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A MORNING SESSION AT THE MEN'S MISSIONARY CONVENTION, PHILADELPHIA
The cMtsstonary cRevieHi) of the World
Vol. XXXI. No. 4
Old Series
APRIL, 1908
Vol. XXI. No. 4
Neiv Series
Published by Funk & Wagnalls Company, 44-60 E. 23d St., N.Y. Isaac K. Funk, Pres., A. W. Wagnalls, Vice-Pies, and Treas., Robt. Scott, Sec'y
SIGNS OF THE TIMES
THE WORLD OUTLOOK
A witness of high character, after three years of travel over four conti- nents and the isles of the sea, recently told the committee of the Church Mis- sionary Society in London, that he had a conviction, ineradicable, that the world is peculiarly ripe for the Gos- pel. The laborers, notwithstanding fewness, and scattered as they are, everywhere rejoice in present success and expect greater things. Peoples, a generation ago, careless if not dis- dainful, respond to evangelistic ef- forts ; and over extensive areas antip- athy and apathy are giving way to sympathy. A new spirit pervades the Orient, with its half of the world's population. There is a new inquiry as to facts, a probing of causes, a concert of remedial efforts. It is, he says, like the awakening of giants from long sleep and torpor.
Mr. John R. Mott, who has been mainly occupied in world-wide travel for a decade of years, gives fully as striking testimony in the same direc- tion.
SPIRITUAL FORCES IN INDIA
.Much more than is generally im- agined is being done for the spiri- tual benefit of the Hindu races, by devoted Christian civilians. A large number of noble men and women be- longing to the official and commercial
classes, have gone to India to spend their lives there, and have been as in- tensely earnest and impassioned in the propagation of the Christian faith as any missionaries could be. It is an error, says Dr. William Durban, to suppose that few outside the mission- ary section set a Christian example to the natives of India or engage in Christian work. Many of the officers of the British army in India are con- sistent and saintly men, and their wives are shining lights for Christ. One of the most enthusiastic advo- cates of Christianity now in India is Sir Andrew Fraser, Lieutenant-Gov- ernor of Bengal, who never neglects an opportunity for exercising his per- sonal influence or for doing actual re- ligious work. He is president of the India Sunday-school Union, and last summer he presided at the opening session of the Darjiling Christian Conference. When he was visiting Bankipore, the civil station of Patna, on one of his official tours, he preached at the ordinary native Chris- tian services, at the Baptist chapel. There can not be any doubt that Christianity will continue its forward march in India, until, in the not dis- tant future, it will hold the field with dominating spiritual power.
Dr. Durban continues : "Only Christian faith can hold the balance in
242
THE MISSIONARY ^REVIEW OF THE WORLD [April
India between the absolutely antago- nistic cults of Brahmanists, Moslems, Jains, and Parsees. India is a land of perpetual religious discords. Even the Moslems are not unified in that country, as some persons fancy who have made no study of the conditions. Recentl on the occasion of the Mu- harram celebration a fatal riot oc- curred, arising out of a dispute be- tween the Sunni and Shiah sections of Mohammedans in Bombay. Five persons were killed and forty serious- ly injured. Among the latter were a Parsee and a Hindu who were merely spectators. When the Christian re- ligion wins India it may not, of course, present a spectacle of abso- lute unity, but at any rate murderous fanaticism will be eliminated and the spirit of peace and charity will be un- derstood.
INDIA COMING TO CHRIST India is a great country with four times the population of the United States and more being born every day by natural birth than by spiritual birth and yet there are many encouraging signs that India is awakening* to a sense of her need of Christ. It is the Christian Church at home that is holding back. Some of the signs of progress are :
1. Modern Protestant Missions in India were reborn with the new India which followed the Mutiny. In the year 185 1 there were 15,000 Protes- tant Christians in all India. In 1890 there were 648,843. The census re- turns for 1900 show 978,936. These figures furnish ground for hope, reso- lution and thanksgiving.
2. Missionaries worked among the Telugus thirty years to win twenty- five converts ; they then baptized 2,222 converts in one day, and 8,691 in six
weeks. There are now 50,000 Telugu Christians.
3. To-day a hundred thousand na- tives in India are ready to cast away their idols and profess Christ, if there were teachers ready who could give them Christian training.
4. The position occupied by those who come out as followers of Jesus Christ marks another advance. Years ago they were despised as the off- scouring of the earth ; to-day in many places they enjoy the confidence of their neighbors.
5. Education for women and girls, the coming home-makers of India, is making rapid progress, and is encour- aged by intelligent and wealthy na- tives. Large sums have been given to medical education for women.
6. The record of medical and mis- sionary work in the past twenty-five years is marvelous.
7. Every hospital and dispensary, every visit of a physician, and every prescription given is an object-lesson of the power and influence of Chris- tian love. An Indian paper comment- ing on a successful operation per- formed by a woman physician, said : "The age of miracles is not passed, for Jesus Christ is still working miracles through women physicians."
8. Missionary work among the Moslems in India seems hopeful. The immobility of Islam, has sustained many a shock from which it is trying vainly to recover.
9. The number of converts from Islam is an earnest of the great work which lies before Christian mission- aries, and a proof of the way in which God has owned what has already .been done.
10. There is a remarkable decay of superstitious rites and practises. The
SIGNS OF THE TIMES
243
widow no more burns on the funeral pyre of her husband ; and the children are no more flung into the Ganges by superstitious mothers. The Rajputs, who were formerly the chief sinners in the practise of female infanticide, are now working in ( )udh, for its banishment.
II. A society has recently been formed in India for the protection of children. This is destined to exert a great influence over the present and future life and character of India. It aims to prevent the public and private wrongs of children and the corruption of their morals, and to take action for the making and enforcing of laws for their protection.
ANOTHER WITNESS TO KOREA Just now this former Hermit na- tion is the cynosure of all eyes. Pro- fessor Harlan P. Beach, of Yale Uni- versity, who has been traveling through the Orient, says he has seen no such sights anywhere as in Korea. "When it comes to eagerness for Christian learning, Koreans again ap- pear in the van, eclipsing apparently the Christians of Uganda. One con- stantly hears of conferences, normal institutes, inquirers' classes, etc., which would drive American pastors distracted. Yet the people are hun- gry for them all, and it is the only way in which the small force can be- gin to overtake their work. If you ask the missionaries how they keep out of the grave or insane asylum with all this pressure, they will give you replies of which this is a speci- men : 'We don't keep out of either, as the death-rate and invalid list is ex- ceedingly serious. Yet remember that we do not have to look up work as you do in America ; we do not have to get in the shafts and pull along
a lazy membership, but they pull and inspire us ; success is a perpetual tonic; and God is manifestly with us and we know that I le is in us also.' "
In 1883 a Xew York financier gave his check for $6,000 to start a mis- sion in Korea. In a public meeting recently he announced that it was the best-paying investment he had ever made. Now is the time for Christian men and women to make other paying investments — to lay up treasures in heaven and at the same time to save lives of men and women, children on earth. Two thousand five hundred were baptized in Korea last year. RELIGIOUS TOLERATION IN RUSSIA
Pastor Fetler, the Russian, who recently visited England, belongs to the Baptists of the Baltic Provinces, and had much to say as to the bitter persecutions endured by his family for both political and spiritual rea- sons. Last summer he undertook evangelistic work in Russia, purpos- ing to begin, if possible, in the very heart of the country, making Moscow his headquarters. The success he met with is one of the proofs that in all the darkness of the situation in the Mus- covite dominions there is at least one gleam of light. The edict of religious toleration which was at first regarded with skeptical scorn, appears to have been issued by the Czar with a sin- cere purpose in view. Pastor Fetler is at work under the auspices of the Baptist Pioneer Mission and sends word that he has witnessed since he commenced his mission fully 1,400 conversions, of which 182 were regis- tered recently in a single fortnight. He has gone to St. Petersburg, and is holding Sunday meetings in the palace of the celebrated and devout Princess Lieven.
244
THE MISSIONARY REVIEW OF THE WORLD
[April
THE KONGO SITUATION
It is announced that King Leopold has at last yielded to pressure and his fears of intervention, by England and America and has agreed to turn over to Belgium the control of the Kongo Independent State. The reports of American and British consuls so fully substantiated the charges made against Leopold's administration that the governments of these two civilized nations demanded reform, with a hint that unless something adequate were done in this direction, they would take the matter in their own hands.
According to the agreement be- tween Leopold and the Belgian Gov- ernment, the King turns over the crown domain and crown foundation lands, while Belgium agrees to as- sume Kongo obligations amounting to $21,000,000 and to continue large an- nual payments of revenues which will keep the King himself from dire pov- erty ! To Prince Albert also are to be paid $24,000 a year and $15,000 to the King's daughter, Clementine. The King has also decided to pose as a philanthropist by including in the agreement a special payment by the government of $10,000,000 in fifteen annual payments for the construction of hospitals, schools and other insti- tutions.
It is stated, however, by the Kongo Reform Association, that the terms of annexation are entirely inadequate to correct the abuses. No stipulation is made for the restoration of land or its produce to the natives, or for the reduction of the extortionate labor tax which involves incessant slavery. No provision is made for the abolition of commercial monopolies and the estab- lishment of free trade as provided by the Berlin Act. Other weak points in
the agreement make it doubtful whether this control by Belgium will adequately change the situation of op- pression. The strongest point in its favor is that it will be possible for the British and American Govern- ments to treat directly with Belgium for the correction of evils. Mean- while the conditions in the Kongo State continue practically unimproved.
PROGRESS OF MOHAMMEDANISM IN WEST AFRICA
From the Gold Coast Colony and from Ashantiland come continued reports of the steady progress of Mo- hammedanism. In Nsaba, Gold Coast, the propaganda is so strong that the followers of the False Prophet feel greatly encouraged. One of them, a native fanatic, approached one of the missionaries of the Basel Society and told him, that if he would not ac- knowledge Mohammed, he would be killed within two years and six months. Every follower of Moham- med is eager to fight for him and feels himself high above the heathen negroes, who, he thinks, will soon be punished and destroyed by his God who sent the great earthquake of No- vember, 1906, as a warning for all unbelievers. From some stations in the Gold Coast Colony, come reports that Mohammedans are settling in in- creasing numbers, from others that Mohammedan houses of prayer have been opened. In Ashantiland large settlements of Mohammedans have been opened and, strange to say, these Mohammedans sell amulets and charms to the heathen, while they teach Mohammedanism and state that they serve the same God as the mis- sionaries. It is said that only two Ashanties have accepted Mohamme- danism thus far, but many wear al- ready the Mohammedan garb.
SIGNS OF THE TIMES
245
THE PROGRESS IN THE TRANSVAAL
The Transvaal Colony in South Africa contains a population of more than one million and a half upon its 112,000 square miles. About one million of these are still fetish-wor- shipers, altho the Wesleyan Method- ists of London, the Berlin and Her- mannsburg Societies of Germany, the Mission Romande of Switzerland, and the American Board have been at work there many years. A writer in Dcr Missions-Frcuiid gives an in- teresting account of the progress of the Gospel in the colony. He says : .
The Berlin Missionary Society has been at work in the Transvaal Colony since i860 and employs at present 35 missionaries upon 48 stations. Much work remains to be done there. Espe- cially in Northern Transvaal heathenism still prevails and the sunlight of the Gos- pel battles against the dense fog ascend- ing from the depths of fetish worship. Unbroken heathendom, however, is not to be found in any part of the colony. The times of serious torment or bloody persecutions of native Christians and the missionaries are past. It is well known that the powerful government severely punishes all attacks upon Christian con- gregations and their teachers, and that it now and then interferes energetically with heathen usages. Last year, when the blacks arose in rebellion in Natal, some anxiety prevailed, for had they suc- ceeded, a rebellion would have broken out in the Transvaal also and might have caused great harm and damage. But the rebellion in Natal failed, and the Trans- vaal remained quiet.
The number of native Christians in Northern Transvaal within the sphere of work of the two German societies is estimated at one hundred thou- sand, and that many heathen are still found. In some places these are hard to reach with the Gospel on account of their great indifference toward the
Christian doctrine of sin and the atonement. In other places, and they are in the majority, there is great readiness among these heathen to hear and to believe. Missionary Hoff- mann of Mphome, Northern Trans- vaal, writes :
I made a visit to the mighty heathen underchief Mossuane. The spectacle which I saw, will never be forgotten. The heathen chief and thirty or forty of his heathen subjects were erecting a little church for his people who were desirous of learning. There was great rejoicing among these heathen upon our arrival, for the chief had expected me and begged for a teacher for many months.
These heathen people are thus will- ing to listen to the teaching of the Gospel, and Christ's cause makes rapid progress.
A WORTHY RECOGNITION OF MISSIONS
One of the cheering signs of the times is found in the increasing num- ber of articles on missions in non- religious newspapers and magazines. A striking illustration appears in The World's Work, which contains in re- cent issues articles by Edgar Allen Forbes upon medical and educational missions, with excellent illustrations to add to the impressiveness of the text. Of the second article these are the opening sentences :
"If a man in quest of material for an American exhibit were to sail out of San Francisco Bay with a phono- graph recorder, he would come up on the other side at Sandy Hook with a polyglot collection- of records that would give the people of the United States a new conception of their part in the world's advance toward light. His audience might hear a spelling- class recite in the tuneful Hawaiian tongue or listen to Moros, Tagalogs,
246 THE MISSIONARY RE
and Igorrotes reading from the same McGuffey's Reader. A change of rec- ords might bring the sound of little Japanese reciting geography, or of Chinese repeating tlie multiplication table in a dozen dialects. Another record would tell in quaint Siamese the difference between a transitive and an intransitive verb, or conjugate the verb 'to be' in any one of the lan- guages of India. One might hear a professor from Pennsylvania lecturing on anatomy to a class of young men in the ancient kingdom of Darius ; or a voting" woman from Massachusetts
J o
explaining the mysteries of an eclipse to a group of girls in Constantinople ; or a Princeton man telling in Arabic the relations between a major and a minor premise. Manual - training teachers would recognize the sound of hammer and plane from the head- waters of the Nile and of the Eu- phrates, the ring of an anvil on the southern slopes of the Himalayas, or the hum of a circular saw on the Kongo or the Niger. And when the audience had listened to all this and 'My Country, 'tis of Thee,' in Eskimo and in Spanish, the exhibit of Ameri- can teaching would have only begun."
ASSISTANCE FOR THE IMMIGRANTS
As a people we are coming slowly but steadily to see and perform our duty to the hosts of die foreign-born who are pouring in upon us, both for their sakes and our own. The latest movement relating to this great mat- ter is seen in the recent organization
[EW OF THE WORLD [April
in Boston of the North American Civic League; with such men of high standing in Church and business cir- cles as President Rothwell of the Board of Commerce, Bishop Law- rence and Archbishop O'Connell. The Boston Young Men's Christian Asso- ciation was prominent in the matter. The League will place in the steam- ships, cards and posters in different languages, containing valuable infor- mation. It will act as a clearing-house for all societies engaged in immigra- tion work, discover and guard against the agencies which seek to convert the immigrant into a dangerous citizen, find employment, where possible, for the deserving, direct different races to those sections of the country where they are most likely to become self- supporting, and assist them in reach- ing their destinations. Cooperating with the government officials and pa- triotic societies, the League will try to instruct the immigrants in princi- ples of good government, and to found a corps of foreign-born men of high character who will assist in these various enterprises.
Well does The Congregationalist suggest: "The fact that last year brought to this country more than 1,000,000 immigrants, of whom eight- een per cent, were Protestant, twelve per cent. Hebrew and sixty-six per cent. Roman Catholic, shows the need of a movement to prevent this for- eign invasion from becoming a burden and a menace, and help make it a real blessing to this land."
BOARD OF FOREIGN MISSIONS AND ARABIAN MISSION, R. C A. REPORT OF VISIT TO THE
Church of daiais of ££l&A*i2£„/jZ^/^^£-**3^
by jfH J^Ai^A^&d^fcs Date - & Z.f J>£_
l. The Church. I. Does it have regular Missionary Meetings? 1. How does it collect its missionary offerings ?
Missionr-^*
3 Does It coo tribute to the Arabian M isslon 1
a Is there a Mission study class?.- ^i^ku-U cJL&s*4£>4
IX Th. Sunday School I. Wtoat Mi-^iooary Instruction is gi- en ? V" ca/Nrv'^.
.L#*3y(u^<s«*s£*-f- "Ai e^t^-^*^jf^C- g. What. If any. crlti I offeriogs'roade and to what objects?
.. How are the offeriogs'roa
3. Is there a Missionary Committee?
HL The Young PeopV. Society, I. Does It have Missionary meetings? a. Does It contribute to o
IV. Gea«iL
I. What other organisations give to Porelgo Ia) 6-w*~C4 P^a-ty &&X^JtsL
J. Is the -Own Missionary" or "Own Parish" plan adopted? j What is the supply of Missionary Books ? BS— <J •
4 How largely do our Missionary Periodicals circulate ?
5. Did you Impress the Importance of Missionary I
6. What services were held during this visit >
7. What immediate results apparent? VVVtV*>A*(^'CJ
jtHyytC<h<o.V-t ? nvKjd+yt^m
9. What recommendations have you to make for increasing Interest >
-Jk*flU±J±*^J*d^-V
10. Give names of some leading men in the church :
^vt^^AvVC W ,a£2 ....
Jfc] (g^ac^ft*A^->
— (2L- V^K^h V/isi^trJL. .. .
cu^
Any other remarfca may be written oe the other tide of this 1
AN IDEAL MISSIONARY CHURCH REPORT (Prepared by Dr. S. M. Zwemer for the Christian Intelligencer.)
RELIGIOUS STATISTICS FOR 1907
According to Dr. H. K. Carroll's figures in The Christian Advocate, the gain in Churches in 1907 is more than double that of 1906, but the gain in Churches is nearly 2,000 less and in communicants over 300,000 less than that of the previous year. The Roman Catholic denomination report over 11,000,- 000 members, while Sadlier's Catholic Directory reports the Roman Catholic population as 13,890,353, the number of priests as 15,093, with 8,072 churches and 4,076 missions.
The following table shows the ministers, churches, communicants, and relative gains or decreases (*) :
Denominations
Grand Total in 1907.
Adventists (6 bodies)
Baptists (14 bodies)
Brethren (River) (3 bodies)
Brethren (Plymouth) (4 bodies)
Buddhist (Chinese)
Buddist and Shintoist (Japanese)
Catholics (9 bodies) ,
Catholic Apostolic
Christadelphians
Christian Connection
Christian Catholic (Dowie)
Christian Scientists ,
Christian Union
Church of God (Winebrennarian)
Church of the New Jerusalem
Communistic Societies (6 bodies)
Congregationalists ,
Disciples of Christ
Dunkards (4 bodies)
Evangelical (2 bodies)
Friends (4 bodies)
Friends of the Temple
German Evangelical Protestant
German Evangelical Synod
Jews (2 bodies)
Latter-day Saints (2 bodies) ,
Lutherans (23 bodies) ,
Swedish Evangelical Mission Covenant,
Mennonites (12 bodies)
Methodists (17 bodies) ,
Moravians
Presbyterians (12 bodies)
Protestant Episcopal (2 bodies)
Reformed (3 bodies)
Salvation Army
Schwenkfeldians ,
Social Brethren
Society for Ethical Culture
Spiritualists
Theosophical Society
United Brethren (2 bodies)
Unitarians
Universalists
Independent Congregations ,
SUMMARY FOR 1907
1,569 38,279 173
15,891 95
1,348 104
1,336 201 499 130
5,923 6,673 3,337 1,503 1,466 4 100 974 301 1,952 8,040 355 1,240 41,893 129 12,723 5,197 1,999 4,765 6
17 10
2,168 594 728 54
161,731
Grand total in 1906 1 159,430
2,544 55,294 98 314 47 9
12,731 10 63 1,340 110 668 268 590 144 22 5,941 11,307 1,159 2,666 1,075 4 155 1,262 570 1,328 13,169 351 701 61,518 119 16,478 7,779 2,596 1,016 8 20 5
748 72 4,359 473 910 156
210,199
205,985
3 cn
8 %
o .a
u 8
NET GAINS FOR 1907
99,298 5,224,305 4,239 6,661
11,645,495 1,491 1,277 101,597 40,000 85,096 17,500 41,475 8,200 3,084 699,327 1,285,123 121,705 173,641 122,081 340 20,000 237,321 143,000 398,000 2,022,605 46,000 61,690 6,660,784 17,199 1,821,504 830,659 430,458 28,000 740 913 2,142 150,000 2,607 289,652 71,200 52,621 14,126
32,983,156
32,355,610
4
259
622
10
23 f480 96 48
10
300 168 10
381 *1 18 *61 *45 992 1
45 676
282
18 197 59 25
35
135
1,946
556 212 33 33
10
|
*79 | |
8 |
3,414 |
|
5 | |
9 |
200 |
|
8 | |
*67 |
*3,210 |
2,301 | 4,214
4,201 1,901
It will be interesting to compare these figures with the statistics of mis- sionary work as given in the Missionary Review for January, 1908.
WHAT ARE THE LIMITS OF CHRISTIAN TOLERATION?
EDITORIAL
One of the conspicuous signs of the times is the new attitude of tolerance toward those who differ, especially in matters pertaining to religion. The era of bitter controversy and conflict has been abruptly followed by one of concession and compromise, whose watchword is that charming word, ''charity," which is made to cover a multitude of doctrinal sins. Even Coleridge's paradox, that "the only true spirit of tolerance consists in our conscientious toleration of each other's intolerance," is out of date; and those are now considered illiberal and dog- matic, who show any intolerance even as to errors which they may regard as vital and fundamental. This whole at- titude of liberalism seems to demand a careful, prayerful, review. There may be rocks ahead.
One curious and suggestive episode in Hebrew history stands unique and solitary. When the respective adher- ents of David and Ishbosheth — the rival claimants for the kingdom — were struggling for the possession of Gib- eon — the new seat of the Tabernacle after the fall of Nob — a contest took place which, in character and issue, has no parallel even in the combat be- tween the Horatii and Curiatii, four hundred years later.
Abner, as Ishbosheth's champion, proposed, to save effusion of blood, that twelve picked men from each of the contending hosts should meet in battle and, as representatives, decide the issue. David's captain, Joab, ac- cepted the challenge ; and, when the selected Judahites and Benjamites rushed madly at one another, all of them fell together. The Benjamites,
famous as left-handed (Judges xx :i6), would naturally seize the heads of their opponents with the right hand, while running them through with the left; the men of Judah, as dexterous as the others were sinistrous, would, exactly similarly, use the left hand to lay hold, and the right to wield the sword, and so they all fell simultane- ously.
This quaintly tragic combat is a par- able of many a historic battle waged with tongue and pen. It is hard to say on which side the final advantage lies, because, on both sides something has been gained and lost; while both parties were contending for the mas- tery, neither fully secured it. They were swayed by different motives, used different methods, and aimed at different ends. Each got an advan- tage, but only at the cost of yielding something, and hence there was a sur- render even in securing success. Nei- ther completely vanquished the other, but both had gains offset by losses.
Never was this more strikingly ex- emplified than in some modern theo- logical and ecclesiastical adjustments. A religious "Tribunal of the Hague" seems already in sight where all con- flict and controversies are to be settled by compromise; and whether this is on the whole to be welcomed as an un- mixed good, is what, perhaps, it be- comes us to consider.
For the first three centuries the world and the Church were arrayed against each other with mutual hos- tility. It was believed that they were so essentially at war that their oppos- ing principles and tendencies were ir- reconcilable: those who belonged to
248
THE MISSIONARY^ REVIEW OF THE WORLD
[April
Christ expected to be hated of all men for His Name's sake. Under Constan- tine the world and the Church were wedded in a State Church, with the emperor at its head. The via cruris became the via lucis, self-denial was displaced by self-indulgence ; the con- fession of Christ became the signal, not for the cross but for the crown, and many thought the millennium had dawned. The Church won the world and disarmed opposition; but, mean- while, the world captured the Church and leavened it with secularism. The world became more churchly, but the Church vastly more worldly, remind- ing of the experiments in "endosmose" and "exdosmose," where two liquids on opposite sides of the membrane so intermingle as that each loses its indi- vidual qualities and assimilates with the other.
There are many other examples in history, and they are multiplying fast in these days, of the abatement of op- position by a mutual concession. This is especially exhibited in the domain of politics, where it seems to be a set- tled maxim, that "if you can not get a whole loaf you are to be content with half." Even such a man as Gladstone, with high ethical ideals and orthodox religious views, justified compromise on the ground that it was impracticable to carry out in the political sphere the strict principles of truth and honesty; one must do the best he can with the elements he has to confront.
The bearing of this matter upon mission work, and in fact upon the whole conflict of Christianity with heathenism and skepticism, is of im- mense importance. Some of us can not avoid a profound misgiving that there is a peril in union that may be worse than in separation, and that some
peace may be bought at the price of purity — a daubing of a falling wall with untempered mortar, a yielding of what is vital, a sacrifice of truth. It is quite possible in some forms of mis- sion work to overcome opposition by eliminating what arouses antagonism, or by virtually assimilating Christian- ity to heathenism. Roman Catholi- cism has won more than one victory over Buddhism by simply investing Buddhistic rites and customs with a new name, leaving its essentials un- touched; and there is a strong move- ment now in favor of allowing polyg- amy among heathen converts, if it ex- isted before conversion, and tolerating ancestral worship as a mere form of reverence for parental authority, etc.
Two marked manifestations of this tendency toward toleration may be mentioned as examples : one a recent course of lectures delivered in India by a theological professor ; and the other a work of fiction from the pen of a prominent evangelist, preacher and author.*
The lectures, delivered in India and Ceylon, are on "The Witness of the Oriental Consciousness to Jesus Christ." In the dedication, the lec- turer announces himself as one "who believes in the unity of the human race, and who looks with reverence on the India of the past, with afTection on the India of the present, and with ardent expectation on the India of the future." In the opening lecture he proclaims his "affection and admira- tion for brethren of other faiths," and his appreciation "of the qualities of the Oriental consciousness," and "their potential value for the higher interpretation of the Christian relig-
* Barrows' Lectures, 1906, Charles Cuthbert Hall. A Prophet in Babylon, W. J. Dawson,
I9o8] WHAT ARE THE LIMITS OF CHRISTIAN TOLERATION?
ion." He thinks "the East marvel- onsly qualified to be the interpreter of the Christian mysteries ;" he addresses his Indian hearers, appealing to their "tolerant and discriminating minds," "as a friend returning to friends, with whom he has taken sweet counsel be- fore, and on whose broad and catholic friendship he now depends." He does "not consider that the hereditary di- vergencies of racial and religious tra- dition offer the slightest impediment to fellowship," etc. The following paragraph may be quoted in full :
My Brethren (if I may have the honor to address you in that term of blended af- fection and respect), I have set before you in outline the purpose that brings me the second time to India. The prospectus of my argument is in your possession. You know my heart. I have kept nothing back. Be- cause you are what you are, possessors, through a proud and ancient ancestry, of that most rich treasure, the Oriental con- sciousness, I bring to you a treasure, rich, profound, sacred, worthy of your ancestry, worthy of yourselves. I ask you to examine it in relation to yourselves, looking upon it as an instrument through which you, gen- tlemen of the East, may discharge an in- calculable service for the whole world.
