased by the Rothschilds, but add the somewhat remarkable news that the French company have asked permission from the Sultan to extend the road to the Dead Sea and Jericho. As Jerusalem is 2600 feet above the sea-level, and the Dead Sea is 1300 feet below it, there is a descent of 3900 feet in about 18 miles. A Swiss cog-wheel road could be built without difficulty in these days of engineering triumphs, but the question arises cui bono? The few hundreds or even thousands of poor pilgrims who go down to Jericho and the Jordan annually would never compensate the company even for running expenses, especially as the majority of the Russian pilgrims, in their superstitious devotion, come to Palestine with a vow that they will walk all the way from Jaffa to Jerusalem, to Jordan, Bethlehem, Nazareth, and back to Jaffa. The Dead Sea, with its salt and bitter waters, would seem, in a poetical sense, to be an appropriate place to " end" a railway which is said to be already a financial failure.
The Sultan has recently annexed to the Turkish Empire the district of Kir Moab (Kerak), southeast of the Dead Sea, where the sheikhs of the MajeUa Arabs have so long defied the government and levied blackmail upon travellers. A wagon road has been surveyed from Kerak to the Mezraa, on the southeast shore of the Dead Sea, and a steam launch is said to be prepared to run between the northern shore and Mezraa. As a military convenience to the Turkish garrison holding Kerak, this is a wise arrangement, but hardly enough to give business to the Jericho extension of the Jerusalem Railway.
A far more encouraging piece of news comes by the last Arabic journals of October 16th from Beirut, that the Jaffa Railway Company have asked of the Sultan a " concession" for building a breakwater and harbor at Jaffa. No tourist to Palestine can ever forget the perils of landing at Jaffa. It is proposed to build a stone breakwater enclosing a port large enough to admit steamers, and to extend the railway to the harbor.
II. The Haifa-Damascus Railway. A firman was given some years since to a native Syrian for the construction of a railway, standard gauge, from Haifa, under Mount Carmel, through the plain of Esdraelon south of Nazareth, via Jezreel and Bethshan to the Jordan south of the Sea of Galilee, thence northeast through the land of Javlon to Damascus, with a branch into Houran and east of the Jordan.
This concession was sold to an English company in London, who surveyed the road, let its construction to contractors, and a few miles of track were laid southward along the Kishon. Then came a sudden halt. The work stopped. The Syrian concessionaire sued the company for a heavy amount, and this with other suits is said to amount to some £80,000 sterling. The engineers in Haifa, having received no pay for seven months, seized all the plans and surveys of the road, and, according to reports published in the Lisan el Hal journal of Beirut, in September, were about to leave for London to prosecute the company. There has been gross mismanagement somewhere, and the whole enterprise is imperilled. It had proposed to continue the road eventually from Damascus to Baghdad.
III. The Beirut-Damascus Railway. The concession for this road was obtained four years since by a Syrian Mohammedan gentleman, Hassan Effendi Beihum, and by him sold to a French company, which has owned the Damascus Diligence road since 1860, and has also just completed a fine breakwater and harbor in Beirut at a cost of about $500,000. This road consists of three divisions: 1. From Beirut to Damascus. This crosses the Lebanon range at an elevation of 5000 feet. It is a narrow-gauge road, and has a third cograil on the steep grades. It pass@s northwest of Shtoreh below Zahleh, thence east to Wady Yehfofeh and Zebedany, and down the valley of the Barada (t1l.e Abana) to Damascus. This road will be open for traffic within a year.
2. The Damascus-Honran brauch. This ruus south of Damascus to the vast wheat region of Bashan and Houran, and is to terminate at Bozrah or Mezeirib. It is already finished and open for traffic. It will protJW)te the pacification of that turbulent district and provide a cheap outlet for the splendid wheat harvests of Houran, besides increasing largely the area of cultivated land. It will also be used by the Hajj pilgrim cara- van on the first stage of its progress from Damascus to Mecca.
3. The Damascus-Aleppo-Birijik branch. This is under survey, run- ning from Damascus northeast to Nebk and Kuryetein, thence northwest to Hums and Hamath, thence to Aleppo and northeast to Birijik on the Euphrates.
This is a part of the future inland mercantile and military trunk rail- way from Constantinople to Damascus. It passes through a fertile region now almost wholly abandoned as pasture land to the Bedouin Arabs.
IV. The Mersin-Tarsus-Adana Railway. This road was built some years since by an English company as the beginning of a through line to Mosul. It is completed only to Adana, and its extension eastward is among the uncertainties of the future.
V. The Constantinople-Angora-Cresarea Railway. This road is com- pleted to Angora, and is under construction to Cresarea, with the expectation of its ultimate extension to Diarbekir, Mosul, and Baghdad. It will, no doubt, connect at some time with Birijik and Damascus.
VI. The Smyrna-Ephesus-Aidin Railway. This is already extended 70 miles east of Aidin to Serai Kowy. through the finest fig-producing region in the world. It will, no doubt, be extended still farther eastward.
VII. The Constantinople and Bulgarian Railway. This is the connecting link between Constantinople and Western Europe.
The advantages of railway communication in this great Empire will be very great.
1. Large tracts of fertile land now lying desolate through insecurity will be brought under government control and settled by the peasantry now crowded into the mountain districts for mutual protection. The -great wheat region of Houran and Bashan and the vast trans-Jordanic pasture lands now claimed by the Bedouin Arabs will be gradually restored to cultivation.
The line from Damascus to Aleppo borders a district of great fertility, now desolate or sparsely settled and at the mercy of the Mowali, Hadideh, and A 'nazi Arabs. Mount Lebanon is crowded with villagers who earn a scant subsistence from their rocky terraces, but are afraid to venture out upon the plains. This railway will encourage settlers, enable the goverp.- ment to protect them, and thus benefit the whole land.
2. It will make travel more safe and economical. A box of Bibles now Bent from Beirut to Mosul (the ancient Nineveh) goes by caravan, and is
GROWTH OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH IN JAPAN
a month on the passage, and during the winter is liable to injury and delay from pouring rains and impassable roads. This is true of other routes, and increased facilities will increase opportunities for good.
3. It is to be hoped that increased means of intercourse will tend to bring the different tribes and nationalities of this motley and much-divided empire into a better acquaintance with each other. The Protestant communities of Asia Minor have little to do with those of Syria and Palestine; and yet they are under a common civil organization, with a common wakil or civil head in Constantinople. If the future Evangelical Church of the Empire is to be a unit, and co-operate for the common weal and the spread of the Gospel, the people must know each other, and send delegates to each other's conferences. Railways will make this possible. At present it is out of the question.
THE GROWTH OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH IN JAPAN.
BY REV. A. D. HAIL, D.D., JAPAN.
The Protestant division of the Church in Japan has passed through two periods in its progress, and is now in the initial stages of its third period. These may be loosely characterized as the periods of preliminary resistance, relaxation of resistance and revival, and reaction.
The first period embraces the time from 1859-72. To the missionaries of this period Japan was a Jericho, around the walls of which the powers that be, under severe penalty, forbade the priests the privilege of even "blowing their horns." The swaggering Samurai not only "looked daggers," but carried them, and that, too, with a purpose. Indeed, the threat was made that should the Christian's God Himself come to great Japan, even His head would be cut off. The whole chrysanthemum country was completely combined against Christianity.
When the Roman Catholic form of Christianity reached the high-tide of its great success several centuries ago, it drew to itself the attention of the Buddhists. They bQgan a series of persecutions and oppositions which were not terminated with the supposed extermination of those Christians. When our pioneer missionaries came they had, accordingly, to live in an atmosphere of suspicion and hatred generated by the same persecuting power. They found edicts everywhere on the government bulletin-boards against the faith they had come to propagate. The first teachers employed often proved themselves to be government spies. One man hired himself to Dr. Hepburn in order that he might find a favorable opportunity for assassinating him, and was disarmed only by the impression made upon him by the good doctor's uniform Christian kindness. Not quite twenty-five years ago several thousand Catholic Christians, still secretly maintaining their faith, were discovered and subjected to a cruel imprisonment, many of them in the neighboring city of Wakayama.
When the edicts were first taken down by the new government, it was only that they might be renewed by itself. The masses feared Chris_ tianity. and the rulers hated it. So late as 1872, when an inquiry was made of the Governor of Kobe (Hyogoken) whether a native bookseller would be permitted to sell the English Bible, the reply was given that any Japanese who sold a Bible knowing it to be such would have to go to prison.
By the close of 1859 the American Episcopal, Northern Presbyterian, and Dutch Reformed churches had missionaries upon the ground. One of Commodore Perry's sailors, a Baptist, came in 1860. The A. B. C. F. M.
and C. M. S. entered the field in 1869. The total number of missionaries at the close of 1872 was 28. During the first period, up to the time of the organization of the first church, 10 persons only had received baptism, 5 in Central and 5 in Southern Japan. The first convert, the teacher of Rev. James Ballagh, was baptized by him in 1864. The first church was organized March 20th, 1872, in Yokohama, consisting of 9 young men baptized on that day and 2 middle-aged men who had been previously baptized.
With 1873 began a new era in the progress of Christianity. The attitude of the rulers began to change. An embassy left Japan in December, 1871, making the round of the leading Western nations, returning in 1873. This body was composed of men of such ability and social standing as to have much weight and wide influence. The country began to wake up from its Rip Van Winkle sleep of ages. The edicts against Christianity were taken down, and the hundreds of Roman Catholic Christians were released from imprisonment. Various national reforms were undertaken, the Gregorian calendar was adopted, telegraphs, railroads, daily papers, postal treaties with West ern nations, school systems, prison reforms, and many other improvements began largely at this time, and so the Mikado's empire began to move into line with the great nations of the world. With this year also new missions began to be established, and 29 missionaries came which more than doubled the force already on the ground. At this time also the Committee on Bible Translation began its work. In the 55 missionaries on the field at the close of 1873 ten missions and 8 different bodies of Christians were represented. This second period closed about 1887. The .missionaries on the ground had increased in number, from 1873-78, to 99 ; 1879,122 ; 1882, 138 ; 1885, 183 ; 1887, 253. The converts numbered in 1873 about 125(?) with two organized churches. The number of baptized believers had increased in 1876 to 1004; 1879, 2965 ; 1882, 4987 ; 1885, 11,678; 1887, 19,825. During this period occurred three important and helpful events. The New Testament translation was finished November 3d, 1879; (The committee engaged in this work to its close were Rev. S. R. Brown, D.D., Rev. D. C. Greene, D.D., Rev. Dr. McLay, and Rev. J. C. Hepburn, M.D., D.D.) This was about five years and six months from the time they began it. Another important event was the conference of missionaries held in Osaka, April, 1883. Although every Christian body was represented and all the burning questions of mission polity were warmly discussed, yet the sub-base of a common love to our common Lord was the undertone heard through it all. The inftuence of that meeting for good still lingers, and has specially contributed to subsequent Christian comity and fellowship.
There was also about this time a gracious outpouring of the Holy Spirit and an uplift of the spiritual life of the Church. It spread throughout the entire country. It entered the Christian schools, and delegates from these went to the various churches to exhort them to do great things for Christ. The triennial convention of the Japanese brethren, which is one of their fixed in~titutions, was that year pervaded by such a spirit of prayer that they found it difficult to follow their prearranged programme. It was truly a Pentecostal time, and one in which the Holy Spirit's power assumed a new meaning. This served to give a good direction to the preaching services in the churches and the Christian addresses in the theatres and other places during those days. It also served to prepare the Church for the third and terribly trying period upon which it was soon to enter.
With 1878 Japan began to swing to the other extreme in regard to their treatment of things Western. A nation whose intensity of feeling against Christianity and Western peoples isolated them for three centuries, has in the continuity of its past a potent instrument for either good or evil. With this in the hands of a designing priesthood the politicians become mere puppets, while true patriots and Christian Japanese leaders have their inftuence greatly circumscribed, and also as members of the" body politic" must have their own feelings more or less colored by it.
The schools were the first to feel the effects of the reaction. The attendance dropped from 10,297 in 1888 to 8758 in 1889-90 i in 1890-91 was another drop of 1861, leaving the enrolment for that scholastic year 6897. The year 1893 shows an increase of 253 over 1892, but less by 2305 than in 1887-88.
During these years there has also been an annually decreasing number of adult baptisms, dropping from 6884 in 1888 to 3636 in 1893. The number of exclusions have annually increased during this time from 161 in 1888 to 636 in 1893. The adult baptisms for these years run as fol. lows: 1888, 6884 i 1889, 5007 i 1890, 4431 i 1891, 3718 i 1892,2731 ; 1893, 3636. The number of exclusious for the same time are: 1888, 161; 1889, 286 i 1890, 355; 1891, 322 i 1892, 573; 1893, 636. There has, however, during these years been a net increase of 11,884, the membership by years being, 1888,25,514; 1889,31,181; 1890,32,380; 1891, 33,390; 1892, 35,534; 1893, 37,398. In these reactionary years the contributions of the Japanese Christians amount in round numbers to about 500,000 silver yen ;* to thc close of 1893, from 1888, the sum was 428,6~8.44 yen, the largest contributions for one year having been made in 1891. The organized churches increa~ed in number from 221 to 365, or 144 during these last five years. The number of theological students, ministers, and Bible-women has steadily increased. The present number of theological students is 367 ; native ministers, 206; unordained preachers and helpers, 665 ; Bible-women, 279.
One reason for the annual increase of exclusions and decrease in the number of baptisms since 1888 is the fact that the Church has come to a better conception of the Christian life. They have become more careful in the instruction of catechumens and increasingly particular in insisting upon the maintenance of Christian character.
This straightforward, silent, steady growth of the Church finds its solu- tion in the fact that it has a life derived from Christ alone, or rather in the statement that Christ still lives in and sustains His saints.
Spiritual, like all other forms of life has within it such a mystical, in- visible element that its growth can be known only by the peculiarities of external manifestation.
A disappointment is sometimes felt by missionaries and others that the developing life of the Church and of the individual Christian does not manifest itself in forms that are in the line of those to which they have themselves been most accustomed. The unreasonableness of such a dis- appointment ought to be evident with but little reflection. In the West, where we have so many different denominations developed, each under trials and difficulties peculiar to itself, and where each one has stood for the emphasis of some one important truth overshadowed by others, there , has come in time to be a common denominational consciousness, so much so that we can even speak of different types of piety. In, America we have very distinctly marked types, such as the Quaker, the Methodist, the Old Presbyterian, and the Episcopal. In Japan the Church has not become so thoroughly denominational, and so its type of life partakes more of national and racial peculiarities. The kinship of the general life of the Church to that of the West is indicated by that literature which is so help- ful to all Christians everywhere. Thomas a Kempis's "Imitation of Christ" and Stolker's "Christ's Image" have had a large sale; with them also Bunyan's" Pilgrim's Progress" is immensely popular, and un- bounded delight is taken in following pilgrims from the cross and the wicht-gate through the whole way to the wide-open gates of the celestial city.
Prayer, providence, and the Word of God have been markedly con- spicuous in their relation to Japanese Christian life. Shortly after the opening of the country to foreign intercourse, about 1857, Dr. S. Wells Williams and the Rev. W. E. Style, of Shanghai, went to NagasakLt At that time the United S~tes gunboat Powhatan was in port, and on the • A yen is somewhat less than a dollar. t Rev. Dr. Stont, Osaka Conference Report. occasion of a visit of the officers to the governor of the city, they were invited with the chaplain, Rev. Mr. Wood, to join the party. In course of conversation during the call the governor said that Japan was now open to trade with other nations, and the Japanese would be glad of anything the foreigners might bring them except two things-viz., opium and Christianity. The remark was noted, and on the return of these three gentlemen to the vessel they talked the matter over. It was plain to them that the governor did not know what Christianity really was, but had formed his opinion of it from Roman Catholicism in the country in former times. They therefore resolved that they should try to bring about the introduction of true Christianity, and wrote letters to the Boards of the Episcopal, Presbyterian, and Reformed churches in America, urging the sending of missionaries to Japan. The answer to the prayers of these men and their letters were the first missionaries sent out in 1859. Subsequent events have shown that for the onward movement of the Church in modern missions God had struck the hour of the Church's opportunity. "The isles were indeed waiting for His law." In these early days there was a large number of Japanese with whom the missionaries first came in contact who could read Chinese Bibles and tracts, and these did a good service in sowing the seeds of spiritual life.
As an instance in point we have the well-known case of General Wakasa, who commanded the littoral guards at Nagasaki in 1854, when an English fleet suddenly made its appearance in that harbor. It was his duty to prevent the landing of foreigners except at a designated spot. In his rounds he saw a New Testament floating on the waters and fished it out. From a Dutch interpreter he learned its nature, and afterward obtained a Chinese translation of it. He began reading it immediately. After Dr. Verbeck came to Nagasaki he received a request for instruction from this general, who was living two days'journey in the interior. Owing to feudal restrictions the general could not go in person, but sent by a messenger passages of Scripture for explanation. In time he was ripe for the reception of Christ's appointed ordinance. Dr. Verbeck, on May 20th, the day of Pentecost, 1866, baptized two members of this his interior Bible class-viz., General Wakasa and Ayabe San, his brother. The general translated portions of the Chinese New Testament into easy Japanese for the women of his household, and they too were instructed in the way of salvation. A daughter and female servant were baptized in 1880 at Nagasaki. They reported that the general died a most triumphant death. The servant's zealous service for her spiritual master has resulted in the organization of a church in Saga. A granddaughter of Wskasa has become a Christian, and in 1890 a grandson entered the Doshisha College,bringing with him, and presenting to th~ school, a large English Bible given to his grandfather thirty years before, but which they had been obliged to conceal for years on account of persecution.* Dr. Ver- * Dr. Gordon, .. American Missionary In Japan." beck states that "by the close of the first period of mission work many thousands of volumes of Chinese Bibles and other ChristIan literature had been circulated. These were obtained mostly from the Presbyterian and London Mission presses at Hongkong and Shanghai. The faithful authors of this literature were little aware that while working for the salvation of China, they had been, as it were, writing with a double-pointed pen and working for Japan as well."
There is no mission in Japan but that can in some place or places in its history point to signal instances of the initiation of spiritual life and labor to the seemingly direct inspiration of a conjunction of these three factors-prayer, providence, and the pure Word of God. Prayer at the time of the providential opening of Japan preceded the coming of the first missionaries with Chinese Bibles. Prayer preceded the organization of the first Church in Japan, just at that moment when God's providence opened the country in 1873 to wider Christian effort. Prayer and the translation of the New Testament preceded the revival of 1883. There has for the last year been an unusual spirit of prayer in the churches, while more than 13,000 Japanese Christians are enrolled in the Scripture Readers' Union, and this just preceding that inscrutable providence within which is infolded a dark war cloud big and black with wrath. Has not the Father thus been rooting the life of His people in the living Word that they may firmly endure the coming storm ?
There has from the very first been a spontaneous tendency of the life of the Church toward uniou. Our Lord counted upon the oneness of His people as one of the most apposite of apologetics. In the Saviour's sad. dest hour the solidarity of His saints was His supremest solicitude. " Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also that believe on Me through their word: that they all may be one, even as Thou, Father, art in Me and I in Thee, that they also may be one in us : that the world may believe Thou didst send Me." It might have been feared, in view of the many years of feudalism that existed in the land, with the consequent tendency to clannishness thus generated, that the various bodies of believers would carry the " clan spirit" into their various denominations, but there has been but little of this. The consummation of the promptings of the Spirit in the direction of union. and fellowship has become a fixed hope and prayer with Japanese Christians. Indeed, the greatest checks to union have come from our constituencies in the West. In the earliest years of the work, in September, 1872, the three Presbyterian bodies then in the country and the A. B. C. F. M. missionaries agreed upon a basis for the organization of their churches. '" "The plan," says Dr. Gordon, "of forming simple churches of Christ failed at the time, largely (must it be confessed?) because some people couldn't count converts so easily; but the good tlpirit of the convention has followed these missions down to the present time."
• .. American Missionary in Japan." Yet the union of churches in Japan has not wholly failed, and with the splendid nationalistic feeling in the country and the continued development of the spiritual life of the churches, it is a mere question of time when other unions will be effected. There are now two united bodies in Japan. The English, American, and Canadian families of the Episcopal household unite in building up the Nippon Leikyokwai. Four missions are represented in this work. It has 4 bishops, 3 arch-deacons, 91 missionaries, 61 theological students, 21 native clergy, and 5157 members. The other united body, Nippon Christo Kyokwai, has seven co-operating missions representing one Scotch and five American Presbyterian churches. It has 140 missionaries, 105 theological students, 62 ordained ministers, and 11 ,200 members.
With the union of the various Methodist bodies and of all the orthodox bodies holding the Congregational polity, the 23 missions in Japan would be engaged in building up but four branches of the Church. " Desire for union is strongest either in the newly converted or in the mature Christian. An intermediate stage of experience is the best soil for the growth of the denominational spirit."* With the more marked maturity of the • Church, therefore, may we expect that its oneness may become more and more manifest.
The unfolding of the life of the Japanese Church adds one more illustrative fact to the truth that it thrives even under trials. Its dangers have not dwarfed, but have deepened its life. Spiritual life is not one of God's hothouse plants. The life of Christ's body, the Church, has its wilderness temptations and Gethsemanes, as well as had its great Head. Persecution has played a painful part in the work-imprisonment, the pressure of public sentiment, and other forms of it peculiar to Japanese social life. The son of a man who was assassinated JIllany years ago for his supposed sympathy with Christianity became a Christian. He writes: "One day when I returned home from school my mother informed me that if I did not renounce Christianity she was going to commit suicide that very evening. My father had been assassinated because he was supposed to have been a believer in Christianity, and his friends told me that if her son became a Christian the stain on the father's name could never be washed away. It was a terrible trial, but I asked for a little respite that I might reconsider the claims of Christianity. I said I was willing to abandon it if I could see that it was not true. So it went on. They used every means in their power to change my mind, but the unseen hand was above us and led me. After three months I got permission to go to the government college in Tokyo, and a year after I entered the theological school in Kyoto. . . . My mother is now a Christian rejoicing in the faith."t A Buddhist priest baptized by Dr. Verbeck suffered in various prisons for five years. A teacher of Rev. O. H. Gulick was put in prison for his faith • Dr. Gordon. t Dr. Gordon, " American Missionary In Japan." and died there. There have been threatened disinheritance, boycotts, imprisonment of sons at their own homes, the stoning of Christian preach- ing-places, and lately a cowardly and cruel working of the nationalistic feeling against Christians j but whatever the form of trial, they have borne it as a whole with a prudence and patience that places them in the long roll of those worthies who from the beginning have suffered for Christ.
There are numbers of Christians who have given up lucrative employments from the conviction that these were inconsistent with the Christian life-wholesale sake brewers, renters of houses for immoral purposes, the manufacturer of theatrical costumes and furnishments, and others. There are those serving in the ministry receiving far less than they could obtain in government employ.
A girl who makes 90 cents a month manufacturing paper match-boxes keeps the Sabbath, though it means a loss of 12 cents a month from her scant wages. There are other instances of a similar kind. Missionaries whose work necessarily puts them into the closest and tenderest relations to the Japanese Christians could recount many cases of personal sacrifice, patient cross-bearing that would be a source of helpfulness to all who love our Lord. The life of the Church, as it has grown and shown itself in Japan as a whole, is a grand nineteenth-century evidence of the truth and power of Christianity.
Of course the life is not yet a perfect one, and there still are things criticisable by pastors and others, else there were no further need of either, but better than this is it ours to see Christ back of it all.
The developing life of this Christian body is its safeguard in these days when so many loose Western theologies threaten it. The creation by the Holy Spirit of a Christian consciousness through the common experience of the fulness and fitness of Christ to meet the spiritual hunger of the human heart and to heal "all its diseases," is that which increasingly tends to hold the Church true to her great Head. A Buddhist priest who became a Christian, when giving his household Hotoke San to a missionary, said that two years before becoming a Christian he gave up the worship of this idol, " but I never knew how dear it was to me until, in accordance with my vow, I bowed before it for the last time in worship. No human being can tell what a lonesome heart I had during these two years. I had given up the only object of worship I knew, and there was no other to take its place j but since I have known Christ I have never known what it is to be lonesome-hearted. "
As there are" flowers that bloom in the sunless depths of the sea," so this sweet common experience of Christ in the heart is the flower that continually grows in the depth of this Church's Christian life, no matter what storms sweep the surface above it~· Hurtful theologies cannot stand before the soulful satisfaction found in the spiritually presen1; Saviour.
This is the direction which the Church's apologetics are beginning to assume. An eloquent Japanese pastor, at the recent twentieth anniversary
DR. GORDON'S RELATION TO MISSIONS
of his church, said: "Our early apologetics took the direction of the nature of the God we worshipped as compared with the prices of dried wood the idolators worshipped. We were soon met with the popular reply from them, that we do not worship the wood, but only what these images represent. We then took up the superiority of Western morals and progress, for in those days we supposed that the Western people were about all of them Christians, and everything in their civilization was good j but we finally had to weaken on that line. At last, after trying the whole round of evidences, we come back to the argument from Christian experience. We can stand before our adversaries and tell them of our hearts baptized with the Holy Spirit, with a rest of soul as deep and broad and beautiful as a quiet sea in a still night reflecting the stars of heaven. "
Other features of the growing life of the Church readily suggest themselves, and can be only mentioned. This intensifying Christ-life has caused confessions of sin and restitution, the reconciliation of enemies, a purer family life, lives of faith, and the founding of institutions thereon that have been as marvellous as that of Muller's Bristol work. Indeed, the one thing the Buddhists now fear more than anything is the life of the Christian Church, and they are now duplicating in a mechanical way every institution that is the dynamical outgrowth of the life of the Church.
DR. GORDON'S RELATION TO MISSIONS.
* BY REV. H. C. MABIE, D.D.
If I were to express in one word Dr. Gordon's relation to missions, I should say that hi, interest in missions was integral; it entered into his very spiritual personality ; it was but the natural breathing and outcome of his being; it was no form of service that was put on as a garment; no perfunctory performance; no line of duty taken up hecause he had been elected to fill some official position. Missions with him, as with the God who instituted them, and with Jesus Christ His Son, who by His atonement made them possible, were constitutional. He could no more think of missions as geographically limiting his thoughts, his heart, his life, his enterprise, than you could think of there being limits to the sympathies of our Lord Jesus Christ. I suppose it to be the very essence of the heart of God that He yearns over humanity as a whole, longing with infinite tenderness to impart His own type of being, His own type of life, His own type of blessedness, to His creatures. It proceeds from within, as does the heat of the sun. So was Dr. Gordon's relation to the work of missions; it was born in him by the Spirit of the living God. He was in his natural birth the descendant of a parentage missionary in spirit. The • From at) tj,d<lre•• delivered at the funeral, Boston, February 5th. very name which his parents gave him in the old birthplace in New Hampshire was indicative of the spirit that had ruled in the ancestral home in admiration of the foremost martyr of this missionary century-Adoniram Judson. So also, in connection with his conversion, there seemed to be transmitted to him and implanted within him the very essence and genius of this relation to the whole earth in the spirit of his honored and saintly name8ake.
Dr. Gordon's Bible was a missionary Bible from Genesis to Revelation, not merely containing a passage or two in the form of explicit command, such as " Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature" -but the entire Book, the volume as a whole, the complete oracles of the Old and New Testament, were missionary, from the" In the beginning" to "Even so, come, Lord Jesus." And so whatever his point of departure in his Rtudyor meditation on the Divine oracles, they were ever saying to him, "This is too good, too Divine to be kept; it must be shared with the entire family of mankind." And so Dr. Gordon's preaching was evermore missionary preaching, because missions are the interior of the Bible, the essence of the Gospel, the reincarnation of Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit among the nations, and he could not expound these words without exhaling a missionary spirit.
Dr. Gordon's world in which he lived was a missionary world. He found himself a denizen of a goodly city, indeed, of a noble commonwealth, of what we are fond of calling the most exalted nation on earth; but Dr. Gordon regarded himself far more than this, even a denizen of the planet; the entire earth was his home, his parish; and so these artificial missionary limitations that we are wont to form called home and foreign, because of our shortness of view and our failure to take in the great Divine perspective, which so often affiict the minds of God's people, never affiicted his mind. Those of you who have heard him speak of missions will remember how he was wont to say that the best prayer-book in the world is a map of the world. " Go," said he, "into the closet, and spread out this prayer-book before you, and then draw a line round some portion of the world, and pray, if you can, 'Thy Kingdom come.' Nay, rather, get the entire globe before you, and hover over it in the spirit of the Holy Ghost, who brooded over chaos, and brought light out of darkness, order out of confusion, salvation out of death, and you will pray aright." This was his attitude toward the world in which he lived.
History, in its ongoings, as Dr. Gordon viewed it, was missionary history. He was not a man sailing over a trackless deep without chart or compass, with no desired haven in view. History was not to him a confused mass of accidents, as it is to the materialistic thinker of our dayan insoluble riddle-a hopeless tangle. The history of the world, as he viewed it, started from a beginning and went on through the middle to the end, in an orderly way, and the end was a glorious and Divine consummation. The one last word that escaped his lips WaS "Victory I" He believed that this was assured in history. His faith swept the entire perspective, and hence it was that he saw great mountain peaks in that wondrous landscape where some of us, perhaps, see only hillocks, if we see even these. His view of history was simply the successive stages of the plan of human redemption, with its glorious culmination.
" The great world's altar stairs That slope through darkness up to God."
If some thought at times that his view of proper mission work was superficial or pessimistic, I bid them think again. If some think that he emphasized unduly what he regarded as the great and immediate duty of the Church in this present age-viz., to preach the Gospel "for a witness" -let them think how long, how ardently, how profoundly he pondered the words of the Lord–for His words they are-" This Gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations, and then shall the end come." What Dr. Gordon meant by the" witnessing" is not that superficial post-boy, flash-light method of Christian enterprise which some imagine. * What it is let his own tremendously earnest and concentrated efforts-which burnt out the fires of his lifetestify. He meant all that Jesus Christ meant when He said: "To this end was I born and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness to the Truth." Christ's personal ministry, from the manger to the throne, he believed to be but a witness-the beginnings of things, not the consummation of them-the foundations only of the eternal kingdom that God was to rear. He meant all that the Apostle Paul meant when he spoke of his consummate privilege " to testify the Gospel of the grace. of God j" to" finish his course," a life-work that in the Divine plan had a beginning and a completion.
Dr. Gordon was profoundly moved in respect to missions because he believed that the Holy Ghost-the Third Person of the adorable Trinitybeing the soul of the Christian Church, was likewise the soul of its most characteristic' work, Christian missions. The Holy Spirit, and therefore his spirit, could not rest until it can:ied out what was hinted on the great natal day of the Church-the first Pentecost. Hence it was that Dr. Gordon's thought respecting missions was simply coincident with and exactly commensurate with the attainable spirituality and spiritual service of the Church of God in this age. Missions in his mind were the birth * That there are those who entertain such a view we do not dispute, but such was not Dr.
Gordon's conception of the witnessing. He did indeed believe that, however thorough and effective this period of witnessing among the nations might be, It was ouly preliminary and relatively Ineffectual as compared with what the period of world-harvest to follow the Lord's return will be. This with him was, however, chiefly a matter of programme of the Divine plan of operation. In his mind .it neither warranted superficiality of present-day effort, nor landed him in pessimism. Rather it afforded his basis for the most triumphaut optimism-the only basis for it which he saw In RevelatioD. On this basis he was at least always a pro-millennialist. (See Dr. Gordon's" The Holy Spirit in llIieeions," Ilrst chapter.) of the Holy Ghost~· and hence he could not preach as he did, or think as he did, or write as he did, concerning the Holy Ghost's administration of His Church, without thinking of the most heroic application of service in behalf of all pagan peoples, wheresoever they may be found, destitute of the Gospel. With his large outlool~ on the world, we can appreciate that characteristic hospitality which Dr. Gordon entertained toward all forms of Christian enterprise. Some of us are wont to choose for ourselves the forms of mission which we prefer to do, and we sometimes say, "I will do this," and "I won't do that," but he never thus spake in respect to any aspect of Christ's work on earth. He was naturalized to all Christ's work. To him that work was a circle, not an arc. It was globed. Hence he was as much at home in alien cities as in his own Boston, at the "Vorld's Missionary Conference in London as some of us saw him-easily king of missionaries, as he was imperial among pleaders for missions, the one man without whom no single session was thought complete till his voice had been heard. Hence it was that in Edinburgh and Glasgow and throughout Scotland he was welcomed everywhere, and fitted into the relations and voiced the missionary interest of these people just as naturally as if he were addressing his own prayer-meeting here in Clarendon Street Church. So their testimony was, " He fed us with the finest of the wheat. ,. He enlarged their horizon in respect to the world, and gave them a relish for its conquest. Hence it was that in Paris, with the McAll Mission workers, he was not only welcomed, but eagerly sought for. Hence it was that in our own land he was sought on all platforms where missions were to have a peculiar and effective advocacy. Hence it was that the Student Volunteer movement, the great conferences at Northfield and Ocean Grove and elsewhere regarded his presence and his addresses as indispensable. Hence his favor for the Salvation Army movement, which he commended and cheered when almost all men set it at naught. Hence it was that in the stables of street-car drivers, on the wharves along shore in Boston, or in refuges of the lost, he was everywhere welcomed as the supporter, advocate, and brother, vitally linked with all these organizations of any and every name.
But who shall tell what our beloved brother was to the American Baptist Missionary Union-our counsellor, our inspiration, our pride j none so meek as he. I may be allowed to say, without disparagement of any one, that all through his official relations to that body, through so many weary years in our committee rooms in this city, he often surrendered opinions of his own respecting ways and means in deference to his brethren, whom he was always ready to think of as more to be considered than himself. He was always ready to take the field for us, and was the bulwark of that organization. How this noble church has stood by him and followed him, till at length they only wanted to know his thought and they would anticipate it! There was with him no pulling of people's door-bells to extract from them unwilling offerings j no passing around nertously, hat in hand, to beg for Peter's pence; but rather he quietly exalted the lofty privilege of giving, and reminded of the blood mortgage on all men to redeem the world.
Since I came into this building this morning, I was approached by a young man, a member of one of the young people's societies here. " Excuse me, sir," said he, "but I must tell you what occurred here at our Monday night prayer-meeting. It was discussed what we shoqld do to express our feelings on this occasion, and at length it was resolved-and do you wonder at it-that we would do what he would have liked us to do. There is a great debt upon the Missionary Union; we will make an offering toward its extinction. And in a few minutes we had collected between four and five hundred dollars-gathered with the loving thought that that would have been our pastor's desire." 0 brethren, talk of inB.uence, and power to bring things to pass! It is that unspoken inB.uence which tells-it is what we are far more than what we 8ay, that carries our people. It is what he was in his majesty, his Christly simplicity, that has made his people yearn to be and do. It is that which causes this audience to-day to heave like the billows of the ocean-its main desire to be like Him.
It has been said over and over again, "How can we get on without this brother, in the family, in the church, in the Missionary Union, in Christendom ~ How can we spare him~" Shall we not rise to the heavenly view-point and look down upon it as God does, for this we must do, if we are to stand under this sense of loss? Shall we not remember the words of Him who said-even concerning Himself, the Master of all discipies-" It is expedient for you that I go away, for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come?" God in His providence has demonstrated that it is expedient for us that our brother be taken. He says he can be spared from this side, that he may be glorified on that side ; and God has settled that j it is expedient that he be taken. What, then, we ought to say is this: not how can we get on without Dr. Gordon ~ how can we get on without our pastor 1 how without the chairman of our committee ~ how without him in these Christian assemblies ~ but rather this: how can we get on without those compensations in grace which God's Spirit and providence will give to us if we shall have sanctified to us this inexpressible loss ~ That is what we cannot afford to get on without. We ought to settle it in this house to-day-every one of us-that with God's help we will not get on without that-that compensation, that transmitted bleesing, grace, and power, which may come to us, especially upon the ministry of the land. We draw no denominational lines here to-day. May there come upon the ministry of the world the baptism of fire in connection with thie departure! Oh, that the spirit of Elijah may fall upon Elieha-not !!imply upon !!ome !!ingle man toward whom the Church, in the deep, dark days before them, may reach forth dimly to find as a suc_ Ce!!SOr ill the pastorate, but upon ten thousand ministers of Jeaus Christ-
KEV. ADOLPHE MABILLE. 355
psstors of sll churches, the ministry of all denominations, by whatever name designated, upon united Christendom. Nay, I will not draw the line more narrowly than he would-upon the circle of entire pagandom as well as upon entire Christendom-that there may come such an anointing, such an outpouring of the Holy Ghost, as will be indicative of that great and final world Pentecost toward which his thoughts were forever bent and on which his eye was forever fixed.
REV. ADOLPHE MABILLE, * OF THE FRENCH PROTESTANT MISSION IN BASUTOLAND.
BY ABBIE P. FERGUSON, SOUTH AFRICA.
It is as when a standard-bearer fainteth. The Basuto Mission of the Paris Society in South Africa has suffered a great loss in the death of Rev. Adolphe C. Mabille, now almost a year ago. He was the heart and centre of a great work, one of the most wonderful in its results in South Africa. Dr. Moffat used to speak of it as the most successful of missions.
Mr. Mabille was in his fifty-eighth year, and we had looked forwarll to years of usefulness for him, but he has fallen in the thick of the fight. He was a most intensely active man. One of his fellow-missionaries said of him: "It is of no use to relieve Mr. Mabille in his work, for as soon as he is relieved in one thing he finds something else to do." He had a wonderful helpmeet in his wife, the daughter of Dr. Casalis, one of the pioneer missionaries in Basutoland. The Basutos say of her, "She is our mother, she was born in our land, she is one of us, and what she says is good." And she has unbounded influence among the people.
Mr. and Mrs. Mabille began the work of training evangelists during a time of war. Coming back to look after their people at Marijah,t they were detained there, and while the war cloud hung heavy about them they gathered a few young men and taught them how to help others. Out of this small beginning grew the Bible school at Marijah, from which hundreds of young men have gone forth to all parts of South Africa as teacher!'! of the Word. During all these years Mr. Mabille has given much time to this work, often taking a class at six -in the morning. A small class of young men have gone on to a fuller theological training. and these have been, in fact, under Mr. Mabille's instruction. Indeed, Marijah has been a centre of great activity, with its theological class, its sixty Bible students and seventy .normal students. One great secret of the success of this mi!'!sion has been, under God, the training of the native ChriEltians to work among their own people. I have heard Mr. Mabille say: "Our native .. Mr. Mabille had II church of 1600 communicants and 600 inqulrel'l and OTeraaw work in 16 outstations.
tOrMorija. Christians can help their own people much better than we mIssIonaries can. They know their difficulties and the way to their hearts. "
There are twenty out-stations connected with the Marijah Church, each under the care of a native evangelist, and it was Mr. Mabille's aim to place such evangelists all over Basutoland, until every heathen should come within sound of the Gospel. These twenty evangelists were directly under Mr. Mabille's care and oversight. Twice a year they came up with their church-members to Marijah to a great spiritual feast. These have been never-to-be-forgotten scenes, when hundreds of the Lord's dear people have gathered on the green hill-side around the table of our Lord, and have shown forth His death until He come. Too many for even the great church to hold, they have stood under the blue of the sky, with the grand Maluti Mountains looking down upon them, reminding one of the innumerable company.
Mr. Mabille has always been the life and centre of these gatherings, laying his hand in baptism upon those gathered out of heathenism, breaking the bread of life, speaking words of reproof and exhortation. There were always special meetings for the evangelists, when they reported concerning their work, and received special instruction and counsel from their spiritual father. Mr. Mabille was much used in bringing souls to Christ. I shall never forget seeing a multitude of heathen filling the Marijah Church, many of them under deep conviction of sin, and how wisely Mr. Mabille and his helpers led many of them to accept Jesus as their Saviour.
The printing of a monthly Basuto paper and of Basuto books, which were sent out to all parts of South Africa, made many demands upon Mr. Mabille's time. The printing was done by natives, who required careful superintendence. Mr. Mabille had willing helpers in his fellow-missionaries and in his own family, but a heavy burden of responsibility rested upon him.
Though such a busy man, he was the joy of the home life. Every day after the mid-day meal he and Mrs. Mabille took the time to go away and pray for God's blessing upon their sons and daughters, and God gave them the desire of their hearts. All of their children were converted, and two sons and three daughters were missionaries, working hand to hand with their parents.
Mr. MabiIle had a rare gift of song, and every evening the family gathered around the organ to sing. To us who listened it was a great treat, as each member of the family took his or her own part, sometimes to music of Mr. MabilIe's own composition. We shall never forget how our souls thrilled as we listened to the rich, deep tones of his voice. This gift was a great power among the native students, whom he trained in singing and playing on instruments, like the sweet singer of old. And he has gone, this grand, gifted, courteous man of God, whom every one loved, and whose rule of love was felt all through the Basuto Mission. " God takes home His workers, bnt the work goes on. II His daughter, writing in March, said: "To us the year until now has been one of great joy and peace, in spite of dear father's great mental fatigue. He had done too much and felt very tired. The doctor said if he did not leave the work at once he would not answer for the consequences. The Lord arranged everything for the best. The Home Committee said one of our missionaries was to go with the Zambesi expedition, who go to Mr. Coillard, as far as Mafeking, in Bechuanaland. So father and mother were ready in a week to go. Then strength was given to Louis (Mr. Mabille's son) to take up for a month father's great work-his lessons, printing-office, and church. So ali was arranged, and now we are asking God to bless their journey and to bring back our loved ones to us well and able to resume their work."
At first he seemed benefited by the journey. He attended the Basuto Mission Conference, though he could be present at the meetings only by lying on a couch. There it was arranged that he should have the assistance of his brother-in-law, Rev. Alfred CasaIis, as well as of his son Louis. Then he visited his eldest son at Leribe (Mr. Coillard's old station), all of the Mabille family gathering there, united for the last time.
Mr. Mabille preached in the Orange Free State on his way home, where he arrived, seemingly none the worse for the journey. He suffered very much from rheumatic pain, and when the doctor was called, he pronounced him very ill. Mr. Mabille expressed the desire to live, especially that he might revise the Basuto Bible. He had just finished an English Basuto Dictionary, the work of twenty years, but he soon realized that the end was near. He sent for the Bible students, the Basuto chiefs, the normal-school boys, and said good-by to them. He spoke very earnestly to them, dealing with them as at the very gate of heaven. He pleaded especially with the paramount chief, begging him to be reconciled to God.
Sunday, May 20th, 1894, was a glorious day, full of the veryatmosphere of heaven. Those about him felt that death had no power over the child of God. The first hours of the day he spent praying for each of the catechists, schoolmasters, and elders of his district (about 150 in all), and the students of the Bible school who are in the work. When those about him wondered that he could remember all the names so well, he said: "Oh, you know I have prayed for them so often by name I" When he heard the church bells he said: "Glory, glory, glory in the highest heaven I" and then, "Jesus, I also am one of Thy worshippers." He said during the night before : "You do not know all the struggles my study has witnessed. I have wanted to be small-smaIl-small, that He should take away all the pride and self-love. "
His daughter writes of the privilege it was to sit beside him and receive his last messages.
A young trader wanted to see him. "Yes," he said; "let him in ; I have a lovely message for him." After talking earnestly to him, he said: "I wish I could imprint upon your heart the conviction that Christ
THE LEPERS OF THE WORLD
is your Saviour." Afterward he clapped his hands joyfully, exclaiming, " Bravo! bravo! they are going to reach the Zambesi." His thoughtlil were with the mission party that he had escorted on their way.
At the evening tide it was light. He slept in Jesus to awake in His glorious presence. On the lOth of the next month he would have completed thirty-four years of service in Basutoland. " Well done, good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of thy Lord."
THE LEPERS OF THE WORLD.
Few realize how numerous are the sufferers from this most terrible malady. Miss Kate Marsden, whose life is devoted to the mitigation of their sufferings, is preparing a chart, designed to show at one view the real prevalence and spread of leprosy in various countries. From the minimum figures already supplied by government medical returns and other reliable sources, she reckons that there are 1,300,000 lepers in the world. China alone is said to have more than 600,000 j Japan, 200,000 j and India at least 100,000. But Miss Marsden would rather understate than overstate the case in her earnest endeavor to move the practical pity of the Christian public.
What an awful aggregate of sorrow and suffering is represented by those figures! Who can estimate the value of every Christian effort made to alleviate their pain and grief and to stay the progress of the dread disease ~ Leprosy, the greatest disease of medireval Christendom, is identified, on the one hand, with a disease endemic from the earliest historical times, 1500 B.O., in the valley of the Nile j and, on the other hand, with a disease now commQn in Asia, Africa, South America, and the West Indies, and in certain parts of Europe and the islands of the sea.
Egypt is generally regarded as the country from whence leprosy came. It was endemic among the Hebrews when they migrated from there. During the Middle Ages it was estimated that there were about 20,000 lepers in Europe, and every considerable town had its "lazar house." Owing to strict legislation, it is now found only in small isolated coast districts of Norway, Russia, the Riviera, Spain, Iceland, and some islands. It is common in all the countries of Asia, and in most of the coast districts of Africa. The West Indies and South America (the Guianas), Malaysia, and many of the islands of the sea also have numerous sufferers from this dreadful disease. The essential cause of leprosy is unknown, but it is generally found among people who live on the sea-coast and live largely on fish (often putrid), and who intermarry closely. It is not now believed to be contagious. Comparatively little missionary work is being done for lepers. The Moravians have a "leper home" in Jerusalem, and work among those in South America and elsewhere. The Mission to the Lepers of India is doing a glorious work among the lepers of India, Burma, Ceylon, and Japan. There are also hospitals for the lepers of Europe, of Madagascar, and South Africa, and missionaries are laboring among those in various other parts of the world. Little can be done for the poor lepers' bodies, though their suffering may be lessened, but their souls may be cleansed and saved, and the work among them is a certain one, which shonld call forth our deepest sympathy and most hearty support.
INTERN ATION AL DEPAltTMENT
II.-INTERNATIONAL DEPARTMENT.
EDITED AND CONDUCTED BY BEV. J. T. GRACEY, D.D "In Darkest Afrioa." to the road, so that one has to climb over great masses of fallen trees. This BY R. H. MILLIGAN. is, perhaps, the most exhausting part of the travel; but climbing over such EFULEN MISSION STATION, BATANGA, places i8 infinitely preferable to crawl- WEST AFRICA, March 12, 1894. ing under on all fours. On starting out the first morning we shrank from On July 17th I started for the inte· the cold water and tried to avoid the rior, and returned to Batanga after four mud, but after slipping and falling sevmonths, looking, I imagine, rather pro- eral times we became bold, and when fane, having been neither shaven nor we had walked an hour we came to a shorn for fi ve months. deep stagnant pond that must be cross- ed. I cannot swim in clear water, but There were two white men besides I saw that I would have no difficulty myself, Rev. A. C. Good, who has in swimming here, so I plunged in with charge of this expedition, and who has the others, but we were able to wade been in Africa for ten years, and Mr. all the way over. Just after this a Kerr, a new arrival. We had twenty- heavy rain fell, drenching us through. five native carriers, making in all This was a dreary outstart, but not twenty-eight persons. White brethren unfortunate, for afterward we walked and black friends stood gazing with without timidity, fearing neither mud strange thoughts as we stretched along nor water, nor height nor depth, nor the beach a short way and suddenly any such thing. disappeared into the forest. Noone would think of making this On such a journey toward such a journey for fun. There is great disland none can forecast even the near comfort in walking all day with much future. We were five days in going mud in one's shoes, especially when seventy-five miles, walking from 7 A.M. gravel is added. It is also uncomforto 4 P.M. each day. All the way was table to get up for several successive through deep forest, the trees much mornings before daylight in the cold taller and closer than in American for- bush and put on clothes wet through ests, and made more dense by a thick and through. Yet the road is not growth of enormous vines, all which worse than I expected, nor is it so together make it strangely dark, and rough as to be a great hindrance to our depressing as the Dismal Swamp. work. Any reasonably stro.ng man im- pelled by worthy purpose will find it The road is a po;)rly beaten path, easy enough. which carefully avoids the hills, keeping down in the lowest parts. The natives Four months later Mr. Good and mydislike climbing, but they have no aver- self returned from the interior to Basion to mud; one passes through every tanga, passing over this road at its variety of it and every depth. The very worst. For two months I had road often lies in the beds of streams. been sick with a severe fever that left The part of the traveller that is above several ailments behind, which made it ground is kept cool and wet from the necessary that I should, as soon as I dripping shrubbery that meets across was able, go to Batanga for medical the path, and as if this were not suffi- treatment. It was near the end of the cient, he has to wade many streams. wet season. For many weeks the rain On the first and last days the road passes had fallen almost night and day. The through native gardens, which are never cleared, but the immellBe trees are simply felled, and that without regard forest was flooded. The streams had be- muscle was stiffened and sore, but we come rivers. The rivers had spread had to walk much faster than before, far over their banks, making wading not knowing how far we were from necessary, and beyond were marshes Batanga. which we must reach that which were yet worse. The bridges night, for we had only food for one had all been swept away or buried un- more meal. We walked twenty miles der the water, and others built for tem- . that day, in spite of stiffness and soreporary use. The permanent African ness, but my courage was never so bridge is bad enough, but these tem- taxed before by any physical effort. porary bridges were unspeakably bad, At last we emerged from the forest consisting of a single line of poles tied into the sunshine, which never seemed end to end with rupe uf vines, and so bright nor the sky so blue. Batanga. usually several feet under water. shone like the Celestial City. Our toilet There is also one vine stretched across was in woful shape. Mr. Good had a few feet higher that one may hold received a severe hurt on the way. In with the hand. This latter vine is jumping 07er a deep place he had fallusually rotten, so one must hold it en upon an upright stick. At this late carefully aJ;ld let it go as soon as he be- date I can afford to smile, although at gins to lose his balance, as it will likely the time I turned pale; I thought he yield to the slightest strain. But what- was killed. We twisted his coat into ever other faults these bridges have, a knot over the sore, and bound around they are not especially treacherous; him two strips of bark several inches they make no fair' promises of support, wide, which formed two large bows, and one never starts out upon them extending more than a foot on either with any expectation of reaching the side. Moreover, he had torn his trouother side without sounding the depth sers at the knee so badly that he could of the water. In one place where this only keep the lower part by tying it to upper vine chanced to be strong enough his leg with vine. Add to this that we to bear our weight, the poles beneath were both lame, and besides bore the us, which were three feet under water, general marks of seven days' walking suddenly came to an end, leaving us through mud and mire, and you may to go a short distance on the upper vine imagine the effect. I do not speak of alone, hand over hand, until our feet my own apparel. I could not see that came in contact with another pole. In so well. Our appearance altogether one day we crossed as many as nine was fearful and wonderful. Our such streams with adjoining overflowed friends beholding said: .. Whence come lands and marshes. We were seven ye ?" We replied: "From going to days on the way. I was weak from and fro in the earth, and from walking fever and walked only four miles the up and down in it." tirst day, the next day eight, the next We reached Mr. Good's home first, twelve, and the last day over twenty where I sat down to rest, but in a few miles. On the last day, immediately minutes was unable to walk, and was after starting and before our blood was carried to Mr. Godduhn's home, one in proper circulation, we reached the mile farther, in a hammock. " Slough of Despond," deep with wa- And why illl this hardship, some are ter. We had difficulty in finding the asking, this exposure and peril of life, road. Mr. Good moved about in search, this isolation in the dismal interior of but I not knowing the roads moved Africa, or this madness, as certain of very little, remaining in the cold water our friends have called it? Only obeto my waist, and sometimes to my dience to a Master who thought tit to shoulders, for more than an hour. For say, "Go ye into all the world and the tirst time I felt evil effects from preach the Gospel to every creature." this. Before we had gone far every Is it not strange that even some Christians should seem to question the wis- beads and brass and bells. The men dom of this command or of obedience also wear ornaments, but not in such to it? I am weary of the opposing excess. Both men and women take arguments of many, even my friends, great pains with their hail', doing it up based upon our peril of life or the de- in the strangest and dirtiest way con- pravity of this people. I came not for ceivable. A common style is to build love of these, but in obedience to the it, with the aid of strips of bamboo, above command, and their depravity into three hard ridges several inches makes the command more imperative; high, running from the front to the and as for fear of hardship or danger, back of the head. Each ridge is mount- I am sure that no two things are more ed with a close row of common white incompatible than Christianity and shirt-buttons. Sometimes a card con- fear. If Christianity is anything, it is taining as many as six dozen is sewed courage. When in the French Revolu- on above each ear. The ridges of hair tion France was beset with foes on do not always run fore and aft. They every side, " cannon to right of them, are often in circles built up like a story- cannon to left of them, cannon in front cake and iced with buttons. Some- of them," and all were prostrate with times a kind of splash-board is built despair, the great Danton in thunder- out behind, running from ear to ear, to tones that filled all France called on hold more buttons. This latter style men "to dare, and again to dare, and prevents their lying to sleep in the or- without end to dare," and every son of dinary way. They must place the neck France arose and braced himself for on the wooden pillow, and let the head battle. His words are an echo of what hang over. The hair once arranged re- Christ has always s1id to His followers. mains undisturbed for several months.
Daring is an essential of all successful It forms a convenient place for wiping living. Surely Christianity ought to their hands or knives. After dressing be as strong a motive-power as patriot- it grease is smeared over which in the ism. Hardship ought not to be named; sun melts into the hair, some ot it our life is a small thing, the cause alone usually passing through and running is great. down the back. No matter what color In this interior we found a peculiar this oil is on going into the hair, it al- people indeed, called the "Bule." ways comes out black.
Our station is at the beginning of a The women, moreover, wear a strip countless populace extending far in- of monkey-skin or goat-skin an inch ward. On our first arrival a multitude wide-trimmed with buttons, of course of beggars surrounded our tent, beg- -across the middle of the forehead; and gars everywhere as thick as leaves in besides all this, they have bangs all autumn, insisting that we divide our around the head consisting of loose hair little stock of goods, which to them strung with beads of all colors. With seemed fabulous wealth. No corner this glittering headgear and with brass was too private for them to enter, nor and beads hung over the whole body, could we keep them out but by main the women make an appearance alto- force. Persuasion failed utterly, and gether unique in this world, if they be all a priori arguments were vain. We not like to things sometimes seen in soon came to the use of practical a pos- windows of toy-shops or on Christmas teriori arguments applied with a boot trees.
or other convenient object. We have, no doubt, come among 8 In appearance they are tall, well- desperately wicked people. Borrowing formed, and graceful. The men wear from Hume's estimate of Henry VIII., small loin-cloths. The women wear one might say that a catalogue of their nothing but a few haudfuls of grass, vices would include, perhaps, all the but thAY are loaded wit;.h ornaments of evils incident to human nature. When I first arrived among them I wrote a with the palaver. At the time of shoot· letter to a friend with the superscrip- ing yesterday we were holding our tion "Bule Land," but afterward, usual Sunday service. The man Who knowing more of this land, the super- had stolen the woman was present. He scription seemed a caricature too pro- heard the firing and knew what it fane, and that of my next letter was meant, and thought it was in his own " Chaos," for this is the very home of town, yet he showed no concern, but all disorder. They have reversed the sat calmly through the service. The whole moral law and every righteous people whose men have been killed are maxim. The plough they have beaten on the warpath to-day, determined to into a sword and the pruning-hook into kill a number of people, they care not a spear, and every man's hand is whom. Another palaver is going on in against his neighbor. the town nearest to us. A woman, who said that her husband was so homely There is no other law than the law of that she could not live with him, C'lme selfishness, which reigns supreme. to our station, met a man from another There is no word in their language for town and eloped with him. Her peoservice, they have not the idea. Mr. ple followed a few nights ago and kill- Good has been giving many of them ed a woman. We do not know how medical treatment. They take it for long this will continue. The people of granted that this also is selfish. They the town near by keep up a loud noille will sometimes get angry and scold if all night to let the enemy know that fresh bandages are not gi ven them they are watching. often. One man came and told that his wife was very sick, and asked what Last week Mr. Good and I visited a Mr. Good would give him if he would town one half-day's walk distant, where bring her for treatment. Another was we spent two nights. We found the in great distress, saying that his little stormiest people I have ever seen or daughter was dying, and that a man in heard of. They quarrelled almost a neighboring town had agreed to buy without ceasing, each quarrel involving her in marriage, and had already paid all the men and women of the town. some goods which would have to be re- During the day it was carried on in turned if she died. This latter made the street, becoming worse at night his grief truly pitiable. when they scattered to their houses, the men yelling and the women scream- Their wealth is chiefly in the shape ing their rage from within, loud enough of wives. These are usually stolen at to be heard over the town. There is first. Then follows a big palaver. no lack of matter for copious quarrel· The people of the offended town will ling even among this remote people of come at night and kill some one of the the forest. The occasions are so abun· town where the woman is. The enemy dant that many palavers are not settled, will return and kill one of them. And but are displaced by others. The occaso it goes on-killing in turn until the sion of a large quarrel the day we arthief pays for the woman, or until either rived was that a certain man's hen laid town stop that they may fight another an egg in another man's house, which enemy. Such a palaver has just begun latter man kept the egg. The town in one of our towns. Two days ago was rent in twain. The whole com- (Saturday) a man who lives near by munity is astir; they conspire together; stole a woman from a town some miles deep calleth unto deep; the sky dark· distant. The offended people came in ens; the mountains roll down their arms yesterday, but finding it hard to threatening thunders; hoarse rage is reach the town where the woman was, echoed back; but suddenly strange they killed two men in a town close to quiet falls on all the places-it is time us, which town belonged to another to eat. When eating is finished another tribe and had nothing whatever to do palaver cries out for attention, and the of Freemasons in A.merica, in whose former one is "laid on the table, ", surpas~ing antiquity I can now believe There was not an idle hour in which to that they include Solomon and perhaps resume it before we lefto It is still un- Noah. settled, and liable any day to deluge the valley with blood. Ngee is the native word for gorilla, and is also the name of a certain man We are used to noise. The people in each town, who is the head of this dance in the street almost every night, society and who takes the character of often through the whole night, to the a gorilla. This is also a benevolent somusic of several wooden instruments, ciety, protecting its members from the which they pound furiously, and all power of witches. Ngee may be called keep up a continual yelling such as is a witch-doctor or a devil-doctor, it you only heard in heathendom. Their please, able to kill at will or to cure heads are cracked, but not their lungs. any disease: He has a profound knowl- And with this unfortunate combina- edge of witches, and is a potentate tion of cracked heads and uncracked among them, saying, "Go, "and they go; lungs they make our nights hideous or, " Come," and they come. When in enough. character he will come into the town at any time, roaring like a gorilla, but One day I had thrust upon me the loud enough to be heard at any finite pleasure of seeing a woman perform distance. A.ll women and children the native dance. The woman is a and uninitiated men fiee for their queen. She often comes selling pota- lives. If one of these see him thus toes. This day she was carrying a bun- in character, they will take sick and dle rolled in leaves. She opened it and die. The dire truth is that they Inshowed me a coil of snake, which she deed die if it be known that they was taking home for her husband's have seen him. We suspect they are dinner. There were four other women poisoned. A few nights ago there was with her, all queens and, with herself, a Ngee dance in the nearest town. Mr. wives of one man. They all talk at Godduhn, of Bat&nga, was with us, once; those not talking are laughing, and he and I went through the town. some doing both at once, and at the The chief who lives in the first village same time running about through the followed after us, full of wrath, and house asking for everything they can threatening us with every calamity if find ; but this particular woman insist- we dared look upon the sacred scene. ed upon showing me the Bule dance, We passed on, however, and having which consists of a series of fiendish turned our light very low, we entered contortions. The whole body is in the village where Ngee was holding rapid motion, especially the shoulders forth with many of the initiated. The and stomach. One would think that women were of course hidden in their the body was without bone or solid part. houses, but We have reason to believe She accompanies this with imitation of that they were looking through the the music of their several wooden in- cracks. What woman wouldn't? It struments as weird as the dance itself. was very dark, but we could still see Both music arid dance belong to the un· these weird, black forms in every under world; neither of them should human shape gliding swiftly about in ever have reached upper air. She imi- all manner of strange motions, dancing tates all the instruments at once, and to the discordant sound of the instru· dances on, heedless of perspiration and ments spoken of above, and all shriekdecorum. ing like hobgoblins. The place smelled of sulphur. We soon became conscious But the most hideous of all their that Ngee was approaching. He dances is the "Ngee" dance. The growled hideously and roared in tones Ngee Society is a secret order corresponding in many points to the order such as I would not have supposed where no reason is conceivable unless a could come from man or devil, and love of the lie itself. The only sexual changing from shape to shape. immorality that they consider wrong is the unfaithfulness of a wife, but the "If shape it could be called, that shape had restraint put upon this sin is slight, none, and upon other immorality no restraint at all. They believe in God, but their Diltingui8hable in member, joint or limb." belief is unliving, a vague idea that has no fear in it, and hence no moral force. He flashed his knife about us fiercely, One day when I was returning from but seeing that we were not to be preaching in a certain town, it chanced moved by all the powers of darkness, that several women who had heard the he retired for a time. We turned up preaching were following along the our light and sat down. The novelty way. One of them called to me, a of the lantern overcame their antago- woman in whose face was not even a nism, and they danced freely about us, trace of innocence. She said: .. If God their motions more demon-like than is so good, why does He not give me ever in the dim light of the lantern. more food 1" I replied that the wonder But Ngee did not yet give up all hope was He gave her any, that God only of oVercoming us, or it may be that his promises to take care of good people. purpose was to initiate us. He brought She said that she was a good woman, a the bones of his ancestors-of his grand. very good woman. I looked at her for father or his grandmother perhaps- a moment, wondering what a very bad and placed them in a heap before us, woman would look like. I asked if Shaking the grinning skull at us, and she had never done such and such dancing about them with roaring and things, mentioning their commonest incantation. With look as innocent sins. She had never done any of those and ignorant as we could command, we things, but had always been a model took the bones up and handled them of truth and purity-such a woman, on curiously but respectfully, looked on a the whole, as is not found outside of little longer, and then departed, having Africa. I turned to the other women seen enough. present and asked them if this woman had spoken the truth. To my surprise It is said that after writing the .. In- they all agreed with her, saying that ferno" Dante looked as if he had been they had never known her to do any in hell. I do not know whether I after- of those things of which I had spoken. ward looked so, but I certainly felt as I then said: "Now, you say that you if I had been there. are a good woman. God says you are a bad woman. Who tells the lie?" She The belief in witches is perhaps the replied; without hesitation, "God." strongest prevalent in this country. Again I was surprised, but it was easy History gives us abundant testimony now to defeat her since she had called that this has always been one of the God a liar. Imagine, then, how near most cruel and enslaving beliefs that the abyss a people live on whom the have ever entered man's mind, and greatest of truths, that of a living God, here as elsewhere it is prolific in tor- has no moral force. ment and misery. I am told that among them are men But this subject is too large to enter called "tiger.men," whose custom is upon here. to hide in the bush and spring like tigers upon passing women and chil- As I know more of these people I dren, cutting them to pieces. find greater depths of depravity than I had thoup:ht of. One sometimes won- It is such a people whom we have ders whether man cannot indeed de- undertaken to tame by the Gospel. It scend to the depthS of the witches in .. Macbeth," to whom" fair is foul, and foul is fair." They will answer the most ordinary question with a lie, is not yet too late. "If there are Demon Possession on Missionary Fields.* depths in man as deep as hell, there are also heights as high as heaven. Are There are observable among men not both heaven and hell made out of gradations of intellect. Is there anyhim 1" Christendom may well ask thing unreasonable in the supposition why it is that they have not heard the that there are other intellects in the Gospel centuries ago; but let none ut- universe of higher powers than man P ter reproach nntil himself does his Does the creation necessarily top out duty. Three of us labor here alone with the human· family? Did what- ever force made man exhaust its powamong a people of urenakcnhoewd nthneumdebpetrhs~ ers when it made a human being? a people who have of depravity and misery, where the 2. If there be other higher intelliworm dieth not and the fire is not gences, must they all be necessarily good, or may some of them be malevoquenched. We are calling for help. Their de- lent and evil f pravity calls loud-calls louder to us S. If there be such higher intellithan to our fathers, and Christ's com- gences, good or bad, or both, have they mand, though long neglected, has not any means of influencing the human become a dead letter. The harvest mind and life? Bold, bad men of falls ~o the ground for ripeness, and great intellectual force do here influthere IS none to help. The work is not ence their fellows to evil. May some easy, but I prefer it to any other I have unseen higher intelligences also lead ever done. The Gospel in which we men into error and crime? trust, in which is all our hope, is here These are questions with which the Old and New Testament affect to dperaol ~ put to the severest test, and is not found and about which they are very wanting. It is said of Mohammed, that when a nounced. Is there anything contrary boy, lying one night in the open field, to reason in the way they deal with an angel came in his sleep, and remov- them? ing his heart, wrung out of it all the Explain the Bible narrative as we evil, which fell in dark drops to the may, it distinctly recognizes certain ground. I can think of the streams and phenomena as being superinduced by rivers of this land running red like energy exercised over the human body crimson with their escaping sins, and and mind by unseen spiritual forces. this people still unclean; but we know Is there anything that can be identified a simpler way and more effective, even as the same class of .. possession" as the Gospel of Jesus Christ which is the that described in the New Testament? power of God. From these hills that This is what Dr. Nevius undertook to now resound with the noise of this vio- answer in the volume just from the lent people we purpose to proclaim the press, through the kind offices of Mr. life and death, the example and the Henry W. Rankin, to whom he comprecepts of Him whose voice is not mitted the manuscript just before leavheard in the street, who breaketh not ing for China, where, presently after the bruised reed nor quencheth the arrival, he died. smoking fiax, and who died for the But this is not all which interested sins of the whole world. And this we Dr. Nevius. He wanted to ascertain 0; do in the strong hope that in a time not * Demon Possession and Allied Themes be- far distant the smoke of their torment ing an Indnctive Stndy of the Phenomena onr shall no longer ascend to darken the own Times, by Rev. John L. Nevins, D.D., forty sun, but the listening heaven shall hear years a missionary to the Chinese; with an Infrom ten thousand voices the glad troduction by Rev. F. F. Ellinwood, D.D. shout, .. Gloria in Excelsis." Chicago and New York: Fleming H. Revell Company. $1.50. whether the same kind of power exer- Chinese, their Present and Future: cised by Jesus Christ and committed Medical, Political, and Social" (1891), by Him to His disciples is applicable says he examined many cases of al- to similar cases if found to exist in our leged "possession" in China, and as- .IllY. He had a far more definite pur- serts that mania, dementia, and hysteria pose than that of a mere contribution are sufficient to account for the cases to the occult science of our time. He he had either seen or heard described, grappled with the question, What ought and he considered any who believe in to be the attitude of the foreign mis- demoniacal possession "superstitious sionary to this class of phenomena in and too credible." But Dr. Nevius heathen lands? Must they be relegated furnishes testimony which, he definitely to pathology or psychology, or dealt avers, and many will concur with him, with as spirit-product, to be exorcised cannot be explained by these causes, in the name of the same Jesus who and he gives some striking cases of commanded like spirits to come out of strong, healthy men, never ill, and men and to cease to torment them in never depressed in mind or body, who His day? Shall the missionary treat were subjects of this sort of double ex- them with the ammonia-bottle or the istence at intervals.
Bible? The practical point, however, is the In order to settle this as far as possi- missionary one, of how to attempt to ble for himself, and to furnish datil for deal with these cases. Dr. Nevius others to do likewise for themselves, he affirms that many cases have been took great pains, by personal investiga- cured by prayer to Christ or in His tion and by correspondence with other name, some very readily, some with missionaries in all parts of China, to difficulty; but, so far as he had been gather the fullest possible testimony able to learn, this method of cure had from experience and from reliable testi- never failed in any case, however stubmony concerning these alleged cases of spirit possession. He carefully sifted born and long continued, in which it the mass of material he had thus collated, and as carefully attempted to had been tried; and in no instance had analyze and classify it; and whatever may be thought of the evidence-and the malady returned if the subject beopinion is sure to be diverse-we have here an important contribution to the came a Christian and continued to lead bibliography of spirit-phenomena. The distinction of the volume consists in a Christian life. the facts as testified to by Chinese competent to observe and state them. A reaction against the gross mate- How they arc to be accounted for is a separate portion of the treatise. Of rialism of our times is sure to come, this much the author is convinced, and the occult is quite a8 certain to be thrown out of perspective when it is taken in hand seriously; and this vol- ume will therefore be of value to Chris- tian people wishing to follow a careful and conservative investigator. as all who knew the author recognize him to have been. [J. T. G.] that whatever was meant by demo- niacal possession in the land of Judea in the times of Jesus Christ, exists to- Shall Missionaries be Sent to Foreign day in China phase for phase. He Fields in Faith that the Funds will gives further testimony of Bishop Cald- be Forthooming? well as to the precise similitude with these of evil-spirit possession in va.rious This question has been a vital one parts of India. with some Christian workers for some Dr. Robert Coltman, Jr., surgeon in while past. The Church of England charge of the Presbyterian Hospital, Missionary Society, seven or eight Teng Chow Fu, In his work, "The years ago, determined that God must in some way take care of suitable men then in the Contingenc:y Fund. The definitely called to this work, and re- year 1894-95 began with about £4000 solved to send all such forward, funds to the good, the surplus on the special or no funds. They have recently contributions to clear off the previous issued a tract showing the development year's deficit. The Society, therefore, of their work in the seven years they after the immense development above have pursued this policy, in which they illustrated, is only £6000 worse off than say: it was seven years ago. And within " 1. The total number of missionaries the same period, a mortgage of £20,000 (not counting wives) has increased as on the Children's Home has been paid follows: Clergymen, from 247 to 344 ; off. On the other hand, it is important laymen, from 40 to 82; women, from to remember that very large savings 22 to 193. Total, from 309 to 619, or are due to the fall in the value of sil- just double in the seven years. (The ver. Had the Indian exchange re- Estimates Committe~ give a larger mained where it was, a much larger number, but they have not deducted income would have been needed."
some recent deaths and retirements.) "2. The increase in some missions is especially, noticeable. West Africa (including Yoruba and Niger) had then Reasons for Taking Part in morts to 11; now 43. East Africa (including Save the World.
Uganda) had then 26; now 58. The BY REV. EDWARD WEBB, LINCOLN UNI- Mohammedan lands, Egypt, Palestine, VERSITY, OXFORD, CHESTER COUNTY, Persia, had then 17; now 63. India PAhad then 133; now 222. China had then 30; now 85. Japan had then 14 ; l. Because" God so loved the flJO'I'ld. "
now 53. 2. Because it is the command of " 3. It was at the end of 1887 that Christ.
the new plans for associated evangelists 3. Because Christ Himself, as the first were formed. It was at the same time great model Missionary to the flJO'I'ld, that the large extension of women's leads the way-we should follow Him.
work began. Since 1887 medical mis- 4. Because salvation is provided by sions have much developed, and the Him for the flJO'I'ld.
number of medical missionaries have 5. Because He has given us the Gos- more than doubled. pel in trust for the flJO'I'ld.
"4. Since 1887. the p1'oportion of the 6. Because if we are not faithful to Society's expenditure on home organi- our trust, the flJO'I'ld will perish in its zation and administration, relatively sin.
to the direct expenditure on missions, 7. Because, if by our unfaithfulness has diminished. In 1887 the home and neglect the flJO'I'ld perishes, we charges cost 2s. 8td. out of each pound shall be adjudged guilty.
sterling spent. In 1893-94 they cost 1;1. Because if we are faithful to our 28. 2d. out ot each pound sterling trust, the flJorld will be saved, and the spent. reward will be ours.
" 5. In 1887, there were four honor- 9. Because Christ has taught us to ary missionaries. In 1894 there are say, "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be over seventy honorary. done on earth as it is in heaven."
" 6. In the year ending ~Iarch, 1887, 10. Because no one, without active the General Fund income was £200,- interest in the foreign missionary work, 777. In the year ending March, 1894, can sincerely make this prayer.
it was £237,797. 11. Because foreign missionary work "7. The year 1887-88 began with has brought to the Church In return a £10,500 to the good, being the balance boundless blessing. 12. Because to stop all this work for work and exchange accounts of experithe world would bring upon the Church ences. There were besides five foreignparalysis and death. born missionary children. The mis· sionaries represented work in various 18. Because Christian love is essen- parts of India, China, Japan, Bulgaria, tially world-wide; it utterly refuses to be Hawaiian Islands, Siam, Turkey, and limited. West Africa. These are all receiving gratuitously the medical service of the 14. Because this world-wide love in- faculty and the free use of all the remecludes and fosters love for our own dial agencies of the institution, which country. Dr. Henry Foster has built up through forty years and presented to a board of . 15. Because the plea that to save our trustees composed of the senior secretaown land is to save tke world, has force ries of the leading missionary societies, only when the Church at home fs active to be held in perpetuity for the rebuildin saving the world. ing of the impaired health of missiona- ries. The outright gift is valued at 16. Because home missions had made $500,000, besides not less than $20,000 little progress when, by direction of annually of what may be classed as the Holy Spirit, foreign missions were eleemosynary expenditure. The superbegun from Antioch, in Syria_ intending physician, the Rev. C.. C. Thayer, M.D., and his wife were for a 17. Because, if there is a good reason term of years missionaries in the Turkfor one church or one member of a ish Empire, and as the head of the instichurch neglecting it, there is the same tution are in full sympathy with the for the whole Church. benevolent intent of the founder.
The three non-ethnic religions of the The twelfth annual meeting of the world that in spirit and work are ag- International Missionary Union will be gressive, diffusive and missionary, are held at CliIton Springs, N. Y., June Buddhism, Mohammedanism, and 12th-19th. All foreign missionaries, Christianity. The first, from humani- whether in service or retired, are recogtarian motives only; the second, with nized as members and entitled to free a prevailing political object. But the entertainment. All missionaries pur- Gospel of Christ is spread from su- posing to attend are requested to notify preme love to Him, as the chief and im- Mrs. C. C. Thayer, Sanitarium, Clifton pelling force, and also from love for the Springs, and to name topics they wish world. discussed. Ail information will be gi ven by the Secretary. The prospect is of a Let us, by all means, love our own large attendance, and eminent names country, even as Christ loved His native are already enrolled, such as Dr. H. H. Palestine. In His spirit let us labor Jessup, of Syria; Dr. Blodgett, forty and suffer for it. Let the spirit which years in China; Dr. Jacob Chamberlain moved and inspired the great Apostle and Dr. Boggs, of India; Dr. Amerto the world, whose motto was, "To man, of Japan; and Secretaries Bald· the Jew first, but also to the Gentile," win and Barton. be onrs. For the love which reaches out to the Gentile cannot pass by ~he J. T. GRACEY, Pre8ident, Jew. Rochester, N. Y.
A goodly company of missionaries are REV. W. H. BELDEN, Secretary, " up for repairs" at that great mission- Clifton Springs, N. Y. ary centre, Clifton Springs. One day recently the Sanitarium arranged that these missionaries should dine together in the spacious dining-room of that noble institution, and a social was held in the parlors in the afternoon, at which thirty missionaries gathered to talk over the40
CHU-LA.-LANG-KORN, THE KING OF SIAM, AND HIS SONS. PALACE ENCLOSURE-ENTRANCE TO TEMPLE
FillLD OF MONTHLY SURVEY
III.-FIELD OF MONTHLY. SURVEY.
BY D. L. PDmSON• .Siam and Laos,* Malaysia,t Buddhism,t Lepers.§ THE LAND OF THE WHITE ELEPHANT. lation of the country is estimsted at. about 6,000,000, largely interspersed BY THE EDITOR-IN-CHillF. with Cbiriese. The people are not taU, aTe inclined to tatness; with faces broad' Siam has been, in comparison with and fiat, with, small noses and wide India and China, unknown to modem mouths, and they wear a stolid and sulcivilization. Commerce found little len aspect. 'The type of race is moditbere to attract trade, and, until witbin fied Mongolian, mixed with Chinese and the past quarter century, there has been Burmese. In the extreme south the but little literature which trea.ted of inhabitant8are quite distinct and have that Malayan penil,l8ula; and, as to the migrated from Sumatra; they are Mos- Laos country, it was even more a part lem in religion, and politically indepilDof the great unknown. dent 6f Siam,under rajahs or sultans.
Siam is about 1000miles long, and at Education Is at its lowest level among its widest less than one third of that the'Siamese, and woman Is wholly un· measurement. In the north are great taught, though her domestic estate is mountain districts, rich in fauna and fiora, streams and waterfalls; and the much above the aVllrage condition ·ot lowland,;! produce ample rice crops, the main dependence of the people. Three women in the Orient, and notably hi principal rivers constitute its river system, the Menam, the "motber of wa- toIndia; but. when education is brought ters," being the great highway of inter- bear upon thl'se people, they prove course and the stream on whose banks by no means lack.ing in native ability. Bangkok, the capital, the Asiatic Venice, stands-or, as we might say,fioats- A cuyious cust~m is insepllr~ble from so large is the proportion of inhabitants the exercise of hospitality. The areca living upon its water streets. nut is mixed with lime and 'certain other ingredients, a· compound which not Most of the travel is by boats, but in only blackens, but· rapidly destroys the cases where they are not available, by teeth, and yet this. mixture is chewed elephants, which carry a saddle shaped by both 'men and women, and the richer like a sawbuck. class serve it in gold boxes.
Bangkok has a population. verging The government is an absolute mon. on half a million; and the whole popu, archy, and it is not long' since the lion. ors paid to the Siamese .king. were: aI, * See also pp. 8 (January), 219 (March), and most Divine. There Is no hereditary nobility, and the king himself is elected 321 (present issne). Literature: .. Historical by certain officers. Some. sixty smaU Sketches of Presbyterian Missions:" "Slam provinces have each a ruler, aU subject and Laos as Seen by American Missionaries :': to the king. The late king and his "Siam," Mary L. Cort;" The ·Land of the successor, Chulalangkom, .have, proved Wbite Elephant," Y. Vincent. very able, .educated, and erilightened monarchs, who abQlishEld the CUB· t "India and Malaysia," J. M. Thobnm, toni of bowing lik.e beasts "on all fours," and bade. their courtiers stand D.D.; "A Winter In India ;md Malaysia," before:thein Hkemen.. 'From theacccs- M. V. B. Knox, D.D. sion' of· M8.ha"Mong-Kut" in.18S1, there has been more contact with the outside :I: "The Light of ~Ia and. the Light of the world and more real progress than for World," S. H. Kellogg, D,D.; "Short Chapter~ centuries before. on Bnddhism," .J.. H;. 'TitcOmb;, "Buddhism,',' Rhys Davids: "Buddhism," Sir Monier Will, ams.
S See p. 358 (present Issue). ". The Lepers of Our Indian Empire," W. C. Bailey: "Work Among Lepers." Missionary operations have never been ever opened in this country. Among vigorously carried forward, owing to the first fifteen scholars three were the paucity of laborers. The country daughters of the nobility, and all proved is open in a remarkable degree, but the equal to the boys in the acquirement of whole missionary force in Siam and the knowledge, so the school proved a suc- Laos country does not exceed thirty- cess, and other natives were induced to Jour, including women and the medical send their children also. One of the force (excluding wives of missionaries). Laos princes called to see the school. He had on a coat, pants, and hat, but The missionaries of the American was in his bare feet. The people are Board sent out in 1831 and 1832 were very much darker colored than the afterward removed to China. Since Chinese, but have the same straight 1847 the entire native population have black hair. They cut it short, and been under care of the Presbyterians of comb it d la mode parted in the middle North America. But the whole of the -men and women all the same. The New Testament and part of the Old, priests shave their heads, and wear san· with a beginning in Christian literature, daIs. Their garments are all made of were the fruit of one decade of years, yellow cloth. It is the sacred as well and now the whole Bible is accessible as royal color. There arc thousands of to all who read Siamese. The" Pil- the lazy vagabonds supported by beg· grim's Progress" was among the early ging. They make a very good living, products of a Christian press, which has however, as no one is allowed to refuse proved a grand instrument of evangeli. them what they ask, somewhat after zation and education. Parts of the Bi- the style of certain priests in America. ble have also now been translated into They are all servants of the idol god the Laos dialect. For seven successive Buddha, and at death expect to enter years the accessions to the Church in upon an eternal sleep. They live alone the Laos country were constantly grow- in monasteries upon the temple ~rounds. ing, from 110 in 1887 to 303 in 1893. The mother church at Chieng Mai, after .. At a certain season the kmg celesending out eight colonies, has an adult brates worship and gives gifts to the membership of over 700. priests. He visits the temples for nine days. At such time he may be seen in From 18407 to 1851 aU mission effort his royal barge upon the river. His was hampered by the hostility of the boat, over 150 feet long, with 84 row· king; on his sudden death, and the ers, all dressed in uniform, and keeping election of Maha·Mong-Kut, who had perfect time with their paddles. The studied with an American missionary, boat is beautiful, beginning with a and proved a catholic·spirited sov- bird's head and ending with a fish's ereign, the work began to take root, tail, all covered with gilt and Siamese though it was thirteen years before the carving. There were banners of crimfirst convert, Nai Chune, yielded to son and gold, and tassels of Yak hair. Christ; and the simple faith of the na· The king sat in state uuder a small cantlve Christians has given much hope to opy near the centre ,of the boat, and the missionaries. was almost hidden by curtains of cloth of gold. We saw him plainly When The effort was early made to raise he passed from his barge to the temple up a native ministry and to establish under his glittering golden umbrella. schools for girl8, as well as boys, to He was dressed in shining raiment and whom native custom had confined these sparkling with jewels, but had left his advantages. crown at home, as it is far too heavy to wear with any degree of comfort. I A well·known traveller writes: never saw a more imposing procession. There were perhaps a thousand boats .. Rev. Dr. Samuel R. House and his upon the river; eighty of them, filled wife were at one time the oldest Pres· with princes, nobles, officers of rank, byterian missionaries in Siam, and had soldiers, priests, etc., with their serunder their care the fir8t girls' 8chool vants, were counted as his special es· cort. The whole ceremony was for the perpetuation of Buddhism and the wor- ship of idols.' The people, however, worshipped the king as though he, too, were a god. There was music and shouting, and on either side of the river, in the floating houses, there were altars erected and tapers burning, while the people clasped their hands and bowed themselves as the king in his glory to earth in form of white elephant, passed by." birth, etc., and ending with his funeral pile and miraculous consumption. In the following paragraphs little else is attempted than to make a few The doctrines of Buddhism; bIlef notes on the condition of the land 1. Vacuity, unreality, illusiveness of and people, and to give short extracts nature. from competent authorities. 2. This nihilism levels all barriers of caste, nation, etc. Polygamy prevails to a fearful extent, 3. Final object, Nirvana, or deliver- with the inevitable degradation of ance from pain and illusion. Rotation woman. of metempsychosis then being broken, the soul is not born again; even desire Half a century ago all foreigners were of existence lost. excluded, but now all Christian coun- 4. Its four great truths are; Pain, its tries enjoy treaty rights. The present origin, its annihilation, and the way king subscribeS liberally to educational to such extinction. and missionary enterprises. Buddha actually sways the people of Siam. Its sacred fanes are among the Dr. Dean organized in Siam the first costliest in the Orient. One is estichurch of Chinese Christians in all Asia. mated at $800,000 and has 900 images The first zenana teaching ever at· of Buddha, one of which is 150 feet tempted in the East was by missionary long and is inlaid with pearl and overwomen in 1851, among the thirty wives laid with gold. The sacred literature and royal sisters of the king of Siam. in the Pali is written on slips of palm leaf, and the four hundred principal Buddhism is a most obstinate foe to works embrace 4000 volumes. Gospel conquest. It is a State religion, "Buddhism is evidently losing its and conversion is virtually treason. No hold upon the minds of young Siamese. man can hold office till after three Indeed, many of the older nobility, such months in the priesthood. While this as the Regent and others, are said to is the nominal attitude of the govern- have but little faith in it, but are ment toward foreign faiths, as a matter obliged to keep up appearances to some of fact no Oriental government has degree. The majority of the common made a closer approximation to a catho- people, and the women of all classes, aro lic toleration. still firm in the faith and constant in their works of merit; but there is un- As to Buddhism, it is a very subtle questionably a coldness in certain quarsystem. It is so complex and philo· ters. The present king, before assumsophical, that it has taxed the greatest ing the reins of government, according minds to explore and represent it. It to custom, spent some time in the is a mixture of apparent absurdity with priesthood. This, it is said, he would exalted ethical teaching. The most gladly have avoided, had not the custom satisfactory work I have seen upon been so inexorable, and the prejudice Buddhism is Sir Monier Williams's su- in its favor so strong. perb volume, one of the series of Duff The son of the Minister of Foreign Afmissionary lectures. fairs spent four years in England, part of the time at Oxford. He was there, Buddhism is the religion of the fol- however, without any proper person to lowers of Fo, whose tenets, introduced direct his studies or control him, and about A.D. 66, are called after Buddha, after spending a mint of money for his (to know-inteUigence). father returned, talking fluently upon horse·racing, dog-fighting, dancing, Buddhists hold that countless Bud· theatres, operas, and all plays and dhas have appeared to save the world, among them one in the present period -namely, &kyamuni, or St. &kya, held by some to be the ninth incarnation of Vishnu. His legendary history is in twelve sections, beginning with his being in the fourth heaven, descent sports; but his knowledge of the sci- than anything else. These calculations ences appeared to be small. He pro- are printed at the royal press, and pubfessed to have lost his faith in Bud- lished under the king's seal a short dhism, without having adopted any- time before the opening of the new thing better, and was averse to entering year." the priesthood. His father was indif· ferent upon the subject, but his grand- Buddhism has no place for atonemother was determined that he should ment, acknowledges no creator; the follow the ancient custom. She said souls of men are ancestors'/ all birds-and he was her favorite, and all her earthly beasts represent souls of departed relagoods were laid up for him; she accord- tives. ingly betook herself to weeping, day and night, until the young man was The white elephant is said to represent obliged to relent. Usually the shortest some king or hero. Death may usher time that anyone can spend in the priest- the soul into the body of a white ant or hood is three months. He agreed to elephant. enter the priesthood for tltree days; but stipulated that, contrary to the custom All males enter the priesthood for a of the priesthood, he should have his time, and live as celibates. regular meals in the evening, with claret. It is also reported that many of the ris- The Siamese believe in acts of merit, ing nobility have relinquished Bud· and seek to accumulate them. dhism. It is to be feared, however, that infidelity will succeed. The great The darkness of the future is terrible, preponderance of European influence, according to the confession of an aged outside of the missionaries, is in that priest himself, who with all his virtues direction. and austerities could see only a blank despair ahead. " Phja Krasap, a nobleman of rank and superintendent of the royal mint, Nirvana seems to be a condition in was at one time the only man in the which all attributes or quality, all dekingdom who had any scientific knowl- sire or emotion, or action or sense, is edge ,worth naming. He was also a gone. Buddhists maintain that a soul philosopher of some ability, and has so sublimated exists, though everything been denominated the 0 hunder Sen of that can be predicated of a soul has Siam. He discarded Buddhism as at passed away. One is reminded of an present taught and practised, and be· illustration which a Western college lieved in a Supreme Being, who pos- professor once gave of transcendentalsesses a kind of personality and is capa- ism, When pointing to a sand-bank full ble of hearing and answering prayer. of swallow-holes, he said, "Imagine That Supreme Being he combined with that bank all washed away, and the the correlation of forces, or rather made swallow-holes still remaining, and you that the instrument of the Supreme have transcendentalism." Being in carrying out his designs, and claimed to find this belief revealed in The thing that is plausible in Budthe Buddhist Scriptures. But few of dhism is its ideal, not its practical mothe Siamese know anything about the rality. The Buddhist decalogue is in Copernican system. The Brahman as- most respects commendable, and so far trologers calculate the eclipses with resembles that given by Moses at an tolerable accuracy, and give the time earlier date, that one naturally queries When the sun in his apparent course in whether the wonderful spread of the the heavens reaches the equinoctial and truth in Daniel's time did not reach solstitial points. This is done more in India, and give to Daniel's contemreference to the times of their festivals porary, Gautama, some of his principal ideas. The Decalogue, according to Rev. N. A. McDonald's work on Siam, is as follows: I. From the meanest insect up to man, thou shalt kill no animal what- ever.
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II. Thou shalt not steal. "4. The way to the suspension ofsuf- lII. Thou shalt not violate the wife fering: By the eightfold noble path- Right belief, right resolution, right of another nor his concubine. speech, right deeds, right life, right IV. Thou shalt speak no word that ideals, right thoughts, right memory, is false. right meditation. V. Thou shalt not drink wine nor •• The last of these clauses is the foun- dation of Buddhist ethics. Evidently anything that may intoxicate. ethical law here is not founded upon VI. Thou shalt avoid all anger, ha- the dictates of a higher power, nor is there anywhere the suggestion of a law tred, and bitter language. VII. Thou shalt not indulge in idle or of universal harmony, or necessity, by which the individual is led forcibly to vain talk:. follow a line of conduct which suits VIII. Thou shalt not_covet thy neigh- the universe. The difference between bor's goods. ~ood and evil conduct, roughly stated, 18 the effect upon the individual him- IX. Thou shalt not harbor envy, nor self. Good conduct in a small way pride, nor malice, nor revenge, nor the produces relative happiness in life, and desire of thy neighbor's death or mis- advance of station in the round of ex- fortune. istence; in a large way it becomes the X. Thou shalt not follow the doc- motive-power toward the highest aim, trines of false gods. the resolution into the all, the Nirvana. This doctrine of suffering concentmtes This illustrates the ineffectiveness of all serious attention upon the Ego, and laws, however good, if there be no lov- for the Buddhist this metaphysical term steps out from the franJe of an ing and sentient law-giver. In a world abstract system, and assumes a reality which" created itself" (" Pen Eng," so strong, that everything without as the Siamese say), and whose supreme fades at times into utter insignificance.
being has no attribute nor emotions, To find the Ego is praised as the best end of all search; to be friends with laws will be observed or not according the Ego is the truest and highest friendto the disposition of men. The proof ship. The Ego spurs to good; through of all systems lies in their power to the Ego one knows one's self, and the change the downward tendencies of Ego watches and protects. The Ego is the ultimate refuge, therefore it must men. The practical morality of the be held in check, as the dealer holds a Siamese may be judged by the fact that noble steed. One's own Ego must, the nameless sins of Sodom-the un- first of all, be securely founded on natural affections depicted in the first good. After that others may be in- structed. chapter in the Epistle to the Romans- .. This may, perhaps, be regarded as are fearfully prevalent even among the the most characteristic point in Budpriesthood. dhist ethics. It is a spiritual egoism, Professor Maurice Bloomfield says : whose existence and development are hostile to and exclude practical selfish- " Buddhist ethics is joined directly to ness by its very existence. Forgivethe doctrine of suffering, as we may ness and the love of enemies is exaltcall it. This is the very corner·stone ed, but the impulse is less from the of the edifice. It is designated with heart than from the head; it is from schematic regularity as the fourfold that knowledge which kills desire, and doctrine of suffering, being presented leads to Nirvana. " again and again in four statements which form a close sequence. "1. The truth of suffering: Birth is THE TEA.CHINGS OF' BUDDHA. AND suffering, age is suffering, disease is CHRIST COMPARED.
suffering, union with what is not loved HISTORICAL DIFFERENCES. is suffering, separation from what is loved is suffering. Buddhism• •, 2. The origin of suffering: The thirst after existence which leads from birth By the doctrine of Karma a man is to birth, and to the desire for lust and power. bound hand and foot to the inevitable consequences of his own acts. " 3. Suspension of suffering: Giving np the thirst for existence by cutting Buddha always described himself as off all desires. self-made. Buddha came down to be born on bodily life as the highest of boons and earth in a rich and princely family. loftiest of aims.
Buddha declal'ed that all enlighten- Beware of action, as causing re-birth, ment and wisdom were to be attained and aim at inaction, indifference, apathy, by his disciples, not through him, but as the highest of all states. through themselves and their own intuitions. Every man is saved by his own works and by his own merits. Buddha died peacefully among his friends, suffering from an attack of in- What shall I do to inherit eternal exdigestion, at the age of eighty, and tinction? leaving thousands of disciples. Ohri8tianity. Buddha is dead and gone forever, or lives only in the doctrine which he left. Christianity demands the suppression Ohristianity. of selfishness. Christianity says: Fight and over- In Christ alone there is forgiveness of sins. come the world.
Christ constantly insisted that He Christianity teaches: Expect a new was God-sent. earth, a world renewed and perfected, in which righteousness is to dwell for- Christ was sent from heaven to be born on earth in a poor and humble ever. state. Bodily existence is subject to only Christ had all the treasures of knowl- one transformation. edge hidden in Himself, and made The body of man may be the abode known to His disciples that He was Himself the way and the truth. of the Holy Spirit of God. Present your bodies as living sacri- Christ died in agony an atoning death, suffering for the sins of the world, at fices, holy, acceptable to God, and exthe age of thirty-three, and leaving pect a change to glorified bodies hereabout one hundred and twenty disciples. after. Work the works of God while it is Christ rose and is alive forevermore. day. DOCTRINAL DIFFERENCES. Become as little children, and when Buddhism. you have done all, account yourselves Buddhism demands the suppression unprofitable servants. of self, with the one object of extin- What shall I do to inherit eternal guishing all consciousness of self. life? Buddhism says: Shun the world and withdraw from it. Another writer says: Buddhism teaches: Expect a never- .. To the Christian, the chief quesending succession of worlds forever tions of the future turn upon the fate coming into existence, developing, de- of Buddhism, and the prospects of caying, and reviving, and all equally Christianity. Can Buddhism retain its full of everlasting misery and change. hold upon the people amid the inevita- ble enlightenment? It is admitted to Bodily existence is continued in six be one of the purest of false sYiltems, conditions, through countless bodies of its ethical code almost identical with men, animals, demons, etc. our Decalogue. Gautama, the origina- tor, appears to have been a man of rare The body can never be the abode of disinterestedness and purity of charac· anything but evil. ter, contrasting strangely with the las- civious grossness of Mohammed. But Look to final deliverance from all the whole philosophy of Buddhism is an impractical dream, futile and ineffec- tual. It lays no strong and cheering hold upon the hopes of the life to come. It lacks inspiratIOn and high prompt- ing, affording no • mark for the prize of his high calling in Christ Jesus,' which quickened Paul to all endurance and all effort, revealing no • eternal weight of glory,' no fellowship of God part to different authorities and in part here or hereafter, no eternal career of to basis of calculation. The 2,284,880 culture and growth and delightful ac- Christians include nearly a million and tivity, no joy of eternal love. but in- a half of Roman an~l Syrian Catholics stead of these a mere endless dream iu and about 800,000 Syrian Jacobites. In which all sin will be bleached out of 1890 there were in India proper (excluthe soul. but with it all thought, feel- sive of Burma and Ceylon) 559,661 ing, and moral quality. It gives no Christians, of whom 182,722 were comimpulse, and lacks moral power. It municants. Including Burma and does not,corrupt, but it leaves all the Ceylon, 671,285 adherents and 223,941 natural corruption of the heart to go communicants. These have now inunchecked, which in the end leads to creased to over 700,000 native adherents I much the same result. and about 250,000 communicants for all India. " Buddhism. so plausible and so negative, will be hard to dislodge, and for NOTES FOR THE MONTH.-D. L. P. this reason great fruits have not yet been gathered in Siam. A people well The estimated area of Siam is 190,000 fed and proud of their garden land and square miles, about equal to that of the their respectable religious faith are less New England and Middle States, or one easily moved than impoverished and and one half times as large as the Britperishing races ; but Siam must yield ish Isles. The population numbers up Buddhism before the progressive about six millions, and consists of tendencies of a practical age. If not 2,000,000 Siamese, 2,000,000 Laosians, Christianity, then scepticism will take 1,000,000 Malays, and 1,000,000 Chithe place of the shadowy and soulless nese. dream that now entrances the people… Roman Catholics began mission work Oorreotion and Explanation. in this country about 1662, but soon became corrupt and a great hindrance Rev. D. F. Watkins writes to correct rather than a help to the cause of pure statements in the March Survey: .' Rev. Christianity, since the Siamese judged Mr. Thompson brought Bibles here (to all Christians by the Romanists among Mexico) in 1827. Portions of the Scrip- them. The first attempt to reach the tures in Spanish also found their way into Siamese with the Gospel was made by this country at an early date after their Mrs. Ann Hazeltine Judson, when, at her home in Ragoon, Burma, she transpublication (1823). . . . There are about lated a catechism and some tracts into a dozen churches and congregations in Siamese in 1819. Mrs. Gutzlaff was the Territory of Tepic with two or- the first missionary who resided in dained native pastors, helped by faith- Siam, but she only lived there one year, from 1830 to 1831. The American ful local preachers. The llethodist Board established and maintained mis- Episcopal Church, South, has also good sions there from 1831 to 1849. The work in three cities in Sinaloa and in American Baptist Union began work in Bangkok in 1833, but since 1835 have three places in Sonora, also at La Paz, confined their attention to the Chinese Lower California. OUf statements in Bangkok and the vicinity. The were based on the fact that there are Presbyterians of the United States no Protestant foreign missionaries sta- (North) entered the field in 1840, and have continued laboring successfully tioned here. A seeming contradiction with but a slight interruption until the iu our April issue needs a note of ex- present, and are the only society now planation. On pages 269, 291, and 293 the statements are made that there are in India 2,284,380 Christians, of whom 592,612 are native Protestant Christians, again that Protestant communicants number 250,000 and adherents 700,000, and again that communicants number 182,722 and native Christians 559,661. These seeming discrepancies are due in working among the Siamese and Lao· was granted, and he regained his throne.
sians. The prospects of the work are Later on the kingdom came under the exceedingly bright, seemingly only lim· power of Siam, when French aid was ited by lack of men and means to take again called in, and the protectorate advantage of the fields already white recognized 1863. Pray for an open unto harvest. In 1894 there were la- door and men and means to enter into boring among the Siamese 22 mission- Cambodia and Annam.
aries, including 8 ordained men, 1 phy- sician, and 5 unmarried ladies. These were assisted by 23 native helpers, In- cluding 1 licentiate and 18 teachers.
Communicants numbered 317, of whom Malaysia consists of the lIIalay Pen- 12 were added in one year; 307 pupils insula (Lower Siam and British colo- attended 13 day -schools, 555 were in nies), Sumatra, Java, Celebes, Molucca, Sabbath'school, and the number of in- and other small islands under Dutch door patients treated was 2800. The rule, Borneo, divided between the more important and promising work is Dutch and English, the Philippine Is- carried on among the Laos tribes of the lands under Spain, and numerous other north. Here 31 missionaries (10 or- small islands, some of them controlled dained, 3 medical, 6 unmarried wom- by Portugal. New Guinea is some- en) are stationed, assisted by 1 ordained times added, but more properly belongs nat~ve and 50 other helpers. They to Australasia. The total area, 830,000 have established 9 churches with 1590 square miles, and the estimated popu- communicants, of whom 289 were add- lation, 35,000,000, of whom two thirds ed in a year. Pupils in the 6 day- are in Java. The prevailing religion schools number 370, and in Sabbath- is Mohammedan. In Singapore and schools 475. the adjacent country there are laboring representatives of the Church of Eng- land, Presbyterians and Plymouth Brethren of England, and the Ameri- One of the unoccupied fields of the can Methodists (North). The British world Is neighbor to Siam. OarnlJodia, and Foreign Bible Society from this with an area of 40,000 square miles and centre sends out Bibles and tracts in a population of about 800,000 Siamese forty-jive languages (200 languages are and Laos people, 30,000 Malays, and said to be spoken in the city), and has 100,000 Ohinese and Annamese. Cam- colporteurs going to Sumatra, Java, bodians are more honest, but scarcely Borneo, Celebes, and the Philippine less indolent than Annamese; women Islands, in which last place they are are fairly respected and independent; the only missionaries. In 1890 there instead of earrings they often wear were 83 missionaries laboring in the wooden or ivory plugs in the lobe, Dutch East Indies, most of whom are which thus becomes distended to a connected with the Reformed Church monstrous size. Society of Holland, the Netherland, The early history is obscure. Con- Ermelo, Dutch, Mennonite, Rhenish, quered by the Annamese toward the and Utrecht societies. Statistics of sta- close of the seventeenth century, the tions, missionaries, and communicants southern portion was set apart for Chi- are very incomplete, the Encylopredia.
nese who had fled from home for politi- of Missions gives 198 stations and 32,767 cal reasons, and this became Cochin communicants; this is, however, a very China. In 1787 the king of Cochin incomplete record. In Java there is a China, being dethroned, appealed, native home and foreign missionary so- through French missionaries (Roman ciety founded in Batavia in 1851. This Catholic), to France for aid, which is now operated from Amsterdam_
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
IV.-EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT.
The March of Events. by the Chinese forces that hover around it. The climate is inclement. Imag- Official ad vices received at Wash- ine a large army tramping through the ington announce that the powers of snows of Maine and New Hampshire, Viceroy Li Hung Chang, the Chinese and we have some of the conditions of the Japanese forces, and, moreover, the Peace Commissioner, embraced negotia- Japanese army has not the clothing or tion upon four points. His credentials the shelter that an army in New Engread simply" to negotiate," but he was land might be expected to have, neither clothed with full powers to effect: can it get much support from the coun- 1. The independence of Korea. try through which it is travelling. It 2. A money indemnity. is not the first time that an army has found it a very different matter to push 3. Cession of territory. the war within the enemy's borders from what it was to gain victories on its 4. The readjustment of treaty rela- own or a neutral country's soil. Ja-· tions between the two countries in re- pan, of course, shows no fear as yet, gard to commercial relations, extra-ter- though there is seen a lack of.enthusi- ritorial jurisdiction, and other matters asm over the war which a tew months ago was not apparent. There is no previously covered by treaties which seeming haste on the part of Chinese have been terminated by the war. envoys. They are evidently confident This information discredits the cir- that the longer the delay the smaller cumstantial statement sent out March will be the .indemnity. There is cere tainly at present some ground for the 121h, purporting to give the text of the prophecy which was made by good auconditions agreed to by China in ad- thority in the fall of 1894-that the vance. These conditions are said to nearer Japan came to taking Pekin in include the cession of certain specified 1894 the greater her victory, an<J the farther she was from Pekin on January territory and to prohibit the cession of 1st the greater her misfortune. But all other territory, and to limit the indem- this may have changed ere this reaches nity to $250,000,000, payable In gold. America.
March 25th the news came from Tokio "One event in connection with the war should fill the Christian world with that a young Japanese, Kogama Roku- rejoicing and prayer for God's blessing nosuk, had shot the viceroy in the cheek, upon the Word. In an almost unex- and the bullet entered below the eye. plainable way Japan has lately been The wound was not thought to be dan- opened to the Bible as never before. It shOuld be known that in the past misgerous, and the would-be assassin is re- sionaries and Christian teachers have ported a lunatic. The Japanese with been forbidden to enter the barracks or one accord deplore the fanatic's act, to present Christianity in any way to the soldiers. A Christian young man and the probable result will be favor· who became enrolled in the arm.y could able to China in the peace negotiation. keep his Testament with difficulty, and Indeed, later it was announced that was likely to suffer much persecution an unconditional armistice is granted by at the hands of officers as well as men. A few months ago a young man who the Japanese emperor. last year graduated from the Baptist Ai to Japan and the war, Rev. J. L. theological school, on being enrolled, Dearing writes in The Watchman: had the greatest difficulty in keeping his small copy of the Gospels. Now all " The war wages steadily on. The is changed. Those in authority are nearer view of affairs gives little en· doing everything in their power to have coura~ement of the speedy issue which the Testament placed in the hand of AmerIcan and English papers report. every ioldier. The private secretary The accounts in the daily vernacular of Count Ito aided in forwarding a press, which may be expected to make large number of copies of the Testaout as good a case as possible for the ment, to be distributed through tbe Japanese, lead one to think that the navy. Prince Komatsu, who is at the Japanese army is advancing very slow· head of the Imperial Guards, asks that ly toward Pekin and is greatly harassed 10,000 copies of the New Teatament b6 fwrniihed for every office! and man in may not seem strange to those who are the Imperial Guard. They are the accustomed to think of the sympathy picked men of the empire, he says, and of a Lincoln or a Washington, but It should be the model men of the army. one thinks of the usual luxury of an He wants everyone to have a Testa- Eastern court, and how unusual such ment. Free permission has been given conduct is on the part of an ElIStern to the agent of the Bible societies to monarch, it will be easier to conceive distribute Testaments and to hold reo the high place that his Imperial Maj. esty, Mutsu Hito, is winning in the lIgious conversation in the hospitals of hearts of his people by the sympathy the army, among the Chinese prisoners, and love that he is showing, and one and in the barracks throu~hout Japau. can better understand what an inspira- How much this means it IS hard to reo tion he is to the entire army." alize. We cannot believe that this general permission to do a work here- From other sources we learn that the tofore forbidden cOll}es wholly from a American Board of Commissioners for new love for the Bible. Other forces Foreign Missions has received from are doubtless at work, but the fact that Hiroshima, the military headquarters the Bible is thus circulated may tell above referred to, a statement and ap· wonderfully in the advancement of the peal relating to Christian work for the Master's kingdom through the new and army, showing that, for the firllt time widespread reading which these thou- in history, a pagan nation authorizes the sands of copies will receive. We may employment of native Ohristians a8 army well pray that the understanding of chaplains! Ten missionaries and six· many may be opened. It is unques- teen Japanese workers have been des· tionably true that the war will forward ignated for the special work. for soldiers Christianity in Japan as well as Korea at Hiroshima. Encouraged by the and China. Korea has been opened as sympathy and weighty influence of never before to Christian teachin~. Christian officials high in rank, the 10- The slur which has often been heard lD cal committee have obtained permission Japan, that Christianity would make to send a number of Japanese evangel· one disloyal and destroy one's love for ists to the front as Cluistian workers for the Emperor and for one's country, has the army, and it is hoped that permis. been effectually stamped out by the sion may be secured for a missionary to loyal attitude of all Christian people. accompany or follow these Japanese. The activity of Christian people in seeking to supply the needs of the An appeal is issued asking for $1000 army, as well as in prayer for the at once to use in the missionary work army, has brought Christianity before contemplated in the Japanese army. the people in a very favorable light, The appeal is signed by seven well· quite in contrast with the inactivity of known brethren, with Bishop Evington at the head, and a new door seems open the Buddhists. for Christian effort which it is to be " Reference ought to be made to the hoped may be promptly entered.
attitude of the Emperor toward the In stran~e ways God may use this war. The subject is little dwelt upon war to promote the spread of Christian· by the home paper, perhaps because it is not understood, but it is a fact, never· ity in these lands. theless, which makes him a great ex· ception among Eastern monarchs. Soon Purushotam Rao Telang, a Brahman, after the war opened he removed his in the December Forum, makes the fol· court from the luxuries of his Tokyo lowing remarkable admission in regard palace to Hiroshima in West Japan, to Christ,ianity: "Here, in justice to that he might be nearer the seat of war the missionary, I must say that he has and able to encourage the troops as done much to lift the pariah, socially they embarked for the war, and also and mentally, by opening schools and oversee the return of the wounded and educating those who became converts. prisoners. There, in plain, temporary The structure of ,Hindu society and r60 quarters, he has remained, taking a deep interest in everything that concerned the war. He often goes through the hospitals and sends the band to play for the invalids. Only a few days since he was found walking in his garden in the clothes of an ordinary solaier that he might, he said, more fully appreciate the condition of his soldiers at the front. Such action on the part of an Emperor ligion – built on caste – is such that there was desperate fighting, 1500 men there is no such help for the pariah as having been killed or wounded.
the Christian missionary has brought to ., Then the diplomats and the Papal him." Nuncio, Mgr. Macchi, intervened and Another war threatens between Chili a peace was arranged. and the Argentine Republic, which "During the fighting all of the forwill draw in Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador as allies of Argentine against eign legations were exposed to the fir- Chili. One thing feared by the people ing. The United States Legation was here is that Chili's first step will be to in a particularly dangerous situation. put a heavy body of troops into the centre of Bolivia, which can easily be "Mrs. McKenzie, wife of the United done by the railroad, and thus step in States Minister, narrowly escaped being between all the allies and chastise each shot. More than fifty refugees sought one separately at leisure. an asylum in this Legation. The only means of communication with the out- side world since Saturday has been over the lines of the Central and South Drought and locusts have caused American Telegraph and Cable Comwidespread famine in Eastern Equa- pany. All other lines were closed."
torial Africa. Villages have been de- Dr. Gracey sends the following letpopulated and mission schools and ter from a well-known source: churches have been closed. Many natives are selling themselves and their SEOUL, KOREA, February 7, 1895. children into slavery to obtain food_ I give you a great piece of news- The missionaries in Ugogo, Mpwahwa, Bishop Ninde had an audience with and Mamboia have joined others in an the king of Korea on the 4th inst. The appeal for aid. king expressed a desire to see the bish· op on January 31st, but he had already Mr. McKenzie, United States Min- gone to Chemulpo. He returned and ister to Peru, telegraphed the State was received in auillence. This is the Department March 21st, that, after first time episcopacy stood In the pres- three days' fighting, an armistice had ence of royalty in the bermi~ nation.
been arranged between the insur- Dr. Scranton [Methodist Episcopal] and gents and the government troops, Dr. Underwood [Presbyterian] accom· and that over a thousand dead and panied the bishop, and they understood wounded were left lying in the streets the hearty words of thunks His Majesty of Lima. Later some sort of an agree- uttered to the bishop in behalf of the ment was reached by the belligerents, Americans for their interest in Korea.
and peace was restored. A provisional "There are many, many Americans in government is reported formed with Korea. We are glad they are here.
Senor Candamo as Provisional Presi- Thank the American people, and we dent and Minister of Foreign Affairs. shall be glad to receive more 'teach- The New York Herald says: "Presi- ers.'" This is a wonderful utterance.
dent Caceres surrenders the government There are no Americans worth men- and retires to Ancon. Nicolas Pierola, tioning in Korea except "teachers,"
the leader of the revolutionists and and to tell the bishop to tell "the formerly President, will go to Chorillos. American people" to send more seems Caceres took refuge on board the Chil- to me to be opening the door wide on ian cruiser El P'l'eaidente Pinto. its hinges. The king and many of his .. This change in the government is people believe in Americans, and want the results of the three days' battle in to get as much of their" civilization"
Lima. The revolutionary forces, led from them as possible.
by Pierola, entered the city at dawn To-day I was asked by a representa- Sunday morning, and for three days tive of the foreign department here to receive two hundred students into our ditional pledlSe suggested by this devout mission school. It is not likely they man of God were added? We can im- agine the deeper feeling with which have this number ready, but it does each one would say, ' It meaw mY8elf, mean they want to avail themselves of ()1' my earthly p088essions.' One vow of our school. This Is a time worth living this kind would be worth one thousand in Korea. of the other, which is hedged in on three sides only. The word' if ' leaves Student Volunteers. the other wide open toward the world. Like Gideon's band, the little company An additional pledge is suggested of three hundred would be worth more for battle than more than thirty thoufor the Student Volunteer Movement, sand. by a prominent friend of missions and "These new Volunteers would be a generous giver. We print the com· like the tine wheat and the unblemished munication : sacrifice, which was required in the Old " A widely known and useful clergy- Testament religious rites. Now, no man of our .Church, who has made a less than then, God is mocked when study of Presbyterian and other church solemn vows are broken, or when immethods, made a suggestion recently, perfect sacrifices are brought to His on the Student Volunteer Movement, altar. "
that challenges and will bear consider- In the last issue we gave place to ation. If put into practice, it would insure such a purification of these the communication of Mr. S. F. Wilwould-be sons of Levi as could not fail kins, President of the Howard National • to bring down an abundant blessing on the churches. Bank of Boston, as to the" extra cent· – "Speaking of the imperfect pledge a-day plan" for raising money for the which these young people take upon cause of missions. Mr. Wilkins is not themselves, he added, 'I would find no only very earnest about this scheme for fault with the pledge, if it would go on and say further," If the way is not open- habitual and systematic contributions, ed for me to go to the foreign field, I but he exemplifies his principles by in· promise to live on the same amount, in closing fifty dollars, which we apply to this country, that I would receive were our Student Volunteer Fund for sup- I engaged in missionary work, and consecrate all that I possess over and above plying the REVIEW to proposing and that amount to the maintenance of the intending missionaries. To this plan foreign missionary work." , of Mr. Wilkins we call attention with "It was not said in jest, but in sol- emphatic commendation. emn earnest, and was the result of much observation and careful consideration of the plan that is rcgarded as simple Vivekana.nda. and easy to take up or let go. There is no question but that many who are Last winter no little stir was created counted as Student Volunteers have an in some of the northern cities by the earnest purpose to push on till they lectures of one Vivekananda. a Hindu reach the end they have professed to aim for; but these, as a rule, would monk, who was a delegate to the have gone out, almost certainly. with- World's Parliament of Religions. This out having made any previous public same Hindu has since published his declaration. views regarding missions in India in " It is no less true that most of the rank and tile of the movement are not different papers and magazines in this qualified to carry out their profession, country: and many of the thoughtless, and it would be better that they should or those whose prejudices were against not vow, than vow and fail to perform. foreign missions, were led to suppose Crowded meetings and the enthusiasm inspired by members, with impassioned that missions in India were a failure. appeals, are responsible for forcing, It would be well for such people in our from not over-strong natures, declara- own land to read the comments of the tions they would not make under other newspapers of India, Hindu as well as circumstances. " For these and other reasons would Christian, on the character and views of this same Vivekananda. His Hindu· it not be well, and would it not be an inspiration for the Church, if the ad· ism is repudiated. and it is stated that such a system as he gave forth in this both ways. The lantern and some one country is unknown to orthodox Hin- to read the l"cture must be secured 10.'
dus; and his description 8f mission- cally. Whenever possible, the slides aries is generally pronounced as most are sent so as to arrive a day or two in unfair. It now appears that he was at advance of the date on which they are the outset an actor in the Calcutta the- to be used, and they should be returned atre. He afterward joined the Brahmo the day following, packed in accord- B'omaj, and preached their faith. He ance with the directions on the box.
soon repudiated this, differing from hil!! It may be well to add that Mr. Grant's brethren as to any belief in God. This own hints on giving an exhibition may is the man who has posed before Ameri· be had in printed form, by application can audiences as a learned and able ex- to him. Our illustrations on Siam in ponent of orthodox Hinduism.-The the present issue were kindly lent us by Missionary. Mr. Grant.
Apropos of the above, it may be add· New books on Missions still con· ed that the Calcutta missionaries do not tinue to appear, and some of them of favor the scheme of the Rev. J. H. Bar- high excellence. The Pacific Press rows, of chicago, for a course of lec- Publishing Company publish "The tures to be delivered in India on .. Com- Story of Pitcairn Island, and the Mutiparative Religion." It appears that neers of the Bounty," written by Miss the influence of the recent Parliament Rosalind Young, a native daughter, of Religions has tended rather to foster and it is well done. The marvellous confidence, already too arrogant, on the way in which the Word of God withpart of the mndus, in their own relig- out any living preacher won its way to ion and opposition to Christianity. The the heart of the whole community is a great business of Christians in regard unique testimony to the power of the to India is to preach the Gospel in all living book, and it is well that the story its simplicity and glory, and leave the is fully told by one who knows all the Hindus who hear to make their own facts. The proceeds of the sale of the comparisons. We have had serious book go to the new educational institudoubts from the beginning as to the tion now building on the island. expediency of any such" lectures" in the heart of Asiatic idolatry and false faith. Michael Coates sends gratifying news from the South Africa General A most helpful way of creating and Mission as to the work of God in SWRfostering interest in missionary subjects zieland.
is by magic lantern lectures, illustrating Mr. Baillie with Mr. Coates and wife the daily life of the people, their occu- visited the new station," The Welpations, religion, places of worship, the come," and found the work going for· physical features of the country, public ward, and the natives flocking to the buildings, and the mission work. Such meetings. The Sunday before their illustrated lectures on India, China, and visit it was difficult to find room for Persia may now be had by applying to the people. Klass, the owner of the W. Henry Grant, 53 Fifth Avenue, farm, was converted and baptized duro New York. Each set is composed of seventy or eighty views, with a map ing their stay. The party several time!! and two missionary hymns. A' manu- visited the klng's kraal and held school script lecture is sent with the slides. there for the young king, a boy of About an hour is required for reading about nineteen and his two brothers. the lecture and showing the pictures. l1r. Coates writbs: " We believe there A charge of $2 is made each time the is a work going on in the heart of the slides are used, in addition to expressage queen. lam told she prays often. We heard her speak about Jesus and ask questions about the Bible. She has promised she will shortly tell all her people to learn and to pray. The king is very firm in his belief that their ideas about spirits and snakes are right, being compelled to deny a share in the but all his movements are watched by distribution to any whose income Is the native doctors, who are anxious over £100 a year. The work done by that his mind should be kept -in a state this "book fund" has been immense of darkness. and of vast benefit.
" If the king goes to wash, his medi- A Presbytery has been formed in cine man accompanies him, so that the connection with the United Presbyte- rian Mission in Egypt, one of the most water may be doctored and no evil promising missionary enterprises in the spirit hurt him. When lately the king world. This presbytery has recently shot two men in a fit of anger, his held its annual meeting at Suit al Lebu, witch doctor had to come immediately on the Upper Nile. Americans, visiting Egypt now in increasing numbers, and give him medicine to make the an- often show their interest by their gifts. A gry spirit depart, and the remedy was late letter from Cairo says that Mr. Whitelaw Reid, of the New York to paint the eyes of the king with a Tribune, who has just left for Suez, en black concoction, telling him also not route for Jerusalem, sent in a check for $500 for mission work, with a note in to leave his hut for three days. I was which he witnesses to the excellence of very much surprised the other day the work being done all through Egypt by this mission. when the king told me that the white people simply existed to give nice things The Proposed Medioal Missionary 001- to the nati ves. The king is very fond lege. of speaking to us, and I trust that be- The first payment of $5000 toward fore long his mind will be enlightened. the purchase of the John Stephenson We have had the king's own brother at church twice; he also comes frequently to visit us and is very pleasant and nice. He told me that when he got to know more about Jesus he would believe in Him.
.. Five of the king's sisters with their attendants were present at church, and listened most attentively to what was said, for which we praise God, as we feel sure that the words spoken in church are carried home and repeated again to the queen. "
Rev. Frank S. Dobbins will send to estate at New Rochelle, N. Y., was anyone writing him (at 1420 Chestnut made by the International Medical Mis- Street, Philadelphia) for it, a list of sionary Society early in March. The " Some Two Hundred of the Best Mis- second payment of $70,000 is due May sionary Books. " The list includes only 1st, and the third payment of $15,000 books now in print and on sale and must be made September 1st. easily obtainable. The property, comprising twenty Thirteen thousand copies of the list acres, and forming one of the most are now out in circulation, and a new beautiful sites to be found on Long edition of five thousand is just issued. Island Sound, has upon it a large white stone mansion built in the form of a cross, and measuring 115 feet in length, Mrs. Charles H. Spurgeon, still inside of piazzas. and 72 feet extreme residing at Westwood, London, con- breadth, about 60 feet average width.
tinues to supply ministers of small It has four complete stories. It is pro- means with good books. During 1894, posed to arrange the upper floor as a 8403 volumes were thus distributed, dormitory for male students, the third mostly works by her lamented hus- floor being devoted to lady students.
band. Among the recipients were 183 The ground fioor, containing eleven Baptists, 72 Congregationalists, 105 rooms. will be used for purposes of in- Methodists, 63 Episcopalians, and struotion and administration, While the 6 Presbyterians; £882158. 7d. was con- basement will afford all needed con- tributed. Mrs. Spurgeon says that she venience for boarding, culinary pur· has had more applications from the poses, and laboratories.
Episcopal clergy than she could fill, The former owner, John Stephenson, spent over $400,000 upon the building weeks will also be arranged for prospec- and grounds, but the executors, being tive missionaries, during which instruc- interested in the project, bave given tion will be given in emergencies and $35,000 of the lowest market price- the Bible, and the students will have $125,000-reducing the cost to only opportunity for practical work at the $90,000. A mortgage of $50,000 can mission dispensaries of the Society.
be readily obtained upon the property, The charge for board, residence, and but the promoters of the college trust instruction for ten weeks will be $50.
that the people of God will not permit This course will extend from the mid- this to become necessary. They have dle of June to the end of August.
about $10,000 promised toward the sec- Recently a very valuable addition to ond payment, and much earnest prayer the Society has been made by placing has been and is being offered by the on its Board the Rev. D. M. Stearns, of managers, students, and others that the Philadelphia, one of the ablest and scores and even hundreds of noble soundest Bible teachers of the present young men and women now clamoring day.
for medical education for mission ser- vice may be accepted and trained as they desire. Rev. Dr. Steel, of Sydney. The gift of $1000 will provide resi- dence for one student in perpetuity, Among our ablest editorial correwhile $5000 will provide re8idence and spondents we esteemed the late Dr. board for nine months and medical edu- Robert Steel, of Sydney. A memorial cation for one young man or woman in tablet to him, of Carrara marble, ;has perpetuity. The donors may name been unveiled in St. Stephen's Church, their gifts as scholarships, "In Memo- Sydney. The inscription reads: riam," and for the use of students of their particular denomination. Sacred to Tbe basis of the institution will be the Memory of :THE REV. ROBERT STEEL, D.D. evangelical and interdenominational, Born at Pontypool, Monmouthshire, England, and the trustees will represent, as 15th May, 1827.
equably as possible, the denominations Died at Sydney, New South Wales, 9th' in accordance with the gifts made from October, 1893. and for the same. Minister of St. Stephen's Church for 31 years. The Rev. S. L. Baldwin, D.D., Sec- Third Moderator of the General Assembly.
One of the first Couucillors of St. Andrew's retary Methodist Mission Board, 150 College. Fifth Avenue, New York City, is the President of the Interim Theological facnlty present treasurer. of the Presbyterian Church of New Sonth Since January 1st, 1893, Dr. Dow- Wales. An earnest and eloquent Preacher of the kontt, the Founder and Medical Direct- Gospel.
or of the Society, has received commu- A faithful and Warm-heaned PSBtor. nications from not less than 400 young A Wise and Far-seeing Church Statesman. men and women in our various colleges and schools, who desire to obtain medi- A Popular and Instructive Lecturer. An Enthnsiastic Social Reformer. And an able and voluminous Contrihntor to cal education for mission service. If the Literature of the Day. the building is secured, it is intended In his daily Life to form the first class of first year students of 40 or 50 -both sexes-and be- he endeavored to show himself an example to his Hock. In his intercourse with his Ministerial Brethren he was ever a Pattern gin the regular course about September of Courtesy aud Forbearance, and iu his dealings 15th next. The course will be four with those outside his Denomination, he was a years of nine months each session, with privilege of graduating at the end of Model of Manly Frankness and Christian three years. A summer course of ten Charity.
" 0 for the tonch of a vaniShed hand, And the sound of a voice that is still 1"
GENERAL lIUSSIONARY INTELLIGENOE
V.-GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE.
EDITED BY BEV. D. L. LEONARD.
Extracts and Translations from Foreign faith that had led many to righteous- Periodicals. ness of life ; but as yet confession of BY REV. C. O. STARBUCK, ANDOVER, Christ is not made unto 8al1Jation. We MASS. have now to prophesy to the wind, and the spirit will come from the four quar- lNDIA. ters of the heaven, and they shall then -" Mr. Redman took me last even- live. In a few years we shall, please ing to visit a memorial to Sadhu Hira God, be able to say, ' And they lived, Nand Shanthi Ram Advani. The in· and stood up upon their feet an exceed· scription in English on the monument ing great army.'" – Rev. ROBERT was that he was' born March 6th, 1863, CLARK, in Church Mi88ionary Gleaner.
and died on July 14th, 1893.' 'Do not -" A More Liberal Christianity for be weary in well-doing.' 'The ,world India. It is an exceedingly interesting passeth away and the lusts thereof, and fascinating study to trace the dif- but he that doeth the will of God en- ferent currents of thought that ripple dureth forever.' On the top of the over the Hindu mind one after another.
monument was the Christian cross, the Many of them are very evanescent in Hindu trident, and the Mohammedan their character and their effects. Some crescent. He founded and for a time of these waves of thought just touch taught in the Brahmo Somaj Union the surface and leave the abysses un- Academy in Hyderabad. He was touched; but there is one current of greatly interested in the education of thought which is quietly but surely en- girls, and taught some of them him· tering the Hindu mind and stirring it self. He was the editor of a native to its depths, and that is Christian newspaper, the Barowati, and advo· thought. In many minds it awakens cated every scheme of social reform. sympathy, in others aversion, in some At the time of the cholera epidemic he intense hatred. Numbers would like a wen(personally wherever the pestilence Christianity robbed of its strength, was most virulent, and gave medicine more accommodating to the ways of to the sick and comfort to the dying. men, or, to employ the usual term, a He never spared himself, and he gave more' liberal' Christianity. The Par- his labor, his time, and his money with- liament of Religions is to some extent out any human reward. He was a na- responsible for this latest ripple of tive of Hyderabad, and his whole heart Hindu thought. Hindus and Bud- seemed filled with a measure of the dhists have been welcomed in Ameri- spirit of Christ. But he never became ea; they have proclaimed to delighted a Ohristian. On his monument appear audiences the lofty morality and tran- two English texts from the Bible, scendental philosophy of their sys- which are surmounted with the em- tems ; Christian men and women have blems of the three great religions in listened with delight to their eloquent India, which are antagonistic to each denunciations of Christian morals, and other. have regarded the testimony of these " Full long has the Christian Church men as superior to that given by mis- been prophesying in India to the dry sionaries. The Christian public in bones, as God has commanded us to America and England are prepared to do. These bones are now coming to· take these men at their own valuation.
gether in the form of humanity. But The pUblication of the report of the there is as yet no life and no confession WorId's Parliament of Religions has of !Jhrist. There is apparently the given ' liberal' editors the opportunity
1895.J EXTlACTS .AND
of having their say. The editor of the prevail must emphasize the facts of Metlwdi8t Times cven is quite prepared sin, of alienation from God, of return to accept the Hindu at his own esti- to God through Jesus Christ. Take mate, and heartily endorse his senti- these away, and Christianity will be ments. Mr. Hughes says: 'How ter- deprived of its power. But the heralds ribly just, for example, was the follow- of Christ in this land will not cast away ing bitter cry of a high-minded Brah- their shield of strength. Their work man: •• Oh, that the English had never is agitating the minds of men; it will set foot in India 1 Oh, that we had continue to agitate them till the people never seen a single European face 1 ·of India shall have fairly faced and Oh, that we had never tasted the bitter adequately answered the question, sweets of your civilization, rather than , What think ye of Christ? ' "-Ha1"lJUt it should make us a nation of drunk- Field.
ards and brutes I'" This rhetoric is – We take occasion to commend the , terribly just,' and is to be accepted as Ha1"lJUt Field, published by the Methtrue because it is the 'bitter cry of a odist Episcopal brethren of Madras, as, high-minded Brahman I' But is there in point of mildness, breadth, and any truth in it? We have no doubt soundness, a magazine that leaves the' high-minded Brahman' would be nothing to be desired. delighted if every missionary left these shores to-morrow. Mr. Hughes ap- -The Madras Mission of the Ameri- parently agrees with him. The en- can Board, as quoted in the Ha'I'fJUt dorsement of such exaggerated rhetoric Field, says: may lead Hindus to think that Chris- "In view of the many accessions to tians who can so write are' liberal :' our community, an inquiry concerning but such foolish writing can only the motives of the new converts in be- weaken the Christian sentiment and in- coming Christians is a very interesting fluences that missionaries are trying to one. The opprobrious epithet of ' rice spread. Missionaries who live in the Christians' is not so frequently hurled midst of the people cannot accept at missions as it once was, so that we these representatives of the Hindu and can study the question more calmly.
Buddhist religion as fully and ade- It Is evident that as intelligence grows quately describing these religions; they among the people, and as the Christian do not endorse their wild and extrava- community multiplies, a greater vari- gant rhetorical statements. Hence the ety of motives and higher ones become people of America and England are possible and common among those who liberal and progressive. while mission- are accepting Christianity as their aries are narrow, puritanical, unpro- faith. The relative number is growing gressive. of those who are disgusted with the " The only 'liberal' Chris- hollowness of Hinduism, and 'are at- tianity that will be approved by many tracted by the truth and divine excel- is a Christianity that will deny the de- lence of Christianity, and for that rea- pravity of the human heart, and there- son embrace it in the face of many per- fore its need of regeneration ; that will secutions. We rejoice also in seeing rob Jesus Christ of His Divinity, and many, perhaps the larger number of set Him up as a peerless man among our accessions, drawn to us by family men. and therefore deprive Him of His ties. Their relatives were already redeeming love. Will such a Christi- Christians, and were being richly bless- anity be of any use in India? Will ed by their new faith. Their pleas, the followers of such a Christianity their example. and the solid blessings ever take the trouble to send out am- which Christianity brought to them, bassadors in any numbers? We trow and their refusal to marry their chil- not. The only Christianity that can dren to non-Christians, Were the all-
MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE
powerful motives with this class. And is the power of God unto salvation. this motive through ties of blood and And it is no uncommon experience of kinship is to grow, for some years at the missionary to receive men whose least, out of proportion to all others, motives are so low and Whose minds and become the vastly preponderating are so base as to disqualify them from factor in the conversion of India to any true Christian life, but whose Christ. children, when they themselves have passed away, adorn the faith and ex- "The thirst for education and ad- perience the joys which their parents vancement is another growing power never knew." which draws the people. Many a young man, with the hearty consent -Mission jubilees are commencing of his Hindu relatives, now casts in to rain in India. The fact is suggeshis lot with us because it is the only tively instructive. The contrast with way open to him for education and the olden times, which were not better, promotion, with which blessings our is admirably encoura.ging. The Basel faith is becoming more and more iden- German Mission Church at Calicut, tified in the minds of the masses. And which has arrived at this joyful and many families also thus join us in or- patriarchal age, teaches, both in its inder that their cbildren may be edu- ception and by its later success, two cated. A great many still become distinctly important facts. The birth Christians from less worthy motives of the Church at Callcut was instruthan these. They are poor people suf- mentally due to the English civilians, fering injustice and cruelty at the hands Dr. Buchanan and Mr. Conolly. Its of village headmen and their heredi- parentage emphasizes the essential imtary masters-suffering as none but portance of the Christian layman in the poor Hindus do and can. But they counsels and efforts of the Church. Its learn of the missionary and Christian- maturity accentuates the wisdom of its ity, and sopn come to regard them as policy in its complete discouragement friends of the oppressed and the de- of caste."-Ohurch Mi88ionary InteUifenders of the poor. So they flee to gencer. them for protection, and when they find that they have not lied in vain, -" A notable Brahmo Somaj lecture they and their descendants are found on ' The Hindu Conception of God' was among the stanchest friends of the given on the 19th in the Town Ha)) to cause and the most devout disciples of a crowded audience by Babu Protap our Lord. A few come from more sor- Chandra Mozumdar, the leader of the did motives than these; but beyond Somaj. Tha.t conception, be told his telling all plainly that we offer no finan- hearers, had its best realization in the cial inducements of any kind to any Christian doctrine of the Trinity. The one, and can give them no promise of only point at which his utterances cessation of earthly troubles, we feel it might not have been the utterances of our privilege and duty not to scrutinize a sufficiently eloquent Christian mistoo closely men's motives; for we sionary was where-without explainhave learned not to expect high mo- ing, however-he declared that the tives from an ordinary Hindu, and we Christian conception of the Holy Spirit have learned also that a man's religiou'.! was' just too definite.' What a Chrisstatus in the future will depend, not so tian missionary Mr. Mozumdar would much upon the character of his pre- make t But the Lord of the Harvest Christian motives, or the absence of knows best." -Ibid. any serious motives, as upon the faithfulness and heartiness with which he -" The Irawaddy, like the Ganges entered Into the new relations and and the Brahmapootra, colors the sea llstellS tQ!l!ld 4qbibefj that Gospel which for many miles from its mouth. The coast lief! rlLther low, and is covered
EXTRACTI!l AND TRA]i8LATION8
with thick jungle, 80 that you see noth- find there is not a word in that treaty ing of Rangoon itself until you have to support the claims put forward in swept round into its harbor. But long the Chamber of Deputies by Ministers before, when yet miles away, you see, of Foreign Affairs answering interpella- out of the dark green mass, a glitterin~, tions. It is silent on the subject of a flashing tongue of flame shoot upward protectorate, and it only grants a privi- to heaven. Ascending like a fiery pil- leged situation to France in respect to lar, it disappears one moment in the diplomatic relations with foreign Pow- shadow of a passing cloud, and the ers, but not in respect to trading or any next moment flames out again more other relations. They stand on the brilliant than before. It is the' Golden letter, and, they aver, on the spirit, Pagoda,' the Sway Dagon, which is which was more distinctly expressed thus gleaming out far over the sea to in the Memorandum annexed to the greet us. "-Rev. O. FLEX, in Allge- treaty. They would not sign the treaty meine Mi8&01WJ·Zeitschrijt. unless M. Patenotre accepted the Mem- MADAGASCAR. orandum, which is not the less valid because M. de Freycinet shirked read- -The following statement, from the ing it to the Chamber of Deputies when Ohronicle, shows on the highest friendly he represented the treaty as a victory, authority, French, Catholic, and Jesuit, and asked for its ratification. how thoroughly inequitable is the present attitude of France toward Mada- "The Jesuit Father regards the gascar. Hovas as an intelligent and an interest- ing people, and well aware of the evil -" The Paris correspondent of the consequences of war with a great Euro- J)aily News recently sent to that paper pean power. But they will go to war the subjoined testimony as to the pres- if they are bullied, and a sentiment ent position of the French in Madagas- which would engender future trouble car from Pere Caussegue, a gentleman must spring up in the case of their well known in that island as one of the being defeated. If the French Govern- senior and most able members of the ment act with firmness and moderation, Jesuits' Mission. We fully endorse trying to conciliate and to be fair. the Pere Caussegue's view of the situation; Hovas are sure to become attached to it is strikingly true. France. The Jesuit complained to-day "Father Caussegue, of the Jesuits' to a writer on the staff of the Temp8 of Mission to Antananarivo, bas returned the number of usless French function- to France. He thinks the French aries quartered on the Hovas. Why wrong in ascribing aggressively hos- not send, instead of the fifty soldiers tile intentions to the Hovas. They who form the Resident's guard, six have no wish whatever to break the married gendarmes. and doctors, en- peace, and if they are procuring arms gineers, schoolmasters, and schoolmis· from England, it is only to make, tresses? They would be truly work- should they be obliged, a defensive use ers for civilization. A grand palace of them. They are terrified at the ut- has been built for the Resident, and a terances of M. de Mahy and other per- big barrack for the soldiers. The Jesuit sons of intemperate speech in the Cham- Father longed to see hospitals in their ber of Deputies. All that is said there place, and a few hundred thousand about Madagascaris printed at Antanan- francs devoted to benevolent institu- arivo. It does sound alarming to per- tions. Such an expenditure would be sons who are not used to French par- a premium of insurance against war, liamentary oratory, and it makes the which would cost millions, be a cause Queen and ministers scan closely the of military weakness, and bring France text of the Patenotre Treaty and the no return worth speaking of. There Memorandum annexed to it. They are English and Norwegian missions at
GENE:RAL lIlISSIONA:RY INTELLIGENCE
A.ntananarivo. Father Caussegue says out for more." -Ohul'c7& MiasiMWl1"Jl of them that if their relations are not InteUigence1'. intimate with the Catholic missions they are civil. The English and Norwegi- English Notes. ans do not attack the Catholics. The open and violent enemies of the latter BY JAlIlES DOUGLAS. are French. As to the Sakalavas, who are not yet Protestantized, the Jesuit London Mi8Siona'l'1J Society. – In an Father holds them to be an inferior able article on " The Story of the Lonrace, refractory to civilization. They don Missionary Society," Dr. Horton are fearful thieves. The Rovas are shows that there has been no decline really a fine race, and in time to come in the quality, the devotion, and the will be the governing one of the island." achievement of the missionaries. For example, in the last quarter of the cen- -As the two extremes of Christian tury there is the splendid story of New opinion in France, M. Saillens and Guinea to match that of cannibal Tahiti M. Caussegue, a Baptist and a Jesuit, and Samoa won for Christ. Africa concur in deprecating the overbearing presents a similar record-" the eleven policy of their government toward martyrs, gathered one by one,and laid Madagascar, we may regard the case in the lonely graves to possess the land as closed with all the judicious. M. about Tanganyika," forming a titting Caussegue, we observe, while acquit· sequel to the glorious courage of Vanting the Protestant missionaries of all derkemp, Philips, and Moffat. So hostility against the Catholic, does not with China. Dr. Horton, however, as condescend even to mention the charge an Englishman is not quite satisfied that they are plotting against France with the review. "Is it creditable," herself. He evidently does not think he asks, "to England that nearly all this worth notice. our best missionaries in the London Missionary Society have been Scotch- -" Moral ideas seem lacking among men or Welshmen 1 What is it in the the Sakalavas in Madagascar, though England of to-day that saps the herotheir neighbors, the Hovas, are Chris- ism in youths, and drifts them into tianized to a large extent. They say: smooth respectabilities instead of pas- • To lie, a sin? to rob, a sin? to get sionate heroisms 1" drunk, a sin? to aid wars, a sin? What is sin? That is some idea of Tien-Men and King.shan.-Dr. Grifyou white men, not ours. Let the fith John sends an inspiring and length- Hovas accept new ideas and customs. ened aocount of a journey through We are not such fools, or deceived so these districts. We note one or two easily.' Yet there il:l a conscience in items. "At one of our prayer-meetthem, and it may be awakened."-Pel'i- ings," he says, "it was my privilege odical A.ccounts (Moravian). to hear a remarkable prayer offered up by one of the Christians of Pan-tsze-Nau. -" Last November 21st, the birth- The Christian is a man of nearly sixty, day of the Queen of Madagascar, the and a convert of not quite three years' first pocket edition of the revised Mala- standing. Neither in China. nor out gasy Bible was issued. The books are of China have I listened to anything in clear type, neatly bound, and sold in the shape of reverent, earnest talking below cost at one shilling, so as to be with God that has impressed my mind within the reach of most. Thi.. vocket as that prayer did. The truth must have Bible is esteemed a great boon, and become very real to that brother, and when the consignment reached Anta- very precious, too, for otherwise it nanarivo, there was a great rush to se- would have been impossible for him to cure copies. In a few days every copy hold communion so intimate and loving was sold, and the people were crying with his Father in heaven."
ENGLISH NOTES
Dr. John reports large additions in shade of view and practice. As one of the district of King-shan. Besides 66 themselves expressed it: .. Drawn as already baptized, there are on the books we are from all classes and grades of 136 candidates for baptism. .. There society, we try to perpetuate in our is," he says, " something extremely in- midst the very differences that charac- teresting in the whole movement. It terized us before we entered the fold gives one an idea of the possibilities of Christ; but what has become of the connected with missionary work in bond of fellowship that is in Christ China, and especially in this province. Jesus? Is it not strong enough to . •. Our great need just now is more break down all petty barriers of an ar- men." tificial society? We want more of Ohurch Mi8sionary Society.-In H. union and fellowship, more of sympa- E. P's notes in the Ohurch Missionary thy and Christian love, to weld together Intelligencer, attention is called to two into a homogeneous whole the varying defects in Indian Christian life : First, and discordant elements of our comthe prominence given to matters of munity."
only temporal concernment; and, sec- Kerak, Palestine.-This town, which ond, t.be lack of thorough Christian is some 700 feet higher than Jerusalem, oneness. It seems odd that a Christian is the scene of a hopeful mission. A convention should have been held for great work is being done among the no higher purpose than" to deliberate Moslems of the place, who seem on the on such subjects as .the educational most friendly terms with the workers needs of Indian Christians, their indus- there, and who are very open at pres- trial and commercial pursuits, the es- ent to the preaching of the Gospel.
tablishment of a family pension fund," Kerak is adjacent to the Bedouin tribes etc., but such is the information tele- of the great Syrian desert, who come graphed from Lucknow. In Madras thither to trade, and is within three the subject of .. thrift" has been eager- days' journey of the Arabian frontier.
ly canvaesed ; but better still the first It is felt that there is a loud call to meeting of the" Native Christian Gos- make Kerak a strong mission without pel Propagating Association" has been delay.
held in that city, at which Mr. S.Jagana- Bapti8t Missionary Society, North thum told "how wonderfully the Lord Ohina. – We understand that great was helping the earnest members of it in bleSSing has accrued from the Baptist propagating the Gospel to the multi- mission work in North China. Around tudes of both Christians and non-Chris- the three mission stations in that region tians, and thus accomplishing the only there are now from 80 to 100 small object of the Association, which is to churches, with a membership varying make known the only way of salva- from 6 to 60.
tion. " Dacca,lndia.-The Rev. R. Wright The want of homogeneity among na- Hay has had a warm welcome on his return to his much-loved mission work. tive Christians is doubtless due to the A Mohammedan gentleman, whom he very imperfect assimilation of the spirit has known for years to be under imand principles of the Founder-a fruit- pressions of the truth of the Gospel, ful cause of separation among brethren has committed himself by being bapat home as abroad. The grave·clothes tized. Concern for his family had long of caste hamper the movements of the held him back from the path of open Divine faith in India. At one extreme discipleship. are the conservative native Christians, paganized in customs still; and on the other, there lire the Anglicized few who Lower Congo.-Times of refreshing assert their liberty, while intermediate are reported from Underhill Station, is a motley group of ev-ery oonceiVl.lble· Lower Congo River. Two lads have
GENERAL MISSIONARY INTEJ,LIGENCE
been baptized, both of whom made a The Presbyterian Ohurch of England. good confession in their baptism; and -Much interest is felt in the appoint· there is besides a class of fi ve inquirers. ment of the Rev. W. B. Douglas, B.D., Tidings of a good work of grace in the as assistant in the Puerto College of Upper Congo have also arrived. The the Irish Presbyterian Spanish Mission. work at Bopoto was commenced four "Mr. Douglas," says the Missiona1'1/ years ago, but the seed sown is now Herald, .. is not only an accomplished beginning to yield the promised har- scholar, but seems to be on fire with vest. the true missionary spirit which is so much needed for working for Christ in Oeylon.-A revival of Buddhism in this land of Romish superstition and this island has developed a strong op- ignorance and degradation." For three position to Christianity. It is a time years he has been chaplain at the Rio for the workers in patience to possess Tinto mines, being stationed at Huelva, their souls. The Rev. Walter D. Han· where he preached regularly, and su- kinson contributes an admirable article perintended the large Spanish schools on the situation. Much is contrary for the children of Rio Tinto workmen. 'lnd the reverse of hopeful, but "the Lord sitteth above the floods." The A Visit to Jam-tsau..-This place is fierceness of the opposition has aroused interesting because of its associations interest in many. Mr. Hankinson and with William Burns. The Rev. J. L. his native preacher received during a Milne, B.D., has been visiting it along few weeks hundreds of visitors. "We with Mr. Wynd, a missionary in Japan. feel very thankful," he says, "that so Good congregations were had at the many have come within our reach, for services held. Among those visited ever since I came to the district the was an old saint who was found sitting Buddhist preachers" (one a very bitter against her doorway, reading Matthew hater of God) " have been stirring the 6. "Yes," she replied, in answer to . people up." The opposition in ques- Mr. Wynd's inquiries, "yes, she does tion has been accentuated (thanks to often think of the Lord, and is glad she Chicago) by the arrival of Mr. Dharma- soon will meet Him; and when she Iles pala, who was representative of the awake at night, unable to sleep, her Buddhist religion at the Parliament of prayer is for the work in China." Religions. THE KINGDOM. Wesleyan Missiona1'1/ Society.-The Aylilf and Fingo Memorial Church, -This is the entry made on the rec- Peddie, South Africa, was opened on ords of the Leicester Church when November 1st, 1894, amid great rejoic. Carey's decision to resign his pastorate ings. The name Ayliff is of historic in order to go to India was announced: interest, being associated with the work "No business of importance, except and name of the Rev. John Ayliff, who that in January our pastor gave us no- first brought the Gospel to the Fin- tice that he should leave us in March, goes more than half a century ago, and having engaged to go on a mission to laid a solid foundation on the ever-dur- BengalI, in the East Indies. " ing rock. The original Aylilf Church, Peddie, was built about 1840; and a -It is said that the words, .. Reserve striking evidence of the progress made the cots for the two most uninteresting since those days was afforded by the babies," always accompany the check presence of a thousand persons at the which Miss Helen Gould sends each opening of the new church, among year for the support of two beds in the whom were many ordained ministers Babies' Shelter connected with the and other office-bearers; descendants of Church of the Holy Communion, New original Fingo refugees. York City. -The American Mes8enger relates aged by what the missionary societies this incident: A foreign missionary re- have done and are doing in carrying the cently told of a woman who, on a Gospel to the whole world.-Rev. F. M. school-teacher's salary of $1000, lived Rains. on one half, and with the other half supported a substitute in China. She -The Peninsular and Oriental Steam- then felt that she was really two per- ship Company, commonly known as sons, and carried out her lifelong de- the P. and 0., is the oldest and one of voted desire to be a foreign missionary. the largest steamship corporations In She received a letter every week from the world. It commenced a mail ser- her substitute, prayed for her by name vice to the Spanish peninsula in 1837 every day, and realized the truth of with the Siberia, a wooden side-wheeler what a friend of hers had said-namely: of 516 tons and 180 indicated horse "This teacher serves the Lord twenty- power. This company's fleet now con- four hours a day, and thus practically sists of 54 steamships of 221,807 tons lives the life of the angels, who serve and 225,650 horse power, and 22 steam Him day and night; for at the antip- tugs and launches, the largest and most odes her SUbstitute is working while powerful steamships of the company she sleeps." being the Australia and Himalaya, each 6900 tons and 10,000 horse power. The -A missionary among the colored P. and O.'s receipts from passengers in people in North Carolina relates that 1893 were $4,655,880; from freight, $5,676,480; and from the government after he had bee!B. absent from his field for contract services and conveyance of troops, $1,841,940. The total expendi. for a few weeki, and at the first prayer- tures were, in round figures, $10,885,- meeting, they all thanked God for his 000. In the course of twelve months return, and one brother prayed: "0 this company's steamers traverse a dis- Lord, we thank Thee for our beloved tance of nearly 2,600,000 miles. pastor, and we pray Thee to bless him. -The records of a certain church in o Lord, make his head an inkstand, Massachusetts in 1805 were" enriched" by the addition of these words: "Reand his tongue the pen of a ready writ- 8olved, That we will not allow any er." Still another brother prayed that preacher the use of the pulpit to solioit he might "mount the Gospel horse money in support of missionaries." and ride into the sea of truth." It is But very soon came along a pastor who in this same church that when they brought that people to sound repentgive out a hymn they say, .. Let us ance, faith, and good works. now mangle our jangling voices in a hymn of praise." -Much of this is owed to Christian missions: "The farmers have a new -This gigantic enterprise of saving market. China and Japan find that the world has stimulated Christian peo- flour is now as cheap· as rice. The ple to their largest and best endeavors. mills on the Pacific Coast are grinding More attention has been given to organi- night and day to supply the market. zation and thorough preparation for the A new steamship line is proposed from work in hand in the past few years Portland. Flour is only one of a thouthan ever before. We have come to sand articles of commerce that will be understand that an army, however great, required by a Christian civilization. will be weak unless thoroughly organ- Future trade will make the new Northized. Out of the desire to save the west to Asia, what the North Atlantic world, and the determination to be thor- is to Europe."-North and West. oughly organized for the work, have grown up the various missionary socie- -The Evangelist affirms and proves ties which are making heroic struggles that "last year it took the average against the kingdom of darkness and sin. Lift up your eyes and be encour- Presbyterian twelve days to get one ings embraced 1158 young people who cent out of his pocket for the annual were brought under the inftuence of o:ffering taken in the churches for the Gospel teaching. Some young men re- greatest and the grandest work that is quested her to teach them English, before the Church to-day-that of for- which she consented to do upon their eign missions. Think of it I Less than promising to attend her Bible class."
one mill a day in response to the pow- -There are 4 Methodist womenerful (1) appeal, the ringing (1) sermon Mrs. Knowles, Mrs. Parker, Mrs. Mess· from the past or before the offerings more, and Mrs. T. J. Scott-who have were taken." And the worst of the been in India thirty-dx, thirty-five, matter is that" the average Presbyte- thirty-three, and thirty-one years rerian" is no worse than the bulk of his spectively. ecclesiastical neighbors-in fact, is better than most of them. -The Friends' Woman's Foreign Missionary Society has 202 auxiliaries, WOMAN'S WORK. with nearly 4000 members, who raised $35,982 last year. They support 41 -The Woman's Board of MiSSions, missionaries and 20 native evangelists· representing the Congregational church- or Bible readers; and 5 schools with es in the Eastern States, received, in 296 pupils. Meetings for worship were 1894, $101,898 in contributions and held in 1894 to the number of 691. $24,551 in legacies, making the total receipts $8329 less than in 1893. It YOUNG PEOPLE. supports 5 missionaries, 16 day-schools, and 8 Bible-women in European Tur- -The College Young Men's Chriskey; 5 missionaries, 1 assistant mis· tian Association is assuming great imslonary, 1 boarding-school, 12 day- portance. Among the 85,000 young schools, and 3 Bible·women in Central men connected with our higher institu· Turkey; 16 missionaries, 1 assistant tions of learning, less than one half are missionary, 3 boarding·schools, 26 day professing Christians. The work beschools, and 35 Bible-women in East· gan in 1857; in 1877, 25 Associations ern Turkey; 24 missionaries, the Ameri- had been organized. At the beginning can College for Girls, 5 boarding- of 1895 there were 440 Associations in schools, 50 day-schools, and 8 Bible- American colleges, with a membership women in Western Turkey; 13 Bible- of 25,000.
women in Bulgaria; 15 missionaries in -A Christian Endeavor Society in India; 5 missionaries, 1 boarding- Moreton, Eng., has become a slave- school, and 3 day-schools in :Mexico; holder. One of its members is a mis· 1 boarding.school, 1 day-school, and sionary in Amoy, where her interest 9 Bible-women in Austria. The Eu- was greatly roused in a young Chinese phrates College has 232 girls enrolled, girl whose parents were going to sell 38 of whom are in the college proper. her for a slave. The mission tried to -Miss Lawrence, of the Japan Mis- induce the parents to give her up to sion of the American Methodist Protes- them, but they would not unless the tant Church, is evidently a busy wom- full market price of $15.50 was given. an; for she, .. in addition to her school The missionaries did not have the duties, is engaged in evangelistic work, money, so they appealed to the.Moreton having in the last quarter, with the society, which has raised the money, and help of 0 Yaso San, conducted 50 therefore become the owner of the girl.
meetings for children, taught 12 Bible -Each week the Golden Rule prints classes, 14 Sunday-school classes, at- in a prominent place "the best news tended 27 evening meetings, and made item." Theile two are among recent 88 visits. The various children's meet. ones: " Oharlestown, Mas8.- The First Bap- to the borders of unkindness to make tist society reports three fourths of its them.
members pledged for a penny a day AMERICA. for missions. Literature is sent each week to different parts of the West. United States.-The will of Henry One hundred hymnals were sent to a Keney, of Hartford, Conn., leaves at missionary in Nebraska; and, when the discretion of the executor about the news came of the suffering there, $800,000 for the purchase of the park the church was canvassed, and 5 bar- in the northern part of the city, to be rels of clothing and 2 large boxes of known as Keney Park. Also $424,250 dry provisions went to the same mis- is left in specific legacies, which in- sionary, the express company kindly clude the following: Trinity College, shipping them free. $25,000; Hartford Hospital, $50,000; "Santa Oruz, Oal.-There are 25 En- Hartford Orphan Asylum, $50,000; deavor societies in the county, and one Old People's Home, $50,000; Park of the smallest-a society of only 26 Church, $30,000; Hartford Charitable members-gave most to missions the Society, $2000; Union for Home Work, last six months, the amount being $10,000; City Mission Society, $10,- $91.25 ; and led the six months before 000; Good Will Club, $30,000, and the with $115. This is the Chinese society Wadsworth Athemeum, $25,000.
of Santa Cruz. Within the last six -During the last twenty years the months another Chinese society has New York Society for the Prevention been organized, and it already stands of Cruelty to Children has cared for second on the list in giving." over 230,000 outcasts, a very large pro- -R. Wardlaw Thompson, of the portion of whom would otherwise have London Missionary Society, sounds a been criminals to-day. During the note of expostulation in the ears of the past year 9078 complaints were reyoung people in the March issue of ceived, of which 3770 were prosecuted; The Ohronicle: "It is in connection there were 3730 convictions, and 5459 with the desire for direct correspond- children were rescued from destitution ence with the mission-field. A consid- and vicious surroundings.
erable and increasing number of re- -Moody the evangelist wields an in- quests now reach the Mission House fluence not surpassed by many men, but from the missionary secretaries of Moody the organizer and fosterer of in- Christian Endeavor societies asking for stitutions is vastly more puissant. Take the names of two or three missionaries the single case of his Chicago Bible In- in each part of the field with whom we stitute, of whose graduates this state- may enter into personal correspond- ment is made: "There are 41 pas- ence, and who would be likely to send tors of Congregational churches, 27 of us three or four times a year a letter Presbyterian churches, 25 of Baptist about their work. Such requests give churches, 24 of ::IIethodist Episcopal evidence of a most kindly feeling, and churches; 32 are city missionaries, 12 if they could be gratified they would are home missionaries, 12 are Young doubtless result in stimulating a con- Men's Christian Association secretaries, siderable amount of personal interest in 11 are missionaries under the American missionaries; but those who write have Sunday-School Union, 10 are Sunday- little conception of the burden which school missionaries under other boards, they are unconsciously laying on the 14 are pastors' assistants, 75 are evan- shoulders of the missionaries." And gelists, 41 are assisting their husbands then he easily goes on to show that in in pastoral or evangelistic work; there most cases it is next to impossible to are 61 foreign missionaries, 15 in India, grant such requests; so much so that, 10 in China, 9 in Africa, 5 in Turkey, 8 though unwittingly, it is l1nr~aeonl!ble in Japan, and so on; also 13 under ap- 394 GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE. (11ay pointment for the foreign field. At Christian college planted in that region present there are nearly 300 young men and well endowed.
and women in connection with the In- -The Christians (Disciples) have stitute actively engaged in work in the hitherto been behind many of their different missions and in house to house brethren in missionary matters, ·but for visitation throughout the city." two or three years past their energy and -A second Conference of Foreign enterprise have made great advances.
Mission Boards met in the Episcopal Their leaders know how to use the Church Mililsion House, New York, press, and last year was started Ths February 14th, and was attended by Mi8lJionary Voice, devoted to world- representatives of 16 societies in the wide evangelism, which is decidedly United States and Canada, besides sev- bright and breezy. Surely that great eral missionaries and other persons un- denomination, numbering nearly a mil- officially interested in missions. Papers lion, ought to have its missionaries in were read upon such topics as The the field by the hundred and the thou- Japan-China War; its Strategic Sig- sand.
nificance to Missions; Industrial Mis- Canada.-The United OhurchMonthsions; How far they Have Developed ly has the following item: "In 1845 in Foreign Lands; Self-support in Mis- the Presbyterians in Canada had one sions; The Proposed National Church missionary about to enter the field. In in India; Motive in Missions, etc. Two 1895 they have 34 ordained missionsessions were held, and arrangements aries, 68 unordained preachers, 84 catewere made for a meeting in 1896. chists, and many others engaged in re- -Booker T. Washington, of Tuskee- lated work. In 1845 the sum of $1000 gee Institute, seems clearly destined to was available for the foreign mission be a wise leader for the freedmen. His enterprise. Last year the Presbyteutterances to the last one smack re- rians in the maritime provinces expendfreshingly of good sense. Not poli- ed $34,779, and the western section extics, but hard work on their part, is to pended $105,881, making a total of solve the .. negro problem." Or, as $140,660. Of this the women's soci- Mr. Washington puts it: eties contributed $48,661."
"Immediately after the war we be- -Mr. Tyrrell's late explorations :in gan at the wrong end. We began our distant North have, says the Oana- working to get to Congress when we dian Presbyterian, brought to light yet should have been working to get land. another field for the labors of some de- At Tuskeegee we teach the students that voted Christian missionary. On the it is better for them to spend their time Kazan (or Ptarmigan) River he :Cell in and strength in becoming the leading with a tribe of Eskimo, who have be- carpenters, contractors, truck garden- come separated from their brethren on ers, dairymen, in this town, instead of the coast to whom they originally be- being too anxious to make stump longed, and have become an inland speeches or go to Congress." tribe. These inland Eskimo have not -Marcus Whitman was only a mis- intermixed witlt. the Indians, but live sionary, be it known, but yet he saved exclusively among themselves.
the vast and fruitful Northwest coast EUROPE. of the Pacific to the Union, when all our statesmen, the Websters, etc., es- Great Britain.-The United Presby- teemed it not worth having, and were terian Church of Scotland has a total about to hand it over to Britain. And membership of 188,706. The mission- the indications now are that through ary income during the year 1893 was the liberality of Dr. Pearsons and others £33,543, besides £4639 subscribed for his name will be linked forever with a zenana work. The European staff consists of 71 ordained, 15 medical, 8 lay -The same magazine gives this evangelists, and 31 zenana mi88ion- among the hopeful signs of the king- aries; who are 888isted by 19 native dom: "Let anyone pay a visit to Ox- pastors, 127 evangelists, and 567 other ford or Cambridge and live for a few agents. There are 102 congregations, days among the undergraduates. He with 165 out-stations and 18,460 mem- will find a stream of true and godly bers, almost double the number of thir- men coming up year by year, far be- teen years ago. In Jamaica 10,692 are yond anything in past times-which to be found. There are 401 members stream is largely fed from what some- in Trinidad and 898 in Tokio. Old regard as irregular agencies, such as Calabar has 461 members; Kaffraria, children's special services, mi88ions 3311; Rajputana, 521; Manchuria, among school-boys, the new summer 2176. The work in Manchuria is work- camps, etc. The supply of laborers of ed in harmony with the mission of the the best cl888 for both home and for- Irish Presbyterian Church. eign fields promises to increase both in -A Scotch minister declares that quantity and in qUality. The Student Scotland could easily spare 1200 clergy- Volunteer Missionary Union is growing men and $1,000,000 a year, and yet be apace, and looks like becoming the perfectly well cared for in spiritual most effective of all agencies for enlistthings. That may all be very true; ing workers for the Lord's vineyard." and yet it too often happens with ministers, as with other men, that those -The London Missionary Society is who cau "easily be spared" are of no preparing a feast of fat things to spread great value anywhere under the sun. before its friends, September 21st-27th At least, may they never be sent to the next, in commemoration of the thrillforeign field. ing beginning just a hundred years be- fore. At the last accounts the Cente- -The Free Church of Scotland has nary Fund, with £100,000 as the aim, 5 stations for Jewish work-3 in Eu- had reached £49,134.
rope and 2 in Palestine. Fifty-eight ASIA.
Christian agents, among them 5 or- Islam.-Mi88ionaries must mind their dained missionaries, 2 licensed preach- p's and q's in Turkey, as we learn by ers, and 3 medical men are employed. this from the Miasioruury Herald: About 1000 children attend their schools "Among the conveniences used by daily. Dr. Shepard, a missionary physician at -Since the opening of the Operative "intab, was a telephone extending Jewish Converts' Institute in London, from the hospital to his home. Dr. 922 persons have been admitted; 70 Shepard is so highly esteemed in Ainhave become missionaries; 23 parochial tab that he can ordinarily do as he clergymen; 13 ministers of other de- likes. But in this case as soon as the nominations; and many others have wire was stretched a complaint was obtained high positions in other kinds lodged with the government against of Christian service. this unlawful thing. It has been found that a telephone is the 'petty abhor- -Our British brethren have a way, rence of the Sultan,' and so the sus- which seems strange to us, of rolling picious thing was put under an injunc- up large sums for missionary purposes tion and reported to Aleppo lind thence by sales of work. A recent Intelligen- to Constantinople, and from the central cer had a table which tells of 861 sales government came the imperative order held last year, with receipts in the dif- to 'confiscate,' paying full price and erent counties of the realm· ranging costs. The machine was packed up from £3 in ib.e Isle of Man to £2276 in and turned over to the government for Middlesex, and a total of £21,551. its full equivalent, and, in the terms of the State Department, 'the incident is of that country, and commenced work closed.' " in 1869.
-But even the Grand Turk has a India.-English physicians give medsoft side to his nature, and on occasion, ical assistance to 14,000,000 natives in now and then, is liable to do something one year. positively handsome. A case of this kind occurred last January, when by -A missionary writes thus of the His Dread Majesty an iracU was issued poverty of the land: "It is, doubtless, to the American Girls' College at Scu- true that there are from forty to fifty tari, a document the most sacred possi- millions of these people who are chronible, which bestows certain rights and cally on the verge of starvation, and privileges irreversibly, and places the are rarely able to satisfy the cravings institution under the especial protection of appetite. It is well known that the of the government. average per capita income of the peo- ple of this land is only about $7. If -" Among the Syrians the fetters of this be the average, what must be the custom are almost as strong as those of minimum 1 To missionaries who live religion. The rule of the Fez cap proves among the people it is a constant source this. For a prince as for a menial, there of wonder that the people can live at is no other head-covering. No law pre- all on their income. I know of many scribes it, and yet all Syrians wear it, who, during several months of even a whatever their creed. The long, flow- very good year, enjoy only one meal a ing garments, which have been worn day, and that a very miserable one." since the time of the prophets, and which make one of the simplest expres- -Eighteen native ministers in the sions of dress, have been abandoned by Northwest Conference of the Methodist the majority of Christians. A Syrian Church have volunteered to relinquish hesitates before he adopts the European their salaries, and trust entirely for costume, but public opinion forbids their support to the contributions of him to adopt the European hat. The their own people. same remarks apply to the izzar or body covering. This white sheet is the sym- -Mr. Hazen writes from South bolof Oriental exclusiveness, and cus- India: "Last year our women 'at their tom in Syria sternly prescribes its use. weekly prayer·meeting asked for 100 The izzar sometimes reveals some olive- additions to the number in our station, tinted faces of much beauty, lit up by and the Lord gave 200. Encouraged a pair of clear brown eyes, to which its by that we have all taken hold and whiteness forms a pleasing contrast. asked for 300 this year, and we have Sometimes, also, when the hands are got them. We asked for 15 souls in occupied, the izzar is drawn into the Manamadura village, and we have got corner of the mouth and held there by them. Of their own accord and witha set of pearly teeth. The izzar is a out any stimulus from us they have useful covering, which excludes the dust maintained a daily prayer.meeting here and sun, though it fills the streets with for three weeks from this inga thering. " a dull, harsh pallor." -The progress in the Laos Mission -The (Jltristian World learns with in all its departments is an inspiration. regret that Rev. Dr. Bruce, of Persia, There are 4 mission stations and 3 outwho is well known as one of the most stations. "So complete and joyful devoted missionaries of the Church Mis- have been the successes," that there sionary Society, has resigned his posi- was no room for discouragement; intion after thirty-six years· of ser~ice. deed, the only discouragement is the Dr. Bruce was practically the pioneer limited number of workers for the conof Christian work among the Moslems stantly increasing work. Last year a new station was established and 5 new workers sent out. In the past eleven
GENERAL MISSIONARY
months 289 have been received into the Europeans, 1.-Lutheran Mi88ionary church. "Record of defeat is not Journal. heard. It is victory in every quarter." -The Indian Witneu of January -This item from the Intelligencer re- 12th gives these statistics of the North lates to a perplexing question in India, India Conference: "Paid workers, and the last sentence indicates that the 1606; probationers, 19,823; full mem- Hindu is not lacking in at least one of bers, 11,126; adult baptisms in 1894, the constituent elements of human na- 5262; children, 2817; Sunday-schools, ture: "The question of burial reform 1071; Sunday-school scholars, Chrisis one which we would fain see our tians, 18,102; non-Christian, 21,202; Indian fellow-Christians seriously con- native Christian community, 39,327; sider. The revered A.L.O.E. was Christian boys and girls in school, 10,- buried in December, 1893, at her own 185; non-Christian, 9793." request, without a coffin. The funeral of the Rev. F. Sandford, of the Delhi -Alas! that Miss Taylor's Thibetan Mission, cost only about five shillings, Mission, after months of sunshine, and so in many places missionaries are should pass under the storm-cloud. It striving to dispossess the minds of con- is not possible at this distance and with verts of the notion that a Christian's the meagre statements at hand to parfuneral ought to cost a quarter's in- cel out the serious responsibility for the come, which it now often does. A girl at least temporary breaking up of the seriously told a lady missionary not party by the resignation and departure long since that she should like to die at of most of the members; though it a certain place mentioned, 'because looks much as if the leader, though full there the girls were so beautifully of energy and determination, was yet buried, in lovely white coffins just like wanting in sweet reasonableness and ladies'-of course not at the expense of other qualities essential to leadership. their relations." It is to be hoped that Mr. Polhill·Tur- ner, of the China Inland Mission, whose -There are 10 women of the English aid she has sought and secured, will be Baptist Society at work in Calcutta able to restore harmony, and that in zenanas, with 9 schools under their due season these pioneers of the Gospel care, and an average attendance of may be able to enter the Closed Land. about 500 scholars. In addition to these there are 7 other schools in the China.-While recently on a. tour villages that lie to the south of the city, among the missions of this empire, Mr. with 220 scholars, giving a total of 16 Baring-Gould was impressed by "the schools and about 720 scholars. great influence of medical work, the heroism of the women, and the devo- -Mr. Chandler, of Madura, reports tion of many of the converts." that the 8 churches comprising the "East Church Union" of that city re- -Taking advantage of the presence ceived into fellowship during ten of scholars at the government examinamonths of the last year 186 new mem- tions in Wuchang, Nanking, and Chengbers. tu, among some 40,000 young men up- ward of 60,000 copies of books, tracts, -During the five months ending Oc· etc., were distributed. tober 7th, since its re-opening, the Dispensary in Guntur was open 13:3 days. -Dr. Griffith John, writing from a. During that time 1914 patients made place some days' journey farther inland 4556 visits. As to class, the patients than Bankow, says that the people were: Eurasians, 5 ; native Christians, "appear to take as little interest in 290; Brahmans, 156 ; other high castes, Peking and Canton as they do In Can- 257; Varsgas, 47; 8udras, 637; Pa- ada and Wales." He has been making a most successful tour in places where riahs, 396; Mohammedans, 125, and no European missionary, but only cate- God, and telling him their own experichists, have hitherto labored. At Pah- ence on similar occasions. So the idol tsze-Nau, Tien.Men, Tsau-shih, and was chopped up and set fire to, as well Mau-kia-po the mandarins were frIend- as all idolatrous papers, etc. Then we ly, the opposition was silenced, and sang a hymn and had prayer. The idol many converts were baptized. At the was destroyed in the presence and with last-named town the ancestral hall was the full consent of Li's wife, grown-up cleared and used for service. Out of son, daughter·in-Iaw, and other chil- 200 candidates for baptism, 66 were dren, besides two married daughters baptized, coming from 14 villages. who had returned upon a visit, and a There are candidates for baptism in 12 good many neighbors-no one raising a more villages. dissenting voice."
-Says the North Ohina Herald in an -The North China Mission of the article on " China Unmasked" : " Such American Board reaches 440 cities, a system of internal rottenness has been towns, and villages. The working laid bare that even her best friends are force is composed of 87 missionaries forced to shake off the dust of their and 76 native helpers, among whom are feet against her, and to admit that the 3 ordained native pastors. The Gospel present process of being ground in the is regularly preached at 43 places. mill is, perhaps, the best thing which There are 27 day schools in the mission, could happen to her. To such a pass with an aggregate of 454 pupils. The has official corruption come that noth- total number of young people under ing short of a complete upheaval and instruction is 1510. At the various dis· breaking down of old systems seems pensaries and at the Williams Hospital practicable. Patching up is worse than in Pang-Chuang the medical work has useless. China has been patched up been carried on. too often, and corruption has thriven in consequence. The opportunity has -Mrs. Isabella Bishop had some arrived when a general sweeping and most perilous and painful experiences garnishing is possible, and the truest during her recent travels in Korea, friends of China will not wish to see Manchuria, etc. "She was sent out of the besom stayed. The entire govern- Korea at a moment's notice by the con· mental gamut must be ulilltrung and suI without money or clothes. The retuned. The Emperor of the future, British Minister's wife at Pekin gave if he desires to shed some lustre on his her some clothes. She was in Man· heavenly origin, will have to surround (,,huria with the Scotch missionaries, himself with some rather more heavenly and shared their perils at the time of advisers. " Mr. Wylie's murder; was nearly drowned in an inundation; her bed -Miss Kolkenbeck, of Sz-Chuen, was wet for three days, and she has had gives this incident: "A man named a bad form of malaria ever since. She Li-wan-uen came to us for medicine, was nearly captured by pirates; broke and pressed us to visit his home. After her arm through the overturning of a dinner he asked us how he was to WOf- cart ; was turned out of Pekin with the ship God. I told him. that the first other European women," etc. She is thing would be to destroy his idols. now in Siberia. , How am I to do that? ' , Put; them in the fire; they are only wood.' 'Shall ]apan.-The Kyoto Training School I do it at once?' 'Certainly; the for Nurses is very happy over the fact sooner the better.' So he immediately that its nurses are so popular in the stood up on a stool, and got down his military station at Hiroshima. They god. Our Christian coolie and servant have been very successful, and have spoke, encouraging him to trust only in borne the strain of the work better than any others who have gone there. At last advices a request for more nurses trouble in Tokyo. Their peace ideas faU bad been received, and the whole senior to fit the state of affairs in Japan. Some class were anxious to respond, but it of the students in their school showed had not been decided how many should sympathy with the war, and gave help go. This success is a fine indorsement to the destitute wives of soldiers who for the school and those connected with bad gone to the front. Difficulty arose it, both foreigners and Japanese.-Lij'6 and the students were dismissed. The and Light. consequence is a complete separation -The Red Cross Society of Japan of all their converts from the missionsends 6 physicians and 12 nurseil with aries.
each transportsteamer conveying Japan- -'Mr. Pettee writes in the Japan ese troops to Korea and China. The Weekly Mail of February 9th, that humanity of the Japanese in their con- 6 evangelists are to be sent to minister duct of this war is doing mOle to break to the needs of the Christians in the down the walls- of Chinese prejudice Japanese army. High officials were than any other outside influence. Three opposed to this concession, but "as hundred years ago the Japanese rav- soon as they were convinced that this aged Korea and plundered its people, was the request of no narrow sectarian- and as a trophy of victory the ears of ism, but the earnest plea of devoutly 3600 victims were brought back to patriotic Christian men of every name Japan. To-day Japan is at war again, they quickly yielded and affixed their but with what a different spirit I seals to the papers. Rev. Miyagawa, -Rev. Henry B. Schwartz, presiding of Osaka-sometimes called the Chryelder, Hirosaki, Japan, says: "Weare sostom of the Japanese pulpit-Princireaping the first fruits of treaty revision pal Honda, of Aoyama College, and in a very great improvement in the Messrs. Aoki, of Kobe, Terada, and passport system. As Y(IU do not know, Yamanaha have been selected as 5 of we have not been allowed to travel in the 6. This event, coming so soon Japan except with a passport. In these after the permission to distribute unrepassports the proposed route of travel strictedly portions of the Scripture in had to be exactly laid down, and in the garrisons throughout Japan, the those palts of the empire where the letter of Lieutenant-General Katsura, passport regulations were strictly en- in Manchuria, promising extra protecforced, no deviation from the described tion to all sincere Christians, and the route was allowed. Now we can get recognition of the superior work of the passports for a year's time, on which Christian nurses of the Red Cross corps, we can travel anywhere at any time in promises much for the advance of the whole empire; and, best of all, the Christianity in Japan. "
, scientific' and 'health' clauses are -In the orphan asylum of Mr. Ishii entirely omitted from the application at Okayama are now gathered 301 orblanks. phans. They carryon a printing-press with 4 presses, and 38 persons are em- -Several of the leading Christians ployed in the office. Thirteen boys are are alive to Japan's missionary duty learning to be barbers. A home for toward Korea, and are planning for discharged prisoners has been opened, missionary service there. It is note- where there are 11 persons employed in worthy that Buddhists are moving in making mats. There is also a carpenthe same direction, and have already ter's school. Sixty-two girls are in the sent a priest to Seoul to examine the sewing-classes, and 111 are learning cotsituation. He has devised a scheme, ton-weaving. Thirty-six are studying very fine on paper, which will cost blacksmithing. A farming colony of $10,000 a year.
~The Friends' Mission has had 30 has just been started. The children work all day, and study at night from formed; there are no more swamps, five to nine o'clock. no more jungles. Besides the build- ings of the station, which look some- AFRICA. thing like a Dutch village, there is a causeway, and a foot-bridge, which is -Great Britain owns in Africa an the astonishment and delight of the naarea of 2,570,000 square miles, almost tives. These works, which are the reequal to that of the United States. sults of a patience and tenacity which it would be difficult to imagine exactly, -And yet Dr. Zahn, mission inspec- are certainly an image of the progress tor of Bremen, concludes that with the which the work of God is making growth of French and Belgian posses- among the Barotsis.-Journal deB Missions, and those of other Catholic pow- sions FJvangeliqueB. ers, after all Protestant peoples will control, at least in West Africa, much -They have had deluges of rain in less th~lll half the area. Zanzibar this autuUlll. Fancy nine and a half inches of rain in ten hours! It -The world is likely soon to look to was still pouring when the mail left. this continent for its supply of gold. and they call these the" lesser rains" ! ! ! For several years the output of Califor- -Central Africa. nia has scarcely risen above $12,000,000 annually, but in Africa the amount has -In connection with the recent Italgrown from less than $10,000,000 in ian campaigns into Abyssinia, an arti- 1890, to upward of $22,000,000 in 1892, cle of peculiar interest appeared in a and to nearly $SO,OOO,OOO last year. recent issue of the Churchman from the pen of Professor G. H. Schodde, enti- -Before returning to his home In tIed" The Hermit Christian Nation of West Africa, Prince Ademayiwa gave Africa." He calls attention to the noa lecture In Liverpool on "The White table fact in this land "Christianity" Man's Fire-Water and its Effects on the has had an unbroken history from the African Race." He said that while early centuries, hnd only this" Switzer· Englishmen have officials appointed to land of Africa" was able to resist the see that their "fire-waters" are sold fiercest assaults which the Moslem pure, the African has to take what is could make. sent him by unscrupulous men, is little better than poison, and is frequently -Mr. Pilkington writes concerning used for mixing with paint, like tur- the languages of the Lake district of pentine! Mid-Africa, Luganda, Lusoga, Lem- yolo, Lahama, etc., that they are dia- -Khama, the Christian king of the lects of the same language; and has, Bamangwato tribe, has recently paid a what he terms, vague hopes of being visit to Cape Town, having never be- able to make a dictionary on the prinfore been so far away from his home. ciple of roots which would combine all He was very much affected by the these dialects. He also has reason to tokens of respect received while there hope that a single Bible will do for all from the whites. this region.
-Lealuyi, the station founded by -An interesting departure, initiated M. Coillard hardly two years ago, on by the Leipsic Mission, is the expatriathe banks of the Zambesi, is situated tion of Tamil converts (pariahs), with on a little hill, raDled only a few feet their families, into British East Africa.• above the valley; it used to be an ex- These are intended to aid largely in the ecrated and detested place, wheresorcer- construction of the mission buildings, era were burnt, and at the time of the in view of setting free the European inundations it was haunted by innu- agents for the Illore direct evan~elistic merable swarms of insects and legions work. pi reptiles. Now the isJaJl.4 is traWl-
The Missionary Review of the World — June 1893
THIJ! DIVINE PATTERN OF MISSIONS
MISSIONARY REVIEW OF THE WORLD.
VOL-XVI. No.6.-0ld&rie8. JUNE. —VOL. VI. No. 6.-New &ri&.
THE DIVINE PATTERN OF MISSIONS.
BY THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF.
" Thou hast magnified Thy Word above all Thy name." Herein is God's pattern for all true work for Him.
Human life and the history of the race is a problem without a solution until we find the key to its mystery in the Word of God. Bengel's motto is the law of all success in service: "A pply thyself wholly to the Scriptures, and apply the Scriptures wholly to thyself;" and Arthur Hallam gives in one sentence an epitome of Christian experience: "I believe the Bible to be God's book because it is man's book, fitting every turn and curve of man's heart." The more it is stlldied the more its worth is seen and its charm felt. Michael Angelo's devotion to the famous Torso of Belvidere Hercules in the Vatican, sketching it from every point of view, and in the blindness of old age seeking to enjoy, through his touch, the delight no longer possible through his sight, but feebly expresses the joy of the believer in his contact with the blessed Word, in which he sees and feels the marks of a Divine Artist. Even to Ollr Lord, His Father's "Vord was in temptation His sword, in trial His solace, in teaching His guide; His credential as Messiah, His directory as Servant; it was the balm in Gethsemane's anguish, His legacy in death, His theme from His resurrection to His ascension.
No problem presents greater perplexity than that of world-wide missions; and in the attempt to solve that problem well may we reverently approach this Word, perslladed that here again we shall find written, as over the pillars of Hercules on the old Spanish dollar, " Ne pIllS ultra."
A kind of " introductory chapter" to all missionary history is found in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, which is the Gospel of Christ, as set forth by the evangelists, applied actually and historically by the coming of the Holy Spirit.
Luke, in the gospel which he wrote, told what" Jesus began," and in the Acts tells what He " continued, both to do and teach," by the Spirit, through disciples, in building up the kingdom of God. The door of faith is here opened successively to Hebrew, Roman, and Greek believers as in the order of the Gospel narratives. Pentecost links Old Testament prophecy to New Testament history. This book is the book of witness, first of man to God and secondly of God to man. It is the sequel to the Gospels, the basis of the Epistles j the Acts, not so much of the apostles as of the Holy Spirit and of the risen Redeemer in the person of the promised Paraclete. The Holy Spirit first applies the truth and the blood to penitent believers, then anoints those believers for service, and sends them forth as messengers and witnesses to preach the kingdom, to make disciples and organize disciples into churches. And the fact is full of meaning that the period of time covered by this book is about thirty-four years, about the length of our Lord's human life, or the average lifetime of one generation j as though to teach us what can be done and ought to be done in every successive generation until the end of the age. This fact, often referred to in these pages, we once more emphasize by repetition, as it deserves to be written in letters of .gold on the very banners of all true missionary enterprise.
The introduction to this book refers to that forty days of communion between the Risen Lord and His disciples whose object and result was fourfold: 1. To put beyond doubt the fact of His resurrection. 2. To give them instruction as to the kingdom of God. 3. To prepare them for His unseen guidance in their work. 4. To inspire them with the true spirit of missions.
Then follow the outlines of early church history: 1. The witnessing Church in Jerusalem (1 : I3-vii.), including the ten days of prayer, Pentecost, and the enduement for service, persecution by Pharisees and Sadducees, and the dispersion of disciples, voluntary community of goods, division of labor and the institution of the diaconate, and the first marty~dom. All missions must begin at home, as a stream at its spring; but, like the stream, is not to stay at the source and fountain, but flow forth. 2. The witnessing Church in Judea and Samaria (viii.-ix.). A new PentecoRt in Samaria under Philip the Evangelist, the sin of simony, the conversion of the eunuch, representing Ethiopia, and of Saul of Tarsus, the chosen apostle to the Gentiles. 3. The witnessing Church moving toward the Regions Beyond (x.- xxviii.). A new Pentecost among Roman Gentiles at Cresarea and among Greeks all well at Antioch, the first centre of the Gentile Church, and the starting-point of foreign missions; and Paul's three missionary tours, the book closing with Paul at Rome, the third great centre of Christianity. In the latter part of the Acts Paul is more conspicuous than Peter,because Peter went to the dispersion or scattered tribes of Israel, and the main object of the book is to trace the beginnings of missions to the Gentiles (compare Gal. 2 : 9). The Acts of the Apostles thus constitutes the one great inspired book of missions, God's own commentary and encyclopredia for all the ages as to every question pertaining to a world's evangelization. In the main it is the account of the apostolic ministry of Peter and Paul. To the former it was given to hold the mystic key which unlocked, first to Jews and then to Gentiles, the door of faith. That door being opened, Peter naturally disappears from the record, while Paul, as the specially commissioned and typical missionary to the nations, comes to the front. This is no displace- ment of Peter, whose life mission was to Jews, not Gentiles.
We must bear in mind that Luke, the declared author both of the gos- pel bearing his name and of this book, treats the two books as parts of one continuous and complete narrative. What the author thus links together we must consider as a unit. The purpose of the inspired writer is to give, in these two brief sketches, a complete outline of Gospel history from its infancy in its humble Judean cradle to its mature development as a worldwide power, tracing the seed of the kingdom from its sowing in Syrian soil to its wider scattering beside all waters, borne by the various streams of civilization to the heart of the heathen world.
From first to last the combined narrative is the story of missions. In the Gospel according to Luke we have our Lord offering the good news to the Jews, and foreseeing their continued rejection of Him, commanding and commissioning His disciples to bear the message to all nations and to every creature. Then in the Acts we trace the actual carrying out of this commission, the preaching of the Gospel to the Jews by both Peter and Paul, and its repeated rejection by them, with its subsequent and consequent proclamation to mankind at large at great centres of popUlation.
The Gospel opens with the incarnation and closes with the resurrection and ascension, linking on to the after-narrative by the promise of the en· duement of power from on high" not many days hence." Just at this point the Acts of the Apostles forges its new links, and connects with the Gospel its chain of events, beginning with the birth of the Church of Christ on the natal day of Pentecost, and abruptly closing with Paul's unfinished career as a prisoner at Rome.
We have said Cl03inrl rather than ending, for the story is plainly inconiplete, reaching no proper conclusion. The two narratives, reckoning from Christ's entrance upon His public ministry to the very close of the Acts, cover only about the average history of a generation-and no generation ever reaches completeness; it is linked on to the next-nay, interwoven with the next by many threads; and its history passes gradually and insensibly into that of its successor, as to-day into to-morrow. And so above all is it the true work of missions. It is one work, and no man can tell where the mission of one witness for God ends and that of his successor begins. Paul's preaching and teaching has not yet ceased, nor will it while the ages continue.
But in a sublimer sense the Acts of the Apostles reaches no conclusion.
THE GOSPEL IN NORTH AFRICA
When the late Bishop of Ripon had read the story of that" Apostle of the South Seas," he said, "That is the twenty-ninth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles." He was partly right and partly wrong. To that oft-quoted and striking remark History herself suggests one criticism and correction. That was not the ftr8t new chapter added in post-apostolic days, for before the time of John Williams and his apostolic mission many such additions had been made to that unfinished book, and of not a few of those new chapters there is no human memorial. They are written only by God's recording angel in Ilis own Book of Remembrance, to be opened and read in the flaming splendor of the great white throne. But it was sublimely and divinely true that the triumphant advance of that Tottenham lad, who became the great witness to Christ in the Pacific Polynesia, added another new and glorious chapter to the annals of apostolic missions.
To this leading thought we shall from time to time return in these pages, and give it further amplification. Suffice it for the present to repeat that an inspired book which supplies the key to all the intricate, complicated problems of missions should be carefully, constantly, prayerfully studied by those who would find the secrets of success. And in such study, which has occupied the writer for some two years past, he has already discovered principles so fundamental that they furnish a solid basis for the prosecution of world·wide missions. More than this, the devout student of the Acts will find here not only the history of primitive and initial missionary work, but the philosophy of missions outlined as in a text-book, and the indirect prophecy of the progress of missionary triumphs until the consummation of the age. With earnest emphasis would we commend such study to all who love the coming of Christ's kingdom.
THE GOSPEL IN NORTH AFRICA.
BY REV. JOHN RUTHERFURD, B.D., ROTHE SAY, SCOTLAND.
North Africa is mentioned in several· places in the New Testament. Christian hearts can never forget that it was Simon,· a man of Cyrene, a well-known city in North Mrica, who was honored to assist the Lord Jesus Christ when His strength was so exhausted that He could not carry the cross to Calvary; "him they compelled to bear His cross."
In the Acts of the Apostles we read that Philip, the deacon and evangelist, was the instrument of guiding to the knowledge of the truth " a man of Ethiopia, a man of great authority under Candace, Queen of the Ethiopians. " This African nobleman had come from a kingdom situated near to the modern Khartoum, where the gallant, Bible-loving General Gordon only a few years ago fell at the post of duty.
That preacher in the apostolic Church who is described as an eloquent man, mighty in the Scriptures, was a North African, Apollos of Alexandria. North Africa is mentioned again more than once in connection with st.
Paul's voyage to Rome. Such are some of the New Testament references to the Dark Continent.
The first translations of the New Testament were the Syriac and early Latin; both of them date from the second century. The early Latin version was made, not in Italy, as we would have expected, but by the Latinspeaking Christians in North Africa. Latin was their native tongue j and, taught by the Spirit, they instinctively felt that they must have the New Testament in their own lauguage. They felt as John Wycliffe did when he said that the ploughboy following the plough should have the Word of God in his own tongue. In these modern days of Bible societies and Bible distribution let it not be forgotten that the early Christians of North Africa took so noble a place among those who love and who read the Word of God.
North Africa is rich in names of great historical prominence in the early Christian Church. There is Origen, the famous preacher and writer of Alexandria j Tel'tullian, the Christian apologist and defender of the faith j Athanasius, whose life and work will be had in everlasting remembrance for the magnificent stand he was enabled to make against Arianism and in behalf of the glorious truth on which human salvation depends, of the true and eternal deity of the Lord Jesus Christ. Athanasius, it is believed, was a Copt, a native of Egypt. Cyprian, who died a martyr, was Bishop of Carthage. And there is Augustine, Bishop of Hippo-now the town of Bone, in Algeria-the defender of the doctrines of grace against Pelagianism.
The early Christian Church in North Africa furnished many a name to the roll-call of the noble army of martyrs. Take as an example the wellknown story of the two female martyrs of Carthage, Perpetua and Felicitas. These martyrs were put to death in the year 202 A.D., during a violent persecution under the Emperor Septimius Severus. Perpetua was only two-andtwenty years old. Her aged father was a heathen, and he tenderly entreated her to renounce Christianity in order to save her life. When she was about to be tried before the magistrate her father hurried to the prison and said, "Dear daughter, have pity on my gray hairs. • .• Look at thy brothers, thy mother, and thy aunt j thy son, too"-an infant at the breast, whom to nourish in prison was her greatest solace-" who when thou diest cannot long survive. Lay aside that high spirit, and do not plunge us all in ruin." With these word$ the old man threw himself weeping at his daughter's feet. When she was brought before the judge, suddenly her father entered, carrying the infant in his arms, and looking at her imploringly, said, "Have pity on the child." The' judge, too, urged her in a similar manner, but in vain. Perpetua and her companions -three youths and Felicitas-were condemned to be thrown to the wild beaRts. Shortly before the public spectacle her father came again and made a last appeal to his daughter, threw himself on the ground and uttered " words which must move any creature. " Deeply affected and filled with pain, she nevertheless remained true to Christ. The sentence was accordingly carried out, and the martyrs were thrown to the wild beasts. When Perpetua had been wounded she called to her brother and to a Christian catechumen and said to them, "Stand fast in the faith, and love one another, and indulge in no feelings of animosity on account of our sufferings." Such i~ a sample of Christian martyrdom in North Africa.
In the time of the Valerian persecution there were again martyrs in Numidia. During a severe imprisonment, in which they endured much suffering from hunger and thirst, they wrote as follows: "The dark prison soon shone with the illumination of the Holy Spirit j we ascend to the place of punishment as if we were ascending to heaven. We cannot describe what days and nights we have spent there. Weare not afraid to describe the horrors of that place, for the greater the trial, much greater must be He who has overcome it in us. And, indeed, it is not our conflict, for by the help of the Lord we have gained the victory j for to be put to death is easy for the servants of God, and death is nothing, because the Lord has taken away its sting and power. He triumphed over it on the cross. " Such is the heroism of the North African Christians in those early days.
How, then, did it come about that North Africa, a series of countries in which the Gospel light shone so long and so brightly, presents now the spectacle that it does ~ How was Christianity banished from those shores on which it had taken so firm a hold ~ Two causes brought it about: (1) The love of the churches waxed cold j (2) God punished those churches by removing their candlestick out of its place by means of the Mohammedan invasions in the seventh century.
The churches forgot their early devotion to Christ, as well as the mutual love and good feeling which they had once so signally shown. Their attention became occupied with questions of ritual and of rivalry, and of the rights of episcopal ordination. And to such a length did this spirit of divi. sion and hatred proceed that there were actually to be seen Christians opposing one another on the field of battle-Christians with carnal weapons adjusting their theological differences at the point of the sword. When churches sink so low as this, we need not wonder that God sends judgment.
Divine retribution came-came in the shape of the scourge of Mohammedanism. In the year 622 A.D. there took place Mohammed's He~ira or flight from Mecca, the era from which Mohammedans date their years as the Christian era runs from the birth of Christ. Almost immediately after the death of Mohammed the conquering armies led by his successors ex· tended their conquests from Arabia through Egypt along the entire coast of the African continent as far as the modern kingdom of Morocco. Rome, republican and Imperial, had scarcely effected the conquest of those king. doms in some centuries j but Sidi Okba, the famous Mohammedan con· queror, in 679 A.D. and a few years following overthrew all the Christian kingdoms lying between Egypt and Tangiers. Arrived at the Atlantic Ocean, he spurred his horse into the sea, and declared that it was only the barrier of the ocean that prevented him from compelling every nation be- yond it that knew not God to worship Him or die. The Berber tribesfrom whom these North African countries afterward received the common designation of the Barbary States-made some brave but ineffectual at. tempts to resist the Mohammedan invaders; they were forced to submit, and their enfeebled Christianity was not proof against the stern compulsion with which the Arab warriors forced all whom they defeated to adopt the Mohammedan religion.
It is a most interesting fact, and one which forms a very loud eall to the Church of Christ to send the Gospel onee more to North Africa, that there exist to the present day among those Berber or Kabyle tribes various customs which have come down to them through twelve long centuries of Mohammedanism, and which speak of the time when they were a Christian people. For exam pIe, the Kabyle women refuse to wear the veil over. the face, a custom which is universal among the Arab women. It is also said that certain of these Kabyle tribes, although they are Mohammedans, never· theless observe their weekly Sabbath not on the Mohammedan Sabbath, on Friday, but on the Christian Sunday or Lord's Day. The mark of a cross is tattooed on the forehead of many of the boys and men at Biskra, as well as in other places. One such Mohammedan in the town of Setif, who spoke a little English, being asked what was the meaning of the cross on his forehead, answered in the one word" Jesus." Miss Seguin, in her most interesting book, " Walks in Algiers," asserts that the Kabyle women are in the habit of tattooing the form of the Christian cross on their fore. head. Sir Lambert Playfair, consul in Algiers for England, writes regarding the Kabyles of the Aures Mountains, which lie immediately to the n.orth of the Sahara : "Their language is full of Latin words, and in their daily life they retain customs undoubtedly derived from their Christian ancestors. They observe December 25th as a feast under the name of Moolid (the birth), and keep three days festival both at springtime and harvest. They use the solar instpad of the Mohammedan lunar year, and the names of the months are the same as our own."
These customs are relics of a time when the Christian religion permeated the life of the North African peoples. Surely a brighter day has at length begun to dawn, when the croSEl of Christ will not be written in ritualistic fashion on their foreheads, but shall become the inspiration of their hearts. How great will be the change from the miseries of Mohammedanism to the freedom and joy of Christ's salvation!
The history of the centuries which lie between the era of the Mohammedan conquest and the present time is one of stagnation so far as any advancement is concerned, and of continual cruelty and oppression exercised by the Turks upon all the unhappy people over whom they domineered. While the countries of Europe, on the northern shores of the Meditermnean, were advancing in liberty, in civilization, in education, in the knowl~ edge of science, and in the application of Christianity to life in all its phases, so that the Christian religion has virtually created our modern Protestant kingdoms with their world-wide influence during all those twelve hundred years from the seventh century to the present time, the countries lying to the south of the Mediterranean, though more favored by nature than the others, began and continued that downward and retrograde course which Islam invariably brings. Those who have seen the social working of Mohammedanism are compelled to testify that everywhere it has degraded woman and blighted the home. The testimony of Stanley Lane Poole, who often writes favorably of Mohammedanism, is: "As a social system Islam is a complete failure. By degrading woman it has degraded each successive generation of their children down an increasing scale of infamy and corruption, until it seems almost impossible to reach a lower level of vice." When this indictment can be brought and proved against any system, the sooner that system is swept out of existence the better for the world.
The state of religion in Algeria is quite unique. There are no fewer than four established or State-paid forms of worship-namely, the Roman Catholic, the Protestant, the Jewish, and the Mohammedan. Surely such a state of things stands self-condemned. The Gospel is not advanced by such methods-non tali auxilio, nee defensoribus isti8. The religion of the Lord Jesus Christ needs no such props. Its own inherent strength is the strength of God; and in that divine strength it pulls down all the strongholds of sin and ignorance, of wicked social customs and vice. It is mighty in itself, and needs no such State alliance as is found in Algiers.
In the museum in Algiers there is the plaster cast of an Arab named Geronimo, and his history is a very interesting one. In the year 1569 Geronimo, who had become a professing Christian, was taken prisoner along with some Spaniards; the whole party were carried to Algiers. Strong efforts were made to induce Geronimo to return to Mohammedanism, but in vain. He was accordingly condemned to death, and sentenced to be thrown alive into a mould in which a block of concrete was about to be made. After they had tied his feet and hands with cords they laid him, face downward, into the concrete, and covered up the living man with more of that material. The block was built into the wall of a fort then in course of erection. After the French took possession of Algiers, in 1830, many of the houses were pulled down, and among other buildings this fort was demolished. In course of the process of demolition the skeleton of Geronimo was found in one of the blocks of concrete. The bones were carefully removed and re-interred. Liquid plaster of Paris was run into the mould left by his body. In this way a perfect model of it was obtained, showing not only the general shape of the ,body, but even his features. His hands are seen tied behind his back; the cord which binds the hands is there too, and even the texture of his clothing may be made out. Popery in Algiers may be seen in many of its peculiar forms. For example, over a doorway in one of the public streets there is a sign-board with the following inscription in French: "0 Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee." One of the churches is called N6tre Dame d' Afrique. It is situated on one of the spurs of the hill of Bourzarea, overlooking the sea. Above the altar is a statue of the Virgin Mary represented as a black woman, and there is this inscription, also in French: "Our Lady of Africa, pray for us and for the Mussulmans." At Biskra, in the Sahara Desert, there is a large new establishment erected by Cardinal Lavigerie for his soldier monks, lea freres du delert. On the whitewashed walls there is the inscription that the building has been erected in honor of the immaculate Virgin. But it is not by these Romish pretensions that the weary and heavy-laden tribes of Africa will be won for Christ.
How strange is the way in which North Africa has been overlooked by the churches! So recently as 1880 there were only three missionaries at work between Egypt and the Atlantic. Why is it that North Africa has been thus overlooked by the churches of Britain and North America ~ No satisfactory reason can be given. Steamships carrying the commerce of the world sail in sight of those African shores en route for India and China and Australia. Missionaries going to and returning from their spheres of labor have passed along that coast for half a century, yet almost nothing was done, almost nothing was even attempted until some twelve years ago. There is not even the excuse that can be alleged in regard to Central Africa, that we did not know of the existence either of the country or of its inhabitants, for we possessed very accurate knowledge indeed regarding the Barbary States. The different countries of Europe and even the United States of America had made political treaties with the Deys of Algiers long before the coming of the French. In 1816 the British fleet under Lord Exmouth bombarded Algiers, and the Dey was forced to sign a treaty by which Christian slavery-i.e., the enslaving of the subjects of Christian countrieswas brought to an end. Even the thirty-two gun frigate George Washington, of the United States of America, was requisitioned by the Dey to carry his tribute to the Sultan at Constantinople! It was not because nothing was known of North Africa that it has been so strangely overlooked.
Even for many years after .the coming of the French in 1830 no attempt was made to bring the Gospel to the Arabs j but those times of great and culpable neglect are passing away. A beginning of gospel missions has been made. The providence of God has given a wide door of entrance. The country is everywhere open. Communication is cheap and easy. There are railways running both east and west from Algiers, as far west as the large city of Oran, in which there is no missionary to the natives, or as far east as Constantine and Tunis, and reaching even the Sahara Desert on the south. The railway system is being still further extended. The Atlas Mountains are being pierced with tunnels for the locomotive. A railway in the Sahara makes one think of Isaiah's words, and or a fulfilment of them that the prophet little thought of: "Make straight in the desert a highway for our God"-a highway along which no slave traffic shall be carried, a highway to bring salvation ana joy to the unhappy homes of the Moslems.
There is far more openness and readiness among the Arabs and Kabyles to receive the Gospel than is commonly supposed. There is not that hermetical sealing of the mind which may have existed once. The homes of the Arab women are freely opened to the visits of their English-speaking sisters; and the loving touch of a Christian woman and the kindly presentation of the Gospel are made welcome. Though the ignorance is great and the adversaries are many, yet God has set before us an open door, and not all the power of the adversaries of the truth is able to shut it. It is the duty and the privilege of Christians to enter in and to win Africa for Christ.
Morocco, Algeria, Tunis, Tripoli, and the great unexplored Sahara, stretching from Egypt to the Atlantic, from the Mediterranean to the Niger and the Congo-these countries, with their many millions now under the sway of the false prophet, are gasping for the Gospel, and the promise of God is sure; for it is written, " All the flocks of Kedar shall be gathered together unto thee, the rams of Nebaioth shall minister unto thee" (Isa. 60 : 7). The Scripture cannot be broken, and those wandering tribes, the descendants of Ishmael, shall certainly yield themselves unto Christ. Well may Christian hearts use Abraham's prayer as we cry to God for the salvation of the Arabs, " Oh, that Ishmael might live before Thee!" Prayer an'd effort wiII win the day. The sore need of the sons and daughters of the Dark Continent, neglected as they have been for the last twelve hundred years and more, makes us think of the famous sermon by William Carey, with its two divisions: "Expect grcat things from God; Attempt great things for God."
Protestant mission work in Algiers is carried on by various agencies, and with them all it is still the day of small things, but not to be spoken of lightly. The British and Foreign Bible Society have had a depot in Algiers for eleven years, and in that period have sold over fifty thousand copies of the Bible in whole or in portions. The North Africa Mission has a receiving home at No. 72 Rue Rovigo, presided over by a devoted Christian lady, Mrs. Lambert, who acts a mother's part to the young ladies of the mission, who live with her during the one or two years of their residence in Algiers. They occupy their time chiefly in learning French and Arabic, and when they attain some proficiency in speaking these languages they are drafted off to the towns in the interior in which they are to be located.
Much good is heing done by the Algerian branch of the McAll Mission in its various departments. During the winter of 1891-92 a new salle was opened in which to conduct meetings for the French soldiers; it is situated in the Place de la PrMecture. The soldiers come willingly to the meetings, which are very enthusiastic. There are four Sunday-schools held in connection with the McAIl mission, and in these schools some two hundred Algerian children are under biblical instruction. Some of the Sunday-schools are held not on Sunday, but on Thursday, the afternoon on which the children attending the ordinary week-daJT schools have a half holiday. These Sunday-schools are held, one in the Rue Tanger, attended by Jewish children; one in Rue Michelet, attended by Protestants and Roman Catholics; one in the Bab-el.oued, attended by Spaniards and Jews; and the fourth in the Place de la Prefecture, in which the children are a strange medley-Arabs, Spaniards, Maltese, and Jews.
M. Gonzalez carries on mission work among the Spaniards, of whom there is quite a considerable number in Algiers. This work among the Algerian Spaniards is entirely supported by a lady in England, an example worthy to be imitated surely. Dr. Nystrom is a devotQd missionary from Sweden, and works among the Arabs and Kabyles in Algiers. Miss Trotter and the missionary ladies who live in her house carryon much interesting work among the Arab women, whom they visit in their own homes, thus doing work which can be accomplished in no other way, for no man is allowed to enter the houses of the Arab women.
It is said that not even one Arab woman in Algiers is able to read. Hence the Gospel must be spoken to them. Books and even Bibles are of no use at all. But the doors of those Arab houses are wide open for the entrance of Christian ladies, who thus find an unlimited field of usefulness. The leaves of the tree of life are for the healing of the nations, and there~ fore for the healing of the sad lives of the Arab women.
In June of last year, 1892, an attempt was made by the French Government to expel the missionaries of the North African mission from Algeria. M. Waddington's letter to Lord Salisbury ends in these terms: "We hope that the English missionary societies will themselves take the initiative in recalling their missionaries, and save us from the painful necessity in which we should otherwise be placed of having to order them to take their departure from our territory." It is believed that this was intended as a set-off or counter-movement to the position which the French Roman Catholic missionaries were then occupying in Uganda. The political troubles in which those missionaries had involved themselves in that part of Central Africa, and the opposition which they had uniformly shown to the work of Mackay and the other missionaries of the Church Missionary Society at Uganda, had so discredited them in England that the French Government seemed to think that, as the champions of the Roman Catholic mission, they would institute a policy of expelling all Protestant missionaries from French territory in North Africa. The absurd charges of supplying the natives with guns and ammunition and of teaching them to be disloyal to the French were fabricated against the missionaries of the Norlh Africa Mission, most of whom are ladies. There was not a word of trnth in these charges; but any stick is good enough to thrash a dog, and any charge, however untrue, would do to raise odium against those brave men and women who are doing Christ's work among the Arabs. The secretary of that mission wrote, in the end of June, " We do not yet know how things will go, but the outlook is dark. Still God is above all, and kings and governments are subservient to His mighty will." And the cloud passed away; after a month or two the French Government decided that it would permit the missionaries to remain if they would submit to the French laws, which of course they had always done.
During all that summer of perplexity the missionaries were greatly upheld and cheered by the manifest signs and tokens of God's presence and approval of their work-conversions and baptisms taking place just at the time when it was not known if they would be allowed to remain in Algeria for another day.
North Africa is not far from England. Morocco is only four or five days distant by sea. The journey from London through France occupies less than three days.
Many parts of North Africa are very beautiful. Much of the mountain scenery is exceedingly grand. Across the Bay of Algiers, but at the distance of some fifty miles, there rises the Djurdjura range of the Atlas. While Algiers is basking in the sunshine, and while orange and lemon trees are loaded with their ripe golden fruit, and the almond tree is strewing the paths with its pure white blo;;som, the peaks of Djurdjura, 7500 feet above the sea level, are gleaming white with the deep snow. Grand Kabylia lies around those rugged mountains.
Algeria, including the slopes of the "Atlas, has a fertile soil. It produces freely abundance of corn, while the vine, the orange, the fig, the olive, and the date palm flourish and afford a constant supply of wholesome food.
Morocco is still an independent State under a sultan of its own. The population is estimated at five to eight millions.
Algeria and Tunis belong to France. There are very good roads-the French really excel in road-making. The railways have already been mentioned. The population is perhaps six millions.
Tripoli is a province of the Turkish Empire. The people number, it is thought, about a million and a quarter.
The vast Sahara is practically unexplored; no herald of the cross has yet penetrated its recesses to tell the children of Ishmael, those wandering dwellers in tents, of God's great love to the world.
" Arabia's desert ranger To Him shall bow the knee ; The Ethiopian stranger His glory come to see."
Even so is it written in the Scriptures of truth. We can therefore come to the Throne of Grace in prayer for the Arabs; we can give the needful money-support to those who have entered on this most difficult work among the Mohammedans; we can pray the Lord of the harvest that He will thrust forth more laborers into His harvest.
RELIGIOUS CONDITION OF THE NEGRO IN THE UNITED STATES
THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CONDITION OF THE NEGRO IN THE UNITED STATES.
BY REV. A. F. BEARD, D.D., CORRESPONDING SECRETARY OF THE AMERICA}T MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION.
The present condition of the negro people is a part of their past nis· tory. To-day is the child of yesterday. The heirs of two hundred years of slavery, following uncounted centuries of African heathenism, were four millions in number twenty-seven years ago.
At the close of a desolating civil war they were suddenly freed from bondage. Unable to read, they were ignorant of the world in which they lived. As a class they had no intelligent knowledge of the Scriptures.. A few of the more highly favored in Christian families had by t.heir contact come into the possession of certain truths of Christianity, which nevertheless they held in darkened minds. For the most part, the truths which had been told them, ·and which in some degree they had received, were mingled with the grossest superstitions and held without regard to the verities of the Ten Commandments. The overwhelming majority' of the negro population, however, had no such privileges as these, They were in the rural districts as now. The few negroes who lived in cities and who could hope to get some worthy ideas of Christian truth were too few to be counted in the general condition.
The negro preachers-so called-were parrots. They repeated after a fashion what they thought they had heard as they had remembered it. Integrity and purity were not considered. Stealing, lying, and licentiousness were no hindrances to good and regular standing in their religious fellowship. Of chastity they did not know the meaning.
There was not enough of true Christianity to expel the African heathenism which those who were stolen from the jungle had brought with them. Transplanting did not change the tree, nor the mere succession of years its bitter fruit. Their whole life was pervaded by the belief in, and embittered by the terror of, sorcery. Voodooism and fetichism were common. Their intellectual faculties were obtuse and circumscribed beyond a few local associations ; their childish ideas werp rich soil for every variety of superstition.
Among the negroes it is true in towns and cities, and especially among house servants, there were exceptions, and of the more highly favored many were earnest and sincere, as well as fervent Christians. At the same time, speaking of the many and not of the few, practical heathenism was" on every plantation, in every hamlet, among the sands of the Atlantic coast, in the forests of the Carolinas; all through the black belt of Alabama and Mississippi, in swamps of Louisiana, and the bottoms of Arkansas and Tennessee." Slavery gave the African heathen a nominal Christianity, but it did not expel paganism. It did not add to faith, virtue, and to virtue, knowledge.
In the providence of God, twenty-seven years ago this lawful degradation of man came to an end. This is a short time in the history of a race. I have known people under most advantageous conditions to live twentyseven years without having accomplished much in life. Twenty-seven years are both swift and short for a people to emerge from the bogs of servitude, in low-down life, in absolute poverty of estate of body, mind,. and soul, to acquire true ideas of what Christianity really is, to get away from the inheritances of heathenism, to overcome habits of thought and conduct which had entrenched themselves so as to be ingrained and a part of their natures.
The four millions of people have now become more than seven millions. What has been accomplished?
It may be right first of all to observe what has not been accomplished. There is a great residuum of the race which has accomplished nothing. Millions still remain in darkness, whose common lot is poverty, whose intellectual and moral condition is but little if any better than it was in slavery. When left to himseI£ and his old-time surroundings the negro is not improving. The degradation and misery among those as yet unsaved are appalling. 'I'his is so evident that the superficial observer who forgets that the present is deeply rooted in history, and who speaks from a present impression made by seeing the multitudes of ragged, shiftless, thriftless, ' idJe negroes who crowd into towns and cities, will not hesitate to say that the former times were better than these, and that the negro of to-day has in many ways degenerated from the negro of slavery. In some part it is true that his progress is retrogression, and that his last state is worse than his first. In towns and cities saloons prosper through negro patronage. The evil is incalculable. In slavery days there was a law and a lash for black drinkers. Now a thousand dollars are spent by them in drinking and drunkenness where one was before emancipation. In the rural communities, also, in many places the degradation could scarcely have been worse in slavery days, and idleness, which was not then possible, is now so common as to become destructive to the negro and a public peril. Slavery never taught self-care nor promoted forethought, and a more thoughtless and improvident creature than the negro who has been left to himself lives nowhere short of absolute heathenism. The blacks who cannot read to-day are in excess of the original four millions when they were set free. Their churches-so called-which existed before the war can be but little better than they then were. The old-time negro religion, which one could hold without virtue or morality, has not ceased to be. That which so easily fitted in with the generations of slave life continues with the untaught generations. There are millions to-day in density of ignorance, in depths of superstition, poor, thoughtless, mentally and morally weak. It was immediately realized by those who felt called to tnis missionary work, that a Christian faith could make no real gain among this people by merely proclaiming to them that Jesus Christ is the Saviour of the world, and that now God commanded them to repent. It is not possible to save a vacuum. People with vacant minds cannot honor Christ. Curses brood in the darkness. In ignorance virtue withers. Righteousness needs knowledge. Hence, first of all, missionary schools were established by Northern Christian churches of different communions. From these have gone teachers into elementary schools, until now two and a quarter millions of ignorant people have already learned to read and to write. Many thousands have taken a generous education. A few have risen, and are leaders to higher and larger life. There are now one hundred and fifty schools for the training of colored teachers. Sixteen thousand negro teachers are uplifting their people. Twenty-five thousand five hundred and thirty schools are to-day teaching a million and a quarter of pupils, and a large proportion of these are Christian schools. They are Christianizing agencies.
It has been missionary work from the beginning until now, and as necessarily educational in its forms as if it were in Africa. One illustra. tion may stand for many. A church was organized and a school by the side of it in Georgia, in an isolated rural community composed almost wholly of black people. The old-time negroes, untaught and untrained, were ready to accept Jesus Christ as their Saviour, and in large numbers were received into the church. In the course of time the church was left for some months pastorless. During this period a wandering and crazed man, who imagined himself to be the Messiah in His second coming, came that way. Ready with the Scriptures and fluent in speech, his earnestness and assertion soon won to himself great numbers of these professing Christians among the negroes, whose emotions became inflamed and whose imaginations ran away with what sense they had. The most frantic performances took the plaee of their former worship. They acknowledged this crazy wanderer to be their Lord, and rendered him the most absolute worship and servile obedience. Their fields went to weeds and they to starvation until the county authorities arrested this state of things by arresting their supposed Messiah. None of those who had been in the schools fell into this great folly. It was again an evidence that those who will hear the Gospel truly must be able to think and understand.
Most of what has been accomplished has been chiefly organized and sustained by the Christianity of the North. The black churches number at the present time not less than fifteen thousand. The Baptist and Methodist communicants together are two and a third millions. Perhaps there are a thousand ministers who by training and character may be fitted for these fifteen thousand churches. What shall we say to the fourteen thousand churches which remain? A friend testifies, " I have witnessed scenes in the black churches of Baltimore that ought to have been possible only in the heart of Africa." Those who arc acquainted with the South know that this experience is rather the rule than the exception.
At the same time the influence of these Christian schools upon the religious condition of the negro people is immeasurable. The children are being taught what Christianity is. Purer churches are organized. Old. time churches are being leavened. Intelligent preachers are displacing the ignorant and boisterous and superstitious caricatures of ministers. The Gospel is being increasingly proclaimed by ministers whose minds have been somewhat enlarged by the discipline of the schools, expanded by a knowledge of the world's life and thought, and made capable of an intelli- gent apprehension of the significance of the ministry of Christ. Theologi- cal seminaries and Bible schools for the negro have been planted. The churches which refuse to tolerate a preaching that insiRts on purity and integrity as vital tests of piety are gradually but surely growing less in number. The churches which demand morality and will not accommodate themselves either to pagan practices or pagan superstitions are increasing yearly both in numbers and in strength. Their religious papers and maga- zines are worthy of great respect. Christian teachers and preachers are filling positi~ns of great responsibility.
It has been a hard battle in unsympathetic surroundings with long entrenched ignorance and evil inheritances j but after we have taken account of the forces of sin we may magnify our hopes.
The race as a race, above its heredity and hindrances, has been and is growing in self-hood, and there is a steady and an appreciable gain that is full of encouragement.
Twenty-seven years ago, for example, this people had no homes. There is all the difference in the world between a negro cabin in which the slaves herded without legal marriage, without any family name or family permanence, and a true Christian home.' Christianity has not many surer evidences of its divinity nor many better products of its power than the refined Christian home, with its saving and ennobling Christian influences.
The progress of a true Christian faith among the negroes may be seen in the wonderful evolution of worthy and refined Christian homes. They are not abodes of wealth, though some are j but it is simply wonderful to see what new homes with new meanings have been made in a quarter of a century by those who have been brought into the light.
In this consideration one thing is to be remembered. This degradation. and evil is not a question of race. Blindness and sin are not peculiar to the negro. All peoples who remain in darkness do the deeds of darkness. Under the shadows of the cathedrals of ancient Italy there cluster thousands of miserable people without hope in the world. Brilliant Paris has its city of low-down people within its city, and Paris was founded two thousand years ago. England has her " bitter cry" of tens of thousands who cannot read, and who live in degradation equal to that of the negro in the United States. The foremost peoples of the earth have with them great multitudes in pitiable life. The great residuum of negro ignorance, sin, and misery is but another illustration that unsaved souls everywhere need to be saved, and that only the Gospel of Christ is the power of God unto salvation. The religious progress of the negro in twenty-seven years shows what can be done. The religious condition of millions shows what ought to be done.
