Full text of "The Crisis of Missions: Or, The Voice Out of the Cloud"

See other formats

Google

This is a digital copy of a book that was preserved for generations on Hbrary shelves before it was carefully scanned by Google as part of a project

to make the world's books discoverable online.

It has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject

to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary country to country. Public domain books

are our gateways to the past, representing a wealth of history, culture and knowledge that's often difficult to discover.

Marks, notations and other maiginalia present in the original volume will appear in this file - a reminder of this book's long journey from the

publisher to a library and finally to you.

Usage guidelines

Google is proud to partner with libraries to digitize public domain materials and make them widely accessible. Public domain books belong to the
public and we are merely their custodians. Nevertheless, this work is expensive, so in order to keep providing this resource, we liave taken steps to
prevent abuse by commercial parties, including placing technical restrictions on automated querying.
We also ask that you:

+ Make non-commercial use of the files We designed Google Book Search for use by individuals, and we request that you use these files for
personal, non-commercial purposes.

+ Refrain fivm automated querying Do not send automated queries of any sort to Google's system: If you are conducting research on machine
translation, optical character recognition or other areas where access to a large amount of text is helpful, please contact us. We encourage the
use of public domain materials for these purposes and may be able to help.

+ Maintain attributionTht GoogXt "watermark" you see on each file is essential for informing people about this project and helping them find
additional materials through Google Book Search. Please do not remove it.

+ Keep it legal Whatever your use, remember that you are responsible for ensuring that what you are doing is legal. Do not assume that just
because we believe a book is in the public domain for users in the United States, that the work is also in the public domain for users in other
countries. Whether a book is still in copyright varies from country to country, and we can't offer guidance on whether any specific use of
any specific book is allowed. Please do not assume that a book's appearance in Google Book Search means it can be used in any manner
anywhere in the world. Copyright infringement liabili^ can be quite severe.

About Google Book Search

Google's mission is to organize the world's information and to make it universally accessible and useful. Google Book Search helps readers
discover the world's books while helping authors and publishers reach new audiences. You can search through the full text of this book on the web

at |http : //books . google . com/|

■i:

f^r--^ '«

^♦■*

It* '*

'-;;'

4 »

^-t^J^^ _ ^-^.

1 ■■ "

-if w

;■ X.

■A

A^>

..*

,4. «

i«

•-

fcr.

'/^/luA

r--,-. - i«

rr - — ^ ^w

V V

" •»

, /

•^

'/t^^

-V

'> -■

«*.■

( #

^'^^■'^'•'l^ipip™

•< ♦.

«•

• '.

1 - *•/

• •»

'>.-■-

' • . *<

• ?^ ' V? .-' '>■ /h; ' , '

:. •'v

••«

f • »

1i -

r "V. ••«»-■

-/~

^^W^pT

.•»

••'

>-,._

X «> <*

.-• ''*•

.4.

>. •

ft?'' "

%. ■>>•

'*- «

'' . ^'^

' >

^ ".

?♦

•,^.

• -w"^ I

^^, c:'> -

« '- '

^•» <'

THE

ttoi0 of fl|t00ion0:

OR,

THE VOICE OUT OF THE CLOUD.

REV. ARTHUR T. JIERSON, D.D.,

AUTHOK OF

THX GOSFBL FIjOODING THS WOKLD," " THX PROGRXSS OF MISSIONS,*

*'many infalublb proofs,*' >TC

NEW YORK:

ROBERT CARTER AND BROTHERS;
530 Broadway.

V5S

C^yrighi, 1886,
By Robert Carter and Brothers.

Kitttctff^ 9tcm8
JoHM Wilson and Son, Cambxidgb.

'TO
I

THE BELOVED PARTNER OF MY LIFE,

WHO HAS BEEN NOT ONLY THE ENCOURAGEMENT,

BUT THE INSPIRATION, OF MY RESEARCHES IN THE FIELD

OF MISSIONS,

AND HAS INTIMATELY SHARED IN ALL MY PRAYERS

AND LABORS FOR THE WORLD-WIDE HARVEST,

^ia ISooft i» Sttttrtibdy*

A WORD PRELIMINARY.

|F in this little book any good is
found, it is, like most good things,
a growth ; it has come by a process
of development in personal study and pasto*
ral service.