This sounded so much like flattery that the lecturer himself felt con- strained emphatically to disclaim any such intention ; but it is conciliation carried, as many think, to the extreme. With every page of the opening lecture this attitude of almost homage toward the "Oriental consciousness" becomes more conspicuously prominent. He se- lects four elements which contribute to this "consciousness" — "The contempla- tive life ; the presence of the unseen ; aspiration toward ultimate being; the sanctions of the past." We quote again :
You have been Orientals since the dawn of the world. Continue to be Orientals for- ever, till the world's last twilight closes in
the final darkness. Cling to the contem- plative life : your glorious heritage, your pe- culiar strength. It has given you elements of personality of which the West stands in need and shall one day come seeking at your hand. It has given you repose, gentleness, patience, gravity, noble indifference alike to material possession and material privation, eternal remembrance of the things that eye hath not seen nor ear heard, which God hath prepared for them that love Him.
You are aware that the immemorial thought of India emphasizes the reality of the invisible absolute, while to some extent admitting the distinction of the individual soul and its phenomenal environment, but regarding it under the terms "Maya" or "Avidya." . . . Without going into this very interesting subject, which I have the greatest desire to investigate further under competent Eastern guides, my purpose in referring to it at all is to point out that the age-long tendency of Indian thinking to clothe itself in the various forms of mon- ism, has overspread the East with a most solemn and impressive sense of the presence of the unseen. It is not strange that the East has been historically the birthplace of every one of the great religions of the world, and the natural fountain and origin of the world's religious experience. That this religious experience has undergone stages of development with which I per- sonally could not be satisfied, as, for ex- ample, in some of the forms and phenom- ena of animism, which, as a matter of fact, seem to me to have been greatly in- fluenced from non-Aryan sources, is not a matter germane to my present purpose. I wish to testify that, as I come into the East once more, I am more than ever con- scious of the fact that here the presence of the unseen is realized. That fact is in- herently sublime. It bears witness to the indestructible seed of divinity within the finite soul. It is the refusal of man to be put off with the husk of physical existence, because the eternal wheat of immortality is his portion. May the day never come when the East, inebriated with the wine of mod- ern culture, and dazzled by the appliances of modern civilization, shall move from her high seat of vision, forget her prophets of the invisible, barter her great inheritance in the unseen and bow down before the per-
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ishable idols of this present age, the tin- consecrated gods of a passing hour ! . . .
I speak with emotion of that element of sublimity in Oriental consciousness which 1 have called eastern reverence for the sanctions of the past. I do not discuss at the present moment whether in all re- spects your past, great as it has been, should be permitted to control your present as much as your reverence allows it to do. I do not raise the question here of how far "the shadow of the future," as Mr. Kidd calls it, may be invoked to fall upon you even as already it has fallen upon us. But one thing I affirm with con- fidence and with admiration which I do not seek to disguise : the sublimity of that element in the eastern mind which tena- ciously, proudly, reverently esteems its great inheritances, treasures its ancestral classics, keeps faith with its forefathers, sits unwearied, after three thousand years, at the living springs of its primeval hopes. If the watchword of the West is Progress, the watchword of the East is Faith!
These extracts suffice both to allow the lecturer to speak for himself, and to illustrate the remarkably concilia- tory tone of this whole series. Such catholicity and charity are charming; but may they not be misleading? Is not Christianity essentially intolerant of all heathenism, even the most re- fined and cultured? Whatever may be said of the "sublimity of the Ori- ental consciousness," one thing is sure : it does not prevent these In- dians, whom the lecturer salutes as "brethren," from drawing their popu- lar creed from V edic hymns, in which there are no higher conceptions of sin than a failure to address praises to the elementary deities, or gratify them with oblations ; and these were hear- ers who believe in "endless transmigra- tions of souls," and are "philosophic atheists," and yet have enough deities, such as they are, to supply "a million for every day in the year."
It is also a universal fact that idol- atry and immorality are allied. No- where has idol worship prevailed with- out that strange worship of sex that sanctifies even prostitution as a sur- render to the gods. The subject does not allow of fair treatment in these pages; but India is no exception to this universal fact ; and, in view of the awful exaltation of a cow and deg- radation of woman, this praise of the Oriental consciousness seems at best one-sided. If the Bible is true and Christ and His disciples were not in- tolerant and fanatical dogmatics, there is "no salvation in any other," and In- dia can find eternal life only in the one "Name given under heaven among men whereby we must be saved."
In the work of fiction to which ref- erence is made, the author has por- trayed in colors, sufficiently vivid, the failure of the Church to realize the great mission to the masses of man- kind in the great cities. There is no denying the great gulf, apparently fixt and so far unbridgeable, between the Church and the poor, the outcast, the working classes. The few cer- tainly fail to reach the many. The more spiritual-minded, both in the ministry and in the membership, la- ment as undeniable the alienation of the multitudes from the house of wor- ship. It is not needful to enter upon this matter ; the facts are substantially as the writer puts them. The serious question is his proposed remedy.
The book suggests "A League of Service," in which "all who love unite in behalf of all who suffer." The conception is ennobling and inspiring, and the way in which it is supposed to be embodied in action commends itself to the heroic element in all un- selfish souls. But, with all that is
lOOcSJ WHAT ARE THE LIMITS OF CHRISTIAN TOLERATION? 251
good, the same excess of liberalism appears. 'Flic main characters in this story are, for the most part, those w hose faith has been singularly shaken and who have been led or driven into more liberal views. The whole trend of the story is toward the elimination of dogma from Christianity, and the substitution of unselfish ministry to all who have need, in its place. Those here held up to admiration and imitation, have found themselves defenseless be- fore destructive criticism and have become heretical, but redeemed even heresy by loving and self-denying service. The "League" which is to take the place of the worn-out and virtu- ally defunct church, is not to be called a church, nor to have creeds, forms or subscriptions. Its law is to be free- dom ; its condition, service. It is to unite all who love humanity in the common service of humanity. It is to be a society of equals. It will worship Christ, but neither as God nor man ; rather as a living presence in all men, making all men divine. It will attract everybody, for it will include every- body, and be based on universal ideas. And to make the author's new decla- ration of independence more explicit, the only creed is to be love, and the only test, service. The appeal is "alike to Catholic and Protestant, to Unita- rians and Trinitarians," and "would not exclude the Buddhist and the Mo- hammedan" ; it would embrace men of no fixt religious creed who, neverthe- less, "admit the principle of altruism in human conduct."*
Again these citations must suffice ; but they compel us to face the issue, whether those who call themselves Christian disciples are to surrender all creeds, and join in a league of unsel- * pp. 133, 183, 245.
fish service with all who will join them on the basis of pure altruism ! Whether doctrine is to be considered as of no consequence, and deportment to be the criterion? Whether our faith — in the sense of a system of belief — is to be allowed almost any limits of unrestraint, only so that love consents to serve unselfishly all who suffer or have need?
This is no ghost of fancy but a pon- derous and substantial reality — this new and widely advocated theory of Christian life. It will not down at our bidding, and we must make up our minds as to our position on the ques- tion which is imperatively demanding an answer.
Is there ground to fear that, while thus avoiding the Scylla of intoler- ance, we are running perilously near the Charybdis of laxity? There is an element of sentiment in humanity to which unselfishness appeals. But the noblest service to God and man is the fruit of faith, not of unbelief. To count it a matter of indifference what one believes, provided he is sincere, is to make it no longer worth while, either to search after truth or to obey it when found. Right and truth, and wrong and error, are eternally allied, and no human policy can reverse these relations. It can never be a matter of no moment what a man holds to be true. We are to "hold fast the form of sound words with faith and love, which are in Christ Jesus." Such lec- tures as we have instanced, addrest to the heathen, make inconsistent a Gos- pel message that makes salvation to depend on the acceptance of Jesus Christ. Such a "League of Service," however noble as a philanthropic measure, can never take the place of the Church which its founder declared
252 ' THE MISSIONARY RE
built upon the confession of Himself as Christ the Son of the living God. While the New Testament remains our guide, our love for all men must not blind us to their doctrinal errors, nor to the danger they involve. Salvation prepares for service. Men need first of all to be saved from both their errors of belief and their iniquities of life; then, built upon Christ as the Savior, the Son of God, the Lord of life, faith in Him makes ready for a service in His name that is not the product of a capricious impulse or a transient sentiment, but a principle of life as unchanging as God Himself.
If, as Mr. Dawson contends, the Church has failed, possibly the remedy lies not in substituting for it a League of Service, but in a return toward the primitive beliefs and practises that made the Apostolic Church the great- est league of service the world has ever seen. If the idols could be put away — the idolatry of music, architec-
I EW OF THE WORLD [April
ture, oratory, and estheticism gener- ally ; if money and culture and rank could be less the standards which at- tract homage and foster caste; if sel- fishness, with its love of ease and love of novelty could be displaced by a Christlike self-denial, and devotion to eternal truth ; if prayer were more cherished as the great motive power in holiness and service ; if, in a word, the Spirit of the living, loving God could have in His own house, more liberty to work unhindered, so that He could do His mighty works — it is quite pos- sible that the lost dynamic of the pul- pit might be restored, and the lost hold of the Church on the common people regained. While we are look- ing about for a substitute for God's imperial institution, it may be well to inquire whether, by proper repentance and retracement of steps, we might not find in the way of new conformity to His pattern also new enduement with His power.
BATTLE HYMN OF THE CHURCH
To be sung to the Tune Zion ; 8s. 7s. & 4s.
BY REV. J. FORD SUTTON, D.D
Hark, the tread of coming millions
Marching on — the hosts of God; Coming from the isles and nations, Ransom'd by the Savior's blood. Hear them shouting! "He hath wash'd us in His Blood!'
Soldiers of the cross, long waiting For the coming of this day —
Toiling, weeping, watching, praying- Courage take and march away!
"We have triumphed!" Soon you'll hear our Captain say.
God His promise is fulfilling To His well beloved Son;
Heathen nations to Him giving, For a heritage, His own.
See them coming! All to worship at His throne.
When the long retreat has sounded, And our Chieftain leads the way,
By His conquering host surrounded, To the realms of endless day;
Then, how blessed! To have fought to win the day.
Christ is seeing of the travail Of His loving waiting soul
In the triumphs of the Gospel Over mcxi, from pole to pole.
Hear their praises! Like the voices of waters roll.
Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
Hallelujah to the Lamb! All in Earth and all in Heaven
Sound the praises of His name! Mighty Savior !
We will conquer in Thy name-
WEALTHY HINDUS GOING TO A MELA
WHERE SINS AR
BY MRS. MARGARET DEX
Or rather where people believe they are washed away. There are a number of places in India where Hindus congregate for ceremonial bathing, at certain times and sea- sons in great throngs. Sonpur, in the province of Bengal, is the scene of one of these great melas. From every village and town they come on foot, by horse, camel or elephant- back ; in the richly caparisoned "rath" of olden days, or in "dan- dies," ox carts, "ekkas" (horse cart for one), and thousands by rail, sit- ting crammed together in the box cars, hanging on the sides, if allowed ; begging permission to sit on the floor in first- and second-class cars, (but paying only third-class fare), anyway, anyhow, on to the mela ! \t every station we saw dozens,
WASHED AWAY
XG, MUZAFFARPUR, INDIA
and sometimes hundreds, left be- hind on the wide platforms, shout- ing and struggling to the last to gain entrance to the jammed cars, those inside vociferously ordering them off, pushing them from the steps, and all hauling and mauling until the last chance was gone.
And what a medley to the sight as well ! Umbrellas, brass and earthen cooking vessels, (some of the latter breaking occasionally), sticks, the inevitable "hooka," rolls of bedding, screaming children, strings of frightened women, each holding to the garment of the one in front ; garments of red, yellow, purple, green, white and blue, sweet- meat and "pan-supari" venders, "tea- water" men, "cold-ice" sellers, all in one tumultuous mass, calling to
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friends, shouting their wares or their gods, begging for places, beseeching alms, abusive, pleading; in discom- fort, chilliness, hunger, illness — even death sometimes, on to the mela !
How they gazed at our party of six, settling comfortably for the night, in a small compartment re- served for us by the railway officials.
TAKING A DRINK WITHOUT BREAKING CASTE
It must have been difficult for them to understand. And when they ar- rive at the mela, most of these scenes repeat themselves ; dust, noise, crowds, animals, worship, buying and selling, crude amuse- ments, sincerity, sins; and every- thing very barefaced and manifest.
The people were bathing all along the banks of the Gunduk river, but the more religious traveled on foot four miles to the junction of the Gunduk and the Ganges, determined to reach the most holy stream for their yearly ceremonial purification.
We hired a small boat near the great red bridge which spans the Gunduk. The bridge has, on either
side of the rails, footpaths, solid with human beings, and as we floated down to the junction, we watched this living stream on the bridge, and the bathing throngs in the water. People were mixed up with plunging elephants, horses, buffaloes and cattle. The water was indescribably filthy, but the bathers dipt it up in their hands and quaffed it as the nectar of the gods. One said it tasted like milk. It surely exceeded it in consistency. At one place a dense crowd was ascending and descending to and from the spe- cial temple of Shiva, which conse- crates this place and is the particu- lar lodestone drawing the people here yrear after yrear.
Near the temple was a long line of fakirs. The more correct name is sadhu, when applied to Hindu re- ligious or holy men. They are filthy and loathsome in the extreme, en- tirely naked save for a tiny strip of cloth ; their faces and bodies smeared with ashes and manure, and around their necks strings of dirty prayer-beads. Their hair was matted with cow dung and various designs in colors disfigured still more their vile faces. Near the bridge we saw one man buried in the earth up to his neck, his face made more hid- eous by being daubed with tumeric powder, and the protruding head looking like that of a dead ghoul, but for an occasional opening of the evil eyes. A little further on, an arm extending from the earth, the remainder of the man being buried in some way; the fingers held a string of beads and manipulated it industriously.
Around all these loathsome crea- tures an admiring crowd collected.
W11ERK SIXS ARK WAS 1 1 KI) AWAY
These beings with "features fell, brought to the soul wierd thoughts of hell," and yet, to those poor gaz- ers, this travesty of holiness repre- sented the apex of religious thought and endeavor. Now and then a rush through the crowd would he made by a group of devotees shouting,
And what makes the special sanc- tity of this temple and this image of Shiva?
( )ur pundit, from whom we take lessons in Urdu and Hindi, who spoke in English, and is fairly well educated, saw nothing incongruous or foolish in the story he gave of the origin
A HINDU FAKIR IX HIS WEIGHT OF CHAINS
"Ram, Ram, Sita Ram," as they ran to the river.
The Shiva temple had a door scarcely three feet wide, and the people were crushing in, a solid mass of living, breathing fanaticism. Most of them carried aloft a little brass vessel full of Ganges water, and endeavored to pour it out be- fore the idol. Some, failing this, threw the water high in the air, and those upon whom it fell were grate- ful for the sanctifying drops. A stream trickled out from the tem- ple from the abundant libations and made a very miry place in the road over which myriads of feet were treading, as the people sought their "god."
of this especial festival at this partic- ular shrine. Here is his story : "The temple is in honor of Shiva and the image or god in it has not been placed there by man or consecrated by man. The name of the god is Harihar ( pro- nounced 'hurry-hur') . Hari is one of the forms of Vishnu (the preserver in the Hindu Triad), Har is one of the forms of Shiva ( the destroyer ) . Shiva was here invoked by Vishnu. A long time ago here was a forest and wild elephants roamed ; and one day one came to drink water in the river and an alligator caught hold of him by the leg and tried to drag him into the river. A struggle ensued. At last the elephant became, of course, helpless, and feeling himself placed
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in great danger, called out to Vishnu for help with all the sincerity of his heart, and so, of course, Vishnu hav- ing mercy for him, came and released him out of the mouth of the alligator and killed the alligator. And for the memory of the event Vishnu invoked Shiva, and Shiva, of course, in a man-
is 'He who dwells in every heart.' But these crowds know nothing. Only the educated ones know. These simply run from habit, calling 'Ram, Ram, Sita Ram.' This name includes Ram him- self and God in any form because it is apparent that he who dwells in every heart is Ram." This was not
A BIBLE COLPORTEUR SELLING BIBLES AT A MELA IN INDIA
ner became fixt there and made the spot an inhabitable place. No, of course that is not all," the pundit con- tinued, "Vishnu ordained that who ever will come and offer Ganges water to Shiva will be thought to be— what shall I say ? Ah, to be meritorious !
"The reason some call out to 'Ram, Ram, Sita Ram,' is that Ram is an incarnation of Vishnu and Sita was his wife. Altho the names of God are innumerable, yet of all the names Ram is the most effective. It comes from the root Ram (pronounced 'nan) and the meaning of this root
very lucid, but the pundit did not know it.
"Why do these crowds go every year? Do they go for worship? This year there were more than two million pilgrims, according to railway tickets purchased and other counting; why do they all go?" I asked. "Most of them go for the purpose of mela," he answered, "that is, to see and hear and buy and sell. The thing is, there are pilgrimages and worship which men do from imitation, but there is merit only to the few who do it from the heart."
1908]
WHERE SINS ARE WASHED AWAY
257
"Does any one teach these multi- tudes?" I asked. "Nobody teaches them," he answered, "that is, no one has made it his especial duty to teach them. Who is to care for that? The government does nothing. The rich men are also ignorant and how can they do anything? Yes, there are a few religious teachers who instruct some of the people. Only a few of those fakirs are real fakirs. Most are only beggars. They put ashes on as a sign that they are holy men. Yes, they are highly respected, of course, in India. If a great Rajah comes in grandeur he will not be respected and reverenced so much ; but if he puts on ashes and filth he will receive many obeisances, for he comes as a holy man.
"Yes, most of the fakirs and sad- hus (sod-hoos) are bad men." This and much of his talk being in answer to questions from me.
"Oh, yes, I think there are good ones among them. There is one man at Hajipur, Lakshman Das, who is a true holy man. The holy man at Benares also — I have forgotten his name; he is now dead."
I told him that I had seen Sri Swa- my Bhaskar-anand Saraswati at the monkey temple in Benares, and also his marble image there. I admitted that he was probably sincere and good in a way. But what good has he done? In what is the world any bet- ter for his having lived? Admitting that he sat in contemplation of what Is good for years and years, was it not an intense selfishness to care for his own salvation alone?"
But the pundit could not see. Ah, that is the test; what good has this religion done? With its high-sound- ing talk among the lettered few, about
astral planes, mahatmas, sadhus, and similar visionary nonsense, taken up, alas, by some western people. A few may gasp and gaze, but what of un- selfishness, purity, or philanthropy can it show? What good have these few barefooted Brahminical Theosophical "OM, UM, OOM" people done for their land or their people? Alas, that among them are some English women sitting at the feet of "swamies" in Benares, delving for truth with the muck-rake, while the real vision of glory — the coming of Christ to India, is before them, if they but lift their eyes.
"To the poor the Gospel is preached," the test now as then, of the real, the divine religion. With it comes the uplift of the poor — the "making many rich" ; schools, hospi- tals, hope, salvation, love. This dark picture of the mela is a picture of the best that these people have.
Oh, for Truth's great electric to re- place these feeble rushlights of devo- tion, which but serve to make manifest the dense gloom around.
What man cares for these souls ?
"THUS SPEAKETH CHRIST OUR LORD '* *
Ye call me MASTER and obey me not, Ye call me LIGHT and see me not, Ye call me WAY and walk not, Ye call me LIFE and desire me not, Ye call me WISE and follow me not, Ye call me FAIR and love me not, Ye call me RICH and ask me not, Ye call me ETERNAL and seek me not, Ye call me GRACIOUS and trust me not, Ye call me NOBLE and serve me not, Ye call me MIGHTY and honor me not, Ye call me JUST and fear me not, If I condemn you blame me not.
* From an old slab in the Cathedral of Lubeck, Germany.
THE BIBLE IN INDIA
BY THE REV. H. U. WEITBREC Missionary of the Church Missionary Socie
India is a focus of the world's re- ligions and a land of ancient Scrip- tures. It is the home of Brahmanism with its Yedas ; the motherland of Buddhism and its Tripitaka, and still shelters a fringe of Buddhist adher- ents in the northwestern Himalayas. A fifth of its population consists of the followers of Islam who hold to the Koran as the uncreated word of God. It retains, in the South, one branch of an ancient Church — the Syrian — which has kept a primeval translation of the Bible for more than a millennium : and a shrunken community of Jews, using the Hebrew Old Testament, which their forefathers brought over, per- haps two thousand years ago.*
But India is also a land of illiteracy. Even now, after half a century of sys- tematic education, out of the 283, 000,- 000 people (excluding Burmah) only fourteen per cent, of the males, and one-half per cent, of the females are in any sense literate; and the Brah- mans, who form only five per cent, of the population, include seventeen per cent, of the literate class, a fact which throws no small light on the earlier history of their supremacy. What the illiteracy of India was before Chris- tian missionary pioneers made the first beginnings toward popular education we can only conjecture. Those at- tempts, long since overtaken by the resources of the State, once roused to its duty, yet still providing an appre- ciable portion of the education of the land, resulted in making the Indian Christians the best-educated part of
* I refer, of course, to the Syrian churches in the native States of Iravancore and Cochin, and to the three synagogs of black, white and yellow Jews in the city of Cochin.— H. U. W.
T, PH.D., D.D., PUNJAB, INDIA Chief Reviser of the Urdu New Testament
the community (Brahmans not ex- cepted) and paved the way for the work of the Bible in India.
India is also the land of many tongues. They are variously counted, but Dr. C. H. Grierson, author of the Indian Linguistic Census, estimates 143 languages, differing from each other no less than French and Span- ish, belonging to three great families — the Aryan, the Dravidian, and the In- do-Chinese ; the first spoken by some 220,000,000, the second by 60,000,000, the third (again excluding Burmah), by about 3,000,000.
To the teachers of the earlier re- ligions of India this Babel of lan- guages made little difference so far as their sacred Scriptures were con- cerned. Throughout their history the holy books of the Brahman, the Bud- dhist and the Moslem have remained veiled from the common people in the obscurity of a sacred tongue, San- skrit, Pali or Arabic, and their teach- ers have been content to pursue the primitive method of the earliest Chris- tian catechists, whom Papias de- scribes as translating St. Matthew's Hebrew record of the Sayings of our Lord, "each as he was able." But the Gospel is the religion, not of the let- ter which killeth, but of the Spirit which giveth life, and from the first it has appealed in its records to the universal consciousness, causing men to hear in their own tongues the won- derful works of God. The evangel- ists have given us the words and works of Jesus, not in the Aramaic which he spoke (save a few frag- ments), but in the Greek, which would reach the greatest number within and
THE BIBLE IN INDIA
259
without the Church. But after a very few generations, Latin- and Syriac- speaking churches had multiplied, and the second century saw translations of the Bible made for them, so that the message had gone forth in the three languages which proclaimed at once the accusation and the dignity of the crucified Christ. Thenceforward through all its history the Bible has done its chief work by means of trans- lations. Of course, there have been three groups : the early versions, such as those already mentioned, which sprang from the missionary activity of the early Church ; the great Euro- pean versions of the Reformation pe- riod, at once the cause and the result of a spiritual and intellectual revival of Christendom ; and the systematic Bible translations of the modern age, again connected with the missionary work of the Church in that portion which bases belief and practise upon an open Bible. The translation and dissemination of the Bible in the world has become an activity which can brook no mere opportunism, but must insist on taking a complete survey of the condition and needs of the entire race for whom the message is in- tended. And this necessity has pro- duced great organizations, the Bible Societies, whose work, if it is to be efficiently executed, demands fervent zeal no less than technical ability. In India we have a typical theater of their operations, displaying every vari- ety of religion and culture.
To describe the wTork of the Bible in India is in effect to describe the operations of the British and Foreign Bible Society in that country. A cer- tain amount is also done in the way of circulation by the National Bible So- ciety of Scotland, while the Baptist
Bible Translation Society represents the earliest translators of the Seram- pore Mission. American missionaries sometimes act as secretaries to the lo- cal auxiliaries, notably the Rev. T. S. Wynkoop, secretary of a most pro- gressive branch at Allahabad, of whom more hereafter. The American Bible Society has now and then given a grant in aid toward the production of some version, but it has not (so far as I know) worked systematically in India.
The work of the British and For- eign Society (established at home in 1804) was first organized in India by the establishment of the Calcutta Auxiliary in 181 1, and one of its ear- liest undertakings was to print and cir- culate the epoch-making Urdu trans- lation by the great Henry Martyn, which he completed in the same year, and of which he wrote : ''Your design of announcing the translation as printed at the expense of the British and Foreign Bible Society I highly ap- prove. I wish to see honor put upon so Godlike an institution." Since that time other auxiliaries have been estab- lished in Madras, Bombay, Allahabad, Lahore and Bangalore, under the con- trol of local committees who raise a certain amount by subscriptions in In- dia, but mainly financed by the liberal subsidies in cash and books which the parent society sends out.* The circu- lation is carried on through the cen- tral depositaries, aided by branches in the more important cities and by col- porteurs widely scattered throughout the land, and also by a staff of Bible- women who carry on the slow and difficult work of circulating the Scrip-
* The expenditure of the British and Foreign Bible vSoeiety on its branches in India for 1904 (exclusive of printing Indian Scriptures at home) was ,£"9,496; that of the Scotch Bible Society, ,£"2,065.
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THE MISSIONARY REVIEW OF THE WORLD
[April
tures in the Zenanas. At the Decennial Conference of 1902 it was reported that during the previous decade over 6,000,000 copies of the Bible, New Testament and portions, had been cir- culated in sixty languages and dialects. During 1904 the copies circulated wrere as follows :
British and Foreign Bible Society 664.578 National Bible Society of Scotland 198,774 Baptist Bible Translation Society
(issues) 58,000
Total for 1904 921,352
To appreciate what this dissemina- tion of the Bible means we must con- sider to what extent the languages of India have been reached by the Bible translator. Excluding Burmah, the lists of the British and Foreign Bible Society show that out of 143 Indian languages only 43 as yet have the Bible, in whole or in part. But of these, eleven represent the great na- tions of India, thus :
Bengali, viz.:
Hindu* 21,000,000
Musalmani* ... 23,000,000 44,500,000
Gujurati 10,000,000
Hindi, viz.:
Western 39,500,000
Eastern 21,500,000
Bihari 37,000,000
Rajasthani 11,000,000 109,000,000
Kanarese 10,500,000
Malayalam 6,000,000
Marathi 18,250,000
Oriya 9,500,000
Panjabi, viz.:
Hindu* 7,000,000
Musalmani* .... 10,000,000
Western 3,250,000 20,250,000
Sindhi 3,000,000
Tamil 16.500,000
Telugu 20,000,000
Total population with ac- cess to the Bible 267,500,000
But the impression conveyed by these figures requires modification: (1) Of the twelve languages enu- merated nine have the whole Bible,
* These are only rough estimates.
while Hindu, Panjabi and Sindhi have only the New Testament complete and portions of the Old Testament. (2) But it will be noted that three of them are subdivided, viz. : Bengali, Hindi and Panjabi. In the case of Hindi this division is racial, in that of Bengali it is religious, and (tho it happens that almost all the speakers of western Panjabi are Mohammed- ans) with Panjabi it is both. In each of these languages there is a standard version, representing the original Sanskrit language; in the Musalmani dialects of Bengali and Panjabi only Scripture portions are extant. (3) In Hindi the language of modern lit- erature is based on the western dia- lect, and in this we have the whole Bible, while in the other great tongues of the Hindi area only begin- nings have been made. (4) In this list Urdu is not mentioned at all, tho it is the most widely spread language of India, being the language of lit- erature and culture wherever Moham- medans dwell, and the medium of education and administration and gen- eral intercourse over an area of North India with a population of not less than 100,000,000. But it is grammat- ically based on western Hindi and therefore included under it in the enumeration given.