THE RELATION OF MISSIONARIES TO THEtR GOVERNMENTS
THE RELATION OF MISSIONARIES, TEACHERS, AND COL- LEGE PROFESSORS IN FOREIGN LANDS TO THEIR GOV- ERNMENTS.
BY REV. CYRUS HAMLIN, D.D., LEXINGTON, MASS.
It has been a principle of action rather than of statute that the foreign missionary must take his chance, and must expect little aid when in diffi- cultyand danger from his government. This, however, is peculiarly an American view. No one of the great governments of Europe, Catholic or Protestant, ever asserts it or acts upon it.
It is an unsafe principle, and should be made un-American. Mis- sionaries are scattered all over the heathen and Mohammedan world, and whatever treatment from our Government is accorded to them will be reo garded as the measure of its protection to others. If the house of a mis- sionary is assaulted, his windows broken, or if he is personally assaulted, and no penalty.follows and no reparation is made, the safety and honor of other Americans, whether merchants or travellers, will not be promoted by it. The peoples of half-civilized lands are very quick to make inferences, ' and one act of injustice unrebuked will lead to many more of increasing gravity. , The writoc would urge the following reasons why government should protect missionaries and teachers against all violence, injustice, and abuse, as it would other citizens.
as All other civilized nations do it. France protects her Catholic mis- sionaries with jealous care throughout the world. Italy does the same, does Austria. Germany is more indifferent, but her missionaries, whether Catholic or Protestant, have never appealed to her in vain. Russia has sent out but few missionaries. Those in Japan and 'in Palestine enjoy all the power of her diplomacy and navy for their protection. Her jealousy in this regard was one of the causes that led on to the Crimean War.
But the course of England is more worthy of our approbation. Her principle is to protect every man who is an Englishman, high or low, rich or poor, Jew or Gentile. She has no special regard for Jews, but singu- larly enough, two cases, the most distinguished in the half century in which England has been concerned, have been Jews.
The first, Don Pacifico, was a Jew, but an English subject residing and having business in Athens. The Greek Government took possession of his little store and plot of ground and offered him so small a compensa- tion that ho3 appealed tv the English ambassador, who took up his case with Eome spirit, and demanded a very much larger compensation.
The Greek minister treated the claim with so little respect that the ambassador appealed to his Government at home. In consequence, a part of the Mediterranean squadron took possession of the Pirreus until the Greek Government paid Don Pacifico about five times his original demand and made an apology to the English ambassador. The English demand may have been excessive and unjust, but the object was not to reward Pacifico, but to let the world know that St. Paul's appeal, " I am a Roman citizen," put forth in the form" I am a British subject, " shall secure safety and respect in any part of the world.
The more remarkablc case is that of Rev. Mr. Stein, for some years an English missionary to the Jews in Constantinople. He went to Abyssinia while the Emperor Theodore was already at loggerheads with the British Government. He was seized, thrown into prison, tried, and condemned to death, but not executed. His two servants, or n~tive associates, were so cruelly beaten that they died. The Christian public of Great Britain were intensely excited about him and other prisoners. Theodore scouted all the measures of the English Government for their release, and at length an army of ten or twelve thousand men was sent from Bombay to secure their release. The army accomplished this, and also killed Theodore and destroyed his capit~l, Magdala.
Let it be remembered, this was not done to save Mr. Stein as a missionary. The British Government cared precious little for that; but £9,000,000, equal to '$45,000,000, were expended to protect the Englishman, whoever and wherever he might be.
England has another principle of action that is wise. When an indemnity has been decided upon, it has to be paid without delay. Governments of a cer-tain class are ready enough to promise compensations which they never intend to pay. Spain and Turkey have done this repeatedly to our Government, because they have learned they can do it with impunity. A promise is readily and cheerfully made, and is announced as a satisfactory settlement. The offending power is even complimented and praised, and is thus encouraged to gre~ter boldness in future outrages.
Treaties secure to missionaries rights which in many cases our Government will not enforce. All Roman Catholic nations, as well as England, protect their missionaries with jealous care. Our treaties secure to us all the privileges of the most favored nation. Nations have a certain solidarity of interests in half-civilized and anti-Christian nations. They are morally bound to support each other when Christianity is assailed. When the English ambassador, after the execution of two so-called "apostates," demanded of the Sultan the formal renunciation of the inhuman law, all the other embassies except Russia supported him in it. This principle should be acted upon in every case. No. government so unwise as to disregard legitim'ate claims for redress will persevere in it agaiitst a positive and deter!.llined pressure which will secure the approval, and, it may be, the co-operation, of other powers. Any power that refuses to acknowledge treaty obligations puts itself outside of the protection of international law.
But there is a higher principle of action. Christian nations are responsiblto f6r the Christian influence which they may exert upon the non- Christian nations. Christi::lllity lies at the foundation of their greatness and pre-eminence. They can confer no benefit upon the pagan and Mos- lem nations like that which has made them great. They cannot allow it to be treated with gross and cruel insults without loss of character and without the most serious injury to both parties. There is no occasion for the exercise of warlike force.' It is enough if the preparation for enforc- ing a just claim is made visible. Recently the Sultan sent in great haste to our minister to come directly to the palace. His majesty would settle satisfactorily the Marsovan affair, and there was no need to telegraph for war steamers. Our minister, with great simplicity, denied all intentions of that nature, and refused to go. He might at least have gone and ap- pealed to the Sultan's honor and sense of justice; but the poor man was new in his place, and afraid to move either to the right or left.
A great nation cannot afford to place itself or be placed in such positions. If the mere report of an ironclad can agitate the palace, the presence of one in Turkish waters would be a powerful protection. Such cases demana no v4>lence, but a preparation to enforce respect and secure justice is absolutely necessary in the present condition of the world. If the magistrate bears the sword in vain, or if he have no sword to bear, the rude, the barbarous, and the lawless will be without restraint. American missionaries have a right to expect in every land the protection and the immunities accorded to the missionaries from other lands. The Catholic missionaries from France and Italy are always treated with respect. No indignities are offered to them. Their schools are never interfered with. They are never mobbed or imprisoned. Their books are never destroyed or interdicted or absurdly defaced by the censor. So long as this treatment is accorded to other nations, we have a right to expect the same. Our treaties secure to us the treatment accorded to the most favored nations, and if our Government will not enfor~e its treaties it becomes a proper object of contempt. Its prestige, if it has any, departs, and its subjects will often be subjected to the caprice of bigots. American missionaries have never asked for special favors. They know their rights as citizens of the United States. All they claim is that protection which is secured by treaty and which belongs to them as Americans. It is a violation of all the principles upon which treaties are based that any power should confer special favors upon citizens of one nation and treat with manife'lt disfavor the citizens of another, when common treaty relations bind them all. The Christian public of the United States hopes and expects to see its government take those measures that will place its citizens in foreign lands on an equality with the citizens of any other nation of whatever race or religion. At present throughout the Turkish Empire American missionaries are insulted, mobbed, imprisoned, their dwellings and schools burned, their property seized, confiscated, and no reparation is made with the exception of Mr. Bartlett's house, and that was caused by the mere report that a steamer would be sent to protect American citizens,
CATHERIl"IE PENNEFATHER
CATHERINE PENNEFATHER.
BY JAMES E. MATHIESON, ESQ., LONDON, ENGLAND.
Three links have recently been severed which connected this generation with some remarkable movements of the present century. With the expiring year there passed away, in Glasgow (on December 30th, 1892), the venerable Andrew A. Bonar, in his eighty-third year, best known ontside of Scotland by his memoir of the saintly Murray MacCheyne, a new edition of which has just come from the press. One of three noble brothers, all of whom ha:d attained to fourscore years-John Bonar, minister of Greenock j Horatius Bonar, the Scottish psalmist. Andrew was the last survivor, and of his four hundred and fifty contemporaries who left the Established Church of Scotland in 1843, no one now remains so original as a thinker, so devout in life, or so universally beloved as he. I have before me a letter, written in clearest handwriting and in charming style, dated December 6th, concerning our Lord's premillennial return, which he closes thus: "Keep prayiug, and believe me your ' brother and companion in tribulation, and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ.'" .We look back pensively to that revival time in Scotland fifty years ago, when quickened spiritual life in the Church led the Bonars and so many more to give up their manses and stipends for the truth's sake and for the honor of Christ, the one Head of the Church j and we look around us to-day and we hear of two clergymen of the Church of England only who have resigned their positions because in faithfulness to our Lord they cannot remain in a communion where, by the recent Lincoln judgment, the fuJlblown symbolism of Roman ceremonies opens wide the door to Mariolatry and other abominations which were rejected at the Reformation.
On January 10th there was buricd at Beckenham, in Kent, a sweet old saint, Mrs. Soltau, aged eighty, who has given her three sons to the mission field -one in Tasmania, one in the Neilgherry Hills, in India, one in the McCall Mission, in Paris, and a daughter who ably superintends and trains the female candidates for the China Inland Mission. A happy mother was she with such children, walking in the truth. Her husband, whose books, "The Tabernacle and its Teachings" and" The Soul and its Difficulties," are much valued, was one of the band of devoted and intelligent men-chiefly gentlemen of Devonshire and the "Vcst of England-who originated that quest for more spiritual worship, more scriptural following of Christ, and greater recognition of all the varied gifts in. the Church, popularly known as the Plymouth Brethren, though they themselves disclaimed that appellation. Holding firmly as two of their tenets believers' baptism and the hope of Christ's premillennial appearing. they introduced an era of Bible reading among English-speaking people which probably has kept the Church from a more rapid corruption than that which has actnally sct in, and has 1,y its love of Scripture imparted to a multitude of Christians (many of them unconsciously influenced) a habit of habitual and reverent examination of the truth of God, and this in people throughout all the denominations. No true lover of his Bible will undervalue, and none ought to ignore, the blessing which has come to the Church in these days through the ofttimes despised and misunderstood Plymouth Brethren.
On January 12th, at Mildmay, in the north of. London, there entered into rest, in her seventy-fifth year, the beloved lady whose name I have placed at the head of this notice. 'Tis twenty years since her revered and honored and saint~y husband, William Pennefather, went in to see the King after a life of singular beauty and devotion unreservedly given to Christ, to His Church below, and to the poor and needy of this earth. His father was one of Her Majesty's judges in Ireland, and in that coun· try he commenced his ministry as a clergyman of the Established Church, but transferred his labors to three other spheres on English soil. What stands out prominently in his life as an originator was his conception, when at Barnet, in 1855, to gather together in a conference for worship and mutual edification brethren and sisters from various branches of the Church of Christ. With us to-day, when the idea has long been a fait accompli, it is difficult to conceive of the dissuasions and alarm with which the proposal was 'first entertained even among godly and earnest men. But the invited guests came j "the'number of names together were about one hundred and twenty" (as at the commencement of the Church, Acts 1 : 15) j a sweet Christian harmony pervaded all the meetings, and their repetition was eagerly hailed. Since then, first at Barnet and subsequently in the iron room transferred to London, and since 1870 in the noble Mildmay Conference Hall there have been held meetings full of interest, oftentimes full of power, wherein believers have been edified and multiplied, new' methods of Christian enterprise have been planned, many wearied workers and foreign missionaries have been refreshed and sent forth again to labor more assiduously among Jews and Gentiles.
Fit companion and true helper in all this labor of love was Catherine Pennefather, one of the noble women of our time, who sought no earthly fame or prominence, but could not be hid. On her mother's side she was granddaughter of a former archbishop of Dublin (Cleaver) j her father was the Hon. James King, son of the Earl of Kingston. He was an admiral in the English Navy and an intimate of William IV., who also was an English admiral j they were used to address each other familiarly as " King." The monarch sometimes gave it as his opinion that his successor, the Princess Victoria, would be the last sovereign of England. It was he too who, driving through the streets of London about the year 1830, and noticing placards headed "Reform Bill !" (probably the announcement of a public meeting), soliloquized thus: "Reform Bill, reform Bill; ah ! that means me, I suppose." Mrs. Pennefather was gifted with J. noble presence and with a clear and penetrating mind. A London specialist, called in by her usual medical attendant for consultation the week preceding her death, remarked on coming out of the sick-room, "What a head! Why, it's the head of a judge!" And so it was. Calmness and accuracy of judgment were probably her distinguishing characteristics j but there was none of that usual accompaniment of calmness, there was no coldness, there was deep warmth of love to her Saviour and to all who belonged to Him, and a very special love to those who came nearest to Him in holy living and blessed service ; and the attachment to her person which marked all those who were in any way associated with the varied labors of love in which she was an acknowledged leader and a trusted counsellor was probably unique. As President of the Association of Female Workers, numbering 1700 ladies in all parts of the world engaged in various forms of Christian work, I think I may say she stood pre-eminent, not only in their esteem but in their affections; and to one and all how readily and gladly she gave counsel and help and comfort as often as her ministrations were sought for in these directions! To the immediate circle of Mildmay workers-120 Protestant deaconesses and nearly 100 Christian nurses-she was felt to be a " mother in Israel" in her bestowal of sweet spiritual counsel, but to many of them she was as a mother indeed in her affectionate oversight and thoughtfulness for their needs. The love which radiated from the home of Mr. and Mrs. Pennefather was the love which " beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things." An early incident illustrated this trend of mind and heart even in Mrs. Pennefather's childhood. A bee had stung her badly j she ran to her mother and exclaimed, "The bee has kissed me too hard!" She never thought of the bee as angry and hurtful j and this feeling pervaded her conceptions of men and women acting or speaking injuriously, while at the same time she maintained clear and decided views of truth and deplored error. Though hers was a maste'r mind, she sought not mastery, and had no sympathy with that headship of woman which not a few are seeking after in the preselilt day; and when busily occupied in devising and directing work for the redressing of the wrongs of woman by putting their happier sisters upon right lines of ministry on their behalf, she meddled not with any political nostrum for enforcing woman's rights. In truth, she seemed always to be guided into the more excellent way when a choice of paths was presented for selection, and this because she waited upon God and rested not in her own wisdom, For many of her later years her eyesight had failed, and she enjoyed, without the distraction which hinders many others, ample opportunity for frequent secret, silent prayer, and the great day alone'shall declare how much her intercessions, ascending to and through the Great Intercessor, have availed in ealling down more abundant blessings upon the Mildmay Deacones~ Missions, the medical missions and hospitals, the Jewish mission, the Gospel services, the conferences, as well as upon the individual workers in squalid London districts; upon the nurses watching by sick-beds, that
A VOICE FROM SOUTH AFRICA
they might use the precious opportunity of speaking a wonl in season for the Master j upon scattered workers on far distant mission fields j such intercessory help constituting the uniting bond of the whole association of female workers who are now bereaved of their honored and trusted president, whose place it seems so hard and impossible to fill. vVe way claim, without presumption and without disparagement of others, that Mrs. Pennefather was the choicest embodiment of high-toned spiritual life in combination with that culture which distinguishes delicately nurtured English women, while the woman's work under her guidance and fostering care, in an age remarkable for its development of woman's work in so many directions, has given to thc Church many examples of " daughters as corner-stones fashioned after the similitude of a palace," who had been st.imulated and sustained by the copy which her life set before them. Let a sympathetic cry ascend, dear reader, from your inmost soul that God would comfort with His own strong consolations the many weeping ones who are now realizing a great personal bereavement, and that He in tender mercy will raise up some one to fill the vacant place and maintain in the unity of the Spirit all represented in the Mildmay institutions-that is, reflecting Christ's image. Its motto is, " Grace be with all those who love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity j" and when we sec around us such falling away from gospel simplicity, those who ha'e loved and labored for Him in connection with Mildmay do very truly beseech Him to keep this centre as a stronghold for evangelical teaching, seeing He has permitted it to display for so many years past a banner for the trnth.
Amid many tokens of reverence and love Mrs. Pennefather's remains were borne away after the funeral service in St. Jude's, Mildmay Park, on Monday, January 16th, to their earthly resting-place, twelve miles off, at Ridge, a quiet resting-place indeed, in a typical English churchyard, where rests the dust of her like-minded husband until the glad day when the trump of God shall sound, "and the dead in Christ shall rise first, . . . and so shall we ever be with the Lord." "Even so, come, Lord Jesus !"
And we " comfort one another with these words."
* A VOICE FROM SOUTH AFRICA.
. BY MISS ABBY P. FERGUSON, WELLINGTON, SOUTH AFRICA.
In the June number of the MISSIONARY REVIEW for 1891, under" The Miracles of Missions," was given the story of the Huguenot Seminary at • For the appeal in behalf of the Lord's work in the diamond fields of South Africa, and for the response of Christian friends to that appeal, we retllrn thanks. The aid has come in our time of need, 8IIIl bas been most precious. Miss Anna E. Bliss. who came with me to Africa nineteen years ago, will be in America until November. Her ..ddre.s is West New Bri~hton,8tatenI"18nd. N.Y. Mi.s Bliss has had an important part in the work of the Huguenot !'emioary from it. beginning, and I. prepared to advance its interests in any way that she can riuring tbe y~..r thllt .be is in America. either by corre8pondence, by receiving contributions or by "peaking in its behalf.-A. P. F. Wellington. I will add somewhat as to what the Lord h,.s done for us since that article was written.
The branch seminary at the Paarl haf> grown, until now there are seventy boarders and over one hundred day scholars. Toward the close of 1891 there came requests for two more branch Reminaries : one at Bethlehem, in the Orange Free State, and one at Greytown, Natal. About the last of"
December it was decided to go forward, and our prayer was that the little seminary born at Bethlehem at Christmas time might indeed be the child of the Most High, and that the one at Greytown might also be owned of Him. The Bethlehem Reminary was opened February, 1892, under the care of Miss Catherine Murray, the daughter of Rev. Andrew Murray. The branch at Greytown was opened in July, 1892, under Miss Gates, one of our American teachers. Miss Gates writes of a precious work of grace among her girls, and that she has had the joy of seeing all but one con- verted. Thus God has set His seal upon the precious work. .J Our own work at the mother Huguenot Seminary at Wellington is growing, and we are feeling with the increased opportunities that it assumes new importance. Most of the teachers at our branch seminaries are our own graduates. We have sent out over, four hundred teachers during the nineteen years since our seminary was established. And now lihat Africa is opening so wonderfully, we cry unto God that we may be ready to enter every open door in the name of the Lord, and that these dear daughters of ours may be fully equipped in body, soul, and spirit for the service of the Lord. We number on our own staff of teachers gradu- ates of Mount Holyoke, of 'Wellesley, of Oberlin, besides other vahable teachers from America, Holland, and Germany. The number of our pupils has increased, and for these we are needing increased acco~modation.
With the help of the colonial Government we have been able to purchase a valuable property adjoining ours, and now we are anxious to put up a large building, giving us more room for pupils, and also a library and class- rooms. ,Ye are very anxious also to have a fund to help many girls who are eager for an education and would make good use of it, but have not the means to meet the expense. Our four Huguenot seminaries are for the white girls of South Africa, daughters of European settlers; and closely connected with this work of Christian education, a great mission work is opening. You have an account of the work at the diamond fields in the MISSIONARY RE'IIEW for July, 1892. The work here is not only for the thousands of heathen who come to work in the mines from all parts of South Africa, but a helping hand is stretched out also to the Cape natives, who are civilized in part, and the interest of our workers has been deeply stirred for the whole population gathered here from all parts of the world seeking wealth, and yet so many finding only sin and sorrow. There are eight lady workers here. Two mission houses have been bought; both are nearly paid for; but we are anxious to put up a small hall in connection with one of them for meetings and evening classes. This work is under the Woman s Missionary Union of South Africa. Most of the workers have been at the Huguenot Seminary, ·Wellington, where there is a special class for those desiring training for mission work.
Our Woman's Missionary Society has lady missionaries among the heathen in the Transvaal, and at one station in Bechuanaland. And now the call has come for us to enter new fields. At Johannesburg, the great centre of the gold-mining industries, tliey are asking us to open a work similar to that at the diamond fields, and the need is much the same. There are the thousands of whites who have gone down through poverty, drink, and sin; there are many Cape colored people, and there are tens of thousands of heathen from all parts of Sonth Africa, coming to work in the mines a few months and then returning to their own people. And for these we are confronted by the same question, Shall these men carry back to their tribes the vices of civilization or the Gospel of Christ ~ Another door that is open for us to enter is at Mvera, thirty miles to the southeast of Lake Nyassa, a station under the care of a nephew of Rev. Andrew Murray, and bearing the same name. We are asked to send two ladies to this station to begin work among the heathen women and children, and we are asking the Lord, who has opened this door, to show us whom He has called and prepared to enter upon this important service.
It has been for years my prayer that the Lord would make our work all that it is possible for it to become to His glory, and the advancement of His cause. He is answering wonderfully in ways beyond what we had asked or thought. lIe is showing us more and more that He has planted' us here to do a work for Him that shall be far-reaching in this great dark Africa, with its millions of precious souls waiting to. be told of the great redemption. The work is not ours, it is the Lord's, and it is in His name we lay it before you in all its departments.
I. We need your prayers and Christian sympathy. II. We need Christian teachers having a good collegiate education, who will be able to prepare our girls for the positions of responsibility waiting ":or them. For these we can offer passage-money and a fair salary. III. We should be glad of workers who could be wholly or partly selfsupporting for the various departments of mission work. IV. vVe need help in putting up suitable buildings for our Christian educational work. The Government of Cape Colony has given us to understand that it would help us to the extent of £5000 if we could raise the same amount from other sources. V. We need aid for our buildings at the different mission stations or centres of work. VI. We need help in the education of girls without means who are anxions to enter upon and would be useful in Christian work, and would be glad to receive the training necessary. YII. 'Ye need help in the support of our mission work. Our Woman's Missionary Union is accomplishing much, but without aid from other lands we cannot enter upon the work opening before us.
SAMUEL METHABATHE
SAMUEL METHABATHE, AN AFRICAN EVANGELIST.
BY REV. JOSIAH 'fYLER, NATAL, SOUTH AFRICA.
Sixty years ago a society of Wesleyan Methodists sent Rev. James Alli- son and his wife as pioneer missionaries to the Amaswazi tribe, living on the southeastern coast of Africa, about eighty miles from Delagoa Bay. Not disheartened by hundreds of miles of rough travel in ox wagons, they settled among the wild heathen, and soon a large number came to them for instruction. Then an intertribal war disturbed' their labors. The Zulus, ancestral enemies of the Amaswazi, came and killed many of their people, and threatened them also. They were driven to Natal, accompanied by hundreds of the poor, homeless natives, and the station "Edendale" was founded, which 'is now the largest mission station in that part of Africa, numbering nearly one thousand members and adlterents.
Mr. and Mrs. Allison, unfitted by their age to superintend so large a station, went to Pietermaritzburg, the capital of Natal, to end their days in rest and quiet. But such true missionaries, seeing the Zulu servants loitering about the streets, especially on the Sabbath, invited them to their house for religious instruction, and established an evening school. Having thus won the natives by kind words and loving desire for their good, they soon had another large station to care for. Christian friends among the English colonists aided them, and a commodious chapel was erected which was well filled each Sabbath.
In 1869, while visiting Mr. Allison, I addressed his congregation, and was much attracted by a young man in the congregation who was smaller than the average Zulu, but had an earnest, expressive face and manner. I learned that his name was Methabathe, and he had come seven hundred miles, from the region of the Limpopo River, to earn money to buy a gun and ammunition, but, having found the Saviour, was soon to return to his people to preach Jesus Christ. "Will he hold out, so far away from Christian teachers and religious training~" I inquired of Mr. Allison. " He is a thorough Christian, inflamed with a passion to save souls," replied he. "I have known him for six years. After parting with him I sh~l probably never see him or hear from him again, but am sure he will prove a blessing to his countrymen."
A few months later Mr. Allison set apart this native Christian, and with tears prayed that God would go with him, keeping him humble, prayerful, and steadfast in the faith. Both Mr. Allison and his wife were called to their reward without hearing further of the man whom they had brought to Christ.
Nine years later Rev. Owen 'Watkins, Superintendent of the Wesleyan Methodist missions in the Transvaal, hearing of Samuel Mcthabathe, sent for him to come and tell his story. With three of his converts the evangelist travelled four hundred miles, and in his simple, g-raphic way gave his testimony. He had labored" unknown, unpaid, unvisited, unrecognized by any church, yet remaining steadfast and patiently witnessing for Christ in the midst of persecution and distress as bravely as any of the early Christians."
After leaving Mr. Allison, he had gone back to his country, reported himself to his chief, and asked permission to preach Jesus Christ to his people. This the chief would not allow, fearing that his subjects would rebel against him if told of the great" King of kings," and he threatened Samuel with death or banishment should he be found holding meetings to teach the new doctrine.
In sadness of heart Samuel left the chief, but after much thought and prayer resoh'ed to do what he could. For four years he went about from hut to hut, telling his relatives and friends about the great salvation, praying with them and urging them to believe in Christ. A chapel was built in which the people gathered on the Sabbath for worship, but the chief ordered it to be burned. After his death his wife assumed the reins of government, and proved more tolerant than he had been. Another church was huilt, a school established, and many natives professed Christianity.
As the work grew, educated men· were needed to take charge of the work upon the out-stations. The church selected two men to go to a training school kept by the French missionaries in Basutoland. After two years' study they returned, and the work of the Lord was greatly prospered.
The trial of their faith was not yet ended, however. Aroused by enemies of the Christian religion, this female chief caused the church to be burned, and ordered all Christians to leave the country with their families. With Samuel at their head, two hundred went into exile for Christ's sake. A portion of them settled on a farm which has since been bought by the Methodist Society for them, and which is named" Good Hope."
Soon after hearing Samuel's story, Mr. Watkins visited the tribe and. wrote as follows : " When I got to the foot of the hill on the top of which Samuel's village is now built, some of the people saw me, and at once set up a cry, 'It is ! it is ! the missionary ! our own missionary ! come at last!' There was a great commotion. Then a lot of guns were fired off by way of salute, and then the people rushed down the hill-side to greet me. I stood still at the spot where the first party met me, and waited until all the rest came down. Samuel was away in the bush cutting wood for a schoolhouse, but they sent runners to tell him the glad tidings and bid him hasten.
"I had to shake hands with every man, woman and child until my arms ached again. After that came words of welcome. Tears rolled down many faces as the teacher, Johannes (one who had beel! to Basutuland), told me how for a long time their prayers and cries had gone up to heaven for my eoming, and he concluded, ' Now at last, that we see your face, all the days of our mourning are ended.' I spoke to them very
4'&1 FINAL FACTS RESPECTING UGANDA
gently, for I knew their sorrows for Christ's sake had been very great, and told them God's people in England of the Wesleyan Church would not for- sake them. .
" The teacher thereupon in an ecstasy of joy raised the hymn' Jesus sought me when a stranger,' and we moved forward. In a little while Samnel arrived, and as it was an occasion to be spoken of in coming gen- .erations, he was saluted with three gnns. To see that man's face beami~g with joy as he saw me in the midst of his people, and to feel the grip of his hand in welcome, amply repaid me for all the hardships passed in com- ing to visit him. I cannot tell of the long meeting we held and the many matters we talked of, bnt it was a t.ime never to be forgotten. "
Thus through Divine blessing on the labors of Samuel Methabathe an African wilderness has become a fruitful garden. I still seem to see his intelligent countenance as I first saw him in the native chapel in Pieter- maritzburg, and recall with admiration the faith of the devoted missiona- ries who consecrated him so tenderly to the Lord's service. Eternity alone will reveal the good done in heathen lands of which Christian missionaries have been the unconscious instruments.
FINAL FACTS RESPECTING UGANDA BY REV. CHARLES C. STARBUCK.
The Allgemeine Missions-Zeitschrift for January has an article touching these, on the basis of which it appears worth while to make some statements. We do not reproduce the paper or even condense it, but note some things which may now be accepted as certain.
1. The Protestant missionaries were in Uganda maay months before the Roman Catholic, so that if there has been any intrusion, it has n,ot been on the Protestant side.
2. The Anglican missionaries, though Evangelicals, have been of no malevolent or calumnious schools, but have steadily referred to the Catholics in terms of respect and friendliness. Exceptions to this rule are so slight as to be microscopic.
3. The thorough ventilation of all the facts of the late catastrophe shows Bishop Tucker and the other English missionaries to have had, neither proximately nor remotely, the slightest share in bringing it on. The passionate and exceedingly unhamlsome imputations of Bishop Hirth have dissolved into absolute emptiness.
4. There are more chiefs in the kingdom than places of honor. The religious differences have simply served as a bond of cohesion to the latent, parties. The chiefs on both side!? have fused intense personal ambition with a fiery religious zeal. The masses on both sides, a small percentage apart, have been moved simply bv a spirit of blinu feudal loyalty. The Protestant missionaries have brought this out into full light ; the French priests have thrown a religious halo over the whole of their side, although, being so much the more numerous, it is probably, if there is any difference, even less moved by religion than the other.
5. Bishop Hirth's report, written in the first heat of the collision, is passionate and exaggerated almost to insanity. For instance, he declarea that 50,000 Catholics have been sold as slaves. As the later Catholic accounts do not even allow that there are 25,000 Catholics in all, and as there are many thousands left, the bishop's arithmetic is somewhat delirious.
6. Bishop Hirth and his party-the royal party, moreover-were so far from being straitened or oppressed that the bishop, just before the outbreak of the conflict, expresses the belief that Uganda is about to become " Ii Catholic kingdom." The immediate prelude to the collision was that after the two parties had marched out jointly against the Mohammedans, the Catholics returned without cause. The spark that set the fire was the murder of a Protestant by Catholics, and the refusal of the king to deliver the murderers up.
7. The French missionaries have listened credulously and passionately to accusations of Protestant cruelty which are partly altogether false, partly enormously exaggerated. They have, moreover, thrown imputations of complicity in the actual cruelties on Protestantism because the English missionaries, no more than themselves, have been able to restrain a mass of heathen fighters, most of whom knew little more of Christianity than the name, from showing themselves the barbarians that they were. The Protestants patiently 'awaited Captain Lugard's orders before firing, and he withheld these until the Catholic assault became general. He distributed about one hundred and fifty muskets and rifles on that very morn: ing, but not earlier. He gave no Maxim gun to the Baganda. He urged the priests, as well as the clergymen, to come into the fort, and when there showed them all possible attention.
8. For the fierceness of a civil war, induced, moreover, by their own adherents, the losses of the White Fathers-not, as is often blunderingly written, the Jesuits-have been practically nothing. Most of their goods were in the fort or had been sent south. Most of the buildings had lost only their grass roofs. The" cathedral" was merely of reeds and grass. Had they remained and placed themselves under Captain Lugard's protection, he declares that they would have bcen spared even their partial losses.
Our Roman Catholic friends complain-and some of them optima fide -that the portion of land finally assigned them is out of all proportion smaller than their numbers require. Not knowing how large it is, I cannot undertake to deny that there may be some ground for the complaint. The wortliless Mwanga, having been altcrnately, after some sort of fashion, a heathen, a Catholic, a heathen Ilgain, a Mohammedan, a heathen
PROTESTANT MISSIONS IN nURMA
yet again, a Catholic once more, and for the present a Protestant, would not be his pdious self if he could not contrive to impart some element of injustice into any compact which he favored. Yet when a religious party or a political party under the name of religion stirs up a revolt against a superior authority under religious pretenses, and is defeated, it should not think it unreasonable that it suffers some inconvenient consequences from the attempt. The French priests know very well that England, as Dr. Warneck well says, is the most tolerant nation under the sun. Whether they were moved by national or by ecclesiastical dislike, or more probably by a curious mixture of the two, they must not think it strange if the new order of things sets them somewhat in the background. They are in no manner of danger of being persecuted if they do not foment another commotion; but it would not be strange if, in the distribution of honors and territories, they were a little "discouraged." When a Protestant missionary in French territory expresses dislike of France and regret that England could not have the country-and we know only one such case-we assume, as of course, that he expects his French denizenship to be brief, and is making ready to hand over his work to French Protestants. If our French friends cannot be contented under the English flag, doubtless Cardinal Vaughan or Archbishop Walsh could find them a relief.
PROTESTANT MISSIONS IN BURMA.
BY REV. L. W. CRONKHITE, BASSEIN, BURMA..
These were opened by the Baptists of America, who have been actively engaged in them for the past eighty years. Though they were preceded by a son of William Carey, who after a brief period of labor had retired from the country, permanent work began with the arrival of Rev. Adoniram Judson and wife at Rangoon in July, 1813. They had been led to this field by a series of providences as marked as were the sacrifices by which they subsequently sealed the country for Christ. In 1819 their hearts were gladdened by the baptism of the first convert, Moung Naw. This, however, was speedily followed by persecution. It is noteworthy that a part.icularly bitter persecution followed almost immediately upon the arrival of a reinforcement of fifteen missionaries in 1834. From the first all progress in the work for the BurmanlJ has been in the face of the most serious obstacles; but the determined hostility of the Burmese authorities to the Gospel has been met in the Divine plan by the transfer to the English, first of Southern Burma in 1826, then of Middle Burma in 1852, and of the remainder of the country in 1885. Judson's great translation of the Bible was finished in 1834. To this he subsequently added a dictionary and a grammar, which have never been superseded. The Burmese theological school begun by Rev. E. A. Stevens in 18~8 is Rtill continued at Hangoon, under the care of Rev. A. T. Rose, and important changes are proposed with a view to its enlarged usefulness. In so brief an outline as this one can only note the names of such heroes of the Burman mission as Hough, Comstock, Wade, Kincaid, Hennett, and Haswell, the latter of whom gave some attention also to the Talign race. Cephas Bennett and wifs were connected respectively fifty-six and sixty-one years with the mission. Though Buddhism and the native rulers have done so much to make the Burmese a people peculiarly hard to reach, some real progress has been made. Inplace of the single convert in 1819, there were, in 1847, 200; in 1869, 1000 ; in 1884, 1600 j while to-day the net number,of living Burman Christians is about 2100. The outlook is good for greatly accelerated progress in the near future.
Far more accessible than the Burmese have been the various Karen tribes of Burma, the society's work among whom forms one of the noblest chapters of missionary history. For this the way was prepared by their simpler forms of worship, and by the striking likeness between some of their traditions and the early chapters of Genesis. They had it, moreover, on ancient tradition, that some day their younger brother, a white man, would come by water from the West, bringing with him the lost word of their God. The work for the Karens was begun by George Dana Boardman, and the year 1828 saw the first Karen convert, Ko-tha-byu, afterward famous as the Karen apostle. The Ko-thabyu Memorial Hall at Bassein, given wholly 'by Karens, and the finest building in the Karen mission, was dedicated upon the fiftieth anniversary of his baptism. Francis Mason and others travelled widely through the Tenasserim provinces, and in 1833 Jonathan Wade reduced the Sgau Karen dialect to written form. The Pwo and other Karen dialects followed later. In 1836 the elder Vinton opened work in Rangoon, and was eagerly received everywhere, as was also Mr. Abbott a little later at Bassein. There, among others, a young chief of fine character received the Gospel. Prospective war with England compelled the missionaries to retire from Burmese territory, whereupon Mr. Abbott removed, in 1840, to Arracan. Thither such numbers of the Karens followed him, running the gauntlet of the Burmese, that the latter were compelled to promulgate an order permitting the Karens the worship of" their God." In five years more than three thousand were baptized in the Bassein district by Mr. Abbott and his Karen co-workers. It was in 1848 that the Sgau Karen pastors of the Bassein district decided at their annual meeting to undertake henceforth the entire support of the work in their own field, a promise which they have grandly fulfilled. Their ninety churches now number over nine thousand members. In addition to thcir central school, with its four hundred pupils, nearly one hundred lesser schools are scattered among their villages. During the past three years the contributions of the Bassein Pwo Karen Christians have equalled annually one tenth their incomes for the entire membership. The Rangoon Karen field passed from the hands of the elder Vinton to those of his son, Brainerd, and when both had gone to their reward a son-in-~aw and daughter of the latter were found ready to assist his widow in ministering to the people for whom the family had already done so much. The field is now prospering in their care, with about eighty churches and four thousand members, supporting fifty schools.
The close of the second Burmese war with England in 1853 witnessed the opening of several new stations among the Karens, among which were those at Henthada, Toungoo, and Shwegyin. At Shwegyin 577 were baptized in the first year, while in the first two years of the Toungoo mission 2000 converts were baptized by the earnest evangelist Sau Quala. Through much peril and schism in the native churches, the work at the latter sta.: tion has now extended to several Karen tribes, notably to the Bghais, the Pakus, and the Red Karens, the churches having a total membership of over 5000. Newer Karen stations are those at Maubin (Pwo), at Tharrawaddy (Sgau), and at Thatone, where also work is done among the Toungthoos. The total church-membership of the Baptist mission to the Karens was, in 1833, 292 ; in 1847, 6093 ; in 1869, 20,007 ; and in 1892, about 28,000. These have now the entire Bible in Sgau-since 1853-and in Pwo-siace 1883-together with portions in some other dialects. Dictionaries and grammars have been prepared in the Sgau, in which dialect also are published three papers. At Rangoon is located the Karen Baptist college. The flourishing theological seminary ~t Insein numbers over 100 students.
Work among the Shan tribes was opened at Toungoo by Rev. M. H. Bixby ill. 1860. The Shans are a trading people, industrious and intelligent. In religion they are bigoted Buddhists, and as l?uch have thus far proved largely inaccessible to the Gospel. It has, moreover, been necessary until recently to confine the society's work to the immigrant Shans in Burma proper, with stations at Toungoo, Rangoon, Moulmein, and Bhamo. Much pioneer work in the exploration of the Shan States had, however, been done by Rev. J. N. Cushing and others prior to the recent war between the Burmese and English; and when by this war thc Shan States were opened to foreign influence, the society at once took steps to enter. Rev. M. B. Kirkpatrick, M.D., began labor in the remote city of Thibau in· 1888, and is being greatly prospered in his work. The Saubwa, or native chief, has been strongly attracted by the Gospel, proving his sincerity both by his treatment of enemies and by his large contributions to the work among his people. A station has also been established at Mone, the head of another division of the Shan States. Mr. Cushing has translated the entire Bible into Shan, and has also prepared a Shan and English dictionary and a grammar.
The Ka Ohins occupy the mountains to the north and northeast of Burma, and are supposed to number 5,000,000 souls, grouped into numerous tribes and dialects. They are wicked and lawless in the extreme, while yet possessing a basis for noble and sturdy character when wrought upon by grace. Work was begun at Bhamo in 1877, and has been carried on largely by Sgau evangelists sent out and supported by the Bassein Karens of that tribe. In 1882 the writer had the privilege of witnessing the first Ka Chin baptism, and of assisting in the celebration of the Lord's Supper which followed. The work has been greatly hindered by sickness arnona!' the missionaries and by war, but the present outlook is excellent.
Among the Ohins regular work has been in progress for the past seven years. These people inhabit the western Yomas, being most numerous in Upper Burma. They are nominally Buddhists, but cling strongly to the practices of their ancient demon-worship. Some four hundred have already been baptized, chiefly in Arracan, and the future seems very full of promise.
At Rangoon, Moulmein, and Bassein work is being done among Eurasians and among the Chinese, Tamils, and Telugus, who are flocking to Burma in large numbers. Karen evangelists from Burma are laboring among the Karens of Northern Siam. Meantime, the mission presses at Rangoon, Bassein, and Toungoo are doing much to supply the peoples of Burma with a Christian literature.
To sum up, the American Baptist Mission has in Burma, by its last report, .22 central stations, to which will soon be added Mo-gaung in the extreme north. The work is committed to 139 missionaries and 610 native preachers. The 550 churches, nearly all of which are self-supporting, have a total membership of 30,000, while into the 500 schools are gathered 11,000 boys and girls, bright and teachable.
In 1859 the Society for the Propagation of the. Gospel (Church of England) sent out to Moulmein Rev. Augustus Shears to open missionary operations in Burma. One year later he was joined by J. E. Marks, who has since accomplished so much for the education of Burmese youth, and who has for many years been at the head of St. John's College in Rangoon. In 1869 he established work at Mandalay, then the capital of what was left of the kingdom of Burma. Two sons of the king were among his pupils. The troubles which followed the death of the king rendering the . continuance of the mission impossible, work at Mandalay was dropped in 1879, but was again taken up in 1886, upon the fall of King Thibau and the acquisition of Upper Burma by the English. In 1877 the Rt. Rev. John H. Titcomb was consecrated the first bishop of the Church of England in Burma. Including Port Blair, in the Andaman Islands, the society has now nine stations, chief among which are Rangoon and Toungoo. A schism in the Karen Baptist churches at the latter station resulted in the accession of many to the English society. At several stations work is being done among the Telugu and Tamil immigrants, notably at Rangoon, where 291 communicants of these races are reported. The latest returns of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel for Burma give 12 European missionaries, 8 native pastors, and 83 readers and teachers. Of the 2214 communicants, about 1500 are Karens. The various schools afford instrnction to 2900 pupils, of whom 479 are girls.
AMONG THE LEPERS
American Methodists have recently established a mlSSlon in Burma under the supervision of Bishop Thoburn, with an excellent school for girls and an orphanage at Rangoon. The latest report gives 5 missionaries with 2 assistant missionaries, and in addition to the work among the English, 40 native church-members and 169 pupils in the schools. A Wesleyan mission has lately been opened in Mandalay, one feature of which is a home for lepers.
In con(llusion, there is every reason for an energetic forward movement for the evangelization of Burma. Lying as it does on the great highway between India and China, the country is destined to be of commanding importance as a commercial centre. Already railway projects, connecting it with both empires, are in the air. The country itself is rapidly being knitted together by a system of railways, telegraphs, and river steamers. As an example, it may be mentioned that whereas ten years ago Toungoo was reached from Rangoon by a boat journey consuming from two to three weeks, twelve hours by rail are now sufficient, the trains running both day and night. Even remote Thibau has just been connected with the world by telegraph. Preparatory work in the way of missionary exploration, translations of the Scriptures, and the making of dictionaries, grammars and school-books lies largely behind us. A great plant has been acquired in land and buildings scattered widely over the country. And lastly the complete overthrow of the Burmese civil power, accomplished by the recent war with England, while assuring to the entire country a quiet, enlightened, and humane rule, has also opened to the labors of Christians not only the multitudes of the Burmese, but also fields new and vast among the Ka Chins, Shans, Chins, and several lesser races.
WORK AMONG THE LEPERS.
THE LEPER HOME .AT JERUSALEM.
The woeful appearance of a leper touches every heart. Leprosy embitters the life of its victim j it incapacitates him for business and excludes him from the society of his nearest friends, and indeed of all persons, except lepers like himself. With all the triumphs of human science, leprosy is admittedly as incurable as it was in Old Testament times and in the days of our Lord's ministry upon earth.
At the end of the year 1892 there were 24 patients in the Home- 11 men and 13 women. In general the lepers are contented, cheerful, and affectionate, notwithstanding their sufferings and trials. Their attention is frequently engaged with simple games, and they have entered into these with childlike zest and grateful appreciation. With most, however, the dreadful disease has spread considerably, and at present the majority are suffering severely with open sores. Two have almost lost their eyesight, and a third has for a long time been lying very ill. One of the greatest trials of these poor creatures is their banishment from home. 'Who can know the dreary lot of a father who has been deprived of all connection with his family, or the grief and anxiety of a poor mother at the thought that she is estranged from her beloved ones, never to clasp them in her arms again? Yet these are some of the trials which our poor lepers experience every day. Budrus, one of the patients, says, "Were it not for the comfort that we derive from God's Holy Word, we should have died in despair long ago."
God's abundant blessing has rested on the efforts to minister these comforts to the afHicted inmates of our Home. They have daily practical proofs of the love of Jesus. They are constantly fed, cared for, and made as happy as possible in their physical condition. But there is a further and a higher aim. "Our grand object," says the evangelist, ,. is to win them to the Saviour, to bring them the strong comfort of the Gospel of Divine grace, and to give them in all their misery the message of present peace and an assured future of bliss and glory. In this respect the success has been very marked. Our patients have been wonderfully ready to hail and heed the message of mercy, and the Gospel of Christ has won its way and shed its radiancy into their hearts. Almost all the lepers profess Christ as their Saviour and lead godly and consistent fives. The Word of God is loved and respected by both Moslems and Christians."
Daily worship is conducted at the Home. The Arabic language is very full and rich, and the Arabic Bible uses many terms unknown to the ignorant and untaught Moslems, who are the majority of our patients. The Arab catechist comes on Sundays and Vednesdays to conduct worship in the little chapel of the Home, amI to visit the bedridden in their dormitories. The services in the chapel have been the means of soothing the suffering of the lepers, and of turning their sighs and sorrows into joy and gladness. After the service the lepers are allowed to ask or say anything, and their questions and remarks are sometimes touching and instructive. What hope haye these poor sufferers in this life? Ah! they know that they are the yictims of the most terrible disease incident to humanity, that they are outcasts and have lost everything, that they are dragging on through agony and distress to a weary and inevitable end. But they are fully assured that there can be none too miserable, too degraded, too repulsive for the Master. They will tell you that notwithstanding their terrible disease, they have found their all in Jesus. Some of them even praise God for their misery; they say it has led them to the Fountain open for all sin and uncleanness. "Leprosy is nothing to me," says Hussein, "as long as the Lord is on my side." "Surely," says Smikna, "it is better to be a leper, and have fellowship with Christ, than to be in good health and far away from God."
Three of the best inmates have been called away to their eternal rest during the past year. Their dying testimonies were all to the fulness of joy which they experienced. As one of them, Salieh, was dying, he was asked if there was peace. " Yes," he whispered, "there is peace, there is light, there is joy." Another, a young Greek priest, on whom were dependent for support a widowed mother and her children, said, as his spirit was leaving his wasted body, "Whether we live, we live unto the Lord, and whether we die, we die unto the Lord; whether we live, therefore, or die, we are the Lord's."
There is a Bible woman whose special duty it is to work among the poor lepers outside the asylum, and invite them to share its privileges. Strange to say, neither this invitation nor the Gospel itself has found much acceptance with these outcasts. Beggin~ by the roadside has become a second nature to them, and they cannot give it up, even for daily food or nursing and care. Lepers who are unable to walk any more will be carried out to the roadside on a donkey and lie there displaying their sores to attract the ,pitying gifts of passers-by. In summer they often remain ontof-doors all night with the ground for a bed, a stone for a pillow, and a cloak for a covering. Recently an old man met with a singular accident. He had lain down under a wall to sleep, and put his food on the wall. During the night a dog jumped up to get it and knocked down a large stone on the old man's head. He was terribly injnred, nevertheless he would not consent to be removed to our asylum.
Poor sufferers who are past begging are found in the government house for lepers at Siloam. These accept medicine and food, and permit their visitors to bind up their wounds. They also listen to the tidings of Jesus, the Good Physician. Sometimes those who have been absent begging, come in. Some of these are willing to have their wounds dressed, while others ask for the bandages, etc., saying that they will do it for themselves. But they would probably sell what was given them, and that is certainly not the purpose of those who visit them. Spiritual fruit of this good endeavor has not yet been apparent, but these true friends of the outcast lepers persevere in it, and ask for the support of intercession on their behalf.-Report/or 1892.
THE LEPERS OF JAPAN.
The Committee of the Mission to Lepers has just had an application from two ladies of the Church Missionary Society, at Kumamoto, Japan, asking them to aid in establishing a hospital there for the lepers. The following are a few extracts from the letter of one of these ladies : " I venture to entreat your aid for Japan. It is computed that there are over 200,000 known cases of leprosy. Among respectable people it is regarded as such a disgrace that the person affected is at once shut up in a little room which they never leave until death. Leprosy is more prevalent in this prefecture than in any other in Japan; but the principal garrison doctor here (who has offered his services gratuitously as a consulting physician if we can establish a hospital or aid of any kind) says that from 60 to 70 per cent could be relieved if they bad good medical advice at first. About two and a half miles from this city is a Buddhist temple, to which lepers from all parts of the country come when they have. spent their all, and there they drag out their miserable lives, existing Oil promiscuous charity of the most meagre kind, having no shelter at night, and scarcely any food by day. This island of Kiushiu is semi-tropical, but the winters are severe j a few mornings ago the thermometer registered 28° out-of-doors, and two days ago 26°. The sufferings of these heat-loving creatures must be intense, for in summer we have from 90° to 98° of heat. Very little pity is bestowed upon them, because the Japanese say they-the leperscannot be human beings ; that no human creature could have. such a mysterious and incurable disease-it is not a human ailment, etc. The name for them is Hinin, which means outside of humanity.
"My friend and I wrote home to our society-the Church Missionary Society-offering ourselves as workers among the lepers. Our letter has been very favorably considered, and meets with the heartiest approbation of our bishop here. Our idea is, if possible, to build a hospital by special subscription. Several hundreds would be necessary to build and furnish it. The few Japanese who know of our desire are full of approbation. One of our Christians said to me, ' It will do more for Christianity in Japan than anything that has been done; my people can argue as cleverly as your people about religion, but they know nothing of such love as this. ' The garrison doctor of whom I spoke, said, ' Only Christians would think of such a thing.' He showed us over one of the city hospitals and asked the surgeon-general of the garrison to meet us ; we afterward met others of the doctors j they all offer every encouragement."
RANGOON LEPERS.
Henry Charles Moore (late of Rangoon) writes as follows of the need in Burma: " Forty years of beneficent English rule have changed Rangoon from a collection of bamboo and mat huts, built over a malarial swamp, into a large and wealthy city. Pilgrims, as of yore, flock from all parts of the country, to kneel on the platform of the golden pagoda, and repeat the Pali sentences which they committed to memory while children in the Buddhist schools. They gaze in admiration at the wonders of the famous building-the tall gilded and jewelled spire glittering in the fierce sun with a brilliancy that is perfectly dazzling; the huge images of Gautaina Buddha ; the hideous dragons ; the horrible frescoes, and enormous bells. Truly the place is magnificent in its barbaric splendor; but there is one sight which fills. every visitor, be he pilgrim, tourist, or European exile, with pity. On the steps of the main staircase which leads to the pagoda platform sit, from morning till night, a number of poo( Burmese lepers, who hold up their maimed hands and beg with husky voices from the passers-by. The condition of the lepers there and in other parts of Rangoon is something terrible. Most of them have their faces disfigured by the fearful disease, many are blind, and some that I saw were so muti· lated about the hands and feet that they were compelled to crawl about on their elbows and knees. Unfortunately the number of lepers in Rangoon increases yearly and will continue to do so, for as the railways open up the country, the lepers will quit their native villages, where they are burdens to their friends, and go down to Rangoon to beg at the golden pagoda. The pilgrims as they hurry by respond generously to their affiicted country_ men's appeals; but, nevertheless, leprosy is a subject which a Burman will not readily discuss with anyone, for he dislikes the very mention of it, preferring to forget, if possible, that the fearful disease exists. If by chance he should talk about it, he declares that lepers are being punished for their sins in a previous existence, and that if they lead meritorious lives they will be born again and live free from the terrible taiut. It is quite certain, therefore, that while the Burmese remain Buddhists there is little probability of their ever establishing leper homes j but cannot we at home do something for the poor Rangoon lepers ~ The Mission to Lepers in India would gladly start a home in Rangoon j but their rapidly extending work and the increasing demands made upon them render it impossible for them to do so, unlesR they receive the· necessary funds. If they do open a home, it will do incalculable good, and once started, it wiII receive liberal support from the wealthy merchants, European and Asiatic, who reside in Rangoon. A proof of this has been already received, an English resident hearing of the proposed home having generously offered to give twenty acres of ground as a site for it. This offer, coming from a gentleman who resides in Rangoon, proves unmistakably that the great need which exists for such an institution is recognized in that city, and it will be a great pity if through want of funds no advantage can be taken of it. The home would be conducted on the same lines as the one which the Mission to Lepers in India support in Mandalay. That home was started by Rev. W. R. Winston, of the Wesleyan Missionary Society, who collected funds, and had the place built previous to his departure from the country on furlough. Upon his successor fell the duty of gathering in the first inmates, and this he did by going himself to their haunts and persuading them to enter the home. Now, knowing and thoroughly appreciating its advantages, they come in willingly, and at present there are over fifty inmates. A home at Rangoon would undoubtedly be as successful as the one at Mandalay. "
(Contributions for the above objects may be sent to Wellesley C. Bailey, Secretary and Superintendent of the Mission to Lepers in India, 17 Glengyle Terrace, Edinburgh, who will gladly give any information in his power.)
ANSWERED PRAYERS
ANSWERED PRAYERS.
BY MRS. MARIA J. BULLEN.
Rev. George Dana Boardman, who a year later became the first mission· ary to the Karens, in 1827 established himself among the Burmans of Moulmein, which had just previously come under English control. The Martaban River separated it from the province of Martaban, which was still Burman territory, and the resort of thieves and cnt-throats, from the opportunity it afforded of plying their infamous occupations. Armed companies of twenty or thirty would frequently go over to Moulmein and commit the most daring depredations, and even taking life when resisted, and destroying entire villages when found defenceless and unarmed. They had but to recross the river to be out of reach of the English.
Moulmein had been made the capital of British Burma, and Mr. and Mrs. Boardman were invited to make their home at headquarters, but they declined from a desire to have the freest intercourse with the Burmans. Mr. Boardman therefore built a frail dwelling on a spot which, however lovely, was very lonely, and to Jehovah he committed .himself and family for safe.keeping. In about a month they were visited at night by the dreaded robbers; but the Lord kept watch, and husband, wi£e ahd infant child were held in profound slumber. Not a hair of their head was touched, and no alarm of danger disturbed them, and so the danger passed.
George Dana Boardman, Jr., son of the missionary, at the age of six years was in a native rowboat on his way to the ship which was to bear him to the United States. He was in care of the missionaries Jones and Dcan; but the little company was attacked by brutal pirates bent on securing a box of letters stan.ding in the middle of the boat, which they supposed to contain treasures such as they were seeking. One of the boy's protectors was thrown overboard and the other, not so easily disposed of, received wounds with spear and cutlass. The poor child, hidden from sight behind a-bench, saw Mr. Dean reeling and bleeding on the bottom of the boat. Another blow from a fishing spear with barbed points penetrated the wrist, from which the heavy wooden handle was left hanging! A pale face appeared at the side of the boat, and Jones is dragged in, saved from the waves, but saved for what?
Was it a mother's prayers that made these fierce men stop their attack and by gestures explain their desires ~ The box was gladly given up to them, and the pirates left as suddenly as they came.
Great was the peril of Dr. Jacob Chamberlain, of the Arcot Mission, ,India, in a walled town in Hyderabad. The natives, in a rage at his telling of a different God from theirs, bade him leave at once. He replied that he had a message which he must first give; but they declared that if he should say another word he would be instantly killed. He saw them standing with a'rms filled with paving stones, and heard them say one to another, "You throw the first stone, and I will throw the next j" but he lifted his heart to Him who can subdue man's angry passions, and asked leave to "tell them a story," with the understanding that then, if they pleased, they might stone him.
It was the" old, old story" that he told them, beginning with the birth of Jesus. When he spoke of the cross, and explamed that the agony there suffered was for each one of them, they listened with wonder. Surely God was speaking through the words of the missionary. Their anger ceased j their hearts were touched j they threw down their paving stones. After telling of Jesus Christ's cry, "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken Me~" of His resurrection and ascension to heaven, and of the glorious offer of ialvation for all, Dr. Chamberlain said he was done-now they might stone him. ~~ut he had nothing to fear, for those men, lately so infuriated, were weeping. They gathered around to buy his books, that they might read for themselves of these wonderful things.
Eugenio Kincaid, while descending the Irrawaddy, after an exploring tour in the northern part of Burma, found himself beset with dangers. Civil war prevailed, and bands of banditti were prowling about, robbing, burning villages, taking prisoners, and committing the most appalling deeds of violence. Kincaid, accompanied by four Burman boys who had been under h~s instruction, was in an open boat. At a certain village near the river he was told that his course would take him through a deep ravine where many robbers had their headquarters. He soon s~w a boat of armed men approaching, but the displaying of a musket which he carried, according to the order of the governor, sent the robbers back toward the ehore, and a second boatful was similarly repulsed. Soon, however, the ruffians returned, largely re-enforced j five or six boats came toward him at full speed, their armed occupants looking like fiends and uttering terrible yells. Mr. Kincaid's little crew was in abject terror, and surrender seemed his only course. When his assailants were within hailing distance, he spread out his hands, saying in Burmese, " Come and take all we have." "Sit down! sit down !" was shouted back, and thirty muskets were pointed at him. He answered that" he was a foreigner, and if they harmed him they would suffer for it, for he had been promised protection by the governor." His. words had no effect, and a shower of bullets fell about him. In a few moments these desperate fellows surrounded his boat. He was completely surrounded by steel points, and could not move without feeling the points of their spears. "But," he says, " God was with me. .• In these trying circumstances I lifted up my heart for protection."
Afterward his captors held a council to decide whether they would release him or take his life. At the close of the conference the youngest of the Burman boys came to him and told him the decision, that he was to be beheaded at sundown. As the hour approached the men fell into a dispute, and by their loud, excited talk Mr. Kincaid saw that they were not agreed as to his fate, to which he had resigned himself as the will of God. He took courage, however, and implored protection. The' robbers were on the point of fighting one another in their passion, but quieted down, and all of them, even to a man, departed to make a depredation on a neighboring village, and under the friendly cover of the night their prisoners, though weak and worn, escaped.
During Dr. Eugenio Kincaid's passage down the Irrawaddy he was again captured, and from the very outset treated in a brutal manner. He barely escaped being choked to death. His clothing was torn from him j but when his assailants began to tie his arms as he had seen Burman criminals tied, his brave spirit asserted itself, and he declared he would never be tied j he would resist it till death. The wretches grinned fiendishly, but let his arms remain free. Dragged to a certain spot upon the shore, he was told, if he valued his life, not to step outside a line which they drew around him in the sand. There for six days and nights he was left with no shelter from the hot sun or the night chill. One of his boys divided with him his waist-cloth, and occasionally Burman women passing to and from the river gave him a little food. His boatmen and three of his Burman boys contrived to escape, and the fourth was taken as a servant to a certain chief. Dr. Kincaid's distresses were heightened by the sight of the agonies borne by unoffending Burman women brought from plundered villages. During the sixth day he resolved to attempt an escape to the mountains, although the risk was very great, and discovery would bring instant death. He prevailed on one of the more humane robbers to restore to him his pair of breeches. Night came. His tormentors, after the excitement of the day, slept soundly. Their leader lay but twelve feet from him. Scarcely daring to breathe, Kincaid crept cautiously beyond the guards, and then made his way as fast as his enfeebled state would allow to the entrance of the jungle, and by noon had reached the mountains. He was two hundred miles from Ava. Stiff and weak, often burning with thirst and suffering the pangs of hunger, he was tempted to cease his efforts j but with a prayer to the Lord, he urged himself onward. On the fifth day he came across a man whom he had met before, and induced him to take him in his boat to Ava, where within a few weeks his Burman boys joined him, all feeling that their preservation was almost miraculous.
Bishop Culeridge Patteson was delivered many times from the h!mds of those who sought to take his life before he finally received his martyrcrown. For example, while on a tour, he landed on an island, and inquiring where the chief lived, the natives offered to conduct him thither. From their excited words, some of which he caught, and especially from their expressive gestures, he became convinced that they meant to take his life. He could do nothing in defence. God alone could protect him. Wishing to escape for a little from the burning sun, he entered a small hut. There, on bended knees, he pleaded for his life, adding, " Thy will be done." Knowing that his own soul was safe, he besought the Lord for the souls of these darkened ones. Then, rising, he calmly told the natives that he was ready.
God heard his prayer, granting him such peace and serenity of counte- nance as disarmed his foes. He heard them say, "He does not look like a murderer; he cannot have been a party tt') our brother's death, therefore we will not hurt him." And he received only kindness at their hands.
Nowhere has the offering of human sacrifices and the practice of can- nibalism been carried to such an extent as in Fiji, and consequently the attempt to evangelize its miserable natives was at great risk of life.
In 1839 Messrs. Hunt and Lyth, with their families, stationed them- selves on the island of Somosomo, one of the darkest spots in Fiji. It is hardly conceivable that a refined person could endure the horrid sights and sounds to which they were subjected. They soon passed through a terri- ble experience. During a time of great excitement, when many victims were slaughtered and prepared for their cannibal feasts in near proximity to t.heir abode, they were told that their turn would come. The savages became more and more insulting and defiant, and there seemed to be little reason to hope for escape from this dreadful fate. On a certain night it was felt that the end was near. How helpless they were unless the Al- mighty should interpose !
Mosquito curtains were hung around the room to hide the little band from brutal eyes that might peep through the reed walls, and they gave themselves up to prayer, determined that their enemies should find them on their knees. In continuous audible prayer hour after hour was passed, until wild cries from outside were heard, and " each voice was hushed and each head bowed lower. " But their prayers had been heard. These cries were a call to the savage women to join a dance. God's children again were spared by the interposition of Him who holds the hearts of all men in His hand.
In laboring among the Bechuanas of South Africa, Hobert Moffat at one time had nearly been the victim of their gross superstition. A terri- ble drought had continued so long that many cattle died, and human beings were forced to live on roots and reptiles. A renowned rain-maker was sent for, but his remedies had no effect. Then all, sorcerer and peo- ple alike, charged their troubles upon Moffat and his associate, Hamilton.
They said of these servants of God: "They bowed down their heads and talked to something bad in the ground. The clouds were afraid of their chapel bell, and when they did show themselves the missionaries looked at them and frightened them back."
At last a native council was held, and a chief and twelve of his men were sent to them. He met Moffat with his spear in his right hand, and declared that the missionaries should be tolerated no longer. "They might leave if they would, but if not, they should be put to death." .
Moffat, looking into the eyes of the savage, calmly said, " We are re- solved to abide by our post. . .. You may shed our blood or burn us out. . . . Then shall they who sent us know that we are persecuted in- deed." Mrs. Moffat stood by with her babe in her arms. Moffat threw open his waistcoat, and said, " Now, then, if you will, drive your spears to my heart." The Lord again heard prayer. The chief was confound- ed. He shook his head significantly, and said to his followers, "These men must have ten lives when they are so fearless of death. There must be something in immortality."
How many similar proofs of a Divine interposition might be gathered from the experiences of missionaries! Many and amazing as are the .re- corded answers to prayer, the unwritten history is far more wonderful.
IN'I'EItNA'I'IONAL DEPAR'I'MEN'I'
1I.-INTERNATIONAL DEPARTMENT.
EDITED AND CONDUCTED BY REV. J. T. GRACEY, D.D.
The Status of our Anti-Ohinese Legis- commission to arrange II new treaty. . lation. This the United States did not agree to. The only existing treaty, it would seem, [J. T. G.] then, was that of 1880, shutting out the Chinese till 1890, as no other treaty had We have lived long enough to hear been made. No other was ever made, openly challenged the declaration that hence it would appear that in 1890 we "all men are born free and equal." relapsed to the conditions of the Bur- The Burlingame Treaty with China lingame Treaty. recognizes the "inherent and inalienable rights of man to change his home But further, the treaty of 1880 proand allegiance, and also the mutual ad. vided that the Chinese then resident in vantage of free migration and emigra- the United States should" be allowed tion/of their (the United States and to go and come of their own free will China) citizens and subj ects respecti ve- and accord." In the face of this then ly from one country to the other for the existing treaty Congress passed the purpose of curiosity, of trade, or as per- well-known Scott Bill, excluding all manent residents." Charles Sumner, Chinese who were at that hour tem- William H. Seward, Edward Everett, porarily out of this country, thus wrong- Caleb Cushing, and other great states- fully and cruelly without any warning men of the times accepted, that as the cutting off from their business, propfundamental principle of reciprocity be- erty, or other rights, 20,000 Chinesecititween these two countries. That, too, zens under the treaty. we have seen relegated to the limbo of impracticable politics. In 1892 the infamous Geary Bill was passed, imposing humiliating condi- In 1880 a new treaty was made to the tions on such Chinese as ha.d right of effect that while Americans might come residence after all previous crooked and go ad libitum, no Chinese could legislation. They must after May 5th, eome here for ten years thereafter. 1892, be tagged, ticketed, branded. This treaty was honorably enough se- Fifty thousand, or three times that cured, albeit, as we formulated the number, as the case may be, must com- "eternal fitness" of the first treaty, it ply with what must often prove imposmust have amused the older statesmen sible conditions or be imprisoned and of China to observe that the" inalien- deported. able rights" rule would work both ways only for thirteen years. In 1882 an- It appears that, so far as the internal other restriction bill was passed, shut- regulations of our country go, a law is ting the gates of the country against all of equal authority with a treaty, and Chinese laborers who were unable to whichever bears the later date must be prove a residence in this land dating recognized as controlling; the later prior to the passage of that act. In abrogates the earlier the same as if they 1888 Secretary Bayard and the Chinese were of the same kind. But the law is Minister then at Washington agreed on not unconditional. The Supreme Court another treaty by which the immigra- has decided that the law, in order to tion of Chinese to this country was to abrogate a treaty, must not be arbitrary be prohibited for twenty years there- and unjust. " Arbitrary power, enforcafter. That agreement between the two ing its edicts to the injury of the perministers, the Chinese authorities re- sons and property of its subjects, is not fused to ratify, but instead asked for a law, whether manifested as the decree of a personal monarch or an imperial multitude," is the language of our high. ing with the Chinese, nor even the mis..
est tribunal. The law that substitutes sionary interests involved that concerns a treaty must be within limits set for the usjustatthis moment. It is rather that law-making power; it must not contra- the eternal principles of equity mayob- vene the supreme law of the land; it tain, and specially at an hour when we must be " constitutional." have the nations as our guests. For This is just the quality of our Chinese this let all good men pray.
legislation which is now called in ques- tion. It is said that the" six Chinese companies" have subscribed a large sum The Ohinese Question and International of money to test this-that is, to let this country say for itself what its law is Law.* which they are expected to obey. They say, "Our attention has not been called RY REV. GILBERT REID, CHINAN-FU, CRINA. to. any law which makes it a crime for us to advise our fellow-subjects that The three treatises on international they have a right to disregard a law law by Wheaton, Woolsey, and Sliintwhich is in violation of the constitu- schle have all been translated into Chitions and treaties. " And yet, stl'angely nese for the Chinese Government by a enough, there are people who talk of learned American (Dr. W. A. P. Martin), this action as rebellious because the who is the President of the Imperial Uni- Chinese do not first comply with the- versity in Peking and Professor of Interlaw, the authority of which they wish national Law. The Burlingame Treaty to test. That must look to a Chinese is also especially conspicuous for its laundryman like" flat irony." clear enunciation of the foundation principles of true international rela- But the situation is too grave for tionship. Our modern legislation, at satire. The time for registration of least on the Chinese question, falls far Chinese laborers under the act is May short of what we have taught in other 5th~ Very few have complied with it days. Let us specify a few points. at the time of this writing. The reqoirement that each should be photo- 1. Woolsey, in his "International graphed has been waived by Secretary Law," says, ,. No nation through its Carlisle as necessary before registry. public documents or. by its official per- By request of the State Department, Bons can with right reflect on the instithe Department of Justice will, on May tutions or social characteristics of an- 5th, cause a Chinaman to be arrested other, or make invidious comparison to under the provision of the law and taken its disadvantage, orset forth in any way before the Federal Court. The case will an opinion of its inferiority." This be advanced to the Supreme Court with- principle, it seems to me, has been glarout delay, and a decision is expected ingly violated by this Bill of Chinese before the summer recess. No less a Exclusion and Registration, making cerlawyer than Joseph H. Choate, of New tain uncomplimentary regulations for York, will argue the case for the Chi- certain foreigners, (1) because they are nese Government. The principllilegal Chinese, and (2) because they are labor. ers. That venerable and distinguished statesman of Massachusetts, Senator contention, it is said, will be over the aHernati ve of registry or deportation. • For a fuller presentation of this subject, in The denial of habeas corpus to Chinese its legal, commerCial, national, and missionary bearings, we refer to a pamphlet about to be isattempting to land in this country, and sued by Rev. Gilbert Reid (Warsaw, N. Y.). Mr. the penalty of imprisonment at hard R has been ten years resident in China. He is labor for unlawfully remaining here, the anthor of 8 small volume, "Peeps into will also be challenged. China," which contains fresh and desirable in- formation and sprightly diBcussion concerning It is not 80 much the injury to oor things in that country. Fleming H. Revell Comcommercial interests and national stand- pany, New York, will furni8h It.-J. T. G. Hoar, has said: " These measures not sence of international law and the mak.
only violate our treaty engagement with ing of treaties. Hence it is that China a friendly nation, but they violate the was induced during the Burlingame era principles upon which the American reo of friendliness to begin the policy of public rests, striking not at crime, not sending ministers and consuls to for· even at pauperism, but striking at hu· eign governments, as well as receive man beings because of their race nnd at those from other countries. Hence it laboring men because they 'are labor. was that earlier in its history, but by ers." The Act as passed again and advice of foreigners, China formed a I again refers to " any Chinese person or new office to deal with and consult about persons of Chinese descent," making no foreign affairs. The right of conference distinction between those Chinese who on matters pertaining to more than one are Chinese subjects and those who by country is too axiomatic to meet any de· birth are the subjects of some other fence. And yet in 1888, when the For.
country, as of Great Britain on the eign Office at Peking asked for further island of Hong Kong, or even those discussion of the treaty made that year who by birth are now the citizens of the between the two countries, but not yet United States. That. man is a marked ratified, President Cleveland deemed it man who hilS Chinese blood in his best to refuse that request, but signed veins, no matter to what government he the Act of Congress which placed greater may now be subject. As an English restrictions on the Chinese than even journalist in China bas said: "It is ob. the new treaty under discussion had de..
vious that no European country would fined. It was independent action rather learn with equanimity of the passage of than the conference of two contracting a law singling out its nationals for penal parties. As to the Act of 1892, Wool· legislation. " sey's words may apply: "No State can 2. Sir Robert Fillimore has deduced exclude the properly documented sub- from the principle of equality the right jects of another friendly State, or send of a government to protect its subjects them away after they have been once ad· resident in o~her countries, and it may mitted without definite reasons, which be laid down that a State has cause of must be submitted to the foreign govern- complaint if its subjects in foreign ment concerned."
countries are denied ordinary justice. 5. It is a principle of international The large portion of the Chinese in the law that treaties are a part of the su- United States are still the subjects of preme law of the land, subject only to China, and China, therefore, has a right the provisions of the constitution, and to complain at the partiality of treat. that they are binding on the contracting ment meted out to her people. parties from the day of their date.
3. International comity is another Woolsey. in his "International Law,"
duty of nations. "It embraces," says says : " National contracts are even more Woolsey," not only that kindness which solemn and sacred than private ones, emanates from friendly feeling, but also on account of the great interests in· those tokens of respect which are due volved, of the deliberateness with which between nations on the ground of right. .. the obligations are assumed, of the per- This principle of comity has been in. manence and generality of the obliga- fringed by the insult not only to the tions, and of each nation's calling, Chinese laborers, but the greater inter. under God, to be a teacher of right to national question of insult to the Chi. aU within and without its borders."
nese Government, passing a law against The opinion of a former attorney.gen.
certain subjects of China without regard eral is cited by the State Department as to the national feelings of China. follows: "Not to observe a treaty is to 4. International intercourse by means violate a deliberate and express engage· of international conference is the es· ment, and afford good cause of war. When Congress takes upon itself to dis- things should be notAd if a subsequent regard the provisions of any foreign act of Congress is to prevail over a prior treaty, it of course infringes the same in treaty, and what I here say is also based the exercise of sovereign right, and vol- on the Supreme Court: First, according untarily accepts the causus belli_" Such to another decision of the Supreme is the state, then, in which we find our- Court, if Congress may nullify a treaty selves placed as a nation by Congress, with a foreign power, the nullification in the exercise of its sovereign right, must be express, and not by implication. passing the two bills of 1888 and 1892_ But thus far neither Congress nor the Our treaties with China are broken, and executive has either expressly or impliedthereby one principle at least of inter- 1y abrogated the treaty with China. national law is trampled UpOll_ And hence the treaty is still in force, and not the suhsequent act of Congress. In my younger days of studying in. Secondly, an act of Congress cannot ternational law I learned all this, but pass as law and abrogate a prior treaty, only of late and as a result of studying if it is arbitrary and unjust, as the Suthis Chinese question have I learned of preme Court has also adjudged. 'Thirda modifying principle. Though it makes ly, as according to the Constitution, law rather too complex for an unpro- Article YI., Clause 2, all treaties, as fessional mind, it is still our duty to well as the constitution and laws of the state it as it is. The Supreme Court, United States, are the supreme law of in rendering its decision in 1889 on the the land, so any law which may be Scott Bill of 1888, said: "Although it proved unconstitutional cannot prevail must be conceded that the Act is in over a prior treaty. As the clause encontravention of express stipulationE of joins, the laws must he " in pursuance" the Treaty of 1868 and of the Supple- of the constitution to ,. be the supreme mentary Treaty of 1880, it is not on that law of the land." And this is what the account invalid or to be restricted in its Chinese, under advice of competent atenforcement. By the Constitution, la"s torneys, are wishing to test-viz., made in pursuance thereof and treaties whether the Act of 1892 is constitumade under the authority of the United tional and binding or not. For this States are both declared to be the su- reason the mass of the Chinese in the preme law of the land, and no para. United States are ignoring the regulamount authority is given to one over tions of that act. the other. In either case the last ex· pression of the sovereign will must con- Bnt whatever the outcome, this much trot" So Attorney-General Crittenden, is clear, that it is a lamentable caricain an opinion on certain legislation con- ture on our American civilization that flicting with the Treaty of 1819 with our national government shall even de- Spain, held that" An Act of Congress sire, to pass a law which may break the is as much a supreme law of the land as treaties and the principles of internaa treaty. They are placed on the same tional intercourse. Would it not be betfooting, and no superiority is to be ter, would it not be a sounder and more given to the one over the other. The honorable policy to seek the path of last expression of the law-giving power harmony, either by changing the law or must prevail; and a subsequent act revising the treaty, so that the law shall must prevail and have effect, though be in harmony with the treaty in accord inconsistent with a prior act ; so must with international law, and in pursuan act of Congress have effect, though ance of the constitution? inconsistent with a prior treaty.." What is the bearing of all this on It is not for one like me to argue the missionary work in China? The nummeaning of the law. I merely take it her of American citizens in China are for granted as the right and supreme de- second on the list, those from Great cision. But it seems to me that three Britain being the first- The numher, however, is a small one, being a little ing and estrangement, lind the suspicion over one thousand, both men and worn· of our bad intentions rather than a be· en. Of this number nearly one half are lief that we Americans are all 80 good.
mISSIonaries. Small though the num· Furthermore, there may well be a ber may be, it should not be forgotten ground of shame, to think that it reo that they are all representative men and quired a band of plain Chinese laborers women, delegated to their work by com· and laundrymen to bring our law·mak· petent religious bodies at home. The ers to terms, and that the Chine,se in work they are doing is also a represent. New York should have to raise $30,000 ative work, representing not only the to engage competent attorneys, and five hundred or more who are in China, prove· before the national Supreme but representing the Christian senti· Court that the bill passed by both ment of the people in America. This Houses of Congress and signed by the work thus organized likewise occupied, President is null and void.
as we have mentioned above, places of Suppose, however, that the law will influence, and in some cases strategic be carried into effect next May by or- points of China. Of the twenty.two ders of the Executive, and we shall be capitsls in China, and everyone a very called upon to witness a scene similar centre of influence, half of them are to the expUlsion of the Jews from Rus.
showing to.day the beneficent work of sia or their ancestors from Egypt, or our American missionaries. Already suppose, in a. milder way, the law will obstacles, persecution and riots, all only gradually be applied for the next much as anyone should desire, beset six months, all through the world·wide the work of the American missionaries, Exposition at Chicago, on till the Suo as well as those from other lands, and preme Court shall meet in October- need no additional impetus from the reo what then? We will find ourselves in action in China of our legislation at this position: the United States Con· home. gress can pas!! a bill abrogating a treaty; Whether th'l bill of Chinese Exclusion the Chinese Government will then de· will impair the lives and work of our cide that her treaties with the United missionaries in China, I regard only as States are invalid, and that she, too, a minor matter. The main question is has a right to make la.ws and issue or· one of justice and right. Still the ques. ders contrary to the treaties.
tion of security or peril is interesting Already something of this kind has to those here, as well as slightly so to occurred. According tl! the American our fellow.countrymen in China, I will Treaty of 1880, the same tonnage dues not attempt to prophesy wars, blood. or duties shall be granted to goods car· shed, or martyrdom, but content my. ried by American vessels as by the Chi.
self with plain facts. nese. Well, last autumn the Chinese Let us first suppose that the Chinese began to ship grain to Peking on the laborers, the Six Companies and their China merchants' steamers free of duty.
American attorneys, succeed in carrying under special permits from the Chinese a case to the Supreme Court in the authorities, while duty was still charged United States, and obtain the decision to the grain carried on English steam.
that the bill of May, 1892, is unconsti. ers. By the" favored nation" clause, tutional. This, it seems to me, will be the same favors accrue to England a.s to the probable result, if there can only be America or any other country. Lord the chance to have the case tried. Un. Rosebery, therefore, made a complaint der such circumstances the effect in to Peking on basis of our treaty of 1880.
China. will be nothing da.ngerous or The Chinese Government replied that startling, but none the less there will ex· for the present that treaty was broken ist in ma.nya Chinaman's breast ill·feel· and the right had lapsed. The Oritioisms on the Deoennial Oonfer- A small minority asked the privilege to withdraw the resolution for harmony, ence. lIS it WIIS not unanimously adopted. By We saw it alleged in an India paper a very narrow majority the Conference- some years since, that the India army many members not voting-finally al- was so decimated by disellSe superin- lowed the committee to withdraw it.
duced by vice that it was a serious ques- This action has subjected the Confer- tion whether it could be mobilized to ence to a great deal of grave criticism meet a great emergency. The remedy for lack of moral courage, and even as was sought in a legalized patronage and sympathizing with legalization of vice.
supervision of this vice in military can- By others it is blamed for vacillation, tonments. A great protest of the Chris- and by still others for merely stupidly tian sentiment in India and Great Brit- blundering in procedure. It has been ain resulted in an Act of Parliament asserted that it shows a decadence in dissolving this official connection with ancient missionary enthusiasm under sin. The India authorities have very the domination of "Brahmanized edu.
tardily, if to any important extent, car- cationalists who have ceased to be mis- ried out this decree of the nation. The sionaries." One British editor, who missionaries have in sections where the writes with warmth or does not write at military were quartered protested that aH, says the apology given for the with- great hindrance came to their work by drawal of the resolutions in the light of the presence of this legalization of vice. the Word of God" shrivels into some- All have felt the disgrace of a great thing worse than insignificance."
Christian government sustaining such The criticisms have been so sharp relation to impurity. and so widespread that the missionaries The Government of India carries on have lost no time in making clear their officially the culture of opium for ex- position in relation to the State regula- port, largely to China; and it is claimed tion of impurity. The first meeting of that the revenue from this opium cul- the Calcutta Missionary Conference, the ture is absolutely necessary to balance largest body of missionaries in the world the financial budget of the empire. The meeting regularly at short intervals, India Government has also a license passed a resolution setting forth that system of intoxicants which has many they bad always unanimously con- peculiarly obnoxious features. It fos- demned all State regulation of vice as ters instead of restrains ; forces instead carried on under the now abolished of represses their sale. Contagious Disease Acts, and protest- Itwas anticipated by many. that when ed against any continuance of the sys- the Decennial Conference convened it tem under the Cantonment Act, and re- would express its condemnation of these affirmed their view that the resolution offensive public acts of the Govern- of the British Parliament abolishing it, ment. But the Conference appears to in India ought to be carried out. The have decided not to pass any resolutions two conferences of the American Meth- on any subject Whatever, as it had no odists meeting in Bombay the week pre- power lIS a deliberative body. This vious had declared most positively caused great dissatisfaction, and an- against all three of these vices, and that other adjustment was had that all reso- is quoted as showing the missionary lutions be sent to the business commit- sentiment.
tee, who should present such as com- A great meeting outside the Decen.
mended themselves to their judgment. nial Conference to protest against A very strong resolution was presented opium culture, and traffic is pleaded to against State regulation of vice, which show the real sentiment of the mission- was passed amid loud applause-many aries personally on that subject. It is witnesses say by a vote of " silC to one." shown, too, that a great portion of the agitation against the three forms of vice largest, and in many respects, the fore.
in question has been fostered and led most missionary force of Protestant his.
by missionaries. It is said as an excuse tory.
for non·action by the Conference that It will be more profitable that we de.
the licensed impurity is confined to the vote our attention to their great thoughts military stations, and many missionaries, and ac'tion on the overwhelming oppor· as a consequence, know nothing of it as tunities and responsibilities of the hour an obstruction to their local work; the in India, where there is a condition of practice of opium.smoking is confined things which will not last. It is only within certain areas, too, and its evil is now that the chance of directing Whole not known to many missionary fields. masses and great movements is ours.
These and numerous other statements The lower classes in India will slough and apologies are found filtering through off from Hinduism whether we reach the Anglo.Indian and British press to them or not. They will go to Islam or offset the criticisms. It has even been something else, if not to Christianity.
also said that there was no consistency The upper and educated claflses cannot in the Conference condemning the Gov. remain Brahmans. What will they be ?
ernment while missions continued to reo That is of vital consequence. There is ceive money from the same in support of no reason to believe that the missionary their schools and colleges; the missions force on the field is incapable nor dere.
might better first quit themselves of the lict to duty. They are the best men we charge of being partic,eps criminis. can find. They must be criticised, if We have thus tried to state briefly needs be, but they must l;e trusted. '
lIome of the main features of this case, They deserve our confidence, and will because it is likely to be a subject of honor it. J. T. G.
controversy for SODle while to come, whether and to what extent the Confer- ence shirked its responsibility or mere· The Afro-Mala.gasy Sla.ve TrafBo.
ly blundered for lack of competent lead· BY J. BlIITISH BESIDENT IN MJ.DJ.G.llIC~.
ership under the pressure of its closing hours. There can surely be no neces· Lord Rosebery, at the request of the sity to defend missionaries from suspi. French Government, has issued instruc.
cions of lagging behind the moral sen· tions to the officers of the British navy timent of the age in the matter of social and the British consular agents in this impurity; we will not brook so much as country to in no way concern themselves the suggestion. But the missionaries with exercising a police control over the of India will realize afresh that they dhows of the various nationalities in the have to reckon with a public opinion waters of Madagascar ; in fact, notwith.
among their constituency at home. standing the right of search and seizure That the Conference ought either to of all vessels suspected of slaving in the have stuck to its original decision to waters of this eountry being specifically adopt no resolutions at all-which we stipulated for by Articles 16 and 17 of do not concede to be wise-or having the Anglo-Malagasy Treaty of 1865, his grappled with any form of evil should lordship, according to telegram to hand have gone straight to its mark, will, we here, .. has directed English ships and have no doubt, be the opinion of the the consuls not to search vessels of any Christian world. As it is difficult to flag in Madagascar waters. "
judge of motives and some personal This, in many ways, political as well prejudices at this distance, the proba· as philanthropio, is a very grievoUll bilities are that no more serious damage abandonment of those rights and privi.
will result than grief that an altogether leges the British Government were at regrettable affair marred the harmony pains, in the Anglo.French Convention of so important and noble a body, the of 1890 regarding Zanzibar and Mada· guoar, to reserve to England in their flying flags of different nations, and no entirety; and to avert the censure vessel would be allowed to fly the flag which, I haTe reason to know, is in cer- of any of the great powers without reg- tain qnarterll contemplated being pub- istration and a proper license. They lioly pronounced, at no distant date, on might thank the Government of France England's abandonment of her interest for having conceded what, for some in the suppression of the Afro.Malagasy time, appeared to a certain extent against slave·traffic, the attention of the Gov- their will-the right of search to all other ernment should be called to the spirit nations."
in which the Zanzibar.Madagascar Con- This being the spirit in which Eng- vention was ooncluded. land and France came to an agreement When placing the Anglo.French Con- upon Zanzibar and Madagascar, and this vention before the House of Lords, Lord being the spirit in which both Houses Salisbury stated: "We have taken the of the British Parliament regarded that opportunity on both sides not only to agreement, Lord Rosebery should recon- reserve all rights and privileges which sider his instructions for Her British all subjects of either country (England Majesty's representatives not to take and France) might have in either coun- part in the reduction of the slave traffic try (Zanzibar and Madagascar), but also in Madagascar waters. Under the lax to give the most explicit guarantee to surveillance of France the slave trade missionaries and missions, "nd of free· will assuredly increase with great rapid- dom of religious practice and religious ity, and then attention will be influen- teaching." And Sir J. Fergusson, then tially drawn to the matter, and when it Under-Secretary of State for Foreign is generally known that the increase is Affairs, said during the discussion Mr. due to England having for no purpose S. Smith raised on the convention in abandoned her treaty rights, Lord Rose.
the House of Commons, he thought that bery will be censured for not pursuing all might rejoice with them in what he that "continuity of Great Britain's considered to be the greatest step taken moral policy" which he has recently laid in the last half century toward the ex- such emphasis upon.
tinetion of that accu1"sed traffic (the slave·traffic). Following up the Act of Brussels, a blow had been struck at the The Opium Habit. slave trade in its developments and in its sources. BY BEV. "WILLIAM M. UPCRAFT, SUI-n, CHINA. The statement of Lord Salisbury makes olear that it was not his lord- The opium trade has been called Eng- ship's intention to abandon any British land's sin and China's curse. Both sin right or privilege. And the utterance and eurse it may prove itself to be to of Sir J. Fergusson makes evident that both nations yet, ere their hands are the facility which Anglo.French co- free from it.
operation would give for the extinction The present extent of the curse in of the slave traffic was one of the main China is alarming. but still increasing.
reasons Lord Salisbury had in signing The western province:! produce enough the convention regarding Zanzibar and for home consumption, enormous as Madagascar. Indeed, so strongly did that is, and yet leave a margin for ex· the anti-slavery reasons influence the port to other provinces.
House of Commons that, among other The vice has fastened itself upon all speakers expressing similar approval, classes and all ages. Recently the Mr. S. Buxton said, in the course of the writer was gnest with a responsible same discussion : "It was satisfactory mandarin, and through him was brought to find that careful supervision was into friendly acquaintance with several going to be uudertaken with regard to other officials and students, all of whom smoked the drug. and most of them The Rev. D. C. Gilmore, writing from quite heavily. the Baptist College a.t Rangoon, Burma, The earliest memories of many chilo says: dren, both at home among friends and "The Rnmw for September, 1892, at school, are of opium in its moat sedllc. under the caption' Prayer 1I6rBIU Pray- tive forms. er,' called our attention to the appoint- One of the moat alarming features ment by the Hindus of October 30th as now is the loss of conscience on the sub. a day of special prayer' to the Supreme ject. It is no longer a shame to smoke; Power, that the Hindu religion may be indeed, it is considered a ah·ame not to saved from its present degenerate posi.
smoke when all others are doing so, tion.'
much the same as it used to be consid· " In this connection the REVIEW sug· ered a want of tone in anyone who gested that' It would be a very fitting could not drink his share with the rest thing for the Christian churches of all when drinking was more common in the world . . . to set apart October Westem lands than is now happily the 30th as a day of special prayer for these case. Not to smoke is to be strange. religionists, that God would, in a way In the city of Sui·fu there are said to be they little intend or suspect, hear their over two thousand opium dens, and in cry and answer them.'
the smaller city of Luchow, thirteen "The Burma Bo.ptist Convention as· hundred such places are reported. sembled at Rangoon in October, 1892, To the question, "Do you smoke endorsed this suggestion, and the day opium?" one often gets the reply, .. Who was-to what extent I cannot say-ob- doesn't smok(l1" 0. counter.question tho.t served by the Christians of Burma. It is both reply and comment. was very fervently observed by the Why do they smoke? may be asked Christian students of the Rangoon Bap- o.nd may be answered in 0. sentence-the tist College. It was a beautiful sight to moral deterioration of the people com- see Karen, Burman, and Shan disciples bined with the seductive cho.racter of the (some of whom were themselves converts habit. It begins in play, it ends in grim from heathenism) uniting in prayer on earnest. There is a growing fascina- behalf of the heathen on the other side tion in the way it is taken-this subtle of the !lay of Bengal.
drug. The smoker lies down to it- " But what I particularly want to say bliss in itself to an Oriental. Such a is that one of our heathen young men, position o.ffords an opportunity for the the subject of much prayer, who is now gossip the Oriental lo,es. The opium applying for baptism, says that he was becomes 0. pet to him, he fondles it with led to seek the Lord by the exercises of his fingers, heats it over the tiny lamp, that day of prayer for the Hindus. Our its fumes enwrap him, and finally send prayer for the Hindus of India has been him off to slumber and dreams. answered by the conversion of a Bud.
And who shall measure thll damage dhist in Burma. The hoy ascribes his wrought by this facile agent for suicide change mainly to the long.continued in.
-they can commit suicide and yet die fiuence of Christian schools, but says decently and po.inlessly ! that that day of prayer was the tuming To the lack of adequate medical at· point,"
tendance and accurate medical skill may be traced the large use of opium. Opium THE GAlIOS IN ASILUI.-The Bev.
also is a panacea to a people whose E. G. Phillips writes a note, saying: medical faculty is in the barbarous con· " The state of spiritual life in the na- dition of that of Europe in the dark tive Church in our field is very encour.
ages. The destruction by opium is an aging. The first two of the Garo tribe added plea for the quick evangelization were converted thirty years ago. They of Chiua. begall work among their people, !!oud four years later 40 converts were bap- schools, 240 scholars. The heathen at· tized and a missionary located among tendanta on public worship number them. Since then the growth has been 5790.
steady, until now there. are about 2500 "The Rev. J. W. Mackenzie and wife, communicants, and there have been of the New Hebrides Mission, &fter a probably 4000 baptisms on profession sojourn of several months in New South of personal faith. The work is moving Wales, left in improved health on Feb- on with increasing momentum, and ruary 15th for their work in the illiands.
promises in the near future to bring in They have been for 20 years among the the whole tribe. More than 700 were natives of Ef&te, and have a Christian baptized during the past year. The people around them. Mr. Mackenzie great part of the churches are self.sup- has carried a new school primer and portiJlg in the matter of finances, church hymn.book through the press in Syd.
discipline. and to an encouraging de. ney. There are 80 hymns in the collec- gree in aggressive church work. The tion. He has also reprinted a first cate.
standard of church life is maintained at chism, after the one prepared by the a higher point than in many parts of Rev. John Geddie. There is a cate· Christian lands. chism on geography also in the volume.
.. The Garos are demon.wcrshippers- "The Rev. Joseph Annand, M.A., and one of the many animistic races in wife have been in Tasmania for their Northeast India. Their universal and health before returning to the New constant practice of animal sacrifice Hebrides."
makes them, I believe, specially sus.
ceptible to the teaching of the Atone- Our editorial correspondent, Rev. Al. ment." bert L. Long, D.D., of Robert College, has received from Prince Ferdinand of NEW GUINEA..-Rev. Dr. Steel writes Bulgaria the cross of Commander in the from Sydney: Bulgarian National Order of Civil Merit. An exchange says: " The Rev. James Chalmers has got a steam launch for the Fly River Mission. " It is a much·coveted mark of distinc. It haa cost £1220, raised in Australia. tion. This is the second Bulgarian The Rev. W. G. Lawes, of the London decoration he has received. In both Missionary Society, is soon to return to cases they were conferred without no· New Guinea with the printed New Tes· tice. The first waa from Prince Alexan. tament .in the Motu language. There der, the cross of a commander in the are now 5 European stations of this so· Order of Saint Alexander, an order in. ciety under 6 missionaries. There are stituted by him as a mark of apprecia- tion of special services rendered the national cause. The second is the new order instituted by Prince Ferdinand."
80 other stations. The native teachers from Christian Islands of Polynesia are The Free Churoh of Scotland Monthly 50, and no less than 30 native Christians says: "Dr. Pierson haa been delivering of New Guinea are now teachers. There to large audiences in Edinburgh and are 500 church.members-baptized on Glasgow the Duff Missionary Lectures. profession of faith in Christ. There are The subjects chosen were those with 3000 in attendance at the various which the lecturer had already a special schools. Besides the New Testament acquaintance, and his handling of them printed in the Motu language, gospels was eloquent in a high degree. They or portions of Scripture have been print. will read well, and his book when it is published will certainly prove to be the most popular of the series. ", ed in five other dialects.
"The Wesleyan Mission in New Unoccupied mission territory: to the Guinea has 4 ordained missionaries, 1 extent of 4,000,000 square miles still ex· lay missionary 2 lady missionaries, 26 ists in Central Africll-an area larger teachers, and 1 local preacher. There life ~ Cbllrches, 44 cqmmqnicants, 8 than the whole of Europe. So says Rev. George Grenfell, of the Baptist Congo Mislljon,
DEPARTMENT OF CHRISTIAN El!IDKAVOl. 453
III.-DEPARTMENT OF CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR.
CONDUCTED BY PBOFES80R AKOS R. wmJ.B.
The "First Young People's Memorial ahout six weeks. The course is to be Churoh," whioh Lutheran young peo- obtained, free, and without collections ple are endeavoring to build at San at the meetings, on condition that all Diego, Cal., has obtained from them churches with Christian Endeavor soci- nearly half of the $5000 desired. Only eties in the town petition for the oourse ; 166 Lutheran young people's sooieties, that local missionary societies co-oper- however, have yet oontributed, and 140 ate ; that the Sunday when the address of these are Chril!tian Endeavor soci- is given be made a misaionary field. day, eties. As there are about four hundred pastors preaching missionary sermons Christian Endeavor sooieties in the in the morning, miBBionary workers General Synod branoh of the Lutheran holding a conference and prsyer semee Churoh, it would seem that the SU0088S in the afternoon, and 8 union m……. of the undertaking is essily assured. meeting being held to listen to the ad- The Presbyterian Board of Foreign dress in the evening; that full preBB Missions sends out a ~onthly state- notices be given before and after; and ment. For Maroh this statement that travelling expenses and entertain- showed oontributions from Presbyterian ment be furnished the speakers. This Christian Endeavor societies to the seems to be one of the most praotical amount of $3582.67. For Maroh, 1892, and valuable of the many devioes fOr the Bum received from the BaID.e souroe the popularization of missionary.intelwas $1639.22. This is a gain of $2043.- ligenoe that the Christian Endeavor 45, or 132 per oent! From May 1st, movement has brought into use. 1891, to Maroh 31st, 1892, Christian Dr. Clark fell in with forty Christian Endeavor oontributions to this board Endeavor ~ooieties in India, only about were$6628.25; during the same months ten of which had ever been-reported to of 1892-93 they were $12,710.06 ; a gain the Boston seoretary. This is certainly of $6081.81, or 91 per oent. The board indicative of a general condition of made gains in receipts from Sunday- affairs, and there are undoubtedly schools, legacies, ohurches, and wom- many more Endeavor societies in the en's boards, bnt no gain was anything world than ever appear in the annual like the gain shown by these figures. report of Secretary Baer.
The nlinois State Christian Endeavor The Methodist Christian Endeavor Union, through the efforts of that ar· Society at Allahabad, India, is quite dent missionary worker, Mr. S. L. Mer- suooessful in enlisting in its ranks the shon, of Evanston, has set on foot a British redcoats. Of course this soldier plan which will be adopted, we hope, element is a fluctuating quantity, 8JI the by every Christian Endeavor union in troops are moved he.re and there, but it the world. It is a" missionary exten. is a noble work that this society is thus sion course," and has been prepared in doing. Every aotive member in this connection with the various denomina- sooiety may be depended upon to offer tional boards. Eight or nine promi- public prayer. nent and entertaining speakers have The Christian Endeavor society in been secured. Mr. Torrey is among Bombay, India, is so large that it is dithem. Their subjects will all be mis- vided into four divisions, each of which sionary. Twenty·five places will be is really a separate sooiety. carefully chosen as strategetioal points The Christian Endeavor society of throughout the State, and these leo- the Blockley Baptist Church of Phil,,- tures will be given there at intervals of delphia has established what is called a "propagation committee," which is The president of the New South Wales planning to hold evangelistic services Union writes as follows about the prog.
Sunday afternoons during the sum- ress of the Christian Endeavor move- mer. ment in Australia: "There has been The pastOr of the Christian Church steady progress-more especially among of Lawrence, Ran., was absent for a the Wesleyan denomination-from a month leading a missionary revival in dozen to twenty new .societies being re- another town. During this month his ported each month. The spirit of en- pulpit was occupied Sunday evenings thusiasm is ever on the increase, and by young men from his Endeavor so- devotion to ollr movement becomes ac· ciety, and their ministrations met with centuated every day."
much suooess. Here is an idea.that many a Christian The extensive arrangements for the Endeavor society might carry out for International Christian Endeavor Con- the benefit of some missionary worker vention, to be held in Montreal, July and the cause in general. Rev. E. P.
5th-8th, are well under way. Among Holten, of the Madura Mission in the speakers already secured are Dr. southern India, has a camera, which Cuyler, Dr. Chapman, the Canadian was given him by an Endeavor society Minister of Finance, Dr. Henson, Dr. in Hanover, Mass. This camera he Hoyt, Dr. Burrell, Bishop Arnett, Hon. uses in making pictures of natives and W. C. P. Breckinridge, and many an· of Indian scenery, which he sends back other famous Christian preacher and to the home churches to arouse interest scholar. Two great meetings will be in missions.
held simultaneously, in a hall that will . The Endeavor society in the girls'
seat nine thousand and a great tent boarding school of Madura petitioned that will seat eight thousand. their teacher to allow them to go with.
An excellent Christian Endeavor so- out cocoanut meat in their curry, in or· ciety exists in the Methodist Church in der that they might have something to the historic city of Lucknow. India. give to missions. When it is remem- Two strong Christian Endeavor soci- bered that the girls live on rice and eties are also found in the great Dhur- curry, and that cocoanut is the most amtallah Street Methodist Church of delicious and highly prized ingredient Caloutta. of their curry, the extent of their self- Christian Endeavorers everywhere denial can be understood.
have met a severe loss in the death of a The weekly reports of the workers noble and beautiful man, Rev. A. C. and committes of the Endeavor society Hathaway. Mr. Hathaway was the of Madanapalle, India, are very inter.
ohief promoter of the Christian En- esting. At a recent meeting that Dr.
deavor movement among the Friends, Clark attended, John Yesuratnam re- and was the president of the Friends' ported that, with four others, he had Christian Endeavor Union. preached the Gospel, within two weeks, A Christian Endeavor society has to six huudred people in seventy differ· been formed in the American Church ent villages. Lazarus Marian had start- of Paris, France, whose pastor is Rev. ed a Sunday-school with one hundred Edward G. Thurber, D.D. and twenty members. J. P. Timothy Here is one good result of the Chris- and others had preached the Gospel on tian Endeavor self·denial week of this the railway trains, going from one com- year. The president of a certain Dli- partment to another, as the trains nois society was a confirmed user of stopped at different stations. The cars tobacco. For that week, as hili self- on the Indian railways are built on the denial, he neither smoked nor chewed English compartment plan, and the the weed, and as a result has deter. Hindoos ride. for the most part, in the mined never again to touch it. third·class cars, which are usually crowded. Twenty.five workers from 'Glad are we to Bee you, the society, on the previous Sunday Glad are we to sea you, evening, with a magic lantern, musical Glad are we to see you, instruments, singing, etc., had proclaimed the Gospel to three hundred Glad are we.' people in Madanapalle. The total for the week showed that eleven hundred In front of them was another whitepeople had been reached by about forty robed procession from the girls' school ; members of the society. and they, too, took up the strain- Rev. W. I. Chamberlain, of the Arcot 'Glad are we to see you, (Dutch Reformed) Mission in India, Glad are we to see you,' etc. told Dr. Clark that on one occasion, being asked to show his magic-lantern Thus all the way to the bungalow pictures, he threw them on the white marched these singing youths and wall of a new Hindoo temple which was maidens. Was ever a welcome more being dedicated. So interested were cordial or more unique? Our full the auditors that the dedication services hearts responded, though we conld not were deserted, the· interior of the tem. sing it so well as they, ' Glad ar& we to pIe was emptied, and the priests them- lIee you, dear Endeavorers of Madana. selves, with a throng of hundreds of palle.' For this was the famous sooiety Hindoos, stood for an hour, with won- of the Arcot Mission, a pioneer of Chrisder and interest, while he explained tian Endeavor in India." the story of the crOBS. Perhaps many missionaries in India and other lands, At the decennial missionary confer. if provided with so attractive a sermon ence held in Bombay, India, last De. adjunct, could be as much helped there- cember, the Christian Endeavor Society by. Here is a hint to our societies at received many Warm commendations home. from the speakers, who had tried it, and found it admirably adapted to the Here is Dr. Clark's account of the needs of the young converts. way the native Christian Endeavorers of Madanapalle; India, received him, In four denominations Christian Enas his party approached the mission deavorers are now engaged in raising about nine o'clock in the evening: money to build "Christian Endeavor "When we were within a quarter of a mission churches" under the direction mile of the gate three white figures sud· of their denominational boards. The denly started up from the roadside, fifth denomination to set its Christian peered eagerly into the carriage, and Endeavorers to doing this work is the then started off at a 2.40 pace for the Congregation·al. They wish to raise, mission compound. A little further, from the Congregational Christian En. three other little ghosts suddenly ap- deavor societies of the country, $7000 peared, gazed into the carriage, and for the Philips Church, in Salt Lake were off like the wind. ' They are City. This was the first church (now looking to see whether we have all existing) founded by the New West come,' says our missionary friend, 'so Education Commission. as to give the signal.' Another two minutes, and we hear the mission bell Here is the Sunday programme of one ring out, and when the bullocks turn Christian Endeavor society in France: in at the gate of the mission compound, Church in the morning ; an afternoon a few minutes later, two score of white- service; Sunday-school; Chrstian robed figures, Telugu boys from the Endeavor meeting; then in the even. school. are arranged on each side, sing- ing half of the society holds a service ing melodiously, in good English and in the McAIl Mission braneh, while the with all their hearts and lungs- other half, under the leadership of a young lady, a converted Catholic, con_ ducts the evening service in the church.
The Christian Endeavor society in Monastir, Macedonia, gave its seU-de- nial week collection tQ a struggling church in Bulgaria.
EDITORUL DEPARTMENT
IV.-EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT.
The following letter is one out of many whom the Lord has blessed both many which cause the editors no little perplexity. From the outset we have with the means and with the heart to been seeking to furnish the REVIEW at a give who will gladly joi,n in this goOd nominal rate, or entirely free, to all stu- work. A. T. P. dent volunteers for mission fields who were unable to payfor it, and for a time Death of Dr. Mitohell. our friends have helped us by donations given for this special purpose. For The death of Dr. Arthur Mitchell, t!le every dollar sent us we have, at one.half able and honored Secretary of the Presprice, sent the REVIEW to such students. byterian Board of Foreign Missions, The demand, however, has been so great which occurred in Saratoga, N. Y., on and the fund for this purpose so ex- April 24th, is felt as a great personal bausted that we can no longer cope with loss to the editors of the REVIEW. In the claims of these young men. One of Dr. Mitchell the cause of missions 108.,s the editors has paid for a large number a warm friend and able advocate. The of the REVIEWS thus sent to students. news of his death will be the occasion But unless some benevolent friends of great sorrow. shall give help, this important part of the missionary sernce of the REVIEW Ths Finding of Bishop Hannington's cannot be maintained. And it is our Remains. persuasion that the fact needs only to be known that such applications from Important letters were received from students far outrun all the means at our disposal to elicit both sympathy and Bishop Tucker up to December 18th aid. Any contributions, large or small, sent for this purpose to the editors or last. The most interesting part of them publillhers will be acknowledged on the cover of the REVIEW. refers to the discovery of Bishop Han.
The letter referred to reads as fol- nington's remains: lows: Mumiya's, December 9th,1892.-To. .. DEAR DB. PmBsoN : There are 110 day we came on to a still larger and more populous town, Mumiya's. Our student volunteers who are scattered arrival was expected, and so there were great crowds of people with heavy bur· over the English and Scotch universi- dens of food standing ready to greet ns. I went at once to Bee the chief Mumiya ties, and who are willing to take the -a young man of great intelligence. After talking some time with him, it MISSIONARY REVIEW OF THE WORLD at struck me that he must know something about Bishop Hannington. Accordingfour shillings (one dollar) and postage ly, I introduced the subject. He knew in a moment to whom I referred, and extra. The names were sent to Messrs. spoke of his· having lost a thumb. He told me that he begged the bishop not Funk & Wagnalls, but they reply that to go through Busoga, but that he said it would be all right, and he would the fund for this purpose is entirely ex- reach Uganda safely. I asked if he knew where the bishop'S remains were hausted, and the REVIEW' cannot be fur- buried. He told me in reply that he knew nothing about it; that Mr. Jack. nished at that price without positive son had brought them, but that they had been carried on to the coast. Of loss to tbe publishers. May I ask your course I knew that this was not so, and being convinced .that I was somewhere ~dvice? near the spot, I pressed my question further, but without avail. While.I was [Signed] "L. B." talking to the chief. a young man came np who had been with the bishop on his The editor replied, assuming ihe re- fatal journey through Busoga. This sponsibility for whatever is lacking in man said the chief was with him when the price, that these 110 young men might have the REVIEW. But, as already intimated, he feels confident there are he was killed. I then entered into con- was at s considerable angle. The lid also had been broken. The people had versation with him, and tried to get evidently suspected that something had been buried under the 1l00rof the house, some information out of him. with refer- and my idea is that, believing it to be ence to the place of burial. The re- ivory, they had made an attempt to get mains, Mr. Jackson told me, had been at it. There was no doubt whatever as to identification. We sent for a ooverplaced by himself in an iron box. The ing from the camp, in which the box containing the remains was wrapped. young man told me very much the same Dr. Baxter and I then quietly and rev- erently carried it between us. We took 8S the ohief. Now comes the strange it to my tent, and there left it for a time, closing up the tent so as to stop.my part of the story. I had bidden the idle ouriosity. Mr. Fisher kindly gave me a long tin.lined box, as it was quite chief good-by and had nearly reaohed impossible to remove the remains in the old one. Dr. Baxter assisted me in the oamp when this young man of whom the solemn duty, and then. with a lin. ing of some sweetly scented grass that I have spoken came up to me very quiet- reminded us of the dear home land, we two alone in my tent laid all that WilS ly, and wh·ispered that he knew where left of the dear bishop in the new case.
the remains were-that they were actu. Sunday, December 11th. -We had a very solemn service of oommunion this mornally in Mumiya's village, having been ing, and in prayer for the Church mili- tant specially thanked and praised God buried by Mr. Jackson under a lloor of for His servant, Bishop Hannington, whose earthly remains were with us in a house. He declined, however, to show camp. All in the party were deeply touched, and, I feel sure, have been me the house himself, but said, "There drawn nearer to God by the affecting events of the last day or two. I hope is a man here who was with Mr. Jack- to carry the bishop's remains to Mengo, and with the Churoh's service to bury son, and he will show you the place." them there-the fittest place, it seems to me, for them to await the resurrec- On reaching my tent, I sent for this man tion morning.
at once, and he told me quite freely that Our sympathies are extended to the he knew the spot, and would take me to American Baptist Missionary Union in it. I set off immediately with him, in its losses by the late fire which oon- company of Dr. Baxter, and he took sumed Tremont Temple. We under- us without hesitation to the place. stand that the Missionary Union's .. Here " said he "abisouttheeigshptoe~tn" point- Museum, collected through forty years, ing to'; little bush inches was totally destroyed. That is an irrep. high. I looked around and could see arable loss. Another museum may be traces of the house, which had fallen oolleoted, but there were articles in that, into ruins, and had been taken away. such as Felix Carey's First Burmese It was a solemn moment to us, standing Grammar, a perfect copy. Although as we were by the grave of Hanning- the permanent records were preserved ton, murdered seven years ago. There by the fire-proof vault, yet the loss of is no doubt that in a very little while all the temporarily exposed correspondall trace of the actual spot would have imoe and doouments is more than an been lost, as the people had begun to inconvenience. The offices are at 2 A cultivate the ground about it. As you Beacon Street. Boston.-J. T. G. know, this was not the place of the Pocussing Our Missions, bishop's death, for he fell in Busoga, A suggestiou has been made by Mr. seventy or eighty miles away. The most Hunter, of Liverpool, for awakening appropriate spot for the resting.place of greater interest in the foreign mission the remains seems to be either in Buso- ga, where he died, or in Uganda, which he longed and tried so bravely to reach.
I think the difficulty of laying them in BUioga will be very great. Even if they were buried there, it would be scarcely possible to raise any permanent monu- ment to mark the spot. After consider- ing the whole matter most carefully, I think the proper resting-place will be in Ugimda. At 6.30 this morning, with six men, I commenced the search. The men dug very industriously for an hour and a half, but the deeper they dog the harder the ground seemed to get. We then de- termined to try a few feet further away.
Soon it became quite clear that there had recently been a disturbance of the earth, and we became very hopeful. In half an hour more our efforts were suc- eessful. and the top of the box was dis- covered. But it had evidently been disturbed since it was plaoed there hy Mr. Jackson. Instead. of lying list, it field, and one which, if not original, Mission Board sees fit to do this, in has at least the merit of going into de· order to aid the movement, and, I hope, tails. Recognizing the fact that the gen. give an impulse to others, I propose to erality of people think in the concrete bear the cost of the salary of an addi- tional evangelistic missionary. While rathet: than in the abstract, it is pointed I do not bind myself formally, it is my out that there is very little to take hold intention, if the Board accepts my offer, to continue this contribution yearly of them in the vague expression, "our during my lifetime.
missions in China." It would be other- I also venture to suggest whether the wise, however, if they were personally Board should not either directly, or through the Synod, make an appeal to acquainted in some fashion with one or' our congregations and to our wealthier other of the missionaries out there. As members to become responsible for the we have about fifty missionaries and salaries of missionaries in any of our about three hundred churches here, the fields they choose to select, so that the number of our staff may be greatly inproposal is that each missionary should creased. be allocated to the care of a group of six I am, yours very truly, churches. By a diary and correspond- DUNCAN MoLAREN.
ence from time to time he could keep the home churches posted up in his Rev. Dr. Townsend, of Birmingham, work, and they, on the other hand, would England, in his article on .. Comity and be more likely to take a personal interest Co-operati~n in Missions," in the May in the man and his labors than they do number of the REVIEW, says that" one now. crying want of our mission enterprise ill an organ somewhat resembling the MIS- The suggestion is one which has long SIONARY REVIEW OF THE WORLD, issued been in practical operation in Scotland, in New York, or on the plan of the Rewhere Church or Sunday-schools have view of Reviews, which shall be pan-mis. taken some little dusky child for their sionary in its scope, catholic in its protege – even at times to the nam- spirit, wherein news of all missions can ing of it. A scheme of this kind can al- be reported, plans of extension disways rely on finding a good basis in cussed, candid criticism indulged in, human nature; let us imbibe or stand and fresh enthusiasm kindled in the for what principle we may, the personal heart of the Church. It should become element will always command the great- the most popular magazine of the day ; est interest.
An Exa.mple to be Followed. certainly none would be able to com- pete with it for freshness, romance, or We publish a letter from one who has inspiring power." himself visited many of the mission fields of the East, and knows from ex· Just what our brother here recomperience that foreign missions are not mends the editors have sought to ac- "a failure." We earnestly wish that complish in the REvrEW. We design it his noble example might be far more to be pan-missionary in scope, catholic widely followed. in spirit, and a magazine wherein news of all missions may be reported, plans ST. OSWALD'S, EDINBUllGH, February 27, 1893. of extension discussed, and problems considered. Dr. Townsend could not Secretary of U. P. Mission Board: DEAB MB. BUCHANAN: .The cheering have better outlined our plan from the tidings received from Manchuria as to beginning, and all we need is hearty cothe large number of persons who have applied for baptism, showing the mar· _operation to make this magazine supply vellous progress of the Gospel in that the very place which this programme land;must convince all that the number proposes. We shall welcome any con- of converts is limited only by the num- triblltions under any of'the departments ber of missionaries in the field. It seems to me, therefore, the hounden he mentions, and any requests or sugduty of our Church to increase the staff gestions we will give attention to as far of our agents year by year, and if the ali lieil ill. our power. A. T. P. The Afrioa·Malagasy Slave Traffic. motion of alarm. .' The Malagasy Church," he says, .. has passed through L. M. S. COLLEGE, ANTANANARIVO, two seasons of great trial; out of both of these it has come both stronger and MADAGASCAR, January 17, 189a. better. I do not desire further troubles for it-very far from this; but if they To the J!)Jitor of THE MISSIONARY REVIEW: come again I do not fear them; if only the Malagasy Christians remain firm in SIB : May I, as II. Madagascar mission. their faith in Christ, then all will be well. I believe, not as part of a lifeless aaryl~tctaelrl*thoef attention of your readers to creed. but as the expression of a living a British resident in this truth in the words: ' Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the country, which appears in yo~r pres.ent Lord of Hosts.''' Mr. Clarke writes like one who knows his God and knowllHim oisfsuthe~ referring to the certam reVival too well to fear diplomatic intrigue or slave trade from Africa into this the menacing power of the oppressor. Faith's stillness, or, as some may call island if the extraordinary instructions it, weakness, is greater strength than the might of kings, or, as we should of Lord Rosebery on this subject are al. here say, repUblics.
lowed to go unchallenged by I'arliament "An AmeDican missionary, writing from Arcot, in India, says that the and the country. Church has two missionaries, of which it takes little account namely, the bicy· Is it really the fact that a Liberal Gov. cle and the magic lantern. The former, 'over the admirable roads so largely ernment is going, not only to give up found in India, makes short tonrs, and even long ones, rapid and easy, and is all British interests in this island to the much used by the younger missionaries. Of the other agency, large use is made tender mercies of a French protectorate, in many places.' " -Pree Church Monthly.
but also to abandon the long.continued The Church of England London Mis. sion is now under an eclipse, being at honor England has had of protecting present without a single representative. The" Appeal for Men," issued in April the Rlave? last, has not met with a response. Since then Dr. Battersby has been I am, yours faithfully, obliged to relinquish the work for the third time and has no hope of being JA)'IES SIBBEE, able to return; and Mr. Eric Lewis, amid general regret, has felt obliged to Missionary of the L. M. 8. sever his connection with the society.- British Notes. The Church Intelligencer for February contains several interesting items from BY REV. JAMES DOUGLAS. Archdeacon Wolfo's journal. Tho ex· tracts relate to visits made in connection 'From copies of the Madagascar News with the Fuh-Kien Mission. The follow. which have come to hand. we find ing case of conversion, one of many cit· that the missionaries are being raked ed, we give iIi condensed form. A shop. by two fires. Mr. Henry E. Clarke, missionary in Antananarivo, in a let. ter thml de~cribes the case: "The Par. is papers blame us for not being neu· tral. The Madagascar News, on the other hand, has for months been writ· ing at us for being neutral and for reo fusing to leave our neutrality. Poormis· sionaries I How hard to please every. body-nay, we please neither side I"
In reply the Madagascar News says, in effect: " What the missionaries now feel we foresaw and forewarned them of. We knew that their Christian·like resig. nation to what the future has in store will not save the Protestant Church of Madagascar if France enforces her pre. tensions on the Malagasy."
A strong case may apparently be made out for both sides of this question. Faith's power is often more seen in quiescence than in agitation or in what may even look like heroic measures. Mr. Clarke evidently believes in the repose of faith and in stilling the storm by believingly stifling the first • Page 449. keeper of the age of fifty who had made As noted in the columns of the Daily some money and retired was robbed Telegraph, reports have reached London one night of nearly all that he had. It from Mr. Hill, the archbishop'S com- was then, in the providence of God, he missary to the Niger missions, and heard for the first time of the riches 'bishop.designate of that district in suc- that never fail, and he was led by God's cession to Dr. Samuel Crowther, stating infinite mercy and grace to fix his heart that the native Church demands a sec- on these treasures, and at once became ond negro bishop, but will compromise a regular attendant at the church. upon a division of the see with one Eu- Wondering at the fact, now to him ropean and one African prelate. The strange, that he had not heard of these archbishop'S decision is not yet given, things hefore, seeing that Christian and the equally vexing problem con- teachers had been at work in those cerning the bishoprics of Maritzburg parts for many years, he began to go and Natal is still unsolved.
ahout among his neighbors and seek out the ears that were willing to hear the Mr. Eugene Stock, in the Church Mis- precious news of the unsearchable. sianary Gleaner for February, in a paper riches. As a result, several families, entitled" A Month in New Zealand,"
both inside and outside the city, have gives the following summary concerning been won over and are now in attend· the natives of that island: .. Less than ance on the means of grace, their faces forty thousand Maoris remain in New set Zionward. Zealana. Of these the great majority are quiet, professing Christians. About Archdeacon Wolfe, commenting on half belong to the Church of England, St. James's description of the little memo and about llalf the rest are Wesleyans ber, says: "No one who has not lived or Roman Catholics. The remaining in a heathen, country and mixed freely fourth represent the semi-heathen sec- with heatht"n and understanding what tion that either fell away or had never this tongue utters, can have any concep. been brought in."
tion of the vile, filthy, and atrociously abominable language which this little, The Rev. T. Harding, a Church of vile member can give expression to, es- England missionary, has supplied a pecially when brought into play by most interesting account of a preaching heathen women; and it is one of the tour in the Yoruba country, Western surest signs of conversion when the Africa, a stronghold of th'e most degrad- tongue has been' tamed' and its vile ed heathenism. He has evidently taken habits cleansed and purified. It is up the work of missiolllzing these peo- often the case," he observes, "that ples with. both hands and an ellrnest Christians suffer great losses because heart, and has done something, as it they cannot give license to the tongue; seems to us, considerable in breaking and the heathen knowing this, take ad- up the fallow ground. He has utilized vantage of it to harass and defraud them the magic lantern with great effect and of their property." A case is instanced taught gospel truth by eye and ear to of a man who justified his heathenism large multitudes. He says, "Without on this ground. All the members of exaggeration, I have taught thousands the family were Christians but himself ; of people to pray, •Jesus, Son of God but he frankly told the missionary it and Saviour of the world, save me ; for- would never do for no one in the family give me my sins, and show me TI1y to be able to swear and use bad Ian. way.' Who can tell how many of these guage; and aF! Christians could not do will find entrance into the eternal home? this vile business, he remained a hea- Jesus knows, and we can often com- then in self·defence and to protect the mend them to Him in prayer, and His general interests of the household. Holy Spirit can teach them… The Rev. C. W. A. Clarke, M.A., small, I beliQve there is not such a sad principal of the Robert Noble College, sight throughout the eighteen provinces Masnlipatam, contends that the educa. of China as that of which I write.
tional missions of India are fully justi. Here are Whole tribes, whole peoples, fied by the results. Giant trees have without even a chance of knowing about been cut down, the names of some of the Saviour's love. "
the largest heing Caste, Idolatry, Lying, Lust. "From the Noble College," he says, A mail from Uganda was received on "God has brought out men who have December 23d bringing news up to Sepdone great things for Him. One convert tember 26th. The eagerness of the was a district missionary in charge of the Waganda to purchase Scripture portions Masulipatam district; another an evan· was marked. So tremendous was the gelist to the Telugu people, mighty in crush to obtain copies that Mr. Basker. deed and in word; some have taught in ville was obliged to barricade his house our college and our high school in the and sell from the window. In ten min. Telugu country; some are preaohers, utes all the copies of St. Matthew's gos· some laymen, influential and highly re· pel were sold. Mr. Baskerville says, spected by their non·Christian brethren, "We could sell fifty loads, when we striving to bring home the power of only have three to sell." Christ to those who know Him not, by their life and conversation in that sta- tion in life to which God has oalled Miss Holme gives a graphic account them. In everyone of these cases the in Ohina's Millions of the assault on the convert has had to pass through the fiery home of Mr. and Mrs. Huntley, she furnace of persecution and atRiction be· being at the time their guest. Her tesfore he could openly serve Christ or be· timony is eminently God-honoring. .. I come a witness for Him before his caste praise God for giving me the honor of brethren." Mr. Clarke is satisfied with suffering for righteousness' sake. I the theory and the principles and is shall never fear what man can do unto also enamored with the machinery. me ; nor the evil day ; for I know grace " The one thing we, like all other work. will be given, as it has been in this ers for Christ, really do want is more of case. I know the Lord is a very present the power of the Holy Spirit to give life help in time of trouble. Oh, how much and effect to our efforts." I would like to tell you how the Lord showed His goodness! I do praise Him An appeal is made by Mr. John A. for allowing me to prove His sustain. Anderson, in G'hina's Millions, in behalf ing grace."
of the unevangelized aboriginal tribes.
Three are mentioned-the Ming kia, the The tidings to hand in China's Nul- Mo'soh, and the Lo·los. In the Ta·Ii ions from Rih-chan, Shansi, and Hiao·I, valley there are three hundred Ming-kia Shansi, are of more than ordinary in- villages, numbering many tens of thou. terest. 'Many conversions and baptisms sands of souls. Mr. Anderson says, are recorded; and also one or two in· .. So far as I know, nothing has been stances of much heroism under suffer.
done to give them the Gospel in their ing. Mr. Lutley tells of a convert own tongue. They are very aocessible. named Roh who, because he would not Both men and women come freely to pray to the idols, was accused of being me for medicine, although often unable the cause of a drought then prevailing.
to talk Chinese…. Although my " They first beat and kicked him, and knowledge of the oomparative needs of then tied his hands together, and carried other provinces is necessarily very him to a village three Ii distant, where he became insensible, and they had to mation, as to what has been actually acdrench him with water to relltore him; complished, than they can get either but it was not until evening that, bruised from missionaries or from their wouldand stiff, they let him go free. They be critics. So the English Baptist Misalso made him pay a thousand cash to sionary Society sent out two clergymen give a feast to the men who had beaten to visit the Baptist stations in North and carried him. It was good," con· China. Mr. Morris records his imprestinues Mr. Lutley, "to hear the poor sions of what he saw and heard, vividly I fellow relating how, when they were and clearly, showing himself to be a carrying him, he remembered that Ste. careful and shrewd observer, giving us phen, while being stoned, prayed for valuable information as to the country his enemies ; and he began to pray for and the people. He discusses the rehis, asking the Lord to forgive them," ligions of China and the various phases a proceeding on his part which but in- of missionary work, and says that, for creased their rage and brought upon extent, character and work, missions in him worse blows. China far exceed hi~ largest expecta- tions. It is a valuable addition to our Another notable case of sovereign knowledge of the country and the pracchange is that of Mrs. Kia, who was for- tical value and actual accomplishment merly possessed by an evil spirit. ., She of missionary effort. was," says Mr. George McConnell, "a terror to all, even to us. We feared to -Madagascar, its .Missionaries and its see her come into our yard ; but now Martyrs, by W. J. Townsend, D.D. she is so changed, fully saved, out and (F. H. Revell Co., New York and Chiout for Jesus." cago). Dr. Townsend gives the marvel- lous story of Christianity in the island The Moravian Quarterly is marked by of Madagascar in a most vivid and intones of mingled gladness, Aadness, and teresting way. It is a story with which determination. The pioneers in North all Christians, young and old, should Queensland have acquired speedily a be familiar, for it is unique in the hispowerful influence over the natives. tory of missionary enterpriRe. More at- Confidence is won in the highest degree, tention is given at present to the newer some acquaintance with the language and larger mission fields, but the story has been made, and since the natives of the planting and training of the understand a few English words, the Christian Church in Madagascar is one pioneers are able to testify to them ., of which will never los(l its interest and God who is love and of the redemption power. for sin through the blood of His Son. "
Difficulties impede progress in Nica· -Lives and Work of Rev. and Mrs. ragua, ., but the earnest appeal of the Cephas Bennett, by Ruth Ranney (Silver, poor Indians for missionaries will Burdett & Co., New York, Boston, and quicken sympathy and prayer, before Chioago). Sixty years of missionary life which all obstacles must vanish." in Burma are here described graphically and tersely. Miss Ranney has succeed_ Publioations Noticea, ed in narrating the lives of her grand- parents in such a manner as to transfer . -A Winter in North China, by Rev. to the reader the interest which she T. M. Morris (Revell Co., New York and herself feels in their work. Dr. Bunker Chicago, $1.50). It is natural that the says in his introduction: .. The aroma people at home who contribute gener. of these lives will pass upon others; ously for missions shOUld desire occa- and no one can study them without sionally some more unprejudiced infor- being better." The proceeds from the book will be devoted to mission work in Bul'IP!.
THE MONTHLY CONCERT OF MISSIONS
V.-THE MONTHLY CONCERT OF MISSIONS.
Africa,* Madagascar,t The Freedmen,* AFRICA. § Bechuanaland and Mashonaland along the way of the lakes to Uganda and BY J. T. GRACEY, D.D. down the valley of the Nile to AIexan- dria. Only 35 years have elapsed since Africa has been described as .. one the mighty prize of the source of the universal den of desolation, misery, and Nile was wrested from oblivion j and crime." It is a vast country to come more has been done, so far as any susunder such characterization. It is 1500 picions of history reveal, to reclaim the miles long and 4600 miles wide. The .. Lost Continent" within 30 years than equator cuts it, and both tropics cross in the previous 3300 years. it. Lay its western edge at San Fran. cisco, and it would cover land and sea The population of the continent is to the coast of Ireland. Its rivers are roughly estimated at 200,000,000, or its most marked geographical feature. nearly one-seventh part of the people of The Nile sweeps through 37° of lati- the globe. The beat authorities haTe tude; the Kongo has greater volume agreed that the ethnological classificaand basin. Of its great inland seas, tion must, for the present at least, follow Victoria Nyanza and Albert Nyahza be- language lines. The general conclusion long to the Nile, Tanganyika to the is that the cradle of the genuine negro Kongo, Nyassa to the Zambesi. Possi- race is Africa; that of the Bantu. Asia j blythe entire continent was circumnavi- the one living for ages without the tropio gated in B.C. 600; but in the Middle of the East, the other pushing on to its Aries it had already become the" Dark sunny home in the great peninsula. Continent," its coast line being un· There is known to be a wide difference known beyond Morocco. By the close between the negro and the Bantu races. of the fifteenth century the Portuguese The Bushmen and Hottentot are relathad got far round the Cape of Good ed linguistically with Egypt, and have Hope_ For the next century Africa been sundered from the northern eleseems destined to be the wonder of the ment by some great dividing wedge. world. The rapid opening up of its They differ in appearance, manners, and enormous stretches and the marvellous customs from the Bantu. They were way in which Christianity and civiliza- wont to worship the moon, following tion are bringing light and hope and the sidereal worship of North Africa, liberty to the races of the interior are and their gods are beneath, never above. adding fascinating chapters to the his- The Bantu are lighter colored than the tory of the world. Already the whole negro, nor is their hair so woolly. The country is known from Cape Town to indications are that the Bantus originat- Cairo, and soon the telegraphic com- ed in Western Asia, perhaps in Armemunication will be continuous from nia, possibly in the Euphrates. Their mutual relation is traced in language- * See also pp. 48, 64 (Jan.), 136 (Feb.), 196, 226 structure and roots, as close as those of the Aryan family. The Zulu is spoken (Mar.), 370{May), 404, 423, 426,428 (present issne). in Zululand and by half a" million in t Sec also pp. 66 (Jan.), 4t9, 459 (present Issne). Natal. Dr. Bleek makes 13 classes of t See p. 413 (present issne). Zulu dialects. Sigwamba is spoken ~ We draw largely on the following sonrces aa from Zululand to the Sofala, inland 300 miles j the Yao in the region east and lIumorities in this study: "Report of Commer- south of Lake Nyassa ; the Nyamwezi cial Agent Chatelain on the Province of Angola," east of Tanganyika ; the Swahali by half with original map, .. Reports of the Consuls of a million of people in Eastern Africa; the United States, No. 147, December, 1892;" the Umbundu in Bihe and Bailunda; "The Church Missionary Atlas: Part 1,Africa ;" " Africa Rediviva," by Robert N. Cust, LL.D.; "The IaiZlllu," by Lewis Grout; ~~ Missionary L8ndscap~ in the Dark Continent," by Rev. James Johnston, A. T" S.; "Forty Years among the Zulus," by Josiah Tyler. the Kimbundu, Xongo, and Umbundu Marshman's" History of Roman Catho- in Angola; the Xongo in Xongo region ; lic Missions" layll large claim to success the Mpongwe on the Gaboon River; under the Portuguese in Xongo and the the Dikele by 100,000 at the sources of Zambesi. It is scarcely too IItrong to the Gabun (see Grout's Grammar). The say these utterly relapsed into heathen_ .. Atlas" recognizes six groups for the ism. .. Quick baptisms" by wholesale continent: Hamitic, Nuba-Fulah, Semit- brought their natural result. ic, Negro, Bantu, Hottentot-Bushmen. MODEBN PROTESTANT MISSIONS date The religiO'll8 are (1) African pagan, from Moravian beginnings in West with witchcraft. human sacrifices, ahd Africa in 1736, and in South Africa in fetichism; and (2) Muhammadanism. 1792. The Church of England began Chatelain lIByS, and all experienced work in Egypt in 1826. The United witnesses agree with him, that the Presbyterians of America have had the pagans all believe in one God, who made m08t marked 8ucce88 of modem times and maintains all things, inTisible yet in Egypt proper for a dilltance of 400 eTer seeing the thoughts of man, the miles up the Nile. They have 90 staauthor of all the good and much of the tions with schools, or congregations and suffering, who is angry with men and in- schools united, taught by native pasdifferent to the details of their liTes. tors and teachers; 1000 Mos11!m bOYII They do not worship him nor represent and girls are in these schools. The him by image, nor do they believe that North African Mission ill in Tunis, he is contained in any fetich. What Tripoli, Algeria, and Morocco. So are tranllera generally call gods are inferior some others in localities, and numerous spirits, to whom God has intrusted the organizations of Roman Catholics are in administration of the natural forces. all this region and in the Sahara. They fear these and the shades of de- In 1875 Nyassa, "the Lake of the parted spirits. The images are simply Stars," was circumnavigated, and the amulets and talismans. Dying, one goes Scotch Free Church, Established to hades; dying in hades, he goes to an Scotoh, the United and the Reformed utterly unknown region. Muhamma- Presbyterians soon thereafter began danism swept with fire and sword OTer work in this part of Africa. North Africa in the seventh century, In November, 1&75, Mr. Stanley'. and in the lallt two centurills has spread challenge to Christendom to enter over the Soudan, West Africa proper, Uganda appeared in a London paper. and on the eastern coast. It has Beven months later the first mission brought some externals of civilization; party arrived at Zanzibar. The first but the tribes are in little but name Mos- converts, five in number, were baptized lem ; thllY have changed the fetich from March, 1882. Uganda lies northwest of .ticks and stones to Arabic texts from Victoria Nyanza, and is one of the most the Quran. The whole of the vast inland powerful kingdoms in East Central slave trade is in the hands of these Mos- Africa. It is a four months' journey lems. Mr. Cust says that Islam is " in from the coast. To carry 250 tons, possession of the majority of the popu- $250,000 must be paid to 1000 slaTes lation of Africa, with a tendency to in- hired Ollt by slave owners. But by the crease by its own momentum and adapta- prooeeds of the hire of the British East bility to the environment of the pagan Africa Company, 4000 slaves have effect- African." (3) Christianity came to Africa ed their freedom. The railway system through Hellenist Jews. In the fifth cen- of 600 miles building from the coast tury there were 560 bishoprics in North will cover a coast line of 400 miles and Africa. The North African Church was 1000 miles inland, levering the IIlaveswept out of existence by Islam; the caravan-routes. The reverses of the Coptic- and Abyssinian churches have Church of England Mission have been been Christian in little more than name. connected with the political situation ; lItesa's professed aoceptance of Chrill- besi, a strip. of 800 milesin length. The tiatiity; his return to heathenism, his mis!lion history. thougll I!.ot ita wOl;k, death, the succession of Mwanga, his dates from 1877 ; the la~ter begins with hostility and overthrow, his reinstate- 1885. The mission is international, mentunder the influence of the Roman- though under the di:tection of the Paris ist missionaries, his unprincipled con- Evangeliclll Missionary 8ooiet1. The duct-all combined to make a fiery fur- Primitive Methodis~s have recently en. nae,s for the martyr church of Uganda. tered this :tegion. The sacrifice of missionary life has already been enormous. The saintly The missions of Kajaria bave bef'n 80 band of graduat.,s from the English Uni- long familiar to the Christian churches versities who founded a unique mission that we make no further mention of with four bases, on the eastern side of them than, that of 650,000 Kafirs in Cape Lake Nyassa cover a radius of 25,000 Colony, about one fourth have bl'len bapsquare miles in their estimated reach of tized ; and in Zululand. of 50,000 up_ influ~nce. Thirty-six of these young ward of 2000 are Christians; and in men and maidens, the Hower of English Pondoland, of 150,000, 3000 are Chris-, birth, culture, and piety, have found rest tianized. in African graves. The mission h~s nevertheless made marked progress. In Katanga Arnot began work in 1881 by journeying from Natal to Shoehong, Lake Tanganyika was discoverlld less and on to Benguela on the West Coast, than 40 years ago. Until lately thE! and then peaceably forced his way into route thither was 830 miles from Zanzi- the Garanganze country to initiate bar, and took 100 days. Now it is up Christian civilization. The book by the Shire, thence by the missionary Mr. Arnot," Go.renganze: Seven Years' . highway, .. the Stephenson road," unit. Pioneer Mission Work," published by ing the north end of Nyassa and the the Revell Company, belongs, as Dr. A. southern point of Tanganyika. The T. Pierson says, "in the department, London Missionary Society began work not of Apologetics, but of Energetics." here in 1874, inspired by the telegram to London: "Livingstone is really The &uthern missionary region-De.- dead, and his body is coming home in maraland, Namaqualand,. Good Hope one of the queen's ships." Living. Colony, Natal, Orange Free State, etc.- stone's trumpet call, ., Go forward, and needs not detailed reference here. with the Divine blessing you will suc· These missions do not cling to the ceed. Do you carry on the work which coast, but occupy interior positiona. I have begun. I leave it with you," The climate is suited for Europeans, roused England as well as Scotland. A and large colonies have been settled. noble, heroic work, with increasingly en- Islam has never been in the ascendant. couraging result, has been done by Our reference to Mr. Cust's" Redivive." .. running the gauntlet of fiery ordeals, must in nowise be accepted as comenduring the hardship of perilous travel, mendatory of the idiosyncrasies in his surmounting obstacles of transit and opinions and criticisms. They must malarious climates, pelletrating regions stand on their merits. and some of them untrodden by Europeans," but with an have decided merits; others wear an ez ever-widening confidence amollg the cathedra air, as on page 38, aboutmiBsionmotley population of this territory. arr interference with public morals as impertinence, which it mayor may The Upper Zambesi missions in the not be ; but any allusion to their" ex- Barotsi kingdom were inaugurated by pulsion" on this account is ludicrous. M. Coillard. This kingdom stretches If anybody has gone to South Africa to from the Rafu River to 20° east long., stay, it is the missionary_ and from the Quando and Zambesi to the watersheds of the Rongo and Zam- Angolaland is 80 interestingly treated in Mr. Chatelain's" Report," that we would like to transfer it to these columnl!!. It can probably be had on ap- the English Wesleyan!! Penetrated to plieation to the proper authoritie.IJ. The Quarra, a branch of the Niger. The history of Roman Catholic missions Soudan, stretching from 8° of lat. to under the Portuguese is of use for the the borders of the Sahara, and 3500 warnings of their mistakes and the re- miles from east to west, has a popula- sults. They are now stimulated by the tion nearly equal to that df North Amer- presence of the "Bishop Taylor" 80- ica ; but missionary pioneering has be- styled " Self – supporting missions,' , gun. The name of Crowther, "the which extend to many interior stations only colored non-European bishop con- and have cost lives and money. secrated in England since apostolic Kongoland, with its good waterway days," will ever stand connected with throngh all its great basin, is so promi- the Niger region and missions; and nently in the eye of the Christian pub- Wilmot Brooke's memory will be per- lio tliat, vastly important as it is, we petuated in the Soudan Mission.
need bestow only a paragraph on it in The Gold Ooast from St. Paul to Cape this skeleton reference. At Boma are Palmas has much independent territory, 800 more or less resident Europeans, where the English Wesleyan, the Basle 80 of whom are missionaries. The Eng- and Bremen have done noble work at lish Baptists entered the Kongo valley large cost of life and yet with gratify- in 1878. Through 15 years of struggle, ing results. Liberia is patronized only, soldiers and heroines of faith have !l0 far as foreign subsidy of men and sened, suffered, and perished, till " no money goes, from the United States.
Christian church has supplied a nobler Mr. Cust is too emphatic in saying that contingent to the army of martyrs"- Liberia, as well as Sierra Leone, has the Combers alone would make this failed to make any impression on the record resplendent. Various societies surrounding colored men of the same or are at work-the American Baptists, the cognate African race. It is a marked slip Bishop Taylor, the Kongo-balolo; and in ethnological reference, for the Afro- the French Evangelical of Paris pro- Americans represent trihes in most cases poses, if it has not already begun. to from which they are remotely separated, enter French territory. Through 12,000 and to our personal knowledge they miles of coast or river.line villages and have done something, and under their towns are approachable by the mission- oonditions a good deal, to "impress"
ary. the native races adjoining them. Bishop On the Gabun, the coast island of Taylor's line of self·supporting work in Corisco and the Ogowe, the Ani.ericun the Cavallo. River country has been Presbyterians, after years of successful vigorously pushed, and though ham- work, are hampered by the French Co- pered, deserves great commendation.
lonial policy requiring the use of the Bie-.-ra Leone has an English Episcopal French language in educational work. Ohurch, self-supporting. The English In the Kameruns the English Baptists Wesleyans, the United Brethren (at had a good work, but were substituted Mendi), an American mission from Kan- by a German mission solely because it sas behind Freetown, as 1 base for a had be00me a German colony-a narrow Soudan mission, represent the work of policy out of joint with the times, and Protestants. In the Gpmbia region, at :' a I!hameful breach of the recognized Bathurstand other places, the Wesley- law of missions. " ans and English Episcopals have long The Niger basin presents a population sustained work.
•' untainted" by the evil of contact of We have made a very incomplete and European commerce. The Church of not a balanced sketch of the missions England Missionary Society has impor- of the continent of Africa. They are tant station!! in the Delta, conducted till too vast already for an outline of even very r~cently by African missionaries; a dozen pages. We have been obliged to suppress even the names of the Roman to·morrow if there were funds and men Oatholic societies and orders, many of to do it. The Tembu people have whom have shown illustrious heroism pleaded for a long time that a mission.
in self·denial and endurance worthy of ary be sent to them. The headman has high admiration. All of them will be given ground for the missionary to live found named in Mr. Oust's" Rediviva," upon. At a time when rood was soorce which if not complete is the nearest and the people nearly starving because complete reference volume that we can of what befell their harvest last year, he name, and which is invaluable except has supported in his own hut a native where the author makes excursions to evangelist who was sent there during express his notions instead of judgment; the last six months. . . .
but even these are spicy and suggestive, " People at home should know these and of vaJue. facts. In Western Pondoland there are MADAGASOAl AND ZANZmAl belong to probably not fewer than 40,000 people the African system, and should be con· with no one to tell them the Gospel.
sidered in this group of missions, They are a fine stalwart race of men, though the Malagassy belong ethnologi- but they are living in the grollsellt heacaJly rather with Malaysia. Madagas- thenism. Such a fact should surely apcar is the Great Britain of Africa, but peal to those who may know little of three times her size. Ellis's" Martyr the details of foreign mission work, and Ohurch" of Madagascar well-nigh ranks may in consequence have but a languid as 110 Christian classic. The London Mis- interest in its needs. sionary Society, the Society for the Prop. agation of the Gospel, and the Friends, ,. The TembuB have been aSKing tbat as well as the Norwegians, have operated in Madagascar, the pre-eminence a missionary should be sent to them for belonging to the first-named. All of the ten years. In the thanksgivings of this islanders are not yet evangelized. jubilee year the Tembus and Pondos will surely not be forgotten." (The A late number of the London Chronicle money is now provided, and a missionsays: "We have received a printed table ary will be sent to Tembuland. The Glasgow Oollege students are to pro- vide the mission hOllse, and Stockbridge congregation have given the communion plate.)-Rev. John Lennoz.
of statistics, showing that in our Mad- agascar Mission (not including, however, In a recent letter from Uganda, the the Betsileo district) there are 980 Rev. G. K. Baskerville, of the Ohurch schools; that of the 46.501 scholars Missionary Society, gives a striking inpresenting themselves for examination, stance of the eagerness of the Waganda 21,721 brought slates, 19,480 brought to purchase Scripture portions. Some Bibles or Testaments; and that 16,206 boxes of books arrived, and, during the passed in reading, 12,739 in writing, sale, so tremendolls was the cmsh of and 9,334 in arithmetic." those anxiolls to purchase that Mr. Baskerville was obliged to barricade his " There is a chain of missions stretch- house and sell from the window. All ing like a great strong backbone through the copies of St. Matthew's Gospel the country from Lovedale to Somer- were sold in ten minutes. Prayerville, a distance of two hundred and books, reading-books, etc., were aJl dis- posed of, and more than a thousand people were waiting about, "mad to buy a book."
fifty miles. There are two places at which this backbone just now needs The Derlhi Missionary Society is en strengthening badly. It is at that big gaged in six sections in South and Eaflt gap of ninety miles. On the left-hand Mrica, and at the various stations.has side of the direct line there is a large gathered 11,456 communicants. A misunworked part of Tembu1and. On the sionary stationed at Konigsberg writes: right hand there is the vaRt Pondo na- •• Twenty-five years ago the number of tion in wild untouched heathenism. baptized heathen in Natal was 2000 and Both of these places could be occupied now it is 8000. And the Boers, who formerly looked coldly on, now regard the mission with favor."
GENERA!. lIlSSIONARY INTELLIGENCE
VI.-GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE.
, ED~ BY lU!lV. D. L. LBONAllD.
Extraots .iid TiaD8~tion8 from Foreign to an 'African boy to sit still. It is no trouble' to an Afriean to show an ap. Periodioals.
pearanoe of reverence. Africanboys BY 'UT. C. 0. S'UlIllucx. ,ANPOVEB, ;MASS. have not ,the fidgets like English boys AnroA. have, and they have not so strong a -" Our Lessouto field is whitening will to be oontrolled, What we want is to tne harvest. There are 7689 pupils to teach them a religion which will lead in our sohools, ,and 12,460 Christians them· to disoipline their li"es. Somein,our ohurohes. While, formerly, the times when I have heard warmth of ex- Bassuto Christians doubled their num- pression on the part of those natives bers in fourteen years, it has of late who have been brought up differently; I only. taken six years for the aggregate have felt a little sad, as if there was to double itself again. During the past something wanting among us; but my ten years, tbe scholars have quadrupled, oommon sense and my experience have and 'the Christians tripled. Our Zam- alwsys .brought me baok· to this-that besi mission occupies in the missionary we must teaoh them a religion whioh army working for the oonquest of Cen- will lead them to .disoipline themselves tral A~icaa position of inoaloulable in the midst of 'this vast mass of imimportance; what surprise, then, that purity-in the midst of this terrible at- the.prince of this world should defend mosphere of evil in whioh their battle with special fury the poiD.t menaced by lies. Yes, I do not suppose that anyonr work? God has, moreover, per- body here in this protected country mitted that this mission should be a knows what a battle it is to anyone powerful means of edification for onr there in Africa to live a really holy and churohes, stimulating the faith and noble life. We hear of the virtues of courage of many." -Journal des Mis- the 'Doble savage.' Let anybody who sions, quoted in The Ohristian. talks about the virtues of the noble sav- age come and stay in oup country, and -" In the Soudan, stretching from I think then that he will have to correct the Atlantic to the Red Sea, between those theoretical impressions of his. I theeigMh and sixteenth parallels of think that he would soon have to Benorth 'latitude, there is a population of knowledge that for anyone to lead a 60;000,000 to 80,000,000, mostly Mos- really Christian life in t~t oountry lem, and almost untouched bv oission- means a much greater battle than most illY effort."-The Reaper. people have to fight amid that Chris- -" I, am oertain that the people of tianized social opinion and those sur- Africa need not so muoh to be taught roundings of protected life which most an emotionnl as a di~ciplining religion. of us have here. Therefore we ha?eto It is not difficult to work uppn the emo- koep people a long time waiting.before tions of the inhabitants of a tropical we admit tht>m to Christianity. It has oountry~ We may produce, I dare say, generally been supposed that Roman a ..great.appearanoe of outward devo- Catholics are verY easy in baptizing tion., I think that some people in Eng- people, but a Frenoh miBllionBIY told land would be surprised if they came me the other day that Cardinal Lavi- to our, large school at Zanzibar and saw gene, the great head of African mis- the devotion of the boys at the time of sions, had sont out a message that no sei'vioe; but the fact is that it does native was to be baptized under two not D1ean nearly, so much, as it would years' preparation as a catechumen.'
mean in this country. It is no trouble Well, I have tried something of that kind, and I acknowledge that it is too pa.rily in order to guard the yet weak long; but still there must be·a long Ch:ristian.·from the temptations ofe·the preparation first to test their· earnest. great city. In the course. of the year ness and sincerity, and then there must twenty houses were thus ftlledwith be the deepest dealing with individual Christian families, so that now Christ sculs. Call it conf6B8ion or what y{)U Church has a Christian· cOllgregation of like-we must deal'with each individ. about one hundred souls belongiDg,to ualsoul. The spiritual pastMmUstput it. These are partly derived from; the his arm around each individualAfrica.n, Univeraities' Mission itself, partly from and he must fight side. byside with him the stations of the Church Missionary the battle of life. Society in Mombasa and Freretown.
" The Church must not be depressed With these twenty modest Christian to a lower level to meet half.way the abodes the Mkunazini property of the heathenism of .Africa. The Church Universities' Mission forms a gennine must embrace the African, and raise Christian colony in the midst of the him up by her sacraments and means Mohammedan capital. Around the of grace, and spread a network around former slave market are situated, to the him and raise him up to her high lev. north, Christ Church; to the sOuth, the el, not abating one jot in morality or mission house with the missionaries'
spirituality of what she' requires of her dwellings; to the east the Apprentices'
children here at home. Only so, I be· Bome ; to the west the hospital, and lieve, will there be a truly healthy, liv. around these stately buildings the com· ing Church in Africa. Only then will pact array of the Christian homes.
she dare, as we are daring, to try to The whole is a worthy representation, form a native ministry, and to,put be- a mighty sermon in stone, setting forth fore each boy who has intellectual ca· English Christianity in the face of Mos· paeity, and is leading a high moral life, lem bigotry and moral corruption."- that that is the life he is to look for· Pastor RICHTlI:B, in Allgemeine M"tasions· ward to out of gratitude to God; that Zeitschrift.
as our Lord Jesus Christ has chosen him out of the millions of heathen who -The blessing of God, remarks Dr.
are still in darkness to be Bisson" and WABlflI:cX, continues to rest on the little has poured down so many blessings mission of· the Free Church of Canton upon him, so it should be the highest Vaud, at Delagoa Bay. It has three ambition of his life to take the message stations: Lorenzo-Marques, Rikatla, of the boly Gospel to his. brethren, and and Antioka. In six year!!, for the to spend his life in sharing those great three, about nine hundred· convBl'ts blessings which he has received with have been gather.ed. At Lorenzo~Mar· hiB brethren, who will remain in heathen ques a missionary physician has Hen darkness if he dQes not go to teach stationed, with very. happy results of. his them. That is what many of our young activity. To the north of Rikatla, ·in men have in their hearts ; and one day the territory of the ehief'Mahazule, a I am quite sure that ,we shall Bee an en· little Christian community has consti· thusiastic and able ministry extend· tuted itself &sa result of the courageous ing the w{)rk of· the Church far and wide testimony of a converted woman; who in Africa. " -BIBK{)p SKYTEIES, in Central has won anuruber of other women to Africa. the Gospel. .In North Transvaal" where there are also three stations-Valdelia, -In Zanzibar "it was an original Elim, and Shiluwane-there is much to idea of Bishop Steere to gather around -l'etard the work; the gold fever, the the beautiful edifice· of Christ Church ,law forbidding. more than fi'Ve'oolored all the native Christian elements, partly families to reside on one estate' (and the in {)rder to form a parish for the church, estates are large), and. continuous·.warlike commotions. Discontent, insub- delivered Himself up for us and has left ordination, and looseness of living are us His example. A missionary without sadly fostered by these conditions, and enthusiasm would be a oontradiction ; occasion the missionaries much solici- but the solid and consoientious prepara_ tude. tion of a missionary, the clear-sighted and firm direction of his work, may The Berlin Mission also suffers great- multiply tenfold the activity of a man ly from the same causes, especially from who reckons above all things on God, the oppressive Plakkerswet, the restric- and who, before submitting himself to tive law mentioned above. This mis- the direction of men, and before hum. sion, whose field of labor is very exten- bly preparing himself for his sacred mise sive, divides it into six synods, or super- sion, has surrendered himself BOul and intendencies : North Transvaal, hence- body to his God and knows that he is forth divided into ten Dioceses ; South but a torch-bearer of the eternal light. " Transvaal; Orange Free State; Natal; –Professor F. H. KRUGER, in Journal Caffraria; Cape Colony. These six dis- des Missions. tricts comprise 23,841 baptized peraons ; 1489 cateohumens; 11,456 oommuni- THE WORLD AT LARGE. cants ; 4179 scholars_ -The Zeitschrift states that the Eng- " I am only one, but 1 am one; lish oensus of Basutoland shows the I cannot do everything, bnt I can do somepopulation to be 218,324. The number of Christians of the Paris Society was thing; 9662. Adding children and adherents, What I can do, I onght to do ; these form about 11t per cent of the And what I onght to do, by the grace of God I popnlation. Scholars: 1887. 3754; 1891, 7031 ; 1892, 7869. The mission- will do." aries testify to a decided growth among the Basuto Christians of their spiritual -How little we appreciate the might life, their sense of duty. and their spirit of mites when suffiCiently multiplied. of self-denial. For example, if a church of 30 members were to contribute regularly each one – " Mr. Arnot finds himself obliged at cent a day, with an extra cent each as last to do what all missionary societies a birthday gift, and then half a cent do. He has an agency iJl. Europe to each at the end as a thank offering, look after the transport of baggage; he the amount for a year would be the has an agent on the ooast to receive handsome sum of $110, or enough to them in transit. He has seen himself keep 11 girls or boys in a boarding-school obliged to found two intermediate sta- in India. A club of 3 would thus edutions between the coast and Bunkeya. cate 1 heathen child. What a chance This mission, lately ext~lled as repro- for Sunday-school classes! duoing the apostolic type, in contrast with organized societies, assume., more -The Boston Saturday Evening Gazette and more, the habits of these. It oould recently bestowed upon its readers this not be otherwise. Every personal effort eminently sensible and Christian counwhich prolongs itself must needs organ- sel: .. If you are getting lazy, v.-atch ize itself or disappear; but a regular James. If your faith is below par, read and faithful organization does not ex- Paul. If you are impatient, sit down clude the apostolic spirit, self-denial, quietly and have a talk with Job. If self-renunciation, the sacrifice of life, your are just a little strong-headed, go if needful, the ardent love of souls, the and see Moses. If you are getting holy desire of glorifying, by an obscure weak-kneed, take a look at Elijah. If and hidden work of perhaps all the there is no song in your heart, listen to days of our life, our Saviour, who has David. If you are getting sordid, spend a while with Isaiah. If you feel chilly, get the beloved disciple to put his arms around you. If you are losing sight of the future, climb up to Revelation and split in two for me, let me get under get a glimpse of the promised land." one corner.) 't Yes, and also let us add, if you do not -Somebody defines Buddhism to be believe much in missions, and so do not a system which teaches men to pray to give much, sit down for an hour now nobody to be made nothing of. and then and commune with the Son of God and the apostle to the Gentiles, -A glance at some missionary statis- to read, mark, and inwardly digest tics carefully prepared and published their teachings on the subject. in tbe American Q;u,arterly Register for -The first appropriation to send a 1830 is very suggestive, and clearly indi- Methodist missionary to India was made cates what marvels of progress have in 1852. The amount was $7500. The come to the kingdom during a few bishops were requested to select a decades. For the Sandwich Islands proper man for superintendent. Four only 90 communicants are reported, and years passed, however, before anyone for the Wesleyans in the South Seas, with the proper qualifications could be Fiji included, 60 communicants and 165 found willing to assume the task of in the schools. In New Zealand and founding a great mission in India. New Holland (for as yet there was no Bishop Thoburn says that it would sur- Australia) are 7 missionaries and 199 in prise people at the present day if the the schools. Africa has 91 missionaries, whol.! truth were told about the search representing 9 societies, 10 native asfor a superintendent, and expresses the sistants, and 2603 communicants. In opinion that" no other prominent post Ceylon, Hindustan, and India beyond in all the history of the Methodist the Ganges 10 societies are at work, Church was ever declined by so many with 135 missionaries, 424 native assist. nominees." At last, in 1856, Rev. ants, 2864 communicants, and 39,219 in William Butler accepted the post. the schools. Dr. Morrison had been in China since 1807 ; 2 others had just ar· -A missionary to New Zealand who rived from America; Messrs. Bridgman was in the habit of dispensing blankets and Abeel, two natives, have been bapamong the Maoris who attended his tized, and one of them, Leangafa, is meetings, noticed that one native came zealously engaged in spreading the too frequently for these comfortable ar- Christian truth in the interior. At the ticles. He mentioned the fact. "No close 30 benevolent societies in the more blankets ?" responded the Maori. United States are named, including all "Well, then, no more hallelujah 1" And the missionary societies, both home and he departed. foreign, also all the Bible, tract, educa.
-Evidently the Occidental mind and tion, temperance, colonization, sea- the Oriental were not cast in the same men's, peace, and prison societies, and mould; and therefore it behooves trans- asylums for the deaf and dumb; and lators in particular to be careful in their the total receipts for the year preceding choice of language. Dr. Chamberlain is given as $584.084.02. Those days of tells this story in illustration. He one exceedingly small things are not so ve~ day SUbmitted a somewhat close Telugu far distant, either.
translation of the hymn, "Rock of Coming down 30 years nearer to the Ages," to an able Telugu pundit, and present, in the New Englander of Au- asked him to say frankly what meaning gust, 1860, Leonard Bacon said : "There it conveyed to him. After long ponder- are at least 40 societies with an expendi.
ing and much hesitation, he replied: ture of $3,000,000, with 5000 native "Every religion has its mysteries, and helpers, and 200,000 communicants."
this, I suppose, is one of yours. I can- Glancing backward, he added: "In not understand it at all, but this is what 1820, at the end of the first decade of it seems to say, 'Oh very old stone, the American Board, there were not more than 50 oonverts," though he could Boldier who (in Lawrence's last words) not find half so many-oould discover died 'trying to do his duty' has d~ but 1 in Bombay, a Mohammedan, 2 in served better of his country and of man- Ceylon, and 20 Indians and negroes kind than have these brave ~en and among the Chootaws and Chickasaws of women of the Madura Mission, who Georgia. And in 1825 there were but 5 face daily the fever of the jungle and native helpers, 4 in Ceylon, and the cholera, whioh is always present in fifth among the Cherokees. ., Now they India, and are, with heroio self·sacri. are grown to 497, of whom 243 are pas- fice, wearing out their lives silently for tors." the good of others."
-The Ohristian Observer (Presbyte- -In Thibet almost every crime is rian, Louisville, Ky.) heads an editorsl punished by the imposition of a fine, relating to the acceptance of three men and murder is by no means an expen- as miBSionaries " More Foreign Mission sive luxury. The fine varies according Appointments, .. and says: "The secu- to the social standing of the victim-120 lar papers are full of the names of men bricks of tea (worth about 35 cents a appointed to represent the United brick) for one of the "upper c1aBS," 80 States in foreign lands, and we have bricks for a person of the middle class, felt that these men are honored in being 40 bricks for a woman, and so on down appointed ambassadors of this Govern- to 2 or' 3 for a pauper or a wandering ment. .. And then, after naming the foreigner. Almost every grown-up man young oandidates and the countries to in the country has a murder or two to which they are to be sent, asks: ,. Shall his credit. we not feel that they have an honor greater than that of any earthly ambas- -In Afrioa a Masai woman has a sador ?" market ,value equal to 5 large glass beads, while a oow is worth 10 of the -The Kingdom (Baptist Missionary same. Union) declares that since there are thirty times as many heathen as there "It was a girl, you know," was the are evangelioal Christians, it follows reallon given by a man and his wife on that eaoh Christian is responsible for Epi, one of the New Hebrides, who had thirty heathen, and they are his share. unblushingly confessed to having buried one of their children alive. -Charles S. Smith, a New York merchant of eminent standing in the busi- Dr. William Ashmore, of Swatow, on ness world, has been visiting India, and visiting a neighboring village, asked the writing to the Tribune, speaks in the population, and was told, .. about three highest terms of the missionaries he or four thousand." "Does this inolude met, and espeoially of those in the Ma- women?" he asked. .. Oh, no," was dura field, whose work he carefully in. the reply; "we follow the Chinese cusvestigated. Thil!l is the closing passage tom and do not count the women." of his letter: "I have since visited the stirring scenes of the Indian Mutiny at -The Spirit of Missions has been told Lucmo,.., Cawnpore, and Delhi. I have " that when that marvel of business enstood reverently and with uncovered terprise, the Standard Oil Company, head beside the graves of Havelock and would find a market for its products it Lawrence. I have read the tablet of is not content merely to wait on the or- Lord Napier, upon which he inscribed dinary demand, but it proceeds to create the name. of the gallant men who car- a market. Its agents went into Menco, ried the Kashmit gate by storm, and but found the people so averse to ohange gave their lives to save the honor and that they would still hold on to their the empire of the English raoe in India. tallow dips in spite of all that was told I solemnly believe, however, that no them of the excellence of kerosene. What then? Did the company give that up as II hopeless market? Not at all. Their agents went about to con· 'Was no ordinary calamity to us as Bapquer the prejuuice and to overcome the tists, for it was, as' has been said, • the stolid indifference, and they did it at a home of Baptist traditions and treaprodigious outlay. They took into sures,' as well as a c&ntre of our misevery house a lamp, all trimmed and sionary operations, home and foreign. filled with oil, and gave it to the people, Every day brings some fresh experience and immediately the market was made." of loss and hindrance oonsequent uPOn it to the workers of the Woman's Society -An interesting illustration of t,he of the East. " indebtedness of science to Christianity is given in 8 little book descriptive of " We can never recall this calamity " Work for the Blind in China." From without thankfulness that no lives were this it appears that a system of Isised imperilled, that it has called forth such characters representing the Chinese lan- kind expressions of sympathy, ihat guage has recently been perfected, a strength equal to the day has beengiven language which has no alphabet proper, to those whose work was so seriCHlSly but 4000 symbols representing syllables, interrupted. The experienoe has taaght and which takes a lifetime to learn. us new confidence in God asa very The system employed is by an ingenious present help in trouble." reduction of the sounds-as distinct from the syllables-to 408. The inventor is -The women of the Lutheran Church, a self-taught genius, Rev. W. H. Mur- General Synod, have four representa. ray, BOn of a Scotch mechanic, who was tives in the foreign field, all at Guntur, prevented from following his father's India, and one of them is a physician. trade by an accident in which he lost They publish mission studies for each an arm. Becoming an agent of the month, and' the General Literature Bible society, he was sent to carry Committee keeps on hand a varied supon its work ill China. Here the mis- ply of tracts, photographs, etc., to dif.' erable condition of the blind, of fuse information and excite interest. whom there is an unusual number in the empire, attracted his attention, and -The women of the Scottish Free led him to devote himself to the discov- Church publish the Helpmeet and the ery of a method by which they might be ahildren's Record. enabled to read. -The English Baptists have their WOMAN'S WORK. Ladies' Association for the Sllpport of zenana work and Bible women in India -The Woman's Missionary Society and China, and a monthly paper, the of the Methodist Church, Canada, has Zenana Missionary Herald. 501 auxiliaries with 11,557 members, and 221 circles and bands with 6590 -The London Sooiety sends out 60 members. The income last year was women, 31 to India, 20 to China, 5. to $35,790. The number of missionaries Madagascar, and 4 to the South Seas. is 26, of whom 16 are in Japan, and 8 in Mrs. Robert Whyte edits the Quarterly British Columbia at work for the In- News of Woman's Work, and the Juvedians and Chinese, with 2 in China. nile also is published, a neat mouthly full of good things. The April number -Helping Ha:niJ. for May has an im- contains an amusing illustrated poem pressive page, which gives in parallel entitled "The Lament of a Missionary columns first the ., shade" and then Box," whioh had seen better days, but the ., light" of the current missionary is now empty and forgotten, an excelsituation. The first item in each col- lent piece for· recitation. umn will serve as a specimen : -In the 'Home JC'lSsiooary for April "The burning of Tremont Temple Ellen W. Curtis tells of what she calls .. a novel climb in Miehigan," but which is equally good for any State, or territory, or kingdom on earth, and no mat- Bible women of our own country and ter how level the surface may be. After England must number approximately premising that" too many of us are sur- 2000..- Oongregationalist.
rounded by the Mountains of Ignorance UNITED STATES. (ignorance of the missionary work); and closing down. overthese mountains, -Christians in Great Britain or upon and shutting us in from the busy out· the Continent have little conception of side world, is the leaden sky of indif- the peculiar and very heavy burdens ference, and we do not know that Le- borne by their American brethren. For, yond these mountains lies a vast field in addition to the calls to aid in the re- ready to be cultivated by us ;" she goes demption of the heathen world is the on to allege that "in flOnt of every imperative and almost appalling de- church in our land stands a mountain, mand for home mission work in almost which we will call the' Mount of Priv- every community between the Atlantic ilege: and we may all climb it if we aitd the Pacific, in the new,settlements, will." And the sentence which follows and among the Indians, and the Freed· will give an insight into the meaning men, and the Chinese, and the foreign.
of the parable: "First let me ask your ers from every clime. Take a single forbearance if I should not go straight denomination as a fair specimen, which, up the old beaten path that leads to the aftlJr an annual expenditure of $6,790,.
home missionary work, for you know 000 for ordinary church work, gives in on mountain trips Bome of the most addition some $2,500,000 for home mis.
beautiful mosses and ferns are often sions on the frontier, etc., and after found in the little side paths; and if I that $840,000 for foreign missions.
take you into these paths, it will only -It is announced in the Roman be that I may show you some of the Catholic journals that the Rev. WaIter peculiar blessings with which our Elliot is to try" an interesting experi· Heavenly Father has endowed thill ment." He is to give himself to the State. " work of converting AmericaIl "non.
-In the early days of missions the Catholics" into good subjects of the Bible woman was not. She is the prod. Papacy. He is to do this by public ad. uct of years of patient toil. It was dresses, by lectures, by sermons, by necessary first to win her from allegi- wayside talks, by the distribution of ance to heathen gods, then to teach her leaflets, etc. He is of Irish-Catholic to read the Bible, to understand its descent, and is described as " American in all his ideas and aspirations;" an truths, to imbibe its spirit and to shape " eloquent speaker;" and that we may know the Paulist father more perfectly, her life by its laws. Then came years he is further described as a "most enof spiritual growth and of increase in gaging personality, a six-footer, broadnumbers, until now the Bible woman is shouldered, manly, and with a voice recognized an an important factor in deep and resonant, in the prime of life, missionary work. A Japanese pastor about fifty, with a full, reddish.brown said of them, .' I would rather have one beard, slightly flecked with gray." of these Bible readers for a helper than With this Mr. Elliot on the one hand, a man if I could have but one. " Count· and Mr. Webb essaying to win us to ing those supported by Christians in Islam on the other, great will be our foreign lands, the Congregationalists opportunities. have over 200 Bible women, the English Zenana Society has 171, the Baptist Foreign Missionary Society of the Unit. -A church in New York, Methodist ed States over 150, the Methodist For· Episcopal, has among its members the eign Missionary Society in the United following nationalities: English, Irish, States 300, It is safe to state that the Scotch, Welsh, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, French, German, Spanish, beyond Behring Straits, and where the Italian, Greek, Roumanian, Chinese, Presbyterians have a mission, and stu- African, and Hebrew. And these, all dent life must be peculiar: .. The winborn of the same Spirit, having experi- ter term is one long night. The conence of the same pardoning grace, and stant need of lamps in the school·room rejoicing in the same blessed hope, may is a matter of course. But II greater sing together, "All hail the power of difficulty is experienced in the confu- Jesus' name." No other name can I!IO sion of time which arises from the abunite. sence of the sun to mark day and night. Without a marked difference in the light -A Dakota paper gives an interview between noon and midnight, all knowlwith an Indian whose son is in the school edge of time among a barbal'ous people at Carlisle, Pa. In broken English he becomes lost. They know no difference said : "It makes him good boy ; he read between nine o'clock A.M. and nine Bible; he help me chop wood; he cure o'clock P.M. Consequently, when the my leg; he build fence; he make scbool bell rings out into the Arctic house; he make coat; he mend shoes." darkness at nine o'clock A.M., some of This is quite a list of accomplishments, the pupils have just gone to bed, and !tnd shows the young man had not been are in their first sound sleep. Roused among the white people in vain. Fur- up and brought to the school-room, they ther on he said: "He no dance any fall asleep in their seats. Many of the more; he say that foolish." pupils have come to school without their breakfasts; with sleepy bodies -Probably there are from 10,50(l to and empty stomachs, they are not in 11,000 Indian adherents of the Protes- the best condition to make progress in tant Episcopal, Presbyterian, and Con- their studies. " gregational churches in the Dakotas. Last year three large assemblages were -The American Colonization Society held of the Christian Sioux. On July was organized seventy.six years ago, be- 4th a Catholic congress gathered at gan to send colonists to Liberia four Standing Rock Agency, with 2 bishops years later, aided 50 to emigrate thither in attendance, 8 missionaries, and 800 last year, and from the beginning 22,- Indians. Of these 224 were confirmed. 135. Just now one important part of Then the last of August the Episcopal its work is found in agitating for more Convention met on the Rosebud Reser- direct, IDore frequent, and cheaper vation, attended by more than 2000 communication, in order that the Freed- Sioux, all in citizen's dress. They men may more easily exchange the formed their tepees, 470 in number, in United States for Africa. a circle half a mile in diameter, with wagons in the rear, and 2000 to 3000 -These few figures are most eloquent horses feeding on the plains beyond. About $1000 were brought in-offerings in setting forth the marvellous developby the women. The Presbyterian Indians and their missionaries held what ment of the Young Men's Christian Asthe Indians call the Paya Owohdakeunited talk-at Yankton Agency, South sociation: Dakota, September 17th to 20th. As many as 1000 were gathered at one 1866. 1892. time. During the year this Indian board of missions received $1386 from Associations reporting…. . 68 1,372 the Indian churches and kept 4 Indian missionaries in the field. Total membership …….. . 15,498 217,090 -Rev. Sheldon Jackson has this to Secretaries and other emtell of Point Barrow, Alaska, lying far ployed officera… . . . . . . . . 12 1,192 BuildiD~s …… ……….. 1 268 Value of buildings……… $10,000 $11,002,520 Total value pro)crty.. …. 90,000 12,878,595 Annual expenses of local work ………………. 50,000 1,992,328 Associations in college. . .. 1 400 Railroad secretaries em- ployed ……………. .. o 111. These figures, however, tell but part -The Board of Managers of the For. of the story. "Instead of being scat- eign Missionary Society of the Protestered bands, the associations are all or- tant Episcopal Church has sent an inganized into a great army and are work. vitation to Bishop Ferguson, of Liberia, ing together as no other religious or- at Cape Palmas, to visit the United ganization except the Roman Catholic States during the coming summer. Church, and even that is eclipsed in Bishop Ferguson is the only negro many ways." member of the American House of Bishops. He was born in Charleston, -The International Medical Mission. S. C., a little more than forty years ary Society has a charter in sight, under ago, but went to Liberia with his parwhich it can open in New York City a ents when he was five years old. He medical missionary training school, if has been educated wholly in the schools, only its friends will rally and raise $50,- college, and theological seminary which 000, to put with a like sum already the Episcopal Church maintains in that pledged, for a building and endowment. country. A preliminary circular has been sent out to all who may desire to enter such -The African Methodist Episcopal an institution. Church has a. mission in Sierra Leone with several stations, 355 church-mem. -The dedication on April 6th of the bers, 325 in Sunday-school, and lIome great granite Mormon temple in Salt 700 adherents. The mission was opened Lake has received abundant notice in in 1886. the public press; but the statement that this structurc cost $5,000,000 is to -Who says that science is not the be taken cum grano magno. One third handmaid of religion? Read this : of that sum is probably nearer the amount of money actually expended, .. The health of Rev. F. C. Klein, the since the bulk of the work was donated Methodist Protestant missionary at by· the saints. As far back as 1853 Nagoya, Japan, and president of the Brigham Young began to send pitiful Anglo-American College at that place, appeals to the faithful in Great Britain baving become impaired to such an exto contribute liberally for the purchase tent as to threaten his recall, it occurred of .. glass and shingles." Thill is the to one of his friends that his labors might eighth temple built, or founded, by the be lightened and his strength and eye- Mormons for the practice of their secret sight (which was also failing) husbanded rites-one in Ohio, two in Missouri, by the use of an Edison phonograph. one in Illinois, and four in Utah; and An appeal was made through one of the their amazing scheme contemplates the church papers for an offering for that erection of something like two dozen purpose. The next week a check came more-that is, one for each ., stake of from the president of one of the Chris- Zion." tian Endeavor societies for $150, and the instrument has been forwarded." -Our Baptist brethren of the Missionary Union sorrow, and also greatly -The Mennonite Mission Board has rejoice, for when Tremont Temple, charge of an Indian contract school at Boston, was burned March 19th the so- Halstead, Kan., with upward of 30 puciety suffered serious embarrassment pils, is doing work among the Cheyennes and loss; but then, as an offset, though and Arapahoes of Oklahoma, and bethe centennial million was not obtained, sides has in contemplation a mission yet when the books were closed the among the Moquis of Arizona. The sum total of gifts and pledges had amount expended last year was $9901, reached $851,375, with good hope of of which $3913 was received from the large additions later. government.
-In a recent issue of the Central Pres- byterian (Richmond, Va.) a mission arti· cle sets out with a Te Deum and closes ulation oi the district are now nomiwith a Miserere, and because : nally Christian. It is believed that he had just completed the revision of his ,. Never in the history of our church translation of the whole Bible into has the call to put forth every effort in Cree, into which language he had also our foreign mission work been so loud. translated the Prayer Book and> a hymnso inspiring as at this time. The op- book. portunities set before us are unparalleled in our experience, The tokens -The London Society has ordered a of God's favor have never been so steamer, to cost $80,000, for use in the rich. Twenty-seven missionaries are South Seas, and calls upon the young before our E:Kecutive Committee to be people to undertake the serious task of sent out as a new force-the largest providing the funds required. number ever offered in one year. Among them are 4 accomplished medi- -The Propagation Society (S. P. G.) cal men-l for the Congo, 1 for Korea, reports a total income for last year of 2 for China," $635,745.
And the inviting openings are named -The United Presbyterians report in and described through a half column; a single month 95 baptisms in their but over against all this is the report of mission fields: in Manchuria 63, in a " heavy falling off in contributions." Kaffraria 18, and in Old Calabar 14; and a most earnest call has been issued -The United Brethren are passing for 11 additional missionaries, 6 men through a time of sore trial, for not and 5 women, to strengthen and enlarge only has their African mission been the work. sadly weakened again and again by death, but also, on March 9th, Rev. ASIA. B. F. Booth, D.D., the faithful and efficient secretary of the Missionary So- Turkey.-The Hebrews who during ciety, was called from earth. recent years have returned to the Prom- ised Land have not found it flowing EUROPE. with milk and honey, but, on the con- trary, rags and pinching hunger are the -The English Baptists set out to raise lot of thousands, so that their benevoa $500,000 centennial thank-offering. lent brethren elsewhere are compelled which March 20th had reached $555,- to raise large sums for their relief. 000, and later intelligence is to the effect that $625,000 have been pledged. -It is pleasant to know that, after Verily, the zeal and good works of Carey long delay, our Government has taken have not been forgotten. the Sultan sternly to task for the out- rages and destruction of property in -The China Inland Mission sent out Marsovan, and that the costly seminary 57 missionaries between August, 1892, is likely to be rebuilt erelong with and February of this year. Of these Turkish gold. 25 are from Great Britain, 6 from America, and 5 from Australia. For -Rev. H. N. Barnum, of the Amerithree months 113 baptisms are re- can Board, writes to the New York Obported. server of the crushing calamity which has befallen Malatia in Eastern Asia -The Church Missionary Society has Minor. Three years ago the city, of received intelligence of the death of 50,000, was desolated by fire, a year the Rev. John Horden, D.D., Bishop of later a second time, and now an earth- MoosonGe. Dr. Horden went out to quake has killed or wounded some 600 Moose Fort on Hudson's Bay in 1851, and left the bulk of the population desand was consecrated in 1872. Through titute of homes, while the church, the his efforts the whole of the Indian pop- parsonage, and the 4, school buildings are in ruins. The people are heroic, 1890. Taking all the societies together, but desperately poor, and large help is the foreign and Eurasian missionaries required. increased from 479 to 711 ; the native helpers from 1643 to 3278; pupils in India.-It appears that evangelistic schools from 40,897 to 62,414 ; and pu. work, after the American pattern, is to pils in zenanas from 9132 to 32,659. be pursued in heatheI!- lands. The Rev. Dennis Osborne, who became well -A sign of the reviving activity of known in this country while in attend- the Buddhist religion is seen in the ance some years ago in the Methodist work of the Buddha Gaya Maha Bodhi General Conference, "has been ap- Society, the objects of which are the es· pointed by Bishop Thoburn general tablishment of a Buddhist monastery evangelist for all India. During the and a Buddhist college, the publication past year he has given much of his time of Buddhist literature in Indian verto Hindustani evangelistic work, for naculars, and the support of Buddhist which he is well prepared. " missionaries at Buddha Gay a, or Bud Gya, in Behar, India, the spot where –At a meeting of the North India Gautama, sitting under the great ban- Conference of the Methodist Episcopal yan tree, B.C. 588, is said to have re- Church, held at Bareli, 48 men were or- ceived his call. From this place it is dained to the office of the Christian intended to start a gigantic mission for ministry. All save 3 of these were na- the propagation of the faith throughout tives of India. This is in the district the world. It is intended to unite the where, in 1892, 18,000 baptisms were Buddhist countries-China, Japan, Siam, made. These men have been: in train- Cambodia, Nepaul, Burmah, Ceylon, ing for many years, and are believed to Chlttagong, Thibet. and Asakan-in this be thoroughly fitted for ordination. movement; and tho secretary of the so· ciety represents that it has been cor· -The Lodiana Mission of the Ameri- dially welcomed hy the educated Hindus can Presbyterian Church reports a total of India. Our Colonel Olcott is director of 266 additions on confession of faith and chief adviser, and Sir Edwin Ar. during the last year, making the roll of nold is said to have expressed sympacommunicants 948. The per cent of thy with it. increase is far beyond anything hitherto reported. Many of the additions were China.-Dr. Morrison died in 1834, in the districts connected with the sev- after 27 yeari! of incessant toil, and dureral stations. ing all that time had not heen allowed to hold a public service; but yet every -In this vast peninsula only 1 man Sunday, behind locked doors, with a in 10 can read and write, and 1 woman few natives, he had read and expounded in 190, while among the Christians the gospels. With that fact in mind one third of the men cau read and scan these figures, relating to the inwrite and one seventh of the women crease of church-members: and girls. Of the Hindoos 1 man in 10 is possessed of scholarship to this ex- In 1842 there were …………. 6 tent and 1 woman in 267 ; of the Mo- .. , ……… 350 hammedans 1 in 15 of the men and 1 in '. " 1852 … ……… 320 of the women. 1865 ~ 2,000 ……. ~ …… 13,035 -An industrial school for Moham- " 1876 " " ………….. 28,000 medan women, the only one of the " 1886 " kind in Southern India, has been estab- " ……… … 37,287 lished by the American Lutheran Mis- " 1889 sion. " 1892 …………. 50,000 -Woman's work in India had a wonderful development between 1881 and -A gentleman once saw in an out-of.
the.way place about 20 Chinese babies tied to stakes on a patch of green grass.
The length of each rope was about ten feet, and the stakes were far enough it. Latterly the German Government apart so that the babies wouldn't get has been reduuing Arab slave dealers to all tangled up. They seemed very subjection within its sphere of influence happy, and while he stood watching in Southwest Africa, anrl have succeeded them he did not hear one of them cry. in limiting their operations to the The mothers were at work in a rice-field country lying between Stanley Falls and a little way off. Lake Tanganyika. The only outlet left for the IIIave drivers is eastward. Henry -Dr. Legge, the eminent Chinese M. Stanley says in a late Harper that a scholar, now connected with Oxford railway from Victoria Lake to the Ind. Uni,ersity in England, says: " I have ian Ocean would extinguish the traffic, been reading Chinese books for more and would command an area of 150,000 than forty years, and any general re- square miles.of British territory. If he quirement to love God, or the mention can belt the Dark Continent from east of anyone as loving Him, has yet to to west and Cecil Rhodes project a line come for the first time under my eye." north and south, it will ensure its ulti. mate civilization. -The Ohinese Recorde:r hears with deep solicitude that the International -The Protestants in Uganda have Missionary Alliance is to send 200 two thirds of the oountry allotted to Swedish missionaries to China, at the them, the other third being divided berate of 20 each month, and with only tween the Roman Catholics and the $250 a year for salary and expenses. Mohammedans, as they are less numer. ous. The mission work is going on -One of the ablest. native preachers most prosperously, the greatest danger in the Foochow conference, though beiug that the political supremacy of offered $50 a month to enter the con- the Protestants will lead many to prosular service refused, preferring to con. fess themselves Christians from oorrupt tinue preaching with but $3 a month. motives. Within a period of about eighteen months, ending in September, -Thibet continues to be inaccessible. 1892, the Bible Society delivered to the No missionary is allowed to cross its Church MissionAry Society about 25,000 frontier. But its needs are not lost copies of Scriptures for use in Uganda. sight of. In our last, mention was This shows in a striking way the inter. made of a Roman Catholic who had est of the people in the Bible, but is hung about its borders for years, and very far from indicating its full extent. had prepared a dictionary and a trans· lation of St. John. The Methodists -In the report of Lovedale for 1892, have long had a mission immediately it is stated that the church, which was outside the country, and a flank move- organized in 1886, has now a member. ment from the northeast is now being ship of 150. During the year 40 new undertaken by the agents of the China communicants were received, 33 young Inland Society. The Moravians, too, men and 7 young women. Besides have been long watching and waiting, these, 19 Gallas were admitted by bapbusy meantime with a translation of tism, 14 boys and 5 girls, on profession the Scriptures. Those barred gates will of their faith. erelong be seen standing wide open.
AFRICA. -The East African Mission of the American Board is to be moved from -In 1885 the leading powers of the the malarious and unsympathetic neighworld gave their recognition to the borhood of the Portuguese coast town Congo Free State, one of its duties Inhambane to the healthier interior of being the suppression of the slave trade. Gazaland. In its new location it will Zanzibar has done something in this be under English protection, and will direction. Morocco and Tripoli foster start with a grant of a traot of land as earth and straw giving plaoe to edifioes large as an ordinary farm. of stone and briok. One of the first -The Hermannsbnrg missionaries substantial buildings was intended to among the Zulus, after holding a con- hold the fine library of the Universities ferenoe, decided to abolish the prevail- Missions. But before the building was ing oustom- among the natives of ex- oompleted a fire destroyed the 1500 vol· ohanging girls and women for oattle I umes which the missionaries had aoou· Strange to say, the Christian oonverts mulated. Now they are hungry for oy- .are not willing to submit to this inno- olopmdias, works of soienoe, grammars vation, and have dllmanded of the mis- and dictionaries of vario1!" foreign lansionaries to prove to them from the guages, books of travel, poetry, history, Scriptures that it would be unlawful and standard fiotion.
for them to sell their daughters for oat- -Miinzenberger in his" Abyssinien" tle. If the above statement is true, it holds that the regeneration of Abyssinia looks as though some second conver· is the first step toward gaining Afrioa sions were in order. for modem civilization and the Gospel; that in these old seats and oentres of -The promoters of the Zambesi In. Christian culture, literature and learn. dustrial Missions have a plan for mak. ing, the best base of operations can be iDg missions self-supporting after the found, from which the work oould exfirst outlay in establishing them. It is tend in all direotions. proposed to raise $7500 to purchase land-which can be bought in some dis- tricts at the rate of 1000 acres for $250 -In a letter written by Dr. Living- -and by native labor to raise crops, stone in 1870, just brought to light in which when realized would pay the oost England, the explorer oonfesses that if of missionary wO'rk in the district. It he had known all the hunger, toil, and is believed that by means of the project hardship in his exploration, he " might there would be planted in the heart of have preferred a straight waistooat, the Africa; a self-supporting, colonizing and head shaved and a blister on it to under- Christianizing element which would be taking Sir Roderiok's task. My ohilof great value to the people, and which dren, however, will Bee that I have been would help to develop the vast re- a stout-hearted servant of Him who en· sources of the continent. dowed me with the wisdom, taot and -'Siokening accounts oome of deso- pluck of an explorer, as He did the lating slave·raiding in the region lying workmen of the Mosaio tabernaole and to the north of Lake Nyassa. Arabs others in all ages."
are the acoursed aotors, and their plan -A letter received in London from is to surround a village by night, place Sierre Leone says that the vigilant sup. a warrior at each door, order the in- pression of the slave trade along the mates out, spear the men and boys and coast, and the consequent inability of oapture the women. Of the latter 300 the warlike races to dillpose of their oapwere thus taken in a single village. tives at a profit, has oaused a revival in -A pathetio appeal for books comes the most terrible form of the scenes of from Central Africa. In Lake Nyassa slaughter and bloodshed which formerly is Lukoma Island, oontaining only made every chief town of the interior & twelve square mUes, but more densely Golgotha.
populated than many places in Europe. It is universally admitted in the settle.
Missionaries have lived there for years, ments that the approaching extinotion and many of the natives arB able to read of the slave trade in Western Afrioa is and write. The island has recently making warfare more meroiless than it .b~n comple.t.el'y transformed, huts of used to be.
The Missionary Review of the World — January 1893
OUR WORLD. I
MISSIONARY REVIEW OF THE WORLD.
VOL. XVI. No.1.-0ld 8eries.–JANUARY.–VOL. VI. No. 1.-New &riu.
OUR WORLD.
BY THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF.
A GENERAL GLANCE AT SOME GREAT FACTS.
Facts are first forms of truth. In all solid and substantial structures they are the base-blocks. To ascertain them, classify and arrange them, and then utilize them are the triumphs of the scientist, the sage, and the seer.
There are certain great facts pertaining to our world and its inhabitants which we need to master. They so seriously affect our work and our success that to know them and to have them at command are of the first importance. Some of these we seek hero to collate and compare, aiming at comprehensiveness and accuracy, and hinting the lines along which investigation should be <,arried on, and additions constantly made.
I. OUR EARTH. -The dimensions of our globe are familiar-its circumference of about 25,000 miles, its diameter of about 8000, its surface of 200,000,000 square miles, of which three fourths represent water. Europe, inclusive of the British Isles, has an area of 3,600,000 square miles, with a coast-line of 20,000 miles; Asia, an area of 17,000,000 square miles, with a coast-line of 40,000 miles; Africa, an area of 11,500,000 square miles, with a coast-hne of 16,000 miles. To North America belongs an area of 8,000,000, and to South America an area of 6,800,000 square miles, while the united coast-line of these twin continents cannot fall much short of 30,000 miles on the Atlantic frontier alone. Australia, the island continent, has an area of 3,000,000 square miles; and the estimated area of the ;polar regions is over 3,000,000 square miles. The islands of the sea embrace about one hundredth part of the land area, or 550,000 square miles. If, then, Australia represents the unit of measurement, Europe has a fraction more area, South America twice as much, North America more than two and a half times as much, Africa nearly four times, and Asia nearly six times as great area.
The river systems are immense. They represent a total length of over 125,000 miles, or five times the circumference of the earth. The navigable waters of the Mississippi and tributaries reach 40,000 miles; the Nile, over 5000; the Amazon, 3750; the Yenisei, 3400; the Volga, 2400. The Americas claim over 65,000 miles of river system; Asia, 33,000 ; and Africa and Europe each 15,000, but Africa has probably much more.
II. OUR RAcE.-'l'he earth's population can be stated only approxi- mately, as the data are incomplete. The most carefuUy compiled statistics are probably those of E. G. Ravenstein, and those given in ., Die Bevolke- . rung der Erde," according to which the total population runs from 1,467,920,000 to 1,479,729,000. These figures approach so close to 1,500,000,000 that for all practical purposes this round number may be safely and conveniently used for the totality of the human race at this date. Of this number, Asia has about 840,000,000; Europe, 360,000,000 j Africa, 170,000,000; North America, 90,000,000; South America, 35,000,000 j and Australasia and other islalli~ systems, 5,000,000 j or, if we divide the population into 150 parts, Asia has 84 ; Europe, 36 ; Africa, 17 j North America, 9 ; South America, three and one half parts, and the islands of the sea, one half part.
Ravenstein reckons the increase from 1880-90 at 6 per cent in Asia j 8.7 per cen~ in Europe; 10 per cent in Africa; ] 5 per cent in South America; 20 per cent in North America, and 30 per cent in Australasia. These figures are startling in significance. While Asia has the bulk of the race, the lowest rate of increase is there; and in America and Australia, where the least numbers have been found, the rate of increase is so much more rapid that an actual transfer is taking place from Europe and Asia to the New World.
At least 3065 languages and dialects are already known to prevail. The Bible has been translated into about 260 of them. The sexes are almost equally divided, with a slight preponderance i~ favor of the males. As to color, the extremes of white and black are as 5 to 3 ; the other seven fifteenths are intermediate brown and tawny.
As to density of population, China leads, with from 200 to 400 to the square mile j next come Great Britain, India, Western and Southern Europe, and the Eastern States of North America with from 50 to 200 ; Africa, Russia, and the bulk of the United States bring up the rear with from 10 to 100 to the square mile. Asia will probably average 60, and Europe 100 to the square mile.
As to clothing and housing, about otle third of the race are well clad, about half partly clad, and one sixth practically naked. Curiously enough, about the same proportion holds as to dwellings ; the best clad being the best housed, and the practically nude being practically houseless.
III. OUR THRoNEs.-The governments of the world fall into four convenient classes: despotisms, or unlimited monarchies; kingdoms, or constitutional monarchies; republics, and petty soveff~ignties ruled over by chiefs. Russia is an example of despotic rule,. the whole legislative, executive, Ilnd judicial power being practically united in the Czar, whose will is law. The sultanate, the Empire of Morocco and of Turkey are absolute sovereignties, unrestricted by laws, civil or religious, and with authority unlimited. Of constitutional monarchies, Great Britain, Austria, Prussia, Belgium, Denmark, and of late Japan, furnish examples. Of republics, the ITnited States, France, Argentine Republic, Brazil, etc. ; of petty sovereignties, irregular and tribal governments, Africa is a most conspicuous example, divided among almost countless chiefs; and where a traveller may meet a new language with every sixty miles of advance, and about as many new rulers.
It is a most noteworthy fact that precisely according to the progress of the race in civilization do despotic power and arbitrary force yield to government by the people and for the people. .
IV. OUR FAITHs.-The best presentation of the religious systems of the world is probably that of the Church Missionary Society, which givps to the heathen faith 874,000,000 adherents; to Mohammedans, 173,- 000,000; to the Roman Catholics, 195,000,000; to the Greek Church, 85,000,000; to the Jews, 8,000,000; and to Protestant communities, 135,000,000. This would make over one half the race heathen; one in about 180 a Jew; one in 18 a Greek; one in 9 a Mohammedan; one in 8 a Romanist, and one in 10 or 11 a Protestant. Protestant church-members, however, do not number over 40,000,000 ; all who fall into no other class being reckoned as in Protestant communities-a very unsafe and unsatisfactory mode of classification when we are estimating the available force of the Church. More than 1,000,00(1,000 human 1.Jeings are without even a nominal Christianity; and though about 450,000,000 are reckoned as nominally Christian-or nearly one third of the race-less than one tenth of these actually belong to the evangelical churches.
It ought to be noted, also, that Mohammedanism has more in common with Christianity than any other false faith. It accepts the bulk of the Old Testament, admits many of the patriarchs and prophets, and even Jesus among saints and seers, while affirming the supremacy of Mohammed; is the foe of idolatry, and maintains the unity of the Godhead as against polytheism. Its very approaches to Christianity have, ho~ever, been its secret of resistance. The Mussulman claims that his faith embraces all that is worth retaining in the religion of Christ, and, in all else, is an advance upon it. And thus far the territory of Islam is almost untouched by Christian missions. The Greek Church stands midway between Protestantism and Romanism, with decided leanings toward the doctrine and practice of the Vatican. Romanism, especially in South America, is but one remove from paganism; though in some parts of the world, especially in the United States, it approaches very closely to Protestantism in intelligence and pure morality.
There is a vast gulf between heathenism and paganism, so called, both names being very inadequate. The faiths of Confucianists, Brahmanists, and Buddhists are immeasurably above the fetich worship of Africa, among some (If whose tribes the very conception of God seems to have almost died out. But nowhere among men have any yet been found who have absolutely no form of religion or worship, or conception of Ii deity.
V. OUR AGE.-There has been no such an epoch of general progress since the world began. Such books as McKenzie's" Nineteenth Century," Routledge's" Inventions and Discoveries of the Century," etc., give some conception of the immense strides of modern civilization. to which the advance of all past ages seems like snail's pace. We seem to stand at the culmen or apex of material and social progress. During the past ninetytwo years, since the century began, the movement onward and forward has been incredible. Mr. Gladstone is credited with saying that during the first fifty years of this century the race made more progress than during all the preceding centuries j that in the next quarter century the advance was greater than during the previous half century j and that during the next decade it was even more rapid than during the twenty-five years before. If this be true, then the ten years between 1875-85 were marked by a material advance so marvellous that it puts at a distance the progress of the five thousand years preceding-or, in other words, the rate of onward march was five hundred times as rapid !
A glance at the inventions and discoveries of the nineteenth century, or even the latter half of it, will astound any student of history. At n) period has the race touched such a golden age of intelligence and social improvement. These ninety golden years are each of them centuries measured by achievement. They are the age of the railway and steamship j of electricity as a motor, messenger, illuminator j of the telegraph and telephone and photograph and phonograph j of the ocean cable, the signal service j of the perfected microscope and telescope, and the more marvellous spectroscope and spectral analysis j of aniline dyes, of petroleum and all its compounds j of the steam printing-press, the typewriter, the sewing-machine j of the discovery of forty new metals, and the revolution of chemical science j of the tirth of geology, of anIBsthetics, and a score of new' sciences and arts. The world is now one neighborhood, and no nations are any longer distant or inaccessible. This is the age of world-wide exploration, occupation, communication, association, civilization, organization j the age of the postal union and cheap postage, of newspapers and magazines and cheap books j of free schools and universities; of machine work displacing hand work j of universal opportunity and consequent responsibility. It is the age of giant enterprises and giant explosives, when nothing seems impossible to men, and when we seem to be on the verge of a new era, when the air will be traversed, as the sea is now navigated, by vessels built for mastery not of waves, but of winds!
Could moral and spiritual progress but keep pace with material and ,;ocial advance, it is impossible to foresee or foretell to what millennial mountain heights of glory and of bliss, of purity and power the 'race might come hefore the now opening year should close j and as to the dawn of the new century, not even the most enthusiastic seer could give us the faintest foreshadowing of the possible grandeur of the future of mankind!
In studying our age, it is of the highest importance to appreciate the time factor in human history-the fitness and the fulness of the times. But one fit time and but one full time ever comes to any man or to the race. Then, if ever, the door must be entered j then, if ever, the work must be done. Delay means disaster, and sometimes destruction. If the work for which God gives us the season-the seasonable hour-is not then wrought, it can in most cases never be done j or, if at all, only out of season and at disadvantage, amid unfavorable conditions.
VI. OUR FOEs.-No careful, 'calculating man will stop with the more hopeful vision of progress. Humanity never had to face foes more numerous nor more deadly. If this is the promised lanEl. and age, the giant sons of Anak are in the midst of us with their walled cities and chariots of iron. In presence of some of them we feel ourselves to be as grasshoppers, so insignificant and impotent have even Christian nations proven in coping with these colossal, destructive forces of society.
Dr. G. W. Samson has mentioned four forms of intoxication and idolatry: those of the imaginative, nervous, generative, and acquisitive centres and powers of man's being; and the" strong drink" on which these respectively debauch themselves are the theatre and the novel for the imagination j alcohol and opium and tobacco for the nerves j lust and sensuality for the generative system, and greed and Mammon for the faculty of acquisition.
Perhaps the most formidable foe of human health and happiness is the d1'ink habit. Whatever may be said to vindicate or extenuate the use of intoxicants, the awful fact remains that the main cause of disease and death, of vice and crime, of poverty and misery, of vagrancy and lunacy, is RUM! The natural tendency of the use of all forms of spirituous liquors is toward abuse. "Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess. " In the United States alone the total consumption of distilled spirits, wines, and malt liquors is 900,000,000 gallons annually, or nearly fifteen gallons per capita. In Great Britain and Ireland the annual expenditure is still worse. In the United States it is about $900,000,000 (£180,000,000) a year, and growing, for a population of 66,000,.000. But in Great Britain, for less than 40,000,000 PQople, it was, in 1891, over $706,000,000 (£140,000,000), and for beer alone over $390,000,000 (£78,000,000). "Enough spent for beer to provide the country with two navies and armies, and with the civil service thrown in," says the London Times " "enough to pay the interest on the national debt for three years j or, if funded for nine years, to pay the whole debt and leave no more annuities or interest to pay."
Judges and magistrates affirm that at least seven tenths of all crime and acts of violence are traceable to the use of strong drink. One philanthropist quaintly says that in nine cases out of ten murder finds its secret in two words-formed by spelling murder backward. The total abstinence pledge adopted by every intelligent human being to-da~ would give us, a generation hence, a world free from its principal curse.
Next to drink, and strangely allied to it as a destructive foe of man, comes lust. Gross or refined sensuality in Protean forms stalks everywhere, the moral pestilence of the darkness, and in some parts boldly walks at noonday. Legalized prostitution in Roman Catholic countries, and to some f'xtent in Protestant communities, puts the sanction of law and license abou~ sexual sins, and undertakes to secure immunity, if not impunity, to that vice which God has signalled out for condign judgments in the bodies of the transgressors. Secret and systematic indulgence in sexual sins hides under the veil of domestic privacy and even of marriage, and corrupts the very springs of personal virtue and family purity. Children come into the world with the awful marks of physical and moral leprosy, or are criminally disposed of before birth by nameless and shameless practices which the pen refuses to record on these pages. A few years ago even in Christian England facts were coming to the front involving those in high life-facts so awful and alarming that their full exposure was never permitted. And in America a system of wholesale procuring of victims for illicit practices was, five years ago, unearthed, that would have disgraced the annals of Pompeii or Sodom. When a distinguished social philosopher of Oxford made a catalogue of dominant social sins threatening the destruction of the race, he placed first in the list a form of vice to which Paul refers in Romans (1 : 27), and which, though too shocking to allow description, is openly practised in the baths of Constantinople and throughout the Orient, and is not unknown in the heart of New York City.
These may suffice as two examples of our foes, whose name is legion. To mention greed is enough-that practical and insatiate lust of gain which makes the worshipper like unto his idol (Ps. 115 : 8). The man who is the victim of avarice comes to have a metallic ring, is changed into a coin, and drops into his grave with a chink. If the lust of sensual pleasure begets putrefaction, the lust of gain brings petrifaction j the miser is a hard man, of a. stony nature, and comes to love nothing but the golden calf. The opposite vice to this is extravagance-a lavish, careless, godless expenditure, scarce less hurtful than hoarding miserliness. And these are days of extravagance scarce equalled in the- days when suppers in Rome cost a fortune, when Nero tickled his throat with a foather to make way f(r a new gluttony, or Cleopatra dissolved costly pearls for her drink.
Our ri.sks are even more inclusive than our viceB and open sins. Our pride of numbers, our dependence on the patronage of the wealthy and socially great j our dependence on occasional appeals and impulsive responses for benevolent work and funds j the prevalent disposition to work by proxy. and shift individual responsibility j organizations, with the perils they involve; autocracy and virtual despotism, resulting from lodging undue responsibility with a few j the growth of frivolity and the habit of
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY ONE OF PREPARATION
pleasure-seeking, with the consequent decay of earnestness of character; avarice, appetite, and ambition as controlling influences in the lives even of many of the better class; fashion and fashionable slavery; perilous social amusements, such as the dance, the card-table, the theatre, the horse-race, the gambling-table-these are a few of our foes and risks. And we have said nothing of ecclesiasticism and sacerdotalism and a worldly or secular type of church-membership, on the one hand, and infidelity and irreligion, on the other j a nominal Christianity and a defiant atheism; of the aristocracy of culture and the plutocracy of wealth; of the caste lines in society; of the monopolies in trade, and the perpetual war between labor and capital. And who shall measure the gulf which yawns beneath our feet in the desperate designs of the socialist, communist, and nihilist!
Here, for lack of space, we arrest this paper, leaving to a future issue to discuss further and no less important matters which affect our world and race and age-our history, responsibility, destiny. But surely this is the golden age of opportunity. The ends of the world stand looking with august interest to see what the true followers of God will do to uplift humanity, to repel and defeat its foes, purify its faiths, displace its false thrones, and usher in a greater age of peace and purity and power!
(To be continued.) THE NINETEENTH CENTURY ONE OF PREPARATION.* BY REV. JOSIAH STRONG, D.D.
We are entering on a new era of which the twentieth century will be the beginning, and for which the nineteenth century has been a preparation.
Though many of the achievements of the past century have been unequalled in the world's history, they generally suggest not finality or completeness, but rather beginnings. Many and great as have been the changes of this century, there is reason to expect that those of the next will be even more and greater. It is not proposed to call on the imagination to anticipate them. This ·work is not speculative. It does, however, attempt to trace some of the general lines of development in the past, to note their present trend, and, within certain limits, to project them into the future. It is quite true, as Lowell remarks, that "the course of events is apt to show itself humorously careless of the reputation of prophets." But surely one may study discerningly the signs of the times, which are only I the shadows of coming events cast before, without attempting the prophetic role.
If eventt"l were simply strung tOi!ether in orderly fashion on the thread of time, like beads on a string, without any relation of cause and effect, * See Editorial Notes. there could be no signs of the times; but because to-morrow is folded within to-day, because human nature and its developmt:nt are under laws which remain constant from age to age, because, as Carlyle says, "The centuries are all lineal children of one another," and bound by the law of heredity like other offspring, it becomes possible, in measure, to forecast coming events, to draw from the study of past experiences and present conditions reasonable inferences concerning the future.
Let us glance hastily at some of the more significant ehanges which have taken place during the past century and note their meaning.
1. Changes which may be called physical. There is nothing more fundamental touching the circumstances which affect all human beings than time and space. They condition all human activities and relationships, and hence to change them is to affect all human activities and relationships. This is the reason that steam and electricity have had fIlO profound an influence on modern civilization. They have materially changed t.hese two great factors that enter into all lives. It is as if the earth had been, in two or three generations, reduced to a much smaller scale and set spinning on its axis at a far greater speed. As a result, men have been brought into much closer relations and the world's rate of progress has been wonderfully quickened. Time-saving methods and appliances now crowd into a day business which a generation ago would have occupied a week or more. The passage of the Atlantic, which once required weeks, is now a matter of days. It is possible to be in the United States one week, and before the close of the next in Asia. A little time suffices to compass great events as well as great distances. We read of the" Thirty Years' War" in the seventeenth century; the Franco-Prussian War, which destroyed one empire and created another, was begun and practically ended in thirty days. By reason of the increased ease of communication Rew ideas are more speedily popularized, public opinion more quickly formed and more readily expressed; both thought and action are stimulated; reforms are sooner accomplished, and great changes of every sort are crowded into as many years as once they would have required generations or even centuries.
And it must be remembered that these quickening processes are not yet completed or their results fully apparent. Science is daily making easier the conquest of space; and there is reason to believe that the victories of electricity are only well begun.
Thus these changing physical conditions will continue to render the isolation of any people increasingly difficult – a fact of the utmost importance to the world's progress, for isolation results in stagnation, and we accordingly find that the civilization of all peoples is inversely as their isolation. The conformation of Europe and the exceeding irregularity of her coast line are favorable to the intercourse of her various nations with each other and the world, and Europe has developed the highest civilization. Moreover, ~hose of her peoples who are most favorably located for intercourse with their neighbors have made the most progress. The great mountain ranges of Asia, her vast plains, the absence of water communica- tion, or oceans so broad as to discourage the timid navigators of earlier centuries are much less favorable to intercourse, and the civilization of Asia is much lower t,han that of Europe. That part of Africa which lies on t1.e MeditTJrranean has been in contact with the world, and has had at times a high civilization; but the remainder of the continent has been for the most part a terra incognita. Her people have looked out, not upon the highway of narrow seas or straits, but upon the barriers of boundless oceans. The location of Africa and her coast line are much less favorable to intercourse than those of Asia, her people have been much more isolated, and there we find a lower barbarism than any in Asia.
The world is entering on an era in which the isolation of any people will become impossible, and then will the world's barbarism disappear.
2. Notice, briefly, the political changes of the past century. The explanation of most of them is found in the growth of democracy.
During the eighteenth century the spirit of free inquiry became uni- versal in Europe, but it was purely speculative. 'l'hough England enjoyed a measure of liberty. absolutism still reigned on the continent. For sixty years of that century Louis XV. disgraced the throne of France. He regarded the people of his domain as his personal property. Their lives and substance were at his disposal. But wretched and enslaved as was the condition of the French, that of other continental nations is shown by De Tocqueville to have been even worse.
The French Revolution made the people conscious of their power, and hence prepared the way for liberty as soon as the people should become capable of it. Napoleon, in accomplishing his own selfish and despotic purposes, did inestimable service to popular rights, and though, upon his fall, the old order of things was re-established for :l season, at least in form, absolutism from that time on must needs reckon with the growing spirit of democracy.
Says Robert Mackenzie :* "Sixty years ago Europe was an aggregate of despotic powers, disposing at their own pleasure of the lives and prop- erty of their subjects j to-day the men of Western Europe govern themselves. Popular suffrage, more or less closely approaching universal, chooses the governing power, and by methods more or less effective dictates its policy. One hundred and eighty million Europeans have risen from a degraded and ever-dissatisfied vassalage to the rank of free and self-governing men." When we remember that freedom is the most favorable condition for' a natural, healthful development, we see the significance of the growth of modern democracy. This great political change is prophetic of progress because it has removed the barriers which most seriously obstruct progress.
* The Nineteenth Century, p. 459. 3. Consider, now, certain social changes. Since the middle of the century there has sprung up and spread well-nigh throughout Christendom a deep discontent on the part of workingmen. Its causes and its signifi- cance will furnish the subject of a later chapter (VII.), in which it will be shown that this popular discontent foreshadows important changes in our civilization. Suffice it now to remark that a condition of political eq'bality having been achieved, it is short-sighted to suppose that society has, there- fore, arrived at a state of stable equilibrium. Democracy necessitates popular education, and popular education multiplies popular wants. If the many have the same wants as the few, they will demand the same means of gratifying those wants. To give to the poor like tastes with the rich is to create an inevitable demand for substantial equality of condition, and to stimulate dis<:;ontent until such equality is secured.
The discontent of labor has gained such a hearing, that there has been awakened within a few years an unprecedented interest in industrial and all sociological questions. Books treating these subjects have had an , astonishing circulation. A large number of periodicals devoted to social economy, and advocating industrial, economic, or social reforms, have sprung into existence. Labor organizations. whose avowed object it is to effect important change in the laws and in the whole status of labor, have appeared and grown powerful. Advocates of the reorganization of industry on a co-operative instead of a competitive basis have made many disciples. The word socialism is growing less obnoxious to Americans. It is, as Dr. Gladden says, being "fumigated j" and it has needed it, for some foul meanings have infested it. Socialism, separated from all adventitious doc- trines, has been accepted by many Christian men and women of the Ameri- can stock, and among them are many of the YOIlnger clergy.
The growth of socialism in Germany during the past twenty years has been surprising. The Socialist vote for members of the Reichstag in 1871 waf! 124,655 ; in 1890 it was 1,341,587. Schmoller well remarks: "A social movement of thousands is possible only when thousands of thousands have become doubters. "
The German Government has taken an important step toward State socialism, by insuring German workingmen against illness, accident, and bId age, making such insurance compulf!ory. Like measures have been proposed in France, Hungary, and Denmark. "The question at issue among most continental statesmen and students to-day concerns the details rather than the principle of such State help. The era of full reaction against laissez faire theory and practice 'has come, and Emperor William II. is its prophet." * Taken in connection with the discontent of workingmen, and an in- creasing readiness on the part of society to listen to their demands for change, there is great significance in the tendency toward organization and centralization which is seen everywhere.
* u. W. Hinman, in the Social Economist, April, 1891. The progress of the race has been along two lines-viz., the develop- ment of the individual and the organization of society, the. kind of organi- zation of which society is capable being dependent on the measure or type of development attained by'the individual. In the history of Europe, for centuries together, progress seems to have been along only one of these lines at a time-a development of the individual at the expense of social organization, followed by a closer organization of society, a centralization of power at the expense of personal liberty. Thus when society began to emerge from the lawless individualism of the barbarians, it was organized under the aristocratic form and then passed into the more centralized form of absolutism, which culminated in the seventeenth century, and under which individual rights were ruthlessly sacrificed. In the next century the reaction toward individualism came with the French Revolution. The remarkable growth of democracy during the past one hundred years, which, of course, meant the development of individualism, has already been noticed; aud now we see unmistakable evidence that the pendulum of the ages has again begun to swing in the direction of a closer organiza- tion of society, which movement is greatly facilitated by the increased ease of communication afforded by steam and electricity.
Look at some of the evidence of this reaction. In the commercial world the tendency toward consolidation is most striking. First, many independent railway corporations were united into a system, and now great systems are being consolidated under one management. The same is true of telegraph lines. A like tendency is seen in all kinds of production.
In various lines of manufactures there appears an increasing output and a decreasing number of factories, showing, of course, consolidation. This tendency must continue 80 long as production on a large scale is cheaper than production on a small scale. "The following statements have re- cently been made in California, on what is claimed to be good authority [Overland Monthly], of the comparative cost of growing wheat in that State on ranches, or farms of different sizes. On ranches of 1000 acres, the average cost is reported at 92t cents per 100 pounds; on 2000 acres, 85 cents; on 6000 acres, 75 cents j' on 15,000 acres, ao cents; on 30,000 acres, 50 ; and on 50,000 acres, 40 cents."* One of the most striking features of the modern business world is the growth of powerful corporations and more powerful combinations in the form of " pools" and" trusts." The conditions of production and trans- portation have largely ceased to be democratic j and the question may be reasonably asked, Can our Government remaiQ democratic and our indus- tries continue aristocratic or monarchic ?-that is, controlled by the cor- poration or the industrial" king." The Encycloprodiri Britannica t says: " The great American Republic seems to be entering upon a new era, in which it must meet and solve a new problem-the reconciliation of democ- racy with the modern conditions of production. "
* D. A. Wells' "Recent Economic Changes,"_l';.~; t Vol. xxiii., p. 787· Ever since our late civil war there has been a marked tendency tow- ard the centralization of the Government of the United States. Justice Miller, in an address at Philadelphia on the occasion of the centennial celebration of the adoption of the Constitution, said: "While the pendu- lum of public opinion has swung with much force away from the extreme point of States-rights doctrine, there may be danger of its reaching an extreme point on the other side."
This centripetal tendency of the times is further illustrated by the creation of the Kingdom of Italy and the Empire of Germany out of politi- cal fragments. In the latter part of the eighteenth century there were in Germany nearly 300 independent powers.
Another manifestation of the same tendency is seen in the wonderful drift of population to the cities, which see~s to be a world phenomenon.
So general a tendency toward the centralization of population, of politi- cal power, of capital and of production, manifested in ways so various, can indicate nothing less than a great movement toward a closer organization of society, a new development of civilization.
Thoughtful men everywhere have become expectant of great social changes. Says President Andrews, of Brown University :* "If anything has been made certain by the economic revolution of the last twenty-five years, it is that society cannot much longer get on upon the old libertarian, competitive, go-as-you-please system, to which so many sensible persons seem addicted. The population of the great nations is becoming too con- densed for that. " '
Canon Westcott, professor at Cambridge, writes:t "On every side imperious voices trouble the repose which our indolence would wish to keep undisturbed. We can no longer dwell apart in secure isolation. The main interests of men are once again passing through a great change.
They are most surely turning from the individual to the society." The author of "God in His World" remarks: t "We are now approaching such a crisis. No human wisdom can predict its shaping any more than it can prevent the issne. The air is full of auguries, and even our fiction has become very precisely apocalyptic. It is theoretic prophecy, anticipating the realization of perfect scientific and social economics-the paradise of outward comfortableness. " The Westminster Review says: § "It is felt by every student and every statesman that some movement, vast and momentons, though indefinite, is passing like a great wave over the civil- ized world." And the Ohurchman says:/1 "It is idle to refuse to admit the fact that modern civilization is in a transition state. There are a thousand evidences that the present state of things is drawi;-:; to a close, and that some new development of social organization is at hand. "
Says Mr. William T. Stead : ~ " Everywhere the old order is changing and ** The Oongregationalist, Jannary 22d, 1891. t "Social Aspects of Christianity," p. 4. P. xxv_ § London, May, 1890. i New York, January 17th, 1891.
'J .. The Pope' and the New Era," p. 20. giving place untO the new. The human race is now at one of the crucial periods in its history, when the fountains of the great deep are broken up, and the flood of change submerges all the ~ld-established institutions and conventions in the midst of which preceding generations have lived and died." Srich citations might be indefinitely multiplied.
Many expect violent revolution. Whether such expectations are realized will depend probably on the Christian Church, whether she is sufficiently awake to see and to seize her opportunity. The Church is not yet adequately aroused, hut I believe that she can be, and therefore do not deem revolution probable. We may have social revolution, we must have social evolution. Social systems are never invented, they are evolved, they grow out of what has preceded. A revolution may suddenly sweep away existing institutions as a fire destroys a forest, but the new forest which rises out of the ashes is a growth. Surely it is too late for the world -or at least the Anglo-Sa~on part of it-to fall into the" French fallacy, that a new system of government" or a new social organization" can be ordered like a new suit of clothes."* The social changes which are sure to come will doubtless be great, but they will be natural-the effects of causes long antecedent-hence the importance of comprehending, as far as possible, existing conditions and tendencies.
4. Consider, now, briefly a few suggestions touching the changes of which the progress of science is prophetic.
Most of our scientific knowledge is the growth of the past century. It would be idle to attempt even to enumerate its numberless practical applications to life. By making communication easy and swift, science has effected all human relations and conditions, by perfecting the press ·it has popularized knowledge and powerfully stimulated the mind, by means of labor-saving appliances it has revolutionized the industrial world and added enormously to the world's wealth, awakened new aspirations on the part of the multitude, and created new problems and possibilities of life. If all that science has done for the world during this century were suddenly struck out, it would leave our civilization in ruins; so universal and profound would be the changes wrought, that we should hardly know whether we were living on this planet or had been mysteriously transferred to some other. And we must remember that much of the progress of seience'is so 0: recent that as yet we have seen scarcely a beginning its endless applica- tions to life. Moreover, some of the most practical sciences are still in their infancy; the field of knowledge is boundless, and each new acquisition makes others more easy. Science is certainly destined to make great progress during the next century, and therefore to work great additional changes in civilization.
What if it could be certainly known that during the twentiet.h crntury there would be a new revelation of God's will, another table of the Divine * James Russell Lowell's Democracy, p. 23. law given to men to meet new needs of civilization, and to hasten the coming of the kingdom of heaven upon earth; and so given as to authenticate itself and carry conviction of its truth to all the world? With what profound and eager expectation would it be awaited! What supreme blessings should we expect it to bestow on mankind, and what a mighty upward impetus would it give the race!