The little interest at first felt by the writer
in remote missions in regions beyond has
steadily and rapidly grown. The logic of
the Scripture argument for a world-wide
evangelism is itself overwhelming; but vari-
ous side-arguments and considerations em-
phasize and enforce the scriptural; and the
logic of events adds its mighty demonstration,
that the pillar of God still moves before His
people. Under the combined influence of
such an array of proof from Scripture, from
history, and from experience, that the spirit
of missions is the spirit of Christ, the whole

275118

6 A WORD PRELIMINARY.

mind and heart of a true disciple burn with
conviction and glow with enthusiasm in the
direction of the work of witnessing to a lost
world.

Facts are the fingers of God. To know
the facts of modern missions is the necessary
condition of intelligent interest. Knowledge
does not always kindle zeal, but zeal is " ac-
cording to knowledge," and will not exist
without it A fire may be fanned with wind,
but it must be fed with fuel ; and facts are the
fuel of this sacred flame, to be gathered, then
kindled, by God's Spirit, and then scattered
as burning brands, to be as live coals else-
where. In vain shall we look for an absorb-
ing, engrossing passion for the prompt and
universal spread of gospel tidings, for full
missionary treasuries or full missionary ranks,
unless and until the individual believer is
brought face to face with those grand facts
which make the march of modern missions
the marvel and miracle of these latter days !

To outline these facts is the simple, humble
aim of this book, purposely compressed into

A WORD PRELIMINARY. f

a narrow compass, to catch the hasty glance
of these busy times. So fast is the pace of
missions, that, while we write the record, a
new statement becomes needful ; and so wide
is the field, that a lifetime is scarcely adequate
to its proper investigation. Whatever imper-
fections and inaccuracies appear, the indul-
gent reader will not forget that these pages
have been written, only in the intervals of
pastoral work, in a field where the exacting
labors of pulpit and parish leave the pastor
little leisure as an author.

The writer, himself deeply conscious of the
defects of his work, sends it forth on its
errand, praying that in some small measure
it may prepare the way of the Lord, make
His paths straight, lift up a standard for the
people, or at least gather out the stones.

ARTHUR T. PIERSON.

2320 Spruce Street, Philadelphia,
July, 1886.

CONTENTS.

PAGB

Thb Precept and the Promise. . . ii

II.

Providential Signals . . .

. i8

III.

Removal of Barriers . . .

1 1

IV.

The Moving of the Pillar . .

t 1

• 37

The Opening of Doors : India .

t 1

VI.

East Indian Missions . . .

1 1

• 53

VII.

Burmah and the Karens . . .

> «

. 66

VIII.

The Open Door in Siam . . ,

1 1

• 73

IX.

The Wau,ed Kingdom . . .

• 1

. 8o

Protestant Missions in China

> 1

. 88

XI.

Japan, the Sunrise Kingdom

> «

XII.

Korea, the Hermit Nation .

> 1

, io6

XIII.

The Ottoman Empire . . .

> 4

XIV.

The Dark Continent ....

> •

XV.

Papal Lands ,

' 133
140

XVI.

Mexico, Land of the Attecs

1 1

XVII.

South American States . . ,

•

148

XVIII.

The Subsidence of Obstacles .

■

156

XIX.

Woman's Work for Woman . .

169

XX.

The Preparation of the Churc

184

lO CONTENTS.

CHArrSS PACB

XXI. The White Harvest Fields .... 193

XXII. The Gracious Signs 201

XXIII. The Transformations of Grace . . 211

XXIV. The Products of God*s Husbandry . 224
XXV. The Isles waiting for His Law . . 239

XXVI. God's Seal on the Workmen . . . 252

XXVII. The Aspect and Prospect 262

XXVIII. The Elements in the Crisis . . . 273

XXIX. The Unheeded Signals 281

XXX. The Leaven of a New Theology. . 291

XXXI. The Spirit of Missions 300

XXXII. The Living Links 311

XXXIII. The Problem of Missions 321

XXXIV. The Laborers are few 330

XXXV. Meeting the Crisis 343

XXXVI. A World's Missionary Council . . 355

A Word Supplementary 365

THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

CHAPTER I.