These remarks will serve to show the complevity and vastness of Bible- translation work in India, especially when wre remember that there are eight more languages whose speak- ers number from one to two millions. Of these Kashmiri has the whole Bible; Pashtu and Kol the New Tes- tament; while Malto and Gond have portions. Pashtu (1,250,000) and Tibetan (under 100,000) represent much larger populations beyond the
iyo8J THE BIBL1
frontiers of the Indian Empire, and as a matter of faet we know that the Christian Scriptures to some extent reach those populations. Scriptures also go in the languages of India (chiefly Urdu and Hindi and Tamil) to Demerara, Australia, South Africa, the East African Protectorate, and other countries where the Indian la- borer, soldier or trader emigrates. We may assume that the literates of In- dia, about 15,000,000 — all read one of the principal languages above enu- merated and this shows to what ex- tent the Bible is so far accessible to the peoples of the empire.
In this polyglot mission field the work of translation and revision of Biblical versions is constantly going on. The last two years have seen the completion of the revision of three great translations, the Old Testament in Hindi, and the New Testament in Telugu and Urdu ; also the beginnings of new versions in Brahui for the tribe of that name in Baluchistan, and Balti for a mountain tribe of northern Kashmir, both Mohammedan. Broadly speaking, the Indian translator does not have to encounter the difficulties of which we hear in the case of sav- age tribes whose idea of feasting is intoxication on beer, and who call love a preference for half-putrid meat. We have to do with languages pos- sessing a grammar, a character, and more or less of a literature. Yet even so the different atmosphere of thought in which they have grown to maturity often enough presents puzzling prob- lems of a special kind, besides those which always attend the transference of thought from the mold of one lan- guage to that of another. Before il- lustrating this, however, let me give a very brief indication of the way in
I IN INDIA 261
which the work of Biblical translation in India has developed.
Before the beginning of the nine- teenth century only sporadic transla- tions had been made : a Tamil New Testament by the Dutch missionaries of Ceylon, in 1688, followed by another by the Danish Missionary Ziegenbalg of Tranquebar in 1715 ; an imprinted Telugu version in 1732, and a Hindustani (Urdu) translation of the New Testament by the German, Schultze, of the same mission : with attempts at portions in Bengali and Hindustani by a Doctor Thomas and a Mr. Hunter — these constitute the whole record. But in 1793 arrived William Carey, who, while still a cob- bler, had taught himself Hebrew, Greek, Latin and French, and that because "his heart burned incessantly with a desire for the salvation of the heathen, and his mind was filled with the idea of being some day a trans- lator of the Word of God into the lan- guages of those who still sit in dark- ness." In 1799 he was joined by Ward, the printer, and Marshman, the second linguist, and under the pro- tection of the Danish flag in the city of Holy Rama (Serampore-Sri Ram- pur) a work was begun by this trium- virate which resulted by the time of Carey's death (1834) in the publica- tion of the whole Bible in six Indian languages, besides Chinese; of the New Testament in twenty-three other languages ; and of portions in ten tongues more. The work was accom- plished at a cost of £91,500, of which the British and Foreign Bible Soci- ety contributed about £30,000, and the translators (who subsisted on a pit- tance while they were receiving lib- eral salaries for linguistic work from the government) with their Indian
262 THE MISSIONARY RE
friends, over £5,000. The enthusiasm excited among the home congregations by the work of the three was such that it became necessary to stop the contributions, and the esteem in which the linguistic work of the missionaries were held in India contributed not a little to form the public opinion which brought about the removal (in 18 13) of the prohibition of missionary effort by the East India Company. In the nature of the case, it was impossible that the bulk of this work should be other than pioneering; the most co- lossal industry could not give the nec- essary supervision to the Indian help- ers engaged on all these versions. A certain number, like the Multani, have never come into practical use at all ; others, like Dr. Marshman's Chinese, have been principally useful as a basis for the work of successors, but sev- eral, especially the Bengali, Oriya and Sanskrit hold the field to this day, of course after needful revision.
While Carey, Marshman and Ward were engaged in their great underta- king, there arrived in India another scholar, trained under different con- ditions, possessing the highest dis- tinctions which an English university could confer, but moved by the same consuming zeal for the conversion of the world to Christ, which burned in them. Henry Martyn arrived in In- dia in May, 1806, as a chaplain of the East India Company by appointment, yet a missionary by vocation, without neglecting his pastoral charge. If the eyes of the Serampore brethren were directed to the Far East, so that they included Chinese in their great scheme of Bible translation, Henry Martyn looked also westward in his desire for the conversion of the Moslem. He had made studies already in Ara-
[EW OF THE WORLD [April
bic, Persian and Urdu (or Hindu- stani). This latter was the speech of Mohammedan rule in India, formed by grafting on Hindi a Persian and Arabic vocabulary and idiom, and on this language first he laid his hand for Christ as being the key to unlock for the immense Mohammedan popu- lation of India the teachings of the Law, the Psalter and the Gospel, which their prophet declared to be in- spired. When Carey found that a well-equipped scholar was ready to take up the work in the three great Moslem languages, he showed equal good sense and Christian feeling in leaving them to him. Martyn seems to have begun work immediately after his arrival ; at any rate in less than two years (March, 1808) the first draft was completed and sent to schol- ars at Calcutta for criticism. During the following three years it was fre- quently revised, and in 1810 the Urdu version, together with one in Persian, was finally submitted for the approval of critics. The Urdu was passed and sent to press in 181 1. The Persian was rejected, as too full of Arabic, and in the same year Martyn left for Per- sia to perfect it, and on the way home thence laid down his life at Tocat in Asia Minor. Two years after his death, in 181 3, the Urdu New Testa- ment was published, the whole edition having narrowly escaped destruction in the fire which destroyed the Seram- pore Press in 1812, and in 181 5 the Persian appeared. Both these ver- sions have undergone revision, the Persian once, and the more widely circulated Urdu three times,* but in both instances Martyn's translation
* The last revision of the Urdu New Testa- ment took place from 1893 to 1904 and has just issued from the press.
Til l<: IHIiLI- I X INDIA
263
forms the basis of the subsequent ones, as Tyndale's does of other Eng- lish versions down to the revised edi- tions of 1881 and 1884; and that al- tho Martyn had only begun to read these languages in 1805, and to come into contact with speakers of them since 1806. True, iie shape and pol- ish of the language which he used he owed largely to his excellent as- sistants, but he had to determine the tone and temper of the work, and its faithfulness to the original. This he did with the' help of that Spirit who once worked in the miraculous gift of tongues and still inspires His serv- ants to mold the languages of men to convey His message.
India has seen no more such giants of polyglot industry or geniuses of linguistic perception ; but a vast amount of laborious accuracy and keen discrimination has been put into the eleven greater and thirty-two less- er versions, which are from time to time being further polished and per- fected ; and the most encouraging feature of these undertakings is the increasing share being taken in them by indigenous Christian scholars.
The difficulties of translation have been referred to as they present them- selves in India. Foremost among these we should place the generally wide difference between the language of lit- erature and that of popular usage. The accepted style of writing is in many cases so different from that of speech that the rendering, on which one's literary assistants insist, may be quite unintelligible to the average reader, without such professional ex- planation as he is accustomed to in the case of his own religious books. The grammar of a great language like Bengali, when the first translators be-
gan their work was not even recog- nized in its own identity, but as Sanskrit grammar, modified by usage. In fact prose writing was little devel- oped in any of the Indian languages a century ago, and while the lack of a lucid and dignified expression of thought in prose form was one of the difficulties with which biblical trans- lators were confronted, the develop- ment of such a style, not without in- evitable errors in the process, was not a little set forward by them. Having found the right medium, the trans- lator has to face the fact that the lan- guage he deals with is far less toler- ant of involved sentences, whether relative or dependent, than the Greek, and much less capable of pregnant brevity than the Hebrew. Moreover, as he is rendering into contemporary speech, he can less readily employ obscure literalisms than one who has at his command a supply of archaic religious terms, and he therefore has, on the whole, to translate more freely than the scholars who produced the great versions of the West. All the more is he called upon to answer the difficult question: What terms or phrases enshrine specifically biblical conceptions or teachings, and there- fore must be transverbated into the speech of India, as a Christian en- largement of her world of thought, and which will exercise their true force by freer translation? Thus to translate literally a phrase, albeit im- portant, such as "lusts of the flesh," is only to bewilder the reader who will understand by it, if anything, a cra- ving opposed to vegetarianism ; but the phrase : "Abide in Me," despite its strangeness, must be retained to ex- press the specific Christian truth of a mystical, yet personal union with
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April
Christ. Or,to take a fundamental term such as "conscience," it is probable that none of the current Indian terms which express the moral sense have at all fully the connotation of syneidesis (dweiSfldis), and hence in the speech of educated persons the English word is freely used. Still it has hardly at- tained a sufficiently firm hold in gen- eral speech to be safely used in a book intended for the generality ; and hence in one of the most recent re- visions (the Urdu) the form kdnshans has been introduced only into the mar- gin for the sake of intelligent readers. Some of us may live to see it in the text.
What of the effect of the Bible in In- dia? In the Christian Church, through divinity schools, boarding-schools, Sun- day-schools and Bible classes, in addi- tion to the ordinary ministrations of public worship, I believe that the Bible is being taught, if anything, more sys- tematically than in home lands, and in the higher teaching the critical problems of the day have to be faced. Among agencies for outsiders, besides those strictly connected with the Bi- ble Societies, the foremost rank must be assigned to the mission schools and colleges. The pressure of govern- ment examinations (essential condi- tions for the obtaining of grants in aid), the frequent weakness of staff, reenforced by the natural disinclina- tion of non-Christians, make this in- struction less effective than it might and should be ; yet for all this, the Scripture teaching thus has reached, and is leaving millions of minds, re- moving the prejudices that spring of ignorance, raising up religious and moral ideals before unknown, and pre- paring one here and another there to receive and follow Him of whom the
Scriptures tell. This work is very effectively supplemented by the sys- tematic distribution of English Scrip- tures through the agencies of the Brit- ish and Foreign Bible Society to uni- versity passmen and graduates. Year by year when the examinations are over, every matriculate who applies is presented with the Gospel of St. Luke and the Acts; every B. A. graduate with the New Testament, and every M. A. with the whole Bible. During 1904, 1,644 Bibles, 2,536 New Tes- taments, and 3,238 Gospels and Acts appear to have been thus distributed. In the course of the study of English language and literature, the most widely followed subject, the students already come across so much of bibli- cal histor}' allusion and ethics that their minds are in a measure prepared to understand the sacred volume. At the annual prize-giving of the For- man Christian College in Lahore one of the prizes provided by a former stu- dent for proficiency in Sanskrit con- sists of copies of the Bible and the Vedas. A Hindu assistant surgeon publishes a pamphlet, "Precepts from Holy Bible," in which he gives ex- tracts from the Scriptures, in order to prove his thesis that the higher con- ditions of civilization and morality which obtain in Western lands have their origin in the teachings of the Bible, and he invites others to make similar extracts from the Koran and the Vedas. One of the most eminent judges of the Bombay High Court, still a nominal Hindu, was accus- tomed to teach his wife English by reading the New Testament with her, and he himself loved it and read it in his dying hours. At a reception of new members into the Brahmo Samaj each neophyte was presented with a
THE BIBLE IN INDIA
265
copy of the "Brahma Dharma" (a handbook of the sect), the "Imitation of Christ" and the New Testament. In the report of the Maras Auxiliary Bible Society we find a Hindu gen- tleman giving Rs. 73 (over $24) for the year, and "a Mohammedan secret disciple of Christ" sends Rs. 5. As the Hon. Sir Andrew Wingate said at the meeting of the Calcutta Aux- iliary in 1900:
Who can road the pleadings of the social reformers on behalf of the daugh- ters and sisters of Indian gentlemen, condemned, while yet of tender age, to the sad life of Jephthah's daughter, and not recognize the awakening voice of conscience? Others may persuade them- selves that this active pity for suffering is a revival of altruistic Buddhism, or the outcome of the theology of long neg- lected Sanskrit texts; but we recognize the teaching of the Bible, and tho these be but the first blades of the coming har- vest, yet we are sure that they are true corn of seed that has never failed.
As for conversions, these fall into two classes: There are the mass movements, primarily of a social na- ture, which have led large numbers, generally of the deprest classes, to seek for admission into the Church of Christ. On the other hand there are the conversions of individuals and families going on here and there over the country, as the result of personal conviction. The history of the lat- ter is, as often as not, the history of Bible reading, sometimes without any other teacher ; and now and then groups of families are found prepared for the evangelist through the read- ing and study of a single Gospel. The great task and problem of the former kind of adhesions is the "teaching them all things whatsoever" the Sa- vior has commanded His disciples, as recorded in Holy Writ. The congre-
gations in which this work has been most thoroughly done are those in which the despised outcast has come up to and above the level of his proud . Hindu or Moslem neighbor, and be- come a means of blessing to his Chris- tian brother of higher origin. In the case of individual conversions the names of brethren in the ministry and helpers in the Gospel, to say nothing of others, recall to one the power of the direct message of the Word. One, now passed away, a pundit learned in Hindu lore, casually met with the Sanskrit Xew Testament and began reading it from the first page. He was arrested by the genealogy as pointing back to a more ancient his- tory and his inquiries procured him a copy of the Old Testament. This he studied, and was able to recognize the thread of Messianic prophecy and its fulfilment in Christ before he ever re- ceived instruction from a missionary. Some time after his baptism, when he was preparing for the ministry in our Lahore Divinity School, some one spoke in derogation of the Old Testa- ment as unnecessary to the Christian faith. He warmly objected: "The Old Testament," he said, "first led me to Christ." Another of these men, still living and working with us, was a Moslem student in a village mosque, to whom his teacher gave a Xew Tes- tament, left with him by an itinerating missionary after a controversy in which the Moslem thought that he had gained the victory. The youth, fired by his teacher's example, wished to be trained as a missionary of Islam, and the study of the Xew Testament was to prepare him to meet the padres in argument. But it resulted in his con- version to the Gospel, of which for many years he has been a minister and
266 THE MISSIONARY RE
missionary. In the course of work among his former fellow believers, the most effective method of controversy which he hit upon was this. Being challenged to a disputation by a mau- lawi (Moslem minister), he arranged that, under the chairmanship of a Hindu gentleman, each champion should bring his Scriptures and, ta- king one principal topic of religion at each session, should expound for lit teen minutes in turn the teach- ings of his book on that particular subject, such as the divine attributes, forgiveness of sin, sanctification, etc. Several meetings were held, but it was found that the supply of matter from the Koran on such topics had a way of running short, and when the sur- plus time was adjudged to the Chris- tian expounder the Mohammedan was
[EW OF THE WORLD [April
forced by his supporters to withdraw ; an object lesson as to the character of the two books.
Such are a few fragmentary im- pressions, mostly gathered from expe- rience of the last thirty years, of the work of the Bible in one part of the foreign mission field only. They may serve as a sample of what it is doing in four hundred tongues all over the globe. The work of rendering the Scriptures into these many tongues and adjusting its message to the thought of other nations is the com- plement of that which is the aim of a sincere Biblical criticism, that seeks to interpret the Bible to the conscious- ness of our age. In both cases the life and light which the Bible con- tains is vindicated in the hearts and experience of seekers after God.
THE PHILADELPHIA MISSIONARY CONVENTION
BY DELAVAN L. PIERSON
It was a sight worth going many miles . to see and one long to be remembered when over two thousand men from Presbyterian churches in the Eastern States, gath- ered in the Academy of Music, Phila- delphia, morning, noon and night, for two days and a half (February n- 13), in the interest of Foreign Mis- sions. This convention can scarcely fail to mean much in the awakening of a missionary spirit in the Church at home and in the extension of the Kingdom of Christ in foreign lands. Great electric signs on the City Hall and Academy of Music blazed out a "Welcome to the Men's Foreign Mis- sionary Convention," with a giant key
symbolically offering them the free- dom of the city. The delegates — all men and two-thirds of them laymen, including doctors, lawyers, teachers, business men — came from eight East- ern and Central States, and some from the South and West. The roll of the Convention showed 1,441 men regis- tered as delegates, 37 as missionaries, 40 as speakers, 75 as visitors, and a considerably larger number was in attendance. Apparently every Pres- bytery in the East had its representa- tives and more than thirty men were present from the Southern Church. The first one to send in his registra- tion fee was a colored brother from New Jersey. Three noticeable fea-
THE PHILADELPHIA MISSIONARY CONVENTION
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lures were: the absence of women, the infrequency of clerical coats, and the non-appearance of the collection plate.
The Convention was planned by Mr. David McConaughy, the efficient District Secretary of the Presbyterian Board, and was carried to a success- ful conclusion with the help of an ac- tive committee of arrangements, of which Rev. C. A. R. Janvier of Phila- delphia, was chairman.
The great Academy of Music was decorated with a huge colored map of the world, made for the Ecumenical Conference in 1900 at a cost of over $400. In various conspicuous places were appropriate and epigrammatic mottos and texts :
"This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith."
"No interest in missions — the only ex- planation either inexcusable ignorance or wilful indifference."
"Unless Jesus Christ is Lord OF ALL, He is not Lord AT ALL."
"It is the mission of the whole Church to give the whole Gospel to the whole world."
"The Yellow race in place of being a yellow peril, may become a golden op- portunity."
"Jesus Christ alone can save the world, but Jesus Christ can not save the world alone."
"We can not serve God and Mammon, but we can serve God with Mammon."
What the Omaha Convention did in the West, the Philadelphia Conference is expected to do in the East, to arouse the Church to deliberately accept the responsibility of its share in the evan- gelization of the world.
The conception of the Convention was itself impressive, from the fact that the interest which brought these men together was none other than Foreign Missions. Ten years ago it would have been impossible to have
induced anything like that number of men to come to such a conference. The interest and enthusiasm of the Convention were never on the wane, but from the very beginning of the meeting, when the first clear note of enthusiasm was sounded, the high level of intense interest was fully maintained.
The presiding officer was Rev. George Alexander, President of the Board of Foreign Missions, and the addresses were by some of the strong- est speakers in the Church. These men had one object: to stir the Pres- byterian men of the United States to a fuller realization of the present con- ditions in the non-Christian world and the opportunities and obligations of Christian men to carry forward the campaign for the conquest of the world for Christ. The Convention was not called to ask for money and no collections or subscriptions were taken.
The program was divided into ten sessions and conferences. The Call of the World was presented by Dr. Ar- thur J. Brown and John R. Mott. The Response of the Church was given by Dr. Wm. H. Roberts, Moderator of the Presbyterian Church, and by representatives of other denomina- tions. The present needs of the hour were voiced by missionaries and lay- men direct from the various fields and the demands of the future were ably advocated by Dr. Howard Agnew Johnston and William T. Ellis.
Mr. John R. Mott spoke on "The Urgency and Crisis in the Far East." He stated his belief that Korea would soon become a Christian land, if the Church did her duty and made a thrilling appeal for China, claiming that there was the greatest opportu-
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nity that has come to the Church in years. The plastic condition of China makes it imperative that the Church should enter in now, so that when China crystallizes, she may be Chris- tian. In the next ten years the spir- itual future of China will be deter- mined.
The "Call of the Present Oppor- tunity," came from many missionaries with the same voice : the pagan re- ligions are losing their grip; unless Christianity embraces its opportunity, it will be atheism or indifferentism in the immediate future. Very striking were the words of Dr. Zwemer on the great Mohammedan world. "Not long ago it was truly said that one could hardly find a Mohammedan con- vert the world over, now they are numbered by the thousands. Moham- medans themselves are beginning to realize that their religion will not square with twentieth century ideas, and here is our opportunity."
Dr. Zwemer stated the importance of the Mohammedan world in the fol- lowing forceful terms : ( i ) Because of its strength. The immense number of adherents, about 230,000,000, scat- tered through many countries and speaking different languages. Among these people are to be found concep- tions in their faith closely akin to Christianity to the extent that much is to be found in common with the Apostles' Creed. In this faith is to be found the "backbone of conviction" which makes it strong. To these may be added the strength of caste and the strength by virtue of thirteen hundred years of deep root in their science, art, literature and life.
(2) Because of its weakness. This religion is weak in its inner life. It is weak because it is anti-Christian
[EW OF THE WORLD [April
and has no essential deity of a Christ. It is weak because hopeless, having given no hope to the great masses. It is sensual, pandering to low passions. It possesses low ideals, for [Moham- medanism had to be "white-washed" to suit the twentieth century.
(3) Because of its condition. Great changes are in progress, the Moham- medan countries are open and Islam is on the defensive. Our advantage lies in the fact that the Church has the weapons, not carnal ; holds stra- tegic points in Mohammedan lands which she will never give up, and has the inspiration of those who began the fight.
The call was also sounded from South America, Korea, China, India, Africa and other lands.
[Missionaries were followed by re- ports of men who have recently cir- cled the globe in investigating on the mission fields the works of these mis- sionaries.
Edward D. Sturges, of Scranton, claimed for himself the letters F. M. D. (Foreign [Mission Devotee) and D. D. (decidedly devoted). He said he had been reconverted in Ja- pan. A Christian Japanese shop- keeper told him he had to keep open on Sundays for American and British travelers and then seriously asked him if there were many Christians in America. "The world will be con- verted when the Christians in the United States are converted," said Mr. Richard C. Morse. Our mission- aries are overworked men. A bad business policy. We need twenty per cent more men, to hold our own on the mission field. Xo fault can be found with the missionaries, no fault with our secretaries, the fault is with us, who are withholding the means.
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Mr. Morse stated that "there are over 15,000 missionaries in the world, assisted by nearly 100,000 native help- ers. These occupy 32,000 mission sta- tions. Up to date 1,500,000 heathens have been converted to Christianity and there are 1,000,000 more about to become communicants. The rate of progress is shown by the fact that 200,000, or 14 per cent of the total number of conversions, were made in 1907." This is against a 2 per cent increase in the churches in the home field.
Ex-Governor Beaver made a mili- tant speech, calling attention to the fact that the Great Captain has given the order to move forward. "The Church has been loitering on the skir- mish line of missions for one hundred years, and its duty is to delay nc lon- ger, but plunge into the battle. Is the Presbyterian Church doing its full work for missions? No. The or- ganization is all right, but it is noth- ing but a skeleton of dry bones un- less there are wise and energetic men and women behind it. Shall this skel- eton move and live ? That is the ques- tion. YVe have been letting dead men and live women do the work. We are short on the legacies of these dead men this year. Live women are do- ing much, but live men haven't taken the places of the dead men."
On Wednesday afternoon the Con- vention divided, the Sunday-school superintendents and workers meeting under the leadership of Rev. Geo. Trull, to consider the best means of training the children in the knowledge of missions and awakening their in- terest. The pastors met in Chambers- Wvlie church and discust practical methods of keeping churches alive in mission interest. The meeting in the
Academy was for laymen only, but the audience seemed as large as at the other sessions. This conference, was led by David McConaughy, the Secretary of the Forward Move- ment, and considered "Men's part in leading the Church as a whole to ful- fill its mission." Many excellent sug- gestions came both from the platform and the floor. "Have a regular rule to give a two-minute summary of events for each field at each mission- ary meeting." "Have a statement of missionary progress at each brother- hood meeting." "Our pastor reads each Sunday the list of missionaries on the missionary calendar for that week." "Every Church that takes hold of the foreign field will take care of the home field."
On Thursday Gov. Beaver con- ducted a conference whose theme was "The only Organization Called for : the Church." "The call of to-day is not for new societies but for the or- ganization of the Church itself as a missionary society. Every church should have a missionary committee, representing every interest in the church, and it should be the business of this committee to further in every way the missionary interest of the whole Church." Methods of stirring up this interest were brought out in a conference conducted by Dr. A. L. Phillips, of Richmond, Va. "The ig- norance of the men of our Church of missionary literature is deplorable." A call for a show of hands revealed the fact that few in the audience had read three books on missions in the past year. But more than one-half had read the missionary magazines or leaf- lets of the Church. "Those who criti- cize the missionary books and other literature as being effeminate and dry,
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THE MISSIONARY REVIEW OF THE WORLD
[April
simply do not know anything of what they are talking-," said Dr. Turnball Lee.
J. Campbell White, Secretary of the Laymen's Movement, spoke on "An Adequate Business Basis for World Evangelization." He quoted the remark of a man who said that he would rather save a million men than a million dollars. He emphasized the fact that (i) our greatest needs are spiritual; (2) our greatest oppor- tunities are spiritual; (3) our greatest forces are spiritual and (4) our great- est values are spiritual. These facts show the following: (1) We have an adequate spiritual basis in the com- mand and promises of Christ. (2) We must have an adequate force of workers. The call for one missionary for every twenty-five thousand people in the foreign field is the general opin- ion of the necessary force, this mission- ary to have native helpers. For the Northern Church the foreign field is twelve times larger than the home field : for this greater support was needed. At the present rate of work it will take one hundred years to reach the people. If this Church should give $200,000,000 for 100,000,- 000 people in this generation, it would only mean two dollars for each heathen. A man in Baltimore has given in twenty years $100,000 to an unoccupied field in India, with the re- sult that there are there to-day fifty thousand converts. The reason why Christianity does not possess the world is because Christ does not pos- sess the Christians.
W. T. Ellis, of the Philadelphia Press, gave his views on the "Su- preme Opportunity of the Hour," as one of the many business men who have traveled in the East to investi-
gate missions. His views represented a consensus of opinion among bus- iness men and are therefore worthy of especial mention. He quoted the saying of Emerson that the "world is one neighborhood," and emphasized the fact that we should try to make it so by telling of Jesus Christ, so that the neighborhood would become a brotherhood, for "neighborhood with- out brotherhood is a curse." There is a yellow peril to be reckoned with if we do not take it in hand now. There is no short-cut remedy to do away with "unbrotherliness," no way but the pure old Gospel. The world does not want to be a brotherhood, but the world needs to be. There is a great world-crisis and God creates a force here to meet a need yonder. The movements in different parts of the world may suggest the stately step- pings of Him who makes history. Civic, political and religious revivals in America ; social reforms, liberalism and other movements in England, suggest that America and England and the Orient share in the "divine concatenation of events." Unrest in Portugal ; restlessness in France ; mobs in Germany ; departed glories of Spain ; Vatican troubles in Italy ; con- ditions in Morocco ; disasters in Rus- sia ; call these what you will, yet may it not be the Spirit of God at work among the nations? So Egypt, Tur- key and India have come to the crisis. China is waking up. In five years China has progressed more than in three thousand years of previous history. China is going the western way and wants the western weapon and western wisdom. She has a deep hostility to the Westerner and the task of Christendom is to put the spirit of brotherliness into China.
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This Convention gave evidence of several important things. It showed that the men of the Church are be- ginning to awake to the fact that the missionary work is a campaign in which the women and children should not do the major share of the work. It showed that intelligent laymen who visit the foreign fields come back rilled with enthusiasm for the tremendous need and glorious opportunity pre- sented in the empires of the East. They are also stirred with admiration for the noble men and women who are enduring hardships while devo- ting themselves to the advancement of the Kingdom of Christ at the frontier and for the character of the native Christians whose consecration, spiri- tual insight and liberality put us to shame. The Convention also brought to light the comparatively meager sup- port that the great Presbyterian Church is giving to this world-wide work and the danger that lies in neg- lecting to take advantage of the pres- ent opportunity, this opportunity is evident in the open doors the recep- tive attitude of the nations who are giving up their old religions and are beginning to see the advantages of Christianity.