Just such a revelation has been made during the past century, and is to be continued in the next. Its truth is evident, but all do not yet perceive that the truths of science are God's truths, that its laws are God's laws. The Church has even looked askance at it. It has been regarded not only as secular, but as actually hostile to religion. Books have been written and professorships established to "reconcile," if possible, these two " foes;" but science is as truly a revelation from God' and of God as are the Scriptures, as really a revelation of His will as was the Decalogue, and one which is to have as real a part in the coming of His kingdom among men ~s the New Testament. God's will expressed in what we call natural law is as benevolent and as sacred as His will expressed in what we call moral law. The more perfectly His law, whether natural or moral, is known and obeyed, the better is it for the race. This new evangel of science means new blessings to mankind, a new extension of the kingdom. The Church ought to leap for joy that in modern times God has raised up these new prophets of His truth. It will be shown later that this modern revelation of His will means a mighty hastening of the day when His will is to 1:-e done on earth as it is in heaven.
One of the great services which science has rendered has been to clear the world of an immense amount of rubbish which lay in the path of progress. The scientific hahit of mind is fatal to credulity and superstition, it rests not on opinions, but facts j it is loyal not to authority, but truth. This means that as the scientific habit of mind obtains, men will break away from t1e superstitions of h€athenism and from the superstitious forms of Christianity. Scientific knowledge is rapidly becoming a necessity to all civilized peoples. Commerce is bringing the nations into an ever closer contact, which means increasing competition, and however cheap flesh and blood may be, they cannot compete with steam and steel. The Bureau of Statistics at Berlin estimated, in 1887, that the steam-engines then at work in the world represented approximately 1,000,000,000 men, or three times the working population of the earth. This mighty force is at work for the Christian nations. What are all the millions of China and India compared with it? Cheap labor cannot compete .with machinery which enables one man to do the work of ten or twenty or a hundred men. Labor·saving machinery is destined to go wherever men toil, and with it will go an increasing knowledge of science.
Moreover, China, IJating foreigners, wishes to become independent of them. She has been compelled to employ them to build her navy, to arm her soldiers, and make her munitions of war. In order to become independent of them she must needs introduce the study of the sciences into her schools. Thus science is destined to become the great iconoclast of the heathen world. What then! Men react from superstition into in- fidelity, which has already become the great peril of Japan and is becoming the peril of India. The ·greatest of modern Hindoos, Keshub Chunder Sen, once said: "I fear for my countrymen that they will sink from the hell of heathenism into the deeper hell of infidelity." The prospect is that in the course of a few generations the heathen world will become either Christian or agnostic. Which it will become will depend on the Church.
In this connection we may not inappropriately remind ourselves of the familiar and significant changes which have already taken place during the past century among heathen and Mohammedan peoples. * A hundred years ago the Japanese were so separated from the remainder of mankind that, so far as any intercourse is concerned, they might almost as well have inhabited the moon. There was then in force a law providing that" no ship or native of Japan should quit the country under pain of forfeiture and death, that any Japanese returning from a foreign country should be put to death, that no nobleman or soldier should be suffered to purchase anything from a foreigner, that any person bringing a letter from abroad should die, together with all his family, and any who might presume to intercede for him. "
Until within a few years the following royal rescript, issued on the extirpation of the Jesuits, remained posted up through all the kingdom : " So long as the sun shall warm the earth, let no Christian be so bold as to come to Japan j and let all know that the King of Spain himself, or the Christian's God, or the great God of all, if he violate this command, shall pay for it with his head." To-day there is a new civilization in Japan.
As a Japanese lecturer said, there is nothing left as it was thirty years ago, " except the natural scenery. "t The nati.on is now eager to place itself in the forefront of progress.
China has for centuries been separated from the world by a barrier far more effectual than her famous " ~yriad Mile Wall"-a wall of pride and prejudice, more immovable, more impenetrable, more insurmountable than any possible wall of stone and mortar.
But a trial of Ilrms with Great Britain and France taught China a whole- soine respect for Western Powers j and her pride was sufficiently humbled to employ foreigners to teach her sons ship-building and navigation, together with the military science by which her armies had been beaten.
The War of 1856 resulted in the Treaty of Tientsin, which guarantees the protection of the Chinese authorities to all persons teaching or profess- ing the Christian religion, thus opening the door to Christian civilization.
* For a full and able discussion of these changes see the missionary classic, "The Crisis of Missions," by Rev. A. T. Pierson, D.D.
. t" The Crisis of Missions," p. 1()(). At the beginning of this century the gates of India were locked to Christian missions, and the East India Company held the key. That com- pany was hostile to missions because it received large revenues from native idolatries, and" as late as 1852 $3,750,000 were paid from public funds to repair temples, provide new idols and idol-cars, and support a pagan priest- hood."'"
The East India Company was abolished in 1858, and the British Gov- ernment is in hearty sympathy with Christian' missions in India. Its officials there annually contribute many thousands of pounds for their maintenance. Moreover, social caste, which in India separates classes as oceans separate continents, and which has served to maintain isolation and stagnation, is giving way before modern civilization, which is every- where bringing men into closer relations.
At the opening of the nineteenth century the Ottoman Empire was characterized by the same spirit which had once rendered it a terror to Christian nations. To.day the Protestants of Turkey, like the other re- ligionists of the empire, have their recognized rights and a representative at the imperial city, religious liberty having been assured by the Treaty of Berlin.
Only a few years ago the vast interior of the Dark Continent was a mystery. Now the great •• open sore of the world" has been thoroughly probed-a long step toward its healing.
The changes which have been very briefly recited have a significance which is simply boundless. During this century the barriers which sepa- rated more than 800,000,000 heathen from the transforming influences of modern and Christian civilizatiou have been broken down. The prison- pens which condemned more than one half of the hnman family to isolation, and, therefore, stagnation, have been thrown open. The contact of the Occident and the Orient has already produced in the latter unwonted signs of life. The dead crust of fossil faiths is beginning to be shattered by the movements of new life underneath. "In every corner of the world," says Mr. Froude, t " there is the same phenomenon of the decay of established religions. Among the Mohaqnnedans, Jews, Buddhists, Brah- mins, traditionary creeds are loosing their hold. An intellectual revolution is sweeping over the world, breaking down established opinions, dissolving foundations on which historical faiths have been built up. " And it should not be forgotten that religious beliefs underlie and determine social and political institutions.
The door" great and effectual" which is thus opened to the Christian Church has been only partially entered. Noble as has been the work of modern miRsions, it must be regarded chiefly as one of preparation. The languages of savage peoples have been reduced to writing, the Bible and a Christian literature have been translated into tongues spoken by hundr~ds * "The Cri8is of Missions," p. 48. t N{fftlt American RtvielO, December, 1879.
1893.J A CENTURY OF MISSIONS
of millions, schools and seminaries for training up a native ministry have' been established, missionaries have learned much of native character and of the necessary conditions of success. A foothold has been secured, a fulerum found, the Gospel lever put in place, and the near future will see the mighty uplift.
We have cast a hasty glance over Christendom and heathendom, and have sought to interpret briefly, though not superficially, the great changes of the century. They seem to me to point unmistakably to One conclusion : the drawing of the peoples of the earth into ever closer relations, wh'ich will render isolation, and therefore barbarism, impossible, and will operate as a constant stimulus j the growth of freedom which removes the greatest !:-arriers to progress; the social ferment and the evident tendency toward a new social organization; the progress of science, destroying superstition, thus clearing the way for truth; the opening of the heathen world to the power of the Gospel and the quickening forces of modern life; the evident crumbling of heathen religions, which means the loosening of the foundations of heathen society-surely all these indicate that the world is about to enter on a new era, for which the nineteenth century has been the John the Baptist• .. Out of the shadow of night The world moves into light; It is daybreak everywhere I"
-Longfellow.
A CENTURY OF MISSIONS. * BY THE REV. F. EDWARDS, B.A., OF HARLOW, ENGLAND.
The end of the first century of modern Christian missions is upon us. Weare entering on a new century of work and service, and we are entering it with enlarged privileges and with widened responsibilities. As we cross the threshold from the one century of completed lahor to the other century of anticipated blessedness, it will be well for us to lay to heart the teachings of the past, that we may be strengthened by its results and inspired by its experiences. Our preparation for our work and our consecration for its duties cannot fail to be increased.
It would 2eem as if the most prominent feature of our centenary celebration is to be the raising of £100,000. Other elements enter into the' official celebration, but they are all subservient to this great pecuniary purpose. I cannot help the conviction that if this is all, or that if this is mainly its result, we shall have prostituted to unworthy ends our opportunities; at any rate, that we shall have failed to secure for them the .. This address was read at the annual meeting of the Essex Union; and at the request of the Secretary of the China Inland Mission we cordially insert it in the pages of THE MISSIONARY RE- VIEW. It i8 one of the most thoughtful papers we have read,-En. highest possible good. If we succeed in raising the money-and about that I do not think there is much doubt-in a few years every trace of it will be gone. The new expenditure which is essential, and which must be met by it; the removal of the debt now existing, to which in part it is to be devoted; the meeting of what seems to promise to be a chronic annual deficiency, will exhaust the resources even before the last instalment of them becomes due.
We misunderstand our opportunity if this is the only end we can make our centenary serve. It may and it ought to minister to an enlarged liberality on the part of us all. If this is all that it does, it will just serve ·as our annual debts have done in the past-furnish the occasion for a spasmodic and unsatisfactory generosity. To my mind the announcement of our debts has often been most humiliating and saddening. It has come out that we have been behindhand, say, some £5000. The fact that there is a debt has led to the discovery on the part of many of our friends that they are wealthier than they had supposed, and that the contributions they had given had by no means exhausted or even crippled their resources. It has been no unusual thing for one to find that he could spare another £500, and for many to find that they could part with another £100 each. Collectively and individually the debt has been a curio~s revelation. We have found out that we have not done all that we could have done. We have done for the removal of a debt what the needs of the world and the claims of our Lord never moved us to do. We are high-souled as to the dishonor of not meeting the liabilities that have been incurred, but we should have kept our contributions if the work had not been done at all, or if the work could have been done at a cheaper rate. Our donations must be raised to a higher level, in which our obligations to our Lord and to the world He has redeemed will be met according to our ability. We ought not to need the stimulus of a debt to prompt us to liberality. It is not fitful and occasional liberality that will secure the evangelization of the world. We could well dispense with this £100,000, if all our churches, and all their members, recognizing the need, and thankful for the privilege of meeting it, would imitate one whose memorial is to be an abiding one, but whose greatness arose from the fact that her work and her ability ran together.
There is no doubt that the pecuniary aspect of our work is Of the utmost, the deepest importance. If we were more spiritual we should not feel that there was anything derogatory in this. There was one of whom we read that his alms as well as his prayers had come up before God. Ollf psalmody and our prayers form part of our worship, but the collecting boxes and the subscription lists need not be secular and unspiritual. The love which is shed abroad in the heart finds its response as much in our gifts as in our prayers. It feeds on liberality as well as on de1l:0tion.
And, as to this giving, it seems to me that our conception of our duty and our methods of giving all need to be revised. We are being constantly reminded that we have so many churches in our denomination, and that we have so many members in connection with thosEf churches. Weare told what the income of our Society is, and what it would be if every member of our churches, and every teacher and scholar in our schools, gave some small sum every week in every year. These calculations are made with the utmost nicety, and are, from time to time, printed in our Heralds and reported at our meetings. The one great aim of all these calculations seems to be, not the declaration of the fact that there is a work to be done, and that be its cost littJe or much it must be done, but to show that it can be done without much trouble and without any great loss to anybody in particular, as if the great recommendation of the great missionary enterprise were its cheapness. And, to encourage this idea of cheapness, we examine every item of expenditure abroad and cut down every possible expense to the lowest point-as if we were resolved that, while its cost to us is unfelt, we will give our agents the opportunity of showing their zeal and exercising their self-denial and winning their crown by bearing their cross. It would almost appear as if we did not mind who met the e~pense provided it did not fall too heavily upon ourselves. It costs thoae who do our work more sacrifice to live upon what we give them than it costs us to provide those means. I know we need to encourage the poorest among us to give, and it is a grand thing to believe, and know, that if we had only poor people in our communion the largest work on earth could still be done. The man is strongest among us who is supported by the contributions of the many by whom he is beloved, and not the man who is indebted for his living to the one or two rich people he happens to have in his congregation. In these days of democracy, it is not the power to have their own way, and to do as they like, that people want to be taught, but the power to work. The privilege of carrying on the work of Christ in the world is not the heritage of the rich among us, it is the heritage of us all alike, and we may all claim our fair share in its execution.
I know all this, and yet I am cODvinced that these calculations and this penny-a-week sYiltem are open to misapprehension. Somebody, whose resources are almost unbounded, hears that 28. 6d. a year from everybody will produce a certain sum, gives us the utterly inadequate sum as if that were his proportion, and forgets it was not for his sake, but for the sake of the widow and orphan that the calculation was made, that they might be encouraged to believe that they were not shut out from the privilege of partaking in the work of the extension of the kingdom of God. The lad was right in his tlfeology, though, perhaps, a little wrong in his history, who, in answer to the question, Who were the Pharisees ~ replied that they were a sect of the Jews noted for their stinginess, and that one of them one day brought a penny to the Lord Jesus, who took the penny into His hand and turned it round, and looked at it and said, Whose subscription is this? The widow who casts in her all to the Lord's treasury, though it only comes to two mites, need not wrap up the mites in paper, as if she would fain cover their littleness; those mites shine with the light of God's love, and are glorified thereby in the eyes of Him who gave His best and His all when he gave Himself for us. The penny a week of many of us who pride ourselves that we are doing our fair proportion, and that we have no right to deprive others of their privilege in giving by doing all ourselves, will be met by the withering rebuke implied in the question, Whose subscription is this? Its fault is not in itself, but in its giver.
When we have reached the highest ground and found the right principle that ought to secure this result–that the money in the Church's hands shall be adequate to meet all the legitimate expense connected with the Church's work-we shall not need 58. centenary cards or ingeniously devised £13 2s. 6d. collecting books, or clever calculations as to how far we shall be able t6 go if all the members of our churches will contribute a penny a week. I maintain that appeals for missionary purposeli ought not to be needed, and that when our funds are only forthcoming as the result of debt, there is something radically wrong. Our institutions ought no more to need to ask for ftmds for their working than our children ought to need to ask us for their food and clothing. All we can legitimately demand or look for is the opportunity of giving, and if that opportunity be but wisely afforded, all that is needed to induce us to embrace it is knowledge-knowledge of the work that is being done, and of the work that yet has to be done before we shall have overtaken the trust committed to us by our Lord. It is ignorance that paralyses our effort, and knowledge is the only power by which our liberality will be brought into active operation. If our churches did but know what has been done, what is being done, what has still to be accomplished, they would rise to the occasion, and there would be no need to plead with those who were already anxious to give. I suppose we shall all be agreed upon this point, and the only possible divergence of feeling and opinion will be as to the means by which this needed knowledge is to be disseminated. I take it t.hat we are preventing the development of missions when all we know about them is derived from our annual meetings, and I take it that we are not much improving matters when we seek to supplement their inspiration by readings from the llfis8ionary Herald at the monthly prayer-meetings, especially if the reader makes it clear that he is gaining his own information at the same time that he is communicating it to his hearers. There is a more excellent way than this, and, after testing it for nearly a quarter of a century, I venture to speak of it. God knows that we get enough sermons, and I dare say that, whether we preach or listen to them, we should all be glad to have fewer of them. So weary are we who listen that thirty minutes is as much as we can endure, and so exhausted are some of us who preach, that we find it hard work to find fresh and interesting materials for our sermons. It surely would be well if we could find something more interesting and stimulating without resorting, as some, unfortunately, do, to sensational methods of making the Gospel palatable. Something fresh to us who speak, and something fresh to us who listen, might bring about marvellous results. And we have not far to go to find out what that something should be. The Book of the Acts of the Apostles is the one unfinished book in the Bible. Apostles have been at work in the midst of us, and God has been working with them, and shame on us if we do not rehearse unto the people all that Jesus is continuing to do. If we would but tell out the story of this past century of modern missions, we should kindle enthusiasm where it does not now exist, and revive it where it is decaying. The triumphs of the Cross in this nineteenth century have even surpassed those of the first. On the part of the workmen, we can tell of heroism that has rarely been equalled: their labors in every sphere of service have been abundant; they have not counted their lives dear unto them, but have made them living ~acrifices unto the Lord. And as to the converts, why, even apart from Madagascar, we can tell of sacrifices that have been made, and of martyrdoms that have been endured, and of professions that have been witnessed, which make us sometimes think that if where there is no cross there can be no crown, our chance of coronation is but slight. It is these last chapters of the ever-growing Book of the Acts of the Apostles that we have' to make ourselves acquainted with, and we must preach them and expound them if missions are to be carried on successfully and triumphantly.
It will not hurt our churches or our minIsters to dispense with one sermon a month, and to have in its place a missionary lecture which shall tell the people about the work of God, and make them familiar with the signs and wonders which the ascended Lord is still doing in the world. The man who tries this will find that his theme is practically as exhaustless as the Bible itself. When I began this work, there were not wanting those who said I should soon come to the end of my materials. I remember saying, I will always have three months' stock in hand, and, when you hear me announce as my subject Carey and Ward and Marshman, you may conclude I have come to the end of my tether. Their work I have often spoken of, but, as yet, I have not told the story of their lives. The missionary literature and biography of the last hundred years are extremely rich. Contributions have come from every quarter. From the Moravians downward to the last of the Combers, God has given us men of whom we may well be proud; and I am sure the Apostle Paul will forgive us if we sometimes let our people know that there are other missionary travels and labors beside his. Every year adds to the already large list from which we can draw, and surely one night in the year might well be spared for our own annual report of the work of the Lord during the year. For years I have given one night to the review of the work of the year of our own Society. It will not do to read it or to make extracts. Read sermons are bad, enough, but read report~ are infinitely worse. We must master these reports ourselves, and we may nlry our lectures as much as we like. He is a poor preacher who can preach only one sermon on a good text. We can begin with the money, and tell how it was raised and how we Bpent it. Or we may describe the work and the workers-the spheres of their labor and what they do in them, and astonish our hearers by telling them the small cost at which it has all been done. Or we may begin with our European missions, and go on till we reach those farther off. There are a hundred ways of giving the same report. It took four evangelists to give us a picture of Jesus Christ, and when we have done our part in telling the story of modern missions, we shall have left more unsaid than we have told.
I am not unmindful of the fact that all this means work, and that the work must fall mainly upon the ministers of our churches. It is, however, for work that we ministers exist, and if we do not do it the reason for our existence is ended. I know it is easier to preach a sermon than it is to give a lecture. It is astonishing how easy we can make sermons and how often. Such lectures, however, as those I have been speaking of are different matters. They will involve an amount of reading and preparation from which we ought not to shrink. I may, however, remind you that during the last year or two the necessary labor has been much lessened. Cassell's" Conquests of the Cross," Snow's" Missionary Outlines," Partridge's "Missionary Biographies," the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge's books on the non-Christian religions of the world, and other books I need not specify, have brought within reasonable compass materials which those of us who in the past have gone over the same ground have had to collect for ourselves. I know that epitomes of history are not the safest help to the study of history, and mention these books simply to indicate the fact that no one need be deterred by the reading he will have to go through. A more serious objection arises from the expense involved in book-buying. It is hard that the men who most value books should find it hardest to get them. If our rich members did but know how they themselves would be benefited by their ministers having good libraries they would see to it that they should be provided with them. I may mention, however, that the books I have referred to are cheap, and many of the larger biographies which could be turned to good account are procurable at low rates from second-hand booksellers. I think, however, that if our Missionary Society were approached, the committee might do something to remove this difficulty~ The cost of a book il!! as legitimate an expenditure as that of a deputation. I once asked our late treasurer to give his book on the Congo to everyone of our ministers on the condition that he would read it and lecture on it to his people, and give them an opportunity of contributing to our funds. I am certain that £1000 would have been I raised without difficulty. I once offered, if the committee would find the hooks, to send them out to the brethren, who would use them, and to give the benefit of my experience as to subjects to all who would not be offended at my offering it. A small floating library of this sort would bring untold wealth to our Society. The books would be a treasure to those who read them and to those who had the substance of them given to them. My offer was not accepted. I suppose one must be inside the committee before one is considered wise enough to make suggestions, or one must forget his modesty and press his views forward at annual meetings to get heard. My time for work of this sort is over, and I therefore feel free to speak upon this subject. We make provision in our colleges for the study of Church history, but we do nothing for the history of modern missions. I well remember one who had gone nearly through his college course, and had been stirred by one of Livingstone's books, who has since done work in Africa which will live, who had never heard of Saker, and knew nothing of his stupendous work at the Cameroons. Give, I would Ray, at any cost, to our ministers the means of instructing the people, and, as !!loon as they are familiar with the work that is going on they will be ambitious of the privilege of partaking in it, and the only appeal that will be needed for the raising of the funds requisite for the carrying on of the work of Christ in the world will be the collecting-box at the doors. We shall not need the excitement of annual meetings, but our contributions will be stimulated by our knowledge, and our subscriptions and donations to missions will come to be regarded as parts of our necessary expenditure which must be met and cannot be curtailed.
And it is in this direction that our true centenary celebration is leading us. It seems to me that the grand characteristic of our mission work has been this, that we were the first to show that we were in touch with the great evangelical movement which came as a second Reformation into England. The other societies followed in our train, but it would, I think, be untrue to say that our work led to theirs. The true explanation is that their formation resulted from the same causes as our8, only it came later. We felt the inspiration first, and responded to it to the measure of our strength. If we are wise enough to see it, the outpoured blessing from on high which brought us into existence has tinged and baptized our development ever since. It was God's providence and not our wisdom that led to the choice of our first missionary sphere. Carey's longings and feelings would not have taken him to India. It was John Thomas who led to the establishment of our Indian Mission. The providence that took us there has never forsaken us. In addition to the earnest evangelists who in true apostolical succession have labored in India, we have had a succession of competent linguists who have laid the foundations which are essential to permanent success in the translations they have made of the Word of God into the vernacular. The scholarship that has marked some of our foremost men in India has never been surpassed even in our home churches. God has given us men who, as to the gift of tongues, have made us feel that' the wonders of Pentecost have not ceased. In our African Mission, the same Divine blessing has been realized. Itself the expression of the gratitude of redeemed and emancipated slaves, the first mission driven by persecution into new quarters, and the second given up as the result of the restlessness of German colonization, the forsaken stations and the renounced work have led step by step to the establishment or the Congo Mission, around which there is a halo of consecration and heroism which is as bright as any the Church has ever been privileged to rejoice in. The silent graves, as well as the still living voices, alike are eloquent in telling what the love of Christ can inspire men to attempt and to do. We may and we do weep over our losses, and in our unbelieving and calculating moods may ask the purpose of this waste j but those who have made the sacrifices would call back nothing that they have given, and presently in a regenerated Africa we shall have the convincing proof that the way of the Cross is still the way of light. And the Lord that has led us where we have gone' has blessed us in all that we have done. The direct results of our work are such as fill us with adoring gratitude. One has planted and another has watered, and everywhere God has given the increase. The very character of our progress is the highest proof that it will be maintained and augmented. In all lands it has been a growth, and the growth has been maintaineu," and it has increased. As we have pursued our course we have sometimes wondered whether we have been doing anything at all j but the review of every ten years of work has furnished us with accumulating evidence that if the ratio of our increase be but maintained, we are within measurable distance of the end. The mountain is becoming a plain before the Lord of hosts.
And as to the indirect results of our missions we can rejoice in them all. In Jamaica evangelization has been followed by emancipation. In India, some of the excrescences of Hinduism, if they were not its true growth, have disappeared. Our religion, even· where it has not been accepted, has touched and advanced civilization. Education has sprung up and has become general, and will soon be the birthright of every Hindu as it is already of every Englishman. The very women of India have been reached in their seclusion. "'Te have by science and philosophy undermined the foundations of the old faiths, and are preparing a highway over which the Lord Himself will pass in triumph over India.
And in another way we ha'"e reaped unexpected results. Affinities between the Indian races and ourselves have been discovered, the science of languages has been stimulated, the history of religions has been studied, the materials for the study of comparative religions have been gathered. It is missions that have made possible the researches and labors of sllch scholars as Max Muller and Dr. Legg. And by the increase of our knowledge of all the religions of the world we are enabled to approach men, not so much on the side that is sure to awaken their antagonism-for we have found that there are beliefs that are common to us all, and longings to which no human heart is a stranger-and we are able now to declare unto the heathen Him whom they have ignorantly worshipped.
The hand that has guided and blessed us is beckoning us forward, and if we have learned aright the lesson God has taught us, we shall be sure of this-that no work for God can be done in vain, and that in due season we shall reap if we faint not.
And if, forgetting for the moment all that has been done among the heathen through our instrumentality, we think of the effect of our missions among our home churches, again we shall have another illustration of one of the great laws of God's kingdom, that in blessing others we get blessed ourselves. If not to others, yet doubtless to ourselves, our missions have brought incalculable advantages and blessings. It is a memorable fact that the very men who were the originators of the foreign missions established, and for years themselves conducted, a mission in Cornwall. The cry that home has the first claim upon us originates with those who have no care either for home or foreign work. Our home missions are the offspring of our foreign missions. The last century has witnessed a growth of religion at home that would have been deemed impossible when it began. We have shown that we care for men's bodies as well as their souls, for their minds as well as for their spirits, for their earthly homes as well as for their heavenly dwelling-places. Life is more worth living to-day than it was a hundred yearl'! ago. Everything is not yet perfect, bllt we are better housed to-day than our fathers were. Nursing, medicine, surgery, have brought relief and alleviation to us that our fathers never dreamed, and there is a Christian element in it that once was absent. Much yet has to be done for middle-class education, but we are a better educated people than our fathers were, and the growth of education is showing no signs of decay. There has been an awakening on the part of the Church that it has a duty to perform which extends into every department of life. And with all our efforts for social and educational reform, direct evangelical work is more common than ever. And I cannot help noticing that we may find in our mission fields the true answer to many of the pressing questions that from time to time spring up among us. We are discussing at home what the Gospel is that is to be preached-and some, perhaps, are wondering whether, after all, there is any Gospel that can be preached-and the answer that comes home from every mission field is that the story of God's Jove and of Christ's redemption is still working wonders, changing men's hearts, and altering men's lives. Perhaps if we told the story oftener and plainer, we should have less need to doubt, and less time to discuss, for here, as everywhere, the Gospel will prove God's power unto salvation to everyone that believes.
I am sure of this-that this work has brought us into closest communion with our Divine Lord. As our work has grown upon us, and we have taken wider views of our responsibilities and our prifileges, we have seen the grandeur and the magnitude of the work He came to accomplish in redeeming the world to God as we never saw them before. Our hearts have beaten in harmony with the heart of the Lord Jesus. We have been in tOl1ch, in sympathy with Him. The enthusiasm of humanity that
DR. PENTECOST AT NORTHFIELD
moved Him has been realized by us. In forgetting ourselves and living for others, we have come nearest to Him. Our own spiritual life has been quickened by our work. We have never felt so sure of our oneness with our Lord as we have done when, in imitation of His sublime example, we have gone forth to seek and to save that which was lost.
Our retrospect of the past leaves but one feeling uppermost in our minds, and that feeling is one of thankfulness. It hal been a century of blessing, and the memory of it leads us forward to the work which claims our attention and tasks our energy, strong in faith and strong in hope. We cannot lag behind, we cannot falter. The Lord is with us, and we follow where He leads. He is leading us to vietory, and presently we shall reign with Him.
I close with words that have a deeper meaning now than they had when they formed the conclusion of the fiftieth report of our Society : "When God by His providence has effected such preparation, may it not be taken in connection with the promises of His Word, and the all-prevalent intercession of His Son, as an indication of His purpose? We think it may, we believe it must. Temporary and local reverses there are and will be, to awaken to fresh diligence and trust in God, but we believe that the general movement of His cause will still be onward; that, if not at every point, yet at most points of the line, the outposts of this year will be made the trenches of the next, till at length every encampment of hostile spiritual domination shall be broken up, and' the kingdoms of this world become the kingdoms of our Lord and His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever.' "
DR. PENTECOST AT NORTHFIELD.
OBSERVATIONS AND EXPERIENCES IN INDIA.
BY REV. H. B. HARTZLER.
Dr. George F. Pentecost is always a welcome presence at Northfield. Years ago he was drawn into the town, as were also the Gospel singers, Mr. Sankey and Mr. Towner, by the charms and associations of the place, to seek a home under its stately elms and maples; but Providence has not permitted him long to remain in his chosen home. The great cities of America, Englaud, Scotland, and India have claimed him for special service in the interests of the kingdom of God. After an absence of nearly two years in India, Dr. Pentecost once more appeared before a Northfield audience on Sunday, August 28th. It was the closing day of the Northfield "season," which had begun wit.h the World's Student Conference in July. The Congregational church was crowded to hear the words of their favorite speaker. In the morning and afternoon he preached with all his wonted energy and power, and in th~ evemng he g,'lve a remarkable account of his experiences and observations in India. The report which follows, lengthy as it is, falls far short of reproducing the magnificent, kaleidoscopic picture flashed upon the view of the audience by the eloquent orator. Dr. Pentecost spoke in substance as follows: " We have no time for the expression of personal feeling. I can only say that this day has been a very happy one to me. After coming from the high and low places of the earth, the great mountains and the great and boundless plains. from looking on the grandest scenery of the world, I come back to Northfield, and it seems to my eyes that thil!l is the brightest spot on the earth. Even the vale of Cashmere, celebrated by poet and sage, to my eyes is not more peaceful and restful than this dear old Connecticut valley. I regret that after all these years of absence I can spend so short a time among you, my friends and neighbors j but I must again say that this has been a sweet, restful, delightful day to me. And now I will try to tell something of the wonderful work of God in India as I have seen it during the last two years.
" Well, friends, I do not think if you should take a journey to another planet, that you would find yourself in the midst of more surprises than if you were to he suddenly transported from Northfield to India. I have the feeling, after having been in India only a little over seventeen months, that I have been in another planet. If I should speak to you of the geographical wonders of India, its billowy mountains, its magnificent forests and jungles, its wide, cultivated plains, it would require the whole evening to do so. Think of th~ vast snow ranges with mountains thirty thousand feet high, as if the Matterhorn were piled on top of Mt. B-lanc and then the two capped with the Rigi, and you still fail of the conception. Think of travelling through forests of oak an hundred miles, through which you could scarcely creep because of the dense undergrowth, and millions of orchids peeping and twinkling at you likfl myriads of fairy spirits, of forests of rhododendrons, towering from an hundred to an hundred and fifty feet in height and covered with one mass of brilliant flowers. Another evening might be spent on the architecture of IndIa. Take the one outstanding, illustrious example from the ten thousand of beautiful buildings in India: the celebrated Taj Mahal, the most symmetrical, the most restful and beautiful building the world has ever seen. I have looked at it in all lights j quivering in the first throbbing light of the day, and under the soft light of the setting sun j under the peaceful light of the full moon, and thrilling under the light of a million stars, when the whole structure had such a fairy look, that it seemed as though it might take wings and fiy up into the heaven, from whence it seems it must have come. The architecture of India, as wonderful and more spiritual than that of ancient Egypt, goes to prove that when we speak of the people of India as heathen, we are not to think of them as barbarians or savages or as untutored black men. Perhaps India holds a people the most cultured of any in the world. They have a religious literature the most massive, and written in a language more musical than the Greek, more prolific than the Latin, and more exact than either of them-a people who have a religious cult that antedates every religion of the earth, with a philosophical system from which both the ancient and modern western world have borrowed their most subtle thoughts.
"In India, as I said here a few years ago. in my judgment, we find the chief centre of the missionary problem. Africa has its teeming millions, China has its teeming millions, and India its teeming millions, but in these three great centres of the world's population it seems to me that India holds the key of all the foreign missionary problem of to-day. In India there are three great religions: Mohammedanism, Hinduism, and Christianity. We often think of Turkey as being the seat of the Moham- medan power; but the real head is in India. We might convert Turkey from Mohammedanism and still its chief strength would be left in India. Here is the home of Hiuduism in its double form, the philosophical Hinduism of the monasteries, the monopoly of the priests and scholars of India; and the gross and bestial idolatry with its millions of votaries among the common people, centred about its tens of thousands of temples. Christianity is the David in the midst of these twin Goliaths. Mohammedanism has 70,000,000 followers; Hinduism, 200,000,000 ; Buddhism, which once dominated all India, does not exist in all the length and breadth of the Jand to-day. Centuries ago the astute Brahmins seeing that Hinduism was doomed in the prevalence of Buddhism, finally embraced Buddha and made him the ninth incarnation in their pantheon. This was the doom of Buddhism, for, having embraced Buddha, they proceeded to squeeze him to death in their loving embrace.
" A few years ago there was a large gathering of Brahmin Pundits and priests, who came together from all parts of India to discuss the duty of Hinduism with reference to Christianity. They recognized the fact that Christianity was making rapid strides in India, and they decided that they would adopt Jesus Christ as they had centuries before adopted Buddha, and thus dispose of Christianity, but their scheme would not work, because they forgot that Jesus Christ would not be adopted by them. So we have these three religions struggling in that land for the supremacy. India is the land par excellence of romance and destiny. Weare prone to forget what an influence India has had upon the countries of the world. All history shows us that India has had a predominating influence upon the West. It is a settled· fact that the European country which has held in the past the keys of India's commerce has risen to the highest rank among European/powers; and the country or city that has had that key and then lost it has fallen from the high place which it occupied to the lowest, histori.:ally and politically-as witness Alexandria, Venice, Portugal, and Holland. In dealing with this country we are dealing with the mightiest people and country in the world. Ethnologically we are brothers. The Hindus who possess the country to-day are Aryans, who emigrated into that land before the time of Moses. "Weare the same race as the Indians. They are black, we are white; but we have the same features, and our "European languages are sprung from the same Sanscrit roots. The differ- ence is that in that great migration part went in one direction and part in another. The part of that great Aryan family which travelled toward the West and thence toward the North, and strained itself through the western barbarian people, emerged at last in the great and now all-predominating Anglo-Saxon race. The Hindus are those who went South and East through the Bolen and Khibar pas3es of the Himalayan Mountains into the Punjab, and thence spread over all India, overlaying the Dravidian people. I remember talking with a very distinguished Brahmin on this subject. I said, 'But, my brother, you know that I am also a Brahmin.' He wanted to know what I meant. Then I spoke a parable. I said, ' Some three or four thousand years ago two brothers started from a certain part of Asia. The older one moved west and north ; the younger south and east. The elder brother settled in Europe, while the younger brother settled in India. The only difference is that you are a descendant of the younger brother and I of the older.' He was inclined to question the statement, but I told him that at least he could not disprove it.
" After two years of intimate intercourse with the educated men of India, my love for them has increased. The better I came to know this people, the more I talked with them, and the oftener I got on my knees with them, the more tenderly and sympathetically I carne to love them; and when I turned away from the last meeting held with them, I turned away with my heart filled with emotions of tenderest love for those splendid men who for nights and weeks together came to hear the story of Christ.
" It has been said of the Hindu religion that it is eternal and unchangeable. They claim that their religion is based upon an eternal revelation and that it is unchangeable. The critics of Christianity. who have discussed the question whethe.r it is possible for Christianity to pervade India, have said that in India we have to contend with an unchangeable religious system, bound and linked together by an indissoluble caste system which renders it an impregnable religious fortress. If I had time I might show you, through well-certified facts, that, while it is the boast of the Hindu that his religion is unchanging and unchangeable, no religion in the world has given so many evidences of erosure and decay as theirs has under the influence and impact of Christianity for the last hundred years. Of course when we think of the 300,000,000 Hindus and Mohammedans, and our little force of Christians in India, it looks to the superficial observer like a hopeless undertaking to Christianize these millions. It seems as though the means were entirely inadequate to reach the desired end, and that the task could never be accomplished. So the passing stranger, the coldhearted friend, and the hot-hearted enemy are constantly saying that the conqueBt of India by forces that are there is an impossibility. There are those who take delight in counting up the number of Christian converts and then counting up all the money that has been appropriated and ~pent for carrying on the work; comparing the number won over for Christ with the number of dollars spent for that purpose, and by this commercial test declaring that modern missions are a wasteful extravagance and that practically the work is a failure; but just here, in passing, I would like to say that in my judgment the result of Christian work in India is any way from fifty to five hundred times greater than the result of Christian labor in Christian America, when you compare the number and cost of instrumentalities in that country with those in this. The most hopeful field of missionary labor to-day is India. If I had money to invest in religions work and were seeking the most profitable investment for it to-day, I would invest in India rather than in the Connecticut valley.
" Let me illustrate: I had the pleasure of several interviews with the distinguished and honorable and most able Viceroy of India, Lord Lansdowne. On one occasion we retired into the private office of the VICeroy, and were talking about the possible conquest of India for Christ. He was of the opinion that we could never win India for Christianity ; that our force was too small to cope with the vast and increasing millions of India. I told him I not only felt hopeful, but was filled with a trinmphant gladness when I saw what had been and what is now being accomplished there. I also reminded him of the small number of British soldiers now occupying India compared with the hordes of natiyes. It is not a question of conquest now with them, it is only a question of holding what they have conqu~red. India was taken for Christ a hundred years ago, when William Carey landed at Calcutta and began his missionary labors among them. Since the baptism of Krishna Pal, Carey's first Brahmin convert, the question is not one of the conquest of the land, but of the subduing of it to Christ. For eight or ten years Carey labored without a convert ; then one man was converted, and that gave India into the hands of the Christian Church, just as the falling of the walls of Jericho gave Canaan into the hands of the Israelites. The first convert was not a low-caste man, but a high-caste man. This is significant. When William of Normandy crossed the English Channel and fought and won the battle of Hastings, his first battle on English soil, he had practically won England. There he built a castle, and wherever he won a battle after that he built a castle. So the conversion in Calcutta of Krishna Pal was the battle of Hastings for us. There Carey took possession of India for Christ. Many victories have been won and the missionaries have built Christian missionary bungalows to signalize these victories, and these Christian bungalows are the fortifications by which that great country of India will be held until the entire subjugation of the people is accomplished for Christ.
" To-day there are in India three million native Christians. I suppose the number of real Christians among the gross number of nominal adherents to Christ is much less than this i but suppose we should say that we have no more than one million, we have demonstrated the power of the religion of Christ over their religion. The great mass of native Christians are from the low castes, but there are enough high-caste men among them to demonstrate the power of Christ j that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is adapted to reach the heart and the conscience and the will of all the inhabitants of that land, the high as well as the low.
" Let me give you a bird's-eye view of the results of the work of mis. sions for the last hundred years. The missionaries in India during the last hundred years have accomplished more for Christ than the first Christians under the leadership of the apostles accomplished in all Western Asia and Europe during the first century of Christianity. This demonstrates that the Gry for apostolic days and apostolic power is based upon a misconception of facts. If you should go to India for a year, you would see that it is a time of apostolic men and apostolic power now. The power of the Holy Ghost is being felt in that land to-day as mightily as in the days of the apostles in Western Asia and Europe.
" It has been said that the great mass of convcrts in India are low· caste men. This is certainly true, and it is well that it is so. There are the three great castes, the Brabmin, or priest caste, the soldier and the farmer castes, supposed to bave sprung respectively from the head, the arms and the legs of Brabma; but there are innumerable other castes that have grown out of these. The Brahmins are the first caste. A Brahmin considers himself a god aud exacts worship from the low-caste men. It is among the low-caste mAn that the greatest number of converts have been made to Jesus Christ, and this is sometimes spoken of as an illustration of the lack of power of the Gospel to subdue India. But can you call to mind anY,country where the great bulk of its converts have not been among the low-caste people ~ In America, for instance, how many of the noble, how many of the rich, are included in the living body of Jesus Christ ~ Let us admit that the great bulk of Christians are from the common people. Would we have it otherwise ~ We lay foundations not in the top soil, but in tbe sub-soil. When they laid the piers of Brooklyn Bridge, they did not plant them in the top soil, but dug deep down. Christianity has always rooted itself in the low-castes. Read the story of the Corinthian and the Roman churches, and you will see that the great mass of these churches were made up of low ·caste men; the driftwood of the nations, in Corinth, and slaves and freedmen in Rome. Why, friends, if I wanted to take a city by pulling down its walls, do you suppose that I would rig a derrick to take hold of the cope stones and pull them off ~ No, I would set my sappers and miners to dig out the stones at the bottom of the wall and then thc whole would fall. Practically that is what is going on in India. Indian society and Hinduism rests on its castes. The top caste flourishes on the support which it gets from the lower and the lowest castes. If we pull out the lower castes, the top caste must come down in fragments. The bitter cry of the Brahmins to-day is that Christianity is alienating the low castes. Some time ago a high-caste man, the head master of the Maharaja of Daypoor's College, complained to me because, as he said, we are lifting up the low-caste men and withdrawing their respect forever from the Brahmins and making them equals, and this is so. Whereas a few years ago, if a low-caste man met a Brahmin on the street, he would prostrate himself and allow the proud Brahmin to walk over him ; now he merely makes a salaam to him, and coutends with him for the best places in the gift of the government, and, withdrawing his offeriug, he compels the Brahmin to labor for his bread as though he were a mau and not a god.
"Is it possible to elevate the low-caste man? The Hindus worship caste." Here Dr. Pentecost gave an illustration of the daughter of a sweeper who has graduated from the University of Calcutta aud taken the degree of B.A., also of a now lady, the daughter of a low-caste man, who is teaching the children of the elite in a private school in Poona ; and several other illustrations of the same order. He said, " What may we not expect in a f,ew generations from this low caste, if in one generation such great upward strides are made. God is giving to the American Methodist missionaries alone from a thousand to fifteen hundred converts a month in India. The rapidity with which the conversions are going on among the low-caste people in India is wonderful.
" In the Punjab forty years ago there was not a known Christian; then Messrs. Newton and Forman, of the American Presbyterian Church, went into the country and built their missionary bungalow there. To-day the baptized communicants are numbered by tens of thousands. We sometimes pray that God would open doors for us, that He would pour out His Spirit upon the land. It is not a question of that, it is only a question of our going through the doors that are opened and gathering up the ripe fruit that is lying there. Dr. Forman said to me some time ago that he could not baptize a tenth of the converts who are waiting to be baptized, because they had not the teachers to take care of them. Only recently returning from a missionary tour of the villages, out of two hundred converts he had selected twenty for baptism. The rest he had to leave until his working force should be enlarged. That practically is the problem of India to-day, not to get converts, but to take care of those they have, and the thousands who are knocking for entrance into the Christian Church. The rate of progress among the Christians during the last ten years has been 23 per cent, while that of the population is only about 17 per cent. So great and rapid is the increase that some of the English secular papers have been compelled to confess that in the last ten years they have been utterly blind to the great strides of the Gospel.
" Weare told that the high-caste men are not being converted. I have been in about a hundred cities and villages, and in none where there are Christian missionaries do you find less than five or ten high-caste Christian men. There are enough of these high-caste Christians 1:0 stand as monuments of the power of God. "In every government office in the land, among the men who are holding high and honorable positions are high-caste Christians. In the colleges the men who are taking high stand as scholars are. the native Christians. There is something in the power of the Gospel that sets the minds of these men at liberty, and sends them over the dead point of intellectual power.
" These are some of the encouraging features. But is this all? Why, my friends, we count our Christians at three millions. There is not a city or a town or a village where a Christian missionary lives and has preached the Gospel, but there are beside the open converts great numbers of secret Christians. I speak from experience that among the high-caste men there are more secret Christians than among the low-caste men. In Calcutta I found a great many Christians among the high·caste men. They did not come out from their cas~e, but they openly confessed Jesus Christ.
"The Brahmin gurus or pastors have finally consented that they may confess Jesus Christ and retain their caste, if they will not be baptized. Thus they acknowledge that the Gospel of Jesus Christ has taken a great hold upon the people, and they are afraid of losing their hold upon them.
" We do not need to hurry. The fabric of their religion is being undermined and will eventually fall of itself. All over India great cleavages are taking place-mighty cleavages from the Hindu rock, under the impact of Christianity. The Brahmos, the Aryas, the Devas, and the Sadharans, and theistic sects acknowledge the Bible, especially the Gospel, to contain the best ethical system and Jesus Christ to be the most perfect human example. These various Somajes or churches have thousands of adherents in the Northwest, in the Punjab, in the Bombay and Madras Presidencies. I was recently shown the confession of faith of one of these societies or Somajes, drawn up by its living founder. In it there was not a single sentence the substance of which was not plagiarized from the Gospel, and they acknowledge it. Here are thousands and thousands of men who have been brought out of Hinduism under the influence of Christianity. True, they are not Christians, but they are on the way to Christ. There must be destruction before we can have reconstruction. These things are not given in the translated reports of the missionaries. A man said to me, , Yon will not make many more converts from among the Brahmins, but you are Chritltianizing all Hinduism.'
" There is one other thing in regard to results. There is a Christian atmosphere. There is a passage in the Bible which says that the devil is the Prince of the Power of the Air, and I never knew what that meant until I went to India. There is a strangely hell-impregnated atmosphere in that land. It is almost impossible to resist it. I have seen Americans and Englishmen, not Christians themselves, living there, who have become Brahminized by the very atmosphere; but wherever there is a Christian bungalow, wherever there is a Christian song sung, or a Gospel testimony given, the air becomes purer j the devil is exorcised. The Spirit of God is pervading the very atmosphere where before the devil reigned without a rival, and this is doing more to destroy Hinduism than the direct preaching of the Gospel. Hinduism cannot live in this new heavenly air. You cannot tabulate this. The results of the Christian missions that cannot be tabulated are ten times as great as those which can be.
"I have not told you anything of what God has done among the women. I can only give you the most meagre outline of the most visible results. The Christian women of the missionary force in India are begin- ning to work a revolution in the Indian homes, where Hinduism is anchored more firmly than in its temples." Several striking illustrations were here given. Of his own work Dr. Pentecost had time only to speak a little. He was seventeen months in India, and had the joy of seeing nearly two thousand Englishmen and Eurasians converted to Christ. In Calcutta for eight weeks, every night, he addressed audiences of educated native men. They listened with attention and courtesy, and oftentimes with tears in their eyes. He has now nearly a hundred covenant cards, which are signed by as many native gentlemen in that city alone, in which they declared their acceptance of Christ as Saviour and Lord. Similar meetings for educated native gentlemen were held in Lucknow, Cawnpore, Delhi, Lahore, Poona, and other places, in all of which most gratifying results followed.
" Some of these young men before I left India were baptized. Others said as soon as they could manage it they would be baptized. These men are not yet seen upon the missionary reports, but the power of the Gospel is being felt and is working in their lives. The Hindus are a very peculiar people. In the great college halls of Calcutta I preached to thousands of these Hindus. They are very excitable, and when excited have a habit of grasping one foot and swaying back and forth. I told one night there the story of the Saviour's nativity. After I had finished, I said, , Perhaps some of you have not had the opportunity of reading this story. I have a New Testament here, and if anyone cares for it, he may have it.' Now the Hindus have never learned to act independently. They are entirely bound by caste. When I offered that Testament, a wave of feeling rolled over the audience. The excitable men began to sway back and forth and shake their feet with great rapidity. Finally one man raised his hand. Instantly every foot was still. He rose and came forward for the Testament, but the cold perspiration stood out on his face, and he was trembling in every joint of his body. The cause of the excitement was that he had dared to act independently, without the precedent or consent of his caste followers. Once a vast audience was thrown into a state of volcanic excitement by a Brahmin rising to his feet and openly confessing Christ, and on other occasions when one and another rose to ask the prayers of God's people for his soul and that his sins might be forgiven. After he had taken the Testament I offered a number of others; but when I held up my last Testament and offered it to whoever wished it, the ice was broken and the audience rushed forward as one man for that Testament. There was a perfect mob.
"The Hindus are very anxious to learn English, and many of them come to the service for that purpose alone. At one of my services I spoke to a man who listened with great attention, and told him how glad I was to see him so interested, and asked him why he came. He said, ' I wish to improve my English.' One night during a meeting a lot of fellows got up to go out. I said, ' I see there are a number of yOlmg men here who do not understand English, and so, of course, cannot be expected to remain. I will therefore give time to those who do not understand English to leave the hall.' Everyone of them sat down as if he had been shot. They consider it very infra dig not to be able to understand and speak English. Whenever anyone tried to go out during a meeting, I just intimated that he did not understand English, and he immediately sat down again. These meetings were, of course, for the native gentlemen alone, as the women of the higher castes are never seen in public.
" In Lahore we had a hall that held nine hundred people. I announced meetings for educated, English-speaking Indian gentlemen. I announced that the entire body of the hall would be reserved for these gentlemen j and the two side aisles reservcd for the English and Eurasians. At the first meeting there were about one hundred natives. Before the meetings closed, at the end of three weeks, the entire, body of the house reserved for them, accommodating about six hundred, was packed to the doors. On either side we had three hundred Christians, English or Eurasians. At the end of the meetings I ventured to pronounce the benediction. When I did this the English rose, but the natives always remained seated, as it would have been acknowledging Christianity for them to have risen. At the last meeting I preached on the love of Christ and there were many wet eyes. At the end I sung the doxology and pronoullced the benediction. I turned to go, but before I got away some impulse made me turn around, and I came again to the front of the platform, and lifted my hands and said, 'You have been listening to me for three weeks, with a patience and courtesy that I hal'e never met with before. I have pronounced the benediction and I was grieved that you were not on your feet to receive God's benediction. God has sent me back to pronounce that benediction again, and if there is one here who desires to receive the blessing of God, and will indicate it by rising, I will lift my hands and ask the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost to abide with you.' I lifted my hands and waited. It seemed as if there was a movement like the rushing of a mighty wind over that audience, and those six hundred native gentlemen sprang to their feet as one man and waited in reverent attitude while I pronounced the benediction. They would not have done this if the Ho9' Spirit had not moved them.
" After preaching three weeks in Poona I was asked to come back again, and they even offered to pay all my expenses if I would return.
MISSIONARY PROGRESS IN CHINA
I have given you only a bird's-eye view of what God is doing in India; what He is doing through these men and women who have taken their lives in their hands and gone there to work for Him.
" I come back from India with a profound respect, almost veneration, for the noble men and women who have gone out to that land to spend their lives in missionary work. We should give them every support of sympathy, of love, and of money to carryon their work."
The Rev. Dr. Waugh, of Lucknow, for thirty-four years a mIsSIOnary in India, who chanced to be at Northfield, and heard Dr. Pentecost's address, was moved to follow the speaker with words of emphatic endorsement and confirmation. "Weare thankful," said he, "that America gave us tte loan of this glorious preacher for seventeen months. He has aroused an interest in Christianity in India, of which he has told you something here, but there are a thousand things which he has not told you. His statements concerning the rapid progress of Christianity and the condition of things in India is confirmed by solid facts. I can testify that his witness is true. I wish that every church in Amadca could hear the speech that we have heard to-night. I do not think Dr. Pentecost could do India and the world any better service than to go all over this country and Europe telling his wonderful story as he has told it to this congregation to-night."
MISSIONARY PROGRESS IN CHINA.* BY REV. JOHN CHALMERS, M.A., LL.D., HONG KONG, CHINA.
Christianity has not shown much vitality in Canton, although in ita Roman form it has been planted there for centuries; and since Morrison arrived in 1807, Protestant missionaries have been at work in the city of Rams with little interruption. It is not, however, safe al ways to judge by appearances, 'even about things material, and still greater is the danger of mistake when we come to judge of spiritual changes. Within the last three years a scheme has originated and taken shape among the native Christians of Canton for the ultimate evangelization of the whole province. I had heard of this in conversation or by letter from time to time, and of course rejoiced in it as a sign of life and progress; though not by any means convinced that it was more than a well-meant attempt on the part of a few to help the missionaries. But I have to-day received two printed pamphlets purporting to be the Regulations and the Report up to date, of * "The accompanying article seems to me of such interest aud importance to Christians the world over. that I have asked Dr. Chalmers, of the London Mission. to permit me to send it to the REVIEW. It speaks of the Chinese Church waking up from the lethargy that has characterized it and beginning to realize that it too has the commission, • Go,' 'make di~ciples.' That it should adopt new methods tells of life with movement.
"Yours very truly, JOHN C. 'fHOllPSON, M.A., M.D." the Canton "Book-lending and Evangelizing Society," the perusal of which has left a strong impression upon my mind that the conquering of the province is no mere dream, but they mean to do it. It is no exaggeration to say that for earnestness of purpose and breadth of view these tracts resemble far more chapters of General Booth edited by Mr. Stead than any utterance of natives of Canton. If these publications were translated into English as good as the Chinese is, which I hope they may be, they wou~d astonish English readers, whether friends of missions or not, by their completeness of detail, by their eloquence of appeal, and perhaps, most of all, by their thoroughly business-like character. In this last feature they present a striking contrast to General Booth's scheme, for no conceivable point seems to have been overlooked in the way of safeguarding the application of the funds.
As is fit and needful, this scheme originated in a prayer.meeting. It appears that the native members of six missions-Presbyterian, Wesleyan, Congregational, Baptist, and Lutheran-have been wont to hold a joint prayer-meeting once every two months, and at such a meeting about three years ago the scheme of a book-lending society was devised. The name is a modest one. Book-lending, provided the books are on hand, most of us find easy. Only about the returning, which is part of the programme, there is sometimes a difficulty. There are about a hundred districts in Canton Province, and it is proposed to send a book-lender into each district. The books are to be the Holy Scriptures, commentaries, other Christian books and tracts, and works on European science. There is a great variety of such books procurable; but a judicious selection is to be made by the managing committee, which consists entirely of Chinese. Nothing is asked from foreign sources except the books, which are cheerfully supplied by the Bible and Tract Societies .in Great Britain and America. A fund for the purchase of books amounting to $1379 has been placed in charge of foreign missionaries to be paid out as required. Beyond this it does not appear that the missionaries have any share in the concern, or any direct control of it. The constituents are the native Christians in town and country, in Hong Kong, in America, in Australia, and wherever else they may be, who are all invited to subscribe, and assured that, whether it be a mite or ten thousand dollars, each subscription will be duly acknowledged for the encouragement of others, and carefully devoted to book-lending purposes. The centre of administration is at Kukfau, in the vicinity of Dr. Kerr's Hospital, Canton. There, at bi-monthlyand annual meetings, all subscribers may' attend personally or by their deputies, and vote on or discuss any matter of the Society, as is done in Exeter Hall by similar bodies of supporters. A full staff of officebearers, a managing committee, and an advisory committee, have been appointed by impartial selection from the six missions. It is stated in the programme, that when the scheme of the Society is matured the foreign missionaries will bl) asked to endorse. And it is declared that the object of the Society is not to baptize or form churches, not to settle questions of terms or dogmas, not even to preach (lest they should thereby gefinto difficulties with one another, or with the heathen), but, in the first instance, quietly to circulate Christian literature in every city, market town, and hamlet in the province of Canton. The book-lending is, howevet, to be followed, after two or three years, by a general offering of prizes for the best essays by non-Christians on Christianity and kindred subjects; and then again, in due time, by the establishment of permanent centres of Christian work, when each of the missions will be invited to come in and take a share in the wide field thus opened, in order to form and build up churches. There are eighteen very practical rules laid down for the conduct of book-lenders. They are to be plain, honest, peace-loving men chosen from the Canton churches, who are willing to serve in this capacity for a consideration of $6 a month. They take with them, besides the books, a small supply of stationery for sale, by way of introduction to schoolmasters in the villages. Books are, of course, to be lent only to schoolmasters and such other respectable residents as can read; and they are lent on trial with the prices marked, a register being kept of the place, the person borrowing, the date, and the book lent, and an intimation given that the lender will return, say, a month after to inquire, and effect a sale or an exchange as may be desired. The lenders are to avoid disputes with the natives, not to resent rudeness, but take it as a thing to be expected, and even if harm is done to the books, they are to be content with the smallest compensation or apology. The only literary qualification necessary in a lender is ability to keep his register and make his report, which is to be transmitted every two months through the nearest mission station.
About $400 have been subscribed, and four book-lenders are at work for the present year in the Prefecture of Shiu-chow on the North River. A letter from one of them giving his report for the first two months is published, and is highly satisfactory.
It is an article of the Society's constitution never to spend the whole of the income in any year, but to accumulate a reserve fund, to be invested for the permanent carrying on of the ever-increasing operations of the Society.
It seems but fair to all concerned, and to the cause of Christian missions, to give publicity to the above statement; and I do not think that I have laid myself open to any charge of trumpet-blowing by giving to the public an abstract of these pamphlets, showing the beginnings of what may turn out to be a very important movement in favor of the Christian leligion in the south of China. At all events this is something to set off against the brutal and Satanic attacks of the Hunanese.-Cltina Mail.
INDUS'l'RIAL EDUCATION OF WOMEN IN FOREIGN FIELDS
INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION OF WOMEN IN FOREIGN FIELDS.
BY MRS. J. T. GRACEY.
Industrial schoolI have come to be of great importance in foreign mission work. The Rev. D. A. Day, of the Muhlenberg Mission, Africa, says: "The mission of the Gospel is to develop nan, not in one direction only, but in his entire being. Give the heathen simply brain culture without teaching him industrial habits, and you have a fool. Take a naked heathen boy, put him in a mission, feed and clothe him without teaching him to work, and you have a man vain in his imaginations. To train the young people of Africa into habits of productive industry is essential to the redemption of the Dark Continent.", The Bishop of Sierra Leone says: "The great need of Africa is not the importation of an army of clerics, but of Christian men and women able to teach the natives useful callings," and on a recent visit to England made arrangements to take out a numbel' of carpenters and agricultural implements, so that all the children in his diocese should be taught some trade. What is true of Africa is true of all mission lands. Some one has said that " honest toil is not an article of complexion," and this lesson needs to be taught to many connected with our missions. In the Methodist Mission in India the Christian boys are taught to make wire mattresses, foldingchairs, boots and shoes of all kinds, and in the Presbyterian Mission Persian rugs of all sizes are made in its carpet shop, in which only Christian labor is employed. So we could mention various lines in which boys are trained; but another problem confronts the missionary force. Bow to take care of the girls and give them proper trades and employment-that is the problem troubling many of our missionaries. Educate the women, and it is surprising what avenues are open to them. Miss Hedrick, the principal for years of the Calcutia boarding-school connected with the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Church, wrote a very excellent article in a recent number of the Indian Evangelical Review on the " Future of Educated Girls in India," in which sbe says, " When one seeks for something tangible to lay bold of, this subject becomes the veriest will-o'-the-wisp, dazzling for a moment, but persistently eluding the grasp. When I came to India I was often called upon to settIe disputes between my pupils about the respectability of labor. All agreed that certain work was respectable; other class of work was for low-caste people only." She luggests a revolution in old-time practices in India, and says, "Turn the men out into the fields, the foundry, the factory, and let the girl take her place in the hospital, at the desk, in the shop. Let men stop their dressmaking and sewing, and give such work to the women, to whom it properly belongs; let them stop sweeping and making beds, and then this work will drift into the hands of women." She then pleads for the industrial school, and the training of girls in specialties. " Teach them," she says, " to do one thing, and to do it well. Our educated girl must be Christian first; and when willing, yea, anxious to do and be all that God intended her to do and be, just as surely as God made her will she find her place and work."
The native Christian girls of India are many of them taking respoqsible positions. One graduate of a miesion school has charge of one of the Lady Dufferin hospitals, some are clerks in dispensaries, another has been appointed to the charge of a post-office-a thing unknown before in India– and some are in charge of waiting rooms at railway stations.
An industrial school for Mohammedan women was established recently at Guntur by the American Lutheran Mission, the only school of its kind in Southern India. The wives of poor Mohammedans are often obliged to support themselves and their children. To keep a respectable character and earn a livelihood is a difficult question often to settle. These women are paid according to ability in work, the highest receiving about six cents a day, and this is a larger sum than they could get elsewhere. In connection with their work they have one hour devoted to Bible instruction. They have also secular iustruction. The industry taught is Mohammedan embroidery. The patterns are Oriental, worked in gold and silver, brass and silk thread. Their work I ".s been sent to America, England, and Australia, and found a ready sale. A writer says: "A marvellous change has taken place in the workwomen since they first entered the school. When they began to go to the school they were lazy, dirty, and ignorant; now they are growing into careful, energetic, quick women. The pretty patterns, the bright colors, the order around them, have an elevating effect upon them. Every opportunity is used to introduce lady visitors to the school, and these visits bring a bit of the bright outside world into the cramped lives of the poor women. For months after the visit of the collector's wife the women talked of the wonderful English visitors. The lady assistant in charge of the school talks to the women during working hours of the duties of wives and mothers, the care of children, simple remedies for the sick, and gives practical hints concerning general housekeeping. "
In Pithoragarh, a station in the Himalayas, some forty women support themselves by working on the farm in connection with the Home for the Homeless. During the harvest season the missionary spends hours in the field directing the work, and these women are paid the usual ~ages for such work.
In the city of Lucknow a home for women is maintained by the work of the women. They are trained in the use of the sewing-machine, and do plain and fancy sewing and embroidery.
A woman's workshop has been opened in Rangoon, Burma. A large building is rented on one of the principal streets, a forewoman is employed, who lives on the premises, who devotes her time to overseeing the work and receiving orders, and' some sixty women are here making their own living.
18113.] PASTOR-TEACHERS' TRAINING
Some curious information has recently been brought out in regard to the occupations of native Indian women_ In some statistics furnished by the government, we find women reported as officers of local and village government, some as officers of national government, and others as officers of independent States and Governments. We find some as authors, a few as artists, some in mercantile occupations, quite a large number employed in construction of houses, and some as shipbuilder!! and workers in precious metals.
PASTOR-TEACHERS' TRAINING.
BY C. P. HARD, NARSINGHPUR, CENTRAL PROVINCES, INDIA. • This problem has been confronting us for two years. Special success among sweepers, and some advantage gained among mat-makers and a few workers in leather, with a sprinkling from other classes, began in this place on September 29th, 1890.
In four sub-circuits, for a hundred miles along the Grand Indian Penin- , sular Railway, in the eastern part of the Nerbadda Valley, we directed that the new workeI'l!, forty chosen gradually from these classes, should gather at central points for weckly instruction by the older catechist in charge. We called at these points as often as possible. The Rev. Paul Singh went the rounds during the hot months, too; but we were on the lookout for a trained instructor for these pastor-teachers. With the transfer of this station by Bishop Thoburn from our brethren, the Swedes, we also received a letter from sixteen hundred miles away from Mr. H. W. Butterfield, for a long time head clerk and head master for the Government. He proposed to go on pension and give the rest of his life to educating Christians at Narsinghpllr, where he had once been in Government duties. He is assisted by a man from the Bareilly Theological Seminary. Vole have fifty men and boys in the morning school for reading, writing, spelling, and geography, but the Scriptures are the special subject of study.
The first class, a dozen, is to be scattered among the villages at the close of the year, after the District Conference shall have again been held here, and they shall all have had the adv"'-ntages of the Christmas-tree, their first celebration.
Miss Nash has a day school for the wives of students. The married families live in the numerous out-offices of these two mission compounds. The single men, beyond those who have homes in the town or live with relatives, are housed in the ample old rest near the town. Epworth evening debates are lively on themes which are vital to the thought of these men, whose friends are yet so largely in heathenism, or who on the border-land see men as trees walking. We have had compulsory side taking, half the alphabet for and half against propositions regarding callte, idolatrous customs, early marriage, and such questions as, " Shall we employ the young or those over twenty years in the mission~" "Shall we go at once to our fields or stay here for preparation F' "Is it well to buy and sell wives Y" and for to-night it is to be, " Is it right under any circumstances to have more than one wife!" Though they admire Abraham, we shall have a later authority to offset any inference that Sarah's advice would be tolerated in this dispensation.
All the means of grace find prompt participation, all pray, all testify, all are hearty in learning new hymns, all preach in the streets, all do some work in the villages, as Saturdays and Sundays they are free to visit their homes or are appointed to duty, and some are detailed for tours to help the evangelists who are in the districts j but JURt now it is chiefly the obedience to the command to " tarry" for the preparation.
SOUTH AMER!CA AND 'l'HE PAPACY
SOUTH AMERICA AND THE PAPACY.
BY REV. GEORGE W. CHAMBERLAIN, D.D., BRAZIL, SOUTH AMERICA.
Crowning the "Hay-stack" Monument at Williamstown is a marble globe. The lands in view as you approach that memorial of the" pray- ing club" from the front are Europe, Asia, Africa, and North America. Only as you retreat from it, facing it, on the rear, does South America ap- pear. It lies on the western slope of the globe and bathes in the warm sunshine of the afternoon.
Even so in the history of the ever-unfolding drama of Redemption, in the growth of the" Oity of God," whose limits extend to the" uttermost parts" of the earth, South America is coming in our day into full view, in that all including providence of the wheel within a wheel. By force of the Divine plan it will come yet more into the prominence for which it was of old prepared, and unto which it has been reserved until the fulness of times.
PREPARED OF OLD.
The idea which held the prow of the ship which Columbus commanded steadily to the West when an unbelieving crew clamored to put about the helm was no new idea, however much so it appeared to the men of that day. It was God's idea, communicated with such force to the mind of a rough sailor that he had to follow it, even as the Magi the star which they in the East had seen. It led to a land prepared of old to be the theatre for the " gathering of the nations." The continent from which he sailed away had been a divider of the nations, for the which also it was of old ordained. But the time was full for the" discovery" of that continent which should gather into its ample hosoms dispersed humanity, and there suckle and nourish it " until we all come to the stature of the perfect man in Christ Jesus." For Humanity is One. And He hath made of one blood all nations. He will prove it against all the vaporings of " philosophy falsely so called," or the crudities of "science," which has yet many things to learn, when it shall clothe itself with humility and sit at the feet of Wisdom (Proverbs viii.). Humanity, harassed and hamlJered on the old continent, has been for more than a hundred years seeking rest on the northern bosom of the Western Continent. It seemed as if the milk of human kindness would flow forever toward the oppressed of all nations from that breast of Mother Earth called the United States of America. No doubt it will ; but just now, in the year of our Lord 1892, and of Columbus 400, the supply is running short, and the Asiatic, including China's millions, " must go." Go where ~ To Ireland-to the only land which the Irish don't govern ~ No! for Ireland, like China, is casting out her children. Where shall they go ~ They will go precisely where they were foreordained to go by that wisdom which the Lord possessed in the beginning of His way, before'His works of old . . • while as yet He had not made the earth, nor the fields, nor the highest part of the dust (Dust thou art, 0 man I). Where is that ~ Let physical geography-God's handwriting in " depths" and" fountains abounding with water," in " mountains settled" and" hills"- answer. The course of human progress has beoo predeter- mined by the contour and relief of the earth's surface. If the old hemi- sphere said, " Scatter," the new says, "Gather." And they will gather despite all laws of men in Congress assembled; in virtue of the law of God, who not only" hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth," but also " hath determined the times before appointed and the bounds of their habitation." The" wrath of man" against his fellow shall help to carry out this plan. South America's time has come. She is now unbaring her bosom to all nations of men. Notable coincidence! At the crisis when the United States of America is saying, " Go" to the Chinese, the United States of Brazil is forced by economic reasons to say, " The Chinese must come." Africa contributed her quota, but African slave labor has had its day. European free labor comes slowly to the rescue and is sparse. South America stretches out her arms to Asia in the year of our Lord 1892. No longer can the Pope divide this southern continent and give it to whom he will. He, too, has had his day. Papacy in South America has been " found out."
Members of the congress of all American nations visiting in the" City of Brotherly Love" said to the gentleman who led them in worship at Girard College: "There is not a man of us who does not know that the greatest foe of liberty of our nations is Rome;" not Rome of Victor Immanuel, but Rome of " His Holiness." "The Pope and the Council" has been allowed to run out of print in its English edition, which is only one of the many symptoms of the blindness which has happened to English-speaking peoples. A Portuguese edition lies before me, translated and edited, with a notable introduction, by a foremost statesman of SOl).th America. "Of all emergent questions," he says, " none equals in reach, none exceeds in urgency, the religious. . " No one ignores that the pontifical Church is an organization universal, an ambition nniversal, a plan universal. . . . The evolutions of her tactics. are reproducing themselves in America with the same strategy as in Europe. The features of the papacy will be always identical with those of to-day, and each time more accented, because on the one hand its spl:rit, child of a gestation multisecular, incarnated in the most marvellously wise of all centralizations, and chained to the interests of an innumerable caste, can by no man be transformed; and on the other, the galvanic life of this institution, inwardly decomposed by the vices on which it feeds, has its secret in the reactionary audacity which constitutes its type. The papacy goes its way . • . it can perish more easily than go back."
Availing himself of the book of " Janus," "the most notable product and the most expressive symptom of Christian re-birth of the nineteenth century," " one of those rock-books of perennial tempestivity which abide, transmitted from generation to generation," this writer contributes some solid material to the instauration of religious liberty in the South American States. He speaks not from the religious, but from the political standpoint when he says: "It may be seen there (in' Janus ') with noonday clearness how from that millennial superposition of vices, abuses, and crimes; • . • from a system of falsification, employed indefatigably upon the Holy Scriptures, upon canonical and patristic collections, upon acts of synods, the liturgy and the imperial history, arose and was forn:ed that idolatry of pontifical infallibility which places the whole invincible abysm of the Gospel between the Church of Rome and the Christ. . •. The substantial character of the book (' The Pope and the Council ') is a rigorously historic demonstration of the intimate and exclusively political natu1'e of the papacy. • • ." It is demonstrated that Romanism is not religion but politics, and the most vicious, the most unscrupulous, and the most pestilent of all politics. Sketching rapidly the" incursions of the pontifical primacy in national churches, its usurpations in the bosom of States, and the repeated and peremptory denials of catholicity to the infallibilist presumptions of the tiara i" evidencing" the absolute identity between the idea of infallibility and that of omnipotence in the jurisdiction of heaven and in that of earth;" proving" the incompatibility, philosophically and practically irreconcilable, between the syllabus-that abominable symbol of papolatry-and any modern constitution," he ventilates the religious question in all its relations, and indicates the natural and definite solution of the problem.
.A FREE CHURCH IN A FREE STATE• .A State free from the dominion of the Church and the Church free from the papacy is an aspiration of young South America. For three centuries she held her breath at the bidding of the Pope; but her breast is heaving with the breath of the .Almighty. It bccomes articulate in the language of South .American statesmen. "A curia Romana has been at all times a potency only nominally religious, and always intimately, essentially, and indefatigably political. Religion, moral authority, for long centuries has not been for the papacy anything else than the occasion, the means, or the pretext for interference in the temporal administration of the State. "
" The heresy of domination is the greatest of heresies against the cross, because it transforms into a word of discord for human societies the word of Him who, to bring them peace, instituted the universal city in the higher world, vos de mundo hoc estis, ego non sum de hoc mundo."
., Rome has not renounced the principle that the Pope is the Lord over cru.wned heads, and has power to release subjects from their oaths of fidelity." "Gregory VII. left in his doctrines to papal Rome a tradition which has not ceased until now to be the soul of the Roman Church. . • ." " If the Holy See received from God the power to pronounce sentence in spiritual things, why not in temporal things also? The episcopate is as much superior to royalty as gold is superior to lead ; well did Constantine know it when, among bishops, he took the last place." "The prince (or in modern States the gov~rnment, parliaments, and cabinets) who incurs in heresy loses all authority. Subjects can, and ought when they can, rebel against him. This theory is a point of faith admitted by all theologians worthy of note in Rome. . . . It is to be noted that Rome has not repudiated. these principles. She has left them in reserve because she lacks coercitive resources."
"Papal centralization • . • the continual invasion of the temporal authority by the Church, gave us Protestantism. The' heresy' dominant in the sixteenth century was resistance to the abusive Roman unity•••• A counter-blast was needed. The Jesuits appeared. Instituted in a century full of vital energy, in a century of intellectual, political, and religious resurrection, they consubstantiated in themselves in an unheard-of degree all the principles hostile to these three vivifying forces of the world. Rome breathed her soul into the company. The order is not the evil genius of the papacy, but its delectable offspring. A rule of evangelical wisdom, proverbial everywhere, teaches us to know the tree by its fruit. Wherever Jesuitism has taken root no one can find any difference between its fruits and those of the soil where the papacy reigns directly, absolutely, visibly.
"Cast your eyes on the States of the Church before the fall of the temporal power-sad evidence of the sterilized virtues of the theocracy. There the observer encounters the most authentic and instructive example of the absorption of the individual conscience by absolutism exercised in the nallie of heaven. The social state wherever their principles have been filtered in during generations was never anything but the lowest.
" There is Paraguay-Paraguay, the prime work of the Jesuits, their boast, the miracle of their beneficent propaganda, the mysterious land of blessing with which they deluded, in Europe, even sincere and illustrious wen like Chateaubriand! Even to this day they describe that as a para- * dise. ' Paraguay,' says Padre Sambin, 'presented marvels similar to those of the first Christian centuries.' , In a few -years,' says another Jesuit, praising his own order, t 'the most savage tribes formed, under their influence, model societies, such as philosophy could never create in the bosom of civilized peoples; THE MOST PERFECT REPRODUCTION OF EDEN which it has been possible to obtain from our fallen nature.' 'These marvels,' he adds, ' the Catholic apostolate created in the past century in Paraguay, and can yet renew them.' Says the Brazilian author: 'Yet five years of war, in which our armies (the allied forces of Brazil, Argentine, and Urugnay) penetrated the interior of that country enabled us to judge of Edenic state idealized and desired by Jesuitism.'
" Everyone knows what we found there-a nation of creatures debased below slavery, without law, without rights, without tribunals, without government, without morality, social or domestic, without family, without * Da Cornpautria, Histoire du Concile, Lyon, 1872, t Ramiere, Lea doctrine romaines, Paris, 1870, instruction, without industry, without commerce-a tribe of fanatics poor to penury, savage even to ferocity. This is Jesuistic Catholicism which Roman Catholicism boasts of as the most perfect image of heaven on earth, as an ideal superior to all civilized peoples. • •• Behold the prosperity which our Catholic party (political) reserves for their fellow-countrymen."
I have quoted largely from the book" 0 Papa e 0 Concilio," by the eminent writer and patriotic Brazilian senator, Ruy Barboza, that the readers of the MISSIONARY REVIEW OF THE WORLD may see not through the ('yes of a missionary, but of an enlightened South American statesman what papacy has done and is expected to do in this region of the world.
Iii there no brighter side ~ Thank God, answering to this cry of distress and dire need, the heart of the Church beats responsively, and already the blessing of the Lord on the efforts of the past thirty-three years (one generation) has created self-sustaining churches in Brazil and other South American republics, so that if a relative progress is observed it will not be many generations until this will cease to be a missionary field except in the sense of home missions. These are already begun. MisswB Nacionws at least, in Brazil, is an established arm of service. By the fund thus called, to which all churches and all individual believers are urged to contribute as the Lord prospers them, weak churches are yearly rising to self-support and becoming in turu nursing mothers. A Revista de Missws Nacionws, edited by one of our ablest nati va ministers, is contributing to create and foster the spirit of self-help throughout the bounds of the Brazilian Church. Many affecting examples might be given of those who give to the extent of their power and beyond it.
Into this field the Y. M. C. A. entered a year ago in the person of their first secretary, Myron A. Clark. He has justly merited the sympathy of Brazilian Christians, and now that he has begun to use fluently the Portuguese will soon be able to communicate with the youth of the land. I append some notes of Mr. Clark.
Things accomplished: (1) Organization in Sao Pr.ulo of a young men's Bible class, to study special association course; lessons being published weekly in the Exposi,- tor. Average attendance, 13. (2) Adoption of resolution, assuring support, sympathy, and co-operation by the Synod of the Presbyterian Church in Brazil. (3) Adoption of similar resolution by the Annual Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Brazil. Difficulties : (1) Lack of preparation among young men. (2) Lack of realization of duty, value and privilege of Bible study. (3) Lack of desire for personal aggressive work among their fellows. Hopes for future : (1) To stimulate a desire for and appreciation of Bible study. (2) To arOURe on the part of Christian young men an earnest effort to evangelize their fellows. (3) Regular organizations later in such cities as Rio and Sao Paulo.
INTERNATIONAL DEPARTMENT
n.-INTERNATIONAL DEPARTMENT.
EDITED AND CONDUCTED BY REV. J. T. GBACEY, D.D.
THE OVERLOOK AND OUTLOOK. pire. A clear view of its history and effects gives one strength and inspira- A. NEW YEAR'S SYMPOSIUM. tion. What has it done in Turkey in a little over fifty years? It has introduced 1893. femrue education and compelled its ac- ceptance. It has done much toward re- The Outlook. storing the home as God intended it to exist. It has brought forth or spurrea BY BISI£OP J. M. THOBURN, D.D., CALCUTTA, on to efficiency whole systems of educa- tion. It has done more than anything INDIA. else in the vast interior of the country, not to say in the chief cities, to bring in The present outlook is the best since enlightened medical practice, and drive Carey's trumpet was first sounded. The old systems to the wall and make them era of experiment is over now, and the a laughing-stock. It has given the Bible time for action has fully come. All do and a considerable body of excellent not realize it, and some do not believe literature to the people in several lan- U; but every year adds to the number guages. It has brought into being hunof those who dismiss their scruples and dreds of evangelical congregations, with their fears and hasten to thrust their schools and meeting-places, these being well on the road to self-support. It has sickles int~ the first ripe field of golden introduced colleges and seminaries for both sexes. It has founded hospitals grain which they find within reach. I and orphanages. It has brought forth am confident that before the year 1900 missionary societies. It has diffused every missionary body in India will be general intelligence. It has, in some found fully committed to the great work ways, made as great a difference between of gathering in converts by the score the first half and the last half of this and the hundred and nurturing them .century, in that country, as there is befor God and heaven. I shall be sur- tween the sixteenth and the nineteenth prised and disappointed indeed if the in Europe. ingathering of the next eight years does not exceed that of the previous ninety- What, then, is the prospect? If the two. The converts may be from the Gospel of Christ exert its benign and ranks of the lowly, but the lowly of this peaceful influence for half a century century will be the leaders of the next. more, as it has for half a century past, it The Brahman must accept Christ, or see will increase light and knowledge, prothe pariah walk past him in the rltce of mote love and good-will, multiply happy progress. The first converts in India homes, reform abuses, alleviate the will be the Brahmans of a future genera- woes of infancy and age, develop public tion. Already the valleys' have com· spirit and promote social improvement menced to rise. and the mountains are -all these secondary things it will do, beginning to be brought low. Now, as as it has been doing, till that shall bein ancient days, God is choosing for come a pleasant land to dwell in; all Himself a people who were not a people, these secondary things will it do, but, and in the sight of all the nations a better than all, it will do what it has worm shall be chosen with which to been doing-make peace between man's thresh the mountain. soul and his God, purify the heart, and teach man, while living here below, to Results and Prospects in Turkey, live as a citizen of the heavenly country, BY REV. C. C. TBACY, MARSOVAN.
Before the Crimean War evangelism had begun its work in the Turkish Em- "The Poor have the Gospel Preached did the Macedonian cry sound 110 loudly to Them." as at the present moment.
BY REV. CYRUS HAMLIN, D.D., LEXINGTON, " O'er the desert's burning sands, O'er the ocean's stormy wave, MASS. Voices cry from distant lands, The highest glory of modern missions Come to help us! Come to save I" is that unto the poor the Gospel is preached. Its greatest triumphs are And veteran toilers in the foreign field, among the poor-the common people. as they fall, one after another, echo with It should be so; for emphasis the words of Father Gulick, of the Sandwich Islands, uttered just be- 1. It is ill accord with the spirit and fore his death: "The nearer I get to example of Christ. He gave to the meso eternity the more grand and momentous sengers of John as proofs of His mes- does the cause of missions appear. In siahship, "The dead are raised, and comparison with this, how insignificant unto the poor the Gospel is preached." the pursuit of earthly pleasures, riches, or honor !" 2. They are the chief part of the human race. The common people in Naturally my own vision turns par. all heathen lands may justly be called ticularly to Southeastern Africa, where the poor. I have spent most of my life, and where the outlook is full of encouragement. I 3. They are the most accessible. The thank God that the British South Africa common people heard Him gladly. The Company, dominates so large a territory missionary churches in all lands have populated by tribes which for centuries very fe w converts among the rich and have been sunk in superstition and adprosperohs. dicted to barbarous customs. Of the Bantu race, numbering, it is supposed, 4. They constitute the brightest ex· about one fourth the population of Afriamples of the transforming power of the ca, the most interesting are those speak- Gospel. Out of these poor, degraded, ing the Zulu dialect, all of whom are ac. ignorant people come forth men and cessible, if we except the Amazimu, on women of saintly character, of superior Lake Tanganyika, to missionary opera. mental endowments, pure in life, un- tions. God in His providence has sent selfish, consecrated to the service of the the Anglo-Saxon race to the southern Lord, often not counting their lives dear part of the continent to prepare the way unto them. This is a transformation for the dissemination of His truth. which the world is compelled to take Laborers of the A. B. C. F. M. have been knowledge of. busy, during the past fifty years, in stocking the divine arsenal wit.h weapons 5. They are furnishing the agents for to use in the " holy war" that is to be the world's conversion. In God's good waged in conquering for Christ, Africans time they will rise into all the places of widely extended, but with a common power, for "the people shall be all kinship, ethnologically and linguisti. righteous," and the whole world shall cally considered. The Bible, religious haTe one Lord, one faith, and one bap. tracts, and elementary school books in tism in the Spirit. the Zulu language are available.
Signs of the Times in South Africa. The Zulu Mission has made a new de. parture, the result of which will be can· BY REV. JOSIAH TYLER, D.D., ST. JOHNS· templated with interest. I refer to the sending of Bome of its members to initio BURY, VT. ate work in the northern part of Gaza. land, with the promise of protection The most encouraging sign of the from its chief, Gungunyana. We have times, viewed in relation to the world's reason to believe that Natal natives, evangelization, is, in my opinion, the fact that nearly all parts of it are open And ready to receive the Gospel. Never graduates of the theological school, will labor, in treaty stipulation with Christian soon follow, and under the guidance of Powers. white missionaries, do good work for the Master in that new field. The Bible is translated into the lan- guages used by nearly nine tenths of these In Natal itself the missionary pros- vast multitudes of people. Christian pects were never brighter. labors have already been commenced in aU these lands. Converts have been Then and Now. made, churches organized, schools and colleges have been established, Christian BY REV. A. P. HAPPER, D.D., GLENSHAW, teachers and preachers have been train- ed, and a Christian literature prepared PA. in all these lands. The fields are every- where white to the harvest. Those who The outlook for missions is as hope- go forth now enter into the labors of ful as the providences and promises of their predecessors. These are a few of God can make it. the favoring providences of God. How great and glorious they are ! Our blessed Lord said : "All power is given unto Me in heaven and earth. Go The promises are all " yea" and ye, therefore, and teach all nations. " amen." "I will pour out My spirit Lo, I am with you always, unto the end upon all flesh." "All the ends of the of the world." For three hundred years earth shall see His salvation." "The after the ascension of our Lord, His dis- knowledge of God shall cover the whole ciples, in carrying out the commission, eaTth." "The kingdoms of this world were subject to persecutions,revilings, have become the kingdom of the Lord scourgings, imprisonments, and martyr- and of His Christ." The outlook, theredom by the authorities and people in ac- fore, of Christian mission is as hopeful cOl'dance with the laws of the empire of and sure as the existence and faithful- Rome. These things existed in addition ness of God. Heaven and earth shall to the ignorance, superstition, idolatry, pass away; but not one jot or tittle of wickedness and enmity to God which all that God hath spoken shall fail of a everywhere filled the hearts of the peo- glorious accomplishment. ple. With the accession 6f Constantine to the throne this exposure to legalized The Day is Dawning. opposition and violence was r(lmoved, and freedom and safety in the prosecu- BY REV. ALONZO BUNKER, D.D., TOUNGOO, tion of evangelistic work were secured. BURMA. A hundred years ago, when the first Protestant missionaries were sent forth, When Dr. Judson was once asked, the lands in which the 800,000 hea· after several years of labor in Burma, then and Moslems Jived were closed without a single convert, "What the to the entrance of the missionaries. prospect of success was?" he replied, The whole of Asia and Africa were "Success is as sure as the promises of closed. Now the countries in which the God." 1,000,000,000 of the non-Christian populations are, are open to the unrestricted In any outlook for success on mission entrance of the missionaries of the cross. fields, the promises of God afford a sure There is safe and comfortable convey-' resting-place for the feet of the weary ance on the vessels of commerce to every worker, and by faith the future is full land. In every land the messengers of of a glorious victory. Jesus" shall see the Gospel are under the protection of of the travail of his soul and be satisthe rulers of the Christian Powers of the fied." world. The free use of all evangelizing agencies and the liberty to converts to In the present age, however, there are profess Christianity are guaranteed by many" signs of the times" which give the rulers of the lands in which they us a lively hope of great successes in the near future, These signs 'are so manifest that it seems almost presumption cannot fail to show ~ remarkable mto mention them. crease of missionary knowledge and zeal First is the noticeable unrest among in Christian lands. The organized work those heathen nations with which the for the instruction of youth in all Chris Gospel has had most to do. Both among tian work, the practical results of this the Hindus and the Buddhist races teaching, as well as a drawing together their leaders are putting forth so maDY and a better organization among God's efforts to steady the ark of their faith people generally, is a wonderful adthat it is evident that they regard it in vance on the past. Taking this great danger. These attempts to adjust old movement as a response, under the faiths to the new light indicate their col- direction of the Holy Spirit, to inlapse, which may be much nearer than creasing calls from heathen lands, we many think. The Paramats of Burma, are obliged to stand with uncovered the Buddhist revivals in China and heads, for it is the work of our God. Japan, and the Brahmo.somaj of India He creates the call and prepares the anare but" signs of the tiwes. " swer. He sets the battle and plans the victory. Again, as God has a perfect plan in the natural, so in the spiritual world. Finally, the success of such evangel- " Even the hairs of your head .are num- ists as Miiller, Somerville, Pentecost. hered." So His places for the kingdom and others among nations where, a fllw of His Son are laid with infinite care, years ago, they would be neither reeven in the minutest detail. He calls ceived nor understood, is significant. His servants, chooses the nations He This, with the rapid progress of the will use, and plant.. His strategic cen- English language among Eastern natres of light wi th Divine wisdom. Look- tions, leads us to believe that the time is ing for this plan in work alreadyaccom- near when a nation shall be born in a plished, there is enough revealed to day. Yes! The day is dawning, and make the outlook for the immediate God's weary workers may well congratufuture full of thrilling anticipations. late each other, for all these things be- token a speedy proclamation of the This is true, not only among the more Gospel to all nations of the earth, and civilized races, hut emphatically so then cometh the end. among the" no peoples" who have been reached by the Gospel. Who could South America. have anticipated the results which have been achieved among the despised races BY BEV. CHARLES W. DREES, D.D., BUENOS of India? What a glorious outlook for the future of the Redeemer's kingdom, AIRES, ARGENTINA. through the zeal which they show in proclaiming the truth, even among their Doubtless each of the great mission former masters! fields of the Church possesses its own characteristic features of interest which Again, wherever we look there is, in constitute for each its own peculiar all the world, a marshalling of forces for claim upon the sympathy and help of or against our Lord. In heathen lands those who are engaged in the work of the work of the last century has been sending the Gospel message to a world largely preliminary. That work is now lying in darkness and in sin. near completion. Spiritual forces are cumulative. For this reason statistics South America, though perhaps least always fail to represent spiritual resnlts. heard of and least thought of, has its This massing of spiritual forces shows own case to urge, its own plea to make. us that the great battle is about to be And surely it has some special claim joined ; and this means victory, for our upon the interest of the churches of Captain was never defeated. A com- America. parison of the present with the past It is an American mission field. Its people share with us the heritage given By a marvellous historic development to the world by the penetrating genius, under the gllidance of that Providence the mighty faith and the God.sustained, which administers the government of indomitable perseverance of Coillmblls. this world with a view to its redemp- It is constitllted a mission field by the tion, this whole continent has been fact that its predominant religiolls opened to the proclamation of the Gos- thought and life are determined by a pel. With the siugle exception of Equa.
perverted and corrupted form of the dar, there are everywhere to be found Christian faith, while in the heart of religious toleration founded upon legal the continent there still remains the enactment, or upon a well-defined and darkness of paganism, unillumined by intelligent public conviction, a strong a single ray of the Light of the World. sentiment among inllllential men in This field, therefore, invites to each of favor of the prosecution of our evan- two chief forms of mission work. On gelical work, hearts prepared to receive the one hand it calls for the continu- the message and embrace the truth, and ance among peoples of Latin origin of frllits already gathered which are God's the work of the Reformation, which in seal of ap'proval upon the work already the sixteenth century won such mighty done and His call to the wide-open victories among the nations of Central doors which no man can shut.
and Northern Europe, while it was so strangely hindered in its progress and finally completely paralyzed among the Under the Southern Oross. Latin peoples of Southern Europe. On the other hand, it invites to the first MIsSIONS IN AUSTBALIA.
evangelization of pagan tribes who have BY REV. ROBERT STEEL, D.D., NEW SOUTH for centuries resisted the efforts of WALES. Roman Catholic missionaries, and have as yet never had the offer of a pure Gos- At the Federal Assembly of the Pres- pel teaching held out to them. A con- byterian Chllrches of Australia and Tas- tinent with 23,000,000 of Spanish and mania, held at Adelaide, in September, Portuguese mixed races, with 3,000,000 some interesting particulars were given of negro freedmen, and 40,000,000 of regarding the missions in Australia.
pagan Indians surely offers a vast field These embrace Chinese, the aborigines, for evangelization. and the Kanakas or Polynesians. Re- It is a continent of American repub- garding the latter there are some strik- lics, with ten nations who have modelled ing facts. There are now 9000 in Qlleens- their civil institutions after those of land. Several missionaries are working the United States of North America, among them. The Presbyterian mis- yet are lacking in that sense of indi- sionary is at Walkerstown, in a centre of vidual responsibility to God and regard 16 plantations. He has 1800 under in- for His revealed Word which are the struction, 233 of whom have been bap- only sure ground for truly republican tized. A great change for the better institutions. If we are to maintain has resulted from his labors. These American institutions for all America, natives are now learning habits of thrift, we must give the Bible and the faith of and they have $100,000 in the savings the Bible to South America. banks.
This continent, considered as a mis- The aboriginal mission in Northern sion field, has been left to the Christian Queensland is making progress. The churches of North America. The great government Resident at Thursday missionary societies of Great Britain Island lately visited the States, and and continental Ellrope have relegated expressed a hope that many more of to us the evangelization of this Western sllch might be established and a mis- world. sion vesst>l secured, New Hebrides. who loved us and gave Himself for us.
THE NANUA SLAVE TRAFFIC. We believe that the Gospel is the only real civilizer of man wherever found; BY RloIV. J. G. PATON, D.D. all brought under its power and influ. ence soon enjoy all the blessings of civ- Mr. Sawers, who was murdered lately ilization which accompany it and follow on Santo, was not "a young English in its train. The Master's advice is, missionary." as stated, but a trader liv- " Seek ye first the kingdom of God and ing on Santo. He had just been mar- His righteousness, and all other things ried to a British woman, to whom he shall be added unto you."
had been engaged for some twelve years; Many lives were taken, and are yet but instead of taking his bride with him taken, by the cannibals of those islands to his home, he left her at the mission who have not been reached by the en.
house of Rev. Joseph Annand, M.A., lightening, sanctifying power of the who had celebrated the marriage, and Gospel ; but on the twenty islands our went off in his boat avowedly to prepare mission occupies, life and property are his house for her. On reaching his sta. now comparatively safe, and they will tion, the Santo natives murdered him, become safe on all, as the natives are led for some reason unknown to us ; but to love and serve God. Trade and large even among our savages there is gener- commercial business is also now follow- ally some cause for such revenge upon ing in the wake of the teaching of the traders living among them. Gospel where a few years ago no white Mr. and Mrs. Annand, our excellent man durst set foot on shore without the missionaries living on Tangoa, off Santo, fear of being killed and eaten by the having recently opened a new station savages. Oh that such races could en- there among the cannibals, were placed joy communion with its blessings with- in considerable difficulty and danger by out its curses in intoxicating drinks, this murder. The natives all left their opium, dynamite, fire·arms, and vice, station and gave up attending the school as forced upon them by trading pioneers and church, and for a time the work of from civilized nations to their destruc- the missions among them was suspend- tion, as now among the remaining ed ; but Mr. Annand wisely and devot- heathen of our island! The wonder to edly improved the time at his printing- me is that they don't murder ten for press, printing the Gospel by Matthew, everyone of the slavers, or "Kanaka which he had translated into their Ian. labor traffickers," who are sailing about guage. French and Englishmen.of.war among the islands to kidnap and get have since punished the murderers of away, by every means in their power, Sawers and his party, if possible to in- all the young men and women who so timidate the il!landers from taking the fall into their hands. Britain would lives of other traders, and make them murder every man who so, under any and their property more safe till those pretense, robbed her of her sons and islands are annexed and under the gov. daughters, and the world would praise ernment of some civilized nation. How- her for it and support her in it ; and ever, we look not to ciVilization, but to yet she tolerates this blood-stained traffic the blessed, enlightening, and sanctify. with its many evils, as by law author- ing influences of the Holy Spirit on the ized in Queensland, New Caledonia, teaching of our dear Lord ,Jesus as reo etc., which is rapidly depopulating the vealed in the Scriptures to lead civil. islands and sweeping away defenceless ized or savage nations to fear God and races to satisfy the godless white men's respect the li ves and propert.y of others; greed of gain by them. Oh for the time hence we pray and labor by the Gospel when everyone sball do to his neighbor to lead all to know and love and serve as he would be done by from love to the Jesus Christ as theif God a!:ld SaViour, Lord Jesus! Double the Force. little for Christian nurture and the up. building of men unless they are supplied BY BD. BENBY N. COBB, D.D., NEW YORK with the Bible. 'rhe full equipment of mankind for the service of God calls not CITY. for the four Gospels alone, or the epis- tles alone, but for the law, the prophets, I don't know that I could put into and the Psalms also; for promise and .. 300" or 3000 .. Vords" my idea of type as well as fulfilment ; for the Old the really stupendous work before the Testament as well as the New; for the Church of Christ, the grand openings Bible as the one Book which teaches and opportunities for work or the bless- what man is to believe concerning God ed results already achieved. I am sure and what duty God requires of man. the churches of every name might, with immediate advantage, double at once Thus far we have only begun to supply the number of men and the amount of the world with this Book. It Bounds means now contributed to their foreigIl well to enumerate 3M languages in work. I know ours could. We should which men may read of Christ and His hardly need a day to consider where the salvation; but in only 90 of the 304 is increase should be bestowed. If this the entire Bible printed; and of these be so, how great does the responsibility 90 one half only are the product of this of the churches become, in view also century of missions. We count, then, of the means at their disposal! 214 languages which convey to men a part only of the revealed Word, while The Outlook for Bible Work. the entire Scriptures are inspired and profitable for them. Moreover, 56 of BY BET. EDWARD W. GILMAN, D.D., BIBLE the 214 have only a single portion of the Bible, a Gospel, or some other book, BOUSE, NEW YOBK. and 131 of them have less than the New Testament. Not to speak, then, of Ian. Every Christian heart recognizes with guages as yet unstudied and unwritten, gratitude and wonder the work which there is a call during the present decade has been accomplished in a century in for competent scholars to go on and preparing new versions of the Holy complete the translation of the New Scriptures and circulating them far and Testament in 131 languages and dia. wide in all parts of the world. A hun. lects, and to carry on to its end the dred years ago there were barely 50 lan- translation of the Old Testament in guages in which the Bible had been more than 200 different languages. printed; now some parts of it can be found in more than 300 languages and It takes a man a lifetime to translate dialects. The long list of new transla- every chapter of the Bible and faith. tions made since the founding of the fully reproduce the mind of the Spirit British and Foreign Bible Society in in a strange tongue. Mr. Bingham has 1804 is an enduring monument of PI'· just accomplished this for the Gilbert tient scholarship and resolute effort in Islanders, whose language he began to one line of Christian endeavor. reduce to writing in 1857, and his com- pleted work will not appear until 1893. But there remains an immense amount Then, as a rule, first translations are of work to be accomplished. The Bible tentative, sure to require revision and constitutes what St. Jerome called the chang!l after mistakes have been point. "divine library," and until all nations ed out and improvements have been snghave that entire library in a printed gested by experience. The Syriac Bible, book and in their own vernacular, the begun by Dr. Perkins and his associates evangelization of the world will not be in 1836, and first printed in 1852, has complete. A single chapter of the Bible been for years undergoing revision to may"indeed cast a flood of light upon a meet the wants of outlying communiti,s community, and, like the star in the east, may lead men to Christ. But the evangelization of a people implieR Christian institutions, and the family, the schoo], and the church accomplish hal whose dialects had not been studied by with the help of the Rev. John Edwards. the earliest missionaries to Persia. The Zulu Bible, commenced nearly sixty And for Spanish.speaking America it years ago, and first printed in 1883, is in the hands of revisers who will need has nearly ready for publication aver. years to get their work ready for the press. Marshman's Chinese Bible, sion of the Bible in Spanish, made by printed as early as 1822, has been followed by numerous recensions and in- the Rev. H. B. Pratt, of the Southern dependent versions; but for a standard Presbyterian ChUl'ch, with the aid of Chinese Bible, embodying the results of enlarged study of the language, we must numerous scholars, among whom are the look to the labors of a large committee which has but just been organized for Rev. H. C. Thomson, D.D., of the Theo. work. These are but hints of the toil and effort which must be given by the logical School at Tlalpam, Mexico, and missionaries now in the field and by their immediate successors and associ- the Rev. J. M. Lopez, of New York. It ates in one line of Christian service. is hoped that this translation will Their work will hardly be done in this generation. eventually be accepted as preferable to the one in common use, which was made nearly three hundred years ago.
[With two exceptions, the short arti. cles composing our Symposium were kindly contributed in response to a re- quest for a brief Bulletin. The other two are used, being adapted to the same end. All the writers have placed us under obligation, and have our thanks. -J. T. G.] Besides the above, Dr. Gilman favors A Word from the Arabia.n Mission. us with the following items: BY BEV. S. lII. ZWElIIEB. For missions in the Pacific Ocean under the care of the American Board We feel very much encouraged with (Congregational), the Bible Society has the prospect of work here. I am just just printed an edition of the books of back from a preaching tour of 700 miles Genesis and Exodus in the Ruk lan- up to Bagdad and down the Euphrates. guage, and also has in press the entire The latter river was never before visited Bible for tl1e Gilbert Islanders. by a missionary, as far as I could learn. From Hillah I came down in a native To meet an urgent appeal for Scrip- boat, and had some real experiences of tures from missionaries of different so- Bedouin life and Moslem prejudice, cieties laboring in South Africa, it is the more so as I went at Moharram preparing a set of photo-engraved plates season right through sacred territory. for a new edition of the Zulu Bible. Rev. Catine has much work with our Bible shop. We find quite a demand It has on hand for the Mission of the for our books, and sales have been en- Presbyterian Board in Persia a very couraging. difficult and costly work, the printing of the revised Syriac Bible, under the Re'enforcement in Japan. supervision of Rev. B. Labaree, D.D. This version has been very dear to the In the September REVIEW one of our Nestorian Christians since it was first esteemed corresponding editors, Rev. given to them by Dr. Justin Perkins Dr. Knox, of Japan (p. 654), reviewing and his associates some forty years the year 1891 in Japan, argued for the ago. maintenance of an adequate force, as "nothing is more discouraging than For the Creek and Seminole Indians, work half manned and half done." He who come under the care of Presbyte- advocated the policy of strong re·enrian, Methodist, and Baptist native pas- forcements of existing missions, and tors, it is printing for the first time a deprecated an increase of the number version of Genesis in the Muskokee lan- of feebly manned new missions. He guage, prepared by the Rev. J. R. Ram- referred to the new mission of the Evansay and Mrs. A. E. W. Robertson, Ph.D., g!~l Lutherans, who, he said, had sent out but one man. He asked: "Must it Lutheran Church. Its boara carefully send its little force, too small for effi- and prayerfully and long considered the ciency and yet large enough to increase question of beginning work in Japan_ our denominations already far too According to their best jUdgment, there many?" was still room there for our work_ The Rev. L. G. M. Miller, minister 'Every creature' has not yet been of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, reached there with the Gospel, and Winchester, Va., writes a bitter com- until this is the case, surely we too are plaint against these utterances finding equally entitled with Dr. Knox to seek their way into the REVIEW. We beg to to oueyour Lord's command. We in remind him that the REVIEW assumes no no way seek to hinder or disparage him responsibility for opinions or state- or the body of Christians he represents ments which appear over well-known in their work. We accord them the names. We seek to furnish an arena, right of judgment as to where they had not for controversy surely, but for free best labor. He ought to do the same expression of even widely divergent by us."
opinions. That there is more than one view concerning" polity" in Japan is well known. We cheerfully make room Programme for the Decennial Oonferfor the following from our corre- enoe in Bombay! 1892-93. spondent's communication, though it seems to UR that Dr. Knox's only plea [We are indebted to Rev. J. L. Philis for a large force, if any. Bishop Mal- lips, M.D., for this advance copy. He lalieu, of the Methodist Episcopal and Mr_ A. Manwaring will accept our Church, during his recent visit in Japan, pleaded with his board for re-en- thanks.-J. T. G.] forcement, because he could place the Thursday, Dec. 29th, 10 A.M. to 1 P.M.
right kind of men in a dozen cities not -" Missionary Work among the De- now occupied by a.ny missionary.- pressed Classes and the Masses." (a) [J, T. G.] Nature of Instruction given (i) before Mr. Miller says: Baptism (ii) after Baptism. (b) Moral and Spiritual Results Produced. (C) The "Dr. Knox's statement seems to im- Best Methods of Work for the Future. ply that 'one man' was contemplated Papers-Rev. J_ E. Clough, D.D., Onas the extent of our force in Japan. It gole, Madras; Rev. S_ Martin. D.D., appears that this is not the case. Not Sialkot, Panjab; Rev. E. W. Parker, only is another on the way now, but we D.D., Lucknow. Speakers-Rev. A. hope to continue to add to their num- . Campbell, Manbhum, Bengal; Rev. ber. We go with no purpose of creat- W. H. Campbell, M.A., B.D., Cuddaing 'any confusion.' Our aim is to pah, Madras; Rev. .Ruttonji Nowroji, preach the Gospel and that alone, and Auruugabad, Berar ; Rev. W. S. Sutherin no way to interfere with others who land, M.A., Kalimpong. Bengal.–2 to may be doing the Lord's work in other 4.30 P.M. (Sectional.) (1)" Social and parts of the field. Dr. Knox seems to Legal Rights of Native Christians.-Marimply that the field is already fully oc- riage and Divorce." Papers-Rev. R. A. cupied. It is very far from being so. I Hume, Ahmednagar; Rev. H. E. Perquote from Rev. J. A. B. Scherer, our kins, Atari, Panjab. Speakers-Rev. missionary now on the ground. Appaji Bapuji, Poona ; Rev. K. C. Cbat- There are not less than four cities of terjee, Hoshyarpur, Panjab. (2)" Work over 30,000 souls each where no foreign among Lepers." Paper, W. C. Bailey, missionary resides, not to mention nu- Esq., Edihburgh. Speakers-Rev. G. M. merous smaller towns and clusters of vil- Bullock, Almora. N-w. P. ; Rev. W. J. lages, 80me of which are actually asking Richards, Allepy, Travancore. for foreign assistance. Dr. Guido F. Friday, Dec. 30th, 10 A.M to 1 P.M.- Verbeck, the leader of Japan missiona- "The Native Church in India-its Or- ries, who authorizes the use of his name ganization and Self·Support." K. C. in this letter, said to me this summer Banerji, Esq., B.A., B.L., Calcutta. that he could undertake to name a hun- Papers-Rev. Jacob Chamberlain, D.D., dred places where missionaries could be Madanapalle, Madras; Rev. S. Coles, advantageously placed at once. He is Cotta, Ceylon. Speakers-Rev. F. Hahn.
not only the oldest missionary on the Lohardllggll, Chotta Nagpur ; Rev_ T_ S.
ground, having lived here thirty-three Johnson, M.D., Jabalpur, C. P. ; Rev.
years, but is everywhere respected for A. T. Rose, D.D., Rangoon, Burmah.– his wide knowledge and solidity of 2 to 4.30 P.M. (Sectional.) (1) "The judgment. Religious Training of the Young." (a) "Dr_ Knox is entitled to his opinion, General. (b) Y. M. C. A. ann. Y. W.
but so also are the authorities of the O. A. (c) Sunday-schools. Papers- Miss Gardner, Calcutta; D. McConau. Speaker, Rev. F. W. Warne, Calcutta: ghey. Esq., M.A., Madras; Dr. J. L. (The Calcutta Conference has been asked Phillips, Calcutta. Speakers-Miss Ab- to arrange for another paper and another bott, Bombay; Rev. W. J. P. Morrison, speaker.)-5.30 P.M. (Sectional.) (1) AmbalIa, Panjab ; Rev, J. E. Robinson, Men's Meeting. "Public Morals in Bombay; Mrs. Sorabji, Poona. (2) India." Speakers-Dr. Condon, Mus- "TheJesuitAdvanceinIndia." Paper, Boorie, N-w. P. ; A. S. Dyer, Esq., Bom- bay. (2) Meeting of the Christian Rev. C. A. E. Diez, Mangalore, Madras. Women Workers' Union. Speaker, Rev. M. H. Clark, M.D., Am· ritsar.–5.30 P.M. .. Public Temper- Tuesday, Jan. 3d, 10 A.M. to 1 P.M.- ance Meeting." Speakers-Rev. J. H. (2) "The Social and Legal Standing of Bateson, Simla; Rev. Thomas Evans, the Lower Classes." The Madras Con- Mussoorie ; Rev. A. Parker, Benares. ference has been asked to appoint writ. ers and speakers.–2 to 4.30 P.M. (Sec. '&turday. Dec. 31st, 10 A.M. to 1 P.M.- tional.) (1)" Work among Anglo.Ind- "Work among the Educated Classes of ians and Eurasians." Papers-Rev. India." (a) Their Numbers, Influence, H. Gouldsmith, M.A., Calcutta; Rev. and Diffusion; (b) Their Religious Atti- I. F. Row, Poona. Speakers-Rev. D. tude; (c) Methods of Dealing with Osborne, Mussoorie ; Rev. T. H. Whita- Them. Papers-Rev. R. Wright Hay, more, Madras. (2) ,. Missionary Com- Dacca, Bengal; Rev. M. Phillips, Madras; S. Sathianadhan, Esq., M.A., ity." Papers-Rev. A. Clifford, M.A., LL.B., Madras. Speakers-Rev. J. Calcutta; Bishop J. M. Thoburn, D.D., McLaurin, D.D., Bangalore; S. R. Calcutta. Speakers -Rev. F. Ashcroft, Modak, Esq., Ahmednagar; Rev. Gun- M.A., Ajmere ; Rev. H. Gulliford, Banpatrao Navalkar, Alibag.–2 to 4.30 galore; Rev. J. Shilli.dy, M.A., Surat. P.M. (Sectional.) (1)" Work among Women." Papers-Miss Bernard, Poo- Wednesday, Jan. 4th. 10 A.M. to 1 P.M. na; Mrs. Bissell, Ahmednagar ; Miss S. – " Christian Literature." (a) Vernacu. Mulvaney, Calcutta; Miss Thoburn, lar; (b) English; (c) the Scriptures. Lucknow. Speakers-Miss Greenfield, Papers-Rev. H. Haigh, Mysore City; Ludiana; Mrs. Longhurst, Madras; J. Murdoch, Esq., LL.D., Madras; Rev. Miss McPhail, L.R.C.P., Madras; Miss S. W. Organe, Madras; Rev. G. P. Tay. Wanton, Amritsar ; Miss Warrack, Cal- lor, M.A., B.D., Ahmedabad. Speakers cutta. (2) .. The Native Church-the -Rev. C. B. Newton, D.D., Lodiana ; Training and Position of its Ministry." Rev. A. W. Prautch, Thanna, Bombay; Rev. H. U. Weitbrecht, Ph.D., Batala, Papers-Rev. W. Hooper, D.D., Allaha- Panjab.–2 to 4.30 P.M. Business Arbad; Rev. J. P. Jones, M.A., Madura. rangements and Closing Exercises. Speakers-Rev. H. D. Goldsmith, M.A., There will be a prayer-meeting every Madras; Rev. J. Lazarus, B.A., Mad- morning at 7.30. The Bombay Confer- ence is asked to arrange for two or more ras ; Rev. D. A. W. Smith, D.D., Insein, lectures on "Questions of Religious Burmah.–5.30 P.M. "Public Mis- Thought in India," on evenings not sionary Meeting." Speakers-Rev. S. W. Howland, D.O., Jaffna, Ceylon; Rev. otherwise occupied. J. L. PIlILLIPS, J. E. Scott, Ph.D., Muttra, N-w. P. ; F,ev. J. Wilkie, B.D., Indore, C. I. Secretary Decennial Conference Provisional ISunday, Jan. 1st, 1893, 3 p.M.-Sermon Committee. by the Rev. G. Kerry, Calcutta; fol- A. MANWARING, lowed by United Holy Communion. Secretary Bombay Missionary (Jonference. Monday, Jan. 2d, 10 A.M. to 1 P.M.- " Education as a Missionary Agency." The statistical tables prepared for Papers~Rev. W. H. Findlay, M.A., Negapatam, Madras; Rev. D. Macki- this Conference show an enc{)uraging chan, D.D., Bombay; Rev. A. B. Wann, B.D., Calcutta. Speakers-Rev. J. C. R. increase in many particulars. The Pres- Ewing, D.D., Lahore; Rev. L. B. Wolf, M.A., Guntur, Madras; Rev. J. W. byterians lead in the number of socie- Youngson, Guzrat, Panjab.–2 to 4.30 P. M. (Sectional.) (J ) "Industrial ties at work in India; the Church of Work." Papers-Rev. J. Frohnmeyer, Tellicherry, Madras; Rev. T. Snell England in the Iumber of foreign or- Smith, Jaffna, Ceylon. Speakers-Rev. S. B. Fairbank D.D., Bombay; Rev. J. dained missionaries and in the num· Small, Poona.' (2) .. Plan of Uniform ber of native Christians; the Baptists Missionary Statistics." Paper, Rev. J. W. Thomas, Calcutta. (3)" The in the numter of communicants. The Observance of the Lord's Day in India." Paper, Rev. W. B. Phillips, Calcutta. PIesbyterians lead in Anglo-vernacular schools; the Church of England in ~he vernacular schools; and the Met,hodlsts in female education.
As the documents are not in full be- feonrceouurs~gweemewntiththheoyldafrfeomrdarbkys as to the compari- son of growth with that of other decades.
DEPARTMENT OF CHRISTIAN
III.-DEPARTMENT OF CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR.
CONDUCTED BY PROFESSOR AMOS R. WELLS.
Ten Christian Endeavorers have gone dred and twelve scholars to its Sundayfrom societies in Victoria, Australia, to school during the past year. A noble foreign mission fields. That is one rea- showing, yet one that many an Amerison for the great prosperity of the Chris- can society might equal with a little tian Endeavor cause in that colony. more effort.
Here are some new committees they Not satisfied with separate temperhave adopted in Australia: a "good ance committees in the various societies, word" committee, to encourage and the West Division of the Chicago Union practise kindliness of speech; a .. flour has established a union temperance committee," to make dainty dishes for committee, which can unite the forces the sick and prepare more substantial and focus them effectively on many of food for the poor; a band of housekeep. the most crying evils of that wicked ing young ladies, to take charge of city. Why is not this a good idea for house, children, and Sunday dinner, all city unions? and give overworked mothers a chance to go to church; prayer bands, to ask The Friends are rapidly banding toand receive special blessings; and many gether their Endeavor societies into others. Of course, these things might Yearly Meeting Unions, analogous to be done without "committees," but the Conference and Presbyterial unions how seldom they are I of other denominations. Eight of these have been formed, and it is a most hope- A novel and valuable form of commit- ful fact that four of these unions are tee work, born on American soil, is that furnishing funds to support each a forof the "whatsoever" committee of a eign missionary. certain church in Washington, D. C. This is a committee whose purpose is to It is a distinctly understood Christian do the little things that, being every- Endeavor principle that all officers of body's business, are usually done by State and local unions-yes, and of the nobody. It does odds and ends of work United Society, too-shall serve without that Christian leaders are likely to think salaries, solely for the love of the Mashardly worth while. It is the gap-fill- ter. Secretary Baer has recently obing committee, and every society and tained the written statements of nearly church needs one. all State presidents and secretaries, who cordially affirm their agreement with Endeavor societies took active part in this principle. Even Dr. Clark himself what was, it is to be hoped, the final gets no pay for his services as president contest for Sunday closing of the World's of the United Society. The trustees Fair, the petitioning of the commis- also all serve purely for the love of the sioners. A large number of societies cause. and unions sent earnestly worded requests, fully signed, not only by their The earnest Canadian niissionary, own ;members, but by the prominent Rev. Egerton R. Young, has founded a men of their towns. large Christian Endeavor society among the Cree Indians of the Northwest Ter- Societies on this side the Pacific ritory. The essential Christian Endeavshould be stirred to healthy rivalry by or literature is being translated into the the brisk news that is coming in such a Cree language. :flood nowadays from Christian Endeavorers in Australia. An especially in- Two famous churches in the United spiring record is that of the Sunday- Kingdom have recently formed Chrisschool committee which o.dded one hun- tian Endeavor societies. One is in Glasgow, Scotland, the church of Rev. James Stalker, D.D. The other is in organized in the Presbyterian Mission of Birmingham, England, the church of Oakland, with the assistance of Rev.
Rev. R. W. Dale, D.D. Ug Poon Chew. Ly Moon was chosen A full Christian Endeavor manual in president. Among the refreshments the Armenian and Turkish languages that followed the first meeting was genu- has lately been prepared. The French ine tea.
are also translating Christian Endeavor The board of trustees of the United literature, and the societies are mul- Society has suffered its first loss at the tiplying, not merely in Paris, but in the hands of death. Choate Burnham, country districts. Esq., one of the earliest and stanchest Here is a good Christian Endeavor friends of the cause, has passed away.
missionary incident. In a certain so- He was an old man with a young and ciety a young lady tried earnestly for ardent heart, and he has been of the ut- four years to persuade her comrades to most service, not merely in the present establish a missionary committee. At prosperity of the Christian Endeavor last, wearied with her importunity, Miss movement, but in the earlier days, A. remarked, "Oh, do give it a trial! when it was winning its way and fight- G. will never let us alone until we do." ing its battles.
They gave it It six months' trial, and It is the Moravian Church now that the committee was not discontinued. wisely proposes to draw its Endeavorers On the contrary, the very Miss A. who together into a denominational Chris- made that slighting remark is now in tian Endeavor union. A strong or- training for missionary work, to be sup- ganization has been effected, the field ported by that same society. well divided, and great Christian En.
Mr. Alfred Hutton, a member ot Par- deavor growth may be expected among liament from Yorkshire, England, is an the Moravians.
ardent Endeavorer, and the treasurer or During the month of his stay in Aus- the Bradford Christian Endeavor Union. tralia Dr. Clark was expected to attend We have lately heard of several socie- and speak at seventy different meetings, ties whose temperance committees have and at many of them more than once!
made a specialty of raising money to Evidently his tour is more than a pleas.
send dmnkards, who wish to reform, to ure trip.
Keeley Cure or similar establishments. Here is the portrait of Dr. Clark as he • A few weeks ago news reached the appears to a prominent Australian Boston headquarters simultaneously of clergyman: "We think here that we extensions of Christian Endeavor work can understand some of the success of in localities as widely sundered as Chili the Christian Endeavor movement by and Burma. In each of these lands are the bearing and character of its founder.
seen the genuine Endeavor zeal and His magnificent sincerity and openness, helpfulness and methods of work. the complete and conspicuous absence Quietly but surely the idea of " senior of artificiality in nature and manner, societies of Christian Endeavor," where- mark a Christian gentleman strong in in older church-members and graduates attractive power. This to the general from the young people's society may observer. To those with whom he lived, work on in Christian Endeavor ways, is he blossomed more richly. At closer gaining ground. The Connecticut State quarters one felt that one was having convention urged the idea by a formal fellowship with a good man. The con- vote, and several religious papers of tact of sympathy was complete. Diplo- prominence are pushing the plan. Prac· macy was out of court. Heart touched tical trial in a number of churches is heart in a fellowship which one ever felt proving its value. precious. " California now has ..~other Chinese Dr. Clark's month in Australia was society of Christian Endeavor. It was one eminently fmitful of good to the cause. Everywhere were thronged audi- Moffat, Dr. Chapman, and many others. ences, eager attention and inquiry. the New York held the best convention of most unbounded hospitality and over· its history, with two thousand delegates, flowing cordiality. Through this visit with Mr. Sankey, Faye Huntington, Dr. of the president of the United Society, H. H. Stebbins, Rev. C. A. Dickinson, Christian Endeavor in America will gain and many other able speakers. Oregon as much as it gives, in enlarged plans had a wide·awake convention, and Minof work and revived enthusiasm. Pos· nesota too, with Dr. Wayland Hoyt, Dr. sibly the chief gain to the cause from H. H. French, Rev. R. W. Brokaw, and this journey will be the assurance, ·Rev. W. W. Sleeper. Vermont'sconven. placed beyond doutt, that Christian tion was the best in her history, from Endeavor is a world.movement, suited Dr. H. C. Farrar's stirring address to to all nations, and bringing forth equally the close. Iowa gathered five hundred glorious fruit under all skies. delegates from outside the convention city, and held a rousing meeting. New The conventions held by the State Jersey had eight hundred delegates, and, Christian Endeavor unions this fall among many 'other strong speakers, Dr. have been remarkable for their spiritual C. F. Deems. Seven hundred met in tone. the prominence and ability of the Wisconsin; Quebec's second annual speaker~. and the large numbers of the convention was large and enthusiastic; delegates. Never have Christian En· Missouri had seven hundred dele,g/ltes deavor State conventions excelled those and a magnificent programme, and Onof this season in these three particulars. tario's convention, with nearly a thou- The third annual convention of Texas sand delegates, with Dr. A. C. Dixon, drew together two hundred enthusiastic Bishop Baldwin, Dr. J. A. R. Dickson, delegates and a large body of able clergy- and Dr. S. P. Rose, was remarkably sucmen. Over a thousand Endeavorers cessful. Not the least noteworthy of came together in New Hampshire, to be the conventions of the two months addressed by such speakers as Dr. Ar. under review was the first State conven· thur Little, William Shaw, treasurer of tion held in South Carolina, a State far the United Society, William McNeil, behind the rest, hitherto, in Endeavor Thomas E. Besolow, the African prince, work. A full list of the prominent and Mrs. Alice May Scudder. Mr. San- speakers at these conventions would be key led the singing. The rousing meet· a remarkable one, not merely in the ing in Connecticut emphasized evan- number and prominence of the men, but gelization, and set on foot many practi. in the variety of evangelical faith repre· cal plans. Among the speakers were sented. Baptists and Methodists, Pres- General Howard, Dr. J. Wilbur Chap- byterians lind Congregationalists, Luman, Dr. Josiah Strong, Dr. D. J. Bur- therans, Reformed, Disciple, Moravian, rell, and Rev. N. Boynton. More than Quaker-all these, lind a score more, fifteen hundred Endeavorers gathered would be found fairly represented. To in Massachusetts, to be aroused to fresh fill Dr. Clark's place lit these convenenthusiasm by such men as Dr. James L. tions many men have given much time Hill, Rev. Lawrence Phelps, Rev. C. P. and earnest zeal. Prominent among Mills, Rev. Leroy S. Bean, Secretary these are Treasurer Shaw, Mr. William Gordon, of the Boston Y. M. C. A., Rev. McNeil, brother of the famous Scotch Henry T. McEwen, and Dr. W. E. Park. evangelist, and many members of the Five hundred Nebraskans held an espe· board of trustees. Overflow meetings cially helpful Endeavor convention. have been the rule at these meetings, More than two thousand of Pennsyl. the utmost enthusiasm has been mani. vania's Endeavorers met, and were ad· fested, and a beautiful spirit of consecra· dressed by Dr. W. H. McMillan, Dr. J. H. tion has been exhibited and fostered. Weber, Dr. Sylvanus Stall, President
DEPARTMENT
IV.-EDITORIAL. DEPARTMENT.
Dr. Strong's New Book. pIes Applied to the Two Great Prob- lems. Theadmirable article* in this number, by Dr. Josiah Strong, author of " Our Chapter XVI. An Enthusiasm for Hu- Country," alld one of our editorial cor· manity. respondents, we have obtained, by joint permission of the author and his pub. London, and, infact, all .England, is in a lishers, Messrs. Baker & Taylor, it being state of ferment. The well-known con- Chapter I. of Dr. Strong's forthcoming flict between Labor and Capital comes book, .. The New Era." Knowing the now and then, and with greater fregeneral plan and scope of the work just quency, to the front. Ten thousand about to appear, we greatly desired to Jews in the city'of London propose to print in thl'se pages the substance of its march barefooted through the streets ; magnificent opening chapter, partly for and it is said they are in a practically its intrinsic value as a source of inspira- half-starved condition. It is also said tion on missions, and partly to whet the that nearly twenty thousand engineers appetite of the reader for more. Dr. are out of employment in this metropo- Strong has struck the philosophy of his- lis alone. The poverty is abject and tory, and as one of the most vigorous appalling, and the condition of the thinkers of the age will command a poor threatens the very stability of the hearing. Our readers may be interested nation. This matter of the conflict beto know what other themes are to be tween employeril and employed must discussed in this book, and by Dr. have a speedy settlement; and he will Strong's permission we give the titles of be the greatest statesman of this present the other chapters : era who is able to reconcile these adjust.. ing interests and claims. At present no Chapter II. The Destiny of the Race. one has appeared above the horizon who Chapter III. The Contribution made seems competent to grapple with these by the Three Great Races of Ahtiquity. immense issues. There seems to be lit- Chapter IV. The Contribution made tle use in preaching the Gospel to halfby the Anglo-Saxon. starved people out of employment,whose Chapter V. The Authoritative Teach- particular clamor is for bread ; and this er.. is one of the greatest missionary ques- tions of the age. Chapter VI. The Two Fundamental' Laws of Christ. A Most Startling Faot, Chapter VII. Popular Discontent. One of the most remarkable events of Chapter VIII. The Problem of th, modern times is that vast Hindu Con_ Country. ference recently held at Benares India Chapter IX. The Problem of the City. to take steps toward the saving'of Hin: Chapter X. The Separation of the duism from the encroachments ot Masses from the Church. Christianity. Chapter XI. The Mission of the Church. Among other things, the Conference Chapter XII. The Necessity of New recommended that October 30th 1892 Methods. should be set apart as a special 'day of Chapter XIII. Necessity of Personal prayer to the Supreme Power for the Contact. preservation of the Hindu religion. Chapter XIV. Necessity of Co-operation. Probably in the whole history of the Chapter XV. The T~o Great Princi. world there has never before been a day set apart in the heathen or pagan or * "The Nineteenth Century One of Prepara- ~ohammedan lands for prayer for the tion," page 7. preservation of false faiths. But what This society has been in existence a mighty concession to the growing about five years, and its Board of Manpower of Christianity is the fact that its agement consists of 30 ministers and foes are impelled to cry to their gods, Christian workers representing the varilike the prophets of Baal, for their in- ous evangelical denominations. Its terposition in behalf of the corrupt reo head offices are in New York City, ligions of the world. corner of Broadway and Forty.fifth Street. It has now about 150 missiona- That same day-October 30th-was ries in various countries. About 25 set apart by the Student Volunteers for went out to the Congo last May, and two prayer for the breaking down of the bar- other parties to India in July and Auriers of heathen, pagan, and Moslem gust, consisting of 16 persons. On faiths. It is perhaps an equally signifi- Wednesday morning, November 9th, cant though melancholy fact that the another party of 14 sailed for Liversucceeding Sabbath, November 6th, was pool on their way to the Soudan. Their set apart in London as the" Museum field is the largest single country in Sunday," and that in many even of the Africa, with a popUlation of about evangelical churches and chapels that 90,000,000, stretching from Khartoum day was given up to the public plea for on the Red Sea to Sierra Leone on the the opening on the Lord's Day of the Atlantic Ocean, a strip of 4000 miles various museums and galleries of art. long by 1000 miles wide. This densely populated region is wholly unevangel- The preaching of the Gospel largely ized. gave way to what, in the eyes of the most sagacious students of social and The first missionary party sailed two religious questions, means the breaking years ago under the leadership of Mr. down of the sacred limits of Sabbath Kingman to this field from New York. rest. Others have since followed. The pres- ent reinforcement will increase the A Free Ch'lrch congress has just been working force to 20. Their base of held (November) at Manchester for the operations is Freetown, Sierra Leone, emphasizing of points of agreement be- and their line of advance is up the Rotween Nonconformists. It was very kelle River, which they have already aslargely attended, and many very admi- cended nearly 100 miles, and planted a rable addresses were delivered. We can- number of stations. The present party not have much hope of any close unity will occupy about 8 stations. while two obstacles continue to exist: first, denominational bigotry, such as Hardships in the Mission Field. shows itself in those Baptists who either cannot or will not see that any devout, It is a sign of the imperfection in our intelligent Scripture student can hon- mission work that we still hear so much estly differ from them on infant bap- spoken of the privations with which mis_ tism, believers' baptism, and immersion sionaries have" necessarily" to put up. as the only proper mode of baptism ; To every servant of God who offers himor secondly, loose and unwarrantable self for the work the question is put, views of the inspiration of the Scrip- " Are you really going to give up all sotures, such as some of us never can cial comforts and live in those barbarabide or quietly tolerate, make such ous regions ?" unity impossible. Naturally the earnest and obedient Missionary Reinforcements. follower of J eSUR Christ replies that "the love of God constraineth him," The International Missionary Alliance and lays his ha~d on the passages has just sent out a new party of mis· which mark out to him this path of sionaries to a most important and novel duty. He leaves the "hardships" in field. God's hands, for Him to manage. Once, tiously to resolve by the grace of God in conversation with a lady missionary, to undergo only those troubles and diffi- I let drop the word" hardship" in con- culties which He will see fit to lay upon nection with her work. She immediate- him, and no more. All other burdens ly broke in with, "Do not let me hear borne will tend to the exaltation of you use that word. We who have gone " self." His duty will not demand of feel the peace and joy we have in His him to live in a hut when he is able to service ample reward for any sacrifice." build his house and furnish it with some degree of comfort. Our Church .. In a service which Thy will appoints will never maintain a Christlike mis· There are no bonds for me, sionary activity upon the motto, " Use up and get more." For my inmost heart is taught thc truth That makes Thy children free ; I was struck with this in reading the life of James Gilmour. His career had And the life of self-renouncing love been very active and full of trials; he Is the life of liberty." had lived through many sufferings, but it was only when he learned to "pray But this is a subject continued for us more and work less, so that God may in any journal or biography of missiona- work through His servants," that his ries. work became largely blessed to himself and the people around. On the other hand, it is a mistake on the part of " friends" at home to think As a future missionary I look forward that the life of foreign workers must to enduring hardships, but only such as needs be a life of hardship. Does it fol- He may be pleased to send, and as long low that because he is going to heathen a life spent in such service to His glory lands he is to be poorly supplied with as possibly care and prudence can the ordinary comforts of life? Should make it. there be any difference between the minister at home and the minister in "Lead us not into temptation, but the foreign field? Are not both work- deliver us from evil. ' , We find nowhere ers in the same cause, servants of the in the Bible any hint authorizing us to same Master, and all Christians stew- pray for more suffering, so as to grow ards of God's money? holier by means of it. We accept it as He is pleased to send; His will be done. Must it be that the men who preach to those from whom the funds are drawn W.J.N. be better supplied than those who preach to those for whom funds are col- Light for the Ohuroh at Home. lected ? Where, then, is Christian love and unselfishness, hy which we prefer The missionary cause, which lies so one another? Nay, it i. the fault of close to the Saviour's heart, has now those very talkers whose months are full found a new channel to a multiplication of " hardships" that such actually exist! of its power. And this, like all inven- Let them begin by supplying fitly those tions, is so simple that we wonder that workers already in the field; and by it has not been in use for ages. The sending forth more men by their pray- Cross.Bearers' Missionary Reading Cirers and their money, these privations cle is swiftly binding the Christian world will speedily disappear. together and concentrating missionary zeal. Lastly, however, the future missionary should not think that he has a per- All those who are interested in mismit to sport unnecessary hardships. sions, and who earnestly desire to get The time for extraordinary deeds of into the depths of the missionary cause, mortification does not any more exist in may write to Rev. Z. M. Williams, A.M•• our Church. My body is a temple of St. Joseph, Mo., for a Handbook explain- God, and the endangering of it is break- ing this movement. Already inquiries ing the sixth commandment.
The young missionary has conscienhave been pouring in from all parts ever-widening area and with constantly of the United States, from Canada, increasing results. and even from England. Many great leaders of the different churches have " The missionaries, mostly young, are given their hearty endorsement to the all Presbyterians, all university men, and enterprise, and there have been a num- all carefully selected; partly by the Unitber of additions to the Circle recently. ed Presbyterian Church of Scotland and partly by the Irish Presbyterian Church. The movement contemplates an intelligent study of the whole subject of mis- "Besides the stations enumerated, sions, and without doubt will prove of there are many scores of other places immense value to the" Forward Move- where the Gospel is proclaimed by memment" in Christian missions. bers resident or sojourning for busi- ness. I am not aware of the existence It offers a three years' course of pre- of any considerable village where the scribed daily readings, with yearly ex- Gospel has not been proclaimed and aminations on the same. Such a course, Christian books offered for sale by the comprising travel, history, biography, admirably conducted colportage system philosophy, and studies of peoples, lan- of Manchuria, where every colporteur is guages, and customs is in itself an edu- an itinerant evangelist. Years ago the cation and promotive of real culture, preacher had proclaimed his message while stimulating men to noblest pur- again and again in every city ; and at poses and highest resolves. present there is scarcely a city in which there is not a permanent station or into Two Oorrections. which we are not taking steps to enter. Unless soma sudden blight, which I SOUTH AMERICA. cannot believe in, falls upon our widely spread and aggressive church, there is The statement in regard to the popu- no reason why every inhabitant of Man- churia will not have had an opportunity lation of South America on page 869 of of understanding the Gospel message within two or three decades. the November, 1892, REVIEW should " Our congregations begin at the port have read, "A proportion about equal of Newchwang and extend northward to the neigbborhood of the Songari. Last to one tenth that of Europe… The popu- year we added 3 new congregations to the 16 which were organized when our lation of South America is variously es- 2 missions combined to form the Pres- byterian Church of Manchuria. timated from 30,000,000 to 35,000,000, "The native preachers are mostly or somewhat less than that of the Brit- men of a fair amount of learning, who have been carefully selected, and are ish Isles. constantly trained in Scripture truth. They are set apart only after they have MANCHURIA. proved themselves fit for the seriously responsible position which they occupy. A correspondent calls our attention They are paid at an average of less than to a misstatement on page 711 of the £1 sterling per month. We look be- September REVIEW, where it is said that sides to at least 1000 of our members "Manchuria has 12,OOO,OOO-without a to act as unpaid preachers of the Gossingle missionary." It is an old-time pel. Indeed, we count upon every statement, long since out of date, and professed believer as a. preacher to all we gladly give the correction in full : his circle of acquaintances. We look to our native brethren, not to foreigners, to " There are in Manchuria 17 missiona- evangelize the country. JOHN Ross. rIes, 19 congregations, 43 dut-stations, 57 native preachers, 12 colporteurs. October 31st, 18n, there were 2037 members; there were baptized last year 490 persons. This year's statistics are not yet formulated, but the baptisms cannot be less.
.. The first of the above-mentioned members were baptized in 1873, since which year the work has gone on in an
GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE
V.-GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE.
Extracts and Translations from Foreign in the work that Central Africa is not to Periodicals. be evangelized by white men; too many of the conditions of life are against it. BY BEV. C. C. STARBUCK, ANDOVER, MASS. The European cannot make his home there as he does in South Africa, or on AFRICA. the highlands of the East Coast, or even at the extreme north; and we increas- _co A French Roman Catholic mis- ingly feel that the greater part of the sionary has laid before the French Geo- burden will have to fall upon the people graphical Society some interesting facts of the country themselves. Happily in regard to the Fangs, a well-known the natives are responding right nobly tribe in West Africa. He represents to the responsibilities laid upon them them as having an unusual degree of by their Master ; and their readiness to energy, and as virtually monopolizing witness concerning Him is one of the the ivory trade in the region in which most encouraging features of our work. they are found. The interesting fact is Their testimony is often very elementary brought to light that, although they wor- and crude, but God is being glorified ship as fetiches the skull of the gorilla thereby, and seeing that He is making and the horns of antelopes, they believe such use of His servants, we feel we are in a Supreme Being who created and pursuing the right policy in locating who upholds all things. This affords a ourselves in the most important centres fresh evidence that fetichism is often that are available, and in looking' to only a convenient device, a sort of in- Him to raise up messengers who, termediate, every-day, working religion, through the gracious influences of the which may co-exist with a clear concep- Holy Spirit, shall be enabled to carry tion of one Supreme Being, compared on the work in detail. We do not adwith whom the fetich is little more than vocate the maintenance of native evana convenient appliance. These people gelists by European churches, for we are warlike, and they always eat the feel it is wiser to throw the burden upon prisoners whom they capture."-Ohurch the native churches; for though it may at Home and Abroad. mean less apparent progress, we feel sure we are on right lines. Just so long _co You can never win an African un- as we bolstered up the native church at less you first love him; and then when Cameroons they were dependent upon you love him, like all human nature, he us, but when the Germans stepped in, responds to the love. The African has and they had to depend upon thema sweetness of character which I have selves, they developed a resourcefulness not found excelled even in England. and an ability that most surprised those The Africans of the Bible were gentle who knew them best; and not only and kind. I call to your mind Ebed have they been able to stand alone, but Melech, who lifted Jeremiah the Prophet they have so progressed that they have from the dungeon and the mire; Simon just completed their fifth new chapel the Cyrenian, who carried the Cross of since the fostering care of the English our beloved Master and Lord; the Ethi- churches was withdrawn. " opian eunuch who asked Philip the Evangelist to step up beside him, and -" To-day I saw the young Khedive. was willing to listen to the explanation His appearance impressed me most of the old Book. The African is the favorably. He has a fresh European same to-day." -Canon TAYLOR SMITH, in complexion, a frank, modest, pleasant Ohurch Missionary lntelligencer. expression, and seems to be resolved to take the reins, so unexpectedly put into -The Rev. George Grenfell writes to the Missionary Herald (English Baptist) : " It is quite plain to us who are engaged
EXTRACTS AND TRANSLATIONS
his hands, with honest purpose to do they proceed: "Does a European colohis best. All who know Sir Evelyn nist really expect that even the most Baring agree in regarding him as a thor- , down-trodden' African would willing. oughly wise, as well as firm adviHer; ly leave the cultivation of his own food but one thing that has specially im- crop to do the work of anyone else? pressed me in connection with the Brit- As long as the transport of the said disish occupation of Egypt, and Britain's trictis carried on in primitive fashion place and influence here, is its unob- by native bearers, so long will it be trusiveness. The British army of occu- hampered during the garden season by pation is the smallest; there is no un- failure of the supply of carriers. 1m· necessary parade of that force; in al. prove the means of transport by intromost all branches of administration ducing bullock wagons, and the diffi. Egyptian officials have the chief places, culty, comparatively speaking, disap. and in most cases only Egyptians are in pears. . ., Does a European colonist official authority; but what surprised imagine that the native of the Shire me most was to learn that Sir Evelyn Highlands is unwilling to work and can Baring has no precedence over the only be made to do so by presents or representatives of other European na- threats? Let him go and see the plan. tions. He comes in simply in order of tations of the Messrs. Buchanan Brothseniority. The Consul-General of Spain ers at Michiru, Lunzu, Chiradzulo, and is Dean of the Consular body, and ranks Zomba; then let him look at the buildfirst. ings erected at Mandala, Blantyre, and Zomba. These are the products of free "Next to the unobtrusiveness of labor. Does he remember the carriage Britain is its beneficent effectiveness. of the Good News, the Charles Janson, It is now twenty-four years since I was the Domira, and the other craft sailing last in Egypt. In that time I noticed now on Nyassa? . " That was done several very marked changes. I remem- by free labor in the days when no Euro. ber, for example, near the town of pean employer dared think of evic- Keneh, on a Sunday afternoon, seeing tion. . .. The natives themselves are 10,000 fellaheen (peasants) assembled on saying that if there occurs oppression the bank of the Nile, and being packed in such or any form, they will migrate into large barges, to be carried to some to the districts where there are no Europlace two days' sailing distant, to work, peans, and where they can be free to it might be, on some embankment, but live and cultivate their gardens in peace. as likely on something which was to en· The results will be the melancholy rich the arbitrary and self-indulgent spectacle that we see in the Cape, Free Khedive Ismail. For such work there State, Transvaal, and Natal colonies, was no pay. That system of forced where native and European life have labor, or corvle, has now nearly or quite separated entirely." ceased. The dual control of Britain and France condemned it, and British -The Moravian Brethren sent out to influence has pursued it to a timely end. Lake Nyassa, after a good deal of jour. It was the very same system applied to neying hither and thither in the counthe previously independent children of try, have finally found a settlement in Israel in Egypt which led to the Ex- the country of the boy-king Makapalile. odus."-Rev. JOHN ALISON, D.D., in Mis- " There is a village of neat cottages very sion Record of the Church of Scotland. near 0111' camping-place, and others not very far removed, about seventy in all, -Life and Work in British CentralAfri- with still others somewhat farther off. ca-printed at Blantyre-animadverts The inhabitants appear diligent, having on a practice which, unchecked, might hedges, fences, and irrigating ditches, easily degenerate into slave-holding. and growing in their gardens maize, The extracts will explain themselves as
GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE
sweet potatoes, malesi, and owning ernor, who for many years had been, cows. There is running water near by, and now is again, pastor of the Ando- clay for bricks, a supply of wood, a shel. halo Church in Antananarivo, and to ter against the detestable northwest whose wise administration and kindly wind. No swamps and no white ants, Christian character 1 had many testi.
and a situation 5000 feet above the lake monies. One of the natives, for in.
level – airy therefore and relatively stance, speaking of Ramaka, said to healthy. In short, all the external me: 'When anyone was ill, high or conditions are inviting; but that in the low, Ramaka would put his dignity on eyes of our brethren, and with right, is one side and go and visit him.' . . . A not that which alone suffices, nor yet fortnight's journey from Ambohimarina that they are in the region commended bl'Ought us to Anorontsanga. The gov.
to them by Dr. Kerr-Cross. Rather do ernor here, thank God, is one of the they seek for the earth the final deci- most intelligent and earnest Christian sion from heaven. They would fain men in the island. It is impossible to have from thence, if not a sign or won· be long in his company without seeing der, yet a token of assent, manifesting that for him' to live is Christ.' He is, itself in inward certainty and tranquil- in the first place, the servant of Christ, lity of mind respecting their undertak· in the second the servant of Ranavalo· ing. They know, moreover, that such manja1!:a, the queen of the island. All light from above must be the reward of the people I conversed with-Euro- prayer. Therefore, before they seek peans, Hindus, Johannamen, Hova, their rest, each for himself apart and Sakalava, Mozambiques-were lOUd in likewise all conjointly, they set forth his praises. 'He is truly our father and their thoughts and apprehensions, the mother,' said one man to me, 'and his matter on all its sides, as so often 0.1- only thoughts are for our good.' Thank ready, before Him, to whom this place God, again I say, for a man like Rako- is to be consecrated-Him whose name tovao, the Governor of Anorontsanga.
is to be proclaimed here in the wilder- He not only takes his turn in preaching ness. Thereupon there falls upon them at the church, but also teaches a weekly a joyful and settled confidence, and in Bible class. Every August, it seems, he that very evening it was decided for has a large gathering of children from them: Here abide we and build. Human nearer the schools, and also representa.
habitation and God's kingdom." -.M"~ tives from all the churches, which- sions·Blatt aus der Brildergemeine. though five years ago there were only MADAGASCAR. :five in existence-now number twenty. . Two days' journey south of -From the Chronicle: ., I had several Androvahonko brought us to Alldra- opportunities of meeting the congrega. nosamonta, one of the most important tion at this place, and preaching the trading centres on the northwest coast.
Gospel to them "-Ambohilllarina, in The governor is a man somewhat ad- the Province of Antornboka, at the north vanced in years, and is under Rakotovao.
end of the island-" as well as examin. He, too, is an earnest Christian (indeed, ing the school.children. There are more it was for this reason, added to his in- signs of life in the church here than in telligence, that Rakotovao placed him any of those I had hitherto visited, and here), and takes the deepest interest in I believe that there is a considerable religious matters, he himself teaching a number of genuine Christian people. Bible class every Monday morning.
They have formed as many as five out- "A series of special religious meet- stations, have placed over them an evan- ings have been held at Ambohipaning, gelist, and have provided teachers for in the centre of the Rev. C. Jukes's dis· the schools. • .• This good work was trict. • I have never,' says Mr. Jukes, initiated by Ramaka, the former gov· , known such a time since I have been
EXTRACTS AND 'l'RANSLATIONS
in the ctmntry. Nothing but the work- FARTHER INDIA AND THE ARCHIPELAGO. ing of the Spirit of God could have touched the people in such a way. Peo- -" What benefits can come to the ple came from all parts of the district, people [of Siam] through the preaching bringing little baskets of rice with them of the priests when it is given in a lanto last three days, some a distance of guage understood neither by the priests two days' journey. On the first morn- nor by the people? The homilies of ing, at half-past six, we had a prayer- Buddha in the Bali language are simply meeting, at which two hundred were committed to memory by the priests and present, and at nine 0' clock we assem- recited. It would be sinful for them to bled again, and after a Bible reading on preach in any other language. Neither " Sin" all united in making a solemn have I discovered in the priests any eviconfession to God. The chapel was dence of the missionary spirit or of care crowded, and the extreme stillness for the good of their fellow-men. The showed that the thoughts of the people two words which characterize Christianwere working. We broke up after a ity and Buddhism are as unlike as light three hours' service, and as the people and darkness. Christianity, love; Bud· left the chapel scarcely a word was dhism, selfishness. spoken. In the afternoon we met again at two o'clock, and continued until " For years I spent much time in pre. nearly five. Next morning there was senting the Gospel to the Buddhist another service at 6.30. At least three priests, and as I went from temple hundred were present. At the close of urged the priests to take up a crusade the subsequent meetings the people against the giant evils of Siam-gam. were very reluctant to disperse, and in bling, opium, and liquor-telling them the evening there was singing and pray- how these evils were ruining the poor er all over the village. All seemed to people, body and soul. be in some way concerned about the " Great Salvation." One after another " But invariably I received the heart. got up to acknowledge the good they less reply, 'Let them alone. Let it be had received at these meetings, and unto them according to their merit or likened the three days to the day of demerit.' "-Rev. EUGENE P. DUNLAP, Pentecost. After the meetings num- in Ohurch at Home and Abroad. bers came to us broken down under a sense of sin, and to ask what they must -" Beyond doubt we think a great do to be saved. During the whole time deal about the East Indies, but it is not I have been in Madagascar I have never always nor universally felt with any seen anything like this work.' .. vividness that the Christian Netherlands have in the East Indies a lofty, serious, -The Preachers' Union in Antanana- and noble calling to fulfil. It cannot rivo has, in addition to Sunday preach- have been the sole purpose of Divine ing, formed itself into a sort of Salva- Providence to make the Netherlands rich tion Army of sixty men, for the purpose through India. It has unquestionably of holding service on market days. also had in mind to make the Indies Three fourths of the London Mission- happy through the Netherlands. Be. ary Society's adherents throughout the yond doubt, on the whole, our dominworld belong to the Madagascar Mission. ion has been a blessing for India. It Each missionary has the oversight of has gradually introduced there order from sixty to seventy congregations. and quiet, peace and security, and here The college' has sent out two hundred and there has promoted prosperity; but and thirty young men, and more than is that enough ? Would that satisfy one hundred and ten of these are still God's ,will ? Have we no concern with in large centres of popUlation, higher than material interests? Shall we not suppose that these magnificent lands have been entrusted to the Chris- tian, the Protestant Netherlands, in
GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE
order that their simple.minded, on the and from the written word of doctrine, whole so obedient and far from intel- in order to ground it merely upon the lectually unapprehensive population subjective experience, only covers with might receive a share in our spiritual artificial flowers the bottomless depth be- advantages; that we should bring to fore which it places us. This faith that them the Uh1-istianity in which our ad· is thus left to lean on itself is not the vantages are rooted; the Gospel, which victory that has hitherto overcome the avails for them too as a power unto sal. world or that to-day is overcoming it. If vation ?" – Orgaan der Nederlandsche any work in the world reqilires a faith Zendingsvereeniging (organ of the Neth- that is not left to lean on itself, it is the erlands Missionary Association). work of missions."-Dr. WABNBCX, in – " Islam, in the East Indies, is very AUgemeine Missions.Zeitschrift.
favorably circumstanced for the work of -" There is an extraordinary inorease proselytism. While the Christians have of Jews to be noted generally. In spite to send missionaries from afar, with an of all their troubles and persecutions exclusively religious aim, and so are and tribulations, the nation is rapidly obliged to care for their support, the increasing. There is a great change in Islamites have no concern for any of their social condition. They are no these things. Their millsionaries are longer hooted and spurned in most the Arabs and the hadjis, who come to countries, as they used to be. We trade with the islanders, and Iwho in- know, of course, what is going on in struct them at their ease in the Moham- Russia-but that is the exception, not medan profession. If it were only the the rule. It is the desire of great Prot- Arabs that did this it would be bad estant societies, and generally of all enough; but now that of late years the thinking Protestants, to do good to the voyage to Mecca has become so much Jews. Then there is a general expecta- eosier, many of the natives journey tion, which we cannot deny to be a great thither. On their return they are hadjis, factor in the life of any people, that and have the repute of being initiated there is to be speedily Ii great national into all the mysteries of Islam; and in movement. Even the Jew begins to fact what the islanders need to know of look forward, and even the Jew thinks Islam is so extremely little, that any that, perhaps, after all, he has made a hadji can teach it with small pains. It mistake and that, perhaps, after all, the is simply the well-known profession of Messiah has come; and although you faith, circumcision, and the five duties, have not so many converts as could be of which practically the observance of a wished or expected, there are many single one is commonly held to suffice." thousands, in addition to professors, who -De Macedonier. really in their hearts believe that Jesus MrscELLANEous. Christ is the Son of God. But, my Christian friends. the return of the Jew -" We need a firm foundation nnder to his native land forebodes strife. We our feet if we are to have courage and know that in the last days perilous times joyfulness, to conquer the world for our shall come, and that there will be much Heavenly King; and this sure founda- suffering and sorrow among nations; tion can be no other than the univeraal but we believe that the Jew, with his Divine will of salvation, as it has been proud history and his long lineage, will made known in deed and word, and is again come to the land of his fathers, settled in the Scripture. Missions hover and that the prophecies will be fulfilled in the air if this objective authority for in relation thereto. We know also that the obedience of our faith is under. our Lord will come again with great joy, mined. All the brilliant rhetoric of and we know that we ought to be the modern theology, which divorces faith pioneers in the work. "-MABK STBWAllT, from the historical facts of redemption, ESQ., M.P., in Jewish Intelligence. THE WORLD AT LARGE. every appliance that science, ingenuity, -As a specimen of the" piety" cur- and lavish expenditure of money can rent in Christendom not so many centu· provide to make them comfortable, ries since, this is worth preserving. In spend one or two seasons in Arctic re- 1565, in a ship named The Jesus, Sir gions ; but very little is heard of the John Hawkins had aeized and was trans- men, and women, too, who, with scanty porting to America a cargo of slaves. appliances for making themselves com- Terrible storms were endured, but when fortable, spend twenty.five or thirty captain and crew came out alive, the years, and even their lives, in these officers entered in. the journal: "'Twas same regions, that the dark, desolate of the Lord, who never suffers His elect homes of the natives may receive the light of the Gospel. It takes from to perish '" $25,000 to $50,000 to fit out an Arctic expedition for two years-to do what? -Worth repeating, and equallyappli. Perhaps get a few miles farther north cable in every land under the sun. The than anyone else. But the Church question has frequently been asked, hesitates if asked to provide $10,000 for .. How shall we reach the full· blooded an Arctic mission." Indians with the Gospel?" A Quaker lady says : "To reach the full.blooded -It is two years since a band of mis· Indian, send after him a full-blooded sionaries assembled at Shanghai, China, issued a call for" 1000 men for China," Christian '" to be sent within five years. It was a large draft, but it is likely to be hon. -It is a great question, in what things ored. It is said that 350 of the recruits and just how far to conform to native called foi.- are already in the field. ideas and customs-that is; in non. essential matters like dress, modes of living, music, etc. For example, Dr.
Grundeman is positive that it is a serio -A poor colored man in the West In- ous mistake to attempt to reproduce in dies brought to one of the missionaries India the church architecture of Europe the sum of $13 to help in spreading the or America. -For that land Indian ideas Gospel, and when asked if that were and methods are vastly better. not too much for him to give, replied, -A.D. 395 is the date commonly " God's work must be done, Massa, and given for the complete evangelization I may be dead.'
of the Roman Empire, or three centu. -The following inscription was ries and a half after St. Paul set forth. placed upon the grave stone of a lit- The story of Europe's evangelization tle Irish boy: "I want to be a mis· fills 1000 years. Modern missions, sionary when I grow up to be a man; about which we are sometimes so im· but if I should die before I am old patient for immediate great results, are enough, I want this wish put on my but about 100 years old, and in some of tombstone, so that somebody else may the' great :fields they have been carried see it and go ill my place." on for a much shorter period. -John Ruskin has said, "If you do -Well, really, we must hasten to cut not wish for His kingdom, don't pray down expenses in the foreign field, for for it ; but if you do, you must do more it actually costs as much to support two than pray for it ; you must work for it." , missionary families in Japan for a year as it does to fire a single shot from one -The commander of a Chinese war'
of our big cannons! junk, when asked the nature of his ser- -Or, put it this way, as does Mr. vice, answered promptly: "Why, or- Lopp, a missionary of the American As. ders come, then go; that's it… And sociation in Alaska: " The world lauds why not also receive the command and admires Arctic explorers, who, with given by the Captain of our salvation? -A young Christian negro, who has arrive at Tabor Collegp, Iowa, this year spent four years at the Central Tennes- was Tonami Hyashi, from Kyoto, Japan, see College, in Nashville, Tenn., has sent by one of the missionaries who been called to a throne in Africa. His went out from Tabor_ The last to enter name is Momolu Massaquai, and he is Alexander Vozaks, from ThessaioniclL, came from the Vey country, a region of Greece. In the class of 1893 is a native interior Africa adjoining Liheria_ of Iceland. These all are preparing for -In Abyssinia, it is said, the ilIus- missionary service. A promising Botrated editions of the Bible all have the hemian is also one of the students.
original man, as a matter of course, -Wanted-a just proportion in our ebony-hued, While the devil is always giving to advance the Lord's work.
white. There do not seem to be very many -Dr. Sheldon Jackson, some time Mrs. Jellehys exclusively and absurdly Presbyterian" bishop" of the far North- devoted to Borrioboola Gha on the left west, and now Government Superin- bank of the Niger j for, according to a tendent of Schools in Alaska, seems to report of the foreign missions commitunite in happy fash,ion in his person the tee of the Buffalo, N. Y., Presbytery, functions of church and state. Thus, the Protestant Christians of the United he has heen breaking up the whiskey States expend annually for religious traffic with the Indians. He found 30 work in our own land $80,000,000 per barrels of the stuff on the whaling fleet year, or $1.32 for the evangelization of at Port Clarence, and had the satisfac- each person. The same Protestant tion of emptying it all into the sea. Be- Christians expend in behalf of those in sides. he has been making several trips heathendom $4,000,000 per year, or one to Siberia in search of reindeer, and has third of a cent each for the total popuimported 150, with experienced herders, lation. to teach the Alaskan natives how to take care of ,the animals. Thus it is expected -A missionary in China affirms that " during this very month more money that a new home product of flesh food will be spent in propitiating evil spirits will be provided. Along with these en- that have no existence than all the couraging items, the doctor also reports churches in the United States give in that there are now 34 Indian schools in one year to foreign missions."
Alaska with 1700 pupils. -Homes for the children of missiona- -No missionary periodical has re- ries are becoming refreshingly common cently reached this portion of the edi- in the home field. Thus, in addition to torial table fuller of interesting matter Auburndale, Oberlin has her Judson than the November number of Life and Cottage at least started in an old build- Light for Woman. In particular, Mrs. ing refitted for the purpose, but much Rand's story of calamities is worth read- needing a larger and better structure; ing. and Mrs. Eaton's account of work and the Presbyterian Board is pushing in Chihuahua, Mexico, and of scarcely forward a movement to establish two less interest is Mrs. Gulick's account of homes in Wooster, O.
the girl's boarding·school in San Sebas- -Connecticut contains nearly 30,000 tian, Spain. French Canadians, and Massachusetts -The oldest church in America is that about six times as many_ of San Miguel, in Santa Fe, N. M. It -In addition to the Chinese, and WIlR built in ] 545. Japanese, and Indians, and negroes, THE UNITED STATES. and Italians, and Finns, and Poles, and Hungarians, and Hebrews, Germans, -The ends of the earth are brought Scandinavians, and Irish, and many together. One of the first students to more thrust upon us to be Americanized and taught the Gospel according to the the education and the evangelization of New World conceptions thereof, New the negroes since the war." And it is York City and Brooklyn alone hold not estimated that to this sum the South has less than 45,000 Spanish.speaking peo- added $20,000,000.
ple. -'I.'he reinforcements to the fields of -A writer in the Catholic World, after the Baptist Missionary Union for 1892 a lamentation over the unbelief of numbered 81 missionaries. Of these 29 Americans in the claims of the Catholic returned to the fields of labor from Church, proposes an "apostolate of periods of rest, and 52 were missiona- prayer for the conversion of the United ries going out for the first time.
States." He charitably affirms that Practical Christian Oomity.-The atten- there is " practically little true knowl- tion of the Methodist missionary au· edge of the supernatural life outside of thorities being called to a violation in the Catholic Church." He prints a form Bulgaria of the agreement made years of prayer in which GOD is asked to in- ago with the American Board, they cline the hearts of Americans " to be. promptly rectified the matter, withdrawlieve in Thy Church." He promises ing the new mission begun inadvertent- that "24 masses shall be offered up with- ly in the territory of the Board. out charge for the benefit of those who will recite this prayer daily." -The Freedmen's Aid and Southern Education Society of the Methodist -The Tuskeegee, Ala., Normal and Episcopal Church received for the year Industrial Institute is by, of, and for ending June 30th, 1892, $367,751, aod the colored people; is undenomina- expended $363,613. Of the expenditional ; is located in the midst of the tures, $210,783 was for the support of great" black belt," and has 34 officers schools among colored people. and teachers, and 511 young men and women receiving industrial. mental, and -The income of the American Mis- Christian training to fit them for leader- sionary Association for 1891-92 was ship among their race. Of the 18 build. $430,569. In addition to its splendid ings used, 16 have been constructed al- work among the Freedmen in the South most wholly by student labor. There and the "mountain whites," 90 misis great need of funds for enlargement sionaries and teachers are sustained and to aid indigent pupils. among the Indians, and in boarding and day.schools 500 pupils are found. Be- -The Baptists, Methodists, and Pres· sides, 45 missionaries devote themselves byterians led the way, and now the to the Chinese upon the Pacific coast; Episcopalians, and also the Congrega. and as one result, we find this muchtionalists, follow hard after in declin- sinned-against class contributing $6290 ing to receive any longer government to th e treasuries of the local missions. aid for church schools among the Indians. The world will now watch with -The American Millennial Associadeep interest to see the Roman Catholic tion issues an appeal for funds sufficient Church join this noble procession. J.Jet to send one or more missionaries to church and state be separated and kept China to labor under the care of the apart. China Inland Mission.
-There are 2 Chinese girls studying -The Presbyterian Review, of Toronto, medicine in the University of Michigan, says that in his paper to the Council, who mean to return to their country as the Rev. Dr. Phillips, " the secretary of mISSIOnaries. They have exchanged colored work in the Southern Presbyte- their Chinese names for those of Mary rian Ohurch, made handsome acknowl- Stone and Ada Kahn. There are 3 edgment of the $30 000,000 of Northern young Chinese men also studying medi- money which has been freely spent on cine in the same institution. • Statistios of the Missionary Societies of the [THE following tables are intended to include only Foreign Missions-that is, missions to foreign hence is omitted the work of the Methodists, Baptists and others to Protestant Europe, as well as efforts almost wholly derived directly from the annual report. of the various Societies, and which in most cales figures were not at hand, recourse was had to a number of the most reliabl!, statistical authorities.) Home Missionary Constituency. Income.
·i. . ~ ~ ~ !~ i~ – SOCIETIES IN THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA.
– – – – – – – – – – . – -~ – – -~ – – iii – – ~ – -~-w;; – – – — – Baptist Missionary Union…………. 1814 6,288 8,061 748,890 $575,773 $80,891 1,068 Southern Baptist Convention…. …… 18t/) 8,824 16,091 1,235,76~ 114.826 8,956 185 Free Baptist………. ..•…•…….•• 1836 1,531 Seventh·Day Baptist….. …………. 1847 1,314 82,683 34,913 215 13 Christian (Disciples)………………. 1875 100 American Christian Convention. . . . • . . . 1886 5,388 110 9,000 4,655 II 2 Congregationalist (A. B. C. F. M.)… .. 1810 1,510 4,886 7,246 641,051 65,366 250 45 1,700 120,000 5,203 ……… . 33 4,985 525,097 841,569 92,723 1,221 Lutheran General Council … , •. " • . •. .. 1869 925 1,995 317,145 1~,675 50 127 Lutheran General Synod…. •..•…•… 1837 979 1,437 164,640 Methodist Episcopal………………. 1819 12,914 25,861 2,240,354 48,772 2,945 12 786,295 169,999 320 BishOp Taylor's African Mission……. 1885 50,000 …….. .. 43 Methodist Episcopal, South…. ……. 1843 Protestant Methodist…..•.•.•.•.•…. , 1882 5,321 15,017 1,266,562 294,578 106 Wesleyan Methodist ………………. 1887 1,441 2,003 147,604 P..,otestant Episcopal……. . . .• . •• •. .. 1835 20,767 290 6 Presbyterian……………………… 1837 300 800 18,000 4,250 5,282 549,250 2,000 300 2 6,331 7,208 880,179 275,601 8,597 228 931,292 49,423 691 Presbyterian, Sonth……………….. 1861 1,239 2,572 182,516 130,276 2,850 132 United Presbyterian…… , ………… 1859 782 902 106,385 114,687 .24,491 20'1 Reformed Presbyterian (Covenanter) .. ' 1856 120 115 10,574 24,781 1,034 11 Reformed Presbyterian (Gen'! Synod).. 1836 SO 33 4,602 6,000 40 7 Cumberland Presbyterian………… .. 1852 1,670 2,916 171,609 22,499 1,386 10 Reformed (Dutch)………………… 1832 560 572 92,970 112,164 8.032 198 Reformed (German).. .. .. .. … .. .. . .. .. 1878 835 1,554 204,018 15,745 2,079 17 Associate Reformed, South. . .• ••.•. .. 1879 81 121 9.040 4,9~5 800 11 Evangelical Association. . . . . .. . …… 1876 1,864 2,043 145,603 14,899 609: 31 German Evangelical Synod………… 1883 675 870 187,432 10,800 1,000 8 United Brethren…………………… 1853 1,476 4,203 197,12.3 30,000 1,077 282 Friends………… …………… . .. 1868 .. . 794 80,655 29,278 125 22 Canada Baptist …… …………….. 1873 532 550 77,247 36,420 672 15 Canada CongregatIOnalist.. . … ……. 1881 103 140 10,103 2,287 ………. 1 1 Canada Methodist…….. …….. ….. 1873 1,285 1,268 250,89~ 93,060 Canada Pre.byterian……………….. 1844 1,000 I 6,2441 84 1,200 170'1521115'766 4,500 143 = Ten other Societies……….. …….. …… … …… …. …… ……… 178,921 [ 5,3~0 81 _ _ _ _ _T_o..;,tll;""l_'. _……………….. 73.~ lo8.768 iO,797,(f79 $5;006-;283 $469,419 5,346 United States and Canada for 1891-92.
landi, either heathen or Romanist, and nnder the management of missionaries other than natives; and for the evangelization of the Jews, the Freedmen, and even the Indians and Chinese. The figures are covered the bnlk of 1892, and BOmetimes the closing months of 1891. When, as in a few cases, the official Missionaries. I Native Helpers. Countries in which ~• Missions are Sustained.
-~ 1I – – – – – 89,014 12,285 1,188 22,284,India, Burmah, Assam, China, Japan, Africa I 748ICh(Clnoan,gJoa)p. an, Africa, Bra- 2,728 526 20 zil, Mexico, Italy.
7 2 9 8 Ii 13 44 13 815 41 95 3,619 India (Bengal).
2 2 2 …… 14 20 1 32 4 4 70 China (Shanghai). 17 7 12 1,015 158 10 2 .•..• 15 5 11 30 85 4 …… . 1 183 18 434 40,333 3,516 1,123 1 …… 10 …… 13 89 817lJapan, India, China, Tur- 5 ….. . 3 978 76 key. 174 159 200 2,400 3,034 150 Japan (Tokyo and two Ii II 2 89 103 l other centres).
47,380 Africa., Turkey, India, China, Japan, Microne· sia, Mexico, Spain, A us- tria, Hawaiian blands.
1,473 India (Madras).
6 …••. 6 2 3 178 195 374 8,082 848 223 5,174,India (Madras), Africa.
182 ….•. 175 139 247 2,397 3,595 334 24,717 3,636 1,430 86,878 Africa, S. America. China, 34 31 ……… .. 21 86 India, Korea, Malaysia, Bulgaria, Italy, Japan, Mexico.
9 320 100 38 500 Africa (Congo).
50 ….•. 42 5 … .. 187 284 62 5,980 936 22 800 Africa (West Coast), West 3 . . . .. 13 26 2 217 11 Indie•. Ii .•…. 5 4 241 iJapall (Yokohama, etc.).
2 •.•..• 2 1.. .. 10 15 1 250 10 1 208 Africa (Sierra Leone).
24 8 20 83 56 289 420 . 24 3,203 300 106 3,387 Greece, Africa, China, Japan, Haiti. 46 198 142 165 1,363 2,124 884 30,479 3,430 771 29,011 S. America, Guatemala, 210 Mexico, India, China, Japan, Korea, Siam, Syria, Persia. Africa. 7 33 21 32 91 186 35 2,702 391 26 1,363 China, Japan, Korea, Af- 43 rica, Greece, Italy. Mex- ico, Brazil. 8 24 26 24 494 601 41 10,445 947 253 10,887 Egypt, India.
1 5 7 …… 40 58 3 269 29 28 74OIsyria, Cyprus.
3 ….. 3 ……….. . 12 18 3 100 40 3 30 India (N. W. Provinces).
6 .••••• 66 2 17 37 10 650 89 4 298 Japan, Mexico.
I 24 8 25 14 37 282 385 53 5,559 498 146 4,541 ,China, Japan, India (Arcot). 2 66 Japan (Tokyo and Sen- 3 ….. . 3 3 7 15 31 12 1,656 125 dai).
2 •••••• 21 2 5 12 9 235 24 4 65 Mexico (Tampico, etc.).
7 ….. . 7 …… 5 24 48 5 378 43 18 Japan (Tokyo, etc.).
5 ….. . 4 1 …. .. 24 34 8 356 70 14 410 India (Central). l …. . 4 8 ….. . 40 5fi 25 6,500 1,000 19 600 Africa (West Coast, Sher- bro, Shaingay, etc.). 5 ….. . 36 56 13 465 10 19 848 Mexico, Japan, Syria, etc. 87 17 ….•. 15 ……….. . 102 134 24 2,660 420 41 350 India (Telugus).
2 …… 1 ……….. . 4 ••.. , ……. . ·1 40 Africa (We!t Central).
51 ….. 42 …… 16 89 198 …… 6,494…… 40 2,500 Japan (Tokyo, etc.), I 35 4 27 20 6 214 806 87 6,172 1 . . . . • 101 4,200 China, India, New Hebri- 20 [ ~~ 1,239 I Im 54 52 47 22 70 269 41 3,700 837 5ti .3,209 1,216 9,822 14,524 2,5251l56.649 30,600 5.882 182.205 2:J2 1,116 EUROPE. 218,000 : 140,000 from England. 20,000 from Scotland, from Ireland 57,000. In Great Britain.-This glowing set. 37 years, between 1853-90.3,415,000 Eng. ting.forth of Britain's greatness from lish have emigrated; 710,000 Scotch; an English source may well kindle also 2,832,000 Irish-in all, 7,211,000. To the American heart. And tremendous what numbers they have increased at missionary responsibility comes with their various destinations it is impossi. such dominion : "The material great. ble to calculate." ness of that world-wide realm which hails Victoria queen is indeed amazing. -It reads strangely. Can it benecos· It far exceeds that of any other empire, sary to use $150,000 of the Lord's money ancient or modem. The total area of for such a purpose? ., Dr. Clifford states the whole in square miles is nearly that Mr. Arthington, of Leeds, the well- 9,000,OOO-that is, 74 times the size of known benefactor of missions, is deepthe British Islands. The population of ly impressed with the mournful results the whole is 343,000,000, 9 times that of sectarian and ecclesiastical divisions of England, Scotland, and Ireland. in the mission field, and makes the The revenue of the whole reaches the munificent offer of £30,000 for the proprodigious sum of £222,000,000. Its motion qf denominational comity and mistrade in imports and exports sounds sirmary economy. The offer has set the like a fairy tale-£1,218,000,OOO. Im- friends of union to work, and it is proagination is exhausted as W'l glance from posed to convene a meeting of the secre· the docks of London, with her 5,000,000, taries of the leading missionary sociepast Liverpool, Glasgow, Birmingham, ties at once, to take advantage of the Leeds, and Sheffield, to the lakes, rivers, offer of Mr. Arthington." mountains, and forests of Canada; or to the fabulous splendors of India and -In October last the London Society Burmah ; or to the boundless J'esources bade farewell to 26 missionaries about of Africa, now beginning to be revealed to sail for foreign lands, making in all from the Cape and from Zanzibar; or 40 for the year, an encouragingly large to the stately cities of Australia and fraction of the 100 it is planned to send New Zealand-rivals to the ancient out in four years. European capitals. Canada, it has been said, with its popUlation of 5,000,000, -The Church Missionary Society has is as powerful as England was in the a loan department for supplying magic days of Cromwell, and may be as power· lanterns, slides, curiosities, etc. Dur. ful100 years hence as England is to. ing last:> ear there were loaned 808 sets day. Australia, with her 3,000,000, is of magic lantern slides, 72 lanterns, 347 as strong as the United States were diagrams, 372 maps, 81) sets of curiosi· when they became independent, and ties, and 1039 books. The slides were may at no very distant date be as strong lent for periods varying from one day as they are at the present time. Possi. to a month, and on an average each lanbilities of wealth and power beyond -the tern represented at least two exhibidream of the enthusiast lie within the tions. making a total of from 1600 to grasp of the English race in these inex- 2000 lantern lectures. haustible possessions. Our language is daily spoken by more than 100,000,000 -The United Methodist Free Church of people, is understood by 50,000,000 of England, organized in 1857, has more, and bids fair to become the lan- 417 ministers, 1608 churches, 3341 local guage of the world. The process of preachers, and 85,461 communicants. peopling from these shores the VRst ter. In its missions in Jamaica, Africa, ritories which have fallen to the English China, Australia, and New Zealand it race is continuaUy progressing. In 1890 has 66 ministers, 785 assistants as local the whole number of emigrants was preachers and class lea,ders, and n,7()1) members. -The Primitive M.ethodist Church of months of 1892 they were able to report England, organized in 1812, has 1049 50 Romanists received into 4 of the travelling preachers, 16,317 local preach- churches. ers, and 193,658 members. It has in .Africa 7 European missionaries, 44 white ·-Dr. HBrdeland, for 30 years Director and 486 colored members. of the Leipsic Society, retiring from that position, states that when he began, -The British and Foreign Sailors' So- in 1860, the number of Tamil converts ciety raised over £21,000 (including the connected with the society was 4600, sums raised for local purposes), and the and now it is over 14,000. Then there Missions to Seamen's Society, English were 9 missionaries, and now there are Established Church, raised £28,000 26. The pupils in the schools were during the last fiscal yeBr. 1000, and now there are 4700.
-The Bible Christians of England -The Lutheran Church is being pernave 271 ministers, assisted by 1899 secuted in the Baltic provinces of Ruslocal preachers, and about 30,000 mem- sia. Of 140 pastors in one province, bers. They have 8 missionaries in over 90 have been arrested on various China. pretexts, the chief one being that they have supplied their people with Bibles, -A new missionBrY society has been and so have been engaged in the book formed in England called the" Evan- trade. Another pretext is that they gelization Society for South America," have kept their records in German and taking as its doctrinal basis the Evan- not in Russian. It is plain that the gelical Alliance. It is undenominational government intends to stamp out every in its character, and will seek to co- system of religion but that of the Greek operate as far as possible with other so- Church. cieties in the South American field. The occasion for its formation was the -The Waldensian Church in Italy giving of a large sum of money to the has 137 workers. of whom 44 are pasmissionary bureau in connection with tors, having the oversight of as many the Y. M. C. A. of London, for the pur- churches, and 54 stations where the pose of evangelizing the Indian tribes work of evangelization is carried on. of Brazil, Peru and Bolivia. Religious services are held in 200 places, and it has been ascertained that the -Mr. Stanley declares of Alexander Gospel has been preached in the past Mackay that he was " the best mission· year to more than 50,000 persons to ary since Livingstone," and of his char- whom it was not preached, at least by acter," He had no time to fret and Waldensian workers. groan and weep; and God knows if ever a man had reason to think of ASIA. 'graves and worms and oblivion,' and to be doleful and lonely and sad, Mac- -According to Dr. H. H. Jessup, of kay had, when, after murderin~ his Beirut, the Oriental churches contain, bishop (Hannington) and burning his not including any in Greece or Russia: pupils and strangling his converts and Greeks, 1,000,000; Maronites, 230,000 ; clubbing to death his dark friends. Nestorian Catholics, 20,000; Greek Mwanga turned his eye of death on Catholics, 50,000; Jacobite Syrians, him." 30 000; other papal sects, 300,000; Nestorians. 140,000; Nestorians in In- The Continent -The climate is of dia, 116,000; Armenians, 3,000,000; the Arctic order in Austria, and the soil Copts, 200,000 ; Abyssinians, 4,500,000 ; is sterile. But the toilers of the Ameri- total, 9,586,000. Thus we have about can Board in that country are permitted 10,000,000 of nominal Christians scat· to taste in some measure the joys of the tered throqghout the great centres and harvest. For, during the first eight seats of Mohammedan population and impossible cures. One man wants' to power. be made clever, another to be made fat; -III. Persia, as elsewhere in the another to be cured of insanity, another Orient, the missionaries are sorely per- of tobacco, another of whiskey, another plexed over the problem of what to do of hunger, another of tea; another about the steady stream of promising wants to be made strong, so as to con· young men continually setting toward quer in gymnastic exercises; most men Europe and America for education and want medicine to make their beards other purposes. Many of them are thus grow; While almost every man, woman, lost to their people, though converted and child wants to have his or her skin and educated in the mission schools; made as white as that of the foreigner.
or, if they return full of evangelistic -In a Chinese Christian family at zeal, they bring also so many Occidental Amoy, a little boy, on asking to be bap. ideas and tastes as to be largely unfitted tized, was told that he was too young; for service. In particular, their de- that he might fall back if he made a mands for salary are altogether beyond profession when he was only a little the ability of the poverty-stricken popu- boy. To this he made the reply, Jesus lation to pay. has promised to carry the lambs in His -Communications from Persia to arms. I am only a little boy; it will be EngJish papers credit Miss Bradford, oosier for Jesus to carry me." This an American missionary, with remark- logic was too much for the father. He ably faithful service during the recent took him with him, lind the child was cholera epidemic. While others fled, soon baptized.
she stayed bravely at her post nursing -Robert Morrison went to China in the sick, and by her efforts many lives 1807, and died after twenty.seven years were spared. of labor, in 1834. At his death there China.-Theregion of Western China were only four converts and four Prol.
alone, that magnificent new world now estant missionaries in the whole empire.
fast 'opening to exploration and com- Now we find Morrison's converts reo merce, a region comprising the three placed by a host numbering 35,000 provinces of Szchuen, Yunlan, and chUl'ch.members, who last year gave Kwiechow, is larger by 20,000 square $44,000 for the spread of the Gospel in miles than Great Britain, Ireland, and their own land. "Behold these shall France, and contains 80,000,000 inhab- come from far ; and 10, these from the itants. north and from the west; and these -It is two years since a band of mis- from the land of Sinim [or China]" (lsa. sionaries assembled at Shanghai, China, 49 : 12).
issued a call for" one thousand men for -Again has the fateful Hoang.ho, or China," to be sent within five years .Yellow River, overflowed its banks, from the issuing of the call. It was spreading destruction far and wide.
a large draft, apparently, upon the The number of victims is stated at forces of the Church at home, but it 50,000.
is likely to be honored. It is said that -Manchuria, though lying outside three hundred and fifty of the recruits the limits of China proper, is yet a por- called for are already in the field. Fully tion of that vast empire. Its area is five hnndred young men are preparing about 400,000 square miles, and the to be preachers of the Gospel, and proba. population 12,000,000. Rev. John Ross, bly one hnndred and fifty more getting of the Scottish United Presbyterians, ready to be medical missionaries_ It is was the pioneer missionary, entering a good time to live. that country in 1872, and was soon fol- . -In Mongolia the missionary is often lowed by others. some of them sent by asked to perform absurd, -laughable, or the Irish Presbyterian Churoh. And now, after so short a time, there are will of their own. Women, indeed, are more than 2000 in the churches, of human beings, but they are of a lower whom 1550 have been gathered by the state than men, and never can attain to United Presbyterians. The toilers now full equality with them. The aim of number 17. female education, therefore, is perfect submission, not cultivation and develop- -A convert in the Shansi mission ex· ment of mind. In the other world the pressed it well when he was asked how condition of affairs is exactly the same, the Lord had changed his heart, He for the same laws govern there as here." said: .. I cannot tell how it was done, but I know that my heart is exceedingly Japan.-The Universalists report en- not the same." couraging progress in their mission in Japan. Three men and 1 woman are at -The :first insane asylum ever erect- work, together with 2 Japanese converts ed in the Chinese Kmpire is now being just ordained. In the Tokio theological projected by Dr. E. P. Thwing, who, school 6 students are found. with his wife and daughter, has gone to China at his own expense, to complete -A year ago Dr. Gordon received the arrangements at Canton. into one of the mission churches of Japan a woman who had kept a house -Are Chinese converts sincere and in of prostitution. Immediately on her earnest 1 It looks so. For Miss Grace conversion she set free all the girls she Wyckoff, of Pang.chuang, gives an ac- had bought, and since has been useful count of a hot Sunday afternoon in July in leading other notorious sinners to the last when she was greatly surprised to Saviour. see 4 women come into the yard from a .village 10 miles away. Three of them India.-The evils and follies of fash· were over sixty years of age, and their ion are not all confined to ci vilized faces were red with heat, and they were lands. It is in the heathen village of very weary. They came simply for a Senite, Burmah, that the women wear Christian service. At the same meet· from 30 to 40 pounds of brass wire about ing 16 other women were present from neck and limbs for ornament; and so villages at least 6 miles distant, and a attached to them are they, it is counted goodly number from nearer points. a sign of sound conversion when a Karen woman is willing to dispense with -With such teaching as this from the the load of metal. .. divine" classics of Confucius, we can understand why Chinese women are in -The Asiatic Quarterly Revimo is not a condition so abject. The authority is much in sympathy with missionaries. Dr. Faber, an eminent scholar, and the It is all the more remarkable that the statement appeared in the Chinese Mis· editor should speak of them as .. an un- sionary Recorder. Quoth the ancient rivalled disintegrating force," .. true sage : " Women are as different from alchemists, possessors of the philoso. men, as earth is from heaven. Dualism, pher's stone." He asks: "Isthis mag- not only in bodily form, but in the very num opus, on which the teaching of sev- essence of nature, is indicated and pro- eral hundred sects converges, a small claimed by the Chinese moralists of all matter 1 Is it naught to take the base . times, and the male belongs to 'yang,' metal, the outward civilization, the the female to 'yin.' Death and all pomp and riches from the heathen, and other evils have their origin in the to convert this dross for his benefit into , yin,' or female principle; life and blessing everlasting 1" prosperity come from its SUbjection to the ' yang,' or male principle, and it -A fine old Sikh said lately to a mis- iii therefore regarded as a law of nature sionary: .. Sahib, these neighbors of that women should be kept under the ours, since they became Isais (Chris. control of men, and not allowed any tians), have given up lying and thieving, and seem to be altogether changed." !
-For shame, if true! Can it be that the mint of the Holy Spirit."-Rev.
prejudioe has oolored this statement? A. J. Gordon. D.D.
"In India the Plymouth Brethren disturb -A zenana Christian worker in Delhi the missions. They are intense seota- says that there is scarcely a house in rians, and operate upon the mission that city not open to the reception of ohurohes rather than upon the heathen. the Gospel. The mission of the United Presbyterian Churoh at Gunjarala, in Upper India, AFRICA. has been seriously troubled by these proselyters_ Rev_ Babir Masih and his -Thanks to the energy and skill of son-in-law, a teacher in the mission the Frenoh, the Desert of Sahara is beschool, have resigned and joined the coming a garden. Within a few years Plymouthites. This sect is there under 12,000,000 acres of land have been made the direction of a ruan who was origi- fruitful by artesian wells. But there nally an Episcopalian, but who became a are 900,000,000 aores yet to be reolaimed before all the sand wastes are utilized.
Presbyterian, and is now outside of all – The stories told of the wealth to be churches. Its operations tend to divi- found in the gold and diamond fields of sion, always and everywhere." South Africa are well-nigh beyond be.
-An English justice in India, who is lief. Rev. Josiah Tyler, missionary, also honorary treasurer of the native writes of 100,000 ounces of gold a month church councils of the Church Missionary as the product of the Witwattlrsrand dis· Society in the Northwest Provinces, has trict ; and Sir Cecil Rhodes may well be offered a prize of 100 rupees for the best set down as the foremost of millionaires, essay on native churches. The special since he is owner of one of the richest question is the raising up of a self-sup- diamond-mines in Kimberly. a distriot porting native pastorate in that section, which has turned out thirty-six tons of and the essays are to make suggestions diamonds, worth about £6,500,000 a ton, for improved organization, oheapness of or, say, a total of $1,160,000,000. work and voluntary work in the pastoral, evangelistio and educational agencies – ' , The average Afrioan, if at all edu. of the churohes. The writers must be oated," declares Bishop Smythies, of members of the Church of England. Central Africa, "is a muoh more ready The essays may be in English, Urdn, speaker and a much better preacher Roman· Urdu, or Hindi. than the English clergy, when at three- and-twenty they are ordained deacons."
-Roman Catholic papers please copy. -Though it is unfortunate whenever Miss Mary Reed, the young lady mis- in any degree the Gospel must needs sionary of the Methodist Woman's For- lean for support upon an arm of flesh, eign Missionary Society, who was or resort even indirectly to carnal weapstricken with leprosy some months ago, ons, we yet read with pleasure that the and has consecrated her life to work strong arm of British authority is not among lepers in India, will take up her to be withdrawn from Uganda until permanent residence in the leper hos. March 31st of 1893 at least, and possi. pital at Chandag. She has been living bly not at all.
alone in a little bungalow near Miss -In spite of his hosts of terrible Budder's school at Pithoragarh. Amazons, King Behanzin, of Dahomey, -" Nearly $25,000,000 invested in has oome utterly to grief at the hands search for gold in India, and not $2500 of Colonel Dodds and his Frenoh troops, obtained after three years of hard since he has been ernshingly defeated labor."-India Times. "Look at aur in battle. and has lost his oapital, Abo· gold-mine in India -50,000 Telllglls dug mey. Nobody can object to "protec. from the heart of heathenism, whose tion" from such a monster.
faces now shine like precious ooins from -It costs to send missionaries to the new districts ~f Africa; but then it also – " You missionaries trouble us,"
pays. Since 1887, when missionary said an unchristianized Zulu lately.
labor began at Lake Tanganyika, 11 "Before you came our wives got food missionaries have fallen, and 11 others out of the ground for us, and brought have been forced to withdraw. But 3 us children and cattle. You make us centres of labor are firmly established, give up our wives, our beer, cattle for 2 gospels have been translated, and the our daughters, aud want us to spend people have learned to assemble for wor· money for clothes, books, and preach- ship, and converts are being baptized. ers. Life was easy before. You make -It is evident that missionary life, it very hard."
even in the interior of Africa, is not -The Berlin Missionary Society is altogether without its compensations. engaged in 6 sections of South and East For Mr. Arnot, in Garenganza, tells us Africa, and at the various stations has of a hunting expedition in which he gathered 11,456 communicants. A misbagged 8 antelope, 3 zebra, and 2 im- sionary stationed at Konigsberg writes: mense hippopotami. With his larder ,. Twenty-five years ago the number of thus supplied, he gave a Christmas feast baptized heathen in Natal was 2000, and to a great company of the natives, with the hippopotami for the piece de resist- now it is 8000. And the Boers, who ance, and zebra and antelope for side formerly looked coldly on, now regard the mission with favor. dishes. As the only drawback, during – an interval of the supper a family of -The French Protestant Mission in hyenas and 2 dog leopards made an as- Basutoland has 13 principal stations sault upon the camp and captured a por- and 129 out-stations, with day-schools tion of the provender. scattered through the whole country. It -In the Congo region at the present has nearly 8000 children upon its orditime there are 3 Catholic missions and nary school rolls, and has, besides these, 8 Protestant, among which is that found about 700 young men in training, either ed by Bishop Taylor. There are 28 sta- as teachers or in industrial schools tions and 95 missionaries. where trades are taught. At the princi- pal station at Morija there is a printing -It is now 150 years since the first and book-binding establishment, where, Hottentot was baptized by the Mora- a few months ago, an edition of 3000 vian missionary George Schmidt. There copies of a Sesuto reading-book was are at present in Cape Colony, under prepared entirely by native compositors the direction of the Moravian church, and printers. "In this way," says a 11 flourishing stations, with 22 mis- recent visitor, "the native is converted sionaries and about 9300 souls in their from the condition of a loafing savage care; 1 normal school and 19 common to that of a laborer." schools at the stations, with 2200 schol- ars ; 2 ordained natives, 2 aS6istant na- ISLANDS OF THE SEA. tive ministers, and about 150 native as- sistants. -Every Sunday morning 60 per cent -Mr. Swan, of the Arnot Mission in of the popUlation of the Hawaiian Central Africa, writing of the ravages Islands are in the pews of Protestant of the slave trade, says that at Katanga churches. Eighty-three pllr cent of the a boy of eight or ten years brings popUlation of the Fiji Islands are com.
about 40 cents in our money, a young municant members of the Protestant girl from $3 to $4, a woman from $1 to churches. But what a task is laid upon $1.20. Most of them are sold to Bihe the Hawaiian Christians in connection traders or to Arabs from the east. They with the 15,300 Chinese, 12,000 Portu- die in great numbers before reaching guese, 20,000 Japanese, and several the~r destination. thousand Mormons among the natives antI waifs and outcasts from all parts of audience-room with its two galleries was the world! crowded; the singing was magnificent. With one or two exceptions, every so- -Dr. Paton says of the New Hebrides: ciety in the whole colony was represent- .. Since I entered the field, thirty-four ed ; sometimes, in the case of the more years ago, by God's blessing on the nnit- distant, by only two or three members; ed labors of our missionaries He has often by a large company. As the roll given us about 14,000 converts, and of societies was called, each responded about 200 of them are engaged asnative by a passage of Scripture or a verse of a, teachers. " hymn, and the consecration was so genuine and spontaneous. the expres- -It is scarcely a quarter of a century sion so hearty and vigorous, that I am sinee the first baptism in Micronesia. sure the meeting will not soon be for- Now there are 46 self – supporting gotten in the religious circles of Sydchurches, with over 4300 church-mem- ney. Even after the Mizpah benedicbers. tion had been pronounced, the young people could not refrain from ,:inging ; -The United Norwegian 'Lutheran but all the way home through tne dark Church in the United States has been streets, at the railway station, and at notified that the Mission Society of Nor- every suburban place, where the train way will hand over to it the southern left its contingent of Christian Endeavpart of the island of Madagascar, includ- orers, the Endeavor songs were heard." ing the three mission stations, St. Augustine, Mangasoa, and Ft. Dauphin. -The Methodist churches of various names allover Australia are conferring -The rumored occupation by the with a view to union. In Sidney the British of the Johnston Islands in the representatives of the various bodies Pacific Ocean, 600 miles southwest of have resolved. by practically unanimous Honolulu, and of the Gilbert Islands, votes, that union is desirabl!J. The have an important bearing upon mis- name of the united church is to be sionary movements, since the rule of .. The Methodist Church of Australia." England would be more tolerant and conducive to the growth of Protestant· CENTRAL AMERICA. ism than that of Spain.
AUSTRALIA. -The Moravians have received the cordial consent or the Catholic govern. – A missionary training home has ment of Nicaragua to establish a mis. been opened in Melbourne. sion on its territory. It is hoped that this will result in the opening up of the -After hearing two missionary ser- whole of Nicaragua to mission work. mons in Melbourne recently, a man in very moderate circumstances sent $2500 -The Moravian Mission on the Mosto be divided between missions in India kito Coast (Nicaragua) has lost the little and New Guinea. sailing vessel (the Meta), so indispensa- ble to convey the missionaries, mails, -Here is Dr. Clark's account of an provisions, and other necessaries to Australian eonseoration meeting. It their 9 stat.ions north of Bluefields, the reads like a description of one of our capital of the Moskito Indian Territory. great conventions: "I have attended No lives were lost in the wreck, but the many consecration services in my life, schooner and her cargo are a dead loss, but very few that have exceeded in genu- and the vessel must be replaced as Boon ine spiritual power this meeting in the as possible. Centenary Wesleyan Church. The great
The Missionary Review of the World — June 1892
THE SCOURGE OF AFRICA
MISSIONARY REVIEW OF THE WORLD.
VOL. XV. No. 6.-01d &ries.–JUNE.–VOL. V. No. 6.-NeUI Series.
THE SCOURGE OF AFRICA.
BY REV. JAMES JOHNSTON, BOLTON, LANCASHIRE, ENGLAND.
Quite recently a contributor to the leading British newspaper endeavored to show that the Arab in Africa was a maligned person, who was far from heing the slave marauder which he had been so often protrayed. Readers of the article would be induced to suppose that the Arab's" hand" in slave dealing was either a thing of the past or much exaggerated. That both of these suppositions are false there is conclusive evidence to demonstrate. It is freely and sorrowfully admitted that the native races in many parts of the Dark Continent prey upon their fellow-Africans, and are frequently as brutal as the Arabs in their deeds of bloodshed. But in nowise can or shall this screen the Arab, the arch slave. hunter in every quarter of Africa; and although slavery is doomed, please God, in this generation, the Arab at the present hour, roused by the encroachments of European explorers and commercial enterprise, is showing' a revival of savage energy throughout Central Africa in the perpetration of atrocious crimes against humanity and a huge sin before God. Let a survey of his tracks be taken.
In North Africa the slave trade shows little diminution. As a base of operations Tripoli has an unenviable name. From that province young Arabs, as of old, make it their ambition to go on the grand tour of twelve hundred miles southward to Kuka, weilt of Lake Tchad, to exchange the products of semi-civilization for ivory, skins, ostrich feathers, and especially slaves. Their caravan either returns along the same route to Murzuk, where the slaves are distributed over the Nol'thwestern States, or an east.. northerly route is chosen via Baghirmi. through Wadai, the rival State to Bornu, Abeschr, Ogila, terminating at Benghazi, in the north, on the Mediterranean coast. Though a British consul is stationed hepe, the slaves are unaware or afraid of exercising their right to claim liberty. This path, said a missionary, lately returned from the mission field of Tripoli, to the writer, may be traced for hundreds of miles by the white, rotting bones of slaves, the victims of thirst and slaughter. Their awful suffering on these forced marches, chained and heavily laden, is hidden entirely from the eye of the civilized world. Turning to the northeast of Africa, there is a comparatively open seaboard, in spite of blockade precautions, between Tajurah Bay and Cape Guardafui, whence a regular debarkation of slaves is in full swing. Emanating from the African coast via Southern Arabia and the Persian Gulf eastward, the Indian papers say that" unabated vigor"
characterizes the slave traffic. Major Talbot has just stated that" many of the Omani boats fly the French flag and carry French papers, under cover of which they are able to practise their trade in slaves with impunity."
The news is welcome that various suggestions are being considered by the residents and goyernors for the purpose of stopping effectually the abomina- ble traffic. .
Within French protectorates in the extreme Western Soudan the slave curse reigns. In a current volume, "Du Niger au Golfe de Guinee,"
recounting exhaustive geographical research, the author, Captain Bin- ger, describes an extensive and fertile country, "often depopulated and devastated by war and slave-raiding." More terrible records of the pursuit and capture of slaves are furnished in another contemporary work, by Dr. Wilhelm Junker. Over an enormous tract of .country, having Meshra-el-Rek on the north and the Wel!e-Makua to the south, peopled by the Niam-Niams, the Mongbuttus, A-Madi, and smaller tribes, native -raids are prevalent, while all the races are preyed upon by the " Arabs," who gained a footing in the country at the time of the now de- funct Egyptian rule. Since the King of the Mongbuttus was assassinated, disorganization and slavery exist over the whole region watercd by the western feeders of the Nile, intensified by Arab sway and the tremendous advancing tide of Mohammedans from North Africa. It is very disap- pointing that Dr. Junker, whose services to geography, and particularly ethnology, are appreciated, should countenance a modified form of slavery, compulsory labor, and the administration of the courbash to promote the development of the African in regard of work and civilization. Possibly familiarity with Russian methods of government or contact with barbarous cruelties has suggested this kind of reformation. Of course other travel- lers advocate what the German paper, the Reichsanzeiger, urges to be in harmony with the" social and domestic conditions" in Africa. Such a procedure will have to reckon with the enlightened conscience of Europe and the United States! Again and agaiu distinguished men have said that in the principal slave provinces free labor never has had a rational trial, be- cause slave customs have prevailed from time immemorial. Humane methods of redeeming the negro are feasible. In some measure this has been shown in the diamond mines of South Africa, in the British West Coast colonies, in the coffee plantations south of Lake Nyassa, on the Shire highlands, and, notably at Blantyre, in the erection of the finest ecclesias- tical edifice between Egypt and the Cape, which the natives have built voluntarily for wages, under the direction of white men. Testimony like- wise to this effect comes from such African experts as Mr. Stanley and Sir Francis de Winton, who assrrt that a settled form of government, based on European principles, can be established, to whieh the natives in thousands, and millions even, will be easily amenable when their respect and confidence have been won by just treatmpnt. Combated by the resources of a benefi- ceut civilization and permeated by Christianity, the horrors of slavery will be most speedily checked and extinguished.
But whatever plan is proposed for slave abolition, it is imperative that the attention of the nations should be fixed on the slaughter roll in the Dark Continent. By the nobly organized African Association at Cologne, revelations of a dreadful character, scarcely paralleled in recent times, were published last December. That the atrocities now disclosed occurred upward of a year ago is a [foof of the backwardness' of civilization in Africa, and the need of communication and opcning np of the country. The shocking details brought to light at Cologne are. copied from the diaries of German missionaries stationed in the vicinity of Lake Tanganyika, the authority of which is fully verified.
When it was learned, on November 19th, 1890, at the German mission station that a notorious slave hunter named Makatubo had arrived with about two thousand slaves at I{irando, two days' journey south of Karema -within the German" sphere of influence"-Father Dromaux left at once to rescue, if possible, some of the prisoners. Nine days later he returned with sixty-one-bought and liberated. Many of their companions had died of hunger at Kirando, and a large number could not long survive. From the ransomed slaves and followers of the expedition the missionary had appalling accounts of the cruelties inflicted and fearful slaughters by the wild hordes of Makatubo in Marunju and Kizabi. The diary states: " When Makatubo set out on his march back he wished to get rid of all those who might have impeded the march; and at Lusuko, therefore, he had a great number of captives-old women and little childrendrowned. The caravan was now to advance with greater haste; but a large number of captives who were completely exhansted formed a fresh hindrance. Massacres, of which one can form no idea in Europe, followed. A Mgwana who belonged to the expedition assured us that daily ten, twenty, thirty, and even fifty were killed. In spite of this, about two thousand captured slaves arrived at Kirando. "
"The last pathetic fact makes it plain," says the London Daily News, in commenting on this shocking' waste of human life, " that the slaves per· ish by blows, by hardship, by starvation, and by the most devilish cruelty in every form;" proving, too, that while thousands reach the slave markets, a greater proportion die on the journey thither from the villages sacked. The British Commissioner in Central Africa, Mr. H. H. J ohnston, observes that" not perhaps a tithe of the captured slaves live to reach the slave market;" corroborated by Dr. J linker, with the remark that for every native captured ten are slain. Humanity in Africa is, indeed, of small value.
These harrowing statements are confirmed in letters from the mission station of Mpala, the missionary adding, respecting Captain Joubert, whose civilizing rule extends three days' journey from the station, that he " sent for fifty of our people to support him in defence of his station against Arabian slave hunters. They caught hundreds of slaves, and have killed a very great number and burned their villages." A fmther confirmation has arrived, of date January 9th, 1891, from Father Josset, of Karema, regard- ing Makatubo's return from his last slaving expedition with" no less than two thousand slaves of every age and sex." He thus continues: " They were chained together in groups of twenty to twenty-five, and looked like living skeletons. As there was a great scarcity of food in Kirando. they were forced to dig up and eat wild roots which wild animals refused to touch. Wasted away by hunger, fever, and dysentery, they were sheltered in huts which afforded no protection whatever against the weather. Father Dromaux told the writer that he had seen prisoners in a roofless hut: while next to it their masters' goats had a roof over their heads. Every morning corpses were dragged out of each hut and thrown to the hyenas. During the long march through Marunju, when a slave was too exhausted to follow the caravan, they killed him with cudgels."
In such grim fashion proceeds the recital of wrongs against a longinjured Africa, and now the question will be asked, and persistently be asked, " Is Germany, in whose' sphere of influence' these infamies are being enacted, allowing them through inadvertence, or is she incapable of stopping them?" For the nations which have given their adhesion to the Treaty of Brussels adequate provision is made both for the prevention of slave marauding and the mterception of slave caravans, and alsu of the strict. examination of these at their inland destinations and on the coast routes.
From this ghastly picture one turns with feelings of intense gratitude to the telegrams forwarded at the end of December, 18!H, and early the month following, announcing that the Commissioner of British Central Africa, Mr. H. H. Johnston, and Captain Maguire, in Nyassaland, have been delivering what appear like final blows to the iniquitous slave traffic in that region. For months and years the letters of Dr. Laws, Dr. Kcrr Cross, Bishop Smythies, Archdeacon Maples, and the ReI'. "'.V. P. Johnson have supplied terrible revelations of the scenes which they witnessed (ast and west of Lake Nyassa, which consequently invests the current news with special interest. The two British offieers and their forces surprised in October last a slave-trading caravan from Lindi buying slaves at Oponda's, on the Upper Shire. As the tradcrs refused to free the slaves the town of Mponda was stormed and captured, one hundred and three slaves released, and Oponda compelled to send the slave-traders out of his country, and to agree to the entire abolition of slavery in his dominions. This success was followed up by activc measures against other slave-dealers, and after severe struggles, in which the assailants had most r~markable escapes, some one hundred and sixty-three slaves were freed, making two hundred and sixtynine free in all. As the raiders in quc~ti()n had come from Kilwa, Kivinge, and Lindi only in July last, and knew of the pruhibition of slavery, they were tried and sentenced to various terms of imprisonment. Arriving at . Makanjira's, at the eud of October, in chase of a third slave.raiding caravan, their steamer was fired on by the attacked, who vigorously defended their town. After two days' fighting capitulation was made by the chiefs and agreements signed. From this point the expedition sailed to the opposite side of Nyassa, where a number of ~lave·raiding chiefs agreed to abandon slavery and to rekase their newly caught slaves. The chief of the slave- hunting Yaos, of whose doings Livingstone used to write heart-rending let- ters, was made to pay a heavy indemnity. It ought to be mentioned that the Commissioner had valuable co-operation in his movements on the lake from the African Lakes Company's steamer, the Domira, identified with the transit of goods, etc., belonging to the Livingstonia Mission. All this unexpected intelligence of the overthrow of slave strongholds is a sign that a brighter day is dawning at least on the leafy shores of Lake Nyassa, wh~re henceforth freedom's flag will wave.
Toward the extinction of the slave trade, which the English statesman Pitt declared to be "the greatest practical evil that ever afflicted the human race," there are in several directions encouraging indications. Even European powers are more sympathetic, and at length the Brussels Anti- Slavery Convention, for which Lord Vivian, the late British Minister at Brussels, rendered invaluable aid, will shortly eome into operation. Very recently a number of influential English philanthropists had in London a conference with leading natives of West Africa upon. the best means of circulating information respecting the progress of vVest African affairs, and of other parts of Africa, and also the widening of English sympathy with the native races and the protection of their rights.
That a protracted crusade lies before the friends of the negro in Africa is admitted, and were it not that one half of Christendom lacks imagination, the miseries of the slave would not be greatly prolonged. Nevertheless, manifold agencies are in league against this gigantic iniquity; and what was said of Wilberforce, that he had shared in "the most glorious battle that ever was fought by any human being," may become the honor and the crown of the humblest worker in every land prepared to serve on behalf of the complete emancipation of Afric's dusky race.
The Episcopal Church in England has 34 bishops and 24,090 other clergymen; in the United States, 61 bishops and 3800 clergymen; in Ireland, 13 bishops and 1807 other clergymen, and in Canada, 24 bishops and 1300 other clergymen; in Asia, 13 bishops and 713 other clergymen; in Africa, 13 bishops and 350 other clergymen; in Australia, 21 bishops and 269 other clergymen, and in Scotland, 17 bishops and 280 other clergymen; in scattered dioceses 9 bishops and 1:10 clergymen-a grand total of 189 bishops and 32,729 other clergymen. This is certainly a strong array of working force; with increased devotion to Christ, its evangelical power would be vastly multiplied.
'l'HE GREAT CALL OF GOD TO HIS CHURCH
TIlE GREAT CALL OF GOD TO HIS CHURCH.
BY TilE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF.
We have sought with increasing diligence to find by searching what is God's plan or purpose concerning the Church and the world. Certain we are, at least, of this, that He wills the largest and promptest proclamation of the Gospel, the presence of witnessing believers and a witnessiug Church everywhere, even to the uttermost part of the earth. Beyond this we are sure of nothing sa~ e this, that His Vord will not return to Him void, and that our labor will not be in vain in the L(lrd.
To all believers the Divine cOlllmand is, that they outgrow babyhood, cease to be mere objects of care, and become care-takers j and enter into that Divine plan which takes in the whole Church, the whole world, and the ~hole age. We must be satisfied with the hope that has its anchorage in Scripture promises, do our duty, and leave results with God j undertake a world's evangelization, and not be disheartened if we find that to the end of the age there is only an outgathering of the elect Church, and that, as in the apostolic age, some believe the things which are spoken, and some believe not. The stress of the command of Christ lieR on occupation, evangelization. A loyal servant or soldier simply obeys implicitly orders which are explicitly given. Here are our" marching orders j" and to follow them is to win what is better even than apparent victory-the approval of Him who will say, " WELL DONE, good and faithful servant."
Now, of the things which we have spoken this is the sum: Every saved soul is called to be a herald and a witness j and we are to aim at nothing less than this: to make every nation and every creature in every nation acquainted with the Gospel tidings. This is the first and ever-present duty of the Church j it is the heart of the whole missionary plan. God will give us souls as our hire and crown; large results in conversion of individuals, and the transformation of whole communities will follow, as they always have followed, a godly testimony. But we are not to wait for reBults; we are to regard our duty as never done, while any region beyond is without the Gospel. Let all men have a hearing of the Gospel at least j then when evangelization is world-wide, we may bend our energies to deepening the impression which a first hearing of the Gospel has made. But, again, let it peal out as with a voice of thunder, to be heard wherever there are believers; the first need of the world is to hear the Gospel, and the first duty of the Church is to go everywhere and tell every human being of Christ, the world's Saviour. To stop or linger anywhere, even to repeat the' rejected message, so long as there are souls beyond that have never heard it., is at least unjust to those who are still in absolute darkness. . Instead of creating a few centres of intense light, God would have us scatter the lamps until all darkness is at least relieved, if not removed. And if to any reader it appears that this is emphasizing a distinction that is of little consequence, let such an one stop a moment and consider what would be the result if our Lord's plan were followed. There are, we will say, about forty million members of Protestant churches, and at least eight hundred millions yet in entire ignorance of the Gospel. Let us suppose that the whole Church, under some mighty baptism of fire, should undertake to bear the Gospel message to every living soul at once. If every Protestaut. believer could so be brought into active participation in this work as to be the means of reaching twenty of these souls, now without the Gospel, the work would be done. All cannot go, but all can send. Let us suppose, again, that Protestant churches should sena out one missionary teacher for every four hundred communicants, we should have a missionary force of one hundred thousand; and by distributing this force in the entire field, each teacher would have to reach but eight thousand souls in order to evangelize the world. Allowing twenty years for that work, each laborer wopld have to reach but four hundred of the unevangelized each year.
We must push this work as we never have done; let men call us fools, fanatics, madmen; we can afford to bear it for the sake of doing the will of God. When Judson had buried himself in Burma, and teu years' work . could show but eighteen converts, he was asked, " vVhat of the prospect?" His heroic answer was, "Bright as the promises of God." When John Wesley proposed to go to Georgia as a missionary to the Indians, an unbeliever ridiculed him. "What is this ~ Are you one of the knights errant ~ How, pray, got you this Quixotism into your head 1 You want nothing, have a good provision for life, and a prospect of preferment; and must you leave all this to fight windmills-to convert American savages 1"
vVesley calmly replied: "If the Bible be not true, I am as a very fool and madman as you can conceive j but if the Bible is of God, I am soberminded. For He has declared, ' There is no man who hath left house, or friends, or brethren for the kingdom of God' 8 sake, who shall not receive manifold more in this present time, and in the world to come life everlasting.' , vVith such heroic missionaries as Adoniram Judson and John Wesley we are content to follow our Lord's leading without regard to apparent results. The command is plain: "Go ye also into the vineyard j" and the promise is sufficient: "Whatsoever is right, that shall ye receive." God is a liberal rewarder, and He always exceeds His own promise. That workman is surest of blessing who does his Lord's work withont the mIsgivings of unbelief or the exactions of a carnal spirit. The path of the missionary is the way to Calvary, but beyond the cross shines the crown.
In a circular from Staunton, Va., "it is proposed to find two million Christians in the Ullited States willing to give one dollar, in advance per month for ten years, prayiug that God will raise up preachers and teachers and physicians to carry His Gospel to the heathen, and gO to bless their labors and o·ur gifts that the native converts shall be able thereafter to carryon the work through their home missions without additional help from foreign lands."
CASUISTRY OF BUDDHISM
CASUISTRY OF BUDDHISM.
BY REV. GEORGE L. MASON, GRANVILLE, O.
[This paper is designed by the author as an important addition to a former article.-EDIToR.] In the article" Buddhism and Romanism," in the September, 1891, number of the REVIEW, Buddhism was said to be without any authorized system of casuistry by which vices are explilined away. But if there is no authorized Rystem of casuistry, certainly the spirit of Jesuitism pervades the moral writings of the Buddhists of Ceylon, as translated by Spence Hardy in his" Manual of Buddhism." In that very keen critique, which every missionary in the far East should read, " Edwin Arnold as Poetizer and as Paganizer," Professor VY. C. Wilkinson quotes at length from Hardy. Many of the evasions and excuses framed by Buddhists for the evil-doer anticipate the very subterfuges planned by Roman Catholic moralists many centuries later. For example: "When a command if' given to take the life of a particular person, and that person is killed. it is murder; but if another person be killed instead, it is not murder." This sounus quite like Liguori, the highe~t ethical authority of Romanism, who maintains that" he who kills A, meaning to kill B, is not bound to make com· pensation, because the homicide is casual and inadvertent as regards B ;" and that if a man intends to burn the house of an enemy and by mistake hums that of a friend, the incendiarism is a very light offence. When time, place, method, and various circumstances must all be just as the evildoer intended or else his act is not a crime, there will be plenty of loopholes through which the Buddhist or Romanist criminal may disappear.
Says Professor "Vilkinson : "Christian morality at least does not confuse itself, defeat itself, first with absurd exaggerations and then with absurd extennations of rEquirement, or perhaps with subtle qualifying clauses. " But this is the Buddhist method. Among four things neces· sary to constitnte a lie, " there must be the discovery by the person deceived that what has been told him i~ not true. " That is to say, it is not a lie unless you are found out! Authorized Romau Catholic teachers make similar terms for the expert liar. When a crime is " altogether hidden"-that is, known only to the criminal and one witness-the witness is not merely permitted, but is actually bound to say that the accused did not commit it (Liguori, Theologia Moralis, iv. 152 sq.). This low ethical aim-not to prevent sin, but to prevent its discovery-appears also in the discussion of theft. If one stealfl fifty dollars at one time it is " a grave sin,' '. for it might be discovered; but if at many different times one steals small sums, amounting to fifty dollars in all, each single theft is " a light sin" (Theo. logia MoraIis, iv. 54).
The more one studies Buddhism and Romanism, the more he sees the mongrel character of each system, each containing many elements in common, whose origin can be fairly traced only to the father of lies.
AFRICAN THEOLOGY
AFRICAN THEOLOGY; OR, THE ZULU'S CREED, AS SEEN IN HIS FOLK-LORE.
IIY REV. LEWIS GROUT, WEST BRATTLEBORO, VT.
If any new encouragement or incentive to mission work among the Zulus were needed, it would seem it should be found in their earnest yet futile study for all the ages to find the light without the Bible. Their religious speculations, theories, notions, erroneous and absurd as they often arc, indicate thoughtful minds and an eager desire to solve the many physical, providential. and spiritual problems with which, like other heathen, they have ever been solemnly confronted.
The Zulus constitute a large element in the Bantu raee, a race that is only just now beginning to be known in its fulness and importance. It extends from the Orange River to about the fifth degree of north latitude, and numbers about fifty millions of people. The language spoken hy this widely extended Afriean family is virtually one, though among the different tribes there is much dialectic variety. Doubtless the best, most perfect representative of the family in respect to speech is the Zulu; and the same seems to be true also of their folk-lore, of which till late little or nothing has been known. In the extended specimens of this language, which the writer gathered some years ago from the lips of their more intelligent men, as they had no books from which to prepare a Zulu grammar, were included many of the myths, legends, fairy tales, and songs of this people. Similar collections were afterward made by Dr. Callaway, to whom the writer is here glad to acknowledge much indebtedness for aid in these studies. The number of what may be called Zulu legends and fairy tales seems almost without limit. Like other people in the midst of their development, the Zulus have ever been greatly delighted with excursions into the realms of myth and fancy. To them all things in nature are peopled with spirits of one kind or another. Wizards and witches, giants and dwarfs, are found everywhere. Their mythical stories, legends, traditions concerning the origin of men and things, their notions concerning the cause and cure of evil, the reason why men die, their ideas concerning the spirit land, or the realm to which the departed have gone, their objects and modes of worship-all testify to the vigor of their imagination and the earnestness of their bewildered efforts to solve the mysteries of life.
From some of their traditions we learn how their ancestors believed that not the dry land of earth alone, but the waters also, and the heavens above, are the abode of manlike inhabitants; while other traditions tell how their friends and all who have departed this life are occupying a subterranean region, and still engaged in cares and labors not unlike those they had here on earth. A mere outline of one story on this point is that, once on a time, Umkachana rose in the morning, he and his dogs, to go a-hunting. Presently they started a buck, which the dogs drove till it went and entered a cavern. Then in went the dogs and he too. On and on he went till he came to where the underground people dwelt, and there met with some of his old friends; but they charged him to return and go home. So he returned and reported to his friends at home where he had been and what he had seen. And now hIS friends at home, who had been wondering where he had gone, asked him: "Is it really so, that you saw men like us there in the underground region?" And he said, " Yes," and went on to give the names of some of them, and told how they had sent him back.
In another legend we have the story of another visit to thosc who dwell below, more minute and extended, which begiw'l with telling how a man started out one morning, in the dew, to follow the trail of a porcupine that had wasted his garden. Being much excited, angry because of the los8 he had suffered, when he came to the hole into which the porcupine had entered, he rushed in, saying, "I will go till I find it and kill it." Weapons in hand, yet without his dog, on and on he wcnt. At first it was dark; but when his eyes had got used to it he could see very well. At length he came to a pool, which he passed with some difficulty by the edge, and went on. When night came he lay down and slept till morning, then woke and went on, never doubting that if he persevered he would succeed and be satisfied. At length he came to a river, which he crossed, and continued his journey till, fiually, he saw it began to grow light in front. Presently he began to hear dogs baying and children crying. Passing on, he came to a village, and saw smoke rising, and said: "Hau! what place is this? I must have come to a settlement." Whereupon he returned, walking backward, returning upon his path, and saying: "Let me not go to these people, for I do not know them; perhaps they will kill me." So he fled, and went, day and night, recrossing the river and the pool he had crossed on his way inward, till finally he came out of the hole he had at first entered. And now he is greatly astonished to find that all things at the place where he has been are like to those here above-mountains, precipices, rivers and all. On going home, his appearance was an occasion of great surprise. His wife smote her hands together and cried. His neighbors rushed in and wondered, and again they shouted the funeral dirge. The woman said, " I have buried your kilt, pillow, dishes-everything that belonged to you save your mat and your blanket, and these I have burned, supposing you were dead." So he told them how he had been on a long journey to the" Abapansi," subterraneans, or those who dwell below-what he saw there, and why he came back.
These fanciful imaginings of the untutored Zulus remind us of the more studied productions of Virgil and Dante. They may not be so poetic or classical, but for a natural, truthful correspondence with their surroundings, mode of life, or mental and moral condition, it is not easy to see wherein the fonner would suffer in being compared with the latter. Dr. Callaway's suggestion is at least plausible, if not probable, that here, in these and other Zulu tales of a like character, we find the relics of an old belief, clothed after a new fashion-a belief having a common origin, probably, with that which, in other countries whose inhabitants have been in different circumstances and had a different development, has formed the basis of morc exact theologies or of such fanciful tales as the Arabian Nights' "Jullanar of tne Sea," Fouque's "Undine," or Longfellow's " Song of Hiawatha."
The folk-lore of the Zulus, their myths and legends respecting the source or orgin of men, animals, and other earthly objects, are numerous and original, and yet in some cases not wholly unlike what we find in other lands and races. Ask them in respect to the origin of man, as in the question, " Who made man? Whence came the race?" and the sum of their llsual answer is, " They burst from a reed," or, as some render it, " They broke off from a reed," as a shoot from a stem, or a bulb from a parent bulb. Bursting iuto life in this way, as the story goes, the first human pair, Unkulunkulu (the great·great one) and Umvelinquangi (the first comer), walked along the fields, fell in with grain, ate it, multiplied, and peopled the earth. Another legend makes U nkulunkulu himself the first man and great author of all. Having himself broken off or sprung into being, as the story goes, he broke off the rest. "He it was that made the first people, the ancients of long ago. These begat others, and these others, and these others. And so it is that we have heard about the origin of men, generations, and nations. It was our ancestors who told us." Still another legend, or another form of the foregoing, is that men sprung originally from a rock, which U nkulunkulu split, and they came out. In this we are reminded of the simile which the prophet used in his address to the Jews: ". Look to the rock whence ye are hewn . . . look unto Abraham your father."
As to the difference in color, an old man said: " When I was a little child, I heard from the old men of my boyhood that there were at first two mothers, one of whom gave birth to a white man, the other to a black. But how or where this happened we of to-day have no knowledge. When we were children, we, the offspring of the men of old, we were not like those of the present time, who worry themselves with finding out knowledge. For our parts, we used not to que~tion a great man; when he told us a tale we used just to listen. We now see how and why we ought to have inquired, but did not because of our great simplicity and respect for age. "
Onc of their legends would seem to have had its origin in some shadowy idea of the scriptural account of the first and second Adam. The sum of it is that there were two U nkulunkulus, one from beneath, the other from above. He from above came in a fog, and wa'l altogether white. When the people saw him they were afraid; but he said: " Why do ye fear, since I too am a man?" They say cattle were slaughtered for him at the place of llis advent j but he did not eat of these j he ate only of that whieh he brought with him. After a long stay on earth he disappeared in another fog, and they saw him no more.