THE PRECEPT AND THE PROMISE.

|HE argument and the appeal in be-
half of missions are unsurpassed for
variety and cogency.
First of all, there is the imperative voice
of duty. The very watchword of the Chris-
tian life is obedience, and our great Captain
has left us His marching orders : " Go ye into
all the world and preach the gospel to every
creature.'' Such a plain command makes
all other motives comparatively unnecessary,
"Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it."
Where there has been .given a clear, divine
word of authority, immediate, implicit sub-
mission and compliance will be yielded by
every loyal, loving disciple. Even to hesi-

12 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

tate, for the sake of asking a reason, savors
of the essence of rebellion.

When our great Commander left us this
last precept, however, He annexed to it a
most inspiring promise : " Lo, I am with you
alway, even unto the end of the world."
That promise has been conspicuously and
marvellously fulfilled in connection with mis-
sions ; for Christ has been with us, both by
His providence and by His grace. The ar*
gument and appeal, found in this providential
and gracious presence, have not been prop-
erly considered and appreciated ; and we pur-
pose to make them more emphatic by a
rapid glance at the more important facts of
modern missionary history.

We shall aim to show, for example, that
the providence of God is especially apparent
in missions, in the opening of doors, great
and effectual; in the removal or subsidence
of barriers; in the preparation of the field
and the workmen ; in the provision and pro-
tection of the laborers ; and in the revealing
and unfolding to the Church of His set times,

mmmk

THE PRECEPT AND THE PROMISE. 1 3

seasons, and measures for securing new ad-
vance and success. Such divine providence
becomes to God's people a glorious and in-
spiring signal both that He is always with
them, and that His pleasure shall prosper in
their hands.

The grace of God appears in missions,
especially in working mighty results and ef-
fects, such as are plainly attributable only to
the Divine Spirit. These results are wrought
not only in individuals, but sometimes in
whole communities ; there are some transfor-
mations that deserve to be called trans-
figurations. In the workmen, also, whose
consecration to such heroic labors develops
in them an exalted type of piety, and even
in those who earnestly pray and liberally
give for the support of the work, similar un-
mistakable fruits of this grace appear and
abound.

To these somewhat neglected arguments
in favor of the work of missions it is well to
turn our attention: for these providential
signals and these gracious signs, being once

14 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

truly recognized and realized, make duty a
delight; the work of missions becomes no
longer the cold necessity of obedience, but
the most inspiring, enrapturing privilege.
Only some such exalted conception of this
last commission, and of the supreme blessed-
ness of a loving fidelity to our stewardship
in the gospel, can lift the church of God to a
higher plane of praying and giving. Better
than the conscience that drives, is the love
that draws, to the work of missions. Once
brought to the white-heat of passion for
souls, we are henceforth " weary with forbear-
ing, and cannot stay" in apathetic idleness
and silence : the inward fire must have vent.
It is no longer hard to give, but hard to with-
hold ; and, better than the most princely gifts
of money, we shall give ourselves, a living
sacrifice.

These two classes of facts, then, will com-
mand our attention : the providential opening
of doors, and removal or subsidence of obsta-
cles and barriers; and the gracious manifes-
tations of transforming power in individuals

THE PRECEPT AND THE PROMISE, IS

and communities in heathen lands abroad>
and of reforming power in our church life at
home.

Before entering into details, one startling
and comprehensive fact should be clearly
kept before us, — that all the stupendous
movements and changes which we have to re-
cord, or refer to, have taken place within less
than a century! Not until 1892 will the first
hundred years have rolled around since, in
that humble cottage of the Widow Wallis at
Kettering, twelve Baptist ministers formed
the pioneer English " Society for Propagating
the Gospel among the Heathen." " Attempt-
ing great things for God, and expecting great
things from God," they laid on His altar
thirteen pounds, two shillings and sixpence,
as their first offering for missions, covenant-
ing together to undertake to spread the gos-
pel among the heathen.