The Church is taking a forward move and experience has proved that the missionary spirit and generous missionary gifts helps to build up the Church at home as well as to extend the Kingdom of Christ abroad. If a church would be self-supporting and have a healthy life and growth it must not stagnate with self-interest. The Church, like the Christian, is intended to be a channel rather than a cistern.
The following plan was one pre- sented in a leaflet distributed at the Convention ;
MODEL MISSIONARY CHURCH Platform
The WHOLE CHURCH, a Missionary Society, to give the WHOLE GOSPEL, to the WHOLE WORLD, according to Christ's command.
Organization
r. The SESSION, an Executive Committee to carry out this platform.
2. AGENCIES.
The Sunday-school a Missionary Society. The Women's Missionary Societies. The Young People's Missionary Committee. The Brotherhood Missionary Committee. Any Other Societies Needed to Enlist all Classes.
3. The MISSIONARY COUNCIL, made up of
one representative from each of these branches of the Church life to help the Pastor unify and push the work.
Methods
EDUCATIONAL.
Missionary Literature. Missionary Library. Monthly Concert. Sermons, Address. Missionary Study Class.
FINANCIAL.
Giving an Act of Worship according to the Rules of Three (1 Cor. xvi: 2.) (Indi- vidual, Systematic, Proportionate.) Use Subscription Plan.
Assume a Definite Sum for the Work Abroad as we do for the Work at Home.
INSPIRATIONAL.
The Visit of the Missionary.
The Missionary Rally, Convention.
The Sending forth of a Son or Daughter from
the Church. The Missionary Consecration Meeting.
What will be the permanent results of this Convention can not be fore- told but there are many indications that the men were deeply stirred by a new vision of Christ and the work to which he called them. Many exprest a determination to return to their churches and there use their influence for a new forward movement in the great campaign. The Presbyterians are responsible, according to the new division, if they accept Federative principles, for one hundred million people in foreign lands. On the clo- sing day the Convention, after a full discussion, unanimously adopted the following resolutions :
We, men of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, thank God for the command of Christ, deter- mining forever the highest mission of His Church, the evangelization of the world. We are grateful for the share
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He has given us in this work, grateful for the larger share He now offers us, and grateful that the work is making the workers one at home and abroad, as shown by spiritual fellowship and prac- tical cooperation.
Recognizing the urgency of present conditions and our corresponding re- sponsibility, we plan and propose as fol- lows:
(1) That accepting the definite conclu- sions of the Omaha Convention as de- fining our specific part in the world's evangelization, and moving toward the six million ($6,000,000) dollars stand- ard there established and knowing the immediate demands of the world-field, we now set ourselves definitely to the task of raising at least two million ($2,- 000,000) dollars during the coming year.
(2) That to this end each Synod, Pres- bytery and individual church assume im- mediate and specific organized responsi- bility to raise its full share determined by its ability, none limited by but all surpassing if possible, the standard set by the Omaha Convention.
(3) That we urge upon the men of each church the duty of gathering and giving information concerning the prog- ress of missions, using the means pro- vided by the Church and all other means that will make the information definite and inspiring.
(4) That believing the Holy Spirit will do through us even more than we ask or think in Christ Jesus, our Lord, we solemnly renew our faith in united un- ceasing, definite prayer, and suggest that in unison with other bodies the noon hour of each day be a time when all men may appeal to the throne of God for the speedy evangelization of the world.
One of the noticeable features of the convention was that it seemed to be dominated by a spirit of prayer. Again and again during the delibera- tions pause was made for prayer. There was a realizing sense of our in- sufficiency for these things, save us the instruments of the Spirit.
That the Convention made a marked impression on the delegates no sym- pathetic Christian, who felt the pulse of the body, can doubt.
"It is a second Pentecost," said a Xew York pastor, as he left the Acad- emy, at the close of the conference.
"I asked my people last Sunday for
an advance of twenty per cent on their gifts for foreign missions," said an- other New York pastor. "I shall go back to them, in view of this meet- ing, to make the advance fifty instead of twenty per cent."
These expressions from such men of wide experience and calm judgment show how deep was the impression made upon the sixteen hundred men, who for three days had sat in confer- ence, listening to burning speeches on the call and the crisis fronting the Presbyterian Church to-day.
Dr. Chas. B. Chapin, of Rochester, calls attention to the following sig- nificant facts and truths brought out at the various sessions, i. c, 1. Phila- delphia gave such a cordial welcome and reception that all were, as one man said, made D.D.'s — "delighted delegates." 2. The prayer life and spiritual part of the Convention were emphasized by three "Quiet Hours," as well as by a prayer-room set apart for intercession and open at all hours, of the day. 3. Every delegate, it is safe to say, got such a world-vision as he had never had before. 4. Mis- sions is the greatest enterprise on earth, and that from the social, edu- cational, political, commercial and re- ligious side, — indeed, from every side and from all sides. 5. The next ten or twenty years will mean more to the Orient, to our own country, to the kingdom, to the world than any sim- ilar period since the time of Christ. 6. It is pitiful that the Church is so ignorant of and oblivious to this, the opportunity of the centuries. 7. In or- der to meet this crisis, we must work foreign missions upon a radically dif- ferent plan and scale ; we must do bigger things in a bigger way. 8. To the Presbyterian Church has been as-
THE PHILADELPHIA MISSIONARY CONVENTION
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signed 100,000,000 of heathen souls to evangelize in this generation. 9. This can be done, but it is a man's job.
Rev. James II. Taylor says of this Convention: "Its value can not be es- timated. Such contagious enthusiasm, and such valuable information, when let loose upon individual churches must prove fruitful of good things. How the heart of Carey would have throbbed, and the pulse of Samuel J. Mills quicken, and the flush on the dying face of the lonely Martyn pass
away, and the soul of Judson rejoice, if they could have seen such a sight as this Convention. But better still, the very face of the Master Himself shows approval, as He sees men at last listening to a commission first given to men to perform, but which for centuries men have shirked, but now, may it be, are anxious to obey the orders of the Captain of Salvation who said: "Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every crea- ture."
A MEN'S MISSIONARY SONG
Written for the Men's Missionary Convention in Philadelphia
BY THE REV. H.
Onward, army of God.
To victory, not to defeat! Yielding your blood-won ground
To error were sad escheat; Bugles of Truth should never sound
The sorrowful note of retreat!
Forward in Jesus name!
The column must not fall back! Answer the challenge of foes
By charge of a fresh attack. Soldiers of Christ, forbid the shame
Of letting the vanguard lack.
Forward in Mercy's name,
True to the Master's will, To win Him a hostile world,
By rendering good for ill; Seeking to help, not to hurt. His foes,
To rescue and not to kill.
c. MCCOOK, D.D.
On to the fields of strife!
Clad in your robes of white, Bearing the Red Cross badge
Into the thickest fight; Healing the wounds of the hurt of sin ;
Mending the Wrong with Right!
'Forward, gleaners of love!
After the bands of war; Soothe with the balm of Peace
Spirits that Hate would mar, Pointing the eyes of dying men
To Hope's unsetting star.
Speed with your aiding arm
To wrecks of humanity, Broken by many a storm,
Adrift upon life's rough sea! Brightening Night with the Beacon Light
Of blest Immortality.
THE LUXURIOUS LIFE OF A MODERN MISSIONARY
IN INDIA
BY ALBERT EHRGOTT,
President Roosevelt' once said : "A missionary is one who squares his life with his profession." Allowing wide latitude for his intelligent circum- spection, he could not know the full import of his own commendable ex- pression.
The cursory visit of even the most sympathetic and well-informed trav- eler does not give one a comprehen- sive knowledge of missions and mis- sionaries. One must dwell on the field and be in the work. Residence in the Oriental climate, amidst the na- tives, in touch with their lives, reveals more to the square inch in experience than one can learn to the square mile by reading.
Much of the romance of missions has passed away. Slow ships, poorly equipped, the minimum of sympathy at home and the maximum of opposi- tion abroad toward the missionary en- terprise, hardships of pioneer work on the field, meagre communication with the homeland, and other trials were especially peculiar to missionaries in the days of Carey and Judson. The results of their arduous endeavors, the increased popularity of world-wide evangelization, and the advance of civilization have combined to reduce these difficulties. Many remain which a true missionary may not count a sac- rifice, but which are, nevertheless, "thorns in the flesh."
The Sun and Rain
The sun is just as hot now as in the days of primitive missions. The in- tense heat and blinding brilliancy of the sun in the Orient can not be imag- ined by the uninitiated. Insanity and
RANGOON, BURMA.
death are the penalty of undue expos- ure. In many places, for half the year, a cloud rarely, if ever, hides the incessant direct rays of the tropical sun. However gratefully the rainy season is ushered in, its long continu- ance of several months brings mildew on garments, bedding and books, so that it soon wears out its welcome. One's whole system longs for a breath of the bracing air of the West. The atmosphere is depressing and stifling. One truly, earns his bread by the sweat of his brow.
Insects and Reptiles
Even a short residence in the Ori- ent gives a taste of some of the plagues which afflicted Pharaoh. Pests of flying and creeping things invade the premises. Lizards on the walls, ants in bed, garments, food — every- where; crows by day and bats by night ; mosquitoes at all hours ; other insects fluttering in hosts about lamps, or feasting upon linens ; rats and white ants become veritable ''book-worms."
The Servant Question
In America one meets the "servant question," but in the East the servants are a necessary evil rather than an un- comfortable luxury. Climate and cus- tom are inexorable in their ruling concerning the use of servants. Free American democracy can not compre- hend the rigidity of the Oriental caste system. A cook is a cook and will do nothing more ; the water-carrier, the nurse, the sweeper, is each a separate office, and that settles it. It is impos- sible to combine these offices in one or two servants. Each clings to his sphere with tenacious stubbornness.
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275
The management of these necessary servants almost drives one to nervous prostration. As a rule they are heath- en devotees who pilfer and lie without scruple. Everything must be kept un- der lock and key and doled out from meal to meal. One wishes that he might dispense with these servants and perform the work himself. The intense heat, fixt custom and more important duties of the missionary ab- solutely forbid this, and every cent of expense for household servants is paid out of the missionaries' small personal funds.
It costs more to live on the same plane in Rangoon, for instance, than in Boston, New York or any other Amer- ican city. The variety of food within reach of a missionary's means is not so diverse as a casual visitor may think. Lack of appetite, due to the climate, and monotony in menu dis- count the enjoyment of meals.
Sickness and Death
" There are times when the luxuri- euce of tropical vegetation loses its charm. A man hot and nervous with fever is apt to look on the country as a vast burying ground and every palm as a monument. Sickness fre- quently overtakes the missionary, for from the beginning the climate is against him. He is compelled to de- pend upon reserve strength stored in his own system. Health broken be- yond repair is often the result, if death does not come to his relief.
Isolation
The isolation to which a foreign misionary is frequently subjected is no inconsiderable privation. Christianity is considered an intrusion among heathen systems.
The depression of heart due to surrounding immorality, superstition and ignorance increases rather than wears away by longer residence among such people.
Separation, by half the globe, from the homeland and loved ones is no luxury. Words are cold and almost meaningless to tell the heart-sorrow following the announcement by letter a month after the death of a loved one at home.
What has been said applies to the ordinary missionary life abroad. The farther he is removed from the centers of civilization the more aggravated are the inconveniences. This is not a complaint but a confession. A true missionary minimizes sacrifice. The joy of the Lord's service, the joy of lives saved and transformed, the joy of association with fellow missionaries overtop all these adverse experiences.
If the word sacrifice is used at all it is when circumstances compel him to abandon his chosen field of labor for which he has a passion.
It would be good if a number of home pastors could live long enough in the midst of the heathen world to understand its social, physical and re- ligious atmosphere.
TWO WEEKS IN TENTS IN INDIA
BY GEORGE SHERWOOD EDDY, KODAIKANAE, SOUTH INDIA
We have spent two weeks out in tents, preaching. There were alto- gether about 20 workers ; catechists, teachers and theological students. We divided up into small bands each day, going out in the morning to the more distant villages, and in the evenings to villages nearer by, reserving one party for the magic lantern to preach in the largest town of the neighborhood in the evening. We could thus reach nearly a score of villages with from 500 to 1,000 hearers every day; treat- ing patients medically, selling scrip- ture portions as we went, and trying to make the Gospel known in every village.
At our first tenting place we concen- trated our efforts every evening upon one particular village which seemed hopeful. On the last night, as we preached in the moonlight, with the villagers sitting about on the ground, after four or five short addresses, I rose to "pull in the net." We had shown them the power of Christ to save, and the utter lack of Hinduism, which had trampled upon them as poor outcasts, not even allowing them to enter its sacred temples. At the close of the meeting I said, "How many of you will to-night break away from the awful power of caste and accept Christ, whom you admit to be the true Savior? Turning to the headman, whose heart had been deeply touched, and who was convinced of the truth of Christ, I said, "My brother, will you not stand to-night, and accept Christ once for all?" It was a mo- ment of intense suspense and of moral struggle for the old man, for he was not sure if any one would follow him, and it was not a light thing to step
out from his past and break all the ties of kindred and of caste and stand alone for Christ. Slowly and bravely the old man rose silently, and folded his arms. A hum of astonishment went through the company, who had not believed that he would take the step. After a pause another arose, and then two young men : four in all. There, in the moonlight, we wrote out a document, and the old man signed, promising (1) to break forever with idolatry, (2) to attend Christian wor- ship and to place himself under Chris- tian instruction, and (3) with God's help, to lead a holy life as a true Christian from that moment. With trembling and uncertain hand the old man wrote his name, and the three others followed. The village deserted them, and they were left to stand alone, bearing persecution in their own homes, and receiving the cold shoul- der from the villagers, who had prom- ised to follow if they led the way. The old man has ever since been standing firm.
In another village we preached one morning to a company of villagers as they stood about listless and indiffer- ent. The crowd gradually melted away, but one man, with riveted gaze, seemed to hang upon our words. He had been prepared by previous in- struction on the part of our catechist. Finally turning to him I said, "My brother, will you not accept Christ to- day?" As he trembled on the brink of the great decision to break away from the whole community and stand alone, to be cut off from everything, and perhaps be persecuted, he finally said, "If three men will join me, I will come to-day." Then I said, "God and
TWO WEEKS IN INDIA
277
three men would enable you to take the step, but is not God alone enough?" Then he said, "If two men will come, or if even one will join me, I will come out to-day." For half an hour he clung to the hope of one more man, but he finally decided, "Yes, God alone is enough; I will trust Him against everything." And there, in the dust of the village street, caring not who saw or heard him, he knelt with me, and gave his heart to Christ, conscious of God's presence alone. I wrote out the same three conditions, which I asked him to sign. He could not write, but made, with the pen, the sign of the cross, and with the clear conviction that it would cost him everything, he chose a new name, "Courage," and left for his day's work in the fields, a new man in Christ. J low ignorant, how dirty, how low in the social scale he was I can find no words to describe, but this I know, a ray of light had entered that dark soul, and in that light he has walked all the days since. His own wife re- fused him food for a time ; the people have stood against him, but he has clung to Christ, and he has remained faithful. It doth not yet appear what he shall be.
In our last preaching station we baptized two boys, who had been studying in our Christian school. A messenger reached us, saying that an old man, lying at the point of death, who had been serving as the priest to the local village demon, had sent for us to give him Christian baptism. He had long known the truth, but he had not had the courage to cut off his only source of livelihood and stand alone against the united oppression of the village. The old man and his wife gave clear evidence of faith in Christ.
He chose for himself a new name, "Faith," and his wife, "The servant of Jesus." And there, as we were, hot and dusty from the long journey, and dripping with perspiration, we knelt by the bedside in our shirt- sleeves for that solemn baptismal service. His son and daughter had been baptized a short time before. Within a few days the old man died. Then persecution began. "Ah, yes," they said, "our god has killed him because he became a Christian." They refused to come to his funeral or to help bury him, and with all the effect- ive ingenuity which the cruel system of caste can bring to bear upon a helpless individual or family, the vil- lage turned against them. Their grain was taken up by the roots from their field and transplanted into the field of a neighboring Hindu. Their relatives refused to eat with them or to visit them. They were told they could no longer grind their grain in the village mortar, they could expect no more help in their work in the fields. Their house might remain un- thatched in the rains ; they might sink or swim, live or die, as best they could. The village passed them by in cold silence. But through tears and much tribulation this little family has stood bravely now for months, coming out with shining faces, and growing stronger as they stand alone in this new individual life in Christ, which has been crusht out for centuries by the caste system.
You tell me that these people are outcasts, that they have nothing to lose and everything to gain ; that they are "rice Christians." Yes, they are "rice Christians," and so would you and I be in their place. Tell me, my friend, if you had no hope of ever
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getting a meal of rice from one year'? end to another; if yon remained crnsht as an outcast under the system of Hinduism, left dirty and degraded, sunken and superstitions, and yon and your posterity had no hope of get- ting an education or of rising in the social scale unless yon embraced Christianity ; and further, if denied access to all the holiest temples of I [induism because yon were an out- cast, doomed to the degraded slavery of demon worship — if, I say, hun- gry in body, ignorant in mind, dark- ened in spirit, you could, by embrac- ing Christianity, so improve your physical condition that you could actu- ally eat rice ; that your children could get an education and that — in Christ — you could find the heavens opened with new and infinite possibilities for endless advancement, would you, too, not become a "rice Christian?" If you think it is easy for these outcasts, go and try to convert them. We give them no rice save what they earn by honest labor, and rice and education seem to them as nothing as compared with the bitter cross of being ostra- cized by friends and relatives, with no visible hope of marrying their sons and daughters nor of receiving human aid. Xo, the persecution which they receive is an unanswerable evidence that these are not "rice Christians."
In one village we preached without immediate fruit, but a little later I was sent for by a group of high-caste people who wished to come out for Christ. We met in the private house of the only Christian in a town of 5,- 000 people. But to-day there is a church in that house of some 20 souls, for several high-caste families came out that day for Christ. Only this week I was called to that village
to investigate the persecution and the boycott which the villagers were in- stituting against them. The Hindus had been going from house to house to urge the villagers to refuse them water, to refuse them fire and to boy- cott their shop, which they had done most successfully.
Two days later I was called fif- teen miles away to a little destitute village of fifty souls, who have just come over to us in a body. The village — so called — consisted of a dozen little huts of mud, each ten feet square, with leaking straw roofs in this season of pouring rain. Their well was full of muddy water in a stagnant pool, darker than the coffee and milk upon your breakfast table, and the whole village of fifty souls did not occupy, in its huddled collec- tion of little kennels, more space than the single house you live in. And here, with these poor souls I stood, trying to bargain with the high-caste Hindus for a small piece of ground at any price, upon which we might build a school, and with the hope of future progress to these people. But there stood the caste people of the neigh- boring village with one mind against us, bitter that these people should be allowed education or should be torn from their degrading slavery. Lying, deceiving, plotting against us, ready to burn the straw roofs from over their heads, if necessary — there stood the combined power of heathenism and its caste-system against us. And with us stood fifty people as ragged, as dirty, and as ignorant as ten centuries of Hinduism could make them. Last week they were "Pariahs," but to-day they bear the name of Christians, sons of God, heirs of the future, the hope of India.
SAMOA — HEATHEN AND CHRISTIAN
BY REV. I Missionary of ih
Samoa (meaning the family of Moa), is the native name of a group of islands extending' over 267 miles of ocean. The German flag waves over the larger and western islands of Upolu, Savaii, etc., while the stars and stripes are seen in the
A SAMOAN GIRL
eastern portion — on Tntnila and Manna. The United States have a fine land-locked harbor and naval station in Tntnila.
If was to Samoa on his homemade little Messenger of Peace that Will-
n. DAVIES, M.D.*
London Missionary Society
iams of Erromanga carried the first native teachers from Tahiti. The early missionaries who began to re- side in Samoa six years later labored most assiduously for the accomplish- ment of three things. These were the translation of the Scriptures, the training of a native ministry and the education of the young. They also devoted a fair share of their time to the healing of the sick, which has proved a valuable auxiliary. Most of them had some knowledge of medicine — a few a considerable amount — and afterward duly quali- fied doctors followed.
The Samoan translation of the Scriptures, after three careful revi- sions, is unsurpassed for accuracy in the South Pacific. There is also quite a little library of books in Samoa, commentaries, Bible diction- ary, educational manuals, etc.
The institution or college at Ma- nila during its sixty-two years of ex- istence has been an untold blessing. It has trained some 1,200 for the native ministry, who combine the duties of pastors and schoolmasters, besides giving higher education to a number of youths. Of the youths many have become native pastors and others have filled important po- sitions in their islands. Not only has Manua furnished pastors and schoolmasters for Samoa itself, but numbers of its students have carried the marvelous light into dark places, such as New Hebrides, New Cale- donia, Loyalties, Nine, Tokelau, El- lice and Gilbert Island, and scores
* Dr. Davies was for over thirty years connected with the Samoans and later spent nearly three years on Niue and in visiting the London Missionary Society Mission in New Guinea and elsewhere.
28o THE MISSIONARY RE
are working in New Guinea today. Our high school at Leulumoega gives a good three-years' course, combining with general education industrial pursuits. •
The high schools for girls at Pa-
CHIEF OF MANUA, SAMOA, AND HIS WIFE, BOTH CHRISTIANS
pauta, Upolu and at Atualana, Tu- tuila, are doing a most excellent work.
At every mission station there is also a preparatory institution for the brightest youths and young men from our village schools.
In every village is a school, where systematic examinations are carried on by the English missionary, and, with the exception of the salaries of the European agents, all these col- leges and schools are self-support- ing. Self-support is inculcated all over Samoa and our out-stations.
Christian Endeavor Societies also
IEW OE THE WORLD [April
are flourishing and there are 5,000 members of the International Bible Reading Association.
One special characteristic of our Samoan churches, and the same is true of our South Sea mission as a whole: They are missionary churches and so they are alive.
It was a high chief of Samoa, on questioning one of the early mis- sionaries as to what was then hap- pening in Britain, who was the orig- inator of the first missionary meet- ing in that group. Hearing from his missionary that in that very month Christian people in England would meet in London to hear about God's work in foreign lands he pleaded hard for a May meeting in Samoa. This was held in the month of May and was a most enthusiastic gather- ing of 3,000 persons. Since then the May meeting has been held annual- ly— not always in May — but some- times as late as October or Novem- ber, altho the people still call the annual missionary meeting the May meeting.
Never were the Samoans more generous in their offerings for heathen lands, or more liberal in the support of their native pastors than at the present time. How many de- voted men and women have given more than money — for they have hazarded their lives in carrying the Gospel of Christ to dark lands. The story of South Sea Island evangelists and martyrs is a fascinating chapter in the history of modern missions.
In the Memorial Church at Vat- orata, New Guinea, the writer recent- ly saw a brass tablet with eighty- seven names inscribed of those who had laid down their lives for Christ in that dark land. And of
[9o8]
SAMOA— HEATHEN AND CHRISTIAN
28 i
600 men and women — native evan- gelists from the South Sea Islands — no less than half have died in New Guinea, and still there are of- fers of service. At the end of 1905 in my charge on the steamer John Williams for location in New Guinea were eighteen couples. In December last nearly that number went again. These were from Cook Island, Nine and Samoa.
and "there he preached the Gospel." By the labors of native agents, superintended by ourselves and dur- ing the past forty years in the places mentioned, not less than 25,000 have been won over from heathenism in connection with the Samoan mis- sion.
Niue was called Savage Island by Captain Cook, because its heathen people resented the intrusion of a
The part natives have played in introducing Christianity to their is- lands.— Three of these, known per- sonally to the writer, were the means of introducing Christianity into the Tokelau, Ellice, and the five southern islands of the Gilbert group.
Quite recently I met in the Cook Island Elikana, who with others on that memorable voyage of eight weeks in a canoe, drifted over 1,200 miles of ocean to the Ellice group
foreigner, and "came upon him like wild boars." Niue fekai, or Niue the fierce, it was named by politer natives of other groups because of the rough manners of the inhabi- tants.
Niue tokotaha it was called by its own people because of its isolated position in the vast Pacific Ocean. Lying there solitary, 280 miles from anywhere, has made the island somewhat unique in its customs and the people almost a race by them-
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selves. The Niueans, like the Sa- moans, eastern Polynesians and Ha- waiians, are of the Malayo-Polyne- sian race. They are more industrious than the Sanioans, whose climate and soil furnishes everything edible in tropical profusion. Niue is a very rocky island; a quarter of a century ago the active males began to go
5,500; to-day 4,000 may be found always on the island.
These are all church-goers and among them are nearly 1,600 church members. Ineffectual attempts have been made by Roman Catholics to obtain a footing, but the whole island is still attached to the London Missionary Society.
away — a few as sailors, but the many as laborers to guano islands and other places.
At present, not being well satis- fied with the ungenerous New Zea- land rule, they are increasingly leaving in order to obtain the higher wages they receive elsewhere. This is the most serious aspect of Niue. It has meant physical and moral de- terioration and the introduction of new diseases which have sapped the physical vigor of an energetic peo- ple. Formerly the population was
The writer found the people of Niue kind and loving, altho not polished in their manners like the Samoans. What indeed must they have been in heathen times when Williams, at the great risk of his life, tried unsuccessfully to land teachers on Niue ! A number of years passed and then a native named Peniamina who had heard the Gospel story in Samoa carried it to his own island, but with little success. He was followed by native evangelists from Samoa ; but of all
1908]
these the highest place must be given to Paulo, whose memory is still fragrant. There are two spots on Niue which should be immortal- ized. At the village of Mutalau is the tomb of Paulo ; five miles south- west at Tuapa is the grave of one of his devoted converts. How Paulo
283
Master he would win Niue for Christ. Joined by other Samoan teachers he worked on and when the first resident missionary, Rev. W. G. Lawes (now Dr. Lawes) arrived, congregations were gathered all over the island.
The "noble brothers" Lawes,
SAMOA— HEATHEN AND CHRISTIAN
SCHOOL AND CHURCH AT ALIFI, NIUE, SOUTH SEA ISLANDS
overcame opposition, how he in- duced the people to make roads and to build places of worship and how, having served his generation, "he fell on sleep" is a record which is kept in heaven, and is well worth keeping by the Church on earth.
The dying request of the devoted convert was to be buried in the spot referred to; and why? It was be- cause on that spot his spiritual father one day stood, and planting his staff in the ground with a sub- lime faith and undaunted courage, resolved that with the help of his
aided by their devoted wives, have done splendid work on Niue. The elder Dr. Lawes, before he was transferred to New Guinea, and dur- ing his eleven years' residence, translated the New Testament and some of the earlier books of the Old, besides with his versatile genius do- ing many other things. His brother has completed the translation of the whole Bible and is full of labors to-day. Their own native ministers have been trained by the brothers Lawes. When the complete edition of the Bible arrived three years ago
284 THE MISSIONARY REVIEW OF THE WORLD [April
the writer was scarcely able to get a meal. The people were clamorous to purchase — with good English money — the new Bible.
New and improved places of wor- ship are being erected all over the island. As in Samoa, the Niueans put up their own churches, ably support their native pastors, but this does not prevent them from giving very generously for the work in dark lands, and no village surpasses Mu- talau for its gifts. Recently Mu- talau gave in one year £59 ($295) for "dark lands" and for their pas- tor £69 ($345). A very warm in-
terest was manifested last August in heathen New Guinea when six couples were set apart to break up new ground there.