Some of their legends give the order in which men, animals, and all things came into being. They say, " We black men had the same origin as you white. All came from out of the earth-we, the blacks, first. and after that the whites. But we did not bring much with us-only a few cattle, a little corn, spears, picks, fire to cook with, potter's clay, and just wisdom enough to help ourselves when we are hungry, and to know the time of digging, so as not to die of famine. And yet we thought we had all things, were wise, and that there was nothing which we did not know. But when the white men made their appearance wearing fine clothes, able to perform wonders, driving big teams, and bringing with them every kind of goods in great abundance, we saw how verily we black people came forth without a single thing, utterly destitute because wc came firbt and in a hurry, while the white people waited for all things, and delayed that they might sc~ape out the last bit of wisdom. And then as to the order in which men and things made their first appearance, we used to hear it said by our fathers, they too having heard it from others, that the first to come into being was a man, next a woman, then a cow, then a dog, then all the little animals, then elephant~-all in pairs-then corn." This part of the untutored African's story reminds us of some of Milton's words: " The earth obeyed, and straight, Opening her fertile womb, teemed at a birth Innumerous living creatures, perfect forms, Limbed and full grown."
And so the sacred Scriptures, where we are told that God said: "Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping things, and beast of the earth after his kind; and it was so." Nor is it otherwise than natural. and in a sense correct" to refer the origin of all things secondarily to the earth; since from this it is that the elements of the material organism of all living things are derived."
In our day we hear not a little about the development of one species from another, as of man from the ape; but the Znlus have a legend which makes the transmutation go the other way, so that man is not an elevated ape, bnt the ape a degenerated man. The story is, that the chieftain of a certain idle tribe, too lazy to grow their own food, told his people to pack: up, take their picks and all, and follow him far away into the wilderness. So they took their effects-picks, pick-handles, and other things-binding these handles, withal, upon their backs. And so it was that in some way -we know not just how-these handles became caudal appendages; hair made its appearance on their bodies ; their foreheads became overhangiug ; and so they became apes, went to the precipices, and had their abode among the rocks. A Mussulman legend is to the same effect. It says that on one of Soliman's trips from Jerusalem to Mareb he passed through a valley inhabited by apes which dressed and lived like men, at which he was greatly astonished. But upon inquiring as to their orlgm and their many points of likeness to men, he was told that they were descended from men, being the remnant of a Jewish community which, notwithstanding all admonition, continued to break the Sabbath until Allah cursed them and turned them into apes.
Another Zulu legend hints, like the former, at the folly of idleness, by explaining how it came about that the monkey has such a long tail, while the rabbit has almost none at all. "Long ago," as the story goes, " a certain king sent for all the animals to come and receive their tails. Now the day on which t.hese were to be distributed being cloudy and wet, the rabbit, not liking to go out in the rain, called to the monkey as he was passing by, and said, 'See here, my good neighbor; when you get your tail, will you please ask for mine and bring it to me ?' The monkey said he would; but on his way home he managed to join the rabbit's tail to his own, saying, ' If he is too lazy to go himself for what he wants, I shall not encourage his idleness by waiting on him; he may go without his tail.' So the monkey has a long tail, and the rabbit scarcely any at all." Hence the common saying among the Zulus: "Remember the rabbit; and if you want anything done, and done well, do it yourself; and not trust to others. "
Having noticed several Zulu legends concerning the origin of man, we close with one concerning his end, or why he dies. The sum of it is that "Unknlnnkulu sent a chameleon, saying, 'Go and say, "Let not men die.'" The chameleon went, went slowly, loitered by the way, and stopped to eat the fruit of the Ukwebezanc, a kind of mulberry. Then at length the Great Being sent the quick-running lizard, saying, 'Go and say, "Let men die.'" So the lizard ran; and when he had arrived he said, 'I have to come to say, " Let men die.'" Then the chameleon came and said, ' I have come to say, " Let not men die.'" But to this the people said, ' Oh, we have already received the lizard's word, by which it is settled that men must die! '" This tradition would seem to have had its origin in the scriptural account, to which Milton refers when he sings: " Of man's first disobedience and the fruit Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste Brought death into the world, and all our woe."
And so it is that both of the above-named animals are looked upon by the Zulus much as the serpent is by manyin Christian lands. Both are hated, hunted, and often killed; both are charged with having been the cause of men's dying-the one from having been so slow, the other from having been so quick.
But no complete idea of the Zulu's creed can be had without a brief notiee of the object and mode of his worship. In his way the Zulu is one of the most religious of all people. lIe has, naturally, a broad, deep. religious susceptibility. The Great-great One, as we have seen, is his Maker, the Author of the race to which he belongs j but the object of his worship, the divinity that has power over his destiny, is the shades of the dead-the amahlozi, or amatonga, the departed spirits of his kindred and of the great ones of his race. For a Bible, a prophet, and a priest he goes to the inyanga, a fellow-man well versed in Delphic art. He admits that he is a sinner, believes in prayer and in the need of an atoning sacrifice j that" without the shedding of blood there can be no remission."
When som ecalamity, as sickness, comes upon him, he goes or !Sends a deputation with a cow or other present to the inyanga, to Jearn the cause and cure of his sufferings. After much inquiring of the shades, he it! told that they are offended at his neglect j it is long since he has made an offering of any animal to them j and now, if he will recover, he must slaughter that best cow of his for them. He accepts the answer, admits his negligence, says his prayers, brings out his spear and cow, gives her a stab in the side, and if she shows signs of distress, he says, "Yes, that is good j just what an animal for the gods ought to show j let hcr cry and drive away the evil." He then sprinkles the blood and gall upon his per- son and premises, puts the beef away in a hut by itself, and in the morn- ing professes to believe that the divinities have been there, had a taste of the blood and beef, and been satisfied. And now his hungry neighbors gather at his kraal, bring out the beef, roast and consume it, pronounce the sacrifice a good one, and express the hope that the sick man may soon be well and out again. If so, that priest is praised j if not, he is denounced and called a fraud j and the sick man, resorting to another, goes through the same process again, and perhaps yet again, till finally either health or death ensues.
Another somewhat noted article in the Zulu's creed-the last we name -is his belief that departed spirits sometimes come back and appear to men for a time on earth, especially to their kindred and friends, in the garb of a snake. Hence it is that rept.iles of this kind arc always looked upon with a kind of sacred awe, and never in any way harmed, lest some great calamity befall· those who maltreat them. When questioned on these points, and especially as to whether they really worship the snake, the Zulu says: "No j what we believe is, that we are mortal; that between us and the spirits of the departed -the amatonga-there is a broad chasm j and that the arnatonga are of two kinds-some good, some evil. Those of our families which have an interest in our welfare are able to take on the appearance of a snake, and by that means not only form a link between us and the world of spirits, but in this guise of a snake they are permitted to watch over us. We do not believe in the snake as a snake, but in the amatonga, the spirit or spirits which the snake represents."
From these few specimens of the Zulus' folk-lore stories, and a comparison of these with the like stories of other races and nations, we are impressed, for one thing, with the manncr in wbich they help to show the common brothE)rbood of men. We see this in the common faith of all in
THE J.AST OF THE COMBERS
some superior power or .livinity, to which all are subject, and on which all are dependent. ,Ve see this common brotherhood in the general interest which all take in the great problems of life, such as the origin and end of man, the cause and cure of evil, and in the general belief which all have in another life.
These folk-lore stories help also to show the great value of the light which the Bible throws upon all these problems, and, indeed, upon every question that we really need to have solved for us in the present state. We see, too, what cause we have for gratitude that our lot has fallen to us under the hallowed teachings and influence of the Gospel of Christ, and what obligation we are nnder to help extend a knowledge of these great blessings to those who grope and suffer for the want of them.
THE LAST OF THE COMBERS.
SIX LIVES SACRIFICED.
The death of Rev. Percy E. Comber from the terrible African fever terminates a pathetic episode in the history of the Congo Mission. Three brothers, one sister, and two wives-six in all-bearing a name ever to be honored and revered, have now found a grave beneath the palms. We question whether a similar example of family devotion to the missionary enterprise ean be found in the entire annals of the Christian Church. In the beginning of the year 1878 Thomas, the eldest brother, left Cameroons with Mr. Grenfell for the preliminary expedition to San Sahador. these two being the first Protestant missionaries to enter the Congo country. The following year, after a home visit, Thomas Comber returned with his hride, but the happy companionship was to last hut three brief months. Sidney, the doctor, who had distinguished himself at Edinburgh University, and from whose medical attainments helpful service was anticipated, was the next to fall. Referring to his brother's death, Thomas wrote: "Twenty years ago our dear mother, after eommitting us all to the care of our Heavenly Father, was called away home. One after another we have all given ourselves to mission work in Africa. My brother Sidney and I were on the Congo, my sistrr in Victoria, and Percy, my youngest brother, is preparing at Rrgent's Park College for the same work."
In 1886 the sister Carrie died on the West Coast; the next year Thomas himself, and now Percy has passed away, surviving his young wife only some twelve months. Very touching are the few words written in haste by one of the missionaries, teIling how he was ,mgaged in placing the memorial stone sent by loving friends from the home country over the wife's grave on the very day the widowed missionary had rejoined her.- The Christian.
WILLIAM CAREY
WILLIAM CAREY, THE MISSIONARY ORGANIZER, PREACHER, AND TEACHER.-PART II.
BY GEORGE SMITH, LT".D., F.R.G.S., EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND.
The same hand of God, in history, which guided Columbus to America, when he set ont for India, led William Carey to India, when he had desired to go to Tahiti. So, three qnarters of a century later, David Livingstone determined to be a medical missionary to the Chinese, but God kept him for Africa. The" fulness of the times" came in India, as in Great Britain, America, and France, in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. 'Vhen Carey was mastering seven languages, as he sat on his cobbler's stall at Hackleton and Moulton or among his flowers and birds opposite his chapel in Harvey Lane, Leicester, the surgeon of an East Indiaman, John Thomas, was rudely trying to convert the natives of Calcutta and Bengal. He had no scholarship. and little common· sense, but he yearned for the souls of men, and in his three voyages he had learned the local facts. Filled with these, he met Fuller, Ryland, and Sutcliff-the three to whom, as the executive of his own Baptist Missionary Society, Carey had offered himself. He met Carey also, when they embraced each other with tears of joy, and Bengal was chosen as the scene of the mission. Carey and Thomas went forth, two together, one an ordained and tho other a medical missionary, with their families and £150 a year between them, to win to' Christ the Hindus and Mohammedans, first of a province in which they now number seventy-five millions, then of all Northern, Central, and ·Western India, and then of the half of Asia from the Gulf of Persia to the YcHow Sea of China. While we thank God for Carey's faith and love, which the delays of twelve years had only intensified, let us not blame the thirteen ministers who, at Kettering, subscribed £13 28. 6d. wherewith this mighty enterprise was begun. * As with a few loaves and fishes the Son of Man fed the multitudes of Ilis day again and again in the wilderness, so the Risen Lord and Reigning King multiplied the first mites then cast into His treasury, till before he died Carey saw them grow to £400,000 a year. And now, after a century, we reckon them at £2,500,000 a year, and count that all too small. Carey's minimum for" every person" was lOs. 6d. a year, which these poor strn1!gling ministers more than doubled at starting; and if every communicant of the Evangelical churches had given even the minimum in the last hundred years, there would not be • This is the ever memorable list: £ 8. d. £ 8. d. Samuel Pearce, Binningbam. . .. .•…. 1 1 0 John Ryland, Northamptot:. ………. . 2 2 0 Thomas Blundell, Arnsby… …..• …. 0 10 6 William Heighton, Road…………. 010 6 Reynold Hogg, Thrapstone ………… . 2 2 0 John Eyres, Braybrook……. … …… 0 10 6 J oBeph Timms, Kettering………….. 1 1 0 Jobn Sutcliff, Olr.ey………………. . 1 1 0 A Contributor, name not recorded Andrew Fuller, Kettering 110 (Carey?)…. …………… …….. 0 10 6 Abraham Greenwood, Oakham …….. . 1 1 0 Edward Sharman, Cottesbrook…….. . 1 1 0 Josbua Burton, Foxton……….•….. 010 6 a thousand million of human beings alive who know not Christ. It was the poor of Christ's flock who sent forth the first English speaking mis- sionaries, and who have supported their succcssors all through the century. It is still the comparatively poor who deny themselves to raise every year the two and a half millions sterling administered by the missionary churches and societies.
William Carey was thirty-three years of age when, on November lOth, 1793, he landed at Calcutta, and began there the forty-one years of his mis- sionary career. After months of poverty and hardship causing misery Lo his wife, which soon affected her reason, yet himself ever working for his Master among the natives, Carey found himself nominally an indigo-plantcr in the service of the godly Bengal civilian of MaIda, Mr. George Ddny, on £250 a year. No apprenticeship could have been better than the seven years which he spent among the Hindus of the district now known as Dinajpore. He had been ejected from the East India Company's ship in which his first passage had been taken, and had reached Calcutta unobserved in a Danish vessel. As a missionary he would not have been allowed to land, or, having landed, he would have been deported as some of his successors were. As a planter, daily doing missionary work, he was not interfered with, while he not only supported himself at no cost to his society, which he urged to send missionaries to Africa with the old salaries of Thomas and himself, but he gave more than half his income to extend his own mialiian. The self-supporting system was that on which the only evangelical missionary agency then known-that of the Moravian Brethren -was conducted; and Carey and his colleagues so carried it out till they died that they personally gave £90,000 to their mission. Carey's first congregation were the ninety Bengalees and Eurasians whom he employed, and for whose children, as well as those of the otber peasantry, he opened schools. Hi" first convert was the Eurasian trader, Fernandez, who at once a built chapel next his own house, and who acted as a missionary at Dinaj- pore till he died, four years before Carey. The firRt letters of Carey and Thomas were not received by Andrew Fuller, the Secretary, till the end of July, 1'794, and they were little more than a modest record of toil at the languages, of conversations with the natives, of hardships from the climate, and of the hypocrisy of the one Bengalee whom Thomas llad previously attached to himself as a catechuman and interpreter, Ram Bose. But Carey's faith and sacrifice lighted up the whole evangelical world of Great I3ritain- Anglican, Nonconformist., and Presbyterian-when Fuller published No. I. of his Periodical Accounts relative to the Baptist MisRionary Society, following Franke's Pietist example of 1710. Charles Grant, John Newton, and the Clapham men in London, and Charles Simeon in Camhridge, were delighted and resolved to renew their former attempt, which in a few years resulted in the establishment of the Church Missionary Society. Rylaud, in Bristol, called friends like Dr. Bogue to rejoice with him and spread Carey's letters before the Lord, so that the London Missionary Society sprang into being. In the far north Dr. Erskine and Greville Ewing founded the Scottish Mis- sionary Society; and the Haldanes, selling all they had in the beautiful estate of Airthrey, laid £35,000 at the Lord's feet. Every true Christian in the land was moved as successive numbers of the Periodical Accounts appeared, till in the two Quarterlies Sydney Smith scoffed and Southey rebuked him, while even the doubting churches began to deluge Parlia- ment with petitions, which ended in the comparative toleration of the East India Company's charter of 1813.
Carey's own society was not idle, for Fuller and Ryland were its execu- tive who had vowed, by prayer and toil, to hold the ropes while he worked below in the gold m~ne of the unconverted souls of the millions of Southern Asia. Before the' eighteenth century closed four colleagues and their families were sent out to him; but going as missionaries, they could not then sail in a British ship or lan~ on the East India Company's territory without the license or passport refused them. Again the hand of God ap- peared guiding the infant mission. At the very time when Carey's position in the Company's territory was becoming so intolerable that he seriously proposed to cross the Himalayan frontier into Bhootan, Charles Grant, a director and twice chairman of the Company, advised the four to seek the protection of the Danish flag, at Serampore, fourteen miles up the Hoogly from Calcutta. They shipped in an American vessel, the Oriterion, of which a Presbyterian elder of Philadelphia, Captain Wickes, was captain ; he sent them off in boats just before entering the port of Calcutta, and they landed without difficulty at Serampore on the" Lord's day, October 13th, 1799." Next day they were welcomed by Mr. Forsyth, of the new London Missionary Society, who afterward settled at Chinsurah, higher up the river. Next Lord's day the Danish Governor, with his fltaff, worshipped at their first service. Denmalk ever after protected them, and has not ceased to be proud of its trust up to the present Sovereign, although, in 1845, Serampore became British by purchase. Under a Danish passport, Ward, whom Carey himself had chosen when a printer and editor at Derby, went off to Diuajpore to persuade him ~o share the security of such a centre. January lOth, 1800, found the five, afterward joined by Thomas occasionally, united in loving fellowship and toil in what has been called the Canterbury of Asia. America and Denmark combined to save the infant mission from the persecution of the trading monopoly of the East India Company until, in 1813, and finally in 1833, the Christian opinion of Great Britain compelled the directors, by Act of Parliament, to learn full toleration. America thus really provided an asylum for its own sons and daughters when, having in its turn become missionary, it sent forth Adonirllm Judson and his companions, and Carey helped them to found the great Baptist Mission in Burma, and the noble missions of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions in Bombay.
Whcn Carey transferred his India mission to the unique and beautiful centre of Serampore he was in the perfection of his life and powers of every kind. Forty years of age; seasoned to the climate; master of the great Hindu languages of East and West, Bengali and Marathi, and having the key of Sanskrit from which they spring; knowing and loving the people of every class, especially the peasantry, artisans, and Brahmans; familiar with their intellectual and economic condition, their resources and agricultural wants; in command of the printing press and all its appliances; having translated the New Testament and written .ernaeular works; above all, yearning for the salvation of every man the more he knew the misery and the ignorance of all, William Carey stands before us at the opening of the Nineteenth Century the greatest-and is he not still the greatest 1-of the thousands whom Evangelical Christendom has sent to the conquest of the world. Of his colleagues we have mentioned the gentle, the accom. plished, the practical 'Yard, of whom we shall see more when we come to the translation of the Scriptures. The other was Dr. Joshua Marshman, of Bristol, who took with him the first' great woman missionary-before Anne Judson, of Burma, and Isabella Vilson, of Bombay, long after-the devoted Hannah Marshman.
For the six missionaries and their families Fuller had promised £360 a year; but Carey had not been with them more than eight days when they took the first steps to form a brotherhood, by adopting" a set of rules for the government of the family." On the early death of three of them, and as the others made the common fund not only self-supporting, but the means of planting new missions, their Agreement took the form of 1805, spiritual and administrative, under which, in loving unity, they sought to win Asia for Christ. Of their eleven" great principles, " this was the first: " It is absolutely necessary that we set an infinite value on immortal souls ;" and this the tenth: " That we be constant in prayer and the cultivation of personal religion, to fit us for the discharge of these laborious and unutterably important labors. Let us often look at Brainerd, in the woods of America, pouring out his very soul before God for the perishing heathen. without whose salvation nothing could make him happy." In the eleventh we again trace Carey's experience and language: "No private family ever enjoyed a greater portion of happiness than we have done since we resolved to have all things in common. If we are enabled to persevere. we may hope that multitudes of converted souls will have reason t<;> bless God to all eternity for sending His Gospel into this country."
Krishna Pal was the first of these" multitudes," ascertained by the India census of February, 1891, to be 2,284,000, or above two millions, if we confine ourselves to natives, besides the millions of reo deemed Asiatics who have joined the multitude which no man can number. He was an intelligent adult only a few years younger than Carey; a carpenter who read one of Carey's tracts as he lay with a dislocated arm; an inquirer whom Thomas healed, and who came, the first fruit of Bible and medical missions, to Jesus. He became a missionary to his countrymen in Calcutta and Assam, and a writer of such hymns as that whirh, in its English version, many besides those who use the Baptist Hymnal are singing this year with peculiar fervor: " 0 thou, my sonl, forget no more The Friend who all thy misery bore: Lilt every idol be forgot; But Oh, my soul, forget Rim not !"
Krishna Pal's baptism, along with one of Carey's sons, in the broad Hoogly River, beside the mission housl1, on the last Sabbath of 1800, in presence of the Danish Governor and his native subjects, was to the long- waiting and often disappointed missionary of eight years' standing an event " of great joy. I had the happiness to desecrate the Gunga (Ganges) by baptizing the first Hindu. . . , I addressed the people in Bengali, having sung a Bengali translation of the hymn' Jesus, and shall it ever be ?' and engaging in prayer after the address, I administered the ordinance of the Lord's Supper." Converts followed slowly at first, and then faster from all castes and clasRes-from Brahmans as well as Mohammedar:s j from Eura- ~ians and Europeans j from English soldiers and their officers. Sir Henry Havelock was one of the last class. Calcutta city and its neighborhood became quite as much the scene of his missionary labors as Danish Serampore, for in the mOllt intolerant times Carey, as profe~sor in Lord V~I lesley's College of Fort William, was to the authorities a persona grata, and as the years went on active opposition ceased. Like every wise missionary since St. Paul, and unlike many ignorant critics of missions even in the present day, Carey followed every method, if by any means he might win men and women and their children to Christ: But his twiu methods of evangelizing the Natives and Eurasians were those of teaching and preaching. From the first he and Marshman opened schools-Bengali and English. From the first he and all his coadjutors, English and Bengali, preached Christ in season and ont of season in tl18 country languages. Dr. and Mrs. Marshman's schools for Eurasian children were the finest in the East, and most profitable to the mission. Carey's College, paid for out of his earnings as professor ehiefly, is still the noblest educational building in India since he and Marshman erected it, in 1818. He nel'er depreciated educational evangelizing based on grantsin-aid from the State, which he was the first to take, and he encouraged young Alexander Duff to follow the same method in happier cjrcumstance~ in the metropolis of Calcutta. Would that the successors of Andrew Fuller and John Ryland had been Christian statesmen like them and the immortal three of the Serampore Brotherhood!
For on Fuller's death, 800n followed by Ryland's, Carey'8 Society, in spite of Robert Hall, John Fo~ter, CLristopher Anderson, and the best of the Baptists, led by RylHlld's inexperienced snecessor as secretary, were guilty of so acting that the brothelhood were deprived of their own personal
1892.J THE DECENNIAL MISSIONARY CONFERENCE
property, and in their last years the old heroes were wounded to death. There is no one who does not bewa"a the conduct of Dr. Marshman's assailants now. Alas! it is written in history forever, and it has not been atoned for, else would the great college, made over to the Society by Dr. Marshman's distinguished son and successor, not now be neglected. Writing in 1827 of. the "unceasing calumny" of sixteen years, for action of which Andrew Fuller approved almost with his dying breath, Carey and his colleagues of that time dedared: "We confidently appeal from the decision of the present age to the judgment of posterity." Sixty years afterward I republished that appeal, and have found Carey's confidence justified. All the more because this year is a centennial period of thanksgiving is it right to ask the Church and the world to ratify the verdict. 1< THE DECENNIAL MISSIONARY CONFERENCE.
(1) Place.-The next Decennial Conference will be in Bombay. The daily sessions will be held in Wilson College Hall. A larger hall will be engaged for public meetings in the evenings.
(2) Time.-The Conference will open on the Wednesday following Christmas, DecemLer 28th. 1892, and will occupy a full week, possibly more. (3) Plan.-This Conference will convene on much the same lines as those of Allahabad and Calcutta, and all missionary workers and helpers will be regarded as members. There will be no " Ladies' Day" as such, but men and women will be accorded equal privileges, and be expected to participate freely in the discussion. (4) Papers.-In order to save time for discussion the papers will be printed beforehand. and not read to the meeting. Each writer will be requested to furnish at least 300 copies of his paper for distribution among members II day or two before his topic is taken up. (5) Topics.-Many topics have been sent in by onr friends in India and at home. These have been chosen for the programme, which wili be given to the public after the names of writers and speakers and otber details h'lve been settled-viz., 'Vork for the Depressed Classes and the Masses; Missionary Comity; The Religious Education of the Young; How can our ~liBsionary Schools he Made more Effective as Evangelizing Agencies ? Work among English-Speaking Indians; Special Evangelistic Work for Women; The Native Church in India; The Christian Press; Attitude of Mis,ionaries toward Reform Movements-e.g., The Sabbath, Temperance, The Congre~R, Marriage and Divorce, The Social Evil: Miscellaneous Topics-e.g., 'Vork for Lepers, Statistics in Misgionary Wark, Tbe Relation of Missionary Societies to tbe Management of the Work in the Field, The Relation betwc(m European and Indian Christians, The Influence of the J eSllit Movement on Protestant Missions, Horne Evangelists in India. and 'Vork for our own Countrymen.
* See the principal fnete "nd documents of the Dyer Controversy in the" Life of William Carey D.D., Shoemaker and :lli,,!o!1aI'Y" (2d ed, London, .John Murray, 1887), in which the late Charles H. Spnrgeon wrote. "The He.a."porc mistake is wisely treatecl"
THE ORIGIN OF MISSIONS IN AMERICA
THE ORIGIN OF MISSIONS IN AMERICA.
BY REV. D. L. LEONARD, BELLEVUE, O.
From the founding of the first European settlements in the New World somewhat of zeal for the evangelization of the heathen has always existed, and Protestant efforts looking to that end date from the very beginnings of New England. Concern for the spiritual well-being of the aborigines manifested itself in various ways. Appropriations of money were made by the civil authorities, and urgent appeals for financial aid were sent back to the mother country. But much more, labors abundant and truly apostolic were beRtowed by Eliot and by the Mayhews through five successive generations, and were continued in the century following by such as Sargent and Edwards. A school was opened at Lebanon, Conn., for the education of Indians and missionaries, where Orcum, a Mohican, was trained for the ministry, and Kirkland, who for forty years devoted himself to unwearied toil for the Oneidas. As early as 1643 the Gospel was carried in their own tongue to the Mohawks in the vicinity of Schenectady by ministers of the Reformed (Dutch) Church j many were converted, and for their use the liturgy and portions of the Scriptures were translated. In 1741 the Scottish Society for the Propagation of the Gospel established a Board of Correspondence in New York, and sent Horton as missionary to the Indians of Long Island j David Brainerd to the Forks of the Delaware, aud, after his death, his brother John to the same region. The latter was supported almost entirely by American Presbyterians. But, on account of a strange succession of serious hindrance8, no lasting results were secured; and finally, after the close of the Revolution, these efforts almost entirely ceased, At the beginning of the present century the idea of world.-wide missions, the evangelization of the entire race, had not begun to dawn upon the consciousness of American Christians. Though for sixty years the Moravians had been bearing the glad tidings to distant lands j though Schwartz, Ziegenbalg, Carey, and Vanderkemp had been preaching Christ in pagan India and Africa; and though already in Great Britain three missionary societies had heen formed, stillDn this side of the Atlantic, even among the most earnest-hearted, the only heathen who llad any c'aims upon them were the aborigines at their own doors. To not a soul came overwhelming conviction and longing. Hitherto the best efforts had been unsystematic, sporadic, and transient. There had been no attempt at corning together in combination and co-operation to fashion some comprehensive and far-reaching scheme to carry the light far and wide through the lands of darkness. The first signs of something better to come appeared as the result of the call of the Scottish Christians, in 1746, for monthly, public, united prayer for the universal spread of the Gospel. vVhen Brainerd died, his last message to his Indians contained an injunction to observe this day. The Massachusetts Baptist Missionary Society was organized in 1802 "to promote the knowledge of evangelical truth in new settlements of the United States, or further, if circumstances should render it proper j" and, two years later, the Massachusetts (Congregational) Missionary Sociely changed its constitution so as·to read: "Among people of newly settled and remote parts, among the Indians, and through more distant regions as circumstances invite and ability admits."
The fact is patent that missions in America were an outgrowth almost direct from missions in Britain, though of course at the same time various causative forces, mighty, though less visible, were operating throughout Christendom, so that William Carey was the father of the former as well as of the latter, In spite of the violent sundering which had recently taken place between the colonies and the mother country, the relations still existing were most intimate, especially upon the intellectual and religious side. Great movements starting across the sea were quickly known and deeply felt here also. When, consequently, in 1792, the Baptists launched forth for their sublime endeavor, and when, soon after, Carey sailed for India, the New World also was looking on with wonder and admiration. In particular, the Baptists of this land were eager watchers. Dr. Staughton, later a pastor in Philadelphia, heard Carey's famous Nottingham sermon; like all the others, was stirred to the depths j into the collection which followed cast II half gainea, borrowed for the purpose, and" rejoiced more over it than over any other sum he ever gave in his life." Letters and missionary reports sent by English Baptists were circulated quite extensively. Since Carey, with all his stalwart faith in God, was also a staunch believer in the grace of vigorous works, and was a most indefatigable letter writer, information and exhortation were poured forth in all directions from his pen. Thus communications not a few reached New England and the Middle States, were read with interest, and, as a result, considerable sums of money were forwarded to Calcutta. In 1806-7 he acknowledges the receipt of $6000, and says: "The Lord has wonderfully Rtirred the whole religious world of every denomination to favor our work and contribute to a large amount j and our American friends have special claims on our gratitude in this respect." And, further, in 18ll, through the action of the Boston Baptist Associati:'n, $4650 were contributed by persons of different denominations in Eastern Massachusetts, to aid in carrying forward his numerous translations of the Scriptures into Asiatic languages. Rence the assertion is abundantly justified that" We are indebted to those pioneers for the example which gave a powerful impulse to missions by arousing the interest and embodying the efforts of all denominations. "
But an impulse vastly greater was imparted three years later when the London Mi8sionary Society leaped suddenly forth into vigorous life. Says Rev. Kiah Bayley: "In 1797 Rev. Alexander MeLean, of Bristol, Me., received from Scotland the sermons of Dr. Haweis and others preached at the organization, was charmed by reading them, and loaned the pamphlet to me. I took it to Newburyport, where it was soon reprinted and read with avidity by various others, and among them by the Rev. Samuel Worcester, who thus caught the sacred flame. And so was started the rill which led to the river." In 1796 a society was formed in New York, in which Presbyterians, Baptists, and Dutch Reformed were united, and monthly meetings were held to pray that" the God of grace would pour out His Spirit on His Church and send the Gospel to all nations." By 1807 five societies had been organized in Massachusetts to propagate Christianity, and similar ones in all the New England States, with some also in the Middle States. During the first five years of the century these periodicals were established, and combined to diffuse miRsionary intelligence from the Old World: the Connecticut Evangelical Magazine, the :Massachusetts Missionary Magazine, the Massachusetts Baptist Missionary Magazine, the Panoplist, and the (Presbyterian) Religious Intelligencer. In 1804 the Massachusetts Society chose the President of the London Society an honorary trustee. It was during this same period that Melville Horne's" Letters on Missions" and Claudius Buchanan's ., Star in the East" were published, and produced an impression widespread and profound. In addition, the churches began to be moved hy missionary discourses as never before. Upon the General Assembly in 1806 Dr. Griffin" urged the claims of the heathen and the greatness and excellence of missionary work with an eloquence and earnestness seldom, if ever, surpassed." The next year, Parish, before the Massachusetts Domestic Missionary Society, dwelt upon " the growing conviction of the value of Christianity; and so it was a good time to send missionaries to every nation." In 1808 the General Assembly appointed a day of fasting and prayer to beseech" God to bless the efforts of His people to Christianize the heathen and to extend the Gospel." The same year, in Cambridge, Holmes hailed the approaching day when idols would be cast to the moles and bats, and all false faiths be superseded by the glorious Gospel of God. Only a few days before the American Board was organized, at the annual meeting of the Massachusetts Society, Norton had boldness sufficient to inquire: "Is the expectation visionary and unfounded that the time is not far distant when from the United States missionaries win go forth to every region of the globe, accompanied with the fervent prayers of thousands 1" Finally, as early as 1R06 Norris. of Salem, had given $10,000 to found Andover Seminary, and declared, " My object is the foreign mission enterprise, for we must have ministers if we would have missionaries."
These Were some of the preliminary and preparatory steps, and such were some of the more significant ~igns of the times. Hitherto zeal has been only general and indefinite, destitute of specifi0 object and aim; but now we cOllle upon desires and convictions burning in the bosoms of godly and heroic men, which cannot at all be c(lnt~ined within the realm of thought and emotion, but must Jeap fOlth and incarnate themselves in action. "With such feelings and utterances among the elders it is not strange that from among the young men some should catch the spirit and propose actually to engage in missions." At this point., in the person of Samuel J. Mills, there begins to come into very prominent view one who without doubt may be properly termed the American counterpart of Will- iam Carey. If there were need of proving this affirmation, it wonld be sufficient to set forth the distinguished and essential part he played not only in the formation of the American Board, the Cornwall School, and the mission to the Sandwich Islands, but also of the United Foreign niis- sionary Society, the American Bible Society, the American Colonization Society, and the school in New York for the education of Africans. Like the Hebrew Samnel, from his birth Mills had been lent to the Lord-not to serve in the tabernacle, but to offer living and life-long sacrifices in pagan lands. 'Vhen a child he "accidentally" heard his mother mention to a neighbor this fact of his consecration, and he never forgot it, but was inspired and impelled thereby to his dying day. She often also told him stories of Eliot, Braincrd, and others. Converted in 1802, at the age of nineteen, his controlling purpose was already so clear and so strong that. he could say to his father: "I cannot conceive of any course of life in which to pass my days that would prove so pleasant as to go and communicate the Gospel of salvation to the poor heathen." And even then his longing was to be a mi~sionary, not to the Indians at home, but in some foreign land.
Entering Williams College in 1806, his heart was too mu~h aflame with another passion to allow him to excel in his studies. Soon a few familiar spirits like Richards and Hall were found or fashioned, and at once they began to pray and plan. There is no time to dwell upon the memorable meeting under the haystack, or the secret society with its solemn pledge binding to the foreign work, or their careful canvass of prudent and efficient ways and means for furthering the momentous project they had so fervently at heart. The object of the organization was " to effect in the person of its members a mission to the heathen," and the constitution was drawn up in cipher, " public opinion being opposed to us," and" lest we ~hould be thought rashly imprudent, and so should injure the cause we wish to promote." They made the acquaintance of various clergymen of influence, and opened a correspondence with others. They secured the publication and distribution of various sermons and other works on missionary subjects. They visited several colleges, or wrote thither to kindle the holy flame in the breasts of other young men. Here, surely, was fonnd a remarkable combination of fervent zeal and knowledge of men and affairs. Yet with all their boundless ardor, anything approaching dangerously near to fanaticism would be hard to find. The spirit which lifted them up and bore them onward may be discerned in the reply of Hall, when, later, he was urged to take a pastorate: "No, I must not settle in any pariFh in Christendom. Others will be left who;e hellli h or pre-engagements require them to stay j but I can sleep on the gronnd and endure hunger and hardship. God calls me to the heathen. Woe to me if I preach not the Gos- pel to the heathen."
In 1809 the scene shifts to Andover, the doors of the theological semi- nary having opened for the reception of students only the year before j and the little band from Williams was re-enforced by Nott and Newell, and a few months later by Judson, coming each one from a different college, and each also having arrived independently at the dominant conviction. Judson had read Bnchanan's "Star in the East," and "the evidences of Divine power manifested in the progress of the Gospel in India fell like a spark into the tinder of his soul." "I could not Mtudy j I depicted to myself the romantic scenes of missionary life j I was in a great excitement." A· few months sufficed to bring him to the fixed purpose to devote his life to a mISSIOnary career. And though several with whom he counselled thought the idea was irrational, he would not change his determination, but wrote to the London SOCiety, and so began to move before he knew of any other who was like. minded. The meetings of these young men to strengthen one another in their planning to extend the dominion of their dear LOld has been likened to that striking scene in the chapel at Mont Martre, where, nearly three hundred years before, the seven founders of the Society of . Jesns mct to exchange their vows. Though wholly of one desire and pur- pose, they were as yet also wholly without knowledge as to who would authorize them to go and send them forth, as well as to what particular portion of the wide world they should direct their efforts. Consulting the faculty, and their designs finding favor, a conference with several clergy- men was arranged for June 25th, 1810 j they were advised to petition the General Association to move in the matter, and that body was to meet the next. day. The petition was duly prepared and presented, signed origi- nally by the entire six j but lest the large number should strike some through with terror, two names were taken off. The petition set forth that their " minds had long been impressed with the duty and importance of person- ally attempting a mission to the heathen," and inquired if they could ex- pect "patronage and support from a society in this country, or if they must commit themselves to the direction of a European society." And it was as the direct result of such urgency of appeal on the part of this con- secrated company that the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions came into being, the first of the kind on thi!;l side of the Atlantic, wh08e aim was to go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature. Thus, in 1810, American missions were born.
It is affirmed that at this date not less than eighteen or twenty persons had been seriously considering the perRonal claims upon them of mission- ary work, and, of course, more or less of interest had been excited in the minds of many. Bnt even now only a few ministers-and of laymen fewer still-had attained to the fill ness of faith and zeal. The Prudential Committee were thoroughly persuaded that a considerable timo must elapse before they could sUR[ain a mission on a pt'omising scale in any land. One of their number, a Bosion merchant, was oppo~ed to sending out any men unless a fund of at least $60,000 was in reserve for use in case of inadequate receipts; and a fruitless effort was made to raise a large sum for investment, while but one was venturesome enough to insist that ihey should go forward ju~t as soou as an eligible fidd was found, fund or no fund, holding that the Lord's hand was iu the matter, and that the way would be opened if they bestirred themselves. Meanwhile, the young men were counselled to pursue their studies and wait in patience. Recourse was had to the London Society to see if the candidates could not be sent out by the two bodies in co-operation, and Judson was sent to England to con· fer. Fortunately, however, nothing came of that timid project; and so all concerned were compelled to trust to God and their own exertions. And, verily, those wele the days of small things. At the end of the first year the receipts had reached but $099.52, and when the next year was well advanced the treasury contained only $1200. So, with a minimum of sight for a fOllndation upou which faith might stand and plume itself for flight into the unseen, it. is not strange that there was great hesitation abuut making the tremendous venture. But now, without warning, the supreme test of faith was thrust upon them. Word was brought from Philadelphia th'lt in a few days a vessel would sail from that city, in which missiunaries might take passage for India, an opportunity not likely to occur again for a period indefinitely long. Then, a little later, came intelligence that about the same time from Salem another ship would set fOlth for the same region. With this golden opportunity, and with four men ready and waiting, most eager and urgent to be sent, what should be done 7 To add to the sore perplexity, behold a fifth petitioner appears in the per· son of Rice, asking to be ordained and dispatched with the others. The courage of the Committee rose grandly to the height of the great occasion, and they determined to go forward. They stipulated, however, that Rice should himself secure the wherewith for his outfit and passage, and suggested that the four wives would better remain behind for a season to save the extra expense, and further intimated that if the worst came, a portion of the number, or even all, might be trangferred to the London Society. Nor did the outcome fail superabundantly to justify this act of faith. A call was issued to the churches for money, and arrangements were made for the ordination services. Fortunately, too, the day of sailing was postponed for a fortnight. Now enthusiasm began to rise. So Illany hearts wele opened, and so great was the eagerness to gin>, that by the end of three weeks more than $6000 wele in hand, Philadelphia alone contributing more than $1000. Thus it became posRible for wives and all to depart, with salaries paid for a year and a half in advance! On February 19th, 1812, Judson alld Newrll sailed from Salem, and on the 22d, Hall, Rice, and Nott from Philadelphia. In J nne following war was declared against Great Britain, :md for yean! communication with the East was practically closed.
The in~truction!l drawn up in haste for the guidance of thlse pioneer American missionaries, though, on the whole, surprisingly wise, both in what they contained and in what they omitted, have yd some passages which read strangely in the light of what experience has since taught. Thus they were enjoined to adopt as soon as possible" some plan of polity or social order," a sort of family or communistic arrangement such as Carey had contrived. And, still further, "to lighten expenses, apply yourselves to the most eligible ways and means of support, agreeable to the example of the English missionaries, and even of the apostles." But a few years were sufficient to demomtrate that neither of those ideas could profitably be reduced to practice. In those primeval days, as well as for more than a generation later, the conviction was prevalent that to send women to countries heathen and savage was of more than doubtful propriety ; for not only was thc matter of dElicacy, modesty, and even the greatest danger of gross ill-treatment involved, but, since they could not help, they would provc a serious encumbrance! But, somehow, it has happened that the weaker sex to this day has continued to get itself commissioned of God and of men to proclaim in darkest and vilest lands the Glad Tidings.
Ever since the organization of the Board, the two burning questions had been concerning finances and the location of the missions. During the early conferences of the student originators" sometimes we would cut a path through the moral wilderness of the West to the Pacific and sometimes to South America, the object always being the salvation of the heathen." The London Society suggested the Indian tribes and IIindustan. For long months the committee watched eagerly for the 'rising and moving of the pillar of fire. In 18ll they reported that" scarcely sny portion of the world is more important and inviting than Burmah," and that" Providence points to Canada and the Caghnawaga tribe ;" the latter, since they know of a pious native who longs to carry the Gospel to his people, and is getting an education for the purpose. India was looked upon with favor because of the presence there of the English missionaries, though Burmah seemed to be a more desirable fielil, being outside of the East India Company's domain.
When, in November of 1812, the actual beginning of a mission was heralded by the sailing of the first five men for Asia, this is the language employed: "The magnitude of the event, if estimated by the probable consequences, is such as to form an era in the history of the American churches, though the immeiliate consequences may be such as to dii'appoint" -words profoundly wise and prophetic as well. Up to this point the work had been but that of putting the hand to the plough, and now weTe to follow long and weary years of toilsome seed-sowing and anxious waiting for the harve~t. Jnst ahead were in store struggles again~t ub,tncles numerous, multiform, and well-nigh insuperable. The fir6t message wInch came from the migsionaries was to the ('ffect that they, arridng at Calcutta, . had been ordered to leave the conntry at once; and the next, even more crushing, that two of them had withdrawn from the Board and gone over to the Baptists. As was natural, the surprise and con8ternation which fol- lowed this revolution in sentiment was not unmingled with indignation, though, on the whole, the humiliating set-back was borne with commend- able resignation and forbearance. These words appeared in the next annual report: "The committee has no disposition to impeach the sincerity of these men, but they regret that the subject was not examined before so late a day. Nevertheless, the foundation of God standeth sure. We repose our hopes on this in spite of the instability which we lament to record, bllt against which no human foresight could provide. Let it rouse a holy zeal; and should it be overruled and bring an accession of strength, it will be a joyful event."
In noting the most impressive series of providences which followed, it will be profitablc to transfer ourselves to the foreign field. After a voyage of five months Judson and Newell had arrived at Calcutta June 17th, 1812. At once a command was served npon them to return to America in the ship which brought them, nor would the Caravan be permitted to sail without them. Later it was concluded that they might depart to any region not within thc Company's jurisaiction. Presently information was received which "decisively deterred" them from attempting to enter Burmah; and as no door, either open or likely to open, appeared in that direction, their eyes were turned westward toward Bombay and Africa. On August 4th Newell and his wife took passage for the Isle of France in a vessel which could carry but two, leaving the Judsons to follow as soon as possible. And, behold, only four days later the Harmony arrived, bringing Hall, Nott, and Rice. They too were bidden to be off at the soonest. A passport was therefore procured by the two former from the police, passage was engaged, and their belongings were put on board, when the order came to go to England in the fleet about to sail; but, notwithstanding. they went on board by stealth and made their escape. Judson had already been baptized in Serampore, and Rice had followed him a few weeks later. Meanwhile, the Newells were enduring wave upon wave of trouble and sorrow. For a month they were beaten up and down in the Bay of Bengal. Mrs. Newell being very sick of a fever; and then in distress the ship put in at Coringa and lay for a fortnight. It was November before they reached the Isle of France, and on the last day or that month Mrs. Newell died; and, as the event proved, thus accomplishing far more for the cause for which she exultingly laid down her life than she could have done by the longest term of most devoted service.
After a voyage of eleven weeks, on February 11th, 1813, Hall and Nott landed in Bombay. But knowledge of their movements had preceded them thither, and they were met wit.h a commillid to depart forthwith for England. Appealing to Governor Nepean, fortun~tely a man large-hearted, and thoroughly Christian, he promised to do the best possible for them, and wrote privately to Calcutta in their behalf. 'rhey began at once to study the language. Just now came the news of the war between Great Britain and the United States, and, as was not 8trange, the missionaries became objects of political suspicion. In August they learned that their names were down on a list as passengers in a vessel which was to have sailed at once, but on account of a leak was delayed. In September they asked permi1'sion to depart for Ceylon, where Newell now was; but consent was withheld. A few weeks later, learning that a ship was to start in a few hours for Cochin and go thence to Ceylon, they went on board, leaving Mrs. Nott behind, and a letter for the Governor, explaining why they had left without authority from him. Delayed at Cochin, letters arrived ordering them to be returned to Bombay. On December 22d they must sail for England. As a final effort, a most solemn memorial was addressed to Sir Evan Nepean as a man and a Christian. But preparations were made for departure, goods were packed and labelled, coolies and boats were engaged. As a last step the captain applied for the passage-money at the pay-office, but it was refused; and not long after came a message granting permission to remain in the city. Newell soon joined them, after ten months in Cey- Ion; and at once the foundations began to be laid of the first American foreign mission.
At the annual meeting of the Board, held in Salem, September 20th, 1815, in the sixth annual report, this is the language chosen to set forth most fittingly both the achievements hitherto made and the current situation : "The last two reports had recitations of the pilgrimages and adventures, perils and deliverances, discouragements and consolations of our missionaries in the East, seeking a door of entrance, but obstructed, disappointed, and in continual anxiety and suspense. But thus have been showed the faith and patience, the firmness and prudence, the fortitude and devotedness of the brethren, and proofs, affecting and animating, of the wisdom and goodness, the faithfulness and mercy, the almighty protection and overruling providence of God. This report has less striking narrative and affecting incident, and because they have found an open door and a resting place, though even now they have scarcely commenced their public labors." The glad announcement was also made that, after three years of war, peace had returned.
During all this protracted period of sore trial, so well had the faith and patience of the saints at home endured, that now, a brighter clay having dawned, the way was open for an enlargement of the work. Five men,' who had long been waiting for the opportunity, were now dispatchedsome to Bombay, to re-enforce the mission there, and the others to Ceylon, to break ground for a second station. The year after, various hindrances, which had hitherto prevented, having been removed, a mission was started among the Indians of Northern Georgia. It is in the annual report of 1817 that for the first time ~everal distinct fields could be named. It informs us that $2200 had been sent to Bombay with which to open schools, and that a house of worship was much needed in that city. In Ceylon the Government had granted the use of certain old Roman Catholic churches, with their manses and glebes. Among the Cherokees, Mr. Kingsbury found much encouragement. Also a mission school had been founded at Cornwall, Conn. And this significant item appeared: "The late glorious events at the Society I..lands-particularly at Otaheite and Eimeo-make our hearts burn with desire to witness the same triumphs of the cross at Owyhee and vVoahu [Hawaii and Oahn]. From all accounts this field is white for the harvest."
In 1819 details are given concerning no less than seven missions- Bombay, Ceylon, Palestine, among the Cherokees, the Choctaws, the Indians of Arkansas, and in the Sandwich Islands. "The first only six years ago was struggling for a place and even for existence, the last just ready to embark, and in all extending from east to west more than two thirds around the globe. " In the North Paeific the way had been strangely prepared by the advent into this country of Obookiah, his quasi-adoption by Mills, his conversion and education with other Hawaiian youths at Corn- wall, and their letters sent home telling of the Christian faith; and per- haps even more, by the news carried by sailors that the idols had been cast out in Ot!lheite, as well as by the return of certain Hawaiians after their conversion in the Society Islands. It was a great event in the history of the American Board when, in 1819, Bingham and Thurston and twenty others-by far the largest missionary family that had yet been gathered and sent forth at one time-set sail in the brig Thaddeus, bound for the Antipodes, to tell to the perishing the Gospel story.
Little came directly from the projected mission to Palestine, from whieh so much was fondly anticipated, and about which so much of enthusiasm and fine religious sentiment had gathered; though indirectly and more remotely it led to the opening of the Board's most important work among the Oriental churches in the Turkish Empire. Tl~e Committee wrote: " Western Asia is an interesting region, and has powerful claims upon us. We owe to the Jews a great debt, and they are to obtain mercy. A disposition manifested lately and extensively, and recent successes among them, are indications not to be disregarded. Our minds and hearts have long been drawn toward Palestine in particular, and we determined to send a mission thither as soon as preparations could be made. So Parsons and Fisk were chosen and sent upon an extensive tour among the churches as missionaries to Jerusalem, whereby a wide and lively interest was excited, and a distinguished liberality of contributions was the result." As one says: "The vision arose of a reconquered holy city and an ingathering of the chosen people. They were to go to Zion, view her battlements, and from her towers get views of the land soon to be possessed for the Son 1"
In 1820, after ten years of most careful planning and most arduous toil, this is the summing up of tangible results. The cost in money had reached $200,000. From $1000, the receipts of the first year, the annual gifts rose to $12,266 in 1814 ; fell to $9494 the year after, on account of the war, and then climbed steadily to $37.521 in 1819. At the end of the first decade 110 missionaries in all had been appointed, of whom 62 were men; and of the 88 still in serl'ice or on the way to their fields, 28 were men ordained. Of the entire force 44 were laboring among the Indians, 25 were in the East, 17 in the Sandwich Islands, and 2 in Western Asia. As to fruit-gathering, even yet the report is: ' , We cannot reckon up much of tangible results." The ten years follOWing were devoted almost wholly to the development of fields already occupied rather than to the founding of additional missions.
Thus far we have been dwelling upon the early designs and doings of the American Board and the New England Congregationalists. In fact, for a number of years the bulk, both of money and men, was derived from the children of the Pilgrims. Williams College, Andover Seminary, and Massachusetts General Association were called of Providence to playa most prominent part in arousing and organizing the forces which laid the foundations and began to rear the superstructure of American missions. It was from accident rather than design-was the result of circumstances-that of the first eight commissioners chosen, five were from Massachusetts, and the others were from Connecticut. But no setting forth of the origin and growth of missions in the United States would be at all complete which did not make mention of the hearty sympathy and generous co-operation of various other denominations, and as well of other missionary societies, to which, directly or indirectly, the work of the Board gave rise. We have already seen what liberal contributions were bestowed by the Philadelphia Presbyterians when the first men were sent out in 1812. The same year the General Assembly was invited by the secretary to form a similar society to co-operate with the Board; but that body, in reply, expressed the conviction that foreign missions would be best served by a single organization, and added that their" churches rejoiced in the American Board and would sustain it to the best of their ability." For a generation that pledge was well kept. In order to secure increased 'denominational comprehensiveness, at the second annual meeting an addition of thirteen commissioners was made to the corporation, of whom eight were Presbyterians. In 1832, out of sixty-two corporate members, thirty-one were Presbyterians, twenty-four were Congregationalists, six were Dutch Reformed, and one was Associate Reformed. while the missionaries were chosen in about the same proportion. The German Reformed also assisted with their gifts.
But special mention must be made of a second organized missionary movement, whose beginning constitute" one of the very strangest passages of missionary history, and which came into existence by what seemed to most to be a piece of human frailty.' Out of disappointment and sorrow, out of apparent failure and disaster, came most remarkable success and enlargement to the kingdom. It was evidently the Lord's doing, and even yet is marvellous in our eyes. Of course the reference is to the famous change of opinion with regard to baptism on the part of Judson and Rice, soon after they had reached India. We have seen what impression that revolution iu seutiment made upon the Executive Committee. In their deep perplexity Hall and Nott wrote home as follows: " What the Lord means by thus dividing us in sentiment and separating us from each other we cannot tell. The Lord seoth not as man seeth, and it ill becomes us to be dissatisfied with what He does. We hope and pray that it will not damp the missionary spirit, but that it may burn with a brighter and purer flame. " That hope was well founded, and that prayer was not unheard. The work already begun was not weakened a whit except for a very brief period, while presently an entire denomination was set on fire with zeal for missions, and ever since has felt the tremendous impulse then received. Among the fruits of that earliest" failure" we may reckon the almost unmatched victories of the Gospel among the Karens of Burmah, and in our day among the Telugus of India!
As soon as the decisive step had been taken the two chief actors wrote to the American Baptists of what had come to pass. Carey also wrote, and their letters all reached Boston by the same mail in February of 1813. It will be remembered that Judson, on his departure, had suggested the formation of a ~aptiBt society; but the time was not yet. Now, all unsought, undesired, unlooked for, and of a sudden, they find two missionaries already in the foreign field, joining their fellowship at terrible cost, and fairly thrust upon them for support. Here were straits even greater than those ill which the Board had found itself with five men on its hands, and with a treasury poverty-stricken. Here, too, was a question without a negative. Almost at once a local society was formed, and circulars were soon sent out looking to a gathering to unite the whole denomination. The proposition was made to the Baptist Society in England to receive the two men into its Indian mission, their support being supplied from this side the Atlantic; but Fuller wrote in reply, and how fortunate for the Lord's work in the world: "Late events point to the origin of a distinct Baptist society in America. " "The intelligence spread with electric rapidity, and gave to benevolence and Christian obligation a'depth and fervor never before experienced. One sentiment of deep thanksgiving prevailed. The providence was too plain to be mistaken. The way had been opened, the field had been prepared, and the true-hearted must enter and prosecute that to which they had been summoned." In Maya preliminary convention was held in Philadelphia, attended by twenty-six ministers and seven laymen representing eleven States and the District of Columbia. As yet no meeting had ever been held for any purpose, which stood for all the churches; but now arrangements were made to form the" General Con~ vention of the Baptist Denomination in the United States of America for Foreign Missions." Much fuel was added to the flame when, in September, Rice reached home and began to tell what wonders he had seen and heard. "Here was one who had actually stood among the temples of heathendom and beheld the cruel abominations." His was an imagination most ardent, and his pictures were painted in vivid colors. "He reproduced the rapt predictions of the prophets of the Old and New Testaments and the thrilling exhortations of the apostles concerning the kingdom of heaven, and multitudes hung on his lips and followed his footsteps with an enthusiasm seldom known since "'~hitefield." Nothing could withstand the swelling tide of zeal which now set in. Before it indifference and prejudice-for the time at least-were swept away.
In the mean time, Judson, with no human arm to lean upon, but with unswerving confidence in the protection and guidance of his unseen Master, looked forward only to the accomplishment of the work to which he had been called. Ordered to England, he yet managed, by a remarkable train of circumstances, to escape to a ship bound for the Isle of France; after three months, returned to Madras, was immediately ordered to depart, and, as the only possible resort, took passage in a vessel with Burmah as its destination. So it was that July 14th, 1814, thirteen months after his departure from Salem, with his equally heroic wife, he was landed at Rangoon, in a region to which he had been originally assigned, but into which no door of entrance had been visible while in Calcutta. Here we must leave him upon the threshold of his work, the story all untold of the years of incredible toils, and sufferings, and afflictions next to follow, as well as the distinguished successes which even in his life-time began to appear. His name will ever stand high among the names of Christian heroes.
Space remains only to touch very briefly upon the beginnings of missions in the Methodist Episcopal Church, whieh started only at the close of the period to which this view is limited. Here too is found a peculiar ordering of Providence, which lends to the story an element of romance. As so often happens, it was but a commonplace incident, a mere accident, that started a movement of great importance. At Marietta, 0., a drunken negro, Stewart by name, while on his way to drown himself, was arrested by the voice of a Methodist preacher; was converted by the sermon, and not long after in a vision was called to set forth northward and westward to preach the Gospel to the perishing. Making his journey through the forest, he at length appeared among the Wyandots upon the upper Sandusky River, and immediately began to call those pagans to repentance. A revival ensued, the mission was continued, and later, the facts coming to the knowledge of Nathan Bangs and others in New York, their hearts were stirred, and they proceeded to organize a society which should systematize the work of evangelizing the heathen at home and abroad. For years the entire missionary zeal of this Church was expended upon the Indians; and it was not until 1832 that a venture was made in foreign lands by sending Melville B. Cox to Liheria.
The Prote:;;tant Episcopal Church was the next one to organize. The English Chmch Missionary Society as early as 1817 had urged the founding of a society, and in 1820 the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society was instituted ; but not until ten years later were missionaries sent out; then two
THE MISSIONARY AND THE LARK
were despatched to Greece, and, five years later, the mission to China was opened. By this time almost every denomination in the United States had at least begun to heed the command from Heaven to preach the Gospel to every creature. And finally the supreme test of loyalty to Christ has come to be the question: How abundant in labors, how liberal in giving, how earnest in prayer is an individual, or a body of Christians, for the redemption of the world 1 THE MISSIONARY AND THE LARK.
BY HUGH P. McCORMICK, ZACATECAS, MEXICO.
Through leagues of desert sand, from break of day, A weary traveller pressed his lonely way; And though his heart on mission high was bent, His tardy course betrayed a spirit well-nigh spent.
" What worth my journeying ~ What reeks my haste ~ Why sow my life on such a barren waste V My fainting heart by doubt and dangers torn, As are my limbs by cactus and acacia thorn."
Repining thus, he spoke-when his deep sighs All suddenly were hushed in glad surprise; For, perching lightly on an ancient palm Hard by the way, a field-lark raised its vesper psalm.
As water from the rock to Israel's eyes The pleasing sight and sound bade Hope arise Anew within the falling heart, and woke Afresh Faith's dying flame. Revived again, he spoke- " 0 childhood's mate, by what stern duty pressed Hast left thy native hedge, thy meadow nest, For this unfriendly clime 1 And can5t e'en here Forget thyself a fellow-traveller to cheer V " 0 Singing Angel, sent from God! To me Thou hast performed a holy ministry. Within my heart I'll bear thy sermon song, ~nd learn, like thee, to sing the thorny way along.
" Like thee, sweet bird, a missioner I'll be Of joy to spirits faint. My minstrelsy A lightsome one, that all the desert ways My pilgrim feet may tread b~ redolent of praise.
And will press on, o'er thorns and burning sand, With tuneful heart and lips, and helping hand, Till streaming down upon my paling face Shall fall the light of my eternal resting place."
A DYING TESTIMONY
A DYING TESTIMONY.
[From Graham Wilmot Brooke, of the Sudan Mission, C.M.S., who died at Lokoja, on the Niger, March 5th, 1892, perhaps the noblest young missionary of our time.-A. T. P.] He says, in his last letter: " Three great questions must determine our conception of the conditions amid which we work j and these I state, leaving my narrative of facts to supply the answers in some measnre.
"1. Is it part of God's plan that such mighty manifestations of the Spirit's power among the heathen as are recorded in the Acts of the Apostles should be as mnch a thing of past ages, as those mighty manifestations of animal energy which we wonder at in the gigantic skeletons at the British Museum 1 This position is often maintained.
"2. Is it true, as is often maintained, that ferocious and savage tribes have sunk themselves so low that they are no longer able'all at once to grasp the grand outlines of the plan of salvation 1 "3. Is it truP. that the fearful miseries of Muslim invasion tend, as has been often asserted of late, to bring the few survivors more within reach of the Gospel ~ And here I may point out in passing that while Islam prepares the mind to listen reverently to the idea of resurrection and future judgment-ideas quite novel to the pagan-it none the less trains its vota- ]jes to receive with indignation and derision the doctrine of atonement and of the Divinity of Christ.
" Besides these questions, other matters of scarcely secondary importance are constantly engaging the attention of missionaries-great questions as to the principles whil,h ah.mld determine our selection of methods of work. I will just state these questions, and then, without attempting to dogmatize for other fields or other workers, will mention the views which we hold on each point, and the reasons that have guided us to these decisions.
"1. Should we aim at magnifying or minimizing the benefits of civilization Y We carefully avoid praising civilization or civilized powers to the heathen, and if they themselves are extolling civilization, we tell them that they should not set their affections on ~hings below. We tell them that God has commanded kings not to greatly multIply to themselves sih'er and gold (Deut. 17 : 17), but that holiness is just as much at home in their little villages as in great palaces. Of course I use the word civilization in its strict sense. I do not refer to truthfulness or morality. which are far more likely to be found in the wigwam of the converted American Indian than in the halls of the Palais de Justice at Paris.
"2. Should we direct our effo;trs to the children or the adults ~ We preach to all alike; but in practice we find that the adults give more serious heed to what is preached, and work among them has been more en. couraging.
"3. Should we regard education as a pathway leading to conversion, or as a result to spriug from it V In these lands, everyone, from the Sul- tan in his palace down to the little child that scares the birds from the maize fields, can best be reached by the old apostolic fashion of preaching j and nothing in our experience corresponds to what we hear of India, that educational missions are the only way of reaching certain classes. More- over, we note that about 99.5 per cent of those who have been educated by the Niger Mission in past years have turned out very badly indeed, and the only effect of education has been to greatly increase their power for evil in the country. We, therefore, at Lokoja are endeavoring to reduce the education of the unconverted to the smallest possible limits, as the work of instructing genuine inquirers in the Scriptures seems likely to demand all our strength. . "4. Should we aim at getting influence with the natives as a preliminary to unfolding unwelcome truths to them? or, should we at once declare the whole counsel of God in faith that He will be responsible for our influence V It is our experience in this field that influence which is gained at the price of keeping unpleasant truths in the background is not worth having j for it parts like a rope vf sand the moment a faithful attitude is resumed. On the other hand, we have again and again been amazed at the way in which God has supported a message of uncompromising outspokenness, and has suddenly smitten the hearers with conviction, when, humanly speaking, nothing but curS!1S or violence could have been looked for in reply.
"5. Should we adopt in preaching among the pagans the methods prescribed for the evangelization of Palestine in Matthew 10 : 9-lfi V That we should do so was maintained, as many may recollect, in a very powerful series of papers in the Christian,papers which contained so very much that was true and searching that many of us were almost persuaded to adopt the writer's conclusions. Long and careful examination of the question, however, has convinced us all that taking nothing of the Gentiles is the command for us; and so, although free gifts of food are'heaped upon our delegates in all their journeys, we make a point of paying generously for all we receive, in spite of the people's protestations. A great principle underlies this j for all in these lands, even those who still adhere to paganism, have a g'reat idea of making' Sadaka,' or free-will offerings, to the mallams, as an act of religious merit, and with the great mass of the population a gift to a religious teacher is as much a salve to the conscience as five shillings for a mass is to an Irish Romanist. Those who have worked among Romanists will appreciate my meaning. It is, therefore, of no little importance to refuse such gifts, if we wish our words to strike home with undiminished power of conviction.
" For the last five or six months our work has been rapidly developing, almost, I might say, in geometrical progression, and that ill spite of the steady diminution of our nnmbers, and the fact that no European, except Miss Griffin, has had any prominent share in the mission work. ' The people are yet too many for me to give the Midianites into their hand, lest Israel vaunt themselves against me, saying, Mine own hand hath saved me. ' These words, the subject of one of our Bible-readings in the end cf September, have sounded in my ears ever since. And now this is being still further carried into effect. Mrs. Brooke has been prostrated for nearly a month by a second attack of hmmaturic fever, followed by a very severe ,md obstinate attack of dysentery, so that a prolonged stay at Lokoja would be quite useless. I may mentiou that this same attack of dysentery was gradually getting worse and worse for more than a fortnight, in spite of every remedy and every care, when we called a special meeting for prayer. vVhen the party assembled the attack was at its worst, but from that hour, literally, all dIstressing or alarming symptoms vanished, and recovery has since progressed at a wonderful rate. And thus we know how near God is to us, even in Ollr seeming difficulties and disappointments. At the same time Miss Griffin has been invited to take up work in another part of West Africa, and we all feel she has done right in accepting. Thi~, while it will diminish our numbers, need not, to judge from the past, diminish our work, and it will set me free to go with the various agents over all the gronnd that has been visited.
" The dispensary work has grown greatly, the patients in the last month being as many as in the preceding half year. But the wonderful efficacy of the native medicines, in the hands of the best native physicians, must always prevent the dispensary work from reaching very many of those who can pay for native doctors. Indeed, in proof of the skill of good native physicians, I may say that, though native medicines are very unpalatable, I would just as soon have a first-class country doctor as a European physician to attend me in any i1Iness with the cure of which the natives are familiar, unless, perhaps, the European had five or six years' experience of the country, which is not very common. * Our dispensary work, how- ever, has been chiefly carried on among the Kakandas, that rude and savage t'ribe of fishermcn who live between this and Egga, whose little huts, now that they have fled in large numbers from Nupe oppression, are crowded along the waterside. These are the only people in all this country from whom we have met with insults or threats of violence, and now, since the district-visitors have been going to their huts, they all receive us eagerly, and flock up the hill-side every morning to bring this or that comrade to have some sore, or cough, or swelling seen to, and to listen to whatever they may be taught. Thus to the poor the Gospel is preached.
* While acting for a short time as medical attendant to the local garrison of R.N.C. Constabu- lary (at that time about 300 men), I alway" consulted with the· native physicians, who became very open, and freely explained to me their dmgs and their course of treatment. Many difficult cases I entrusted to them, and whenever they told me with confidence that they had a specific for the dis· ease in qnestion. I observed that they effected cures which any London physician would have envied. The natives, accustomed to their own very powerful drug~, look upon our mild remedies just as most English M. D.'s do on a bottle of homceopathic pillules.
LIVINGSTONE'S ANSWERED PRAYER
., At the church we are holding special Gospel services daily, to urge decision upon the many who arc now thoroughly instructed as to the way of salvation, and we see many signs that our efforts will be blessed of God.
" Thus closes 1891, the results of the work equalling our most sanguine expectations, for the Word of God has been fully preached over an area equal to Hertfordshire, Middle8ex, Kent, Surrey, and Hants. But the means chosen of God have been different to what we had planned. ' The people . . . are too many for me' was written in large characters across t he record of the first half year, and now, 'The people are yet too many' is written across the record of the last half year. The least we can do is to accept God's will, and not be as the horse or mule. He would se('m to wish that we should give up for a little any feverish attempts to reinforce the work with new men, but jllst wait on Him, and see how many He can turn to Christ with those whom we have already got. 'Come and let us go over, . . . it may be that the Lord will work for us, for there is no restraint to the Lord to save by many or by few.'
LIVINGSTONE'S ANSWERED PRAYER.
BY MISS LAURA M. LATIMER, ROCK CREEK, o.
" And it shall come to pass that, before they call, I will answer." -Isaiah 65 : 24.
In the year 1866 Dr. Livingstone was exploring Central Africa, in order to discover the sources of the Nile. Ten men deserted him. They made their way back to Zanzibar, and to excuse their sudden return and to obtain money they circulated the report that Dr. Livingstone was murdered by the natives on the western shore of Lake Nyassa. This was believed by his friends in England. He had ordered five hundred pounds sterling worth of goods to be sent him from Zanzibar. The man to whom they were intrusted stole all these necessary supplies and sold them for ivory and slaves. Dr. Livingstone was pursuing his way on foot through wild, trackless forests, wading knee-deep across deadly bogs and marshes, in damp, poisonous jungles, over famine-stricken plains, through broad districts desolated by war, trying faithfully to accomplish the object of his journey, and in total ignorance of the train of circumstances conspiring against him. In the year 1871 he was nearly to the end of the geographical part of his mission, when Ruddenly his men refused to go one step farther. Bribes, coaxing, nothing availed to change their purpose, and he knew that there' was a plot to kill him if he forced them to go on. When he thought of his children, whom he had not seen for six years, the desire became very intense to finish hiR work. But it was impossible, and heartsore and greatly depressed in spirit!!, he commenced the long, weary tramp back to Ujiji on foot, every step of the way in pain. It seemed so unnecessary to him, this long journey back-five hundred miles under a burning tropical sun. But he comforted himself each day of the toilsome way that there would be letters from his family at Ujiji, news from the dear home-land, and plenty of necessary supplies, comforts, and medicine; and he would find faithful men who would return with him to finish his explorations.
He arrived at Ujiji October 26th, 1871, "almost at death's door," and found that the supplies which he had left there for this hour of need had all been sold; the goods sent to him from Zanzibar were stolen. Not a single letter from his friends had reached there. Sick and without medicine, he seemed forsaken; for he knew of no possible way by which help could come to him. He said that he was like the man in the Gospel who fell among thieves; but in his case he was sure that there was no possibility of a priest, Levite, or Samaritan passing that way. Almost on the verge of despair, and in great destitution, he took up his abode in the poorest habitation in Ujiji. This new trial of his faith was very hard to bear, for the thought of beggary among the Ujijians made him very wretched. It was impossible for any letter to reach his friends while the fierce Mirambo was waging such a deadly war with all the tribes between him and the coast.
In the year 1869 Henry M. Stanley, who was in Spain, received a telegram from James Gordon Bennett, editor of the New York Herald. It read : "Come to Paris on important business. .. He reached there the following night, and in haste made his way to the Grand Hotel and awoke Mr. Bennett from sleep to learn why he was so hastily summoned to Paris. Mr. Bennett said: "Where do you think Livingstone is~" And he added, " I think he is alive and that he can be found, and I am going to send you to find him." Stanley looked at him in surprise and said, " Do you mean me to go to Central Africa~" "Yes," the young editor replied; "I mean that you shall go and find him wherever you may hear that he is; and perhaps," delivering himself thoughtfully and deliberately, " the old man may be in want; take enough with you to help him should he require it. Draw a thousand pounds now, and when you have gone through that draw another thousand, and when that is spent draw another thousand, and when you have finished that draw another thousand, and so on ; but find Livingstone." That night Stanley started for Central Africa. After a perilous journey of nearly two and a half years, he stood upon a rugged height and looked down upon the great Tanganyika. Below him was Ujiji embowered in palms, the waves of the silver waters of the lake rolling at its feet. Those dark, deadly, fever-haunted forests" with their appalling, intense silence, were behind him, and with our flag flying in the breeze, and with the firing of guns and the glad shout of his men, he marched into Ujiji and clasped the hand of the hero of Africa.
The Herald expedition arrived there just sixteen days after Dr. Living-
NEWS FROM THE SOUTH A~'RICAN MISSION FIELD
stone reached there. Mr. Stanley said: "Had I not been delayed at Unyamyembe by the war with Mirambo, I should have gone on to Manyema, and very likely should have lost him j but I was detained by a series of circumstances which chafed and fretted me considerably at the time, only to permit Livingstone to reach Ujiji a few days before 1 appeared. It was as jf we were marching to meet together at an appointed rendezvous, the one from the west, the other from the east."
The expedition had been kept a secret j for the young editor of the Herald was sending thousands of dollars to Africa to help a missionary whom nearly all the world believed was dead and buried years before. Rtanley himself felt that he was pursuing a shadow, and yet he was on the way more than two years before Dr. Livingstone knew that his supplies were stolen j he was pressing on with all possible speed, "lifting up his head and asking the silent plains around, and the still dome of azure upheaving to inJinity above, Where can he be g" and at last reached him, just at the hour of his extreme need.
NEWS FROM THE SOUTH AFRICAN MISSION FIELD.
BY WILLIAM J. NEETHLING.
On Friday, February 26th, the minister of Stellenbosch received the following telegram: "Christening on Sunday, 11 A.M., chief, wife, and thirty-one others j pray for us."
This was from Moc;uli (Pilands Mountains, Rustenburg, Transvaal), where Mr. Beye~, the missionary, is working on behalf of our Dutch Reformed Church in Cape Colony.
This is a great event in the history not only of that station, but also of the Mission Society of our Church, that Linque has at last yielded himself to the Lord and consented to baptism.
He has long been favorable to the mission and built a church, but the attractions of heathendom-polygamy and the like-have hitherto kept him back. Now he is corning out openly for his belief, and we rejoice with the missionary and his lady assistants.
On Sunday 28th we heartily responded to the request. In our young men's meeting and in our large gathering in the Church special prayer was offered for a rich blessing on the ceremony, and for further manifestation of the power of the Holy Ghost in the hearts of the chief and those around him. All throughout the Sabbath our hearts were full of praise and thanks.
Most likely political troubles will arise from the heathen faction to test the Christian endurance of the king and other converts. They will need special grace to remain steadfast.
"If we Christians," wrote a lady from the mission field, " find it so hard to be spiritually minded how much more they who are undeveloped and in such surroundings!"
NEW MISSION IN AFRICA
Let us then ask for the prayers of Christians who love mission work, that the Lord may send His Holy Spirit into their hearts; that they may grow in grace and in favor with God and man, and lead many of the other heathen to the foot of the cross.
Dr. Laws, of the Nyailsa Mission, has been making a tour through some of our towns in the Colony on his way to Scotland from Bandawe on furlough. He has everywhere delivered addresRes, appealing to the young people to go to the mission field, explaining the needs and nature of the work, and telling us "what great things the Lord had done." He has been greatly blessed in this piece of service for the Master. His remarks are specially interesting for their sober, practical sense. His ideal missionary is to be (1) undersixfeet; (2) slim and wiry, not too much" beef;" (3) he must be a good sleeper; (4) must have good digestion; (5) must be of a calm, untroubled temperament, and more requirements of the same sort. All are welcome, however, provided they have the last (6) qualification-consecration. "Is everyone to have the fever~" "Most decidedly. Just make up your mind to that at once. If the malaria seizes upon you at the start-i.e., if the malaria works outward-you are safe; but if you do not get it within a year, the doctor gets anxious; and if not within two years, he knows that there is small hope of your living more than another year or two."
" Are we future missionaries to go to the mission field married @" Dr. Laws: "No, it would be very imprudent." ," What, are we to remain unmarried 1" "No! You must marry. But don't you see that your wife can follow later on 1 You first go, get a year or two's experience, find her a place, build a house, etc., and then by all means get married."
Such were the remarks he offered. It was to us thrilling when he pointed out the crying need and claims of the heathen, and when he mentioned the few devoted workers surrounded by millions of ungratefnl heathen. Mnch has been done, but oh! how much more remains to be done before we can meet our Master !
NEW MISSION IN AFRICA.
On June 5th last year, Rev. Dr. Stewart, of Lovedale, left this country for East Central Africa, at the request of Sir William M'Kinnon, Mr. A. L. Bruce, and others interested in the welfare of Africa, to found a mission to the natives in the Imperial East Africa Company's territory similar to the mission of the Free Church, Lovedale, South Africa. At Mombasa the other' members of the mission joined him, and thence they proceeded inland. Much difficulty was encountered in procuring the two hundred and . fifty porters necessary for the transport of the goods, and also on their in- ~ land march throngh the Taro desert, where for three days they were wlthout water. The original intention was to place the mission at Machakos.
A little more than half way to that place, however, Dr. Stewart was much struck by a site on the banks of the Kibwezi River. There was good water, good timber, good soil, elevation three thousand feet, and the people so friendly as to invite the mission party to remain with them. It was thought advisable to make a temporary camp there, while Dr. Stewart, ac- companied by Mr. Wilson and fifty native men, proceeded to Machakos to compare the two sites. While journeying to Machakos the chiefs and headmen were visited and friendly relations established. The chiefs were invited to send deputations to visit the white men to se" what they were doing, to study their ways, and to return and report to the old men of their villages. The march for two days was up the bed of a river, that being the only road. Although only the beginning of the rainy season, there was a foot or so of water, which, of course, meant considerable discomfort during the march.
The comparison of the two sites was found to be decidedly in favor of the Kibwezi. Although Machakos is cooler, being five thousand feet above sea level, the disadvantages of the want of a plentiful supply of water, want of timber (the nearest being ninety miles off), and the gWlt distance from the coast entailing so much expense in the carrying of goods-all seemed to outweigh the single ad vantage of cooler climate. A further consideration is, Machakos is situated at the extreme inland side of the Wa-Kamba tribe, while the Kibwezi is on the coast side, this being an advantage in the case of any disturbances arising in the country. Dr. Stewart's intention, however, is to work inland, establishing a chain of stations. Machakos would ultimately serve as a sanitorium for all. The site being fixe<1, on the return of Dr. Stewart and Mr. Wilson to the Kibwezi plans were drawn up, and the party at once set to work to layout the station. Two miles of roads and paths have been made round the station. Seven buildings of strong wooden frames, wattle and daub and thatch, are in various stages of completion. These are the church and school combined, dispensary, workshop, store, and three dwelling-houses. English vegetables have been used from the gardens laid out, and six of the small oxen of the country llave been trained to the yoke. This last item may seem of little importance to many, out in reality it means the ultimate freedom of the Va-Kamba women from being the general carriers and burden-bearers of that country. During the months ending December 22d, 1891, the sen'ices of the medical part of the mission, conducted by Dr. Moffat, included the following: Dressings and attendances, 354 j new cases during the four weeks, 99. Sunday services are held in English for the Europeans; in Swahili for the coast men, who went up ail porters, and remained to assist in the laying out of the station. The larger number of these men, however, are Mohammedans. vVa-Kamba services have also been held j but the natives have yet to comprehend the reason why the white man has come to live in their country. Therefore th~ work among them will be very slow.
Industrial training is also being introduced, and will constitute an important educational factor in the mission. Thus far, therefore, the new mission to East Central Africa may be said to be fairly set a·going j and Dr. Stewart looks forward to a great future for it with God's blessing and wise management. A cablegram received on the 22d instant from Dr. Stewart announces his arrival at Mombasa, whence he sails on the 28th instant for this country.
EXTRACTS AND TRANSLATIONS FROM FOREIGN PERIODICALS
EXTRACTS AND TRANSLATIONS FROM FOREIGN PERIODICALS.
BY REV. C. C. STARBUCK, ANDOVER, MAS AFRICA.
-Our French brethren in Basutoland have experienced a hem'y loss in the death of M. Louis Duvoisin, missionary at Berea. '1'he Journal des Missions, speaking of his articles, says: "They enable the readels to ap- preciate all those qualities of style, of penetrating observation, of delicate and sagacious judgmelJt, which distinguished M. Duvoisin, and which stamped him as being, in the true sense of the word, a thinker. But that which these articles do not reveal, and which only his intimate friends and associates have been able to appreciate, are the moral qualities which distin- guished him-that goodness, that sweetness, that charity, that piety which beame! from his countenance, and gave him, above all when he prayed, an expression almost celestial."
-A writer in thc Catholic Review, remarking on the apparent sickliness of the Catholic Church in Southern Europe, is quoted as at-king whether it can be that the instrumentalities of religion have there too much taken the place of that which alone gives them value, namely, the Christian regeneration of the individual. The following remarks of Professor Kruger, in the Journal des jJ/issions, appear to confirm this surmise of the correspondent of the Catholic Review: "The King of Congo is dead. The political journals have said little about it; and more than one reader will perhaps ask who iii this sovereign, mortal like others, but whose death causes so little stir. Dom Pedro V. died February 14th, 1891, in his capital city of Ambassi, better known by its Portuguese name of San Salvador, where he had been reigning since 1859 ; he filled a throne whose occupants once treated as brethren with the powerful Portuguese sovereigns of the sixteenth century. Their court then courted dukes of Sundi, counts of Sonho, marquises of Pango, and of Pemba. Great cathedrals reared their spires toward heaven; processions traversed the capital, upon whose sumptuous sacerdotal ornaments the sun of Africa gleamed resplendent, and above whose ranks floated the standards of white and gold blessed by the Pope. Dom Pedro V. still kept, as an regis, the Standard of the Cross blessed by Innocent VIII. about 1490. This, some crucifixes, some images of saints treated as fetishes, a sonorous and empty title of sovereignty, are all that is left of those Congo missions so much vaunted by the Portuguese Dominican. and the Italian Franciscans of the sixteenth century.
" What a lesson for the missions of the nineteenth or twentieth century! Is it, then, that the monastic orders which preached Christianity in the kingdom of Congo from 1491 until the bishopric of St. Thomas and of Congo was created, in 1533, were wanting in zeal or in sincerity ~ Neither zeal, nor resources, nor successes failed them; their enthusiasm in the sixteenth century is comprehensible, if Christianity consists in ceremonies, if the Church is a passive throng which conforms its movements to a prescribed ritual. That is precisely the germ of death which has killed Congolese Christianity; the outward institution has been accounted more important than the sinners who ought to have been summoned to a personal experience of salvation at the foot of the Cross of Christ; the imposing framework has hidden and smothered the individual; the name has been more than the reality; there were churches, priests, canons, and chapters; there was a fully organized Christian nation-and no Christians. " ARABIA.
-Major-General F. T. Haig, of the British Army, has published an interesting pamphlet entitled" The Evangelization of Arabia." Be remarks that missions in many parts of Arabia, contrary to popular impression, cannot be compared to going forth" as sheep in the midst of wolves," and that, though not destitute of risks, they involve risks far less than those of Paul and his fellows.
-As Islam was born in Arabia, we are apt to imagine that all its people are Moslems. Yet the Bedouins-one third of the Arabs-are for the most part only Mohammedans in name, and many of them hardly even this. They have a strong sense of natural religion, and are wont to pray, " Lord, forgive us in Thy great compassion, and have mercy on our friends that have gone before us," and there they stop. Even of the civic Arabs, those in the East follow all manner of opinions, and are rather hostile than friendly to Islam. In Yemen also, especially near the Britii'h post of Aden, there is considerable opportunity to present the Gospel. The simple, stern, and ferociously Mohammedan Wahabees, in the centre, are, indeed, at present inaccessible. " How such a mi~sion would in time develop it is impossible to foresee; but the Arabs are a noble race, with ~reat capabilities. They once bore the standard of the False Propbet from Persia to the Atlantic, and if fired with a similar enthusiasm for tbe glory of Christ and tbe salvation of men, might yet prove to be a powerful factor in the conversion of the world." There seems little doubt tbat Arabia Felix will soon fall from the hands of the Turks into those of the English.
" The work will be one involving suffering, occasional loss of health, and even risk to life; but it is one which Paul would have chosen and an angel might envy. Can the churches of Christ in Great Britain take it up, or is it of altogether too adventurous a type for our modern Christianity ~ The probability is that the difficulties besetting it are greatly magnified in most minds by ig-norance of the real feelings of tbe Arabs, and tbat those who approach them in a spirit of Christian love and kindness would be met, as the missionaries among the Mohammedan races of Algeria and Morocco have been met, not with fierce hatred and violence, but with a hearty welcome and tbe utmost readiness to listen to the Gospel message. Ve live in a wonderful time; it is the day of the LORD'S power and Abraham's prayer. ' Oh, that Ishmael might live before Thee!' has yet to receive its full answer in the conversion to God of his descendants and of the other long-neglected races of Arabia."
-The Church Missionary Intelligencer, speaking of the infamous practice among the Hindu opponents of the Gospel of fitting the most loathsome words to revival melodies, and singing them about the streets as samples of Christian hymns, remarks: "For, failing to revive enthusiasm for the Hindu deities, has Hinduism thus recourse to the Indian Acheron alone. She cites to her assistance, out of the nethermost depths of unbelief, the free· thinkers, the atheists, and tbe agnostics of otber lands. She honors our own country with large orders for such mischievous wares. For these Hindus everything of the foreigner is hateful save his vices and his infidelity. With such Hinduism scruples not to ally itself in closest amity. Anything which is an enemy of Christ is the friend of Hinduism. One of our missionaries describes to us verv touchingly the effect, fatal and instantaneous, of one of these sulphurous shafts of infidelity. A Hindu actually on his way to baptism had placed in his hand one of these missives of atheism. He paused, he read it, his faith was destroyed j per- manently and completely was his trust in Christ uprooted. 'I would give worlds,' was his bitter lament, ' might I again recover Qgain the faith which I have lost.' We believe it is impossible to duly estimate the deadly influence of the scepticism of .the English materialist. We are con- vinced that the persistent assaults of infidelity represented in the coarse and yulgar secularism of the halls of science, or the refined criticism of popular reviews, is efficacious especially in our Indian dependency. We are even of opinion that many of such articles are penned for a far wider circle than our domestic England. Often their contention seems !lot to move in the same plane with the arguments they assail. VI!e have, we believe, detected also an inaccuracy of uncritical statement. a frequent misrepresentation of the most obvious positions of the faith, which seemed to indicate that the writer held not in his view so much the more immediate environment of his educated fellow-c.ountrymen, as the credulous receptivity of a crude, because ill-informed, Indian clientele. These prophets of sceptir.ism are not without honor, but it is not at the hands of their educated countrymen they receive it." .
– " The wilderness hour of this great Society, her time ~f weakness and peril is past. The time when five men in a room in London looked out on the desolate wilderness of the world and asked, 'What shall we do for the heathen g' the time when the power of a Christian State was arrayed not for, but against missions, and for heathendom j the time when to advocate missions was to incur, as its least punishment, the open con- tempt of the wise and prudent and even the good-all this has passed.
Our Society has won her way to a high and honored place; she stands OIl the pinnacle of the .edifice of Christian effort. Let us beware! The hour of prosperity is the hour of trial. When the seed becomes a great tree the fowls of the air lodge in its branches. Remember the promise is still that.
God will be with us only in our appointed ways. Still, the wider our field the greater our success, the greater need of humility and caution j need, in our missionary churches abroad, of wisdom, and power, and a sound mind in dealing with all the difficult questions that arise in new and growing churches j wisdom in avoiding all offence eave the offence of the cross; faithfulness that never shrinks from truth-strict, rigid faithfulness in dealing with errors of heathendom as such j wisdom and gentleness in dealing with the natural prejudices and infirmities of weaker brethren.
Ever as our churches grow will grow their difficulties from these sources.
False doctrines, heresies, schisms, have yet to be encountered. The strug- gle of the earlier Church is for existence j as it grows its trial is to order its life aright."-ARCHBISHOP ~1:AGEE.
-" Not in creeds, not in formularies, not in traditions, not in Bibles even, hut in the hearts of those who believe the creeds and repeat the formularies and read the Bible does Christ dwell. Remember that if He is present to bless He is present among the golden candlesticks to trim or remove the waning light! Let us not he high-minded, but fear. Let us pray to be delivered from self-glorification or party-spirit; delivered by a love of Christ and of His truth from the sin of tempting the Lord our God by spiritual pride and presumption." -ARCHBISHOP MAGEE.
– " The kingdoms of the world are the objects of the lawful ambition of the Church of Christ. To conqu('r them for her Lord is her aim, and her success in that conquest is her true glory. But it must be for her Lord she conquers them i the cities she wins must be called by His name and not by hers; it is His kingdom, and His alone, she is to establish. That kingdom is the kingdom of the Cross, the Cross of Christ. Not the Cross of JesuR, the great moral teacher, with its lesson of merely sublime self- devotion of man for men; but the Cross of Jesus, the Christ, the Son of God as well as the Son of man, with its revelation of the infinite love of God for man. Not the Cross as some would have it, whereon hung a patient, loving, self-sacrificing man, whose death distresses us by its cruel injustice, and whose life perplexes us by its inconsistencies and its errors; but the Cross on which was offered up the spotless Victim provided from everlasting for the sins of men. "-ARCHBISHOP MAG:(!;E.
– " The new Christianity shall conquer the world for the new Christ, and all men own the Fatherhood of God, and all men feel the brotherhood of man. Yes! All these will I give thee, and the power over them, and the glory of winning them, if-if only thou wilt fall down and worship, only do homage to the father of all falsehood by yielding the supremacy of truth j only acknowledge that yours is not the true faith, but one of many, all partly true j only bow yourselves to me as you enter those temples where men sacrifice to me, and these shall vanish away, and in their place shall rise a great world pantheon, where your Christ shall still have high place, but others take their place beside Him; only be disloyal to God and God's ttuth, and you shall have the world now !"-ARCHBISHopMAGEE.
-" Be ours the glory of the warfare beneath the Cross. Let His be the glory of the final victory j but never let us be tempted to win the very smallest portion of our Lord's inheritance by compact or compromise with him who has usurped it. No truce in our warfare j no armed neutrality j no alliance, but war, steru, uncompromising, open war, for the truth, for all the truth of God against all the lies of the enemy j and, most of all, against that greatest of all fabehoods, which proclaims his lie to be greater than God's truth, which bids us do homage to the false in order to advance the true. "-ARCHBISHOP MAGEE.
-The Ohronicle for June mentions the Decennial Report of the London Missionary Society, which, however, does not accompany it. It remarks: " Among the many striking facts may be noted: the openings in China for a great extension of country work j that in India whole villages have gone back to heathenism' because, having waited long for teachers, no teachers were forthcoming;' the work of the Native Missionary Society in the Imerina Province of Madagascar, which has raised more than £3000 during the past ten years, and sent out twenty-three agents j the baptism of our first convert in Central Africa at the close of the decade j while the New Guinea decade ends with the arrival of the Rev. W. G. Lawes in England with the manuscript of the New Testament in the most widely used language along the southeastern coast of New Guinea."
-The Missionary Herald of the English Baptists for October, 1891, says: "There can be no perennial freshness in a superficial acquaintance with the Gospel, and if the churches fail to apprehend the end or purpose of the Gospel, then they lose at once its unfading charm. If the truths of Christianity are regarded simply as valuable treasures that are to be kept locked up in a sacred ark, and carefully guarded from all robbers, then we· may expect them to become mouldy and rusty j but if they are regarded as Heaven's coins for circulation throughout the world, or as weapons that have to be used in the conflict against sin and error, then they will always retain their brightness." AFRICA.
-The Free Church of Scotland, in its last report, says: "Almost year by year the Committee has rejoiced to be able, in the good providence of God, to form new and practical relations of co-operation with other churches and societies, as in the case of the Moravians and Berlin Lutherans above recorded. Such relations now exist with the following: With the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland in Nyassaland, and to some extent in Kafraria and Bombay; with the Established Church of Scotland in British Central Africa, and-as proposed-in Calcutta; with the Ohurch Missionary Society and the Wesleyan Missionary Society in Madrns; with the Irish Presbyterian Church through the ·Wilson College, Bombay; with the Canadian and Australasian Presbyterian churches in the New Hebrides; with the Dutch Reformed Ohurch of South Africa in Nyassaland; with the London Missionary Society, South Africa, and now with the Moravian and Berlin Lutheran societies. Such co-operation of the different regiments of the Lord's army extends His conquests in a way which amalgamation even if it were possible, would arrest or weaken."
-PerilYdical.Accounts for June (Moravian) has an appeal from Rev. A. G. Hettasch, pastor of Genadendal (Gracevale), in ~outh Africa, which is interesting. He says: "What a church for Genadendal, the mothercongregation of the mission in Africa! I fear the police at home would never allow a thousand people to assemble within those walls, only kept from falling in by solid beams inside and large buttresses without. Yet it is not to be wondered at that this church presents such a miserable appearance, for it is the very first place of Protestant worship ever built for the children of Africa, and is nearly one hundred years old. It is a structure fnll of days and full of honors, but the tooth of time has long been knawing at it, and the process of destruction is far advanced. Genadendal must have a new church."
– " The Incarnation, involving the crucifixion and the present work of the Holy Spirit, is the abhorrence of Islam. Islam seems to make much of the will of God, and does of an external will of God. But its thought is of submission to the will of God, and not of suffusion with the will of God" (" Shall Islam Rule Africa g" by Rev. Lemuel C. Barnes, in Regions Beyond). This is a singularly thoroughgoing article. So also: " In general the fruits correspond to the roots. The result of Islam is stagnation; the result of faith is progression. Islam causes atrophy; faith causes development. There is one refrain on the lips of Muslims always: , There is no God but God, and Mohammed is the apostle of God.' Their thought is of the arbitrary, fixed, mechanical; three characteristic words of Curistianity are • Faith,' 'Ohrist,' 'Life.' They speak of that which is dynqmic /"
-Mr. Barnes remarks that Islam and Rationalism resemble each other in disliklllg the Cross. This reminds us of Mr. Wilfrid Blunt's remark that Islam, strictly speaking, is a rationalistic creed.
-M. George Liengme has been sent out to Delagoa Bay, Southeast Africa, as missionary physician by the Free Church Mission of French Switzerland. He has been also ordained as a minister in the Oratory at Geneva.
~M. Grandjean, of the same mission, writes: "As our mission extends toward the north, that of the Americans of Inhambane will advance to meet it; with them we are always able to extend ourselves, and labor hand in hand."
-M. Junod, of the same mission, remarks: "I am so delighted wheu our blacks preserve their individuality and originality. There is not yet apparent in these converts that varnish of imitation wherewith so many Negro Christians love to decorate themselves, and which in reality disfigures them."
– " A cardinal of the Roman Church sends out soldiers as champions of missions, and hallows their swords, as if Christ had never said: • All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.' These soldiers fail, sword in hand, and are then glorified as martyrs! What a cry would go through the world if any such anti-Christian thing was done among Protestant-above all, among English missionaries! But in Roman Catholic missions everything seems to be allowed, and everything to be extolled_"- Allgemeine If:fissions- Zeitschrift.
-It does seem to be a little late to return to the Crusades. Cardinal Lavigerie, in his speeches addressed to these military monks, blends Christ and France, Gcspel and sword in such an indistinguishable amalgam that it is hard to say what we are to make out of it, except that it is something with which a Protestant Christian of Teutonic race can have nothing to do, and with which we are sure that Protestant Christians of Latin race will have nothing to do. The latter, if they fight for France, will hardly do it under the banner of Rome. Fortunately, they have no temptation, being held altogether unworthy. Cardinal Lavigerie is a man of eminent qualities, but assuredly evangelical simplicity of aim is not one of them, nor even personal simplicity of character.
-The French brethren of Basutoland (Lessuto) have ordained their first native pastor, Carlisle Motobang.
-One of the most self-denying missions in the world is the French Zambesi Mission. After months and years of discouragement, the tide appeared to turn; the brethren were permitted to baptize their first convert; the king, Lewanlka, began to observe the Lord's day, to 0ppoile himself to intemperance, to cruel punishments inflicted on the pretence of sorcery. and to plundering forays against neighboring tribes; hi!! young son, Litia, showed very distinct evidences of a Christian mind, and the schools and the Sunday services began to be more largely attended. But" the clouds have returned after the rain." Malicious whispers have once more gained the ear of the king, while loss after loss has reduced the missionaries, whose comforts at the best have been very scanty, to a peculiar depth of privation. M. Coillard regrets to have had to write the saddest of all his letters home. "But the old soldier of Christ would not know how to linger long over a mood of discouragement. He adds: 'But be of good courage, the bark will not capsize.' "
MISCELLANEOUS.
-The Ceylon Friend (quoted in the India Watchman) says: " We must tell the home churches the whole truth, our failures as well as our successes. There is, of course, a great rage at home for pathetic incidents and striking facts, and they have their use; but when they are so placed before our people as to lead them to suppose that they furnish a correct index of the general character of our work they do incalculable harm; they arouse a momentary enthusiasm, but also hopes which are certain to be disappointed. Our people will never understand our work, appreciate our difficulties, or gain that kind of faith which IS necessary to success unless we place before them the whole truth."
-" According to the papal Osservatore Romano there still live among the mountains of the island of Sardinia descendants of those 80,000 Jews whom the Emperor Vespaslan exiled thither after the destruction of Jerusalem." -Jewish Intelligence.
-The Ohinese Recorder, referring to the abuse lavished by the Lepel Griffins and their confederates on the opponents of the opium trade, quietly remarks; "It would seem rather late in the day to ignore the fact that the conscience of a nation can be aroused, and that there is such a thing as moral stamina among a people." But what can those that have no conscience of their own know about other people's consciences ~ . -Bishop French, of Lahore, who threw up his bishopric that he might preach the Gospel to the Mohammedans, and who died of a sunstroke at Muscat, has been not unaptly likened to Raymond Lull, that illustrious missionary of the middle ages among the Moslems, and like him in fact, though not in form, he died a martyr. His brother, a clergyman, writes of him: "His whole time, from morning to night, was spent in preaching in the open air with varied success. . .. His intervals of time were spent in prayer and meditation, and a translation into Arabic of St. Hilary on the Trinity. His diary reads like an apostolic missive. I never knew a man so humble, so self-sacrificing, so perfectly heroic for his Divine Lord. He was a thorough Oriental scholar-Hebrew, Sanscrit, Arabic, Persian, Hindustani, Hindi, Tamil, etc." Such men keep up the succession of saintly witnesses in the wilderness until the time has come to bring Ishmael in.
THE LEVANT.
-The Broossa Orphanage in Asia Minor, at the foot of Mount Olympus -not, indeed, the one venerated of old as the seat of the gods, but the most eminent of its four or five namesakes-being an institution entirely dependent on individual contributions, is deservedly commended to Christian benevolence. Contributions will be gratefully received and acknowledged by Mr. M. Baghdasarian, 303 West Twenty-first Street, New York City. This institution has the warm commendation of Dr. Cyrus Hamlin and of the Prudential Committee of the American Board. Bishop Whipple, quoted in the Spirit oj Missions, says that a new Armenian version of the Bible is now in preparation by a commission consisting cf an Armenia!] priest, a Roman Catholic priest, and a Protestant.
-Secretary Wright, of the Bible Society, at the anniversary of the London Missionary Society said that he felt that the tremendous wealth of influence and power in woman's work had hitherto been neglected. "In Damascus we men preach to the cheerless east wind of the Oriental Bazaars. A woman will go with her smile, and this smile will be answered by a smile. We dare not smile. She goes with this access to all these little springs of love and influence down among the people, into the homes, into the seed place, where the good seed can be sown in the hearts of the women."
INTERNATIONAL DEPARTMENT
n.-INTERNATIONAL DEPARTMENT.
EDITED AND CONDUCTED BY REV. J. T. GRACEY, D.D.
The Parliament of Religions at the excellent chief of the Liberal Arts De- World's Fair, partment, informs us that the space as· signed to, his division is more than BY BEV. JOHN HENRY BARROWS, D.D., PAS· double that provided at Paris, and more than ten times what was furnished at TOR OF THE FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, the Centennial. But to indicate the in. tellectual and spiritual sources of civ- CHICAGO, ILL., AND CHAIRMAN OF THE ilization, the World's Congress Auxiliary has been organized by the Exposition GENERAL COlllJl'IITTEE ON RELIGIOUS CON· authorities. The congresses provided for will cover the chief departments of GRESSES. knowledge, and will extend through the whole half year during whioh this During the next eighteen months World's University will continue. Hunnearlyall roads will lead toward the Co. dreds of busy men and women are daily lumbian Exposition. The latest WorId's planning for these conventious, corre- Fair will be the largest, the costliest, sponding with more than twenty thouthe most comprehensive. The English sand of the leaders of thought in all commissioners who carefully studied the lands. Religion, the supreme concern situation expressed the conviction that and glory of man, has been excluded, the coming Exposition will far surpass in as an element of discord, from all pre. extent, and eclipse in splendor, even vious world's fairs. In the coming Ex_ the Paris achievement of 1889. At the position, however, it will have a most Exposition Headquarters it is computed conspicuous place, not only in the mao that, by the Directory and th" Commis. terial exhibit, in the Liberal Arts Build. sion, by our National Government, the ing at the very heart of the Exposition, different States and the more than fifty but also in a series of congresses exnations who are to participate in the tending from August 25th through Sep- World's Fair, there will be expended, tember 29th, to be held mainly in the in the preparation and conduct of this great halls of the 'new Art Building procolossal undertaking, a sum not far vided by the Directory. President C. C. short of $40,000,000. The Director- Bonney, of the World's Congress Aux- General is confident that thirty millions iliary, believes that these religious' asof admission tickets to the magnificent semblies will overshadow all the other display will be sold. The vast interest oonventions. They have been assigned aroused in America and in other lands quadruple the number of days given to will increase as the months go by. The any other of the congresses. The meet- Rev. E. S. Williams, one of the special ings of the great churches will occupy a Commissioners of the Treasury Depart- week ; the mission oongresses, covering ment in promoting the World's Fair the whole field of oity, domestic, and abroad, wrote recently: "In Japan I foreign missions, will occupy seven or met almost unceasing ovations. No eight days; a week has been assigned halls would hold the mercurial and en- to the Evangelical Alliance, and three thusiastic people, glad to hear and proud days to the Sunday Rest congresses. that their government was preparing to The Parliament of Religions, to which vote a generous appropriation for the representatives of all the great historic Jubilee of Peace." faiths have been invited, will open the series, and one chief division of this But is the Columbian Exposition to Oongress will be the l'arliameo.t of be chiefly a brilliant illustration of material achievement and mechanical prog. ress? Far from it. No other World's Fair ever provided so amply for educa. tion, music, oharities, religion, and the liberal artl!. Dr. S, H. feabody, tho Christendom, for which invitations are of idols and objects used in ceremonial given to those who accept the moral worship would attract beyond any and spiritual leadership of Jesus. Ac- other. Models and illustrations of the cordingly, one who is able to attend great temples of the world and of the this whole series of meetings, or to read world's history would be in a high dethe full official accounts of them, will gree instructive. Add to these things confront the leaders of the religious the living word of living teachers, and world, will know what is Nported by the whole world may well pause to all its grand divisions, will gain a vision listen." Some years ago President of the supreme importance of religion Warren described an imaginary congress in human development, and will be es- of this sort, locating it in Japan, and pecially impressed with the proofs of giving it as its subject for discussion, the supremacy and the triumphs of an "The Perfect Religion." This interaggressive, world-embracing, evangeli- esting address has been translated into cal Christianity. The venerable Bishop several languages, and presents valuable Weaver, of the United Brethren Church, suggestions to those having the parliawrites: ,. Paul went to Rome, not to ment in immediate charge. Dr. Strong, preach, but to obtain simple justice. Secretary of the Evangelical Alliance, God overruled it so that the greatest writes : .' It is in the interest of the possible good came out of it. A word final triumph of truth and of the brothspoken in Rome was like a sound nt- erhood of man that representatives of tered in a whispering-gallery-it could all faiths meet on a friendly platform. be heard throughout the whole civilized Such a gathering will be one of the world. It appears that Chicago is to be most significant as well as uniqne ex made a whispering-gallery, from which hibitions of modern and, I may add, of all nations may hear and know more Christian civilization." Rev. George concerning the kingdom of our Lord_ " Dana Boardman, D.D., of the First Bap- tist Church in Philadelphia, writes: "I Urged to provide plans for religious do not believe that a better tribute can meetings in connection with the WorId's be paid to Christianity than to put it in Fair, the Committee at once perceived fair comparison with other religions." that the religious world in its great his- Dr. Storrs, President of the American torio developments, and not anyone Board, has expressed his admiration of section of that world, should be invited the plan as " certain, if wisely carried to make some representation. Undoubt- out, to attract wide attention, to make edly the Committee believed that the happy and strong impression on a mulbest representation possible by the titude of minds, and to leave behind it ethnic religions would tend to the ex- permanent good effects." The Comaltation of Christianity. But the spirit mittee have been particularly pleased of the most generous human brother- with the responses from Christian mishood a~tuated them in sending out their sionaries and teachers in other lands, invitations and in making their ar- like President Washburn, of Robert rangements for the Parliament of Re- College; President Tison, of the Imligions. They have been delighted with perial Law School of Tokyo; Dr. Miller, the vagt favorable response which so of the Christian College at Madras; and many eminent men of many nations Dr. Henry H. Jessup, of Beirut, who is have given to their Preliminary Address one of the Advisory Council, and who and to their First Report. President has called attention to some intelligent W. F. Warren, of the Boston Univer- and English_speaking Mohammedans of sity, writes: "I am glad to know that Syria, who should be invited to the Parthe world's religions are to be repre- liament. It is well known that the sented at the World's Fair. Were they plans of the Committee have been apto be omitted, the sense of incomplete- proved by statesmen like Mr. Gladstone, ness would be painful.. Even a museum Count d'Alviella, and Professor James portant peculiarities distinguishing the Bryce; by the poets Whittier, Tenny- religions of the wol'ld is not to be cher- son, Holmes, Arnold, and Stedman; 'by ished. Logically following the presenta- Cardinal Gibbons, Archbishop Ireland, tion of common truths will be the and other leaders of the Catholic presentation of distinctive truths, and Church; by prominent divines of Great no discussion of differences is largely Britain and the Continent; by many useful till men discover what they be- bishops of the Protestant Episcopal lieve in common. It is a matter for Church and of the Methodist Episcopal thanksgiving that a notable gatllel'ing is Church; by leading college presidents to be held wherein men far-sundered of America, leading religious editors, in their inherited and acquired faiths and a score of the best.known teachers are yet to confer in the most catholic in our theological seminaries; by a host and irenic spirit. What a contrast it pre- of stalwart evangelical Christians like sents to those frequent pages of relig- Joseph Cook, Dr. T. W. Chambers and ious history which have been marked Professor Edwards A. Park, and by a by disastrous animosities!
large number of those who have the Since the. General Committee, with conduct of our missionary societies. one exception, are Christians, and since Assisting the General Committee of Six- the summons is sent forth from a Chris- teen is an Advisory Council of nearly tian land, the Parliament may be right- two hundred of the world's religious ly conceived as, in a large and general leaders, who approve the general plan, sense, the invitation of Christianity, ad.
and are furnishing timely and valuable dressed to all the great historic faiths, to suggestions. come and give an account of themselves.
A book has recently been published, The faiths that have been invited, " The Religious Systems of the World," through personal letters, are the Brah- a series of papers and addresses deliv- man, Buddhist, Confucian, Mohamme- ered on successive Sunday afternoons dan, Parsee, Jewish, snd Christian.
in London by expert representatives of Others may be included. The Japanese each. It is something like this school scholar, Morihiro Ichihara, of the Yale for the study of comparative theology, Divinity School, writes: "I dOUbt which the Committee desire to bring whether you can get any English.speak- about, accompanied, however, by sur- ing Shintoists who can competently roundings which will lead men of differ- represent that religious body. Still it ent faiths to a better understanding, seems to me that they should be repre- and to be followed by a Parliament of sented in a meeting like the one you are Christendom, in which the apologetic planning for, and I shall suggest the of Christianity will be set forth by the names of Baron Senge and Mr. Mato- ablest Christian scholars, and in which ori,as the two most prominent Shintoists not only practical problems of ethical at present."
interest, but also the great question of What kind of men are we inviting to the reunion of Christendom, will be speak in the Parliament of Religions?
amply discuesed. One of the many im- Let President Washburn, of Constanti- portant objects aimed at is the brother- nople, answer: ,. You must have able ly conference of religious men, a relig- men, pious men, who have full faith in ious fraternity involving no surrender their own religion and are yet broad of personal conviction and no abate· enough to conier with infidels." We ment of devout faith on the part of have invited such men as Justice Ameer those who recognize that Christianity is Ali, of Calcutta, to represent Moham- widely differentiated from other systems medanism ; Mr. Bunyin Nanjio, a Bud.
by an authoritative and miraculously dhist priest of Tokyo, and former lec- accredited revelation. The temper of turer in Oxford University, to represent indilferentism with regard to tllQ un· Bujdhism; Babu Mozumdar to reprosent th!' Brahmo Somaj of India. Many hear 1" Of course it will only be just names ha ve been suggested to speak for that the Christian faith, which is held these faiths and other3, and the Com- by nearly all the ruling nations of man- mittee will extend invitations after care- kind, should be presented in its argu- ful conference with experts. As the ment and in its historic results by those work adl'ances we are more and more who will speak with the greatest fair- hopeful of securing a good representa- ness, the widest learning, and the most tion from most of the historic faiths. conspicuous ability. Ifit be asked, " In What will the men of other religions be what spirit sheuld the representatives likely to SllY? It is hoped and expected of the great historic faiths be met?" the that they will make the best representa- reply is, " In the spirit of the most cor- tion of their own systems which can be dial brotherhood, attentive kindness, rightly offered. While it is probable and Christian love." It is in our that they will call our attention to the thought to have social conferences, for noblest teachings of their sacred books, example, of the representatives of the and disown the popular and widespread faiths of India. The Rev. Dr. Wherry, perversions of their scriptures, it is also of Chicago, for twenty years a mission- in the scope of our plan to discover what liry in Madura, believes that such social spiritual and other effects their religions conferences will be promotive of per- have produced upon the peoples among manent good, and that the J;epresenta- whom these faiths have prevailed. Chris- tives of the non·Christian religionB tianity has never rejected the biblical should be made practically familiar, by declarations that" in every nation he observation, with the work of the that feareth God and worketh righteous- American churches, charities, Sundayness is accepted of Him," and that schools, endeavor societies, and Young Christ" is the true Light, even the Light Men's lind Young Women's Christian which lighteth every man coming into Associations. the world." It believes that the relig- It is certainly a subject of congratuious nature itself and all its heavenward lation that the time draws near when yearnings are of Christly origin, and representatives of widely different faiths that whatever of truth and goodness will be able to meet in friendly confermay be discovered in the twilight of ence without compromising any per- Asia is a reflection of that original Light sonal conviction. While the Parliament which, in the fulness of time shone of Religions, like the Parliament of amid the hamlets of Galilee and in the Great Britain, is not an assembly whose streets of Jerusalem. The peoples who object is worship, the Committee are have received the ampler Divine radi- planning for the singing of devout ance should disclose the gentlest and hymns of thankful praise; and they most generous spirit to those who have may decide that, as at the Religious groped in a dimmer illumination. Chris- Convention which PreRident Warren tianity will doubtless be forced to face imagined, there shall be moments of thos~ mighty obstacles to misRionary silent prayer. But immediately precedprogress, the monstrous sins of Chris- ing the meetings of the Parliament will tendom ; and it will also be bidden and be daily morning conferences, under a encouraged to tell not only through great variety of suitable leaders, which American and European, but also will enable those naturally affiliated to through ,Japanese, Hindu, Chinese, worship together and to come into a Arab, and African Christians what the more perfect acquaintance. And who Gospel of Christ has wrought for their can doubt that not only will thousands races and nations. Quite as important of earnest hearts be praying to God in as the question, .. Wh!l.twill the Moham- the stillness of spiritual communion medan and the Bul1ilhist have to say," during the sessions of the Parliament, will be the question, " What are they to but also that millions of those who have learned the way of salvation through our own religion, serves only to make us Jesus Christ will, in many lands, offer see more clearly what is the distinctive up daily petitions that this phenomenal and essential character of Christ·s assembly of God's children may be teaching, and helps us to discover the blessed to the furtherance of that king- strong rock on which the Christian, as dom which they believe is yet to cover well as every other religion, must be the earth. The speakers who have been founded." The science of comparative suggested for the opening session of the religions, according to Preaident Fair- Parliament will represent twelve hUll- bairn, has shown the necessity of redred millions out of the fourteen hun- lifjlions to man, and the supreme neces- dred millions of the human race. Sure· sity of the highest of them all. Profes- 1y that will be a great moment in his- sor Legge, of Oxford, speaks for the tory, as Dr. W. H. Withrow, of Canada, Christian scholarship of to-day when he has suggested, " when men who profess says: ., The more a man possesses the the differing religions of the world stand Christian spirit and is governed by side by Ride." The Committee having .Christian principle, the more anxious this enormous undertaking in their he will be to do justice to every system charge fully appreciate the task com- of religion and to hold his own without mitted to them. They are pioneers en- taint or fetter of bigotry." The study tering a new country; they seek light of comparative religion has tended to and wisdom from Ilvery source. They strengthen Christian missionary enthu. desire to accomplish the greatest possi. siasm. Those disciples of Christ who ble good and to unite all tho~e who be· know most intimately the other faiths, lieve that such a congress as has been and appreciate most fully the truths outlined will promote the best interests which they may contain, are augmentof mankind. They desire (to q note ing their unselfish efforts to give to all from the objects of the proposed Par- the world the supreme blessings of the liament, as stated in the forthcoming Christian Gospel. In Christian lands revised edition of the First Report) one chief hindranee to the foreign mis- "to deepen the spirit of human broth· sionary cause is a deep ignorance conerhood among religious men of diverse cerning the non-Christian nations, and faiths ;" to set forth what are deemed a stolid indifference toward those remote the important distinctive truths taught and unevangelized myriads for whom by each religioll; to indicate the im- Christ died. Whatever can be done to pregnable foundatiolls of theism and make the non-Christian peoples le",s unthe reasons for man's faith in immortal- real to the Church generally will be an ity ; to strengthen the forces adverse to enormous gain to Christian evangelism. materialism; to inquire what light each Dr. Ellinwood, of the Presbyterian religion may afford to the others; to Board of Missions, who has widely and furnish an accurate account of the pres- carefully studied the Oriental faiths, ent outlook of religion; to throw all believes that in proportion to the intelpossible light on the solemn problems ligent discrimination which shall be of the present age, and to bring the na- exercised in judging of the non· Christions of the earth into more friendly tian religions, and the skill which shall fellowship. They invite the co-opera- be shown in presenting the immensely tion of all who are favorable to their superior truths of the Christian faith, plan in its grand outlines, and the sug- will the success of the great work of geGtions of all who believe that it may missions be increased; and he thinks be improved in its minor details. Max that a timid attitude "amounts to a Milller has written: "I have never dis. half surrender, and is wholly out of guised my conviction that a compara- place in this age of fearless and aggrestive study of the religions of the worli!, sive discussion. Evidently the one so far from undermining our faith in thing needed to disenchant the false systerns of our time is a clear and accurate the Creator." "That the Influence of knowledge of their merits and demerits, Religion on the Family of Life is to and of their true relations to Christian- make it Virtuous and Pure." "That ity." the Influence of Religion on the Com- I express a deep personal conviction munity is to Establish Justice, Pro- in saying that I believe that the Parlia- mote Harmony and Increase the Gen.
ment of Religions, in connection with eral Welfare." ,. That the Influence of the whole series of religious congresses, Religion on the State is to Repress will bring into glorions conspicuity the Evil, Vice and Disorder in all their supreme power and attractiveness of the Forms, and to Promote the Safety and cross of Christ. While we earnestly Happiness of the People." •• That Con- seek from our brothers beyond the sea science is not a Safe Guide, unless En- a frank and full presentation of their lightened by Religion and Guided by sincere beliefs, which is only possible Sound Reason." "That of a Truth in an atmosphere of confidence, mutual God is no Respecter of Persons, but in respect and affection, we shall speak every Nation he that Feareth Him, and from our hearts those truths which have Worketh Righteousness, is Accepted of come to us from the 'words and the life Him." "That throughout the World of the Son of God. Believing that the Substantial Fruits of Sincere Re- Christianity is not only the complement ligion include the following:. Improved of all other religions, filling out what is Personal Character; Better Citizen- imperfect in them, and correcting what ship; BeUer Business Methods; Nearly is erroneous, but is also a direct, mirac- all the Works of Charity;' Improved ulous revelation centring in a Divine Domestic Order; Greater Public Peace, Redeemer, they who hold this faith will etc." ,. That the Weekly Rest Day is have the opportunity to proclaim it as Indispensable to Religious Liberty, and never before. The religion whose dis- to the General Welfare of the People."
tinctive features are incarnation, regen- "The Triumphs of Religion in all eration, and atonement flings its loving Ages." "The Present State of Re.
challenge to all the world, and has no ligion throughout the World, including fears ! its Marvellous Advances during the Pres.
CHICAGO, April 9, 1892. ent Century." .. The Statistics of Churches as an Answer to the Alleged Prevalence of Infidelity." "The Domi.
nance of Religion in the Higher Institu- Seed Thoue:hts of the World's Congress tions of Learning." "'l'he Actual Hal'. Auxiliary. mony of Science and Religion; and the Origin and Nature of the Alleged Con- The scope of the World's Congress flict between them." .. The Influence Auxiliary is suggestively set forth in of Religious Missions on the Commerce the Committee's report, as intended to of the World," "The Influence of Re· reach a class of information and discus- ligion on Literature and Art." sion indicated by such themes as the following: Some of these topics naturally fall to the Parliament of Religions, of which " The Idea of God, its Influence and the Chairman of the Department writes Consolations." "The Evidences of the in a preceding article. Other portions Existence of God, especially those which will fall to the several Church denomi- are calculated to meet the agnosticism national conventions, and others to the of the present time." "That Evils of Congress of Missions, of which the Life should be shunned as Sins against Chairman of the Committe9 having it God." "That the Moral Law should in charge, the Rev. Walter Manning be obeyed liS necessary to Human Hap. Barrows, D,D" has promised to write piness, anl because such is the Will of in our pages at an early date. [J. T. G,] The OOIDnal'ative Study of Religions. knowledge. Just because the facilities [J. T. G.] for communication with all parts of the world are so exceptionally great, and be- There is in our day a search into the cause there is, as a consequence, a re- religious beliefs of all men, which is markable interchange of thought with popularly spoken of as comparative all quarters of the globe, the spirit of in.
theology, or the science of religion, vestigation becomes unusually active though there is as yet no such thing, and comparisons are instituted in all nor even a tolerable approach to any directions.
such thing as a science of religion or a Persons holding, as do Christians, science of comparative theology. All Jews, and Moslems, that their religious that has thus far been done is to insti. beliefs are the only original, uncorrupt.
tute a speculative and tentative inquiry, ed, and inspired religion, are supposed and an initial experiment as to whether to find it difficult to put themselves in the subject of religion is susceptible of mood for scientific examination thereof.
being in,estigated in the same manner Hypothetically this is to acknowledge as that which has been pursued in the that their religion is one of many, which study of the crusts of earth, by which is contrary to the permanent hypothesis we have the lair beginning of a science of the religion from which they derive of geology; or similar to that pmsued all their spiritual comfort; and most in the case of human speech, by which Christians SpUl'll the perilous principle it may be fairly claimed that we have of Descartes, that in order to be a phi.
laid a foundation of a science of lan- losopher a man must" once in his life guage or of comparative philology. Max doubt everything." Christians of the Miiller doubts whether the" time has most advanced spirituality and of the yct come for attempting to trace, after most profound faith in their religion as the model of the science of language, the one true revelation have, however, the definite outlines of the science of been among the foremost to welcome religion." Yet considerable progress searching analyses of all religions, and has been made in the collection and ar· to place Christianity not so much in rangement of the material of religion comparison as in contrast with all com· after the model alluded to, and there petitors.
are those who hold that" the logic of In a large sense it is incumbent on science is a universal logic applicable to the followers of any religion which lays all subjects of human inquiry." claim to universal acceptance to show " The advance of prehistoric study," that it is universally applicable. But says the author of ., The Dawn of His· this is, in fact, to make a beginning of tory," "has been, during the past few the comparative study of religion. Dr.
years, exceptionally rapid, and consider. Moffat, of Pfinceton College, well said: ing upon how many subsidiary interests "Were there no common principles it touches-questions of politics, of so· pervading all religions, or were all men ciallife, of religion almost-the science as religious beings severally so different of prehistoric archreology might claim from one another that knowledge of one to stand in rivalry with geology, as the man's religious nature could be no guide favorite child of the centmy." to that of other men, a scientific treat- Within thc historic period as well, we ment of religion would be impossible,"
may fairly be said to be in pORsession and we may add that the Christian of information from all quarters of the theory of religion would be seriously globe and of all the centnries, such as undermined.
was never equalled by any people on The very work of evangelizing the earth of any former time. non-Ohtistian world, which has become The natural tendency in all periods so prominent in the last three quarters like our own is to generalization of of a century, has itself thrust upon us the question of the relation of so·called fectly evident that in an age like this we religions to each other, and especially cannot propagate Christianity under to that which we profess. Hence really glass." "There is Christianity in Cal- no persons have been more eager to deal cntta, and there is Buddhism in Boston.
with the material of religions than the The line of battle is the parallel that most aggressive Christians. It is, in belts the globe. It is no time for mere fact, imp08siUe to do the work of a pious denunciation, There must be no Christian missionary without a mastery blundering; the warfare must be waged greater or less of the beliefs which Chris- with weapons of precision, and then tianity seeks to displace, correct or sup- victory is sure." The study of the non- plement. It is possible that the prose- Ch1'istian religions has been too long cution of these investigations may seri- allowed to be a monopoly of anti-Chris- ously modify some of our missionary tian scholars. In the department of methods. It is possible that thereby sociology religions are to be brought to we may find that many systems of reo book, as to their bearing on the condi.
ligious error may be most easily attacked tion of industry which they foster; the from within ; may be best approached Bocial habits of the people; the position through some inherent weakness of of woman and the character of the fam- themselves, and thus the work of evan- ily they are responsible for; the or- gelism become somewhat a work of ganization of Government, and the reformation rather than of religious character of the rulers they inspire; the revolution. Mohammedans, for in- state of public education, and the prac- stance, are bound to accept the Old tical bearing of religious worship on Testament Scriptures and the Gospel of actual life. We will as Christians in Jesus, because the Koran includes these many things have to lay our hands on among the inspired records ,which it is our mouths, bnt if we are shamed to se- obligatory on Moslems to obey; and it cure a freer course for our religion at thus becomes practical to present the home as well as abroad, we can prove acceptance of the Scriptures on the au- that there is in Christianity that which thority of their own acknowledged Sa- will produce it humanity which no other cred Book and prophet. religion among men can produce. Theo- Thus, too, Brahmanism is found to be logically we can show the defect of even weak. Investigation has shown that Chinese ethics as lacking any proper the Shasters and Puranas are but com- relation to God. Dr. Legge says, "I mentaries on the Vedas, and that the have been reading Chinese books for Vedas alone contain the originally re- more than forty years, and any general vealed truth obligatory upon Hindus. requirement to 'love God' or the men- But it is found that the Vedas do not tion of anyone as ' loving Him' has yet teach nor support caste, nor idolatry, to come for the first time under my eye."
nor many other things popularly held in the great Hindu form of heathenism.
The comparative study of religions be- A SIGNIFICANT MovEMENT IN BURMA.- ('omes thus a part of onr work in seek. Professor D. C. Gilmore writes to his ing to bring the world to Christ; awl so father, Dr. J. H. Gilmore, of the Roches- far from shrinking at the seemingly ter University, from Rangoon, under secular search after truth implied in date of March 2d, as follows: "I this comparative study of religions, have glorious news for you; the Bur- through fear lest the comparisons may mans have begun to come. At it village subject Christianity to less reverential near Pyinmana, in the Toungoo dis- consideration, the most progressiye and trict, a pure Burman village, the entire aggressive Christians hold it essential village has united to drive out the Bud- to the universal spread of Christianity. dhist priests and to ask the missionary Dr. Ellinwoocl well says, "It is per- to Bend them a Christian teacher. They've completely cleaned out the week the building was crowded to the priests, and I think- but of this I am door to hear the Gospel preached sim. not certain-that they have torn down ply and direetly to their minds and the monastery. Mr. Cochrane has sent hearts. At the close of this series of them teachers and preachers. services a request was sent to Dr. Pente· cost that those who heard him should ,. Do you realize the significance of be permitted to pay all the expenses inthat move? Such a thing has never curred that week; and at the last meethappened in the whole history of the ing a gentleman stood up, and in the Burman Mission. The Karens have name of all assembled thanked the Doc. come in that way again and again; but tor for what he had been teaching them never until now has a whole Burman vil- and trying to do for them, and he add· lage gone over in that style. It means ed, ., If any man had attempted fifteen a great deal-the first giving way, which years ago to speak in this manner to I doubt not will be followed by a rush. such an audience in Poona, he would It is the beginning of the end. Our have been torn in pieces; but here have hearts are filled with joy aud thankful- we been filling this place night after ness; even the least sanguine ar'! full night for a week, to hear, not lectures of enthusiasm." on secular subjects, but a plain, simple, direct exposition of the Gospel of -We are pleased to learn that it is Christ. This shows how great a change definitely settled that Rev. S. H. Kel. has come over us in Poona." – The Ol,ris. logg, D.D., is to return to India at the tian. close of this summer to act with other able scholars in the revision of the Old New Publications. Testament in Hindi. Weare certainly loath to see him leave this country; [J. T. G.] and the St. James' congregation in To. ronto, the pastorate of which he now reo Everything that increases our in. signs for this more special field, will formation in regard to a country with feel his departure sorely. But the duty which we are so little acquainted as we is plain. Neither America nor Europe are with Korea, .. The Hermit Nation," has a scholar, taken all in all, more should be hailed with pleasure. We are thoroughly fitted and furnished for the pleased to say to our readers that the important task to which the providence Religions Tract Society of Korea has of God now assigns Dr. Kellogg. His started a monthly magazine at Seoul, lectures delivered recently at Princeton called the Karean Repository. The price College, on "Modern Theory of the is $2 a year. It contains articles from Origin of Religion," were of a masterly all classes and nationalities represented order. A more genial gentleman could in the Peninsula, discussing the history, not be found. as an associate in the language, literature, religion, manners labors to which our brother is now ap- and customs of the Koreans, and all pointed under the British and Foreign other matters of interest abont this Bible Society; and we cougratulate his •• Italy of the Far East." The editor of associates in this great work. this department of the REVIEW will reo ceive subscrjptions from Americans as -At Poona, Dr. Pentecost preached showing his interest in this new and in a large theatre. The committee of worthy enterprise. management so arranged it that none but educated Brahmans should be ad. Two very excellent and helpful books mitted, and every night of a whole have appeared recently treating of the religions of the world, very unlike and yet each valilable after its kind. The one is a series of brief addresses given of martyrs, evangelists, and tbilan. in London by recognized able exponents thropists, who, just as the translator of each of the non-Christian religions, renders a word into vocables anll symand of the several branches of the Chris- bols intelligible to the ear of each Afritian churches. It is intended to present can tribe, so by their lives, their utternothing but a condensed, plain state- ances, and manner of dying, translated ment, in the working.man 's vocabulary, into symbols intelligible to the hearts of these several faiths and divisions of of the poor African the great, the eter- Christendom. Its title is "Religious nal and all-sufficient truth that Jesus Systems of the World" (Macmillan & Christ died on the cross for the salva. Co., New York). tion of the whole human race." It is not in our thought to review this excel- A wholly different book, and one of lent survey of the missionary occupa- far greater value to the student of the re- tion of Africa, with its valuable maps ligions of the world, is that of Dr_ Ellin. of every part; but we must make a wood, just issued by the Scribners, en· quotation applicable at this hour, when titled" Oriental Religions and Christian. our Student Volunteers illustrate it : " A ity," which, besides clearly presenting dying world lies at the door of Europe- beliefs of the Oriental world, dis· a world ignorant, but not by their own cusses candidly and boldly the several fault, of Christ's great sacrifice; from questions to which their study gives every rank of the community of the Neo- rise. The lectures were delivered be· Latin races, and of no other, men and fore the students of Union Theological women leap out and cry, 'Send me, Seminary, on the Ely Lectureship send me to my dying fellow-creatures, Foundation. The opening lecture deals dying in body and soul. Never mind with need of understanding the false reo whether their color is black or brown ligions, followed by a lesson drawn from or red or yellow. Never mind whether the _Apostolic Church as a model in the they are cruel, or gentle and tractable.
method of dealing with them. Hindu· Never mind whether they are healthy or ism, Buddhism, and Islam are consid· leprous. Never mind if I die just when ered ; the traces of a primitive theism I land on their shores, or live to Bee them are sought; the ethical tendencies of pass from their barbarous nakedness the Eastern and Western philosophies into the decent form and order of a holy are contrasted, and the divine suprema. church; send me! I have but the desire cy of the Christian religion contended and a few poor talents; the issue is with for. We have no space for a proper re- God.' "
view of this most timely contribution to this class of literature.
The dedication of Dr_ R N_ Cust's -Rev. T. J_ Scott, D.D_, who has been nearly thirty years in active missionary volume, entitled "Africa Rediviva," is service, has made selections from his touching and very suggestive_ It is as contributions to the press from time to follows: "To the memory of Simon of time; and Dr_ C_ C. McCabe's Self-Sup- Cyrene, the first African cross-bearer; porting Missionary Literature Departthe eunuch of Ethiopia, the first Afri- ment, 150 Fifth Avenue, New York, has can who was baptized; Apollo of Alex- printed these. The title is "Sparks andria, the first African mighty in the from the Anvil of a Busy Missionary;" Scriptures; Cyprian and Augustine, the the price is twenty-five cents. We first men, and Katharina, Felicitas, understand that Dr. Scott asks no royand Perpetua, the first women who died alty from the publishers. The great for Christ in Africa; Frumentius, the variety of themes, crisply treated, will first tl'finslatorof God's Word into alan- make it helpful to a wide range of read· guage of Africa; and thnt great Ilrmy ers.
EDITORIAL NOTES ON CURRENT TOPICS
I1I.-EDITORIAL NOTES ON CURRENT TOPICS.
A Letter from Dr. Kerr Cross. Sabbath, at four, besides the English service, a native service at the chief's From Uwundale, Song we Valley, Lake house, nearly 100 present. At first we had few women, but now a goodly num· Nyassa, East Central Africa, Dr. W. Kerr ber. It is amusing to see these rude men standing at the hymns and doing Cross writes : their best with grunts and groans to imitate the tunes. They are getting " Mrs. Cross and I reached our home on, however. Nyembere sits on a stool in the centre, and is all ears and eyes; here October 1st, 1891. I was sent by and when we pmy is most careful that every eye is closed. The idea of God the oomllittee to build on the hills if punishing by fire (hell) is entirely new to him, and he listened with rapt attenpossible before the present rains, Mrs. tion when I had occasion to refer to hell, and when I had finished turned Cross to remain at the central station to the women, saying, ' You women, you hear! if you do bad and don't cook half way up the lake, with Dr. and Mrs: our food, God will roast you in that fire,' pointing to the ashes. Laws till this home should be complet. " The windows and fireplaces of our ed. She did stay a month; but Dr. house are sources of great amusement The natives stare at one another and Laws, being unwell, left fer England, talk. When a fire is put on and the smoke does not fill the house they are and my wife came north. Meanwhile I amazed. Then one stoops and looks up the chimney; anotber explains that the had selected a site and begun building. smoke goes up a hole in the wall and comes out at the top. Out they go to " The country here is worth fighting see this, and explain among themselves how it gets beyond the thatch; then for-the finest in these parts, equally clapping their thighs, they say, ' He! th~ white men! what wisdom they have!' distant from the various settlements of " Our influence is not confined to one white men, English and German as a tribe, but reaches to many. Already we have been visited by several chiefs doctor should be ; from 5000 to 6000 feet and deputations from others. We aim at a large school with youth drawn from above the sea and 3000 feet above the various tribes, to be educated and sent back to open schools in their own counlake. This valley is ten miles by from try. "
three to five, and with aThriechperoepdlesoairl~ Some of the missionary dead of 1891 and abounds in cattle. are thus recorded by the Christian at Work: famed for their garden s. Here are many " Bishop French ascended from Aravarieties of bananas and plantains. bia ; Bishop Boone, having only for a short time been enrobed in the mantle .. When we began work here, Nyem- of bis father, the renowned missionary, died in China ; Newton, 'the beloved • bere, the chief, was at war with a neigh- boring chief, and appealed to me to de- cide on the affair. The discussion was opened' by my reading and explaining the ten commandments, lind assuring them that God was ever angry with war, and that, as white men who obeyed God, we could not but frown on such, etc.
Ny.e. mMbirearseeowfak, eetphiengoonfef thcehriaeif~ accused from his country last year. And so they fought, etc. I decided that both were wrong; and as Mirasewa began the war, he must bring a bull and kill it before me. This was done, and they shook hands and ate together as friends; and so our in- fluence began, and many disputes be- tween chiefs and private men have been deliberated on since.
" We hope soon to have a school and begin more direct spiritual work. Every morning at six we have 150, including workers, for singing and prayer. O~ of the Punjab, was followed to better Cairns had apparently in him the vigor than India's palaces by Winter, of the of his prime. He was born in 1818, and Delhi Mission, who loved his special was but seventy.four years old. His last work more than he did a bishopric. words were, ., Only they who openly Amid the lamentations of thousands identify themselves with the cause of that ' good servant of the Lord,' Bishop God will be victorious and trium- Caldwell, was laid to rest after fifty-four phant." James Calvert was born in years of labor in India for IndIa; Dr. 1813. and was, therefore, seventy.nine ; Luther H. Gulick, the founder of a large he died on Tuesday, March 8th, and Prin- missionary family, went up to the cipal Cairns on Saturday, March 5th. , bosom' of the 'Father of the faith- The two men were in many things ful ;' and dear and great John Inglis strikingly alike, though in others in dropped his finished translation of the marked contrast. But each in his visions of him of Patmos to open his sphere achieved an enviable success, eyes on the beatific vision of the An. and are together in one reward. cient of Days. Redslob, the Moravian sentinel of the outer patrol limit of Born a Savage, Died a Bishop. Christendom on the edge of Thibet, went to know the richer meaning of Those who attended the London 'Nam Thang Song,' and to find it' all Missionary Conference of 1888 will re- bright ahead' forever. Sheshadri, the call the kindly face of the aged Bishop first Asiatic whom America ever honored Samuel Crowther. He died in London, with a doctorate of divinity, found a December 31st, being something over fitting sepulchre in the sea for his body, eighty years of age. He was born, he while his soul went to the 'sea of never knew when, in the Yoruba coun- glass.' Goloknath of Jalander was car- try, one hundred miles inland from the ried to hill burial by 'devout men,' Bight of Benin. He was carried off by and honored by the presence at his Mohammedan slavers In 1819, and was funeral of European officials and a thou- exchanged for a horse. He was treated sand Hindus and Mohammedans." with the greatest cruelty. Again he was exchanged for some tobacco. The slave This list is but partial. Wellington J. vessel was captured by an English man- White's tragic end cannot be forgotten; of-war, and young Adjai, as he was . the Moravian Marx also died at Leh, named, was sent to the church mission and many more, obscure, perhaps, in school at Sierra Leone. In 1825 he was human eyes, but emblazoned on God's christened by the Vicar of Christ Church, immortal scroll. Think of the mis- Newgate, Samuel Crowther. In 1829 he sionaries dying in Africa alone in 1891 ! married a native girl,who had been educated in the same school. He taught The almost simultaneous death of for a while, and accompanied the first Rev. James Calvert, formerly of the Fiji Niger expedition. He then went to Mission, and Principal Johu Cairns, of England and studied in the Church Edinburgh, takes from earth two of the Missionary College. He became a min- most distinguished men of the genera- ister, and went with the second Niger tion-Mr. Calvert, very conspicuous for expedition in 1854. He translated the missionary toils and triumphs, and Bible into the Yoruba language. He Principal Cairns, perhaps the most gift- was set apart as a bishop-the Bishop ed, learned, and really great man in of the Niger territory, in West Africa- Scotland. If auy man survives who in 1864. In May, 1880, the Royal Geo- combined so much mental power with graphical Society presented him with a so much childlike gentleness and gen· gold watch. Bishop Crowther was a erosity, we know not who he is. Mr. ~odl! man, of llU(lh intellectual powerl Q~lvert had fetireq from, wgrk, but Pro ann with a great authority over the na- was already producing a vast social and tives with whom he dealt. He was very political revolution. People were to- highly esteemed in England. His life day taking to heart the suffering and is a striking illustration of the power of misery of their fellow·creatures as they Christianity to uplift the savage races. never did before. They who represent. All that he was he owed to Christianity. ed the London Mission were the illus- trations of that new awakening of ten- When we remember that only ten der sympathy. This movement in Lonyears ago the people of Uganda and Vic· don was the direct result of the" Bit· toria Nyanza' were almost unknown to ter Cry of Outcast London." When the world, it is surprising to read that that remarkable pamphlet appeared a the missionaries recently sold in a few few years ago it tortured the souls of weeks 4000 reading sheets printed in many. They felt it was a veritable the native language. They send word shame that while they were sitting in that they could. sell 10,000 copies at cushioneJ corners of their pews there once if they had them. They say the were hundreds and thousands standing people are most anxious to acquire the under the shadow of their sanctuaries. art of reading, and their eagerness for books is astonishing. "As long as we Christianity is not dying out, but has had a reading sheet or a book left." moved forward until it has obtained a writes one, "a crowd swarmed around marvellous hold among all civilized naus day and night, and hundreds were tions. The .Army Ohaplain states the foldisappointed when the supply gave lowing: "Three centuries after Christ out." there were 5,000,000 Christians. Eight centuries after Christ there were 30,000,- The work in Africa, with all its hin- 000 Christians. Ten centuries after drances, goes forward so rapidly and Christ there were 50,000,000 Christians. with such strides that the records of Fifteen centuries after Christ there were yesterday will be out of date to-morrow. 100,000,000 Christians. Eighteen cen- turies after Christ there were 174,000,000 London Wesleyan Mission. Christians. Now there are 450,000,000 Christians. The followers of the three The London Wesleyan Mission about religions, Confucianism, Buddhism, lind six years since began its work. Atten- Taoism, all combined, are less in numtion was first directed to the East End, ber than the Christians alone. Includand afterward St. James's Hall, in the ing the latest division of Africa among west, and other parts of London, were the European powers, about four fifths made the centres of important mission- of the land of the world is under Chris· ary (,fforts. In addition to the minis· tian control." So much for figures; terial staff, some seventy •• Sisters of but what of the general influence upon the People" and twenty lay agents are society! Of one thing we must beware. employed in the mission, and as the The above figures represent not the conoutcome of their work about five thou- verted disciples of Christ, but those sand persons are .. meeting in class, " identified with so.called Christian commost of whom previously belonged to munities. no church. Rev. Hugh Price Hughes, before a large assemblage in the Free We publish gladly the following cor- Trade Hall, Manchester. observed that rection : nothing wall more remarkable in the present age than the growing sensitive- .. In the MISSIONARY REVIEW for Noness to the amount of pain and misery vember there are some pages of in- for~ation respectins, British foreiRI!, iu the world, ',fhjl! te~derness of heart 464 EDITORIAL NOTES ON CURRENT TOPICS. [June missions, by Rev. James Johnston, Bol- asked him if he expected to end his ton, England. Respecting' English days in the poorhouse, since he squan- Missions in Canada,' he says: •With the dered his money in that way. .. Ah," translation of the Bible into the Cree said Mr. Carter, ., how little he foresaw language, the Bishop of Moosonee that the time was coming when Robert writes honie that he is making rapid and Alexander Stuart would gi-ve habituprogress.' The writer overlooks the fact ally $50,000 a year to foreign missions that the Bible was translated into Cree and $50,000 to home missions I" Mr. many years ago by the Rev. Henry Stein- Carter, speaking of Robert and Alexanhauer, an Ojibway Indian, but for many der Stuart, says: "They began to give years a missionary of the Methodist small subscriptions to benevolent ob- Church to the Crees, and John Sinclair, jects, which increased with increasing a half. breed of the Cree nation. Tl,J.at prosperity. They first gave hundreds, translation was printed by the British then thousands. then tens of thousands, and Foreign Bible Society, in the syl- and at last hundreds of thousands."- labic characters invented by the Rev. Churchman. James Evans, at that time Methodist mis~ionary at Norway House. The Extract from Christian Ltader, June manuscript was entrusted to another 25th, 1891. Mission field. "Baptist missionary-the Rev. William Mason- Blundering on the Congo." .. In the who subsequently became a minister in Monthly ~JJfessenger of Storie Street, Bapthe Church of England. Mr. Mason had tist Church, Paisley, of which Dr. O. the oversight of the printing, and dis- Flett is pastor, reference is made to an honestly introduced his own name into address lately given by Rev. R. D. Darthe title-page, completely ignoring the by, from the Congo." "The story work of Messrs. Steinhauer and Sinclair. which he told of the privations and He also represented himself as the hardships which he and his companinventor of the syllabics, thus robbing ions had endured was a sad and pitiful James Evans of the honor of the discov- one. His two companions died, and he ery. We are under the impression that himself only narrowly escaped. In the work on which the Bishop of Moo- listening to such a story one cannot sonee is now engaged is not a new trans- help feeling that there is great and lation in the syllabics, but a translitera- inexcusable blundering somewhere. tion into Roman characters of the exist- There is really no need why our mising edition, probably with such im- sionaries should be left in such straits proved readings as may be suggested by for the lack of the common necessaries his knowledge of the Cree tongue. But of life. If the Mission Committee in on this point we have no positive in- London, who are responsible, would formation."-Missionary OuUook. only show a little more business ability in providing for the wants of their A few years before her death Robert agents, no calamity of the kind would Carter called upon Mrs. Stuart, and she be likely to overtake them. The sad drew from a desk an old document, thing is that the lack of proper prowhich she handed to him. It was a vision for the wants of the agents sent call for a first meeting to discuss the out has less or more characterized the propriety of forming a Board of F<Yreign management of the committee from the _Missions. Mrs_ Stuart said that her hus- beginning. The effects of this are band had gone to that meeting, and in shown in the fact that about 60 per cent the enthusiasm of his heart had pledged of the missionaries sent out to the Conhimself to give $500. When he came go district have died. Surely a radical home his mother and his brother Alex_ change in the mode of conducting the ander were full of consternation, and mission is called for !"
1892.' THE MONTHLY CONCERT OF JIUSSIONS
IV.-THE MONTHLY CONCERT OF MISSIONS.
BY ,VILLIAM EllENTON GREENE, JR., D.D.
AFRICA. and apes and slaves. The explorations The four evangelists record 0ur Sav. of late years have, however, acquainted iour's activity when He was on earth us with its principal physical features.
in the flesh. Luke, in the Acts of the It has few harbors considering its great Apostles, begins at His ascension and extent of coast. It rises gradually from narrates the continuance of His work a hard beach of yellowish sand; it in the Church by His Spirit for thirty- spreads out into broad plateaus; and four years. It was, however, promised these are traversed by five systems of that the Spirit of Christ should be the mountains, some of them lofty. It is life of the Church. " Iro ! I am with watered by many lakes and large rivers, you alway, even unto the end of the chief among which are the Zambesi on world," said our Lord. It is evident, the east, the Niger and the Congo on therefore, that the Acts must be an un- the west, and on the north the long, finished book. Christian history in mysterious, though historic Nile. It is every age is as truly the story of tho a land of forests, seemingly trackless activity of Christ's Spirit as is apostolic and impenetrable, which yield ebony, history. This is never more conspicu- dye woods, palm-oil, gums, copal, and ously the case than in the annals of india.rubber, and whose clearings pro- foreign missions; and nowhere prob- duce plantains, cassava, tapioca, Indian ably has the work of evangelization been corn, slIgar-cane, much else, so abun- more evidently supernatural, more dantly and readily that industry be- manifestly inspired and guided and de- comes useless and indolence inevitable.
veloped by Christ through His Spirit, At the same time Africa may well be than in that vast and dark continent called the country of the desert. For which, under the name of Ethiopia, is 900 miles along the western seaboard represented in Scripture as about to toward the south there is not a drop of stretch out her hands unto God, and to fresh water and but one fertile spot.
which our thoughts are for a little while An even larger region along the eastern to be directed. coast nearer the equator is dry and Africa is the southern continent of sterile. North of the eqlIator i;; the the eastern hemisphere. Bounded on Sahara or Great Desert, 3000 miles the north hy the Mediterranean Sea, on long, with an average width of 1000 the east by the Red Sea and the Indian miles; its area is almost equal to that Ocean, on the south by the Southern of the whole of our own vast country.
Ocean, and on ·the west by the Atlantic " Its surftlce, lower in many places than Ocean, it has, since the opening of the the Mediterranean Sea, is made up of Suez Canal from the Mediterranean to shifting sand, rough gravel, and barren the Red Sea, become a continental isl- rock, variously distributed, and occa· and. Lying between the 37° of north. sionally traversed by low chains of bare and the 340 of south latitude, it is al. hills. Extensive plains of salt also oc- most wholly within the tropics. Tri. cur. Throughout this sterile region rain angular in shape, its greatest length is is almost unknown, and the heat is ter- 4330 miles; its extreme width, 4000 rific," sometimes indicating, especially miles; and its area, 11,360,000 miles, during the hot wind and stand storms, nearly four times that of the United over 1200 F. in the shade. The western States. portion of the Sahara is the wildest and Until very recently little or nothing the most desolat.e. In the eastern part was known of the interior of Africa, ex- are numerous oases, some of which cept that it was rich in gold and ivory cover many miles of fertile territory. The climate of these oases and of the the ancient Egyptians, and are a mixed forests and rich table-lands of Africa, race, their ancestors having intermarwhich make up two thirds of the conti- ried with Greeks, Nubians, and Abysnent, is very different from that of the Sllllans. Their complexion is brownish desert. Rain is regular and abundant; yellow, their foreheads fiat, their hair the average temperature is about 80" woolly, their lips thin, and their eyes F.; and the thermometer seldom if bent upward like the Chinaman's. ever rises above 98° in the shade. Their home is Northern Egypt. Next we have the Nilotic race, comprising the Africa does not seem to be very rich Nubians in Nubia, the Abyssinians in in minerals. Gold, however, is found Abyssinia, and the Gollos along the in Guinea. Iron and copper occur in eastern coast farther south. These are many of the intertropical places. Seams all strong, vigorous people, often handof coal have been discovered along the some, more or less dark, and standing banks of the Zambesi. Salt is said to between the Berber and the negro. Of be plentiful everywhere. Diamonds of the latter no description is necessary. fine quality and great size have been Suffice it to say, that their home is the found. It is not unlikely that there are Soudan or Central Africa; that they are many mineral treasures yet to be un- very numerous; and that many of them earthed. are partially civili:led. They are found to improve as we penetrate the country, The vegetable wealth of Africa has and there is reason to expect gratifying been alluded to. Its fauna also are nu- developments when we sha1l become merous and highly characteristic. Land acquainted with the vast inland tribes animals preponderate over water ones, of which now almost nothing is known. and many of the quadrupeds are exclu- Nobler far and more characteristic of sively African in their origin. Such Afrioa than the negro is the Bantu race. are the chimpanzee, the gorilla, the dog- Nearly the whole southern half of the faced baboon, the two-horned rhinocer- continent is their home. A recent os, the hippopotamus, the giraffe, and traveller thus describes them: ""The five sixths of the known species of ante- Bantu is a fine, tall, upright man, with lope. It is in a land extensive, varied, delicately small hands and well-shaped productive, and peculiar as this that feet, a fine face, high, thin nose, beard the races live the problem of whose and;mustache. . .. Some of them are perevangelizatiolj. we are about to study. fect Greek statues as regards the splen- did development and poise of figure." The people of Africa may be divided Finally, we have the Gouipine race, into native and foreign. The foreign composed of Hottentots, Korannas, and element, which is numerous, consists Bushmen. ~enoe they originated is of Europeans, Arabs, Moors, Turks, and a mystery. They are thought to resem- Jews. The native element embraces ble the Chinese. Like them, they have six races which are, to a greater or less the high cheek-bones, the oblique eye, degree, allied, and which all spring the thin beard, the yellowish complexfrom the great Indo-Ethiopic fa·mily. ion. They differ, however, in their They are thus a mixture of the pure hair and in the formation of the bones African type with the Asiatic, and they of the pelvis. In height they rarely differ in race characteristics according exceed four feet six inches; and they as the one type or the other predomi- are lively, cheerful, and by no means nates. The Berbers are the descendants wanting in intellect. These six races of the primitive stress of the land. with the foreigners give a total not far a'hey vary in color from blaok to dark from 300,000,000, or considerably more bronze or copper, have high cheek- than four times the population of the bones, thin lips, expressive eyes, curly United States. hair, and athletic forms. Their home is Northern Africa. Then there are the Copts. These are the desQendants of Of the social, moral, and religious African people wherein lies the hope of condition of these millions little that is their future. They are born traders.
good can be said. The northern half They have created a true currency, of Africa has the characteristics of Ara- though not a money one. "In the bic civilization. The people are pas- m"nagement of a bargain," says Stan- toral and nomadic. They have the ley, " I should back the Congoese na- Arab's genius both for war and for tive against Jew or Christian, Parsee or trade, In general, we may say of them Bouyan, in all the round world. Un- that they are restless, fierce, warlike, sophisticated is the very last term I proud, aggressive; in trade, keen, ver- should ever apply to an African child satile, grasping; in morals, grossly sen- or man in connection with the knowl- sual, as the Abyssinians, or proudly ab- edge of how to trade. I have seen a stemious, "s the Nubi"ns, They are all child of eight do more tricks of trade in stamped with the'virtues and the vices an hour than the cleverest European of the Moslem faith. Many of them tmder on the Congo could do in a h"ve heard of the S"viour, but almost month."
none of them have found life in Him or As to morals and religion, the picture even realized their need of Him. is an extremely dark one. Degradation The southern half of Africa is utterly is well-nigh universal. Polygamy is destitute of any civilization worthy of everywhere practised. The idea of the name. The people live in indepen- chastity seems to have been entirely dent groups under the command of a lost. The value of human life is not king, whose slaves they usually are, appreciated. Mutilation and death are As to intelligence, there is a v"st differ- the punishments for the slightest of- ence in different tribes. The Bololo fences. Human sacrifices are common.
people, for example, in the bend of the Cannibalism is prevalent. Atrocities Congo, clear away the forest and raise which among us might not even be crops of maize and mandioc", They mentioned are with them of daily occur- are expert in the working and smelting rence. There is no worship in the of brass. They understand division of proper sense of the word. Religion has labor. Their streets are straight and deg'merated into a superstition called their houses commodious. Of the peo- fetichism.
ple in the Nyassa district, however, It does not come so near to the wor- Professor Drummond gives the follow- ship of God as idolatry does; for the ing description: " Hidden away in the idolater professes to worship God endless forests, like birds' nests in a through the idol, while the African, wood, in terror of one another and of though admitting the existence of a their common foe, the slaver, are small Creator and Father, gives Him no actual native villages; and here in his virgin worship. Sacrifices are made and simplicity dwells primeval man, with- prayers are regularly offered; but there out clothes, without civilization, with. is no confession of sin, no thanksgiv- out learning, without religion, the gen- ing, no praise. Fetichism conRists in'
uine child of nature-thoughtless, care- the wearing of charms or amulets to less, and contented. This man is appal" secure a wish or to ward off an enemy.
ently quite happy; he has practically These charms may be anything-a shell, no wants. One stick' pointed makes a bone, even a rag-that has been con- him a spear; two sticks rubbed together secrated by the fetich doctor, who pro- make him a fire; fifty sticks tied to- fesses to inject into it, by means of gether make him a house. The bark drugs and incantations, a spirit by he peels from them makes his clothes; whom one can be made successful.
the fruits which hang on them make his Ascetic rnles are also to be obeyed. In food." There is, howe,er, one com- a word, the only religion of the native mon characteristic of all the Central is a bondage to fear; and if we except the coast regions, this religion is well- of Belgium, losing his dear son, adopted nigh universal. "In Stanley's journey Africa with her sable children as his of 7000 miles from Zanzibar to Banana, own, out of his royal fortune giving a he saw neither a Christian disciple nor a princely sum annually for her sake. man who had even heard the Gospel What an event was that when, under message !" the presidency of Prince Bismarck. fif- teen nations, by their representatives, What, then, has been the work of the assembled to torm the "International Spirit of Christ for AfrIca? Association of the Congo" I And who are the 'national parties to this most reo He has inspired the explorations by markable compact against the slave which the Dark Continent has been tmde and for civil and religious free. brought to the notice of the Christian dom? Not only Protestant powers, but world, and opened up to the heralds of Papal kingdoms, the Greek Church as the Gospel; but for the patient and represented by Russia, and even Islam heroic forced marches or Speke and as represented by Turkey. When in Grant and Baker and Cameron and the history of the world has there been Stanley, missionaries could not go into such a union of the nations of the earth, the interior of Africa; and, indeed, the not to Ilpeak of different forms of faith, need of them there would not be appre- and all in the interest" of the kingdom ciated. It is significant, therefore, that of Christ? Can we do otherwise than these intrepid explorers, who for the exclaim, "What hath God wrought!" sake of science or adventure gave the Once more, He has developed as well best years of their lives to seeking to as inspired and guided the missions solve the mysteries of the Dark Conti. themselves. If wonderful works are nent, would probably never have seen it needed to prove t.he presence and power but for David Livingstone. Herein is of the Spirit of Christ, these works have the greatness of his work. He was mis- not been wanting. The Moravians taken in many of his geographical the. seem to have been the first in this field, ories, but his mistakes inspired those as in many otbers. In 1737 George who corrected them. He planted no Schmidt, one of their number, sailed missions himself, but his missionary from Holland and established a mission spirit inspired the most effe~tive mis- at Gnadenthal, 120 miles north of the sions in Africa. He did not live to see Cape of Good Hope. Here he labored the results of his arduous labors. After for nine years, gathering a little com· forty attacks of fever he died on his panyof converts numbering 47 families. knees in a grass hut amid the swamps He then went back to Holland to induce near Lake Bangweolo, early in May, others to join him, but was not allowed 1873; but that dying prayer was an· to return. Not until 1792 did the Mora ' swered. With his death began a new vians obtain permission to resume their era for the "Dark Continent." Who work in Africa. Then three humble will say that the Spirit of Christ that artisans were sent to that same place. lived in him did not inspire the explo· There among the first to welcome them rations which his death powerfully stim- was a poor blind woman, an aged pupil ulated, and which but for his life would and convert of Schmidt's, bringing with have been impossible? Again, the her the old treasure Testament which Spirit of Christ has controlled the pol- he had given her fifty years before. icy of empires in the interests of Afri. Who but the Spirit of Christ could have can evangelization. In the words of kept that handful of believers faithful Dr. Pierson, "Perhaps no more won- in the midst of a continent" dead in derful occurrence has been recorded trespasses and sins" ? Was there ever since Pentecost than the Berlin Confer· a more striking illustration of the truth ence, that, in the closing weeks of 1884, that He who begins the good work in met to determine the constitution of the Congo Free State.. King Leopold us will perform it until the day of Jesus tioned anarchy. The different tribes Christ? In 1799 the first four mission- are at war constantly. The same is true aries of the London Missionary Bociety of the different families of the tribe; arrived at the Cape. The Dutch Re- hence, unkind feelings are engendered, formed Church is another of the early and to deal with people so irritated agents in the South African mission '.lalls for unusual patience, prudence, canse. The two great societies of the decision, tact. Another obstacle is in- Church of England, the Society for the dolence. The wants of the natives are Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign so few that they grow up in idleness. Parts and the Church Missionary So- When they profess Christianity, thereciety, were erelong in the field, begin- fore, their change of heart does not at ning their labors, the latter in Abyssinia, once make them diligent. There is the former in South Africa. Egypt has small occasion for diligence. They been successfully occupied by the have, consequently, to be taught indus- United Presbyterian Church of the tries as well as religion. In no field are United States. '.I,'he western coast is lay missionaries, Christian mechanics, the Bcene of very many missions of very and farmers so much needed. many churches. Here we come to Ashantee, where the celebrated native Bish. A further obstacle is slavery. The op Crowther, whose death we have been united influence of the many mission. called on so lately to mourn, labored ; ary societies and the efforts of one and here, too, but farthest down of all Christian nation after another have enwe find Gaboon, and the field well oc- tirely broken up the slave trade, so far cupied by the American Presbyterian as the west coast is concerned. It is, Board, in which field, as in all this re- however still carried on clandestinely gion, the mortality among the mission. on the east coast, and it exists everyaries has been so great that it has been where unrestrained as a domestic instiwell called .. the White Man's Grave." tution. Indeed, slaves constitute the In 1875, a year after Livingstone's laboring class, and hence arises an exdeath, a memorial mission was founded cuse on the part of the free for their infor him on Lake Nyassa, and it has been dolence. In their view work is not very successful. Space, however, would only largely unnecessary, it is also disfail were even the barest enumeration honorable because associated with slaof the missionary agencies now at work very. in Africa to be attempted. Statistics, too, with reference to this field are sin. A fourth obstacle is intemperance. gularly unreliable. Like the maps of The natives have their own beer and the country, they change daily. Ten wine, but they have learned to like the years ago the report was 730 ordained more intoxicating qualities of imported missionaries, 73,000 native communi. rum, gin, and whiskey. 'I'hese are obcants, 250,000 under instruction-prob- tained in abundance at all the foreign ably a million more or less under the trading houses. The testimony of the influences of Christianity; and ten missionaries is that where converts are years ago the Christian Church was just now reckoned by hundreds they would beginning to rouse herself for the evan· be numbered by thousands but for the gelization of the .. Dark Continent." rum trade. "What a record against the Protestant Christianity of Great It should not be supposed, however, Britain and Germany and America !" that the work, because it has been rapid, is easy. It has peculiar difficulties. Polygamy. with its kindred vices and Perhaps no field calls for more of the the moral degradation which result heroism which only the Holy Spirit can from them, is another and most serious inspire. obstacle. 'rhe people have become so debased that there seems to be no moral Among these obstacles may be men- foundation on which to bnild. The climate, too, must not go unmentioned. It has proved singularly, fearfully fatal we account for such apostolic lives as to the missionaries. Now that they Moffat's, as Livingstone's, as Black's, have learned how best to adapt them· as Bushnell's, as Harrington's, as Mac· selves to it, it is less so. At the same kay's, as Crowther's, as those of many time, however, another difficulty has other missionaries that may not now be arisen. The natives cannot understand mentioned, unless the same Christ who why foreigners cannot the as they do ; lived in Paul by the Spirit lived also in and so it often comes to pass that in them? ·Can we doubt that the land in proportion as the missionary takes care which the Saviour Himself is thus diof his health he loses influence in his recting and sustaining the work of evanfield, on the ground that he is too lux- gelization will soon stretch out her urious. hands unto God? Is she not even now beginning to do so? Can we, then, reo That, therefore, the wonderful prog. sist the short and emphatic appeal ad. ress of the past twenty years has been dressed by David Livingstone from the made in spite of all these obstacles is centre of Africa to the Protestant in itself most encouraging. The simple churches of the world, "Coml) on, fact that the Bible has already been brethren !n Friendship for Christ, translated into sixty.six of the Ian. mere loyalty to Him, compels us to do guages and dialects of Africa is a stu- so. Not to be interested in the evanpendous achievement. Great expecta. gelization of Africa is not to be intertions, too, may be cherished with refer- ested in what is conspicuously the work ence to the missionary influence of the of our Friend, who redeemed us with colored people of the United States_ His own precious blood. In number 7,000,000, what might they not accomplish for their brethren over -A testimony to the value of misthe sea if only they themselves were sions is given by Jesse Seligman, the baptized witl~ the missionary spirit? Jewish banker, who is now travelling Can we doubt th.3.t it is God's purpose on the Nile. He says: "I am glad to make them missionaries? Have we, to inform you that the American misthen, any duty more pressing than to sionaries all along the Nile are doing give them the churches and schools splendid work. You can scarcely enter necessary for their religious and moral II single town or village without finding training? Most encouraging,however, one of these nicely constructed school. are the effects of the Gospel on the houses where these Arabs are taught, character of the Africans, who seemed and it would IIstonish you to hear with to have no character. The Pentecostal what pride they say they were taught at blessing has been repeated on the Con- the American mission school… go. In places not a few the people, thieves before, hhve become honest. -The statistics of the Presbyterian Liars before, they have become truthful. missions in Siam and Laos, as l·ecently Indolent, they have become industri- reported, are as follows: Ordained misous. Their idols they have burned; sionaries, 14 ; medical missionaries, 4 ; Christ they have enthroned Lord of all. single lady missionaries, 9; native The Christians in the neighboring isl- preachers, teachers, etc., 54; number and of Madagascar have remained true of churches, 13 ; communicants, 1113 ; in spite of persecution unsurpassed for number added last year, 239 ; boys in cruelty in any age. If the Waldenses boarding. schools, 208; girls in boardare rightly called the ~Iartyr Church, ing-schools, 146; day-school pupils, the believers of Madagascar are fully as 320.-Dr. Ellinwood. worthy 6f the honorable title. Can we explain this save on the ground that the Spirit of Christ sustained them? Can
GENERAL MISSIoNARY UtTELUGENCE
V.-GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE.
Organized Missionary Work and Statistics. Edited by Rev. D. L. Leonard, Bellevue, O.
-Under 120 of the wills reported in this country more than 2,000,000 of during last year in this couptry, the be- Slavs; the Poles number 1,500,000 and quests for religious, educational, and the Bohemian~, 350,000. Chicago alon" charitable purposes have amounted to contaius 100,000, Cleveland and Detroit about $7,000,000. are also large centres, while the mining regions of Pennsylvania hold many -The population of the city of New thousands; but llJUong them only a very York exceeds that of North Dakota, slight beginning in missionary work has South Dakota, Montana, Washington, been made. Oregon, Nevada, Colorado, and Wyoming. The PresbyteJ:ians and Congre- -Says the venerable Archdeacon gationalists have only 85 pastors f>t work Kirkby, who in he service of the Church in New York City, while in the eight MiBsionary Society spent 27 years among new States the two denominations have the Indians of Rupert's Land: "There 540 pastors and workers. The Roman is no better argument for Christianity Oatholics have 115 parish churches and than a congregaMon of Indians repeatchapels in New York City, with 300 ing in their own tongue the Apostles' priests and 300 Brothers, and 2000 re- Creed." There are now 10,000 baptized ligious women constantly at work among Indian Christians leading consistent the people. lives, and reading daily the Gospel of Jesus Christ. -Probably the largest congregation in America is that of the Church of St -In mission work the progress of the Stanislaus Kostka, in Chicago, which Methodist Episcopal Church during the has 30,000 communicants. The num- quadrennium has been marvellous. ber of attendants at the several masses Each year the income of the Missionary every Sunday frequently exceeds 15,000. Society has risen to a higher level, The cUl'e of souls committed to its reaching last year $1,228,888.04. The charge requires the services of 12 sum named does not include $263,660.69 priests. It has a parochial school at- raised by the Woman's Foreign Mistended by 3000 children, and these are sionary Society, nor $155,398.54 raised taught by 26 Sisters and 8 lay teachers. by the Woman's Home Missionary So- The church maintains an orphan asylum ciety, nor $311,827.56 raised by the in which about 300 inmates are cared Board of Church Extension, nor $322,- for. 656.44 raised by the Freedmen's Aid Society, nor many thousands of dollars -Five years have passed since the raised by the various city missionary Students' Volunteer Missionary Move- societies. Even more encouraging are ment started, and in connection with it the spiritual fruits. During the past almost 6000 have pledged themselves to year, in a single field (North India Conthe foreign field, if the way of entrance ference), the baptisms of convertedheashall be opened. Of this number about then have averaged at times 500 a week. 70 per cent are young men and 30 per The accessions in that field alone within cent are young women. Not far from the twelvemonth have amounted to 350 have already entered upon their 16,000. work, while some 500 are yet in theological schools, 125 in medical schools, EUROPE. and a far larger number in various colleges. Great Britain.-Seven of the direct- ors of the British East African Com- -It is estimateil that there are now pany-aIl of them Scotsmen except one -have instituted a new mission, to be lire from Peter's Pence; 3,000,000 lire known as the East Afrioan Soottish Mis- from English Consols ; 300,000 lire from sion, and have personally subsoribed various sources. The expenditures ure £10,000 for that purpose. computed as follows: Salaries of car- dinals, 650,000 lire; expenses of the -Rev. J. Hunt Cooke, editor of the Vatican for kitchen and household, in- London Freeman, estimates the total cluding the Guardia Nobile, 2,000,000 gross ineome of the Church of England lire; for legates, diplomats, etc., 1,000,- at £5,750,000 per annum, of whioh only 000 lire; stipends and pensions, 1,500,- 5 per oent is derived from endowments 000 lire; Apostolic palaces, 500,000; made since 1700, and by far the greater for San Giovanni in Laterano, 300,000 ; part is an inheritanoe from the days Archivio Borghese, 250,000 ; monument when the Roman Catholio Church was of Innooent III., 100,000; other exsupreme. The same authority puts the penses, 1,000,000 lire. total value of the endowment at £300,- 000,000, and calculates that this vast -The election of a new General of sum is equivalent to a bag of 100 sover- the Jesuit Order has been set for May, eigns for every letter of the Bible from the Convention to be held in the Gerthe first of Genesis to the last of Revela- man-Hungarian College in Rome. In tion. connection with this announcement the Rome correspondent of the Paris Temps -New statistics of Austria, exclusive gives the latest official statistics of the of Hungary, hllVe been coJIe'3ted. The Order. The Society of Jesus now numtotal population is 23,895,424. Of these bers 12,947 members. Of these 1764 18,814012 are Roman Catholics; 2,814,- belong to Italy; 2863 to France; 3470 012 Greek Catholics; 544,786 Oriental to Germany, Austria, and Holland, Greeks; 315,528 Lutheran Protestants; which three countries constitute one 120,524 Reformed Protestants; 1,148,- province; 2570 to Spain; 2307 to Eng- 506 Jews. land and her colonies.
Germany.-Among the receipts of -The Orthodox Church of Russia is the Basle Missionary Society last year divided into 60 bishoprics. Of these were $58,000 from poor friends of the 48 are in European Russia, 4 in the sooiety, who subscribed one cent a Trans Caucasus, 6 in Siberia, 1 in the week. Collectors obtained the amount Aleutian Islands, and 1 in Alaska with from them once in ten weeks. These the seat in San Francisco. Of these 60 collections are known by the name of bishops 3 are metropolitans, those of the sou missionaire. Kief, Moscow, and St. Petersburg. Ac- cording to the latest statistics Russia -The Moravian Church in the for- had 1418 archdeacons, 34,345 priests, eign field has 135 stations and out-sta- 6810 deacons, 42,371 psalm-singers, and tions, 295 missionary agents, 59 native some 6000 unofficial clergymen. missionaries, 1664 native assistants, and 31,480 communicants. The missions -Sweden is the most Protestant are in Greenland, Labrador, Alaska, our country, for out of a population of own country, the East and West In- 4,774,409 only 810 are Roman Catholics, dies, Demerara, the Moskito Coast, Suri- or 16 out of every 100,000 ; and next to nam, Africa, Australia, North Queens- it in this respect is Norway, which is land, and Central Asia. under the same sovereign, and has only 502 Roman Catholics out of 1,818,853 Italy.-The Italia Evangelica reports inhabitants, or 27 out of every 100,000. the papal budget for 1892. The income In both of these countries the mass of is from the following sources: 1,500,000 the population adhere to the Lutheran lire (a lira is about 20 cents) from spir- Church. itual dignitaries and offices and admission fees to the museums; 2,550,000 AFRICA. agents of the British Bible Society have kept step with the Italian soldiers, and –Unoccupied mission territory to the Swedish missionaries have been laborextent of 4,000,000 square miles still ex- ing llere since 1866. In 1877, with the ists in Centl·al Africa, an area larger assistance of General Gordon, they esthan the whole of Europe, says Rev. tablished the station MoncuIlo, near George Grenfell, of the Baptist Congo Massower ; and this iH the first evangeli- Mission. cal congregation in Abyssinia, consisting chiefly of natives. Representatives of -It must not be supposed that all the Basle Society have been engaged British commercial companies ar here for fifty years, but have been exwholly without conscience and wholly pelled several times. The station Mongiven to gain. The British East Africa cu110 has gradually become a village. Company, for instance, in its scheme Among the 60 pupils in the boys' school, for raising revenue within its territories 38 are Abyssinians, 10 heathen Gallas, forbids the growth, sale, and use of and the others Mohammedans. The opium, bhnng, or gnnji. It entirely pro- Swedes have advanced to the mountain hibi ts the passage of ardent spirits into districts inland, and several Abyssinian the interior, and near the coast it places priests have been converted. 'l'he proheavy restrictions upon licensing liquor- tection of the Italian army and the shops. It recognizes the helpfulness of medical work of the Swedes have been missionary laborers, and exempts al'I valuable factors in these successes. ministers from taxation. In a similar Fully 2000 natives come into contact spirit the African Lakes Company is with the mission and the missionaries conducting its operations north of the every week. Zambesi.
– The Belgium Roman Catholics are -The Ovambo Mission of the Finnish pushing their work in the Congo Free Missionary Society, on the west coast State. One order has 5 stations occu- of South Africa, was opened in 1868, pied by a dozen priests, extending from but its work has often been hindered, the coast beyond the last Baptist sta- and several times has been nearly broken tion. The Bishop of Ghent also has a up by wars among the natives. Nine station at Matadi; and the Sisters of stations are now maintained. At a Charity occupy 3 stations on the Lower single one, LanomlB Harbor, 153 per- Congo. A mission steamer of seven sons were baptized in 1891, making the tons is being built for use upon the number of converts 312 at the close of river. The Jesuits and Carthusian the year. An additional missionary has friars are also entering the field; and recently gone to that field, and another on the eastern coast are found the white will be sent during the coming summer. Fathers of the congregation of Cardinal Lavigerie. More than 100 priests and ASIA. novices besides Sisters of Chal·ity have recently entered, or soon will enter, China.-The China Inland Mission that country as missionaries. reports 123 additions to its force the past year, making the whole number -The Italian expedition to Abyssinia now engaged in that work 512, occupyhas had at least the one good result of ing 94 different points. reopening that land to the messengers of a living Christianity. The lowland -Summing up for the year 1891, Secalong the coast has been in possession retary Mitchell, of the Presbyterian of the Italians for some three years, and Foreign Missionary Board, says of the this, the" Erythrean Colony," has been work in China that the presbytery of made the basis of further operations on the province of Shantung, which now the part of the Gospel workers. The embraces 28 churches, 7 of which have been recently organized, has had" the cupied by missions. Mr. Dutt quoted most prosperous year" in its history; some very striking figures from the cen- 760 communicants have been added to BUS returns, showing how rapid the the churches, making a total member- growth of Christianity had been in reo ship of 3392. It is said that there is cent years. In 1851 there were 91,000 but one presbytery in the United States Christians in India; in 1861 there were in which last year" the number of con- 138,000, an increase of 53 per cent; in verts was as large in proportion to the 1871 there were 224,000, an increase of number of ministers as in Shantung." 61 per cent; in 1881 there were 417,000, an increase of 86 per cent. This year India.-Professor Lindsay, D.D., the Christians are reckoned to be 2,000,- speaking at the meeting of the London 000 in number. Missionary Society, thus defined the problem presented by India: "There -A missionary has recently given were a hundred Indias, with a hundred this bit of evidence that the Gospel is different languages, and representing making progress in India: "There is a every stage of civilization, from the very considerable relaxation in the rigor most primitive to the most advanced. of caste bondage. This is true both in Such differences formed a great part of regard to the scope of caste rules, and the problem of mission work. Hindu- to the question of restoration when caste ism included only about a third of the has been lost. It cost a man more than 280,000,000 inhabitants of India; there $100,000 to be reinstated after losing were about 5~000,000 Moslem!!, 6,000,- his caste 70 or 80 years ago, and men 000 Sikhs, Parsees, and Christians, and were known to commit suicide because about 20,000,000 of aboriginal tribes. they failed to obtain restoration on any The number of pariahs–outside caste terms. In recent years it has been pur- -was, he thought, from 40,000,000 to chased by a wealthy man, to the writer's 60,000,000, and these were practically, personal knowledge, for $300. Caste for mission purposes, outside the great will be dear at a dollar after awhile." realm of Hinduism." ~The Indian Home Mission to the -The Rev. Roger Dutt, a Bengali Santals is a Danish organization which, clergyman from Cawnpore, recently ad· however, receives considerable support dressing members of the committee of from England. Its secretary in Den- the Society for the Propagation of the mark is the well.known Dr. Vah!, the Gospel, said that he had been asked author of "The Mission Atlas." The whether the missions in India were fail- stations occupied are in Bengal, the ures, and that he answered that they head station being at Ebenezer. There were certainly not. There is an impa- are 6 missionaries with their wives, tience about missions. People appear 4 Santal pastors, 18 deaconesses, 80 to think that the Gospel has only to be travelling elders, and 5 catechists. Re- . preached, and that then the place where cently there has also been established it is preached will straightway be won; an Assam colony with 1 missionary, 1 but when Christian people are them- pastor, 9 elders, and 3 catechists. The selves so long in their contest with their last annual report shows that the work besetting sins, it should not be expected done during the year has been quite that those sunk in sin in India should successful. The baptisms of converts immediately rise. The conversion of were 201, and there are at present 6300 England occupied centuries. India is baptized members of the community. 2.7 times as large as England, and con- tains 280,000,000, as against perhaps -The popUlation of Burmah is 8,921,- 2,000,000 in England in the days of St. 700 ; Christians, 2.40 per cent; popula- Augustine. Even now only a few towns tion of Rangoon, 180,324; races from and a few chief centres in India are oc- India in Burmah, 356,087. (Half the population of Rangoon now is from India, servants and coolies.) Burmans, Miscellaneous.-The largest univer· Lower Burmah, 3,391,519; Burmans, sity in the world is at Cairo, Egypt, and Upper Burmah, 2,737,577; total Bur. it has 11,000 students. They come from mans, 6,129,096; total Karens, 633,657. every part of the Mohammedan world, The percentage of religions is: Bud. and they Iiltudy Mussulman law, history, dhist, 86 per cent; Nat worshippers, 3 theology, and other branches needed to per cent; Hindus, 3 per cent; Moham· confirm them in the faith of Moham- medans, 4 per cent; Christians, 2.4 per med. They sit on the floor of an enor- cent; others, 1 per cent; Shans, Lower mous court and study aloud, and the Burmah, 94,302; Shans, Upper Bur. Western visitor who calls on them duro mah, 112,492; Christians, Lower Bur. ing study hours thinks that he has mah, 111,982. struck the original site of the tower of -There is no missionary in Afghanis. Babel, and that the confused of tongue tan, wilh her 6,000,000 people. An· haven't i>topped talking yet.
nam, with 5,000,000, has only Roman -An interesting paper has lately been Catholic missionaries. India has one printed by Dr. Schreiber, of Barmen, missionary to 275,000 people; Persia, on the prospects of Islam. He calcu.
one to 300,000 ; Thibet, one to 2,000,000. lates that of the 175,000.000 Moslems 100,000,000 are already subject to Chris· ISLANDS OF THE SEA. tian Powers, and that it will not be long before the remaining 75,000,000 will be -Among the newer work commenced in the same position. As a political by the London Missionary Society is power Islam has already fallen, and the that in New Guinea. There are now loss of its temporal power is crushing 53 stations along the southeast coast, a and ruinous, unlike the effect of the staff of 6 missionaries, over 30 South loss of the temporal power by Rome.
Sea Island tea~hers, and some 20 New n Islam is gaining something in Africa Guineans. More than 2000 children among the negro races, it is losing are under instruction, and there are be· ground everywhere else. The Church tween 400 and 500 church-members. Missionary Society reports 1000 con- The whole New Testament in the Motu verts from Mohammedanism, the Rhen- dialect has also been put through the ish Society,2000, and in Java there are press. Within the first year a new sta· 12,000 Christians, most of whom were tion on the Kwato Island has been oc· formerly Moslems.
cupied by 2 missionaries. -There are 12,000 mission schools Then and Now.-Fifty years ago there sustained by the offerings of Protestant was not a native Christian on the Fiji Christians. They are teaching some Islands; now there is not a heathen. 600,000 children and young people Not long since 40 volunteers responded to a call for 15 native missionaries for dangerous and unhealthy work in New British Foreign Missions. By Rev. Jas. Guinea. Johnston, Bolton, England.
-The Friendly Islands 50 years ago Wesleyan Foreign Missions.-At had not a native Christian; now there length the clouds which have lain on are more than 30,000 church-members, the treasury of the Missionary Society who give from their scanty store $15,000 are lifting, and a brighter prospect is annually for religious objects. before the directors of this influential -The Samoan group has a Christian organization. In making arrangements population of 30,000. In the largest for the approaching anniversary ser- island there are not 50 families that fail vices, the Rev. G. W. Olver, one of the to observe family worship. missionary secretaries, stated that the financial year which had now closed al- perial British East African Company in lowed the officials to congratulate them. their approach t,O and occupation oj' selves on having" turned the corner" Uganda,has lamentably failed, as only with regard to their missionary income. a sum under £6000 has been subscribed. The year's receipts from the home dis- Although the Bishop eloquently urged tricts of Great Britain were slightly in the influence which the railway would advance of the previous year, which exert in checking slavery and extending would warrant the presentation of an the rule of civilization, it is doubted encouraging report to the Exeter Rail whether his project is a wise one. It is gathering. The annual meeting will be remarked that the King of Uganda will invested with additional interest by the be able to point to the bishop's letter as presence of a large contingent of mis. a justification for his oft-repeated asser· sionaries from all parts of the foreign tion that the missionaries have come to field. ., eat up" his country. A supplemen. tary estimate has now been issued by Under the leadership of the Rev. J. H. the British Government for the sum of Bateson, Wesleyan missionary. the Army £20,000 for the survey of a railway route Temperance Association in India, which from Mombassa to the Victoria Nyanza. the Rev. W. L. Glegson established, is making marked progress. The Confer- Some concern is expressed by the ence has released Mr. Bateson tempo. Church Missionary lntelligencerrespecting rarily, to enable him to act as secretary current income. From returns to hand, of the Association. No fewer than it is apprehended that the close of the 17,500 soldiers, or a quarter of the total financial year will show a decrease in British force in India, are now pledged funds, since the receipts to the end of abstainers. Vith one or two exceptions, January, though appreciably above the every corps in India has a branch so· average of the five previous years, were ciety, prominent among which stands nevertheless smaller than those of last the Welsh Fusileers with 535 members. year at the same time, while the expen- Lord Roberts and the army authorities diture was larger. warmly countenance the objects sought. It is said that the Church of England The Church Missionary Society.- Zenana missions have been embarrassed Very shortly an appeal will be issued of late. by the rise in value of the rupee, for more workers on behalf of the Ugan. which. with other causes, had made the da Mission. The greater danger~ and estimates for the year ending March the rougher experiences in this historic 31st, 1891, over £4000 in excess of the mission than obtain elsewhere do not previous year; and unless the regular deter the. enlistment of volunteers. income 'could be raised to £34,000 the Among the friends of the Society, Cen. foreign work, instead of advancing, as tral African missions attrMt special at. was urgently needed, would go backtention. Recent letters from East Afri· ward. ca, in which entreaties are made for more missionaries, add that the Bugan- The Rev. Canon Lloyd, speaking reda are" thirsting for knowledge," mak· cently on the operations of the Church ing the need of teachers as great as at of England in India, observed that, in any previous time. As the Society's 'dew of the more than 288,000,000 peo- English missionaries are greatly out· ple in India, they could not particularly numbered by the French priests, this rejoice in the statement that of this vast filet will lend emphasis to the cry for population only about 1 per cent bere·enforcements. longed to the Church of England. This percentage, however, represented an in· Thus far the plea of Bishop Tucker to creasing number. While the census of the British public for £60,000, says II 1891 showed that the population had in- London correspondent, to aid the 1m· creased by about 10 per cent, those at· tached to the Church had increased by about 20 per cent. India was on the added. In area it is about the size of threshold of a great moral and social England, and there are 13 clergy at revolution which was progressing quiet- work." Any subscriptions in support ly but surely. The natives were rapid- of the good work will be heartily ac- ly becoming Anglicized in their ideas, knowledged by Mr. Lewis Wigram, The and if they did not all study the Gos- Grange, Chislehurst, Kent, England.
pels, vast numbers of them read John Society lor the Propagation of the Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer, and sim- Gospel.-Awaiting the publication of ilar writers, which, on the whole, tend- the formal finance statement of the Soed to their good. ciety, it is possible to foreshadow the Zululand.-A vigorous appeal has amount of the receipts for the year 189L been made by the Bishop of Zululand This is stated to have been £116,520 (Dr. Carter) in aid of missions in that lOs., a sum undoubtedly large, yet insphero of service. He writes: "I know adequate for the demands on the Sothat many missions, both at home and ciety from many lands. Though the abroad, have a special claim upon Eng- collections, subscriptions, etc., show an lish people, but I doubt if any people increase of £1100 on the year, there has have a greater claim upon Englishmen been considerabl<;l falling off in the at the present time than the people in amount received from legacies.
Zululand. Ten years ago England con- The Anti-Opium Cl'usade.-An in- quered this country and took away fluential conference of British Members from its people the discipline which of Parliament who voted with the ma- made them in many ways the finest ot jority in April, 1891, against the opium all the South African races. It was un- traffic as a morally indefensible source doubtedly a cruel discipline, and yet the of Indian revenue, has been held in discipline had its good side; and there London to consider what further imme- ill nothing now in its place. Surely the diate action should be taken. A propo- very least that England can do is to sition that the Government should be show them' a more excellent way;' and thanked for its issue of a Blue Book this is what the Church mission to Zulu- was withdrawn, one of the members re- land is trying to do. But we who are marking that renewed pressure was more working here feel that we are crippled called for than gratitude. In postpon- from want of means and workers. The ing any concerted steps this session, it work here was begun over thirty years was resolved to take every opportunity ago, when this country formed a part of of emphasizing in Parliament the view the diocese of Natal, under Bishop already recorded in the journals of the Colenso. The diocese was established House.
in 1870 as a memorial to Charles Mac- So much has been said in Great Brit- kenzie, the first Bishop of Central Afri- ain of late in the way of minimizing the ca. Since then the work has been going effects of the habits of opium-smoking on in spite of many difficulties, the in India that it is desirable to quote greatest of which was the Zulu war in from a report of Mr. E. H. James, an im· 1879-80, when practically every mission partial and well.informed authority, in station was destroyed. At the present the Government service in the Northern time a sum of about £1000 a year is col· Division of Bombay, who clearly distin- lected from private sources, and about guishes between the Chinese vice and £700 a year is contributed by the Society the Indian one. He says: "Opium- for the Propagation of the Gospel, and smoking in India is not, as in 99 cases this is the whole income of the mission. out of 100 in China, a harmless habit, The ,Hocese consists of Zululand, Swazi- like cigar.smoking among Europeans.
land, Tongaland, an(l a certain portion (I can testify to this from my own ob- of the 'fransvaal, which has lately been servations when travelling in the north of China.) In India it is a degrading conditions, she won her way into the vice, the mark of a debauchee; and 99 hearts of the natives. Broken down in out of 100 who practise it are degraded health in 1891, she was obliged to seek and worthless, perhaps criminal per- rest at home. Partially restored, Miss sons. In the ports, no doubt, respect- Hoare promptly returned to Calcutta, able, hard-working Lascars and others but soon died, leaving means, however, are to be found who indulge in it; but whereby her work will be continued. as a rule an opium.smoking native of India, of whatever rank of life he be, is Mr. Eugene Stock, the editorial sec_ vicious and without any self-respect. retary of the Church Missionary Society, The reverse is the case in China." has been invited by the General Com- mittee to proceed to Australia and New Dr. Thomas Smith, of Edinburgh.- Zealand on a special mission, and he will This eminent missionary, author, and sail without delay. It seems that the professor has resigned the professorship visit was suggested by a letter from the of Evangelical Theology in the New Col- Bishop of Sydney, urging the appoint. lege, Edinburgh. He was ordained in ment of a delegate of "tried experi- 1839, sailed for Calcutta to engage in ence" to travel through the British Colomission work along with Dr. Duff, and nies to stir up interest in foreign misfor twenty-one years was his colleague. sionary work. Than Mr. Stock's selec- The state of his health obliged him to tion, no better could have been made return to Scotland thirty. one years ago, either as regards minute knowledge. of when he undertook the pastorate of the Society's vast operations or capacity Cowgatehead Church, Edinburgh, and as a singularly graceful and persuasive in 1878 was called to succeed Dr. Duff platform-speaker. in the chair which he now resigns. As the author of biographies of Dr. Duff Methodist Free Church Missions.- and Dr. Begg, and of many valuable The Missionary Committee reports that works, an expert in mathematics, a mis· two new chapels have been erected in sionary authority, and a leader in eccle- Jamaica. An expedition started early siastical courts, the venerable doctor, last January fo1' the Mundi country, who has reached his seventy. fifth year, lying beyond Sierra Leone. is deservedly honored and revered. Germany and the Slave Trade in Miss Hoare, of Ca1cutta.-There re- Africa.-Information has been sent in cently died in Calcutta a lady whose a letter by one of the English officers in name is beloved in many a remote command of a Central African expedivillage in the Sunderbunds, and in tion, confirming the serious charges those swampy tracts south of Calcutta made by Captain Lugard against the wherein she had lightened the load of Germans with reference to the importamisery and pain which press so heavily tion of powder into Africa. Captain upon the poorest of a poor population. Lugard protested strongly to Mr. Stokes, Miss Hoare devoted a large fortune to the ex-missionary, who is now in the the founding of an educational institu- German service, against his selling tion in Calcutta, and of schools in the powder to the natives, and offered to v:illages. At the same time she exer- buy the entire stock brought by Mr. cised a large-hearted benevolence in Stokes from the coast for the British ameliorating their bodily distresses, and East Africa Company. As Mr. Stokes is for the last fourteen or fifteen years she employed by the Germans, they are had spent much of her time among the morally, at least, responsible for his villagers. Living in their houses, shar· actions. But the message of Captain ing their food, and patiently enduring Lugard is supplemented very strongly the discomforts which a European lady by the letter written from Tanganyika. must of neceijsity experience under such In his journey throngh German East Africa tUe writer states that he encoun_ tered numerous Arab traders who were work. For three years he had been in possession of large quantities of pow_ suffering with consumption, but he re- der, which they were taking into the in. fused to return hOlUe, preferring to die terior. And even more, the Arabs were among his choeen people with his armor actually in possession of written per· on.
mits, signed by German officials on the, Japal).-A Buddhist priest from coast, authorizing them to carryon this Japan, student in the jnnior class of trade. These Arabs carl'y thousands of the University of the Pacific, in Calipounds' weight of powder into the fornia, has recently been converted to Congo Free State, where it is used for Christ. He said: "Since last August I slave raiding. There appears slight have been contributing articles to a doubt that it was from German East Buddhist monthly magazine, published Africa the Mohammedan party in Ugan- in Japan, for $200 a year. It was my da and their ally, Kabrega, obtained the plan to support my school expenses supplies of ammunition which were used with this money; but as I am a Chrisagainst Captain Lugard in the recent tian I shall not contribute any more, troubles. Although the Brussels Act and shall not fail to tell them so by next has not yet come into operation, Ger· mail." many is a consenting party, and is certainly pledged as a civilizing European -The Japan Conference of the Meth- Power to do all that lies within her odist Episcopal Church lately held its scope to protect the African, and sup- annual meeting in Tokyo, and adopted press slavery, or connivance a t it, be- several memorials to be presented neath her flag of " influence… to the next General Conference of the Methodist Church of this coun- try, which will be held next year.
Monthly Bulletin. Among other things, the Japan Con- ference asks for the appointment of a India.-A native Christian hall just bishop to reside in Japan or China, and been appointed Administrator·General the establishing of a branch of the of Madras; and a native Christian girl, Methodist Book Concern in Tokyo.
graduate of one of the Christian colleges, -The freedom of Japan, to reside and has been appointed to the charge of the travel at will through the empire, subpost-office at Mandapasali. ject only to its laws, has been given to -The Pundit Iswara Chandra, who Rev. G. F. Verbeck, D.D., missionary died recently in India, was noted as of the Reformed Church, and his fam- having been more influential than any ily. The case is believed to be unique other single individual in securing the in the history of missions and of Japan.
abolition of the suttee, or burning of By reason of his long absence of forty widows on the funeral pyres of their years from the Netb,erlands, the land of husbands. his birth, Dr. Verbeck has lost his citi- -There was unity of the faith at one zenship in Holland. Not having repoint. A Hindu was asked by a lady sided in the United States for the missionary if there was anything on legally prescribed period after declaring which the differents sects of the Hindus his intentions, he failed to become an agreed, and he replied: "Yes, we all American citizen. He was thus pracbelieve in the sanctity of the cow and tically a ,. man without a country." On the depravity of woman." his return to Japan he made application for a passport to the Foreign Office, -The death is announced of the Rev. stating the peculiar circumstances in :S. Bradley, President of the Methodist which he was placed. A fow months College at Lllcknow (India). He had later, in a very complimentary letter, spent nineteen years in missionary he received from Count Enomoto a passport entitling him and his family to queen, and also the fact that slavery still perfect freedom of travel and residence exists in Madagascar. The pastor of lhe for a year, with the privilege of renewal. church at Androvakely, about twenty. It is alike honorable to the Japanese five miles from the capital, is a slave, Government and to the good doctor and though he has been much hindered himself. in his work by the claims of his master, Madagascar. -A revival is in progress he has done excellent Christian service in Antananarivo, the capital of Mada- in the district. Recently the queen, gascar. The missionaries of the Lon- hearing of the good work he had done, don Society write with great joy of the sent for him to preach in the palace work which began early in May. The church. She was so pleased with him meetings are attended by young men that she paid fifty dollars to redeem and women, many of them connected him. This pastor is not educated, but with the higher schools. An illustra- he is exerting a strong influence tion of the radical change wrought in throughout his district.
some is presented in the following New Zealand.-The Baptists of New story: One of those who attended the Zealand have recently established an meetings was powerfully wrought upon Aborigines Mission for Eastern Bengal, by the Holy Spirit, and came privately with a station in the district of Brahto confess a great sin, and to make man daria, Hill Tipperah, northeast of reparation. He would not confess his Calcutta. The Baptist Missionary Sosin until after prayer, and then he ac- ciety, of England, has stations all knowledged the stealing of some money. around, but this is the first attempt to •• If I could," he said, " I would do like work in the midst of the aborigines, Zachreus – restore it fourfold; but I whose condition is of the lowest. Two have not got the money. However, I missionaries have been on the ground can restore it twofold, and here, there- for some little time, and they have refore, are sixteen shillings." cently been joined by three others.
-West of the capital of Madagascar Samoa.-A communication has reis a tribe of the Sakalava nation num- cently been received from Samoa, bearbering about 1,500,000. Two years ago ing testimony to the demand among the one of the missionaries of the Society natives for the English Bible Society's for the Propagation of the Gospel pen- Pocket Edition of the Bible, of which etrated into this region to find that he few copies were left unsold on the was the first white man ever seen by the island; and urgently asking for a people, who were heathen, with no in- further supply of 5000 copies. In its tercourse with the outer world, and no way, the letter is an interesting illustra. idea of the value of money. He estab- tion of the extent to which the Bible is lished friendly relations with Tocra, the becoming the people's book all the ruling chief, who expres8ed his readi- world over. ness to receive a teacher. In August last the missionaries landed on the west -A clergyman travelling in the East coast, and with the assistance of a writes in the highest terms of the friendly princess, sister of King Tocra, American United Presbyterian Mission they have made their way inland, being in Egypt and Syria. He says they are oHen met on the way by natives bring- gathering the young boys about them in ing their sick for treatment. Many snch their mission 8cho,)ls, and in ten years cases having been alleviated the mis- the tourist will find the villages along sionaries have secured the respect and the Nile filled with hundreds of young protection of the blacks. men who not only speak English well, but who are washed and" clothed in –An incident that has recently oc- their right mind." curred illustrates the ch'1racter of the
The Missionary Review of the World — July 1891
MISSIONARY MONEY-QUALITY AND QUANTITY
MISSIONARY REVIEW OF THE WORLD.
VOL. XIV. No. 7.-Old&ries.–JULY.–VOL. IV. No. 7.-New &ries.
MISSIONARY MONEY-QUALITY AND QUANTITY.
BY REV. A. J. GOJVlON, D.D., BOSTON, MASS.
"Not more men merely, but more man" is the way a thoughtful writer puts it, in speaking of the needs of the field. By this language it was evidently intended to discriminate between quantity and quality in Christian laborers. Has it ever occurred to us to make a similar discrimination in missionary contributions ~ .. Show me the tribute money" is the word of our Lord, as He points to what has been gathered in the boxes. "Whose image and superscription is this r' is His pressing question, as He inspects our gifts. II it enough that we are able to answer, "Cresar's~" In other words, is hard cash the only requirement of our missionary treasuries ~ I contend not. There is money and money; and it is perfectly certain that coins of exactly the same denomination may differ a million per cent in evangelical value, according as they bear only Cresar's image, or with that also the image and superscription of Christ. * More consecrated money~ money which has passed through the mint of prayer and faith and selfdenial for the Lord's sake–is the greatest demand of o~r time. Does any one doubt that the two mites of that" certain poor widow" have brought a perpetual revenue into the Lord's treasury through the centuries, and are still yielding a large income to the Church 1 Christ must have computed the spiritual interest of her gift when He said: "She hath cast in more than they all." In her offering there was sincere and whole-hearted consecration. She gave her all when she might have given a generous proportion-two mites, when she could have done her duty in giving but one. " By the divided state of her purse," says one, "she showed the undivided state of her heart." Her small gift, because representing entire consecration, has been reaping compound interest throughout the centuries, till it has become the greatest of which we know. It is not a bare question of pounds, shillings, and pence, therefore, with which we have to deal in getting funds for missions, but of securing gifts which are quoted at par value in the exchange of heaven. "Oornelius, thy prayers and thine alms are come up for a memorial before God" (Acts 10 : 4). Do we believe that the alms would have come up without the prayers to wing them ~ Gold * "By doing good with his money a man, as it were, stamps the image of God npon it, and makes it pass current for the merchandise of heaven."-Lord Sl!aftesbury. and silver are heavy metals, and the attraction of gravitation is bound to carry them down unless faith and love and consecration shall impart to them a heavenly gravitation. We never have been able to believe that money earned at church fairs, or ecclesiastical raffies, or vestry junketings has any upward tendency. And we are bound to warn those who devise such things for the aid and promotion of foreign missions, that though they raise a large amount thereby, they may fail to be credited with it in the" Book of Remembrance." We have such a growing sense of the importance of sanctified offerings in our missionary treasuries, and such a strong conviction of the tendencies now operating to check this kind of revenue, that we are led to consider some of the conditions of consecrated giving: 1. Gifts for the Lord' s trea.~ury should come from a living hand, and not from a dead hand. Legacies and bequests we gladly receive, as they are sent into our missionary treasuries, and we sincerely thank those who have left them to us. But we are sure, nevertheless, that this is not the best kind of giving. A Christian's obligation is first and before all to his own ·generation. Why, then, should he studiously arrange to bestow his largest contribution upon the generation following 7 Besides, post-mortem gifts lose vastly in that sympathetic value which ill such a precious element in Christian charity. To extend help to lost men from the skeleton fingers of a corpse, when one might have given it from the warm hand of a living compassion, is a vast loss both to giver and receinr. Dr. 'Wayland used to complain of what he called" a long-tailed benevolence." Is it not better to lay hold of our generation with the grasp of a present and living sympathy, than to reach back to it, after we are gone, with the cold touch of a residuary bequest? Moreover, experience shows that the first is the only safe method of giving. By a strange irony of custom we call a man's legacy his" wilL" But, as the history of such instruments goes, it would be truer to say that a legacy is an ingenious contrivance for getting one's will defeated. What humiliating swindles are perpetrated on welilthy Christians by this last-will-and-testament device! We well remember a millionaire to whom we ministered in sickness-an orthodox Christian, who trusted in the blood of Christ, and dreaded, more than anything that coulQ be named in his presence, that Unitarian denial that tramples on the atonement of the Son of God. But he was a bequeather instead of a giver; he made death his administrator; and Esquire Sepulchre so managed the estate that the bulk of it went to further what, during all his life he had most disfellowshipped and dreaded, and to defraud the missionary treasury of what he might and ought to have done for it. We recall another friend of evangelical missions whose large property, since his decease, has lent its entire support to a church of Free Thinkers. Such grotesque perversions of Christian funds must be the theme of infernal laughter among the dark spirits in perdition who are ever plotting to obstruct the work of the Gospel. The only remedy against ail this is for the Christian to be his own executor. In our giving, as in all things else, " God worketh in us both to will and to do;" not to will only, leaving others to undo after we are gone, and to thwart our most cherished intentions. The Christian's calling is to be beneficent rather than benevolent, a well-doer rather than a well- willer. So solemn is the obligation at this point that we desire to enforce it with all the emphasis of entreaty and persuasion which we can command. Whatever men may do, God does not "accept the will for the deed." On the contrary, those who bequeath to Him only the good intentions of their wealth may have to wait in vain and forever on the other side for their alms tf) come up " for a memorial before God." We believe th~t our Lord meant literally what He said when He gave the commandment, " Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth." To deposit our wealth in the safety vaults of this world, and expect the interest thereof to be remitted forward to us after we have entered into heaven is a delusive expectation, though thousands of Christians are aiming to accomplish this by the provisions of their wills. The Lord's requirement is that we lay up for ourselves" treasures in heaven," drawing interest therefrom now, in the joy of implicit obedience, and the peace of a good conscience, assured that when we are called home we shall go to our wealth instead of waiting in vain for it to come to us. We do not affirm that the Christian is forbidden to lay by anything in this world's banks. Here we must interpret Scripture by Scripture; and the solemn admonition of Paul concerning the Christian's duty to "provide for his own, especially for those of his own house," is by common consent taken to refer to a reasonable provision for one's family. But this provision should not be sumptuous if, indeed, we are " strangers and pilgrims on the earth." It should not be such as to secure either luxury or exemption from the necessity of labor for our children who come after us. "Having food and raiment, let lIS therewith be content," says the Scripture. This is the pilgrim's portion; and we may do well to secure this much to the aged or invalid of our families who may be left behind. But beyond this we are clearly forbidden to lay up on earth. "All men cannot receive this saying, save they to whom it is· given. " Blessed are they who can and do receive it, for such make a provision' for themselves and for their children, and children'l! children, of which the prudence of this world knows nothing.
If all disciples of Christ would give while they live, and give according as God has prospered them, what an impulse would be imparted to missionary work throughout the world! Edersheim, in his work upon the ministry of the Jewish temple, dwells upon the rigid requirement of the law that the offerer, in depositing his gift in the treasury of the Lord, mllst bring it " in his hand;" not in his purse, not by proxy-so sacredly personal was the transaction. In like manner, we believe, should Christians give-directly, and from a living palm, and not circuitously, or from dead fingers. To make death our almoner and the distributor of our gifts is a worldly and unsanctified custom, invented, we seriously believe, by Satan. Death's most intimate friend, in order to defraud the Lord of His dues, and to cheat thfl Christian out of his reward. Is it not distinctly stated in Scripture that" we must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ, that everyone may receive the things done in his body according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad ~" (2 Cor. 5 : 10). Why, then, should Christians so industriously plan that their ·best deeds should be done after they get out of the body ~ Is there any promise of recompense for this extra corpus benevolence ¥* "Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost ~" asks Paul. Let your worship of giving be carried on in that temple, then, and not relegated to the narrow house of corruption. "For whether is greater, the gold or the temple that sAnctifieth the gold g" asks Jesus. We press His question concerning the subject now under consideration. If our bodies have been consecrated by the indwell- ing of the Spirit, the wealth which they have earned has thereby been made holy unto the Lord. Then let that wealth be offered up upon the altar of a living heart, and by the agency of a living hand. Let it be personal, and not by proxy. Now, and for meeting the present exigency, le~ us cast our offerings into the treasury of the Lord; for the dying millions of our own day, let us give and give abundantly, singing as we do so, ., The grave cannot praise Thce; death cannot celebrate Thee; the Jiving, the living He shall praise Thee as I do this day."
II. Gifts for the Lord's treasury should have in them the element of selfsacrifice.
The temple of the Holy Ghost, of which we have just spoken-the believer's body-has its worship and its sacrificial offerings as truly as the Jewish temple. To the latter Sl)ripture distinctly refers in the injunction: " But to do good and to communicate, forget not: for with such sacrifices God is well pleased" (Heb. 13 : 16). The worship of giving is here plainly indicated. But there are methods of raising money for missions, very widely in use in our time, whose tendency is to eliminate the element of sacrifice from the gift, and to replace it with the element of luxury. Fairs, concerts, suppers, entertainments, festivals, etc., in which the principle is" somcwhat for something," or "pay your money and get your money's worth"-these are among the means in almost universal use in our churches for securing missionary funds. Cash is cash indeed; but is not a dollar worth more to the Lord when cast directly into His treasury, than when finding its way through the circuitous route of a church restaurant or an ecclesiastical fair ¥ Weare very bold to say it is so. And yet here is a principle of spiritual economics, so fine and far-fetched in the estimation of many Christians, that it needs to be very patiently expounded.
Why, asks a devout Christian housewife, may I not bake a loaf of cake and carry it to the church to be sold as my contribution to foreign missions, .. "We often read in the papers of • munificent bequests.' To my mind it is a phrase that has no meaning at all. I see no munificence in beqneathing your property to charitable purposes when you are gone out of this world, and have not the possibility of longer enjoying it. What I like tIl'e munificent donations."-Lord Shajtesbury. and in this way render just. as acceptable an offering as though I put my money directly into the contribution-box 1 But notice the needless in- direction of the gift. The frosting and flavoring of the loaf are skilfully adjusted to satisfy the taste of the eater, when in the true worship of giving the mind ought to be free to be occupied with God, to whom the gift is brought. The direct giver careth for the things of the Lord that she may renner unto Him an acceptable offering; the indirect giver careth for the things of the world-how flhe may please. her customer. Then when her loaf is sold, he who buys it gives nothing into the missionary treasury, though he mistakenly thinks he does. He simply makes a purchase so sweet to the taste and so satisfying to the palate, that self-sacrifice is com- pletely swallowcd up in self-gratification. Thus the charity, instead of being" twice blessed," has been twice defrauded-once by her who baked, and once by him who bought. It may seem like a fine-drawn objection which we are urging, oh, candid reader; but we must strenuously main- tain, nevertheless, that the widow's mite is worth vastly more to the treas- ury of the Lord than the widow's muffins. In giving, as in everything else, we are to take up our cross and follow Christ. We strongly believe that money sanctified by self-denial and prayer will go farther and buy more in the great missionary transaction than the same amount passed through the Church victualler's clearing-house. Sarah Hosmer worked in a cotton mill, lived in an attic, and prayed in her closet for missions; and when she died the Lowell factory girl rejoic6ld in six missionaries preaching the Gospel among the heathen whom her hard-earned money had pnt into the field. Does it not look as though the God who multiplied the widow's meal and cruse of oil in order to feed a prophet, did likewise with this working-woman's contributions that they should accomplish so much? Would that our churches might study the object-lesson in Christian giving, which the Salvation Army is holding up before them! The poorest of the poor, they have now and then thei~" month of self-denial" in which, by stinting their narrow living, they are enabled to put their fifty thousand dollars at a time into their missionary treasury. If for one year the icecream suppers and strawberrl festivals, which so abound in our churches, conld he abolished, and the aggregate of time bestowed thereon put into a month of self-denial, we question not that there would be an inpouring of sanctified offerings of which we have yet known nothing.
If we must speak thus of our luxurious methods of giving, what shall be said of our luxurious manner of spending 1 Leave out of the question now personal and family extravagance, and consider simply that of the Church. We have, on inquiry, found repeated instances of congregations spending five times the amount on quartet choirs which they give to missions. Commenting on this fact, not long since, in a missionary address in a large city, and giving instances of the extravagant cost of artistic choirs, a gentleman said to ns at the close: "You have understated it, sir; our church papl twenty-fiOe hundred dollars per annum for a single singer." On further inquiry it appeared that the same church gave less than three hundred dollars that year for foreign missions. Upon a recent Easter Sun- day it was estimated that the churches of New York expended one hundred thousand dollars on floral decorations for their sanctuaries. And all this in the face of a perishing world, with its thousand millions who have not yet heard the glad tidings that Christ is risen from the dead; and in sound of the cry which comes up from the fainting laborers on every missionary field for immediate reinforcements, and the reinforcements not sent for lack of money to support them. Worship, is this? We have an altar and a sanctuary. "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you q" writes the Apostle to the Church of Christ. But what are the sacrifices prescribed for this temple q "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye preseut your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is yonr reasonable service." Does this seem to enjoin the sweet odors of rose, heliotrope, and lily, floral displays of wreaths and crosses, and garlands procured at extravagant cost to minister to our carnal senses? As for the ecclesiastical mnsic, hear the Scripture again: "By Him, therefore, let us offer the 8ftcrifice ofpraise to God, continnally-that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to His name." Can the sacrifice of praise be interpreted to mean costly musical delicacies, dainties of song and sound iu which art has the first place and the thought of what is pleasing to God the lastl? We trow not. On the contrary, if it be true -as wise commentators suppose to be implied in 1 Cor. 11 : lO-that the angels are invisible spectators to the worship of the Church, we are constrained to wonder how they must be impressed by our sanctuary self-indulgences. Can we not easily imagine them shutting their ears to these voluptuous strains of sacred song, and holding their noses at these sickening odors of Easter flowers, and eagerly searching through the whole elaborate scene for the coveted opportunity of rejoicing" over one sinner that repenteth more than over ninety-and-niue just persons that need no repentance ?" If, as some are telling us, there is a lamentable decline in the giviug of our American churches, considering the vast and rapid increase in numbers and in wealth, the secret of the falling off is not difficult to discover. Ecclesiastical luxury is rapidly throttling missionary self-denial. It has come to be so generally accepted, for example, that paid singing of the highest quality within reach is absolutely indispensable to the success of a church, that many congregations have to lift to their utmost to meet this tax, and have comparatively little left for sending the Gospel t~ the heathen j and we predict that, just in proportion as this costly style of worship increases, our missionary resourceM will dry up. In the beginning it was not so. The Reformed Sects, as they are called-Presbyterian, Congregationalist, Methodiit, and Baptistall started out on the line of plainness and godly simplicity of Christiau life and worship. But as wealth has increased, they have, one after auother, yielded to the temptation of ecclesiastical extravagance, sumptuous churches,· sumptuous furniture, sumptuous music, till their original Puritanism is fast fading out. The Moravian Church forms a notable exception to this tendency. So far as we can learn, it has kept its primitive simplicity, and exhibited little tendency to ecclesiastical extravagance of any kind; and, as might be expected, it has not flagged in the missionary consecration that marked its early history. Let Christians of every name look for a moment at this impressive object-lesson. The Moravian Church sends out one of every sixty of its members to the foreign field, and raises twelve dollars per member annually for foreign missions. In contrast with this, look at the American Protestant churches as a whole. Their increase in financial resources within the last fifty years has been enormous. It is estimated that the evangelical Christians of the United States hold eight 'billions of wealth in their hands-an amount so great that it staggers our mathematics to compute it. Yet the highest estimate of their gifts for foreign missions which we have heard is twenty-five cents per head annually. Shall we invite all our churches to look at their little sister, the " United Bðren," to whom we have just referred, and humble themselves ~ We can present a more startling contrast than even this. China reports 32,000 native Christians, who gave, year before last, $38,000 for missionary work. Thus the Church of China, out of her deep poverty, gives annually more than one dollar per member for the same sacred object on which the billionaire Church of America bestows twenty-five cents per member!
Now, how shall we restore the element of sacrifice to our missionaT~T giving, and so lift our contributions out of the shameful parsimony which now characterizes them ~ 1. We must begin with ourselves, and set apart weekly a fixed proportion of our income, and hold it sacred to the Lord. When the Hebrew brought his gift to lay it on the altar it was his; but when he had withdrawn his hand from it it was God's; and thereafter it woul~ have been an unpardonable sacrilege to have devoted it to common uses. Christians will never give as they ought until they begin to keep two purses-one for their own necessary expenses, and one for the Lord's work-from the latter of which they would no more draw for their own use than they would purloin from their neighbor's pocket.
2. We must so increase the proportion and frequency of our Church contributions that it shall be seen that we regard missions as our principal business, not as an outside charity. We have constantly maintained that a church should at least raise as much annually for missions as she spends upon herself. But in order to do this there must be proportionate and weekly giving. The custom so widely prevalent of making an " annual effort" for the foreign work," and then shelving the subject for the year, is simply a humiliation inflicted upon the great commission. If we may speak of – our own experience in the pastorate, we have long since reached the ideal of an every" Sunday contribution for foreign missions, so that now, during the y"ear, no Lord's day passes without the claims of the heathen world being brought before the congregation, and an opportunity gi~en to contribute for sending them the Gospel. By this method it has been found possible to reach the other ideal mentioned above. And we cannot overstate the blessing which has come to the Church through the practice, not only in arousing and sustaining an interest in foreign missions, but equally in deepening the spiritual life of the membership.
3. We must lay aside the unsanctified methods now so widely in use for raising our missionary money. Luxury is a fatal foe to charity. Attempt to yoke the two together in the service of Christ, and the first will be sure to grow fatter and fatter, and the second to grow leaner and leaner as the years go on. Eating strawberries and cream in the interest of foreign missions stands in immeasurable contrast with foregoing butter and sugar for a season, as the poor" Salvationist" does, in order to save thereby to help the Gospel. The Bible knows nothing of the former method; it is full of encouragement to the latter. Let fast days take the place of feast days in our churches; let Christians set apart a week or a month now and then when they Ilnd their household shall live on the plainest diet, and so, by their abstinence, gain an extra contribution for the Lord's work. In the name of the cross and sacrifice of Christ, in the name of the fundamental law of Christianity, " Except a man deny himself and take np his cross daily," we plead whether this method is not likely to bring larger and more fruitful contributions into our missionary treasury than tha other.
4. We must return to the plain and primitive style of sanctuary services that characterized our early history.
The difficulty here is confessedly great. Ecclesiastical fashions are even more tyrannical than society fashions. Fine organs, stained windowil, elaborate architecture, and "frozen music," these modern accessories of Christian worship, have come to be regarded as so essentiaJ that he would be counted a bold innovator who should suggest that they might be .entirely disused. And yet we are bold to declare our belief that worship " in spirit and in truth," and singing" with the spirit and with the understanding also" are entirely possible without any of these things. We speak from the most positive knowledge when we say that the strain of keeping up with the fashions in such directions so .cripples many churches as to afford them a perpetual excuse for giving nothing, or almost nothing, to the cause of foreign missions. If it be asked : "And how about costly ministers 1" we will not wince under the question. "Even so hath the Lord ordained that they which preach the Gospel should live of the Gospel" (1 Cor. 9 : 14). But this can signify no more than an humble aDd modest support. It gives no warrant for sumptuous salaries or palatial parsonages, or the accumulation of clerical fortunes. * Is not the teaching of Church history sufficiently solemn on this point? And are there not tendencies visible among the ministry in our great cities which should occasion deep * Accompanying the announcement, a few years since, of the death of an eminent clergyman in the Church of England was the record that he left wealth to the amount of ninety tkO'lt8and pounds. Is this not a melancholy jnstification of the phrases, "The deceitfulness of riches" and "saint· .educing gold" ~ On the contrary, is not the saying of BiShoP Butler worthy of all approval, "I
HERRNHUT: THE HOME OF MORAVlAN MISSIONS
heart-searchings ~ Like priest, like people; and we have no doubt that our missionary contributions would soon reach the high-water mark if in every pulpit the Christlike humility of becoming poor in order to make many rich should reach the low-water mark. But we forbear, with only the added suggestion, viz., if, in any instances, affectionate congregations insiBt, out of their wealth, in paying inordinate salaries to their pastors, in spite of the unwillingness of these pastors to receive so much, there is a way of relief. Let what remains above a modest support be cast into the treasury of the Lord that the poor laborer in the Lord's vineyard may share his more prosperous brother's bounty.
In closing we beg to urge these three questions: If, as we believe. the carrying out of the great commission is the first and highest obligation of every Christian, ought not the Ohurch to forego the luxuries of worship at home in order that she may provide for the necessities of missions abroad?
If, as says the Talmud, "almsgiving is the salt of riches," is it not to be feared (haUl Ohristian8 wait to give their alms from a dead hand their salt will have lost its savor, and their riches, which might have been preserved, will become corrupted, and in turn entail corruption upon children and children's children?
If, as we believe, there is no second probation for the heathen who have died without hearing the Gospel, can we 1'easonably expect that there shall be any second probation for Ohristians who have passed through tltis life and done practically nothing to give the heathen the Gospel?
LETTERS FROM ABROAD.-II.
HERRNHUT: THE HOME OF MORAVIAN MISSIONS.
BY DELAVAN I". PIERSON.
Nestling in a little valley in Saxony lies the picturesque village of Herrnhut, the birthplace and centre of the modern Moravian Church. Here. more than one hundred and sixty years ago, came the first settlers, fugitives from the persecutions of the Catholic powers in Moravia, to seek a haven of peace and rest in which they could worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences, and in days to come grow into a centre from which to send the Bread of Life to all nations. The village is a quaint old town, and its inhabitants have the simplicity and honesty of quaint old Christians. Walking through its narrow streets one meets many a foot passenger walking leisurely along, and each one, man, woman, and child, utters a greeting of a kindly" Good-day." The children returning from school carry each a small knapsack on the back which seems quite in keeping with their usually grave demeanor. Everything is quaint, every- slwuld be ashamed of myself if I could leave ten thousand pounds behind me"? And onght not this example of Wesley to be kept before every minister of the Gospel, " When John Wesley's income was £30 he lived on £28, and gave two .. and when his income rose to £60 and afterward to £120, he Btilllived on £28, and gave all the ,'emainrle,' " ?- Vd. Strrmg'8 "Ou'/' Ooun/,'y," pp. 196, 198. thing is picturesque, from the long avenues of lime-trees, trimmed flat at the top, and the antiquated houses, to the canopied wagons passing along the one and the peasant people inhabiting the other.
On the afternoon of my arrival, I was shown through the old Schloss or Castle, where Count Zinzendorf, the patron of the first settlers, lived. It is now used as the farm-house for the estate, and in it are the conference rooms in which the" Unity's Elders' Conference" meets to discuss the methods for the government of the Church. Around a table are twelve chairs for the members of the conference. There is still in the old ink- stands the sand in use before the days of blotting-paper, and there is about the whole an air of the mingling of the ancient and modern which gives it both authority and practicality. Three of the elders compose the COlli- mittee to look after the educational department, three have charge of the financial, and three of the missionary matters j each separate committee has its secretary, and there is, besides, one for the whole body. The thir- teen compose the Unity's Elders' Conference for the general government of the Moravian Church, and all but the missionary committee compose the Provincial Elders' Conference for the care of the secular departments espe- cially. Each settlement has its own conference committee or conncil, but that at IIerrnhut is the chief. Its duties are especially to preserve the doc- trines of the Church in truth and purity, and to keep a general watch over all its affairs. They have the power to appoint missionaries to certain fields ' and to nominate ministers for vacant charge8 and offices. They are also in- spectors of education and trustees of the financial interests. The principal doctrines of the Church are: the natural depravity of man j the Divinity of Christ j the free atonement for our sins by tho death of Christ, and the sanctifying power of His blood j the operation of the grace of the Holy Spirit, and the fruits of faith; while the special emphasis is laid on the belief that" there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby ye must be saved" than that of Christ Jesus, our Lord.