Within that yet uncompleted century what
astounding changes have taken place ! That
bugle-call of William Carey has rallied all
Christendom. God has opened the two-

1 6 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS,

leaved gates, until the last of the hermit
nations unbars the doors of exclusion and
seclusion and welcomes to her ports the
messenger of Christ. Even the most en-
thusiastic student of missions fails to appre-
hend and appreciate the grandeur of such
colossal movements. Wonderful, indeed, that
a hundred open doors, great and effectual,
God should set before His Church; but
more wonderful the ways in which, by keys
of His own, He has unlocked the gates of
hermit nations. And the rapidity of these
changes is supernatural. When, in 1792,
that pious cobbler of Paulerspury led in the
formation of that first British society, and
when, in 1793, he himself went forth as the
first foreign missionary from English shores,
the whole world was comparatively locked
against missionary enterprise; there was
scarce one real opening into pagan, papal, or
Moslem lands to preach the gospel in its
purity or win converts, without molestation
and persecution both to the missionary and
the convert. Now the whole aspect of the

THE PRECEPT AND THE PROMISE, IJ

world is changed, and there is scarce one
closed door, or community where the preacher
may not go with the open Bible, or where
the convert may not, in publicly confessing
allegiance to Jesus, claim the protection of
law. And yet these are but a part of the
changes which make this nineteenth century
the most conspicuous in history for the prog-
ress of missions. To appreciate this, we
must enter somewhat into details.

CHAPTER II.

PROVIDENTIAL SIGNALS.

OD'S ancient Israel were led by a
pillar of cloud and of fire. It was
dark, yet light ; mysterious, yet lu-
minous ; obscure, yet glorious ; instinct with
divine intelligence, vocal with divine utter-
ance. It was the symbol and signal of
omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotence ;
the hiding of God's presence and power.
Wherever that pillar moved or rested, His
people were to follow or halt; and to move
in its sacred shadow was to be guided by
His wisdom, guarded by His power, and
shielded by His protection. Before it the
Red Sea and the Jordan opened a path in
the midst of their waves, and Jericho's walls
fell down ; before it no obstacle could stand,
no foe prevail; and happy were they who,

PROVIDENTIAL SIGNALS. 19

watching that pillar, were always ready to
obey its signal.

That pillar was a visible symbol of the
providence of God, which through all the
ages remains, to His people, the perpetual
signal of His presence, power, and pleasure.
We are to watch that pillar of Providence,
march when and where it moves, and halt
when and where it rests. In other words,
though no longer accompanied by a visible
sign or signal, to the attentive observer God
is in history.

The Book of Esther seems to be placed in
the canon of Scripture as a marvellous ex-
hibition and illustration of God's providence,
— that unseen power back of human affairs,
distributing the ultimate awards to evil and
to good, and by its mystic shuttle weaving
even the minutest thread of events into the
fabric of God's design. Some, it is true,
would banish this Book of Esther from the
canon, because in it the name of God does
not appear ; but there may be a significance
in this fact, for it is a hidden hand that shifls

20 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

the scenery, and thrusts the actors on and
off the historic stage. This Book of Esther
is the rose-window in the Old Testament
cathedral, transmitting, as through stained
glass, a light, dim, perhaps, but rich with
divine hues ; and by that dim light drawing
attention to the exquisite tracery upon its
framework and the symbolic design of its
tinted panes.

So God is not less in historic events be-
cause the visible signal is now withdrawn.
The eye of faith detects His prevision, pro-
vision, presidence, all along the line of the
march of the ages. The devout disciple be-
holds still the moving pillar, and it is to him
the perpetual demonstration of the existence
of God and His interest in human affairs,
and the perpetual inspiration to a life of
self-sacrifice in holy endeavor and heroic en-
durance.

The argument from Providence is espe-
cially needed in this materialistic age. The
prevailing ignorance and indifference mani-
fested in the church of God toward missions

PROVIDENTIAL SIGNALS. 21

prove that even nominal disciples are in dan-
ger of drifting into practical atheism. There
cannot be a quick sense of God's being
while there is so slow a sense of obligation
and of privilege in respect to carrying out
our Lord's last command and commission.
Our first need is to know and feel that God
is, and is the all-pervading, aIl>controlling
factor in human history.