As one looks back over forty years there is abundant cause for joy and thankfulness. But the work needs consolidation and strengthening in many places. Above all, in New Guinea there is much need for all the help the South Sea Island churches can give by sending their devoted sons and daughters to unite with New Guinea Christianized na- tives in carrying the Gospel to the regions beyond.
|
lb |
|||
|
■1 s |
Work ssiona |
istiani Vorkei |
|
|
Societies |
1% |
St |
|
|
British |
5,140 |
7 |
12 |
|
2,226 |
5 |
20 |
|
|
5,o74 |
5 |
*9 |
|
|
{American Societies) |
|||
|
American Board, Boston |
566 |
7 |
14 |
|
Baptist Missionary Union.. |
54^ |
8 |
26 |
|
Methodist Episcopal Church |
808 |
9 |
11 |
|
889 |
3 |
18 |
NATIVE WORKERS IN MISSION FIELDS
BY REV. J. S. CHANDLER, D.D., AMERICAN BOARD, INDIA
The native worker is the prime fac- tor in the work of any mission. A for- eign missionary without fellow work- ers belonging to the people for whom he labors is shorn of the strength that his task demands. The band of native workers creates the atmosphere in which he gains familiarity with the people. He and the people learn to know each other largely through the medium of these fellow workers. In general they are his joy and comfort, for they are faithful to the Lord Jesus Christ, and therefore faithful to the mission and to the people. Abraham Lincoln said the Lord must love the common people because he made so many of them. So we may say that missionary bodies must love their na- tive fellow workers, they secure so many of them.
The following table shows how gen- erally they are to be found in all the missions. The last column also shows the proportion of communicants to workers, both foreign and native:
All the societies of Europe and America are represented on the field by 12,440 missionaries and 70,305 na- tive workers. The average number of native workers to each missionary is therefore not less than five.
Of the four largest American soci- eties one, the Presbyterian, has less natives on the average to each mission- ary than the average of all the soci- eties or than the average of the other large American societies. But they have the largest number of foreign
icjoSJ
missionaries, and a larger income than the Congregational or Baptist soci- eties.
On the other hand the other three of the American societies have more than the average, viz. : seven, eight, and nine, respectively.
Many of the missionaries are mar- ried couples, and in these cases the associated native workers will average from ten to fifteen for each missionary couple.
This band of native fellow workers comprises all or most of the following groups, viz. : ordained pastors, cate- chists or evangelists, teachers, and Bible women. Each band is organized in connection with its mission, or sta- tion, to conduct the work most effi- ciently.
In the early days of missions, espe- cially those to peoples dense in num- bers and in ignorance, but few natives were available as workers, and they were men of very modest education and attainments. If they were faith- ful and willing to learn, the missionary could depend upon them for important service in reaching the people and teaching them the Gospel story. But it was incumbent on the missionary to keep in close touch with them for the sake of their own intellectual and spiritual growth. Often the mission itself would prescribe lessons for them to learn with their individual mission- aries and then recite before the whole body of the mission at its general meetings.
The next step was the establishment of schools to train promising children in the branches necessary for mission work. Primary schools created a de- mand for grammar and high schools, and these for theological seminaries and colleges; and with the establish-
es
ment of a system of education the quality of men available for mission work was constantly improving, un- til the need of lesson classes dimin- ished or ceased.
While this process was going on in the mission organization, the few con- verts were increasing and being organized into congregations and churches ; and soon the necessity arose of ordaining some for the pastoral care of the churches. These ordained pastors represent the highest fruit of the spiritual work of missions. They are the associates and companions of the foreign missionary not only in church work, but in the training Of the lower classes of workers.
The schools for girls have always been as necessary as those for boys, not only to elevate the women, but to train mistresses for girls' schools, and Bible women to work among non- Christian women, and intelligent wives for the men. But it was difficult in some places to get girls to study, and some missionary ladies used to give a cup of rice to each girl that would come to Sunday-school in the hope of getting some of them interested enough to come to the day-school. Gradually that state of things passed away and enough would come, without being paid for it, to fill the schools. But for years young men preparing for mission work preferred unedu- cated wives to educated ones, because they feared that education would not help them to be obedient to their hus- bands. Then one mission voted that they thought it so important to have workers with educated wives that they would consider an uneducated wife a bar to promotion and increase of sal- ary. This did something toward the increase of education among the girls,
NATIVE WORKERS IX MISSION' IT ELDS
286
THE MISSIONARY REVIEW OF THE WORLD
[April
but not very much. In that mission the tide has been completely turned by the discovery on the part of the young men, that educated girls, can, by teach- ing, earn a salary even after they are married. Now educated girls, espe- cially those trained as teachers, are sought after. They are not always to be had, for educated girls have learned to have a mind of their own, and to appreciate the opportunities of doing- good without getting married, at least until the man of their choice appears.
On the whole, the result is that many of the pastors have found for their companions true helpmeets and coworkers instead of being married to ignorant and inefficient women.
These are the men and women who are coming to the front in the Chris- tian work of the mission fields. They are the counselors and friends of the missionary as well as of the Chris- tians ; they are the best representatives of Christianity to the non-Christian multitudes, and illustrate its power to develop spiritual life and character in the individual, and unite men of di- verse training and advantages into one brotherhood. It is the joy of the mis- sionary to let them increase while he decreases. All missions are not in the same stage of progress in this matter, but it is the goal for all.
But at present the main body of na- tive workers is made up of men and women of moderate training and small salary, who need contact with the mis- sionary, or native pastor, at periodical times to receive suggestion and in- spiration. They easily get into ruts, and it does them great good to come together every month for a couple of days to report their work and have seasons of conference and prayer with one another and with their leaders.
In the Madura Mission of South India these workers are not only brought together every month in each station to meet with the missionary and pastors of that station, but every September they all come together in a central place with all the missionaries and pastors for a series of conferences extending through several da vs.
Many of them live apart from their fellows, in a kind of settlement work, with their families as the only edu- cated Christians, and in some cases as the only Christians, in the midst of a Hindu and Mohammedan population. Little by little they gain the confidence of the people. A school is started and the work seems prospering, when sud- denly one or two young men of the school decide to become Christians. Immediately there is turmoil and bit- terness. It ends by the expulsion of the lads from their homes and even from the village, and the breaking up of the school. The result seems to be the gain of one or two lads with the loss of a school and the confidence of the community. It may take years to win back that lost prestige, and usu- ally the worker has to be transferred to another place and another sent to rebuild the school. But if the young converts prove faithful they are worth the loss. In a village where three brothers came out as Christians one backslid under the pressure, but the other two remained firm and were driven away. Of those one has pushed his way through the mission schools and become a successful pastor, min- istering to a parish containing seventy small congregations. The school that was broken up at his conversion has been reestablished for many years, and the relatives that drove him out are now friends ; and if other conver-
NATIVE WORKERS IX MISSION" FIELDS
287
sions occur, as they surely will in time, the new converts will not be perse- cuted as he was.
While many workers are gained in this way, others are the children of a previous generation, even of those who themselves became disciples through tribulation. It is a joy to see the families thus coming into Christian work.
One Bible reader of the earlier time, whose salary was but $2 a month, sent three boys to the mission schools, and by the greatest economy and self-denial kept them there until they could become teachers. One re- mains a teacher, another is a theolog- ical instructor, and the third is an or- dained pastor, all faithful workers.
An old watchman, with the same income, did the same with his family, and now one is a prominent catechist, two are pastors, and a daughter is a Bible woman ; still another was, until his death, a useful teacher. Thus in the family of that poor watchman were raised up workers for each of the four classes mentioned in this article.
These faithful coworkers with the missionary are not only the medium for reaching non-Christians ; they are looked up to by the members of their congregations as models in clean- liness, courtesy, piety, and charity. It gives every faithful man and woman among them an honorable and inspir-
ing position; and when the people are in trouble from their non-Christian neighbors, in sickness and death, in poverty and prison, they turn to their "helpful minister," as he is called. Many such workers will surely have every sentence of commendation men- tioned in Matthew's gospel uttered to them, viz. : "I was hungry, and ye gave me to eat ; I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink ; I was a stranger, and ye took me in ; naked, and ye clothed me ; I was sick, and ye visited me ; I was in prison, and ye came unto me."
The position of these workers in every mission is of the utmost im- portance. They ought to be better paid and able to maintain their fami- lies in a more self-repecting way. On the other hand there ought to be more of them. In the Madura Mission dis- trict there are 3,000 villages and only 524 of these have Christians in them. The workers number about one for each village with Christians ; whereas many more villages would welcome them. Thus the missions are between the two needs, of better paid workers and more workers, which grind them down as between upper and nether millstone. A large trust fund of mil- lions, like the Rockefeller, Sage, and other funds in this land, is urgently needed to secure good wages and small pensions for the 70,305 native workers of all the missions.
INDIA: A NATION IN THE MAKING*
BY W*. M . ZUMBRO President of the American College, Madura, India
There are many things to indicate that the people of India are slowly finding themselves, are coming to their own. Everywhere there is fer- ment and a murmur of discontent. The cry "Bande mataram!" (Hail to the mother country!) is heard throughout the land, and "swaraj" (home rule) and "swadeshi" (home country ) have become words of magic to conjure with. What does it all mean? Briefly and fundamentally it means this : A new nation is about to be born.
There are three dominant notes in the murmur of discontent, one polit- ical, another industrial, and the third religious and social. During Christ- mas week of 1906 Dadabhai Xaoroji, a Parsee gentleman of Bombay, for some years past resident in England and formerly a member of the British Parliament, in the course of his presi- dential address at the opening of the twenty-second session of the Indian National Congress insisted upon the right of the Indian people as British subjects to govern themselves and asked that this right be realized. There were nearly 10,000 delegates and vis- itors present, and the address was re- ceived with a tumult of applause. The members of the Congress belong for the most part to the "Moderate" par- ty. They maintain an attitude of con- fidence toward the British Govern- ment and believe that in the end they will gain what they ask by persistent agitation. They do not on any account wish the guiding hand of the British Raj to be withdrawn, for they know full well that the people of India are not yet ready to take the government into their own hands. There is, on the other hand, an "Extreme" party, led by such men as Bal Ghanghadar Tilak, of Poona, Bipin Chandar Pal, of Calcutta, and Lala Lajpat Rai, of Lahore, who openly assert that it is
useless to continue to ask the govern- ment for what they want, that to do so is to play the part of beggars, and that the thing to do is to take by force what they can not get otherwise.
How India is Governed To-day
In order to understand the signifi- cance of the demand for a larger measure of self-government it is nec- essary to have in mind just what part the people of India now have in the administration of their own affairs. The Indian Government has two cen- ters, one in England, the other in In- dia. The home government is vested in a Secretary of State for India, who is a member of the British cabinet, as- sisted by an under-secretary and a cabinet of fifteen members. No In- dian gentleman has ever been a mem- ber of this cabinet. In India the gov- ernment is vested in a Viceroy, or Governor-General, appointed by the Crown, and acting under the control of the Secretary of State for India. He is assisted by a council of five ordi- nary members, and when the council acts as a legislative body there are from ten to sixteen additional mem- bers, half of them being "non-official." None of the ordinary and not more than four of the non-official members of the Viceroy's council are Indians.
The empire is divided into prov- inces, the six most important of which are Bombay, Madras, Bengal, the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, the Punjab, and Burma, each under a Governor or Lieutenant-Governor, and each with a council. These coun- cils are modeled after the Viceroy's council and have official and non-offi- cial members. Indians may serve only as non-official members. These In- dian members may take part in the discussions and vote as do the Eng- lish members, but they are always in a hopeless minority should any ques-
* From the American Monthly Review of Reviews.
INDIA: A NATION IN THE MAKING
289
tion conic up in which there is a clash between the interests of the rulers and the ruled.
For administrative purposes these provinces are divided into districts, of which there are in all 250, each dis- trict having its own department of ad- ministration, justice, public works, health and sanitation, and police. Usu- ally, tho not always, the heads of these various departments are Eng- lishmen. On the other hand, far and away the larger number of govern- ment positions are held by the people. Out of over 114,000 positions carrying a salary of $300 or over per year 97 per cent, are held by Indians.
The Industrial Situation
The second note of discontent is in- dustrial. In October, 1905, on the day that Lord Curzon's order for the par- tition of Bengal went into effect, a large crowd marched through the streets of Calcutta, flags and banners flying, and later went to the temple of Kali where, in the presence of the god- dess, they took a vow that they would no longer buy foreign goods, espe- cially English goods, the penalty to be that they would give of their blood to Kali. Thus began the Swadeshi movement. As a movement to boy- cott foreign goods it is a failure, but as an attempt to revive and reorganize the waning industries of the country is is exerting a most helpful influence.
In India the industrial situation is critical. There are many reasons for this. Scientific and industrial educa- tion has been almost wholly neglected, and save among the Parsees the edu- cated classes have held themselves en- tirely aloof from industrial pursuits. This leaves the industries in the hands of the ignorant and conservative classes, who neither invent new or im- prove old methods.
The result is seen everywhere. Take agriculture : The population numbers about 300,000,000, in a territory half the size of the United States, so that the problem of getting enough to eat is serious. The methods and imple- ments of the farmer are of the most
primitive kind. The plow consists of three crooked sticks fastened together. A large part of the land which might be cultivated is uncultivated because the farmer has not found out the way to cultivate it with profit. In 1903-4 the following conditions prevailed with reference to agriculture :*
Acres.
Total area, British India only 554,536,000
Forest 67,104,000
Not available for cultivation 138,352,000
Current fallows 36,870,000
Cultivable waste other than fal- lows 103,391,000
Net area cropped 208,817,000
From this it will be seen that the net area cropped is only about 37.5 per cent, of the total area, while there is over 18 per cent, of the total area left waste which is capable of cultiva- tion.
The disastrous effects of this neg- lect of industries by the educated classes is also seen in the decadence of the industrial arts. The artisans still work under the old hand regime where the work is done at home in- stead of under the modern regime of the machine and the factory. How- ever cheap labor may be in India, it is no longer as cheap as a machine, and the artisan is being driven to the wall. From the earliest periods of his- tory up to very recent times India had held high rank in the trade of the world, having been a large producer of commodities that were highly prized in general commerce. Since 1834, when the East India Company was deprived of its monopoly, there has been a large increase in the com- merce of India, the exports rising from a total of $50,000,000 in that year to over $580,000,000 in 1903-4. But the exports during the early period consisted largely in manufac- tured articles, while to-day they are largely raw materials. Textiles, once an important export, now far exceed all other imports, amounting to two- thirds of the whole. Cotton grown in
* Statistics taken from the "Statesman's Year Book," 1907.
290
THE MISSIONARY REVIEW OF THE WORLD
[April
the country can be shipped to England, spun, the cloth woven on the looms of Manchester, sent back, and sold in the bazaars just a little cheaper than the native artisan can sell the cloth woven on his hand loom.
Not only are the old industries de- clining-, but the new economic wants that are developing are being supplied by articles imported from abroad rather than manufactured at home. About 65 per cent, of the population is engaged in agriculture. When the rains fail, as so often happens, the peo- ple are face to face with famine con- ditions, a situation which might be greatly relieved by the organization of new industries.
Caste exclusiveness, suspicion, and lack of business integrity make it as yet impossible, save among the Par- sees, for the people of the country, to any considerable extent, to organize commercial enterprises. Some years ago, in the city of Madura, a num- ber of Indian gentlemen thought they would build a cotton-spinning mill to spin the cotton grown nearby. A con- siderable amount of capital was sub- scribed, but when it came to actually paying in the money to start the build- ing no one would do it, and so they bought their wives and daughters new jewels instead.
It is sometimes said that the reason for the present industrial depression is to be found in the excessive burdens of taxation which the people are com- pelled to bear. In answer to this it is perhaps sufficient to cite statistics from government records gathered by the editor of The East and West and published in the June (1907) num- ber of that magazine. These data show that in the ten districts of the Bombay Presidency investigated the annual assessment averaged from a little over 50 cents to $1 per capita, while the assessment varied from about 16 to 50 cents per acre, accord- ing to kind of soil.
Social and Religious Discontent
The third note of discontent is so- cial and religious. Recently "His
Holiness, the Guru of Shirali," called a "Mahasabha" or great council of the Saraswat Brahmins, for whom His Holiness is the spiritual head, to consider measures whereby to over- come the increasing tendency of the people to resort to foreign travel. Ac- cording to His Holiness' interpretation of the Shastras, foreign travel is for- bidden, and he is consequently much exercised by the growing tendency among his people to condone such travel. The Guru has stood firm and has issued bull after bull condemning those who have returned after such voyages, and has forbidden the ortho- dox to have any intercourse with them on their return, but, in the language of a writer in the Indian Social Re- former, "the rising spirit will not down." The heart of India remains deeply religious, but the intelligence of India is demanding that what has been long outgrown shall now be dis- carded. Just as to-day the tools of industry are antiquated and ineffi- cient, so also many of the social con- ventions, religious beliefs, supersti- tions and practises belong back in the days of Greece and Rome. In the name of their holy religion the priests forbid foreign travel, remarriage of widows, the attainment of mature age before marriage, intermarriage and interdining between the different castes and sub-castes, and plant them- selves athwart every effort made to introduce reforms imperatively needed.
England's Attitude
There can be no doubt that Eng- land means to do the fair thing with India, sometimes slowly perhaps and rather grudgingly in some matters, not infrequently, when the interests of India cross those of England, as in the matter of an import duty on English textiles, sacrificing the for- mer to the latter, but yet in the long- run determined that India shall have a square deal and when the time comes a government of her own.
The fact that unrest exists is no dis- credit to England ; rather it is the best possible testimony to the excellence of
INDIA: A NATION IN THE MAKING
291
her work. As Mr. Morlcy said in his budget speech of a year ago, "Every one, — soldiers, travelers, and journal- ists,— they all tell us that there is a new spirit abroad in India. Be it so. How could you expect anything else? You have been educating the people for years with western ideas and lit- erature, and you have already given them facilities for communication with one another." Probably nowhere in the world is there a more efficient, upright, faithful body of men set to rule a country than is to be found in India. Sympathy with the ruled there may not always be, misunderstandings there are a-plenty, and the Britisher is too often inclined to look with proud disdain upon the people over wrhom he exercises lordship, but he can not be accused of neglect of duty, inefficiency or graft.
England is fully aware that a new situation has developed and is prepar- ing to meet it. Lord Minto has al- ready appointed a committee to con- sider whether the time has come to give India some form of representa- tive government. This committee has made its report, and the government recommendations based on it have been sent home to England, but until the reply of the Secretary of State has been received it will not be made pub- lic just what the recommendations are. Meanwhile, Mr. Morley, in his last budget speech, proposes the following changes in the administration of the Indian Empire : ( 1 ) The establish- ment in India of an advisory "Coun- cil of Notables"; (2) a substantial en- largement of the Legislative Councils in India, both the Governor-General's Council and the Provincial Legislative Councils; (3) the nomination by the" Secretary of State for India of one and perhaps two Indian gentlemen to be members of the Indian Council in London. The latest information is that Mr. Morley has already intro- duced into the British Parliament leg- islation looking toward the bringing about of these changes.
It is evident, however, that the In- dian Government is much concerned
about the present unrest. Around Lahore certain agitators like Ajit Singh have been inflaming the people by seditious speeches and inciting to open revolt, seeking especially to influ- ence the Sikhs, many of whom are in the army. On May 7 a warrant was issued for the arrest of Ajit Singh and Lala Lajpat Rai. The former es- caped, tho he was taken later, but Rai was arrested and without trial de- ported to Rangoon "for reasons of state." A considerable portion of the native press has of late been publish- ing scurrilous attacks on the govern- ment, and it became imperative to put down with a firm hand such proceed- ings. Thousands still die of plague, and agitators played upon the super- stitions of the people by tales of the British officials causing plague by putting poison in wells. May 10, of last year, was the anniversary of the breaking out of the great Sepoy Mutiny at Meerut, and as that day drew near a rumor was started that on this anniversary Lala Lajpat Rai was intending to march on Lahore with an army and begin a military movement against the gov- ernment. To prevent this a consid- erable detachment of soldiers was hur- ried to the city and prompt meas- ures taken to prevent what it was feared might be a serious uprising. There was. some rioting at Rawal- pindi, near Lahore, two or three vil- lages were burned, and some mission property destroyed, but later informa- tion gives little evidence to show that an armed uprising had been seriously contemplated.
Who are the People of India?
The population of India is made up of a multitude of races and tongues gathered from many lands, representing many creeds, divided, discordant, oftentimes hating each other, and until recently doing all that they could to prevent assimilation into one people. There are the aborigines, now driven back into the forests and mountain fastnesses; the Dravidian, who came into India long before the
292 THE MISSIONARY REVIEW OF THE WORLD
coming of the Aryans and for a time occupied nearly the whole of the pen- insula, tho later driven southward ; the Aryan, who came , down through the northwest pass about 2000 B.C., and who at once asserted and has since maintained his superiority over the other races ; and the later comers, Jew and Arab, Scyth, Tatar, and Mo- gul, each maintaining so far as possi- ble his separate life, and refusing to blend with his neighbors.
And yet these divergent peoples are being drawn together and fused into one nation. The Hindus and Moham- medans have for centuries been ene- mies, and yet Surendra Nath Ban- ner ji, a Bengal Babu, at the outbreak of the Swadeshi movement, addressing the Mohammedans at their great Bakra Id festival, said: "We are no longer Hindus and Mohammedans, we are Indians," a sentiment which would have been impossible five years ago.
No people can unite to form a na- tion unless they have a common lan- guage. This India has never had, the last census giving as many as sixteen different languages, each spoken by from 3,000,000 to 90,000,000, while more than 160 minor dialects are rec- ognized. A century of English rule has made possible a common language. English is now the language of in- struction in all the high schools and colleges throughout the empire; it is also the official, as it is fast becoming the commercial, language. A visitor from America who may happen to at- tend the National Congress will per- haps be surprized to see the 10,000 or more delegates, splendid fellows from all over the empire, holding dig- nified conference over the various problems that present themselves, but he will be still more surprised to find that the proceedings are all conducted in English, the only language that is common among the delegates.
What part are the Indian people ta- king in their own regeneration? The national organization and development of Congress is the best thing that In- dia has yet done of her own initiative to prepare for self-government. It is
not an official body and has no official standing with government, but by it public opinion is being formed and a new national spirit created.
India is alive to the need of indus- trial reorganization, and there is com- ing an insistent demand for scientific and industrial education to supplement the exclusive literary and philosophic education of the past. Young men in increasing numbers are going to Ja- pan, to Europe, and to America to study agriculture, engineering, applied arts, and sciences. A young high-caste man from India has recently been ta- king a course at Pratt Institute and studying among other things the pro- cess of soap-making, an unheard of thing in the past and significant for the future. Mills built by native capi- tal are found in Bombay, Bengal, and elsewhere, tho aside from what has been done by the Parsees there is not much to the credit of the Indian people in the way of organized industries.
As to their religion, various at- tempts have been made to reform Hinduism, but with little success, as the Hindus themselves admit. The Brahmo and Arya Samaj movements have done something, but they do not increase as one might expect them to. Movements like the Young Men's Hindu Association accomplish noth- ing. The priests are frequently cor- rupt and immoral. Moreover, Hindu- ism has no way by which to help the low-caste man. A few years ago a Brahman official to whom the Madras government gave the important duty of writing the "progress report" of the presidency pointed out that "from a Hindu standpoint there was no hope for the social amelioration of the out- cast within the pale of Hinduism. There is but one way for them to rise, and that is to accept either Moham- medanism or Christianity." The edi- tor of the Christian Patriot, comment- ing on this, says : "No Hindu has ever challenged that statement made in a public report of government." The Christian community, tho small, numbering only about one per cent of the population, is admitted on all
INDIA: A NATION' IN T1IH MAKING
293
1 90S I
hands to have an influence out of all proportion to its numbers. It is the only community that has the hope of the morning in its heart, and in it the Gospel which it preaches lies the future of India.
What part is America taking in this work of creating a new India? Nothing so far as political influence goes, and practically nothing commer- cially, for America's trade with India is insignificant, amounting in 1905 to $7,547,938 worth of exports and $53,- 238,000 of imports. The only way in which America is directly influencing India is through her missionaries. There are about 1,100 American men and women engaged in mission work. They have gone out with a few simple things packed away in their trunks,— the Bible, a school-book, a few tools and implements of industry, — and with the American idea of a fair chance to all and a helping hand to the one who is in need, they have scattered out into the cities and villages and out-of-the- way places and there they have set themselves to the task of helping in the redemption of India. Wherever they have gone they have organized schools, and in the school is crystal- !ized much of the best that America has. The following table indicates the amount of educational work carried on in India by the American missionaries :
No. Pupils.
Primary and secondary
schools 3,542 127,302
Colleges 9 3,387
Theological seminaries 7 183
Industrial schools 17 1,759
Medical schools 3 18
Kindergartens 15 507
In addition to this a considerable number of the 159 newspapers and magazines now published in India are published by American missionaries. It is a small work that they are doing compared with the much larger work of the English, but it is something, and something too for which India is grateful, and all the more so because
there is no possibility of political in- terest back of it. Already India is sending some of her choice sons to America to study American institu- tions and methods of industry, and soon many more will be coming for the same purpose. Some of the Amer- ican schools and colleges in India, like the American college at Madura, are trying to reorganize their work so as to offer scientific and industrial train- ing, for which, however, a larger in- come is imperative.
India has splendid achievements to her credit in the past. The Empire of Asoka was one of the greatest of pre- Christian empires, and the pillar and rock inscriptions of the Asokan era form, according to Rhys Davids, one of the most important of any age. Two of the four great world religions had their birth in India, and the sacred books of the Hindus exceed in volume those of any other faith. Nor have they been wanting in other literature.
Where is there in all the world a gem of architecture equal to the Taj at Agra as it stands alone in its own exquisite garden on the banks of the Jumna, the finest monument in the world to the most beautiful of senti- ments, the love of man for woman?
Still greater achievements await India in the future. No definite plan of reorganization by which the people will have a larger part in their own government has yet been agreed upon. Perhaps the plan that would be most popular there would be for some mem- ber of the royal family of England to become the permanent Viceroy and es- tablish his own court, with a legislative assembly, one branch of which at least should be elected by the people.
While there are possibilities of seri- ous difficulty in the future, there seems good reason to believe that the pres- ent discontent is but the normal sign of healthy growth, and that out of the womb of the past a new India is be- ing born fairer, brighter, truer, no- bler than anything that the past has ever known.
THINGS OUT OF PROPORTION IN INDIA
BY. MRS. JOHN H. WVCKOFF The American Arcot Mission in South India
India is a land of surprizes, and you may notice some of them on your very first journey in the land. The proportion of water to sand in one of the vast river beds the train has to cross, is an instance : it has taken a bridge half a mile long to span it, but the stream of visible water there is surprizingly small, and as the hot months wear on, may become invisi- ble. At the same time, the glossy greenness of the banian trees that shade the highway seems to be en- tirely out of proportion to the wither- ing heat of the sun. The size of the washerman's donkey is sadly dis- proportioned to the vastness of two bundles of clothing being taken to or from the river bed, where they are cleaned by being beaten flail-fashion on a smooth stone — and, alas ! the number of buttons that return to you is also staggeringly small compared with those you know were sewed on before that vigorous treatment !