Not far from the Schloss of Bertheldsdorf is the Lutheran church which the Moravians first attended after their migration to Herrnhut. It is a plain building, but one where they could" worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness," and it was here that the wonderful revival took place in 1727 . -August 13th-which thrilled the worshippers with a new life which has never died out, but has come down through a century and a half, trans- • mitted from father to son, and has enabled them to do a work which will never die out. The day is kept as a spiritual birthday and one for special thanksgiving and prayer. The church, too, is considered sacred, though they have long since erected a church of their own in Herrnhut. There was a service in the Moravian Church every evening during the Passion week. IIere come the Brethren and Sisters to hear the reading of the story of the death of our Lord, and to drink from the Fountain o{Life. The" Sisters" occupy one side of the meeting-house and the Brethren the other. It is interesting to see the small caps of the women and note the white ribbons of the widows, the blue of the wives, pink of the maidens, and red of young girls. The officers of each church are the pastors, deacons, and acolytes, and over these the elders, bishops, and co-bishops. The name of "United Brethren" was adopted by them about the middle of the fifteenth century, when, after the persecution following the death of John Huss, they left Bohemia and sought a home in the borders of Silesia and Moravia. They were then, as now, a people who denounce worldly amusements, and strive to live only for the glory of God and the good of their fellow-men. They made it the duty of individuals and families to preserve in its purity the worship of God, to banish idleness and worldly amusements, and to wear none but the most siniple dress. Afterward, in their dispersion through Prussia and Poland, their trials and persecutions for conscience' sake, till their migration to IIerrnhut, in 1722, they maintained much the same principles and habits of life. In a little grove not far from the village is a monument which marks the spot where the first tree was felled for the building of the first house for the settlers. It is marked with a short inscription and reference to Psalms 84 : 4, "Blessed are they which dwell in Thy house j they will be still praising Thee." With what thankful hearts must the Brothers NeiRser and their one or two friends have considered the prospect of a home under the patronage of the earnest Christian, the young Count Zinzendorf, and how gladly must Christian David have carried the news of this new" Fortress of God" to the Brethren in Moravia. There are now about a dozen Moravian settlements in Germany alone. Each has its own council, schools, church, and societies. They are all connected by a common bond of brotherhood. In many places there are houses of the Brethren and of the Sisters where each can find a good home if they have none of their own.
The cemetery, or, as the German beautifully puts it, the" Field of God," is a picturesque and interesting "pot on the Hutberg, near the town. Here, under the shade of immense lime.trees, lie the remains of Count Zinzendorf and the members of the Moravian Church. Each grave is marked by a small stone slab lying upon it, and each body lies with its face toward the east in readiness for the last awakening, when" joy cometh in the morning." Here, as elsewhere, the sexeR are separated; the graves of the Brethren being on one side, and those of the Sisters on the other of the central path. An odd appearance is given to the burial-ground by the t1attopped lime-trees which enclose the several parts like hedges, and in summer, when the leaves are out, have the appearance of immense walls of green. An observation tower crowns the summit of the hill, as though to remind the people that they are to be "ever watching, waiting, waiting till the Lord shall come."
But, to judge more clearly of the power for good which this Church has become, we must look at the missionary side of their work. Besides secular schools in many parts of the world, they have missions in all quarters of the globe. In the museum at Herrnhut are shown the curious articles gathered from the various mission-fields of the society. Here we find huts from Greenland and Labrador, with canoes and arrows from Africa; articles of dress and implements of warfare from the Indians of North, Central, and South America, and from Australia and Central Asia. The first missionary interest was awakened among the Moravians by the tales of distress of a negro from the ,VeRt Indies, who had come on a voyage with his master to Denmark. lIe told of his own dissatisfaction with an evil life, and of his struggle after the light without the help of a Christian teacher, and he pictured the neeufI of his countrymen so vividly that those who heard him decided that they would not keep their Gospel to themselves, but would carry it to those who had need. So it was, that in 1731 two pioneer missionaries were sent out-with the promise of protection from the Danish Government-one to Jamaica and one to Greenland. The story of trial and hardship of these two first missionaries is a thrilling one. In Jamaica they made themselves as one with the slaves, were suspected of treachery to the Government, and imprisoned; and it was only through the energetic action of Count Zinzendorf that they were again given their freedom. Now the mission work has grown, until there are forty-two stations, sixteen of whieh are settlements, aqd a new mission has just been opened in Central Africa. Each station seems to be prospering, being blessed of God. Periodicals containing accounts of the work of the Church are pub. lished in German, French, and English, and tell wonderful stories of the work of Grace at hom~ and abroad.
HERRNHuT, March 24, 189I.
[We add to this letter from Herrnhut an extract from letters written from Berlin, before leaving for Italy and from Florence] : .
" We went to the American Church in the morning, and enjoyed a very good, homelike service by Dr. Stuckenberg.
" In the evening we went to another meeting for Americans and Eng- lish, at his house, which is just around the corner from us.
" Mrs. Stuckenberg is a charming lady, and does a great deal of good here. .
" They need a church very much. The hall they have is only a very small one, and can only be had for Sunday mornings, so that their house must be used in the evening. The meetings are always crowded in both places; and only those who have been here know how Uluch is owed, by English-speaking visitors, to the Stuckenbergs. They go to any amount of tronble to make it pleasant and easy for strangers, and have a wonderful hold, especially on the young men, which is a great thing in a city so full of anti-religious influences as Berlin.
" The evening meetings were started in order to keep the people from the theatre; but the house is far too small to accommodate the crowds who come to them. The church seats are free, and the church is supported entirely by voluntary offerings. " They have now some twenty thousand dollars raised for a new building, but it will take sixty to buy the lot.
" Certainly the need is most urgent; and everyone who feels an interest in the endeavor to keep hold of young men, especially, should try to help on the cause.
"I wish that some of the people in America would take hold more readily and help to raise the amount needed immediately."
Of the Rev. Dr. J. II. W. Stuckenberg, pastor of this American United Church of Berlin, a recent issue of the London Christian World says: " He has charge of the American Church-and no pulpit speaks with manlier or Christlier voice-and most of the timc not taken up by spiritual duties is devoted to sociological studies. No man is able to speak with greater, few, if any, with equal, authority on the social questions which now agitate Germany, while no man brings to the consideration of the present day problems a readier ear, a kindlier heart, or a broader sympathy. The seed which he has sown by his pastoral discourse, and still more by his writings and his private influence, is having no insignificant part in the leavening of his country's pulpit!! and churches with the spirit of Christian socialism. In short, Dr. Stuckenberg is a man at once vf powerful intellect and large heart, of rare earnestness of purpose and lofty devotion to duty, whether as shepherd among flock, or as man among men, a man whom to know is to esteem and admire. "
This is high praise, but every word of it is richly deserved. ['Ve have another later co~munication from Florence, Italy.] Last Saturday evening I went to the opening meeting of the E.vangelical Alliance. The" Teatro Salvini," where all the meetings were held, was crowded, and we had a fine address from Dr. Geymonat, the President of the Florentine Reception Committee. Telegrams in English, German, French and Italian, were sent to King Humbert expressing the satisfaction felt by the Alliance that in the last fifty years such great changes for the better had taken p.lace in Italy, both in regard to the political and religious liberty enjoyed here. There were some interesting !!ubjects considered, and papers read by able men. There were meetings conducted in all the lan- guages, but the most were in English and Italian, though many French and Germans were present. The meetings were all well attended and interest- ing. It was interesting to hear the versions in the various languages of one and the same thing in the general meeti ngs, and I tried to see how much I conld follow in each of the four languages, and found I could tell of what they were talking, but not always exactly what they were saying.
In the farewell meeting on the last night, Signor Prochet spoke in six lan- guages-Italian, French, Spanish, English, German, and Dutch-and apolo- gized for not being able to speak in more. Everyone seems pretty well satisfied with the result of the Alliance. D. L. P.
FLORENCE, h,ALYr April, 1891, [With these" Letters from Abroad" the editor adds extracts from cor- respondence of Ernest B. Gordon, Esq., the beloved son of our co-editor.] " Everywhere I go I make it a point to visit missionaries, and to make inquiries as to the success and operation of missions. They are the be8tinformed men iu the East, because coming into closer relations with the people and residing longer in the country than civil officials or army officers.
"In Agra I met Mr. Jones, a devoted English Baptist, who sings Hindu music with Christian words, to draw the crowds, accompanying himself with the tambourine. He makes the criticism on his own missions in India, which might be made in regard to ours in Burmah-viz., a lack ofensemble and organization. There is too much individualism-not sufficient mutual understanding. The remedy would be the establishment of a lOcal board, with executive powers under the board at home.
" The Methodist Mission in Rohilkund and Lucknow is a wonderful one. They have snap and perfect organization; are baptizing about five thousand low caste Rohillas each year; have a powerful printing-house in Lucknow, and splendid schools for both girls and boys. The young women's school, which Miss Thoburn has charge of, is about to be raised to the grade of a college, able to grant B.A. degrees. Bishop Thoburn is the head and front of this mission.
" Things are loosening greatly in India. If you can get the first bricks out of a wall the rest will come tumbling down shortly. Mission work in India-in fact all work along progressive lines as well-has been prosecuted systematically only since the meeting closed, just a generation ago. Yet, in 1866, Sir John Lawrence, Viceroy, sa"id that the missions had done more for India thau all other benevolent agencies combined.
" By the way, Sir Henry Harrison issued an order recently, forbidding street preaching by missionaries in Calcutta. Only Protestants preach in the streets. Harrison is a Roman Catholic.
" The vice-regal board vetoed his mandate. The same spirit in Boston and Calcutta! Dr. Mabie met in Singapore a Spanish Protestant missionary to the Phillipine Islands, who had been driven out, his co-laborer having been poisoned. The same spirit in Manilla and Cuba! Rev. William Haslam, the evangelist, told me that he was convinced that the masked hand was behind the ritualist movement in England, and that he was sure that there were priests of the Romish communion who had received a dispensation to go to work in the English Church. I had a long and frank talk with a Jesuit recently, who expressed his satisfaction with the mo"ement, since it meant the certain disestablishment of that Church. He said that disestablishment would mean a general unsettling of Protestantism in England, and that then their chance would come. I think the upheaval would surely come, but I draw a flifferent conclusion as to the result. The High Church would be left high and dry. It depends now on State help. Contributions to missions from the Church MiRsionary Society (Low Church) are ploportionally, as well as in the aggregate, much greater than from the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (Ritualistic). The Protestant elements in the English Church would come out of the fire purged and freed from the present distracting element.
" While in Delhi, I met Mr. "Vhite, of the S. P. G., and other mem- bers of the Cambridge Mission-a brotherhood of six young men from Cambridge University. I wish you could have seen one of them preach. ing to the Mohammedans yesterday. To see a High Churchman preaching in the streets like an ordinary Plymouth Brother or Salvationist seems rather startling; but they are on their mettle in the East; they could make no progress if their Puseyism did not bend somewhat to Methodism. Day 'before yesterday there was a joint discussion in the yard attached to their bungalow between a Uohammedau mullah and Mr. La Froie, one of the Univcrsity men, at which three hundred Musselmans were present. Each had a half hour to start with, and fifteen minutes apiece for rejoinder. Everything was decorous; the fanatical followers of the Prophet kept their tempers lUuch better than ordinarily. Afterward the Christian apologist was invited to speak in a mosque! So there is some comity between the antagonistic parties in Delhi. These Cambridge men are fine fellows, cultured, zealous. Their influence has essentially modified the S. P. G. Mission here. That has generally a disreputable name for proselytism among Protestant bodies, etc. Here they have schools, with 1500 boys, and a college with 60 students.
[A letter dated April 11th ult., from Rev. Dr. Marshall Lang, a nephew of Rev. Drs. J. Marshall Lang, of Glasgow, Gavin Lang, of In- verness, J. Parsley Lang, of Sterlmg, and of Mrs. Dr. John Pagan, of Bothwell, Scotland, states that he has removed from Osaka to Kumamoto, Japan, where his address is care ef Rev. J. B. Brandram. He speaks highly of the Life of Dr. Neeshima, whom he calls" the apostle of Japan." We hope that an edition of the life of this remarkable man, who had so much to do with moulding the religious fulnre of the Sunrise Kingdom, will soon be published in this country. His conversion and career are among the most remarkable events in connection with that island empire which is the cynosnre of all eyes in this last decade of this eventful century.
Mr. Lang's sister has just gone out to China under the China Inland Mission, and is now training at Yang Chow. The Lang family, so well known both in Scotland and America, have a large representation in the Christian ministry and the missionary work. Their venerable mother was a woman of marked character, as her portrait indicates. Her sons have found their way to the pulpit, her daughters are preaching through their husbands, Drs. Pagan, Gloag, etc., and now the grandchildren are fast joining the same noble army of Christ's witnesses in the parishes at home and ;missions abroad. How much a sanctified parentage and home-life have to do with frling up the ranks of the ministry and the missionary host! That blessed mother has already nearly a score of preachers and' Christian workers among her children and grandchildreu.-ED.]
THE PRESENT CRISIS OF lIISSIONB
THE PRESENT CRISIS OF MISSIONS.
[EDITORIAL, A. T. P.] There is a great crisis in missions. But it is the result of the very successes, not failures of missions j and it is strange that thinking, intelligel't men should fail to see this, and that despondency and discouragement should exist where hopefulness and even thankful-ness arc the more natural to one who discerns the signs of the times. Growth always brings a demand for new conditions, new accommodations, new provisions. A growing plant must have larger space, more room j the old flower-pot must be discarded for a new and more spacious one. The growing boy must have new clothes j and often, too, the growing family a larger house, a better supplied table. A growing business needs new shops or factories, a larger stock, more hands, a costlier outlay. No sensible man ever finds fault with such increase, though it demands more care, more cost, more labor, more vigilance. How comes it to pass that when the Lord's work outgrows all past provision for its successful prosecution, demands more room, more men, more money, more churches, schools, colleges, preaching stations, Bibles, medical missions, etc., we should begin to be heavy-hearted because what was adequate ten years ago is entirely insufficient to-day g This is another anomaly and paradox in modern missions.
These crises of what we call danger and discouragement are, in fact, God's own challenge to new prayer, faith, heroism, and consecration. And if so accepted, they always introduce periods of unprecedented triumph. Let an example or two be adduced. At Tahiti, for sixteen years the missionaries, Mr. Henry, Mr. Nott, etc., seemed to have expende.d their strength in fruitless and hopeless toil, spending themselves for naught. Their tireless zeal, their constant journeys, their faithful testimony, seemed like blows of a feather against a wall of adamant. Not one conversion took place j the idolatries of the natives were an abomination, and their wars a desolation. The directors of the London Missionary Society seriously thought of abandoning the work. But there were a few who rightly read the lesson of this apparent failure. God was rebuking unbelief, and challenging faith in His unchanging Word of promise. Dr. Haweis sent another £200 sterling to the missionary treasury, remonstrating against giving up the mission. Rev. Matthew ·Wilks, John Williams' own pastor, said, with characteristic zeal and devotion: "I will sell my garments from my back rather than that this mission shall be given up j" and instead of a cowardly withdrawal, he proposed a special season of prayer for the blessing of the Lord of the han'Cilt. His proposal was accepted j letters of hope and encouragement were written to the disheartened laborers, and prayer went up to Almighty God with tears of sorrow for past unbelief that had made mighty works impossible. And now mark the result. While the vessel that bore these letters was on her way to Tahiti, the ship that crossed her track on the way to England carried the news, not only of a beginning of a work of grace, but of the entire overthrow of idolatry i and, with thelie tidings of the new Pentecost, bore also the rejected idols of that people! "Before they call I will answer, and while they are yet speaking I will hear." No promise was ever more literally fulfilled.
One more instance. In 1853, at Albany, the American Baptist Mis- sionary Union held its anniversary; and the question of the. abandonment of the mission among the Telugus in South India was discussed. Here again was a field without any adequate fruit of the long tillage. The missionary (Rev. Mr. Jewett), already there, refused to abandon the field, and Rev. Dr. S. F. Smith wrote a poem, unconsciously prophetic, " Shine on, Lone Star," etc.
Dr. J. E. Clough, then a civil engineer, went out to the" Lone Star" field. The famine of 1877 came, and his services as a civil enginecr came strangely into play in the completion of a half-built canal, by which hungry men got work, wages, and food. In the evenings Mr. Clough would gather his gangs of workmen and preach to them the simple gospel of John, 3 : 16 j then encourage the converts who accepted it, to go and tell the news to others. And 80 God used even famine as His evangelist. Next year, in one day, 2222 were baptized; in thirty days, 5000, and within a twelvemonth, 10,000. Here again it was darkest just before day. God withheld fruits to try the faith and persistence of His pAople. To have given up the work: would have been to have forfeited the greatest pentecostal harvest of all modern times. And it would seem as though juse now the Lord of the harvest is proving the faith of His own people; and if faith triumphs there is in store a world-wide blessing. . How shall such an exigency and emergency be met 1 We give answer that, first, there are great general principles which must always be kept pr:ominently before the mind. The tabernacle in the wilderness was a remarkable object lesson, setting forth, as Professor W. W. Moore says, " the terms and forms of communion with God." The terms were beautifully represented in the outer court, in the altar of sacrifice and the laver j one standing for the remission of sins through the shedding of blood, and the other for the renewing of the heart through the washing of regeneration. We come to God by the blood of Christ and by the new birth from the Holy Ghost. The Holy Place beautifully shows the forms of communion, with the three articles of sacred f~rniture, the candelabra, the table of shewbread, and the altar of incense. The Sermon on the Mount may give us the key to these three symbolic lessons: "Ye are the light of the world j let your light so shine," etc. "Take heed that ye do not your alms before men: let thine .alms be in secret." "Enter into thy closet j pray to thy Father which is in secret." These are the threefold forms of communion : a burning, shining light of testimony; a consecration of substance; and unceasing prayer. That is the way to prosecute missions. Let every child of God accept the privilege and duty of being Christ's witness to the world by lips and life. Let our offeringll, individual, sys- tematic, habitual, proportionate, constantly keep the Lord's house as con- stantly supplied with meat. And le.t us remember that, as the work and the power are God's, the only way to command success is to be unceasingly in prayer. A church universally witnessing to the Gospel; a church sYII- tematically giving; a church perpetually praying-that is the church per- petually conquering, before whose banners every stronghold of Satan must fall. And it is because in everyone of these departments, world-wide wit,nessing, church-wide giving and praying, there is such ,a lack, that our missions are hindered for want of laborers, our treasuries depleted of funds, and our missionary converts have become a thing of the past, especially in respect of earnest and prevailing prayer.
Particularly are we mortified at the decrease of gifts. Think of the great American Board announcing twenty per cent reduction in the appro- priations of the current year! And of the wealthy Presbyterian Church working for two years under the burden of an enormous debt, unable to expand, and even to maintain, without reduction and contraction, the work already in hand among the great unsaved peoples of the world I We must have, and we may hav~, greatly increased gifts. There is a financial basis of evangelization, and money must be furnished if men are to be sent into the field and supported in it.
Not.hing is plainer than this, that we have not yet begun to touch the possible, available resources of the Church. We have never yet, as we have often said, sacrificed even our luxuries and our superflmties. There is enough jewelry and ornament on our persons and in our homes to supply all the needful money for a world's needs. In 1867 one prominent Presby- terian paid as much for a lot on which to erect a house as the whole Board of Missions appropriated that year to its foreign work! If Christian men and women would imitate. the patriotism of the people of Germany in the Napoleonic wars, and give up their gold and silver adornments for the wars of the Lord, as those Germans did for the campaign of their country, what vast sums would be realized! Let us form a new "Order of the Iron Cross," and vow not to wear any more superfluous jewelry until the needs of a dying world are met.
And would to God that we might impress every member of the Church of Christ with the privilege and obligation of even the poorest to take part in this universal offering.· How many a poor seamstress might find, like Sarah Hosmer, the factory woman of Lowell, the means to lay up enough to educate six natives as preachers of the Cross in Oriental lands ! Yes, and how many a poor widow, like one of Rev. Dr. W. M. Paxton's humblest . members, might raise chickens on the roof of a city tenement house, and bring her five dollars a year to the missionary treasury! How many a work- ingman's household would find a way to lay aside a portion of every day's expenses, as the Ceylonese converts diminish their quantity of rice at every morning meal that it may be put aside as the Lord's portion! Self-denial ~ There are very few who know the meaning of the word. What we give to the Lord costs us nothing. We do not diminish our food, our raiment, our home comforts, or even our luxurious adornments, to give the Gospel to the world. We scarcely miss, if at all, the money given in missionary collections. With the majority there is no calculation of what the cause demands and what their own ability justifies. It is a mere chance, what the Lord gets as His portion. What if it were a mere chance what is reserved for house rent, or for food, or for clothing ~ Never will the needs of our mission treasuries be met until provision is made on a business basis, until we mako our honest reckoning with the Lord as to what His cause needs, and what we ought to do as our share-more than this, until we get some high conception of the duty, not only, but the privilege of laying consecrated offerings at the Lord's feet as Mary broke her alabaster box for His sake.
But, specifically, there is a duty which is particularly to be done in this critical and pivotal hour of missions. The Church must be set on fire with an intelligent missionary interest, a " zeal according to knowledge." vVe need a widespread information about facts, as well as principles, of missions. Disciples must become familiar with their duty as witnesses, and with that inspiration to duty found in the past triumphs and present demands of tho missionary work. And to whom shall we look for this educating process but to the pastors? ,Vhere did you ever know a burning flame of missionary zeal in a church whose pastor was cold and indifferent ~ He is generally the vestal whose hand lights and keeps burning the sacred fires. Give us a properly aroused, intelligent, active, spiritual body of pastors, and we shall have a new missionary era in the churches. Nay, we shall ha'e almost no need even of missionary secretaries, save as the mere channels of communication between the great body of churches and the mission fieM. The pastor, who is the most natural and the most effective pleader for any benevolent cause when his head, heart, and tongue are full, will become the self-appointed and omnipresent agent of every good work, and the Church will follow such lead as an army follows where its heroic captains lead the way.
During recent mission tours, I am sorry to confess that I have found not a few ministers of Christ who have told me that they" would not goad their people to more giving; it is all they can do now to get their own salary!" What a fatal mistake, not only for the Lord's cause, but for the minister's own interest! A people learns to give by giving; and the more they give the more and the easier will the gifts be. Selfishness grows by indulgence. The man who hoards and keeps, wants to have more and to give less. The man who learns to bestow finds the bliss of giving. and his purse-strings relax more readily as they are the oftener untied. The grace of giving ill one to be cultivated. Everything that restrains it tends to kill it. NothinK but constant care keeps such a delicate, sensitive, celestial 'plant alive. Many a man's salary comes b,aJ,'d because he does not train his people to appreciate the duty and luxury of an open hand, an open heart, and an open purse. But even were it not so, loyalty to Christ and His cause is our first obligation.
Missions stand vitally related to the Church. The very word is significant j it represents tltat whereunto the Church is sent. Thill is the savor without which the salt is good for nothing; this is the shining without which the light is no longer a light, but a burned-out lamp. Bishop Thoburn therefore says, that if the Church of God should deliberately determine to turn her back on a perishing world, and abandon her mission and commission, it would not be one hour before the Church would be swept from the face of the earth. We talk about the peril of missions at this crisis j it may be questioned whether the peril of the Church is not even greater. The salvation of the heathen hangs on the Church's fidelity; but what about the salvation of the Church herself ~ What if, with a thousand doors of access standing open, a thousand calls from Macedonia inviting, a thousand interpositions of God encouraging, a thousand victories over idolatry and iniquity inspiring, and a thousand voices of God sounding the trumpet call, " Advance !" we now turn back faithless, unbelieving, heedless, and leave the world to perish ~ There is a curious fact in botany. The exogenro receive their increase of matter by external accretions of outermost layers. Buds, which are the organs supplying materials constituting the stem, exist in the oxogenous plants in indefinite quantity, and so the destruction of one 01' more does not in the least imperil the life of the plant or tree. But in the endogenous growths, one bud alone keeps up the supply of matter needful to perpetuate plant life; the newly formed fibre descends into the innermost part of the stem, and hence any injury here is a fatal one. For example, if a large sea snail is. laid on the crown of the cocoanut tree and left there to rot around the tender sprout, or if with a stone the crown is crushed, the tuft of plume-leaves which adorns the top of the tree fades and falls, and the trunk stands leafless and barren, never more to sprout. The Church of God belongs to the endogenous order, and its solitary vital bud is the missionary spirit. Upon this depend its vitality, its energy, its fertility, its increase. And the blow that injures that bud is fatal to the whole tree. Kill the missionary work of the Church, blast her service for souls, destroy her delicate zeal for the perishing, and her life languishes and perishes also.
Once more we feel impelled to write that the charm of missions, to our mind, is this: It is God's march, through history; and he who is most engrossed with the work of giving the Gospel to thll destitute millions is therefore most closely linked ~ith God and in line with His march. The modern Enochs and Elijahs whose close walk with God invites translation, are the Careys, and Morrisons, and Livingstones, whose absorbing pas~ion is to win a world for Christ, and who join the Triune God in the holy walk and war.
Our Lord~ in His last command, accompanies the injunction, "Go ye into all the world," etc., with a remarkable preface and an equally remark- able conclusion. First comes that declaration: "All power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth;" then, last of all, stands that marvellous promise, " Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the age." Be- tween these two, and by no accident, stands the grand, perpetual command, "Go ye, therefore, and make disciples of all nations," i.e., because" All power is Mine, and My All-Presence is assured you all the days, go into all the world." You see, the logic of missions lies in that word" there- fore." And so far and so fast as the Church goes everywhere with the Gospel message, will that All-Power and that All-Presence be realized and manifested. For ourselves, we claim no wide acquaintance with the history or the progress of missions, but are rather oppressed with the sense of igno- rance. But all investigation of this great theme, whose very ext.ent baffies our utmost industry, hM left on the mind one overwhelming impressionviz., that the story of modern missions is, as the Bishop of Ripon finely intimated, a continuation of the .Acts of the .Apostles, with all its essential supernaturali8m. No exhibition of manifestly Divine power, no proofs of a peculiarly Divine presence, have ever been furnished mankind more unmistakable in their way than those found in this world-wide evangelism! The devout student of missions, and pr~-eminently the consecrated worker in missions, finds himself overwhelmed with evidences of a Providential interposition and a spiritual intervention which simply defy contradiction.
What a new era of missions would come to the Church of God if His people could but read these new chapters in the Acts of the Apostles, which prove God to be yet present and powerfully working in the missions of the world!
John Williams' progress through the South Seas was a triumphal maroh. There is nothing in the life of Paul as he went from Antioch to Athens, and from the Golden Horn to the Pillars of Hercules on his great commission, that more proves God's power than John Williams' voyages, from the shores of Eimeo to the fatal coasts of Eromanga. The missionary career of this Apostle of the South Seas extended over twenty-two years, from 1817 to 1839. In the course of these years he went like a flaming messenger of God with the Gospel torch, from island to island and group to group-Aitutaki, Atiu, Raratonga, Mangaia, Raiatea, Samoa, Eromanga -and one continued and unbroken series of successes crowned his labors,; island after island, and group after group, in rapid succession, came under the sway of Christ's golden sceptre, until he could calmly say, in 1834, " At the present time we do not know of any group, or any single island of importance, within 2000 miles of Tahiti, in any direction, to which the glad tidings of salvation have not been conveyed."
There is nothing to prevent similar triumphil in our day but the apathetic indifference of the Church. God is not straitened save by the unbelief and inaction of His people. Where is the trumpet to be found that shall sonD': a loud enough and long enough peal to awake God's sleeping saints?
THE YOUNG PEorl,E'S SOCIETY OF' CRlnSTIAN ENDEAVOR
THE RELATION OF THE YOUNG PEOPLE'S SOCIETY OF CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR TO THE ·CHURCH.
BY REV. F. E. CLARK, D.D., PRESIDENT.
It is a very agreeable task to write on this subject of the relation of the Young People's Society of Christian Endeavor to the Church.
The attitude of the society to the Church has been from the beginning so entirely and unequivocally loyal that there is nothing to explain away or apologize for. It is simply necessary to state the plain factI'. The society has alway;; spelled the Church with a capital C, and has written itself in small letters. It has existed from the beginning as a handmaiden of the Church, and has no other object or purpose in its life now that it has grown to be a vigorous and a large organization. Its yery inception shows its character, and the purpose which brought it into being. A church and pastor in Maine, after enjoying a season of revival which especially blessed the young people, were casting about for some means of training these young Christians, and thus fitting them for greater usefulness in that church. There was no other objeot contemplated. This purpose shaped the organization in all its parts. Its thought inspired the first constitution, which has since been adopted, in its essential features, by all the societies. It made much of the prayer-meeting pledge; it provided the two classes of members-active and associate-so that there might be a clear-cut dividing-line between the Christian and non-Christian young people; and it devised the different branches of committee work so that the young disciples might learn how to look out for each other; how to prepare for the prayer-meeting; how to provide for the social needs of all; how to enlarge and increase the efficiency of the Sunday-school; how to improve the music in all the serviceR of the Church; how to beautify the sanctuary with flowers on Runday ; how to look after the sick and t~r}e stranger within the gate.
If the so-called" model constitution" is studied, it will be seen that in every part, well-nigh in every sentence, it is designed for this sole purpose: To aid the Ohurch in looking after and in training its young people.
That same purpose which framed the' constitution has been adhered to rigidly, and every amendment and addition has been made with the view of cementing more closely this relationship.
Such sentences as these are continually upon the lips of the leaders of this movement: "Do not attempt to form a Society of Christian Endeavor unless the pastor desires it and sympathizes with it." " Wait until the Church doors are thrown open before you enter with the society." " Always yield to the wishes of your pastor and church officers in every particular, even if to you they seem unreasonable," etc.
For this reason Union Societies have' not been encouraged, since the organization is to work, not for the city, or town, or community as such, but for the local church. If there a!e~aQozen churches in a town there ought to be as many societies, one connected with each church, and working for and through the young people of that church.
It may be a very serious question whether there should be a dozen or half dozen, or even two churches in a particular town j but if, in the judgment of thll elders, so many churches are needed, then, on the same ground that a Sunday-school, or a prayer-meeting, or a missionary circle is needed, is a Society of Christian Endeavor needed in each church.
Because of this idea of absolute loyalty to the Church, so early ingrained into the movement, so steadily kept in. mind, and never obscured, the organization has grown with such marvellous rapidity from the one society with 60 members in 1881, to more than 14,000 societies, with over 850,000 members in 1891.
And yet all this time it has been vigorously asserted and reasserted by some that any organization of young people would necessarily draw away from the Church and create division between the old and young in the Church. Every now and then some good brother makes this discovery once again, and brings it forth, as though it had not been refuted by practical experience a thousand times at least during the last ten years. It is noticeable, however, that most of the brethren who make this discovery make it from the standpoint of theory alone. " They will never have such a society in their churches," they say, "which will draw a line between old and young, and keep the young people out of the weekly prayer-meeting." In hundreds of cases, when some friend has prevailed upon them to find out just what the society is and does, and to try the experiment for themselves, they have made, from the standpoint of experience, the far more pleasing discovery that their alarm was false and their fears unfounded, and that the society was a loyal and devoted helper of the Church.
A few facts in the later history of the society will show that it has insisted on this close union with the Church with ever-increasing persistence.
When the "model constitution" was ,revised in 1885 the following clause was inserted : "ARTICLE IX.-RELATION TO THE CHURCH.
"This society, being in closest relation to the Church, the pastor, deacons, elders or stewards, and Sunday-school superintendent shall be exofficio honorary members. Any difficult question may be laid before them for advice."
When I was called to leave my church in Boston to devote my time to this work as President of the United Society, I did so on the following condition, as given in my letter of acceptance to the societies. This letter was received as a kind of platform of principles, and, so far as I know, met with the approval of all the societies. The following are three of the principles upon which the acceptance was conditioned. As will be seen the first of all relates to its inseparable union with the Church: "First. The Society of Christian Endeavor is not, and is not to be, an organization independent of the Church. It is the Church at work for and with the young, and the young people at work for and with the Church. In all that we do and say let us bear this in mind, and seek for the fullest co-operatiou of pastors and church officers and members in carrying on our work. The Society of Christian Endeavor can always afford to wait rather than force itself upon an unwilling church.
"Second. Since the societies exist in every evangelical denomination, the basis of the union of the societies is one of common ioyalty to Christ, common methods of service for Him, and mutual Christian affection rather than a doctrinal and ecclesiastical basis. In such a union all evangelical Christians can unite without repudiating or being disloyal to lIny denominational custom or tenet.
"Third. The purely religious features of the organization shall always be paramount. The Society of Christian Endeavor centres about the prayer-meeting. The strict' prayer-meeting pledge,' honestly interpreted, as experience has proved, is essential to the continued success of a Society of Christian Endeavor."
Four years ago the motto, which has now very generally been adopted, was proposed to the societies: "For Christ and the Church." This has been inscribed on their banners, printed on their constitutions, engraved on their badges, and received by the societies universally as expressing their only purpose and design.
At the great Convention in Chicago the following amendment to the " model constitution" was proposed and accepted with great heartiness and unanimity: "Since it would in the end defeat the very object of our organization if the older active members, who have been trained in the society for usefulness in the Church, should remain content with fulfilling their pledge to the society only, therefore it is expected that these older members, when it shall become impossible for t~em to attend two weekly prayer-meetings, shall be transferred to the affiliated membership of the society if previously faithful to their vows as active members. This transfer, however, shall be made with the understanding that the prayer-meeting pledge of each affiliated member shall be binding upon him for faithful attendance and participation in the usual church prayer-meeting, instead of the society meeting. It shall be left to the Lookout Committee, in conjunction with the pastor, to see that this transfer of membership is made as occasion requires. Special pains shall also be taken to see that a share of the duties and responsibilities, both of the prayer-meeting and of the general work of the society, shall be borne by the younger members."
To show that this is not simply the opinion of an " interested party," I will quote the views of some eminent clergymen on this point-men who have tried the society in their churches, and speak of that which they do know.
These opinions might be multiplied indefinitely, and a whole issue of THE MISSIONARY REVIEW OF THE WORLD might be filled with such testi- monies j but these few will suffice. The first I will quote is from the Rev.
Wayland Hoyt, D.D., pastor of the First Baptist Church of Minneapolis: " I am frank to confess I have become an enthusiast in the Christian Endeavor movement, and the more I know of its principles and workings the more fervent is my enthusiasm. And for reasons like these: 1. Be- e·ause of the emphasis the movement puts upon the local church. Its beat- ing heart and centre is the special church with which the young Christian is in personal relation. The steady song of the movement concerning the local church is : • For her my tears shall fall ;' etc.
"No pastor, especially in the large cities, but must have often felt that there are frequent and great temptations nowadays presented to his young people for main service at some other centre than their own particular church home. "
The second is from Rev. C. F. Deems, D.D., pastor of the Church of the Strangers, of New York City: " An earnest pastor brings all his powers to bear upon stimulating all his people to employ their energies in the advancing of the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus. In this the young will be included, and probably the strongest stimulus will be administered to them, because they are young, in the freshness of their power, and in the morning of their life. When so stimulated, young people must have vent for their energies. If they do not find it in their own church they will find it elsewhere. In former years they have found it elsewhere. It is not to be deplored that they have worked outside the Church. It is to be deplored that work is not furnished them inside the Church.
" As a pastor, coming now to be one of the oldest pastors in the American Church, I hail the Young People's Society of Christian Endeavor with delight. Because of its being formed in the Church, by the young members of the Church, and finding its field in the Church by reason of its function as a training school, it will be repairing those wastes of the Church which necessarily occur by the aging of its members, by their removal to other parts of the country, and by their departure to the upper glory."
Here are one or two more similar testimonies, which perhaps will fill all the space which can be allotted to them in THE MISSIONARY REVIEW OF TH~ WORLD; but if others of a similar nature are desired, they can be furnished by the thousand from well-known pastors in all evangelical denominations.
Says· Rev. John H. Barrows, D.D., pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, Chicago : " The happy marvel of Christian Endeavor work is its surprising success. It is thoroughly adapted to the Christian training of the young, not only in prayer and testimony, but in all wholesome social life and in benevolent activities. It is so completely identified with the Church that every pastor in the land should welcome its aid in advancing his own church's welfare. This new movement in modern Christianity, springing from the soul of a consecrated pastor, deserves the most grateful co-operation on the part of the pastors. Guided as its national and international development is by wise and broad-minded men, the path of its future progress appears luminous with splendid victories for Christ. "
Says Rev. A. J. Gordon, D.D., pastor of the Clarendon Street Baptist Church, Boston : " Christian Endeavor has done much to solve the difficulty with us. It has turned the energy and activity of our young people into a better channel. Instead of amusement, it is now solid Christian service. Instead of a laborious effort to draw in by questionable entertainments, there is now a diligent and earnest going out to bring in. A little channel of Christian effort has been opened, and it has been clearly demonstrated that there is nothing that attracts like the earnest and hearty meetings in which our young people pray and sing and bear witness for Christ. The society has done us excellent service in just this way."
The recent history of the society may be summarized in a few sentences. It has been marked by a more extraordinary growth during the last few months than ever before. Last June there were found to be 11,013 societies, with 660,000 members. On January 1st, 1891, there were known to be 13,068 societies, with 784,000 members, and now, in the middle of March, there are over 14,500 societies, with 870,000 members. The growth seems to be as healthy as it is rapid, and the testimonies from pastors and other Christian workers are continually more and more encouraging in regard to the downright spirituality of the young people and their fidelity to all forms of Christian service. The conventions have from the beginning been most notable gatherings, the Convention at St. Louis, in June, 1890, being the climax of all that had hitherto been held, when something like 8000 young people came together from all parts of the land, and the whole tone of the meeting was productive of the deepest spirituality, and was calculated to send the young Christians home to do better work in their own churches than ever before.
The idea of fellowship also has evidently been coming to the front, and while it is no part of the work of the Christian Endeavor Society to break down or weaken denominational lines, it has a mission, I believe, in bringing young disciples together for an interchange of views, and for a most delightful interdenominational fellowship.
The celebration of the foundation of the first society at Portland, February 2d, 3d, and 4th, 1891, which marked the close of the first ten years of the Christian Endeavor movement, was in every way a notable gathering. Something like 1800 delegates were present, and the spirit of profoundest thankfulness to God for His blessing upon the work of the past ten years, and an earMst reaching forward to better service in the future characterized the gathering from the beginning to the end. Thousands of young Christians are now looking forward to the International
THE EPOCH Oi' ORGA'NIZATION. 00'7
Convention at Minneapolis, which will be held next July from the 9th to the 12th of the month. It is expected that this will be the largest, and, it is hoped, the most profitable and soul-stirring meeting that has yet been held. If it proves to be like the conventions that have gone before, it will bring a revived spirit of consecration to hundred!! of churches, and will lead thousands of young disciples to devote their lives more fully than ever before to the work of " Christ and the Church."
THE EPOCH OF ORGANIZATION.
The foregoing article was prepared by Dr. Clark at the request of the editor. He cannot fo: bear to add to this record of one of the most startling developments of the age, that this seems to be the epoch of organization.
During the last half century the Young Men's Chri8tian AS80ciation, Young Women's Christian Association, Women's Christian Temperance union, guilds of all sorts, women's foreign and home missionary boards and societies, Helping Hand, and numberless other similar organizations ~ave sprung into being and multiplied with unexampled rapidity; and none have shown such amazing vitality and reproductive force as the Christian Endeavor movement. The hand of God must certainly be in this. He means that all this organization of individual power in association shall be the signal for new advance along all the lines of missionary work, at home and abroad.
We are particularly glad to see that the Young People's Society of Christian Endeavor have begun systematir, work for missions. The greatest peril is that of prosperity. Numerical growth, popularity, enthnsiasm, rapidity of expansion-all these are the snares of the devil to betray us into self-complacency and selfishness. To have an object outside of ourselves and sedulously labor for the salvation of the lost is God's antidote to all destructive and hurtful tendencies.
In a prominent community of New York State, in 1866 and 1867, there developed suddenly a temperance organization which attained such amazing popularity that at least one third of all the best people in the town were actively identified with it. In fact, it became a reproach not to be, for the ontsiders were left in bad company. At that time there was such power resident in that organization that by simply acting together, every drinking saloon conld have been swept ont of existence, for the laws were such that they had but to be enforced to banish the grogshop. Hitherto few had dared to prosecute because there was not sufficient backing to insure immunity from personal revenge. But now, with a temperance organization numbering 800 active members, and embracing the foremost men and women of the community, the drink-venders began to tremble, and some actually left the town for fear of coming prosecutions!
Just at this time a sudden discord in the organization developed into division and hopeless disintegration, and the grand opportunity was lost and never has been regained. In face of a united foe the temperance host split hopelessly, and the grave question that was the wedge of division was this, wheth,er they should use an organ or a piano to lead the singing at the meetings!-[EDITOR.]
THE OPIUM CURSE
THE OPIUM CURSE.
BY JAMES E. MATHIESON, ESQ., LONDON, ENGLAND.
During three days, March 9th, lOth, and 11th, 1891, a Convention wall held in London by Christians from various branches of the Church, includ- ing delegates from Ireland, Scotland, and the Provinces, and a representa tive from Holland, concerning the awful traffic in opium which is bringing a curse home to millions of our race in the two most thickly peopled countries on this globe-China and India-as well as in Burmah, the Straits' settlement, and the Dutch colony of Java. Happily the Empire of Jap'an has been saved from the devastation which has been wrought in the countries we have named, and which year by year is spreading further.
It is on record that the infamous Warren Hastings, first Governor-Gen- eral of India under the old East India Company, sent a private venture of 2000 chests of the drug to Canton. In referring to the great crime which Great Britain has now so long and so persistently perpetrated against China, be it remembered that it differs in toto from the accursed drink and gunpowder traffic with Africa, inasmuch as the latter is carried on by private individuals or by trading companies, for whom Government has no special responsibility. It is unlike our drink traffic at home, inasmuch as our Government does not grow barley or hops, nor carryon breweries or distilleries, nor sell their products; on the contrary, it taxes these heavily, and puts certain restraints upon the licensed vendors of strong drink. But in India the Government advances money to enable the ryots to grow the poppy, receives and manufactures the juice into opium for the market, takes care that in quality it has the proper " smack" to make it far preferbIe by consumers to the coarser article prepared in China, sells it at public auction in Calcutta, and makes it, in fact, a Government monopoly, from which it derives a net revenue of about five millions sterling, or twenty-five millions of dollars annually. Vast breadths of land in every province of China are now devoted to poppy culture, where not so ,very long ago rice and other cereals were grown; and in days to come this state of things may aggravate intensely the oft-recurring Chinese famines. But the increase of production by the Chinese has diminished the consnmption of Indian opinm in China; and therefore the Indian Government, by an inspiration which comes from the pit, has been creating a taste for the drug and extending the area of human misery and utter destruction by the issue of licenses for the sale of opium all over India and in Burmah. Remonstrances and motions in Parliament have heretofore failed to move successive Secretaries of State for India to face the question of replacing this revenue, wrung from the vices of Chinamen, and now of our fellow-subjects in India ,and Burmah ; nor have the long-continued endeavors of the Anti- Opium Society succeeded in arousing the consciences of Christians to a sense of the awful wrong we are inflicting on' peoples who have done us no injury j indeed, the ignorance and apathy upon the subject throughout the churches it is woful to contemplate. The conveners of the Convention just closed felt that their resort must be to the arm of the Almighty, as there seems no hope but in His mighty help, in attempting to overthrow this gigantic evil. There may be-let us hope there is-in Great Britain sucl1- a sufficient reserye of moral force as, if aroused, would triumph over all the obstacles in the way: the non possumU8 of Government officials; the vested interests and prospective interests of the vast number of families who have relatives in the civil and military services of India, or are looking forward to occupy such posts. But, as John Bright once said, " It cannot be expected that India is forever to remain a rich pasturage for the younger sons of British families." The probable sacrifice which must be faced on this side to fill up the void, were the opium revenue to be cut off, in increased income tax at home, will make unpopular the effort to shift the burden from India to England j and it is to be remembered that India is already taxed to the utmost eapacity of her people, multitudes of whom are always on the verge of starvation. These and other difficulties in the way of those who go for the total abolition of the iniquitous traffic, led the committee to dedicate the first four sittings of these three days to prayer j and we had a precious outpouring of heart in each of those four meetings, men and women spontaneously risiug, one after another, with no cessation, except while the Honorary Secretary read, in each of the meetings, letters from various parts of our land expressing the deepest sympathy with our purpose, and giving thanks for the pamphlets and appeals which had been mailed to 45,000 ministers of all denominations during the month of February, calling attention to our country's shame, and the curse wrought in the great Asiatic empires by our wrongdoing. The prayer-meetings were followed by four meetings for open conference, in which there were no < discordant notes, and much valuable information was elicited. The closing meetings (in two halls) the last night were addressed by notable speakers. A resolution was passed in the closing meeting of conference, appointing an Urgency Committee of Seven to carryon the 'war, and calling for £20,000 to provide the sinews. Before the break-up on the last evening, two donations of £] 000 each had been promised. It should be mentioned that the whole of the meetings were held upon the premises of the Friends' historical meeting-house in Bishopsgate Stre~t without j and it was inspiring to stand within walls where Elizabeth Fry and generations of the Socicty of Friends had met in conncil to agitate against great wrongs, as well as to worship God in spirit and in truth. One of the rooms lent to the committee is that in which " the Committee for Sufferings" was wont, in a past age, to meet, to consider the claims of those who were persecuted for righteousness' sake, and to help the families of such as went to prison and to death rather than deny the name of Jesus.
May we claim from American Christians much believing prayer for the speedy and complete success of this new endeavor to rid our country of this dark blot, and to deliver millions in the far East from the temptation to the fatal indulgence in the opium habit? It may be that some of the Lord's stewards will come to our worthy Honorary Treasurer's help in this crisis; his name is George Gillett, Esq., 9 Birchin Lane, E. C., London.
Some friends of Israel, in London, lately tried to gain access to the Czar of all the Russias with a petition that he would not oppress the ancient people of God. I wish your President, Senate, and House of Represent- atives would memorialize our gracious Queen about our oppression of Asia's millions with this bondage of opium; it is to be feared that her Majesty does not know that she is, as Empress of India, the greatest poison manu- , facturer the world has ever seen.
And now let me give you a few reflections upon God's moral govern- ment of this wicked and rebellious world. It is a trite observation that while men individually have to answer to God for their 'sins, here, in the world that is to come, nations are judged and dealt with in this age. Some of us are old-fashioned enough to lament tne abandonment of days of humiliation and days of thanksgiving, which characterized the more rev- erent ages which preceded our own. But whether men acknowledge God's intervention inhuman affairs or no, Christians are forced to see, by His Providential dealings, that" verily there is a God that judgeth in the earth." Where, some one will say, are the wars, and famines, and pesti- lences which have afflicted Great Britain as judgments on her persistent crime in the matter of opium ? Well, it might be answered, look at the Afghan War and Kyber Pass disaster, and later on, the Indian Mutiny, as God's rebuke of this national crime; or the repeated Indian famines; these together swallowing up as much revenue, perhaps, as we had unholily gained by our opium manufacture and sale. But calamities far away in India do not burn into the souls of people dwelling at home at ease, and I think we must go deeper than this. The Almighty and wonder-working Jehovah has other plagues wherewith to chastise the impenitent nations- plagues which touch, not so much persons or property, but which affect tl,e moral and spiritual sphere of human beings, and determine their eternal destinies. And I note, and ask your readers to note, some ominous conjunctions of dates which, to my own mind at. least, carry the conviction that their mention cannot be dismissed by the customary post hoc non propter hoc, but that the finger of God is here. In 1840, the year of our first Chinese war, we compelled the Government of China to pay the cost of the opium they had right~ously destroyed, and 'to give us the cost of the war besides; by superior force and weapons we easily overcame this partially civilized people, and compelled their submission to an awful injus, tice. In 1841 there appeared an ecclesiastical portent, a cloud no biggel than a man's hand, in the issue from Oxford of "Tract No. 90," whi'ch wast he prelude to the deluge of ritualism and Romanism, which, after its course of just fifty years, now threatens to submerge the once Protestant Church of England. Be it marked well that this spread of sacerdotalism and sensll,OUS ceremonial" and the substitution, of the ChuIch in the NOm of Christ has chiefly been among the governing classes in our land. What next? In 1857 we had our second nefarious war with China. Lord Palmerston, then Prime Minister, was defeated in the House of Common~ in a debate concerning this opium war, * appealed to the constituencies, and was restored to power by a great majority. The middle and lower classes thereby endorsed the crime, and made it their own. What followed ~ In 1860, scarce three years later, appeared another sign, not in heaven, but from beneath, in the publication of the celebrated" Essays and Reviews." From that time there bas spread and spread, like a canker throughout the nonconformist churches of Great Britain and among the middle and lower clasaes, the spirit of insidious unbelief, undermining the authority of God's Holy Word in this once favored land of Bibles, putting a diminished value upon the atonement of our blessed Saviour, and giving rise to all sorts of unscriptural views about human destiny. Our' old supremacy among the nations rel:ted upon tbe moral and ,religious character of the people, and that character was formed by implicit belief in, and reverence for, God's Holy Word; when these are abandoned, our national characteristics disappear, and our strength will depart from us. " Verily there is a God that judgeth in the earth!" There are hundreds of ministers in our land to-day who, deluded them!!c1vcs in their religious beliefs and disbeliefs, are unconsciously" the scourge of God" in leading multitudes into similar delusions, inflicting judicial blindness, as the plague upon us for our crime and impenitence. Accompanying the eclipse of faith is the corruption of morals, the introduction of the gospel of amusements, multiplication of theatres, and the spread of gambling; the Lord looks down from heaven to see if there be any fresh green thing for His holy eye to rest upon; but" That which the palmerworm hath left hath the locust eaten; and that which the locust hath left hath the c'ankerworm eaten; and that which .the cankerworm hath left hath the caterpillar eaten" (Joel 1 : 4).
Yet there is hope. If we repent of our sin and forsake it, and attempt to make some restitution to China and put an arrest upon the plague in India and Burmah, God may still make this" a delightsome land," where His glory may dwell and shine forth brightly through His people. "I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the cankerworm, and the caterpillar, and the palmerworm, my great army which I sent among you" (Joel 2 : 25). Brethren in America, we are in an evil case. Pray for us! We need your prayers.
But why this statement and appeal in a missionary magazine 1 Because the opium vice, and, back of that, the cultivation, manufacture, and sale of opium, is the most gigantic stumbling-block in the way of the Gospel of the blessed God our Saviour. In India, Burmah, and China, American missionaries and British with one consent will concur in giving this testimony. It is one of the devil's masterpieces. "He knoweth that he hath but a ~hort time" (Rev. 12 : 12) ; and, as one fal5e system of religion after * Among the opponents of the war were John Bright, Richard Cobden, and W. E. Gladstone. an'other begins to totter to its fall, the arch enemy of God and of man de- vises some new and insidious snare for the race of Adam. It would be well worth the while of all mission boards in Protestant countries to con- centrate attention upon this great crime of Great Britain, to create a public opinion which would compel its termination; it would be well worth the while of all the temperance associations in Great Britain to throw their energies into the anti-opium war, if only to secure the subsequent blessing upon their home endeavors to overcome the drink interests. J. Hudson Taylor, of China, a man who" dwells in the secret of God's presence,"
remarked to a friend some years ago, "I,do not think your temperance crusade at home will triumph until you have redressed the wrong done to China in the matter of opium." This witness is true. What says the prophet Isaiah 1 "When ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you; yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood" (Isa. 1 : 15). Hear the psalmist's cry, "Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, 0 God, thou God of my salvation: and my tongue shall sing aloud of Thy righteousness" (Ps. 51 : 14). Why is there so much barrenness in the churches at home 1 Why such very partial success in philanthropic endeavor 1 Why are the results even on the foreign mission fields so incommensurate with the expenditure of human life and energy, and other outlays 1 "Your iniquities have turned away these things, and your sins have withholden good things from you. . . , Shall I not visit for these things 1 saith the Lord; shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this 1" (Jer. 5 : 25, 29). There has been a guilty silence in the pulpits of our land; for very shame men may have shrunk from dwelling on the dreadful theme; we have to knock away all props, such as apathy and ignorance of the subject, which have enabled our rulers to persevere in a course of criminality and injustice; and we go into this new campaign with trust in the living God, with appeal to all true-hearted men and women, and with resolve to spend and be spent in this holy, just, and patriotic effort to clear ourselves and our fellow countrymen from the shame and the sure punishment of the opium traffic and its base motive-the creation of revenue by the degradation of millions of the human family.
[The writer of the above article is the well-known ex-superintendent of the Mildmay mission work in London. Few men in Great Britain are better known or more loved. For many years he presided over the many departments of evangelistic, missionary, ho~pital and other work, of which Mildmay is the centre. There, in the heart of the world's metropolis, is the great. Mildmay Hall, seating its three thousand people, consecrated by countless gatherings, and especially famous for its June meetings. All about it are its hORpital, deaconess houses, school-rooms, etc., all in a roomy and convenient park. Mr. Mathieson tore down the old garden houRe and built a new and more commodious one, which with characteristic self-forgetfulness he put at the disposal of his successor, as he retired from his arduous labors. And now he is devoting tongue and pen to the advocacy of everything good. We commend not only the foregoing article to our readers' careful examination, but likewise the organ of this new protest against the opium traffic, to which Mr. Starbuck refers, " National Righteousness," which with no uncertain sound thunders out its remonstrances.- Eo.]
THE MIRACLES OF lIlISSIONS
THE JHRACLES OF MISSIONS.-NO. XIX.
MIDNIGHT ON THE HAWAIIAN ISLANDs.-I.
[EDITORIAL, A. T. P.] The popular name, "the Sandwich Islands, "was given by James Cook, who discovered them in 1778 ; but the proper name, which alone is used by the inhabitants, is " Hawaiian," derived from the lar~est of the group. They lie midway between Panama and-China, and their united area is about 60,000 square miles.
Their origin is volcanic, and coral reefs are found along the coast. The vessel that enters the fine harbor of Honolulu takes shelter in one of these coral reefs; the sloping walls which enclose this bay were built by the slow labor of centuries, and the builders were innu;:nerable minute zoophytes.
The tragical fate of Captain Cook in 1779 for seven years kept vessels from touching at the islands, but in 1786 Captains Dixon and Portlock stopped at Oahu, and La Perouie visited Maui.
Kamehameha was then king, and his settled policy favored foreigners. When the natives on the west shQre of Hawaii plundered a vessel and slew the crew, sparing the lives only Qf Isaac Davis and John Young, the king took them under hi!;! protection and subsequently admitted them to the eouncils of the nation.
Vessels were attracted to these shores partly to obtain sandal-wood, for incense to the idols in Chinese temples; and thus these idolaters contributed to idolatry elsewhere. Of course the features common to idolatry were found among the Hawaiians, and human sacrifices were customary, especially in case of the sicknes~ of a monarch; and, when Kamehameha would not permit th~m, three hundred dogs were offered at his funeral obsequies. The islands were filled with wailings ; the people shaved their heads, burned themselves, knocked out their front teeth, and both sexes, young and old, gave free reiu to their bad passions, in robbery, lust, and murder.
Idolatry here was of the lower order; the idols were of their own making, roughly and hideously carved in wood and in stone. Again were the significant words of Scripture fulfilled: "They that make them are like unto them," for the Hawaiians had become almost as stupid and senseless as the images they worshipped.
Kilauea, the great volcano, was among their gods. Its crater is 4000 feet above ~ea-Ievel, and 10,000 feet farther is another active crater, not connected with thill, which is three miles in diameter. Jets of scalding steam may be seen all over the field, and the burning l"ke rises and falls as the mighty power beneath heaves the molten mass, whieh every now and then swells into a vast dome, or is tossed up in jets from 60 to 80 feet hig.. Here the god Pele was adored with prayers and offerings. When the volcano poured forth its rivers of fire the wrath of Pele was no longer tf) be restrained j and when the seething crater wa~ comparatively quiet. he was appeased. Kalaipahoa, the poison god, was made of wood, curiously carved into hideous deformity; and no idol was so dreaded save the deities believed to preside over volcanoes. All deaths from poison were traced to his malign power, and even the wood of his image was believed to be poisonous.
The war god, Tairi. was borne in war near the king's person. It was about two feet high, of wickerwork, covered with red feathers, and having a hideous mouth. Lono, another of the most popular and powerful idols, consisted simply of a pole with a small head on the end, probably carried in battle. One of the largest temples was dedicated to this god. It was over 200 feet long and 100 feet broad, and built of lava stones, and upon it stood the idol, surrounded by images of inferior deities. Thilil temple still stands, a melancholy monument to what the Hawaiians once were. There was the court of idol deities; there they met for superstitious worship and licentious festival. There they poured out human blood and burned the flesh and fat of human sacrifices, every humane instinct blotted from their natures by ages of increasing degradation and deterioration.
No intelligent view of the heathenism of the Hawaiians can be had without a knowledge of the tabu system of restrictions and prohibitions, inseparable from the national idolatry, and embracing sacred places, persons, and things. To violate these restrictions was a capital offence. A husband could not eat with ~is wife, nor could women eat certain choice articles of food; and those whose high social position could defy the death penalty were threatened with the wrath of the gods. What was enjoined or prohibited was more tyrannically trivial than the injunctions of the ancient Pharisaic code; yet their very insignificance made them more intolerably oppressive. The tabu laws left the people at the mllrcy of a corrupt priesthood, and under a yoke of the most galling servitude, destroying personal liberty.
Ignorance of course prevailed. The Hawaiians knew not the meaning of a grammar, a dictionary, or a literature, and the simplest operations of arithmetic were inexplicable mysteries. Ignorance is the mother of superstition as it is the twin sister of idolatry. The ignorance of the Hawaiians was as extreme as their idolatry was degrading. They were savages without the Gospel. They lived in grass huts, and were almost destitute of clothing; the arts and sciences were unknown to them beyond thoae which are most primitive and essential to the preservation of life. Even language often shows the degrading influence of idolatry. As a people sink into depths of moral ruin, they lose higher and more spiritual ideas, until they have no longer any words with which to aSllociate elevated and ennobling sentiments. The missionaries to the Pacific Isles found no word to express thanles, as though gratitude were unknown; and many other instances might be given showing the influence of idolatry upon language.
The influence of superstition could be seen conilpicuously in the treatment of disease by native doctors, and the apprehension of being prayed to death, implying a belief in a species of witchcraft. The most absurd and foolish notions had all the importance of most certain facts and most weighty issues. The people lived in terror of their own thoughts, and malignant influences were believed to be all about them, shaping them and their destinies as by an inexorable fate.
It is but seventy years ago since there was one ruler, and his word was law, and his beck determined even life and death. If a chief placed a stick of sugar-cane in the corner of a field, not even the owner himself dared take his own crop away. If a person refused to obey his chief, or perform any service, his house might be burned, and his family left deititute. Hawaiians were ruled with a rod of iron.
There were formerly two cities of refuge on Hawaii, to which all might flee even to escape the penalty of crime, and those gates were never shut except against the pursuer. Thus even the provisions of mercy favored the destruction of all equity and justice. Mercy meant leaying crime to be unpunished, and sometimes even rewarded. Guilt was no assurance of penalty, nor innocence, of security. There were no forms of trial, no judges, juries, nor courts of law. The chief was sole arbiter of destiny.
Vancouver's visit and sojourn at the Hawaiian Islands (1792-94) marks an epoch. He was sent out by the British Government on a voyage of exploration, and introduced domestic animals, such as goats, sheep. and cattle from California. He had been with Captain Cook on his fatal visit, and found the population greatly decreased since the time of his first landing. As this could be accounted for but in part by the war'! in the early part of Kamehameha's reign, some deadly influences were obviously at work.
Among these were two-intemperance and licentiousness, which had been in a large measure introduced by so-called civilized foreigners. It was these vessels from Christian lands that touched at the Hawaiian group and first introduced there the damnable liquid fires of alcohol, and whose licentious crews first made the harbors of Hawaii the hells of the most abandoned and shameless vice.
Infanticide was also the fatal plant growing in the death shade to destroy the very existence of the nation. With the exception of the higher class of chiefs it was practised by all ranks of the people. Few parents spared more than two or three children, and many allowed but one to live. Shortly after birth, or during the first year, two thirds of the native children actllally died a violent death; and many different methods were used, some of which proved fatal to the mother also. Having failed, through lack of a " higher civilization," to nnderstand the modes of prenatal murder so common in Christian lands, the poor Hawaiians had no alternative but to permit nature to bring to birth, and then to strangle, or bury them alive. Think of a mother thrusting into the mouth of a helpless babe a piece of tapa to stop its cries, then deliberately digging a hole in the earthy Hoor of her hut within a few yards of her bed, and of the spot where she ate her daily bread, and there burying alive her own child! And for no other motive than to indulge indolence, or save the trouble of bringing the child up!
Parents were wont thus to put out of the way not only weak and sickly children, but even the brightest and healthiest. During the forty years, between 17';8 and 1818, the population had decreased from 400,000 to 150,000, nearly two thirds, so that a nation 'Was saved from extinction by the gospel, for in twenty years Illore, at the same rate of decrease, the Haw- aiian Islands would have been an uninhabited waste.
The governor, Kekuanoa himself, in an address Honolulu, in 1841, said: "There were, a few years ago, three laws, all dcsigned to deliver criminals from justice by the protecting favor of the chiefs. Offenders were not then brought to trial, and even legislation set a premium upon crime. Both polygamy and polyandry were common, no law of marriage being known, and property and rank settling the question of the number of wives a man should have or the nu::nber of husbands a woman should have, and hence came the attendant evils of infanticide, quarrels, and murder.
" The lines of distinction between right and wrong seemed well-nigh obliterated. Good and evil were alike j the rights of others were not re- spected j they abused the maimed, the blind, the aged, and the chiefs ground the poor into the dust. Gambling, drinking, and debauchery found in the rulers rather their leaders than their rebukers and punishers. The chiefs themselves became rich by seizing the property of their subjects j and at the death of his father Liholiho made a law which sanctioned wholesale rum-drinking, dancing, stealing, adultery, and night carousing, consuming whole nights in the most shameless debauchery, and turning whole villages into brothels."
Modesty there was none j even among the gentler sex all sense of shame seemed dead. .Nakedness brought no blush.· As to virtue, what chastity could be expected where these barriers were broken down? Parents gave their daughters, and husbands their wives to a fate worse than death for the sake of gain j and this traffic in virtue became a systematic thing upheld by law and sanctioned by universal custom. Every foreign vessel was turned into a floating Sodom. The facts defy language ; and, if language could be found, refined taste would forbid the repetition of such shocking details.
Of course the whole social fabric was decayed and rotten from the foundation. The tie of marriage was dependent on caprice. One day a man might have as many wives as he could feed and take care of j the next day he might turn them all adrift, as it suited his pleasure or fancy. A woman could have as many husbands as she pleased, and the relation was equally uncertain. The king himself had five wives, and one of them was his father's widow, and two others his father's daughters. Each one had her day in which to serve her lord, following him with a spit dish and 1 fly-brush. Conjugal concord or affection was as unknown as though they had no existence. and so of parental authority or affection, or filial love and obedience. (To be continued.)
THE POLITICAL CIlECK IN JAPAN
THE POLITICAL CHECK IN JAPAN.
BY REV. D. S. SPENCER, NAGASAKI, JAPAN Recent political movements in Japan and their immediate influence upon missionary operations here demand thought. Only a brief resume will now be attempted, and 1Il0re interesting things must be omitted. My object in writing is simply to show the trend of ., things Japanese."
On February 11th, 1890, the Emperor gave to his Japanese subjects a Constitution, according to promises made some ten years ago. In accordance with the provisions of that ConRtitution, the imperial parliament of thiR nation was opened by the Emperor on November 19th, and Japan then began her first experience with parliamentary institutions. The necessary preparations had, of course, been previously made, and the political machinery of the country, such as it is, had been set in motion. Representatives of the people had been chosen aCQording to the Constitution, which provides that persons of certain age, and paying above a certain amount of direct government tax, shall have the right to vote. Temporary parliament buildings, costing over 300,000 yen, had been built. Now, for the first time in their history, the Japanese people began to have direct hand in the government of the nation. The outside world has looked on with intense interest to see what kind of work the Japanese would make at handling institutions, the names of which they but yesterday learned, nnd the meaning of which they perhaps to-day do not well understand. The people had at least some idea of the new responsibility that had come iJ I'on them, perhaps a very crude idea, and an overwhelming sense of their own importance and power. This was to be expected. It would Dot be vaHtly different under similar circumstances in any land. At any rate the people generally felt that when the Diet met something would be done. The taxes exacted by the government of the people have been somewhat high, but not excesRively 80. There haR doubtless been here as everywhere official blunders, political corruption, and such a lording it over the people by the official class as might have been expected under the existing circumstances. But on the whole the government has done well.
It will be remembered that just as preparations for the new Diet were being actively made, the treaty revision scheme fell through, and this caused in some circles intense disappointment. A conservative feeling, for which thoughtful men had looked as a reaction from the intensely progressive spirit which had possessed the people, now set in with much force ; and the treaty revision failure only added new fuel to the conservative fires.
The representatives sent by the people had, in the elections in which they were chosen, pledged their constituency that great reforms should take place in the goYernment, among which reforms was the reduction of taxes. As soon as the budget containing the estimates of the government for the ensuing fiscal year had been presented to the House of Representatives for approval the fight began. The extreme RadicalR, strong enemies of the present government, have done all in their power to swamp the government and force a resignation of the Ministry. This has been carried on till the relations between the government and the House have become very much strained. A class of hair-brained youth called soshi, whose policy is to carry out their plans by force instead of reason, the nihilists of Japan, have been used by some of the party leaders to carry out their plan~, and threats, intimidation, personal assaults, and even murder have been the result. On January 20th the parliament buildings were totally destroyed by fire, said to have been caused by the over-heating of the electric wires with which the Diet is supplied with li!!ht. But thcre i,: /1 strong suspicion that they were set on fire. To put the matter briefly, Japan is passing through a crisis, and never since the restoration has there been a time when greater skill and calmer judgment were needed than now.
As a result of this conservative reaction, foreigners who were yesterday looked up to by the people generally are now looked down upon. This applies to all nationalities with perhaps little distinction. If one nationality is hated more than another, it is the subjects of her Majesty the Queen of England. Foreign teachers formerly employed in the government schools are being dismissed as fast as their contracts expire. So also with those holding other government positions. Passport regulations hRve become very strict. All foreigners are watched as they have not been before. Our mission schools, especially those for boys, suffer severely, in some cases having to fight for an existence. Missionaries are often insulted when speaking in public, and when passing along the street often hear invidious remarks made by the people about themselves, or have dogs set upon them, or are stoned, or meet with other annoying things that until a few months ago were never heard of as against a missionary. Police protection has been necessary in many cases. Dr. Imbrie was stabbed in Tokyo, Dr. Worden's life threatened in Nagoya, and the Rev. Mr. Perin driven from a public meeting by a mob in the same city, and many other less dangerous, but equally insulting things have occurred. With the foreigner, of course, the foreign religion must suffer. Pastors of the churches have had and are having a hard time. Rev. Mr. Miyama, in Nagoya, has had to endure hard persecution, but he is brave, calm, and hopeful-a hero. Members have left some of the churches because of the anti-foreign feeling that has ruled them. Buddhists, seeing their chance, have been most active in this persecution against native Christians. In the Union Church of Japan, composed of the Presbyterian churches working here, a Synod was recently held in Tokyo, to which, of course, Japanese Christians were sent as members together with their foreign brethren. These Japanese Christians being in the majority, voted to 5ubstitute the Apostles' Creed for the Presbyterian symbols, adding a brief statement concerning the Trinity, and making this the creed of the Union Church. Even this confesKion, drawn by Professor Ishimoto " was submitted. only to be almost immediately challenged on the ground of its evident foreign authorship. Mr. Ishimoto assured his numerous questioners that not till half an hour before the meeting, when he had shown it to Dr. Imbrie, had any foreigner suspected its existence. Opposition to it vanished, and it was unanimously and enthusiastically adopted."
Without further details it will be seen that this reaction will affect all church work, aud seriously the question or self-support. Now what is to be the probable outcome of all this? Will it permanently injure the cause of Christianity in Japan ~ The writer is of opinion that it will not. It will multiply the difficulties of the missionary for a time, will sift the Church, perhaps reducing the numbers, but not the real power of the Church, will necessitate help from home in order to keep up the work, and may discourage some who had been led to think that the battle in Japan was about over; but to those who have studied Japan, who have measured the power of Buddhism, and who have faith in the all-conquering power of the Gospel, it will not be discouraging. It may be a long battle, and may take more men and money than some enthusiastic persons have thought, but the victory is ours. God is with us, and the battle is not ours, but His. .Tapan needs the hfllp of the foreign churches to keep up the work, but more than all else she needs the Pentecostal baptism of the Holy Ghost. That is the supreme need of the hour The Church machinery is here and well established; such a baptism as came upon the early Church would put life into this machinery, and solve these difficulties as nothing else can do.
RUSSIAN MISSIONARIES IN JAPAN.
It is not yet known whether the Japanese who attempted the life of the Czarewitch is a religious or a political fanatic. He may belong to the latter class, for the anti·foreign movement is strongly developed in Japan, on acconnt of the agitation created by the proposed revision of the European and American treaties. The United States Government was the first to conclude a treaty with Japan, in 1854, its example being followed by various European Powers. In 1886 Japan proposed a revision of those diplomatic arrangements in a spirit somewhat unfavorable to foreigners. The negotiations were abruptly stopped by the Mikado's Government, which reopened them in 1889, curtailing still more the privileges granted formerly to foreign residents. Still, it is probahle that the would-be murderer of the Czarewitch has obeyed the impulse of religious rather than of political and patriotic fanaticism.
Russian proselytism has been of late more prominent and more puhlic in Japan than any other, though it must not be forgotten that three Ameri- Cltn missionaries have had to suffer during the last year at the hands of Japanese. Christianity was introduced into Japan by the Portuguese in 1549, and there were soon m:my thousands of converts, 40,000 of them being sentenced to death under the pretext that. they had taken part in a political conspiracy. The teaching of the Gospel was forbiuden. Neverless, when the French landed in Japan in 1860, they found there 10,000 natives secretly adhering to the Christian reli~ion. It is only ilince 1872 that Christianity has been recognized officially by Japan as a tolerated religion. In that year, too, the Russian missionaries openly pursued their work. They had a peculiar method of teaching sacred history. They gathered the native pupils in front of the holy images, and used the latter as explanatory figures, thus aiding the pupils in remembering the lessons.
The Russian mission in Japan was founded in 1861, but its official life dates only from 1870. All its member~ must be " exceedingly learned people, speaking perfectly the language of the country, and able to conqner, by their irreproachable life, the respect and affection of all the natives. " Such is the language of the regulations. U nti! 1880 thos6 missionaries did Rot have large funds at their disposal and were able to erect only one church building, though they had made already 5000 proselytes. Bnt the Japanese Orthodox Christians addressed a petition to thc Imperial Procurator in St. Petersburg, begging him to increase the subsidy given to the mission by the Russian Government. Their request was immediately granted, and besides that, the Missionary Association in Moscow agreed to furnish $20,000 a year to the Japanese Mission. The labors of the Russian priests were then pushed in earnest, and in 1885 thRy had 12,000 Japanese as members of their church. The membership now is a little more than 20,000, and in the single year 1889, 1800 natives were converted to the Orthodox faitb.-N. Y. Tribune.
EXTRACTS AND TRANSLATIONS FROM FOREIGN PERIODiJALS
EXTRACrS AND TRANSLATIONS FROM FOREIGN PERIODICALS.
BY REV. C. C. STARBUCK, ANDOVER, MASS.
THE W ALDENSES.
-An interesting little pamphlet has been issued, giving a sketch of Waldensian history since the Glorious Return. After that the Vaudois were, within their valleys, quietly allowed to practice their religion. But down to 1848 they were persecuted, though 110 longer unto blood. They could not buy any new lands, and only by tacit allowance could they even carryon any business outside their own valleys. Civilly they could not rise above the office of syndic, or common councilldr. Having neither lawyers nor jndges of their religion, they almost always went into suits with Catholics with the expectation of having the worst of it. Their land tax was a third higher than that of the Catholics. Their physicians, who received a mere certificate, were only allowed to practice among them. All their religious books were strictly supervised, and JIli,ght, under no pretext, pass into Catholic hands. In some placeli, once or twice a year, the Catholics claimeJl the right of going in procession around their temples, singing hymns before thc ministers had withdrawn. A refractory child had hut to say that he wanted to become a Catholic, and, like a Catholic child in Ireland under the laws of William and Mary, he was thenceforth independent of his parents; indeed, still more completely exempt. No Vaudois worship eould be celebrated beyond the valleys, and propagandism, by word or writing, was rigorously forbidden.
But at length signs of deliverance began to multiply. Generous Catholic voices began more and more to be heard in their favor. The Sardinian kings granted dispensations from restrictive laws in increasing measure. D'Azeglio and Cavour became the powerful champions of their rights. At Tnrin a petition of 600 leading persons, of whom 80 were priests, attacked intolerance in its citadel. Count Sclopis reminded the king that, for moral and domestic virtues, no other population of the State could he compared to the Waldenses. The king himself, coming among them to attend the consecration of a spleudid Catholic church, refused a guard, and was greatly pleased when the Waldenses themselves, donning their antiquated uniforms and grasping their old flint-locks, discharged this loyal office.
At. last the Statuto, which transferred the centre of authority from the will of t.he monarch to the deliberate purpose of the nation, opened the way for the Decree of Emancipation, by which, on the 17th of February, 1848, Charles Albert raised the Waldenses to the full civil rights of Sardinian subjects. This final deliYerance was received with indescribable enthusiasm and gratitude, both to God and the king, throughout the Vaudois valleys, and swept the Catholics likewise along in the tide of generous feeling.
But the crown of honor was put on the headR of the long-proscribed mountaineers when, on the 27th of Febrnary, 1848, the various populations of Charles Albert's kingdom, who by the Statuto, the Magna Charta, not merely of the Subalpine kingdom, but of the Italy that was to be, had been rai~ed from the humiliation of mere subjects into the dignity of free citizens of a crowned commonwealth, regalis respublica, assembled at the capital to render to their sovereign and to each other the tribute of joy, gratitude, and fidelity. In the great square of Turin, where in old time the Vaudois Varaglia had suffered at the stake, Ligurians, Sardinians, Savoyards, Piedmontese of various provinces, poured out before their king and his household a wealth of festal display and a wealth of enthusiasm such as Italians know how to lavish. And among them the mountain band of 600 men, those Waldenses whose name had never before been in Turin anything but a by-word, marching under a banner which bore above the royal arms the simple inscription" A Oarlo Alberto, i Valdesi riconoscenti," " To Charles Albert, the grateful Waldenses," divided with the king himself the honors of the day. Every class of their fellow-countrymen, but above all the generous university youth, thronged to cheer them, to embrace them, to condense, as it were, into one day the amends for centuries of proscription. And the sons of the valleys 80 received it. "When the Lord turned our captivity, we were like them that dream." From this dawn of a delivered and united Italy they went back to "the strength of the hills" to forget the past, and to address themselves to a worthy share in that work of spiritual regeneration for which, as they say with some sadness, the civilly regenerated Italy shows little longing, but without which her civil Iegeneration will either stiffen into a sordid materialism or perish in the bloody waves of an anarchical enthusiasm of atheism, the worship of La Madre Natura, whose one regulative impulse will be the murderous hatred of God, of Christ, of all the sanctities of Christian life.
AFRICA.
-The Bulletin Missionnaire of the Free Churches of French Switzerland, whose mission is in the Transvaal, and in the Portuguese territory, remarks: "As we are laboring to fashion men, the missionary will be hated so long as the sentiments which refuse to the blach equal rights with the whites shall prevail in this country. Meanwhile our Christians are extremely appreciated as policemen, confidential agents, and domestics."
-The Free Church of Scotland Mission at Main, Tembuland, South Africa, has 412 communicants, and 124 candidates.
-Bishop Tucker writes of Uganda that the whole country seems literally thirsting for instruction. He says that a man will willingly work three months for a copy of the Suahili New Testament.
INDIA.
-The Rev. W. B. Simpson, English Wesleyan, writes in the Wesleyan Missionary Leaflet: "The deadness, lethargy, the flatly indifferent toleration of any creed in heaven or earth, the inertia of Hinduism, is far the mightiest force we have to contend with."
-The Madras Standard, as quoted in the Bombay Guardian of February 14th, 1891, calls attention to the persecution of Christians in the Travancore State, alleging that though the British resident there-Mr. Hannyngton-could wipe out these disabilities by the stroke of his pen, he takes no interest in the subject whatever, and only exercises his interest in supporting the present maladministration. It seems that the Rajah has been prevailed on to revive a forgotten law, making it penal to build any Christian church, chapel, or school without special license, after due inquiry whether the susceptibilities of neighboring Brahmans or priests will not be offended. The law appears to be meant as virtually prohibitory. One would think that a gentle intimation from the Empress to her royal vassal might not come amiss.
– " In the' Vishnu Smriti,' to sell salt, to commit fornication, to abuse the Vedes, to kill cows, and to let your younger brother marry before you, are all sins of the fourth degree, not nearly so awful as stealing from a Brahman or getting drunk, but condemning an offender to becomp, a seabird in the next life. And it is no doubt due to this absurd mixture of serious and trivial offences in their sacred books that the ordinary Hindu cannot distinguish between the moral well-being of the people and the accidental benefit of a class. "
Again: "In modern Hinduism things the most grand and the most grotesque ~tand side by side. Regulations about food stand side by side with moral precepts. The three handfuls of water are as important as the Gagatri at the bathing tank, and to sneeze is worse than to tell a lie. "
-Sir Charles Aitchison, in a speech in England, quoted from in the Standard, says: "In the large and important town of Islamabad, in Kashmir, we are told that most of the wealthy Mohammedans posse~s a copy of the Bible j many of them read it j and one native gentleman acknowledged that he was goh;g th,rough it for the eighth time, and liked it more and more. In the south of India we read of a juvenile society being formed in one of the colleges for the study of the Christian Scriptures. all the members of which are high caste lads. In Bengal we read of school-boys choosing copies of the Bihle for prizes, and begging that their knowledge of Scripture may be specially noted on their school certificates. "
-The examination of the Indian work of the Free Church of Scotland by a deputation of the church, and the criticisms of its report by the missionaries, have resulted in the passage of a resolution by the Foreign Mis· sions Committee, acknowledging a wise providential guidance when the Church was led, by educational work, " to deal with that great central core of the people of India on which Christianity had up to that time made small impression j" declaring that this work still deserves cordial support, and addir;g, that, as always urged by the missionaries, this pra!pamtio evangelicil mllst always, and now more than ever, " be supplemp,nted and completed by the simple, earnest proclamation of saving truth," and" that the two sides of the work should always be in visible connection with each other."
-The Fifty-second Annual Report of the Wesleyan Mission in the Mysore Province (South-western India) remarks: "The Mysore is an epitome of India, as India is of the world. Nowhere is caste more tenacious of its privileges, or religion more bigoted in its prejudices. Saivites and Vishnaivites here discuss the tenets of their respective faiths. The Lingayats, numerous and powerful, claim a proud position. The Jains, a people of peculiar Buddhistic doctrines, have a stronghold here. The followers of Mohammed meet us at every turn j and though as yet we have scarcely approached them with the Gospel, the most determined of our Hindu opponents are not so violent or dangerous in their extreme antipathy to Christianity as they. In the Mysore the proportion of low caste people is less numerous than in many other parts of India, but all the social strata, from the lowest to the highest, may be here discovered."
The report says: "Life wears an altogether new aspect to a Hindu woman in her unromantic home when the visits of the Zenana teacher take away its monotony. Often with strong anti-Christian prejudices, but always with unfeigned pleasure, do the women receive these visitors. The welcome thus afforded helps greatly in removing prejudice. Then when this is followed up by systematie instruction in both religious and seeular subjects, the mental and spiritual faculties of the women are marvellously aroused, and their sympathies are brought into play on behalf of that which is pure, noble, and Godlike."
JAPAN AND CHINA.
-Dr. Daly, port-doctor at Ningpo, China, says: " Years will show whether opium is the great curse it has so often been described to be." His final conclusion, however, is that" it is possible and probable that opium will prove' the curse of China' by diminishing the population to an injurious extent., producing an unhealthy race, and turning millions of these peaceful, sober, industrious masses into a degraded and vicious peo- ple, with what effects on this great nation time alone can show."
-The Rev. H. J. Foss, of Kobe, Japan, a missiouary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, speaking of the patriarch of the Episco- pal Church in that place, who was seventy when baptized, and is now seventy-eight or nine, remarks that his great ambition was to see fifteen Christians arot:nd him ere he died. There are now forty-nine, including nine catechumens. This outstripping of anticipation is thus far a characteristic of Japanese missions.
-The Rev. Murdo Mackenzie, of the English Presbyterian Church, writes an interesting letter from Hak-ka, China. The following two paragraphs give vil'idly the two sides of the Chinese chameter : .
"Mountain lands are very barren, but John Chinaman can make even bare hills fruitful. High up in the mountain we come suddenly upon a little cottage ensconced between two rocky precipices, and there, by the side of a little rivulet, lives a thriving family, and there they have made a habitation for themselves out of what would seem to most people but' airy nothing.' The palm-tree is transported here and flourishes. It decorates the frontage of the little house. In variety of produce they rival their neighbors in the plains. The inevitable garlic is there, and a variety of green cabbages and other vegetables.
" Notwithstanding his pluck and perseverance, the Chinaman is a terribly ungetatable ereature. You cannot get him interested in anything else than worldly affairs. When you remind him of other important matters which ought not to be overlooked, there is a look of blank astonishment on his face. It is difficult to get him to higher things. There is a little shrine by the roadside not far from his house, and under a sturdy old oak. Thither he hies sometimes, aud pays his tribute to the Spirit of the hills. He does not seek after God, for he knows not God. He knows not that Hod or man has any interest in his welfare. HiB experience of man has led him to distrust him, and it is a harder task than we can accomplish to get him to realize that God loves him, and that God is worthy of his trust. We shall not fail in accomplishing much if we are the means of bringing into his life the element of trust."
–The Rev. Gilbert Reid, of the American Presbyterian Chu!"ch in Shanghai, China, has lately published three interesting and able articles on three aspects of Chinese society, of which he thinks advantage may well be taken in the promulgation of the Gospel. The first respects the hierarchical gradations of official authority; the second, the almost unexampled influence of the higher classes; the third, the hierarchical gradations of the rank of cities, of which, he thinks, enough has not been made. In this respect China, Mr. Reid remarks, is extraordinarily like the Roman Empire, and we know how almost everywhere the apostles struck for the cities, especially for the central ones, so that the whole government of the Church was developed out of this fact, of which" Metropolitan" is a reminder over vast regions where its present application may seem somewhat artificial. China seems, according to all accounts, to be like Wordsworth's cloud" that moveth altogether, if it move at all." The very opposite of t.he weltering chaos of India. Mr. Reid's articles are in the C'hinese Recorder.
-The Rev. T. R. Stevenson says, in a sermon quoted in the Ohinese Recorder of February, 1891 : "During a recent visit to Japan I met with a gentleman who meutioned an incident which I can never forget. One rarely hears anything more impressive. He knew a missionary in China who one day encountered a Chinaman. The latter had been in the habit of watching the conduct of the former, and that very narrowly. He said, , I want your God to be my God.' The missionary answered, ' 'Vhat do you mean r 'I wish to be of the same religion as you.' 'Why do you ?'
, Because if your God is like you, He must be good. ' "
-A pamphlet, published by Morgan & Dyer, London, entitled ])evastation of India's Millions, says pungently: "It iR a British axiom, and has been an Englishman's boast, that British law is equal for all British subjects. But in the British opium administration in the East, there is th" principle of slavery, viz., that the rights and welfare of men of one race may be disregarded and sacrificed by men of another."
-Another pamphlet, Britain's Crime, published by Dyer Brothers, say,;: "Few things in Chinese history are more pathetic than the experience of the Emperor Tao Kwang. Three of his sons had died through the opium habit; and finding the curse stealthily spreading among his subjects, he ordered Commissioner Lin to proceed to Canton in 1839 to stop thc smuggling of opium into China. The monarch wept as, recounting the dire effects of the drug, he sent forth Commissioner Lin on his momentous mission. Then followed, in the interests of rapacious and criminal greed, and in defiance of the elementary principles of morality, one of the blackest pages in the history of Britain's dealings with other nations-the first opium war. The emperor died, while the plague which had laid waste his own family was still forced upon his people at the point of British bayonets. "
MISCELLANEOUS.
-What better ground conld there be for an appeal than that of the Brethren's Unity, as we find it expressed in Service for the King? "Existing missions are being so blessed they must be extended. "
-Service for the King has· a letter from Mr. Barnett, written from Jaffa. He speaks of visiting the Jews in Port Said. "Among the 300 Jewish families there are many RURsian and Roumanian Jews. They seemed full of hope of the nearness of restoration to Palestine, and of the coming of the Messiah. One Jew said: ' The persecutions of the past have worked for our good, and so will the present troubles; if it were not for these the hearts of the Jews would never be toward Palestine.'
"On December 22d we landed at Jaffa. Miss Cresswell met us and took us straight to the hospital, where we met Miss Marriott also and found the spirit of MildmllY in Jaffa."
-The .Tewish Herald for March, 1891, gives a communication from Mr. Rabinouich, giving information that after long and painful suspense the Russian Government has at length given permission for the opening of Somerville Hall, Kischeneff. "An inscription in golden letters, both in the Hebrew and Russian languages, adorns the portal, and is well calculated to aflest attention. It is in the words of Acts 2 : 36 : ' Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made that ~ame Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord ant! Christ.' Surely a most striking and significant fact that this word of Scripture should be thus proclaimed in Hebrew to the Jews, and be inscribed on the door of a synagogue in which the Gospel is proclaimed. Mr. Rabinouich writes that the inscription made a profound impression. "
-The Herald says, speaking of Jerusalem: "Every building of any importance has to do with religion, church, mosque, monastery, synagogue, or hospice. Religion is in the atmosphere. But one cannot help feeling that religion may playa great part in people's lives without the people themselves being truly religious. Devout Christians there are in Jerusalem ; but;. religionism is a greater force than religion. Not in Jerusalem, where the externalities of Christianity have almost choked its spiritual life, and where the spirit of Christ is so deeply sinned against in the hatreds which are cherished by His followers toward each other, and toward .Tew and Moslem-no, not there Bas the religion of Christ any longer its special seat." In that city, it goes on to say, where the lives of men and women are fullest of Christ, there is Christ nearest; while of Zion He may still say: "How often would I have gathered thy children together, and ye would not." But perhaps the day of redemptIOn is at hand.
-The Greater Britain Messenger speaks of the diocese of Algoma as "the one missionary diocese of the Canadian Church." "The work of the c1/lrgy is at times a great physical hardship. In a recent trip to Nepigon, the bishop had only for five nights the luxury of a bed." Dr. Sullivan may fairly claim a larger share in the apostolic succession than some of his mitred coileagues, in having the privilege of ,. enduring hardness" for Christ's sake.
-National Righteousness, which, unmoved by the sneers of the Guardian at Exeter Hall eloquence, continues to set forth the abominations of the opium traffic, says: "Again and again we have heard the question, 'Shall I not visit for these things, saith the Lord; shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this l' and the answer we have heard, ' By fearful things in righteousness.' Yet again it is repeated. We have listened and seemed to get no answer. It may he because when the thunderbolt next falls it will be from clouds that have been longer in gathering. It may be because it is not to be by the thunderbolt. As in the individual sinner, his iniquities are sometimes visited by the stroke of apoplexy and sometimes by a creeping paralysis, so may it be with a nation. The answer to that solemn question may have to be watched for by an observant eye, rather than heard by an attentive ear. Do we see it in the stealthy spread of the opium vice in India, Australia, and other colonies, while w.e hear the prophet's whisper, ' Thine own wickedness shall correct thee l' "
-The Queensland Kanaka Mission has presented its fourth annual report. The mission aims at the evangelization of the Polynesian laborers on the Qlleensland plantations, of whom there are 2500 it:. the Bundaberg district alone. It is evangelical and nndenominational.
INTERNATIONAL DEPARTMENT
H.-INTERNATIONAL DEPARTMENT.
EDITED AND CONDUCTEI? BY REV. J. T. GRACEY, D.D.
Shall we Have Another General Missionary Oonference? [J. T. G.] The subject of utilizing the Colum· can societies. '1'hey might hold a gen. bian centennial occasion in the inter. eral convention to review the work they e~ts of missions has received only casual have in hand and plan to co-operate in thought. It seems desirable to get a different fields. I should like that. more general expression of the opinion The time may come in 1898 or 1900 of those who should direct any move· better for a World's Missionary Conment of the kind and awaken thought vention. In the mean time, a convention in others. In connection with work of the American missionary societies that has fallen to the writer to do for might be held earlier to ad vantage, as the International Missionary Union, above suggested." opinions have been solicited from a few representati ve persons on the desira- Rev. Dr. J. O. Peck, Secretary of the bilityand practicability of attempting a Methodist Episcopal Missionary So- World's Missionary Conference in 1892 ciety, says: or 1893, or of a General Conference of the American missionary forces, to reo ,. I would like to Bee a World's Misview the work that has been done by sionary Convention held in this counthe churches of North America for other try in 1892, but I have not clearly been countries; and for planning for co·opera. convinced of its expediency or desiration and stimulating zeal among us to bility quite so soon after the great Lon. proaecute this work more efficiently and don meeting. I think, perhaps, at the extensively in the future. We desire present juncture that an American to know from many persons, at home Protestant Missionary Convention for and abroad, what their thought is on the continent might be as desirable and the subject, and solicit volunteer opin- profitable just now as a World's Mis· ions and statements of facts pro and sionary Convention, and that a few con.* Meanwhile, as many of the per- years later, perhaps ten years after the sons from whom we have tmlicited opin- London Conference, it would be deions kindly put us at liberty to treat sirable to have again a Congress of the World's Protestant Missionary Soci. as their replies of a public nature, we eties. I am heartily in favor of any movement which will increase the in. venture to print some of those received telligence and zeal of the Church of from secretaries of societies. Christ in the great cause of missions."
Rev. Dr. N. G. Clark, Secretary of Rev. Dr. Henry N. Cobb, Secretary the American Board, says : of the Board of Foreign Missions of the Reformed Church of America, writes: " In regard to the expediency of having a World's Missionary Conference in ., I presume that I may find myself 1892, my own thought is, that while in a minority. nevertheless I have grave such a convention would be very pleas- doubts on the subject. It seems to me ant to many persons, I am still in doubt that once in ten years is quite often as to its desirability and expediency. enough for such a convention, and It requires a great deal of labor and 1892, therefore, quite too near the Lon. care, and there seems to be hardly oc- don Conference of 1888. casion for another great convention so soon. It will be only four years after " I have often thought, however, that the great London Conference. I should it might be well to have a national or think better of a meeting of the Ameri- American convention at a five-year in. terval from the World's Convention, * Address J. T. Gracey, Rocbester, N. Y. and should be inclined much to prefer that course to the other. Much good might be expected from such a conven- sionary societies would seem too narrow tion, and a great impulse be given to to be attractive, unless, indeed, it had the work of foreign missions among our for its chief object the consideration of American churches." methods for arousing the American churches to new activity in the foreign Rev. Dr. Mabie, Secretary of the Bap- mission work. It seems to me that the tist Missionary Union, says: methods of work in the foreign mission field have been so fully discussed, that ., I have considerable doubt. So far now it only remains for the missionas we Baptists are concerned, plans are aries in each section of the broad field already on foot whereby important to determine for themselves what the meetings, embracing both bodies North true result of the discllssion is. But and South, as well as Canadian, are to for the development of the latent rebe held in commemoration of the cen- sources of the Church at home, all the tennial of Baptist missions. I fear we skill, tact, and courage of the true oon scarcely manage to do justice to friends of the Master are demanded. more in the same year. A World's Convention or an American Convention that would assemble in the U Besides, it is 80 soon after the spirit of Isaiah 58, with fasting and World's Conference of 1888 in London. prayer-a convention that would • cry There is vast expense about such meet- aloud, spare not, lift up their voice like ings to have them often. Moreover, a trumpet, and show the people of God from a personal tour right round the their transgression and their sins' world among all the missions withiu might be a great power for God… the past nine months, I am deeply persuaded that long existent and conserva- Rev. Dr. John McLaurin, Secretary tive methods in mission work need of the Baptist Foreign Missions of Onstrong reinforcement along well-e!ltab- tario and Quebec, says: Iillhed lines. There are no new methods to be discovered of much value that ,. I believe a World's Missionary Conour frequent general conventions can vention should be held in America in invent or improve. I should say, let us 1892. I firmly believe it ought to be a keep right at the work already laid out World's Missionary Convention. I beby the various branches of the Church lieve more Missionaries and more Native of God. A deeper spirituality and con- Brethren than took part in the last secration within these several bodies should take part in this. Trophies of touching the broad work is the chief missions should be there from all lands ; need rather than improved methods." they should not be thrust into a corner because they cannot thrill an audience Rev. Dr. M. H. Houston, Secretary like an Anglo-Saxon would. If there be of the Board of Foreign Missions of the an American one, let it be an annex. I Presbyterian Church in America (South- was at the one in London in 1888. ern), says: Blessed results flowed from that one, and more will flow from another." ,. My opinion is that the London Conference is so recent that it would not be Miss Abbie B. Child; Secretary of the well to attempt another World's Mis- Woman's Board of Missions (Congresionary Convention in 1892, at least for gational), and also Chairman of "The the discussion of those general subjects World's Committee of Women," which which were before the London meeting. grew out of the London Conference, I would be glad, though, to attend a says: World's Convention at any time to consider the urgent practical question, ., The committee for the "'"arious What can be done more than we are woman's llilsslOnary societies had now doing to evangelize the present thought of a similar convention. Last generation of men? autumn I sent a letter to the members of the committee asking their opinion "I am inclined to think that a call tor a convention of the American mison three points-viz., 1. As to whether The fund will be devoted to the ontfit, such a meeting would be desirable; passage, and probation expenses of one 2. Whether it should be held in 1892 or hundred new missionaries, mainly for 1893 ; 3. The place in which it should the India, China, and Congo missions. be convened. Part wiIl be used for a working fund to obviate the necessity of borrowing •• The majority of the replies-I think money on the part of the society, and all but one-thought such a meeting part wiIl be used in new work in the would be desirable; most of them men- mlSSlOns. A centenary volume is also tioned 1893 a8 preferable to 1892, be- to be published. cause of the attraction of the World's Fair that might bring foreigners to the "These plans promise to give our country; the place most favored was English Baptililt friends a great mis. Chicago. sionary year, and it is hoped that what. ever shall be done in this country in "This is as far as we have gone. the same direction will have the effect Since it seemed best to wait till 1893, I of greatly increasing the interest in mis· thought we would make no special sions among all peoples." plans till next autnmn. If others are planning for a World's Convention, I II Shall Islam Rule Afrioa?"* think it would be much better, of course, for the woman's societies to join BY REV. LEMUEL C. BARNES, D.D., NEW· with them. We have no very definite TON CENTRE, lIU.SS. plans, but I should say we should need two or three days for a woman's meet· Whether Africa is to be, as some one ing, either before or after the General has said, " the continent of the twen· Con vention. ". tieth century" or not, it is likely to be the continent of studious attention dur- Apropos of this discussion, we quote ing the last decade of the nineteenth from the Baptist Missionary Magazine century. At any rate, it is bound to the following: be, is already beginning to be the arena of a desperate struggle between Islam .. The year 1892 will be a year of cele- and Christianity. It is needful to take brations in this country. The four iii calm, if possible unprejudiced view hundredth anniversary of the discovery of the situation. of America by Christopher Columbus will be celebrated by II great' World's * * * ** Fair' in Chicago; and Christians of all denominations will be interested in the The distance ncross the continent is centennial celebration of the formation the same north and south between of the English Baptist Missionary So· Tripolis and Cape Town, and east and ciety at Kettering, October, 2d, 1792, west between Cape Verde and Cape when £13 2s. 6d. was subscribed to send Gardafui, Borne forty.six hundred miles William Carey and Dr. Thomas to In· each way. But the Gulf of Guinea dia. A movement is on foot for a gen· sweeps into the middle of the continent eral celebration of the centenary by from the west BO far that it is only all the Baptist missionary societies of about twenty·three hundred miles from America, but the plans are not yet suffi· its waters, on a line running north of ciently matured for publication. eaitward to Massawah. the port of Abyssinia on the Red Sea, which has .. The English Baptists have arranged recently come into possession of the for a grand centennial missionary year in 1892. In connection with these ser· *We obtained permission from the author of vices, it is proposed to raise a special centenary fund of £100,000, and to the small booklet bearing this title to use whatever take measnres to increase the current parts of it we pleased. We only wish we could income of the Baptilit Missionary So· reproduce the whole essay. It can be had of the piety to £100,000 (or about $500,000). American Baptist ~fis8ionary Union, Tremont Temple, Boston, MMs. Price 10 cents. Italians. By such a line the continent sional'y societies in the world, is be is divided into two nearly equal por- coming Muslim much faster than Christions, the northern or northwestern tian. In the twenty years between with its longer diameter lying east and 1865 and 1886 its Muslim population west, and the southern or southeastern increased from twelve hundred to with its longer diameter lying north thirty thousand. and south. It is as if the continent had been girded in, half-in-two, and The whole northern half of Africa is looped on to Southern Arabia. The as thoroughly Islamic as Turkey or distance from Massawah is almost ex- Persia, if not more so. It is by far the actly the same to Cape Verde anu to the largest continuous area on the globe Cape of Good Hope. under Islam. There are more Muslims under the government of England in The northern half of the continent India than under any other single govhas, in fact, been attached to the Ara- ernment. But they are only a minor bian prophet; all its roaus lead to fraction of the population there; while Mecca. By actual count it sends 14,000 in the northern half of Africa they are pilgrims a year. It consists of three the bulk of the population, and are zones. North Africa proper is best more numerous than in India. From known, and longest Islamized. The Tounis to Youla, two thousand miles population of the Mediterranean states north anu south, from Cape Verde to of Africa, as given in tho" Statesman's Suakim, three thousand six hundred Year.Book, " aggregates 18,123,846. west to east, millions of Muslims, The next zone is the Sahara. In tho though under one government, are all oases of this vast desert region there under Muslim governments, and are in are hundreds of thousands of people, one cODscioUIl brotherhood of Islam. according to the German statistician The number is, of course, variously esti- HUbner, 2,500,000. With symbolic fit- mated. A low estimate is fifty millions. ness Islam has long ruled Sahara. Be- Cardinal Lavigerie estimates sixty-five low that the Soudan stretches clear million Muslims for all Africa. If the across the continent and swarms with great authorities are correct as to the humanity. HUbner reckons 83,800,000 total popUlation of the northern lobe people in the Soudan. These thl'ee of the continent, its Muslim population zones. which contain considerably more is over, rather than under, seventy-five than half the population of the conti- millions. nent, are thoroughly Islamic. But Islam has made large advances There are some tribes in the Soudan also in the southern half of the contiyet clinging to paganism, but they are nent. Starting from Ahyssinia, tho comparatively insignificant and are fast eastern seaboard is in the hands of succumbing. West of the lower Niger Islam for more than two thousanu is a small region yet largely pagan. miles, reaching inland some five hun- But Islam is taking possession of it far ored miles, much of the way. There more rapidly than Christianity. The are believed to be five millions and a city of Abeokuta, exceeded in size on half of Muslims in that territory, and the continent only by Alexandria and as many more in tho samo and adjacent Cairo, has a few hundred Christians, territories who are more or less under but thousands of Muslims. But sixty the Islamic influence. Thus Islam is miles away is another city, Ibadan, of the prevailing religion throughout near over one hundred thousand population, ly two thirds of the peripbery of the more largely Muslim than Abeokuta. whole continent. In the remaining These towns are less than one hundred third there are two regions of active miles north of the Guinea coast. Even Islamic propaganoism, Mozambique and the English coast city, Lagos, occupied Cape Colony. In the year 1880, Cape by some of the stron&est Christian mis- Cobny sent ene hl111ox:ed lind fifty pilgtims to Mecca. There are mosques in the whole Congo basin at this moment Cape Town and Port Elizabeth, and is Muslim. some proselyte>! are being made. In a population of only six hundred thou- Islam has reached considerably more sand, thirteen thousand are Muslims. than half way from the Indian Ooean to the Atlantic. Still farther west, south. From Zanzibar, MLlslim influence ex- ward on the wllter-parting between the tends westward half way across the con· Congo and the Zambesi basins, some tinent. In the now famous kingdom of of the Lunda people have learned, at Uganda, north of Victoria Lake, Islam least, to use the werd "Allah" as an has much of the time recently held the exclamation. upper hand, bringing native Christians to the stake by the score, and even an But without reckoning any such, or English bishop to martyrdom. How other millions who are actually somefar the Mhadists are at this moment in what under the influence of Islam, it sway about the head waters of the Nile seems to be within bounds to count five is not clearly known. They are cer- million Muslim!! south of Abyssinia. tainly in possession of the former Equatorial Province. But whether there is The interest of the competition beto be an effective junction of these tween Islam and Christianity in Africa MLlslims from the North and their is intensified for the student of combrethren from the East Coast or not, parati ve religion, by the fact that the Stanley has brought Emin and the last contest has now reached a point where representatives of Christendom from it begins to be for a new race of men, the upper Nile. For eight hundred Islam has captured Nigritia i but there miles so'uth of Uganda, till you come is much land in Africa besides Negroto the region between the two great land. lakes Tanganyika and Nyassa, Muslims exert a large influence. Even further But the forces of genuine Ohristian south between Lake Nyassa and the .faith are to be, are already being, Zambesi River, the Maviti natives con- thrown into the newly opened regions duct their fLlnerals with Muslim i1'ites, of Middle Africa. Toward these same and the grave is always turned toward regions Islam has long been pushing its Mecca. Thill is some fOLlr hundred front. Now, after twelve hundred miles in the interior, and in crossing years of contact, for the first time Islam the continent from north to south is and Faith afe to meet face to face for a much more than half way from Massa- trial of strength on a fa.ir field. For wah to Cape Town. But somewhat the first time, also, it is to be purely a northward, twice as far inland, directly trial of moral strength. The European west of Zanzibar, on the Upper Congo Powers will not long leave Islam to itself, not far apart, are two Muslim propagate itself by gunpowder in the towns of some ten thousand population Great Lakes region. The Congo Free each, Nyangwe and Kasongo. In fact, State is already guaranteed religious Muslims hold the country for three liberty. These two regions span the hundred miles down the river as far as continent. If Islam moves farther Stanley Falls. In one of Stanley's let- southward in Africa, it will be because ters written since he approached the it has moral power for conquest. East Coailt, he admits tha.t when he went in, three years ago, he did not be- Again, the conditions are altogether lieve the Congo Free State able to cope different here from those in India. or with Tippu Tib, or even hold him in China, where Islam and Christianity check except by a subsidy. Develop- have to contend with e~tablished, highly ments coming to light since, make it cultivated, literary religions, which so m.ore evide~t that the strongest power in far hold their own, and are even making more converts from the remaining ab- original tribes, than ei ther Islam or Christianity are. But in Central Africa the unlettered, unorghnized fetichism is sure to yield, and that rapidly, to serted the year round, except at this one or the other of the noble monothe. season, when the boats for miles around iSills whieh are about to aUack it. come laden with incense-bringing pil- grims and stop at it a8 the nearest land- Some phases of African ethnology are ing-place to the famous temple. On in no end of dispute. BIlt all agree the busiest days probably one thousand that south of the Soudan, or land of the boats containing, it may be, ten thou- blacks, nearly down to the Cape of sand pilgrims arrive at, o.nd as many Good Hope, there are many tribes, but depart from, this little village. The all of one allied race, now commonly little village is converted into a minia· called the Bantu race. Their language ture oity or active bazaar stocked with id prefixional in its inflections, and very all kinds of goods attractive to the elaborate in some respects; yet so clear country people. Early in the morning that it is generally spoken with great the pilgrims who have arrived during grammatical accuracy. The Bantus are the previous day and night start with a far nobler type of men than the ne- their candles and incense, etc., to worgroes. There are probably seventy.five ship in the temple. After walkmg about millions of them. The bulk of their a mile they come to the northern end territory is in the region of more than of a little lake, where those who are willing to pay one and one half cents twenty inches of rainfall, i. e., in the re- may t.ake a boat and be ferried to the southern extremity, a distance of two gion of natural cultivation. The Great and one half miles. The great major- Lakes, larger than our North American ity, however, prefer to save the money, lakes, the Zambesi River and the Congo and walk the whole distance of six or River, with its lately discovered im- ~even miles. .A few of the more wealthy mense Lranches, are all of them already hire sedan chairs or horses for the navigated by steam. The interior round trip. The road that winds steam navigation shore line is longer around the edge of the little lake and than the sea-coast around the entire at the foot of a range of hills, at this continent. Reason covered with wild flowers, is quite picturesque. At intervals of a The Bantu race of men, so situated, mile at most, and often separated by is the prize which now lies open be- only a few hundred yards, there are tween Islam and Faith in Africa. Is- temples and shrines where the pilgrims lam has a considerable following in the are invited to stop and pay their devonortheast, and Christianity perhaps an tions, and also their money as they equal following in the south among the move on toward the grand temple, Bantu people. The battle is now set. which is their main object. The road Which is likely to win? One or the is thickly populated with beggars also, other substantially before 1950. who set up their little huts and spend the season at their profession ; for the A Glanoe at Chinese Worshippers, greater part of the road they are sta- tioned ten feet apart. Many of them BY REV. J. L. STUART, HANGCHOW, CHINA. are really objects of pity, blind, halt, lame, etc., but many of them are im- The city in which I live contains postors, with a good hand hid away unabout seven hundred thousand of a der the ooat and a false arm with a population. It was the imperial capi- festering sore or ulcer exposed to view, t.al for two hundred years, is beautiful looking horrid enough to drfW pity from for situation, and is famous in many the hardest heart. The pilgrims come other respects. It is especially noted prepared to give, and they are not paras being the location of many famous ticular abo~t the objeot, as thll merit temples in the hills, one of which draws crowds of worshippers for six weeks in March and April.
There is a little village abuut a milo ~rom the north ~ate that is alnwst deconsists in giving, not in giving intelli- nese music (?) goes before them and va- gently. The beggars have a fine time, rious banners and mottoes are borne and reap a rich harvest during the sea- above them, to let the guds and men son. One day I thought that I saw a know what a great act of filial piety dead beggar lying in his hut and began they are performing. Among other to investigate, and soon found that it shops in the little ecclesiastic village was a man that I was exposing. The there are quite a number of opium beggar in the next hut began to abuse shops, where priests and pilgrims are me for interfering with his business not ashamed to indulge in the drug. arrangements ancl told me to go on my business and let him alone. After Now we have got to the temple itself. walking five miles they come to a beau. It is a magnificent structure for China. tiful grove of large trees through which The huge pillars which support the flows a clear stream of water, and hun- heavy tiled roofs are pine-trees imported dreds of idols are carved in the solid from Oregon. The temple was burned rocks which form the sides of the hills by the rebels thirty years ago, and has overhanging the stream. There is one been rebuilt since that time. The first large and famous temple here, and one building is the gateway, where im- of the rooms in it contains five hundred mense figures scowl upon you and im. idols, all more than life-size. These press you with the fact that they are idols are made of a framework of wood the guardians of the temple. The pil- over which clay is daubed until it as- grims ar3 hurrying up the steps and sumes the shape of a man, and then the offering their incense and bowing down whole idol is covered with gold-foil and before these horrid-looking figures. looks like an image of solid gold. In Passing through this building we enter the back of every idol there is a little a large court paved with flagstones and hole where some living creature, as a surrounded by buildings ocoupied by toad, a centipede, snake, etc., has been the priests. On the other side of the put inside the idol; then the hole is court is the maintemple, where the im- stopped up and the Jiving creature dies, age of the famous Goddess of Mercy is. and that imparts life to the idol itself. In front of the door is a large iron in- cense urn, and the pilgrims are tossing From this temple onward there is a their lighted incense sticks into it so succession of houses and temples-in rapidly that a priest is stationed there fact, quite a village, where several thou- to throw water on the flames when they sand priests live. All sorts of things rise too high. Right inside the temple needed by worshippers are kept on sale. is a long low stool, and the worshippers The crowds grow thicker and thicker as crowd up to kneel on it before the im- we draw near the famous temple. The age of the goddess. This image is air is full of incense; a cloud of smoke placed high up in a shrine and curtains from the incense overhangs the temple. hang about it so, that it can be only Here passes a devotee, who stops at seen after close inspection. every third step and bumps his head on the hard stone pavement. Here The worshipper lights two candles comes a procession of persons enduring and sticks them on a railing in front of .penance, probably on account of a siuk the altar, then lights his incense and mother, whose disease they hope to throws it into the incense urn, thon have removed. There are four sons; oomes reverently and kneels on the everyone has his breast. and arms bare, stool. He bends forward until his head and four little incense urns, weighing bumps the floor three times, and this is about two pounds each, suspended repeated three times, making nine from his outstretched arms .by means bumps of the head on the ground. of little hooks piercing the skin of the Then he rises and mutters a Tery short arms and the breasts. A band of Chi- prayer. Then he looks around with a relieved and satisfied air, and his deTo_ tions are over-worship is done. Others 2 inches wide on a large map. For crowd up to take his place and go through the boundaries of the different coun- the same mummery, and thus it goes tries, States, or districts use differen t on all day long. After worship they walk around, look at the temple, the colored ribbon or tape about t or ! i mages, the curtains. They will probably buy prescriptions for medicine, and inches wide. Let the colors be strong, draw lots for the particular one, and and "bound" each geographical dis- then go away to the city, look around, trict entirely with its own ribbon make purchases, worship at other tem- stitched close up to the ribbon bound- ples, etc. They generally spend two ing another district, country, or coast- days, one in visiting the temples in the line. hills outside the city, and one in visit- ing the temples of the" Rulers of the 5. For rivers use blue ribbon, tape, city." On the city hill they pray for or strips cut from blue material; for good crops, success of the silk worm, lakes" bound" with blue ribbon as if peace and plenty during the year. For a country. For cities or any special special objects they go to special temples to pray where that object is a spe- place use red ribbon It or 2 inches cialty. The worship season lasts about six weeks, and several hundred thou- square, or any other mark desired. sand pilgrims visit the city in tcat time. 6. Names of countries, rivers, cities, The Ribbon Missionary Map, etc., should be of large letters cut from stiff, black linen or cotton goods and BY REV. G. L. WHAIlTOl!;, LEXINGTON, KY. stitched on evenly. Letters for the Bay of Bengal on map of India should be at There ought to be a missionary map in every church. It is scarcely worth least 3 inches square. For mountains while to say it cannot be afforded. AI. use "spatter work" of India ink, or most anyone can make a very useful invent something better. map with very little labor or expense. 7. Around the map, 8 inches from the DIRECTIONS. edge of the cloth, stitch a line of black tape, the same as the lines of latitude 1. U5e ordinary white muslin or and longitude. Outside of this line "sheeting" from 6 to 9 feet in width, leave a space of 3 inches for the figures as required. To make a map of Africa, showing latitude and longitude, and India, or South America the cloth stitch black tape about one inch wide should be 9 x 12 feet. all around. Bind the edge of the cloth 2. Spread the cloth on the carpet, and with pink or any light-colored material from a good atlas determine how many times wider apart the lines of latitude Ii inches wide_ and longitude must be than on the atlas. With lead-pencil trace the lines tn some unoccupied space stitch the of latitude and longitude on the cloth, name of the map iu black letters at least upon which stitch narrow black tape t 6 inches square. Do not place much more on the map than you desire to call or i inches wide. especial attention to. 3. Either by measurement or the eye, This will give the whole quite a finor both, trace with lead-pencil the seacoast line, boundaries of countries, ished and mappy appearance. principal lakes and rivers, and such cities, Iltations, etc., as you wish to use. REMAIlK.
4. Upon the sea-coast line stitch by This map requires no mixing of paint hand blue" graduated ribbon" at least or artistic skill to make it, while the colors are better than the best printed ones. You can' alter the map at pleas- ure. It does not rub off, break, or stick together by close folding or rolling. The. making of such a map will be a fine exercise for mission bands; the proper use of it will make thousands "see with eye, hear with the ear, and understand with the heart."
This plan is dne to A. T. Magarey, Esq., of Adelaide, South Australia.
EDITORIAL NOTES ON CURRENT 'l'OPICS
IlI.-EDITORIAL NOTES ON CURRENT TOPICS.
The Proposed Exposition of Missions. sions far more impressive than any words. In this REVIEW (Vol. II., p. 173) the editor ventured to suggest a grand ex- Meanwhile, Principal S. M. Hill, of position of missions or a visible pres- the Luther Academy, Wahoo, Neb., adds entation in material forms of the prog- another suggestion, which is on a scale ress of the Gospel in many lands, some- even more colossal. He calls it what after the manner of the internation- al exhibits in London, Paris, Glasgow, THE NINETEENTH CENTENNIAL OF CHRIS- etc_ Subsequently (Vol. III., p. 627) he ventured to add the suggestion that TIANITY. a great missionary picture or cyclorama might be painted, somewhat like If the United States Government suc- the grand picture in the garden of the ceeds in assisting the Jews back to their Tuileries, Paris, L' Hisioire du 8iilCle_ native land, the next great thing would be to inaugurate a celebration of the These suggestions have been taken up nineteenth centennial of Christianity at and embodied in part in the scheme of its birthplace in Jerusalem! Then, every Mr. William G. Douglas, of the local decade during the twentieth century, staff of the Baltimore American, who universal Christianity should meet on proposes, in connection with the the centennial grounds at Jerusalem for World's Fair at Chicago, some such a World's Chautauqua Assembly. The exhibit of world. wide missions. Mr. work of evangelization would be greatly Douglns has laid his proposal before the hastened by such jubilees. The grand managers of the Exposition, and Secre- conquests of Christianity in the moral, tary Butterworth has recommended the intellectual, and material progress made exhibit to the district general. It iB through its agency could there be disproposed to exhibit the idols of the played as in no other way_ world by specimens, casts, and photographs, the work of missionary publish- The centennial should be absolutely ing houses, medical missionaries, and interdenominational. All parties recog> industrial schools; and the mission sta- nized by the name of Christian-i.e., all tions and missionaries connected there- acknowledging the three oldest confeswith. The exposition would include sions, should there have the right of mission work at home and abroad, in nll representation. All languages in which its branches. The harems of Turkey the Gospel is preached or has been and the zenanas of India; the alphabets preached should there be heard. All and literature of missionary lands, cus- Christian nations and peoples should toms, and manners; Buddhist praying thtJre have at least one man. Relics wheels, and models of Juggernaut's car, from heathen worship and superstition and the fanes and shrines of idol gods; should be there, and all idols supermonkey temples of Benares, charms, seded by the God of the Gospel should etc., will be presented to the eye; and be shown as trophies. the ?ontrast between what was and what Some of America's millions could be is will be rendered as complete as possi- well spant in snch an undertaking, of vastly more practical value to humanity ble by the models of Christian villages than any polar expedition or digging over against those which the GOBpel has expedition on old classic grounds. The not yet lifted to a higher level. plan certainly is practical. A railroad is being built to Jerusalem. A direct We repeat, what we -have put on record steamship line conld he put bEltween before, that if properly managed this New York and Jaffa. There would be may be a most instructive and impres- no lack of passengers to make it a pay. sive exhibit, and an argument for mis- ~~g ~nterprise. Will it be done? Who will go ahead? when the chart appeared in the REVIEW, It would be an undertaking worthy of a that the author was one who had intelmissionary century and of a missionary ligently studied and compared th"Re two country like the United States. systems, and knew of what he was pic- torially dilicoursing. S. M. H. 2. The editor' would say, again, that Ohristianized Paganism. such a chart, like any article puhlished in these pages, does not carry with it In the May number of this REVIEW the endorsement of the editorial staff, was published a comparative chart or unless so expressed. Every writer is pictorial representation of the similarity alone responsible fur the sentiments he exbetween" Buddhism and Romanism. " presses " the editur's province is to judge whether it is expedient to admit the article to As was foreseen, this startling ex- the REVIEW. This rule we state now, as hibit has provoked a few hostile criti- the criterion for the futurGl. Had the cisms, though in the large majority of editor prepared this sketch he would cases we have received rather the cor- have put in something left out by Mr. dial support of our readers for printing Mason, and left out something which he these" twin monuments." has put in. But the chart was judged worthy to be published as the author It occurs to the editor that this affords had made it, and was left to commend a fit opportunity and occasion for stat- itself to the judgment of the reader for ing the attitude of the REVIEW as to mat- whatever of worth it contained. ters of this kind: 3. The question has been raised by 1. First it may be proper to say that some of our readers as to whether it is this "chart" was found among the becoming a missionary review to assume manuscripts left by Dr. Sherwood at his an attitude of antagonism toward a large death, to be published in these pages, section of the nominal Church of Christ, and it was admitted to the May number and in which, with all its admitted because in that, Buddhism, was especial- errors, charity bids us hope there are ly considered. The origin of this striking many true believers. sketch it may be interpsting to our readers to know, and the following let- In reply, we would Bay that we make ter will explain. Rev. G. L. Mason, of in our own minds a broad distinction the American Baptist Mission, Huchow, between Catholicism as a form of religious Chekiang Province, China, is the author belief and church polity, and Romanism of the cartoon, and the writer of the let- as a religio.political sYlitem, a sort of ter. He sayli : Christianized paganism. We accord to all others the liberty which we claim for "This chart was suggested at the ourselves, of following their own re- Shanghai Conference, as I was meditat- ligious convictions and preferences. ing one morning on the forthcoming But it is plain to an observing mind paper by Dr. Martin, urging missiona- that, upon primitive Christianity, there ries to tolerate ancestral worship. It have been engrafted from time to time occurred to me that the underlying rea· conceptions and customs borrowed from Bon for ancestral worilhip was the same heathen and pagan nations, and which as that in Buddhism and Romanism, as have no right to be treated as any part regards the dead-viz., a belief that the of Christianity, even by the most liberal living may benefit the dead, and that charity. As we distinguish hetween the dead may benefit or injure the liv- Episcopacy and ritualism, between ing; and the thought took shape in Protestantism and rationalism, between these monuments, a copy of which was a reverent scholarship and a destructive given to every missionary at the coufer- " higher criticism," so we can separate ence." between an honest believer in Catholi- It will b8 seen, as the editor remarked cism and" jeHuitical and hypocritical, that if this REVIEW is to treat worldor even misguided, Romanist. wide missions with comprehensiveness and candor, we cannot avoid an ex- It may be a matter of regret that we posure of this system of Christianized have not a term to express what, for lack paganism or paganized Christianity. of a better term, is called Romanism. Within this world·wide field are em- But we mean by it, in the sense now braced missions in Roman Catholic used, that system of priestcraft which countries. No intelligent student of withholds the Bible from the people, papal lands needs to be told that misputs man in the place of God, teaches sions are needed there. The editor, by that even a lie is j Ilstifiable in the inter· no little reading, and personal travel in ests of the " Church," puts penance in those parts, has become painfully opplace of repentance, interposes the con- pressed with the fearful destitution of fessional between God and the sinner, these peoples as to the pure Gospel. and even between husband and wife; Thousands of inhabitants of papal Euteaches prayers for the dead and to de- rope and South America are as much in parted saints; makes a woman queen of need of the Bible and the knowledge of heaven, and addresses to her direct wor- salvation by faith, as the dwellers in ship; and which in some parts puts her pagan Africa or heathen Asia. What husband practically above not only her, should be the policy of THE MISSIONARY but her Son, who is also Son of God; a REVIEW OF THE WORLD? Shall we, in system that makes the seven sacra- treating of papal lands, encourage exments necessary channels of grace, fiiUb- posure of the superstitions, falsehoods stitutes a sensuous and elaborate ritual, and impositkns, vices and corruptionil, with man millinery, postures, and im- petty tyrannies and absurd pretensions postures, lighted candles and crucifixes, of Roruanism; or shall we forbear in banners and processions, chanting of deference to those who, on the one hand, Latin prayers, and the adoration of a are tinctured with these errors, or, on wafer, in place of simple Christian wor- the other. carry their liberality to the exship; that appeals to superstition by the treme of laxity? use of holy water, sign of the cross, worship of r",lics ; that sets a premiuIll For our part, we feel that it is no time on sin by the vending of indulgences to keep silence. John Knox said, "I and masses for the dead, and so on to am in that place where it is demanded the end of the chapter, never yet con- of me to speak the truth, impugn it who cluded I list." And we shall dare to follow the same heroic motto, " with charity for all This system is, we repeat, an engraft- and malice toward none." ing of paganism upon the stock of Christianity, a perversion of the name 5. While a very few of our readers of Christian, a reversion toward heathen- have remonstrated, the great majority ism. And the student of church his- have congratulated us on the publication tory can trace the very periods, and of this chart. And we venture to add oftentimes years, when these new feat- two testimonies from very high sources. ures were transferred from pagan sys- One eminent brother in the Methodist tems to the so-called Church of Christ. communion writes: "That diagram is This system has no exact name. It has all right. Cartoons are not scientific been called Jesuitism, but that means statements. If it makes a ripple, let the more and less. Gambetta called it ripple go on. It is not worth while to " clericalism," and denounced it as run a magazine that hits–nothing. The .. the foe of France," but that term is general policy toward Romanism (not inexact. The author of thiil cartoon Romanists) cannot vary long from the called it Romanism because he thought general basis of the great American misthat term nearest to the " concept." sionary societies, ~ quite decided, per- sistent, and well-defined antagonism to 4. The editor is constrained to add Romish superstition and ecclesiastical Behold five thousand young men standcorruption. Abuse has no place in this ing at God's missionary altar ready to contention; ill feeling is weakness al. go! Send them, and see what will folways, but steady shedding of informa- low." tion and statement of certified facts is essential to the very life of such a re- So writes Chaplain McCabe in that view." alive paper, World- Wide Missions.
Another correspondent, eminent in The editor of this REVIEW has often another great Christian body, writes: Deen asked to give to the public the story of the way in which he was first " I approve of your' deadly parallel' led to Bound out this trumpet call, between Buddhism and Romanism, and which is now, thank God! becoming think it should be followed up with fur- the signal shout of God's army. ther illustrations. There is a man now returning to this country who might be God moves in a mysterious way. As asked to prepare an article on •Reversion nearly as can now be remembered, it to Paganism,' for he has been great- was in or about the year 1870 that the ly struck in his world-tour, he says, writer of these lines saw a paragraph with the tendency of Romanism and from the pen of the venerable Joseph Rationalism to reaffiliate with the old Angus, D.D., of London, calling on the heathen religions. It is a subject which Church to do nobler things for the cause needs to be set forth, especially con- of the kingdom. Dr. Angus affirmed sidering the rage in Ilome parts for that the Church could easily raise a band • Esoteric Buddhism.' The chart in the of 50,000 missionaries, and that such a May number is most telling and instruc- body of evangelists could preach the tive. By all means take that line and Gospel to the whole unev:mgelized pordevelop it. How striking that, just as tion of the race in a quarter of a censoon as Christians drift from evangelical tury. This was at least the substance moorings, they begin to CODrt fellowship of Dr. Angus's challenge. with Rome !" This and other similar thoughts took What has been written above has possession of my mind, and, like other been calmly put on record for all time thoughts in which lie the seed of the to come as the policy of this REVIEW. kingdom, began to germinate. What If any Jesuitical hand shall seize the was at first a vague conception grAw editorial pen to write diluted statementS into a definite and practicable enterin the pale ink of half truth, or in- prise. It became apparent that if the sidious presentations of a corrupt and Christian Church in Protestant commiscalled Christianity in the purple ink munions, numbering perhaps 30,000,- of a fascinating apology, it will not be ODD, would send out one in a hundred, our pen that will be so used. And, in it would give 300,000 missionaries; and this course of Christian candor, whether that if an average contribution of even against rationalism, ritualism, or a bap- one dollar a year could be obtained tized paganism, we invoke the blessing from all Protestant communicants, it of the God of truth and the prayerful would yield $30,000,000 annually-an support of every truth lover. immense sum, obtainable without any real sacrifice at so Iowan average. The Signal Cry of the New Crusade. The conception seemed so practical ., 'Let us evangelize the world in this and practicable that, as it was reflected generation! ' Let us be thankful that upon, it took deeper root until the even one man has been found to send autumn of 1877, when, as the pastor of forth such a cry as that. It has stirred the Fort Street Presbyterian Church, in the heart of the Church to its depths. Detroit, I gave public utterance to it in the prayer-meeting of the Church. From that day to this the thought has grown upon me, Bnd wherever by tongue or pen it has found utteranoe it has found salvation, the blessed hopcl, and the also, both in Amerioa and Great Britain, duty of witnessing to a lost world. and especially on mission fields, a sympathetic response in other Christian .. It was near to our plaoe of meetin~ that, in 1747, lit Northampton, Jona· hearts; and RO, like a trumpet. blast, than Edwards sent forth his trumpetechoed from hill to hilI, the cry, " Let peal, calling upon dililCiples everywhere us evangf'lize the world in Ollr genera- to unite in prayer for an effusion of the tion, " has found wider and wider rever- Spirit upon the whole habitable globe, beration. No one man oan olaim the That summons to prayer marks a new honor of starting that thought on its era and epoch in the history of the way. It was God's thought and signal Church· of God. Praying bands beg!n to gather in this and other lands; ory, emphasized py His providence and mighty revivals of religion followed; Spirit, and only oaught up and echoed immorality and infidelity were wonder- fully ohecked ; and, after more than fifby human lips. teen hundred years of apathy and leth- On no oocasion was this sentiment argy, the spirit of missions was reawa- kened. In 1784 the monthly concert was more devoutly'responded to than at begun, and in 1792 the first mis8ionary societ,. formed in England; in 1793, Northfield, Mass., in the Believers' Con- William Carey, the pioneer missionary, sailed for India. Since then, one hunference, presided over by D. L. Moody, dred missionary boards have been organthe evangelist, in August, 1885, and it ized, and probably not less than one may be interesting to our readers to see hundred thousand missionari"R, includa copy of the original resolution which ing women, have gone forth into the harvest-field_ The Pillar has moved beled to the call for a world's missionary fore these humble laborers, and the twoconvention_ Here it is : leaved gates have opened befor., them, until the whole world is now accessible, " Resolved: As those gathered in the The ports and portals of pagan, Mossolemn presence of Almighty God, this lem, and even papal lands are now eleventh day of August, 1885, that this unsealed, and the last of the hermit conference appoint a committee of seven, nations welcomeil the missionary. Reto prepare and issue a circular letter sults of missionary labor in the Hawaiian addressed to Christian discipIes of every and Fiji Islands, in Madagascar, in name, calling them to united prayer for ,Japan, probably have no parallel even a mighty effusion of the Spirit on all in apostolic days; while even Pentecost ministers, missionaries, evangelists, is snrpassed by the ingathering of ten teachers, and Christian workers, and thousand converts in one mission stasuggesting that, at some great world tion in India within sixty days, in the centre, at an early date, a great world year 1878. The missionary bands had oounoil of Christian believers be oalled scarce compassed the wallM and soundwith referenoe to the immedIBte dis- ed the gospel trumpet, when those tribution and ocoupation, and to the walls fell, and we have but to march speedy evangelization, of all districts of straight on and take possession of Sathe earth's population now destitute of tan's strongholds.' the Gospel." " God has thus, in !nswer to prayer, This resolution was unanimously opened the door of access to the na- tioD~. Out of the Pillar there comes passed, and a committee appointed to once more It voice, 'Speak unto the issue a oall for such a convention, and children of Israel, that they go foron the third day after there followed a ward_' And yet the Church of God is unanimous adoption, by a stauding vote, of the acoompanying " Appeal to Disciples Everywhere.
Issued by the Northfield Convention: .. To Fellow-believers of 81!ery name, scat- tered throughout the world, Greeting; "Assembled in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, with one aocord, in one place, we have continued for ten days in prayer and supplioation, communing with one another about the oommon slow to move in response to the Provi- to angels and men, could believers of dence of God. Nearly a thousand mill- every name, forgetting all things in ions of the human race are yet without which they differ, meet, by chosen the Gospel; vast districts are wholly representatives, to enter systematically unoccupied. So few are the laborers, and harmoniously upon the work of that, if equally dividing responsibility, sending forth laborers into every part each must care for at least one hundred of the world-field! thousand souls. And yet there is abundance of both men and means in the .. But, above all else, our immediate Church to give the Gospel to every liv. find imperative need is a new spirit of ing soul before this century closes. If earnest and prevailing prayer, The but ten millions, out of four hundred first Pentecost crowned ten days of millions of nomInal Christians would united, continued supplication. Every undertake such systematic labor as that subsequent Ildvance may be directly each one of that number should, in the traced to believing prayer, and upon course of the next fifteen years, reach this must depend a new Pentecost. We one hundred' other souls with the Gos· therefore earnestly appeal to all fellow. pel message, the whole present popula. disciples to join us and each other in tion of the globe would have heard the importunate daily supplication for a good tidings by the year 1900 ! new and mighty effusion of the Holy Spirit upon all ministers, missionaries, " Our Lord's own words are, • Go ye, eVllngelists, pastors, teachers and Chris. therefore, and disciple all nations;' and, tian workers, and upon the whole earth; 'This gospel of the kingdom shall be that God would impart to all Christ's preached in all the world for a witness witnesses the tongues of fire, and melt ,mto all nations; and then shall the end hard hearts before the burning message. corne.' Peter exhorts us both to ' look It is not, by might nor by power, but by for and hasten the ooming or the Day of the Spirit of the Lord, that all true suc· God;' and what if our inactivity delays cess must be secured. Let us call upon His corning? Christ is waiting to ' see God till He answereth by fire! What of the travail of His Houl ;' and we are we are to do for the salvation of the lost impressed that two things are just now must be done quickly; for the genera· of great importance: Hrst, the imme. tion is passing away, and we with it. diate occupation and evangelization of Obedi~nt to our marching orders, let us • go into all the world, and preach the every destitute district of the earth's Gospel to every creatm'e,' While from our very hearts WEI pray, • Thy kingdom popUlation ;, and, secondly, a new effu· come,' sion of the Spirit in answer to united prayer. "Grace, mercy, and peace be with you all. " If at some great centre like London or New York, a great council of evan· " Done in convention at Northfield, gelical believers could meet, to consider Mass., August 14th, 1885, D. L. Moody the wonder-working of God's Providence presiding. and grace in mission fields, and how fields now unoccupied may be insured .. Committee: Arthur T. Pierson, from further neglect, and to arrange and Philadelphia, Presbyterian, Chairman; adjust the work so as to prevent need· A. J. Gordon, Boston, Baptist; L. W. less waste and friction among workmen, Munhall, Indianapolis, Methodist; it might greatly further the glorious ob· George F. Pentecost, Brooklyn, N. Y., ject of It world's evangelization; and we Congregationalist; William Ashmore, earnestly commend the suggestion to missionary to Swatow, Chino., Baptist; the prayerful considerlltion of the vari- J, E. Rquaston Studd, London, Engous bodies of Christian believers, and land,Church of England ; Miss E. Dryer, the various missionary organizations. Chicago Avenue Church, Ohicago." What a spectacle it would present both Probably in all parts of the world Christians had by the same Spirit of But nothing written about the events of God been made to feel the importance 1887 ean give an idea of that seminary of a simultaneous movement in the now. I quote the language of Rev. Mr. direction of a world's evangelization; Rankin, agent of the American. Bible and the consequence was that, in July, Society, just after a visit to IJaredo : "I 1888, a World's Convention met at Lon- go there often, and never fail to visit don, whose influence on foreign mis- the seminary: There the ragged, neg- sions was simply incalculable. The lected children of the poorest Mexicans "student volunteer movement," like- are taught everything a Christian woman wise originating at Mt. Hermon, and in ,ought to know. .. In the spring of 1890 a convention called by Mr. Moody, nearly all the pupils were converted. caught up this cry, and made it the sig- Six of the former students are now doing nal for the" Modern Crusade." faithful missionary work in Mexico. It has, as results, a school for boys in the This conviction of the duty and feasi· same city, also mission schools of its bilityof giving the whole world the Gos- own type in Saltillo, Durango, and pel in the present generation has taken Chihuahua, all these on the Mexican possession of countless men and women border. Their influence has extended as in all parts of the globe. Hence the fast as their means would permit, and simultaneous calls for increased labor- Miss J-,oland, one of our first and most ers, enlarged means, and higher con- successful missionaries in Laredo, has secration. Let us keep this cry echo. advanced into Central Mexico, and es· ing, and let us press the Lord's enter- tablished a similar work in San Luis prise until not a lethargio churoh or Potosi. apathetio dIsciple remains-until not a child of Adam remains without the Miss Frances Williams was appointed knowledge of the Second Adam, who is to report to the REVIEW the doings of able to repair the ruin wrought by the the late Conference in West Africa. first. No believer can tell how much depends upon his actively joining in She writes: this crusade of the ages. Every voice and pen, every heart and hand and purse, ROTUFUNK, W. AFRICA, Feb. 10, 1891. should be enlisted constantly and un- The Mendi, Sherbro and Bompeh reservedly to secure the immediate missions of the United Brethren Church proolamation of the Gospel to every met in their eleventh annual meeting at soul. To this end the pages of this Rotufunk, West Africa, on Wednesday, REVIEW are pre.eminently and prayer- January 21st, 1891. There were present fully devoted. fifty-three workers, including missiona- ries, teachers, and helpers. We have a communication from Mrs. Bishop E. B. Kephart, D.D., LL.D., S. PhilP'>tt, as follows: who had recently arrived from America, presided. The bishop opened confer- DEW, FREESTONE Co., TEXAS. ence by reading and commenting on the The friends of evangelical work in fifth chapter of Matthew. He expressed the "Land of the Aztecs" were much himself as being glad to be present, and pleased to see, in the March number of to bring greeting from the Church at the REVIEW, an article by Miss Brown, home. All rejoiced to hear him speak of Tuscaloosa, Ala., on "Faith Hall, .. of hope and faith for the spread of the Lerado, Mexico. It should have been Gospel in dark Africa. His wise coun- Laredo, but the mistake involves no sel, given in the spirit and power of the ambiguity. There is but one such in- Master, gave to all a new inspiration for Htitution. It is a parallel to Mt. Hol- the work of saving souls. yoke, and many think its superintend- The reports of the workers for the ent the only living peer of Mary Lyons. past year show the year to be the best the conference hils ever known, there among the heathen than Adoniram Judhaving been gracious revivals at some of son and his associates; but the rocky the appointments; and ruany wer.. hearts of the Burmans did not readily turned to righteousness. The plans and yield to the fire and the hammer of Diresolutions adopted gave all hope that vine truth. They were arrogant, conthe coming year will be marked with ceited, and proud beyond any other even greater success. The reports given nation on the face of the globe; they by those who, during the year, had gone had a religious system <lating back into the interior, where the Gospel was about 2500 years, and a written language, never heard before, were so encouraging with an abundance of literature, exthat we longed to go and possess the plaining and defending their doctrines, " goodly land" for our King. and they were contented and at rest in their religious and their social position. One evening was given to temper- It is no wonder that the missionaries, ance work, when the Loyal Temperance who were few in numbers, and who had Legion of Rotufunk was called npon to to prepare their books and tracts and instruct and entertain the people on their translations of the Scriptures by this subject and work. Earnest sermons long and painful labor, in one of the were preached on the other evenings, most difficult of Oriental tongues, should ani! sinners were invited to accept have found their progress slow and at Christ. A nnmber began seeking the times almost disheartening. Dr. Judliving way, and fonrmen were hopefully son understood this, and recognized the converted. fact that it was much easier to bring souls to Christ among a people who had On Sunday morning the bishop no written language, no literature, no preached an able sermon, after which religious system, but who had a deep he ordained the following persons to consciousness of sin, and of their need preach the Gospel: Mr. Jacob Miller, of a Saviour. Jr., Mr. S. B. Morrison, Mrs. Lida M. West, Misses Ellen Groenendyke and In regard to Ko-thah.byu, there is no Frances Williams. doubt that he was baptized by Mr. Boardman, and was the first Karen con- A spirit of love and unity was mani- vert, or that he accompanied Mr. Boardfested throughout the conference ses- man to Tavoy, preferring to be baptized Mions. And as the workers separated, it there, among his own countrymen; but was with a consciousness of having his conversion took place in Moulmein, come nearer the first and greatest mis- and under Dr. Judson's own labors. sionary, and also nearer to each other. Dr. Judson had redeemed him from " In union there is strength." slavery, and labored with him long be- fore he was willing to abandon his Dr. L. P. Brockett also writes: wicked life and pecome a Christian. (See Dr. E. Judson's" Life of Adoniram BROOKLYN, April 20, 1891. Judson," Carpenter's" Self·Support in I find in the May number a com- Bassein," etc.) municationfromRev. H. Morrow, Karen missionary at Tavoy, taking exception We know that" God has chosen the to some statements of mine, in the No- weak things of this world to confound vember REVIEW. Mr. Morrow has in, the mighty; and things that are not, to this communication, fallen into some bring to naught things tLat are. " If it errors very natural in his position, but had been possible for the earlier Burwhich should be corrected. He errs in mese missionaries to have understood supposing that I attributed the scanty and acted upon this principle, and to success of the Burmese missionaries to have given their first" labors to the their schools, or to a lack of preaching Karens and the affiliated tribes, they {In their part. No more devoted and might have endured ev-en fiercer perseearnest missionaries have ever labored cution than they did; but after seve4ty. and soundness of doctrine. Yet those seven years of labor, they would have had a very much stronger Karen can· churches as a whole need an Americun stituency than they now have, and the Burmans would very largely have hum- missionary Buperintendent. bled themselves before the cross. Bnt our Lord, in this case, as among the P.S.-As to the.number of missiona- 'l'elugus, saw fit to bring His people into Canaan after half a century of doubt and ries. both to the Burman and Karen trial, and in the end IIi:,; way will be shown to be the best. Mr.·Morrow is missions, we do not differ materially. undoubtedly in error in estimating all the Karen churches by the standard of My statistics were taken from the offithose in Tavoy. After the large in. gathering under the labors of Ko·tbah- cial hand-book of the Missionary Union byu and his associates, with some superintendence by Dr. Mason (who, how- for 1890-91, and they show the comever, soon removed to far-away Toungoo), the Karen churches in the lower Tenas· parative success of the Karen missions serim province were left for nearly forty years under the care of native pastors, over the Burman to have been as fifteen nearly all of them illiterate, without the Scriptures, and most of them unable to to one. No doubt there should have read them if they had them, and isolat. ed from the other Karen churches. bden ten times as many missionaries in They had no schools except the most elementary ones, and these were sus- each. L. P. B. tained by government aid. A few of the churches partially supported theil' Baron Hirsch is probably the greatest pastors, but the pittance they gtlve was philanthropist in Europe, if not in the so small that they could only maiIitain w Jrld. He has established a special an existence by hunting and fishing. once with a corps of clerks for the What wonder that their condition was management of his plans. He has so low, and that the degeneration was o'fered $2,000,000 for the public schools so great that it was a 1uestion with the of Russia, on condition that no distincmanagers of the Union whether there tion shall be made in the application of was enough left to be worth saving! the fund as to the race or religion. The offer was declined. He now proposes Contrast these neglected churches to transport to the river Plate half a with the intelligent, devoted Christian million of Russian Jews. His recent churches of the Sgau Karens in Bassein, beneficAnt appropriation for Jews in this described in the May number of the RE- country is well known. And we believe VIEW; churches whose poverty abound- that the aggregate of his gifts to benevoed to the riches of their liberality, and lent purposes cannot be less than from whose benevolence, education, and so- $10,000,000 to $20,000,000. We would cial position mighb be fairly compared gladly have any trustworthy information with those of our rural churches at as to this remarkable man-who he is, home, and then say whether Mr. Mor- where he was born and has lived, how row was justified in judging all the his great fortune was acquired, and how Karen churches by the Tavoy standard. it is expended.
There are certainly among the Bas- The following, says the Australian sein pastors some who are not behind Sunday-school Teacher, is from a boy's most of our' American pastors in elo- essay on total abstinence. It is a whole quence, l.l;nQwledge of the Scriptures, volume on temperance in a nutshell : "I abstain from alcoholic drinks be- cause, if I would excel as a cricketer, Grace says, • abstain ;' as a walker. Wes- ton says, 'abstain;' as an oarsman, Hanlon says, • abstain ;' as a swimmer, Webb says, ' abstain ;' as a missionary, Livingstone says, • abstain ;' as a doc- tor, Clark says, 'abstain;' as a preach. er, Farrar says, • abstain.' Asylums, prisons, and workhouses rel?eat the crJ', 'abstain t' '" A Remarkable Farewell. these parts. Actions I!Ipeak louder than The readers of the REVIEW have been words, hence much does not remain for informed in regard to the remarkable us to say as to what valuable service ingathering among the Telegus in India. you have rendered the country in which Dr. Clough, the leader in this great you have faithfully worked for the last movemlmt, arrived in this country on quarter of a century, since the results the 18th of May, being compelled, from of your hard and honest labor are them- ~heer exhaustion, induced by his im· selves monuments of the standing evi- mense labors, to lea"e the field for a dence of the good you have done in the season of rest. He comes with the im· improvement and elevation of thhl portunate cry for twenty.five new men place. We feel that YOll have been a to be sent out at once by the Baptist powerful instrument in God's hands in Missionary Union to reap the harvest the accomplishment of His great pur- which is now ripe for ingathering. Eight pose. The poor downtrodden people thousand converts have been baptized who were grovelling in darkness and on this one field since the first of Janu- sunk in ignorance have been brought aryof the present year; and Dr. Clough to the light and knowledge of the living believes that these are only the first- God," etc. fruits of the coming ingathering. Noth. ing like it has occurred in the history Tho address continues in this strain, of missions. It is, however, of a significant event in connection with Dr. closing with a commendation of the de- Clough's return that we are now writing. When he went to the field twenty-five parting missionary to the care and keepyears ago. the caste preJudice was such that Hindus meeting the missionary on ing of God during his voyage, which the street would make a long detour, lest his shadow falling on them, or the odors almost reminds one of Acts xx. After of his person being wafted toward them by the wind, might defile them. Such the reading of the address, several native has been the change in a quarter of a century that the Hindu citizens of the gentlemen spoke, among them Mr. D. highest position in the city gave a farewell meeting to the departing mission. Markundayulu Sastry, who said that ary, inviting Christians, Mohammedans, and Brahmans to join in a public "according to the Shastras he should expression of gratitude for the great blessing which the missionary's labors not have stirred out of his house that had brought to their country. The Madras "l£ail, in recording the day, as there was a ceremony to be perevent, gives a long list of the distin- formed by him; but whatever the Shasguished representatives present, and a verbatim report of the farewell address tras could have prohibited him, they could tendered to the departing missionary. not pr'event him being present to do hOrlor The address says : to one who had done so much good to the "REVEREND AND DEAR SIR: We, the people arul the country." Surely all this people of Ongole, consisting of all classes and communities, have come from an assembly of Hindus is remarktogether here to.day and asked your presence for awhile, that we may bid able.-A. J. G. you farewell on the eve of your departure to America. We take this opportunity The Mission to the Ohildren. of tendering yon our deep gratitude for the many obligations you have con- From March 1st, 1890, to March 1st, ferred OIl. llS !Utd the people at large in 1801. the missionaries of the American Sunday-school Union in the Northwest, under the direction of F. G. Ensign, Superintendent of Chicago, established 650 new Sunday-schools in destitute places, and induced 2759 teachers and 20,705 scholars to attend them. Be- sides this, the!' visited and aided othpr.
schools in 2745 cases where 14,020 teachers are giving Bible instruction to 135,389 scholars, heU 7522 meetings, made 26,245 visits to families, distribut- ed 5532 Bibles and testaments, placed in circulation $5070 worth of religious reading, and travelled 191,685 miles.
Already 2982 conversions have been reported from tbis work during the year, and 85 churches have developed U;OIll the Sunday-school,
TH]jJ MONTHLY CONCERT OF MISSIONS
IV.-THE MONTHLY CONCERT OF MISSIONS.
BY REV. D. L. LEONARD.
A glance is to be taken at missionary tion men; are found to some extent in work among the Japanese and Chinese the mines, though having no fancy for in this country, among the American toil underground; are expert gardeners Indians and the Mormons, and in the and laundrymen, and when trained islands of the sea. The theme has no excel as cooks als-o. lack of either length, breadth, or variety, and includes points not a few of pro. The Chinese are industrious and found interest to every Christian pa- economical in the extreme, and, IDore triot. than anything else, it is their ability to make so little go so far that tends, wher. JAPANESE. ever they are found in considerable numbers, to cheapen and degrade labor, The census return~ for 1890 are only and so stirs the fear and the wrath of in part available; but enough is known other toilers. From several causes they to make it certain that this class of our are compelled to endure an endless population is but small, and does not amount of opprobrium and insult, are constitute a very serious " problem." the butt for jokes, and a mark for the The few thousands we have are scat· mob. Though Bret Harte's" Heathen teredfarand wide, some in almost every Chinee," Ah Sin, with ., ways that arc large city, though about 1500 are found dark" and" tricks that are vain," may upon the Pacific border; Louisiana can. occasionally be duplicated in real life tains 39, Florida 14 ; Virginia, 13 ; Ten. among the Celestials, yet the represen tn. nessee, 10, etc. Wherever found they tion is a slander nevertheless. The are intelligent and polite, and readily ,vorst feature of the Chinese question is adopt the ideas and manners and cus· found in the fact that those who come to toms of their neighbors. Nor is the us take no interest in American affairs. task specially difficult of persuading They journey hither only to make them to accept the Gospel with all their money and return, and hence keep the heart. Not much organized work has way open by clinging to their old ways, been begun or is possible in their be the queue, their peculiar dress, etc. To half. But the Methodist Episcopal lay these aside is not only to be treason. Church expends some $5000 to enhance able to the emperor, but also to aposta. their spiritual well being in California, tize from Confucius. dividing it among several missions, and reports 4 missionaries, 3 helpers, 160 Missionary work is carried on largely members, 21 probationers, and 44 bap. by means of evening schools and Sun. tisms during the last year. Not many day.schools, advantage being taken of cnter the United States intending to reo the fact that many-it may be only with main, and q aite a large proportion of a business motive-are eager to learn to the converts sooner or later return to speak and to read the English language. Japan to strengthen the missions there. In the early stages of instruction it is found necessary to supply each indi- CHINESE. vidual Chinaman with a teacher. Many of them are found to be possessed of They number not far from 130,000, bright and inquiring and impressible of whom the census reports 71,681 as minds, most are models of good deport· residing in the single State of Califor. ment, as well as generous and grateful nia. They are found also in all the for favors. principal cities West and East; in the flourishing mining" camps ;" in the reo In all the large cities missions are gion we~t of the Rockies they constitute carried on, and are not especially disthe force of railroad builders and sec· couraging, but bear fruits which am substantial, and, all things considered, Methodist Episcopal Church South refairly large. Muny are found in Chris- ports a church-membership of 3909 in tian churches who in every way adorn the Indian Territory. Bishops Whipple tho Gospel of .Tesus Christ, lind whoso and TIare of the Episcopal Church find godly and self-denying lives rebuke abundant ground for thanksgiving and their white brethren. The American hope. The Congregationalists have gath- Missionary Association alone Bustains ered 9 churches with 438 members, and 18 schools in California, with 33 teach- 16 schools with 527 scholars, and supers and 1310 scholars. Of these 204 port 87 missionaries and teachers. have given up idolatry, and 159 give Twelve theological students are in trainevidence of conversion. In all, from ing for the ministry. The Roman Caththe first, 750 are counted as having been olics were first in the field, beginning led to Christ in these schools. The nearly 300 years ago, during the French Methodists also and Baptists ani Pres- regime in Canada, and even yet maintain byterians are doing work. their self-denying zeal. It is much to be hoped that with civil service intro- INDIANS. duced into the Indian Bureau, and the churohes encouraged by the past fruit Well may Americans blush when they of their prayer and toil, a brighter meditate upon the Indian question. Not day for the American Indian is at hand. including Alaska, we have to do with 249,273 red men who are found scat- MORMONS. tered through 35 of our States and territories. The Indian Territory holds The Mormon Church was founded in 66,289, of whom most ar61 civilized. In Seneca Co., N. Y., in 1830, or more than New Mexico dwell 20,521; in South 60 yoorll ago, and sprang from causes in Dakota. 19,845; in Arizona, 16,74,0 ; in whioh is found a strange combination Oalifornia, 15,283, and 10,000 each in of iniquity and folly, boundiesil false- Montana and Washington. Upon the" hood and trickery, on the one hand, and various reservations 133,382 are gath- credulity to match on the other. Its ered, of whom 98,707 are self-supporting, origin was in. a generation famous for and the land contains 32,567 Indians isms, and it was but one of a half hunwho are tax-ed or taxable. dred patent schemes for the hastening of the dawn of millennial bliss. From The government, after expending for the first it was a shining mark for ridiforty years an annual average of $10,- cule and hate, and within 15 years was 000,000 in fighting him, and at a cost of compelled five times to change its habi- $1,000,000 for every one killed, is now tat, and finally, after its prophet and at length devoting $500,000 a year to high-priest hBd falJen victims to mob educational work; and the churches Tiolence, sought refuge in the wilderhave found that for the average ex- ness 1000 miles beyond the Missouri. penditure of $1000 the red man can be Already its emissaries had crossed the converted. Though the facts are all th61 sea, and recruits began to pour in by other way, the conviction is yet wide- the thousand froll the Old World and spread that the Gospel and the Indian to cross the great plains, lured on by have next to nothing in common. And specious but deceitful promises. this though Eliot and Edwards and Brainerd met with abundant success; Meantime polygamy, which ,for ten and th61 Moravians civilized and Chris- years had been praotised in secret, was tianized the Delawares and the Mohi- openly proclaimed and defended in cans by hundreds, and powerful revivals 1852. A little later, made bold by sucwere Touchsafed in Pennsylvania and cess, and during a reign of terror orig- Ohio; and triumphs of grace are to be inating in II dreadful outburllt of fanatiseen among the savage Sioux, and al- cism, Brigham Yonng felt himSelf strong most every tribe in. tbe West. The enongh to defy the Government, and it became necessary to send an army in own against its foes. It is more than 1857 to brine; him to reason; and then likely that the gains from conversions began a contest for supremacy, in which in foreign lands are more than noutral- for 25 long and disgraceful years the ized by apostasies at home. By a series hierarchy was aMe to hold its own. of defeats extending over ten years the Nor was it until the passage of the Ed- spirits of the leaders begin to be broken, munds law in 1882 that the haughty and finding the Government and the moral defiant priesthood began to be brought sense of the whole nation united against to terms and feel compelled in any their schemes. Though not ready yet measure to obey the law of the land. to' yield heartily and thoroughly, even But since then every year has witnessed upon the point of polygamy, their faith solid gains against polygamy and the begins seriously to stagger. It there- rule of the priesthood. But even yet fore remains to continue the momentous constant watchfulness is called for. It struggle. Let the courb. withhold not will not do to trust the wily leaders, and a whit of their stern pressure of penin particular not for years yet will it alty ; and let the churches sustain and answer to bestow upon Utah the boon multiply the toilers in school and pulof statehood. pit, and to mea-sures hitherto employed add wise and vigorous and persistent For nearly 20 years no Christian mis- evangelistic effort, and ten years hence sionary appeared in Salt Lake, and the yet greater marvels of improvement will Great Basin was as effectually closed have been wrought. against missionary work as were China or Japan. Nor was it until after the ISLANDS oj' THE SEA.. discovery of rich mines of silver, and more, after the completion of the Pacific The isles shall wait for His law; and, Railroad in 1869, that the churches of alas! for shame, that the countless the land began in earnest to endeavor islands of the ocean, with their millions to win the" Saints" from the error of of souls benighted and depraved, should their ways. Indeed, the last decade have been compelled to" wait," in a contains the bulk of the educational and sense not at all scriptural, and for religious victories which have been eighteen centuries before an opporwon. It was soon found to be as good tunity was supplied to hear the Gospel as impossible to reach the adult popu- command. True, many of. them were lation, and hence great emphasis has not known until times quite modern, been laid upon Christian schools, and 11. and only reoently have they been extroop of consecrated and heroic women plored and made accessible. were despatohed to the scene of strife and have been there maintained, and It is worth recalling that the first forgroot have been their achievenrents in mil.! missionary undertaking set on foot breaking down barriers of prejudice, by the Christian Church had an island letting in the light of intelligence, and for its object; and when the Holy Ghost leading hundreds to better lives. Prog- said, " Separate me, ;Barnabas and Saul, reBS is slow, the field is as full of dis- for the work whereunto I have called couragements as any in foreign lands, them." This was ten years before the and yet the changes which have trans- continent of Europe received the Gospired within the decade are amazing. pel. It was also to the West Indies that By the development of mining and the Frederick IV. designed to send Ziegenincrea8e of railroads such an influx of balg and Plutscho. The Moravians denon·Mormon population has taken place spatched their firilt representatives to that. three of the largest cities have been St. Thomas, and the second company wrested from Mormon hands, and a turned their faces toward Greenland. fourth will soon be redeemed. where Egede had already been long at work. It was Captain Cook's discov- The church is now scarcely holding its eries in the South Seas that first fired Carey's Boul with zeal for the world's into the churches, which now are indeevangelization, and for years he thought pendent, almost self – sustaining, and the Lord had called him to labor for the earnestly engaged carrying the Word souls of the heathen in Tahiti, while it of life to other islands. What dismal was the enthusiasm stirred by those tragedy was enacted for a generation in same explorations that led to the forma- Madagascar after thousands had chosen tion of the London Society, and gave to the way of life! The whole company it such an astonishing initial impulse. were called to endure the fiery trials of The American Board occupied Ceylon relentless persecution, and not a few to at an early day, and soon after seventeen be faithful even unto death. But the men and women were en route for the Church came forth from the furnace Sandwich Islands. with scarcely the smell of fire upon it, and to-day the London Society, God's The earth's islands have never been most honored instrument, can count 670 numbered, nor has an accurate census ordained and 3785 unordained toilers in of their inhabitants ever been taken. that fruitful field, with upward of 50,000 But they doubtless hold from thirty to church-members and 250,000 adherents. forty millions. Often possessed of cli- The Church Missionary Society entered mate nearly perfect, and of wondrous New Zealand as far back as 1814, but natural beauty, they also in many cases waited and toiled eleven years for the supply a flora and fauna most remark- first con vert, and then five years longer able-birds and blossoms decked in for the second. But then ensued such array most gorgeous, and fruits and a remarkable religious overturning that flavors delicious beyond comparison. in 1842 Bishop Selwyn could write: Behold the peculiar treasures of the ., A whole nation of pagans has been Spice Islands, and the pearls, and ebony, converted to the faith." And now, out and satin-wood, and coffee, and cinna- of about 45,000 Maoris. 18,000 are Chrismon, and cocoa-nuts of Ceylon! And tians by profession, with 38 of their how strange that where nature has number ordained clergymen. And Fiji, wrought many of her chief marvels, and under the wise and patient and self-sacso is seen at her best, man is often found rificing care of the English Wesleyans, at his very worst! The islands of the has become at length to all intents Pacific stand for the lowest type of .bar- and purposes a Christian nation, and barism and shocking savagery, for the with perhaps a larger proportion of unspeakable horrors of the tabu, canni- the population in regular attendance balism, universal lust, and endless war. upon religious services than can any_ Fiji, New Zealand, New Hebrides, Rara- where else be found. And it may be tonga, and Tierra del Fuego have long that Japan will speedily prove herself been names with which to conjure up the queen of all the isles, because of her scenes most forbidding and loathsome. ready and eager and thorough accept- High among the names of martyrs, too, ance of Christ and His salvation! stand those of Williams, and Patteson, and Gordon, and Gardner, the latter The secret of these distinguished congladly laying down his life in a land as quests for the kingdom of heaven is dreary as any under the sun, and in be- doubtless to be found in part in the fact half of a people as brutal and God-for- that the insular races, as a rule, are of saken as can anywhere be found. But, a make more gentle and docile and imover against all this, perhaps nowhere pressible than that of the Chinaman or elso have the triumphs of the cross been the Hindoo, and this because, never more numerous or more glorious. Upon having been burdened and enslaved by the Hawaiian Islands there were toiling any form of civilization highly wrought and waiting and watching with weeping and hoary with age, or by any religious for twenty long years, but after that system elaborate and fortified by cenwithin aix years 27,000 were gathered turies of learning and culture. The people, thereiore, were more like chilo age. In Jamaica alone 20 stations are dren, were ready to look up to thei!." held by 26 missionaries, and the teachers and to learn, were far leslI churches have 6444 members and 16,936 proud and self'Bufficient, and so, with adherents. In the 74 schools 7444 chilo all their base superstition and measure. dren are taught. In the other islandsless depravity, like the pUblicans and St. Thomas, Antigua, Tobago, Barbados, sinners of our Lord's time, were much etc.-are found upward of 10,000 com- nearer the kingdom. And only let those municants, and 6500 in schools, with 23 who have received the knowledge and missionaries and 21 trained native help- hope of salvation, and who also, in a ers. The Episcopalians have a church sense, love and prize the unspeakable in Hayti with a bishop, 9 presbyters, gift, make haste with all their might to and 4 deacons. Its communicants num· evangelize, and so far as possible to ber 402, of whom 84 were confirmed convert, the millions who even yet are in 1890. altogether unreached, and another sub. lime Scripture will presently inspire our The London Missionary Society has a glad song. The Lord reigneth, let the Polynesian mission with 20 English mis. earth rejoice; let the multitude (or the sionaries, 347 native ordained minis· many, or great) isles be glad thereof. ters, and 216 native pr,mchers, 13,663 church.members, 40,651 adherents, 13,. The figures which follow will give de. 445 in Sunday.schools, and as many finiteness and point to the more general in day-schools. The principal work is statements which have preceded: done in the Heroey, Samoan, and Loy- alty grflups, and in New Guinea. In The Presbyterians are carrying on Rarotonga a training institution was mission work in 28 towns outside of Salt established as far back as 1839, and in Lake City and Ogden, and have 21 min. it hundreds of natives have been fitted isters, 58 teachers, 30 schools, and about for preaching and pastoral toil, and from 2100 pupils, 75 per cent of which pupils thence have gone out through all the are from Mormon or ex-Mormon fami. vast region of the South Pacific. lies. The summary of the work done by all the Christian denominations in A treaty has just been concluded Utah is about as follows: 85 mission Christian schools in 78 different towns, between Japan and the Hawaiian Gov. employing 172 Christian teachers, and educating about 6500 pupils, three ernment for the unrestricted immigrafourths of whom are from Mormon families. tion of Japanese subjects into the In Micronesia the American Board is Hawaiian kingdom. Special inducedoing work in the Caroline and Gilbert groups, and with Ponape and Ruk as ments are offered to Japanese coolies nentres. In this field Robert W. Logan was the apostle, and in labors abundant and farmers-a free paRsage to the wore out his life. The mission con. tains 3 stations and 49 out·stations, with islands, exemption from taxation, and a 19 American missionaries and 86 native helpers. The 51 churches have 4475 bounty of seventy-five Mexican dollars inembers, of whom 496 were received on c;onfession of faith last year. given to each bonafide immigrant. The The first Moravian missionaries were first steamer, carrying one thousand sent to the West Indies and to the negro population, then in terrible bond- farmers, sailed for Honolulu February 27th. J. T. G.
Matches and kerosene seem strange mission factors, yet the extent to which they are being imported into China makes an item of considerable interest in the increased intercourse with Chris. tian countries, and Western ideas flow in with these light.giving articles.
J. T. G,
GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE
V.-GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE.
Orga.nized Missionary Work and Statistios. Edited by Rev. D. L. Leonard, Bellevue, O.
-Dr. Kerr, who has been for 36 years en are at work, sent out by the Swedish in charge of the missionary hospital in Woman's Missionary Society. Canton, has treated, during that period, 521,000 patients, has written 27 medical -More than 100 Waldensian delegates and surgical works, and educated 100 assembled recently at Torre Pellice, native physicians. And yet an unbe- near Turin, in Synodical Convention. lieving and ill-informed world continues The 17 mountain oongregations have 78 to ask in wonder: .. To what purpose Sunday-schools, with 3270 scholars, is this waste upon missions ?" some 40 lay sooieties for practioal. Chris- tian work, and 13 societies for mission -The great Church whose seat is work, home and foreign. There lire upon the Seven Hills is neither dead now found in Itllly 43 Waldensian oonnor sleeping. During the last four gregations, with 53 stations for preachmonths of 1889 no less than 49 Roman ing with referenoe to the formation of Catholic missionaries, male and female, congregations. In all, 4228 oommuniarrived in East Africa, and 15 of the cants and 511 cateohumens have been number were destined to the mission gathered, and mostly from the Catholio which is rival to the Protestant Mission Churoh, in Dar-es-Salaam. -Though it is but a few years since -One of the most powerful private Protestant missions were founded in associations to which the recent anti- Mexioo, already 20,000 have been gathslavery movement has given birth is the ered into the churches, and a few of African Association of German Catho- these are already large and even selflics. L' Afrique reports that this asso- supporting. The M. E. Church, South, dation holds many publio meetings in is expending $105,000 annually upon different oities, publishes a journal- this field, the Presbyterians, $90,000, Gott will es-and has 10 diocesan com- the M. E. Church, North, $50,000, and mittees, comprising 1500 oiroles and the American Board, $24,000. Besides about 200,000 members. The oentral these the Episcopalians are at work, the oounoil at Cologne has received more Associate Reformed, the Cumberland than $130,000 in money. This is to be Presbyterians, and the Friends. spent in African expeditions, in founding safe retreats for threatened negroes, -The Hawaiian Islands, though long in missions, orphan houses, etc., all over since substantially Christianized and the German Afrioan possessions. Six left to oare religiously for themselves, thousand dollars have been given to aid still find mission work in abundance on in the transport of the first German hand. Upon the islands, among other steamer for the Victoria Nyanza. foreigners, are found 12,000 Portuguese, 13,600 Japanese, and 20,000 Chinese, -The Swedish Congo Mission, dur- and work in behalf of all these is oaring the last 10 years has opened 5 sta- ried on. The Hawaiian Evangelical Astions, whioh are oooupied by 18 mis- sociation raised $47,857 last year, and sionaries. The Swedish Church Mission was sustaining 9 missionaries with their Bustains 8 ordained missionaries in wives upon the Marquesas and Gilbert Natal and Zululand, 2 of them natives. Islands. The Swedish National Evangelioal Assooiation supports 12 Swedish and 14 -For large, Tisible, and tangible renative missionaries in Massowah and sults the Baptist Ongole Mission among Abyssinia. And in Algeria several wom- the Telugus takes rank with the North India Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and the Hawaiian Islands, -The Free Church of Scotland, with 1838-43, when 27,000 were received to 335,000 members, raised last year from the churches in 6 years. In 1878 in all sources, a total missionary revenue Ongole over 9000 were baptized, and for the evangelization of the world out. 2222 in a single day. A revival has side the United Kingdom of £113,431 continued ever since. One church has 16s. 3d ($567,155). Its native communi_ reached a membership of 12.000. Last cants in all forfign fields aggregate year was ·fruitfnl in conversions, 2023 6620. It supports 51 ordained mis- receiving baptism in three months, 1671 sionaries, 8 medical missionaries, and in one day, with 2000 candidates. 23 professors and teachers.
-It is saiJ that 4000 parishes of the -The provinces of Alsace.Lorraine, Established Church of England are so acquired by Germany in 1870, have a uninterested in the foreign missionary Roman Catholic popUlation of 1,191,974, movement as to put forth no effort served by about 3000 priests and prelwhatever in its aid. There is a growth, ates, while the Protestants number however, of foreign missionary interest 288,895 souls. These are divided into in the English Church, as evidenced by 238 parishes and 118 preaching places. enlarged receipts of money and the in. Of the former 199 are Lutheran and 39 cre!1sed number of missionaries sent Reformed. The Lutheran pastors numonto The London Ch mch Missionary ber 226 and the Reformed 139. In addi- Society, for example, sent out no less tion to these there are 25,000 soliliers than 82 new missionaries in 1890. in the provinces, served by 12 clergy- men. -Bishop Potter, in a recent sermon in behalf of New York City missions, -In St. Petersburg there are 83,000 said that the Church he representeJ was Protestants. Of these 42,000 are Gerpreaching the Gospel in that city" not mans, half of them Russian subjects. only in almost all the tongues of Eu- They are organized into 14 congregarope, but in those of China, Armenia, tions, served by 30 pastors. The church Turkey, and Persia." A certain parish work among them receives no support has promised him $3000 a year, and the from the State, the voluntary contribudaughter.in.lawof Robert Browning has tions of each member averaging about promised to build a $40,000 chapel. six or seven dollars annually. One of these co~gregations is building a church -In Belgium one out of every 200 of costing $250,000. The same congrega. the popUlation is a monastic brother. tion has a gymnasium which graduates These 32,000 monks, notwithstanding its pupils into the university. Another their vow of poverty, have property congregation has also a gymnasium of valued at $26,000,000. In France there its own, one of the best in Russia, exare fully 10,000 Sisters of Mercy, who pending about $20,000 a year for this upon entering the 800 cloisters of that institution. The city mission work of country, resign all claims to their prop- the Protestants of the Russian capital is erty. Yet the property of these orders being energetically prosecuted. is worth more than $5,000,000. -From thQ last statistical Year Book -According to the Gospel in all LandB, of the Protestant Church in Prussia, it the benevolent contributions of the dif- appears that in 1889 no fewer than 3125 ferent Evangelical denominations in the persons became converts to the Evan- United States for the year 1890 were as gelical Church. Of these 2317 were follows: from the Roman Catholic Church, 525 Baptists. __ •. . . .. . …. .. .. $1,362,488 had been Dissenters and 283 had been Protestant Episcopalians .. . 1,689,401 Jews. During the same year 107 Prot- Congregationalists……… . 2,398,837 estant pastors had died, the average age Methodist Episcopalians… . 2,769,172 Presbyterians …• _•.••….. 4,783,657 being 60 years and 6 months, the average foreign missions are disproportionately time of service, 30 years and a few large.
months; 98 were placed upon the re- -The fact is well known that for tired list, receiving a pension from the years the Roman Catholic Church has Government. The average age of these been vigorously pushing itself Rmong was 71, and the average service time 40. the Freedmen of the South, and among -Gossner's Mission. founded by Pas· the American Indians, in the latter case tor Gossner, of Berlin, in 1844, is a securing the lion's share of Government most vigorous missionary body. They appropriations. According to a late are at work among the Kols of Chutia· church official report, 81 priests have Nagpur, India, and are wonderfully suc- established 108 churches and 58 schools cessful. Within the last twelve months among the Indiamt, have the care of 10,073 have been baptized and 2796 have 87,375, and last year baptized 3807 chilbroken caste and come under Christian dren and 245 adults. ,The same authorinstruction. There are now in the mis- ity reckons up 151,6a Catholic negroes sion 167 churches, with 11,552 full who are taught by 33 priests in 27 members, and a Christian community churches and 110 schools. The sum of over 35,000. The leper asylum of the contributed last yea.r for these two forms mission has been recently blessed with of mission work was but $74,664.
many conversions. -Mr. Stanley has recently said: "At -The thirtieth anniversary of the the present time there are over 1000 offi- Woman's Union Missionary Society was cials administering the laws of civiliza. held recently in New York City, Mrs. tion in the Kongo State, where 23 years Henry Johnson, President, presiding. ago there was but one white man. The report of the treasurer indicated reo Thirty steamers now ply the waters of ceipts the past year of $60,027. The ex· the Kongo, and innumerable steam penditure~ amount to $48,681, leaving a launches now cleave the waters of the balance on hand of $11,346. The board great lakes. This year a navy will be of managers comprises representatives placed upon the lakes; railways are now of eight different Christian denomina- being constrncted by the Belgian and tions, namely, Protestant Episcopal, German Governments, and an English Congregational, Presbyterian, Reform- road has already been completed for a ed, Methodist Episcopal, Baptist, Re· distance of 40 miles. Over 50 missionformed Episcopal, and Friends. ary stations have been established, that precept and example may not be want- -It has been pungently affirmed, and ing for ~he regeneration of Africa. The apparently with truth, that if the Unit- old continent will never become what , ed States, Canada, and Great Britain the new is, but the new taate of Kongo were supplied with ordained ministers will become the nursery of the dark na- in the same proportion to population tions. And he speaks of the time when that the pagan world is supplied, Cana. he wrote a letter urging that missiona- da would have 20 snch ministers, the ries be sent, which was published in the United States 200, and Great Britain London Telegram, and nearly 400,000 and Ireland 100. As it is, "there are copies of the paper containing the let· 400 ordained pastors in Christian lands ter were sold, and in a very short time to everyone on the foreign shores, and money was subscribed toward equipping there are 600 Christian workers to every the first missionary station in Central one abroad." The same writer also ac· . Africa. Now there are scores of stations cepts the estimate that $98 are expend. and over 6000 converts after years of ed in Christian work in Christendom to ignorance and darkness."
every $2 sent to the foreign field. Yet -The following table, taken from the there are those who say that gifts for MISsionary Herald, sets forth the .. ex· travagant" expenditures of the churches redemption of the Dark Continent with of these United States for the spiritual its ~OO,OOO,OOO of pagans- WORK 0)' .AKBBICA.N 1(J8fHOJ(A1I.Y IOClETIES 11J AFRICA..
'O~ rg Annual " " " E x p e n d i t u r e eOCIlIITIEil. ~I ~ <Xi o~ ~~ 11.1.1 ui ·~.~~l ",o. z~ SOl .90.9 S1:l ~~ – -0 – rn .. rn o·~ Z" .~0 0" —- —- 3]3 in Africa. •…. J.I ~ ~ ::iil"~~ – – – — – – – – – Bapti.t Missionary Union, Congo …….. $48,746 iQ 5 5 386 4 Protestant Episcopal, Liberia….•••.•.. 44,093 8 48 17 709 69 United Brethren In ('hri.t,Mendi. ……. 10,818 7 43 55 317 61 United Pre.byterian Vhurch, Egypt…. 29 2,m 112 42,000 35 2IJ6 American Board, Natal.. ……………. 45,265 Methodist Episcopal Church, West Coast 5.~ 137 17 1,174 37 BishopTaylor'sMlssion,Congo andAngola 7,500 3 57 38 2,755 38 Evangelical Lutherans.•••…………… …. i3;000···· 27 38 141 10 4 9 —————— ——– Presbyterian Board… . ……………. 31,156 3 WO 3 Total……………………… …. $237.077 – – 28 24 204 —- – 17 – 1,898 25 617 – —– — 181 10,Oil 359 MISSIONARY WORK IN JAPAN FOR THE YEAR 1890.
CONDENSBD FROM STATISTICS PREPARICD BY REV. H. LOOllIS, YOKOHAMA..
~ E"'" '"" " ~.. .. — — "",od.)(I28IOlfARIEB.
<Xi .S :cai. ",8 – ' " -;;~ lfAlIIE 0)' lIrIIBIiIOl(. "d d 'O~ .0 ; t'"l ",.g ~o.mg .::l .~ E0o.<0S :";"s .SIi ~ ~~ ~;:::: 0 r!n! ~ rn" " ~S~o 3~.S.. ~p. rn ~ oS zs -0 ~ 0 – f-i1 – – – – — — – – – 0- – – -0 – Church of Christ in Japan" ••….. 44 48 150 23 <t'z 71 1,077 9,314 1M 1,409 Nippon Sel Kokwai t …………… 40 37 110 17 66 56 466 4,000 110 669 American Baptilt Missionary Uilion. 16 15 45 9 43 13 121} 1,027 34 222 American Boord ……………….. 28 32 84 9 73 61 1,615 9,146 109 3,240 Methodist Episcopal Church, North. 20 29 68 9 39 53 492 3,923 75 2,144 Methodist Episcopal Church, South. 12 5 27 4 15 6 77 318 18 136 Canada Methodist Church•..••…. '110 11 29 5 12 15 287 1,446 50 348 – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – 'l'welve Smaller Societies. . . . . . . . . . . . 28 12 62 18 34 21 289 1,623 51 526 — —- 297 -I 4,431 3,082 584 8,758 Total. . .. …. …………….. 214 189 577 93 423 *In the" Church of Christ in Japan" are jomed the Unit"d Presbyterian Church, Scotland' the PresDyterian Churche., North and South, aud the Cumberland Presbyterians; the Reformed Chul'ch In America, and the Reformed Church In the United States, and the Woman's Union Missionary Society.
t In the "NIPRon Sei Kokwai" are joined the Protestant Episcopal (,hurch, the Wickliffe College ~llsRlon, Canada, the Church Missionary Society, and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel.
STATISTICS OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS IN CHINA. FROM TABLES PREPARED BYREV,J. W. DAVI8,D.D.
FOREIGN NATIVE I~ S .; 1lISSIO:NARIES. HELPERS. .0g . =" I"i 3 .E .". .~~ "'.""- ~]~ :siS "d N AllE OF SOCIETY. .~ OJ) .; rn § 0 …..:.9 rD II .S 0 ~~ !!<O ~ <i :S;So 0; ~ 'So Z".!~l – . I-'<- – – – – – – – -~- – – ————–~~- 'E -0 – 0 – -E0o< – 0 – – -0- – — London Mi••ionary Society…….. 30 14 65 11 75 62 !,124 4,078 $ 5,673 American Boord………•……•.. 36 15 83 4 91 20 1,074 1,549 1,6111 American Baptist ……………… 14 7 34 7 75 14 325 ],479 American Baptist (South) …….•.. 14 8 35 8 21 13 338 808 715 American Protestant Episcopal …. 11 11 760 American Presbyt9rian ………… r,s 100 American Presbyterian (South)…. 12 … ….. 318 19 '44' 1,123 450 548 British and Foreign Bible Society. 12 122 9 2,482 4,041 2,372 21 ..2.0.. 128 7 28 72 18 …2.. .. 300 ….1.0.0.. Vhurch Missionary Society …….. 27 15] 2,695 "3;100 English Ba~tist. …..•…••…….. 20 8 56 17 18 ..1.9.. 2,000 36 1 177 1,1M 360 Methodist plscopal. ………•…. 37 27 99 76 167 148 2,708 3,888 7,341 Basel Mission" ……•…………. 19 ….. 33 6 45 38 848 2,0211 1,237 English Presbyterian ………….. 26 10 51 8 197 40 628 3,471 6,935 Wesleyan Missionary Society …… 17 3 31 2 48 15 534 1,079 1,300 I China Inland Mission . .. . …… 161 135 366 10 82 80 182 2,1137 67~ -Tw-e-nt-y–six-s-m-al-ler-s-oc-ie-tie_s …..-..-. -95- 58 221 22 298 271 993 7,529 4,176 16,836-'37,287-'$36,884 Total… ….. …. ……. . .. ' 589 316l,'296 20l,'446 522 Protestant Missions in Spain.- of the life of Howell Harris, the founder ThQ Rev. William H. Gulick haB recent- of the Connection, the same year, is ly prepared the following summary of highly appropriate. societies engaged in evangelical work in Spain, and of tangible results achieved: Primitive Methodist Missions.-At Of churches and societies engaged there the approaching May missionary gathare no Jess than 15, of which 4 are erings. the London churches hope to Scotch, 5 are English, and 3 are Ameri- raise not less than £1000, which will be can. And, after 15 years' toil, these equally divided between the new misfigures can be given : sions in London and the denomination's operations on the West African coast Foreign Missionaries, men. .. 22 and the recently established Zambesi women 28…… … 50 enterprise.
Spanish Pastors. . .. •• •……….. _. . . . . 37 United Methodist Free Church.- Evangelists… _. . . . . • . . . • . .• . … 39 With the completion of their training in 9,220 Manchester the two colored students, Attendants on public worship. "" •.•.. 3,516 Messrs. E. D. L. Thompson and J .. B. Commnnicants . _•.. __ .•••..••…. _…… 119 Nicholls, have returned to Sierra Leone Day-schools………. •••• ..•…•. •… …. to assist in mission work, the colony School-teachers, men ..• 74 156 according them a public reception on their arrival. Disquieting news has women 82…. •… .. …• been received from the Free Methodist station in East Africa. The Golbanti Pupils. .• . ……•..•…. _•.•…•..•.. _.. 4,880 Mission station is located in the Witu SundaY-Bchools…. ……..••••••…. .•.• 82 country, where several Germans were Teachers in the Sunuay-schools…. .. … 192 massacred last September. When the Scholars in tile Suuday.schools………. German missionaries were attacked they 3,500 fled for protection to the station of their Free Methodist brethren, and ultimately Missionary Items. By the Rev. James the whole of the missionaries left for Johnstoa, Bolton, Lancashire, England. the coast along different routes. One of the missionaries, the Rev. W. Howe Free Church of Scotland Modera- (Free Methodist), travelled alone across torship.-In missionary circles much the open country for three days, and pleasure was expressed at the choice of afterward reached the seaboard in safety. Professor Thomas Smith as moderator- What may befall the mission premises elect by the Free Church Commission in and the native converts can only be sur- Edinburgh. His eminence, as a mis- mised. The latest intelligence stated sionaryof the denomination in India, is that Golbanti would again be occupied worthy of recognition, in addition to by the missionaries at the first opporwhich his professorial work in the New tunity, notwithstanding that missionary College, Edinburgh, and his marked blood has already been spilled there. ability as a leader in the ecclesiastical courts presented further claims for the Steamer for the Congo.-A commisnomination. sion for a new mission steamer on the twin-screw turbine system has been The Nyasaland Missions.-The re- given by the Baptist Missionary Society ported endeavor of Consul .Tohnston to to Messrs. John L 'fhornycroft & Co., of subsidize the Arabs against the natives Chiswick. It will replace the Peace, is naturally causing the disapprobation built by the same firm in 1882, which of the directors of the missions in that the Congo Free State lately forcihly region. ProfeBsor Lindsay, of the Free requisitioned. The vessel will be con- Church and an official of the Estab. siderably larger than the Peace, being lished Church of Scotland have visited 84 feet long and 13 feet beam, and London to lay before the Foreign Office drawing 2 feet 2 inches when laden with the views held by their respective cargo. In launching her at Stanley churches respecting the administration Pool the society will not be destitute of of Nyasaland. Their action has, it is means of communication at any time understood. the approval of the Uni. with brethren at dist.ant stations. The versities' Mission. able missionary, Mr. George Grenfell (who unfortnnately is in England, suf- Welsh Calvinistic Methodist Jubi- fering from ill health), has drawn up the lee. -It is fnlly probable that the Mis- specifications, and will superintend her sionary Jubilee Fllnd of this vigorous building. Not unlikely Borne of the body will reach the sum of £50,000, or mission boys, by whom the boiler in tho twice as mu('h as the amount originally Peace was completely put together, and suggested. The anticipated early issue steam raised on the third day aHer re- party is that the Greek Church is defec- erection was begun, will be asked to tive in its teaching of " the Gospel" as give once more their intelligent co- understood by Low Churchmen. It is operation. disappointing to see that the Church Missionary Society, alter thirty years of Contributions for English Church labor, cannot reckon more than 600 Missions.-Corresponding with the in. communicants, 2000 adherents, and creasing subscriptions for home mis. 2000 children, whose interests are cared sions are the large sums contributed on for by ten ordained and five lady mis- behalf of the foreign field. ThiM is sionaries, besides sixty or seventy lay specially characteristic of High Church. workers. The question bas heen put to men. }<'or example, the income of the the Church Missionary Society whethel' Society for the Propagation of the Gos- it might not devote some thousands of pel, distinctly belonging to the High pounds annually to needier and more Church party, exceeded in 1890 all pre- promising fields. I learn that the vious years. The grand total reached Archbishop of Canterbury bas had the was £164,382, an increase of nearly matter of settlement referred to him- £40,000 on the year 1889. From the self, and everyone will hope that a , subscription list it is apparent that a modus vivendi may be discovered. steady advance is being made in the regular subscriptions. Equally surpris- The Niger and the English Uni- ing is the progress ot the sister organ- versities' Missions.-Doubts of the ization, the Church Missionary Society, Rev. F. N. Eden, the English secretary whose accounts, which do not close of the Lower Niger :Mission, not being. until March 31st, will doubtless show a prepared to return to his sphere of toil similar gratifying return. in Africa, owing to the Special Com- mittee of Inquiry appointed by the Church Friction in Palestine.-No Church Missionary Society, exonerating solution of the quarrel between Bishop from blame most of the native clergy against whom he had made charges, are Blyth and the Church Missionary 1:10- dispelled. Mr. Eden will, to the joy of many in church missionary circles, go ciety has yet been found. The London back to his post. Though a young man, Guardian, representing the bishop, urges he is a rising missionary force, whose the society to withdraw and transfer its services to the cause of African missions agencies to the Society for the Propaga- may be of increasing value. The clouds tion of the Gospel, a recommendation which have been hanging over the Niger which a majority of the supporters of the stations are quickly vanishing. Church Missionary Society decline to accept, believing that such a course Archdeacon Maples is addressing Eng- should be taken by the bishop, who lish audiences on the Universities Mis- came second into the field and was sion at Zanzibar, on the Rovuma, and aware of the nature of the society's Lake Nyasa. He says that they are operations. To the letter of the Church training a native ministry which in time Missionary Society secretaries the An_ will enable the English missionaries to glican Bishop of Jerusalem replies that withdraw and leave the work in the the society's missionaries are prose- hands of African teachers and preach- lytizers, inasmuch as they win over ers. Progress is slow; nevertheless, in converts from Eastern Christian connection with the mission, there was churches, and "a general policy of a large band of African workers, hoth men proselytism endnngers," he says, ., not and women formerly released slaves, only your own, but all our English work who were n~w doing excellent service. in these lands, and is against Church A native ordained minister was at pres- order," He asks what is the use of the ent working with much greater success Archgishop of Canterbury desiring fra. than any of the white missionaries. ternal rehttions with the Eastern hie- rarchy when this kind of missioning is Mashonaland.-Speedily in tbe track practised by the society under his of the snccessful British encampment patronage, and further observes that in Mashonaland, missionaries are being although the society professes to have dispatched. In response to the Rppeal centres of work among Mohammedans, of the Rev. Owen Watkins, a WeRleyan thesB are, jn reality. as a rule, members Sonth African missionary pioneer of of the Greek Church previons to their deserved reputation, the Wesleyan Mis- entrance into the church mission fold. sionary Committee have decided to es- His sympathies, he says, are with gPll- tabli~h a mission in this lately opened uine missionary work wherever carried territory To meet tb& expansion of on, and if the society proceeds on these English in this and adjoining regions, a linps it will command his aid. Obvi- new bishopric, known as the Bishopric ously the answer of the Evangelical of Mashonalat.d, is about to be created, in Senegal, he sets in contrast the de- the nomination and consecration resting praved condition of things, notably in with the Archbishop of Canterbury. Freetown, under the British. The un· Since the death of Bishop Colenso there cleanliness of the plaoe is a crying scan- has been no real tie between the dal, the streets in many directions Church, England and that of South grass.grown and reeking with smells of Africa, "'hich is perfectly autonomous. deoayed fish and vegetables. Trade and The Situation in Uganda.-Heroism enterprise are practically dead. More for G( . marks every stage of this much- appalling are the numbers of Govern. checkered East African Mission. The ment licensed grog.shops. 'rhese haunts Hev. E. C. Gordon, writing from Mengo, of degradation are crowded day and the capital of Uganda, on November 1st, hall, after four months' solitary occupa. night with hundreds of natives, who tivn, been gladdened by the face of the afterward stagger through the streets in a ragged and helpless state. The con- Lev. R H. Walker. On Bishop Tucker sequences are terrible. These vi<:ltims either fall into the holes or man·traps and party arriving at Usambiro, October which abound, until they are sober, or 13th, they were detained six weeks they are oarried off to the lookups, pending the return of the mission boat, where horrible barbarities are perpetrat. which Mr. Walker had taken across the ed upon them. "I found," says Mr. lake to secure canoes for transport to Buxton, ,. our English Freetown a filthy, Uganda. Mr. Walker carried to Mwanga a letter from Bishop Tucker, and a copy forlorn, and uncared·for Darkest Engof the treaty relating to the spheres of in. land in Darkest Africa." It is not fluence agreed upon by England and surprising that self.respecting na· Germany. It appears that the French tives say of British rulers and traders, priests had strongly advised Emin Pasha •• From whence come these white savto take Uganda in the name of Ger. many, but of course he scorned the no· ages, who are more savage than ourtion. Mwanga dispatched twenty canoes selves ?" These poor creatures, united to Usambiro for Bishop Tucker, who, testimony says, are now much more de. together with the Rev. D. A. L. Hooper moralized than they were before seeing and Messrs. G. L. Pilkington, G. K. a white man's face. For the purposo Baskerville and F. C. Smith, started on of making a rich revenue, Government December 4th for their voyage across allows the Gambia and Sierra Leone to. the lake leaving the Rev. J. O. Dermott he deluged with this fearful eurse. Mr. and Mr: D. Deekes at Usambiro with Buxton speaks of If, ship in which ho instructions to move to Nasa, on Speke had a passage, carrying from Rotterdam Gulf. Sadly unfortunate was the delay to the West C0l18t 100,000 cases of gin, of the little band at Usambiro. By fever worth two shillings a case, while it is both the Rev. W. Dunn and Mr. H. J. common to witness dhows laden with Hunt died, and from the same cause the huge carboys of poisonous rum slipping bishop had suffered four successive at- up the rivers. These diselosures are in tacks from the last of which he was the main confirmed by other writers, barelY-recovering when Mwanga' s canoes and the hope is expressed that as soon hove in sight. Th9 followers of the as the civil governor is withdrawn the Protestants and Romanists are frequent. primary remedial enactment will inly in antagonism in Uganda, though elude the total prohibition of drink in thA:y invariably combine against their the colony. Shocking detajls of the common Mohammedan foe. It is cheer· traffic in spirits and its results on the ing, how~ver, to note that many natives native races may be gathered from the hac{ been baptized, the majority being Aborigine,,' Protection Society's Annual young men, with a sprinkling of older Report, from Book C 5740 in the Sierra men and women. The e.atechumens had been carefully prepared, had attended Leone returns. classes three times a week, read most of the Actfl of the Apostles, and ap- New Mission to the Central Sou· preciated the" Pilgrim's Progress." dan.-Great interest has been excited in the religious community of Bolton, British Misrule in West Africa.- Lancashire, by the departure, on Feb- Lurid nnd deplorable revelations of the ruary 10th, of Messrs. Hermann ~. vices of English government in Sierra Harris, B.A., and Edward Whiteformls. Leone hnve been sent to the Daily sionary work in the Soudan. 'rheir des Graphic, a London paper of good stand. tination is one of the five or six remain· ing, by Mr. F. Buxton. Complimenting ing countries which are ignorant of the the French on their laws, f"lnitn Li on , Gospel, and continue totally unevangel. business, and the morality of the people ized. The region measures a thousal:d miIeR in length and five hundred III hrp,vUh, and is quite distinct from the E~yptian Soudan on the east and the Western Soudan to the west of it. It perience recently that no one could contains five negro kingdoms, each envy. They were "ttacked by river larger than Great Britain, with popula. pirates, who, after opening their trunks tions of many millions. With both gen· and seat·ching their persons, robbed tlemen it has been the writer's privilegt' them of many articles of yalue. "Perils to have intimate friendship, and of their by water, and perils by robbers," it Christian life, enthusiasm, and capacity seems, were not confined to the apos. it is a pleasure to bear unequivocal tes· tolic age. timony. The missionaries intend to tarry in Tunis until they have mastered -The work done among the Chinese the elements of Arabic, and then joiu on the Pacific Coast is now beginning one of the c,uavans fn rmde from Tripoli to bear fruit of a very hopeful kind. to Lake rrchad, in tho Central Soudan. Here are two illustrations: One thou· Miss M. F. Harris, a devoted lady mis. sand Chinamen, members of tho Con. sionary in Tunis, connected with the gregational Church in CAlifornia and North Africa Mission, is the sister of Oregon, have sent two missionaries to Mr. Harris. The tlVO missionaries are their native land, organized a Foreign depending in faith npon the sympathies Missionary Society, with one thousand of God's people for temporal assistance. dollars to start with, and have also con· tributed twenty.two hundred dollars to Another Anti-Slaverr Conference. home missions. Lun Foon, a member -Announcement is made of the next of of the Methodist Mission Church in the series of anti·slavery conferences, San Francisco, gave up a good business which owe their origin mainly to the and returned to China to do missionary activity of Cardinal Lavigerie, and will work at his own charge. He has built be held in London. The British and a mission property in foreign style of Foreign Anti.Slavery Society, which architecture, with preaching hall and conveyed the London invitation to the school·rooms. Cardinal, is exerting itself energetically to make the gathering what it promises -Dr. Judson Smith says the Chinese to be-an important event. One of the are manifestly the governing race of features of the previous conferences at Eastern and Central Asia. They evi· Brussels and Paris was their absolute dently hold the key to the future of al. freedom from political and sectarian most one half the unevangelized people coloring, which allowed men of every of the globe. So long, therefore, ao the shade of politics and phase of religious Chinese remain without the Gospel, belief to unite on a common platform. the great bulk of Asia will be pagan; This wise arrangement will be observed when they become Christian the conti· at the forthcoming demonstration. nent will be Christian, and the worid will be won for Christ.
Monthly Bulletin. -The medical missionaries in China appear to be making a deep impression Brazil.-A movement has been started upon the people. The physician is at Rio Janeiro to founn a Protestant hos; well-nigh worshipped; his person and pi tal. The new hospital will receive a work are sacred. A remarkably healthshare of the taxes levied on the shipping, ful and uplifting influence flows from and will be under the care of skilled phy. the labors of the female physicians and sicians. It will increase the field of of the native nurses trained by them. Christian work and the responsibility Their work has opened the eyes of the of the Protestant missionaries in Rio Orientals to the capabilities of women. Janeiro. There are said to be 109 medical mis- sionaries in Chino. at the present time, Buddhism..-Rev. Dr. Happer, the vet· 38 of whom are women, all but two of eran missionary of China, writing to the whom are from America. The Medical Presbyterian, estimates that instead of Missionary Record says: .. It is not al· four to five hundred millions of Buddh- ways easy to obtain entrance into a ists, as claimpd or conjectured by many Chinese city. The man who gains the writers, there are not more than seventy· good.will is the physician. With a hos· fi ve millions. Dr. Happer gives reasons pital, a daily clinic, and 0. large country for these figures, furnishing in comdder· field, the most skilled surgeon would able detail the statistics of Buddhism in always find his hands full. We ask our the different countries where it has ad. friends of the medical profession to herents. come over and help us. There are about 100 miRsionary doctors in China; 1000 Ohina.-Miss M. M. Phillips, M.D., and are neetled." Miss Smithey, of the Soo.Chow, China, M. E. Mission, while retnrning by boat -One thousand men in the next five from Shanghai to Soo.CholV l,ad an ex· years, is the call from China. Of course and throwaway What will require years 1000 men will mean nearly, if not quite, of labor, perhaps, to regain. My help. 2000 workers; for many of the men ers here have come to the rescue of th" will bring their wives, and a good wife work very nobly, and have assumed over doubles the power for good of a mis- three hundred rupees of the reduction., sionary in the field; and unmarried so that the work here may not suf. ladies in increasing numbers are volun- fer. • .. If the school is cut down, it teering from time to time. It is hoped must be cut down from the top. If it that this number will respond and be is cut down from the top it dies. If it dies, what is to become of all our Chrissent by the Church. tian labor in this community? If the children of Christian parents grow up -The most recent statisties of the ignorant and not grounded in Chrismissions in China are 1296 foreign mis- tianity, they will be a curse to the comsionaries, including 316 single women munity." The American Board is and 391 wives; 211 ordained, and 1235 obliged to retrench the next current year other native laborers; 522 churches, twenty per cent. 37,287 communicants, and 16,836 pupiIR in schools. -As another evidence of the extent of the influence of Mr. Spurgeon, it is -China's production of tea la8t year stated that Miss Tucker, known liS A. was 43 per cent of the world' B consump- L. O. E., reads three of his sermons tion. This shows the commercial im- every day with native converts in India. portance of China. -Dr. Pentecost is spending the hot -Mr. Trow Ahok, a prosperous meI- season in Simla, which is a centre of chant of Foo.Chow, lately gave $10,000 fashion, society, and godlessness, but to found an Anglo-Chinese College in not idly. A wealthy friend in Scotland that city. has purchased, for his use in India, a tent capable of seating 1200 peoplo. -One hundred Australians have vol- Dr. Pentecost will use this in his camunteered for service in connection with paigns in various parts of the 'country, the China Inland Mission. A domestic owing to the difficulty and expense of servant in Tasmania has given $100 of procuring suitable halls. her savings to this mission, and $20 for the work in Africa. This is an illustra- -The recent great revival in the Baption of the earnest missionary spirit of tist Mission at Ongole, in the Telugu these people. field, is one of the most remarkable in the annals of missions. In exactly three Hawaii.-The largest congregation in hours and five minutes two native the world, numbering 4500 members, is preachers are said to have immersed on the island of Hawaii. 1065 persons! Rev. Drs. Clough and Johnson immersed 606 in one hou-r and Iceland.-The Icelandic Lutheran con- twenty minutes. gregations of Manitoba and the Northwestern States recently celebrated the Ceylon.-A Christian convention of three hundred and fiftieth anniversary great interest was recently held at Jaffna. of the translation of the Scriptures into Its specific aim was the arousing of Chris- Icelandic. tians to greater earnestness and conse- cration, and it is believed that much lndia.-It is pathetic in these days of good resulted not only in the reviving of believers, but also in impressing those emptied missionary treasuries to read not believers.
such a letter as the following, received N. A. Indians.-The total Indian pop- ulation of Canada is about 120,000, aud by Secretary Clark of the American of these about 30,000, it is said. are more or less under Christian instruction at the Board, from a missionary in Bombay: hands of the Methodist, Episcopalian, and Presbyterian churches. There arfl " I have collected a band of superior in the United States 243,000 Indians. Of these only 58,000 receive any assistance Hyoouwn~"amn eI n as workers in this field. whatever from the Government, and a suddenly dismiss them with- large proportion of these are only slight- ly dependent. There are 64,871 includout great wrong to them? Again, if I ed in the five chiIized tribes of the Ind- ian Territory, and there are, besides, close any of my schools now it will be 35,287 uot living. on reservations Who at the expense of prestige, which, at this especial juncture, will be most un- fortunate. Our work here is beginning to bud after these nine years of labor.
The Church has been organized; two admit.ted from this place to the Church; a Brahman young man-a former pupil -has just come out for Christ, and the whole district is stirred up about it.
To diminish our work now is to lose are counted in with the general popula- ing Christians, whose beginning in the tiun. The main disturbances in the Christian life was in this church. recent uprising have been among the Sioux, who number about 28,000. -Con- -The Rev John L. Dearing, a Bapgregationalist. tist missionary, gleans from the lnde- pendent some significant facts from the Japan.-The Synod of the Church of ststistics of miHsions in Japlln in 1890. Christ in Japan adopted the following as One is that Japan is not a field for its Confession of Faith: "'I.'he Lord medical missions, the reason being that Jesus Christ, whom we worship as God, that. country is so well supplied with the only begotten Son uf God, for us men competent physicians trained abroad, and for our salvation was made man and and that the Government provides hossuffered. He offered up a perfect sacri- pitals and medical attendance for the fice for sin; and all who are one with sick. Another fact noted is the great Him by faith are pardoned and account. advance in Sunday-school work. Buddhed righteous; and faith in Him working ism ignores the children, Christianity by love purifies the heart. The Holy gathers them in. There are in Japan Ghost, who with the Father and the 514 SundaY-Achools, with about 21,000 Son is worshipped and glorified, reveals members. Another encouragt'ment is Jesus Christ to the soul, and without in the increase in students for the min- His grace, man being d.ead in sins, can- istry. not enter th6 Kingdom of God. By Him the prophets, and apostles, and holy -Woman's Workfor Woman says that men of old were inspired, and He, one of the Presbyterian missionary speaking in the Scriptures of the Old ladies in Tokyo invited the newly Alectand New Testaments. is the supreme ed Chri.tian members of the Japanese and infallible judge in all things per- Parliament to her house to tea, and that taining unto faith and living. From out of fifteen members thirteen acceptthese Holy Scriptures the ancient ed the invitation. Church of Christ drew its Confession: hence, we, holding the faith once de- Judea.-Professor Sayce, in his article livered to the saints, join in that con- on .. Excavations in Judea," dwells parfession with praise and thanksgiving." ticularly on the mutability of ancient Here follows the Apostles' Creed. names in the East, and the necessity of renewed excavation for discovering the -The Doshisha University at Kyoto arcbreologyof the Holy Land. He BUYS: is putting its theological stUdents into " We have dug up Homer and Herodopractical evangelistic work by sending tus ; we shall yet dig up the Bible." them to points in and about the city. They preach the Gospel in places where Madaqascar.-This island, with its most of the people hear it for the first queen and 200,000 of her subjects, is time. In this way their own hearts are ranged on the side of the cross. kept warm, and they gain a valuable experience. The catalogue for the pres- Manchul·ia.-This country presents a ent year, illustrated with cuts of all the good instance of Presbyterian union. college buildings and containing much Here the Scotch United Presbyterians information regarding the institution, have already 956 communicants, and gives the number of those in the differ- with them the Irish Presbyterians have ent courses as 570. President Kozaki is agreed to unite in forming one Presbytireless in his efforts to Improve the tery. school, and largely through his influence the theological students are push- Mexico.-The missionaries in Mexico ing forward more aggressive evangelistic have much to contend against. At work. Guadalajara, the headquarters of the Northern Mission of the American Board, -From 32 members at its organiza- the Romanists are very bitter, and are ention, the church in Okayama, Japan, deavoring to get possession of the chapel has increased, in ten years, to a mem- site, thus creating an unpleasant combership of above 550. Five churches in plication for the missionaries, who afe the province, and two in adjoining prov- liable to insults and injury from the inces may claim to have sprung from it. armed rowdies. A girls' school, with 52 students, a boys' school, with 34, and an orphan -There are 97 Presbyterian churches asylum, with 90 occupants are Bome of in Mexico. Twenty-nine converts are its outgrowths. Not one communion now able ministers of the Gospel. Over has passed without additions, and hard- 5000 converts are in full communion. ly a year without the formation of a new church. It reckons 1300 profess- Trinidad.-Rev. John Morton, D.D., the pioneer missionary of the Pres- byterian Church of Canada in Trinidad, and who has been in the field since rian and Reformed denominations early in 1878, was offered by the throughout the world have 20,265,500 last General Assembly the position adherents. of permanent Secretary of the For- eign Missions Committee, Western Sec- -An English missionary was recent- tion. Dr. Morton, in view of the de. ly heard to remark: •• If there was more mands of his present field, has made up .abiding in Christ there would be less his mind to decline the offer, and to reo abiding in Britain. .. The same may be main preaching and teaching the East said of America. Indians of Trinidad. His decision, while disappointing to the Committee -The Presbyterian Record, of Canada, of Foreign Missions will be extremely says: .. The problem of Christian union gratifying to the members, the friends seems likely to find its solution in the and supporters of the mission in Trini- foreign field. Christians at home do dad. Dot realize the wickedness of sectarian- ism, nor feel the need of united forces Turkey.-The burning of the college and united action as do those who are building of Central Turkey College, at called to apologize for the divided Aintab, on December 26th, is a /levere Church in the face of perishing blow to the mission work in that locality. heathen." Strenuous efforts were made to stay the progreils of the flames; but the building, -The impression left by the great aswith the exception of the west wing, semblage at Cleveland of 500 students was destroyed. In the face of many pledged to the foreign missionary ber· adverse circumstances the professors vice was that the possibilities of this and other Christians on the spot have remarkable uprising are hot yet fairly promised financial aid, and contribu- estimated. So stirring were the scenes tions from all fields are earnestly asked in this convention, in which 100 mis. to help the cause of rebuilding. This sionaries participated, that two local is the second disaster which this mis- pastors are reported to have decided to sion has sustained-the burning of the go to the foreign field. The meetings woman's college a year ago hindering were admirably conducted, and it is the work for a time. Dr. Fuller, the hinted that the regular yearly anniversapresident of the college, writes very ries of denominational societies would hopefully of the outlook, and a new and be made more effective if some of the more commodious building ought soon methods used at Cleveland were adoptto replace the one in ruins. ed. One specially successful feature was the opportunity given to ask ques- Bmyrna.-An idea of the manner in tions of the speakers, fifteen or twenty which missionary work is done now in minutes being reserved at the close of regions in which St. Paul once wrought each address for this purpose. may be gotten from the following pltragraph from a letter in the Independent: -The Missionary Herald tells of a .. A missionary from Smyrna writes of Scotchwomhn whose practice it was to his winter tour through a field of some give a penny a day for missions, to 40,000 square miles in extent. He went whom a visitor gave a sixpence to proeastward from Smyrna, stopping at cure some meat, on learning that she hopeful placet! a day or two, 01' prolong- hlld not lat~ly enjoyed that luxury. She ing his stay for two or three weeks where thought to herself: •• I have long done there was special interest; visiting men very well on my porridge, so I will give in their shops, receiving calls from in- the sixpence also to God." This fact quirers, preaching every night, travel- came to the knowledge of a missionary ling by day under circumstances that re- secretary, who narrated it at a missioncall Paul's description of his adventures ary breakfast. The host and his guests in the same regions; and all this is in the were profoundly impressed by it, the bitter winter weather, because it is the host himself saying that he had never season when men can be found at home. denied himself a chop for the cause of This sort of work has the most imme- God. He therefore instantly subscribed diate results. The man who preaches $2500 additional, and others of the party to a stated congregation, or teaches, or followed his example, till the sum of writes books, is sowing seed for others $11,000 was raised before they sepato reap. But the man who tours much rated.. in his district returns with joy, bearing his sheaves with him." -The Young Men's Christian Asso- ciation of Chicago is to erect a magnifi- -Bev. W. H. Roberts, D.D., Ameri- cent building at a cost of $1,400,000. can Statistical Secretary of the Presby- The building will have fourteen stories, terian Alliance, lIays that the Presbyte- three of which will be devoted entirely to the work of the association. Mission to the Australian Aborigines, been eighteen years at Havl<nnahHarbor, Fate, was appointed to pione!'r the new Rev. Dr. Steel, Sydney, N.S. W., writes work. He has left the islands for Mel- Sept. 30; it has been proposed to es- bourne, where he is to make necessary tablish a mission among the aborigines arrangements, and it is hoped to get in northern Queensland by the Federttl a steam launch to be of service to the Assembly of the Presbyterian churches new enterprise. Mr. Macdonald is marof Australia and Tasmania. Adeputation ried to a daughter of the late Rev. Dr. from the Mission Committee, consisting Geddie, the first Presbyterian missionof the Rev. Professor Rentoul, D.D.• of ary in the New Hebrides. The Rev. Ormond College, Melbourne; the Rev. Joseph Armand, M.A., missionary of Samuel Robinson of St. Kitto, Mel- the Presbyterian Church of Canada, has bourne, the Rev. F. A. Hagenauer, already estahlished a station on a small Superintendent of the Aborigines in island to the south of Santo, and from the Colony of Victoria, and for more which he operates on the larger island. than thirty years a missionary among A new edition of the Gospels and Acts them, along with the Rev. Robert of the Apostles in the Erromangan Steel, D.D., of Sydney, went to Bris- language has just been printed in Sydbane, Queenslaud, in July. They were ney, at the expense of the British and there joined with the Committee on Foreign Bible Society. A thousand Missions to the Heathen appointed copies, bound, have been sent to the by the General Assembly of the Pres- island, where the Rev. H. A. Robertson, byterian Church of Queensland, and who superintended the printing, lately had an interview with the Premier of returned to resume his work. J. J. the Government respecting reserves for the mission. The Premier promised Dr. Edith Pechey-Phipson.-In Janall that was required, and as already gi ven to the Lutheran Mission among uary, at a Convocation of the Bombay tne Aborigines. The deputies preached ill various Presbyterian churches in University, Mr. Justice Birdwood, the Brisbane and Ipswich, and held 1 public meeting on the mission. They also Vice-Chancellor. announced the appointlectured in different churches. A meeting was held in Sydney on their return. ment of this distinguished lady physi- It is expected that two Moraviall breth_ ren will be secured from Germany to cian as a member of the Senate. He undertake this mission on behalf of the Presbyterian Church. It has always remarked that, although for six centubeen a difficult work to carryon missions among so migratory a peoplc. ries ladies had held the office of Pro The most successful has been when the Aborigines were induced to settle on fessor of Medicine at the Cologne Unireserves gral'lted by the Government. In the course of a year it is hoped that versity, he believed this to be the first this mission may be commenced. J. J. instance of a lady being appointed a Tl'le New Hebrides Mission.-A deputation from the Federal Assembly member of the governing body of any of the Presbyterian chmches of Australia and Tasmania visited tho New University. He added that the Senate Hebrides in Mav and June last. It consisted of the Moderator, the Rev. James would recognize the propriety of ap- Lyall, of Adelaide. the Rev. Andrew Hardie, Convener of the Committee on pointing a lady who had bravely fought Foreign Missions, Melbourne, and Mr. M. McGillivray. an elder. Professor woman's oause in the face of much op- Drummond, of Glasgow, also joined the party. They all went round the group. position and obloquy. J. J. visited the different stations, and addressed the Synod at Aneityum. They From a letter sent by a student volwere much gratified with the progress unteer to the Missionary Echo we gather of the mission everywhere. The Synod the following items: resolved to begin a new mission on Espiritu Santo, the largest and most "Miss Lucy E. Guiness has been northerly island in the group, and Working in colleges in this country for appointed three missionaries to the three months under the direction of the work. The Rev. D. Macdonald, who has Student Volunteer movement. She has recently returned to London. Miss Guiness is tha daughter of Hon. H. Grattan Guiness, F.R.S., who superin- tends three missionary training schools in England.
"Miss Guiness visited many of our western colleges, and through her direct instrumentality over 200 names were added to the volunteer liRt.
•• She expressed herself as greatly sur· prised at finding many Christian girls in our colleges without the habit of daily Bible reading and unfamiliar with Scripture. Things are not so in Eng. land, she says. She has been the means of awakening fresh interest in Bible study among lUany college girls."
The Missionary Review of the World — June 1891
HUGUENOT FEMALE SEMINARY. WELLINGTON, CAPE COLONY, SOUTH
MISSIONARY REVIEW. OF THE WORLD.
VOL. XIV. No. 6.-0Zd Serie.~.–JUNE.–VOL. IV. No. 6.-New Series.
THE MIRACLES OF MISSIONS.-XO. XVIII.
J [EDITORIAL, A. T. P.
THE LIGHT AT THE CAPE OF GOOD ·HOPE.
" IF you want most to serve your race," said Mary Lyon, " go where no one else will go, and do what no one else will do."
We propose to draw· in profile the outline of one of the most wonderful and fascinating stories of modern missions-the narrative of the founding of the Huguenot Seminary at Wellington, Cape Colony.
Wellington, about forty miles from Cape Town, is a gem set in a ring ~f mountains-the Drakenstein and Paarl ranges. It is now more' than two centuries since some three hundred Huguenots, who had fled from France to Holland after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, accepted the invitation of the Dutch East India Company, and settled at the Cape. What the Puritans were to America, these devoted refugees became to the Dark Continent.
·By law Dutch was the language of the colony; and so, in a few generations, the French ceased to be their language, and almost the nationality of these refugees was lost. Early in this century the colony passed into the hands of Great Britain, and the Dutch Reformed churches. already established, became largely supplied with Scotch Presbyterian pastors. .
One of these was Rev. Andrew Murray, who was settled over the congregation at GraafI Reinet. He married a Germano-Huguenot lady, and five of their sons now preach in the colony, while four of their daughters are wives of ministers. The second son, also called Andrew, is the pastor of the church at Wellington, and the now famous author of the most pr«>ciolls devotional books which perhaps during the past half century have been issued from the English press.
This man of God, Andrew Murray, nearly twenty years ago, buried two young children at his African home; and, as Mrs. Murray expressed it, " their hands seemed emptied and ready for some work with which the Lord was waiting to fill them." The bereaved husband and wife went in December, 1872, to the seaside to rest, and there they read together the
THE MIRACLES OF MISSIONS
marvellous life of Mary Lyon. So thrilled were they by that story of heroism, that they sought to obtain everything that could further info}m them of the subsequent history of the Holyoke Seminary and its pupils, and eagerly devoured the story of Fidelia Fiske, the Mary J~yon of Persia.
Just at this time the descendants of those Huguenot refugees living at Wellington were proposing to build some monument or memorial.to their ancestors; and Mr. Murray was strangely and strongly impressed that the best memorial they could rear was just such a school for their daughters. The schools scattered through South Africa were neither such as the mind nor morals of the girls needed; few of them were fitted to train immortal souls for service here or glory hereafter. Every indication of human need and Divine Providence seemed to point to this as the time and place for a new Holyoke. And, after much thought, consultation, and prayer, letters were written to the Massachusetts Holyoke, asking for a graduate to found a similar school at the Cape of Good Hope.
These letters awakened unusual interest at the parent seminary, and were put into the hands of Miss Abbie P. Ferguson, a graduate of the class of 1856, who was at that time conducting a very successful work in New Haven, Conn. Her mind was 80 deeply impressed that God was calling her to Africa, that she could not rest until she had laid herself at the Lord's feet, to go wherever He might lead. She breathed a prayer that, if He was indeed calling her to Wellington, another might be found to share the work; and just then Miss Anna E. Bliss, of the class of 1862, offered herself as a companion in labor. Just at this time, across the Atlantic, special prayer was arising that Jehovah Jireh would provide a teacher, and so once more prayer and its answer joined, in a blessed harmony, man's performance and God's purpose. Before the letter~ reached Wellington, telling of the decision of these teachers, Mr. Murray, with characteristic faith, had sent passage-money to America; and when the news of the decision of Miss Ferguson and Miss Bliss reached the colonists, the open letters were bedewed with the tears of thanksgiving. They had asked one teacher, and God had given two.
Mr. Murray rehearsed the whole story of this marked leading of God, commended the proposed work to the Lord in prayer, and pledges were given on the spot to insure the support of the new school. Though not a rich people, in a few weeks $6,000 had been given by the Wellingtonians alone, one widow giving one sixteenth of the whole amount-all her little patrimony.
Miss Ferguson and her companion sailed for Africa in September, 1873, and arriven at Cape Town in about eight weeks. They found that a large building with grounds had been bought for the school, the life of Mary Lyon had been translated into Dutch, and many young people were ready to enter as pupils into the new Huguenot Seminary, or as teachers, to seek higher fitness for their calling. The seminary was formally opened, January 19th, 1874, anq the large assemblage which that day prayerfully committed the work to the – Lord will never be forgotten. During the first term there were forty Rtudents from fifteen to forty years of age; and the Bible and prayer were from the first the characteristic features of the school life, the first hour of each day being given to instruction in the Holy Word, and a half hour in the day beibg reserved for the quiet of personal communion with God.
The devout and earnest purpose of these teachers was to educate Christian character. God honors those who honor Him. One morning the Scrip~ ture lesson was on the new birth, and before that day had gone thirteen had taken their place on the Lord's side. Even those whom candor compelled to confess that they were unsaved, could not rest content without salvation, and when another meeting was called for those who felt that they were Christ's, everyone in the school came. And after all these years have put the confession to the test, nearly everyone has remained faithful, and not a few have been filling positions of singular usefulness.
Our space will not permit more than an outline of a history now covering nearly a score of yearil. But, as might be expected, the saved became saviours. Children were gathered from the street, and 8 Sunday-school was formed ; through the children access was obtained to their parents; cottage meetings-as many as fourteen, in or near the village-were conducted by the young ladies j the navvies and their families were reached by the same consecrated workers, and Wellington Seminary became a fountain of living waters.
The seminary building became too strait for the growth of the institution, and a new building became a necessity j its corner-stone was laid November 19th, 1874, the two buildings together costing $40,000. Two more teachers were sent for, and Miss Wells and Miss Bailey came from America, Noyember, 1874, and soon after, Miss Spijker, from Holland, to teach Dutch and French.