The main value of a careful study of
modem missions is perhaps to be found in
the unanswerable argument which it pre-
sents for God's existence and providence;
and hence out of all those considerations,
which blend in one mighty plea for the
immediate evangelization of the world, we
put this among the foremost. The logic of
events demonstrates that the promise, ** Lo,
I am with you alway, even unto the end
of the world," is specially and gloriously ful-
filled to those who " go into all the world "
to " preach the gospel to every creature."
All the shallow pretexts for our neglect and
selfishness, our meagre offerings and few

22 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

laborers, are shamed into silence when our
opened eyes behold in the history of mis-
sions itself a burning bush whose every leaf
and twig are aflame with the presence of
Jehovah.

It has been already hinted that a blessed
inspiration is furnished to the workman in
the mission field by this faith in the provi-
dence of God, and this consciousness of the
divine presence. Prince Albert used to say
to young men, "Find out God's plan in
your generation, and then beware lest you
cross it; but fall promptly into your own
place in that plan." Dr. Anderson declared,
as the result of many years* experience as
missionary secretary, that *' the great defect
/ of the age is, that it does not respond as it
* should to the providence of God."

What guilt and folly characterizes him
who wilfully, or even carelessly, crosses
God's plan ! What heroism and martyrdom
must be inspired by the serene confidence
and consciousness that one is watching God's
pillar and moving with itl The true mis-

— TTTTTririfiBaMiiMUh^a'' ^ ~ - *.^

PROVIDENTIAL SIGNALS. 2%

sionary must be heroic: he sees the pillar
of Providence; across its white column he
reads in Shekinah fires, " Lo, I am with you
alway/* and he knows that such a promise
yokes divine omnipotence to human impo-
tence ; it means the removal of hinderances
and the surmounting of obstacles broad as
continents, high as the Himalayas; and he
moves forward, fearless and faithful, facing
foes as formidable as the giant Anakim with
their chariots of iron.

But this matter concerns not only the mis-
sionary. Every disciple both may and should
understand God's plan for the evangeliza-
tion of this world. That plan is revealed in
prophecy in unmistakable terms, and a close
study of these inspired predictions will show
not only the general outlines, but many
particulars, of that plan. More than this,
history is progressively unfolding, confirm-
ing, fulfilling prophecy. Current events are
God's own commentary on his Word, and
only open eyes and a docile mind are neces-
sary in order to read and interpret them.

24 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS,

The knowledge of the Lord is covering the
earth as the waters cover the seeu The stone
cut out without hands has been growing for
centuries, and is to-day filling the whole
earth. That such predictions have a fulfil-
ment on a much grander scale we do not
doubt; but Christian history is full of an-
ticipations and foretastes of the final con-
summation. Take a wide survey of the
world to-day. ^o figure so colossal as that
of the person of Christ can be seen through
all the centuries, — even distance does not
diminish its proportions or dim its glory.
No book so colossal in its grandeur ever
challenged the admiration of even the wisest
and best of men, as the Bible. John of the
Golden Mouth gave it its name, " 'O Bt/8Xo9,"
The Book, more than fifteen hundred years
ago ; and the whole world echoes the name.
No fact so colossal as Christianity has ever
attracted the wondering gaze of men ; it fills
the world's whole horizon to-day. The fore-
most nations of the earth are not only Chris-
tian, but Protestant, and they have their grip

PROVIDENTIAL SIGNALS. 2$

upon the leading nations of the rest of the
world. Prussia, England, and the United
States hold the sceptres that at this hour
sway the destinies of both hemispheres.

It behooves all disciples to awake and bestir
themselves. God's eternal purpose concern-
ing this world should be so engfraven on our
minds and hearts, that no doubt can ever
arise as to the fact and nature of His plan,
the destiny of the gospel, or as to our duty.
Events are moving at such a pace that only
the active disciple can keep up with them.
This subject has a special interest to us of
this generation, for we are living in the grand
missionary age of history. Before the dawn
of the nineteenth century, Protestant missions
were so rare, limited, exceptional, as to form
no marked feature of church life. In the
apostolic age, the new faith ran on swift
foot to the limits of the Roman Empire ; in
the mediaeval age, the rays of gospel light
touched here and there a rude and barbarous
people, fringing with silver edges the dark,
black clouds of paganism. But this is the

26 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

epoch of world-wide missions. Since this
century began, a golden net-work, glistening
with heavenly dews, has been extending from
the great centres of Christendom, with lines
radiating in every direction, and cross-lines
connecting, until the great globe itself is
girdled and enclosed ; the most distant and
destitute will speedily be reached by God's
evangel, and no land be left to the dominion
of the death-shade. Theodore Christlieb at-
tempted a " survey of Protestant missions."
Awed by the greatness and grandeur of the
theme, he was as one who from a balloon
seeks to command a general view of an army
so vast that no one horizon bounds it, be-
cause its lines reach round the world. What
true soldier of Christ can be indifferent to
the issues of such a campaign?