Another incongruity that constantly obtrudes itself on your notice is the amount of clothing vs. jewelry every- body wears. There is an inordinate love of self-adornment in the people — high and low, old and young, male and female. A naked baby of two months will have its fat little wrists stiff with bangles and wear a string of beads round its neck. In rich fam- ilies, the boys from two to five years of age will be in full dress, when wearing only silver anklets and brace- lets and a stiff necklace of gold wire, with perhaps some silver ornament on the string inevitably worn around the loins. Their sisters, in addition, will have ears and nose more or less dec- orated, and multiply the bead chains and bangles, and their fond parents think any further clothing a super- fluity for such babies. This passion does' not decrease with age nor disap- pear with extreme poverty. . . .
It is a cause of much crime in the land, for often little children and women are murdered for the jewels they were wearing. Moreover, it keeps a vast amount of capital out of circulation. Ninety million pounds sterling is the sum computed to be thus tied up for senseless display in the past 70 years that might have been expended for the comforts and necessities of life. Is it any wonder that India is poor?
Does this concern the problems of the missionary, you ask. Yes, when he has to fix the salaries of his agents, who feel too poor to afford twenty- five cents a year for a book or a little magazine, and yet can supply their daughters with nose and ear jewels and bangles, silver toe-rings besides ! or when an agent with a kind-hearted supporter in this land writes a pa- thetic appeal for help to feed his family better, receives direct a Christ- mas gift of $10, and spends it all in substituting gold for brass in his wife's ears !
You are more familiar with an- other of the distortions of heathenism that comes from the undue exaltation of man above woman ; but you do not realize the ruinous outcome of this sentiment as we meet it in a hundred ways. In the man, arrogance un- bounded, and self-gratification the one purpose of his life ; in the woman, enslavement of body and mind. The baby boy is the one who, if he lives to perform the funeral rites for his father, saves his father's soul from hell ; so he is a little brown god from his birth, growing up undisciplined and uncontroled. As a little boy, he may beat his mother, unreproved. Small wonder that as a young man he beats or kicks his little wife, if he so chooses, for any slightest cause; for she is given over to him body and soul — there is no possible appeal —
* From the Bombay Guardian.
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public sentiment is all on his side, applauding his ability to rule his own household. Of course, she may never speak his name, nor eat till he has finished his meal, nor sit in his pres- ence ; that is a matter of family eti- quette. "Yes, surely, I have beaten my wife," confest a good, earnest Christian man, "I had to beat her till she learned not to answer back." But it takes more than two genera- tions to counteract that which has been bred in the bone for centuries.
( )h, how the subject of woman's dis- abilities looms up with more and more terrible distinctness as you see into the heart of heathenism ! Books about her wrongs have been written, which all will do well to read who still have a faint idea that Hinduism is a re- ligion sufficiently well adapted to the Hindus to be let alone by outsiders. The treatment it accords to its child- wives and child-widows is of itself enough to brand it as satanic. Com- pared with all others, surely they are the deepest wronged who are given over in infancy to the passions of bru- tal, wicked men ; or who, when the husband dies, are branded from baby- hood through life as the murderers of their husbands, for which uncon- scious sin no misery is too great a punishment, no ignominy undeserved, no mitigation allowed, no atonement possible. And the greatest sinners in this respect are the Brahmans, who exalt themselves as gods, but thrust down a widowed daughter or sister to the lowest hell, even disfiguring her appearance, so that all the world may know her at a distance and avoid her as they would the plague. Is it not a miracle that out of this lowest pit of man-invented suffering, should have been raised up one, who has rescued 2,000 and more of the de- spised widows and famine castaways, and is bringing them into the light? The success of the work of the Brah- man widow, Pandita Ramabai, is out of all proportion to the means em- ployed, and is only to be explained as you recognize in it the hand of God.
We can touch only lightly upon some of the other disproportions that especially appeal to mothers. The mad haste to get their little daugh- ters married, over and above any de- sire to see them physically or men- tally fitted for the responsibilities of life, is inexplicable to all of us. And, again, their consuming desire for chil- dren is most pathetic. ... I have seen them in the blistering April heat walking three miles around a sacred rock, with clasped hands as if in ceaseless petition, touching the earth at every step ; and my heart ached with the hopelessness of their reme- dies, and the cruelty of the public sen- timent and the priestly dictum that prescribed such remedies.
"How can they be so ignorant as to do such things!" you exclaim; but you only ask it because you do not yet appreciate the proportion of dark- ness to light in that land, nor the as- tonishing power wielded over the masses by the priests, who prescribe these senseless remedies and keep up the unholy feasts, with all the imbe- cilities of idol-worship. They are the emissaries of the Prince of Darkness, and there is an army of several mil- lions of them, many of them wander- ing about as sacred beggars, fright- ening the simple-hearted with their pretended powers of cursing those that oppose them, and fostering su- perstitious fear of gods and devils alike. Alas, that in India morality should seem to be in inverse ratio to the profession of religion and that these leaders of the people should be the greatest hindrance to the spread of the light ! For the stupendous fact remains, that, with all tlie change that the last 100 years of missionary effort has brought about ; with all that Prot- estant countries with their 91 mission- ary societies have thus far accom- plished; with all that the British Government with its magnificent edu- cational system has yet done ; only 22 per cent of the men and but two and a half per cent of the women of India can read ! You have put too vast a
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burden upon us, your agents, in that distant land. You have given us a field to work of whose extent you can form no adequate idea. One foreign missionary to 500,000 souls ! Is that the proportion the Christian Church desires to maintain? My husband had a parish of 2,500 Christians, and tho he had three assistant ministers, yet as his congregations were scat- tered over an area of 500 square miles, they did not reduce his work to such proportions that he could rightly com- pass it, for those Christians were scat- tered in fifty different villages, and among them were forty schools which he had to manage and maintain. Then think of the 8oo villages with their thousands of souls, where the Gospel can be only occasionally preached, and which are dependent on him for the Bread of Life. Now add to these la- bors the duty of supervising the work of your neighboring missionary who is obliged to take his furlough, and some serious responsibility for the whole mission, like the treasurer's or secretary's duties, and then tell me if your expectation of results from your foreign work is not sadly out of pro- portion to the force you send to work
it. At the least, can no; the Church supply the place of those who have fallen in harness?
Dr. John Scudder died, another missionary withdrew, and no one has been sent to fill up the ranks again, their fields being divided up among the remaining missionaries already overburdened, so that now their re- sponsibilities are cruelly out of pro- portion to their strength, and demand, as one of them wrote, "full days and nights of work." Is there no way to come to their relief? I know I am addressing a noble band of workers who are presumably giving a large part of their time and thought and means to these problems — indeed, who have given their all to God to be used by Him as He directs — but the pro- portion of those who are interested in this work is small, compared with the larger number who do little or noth- ing to extend the Redeemer's kingdom in the regions beyond. Not in a carp- ing nor fault-finding spirit, but in a spirit of tender love, do I urge any who may be indifferent or lukewarm to "come to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty."
THE STUDENTS OF RUSSIA*
BY BARON PAUL NICOLAY OF RUSSIA
The Russian student world does not represent a compact homogeneous mass of Russians, but reflects the vari- ety of different nationalities, which form 144,000,000 inhabitants of this Empire and of its one hundred or more languages and dialects. This is espe- cially apparent in the western univer- sities, in Yoorieff (Dorpat) for ex- ample, where the Polish, German, Let- tish, Esthonian, and Russian students form distinct groups, the last com- prising, besides "great" and "small" Russians, a number of Jews, and of dark-faced Armenians and Georgians from the Caucasus. These groups are not on friendly terms with each other.
It is impossible before a correct census has been taken, to give an ex- act estimate of the number of students in the eight universities and about thirty-six high technical schools for men and in the ten or eleven higher institutions for women ; but it is cer- tain that the number has of late greatly increased, having risen in St. Petersburg from 14,600 in 1905 to 29,500, including about 8,400 women. The total for all Russia can not be below 64,000. The students are con- centrated in a few great centers, thereby making access for work among them easier. All the universities and almost all the high technical schools are non-residential.
* From The Student World, New York.
icjo8J
THE STUDENTS OF RUSSIA
The distinctly Russian class of stu- dents produce on a foreigner an im- pression that is not prepossessing. With the exception of a few dandies in the capitals, they are mostly ex- tremely poor and crowd into the uni- versities without financial means, in hope of finding work or lessons to live on, and many are almost starving. A foreigner will also be struck by their unruliness, lack of restraint, unrelia- bility, lack of enterprise and of perse- verance, and the more than loose way, in which they regard the very worst forms of sin. The sense of good and bad, of right and wrong, seems to be obliterated to a terrible extent.
But much must be said in favor of these students, to make up for these dark outlines. Russians are an emo- tional people, quick to feel and to act under impulses, open to the worst and to the best and highest influences. You will hardly anywhere find more warm- hearted, generous, unselfish people, once you have won their affections. They are willing to spend and be spent for a cause they have espoused. A woman student, living on fifty shillings a month, used to give twenty to her social democratic party. "What do you do? What do you sacrifice?" is a usual question put to a Christian com- rade. Should not this quality be en- listed in the cause of Christ?
One of the most interesting prob- lems for study is the religious attitude of the students. With a few excep- tions, they consider themselves free- thinkers, but, strange to say, the innate religiousness of the Russian race shows itself even in their very irre- ligiousness. The very fanatical zeal of the anti-Christian propaganda they carry on, the way they grope after something that will fill the emptiness of their souls, the number of suicides committed for purely ethical reasons, and the way they respond if something seems to meet their needs — are both expressive and impressive. It must not be forgotten, that tho they usu- ally reject Christianity in its Biblical form, consideiing it to be a fable of the past — they have never had the
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Gospel put before them in its simplic- ity and power. Few Russians have read through even the New Testa- ment. Neither should it be forgotten, that for many reasons the bulk of Russian students have drifted so far from Christianity and have imbibed such a lot of false teaching of every kind, that it will need slow, patient, plodding work to win a greater num- ber of them for the Christ of the Gos- pel. This wrork must be done on Scrip- tural, evangelical, interdenominational lines.
There is no doubt, that new and mighty forces for evil and good are now at work in Russia. A change is visible even in the political attitude of students ; many have been disap- pointed in their political ideals and are now more accessible. "We have learned much during these years in the way of political agitation," they say, "but we have not had time to think for ourselves." New tendencies are show- ing themselves also in the moral and religious realms. Crude materialism is losing ground, and although theo- retical pessimism is swaying great numbers and even monism is taking a more definite form, yet Christian ten- dencies, however vague and feeble, are being felt more and more. Pro- fessor Bulgakoff, in Moscow, a for- mer ardent Marxist and atheist, is putting Christianity to the front wher- ever he can. Religious-philosophical societies are making their appearance, and much is spoken about Christian- ity. It is a gladdening fact that, among the students, who have come from the ecclesiastical seminaries, and who are commonly regarded as the most hardened of all, we find men in whom the better knowledge of the Gospel has prepared the ground for real service for Christ. They can be- come our best helpers.
Xew spiritual breezes are visibly blowing over Russia ; an awakening of Christian thought is visibly taking place ; outward restrictions and hin- drances have mostly been removed. Xow is the time to press on with all our might.
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EDITORIALS
THE WAYS OF PRAYING
Some time since we indicated seven different ways of giving: "The selfish way, equal way, proportionate way," etc. It has often occurred to us that the word of God hints many ways of praying also, and their mention may show their defect and necessary lack of prevailing power. For instance :
1. The formal way — when prayer is a mere form of words, with little or no heart ; or when it is simply due to the force of a habit which has lost its real motive power.
2. The hurried way — hastening through it as a disagreeable and irk- some duty — a duty indeed but not a delight, and to be dismissed as quickly as may be.
3. The selfish way — when the real motive is to consume the coveted blessing upon ourselves — in some way to promote our own selfish advantage or pleasure.
4. The impulsive way — praying as the feeling prompts, and when we feel so inclined — without any definite plan of prayer in our lives, or devout habit.
5. The faithless way — with no real dependence on the promises of God, or confident expectation of receiving what we ask or seek.
6. On the contrary, there is the thoughtful way, seeking to meditate upon God, and intelligently under- stand both the nature of prayer and the good we seek.
7.. The earnest way — with the at- tention of the mind and the desire of the heart absorbed in asking, with a determination to persevere.
8. The trustful way — coming in the spirit of a child ; first believing that God's promises justify prayer, and then that we are coining to a Father, both able and willing.
9. The consistent way — that is, liv- ing as we pray, and so walking with God as to be in the way of blessing, and by fellowship with God inviting it.
10. The spiritual way — so cultiva- ting acquaintance with the Holy Spirit
that He can and does breathe in us first the desires we breath out in prayer.
]t is easy to see why we so often fail, and how we may succeed.
THE HOPE OF MISSIONS
Isaiah xlii: 1-7. This is one of the great central passages of all prophecy. The Messiah is here set forth as the servant of Jehovah, upheld by His Almightiness ; His elect, the object of His delight, the subject of His Holy Spirit's unmeasured indwelling and outworking.
His special mission is to the Gen- tiles. "He shall not cry," as in help- less grief, nor "shout," as in boast- ful glory; but perform His service in the quietness of a divine confidence and certainty of result.
"The bruised reed" and "smoking wick" seem to refer to the golden candlestick, whose branches were called reeds ; and so regarded, this verse may refer to the Church, which even in periods of spiritual decline, He does not forsake. When its branches are "bruised" He does not utterly break them off ; and when its lamp burns dim, He does not quench it, but, by patient, loving discipline, heals schisms, repairs breaches, and breathes new life into the expiring flame, so that the light may shine clear and far.
The fourth verse, open to a similar construction, may be translated, "He shall not burn dimly, nor be bruised ;" and this makes the thought, through- out, beautifully consistent.
Christ finds His Church with branches bruised and lights dim, and, by corrective judgments, makes it ca- pable of a powerful testimony to the truth. We are to look up from a fallible, imperfect body of disciples to an infallible and perfect Head and Lord, who can not be bruised and broken, nor can His light ever become dim or be extinguished. He shall cor- rect His Church by chastening judg- ments, and by punitive judgments,
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destroy the wicked, and set up His throne upon the earth : and, for His law, the isles shall longingly wait and Ethiopia shall stretch forth imploring hands.
God has called Him to be the Justi- fier, and holds His hand and keeps Him; He has entered into a covenant with Him, which is as sure as the word and oath of God can make it. Christ shall be the light of the Gen- tiles, tho the Church's lamp may, at times, seem to be going out and its testimony almost quenched. He shall open blind eyes, release imprisoned souls, and visit those in the shadow of death.
W ithout claiming this as an exact and scholarly exegesis, careful study of the Hebrew will satisfy the student that the drift of this paragraph is not ordinarily apprehended. The grand hope of missions is here shown to be the infallible covenant of God, not the golden candlesticks, but He who "walketh in the midst'' of them — not the efficiency and energy of human or- ganization, but the power and grace of the living, risen, glorified Christ.
The word, "judgment," occurs here in three conspicuous connections ; and always calls attention to Divine energy of action. God invites the coopera- tion of His people, but is not depend- ent upon it. He can work in His own way — and sometimes by mighty judg- ments He both brings an unfaithful Church to see her duty, and a rebel- lious world to bow and submit to His law. The whole outline of the work missions is suggested in this passage in Isaiah ; as also of missionary his- tory and the Divine philosophy of missions.
A conspicuous change in prophetic terminology occurs at the fifty-third chapter, "The servant of the Lord" is a phrase which occurs frequently, up to the eleventh verse, referring to the Messiah, who represents the true Israel, the Holy Seed of God, the in- destructible germ which assures con- tinuity to Israel's life, the restorer of moral order.
But, tho this title occurs nineteen
times in the previous chapters (xli to liii), after the eleventh verse of this chapter it disappears: "My righteous Servant shall justify many" Now his work as servant is done ; He has suf- fered the just for the unjust to bring us to God; has justified many and made them "servants of Cod:' They now take up the work He has laid down, and "fill up that which is be- hind in his afflictions.'' And so, after this, as in chapter liv : 17, we find the new phrase, "servants of the Lord" — plural — which occurs ten times from chapter liv: 17 to lxvi : 14. He who is "the seed of Jehovah'' now sees His own seed and it is numerous. The "Servant of God," thus multiplied a thousandfold, (Rom. v: 15-19), ceases to suffer, and in the former sense, to serve ; and His spiritual offspring take up the service and suffering for His sake. They go into all the world, as witnesses to testify, and, as martyrs, to die, for Him and His cause ; until He comes again, and then service and suffering are merged into triumph and glory, and the new heavens and earth, wherein dwelleth righteous- ness, take the place of this sin-cursed and sorrow-stricken world ; and chaos is once more displaced by cosmos.
STUDENT VOLUNTEERS IN CHINA
The Student Volunteer Movement has taken root in China. Revival services were held in Peking two years ago, and a good many Uni- versity students were laid hold of. Sixty of them united in a pledge to work for the salvation of their fellow countrymen — a student volunteer band. Their leader, Mr. Chen, a tutor in the Peking University, told the story of this company of volunteers and the work they have done and have in view to a meeting of mission- aries at Pei-ta-ho, a health resort on the Gulf of Pechili.
Last summer forty of them spent their summer vacation preaching in the country mission stations, services much appreciated at every center they visited. This year forty-seven have given their vacation to the same work.
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Mr. Chen and another of the band are at present visiting the Protestant Colleges of Shantung, seeking to in- terest other students in the movement.
PRACTISING VIRTUE
The Chinese "practise virtue" on the 8th day of the 12th moon, laying up merit against the future. Donors advertise their intention of thus prac- tising virtue ; if the day ends and no one applies, the supplies — consisting of a weak soup which has been kept ready to serve out to applicants for twelve hours — are fed to the pigs !
THE MONUMENTS TO MISSIONS
The late Henry M. Stanley had a garden, at his home in Birbright, laid out to represent Africa. A narrow little brook represented the Kongo, branching at one end of the garden to illustrate the Zambesi ; a small waterfall to remind him of Victoria Falls, and a little lake to call to mind the day when he first looked cn Vic- toria Nyanza and the source of the Nile. Probaby the idea was suggested by the park at Blenheim where the Duke of Marlborough planted acres of trees to represent the position of con- tending armies in his main engage- ments, so that every spring might hang out leafy banners and blossoms of triumph to commemorate his vic- tories. Many a retired missionary or explorer, by some such device, might recall the scenes of his earlier labors or travels.
But he needs no such memorials. His Master rears to him monuments of another sort — souls renewed, a new literature created, churches formed, and missions planted, and schools and medical institutions — to make the des- ert blossom as the rose, and transform the deathshade into a valley of light and bloom — to displace the thorns and thistles by the planting of the Lord and trees of righteousness that He might be glorified — this, tho it may not appear so conspicuous to the eyes of men, is his true memorial, and will witness to the humility and fidelity
of Christian service, when the pyra- mids crumble to dust, and the monu- ments of brass and marble crumble. We have only to do our work and leave to our Master our reward.
THE PERSONAL ELEMENT IN MISSIONS
A careful comparative study of mis- sionary biography, and of the life-work of those who have been the feeders and supporters of missions at home, reveals nothing more clearly than this, that the degree of real power wielded for Christ depends, not on wealth, rank, culture or genius, but on the measure of close personal fel- lowship with God, and in Him zvith other fellozu workers, and fellow help- ers to the truth. Conspicuous for- evermore stand out, even from their fellow missionaries, such as Schwartz, Carey, Judson, Livingstone, Duff, Bowen, Hudson Taylor, Henry Mar- tyn, Fidelia Fiske, Dr. Baedeker, in the foreign field; and Chalmers, Fleming Stevenson, George Muller, John Wilkinson, Pennefather, Charles Hodge, Lord Radstock, at home ; and, in every case, this prominence is solely due to this element of personal relation to the Lord.
Accordingly the following docu- ment has a wide bearing. Dr. John R. Davies, of Philadelphia, who gives it to the press, says:
The original was placed in my care, shortly before his death, by a parish- ioner, David Brainerd Williamson, a son of Rev. Alexander Williamson, one of the signers, who, leaving Princeton Sem- inary in 1822, went as a missionary to the Indians in the Southern States, ri- ding upon horseback, in the discharge of such duties, more than four thousand miles. Afterward he was the devoted pastor of churches in Indiana, dying at Corydon, in that State, July 14, 1849. More than eighty-five years have passed since this covenant was written, the men who signed it having long since entered into rest, but its message is of perma- nent value. The depth of its piety, the sweetness of its spirit, the Christlike character of its purport makes this doc- ument, yellow with age, crumbling into fragments, a word in season in times like ours, when internal and manifold in- terests tend to make both the man in
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the pew and the man in the pulpit self- centered and forgetful of the brother- hood of believers with whom he wor- ships and works in the Kingdom of God.
Theological Seminary, Princeton, September 23, 1822.
"Let brotherly love continue," is not only the divine command, but it is exactly the feeling of our hearts. Hav- ing been providentially brought into the same class in this seminary, and having enjoyed a long and very pleas- ant friendly intercourse, we feel de- sirous to perpetuate the attachment and have therefore resolved to give and accept this written pledge of it.
We have to confess to God and to each other our intercourse as students has not been so spiritual, so marked with mutual usefulness as from our character and employments it should have been ; yet as we do each one hope to be pardoned by the Savior, so we do now severally ask forgive- ness of each other for everything which has been said or done that was offensive, or in any way inconsistent with that tender regard for each oth- er's feelings and character which was mutually due. And we do severally forgive sincerely and from the heart every offense and do now each one over the faults and failings of his brother spread the veil of Christian charity and affectionate fraternal for- getfulness.
And as we are about to leave this beloved retreat and to separate finally it is probable as to this world, we do mutually offer and accept a sincere affectionate and disinterested Christian friendship which will last, we fondly hope, throughout eternity. We pledge ourselves to love one another, "to be kind to one another, and to endeavor as far as possible to promote each other's happiness and usefulness ; and, also that we will be faithful in coun- seling and admonishing one another in regard to everything which our duty to God and to each other re- quires us to notice.
And now may the blest Jesus who will not be ashamed (we humbly hope) to call us brethren, give to our
covenant I lis approbation and I lis blessing, and when the separations of time are over, unite us again as a band of worshipers in heaven, together with our dear departed brethren who we trust have gone before us to that place where we hope to be permitted to see his face and celebrate his praises forever. Amen.
(Signed) — George Potts, Michael Osborn, Charles Clinton Beatty, James Douglass, John Hudson, Hugh Wilson, Holloway W. Hunt, Thomas Kennedy, Moses P. Harris, Augustus L. Chapin, Alexander Williamson, John Breckenridge.
THE ADVANTAGE OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS
Luther compared the writers of the Old Testament and the New to the two men who carried upon a staff, between them, the branch with the huge cluster of Eschol grapes. They were both bearing the same precious fruit ; but one of them saw it not. The other saw both the fruit and the man who was his fellow carrier. Hebrew believers could not see the full scope and value of the truth they were bear- ing for the world, but Christian believ- ers see it all, and how it was given in outline and shadow to those of the elder economy. Augustine said "The New Testament is enfolded in the Old, and the Old is unfolded in the New." Both are indispensable to mutual com- pleteness.
Somewhat so is it as to workers in missions. Those who went before and only foretold the triumphs of these latter days, bore their testimony but saw not how it was fulfilled in his- tory, perhaps themselves understood not the message they bore. We who are permitted to engage in the work, not only have our eye on the old Tes- tament prophecies and promises, but are permitted to behold the gathered fruits of missionary labor — the grow- ing fulfilment of the long deferred hope. We have the double inspiration and encouragement of the Word of God and the Work of God.
GENERAL MISSIONARY INTELLIGENCE
INDIA
How Wonderfully India Has Changed
The Hindus and Mohammedans of Cumbum, India, united with the Christians in giving a welcome to sixty missionaries of the American Baptist Telugu Mission, who met there in conference December 27, 1907, to January 2, 1908. Along the road, for four long miles the road was spanned with gay arches, on which "Welcome, Welcome, Wel- come!" was inscribed over and over again. On one of the arches was to be read: "Hail, Preachers of Truth!''
India Missionaries in Conference
There are 104 missionaries con- nected with the India mission. The year just closed has been one of steady progress. A few stations re- port a considerable number of bap- tisms :
Sooriapett, 387 ; Nalgonda, 220 ; On- gole, 215; altogether there were 2,132 adult baptisms within the mission, of whom about one-half came from the non-Christian community. The num- ber of caste people baptized num- bered 44, which is 12 more than last year and nearly three times as many as any preceding year.
In spite of the hard times and semi- famine, much progress has been made, and quite a number of the 142 or- ganized churches are wholly or almost self-supporting. The Indian Christians alone gave last year nearly $400 to the Telugu Home Mission Society, which was an increase of $66 on the year before. The spiritual tone of the churches is good, and while there have been some defections, discipline is well exercised.
The continued hard times have a disastrous effect on the schools, partic- ularly those in the country hamlets. The college at Ongole has had a pros- perous year with over 300 students, of whom more than half are Chris- tians. The mission maintains a high school at Kurnool and two at Nellore,
one for boys and one for girls. The plans and estimates for the Jewett Memorial Church at Ongole have been sanctioned and it will be built at once at a cost of about $8,000.
Torrid Heat in India
A missionary writes feelingly as fol- lows concerning what he and thou- sands of other Europeans are com- pelled to endure :
How the sunshine does scorch down to- day ! A welcome breeze from the west had made the night hours unexpectedly tolera- ble; and after sunrise, the breeze became a wind, which, while one was in it, despite the dust it raised, was like Lazarus' finger allowed to be dipt in pitying coolness and waved to and fro over poor, condemned souls. But in the Bazaar street, or along the narrow, evil-smelling pathways between the village huts, where the walls shut off the wind, the heat sprang up and choked one, while on the open spaces often the wind was forgotten because of the sun burn- ing down from above, and the all-prevailing glare beating in from every side. Hard- baked fields, unseamed yet by the plow for the most part, all bare and bleached— and this should be the time of sown seed up- rising in fertile greenness, struggling with the wilful weeds as to which shall own the soft, wet earth.
A Refuge from the Torrid Heat
Kodaikanal has become, in a pecu- liar sense, the missionary center of In- dia. It is a beautiful mountain re- treat in South India, between 7,000 and 8,000 feet above the sea, and pos- sest of a unique climatic charm. Dur- ing the last two months no fewer than 309 missionary adults came to this place for rest and recuperation. They represent 25 missionary societies work- ing in at least 4 provinces of India, and are members of 8 different nation- alities. It is wonderful how much of a unifying power this sanitarium pos- sesses as it warms up in fellowship and amity these many polyglot Chris- tian workers of India. And it is not too much to claim that, during the last twenty years, many of the movements which have made for organized union and fellowship in this great land had first their origin in suggestion, discus-
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sion, or organization at this mountain retreat in the heart of the Madura Mission. 1 know of nothing which is better for the missionary force in In dia than to be thus able to meet at this and other centers for prayer and for conference concerning the problems which confront them and to cultivate the spirit of love which is necessary wisely to solve them.
PR. J. P. JONES.
A Hideous By-product of Hinduism
Rev. J. P. Jones writes in the Ad- vance as follows: "There are at least 5,000,000 religious mendicants who are entirely non-productive and live upon the people of the land. A few of them, doubtless, are sincere and are seeking after communion with God. But the vast majority of them are lazy and rotten to the core. Their life is known to be utterly worthless, and they are morally pestiferous in their influence upon the whole community. It is known that they have entered this pro- fession because they are too indolent to support themselves by honest work. And yet the people accept them as rep- resenting the highest type of piety in the land. Even the poorest among them would give their last morsel to these worthless men. And even when such offerings are not voluntary there are very few in the community who would dare to refuse an offering to these religious mendicants, because they are so ready to invoke the most dreadful imprecations upon those who decline to give anything to them. And there are few things that an or- thodox Hindu dreads more than the curse of a religious ascetic.