In July, 1875, the new building was ready for use j the pupils increased from forty to ninety, and the school was divided into two departmentsone preparatory. In December, 1875, Miss Landfear came from New Haven to share the growing burden of work, and still later Miss Brewer, of Stockbridge, Mass. j in 1877, Miss Cummings and Miss Knapp were added to the corps of instructors, and the standard of the school kept rising higher and higher both intellectually and spiritually.
During 1878, stimulated by the reports of the Ten Y-ears' Work of the Woman's Board of Missions in America, the Huguenot Missionary Society was organized, and became speedily the parent of many mission circles. Missionary offerings had been the habit at the weekly devotional meetings, and had been sent to Mrs. Schauffier, in Austria, to Dr. Bernardo and Miss Annie Macpherson in London, and to the Basuto, Natal, and East Indian missions. But now the work took organized form, and before the year closed a member of the school offered herself as a missionary, and subsequently went as their representative to the heathen in the Trans~ vaal. That same year-1878-the first graduating class left the Huguenot Seminary. To trace the after-careers of these four graduates may give some hint of the streams which flow from this fountain. One of the four (Miss Malherbe) was next year a teacher in her Alma Mater, and then took the principlllship of Prospect Seminary at Prretoria in the Transvaal ; Mi~s De Leeuw and Miss Mader started a boardiug-school at Bethlehem, in the Orange Free .State,similar to the Wellington Seminary; and during the first year had five more pupils than Wellington at the corresponding period of its history ; Miss Wilson went to teach in the Rockland Seminary at Cradock. In December, 1879, seven more young ladies received diplomas, and all became teachers. Meanwhile God continued to bestow His grace. and again in 1879 nearly all the inmates of the school became disciples of Christ. These nearly twenty years have been marked by a constant growth. In 1882 there was opened a model school, and a normal department was organized. Rooks, and chemical and philosophical apparatus, a Williston observatory and telescope, etc., were furnished by generous friends; and far and wide the" daughters" of Miss Ferguson and her fellow teachers scattered to diffuse new blessings.
In April, 1880, Miss Ferguson left for rest and change, and visited her native land, returning the next year. And in 1882 another building was erected, to accommodate .about forty more pupils-boarders; and during the same year, as already intimated, another building was opened for a model school for the training of the younger children of the village j and the pupils of the normal class have practice in the art of teaching, and can learn the most approved methods-kindergarten, etc.
The pressure of pupils and too little room made it necessary again to enlarge, and a cottage adjoining the school grounds was purchased. In i885 Miss Cummings, of Strafford, Vermont, one of the teachers, came home for a year's visit, and secured from Mr. Goodnow, of Worcester, a building costing some £3,000. The upper story, to be used as a chapel, will seat five hundred, and the lower floor is devoted to art-room and scientific class-rooms.
Last year the applications were so many it was again necessary to provide more room, and while hesitating whether to build or rent rooms near the seminary, the principal of a girls' school at the PaarL a village some eight miles distant, applied to the trustees to purchase' his building, failing health making it necessary that he and his wife should give up the work. Some of the village people were very anxious the school should come under the influence of the Huguenot Seminary, and after much thought and prayer the purchase was made. This school takes the younger pupils, 'making it a preparatory department, and one of the American teachers superintends it. This gives more room at Wellington for advanced pupils. The schools are called Huguenot Seminary, Paarl, and Huguenot Seminary, Wellington. There are now in the two schools over four hundred pupils. They have the same board of trustees, and are under the same principlll, The expense of buildings and grounds has outrun their income, and they have felt keenly the pressure of debt. But the friends of Christian education in the colony have responded nobly to the call for aid, and at different times Parliament has granted them appropriations amounting to £2,000, so that during the last year they had much rejoicing in Wellington over the accom- plishment of the long-desired freedom from debt. There is some indebted· ness on the Paarl school yet; but Dr: Dale, or Sir Langham Dale, the Superintendent of Education for the colony, gives them encouragement to hope that Government will give them help by and by.
In 1888 Mrs. H. B. Allen, of Meriden, Conn., a sister of Miss Ferguson, sent a circular letter to her sister's classmates asking for help to reduce their indebtedness, it being her sister's" jubilee year," and the two hundredth anniversary of the settlement of the Huguenots in South Africa. They were making a special effort ~o " go free" that year. Mrs. Allen secured about $200 in money, but interest and prayer which were, perhaps, worth more. And then faith was rewarded, for early in 1889 the grant from Government came.
The writer does not know just the number of missionaries who have gone out from the school, but there have been hundreds of .teachers.
Miss Ferguson made a famous journey in 1887-8. In October, 1887, she left the seminary for her year's vacation. The first three months of it she spent in visiting the missionary stations in the Midland and Eastern provinces of the colony, where some of the pupils are located as missionaries and teachers. She returned to Wellington in December, and met two of her pupils from Basutoland, who had just graduated, and returned with them to their home. They are the danghters of French missionaries who are in charge of the Protestant mission of Basutoland. They went by train from Wellington to Kimberley (where the diamond mines are), spent several days with school daughters there. A bullock wagon, drawn by fourteen oxen belonging to the missionaries, was sent from Moujah to meet them. Leaving Kimberley on the 28th of December, they reached Morijah on the lOth of January, outspanning in the heat of the day, and travelling often by moonlight. Two Christian natives, who had long been in the mission family, had charge of the party-Eleazer and Nkloroso.
I have before me the plan of. the journey as Miss Ferguson sent it from Morijah. Here are extracts from her journal: " February 5th at Hermon (Basutoland) ;. February 12th at Mofukas for the baptism of a sister of the old chief Mosesh, over eighty years old, and others. February 19th, Leribe, Mr. Colliard's old station. February 27th, Bethlehem, Orange Free State, with Mrs. Theron, one of our Huguenot teachers. March 3d, Heilbron, Orange Free State, where four of my Huguenot daughters liye. March 8th, Freeport. Orange Free State, the minister and wife from Wellington. March 12th, Potchefstroom, Transvaal, where I have several daughters. Here Mrs. Gonin, wife of the missionary at Saul's Poort, meets me with her bullock wagon, and we go on to Rustenberg, where one of my daughters is in the school. Her father is the principal. March 19th to April 20th, Saul's Poort, Mabie's Kraal, ~nd l1ochuli ; in all these places we have girls who ~re missionaries. The last of April I go to Prretoria (Transvaal), where we have girls teaching j then on to Wakkustroom and Utrecht with Mr. Murray's sister. The last of May to Rorke's Drift, where my friend, the Baroness Posse has a little mission work of her own. June and July I expect to spend in Natal with the American missionaries."
Miss Ferguson was detained by rains and full rivers, so that she did not leave Mochuli (which is half-way between the parallel 24° S. and the tropic of Capricorn, and half-way between meridian 26° and 27° E. just north of the Natwane River, almost in the torrid zone. It is not on the map) until May. Pietermaritzberg, the capital of the Transvaal, was the only place where she spent a night at a hotel. She arrived Saturday night, and her letter to friends had not been received; but she was found on the Sabbath and carried away to the home of Christian friends.
Early in August she sailed from Durban to Port Elizabeth, went to King William's Town, and on up to Graat! Reinet; then to Kimberley again in the interest of the mission work so near her heart, which has resulted in the Mission House, cared for by three of the Huguenot daughters; and back to Wellington the last of September.
Every letter speaks of the marvellous kindness everywhere received, and the wonderful openings for work. We have not spoken of the " Chautauqua circles" that have been formed all through South Africa. Miss Landfear, one of the Huguenot teachers, is the secretary for South Africa, and is introducing a class of reading that it! educating and elevating those who have left school. A circle has been formed among the native boys at Morijah.
If any of our readers will, on the map, follow this remarkable journey of Miss Ferguson through Southern Africa, they will see how many hundreds of miles she went; and let it be remembered tbat only one night in all tbat journey was spent at a hotel; in every other case she was the guest of "her daugbters"-the young ladies wbo had graduated from Wellington and gone into all that dark land to become teachers, missionaries, wives of godly men and ministers of the Gospel, an~ who are thus turning many a " Valley of Desolation" and barren waste of paganism into the Lord's garden! Are we not right in calling Wellington's Huguenot Seminary" the Light at the CapeY" To-day Miss Ferguson has under her care four hundred pupils.
We must add a word as to the progress of education in other parts of the land, which is largely due to the influence of Wellington.
In 1874, the year when the Huguenot Seminary began its work, Rev. J.
Neethling, of Stellenbosch, asked for a teacher from America, on behalf of the school committee, and Miss Gilsou came in response to the call in November of tbe same year. Beforethe year 1875 closed a boarding department was opened ; and the large and flourishing seminary now does for the Lord most excellent and efficient work both in training intellects and educating Christian hearts for the service of the Kingdom.
During 1875 a request for two teachers was sent from Worcester by Rev. William Murray, the minister there, to America. And, as at Wellington, the spirit of faith and prayer anticipated the arrival of the teachers in preparing for the school and sending forward the passage-money. The Misses Smith (two sisters), of Sunderland, Mass., responded. In April, 1876, the the seminary building at Worcester was completed. At the opening, Rev. Andrew Murray spoke on the great need of multiplying such Christian schools in Africa, and it was determined to ask for six more teachers from over the seas.
At the same time. Miss Helen Murray began work at Graaff Reinet, taking charge of the Midland Seminary, with twenty-five boarders and as many day scholars, until Miss Thayer and Miss Ayres arrived six months Jater. A reVival during the first term put the significant seal of God's approval on the work at its very inception, and nearly all the pupils rejoiced in Jesus. In 1876 Miss Lester left Woodstock, Conn., for the Bloemhof Seminary at Stellenbosch, and in April, four years after, was transferred to a similar work in Standerton, in the Transvaal.
During 1877 Messrs. Andrew and Charles Murray visited America, and in answer to their appeal for teachers, thirteen more went to Africa that year, one of whom went eventually to Swellendam. And when, in September, 1877, the Messrs. Murray returned, Rev. George R. Ferguson, brother to the founder of the Huguenot Seminary at Wellington, came with them, to take in charge a new school or institute for training of young men as evangelists and missionaries ; and has since been engaged in that work at Wellington.
When this noble band of workers arrived in 1877 to reinforce the educational mission work in Africa, a feast of rejoicing and thanksgiving filled an " eight days" like the feasts of ancient Israel. The windows were illumined, the flowers hung in festoons or bloomed in bouquets as on an Easter morning, and the Lord was magnified in the praises of His own. One day twenty-seven Americans dined together in the building where, four years before, two teachers began their pioneer work. The teachers at Graaf Reinet, too far away to participate in person, flashed greetings over the electric wires.
After a few days the new teachers began to disperse to Worcester, Graaf Reinet, Stellenbosch, Beaufort West, Swellendam, etc. Miss Clary chose Prretoria, because the work there was most difficult and discouraging; and Miss Ruggles undertook with her the journey to this field fifteen hundred miles beyond Cape Town.
We can follow no further this fascinating story. In 1880 eleven schools had already been established in South Africa under the care of these American teachers; eight in Cape Colony, two in the Transvaal, and one in the Orange Free State. Thirty-eight ladies had, previous to 1881, gone out from America to take charge of this work of education ; and the devoted man of God, Rev Andrew Murray, has generally had the privilege of applying for teachers, while Mrs. H. B. Allen, of Meriden, Conn. (sister of Miss Ferguson), has co-operated in the selection of those who should go.
No words can expr/ilss the blessing which has come through this period of almost twenty years to the whole of Africa through these grand Christian schools. They are building light houses, not at the Cape only, but all through the southern half of the Dark Continent. We doubt whether any work ever done for God has had, from the inception, more signal tokens of His approbation and blessing.
. Those who have visited Graaf Reinet have remarked that it stands close by the" Valley of Desolation," so called from its absolute barrenness and the absence of life. In fact, Graaf Reinet is itself simply a section of that barren waste reclaimed by culture and irrigation. How completely the whole aspect of this. part of the valley has been transfigured may be inferred from the fact that in the garden of Rev. Charles Murray eighty different species or varieties of roses may be ·found in bloom. May thiR not be a precious symbol and type of what the Huguenot Seminary and its companion schools are doing for the wild wastes of the Dark Continent, flashing out rays to illumine the midnight, and sending forth streams to irrigate the barrenness, until where darkness and dearth abounded there shall be a radiance as of a morning without clouds, and a fertility as of an earthly Eden !
" The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them ; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom like the garden of the Lord."
[Apropos of the foregoing, we gladly publish a letter from Rev. George S. Malan, of Montagu, Cape Colony, giving additional information about the work in South Africa.-EDIToR.] The Dutch Reformed Church of the Cape Colony counts upward of 100 congregations, with an aggregate membership of about 90,000 ; the number of souls being about 200,00'0. Our ministers are trained at the Theological College * of our church at Stellenbosch. Some four years ago one of the settled ministers of our church (Rev. Helm) was led by the Lord to give up his congregation in the colony and devote himself to mission work. Our church had already at the time five mission stations outside the borders of the colony. These were each under the superintendence of a resident white missionary, assisted by several lady workers as teachers, and by evangelists (native) for the work among the outlying kraals. To one of these stations, situated in the north of the Transvaal, our brother minister went as assistant to our veteran missionary there, who after nearly twenty * It was fouuded in 1859, and has since then supplied the Dutch Reformed Church of South Africa with upward of 120 ministers. years of ,unceasing toil in the mission field, had grown weak and aged in the Master's service.
Our people were never adverse to mission work; and as a whole our church contributed well for the cause.
This was, however, a new departure. A minister giving up his congre- gation to go to the heathen was something unknown before. A new im- pulse seemed to be given in that way to the good cause. More liberal con- tributions followed, and greater interest. This was the result also of a visit to the colony, and of addresses given everywhere by our veteran mis- sionary (Mr. Hofmeyer), who was enabled to leave his work for a short time through the assistance afforded him by Brother Helm.
At the same time, or thereabout, a society was started among the theo!
logical students of the theological college, known as the Students' Mis- sionary Society, with the object of getting contributions for the cause, but most of all to create a love for mission work among the future m~isters of the church. '
Not long after the ministers of the church formed among themselves a Ministers' Missionary Society.' This society has since sent out a~d is now supporting two missionaries in Nyassaland, in the vicinity of the sta- tions of the Scotch church. One of these missionaries is a son of one of the ministers of our ,Church, a young Ulan of ability and promise, who passed through his full theological course here, and after that had a few years' training in medicine, etc., at the Edinburgh University. Last year -especiaI1y through the influence of some American teachers from Mt.
Holyoke, engaged as such at the lIuguenot Seminary, Wellington, a large and flourishing educational institute for young ladies-a Woman's Mis- sionary Society was formed, with several branches throughout the colony, for the purpose specially of sending out and supporting lady helpers to the missionaries at our various mi~sion stations.
Toward the end of last year the session of our Synod took place.
Brother Helm from the Transvaal mission field (Zoutpausberg) was present.
lie earnestly advocated the claims of the Banyai. This tribe of Kaffirs in- habit a very healthy and fertile country north ot' the Transvaal and east of Matabeleland. The king of the latter country, a savage despot, con- siders the Banyai as his slaves, and has hitherto, for obvious reasons, re- fused evangelists the right of settling and laboring there. Attempts made by our church in previous years to send evangelists there proved vain, and even fatal to the life of one of them. But what hath the Lord wrought!
The British Soutb African Chartered Company obtains from the imperial Government a ~harter to settle in and develop those 'regions, especially Mashonaland, which lies more or less in between Matabeleland and Banyai- land. This company goes there with an armed police force, several hun- dreds strong, for the protection of its chartered rights, builds forts, etc., in short, colonizes the country, and in this way forms an effectual barrier for the Banyai against the oppressions and despotism of the Matabele. All at once the Lord has opened Banyailand. Brother Helm had just returned from a visit to that country when he appeared in the Synod. And now the Synod has decided, on his urgent appeals, to send, as soon as possible, three or four more ordained missionaries, men fully trained at the theological college, to occupy the open field-some in Banyailand, and others to stay at Zoutpausberg, and so enable the church to establish there a Training Institute for native evangelists, who by the side of the white mis. sionaries can do the great work waiting for us to be done there. Surely the Lord reigneth among the heathen! His blessed Kingdom must and will come also in those dark regions of South Africa. Even so, Lord Jesus, come quickly !
MONTAGU, CAPE COLONY, SOUTH AFRICA, January 26, 1891.
Dr. Arthur Mitchell, of New York, says of the rise and progress of woman's work for woman: "Great was the surprise of the entire Presbyterian Church when the first year the women sent to the Board *27,000, their greater snrprise when the next year it was $67,000, the third year, $87,000, the fourth year, $96,000, increasing the amount each year of the fifteen, except in one instance, until it has reached $250,000." Dr. Mitchell told of a good old doctor of divinity who, being on a committee on missions in the General Assembly, told in the report of what the women had done, gracefully Ilnd kindly giving them all due credit, but adding in humorous fashion, " You know the women are good collectors." "Can it be possible," thought Dr. Mitchell, who sat there listening, "that the good doctor does not know more of the sources from whence these women have their strength. I' They have three never-failing fountains from which to draw. The first, Organization. The work has been done systematically, until nearly all our churches have Woman's Foreign Missionary Societies, and even the children have their mission bands. Second, Information. They are far in advance of the men's Board in the number and character of their publications. They have, among other things, given to the world one of the best books on missions ever written, the " Historical Sketches of Missions." Influenced by Woman's Work, the Board improved the Foreign Missionary, until it seemed to have taken on a new life. Third, is the Sympathy existing between the women at home, who are interested in missions, and the missionaries in the field.
Dr. Smith, of Baltimore, says that he has, closely observed, from its be. ginning, this work of woman for woman, and at the close of fifteen years of trial and triumph, rejoiced to say that woman had found her tl'lle sphere in work for the Master, which leads her to the foot of the cross. The cross has always had a strange attraction for woman. Yes, even that plain wooden cross on Calvary drew all the Marys about it. This society has proved its right to a new name, Esther, the morning star, which shines brightly just hefore the dawning, and ushers in the glorious Sun of Rillhteousness.
TIlEl D1VINE AND SUPERNATUltAL IN FOREIGN MISSIONS
THE DIVINE AND SUPERNATURAL IN FOREIGN MISSIONS.
BY REV. EDWARD STORROW, BRIGHTON, ENGLAND.
IF anywhere we might expect to see Divine and providential manifesta- tions rising toward the supernatural, it is in the spbere of foreign missions, because they, in a pre-eminent degree, seek to honor God, express the mind and purposes of Christ, have their spheres of operation amid perils and dangers. encountered only that error and evil may be overthrown and God have the glory, which is His supreme righ~.
The missionary enterprise bears two features distinctly expressive of the Divine presence and blessing. First, these only can explain the origin, his- tory, and progress of the enterprise. Then there occur in its affairs a series of incidents which more than point at personal and supernatural intervention.
1. God must have put it into the hearts of His servants to form these societies. They are not after the manner of men, since they involve out- lay, trouble, responsibility, yet forbid any of the usual incentives of a return in money, honor, or personal aggrandizement.
2. These enterprises were all begun after much prayer. They not only were born and cradled in an atmosphere of prayer, but have lived in such an atmosphere.
3. There are manifold evidences of Divine interposition and guidance in the manner in which obstacles have been removed, openings made for their efforts, and snitable agencies for the most varied spheres provided.
4. In many instances the agents to begin the work and to nurture it into strength, both at home and abroad, have evidently been called of God and prepared for the spheres they have filled. So was it with Count Zinzendorf, the father and founder of the Christian Knowledge Society j the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel j the Baptist and London Societies j the American Board j the first Danish mission, and Mr. Hudson Taylor's. So was it with the pioneers: Hans Engedi, in Greenland j Zeigenbalg, Plutschan, Schultze, and Schwartz, in South India; Carey, ifarchman, Ward, and Duff, in Bengal ; Mor~ison, in China; Judson, in .Burmah j Moffat, in South Africa, and many others.
5. The manner in which, now for some three generations, this work has been sustained, and with steadily growing liberality, has nothing in the history of human effort to compare with it for disinterestedness, persistence, and widespread self-denial. It has come to pass that after years of detraction, some millions of people, unusually thoughtful and considerate of their expenditllre-most.ly belonging to the lower middle class of society -contribute spontaneously for th~ love of Christ, almost all in small sums. an aggregate amount of two and one half millions a year. (2 Chron. 5: 11-14.) 6. A Divine gnidance and control is surely seen in the direction Of tlJese ·societies. Considering that they h:l'1." had to originate policies; to enter on spheres but little known; to discover the best methods of opera- tion; to meet all manner of difficulties; to conduct their operations in countries most diverse, ·among all classes and conditions of non-Christian 'people, and to disburse annually an aggregate sum which has grown from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands, one may marvel at the few great mistakes that have been made, the general good sense and practica- bility of their policies, and the honor and integrity with which their affairs have been conducted. No class of commercial, financial, or national under- takings can show a record as free from stain.
7. Equally noteworthy is the integrity of missionaries. Thousands of them have lived for years away from the rJstraints of civilized society, where the inducements to live loosely, to become mercenary, and to misuse power are strong. But how few have made shipwreck of faith and of a good conscience! Contrast the lives and conduct of missionaries in every quarter of the globe with those of adventurers, travellers, traders, where the two classes come into contact with barbarous or semi-barbarous races!
8. The success of missions. Their results prove them to be of Divine origin and to have the Divine blessing. Here it can only be pointed out, (1) that no doubt it always has been a most arduous task to make anyone a true Christian, or to overthrow the superstitions of any race in favor of Christianity. (2) That considering all the conditions of the stupendous problr-m, the marvel is that missions have been as successful as they are proved to be by the Divine change that has passed over the natures and the lives of hundreds of thousands of heathen people; by the change from heathenism to Christianity on the part of at least four million persons, and by many changes tending toward Christianity in the opinions, sentiments, customs, and condition of many races.
The only adequate explanation of all these facts and phenomena is, that connected with Christianity there is a personal God who interposes in human affairs, a Divine King who rules all things, and is guiding the affairs of the Christian Church (Matt. 28: 18-20; Eph. 1 :.15-23; Col. 1 : 9-20), and a Holy Spirit who potentially affects the thoughts, feelings, opinions, lives, and even moral·and spiritual natures of men (John 16 : 7-15 ; Gal. 5: 13-26; 2 Cor. 2 : 14-17.) Second, these great truths, assumed everywhere in Scripture, embodied in their history and the lives of saintly persons they record, find a plMe in the experience of the sen'ants of God now, and especially of those who have strong and simple faith, and choose their fields of action in heathen lands. (Ps. 35; 91; Mark 16 : 15-20; 2 Tim. 3: 10-13; 2 Cor. 11 : 16-33; 12 : 1-13.) 1. They are singularly preserved from the perils of the sea. The Moravian missionary ship, for instance, has sailed to and from Labrador for 120 years without any serious accident, though the voyage is an unusually precarious one. The case is so exceptional that the experienced Lord Gambier declared that he considered the continued preservation of this ship the most remarkable occurrence in maritime history that had corne to hi8 knowledge. * And this is but a small part of the MOr1lvian testimony. During 158 years, 2300 of their missionaries have sailed to foreign lands, hut only eleven times has shipwreck resulted in the loss of life. Of all the children of missionaries sent home to Europe in charge of friends, not one has per- ished at sea. And so it is with missions generally. A careful investiga- tion of the nautical affairs of any society will show how few missionary vessels have been lost, and how few missionaries or missionary families have perished by shipwreck.
2. Missionaries in some parts of Africa, India, and the Indian Archipelago have to live and travel where deadly reptiles and beasts of prey are numerous, but i.~ there an instance of one of them thus dying?
3. Their protection from violent men is very marked. The escape of five Malagasy refugees to England was a series of providential interventions. Three of them were chiefly sustained for six months in a forest by food brought by a friend a distance of fifty miles. One of them would have been apprehended by soldiers in a house where she was hiding had not the noise made by cr()w~ given warning of their approach. On another occasion she only escaped by lying in a bog with her head concealed in rushes. She was recognized by a slave, who told her master, but he would not believe her. A house in which she was hidden was searched, but she was not found. On their flight to the coast they had to travel by night, often lost their way, had to avoid villages, soldiers, and spies, to be ferried across a river swarming with alligators, where the boatmen were on the watch for fugitives. H~w they escaped was a marvel to their enemies, to themselves, and to their friends. t On one occasion Livingstone had to pass through a dense· forest along a narrow path. In one pIneo the path was obstructed, and men stationed to kill him. A large spear hurlcc1. past almost grazed his back. "As," he writes, "they IJ,re expert with the spear, I don't know how it missed, except that he was too sure of his aim, and the good hand of God was upon me." All his party were allowed to pass a certain place when another spear was thrown at him by an unseen assailant, and it missed him by about a foot in front.
Further on he saw a gigantic tree on fire, but felt no alarm until he saw it .come straight toward him and fall a yard behind him. Had the branches not previously been rotted off, he could scarcely have escaped. "Thus, three times in one day," he says, " was I delivered from impending death.
The first missionaries to the Fegeans were exposed to great perils, for not only were they threatened with death, but stood again and again before mfuriated men, who avowed their purpose to kill them, as repeatedly, and.
* "Brief Account of the Moravian Missionary Ships Employed for Labrador."
t "Madagascar: its Missions aud its Martyrs." without compunction they killed and ate their own people. "On one occa- sion they were told that they too would soon be killed. The king's Bon in a fury came for this purpose, and only with great difficulty was restrained. The peoplo seemed bent on mischief and murder. One night they assem- bled near the house of the missionaries, giving unmistakable signs of their intent. The missionaries and their wives resolved to die praying. But &S they prayed a ringing shout outside announced that the murderous purpose of the multitude was abandoned. * The autobiography of J. G. Paton abounds with providential occur- rences. These are some of them: Some of his converts resolved to visit an inland village much opposed to Christianity. They were told, "If you come you will be killed." They went, nevertheless, unarmed. Many spears were thrown at them. Some they evaded, others they caught or turned aside in an incredible ·manner. The heathen, amazed at these men coming unarmed, and instead of throwing back the spears, still pressing on in a calm and cheerful manner, desisted, perfectly overawed. The chief and all his tribe came into the school of Christ, and, Mr. Paton adds: " There is, perhaps, not an island in these Southern seas, among all those won for Christ, where similar acts of heroism on the part of converts can· not be recited by every missionary to the honor of our poor natives and to the glory of Christ."
For months, almost years, he lived through repeated outbreaks of sav- age hostility. Of one of these occasions he writes: "The inhabitants for miles around united in seeking our destruction, but God put it into strange hearts to save us." " My enemies seldom slackened their hateful designs. against my life, however calmed or baffled for the moment. When natives in large numbers were at my house, a man furiously rushed on me with his axe; but a chief snatched a spade, with which I had been working, and dexterously defended me from instant death. Life in such circumstances led me to cling very near to the Lord Jesus. I knew not for one brief hour when or how attack might be made; and yet with my ~rembling hand clasped in the hand once nailed on Calvary, calmness and peace and resigna- tion reigned in my soul" (Col. 1 : 19).
"A wild chief followed me about for four hours with his loaded mus- ket, and though often direCted against me, God restrained his hand.
" One evening I awoke three times to hear a chief and his men trying to force the door of my houso. God restrained them again; and next – m"orning the report went all round the harbor that those who tried to shoot me were smitten weak with fear, and that' shooting would not do. ' A plan was therefore set on foot to fire the premises and club us if we attempted to escape."
"One day, while toiling away at my house, a war chief, his brother, and a large party of armed men surrounded the plot where I was working.
* "Fege and the Fegeans." By Thomas Williams. They watched. me for some time in silence, and then every man levelled a musket straight at my head."
After a strange, terrible journey in the night through an unknown region, dangerous to strangers, and abounding with enemies, the natives who heard of his escape, exclaimed: "Surely any of us would have been killed. Your Jehovah God alone thus protects you and brings you home. "
On his final flight with a few friends, they lIaw, as far as the eye could reach, the shore covered with armed men, and, overwhelmed with fear, his native friends hopelessly exclaimed: "Missa, it's of no use, we shall all be killed and eaten to-day I" Nowar, a friendly chief, said to Paton: " Misse, sit down and pray to our Jehovah God, for if He does not send deliverance now we are all dead men. " Presently he said: " Missa, Jehovah is hearing. They are all standing still." So it was, though there was nothing whatever to oppose their advance; and presently the host turned and marched back in great silence.
Instances like the following have been by no means rare : Kapaio, a native of one of the New Hebrides, confessed, after he became a Christian, that for many months he was on the watch to take Mr. Geddie's life. He was a strong and powerful man, familiar with violence and bloodshed, and one blow from his club would have caused death. One night, as he was on the watch, Mr. Geddie went out of his house alone and passed close by the bush which concealed Kapaio. Now was the opportunity for which he had long waited. He grasped his club, but he was powerless to strike; a strange sensation came over him, and he could not hurt the man who was entirely in his power, whom he hated and came to kill.
4. The manner in which the temporal wants of missionaries are supplied is remarkable. No class of civilized men going among the uncivili2ed are really so dependent, or have as few material resources as missionaries, and yet in a manner which is extraordinary, their daily wants are met. Is there an instance on record of a missionary or his family dying of want excepting through folly or imprudence 1 And in many cases of exigency supplies have come evidently from God.
Dr. Fisher writes from the Garenganze Mission, South-East Africa, December 8th, 1889 : "Yesterday two circumstances occurred which we cannot doubt, were ordered by our blessed Lord. In the morning our meal bag which supplied us for three weeks was empty. We had told the nati,.es for five days that we wanted meal, but none came. In the afternoon meal was brought by five different women, which was all freshly pounded, the whole just filling our bag. Then six carriers came yesterday wanting their pay. I had no cloth with me, and wanted three different varieties in order to pay them. As it happened, three of the six loads which they brought were bales, and to my surprise each a different kind of cloth, so I was able to pay the men off. I took both these circumstances as the manifest and loving care of the Lord for us. "
S~me of the Moravian missions in the North of Europe and America supply a continuous series of such instances, since they are placed where almost all their supplies must be drawn from other countries, and the sup- plies, though often interrupted, hardly ever fail.
So it is with large numbers of missionaries who cast themselves directly on the providence of God. He honors their trust.
5. God answer8 prayer. Here is an instance: Two years ago the lo()al secretary of a branch of the Gleaner's Union obtained some African curi- osities from the C. M. House t,o exhibit at a Mother's Meeting. She was instructed to forward them next day to a clergyman in a distant town. She sent them off j and the same night, being sleepless, it occurred to her to pray that the clergyman, of whom she only knew the name, might use them effeotively, and that his influence might be instrumental in sending forth some young missionary from his parish. This she did, by the space of two hours j and from that day, every month for two year8, she looked in The Gleaner to see if anyone had been accepted from that town. In a recent number she found, to her intense joy, that the clergyman him8elf was going out! The world would call this a striking coincidence j what do we call it ?
So, when some of the friends of the China Inland Mission, moved by the wants of that great empire, united in definite prayer that the Lord would enable them to lIelid 100 more missionaries, the prayer was heard, and the 100 were sent.
The "Lone Star" Mission among the Telugus was saved from extinction and nurtured into extraordinary success by prayer. When it was very low, a missionary; his wife, and three native helpers on the first day of the year ascended a hill overlooking Ongole. They saw the large town and some fifty villages wholly given to idolatry, and, moved by the sight, each one in turn prayed that God would send a missionary to Ongole. The prayer was heard, though it was not answered for twelve years; but in little more than twelve other years the little church of eight souls had become 12,000 tried converts with a yet greater number of general adherents.
When the church numbered 143 members, they made it a special request, during the week of prayer early in 1869, that God would convert and add to the church during the year 500 souls. The number baptized into the Ongole church was 573, as well as 53 into the neighb,oring church at Nellore. And that was but the beginning of blessing.
At a special missioMry service, Dr. Ryland, And!:,ew Fuller, and others, solemnly agreed to pray for the immediate conversion of J abez, the son of Dr. Carey, then in India. Some time after a letter was received from Dr. Carey, giving details of the time and manner of his son's conversion, from which it appeared that he was converted at the precise time they had united in prayer.
The Rev. James Calvert, * acting on the idea that prayer and effort for 1he conversion of selected individuals would be honored by God, thus • The Life of James Calvert. prayed for the conversion of Thakumbau King of Fege. His prayers were heard, ~nd this greatly tended to bring about the man-ellous spiritual revo- lution witnessed in these il!lands.
6. The evidence is ample of Divine interposition and guidance. For instance, the chief of Fallungia, West Africa, prayed for twenty years for a missionary, and one was found in an unexpected manner. * So Barnabas Shaw was thus directed to his important sphere. He was not all~wed to settle near Cape Town, so he relilolved to seek a sphere in the interior. For a month he travelled on, not knowing whither he went; but as be halted, the chief of Little Namagualand, with four attendants, halted beside him. They were on their way to Cape Town in search of a missionary, now greatly desired by their tribe. They and he thought they saw in this unexpected meeting the finger of God; and Shaw's great success in subsequent years proved that they were not mistaken.
Hundreds of missionaries, looking back on their past careers, have been conscious that they were guided to their scenes of labor by God, and have noted numerous events in their history which neither chance, nor coincidence, nor human aid adequately explain.
So, too, of events. Our belief in a personal God and an overruling Providence justifies us in believing that He sent Carey to India to give so many versions of the Scriptures to the people. That He sent that copy of the Pushtoo Bible to the Afghan, who kept it " from fire and from water" for thirty years, so that when it was resolved to reprint this Serampore version, this copy was the only one that could be found in India; who guided that copy of the Japanese New Testament, floating in one of the harbors of that empire, into lands where it was greatly blessed by God; who sent through shipwreck and heavy loss the ruined merchant to Mr. Ross, of Manchuria, when he was at a loss to find anyone competent to assist him to translate the New Testament into Corean. Surely the God of Israel still guides His people, going before them in a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night.
And He avenges and punishes as well as guides. Listen! In January, 1878, the Day-Spring, the mission ship of the New Hebrides, was wrecked on a coral reef. She was bought at an auction sale by a French slaving company, who managed to get her off the reef, and intended to use her in the Kanaka traffic-a euphemism for South Sea slavery. This filled the missionaries and native converts with horror and alarm, for they knew that, deceived by the name, many simple natives would be allowed on board only to find, instead of a mission vessel, that they were entrapped for the most brutal, unjust, and cruel of purposes, and that revenge would perhaps be taken for the wrong done on the missionaries, as in the case of Bishop Patterson. What could be done 1 Nothing but cry to God, which all the friends of the mission did night and day, not without tears. Listen! The French slavers, anchoring their prize in the * "Remarklble Pl'ovidences, " p. 205. By the Rev. J. R. Phillips. bay, and greatly rejoicing, went on shore to celebrate the event. They drank and feasted and revelled. But that night a mighty storm arose. The old Day-Spring dragged her anchor, and at daybreak she was seen again on the reef, this time with her back broken in two, and forever unfit for service either fair or foul !
Speaking of the Europeans who trade in unrighteousness, Mr. Paton says: " Thousands upon thousands of pounds were made in the sandalwood trade, but it was a trade steeped in blood and indescribable vice. Nor could God's blessing rest on them or their ill-gotten gains. I have scarcelyknown one of the traders who did not come to ruin and poverty.
" The money that came in to the ship-owners was a conspicuous curse. Fools made a mock at sin, thinking that no one cared for these poor savages; but their sin did find them out."
So of the enemies and friends of the worship, as it was called on Tanna, Mr. Paton says: "This Miaki and his followers were a scourge and terror to the whole island of Tanna. They intensely hated Nowar because he would not join in their cruelties. Yet he and Manumauaud, Sirawia, and Taimungo continued to live long after war and death had swept all the others away. The first three lived to be very old men, and to the last they made a profession of being Christians." (Ps. 7 : 8-17 j Ps. 58 j Eccles. 8: 11-13 j Rom. 11 : 2-16 j Rev. 18: 4-8.) THE MISSIONARY CALL.
TUNE: "Still There's More to Follow."
Hark, the bugle call of God ! Down the ages sounding, " Go ye, and proclaim abroad News of grace abounding !"
CHORus.-Tell the news! Tell the news! Let the farthest nation Hear the sound, the world around, Tidings of salvation!
Let the sacred heralds go, Through the vales and mountains j Steady streams of trensure flow From the golden fountains! [CHORUS.
Go to woman, now enslaved [CHORUS. In her household prison, Tell her, you whom Jesus saved, He was dead-is risen J Hosts of God, march round the wall !
While the trumpet's pealing j Satan's mighty towers will fall, God's own power revealing! CHORUS.
A.T. P.
THE PENTECOST ON THE CONGO
THE PENTECOST ON THE CONGO.
BY J. R. MILLER, D.D., PHILADELPHIA.
THE Acts of the Apostles closes like an unfinished book. The truth is, it is an unfinished book, and new chapters are continually being added to it. The wonderful stories of modern missions belong really to the samevolume.
Few narratives of missionary experience in all this century surpass in thrilling interest the account of the work of the past twelve years at Banza Manteke, in Africa. In 1879 the Rev. Henry Richards went from Eng. land to Africa as a missionary of the Livingstone Inland Mission. He established a station at Banza Manteke, one hundred and fifty miles from the mouth of the Congo, and ten miles south of that great river. In its earlier years the mission was transferred to the American Baptist Missionary Union, and now there is a large Baptist church there, in the midst of a great heathen population, upon which it is pouring the light of the Gospel.
Mr. Richards came to this country last year to tell the wonderful story of the Lord's work on the Congo. This story is so full of interest that it is here condensed from the missionary's own accounts into a simple narrative.
Stanley travelled from Zanzibar around the lakes and down the Congo for a thousand days, and though many thousands of people passed before him each day, he did not find one that knew the Lord Jesus Christ. In 1879 two missionaries were sent out to penetrate this trackless region. They succeeded in getting some distance into the country to a place called Palabala. Mr. Richards, with some others, was sent to try to get, if possible, to Stanley Pool. But the difficulties were very great–insurmountable for men of any but intrepid courage and indomitable persistence. At length the missionaries reached Banza Manteke, and being unable to go any farther, they decided to stay there and establish a station. There were many villages near by, and the people were inclined to be friendly.
They had only one tent, and they built a hut of the long grass that grew all about them. There, in . September, 1879, Mr. Richards fonnd himself alone among people who were entirely unknown to him. He knew nothing either of their customs or of their language. He at once began to study the people, tut, not knowing a word of their language, found it very difficult. Some things, however, he soon learned. For one, they all seemed to be thieves. They would take everything on which they could lay their hands. He would look into their faces and accuse them of stealing his things, but they would deny it without the slightest hesitation.
Mr. Richards gives a most interesting description of his experience in learning their language. They had no dictionaries, no grammars, no books, no literature of any kind. No white man had ever learned the language. He took a note-book and determined to write down pbonetically everything he could hear, with the meaning that he supposed belonged to the word. In this way he soon had a number of words, phrases, and sentences, and at once began to use them. Although the people would laugh at his pronunciations and at the way he put his words together, he did not mind it, but persisted in his effort.
Some words he found it very hard to get. He noticed that the affection between the mothers and their children was very strong, and he wished to get the word for mother. At last he thought he had succeeded, but afterward he learned that the word which he supposed meant mother really stood for a full-grown man. He was three months in finding out the word for yesterday.
At length he began to try to get hold of the grammar of the language. He began with the nouns, and sought for the way of forming plurals. He expected to discover some modification at the end of the words, but could not detect any such change. After much experimenting he learned that there were sixteen classes of nouns, with as many modes of forming the plural. In like manner he discovered that there were seventeen different classes of verbs, with very many tenses besides the ordinary present, past, and future, each having its specific form. The shades of meaning in these variations are often very delicate and beautiful.
The language is not, as one would suppose, a mere jargon, but is really very beautiful, euphonious and flowing, with numerous inflections. When one has acquired it it is very easy to preach in it and to translate the Scriptures into it. Says Mr. Richards: "I think if some of our best linguists were to try to form a perfect language, they could not do better than to follow the Congo. It seems to be altogether superior to the people; and there must have been a time when they were in a high state of civilization, from which in some way they have degenerated."
After learning in this patient way enough of the language to use it a little, he" began to try to find out the customs, superstitions, and religiou of the people. He found that they believed in a great Creator, who made all things. He asked them why they did not worship this Nzambi, and they said they did not think He was a good God and they did not thank Him. He did not concern Himself about them j He was too far away. They had little images cut out of wood-some like themselves, with birds' heads, beaks, and claws; others like animals. These are their gods. They trust in them for protection from harm, sickness, death, or misfortune, hut never expect to receive any blessings from them. They arc believers in witchcraft, to which they attribute all evils and misfortunes. They have charms to counteract witchcraft. They have witch-doctors, for whom they send if anyone is sick. 'The doctor comes, and with a great many incantations tries to drive the demon out. Sometimes the doctor points out some person as the witch, and this person then has to take the test by poison. If he ejects it, they say he is innocent i but if it kiJll~ him they say he was ~uilty. The missionary at length began to show them that sickness and death, and all misfortunes, were due not to witchcraft, but to sin. He gave them the Bible account of the creation and the fall. Then he began to try to show them th/!-t God is not only a great Creator, all-powerful, but that He is also kind and loving. They would ask many questions, some of which Mr. Richards found it hard to answer to their satisfaction. He continued, however, for four years, teaching them about the creation, the fall, the flood, and the history of the Israelites, thinking it necessary to give them some idea of the Old Testament before beginning with the New. But the people were just as much heathen at the end of this time as when he first went among them. There was no evidence of any change. They did not feel themselves to be sinners.
About this time Mr. Richards was at home for a season of rest, and while there he spoke to one who had had much experience in mission work, saying he did not see how he could preach a Saviour until the people felt themselves to be sinners. He was advised to go back and preach the law -for it is the law that convinces of sin. So, on reaching Banza Manteke again, the first thing he did was to translate the Ten Commandments, and then he began to read and expound them to the people. They said the com- mandments were very good, and claimed that they had kept them. The most plain and personal applications of the law made no impression on them. So two years more passed with no result; the people were no better than when he first went to them. He began to grow hopeless of any good from preaching among them. He had gained their respect, and they were kind to him, but that was all.
At last, in his discouragement, Mr. Richards began to study the Scrip- tures anew for himself, feeling that there was some mistake in his preacb~ ing. In the early days souls were converted; why not now ~ Had the Gospel lost any of its power ~ If heathen then turned from their idols to serve the living God, why should not these people in Banza Manteke do the same? He studied the Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles, and began to see his mistake. The commission is not, "Go ye into all the world and preach the Law," but" Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel." .
It was the turning-point in the work of this lonely missionary. He determined to preach the Gospel. Five times in four chapters Peter ac.- cuses the people of the crucifixion of Jesus. Another thing that struck him was that the disciples were bidden to wait until they were clothed with power from on high. He felt that he had not this power. He went again to his work, determined to preach the Gospel, and cry to God for the promised power.
Then he had to decide precisely what the Gospel was. If he preached Jesus and Him crucified, the people would want to know who Jesus was.
He decided to take Luke's gospel, as this seemed the most complete and the most suitable for Gentiles. He began tran~lating ten or twelve verses a day, and then read and expounded them, asking God to bless His qwn Word. At once the people were more interested in the Gospel than they had been when he preached the law. As he went on he was greatly encouraged.
When he came to the sixth chapter of Luke, thirtieth verse, a difficulty arose. The people were notorious beggars. They would ask for anything they saw that pleased their eye-his blanket, his knife, his plate ~and whIm he would say he could not give the things to them, they would reply," You can get more." Here now were the words of the Gospel: "Give to every man that asketh of thee." The missionary was greatly perplexed as to what to do with that verse. He let his helper in translation go away, and went to his room to pray over the matter. The time for the daily serviM was drawing near. What should he do 1 Why not pass over that verse? But his conscience told him that would not be honest dealing with the Scripture. Time for service came j but, instead of advancing he went back to the beginning of the Gospel, reviewing the earlier part. Thus he would gain time for fuller consideration of the text. Still he could not find that it meant anything but just what it said. He consulted a commentary, and it said Jesus was giving general principles, and that we must use com::non sense in interpreting His words. But this did not satisfy the missionary. If we are allowed to interpret oue Scripture in this way, why not others? Leaving the meaning to be decided by " common sense" seemed a very unsafe course.
After a fortnight of prayer and consideration he concluded that our Lord meant just what He said j and he went and read it to the people. He told them that this was a very high standard, and it would probably take him a lifetime to live up to it j but he meant to live what he preached to them. After the address the natives began to ask him for things, and he gave them what they wanted. He wondered whereunto this thing would grow i but he told the Lord he could not see any other meaning in His words. However, the people were evidently deeply impressed by his course. One day he overheard one say: " I got this from the white man." Then another said: "I am going to ask him for such a thing. " But a third said: " No i buy it if you want it." The leaven of grace was working in their hearts. After that they rarely ever asked him for anything.
Mr. Richards then went on translating and expounding Luke's gospel, and the interest continually increased. The climax was reached when he came to the account of the crucifixion of Christ. There was a large congregation the day he read this passage. He reminded the people of the kindness and goodness of Jesus and of His works of mercy, and then pointed to Him nailed upon the cross between two thieves, and said: " Jesus never would have died if we had not been sinners j H was because of your sins and mine that He died." The impression was very deep. It seemed that indeed the Holy Ghost had fallcn~upon the people. He continued preaching. One day, as they were returning from a ser- vice, Lutale, the man who had helped him in translating, began to sing one of the Congo hymns. His face shone with joy, and he said: "I do be- lieve those words; I do believe Jesus has taken away my sin~; I do believe He has saved me." After seven years of toil and weary waiting and suffering here was the first convert at Banza Manteke. At once Lutale began testifying what the Lord had done for him. But the people became his enemies and tried to poison him. He had' to leave his town and live with Mr. Richards for safety. For a time there were no more converts. However, the people were stirred. By and by the king's son became a Christian. Shortly after this another man came wit,h his idols, and placing them on a table, said, savagely, that he wanted to become a Christian. He soon began to preach. So the work went on until ten were converted. These all had to leave their own homes, however, as they were threatened with death. The missionary now shut up his house, and taking these men with him, went from town to town preaching the Gospel. The people were greatly moved, and one after another came over to Christ's side. Two daily meetings were held, and inquirers were numerous. The work continued and was blessed, until all the people immediately around Banza Manteke had abandoned their heathenism. More than one thousand names were enrolled in a book of those who gave ~vidence of real conversion.
Four years have now passed, and Mr. Richards has carefully noted the results of the work. Most of the converts are holding on their way. About three hundred have been baptized. The Church is earnest and spiritual. There has been much persecution, but the Christians have not been intimidated by this. Many examples of earnestness are reported. Materials for a chapel (provided through the liberality of Dr.· Gordon's church in Boston) were brought to a point fifty or sixty miles distant, and the people carried them all the way to Banza Manteke, over rough roads. Some of them went four or five times, each trip requiring a week. In all there were about seven hundred loads, of sixty pounds each, and the whole thapel was thus carried, and without charge.
The people, thieves before, became honest. Liars before, they now became truthful. They have also become industrious and cleanly. The women want to dress better. The men are more energetic and industrious. Witchcraft, poison-giving, and all such heathen practices were put away by those who confessed Christ. Many brought their idols, and at the first baptism they had a bonfire of images, destroying thus every vestige of Idolatry.
This sketch of the work at Banza Manteke, given almost in, the words of Mr. Richards, though greatly condensed, is' sufficiently full to indicate the method pursued and the different stages of progress. The story is of intense interest, and is also full of instruction not only for missionaries in heathen lands, but for Christian workers in any field.
AN AFRICAN DEVIL'S BUSINESS AliD ITS ARAB AGENTS
AN AFRICAN DEVIL'S BUSINESS AND ITS ARAB AGENTS; OR, THE SLAVE TRADE OF THE PRESENT DAY: WHO CARRIES IT ON, WHERE ARE THE SLAVES USED, AND WHAT CAN BE DONE TO STOP THE BUSINESS?
BY FREDERIC PERRY NUBLE, NEWBERRY LIBRARY, CHICAGO, ILL.
I.-THE FIELD AND THE HUNTERS.
Draw a line from Cape Verde to Cape Guardafui. Coast southward along Somauliland until you strike the equator. Run inland to Lake Vic- toria. Prolong an eastern boundary from its south-eastern corner to Lake Nyassa, and down the Shire River. Follow up the Zambesi to its source in Lake Dilolo ; then draw a line to Stanley Pool on the Congo, and fol- low the curve of the Gulf of Guinea, but at an average distance from the sea of about one hundred miles, until we come back to our starting.point in Senegambia. Thus, generaJly speaking, the Sahara, the Indian Ocean, the great lakes, the Zambesi, and the coast lands of the Atlantic constitute the boundaries within which the devil's-business of man-hcnting is pur- sued. With the exception of the Guinea coast and the west half of the Congo State, there is scarcely a recess into which the Arab has not pene- • trated. His hunting-grounds comprise, (1) the independent Soudan, (2) the for-mer Egyptian Soudan, (3) the heart of Central Africa, i.e., between the Congo and the lakes, and the Zambesi countries.
1. First and foremost among slave-stealers stand people from the east coast. These consist of shore tribes called Swahili, of half-caste Arabs, of resident Hindus called Banians, and of Portuguese in Mozambique, or up the Zambesi. Their boundaries of action lie between the Aruwimi, Lakes Albert-Edward and Victoria, Lake Nyassa and Shire River, the Zambesi as far as Victoria Falls, thence to Lake Bangweolo, where only yesterday , the Arabs instigated the Awamba negroes to pursue a most destructive sys- tem of slaving among the inhabitants of its northern and western shores; down the Lualaba-Congo to Nyangwe, whence they swing 100 miles west to Lumami River. Not more than 400 Arabs operate here; but they employ armed negroes in such numbers-Tippu Tib alone being reportfld to have 2000 men in his pay-that perhaps] 0,000 bandits wage war upon the blacks in this section. Until now the Free State post at Stanley Falls, even under Tippu Tib's governorship, kept the Arabs east of that point. But now that Tippu Tib is at Zanzibar, impotent with paralysis, his hotblooded kinsfolk are swarming over the barrier, and are fulfilling the prediction that they must yet be battled with. In March, 1891, seeing that the Free State's forces stop their passage across the Aruwimi, the slaveraiders turned north, reached the Welle, and threatened the Free State's port on that stream. The situation is alarming in the extreme, for the Congo State has no adequate revenue for military purposes, and America has robbed it of the means to secure itself. Its principal stations have
R .A
T SLAVE TRADE MAP OF ocEA EQUATORIAL, REPRINTE 0 FROM "T'HE ARABS IN CENTRAL ArRICA AND ATLAlo<E NYASSA IJ BY J,STEVENSON,F:R.S.E ..
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-Tracl<s ofSlaveCaravan.r and S love-Hunter.r.
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AN AFRICAN DEVn!S BUSINESS AND ITS ARAB AGENTS
been Zanzibar, Bagamoyo, Kilwa, and Quilimane (all on the coast), U-nyanyembe, U-jiji, and Kazembe's toward the lakes, with Nyangwe and Stanley Falls on the Congo. The main lines of travel were three: (1) Erom Manyuema via Tanganika Lake, U-jiji, and U-nyanyembe to Bagamoyo, Kilwa, and Zanzibar; (2) from Lakes Bangweolo and Moero, with a branch across Lake Nyassa to Mozambique; (3) from Lake Victoria to coast towns.
2. Next in power for evil come the slavers of the Egyptian Soudan, with Khartum as their centre. This territory comprises the Nile basin of 2,000,000 square miles, reaching from the Blue Nile to Lake Victoria 1500 miles south,and to the Welle River in the northeast quarter of the Congo State. There the Mabdist and the Zanzibaris lock hands. When Baker was appointed governor in 1869, he fuund 15,000 Egyptians, or Turks, engaged in slaving; and the number cannot now be less. Emin's former province of Equatoria and West Abyssinia are their .latest victims- Khartum, Fashoda, Sennaar, Gondokoro, and (formerly) Massowah the depots. The export route is the Nile, or overland through Darfur and Kordofan. In 1873 these fellows annually smuggled 50,000 slaves into Egypt, Tripoli, Arabia, Turkey, Persia, and eyen Turkestan. There are reasons for fearing the number to be as large to-day. The power and organization of the Khartum slavers may be inferred from the fact that during the Brussels Anti-slavery Conference, 200 delegates assembled at Khartum to devise measures for suppressiug Europe and America's rum traffic with Africa. They resolved to girdle Africa with dhows, confiscate every vessel containing liquor, and sell the crews into slavery. May the worst men lose !
3. The third principal source of supply is the native Soudan. This is about 2500 miles long by 500 wide, and forms one vast hunting ground, with Arabs from Morocco, Tripoli, or Kabylia as Nimrods. From Wadai these marauders penetrate to a point among the cannibal Nyams and dwarfs as far south as the Congo. Captives are transported to the market of Kuka, on Lake Tc,had, where about 10,000 are annually bought by Barbary dealers, and marched across the Sahara to the Fezzan, an oasis south of Tripoli. There they are sold to the south and east coasts of the Mediterranean. The sufferings en route have been so dreadful that very many succumb; and travellers unacquainted with the road need only follow the bones lying right and left. From the West Soudan, via Sok6to and Timbuktu, slaves are also sent to Morocco, where almost every town has its market. Throughout Africa nearly all Mohammedan towns arc receiving and distributing centres for the" black beasts." Morocco owns 50,000 slaves, and annually imports about 4000.
4. There are also minor sources; these, however, being less only by contrast. (1) In Congo State a domestic slave trade is fiercely pursued by large, powerful tribes between Stanley Pool and Stanley Falls. In this western half, as in general through the central belt extending from Senegambia to Uganda, the possession of many slaves is indispensable to tho dignity and power of head men, both in this life and after death. Their. decease is the signal for human sacrifices on a huge scale. Near the mouth of the Mobangi-Welle the inhabitants sell their war captives to the cannibals of its upper reaches expressly for food, and the latter even wage wars for the one object of capturing" long pig." (2) In Lunda, between Angola and the southwest of Congo State, Portuguese subjects enslave its people than dose around the sources of Zambesi River. Cameron was, in 18'75, informed that slaves (at least a few) were still exported from the Portuguese west coast. On the east coast the Portuguese (African and European) ship" black ivory" from Mozambique and Sofalaland. In 1880 the British Consul at Mozambique City rated the annual export at 3000 louIs; but an increased demand for ivory afterward gave the business fresh impulse, the two trades being hand and glove. In 1888 a Portuguese officer, reporting from his post in the interior, said of its commerce ,: " The lole trade of this district at present consists in slaves." Thus Portuguese authorities demonstrate that under their flag the slave trade has so increased and strengthened that to-day there is a yearly export of 10,000 slaves to Madagascar and the Comoros. (3) At the Gulf of Aden slaving is very active in Somauliland, where the slaves are bought or stolen from the Gallas inland, from Guragwe, and the Shillooks or Denkas. Abyssinia has many markets; and former Mahdists have swept thousands of its native Christians into slavery in Arabia. (4) Across the continent the natives of French Loanga, the German Cameroons, and Ashantee and Dahomey hunt their fellow-men relentlessly. (5) Uganda seems to link the Soudan and Zanzibar trades, since M'wanga formerly stole and sold 80,000 people each year, while one competent authority rated that export at 180,000 slaves. Central Africa contains 41 slave routes, varying from 100 to 1'000 miles in length; 16 slave-producing areas of less or larger extent, and 6 regions (several larger than Ireland) which have been all but depopulated, if not utterly unpeopled.
H.-THE METHODS.
The methods of slaving involve the commission of every crime. Before 18'70 slaving was generally commerce j to-day it is murder and robbery. Invasion of peaceful communities, not seldom prosperous or semi-civilized, firing villages at midnight, massacring terror-stricken men as they start from sleep to fall amid burning huts into sleep that knows no waking; kidnapping women and children, or holding them as hostages for a ransom of ivory from yet surviving fathers and husbands j and gratifying every instinct of lust and cruelty-all constitute its ways and means.
We wish, however, to scan the inner workings of the system, and must, therefore, concentrate attention upon Zanzibar as being fairly enough typical.
Among its commercial classes, none before 1890 exercised so much influence on the trade of East Africa as did the Banian, who number thousands. The Arabs are nearly all in their debt j and if a trader planned to journey to Uganda or Nyangwe or Nyassa for slaves or ivory, gum-copal or orchilla, he would borrow $5000 at fifty, sixty, or even seventy per cent interest, and purchase goods. At his journey's end they would have more than trebled in purchasing power. Leaving Bagamoyo or Kilwa with a caravan numbering 100, 300, or 500 pcople, our half-caste, who is mer- chant or murderer, as circumstances permit, takes several months to reach U -nyanyembe. In the maritime district kidnapping is seldom attempted, for the natives stand ready to avenge the slightest affront with bloody hands, and to use firearms whenever opportunity presents itself. From U-nyanyembe (Tabora) routes diverge to U-jiji and Uganda. Passing to U -jiji, he might either purchase slaves at its market or push into Manyema, 150 miles beyond Tanganika Lake (so Stanley pronounces and writes). At U-jji 5 dotti of cloth worth $7.50 would purchase a slave worth $30 at Zanzibar, while $6 would purchase ordinary males, whose value at U-nyanyembe would equal $25. Leaving $3500 as capital, this secured 464 slaves who, if surviving the march to Bagamoyo, realized $13,920 there-a net profit of $10,420. Nor is there reason to !luppose that their value in 1890 was less at marine marts, whence they could still be exported; and often the traders did better still, almost always returning with an enormous margin of gain.
Manyema, in 1865 an unknown country to these Arabs, has for twenty years been an El Dorado of ivory. When the first slaver returned in 1867 with a wealth of tusks and with tales of fabulous quantities of the precious article, the beaten tracks of Uganda and of Tanganika's coasts to east and south became comparatively deserted. Nevertheless, in the long band of country extending from Lake Victoria to Zambesi's wave the slaver has since ravaged and ruined so ruthlessly, that many populous, fertile districts have been reduced to deserts, and in every village around the great lakes no woman or child wandering ten minutes away has any likelihood of ever seeing home again. In Manyema firearms made even small parties of Arabs invincible. This helplessness and the ridiculously low price of ivory led to the new era in slaving, to the methods of the present day, and the rise of the Tagamoyos Tippu Tibs, and Ugarrowall.
Ivory cost, in copper wire or in beads, from one half to one and one quarter cents a pound in 1870-its value in Zanzibar being from $50 to $60 the 35 pounds. To-day that amount is worth $105, and is bought with bullets and blood. The new-comers, urged on by greed and ferocity, began the practice of wholesale massacre. They would accumulate tusk upon tusk for years, till great piles were buried beneath their huts. Suddenly they would "one day pick a quarrel, seize herds and goods, and shoot the men, sparing only enough to carry ivory. They fired the village, and the march worse than death had begun. Multitudes perish merely as beasts of burden; but ·for every slave-porter escaping or succumbing, a man is stolen or bought from the nearest tribe. This supplies its losses by seizure from Beighbors, and thus the caravan, even on the road, Cfl'ates a constant circu- lation of human cl1rrency in every local centre traversed. The Arab wreaks a ruin even greater than the annihilation of tribes outright. He keeps the region in a perpetual ferment, pits chief against chief to prevent com- bination, and either makes tools of tribes likely to become dominant, or shatters them by instigating rebellion among their dependants.
It is in the Congo forest that the frightful atrocities of the Arab slavers reach the depths of hellishness. Within an area equal to France and the Iberian peninsula, Tagamoyo, Tippu Tib, and Kilonga.Longa have suc- ce8sively harried, kidnapped, and murdered, till exaggeration by the nar- rator is. sheer impossibility. The sailor was right who said, on seeing slavers, " If the devil don't catch those fellows, we might as well have no devil at all."
November 27th, 1883, when founding establishments in the :Congo State, Stanley met with the Arabs of Nyangwe. He discovered that this horde of banditti-for in reality and without disguise they were nothing else-had started in July, 1882, from a village half way from Nyangwe to Stanley Falls. The ban 1 numbered 300 fighting men armed with flint- locks, double-barrelled percussion guns, and a few breech-loaders; their domestic slaves and the women doubled the numbers. For 11 months they had raided the left bank of the Congo for 100 miles, and as far north as Aruwimi-mouth ; then they had spent 5 'months on Congo's east shore in the same cruel work. This territory comprises 34,570 square miles- exactly 2000 more than Ireland-and had possessed nearly 1,000,000 peo- ple. One hundred and eighteen villages, comprising 43 districts, had , been devastated to gain the scant profit of 2300 women and children, and about 2000 tusks. Stanley calculated that if those 118 towns had only 1000 inhabitants each, the Arabs had a profit of merely two per cent, and that after these captives had undergone the voyage to Nyangwe, camp life, and the pests which miseries breed, there would remain only a scant one per cent on the bloody venture.
Horrible as are these facts from slavery's charnel-house of horrors, they do not begin to be the worst. Five expeditions, each as great as the pres- ent one, had already come and gone with their booty, and had completely weeded the region. If each expedition was as successful as Stanley's acquaintances, the slavers got 5000 people safely to Nyangwe j but 5000 out of 1,000,000 is one half of one per cent, or 5 slaves out of 1000 per- sons-the poorest possible profit. The 2300 slaves had cost 2500 souls shot, and 1300 dying by the way j and at this rate the 5000 slaves surviv- ing at Nyangwe (of the 10,000 originally obtained) had cost 33,000 lives. Each of the very smallest infants Stanley graphically estimates to have cost the life of a father, and perhaps his 3 stout brothers and 3 grown-up daughters': "An entire family of 6 souls has Leen done to death to obtain that small, feeblc, helpless, useless child !"
" What," he asks, " was the cause of all this vast sacrifice of human life, this unspeakable misery? Nothing but the indulgence of an DId Arab's wolfish, bloody, starved, and ravenous instinct&. He wished to obtain slaves to barter profitably with other Arabs. Having weapons—guns and powder-enough, he placed them in the hands of 300 slaves, and de- spatched them to commit murder wholesale, as an English nobleman would put guns in the hands of his guests and permit them to slaughter the game on his estate. If we calculate three quarts of blood to each person who fell during the campaign of murder, this one Arab caused to be shed 2850 gallons of blood-sufficient to fill a tank of 460 cubic feet-quite large enough to drown him and all his kin."
Stanley's pen-picture of this camp is as vivid as if taken by instantaneous photography. "It was surrounded with a fence made 'of the hut-walls of the native town, which lay in ruins outside, square plots of raised tamped earth, with a few uprights alone indicating where it had stood. The banana groves had been levelled, and their stalks employed to form the fence. Within the enclosure was a series of low sheds, many lines deep, extending 100 yards inland from the immediate edge of the bank In length the camp was about 300 yards. At the landing-place were 54 canoes, varying in capacity from 10 to 100 people. The camp is much too densely peopled for comfort. There are rows upon rows of dark nakedness, relieved here and there by the white dresses of the captors. There are lines or groups of naked forms upright, moving listlessly, or standing; naked bodies are stretched under the sheds in all positions; naked legs innumerable are seen in the perspective of prostrate sleepers; there are countless naked children, many mere infants, forms of boyhood and girlhood, and occasionally a drove of absolutely naked old women bending under a basket of fuel or cassava tubers or bananas, who are driven through the moving groups by two or three musketeers. Mostly all are fettered; youths with iron rings round their necks, through which is riven a chain like our boat anchor-chains, securing the captives by twenties. The children over ten are secured by three copper rings, each ringed leg brought together by the central ring. The mothers are secured by shorter chains; around are grouped their respective progeny of infants hiding the cruel iron links that fall in loops or festoons over their mothers' breasts. There is not one adult man captive. Beside the shaded ground so thickly strewn with prostrate and upright bodies lie scattered or heaped in profusion everywhere the relics of the many raids. There is scarcely a square foot of ground not littered with something. All these littering the ground, or in stacks and heaps, with piles of banana and cassava peelings, flour of cassava, and sliced tubers drying, make untidy pictures and details, through which prominently gleam .the eyes of the captives in supreme and utter wretchedness. Every second during which I regard them, the clank of fetters and chains strikes my ear. My eyes catch sight of that continual lifting of the hand to ease the neck in the collar, or as it displays, exposed, a manacle through fl mllscle bein~ irritated b, its wei¥,ht or want of fitnilss. 130lllld or riveted by twenties, they wallow in filth. . Only the old women are t"ken to forage; they dig the cassava and search for the banana, while the guard, with ready musket, watches keenly for the coming of the vengeful native. Not much food can be obtained. What is procured is flung in a heap be- fore each gang, to cause at once an unseemly scramble. Many of the poor things have been fettered for months already, and their bones stand out in bold relief on the attenuated skin which hangs down in wrinkles and puckers. Who can withstand the feeling of pity so powerfully pleaded for by those large eyes and sunken cheeks ~"
As we listen to this eye-witness, it appears unthinkable that wicked- ness can go lower. Yet it is Stanley himself, who from Darkest Africa brought tidingS and tales of deeds of darkness befitting depths beneath the lowest depths of hell. He says: "In 1887 a half-caste Arab slaver and his Manyema banditti launched out on one of the most sanguinary and de- structive careerl, to which even Tippu Tib's and Tagamoyo's offer poor comparison. Toward the Lenda and Ihuru rivers they had levelled every settlement into black ashes, had even vented their rage for destruction on the plantain groves, had split every canoe into pi~ces, had searched every , island, and had penetrated into the darkest recesses whither a slight track ( could be traced, with only one dominating passion, which was to kill as many men and capture as many children and women as craft and cruelty would enable them. However far north or east these people had gone .they had done precisely as we had seen, and had reduced the forest to a howling wilderness. Through all the immense area they had left scarcely a hut standing. Assuming that their ravages had extended east, north, and south 105 miles from Ipoto, we have something like 44,000 square miles. Once we know where the slaving centres are, we may, with a pair of compasses, draw great circles round each, and park off areas of 40,000 square miles into which a half dozen resolute men, aided by their hundreds 'of (negro) bandits have divided three-quarters of the Congo forest for the sole purpose of murder, and of becoming heirs to a few hundred tusks of ivory. • •• There were Manyema headmen responsible to the chiefs for followers and operations entrusted to their charge. At alternate periods each sets out for his own special sub-district. The fighters con- sist of Congoans trained by the Manyema as raiders, as in 1876 Arabs and East Coast natives had trained Manyema. This extraordinary increase in the number of raiders on the Upper Congo is the fruit of the policy of kill~ ing the adults, but preserving the children. The girls are distributed among the Arab, Swahili, and Manyema harems, the boys are trained to carry arms, and are drilled. Grown tall and strong; they are rewarded .with wives from the female servants of the harem, and are admitted as partnera in the bloody ventures. So many shares of the profits are due the great proprietor; a less number becomes the due of the headman, and the remainder is the property of the bandits. . . . At other times all ivory over 35 pounds goes to the chief i that between 35 and 20 pounds belongs to the headman, while young ivory, or scraps or pieces, fall to the lucky finders. This intlpires every man to do his best. The caravan is well manned and armed by the great proprietor, who stays in his harem on the Lualaba. The headmen, inspired by greed, grow ferocious. The bandits fling themselves upon a settlement mercilessly to obtain the largest share of loot.- children, flocks, poultry, and ivory. • •• All this would be clearly beyond' their power if they possessed no powder. Not a mile beyond home would the Arab and his followers dare venture. It is more than probable that if gunpowder were prohibited entry into Africa, there would be a general and quick migration of all Arabs from inner Africa to the sea, as the native chiefs would be immeasurably stro~ger than any combination of Arabs armed with spears. Of ivory there is not a single piece nowadays which has been gained lawfully. Every tusk, piece, and scrap in the possession of an Arab has been steeped and dyed in blood. Every pound has cost a life. For every five pounds a hut has been burned ; for every two tusks' a whole village destroyed; every twenty tusks have been obtained at the price of a district with all its people, villages, and plantations. It is simply incredible that because ivory is required for ornaments or billiards, the rich heart of Africa should be laid waste at this late hour of the nineteenth century, signalized as it has been by so many achievements; incredible that populations, tribes, and nations should be utterly destroyed. Whom, after all, does this bloody seizure of ivory enrich' Only a few dozens of half-castes, who, if due justice were dealt them, would sweat out the remainder of their piratical1ives in the severest penal servitude."
IlL-THE RESULTS.
How many slaves are captured; how many lives lost annually! In Nyassaland and Zambesi, according to Cameron's latest (1889) statements, 525,600 each year become slaves. In the equatorial tableland, from the data furnished by Papal missioners, the figures mount even higher. Thill brings the total of Africans who annually lose freedom at the hand of tho Arab hell hounds between the Soudan and the Zambesi up to 1,050,000. Including the Soudan, from the Atlantic to the Red Sea, Ashanti, Dah6- mey, Loanga, the Cameroons, Lunda, the native slaving on the Congo, Somauliland, and Uganda, it appears certain that the grand total equals at least 2,000,000. It is as if a Georgiaj or Iowa, or Michigan were annually enslaved. The worst of it is, that Christendom has a real though ,indirect responsibility for those astounding figures, because the relaxation of the English blockade, the troubles in the Soudan and on the East coast, the connivance of Portugal, and French bulldozing in Madagascar enabled the slave trade since 1885 to increase fourfold.
Yet this host, moving every twelve months into the house of bondage, does not represent one half of man's inhumanity in the land of death shades. The mortality of the caravans varies from one-half to three- quarters, and even nine~tenths. We wonder that one slave in ten ever reaches his destination, when we hear the accounts of Cameron, Baker, Livingstone, Lavigerie, and Stanley. Lavigerie says: "When all that are captured are hurried off, a series of unspeakable miseries commences. The men who appear strongest, and whose escape is to be feared, have hands and feet so tied that moving becomes torture, and on their necks are placed yokes attaching several together. All day they march ; at night a few handfuls of raw sorgho are distributed ; this is all their food. Next morning they must start again; but fatigue, suffering, and privations have weakened very many. The women and the aged are the first to halt; then, to strike terror into the miserable mass, their conductors, armed with a wooden bar-to economile powder-approach those most exhausted, and deal a terrific blow on the nape of the neck. The victims utter a cry, and fall in convulsions of death. The terrified troop immediately resumes its march. Terror has imbued even the weakest with fresh strength. Each time one breaks down the scene is repeated. At night, on arriving at their halting-place, after the first days of such life, a not less frightful scene awaits them. The traffickers in human flesh know how much their victims can endure. A glance shows who will soon sink from weariness j so, to economize food, they pass behind these wretched beings and fell them with a single blow. The corpses, when not suspended on neighboring trees, remain where they fall, and close to them must their companions eat and sleep as well as they can. In this manner the weary march is continued, sometimes for months. Daily the number diminishes. If, goaded by their cruel sufferings, some attempt to escape or rebel, thl! masters cut them down, and leave them as they lie, attached by yokes. "
Baker shall be our next witness, describing a slave-dhow and its cargo. He ordered one searched, and the captain was astonished that search was considered necessary. Besides crew and soldiers, the skipper averred, there was not a soul on board, while the vessel had only com in the hold, and ivory beneath. "But," says Baker, " she appeared suspiciously full of corn"for a boat homeward bound. There was an awkward smell about the closely-boarded forecaStle that resembled that of unwashed negroes. . . . Abd-el-Kader drew a ramrod from a soldier's rifle and sharply probed that corn. A smothered cry from beneath, and a wriggling among the corn were succeeded by a woolly head, as Abd-el-Kader, having thrust in his long arm, dragged a negress forth. At once the planks boarding forecastle and stern were broken, the corn was removed, and there was a mass of humanity exposed-boys, girls, and women close packed like herrings in a barrel, who, under threats, had remained silent. The mainsail appeared full and heavy in its lower part. Upon unpacking, it yielded a young woman thus sewn up. We discovered about 150 slaves stowed away in a most inconceivably small area. The stench was horrible when they began to move. Many were lD Irons. I ordered the agent and the captain to be put in irons."
Yet the captives and human exports are far and away the slightest sectiOl~ of thf;J sufferers. Every slave, on the average, represents 100 victims. T.he populations blighted by the simoom of slaving number 150,000,000as many as the German and Rm!sian Empires together.
IV.-THE REMEDIES.
1. As the Zanzibar slave trade has so long been sustained by the capital of British Hindoos, England has moral respousibility for that traffic. Now she is mistress of Zanzibar and Pemba, and her East Africa Company controls the coast north, and has brought Uganda under English lordship. 'With Zanzibar as the maritime key of the situation, and with Cairo a future . centre of Saxon government over an area greater than India, England can lock this export traffic into the interior. Moreover, Germany is conquering lands between Zanzibar and the lakes, the Reichstag has forbidden marine export.ation of slaves, and domestic sl~very will be abolished from its African possessions as speedily as circumstances permit.
2. Again, it began to look, last February, as if the Great Powers would fulfil their solemn pledges for the welfare of Africa, which they have shamefully failed t<? live up to. In 1884 they declared the Congo State should not be used for the slave trade, and each. bound itself to employ all means at its disposal to end the traffic and punish the slavers. Had they enforced their prohibitions, the slave trade could not have attained its present proportions. They <leclared that " these regions shall not be used as markets or as routes of transit for the slave trade, no matter of what race j each of these powers binds itself to use all the means at its disposal to put an end to this trade, and to punish all engaged in it." In 1889 they met in Anti-Slavery Conference (It Bru!:lsels, and agreed that the following measures are directly and generally practicable: (1) Tribes concerned in raiding shall be held responsible. (2) Any tribe through whose territory slave caravans pass shall be held to account, and such chiefs or organizers of caravans as have been once convicted of slavetrade offences shall render security on starting from the seaboard. (3) Chiefs ou whose coast slave shipments occur shall be dealt with. (4) The police of the sea is to be maintained by joint European effort, maritime transportation being the point where force and united action can be made most effective. Vessels of 500 tons and under, unless slavers of larger tonnage be hereafter discovered, shall, on the high seas, be subject to supervision and detention. (5) Disarmament of the slaver is nigh. From 20° North to 22° South, and from 100 miles out in each ocean" the sale of firearms to Arabs or natives is prohibited. Arms must be deposited in Government warehouses, taken· out only on permission, and not in sale include the most improved weapons. Stanley has said: "for wholesale massacres of African aborigines there is only one remedy -the solemn combination, of England, Germany, France, Portugal, South Africa, East Africa, and the Congo State against the introduction of powder into any part of the continent, except for the use of their agents j and seizing every tusk of ivory." Now Christian sentiment must compel civilization to redeem itself by grappling immediately with the slaver of the Congo, for the Free State offers the most advantageous means of attacking these Manyuemans and Soudanese in the rear, while Stanley Falls is the West Point of the Upper Congo. The United States itself took part in this Conference, and the refusal of our Federal Senate to ratify the decree of humanity is a damning diegrace to America. How the country that shattered the shackles of 4,000,000 bondmen could shirk its duty and fasten fetters on the black man in Africa, passes comprehension. EYen Holland played the man and shames us.
3. Cardinal Lavigerie has awakened even papal peoples to their duty in suppressing slavery, and proposes to stop man-hunting at its source by the sword. The campaign to realize this object may take place, since several thousand young meu have foluTJteered and are preparing. In the Sahara these youth~ and the Peres Blancs are already proving themselves true knights of labor, as diggers of wells and planters of trees.· It is objected that these crusaders would merely destroy a few slavers and divert the trade to other routes. But Lavigerie's real idea is that every European Power should maintain sufficient military forces wherever in its possessions the black is hunted j but, if finances forbade, he would revive the medireval soldiers of the Church, its Knights of Alcantara, Lazarus, or Malta, adapt them to modern methods and needs, put them under the Pope, and at the call of any government remove them from place to place requiring their services. Small, inexpensive squadrons can achieve great results.
Whether or not we agree with Lavigerie on the means of employing force, it is absolutely certain that force is now an indispensable necessity in suppressing slave-stealing. The case admits no alternative to-day, for Africa is bleeding out her life-blood at every pore: the population is far too scanty, and va~t areas are relapsing into uninhabited wilds, impenetrable to missionary or merchant. The Arabs are bitterly hostile to European influences, mean to practice slaving as their right, wage wanton war against missions, and demonstrate that in Central Africa European and Arab cannot live together. Turkey intends to send Mohammedan missionaries into her African possessions.
What, then, are the warlike measures inevitable against the Arab? Simply this: protection of Arric's dusky, helpless children. This comprises the introduction of armed bodies into the interior as shepherds of the people, continental blockades against caravans, and as police patrol. At their head will be Europeans, in the ranks natives, as militia, or Sepoys, picked men and masters of gun-drill. As on the Congo, so on the East Coast, the Zambesi, the Niger, the Nile and the lakes, lines of military posts or commercial depots three days' journey apart, are opening. These will absolutely forbid slaving, abolish local markets, prevent the transporting of slaves, except domestics duly registered, and sweep away customs or duties levied on slave sales. Swift armed launches are to be put on all navigable waters, with a garrison or tWQ on the high, healthr platealls of ~a<?h llik~ and on the main traffic lines. Such a chain of fortified posts we may soon see from Suakim along the Nile and the lakes to Quilimane. This will cut the roots of the cancer, and constitute bulwarks behind which missions may advance-missions, which alone can work lasting good.
4. When the export over-sea, indispensable to the continuance of Mos- lem slavery, is destroyed, serfage cannot long continue. Closure of ship- ping ports must therefore be effected, though a tremendous 3000 miles task. The status of slavery must be denied further recognition by inter- national law, the traffic be banned as piracy, and the maritime routes be made so utterly unsafe that no Arab will dm'e risk his life.
5. Mohammedan slavery keeps Africo.Arab slaving alive. So the Brussels Conference brought public opinion to bear on Persia and Turkey, the sole independent slave powers there, and deprecated the influence of their domestic bondage. They should persuade the heads of all Mohammedan States to discourage the purchase of negro slaves, and hold Moslem rulers accountable for future slaving infamies. Zanzibar's new sultan has prohibited slave selling, and instituted measures that will steadily wipe out the whole institution. The British Anti.Slavery Society has pledged itself to suppress Mohammedan slavery, and very many facts prove that the prospect for slavery dying out from the Moslem East is better than that possibility of mediooval Christendom.
6. Colonization, commerce, and railroads afford Christianity the underhold in this death grapple. The prejudices of the natives against colonization, never very strong, will yield to fair and judicious treatment.' But tropical Africa cannot be colonized. by " Caucasians," and it may well be in the Divine statesmanship that the American freedman and none other is to save the brother in black and teach him to save himself. Liberia and its noteworthy success, despite every disadvantage, prove negro colonization to be no Utopian scheme, and with regard to the Congo State, Stanley assures us that if " American negroes form the majority of its citizenship, it would, with proper encouragement, make remarkable development, and in time become a great nation. If these civilized blacks are developed morally, their contact with the savages would be happy." Signs are not wanting that among the negroes of our New Soutb not a few consider. African evangelization their race duty; and that the wonder-working Providence of American history anoints them as apostles to Ethiopia. The task would require comparatively few of the 7,000,000 black Americans, for if less than ten per cent return, 500,000 chosen people would, within one century, accomplish the regeneration of tbeir mother country. Such colonies will swiftly develop legitimate commerce and native industries among the fairly active and workable populations.
Commerce strangles slaving by making its profits less tban those of lawful trade, though it needs to be protected by physical force before it can produce its effects. On the Congo commerce checks the slave trade, since Boma and Matadi are drawing the ivory trade of Stanley Falls away from Zanzibar. Grenfell avers that if once the railway, now rapidly building between tidewater and Stanley Pool, is completed, the Arab will find his occupation gone. On the East Coast the African Lakes Company was organized as a lay auxiliary of Nyassa Missions, and accomplished this by buying ivory at higher prices than slavers can pay. It also built Murchison Road round the Shire Cataracts, and Stevenson Road between Lakes Nyassa and Tanganika. These mend the breaks in the water route from Quilimane to Ruanda, and are for humanitarian purposes the most im- portant thoroughfares to Central Africa, as this line cuts the principfll routes to the coast, and several garrisons on it could throttle the slavers in transit. As to Uganda and Masailand, Mackay and Emin have affirmed that a safe road to the coast must unquestionably be opened. The British East Afric:m Company is building a railroad from Mombasa to Lake Vic- toria. The English, at Stanley's request, devote their Stanley fund to placing a steamer on that lake, and Germany is doing the same thing. Emin has established a fortified post on its south shore, after whipping Arab slavers in many encounters. U-nyanyemhe is his central station, but he will found four large commercial stations and several smaller ones on the Tanganika and elsewhere. An ivory tribute will, within three years, repay the expenses-$400,000. That does not appear unreasonable when we remember that since 1885 Tippu Tib has exported $500,000 worth of ivory, and that this includes the cnormous stock just brought to market by his 7000 porters. A Swedish expedition intends to plant stations from Lake Victoria to Tanganika for co-opcration in suppressing ~laving. The Germans will, of course, push roads to the latter lake. The British Company bas effected the emancipation of 5000 slaves since 1888, made compacts against slaving with tribes inhabiting 50,000 square miles, compels Arabs themselves to recognize that no native is to be held in servitude, releases slaves in caravans, and enables domestics to buy their freedom. On the Juba 30,000 runaway slaves recently asked to be taken under its protection. In Uganda, Mwanga pledges himself to assist, in the abolition of slaving. Thus the outlook for the speedy suppression of East African sla1Jing, and the march of Christianity even to the Great Forest, is full of promise.
The greatest efficiency of the iron horse in destroying the slave trade will occur on transcontinental lines bisecting the slave-belt~. A railroad from Congo mouth to Zanzibar, Stanley says, can be eatiily constructed, and would pay from the start. Another, 1000 miles long, runs from Cape Town to Kimberley, and the South African Company, which is to govern all lands between the Orange River and the Tanganika will prolong it to the Zambesi. (A railroad from the South already reaches Yryburgh in Bechuanaland.) The Niger Company controls the Low.er Niger, where it bas suppressed human sacrifines and checked slaving j before 1900 it wm control the independent Soudan as far as the Egyptian Soudan. There .it will be met hy English -agents, either by Anglo-Egyptian officials, who will have recovered. the Khartum country, or by the East African Company from Equatoria itself. Since tltat is their ultimate goal, then we shall see the proposed railway from Monrovia to the Red Sea, a French line from Algeria to Lake Tchad, aud the Nile made, by skilful engineering at its modest cataracts, a broad waterway from the Midland Sea to the inland seas. Such roads will accomplish far more than armies; and if Europe will Europe can within a decade shatter the Arab slave trade to atoms. God grant that the negro who talked with Jephson about railways prove a prophet of good, and" that when the railroad is made, Jesus Christ may go up with it."
James H. Richardson, M.D., of Toronto, writes a letter to the editor, expressing emphatic dissent from the article in the January issue on " Livingstone and Stanley." We perhaps owe it to fairness to quote portions of this letter. Dr. Richardson questions the propriety of coupling these two men as we have done, and thinks the aims, characters, and methods of the two are dissimilar and antagonistic. Dr. Richardson thinks Mr. Stanley has given sanction to practices which humanity and Christianity must deplore, and cites the Emin relief expedition as an instance. We give his words: " Think of the very first step-the investing, of that fiend, Tippu Tib, with the authority and pay of an officer of the Congo Free State in the very heart of the country where he had been pursuing his most nefarious deeds of rapine, plunder, and slavery j and in the appointment recognizing his authority for carrying them on above the Stanley Falls. Think of the contract with this miscreant to furnish 600 slave carriers. Mr. Stanley denied, in his lecture at Montreal, that slave labor was employed; hut his book (' In Darkest Africa,' vol. i1., p. 3) records, ' The utter unruliness of this mob of slaves which had maddened tne officers of the rear column.' In vol. i., p. 26], he describes the la~hings on these poor slaves, and says 'awful oaths of vengeance were uttered for all the indignities they suffered j' on pages 212 and 213 we have the record of the hanging of a , slave of Fayilla,' and the condemnation to death of two other slaves-one the slave of a man in Zanzibar, thc other a slave of an artisan in U-nyanyembe, both of whom must have been brought with the expedition all the way from Zanzibar.
" Think of the 357 rifles and the Maxim gun which poured out a deadly stream of 300 bullets a minute! Think of the invariable practice' of driving the poor natives out of their villages and taking occupation. The very first landing at Yambuya was of this character. Read the account (vol. i., pp. 113, 114) after parleying uusucce~s£ully for an hour, ' for leave to reside in their village,' the signal was given, the whistles wl:lre blown" the, boats were moored to the shore, and the horde of about 700, armed to the teeth, rushed up the bank, ' and when the summit was gained not a villager was in sight.' For ten or eleven months these poor villagers were kept out of their homes; no wonder that two days afterward, when Stanley
43i .A. CRITICISM OF STANLEY
started with his advance force, the poor natives drew themselves up at the entrance to their village to prevent it from being taken possession of, and no wonder they never tried the defence again, as they were mowed down by the bullets from the 357 rifles and the deadly Maxim gun. They seem to have vacated village after village in terror, as if the demon of destruction was let loose on them. See also vol. i., p. 152. On July 10th the expedition occupied one of seven large villages at Gwengwere, out of which' all the population had fled ;' on tho 11 tIl, he writes, ' as we were disappearing from view of Gwengwere, the population was seen scurrying back to their homes, which they had temp'orarily vacated for our convenience. It saved trouble of speech, exerted, possibly, in. useless efforts for peace, i.e., if they had not left peaceably they would have been driven out!
" Think of every village being raided for food, and provisions for ten days carried off without remuneration, and this not once. but every day. It may be said that these robberies, this occupation of their homes, this employment of slave labor, this authority conferred on Tippu Tib, were necessary to the success of the expediti.on ; if so, then the expedition was an unholy one. To do evil that good may come is as wrong in this case as in any other. " Dr. Richardson adds that, in his opinion, the sad story of the rear colJlmn " would not have been written if Stanley had done his duty. In 1'0. t, pp. 337, 338, 362, and 364, it is recorded that after a council on Lake Albert, not having found Emin, they concluded to retrace their steps and to ' hurry' on to find Barttelot and the rear column before it was a , wreck' as 'the only sensible course which was left to them,' and how he abandoned this' only sensible course' and left Barttelot to his fate because the headmen and officers wanted to go back to find Emin, and so lost four months and a half before going to Barttelot's relief. As to the abuse heaped on Barttelot because he did not advance without getting the carriers promised by Tippu Tib, one short sentence (vol. ii., p. 13) settles the question: ' Without Tippu Tib, or one of his nephews, such a column' (as the rear column) 'could not be taken through the broad extents of wilderness ahead.' "
The Australian Ballot System is a striking illustration of the benefits which Christian lands may receive from their efforts in carrying civilization and Christianity to heathen countries. Australia was formerly wholly heathen, but has become a Christian land by colonization and missionary effort. The conditions of life there rendered possible the trial of a system of balloting which it would have been very difficult to experiment with in any country of more established institutions. But after having proved successful in Australia it is now adopted in nearly all the United States to the great satisfaction of every intelligent voter. It pays for Christian countries. to send missionaries and colonists to lift heathen lands out of their ignorance and degradation. Every nation so raised to an enlightened religious condition will have some peculiar contribution to the welfare of the whole world which could come from no other people.-Baptist Missionary Magazine.
MUTUAL RELATIONSHIP AND LAWS OF THE BANTU LANGUAGES
THE MUTUAL RELATIONSHIP AND LAWS OF THE BANTU LANGUAGES, AS SEEN IN THE KIMBUNDU AND ISI- ZULU.
BY REV. l"EWIS·GROUT, WEST BRATTLEBORO, VT.
The elementary grammar of the Mbundu language, by Mr. Heli Cha~ lain, is a very valuable and timely contribution to a better knowledge of that great family of Bantu languages, which is now known to extend all through South Africa, or, in general terms, East and West from ocean to ocean, aud from the Orange River to some five degrees North of the equator. The grammar is pnmarily designed for the missionaries, the natives, and the colonists of Angola and neighboring dist.ricts; and, for this reason, is written in Portuguese, which prevails to a large extent in that field. Otherwise it would seem to have been better had it been written in a language more widely known. The author of the grammar was well qualified for the work he has done, and has done it well. A native of Switzerland, having acquired a knowledge of six or eight languages aside from the French and German which were his mother tongues, he went out some seven or eight years ago to Loanda, in the Portuguese colony on the West Coast of Africa, as linguist of Bishop Taylor's self-supporting mission. Studying the Portuguese Oil his voyage out, he was well fitted for his work among tribes that spoke dialects of which comparatively little was known as yet in other lands, though they are spoken of by Dr. Cust as constituting the lingua franca of all Western Africa. Indeed, Livingstone speaks of a resemblance between this language and that spoken at Tete, on the Zambezi in Eastern Africa; and the inhabitants of Angola have always found the Mbundu language of great service to them in their travels far to the East.
Mr. Chatelain, giving himself to the study and development of the Bantu languages, has prepared a primer and a translation of John's gospel for his mission, a short vocabulary of the Mbamba, and another of the Umbangala. He is now completing a work on the legends and fables of Angola, and several new vocabularies of neighboring dialects. A more extended work is that of a dictiona~y of the Mbundu language, now in preparation, to be enriched by a comparative study of the Swahili of East Africa, of the Kongo on the West Coast, and by the fruits of the labors of the American missionaries in the Benguela district, together with the fruits of German missionary labors in the Herero of Damara-land. Dr. Cust, the learned and able author of "Modern Languages of Africa," a work published in 1883, speaks of the Mbundu as one of the most important in all West Africa; and, having given a sketch of what the Portuguese have done during the last two and one half centuries to master and make this language known, concludes by saying: "It must be admitted that a new grammar of it is still required." But now, a year since, writing an " Introduction" to Mr. Chatelain's" Kimbundu Grammar," he expresses himself as much pleased .that the matter had fallen into the hands of a scholar 80 well qualified to undertake it, and commends the work to the favorable consideration of African scholars. It will help to give some idea of both the Zulu and Mbundu languages, their general character, forms, laws; also Fome idea of the relationship, or points of similarity that prevail throughout the ('ntire family of South African or Bantn language~, of which Dr. Cust finds 168, aside from 55 dialects, if we institute a brief comparison between the Kimbundll of Angola, in the northwest of the field, and the Isizulu of Natal and Zululand, in the southeast-a geographical distance which puts the two languages nearly two thousand miles apart.
One of the minuter points of resemblance is, that both languages make open syllables; that is, each word and syllable ends in a vowel; and, at< a general rule, the accent falls on the penult. Each abounds in certain consonantal combinations, such as mb, mv, ml, mp, nd, ng and nz; but clicks and gutturals are found only in the Zulu. The vowel signs used in writing have in each the Italian value, and the abundance of these makes the flow of pronunciation in each easy and musical. In their radical element many of the words are the same, or nearly the same, and quite the same in respect to the principle and use of the incipient elements or prefixes of words, though in the forms of their several prefixes they generally differ. Thus, nouns: ENGLISH. ZUI,U. MBUNDU.
Person. s. umuntu. S. mutu. Mother. P. atu. Snake. P. abantu. S. mama. Death. P. jimama. s. umame. S. nioka. P. jinioka. P.omame. S. kufua. P. makufua. s. inyoka.
P. izinyoka.
s. ukufa.
P. ukufa.
So in verbs: ZULU. MBUNDU.
ENGLISH. uku tunga. ku tunga. uku luma. ku lumata. to sew. uku shinga. ku shinga. uku beta. ku beta. to bite. uku lima. ku rima. to insult. uku sala. ku sha:la. to beat. to till. to remain.
For" three" we find tutu in both languages; for" five" we find Manu in the Zulu and tunu in Mbundu. In the former uleu lamba means" to hunger," in the latter leu lamba means" to cook."
In each language the nouns are divided into classes according to their prefix or preformative, and according to the way in which the plural is generally made from the singular by some change in the prefix. Zulu nouns are divided, in this way, into eight classes, the last two of which are without distinction as to number; and, in the same way, Mbundu nouns are divided into ten classes. In the former, the prefix u, um, or umu, of the first class, is changed to 0 or aba to form the plural; as um/ana, " boy," abafana, "boys." So, again, ili or i is changed to ama; im or in to izim, izin, orama; isi to izi, izim, or izin; and um or umu (impersonal) to imi ; though nouns of the seventh and eighth classes have the same pre- fix, ubu or uku, in both numbers: thus, ubuso may mean either" face" or " faces." Nouns in uku are of a verbal character, being the same as the verb in the infinitive mode. In the Mbundu the prefix mu, of the first class, is changed to a, to form the plural; as, mutu, " person," aiu, "persong;" m'}', of the second class, is changed to mi, as mulundu, " mQlmtain," milundu, ,-' mountains. " So, again, ki is changed to i; ri to ma; u to mau; lu to malu,. tu to matu,. ku to maku,. ka to iu; and other forms to ji.
IIi both languages alike f'ach class of nouns has a fragmentary or genitive pronoun of a preformative character, which corresponds to the noun's ptefix ; one for the singular, and one for the plural, which, with the genitive particle a, denotes possession, or the relation of a subject to an attribute; thus, in Zulu, ilizwi lom/ana (loa-um/ana), " word of the boy," or " boy's word;" ~baniu benkosi (b-a-inkosi) "people of the king," or "king's people. " So in the Mbundu, muiue ua mutu, " head of man," or " man's head;" mitue ia atu, " heads of men."
In both languageR alike the adjective takes a prefix corresponding to the prefix of the noun with which it agrees; thus, in Zulu, um/ana umkulu, "the boy (is) great;" um/ana omkulu (a-umkulu) , "the boy (which is) great," i.e., "great boy;" abantu bakulu, "people (are) great ;" abantu abakulu, "great people." So in Mbundu; thus, muiu uonene, "great person;" kim~ kionene, "great thing;" ima- ionene, "great things ;" r'ital'i l'ionene, "great stone;" mata;'i monene, "great stones. " So, too, in respect to numerals. In the Zulu we have umuntu omunye, "one person;" abantu ababili, " two persons ;" izinkomo ezintatu, "three cows." In the Mbundu we ha-e mutu umoshi, " one person ;" kima kimoshi, " one thing;" ima itatu, "three things ;" matubia matanu, "five fires."
The grammar of the verb is essentially the same in the Mbundu language as in the Zulu. In the latter the infinitive has the sign uku, " to ;" as uku landa, "to love;" uku bona, "to see;" in the former, ku; as ku zola, "to love ;" ku longa, "to teach;" ku banga, "to make, do." In both languages alike the pronominal subject of the verb in the third person corresponds to the prefix of the noun for which the pronoun stands. Thus, in Zulu (um/ana, "boy") u bona, "he see~;" (aba/ana, "boys"), ba bona, "they see;" (inkomo, "cow"), i bona, " it sees;" (izinkomo, " cows"), zi bona, "they see." In the Mbundu we have (mutu, "person"), u banga, "h~ (or she) makes;" (atu, "persons"), a bar.ga, " they make ;" (kima," thing"), ki banga, " it makes ;" ' (ima, "things"), i banga, "they make." 'For the first, second, and third persons, preient tense, we have: IN ENGLISH. IN liIZULU. IN KIMBUNDU.
S. I love. S. Ngi tanda. S. Ngi zola. thou Iovest. u tanda. u zola. he (or she, etc.) lovt's. u (i, or Ii, etc.), tanda. u (or a, etc.), zola.
P. we love. P. si tanda. P. tu zola. ye love. ni tanda. nu zola. they love. ba. (or zi, etc.), tanda. a (or i, etc.), zola.
In the few following forms we have a comparative view of some of the modes in the two lan~ua~es : IN ENGLISH. IN ISIZULU. IN KIMBUNDU. '
Love, or love thou. tanda, or ma u tande. zola. Love yeo I love, or I do love. tandani. zolenu. I may love. I should love. ngi tanda, or ngi y a tanda. ngi zola.
ngi nga tanda. ngi zole.
nga ngi tanda. ngojo zola.
In the following we have a comparative view of a few tenses.
IN ENGLISH. IN ISIZULU. IN KIMBUNDU.
I love. ngi tanda. ngi zola. I loved. nga tanda. nga zolo. I have loved. ngi tandile. nga zolele. I had loved. ngi be ngi tandile. nga. zolele kia. I shall love. ngi y8 ku tanda. ngondo zola, or nganda ku zola.
IB respect to species of verbs, we find much of likeness between the Zulu and the Mbundu, as also between these and the Hebrew, in what is there called " conjugations." In the former from tanda, ,. love," we get the causative, tandisa, .. cause to love j" the relative, tandela, " love for j" the reciprocal, tandana, "love one another j" the reflective, zitanda, " love self j" the subjective, tandeka, " be lovely or lovable j" also other species. In the Mbundu we have from zola, ,. love," zolesa, " cause to love j" zolela, "love for j" rizola, " love self." We sometimes find two or more species combined j as, in Zulu, the causative and relative, tandisela, "cause to love for j" in Mbundu, zolesela, " cause to love for."
The mutual relationship and laws, or kinds of resemblance and difference that prevail in the great family of Bantu languages are seen, to some extent, in the goodly number of words that are found to be substantially the same in many of its members, though such words are often found in greatly differing forms. "Ve take two words, or, rather, one word in its two numbers, umunt!l, " person," abantu, " persons or people," as a good example of the unity in variety in some of the corresponding words in the cognate lauguages of which we speak. This word consIsts of two elements, one radical, the other preformative, which is also called "prefix." In Zulu the ,root is ntu; the prefix, singular, umu, plural, aba. And, of all the numerous forms which this word may take, whether in root or prefix, doubtlelOs the Zulu, as above, i.e., um'l1ntu, abantu, are alike most original and complete., For these Zulu words we find the corresponding words, in the cognate languages, to be, on the South, in the Kafir, umntu, abant'l ; on the West, in the Sesutu, motu, batu,. in the Sethlapi and Sechuana, mothu, bathu. Going northward and eastward, and coming into the Delagoa region, we find, in the Southern Tekeza, munu, banu or vanu,. in Northern Tekeza, amuno, vano,. coming to the Tete and Sena on the Zambe~ii, we find munttu, vanttu,. in the Quilimane, muntu, antu,. in the Maravi, muntu, wanthu. In the Makua, latitude 15° South, we find muttu, attu. In the Yao, on the eastern bank of Lake Nyassa, we have mundu, vandu or wandu; in Kiswahili, latitude from 5° to 6° South, mtu, watu,. then, in the Kinika, mutu, atu,. in the Kikamba, mundu, andu,. and in the Kisambala and Kipokomo, on the Pokomo, Dana or Tana River, near the equator, we have muntu, wantu.
Passing now to the southwest of the Bantu field, and moving northward along the West Coast of the c'ontinent, we find, in the Otyiherero or Damara language, omundu, ovandu j in the Sindonga, the language of the Ovambo, umtu, oantu,. in the Nano of Benguela, omuno, amana j in the Kimbundu or Angola, mutu, atu,. in the Kongo, omuntu, oantu j in the Benga, as spoken on the Corisco Islands, North of the equator, moto, bato,. and in the Dualla and Isubu or Cameroons language, motu, batu.
From what is already known of the many other Bantu languages, we have every reason to believe that the points of agreement and difference which we have. now passed in review are a good specimen of what prevail among the scores that still remain to he reduced to order in the great inland region that stretches through the interior, from four or five degrees North of the equator to the Orange River on the South.
Of how great advantage this relationship must be to the hosts of missioll9.ries, whose great work it shall yet be to reduce the still unwritten multitude of these Bantu languages each to its own grammatically exact order, and translate the Scriptures into them, it is hardly pOl)sible to give any adequate idea. If the writer, while preparing to go abroad, could have, had the means of getting even such a knowledge of these languages as may be gathered from this article, it would have been of more aid and saving of time to him than he can now tell.
We reprint from the African News a brief article on " The Spelling of African Names," by Heli Chatelain, which is appropriate to follow Mr.
Grout's paper: " Every reader of African publications and student of African maps must have been struck with the orthographic chaos which prevails throughout African nomenclature. The same town, country, people, mountain, or river is designated in different maps and b?oks, sometimes in the same periodical, with a variety of names which, to the uninitiated, present but few or no traces of similarity, much less of identity.
" This lamentable fact is due mainly to two causes: (1) to the hetero-
THE SPELLING OF AFRICAN NAMES
geneous spelling of European languages, from which the information is culled; (2) to the prefixes and suffixes of African languages, whose secret is understood by few African linguists, and even then imperfectly.
" ]. The nature of the first difficulty will be understood at a glance, on comparing the following table, giving the principal European ways of rendering the same sounds : English. Frencli. German. Portuguese. Spani87i. u 00 ou u u e e a e,(! tl x, eh nh Ii 8h eh seh eh nj dj ny gn tach, tj ao au dsch, dj ai, ae ai, ay elt teh all j dj ei ow (as in how) aou i a"i Thus the Magadoxo of the Portuguese becomes Magado~ho in English, and MagadoKcho in German, unless the Arabic form Mukhdishu, with its own national transliterations, be preferred by a traveller or map-maker.
" The British Government and the Royal Geographical Society have recently taken an important step toward bringing some order into the hitherto arbitrary nomenclature, by agreeing on a systcm of geographical speIling and transliteration which shall be followed in all official documents, and is sme to be adopted by the public at large. The value of the letters according to the new system is given on page 466 (October, 1890), of the African News j but one important article was omitted.
" In the names of places belonging to the German, French, or Portuguese spheres of influence, and, in the case of a few old names, the German, French, or Portuguese spellings are to be left unchanged. So, the readers will still be supposed to know all those langllage~, if they want to pronounce correctly. It follows, therefore, that the new spelling will be principally applied to the tranBliteration of native names in eOllntries controlled by England. It may be interesting for many to learn that the system recently made official is simply the one used by Krapf and his colaborers in Ea~t Africa, for the transliteration of Ki-swahili and other East Afril)an languages.
" The United States have just been favored with a Board on Geographic Names, whose duty it is to give the standard, to which all official publications will have to, and the unofficial will choose to, conform. It is much to be desired that our Board will, as far as possible, concur with the decisions of their colleagues across the water.
"2. The second cause of pnzzling spellings, the peculiar construction of African tongues, cannot be as snmmarily dealt with as the first. Only as our knowledge of the hundreds of dialects advance~, can the correct names be settled on, and the only rightful judge on the question is the acknowledged master-linguist of each separate language. Many of the names now generally accepted will have to yield to new ones, because they are not the names used by the natives of the 'place, but those given to travellers or missionarie~ by their native guides or carriers belonging to other tribeft, who adapt all the names they hear to their own national taste. Though quite insufficient for the scientist, a few points will be very useful to the general reader.
" Thus, in most Bantu languages, whose area covers the immense triangle between the Cameroons (now Kamerun), the Kilimanjaro and the Cape of Good Hope, the different prefixes, which puzzle so much the stranger, can easily be learned: Mu- mo- m- * mean man, e.g., Mu-ganda signifies a G"nda-man. Ba- wa- a- ma- t mean mtn. e..q., Ba-gar,da signifies Ganda-men. u- Ki- tlki- si- mean language. e.g., Ki-swaltili signifies Swahili language. Bu- mean country, e.g., Bu-ganda, U-gogo signifies Ganda Oountry, Gogo Oountry.
" When, therefore, an African name occurs, the prefix will tell you whether the name indicates a single man, a people, a country, or a lan- guage, and our table will tell you approximately, in case of doubt, which prefix you have to use. Never use Wa- or Ba- for the country, nor Bu- or U- for the people. Tbough less gross, mistakes are even then unavoid- able, alii a comparison of the prefixes used (1) by the Ba-ganda, and (2) the Ba-sutu will show: .
Man. Men. Country. Languap:e.
(1) Mu-ganda Ba-ganda Bu-ganda Lu-ganda (2) Mu-autu Ba-8utut Le-8utu Se-&utu " In Angola two neighboring nations are distinguished solely by prefixes, which were modified to avoid the confusion. Thus, in the language of Angola proper, ki-mbundu means the language of the a-mbundu (people), while ki-mbundu, applied to a person, signifies a native of Bailundo or Bihe j as to the language of the latter it is called u-mbundu, which is also used to express the negro color and natnre.
" Dr. R. N. Cust. in his excellent' Modern Languages of Africa,' cut the Gordian knot of prefixes and suffixes in Alexandrine fashion by ignoring them completely aud using the bare radical to indicate language. Ignoring them, however, docs not remove the difficulties for a long time j the specialists keep on clinging to their distinctive prefixes. The splendid language map, which accompanies Dr. Cust's book, has passed into the hands of many students of Africa, and has led them to use the radicals, which there designate the languages, for either countries or people.
"A treatise on the subject by a speciaJiRt in each of the few great. families of African languages would be timely and helpful to geograp}:lers and the reading public." ——————– The religion of the people of Syria is usually called by the Government Moslem and non-Moslem. The first includes Orthodox and Persian Moham- medans (Moslems and Metawalies), Druzes, Nusaireeyehs and Ismaileyehs and all Bedawee Arabs. Non-Moslems are Jews, nominal Christians (Or- thodox Greek, Papal Greek, Maronite [Papall, Jacobite, Syrian, Armenian and Latin Papists) and Evangelical Christians. The principal accessions to the church have been from the non-Moslem sects. Work among these is important. It aims to give them a pure Gospel and to remove all ground for the well-merited contempt in which nominal Christians are held by Mos- lems. This has been so far successful that, first, the religion of Evangeli- cal Christiant! is looked upon as a new religion and is respected by the non- Christian sects j second, the old sects are beginning decided reforms in their churches j and, third, the leaven of the Gospel is working in a most interesting and marked manner among the Moslems, giving the confident hope that the day is not far distant when a large number of them may be brought to Christ. Earnest prayer is asked that freedom of conscie'lce may be fully granted to all. – Ohurch at Home and Abroad.
• In nicknamee eometime. KOr and t TIl·.
t The French spell BOrBOuto, the English, ~Or8'ttu, the Germano, BOrBOto. The correct woulq be Ba-eOtO. the accented vowels sounded like u inj'ult, but long. THE PEOPLE OF AFRICA lIY W. A. I'lTANTON, EI'lQ., HAMILTON, :N. Y.
Now that 110 much interest centres in the Dark C0I1tinent; we seek for some comprehensive view of the great people wbo inha;bitjt. We hear· much of individual tribes, but very little of general races. 'Ve :rnow something of the Negro and the Congoese, but very little of the African man, in his diverse life and multitudinous types, from the M:editerranean to Cape Colony. Our view is 1>artial and one-sidlld, rather than complete 'and comprehensive. It will be the purpose of this paper to gather up the results of recent investigation, and present, as far ·as possible; a broad general view of the people of Africa. We will accomplish this be·stby considering, first, the ethnology, and second, the gener:;tl condition of the people j or, in other words, by seeking to discover who -the people are, and what they are.
I. Who are the people of Africa! 'Ve must remember at the outset t~at the population· of Africa is composed of two elements; the native and the foreign.. Thl'! foreign element consists of Europeans, Arabs, Moors, Turks, a~d Jews. With these we will not deal, as they are well known both as to race chamcteristics and general manner of living. We must not, however, classify 'the Arabs and Moors in exactly the same rank with the Europeans or. even the Turks. For the Arabs have been in Africa ever since 300 B. c., and· have thus become almost indigenous, in many cases amalgamating with the native races. But it is not this foreign element, however long it may have cxisted in the land, of which we wish to speak, but of the great undefined and unclassified native population. Any true classification of the people is almost an impossibility. The ethnology of Africa is in the utmost confusion. Every new explorer brings to light great and hitherto unknown races, as well as· establishing new facts in regard to old ones. As the case now stands, in the light of Stanley's most recent discoveries, the native population of Africa consists of six great races-B·erber, Coptic, Nilotic, Negro, Bantu, and Goriepine.. Mr. Stanley, in his most recent work, criticises the term " Bautu" as unscientific, on the ground that it simply means "men j" but, as all the best authorities employ it, and as it has become asseciated by constant use with the race to which it is usually applied, we think it best to retain it. All these six races are allied to a greater or less degree. They all spring from the great Indo-African or Indo-Ethiopic family. They are thus a mixture of the pure African type with the Asiatic. and differ in race characteristics according as the one type or the other predominates. Though thus allied, they present strong race distinctions, and hence deserve a separate classification. 1. The Berber. The Berbers are a race of great antiquity. They are descendants of the primitiv~ ~to{:k of the land. They vary in color from a black to a dark bronze or copper. They have hig~ cheek-bone!!, the nose sometimes flat, like that of the Nf>gro, and sometimes aquiline; lips formed like those of Europeans; eye!! expressive, and hair curled, but not woolly. They are without the slightest trace of what is generally recognized as the negro physiognomy. They are an athletic, strong-featured people, accustomed to hardship and fatigue. Though the various tribes differ much, they are all fine men, tall, straight, and handsome. The home of the Berbers is in North Africa. They extend from Morocco to Egypt, and from tho Mediterranean to the Soudan. The Shuluh of the Atlas district, the Kobyles of Tunis, the Tuaneks of Western and Central Sahara, and the Tibbus of Eastern Sahara all belong to the Berber genus, and speak the Berber language.
2. The Coptic. The Copts are descendants of the an~ient Egyptian… They are a mixed race, their ancestors h!1ving intermarried with Greeks, Nubians, and AbYRsinians. Their complexion is similar to that of the Arab-a brownish yellow; foreheads flat, hair soft and woolly, noses flattened like the Negro's, lips thin and straight, cheek-bones high, beards thin, eyes large, and bent upward like the Chinaman's. They represent all that is left of the proud blood of the Pharaohs. Their home is in Northern Egypt.
3. The Nilotic. There are three main divisions of this race-the Nubians, Abyssinians, and Gollos.
The Nubians are of a reddish brown complexion; their color in some cases approximating a black, but not like the ebony hue of the Negro. They are described as a handsome people, with beautiful features, fine expressive eyes, and of slender and elegant forms. They inhabit Nubia.
The Abys~inians are a IItrong and vigorolls race, of a copper hue, more or less dark, with straight noses, eyes clear yet languishing, hair black and crisp, but not woolly. They are a mixed race, and inhabit Abyssinia.
The Gollos are the strongest tribe of the Nilotic race. They are a large, vigorous, almost bulky people. Their color varies between black and brownish, some of the women being remarkably fair. As to type, they stand between the Negro of Guinea and the Arab or Berber. Their countenances are rounder than those of the Arab, their eyes small, deeply set, but lively. They occupy a large district in East Africa directly South of Abyssinia.
4. The Negro. The general physical characteristics of the Negro are too well known to need description. It is a mistake to suppose all Africans are Negroes. The Negroes form but one of the six great races. Their home is in the Soudan, stretching from Senegambia on the West, to the highlands of Abyssinia on the East. The Mandiogoes are one of the most powerful of Negro races. They inhabit Senegambia, are very numerous, and partially civilized.
The W olofs occupy the region between the Senegal and the Gambia. They are the blackest and handsomest of all Negroes, and are a mild and social pe>ple. Central Soudan is occupied by the FOlllahs. They are one of the most remarkable races in Africa, distinguished for their intelligence and friendliness, are fairly industrious and civilized, and speak a rich and harmonious language. Our knowledge of Negro races is confined, in the main, to those of the coast, who are of the lowest type. Of the vast inland tribes of the Soudan ah:~ost nothing is known. The heart of this great country has scarcely been penetrated, and is now the least known of any part of Mrica.
5. The Bantu. The Bantu race is the most marked and characteristic race in Africa. The Bantu is of a far nobler type than the Negro. Though there are many tribes and nations, they all have the same general characteristics, and belong to one great family.' They are thus described by a recent traveller: "The Bantu is a fine, tall, upright man, with delicately small hands and well-shaped feet, a fine face, high, thin nose, beard and mustache.
" The further you go into the interior the finer the type becomes, and two points about them contrast yery favorably with most of the coast racesnamely, their lighter color, generally a warm chocolate, and their freedom from that offensive smell which is supposed wrongly to characterize most of the Africans. Some of them are perfect Greek statues as regards the splendid development and poise of figure. " They occupy a greater extent of cOllntry than any other one race in Africa, stretching from the SO North of the equator to the Tropic of Capricorn; or by countIies, from the 'Soudan nearly to Cape Colony. Thus nearly the whole Southern half of Africa is the home of the Bantu race.
6. The Goriepine. The Goriepine race is composed of Hottentots, Korannas, and Bushmen. A description of the Hottentot will suffice for all. Where they originated is a mystery. The only people to whom they are thought to bear a resemblance are the Chinese or Malays. Like these they have the broad forehead, the high cheek-bones, the oblique eye. the thin beard, and the dull yellow tint of complexion; but there is a difference in regard to their hair, which grows in small tufts, harsh, and lather wiry, and in the formation of the bones of the pelvis. They are a race of dwarfs, rarely exceeding four feet six inches in height. They are lively, cheerful, good-hnmored, and by no means wanting in intellect.
These six races form the native population of Africa. The entire population, both native and foreign, is variously estimated from 200,000,000 to 350,000,0.00. Mr. Guinness estimates it at 350,000,000. Stanley places it at 250,000,000. A conservative estimate would place it between 250,000,000 and 300,000,000.
II. We ask, in the second place, what is the social and moral condition of this great people 1 As to civilization and social status, Africa may be divided into two .great sections. The division is marked by passing a line froni the mouth of the Senegal Rh-er on the West to Cape Guardafui on the East. The Northern half includes aU the States of the Mediterranean, Egypt, Nubia, Abyssinia, and the Sahara. The Southern half embraces the Soudan, and Central and Southern Africa; or, as to races in the North, the Berber, Coptic, and Nilotic, in the South the Negro, Bantu, and Goriepine.
The Northern half has the characteristics of the Arabic civilization. The people are largely pastoral and nomadic. They have all the genius of the Arab, both for war and for trade. The Tuoricks and Tibbus of the Sahara are purely nomadic, living by means of predatory incursions and by tribute exacted from passing caravans. The Kabyles of Algiers and Tunis are the most industrious of Berber tribes. They till the land and work the mines in the mountains. The Copts of Egypt are an extremely bigoted people, of a sullen temper, very avaricious,. great dissemblers, ignorant, and faithless. They form the middle class, working chiefly as tradesmen and mechanics. The Abyssinians are, on the whole, barbarous and addicted to the grossest sensual pleasures. Their priests, among whom marriage is common, are but little better than the mass of the people. They are fierce and warlike, and have little regard for human life. In general, we may say of the Norj:.h African people, they are restless and nomadic for the most part, fierce and warlike, yet in some cases peaceable and industrious, proud; haughty, arrogant, energetic, and aggressive; in trade keen and versatile, with a strong native instinct for acquisition; in morals grossly sensual as the Abyssinians, or markedly abstemious as the Tuoricks of the desert or the Nubians of the Nile. In fine, they are characterized by both the virtues and the vices of the Arabic civilization and the Moslem faith. The stamp of the Arab and of Islamism is impressed on every race from the Mediterranean to the Soudan.
The Southern half of Africa is utterly destitute of any civilization worthy of the name. 'fhe people are for the most part in Ii primitive condition, not strictly savages, yet not civilized. As to social status, the people live mostly in independent groups under the command of a chief or king, whose domain may comprise only a few villages, or it may be a large extent of territory. In the Congo valley every village is independent, while in the South is the great Gorongange kingdom of Msidi, who is a most absolute despot, and rules by means of 2000 fusileers. In general the king or chief is tyrant and the people his slaves.
As to intelligence, there is a vast difference in different tribes. The best representatives, perhaps, of intelligence are the Bololo people, in the bend of the Congo. They clear away the tangled growth of t.he forest in their settlements, and sow the fertile soil with maize and mandroca. They are expert in the working and smelting of brass. They understand division of labor, and have divided themselves into farmers, gardeners, smiths, weavers, cabinet-makers, warriors, and speakers. They are intelligent, industrious, and friendly. The streets of their villages are straight and regular, running at right angles. Their houses are large and commodious. Far in the interior, however, we find a different state of things. Professor Drummond gives this description of the people in the Nyassa district: THE PEOPLE OF AFRICA.
" Hidden away in the endless forests, like birds' nests in a wood, in terror of one another, and of their common foe, the slaver, are small native vil- lages ; and here in his virgin simplicity dwells primeval man, without clothes, without civilization, without learning, without religion, the genuine child of nature-thoughtless, careless, and contented. This man is ap- parently quite happy ; he has practically no wants. One stick pointed makes him a spear j two sticks rubbed together make him a fire; fifty sticks tied together make him a house. The bark he peels from them, makes his clothes; the fruits which hang on them make his food."
There is one common characteristic of the Central African people. They are bom traders, and therein lies the hope of a future civilization for Africa. The commercial instinct is all-powerful.· They have actually created among themselves a true currency, though not a money one. " In the management of a bargain," says Stanley, " I should back the Congoese native against Jew or Christian, Parsee or Bonyan, in all the round world. Unsophisticated is the very last term I should ever apply to an African child or man in connection with the knowledge of how to trade. I have seen a child of eight do more tricks of trade in an hour than the cleverest European trader on the Congo could do in a month. Therefore, when I write of a Congo native, whether he is of the Bakongo, Bayanzi, or Bakete tribes, remember to associate with him an almost unconceivable amount of natural shrewdness and power of indomitable and untiring chaffer." As to morals, the picture is not so fair. The degradation is extreme and well- IJigh universal. Polygamy is everywhere practised. In the empire of Kasongo, 'Vest of Lake Tanganyika, the ruler is regarded as the husband of all his female subjects, except his mother. The idea of chastity seems to have been entirely lost. The value of a human life, especially of a slave, is unknown. Mutilation and death are the only punishments in vogue, even for the slightest offences. The slaughter of men, women, and children that accompanies the death of a chief is so revolting as to be almost incredible, had it not been attested by eye-witnesses. Human sac- rifices are common. The walls which surround. the palace of the King of Dahomy, on the West African Coast, are decorated with the heads of war- captives stuck on stakes. Cannibalism is not universal, but is prevalent among the tribes of the Upper Congo and about the Mobangi River, where the paths are marked by rows of human skulls, and the people wear neck- laces of human teeth. We shudder at the very mention of atrocities which ~ are of every-day occurrence among this people. From the dwarfs of the Great Forest of Upper Congo to the half-human inhabitants of the Kolohori Desert, and from the besotted Negro of Old Calabar to the degenerate Hot- tentot of Momagna land, the same blackness of moral degradation prevails with ever-deepening shades. All are not as atrocious or as degraded, but the few faint and s~attered gleams of light only serve to deepen and in- tensify the dense darkness that covers like a pall this truly benighted land. Africa has been likened, from her geographical form, to a woman with a
CONFUCIUS AND CHRIST COMPARED
huge burden on her back. Need I ask what that burden is! It is the crushing weight of a bondage more cruel and relentless than that of the Arab slaver, more deadly and destructive than that of the white man's rum -the bondage of a thousand years of ever-deepening sin.
CONFUCIUS AND CHRIST COMPARED.
In a recent issue of the American Missionary we find the vast difference between the power of the moral teachings of Confucius to affect the conduct, and that of the teachings of Christ, very clearly put by a converted Chinaman, as the following item will show: Hing Sing is a helper in the Chinese mission at Petaluma, Cal. He • reports in a letter to Dr. Pond, the superintendent, an interview with a pagan friend. Though his English is in dialect form, he makes it express very clearly his idea of the universality of the religion of Jesus, and its superiority to that of Confucius.
In the course of the interview his friend had acknowledged that it. was a wrong way to do to smoke and to gamble, and that it wasted money. " But," he said, to quote Hing Sing's own words, " you should not believe Jesus, for we have our own Confucius doctrine, which also taught us to be good. You should not believe Jesus, and should not imitate foreign doctrine.' , I answer him: " Gold have no limit, no matter from what country or nation, but pure and true, so that we call precious, for everybody can use it. Also the Jesus doctrine have no limit, from whateTer nation, but is the true, for we to imitate and believe.
" We loand Jesus was the Son of God, came down to saTe our soul, if we real trust in His name. I found our Confucius, he was virtue and good man. lIe can teach us to be good and honor, but he cannot save our soul. But we found J csus was the Son of God, for lie can give His Spirit to melt our wicked hearts into righteous and faithful and good man; our Confucius only can tell us between good and bad, but not able to melt our evil heart. How many our Chinese people understand our Confucius doctrine! Why should they not imitate and obedience his teaching? Smoke opium, gamble, swear, and other evil things, they know very well that was unrighteous, for why should they not imitate our Confucius what he has done, the good work, and obey his teaching 1 Ah, for he can only indicate to you the way of good, but he cannot inspire your spirit, but Jesus only can! Nothing impossible. When I was not a Christian I was gamble and I was swear, but since I became a Christian, never smoke opium, never gamble or swearing, and many of my friends was the same.
So it was illustrated, Jesus was the Son of God, can give ot His Spirit to inspire our spirit, to turn away from bad to the good."
A. WONDERFUL LIFE·BOAT
A WONDERFUL LIFE·BOAT.
BY CAPTAIN E. C. HORE, F.R.G.B.
If you turn to the map of Africa you will see, toward its centre, several large pieces of water known as the Central African lakes, and, in a central position among them, a long. shaped one called Tanganyika j its surface is 2700 feet above sea-level, and it is hemmed in nearly all round by high land crowned witb forests. Around the shores of that lake twelve different tribes of Africans have their homes j there may be seen market places where hundreds of natives bring their produce, such as mats, baskets, skins, bark cloth, woven cotton cloth, pottery, iron, both as hoes and axes, weapons and wire j copper, botb in pigs and manufactured into bracelets and otber ornaments, sugar-cane, ground nuts, palm oil, salt, honey, and butter, besides goats, fowls, fisb, and corn and vegetables of 'many kinds. , These are spread out for sale in the early morning in the market-places, which become busy scenes of barter and exchange.
For such busy and industrious people the lake forms a ready means of getting about; and much of the produce to be seen in those markets is brought there in canoes. These are wbat are known to us as dugouts– hewn out of solid trunks of trees from the great forests on the lake shores; they are clumsy-looking craft, following rather the model of the hippo- potamus than that of the swan, but strong and safe for all that j and tbe natives are very clever in managing them. These canoes are also largely used for fishing. I have seen more than 200 little canoes at one time out at nigbt catching whitebait. In each canoe a long faggot of dried reeds, witb one end alight and pushed over the bow of the canoe, served to attract the little fish in immense shoals. The fisherman, standing erect in his tiny-craft, and using a large hand-net, literally shovels them in. Tbe fish are then taken on shore, baked quite dry in the hot sun, and made up into little bolster-shaped loads wrapped round with leaves, and thus form,ing portable packages of preserved provisions, which are sent far and wide over the country. Other large canoes, some of them over forty feet long, are engaged in all kinds of trading enterprises between the different countries round the lake, and, especially, in the slave trade between tribe and tribe. For, although these fine people are so enterprising and industrious, there is everything with them that we think of as heathen and savage, the horrible curse of the slave trade having always kept them down, and no light of Christianity brightened their life into liberty and civilization.
But, a few years ago, there appeared on those waters a boat of most strange appearance and character for that remote region.. The Morning Star was her name, coming, let us hope, as the harbinger of the light and glory of a true daylight. She is a boat built of the best modern materials, and of handsome appearance, like a large sea-going life-boat, with three sails and eight oars, and flying at her masthead the peaceful device of the dove and olive branch-the flag of the London Missionary Society, to whom she belongs, and whose missionaries she conveys from place to place with a message of Jove and light to those natives.
And this is how the Morning Star got to 'l'anganyika : I went home from England to Central Africa in 1881 with a survey of Lake Tanganyika, and a report of the kind of vessel necessary for missionary work on that inland s~a. In due time the Good News, auxiliary steam yacht, was placed in hand for that purpose ; but, as it would be some time before she was ready for service, and a large reinforcement of missionaries were starting for Tanganyika, another smaller vessel was required, both for immediate use, 'and, afterward, to complete the efficiency of the boat service on the lake as tender for the Good News, or independently.
For this purpose I designed the Morning Star, 32 feet long and 8 feet beam. She was built from my design, by Forrestt & Sons, of London, in six complete sections, and ele'en smaller pieces, to be jointed together with bolts and nuts, each section and piece separately galvanized, and t:) form, when put together, a strong, sea-going life-boat. Each end section formed a complete air-tight tank, and two intermediate little cabins formed each of two sections, also being water-tight compartments.
To convey these sections overland six small carts or barrows, consisting of light wooden frames exactly to fit the sections, and wrought iron wheels and fittings, were made, also conveniently taken to pieces. All these sections and pieces and their carts, were conveyed in the ordinary way as cargo in a steamer from London to Zanzibar, where the strange enterprise commenced of conveying them overland to the centre of Africa.
From the East Coast of Africa, opposite Zanzibar to Ujiji, on Lake Tanganyika, following the windings and zig-zags of the only possible paths, is a distance of 836 miles, without railways, vehicles of any kind, or even beasts of burden. On the heads and shoulders of Africans, or on carts drawn and pushed by them, the Morning Star was conveyed to the lake. Carried over first in small Arab dhows from Zanzibar to the coast (a distance of 25 miles), the sections, and carts, and loads were landed at Saadani, a native settlement or town under the rule of the Sultan of Zanzibar. There the carts were fitted together ,and the sections secured npon them, and, after a great deal of work and preparation (for the boat and its fittings formed part of a large caravan, consisting altogether of over 900 Africans, ten of our missionaries, and all their stores, besides African moneys in the shape of many bale~ of calico and other cloth and barter goods) started on their long journey.
For three and one half months the faithful African porters cut their way through broad belts of jungle, dragged the carts ankle deep through miry swamps, threaded patiently the winding forest tracks, slowly clambered over mountain barriers-often hungry, thirsty, and excessively tired, but never giving in or yielding to others the" honor," as they considered it, of .managing the cart, or carrying the piece of boat which formed their part of the work. In camp. gossiping over the fire at night, they would argue with one another as to how the boat would be put together, and to strangers along the road they would boast that they were ,,'partners" in the enterprise of conveying it to Tanganyika; and this, often, while they were hungry and thirsty by reason of the hard work it had cau~ed them.
At last Ujiji was reached, the carts causing a great sensation there, and great wonderment was expressed at the boat sections. I soon got settled in myoid quarters, and the boat-building was commenced. Day after day she grew in size and beauty as the various parts were joined together, until, all being finished, she was one day launched into the lake, a thing of beauty and strength, and a joy to us for years of work, during which she proved to us safety and comfort and speed.
As the Morning Star was being built, some of myoid boat'll crew (natives of Ujiji), who were. eager to go again with me voyaging on Lake Tanganyika, came, day by day, to look at the new craft; day by day, too, some cloud or doubt seemed to damp their ardor about the coming voyage, until at last, one day, they came along to have a special talk with me, and the difficulty was explained. They had beguu to wonder, and then to doubt as they saw the metal sides of the boat, and had finally determined to tell me that, although they would" go anywhere" and" do anything" for me, they really could not go " to sea in a saucepan." I told them to wait; and while I was preparing to depart from Ujiji and give up our house to its owner, the boat lay quietly afloat at anchor. Several times I took So~lC of these Wajiji sailors off with me to the boat to have a look, and in this way seeing her buoyancy and perfect tightness, they at last became convinced of her seaworthiness.
Our beautiful boat was complete, and her loyal crew ready for work; the new Morning Star shone forth upon the lake, and now, for more than five years (having become well known as the harbinger of peace and goodwill) has been afloat there, welcomed wherever she goes, conveying backward and forward, between our stations, our missionaries and their stores, proving herself to be a stanch and good vessel, and in her life and history fully entitled to the name of " a wonderful life-boat."
There she still remains (together with her larger companion, the steamer Good News, afterward built there) on Lake Tanganyika, 2700 feet above the sea, and 800 miles from the sea-coast, a remarkable evidence of the very practical nature of missionary work in that country, and a means by which our young people may, by contributing to her support, help in giving to Dark Africa the Light of the Gospel.
Any of our readers who wish to study African missions will find, we are sure, great help in Tlte African News, published by T. B. Welch & Son. While this admirable periodical especially reports Bishop William Taylor's work, we have found it full of information, and have taken the liberty to copy a short article in these pages.-EDITOR.
EXTRACTS AND TRANSLATIONS FROM FOREIGN
EXTRACTS AND TRANSLATIONS FROM FOREIGN PERIODICALS.
BY REV. C. C. STARBUCK, ANDOVl'i:R, MASS.
-The Calwer Monatsbliitie1·, referring to David's ordinance, that" as his part is that goeth down to the battle, RO shall his part be that remaineth by the stuff, ,., remarks: "This is the word of a king, and is in force even to this dar. The cause is the Lord's. His are the laborers. His is the result. And He apportions the reward as He will. His truth finds application in a thousand ways. The simple Christian, who imagineR himself so far behind the missionary, and the missionary, who is tempted to imagine himself of special dignity in the kingdom of God, will one day find the Judge using another standard than that of either. Those .who look upon home .missions as an inferior work, and they whose sense of their country's need" makefl them jealous of everyone that is penetrated with the thought that ' the field is the world,' will both find at last that the question is not: ' Where have ye wrought l' but, 'How have ye wrought where ye were called to work~' 'If it is only good, then it is good. ' " Or, as the youthful Malcolm says: ., This, and what needful else That :Jalls upon us by the Grace of grace We will perform in measure, time, and place. "
" Inner missions," says the Monatsbliitter, referring to George Miiller's definition of himself, "are a Handlanger of foreign missions." A hand- Zanger is one who hands the materials which the craftsman uses. In Germany the mutual inosculation of the two interests is even more distinctly evident than here. It is no wonder,. then, that George Miiller has brought with him to England in the most eminent degree the instinct that refuses to separate them either in thought or act.
-The different departments of evangelistic work are corning so rapidly into intercommunication that we are as likely as not to find the fullest account of what is going on near us in some publication at the ends of the earth. This is illustrated by the following paragraph from the Bombay Guardian of November 22d, 1890. Even when it states facts already known, they seem to have a new meaning when they reverberate from hoary India: " We have frequently noted with thankfulness the progress of the McAH Mission in Paris. Now we learn that a large missionary boat, in connection with the mission, is to be anchored in the Seine. Daily services will be conducted in the cabin, which will contain nearly two hundred persons. The authorities have given every facility and protection. The Parisian prefect of police testifies to the good work which the mission is doing. He says: ' Every new McAll station means a reduction of po1ic~ force. Sixty persons now give their whole time to the missions, and froIl). 600 to 700 co-operate. There was an aggregate attendance last year of 1,200,000 persons in the 130 salles in all parts of France. In connection with this we may mention that in a paragraph in our last issue, on page 11, entitled' A Noble Giver,' alluding to this Rubject, the name of the writer-Dr. Pierson–was omitted. There is a holy emulation between the McAll Mission, the Salvation Army, aud the Belleville Mission of Mademoiselle de Broen as to which shall have the largest share in the leavening of the slums of Paris with Christian truth. They form an heroic trio. Things arc greatly altered for the better in Paris since the terrible record of 1871, with its petroleuses and communistic horrors." At least an elect remnant is being saved. The insurgents of 1871, as Mr. Hamerton remarks, should be called communards, not communists. The privileges which they claimed for the Commune, or Municipality of Paris, had no connection with any theories of communism.
-The Heidenbode informs us that the province-or as it is called there -the Presidency of Kedol, the newest field of evangelization in Java, now numbers 1000 professed believers, lately Mohammedans. This has been almost wholly the work of Javanese Christians, who show a remarkable zeal and successfulness in diffusing the Gospel which they have received. Everywhere, however, in the Dutch East Indies, Islam is advancing by natural increase, and by a steady reduction of the heathen populations under its sway. The Netherlands Government, which long directly encouraged the spread of Mohammedanism, is now beginning to be afraid of it, and is looking to its meani of suppressi.ng a very possible Moslem outburst of rebellion.
-The first re-marriage of a widow has taken place in the Pokarna callte of Brahmins.
-The (Jhronicle for November, 1890, speaking of the work ofthe London Missionary Society in Hankow, China, refers to the Hanyang Hill a8 being" so situated as to ghoe anyone who ascends it a bird's-eye view of the whole neighborhood. When our former foreign secretary, Dr. Mullens, came here many years ago, Dr. John took him to this spot as to one of the principal sights of the neighborhood, and he declared that in all his travels in India and elsewhere he had not seen any sight that impressed him more. Not that the view here presented to the eye is one remarkable for the beauty or grandeur of its physical ,scenery. A few low hills, a few lakes in the distance, the' great yellow Yang· tsze-here a mile wide-stretching away as far as the eye can reach in a north-easterly and a south-westerly direction, while from the northwest the tributary Han winds in and out till at last it empties itself here at Hankow (i.e., Hanmouth) into the larger river j these are the chief natural objects to be seen here. But it shows us one of the largest centres of human life and activity in the whole of Asia. To men and women who in any part of the world are carrying on the work of Christ, excellence of outward surroundings must always be estimated with reference to the presence or absence of their fellow-men. The first paradise of which we read was indeed a garden, the garden of the Lord, full of exquisite scenery, and of everything in nature that could delight the eye, but almost entirely devoid of living, sentient, thinking human beings. The last paradise is to be a city-the city of God. The difference is most significant. The Son of God rejoiced in the habitable parts of the earth, and His delights were with the sons of men j and when once His call has been heard by any of His followers to devote their lives and strength to the one work of saving men, then every large hive of human beings, every city-even if only full of fallen, sinful, heathen human,ity, and not, as the New Jerusalem, full of saints redeemed from the earth-must always have a strong attraction and fascination sl1ch as no solitary region, however grand or picturesque its scenery, can ever have." The population of Hankow, on ship and shore, the Rev. Arnold Foster, who writes this, estimates at a million and a quarter, besides the throngs passing and repassing from other provinces.
-The Missions-Blatt of the Moravian Church, for JailUary, gives a New Year's benediction, which, coming from that centre, extends over all that are concerned for the work of the Lord throughout the world: "Th9 Saviour's rich blessing for the New Year. May Himself, the King of HiA Kingdom, greet thee, beloved Church of missions, with the greeting of His peace! May His grace and His truth 'permeate thy ranks anew, and deeply illumine thy innermost heart. Into the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, hast thou also been translated through the love of the Father j and thou dost daily experience that He who, born of the line of David after the flesh, has been manifested in power as the Son of God after the Spirit, hallows more and more them that come believil1gly to Him as a people of possession, being now risen from the dead. Be He then in the New Year also, as well the heart of our preaching, as also He for whom we adventure and surrender all that we have-life and limb, goods and blood. For who but He is it that hath redeemed and won us over from all our sins and from the dominion of death, and from whom alone we have received grace and apostleship to establish among all the Gentiles the obedience of faith in His name."
-The Brethren's Church hall decided to take up a new mission in North Queensland, among the aborigines, and another on Lake Nyassa, within the German " sphere of influence. " .
-The Moravian Mission in Greenland consists of 6 stations, in 2 gro~ps, and of 9 missionaries. Under their charge are 1608 persons. The rest of the Greenlanders are cared for by Lutheran brethren of the Church of Denmark.
-The death, by a fall from his horse, of the hereditary High Chief of the Mosquito State-a young man of twenty-live-suggests to the Moravian. brethren that, in the event of the extinction of the reigning family (happily not imminent), this little Protelltant State would be, by treaty with England, absorbed by the Catholic State of Nicaraugua. This, however, is showing itself ftiendly to the brethren, and now allows them to instruct their converts on both sider; of the line.
-The Missionary Record for December, 1880, gives statistics (thoroughly corrected) of the advance of the missionary work of the United Presbyterian Church in Scotland in thirty years. The term" missionary" includes ordained native pastors, Zenana misI'ionaries, and European teachers, but excludes all native evangelists and teachers: Missionaries. Home Contribntions for Foreign Work.
1859…………………….. 30 1840…………………… £3,300 1869….. , ………………. 63 1849…………………….. 12,800 1879…………………… 81 1859…………………….. 16,900 1889 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 1869…………………….. 29,100 1879 ……………………. 32,300 1889……………………… .40,500 No. Native Congregations. Members in Full Communion.
1859 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 1859……………………. 4,552 1869 •……………… ~. " …48 1869 ……………………. 5,740 1.879……….. " ., ……….. 63 1879……………………. 9,187 1889…………………….. 96 1889 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14,899 Native Pastors. Native ContributiollS.
1859……… 1 (Rev. Tiyo Boga.) 1859…………………… £2,090 1869……… 7 1869……………………. 3,020 1879 . . . . . . . . . 12 1879……………………. 6,500 1889. . . . . . . . . 23 1889 …………………….10,470 "The missionary sympathy of the Church has been widening and deepening j the liberality of the Church has been expanding j the lands in which our operations are carried on are being more completely taken possession of in the name of the Master; while a native church in each of those lands is rapidly gathering around itself the love and devotion of the native population, and promises to become, in course of time, so vigorous that it will be able to manage its own affairs, and allow our missionaries to enter into new regions where they may still further extend the blessed work."
What is said here about the Jamaican Church, connected with the United Presbyterian Church, ought to be laid to heart universally: "Our Church in Jamaica is looking forward to such independence, and endeavoring to prepare for it. But this independence ought not to be sought in the near future. It is a distinct advantage, to the cause of Christ in Jamaica that our Church there continues to be in dependent union with a church life ~f wider horizon and riper experience. Its own church life gains through this union, possibly a firmer fibre, but certainly a richer tone and a greater influence upon public opinion. To force our Jamaican Church into a position of independence by any mechanical arrangement would be a mischievous policy. It would mean the undoing of results that have been gained, and might require a reconstruction of the agency at work after an inferior pattern."
The present writer, two of whose former charges have been happily incorporated into the Presbyterian Church of Jamaica, can wish nothing better for them than that the United Presbyterian brethren in Scotland may keep an eye on them for a number of years to come.
-The following paragraph from Central Africa, the organ of the Universities' Mission, gives, in a few lines, the whole African heathenismperhaps the darkest form of heathenism, the most utterly dismal and comfortless in the world: "Only gradually does the deadly atmosphere of heathenism dawn upon one. Lust, as strong, perhaps in some ways stronger than with ourselves, has nothing to check it. There broods oppression on a petty scale, with tragic burnings and poisonings, fear of lions, or sudden night attacks, and murders of a mother or ,near relative who has been half the little world of life-things that leave the child an old man in heart, cut off from our comfortable security."
-The Indian Witness of December 6th, 1890, says ~ ., The death of Sir Rivers Thompson, late Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, calls for a notice from the Christian press of the country. Respected even more than he was loved by all who came within the reach of his personal influence, he has left behind him a reputltion which any Indian civilian may envy. What he was in the dawn of his wider influence he was consistently in its meridian and at its close. An open worshipper of the living God, a friend of all agencies that sought to make Him known to dying men-a Christian in his conscienee, an Englishman to the backbone."
-The Mission Field, the organ of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, says: "Both by countenancing heathenism and by ignoring the missions, Christians in India retard the work. They do it doubtless unintentionally. Then they in some cases eomplete the mischief by depreciating the missions when they come home. It is an unfortunate fact that there is injury to the cause of missions, and to the zeal of the Church at home by those who, by having been in India, claim to be able to speak with authority, while as far as any actual knowledge is concerned, they are as ignorant about missions in India as they were before they left England. They take upon themselves the responsibility of repeating indiscriminate slander on the work of God, although they may be living close to strong evidences of God's grace and power." -The late Daniel Adolf Cracau, of Breslau, left, in 1887, a bequest of about £4,0,000 to the Moravian Church. The custodians of the trust are the German Emperor and the King of Saxony. Half the income is to be used for the conversion of the heathen, half for the ransom of slaves.
-The Moravian brethren, in their Periodical Accounts, cordially echo the wish expressed by the Rev. S. D. Fulton, in this REVIEW, that Protestant missions may soon be established in Nicaraugua, which, they truly say, bids fair to be just such a mission centre as the Apostle Paul • would h,.ve delighted in.
– The following reminds one of the suggestions of Gregory the Great to the Abbot Augustine, when sending him on his mission to con- vert our English forefathers. As Gregory was a man of deep practical in ight, his suggestions are always worth heeding. Speaking of the Melas, or religious fairs of India, the Mission Field says: "It is beginning to be generally felt that it would be well to have Christian Melas. The Mela is, in fact, valued by the great mass of the Hindus and Mohammedans merely as a holiday. It is the only holiday there is for the mass of the people.
Where the Hindu cannot attend one of his own he betakes himself to the Mohammedan, and vice versa. So will it be for the ordinary native Chris- tian. If he have none of his own he will be strongly tempted to attend those of his Hindu or Mohammedan neighbors. Accordingly there is a strong feeling that Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide should be treated as times for Christian Melas, and that the largest and nearest Christian station should be the centre to which the surrounding Christians should resort." The writer remarks that such gatherings may easily be kept free from all leaven of heathenism.
-The charges of " unscriptural optimism" and" unscriptural pessim- ism" are freely bandied back and forth in the Church between Christians.
The Bombay Guardian seems to hit the nail on the head in the following: " Every well.established Christian should be intenRely pessimistic and intensely optimistic. He should be intensely pessimistic of what he or any other man can do of himself, and intensely optimistic of what God can do through any child of His who fully surrenders to Him." .
-Henry Augustus J aeschke, late Moravian missionary iq the Himalayr.s, a lineal descendant of the first Moravian emigrants to Herrnhut, besides German was master of Polish, Danish, Swedish, and was acquainted with English, Hungarian, Bohemian, Latin, Greek, and after going to the East, already knowing Sanscrit, Persian, and Arabic (and doubtless Hebrew), he learned Hindustani, and Urdu, and lastly Thibetan. He was likewise an enthusiastic student of mathematics and natural science, especially of botany. But he obeyed. the call of his Church, to go to the dreary Thibetan regions, as unquestioningly as if he had been an unlearned artisan. "While at Ladak he lived at Stok, near Leh, in the most frugal and primitive fashion. His food consisted of oatmeal and porridge, and the woman of the house faithfully kept for him the egg which her one hen laid every day. From his curiously.shaped bedroom he had to climb to his study by a stair composed of five unequal blocks of stone, and his furniture consisted of a tottering table and a still more defective stool." He had no notion of being too valuable in Europe to be hidden away in the inaccessible uplands of Asia. In other words, he was a true Moravian.
-The Periodical Accounts for September says: "THE MISSIONARY REVIEW OF THE WORLD holds on its way with growing interest and power. Dr. Pierson continues his graphic and informing missionary letters from abroad, and we join with many in gratefully acknowledging his manifold labors on behalf of' missions by pen and word of mouth." The editors also express a kind senljle of the value of the extracts from foreign magazines.
-The .Macedonier brings the same accusation against the Dutch Govern- ment that English Christians bring against the British, with the further aggravation, that whereas England is ready to ruin a foreign race with opium for the sake of gain, Holland is destroying her own subjects.. In a notice of a Dutch book on the opium question, it says: "It supplies con- , vincing proof that the Netherlands are every day heaping new guilt upon themselves and murdering, body and soul, the Javanese who are under their jurisdiction. Yet it gathers nothing but facts, and for every statement is careful to give its authority."
-Missionary Lazarus, in the ])ansk .Missions-Blad, gives a pleasant instance of how the seeds of truth blow about in India: "Yesterday afternoon we preached before a Telugu village called Karapet, which we had already visited two or three times. Just as we arrived, the people, who are all lapidaries, came out to bid us welcome. They then begged us to sit down, and began to sing a Christian hymn, ' Come quickly, flinner, come to the Saviour.' The hymn was in Telugu, and many of them sang it well. I asked thelll where they had learned it,. and found that they had picked it out of a tract I had left there, and had set it to one of their own melodies. I then addressed them, and taking advantage of their calling, depicted to them Jesus as the Great Lapidary, who deals with our nature as they deal with rough rubiefl, to cause it to gleam forth in the glory of a pure gladness. Thus we find that the leaves of healing are not spread abroad to no purpose."
-We find in the Bombay Guardian of November 8th, 1890, the most particular account we have seen yet of the happy development of missionary activity among the English Friend@. It says: "Any Church which tries to exist without a missionary spirit will inevitably perish. Aggression is the soul of life. About twenty years ago the Society of Friends awoke to this fact, and in England turned its attention to the lapsed masses at its doors. Now nearly all its meeting-houses have a mission attached, seeking to help the poor in soul and body. Mothers' meetings, clothing clubs, adult and juvenile schools, and other similar agencies, are vigorously prosecuted. A marvellous increase of spiritual life in the Church itself has resulted. Its foreign mission work has likewise developed almost entirely during the past twent.y years. Up to 1875 only 1 missionary was in the field in India, now there are 14. Madagascar has 22 j China, 4 j Syria, 10 j Armenian Turkey, 9 j Zululand, 3. American Friends are also carrying on mission work among. the North American Indians, and in Mexico, Jamaica, Japan, China, Alaska,. and Ramallah in Palestine. Thursday of this week was to be observed at the headquarters of the society in London, as a day of united prayer for missions, including a Bible study on the spirit of missions, and then a survey of the needs of both the foreign and home work." Thousands of the children of this venerable society, now found in other denominations, will rejoice at this sudden outburst of life after long apparent decay. May she renew her youth, and while coming to this greater distinctness of evangelical apprehension and activity. long abide as a witness to essential, over against all the overvaluations of ceremonial, righteousness.
INTERNATIONAL DEPARTMENT
II.-INTERNATIONAL DEPARTMENT.
EDITED AND CONDUCTED BY BEY. J. T. GRACEY, D.D.
The Black Fellows of Australia. colonist said to them: .. The few blacks will ultimately accept the Gospel of a FrnST PAPEB-MOBA.VIAN MISSIONS. crucified Saviour and be blessed there- • by, but the whites will hinder your BY~EV. A. HARTMANN, MOBAVIANTOWN, ONT. work, as they did the mission work of other societies." The first hindrance (Continued from page 217.) arose from the discovery of the gold nelds at Mount Alexander; the gold dig- I. FIRST ATTEMPT AT MISSIO:ti WORK. gers, coming from Adelaide, passing the mission station, damaging them in many Being repeatedly pressed to com- ways., This might have been borne mence mission work among the blacks with, but.the vulgar and disgusting in- of Australia, the Brethren's Church trigues of unprincipled whites greatly (Moravian) sent out two missionaries, hindered the missionaries in their efforts Tl1ger and Spieseke, educated laymen, to attract the natives to the place and to commence the work. In 1850 they to gain their confidence. Then, after arrived at Melbourne. They were very the exhaustion of the gold, many of the kindly received by the Governor, Joseph European immigrants took up land in La Trobe ; and the Bishop of the Angli- the colony, and also about Lake Bogs. can Church, as well as many ministers The missionaries were given to under. of other denominations, met them with stand that if they did not voluntarily true Christian love, and encouraged leave the land (on which they had set- them to do the Lord's work. tled by permission of the Government) steps would be taken to drive them After a long search in the northern away. districts of Victoria for a suitable place, they came at last to Boga Lake, which Meanwhile the missionaries went on had been recommended to them as the in their work, being strengthened by very best place, because it was a favor- another brother (Hansen) sent out in ite resort of the blacks. This Boga January, 1854. They also succeeded in Lake is about 200 miles northwest of gaining the confidence of a number of Melbourne, close to the boundary of the natives: Spieseke wrote: .. We have Victoria and New South Wales, and not not yet enjoyed the happiness of ob- far from the mouth of the Loddon serving the work of grace and of the river, emptying itself into the Murray. Holy Spirit in the hearts of the blaoks. Brethren, have patience with us, and The missionaries went back to Mel- believe with us, for we have reason to bourne, buying all that was necessary to be thankful for what the Lord has done carryon the work, and were permitted for us. When we oonsider how the ene- and authorized by the Government to mies of the Gospel have exerted them- make use of a certain portion of land selves to keep the blacks away from us, facing the lake, to build up a settle- we must confess that it is a wonder we ment. They little thought at the time have so many gathered about us, and that attempts would be made by some notice how they begin to trust us." whites to claim the land they had set- tled on. Much less did they think that We put it down as a fact that the mis- by their attempt to hring the natives sionaries would have succeeded if the under the blessed influence of the Gos. Prince of this world had not been per- pel, they would stir up the hatred and mitted to frighten them away. ill-will of white neighbors. ., There is no space allotted us in your columns to go into detail, and so we Heavy rains, followed by large 1I.00ds, made it impossible for them to arrive at Boga Lake before October 21st, 1851. They commenced their work in fear • and hope, and they experienced what a '< must sum up the diRastrous retreat of the missionaries now bitterly regret the Moravian missionaries very briefly. that they acted upon the impulse of the moment, and thus cut short a work In 1855 a neighboring settler, Imp- which was sure to bear fruit to God's ported by the District Court, claimed to glory, as the sequel will show. have a right to the land granted to the miRsionaries by the Government. Mr. II. Tager, the leader, being in ill health, had no inclination to enter on a legal RENEWAL OF THE MISSION WORK. process, as. he was advised to do. When, therefore, he found that he was For want of space we shall have to not righted after he had lodged his com- make just a mere sketch of the very plaint with the Government, he grew blessed and very successful issue of this impatient, and declared that on July second attempt. The two brethren ap- 1st, 1856, he would dissolve the mis- pointed (Hagenauer and Spieseke) have sion, as the authorities had failed to in every respect justified the confidence support him, and he had no mind to go placed in them by the Church. (Brother to law. A private individual has a right Spieseke was not to blame for leaving to actin this manner, but not a re- .Lake Boga ; he was subordinate, and spor:sible agent of a Mission Cburch did not agree with the move.) On May like the Moravian, for it was a breach 7th, 1858, they landed in Melbourne, of confidence. and were well received by the Gover- nor, Sir Henry Barklay, and numerous We quote the words of the Mission Christian friends. They were directed Board of the Moravian Church as laid to the Wimmera district, as most suitbefore the Christian public: •• It is true able for work aDlong the natives, and, that our mission work in Australia has after much travelling, a site for the for the time come to an end, an occur- establishment of a mission was found rence well calculated to humble us.. on the river Wimmera, not far from the How often, and not without reason, has sheep station Antwerp, belonging to the perseverance of our missionaries Mr. Ellerman, by whom they were reo been lauded when they were laboring ceived with open arms and helped. under various trials and difficulties, Here they obtained a grant of land of and under apparently hopeless pros- three square miles. The place was pects of success. How they kept to called Ebenezer. On January 10th, 1859, their post in a simple faith! Think of after humbly imploring the Lord's blessthe work in Greenland; think of the ing on the undertaking, the two mis- West Indies, where many brethren and sionaries started for the chosen spot, sisters went willingly into the jaws of and commenced clearing. Two natives death, and then think of the work here at first, and more afterward, assisted in in Australia, commenced with much the work, and by this means became aclabor and outlay, and carried on £or a quainted with the brethren. Soon the number of years; think of the giving natives gave the missionaries to underup of this mission, the necessity of stand that a carroboree–a kind of rewhich we are not able to prove. Think ligious dance-would be given in their that the missionaries left their post be- honor, which the missionaries could not fore every hope. was vanished to main- prevent. Mr. Ellerman provided the tain their position ; and then that they workers with food and lodging at his returned home without, and contrary home in Antwerp, twenty.two miles to, the permission of the Board. This distant, till they had built a home for is a painful confession, but we do make themselves. After eight :lays, Hageit before our dear Christian friends, and nauer commenced a school for the bow at the same time before the Lord, young men, and several made pleasing that He may again be gracious unto us progress. The women and girls were and exalt us in due time. We add that not forgotten. Clothing material had benches ; they made bedsteads, and a been provided by friends in Germany, box, etc. The youth Corney joined and Brother Hagenauer, though quite them. When the missionaries gave inexperienced, cut out and directed the them some kitchen utensils they were sewing of the dresses and pants. Later as proud and happy as kings. The rest. some ready-made clothing arrived from of the blacks looked on with astonish- Melbourne, which was a real boon to ment and pleasure, and after a time the missionaries. At the Sunday service sought to follow their example. For a the audience presented a remarkable as- whole year the missionaries had to fight pect. All had washed, and, so to say, against the difficulties which Brose from dressedthemselvegtoo-thatis, one had the heathen rites and dances, and the on a shirt, another a pair of pants, a superstition and degraded habits of the third a coat, and so on. .They had people, with no appearance of life from divided their clothes among themselves, God among them. But at last, in Januso that they might all appear at church. ary, 1860, the light sprung up and chased Amid all the work and anxiety of estab- away th.e darkness in the heart of Peplishing a home in the wilderness, the per (before mentioned), and he became missionaries never lost sight of their a new creature in Christ Jesus, though proper errand. But at first tbe only not without much conflict and many answer to the heavenly message was; slips and falls. One day Brother "Give me something to eat; give me Spieseke showed some Scripture prints; clothes; or, as when old Charley, after among others, one of the flood, and ana long, earnest talk and prayer, which other of our Saviour on His knees in Hagenauer had with him, pointed to agony in the Garden of Gethsemane. A heaven and asked if there were many day or two later Pepper came to him sheep and oxen there. Another time in the evening, saying, .. I want to came Diggy, and asked Spieseke for speak with you about my state. I don't flour. ,. What for?" said Spieseke, .. you know what is the matter with me. I have have done no work." "No," said Diggy, wept over my sins; last night I cried .. but I will go to prayers to-morrow." aloud. Just now I went to the river for The blacks showed a willingness to do water, and I thought, and thought, and all that was required of them. Their thought how our Saviour went that behavior at the meetings surprised night into the garden, and prayed till Spieseke, who knew their restless He sweat drops of blood, and that for habits, and looked upon it as a hopeful me." These words he spoke with much sign for the future. At times the wan- feeling. From that time a great change dering spirit came upon the natives, and was observed in Pepper, and be.came they vanished almQBt to a man. But two evident also to his brethren, for out of of their number (young Bony and Pep- the fulness of his heart he spoke to per) began to understand some of the them of the way of salvation, and of benefits of the coming of the mission- the Saviour whom he had found. His aries, and stayed with them, in spite of joy in God's Word, and his loving and the entreaties of their wandering com- tractable behavior showed that the panions. After the mission house was Spirit of God was at work in his heart. finished and the missionaries took up One Sunday evening, as the missionaries their abode in Ebenezer, these two young were returning from a neighboring stamen expressed a desire to give up their tion, where they had preached, they wandering life and build a house of found Pepper, surrounded by fifty of their own, which they did, with the his people, preaching to them the glad help of the missionaries-building it of tidings of the Gospel. Great was the bark, and finishing it off with I/, brick joy of the missionaries, who begged chimney, as the missionaries had done him to proceed, and afterward thanked their own. Inside were table, stool, or and praised the Lord for His grace thul! bestowed. After a time the request of mony. Even old people and little chil- Pepper to be especially instructed, with dren gave pleasing proofs of their be- a view to baptism, was acceded to, as it lief in and love of the Saviour, and became more and more clear that the many of them are now, we fully believe, work in him was of God. The 12th of rejoicing before the throne of God, .. hav- August, 1860, was the day of his bap. ing washed their robes and made them tism, and also that of the consecration white in the blood of the Lamb." Al- of the small church which had been ready in 1868 the number of converts in erected, and for which a new bell had Ebenezer had reached twenty. But be- been sent from Germany. Rev. Chase fore this time other laborers had arrived took the long journey from Melbourne; -two brides for the .brethren Spieseke from Horsham came friends, and the and Hagenauer, in May, 1861, who found neighboring sheep farmers came to· plenty of work among the women and gether to celebrate the event. That day the sick, besides caring for their own will not soon be forgotten by those who households. In November of the same were present. Pepper received, at his year, Brother Francis came from Engown request, the name Nathaniel. land,and when he left, after two years, Hagenauer says: " We felt that the Brother Hartmann and his wife entered blessing of the Lord was with us on that day." Of Nathaniel's further on the ~or1r, in which they continueCl course we will here say that though a true s!3rvant of Christ, he was Ii very for eight years. weak one; and though at times his light burned brightly, to the joy of his RAMAH-YUCK. teachers, at others he triell their pa· tience and grieved them by inconsisten- In the mean time a new work had been cies, which indeed was scarcely to be commenced in Gippsland by Brother wondered at in one so recently a hea. Ha.genauer at the request of the Presthen. He was the first of a great num- byterian Church of Victoria, who promber of converts who received the Gos- ised to provide the means if the Morapel with joy, and turned with repent- vian Church would send the men. It ance and faith to the Saviour, proving was proposed to name it .. Ramah," to by their lives, and often by their preach- which the natives added" yuck," " our ip.g; theirlove to Christ and the breth- home," thus showing their joy and apren: '~ 'these many names could be preciation. In Ramah-yuck the faithgiven.. Young Bony (baptized Daniel) ful efforts of Brother Hagenauer and was, at his earnest request, accepted as his wife met with success 8.Il in Ebeneassistant to the brethren who went to zer. In 1866 the first convert was bapcommence a mission at Cooper's Creek, tized, and received the name of " James in the interior (of which a hrief men- Matthew," and five months later Tomtion will be made later), but died on the my and Jack. In 1868 the number had ;way thither. Philip and Rebecca were increased to seventeen, and by the end placed in charge of the orphanage at of 1869 had risen to twenty-six. Ebenezer, and were most useful and consistent Christians. Philip also as- But these missions are not remarksisted in preaching, and often accom_ able for numbers, nor for the shining p~nied the missionaries on their evan_ lights among their converts, though, as geliziug tours among the still wander- was said before, some of these put to ing tribes. Dick-a-Dick 'was baptized shame many white Christians by their on what proved his death-bed. His consistency. Moreover, as sad diseases childlike and strong faith rejoiced the -particularly consumption-carried off hearts of the missionaries, and aston- many of their number, and others left ished all who heard his dying testi- the mission station to obtain employ- ment, it is easy to see that the work done was in many cases lost to slght, and, indeed, we shall only know when we see them in glory, how many of thll8e poor lost ones were rescued and saved. mankind, and that some will certainly The schools at both stations reached a be among the multitude surrounding high standard, that in Ramah.yuck the throne of God and the Lamb. having gained the highest marks for fOllr successive years, the only school in All the glory be to His name. Amen. Victoria which could show such results. So much for the general opinion that -The African Times says that a stam. the blacks could not learn. An attempt pede is reported among the" traders on was made to found a mission in the in. the Congo from the right to the left terior, at Cooper's Creek, which was bank of the river, except one Dutch given up on account of cost, and be- house, to escape the impediments and cause Lutheran missionaries had en· taxations of the Free State. The traders tered the same field, probably not know- say that this heavy taxation not only ing that our brethren were already there. applies to liquor, but to land tax, and Spieseke, after faithfully serving in even to canoes and surf-boats, and to the mission at Ebenezer for twenty white and black employes. years, died happily in the midst of his people, and was honored by them in his -Rev. Dr. E. W. BIyden, at a public burial. His place was supplied by dinner tendered him down at Lagos, Brother Kramer and wife, and Brother said, recently, that the Mohammedan Bogish. population of ,Lagos has increased with astounding rapidity during the last The natives are dying out fast, and thirty years. In 1863, Captain Burton the half breeds are not allowed to stay estimated the Moslem population at from on tj:le stations, so there is a fear that 700 to 800. In 1889 Sir Alfred Moloney our work in Victoria will soon be over. put them down at 15,000, and he de- scribes them as " the most orderly, in· But other fields are opening in tellectual, and respectable class of citi. Queensland; the latest news being that zens, composed of all the tribes of three brethren have been appointed by Yoruba. 'l'his is tb e official testimony our Mission Board. The country has borne of this people in all the settlebeen explored by Hagenauer with a view ments. They have spread over the to a speedy commencement of a mission whole of our fatherland north of the to the degraded cannibals of Queens. Equator from the Atlantic to the Red land. If we understand rightly, the Sea, from Lagos to Morocco, and from Presbyterians will supply the funds, Sierra Leone to Egypt." and the Moravian Church the men. Two other missions-one at Lake Con. Release of Mr, Penzot.ti dah, supported by the Church of England. and one at York Peninsula, sup- We have at last the satisfaction of reported by Friends-are carried on by cording the fact, which has already be· Moravian missionaries with much pros- come widely known through the daily perity and success. Lack of time and and weekly newspapers, that the long space forbids our entering into details and wearisome imprisonment of Mr. in regard to the blessed results of this Penzotti in Callao has been terminated mission among the aborigines of Aus- by decree of the Supreme Court of Peru. tralia; but enough has been said to The terms of the decision are not yet show that the Gospel of our Lord Jesus reported; but a telegram, dated Lima, Christ is "the power of God unto sal· April 3d, and addressed to a gentleman vation to everyone that believeth;" to in New York who has taken great inter. show that there is no respect of persons est in the case, announces in a single before Him, but that the Holy Spirit is word that he has been liberated. 1m. " given to all that obey Him;" to show prisoned for more than eight months, that the blacks of Australia are also in- on an accusation presented and urged cluded in the plan of God's salvation of , by a Roman Catholio priest, the Rev. of the terms offered the natives by the Jose M. Castro; charged with the offence Spanish Governor. He says the specifi- of violating the law in holding unauthor- cations of the Governor's trumped-up ized religious services; kept in a dun- charges against him were of three sorts : geon after he had once and again been (1) that I had been harboring the re- adjudged guiltless by the tribunals be- bellious Metalamin chiefs, feasting them fore which his adversary had summoned and buildingthem a house at Kiti. Also, him; denied the privilege of bail; (2) that I had been having meetings shrinking with inexpressible loathing with them and the Kiti king to influ- from the filth and impurity of the cell ence them against the Spanish rule. He in which he spent two hundred and also said, (3) that he had positive proof fifty nights with thirty or forty crim- that I was one of the principal leaders inals ; refusing to listen to the whis- in planning the breastworks at Oua.
pered suggestion that proceedings might And (4) as the mission was responsible be discontinued if he would agree to for the present outbreak of the Metala- leave Peru; constrained to send his min tribe, he did not think that we daughters out of the country, lest with- would be permitted to carryon our out a father's protection they might be_ work much longer.
comlt"victims of a foul consph:acy ; and ever hopeful that his sufferings would -Bishop A. W. Wilson, of the Meth- eventually lead to the promulgation of odist Episcopal Church, South, says religious liberty in Peru-he is now " that the agitation in Japan of the revi- vindicated and set free. Eight months sion treaty has affected foreigners in of imprisonment and the exp~nse of general, and missiona.ries to some ex- defending himself in three courts is tent along with the rest." Missionaries, what the administration of justice in he says, " have to be very careful about Peru awards to an innocent man! One their political positions.
cannot but ask What penalty would "This treaty agitation has raised up an have been in:tlicted upon him if the anti-foreign party, who want the Chris- outer door of the warehouse in which ti:l.n missions conducted only by native he talked to a small company of men Christians. 'I'hey want the natives to about the Gospel of Christ had not been formulate Christian creeds for them- locked, and if admission had been grant- selves. They do not want Christian ed to people without a ticket.-Bible creeds formulated for them by the West- &ciety Record. ern nations. They are fully able "to -Sir Edwin Arnold says, in the Daily understand Christianity and to formu- Telegraph: .. A new Japan is definitely late from the Bible creeds to suit themborn-constitutional, progressive, ener- selves. The idea of a representative getic, resourceful, sure to become great, government, as we have it, is not comand, perhaps, almost again as happy as prehended ; it is not in the mind of the she was of yore. Let the nations of the Japanese people. West receive and welcome as she de· serves this immeasurably ancient em- .. For 2500 years they have taken all pire which thus renews her youth in law from the Mikado, and I doubt not if the fountain cf constitutional liberties the Mikado would to-morrow withdraw and institutions." the Constitution, which gives repre- sentation to the people, the great mass of the people would quietly accept it as -The Daily Pacific Commercial Ad- coming from the source of all law-the vertiser of Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands, Mikado. There would probably be a of March 14th, contains along letter from few murders among the student class, Rev. F. E. Rand, written at Ponape, to who would resist it, and there it would friends at Honolulu, giving an account end."
EDITORIAL NOTES ON CURRENT TOPICS
III.-EDITORIAL NOTES ON CURRENT TOPICS.
Among other Alliances for Prayers for "Even so, come, Lord Jesus (Rev. Missions, we call attention to the xxii: 20). Prayer Alliance, of whi6h Miss Mabel B. Atwater, 334 Lexington Avenue, New " And this Gospel of the kingdom shall York City, is Secretary. It reads as be preached in all the world for a witfollows: ness unto all nations; and then shall the end come (Matt. xxiv: 14). Walch " In the Year of our Lord 1891. Shall and pray." the generation now upon the face of the earth hear the Gospel? Likewise we call attention to the Prayer Union for Arabia and the Ara- "First. It is our Lord's last command bian Mission. Gen. xvii : 18. (Mark 16 : 15). 'Every creature' cannot possibly mean only those on one Aden, Arabia, January 1, 1890. third of the globe. It is our Saviour's will (1 Tim. 2 : 4, 6). The Arabian Mission, begun in an- "Second. This generation will be lost swer to prayer and sustained by conunless they hear the Gospel (Rom. 1 : 20, 21, 28, and Ps. 9 : 17). stant appeals to the Throne of Grace, " Third. If this generation hear the comes to its friends with a New Year's Gospel, IDe must carry it to them, for to us the work has been committed (2 Cor. request. 5 : 19 ; 1 Tim. 1 : 11). On the threshold of Arabia, face to " Fourth. We cannot serve the next generation. Are we with David serving face with the greatness and difficulties our own generation (Acts xiii: 36)? of the work, and deeply conscious of " In the heathen world there are about 1,000,000,000 souls; 30,000,000 a year our own weakness, we ask you, who go into eternity without God. Our Lord said: ' Go ye into all the world have already shown your sympathy for and preach the Gospel to every creature.' Out of 35,000,000 Protes- the cause of Christ in Arabia, to join tant church-members only about 6000 have obeyed this command, one in us in stated, fervent prayer: every 5800. Evangelized, 116,000,000 ; unevangelized, 1,000,000,000. The field 1. That God's promise in regard to is the world. 'Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it.' the children of Ishmael may speedily " And whatsoever ye shall ask in My be fulfilled, and that His blessing may name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son (John xiv :13). rest upon every effort put forth to give " Pray ye therefore the Lord of the them the Gospel. I harvest, that He will send forth laborers into His harvest (Matt. ix : 38). 2. That many may be led to choose PRAYER ALLIANCE. for their field of labor this neglected .. , Depending upon the Holy Ghost to portion of the Lord's vineyard. bring it to my remembrance, I pledge myself to pray daily, IN FAITH, for the 3. For a special blessing upon the evangelization of the whole world during the present century; and the speedy missionaries of the Arabian. Mission: coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.' that they may live very close to the Master; that t.heir lives and words may ever point men to Christ; that God may be pleased to use their efforts in bring- ing many of the children of Ishmael unto Himself.
Will you join us in making these ob- jects a special burden of prayer at your Sabbath morning devotions throughout the year?
"The wilderness and the solitary plllce shall be glad for them, the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose."
" He is faithful who hath promised."
.TAMES CANTINE, S. M. ZWEMER. " Speed on, ye heralds, bringing The latest phase of the Uganda revolu- Life to the desert slain ; tion-the flight of Mwanga, his appeal Till in its mighty winging, to the Church he persecuted, the vic- God's Spirit comes to reign. tory of the Christians. the J:eturn of From death to new·begetting, Mwanga, and his re·establishment in God shall the power give; the kingdom surrounded by chiefs and Shall choose them for crown.setting councillors professing the Christian And Ishmael shall live. faith-is a chapter in praise of meekness and mercy. In Uganda to.day the .. So speaks the promise, bringing , meek inherit the earth' and Iorgive. The age of Jubilee ness is proved to be the noblest re- To every home and tenting, venge." From Tadmor to the sea. The dead to life are risen; Goodness is sometimes better than The glory spreads abroad ; greatness. A missionary in India was The desert answers heaven, so feeble mentally that he could not Hosannas to the Lord !" learn the language. After some years -J.G.L. he asked to be recalled, frankly saying that he had not sufficient intellect for The St, Paul of Uganda. the work. A dozen missionaries, how- ever, petitioned his Board not to grant When Stanley urged Christendom to his request, saying that his goodness send missionaries to Mtesa's kingdom,' gave him a wider influence among the Mackay joined a party of eight to found heathen than any other missionary at an industrial mission to the Victoria the station. A convert when asked, Nyanza. In three years he alone sur- " What is it to be a Christian ?" replied, vived. For fourteen years, in jeopardy "It is to be like Mr. –" naming the every hour, he was yet the soul, the good missionary. He was kept in In- hand, the head of this great and model dia. He never preached a sermon; movement. The London Times called but when he died hundreds of heathen him ".The St. Paul of Uganda" : as well as many Christians mourned him and testified to his holy life and char· " He built, cut type, translated, print- acter. ed, engineered, navigated, diploma- tized; he de~ounced crime, preached It causes sorrow to many to learn that .the Gospel, acted as schoolmaster and Mrs. Phraner, wife of Rev. Stanley K. doctor; he befriended Emin Pasha, Phraner, died at Chang Mi Laos, in Junker and Stanley, and strove, alas Northern Siam, one month after their in vain! to save Hannington from the arrival. Mr. Phraner graduated last results of unconscious but heroic folly; spring at Princeton Theological Semi. he controlled the court so far as it could nary, was ordained by the Presbytery of be controlled; protected the brave Westchester, was married, and imme- Christian boys, and, in a word, through diately set out as a missionary to Siam. baptisms of blood and fire, won a He is a son of Rev. Wilson Phraner, church in the wilderness for the dear D.D., for many years pastor at Sing Lord and Master whom he served with Sing, N. Y. an absolutely single eye. No such story of Christian heroism has ever teen told Dr. Storrs, of Brooklyn, the President in our day. The boys of Uganda who of the American Board, referring to died in horrible tortures rather than whiskey in Africa, is said to have used deny their faith will rank with the this terse but telling sentence recently: noblest martyrs of Christian history. ., Every dollar gained in the Congo rum Every line in our Lord's Sermon on the trade ought to burn in the palm of a Mount finds its illustration and con- firmation in this extraordinary history. man who gains it, as if it were a part Proposed Colony on the Bellamy Plan. of the blazing asphalt that makes the pavement of the infernal regions." A ,despatch from Hutchinson, Kan., says: "John Caplieg, of Buffalo, N. Y., Baptist Missionary Centenary in passed through this city, March 26th, on 1892.-Next year the Baptists will cele- his way home from Beaver City, in No. brate the centenary of the formation of MlLn's-LlLnd, where it is proposed to lotheir Missionary Society. It is the old- cate IL co-operative colony to be organest organization of the kind in existence, ized on the Bellamy plan. He said that excluding, of course, the Society for the he expected the colony would be formed Propagation of the Gospel, founded this spring in time to put in crops, if nearly a century previously. William possible. The colony, he thinks, will Carey, of Leicester, Baptist minister, comprise about 500 people to start with, schoolmaster, and shoemaker, first raised and it is to be strictly co-operative." the question of modern missions in 1786. but not until 1792 was the Society Attempts similar to this have been launched. Historic dates and places made from time to time, but the bottom linked with the So.ciety·s inauguration has dropped out of them all Booner or will determine the time and centres of later. The only perfect state is that the forthcoming services. Carey built on Christianity. kindled the flame by a missionary sermon preached on May 31st at Notting- The revival among the Telugus in ham; on October 2d the Society was the last few months has been the notable formed at Kettering; and, on March event of the year. Four thousand con- 20th following, he was ordained for mis- verts in that mission have put on Christ sionary work at Leicester. At the open- in baptism. Upon one Lord's day 1671 ing meeting of the Society £13 28. 6d. was were baptized in a little over six hours, subscribed, which .seems trifling com- two men only at a time administering pared with the current average annual the ordinance. It must have been a income, between seventy and eighty grand sight to witness on the forenoon thousand pounds. The Society has a of that dllY the thousands of thirsty inbright record of labor in the East and quirers, many of whom had travelled West Indies, and latterly, since 1878, miles, sitting upon the ground in the on the Congo, where it employs over broad commons drinking in with rapt twenty mISSIOnaries. A centenary attention every word that fell from Dr. thanksgiving of £100,000 has been Clough's lips, as he expounded from proposed, and the increase of the Soci- the text, ., Come unto Me, all ye that ety's yearly income to £100,000. The labor and are heavy laden, and I will young folks connected with the Baptist give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, chapels and Sunday-schools are invited and learn of Me ; for I am meek and to raise one fourth of the form€r sum. lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest To the 120 missionaries and 306 evan- unto your souls." The words given of gelists at present in the field it is con- the Spirit to the speaker were indeed templated by the Society to send forth .words of eternal life to the hearers, and a hundred additional men and women. brought rest to many souls whose bodies The Baptist Union of New Zealand has were wearied by the long journey to this resolved to hold simultaneous centenary " Bethel" of their souIs. Thirty of Dr. gatherings. Once more I notice that Clough's co-workers assisted him in the "A Frii'md" has sent £1000 to the examination of the candidates for baptreasurer of the Baptist Missionary So- tism, and none were baptized of whose ciety. a similar amount having been conversion they did not find good evisent by the same person at the begin- dences. ning of several recent years. In this Ongole station the revival has been continuous now since 1877, and it may be doubted whether in all mission- sticks, and objects used in their idola- ary history another such case is to be try, and made a great bonfire of them. found. Mr. Mackay says that over 500 houses were cleansed of idolatry in his pres. The Right Heir, e:nce."
When the excellent Christian Schwartz Mr. and Mrs. Stebbins, it may be re- was about to end his long and devoted membered, were to join Mr. Pentecost missionary life in India, he said, in view and assist him in his evangelistic work of all the Lord's goodness to him, "I in India with their singing. In are. make Christ my heir"- and then by his cent letter to the Hartford ReligiCYU8 will made provision as far as his world- Herald a member of the family writes as ly means would go, for carrying on the follows: work of Christ among the heathen after he would be gone. We can think of but " On the 17th of November we reached one addition to this plan: to make Calcutta. Here we stayed until the 1st Christ first of all the partner of our daily of January, 18111, helping Dr. Pentecost toils and profits. in his meetings, and doing a great deal of singing for the missionaries. We We are so crowded with matter of were entertained by Bishop Thoburn, great importance that we omit this the Methodist Bishop of India, and by month any distinct Department of the pastor of the M. E.church there. Monthly Concert. Our readers will not The Methodists are by far the strongest miss this, inasmuch as the whole num- in India of any of the denominations, ber is maiuly given to Africa, and is and they are ce~tainly doing a great and unusually rich in material from various grand work. About Christmas time Dr. valuable sources upon different phases Pentecost decided to turn his attention of the languages, customs, oppressions, to the educated natives, and as they and needs of the Dark Continent. were not appreciative of Christian song, he·advised us to make a tour of the cities Says the Ewminer: "The Rev. Mr. of India, helping the missionaries as Mackay has been in the Island of For- we go. So we left Calcutta, January mosa for a great many years. About ,a 1st, and next day arrived at Benares, dozen years ago he planned to visit a the seat of Hinduism. We sawall their district containing a number of villages vile worship, and the great ruins of bearing the name of Ka-le-oan. Not Buddha's first preaching places.••• being able to go he sent II native preach- We visited Cawnpore, the scene of the er. Mr. Mackay was enabled a few worst atrocities of the mutiny of 1857. weeks ago to visit the region. He Then up to Noradabad, where was being found the people having a wonderfully held the North India Conference. We clear conception of the Gospel and had some fine meetings, and got a peep wearied with their idol worship. They at the executive missionary body. told him that the Mandarin would not let them throw up idolatry, declaring "We have held a song service and that they would be rebels against Chi- sometimes two or three in every city we nese authority if they did so. Mr. have been in except Delhi, where we Mackay saw that official and gained his were not entertained. We ha"e helped consent to let the people do as they in the conferences and in every place liked. 'fhe people held a council, and have sung to large audiences of Euroat once determined to forsake idolatry. peans." Mr. and Mrs. Stebbins planned A temple recently built was turned over to sail for home on February 28th, and to the missionary, and became a Chris- stop in Egypt, Palestine, Italy, Gertian meeting:house. Parties went about many, and England, reaching home by the villages gathering up idols, incense midsummer.
GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE
V.-GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE.
BY MRS. 1. T. GRACEY.
Woman's Foreign Missionary 22,156 subscribers, a children's paper, Union of Friends in America. Cor- the King's Messenger, is also published, responding Secretary, Eliza C. Arm- with 20,315 subscribers, Boston, Mass. strong, Centre Valley, Ind. A large amount of miscellaneous litera- ture is issued by the society. The consolidation of the various branches of the woman's societies un- Woman's Baptist Foreign Misder one board has been accomplished, sionary Society of the West.-Orwith a department of missionary litera- ganized 1871. Corresponding Secretary, ture, one of junior and juvenile work, Mrs. A. M. Bacon, 3032 South Park another of systematic Christian giving, Avenue, Chicago, TIl. and another of interest and organization. Home report of this society: Number Number of auxiliary societies 224, of circles 1243, number of guilds and with 3376 members, and 2140 members young people's societies 233, mission of children's bands (number of bands not bands 309. The fields occupied are the given). Amount of money received dur- same as those occupied by the society of ing year, $23,164. the East. The same periodicals also are circulated. The board supports 18 missionaries, 8 native evangelists and Bible readers, Foreign work: Twenty-eight mission- 51 children in homes or boarding- aries are supported, 3 of whom are medschools, 7 day schools with 304 pupils. ical; 79 schools, in whole or in part, with an aggregate of 1759 pupils; and 31 Work is carried on or aided in Mexi- native teachers and 49 Bible women co, Japan, India, Syria, China, Indian have also been supported. Territory, and in Alaska. During the year the Carpenter Memo- Friend's Missionary .Advocate is the rial Hospital, at Bassein, has been official organ. This paper has been opened. Receipts for the year, $34,674. owned by Mrs. Esther Tuttle Pritchard since its establishment, in 1886, until Woman's Baptist Foreign Misthe past year, when a centralorganiza- sionary Society of California.-Corretion was effected, she presented the sponding Secretary, Mrs. L. P. Huntspaper to the union. man, 1264 Eleventh Avenue, East Oak- land, Cal. BAPTIST WOMAN'S BOARDS. This society has been organized 16 Woman's Baptist Foreign Mission- years. Previous to 1889 only one misary Society.-Organi~ed 1871. Cor- sionary was supported, who was staresponding Secretary, Mrs. O. W. Gates, tioned on the Congo. Now they sup- Newton Centre, Mass. port 4 missionaries, 2 to Hakkas, of China, 1 at Seudai, Japan, and 1 at The home work of this society is rep- Swatow, China. resented by 1440 circles, or contributing churches, 702 mission bands, and 15,578 Receipts for past year, $2214. No re" members. Amount of money raised for port of home work.
year ending March, 1890, $99,007. Woman's Baptist Missionary So- The society has work among the Bur- ciety of Oregon. -Corresponding Sec- retary, Mrs. Clinton Latourette, Oregon mese, Karens, Shans, Chins, Kachins, City. Eurasians, Telugus ; missions in China, Assam, Japan; Congo Mission, Africa, This society reports 31 circles, with a and Europe. membership of about 500, 7 children's bands, with 220 members, and 11 young Fifty-one missionaries are supported; people's societies, with 345 members. 9 sent past year; 171 schools with 6119 Amount of money raised from October, pupils, and 67 Bible women. 1889 to October, 1890, $1730.
Official organ, the Helping Rand, with One missionary is supported in Now- its Church Board. It helps to support gong, Assam. and contributions made work in Shanghai, China. Has 2 misto support Bible readers in Burma and sionaries-I a physician-and 3 assist. in, China. ant teachers. Has 1 boarding.school with 12 pupils. Work is also carried on Woman's Missionary Union Aux- in Holland in addition to home work. iliary to Southern Baptist Conven- Receipts for year, $3216. tion.-Organized 1888. Corresponding Secretary, Miss Annie W. Armstrong, 10 Christian Woman's Board of Mis- East Fayette Street, Baltimore, Md. sions.-Corresponding Secretary, Mrs. Lois A. White, No. 160 North Delaware Prior to 1888 the Baptist women of Street, Indianapolis, Ind. the South had been working for missions, but without a general organiza- Twenty·nine States report 882 auxtion. Auxiliary societies 1469. iliary societies connected with this bo.ard-156 organized the past year. The society contributes to the work Present number of members 15,086, of the board in Brazil, Japan, China, young people's circles 49, children's Cuba, Italy, Mexico, Africa, besides bands 380. work at home among the Indians and colored people of the South. Official organ,' Missionary Tidings, with 4459 subscribers. A children's The society has a general depot for paper, Little Builders at Work, has a submissionary literature in the city of Bal- scription of. 2000. Amount of money timore, where can possibly be found the raised for the year, $45,166. largest variety of missionary le!,fiets in the country. Literature has been sent The society has work in India, out to 14 States, and over 100,000 Jamaica West Indies, and in Montana leaflets and pamphlets have been dis- in the home field. An orphanage is tributed during the year. supported at Bilaspur, India, with 19 orphans, and a school with 27 pupils, Amount of money raised, $21,398 for and a hospital has been established in foreign missions, and $10,161 for home India. Number of missionaries or formlSSlons. Official organ, the Baptist eign workers not given in report. Basket, Louisville, Ky. Woman's Auxiliary to the Board Free Baptist Woman's Missionary of Missions of the Protestant Epis- Society. – Corresponding Secretary, copal Church.-Corresponding Secre- Mrs. J. A. Lowell, Danville, New Hamp- tary, Miss Julia. C. Emery, 21 Bible shire. House, New York.
The home work of this society is rep- During the past year a junior auxiliary, resented by about 250 auxiliary societies modelled upon the woman's auxiliary, and 57 children's bands. Amount of has been formed, and a paper called the money raised during year, $7694. Peri- Young Ohristian Soldier started. The odical, the Missionary Helper, with 1250 woman's auxiliary has its workers in 51 subscribers. dioceses and nine missionary jurisdic- tions. Besides their domestic missions, The main work of the society is in the auxiliary aids the work in China, India. The principal stations are Mid- Japan, Africa, Mexico, and Alaska. napore and Balasore, where zenana, Six missionaries have been sent to the school, and medical work are success- :field the past year. fully carried on. Twenty teachers, 5 Bible women, 13 male teachers, in all 49 The aggregates are all given for parish persons, have been supported. An Of- ladies' aid work and other mission work phanage at Balasore has 35 children, and combined. It appears that of an aggre 7 day schools with 270 pupils. gate collection of $542,197, about $36, 838 is spent in foreign work. But the Woman's Board of the Seventh- North American Indian work is includ- Day Baptists.-Corresponding Secre- tary, Miss Mary F. Bailey, Milton. Wis.
This society works in connection with ed in domestio missions. It is impos- eties, 437 auxiliaries, 176 mission bands; sible to follow here the classification members in auxiliaries 10,443, members which is made where the home and in bands 4869; total membership 15,- foreign work are in separated societies. 312. Amount of money raised from April, 1889 to April, 1890, $32,117. 'Woman's Foreign Missionary So- ciety of the Reformed Episcopal This board has work among the Ind- Church.-Organized May, 1889. Corre- ians of the Northwest, missions in sponding Secretary, Mrs. William H. China, Formosa, Central India, Island Allen, Philadelphia, Pa. of Trinidad, the New Hebrides, and British Guiana. Foreign statistics not This society, so recently organized, given in report. Periodical, Monthly raised during the year $4077. One mis- Letter Leaflet, with a circulation of 5500. sionary is supported in Cawnpore, India, and another went to Calcutta under the Woman's Foreign Missionary So- auspices of the Woman's Union Mission- ciety of the Presbyterian Church in ary Society. Money has been sent to Canada (Eastern Section}.-Organized Sierra Leone, Africa, to open a training- 1876. Secretary, Mrs. J. T. Thompson, school, and some aid given to Japan. 111 Spring Garden Road, Halifax, N. S.
Oa.nadia.n Societies. This society is represented by 6 Pres- byterian societies, 112 auxiliaries, 5 Woman's Missionary Society of young people's branches, 46 mission the Methodist Church (Canada).- bands. Work is supported in the same Corresponding Secretary, Mrs. E. S. fields as those of Western Division. Strachan, 163 Hughson Street, North Receipts for year $5340. Hamilton, Canada. Woman's Baptist Foreign Mis- This society, territorially, is divided sionary Society of Ontario.-Corre. into 5 branches, viz., Eastern, Western, sponding Secretary, Miss Buchan, 165 Central, Nova Scotia, and New Bruns- Bloor Street, East Toronto, Canada. wick, and Prince Edward Island branches. Number of contributing circles 173, number of bands 81. Money received Home force: Auxiliaries 358, memo for the year $7471. bers 8020, mission bands 153, members 4462. Amount of money received for ,Work is carried on in India at Akidu, year $25,560-an advance of over $3254 Cocanada, Tuni, and Samulcotta. At over preceding year. Cocanada a flourishing boarding·school is supported, with 26 pupils. The society has a prosperous work in Japan, a boarding.school at Tokyo, and Woman's Baptist Foreign Misseveral day schools. Also a large work sionary Society of Eastern Ontario among the French in Canada, and dur- and Quebec.-Corresponding Secretary, ing the year a French institute has been Miss Greene, 478 St. Urbain Street, established in Montreal with 43 pupils. Montreal, Canada.
Theyhave a work also among the Ind- This society has work the same as the ians and Chinese on the Pacific Coast; society in Western Ontario. It has support 18 missionaries, 12 in Japan about 50 circles. Money raised during and 6 at home. Periodical, Missionary year $1530. Other statistics not given Outlook, Toronto. in report.
Woman's Foreign Missionary So- Woman's Auxiliary to Diocesan, ciety of the Presbyterian Church in Domestic, and Foreign Missions of Canada (Western Division). – Or- the Church of England, Diocese of ganized 1876. Foreign Secretary, Mrs. Toronto.-Secretary, Mrs. W. Cum- L. J. Harvie, 80 Bedford Road, Toronto, mings, 321 Markham Street, Toronto, Canada. Canada.
This society has 25 Presbyterian soci- Number of adult branches 51, number of junior branches 17, members 1407. Periodical department in The Canadian Ohnrch Magazine and M'i,Ssion News. The human family living to-day con- Total amount of money raised for sists of about 1,500,0'00.000 individuals. 1890, including value boxes of clothing In Asia there are now approximately to needy missions, $12,236. about 800,000,000, densely crowded; on an average 120 to the square mile. In General Statistics, Europe there are 350,000,000, averaging 100 to the square mile-not so crowd- BY BEV. D. L. LEONARD. ed, but everywhere dense, and at all points over- populated. In Africa there Missionary Ammunition. – Every are 210,000,000. In America, North and pastor ought to see that every pew is South, there are 110,000,000 relatively supplied with the diagram first pub- thinly scattered. In the islands, large lished by the Church Missionary Society and small, probably 10,000,000. The of London, which pictures to the eye at extremes of the white and black are as a glance, and most effectively, the 5 to 3 ; the remaining 700,000,000 interspiritual condition of humankind by mediate brown and tawny. Of the race, means of a rectangle 4 by 6 inches, 500,000,000 are well clothed, that is, printed in various colors, to distinguish wear garments of some kind to cover the principal religions and divisions of their nakedness; 700,000,000 are semithe Christian Church, and divided into clothed, covering inferior parts of the some 1500 squares, each one represent- body; 250,000,000 are practically naked. ing a million souls. Thus the Jews oc- Of the race, 500,000,000 live in houses cupy but 8 squares, the Greek Church partly furnished with the appointments 84 squares, Protestants 125, Roman of civilization; 800,000,000 in huts or Catholics 190, Mohammedans 170, but caves with no furnishing; 260,000,000 the heathen 856, the latter and most have nothing that can be called a home, palpable fact being properly emphasized are barbarous and savage. The range by so many squares in jet black. And is from the topmost round-the Anglothen, to show what slight impression Saxon civilization, which is the highest has been made, what a tremendous task known-down to naked savagery. The remains to be performed after 19 centu- portion of the race lying below the line ries of Christian history, after 100 years of human condition is at the very least of Protestant modern (playing at) mis- three-fifths of the whole-900,000,000. sions, those awful 856 inky squares contain 2-only 2-near the centre that are -The various Protestant churches of snow white-standing, of course, for the Canada sustain 6 missionary societies, handful of converts made from heathen- and contribute to the foreign work an ism. What Christian heart can gaze aggregate of $165,000 annually (of unmoved upon such a lamentable de- which $100,106 is expended through the lineation? Presbyterian Board), have Ill3 missiona- ries in the fiela: and 380 native laborers, Then add to this another set of fig- and have gathered 8172 members into ures, which portray the physical, intel- their churches. lectual, and social status of mankind, and we have a working basis for an –The indications are unmistakable overwhelming appeal for a general and that the Huguenots in France, after sublime outburst of evangelizing faith centuries of extreme depression, and and zeal. And without doubt never after even lad apostasy from faith and were the facts relating to the condition fervor, are at length awakening to new of the race upon the material side set spiritual life. This fact appears espeforth so adequately in such brief space cially in the aggressive work undertaken as in the statement which follows. It to spread a pure gospel both at home has been before the public for some and abroad. They number some 600,000, years, and may therefore be quite famil- and are gathered into about 650 iar to many; and yet it cannot be reviewed and pondered too often: churches, though 30,000 or more are the seat of the IIiission. The work acsCdttered, and destitute of pastors and complished is made palpable in part oy places of worship. They sustain 3 Bible 125 chapels and prayer· houses, 341 consocieties, 3 book and tract societies, gregations, 6367 communicants, 223 many Young Men's Christian Associa- Sunday-schools, with 8151 scholars, and tions, 2 theological seminaries, 2 schools 194 day-schools, with 236 teachers and for evangelists, 4 societies for carrying 4423 scholars. Of these schools 171 are on evangelistic work, and a host of col- primary, 15 are high caste Hindu girls' porteurs. The annual contributions schools, 3 are Mohammedan, 3 boardfor home missions amount to $100,000, ing, and 1 industrial. In addition a and for foreign missions, $80,000. But college was opened in 1885, which now so limited are their resources and so has a teaching force of 19 and 361 stuheavy their burdens, they have sent one dents, and having as its chief object the of their number-Professor L. J. Ber- training of teachers and gospel workers rand-to America to raise here, if pos- of every kind. Money has also been sible, $20,000. raised ($15,000) for a hospital in Guntur.
Methodist Protestant Church.- -The Moravian Church, the pioneer Secretary, Rev. F. T. Tagg, Easton, missionary body in modern times, I!nte. Md. dating Carey and the Baptist Missionary Society by 60 years, with its" home .. Report for eight months ending De- membership of but 21,360, has in its cember 31st, 1890 : missions 30,591 communicants, and 87,263 in its congregations. Ten coun. RECEIPTS. tries are occupied, with 135 stations; 36 men and women were sent out last yelll, Foreign Fund..•..••.••…………• $3,452.12 making 355 Europeans and native as. Children'S Day…………..•……. 5,718.74 sistants in the field, with 1663 other Album F'und . . . . . . . . .• . . . . . . . . .. .. . 142.71 native helpers. In 113 Sunday-schools SpeciaL ……….•………………• 1,319.06 15,362 scholars are taught, and in 235 day-schools 20,629. The receipts for Balance, May 1 …… _. . ••• .. ….•. . 1,250.03 1889 were $100,115, of which upward of $40,000 came from non – Moravian Total. ……•…••…•••.•…….. $11,882.66 sources. Expenditnre•..•..•••…•..••.•.••… 11,371.15 The lal'gest mission is found in the Balance, Dec. 31…….. ..•. ………. $511.51 British and Danish West Indies, with 49 stations and 39,420 in the congrega. This society has 2 stations in Japan; 2 tions. Next come Surinam and Deme- churches, with 205 members; 15 mission· rara, South America, with 27,534 adaries and teacher/!; 3 Sunday.schools, herents, and South Africa, with 13,084. with 350 scholars; a college with 50 stu· Gnadenthal, the oldest station in South dents; an Anglo.Japanese school, with Africa, is to celebrate its centennial an attendance of 152, and a school for next year by the erection of a new women with 90 pupils, in all 292 under church, to cost £2000, of which the peo. instruction. A kindergarten will soon pIe on the spot hope to raise £1500. be opened, and the first native Japanese preacher has been chosen and will -The Syria mission of the Presbysoon be ordained. terian Board, North-especially with its large and thoroughly furnished printing General SynGd of the Lutheran establishment, and its Bible house at Church.-Secretary, Rev. George Scholl, Beirut-is one of the most important in D.D., Baltimore, Md. the entire foreign field. Besides Beirut, stations are maintained at Sidon, Trip- This society has 1 mission in Africa and 1 in India, and sustains in all 13 representatives from America, and 171 native assistants. The India field is in the Madras Presidency, upon the Bay of Bengal, and among the Telugus, covers about 5000 square miles, and contains 1,000,000 of inhabitants. Guntur is ali, Abeih, and Zahleh. This tahle progress has been for nearly fifteen will show how steady and general the years: STATISTICS OF THE SYRIA MISSION.
1876. 1885. 1886. 1887. 1888. 1889.
– – – – — – – – – – – American Missionaries .. _. .. _… . .. . …….. . 28 38 37 34 35 42 Native Laborers . ….. ' ………………….. . 120 Stations and Out-Stations ……………….. . 65 189 179 171 201 201 95 91 96 94 94 Church-Members ……………………….. . 573 1,301 1,440 1,493 1,534 1,615 Added on Profession…. .. . ……………… . 75 130 153 104 63 98 Average Congregations ………………….. . 2,642 3,891 4,293 4,289 4,522 4,640 Sabbath-Schools ••.•.. . ………•••……… 40 S. S. Scholars …………•……………….. 1,540 73 68 66 81 88 Total Schools. . ………… .. . ………… . 80 3,804 3.746 3,732 4,620 4,966 136 121 125 141 142 Total Pupils …………………………… . 3,509 5,665 5,344 5,391 6,299 6,172 This table of statistics, and the one summary covering eighteen others, which follows, though in a condensed while from four, the Free Methodform, are taken from the very valuable ists, the African Methodists, the Bap- American Board Almanac of Missions. tist Convention of the United States, Facts are set forth in detail concerning and the Friends, no report was reten of the principal societies, with a ceived : 'FOREIGN MISSIONARY SOCIETIES OF THE UNITED STATES, 1889-90.
~ .; AMERICAN ~ ~ ci ]"o'" ~. .~'c"~.; LABORERS. '<""3 0 '~" 00 :og.~a SOCIETIES. rn.; ".8 "03 w "~ .:i 0""3,8" .;J .S ""..~- .co $ "03 S ."c 0 ""… ~" ~ 'c:3~ ….:I 'C E,,"~ rn ;:;I I'""< ~ 0 'C … ~" .":: "'C ,,~ 8~ ~ .c p~…. z" -;; 'C 0 Z 0 -<j —— — — —— — —— Meth. Epis.,North 52 :1 159 135 3,018 559 42,632! 5,563 30,049 $282,997 $885,197 Presb. Bd., North. 99 240 336 1,302 320 26,794' 2,753 23,935 Am. Board(Cong ) 96 200 333 2,417 387 36.256 4,554 47,319 lii,494 794,066 762,947 Bapt.. Miss. Union 64 1,382 131 200 1,343 712 81,072 7,099 20,615 54,844 440,788 Meth.Epis., South 4,014 244,176 Ref. Ch. (Dutch).. 18 . i4i 34 "35 97 "in 5,336 552 '4',i56 . fi,D03 117,000 15 26 364 Protestant Epis .. 52 168 74 39 210 38 2,631 264 3,876 5,527 189,183 ~aPt. South. Conv 37 124 33 45 86 62 2.213 409 675 4,681 109,174 resb.Bd.. South. 18 98 37 41 50 31 1,207 360 1,207 4,317 107,627 Unit. Presb Bds. 16 198 26 44 459 391 9,568 1,722 10,687 7,167 100,539 E ili~te:sn ~.t~~~ ~~: 113 151 ~ ~ –.: -.-: ~.495 3,351 –.:,871 ~,187 _278,914 1 Totals . . . . . . . . 580 3,474 1,054 1,296 10,020 2,721 236,187 25,963 174.891 $524,21J $3,977,701 PRINCIPAL FOREIGN MISSIONARY SOCIETIES OF GREAT BRITAIN.
MISSIONARIES. zi ~ "" '" 'C.; " °8 ~.2 – – – – – – Ol SOCIETIES. w~ "03 ~=">= S" ~ "ol~o~~ oJ S Z S 0 03 – "rno );l "I'"< 0 =">-< 0 —– – —— Church Missionary Society. . . . . . . . . .. . …. 315 338 59 4,121 49,016 $1,145,240 Wesleyan Missionary Society. ….. . …. 363 343 6,284 34,086 703,115 Society for Propagation of Gospel ………. 499 2,447 66,593 625,190 London Missionary Society…..••………. 1)33 155 154 5,419 68.805 505,765 Free Church of Scotland…… .. ……… 209 80 35 660 6,620 480,535 Ba{,tist Missionary Society……………… 515 126 986 48.646 , 398,045 Chma Iuland Mission ……. .. ……….. 158 180 180 232 2,839 257,420 United Presbyterian, Scotch …………… 251 491 14,899 202,455 69 25 Established Church, Scotland. .. … … .. 30 17'9 825 156,805 Church of England Zenana MIss. Society .• Gl 113 639 135,000 – – – – Twelve other societies. .. ……………… 348 347 232 3,059 55;752 540,803 — Totals ………….. ……….. …. 3,353 2,167 – – – – —- 798 24,517 '348,081 $5,150,373 The second table of figures on the pre- so heroically founded by the late Mr. ceding page gives certain details con- Mackay before the waves of successive cerning 22 British societies, of which 12 revolutions swept over Uganda. In May are presented only in a summary. But next another mission party depart for the total of receipts is not to be taken as Uganda, under the tried leadership of showing the entire gifts of British Prot- the Rev. R. P. Ashe. 'lile Rev. G. H. estant Christians to foreign missions, for, V. Greaves, and also Dr. G. Wright, have according to Canon Robertson, their con- been appointed to it. "Six or eight more tributions in1889 amounted to $6,056,530. are at least required," says the Church Missionary Society, "in view of the -The Methodist Episcopal Church, wonderful openings for Christian work South, publishes a very complete table of all kinds in Uganda, in Usoga, at the of statistics of its Chinese Mission Con- south of the Victoria Nyanza, not to ference for the year ending September speak of the nearer territories of the 30th, 1890, and showing the results of British East Africa Company." five years' work. Two dist~icts are occupied, and 10 circuits, with 30 mis- Except the Scottish m~ionary camsionaries, male and female, and 6 nati ve paign of the Free Church of Scotland to helpers. Into the churches 345 mem- raise a sum of £20,000 for the fourth bers have been gathered; 22 Sunday- period of five years in the history of the Bchools are sustained, with 742 scholars; glorious Livingstonia Mission, no sim.iand 47 schools of all grades (including lar undertaking can be compared with an Anglo-Chinese college, with 146 stu- the remarkable endeavor of the Church dents), with a total attendance of 100l. Missionary Society to send forth 1000 In the 2 hospitals 2494 patients were missionaries during 1891 into the mis. treated last year. sion field. Partaking of the nature of a missionary revival, it is being achieved Foreign Mission Notes, with almost incomparable enthusi8Rm. Men and means are flowing into the BY REV. JAlIlES JOHNSTON, BOLTON, ENG- treasury of God. LAND. Mr. A. M. Mackay's Father. -The Africa – Bishop Tucker. – Clouds readers of the :MISSIONARY REVIEW in all continue to hang over Uganda. Bishop lands will welcome a glimpse of the Tucker had a rough journey inland, not- father of the late distinguished mission. withstanding the kindness of German ary, which the writer, favored with an officials en route. On reaching the con- intimate friendship, can supply. At fines of his new diocese he was seized the foot of Boniface Downs, east of with fever. By the attacks of this Ventnor, in the Isle of Wight, overlook. dreaded foe two of his ardent fellow ing the wide-stretching blue waters of missionaries were fatally struck down the English Channel, lies the charming at Usambiro. Their loss to the cause is home of this dear old man. It has been greatly regretted. Through the jealousy opened to receive many weary African of the French Roman Catholic mission- traveilers, who have left behind them aries, and the ever-threatening attitude souvenirs of the Dark Continent, or of the Mohammedans on Mwanga's ter· gifts from the gallant Mackay himself. ritory, the bishop finds the situation in From this spot were sent for yearll Uganda exceedingly perplexing. It is newspapers, books, etc., to Alexander not improbable that as soon as an inter- Mackay, who in turn despatched porview has been granted by Mwanga he tions bf them to his friend Emin Pasha, may make a hurried journey to England, in Equatorial Africa, when caravans to take council with the committee as to were.permitted to pass through the inthe future policy. Should the journey tervening hostile countries. The father be made, he will leave a small band of of Mr. Mackay is a native of Thurso, in men in Uganda to re-establish the work Caithness, originally, in all probability, as well as the export of slaves in his of Scandinavian stock, and his mother, territories, to the best of his power. of Banffshire. In his quiet Ventnor The following is the translation of the home, which he occupied on retiring from the Presbyterian ministry in Scot- copy Oll" TREATY: land, he has watched with practical solicitude the course of the missionary " I, Mwanga, King of Buganda, here- enterprise. Though bearing the silvery by declare, in the presence of Dr. Carl locks of age, it is a veritable inspiration Peters and Pere Simeon Lourdel (since to listen to his eloquent utterances on dead), that I prohibit the slave-trade in the redemption of the heathen world Buganda and the territories belonging from the yoke of idolatry. thereto, and that I will do my utmost to prevent the exportation of slaves from As Mr. Stanley promised Dr. Mackay, all countries under my jurisdiction. prior to departing for Africa, in 1887, to bring his son home "safe and "MwANGA, KA13AKA sound," it is not easy to imagine his disappointment when he learned that of Buganda. his long-absent "Alick," declined to leave his post. Greater and irreparable " SIMEON LOURDEL was the blow on the arrival, last year, of the tidings of Mr. Mackay's death. of the AlgerilJn Missions. Of this calamity the doctor has written, under date of February 7th, 1891, to the " CARL PETERS. writer: "The news of my dear son's death at Usambiro gave me a stunning " MENGO, May 16, 1890." blow. It came so unexpectedly that, for a time, I could hardly realize it, es- The arrival of this information, topecially as I half.expected him home gether wUh the adherence of all the some time during the summer. I have, European powers (now that Holland has however, learned to say, 'the will of the consented) to the General Act of the re- Lord be done,' and I have no doubt this cent Brussels Conference, will gi"e a event, like all others, has been wisely strong impetus in every quarter of the ordained by the Divine Disposer." He globe to the anti·slave·trade movement. alludes to the success of his son's memoir written by his sister, of which 8000 More African Missionaries.-Dr. copies have been sold. "Its perusal," George Smith says that he knows noth. he says, ., has led to the self-consecra- ing at all in history which equals the tion of some young men to the Lord, rapidity with which the civilizing, Chrisand to the evangelization of poor be- tianizing organizations had spread over nighted Africa." Mr. Mackay's trans- Africa during these fifty years. Although lation of the Scriptures is being dili- he has spent the greater part of his life in gently completed by three of his most India, where there has been great misintelligent converts and pupils in sionary enterPrise, "still, before Africa, Uganda. India paled. " I understand that the Mo- ravian Mission and the Lutheran Society King Mwanga and Siavery.- in Berlin were in communication with Though one is naturally sceptical of the doctor last January, asking his adany real change in the heathen passion vice and assistance respecting the des· of this African monarch, it is gratifying patch of missionaries to the German to report that Prince Hohenlohe Lan- African territory. It is remarkable to genberg, President of the Deutschen learn that instead of entering their own Kolonial-gesellschaft, writes of Mwan- " sphere of influence" from Bagamoyo, ga's resolve to forbid slave-dealing, they preferred the Scottish route via the Zambesi, the Shire, and Nyassa. Very shortly the Livingstonia Mission pur· pose sending a party of six men, two of whom are medical missionaries, to the north end of Lake Nyassa. The Mora- vians propose to send in their compnny four missionaries for work in Ge.rman territory, and the Lutheran Society will send three, or probably five, by the same that they have a right to cook or sell in missionary expedition. them, and turn them into shambles, or set up open.air theatres on the sideways. A Congo Missionary Heroine.- They cannot endure the institutiou of a Friends of the Congo Missions will re- pound. Dogs, donkeys, and troops of gret to hear that Mrs. Percy Comber, goats from time immemorial wandered who only went out in May last year, and where they pleased. Who was the worse was married to Mr. Comber in the for their liberty? The dogs never went August following, has fallen a victim to mad; they were the auxiliaries of the the malarious climate. Great sympathy hymns in devouring corpses scarcely cov- is expressed for her suddenly bereaved ered with earth. Why trouble about the husband. The name of Comber will be registration of births, deaths, and mar_ always honorably associated with Afri- riages ? Tunis, nevertheless, is making can missions and African exploration. steady headway in the path of progress. Their martyr roll on African soil in- cludes the names of Dr. Sidney Com- In this unevangelized region seven ber, Thomas Comber; Mrs. Hay, her missionaries of the North Africa M'tssion sister, Mrs. Thomas J. Comber, and are laboring. The darkness of the land now, Mrs. Percy Comber. By these, is appalling. Tunis is spiritually dead. truly heroic breath has been offered for Alcohol is the chief foe of the mission Africa's perishing millions on the Con- workers. Mohammedan insobriety is go watershed. notorious. A missionary writes of the Regency: " The longer I live in Tunis, The Niger Troubles.-A long doc- the more I see and hear of its awful ument has been issued by the Commit· wickedness, and the burden of souls is tee of the Church Missionary Society, very real to us. " It is pleasant to learn appointed to inquire into the charges that the Roman Catholic Italians in made by the English secretary on the Tunis are moved with the simplicity of west coast of Africa against the native the Gospel. mIssIOnaries. Briefly summarized, the report practically acquits of guiltiness Uzbek Turki Gospel Translations. the principal native clergy whom the -Thanks to the enterprise of the Brit· Rev. F. N. Eden took upon himself to ish and Foreign Bible Society, a part suspend, yet in two instances his de. of one of the most important biblical cision is confirmed. An English Church translations undertaken of late years, dignitary will possibly embark for the consisting of the four Gospels, is now Niger on a mission of reconciliation. passing through the press. It is esti- To the credit of the society, it should mated that Uzbek is the' language of be known that, promptly and exhaus· nearly 2,250,000 people scattered over tively, it invariably deals with the diffi· Russia ;r;. Asia, Bokhara, Afghanistan, culties whieh arise on its fields of labor. Khokhano, and Khiva, and is spoken by almost all the agricultural population of Tunis.-Of this J!'rench Protectorate these territories. The language is hard in North Africa, with a population of to acquire, as it is spoken in an exceed- 2,000,000 souls, the great majority of ingly rapid, shrill utterance. The transwhom are Mohammedans, a book of lation, reported to be quite worthy of considerable interest has just been pub- the society's repute for scholarly acculished, entitled" La Politique FranQaise racy, was commenced in 1884, by M. en Tunisie," whose author hides his Ostroumoff, a learned Russian gentle. identity under the signature of P. H. X. man who had lived many years in Cen- He speaks of the administrative diffi. tral Asia. His rendering has been most culties of the French resident as being caretully revised and, where advisable, very trying. The Tunisians like their amended by Dr. Radloff, Professor Sale. picturesque, old·world ways, and aro man~, Dr. Sauerwein, and M. Amischanot to be meddled with. Their idea is sisantz. that the streets belong to everyone, and Jewish Colonization in Palestine.- Government circles cause serious mis· "Yeax by year," remaxks Lieutenant· givings regarding the nation's welfare. Colonel Goldsmid, "the state of the Thus fax French influence has not raised Jews all over the world is becoming less the moral standard. The habits of life satisfactory instead of better. As the and non·Christian principles of Frenchresult of the persecutions in Russia and men are unmistakably introducing a Roumania Jewish colonies are being false civilization. In developing the refounded everywhere. They are even in sources of Madagascar, or promoting an initiatory stage in South America, commercial enterprise and colonization, and may likely be commenced in Cen- the French are utterly unfitted. The tral Africa. These schemes, Mr. Gold- export and import trade is nearly all smid thinks, are only deferring the evil done by English and American traders. day. He holds firmly that the Jewish Religiously, the work continues to prosquestion will never be settled until there per. In face of the disappointments is a Jewish state in the Holy Land. with respect to the action of the Govern- " In some countries," he says, " we are ment, the missionaries maintain a pow. persecuted. In others we are barely erful hold on the native communities. tolerated. I am not at all surprised at The London Missionary Society and the this. What other race with 80 glorious Society of Friends sta,nd on almosj; sima history as ours would tamely sit down ilar platforms, and attempt much in comand see the land of their ancestors in mon. It is regretted that the advanced the hands of a foreigner? Italy has re- sacerdotal teachings of the agents of the gained Rome, why should we not regain Society for the Propagation of the Gos. Palestine, instead of being contented to pel prevent co-operation with this body. remain tolerated by the peoples among Despite the energy of Roman Catholic whom we live ?" missionaries and their numbers, they are singularly weak and unable to gather Madagascar.-Political affairs are congregations. taking an erratic course on the island. The determined attitude of the more India-" Age of Consent" Bill.-Naenlightened and patriotic Malagassies tive papers are full of letters and distoward the French Protectorate, to cussions relating to the proposed measwhich I referred in the January issue of ure for raising" marriage consent" from the MISSIONARY REVIEW, is being neu- the age of ten to twelve. The bill is in tralized by the Malagasy Court. Either committee, and should reappear before by adroit negutiations, or intrigue, the the Legislat.ive Council next March, French are already on growingly cordial meanwhile, local goveTnments are colterms with the Government. The Eng- lecting native opinion in all parts of the lish adviser, the Protestant missiona. country. By the Mohammedans exries, and other tried counsellors, are to- pressing themselves favorable and, to day set aside for the French, while the a laxge extent, the Brahmo-Somaj, there queen, the prime minister, and the . is great anticipation of eventual sucladies·in-waiting affect French customs, cess. Orthodox Hindus in Upper· and and eagerly show their regard for the Western India are apparently unconofficials of the French Republic. As a cerned. The National Congress is neucorrespondent says: "The French rep- tral, according to its resolution not to resentative has but to go ahead cau- agitate on social questions. From Bengal tiouslyand circumspectly to obtain for comes the most pronounced opposition, his country all she can possibly wish though it is generally believed the meas· for." What the future will bring re- ure will be carried when it is universally mains to be seen. At present the coun- known that the bill does not interfere try, administratively, is in a lamentable with religious customs, or form a pre-. condition. .The increasing selfishness, Iude to corresponding acts of legislation. despotism, and lax morality noticed in
The Missionary Review of the World — May 1891
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– – ""OTt TtU" 5IM'.&.Aft. FC~Tu RE S BUODI/ISM ROMANISM (tth;m deVlhsh.) (Ubi(S d.efectiye) MISSIONARY REVIEW OF THE WORLD.
VOL. XIV. No. 5.-0ld &ries.–MAY.–VOL. IV. No. 5.-New Series.
LET US EVANGELIZE THE WORLD IN THIS GENERATION.
[EDITORIAL, .A. T. P.] The supreme question of the hour is the immediate preaching of the Gospel to every creature. When Francis Xavier stood before the 'Walled Kingdom and felt the power of its adamantine exclusiveness and proud se1£- sufficiency, he exclaimed, "0 rock! rock! when wilt thou open to my Master r'
Could that heroic Jesuit of Navarre, whose grave was made at Goa in 1552, after these nearly three hundred and forty yellrs, see that" rock" opened to his Master, and the whole world now flinging wide the long-shut doors; and then see the comparative idleness and indifference of the Church, so slow to enter and possess the land, he would turn to the Church itself and cry again, "0 rock! rock! when wilt thou open to my Master ?"
The great question of the hour is, How can the immediate proclamation of the Gospel to every creature be made a fact? Other preliminary questions have been answered by the very movements of God's providence and the developments of human history. We need no longer to ask how we shall get access to the nations, for the barriers are down; nor need we inquire how we are to reach these uttermost parts of the earth, for the steamship and steam-car will bear us to the limits of the globe in less than two months ; nor need we search for the implements and instruments for the work of evangelization, for the printing-press offers to make the eye the handmaid of the ear in the rapid dispersion of the Gospel message, and science offers to be the powerful ally of faith in the conquest of the world for Christ. Nor is it a question of adequate force for the field, for the evangelical churches could furnish four hundred thousand missionaries, or one for every two thousa~d of the unevangelized population, and yet have one hundred at home to support every foreign missionary. It is not even a question of adequate m,eans to support a great army of missionaries, for the aggregate wealth which is at the disposal of disciples is so great that onetenth of it would amply suffice to sustain half a million workmen in the foreign field and supply all the needed adjuncts and accessories for mission work.
LET UI!! EVANGELIZE THE WORLD IN Tms GENERATION
What, then, is the hindrance f We answer unhesitatingly that the Church of God is trifling with human souls and with her own duty. The time has come for plainness of speech. It is no time to put a veil over the face, or a gag into the mouth. Christian missions have never yet been taken up by the Reformed Church as an enterprise to be dared and done for God, like any othel' enterprise, with promptness and resoluteness. Two texts of Scripture should be the motto of the present age : "Where the word of a king is, there is power" (Eccles. 8 : 4), and, " the king's business requireth haste" (1 Sam. 21 : 8). The command of the King of kings is before us; that implies divine authority back of our commission, and hence guarantees divine ability to fulfil.it. And whatever is the King's business it demands implicit and immediate attention. To submit to His authority, to believe in the ability divinely assured, to attempt great things for God, and expect great things from God, would insure an era of missions so far eclipsing all hitherto done or attempted, that the present activity of the Church would be seen to be like the winking of an eye, or the movement of the little finger, in comparison to the energetic action of the whole body in a ra~e for a prize.