Again, this subject has a special interest
to us of this generation, because changes
more rapid and radical and revolutionary
than in any preceding age are taking place
before our very eyes. God is moving with
great strides in His march toward the final

PROVIDENTIAL SIGNALS. 2/

goal. The gospel flood is fast rising toward a
flood-mark higher than has ever been reached.
The fulness of time has come, and the end
seems at hand, which is also the beginning of
the last and greatest age. God is specially
working, and loudly calling His people to
closer fellowship and more diligent co-opera-
tion. Such facts mark and make the crisis
of missions. Now or never! To-morrow
will be too late for work that must be done
to-day. The time and the tide will not wait
He who lags behind will be left behind.
Every day will make or mar the future of
great peoples.

"The field is the world;" there are there-
fore not only many different points of pros-
pect, but every part of the wide field has its
own horizon. The march of the Lord is
through the ages and around the world;
everywhere the line of His march is radi-
ant, like the milky way, with the marks of
His golden footsteps, for the place of His
feet is ever glorious. Where, in the treat-
ment of such a theme, shall we begin or end ?

28 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

For brevity of statement and unity of im-
pression we select only the more conspicuous,
proofs of divine interposition, gleaning, like
Ruth, a few handfuls from a vast and varied
harvest field.

CHAPTER III.

REMOVAL OF BARRIERS.

|HEN this century was at its dawn, ten
great barriers, to human view insur-
mountable, interposed between the
Church and the fulfilment of the Lord's
command. We may group them into four
classes.

I. Obstacles to approach. There was little
or no access to the great nations of the hea-
then world. China was walled about, Japan's
ports sealed, India held by an English power
hostile to missions, Africa impenetrable even
to the explorer, and the isles of the sea
crowded with cannibals more to be dreaded
than the devouring waves of the angry ocean.
In the Moslem world blind bigotry, as with
the iron flail of Talus, crushed all freedom of
speech or thought, and hung the death pen-

30 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

alty like the sword of Damocles over the
head of every follower of the Prophet who
even looked away from the crescent to the
cross. In the papal world a nominal Chris-
tianity, intolerant of all evangelical creeds,
forbade even the circulation of the Bible;
there was less hope of proper missionary
work among Roman Catholics than among
Polynesian cannibals. Travellers could not
visit the Eternal City without leaving their
Bibles outside the gates, within which no
Protestant chapel was tolerated. The Wal-
denses, in seeking to keep the pure primitive
faith, found the Vatican an Olympus for its
false gods, a Sinai for its terrors and thun-
ders, and a Golgotha for its tortures and
blood.

2. Obstacles to intercourse. Outward ap-
proach proved often no real access. Serious
inside walls had to be scaled, even when the
outer barriers were passed. Tediously slow
travel and transportation made neighbors
foreigners; languages, strange and hard to
master, hindered even converse and comma-

REMOVAL OF BARRIERS, 3 1

nication, and, formed in the matrix of hea-
thenism, offered no mould for spiritual ideas ;
moreover, at least sixty such tongues must
be reduced to writing, having no literature,
or even lexicon or grammar. Woman was
hopelessly secluded within harems, zenanas,
seraglios ; degraded to the level of the cattle
for which she was bartered, or the donkeys
with which she was associated as a burden-
bearer, unwelcome as a babe, untaught as
a child, enslaved as a wife, despised as a
widow, and unwept as dead, denied all social
status and individual rights, and even a soul.
Worst of all, caste, that gigantic foe of human
progress, forbade not only conversion, but
communion among converts.