Europeans as Hinderers of the Gospel
In The East and The JJ'cst the Bishop of Southampton, formerly Bishop of Bombay, writes as follows :
European society, viewed as a whole, is materialistic and unspiritual. The life is not religious. This is in- comparably the saddest feature in the life of our people in India. Large numbers of them forget their religion,
and neglect any systematic attention t<> its duties. There is, no doubt, a small minority who are consistent and exemplary in their attendance at church services and their observance of Sunday as a sacred day. But that is not the case with the majority. I think of a Sunday at Poona ! The station is full of soldiers and civilians, and the upper-class Europeans during the rains. There is only a moderate attendance at church at the eight o'clock service, and the official ele- ment is feebly represented.
Medical Missionaries in India.
The January issue of Medical Mis- sions in India gives the name, medical qualification, society and address of 313 medical missionaries in India, this large total representing an increase over the previous year of 12. A separate list of nurses contains 124 names, an increase of 26. Accompanying this issue of the journal is a carefully ar- ranged monthly prayer cycle of medi- cal missionaries and nurses, which must form a very sacred link between workers widely separated by distance, and divided in a sense by creed, but all following in the footsteps of One who went about doing good and heal- ing.
Is There Hope for India?
Have we yet really grasped the su- preme problem of India? Rev. A. C. Clayton, a missionary in the Mad- ras district, writing in regard to the recent census, has some words which may be helpful in making clear the difficulties which face, and which in God's mercy are being overcome by, the presentation of the Gospel of Christ. He says :
Hindus, Mohammedans, Buddhists, demon worshipers, and the like, make a boast of 291,000,000, while in all In- dia and Burma there are scarcely 2,500,- 000 native Christians, most of them very- humble folk gathered from the outcast classes. . . . But when it is remem- bered that thirty years ago the 2,500.000 were only 1,250,000, there is cause for confidence.
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Isabella Thoburn College
This well-known Christian institu- tion in Lucknow has had phenomenal results during- the past year in the government university examinations. In the B. A. examinations the num- ber of candidates sent up from the provinces was 375, and in results Miss Lucy Bolton of this college heads the list. In the first arts examination a total of 641 candidates went up, and Dorothy Bolton of this college heads the list. In the entrance examination- a total of 1,367 candidates went up, and among this number 12 scholar- ships #were to be distributed in order of merit. Two were given girls of this college. Of the sixteen scholar- ships in the middle school examina- tion of 27 girls, 5 came to the stu- dents of this college. The director of public instruction says that the Isa- bella Thoburn College continues to excel in examinations. — Christian Ad- vocate.
A Bishop's Visit to a Zenana
''The Mohammedan branch of the Zenana Mission has been working in Calcutta for a quarter of a century, but little is known about it, because its work is 'purdah.' Lately the Bishop of Calcutta desired to see some of its activities, and the most elaborate pre- cautions had to be taken before his episcopal zeal could be gratified. The houses he visited are a secret. Why? Because some of the girls in them are unmarried, and ignorant persons might perhaps imagine that the eyes of the Bishop rested on the pupils of the missionaries. All that the Bishop really saw were verandas, and chairs and tables. The doors were closed, the half-open Venetians were covered by heavy curtains, and inside the houses the pupils of the missionaries read the Bible for the edification of the Bishop, who placed his fatherly ear to the purdah. Afterward a mis- sionary offered, on behalf of the ladies of the house, iced lemonade and cigars, also neck ornaments for the Bishop's Mem sahib. The needlework done by the pupils was shown to the
Bishop, together with their copy- books, drawing and arithmetic. Then the Bishop and his chaplain departed, and the pupils came on to the ve- randa and asked if the Bishop had enjoyed the tarnasha, and an old, old woman confest that she had lifted a little bit of the curtain and 'had seen the Bishop !' "
CHINA
Radical Resolutions on Reform
Perhaps the most striking fact in the last year's record is the serious attempt which is being made to abol- ish, as far as possible, the distinction between Manchus and Chinese; that is, the difference in dress, in social status and official standing between the ruling caste and the subject Chi- nese. Some time since, the Empress Dowager issued a decree allowing the intermarriage of Chinese and Man- chus, hoping thereby to consolidate the two races. Later, at a meeting held in Peking of members of the grand council and presidents of the ministries of state, ten resolutions were adopted to be submitted to the throne, of which the following were the most important:
1. — Abolition of useless Manchu garri- sons throughout China proper.
2- — Appointment of both Manchu and Chinese to all posts throughout the Em- pire, without favor.
3- — Alteration of dress by Manchu women and girls, as far as possible.
4- — To allow Manchus to become mer- chants and do business in the same way as Chinese, so that they may support themselves and their families without depending upon their military pay, which will be gradually abolished during the next ten years.
5. — To encourage intermarriage be- tween Manchu and Chinese officials.
6. — To enlist both Manchus and Chi- nese for military service hereafter, with- out distinction.
7. — To inflict severe penalties upon Manchu or Chinese authorities who at- tempt to create barriers between the two races.
A Year's Progress in China
In reviewing the imperial edicts pro- claimed in 1907, the Chinese Recorder for January suggests as follows : One is tempted to say, with a sigh of hope
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deferred: "It is the same old story — much of promise on paper." But this is not the whole story. Anti-opium reform bulks large in fact; a consid- erable advance has been made in put- ting constitutional reforms into prac- tise (tho perhaps not much more than reorganization can be claimed as yet ; and that not very extensive in point of territory) ; sincere efforts to adjust the political relations of the mission- ary propaganda have been made, if only from an instinct of self-protec- tion ; and the enlightened policy of sending young men to study in Eu- rope and America, as announced in edicts of recent years, is proceeding more intelligently and with more care and zeal than ever, since the return of the five ambassadors. According to Dr. [Morrison, correspondent of the London Times, there are now 420 Chinese students in schools and col- leges in America alone.
Substantial Christian Progress
Rev. E. J. Lee writes in the Spirit of Missions: The growth of the Church in China is very much like that of the banyan tree, whose branch- es drop roots and so become themselves centers of support and nourishment, from which the tree continues to grow and spread. Our work in Anking branched out to Taihu and took root there. Taihu, in her turn, has sent out several branches, which are tak- ing root, and one of these is Hsiu- tsang. We have here a constituency of about 80, only two of whom, how- ever, have been baptized, the others being most of them in the beginner's stage. The Christians have recently bought a house for the mission and are fitting it up gradually as they are able.
Three Thousand Miao Converted
Mrs. S. Pollard, of China, in a re- cent meeting, said : I suppose you have all heard of the wonderful re- vival among the strange Miao aborig- ines of the province of Yunnan. We didn't go to the Miao people. They came to us. We did not like the looks
of them at first. They were not too clean. We were inclined to be suspi- cious of them. \Ye did not under- stand them, and they did not under- stand us. We thought that they might have some ulterior motive. But it is four or five years since they came to us, and we have not found any ulterior motive yet. They came to us in swarms, and filled our kitch- ens and bedrooms, and every room in the house. They brought their own food, and slept on the floors. We had Miao everywhere. When their food was exhausted they went away for more, but while they were away others were coming. We did not know a word of their language. There was no use to give them Chi- nese books. It would be like giving French books to English children. But we set our wits to work, and re- duced their language to writing. Then we got blackboards, and taught them their A. B. C. They were so deeply interested that they kept us up until three o'clock in the morning teaching them. At last we decided to go to them. We did so and they have ac- cepted Christ by hundreds and thou- sands. You should see them making bricks and building chapels and schoolhouses and studying their les- sons, and pointing others to Christ. They are beginning to teach other tribes. About 3,000 of them have pro- fest conversion, and ten of them are training as Christian workers. They have erected five chapels. All this in the last four years. — Christian Herald.
The Blind Boy Who Saw Jesus
Dr. Griffith John writes : "We had in our church at Hankow a blind boy who wras generally called Blind Hwang. When about sixteen years old, his father came to one of our chapels and heard the Gospel for the first time. He wa^ touched, came again ; and at length confest faith in Jesus, cast away his idols, and joined the church. Later he brought this son as a candidate for member- ship. I asked him if he loved Jesus, and he said, "I do." "But, vou are
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blind and have never seen Him." "True, but I see Him with my mind's eye." 1 asked him to pray with me, and he offered a beautiful prayer.
He entered the blind school of the Wesleyan mission and learned to read and write. He also learned basket- making. Later still he went to Pe- king where he learned music, and finally returned to Hankow to engage in Christian work. So wonderful is his memory that he has memorized the entire New Testament and the hymn book.
KOREA
What It Costs to Be a Christian
Mrs. A. M. Nisbet, of the Presby- terian Mission, writes from Chunju:
The Koreans are a bright, intel- ligent people, and possess a good deal of steadfastness of purpose. I used to think, before I came to the mission field, that there was a great deal of danger of the natives professing to accept Christ because of ''the loaves and fishes." But I find it very dif- ferent. It costs something to be a Christian here. You know at home the line between the Church and the world is such a narrow little path that it is hard for us always to tell on which side some of our friends are walking; it is not so here. Take the one thing of Sabbath observance. Every five days there is a big market at Chunju, to which the farmer, mer- chant, mechanic — every one comes and brings what he has to sell. A man makes more on market day than on the other four doubled, generally. Of course, every few weeks market day rolls around on Sunday. Now a Korean Christian not only has to give up one-seventh of his income (by keeping one day sacred from barter and trade), and so suffer the jeers and sneers of his neighbors, but some- times that day is market day, which means a big pecuniary loss. Yet last Sabbath market day Mr. Nesbit counted the heads of more than 1,000 men and boys in our Sabbath-school. It meant something for them to be there.
Koreans as Givers
In some of the Korean churches it is customary to make offerings of time as well as of money, each mem- ber stating how many days during the year he will devote to evangelis- tic work. A Bible-class in Seoul, numbering 450, pledged themselves to give 2,200 days this year. In Pyeng Yang, men and women who had passed through the fire of experience and were filled with the Holy Ghost, resolved to visit every house in the city. They not merely invited peo- ple to attend the meetings, but in the power of God, told of the Savior's love for the lost sinner. Many hun- dreds prof est faith in Christ, and the ingathering in the various churches continues. A missionary society has been formed, and five men have already been appointed native mission- ary evangelists. The spirit of sacri- fice and self-denial is manifest every- where. Men and women traveled on foot, over rough roads through moun- tainous country, distances of 120 miles, to study the Bible for two weeks so as to have the truths made clearer. How these Koreans do love to study the Bible ! They put to shame many in our home churches. One woman sold some of her hair that she might come to Pyeng Yang to study in the Bible Institute. Par- ents deny themselves that their chil- dren may go to school, and they find great joy in their sacrifice.
JAPAN Chinese Students in Japan
In the Student World Mr. John R. Mott gives some very striking facts regarding the number and condition of Chinese students in Japan. During his visit to the Imperial University, in Tokyo, six years ago, he found not to exceed twenty. Two years later the number had increased to 500, and the next year to 2,000, and in the spring of 1907, according to the esti- mate of the Chinese ambassador, there were not less than 15,000 Chi- nese in the educational institutions in Japan. Owing to the action of the
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Chinese government by which politi- cal agitators and those who had iden- tified themselves with the revolution- ary propaganda were eliminated and the attitude of the Japanese educators in discouraging the coming of short- term students, the number has de- creased until there are about 10,000. From Szechwan province, which stands before the gates of Tibet, 600 students have gone to Tokyo, and from Hunan, the last province to ad- mit missionaries to residence, 1,250, the largest number from any one province. Air. Mott says : "In the history of the world there has been no such extensive migration of stu- dents from one land to another in so short a period. Here we find several thousand young men, who have come out from the proudest nation, the most conservative nation, the most se- cluded nation, aptly called the AValled Kingdom, to sit at the feet of their conqueror in order to learn the secret of her progress and power."
Japanese Independence
Says an exchange : How steadily and efficiently do those Japanese Con- gregationalists run their own affairs ! The recent report of the annual meet- ing of Kumi-ai churches at Osaka sounds much like that of any assem- blage of our churches in this country. They disenst the pensioning of retired ministers, the raising of a church building loan fund, modifications of traditional Congregationalism — note that word traditional ; they ordained two ministers and pledged 1,150 yen ($575) for continuing evangelistic missions in various cities, and actually talked about engaging in real foreign missionary work, by which they meant efforts in behalf of other races in other lands. Already they have established at Seoul, Korea, a Ku- mi-ai church, and are beginning work at Pyeng Yang. But when it comes to comparisons, they outstrip us in their spiritual harvests, for these ninety- four Kami-ai churches baptized over 2,000 persons during 1907. More than half of their churches are now
self-supporting, and they raised for home expenses and missionary work over [8,000 yen ($9,000). Even the laymen are organizing an auxiliary, and the women, too, are holding an annual meeting of their missionary societies. Yet these Japanese breth- ren have not outgrown their affection for the American Board, and a vote of thanks was passed for what it has done thus far for Japan.
NORTH AMERICA World-Work of the Y. M. C. A.
According to John R. Mott, recently returned from a tour around the world: Tho the Y. M. C. A. has been at work for only about half a genera- tion, there are now stationed at pivotal positions over 70 foreign secretaries, representing 8 nations and over 20 Christian bodies. They are a picked body of men, and they have raised up nearly as many native secretaries. The latter are the hope of the movement, for it is the policy of the Association to develop the native branch of the work rather than the foreign. The proportion of young men in these Eastern countries who are becoming- Christians has been steadily increas- ing, and this is particularly marked among the educated classes. Among those who have been reached are Gov- ernment officials and students, as well as men with money power ; and the observant traveler will find there the beginning of a Student Volunteer Movement in these countries.
Missions and Pennsylvania Students
A very interesting consequence of the Men's Missionary Convention in Philadelphia, was a mass-meeting of the students of the University of Pennsylvania on Wednesday evening, which was addrest by Robt. E. Speer, J. Campbell White, and W. B. Smith, at which nearly one hundred men vol- unteered to join classes for the study of missionary topics. Several years ago Joseph McCracken, the famous full-back of the University team or- ganized the "University Mission in Canton, China," which has since been
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supported by the alumni and students of the University, and for which a number of the best men the University has turned out have volunteered, and are now in active service in China.
Secretary Taft and Foreign Missions
The Laymen's Missionary Move- ment has arranged for a Men's Meet- ing in Carnegie Hall, New York, on April 20th, at 8 P. M., when Secre- tary Taft, Silas McBee, Editor of The Churchman, John R. Mott and J. Campbell White will speak. There will also be presented a preliminary report of the Laymen's Commission which has been making a personal in- vestigation of foreign mission fields, this year. Over sixty prominent lay- men of all denominations are mem- bers of this Commission. Secretary Taft has seen much of mission work in the Philippines, and in other parts of the Orient ; he will speak of his observations of the work, and of the interest of the nation in the missions of the Church. Admission will be by ticket only. A limited number of tick- ets will be allotted to each denomina- tion. Men wishing to attend from a distance should apply for tickets, with stamped envelope for reply, to Lay- men's Missionary Movement, i Madi- son Avenue, New York.
The meeting in Carnegie Hall will be in the nature of an international meeting of the Movement. Men will be present from all parts of the Uni- ted States and Canada.
Cooperative Missionary Service
Missionary service is the especial bond of unity with which the Presby- terian Federation has sealed its organi- zation. This "Council of the Reformed Churches in America holding the Presbyterian System," held its first ses- sion in the Marble Collegiate Church, New York, some weeks since. It is composed of the American Presby- terian Church, the Southern Presby- terian Church, the Reformed Church in America, and the United Presby- terian Church — four of the seven de- nominations that were signatories to
the earlier "Charlotte articles of agree- ment." The delegates of the new body decided that they must define a sphere for useful work if they were to vindi- cate the existence of their organiza- tion. As given in The Interior (Chi- cago), missionary service was the ac- tivity chosen.
"Two committees were appointed — one on cooperation in foreign mis- sions, the other on cooperation in home missions. These committees brought in strong reports. In foreign missions joint action was proposed in the maintenance of colleges, theologi- cal schools, and hospitals, in the prep- aration and circulation of Christian literature in native languages, in pub- lic protest against the immoral in- fluence of many commercial represen- tatives in non-Christian lands, and especially in the now almost wholly neglected ministry of the English- speaking populace of the port cities of missionary countries. In home missions, conferences among the denominational boards on similar features of their work were recommended. Joint pub- lication of literature — especially Sun- day-school periodicals — was recom- mended as practicable economy. Warn- ing was voiced against the danger of multiplying duplicate agencies in Sun- day-school missionary work. The sub- ject of young people's nurture was marked as an important theme of con- ference and combined advance. But the most emphatic and important prin- ciple which the Federation adopted under this head was its record of the conviction that the 'principle of co- operation should be applied as far as possible to work among the colored people of our country.' A permanent committee on work for colored peo- ple was named besides the one on gen- eral home missions."
The Forward Movement
During the past few months, Rev. Charles H. Pratt has enlisted 68 churches in the Forward Movement in the southeastern portion of the Assem- bly. Most of these are small churches. They gave to foreign missions last
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year $3,339. They have recently sub- scribed on the Forward Movement plan $15,450. Mr. Pratt is now visit- ing the churches in the Presbytery of Florida. Rev. F. A. Brown has re- cently visited the churches of the Presbytery of Palmyra in the interest of the Movement. Thirty-eight serv- ices were held and 13 churches en- listed in the Movement in 25 days. Mr. Brown's next itinerary is in the Pres- bytery of St. Louis. — Christian Ob- server.
Church Growth
It is interesting to note, from the Presbyterian records, the fact that about fifty churches report over 1,000 members each, and eight, over 2,000 each, Bethany Church of Philadelphia leading with about 4,000. More signif- icant is the fact that eighteen have re- ceived on confession 100 or more each, and in this list, the first church of Seattle leads with 613, and Bethany follows with 294, and Kankaka with 269. • Such phenomenal growth is worth studying. Especially do we commend the Seattle and Bethany churches as pursuing methods worthy of consideration and emulation. Pros- perity in these cases is no accident, nor is it the result of sensational methods. There is a way of sowing that invites abundant reaping. Why not have a congress of churches to study success- ful methods of soul-winning?
Large Gifts to a Splendid School
More than $100,000 was subscribed in a few hours last week by prominent women of New York City at the home of Miss Helen Gould for the Ameri- can College for Girls at Constantino- ple, which was destroyed by fire two years ago. Miss Gould visited the school . last year. She influenced Dr. Mary Mills Patrick, president of the college, to come to America to rep- resent its needs, and it was at a lec- ture given by Dr. Patrick that the money was raised. Miss Gould con- tributed $10,000, Mrs. Russell Sage $10,000, Miss Grace Dodge $10,000, John H. Converse, of Philadeplhia,
$10,000, while a society woman of Boston pledged $50,000 with the un- derstanding that her name was not to be mentioned.
Fifteen nationalities are enrolled in the institution, and it is the only college for women in the Western Levant. The college language is Eng- lish, but French, German, Latin, An- cient and Modern Greek, Armenian, Bulgarian, Slavic, Turkish, Persian and Arabic are taught by 26 profess- ors of the best ability and of different nationalities. The largest number of students has been 197, and the stand- ard of scholarship has been constantly raised, so that the diploma of the col- lege is accepted in at least two Euro- pean universities.
A Model Missionary Sunday
For at least eighteen years the sec- ond Sunday after the Epiphany has been observed by the congregation and Sunday-school of the Church of the Holy Apostles, Philadelphia, as "Missionary Sunday." All the offer- ings on that day are sent to the Board of Missions without designation. The first service of the day is a celebration of Holy Communion, especially for the officers and teachers and scholars of the church and chapel Sunday- schools. In addition to the usual morning and evening services there is a special service in the afternoon for the younger people, following the form suggested in the leaflet issued by the Board. These figures show an interesting growth in the amount of the offering of the congregation :
1890, $2.50
1891, 339
1892, 492
1893, 730
1894, 727
1895, 755
1896 $992
1897, 1,027
1898, 1,099
1899, 1,058
1900, 1,146
1901, 1,296
1902,
1903, 1904, 1905, 1906, 1907,
£1,785 4,392 4,213 4,599 6,183 6,139
In making preparation for the offer- ing, emphasis is laid upon the fact that every baptized person is a mem- ber of the missionary society, so that the responsibility and privilege of sharing in the enterprise becomes a personal one. — Spirit of Missions,
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A Protest Against the Laymen's Movement
To those acquainted with the gen- eral feeling' among- the officials charged with the duty of promoting missions, it is not surprizing that a somewhat vigorous protest has been made against the exclusive policy of the Men's Missionary Movement, which exerts itself in behalf of for- eign missions alone. Such a protest has been voiced by Dr. Henry L. Morehouse, secretary of the American 1 iaptist Home Missionary Society and one of the most prominent missionary leaders of the country. The protest is based upon the fact that at a recent meeting of the executive board of the Movement, it was definitely de- cided that nothing but foreign mis- sions should be included in its work. Dr. Morehouse considers this decision to be "an almost inconceivable blun- der for good men to make in this day of unparalleled opportunity and need at home." He points out that such a decision sets up anew the artificial barriers between home and foreign missions and he goes so far as to call upon the men of his denomination to refuse to accept any such limitation of their missionary interest. — Cumber- land Presbyterian.
SPANISH AMERICA
Mexico Religiously
Mexico is said to be the most pro- gressive of the Latin American re- publics. The census of 1890 reports a population of 13,545,000. Thirty- eight per cent, of the population are Indians, hardly civilized, and forty- three per cent, mixed blood. Among the religions are Roman Catholics, numbering over 13,380,000; Protes- tants, over 40,000; Jews, 8,900, and other religions, about 62,000. The last available report shows 38,864 profess- ing Christians, of whom 20,638 are regular communicants. The total num- ber of missionaries is given as 216, with 680 workers, including men and women. There are 116 stations and outstations.
Grejwt Loss to British Guiana
Says The Mission Field: The death is announced of Miss Anna Maria Austin, of the Duffryn Mis- sion, Essequibo, British Guiana, who for 63 years had been engaged in missionary work among the Indians. She was known among the Indians as Tete, i. c. "Great Mother." She was the last surviving daughter of the Rev. William Austin, who was for 59 years vicar of St. John's parish, Essequibo. Mr. Kirke, in his book en- titled "Twenty-five Years in British Guiana," says of her:"This exemplary woman has lived for years surrounded by the gentle Indian people, whose children she has taught to read and sew, whose wives she has protected while the men were away fishing and woodcutting. She has been a sort of protecting goddess to these poor peo- ple, and her sole recompense has been their love and devotion."
A Hero of Chili
One of our former missionaries in Chili tells the interesting incident of the conversion and self-control of one of the prominent evangelists working- there to-day, an ordained member of the Presbytery of Chili, and in charge of the church at the Port of Taltal, together with working in the interior. This man was a Chilian Tortilero. He carried or wheeled his cakes and spe- cial bread along the streets crying his list, going from door to door among the poorest people. After his conver- sion he was always ready to testify for Christ, even to those who were the most outspoken enemies of the Gospel. He was always ready to take part in public service. His tongue, however, often got the better of him, either when driving a bargain with a wrangling customer, or in his ten- dency to exaggerate in his testimony of the things pertaining to the Gos- pel. At such times he voluntarily im- posed upon himself a gag. He claimed it was so easy to lie, and so natural in his business, also that his inclina- tion to magnify facts seemed so
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inborn in him, that in no other way could he control himself or satisfy his own conscience; so he willingly im- posed this punishment upon himself. He frequently wore this gag for an hour, sometimes for two hours,and oc- casionally for six hours at a time, and thus forced his memory to help him overcome his besetting sin. Finally, he won the victory over himself, and was always, after this, composed, happy, radiant and deeply spiritual, altho frequently under the fear of ad- verse criticism, the subject of scorn, hatred, and open opposition.
JOHN TIMOTHY STONE.
EUROPE Missionary Enterprise in England
We are accustomed to think that ours is the country of bold underta- kings and that new schemes in mis- sions, as in other matters, are apt to originate here. Behold the daring of our cousins across the sea, who are preparing to hold in London next June a great missionary exhibition, to be called "The Orient in London." How large and elaborate this presen- tation of missionary work will be may be judged from the fact that the esti- mated expense is $35,000. The rep- resentation of missionary scenes will be both artistic and realistic. One of the promenades of the exhibition is to represent an Eastern street, with the various courts lining the roadway. Mr. Moss, who managed the Romsey Pag- eant which charmed England recently, has been engaged to present for this exhibition a pageant entitled, "Dark- ness and Light," representing the con- trast between heathenism and Chris- tianity. Ten kindred societies are expected to have courts or stalls at the exhibition. — Missionary Herald.
Livingstone's Life Reviewed
A Livingstone Memorial Meeting was recently held in the Senate House at Cambridge. The Registrar of the University spoke as one who was present at the famous lecture deliv- ered in 1857, of which the direct out- come was the founding of the Univer-
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sities' Mission to Central Africa. "He never saw any man whose ap- pearance told its own tale as Living- stone's did." The lecture was "a series of notes on Africa and on the open path for commerce and Christianity which he had been permitted to make." Livingstone apologized for his language on the ground that he had "spoken the native languages of Africa for seventeen years;" but no eloquent peroration could have been so effective as his closing words : "Do you carry out the work which I have begun. I leave it with you."
Livingstone and Cecil Rhodes
It may seem almost profane to put the two names in the same category ; but in connection with the meeting just mentioned the Scottish Review has ventured to say :
"There have been two men in Afri- can history during the past century who deserve to be called men of des- tiny. One was Livingstone, and the other was Rhodes. Of the two, the first was far the purer and nobler type. The career of the great mis- sionary is stained by no crimes and marred by no blunders. But both had certain qualities in common. Both were robust optimists, believing that in time the desert could be made to blossom as the rose. Livingstone be- lieved in the possibilities of the dark races, and in the value of contact with the best civilization. Rhodes dreamed of an Africa where white and black could live in harmony, with equal rights.
"Both, again, had practical good sense. They saw the economic needs of the country, the necessity of routes and highways of commerce ; and they grasped that cardinal fact that civil- ization, if it is to last, must pay a dividend. Both, finally, had imagina- tion. Rhodes could see beyond the bare leagues of bush to a country of cornfields and homesteads, and Liv- ingstone could discern in the lowest savage the promise of something to be shaped to noble ends. Faith and imagination on a grand scale, com-
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bined with a clear-eyed perception of present needs — this is the equipment of the pioneer; and Livingstone must rank among the greatest pathfinders of the British race."
A Missionary Jubilee
It may not be generally known that at the present time there are about 90 women's missionary societies, most of them of comparatively recent date. Until 1858 there were only 3 ; but in that year a fourth was founded, which is now celebrating its Jubilee — the Women's Auxiliary of the Wesleyan Missionary Society. It cooperates with the Society in India, Ceylon, and China, devoting itself to work that in these lands only women may do. Twenty thousand girls are receiving Christian teaching in its schools ; 80,000 patients were treated last year in its hospitals ; thousands of women in zenanas and pariah huts are under religious instruction, and a great num- ber through its industrial work have been saved from starvation and still worse evils. Because the harvest is greater than the workers have strength to reap, a Jubilee Thanksgiving Fund of £20,000 is being raised, to be spent on the better equipment of the hospi- tals (now 10 in number), the schools, on converts and rescue homes, on training Bible-women and women doctors, and in augmenting a small pension and sick fund for disabled women missionaries.