The question is asked, How can the eY"angelization of the world in our generation be made a fact?
God has certainly supplied a material basis for this stupendous achievement. Three things amaze and overwhelm the thoughtful observer: First, this is the age of world-wide openings. From Japan, at the sunrise, acrol!lS the whole track of the monarch of day to his sunset pavilion on Pacific shores, he looks down on scarcely one land that still shuts out the Gospel. 8econd, God has given us world-wide facilities. What implements and instruments! The Marquis of Worcester called the sixteenth century the century of inventions, and Dryden named the year 1666 the annus mirabilis. But the nineteenth century might crowd the aehievements of the sixteenth into a decade, and the years 1858 and 1878 were years that were in themselves as wonderful as almost any century previous to the sixteenth. Imagination can scarce paint any means of travel, transportation, communication and contact, which are not now supplied; end another quarter of a century may see the human race navigating the air as they now do the waters, and telegraphing WIthout wires, and driving mail matter through pneumatic tnbes. Again, this is the age of world-w.ide enterprises. Everything moves with a rapid foot, and time and space are annihilated. With a swiftness, credible only when witnessed, men push to the confines of the globe to find treasures, or to bear inventions. The Church of God alone moves slowly! Kerosene lamps and sewing-machines, parlor organs and glass beads are carried ahead of the Bread of Life.
Now, what is the natural basis of a world's evangelization? What, humanly speaking, constitutes man's responsibility in this work? We answer again: Three factors enter into the problem-men, money, and methods. The Gospel needs a voice-a book will not do. Behind the Bible must be a believer, behind the Gospel a gospeller, or herald. God wants witnesses who speak what they know. These the Church must sup- ply. At present the exact number of missionaries is stated as 5994. But for the native laborers, who outnumber ours almost seven times (35,343), our work would almost come to a standstill, with one missionary, on the average, to 166,000 unevangelized. Again, I say, the Church should robe herself in sackcloth at the remembrance of the fact that, in the nineteenth • century, it takes nearly six thousand Protestant church-members to supply one missionary! At the same rate of supply we should have had but a force of 8000 to 10,000 to bring into the field in the late War of the Rebel- lion!
There is the factor of money-for there is a financial basis of evangeliza- tion. The whole church-membership in Protestant churches of America and Europe raise $11,429,588 a year-less than thirty cents a member-less than one-tenth of a cent a day! These are no new facts, but they need to be beaten in by repeated blows.
Our superfluities and luxuries, absolutely unnecessary, save as made so by a luxurious and extravagant taste, reach an aggregate which is believed to be not less than $4.000,000,000. Suppose that only one-tenth of these was sacrificed. We should have $400,000,000 at once for the Lord's work!
Our comforts and conveniences aggregate fully as much more. Suppose we should give one-twentieth of them to the Lord, we should have an aggregate of $200,000,000 more, a total of $600,000,000. Ana yet we have not supposed our self-sacrifice to touch Qur necessities, which might yield no small percentage, in view of the extremities of the poor and the lost.
Consider what a power would accrue to missions if to-day self-sacrifice, without touching out actual needs. should simply begin by a tithe of our luxuries, and a half tithe of our conveniences! Let us have a new " Order of the Iron Cross !"
Then there is the factor of method. We need a careful and systematic method for districting the field and distributing the force. There is so much ground to be covered, and there is so much material of men and money to meet the need. Well, then, let us so map out the world-field and so divide and distribute all available workmen and contributions, that no part of the world shall be unsupplied. If the workmen are scattered, better one than none; and better to supply the whole field inadequately than leave whole districts absolutely destitute.
But I wish to emphasize that supernatural basis of missions, wherein it is my abiding confidence that the solution of this problem really lies. This work is God's work, and we are simply co-operating with the Father. going into all the world as ambassadors; co-operating with the Son, in the cross-bearing of self-sacrifice for souls; co-operating with the Spirit in w~tnessing to His power to save and sanctify. God'il work may demand haste, but never hurry and worry. And because it is His work it can be done if done in His way and in His strength. If I did not believe this I would give up all effort henceforth. The Church will never do this work until, from reliance on men, money, and methods we rise to dependence on the providence of God, prayer in Jesus' name, and the power of the Spirit.
1. The supernatural basis of missions is the divine command. The Word of the Kmg is the assurance of authority and ability: " Whatsoever He saith unto you do it.' , We have not bread enough for so great a multitude j but, He says, " Give ye them to eat," and our means are permitted to be inadequate because He intends to work a Ilew "miracle of the loaves. " We have not men enough to go into all the world j but He says, "Preach the Gospel to every creature," and He allows the supply to be inadequate that in answer to prayer He may "thrust forth laborers into His harvest. " We have but to go and do as He bids us, and we shall find God i'l with us, supplying all lack both of men and money. Our very deficiencies are a challenge to faith.
2. Again the supernatural basis is found in the promised power of Christ. In missions we bear our cross-not crosses-after Christ. We join Him in self-abnegation. We consent to die that others may live-to be buried that others may be garnered, a harvest for the kingdom. Now Christ is both the Captain of the Lord's host on the battlefield, guiding tlle movements of His army, and on the throne, King of kings, administering government. Hence come two grand confidences : First, that the battle is bound to issue in victory, and second, that Omnipotence is on our side. To open shut doors we need only to appeal to Him-to meet all threatening dangers we have only to rest on His power.
3. Once more the supernatural basis is found in the co-witness of the Holy Ghost. In the mouth of this divine, confirming witness, every word shall be established. The conditions of blessing are plainly indicated in the Word of God: (a) ADointed disciples: "Ye shall receive the power of the Holy Ghost coming upon you." It is " not by might, nor by power, but by the Spirit of the Lord. " Something more than human words and witness brings men to Christ. (b) Scattered vessels. We are the chosen vessels, vehicles of conveyance.
There is here a truth which few seem to have grasped. The Holy Ghost is represented as coming to dwell in and work through disciples, but never as sustaining either of these relations to ungodly souls, who cannot perceive, receive or know the Holy Ghost. It is God's plan that believers shall be everywhere scattered in order to provide avenues of spiritual communication. The Holy Spirit has never yet been known to come down upon and work in a community where there were no believers. In the entire history of missions the intervention of some one or more believing disciples has been the condition of His outpouring. Hence, as water can be conveyed only in vessels or channels, the believer must. become the means of communication, impression, and salvation. Therefore, Christ waits to see
A VOICE lI'ROM THE FmLD
of the travail of his soul, and the Spirit waits to pour out blessing, until the believing Church scatters everywhere the witnesse!! of the cross.
The grand duty of the hour is, to my mind, as plain as an t:nc1ouded Bun at its zenith. Faith in the duty and so the possibility of doing it ; energy of action, courageously and promptly doing the King's business, and prayer for power from above. Give us these, and before the generation passes away the world shall hear the Gospel.
God makes specIal appeal to young men! With many of us life's Bun has passed the zenith and is moving toward its setting, and with not a few the sunset already reddens the sky. You, young men and women, have life before you. Your sun has yet to mount from dawn to zenith. In the age, on ages telling, when into every year is compressed the eventfulness of a century, you are to live. God is marching on ; the signal guns are sounding, the battle grows hot, and the hour is critical and pivotal. Who of you will fall into the ranks and take up the grand march ~ [NOTE.-The above is the substance of an address delivered at Cleveland, 0., before the late Students' Volunteers' Convention, Feb. 27,1891. The following letter, from Dr. McGilvary, will confirm the view here pre- sented.-A. T. P.] A VOICE FROM THE FIELD.
BY REV. n. McGILVARY.
CmENGMAI, N. LAOS MIssION, Oct. 22, 1890.
To The Missionary Review of the World: DEAR EDITOR: You might be interested to hear another voice from the field in response to the standard raised pre-eminently by your REVIEW for a crusade to evangelize the whole world during the present century. The idea is a grand one. Possibly, the faith of but few has reached the standard of Christianizing the whole world during the next decade. We all know it is not beyond the divine power to effect it. It may be doubtful whether it is the revealed will of God that all of any age shall experience the saving power of the Gospel. The number of the saved belongs to the secret things which belong to ,God. There can be no doubt, however, thai it is the revealed wiJI of the great Head of the Church that the Gospel is to be preached to every creature. That command forms the proper foundation of the Church's duty. That it is able, with a tithe of the zeal that nations manifest when their country is in danger, or that the world puts forth in amassing wealth, to carry the Gospel message to every living soul, admits of no doubt. There is latent power in fire and water to move a million-fold the present amount of machinery, but it must be converted into steam. So the great problem is to generate the latent power of the Church into red-hot heat to make i~ effectual. But what trumpet voice is to awaken the slumbering power of the whole Church ~ A pentecostal baptism would do it. That baptism would. surely be given in answer to a universal cry of prayer; but what shall move the Church to prayer ~ What more effectual appeal than the cry of a perishing world open to the Gospel q China's moderate call for five hundred laborers has been echoed by your REVIEW. Japan is a standing appeal and a standing argument to enforce it. Africa has uttered its voice till it is the centre of attraction in Europe. To all of these we heartily respond. Will your readers listen to an appeal for a race that can claim only two or three millions ~ We would appeal esp~cial1y to the Presbyterian Church, some of whom may not see its own excellent organ.
We may assume a general idea of the work in Chiengmai and Lakawn. In these we may regard the Gospel as firmly established. ·When the forces on the way, and those under appointment, reach us, we may hope not to have to draw soon for more foreign laborers for these. With a baptized membership of fifteen hundred, one native ordained minister, a number of valuable assistants and ruling elders, we doubt not that the work would go on were all the foreign laborers removed, while with their aid, which is yet needed, if not absolutely indispensable, we look for great results.
But to perfect the unity and symmetry of our work and design of reaching the whole race, at least two other stations should be occupied, and one of them immediately. In February, March, and April an eV'lngelistic tour of three months was taken by the writer to all the Laos states and cities except Hluang-Prabang, in the extreme northeast. Besides its immediate object, it was designed to take a resurvey of the whole field with 'a view of selecting the next station. Two points called for special attention. One is M-Nan, in one sense the flower of the Laos states. Its territory is as large and populous as Chiengmai, but its rulers are somewhat more conservative. It is open, but not yet so like a ripe apple falling into our hands as afourth one to which I would call the attention of the Church. One hundred miles to the north of Chiengmai is Chieng-Rai, or Kieng-Rai. Fifty miles farther north is Chieng-Saan (or Kieng~Tsan), the northernmost province or state in the kingdom, and to the east is Chieng Kong, both the latter being situated on the great Cambodia River. The rulers in all these are favorable to our work. The Governor of Chieng-Rai was disappointed that we could not occupy a lot previously given this year. There is an organized church of about eighty baptized members mainly the result of God's blessing on native labor. In Chieng-Saan there is another of over forty members. Chieng-Kong is the largest department of the M-Nan state, which closely borders on Chieng-Rai, while to the south is Papaw, with a membership that can soon be organized into a church. With a fair idea of the whole field from previous isolated towns, and an extensive acquaintance and inquiry for twenty years, I was hardly prepared to realize the possibility of reaching the whole Laos race in the next decade by a station to be formed immediately in those three places, with Chieng-Rai as the centre, and a subsequent one in the latter half of the decade in M-Nan. A more promising neld for evangel~stic work could not be chosen for the present than the . former. Providence has opened the door, removed all. obstacles, and planted churches in advance.
Before reaching home a plan was formed of going up to Chieng-Rai in Decem,ber, leaving my family and spending six months, and returning to Chiengmai the latter half of the year. With these bright visions of work, imagine my disappointment on learning that the debt of the Board required retrenchment and not expansion. But still the two stations of Chiengmai and Lakawn have appealed to the Board for its sanction. The last letter from the Board expressed a doubt as to its favorable decision. The only difficulty in the way is the funds. How many churches, how many indi- viduals in the church, could assume the expense of a station for one, three, or five years! Mr. James Lenox gave $3000 the first year to start the Chiengmai Mission. The call seems imperative. Not to adyance is to risk the loss of the best portion of our field. Hluang-Prabang, lower down on the Cambodia, contiguous to French territory, is already occupied by a Catholic mission. If we fail to advance, they probably will. The Govern- ment and the people would greatly prefer our occupying it. It would give a scope to our native workers, and develop as nothing else would the mis- sionary spirit in the native churches. It would furnish a wider field for our literature. There is no obstacle in the way but the want offunds. In nearly every place visited, the complaint was that our stay was too short.
The wife of the Governor of Chieng-Kong could hardly be reconciled, and .begged _for one month to be taught to read our Scriptures by Miss Mc- Gilvary. Three weeks after we had left we were overtaken by three men, who had not heard of our arrival, and who were anxious to study our re- ligion. A head priest in M-Ngow, whom I had formerly met, had read our books, and partially promised to leave the priesthood and come to Chiengmai to ~tudy more. The venerable Viceroy of M-Nan, eighty-four years of age, voiced a common sentiment in regard to Buddhism. When our religion was explained, at our audience, as well as it could be to one so deaf, he replied, "That is all very good. You may preach it to my people; but as for me, it is too late. I have built my temples, fed the priests, made my offerings, and performed my devotions in the only re- ligion I knew. I must rely on my merit for the future." To the sug- gestion that the road to Nirvana is practically endless, he replied: "You say truly. It can only be attained after myriads of transmigrations, but it is too late to enter a new one. You must teach the rising generation."
After myriads of transmigrations. If such appeals from princes, priests, and people touch no chord in the hearts of those who believe that they have themselves been saved by the Gospel, and make no call to prayer, offer no motive to self-denial and effort, what more can be said ~ Only one other voice is stronger, and that comes from the Mount of Olives, from the lips of the ascending Saviour, " Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature, and 10, I am with YOIl alway, unto the end of the world.
Amen." Yours fraternally, D. MCGUVARY.
MODERN MISSIONARY MARVELS
MODERN MISSIONARY MARVELS.
THE BASSEIN-ARAKAN MISSION AMONG THE SGAU AND PWO KAREli8.
BY L. P. BROCKETT, M.D., BROOKLYN, N. Y.
Among the forty-two nationalities inhabiting Burmah about twenty be.. long to the Karen family, and are distributed over its entire territory, as well as that of Siam, and are supposed to number nearly 2,500,000 souls. So far as known, none of them are Buddhists or, idolaters; most of them believe in a Supreme Being, who is far away, and takes but little interest in human affairs j they also believe jn Nots, demons, or evil spirits, taking a malicious pleasure in annoying and troubling men, to whom they offer sacrifices of food, to placate them. They have no priests or medicine men. They are brave, honest, and reliable. The northern tribes are great fighters, while the southern tribes are peacllable and quiet. They are generally agriculturists, fishermen, or laborers, and very industrious. Their languages differ greatly, but philologists assert that they have a common root. They differ also greatly in cmtoms, habits, and manners.
Of the .tribes of Southern Burmah the largest are the Sgaus and Pwos, inhabiting the Tenasserim and Pegu provinces, between the eastern and western Yoma ranges of mountains, and extending from the twelfth to the eighteenth degree of north latitude. This includes all the delta branches of the Irawadi and a part of the main river, as well as the lower portion of the Salwen (Sol-ween) and Sitang (See-tong) rivers. In this territory the Tenasserim region was separated from that around the delta branches of the Irawadi by a wide expanse of jungle from one to two hundred miles in breadth.
The Gospel was first offered to the Karens of the Tenasserim provinces- Tavoy, Mergui and, not long after, to those in Amherst, Maulmain (Mohool-mah.een), and Maubee (Mah-oo-bee)-by Rev. George D. Boardman and Rev. Francis Mason, and the faithful assistant (Ko-thah-byu, the Karen apostle and first Karen convert), in 1828, and the following years. Unlike the Burmans, they readily accepted it, and very many were baptized. Many converts were gathered also in Rangoon, and the language was reduced"to writing by Rev. Dr. Wade, then of Maulmain, and some text- Looks and tracts" printed in it in 1831 and 1832. The New Testament was translated into the Sgau Karen dialect, and portions of it printed between 1833 and 1836. But though Ko-thah-byu and some of the other assistants had been very active and successful in carrying the Gospel to their eountrymen in the Tenasserim provinces and the region east of Rangoon, no effort had been made to reach the far more numerous Karens of the Bassein district, the southwestern section of Burmah, occupying the region drained by the delta branches of the Irawadi, and extending for some distance northward between the main river and the western Yoma range of mountains. This district had an area of 7047 square miles (about as large as Massa- chusetts) and, in 1881, a population of 381,419, of whom nearly 100,000 were Sgau and Pwo Karens. The Karen population has largely increased since 1881. The district is fertile, producing rice and fruits in great abundance and large quantities of fish in the rivers. Bassein, its capital, was a port of entry with a large commerce. The Burmans, who were the ruling class, oppressed the Karens most cruelly and had reductld most of them to a condition of peonage.
Light was brought to this people, then sitting in darkness, in a very singular way. In April, 1835, Rev. Thomas Simons, a Baptist missionary to the Burmans in Rangoon, who bad been on a visit to friends in Arakan, then a British province, determined to return to Rangoon overland through Bassein, crossing through a pass in the western Yomas to some of the branches of the Irawadi. His journey by boat and on foot occupied ~everal days. Mr. Simons did not understand the Karen language, but he carried with him many Burmese tracts, some of them written by Dr. Judson. In the villages at which he stopped he distributed these to the Burmans and Karens who came around him, and not knowing that the Burmans had prohibited the Karens from reading or hearing read any foreign books, he told them to ask some of the Burmans to read them to them. Mr. Simons made his way to Rangoon, and the bread which he had cast upon the waters seemed to have been wasted. But it was not.
Two years later Rev. Elisha L. Abbott, designated as a missionary to the Karens in Burmah, after spending a year in Maulmain and Tavoy in acquiring the language, came to Rangoon to commence his labors there. He met with great success and baptized nearly two hundred, mostly in the vicinity of Maubee, thirty miles north of Rangoon. In December, 1837, he left Rangoon to make his first visit to Bassein, in which no missionary had yet preached. He crossed the Irawadi, December 16th, and entered the little village of Sekkau. In the first house he entered he found several Christians, some of whom had visited Rangoon. Very soon an old man came in, and going up to Mr. Abbott said: " Teacher, I want to be bap- tized." On inquiring, Mr. Abbott found that two years before a Burman had come to the old man and offered to sell him two little b(loks in the Burmese language, which proved to be the" Golden Balance" and" The Ship of Grace," which Mr. Simons had given to him. As the old man could read Burmese, he bought them for two large bunches of plantains. He read them over and over again. They told him of an Eternal God and a Divine Redeemer. He was not satisfied, but wanted to know more, and hearing that the Karens in Maubee had received a new religion; he made his way thither through the dense jungle, infested with robbers and wild beasts, a distance of nearly a hundred miles, obtained light and instruction, embraced the Gospel with all his heart, told the story of the cross to his neighbors, some of whom were converted, and for a year had served God . with all his house. Three days later, at a large village on the eastern bank of the Irawadi, he found that a whole village of Karens, nearly a hundred souls, had been leq to embrace Christianity by reading some of these Bur- mese tracts distributed by Mr. Simons, and finding their way to Maubee had learned to read in Karen, and received instruction which enabled them to become very efficient missionaries to their countrymen. These people were not within the technical bounds of the Bassein district. Mr. Abbott ex- amined the~ carefully, baptized thirty-four of them, and organized them into a church, and went his way into Bassein proper. At the large village of Kyootoo, on the west bank of the Irawadi, he preached in Karen, and , among his hearers was a young Karen chief, Shway Weing, a man of re- markable abilities and great influence, but at that time, Mr. Abbott said, " a most ungovernable, wicked, and reckless heathen." Under that ser- mon he was converted, learned to read the Karen language, and began to labor most earnestly for the conversion of his people. Mr. Abbott, as soon as possible' after his return to Rangoon, decided to commence Ii school for young Christian Karens where they might be instructed and trained to be- come assistants in the missionary work. On the 8th of June, Shway Weing sen't him a number of young men to be instructed and baptized, and wrote a most interesting letter pleading that he would come to Bass~in if possible, and bring a great many of the precious books with him. The people of five Karen ~'illages, which he named, he said, "all worship God, every one; but we have no books, oh teacher, that we may fully understand the word of the Eternal God and keep it, and be enabled to distinguish between right and wrong. Weare very anxious that you come again."
On the 10th of June, 1838, Mr. Abbott began his training school with fourteen young men, mostly from Bassein, all Christians, but none of them as yet baptized. On the 20th Shway Weing arrived, with nine other young men, converted under his labors and those of Mau Yay and Moung Shway, two other young converts like-minded with himself. He desired for him- self and his associates that they should be baptized (he could not, he said, return to his village unless he was baptized), and receive a fresh supply of books to instruct those who were coming to him to learn the way of salva- tion. Eight of the young men were received into the school and, after a very careful examination, which convinced Mr. Abbott of the genuineness of his conversion, he was baptized, provided with books, and returned home rejoicing.
Presently there broke upon the missionary, his students, and the new con- verts, both in Rangoon and BaAsein, a storm of the most violent persecu- tion. Personally, Mr. Abbott was safe from violence, but his house was watched, Karens were prohibited from going thither, and any Karen found holding intercourse with him, or having in his possession any of the" white books" was beaten, imprisoned, put in the stocks, tortared, made to work on the pagoda-grounds, loaded with several pairs of heavy iron fetters and, on a repetition of the offence, threatened with death either by beheading or crucifixion. Mau Yay, Htou Byu, and another student, and Shway 1891.] MODEM MtsS10NAll.1' :M:Alt"VEtS. 881 Weing himself, suffered these cruel punishments, but they held firmly to their faith, though as yet none of them, except the young chief, had been baptized. All witnessed a good confession. They were at last released, but only by the decided action of the British Resident. After his release, Shway Weing wished to take more books to his people. "No," said Mr. Abbott, "you have just escaped with your life. If you I,Ire found with books in your possession now, you would certainly lose your head." " Should so much sooner get to heaven," was his reply.
The Burman Government was evidently in earnest to put down Christianity. Burmese Christians were persecuted as well- as Karens, and, as was their nature, the Burman officials gloated in inflicting the most atrocious cruelties. Yet the Karens could not be prevented from coming to the missionaries and pleading for books and instruction in the way of life, and if arrested and imprisoned they boldly avowed their Christianity. The missionaries found it necessary, for the sake of these poor converts, to remove to Maulmain, which was British territory, but their hearts ached for these poor Karens among whom the Gospel was spreading so rapidly through the efforts of these partially instructed assistants. By the first of January,. 1839, it was reported that more than a thousand of them had become obedient to the faith, and the good work was still progressing. Mr. Abbott was greatly distressed at the very small amount of knowledge which the new converts, and even the assistants, whose training had been so scanty, possessed j but he knew that they accepted Christ in simple faith as their Divine Redeemer. Yet, how to reach these humble disciples, to instruct, examine, and baptize them, and organize them into churches, and train up pastors for them, was a very difficult problem. It was out of the question to accomplish this from Maulmain j the journey by water was too long and dangerous, and that by land through the terrible jungle too perilous j and the Burman officials would prevent them from attempting either route, slaughtering them if necessary. The lower Tenasserim region, Tavoy, Mergui, etc., would be eve'll more inaccessible. For a time in the summer of 1839 there was a lull in the persecution, and the Burman Viceroy at Rangoon thought it would be good policy to favor the Americans, and invited Messrs. Kincaid and Abbott to visit Rangoon, return thither, and commence anew their missionary work in that city. They accepted his invitation, remained there forty days, during which they saw many of the Bassein oon- _ verts. They were satisfied of his friendly intentions and went back to Maulmain, intending to remove with their families to Rangoon in October. But the cruel and bloodthirsty royal tyrant, Tharawadi, was determined to crush Christianity out of Burmah, and almost immediately after the missionaries left Rangoon he summoned the viceroy to Ava, stripped him of all his honors, loaded him with chains, and consigned him to the death prison. In his place he appointed one of the most ignorant and brutal of his officers, with instructions to persecute all ChristIans, Burmans, Talaings, and Karens more violently than ever. All the missiunaries were obliged to escape to Maulmain, and the native churches were scattered.
There was now no alternative for Messrs. Abbott and Kincaid. The Bassein disciples could only be reached from Arakan, a narrow sandy strip of land on the eastern shore of the Bay of Bengal, extending to the western slope of the Yoma range of mountains, and having several good seaports. The land was sterile, the climate sickly, but it was British territory. From Sandoway, Ong Khy-oung, Sinmah, and Gwa harbors, on the Arakan coast, it was possible to cross the Yoma Mountains (here from 8000 to 12,- 000 feet in altitude) by three or four rather difficult passes. The mountains, and even the passes, were covered with a dense jungle inhabited by tigers, leopards, hyenas, rhinoceroses, and elephants, and enormous pythons, cobras, and other vcnomous serpents. Many bands of robbers had their haunts here. The plan decided upon was that Mr. Abbott and his family should remove to Sandoway and thence open communication through the mountain passes with the Bassein converts, who could come to Sandoway for baptism, and the most promising yOung men could be received at his house for study and training as native preachers and assistants. Messrs. Abbott and Kincaid and their families, with several Karen assistants, and the venerable Ko-that-byu, sailed for Arakan in February, 1840; Mr. Abbott and his company landed at Sandoway, March 17th, 1840, while the Kincaids went on to Akyab.
In January, 1840, there were in Bassein more than two thousand Christian Sgau Karens, none of whom had yet been baptized (brought to Christ by the zealous labors of Shway Weing, Mau Yay, Myat Keh, and others), who had avowed themselves Christians for the last one or two years, had led exemplary and pure lives, free from any taint" of heathenism or any sinful practices, and who were anxious to be baptized and organized into churches. Behind these were quite as many more who had abandoned all heathen customs and practices, and were disposed, so far as they knew, to become Christians, and accept Jesus as their Saviour and Redeemer. Of these 4000 or more, probably not more than three or four hundred had e'er heard a Gospel sermon, or seen a missionary; all they knew of the way of salvation had been acquired from the books and tracts which had been read to them, and the teachings of the assistants, whose instruction had been very meagre. They were very ignorant, but they had heard of Jesus, and they were willing to trust in Him and, if need be, to die for Him.
Immediately on reaching Sandoway Mr. Abbott despatched his two assistants over the mountains, to invite the young men to come to him for instruction, and other disciples to come for examination and baptism. Within a month 135 Karens had come in, between thirty and forty of them young men who had come to study for assistants. They continued to come in great numbers, though some lost their way and perished in the jungles. Mr. Abbot.t examined all the candidates carefully, and baptized several hundreds, who were organized into churches. Some of them remammg in Arakan, while others, with the best instructed assistants, after organization, returned over the mountains to Bassein, to establish Christian villages there. He was indefatigable in training native preachers, and they generally proved apt 8cholars. There was much sickness, jungle fever, and cholera, both in his own family and among the students, but the teaching work went on. He also interested the British Commissioner, Mr. (afterward Sir) Arthur P. Phayre, in his Karens, and procured grants of land for villages for them, timber for building, and seed rice for planting, the first year. The persecution was so severe in Bassein, the imprisonment so cruel, and the fines and plundering so crushing, that the poor Karens, in sheer despair, were compelled to fly to Arakan. More than a thousand thus emigrated in 1841-42. They had cleared the jungle and built up pleasant villages, with good chapels and comfortable dwellings when, in 1842, a terrible epidemic of cholera swept over both Arakan and Bassein, and more than a thousand of the converts fell victims to it and to the hardships they were called to endure. Many of the colonists in Arakan werl) so terrified by the pestilence, that they attempted to return to Bassein and perished in the jungle. Mr. and Mrs. Abbott were indefatigable in their attendance upon the sick and dying, and they taught the assistants to be active in these ministrations of mercy. The next year the Bassein disciples came over in great numbers, and the villages which had been deserted were made to blossom as the rose. In order to carry out his plan of instructing the preachers and people as rapidly as possible, and retain an oversight of the churches, Mr. Abbott every winter called the pastors (native preachers and assistants) and as many of the deacons and members of the churches as could come, to meet him at one of the frontier towns in Arakan for a conference of three or four weeks, at which he heard reports from each of the churches, advised them in regard to discipline, and instructed them in the doctrines of the Gospel. On these occasions many were baptized. At the conference of 1843, finding that his labors were to,o great for his strength, he decided to ordain two of the native assistants, in whom, from long acquaintance and thorough examination, he had full confidence. These were Myat Kyau and Tway Po. These were the first ordained preachers among the Sgau Karens of Bas~ein. They proved to be most excellent men, and for ten years they served the churches with great fidelity and success. Within about a year after their ordination, Myat Kyau reported 1550 baptisms and Tway Po nearly 600. Both acted as pastors as well as evangelists. Early in 1845 Mrs. Abbott and two of her children died, and Mr. Abbott was attacked with pulmonary consumption and compelled to sail for England and America. He was absent for two yeaIs, and returned with health still seriously impaired. An associate, Rev. J. S. Beecher, was sent to Sandoway by the Missionary Union. The Bassein-Arakan churches had been under the care of the two native evangelists during his absence.
Mr. Abbott and his associate entered upon their work with great zeal, visiting the association, counselling, instructing, and stimulating the churches to higher endeavor, directing their attention to the heathen around them, and in Northern Burmah, and encouraging them to establish the Karen Home Missionary Society, to sustain their own native preachers as missionaries to the heathen tribes. The tyrant Tharawadi was deposed and dead, and as the new king did not like to lose so many of his taxpaying subjects to the English by emigration, orders were given that the persecution should be relaxed. Under this lull in its fury, Messrs. Abbott and Beecher urged upon the churches that they should support their own native pastors i most of them willingly did this, and only about six hundred rupees ($270) was sent from America for that purpose.' An effort was made to establish elementary schools to teach both children and adults to read the Scriptures in the Sgau Karen language. The Pwo Karens, who had bee. neglected because the missiouaries did not understand their language, were now clamoring for books and teachers-a lack which the Roman Catholics were attempting to supply-and a missionary, Rev. H. L. Van Meter and some native preachers were assigned to them. Mr. Abbott made two very strenuous efforts to enter and settle in Bassein, but was thwarted by treacherous Burmese officials in both. His health again failing, he was compelled to remove temporarily to Tavoy and Maulmain, but labored there in the preparation and printing of Karen tracts and text-books. When the long-threatened second Anglo-Burmese war at last commenced, in 1852, he was on the alert (though very ill) to enter Bassein as soon as it was captured, and though unable to be borne on shore for ten days after his arrival, he spent nearly three months in the city of Bassein (August-October, 1852), receiving, counselling, and directing the native pastors and preachers, as well as the members of the churches. At the beginning of the war, January, 1852, there were over five thousand members in the Sgau Karen churches, and nearly four thousand more professed converts not yet baptized j 55 churches and 54 native preachers, of whom five were ordained. When Mr. Abbott was compelled by the pressure of disease to turn his face homeward, in October, 1852, his parting with the Karens was very distressing. They gathered about his couch weeping and anxious to' minister to him, but overwhelmed with grief that they should see his face no more. He arrived in America !Jarly in 1853, and. though unable to labor, except to some extent with his pen, dwelt in the land of Beulah till the day of his release, in December, 1854. Hp. was but forty-five years of age. Thf; Karens had been driven to take up arms against their oppressors, and the Burmese were full of rage against them. For more than a year after the declaration of peace the Burman dacoits, or guerillas, ravaged every Karen Christian village, burning the chapels and dwellings, plundering the inhabitants of all their grain and other property, torturing, outraging and butchering old men, women, and children, crucifying some of the native pastors, till they were captured and slain by the English troops and their Karen allies. Yet the churches reported at the association in February, 1853, 50 congregations, about forty pastors, and 5000 members.
The year 1854 was one of sad visitations of pestilence and famine, three pastors, including the first two ordained-Myat Kyau and Tway Po– had fallen victims to cholera, and 250 of the members had died. About forty had been excluded-mostly those who, in the stress of suffering and starvation, had robbed or maltreated others-but 519 had been baptized, the greater part new converts, and many Burmans had been led by the Christian lives and fortitude of the Karens to become Cbristians. Mr. Beecher had entered upon tbe work the sainted Abbott had laid down, but his health failed from overwork, his wife had died on her way to America, and an unfortunate misunderstanding with the Missionary Board, or rather the deputation it had sent out in 1852-53, rendered it necessary for him to return to America in February, 1855. He returned in 185'7 with a second wife, a noble and excellent woman j but he came back as a missionary of the American Baptist Free Mission Society, and not of the Missionary Union. Messrs. Yan Meter (the missionary to the Pwos) and Douglas (missionary to the Burmans of Bassein) had given their counsel and assistance to the native pastors during his absence, and the mission had not seriously suffered. The Missionary Union had sent other missionaries to take Mr. Beecher's place, but the Karens would only have their old teacher, and from September, 184'7 to 1866, he devoted all his powers to their service. While maintaining discipline and correcting errors and abuses which had sprung up in his absence, and endeavoring to promote a higher spiritual life, Mr. Beecher recognized as the great duty before him the necessity of promoting a higher education and a greater social and industrial progress than the Karens had yet made. They were now free from the Burman yoke, and while in their villages and churches they should be first of all Christians, he deemed it necessary that they should be also intelligent Christians and should make such progress in social life and industries that they might be qualified to hold their own with the Burmans who had hitherto affected to despise them. Mr. and Mrs. Beecher selected a site for their new mission compound near the city and overlooking it; the British commissioner granted them ten acres, and friends sixteen more, and here, besides the necessary dwellings, Mr. Beecher proceeded to erect the " Sgau Karen Normal and Industrial Institute," in which there should be a vernacular high school, an advanced English school, in which native teachers and assistants should be educated, and an industrial department, in which the pupils should spend three or four hours each secular day in the practice of some of the more useful arts and trades. He had previously greatly en" couraged and increased the attendance upon the elementary schools, which now numbered over eleven hundred scholars, had caused the establishment of four academies, advanced, or, as we should say, grammar schools, in the vernacular tongue, and these, as well as his Normal and Industrial Institute, were erected and supported by the Karens themselves. The cost of the buildings was 4000 rupees, and the contribution!> from the Karen churches had risen from 9586 rupees, in 1860, to 20,666 rupees in 1866. In the same time the Sgau Karen membership had increased from 5501 to 6289, the number of churches from 56 to 70, and the preachers to 109, of whom 18 were ordained. There were 22 evangelists or missi(maries in the various fields. Mr. Beecher's labors in the eight and a half years (1847- 66) which followed were herculean. No three men could have performed them aud have lived. He plead most earnestly with the Free Mission Society (as he had done previously with the A. B. M. U.) for an associate in the educational work, but none was sent till the autumn of 1865, when Dr. ·W. M. Scott arrived without knowledge of the language. It was too late. Mr. Beecher had established the elementary schools and furnished teachers for them; had founded several large academies; had built and organized his threefold Normal and Indust~ial Institute, and superintended all the teaching and training; had maintained his school for native pastors; had ordained 14 native evangelists; had impressed his own lofty character for piety and spirituality upon the 70 native churches; he had done all this and more with only the help of his devoteq wife, but the end had come. About April 1st, 1866, he was smitten down with liver disease, and his physicians gave him but a week to prepare for a homeward voyage. His wife, almost an invalid, and his four little children embarked for England, which they reached September 12th and, after lingering about five weeks at Plymouth, England, he was not, for God took him. He had not quite completed his forty-seventh year.
But though the leaders fall the work must go on. Dr. Scott took charge of the Institute and, in a general way, of the schools. The native evangelists and pastors went on with the churches and the native missionary work till February, 1867, when Rev. B. C. Thomas, an excellent missionary from Hentzada, took Mr. Beecher's place; but for him the work proved too great. He was compelled to sail for America in January, 1868, and, in June, three days after arriving at New York, died, having just passed his forty-eighth birthday.
The old difficulty between the Missionary Union and the Free Mission Society was healed, and the property of the society had been purchased by the Union. Mr. Douglas, who had been in charge after Mr. Thomas left, died of bilious fever in July, 1868, at the age of about forty-six and a half years. Mr. Van Meter, the faithful and efficient missionary to the Pwos, after a lingering illness reached America only to die in August, 1870, not having completed his forty-sixth year, and a year later his wife followed him.
The Karens were thus deprived of all their counsellors and teachers in the past, all of them dying in the prime of life, and at a time when they so much needed the helpful influence and superintendence of an able and accomplished missionary. They had known something of Rev. C. H. Carpenter, then a professor in the Karen Theological Seminary, at R.an~oon" who had visited Bassein and was thoroughly conversant with the Karen language, and they had· applied to the Missionary Union to send him, and had also written in September, ] 868, to Mr. Carpenter himself, asking him to come and be their teacher. The Board of Managers, in November, 1868, cabled to Bassein the message (the first they had ever Bent to Burmsh), " Carpenter transferred to Bassein, Smith to Rangoon."
Mr. Carpenter removed immediately to his new field. lIe was about thirty-three years of age, an accomplished scholar, of wonderful tact and executive ability, and the work he accomplished for Bassein in the next twelve years has never been equalled by any missionary in the world. lIe began by visiting nearly everyone of the Karen churches in Bassein and southern Arakan, and ascertaining all the facts respecting their pastors, their spiritual condition, discipline, educational progress, and social attainments. Of course there were many abuses and errors to be corrected; three or four of the pastors (one of them an ordained man) had fallen: others (a few only) were ignorant and inefficient; the discipline was not thorough, the spiritual condition was generally good, though in some instances there ,was a lack of earnestness j a majority of the mem bers of the churches could neither read nor write j only one in thirty had either the Old or New Testament Scriptures, and many of the schools were not well taught. The social condition, though much higher than among the heathen, was stm too low. With the aid of the leading pastors, some of the best men to be found anywhere, Mr. Carpenter set himself to reform these evils, and to bring the churches up to a high standard of holy Christian living; and he was, in the main, successful; but two of the churches clung to their fallen leaders and went to destruction. There was a genuine revival, and many hundreds of new converts were received into the churches. The schools were greatly improved, the academies made great advancement, and the Bassein Institute founded by Mr. Beecher was again crowded with pupils. But the buildings of the Institute, constructed of cheap jungle wood, and covered with thatch, were sadly dilapidated by their eleven years' wear in that climate, and were in imminent danger of destruction from fire. They must be rebuilt and greatly enlarged, and the buildings, to be nearly fire-proof, must be of teak, with iron-wood posts. Mr. Carpenter had already made his plans for an entire reconstruction of the compound, which was to be graded and laid out anew, with the buildings arranged around a park of fruit and flowering trees in the centre, the erection of school buildings, teachers' houses, and dormitories around this park. With this. plan prepared he addressed the pastors whom he had called in consultation and, after stating the need of the school, asked them to pledge their churches to raise the amount needed (about 6000 rupees) in three years. They were evidently taken aback by this proposition. They had raised considerable sums under Mr. Beecher's leadership, but nothing like this j moreover, they were supporting their pastors, their ~chools, and their missionaries. Why could not the American churches help them in this? Mr. Carpenter met all their objections with infinite tact, and at last persuaded them, though with some hesitation, to make the pledges. The. students in the Institute did the grading, laying out and planting of the trees. These pledges were fulfilled and exceeded. Instead of 6000 rupees they had contributed more than eight thousand before the expiration of the three years, and were ready to go on with a new girls' school building. In 1870 Mr. Carpenter urged upon the pastors and teachers the duty of liberal and systematic giving, and a few days later all the pastors and the teachers in the Institute voluntarily signed au agreement to give to the cause of the Lord not less than one-tenth of their income. This pledge has been maintained ever since. More of the pastors were now ordained, till the whole number was twenty-two. But the work was too exhausting and the pace too rapid for Mr. and Mrs. Carpenter, and at the end of three and a half years they were compelled to return to America for rest and the restoration of their health. They sailed in January, 1872, and returned in 1874, after an absence of about two years. Mr. (now Dr.) Jameson had come as a missionary to the Burmans in 1870, and could not be induced to change to the Karens, but he rendered some assistance, and Mr. Hopkinson; sent out as Mr. Carpenter's associate, came to Bassein in January, 1872. Mr. and Mrs. Van Meter were both dead, and Mr. Goodell had just come as' a missionary to t11e Pwos. There were, therefore, three missionaries who could render some assistance during Mr. Carpenter's absence. On his return, in April, 1874, the Board had appointed him President of the Rangoon Baptist College, but his heart was in Bassein and, convinced that he could ~e more useful and accomplish more for the cause of God there than in Rangoon, he resigned, and in March, 1875, returned to his beloved Karens. At his return he embarked with new zeal on his educational plans. Within two weeks after his arrival the association voted unanimously to raise 20,000 rupees in four years for a large and substantial chapel and boys' school building. The girls' school building, which had cost between 6000 and 7000 rupees (about half of the amount being contributed by the Woman's Baptist Foreign Missionary Society), was completed in October j the baptism of the first Karen convert in Burmah (Ko-thah-byu, a native of Bassein) having occurred May 16th, 1828, the Karens resolved to call their new and great building, which was to be devoted to the education and Chtistianization of the Karens, Ko-thah-byu Memorial Hall, and to dedicate it, free from debt, on May 16th, 1878, the fiftieth anniversary of his baptism. It was a great undertaking for a people so lately rescued from heathenism and semi-barbarism, and among whom there was not one rich or even moderately wealthy man, and where the giving implied great sacrifices; but it was accomplished, I.4nd in three years instead of four the 20,000 rupees of the building fund had become 42,342 rupees in May, 1878, and the other charges and expenses had all been met, including the support of the pastors, the missionaries to other tribes, and the schools, and the heavy expense of the support of these boarding schools, and beyond this these Karens had, in 1874, sent 1000 rupees to their famine-stricken brethren in Toungoo j and, in 1877, while threatened with famine themselves, another 1000 rupees to the perishing Telugus across the Bay of Bengal, who, though of another race, were their brethren in Christ.
They had raised in the ten years, 1868-78, for the erection of permanent buildings for their Industrial Institute and its partial endowment, 82,512 rupees, equal to $36,565. The Institute, as completed, had cost about 150,000 rupees, the difference, except the 3300 rupees of the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society, being made up by friends of the missionaries in Burmah, England, and America. The whole property was made over to the Baptist Missionary Union in trust for the mission.
The whole contributions of the Sgau Karens for mission and educational purposes, from December, 1868, to December,· 1879, eleven years, slightly exceeded 365,000 rupees ($164,250), a sum which, under the circum- stances, was unprecedented in any mission of like extent in the world.
None of the objects they had undertaken to sustain had been suffered to lack j their pastors had been supported, their missionaries among the heathen tribes paid promptly, their chapels rebuilt and kept in good order, the teachers Of the elementary schools, the academies, and the great schools at Bassein, had been supported, and the sustenance for 2.50 boarding schol- ars provided. These schools all received grants-in-aid from the British Government for their excellent teaching, and the blessing of God rested on their faithful work for Him; notwithstanding the defection of two churches, and the dismissal of four others to the Rangoon Association, and the dis- mission of more than five hundrea other members to churches of the same association, the number of churches had increased from 52 to 80 ; of mem- bers from less than 6000 to nearly 8000 (the Pwo churches not being in- cluded as forming an association of their own), and these very largely by conversion and baptism; their preachers and pastors were better educated and were sound in the faith.
To crown their work the Karen pastors proposed to raise an endowment of 50,000 rupees for the Normal and Industrial Institute within seven years, and as usual they exceeded their pledge, raising more than 60,000 rupees in the first three years, and were to make up the amount to 100,000 • rupees by 1890. It can hardly be matter of surp·rise that Mr. and Mrs.
Carpenter were again compelled to leave Bassein, in November, 1880, or that after three or four years of ineffectllal effort to regain their health, he should have gone to a new field in Japan, where, after a year of labor he passed away at the age of about fifty years.
His successor, Rev. C. A. Nichols, is a man like minded with Mr. Car- penter. He has now completed his tenth year of service, and with tho efficient aid of Mrs. Nichols, and four ladies, who are mainly engaged in the ~assein schools, he reports progress along the whole line. Mr. and Mrs. Nichols were compelled to return home on account of ill health, but n in a year and & h1l1f retIJrneq withn~w vigor. hll& been p~ccssar, to enlarge the Ko-thah-byu Memorial Hall and the school-rooms j 400 pupils are in attendance j those who pass the examination for admission have tuition and board free. The village schools have increased to 78, with about 2400 pupils j the churches to 88, with a membership of 8589. (These figures do not include the Pwos, who have 22 churches 'and 1367 members.) There are 79 preachers, of whom 29 are ordained. All the churches, schools, etc., are self-supporting. The contributions of 1889 were *23,000-nearly 60,000 rupees at present rates. The number of baptisms was 404. Of the 100 Sgau Karen villages 83 are Christian villages, with churches and chapels in each. Socially and intellectually, as well as morally, the Sgau Karens are making rapid advances, and are attain· ing to positions of honor and trust. The Government finds them more capable and trustworthy than the Burmans. Such have been some of the results of fifty years of patient and faithful missionary labor. Have we done better here at home Y Canon Scott Robertson has published his annual summary of the funds voluntarily given or bequeathed in the British Isles for the work of Foreign Missions for the year 1889. The calculation shows that the total so given was £1,301,306. Of this sum Canon Scott Robertson estimates that about £670,000, or rather more than one.half, came from members of the Church of England. Although the total for 1889-£1,301,306-is below that for 1888, it is greater than any similar total previous to 1888. The channels of contribution were: Churc!> of England Societies, £523,226 j Joint Societies of Churchmen and Nonconformists, £21'7,963 ; English and Welsh Nonconformist Societies, £364,652 j Scotch and Irish Presbyterian Societies, £185,646 j Roman Catholic SOCleties, £9,819.
The late Henry Thornton, who did not drive from him people who sought subscriptions for mission work as if they were mendicants, as some rich persons are in the habit of doing, in response to an appeal from a visitor, once wrote out a check for £5. Before the ink was dry a telegram was brought to him. He tore open the envelope, read the contents, and turned ' ashy white. He said to his visitor-a clergyman-" I have received some dreadful news. I have lost hundreds of pounds-give me back that check." It was not pleasant to give back the check, and I dare say nine persons out of ten would have cancelled it j but Mr. Thornton, on receiving it back, . altered the" £5" to " £50," saying, " God has just taught me that I may not much longer possess my property, and therefore I must use it well." Did Henry Thornton lose anything by that ~ Did he die a bankrupt 1 No; he continued one of the most prosperous merchants of his day, and consecrated his wealth, his influence, and his time to the Lord Jesm! Christ.- $outh 4mericg,n J(ilflliQnary Ma[lazine. PROTESTANT MISSIONS BEFORE CAREY.
BY REV. DELAVAN L. LEONARD, BELLEVUE, OHIO.
Whatever the reason may have been, certain it is that the great Reformers of the sixteenth century, with all their lofty enthusiasm and holy zeal, were possessed of no pervading and consuming desire to carry the Gospel to the ends of the earth. In the multitude of their perfervid thoughts we find no reference to the sublime privilege, the bounden duty, or the possibility even of making Christ and His salvation known to every creature. This was in part on account of the tremendous pressure of such external hindrances as were named in a former article. It came about also in part because of the fact that their zeal was so largely not evangelistic, but polemic instead-anti-catholic, theological, ecclesiastical. Thus, as we have seen, the range of their intellectual and spiritual vision extended only to the boundaries of Christendom. The Mohammedans-" Turks," as the dreadful word was-were thought of only to be feared and hated, while, as for the heathen, they had no dealings with them, or knowledge of them. In addition, it appears to be well established that miC1sionary fervor was smothered by certain eschatological misconceptions. As many earnest souls read the Scriptures and the signs of the times, not only was the world " very evil," but" the times were waxing late." The Gospel had already reached its extreme limit in terrestrial space and the end of all things was at hand. The world was not to be converted, but was soon to be destroyed. And it has even been suggested, though perhaps without sufficient evidence, that in the fact that from 1540 onward, the papacy, through the Jesuits and other similar orders, was propagating itself with such tremendous vigodn all the new-found regions, the Reformers and their successors, in their intense anti-papal prejudice, discovered a sufficient reason why they should undertake nothing of the sort.
The story of wj:J.at was attempted for the salvation of mankind is so brief as to be most painful and humiliating. In 1555, at the request of the great Coligny, Calvin despatched fourteen pious men to Brazil, of whom, however, only two were clergymen; they went out more as settlers than as heralds of good news, and besides the" mission" met with speedy and utter failure. In 1559 Gustavus Vosa (not the Swedish Church or the Swedish Christians) was moved to send the Gospel to the Lapps, and his successors carried on what he had begun. Churches were built, schools were opened, and in later years relIgious books were translated into the vernacular, but only the slightest spiritual results ensued. And the reason becomes evident when 'we are told that all servir.es were held in Swedish, which the people did not understand, and that in the winter months the population was gathered by royal edict to pay tribute and to be indoctrinated into the faith. For those were the days of universal State and Church. And these few lines contain in outline the entire narrative of Protestant missions undertaken during the first century after the Reformation. And it is well-nigh as brief a8 that famous chapter upon" snakes in Iceland."
l':ROTES'1'ANT MISSIONs BEFORE CAdY
And the record of the seventeenth century is not much better, except as in it we discover the promise, the potency, and the preparation for vastly brighter days to come. And what we find of good omens is almost wholly upon the secular side of human atlairs. Tremendous revolutions, both political and commercial, were at hand, destined in due season to open a door for the introduction of a pure Gospel into remotest continents and islands. For a full hundred years after the immortal achie'ements of Columbus and Magellan and De Gama, Spain and Portugal, both wholly devoted to the pope, had enjoyed an absolute monopoly of discovery, colonization, and trade in all the vast and new-found regions. No other nation had been daring or venturesome enough to trespass upon the boundless spaces of the Pacific, or scarcely to land for purpo'les of traffic upon the Eastern shores of the New World. But finally, through the intoleraole tyranny of Philip II., three Protestant nations, aJ.ld almost at the same time, were stirred to rebellion. And the change which resulted is one of the most momentous in the whole range of human history, greater far in its effects than the sending of Solomon's ships to Ophir, or the voyages and settlements of the ancient Phrenicians, a~d in its relation to the spread of the Gospel every way worthy to be compared with Alexander's conquests in remotest Persia and India, and the countless campaigns of the invincible Roman legions. The. first result was in its nature only military, political, commercial. Supreme power simply passed from Catholic to Protestant hands. But the real divine meaning was world-widespread of Protestant ideas, or later and more especially the dominion of God's most highly honored missionary agency, the Anglo-Saxon race.
The Dutch were the first to poach upon the Portuguese preserves in the East Indies. They had maintained their independence against the utmosthat Philip could do, and having united in his own person the sovereignty of the two kingdoms beyond the Pyrenees, and in order'to punish these doughty Netherlanders whom he could not conquer, he forbade their ships to enter the port of Lisbon, then both entrepot and depot for the spices and all other products both of the East and West. The Hollanders had long been ocean carriers for all Europe, and thus were threatened with ruin utter and without remedy. Nor were they long in concluding that if not allowed to purchase what commodities they wanted nearer home, they would procure these in their native clime, and also at first hand. The annihilation of the Spanish Armada in 1588 supplied the golden opportunity. After three unsuccessful attempts to find a northeast passage by way of Nova Zembla, in 1596, the same year in which Van Linschoten, after fifteen years' acquaintance with the Portuguese and their commerce in Lisbon and the far East, had published a book full of information, containing many maps and charts, giving routes, laying down currents, rocks, harbors, etc., the Houtmann brothers doubled the Cape of Good Hope, and a few months later appeared in Sumatra waters. In 1602 the Dutch East India Company was organized under a charter which ,slJe£fied as one object to be sought the caITying of the Reformed faith to the heathen. In 1605 Van der Hagen, while en ronte, made a lodgment on the Malabar coast in the vicinity of Goa, the Portuguese headquarters in India, and then sailed on to Am- boyna, one of the Moluccas, and captured it. And now followed almost a century of conquest. Batavia was founded in 1619. By 1635 Formosa had become subject to the States, Malacca by 1640, while in 1651 fell the last Portuguese stronghold in Ceylon, and in 1664 the entire Malabar coast had passed into Dutch hands. Also in 1650 a colony had been planted at the Cape of Good Hope as a sort of halfway house on the road to the East.
But alas! we search almost in vain for any display of zeal in proclaiming Christ to the heathen. The Company was purely political and commercial in its designs, and its desires were fastened on something other than missionaries and converts, on spices, to wit, and like treasures, which would bring large financial returns. Ministers, not a few, were sent out, especially in the early years, and some of them were godly men in earnest to do good. The Gospel was preached to the heathen resident in the vicinity of the colonies and factories. The Scriptures were translated into Malay, and also into Cingalese, and printed at the expense of the company. Pagan temples were closed, and Catholic churches were turned to Protestant uses, while an end was put to the celebration of both Buddhist and Romish rites. And, let what occurred in Ceylon and Java stand for the dominant methods of Dutch evangelization. It was given out by the highest civil authority that no favors whatever could be expected from the Government by any who did not accept the Helvetic Confession and receive baptism. But then, as an easy preparation for this sacrament, it was only required that the neophyte should master the Ten Commandments and the Lord's Prayer, and undertake to pray morning and evening, and say grace before and after meals! And behold, eager crowds prcssed into the churches. By the year 1700 there were 300,000 " converts" in Ceylon, which number had increased to 425,000 in 1725. In Java 100,000 received baptism under a similar impulse and upon the same terms, while the process and the spiritual'results were similar in Formosa, Celebes, the Moluccas, etc. And the advance was but slight beyond what the Jesuits had done.
But the best outcome was to follow later. The Dutch conquests in the East made vast populations known to the Protestant world, and eventually' made them accessible to the heralds of a pure faith. Nor in India and the Spice Islands alone, but in the New World as well. For the Dutch West India Company was formed in 1607 ; two years later the Netherlanders made their advent into New York Bay and upon Manhattan Island i early in the same century settlements were planted in Surinam, and in 1621 in Brazil. At l~ast in the country last·named some missionary work was done, for in 1636 an earnest request for eight clergymen was sent home.
In the mean time English sailors also had learned the watery road to the far East and, after long trying in vain to discover a northwest passage, they turned southward, following Magellan and De Gama. In 1577-79 Drake made the circuit of the globe via Cape Horn, traversing the East Indian Archipelago and the Indian Ocean; Stephens penetrated the region of the Spice Islands, 1579-82 by way of the Cape of Good Hope, and Cavendish followed in 1586. The British East India Company was formed in 1598- 1603 under a charter given by King William IlL, and at once sent out the first of a long succession of fleets to trade and to fight, as well as to found colonies. Almost a century followed of warfare with the Dutch for a share of the islands and of the traffic in cloves, cinnamon, and pepper. In 1612 a lodgment was made in India at Surat, whose significance for British do- minion and for the spread of the Gospel did not in the least appear until generations had passed. During all these years English Christians did noth- ing whatever for the introduction of the Gospel into Southern Allia, and even though in the charter of their great Company it was expressly re- quirM that a plentiful supply of chaplains be maintained at all the stations, and it was made obligatory upon these to learn the language, and to give religious instruction to at least such of the natives as were in the Company's employ.
And, in truth, the churches were kept busy at home with vital struggles over kingcraft and episcopacy, or in behalf of sacred liberty both civil and religious. And what slight stock of evangelizing fervor they possessed was expended upon the colonies in the New World.
In the history of modern missions Jamestown and Plymouth will always remain words to conjure with, and the dates 1607 and 1620 will rank with the few which mark the beginning of eras, since they stand for the momen- tous founding of this great Christian nation. In all the early voyages to America under the lead of Raleigh and others, the conversion of the abo- rigines received a mention. Upon the seal of the Massachusetts colony was represented an Indian with extended arms, and the motto, " Come over and help us." As early as 1636 Plymouth took legislaiive action look- ing to the salvation of the pagans living near by. In 1644 the General Court at Boston ordered the county courts "to have the resident Indians in- structed in the knowledge and worship of God," and thus became, in the phrase of a competent historian, " the first missionary society of Protestant Christendom." In 1642 the Mayhews began their apostolic labors upon Martha's Vineyard and neighboring islands, and in 1646 Eliot preached his first sermon to the red men in their own tongue, and by 1663 he had pub- lished his Indian Bible. By the end of the century several thousands had be90me Christian in name, and thirty churches had been gathered. It was in order to aid the New England colonists in these labors of love that twelve ministers petitioned Parliament, and as a result, in 1649, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England was chartered, and for years substantial financial succor was bestowed. There were a few Englishmen of eminence, in that generation, of the spirit and deeds of Robert Boyle, . who for thirty years was pre4!ident of this society, and contributed £300 to its funds, nearly £1000 for various translations of the Bible, and at his death left £5400 "for the propagation of Christianity in infidel and unenlightened nations." It was in this period, too, that Cromwell devised his scheme, which though futile, was yet grand, for uniting all Protestant peoples in an effort to evangelize the entire race, parcelling out the heathen and Mohammedan world among. them.
Two or three almost fruitless attempts on the part of individuals will complete the missionary history of this century. In one of the earlier decades, inspired by Grotius, seven young men of Liibeck were moved to endeavor to rekindle the light of New Testament truth in the midst of the corrupt Oriental churches. One set forth for Jerusalem, but lost his faith while on the journey; another pushed his way into Turkey and seems to have met death by violence, while a third, Peter Heyling, after several failures, is heard of in Abyssinia in 1634, and for years lifted up his voice in witnessing for Christ. Then, in 1664, Von Welz, an Austrian baron, of Ratisbon, his heart burning within him, published two impassioned pamphlets in which he called upon Christians to rise and make haste to seek to save the lost, and proposed"to form the Society of the Love of Jesus. But he excited only ridicule and opposition in Germany, and so took his departure for Holland, gave up his title, was ordained, and sailed for Surinam as a missionary, where he soon died.
And thus two hundred years of Protestant history passed with only these attempts, so few, so feeble and sporadic, to carry the glad tidings abroad. The missionary dawn was yet almost a century away, but presently a few cheering tokens of the morning were to appear. Just now, and for forty years to come, Denmark is the centre of missionary activity, and with its King Frederick IV. to lead. Ai seems probable, it was' by his chaplain Liitkens that this monarch was moved to send one message of salvation to various dependencies of the Crown. Searching for fit persons, when none could be found at home, recourse was fortunately had to those godly men Francke, at Halle, and Spener, at Berlin, and at length two young men were found willing to go. Great opposition was met with in Germany on the ground that missions were neither necessary nor proper, and so difficult was it to establish their orthodoxy before a court of Danish theologians, that the candidates were ordained only at the imperative command of the king. But finally, and after a tempestuous voyage of forty w~eks, in July of 1706, these pioneers of the Gospel among the millions of Hindostan, Ziegenbalg and Plutscho, began their arduous labors at Tranquebar. Incredible difficulties awaited them, and not only from the nations, but even more from godless Europeans, and from the local authorities, by whom they were thrown into prison. But in spite of all they held on, mastered the language, preached without ceasing, and translated the Bible into Tamil. King Frederick never failed them, but sent an annual allowance of £300, which later was increased to £450. In 1709 came a reinforcement of three more from Halle, and the London Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge sent a printing-press as well as a liberal donation of money, the first gift of a long series. Before the death of Ziegenbalg, in 1719, Schultz had come to India, another man of God as gifted and devoted, to take up his work, and in 1750 Schwartz made his advent, who possessed not only gifts and graces truly apostolic, but the powers also of an accomplished scholar and statesman. By him and his helpers the work was enlarged upon every side, and it is estimated that by the end of a century not less than 50,000 converts had been made.
In 1714 this same Danish king established a college of mi!!sions. Two years later he opened a mission is Lapland. And it was during these same years that in northern Norway the soul of Hans Egede was pondering a great question night and day. For thirteen years the Macedonian cry had sounded in his ears j he longed to undertake something in behalf of the perishing in Greenland, and sought eagerly for means to betake himself thither. He petitioned Frederick for aid, and in 1717 resigned his pas- torate is Waagen and made his way to Copenhagen. And finally, by sheer persistence having conquered every obstacle, he set forth in 1721 and en- tered upon a fifteen years' course of spiritual and physical suffering, with but slight measures of success attending.
And now the Christian world was to behold yet another notable step forward in the sublime march of missionary progress. And this al~o was closely connected with Denmark, King Frederick, and Francke. The Renewed Moravian Church had been in existence at Herrnhut only ten years, and numbered but some six hundred souls, when Zinzendorf, who had felt profoundly the influence of the pietistic movement which centred in Halle and Berlin, paid a visit to Copenhagen at the coronation of Christian VI. While there he heard that the settlements which had been maintained in Greenland, being financially unprofitable, were to be broken up and the missionaries called home, and. he also saw two Eskimo converts whom Egede had baptized. Moreover, it came to his knowledge that the sister of a negro whom he met was a slave in St. Thomas, and with other wretched beings was famishing for the Bread of Life. This tiny mustardseed had fallen into soil most fruitful, and was destined to bear a plentiful harvest. The story was repeated. in' Herrnhut, and in a few months five heroic messengers of peace were ready and eager to endure all and risk all for Christ, whether at the frozen north or under the tropics, and in the latter case expecting success only at the cost of suffering themselves to be sold into life-long slavery, and ready to die if only able to save a single soul! And such was the inspiring and most remarkable genesis of Moravian missions. Nor has the spirit changed, nor hass halt been called from that day to this. This little church went on in faith and love to start" more missions in twenty years than all the Protestant churches together had in two hundred." Dr. Warneck justly deems Francke and ·Zinzendorf " the fathers of the modern mission to the heathen." And further, he declares of the latter that" He is the first in modern times on whose heart lay day and night the desire that all the ends of the earth might see the salvation of God."
We come now to a great gap extending from Zinzendorf to Carey. For full sixty years not a single new missionary undertaking was set on foot. A few societies were formed in Britain which were evangelistic or semi-evangelistic in their character. Among them is found the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, dating from 1698, and which for a century and more supplied .Ziegenbalg and his successors with the sinews of war. And the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, chartered by King William in 1701, which afterward sent out John Wesley to Georgia. The first year its income was but £1535, and a full century afterward had risen only to £6407! The Scottish Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge followed in 1709, one of whose mission- aries, David Brainerd, in later years became. A few honored names can be mentioned of those who undertook to carry forward the work which Eliot and the Mayhews had begun during the century preceding. Such as Horton, who labored among the Indians upon Long Island. And Sergeant, who, in 1734, gave up a tutorship in Yale College and removed to Stockbridge to gather the scattered Mohegans and preach to them the Gospel, and whose successor Jonathan Edwards became in 1750-56. Brainerd was in labors abundant, 1744-47 in New Jersey and Eastern New York, as well as Kirkland among the Oneidas from 1764 onward. When, in 1766, Whittaker and Occum visited England in behalf of an Indian school at Lebanon, Conn., they easily raised £12,000 among the churches.
A few words will suffice to tell of the territorial growth during the eighteenth century of Great Britain through her colonies and her commerce, and that both in the West and the East. The Seven Years' War was of slight significance to the powers of Europe, but was of import unspeakable to the Christian world. For it ga,'e to PItt the peerless QPportunity to end for- ever, at Quebec, in 1759, the dominion of Catholic France in the New World, and in the East Indies as well by the battle of Plassey and the fall of Pondicperry. The Dutch, too, were largely expelled from their Eastern possessions, finally retiring from Ceylon in 1795. In the mean time, 1769-79, Cook's voyages of discovery had been made, so big with results to Christian missions.
Along with all this much-needed material preparation had gone forward for fifty years the marvellous revival work under the WesJeys and Whitefield, and their coadjutors, by which all Britain had been profoundly stirred and, as well; all countries adjacent. And the overwhelming and most blessed effects of that greatest effusion of the Spirit since Pentecost, scarcely less important to Christendom than the Reformation it~elf, had even crossed the Atlantic, and was renewing the religious life of the colonies from Georgia to Maine. In the momentous campaign about to begin against heathenism in all the world, not German or Scandinavian, but Anglo-Saxon Protestantism was to lead, and in Carey's bones the holy fire Lad already begun to burn.
ONE '1'tlOtJSAND MORE MISSIONAnt'ES Iron clItNA
ONE THOUSAND MORE MISSIONARIES FOR CHINA.
BY REV. A. P. HAPPER, D.D.
The churches should not forget the call sent forth by the General Mis- sionary Conference at Shanghai, in May, 1890, for 1000 missionaries for China within the next five years. For definiteness these five years may be understood to mean the years 1891-95. This implies 200 missionaries for each of these five years. Many of the friends of missions are ready to inquire, Why does the Conference call for so many for China when there are so many other countries needing missionaries ~ In this paper I wish to present some of the reasons for calling for 1000 missionaries for this great empire, and also give some of the reasons for the urgency of the call.
The first and most obvious reason for asking for so many is because the population of China is so numerous. There is no reliable census of the in- dividual population of this empire. The enumeration which is made by the Government is made with reference to taxation, and has reference to the households. When the number of the households is known, then the estimated number of the population will depend upon the number which may be fixed upon as the average of each household. Some compilers of statistics fix upon one number and some upon another. This is one reason that the estimates of the population of China differ so widely. Some esti- mate the population to number 250,000,000, some 300,000,000, some 350,000,000, and some as high as 400,000,000. If we take 334,000,- 000 to be the population of China, then it contains one-third of the non- Christian populations of the world, which is estimated to be 1,000,000,000. It is well known by all the friends of missionary work that not nearly one- third of the number of Christian workers in heathen lands is in China. In round numbers, and for the sake of definite statements at this present time, there is' only one missionary-taking the number of missionaries to be 1295, including men and women-to every 250,000 people. There is only one male missionary to every 283,000 of the male population, and one female missionary to every 239,000 of the female population. 'There is oulyone medical missionary for every 3,340,000 of the population. The . number of missionaries now in China is, therefore, utterly insufficient for the conversion of China to Christ. The number of missionaries now in China is less in proportion to the number of the people than the number of the other non-Christian lands. Hence the cull of the missionaries now in the field to the churches in Clnistian lands for this' reinforcement of Christian workers in this populous field.
A second reason for this call for 1000 missionaries for China is thi~. When the foundations have been laid, and the work in the various departmen1~ of work ha~ been commenced, doubling the number of the work!'r~ in- creases the results in some things threefold, in some things 8CV(,lIfold, alHl in some things seventeen-fold. The Rev. N. G. Clarke, D.D., Secretary of the American Board, in the annual survey of the operations and results of the year 1890, summarizes some of the results of the twenty-five years during which he has acted as secretary. During these twenty.five years the number of missionaries has increased from 223 to 533, which is twofold and thirty-nine hundredths more. But with this increase of missionaries the stations have increased in the same time from 342 to 1058, which is nearly threefold. The native pastors have increased from 60 to 173, or nearly threefold. The number of students in high schools and seminaries has increased from 437 to 7780, which is more than seventeen-fold. The number of these high schools and seminaries has increased from 18 to 122, which is an increase of sevenfold. The number of church-members has increased from 5247 to 36,256, which is nearly sevenfold. And the contributions of church-members have increased from $10,000 to $117,000, which is more than elevenfold. If the churches desire to see results of Christian work on the foreign field multiplied, the most direct way to effect that object is to increase the number of missionaries on the fields when the work is already commenced and the foundations laid.
A third reason for asking this addition to the missionary force is this: In every properly planned and conducted mission the work naturally en- . larges and expands, and requires an additional number of persons to follow it up and utilize these opportunities. If this is not done there is an obvious waste and a failure to improve the facilities of increase and enlargement which the labor already bestowed has secured. Hence, if the churches would properly secure the full results of Jabor already performed, they must increase the number of workers so as to properly improve every facility and opportunity secured by the labor of the laborers already in the field.
But besides the reasons already stated there are some considerations that should be specially regarded as reasons for increasing the missionary force in China. In this land there is a regularly organized government, which affords protection to life, and property, and residence in the midst of this multitudinous people. There are safe and convenient modes of travel to all parts of the country. It is true that the conveyances to the most distant places are not steamboats or railroads. But the native boats are safe and comfortable, though they are slow. The wheelbarrows and carts are not liable to accidents or overturnings. There are also safe and reliable facilities for sending 1ll0ney and other supplies to the most distant stations inland. There are everywhere houses that can be rented and used for residences, school-rooms, opium refuges, and preaching halls. Clothing, when using the native costume, can everywhere readily be obtained. Every yariety of food is abundant and comparatively cheap, and the fuel ,and facilities of cooking it always at hand. The climate is everywherp. comfortable and healthful, so that missionaries everywhere enjoy a fair degree of health and energy, and many live to an advanced age. The protection pf thc :Britjsh, German, /lnd tmericlln GoyeJ1lments is enj'oyed by their I respective citizens when laboring as missionaries in every part of this ex- tended country. The most cursory consideration of these statements show what special facilities are enjoyed for the prosecution of missionary laborers in China, as compared with Africa, the interior of Asia, or the Pacific Islands. These arc providential orderings that the churches should thankfully avail themselves of.
There are still other and yet more important facilities, that indicate that the Lord has prepared a highway for the introduction and spread of the Gospel among this people. This vast multitude read and understand one and the same written and printed language. The Bible, the whole Bible, is translated and published in this language, which is thus read among these 334,000,000 of people. There are also facilities for printing the sacred Scriptures in the Chinese language to any desirable extent. Ten millions of copies can be printed every year if the churches furnish the money to print them and the missionaries to distribute them. But not only is the written language the same all over the country, but the same spoken language is understood throughout two-thirds of the whole land. The missionaries who acquire the knowledge of this spoken language can travel through whole provinces, with 10,000,000 of inhabitants, preach- ing the glad news of the Kingdom. In the other third of the land there are. some ten different dialects; but each of these dialects is spoken by some 10,000,000 of people. The missionary, therefore, who acquires the s knowledge of anyone of them has 10,000,000 of people amon whom he can labor; and he will find ample scope for his most untiring labors, with every needed assistance. The whole Bible has been translated and pub- lished in all these several dialects, as well as in the general language of the whole country. But not only has the whole Bible been thus translated and published in the language of the whole country and of the several dialects, but compends of theology, religious books, commentaries on many of the books of the sacred Scriptures, religious tracts, school-books in geography, arithmetic, and other branches, and scientific, medical, and historical works have been prepared and published. High schools, academies, colleges, dispensaries, hospitals, and theological seminaries have been commenced and buildings erected. Common schools, Sunday-schools, church organizations, ecclesi- astical courts, and native associations for Christian work and co-operation in evangelistic work are in operation. Books for assisting in the study of the language, ~s grammars, phrase.books, dictionaries, conversation-books of great excellence and usefulness have been prepared and published.
Printing and publishing establishments, with all the various requirements for casting matrices, type-cutting, electrotyping, stereotyping, etc., are all provided, suitably housed, and have native workmen trained for all the various kinds of work.
With all these facilities and preparations on hand, the addition of mis- ~ionaries provides for extensiOIl and enlargement in every part of lllis&ionary work; for all these different departments of work admit of easy and indefinite enlargement and expansion, just in proportion to the number of missionaries sent. In the interest, therefore, of a wise economy, healthy growth, and rapid advancement, the Conference have asked for these 1000 missionaries within five years. Two hundred additional workers are very urgently needed each successive year for the work already commenced. And for the portions of China yet unreached and where work has never yet been commenced, yet a greater number is needed in order to hasten the conversion of China to Christ. We Christians pray that China may be converted to Christ. Our actions should correspond to our prayers. We may not expect the Lord to convert China by any miraculous means. We must, therefore, employ means adequate, by the Divine blessing to effect the prayed-for result.
r will only refer to two other considerations in conclusion. The Saviour's command is to " Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature." Here are tens of millions of onr fellow men who have never heard the glad news of salvation. The door is wide open, the opportunities and facilities for obeying the command of our Lord are very great. Every consideration of loyalty to our Divine Master, and every incentive of love and ~on&ecration to our gracious and adorable Redeemer, who has redeemed us with His own precious blood, bind us, and should impel us to carry out this last command of our risen and ascended Saviour.
The other consideration is this: Weare responsible for this present generation who are living at the same time with ourselves. They are dying at the rate of 12,000,000 every year, or 33,000 every hour. We cannot, with our most energetic efforts, reach them all. But let us seek to reach as many of them as we possibly can during our lifetime. Let each and everyone do what he can. Let each one" do with his might what his hand findeth to do." Let us make the golden rule our rule of action in this matter, " Whatsoever ye would that others should do to you, do ye even so to them." It is very easy for us to arrive at the matter of duty. If we were in their condition, without the knowledge of the way of salvation through Jesus Christ, what would we wish those to do to us, who have that precious blessing 1 There is only one answer to such a question. vVe would wish them to impart it to us. Let us then strive with all our might to do this to those who have it not.
CANTON, January 6, 189l. It is said, upon the – au-t~ ho~r- it- y~o~ f -h-is– m-a- na-ger, Major Pond, that Mr; Stanley has decided to give the many articles presented to him by European authorities to General Booth, in furtherance of the latter's scheme for the benefit of East London. Should the rumor prove correct, the action of the distinguished explorer will go far to prove the strength and reality of the impressions made upon him vrhen in African wilds beyond human help; and to set an example of the sacrifice of our superfluities, in view of the necessities and extremities of the poor.
STUDENT VOLUNTEERS' CONVENTION
STUDENT VOLUNTEERS' CONVENTION.
BY MAX WOOD MOORHEAD, ESQ.
The first Convention of the Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions was held at Cleveland, 0., February 26th to March 1st. It was a unique conference. In the history of missions no such gathering ever assembled in our land or any other land. Its ultimate aim was to promote the cause of foreign missions. Upward of five hundred young men and young women, representing 159 educational institutions in the United States and Canada, were present. Nearly every heathen land where the cross has been uplifted had its advocate in the person of a returned foreign missionary. Secretaries' from various denominational boards and societies gave counsel in private, and participated in discussions in public. "It was to be expected," some one said, " such an occasion would give rise to extravagance in speech and action." But, on the contrary, the occasion was marked by rare moderation, but moderation compatible with zeal and glowing enthusiasm. Mr. John R. Mott presided with great tact and skill at all the meetings.
PERSONNEL.
The following are among those present who made aJdresses or engaged in discussions: Rev. H. N. Cobb, D.D., ReforJIled Church in America: George D. Dowkontt, M.D., International Medical Missionary Society; Rev. F. F. Ellinwood, D.D., Board of Foreign Missions of Presbyterian Church, U. S. A.; Rev. J. T. Gracey, D.D., International Missionary Union; Rev. J. N. Murdock, D.D., American Baptist Missionary Union; R. R. McBurney, Chairman Foreign Missionary Committee of International Committee Y. M. C. A. j Rev. D. C. Rankin, Foreign Mission of Presbyterian Church in United States; Mrs. N. M. Waterbury, Woman's Baptist Foreign Missionary Society; Professor H. H. Harris, Southern Baptist Convention; Rev. Judson Smith, D.D., American Board; Rev. Alexander Sutherland, D.D., Methodist Church in Canada; Rev. George D. Scholl, D.D., Evangelical Lutheran Board; Rev.J. O. Peck, D.D., Missionary Society Methodist Episcopal Church; Mrs. S.B. Capron, Woman's Board of Interior, Congregational; Miss Abbie B. Child, Woman's Board of Missions, Congregational. Turkey, Rev. Frank Gates. Africa, C. J. Laffin, the Congo field. Rev. George A. Wilder, the Zulu field. China, Rev. John L. Nevius, D. D., Rev. and Mrs. F. A. Steven. India, Rev. F. P. Graham, Rev. Henry Forman. Japan, Rev. Kajinosuke Ibuka, Rev. W. R. Lambeth, D.D. South America, Rev. J. M. Allis, Chili; Rev. George W. Chamberlain, D.D., Brazil. Rev. A. T. Pierson, D.D.; S. M. Sayford, Esq.; Mr. R. C. Morse, General Secretary International Committee of Y. M. C. A.
But what; some one asks, is this Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign M.issions 1 What do~&it stand for? Whl-1t did it '~t~rt from 1 ITS ORIGIN.
Come with me to Princeton College back in 1883, and there we find a society the object of which was the cultivation of a missionary spirit among the students of the college, and the informing of its members in all subjects of missionary interest, especially tho leading of men to consecrate themselves to foreign mission work. The pledge, " We the undersigned declare ourselves willing and desirons, God permitting, to go to the unevangelized portions of the world," was embodied in our constitution. Mr. Robelt P. Wilder said at the Convention: "I can remember all if it were but yesterday the fellows sitting in a semi-circle facing the foldingdoors upon which was extended the map of the world. My father would point to his thirty years' experience as a foreign missionary and press home the biblical argument for missions, the need for workers, and the privilege of personally enlisting in the service. After hi~ appeals the old missionary would withdraw and we would kneel in prayer. In an adjoining room, unknown to any but myself, there was another praying; when the service was finished we two would slip off together and talk it all over. God alone knows how much those meetings in our parlor owed their success to the prayers of my sister, now engaged in missionary work in India; and well do I remember her saying just before I started for Mount Hermon, in July, 1886 : 'I will pray for a missionary revival among the college students where you are going.' "
As the days passed at Mount Hermon the conviction grew on Mr. Wilder that God would call, from that large gathering of college men a few, at least, who would consecrate themselves to the foreign mission service.
On the evening 'of July 16th a special mass meeting was held, at which Dr. Arthur T. Pierson gave a thrilling address on missions. He supported by the most convincing arguments the proposition that" all should go, and go to alL' 'This was the keynote which set many men to thinking and praying.
Several days before t}le conference closed a meeting was held which may occupy as significant a place in the history of the Christian Church as the famous Haystack Prayer-meeting, at Williams, so many years ago.
It is known as the " meeting of the ten nations." It was addressed by sons of missionaries in China, India, and Persia, and by seven young men of different nationalities-an Armenian, a Japanese, a Siamese, a German, a Dane, a Norwegian, and an American Indian. The J'lddresses were not more than three minutes in length, and consisted of appeals for more workers. Near the close, each sreaker repeated in the language of his country the words, "God is Love." Then came a season of silent and audible prayer, which will never be forgotten by those present. The burning appeal!! of this meeting came with peculiar force to all.
From that night on, the missionary interest deepened. One by one the men, alone in their rooms, and in the woods with their Bibles and God, fonght out the battle with self and were led to decide to carry the Gospel "unto the uttermost part of the earth." Before the meeting closed, exactly one hundred signified their desire to become foreign missionaries.
The enthusiasm, enkindled at Mount Hermon five years ago, has communicated itself to students all over the United States and Canada j and to-day" the movement numb'ers ~200 men and women on its rolls. Well may ex-President McCosh, of Princeton University, ask: "Has Imy such offering of living young men and women been presented in our age, in our country, in any age 'or in any country since the day of Pentecost r' In days whcn the Church of God is charged, and justly charged, with ignoring or dilltorting the teaching of Jesus about the power of the Holy Ghost for service, it is a noteworthy fact that the theme of Dr. A. J. Gordon's address, "The Holy Spirit in Missions," was the subject emphasized as most important by nearly all present. Said Dr. Gordon: "Here is something given as a direct duty. 'Bc ye filled with the Spirit.' How can I ~ some one asks. The answer is often made, You must empty yourself before you can be filled with the Holy Ghost. But who is sufficicnt to empty himself ~ I believe God's way is the expulsive power of a new affection, throwing off and casting away the old which we cannot rid ourselves of. There are two ways of emptying a tumblerful of water j you can turn it upside down, or you may drop quicksilver into it, drop by drop, until all the water will have gone out." . •. " I believe that just as certain as wind is the power that drives ships, just as certain as water is the power that moves the ponderous wheels of the Merrimac and Connecticut rivers, just as surely as steam is the power that makes the mighty steamship plough the great deep, so explicitly, by Divine appointment, the Holy Ghost is the power that moves the Church." • . • One who studied under Fletcher, of Madeley, says: "Fletcher was an admirable teacher. We had our Greek, and our Hebrew, and our theology. Then he would close his book and say, 'Young men, Hebrew, Greek, theology are very important. We have attended fully to these things for two hours. Now those of you who want to seek the power of the Holy Ghost, follow me.' And he would lead Ol1t that whole class into another room where," says this pupil, " we would often stay for three hours wrestling in prayer for the Holy Ghost, being told that all other learning was powerless without this." Referring to the promise of the gift of the Holy Ghost, he said, in closing, " Let us go back to tho experience of that admirable writer (David Brainerd) whom I quoted in the beginning. He says, 'This promise is for us j it is right that we should claim it. It is proper that we should plead it now. It is right that we should look for the fulfilment of it immediately.' "
From the frank criticism that was invited by the Student Voll1nteer Movement for Foreign Missions-criticism of its methods and agencies employed in the propagation of itR work-it must have been evident to the intelligent observer that the volunteers had not a'lsembled in order to con-' gratulate one another, or with the expectation of hearing laudatory things said by outsiders.
PROBLEMS OF THE MOVEMENT.
On " Volunteer Life in Individual Institutions," Mr. Robert E. Speer, of Princeton Theological Seminary, expressed his opinion that every volun- , tecr should be, above everything else, the best Christian in his or her insti- tution. He or she should be the best personal worker, the bellt Bible stu- dent, so far as possible, the best student in every way that can be found in that place. But apart. from that, that individual life should b~rn also with a zeal" that cannot be quenched, with an intelligent zeal for spreading the Gospel in all the world.
On " Classification of Volunteers," ~Ir. Walter J. Clark, Corresponding Secretary, made the following statement regarding the distribution of volunteers: (1) In institutions of learning, 2600 : Academies, 500 ; normal schools, 175 ; theological seminaries, 500; colleges, 1200; medical colleges, 125; training schools, 100. (2) Out of institutions (owing to state of health, insufficient means, etc.), 700. (3) 'Graduates (post-graduates, special students, etc.), 600. (4) Ready to go, 100. (5) Appointed (not including class of 1891), 20. (6) Hindered, 250~ (7) Unknown (large majority of these lost trace of before the movement ,vas organized), 450. (8) Rejected by boards, 50. (9) Renounced, 450. (10) Deceased, 60. (11) Not students when enrolled, 600. In addition, at least 320 out of the 6000 volunteers have already gone to the foreign fields under the various missionary agencies.
[A noted foreign missionary recently said that not more than two per cent of those who volunteered in a missionary revival ever sailed. But already over five per cent of the members of this movement have sailed; and fully ten per cent of the Canadian contingent.] The importance of " Immediate Sailing" found a warm supporter in the person of Mr. William H. Cossum. He said he believed if these people (referring to the heathen) need help at all they need help immediately. " Don't stay in this country theorizing when a hundred thousand heathens a day are dying without hope because we are not there teaching the Gospel to them." Furthermore he said that the one thing which will secure the immediate sailing of the man who is a volunteer is the heart interest of that volunteer in the ·field to which he is going.
Robert P. Wilder, on the ".Volunteer Pledge," said: " , Man, of all luggage, is the hardest to move.' To ~how a man his sinfulness is comparatively easy; to move him to act is the most difficult part of evangelistic work. The head heeds the admonition ; the heart postpones assent. The princi.ple of decision is operative in successful work among Christians. One speaker impresses upon his audience the importance of Bible study, but presents no plan, and pleads for no decisions ; the other secures pledges and organizes a class. 'When the nail of conviction is driven in, he clinches it with a practical twist.' Should not the same plan be pursued in missionary meetings to secure prayer, money, and men ~ General appeals for prayer do good. But is not more accomplished by organizing prayer groups, whose members are pledged to pray for definite obje'!ts ~ Why not employ the same method in securing men for missionary stationR ~ The pledge of the Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions means more than a willingness to go anywhere; it signifies a purpose to enter foreign service. On the other hand, meu, by signing it, do not take their lives into their own control; the signers are still under God's direction; they will not become foreign missionaries unless He permit. The pledge means, We are fully determined to become foreign missionaries unless God block the way."
Mr. Wilder argued for the retention of the pledge as it now reads, on the ground that it adequately meets the requirements of the case, and that any alteration would seriously imperil the unity of " the movement." He demonstrated so ably that the existing pledge is the best possible one, that all his objectors were silenced, and convinced also, we trust. The old pledge was retained.
Stretched along one of the galleries in the auditorium of the Young Men's Christian Association Building, where the meetings were held, was a canvas on which was printed the watch· cry of the movement, " The Evan- gelization of the World in the Present Generation. "
" This does not mean," said Mr. Speer, in his address of Friday even- ing, "the conversion of the world; it does not mean the Christianization of the world. It does mean that every volunteer believes that in this gen- eration the Gosp~1 can be so presented to the world that the responsibility for the salvation of the inhabitants of the world will rest on the inhabitanttl themselves. " Mr. Speer said that the evangelization of the world in this generation is possible, because, 1st, the Church has the agencies; 2d, she has'the means; 3d, she has the men.
" A young doctor, not a Christian, said to me the other day, 'How is it that the Church wastes so much energy on the work abroad, when there is so much to be done in this land of ours r I asked him what he would consider a fair proportion of workers to keep in this land, and a fair pro- portion to send abroad. He said : 'I suppose two-thirds here and onc- third abroad would be treating ourselves fairly.' If we sent one-third of our workl'fs abroad and kept the other two-thirds at home, we would more than . tenfold multiply the ordained missionaries in the heathen fields from all the Christian nations in thc world, and it would be sending 400,000 lay workers out into the foreign world. If we did what an unbelieving doctor . said would be only a fair proportion to do with reference to this work, would it not he possible if 400,000 missionaries went out in the next twenty. five years, each having, out of the thousand million people in this world only 2500 to reach, speaking to only one a day in eight years, to evangelize the world before we die ~" ' Mr. Speer spoke in a way which gained a powerful hold on the minds and the hearts of his auditors. He showed himself to be a man of unusual gifts; but his power is not in close reasoning, nor in exquisite diction, nor in the music of a pleasing voice. He has, as one man said, " an unction from the Holy One."
The appearance of the well-known figure, Rev. Arthur T. Pierson, ' D.D., was the signal for applause from the students. His theme was ., The Evangelization of the World in this Gcneration-How Made a Fact." He gave" Men, Money, and Methods as the three great elements of the natural basis of the evangelization of the world, and the command of God and the presence of Jesus Christ as the two things which enter into the supernatural basis." To illustrate how the world might be evangelized if people would contribute only a small part of the money used for luxuries, the speaker held up a marquise ring set with seven diamonds, which had been brought to him by a young lady after hearing his sermon on the text, " If there be first a willing mind, it is accepted according to that a man hath, and not according to that he hath not." Why should not we show a spirit of enterpri~e in the Church such as the world shows in all business schemes 1 What is the matter with the Church, that in this nineteenth century she has scarcely one of those great master agencies which men use to carry their inventions to the ends of the earth 1 Why should we not have a great Church exploration society, and go forward and pioneer the way into destitute fields 1 Why should we not have a great transportation society to carry missionaries to other fields without cost g 'What is the reason that you will find the sewing-machine, the parlor organ, the kerosene lamp, and the circlet of glass beads in districts where as yet the Gospel of Jesus Christ has never been carried by its heralds 1 "I solemnly believe, and I say it with the emphasis of a dying man, that if the Church of to-day would resolve that the year 1891 should not go by until she had sent at leaRt one representative of Christ and Ris Gospel into every destitute district on the face of the earth, so that there should be no district a hundred miles square that should not be represented by one witness for Christ, before the year 1891 passed by there would be an outpouring of the Holy Ghost to which even Pentecost was simply the first drops of a coming latter rain."
REQUIREMENTS OF MISSIONARY SOCIETIES.
Rev. J. N. Murdock, of the American Baptist Missionary Union, said that the first thing we must have in a missionary candidate is good health. We want the man of sound nerves, of reasonable muscles, of good stomach. We also want men of good common sense-not simply mental ability, but we want the roundaboutness of common sense. We want the men who are sonnd in faith and possessed of missionary convictions.
Rev. Dr. McLean, Secretary of the Missionary Board of the Church of the Disciples, said that what was wanted was not so many cultivated men, or uncultiYated men. but men of common sense, thoroughly consecrated to the work, and not only that, but men who were adapted to it. Rev. F. A. Steven, Secretary of the China Inland Mission, Toronto, said that he deemed thorough college education of the highest importance next to piety -education always stands first because it carries in its wake confidence and admiration. and a trained mind is always the most capable. Rev. H. N. Cobb, l).D., Secretary of the Reformed Church in America, said: "If anyone had ever felt that he was called by God to the work, no amount of impediment or non-8uccess should in any wise dishearten him." Rev. Dr. Peck, Secretary of the Methodist Missionary Board, on the subject" Mode of Application," said that in order to be successful each applicant should f(>el a clll so urgent that he would be determined to go somewhere, whether he was sent by the board or not. The" Volunteer's Preparation" was presented by Rev. F. F. Ellinwood, D.D. Said he: "A missionary must be thoroughly acquainted with every part of his work. We must study the heathen system, and in studying it do it to find 0.1t just where the weak points are that they may be replaced by the Word of God. We must remember that this is an intellectual age, and many bright minds and pithy questions will have to be met with and answered. ,.
At the opening of one of the evening services Mr. S. M. Sayford announced that $700 had been voluntarily contributed to the expenses of the movement. He stated that all expenses up to the present time have been exclusive of salaries, as no salaries have been paid to officers of the movement. After prayer a collection was taken and it was found that the offering had increased to $1200. Besides pledges, coin, and bills, were passed in a gold watch-chain and a gold ring which the inscription said had been given to some boy by his mother.
" The Work (If the Young Men's Christian Association in Foreign Lands" was the subject of Mr. R. R. McBurney's address. He gave an account of the growth of Young Men's Christian Association work in Tokyo, Japan, where between sixty and seventy thousand students are gathered each year. He stated that the National Committee of the Young Men's Christian Association were empowered to establish such associations and place such secretaries in the foreign mission field as in its judgment may be proper. "We are receiving," said he, "urgent appeals from cities in India to aid in this work, and what we want is money j the men are ready to go."
Mr. Allis, of Santiago, Chili, gave the following advice to young missionaries: "First, cultivate your own piety j second, learn your own denominational methods j third, master the language; fourth, be selfreliant; fifth, go out married; sixth, select a wife who will be suited with her lot j seventh, take care of your health."
SERVICES OF THE CLOSING DAY.
The spirit of devotion deepened _very perceptibly as the sessions of the conference drew to a close. The Sunday morning meeting will be remem- bered for all time as one of great preciousness. Each person prayed for himself or herself, and words of humble confession alternated with utter- ance of joyous praise. The leader spoke of the Christian's ambition 1. To preach the Gospel where Christ is not already named. Romans 15 : 20.
2. Study to be quiet. 1 Thess. 4 : 11. 3. Study to be well pleasing in His sight. 2 Tim. 2 : 15. Mr. Robert P. Wilder, on Sunday evening, spoke on " The Perils and Privileges of the Student Volunteer Movement." Identified as he is with the history of the movement more completely than any other man, and known and loved by so many hundreds of volunte~rs, he was singularly adapted to speak on this difficult subject. "The three perils," Mr. Wild- er said, "were: first, lack of funds; second, opposition from friends; third, selfishness within the volunteer's heart." Concerning opposition from friends he said: "The most serious peril is that presented by homo ties. The windt! of oppo~ition from father and mother have changed tho course of many a man who has weathered the gales of fierce 0ppoilition.
You say, are we not told, ' Children, obey your parents r Yes, but com- plete the verse. It reads, 'Obey your parents in the Lord.' Are we obeying them in the Lord, if they interfere with our doing the Lord'8 work J"
He touched with delicacy and firmness upon the duty of one in regard to missionary service whose fiancee is not missionary-hearted. "Many sad complications would be avoided did volunteers live up to their pledge. One said to me not long since that his fiancee refused to accompany him. With my whole soul do I pity that man, but the fault is largely his own. Had he made it evident to her and to her friends that it was his unflinching purpose to go, he would have avoided this complication. Write such a letter to her as Adoniram Judson wrote to his fiancee. If she is t'horoughly consecrated, it will nerve her to new self-devotion. If she be unwilling to go, find out the fact as soon as possible, leave her, and thank God for your escape from a union which would defeat His purpose in your life." He emphasized the great privilege of securing recruits, and of arousing the home church to a greater interest· in missions. "It is in our power to stir Canada and the States, from Toronto to Texas, and from Nova Scotia to the Pacific. Think what God did through that one man, Wesley. What can he not accomplish through five hundred men and women if we let Him use us! Think of tbe churches and institutions which we represent. The way in which Jerusalem was kept clean was by having each man sweep before his own door. Let each of us sweep ~way from his own church and institution whatever ignorance and indifference there is in this the greatest work of the nineteenth century."
Following Mr. Wilder were a number of five-minute addresses. Mr. J. Campbell Vhite spoke of " Missionary Interests in the Southern States.".
Miss Nettie Dunn had a message for women volunteers. "There nre," she said, " fifty thousand Christian women in our colleges to-day, and only a handful of them going to the great, needy foreign field. Let us plan to multiply ourselves, tach oue of us, a hundred-fold within the next year."
Rev. Kajinosuke lbuka, of Japan, said: "The greatest need of Japan is Christ. We ask for one hundred young men full of the Spirit of Christ. And with those one hundred young nlen, with the force already on the ground, the whole Empire of Japan, with its 40,000,000 people, can easily be evangelized, God helping us, in this genoration."
Mr. Helms, of Kansas, in the very few minutes allotted to him, pictured in a vivid way the needs of " Darkest Africa," and in tones which thrilled one through and through, drew the sympathies of his audit'ors to the one place blacker than any other-to Africa, whose body and soul the social sin had eaten. He told orthe great marches in the world's history-of Xerxes, . of Napoleon, of Sherman, and of a swifter, mightier, more terrible march of millions of Africans, in rags and blth and disease, marching straight to hell. " We have written and sung and talked about Africa long enough j and if the Lord stood here to-night He would say, ' Let somebody go. ' "
Mr. Mott, the Chairman, then called upon men to give, in a single sen- tence, their dominant impression of the conference, or their dominant pur- pose forme,}. The following are typical testimonies: "My chief impres- sion has been my own insignificance." " I know what the power of the Holy Ghost is." "I believe the motto of ' the movement,' the' Evan- gelization of the W orId in this Generation,' can be realized.' , " I want to surrender myself wholly to Christ." " Woe .is me if I preach not the Gospel. "
At ten 0' clock the time approached to separate. Mr. Speer responded to the spirit of the closing scene in words fitting and beautiful: "Fellow students, may we learn among other things this year the language of the Lord's tender love. May it be this coming year that as our hearts form a wish it may be quickly laid at Ilis feet j that as quickly as our hearts gain a motive, it maj be handed over to Him j that as quickly as we see anything that our brother needs, it may be that we pray for him. And perhaps the best thing we can do to-night is just in the silence, and the stillness, and the sweetness of that holy place in our lives where you and I live alone with Jesus Christ, to commend unto God and the '"ord of His grace every volunteer who, with life devoted to Jesus Christ, shall sooner or later have the rare joy of holding up the life, and the death, and the blood of his Lord before the world."
[So important did it seem that this admirable report of this significant convention should be printed at once and undivided, that, at the risk of erowding out valuable matter already in type, the Editor has concluded to give the above report its full space in this number.-A. T. P.]
1891J EXTRACTS .AND TRANSLATtONS PROM FonEtGN PElUODICALS. 3(11
EXTRACTS AND TRANSLATIONS FROM FOREIGN PERIODICALS.
BY REV. C. C. STARBUCK, ANDOVER, MASS.
-The important Darjeeling Mission of India has four divisions: (1) Darjeeling, 2 ordained missionaries, 14 preaching stations, 13 schools, 21 teachers, 726 pupils j (2) Kalinpong (Church of Scotland Young Men's Guild Mission), 1 ordained misRionary, 4 preaching stations, 12 schools, 12 teachers, 341 pupils; (3) Sikkim, 1 ordained missionary, 7 schools, 7 teachers, 188 pupils j (4) Darjeeling Zenana Mission, 3 European ladies.
-" The time is gone by," says the Allgemeine Missionszeitscltrift, " in which missions were looked upon, or rather overlooked, as a thing by the way. They have come out of the corner and. become a public matter, even with us in Germany. We here leave unnoticed the question whether this change brings more good or harm.We only emphasize the fact, and the world of science and of economics, the literature of the day, the parlia- ments and the dip].omatic congresses, the statesmen, and above all the colonial politicians are interested in missiuns. "
Dr. Warneck notes two things: First the ignorant self-conceit of the German secular writers who, kuowing as good as nothing about missions, haughtily cut short all attempts of real knowers of missions to set them in the right light j second, the determined purpose to extol all Roman Catholic, and to decry all Protestant, missionary activity. "A Romish wind breathes through the world j it is the fashion to cocker Rome j and the daily press, like a lady that would rather be out of the world than out of the fashion, swings the Romish censer lustily with the rest." "Is it antipathy to cvang-elical faith, innn affinity with Roman secularity, colonial prejudice, lack of independc·nt judgment over against the authority of an imperial commissary, or mt're IHllve ignorance r'
"Like all knowledge, missionary knowledge must be tlte fruit of labor,. he that has nothing can give nothing, and he that labors not has nothing."
-The Zeitscltrift remarks: "There is a mighty quickening in the Brethren's Church, which, besides the youthful mission in Alaska and the Homona Mission in Sonthem California, is also advancing to an extension of the work in the Surinam bushland, as also in Australia, and an entirely new mission in German East Africa (at the north-eastern end of the Nyassa), a fresh and joyfully believing advance, which gives the testimony of fact that the old mission spirit is still awake in this missionary Church par excellence, an example to quicken a wholesome shame in our great state cb urches. "
-The Rhenish Missionary Society in 1890 founded 7 new stations: 5 in Sumatra, 1 on Dampierre Island, near New Guinea, 1 on Nias, near Rumatra, and is expecting to extend its work among the Hereroes in southwest Africa.
-In Holland the Inner Mission hag lately taken an upward movement rather at the cxpcnse of foreign missions. The extreme comminution of Dutch missionary force (eighteen societies for this small conntry) is also disadvantageous.
– The Zeitschrfit, speaking of Emin and Stanley, says that they are too profoundly unlike to understand one another j each has his bright side and. each his dark, and that German depreciation of Stanley and English depre- ciation of Emin are both unjust. Emin, however, it decidedly characterized as warm in heart but (yeak in will.
-The Kaukab i Hind (Star of India), of December 26th, 1890, says: " Word has just come from Calcutta that Dr.- Pentecost's addresses are making a profound impression on the higher classes of the European com- munity, and a great many are being led to devote themselves to God's service. "
-It may have been known, but it has been little heeded, that the Moravians have for nearly seventy years carried on a work among the lepers of the Cape of Good Hope. The following sentence from Bishop La Trobe's account of it pictul'es to us at once the extremity of human misery, and lo'e and faith working triumphantly through all : "Go into the wards of the hospital; on one couch lies a leper whose hands are gone, and before him an open Bible; he has reached the bottom of the page, but cannot turn it over; he looks around, and one who can walk, but is also without hands, takes another who has lost his feet, on his back, and carries him to the fir~t to turn over the leaf."
In 1865 the Baron and Baroness Keffenbrinck-Ascheraden having established a leper home at Jerusalem, the Moravian brethren were placed in charge of it. The first-fruits of honor in this form of the works of love in modern times, therefore, are theirs.
-A littlo blunder, reported in the Woman's Worlc of Shanghai, is one cf a thousand things which show how hard it is to work at first-hand in a foreign country. A Chinese womfm having been addressed by a foreign lady with the inquiry whether, as a sinner, she did not wish to be forgiven, took great offence, and angrily denied that she was a sinner. Of course the foreign lady set this down to the account of self· righteousness until, to her dismay, she found that she had addressed the woman as a " jail bird." Nothing can easily take the place of the native helper. To train them up may well be the great thought of those from abroad. "0 Lord," said a good deacon in Madura, " our missionaries, we doubt not, are at home in Greek and Hebrew, but what work they do make of Tamil I" It is the ultimate praise of vernacular familiarity given to Dr. Van Dyck in Syria, that" he knows even women's Arabic."
-"The English schoolmaster, John Horden, who in 1872 was consecrated first Bishop of Moosonee. comprising the whole coast-line of Hudson's Bay-a diocese of 1200 by 800 miles–is now," says the Ch1lrch Mis- sionary Gleaner, "in his fortieth year of service-a service consisting largely of incessant travelling over his vast sphere of work." The few thousand Indians and whites require five Bibles-English, Bree, Ojibeway, Chipewyan, and Eskimo. There are 4000 baptized Christians and 700 communicants.
-The Hindu, a Madras paper, edited by " a Hin,du of the Hindus, " is quoted in the Church Missionary Intelligencer as follows: "The progress of education among the girls of the native Christian community, and the absence of caste restrictions among them, will eventually give them an ad"antage which no amount of intellectual precocity can compensate the Brahmins for. We recently approved of the statement of a Bombay writer that the social eminence which the Parsees so deservedly enjoy at . the present moment was due to these two causes, namely, their women are well educated, and they are bound by no restrictions of caste. These two advantages slowly make themselves felt among our native Christian brethren, and it is probable they will soon be the Parsees <1f Southern India; they will furnish the most distinguished public servants, barristers, merchants, and citizens among the various classes of the nativec@mmunity."
-The Allgemeine Missionszeitschrijt for January, 1891, remarks that the Protestants of Germany in missionary achievement are as yet decidedly behind both the duties providentially laid upon them and their numerical strength. They are almost a fourth of the Protestant world, yet of 3000 ordained Protestant missionaries they only supply 561-less than onefifth, and of lay missionaries, male and female, less than one-fiftieth. Of 40,000,000 marks raised in Protestant Christendom for foreign missiuns, the Germans (including German Switzerland) contribute 3,000,000. Proportionately it ought to be 10,000,000.
-The Witness quotes approvingly Cardinal Manning, who declares, with Sir Bartle Frere, that England only holds India by "the divine right of good government," and that one of the things implied in this is the deliverance of female India from the curse of child marriages, compulsery betrot}:tals, and enforced widowhood.
-The Journal des Missions Evangeliques for October, 1890, giving an account of the hard conditions of life among the mountain Waldenses. says: "One might easily suppose that under circumstances so toilsome, the struggle against material difficulties must needs absorb all other thoughts. Far from it, however. Blessed with the ministry of devoted pastors who are daunted by no effort, Vaudois piety finds a place in heart and life for the things of the kingdom of heaven. As a result, from these houses, where superfluity is unknown, where even necessity often has to be strictly construed, there has descended a veritable army of evangelists, schoolmasters, professors, some of whom, raised by diligence to the heights of culture, are now the venerated chiefs of the Vaudois Church."
A young M. Pascal, a child of these valleys, has just been ordained at La Tour as a missionary for Lessuto. " May he help to make of the Basutos a people of evangelists for all South Africa as the Waldenses are coming to be for Italy."
-The brethren of the Zambesi are gradually finding their isolation somewhat relieved by more frequent intercourse with the colonial world, and with the world at large. But the same growth of publicity menaces them with the invasion of gain-seekers and all the desolations coming in the train of Mammon. Let us pray for them.
-Of tbe 520 organized Protestant churches of China, 94, remarks the Journal des Missions, provide entirely for their own spiritual and material wants.
Treating of the precariousness of the foreign protection accorded to the Chinese churches, the Journal inquires why they might not come nearer the requirements of Chinese society by organizing themselves; after the model of the Chinese clans, just as the churches of the Roman Empire gained long intervals of toleration by assum'ing the forms of beneficial, religious, and social collegia or guilds.
-The Harvest Field of Madras, for December, 1890, has an interesting articl' e on. the" Portuguese Inquisition lit Goa," in western India, showing ….-.-….. -.- how this hindered the spread of Roman Catholic Christianity. The Church of Rome teaching that it is unlawful to compel anyone to accept baptism, but lawful to punish him for defection after being baptized, the Goa . inquisition allowed Jews, Moslems, and Hindus to live unmolested, but claimed the right to punish them (though not with death) for publicly exercising their religion. Multitudes, therefore, who might otherwise have been won, refnsl'd to be baptized for fear of the ultimate penalties. And as the lesser penalties were severe enough, multitudes of the non-Christians fIe-d into other parts of India, which largely explains the collapse of the Portuguese power.
It must not be Rupposed that the Inquisition was always the protectress of error. Unhappily it was equally cruel when it defended the truth. Thus a Frenchman at. Goa, after months of imprisonment, was condemned to five years in the galleys (remitted, however, by the Crown of Portu- gal), principally fur having declared that no one can possibly be saved without extemal baptism. Here the Inquisition was plainly in the right and the Frenchman in the wrong. What a warning to us all not to excuse a persecuting zeal on the ground that it is zeal for the truth I • -The Harvest Field speaks a good word for the brave and faithful Ger- man brethren of Gossner's Mission among the Kols. It says: "There is no mission in the country more actively alive than Gossner's in Chutia- Nilgpur. The men who are controlling the work take a comprehensive view of their duty, and interest themseh'es in those political and social questions which so seriously affect the well-being of these Kols, who have come under their influence. They have battle on all sides of them. The Jesuits poach unconscionably on the one hand, and the S. P. G. harass them on the other; this in addition to the ignorance, evil habits, distress- ing connections and social disabilities of the Kols themselves. Yet they succeed, not merely encouragingly, but gloriously. Their last twelve months' census shows that 1073 have been baptized, and 2796 besides have broken caste and placed themselves under Christian instruction. A Ilew mission station is being takf'n up, to be called Buchselpur j and there are already 1000 Christians in the neighborhood as a nucleus. Two new churches have been built for native pastors j a native church endowment fund has been started, which promises to grow into importance. There are now 167 churches in the misRion, aggregating 11,552 full members, or a total Christian community of 35, I 03. The leper asylum has been specially fruitful lately in conversions."
-Gleanings in the Harvest Fields, York, England, organ of tbl' Metho- dist New Connection, says: ,. The best missionary periodical is TIn;: MIS- SIONARY REVIEW OF THE WORLD. edited by Dr. A. T. Pierson. It is fresh, vigorous, varied, and.cheap."
-An article in the Gleanings, from Miss M. J. Waller, refers to an oeinion expressed by Sir John Pope Hennessy. that China is the ffeest country in the world. Miss Waller thinks that he has left the female half of mankind out of account. A wife who has lately fled from the cruelties of her husband's home, is sentenced to a rising scale of beatings, and if still refusing to return, to be officially sold. Miss Waller adds: "The severe discipline to which girls in China are subJected so thoroughly destroys all that is spiritual in their nature that it is humanly impossible to raise them from the state of cunning and deceit to which they hav(, been brought. They are just prepared to become moth!lrs-in-law in their tulU I believe the phlegmatic and crafty characteristics of the Chinese race, of which so many missionaries complain, are greatly owing to this moral death imposed on their women."
-The Jewilh Intelligence describes the Protestant cemetery on Mount Zion. Dr. Alexander, the first Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem, it will be remembered, was a Jew. His tomb bears the inscription, in four languages: "Whose Christian love won the good-will of his brethren of Israel. "
-M. W olkenberg, writing in the Jewish Intelligence, declares that some Jewish leaders are now, in desperation, aiming at "a substitution of Hebraic literature for religion, and thE exaltation of the race in the place of its Creed-its only preservative. Sooner will the rivers roll back to thcir source than Jews, once emancipated, will go back to the dead and deadening level of Talmndic trivialities. There is but one alternative-Christianity or total alienation from religious belief. And while many sink intothe latter abyss, we may thank God that the Church is at last visibly and indisputably exerting a potent influence upon many of the lost sheep of the house of Israel. "
-The Ohristian for January 20th, 1891, gives a portrait and biographical sketch of M. Eugene Casal is, the eminent French missionary to the Basutos. It is interesting to know that he is of a Huguenot ancestry which, in the time of persecution, resolutely remained, saying: ".The seed of the true Church of Christ must not depart entirely from the soil of France; it is in the Lord's power to bring us better times."
–North Africa, devoted to the Kabyle and Berber missions, thus describes a citadel of Tangier in Morocco: "The Kasbah is full of strange contrasts. The streets narrow and dirty; the priso)Js in semi-darkness, with an evil odor ever proceeding from them, and filled with prisoners chained, starved, and diseased. Yet the opening of a door in one of the windowless walls and a few steps 'down some winding passages lead into sunlight, beauty, and romance; for a palace of a past age is here, with neglected gardens and a lovely court, in the centre of which a fountain is playing in a marble basin, surrounded by marble Corinthian pillars, and rooms with floor, wall, and ceiling displaying the finest specimens of Moorish art in tessellated work and wood-carving, the latter glittering with gold and soft colors, though the modern Moor delights in brilliant painting. The lace-like delicacy of the designs, both in wood and stucco, is indescribable." Christianity in various forms is once more setting its foot on that North African shore so great in Christian mp.mories. At a farewell meeting in Exeter Hall these quiet beginnings were aptly compared to the handful of marines that have brought one great region after another under the sway of the British crown.
-Says the Indian Witness: "The Rangoon Gazette does a good work in vindicating American missionaries in Burmah from the sneers and charges of Sir Lepel Griffin-that foe of missionaries"-and of Americans. He assert~d that these godly men had surreptitiously helped the Karens to arms and ammunitIon, and in so far, at least, encouraged them in wrong-doing. The Gazette declares the charges utterly " malicious and false," and says, " if the American missionaries often show much business shrewdness in mundane matters, they have also shown that the Christianity they produce in their converts is of a good practical sort, which statesmen should welcome instead of sneering at and maligning." Sir Lepel Griffin declares that the Burmans are the most interesting race in the world, because they count life its own sufficient object and reward. To this precious specimen of the English Antichrist, the moment a people begins to think of eternity, that moment it loses its interesting- ness. He dishonors even the Buddhism which he professes to admire- for that has a deep though hopeless earnestness. It searches through eternity, though it comes back like the wanderer of Jean Paul's dream, exclaiming despairingly: " There is no God !"
-The Missionary Record of the United Presbyterian Church in Scot- land for Jannary, 1891, has iateresting articles on their late eminent mis- sionary in North China, the Rev. Dr. Williamson. The Protestant missionaries of Tientsin, in their resolutions of sympathy, remark: "This long period of service in North China, extending over thirty years, and the many departments of Christian enterprise with which he identified himself, have familiarized and endeared his name to many, not only among his brother missionaries and the native Christians, but also among those who have ordinarily little sympathy with our work. His singleness of aim and earnest desire to promote the material, social, and spiritual welfare of China were apparent to all. By his early itinerations in the cause of Bible distribution, he did not a little to open the large regions to the Gospel message. By the preparation of books upon political, scientific, and theological subjects, he Rtrove to promote the much. needed education 'Of the people. His sympathy with all movements tending to further union and co-operation among the various branches of the Christian Church in China was well known, and his own effOlts in this direction had much to do with the success of the Missionary Conferences of 1877 and 1890."
To say that Dr. Williamson worked for Christian union is little more than another way of saying that he was a United Presbyterian missionary of Scotland. He that cannot work with a United Presbyterian brother cannot work with anybody.
-It is known that Protestant missions are extending from China proper into the northern regions of Mongolia and Manchuria, from which latter country came the prcsent imperial family. Dr. James A. Greig, nnw ,medical missionary of the Irish Presbyterian Church, though, as he says, still "a Scotchman and a United Presbyterian." writes to the Missionary Record concerning hi'S work. Speaking of one patient, suffering under a malignant tumor, he remarks: "I asked, ' Have you ever heard of Jesus ¥' , Never.' 'Have you ever heard of heaven?' 'Never.' • Of hell~' , Never.' Yet here he stood, as thousands in this dark land, on the brink 'Of eternity; the future dark and unknown, the present hopeless. After sim,plyexplaining to him the way of salvation, and urging upon him its acceptance, he left ns, bearing with him John iii. 16 as an epitome of all we had said. He left, but his Never remained. It sounded and reresounded through our ears and in our brain. ,. , -The Free Ohurch of Scotland Monthly remarks that their Budapest mission among the Hungarian JAWS has had an important incidental result in knitting various closer ties of brotherhood 'tfith the Hungarian churches. Scottish liberality has provided bursaries at the New College, Edinburgh, for Bohemian and Hungarian divinity students. A now financially independent German Reformed Church in Budapest has mainly resulted from Scottish labors. The leading Hungarian pastors express a warm sense of this catholic co-operation.
'I,. "The missionary campaign," says the Monthly, " opened enthusiastically in Glasgow, November 24th, with two great meetings of more than 3000 people, and had been continued throughout Scotland among grown people and children. In some of the country places, owing to the stormy weather, the attendance 'Yas small. But even in these cases a deep impression was invariably produced, and it was felt by the missionaries and others how great a mistake it would be to give populous centres a preference over quiet rural districts in the arranging of such meetings. The largest meeting was at Greenock, with 1600 children and 400 adults present. There were also crowded meetings in Ayr, Kilmarnock, and other places." It was felt important to engage interest, especially among children, in 8pecific missionary objects.
-Inasmuch as Muscat, in south-eastern Arabia, is the seat of Arab influence and power in Africa, Bishop French urges the establishment of a mission there to attack the evil in its source.
-The Church Missionary lntell(qencer for January, 1891, contains an article on Henry Martyn's Urdu translation of the New Testament. The Urdu, the basis of which is the fine Hindi language, greatly enriched and modified by Arabic and Persian, has been classed as one of the twelve ot thirteen conquering languages of the world. Martyn's Arabic translation was faulty, and soon abandoned by him. The Persian he cntirely recast. But his Urdu version went into use at onl:e, and for many years suffered no change. The following fine passage describes the inmost quality of the man: "There was in Martyn's rcligion the element of awe. There are depths in his mind. Deep calls unto deep. The deep of reverence calls to the deep of confession; the deep of realized forgiveness calls to the deep of charity. His critical ear detects in an instant a word or expression that sinks below the level at which the message of God ought to be expressed. And this sense of fitness affeCts his whole work. He is minutely careful of small things, but never small himself. Pettiness is not in him, nor pedantry, which is scholastic pettiness. Vulgarity is odious to him. Vulgarity he cannot away with. All his instincts are refined. He breathes freely only when the atmosphere is pure. He' prays over his thoughts as well as over his words. His citizenship is. in heaven, and there is dignity in all that he says. There are depths in his mind, and because there are depths there is elevation too. He humbles himself and is exalted."
-Bishop Westcott, of Durham, of whom we have not yet unlearned to think of as Canon Westcott, says, as reported in the Intelligencer: "The Rajah of Travancore-that state at the south-western extremity of India, one-fifth of whose people are Christians, Syrian, Roman Catholic, or Protestant-answering the missionaries who had thanked him for the protection afforded theU!, said: 'One cannot be sufficiently thankful for the introduction of this civilizing element and its steady development. Your labors have been increasing year after year the number of a loyal, lawabiding, and civilized population-the very foundation of good government. ' Again I ask, is that the language of a man who feels that he has in his ancestral faith a solid basis of an enduring empire ~"
The bishop quotes, with the like inquiry, the recent declaration of a non-Christian lawyer, that mission schools are the quinine for India's fever.
-The Bombav Guardian of November 22d, 1890, remarks; 'One of our correspondents recently started ·the question, 'Is Hinduism declining or advancing in this country~' To hear of the great Hindu religious congress just held at Delhi, attended by Hindu nobles, pandits, and Brahmins from all the sacred cities, orgallized and carried through with enthusiasm, it would appear that it was decidedly advancing; but, on the other hand, we are not without signs that tell a different tale. ""hen spring is on the way the edges of snow-drifts and ice-floes begin to melt, and though it may be long before the increasing warmth of the sun penetrates into the heart of these frozen masses, all who see them rejoice in the prospect of a general break-up."
– We observe in the Mildmay Service for the King the statement that 1 of eyery 60 Moravians becomes a missionary, and that the converts outnumber the parent Church by very nearly 3 to 1. Why are they any more obliged to this than we? And as it is fruitless to ask til< III to lower their stand"ard, there seems to be nothing for it but that we should exalt ours.
-The Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of the Church of England in Canada, according to its organ, the Canadian Church. Magazine and Mission News, has sent out a missionary of her own to J apanthe Rev. J. G. 'Yallt'r.
-In the Chronicle for January, 1891, the Rev. G. H. Macfarlane discusses the work of gathering in the non-castes of the Cuddapah district, in the Madras Presidency, a country larger than Wales, and with a popula· tion of about 1,150,000, nearly all speaking Telugu-the second in importance, we judge, of the four affiliated Dravidian languages of which the Tamil is the principal. Mr. Macfarlane gives his decided judgment that these non-cm.tes, or out-casteR (about 150,000 in the district) owe their abjectness of character to no mental inferiority, but purely to the pressure from above, and to the lack of stimulus to self-development. It requires, he says, two generations of education at most, to bring them to an equality with the Brahmins. This again shows that these nummons conversions from the classes which are only lowest because they have been held down, are preparing a silent revolution which will some day compel the Brahmins to come to terms. Even Hinduism, as Sir William Hunter has shown, is slowly elevating the aboriginal tribes, which it is rapidly incorporating, until some of them have even attained to the !<acred thread of the" twice-born." Christianity. therefore, as he suggests, instead of being: ashamed of these, ought to throw herself first of all upon them, and thus secure these 50,000,000 from being thoroughly absorbed by Hinduism. It is one of Canon Taylor's choicest blunders that he has turned these 50,000,000 into half a million!
As to the motives of accession to Christianity on the part of these noncastes or Malas, as they are called, Mr. Macfarlane says, very discriminatingly, and exactly in a line with Bishop Caldwell in speaking of both these and of the lower castes: ,. The Gospel of Jesus Christ has long been preached to these people, and many have placed themselves under instruction to learn something of its saving truths. It is not to be supposed that deep conviction of sin has led them to such a step. They have not so much spiritual enlightenment as to feel sin to be a burden and to be anxious to get free from it. What impressions these people have are more of the head than of the heart. They see something better in Christianity than in what their ancestors and neighbors believe. Indeed, many h(athen scolf at their own practices while continuing them. They conceive, in a bli.l)< sort of way, that the religion of Jesus is the true path of righteousness and salvation. They are anxious also for social improvement for themselves and education for their children. Many of their relations llave become Christians and are receiving instruction, and they donot wish to be cutoff from them and be unable to intermarry. These and other reasons influence them, and so they would like to put themselves under Christian teaching and get whatever advantages, temporal as well as spiritual, connection with the new religion involves. The purest and highest motives do not move them. But amid what is worldly and selfish some distinct perceptions of the truth and superiority. of the religion of Jesus Christ do weigh with them. And, in truth, they themselves, or their children, do attain to higher perceptions, but the spiritual faculty in them has first to be awakened. Again, although as a community they are not ruled by purdy spiritual motives, individuals of them lire, just as it happens among other classes that only single hearts are touched, 'The wind bloweth where it listeth.' 'One is taken and another left.' But in the case of these people we have the whole community willing to put itself under influences for good, so that the chances are that a large percentage of individuals will be awakened t(l life and godliness. Higher castes are as yet only in rare instances open to influence as communities. Only single converts are being made from them. " Again: "Conversions to Christianity from other castes only occur in individual cases. •A Sudra is not able to persuade family and friends to become Christians. A Brahman, far from inB.uencing them, is disowned and excommunicated by them. His means of support–unless he fills a public post-are cut off. The mission he has joined has to maintain him and find him employment. He is himself a distinct gain to the Christian Church j but Hindu society remains unaffected. It closes on the space he left void. He is only a sapling broken off a tree, which scarcely shows the wound. But the Mala becomes a Christian with his wife, children, and all connections. A great branch is torn away from the tree, and the rent left apparent. An entire layer of Hindu society is gained for Christ. It is, indeed, the lowest j but it can form a foun,dation on which a Christian Church for the whole of India can be built. India is called' the country of villages.' If the Christian Church is to lay hold of them and not leave them pagan to the last, it cannot be accomplished by the conversion of solitary individuals, taking them out of their families and society, and finding them employment within the bounds of the mission. Christianity must establish itself by fonnding its churches in every village, and let.ting converts maintain themselves by their own occupations. There are no evidences at present that this work can be done by large conver- I!ions from caste TIindus, but the way seems open for it through securing and instructing the Mala community."
We would Buggest, under editorial favor, that Mr. Macfarlane would do a great service if he would write for THE MISSIONARY REVIEW OF THE WORLD an article explaining whether any large part of these out-castes are also outcasts, the descendants of those that have in various' ages been expelled from their respective castes, and precisely how those lower races that are attached to Hinduism without having been admitted to the rank of a caste, differ, in point of religious and social rights, from the members of the lower castes. Most of us have but a confused idea of this distinction, which we nevertheless see to be so important in India. Indeed, the whole subject of Caste needs a revised elucidation for the benefit of those that are interested in missionar7 work among the Hindus. -The warning given by the editor of the Allgemeine Mislionszeitschrijt against too great a precipitancy on the part of Japanese Christians to set up for them.elves, is re-echoed by the Rev. W. Muirhead, of Shanghai, who writes, in the January Chronicle: "It may be well to mention to you the latest news from Japan from a missionary point of view, that, in general, it is a cause for much anxiety. The Christians there are largely in a very independent frame of mind regarding the forms in which Christianity has been presented to them as not suited to their requirements, and they are resolved to form a system of their own, dispensing with their foreign teachers 8S much as possible, and doing things as they think best." If we 'were to describe as faults of the Japanese character exaggerated self-confidence and exaggerated patriotism, we should be saying too much. Yet they would. hardly deny that their dangers lie on that side rather than on the other. As President Garfield is said to have declared that he was "for protection, with a view to ultimate free-trade," 80, perhaps, our Japanese brethren would not be the worse of taking as their motto: " Frank deference to the elder Christendom, with a steady progress toward spiritual independence for ourselves."
-It appears, from the Chronicle, that the French authorities on the Island of Mare have finally become tired of forcing the people in the matter of religion, and that now, although there is a good deal of petty persecution, the only act of persecution on a grand sca,le that has lately occurred is the impending exile of a pastor, two deacons, and three private members for having mutually given and accepted a call to resume the care of the pastor's old church, without bethinking themselves of first obtaining formal permission.
-We observe the publication, by Bertelsmann, at that metropolis of 'missionary interest, Giitersloh, of a pamphlet, the contents of which were first published in the Allgemeine Missionszeitschrijt, entitled " Wie ist da8 Maluriafieber in den Tropell mit besserem Erlolg als bisher zu behandeln? " " How can malarial fever in the tropics be treated with better success than hitherto 1" The author, Herr Zippel, contends strenuously against the use of quinine and of drugs in general as remedies for this fever, and.in favor of the water cure. We have read his treatise carefully in its original form, and mU9t say that it bristles with a very staggering array of facts in disparagement of quinine and in commendation of water. The pamphlet of forty-six pages seems worthy of being translated. The present writer, who has some experience of pernicious tropical fevers, must own that, so far as this goes, it inclines him to think highly of water and not very highly of drugs.
-We see from China's Millions that our Swedish brethren in this country are sending out helpers to the China Inland Mission. " The first -Mr. Matson-reached Shanghai on October 28th, and Mr. and Mrs.
Wallen have since arrived."
The Emperor has ordered all the distilleries in the flQoded province of China to be closed for a year, in order to save the grain. Good out of evil! .
China's Million8 quotes from The 'Christian part of an address of Dr.
D. McEwen, at Manchester, in which he says: "The special work of the Christian Church Jo-day is the immediate evangelization of the whole world. Conversion, whether of the few or the many, is the work of God Himself; but it is committed to the Church to take the Gospel message to every creature j and the time has come, in the providence of God, when this ought to be done, nDt in a halting, tentative way, but by sweeping measures. Through the march of discovery, the progress of international commerce, and the translation of the Scriptures, the speedy evangelization of the human race has come within the region of practical Christian politics."
An epidemic of influenza, as well as one of fever, appears to have been very rife throughout China, of which the missionaries are having their share.
-The Rhenish Missionary Society ill joyful and thankful at having been able to report for the last year double the number of baptisms from among the heathen that there were four years previously. In 1886 there were 1070; 1887, 1277 ; 1888, 1628 ; 1889, 2289.
-The Church of Scotland Mission Record for January 1st, 1891, says: " As w~ go to press we have received the distressing news, wired from Mozambique on December 13th, 'Cleland died, fever, Blantyre.' This is the second death sustained by our mission staff since Blantyre was founded in 1877, and now we have lost an enthusiastic missionary, who had Africa written upon his heart, who felt her woes most keenly, and who has labored for her in painfulness and weariness and loneliness through nearly four anxious years. "
-The Mission Record laments the loss of Dr. Brown, late editor of the Missionary Record of the United Presbyterian Church: "In the Church of Scotland he had many attached friends, and the General Assembly seldom passed without his genial face being seen within our assembly hall. He was a man whose losll to our Scot~ish Presbyterianism is to be lamented at the present time, when in the growing desire for reunion, the help of generous, broad-minded men, of whatever Church, is greatly in demand." Happy Scotland, that has unity even in her divisions, and not, as some say of a great national church not far removed, division even in her unity.
It will be remembered that Disraeli. in one of his earlier romances, describes the Queen of Great Britain 'retreating before a too-powerful invader, as taking refuge in her fleet and establishing herself in the capital of her Indian Empire, from which, advancing westward, she sweeps Western Asia and all Europe under her sceptre, and reoccupies London. The subsequent achievement of the transplanted Asiatic, in placing the Indian diadem in all form on his mistress's brow, challenges a half-amused, half-serious attention, in these days of unsettled expectancy of nations, even to this fantastically gorgeous dream, and to the fine description of Calcutta quoted by the Mission Record from Sir William Hunter: "Calcutta still goes on growing with the growth of a vigorous maturity. Its unrivalled position at the mouth of the combined river systems of Northern and North-eastern India gives it a great advantage in regard to the older and bulkier staples of Bengal-rice, jute, and oil seeds-although even these have to a very large extent deserted the slower water-routes for the rail ways. The enterprise of its merchants and capitalists has called into existence new industries on a vast scale–'-tea-planting, coal-mining, engineering foundries, and steam factories of many sorts. The new railway to the west will bring to it an increasing share of the wheat trade; and it only awaits the better adaptation of the European smelting processes to the Indian coals and ores to become the financial centre of a great iron industry in Bengal. Meanwhile Calcutta sits calm and strong on its ancient river bank and watches the produce of the richest provinces of the world float down to it by many waters, or pour into it by an ever-extending network of railwa;ys. $edet aJternumq.ue Iwtf/bit," H ije~d,& 9q~ t4lt the two- ed~ed. sword of the Son of God should cut a~under the chains of Brahminical bondage, and India may perhaps spring forth into a magnificence of development passing the imaginations of antiquity concerning her uncounteJ. wealth.
The following passage from the Record is worthy of being pondered by American Christians: "The State may persecute, as the Roman State did, because anti-Christian; but it is hard to see why the people of a State preponderatingly Christian should persecute themselves, since they know that their faith makes not for the overtb.row but for the consolidation of national life. Or the State may try to ignore religion on the false theory of exaggerated individualism, which forgets that national life is the aggregate of the life of families, and that family life is based on the religious conception of marriage. The attempt to ignore the mightiest factor in the formation of national life can never succeed." Says the old Scottish Second Book of Discipline, magistrates "are callit in the Scripture nourishers of the Kirk, for sameikle as be them it is, or at least aucht to be, mantenit, fosterit, uphalden, and defendit against alt that wuld procure the hurt thereof." Whatever may be our theories respeCting the relations of Church and State, it seems as if Christians must allow that a modu8 vivendi between Christ and Antichrist was never in the mind of our Lord Jesus.
-The following, from a discourse of George Muller, delivered in his native tongue, in the Mission House of Basel, and appearing in the Neukirchener Heidenbote, ctlmes with especial authority from the lips of one whose faith God has so often changed to palpable fact. It assuredly belongs to the missionary work at a time when dignitaries of the Church raise the scoffing cry, " What do these feeble Jews r' "If we wish to have faith, we have purely to do with the promise as it is given in God's Word. We have not to question our thoughts and feelings j we have not to wait for special impressions, not to look to probability and outer circumstances, but purely and only to the Word of God, to believe what that says. Faith can act without feelings and probability j faith needs nothing but God's promise. If we wish anything more, this is no longer faith in the Word of God. " Faith is not concerned primarily with this or that fragment, but with all the promises, with the whole revelation of God in His Holy Word, with all the promises that have been made to the people of God. This, it appears to me, suffices for a definition of faith in the Word of God. "
-The Guardian commends to the public, as ft very valuable mine of information respecting India, on all its sides, Mr. S. W. Caine's new book, "Picturesque India." It regrets, however, the last chapter, "the tendency of which will be to strengthen the foolish belief that India is in danger,' near or remote, of a Russian invasion; and by pandering to this folly to condone the extravagant and wasteful military expenditures which absorbs so much of the revenue of India.' , -The Indian Witness, remarking on the lavish subscriptions in India for statues to departing governors, laments that thus far the Bowen Memorial Fund has barely touched 10,000 rupees. "George Bowen did a mightier. work for India, especially for Western India, than any half dozen bestatued governers." As George Bowen's former teacher, Dr. T. E. Skinner, said of him, " his face shone with the light of incipient trans- figuration w4ile he was sttn ~ student in VniOll Seminary-."
INTERNATIONAL DEPARTMENT
II.-INTERNATIONAL DEPARTMENT.
:EDITED AND CONDUCTED BY REV. J. T. GRACEY, D.D.
Fourteen Years of Earth-Hunger in Thus reads a dooument lately issued by Africa. the new French Committee on African affairs. It is, a long story already and [J. T. G.] not a very amusing one, this of the so- called Partition of Africa; yet it is, the " We are at present assisting at a London Times says, "so far an Rccom· unique spectacle in hi.story-the actual division of a continent scaroely known plislied faot that it is possible to take by the civilized nations of Europe." stook of the share which has fallen to
rn'1'EliN.A!t'10NAL lYliJPAltTMlllNT
the lot of each with some approach to Portuguese limitations, the English accuracy. " sphere•• , now and then," is suggestive. The MlJUvement Geographique, some short while gince, worked out the prob. British Africa, 1876: West Coast Col- lem of the European geographical exten_ ilion in Africa in a series of tables which onies, 15,640 square miles; Atlantic are the clearest presentation of this prog- ress which has fallen under ou.. eye. Islands, 125 ; Cape Colony and depend- It is astounding to note this projection of Europe on Africa within fourteen encies, 241,500 ; Natal, 21,000; Mauriyears, or since 1876, the year of the Brussels Conference, from which the tius and dependencies, 900. Total, scramble may be said to date. 279,165 square miles. So far as area goes, France has got more in this general looting than any British Africa, 1890 : West Coast Colother nation. In 1876 France had African possessions as follows: onies, 45,000 square miles ; Royal Niger French Africa, 1876 : Algeria, 123,000 Company, 400,000; Atlantic Islands, square miles; Senegambia, 154,400; Gaboon, 4830 ; Reunion, 964 ; Mayotte, 125; Walfish Bay, 460; Cape Colony, Nossi-Be, and Ste. Marie, 256. Total, 283,450 square miles. Her present pos- with dependenoies-Basutoland, Zulusessions stand in marked contrast with that, as witness the figures, which are land, Bechuanaland, etc., 500,000; not, of course, precise. Natal, 21,000; British South Africa French Africa, 1890 : Algeria, 184,480 square miles; Tunis, 44,790; Senegal Company and Nyassaland, 500,000; and dependencies, 580,000 ; Sahara and Western Soudan, 965,000 ; Gold Coast, Mauritius and dependencies, 900; 19,300; Gaboon and French Congo, 270,000; Madagascar and neighboring Zanzibar and Femba, 760 ; British East islands, 232,600 ; Reunion, 964 ; Comoro Islands, 798; Obock, 2316. Total, Africa (including sphere of influence), 2,300,248 square miles. 400,000 ; Somali Coast region, 38,000 ; In 1876 Germany had no claim to a mile of territory in Africa. At present Socotra, 3000. Total, 1,909,445 square her empire in the "Dark Continent" is great. miles.
German Africa, 1890 : Togoland, 7720 But Britain has no northern limit to square miles; Cameroons, 193,000; Southwest Africa, 385,000 ; East Africa, its sphere, and the" thin red line" is 450,000. Total, 1,035,720 square miles. at Cairo and Suakim. This may not seem vast compared with some, but the ratio' must be reck- It is doubtful if Portugal had more oned from nothing; and it must be borne in mind that this was all virtually than 80,000 square miles of territory in obtained within a few months, in 1884- 85 ; all else has been mere adjustment Africa in 1876, but the following may of boundaries. be accepted as substantially correct: .. Has Britain finished 1" is the signifi. cant question of the Mouvement Geo- Portuguese Africa, 1876 : Madeira, 314 graphiq'lle, in referring to the British sphere of influence. Taking the Anglo- English square miles; Cape Verd Isl- ands, 1486; Islands of Sao Thome and Principe, 417; Angola, 300,000; Mo- zambique, 300,000. Total, 612,217 Eng.
lish square miles.
Portuguese Africa, 1890: Madeira, 314 square miles; Cape Verd Islands, 1486; Guinea and Bissagos Islands, 2316 ; Sao Thome and Principe, 417 ; Cabinda, 460 ; Angola, 470,000 ; Mozam- bique, 300,000. Total, 774,993 square miles. • For the smaller states we can only give totals. In 1876 f:$pain had not more than 80,000 square miles. If all her claims were now admitted she would have 220,000. In 1876 Italy had nothing, …
officially, in Africa; she now claims, and no power contests it, 360,000 square miles. Turkey's claim to Tripoli is un· disputed ; and if her rule in Egypt is to be counted-though England rules it far more-she has, in a loose way,
INTERNATIONAL DEPARTMENT
enough beyond Tripoli to make perhaps Laying Siege to the 'Stronghold of the 1,000,000 square miles. Dalai Lama-The Moravian Mission among the Western Himalayas. SU1lOrLUlY. BY MV. ;T. T. lLUIILTON;, BETlILEHlCM:, l'A. The following is the summary of the above ciphering. Perhaps we would Among the flora of the Himalayas not better state in advance, for the benefit the least inteiesting is the juniperus of sticklers, that this is only an approx- excelsa, the" pencil cedar," a tree held imate putting of the facts: sacred by the Tibetans, who use it for their sacrificial fires. Clinging to the Portugal, in 1876, 612,217; in 1890, merest crevices, thriving on almost pre. 774,993 square miles. Spain, in 1876, cipitouB declivities, it roots itself with 3500; in 1890, 210,000. France, in a firmness that acknowledges alone the 1876,283,450; in 1890,2,300,248. Ger- superior power of the avalanche. Evermany, in 1890, 1,035,720. Congo Free green in life and when felled furnish- State, in 1890, 1,000,000. Italy, in ing most valuable timber, it is of amaz- 1890, 360,000. Great Britain, in 1876, ingly slow growth. A century may 279,165 ; in 1890, 1,909,445. Total, in elapse before a seedling from it deserves 1876, 1,178,332; in 1890, 7,590,406 the name of tree. Yet it can and does square miles. attain noble proportions, its trunk some- times measuring from nine to twelve If to this we add the areas of Egypt yards in circumference. To the juniand the Egyptian Soudan, of Tripoli, per of the Himalayas the mission of the Morocco, the independent Central Sou- Moravian Church among those moundan States, the Transvaal and Orange tains has been compared. Planted in Free States, and patches elsewhere not an almost inaccessible region and in the yet ensphered, it will probably be found face of gravest difficulties, its progress that, of the 11,900,000 square miles of has been slow. Yet faith foresees a day Africa, not more than 2,500,000 remain when the hardy evergreen shall flourish to be scrambled for. like a cedar of Lebanon. Possibly, as by the botanist, the juniperus excelsa·is We have left ourselves no room to regarded with peculiar interest, so also moralize on all this, as to its inherent for the friend of Protestant missions justice, its inspiration, its probable fu- the story of this undertaking, which inture, its bearing on the evangelization volves a residence for Europeans at an of the peoples; or on-what tempts our elevation a couple of thousand feet pen just now more than other points- higher than the famous St. Bernard the overstrained claim for benevolence Pass, and journeys through mountain in seeking the good of Africa. It is, at defiles far above the level of the sumleast, quite noticeable that this mag- mit of Mount Blanc, may in like mannanimous regard for the betterment and ner possess attractions. civilization of these, ofthe .. submerged tenth"-not of England, but of the Invited, in 1850, by the well-known whole human family-should date con· apostle to the Chinese, K. F. A. Gutztemporaneously with the fever for co- laff, to send missionaries to the western lonial expansion. Whether the govern· portion of that great empire, the Mis_ ments know it or not, the people are not sion Board of the Moravian Church deceived by this pious cant. It may called for two volunteers. Thirty reseem to serve their purpose, just because sponded. Two of these, Edward Pagell back of all this reckless rush for gain and A. W. Heyde, both laymen, having there really is a great percentage of earn- been selected and sent to Berlin for a est philanthropy which, while it is not course in medicine, in the summer of humbugged by this political hypocrisy 1853 proceeded to India. The original of motive, has the good sense to avail plan had been to seek Mongolia via Rus· itself of the opportunity thus afforded; but it would do this just as well without this rubbish of asserted magnanimity of motive. sia, but the Czar's fidelity to the tradi- about a hundred miles northeast of tions of the Orthodox Greek Church negatived a request for permission to Simla, and therefore on the very con· take this most direct route. At Kolghur, a statiol1, of the Anglican Church, on the fines of Tibet. Yet endeavors to in- Sutlej, north of Simla, the reside,nt missionary rendered them every assist- vade the land from this point also failed, ance in his power, and a beginning was made in the study of Hindustani and even though the people were willing Tibetan. When somewhat familiar with the latter an attempt was made to enter enough to send for the missionary to in- Tibet. But the boycott was most effectually employed to defeat this. Hardly oculate multitudes against the smallwas Pagell a few days' journey within the Province of Tsotso when he realized pox in a time of distress from that that starvation faced him. Not even could parched barley-meal be bought. scourge. The very lamas and nuns Water was to be obtained only on condition of a withdrawal from the coun- anxiously availed themselves of vaccinatry, and even after a promise to this effect had been given not more than tion, and honors were shown to the misone day's allowance of barley-meal could be procured by the missionary's attend- sionary such as only men of high rank ants. receive; but the work of vaccination Lama-ridden Tibet being thus barred shut, the best that could be done was to over, he was significantly reminded that seek Mongolia by way of Ladak, a former Tibetan province, now tributary to he belonged the other side of the bor~ Kashmir. Here also jealousy of Europeans drew forth a peremptory order to der. Nay, at a later time, so recently return across the border. as 1888, when another trial waa made, Satisfied that for the present an advance was impoRsible, the missionaries friendly officials gave assurance that it then found a permanent home in Kyelang, a village of Lahoul, within the lim- would cost them their heads if they perits of .British sovereignty. Here, a hundred and fifty miles from Simla, and mitted a European to pass. the same distaDce ,from Leh, the capital of Ladak, .at.a height of 10,000 feet Nevertheless, one barrier has since above 1Ie6,level,. in tb,e midst of a population prevailingly Tibetan and Buddh- thenl?roken down. The jealous suspiillt, they began their labors in 1856. cions of the Maharajah of· Kashmir have Before long. they were joined by the Re,.., H,. A. Jaschke. a.scholar pre-emi- yielded. In 1885 Leh became a third nent' in Jingu}J,tic abilities, who had resigned' his ~o-directorship of the classi· station of the mission, and is now ascal· college of the Moravian Church in Germany . that. he might share their suming the characteristics of its headlabors .. . In 1865, still keeping in view their quarters, as is natural, since it is an imultimattl purpo.se ofearryi1g the Gospel into Chinese territOlfY. they founded portant city, an entrepot of trade from a Bacond 4itation ·at.l'oo,.onihe .Sutlej, Lhassa, Yarkand, Bokara, Cabul, the Punjab, and Srinagar. Moreover, even though it lies at an elevation of 11,500 feet, it affords an excellent starting- point for evangelistic tours among Ti_ betan-speaking Buddhist populations.
Hindustani is the language of its bazar, and Islam is predominant. Here the hospital established by the British Gov- ernment has been made over to the mis- sionaries, and here, especially, they have an important school, a school the farther-reaching in its influence because the sub-ruler of the Province of Ladak last year promulgated a decree" that from every .family in Leh and the neigh- bo.rhood, where there ill more than one child, at least one child must be Bent to the mission school." True, the attend- anco at the portion of the curriculum which touches on ~eIigion is left .oP- tional, but at last accounts. there were about sixty present daily.
sioWnairtihe'sit(smatlh~reaensdtatfieounias!,.eel}e.avnsdll mis- Olll, about fifty native communicants, the ing my tent, I was obliged to take refugo growth of this mission has been juniper- under a large block of stone which promlike in its slowness. Yet the intricate ised some protection from the weather. network of rootlets thrown out in the It snowed heavily in the night and I evangelistic tours and in the scattering longed for the morning.' , of printed portions of God's Word and religious tracts in the Tibetan, may be Again, the missionaries here confront believed to have fastened it so firmly in a powerful and well organized system its unfavorable situation that, please of false faith. The lamas, clothed in God, it will defy the storms and endure their red robes and yellow peaked caps, evergreen for generations to come, at claim and receive divine honors. The length reachil{g a glorious symmetry and sense of sin has been deadened by the majestic size, " its leaves for the healing doctrine of the transmigration of souls. of the nations." Of repentance the people appear to have no innate conception. Gross supersti- Peculiar obstacles have been in the tions have debased even their Buddh. way of the progress of this mission. It ism. With complacent indifference has been found no child's play to lay they let the lamas do the thinking for siege to the stronghold of the Dalai them. With a liberalism that would Lama. First of all, the physical features delight the most thoroughgoing agnosof the field are unique. From April to tic, they meet the approaches of those October the two earlier stations, Kye· who would point out the way of salvalang and Poo, are absolutely isolated tion by affirming that" doubtless there from the rest of the world by the vast are many roads which reach one final masses of snow that block every pass. goal. " The prayer-mill mechanically The very battle for existence is severe, grinus out their devoticns. Pol'yandry there being so little arable land, and corrupts their morals. Holiness is supfalls of snow being unknown in no posed to be acquired by paying a lama month of the year. What is entailed in to read pages of the sacred books in an travelling may be learned from the unknown tongue. Lucky and unlucky following extracts from missionaries' days and divination, playas important a letters: "Passing through rivers, or part in their daily Iives as in those of over them, on swaying bridges made of the ancient Egyptian. Deception and boughs, crossing glaciers with danger- fraud are considered' far less culpable ous ice hanging from steep, rocky preci- than the killing of some noxious insect. pices, where one truly carried one's life Idolatry is so universal that when a in one's hands; traversing partly Tibetan has received a religious book snowed-up passes 14,000, 16,000, 17,- from the missionary he has been known 000 and 18,000 feet in height-there to keep a lamp burning and offer sacri. were so many gracious preservations fices before it in his house. from danger that the recollections of this journey are truly a page of memory Again, to profess the Christian rewhich my wife would not on any account ligion involves for the convert the being be deprived of. …" "Next morning completely disowned by his people. He we set off very early and soon hau noth- is boycotted. There have been ining but ice beneath and around us. stances when his life was endangered, Twice my horse fell with me through a or when he has died under suspicious thin coat of snow into deep fissures, but circumstances pointing to foul play. both times I was mercifnlly preserved. The jealousy of native chiefs and the "I spent a trying night in deep hatred of the more influential the vicinity of the monastery ; not being lamas have been manifested in the bringable to find shelter in the miserable huts ing of vexatious lawsuits against the erpcted by the side of the wall of rock, ' missionaries on various pretexts. ~tm Jess to discover a fit spot for pitch- And in addition to all this the barrier of language has often been great. Evenafter the Tibetan proper has been mas- ormation, a catechism, and a summary tered, it has appeared t-o be a dead of Christian doctrine, besides tracts and language to the mass of the people of a school-books in Tibetan, mustal.so be district, and especially to the women. numbered among the literary labors of Some peculiar dialect, like the Bunan the missionaries. Highly important, or the Trinan, has been all that they un- too, are Jlischke's Thibetan-English nerstood. Grammar (Kyelang, 1865; LondoD, 1883), and Thibetan-English Dictionary Under these circumstances it is not (London, 1881), which have called forth surprising that the missionary efforts high commendation from Professor Max have not as yet shown large measures of MUller. visible results. The Gospel, in these regions especially, must be addressed to .. All things come to him who waits," individuals as such, but they have so says a well-tried proverb. Its truth is little personal independence and force especially applicable in the case of him of character, that it is almost impossible who waits on the Lord. Full success for them to face public opinion and risk must attend the work among the all for Christ's sake. Yet the leaven of Himalayas sooner or later, and a breach the Gospel is working slowly and sure- be made in the wall that surrounds the ly. The lamas are indicating their can. stronghold of the Dalai-Lama. Mean· victioD that a contlict is UpOD them whil~, the missionaries are asking that fraught for them with the most serious the siege guns of prayer bombard the issues. Thus, for example, they have bastions of Lamaism. "Could you not, recently imported from Chinese Thibet in missionary circles at home, form a a famous Buddhist work in a hundred union which should make it a duty, not volumes, a load for twelve horses, at a occasionally, but regularly, to remember cost of $500, for the defence of their re- prayerfully the Himalayan mission?" ligion. They feel that the ground is was the request that came last spring beginning to slip from beneath their from the missionary at Poo. It has feet. Among the converts is to be reck- been ·answered by a number, who agree oned a learned lama, Sodpa. Gjalzan, whose father was an official at Lhassa, 1. To pray definitely at least one day the home of the. Dalai-Lama, the in the week for this mission, and for an Buddhist pope. . outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon its missionaries. Direct preaching, evangelistic tours, schools, and the work of medical mis. 2. To read regularly what is published siona.ries have been among the methods about this field, as material for suppliof attack employed here as elsewhere. cation and thanksgiving, and But particularly important has been the printing and distribution of the Scrip- 3. To plead for the opening of the tures and tracts. Many a Christian vol. door into Chinese Tibet, the great ume in Tlbetan has t.hus found its way stronghold of Buddhism, and one of the to Lhassa itself. Ever since the fall of few countries still closed to the Gospel. 18580. lithographic press has been busily employed, and the entire New Testa- The intercessions of the readers of ment, translated by Jlischke and Red. this magazine are likewise requested. slob and the converted lama, was printed at Berlin in 1883 and 1884 at the ex. " Working and Waiting for Tibet" is pense of the British and Foreign Bible the title of a book just issued by Mor. Society. The greater part of the gan &, Scott, London, containing a time· Pentateuch, Joshua, the Psalms, and ly and admirable description of this isaiah have also been issued from the mission work in the Western Himalayas, lithographic press at Kyelang. A his- the country and people, with chapters tory of the Christian Church to the Ref- on Duddhism and the Lamas. It is based on a German work by Hermann Gustav Schneider. It is illustrated, and if! to be sold at a low price. J. T. G.
1891·1
Editorial Notes. missionary lands. Besides, as there is ;T. T. G. nothing a Chinaman dreads more than singularity, this review will have the We cannot forbear adding a personal effect of inspiring a new and more agtestimony to the noble work of the Unity gressive interest in the work which is Brethren. in the Western Himalayas, enlisting the activity and labors of about which Secretary Hamilton writes. Christian communities in all lands. In 18137 the writer received from them Both the periodicals are issued under at his own request a dozen copies of the the auspices of a local society for the Gospels in Tibetan, then just issued "diffusion of Christian and general from their press, and found a way to knowledge," which is thereby solving send them by messenger through the the problem of enlisting in the cause of Nepal Passes into Tibet. It is with missions the interest and co-operation interest that after all these years the following letter is at hand: J. T. G.
KYELANG, Nov. 6, li67. of a large and influential lay element res- Rev. J. T. Gracey: ident in China. This society is com- posed of leading men of all nationali- DEAn BROTHER: Your letter, dated ties, consuls, Chinese customs officers, October 5th, reached me only the day merchants, bankers, and lawyers who, before yesterday. I am glad to learn with some of the older and more experithat you find no difficulties in dis- enoed missionaries, have' in this way tributing the Tibetan Gospels, and united to give the Chinese the benefits of our higher civilization and enlight- I am very happy to send you by thill enment.. Thus, the cause of missions post another supply of them. We are is being mightily sustained and promotall here very thankful that you assist ed by a' large and influential class of uur work in this way, and we shall be foreigners resident in China who, but always happy to hear that they find the for such an opportnnity-one whioh way into Tibet. they heartily approve of and believe in -would be almost entirely lost to mis- Allow me to send you also by book- sionary enterprise. post our Tibetan grammar and our dictionary. Please accept this as a broth- A correspondent from China, writerly gift. I take also the liberty to send, ing about the great Shanghai Conference together with the books, a few copies last May, calls it a .. glorious success," of grammars and dictionaries, in case and says the spirit of it still abides that there would be gentlemen who would like to buy them. 'rhe price of adictionary is rupees 2, and the gram. mar, 12 annas.
The Lord be with you in your wor~. In Him I salute you as your Brother, TH. RECHLER.
among the churches. .. Over one hun.
We have pleasure in acknowledging dred new missionaries," he says, .. have the receipt of the first number of a new arrived since our call for the 1000 was missionary literary venture, Ohung si issued !" The executive committees Kiao HwuiPao (The Missionary Review), appointed' by the Conference to provide edited by Rev. Dr. Y. J. Allen, also the . for the revision of the Bible have nearly Wan Krooh Kung Pao (The Review of the completed their labors by the election Times), under the same editorial care. of competent translators. There are to The latter is designed to reach the offi- be three versions, one in High Wen-Ii, cials and literary classell, who chiefly one in Easy Wen-Ii, and one in Man- , patronize it, while the former is devoted darin, and it is hoped that the entire to the native churches. The Chinese work will be done by the Dext General are given to imitation, and it is thought Conference, say ten years hence.
that this new periodical may avail itself of this peculiarity by laying be- Rev. Dr. Happer was compelled to fore them the history, objects, and meth- resign his muoh loved work in the col- ods of missions, as condncted in all lege at Canton, China, owing to the state fields, or, at least, in all foreign and of his health, which his physicians said
INTE:RNATIONAL DEPARTMENT
forbade all work involving either severe ton Springs, N. Y., June 10th to 17th. mental or physical strain, especially that May God bless and restore our dear which causes anxiety; and the college Brother Belden ! had reached a stage which required great care and responsibility as well as hard "A suggestive symptom," says the work. In a letter written to us, January Asiatic Quarterly Review, about China, 12th, he says he hopes to get away early "is the decree just issued that, on ill April. He hopes to resume his their next New Year's day the ambassastudies in this oountry, and is bringing dors of the Western nations," such as all his books for this purpose. His ob- ministers of Great Britain, France, Russervations and experiences on the field sia, the United States, and Holland, are during forty-seven years will enable to receive an audience of the Emperor, him to present most valuable addresses followed by a banquet, and this cereon foreign missions before the churches mont is to be continued every year. and young men in the colleges and sem- The question of audience has been uninaries. He hopes to be at the next der discussion for centuries. So far meeting of the International Missionary back as 1816 Lord Amherst flatly reo Union, at Clifton Springs, N. Y., June fused to kowtow-that is, to knock his 10th to 17th. head against the ground in presence of the Emperor. Thus, the British sailor It is with the deepest sorrow that paved the way for the American miniswe are obliged to say to the members of ter to dispense with the whole of this the Internation!11 Missionary Union that ceremony in order to ' protect those dutheir most faithful and efficient secre- ties which every Western nation owes tary, Rev. William H. Belden, of Bris- to its own dignity,' and to introduce, tol, Conn., has been stricken from the through the present Emperor, the brothlist of nctive workers, at least for" time. erhood of monarchies even among the On February 28th, at his own home and Celestials. " in the midst of his family, he was stricken with paralysis in a severe form, and The resignation of Rev. Dr. Lowrie, lay unconscious for some days. At as Secretary of the Presbyterian Mission. this writing, which is necessarily weeks ary Board, follows hard on that of Dr. away from the reading of it, his life Murdock, of the Baptist Union. "Ad. still hangs in the balance, but is not de- vancing years and providential circum. spaired of. This is not the time nor stances" compel these changes. The. plaee to say what Mr. Belden was and, Presbyterian Board requests Dr. Lowrie we hope, is to be again to the Union, to to accept the position of Emeritus Sechis large parish, and to other prominent retary, with a salary as heretofore, and enterprises. We cllnnot bring our- express their appreciation of his ability, selves to do more now than to ask the fidelity, and diligence in his general prayers of the members of the Union in superintendence through so many years. particular in his behalf, and to announce that his heroic lind devoted wife, even Miss M. Burt, of Springfield, 0., has in the midst of her troubles, elects to just issued a pan-denominational map take up his duties as Secretary of the I. of China, with the mission stations of M. U., as she is familiar with the con- all boards clearly and accurately loca~. dition of the work; and at this hour ed. The map is 34 by 45 inches. It is the work could scarcely be handed over offered at the very low figure of one dolto any other. The Union will feel un- lar. Around the margin of the map is der great obligation to her for this ser- an amount of interesting and instrucvice, and will render all the aid possi- tive matter such as is of general useful. ble in reaching all missionaries with no- ness. tice of the eighth annual meeting, at Clif.
EDITORIAL NOTES ON CURRENT TOPICS
III.-EDITORIAL NOTES ON CURRENT TOPICS.
Bound up with this number is 0. chart, Sarah Rhea, Melinda Rankin, and hosts prepared by 0. very intelligent student of women besides. of Buddhism and Romanism, by which he seeks to present to the eye the strik- There are at present some four mething similarity between the two systems. ods of conducting these lectureships, It has often been remarked by mis· and where one plan is not feasible sionaries in Buddhistic communities, another may be. that Romanism finds it difficult to make much headway because the Buddhists 1. The Occasional Lectureship, or claim that already they have in their such as may be provided for from time faith and worship so many anticipations to time, for 0. single season or term of of the new" Western religion" urged years. It is sometimes practicable for on their acceptance. The comparisons an institution to secure from individuals suggested in this chart confirm the fact, 0. donation for this purpose, or to apalready hinted by Church historians, propriate from current funds 0. suffithat many of the prominent features of cient sum to provide for an occasional Romanism are borrowed from paganism, course. as many of the statues of saints at Rome are really the gods and heroes of pagan 2. The Professional, Lectureship, Rome christened with new names. where, in the erection and endowment of a professor's chair, lectures on mis- Missionary Leotureships, sions are embraced as a part of the func- tion of the teacher. A chair of " Chris- These are deservedly growing in favor, tian Evidences and Missions" has thus for they secure careful and competent been provided for of late at that very preparation of matter on the part of progressive McOormick Seminary, at specialists in the department of mis- Chicago, as similar chairs have been sions, and they bring the great facts and established in other institutions. appeals of the world-wide field into contact with young men at the most im- 3. The Annual Leotureship. Suoh is pressible period of life, when the con- usually provided for by a fund whose victions and resolves are taking perma- interest is applied to this purpose. A nent shape and the sphere of life work generous donation or legacy is given or is being determined. We sincerely bequeathed to an institution, and by hope that this practicable and desirable the provisions of the gifL is restricted method of reaching students in life's to this use. The famous Bampton transition period will come to be uni- FoundatioIl' in Great Britain, and the versal in our colleges and theological Ely Foundation in this country, may schools, and particularly do we urge the furnish examples. The former is now establishment and delivery of such lec- in its second century, and has furnished ture courses where hitherto, we regret to the world some of the ablest oourses to add, they have been very strangely of lectures ever delivered. neglected-in our young ladies' colleges and seminaries. It must be remem- At Rutgers Theological Seminary, bered that some of the noblest pioneers New Brunswick, N. J., the editor-inin mission work, and some of the most chief has just concluded (February 23d) remarkable examples of apostolic con- 0. course of seven leotures on" Chrissecration, have been found among wom- tian Missions as a Divine Enterprise." en, like tbe wives of Adoniram Judson, Mrs. Dr. Grant, Fidelia Fiske, Mr. N. F. Graves, of Syracuse, has Harriet Newell. Rosine Krapf, Eliza put 0. certain sum year by year at the Asnew, Mfa, Sarah B, Capron, Mrs, disposal of the Seminary for such pur- pose. The first year six lectures were delivered by as many different men; last year, Rev. Dr. John Hall gave the en- tire oourse. Here, without any perma- Ill)p.t fund, the le<lt1:Il'eship is aunual, and we understand that Rev. Dr. A. J. and pllices as the trustees may deter· Gordon, of Boston, ill already appointed mine, between January and April of the Graves Lecturer for 1892. We congrat. second year of the lecturer's term. ulato the seminary on this appointment, 4. That the lecturer shall publish not • and sincerely hope that this generous less than one hundred copies of his lec· Syracusan may be led to provide for tures within one year following their the permanence of this Rutgers course. delivery, to be distributed according to 4. The Qu'ldrennial Lectureship. Of a list furnished by the trustees; and this the famous" Duff Foundation," in beyond these the published lectures be· Scotland, is perhaps the only example. come his own property. There are some features about it that Me unique and very desirable. We'give 5. Out of the income of this trust somewhat extended reference to it, as fund the trustees first defray all neces- it commends itself for imitation in cer· sary costs not falling to the lecturer to tain advantages in which it stands alone, defray; then, on delivery of the course, not to say unrivalled. the net proceeds of two yeMs go to This" Duff Lectureship" was founded the lecturer; and upon the publication in 1879 by William Pirie Duff, Esq" in of the lectures he is entitled to the in- pursuance of the will of his father, Rev. come of the remaining two years. Alexander Duff, D.D., " for the estab· lishment and endowment of a quadren- All other matters connected with the nial course of lectures on some depart. lectureship are left at discretion of this ment of foreign missions or cognate sub· Board of Trustees, who become final judges in every matter pertaini ng thereto r jects. A Board of Trustees was created, under these provisions. Rev. Thomas Smith, D.D., Dr. Duff's colleague in Cal. consisting of eight leading men, viz., cutta, became the first lecturer, Rev. Baron Polwarth, Rev. William Lindsay William Fleming Stevenson, D.D., the Alexander, Principal of the Theological second, Sir Monier Monier Williams, the Hall of the Oongregational Union of third, and the editor·in·chief of this Scotland; 'William Pirie Duff, Esq., REVIEW, the fourth. Hev. Robert Gordon,. of the Free Ohurch ; Rev. J. Marshall Lang, D.D., The special features of this lecture. of the Established Ohurch of Scotland; ship, which seem to us to be unique in Hugh M. Matheson, Esq., Duncan Mac· their desirableness, are these: . Neill, Esq., Rev. Andrew Thomson, D.D., United Presbyterian, and their 1. It is practically impossible that successors, as provided for. Here it this trust fund should ever be perverted, will be seen that some of the foremost abused, or wasted. men of the leading evangelical bodies are put in charge of this fund, with Mrs. 2. Though undenominational and Rebecca J. Duff Watson as consulting catholic in character, the evangelical member. standing and teaching of the lecturers is assured. It is further provided, 1. That the lecturer shall be a minis· 3. Ample time is secured for the ter, professor, or godly layman of any preparation and delivery of the course. evangelical church, and shall hold the The lecturer has at least two years from said lectureship for four years. the date of his appointment to get his 2. That the lecturer shall choose his course ready, and one year more to com· own theme, subject to the approval of plete its issue in printed form. this Board of Trustees, one year before time of delivery. 4. Ample provision is made for the 3; That the lectures, at least six in expense incidental to such preparation number, shall be delivered in Edinburgh and publication. But one series of lee· tures is called fur, but the lecturer holds PIld Glasgow, and Ilt 11llCP other tixulls his incumbency for a four years' term, during which the net income from the investment inures to his benefit. He is ~bus eD!ltbled to purchRRe any books, or bear any other needful expense of time are Roman Catholics, should read that, and st~ength incidental to preparation. out of a popUlation of about 2,000,000 5. The repeated deli very in the great centres of population insures a large and there are that number of Roman Catho- representative hearing, and brings the course before both the educated uni· lics." Until about thirty years ago, versity students and the popular assem- blies. only Lutheranism was tolerated in Nor- 6. The infrequency' of the course way. allows an opportunity to the trustees to act with deliberation. It would not In justice to Dr. McAlI and his work- always be easy to secure for each cur· rent year a lecturer who had made the ers, the REVIEW gives place to the fol- subject of missions a specific study, nor would it be always practicable even for lowing statement by the Rev. Dr. Mc- such persons to prepare a special course at short notice. All, approved by the Committee of Di- If any other lectureship of missions rection of the McAll Mission, at their has been established whose provisions are equally sagacious, and foresighted. meeting held on January 20th, 1891, re- and generous, the writer knows not of such; and the details of this Scottish specting certain re!lections recently plan are presented somewhat fully, in hope that the essential features may be made upon the position and constitu- largely and extensively copied in other parts of the Christian world. tion of the mission: That little paper which Chaplain Mc- The Committee of Direction of the Cabe is now distributing among the ,. Mission Populaire Evang~lique de host of the Methodists is a wide-awake France" would gladly pass over in silence and trumpet-tongued messenger of the an article in the American Baptist Mis- Gospel of Peace. It is well called World- sionary Magazine for January, 1891, and wide Missions, and we should gladly wel- briefer ones in L'Echo de la Verite (organ come it to a world-wide circulation. He of the French Baptists), and Evangelical hopes for a million and a quarter read- Christendom (organ of the British Evan- ers this year-and a million and a quar- gelical Alliance), in which our relations ter dollars for missions. Here is an with the French chur,ches are more or illustrated monthly, with nine pages of less pointedly referred to. Since, how- reading matter exclusive of advertise- ever, those statements convey the im- ments, and all for twenty-five cents a pression that the mission" is allying it- year in advance! It is published at 150 self more and more with churches per- Fifth Avenue, New York, and 144 Mon- meated with rationalism and formal- roe Street, Chicago. Chaplain McCabe ism." it becomes necessary to make has proven himself an efficient leader public an outline of facts bearing on the '. among the Lord's hosts as well as in the case. For it is obvious that, if such a , armies of his country• We bid him God- compromise existed, the work must for- speed! feit its claim to the confidence and sup- port of all faithful evangelical Chris- Dr. J. H. W. Stuckenberg writes from tians. We venture to affirm that the Berlin, March 3d. 1891: "The state- original basis of the mission, which is ment made in a recent number of the precisely that of the Evangelical Alli- REVIEW that, out of a population of ance, has been in no degree departed 6,000,000 ill Norway only about 100Q from. Our invariable rule of action is to accept only association with those who, so far as known to us, are strictly evangelical,' but without making any distinction respecting the denomination to which they belong.
It is quite true that we have come gradually into closer relations with the various French evangelical pastors and congregations. But this is surely occa- sion for rejoicing. It is not that the mission has changed, in any degree, its principles or attitude, but simply that these esteemed brethren have felt more and more drawn to ioin with us in the effort to spread the Gospel in their coun- try, and this increasing intimacy of as- sociation has been with those belonging to the Eglise Libre (Union of Free Churches), and with the Baptists" and Wesleyans, q,uite as markedly as witll those of the Reformed and Lutheran originated and sustained by a voluntary Churches. committee of faithful pastors and mem- bers in that congregation, with the Into the question of relations to the avowed aim of combating the tenden- State or form of Church organization cies referred to by the pure teachings we are precluded from entering, by our of the Gospel. Evangelical Alliance basis. That basis forbids us to make ecclesiastical ques- To comprehend accurately our positions a ground of separation. To do so tion, it is necessary to take into account would, in fact, involve a breach of faith the fact that these two contrasted tenwith all those who have contributed, dencies in the Reformed Lutheran whether by pecuniary gifts or personal churches form a strongly-defined line of service, to form and sustain the mission, demarcation, so that the more closely we the undenominational platform having associate ourselves with L:.~Ee faithful been from the beginning avowed and French brethren whom we honor and maintained. love (who constitute the evangelical sec- tion, and happily the large majority of The point at issue is this. "Ought these two communities), the more emthe mission henceforward to refuse co- phatic in effect is our protest against operation with the purely evangelical formalism and worldliness, and all that elements (and happily they are a large is unevangelical or indefinite in doc_ majol'ity) in those churches, because pastors and congregations exist within trine. the pale of those communities marked While thus affirming our resolve to by rationalistic or formalist tenden- co-operate with the faithful portions of cies ?" these two denominations, we are, and have evidenced ourselves equally ready M. Saillens, the writer of the article to join hands with the other faithful communities-Eglise Libre, Baptist and in the American Baptist Missionary Mag- Wesleyan. We have gladly set ourazine, has himself, for a series of years, selves to work with and aid them wherreturned and acted with us on the an- ever possible, and are still prepared to swer, " We ought to associate with those do so. esteemed brethren, and seek to strengthen their hands against the opposed ten- The Committee of the Mission is, natdency." Now he has changed his esti- urally, composed of members holding mate, but we have not changed, and can- each one his own views on church ornot change, ours. In fact, our entire ganization and government. We take co-working has been, and is an earnest our places on that committee, not as reppretest against the rationalIstic and resenting this or that denomination, formalist elements, because we have, on but simply as associated workers in the principle, refused co-operation with the representatives of those elements in common cause of evangelization. To every instance in which we have been accept co-working with our brethren, aware of their existence. This course whether holding our own views of of action has, on several occasions, re- church polity and organization or not, quired no little determination, and cost is obviously the sole principle on which us no little pain in withdrawing from a non-denominational (or as it has been those otherwise entitled to much esteem, justly defined, aU-denominational) miswhen the fact of their non-adhesion to sion can go forward. To depart from strictly evangelical ideas has become it would be to quit the ground of the known to us. Strong pressure has even Evangelical Alliance. We have studied been put upon us, repeatedly, to relax most carefully to adhere to that ground, this rule of action; but it has been rig- and shall do so still. idly adhered to in all cases. It has been stated that we have sought The fact of our having granted the use to favor the two larger churches more of the station of Boulevard Bonne Nou- than the others. Is it so? Take-e.g., velle, Paris, for worship instituted by a the Baptist denomination, which, as committee connected with the central yet, h~s only a few congregations in (Oratoire) parish of the Reformed France. We ha~e never yet refused, Church at an hour when our evangelis- when in our power, to aid any evangelistic meetings were not held, has been tic work connected with that communcited more than once, as if involving a ity. And in Paris we have incurred a compromise of the above principle, be- large outlay in order to enable M. Sailcause in that great parish, Unitarian or lens to have an open Baptist place of rationalistic elements exist. On the worship in the large Mission Hall of contrary, this was a fine opportunity for publicly evidencing our resolve to do Rue St. Denis. We joined with him our utmost to strengthen the evangeli- and the American Baptist Association in hiring that hall for the double purcal party, becaul!e the movement Wall pose of QUr evangelistic meetings and the formation of that church, and gladiy would indicate no favoritism whatever saw the most promising of our converts shown to the larger communities. Our from various stations gathered there. Wesleyan friends have their own evan- That this, Olle of the first·planted of our gelistic mission on the model of ours ; mission churches, should, by the seces- hence the small number of our stations sion of its pastor from ollr ranks and in which they have undertaken to work from united working with the churches, along with us. o.ur Baptist brethren take a separatist character, is, to us, the have received as cordial a welcome from cause of great regret. It is a step fitted us as those of any other body, and we to retard the movement for bringing our have held and still hold ourselves ready COilverts into fellowship, by presenting for enlarged co-working with them, as the aspect of liability to cause them to with all the congregations faithful to drift into sectarianism and separation. the foundation. truth of the Gospel, so long as that co-operation involves no It is true that, shortly before his lIud- elements inconsistent with the fraterna: den retirement from the mission, M. basis of the Evangelical Alliance as re- Saillens m"de overtures to our commit- gards Evangelical Christians in other tee respecting the opening of additional Christian communities. halls in Paris, which would be, like that of Rue St. Denis, centres of Baptist R. W. McALL, Hon. President. working. We did not then consider that the right moment had come, and, A friend writes us : indeed, our financial position abso· "On page 237 of the March number, I lut.ely forbade the added outlay. At find statistics of the American Mission the same time, we testified to M. Sail- in Egypt. They make a good showing. lead our readiness to aid him when the It would be as well to speak of the time seemed ripe for such extension and American Mission in China, or India, or our means enabled us to carry it out. Persia, or Syria; but the denomination doing the work gets credit for it by It is obvious, however, that an evan- being named. Why not name the gelistic work which welcomes co·opera- United Presbyterian Church of America, tion without denominational distinc- when speaking of her work done, as weH tions, and is prepared to open its sta- as naming other churches? This has tions in every district to the representa. been done not once only, but several tives of whatever faithful Christian timell during the past two years. body may be prepared to undertake the " We are not ashamed of our work effort, in order that the converts may be either in Egypt or in India, and it seems grouped in Christian fellowship, is that fair treatment would be to speak of likely, without the least favoritism, to our church in connection with her mishave a larger or smaller number of its sion work, as well as to mention others mission.halls linked with the several de- in connection with theirs. nominations, somewhat in proportion to the larger or smaller number of M. M. GILCRRIST. churches existing in connection with IRETON, JAVA.. each. Thus, taking the congregations of the Reformed Church (Eglise Re- Ohina Inland Mission, Shanghai. formee) throughout France as 700 or 750; after deducting a percentage for February 13th, 1891. the minority which are not professedly To the Ei,itor of The ,Missionary Review: evangelical, a figure of 500 or more remains. The Lutheran congregations in DEAR SIR: My attention has been France number about 100; a similar drawn to an article, which has appeared deduction must be made from their in more than one religious periodical in total. (These deductions, however, America, headed, "Chinese Dresll in happily do not apply to Paris, all the the Shanghai Conference. " pastors in charge in Paris in both of them being adherents of the Evangelical In that article the esteemed writer Alliance, with the exception of the di· gives publicity to reports which appear vided elements in the parish of the Ora- to refer to the China Inland Mission. toire, already referred to.) The Eglise namely: (1) "That one-half of thORO Libre (Union of Free Churches) counts, who enter China under its auspicell, rt)- say, 50 or 55 ; the Wesleyans, between 30 and 40, besides out-stations; the Baptists about 12 or 14. Comparing these figures with the extent to which our mission stations have become allied with these communities rellpectively.
we venture to affirm that the result turn within two years, either to their lies before them a much longer period of work. For, as I need scarcely indihomeland on e(2a)rth"T•ohr atto the home c~te, this low average of seven years' above;" and the average service is the inevitable result of the rapid increase of our numbers during reterm of service for the whole body is cent years. Taking the older members of the Mission only, the first 50 have only three and a half years." I am sure already completed an average of over seventeen years, and 16 of them have both the writer and your readers will be averaged twenty.four and three-quarter years. glad to hear that these rumors are en- On the whole, we are led to conclude tirely unwarranted. that our mission is, by God's blessing, one of the healthiest in China. 1. Looking into our statistics, I find Yours truly, that 539 personlil have been connected J. HUDSON TAYLOB.
with the China Inland Mission-either Mr. Frederick J. Stanley writes from Blauvelt, N. Y.: "Make your own misin Burmah or in China-during the last sionary maps and charts." The REVIEW, Volume II., page 129, contained a plan twenty-six years. If the above state- by Mr. Larken for constructing such. The objection is that his plan is too inment were correct, 270 should have left tricate and painstaking for a busy pas- tor or layman. China during the first two years of ser- Dr. Barrows, of Chicago, says: " Misvice. The actual number, however, sions make such rapid and marvellous changes, such advances, that no one who did so is lelia than one-llixth of can keep fully abreast with the knowl- edge of progress though he devoted his this; in point of fact only 44, of whom whole time to it." For that reason alone our maps and charts must be made 2 retain their connection with the mis- for present use only. This month's map will not do next month on any given sion, and may return to China. country or place of work, much less this year's map for next year. Hence make Of this number 21 were removed by them as cheaply and quickly as possi- ble, never sacrificing accuracy. My plan death, 5 were invalided home, including for years has been as follows : the 2 still in connection with the mis- .. Take some common thickmanilB (buff colored) paper. Fasten sheets together sion. ' Of the remaining 18, 4 resigned, 5 by mucilage or otherwise, till desired width and length are obtained. Then, were requested to withdraw, and 9 left with a match, or larger stick sharpened, draw tl1e map and letter it distinctly, the mission on account of marriage or using common fnk or writing fluid. Place on the map only the names of family claims. rivers and places necessary to give the audience the ideas and facts of the work These facts refer to our missionaries of God in that conntry. Make a chart of statistics on another paper to hang by during their first two years of service, the side of the map. A blackboard is a good substitute for the chart; but I find for which period they are considered probationers. There are now 122 pro- bationers in the mission, who have come out during lS89 and 1890.
2. We have had from the commence· ment 373 full members; 22 of them have died after an average service of more than eight and one half years ; 12 have been invalided home after an average service of six years and a half ; 4 have been transferred to the home de- partment of the work, while 21 have reo tired, 9 have been requested to resign, ..nd 18 have had to leave us on account of marriage or family claimll. Taking these 86 as a whole, the average period of service was six years and one month, not three and a half years.
There still remain 287 full members of the mission to be accounted for. In a few weeks these will have completed an average service of seven years. If the Master tarry, we may reasonably expect from past experience that there need for the board in addition to the his labors as Bishop Taylor and Dr. ohart, for there are so many facts to bring Summerville We1e in the same field. before the eye. Further on Dr. Pentecost said: " From month to month in my pas- "From them we will proceed to evan_ torates I have used these inexpensive gelize the English.speaking Hindus. and easily made helps-frequently pre· After them, we will evangelize the halfpared by some of the congregation-and breeds." The "half-breeds" regard found them inestimably valua.ble. En- themselves as Europeans, and will be in gage the young men and women in this attendance at church along with" the work." English." Many native Christians will be there also. These classes will be reached While publishing Mr. Stanley's letter, first of all, and should prove the ohief the editor .is not wholly in accord with helpers of the work of the evangelist. the idea thBt it does not pay to make a Further on he said: .. We have ohosen map for permanent use. Geographical the high castes, because no work of evanfeatures do not change. All other gelization has ever been done among changes may be marked by additional them." The missionaries to Calcutta labor, as new stations, etc., require only will be amused to see this statement. additions to a map already made. We Ever since the days of Dr. Duff the high make all our maps for permanent use, oastes have been the special subjects of and add new features as new develop- evangelization. For them schools and ments demand. colleges have been established, lectures delivered, special services held, books Mr. E. M. Wherry writes from Chi- written, and papers and magazines edoago, Ill., correcting certain inaccurate ited. The hope of Dr. Pentecost's laremarks of Rev. Dr. G. F. Pentecost, bors resulting in conversions rests upon and as we seek exactness of statement we the extensive sowing and watering of give Mr. Wherry's friendly strictures for the past half century on this high caste what they are worth. soil. We hope the evangelist will find himself,pleasantly surprised to find how He says: " Dr. Pentecost remarked, in much has been done in the line of his his address at Dr. Meredith's church, own plans. Brooklyn, " We need to be careful not to exag- 1. "There are 5,000,000 Hindus, younll gerate, to guard against a misapprehenmen, who speak English." sion of facts, and to present more and mare the work already accomplished by There may be 3,000,000 natives of In- the men in the field. It is bad policy, dia who understand something of the as well as bad morality, to minify the English language, but of th.ese Dr. Pen- results of missionary work in order to tecost will not find over 200,000 who can magnify the plans and methods of some appreciate an English sermon. The doc. new evangelistic project. Dr. Pentecost tor then goes on to say : has before him a grand work. His suc- cess, however, will mainly rest for its 2. ., We will go 11rst to Calcutta, result, upon the faithful labors of scores where we will open an evangelistic mis- of devoted missionaries and teMhers sion and begin on the English them- toiling for the same end and in the same selves. " field. "
On arrival Dr. Pentecost will have Rev. William H. Hannum, of Kplhafounp. about sixty missionaries, besides pur, S. M. C., India, writes under date many chaplains, many of whom have of January 15th, 1891 : been faithfully proclaiming the Gospel to these English people. He will find .. The annual meeting of the Kolhapur as many devout and godly men among Mission (Presbyterian) closed last week. them as he would find in any city possessing an equal number of people. There is, however, need of revival work" and we trust he may be as successful in It was held on the breezy hilltop of the consecration of the home Ohurch Panhala, and opened on Sunday, De- might rise high enough t.o bring us all cember 29th. Fourteen missionaries these! Mr. Irwin and I are the only were present, and their reports showed ordained missionaries that have come encouraging progress. More evangelis- within the last ten years. We must retic touring had been done than in any ~ember, too, that the Kolhapur Mission preceding year. Most of that work is only one of hundreds. How great is h,ad been done by the Indian Chris- the harvest, and how few are the labortians, and the native churches were be- ers! Volunteers, come! ginning to pay the travelling expenses of their preachers. This is promising, "At Panhala I saw a man 1::aptized because it shows that these Christians who had been kept waiting a long time are beginning to realize their duty to against his wishes. A candidate's give the Gospel to their countrymen. knowledge and sincerity must first be Besides this, the work of the high school, tested for awhile. An aged Brahman of the two boarding-schools, and of the widow has lately asked to be received, dozen day and Sabbath-schools, the and is now negotiating the sale of her zenana visiting, and the regular preach- land to free herself from heathen ening in the churches and bazars have tanglements. That will be a good test been prosperously maintained. The of her earnestness. A week ago I witmeeting took a recess of four days for nessed a marriage of two Christians. It the Christian Convention, or • Merla,' showed that Christians do better than which is held annually for the discus- the heathen in waiting till mature age sion of religious subjects, and for the to marry. meeting of the Presbytery of Kolhapur. This coincidence of the meetings gave " The Marathi language is, of course, us newly arrived missionaries the best new and strange to me yet, but I fed possible opportunity to learn the meth- safe in saying that though it will require ods and plans of the workers, and to hard and persevering labor, any student make the acquaintance of the Indian of average ability can certainly acquire brethren. The excellence of the native a good working knowledge of it. Mrs. preachers, in spite of their poor educa- Hannum, Miss Sherman and I have been tional advantages, impressed me with designated to Ratnagiri Station, which the correctness and importance of the has been unoccupied for some years policy already established in the mis- and which offers opportunities as well as sion, that through the coming years the difficulties. We are to settle there mission must decrease, and the Indian about February 1st." Church must increase, in relative importance. A great part of the work of As to Missions Among the Karens. ordained missionaries must be the training of the ministry and the guiding of Rev. H. Morrow writes from Tavoy, the infant Church. Burmah (December 16th, 1890), calling attention to certain inaccurate state- "Ihavenowhere else seen such prom- ments in regard to the Karens of Burinent, showy, and clamorous idolatry as mah. He says: "A marvellous change at Panhala, but this is only the expres- has been wrought in little more than sion of the general feelings of the Hin- h~lf a century-a short time in the hisdus. This only emphasizes the dire tory of a people-transforming a wild, need of this field. The mission voted barbarous race to one that is on the way to ask this year for seven ordained mis- to civilization, at least. sionaries, one missionary to teach the high school, one to teach an industrial "Dr. Brockett, in the November numschool, three lady teachers, and one ber of the REVIEW, on "education lady physician. Oh, that our faith and and evangelization in mission fields," appears to attribute the comparatively small Buccess among the Burmans to a lack of direct preaching and too much dependence on schools. The very op- anything these people may do. Our posite, however, is true. Burmese mis- friends at home would feel the same if sionaries have done but little school permitted to visit them in their native work, except calling together at certain jungle, living in huts in the dense forest, seasons a class of native helpers for in- often far separated from each other, struction in the Bible. If ever direct neither hearing nor lIeeing anything to preaching, from day to day and year to awaken thought or reflection. From year, by missionaries and native assist- year to year they live on in that condiants, has had a fair trial, it has been tion, growing old without seeing a sunamong the Blumans. At the same time, set. The wonder is that enough manwell prepared tracts have been sold or hood remains to make an impression on. given away by thousands-enough, it has been said, to whiten the ground. " But as to the methods pursued by And yet, although God has not left His Karen missionaries, we rely very largeservants without encouragement, no lyon what may be called education- Pentecostal season has cheered these al work. How do we obtain a footworkers. No doubt the number of mis- ing in a heathen viIlage? We get persionaries has Ilways been inadequate, mission to begin a school to teach their but many consecrated lives have been children to read, or a request may come given to this service. In this matter from some one or more of the people there is an inaccuracy in the letter re- to send them a teacher. If a suitable ferred to. At present there are twelve young man is available, one is sent, who male missionaries in the Burman de- teaches the children during the week, partment, and to the best of the writer's and on the Sabbath talks to all whom knowledge and belief this is the largest he can call together for a little time number there ever has been. During about God, and sin, and salvation. his term of fourteen years in the coun- After having learned to read, some amtry he has known the number to be as bitious boys and girls find their way to low as three. There are also ten wives the town schools, referred to by the of missionaries and eighteen widows writer as " academies," I presume, but and young ladies. by no means of so high a grade as schools so designated at home, These •• The honor of bringing the first Karen are schools where most missionaries and convert to Christ was not given to Jud- their wiYes, assisted in some cases by son, but to Boardman, by whom he was one or more young ladies, do their hardbaptized, May 16th, 1828, here in Tavoy, est and most important work. Here and within a few rods of the writer's boys and girls having learned to read residence. This Karen, Ko-thah-Byu, and write their own langnage, and in and others who very soon afterward em- some cases a little more, come to conbraced the new faith, went everywhere tinue their studies. Among these the preaching the Word, and large numbers Scriptures and Christian civilization were baptized. We who now labor with form an important part. In these this people have much reason to doubt schools such heathen children as above the genuineness of that so-called revival. referred to come in contact with the The Karens hailed the English offi- missionaries and the religious influence cials as their deliverers from Burman of the school, and are led to Christ. oppression, and American missionaries They return during vacation to tell their as those who could represent their parents and friends the wonderful grievances. The work at that time, as things they have been taught, and these it is indeed to.day, was largely in the children prepare the way at least for the hands of native preachers, whose weak- preacher's message. ness and inexperience led them to enroll converts too rapidly. Nor do we " In reference to the amount of benevwonder at this, nor, indeed, at almost olence and of Christian living found among these people, we are thankful that so much has been done, but we some fifty pages, and was at that time constantly have 'occasion to admonish remarkably complete. To that we must them and entreat that they abound more refer all inquirers. At the same time and more. The teachers in the village we have from time to time mentioned schools are now, almost wahout excep. here leading books on missions as they tion, paid by Government, their allow. appear. And we specially commend ances graded according to the certifi· certain cheap books recently issued, cates they have been able to gain. The' such as the" Lives" of James Calvert, pastors get their meagre support from John Williams, Robert Morrison, David the churches, as a rule, so meagre in Livingstone, Robert Moffat, William many cases that too much of their time Carey, Thomas J. Comber, Griffith John, is given to hunting, or fishing, or some James Chalmers, Samuel Crowther, petty trading, to feed and clothe their Bishops Patterson and Hannington, families. We are laboring to teach John G. Paton, John Hunt, etc.
th(lm a more excellent way. From year to year better educated men are enter- ing the ministry, but the number of A Word to Those Who Invite Speakers.
men who would be called educated at The editor-in.chief, in his own behalf, home is small indeed. So far it has not and that of many of his brethren, begs been the writer's privilege to know or to say to all who invite addresses upon hear of & Karen preacher that can be missions and other topics : compared to our ministers at home, 1. Busy men cannot afford time and even those not blessed with the best strength to go any considerable distance gifts. Many know the way to Christ, to deliver a single address, except on and can lead others therein, and for rare occasions.
this we are exceedingly grateful. 2. It is unfair ever to ask such men to II There have never been so many go and speak at their own charges, or workers in the Karen department as even for the payment of their empenses.
'to.day, and they are a8 follows: seven· Some one must be found to do their teen men, two of whom teach, in the work when they leave it. There are theological seminary; sixteen wives, many costs besides those of travel and of whom five are now in America, and hotels. And besides, the sacrifice is twelve widows of missionaries and unequal, where the whole outlay falls young ladies." on the speaker and none on the audi- ence.
Dr. John Pagan, of Bothwell, Scot· 3. Give a speaker plenty of tim" to land, who has just kept the quarter cen· make an impression. Begin a meeting tury anniversary of his settlement there, promptly, shorten preliminaries, and is illustrating by lantern slides the for- while the audhmce is fresh introduce eign mission work of the Church of Scot- the speaker. The writer recently went land. He has sent a list of 176 such 500 miles to deliver an address to which slides. Why would not snoh methods an hour should have been given. By be available here, in inciting to new and sheer mismanagement, he had barely a more intelligent mission work? half hour in which to speak and start for his return trip. Be gave ihree days The editor is frequently asked to send for one half·hour speech, and received to correspondents lists of good books on the costs of travel in return. It is very missions, and to publish such lists in plain that life is too short to throwaway . this REVIEW. This we cannot under- time and strength in such fashion.
take to do. In the report of the great If correspondents will heed these world's conference on missions in Lon. hints, it will make unnecessary much don, in 1888, the editor has added a letter·writing, and save much valuable bibliography of the subject. It covers I:, life-forc~ ,"" I:
TRE MONTHLY CoNCERT OF MISSIONS
IV.-THE MONTHLY CONCERT OF MISSIONS.
BY BEV. J. ~. GBA-OBY, D.D.
BUBMAH. The Society for the Propagation of the Within thepast&eventy.five years the Gospel entered Burmah in 1859, and political map of south·eastern Asia has Independent Burmah in 1868. The See materially changed. In 1820 the Emper. of Rangoon has had the honor of main.
or of Burmah claimed dominion over all taining all the missions of the Church the tribes of Burmah proper, 8S well 8S of England in Burmah from the first.
over Chittagong, Arakan, and the Tenas· What is known as tb,e Mission to Lepers Ilerim provinces, including a large part has aided the" Church" Missionary So.
of the Malayan Peninsula. On Novem· ciety, in its specific line in Burmah.
ber 30th, 1885, Theebaw, the last Em· The Leipzig Evangelical Lutheran Mis.
peror of Burmah, was a prisoner in the sionary Society include Burmahin their hands of the English army. He was India mission. A Lutheran mission sent to England, and a few weeks later was begun to the Karens of Burmah in the Empire of Burmah was annexed to 1884 by two friends, Hans Poulsen and British India, and the Burmese rule H. J. Jensen, who opened a station at ceased. At present, and for missionary Yaddu, near Taung-ngu; but wishing purposes, Burmah may be considered as to get to a people not yet evangelized, composed of Upper and Lower Burmah, they sought access to the Red Karens, comprising the late kingdom or empire and began their work at Pobja, the resi.
of Burmah, and Lower Burmah, all that denoe of the chief. We know of but portion of the country below the twenti· one unmarried lady who represents eth degree of latitude, as well as the them at present on the field. The Ameri· Tenasserim provinces and the present can Baptists have been 'the chief repre.
missioll stations in Arakan, and Shan- sentative of the Christian world in this land, in the east. land, and their success has been the oc· Burmah is about equal in area to New casion of great rejoicing far beyond England, the Middle States, Ohio, In. their own ranks. Bishop Cotton de.
diana, and illinois combined. Its pop· clared that there were three great mis- ulation is variously estimated at from sionary successes in India: 1. The 8,000,000 to 15,000,000. Except in what work of the" Church" in Tinnevelly; was until lately known as British Bur. 2. The work of the Lutherans in the mah, no census has ever been taken. "peasant Church" of Chutia Nagpur ; The population of British Burmah has 3. The work of the American Baptista been so largely increased of late years in Burmah. They now register 113 by immigration, that some estimates now missionaries in this country, with place the population all high as 10. 28,009 members in 528 churohes, in 000,000 for Burmah proper. There are the service of which are 540 native said to be forty·two different races in preachers; the pupils in schools num.
Burmah, divisible into four genelal ber 11,146. During the past year the classes-the Burmans, the Taligus or Karen Mission has been extending, el· Peguans, the Shans, and the Karens. pecially in the direction of Karenni.
The Peguans were once the lords of the The interests of the Gospel among the country; the Shans are a nomadic race Burmans has made 0. marked advance.
found ineastern Burmah, northern Siam, The first station in the Shan states has and south.western China. These first been established, and is now occupied three races are Buddhista. Of the Ka· by Rev. M. B. Kirkpatrick, M.D. The rens there are more than thirty tribes. Chin Mission in the western part of – The Sgau and Pwo tribes have been Burmah has made encouraging progress.
I largely converted to Christianity, and of,Tile work among the natiTe! of Indio., whom there are now more than half have formed many Christian Villages. a million in Burmah, is attracting in- millions or more. Siam means a brown creasing attention, and the rapid de- race. It is often called .. The Land of velopment of the country, now that it the White Elephant." The fiag of the has come ';holly under British rule, is country is a red ground with a white offering manifold opportunities and elephant upon it. The white elephant enlarged facilities for extending the when found is escorted to the city by missionary work to every part of the the king and his court, given a title of province. nobility, and if sick is attended by the court physician. The Methodist Episcc:>}lnl Mission was begun in Rangoon in 1872, and is now Until 1885 Siam had two kings, but conducted among the English, the in that year the office of one of them Tamil immigrants from India, and, in a was abolished. The present king is small way, among the Burmans. It thirty-seven years old, and is the first numbers 200 communicants in all. sovereign of Siam who ever went abroad. He is intelligent and progressive, as will WITHIN THIRTY YEABS-Two PIC- be seen from statements to follow re- TUBEs.-liirst Picture: King Theebaw garding the advance movements of was inaugurated as King of Upper Bur- Siam. In 1873 the custom of prostramah, at Mandalay, about thirty years tion on elbows and knees in the presago. He was an incarnation of cruelty. ence of his majesty was abolished. In Several hundreds of the nobility and of 1883 he showed his public spiritedhis own family were massacred to cel- ness in giving $4800 to aid the sufferers ebrate the event. To undertake mis- from earthquake in Java, while the sionary work in Upper Burmah meant queen gave half as much more to the death or captivity to the individual at- same object. Trade with foreign parts tempting it. When the city of Mandalay increases, and their fancy for European was built, the eight gates surrounding hats and caps resulted in the importathe city were supposed to have been tion in one year into Bangkok, the capmade secure against all invaders by the ital, of $18,000 worth of hats and caps. sacrifice of fifty-six young girls! In 1883 Siam first erected telegraph lines to connect it with the world· wide &cond Picture: In October, 1890, the lines of the cable companies. The Baptist Missionary Conference was held royal palace is lighted by electricity, in thifl same city of Mandalay. The horse-cars are on the streets of the cap- Judson Memorial Church was dedicated ital, and steam ferryboats are seen on during the Conference. Eight thousand the rivers. King's College is 8 noble rupees of the money needed were given edifice, with 250 students learning the by Christians in Burmah; the Karen English language and literature and choir furnished excellent music, and on Western science. It is equipped with the evening of the closing day there was philosophical and chemical apparatus held a. communion service 'at which there ordered from the United States. Prizes, were present Tamils, Telug11s, Burmans the highest in value £100, were disand Karens, Shans and Tounghus, Eng. tributed by the young Crown Prince at lish and Eurasians, Chinese and Amer- the last examination. The college has icans, representing 500 churches and recently been transferred to the spa- 30,000 members in Burmah, all .. one cious and beautiful edifice erected by in Christ Jesus," about the table of the the king in memory of his late queen, Lord. who was drowned. This is in striking contrast with the conduct of his prode- SIAM. ceRBor who, on the death of his wife, built a Buddhist temple and monastery. Siam is in ·Farther India, between Another illustration of the new order of Burmah on the west and Anam or things is the Home for Orphans, with Cochin China on the east. It is four times as large as the State of New York, with about the same population-six thirty. five orphans, erected in memory her rival's hands as Cambodia did. of a young prince deceased. Under Nor will France let England acquire former reigns the wats, or monasteries, more of Farther India than she now pos- were the only places where boys were sesses; and Siam is too shrewd, too taught their mother·tongue ; now na· wide-awake to give either of her powerti ve schools have been opened, and also ful neighbors any pretext to get a persc1l.o01s for the study of English and manentfoothold within her boundaries, the higher branches, one at least be- or to have any excuse for interfering in sides the King's College already alluded her policy. So, though pressingly beto. The progressive Government of set by English capitalists to let them invest in a grand system of railways they Siam are now planning to put np a had planned and surveyed, for travers- ing the whole length of the Menam medical college near the largest hospi- valley to connect with a line of their tal. The King's intention has been an· own from Rangoon to the west frontier nounced of sending six chosen Siamese of China, Siam has r(lsolutely refused boys to this country to receive a to allow them to build her railroads and thorough American education. They has decided at last to build them herare to come in the charge of a returning self. missionary. That also is a significant fact. The Government has known the Thus f(lr she has kept free from a navalue of missionaries to the land and tional debt, and is not likely to put herrecognized it in various ways. Rev. self, as Egypt and Turkey have, at the Dr. S. G. McFarland has for many years mercy of English creditors. In the New been the Principal of King's College. York Engineering New.~ for December, Dr. Hays has been appointed by the 1890, is an official advertisement by the lOng Director-General of all the Gov- Minister of Public Works in Sialll inernment hospitals, and that without viting tenders from American contracany restriction upon his teaching the tors for the construction of a Royal religion he professes to those under his Siamese State Railway from Bangkok, care. the capital, to Korat, an important town one hundred and sixty.six miles to the Politically Siam is likely to retain a northeast, over the mountains, on the position of prominent interest in the watershed of the great Cambodia River. world. She bids fair to maintain her Korat is the capital of the district from position as an independent kingdom. which the raw silk of Siam is derived. This is greatly to her credit in these Rice is very abundant there. Dr. days when the great powers are over- House, writing to us about that district, shadowing and absorbing the weaker says that when he was there in 1854, the ones, without so much as saying" by first time it was ever visited by a white your leave." Siam is still a kingdom. man, he found rice selling at half a cent A friend writes in this connection say- a pound, there being no market for it, ing : .. In these days, in consequende of and no transportation save in packs on annexations, protectorates, absorptions, the backs of bullocks several days' and turning into republics, it really travel through a dense and dangerous looks as if the Seventh Angel would jungle. have few' kingdoms' anywhere left to announce as having become • our .Missions: Foreign missionary work Lord's.' .. was begun in Siam by the American Baptists, under Rev. William Dean, But England and France both need D.D., as early as 1833. The American Siam to act as a buffer between their pos- Board followed in 1834. The Baptists sessions in the East, to prevent colli- now confine their work to the Chinese. sion, though each nation doubtless looks with a covetous eye on that fertile The Presbyterians commenced work land. in Siam in 1840. Rev. William P. Buell England will not let Siam slip into and wife began the work, but were there kok alone there are ten thousand priests three and a half years only. They who are dependent on the people for were followed in 1847 by Rev. Stephen daily food. Nowhere are the living Mattoon and wife, and S. R. House, force and the deadening influence of M.D. Both of these honored brethren Buddhism more felt than in Siam.
are still among the churches, Dr. Mat· We have little disposition and less toon,being now in Siam, and Dr. House, space to attempt a presentation of with his excellent and devoted mission· Buddhism as a system of belief; but as ary wife, is now in America. In the it is the latest" fad" among a class of first eighteen months of Dr. Rouse's' persons who dislike Christianity, be.
labor as a missionary physician he pre. cause of its rigorous demands upon scribed for 3117 patients. These first them, to prate about" beautiful Buddh· m,issionaries labored for twelve years ism," we beg to remind our readers of before seeing their first convert. All its practical output. It may have the work is now in a prosperous condi· tamed barbarians and helped to main.
tion, the mission schools are doing es· tain order and discipline among some pecially well, the Christian high school peoples, but it has not supported is a great success. The wholo country any people in their efforts to recupe· is open to evangelical work, and numer· rate after disaster nor in their en· ous converts are yearly added to the deavors after progress. The mission of churches. . . Buddhism is not to root out what it The principal stations are one in holds to be deadly errors, nor to pro- Bangkok, and one in Petchaburee, and claim truths, nor to build up a righteous one in Ratburee. Siam has 13 mission· kingdom. It seeks not to convert but aries, 10 married, and 5 single, ladies. to rescue from delusion and desire ; the LAOS. moral life is not the end but a means; morality is sheer mechanisID ; the end, The Laos are a hardy and industrious the aim is not to be good for the sake of race who inhabit five or six small king. goodness, nor righteous for the sake of doms north of Siam. They number be· righteousness. It aims at no ideal excel.
tween one and two millions. Mission lence for the sake of the excellence. .The work was begun among them in "1867, realization of the moral idea is a blank at Chiengmai, 500 miles from Bangkok. which Buddhism cannot fill. Its con· This and Lakawn are the principal sta· ception of the kingdom of God is radio tions; there are twelve out·stations. cally other than holiness, or ultimately The Laos Mission has 852 communi. holiness itself. Buddhism knows no cants, fOllr schools, with 229 pupils, 10 sin, hence it can know no punishment missionaries, with 8 married, and 4 sin. of sin and, of course, it can know no gle, ladies. pardon; nor can it know any prayer, The Bible has not yet been translated nor sacrifice, nor thanksgiving. It has into the Laos language, but one of the no parable of the prodigal son, or story missionaries was in this country last of " the dying .thief," because it has no year having a complete font of type God, no soul, no Saviour. .
made, at a cost of about $1000, and it is Sir Edward Arnold, author of "The anticipated that the Gospel will soon be Light of Asia," who has been esteemed given the Laos in their own tongue. a foremost champion of the beauties of BUDDHISM. the Buddhist legends, and as exalting Buddhism at the expense of Christian.
Buddhism is not the religion of any ity, in a conversation with Rev. Dr.
independent power on the earth at this Ashmore, on the Belgic, between San hour except Siam, but it is prevalent Francisco and Yokohama, said: in all the countries whiclt have come "I have been criticised for an im. under review in this study., In Bang. ~lied ;comparison between Buddhism and Christianity in regard to doctrines nothing ever disturbs the repose of derived from them and principles con- Buddha, or turns his heart with quick tained in them respectively. No such throbs of love and pity. He cannot object was in mind. For me Christian- stretch out his hand to save Question ity, rightly viewed, is the crowned a Buddhist as to his future state, and queen of religion, immensely superior he says, •It is all dark !' • I have stu- to every other, and though I am so great died many religions,' said one to a mis· an admirer of much til-at is great in siona»y, • and I have found no god that Hindu philosophy and religion, I loves as your God loves.' Buddhism would not give one verse of the Sermon will fade in the presence ~f a purer and on the Mount away for twenty epic holier faith."
poems like the • Mahabharata,' nor ex- change the Golden Rule for twenty· The •• Baptist Missionary Hand·Book"
• Upanishads.' " ' says: .. Rangoon, the capital of Lower It i8 needless to make reference at Burma, is on the Rangoon River, the this time to the moral result of Buddh- eastern delta.branch of the Irrawaddy, ism over Asia in general, but the testi- twenty miles from the sea. It is acces- mony of those who have had large ex- sible to large ships, and has a large and perience of it, and great opportunities of rapidly in~reasing foreign trade, and an observation in the Jands which we are important traffic by river. The city is now studying, is fairly in place. well built, and has a population of 134,- Bishop Titcomb, who had large ex- 176, an increase of a5 per cent since perience in Burmah, says of it, .. That 1872.
while the same old reverence exists for " Maulmain, the chief town of the Ten.
Buddhist law and religion which ~x asserim province, is situated at the junc- isted in its best days, yet dead worldli- tion of the Salwen, Attaran, and Gyne ness almost universally pervades daily rivers. It has a. good port, and a large life. Religious rites are observed, but trade in teak, rice, and ivory. The they are mostly of a formal character. scenery about the city is strikingly Large numbers of worthless and most beautiful, and its location healthful.
ignorant men are admitted into the Population, 93,187, an increase of 14 monasteries. Not one householder in a per cent since 1872.
thousand makes any serious effort to " Mandalay, the most important place obtain what is called the Path which of Upper Burma, and now the oapital leads to Nirvana; popular religion is a of the whole country, is a large city on life of easy·going conformity to outward the east side of the Irrawaddy River. It observances, accompanied by practical is connected with Toungoo and Rangoon self.indulgence. Idolatrous practices by a railroad.
are followed which in the law of primi. .. Prome is on the east bank of the Irra.
ti ve Buddhism were unknown. Images waddy River, eighty.five miles west of of Buddha are enshrined everywhere Toungoo, and one hundred and sixty- with a hideous prodigality, in stone, and six miles northwest from Rangoon, with wood, and metal." He says : .. The ap- which it is connected by a railway. It plication of any strong corrective prin. is the seat of a la.rge trade and manu- ciple has been lost." factures. PopUlation, 28,813, a loss of A missionary in Siam says: "The 7 per cent since 1872. "Bhamo (Bah.mau)is on the Irrawad· further we penet.rate in this system for . dy River, one hundred and eighty miles good fruits, for. justice, mercy, love, and above Mandalay, and only forty miles , purity of h~art and life, the more are from the Chinese province of Yunnan.
I we convinced of the utter rottenness It was formerly capital of a Shan prin- and deadness of the whole strncture. cipality, and has 8 considerable trade There is no living intercessor. Suffer. with China by means of caravans. By the rj ver it isabout eight hundred miles ing humanity may cry for help, but • from' Rangoon. "
GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE
V.-GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE.
BY MBS. J. T. GRACEY, D.D.
The Woman's Union Missionary and Madanapalle. in India; Cairo, in Society of America for Heathen Egypt; McCall Mission, Paris. Lands.-Organized 1860. Corresponding Secretary, Miss S. D. Doremus, Amount of money raised in 1889, office, 41 Bible House, New York.• $43,267.34. Report for 1890 not out.
This was the p'ioneer society (Ameri- The Missionary Link is the organ of can) in zenana work in Ir.dia. this society. During the past year it has been changed from a bi-monthly to The society has work in three large a monthly issue. and important stations in India, viz., Calcutta, Cawnpore, and Allahabad. Woman's Foreign Missionary So- ciety or the Presbyterian Church.- In Calcutta there aro 16 missionaries, Organized 1870. Mrs. C. N. Thorpe, 55 native- teachers, and in the city and Foreign Corresponding Secretary, 1334 suburbs 64 schools with 1000 zenana Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, Pa. pupils. A girls' orphanage with 140 children, also an institution for the This society has work in Africa, higher (lducation of native Christian China, among the Chinese in California, girls. Medical work has been reopened, India, Japan, Korea, Mexico, North a medical training class organized, and American Indians, Persia, Siam and a dispensary opened during the year. Laos, Syria, and South America. This is known as the Doremus Mission. The home work is represented by 48 Presbyterian societies, more than 1100 Allahabad.-Hf'lre there are 16 mis· each of auxiliaries and bands. Amount sionaries, 6 native assistants, 47 day of money raised from April 20th, 1889, schools with 1000 pupils, and 320 to April 20th, 1890, $144,617. zenanas with 398 pupils, in all 1398 persons under instruction. The Woman's Work for Woman, the organ of the Presbyterian Church, has Cawnpore.-In this city there are 13 16,300 subscribers. Children's Work missionaries, 5 native assistants, 968 far Children has a large circulation; figpupils, 37 day schools with 623 pupils, ures not given in report. This society 184 zenanas with 345 pupils. sends out quantities of missionary lea11ets. In Shanghai, China, 2 lady physicians are in charge of the Margaret William- The foreign work is represented by son Hospital, with 2 assistants and 5 139 missionaries, 16 of whom are at hospital helpers. A home for medical home and 10 of whom were sent out the workers has been donated during the past year, 5 of them self-supporting; year. A boarding-school with 40 girls, 10 missionary teachers and visitors, 84 and 4 native schools with a large Sunday- native helpers and Bible wo~en, 33 school, represents the work. boarding-schools, 153 day schools.
In Yokohama, Japan, a girls' boarding- Woman's Board of Foreign Mis. school has 140 pupils. Evangelistic sions of the Presbyterian Church.- and medical work are efficiently carried (Formerly Ladies' Board of Missions.) on. Six native teachers are employed, Headquarters, 53 Fifth Avenue, New 6 native medical assistants, 21 Bible York. women, 3 of whom are self-supporting, and 200 Sunday-school scholars. This board is composed of 25 Presby. terian societies in the New England To mission work in denominational States, New York, lind Kentucky. stations aid has been given by the society in the following places: Bassein, Its home work is represented by 504 in Bnrmah ; Dehra, Kohlapur, Bellore, auxiliary societies, 121 young people's and il58 children's bands and Sunday- schools. The amount of money raised from April, 1889 to April, 1890, $58,305. This board supports 23 missionaries, It has a Bureau of Exchange for the sup- 9 of whom are foreign and 14 home. ply of missionary letters and literature. Two have been sent the past year. It Periodicals, Woman's Work for Woman oontributes to work in Persia, Japan, and Ohildren's Workfor Ohildren. India, Siam, China, and South America. Amount of money raised during year, It contributes to the support of work $15,000. in India, Siam, Africa, Japan, Persia, South America, Syria, China, Mexico, Woman's OccidentaJ Board of Guatemala, and NorthAmerican Indians. Foreign Missions of the Presbyte- It has under its care 61 missionaries, rian Church of the Pacific Coast.- 11 of whom are at home. Summary of Offioe, 933 Sacramento Street, San Fran- foreign work not given in reports. oisco, Cal.
Woman's Presbyterian Board of This board supports 8 missions on Missions of the Northwest.-Head- the foreign field and has work in Japan, quarters, Room 48, McCormick Block, China, Siam and 'Laos, a medioal mis- Chicago, Ill. . sionary in India, also work in Persia and Syria abroad, and work for Chinese This society is represented by 10 women in San Francisco, Sacramento, Synodical societies, 66 Presbyterian so- San Jose, Los Angeles, and San Diego. cieties, and 1661 auxiliaries. Included Total receipts for year, $10,600. in this are Sunday-school sooieties and young people's societies and bands. Woman's North Pacific Presbyte- rian Board of Missions.-Organized Amount of money raised during the 1889. .Headquarters, Portland, Ore. year, $80,678. Periodioals, same as other Presbyterian boards. This society, so recently indepen- dently organized, has 2 Presbyterian Work is carried on among the North societies, Oregon and East Oregon. It Amerioan Indians, Mexico, Guatemala, reports 20 children's bands with 360 South Amerioa, Africa, Syria, Persia, menibers. Number of auxiliaries not India, Siam and Laos, China, Japan, given. Amount of money raised in and Korea. 1889, $5908.
Number of mIssionaries supported, Woman's Board of Foreign Mis- 70, of whom 7 are. medioal; Bible sions of the Cumberland Presbytewomen, 26; native teachers and pas- rian Church.-Organized 1880. Cortors' wives, 30; boarding-schools, responding Secretary, Mrs. J. C. Mcwholly supported, 7; pupils in other Clurkin, Evansville, Ind. boarding-schools, 211 ; day schools, 92. This society is represented by 46 Woman's Foreign Missionary So- Presbyterian societies; auxiliary sociciety, Northern New York.-Corre- eties 793, with a membership of 7900 ; sponding Secretary, Mrs. Archibald Mo- young ladies' societies, 8, with a mem- Clure, 232 State Street, Albany, N. Y. bership of 130; children's bands, 138, with 1741 members. Amountof money This sooiety oontributes to the work raised in 1889, $10,614. in Africa, China, Guatemala, India, Japan, Korea, Mexioo, Persia, Siam, Organ of the society, Missionary Syria, and to home work in Idaho and Record, with 3000 subscribers. A chil- Dakota. Home society is represented dren's paper is also published called the by 96 auxiliary societies and 100 bands. Missionary Banner.
It supports 4 missionaries, 5 native Eight stations in Japan are occupied pastors, 12 Bible readers, and 51 schools by the society, and in the Indian Terand scholarships. Amount of money ritory 1 missionary is supported by raised during past year, $9692. them. Appropriations have beon made for work in Mexico. Woman's Presbyterian Board of Missions of the 50uthwest.-Oflice, Woman's General Missionary So- 1107 Olive Street, St. Louis, Mo. For- ciety of the United Presbyterian eign Secretary, Mrs. L. D. Hopkins. Church. – Corresponding Secretary, Corresponding Secretary, Miss M. H. Mrs. W. J. Reid, 38 Federal Street, Morris, 406 North Greene Street, Balti- Pittsburg, Pa. more, Md.
This society is represented by 46 Pres- This society prints a report only once byterian societies, 764 auxiliaries, and in two years, after their Biennial Con- 18,819 members, and raised for foreign vention. The statistics given below are missions, in 1889, $13,024. Over$21,000 the latest. Number of Synodical soci- was raised by the Woman's Society, but eties corresponding to the district Syn- the remainder was appropriated to vari- ods in the General Synod, 20 ; number ous church and home enterprises_ of auxiliaries, including young people's societies and children's bands, 566; Work is carried on in Egypt and In- number of members, active, honorary, dia. Of the 23 missionaries supported and life, 14,472. Amount of money 9 are in Egypt and 14 in India. A me- contributed for the year filnding March morial hospital was opened at Sialkot. 31st, 1890, $22,752. Besides work in India, during the year. some of the Western States, the society has foreign work in India and Africa. The Woman's .Missionary Magazine, of In India zenana, educational, and medthe United Presbyterian Church, is the ical work is carried on. There are 12 organ. It has 3800 subscribers. schools, with 24'teachers and 719 pupils, located in Guntur and neighboring Woman's Board of Foreign Mis- towns. A very succelisful industrial sions or the Reformed Church in school has been established for Mo- America.-Organized 1875. Corre- hammedan girls and women, and a sponding Secretary, Miss Mary 0_ Dur- boarding-school with 35 pupils. The yee, 30 Washington Place, Newark, N. J. medical work is prosperous, and a tract of land has been secured upon which a The home force of this society is rep- hospital will be built. The women have resented by 267 auxiliary societies. a department in the Missionary Journal, Amount of money raised during year. which is published by the General So- $28,517. The society has work in ciety. China, Japan, and India. In Amoy a girls' boarding school with 48 pupils, a CongregationaISocieties.-Auxiliary day school, a Bible school, and a chil- to the American Board of Foreign Misdren's home are supported. In Japan sions and independent of each other are 103 pupils are in the Ferris Seminary, 3 organizations which are the channels at Yokohama. of woman's foreign missionary work in the Congregational churches of the At Nagasaki the Jonathan Sturges United States, viz. : Seminary has 22 pupils. In India 3 important stations are occupied, viz., Woman's Board of Missions, Woman's Vellore, Madanapalle, and Tindivanum, Board of Missions of the Interior, ,with surrounding towns. Woman's Board of Missions for the Pacific. In the Hindu Girls' School, at Vellore, are 111 pupils, 61 at Madanapalle, Woman's Board of Missions.-Orand 49 at Tindivanum. Beside this, ganized 1868. Corresponding Secretary, work is done a!Dong the native women Miss Abbie B. Child, 1 Congregational in the zenanas. Eight high-caste girls' Bouse, Boston, Mass. schools have 585 pupils. The board, with headquarters at Bos- The Missionary Gleaner, organ of the ton, has work among the Zulus of South society, has 1485 subscribers. Africa, also in East and West Central Africa, European and Asiatic Turkey, In 1881 the :Woman's Board assumed India, Ceylon, China, Japan, Microne. the entire cast of all the work carried sia, Mexico, Spain, and Austria. on by the board in the various missions for women and girls. The home force of the society is rep- Woman's Home and Foreign Missionary Society of the Evangelical Lutheran Church General Synod.- resented by 1182 auxiliaries, of which The foreign work of the society is III are young ladies' societies, with a represented by the support of 4 mis- membership of 34,300; mission circles, sionaries, 3 schools, and aid toward 1 549, with 15,500 members. ship. The schools aided are in Tur- key, India, and Spain. Five thousand The board has under its care 111 mis· two hundred and ninety-five dollars sionaries, 32 boarding-schools, 228 day were given by the Congregational schools, 143 Bible readers, 1 hospital, 2 churches of California for foreign mis- dispensaries, and 1 training-school for sions in 1889. Of this $4319 were given nurses. by the women of this board, leaving $949 as given by the churches in gen- During the year 22 missionaries have eral, or by the 11,223 members of been sent out, 11 going out for the first the churches. Home statistics not time and 11 returning, and 8 have sev- given. ered their connection with the board. Organ of the society, Life and Light, Life and Light has 373 subscribers, published in Boston, with a circulation and has a column in The Pacifio to repof 15,500. The society also publishes resent its work. a periodical for children, the Mission Day-Spring, with a circulation of 18,730. Woman's Board of Missions for the Pacific Islands.-Organized 1871. Amount of money raised in 1889, President, Mrs. Hiram Bingham, Hon- $115,000. olull1, Sandwich Islands.
Woman's Board of Missions of This board is Congregational and inthe Interior.-Organized 1868. Presi- dependent. It has work in Honolulu dent, Mrs. Moses Smith, 59 Dearborn among the. Hawaiians, Chinese, and Street, Chicago, Ill. Japanese. Six Bible women are em- ployed in Honolulu. Auxiliary soci. Thirteen interior States represent the eties are prganized in the adjoining home field of this board. The work is islands of Hilo, Maui, Kauai. represented by 1000 auxiliary societies and 365 junior bands. Receipts from June, 1889 to June, 1890, $1548. The society has work in Africa, European and Asiatic Turkey, India, Cey- Woman's Foreign Missionary Solon, China, 'Japan, Micronesia, Mexico, ciety, Methodist Episcopal Church. and Spain. -Organized 1869.