London Society's Campaign
An important circular has been just issued in regard to the special cam- paign of the London Missionary So- ciety during the year.
In view of Dr. Wardlaw Thomp- son's unanimous election to the Chair- manship of the Congregational Union, it has been widely felt that his year of office should be celebrated in all the churches of the denomination as pre- eminently a missionary year. The object aimed at is to carry out a cam- paign for the definite purpose of in- forming and inspiring the churches, and special emphasis will be laid on the spiritual side of the campaign.
Among the methods to be adopted will be (1) The visitation of the churches by a number of ministers. (2) Simultaneous mission lasting from November 15 to 22. (3) The systematic study of foreign missions and the promotion of study classes in all the churches. (4) Conferences. (5) The preparation and circulation of missionary literature. (6) Special prayer throughout the year.
Independent Catholic Movement
This movement is making rapid progress in France, where a great change has taken place, the large ma- jority of the people favoring the action of the Government. Three years ago some hundreds of priests, through reading the New Testament, formed a combination with a view to establish- ing themselves and their congrega- tions on new lines "los von Rom." In consultation over a proper man to lead them on with advice and exam- ple, they decided upon M. Meillon, the converted priest at the head of the Paris Mission of Protestant con- verts. This talented successor of the lamented Abbe Courneloup entered fully into the spirit of the movement, and accepted the choice of himself as a leader in counsel.
The claims of 300 priests, and 300 congregations willing to be led, came so powerfully upon his soul, zealous for the promotion of the Gospel light, and truth, and salvation, that he has resigned the charge and employment of the Paris office and has concen- trated his time and talents to these congregations called by Government, *' Associations culturvelles." They are banded together in a league, and these are some of their pronouncements : Separation from Rome ; establishment on the basis of the Gospel ; absolute independence to be the right of each Church, yet federation of all; election of trustees by and their own Associa- tions only ; perfect liberty as to Rome's dogmas, and substitution of French for Latin in public worship ; loyalty to the Republic. — Mission World.
I(jo8| GENERAL MISSIONARY [NTELLIGENCE
Swedish Evangelical National Society
The Fosterlands stiftclscns is the oldest of the Swedish Missionary So- cieties, having celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in 1906, and also the largest, having expended $161,717 for its work in 1906. Its spheres of ac- tivity are in East Africa and in India. In East Africa its missionaries are at work among the Gallas, the inhab- itants of Abyssinia, and the heathen inhabitants of the Italian colony of Eritrea. The work among the Gallas is most encouraging, while great dif- ficulties have to be overcome in Abys- sinia, where the jealousy and the in- trigues of the priests just at present seem to make aggressive missionary work impossible. In Eritrea the work makes rapid progress. According to the report for 1906 the Fosterlands stiftelsens employed in East Africa 42 Swedish and 58 native workers upon 14 stations. The 36 missionary schools were attended by 858 pupils, while 125 baptisms increased the num- ber of native Christians to 1,122.
The Swedish work in India is among the Hindus and was being car- ried on, in 1906, by 52 Swedish and 95 native workers upon 8 stations. The 24 missionary schools were at- tended by 768 pupils, while 79 bap- tisms increased the number of native Christians to 1,243.
The Society also supports Seamen's Missions in a number of foreign sea- ports.
RUSSIA Good News from a Dark Land
In a marvelous manner God has re- cently opened the door into the great empire of Russia. A few years ago one of our German preachers went over the northern frontier into Kowno, Russia, and now we have there a flourishing circuit. One year ago we appointed the Rev. Hj. Salmi to Saint Petersburg. He reports 150 conversions. A few months ago we transferred the Rev. Geo. A. Simons, a young man of brilliant parts, from the New York East Conference to take charge of this vast field of
150,000,000 souls. He writes with en- thusiasm of what has already been done and says that there is a great opening for us everywhere in Russia, but especially in the south. He says: "I could place 50 men immediately if I had them. We must put a man down in Moscow, the heart of Russia." — Western Advocate.
The Papacy Smitten in Italy
An apparently reliable statement has come from the pen of Rev. A. Robertson, of Venice, which informs us of the present ecclesiastical state of Italy. In this paper we are told that "the tables in Italy are entirely reversed." The Pope is saved from actual violence, at the hands of the people of Rome, by the hated Italian bayonets only. A great cry was sent up by the Church for what France has- done in confiscating its property. But in Italy "All property has been taken from them. The Papal Church does not possess a stone of building in the land, or an inch of Italian soil. It can not hold, it can not build, it can not inherit property. It is a ten- ant at will. Formerly the schools were entirely in the hands of the priest- hood. "Now no priest, no monk, no nun, no sister is permitted to be a teacher in any national school — all the teachers of these schools are laymen and laywomen. Education in Italy is national, secular, compulsory, free and lay. The children of Italy, during school years, must attend the national schools ; before and after that term priests and nuns are at liberty to teach them. And the conditions prevailing in these schools have been subjected, on complaint, to a government inves- tigation, with the result that shocking revelations of immorality were made. As a consequence — "the government has closed many clerical, infant, and high-class schools and many priests and sisters are in prison."
"The attitude of the people to Prot- estantism is manifestly friendly. The gospel of Christ, preached in all its simplicity, is well received and the halls, where services are held always
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crowded. Dr. Robertson tells us that the fields are white for the harvest and that "at the present moment Italy is open to the Gospel.!"
MOSLEM LANDS Gospel Work in Asia Minor
Dr. J. K. Greene writes as follows to the Missionary Herald:
Asia Minor is the center of Turkish power, with its population of some 13,000,000 Turks and of 5,000,000 Greeks, Armenians, Europeans, and others. The Turkish peasants are a patient, hard-working people, and from them is recruited the main body of the Turkish army. The Greeks and Armenians are for the most part tra- ders and artisans. Eighty years ago American Christians began to cast the Gospel leaven into this Asiatic mass. The missionaries whom they sent sought to revive the Eastern churches by a fresh presentation of Christ and of his teachings. What response has been made to such teaching?
The response is found in spiritual fruit; in the organization of 123 evan- gelical churches, with 14,276 members and 50,000 adherents. These churches have formed five associations, inclu- ding one of Greek Protestants, and to them belongs the solution of all ques- tions touching the government and spiritual growth of the churches. Many of these churches have been self-supporting for years, and in 1905 the native payments for religious and educational purposes amounted to $111,351. In 1906 the total gift of the Board to the 20,000 Protestants of the Central Mission was but $1,430, while the gifts of the people amounted to $24,200.
The Syrian Protestant College
Of the death of Morris K. Jesup, of New York, the New York Sun says:
Nowhere will Morris K. Jesup be more sincerely mourned than on the extreme eastern shore of the Mediter- ranean under the side of Mount Leb- anon, where one of the most interest- ing educational institutions in the world owes much of its remarkable
development to his energetic financial administration and constant fostering care. We refer to the great modern English-speaking university at Beirut, formerly styled the Syrian Protestant College.
This school of civilization surprises every new beholder. Having pre- viously entertained, perhaps, some vague idea of a "college" in which a handful of native youth sit at the feet of the local missionary, . . . the visitor discovers, generally to his im- mense astonishment, what the Beirut institution really is. He finds a thor- oughly organized and perfectly crys- tallized university with a faculty of 80 or more accomplished and eminent men, and nearly 1,000 students from all parts of the Turkish Empire, from the Greek Islands, from Egypt, from the Sudan, from Persia, from India, from the very heart of Arabia, pursu- ing both academic and professional studies under physical and intellectual conditions precisely similar to those obtaining in any American college of equivalent importance.
The strictest of Wahabite Mussul- mans from Nejd, the most orthodox of Jews, the fastidious Hindu, the usually intolerant Christian of the Oriental churches, the Maronite, the Druse, the Sunite and the Shiite are found together in the college library, helping each other in the use of ref- erence books, or on the football field amicably and even fraternally com- mingled in the fiercest of rushes, pre- cisely as is the case with the more homogeneous population of Amherst or Princeton or Dartmouth.
AFRICA A Jubilee Contribution
The Church Missionary Society has received a check for £256 17.?. 6d. It came from Onitsha, on the Niger, and is the thank offering of the Ibo Chris- tians there for the blessings of the Gospel, which they have enjoyed since 1857, when Adjai Crowther planted the first teacher among them. This special jubilee effort, moreover, has not been made at the cost of the
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fund which helps to support the na- tive agencies ; on the contrary, the contributions to that fund by the sev- eral congregations are larger than the year before in every case. These West African converts are an example of liberality. The Abeokuta Christians celebrated their pastorate's anniver- sary at the same time as those at Onitsha kept their jubilee, and we read of an annual meeting lasting from 10 A. M. till 4 P. M., and of an income of nearly £1,000.
A Good Report From the Kongo
The Washington Herald reports the following interview with the Rev. Motte Martin, missionary at Luebo, on the Kassai river :
Rev. M. Martin, missionary of the American Presbyterian Kongo Mis- sion, who has recently arrived from his field of labor in the Dark Conti- nent for a vacation, said that he would rather work among the Kongo natives than anywhere else. "The natives are very bright and learn quickly,'' said Mr. Martin, "and they have a child- like confidence and respect for those placed in authority over them. When- ever fights occur between rival vil- lage chiefs we step in between them, tell them to stop instanter and they obey. We ask them to listen to rea- son, and then wre explain to them the folly of fighting. Finally they prom- ise to be good, and shaking hands the two chiefs go their respective ways reconciled. They regard the white man as incalculably above themselves — something like a demi-god. Anything wTe tell them they are quite willing to do.
Progress of Civilization in Central Africa
The future capital of Central Africa arises, where German engineers are forcing the giant powers of the falls of the Zambesi River into the service of man. A five-storied "Grand Hotel'' writh all the comforts and luxuries of a modern hostelry has been erected in the center of the beautiful Peace Park, while a great Zoological Garden is being laid out not far away. Upon
Livingstone Island, situated in the wide river, important buildings and pleasure-grounds will be erected, and soon a large modern city will be upon that spot where Livingstone saw the grand falls for the first time. Did he dream of the future ! It is scarcely possible that he could hope for that which now has become a reality. Where once he stood alone, the groaning and puffing of the steam-engine is heard incessantly. The "Cape to Cairo Railway" has its tracks across the fields, and a railroad bridge crosses the foaming, roaring falls. The place which Livingstone reached under al- most unbearable hardships and diffi- culties, can now be reached by the world-traveler while he enjoys the lux- uries of a modern railroad-train. What a change !
The Race Problem in South Africa
Says the British Statesman: One of the most interesting features of con- temporary politics in South Africa is the contrast between the treatment of the native and colored races in Cape Colony and in the other three Col- onies under the British flag. In Xatal, in the Transvaal, and in the Orange River Colony, there is an al- most unanimous feeling among the white colonists against the admission of the colored races to any kind of political equality. In Cape Colony, on the other hand, white politicians of all parties are apparently resolute to maintain the right of the colored races to exercise the parliamentary fran- chise. This fact is all the more strik- ing when we remember that many of the prominent politicians in Cape Col- ony are Dutch by descent, and have probably inherited the prejudices against the colored races that are so marked a characteristic of the Boers of the Transvaal and of the Orange River Colony. Yet the Afrikander Bond in Cape Colony, representing the Dutch population, is quite as em- phatic as are the members of the Pro- gressive Party in favor of the colored franchise. The explanation is very simple. The colored franchise exists
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in Cape Colony, and has existed so long that the native vote has become an important factor in contested elec- tions.
Ingathering in Livings ton ia
Rev. Dr. Laws gives glad tidings of ingathering in the Livingstonia Afri- can Mission of the United Free Church of Scotland. Fifteen male and 6 female adults were baptized one morning, 51 probationers were re- ceived, and 338 received the commun- ion of the Lord's Supper. Seventeen native teachers have volunteered for active Christian work.
ISLANDS OF THE SEA
The Busiest Woman in Malaysia
Bishop Oldham writes home: Among the many activities of our women missionaries in Malaysia, none commands my entire respect more than a little Tamil girl's school and orphanage, conducted by Mrs. Pykett, the wife of the principal of our great Wood Anglo-Chinese School of Pe- nang.
Mrs. Pykett is a very busy woman and seems to be able to bring about results with very little machinery. This orphanage has no separate build- ings, teaching staff, etc., but in the small buildings and on the lower floor of her own home this good lady has gathered a score of girls whose out- look for life would be very dreary indeed without her help. These she is training as household servants. The English residents in the land prize Mrs. Pykett's girls as among the best trained domestics to be obtained. Any of them who are old enough and suf- ficiently advanced can be placed at once, at good wages. The girls are taught to read their own language, and many of them are devout Chris- tians. Indeed it would be difficult for any girl to pass under Mrs. Pykett's influence without this result.
Besides this school and the care of her own home and children, of whom there is a "quiver-full," Mrs. Pykett has a refuge home for unhappy wom-
en of the street, and has succeeded far beyond the usual in this work, in which she receives some help from the Women's Foreign Missionary So- ciety.
MISCELLANEOUS
Judson a Typical Missionary
Judson never for a moment fal- tered in his purpose. The prospects, he said, were "as bright as the prom- ises of God." He was willing to wait seven years for the first convert, and when friends at home grew impa- tient, he wrote, "Give us twenty-five or thirty years more, and then inquire again." He lived to baptize many scores of Burmans, to know of thou- sands of converts throughout the country, to translate the whole Bible into Burmese, and then, as he sought a little rest and some relief from his sufferings, he fell asleep on the open sea, and rests beneath the waters that cast their spray against the rocky coast of his boyhood home in New England and lave the tropical shores of Burma.
OBITUARY
Mrs. J. T. Gracey, of Rochester
It is with deep sorrow for the af- flicted husband and family that we record the death of Mrs. Gracey, the beloved wife of our coeditor. Mrs. Gracey was a power in mission work. For some years she was a missionary with her husband in India and when reasons of health compelled them to return, both gave themselves with rare devotion and power to the ad- vocacy of missions in the home churches. Mrs. Gracey was for many years a secretary of the Woman's Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church and has been since its inception secretary of the United Women's Mission Study Committee. She was a writer and speaker of rare ability and was greatly beloved by all who knew her. Children rise up to call her blessed. The loss of her coun- sel and friendly fellowship will be felt more deeply than words can express.
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Jacob Chamberlain, of India
Rev. Jacob Chamberlain, D.D., LL.D., of the Reformed Church Mis- sion, one of the ablest and noblest of the missionaries in India, died at Madanapalle, on Monday, March 2. He was born at Sharon, Conn., April x3> 1835 ' graduated from the West- ern Reserve College of Ohio and from the Theological Seminary of Bruns- wick, N. J., in 1859. In December of that year he went to the Arcot Mis- sion of Southern India as an evan- gelist. He had resided in India ever since, during except four vacations which he spent in this country. For some years Dr. Chamberlain has been suffering from ill health. He was a hard worker and a well-known writer. His books, "In the Tiger's Jungle" and "In the Cobra's Den" have been and are deservedly popular. At the time of his death, Dr. Chamberlain was working to complete his Telugu Bible Dictionary, one volume of which has been put through the press. No one man can take his place in India.
S. W. Siberts, of Argentina
Word has been received by the Board of Foreign Missions of the Methodist Episcopal Church of the death at Buenos Ayres, Argentina, March 3, of the Rev. Dr. Samuel W. Siberts, Dean of the Methodist Theo- logical Seminary at that place. Dr. Siberts had been a missionary of the Methodist Episcopal Church in South America since 1898, and for more than twenty years previous to that time was a missionary in Mexico. He was graduated from Iowa Wesleyan University and the Boston University School of Theology.
Lord Overtoun, of Scotland
The death of Lord Overtoun, on Saturday, February 29th, leaves one of the greatest gaps in modern Chris- tian beneficence, which we fear will not soon be filled. He was but sixty- four, but had left a deep and ineradi- cable impression on the Scotsmen of his generation. He was at once a suc- cessful merchant and a winning evan-
gelist, a county magnate and a modest citizen ; he was in spirit a peasant and in rank a peer. 11 is philanthropy was proverbial and his benefactions multitudinous and discriminating. To him Mr. Moody's Mt. Hermon school owes its commodious Overtoun Hall; and his sympathy with world-wide missions put him practically among missionary workers. During the re- cent crisis of the United Free Church, it was, humanly speaking, owing to him more than to any other one man, that the Church weathered the storm that swept away by one decision of the Flouse of Lords' Commission, the bulk of all its property holdings. He put his fortune at the Church's dis- posal till a more -equitable adjustment could be secured. He was a pupil of the late Lord Kelvin — when in the university ; and, after graduation en- tered into his father's business, and became ultimately the head of the largest chemical works in the country.
He followed his father's lead also in not allowing his business to absorb him. In fact his' heavenly Father's business always had a prior claim. He was from youth a Bible teacher ; and his adult class at Dumbarton, which he taught for nearly forty years grew to 600 in membership. He main- tained in his native place for many years, a Bible woman, a Scripture reader and a trained nurse ; and the institute with its gymnasium, reading rooms and baths, and the fine public park, shortly to be opened, were both his gifts. Mr. Campbell White was powerfully influenced by Moody when he visited Britain in 1874. His mu- nificent gifts for religious, philan- thropic, municipal and missionary pur- poses, were, in the aggregate, very large ; and it was especially in recogni- tion of these that in 1893 he was nom- inated for his peerage by Mr. Glad- stone. Tho a member of the House of Lords, he has taken no active part in its affairs. He leaves no family, but probably no man in Scotland was more loved or would be more lamented.
FOR THE MISSIONARY LIBRARY
In Korea With Marquis Ito. By George Trumbull Ladd, L.L D. 8vo, 463 pp. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, iyo8.
The title of this work is most ap- propriate. It reads like a lawyer's plea in behalf of the Japanese domina- tion of Korea. It takes advantage of every possible argument to clear - Ja- pan, but makes no admissions what- ever to the other side. It is clear cut and definite in its statements, but it is to be regretted that we could not have had a more unprejudiced presentation of the case. It is evident, however, that Prof. Ladd looked through Japa- nese eves. The American public has been informed almost wholly from prejudicial sources on both sides of this controversy and the conclusions reached have been so contrary that thoughtful people will have to confess to some degree of bewilderment. In the present volume the evil that Japan may have done in Korea is belittled or excused and the good is magnified. On the other hand every weakness of the Korean is painted in strong relief and only occasionally is there a faint note of commendation. An indication of the method of the author is seen in the fact that he quotes largely what Prof. H. B. Hurlbert has said in a re- cent book in criticism of the Korean, but omits entirely all reference to his conclusions that are commendatory. This would seem to indicate that the book is a special plea wTith a special purpose.
Prof. Ladd's views about Protestant mission work in Korea do not agree with those of other travelers. He be- littles the genuineness and the disin- terestedness of Christian missions and charges missionaries with trying to discredit the Japanese regime in Ko- rea by letters written to their friends, and by their description of the facts to travelers. Dr. Ladd charges the missionaries with unreasonable antip- athy against the Japanese, not men- tioning the fact that before the late war all Americans in Korea were
wholly commendatory toward the Jap- anese. We may well look for the rea- son for this sudden and complete change of feeling. The missionaries are seeking to keep out of the controversy in order that they may not become entangled with politics.' In this they have been following the .explicit ad- vice of all diplomats the world over. Apparently from Dr. Ladd's showing, the Japanese demand that the mission- aries give up their neutrality and come out boldly in Japan's favor, irrespec- tive of their consciences. Mission- aries can not well be prevented from stating their views in private cor- respondence whatever the result may be. On the whole it is reasonable to suppose that the practically unani- mous consensus of opinion among two hundred missionaries is worth some- what more than the opinion of one man who spends two or tiiree months in the country and is the guest of the Japanese.
Prof. Ladd also speaks slightingly of the effects of Christianity upon the Korean, and maintains that the re- markable work in that land is with- out a firm basis. Other travelers judge differently and seem to be bet- ter supported by facts. The self-sac- rifice, the loyalty, the fellowship, the thirst for education, the scriptural eagerness of the Korean Church are all proofs of the genuineness of the work.
"Where The Book Speaks/' or; "Mission Studies in The Bible/' By Rev. Archi- bald McLean. i2mo, 241 pp. Flem- ing H. Revell Co., New York, 1908.
Twenty studies of Bible themes in their relation to Foreign Missions by one wrho knows both and has seen the inside working of the missionary problem both at home and abroad. Altho not the first book on this sub- ject, it is the best we have yet seen on the Bible as a missionary book. Epigrammatic in style, interestingly written, and with good exegetical skill, the book is strong from beginning to
1908 J
end. There is material here for a score of missionary sermons, and the pastor will find this volume most useful.
What the missionary idea is in the Old Testament — How the Church is a Missionary Institution — The signifi- cance of the Great Commission, of the Lord's Prayer, of the Macedonian Call, and of a New Testament Church in Relation to Missions. Such are some of the topics treated.
There is often a sermon in a sen- tence, e. g. : "Small giving is the curse and shame of our day." "God is not a beggar asking alms, he is a preferred creditor." "The world will never be won to Christ by gifts from our pin money." ' 'Christ does not ask for the broken fragments that have remained after we have eaten to satiety." "He does not ask for our cheese-parings and pork-rinds." "The Apostles evangelized the Roman Em- pire without a choir or pipe organ."
All of the chapters are so good it is hard to make a choice. One of the best pieces of missionary exegesis is the chapter on the call from Mace- donia. It is unfortunate that because there is no index, it is impossible to tell exactly where the Book speaks. A full index of Scripture passages should have been added, and one would like to see references for the authori- ties quoted.
Mankind- and the Church. By Seven Bishops. Edited by H. H. Montgom- ery, D.D. 8vo, 398 pp. $2.25 net. Long- man, Green & Co., London and New York, 1907.
This book is upon an unusual plan. Its aim is to estimate the contribution of great races to the fulness of the Church of God, by giving the personal witness of Bishop Stone- Wigg, among the Papuans; Archbishop Xuttall, among the Negroes of the West In- dies ; Bishop Awdry in Japan ; the late Bishop Hoare in China ; Bishop Lef- roy in India, among the Moslems : and Bishop Mylne, among the Hindus. This volume is thus seven in one, the center of unity being the main pur-
319
pose to show how, from these various sources, proceed streams tributary to the church life. An elaborate introduc- tion by Dr. Montgomery, formerly Bishop of Tasmania, upon the Church of the Far West, adds value to the book, and is by no means the least of its attractions.
The demand of the day is for the testimony of experts, and one hesitates to. criticize the views of writers who in their individual spheres are obvi- ously competent. With some of the opinions exprest we may not fully accord, but the writers have earned the right to be heard, and have ex- perience which enriches their testi- mony. We have been specially inter- ested in the analysis of racial character found in these pages, and the out- lines of the different religious sys- tems, as for example those of Japan and China, and the characteristic fea- tures of Islam and Hinduism. There is much here to interest the student of mental and moral philosophy, as well as the student of Christian mis- sions. Many of the strange notions and practises of other peoples find here an illumining exposition. The book is not to attract the common reader, but it will interest thoughtful men and women, who want to add to their stock of information on great ques- tions of ethnology and the adaptation of the Gospel to the world. These discussions obviously aim at fairness — presenting the whole case, from both sides, as Bishop Lefroy does in the case of Islam, giving Mohammedan- ism credit for all that is good, while with judicial impartiality exposing its defects, or as he says, "its merits and failures." It is not expected that every reader will agree with the writer — probably such agreement would be im- possible without the writer's observa- tion and point of view ; but all such testimony tends to promote intelligent and moderate opinions, and no one will close this book without the deep- ened conviction that Christianity sup- plies to man what no other religious system can furnish, and is incom- parably superior to them all.
FOR T1IF MISSIONARY LIBRARY
320
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[April
The Heathen Heart. By Campbell X. Moody, missionary in Formosa. i2mo, 3s. (x/.. net. Illustrated. Oli pliant An- derson & Ferrier, Edinburgh & Lon- don, 1907.
This is an account of the reception of the Gospel among the Chinese in Formosa — a modest volume of 250 pages. The author himself says the central chapter is the fourth, "Christ crossing the Threshold of the Heathen Heart." He says that there are sev- eral ways in which Chinese are won over to Christ ; by the study of the Xew Testament ; by the actual exor- cism of demons, which seems to be a common experience in China ; by mon- otheism ; and by the purity of Chris- tian life as seen in those who exhibit it.
Their faith is of a very simple sort. They take everything literally, and ex- pect their newly found Jehovah-God to shield them from harm even in temporal things. Hence when a pig dies, or a child or a crop fails, there is risk of relapse into heathenism through their keen disappointment. They need constant care and instruc- tion, till they get more adequate ideas of the real character of Christianity, as to what salvation is, as to the char- acter of a justifying faith and the dan- ger of reliance on works, etc.
There are certainly marvelous trans- formations seen in gamblers, opium smokers, and victims of lust. Fear is more frequently a motive than love. In- deed the Chinese ideas of love are very defective. It too often means to them kind treatment, or condescension to inferiors. They also crave external signs and place on them undue em- phasis. Teaching as well as preaching is needful, that thoroughly scriptural conceptions may prevail. Only a true knowledge of the Word of God, in its spirit as well as letter, can make in China or anywhere else, steadfast and intelligent disciples. Mr. Moody strongly takes ground against the modern notion of an undogmatic preaching. He thinks that to sweep all doctrines away would seriously complicate all the problems met in
Formosa, and that the condition of tilings there may find a very close forecast on the apostolic age — that the needs are similar, the dangers simi- lar, and the remedies similar. The other chapters treat of Formosa un- der Japanese rule; of the character, conduct and religion of a heathen peo- ple; and give graphic accounts of some Chinese converts, portraying al- so the difficulties of missionary life, and the lamentable lack of an adequate missionary force. Some one has called this the "most illuminating book on missions he has ever read." This we regard as excessive use of super- latives, but it shows that to some minds it must appeal as especially helpful.
NEW BOOKS
With Marquis Ito in Korea. By George Trumbull Ladd, D.D. Illustrated. 8vo, 477 pp. $2.00. Charles Scribner's Sons, Xew York, 1908.
Missions to Hindus. By Bishop Mylne. i2mo, 189 pp. Longmans & Co., New York, 1908.
China's Centennary Missionary Confer- ence Records. 8vo, 823 pp. $2.50, net. American Tract Society, New York, 1908.
The Future of Japan. By W. Petrie Watson. 8vo, 389 pp. $3.50, net. E. P. Dutton & Co., New York.
Foreign Religions Series. Edited by R. J. Cooke. 121110, 6 vols. 40 cents each. Eaton & Mains, New York, 1908.
Heathenism Under the Searchlight. By Wm. Remfry Hunt, F.R.G.S. i2mo, 267 pp. ss. Gd. Morgan & Scott, Lon- don, 1908.
Breaking Down Chinese Walls. By El- liot I. Osgood, M.D. i2mo, 217 pp. $1.00 net. Fleming H. Revell Co., 1908.
Man's Day. By Philip Mauro. i2mo, 152 pp. 3s. 6d. Morgan & Scott, Lon- don, 1908.
The Wonderful Story of Uganda. By J. D. Mullins. (Second edition.) Il- lustrated. i2mo, 235 pp. is. 6d. Church Missionary Society, London, 1908.
The True Church. By Rev. Allen M. Dulles, i2mo, 320 pp. $1.00 net. Flem- ing H. Revell Co., New York, 1908.
Maintaining the Unity. Report of the Eleventh International Evangelical Al- liance Conference. i2mo, 400 pp. Re- ligious Tract Society, London, 1908.
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