It supports 85 missionaries, 15 having This society includes ten associated been sent out last year. Amount of branches. Each branch has its territomoney raised for 1889-90, $56,041.89. rial limits, with Corresponding Secretary and Treasurer. These corresponding It has under its care over 30 Bible secretaries constitute a Committee of readers and 13 boarding-schools; other Reference, of which Mrs. H. B. Skidforeign statistics not given. more, No. 230 West Fifty.ninth Street, New York, is Chairman. Life and Light is the organ of this board; M"l.Ssion Studies is also pub- The work of the society in the home lished by the board, and over a 1,000,- field is represented by the following fig- 000 pages of missionary leaflets have ures : Auxiliary societies, 4308 ; young been issued. ladies' societies, 501 ; children's bands, 748; total organizations, 5557. Mem- Woman's Board of Missions for bers of auxiliaries, 112,834; of young the Pacific.-Organized 1873. Home ladies' societies, 10,119; children's. Secretary, Mrs. J. H. Warren, 1316 bandll, 15,997 ; total membership, 138,- Mason Street, San Francisco, Cal. 950.
The territory of this board covers all The society has work among the Gerportions of the country west of the mans in the United States, also 25 aux- Rocky Mountains. This board has 3 iliaries in Germany, and 13 in Switzerbranches, the Oregon, the Young Ladies' Branch, and the newly organized Southern Branch. land. Amount of money raised from Oc- ers is established at Kansas City, tober, 1889, to October, 1890, $220,329- through the munificent gift of Rev. $10,000 of this by bequest. Over $14,- Nathan Scarritt of property valued at 000 was raised beyond this for a $25,000 and cash $25,000. woman's college in Lucknow. Woman's Foreign Missionary So· The society has work in Japan, ciety of the Methodist Protestant Korea, China, India, Burmah, Singa- Church. – Organized 1879. Corre- pore, Bulgaria, Italy,. South America, sponding Secretary, Mrs. M. A. Miller, and Mexico. Box 1065, Pittsburg, Pa.
Of the 96 missionaries abroad, 34 are Since the organization of this society ih India, 23 in Japan, 20 in China, 4 in 5 missionariel> have been sent out to Korea, 7 in Mexico, 4 in South America, Japan, to Yokohamaand Nagoya, where 2 in Bulgaria, 1 in Italy, and 1 in Sin- prosperous schools are conducted. gapore. Included in these are 11 regularly graduated medical mission- The summary of work is comprised in aries. the following statistics, as nearly as can be approximated: Branches 14, with 7 The foreign work is represented by 25 others partially organized-an increase boarding-schools with 1671 pupils, 306 over the previous year of 1. Auxiliaries day schools with 9225 scholars, 300 Bible 355, an increase of 31 ; mission bands women, 8 hospitals and dispensaries. EO, an increase of 20 ; members 3700, The Heathen Woman's Friend is pub- an increase of 500; life·members 142, lished monthly by the society, with 19,- an increase of 9; honorary man· 236 subscribers, also a paper in German, agers 6, nn increase of 1; memorial with 2176, and a children's paper, with members 3. 5128, and a paper for women in India, in three dialects. Amount of money for the year, $4166. Organ of the society, Woman's Mis· Woman's Missionary Society of sionary Record. the Methodist Episcopal Church, Woman's Missionary Association South.-Organized 1878. Correspond- of the United Brethren in Christ.- ing Secretary, Mrs. D. H. McGavock, Organized 1875. Corresponding Secre- Nashville, Tenn. tary, Mrs. L. R. Keister, Dayton, O. This society has work in Africa, Ger- The work of this Church throughout many, among the Chinese in Portland, the Southern Methodist Church is rep- Ore., and during the past year they have 'resented by 1986 auxiliary societies and opened a mission in Canton, China, and 41,235 members. Young people's and sent 2 ladies to take charge of the work. children's societies, 995 ; members, 31,- They now Rupport 10 American mission. 132 ; total societies, 2991. Total mem- aries, 18 native helpers, a membership bership, 72,367. Amount of money of 1484, with property valued at $28,500. raised for 1889-90, $75,486. Amount of money raised for 1889-90, $4,567. The society has work in China, Mexi. Woman'sEvangel is the organ of the can border, Brazil, Indian Territory, society. and has 2,300 subscribers. and Mexico. It is represented in Woman's Missionary Society or. foreign fields by 31 missionaries, 20 ns· the Evangelical Association of North sistants, 37 native teachers, 10 board. America. – Headquarters, Napierville, ing.schools, 31 day schools, 1248 pupils, Ind. Has department in Missionary 1 hospital, 1 medical missionary, 1 Messenger published in Cleveland, O. foreign assistant, and 9 native hospital This society has work in Germany assistants. Value of property owned and Japan, and raises between two and by this board in foreign fields is $181, three thousand dollars annuall~, ~~ 000. Organ of the society, Woman's Mts. report of work has reached us., sionary Advocate, Nashville, Tenn'., with a circulation of 13,000. (To be continued.) A training.school for Christian work.
The Missionary Review of the World — April 1891
A JESUIT MISSION IN INDIA
MISSIONARY REVIEW OF THE WORLD.
VOL. XIV. No. 4.-Old &ries.–APRIL. –VOL. IV. No. 4.-New Series.
A JESUIT MISSION IN INDIA.
BY REV. EDWARD STORROW, BRIGHTON, ENGLAND.
The Portuguese found their way to India before aLY other European nation, in ] 497. From the beginning they were zealous, after their fashion, in the spread of the Roman Catholic faith, but their zeal, being neutralized by great moral laxity, commercial greed, and political ambition, the" European idolaters," as they were called, made but few and mostly doubtful converts. But it was seen that India presented a' splendid field f~r the propagation of the faith, so Xavier was selected as " the apostle to the Indies. " He went with every human advantage. Ignatius Loyola sent, him forth with the inspiring words, " Go, my brother. Rejoice that you have not here a narrow Pale8tine or a province of Asia in prospect, but innumerable kingdoms; an entire world is reserved for your endeavors.' , The pope conferred on him the authority and dignity of Apostolic Nuncio throughout the East, and commended him to the respect and protection of all princes and governors. The King of Portugal sent him with every demonstration of interest and authOt'ity, and aided him all through his splendid but erratic career with whatever royal zeal and power could command.
Xavier landed at Goa in May, 1542. For three years he was ceaselessly active, passing from one part of Southern India to another; then, in 1545, he left for Malacca, and after visiting several other islands returned to India in January, 1548. Here he remained for fifteen months, busily occupied in the affairs of the college he had founded at Goa, visiting some of his former scenes of labor, and arranging for the prosecution of the mission, and then, in April, 1549, he sailed for Japan.
It is difficult to ascertain with any degree of precision the results of his " wild but splendid" career. Roman Catholic biographers and historians, having now Protestant eyes on them, are guarded in their statements, but in the past, when not so liable to criticism, gave almost as much rein to fancy as a Hindu panegyrist writing a Purana; By them Xavier is credited with all manner of gifts, natural, supernatural, and spiritual, and with an extraoldinary amount of success, his converts being said to amount to 500,000-" all fervent, and desiring nothing more than to become martyrs for their faith;" while, on the other hand, the Abbe Dubois affirms that Xavier left India in disgust, disheartened at the difficulty of making any real converts.
The latter opinion is the true one. He made many Christians, according to the Jesuit theory, though far fewer than is reported, but the vast majority were Christians only in name. Most were infants, baptized craftily and surreptitiously by the agents of Xavier.* A large number of adults submitted to baptism through fear and greed, and almost all the converts baptized had but a formal and most inadequate acquaintance with the doctrines and requirements of Christianity. That Xavier was himself dissatisfied and discouraged at the inadequate results is proved, first, by the fact that after so brief a span of labor he should have abandoned an enterprise 80 extensive, so splendid, and to which he had been specially appointed; and, secondly, on his owno testimony. In a letter to a missionary in Travancore he writes, in December, 1548 : "If you will, in imagination, search through India, you will find that few will reach heaven either of whites 01' blacks, except those who depart this life nnder fourteen years of age, with their baptismal innocence still upon them." In the following month he wrote to Loyola: "The natives, on account of the enormity of their wickedness, are as little as possible fitted to embrace the Christian religion. They so abhor it that they have no patience to listen to us. To ask them to become Christians is like asking them to submit to death. Hence, all our labor is at present to guard those who now are Christians. Hence, since there is not the least need of my labors in these parts, and as I have also learned of Japan, I have determined to start for that country as soon as possible."t In these letters Xavier obviously refers to the Roman Catholic missions generally, his own and those which had been conducted for the previous fifty years, at least, with the concurrence and aid of the Portuguese Government.
But the most condemnatory proofs of the want of success on the part of Xavier and all preceding missionaries, and of the genius of Jesuitism to adopt" ways that are dark and tricks that are vain," are seen in the methods adopted by the Jesuit missionaries in Madura, and persistently prose- * " When these children," says Father de Bourges, "are in danger of death, our practice is to baptize them without asking the permission of their parent_, which would certainly be refused. The catechists and the private Christians are well acquainted with the formula of baptism; and they confer it on these dying children, under the pretence of giving them medicines."-Lettl'es' Edijlantes, tome xiL, po 107.
t" The Missionary Life of Xavier," po 156, by the Rev. Henry Venn. Some Roman Catholic authorities state the number of converts, soon after .the death of Xavier, at 300,000 iu the western portion of India. In the beginning of the eighteenth century the native converts in the Madura district are reckoned by Father Martin to amouut to 150,000, and each missionary is said to have baptized at least 1000 each yearo Bnt the Abbe Dubois, who labored in India from 1790 to 1815, states the number of Roman Catholic Christians in all India, inclnding half·castes and Portnguese, at 635,000. Now, no one will claim that the Roman Catholic native Christians nnmber more than a million and a quarter; or for the whole Roman Catliolic popnlation more than a million and a halfo Where, then, are the boasted resuits of Roman Catholic missions, of which we hear eo often, and whose methods we are advised to follow l" cuted for one hundred and fifty years, which, as an instance of ,religious imposition, has been declared " to be without a paralleL"
The various steps by which this was done were kept secret, as Jesuit methods usually are, but of the fact there i" abundant evidence, as the following account will show.
Early in the seventeenth century, about fifty years after the departure of Xavier, Robert de Nobilibus, a nephew of Cardinal Bellarmine and grandnephew of Pope Marcellus II., and other Jesuit fathers in Madura, perceiving the strong prejudices of the Hindus against Europeans and the Christian religion, devised a plan, as subtle as it was criminal, whereby they hoped to overcome native prejudices by pretending that they were substantially one with the Brahmans themselves, and that Christianity and Brahmanism were essentially one, only that the former, being older and purer than the latter, should be accepted in its place. Studying the native language carefully; attaining a minute acquaintance with the usages and customs of the priesthood; preparing themselves, by a long course of austere training, for the part they were to act, and armed with writings made to resemble certain portions of the Vedas, and declared to be of equal authority, they entered Madura, not as Christian missionaries, but as Brahmans of a superior order, who had come to restore the most ancient form of the native religion. Their success, at first, was not great, but when charged in a large assembly, specially convened, with being an impostor, who sought to deceive the people, in order to introduce a new religion into the country, Malihilus produced his manuscripts, affirmed that the Romaca Brahmans were of much older date than those with whom he was contending, and in the presence of all declared and made oath that he was really descended from the god Brahma. On this, three Brahmans, impressed by his specious evidence and earnestness, advised that they should not persecute a man who declared that he was one of themselves, and gave such evidence of the truth of his assertions. Thus audacity and speciousness gained a certain amount of credence.
To sustain these pretensions spurious documents were produced,* and the fathers adopted names and usages which gave them a close resemblance to Suniassis, men devoted to the most ascetic forms of Hinduism, and greatly reverenced and feared by the more ignorant and superstitious of the people.
As Father Tachard wrote: "The missionaries have resolved to assume the dre!s and manner of living of Brahmanical Suniassis. This was a very difficult undertaking, and nothing less than apostolic zeal and love cOlild have enabled them to sllstain its hardships and austerities. For, besides * The most important of these was a work pnblished in Paris in 1778, nnder the title, .. L'Ezour Vedam, ou Ancien Commeutaire du Vedam, contenant I'exposition des opinions religieuse. et philosophiques des Indiens, Traduit du Sauscritam paiun Brami." An elaborate and scholarly analysis of this remarkable production is given in the fourteenth volume of the" Asiatic Researches" by Francis Ellis, Esq. He declares it to be "an instance of religious lmposition without a parallel." The author is unknown. abstinence from everything that has life-that is to say, flesh, fish, and eggs, the Suniassis must bathe every morning in a public tank in all weathers, and do the same before every meal. ,,* The Father did not think it expe- dient to add that Suniassis, among others t.hings, must wear an orangecolored dress j rub cow's dung on their foreheads and breasts j have a tiger's skin across the shoulders j have a club or staff on which are seven natural knots, and go daily through numerous .ceremonies, and that all these have a close association with heathenism. Thus armed and equipped did these "Brahmans from the north, " these "Roman Suniassis"
(" Lettres Edifiantes," tome x., pp. 15, 46), go forth to teach idolaters how to worship and serve the true God ! All the missionaries did not resort to these methods. They were adopted by a class, certainly with the assent of some others, for the purpose of winning over, if poss?ble, to the Catholic faith the social and intellectual leaders of the Hindus. It was seen that the Brahmans were excessively hard to wiu, and that between them and the lower castes and out-castes marked distinctions existed, but that if the former were gained over the conversion of the latter would be comparatively easy, if not inevitable. But this method involved the recognition of caste and of much beside utterly subversive of Christian doctrine, and even truth and honesty. "The catechist of a low caste," writes Father Maduit, "can never be employed to teach Hindus of a caste more elevated. The Brahmans and the Sudras have great contempt for the Pariahs. . • . We must, therefore, have Pariah catechists and Brahmanical catechists for the Brahmans, which causes us a great deal of difficulty." And then he illustrates the difficulty thus: A catechist came to beg him to baptize some Pariah catechumens and.to confess certain neophytes. But" the fear that the Brahmans and Surlras might come to learn the steps I had taken, and hence look upon me as infamous and unworthy ever after of holding any intercourse with them, hindered me from going." Subsequently he went, and writes: "I made these poor people go to a retired place about three leagues from hence, where I myself joined them in the night, and with the most careful precautiolls, and there I baptized them"!t Not only had the Pariahs separate catechists, but separate churches j nor ~<luld a Christiau Suniassi enter one of their dwellings to administer the 1allt rites of the Church, though he would do this if the dying were removed out of their own d welling-contamina.ted by low caste or no caRte-into the open air, or a proper caste church. The results of such a policy were such as might have been anticipated. As the Roman Brahmans had their poitas, cow * See "Lettres Edifiantes et Curienses," tome x., p. 324. Paris, 1780.
Also" Systema Brahmanican Fra Paolicio Bartolomeo," pp. 47, 56, 57. Romal, 1791. The leading features of Nobilibu8'8 or Nobilis's course are stated by the Jesuit Jouvincy in his history of the order, and in vindication of the policy pursued when it was subsequently called in question, the Secretary to the Congregation de Propaganda Fide wrote in 1676 to Pope InnQC('nt that Nobilis, although he called himself a Brahman, was not guilty of falsehood I t " Lettres Edi1lantes," tome x., pp. lJ43…!.:.5. dung ashes, and strict ritual, their converts, really few in number, ill- instructed and beguiled into Christianity, rather than intellectually ac- cepting it on conviction, retained with but slight modification the superstitious manners, customs, and beliefs of Hinduism, a residuum or virus of heathenism which has kept the Roman Catholic community of Southern India ignorant, poor, weak, uninfluential, up to the present time.
The boasted unity of the Church of Rome has always been more of an Rssumption than II reality, and these proceedings were too scandalous, es- pecially in the eyes of the Dominicans and Capuchins, to be alJowed un- challenged. An appeal was made to Rome, and Pope Paul V. appointed the Archbishop of Goa to investigate the charges. His report confirmed the charges, and condemned the policy of Nobilis and his party: To this the Jesuits replied with their usual speciousness that the rites and practices now challenged and condemned were merely civil .observances, having in them nothing of a religious nature; that they were neither opposed to the faith nor morality, but were absolutely essential to the spread of Christianity in India, and nothing more than prudent and innocent concessions to native distrust, superstition, and ignorance! On these conflicting reports a Papal declaration was issned, in 1623, condemning some of the practices, and counselling great care on all points in dispute, and to avoid scandal and. exposure, it was sent privately to the Jesuits only. The worthy fathers received it in silence and went on doing as before, so th'lt it was not until fifty-seven years afterward that the Capuchins so much as knew of the existence of such a document!
The Jesuits about ,this time were at the zenith of their power, and so for a long time were able to defy their enemies. And so, like other mortals, they abused their power and acted with more audacity and less caution, so that public attention was again called to their proceedings. So numerous and flagrant were their alleged compromises with Hindu rites and practices, that Pope Clement XI. was moved, in 1702, to send out C. T. Maillard de Toumon, a man of high rank and great repute, as Legate, with power to investigate the charges and report. The decree he issued condemned, among otlier things, the marriage of children six or seven years of age; the hanging of the talz about their necks–the usual Hindn symbol used in such cases; the abolition of certain nuptial ceremonies–" for they overflow with the pollutions of heathenism ;" the disuse of the twig of a certain tree which was emblematic of the Hindu Triad-Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva; of the circlets used for averting misfortune; the use of seven vessels filled with growing rice, emblematic of the seven planetary gods. The Christians were condemned for taking a part in idolatrous festivals; bathing at set times, and in tlie manner of the heathen; passing themselves off as Suniassis; using the ashes of cow's dung, with marks on the forehead, chest, and elsewhere, practices common among the" most superstitious Hindus;" and among other things condemned was a feminine ceremonial the decree characterizes as " the festival of immodesty and wanton- ness. ,.
A great outcry was raised against the decree. Father Tachard sent to all the missionaries under his charge a set of inquiries in detail asking if the ceremonies thus condemned were necessary, or could be dispensed with. The answers declared it was necessary to continue the methods in use. And this was affirmed in the following solemn document: "I, John Venaut Bouchet, priest of the Society of Jesus, and Superior of the Carnatic Mission, do testify and swear on my faith as a priest th.at the observance of the rites, as set forth in the preceding answers, is of the greatest necessity to these missions, as well for their preservation as for the conversion of the heathens. Further, it appears to me that the introduction of any otller usage contrary to these would be attended with evident danger to the salvation of the souls of the neophytes. Thus I answer the Reverend Father Superior General, who orders me to send him my opinion as to these rites, and to confirm it by my oath, for assurance and faith of which I here sign my name." Signed, November 3d, 1704, in t.he Mission of the Carnatic, Jean Venaut Bouchet.
" Fathers Peter Manduit, Philip de la Fontaine, Peter de la Lane, and Gilbert Ie Petit took the same oath, and attested it by their signatures; and after like fashion, swore all the Portuguese Jesuits in Madura and Mysore" .<" Memoires Historiques," Luques, 1745, tome iii., pp. 8-10).
Thus the reverend fathers publicly, solemnly, and deliberately make oath that, in these missions, the religion of Christ must necessarily be joined to the idolatry of the heathen, and that the introduction of Christianity alone, and in its purity, would be fatal to the salvation of souls!
This document was carried to the Pope at Rome by Bouchet and Lainez, who did their utmost to have the report of Cardinal de Tournon set aside. In this they were unsuccessful, but with wonderful audacity, on their return to India they affirmed the opposite! Norbert states that on a day when a large congregation of French and native Christians were assembled at Pondicherry, Bouchet "came forward in his sacramental robes, and calling to witness the body and blood of J esns Christ, protested before God that of a truth he had obtained from the lips of the Pope himself that the decree of Cardinal de Tonrnon was in nowise binding, and that the missionaries might permit the practice of ceremonies which the Legate had condemned, because so doing they might the more easily convert the heathen to the faith. ,,* Lainez, now Bishop of St. Thomas, made to the Superior of the Capuchins a similar declaration. These statements were denied by the Pope in a brief addressed to !:.ainez himself, dated September 17, 1712 ; in a letter addressed to the Bishop of Claudiopolis, Cardinal Sacrissanti, Prefect of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, encloses a copy of ,. .. Lettres Edifiantes," tome iii., p. 320. the original acts of the Congregation of the Holy Office. "They will show you," he writes, "that the report you have heardin your co'un- tries announcing the suspension or annulling Of the decrees of the Cardinal de Tournon, Visitor Apostolic of happy memory, is false and without the slightest foundation." * The fathers, though hard pressed, were not yet vanquished. They reo ported that the Pope had been misinformed as to facts on which his de- cision had been founded, and prepared a document which was signed by many of their converts and three eminent Hindu Pundits affirming that the rites in question were all mere civil observances. But the contrary was affirmed by other Brahmans, yet with little effect; for the wily Brother- hood held on their way. Again Clement XI., in 1714 and 1719; Benedict XIII., in 1727, issued briefs, insisting on obedience to the decree of De Tournon, to which no attention was paid. But· a yet more ~x traordinary instance of disregard of moral obligation followed. Pope Clement XII., in 1739, issued a brief insisting on instant and absolute submission. Every Jesuit bishop and missionary in India was required to subscribe on oath to a most binding document, part only of which can here be given: "I, – – , of tha Society of Jesus, . . . obeying the precept of . . . Pope Clement' XII., . . . issued in 1739, enjoining all the missionaries • • . to take an oath that they will faithfully observe the Apostolic determination concerning the Malabar rites, . . . promise that I will obey fully and faithfully, that I will observe it exactly, entirely, absolutely and inviolably, and that I will fulfil. it without any tergiversation; moreover, that I will instruct the Christians committed to my charge according to the tenor of the said brief, . . . and especially the catechumens, before they shall be baptized, and unless they promise that they will observe the said brief . • . that I will not baptize them; further, that I shall take care, with all possible zeal and diligence, that the ceremonies of the heathen be abolished. . . . Thus, touching the Holy Gospels, I promise now and swear.
• • . Signed with mine own hand, –." t This evidently was designed to be a net from whose meshes no fish should escape; nevertheless, though it was signed by every Jesuit father, the Madura Brotherhood went on their way, systematically doing what~ according to the common understanding of mankind, they had taken an oath not to do !
The fathers yet continuing their methods, another Pope, Benedict XIV., issued a brief, so precise that it was difficult for even Jesuit ingenuity to evade it, and to make it public, commanded that it should be read every Sunday in their congregation, and that all converts should be made to promise obedience to its requisitions. Thus for a century and a half was this deliberate and systematic lying and imposture persevered in, and even then was but reluctantly, sullenly, and partially abandoned, not because it * "MemoireB Historiques," par Ie R. P. Norbert, Lucca edition, tome L, pp. 319-61.
t The original of the brief at full length is found in " MemoireB HiBtoriques," tome ii., p. 465,.' was evil and unchristian, but under the extremest pressure. Jesuitism remained true to its principles of concealment, evasion, and double meaning, if an end is to be gained, and submitted, but did not recant.
And the evil wrought remained. As a Roman Ca~holic historian writes: " In order to take away every pretext for tergiversation, Benedict XIV. issued the bull Omnium Sollicitudium, in which he recited all that had passed on the matter, . . . and left nothing undone in order to put an end to the disputes in regard to the Malabar rites. N6,"ertheless, a leaven of discord always remained between the Jesuits and the other missionaries, aud the latter reproached the formerfor not observing the bull honestly."* What have been the issues of this most shameful and systematic deception, this doing of evil that good might come ~ Ignominious failure, since Christianity has been slandered, the success of missions been hin- dered, and native Christian life and character permanently degraded and weakened! The natives discovered that the Roman Suniassis were, after all, only Feringhees, Europeans in disguise. This enraged and disgusted them. It stopped conversions. It aspersed the Christian name, and men of Western race. It lowered the standard of native Christian life and character almost iJ.leradicably. About twenty-five years after the bull of Benedict was issued, Fra Bartolomeo describes the :Madura Christians as "living in the lowest state of degradation and ignorance." The Abbe Dubois, who was a Roman Catholic missionary in Southern India from 1790 to 1815, gives in his remarkable volume of " Letters on the State of Christianity in India," a most humiliating account of the weakness, ignorance, and superstition of the Roman Catholic converts. Hereis one of his statements: "During a period of twenty-five years tbat I have familiarly conversed with them, lived among them as their religious teacher and spiritual guide, I would hardly dare to affirm that I have anywhere met a sincere and undisguised Christian."
Nor has the evil leaven yet been purged away. In the Harvest Field of this year, p. 329, an experienced and intelligent Protestant missionary in Southern India, the Rev. S. V. Thomas, M.A., thus writes: "Their converts are now to be found in certain districts of South India, in Madura, Trichinopoly. Tangore, and other places. These Catholic Christians, as they call themselves, are living monuments to attest the Jesuit policy louder thatl Pascal's letters or European proverbs. They wear marks on their foreheads as their heathen neighbors do, go to Hindu temples on festival occasions, and bow down before the images of pagan gods, while perhaps they inwardly repeat Paters and Aves. Part of their marriage ceremony is performed in the Christian chapel, and the oouple is blessed by the Catholic priest. When this is done they go home, kindle a fire and walk round it, tie the wedding knot in the presence of Agni, and call upon that fire god to witness the solemn contract. Their church is divided into compart- * " A Continuation of the Church History of Bersult Bercsstei," by Comte de Robiano, tome 1., p. 197. ments, so that the high-class Christians may worship the image of Him who was the friend of outcasts, without being contaminated by the touch of the low-caste worshippers. Christians and the descendants of Christians for several generations, they are sunk in such gross ignorance that, like the good lady in the" Monastery," they are often puzzled to know why Eve forgot to ask the advice of St. Peter or St. Paul before eating the forbidden fruit. Three hundred years of Christianity has left them only where it found themthe slaves of Brahman superstition and of Brahman fraud. Their condition is worse than that of the Samaritans described in the Second Book of Kings, ' Who feared the Lord and worshipped their own strange gods.' "
Such is Jesuitism and its fruits. The leading statements in this paper rclative to the Madura Mission are taken from a remarkable article in the second volume of the. Oalcutta Review, called" The Jesuit Missions in India," by the Rev. Dr. Mackey. The following are the Roman Catholic authorities on which it is principally based: 1. "Lettres Edifiantes et curieuses, ecrites des Missions etrangers, par quelques Missionaires de la Compagnie de Jesus." The original consists of 25 volumes, printed in Paris. The first volume was published in 1717, the last in 1741. The letters they contain were written at various times between 1699 and 1740. 2. "Annales de la Propagation de la Foi." The publication of this was commenced at Lyons, in 1823. . 3. "Memoires Historiques presentes (en 1744) au Souverain Pontife, Benoit XIV. Par Ie R. P. Norbert. Besangon, 1747 j et Luques, 1745. Avec la permissiou des superieurs." Norbert went out as a missionary from Rome to Southern India in 1737. He subsequently held the office of " Procureur General en Cour de Rome des Missions aux lndes Orientales." His work is most condemnatory of the proceedings of the Jesuits, not only in India, but China, and gives ample documentary evidence in proof of his statements. Like the Papal Legate, Cardinal de Tournon, of whose mission he gives a full account, he suffered much from the implacable hostility of the Jesuits.
From the Congo Balolo Mission, Lolongo Station, Lulanga River, Upper Congo, F. Theodora McKittrick writes, correcting a statement in the June number of THE MISSIONARY REVIEW OF THE WORLD regarding the Mission at Lolongo : "Only one lady here has suffered from fever since our arrival fourteen months ago j three of us have enjoyed wonderfully good health. We are living in what appears to be a healthy neighborhood; the combined fevers of all three of us may perhaps have lasted twenty-four hours. "
MI~SIONARY METHODS OFFICIALLY REVIEWED
MISSIONARY METHODS OFFICIALLY REVIEWED.
BY REV. J. T. GRACEY, D.D.
Partially owing to adverse criticisms and partly to increased general intelligence in the Church concerning missionaries and their work in heathen lands, large sections of the Church in Great Britain and some in America, have been led to make a patient and thorough investigation into existing methods of missionary work and their results.
The Wesleyan Missionary Society was precipitated into an investigation of mission economics and mission resnlts in India, by the hasty and extremely indiscreet criticisms of a young missionary, only one year in the country, finding access to the home public through an influential journal, and fostered and fended by its popular and vigorous editor. The result was, the society was obliged to make investigations into the charges against it for allowing extravagant living of its missionaries, and for general expenditure to which results were not commensurate, whether judged of in themselves or by comparison with results achieved by others at less outlay. The ill-feeling and general critical attitude of parties, equally eager to ascertain what was right, but working from wholly divergent points, did not place the society in tile best attitude, to ascertain the calmest judgment, of those whose testimony was essential to a thorongh judicial investigation; but it did result in the severest testing of ,all evidence rendered in the case, and the discarding of everything that did not stand the fiery ordeal of a stiff controversy. We think very good results were obtained, but we cannot discern that anything was elicited under this burning.glass that might not have been better reached by other processes. Be that as it may, this was one of the forms in which answers" were wrought out to clitieism of a dam-· aging nature to missions in general and to those of this society in particular.
The London Missionary Society was favored with a more peaceful method of examining its work and of considering all suggestions that were made commonly public, by the agitation of the missionary critics. They appointed a special committee of investigation on all these subjects of metb(~ds, polio cies, and fields of labor. They secured able men to discuss these questions in formal memoranda. They also invited missionaries of recognized standing of the most prominent and widely separated fields, as China, India, and Madagascar, to lengthened interviews with the ::::pecial Committee.
The Free Church of Scotland sent an able delegation to India to examine all these questions of policy and methods on the field. The Church of Scotland Missionary Society instituted inquiries by correspondence with eminent laymen as well as missionaries, especially concerIling educational methods compared with evangelistic methods of work.
We caunot follow these various investigations in detail. They should convince the Church that missionary societies are careful to keep their whole work on the most approved plans, and are ready to make any advance movement that circumstances and experience demand and justify. We select from the topics specially considered a few, and give the result of the iuquiries, not, however, strictly confining ourselves to these official reports.
CELIBATE MISSIONARIES.
The London Society's committee represents the general concensus of opinion in the matter of sending out unmarried missionaries on the ground of economy and efficiency. The conclusion reached was that the system of celibate missionaries was bad. The results in the case of both native and Roman Catholic missions were unsatisfactory and often worse. China testimony was unqualificdly against celibate missionaries, as presenting insumountable obstacles to the work. In every field it was recognized that the Christian home and Christian family were absolutely necessary for exhibition of Christian life. The committee, therefore, made a minute in accordance with the testimony, and condemned the practice of sending celibate missionaries, exccpt in special cases and for a limited time.
LAY EVANGELISTIC MISSIONARIES.
The general drift of thought among those who have given largest attention to the subject in all fields and all societies is undoubtedly more and more favorable to the employment of If much larger number of Jay missionaries. The openings for their labor are increasing constantly along the avenues of commerce, colonization, and geographical extension; and coincident with this condition is a sort of general movement, which it is judged may be divi~ely originated, among great numbers of young men as well as young women, to engage in some form of work among heathen abroad, as mechanics, teachers, professional persons, engineers, clerks, and other secular offices.
The directors of the London Society have decided to accept offers of service from men who have not passed a course of theological collegiate training, and to send them out for a term of years as lay evangelists; the object being to open the door to foreign service, to men of good education and of proved experience as Christian workers, having missionary enthusiasm. They have to admit, besides, that the theological schools are not at present able to supply the increasing demand for workers. They, however, deem i~ desirable that the study of Christian missions, of the history of philosophy and comparison of religions, should form part of the course of preparatory study for all missionaries, especially for those appointed to India or China. The committee after thorough investigation approved of this action of the directors.
NATIVE AGENCY.
It is often urged that native agents should be relied on to meet the great demand, now unsupplied, for workers. But as yet it is plainly acknowledged that such agency is deficient in quality and quantity, and this, in fact, only points out the necessity as yet but partially cared for, of more institutions for the training of a native ministry, and more trained men to develop them j but as yet these trained men are not forthcoming, and the native ministry is not forthcoming as needed, hence the emergency must be met by accepting others whom God has raised up and thrust on the notice of the societies-laymen eager to be evangelists and teachers abroad.
EDUCATION.
The relation of Christian missions to education, and of educational work to results in conversions, was the gravest question that these societies were called upon to investigate. The Church of Scotland invited one hundred persons to give their opinions on the desirability of maintaining their col- leges in India. Of the eighty-five replies received, sixty-eight were favor- able to their continuance and sixteen unfavorable. Of the seventy Pres- byterians to whom the testimony was submitted, sixty voted favorably to the continuance of the schools. The symposium, composed of the sixty- 'eight opinions received in answer to tho crircular letter of inquiry, is in- structive reading, though mnch of it is quite too general and too long to admit of our making such extracts as would do justice to the authors.
Sir William Muir, formerly Secretary of the Government of India, said: " I have no hesitation whatever in saying that it would be a calamity for . India if missionary schools were withdrawn. Apart from immediate con- version to the faith, their influence on the mind of the people has been of. inestimable value. It was the t!cotch schools and colleges which first called forth the sympathies of Hindus toward Christianity. The country has by them been inoculated with Christian sentiment.
•, I take the Brahmo community as the exponent of this new phase of Indian life. The two sheets enclosed are random specimens of the hold which Christian truths and ideas have gotten of the minds even of those who ostensibly reject them. The Brahmo faith, no doubt, is but a poor travesty of Christianity j but it takes the life and teaching of our Saviour for its real basis, and through it vast numbers have access to the Bible and do study it. The process will go on if our missionary schools are maintained i and they are the only means at present available for leavening the minds of the young."
Sir Richard Temple, Bart., G. C. S. I., argues at length to show that the Educational Commission of 1881-83 felt itself obliged to recommend that the IJducation supported by the Indian Government should be religiously neutral, and though the foremost Hindus of the land deprecated that coarse, circumstances had justified the decision. He says: " If, therefore, the Scottish Missions were to withdraw from educational work in India, the state system of public instruction would be deprived of one of the most important class of institutions which have hitherto tem- pered the exclusively secular teaching of the Government schools. Further, as the native religious leaders have been encouraged to give spiritual in- struction in aided schools of their own, the Indian races would be left to the influence of a constantly increasing propaganda of Hinduism and Islam, while the Christian teaching hitherto given by t1>e Scottish Mission schools and colleges would be curtailed. " In short, just as Hinduism and Mohammedanism are entering more largely into the field of religious instruction in the schoob, Scottish mis- sionaries would be withdrawing from it. So far as regards the welfare of the people of India, therefore, I should deprecate any relaxation of the educlltional efforts of the Missions of the Scottish Church."
Sir Charles E. Bernard, Chief Commissioner of Burmah and Home Secretary of the Indian Government, at the close of .an able paper, says: " In so far as the existing educational system leads men to reject Hindu- ism, it prepares the way for Christianity. But if no effort is made to teach Christianity, and if Ohristian Rchools and colleges were closed, atheism would be unchecked until some extension of Brahmoism or some new sect like the Brahmos arose. If Protestant colleges and schools were abolished or greatly diminished Roman Catholics would probably extend their educa- tional work, and would occupy much of the .ground vacated by Protestant missions. "
Hon. George Edward Knox, formerly Sessions Judge, now Legal-Remem- brancer, Northwest Provinces, say~ : " I feel assured of this fact, that educational missions have, under God's blessing, conferred a boon upon India, and have been permitted by Him to be the means of bringing many souls to Christ. Of the extent of the boon, and of the number of souls, we shall not and cannot hope to have a com- plete record, at any rate until the day when we attain perfect knowledge. I have long entertained a belief that His Word is working secretly to an ex- tent which we cannot perceive, and that the day is not far off when the number of those who are added to the Church will be as unexpected as was the draught of fishes after our Lord's resurrection. May we be prepared to me~t it! The practice of employing heathen teachers should, I say unhesitatingly, be abandoned."
Sir William W. Hunter, an unquestioned authority on all things per- taining to India, as preface to a most interesting paper, says: "With reference to the welfare of the peoples of India, I should regard any withdrawal of the Scottish Missions from the work of education as disastrous. The weak point in our system of Indian public instruction is our inability to give any form of religious teaching in our state schools. We cannot teach Christianity, for the great proportion of the tax-payers are Hindus and Mohammedans. We cannot teach Hinduism or Islam, for we are a Christian Government. The result is an absence of religious teaching of ar:y sort, which the natives of India deeply deplore."
Rev. J. Murdoch, LL. D., of the Christian Vernacular Education Society, says: " It would be a great calamity if the higher education in India fell exclusively into the hands of Government, the Jesuits, and Hindus."
We cannot pursue this repertoire of very thoughtful expression of judgment and of most expert testimonv. It is fair to say, however, that the whole question is not covered in the above extracts.
SOME OF THE DIFFICULTIES.
But the troublesome kernel of this whole question still remains. Are these schools giving Christian education and reaching definite results in conversion 1 One of the recognized difficulties is the scarcity of Christians competent to do the teaching, and 1ence the employment of non-Christian teachers. The London Society's Committe(; thus conclude on the whole subject: " Ad things stand at present, such a course of instruction as will pre- pare for University degrees and Government service, necessitates the em- ployment of non-Christian teachers. An adequate supply of Christian teachers is not forthcoming. Difference of language forbids the trans- ference of teachers from one part of India to another. The non-Christian teachers are, of course, confined to secular subjects, and work under the eye and control of the missionary. Still, it is evident that their presence and influence detract from the Christian character of the school ; and may even, in some cases, seriously hinder the work and influence of the mis- sionary. By some devoted friends of missions, in India and at home, this danger is deemed so serious that they are ready to abandon our edu- cational work sooner than tolerate the presence of non-Christian teachers in mission schools. The grave responsibility and inevitable results of fluch a course must be fairly faced. It would mean the reduction of our schools to the level of elementary vernacular schools-the surrender of our hold on the young mind of India, in this crisis of its intellectual and moral history, when the first stirrings of ~ national mind are beginning to be felt, and old faiths are tottering to their fall. It would mean the handing over of the cultured youth' of India, the hope of the future, either to schools from which religion is systematically excluded, where morality has therefore no firm footing, and where there may be Agnostic and Positivist teachers as bitterly hostile to Christianity as the heathen; or clse to Rome and the Jesuits, eagerly watching the opportunity to step in and fill our empty place. "
THE EXPLANATION.
A really much more penetrating view of the whole subject is found in the conclusions reached by the Free Church Delegation. vVe do not know how far this has been made public, nor how far we are at liberty to make public what was committed to us witb the implication that it was official matter, for exclusively official uses. But surely the following most impor- tant general points are of too great value, and quite too general to make our use of them obtrusive or too enterprising. They admit that the Mission Colleges do not now produce the number of converts they once did. In fact, they produce hardly any, and they are not to be looked for. This was not the case in the old days. Dr. Duff and his colleagues had a noble band of converts from the college in Cal- 'cutta. So was it in Bombay and Madras. Why should this have been, and yet not even be anticipated now 1 We wish we could give much space to the reasons so ably assigned. 1. In the earlier days of mission colleges and lligh schools there was no balf-way house between Hinduism and all its abominations, and Christianity. Educated young men had to remain Hin- dus and accept what they came to loathe, or become Christians. There is now no such limitation. Oriental scholars have recovered the earlier Hindu faith, which has fewer disgusting elements, and even some elements of morality. There has, besides, been a decided attempt to read the spirit of Christianity into Hinduism. All this makes new conditions ; the then and now are not alike.
2. There is also the position which the higher schools are obliged to take in the Government system of education. The colleges are affiliated to the universities, and must satisfy Government educational requirements. This results in a pressure on the missionary for an amount of teaching which precludes the quiet personal talks on religious matters, and the private companies gather.ed formerly for instruction in Christian truth. The school is in the toils of competitive work and its secular results are essential to its Government revenue, and the teaching force is, at the minimum to reach this secular standard alone. The preparation former1y wont.to be made for conversion in the class is well-nigh out of the question.
3. In the old days baptisms sometimes suddenly emptied the school for a time, but the support of the 8chool being drawn from the missionary treasury, it was financially unaffected; but now these colleges and high schools are dependent on Government because its grants are conditioned on the fees raised in the school, and Ii stampede from the school means a finan· cial collapse in that portion of mission work; aud neither the local mission nor the home treasury is prepared to meet such emergency.
Professor Miller, in the Contemporary Review, October, 1889, cautions the public what to expect of mission high schools. " Education," he says, " is not fitted to bring men of immature minds, whose characters are only in process of being formed, into the organized Christian Church upon any extensive scale. . . . But it is fitted to plant thoughts and awaken impulses which may make the work of the missionary tell more powerfully.
It is in rare cases more than preparatory." There is no doubt that the general opinion is that educational work absolutely mnst be supported by evangelistic work. But there is still another side to this entire question, which has not been touched in any of the quotations or references we have made. What about the schools, the higher schools, as essential to the existing native Christian community V They cannot be educated in Hindu or Moslem schools, and the Government schools are positively negative or worse in religion. What then V We will let R,lV E. W; Parker, D.D., and Rev. E. H. Badley, D.D., of North India, state this case. This is their utterance about the work in the North India Methodist Mission: " Our evangelistic work is bringing in converts at the rate of 6000 per year, with a rapidly increasing ratio, and our s«hools have had and are haying a very important share in this work. We never could have had this work without our schools, and we dare not continue it without them. If we go forward-and go forward we must-we must educate or we will have a heathen Christian Church. "
But the Free Church Commission boldly puts the question also of the relation of higher education to the higher class of the Indian population. It is, they say, the only way of reaching them. They deliberately assert that, " Unless the Christian Church is prepared to abandon its efforts to get a hearing for Christianity among caste Hindus, unless it is prepared to confine its missionary enterprise to the sixty or eighty II ilIions outside Hinduism proper, this higher education must be included among missionary agencies and given an important place."
The Rev. Archibald Turnbull, B.D., of the Church of Scotland Mission in Darjeeling, with its 1200 converts, remarks that the discipline exercised by the monthly Panchayat (church-court) would seriously decimate the home churches. Our Scottish brethren have a high standard, and apply it strenuously.
Our readers already know that another of the "Soudan Pioneer Band," Mr. Helmick, who received the best medical treatment, has, like others before him, fallen a prey to the African fever. His letters show that even his short career in Africa has left the seed of a blessing in that dark soil. Mr. Brooke was also very sick with typhoid, and had to go away for a rest. We fear that too much blame has needlessly attached to other members of the Soudan Pioneer Company, because they refused medical treatment. One of the principal physicians of New York City has recently stated to the editor that if he were going to explore Africa, he would rather trust to the vigor of his constitution, with care as to his habits, than to risk a greater injury to his system by the daily use of quinine. He says the quinine habit is sometimes as dangerous and enslaving as the opium habit.-EDIToR.] Mr. A. R. Miles, referring to Treasurer Dulles's note in November REVIEW, writes from Bogota, that while the silver law has caused exchange to depreciate, the loss this year will not fall on the Boards-at least not on the Presbyterian Board. The appropriations being made on a gold basis, the loss is borne by the stations in the countries where silver is the monetary basis. The salaries of the missionaries of the Presbyterian Board North are fixed on a gold basis, and do not fluctuate from year to year.
Reginald Radcliffe, Esq., writes from Liverpool urgently appealing for greatly increased prayer in behalf of world-wide missions. He says it is time to " call a halt!" that we may consider whether the greatest need of the mission work to-gay be not that believers unite with each other in believing appeals at the Throne of Grace. We believe Mr. Radcliffe is right, and have often urged this as the grand and imperative demand of our missionary work. The laborers, the money, the energy, the enterprise will all be abundant when we get on our faces in penitence, in faith, in obedience, independence; and when our confidence is only in God. Then every door now shut will open. and every door now open wilL.be entered, and every field be sown with the good seed of the kingdom.
LING CHING TING, THE CONVERTED OPIUM-SMOKER
LING CHING TING, THE CONVERTED OPIUM-SMOKER.
BY REV. S. L. BALDWIN, D.D.
In 1863, as the Rev. S. L. Binkley was preaching one day in the Mission Chapel at Ato, in the southern suburbs of the great city of Foochow, China, a mim about forty years of age, seeing the chapel doors open, strayed in out of curiosity, and took a seat with the congregation. He listened with great attention to the preaching; and, at the close of the service, when all the rest of the audience had gone out, he made his way up to the altar, and said to the missionary, "Did you say that Jesus (I never heard of Him bcfore : 1 don't know who He is); but did you say that He can save me from all my sins ?" "Yes," replied, Mr. Binkley, "that is"just what 1 said." " But, ,. the Chinaman responded, "you didn't know me when you said that; you didn't know that 1 have been a gambler and a sorcerer for many years; you didn't know that I have been a licentious man; you didn't know that I have been an opium-smoker for twenty years, and every " one knows that any man who has smoked opium for that length of time can never be cured of the habit. If you had known all this, you wouldn't have said t.hat Jeflus can save me from all my sins-would you 1" " Yes," r-eplied the missionary, " I would havc said just what I did; and I tell you now that Jesus can save you from all your sins."
The poor, sinful Chinaman was bewildered. It seemed to him impossible of belief. Yet there was a charm about the very idea of a Saviour, who could deliver him from all his sins. He went away in deep thought. The next day he sought Mr. Binldey at his residence, to talk with him about this wonderful Saviour j and day after day for many days he came, examining the proofs of Christianity, and bringing his objection~ to be solved by the missionary. But one day he came to the missionary's study with a radiant countenance, exclaiming as he entered: "I know it! I know it ! I know that J csus can save me from my sins; for He has done it !"
He had a gteat battle to overcome his habit of opium-smoking, but seeking help from his new.found Saviour, he soon conquered, and said, " I don't want to smoke opium any more; I don't want to do any of the evil things I have been doing; but I want to go and tell the people of Hok-chiang that Jesus can save them from their sins." When his friends heard of his purpose, they tried to dissuade him, saying, " Don't go down, there j the people are fighting there all the time j they will soon take your head off, and that will stop your 'Preaching. If you will preach the , foreign doctrine,' stay here at Foochow and preach it where you will be safe." But he replied, "No j I must go to flok-chiang. The people there need the Gospel, and they are my people. I came from there, and I must go and tell them about Jesus. "
There was no time for a college course or for theological training. He went out with the Word of God in his hand, and the experience of his Saviour'8 love in his heart. His lSimple message to the people everywhere was, "Jesus can save you from all your sins; I know it, for He has saved me from mine!" He suffered much persecution-stoned in one place, pelted with mud in another, beaten in another, he pressed on with ill.domitable energy, proclaiming everywhere his simple message of salvation. Many listened to his earnest words anrl became followers of Christ.
After a time he was caught by his enemies in the city of Hok-chiang, and brought before the district magistrate, with false charges against him, and false witn~sses to testify to them j and the too-willing heathen magistrate sentenced him to be beaten with two thousand stripes. This cruel sentence was executed with the bamboo upon the bare back of the victim. I well remember the day when he was brought to our Mission premises, apparently almost dead. I well remember the sorrowful countenance of our good Scotch physician, as he came out of the room, after examining his patient, and said, " I don't think we can save him. I never saw such terrible injuries from beating. The flesh on his back is like quivering jeUy. But we will do our best to save him." I remember how I thought over some of the comforting words of Jesus, as I made my way toward the room, that I might try to comfort my brother in his great distress; and I remember, too, the smile with which he greeted me, and how he, speaking first, before I had a chance to say anything, said: "Teacher, this poor body is in great pain just now; but my inside heart has great peace. Jesus is with me ; and I think perhaps He will take m!> to heaven, and I will be glad to go. " And then I could see the old fire flashing again in his eyes, as with effort he raised himself a little from his bed, and said, " But if I get up from this, you'll let me go back to Hok-chiang, won't you ~"
He was in a precarious condition for some time, but soon began to mend; and before the missionaries thought he ought to leave the premises, he was off again to Hok-chiang, preaching to the very men who had persecuted him, and with such effect that some of them were converted, and became members of our church in that city.
He continued to preach with much energy and success for a period of fourteen years. He was ordained by Bishop Kingsley, in 1869. Soon after he was appointed to Teng-tiong in 1876, finding himself very ill, he went to his native island of Lam-yit, hoping to improve in the sea breezes, and under the care of physicians there. But when, after some weeks, they told him that his case was hopeless, and that he could not live many weeks, hc said: "Then I must go back to my station. I only came here in hope of getting well, so as to do Jonger service; but if I cannot, then I want to go where my work is, and die at my post. " So, in his feebleness, he made his way back to Teng-tiong ; and when he could no longer stand to preach, he sat down, gathered the Christians close around him, and talked to them of the love of Jesus, and His power to save from sin.
On Saturday – evening, May 19th, 1877, he sang two verses of the " Saturday Evening Hymn," beginning, " To.night all worldly things we clear away; To.morrow, keep holy the Sabbath day."
Finding himself unable in his weakness to sing more, he slowly repeated the last lines : " Resting on Jesus, my heart has no fear ; I shall reach heaven, my evidence is clear."
Casting a look of tender affection upon his family and the Christian brethren who were present, he gave them his parting blessing, and in a few moments, peacefully breathed his life away, leaving hundreds of converts to Christ, and among them a score of native preachers, brought into the Church through his labors.
Mr. Binkley was obliged to return to the United States, by the illness of his wife, before he had been two years in China. I remember how the tears flowed down his face, as I stood with him on the deck of the steamer which was to bear him away, and he said, " I can't bear to go home, when I haven't yet been able to do anything for Jesus here." But in leading this one man to Christ, our dear brother was honored of God in doing a work which will go on in increasing power while the world lasts.
Our last reports show over seven hundred members, over five hundred probationers, and over fifteen hundred adherents in the Hok-chiang district. Does it not pay to preach the Gospel to the Chinese ~ [The above article has already been published in tract form j it has; however, awakened such deep interest that the editor has asked permission of- Dr. Bald win to reprint it in the pages of this REVIEW. Among all the narratives of the mighty power of God in the conversion of a human soul, we believe that not even the Acts I of the Apostles give a more convincing example. We commend the reading of this tract to those who have charge of missionary meetings and monthly concerts. It is of itself a sufficient vindication of missions. -EDITOR.] Word comes from Figueras, Spain, of thi opening of the new hall and schools, in October last. Over 1000 persons were present, and most decorons was the assembly. Copies of the New Testament and religions tracts were distributed as the crowd dispersed. About $3000 are needed to pay for the new accommodations. The Town Council of Figueras has actually granted £5 sterling to the Protestant hospital or dispensary in acknowledgment of charity exteuded to patients, and there was only one dissenting vote! Here is an act unparalleled in th~ religious history of Spain. The work seems reaching all classes of people. Children from high Catholics are being transferred from the convents to these Protestant schools. We regard this work of Signor Rodriguez as very remarkable and promising.
WHY MISSIONS ARE SO ,MODERN
WHY MISSIONS ARE SO MODERN.
BY REV. DELAVAN L. LEONARD, D.D.
How happened it that the work of evangelizing the world, after centuries of such vigorous prosecution, attended with such marvellous success, was afterward well nigh suspended, and for well nigh fifteen hundred years? This most serious question we answer correctly Dy alleging that Europe became semi-barbarized and half-heathen, that the Church became secularized and religion formal, that Gospel faith, and love, and zeal went into long and almost total eclipse.
But this only leads to another question equally pertinent, and corriing much nearer home: Why, when through the Reformation ensued an astonishing spiritual quickening, a widespread revival of New Testament fervor and force, was not the sublime task at once resumed and pushed as at the beginning? Or, how happened it that for nearly three hundred years longer next to nothing was even attempted, so that the nineteenth century ·of grace was well on its way before the ears of the Christian Church began to be opened to hear the agonizing wail of a dying world? To this latter question let us seek a reply more at length; and also together with it, to the further and pleasanter query, How came it about at length that His disciples began to reperuse their Lord's Great Commission, and, though slowly, began to obey his last command? It is my purpose to set briefly forth some of the principal and more patent causes which hindered the beginning of modern missions and postponed them to a day so painfully and so culpably late, and also other conspiring forces which in the fulness of time made a beginning easily possible, and communicated the heavenly impulse, and then carried the majestic movement onward from strength to strength, from grace to glory.
And, first of all, be it remembered that in God's strange providence Protestantism was compelled at once to engage in a most terrible life-anddeath struggle with Rome, one whose fury did not in the least abate for five or six generations, and which has continued to the present time. The new doctrine must establish a right to existence, must conquer standing ground for itself, define and then enlarge to the utmost its bounds in Christian countries. So that as yet there was neither much time nor energy left to expend upon the vast and even far more benighted regions beyond. In Babylon, out of which they in horror had lately fied, the reformers found a foe ever present. wily, unscrupulous, and most determined to crush them, and commonly with the ruthless civil power in close league and co-operation. The horrid enginery of the Inquisition was steadily at work, and the Jesuits were. plotting destruction night and day. All Germany was in perpetual chaos, social, political, and religious. Recall the unspeakable desolations attending the almost constant "religious" wars of those dark days; the hapless and most tragic lot of the W alUenses and Albigenses; how the Huguenots found no rest from persecution, and finally were slaughtered by the wholesale, imprisoned, impoverished, and driven from France. For the better part of a century little Holland bent the utmost of her almost miraculous energies to save herself from utter destruction by the diabolical schemes of Philip II. and his Duke of Alva. And as for England, in the persons first of the Lollards and later of the Puritans, those who would have none of Rome suffered manifold afflictions from Henry VIII., Bloody Mary, Elizabeth, and the four Stu'arts, for a hundred and fifty continuous years in all j nor was the fearful stress finally over until happy 1688. Therefore, it is not at all to be counted strange that the dreary and bloody sixteenth and seventeenth centuries witnessed no evangelistic crusades to speak of aimed at remote Africa, Asia, America, and the islands of the sea.
But besides the theological and ecclesiastical strifes which began from the Reformation, esteemed one and all by the frenzied combatants " wars of the Lord," were almost as bitter, as exhausting, and even more interminable thau the clash of arms. And, indeed, the task was tremendous, full of difficulty, demanding the .utmost of wisdom and skill, to separate Bible truth from Romish error, with which for more than a millennium it had become worse and worse intermingled. The trouble extended to all matters of both belief and practice. The reformers of necessity resorted to the Scriptures anew and investigated for themselves. The human mind and conscience now jllilt set free from age-long and galling tyranny, of course were altogether unused to untrammelled exercise, and so not strangely they ran riot sometimes, and went to the other extreme of license, lawlessness, anarchy. Sects sprang up by the score, all manner of hobbies got upon their feet and performed their antics before high heaven. While some would bring the least change possible to religious beliefs and customs, others would reject to the utmost, and thus be as unlike as possible to the harlot of the Reven Hills! But the most temperate and conservative were compelled to fashion fresh creeds and church forms. And, should ecclesiastical rule be monarchic or aristocratic, as aforetime, or democratic rather ~ And the confession, should it be of the Augsburg pattern, or of the Helvetic, or the Gallic, or the Belgic ~ Which was verily nearest to God's Word, the Heidelberg, the Westminster, the Thirty-nine Articles, or the Savoy 1 The spirit of war filled the air, fighting was the chief business in all realms, and hence Luther was hot against Zwingli, and both against Calvin, and all three could by no means in the least tolerate the heresies of Servetus, Arminius, and the rest. In England for long it was not only Protestant always against Catholic, but also war to the knife between the Established Church and Presbyterians, and Puritans, and Independent~ and Baptists, and Quakers, etc. Nor, indeed, in the nature of things, could it be any light matter, a short and simple process, to escape altogether from the intellectual and moral night of the Dark Ages, to return fully to the , truth as it is in Jesus, or for Protestantism to come thoroughly to itself, to a knowledge of its sublime mission, and as well to fashion the needed instrumentalities for its accomplishment.
A further difficulty as good as insuperable was found in the fact that everywhertl Church and State, the spiritual therefore and the material, were closely united, and so long had the relation existed that now it seemed to most to be not only eminently proper, but also necessary. This was another portiQn of the evil inheritance received from Rome; but as a result religion had come to be largely a political affair, to be managed in cabinets by kings and statesmen and generals, by them to be fostered and guided, to be defended by the secular arm. Force was in common use to punish opinions and convictions which by theologians, or philosophers, or politicians were adjudged pestilential. And such a wretched caricature of the teachings and example of Christ as resulted was not at all fit to be carried to the ends of the earth. Better wait for generations until this unnatural and unchristian alliance is ended, and a sharp distinction is made between the things of Cresar and the things of God.
And then, in addition, as yet nothing of importance in any realm of activity was undertaken and prosecuted by the individual of his own motion, from an impulse abounding~ within, but every movement was by prescription, authority of pope or king, and under the lead of orders, and companies, and guilds. The day of voluntary associations was not yet, and far in the future. The benighted people were nobodies, but cattle to be driven or clay to be moulded, instruments to be played upon by the few enjoying the divine right to originate, and shape, and manage. As we shall see, what little was done to carry the Gospel abroad was devised wholly and engineered in every case by royalty and privileged corporations. As far lUI possible all this from the glorious days of the apostles and of their successors, when missionary effort was mainly individual, when the entire body of Christ was instinct and overflowing with celestial aggressive force. No world-wide progress could be made uutil such ignoble and enfeebling bonds were in some way broken, and if need be through violent civil .and ecclesiastical overturning, and the rude shock of war. The English revolution, with the sublime outburst of the Puritan spirit, must precede, and the American, yes, and also the French, with the terrible throes and destructions included 'of the Napoleonic campaigns, to end a great host of old abuses, to teach p·riests and nobles an unpalatable lesson in humility and modesty, to exalt the rights and privileges of the many. Above all, the religious world was waiting for the rise of a great people beyond the sea, untrammelled by tradition, God-fearing, intelligent, each one trained to think and act for himself, with democracy in the State reacting upon the Church, a people loving liberty of thought and conviction better than life. Then, at fellgth, the Gospel, free as at the first, left to itself to do its appointed work under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost and the guidance of the Word, an<l with reliance only upon spiritual forces, couId enlarge itself indefinitely on every side, and spread around the whole earth.
• There was yet another obstacle to the origin and growth of mIssiOns, well nigh prohibitory, and resident in the fact that for nearly a hundred years after the rise of the Reformation Protestant peoples possessed no point of contact with the heathen world. Hence the existence of any widely extended and deplorable moral darkness was a mere matter of hear- say and untested theory. All navigation to distant paris of the world, all commerce, all colonization were exclusively in the handt! of such z!lalous servitors of Rome as Portugal and Spain. Because Catholics saw with their own eyes they also felt, and sent out missionaries in abundance. It •was not until after the destruction of the Spanish Armada and the rapid decline of those powers behind the Pyrenees that Prot~stant England, Holland, and Denmark stepped forward to the first rank as rulers of the ocean. But a few years more elapsed before colonies were planted at Jamestown, at Plymouth, and on Manhattan Island, while factories were opened in South Africa, Asia, and the Indies, both East and West. And when thus finally the supreme naval and commercial hegemony passed into Protestant hands, it was the Lord's sure token that the pure Gospel was about to fly abroad.
Then, in due season, followed yet other and even more astounding victories for the rising faith of Luther, and these chiefly through British valor and aggressive enterprise. It was nothing less than one of the greatest epochs in human history, especially in relation to the career of all English-speaking people, and the publishing of the message of salvation to all mankind, when almost in the same year Clive conquered at Plassey and Wolfe at Quebec, and thus 200,000,000 Hindus were brought into closest intercourse with English Christians, and the French were driven from this continent to make room for the speedy rise of a " Greater Britain," which should fairly rival the mother country as an ardent evangelizer, and continually provoke her to Gospel good works.
One more step of a similar character remained to be taken, nor was it long delayed. Since the generation which followed Columbus. and Magellan, and the Cabots there had been a litrange and long-continued apathy with regard to carrying forward to completion the discovery of unknown regions. Little progress was made in that direction save by a few like Barentz, and Tasman, and Behring, until Captain Cook's three famous voyages (1769-79). In· particular he turned the attention of the civilized world to such continental land spaces as Australia and New Zealand and New Guinea, and brought to light in the vast and hitherto untraversed expanse of the Pacilic, the South Seas of a century since, islands innumerable, such as the Society, the Friendly, an<f the Sandwich groups. We can little understand. the great stir that was made, the boun·dless en- thusiasm that was kindled by his achievements. The deeds of our Living- stone and Stanley were received coldly by comparison; and the impulse . directly given to the cause of missions was immediate and very great. Two facts in evidence of this must suffice. It was the reading of Cook's narrative that first set Carey's soul on fire with holy zeal, and his original purpose was to proclaim Christ to the heathen in Tahiti. And, moreover, the London Missionary Society, at whose organization such a remarkable wave of religious zeal arose and spread all over Britain, was formed expressly to carry the cross to the South Seas, and in Tahiti its earliest representatives first touched land and opened their work.
A final step remainp,d in preparing the way for successful attempts to turn the heathen from their idols to worflhip the living God. A mighty and widespread outpouring of the Spirit of the Most High had long been the chief desideratum. From various causes in conjunction during the.' latter part of the seventeenth and extending far into the eighteenth, a sad and dark eclipse of faith had befallen the reformed churches throughout both Europe and America, a serious decline of vital piety, a lapse into frigid formalism and rank rationalism. The only zeal left was for an orthodoxy which was stone dead. After the Restoration in England had ensued a woful reaction, a descent into infidelity and immorality. "Never has there been a century in England so void of faith as that which began with Queen Anne and ended with George II., when the Puritans were buried and the Methodists wp,re not born." In 1732, when the Moravian Church came into being, cheering evidence began to appear that the Lord's grace and mercy were not clean gone forever from his apostate people. And a little later began to descend those refreshing showers of divine blessing through the fervid and tireless labors of the "'IVesleys, Whitp,field, and our own Edwards, whereby were supplied to hundreds and thousands a spirit truly apostolic, a zeal fiery and vehement, a faith hardy and venturesome, . like that which inspired the church in the pentecostal age. Without this almost unparalleled anointing from on high modern missions could never have begun to be, but now it was possible for the kingdoms of this world to become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ.
Closely akin to what has just been mentioned, and in great part as a result of the operation of the same spiritual forces, the heart of Christendom began to be strangely touched, and melted, and filled with compassion for the millions who were perishing-that is, the spirit of humanity, of philanthropy, of the Good Samaritan, which is inherent in the 'Gospel, was everywhere active in the early days, but had long since been almost quenched, was wondrously revived. Even Christian souls were in an unfeeling, an inhuman frame, reflecting thus the old pagan and barbarous times. Sorrow and woe found slight sympathy. When the general case was so forlorn little heed was given to the misery of others, especially if .of a different nation, out of sight, !It a distance. But a marked change in this regard was at the door. Howard had started upon his painful journeys to mitigate the grievous wrongs inflictcd upon prisoners; the voice of Wilberforce was lifted up in denunciation of the sin of African slavery, and Raikcs had opened his first ragged school. And all this was but the feeble beginning of an era of reforms which constitute one of the most striking characteristics of the passing century, as well as one of its best claims to be remembered with gratitude in centuries to come. And of this pity and compassion the heathen world presently began to receive at least a portion of its share. '
This brief glance at the Protestant Christian world, extending from near the beginning of the sixteenth century to near the end of the eighteenth, is sufficient abundantly to show that the long failure of the Lord's host to go up and possess the earth for Christ, though in no inconsiderable degree their sin and shame, and because of their indifference and unbelief, was also in yet greater part their misfortune, the result of their evil environments, for which they were not responsible, and which they were compelled to endure. Moreover, those tempestuous years were not by any means wholly wasted, but, on the contrary, were an all-important and indispensable period of extensive seed-sowing in preparation for the magnificent missionary harvest to follow. At length the time was fully ripe. Rome was now so badly battered that no longer need any live in mortal fear lest either by guile or by open assault she should recapture lost territory, and therefore Protestant Christianity could well afford to face some other way than toward the Tiber. Freedom, both ecclesiastical and civil, had extensively become the inheritance of the masses, and to them the printing press and the public school were fast bringing intelligence. There were no more lands to be discovered, and the steamship and the rail car were soon to make easily accessible the very ends of the earth. And, finally, in the nick of time a few, at least, in loving obedience to the command of their risen and ascended Lord, were ready to go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature.
The news from the Micronesian missionaries, received January 6th, by way of Japan, Was brought there by the steamship Alliance, Commander H. C. Taylor. It is briefly summarized as follows: The shelling of Ouas Ponape and the burning of the mission premises by the Spaniards took place September 20th. The missionaries, Mr. Rand, Misi Fletcher, and'Miss Palmer, were then at Kiti, on the other side of the island. On October 16th, the United States man-of-war Alliance arrived at Kiti, and after some effort, Commander Taylor was permitted to take Mr. Rand, the ladies, and seventeen girls from their school to Kuraie. There are now, therefore, no American missionaries on Ponape. It was useless for them to remain, for the governor had strictly forbidden the holding of any meetings or the opening of schools. It is a sad day for Ponape ; and it is neither to the honor nor to the advantage of Spain, as it breaks stipulations with the United States.-Missionary Herald.
England, Germany, Italy, and Portugal have signed an agreement for the reCiprocal protection of missionaries of these four nationalities who settle in Africa, in regions accorded to their respective States by the recent treaties. For liberty to exercise their ministry the missionaries must have a passport from the government to which they belong. -Missionary Herald.
THE LONDON PAPERS AND INDIA'S WOMEN
THE LONDON PAPERS AND INDIA'S WOMEN.
BY MRS. J. T. GRACEY.
An impression prevails that many of the stories concerning the evils of child-marriage and enforced widowhood in India are somewhat exaggerated.
Upon opening a recent India paper, I read the following: "In one of the largest cities of Southern India a marriage was recently arranged between a young man of twenty-three years, suffering from white leprosy all over his body, and a bright young girl of only twelve. The girl was bargained for, and rupees five hundred were paid down in hard cash. She of course knew nothing of the arrangements made until told by her father, ~hen she quietly submitted to her fate with a resignation characteristic of a Hindu maid."
Turning over the page, another item fell under my notice : "On Sat- urday last a young girl-wife, aged eight years, was admitted into the hos- pital suffering from burns all over her body, caused by her husband having branded her with a hot iron because she was absent from the house rather longer than usual." Still another: "A marriage has been celebrated within the week in which the bridegroom (name given) is aged 35 years, to an infant nine months old!" A marriage was recently performed be- tween a Brahman and fourteen girls belonging to one family. The corre- spondent of a native paper says : " We learned that fourteen Misses Ban- nerji were to be given away; I went to the spot out of curiosity. I saw the bridegroom older than a grandfather, seated on a painted wooden scat, and fourteen girls, varying in age from three to twenty-six years, seated about him in the form of a crescent. The ladies were veiled, and faces east down, as if they were cursing their parents for shambling them in this fashion." This was not done a century ago. It was done in the latter half of this year of grace, 1890.
Instance after instance could be given, but these facts, a few of many occurring within the last few months of ] 890, will surely prove that the statements have not been exaggerated. Then another item attracts our attention: "The number of persons who died by violence or accident in the Bengal Province alone this past year was between thirty and forty thousand; more than ten per cent of these deaths were from suicide, and the greater number of suicides were among women. " Poor women, with life so intolerable it cannot be borne ! .
For several years past the London Times has most ably discussed these evils in its columns. At one time a series of articles appeared gi.ving most startling facts in regard to existing customs, and demanding a reform in the interests of humanity, and when it became known that these articles were written by a Hindu woman, who knew from bitter experience whereof she wrote, a most profound 8ensation was created.
In a recent issue of the paper a very able editorial appeared, headed, " The Fundamental Problem," in which it explains the origin of the social condition of caste women in India, and deals with the general subject of legisla- tion. This is followed by a letter from a Mr. Malabari of Bombay, an Indian reformer and a Parsee, who has for many years been indefatigable in his efforts in India to stir up the natives to' the physical, social, and moral evils of these customs. He has been recently in England, nsing vig- orously both pen and voice in the hope of arousing public opinion, where legislation onght to begin. He sayR: "The system of infant marriages in India has spread under the regis of British-made laws." He has writ- ten a pamphlet entitled, "An Appeal from the Daughters of India." He urges English women to use their influence, and the Government its authority, to help banish these terrible evils.
Rukhmabai, the young and accomplished Hindu lady, whose sentence of six months' imprisonment for refu'sing to marry the husband to whom she had been betrothed in infancy, awakened such sympathy a few years ago, comes out in a very excellent article on the subject ia the September num- ber of the New Review.
And now Punch takes up the subject, having for its text the following extracts from the T!mes editorial : " It is our national boast that odious and cruel institutions cannot long breathe the atmosphere in which the Queen rules. But in India we have long connived at cruelties-cruelties none the less odious because practised in the name of religion, and upon victims that mutely acquiesce in their fate-which need only to be understood to excite profound repugnance and compassion. The time has arrived for the rulers of India to ask them- selves whether they can any longer throw the shield of British law over the tortures perpetrated upon the Hindu child-wife and the Hindu child-widow."
Again: " Before the' silent millions' who make up the rank and file of Hindus, discard the cruelties of their marriage system, their opinions, preju- dices, and habit of thought must change. Nothing is more certain than that they will change slowly j but we hold to the belief that judicious leg- islation will hasten the process more powerfully than anything else."
A full-page cartoon is given to the subject under a legend, " The Shield and the Shadow": "At the feet and clasping the skirts of the armed Island Queen-the Shield, kneels in agony the child-wife or child-widow, behind whom, closely pursuing, is a dark menacing shadow, ' Caste,' " and in a dozen or more ringing stanzas Punch states some very plain truths, and closes with these lines: – " Poor child ! the dark shadow that closely pursues her Means menacing Terror, she sues for a shield, And how shall the strong lEgis-bearer refuse her? '.rhe bondage of caste to calm justice must yield.
" We dare not be deaf to the voice of the pleader For freedom and purity, nature and right, Let Wisdom, high-throned as controller and leader, Meet cruelty's steel with the shield of calm might!"
WOMAN'S WORK
Docs anything practical come out of this agitation? Yes, but it comes ·slowly. In England !J, very influential' committee has been formed including the names of three ex-viceroys of India, as well as several ex-governors and lieutenant-governors, who are familiar with the facts, and such a committee will have influence.
Then the Christian women of England are being stirred as never before, and as a result, a society has been formed called" The Indian Widows' Union." It is an organization of the Christian women of England for the purposeof improving the condition of Hindu and Mohammedan widows in India. The members are" widows only," but any Christian woman may become an " associate member." They pledge themselves to prayer that God will break the yoke and set the captive free. They raise money to be expended in training widows to useful industries, and they gather and diffuse information with regard to the condition of the widows. At the head of this institution is the Dowager Lady Dynevor, and a depot for the work done by the widows has beep. established at West Kensington.
The agitation in India by the native press, and by liberal and advanced natives on the platform, and this agitation in England should, and surely must lead the Government soon to act j but the evil lies too deep for the Government to remove. Nothing but the teachings of the Gospel of Christ will reach the root of the evil, or cure the disease.
WOMAN'S WORK.
The Woman's Board of Missions of Boston (Congregational) held its twenty-third annual meeting in Hartford, January 13th-15th.
Over two hundred delegates represented its constituency in New England, New York, and Pennsylvania.
At the delegates' special meeting on Tuesday, the subject of first importance was the pressing, imperative need of money. This was ably emphasized in a paper on "Aggressive Work" at home, presented by Miss A. B. Child, Home Secretary.
It marshalled such an array of startling facts that it ought to take every woman's auxiliary by storm, and make "aggressive work" for the treasury of each a success, so that the advan,ce called for this year, $25,000, may be secured without fail. This leaflet, "Aggressive Work," is already in print for circulation.
This Board is invited to meet in Brooklyn, N. Y., III 1892.
One result of General Booth's scheme will be found, we hope, in renewed attention to the rescue work done by the clergy. Looking into an appeal sent out by the Rev. J. H. Scott, rector of Spital fields, we find that in this one parish "during the past year 230 cases [women and girls] have been dealt with, llO of whom were below the age of twenty years j 104 hav~ been sent to rescue homes, 13 returned to their parents, 21 sent to hospitals, 11 to service, and the remainder dealt with in a variety of ways." This is, of course, b,ut one side of the work carried on from year to year in such parishes fiS Spitalfields and WhitechapeI.
THE LIGHT IN DARKEST ENGLAND
THE LIGHT IN DARKEST ENGLAND.
BY FRANCIS EDWARD SMILEY, EVANGELIST.
The.!' Bitter Cry of Outcast London," ., In Darkest England," and other startling announcements of the social and spiritual destitution of our cousins across the sea have conveyed to those, unfamiliar with the numerous agencies struggling to deliver the" submerged tenth," the erroneous im- pression that the misery has resulted from the Laodicean apathy of the churches themselves. We hear so much about the lapsed classes and so little of the saved masses, that the pessimistic world regards England, and especially London, as synonymous with heathendom. So many clouds and so few sunbeams, so much darkness and so little light have furnished 'th~ material for the sketches of rhetorical writers, that one is not s~rprised to hear the question seriously asked, Has the Kingdom of Light in Chris· tian England been overshadowed and blotted out by the Kingdom of Dark~ ness ~ While it is our duty to penetrate the darkn~ss, we can do so more safely and speedily even with tapers to encourage us. Let us hold up a few lights, then, that light even "darkest England" for the encouragement of those at home and abroad who seek to penetrate the darkness and bring the perishing out from the regions of the shadow of death into the light and liberty of a Christian life.
In the city of London, where are to be fomid the darkest spots in darkest England, the herculean efforts of the churches to rescue the perishing are as astounding as the gigantic evils to be grappled with. There are literally hundreds of organizations employing thousands of missionaries, colporteurs, Bible women, nurses, Scripture readers, deaconesses, and teachers, who are striving night and day, on the streets and in the tenements, to raise from the mire the souls and bodies of the "submerged tenth." In no city in the world is there exhibited a more aggressive Christianity, or are more evangelistic agencies effectively organized, or more money spent for philanthropic purposes, than in so-called " heathen London."
If the malignant forces that seek to destroy the moral life of the world's metropolis are legion, so also are the benign influences that oppose with irrepressible energy every evil tendency that manifests itself. If the devil is active, so also is the church or the true diRciples in it.
Among the numerous agencies that hasten to answer the" bitter cry" is the London City Mission. "Lux in tenebris" should be its motto. This single society sends out daily five hundred agents, who occupy as many districts in the poorest neighborhoods of the city. Three hundred halls have been provided in these parishes, wherein the missionary gathers his motley congregation for religious services. The missionary is practically the pastor of the outcasts. He lives among them, is their counsellor and friend. The London Female Preventive and Reform Institute, with its mission- aries, matrons, and seven homes adapted for the classification of all ages and conditions of unfortunates, may be taken as an example of the twenty- five societies engaged in similar work. The girls are induced to forsake the streets for a comfortable home, where Christian influences, motherly sympathy, food, shelter, and employment are furnished as stepping-stones to a virtuous life.
The St. Giles' Christian Mission for men and the Elizabeth Fry Refuge for women are prominent among the numerous agencies laboring among discharged prisoners. Their agents are at the prison gates every morning to invite the discharged men and women to partake of a warm breakfast, and to offer them a friendly shelter and secure for them situations, away from the evil influence of former companions.
Such institutions as the MiJdmay Mission and the Bible and Domestic Mission send out daily hundreds of deaconnesses, nurses and Bible women, who, with food and medicines for soul and body, labor among the inmates of hospitals and asylums, among the toilers in factories and dwellers in the tenements. They visit among the poorest of the poor, nursing the sick, relieving distress, teaching the helpless mothers by simple economic and , sanitary rules the valuable lessons of health and thrift, and proclaiming by precept and example the joyful messages of Christ.
It is idle to attempt in this article even the enumeration of the numerous enterprises sustained by the Christian people for the evangelization of this great metropolis. There are at least one thousand agencies, recorded in the Oharities' R~gi8ter and .Digest, at work relieving distress, both physical and spiritual.
There are two thousand places of worship with all the evangelistic agen- cies for aggressive work. There are, moreover, a number of churches ex- clusively for foreigners.
In addition to their usual services, many of thc London churches carry on mission enterprises among the poor. They send out evangelistic bands to conduct meetings in the open air and call the attention of the thoughtless pedestrian to eternal things. They support colporteurs, Scripture readers, and missionaries, who devote their entire time, visiting among the people of the parish.
To reach those who will not attend the churches, special religious ser- vices are held in concert halls, theatres, and other popular resorts through- out the city, where attractive music, .spirited singing, and brief Gospel addresses interest, instruct, and influence many to a better life. There are special agencies that look after the spiritual welfare of the soldiers j others that care for the sailors. The policemen, firemen, and post-office em- ployes have their special services. There are missionaries that visit the cab-stands, market-places, and railroad stations. There are missions to the Jews, Catholics, and foreigners, w.hile the thousands of toilers along the riV<lr are not neglected. The ~riminal is met as he ('ornes from the prison gate in the early morning j the prostitute is accosted as she plies her trade in the streets at midnight, and urged to forsake her life of sin j and the homeless urchin is aroused from his hard couch, with literally a stone for his pillow, on the bridges and in the parks, and provided with comfortable bed and board, and brought under the influences of a Christian home.
The messsge of salvation is proclaimed through tens of thousands of Bibles, tons of tracts, and numerous volumes of Christian literature, which are scattered broadcast through the agencies of the religious publication societies.
Nor does this charity remain at home. Evangelists are sent out to neigh- boring towns and cities; mission boats cruise about the coasts, visiting the coastguards and lightships in their isolation j hospital ships are dispatched to the fishing fleets in the North Sea, to administer both temporal and spiritual nourishment to the toilers of the deep. Nor does this expensive service diminish the magnificent sum annually contributed to send the Gospel to heathen lands.
In addition to these united efforts there are many individuals engaged in evangelistic work. England's Christian queen becomes an evangelist to the families of the poor crofters in their Highland cabins, and other mem- -bers of the royal family count it a privilege to visit the poor and dis- tressed in hospitals and asylums. Members of the nobility lay aside the cares of State to preach the Gospel to the outcasts. The Christian banker, merchant, and editor supplements his daily labor by mission work after business hours. He erects a building or rents a hall wherein to gather the lost sheep. while he himself. often becomes the pastor of the flock. Sons and daughters of the aristocracy, students of the universities, repre- sentatives of learned professions, have given up their homes to live among the people, and have consecrated their time, talents, and means for thtl, " help of the Lord against the mighty."
Back of all this personal and combined effort for extending the king- dom of Christ, are the sympathy and encouragement of the English Govern- ment, whose sovereign bears the title, "Defender of the Faith." Every- whtlre one sees amid the surrounding wickedness traces of the nation's trust in Almighty God, and professions of Christianity. It is inscribed upon her chief commercial establishment in the humble declaration, "The earth is the Lord's and th~ fulness thereof." Upon her public buildings, her monuments and fountains scriptural quotations are carved in stone.
These evangelistic agencies, stationed like a mighty army throughout the metropolis-contesting every foot of territory against the encroachments of the kingdom of darkness, and winning glorious conquests for the King- dom of Light-have weakened the power of the destroyer and defended London from his complete mastery.
. There have been marked improvements during the last thirty years in the moral and social condition of the people. London is wicked, but Lon- don is growing better. Official statistics testify to a healthier atmosphere, and the Christian visitors notice It decided improvement. The prisons have fewer occupants, the poorhouses fewer boarders, and the public houses fewer customer!!, than three decades ago. The wage-workers live better and dress more neatly. They have discarded corduroy for tweeds, and fustian for more substantial cloth. The wife and mother keeps herself and children more tidy, and her home more inviting. A few pictures or chromos, in rough frame8 or no frames at all, adorn the walls; a flower-pot or box, witb a bright geranium or an aspiring fern, decorates the windows. The people show more respect for the clergy, and welcome the Christian visitor to their humble homes. The minister is invited to the workingmen's crubs, and his address is cordially received.. The deepening interest in spiritual things is manifest in the increased attendance at the churches and other places where religious services are held.
Through open-air preaching, colportage work, and mission services, the people have been brought more into contact with the Gospel. and through the visits and instruction of devoted missionaries, the poor fI~cognize the church as their friend.
We do not mean to imply that this improvement is noticeable uniformly among all the lower classes. It is noted principally among the working people, who a few decades ago were very indifferent to the claims of religion. • Such is the testimony of many of the clergymen laboring in the East End.
All the Christian world is anxiously watching the contest that is being waged in London between sin and righteousness, between the followers of Christ and the followers of Belial. This anxiety arises from the intimate relationship existing between this noble city and the cities of other lands.
The throb of London life is felt throughout the world. If her moral pulse is weak, the effect is visible on people that live afar. Moreover, every city must witness the same struggle within its walls as is now being waged in the British metropolis. It is only a question of time when the fair cities of our own land will house a population as !arge as London. Places that are designated upon our maps to-day as villages will, in a few years, be metamorphosed into citics with teeming populations. The Rame enemies mllst be faced ; the same evils must be resisted that threaten our most sacred institutions. The same social problems will arise. The" bitter cry" will be heard. A" way out" of the darkness will have to be devised. Tbose of us who are laboring in the cities are already in the midst of these burning questions.
We will do well, therefore to turn to the mother country, which has given us so much instruction in art, science, literature, and law, and learn from its Christian activity the methods adopted and the success attained in evangelistic work among the millions dwelling in "the greatest city of ancient or modern times." vye will thereby be better able to grapple with these same evils before they reach the same threatening proportions, and thereby stay the destructive onslaught of the enemy by weakening and scattering his gathering forces. And while we face the" dark forest," let us generously acknowledge the work of the pioneers, who have blazed the trees for our guidance in leading its helpless inhabitants out from their bondage into the light of the glorious liberty of Christ.
Harriett Warner Ellis, No. 64 Mildmay Park, London, North, writlll, with regard to women's work for women: "As one of the oldest survivors of the littld company called together in 1834 by the saintly Abeel, Baptist Noel, and others, and having continued to be a member of that first committee up to the present day, you will, I feel sure, pardon my intrusion. When the first twenty ladies were selected from members of all Christian denominations holding the great vital truths of Christianity, it was suggested by Dr. Abeel, or one of his eo-workers, that four young ladies, who were themselves Christians, should be added to the number, to learn about the work, and so be trained to take the place of others when removed by death or other causes. I was the youngest of those so chosen, not being nineteen. My dear father, John Sherman Elliott, was an active member of the Britil:!h and Foreign Bible Society and other similar work, and missionaries of all names were frequent visitors at our house. The first ladies sent out found, as a missionary's wife wrote, ' our efforts as yet are all among the very dregs; in time all may get access to the higher or more respectable native females.' Miss Wakefield was the first lady sent out to India by the new society. Miss Thornton went, in response to an earnest request from Mr. and Mrs. Medhurst, to Batavia.
" On the 29th of March, 1836, Miss Wakefield wrote: 'All attempts to get at femaleI'! of the higher classes appear to be utterly useless.' In that year, Lady Bryant, who had just returned from India, and who joined the committee, wrote: 'By cautious and persevering efforts it may be done,' and in June, 1837, four native gentlemen in Calcutta gave Miss Wakefield permission quietly to visit their wives to teach them Bengali, from Christian school books, and needlework. But nothing was to be said on the subject in public, and the word Zenana was not to be used, as it might stop the work altogether. In March, 1838, Miss Holliday, afterward Mrs. Leider, obtained the same permission from Mahomet Ali in Cairo.
"Prior to this a ladies' association had been formed in Calcutta to maintain the Central School, established by Mrs. Wilcox, and it had a branch in London. That branch had become extinct before the Female Education Society was formed. While rejoicing that now there are twenty-two ladies' societies, we ask for help, not only as being the first in the field, but because it comprises in its sphere China, Japan, Persia, the Straits, the Levant, and West and South Africa. We have no expense of offices, but still meet at each 'other's houses."
THE CREATION ACCORDING TO KRASI TRADITIONS
THE CREATION ACCORDING TO KHASI TRADITIONS.
BY REV. WILLIAM WILLIAMS, ASSAM, INDIA.
First of all God created the heavens, the earth, the sun, the moon and the stars. He created also the beasts of the field.
Heaven and earth were connected by a very high mountain, which is called" Heaven's Navel."
The beasts of the field, at the beginning, could talk like men, and the tiger was their king. They had a market also of their own, which is called the Lurilura-market. As far as I can gather, the word Lurilura carries the idea of "confusion" or " hurriedness."
After that God made man out of red earth, and He put him out in the sun that he might become hard.
The tiger saw this" son of humanity" and said to himself, "This one will be the king j" and being filled with the spirit of rivalry, he asked his subjects, the beasts of the field, "Who among you will go and tread under foot that son of humanity ~" No one responded. After that a creature which goes under the name of "Horse-divine" came forward and offered his services, saying, " I will go and tread him under foot." He went and bruised in pieces the son of humanity.
This" Horse-divine" was a red creature, and the descriptions of him remind me of the pictnres I have seen of the " Welsh red-dragon."
Early the following morning God came to see the" lion of humanity," but to his great sorrow he found out that he had been destroyed.
Now God called together all the beasts of the field and asked them who did it,but no one answered a word-there was a great silence !
At last the dog came forward and said that it had been done by the " Horse-divine."
God made man the second time in the same way as before, and commanded the dog to watcJ:!. him lest he should be trodden under foot and destroyed again by the enemy. The dog obeyed and watched. The "Horse·divine" made his appearance again, but the dog barked at him and threatened him, and being afraid of the dog, he went away.
After that God breathed spirit or soul into that " model of man," and it became a living creature and it spoke.
God said to man, " Come to me to-morrow morning." When the morning came, the tiger got to God's presence before man, and God gave him twelve bodily powers j and the tiger went his way. After that man came, and God gave him twelve inventive or mental powers.
Having received these mental powers, the son of humanity wended his way to the market of confusion, and to his great consternation he found the tiger waylaying him on the road that he might kill and eat him. Man went back and told God of it, and God presented him with a bow and arrow in addition to the twelve inventive powers.
Thus equipped, man went back and followed the path in the direction of the above market, and he found the tiger still waiting for him. He proceeded this time, and when the tiger came forward with an open mouth to eat him man drew the bow, and the arrow, to his great joy, went straight into the tiger's mouth, and he died.
God saw that man was very lonely in the world, being without a companion ; and He caused a deep sleep to fall upon man, and when he awoke he found the woman standing by him.
God married them; and two genii, one representing" an oath" and the other" a curse," acted as witnesses, who also received power from God to destroy, or, as they express it, " to eat them," if either would be guilty of bigamy.
The Khasis were most strict on this question and other questions relating to the sexes previous to the coming of the English to the Hills. And it was an attempt among the Sepoys to violate their rules and customs in this respect that was at the root of the massacre which took place on the Hills in the year 1829, when two European officers and several Sepoys were killed.
The next thing in the tradition is the existence of sixteen families in the world; but a separation took place; nine houses or families ascended into heaven by that" H!)aven's Navel" referred to at the beginning, and seven families remained on earth. And for a long time there was a continual intercourse between the two parties, and God used to talk with men.
The Khasis very often call themselves" the children of the seven families," or" the children of the seven nests."
Now God commanded His servants to prepare a throne on earth, that He might- hold a durbar to judge and to administer justice. When the throne was ready, and before God made His appearance, man ascended the throne and sat on it, saying to hims~lf, " I also will judge together with God." God came and saw man sitting on the throne prepared for Himself, and He went away in great indignation.
The communication between heaven and earth was ended. God and man were separated. The pride of man's heart drove away the divine favor and fellowship- aspiring To set himself in glory above his peers, He trusted to have equalled the most High."
God determined to punish man for his pride in aspiring to equal his Creator and Judge, and He caused a great tree, which is called" The Tree of Shame," to grow in the middle of the earth, the branches of which filled the heavens, and the world became quite .dark; it kept away the rays of the sun, the light of the moon and stars, and the dew fell incessantly night and day.
The children of men were in a very great trouble indeed. With such darkness and dampness life became almost unbearable.
A great durbar was held to consider their trying situation, and the best way to get out of it; They could see no better way than by trying to cut down the tree. They all agreed to this, and went in a body with their billhooks and axes and worked hard all day. When the evening came they returned to their homes to rest for the night. The following morning they all went again to their work and found, to their great astonishment, that there were no marks whatever of their work the previous day. The tiger, their great rival and enemy, went there in the night and licked the cut they had made, hence the filling up. This aggravated their situation.
When thus overwhelmed in their calamities, God showed mercy to them by sending a .little bird whioh is called in Khasi I Phreid, something like the wren in size, to teach them wisdom. The little bird asked them, " What will you give me if I teach you wisdom g" The children of men said, ' , We shall give yon grain and Indian corn." The terms were accepted, and the little bird 8aid, "When you go home in the evening do not take your billhooks and axes with you, but leave them at the foot of the tree with their edges pointing outwards, and when the tiger comes in the night to lick the cut he will cut his own tongue." Man believed the little bird, and acted according to its instructions. The plan proved snccessful, and the" Tree of Shame" was felled at last, to the great joy of humanity. The branches thereof fell into the land of the foreigners (the Bengalese and the Assamese), and this accounts for their lands being plains; the enormous trunk remained where it fell, and this accounts for the land of the Khasis being hills !
The tradition we see does not improve as it goes on. It begins well, and in several point~ it agrees with Divine Revelation- (1) The order of creation, man being the last and the best-the" roof and crown" of the whole fabric of the world. (2) Man made of ., red-earth." (3) And God breathed ~pirit or sonl into that model of man, and it became a living creature, and it spoke. (4) A deep sleep falling npon the first man, and the woman standing by him when he awoke. (5) The fall of man, cllUsed by the enemy and the pride of his own heart. (6) The" sixteen families" and the" seven families" (see Gen. 10 : 2, 6, 22).
NOAH I JAPHETH. SREY. HAM. ' 13. Cush, 1. Gomer, 8. EIam, 14. Mizraim 2. Magog, 9. Asshur, 15. Phut, 10. Arpbaxad 16. Canaan. 3. Madai, 4. Javan, 11. Lud, 5. Tubal, 6. Meshech 12. Aram, 7. Tiras, The Khasis also have a tradition of a nniversal flood, and their religions ceremonies are full of the atoning and the mediatorial elements.
Mr. J. B. Braddon, an officer of the Indian Government, wrote: "It would be well if those persons who speak and write 80 earnestly respectin/!: mission work should spend some time among the Khasees, and look without prejudice at the work that is going on there. I feel very certain that they would no longet think that the missionaries labored in vain."
LETTERS FROM EUROPE
LETTERS FROM EUROPE.-I.
MISSION WORK IN THE SCOTCH ATHENS.
BY DELAVAN L. PIERSON.
Scotland is generally known as a religious country. One can readily understand this after walking the streets of Edinburgh on a Sabbath morning, and seeing the numerous and magnificent church edifices lifting their lofty spires on all sides, and the populace thronging the thoroughfares in every direction on tll e way to their places of worshi? Not a street car is to be seen on the Lord's day; and, as a natura] consequence, the vast majority of the people walk, if they go to church at all. Yet the congregations seem to gain rather than lose from this cause, for it may be doubted whether in any city in or out of Britain the average audiences exceed those of this modern Athens.
It would be strange, however, if, as in other cases, there should not be found a darker side to the religions life of the city. One needs only to take a stroll through the Lowgate or Canongate on a Saturday night to be convinced of the truth of that fact. It seems as though the higher the spiritual life of one factor of the citizens, the lower would be the degr~da tion of the other. But however that may be, there is at least plenty of opportunity for earnest missionary effort to be expended in behalf of the lower classes of Edinburgh.
In the former residences of the nobles in the High Street and Canongate, some of the lowest classes now have their dwelling places. It seems oddly out of place to see fine panelled ceilings and carved oak woodwork in the homes of the paupers, and it is a peculiar fact that the mansion once occupied by the Duke of Queensbury is now used as a House of Refuge for the Destitute. There three hundred paupers and inebriates find their homes; forty destitute men and women nightly find shelter, and hundreds of the poor buy there daily their twopenny dinner of soup and bread for a penny. Great improvements are being made in the homes of the poor. Dark and dirty closes and narrow winding stairs are being replaced by light and airy courts lined with glazed brick and stairways of iron, so that it is next to impossible for the dirt to find a sticking place. In the lodging houses, too, there is noticeable a vast improvement. Instead of the close, dingy, crowded" metropolitan lodging houses," fit only to breed and foster poverty and vice, " model lodging houses" have been erected that are provided with all necessary sanitary arrangements. Here, at the small price of from four to sixpence per night, so much better accommodations may be had than most of the, poor men enjoy in their own homes, that many leave their wives and families to take advantage of them. A reading-room, with newspapers and Sunday services, is connected with them, and a kitchen with a huge range, where each man may eook his own food. In the washhouse, with its drying room, reminding one of the fiery furnace, a man may wash, rinse, and dry his whole wardrobe in the space of fifteen minutes. Everything is clean, comfortable, and well ventilated. No profanity or vulgarity is allowed, and fines or expulsion are the penalty for every offence. S~arate lodging houses are provided for the women, and each has accommodations for some three hundred and eighty.
But while all this is being done for the moral aud physical improvement of these men and women, their spiritual natures are not neglected. There are missions of every description scattered throughout the city, some of them peculiar to Edinburgh, and all apparently accomplishing a noble work.
The Territorial 'Mission was instituted by Thomas Chalmers, and has continued in a flourishing condition ever since his time. After the disruption he first held his meetings in an old tan loft in the West Port, and in the surrounding district carried out his ideal plan of city evangelization. The church which was afterward erected for him there, and where he preached for several years, is now used as a mission hall in connection with the Chalmers' Territorial Church. In this old church meetings of various sorts; carried on by the members of the church, are held nightly. These meetings include temperance, evangelistic, song, children's, and other services. But the principal emphasis is put upon the" from·house-to-house" visitation, which is carried out most systematically and regularly. Over this mission department of the church work is a missionary, and under the missionary some seventy or eighty workers, each ten having its own superintendent. Each worker visits from five to six families on e,very Sabbath afternoon, so that all of the four or five hundred families in the district are visited at least once a week. Spiritual effects are those sought, and each worker endeavors to become intimately acquainted with the family history and cares of those with whom he comes in contact. Tracts of educational, temperance, and religious character are distributed regularly, and differ in character from Sunday to Sunday. The temporal wants of those who prove worthy are also looked after to some extent. The missionary and workers have lodging house and bakeshop tickets, marked with symbols to denote their worth, so that they cannot be exchanged for drink; these they distribute to the needy, and clothes and food and other assistance are often given when the nature of the case seems to warrant it. Many ladies of the church are interested in the work of reclaiming the fallen women, many of whom are from high familics of the city and neighborhood, and are weary of their wretched life and long for better, nobler things. If Christ is the one whom they seek, some home is usually speedily found for them, and their old life buried as much as possible in oblivion. If, on the other hand, respectability only is their aim, they must agree to spend eighteen months in a reformatory or "home," where they are clothed and fed 2nd are obliged to do a little work. After this a situation is usually obtained for· them, and they may begin life practically anew, apart from all their old surroundings and companions. Open-air services play an important part in the evangelisti,c wo!.k of the church, and every Sabbath f evening they are held in various parts of the city, by which means people are gathered and are led singing down the street to the door of the church, where an evangelistic service is held at eight o'clock. The singers remain without for a time, to endeavor to attract more wanderers, fer music seems to have especial powers over the Scotch nature, and then all are invited in, and the pure Gospel is preacbed to them there.
There are many difficulties and disappointments connected with the work, but one soul saved would put ten thousand misgivings and fears to flight. The scene of the work was, in the early part of the century, the scene of the ghastly tragedy of the" Burke and Hare murders," wheril unsuspecting strangers were decoyed into a so-called lodging house only to come out corpses, sold to the medical students. The body of Burke himself was afterward delivered as that of a criminal to undergo the same treatment that his victims had undergone before him. The most difficult people to) reach are those who have lived in t,hese low circumstances from their childhood. As a rule, they marry early and live a drunken, brawling life. It is those who have falien in some degree at least who appear most susceptible to earnest entreaty. Many are the dangers and inconveniences which the workers are obliged to undergo in carrying on their work, often being called upon to stand between the knives of knavish brawlers or remain up until daylight with those whom they are seeking to reclaim.
Newton's great law of motion seems to apply as truly to religion as to matter, and for every energetic evangelistic action there appears to be an equal reaction in the religious lives of the workers. Never was a church more thriving than the Territorial Church of the West Port. It is noticeable even in the very walk of the members up the church aisle j it is energetic, and not as if the congregation only came to the church to attend a funeral service.
Another excellent example of the Edinburgh mission work is that of the " close" missions. The Carrubber's Close Mission is the most interesting and influential. It was founded in 1858, and for over twenty years carried on its work in small, insufficient, and dingy quarters at the foot of one of the old closes in the High Street. Finally, through the energetic efforts of Mr. D. L. Moody, a fine seventy-five thousand dollar building was erected for their use, with all necessary class-rooms and an audience room with a seating capacity of about twelve hundred. Here meetings are held nightly in connection with the various departments of the work. There are over six hundred workers identified with this mission who, under superintendents, work in connection with one or more of the thirty-two sections. These sections carryon work very varied in character in co-operation with open· air meetings, temperance and evangelistic, together with societies foJ." women, girls, young men and boys, and special work among the J."ailroad men, coalmen, and policemen. During the last year there were 4500 meetings in connection with the Carrubber's Close, including prayer-meetings, open-air services, temperance meetings, Bible classes, and meetings for the young in country and city. There are ten open-air meetings in various parts of the city every Sabbath. A prominent feature of the work is the temperance movement, in conjunction with which a monthly periodical is published, the Gospel Temperance Appeal. Every Saturday evening a temperance meeting is held, at which everything is done to provide an attractive programme of temperance addresses and sacred music. Although m.'lny of the meetings are considerably disturbed by those under the influence of liquor, still often these very men are led to Christ and become earnest and enthusiastic workers. Pledges are to be had at the close of the meeting for those to sign who will, and always a number remain to take the pledge or, at least, be spoken to on the subject. The names of those who take the pledge are written down with the address, and thus they are put into communication with the workers, several of. whom follow up each one and endeavor to help them on in their new stand for the right.
The Girls' Sewing and Bible Class is also very helpful for reclaiming those who have fallen, and for saving many another from a downward course. At a meeting recently of the girls who had been reclaimed through the efforts of the lady in charge of this department, there were present over one hundred and sixty, all in good situations, and leading respectable lives. Need it be said that they have a great affection for their benefactress, and most of them for Christ as well ~ Many tracts are distributed throughout the streets also in connection with the mission work, and have the naHle of the mission upon them· as a guide to those seeking further light.
As an instance of how much influence thc mission exerts for good in the city, we need only cite a letter from the governor of the Edinburgh prison to the Superintendent of the Gospel Temperance Section. It reads : 30 Waterloo Place, Dec. 8, 1890.
DEAR MR. BARCLAY: Will you kindly do me the favor to express to the Directors of Carrubber's Close Mission my thanks for the interest manifested by themselves and their workers in the reformation of the criminal classes. I think you are aware that for many years I have given you the credit of keeping down the daily average number of criminals by about one hundred, and I do trust that you will not diminsh your exertions, as this is 8 very important time for action.
****** ** * Unfortunately, I have not been able to attend so many of your meetings as I could have wished, but when I have been present it has often been a matter of wonder to me, on seeing so many familiar faces, to imagine where they might have been and what trouble they might have got into had it not been for such meetings j although I am aware many of your people have dond much in the way of individual help. With many thanks, Yours very truly, J. E. CHRISTIE.
The Edinburgh City Mission, like those of like character in other cities, takes a large part in the evangelistic work of the city. Its efforts are confined to the poor of no one portion or district, and, unlike other forms of missionary societies here found, employs a number of salaried men to devote their whole time to the visitation and care of the lower classes. For this purpose the city is divided into nine sections of about four hundred families each, and over each section is a missionary who holds services in the mission hall of the district, and whose business it is to visit as often as possible the families in his section, and to care for the general spiritual welfare. There are besides five special departments of the·work for specified classes, having missionaries for each department; these include the cabmen, policemen, lodging houses, prisons, inebriates, and public houses and fallen women. In the division of the city care has been taken not to interfere with any well-organized work of a church or other mission, but there are many churches which work in connection with the city mis- sionaries, thus supplying a large body of workers to assist them in their vis- itation.
The City Mission is entirely undenominational, but is thoroughly evangelical, and in consequence its workers do not as frequently meet with a cold reception at the hands of the Roman Catholic portion of the city. The methods used are very similar to those of the other societies, first and foremost being that of personal contact with the men and women on the streets and in their homes, thus seeking to raise them morally and spiritually, and in raising the individuals from the degradation into which they have fallen to raise the whole community. As a rule, the city missionary is the only pastor and adviser that they have; but the men are well chosen, and keep their hands to the plough faithfully, endeavoring, by becoming all things to all men, to try if by any means they may save some. The results are tangible and encouraging, though the work is one fraught with trials and discouragements.
A fourth form of mission work, and one peculiar to Edinburgh, is that of the" Students' Settlements." These are conducted by the students of the university or theological colleges, and are found to be of the greatest benefit both to the students and to those among whom they labor. The Ponton Street Mission, in connection with the university, originated about four years ago, largely through the efforts of Professor Henry Drummond. Its object is .nominally secular, but much religious work is done by the students who are engaged in the work. A large hall has been erected in one of the poorest districts of the city, and here the students live and endeavor by personal contact, especially with the young men, to raise them intellectually, morally, and spiritually. Classes in wood-carving, drawing, history, and other departments are conducted during the week and, together with the reading·room, furnish an opportunity for the personal contact sought. Sabbath-school and Bible classes, with an occasional evangelistic address, and now and then a meeting for social intercourse, also form an important part of the scheme by which the work is carried on. About five or six students usually live in thE' mission and devote much time to the work, often at great inconvenience to themselves.
The other settlement is in connection with the Free Church College Missionary Society, and has only recently been organized. Its object is solely religious, and avowedly so; other benefits are expected to follow the spiritual uplifting of the community. The" settlers," six in num- – ber, comc into contact with the men, chiefly in the Young Men's Club, where they have an opportunity to converse with them as they at the same ·time endeavor to entertain them at games of dominoes, check- ers, and in other ways. The men's club forms' the chief feature of the work. There is a fee of one shilling a year to entitle one to membership, and the men make their own rules, elect their own officers, and have entire charge of it, subject to the approval of the" settlers. ,. Of their own free will they prohibit gambling and profanity, and are, as a rule, orderly and appreciative. The club is intended to take the place of the public house in the leisure hours of the men, and to afford an opportunity for the students to come into direct contact with the individuals whom they seek to benefit. Other departments of the work are the Sabbath-school,- chil- dren's church, Band of Hope, library, savings bank, Boy's Brigade, Bible classes, prayer and temperance meetings, and meetings for women, chiefly under the charge of ladies from St. Andrew's Church, which works in connection with the students.
The subscribers to each of the various departments of mission work form the society from which managcrs, directors, and the variolls officers are elected, and who guarantee the financial support of the mission.
There are many other, and private, missionary enterprises carried on by individuals and churches, besides many charitable societies for the relief of the poor and distressed. • Few cities of the size seem to be so thoroughly and energetically cared for as this home of Knox and Chalmers, and the results of the labor ex- pended may be seen as much in the spiritual life of the churches as in bet- tered condition of the poorer classes. But there is no l.ack of room for workers, and in spite of all that has been done or is being done, the con- dition of the poor in many districts seems as wretched as can well be im- agined. The workers, however, continue faithful, taking to themselves the consolation and promise given in the word.s. " Let us not be weary in well doing, for in due season we shall reap if we faint not. "
. EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND, January 17, 1891.
Few things impress one more in all Scotland than the old gate in Dundee, where the martyr, George Wishart, preached to the plaguestricken people gathered outside the gate, while the inhabitants of the city were gathered just inside. What a type of the true missionary, standing between a living church and a dying world, and preadhing the gospel of spiritual healing!
THE TELUGU MISSION
THE TELUGU MISSION.
BY C. B. WARD.
This Telugu Mission was born in a prayer-meeting, February 22d, 1879, in Goolburga, Ii railway station about three hundred miles from Bombay, in the dominion of H. H., the Nizam. Two persons were present, a padri and an engineer: the padri, a member of South India Conference, pastor at Ballory, and thc engineer a district officer in the Public Works Depart- ment of the Nizam's Government.
This event took place at the close of the great famine of 1876-71'1, in which five millions perished.
The Bombay Guardian, editor, George Bowen, missionary, first announced the" new arrival" in its last issue of February, 1879, and commended the" little one" to the confidence of the good. March 12th, 1879, we took over from a famine poorhouse, kept up a yenr on private charity, five boys and girls. Here began the actual work.
In the order of Providence, Rev. T. S. Burnell, over thirty years an A. B. C. F. M. missionary at Melun, Madura district, South India, had the honor of taking the firiit financial share in the new concern. His] 0 rnpees were received by us March 20th, almost one month from the prayer-meeting. March 29th on this Rs. 10 we took 14 more waifs from an overcrowded famine camp at Adoni. These, with 2 more taken at Goolburga by Mr. Davis, gave us 21 in all-Telugu; Canerese, and Mohammedan, both sexes.
. The Bombay Guardian of April 5th published progress, and declared rising faith and intensifying purposes.
April 1st the padri got married, and received for the orphan work Rs. 50 from an unknown friend, who continued to do the same thing monthly for a long time. We have since learned he was the great-hearted Henry Conder, Esq., General Traffic Manager of the Great Indian Peninsular Railway.
And so the work went on. At a later date we took up ;30 new ones, at a later, 50, and a later, 13, and the la"t large accession, September 30th, 52 boys and girls from Adoni. A few more scattering ones came in, till about October 1st we found we had actually collected over 180 orphans at Mr. Davis's place in Goolburga. Death did so quick work, however, that we never reached above 122 on hand at anyone time.
The Bombay Guardian, the India Methodist Watchman published our testimony and helped us much.
Thus began the work. God's Word supplied the base for the faith the Holy Spirit inspired in our hearts. We boldly avowed our purpose to trust God and never solicit, except in prayer. The Holy Ghost was chancellor of the exchequer, and in the first six months He called in from whom He would about Rs. 2000.. And in this time the bulk of the care of all these little ones feU upon Mr. Davis. He wrought not by proxy. His own hands fed, dressed, washed, assisted, and he spent hours a day trying to impress these precious souls for God; and surely we shall meet some of those little ones who passed away with Jesus' name upon their lips and His truth in their newly opened hearts.
I saw now the providence of God in the last ten years of my life-from the plough to four years of student life, one and a half years of work in Chicago among the street Arabs of Halsted Street, till William Taylor (now Bishop) found me in December, 1875, and sent me to India.
God's Holy Word, Finney's" Autobiography," and ~Hiller's " Life of Trust" were the pabulum our souls thrived on in those days. How won- derfully the great God led us! Starting as we did without bank or missionary treasury, from the very beginning we b'"gan to cast about us for a productive footing somewhere. We dreamed and prayed over factories, farms, industries, etc. But the Lord had us in hand, and first gave "r the orphans some public road-making on which they realized something like Rs. 100 in a short time. e had no idea of greasing our wheelsforever with charity, but rather designed to repay to the Lord the charity money lent us, and send workers to the " regions beyond" and support them there.
We cannot follow in detail the wonderful history of these ten eventful years. But what have we now ~ 1. C. B. and E. M. Ward and their children, Wesley Asbury, William Taylor, George Fletcher, Susanna Ruth, and Nellie Marion, in all 7 souls.
2. Eurasian orphans, boys, 8, and girls, 5. 3. Native families, 19, blessed with 24 living little ones. Unmarried boys, 4 j girls, 2. One widow with her son-in all, 67 souls. Grand total of 90 -adults 50 and children 40. So we cannot, as of old, say" orphan children," for we are become a colony of families. 4. Of the whole number, 40 are full members of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and another dozen we rank probationers. In most of these honesty, diligence, observance of the Lord'tI day, prayer, testimony, and general upright character give us much ground for believing a work of grace is wrought. We have no tobacco, or liquor, or jewelry Christians in our" little church in the wilderness." 5. When we gathered up famine waifs we found them from five to twelve years of age. All our native people except one, my assistant, Nunsoya Naidu, have been a full ten years with us. Our Eurasian orphans have not been with us so long, but most of them during eight years. 6. For years stern necessity has made us two houses: one in Secunderabad, where Mrs. Ward, our children, and the unmarried girls stay with one or two pairs of the married ones as servants j and one in the district, wherever I may have work for all the field force of our colony, migrating as work leads us on railway construction and mining. The bulk of the family have been in camp with me for about four years now. We find much to encourage us in the Christian character of those we have spent ten years with, for Jesus' sake. They are our" seals." '1. The entire work which we have had upon our hands has cost about Rs. 10,000 per year (ovcr $3000). This includes not only our own mission work, but doing something to help other work. We have spent outside of our own work in this time several thousand rupees-contributions to other missions and support of other missionaries, distribution of religious literature, the publication of tracts, and our own India Watchman, etc.
Of this Rs. 100,000 passing through our hands in ten years more than half are our own earnings. Formerly contributions exceeded, but for four years our earnings have by far exceeded the gifts made to us. In the whole ten years our receipts from places outside of India fall below R8. 5000. Our contrihutions have always come unsolicited, except in prayer. Weare not concerned about money, and never beg. But we do believe and plead God's promises, as they are neither lies nor out of date.
8. Weare not in debt. In an honest and rather daring endeavor to realize the capital needed for a Chr~stian colony, on a large railway contract we lost Rs. 20,000. But God enabled us to make it up and pay the loan with liberal interest.
9. God started us in orphan work in 1879, and kept us closely to it and learning the language up to 1883. In these years God cheered us with the genuine conversion of half a hundred of our orphans.
Then came three years (1883-86) of very steady and vigorous evangelistic work, in which we were much blessed, but the only abidirtg, visible fmit was the conversion of two natives, who are both preachers now.
Insurmountable difficulties in the way of acquiring any land under the Mohammedan Government made dropping into the present" two house" arrangement a necessity-No. 1 at Secunderabad, No. 2 at Beersheba or Dothan, as good grazing leads us. Wonders hath God wrought for us during these years. We can only bless and praise Him.
10. We hope to publish soon a report for the ten years, in which we shall try to rccord something of the goodness of our prayer-hearing God.
11. In the years of our history God has been good, but it has been hard to understand all His ways. Three of his handmaidens, than whom we expect no more spiritual and successful workers in India-Cecilia O'Leary Moore, Hapley Freer, and Hester Ann Hillis-God took from us, each one suddenly. They did work that lasts, and now enjoy reward everlasting. One lady after leaving us became the wife of a Baptist missionary in Bengal. One from iII health was compelled to return to America. Our brethren, Ernsberger and Blewitt are now both honored members of India Methodist Conferences. The latter took away from us Ruth Freer, a good worker with us, a good wife with him. One young man apostatized fearfully. One found the work uncongenial. Miss Bell went to study inedicine in Hyderabad Medical College. One native preacher and wife, lent to us, stayed but a little time. One of our converts left us, and is now promoted to the post of head native preacher in Conference work.
12. Eight little ones hath God taken. Our firstborn first; after him seven other children in our native families. Six of our native orphans have died, ~ giving us their testimony to Jesus' saving power. They surely await us. Three Eurasian orphan boys have died, of whom we have hope, one a poor, ,suffering epileptic all his life. Several have fallen back into the world. Some Eurasian orphans, after two or three years with us, were taken by friends or relatives. A few have died, leaving us no certain word. Our total death-roll in ten years reaches a little over 20.
13. But the best of all is, God has at last answered our earnest prayer in giving us a large piece of land (over' 2000 acres) on an annual rental of Rs. 800. This is what we have besought of Him for years. Our utter extremity has become God's gracious opportunity. And now what! Our migrations may cease, our two homes become one, and our colony be the base of supply for dozens of workers. We may again get into shape for vigorous evangelizing. Our 20 families of native Christians have of their own efforts acquired cattle and caris, and cash to the amount of about Ra. 2000. They are not paupers, and are ready to go to work at once in our village. The rental we can as easily pay as the rent of Secunderabad house. And we believe God has arrangements on foot for the small capital required for the immediate restoration of the entire village, thereby making it worth at an early day several thousand rupees per annum.
We have no complaints, but we can clearly see it has taken ten years to f;ubdue the missionary aristocracy in us, and teach us truly humble, economic, and New Testament lines of life and labor. We have also learned that physical labor is conducive to health in the tropics by these years in India, and are just ready for many more, if it please God.
Trusting God, we have begun work upon our village, and with a home and a promise that" we shall be fed j" with a fine field of souls about us, with our years of experience among the people, and naturalized in India, we look forth after this ten years' journey-not forty, as the Israelites hadto a grand future in this goodly land God has glven us.
Bishop Thoburn recently recognized us fully as a part of the great Methodist Church, and henceforth our members shall have a place in Methodist totals, as they have not had for a few years lately, though we have prided ourselves upon the fact we belonged there. Our only contention has been to be le;ft alone as non-subsidy workers. This is now granted us, and God is with us.
The hard work is not done. Years yet must be spent teaching native Christians confidence in their own ability, and teaching them how better to utilize and develop the resources of the country, making foreign aid unnecessary either for their support or such work as they should do for tIle salvation of the heathen. We have some fine specimens of natives who, under God, will make good business men and women for Him, and some who will make good Christian workers and preachers.
We believe God is with us j we need no other aid to live upon or learn by. God has given us, as capital, strong bodies, common sense, rich soil, aU tributary to our faith. Our prayer has been for a piece of land, that
A. B. C. F. M•
with this productive base we might maintain a whole force of Gospel workers in the surrounding country, whose lifework, and exchequer and methods of filling it, might all be open to the gaze and study of the surrounding heathen. God has schooled us for ten years to ·fit us for the work before us, and now given u!' the land, and here we are a happy family, a monument of God's care in the midst of a heathen land, subjects of His continued love-a little church of Jesus Christ of His own planting. To God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost be all the praise and glory, world wit-hou-t e-nd-I – – – – On January 20th last, a party of five sailed for Secunderabad, India, to join the self-supporting work of Rev. C. B. Ward. One of the party-' Rev. M. F. Smootz-who already spent several years iu this work. bas now married and gone back to the Deccan, India, for life. Rev. R. H. Madden, wife, and son, who accompanied him, have been doing successful mission work in New York City.
There sailed the same day for South America, Mr. T. W. La Fetra and an experienced teacher, Mrs. Anna Dodd. Mr. La Fetra has already spent seven years in mission work in Santiago as auxiliary and helper to his brother, Rev. I. H. La Fetra, in the large college in Santiago. He visited the United Stateil to purchase a complete outfit for printing-costing about $5000-a religious paper and books for educational work in South America.
A. B. C. F. M.
A despatch from Nagasaki, Japan, published recently in the daily press, stated that the United States steamer Alliance, in its visit to Ponape, found that the war between the natives and the Spaniards had been instigated by the American missionaries, who on that account were forced to retire from Ponape to Kusaie. "The story," says the Missionary Herald, "is so absurd as to be comical. The only Americans at the point of conflict on Ponape were two women, who at the time of the difficulty between the Spaniards and the natives sought to their utmost to preserve peace, but failed. And when the revolt occurred, these two women, aided by a native teacher, risked their lives to save from destruction two Spanish priests and some soldiers. And they succeeded in their efforts, only to be accused by the Spaniards of having incited the natives to their deeds of violence. "
The following item is found in the report of the Hiroshima circuit (Methodist), given by Rev. B. W. Waters in the Missionary Reporter: " Hiroshima has been well chosen as the centre for our work in that part of . Japan. But the city itself, a strong Buddhist centre, is not as open to Christianity as some of the smaller neighboring towns. Neither the city nor the country work ought to be neglected. But owing to school-work and passport regulations, it is difficult for one man to carryon both. We really need two additional men for Hiroshima and for the work that proper- ly can be connected with it. "
THE MISSIONARY'S SHOES
THE MISSIONARY'S SHOES.
BY A. J. GORDON, D. D., BOSTON, MASS.
The homely and the sublime were never more closely conjoined, we venture to say, than in the following from the history of Herrnhut : Zinzendorf sent one day for a Moravian brother and said to him : "Will you go to Greenland to.morrow as a missionary F' The man had had no previous intimation of his call, but after only a moment's hesitation he replied: "If the shoemaker can finish the boots which I have ordered of him by to-morrow, I will go."
Need we say that if such a spirit of prompt obedience were universal in the Church, there would be no highways unoccupied or byways untravel1ed in all the regions beyond now waiting for the Gospel. But we have not to tarry even for a day for our shoes to be done. What saith the Scripture, and how much it saith in a single comprehensive sentence ~ "Having '!lour feet shod with th,e preparation of the gospel of peace." The law said to Moses: " Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground." Grace says: " Put on thy shoes upon thy feet, for the place where thou standest is missionary ground. " "All roads lead to Rome," says the proverb j but since the day of Pentecost all roads lead from Jerusalem j "that remission of sins should be preached among alnations, beginning at Jerusalem." Therefore Christ's witnesses were sandalled at the outset for their journey j and of this we desire briefly to speak.
The Gospel is its own preparation. For our shoes are not the preparation for, but the preparation of, the Gospel. The tendency is inveterate and constantly recurring to introduce some forerunner of grace into the missionary field in order to make ready for its coming. Even those who firmly believe that" Christ is become the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believeth," have not infrequently thought that they must take their starting-point from Sinai, again employing the law as a school, master to lead men to Christ. The story of Henry Richards's experience on the Congo-which has made such a profound impression of late wherever recited-has its chief interest in this idea. Brutal and bloody savages, among whom the murder of innocents was a sacred rite indispensable for the solemnizing of the funeral of their chiefs, and man·slaying a medical prescription to be adopted as a matter of course on the order of the witch. doctors, what impression could the Gospel of the grace of God make upon such sonls if immediately applied ~ No wonder that the thunders and lightnings of Sinai should be invoked as a necessary prelude to the sweet strains of redeeming love. "Grace, of course," said an old Scotch preacher, "but did you ever know a woman to sew without a needle? So I say unto you, thrust in the needle of the law till the sinner is pricked to the heart and cries out, and then you may draw as long a thread of Gospel consolation as you choose." But these degraded sons of the C;ongo did not wince in the least under the needle of the law. "Thou shalt not kill," "Thou shalt not steal"-instead of" kicking against these pricks," or being in the least wounded thereby, they were absolutely insensible to them. As for being sinners, when this charge was made against them they blandly conceded that while the missionary and his countrymen might be such, they certainly were not.
But now, after the seven years' fruitless ministry, comes the great change. In translating the Gospel of Luke, and reading therefrom the story of the sufferings and death of Christ, and pressing home upon the people the message, " And all this for you," tears began to fall, exclama- tions of astonishment began to be heard, and then conversions began to occur, till within a few weeks more than a thousand were added to the Lord of such as should be saved. As this story has been repeated of late before churches and theological students, the missionary has rarely been allowed to stop at the expiration of an hour; cries of " Go on !" break- ing out at every attempt to pause. "So astonishing; so well-nigh incredible !" people say.
And yet it is but the repetition of an old stQry, though on a larger scale. What student of missionary history does not know of the work of Hans Egede in Greenland, with its long, weary years of moral teaching, ending with the farewell sermon, " I said I have labored in vain and spent my strength for naught g" And then the translation from the gospels of the story of the Saviour's passion, by John Beck, the Moravian missionary, and the astonished exclamation of the listening savage, Karjamack, " How was that ~ Tell me that again, for I would be saved ;" and through this Word the savage changed into a Christian and a faithful preacher of the Gospel to his countrymen? So it was when Mr. Nott opened the third chapter of John to the hit~erto stolid and unconcerned South Sea Islanders. When reading the golden text of redemption, " God so loved the world," a man rose and demanded, "Is that true ~ Can that be so? God love the world when the world does not love Him ~ God so loved the world as to give His Son to die! Can that be true f' And as the verse was read once more he burst into tears, and the long-delayed blessing began.
It is a lesson which we have constantly to relearn, that" the preaching of the cross is the power of God." Not that evangelical Christians are likely to doubt the efficacy of such preaching tor accomplishing the one thing of bringing peace to distressed and penitent souls; but that it can also effect the opposite result of bringing contrition to hardened and indifferent souls, it is difficult to credit. Yet this is one of the paradoxes of Christianity, that the cross, which is the highest exhibition of divine compassion, should also serve as the most powerful instrument for human conviction. It has proved true a thousand times over that by His wounds we are wounded, as well as that " by His stripes we are healed." As the same sunlight can warm and comfort when falling gently on our persons, or scorch and blister when focussed by a burning glass, so the same love of God revealed on Calvary- can be Ilsed by the Spirit to bring the most tender consolation or the most poignant contrition. 'l'herefore, the Gospel in first, and its fulness, to the most degraded heathen!
Then let us refer to the sandals of education which have so often been bound upon the feet of the Christian herald.
One may well wonder why the temptation has been so constant for the missionary to turn schoolmaster. "No greater than for the pastor to turn pedagogue," it may be truly replied. Yes, and here is the most serious defect of our present-day Christianity, that it is leaning on crutches when it ought to walk by faith, undertaking to accomplish by culture what God has ordained to be effected" by the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven. " Art, architecture, music and ritual, how prominent the place which these are coming to occupy in our modern churches! Ask their promoters why 1heyattach snch importance to them, and they reply, " For their educational influence. " But we make bold to say that their tendency has generally been to educate away from Christ rather than toward Him, prepossessing men with forms, sensible impressions, and so disinclining them to the things of the Spirit 1 We have more faith a thousand times over in the regenerating power of the simple Gospel than in the educating power of all these elaborate accessories of Christian worship.
But we are speaking of education in the strict sense of the wordgrammar, arithmetic, and·· the arts, as introductory to the Gospel. Has 8uch a dispensation of teaching ever proved really helpful in preparing the heathen ,mind to receive the Word of life ? No more probably than a gymnasium in the basement of an American church, with its curriculum of dumb-bells and vaulting-bars, has conduced to a change of heart in the young men who have entered therein. The tendency is inevitable for these preparatives to become substitutes so prcoccupying the interest and attention with themselves as to render thc heart less accessible to the Gospel than before they came in. Education by all means! But in the school of grace the law seems to be not" know, in order that you may believe," but " believe, in order that you may know." Culture, when set forward as a forerunner of Christ, has constantly failed to become such, because it Ja~ks the humility to say: "He it is who, coming after me, is preferred before me, whose shoe latchet I am not worthy to unloose." It being true, according to our Lord's own words, that the Father hath" hid these things from the w'ise and prudent, and revealed them unto babes," it cannot be the missionary's business to make men wise lind prudent in order that they may receive the Gospel, but rather to tell the wise and prudent, that except they repent and become as little children, they shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven.
A wide observer of missionary operations in Japan has recently expressed the opinion that the chief occasion of solicitude.for the country is found in the excess of education over evangelism, and that the wisest missionary policy would be a bold immediate movement among the lower classes, who are as yet untouched by Western 'culture. Let this call be heard, then, all over our country-not for more teachers merely, but for more evangelists.
Concerning industrial and mechanical forerunners of the Gospel we may speak with equal emphasis. So ingrained is the notion that what has been called" a propredeutic dispensation of civilization" must prepare the way for Christianity, that colonization has not infrequently been proposed as a John the Baptist to evangelization. Ninety years ago Wilberforce lent his influence to a great scheme for ameliorating the condition of Africa by this plan. Artisans with saw and hammer and anvil were despatched to- her western coast, with the understanding that after a considerable progress had been made in civilization, missionaries should follow up tho ~ssault with Bible and catechism. But the onterprise had not momentum enough to reach its destination, and proceeded no farther than Sierra Leone.
Even had it entered the field, its work would have been a gratuitous one.
For the trce does not bear the root, but the root the tree. As certainly as the planted acorn produces the oak, so surely will the incorruptible seed of the Word yield the fruits of righteousness and social order when believingly re~eived into the human heart.
David Brainerd gives a remarkable testimony to this fact, when sum- ming up the results of his labors among the American Indians at Cross- weekslllJg. Indeed, his witness supports all that we have been saying in this paper. Lest any should accuse his work of being the outcome of excitement and fear inspired by the preaching of the terrors of the law, or charge that his converts were only such as had been" frightened by a fearful noise of hell and damnation," he says: "God left no room for this objection in the present case, this work of grace having been begun and carried on" by almost one continued strain of -Gospel invitation to perish- ing sinners." Not the law of Sinai, but the cross of Calvary must have the credit for this remarkable work. Amid the multitude of inquirers and the urgency of the claims of perishing so~ls, he had little time, he tells us, to inculcate moral reforms or social llnd domestic improvements.
He could only sound out the message of salvation 1>y the blood of Christ, "and eternal life through faith in His name, and pass on. But note the result, as he records it : .
" When these truths were felt at heart, there was now no vice unreformed, no external duty neglected. Drunkenness," the darling vice, was broken off from, and scarce an instance of it known among my hearers for months together.
The,abusive practice of husbands and wives in putting away each other and tak- ing others in their stead was quickly reformed, so that there are three or foul' "
couples who have voluntarily dismissed those whom they had wrongfully taken, an(l now live together in love and peaco. The same mignt be said of all other"
vicious practices. The reformation was general; and all springing from the internal influence of divine truths upon their hearts, and not from any external restraints, or because they had heard the~e vices particularly exposed and repeat- edly spoken agaim.t. Some of them I never so much as mentioned-particularly that of the parting of men aud their wives-till some, having their conscience awakened by God's Word, came, and of their own accord, confessed themselves guilty in that respect.
" The happy effects of these peculiar doctrines of grace, upon which I have so much insisted, upon this people, plainly discover, even to demonstration, that instead of their opening a door to licentiousness-as many vainly imagine and slanderously insinuate-they have a directly contrary tendency; 80 that II close application, a Bense and feeling of them will have a most powerful influence toward the renovation and effectual reformation both of heart and life."
By as little pains as Brainerd labored to introduce" Christian Civilization," by so much are many modern missionaries anxious to exclnde if -from their fields. Its avant-coureurs in these days are the whiskey bottle and the powcer-flask. " If only we can keep out European and American civilization," says an earnest missionary in Africa, " there is hope for our work in the Dark Continent." On the whole, what a mockery there is in this much-vaunted word! And how little apprehension of the subject does an eminent writer on the evidences of Christianity exhibit in saying that" The wisest modern missionaries admit that they mnst civilize heathen nations in order to make Christian institutions permanent. " No! ~ot the sandals of law, of education, or of social science for the missionary of the Apostolic school j but" feet shod with the preparation of the Gospel of peace." The first take but tardy steps, and rarely those condescending steps that reach the sinner where he is j but the latter: "How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace j that bringeth good tidings of good, that publisheth salvation. "
THE BURMAN BIDLE.-The first edition of Dr. Judson's translation of the Bible into the Burman language was in three large quarto volumes, twelve by nine inches. The second edition was printed from the same type but upon thinner paper, and was bound in one volume. It bears this imprimatur: "Maulmain: Printed at the American Baptist Mission Press for the American and Foreign Bible Society and the American Baptist Board of Foreign Missions; 1840. " Now after the space of fifty years a third edition is published by the American Baptist Missionary Union at its Mission Press in Rangoon, copies of which have just been received in America. It is a royal octavo, much smaller and more convenient than the earlier editions, having been newly set up and stereotyped, with many corrections noted by Dr. Judson himself inserted in the text by the careful hand of Dr. E. A. Stevens. This translation of the Bible into Burman was made amid great difficulties, Dr. Judson being obliged to make ~is own grammars and dictionaries as he went on, but it is remarkable as being one of the most accurate and idiomatic versions of the Bible in any language. It is an imperishable monument to the great ability of America's first missionary to the heathen, Adoniram Jlldio1on.-Baptist Missionary Magazine.
EXTRACTS ANlJ TRANSLATIONS FROM: FOltElGN PERIOlnCALS
EXTRACTS AND TRANSLATIONS FROM FOREIGN PERIODICALS.
llY REV. C. C. STARllUCK, ANDOVER, MASS.
-The Church of Scotland, Home and Foreign Mission Record for January 1st, 1891, has the following statement: "A collection on behalf of the Committee of Correspondence with Foreign Churches is appointed to be made in all our churches and chapels on Sabbath, the 18th inst., provided always that wherever this day may be unsuitable the collection shall be made on another Sabbath.
" The great object of this committee is to foster friendly relations with the Reformed Churches of the Continent, ani to give aid to those who require it. We are especially brought into contact with the Reformed churches of France, Italy, Bohemia, Switzerland, and Belgium. With these churches the Church of Scotland in former days maintained constant correspondence, and it would be a loss both to them and to us should· such communications cease. Since the last appeal was made in 1888, deputies from the Church of Scotland have been present at one or two memorable meetings (If Continental churches. The celebration of the Bicentenary of the glorious return of the Waldenses took place in August and September, 1889, when the Rev. Dr. Mitchell, of South Leith, represented the Church of Scotland. At the jubilee of the formation of the Missionary Church of Belgium, which was celebrated in June, 1890, the Rev. Duncan Campbell, of Rosemount, Aberdeen, represented our Church, and received a cordial welcome. To enable the Church worthily to maintain these relations, and to bestow assistance in accordance with the needs of the struggling communions on the Continent, the present collection is made. "
-Says the Record: "A correspondent in Aberdeen reports a much appreciated visit of our Foreign Mission Convener to that city. Dr. M'Murtrie preached an impressive and an appropriate sermon to the students ill the university chapel 011 the 7th ult., and addressed a crowded congregation in Rosemount Church at night. On the Monday morning he addressed a full meeting of divinity professors and students, to whom he stated that the Mission cause was now attracting to its service a portion of the flower of our divinity halls, and that no less than twenty-four of our present missionaries (including missionaries' wives) in the foreign and Jewish mission fields came from Aberdeen and its neighborhood. At noon, on the same day, Dr. M'Murtrie addressed the South Church Ladies' Work Party ; in the afternoon he took part in the monthly meeting of the Ladies' Association Committee, and in the evening he addressed successively the Rosemount Young Men's Guild, and an Old Muchar congregational social meeting. Verily our Convener does not spare himself !"
-We give two of the collects of the Church of Scotland for the Week of Prayer. For Tuesday: " 'Ve beseech Thee, 0 Lord, on behalf of Thy Church Universal, in all lands and places, under whatever name or form, worshipping Thee in various tongues, and approaching Thy presence in the name of Jesus. We pray for union, for unity of spirit, for love; that Christian life and teaching may be increasingly subject to the Holy Ghost; that Christian people may witness unto Christ by living in godly love; that we no longer be opponents or rivals, but all one in Christ Jesus; and that for His sake, Amen." For Thursday: "For Thine ancient people, o God of Abraham, we earnestly pray that the veil may fall from their eyes, and that they may be turned tu the Lord; and for our Home Missions in the darkness still found in our land, we beseech Thee that the labor of Thy servants may be blessed in bringing many to the cross: through Jesus Christ, thy Son, Amen."
-In the Conferences Fraternelles, held in Paris, last October, various judgments were expressed of Roman Catholicism; but Pastor R. Hollard seemed to strike the centre when he gave as its damning sin, " It destroys the conscience." J esuitized Catholicism values blind obedience above everything else. It will be a sad thing for France to recur to this as her best conception of Christianity. But the leaders of intelligence seem to be awaiting the issue. Professor Atlier said: "The University is deliberating whither it shall go. It has made the round of all the systems, and now is eager to reach a goal. One of its professors said to me, ' My ffiend, count us as belonging to whosoever shall know how to conquer us.' "
Pastor Hollard thinks that Protestantism is not qualified to take the place of Catholicism in France until it understands better than now to respond, in evangelical simplicity, to those spiritual wants which Catholicismconsults the instinct of adoratiou and the craving for unity. Why should Pere Hyacinthe and the Protestants with the same aims be so little inclined to friendship ¥ The sentiment appeared to be very decided, that evangelizin~ work and charitable work ought to be carried on by distinct agencies. At Geneva, M. Ernest Favre attests, evangelization has been much more effective since this separation was made.
-The indian Standard, speaking of a recent Church Congress, allows that sanitation is important, but very reasonably insists thaI; the Kingdom of God and the Cross of Christ have not lost their prime importance. Speaking likewise of Brotherhoods (whose result!! in India do not thus far appear very marked), it wishes to know why the absence of God's unit of human society, the family, should be so highly esteemed. And asks why Archdeacon Farrar contends for vows where a celibate life appears a call of duty. Semi· monastic Sisterhoods and Brotherhoods, as Count Gasparin long ago pointed out, are apt to be of dubious results on Protestant soil. Every plant has its native and congenial habitat.
-The Rev. C. A. Schonberger, through the Jewish Herald, reports " that notwithstanding the sad fact that all open preaching to the Jews is prohibited in Vienna, yet they are constantly flocking, as inquirers, to the missionary's house, where Bible and other classes are regularly held. The Bible-class is largely attended, and this branch of the work is most encouraging. "
– " Regions Beyond," quotes Mr. Stanley's description of the proud Wahuma race, which he discovered, "being clearly of Indo-African origin, possessing exceedingly fino features, aquiline noses, slender necks, small heads, with a grand and proud carriage; an old, old race, possessing splendid traditions, and ruled by inflexible customs which would admit of no deviation." Stanley pronounces the features of the great KafEr race to be ., a subtle amalgamation of the Hindu and West African types." Although the foraying W ahuma have abundance of heathen vices, yet their higher type, mild and courteous manners, and salubrious country, render them hopeful for missions. To Stanley they brought up thoughts of "those blameless people with whom the gods deigned to banquet once a year upon the heights of Ethiopia. "
~ ".'. -The Universities' Mission in Central Africa, which now has 2000 adherents, is rejoicing in the ordination of its first native priest.
– " The Paris correspondent of Evangelical Ohristendom," says the Indian Standard, writes: 'There is a fearful increase of crime, conwadicting strikingly those who hoped that 'schooling' and 'good behavior would go together.' Increased schooling and increased crime proceed pari passu. Youthful literates, fifteen years ago, were 68 per cent, now 78 per cent. "The evident failure, in a moral point of view, of education without religion, is throwing weight into the Roman Catholic scale; children are crowding their private schools."
-Mrs. Dods, of the McAll Mission, says: "The old hall at the corner of the Rue de Rivoli, where the dirtiest of people used to crowd in night after night-some said to get warmed-has disappeared; its successor- Boulevard Sebastopol.-has come and gone, and now in its place are not one, but two or three large halls in densely crowded streets-St. Denis, Temple, and Salle Rivoli-the last redeemed from its evil uses as a rendezvous of atheists, anarchists, and lovers of guilty pleasures j wafihed and purified materially and morally, and consecrated, with its 600 seats, to the service of the Lord."
-Charlie, a convert of the Universities' Mission, having fallen into the handt,; of the heathen Gwangwara, was asked by them, " Why do not these white men and you fear us, seeing that we can kill you all~" He answered: "Because you can only kill our bodies with your spears; it is our souls we care about, and you can't touch them, and so we don't fear you." I heard from others at the time that Charlie had made this answer, and that the Gwangwara were not only awed but actually made afraid by these words. Doubtless it was the first intimation they had ever received that there was anything about a man they could not kill. Yet they believed it when Charlie told them, and, cowards at bottom-like all bullies-they trembled at the news."
-It has been decided in India, says the Bombay Guardian of January lOth, that if a full. grown minor appears capable of caring for himself he may lawfully be baptized against the will of his guardian. But a violent persecution against the Wesleyan Mission at Banknra, Bengal, has been excited by such a case, resulting in the burning of a school.
-A Christian New Year's Mela (or fair) has been held on the banks of the Jnrnna (as lately recommended by the S. F. G.) attended by Anglicans, Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians, meeting " in oneness of spirit, as sheep of one fold." It was held in the Presbyterian grounds.
– " Several thousand representatives of the eight chief Indian languages," says the Indian Witness, "lately met and transacted all their business in English. And no one seems astonished."
-The Ohinese Times, as quoted in the London and Ohina Telegraph, says, of Chinese appropriation of Western science, that it has as yet had very little effect on the national life. "Her dalliance with the skill and science of the Vest is rather a species of coquetry than honest wooino-. The truth is that powers less tangible and material, yet far more pote~t than railways, telegraphs, balloons, or phonographs, must be evoked before any deep or lasting impression upon this slnmbering mass of stagnant life can be expected. Spiritual forces cannot be conquered with material weapons."
tNTERNATtONAL DEPARTMENT
II.-INTERNATIONAL DEPARTMENT.
EDITED AND CONDUCTED BY REV. J. T. GRACEY, D.D.
The Religious Attitude of the Ohinese which he is entering, is somewhat like Mind. a scientific farmer who studies and BYREV.W. A. P. MARTIN, D.D., PRESIDENT OF analyzes the soil into which he intends to cast the precious seed. He may find THE IlIIPEBIAL TUNGWEN COLLEGE, that that soil was produced by the disin- PEKING, CHINA. tegration of many kinds of. rocks, some deposited from water, others thrown up Religion consists of two elements by the action of internal fires, others thought and feeling. Its thought i~ yet affected by atmospheric influences. directed toward the mysterious prob- We find, in a similar manner, the lems of existence. In this aspect mental soil of China composed of three every religion that emanates from hu- leading elements which have been comman thought is, to a certain extent, to mingled and brought into interaction be regarded as a philosophy, hence in such a way as to present to the superworthy of careful study, not as throwing ficial observer a homogeneous aspect. light which to us would be valuable on These are known as the three religions the question of human destiny, bdt as -Confucian,Tauist, and Buddhist. throwing light on human character on national character, and the relation's of Before attempting to point out their nations to each other. The religious interaction, which, after all, is the objecexperience of the Chinese people, the tive point, allow me briefly to sketch the elements forming their religious beliefs, leading characteristics of each, as they constitute the subject which I have to rise successively before our eyes. I discuss. No field could perhaps be of shall not be able to go into detail in greater interest, partly on account of the our allotted time, nor would it be demultitude of people who are affected by sirable, inasmuch as I have in mind the these views, partly on account of the distinct object of pointing out only a vast antiquity, presenting records reach- few salient features by which these reing back, without a break in the chain for ligions have acted upon each other. many thousands of years, and also because that great people have been seg- The Confucian system did not origregated by mountain chains and ocean inate with Confucius. He said: "I am breadths, from intercourse with the rest an editor, not an author." He took the of mankind, to a very large extent for records of remote antiquity and sifted the greater part of their national exist- them, in such wise, however, as to exert ence. In order that our lessons may be in a most effective manner the influence of value, it will be important that we of an editor, giving to the readers of all should take them out of the stream we succeeding ages only that which he may say, at a point prior to the in'flux wished to have produce its effect on the of the living waters of Christianity; national mind. We consequently date for Christianity has to some extent Confucianism from the beginning of his affected the modes of thought of that people beyond the pale of Christian com- twenty~ records, from the time of Yao and Shun munities which, for the last three hundred years, have been growing up in his favorite models of virtue, that land. But the systems of which I have to speak date back far beyond that tw~ two centuries before the Christian era time. The missionary, thoughtful, and accustomed to study the field upon Viewed as a religion, it' presents leading features: the first is the worship *Addrc•• before the American Society of Com- of Shang-ti; the second is the worship of the spirits of men under the title of anparative Religion. cestors. Shang-ti signifies the Supreme Ruler. Coming before us in some of the most ancient books extant in any language, that august being suggests at once the Jehovah of the Clll:istian Scrip- show, by the influence of other religions, tures-the Lord, the Most High, who more or less corrupting even the com- was worshipped not only by those who parative purity of the primitive ideas. are recognized in the canon of Scripture as' possessing the guidance of inspira- Confucius was himself strongly in- tion, but by such men as Melchizedek, clined to agnosticism. In his intimate the King of Salem, who was both king conversations with his disciples he re- and priest. We find the earliest sov. fuses to give them any positive state- ereigns of China combining this double ment in regard to the things beyond the function of king and priest, signalizing reach of hnman sight. He said: " We their accession, especially in the case of know not life. How can we know founders of dynasties, by going to death, or what lies beyond the grave? mountain tops, the highest points ap- We are unable properly to render service proaching to heaven, and there offering to onr living parents; how should we up burnt sacrifices to the king of know how to render fitting service to heaven, by whom kings reign and those who have passed into the other princes decree justice. If there were any world ?" Yet he enjoined service to doubt as to the lofty spiritual conc~p those who have passed into the other tion connected with this grand object world as the cardinal dnty in his reo of worship of the one alone to whom all ligious system, and it is that, more than kings and princes were recognized as anything else, which makes it a religion accountable, we may find it in a single potent and living to this day. The worpassage among many scores that I might ship of Shangti, the Supreme Ruler, cite to you if I only had time. The grand as it is, is nevertheless like a ray founder of the dynasty of Chow, eleven of the sun falling upon an iceberg, so hundred years before the Christian era, far as its influence on the publio mind is leading a small army to attack the in concerned. It is limited to the empowerful host which upheld the thron-e peror and to a few remarkable and au· of a tyrant. On the battle-field, before gust manifestations of public ritual, but the critical engagement, he addresses an you do not find it in the household. eloquent harangue to his soldiers, and You do not find it on the lips of the the most eloquent passage is that in people. You do not find that God in which he points upward and says: " The that form has taken up his abode with Most High God, the Supreme Ruler, is ' men. He is still far remote, on the sum· looking down upon you. Let not your mit of an icy Olympus, as it were, hearts waver." The worship of Skang- although to a certain extent dimly per. ti, the Most High (for that is almost a ceived by the mind of the Chinese naliteral translation of the name), contin- tion. ues to the present day, the sovereign now on the throne acting, as did his Tauism rose next. The founder of predecessors of four thouand years ago, Tauism preceded Confucius, but by a as high priest for the empire. On an kind of paradox his religion is of later altar within the walls of Peking he offers date. The founder of Tauism goes by up burnt sacrifices to the Supreme the name of Lautse, which signifies the Being. In the earliest days, however, .. old philosopher," probably because this worship was impure. We find no he was old when Confucius was young. point in Chinese history where it was They were contemporaries. The Tauist not mingled with the worship of sub- system is not found clearly developed in ordinate deities, nature.gods-gods of the only book which bas been transmit. the hills and rivers-and that intermix ted to us from the hand of Lautse, and ture not only continues to the present the authenticity of which has been to a day, but it has b!)en very largely in. large extent questioned. His followers, creased, as I shall have occasion to however, deduced from the obscure hints contained in that book two ideas, or rather one idea, which afterward sub. divided itself into two. The one idea genii. The term genii we usually em· was that by persistent effort we may ac- ploy as a translation for shensien or quire a mastery over matter in such a sien)in, both forms being used, which is way as to command all its potencies, and the word the Tauists apply to their employ them in accomplishing objects adepts, those who obtain the precious which would seem far beyond the reach gift, the elixir of immortality. This of human power, unless it were elevated view may be illustrated by the following by this process of discipline. The mat- lines from a Chinese poem : ter thus spoken of is subjectively that of our own bodies, the discipline of " A prince the &ought Immortal went to seek, which would result in a possible immor- And finding it he soared above the spheres; tality, and objectively the material objects surrounding us, but chiefly the In monntain caverns he had dwelt a weekelemental forms, the careful study of Of human time It was a thousand years." which would enable man finally to transmute the baser metals into gold, and to The Tauist system, deifying, as it were, accomplish many things which have the matter, being essentially materialistic, air of miracle. You perceive at once laid hold upon that august and sublime how naturally from this root conception conception of the ruler of the universe, springs the two fundamental ideas of and incorporated it into the material alchemy-the transmutation of metals world. Not only so, having arrived at into gold and the attainment of immor- , the idea of the five elements, it subditality. These came forward under the vided the idea of the supreme ruler, influence of perhaps the two leading de- and made five gods, each a god of a 'sires which characterize human exist- special element. Thus it corrupted the ence-the first to be rich, the second to idea of God, and it has been one of the live long, or to Iive forever, in order most fmitful sources of corruption in to enjoy wealth. This system has, how. the history of the Chinese mind, introever, a close relation to what preceded ducin" a multitude of favorite idols, it as a cause and explanation of the nature·gods of material origin, which power with which it took hold of the continue to be worshipped to the preshuman mind. I have just l18id that ent day. Confucius was something of an agnostic. He dealt largely in negations-refused The Buddhist system came in, as you to give any light beyond the grave, or are aware, early in the Christian era, the to hold out any hope of immortality, Emperor Ming Ti having sent a mission although that is to some extent implied to India to bring Buddhist priests and in the formal worship of ancestors. books from that country in the year 66 The longing of the human mind for a of the Christian era. The occasion for future life sought satisfaction in the the introduction of Buddhism was, on Tauist conception of a possible immor- the one hand, the eclipse of Confuciantality which was to be conquered by a ism, and, on the other, the religious long and laborious discipline, and which thought, or phases of thought, stimucould not be the heritage of the many, lated and introduced by Tauism. The but Which might become the possession defects of both were supposed to be of a very few. supplied by the stronger, more intel- lectual, and more spiritual creed of In- This system, at the same time, im. dia. The eclipse of Confucianism was parted a kind of life to all nature; every not caused by the ascendancy of a rival form of matter is instinct with an in- creed. It was caused by a political revextinguishable, divine essence, which is olution. The buililer of the great wall capable of assuming personality. In rose up in his might and conquered the this way it peopled the whole world with rival kings,-and resolved that he would a new Pantheon of gods, fairies, and extirpate the feudal system. He was made to believe that without extirpating the books of Confucius he never could eradicate that system, and that though he might overthrow one king after an- a very powerful attraction in contrast other, yet after he should pass away the to the meagre promises of Tauism and system would again spring from the the cold negations of Confucianism, pages of the Confucian books. He re- which preceded. This was connected solved to burn the books, and then, lest with the doctrine of the transmigration these books should be reproduced from of souls, which "Was common to almost the memory of able scholars, he put all Indian creeds. The Indian philosthem to death, and thus flattered him- ophy on that subject regarded transmiself that he had swept away Confucian- gration as something amounting to a ism from the face of the earth, and with physical necessity, that it is absolutely it the whole of the feudal system. It impossible for a man to extinguish his was during this eclipse of Confucianism, being-that he has, as it has been exwhich lasted for about two centuries, pressed, come into this world without that the Emperor Ming Ti sent his em- his own choice and will go into the next bassy to India. without his own choice, and thence go on in a succession of changes forever. The Chinese people, having got the This succession of changes is described, idea of immortality from Tauism, were under the figure of a wheel, the turn of at first fired with it, but disappointed destiny, or wheel of fate, which is repthat through that system there was no resented as revolving rapidly and drophope for any but a very few; they were ping out human souls to be born again fascinated with a report they had heard in the form of man or of some higher or of a blessed religion in India, which lower being, there being six categories offered salvation to all. Hence the em- in all, according to the Buddhist diviperor sept his embassy to India and in- sion. The religious view of the founder troduced this new religion, which had of the faith was pessimistic. To escape perhaps to some extent already found from this series of changes constitutes its way into China, and begun to exert happiness, and he devised a method for some influence, but which from that day that purpose. In the Northern School became a potent factor in the develop- of Buddhism, especially in its popular ment of the Chinese mind, and contin- phase, we seldom meet with this idea_ ues to the present day to be the leading We meet more frequently with the idea religious influence in that country. I that to rise in the scale of being is hapmay say, as an illustration of the posi- piness. Sakyamuni had in his system tion which Buddhism acquired and no heaven. The Northern Buddhism, holds in China, that I hold in my hand which has prevailed in China, has a a document never given to the world in heaven, borrowed, it may be, from the the English language, nor, perhaps, so Christian's Paradise. It has, presiding far as I know, in any other Western over that heaven, a goddess of mercy, language, showing that if in the year 66 borrowed, perhaps, from the Catholic an emperor was so impressed with conception of the mother of Jesus Christ. Buddhism as to send an embassy to the Many other ic!eas present a transforma- West to introduce it into China, four- tion-Iwill not say a travesty-of Christeen centuries later another emperor tianity. was so much influenced by it as to send an embassy to introduce the Buddhist Weare asked particularly the relation classics from Thibet. (The paper, which and the interaction of these three syswas an edict of the Emperor Yungloh, tems which we have thus briefly 1412, was here read.) Various doctrines sketched. You have noted that they are alluded to in that paper, only one rose one after the other, each of them or two of which I will touch upon. I introduced by a felt want, and that each have already referred to the full and 'was preceded by a yearning of the hnbounteous offer of salvation and immor- man soul for something better; consetality made by Buddhism as furnishing quently, in a religions point of view, each one may be considered as an ad. to the doctrine of immortality, in the vance upon that by which it was pre- duty of worshipping departed spirits. ceded. They were a long time antago- But this is faint, very faint, in compari. nistic, sometimes even inciting bloody son with the religious teaching of the persecutions, but in this day they have other two sects. Buddhism has been become comparatively quiescent, like especially potent in instilling ideas active chemicals, which, being brought which are so nearly akin to those prop· into juxtaposition, exert for a time their agated by Christianity as again to pre. various qualities, but which soon be. pare the way for the introduction of ancome quiescent and inert, until they are other system. Buddhism, no doubt, brought into contact with some more en· vastly enlarged the area of Chinese con. ergetic agent. We shall find that in ceptions, To borrow a mathematical Christianity. A remarkable illustration illustration, the religious ideas of the of the quiescence of these long, active, Chinese were limited, before the intro. and conflicting systems is found in the duction of Buddhism, to two dimenfact that there are in some parts of sions, something th!t may be described China little shrines or temples where as a "flat-land," with length and the three religions are seen represented breadth, but no height. Buddhism by their founders-Confucius, Buddha, gives it height, soaring up to the heav_ and Lautse-all sitting sid" by side and ens and developing the conqeption of a receiving at one and the same time the universe, the grandeur of which perhaps homage of worshippers who acknowl. nothing can exceed. Is it possible that edge all three. You might object that after this universe of three dimensions it would be a strange mind that would we shall have one of four dimensions? acknowledge and swallow all these Mathematicians tell us that with space creeds, yet there are many who assert of four dimensions it is possible to 'do that the three creeds are identical, if you many things which cannot be done could only get down to the bottom. In without it. There is, in my view, room fact, nothing is more contradictory. The for the fourth dimension, or, to drop the Confucian system is essentially ethical; figure, there is room for a fourth stage the Buddhist system is pure idealism, in the progression, one which Ohina is as pure as that of Berkeley or Hegel; waiting for-that is, the introduction the Tauist system is materialistic, be- of Christianity. Each of the previous ginning with gross materialism. How religions was ushered in by a felt want. is it possible that three systems so Christianity alone can supply the de· utterly divergent should ever be recon· fects of all the systems and present one ciled? The fact is, they are irreconcil· harmonious unity. If I were to express able. Each one presents some one thing in one word what Christianity is to con· which meets a human want, Qut recon· fer upon China, it would be this: Not ciliation there is none; peace, union, a God seated far away, upon some reo harmony, there cannot be, though 0. mote Olympus, as in the Confucian systruce, a permanent truce, seems at pres· tem ; not a God inherent in matter, as ent to exist between them. They are in the Tauist system; not a God, as in' no longer belligerent. The question the Buddhist system, who has risen from may be raised, What benefit has each the ranks of the disciples of virtue, a one of these conferred upon the Chinese mere deified man, but God, the Spirit people? Each one has enlarged and of the universe, in Christ Jesus, coming widened the speculative thought and reo into the human Boul, taking up his abode ligious conceptions of the peop] e. Con. there and working by his Holy Spirit a fucianism gave them, or, at least, pre· regenerating influence such as none of served for them, and preserves to the these creeds has ever possessed, and of present day, the grand idea of the Suo which they have presented only a faint preme Ruler, and it bears witness, too, and dim frophecy. This I believe to be the mission of Christianity, and I be- tombs. Here these mounds are, howlieve the Chinese, though it may be un- ever, the great hieroglyph of Americaconsciously, are waiting. for it and up in the mining regions of Michigan, reaching out after it. a thousand miles up the Missouri River, all over the Ohio and Mississippi basins In reply to a question as to what re- five hundred of them, if our memory ligion preceded Confucianism, Dr. Mar- serves us correctly, in one county of the tin said: State of Ohio alone; and all over the Southern tier of our States. How old "Confucius edited the canonical they are is an antiquarian's conun_ books 'of China, the earliest of which, drum. Trees have been found growing or rather the records contained in it, go .upon them with upward of four hunback twenty·two hundred. years before dred rings, recording their annual Christ. These two religious elements growth; and these, the" primeval forof the Confucian system, worship of est" of our forefathers, were a second Shangti (conjoined with that of the growth on the .. primeval forests" of hills and rivers) and that of deceased the civilized races, on whose graves ancestors, were in full flower at that they have grown, and who, some think, time. These mUl!lt have taken some retreated from the Ohio valley two time to attain the form in which they thousand years ago ! appeared. As to the idea of the Supreme Ruler, which, so far as it goes, But monuments they are of a people is very analogous to the Christian's idea of settled life, who had organized inof God, whether that is from a pa- dustries, habits of intelligent work-as triarchal tradition, as I am inclined to skill in masonry and pottery, and in think, I will not affirm." weaving and spinning cloth; and who could mine and move blocks of copper The Mound·Builders of America. ore weighing sixty tons.
We are paying large attention in these Who they were and whence they days to 'he antiquities of Oriental coun- came will be a scientist's riddle for tries. But the more one pursues the many a year to come. .Had half the atstudy of the antiquities of the pagan tention been bestowed on the dead lanpeoples of our own continent, the more guage of these sun·dried or burned interesting does it become. brick books which has been bestowed on the brick books of Babylon, and had The study of the mounds of North the arrow-headed alphabet of these our and South America is equal in interest own prehistoric peoples received the to those of Egypt or Assyria, and no one attention that has been given to Asc.an now say how important their study syrian research, it might not now be 1<0 may become. mortifying a failure to try to answer this question. They are the .. lost All the pre.historic mounds of North tribes of Israel," say some; Malays, and South America are of one type from say others, whose empire, maritime and Peru and Yucatan to Mexico and the commercial, and whose fleets of great Mississippi and Ohio valleys, in being ships reached all over the Pacific island a terraced elevation. Some, possibly, and to Peru; Phcenicians, cry others, once furnished the foundation of a the great colonizing navigators of anbuilding, as did those of Guatemala tiquity. Not so, say others still; they and Southern Mexico, where ruined are" Atlantics," from the lost" islands stone edifices still remain on the sum- of Atlantis," a portion of the American mits of similar earthworks. It is high- Continent now below the waters of the ly probable they were constructed for Atlantic Ocean, which once stretched in religioUI!I uses, some say, giving indica- neighboring groups from the West Intions of sun.worship and other sacred dies to the Allorefl. But, leaving all symbol, while othel"S think theIr} only these external theorizings out of view, arrested at the instigation of the eccle- we have two most adverse theories of siastical authorities on a charge of pub- scientists to amuse U8, if they do not licly performing religiolls services not satisfy us. sanctioned by the Rcman Catholic Church. On a hearing before the Crim- First, the civilized life of the ancient inal Court in November, it was proven Mexicans and Central Americans origi- that his religious services had been nally began and reached its climax in conducted privately within closed doors, South and Central America, and extend- and entirely within the' limitations of ed itself with gradually lessening com- the law, and he was acquitted; but in- pletcness over large portions of Ameri- asmuch as the parties urging the prose- ca, the civilization being less perfect as cution appealed the case to the Superior the colonies were remote. Second, the Court he was remanded to prison. The theory of the modern passionate evolu- Superior Court, after visiting the site of tionist, who would show that the begin- the chapel, affirmed the decision of the nings were everywhere, the gradual de- lower court and directed his release ; velopment reaching highest in Mexico, when his enemies again interposed, and Yucatan, and Peru. by appealing to the Supreme Court, suc- ceeded in having his imprisonment pro- These diyergent schools teach-the longed. Mr. Hicks, of the United States one that this is a great prehistoric race, Legation, telegraphed on the 16th of with arts of civilized life, reading, writ- January, that he bad watched the case ing, and aJ:chitectural decorations, and closely, and had had almost daily prom- skill not to be excelled by the best of ises of Mr. Penzotti's release, which tlie our constructors and decorators. These Foreign Office deemed certain; but al- ( find in the mounds of the United States though his imprisonment has con· evidence of a civilization such as the tinued for more than six months, a race of Indians known to history could decision dops not seem to haTe been never have produced. The other school rendered as yet. thinks there is nothing about these earthworks that may not be accounted Penzotti is an Italian subjeet. He has for after the most ordinary manner as been twenty-five years in South AIDer- belonging to the modern Indian. More ica. He was converted in Buenos Ayres entertaining literature is not easy to and became a colporteur of the Ameri- find, though it be only a babble of can Bible Society. He was some while books. ago placed in charge of Bible distribu- tion on the west coast of South Amer- -A brother kindly sends us a note ica. For threE years, amid a great deal stating that we inadvertently used the of persecution, he has been selling wrong title when we alluded to the Bibles in Peru. The priests had him "Church of England Missionary So- arrested and thrown into prison, where ciety," in Persia, in the February num- he has remained till now, among the low- ber. He says the missionaries whose in- est and vilest criminals in a dark filthy trusion in the Persian Presbyterian mis- cell. The charges cannot be sustained; sion field is complained of are an .. in- but, under Peruvian law, he must prove dependent mission under the special himself innocent. The Italian minister direction and patronage of the Arch- at Callao has sought his release as an Ital- bishop of Canterbury, and receive part ian flubject, and the American Bible So- of their funds from the Society for the ciety has appealed to Mr. Blaine for pro- Propagation of the Gospel." tection of certain property and other rIghts of Americans involved in the At the meeting of the American Bible case. But meanwhile Mr. Penzotti is Society in February, letters were pre- behind those barH, the representative and sented from the society's agent in Peru, champion of religious freedom. who has been in prison at Callao since the 25th of July last. Mr. Penzotti was
EDITORIAL NOTES ON CURRENT TOPICS
III.-EDITORIAL NOTES ON CURRENT TOPICS.
COMPARATIVE RELIGIONs.-The New which Dr. Martin himself was good York University has shown commend. enough to reyise and place at our dis- able appreciation of the thought.need posal. We present it now, with the im- of the age, in establishing a Lectureship pression that it is one of the very best on Comparative Religions, and is to be and most suggestive papers we have congratulated that it has secured Rev. published. We are also pleased to an- F. F. Ellinwood, D.D., as Lecturer. nounce that we hope to present, in an We understand that two courses of lec- .early issue hereafter, a paper from Dr.
tures are given. In the first, Dr. Ellin- Martin on "American Influence in wood considers Hinduism, Buddhism, China." G.
Mohammedanism, Zoroastrianism, and Confucianism, giving a large proportion A NEW MISSIONARY CYCLOPlIllDIA.-We of attention to Hinduism, as embracing soliciteil from Messrs. Funk & WagnaIIs all phases of the religion of the Hindus for temporary use, some advanced sheets from the first Aryan faith through Brah- of the new "Missionary Cyclopredia"
manism, Buddhism, Philosophic Ra-· they are about to issue. We were so tionalism of the schools, etc.-in a delighted with the excellence of the word, all that belongs to the> composite work, that we venture to violate a rule which may be called Hinduism. In of the house, admirahle though it be.
the second course he subsoils these It is, we believe, understood that their same fields with a more thorough study, own books are not to he presented in taking also the ancient religions of the this way in their periodicals. It is our world, studying them with a view to the pleasure to establish that rule by an ex- light which they throw on the question of ception. It is not too much to say that a primitive Monotheism, the testimony for more than a dozen years a missionary which they give by their traditions to the cyclopredia has been a desideratum.
general truths of Christianity. He con- We do not know of an edition of New- siders also Tauism and Shintooism, comb later than 1860. Aikman's Cyclo- and the religion of the Druses. He predia appe'ared in 1859, and reached a takes up particularly the relations of the second edition in 1861. Hassell's" From Dhammapada and the Bhagavad Gita to Pole to Pole" and Elliot Stock's Christianity. . He gives a full written "Handbook of Christian Missions"
lecture. He also furnishes lists of books were issued in 1872, as was also Boyce's to be read in connection with the lec- invaluable" Statistics of Protestant Mis- tures. His classes, as a rule, are enthu· sionary Societies, " which was published siastic in this study. Out of these only for private circulation, but worth courses of lectures has grown the organ- its weight in precious metal. Grunde- ization of "The American Society of man's "Allgemeiner Missions-Atlas,"
Comparative Religion," which though Vahl's" Missions-Atlas," and Werner's young is enterprising. On February 6th "Atlas der Evangelischen Missions,"
last it secured Rev. Dr. A. P. Martin, are of high value within their sphere, President of the Imperial University at but are not in English dress. There Peking, China, to deliver before it a lec- are smaller works, as Badley's" Indian ture on " The Religious Attitude of the Missionary Directory" and Dobbin's Chinese Mind." As the lecture was not " Foreign Missionary Manual," and the a written one we solicited the kind admirable "Missionary Year Book."
offices of the Corresponding Secretary But the great gap is unfilled. We of the Society, Rev. C R. Blauvelt, want a comprehensive, well-digested, Nyack, N. Y., in securing for publica- historical, geographical, and statistical tion in our columns a report of the lec- Bummary-a vast dictionary of mis- ture, and he 'furnished a full synopsiS, sions, And at great cost and pain!! that desidemtum is, we are confident, China is a greater scourge than war or now to be met. We base our judgment pestilence." These China Christians on some two hundred pages which we are taunted with having adopted the re- have examined and tested, by working ligion of "the foreign devils, who are with them for a month. Those who making China into a hell by their opi- know the nature of such a production um." Worse still, the poor, weak lit- will not expect a faultless volume. It tle Christian church in the Celestial Em- will not be free from some inaccuracies. pire is being well nigh decimated by Biographically, it will be like heaven: the use of the drug. G.
one will find persons there he did not expect to see, and miss persons whose -" Maokay of Uganda" has been is· sued by the Armstrongs. Alexander names he thought certainly would be Mackay was styled by the Pall Mall Ga- ·zette the ., St. Paul of Uganda." Stanthere. That is inevitable. But, after ley, Grant, Jephson, and scores of the great Afrioan "lights" have poured all such natural and necessary exception their vials of odors on Mackay's grave. We doubt if he is not to stand out the is taken, this promises to be a mission- foremost missionary layman of the cen· tury. This book is one to " read, mark, ary cycloprodia on a scale and of a char- learn, and inwardly digest." It is a religious tonic. acter such as we have not had. It will be hailed heartily and studied dili- gently. Missions represent more than anything but the Bible the nnity of Protestant Christendom. Manyare eager to get a glance at the whole field down to date. We believe from what we have seen of these sheets they are not to be disappoin ted. Our readers may observe that, for unity's sake and convenience of refer- The leading articles which we have ence, we have assigned to each month a general field, as follows : examined, snch as "Buddhism" and January: The general outlook of the "Bantu," must have been written by world field.
persons speoially competent to furnish February: China, Thibet, and Con- fucianism. them. We understand that.llpeoial care Maroh: Mexioo, Central America, has been exeroised in the assignment of West Indies, Cuba, and Evangelization of Cities. the several classes of work, by which the April; India, Ceylon, Java. Brahmanablest talent has been brought to bear ism.
upon the whole wvrk, which is editorially May: Burmah, Malaysia, Siam, Laos. Buddhism. in the oharge of Rev. E. M. Bliss. June: Africa. Freedmen in North The publioation of such a book or America.
books, for it is in two large volumes, July: Islands of Sea-Polynesia, Me- lanesia. Utah and Mormonism. North requires the investment of a large sum Amerioan Indians. Chinese and Japan- ese in Amerioa. of money, and deserves the encourage- August: Italy, France, Spain. Papal ment of the Christian publio, as furnish- Europe. Bulgaria.
ing a thesaurus of missionary informa- September: Japan, Korea. Medioal Missions. tion. Dr. Rufus Anderson's axiom Ootober: Scandinavia, Germany, ought not to be lost sight of-" The Switzerland, etc. Turkey, Persia, Arabia. Mohammedanism. Greek interest which truly Christian people Oh~roh, Nomu.al Christianity take in missions is equal to their correct knowledge of them." G.
-There is a traot entitled" Christian Woman of North China to the Christian Women of England upon the Opium In-· iquity." In' this these Chinese Christian women deolare to all Europe and to all nmnkind that" forei6n opium in November: South America. Y. M. Bulgaria to the Bulgarians and Servia C. A. Home Missions. Papacy. to the Servians now give Palestine back to the Jews? These provinces as well as December: Syria and Jews. Green- Roumania, Montenegro, and Greece, land. Educational Missions. were wrested from the Turks and given to their natural owners. Does not Pal- A remarkable movement, headed by estine as rightfully belong to the Jews? It is said that rains are increasing, and MT. W. E. Blackstone, of Oak Park, Ill., there are many evidences that the land is recovering its ancient fertility. If is on foot to present an overture to the they could have autonomy in govern- ment, the Jews of the world would rally leading nations of the world, to buy Pal- to transport and establish their suffering brethren in their time-honored habita. estine and put it at the control of the tion. For over seventeen centuries they have patiently waited for such a Russian Jews, for occupation. The list privileged opportunity. They have not become agriculturists elsewhere, because of signatures to this document, already they believed they were mere sojourners in the various nations, and were yet to obtained, include editors, lawyers, mer- return to Palestine and till their own land. Whatever vested rights, by poschants, and men in every secular call- session, may have accrued to Turkey can be easily compensated, possibly by ing, as well as clergymen of every de. the Jews assuming an equitable portion of the national debt. nomination, inclusive even of Roman We believe that this is an appropriate Catholics. We have seen no document time for all nations, and especially the Christian nations of Europe, to show for twenty years that so impressed us kindness to Israel. A million of exiles, by their terrible sufferings, are piteously with its five hundred signatures. appealing to our sympathy, justice, and humanity. Let us now restore to them The following is the text of this me- the land of which they were so cruelly despoiled by our Roman ancestors. morial: . To this end we respectfully petition " What shall be done for "the Russian His Excellency Benjamin Harrison, President of the United States, and the Jews? It is both unwise and useless Honorable James G. Blaine, Secretary of State, to use their good offices and into undertake to dictate to Russia con- fluences with the Governments of their Imperial Majestiescerning her internal affairs. The Jews Alexander III., Czar of Russia. have lived as foreigners in her domin- Victoria, Queen of Great Britain and Empress of India. ions for centuries, and she fully be. William II., Emperor of Germany. Francis Joseph, Emperor of Austrolieves that they are a burden upon her Hungary. Abdul Hamid II., Sultan of Turkey. resources and prejudicial to the welfare His Royal Majesty Humbert, King.of Italy. of her peasant population, and will not Her Royal Majesty Marie Christina, Queen Regent of Spain, and, with the allow them to remain. She is deter- mined that they must go. Hence, like the Sephardim of Spain, these Ashkena- zim must emigrate. But where shall 2,000,000 of such poor people go?
Europe is crowded and has no room for more peasant population. Shall they come to America? This will be a tre- mendous expense and require years.
Why not give Palestine back to them?
According to God's distribution of na- tions it is their home-an inalienable possession from which they were ex· pelled by force" Under their cultiva- tion it was a remarkably fruitful land, sustaining millions of Israelites, who in- dustriously tUled its hillsides and val- leys. They were agriculturists and pro.
ducers, as well as a nation of great com- mercial importance-the centre of civil- ization and religion.
Why shall not the powers which un- der the treaty of Berlin, in 1878, gave Government of the Republic of France, and hopeful that our Government should and with the Governments of Belgium, initiate this friendly movement, to give Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Portugal, these wandering millions of Israel a set- Roumania, Servia, Bulgaria, and Greece, tled and permanent home. to secure the holding, at an early date, of an International Conference to con- " The President listened attentively to sider the condition of the Israelites and Mr. Blackstone's remarks, and promised their claims to Palestine as their ancient to give the subject serious considerahome, and to promote, in all other just tion." and proper ways, the alleviation of their suffering condition." The editorial staff of this REVIEW is now unusually complete. It embraces, Several petitioners wish it stated that besides the editor-in-chief, Rev. Drs. the lews have not become agriCUlturists, Gracey and Gordon, leading Methodist because for centuries they were almost and Baptist divines, Rev. C. C. Staruniversally prohibited from owning or buck, an Episcopalian, Rev. D. L. Leontilling land in the countries of their dis- ard, a Congregationalist, besides a leadpersion. ing Presbyterian clergyman whose name does not appear. Neither effort nor ex- On March 5th, Mr. William E. Black- pense is spared by the publishers and stone, of Chicago, presented this remark- editorial staff to make this the leading able paper, with its signatures of the review of world-wide missions. Mr. most prominent men of the country, to Starbuck, who has charge of the foreign the President of the United States; and exchanges, is seeking to make his dethe following is the report of the inter- partment the American review of review, as found in the daily press: views.
"Mr. Blackstone explained to the The greatest embarrassment which President and Secretary Blaine that the attends our work is perhaps the lack of memorial was the result of a conference trustworthy statistics, or rather, conof Christians and Jews, recently held in sistent and uniform statistics. One of Chicago, and called especial attention to our correspondents complains of the the fact that it did not antagonize Rus- statement on page 232 March issue, of sia, but only sought, in a peaceful way, the work in Africa. He compares this to give the Jews control of their oIa with the figures of Mr. Liggins in his homes in Palestine. He pointed out ., Value and Success of Foreign Mismany evidences of the possibility of sions," page 31, who reports 175,000 great development of ihat country, both communicants and 300,000 baptized agriculturally and commercially, under members of churches, etc. Now we ask an energetic government, and said that our friend to bear in mind, first, that the railroad now building from Joppa Mr. Liggins's estimates, published in to Jerusalem, if extended to Damascus, 1888, were probably taken from reports Tadmore and down the Euphrates, can- made in 1887, and covering the year not fail to become an international high- from 1876-77. These estimates in the way. He said that the poverty of the REVIEW are from the most recent reports Turkish Government gives emphasis to available. But most of all must it be the proposed indemnity by funding a borne in mind that scarce any two portion of the Turkish national debt statisticians proceed on the same printhrough Jewish capitalists, and that only ciple of estimate. A Baptist connts only peaceable diplomatic negotiations are baptized adult believers; an Episcoasked for, to the end that all private palian or Catholic would reckon every ownership of land and property be care. baptized infant; and some high churchfully respected and protected. In clos- men have been Jmown to reckon all the ing, he said that, being on such friendly household of a baptized communicant. terms with Russia, and having no com· plications in the Orient, it is most fitting For years we have been seeking to get not detect the fact that on page 149, some uniform basis for such tables line 17, immorality would read better adopted, but in vain. If we could have for another" t". If any reader thinks uniform forms for such tables, no errors that proof.reading is a sinecure he or contradictions would seriously occur. should try it. For example, if we could have a column for baptized adults, one for baptized in- By some strange oversight in the brief fants. etc., one for adherents, etc., we article on "Missionary Training might prevent confusion. As it is now, Schools," page 300, Vol. III. of thid our only way is either to discard figures REVIEW, no mention is made of the Interentirely, or else publish such as we can national Medical Missionary Society and get, and ask our readers to take them Training Institute, at No. 118 East fortyfor what they are worth as approxi. fifth Street, New York. This institu· mates. We say this once for aU. tion was founded in 1881 and incor- porated in 1886, its objects being, "to Another esteemed correspondent heal the sick and preach the Gospel in thinks the word" boasts," on page 205, New York and other cities, and train March issue, a "venomous word to young men and women to go abroad as thrust at a bishop." The editor will medical missionaries." The medical only say no such indignity was intend· director and founder of the institute is ed. The word was used in a mild sense, Dr. George D. Dowkontt, a devoted misof a perfectly lawful exultation at a very sionary and able manager. creditable increase. This word has a legitimate use. Camp. Psalm xliv., 8. Seven dispensaries have been estab- lished-6 in New York and 1 in Brook. In his annual report of the Congrega. lyn, and upward of 25,000 cases of distional Union's work, Secretary Cobb ease have been treated. suggested, and Dr. Taylor advocated. for promoting the progress of mission. In 1889, 59 students, 12 of whom were ary enterprise: (1) a clear presentation, ladies, were received; and missionaries at least once a year, in every pulpit, of from this training I>chool are working in the work of the various departments India, China, and Africa. of Christian service in the light of the latest facts; (2) the adoption by every At the time of writing the artiC'le, we church of a plan by which offerings of had in mind general training schools, money shall be made, precisely the same and not medical. Hence the inadvert· as offerings of prayer and praise, to ence. carryon the work of the on.coming kingdom of God; (3) a greatly awakened A writer in the Christian suggests that apprehension of the fact that evangeliz. a good service could be rendered by ing work is rapidly growing, so that mllny Christians if they would write let· funds which sufficed twenty.five, or ters to missionaries in foreign lands. even ten, years ago can by no PORS;- There are many who can write a few bility do the work demanded to.day. simple sympathizing lines that would cheer lonely hearts, but perhaps could Our correction in the February num· not otherwise do much for the Master. ber, page 142, needS correcting. The There are also many earnest believers line misplaced on page 51 of the Janu· whose interests would be widened if ary number belongs on page 50. And they were to write to missionaries in in the February number, page 83, line different fields, for wherever their let- 12, Siberia, should, of course, read Libe· ters go their hearts would go thereafter. ria; and even Dr. Gracey's eagle eye did In most cases such letters will be an· swered, and thus new and holy bonds would bind together the hearts of the writer and the lonely workers in far· away fields.
THE MONTHLY CONCERT OF MISSIONS
IV.-THE MONTHLY CONCERT OF MISSIONS.
BY REV. J. T. GRACEY, D.D.
-Asia is the most populous of con- ism, in the strict SQnse of the word, they tinents. But its population is un- say is, what may be called a cellular sysequally distributed. Taking the whole tem of society, where the cells are built area of Europe, it has a denser popula- up separately, and kept from all possition proportionately than Asia has. It bility of coalescing by an elaborate sysaverages 90 to the square mile, while tem of boycotting in food and in mar- Asia averages only 46. riage. And this has given rise to a hab- it of thought which is the deadliest foe But four countries of Asia-India, to Christian aggressive work. The one Java, China, and Japan-with five- sin which the caste Hindu regards as sixths of the total area have double the unpardonable is to think and act for population of Europe. himself. Individual responsibility, one of the most important elements in Chris- INDIA- BRAHMANISM. tian morality, is the one great sin to the caste Hindu. The individual is noth- The population of India is roughly ing, the caste is everything. If the classified as : (1) Hindus, (2) Aboriginal caste Hindu is to accept a new faith, tribes, (3) Mohammedans, (4) Miscella- then the probability is that he will come neous sects-Buddhists or Jains, Parsis, to it by a movement of masses and not Sikhs. The first two are estimated of individuals_ at 206,000,000, the Mohammedans at ronndly 50,000,000, and the miscellane- This finds at this moment an emphatous at 6,000,000. In counting the Hin- ic illustration in North India, among dus and Aboriginal tIibes together, we the Methodist missions. A great movedo not mean to say that Gonds, Rhonds, ment among certain low-caste peoples Santals, and the Hill tribes are Hindus. has taken place by which the communi- Many of them are so counted, but per- ty, as such, is turning to Christianity; haps 20,000,000 of them, at a low esti- and 5000 were baptized last year, and mate, are not even Hinduized, and pos- perhaps as many more were ready to be sibly 50,000,000 of them must not be baptized, but the missionaries preferred counted as Hindus. they should wait for further inRtruction and testing; yet they will, notwithstand- Of the 186,OOO,000-if we reckon it so ing this repression, baptize at least 5000 high-of the Hindu community, a large more this year, and have at least 10,000 number are out.castes by the system, eagerly awaiting baptism. It is a moveor are very low·caste people. These, ment much like that in Ongole among strictly speaking, are religiously with- the Baptists, and in NellorEl also. out privileges and socially without standing, separated necessarily and In the Deccan, this Scotch delegation eternally from the body politic of the thinks, the family feeling is stronger four castes which constitute the Hindu than the caste feeling in the depressed community. classes, and they think that there, the aggression will be along the family line. Professor Lindsay and Rev. J. F. Dr. Sheshadri's success is based on the Daly, deputized last year to visit the family as an indirect agency in the prop. Free Church missions in India, report- agation of the Gospel. It is confessed ed that caste Hinduism includes all man- that the mission does not show the sa~ne ner of religions in our Western sense of proportion of results in conversion the word, varying from a refined theos- among the strictly caste Hindus, but it ophy down to what is little better than is certain that, through mission and govrude fetich worship, and has no com- ernment schools, and other contact with mon creed, although beneath all there Western civilization-in society, letters, lies. a curious pantheism which is the one common religious basis. Hinducommerce, and laws-caste Hinduism is community, . which challenges fresh being seriously undermined and greatly effort on the part of the Christian modified.* Church; for it shows that, after all the European scholarship has disclosed to advance of the Christian community in these Hindus their own original scrip. India, there were more heathen in India tures, now overlaid with the debris of at the end of the decade than at its be- Iustful and foolish idolatry and fetich- ginning. Itmustnot be a source of dis.
ism; anu. whole segments of this commu.i couragement, however, for the Christian nityare breaking from the strict social community in India was shown to have order and organizing at a sort of half.way increased at nearly double the ratio of house between Hinduism and Chris- the non-Christian population. Then we tianity, while individuals in large num- must not overlook t.he fact that Brah- bers have swung to a stage of infidelity manism has been deteriorating for a in all religion. India to·day is not thousand years. It has died at the top.
the India of even fifty years ago. The It has been struck in the head; as a re- British Government steadily urges a ligious sYRtem it has been brained. It European standard of morals on the has added nothing to its philosophy for community. The pressure brought to centuries, nor to its aggregate of re- bear on them just now on the family and ligious force. If because of its exten- marriage life is in illustration, by which sion among depressed masses it has the" age of consent" has been raised found geographical or communal ex- to ten years. Gross abuses forced the tension, it has yet seriously declined in government to this action; but what us its purity. If there are more Brahmans, feel more hopeful is that the public there is less Brahmanism. It has even sentiment of the native community has been compelled to take a back seat on been elevated so far as to fortify the gov- the school forms, while European schol- ernment in this action. This gives en- ars should teach it what its sacred books couragement to hope that the govern- say it is. It is a learner and not a ment may be induced to press the mar- teacher of its own literature.
riage laws of India in the near future A preacher of the Brahmo Somaj is yet nearer to a standard becoming a reported as saying in a sermon : Christian nation. But in considering the " Men's minds have become restless. contact of Christianity with Brahman- Their minds now are filled with doubts ism, high caste or low caste, it is always regarding those things which formerly well to bear in mind that it is an absolutely local religion. It is confined to commanded respect. . . . A great flood the soil; crossing certain geographical has come and swept over the face of the boundaries, a caste Hindu loses his caste. Caste HindJlism, therefore, can have coun'try, carrying away the roofs of the no geographical extension. It is also edifices of past creeds and customs. confined within blood boundaries. It Drowning men, in their despair, are catching at whatever they find nearest their hands. They are finding it diffi- cult to obtain peace of mind."
can only be propagated along race lines. The New Light, an organ of the Brahmo The only possible increase, therefore, of Somaj, has the following: the Brahman community is as the " Christ Jesus … is as much necessary birth.rate exceeds the death.rate. If in this age and in India as He was 1800 the census can be relied on, Hinduism years ago in Judrea. As sinful children (not Brahmanism) increased in the re- of men, we, the people of India, are as cent decade six per cent. This marks a much in need of the Living Son of the great aggregate increase if a heathen Living God as the people of Judrea were in days gone by."
• The part of this official report of the Free But let us not overestimate the utter- Church of Scotland delegates to India, which an~es of the more intelligent classes. we have followed, would make a very excellent Below them is still the vast horde who tract. eat. drink, and are given in marriage, The extensive influence of the San- caring only how to plough, and reap, and skrit language on the Javanese is in evi- trade, and keep from starvation, not able dence of long intercourse. Every to read, not caring what the brains of language of the Eastern Archipelago will India are occupied about at all. Only be found to have engrafted upon it a 11,000,000 out of a total of 250,000,000 quantity of Sanskrit proportionate to the can read. extent of its own cultivation. The Kavi, / Mission work was never more neces- a language of Java, is chiefly SanskTit. sary, never so vast, so intelligent, so co- One sixth of the Malay language is San- operative, so compacted, so jealous of the skrit. The Mohammedans came in 1478, efficiency of its own methods, so intro- and Arabs and MaJays drove out every spective as now. The ratio of conver- description of Hindus, even a sect of sions steadily advances as weil as the Sivaites, who attempted to propagate ratio of the Christian community rela- their peculiar worship. tive to other portions of the population. Bishop Thoburn is authority for the Islam, so modified as to form almost statement that the largest missionary a distinct religion known as Javanism, conference in the world meets monthly remains the religion of the Javanese in Calcutta. race, and is reported to have rapidly ex· tended. The Sundas, who occupy the The next Decennial Conference of the west end, are less civilized than the Jav. ruissionaries will be held in 1892, and anese, who occupy the rest of the island. we have no doubt the summary of re- Politically the country is divided into sults will be greatly uplifting. 24 governorships. It has the electrio telegraph and two railroads. JA.VA.. Missionary work on this island as Java is about equal in size to one a:c.d nearly records a failure as in any part one-third of Great Britain, and count- of the globe. The Christianity of the ing little Madura, in its bosom, with Netherlands has had this eighteen or less than one·fifteenth of the area of the twenty millions of people within touch whole Eastern Archipelago, it has more for two centuries and a half, and enrolls than half the population of the group; not perhaps more than 4000 Christians. and its population is rapidly increasing. The Netherlands Missionary Society has It is the third in size, but first in trade labored here. The Dutch Missionary of the group. It is the granary of the Society commenced work among the archipelago. It is the most noted, too, 4,000,000 of Sundanese in Western Java for its ruins. Brambaban abounds with in 1863. It has schools and perhaps stupendous relics of Indian origin, the nearly 1000 in its congregations. It hilS remains of an extensi ve and splendid translated the entire Scriptures into city, while prodigious monuments of an- Sundanese. The Dutch Reformed Mis- cient Hindus appear in every direction. sionary Society labors in Central Java. The finest Sii ecimens of Buddhist stat- It reports a remarkable movement in ues in the world are in Java. Boro the last two or three years among the Buddha is the most magnificent relic of populations ruled by Moslem Sultans, Buddhism remaining in any country. notwithstanding that no missionary can Three hundred Buddhist images are preach without a government license, here. Buddhism was the prevailing re- and that license restricts him to one po· lision of the ancient Javanese. Civili- litical division. Over one thousand zation spread from West to East in the souls were reported converted in one Indian Archipelago. district where permission to preach hIlS beE'n persistently refused, and no min. The Javanese trace their origin to In- ister allowed to administer the sacra· dia. Probably commercial intercourse ments. The Mennonite Society, or- existed between the Coromandel coast g,an"iz._ed–in. 1849, made Java its first neld and Java from time immemorial. but it reported not more than 133 adhe- tered the field in 1813, by the ap- rents in 1889. pointment of four missionaries. This Board has given great attention to the (lEYLON. establishment of a well-ordered educa- tional system. They have had encour- Ceylon, the natives say, is the" Seat aging results in the way of self-support. of Paradise." Its 3,000,000 of people They now enroll 1477 communicants, are crowded about 118 to a square mile. and number 3116 adherents and 328 na- It is about two_sevenths the size of Great tive workers. The contributions of the Britain. It is called the "adopted native church last year amounted to country of the persecuted Buddhists." $4878. Singhalese and Tamils are the two principal races of the island. These are The Wesleyan Missionary Society endifferent from each other not only in tered Ceylon in 1814. The story of Dr. language and religion, but in vigor, in- Coke dying on the way to found this telligence, and personal characteristics. mission is a familiar one. The Church of England Missionary Society entered The Tamil is industrious and enter- in 1818, and the S. P. G. in 1838. prising, while the Singhalese is just the opposite. The HindUIsm of the Tamils In a large public square in the northdiffers but little from Hinduism in South ern part of Calcutta missionaries preach India. They are mostly devil-worship- every Sunday afternoon to large and repers, and devil trees and temples are spectful audiences. Recently a man common. The Buddhist Singhalese, like appeared in the audience interrupting their Tamil neighbors, have retained the preacher. He was remonstrated many of the lower forms of superstition. with, but continued his impertinent questions. Suddenly a native police- Ceylon has been mission ground for man arrested him, though he called nearly four hundred years, and has been loudly on the Hindus to rescue him; made the victim of some of the most re- and he was taken to the police station markable experiments in Christianiza- where, before the magistrates, he con- Hon that the world can anywhere show. fessed that he was a paid agent of the Its missionary history may be divided Madras Hindu Propagation Society, sent into three epochs, corresponding to the to Calcutta to put a stop to street governments which held it : the Portu- preaching! This illustrates the tactics guese, the .f)utch, and the English. now being pursued in India. When the Portuguese held most of the island, the Roman Catholics, in the be- Dr. W. A. P. Martin, in the librum, ginning of the sixteenth century, sought contradicts the impression that China to introduce Christianity, but it was lit- will menace the world's peace. Chinese tle less than paganism itself. The traditions are opposed to war. Defence, Dutch, in 1556, made the great blunder not conquest, is the aim of her military of seeking to turn the natives from Ro- organization. Internal improvements manism to L)ltheranism, by offering are progressing. To meet the needs of government offices only to such as were commerce, the rich coal-fields of the baptized in the national church. They Empire are being developed. These banished the priests, Catholic rites were mines are connected with the sea by a forbidden on pain of death, and the railway. Soon other railroads will be people were commanded to become built. China, Dr. Martin says, will Protestants. The 30,000 Christians soon mine her own iron and produce which they soon reckoned were of little her own steel rails. She is mining for worth, and there is only a feeble rem-. silvel.' and gold, and is prospecting for nant of them to be found. petroleum.
The English Baptists came in 1812. They number now about 1000 communicants. The American Board en-
GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE
V.-GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE.
-The North Afrjca Mission has in lem are in protracted unhappy friction.
all 58 missionaries engaged in its field Complaint is made by the Society that of operations, embracing Morocco, Al- the bishop'S late charge, instead of geria, Tunis, Tripoli, and North Arabia. being primarily addressed to his clergy, -·Last year the Foreign Mission Fund was evidently intended for English of the English ;Presbyterian Church High Church friends. More deplorclosed with a debt of £3100. able, it magnifies "points of external service and ceremony," to the exclu- Italy-Evangelical Alliance.- The sion of the truths of the Gospel of president of the Roman branch of the Christ. Other charges ar~ made which Alliance had the honor of a private audi- mark strained relations. As the Society ence with King Humbert, before whom provides a large proportion of the bish- were laid the arrangements for the ap- op's salary, some change is inevitable. proaching international conference at Bishop Blyth decla.res that he will not Florence. He expressed his cordial in- resign. terest in the meeting, and hoped that the Alliance would ~e warmly greeted Archdeacon Maples. – Rev. James by the Italians. The subjects for dis- Johnston has recently, in Manchester, cussion comprise" Religious Thought listened to this nobly devoted worker, in Italy," "Florence and the Reforma- identified with the Lake Nyassa branch tion," "The True Unity of the Chris- of the Universities' Mission, over which tian Church," "The Divine Authority Bishop Smythies presides. The archof Holy Scripture," "The Relation of deacon belongs to a family of eminent the Church to Modern Society," "In- solicitors in London, and was educated ternational Christian Co-operation," at the Charterhouse and University Col- "Christianity and Social Questions," lege, Oxford. Upon taking holy orders, and " Foreign Missions." in 1876, he left for East Central Africa, where he has bravely remained, an inde- India-Salvation Army.-By the fatigable missionary pioneer. He gives toilers continued advance is reported a cheery account of the conquests and throughout Ceylon and the Indian Em- prospects of the Universities' Mission. pire. In 1886 the Army had 15 corps, One of the chief trials which the Uniwith 39 European and 41 native officers, versities' missionaries have to face is the while in 1888 some 56 corps had been irritating effect produced on the nerves established, represented by 166 Euro- by the malarial climate, and the consepean and 102 native officers. The re- quent difficulty of dealing justly and turns for 1890 show 96 corps, 171 Euro- gently with the natives. ~'his may pean and 273 native officers. Out of a partially account for, though not excuse total of 4673 conversions there had been the cruelties practised by secular ex- 263 Europeans, 317 Roman Catholics, plorers in many parts of Africa.
592 native "Christians," and· 3501 East Africa.-A Berlin correspond- "raw heathens saved." In December ent of the London Times telegraphs that last 55 new officers embarked for India, the Central Board of the African Society where some of the Army's social work of German Catholics has granted 25,000 is being attempted. As regards the marks toward the fund for placing a.
position of the Salvation Army in the Wissmann steamer on Lake Victoria, United States, the figures are 86,662 on condition of the success of the enter- members, 40 church buildings, and 287 • prise being otherwise assured, and fur- halls, with sitting accommodation for ther sums, amounting to 75,000 marks, 102,261 persons. for the promotion of missionary enter- -The English Church Missionar,}" prise in various districts of German East Societs and the Bishop of Jerusa- Africa. Although Major VOIl Wissmann, on his return to Berlin, last summer, in and Christian manner," and continues, comparing the work of Catholic and " I shall never forget ODe time, when Protestant missionaries in East Africa, speaking on this subject with his late awarded to the former the palm of much Highness the Maharajah of i Travancore. greater success, his statements were His Highness said the day of rest was stoutly challenged and, in some cases, observed by his Government in the certainly disproved. jails, public offices, etc., but he asked, Would it not be a strange thing if he, English Wesleyan Missionary So· a Hindu prince, had to interfere to ciety.":-The discouraging statements make Christians keep the Sabbath? ' " made in the January issue of the REVIEW The missionary concludes by observing relative to English Wesleyan finances that the question is one which, so far may now be considerably modified. as the obse"ance of the day of rest is With the disappearance of the contro- concerned, "very closely affects Chrisversy on the Society's Indian policy, tian missions." which led to a serious decline in receipts in Great Britain, there is reported at Hindu Child Marriage-" Age of the opening of 1891 a "marked improve· Consent" Bill.-Moderate as the Inment." Fresh sympathy has been awa· dian Government measure is to raise kened. From Tonga good news still ar· the minimum age of a girl capable of conrives. With the return of religious sent,ing from ten to twelve years, it is liberty the native Wesleyan chapel is some advance toward the removal' of a regaining the ground which it lost by shameful abuse in relation to Hindu the recent persecution. child marriages. By the majority of representative subjects in India the bill India.-The eminent Baptist minis· will be deemed inadequate. It was ter, Rev. E. G. Grange, of Bristol, who only a few months ago two thousand has just returned from India, says that Indian women asked that the consenting the style of life in which missionaries age should be fourteen yearli. This live does strike a visitor as being luxu· memorial to the Viceroy was supported rious, but it is inevitable. His general by fifty.five ladies practising medicine impression is that the life is a trying in India. For this step in legislation one, and nothing save the love of God great praise is due to Mr. lblabari, or the love of money would keep a man whose efforts have been of the most in India. self·denying character. He thought that fourteen years might be adopted, Indian Factory Commission.- an opinion similarly held by the medi- Although this commission, at the con. cal profession, and likewise long recogelusion of its sittings in 1890, recom· nized by the Parsee and Brahman commended important amendments touch. munities. The Rajpoots have lately fol· ing the excessive working hours of lowed this examp1e. Fortunately, the women and children, there is a further l'rincipal Hindu reformers are press. call for humane -legislation in such na· ing amendments by which to strengthen tive States as Travancore, where the the rights of parents in withholding Factory Acts have no operation. A their daughters from cohabitation with friend of the writer, the Rev. J. Knowles the husbands they have married as mere (L. M. S.), Travancore, South India, re- children, till they have reached a proper marks that" professedly Christian men age. It is admitted that the Viceroy may and do work women and children has escaped being charged with violating from dawn to dark, with only a short outrageously social custom and ecclesipause of about twenty minutes in the astical tradition. The ultimate developmiddle of the day." Referring to the ment of this measure is scarcely less imneed of intervention, Mr. Knowles says, portant than the virtual abolition of " The only thing I am pleading for is the legal status of Indian slavery in 1843. that things shall be done in a humane Monthly Bulletin. year of 42,124. All the Methodist de- nominations in the United States nUll!- -The Christian Alliance has some ber 54,711 churches, 31,765 Dnnisters, suggestive words on taking secondary and 4,980,240 communicants. places in service for Christ. We must learn to help as well as lead, if we would -The Deaconess movement is spread- be used of God. It is a great thing to ing. In connection with the Baptist be wiIIing to be second, or third, or Forward Movement, a new Deaconesses' fourth, or hundredth, if need be. Paul Home was recently opened in London. went out second, but God soon reversed Ladies will be trained in nursing and the order, and so it reads now, " Paul other work among the poor, and will be and Barnabas," not" Barnabas and placed under the direction of such Saul." Andrew Milne was refused as churches as may desire t.heir aid. missionary, and then offered to go as a servant. Be blacked Robert Morrison's -The Rev. G. W. Morrison, of the shoes, and did a servant's work for a American U. P. India. mission, may be time, bnt became at length one of the compelled to return to this country this greatest missionaries of the world. spring to bring his motherless babe.
-There are in the United States, -The Rev. J. Kruidenier, of the Canada, England and Scotland, 34 American U. P. Egyptian Mission, who women's missionary societies, and they has been laid aside for :five months with have 1397 missionaries in the field. critical illness, has recovered, and has resumed his work at Assiout. -The work of telegraph building in South Africa has pushed far ahead of -The Rev. Dr. Lansing, of the railroad enterprise. A line now reaches American U. P. Egyptian Mission, is the new capital of King Khama, 1700 slowly recovering his health, and is bemiles in an air line northeast of Cape ginning to take some part in public ser- Town. Savage Africa will thus be vices. Be is at La Grange, Mo. joined with civilization by electric wires. Two hundred and sixty wagons, -Dr. Pentecost reports the outlook each drawn by from ten to twelve yoke for India most hopeful. The older misof oxen, have taken their way northward sionaries are .full of expectation. Imloaded with nothing but telegraph wires. portant conversions are occuring at all No recent enterprises of the sort surpass the stations. Be emphasizes the fact, in magnitude, or in the energy with however, that the mission field is sadly which they are being pressed forward, undermanned. Be appeals to all Christhese railroad and telegraph projects, tians in America for special prayer for now far advanced in South Africa. India, for the outpouring of the Spirit upon the workers and on the people. -It is said there are about thirty Be pleads also for increased gifts to the thousand children of school age in Chi- mission boards. "Let our men of cago who are not in school, and not at wealth double their SUbscriptions, work. This means that, in most cases, and let one hundred of our very best they are on the street. Verily, there is young men offer themselves. It is need of Gospel work very near home. absolutely of no use to send second- class men· to India. _ . .. Do not -The Methodist Year BooTe for 1891 believe the report of the unbelieving gives many interesting facts. The spies. God is able to give us the land." Methodist Episcopal Church in this Dr. Pentecost presided lately, at the country has a membership of 2,283,154, Town Hall of Calcutta, at the annnal a net gain of 46.691 over last year. The prize distribution of the boys' and the den()mination is serv~d by 14,792 min- girls' schools of that city, and Mrs. isters. It has 2,264,832 Sabbath·school Pentecost gave away the prizes. Dr. scholars, an increase over the previous Pentecost's work among the Englisheducated Bengalis is declared by the home with ruined habits. The Rev. Indian Witness to have been attended Eugene Dunlap, for many years con- with much blessing. One address, at nected with the American Presbyterian Duff College, made a profound impres- Mission at Siam, is making the arrange- sion. Young Bengalis present have ments, Up to the present time only since signed a solemn covenant to take four young men from Siam have been Christ as their Saviour, declaring they educated here. One. is now in the will make a public profession soon. Auburn Theological Seminary. " 'rhe feeling prevails among all classes who know the facts," says the Witness, -October 2d, 1792, the Baptist Mis- " that we are on the eve of a mighty sionary Society waa organized, the first work among this class, who have so long society in the world organized exclusivestood at the very threshold of a Chris· ly for sending the Gospel to the heath- tian life." It is a notable fact that thA en. The first offerings amounted to Englishman, the leading daily paper of about $66. Now there are 223 evangel- Calcutta, gave a sympathetic as w,ell as ical missionary societies, 5594 foreign elaborate account of Dr. Pentecost at missionaries (over 3000 of whom are orthe outset of his mission. It ascribes dained ministers), 33,543 native helpers, much of his success to his striking per- 681,503 native communicants, and in sonality and manner. 1890 the contributions reached $11,42::1,- 58.8. -From Tahiti and the adjacent islands a band of not less than 160 -There are several excellent training evangelists have gone forth, carrying the schools for nnrses in Japan. One of message of salvation to other benighted these is under the direction of a lajy tribes, and yet less than a century ago who left the superintendency of a Bosthe ancestors of these evangelists were ton hospital for her laborious post in lying in the grossest darkness and su- Kyoto. Another school in Tokyo is perstition. raising money for a building. Its man- agers consist of both American and Jap- -A Young Men's Christian Associa- anese ladies. tion has been established in Jerusalem, and modern methods of reaching the -Recent reports from the Presbytemasses are to be instituted in that his- rian mission in Shantung, China., are of toric city. a most encouraging character. The meeting of Presbytery at Wei Hien -The Rev. Dr. R. Hamill Nassau, a brought together about forty mission_ Presbyterian missionary on the Ogove aries full of enthusiasm, besides a goodly River, West Africa, is preparing to re- number of native preachers_ This Presturn to this country with his motherlells bytery has twenty organized churches on little daughter. Mrs. Nassau died in the its roll, with applications forfour or five wilds of Africa, with no white person new organizations. Four hundred and near except her husband. Dr. Nassau fifty-eight additions to t)le churches expects to reach Philadelphia about the were reported for last year. It is estifirst of May. mated that there are fifteen thousand in- quirers in the different districts. -Arrangements aTe making by the King of Siam to send six young men to -The Young Men's Christian Assothis country to be educated. They are ciation work in India is most encouragto enter Westminster College, at New ing. The number of members on the Wilmington, Pa., an excellent United roll of the Madras Association increased Presbyterian institution. The reason in three months from 85 to 165, 50 of given for bringing them here is that whom are active members. The influsimilar experiments in England have ence of the work is great, first in failed, the young men having returned strengthening and enconraging those I who are Christians, but who are exposed the Britons. They were too lazy and to many temptations, and then also in illiterate, he said, for any good. The reaching those who are not yet Chris- darkeys saw the point. It is a good tians. thing to look at the hole of the pit whence we were dug, especially when -British papers announce the death we are impatient enough to say that the at Newchang, China, of the Rev. J. H. lower races about us cannot be civilized. Fitz Simon8, missionary of the Irish Presbyterian Church. He had been -Leading Hebrews in San Francisco, only three weeks in his chosen field it is said, have dt!cided to raise a fund when called home. of a quarter million dollars for the re- lief of their persecuted brethren in Rus- -It is said that not more than one sia. The plan includes the purchase of eighth of the people of Japan live in a million acres in Mexico on the Pacific cities having more than 10,000 inhabi- coast, which will cost only one dollar tants ; the vast majority are farmers or an acre. This tract will be divided into fishermen. small farms, on which large numbers of these Hebrew exiles, who are mostly -The Evangel, the American Baptist farmers, will live. Colonists are to be mission steamer on the lower Congo, is sent out through the English Society of the first vessel to make the passage from Israelites. All the rabbis and rich the mouth of the river to Matedi in a Hebrews of San Francisco ar(}active supday. porters of the projE!ct.
-There are said to be 11 provinces in -The Shah of Persia, it is said, re- China, with 982 walled cities, in 913 of cently paid a personal visit to the Amerwhich there is no missionary. ican mission home and school in Te- heran. This is the first visit ever paid -The American Baptist Mission on by the Shah to a private foreign resithe Congo has founded a new station on dent, and it is not surprising that it the upper river at Irebo, 375 miles made quite a sensation. His Majesty above Stanley Pool and 750 from the was greatly pleased. sea. -From the report of the Japanese -Two new editions of the Burman Minister of Education it appears that Bible are being printed by the Baptist there are nearly three million pupils in Missionary Union, one in Rangoon and the public schools of the Empire of Jaanother, from reduced plates, in Boston. pan. The cause of education is rapidly advancing. -The American Baptist missionaries on the Upp!'r Congo have made discov- -The Rev. A. W. Thompson, the eries which show that Lakes Mantumba new Presbyterian missionary to Triniand Leopold are connected and form a dad, was recently designated at Dursecondary course for the waters of the ham, Nova Scotia.. Mr. Thompson Congo. The Upper Congo Valley is one leaves with the full confidence and the vast network of lakes and rivers. earnest good wishes of his church.
-There are three mission steamers on -The Rev. John M: Greene, D.D. the waters of the Upper Congo. They now for some years at the head of the convey preachers and teachers to the Presbyterian Missions in Mexico, was various stations on the great river and obliged, some six months since, to decarry supplies when needed. sist from his manifold labors and cares, and return home to recruit his health. -A missionary in South Afriea was We are gl ad to learn that he is now reading Cicero's Orations with his negro again in nearly fnll strength, and expects students. He came upon the passage to return to Mexico at once. where Cicero advised the general to make slaves of all the prisoners except -On November 29th last Dr. Henry ing the high passes of the Himalayas H. Jessup, so long of the Presbyterian and fording dangerous streams. They Syria Mission, had the pleasure of wel- have not seen a European for ten years. coming a son as a recruit to that mis- sion. The Rev. William Jessup and -The Presbyterian Mission in Chili wife arrived that day in Beirut. Mr. has five organized churches as well as Jessup left Syria when a little child in preaching halls in the principal towns 1864, and now returns for the first time. in the country, Evangelists make long Educated in Princeton, he was ordained tours, sowing the Bread of Life. There by the Presbytery of New Brunswick are two schools: an elementary one at last April, married to Miss Faith Jad- Valparaiso, attended by 200 scholars, win, October 15th, and sailed for Syria and a superior institution at Santiago early the following month. He is now with 80 scholars, some of whom have stationed at Zahleh, on the eastern side come from homes in Peru and Bolivia. of Lebanon. A young Spanish pastor, M. Francesco Diez, who studied at Lausanne, has re- -The Rev. Hunter Corbett writ~s to cently settled at Santiago in connection the Presbyterian Banner from China: with the mission. " During a journey of two months in the interior visiting churches, stations -McCormick Seminary has at present and schools, forty persons were redMved 40 young men who expect to enter the into the church on confession of faith, foreign field. They appeared before making ninety-two this year. Three Presbytery lately, and asked permission church.buildings were dedicated. Two to visit the churches to present the work of them are built of stone and the other so dear to their hearts. They hope by of brick. These buildings cost the these meetings to stimulate large lib- ChriRtians no small amount of self- erality, so that when the time comes denial." During this year about five the Board will be able to accept them. hundred members were added to the They received the hearty endorsement churches in the Presbytery and five of the Presbytery. men were ordained to the ministry. -As showing the vitality of the sim- -Cardinal Lavigerie proposes to re- ple old Gospel, a missionary from China claim large regions of the A.frican Sahara says: ., If there is anything which lays by monkish settlements. He is organ- hold of the poor people in that country izing a French Sahara Brotherhood, who it is the simple story of the crucifixion will live as engineering monks, and of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is not the after five years' trial devote themselves morality, or the miracles of the Gosfor life. They will be posted near old pel, or even the wonderful sayings or wells in the Sahara, and will reopen teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ, those wells and start new ones and but the old story of the cross, of the plant fruit far~s to form a series of blood, of the sacrifice, of the satisfacoases in the desert. They will make it tion of Christ in dying for sinners on their special work to gather the scat- the tree, that is the power for good in tered nomads, suppress their slave trade, touching the heart and awakening the and convert them if possible. The conscience … system is to extend itself until vast tracts are fertilized, as was the case in -The anti-rum congress at Khartoum the time of ancient Carthage, seems to have been a vigorous one. It was held at the same time with the anti- -AMoravian missionary and his wife slavery congress in Brussels. Bishop have been laboring for thirty years at a Taylor's magazine says: "While the station in the mountains of Thibet, Christians in Brussels were resolving to with the nearest post-office fourteen • search all vessels and dhows suspected days distant and reached only by cross- of having slaves on board, and to con- fiscate the vessels and return the slaves,' the Arabs were adopting a resolution are also 27 80cieties on the continent of • to surround the entire coast of Africa Europe. As to results, it is said that with a cordon of armed dhows and con- within the past seventy-five years 100,- fiscate every European vessel contain- 000 Jews have been baptized, and that ing liquors, and sell .the crewS into sla- the number of Hebrew Christians with very.' " their children reaches a quarter million. Many of the converts are men of influ- -It is said that for what it costs to ence. fire one shot from one of our largest cannon, a missionary and his family can -The work among the Chinese in be supported over two years in Japan. America has a very important bearing Would we not better spike the cannon on the evangelization of China. The and send the Gospel abroad? number of Chinamen converted in thi's country who go back to extend Gospel -The Woman' B Executive Committee influences in their native land is surpris- of Home Missions of the Presbyterian ingly large. They are valued helpers in Church has for several years prosecuted the stations of both the Presbyterian educational and industrial work for Ind- and AmericllnBoardmissions, and some ian children and youth in schools in of the strongest churches have been New Mexico, Indian Territory, Arizona, founded by Chinamen who have been Nebraska, Iowa, and Wisconsin, with converted while living in California. In gratifying results. There are now un- four or five cities natives who are either der the care of this band of Christian now residents of the United States, or women thirty-two schools, where chil- who have sojourned there, are provid- dren are thoroughly instructed in gos- ing the funds for evangelistic enter- pel truth, and through the influence of prises. There is said to be less opposi- which many savage homes have been tion to the Gospel in those sections from transformed. Chapels have also been which there has been emigration to built, and the precious seed of living America. These facts should urge us to truth scattered broadcast. greater activity in behalf of the Ori- entals now among us. -A Methodist medical missionary in India makes a strong plea for a prelim_ -Here is a pleasant item from Glas- inary service in the home field for those gow, Scotland': "Mr. Quarrier was vis- who go abroad, Such experience would ited the other day by friends from the not only be a test of their qualification, West Coast, who laid on his table £2000 but would also be educational, prepar- in bank-notes, saying they wished to ing them for wiser and more efficient build a house for the orphans in mem- service when they enter the foreign field. ory of a beloved husband and father. They were most anxious that no name, -Dr. Tucker, who succeeds the heroic not even initials, should be published. Bishop Hannington in Equatorial They refused to take a receipt, saying Africa, under the appointment of the to Mr. Quarrier, "You have got the Church Missionary Society, found his money, and that is enough." journey to his post at Uganda one of great peril. But for the opportune help -It is not pleasant to read in the of German soldiers the missionary would Christian World that ., Black Mass" was , have shared Bishop Hannington's sad celebrated in 250 Anglican churches on fate. All Souls' Day. Prayers for the dead were offered, and the altars were drapeu -It is usually supposed that mission in black. Straws show which way the work among the Jews does not yield wind blows, and when 250 of them blow sufficient results to encourage its con· in the same direction it is not difficult tinuance. But our friends in Europe to decide the tendency of the prevailing do not appear to share this feeling. breeze. Other indications of 8 Bomish Great Britain has 14 missionary soci- eties. which employ 312 agents. There tendency are furnished by English Epis. the Roman Catholic, and the Anglican copal clergymen in abundance. Church have missions in Alaska.
-The London City Mission has 300 -Yes, even our aborigines can be Gospel halls in which religious services touched and renewed by divine grace. are held during the week, in many cases To the wildest and worst of them, a livevery night in the year. ing Indian can be a good Indian. For Bishop Hare, who knows whereof he -The American Bible Society has reo writes, exclaims: "Nine Sioux Indians ceived from the National Bible Society nobly working in the sacred ministry! of Scotland a copy of the New Testa. About 40 Sioux Indians helping them as ment translated into Tannese by the licensed catechists. Forty branches of Rev. William Watt. the Woman's Auxiliary among the Sioux Indian women. Seventeen hundred -One consecrated man may set in Sioux Indian communicants! Sioux motion great influences for good. Sir Indians contributing nearly $3000 an- Keith Falconer founded a mission at nually for religious purposes! But Aden, in Arabia, and with his last what impression have all these solemn breath begged that it be not given up. but cheering facts made upon the pub. The Free Church of Scotland has ac. lie mind as compared with the wild cepted it as a legacy, and Professor Lan- antics of the heathen Sioux Indians, sing, of New Brunswick, is preparing which excited the attention and stirred some young men for the mission. Mean- the feelings of the country, and daily while a German, reading the life of occupIed column after column of the leith Falconer, was moved to give newspapers for weeks ?" himself as a missiopary, and proposes to enter upon the work of evangelizing -Woman's work for woman in forthe Bedaween Arabs who dwell around eign lands, which had its beginning Mt. Sinai. So the torch is passed from only about 20 years ago, has been atthe dying to the living, and new con- tended by a marvellous development. secrated men are never wanting to take In all 70 societies are in existence, supthe place of those who fall in the field. porting a force of 1468 missionaries, and gathering and expending last year the Organized Mi.~ona.ry W"ork and Statis- snug sum of $1,692,963. Of these so- tics. Edited by Rev. D. L. Leonard, cieties 34 are found in the United States, Bellevue, O. 10 in Canada, 24 in Great Britain, and one each on the Continent and in South -England has 8 Jewish missionaries; Africa. The American societies alone Scotland: has 5 ; Ireland 1 ; and these sustai~ 926 missionaries, and raised organizations in all employ 312 agents. $1,087,568 last year, or almost three- There are 27 societies upon the Conti. fifths ~f the entire amount. nent, and in the United States 7, with 34 in their employ. The total of organ_ -In connection with the Day of izations designed especially to carry the Prayer for Colleges, statistics appeared Gospel to the Jews is 48, and their mis- of an interesting and important charsionaries number 377. acter from 24 colleges having" substaJ;l. tial relations with the Presbyterian -According to Dr. Sheldon Jackson, Church." These figures throw welthe Presbyterian Church now has 7 mis- come light upon one or two weighty sions and 4 churches, with from 70 to questions. Omitting the colleges for 80 communicants each in Alaska. The women only, and including only the church in Sitka has 360 communicants. students in institutions for men, or Besides the Presbyterian Church, the those where co-education exists, it ap- Moravian, the Protestant Episcopal, the pears that 82 per cent of the attendants Methodist Episcopal, Congregationalist are church members in the college classes proper, or 61 per cent if pre- the women 28. The visits made aggre_ paratory students are included. And of gated 22,766. They conducted 2946 the 1509 students, 361 are reported as church, cottage, and mission meetings, "meaning to be ministers." Making 549 children's meetings, 235 tent meetall due allowance for women found in ings, and taught 2163 Sunday-school the mixed colleges, the conclusion is that classes. The number of visits made to not less than one in three has the minis- saloons was 1932, and the number of try in view. inquirers professing conversion was 2729. It is evident from these figures -The educatiox{al work of the vari- that while a large proportion of time is ous societies is always to be borne in zealously devoted to Bible study and mind as only second in importance to attendance upon lectures, attention to the direct preaching of the Gospel in " applied Christianity" is by no means pagan lands. And the aggregate of neglected. In vocal classes 448 were schools of all grades, and of pupils as taught, while 74 received private inwell, is cheeringly large. Thus the strnction for the voice, and 91 received London society alone supports no less private instrumental lessons. than 1615, with 105,980 in attendance_ The Church Missionary Society has -No friend of missions can watch 1796 schools with 75,581 scholars, and that unparalleled movement known as the American Board 1025, with 47,319. the Partition of Africa, without wonder- The Methodist Church, North, is edu- ing what is to be the effect upon the cating 30,049 in foreign lands; the Pres- well-being of the 200,00,0,000 that inbyterian Board, North, 23,935, and the habit the vast spaces of the Dark Con- Baptist Missionary Union, 20,615. The tinent, or without hoping that it will be schools sU'ltained by the various Ameri- blessed in almost. every particular. can societies contain almost 175,000 Eight European nations ~re concerned pupils, and the 12,000 Protestant mis- in the colossal affair, if we count the sion schools are training to Christian Congo Free State with its 1,000,000 intelligence an aggregate of not much square miles, as Belgium'S share in the less than 600,000 children and youth. " deal." France easily leads in the ex- tent of her acquisitions, having her hand -The first annual report is out of upon Algeria, the Sahara country, and Mr. Moody's Bible Institute for Home other regions farther south, or a total and Foreign Missions (and Chicago of 2,300,000 square miles. Though, if Evangelization Society), and will be a to Great Britain's 1,910,000 in South surprise to many. Three departments and Central Africa we add her most exhave been in operation during the year, cellent prospects in Egypt and the Souone for men, one for women, and one dan, and the superior soil and climate for instruction in music; and the num- of her possessions, then her share is ber of persons enrolled in them is most valuable by far. Germany, just at 173, 80, and 578 respectively-in the present, is content with 1,035,00,0 square two first named 253, or a total of 831 miles, Portugal with 775,000" Italy with students. Upward of 20 denominations 360,,000, and great expectations as touchwere represented in the attendance, ing Tripoli, while Spain brings up the and more than 3.1> States of the Union. rear with the trifle of 210,000. Upon Sixteen came from England, 15 from the entire continent-some 50,0,0, by 50,00 Canada,· 9 from Sweden, 4 from Ire- miles in extent-are found some 12,00,0,- land, 4 from Germany, 3 from Norway, 000 square miles, of which only 2,500,- 2 from Turkey, and 1 each from Russia, 000 remai!l unassigned. It can scarcely Bohemia, and Finland. They came be but that roads, the locomotive, and from 51 secular occupations, and 41 stable government will Boon follow; and were ministers or evangelists. The so let the Lord's people make haste to average age of the men was 30, and of go up to possess the land for Him.