3. Obstacles to impression. Some of the
unevangelized races seemed on too low a
level to be lifted even by the lever of the
gospel ; others stood too high, and were too
proud to feel the need of its uplifting. In
some not only the image of God, but the
image of man, was defaced, if not effaced;
they were dumb beasts for shamelessness and

32 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS,

wild beasts for brutality and ferocity, not
only dehumanized but demonized. Others,
like the hundreds of millions of India and
China, proud of their hoary age, high culture,
poetic and ethical faiths, and a social mo-
rality that in some respects put Christian
communities to shame, were under the sway
of a subtle priesthood, and clad in self-com-
placency as in an impenetrable coat of mail.
The gospel might pass the barriers that
hindered approach and intercourse, but here
was another still more insurmountable. What
could a feeble missionary band do in con-
fronting great nations that boasted of their
antiquity and aristocracy, and accounted
apostasy a crime against both God and
man, which was without apology and beyond
forgiveness?

4. Obstacles to action. The Church itself
had reared barriers to its own missionary ac-
tivity. The disgraceful iniquities and im-
moralities with which the Christian nations
were implicated and complicated made the
name " Christian " a stench instead of a sweet

i'^«li*»r'#.'.-"'

REMOVAL OF BARRIERS. 33

savor to the pagan world. England forced
opium upon China, even at the cannon's
mouth; vessels brought missionaries to
Africa from Christian lands, and then bore
back to those lands her stolen slaves; the
Hawaiians caught the consuming leprosy of
lust from the merchant ships of Christian
countries ; and the North American Indians
took the infection of drunkenness from con-
tact with our "higher civilization." The
work of missions advanced under the awful
shadow of a prejudice against Christendom
for which Christian nations were responsible ;
for in some cases intercourse had already
proved to pagan peoples worse than isola-
tion. Missionaries landing on foreign shores
were sometimes compelled to regret that the
shuttle of commerce had already woven a •
bond of contact with the " Christians " whom
they came to represent.

Beside all this, apathy and lethargy reigned
in the Church. Ignorance of man's need and
of God's work made the indifference that pre-
vailed the more hopeless; worse than mere

34 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

lack of sympathy, or apathy, there was, even
inside the Church, antipathy to missionary
effort; while sectarian jealousy checked ac-
tivity, cooled ardor, and wasted energy that,
with harmony and unity, co-operation and
concentration, might have multiplied results
a hundred-fold. At times zeal seemed to
kindle, but only flashed into a flame of tem-
porary excitement and contagious enthusiasm,
soon to die down and leave no lasting results
in self-sacrifice. Sheldon Dibble declared
that Christians need conversion to foreign
missions as really as a sinner needs conver-
sion to Christ. Adoniram Judson said his
"hand was nearly shaken off, and his hair
nearly shorn off for mementoes, by those
who would willingly let missions die." Albert
Bushnell found no obstacles at the Gaboon
so disheartening as those at home, in the
" churches, one half of which give nothing,
and the other half give little, but pray even
less." No wonder if missionaries hesitated
to go down into the deep, dark mine of hea-
thenism, with no one to " hold the rope."

REMOVAL OF BARRIERS. 35

Such are a few of the representative bar-
riers that, within the memory of men still
living, stood between the Church and the un-
evangelized world, defying all merely human
wisdom or power to remove or to surmount.
To-day, if not all entirely out of the way,
they are down, like Jericho's walls ; and from
every quarter the hosts of God have only to
march straight before them, climb over the
prostrate ruins, and take the strongholds of
Satan. Nor has the half been told, or even
hinted, of the wonderful rapidity with which
God has done this preparatory work. It is
impossible to pack into a few paragraphs the
huge mass of facts which no child of God
can carefully survey without becoming a con-
vert to missions. There has been nothing
less than a new exodus out of an Egypt of
apathy and insensibility, a new crossing of
the Red Sea, a new overwhelming of the
pursuing foe, a new pilgrimage behind God's
pillar. The angel of the Lord has gone
before the mission band till, within one cen-
tury, its ranks reach round the world. At

36 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

the command of Jehovah land after land has
admitted the heralds of the cross, till every
people is now accessible, till in the most
hopeless fields the harvest waves, and the

whole aspect of the world is marvellously
changed.

CHAPTER IV.

THE MOVING OF THE PILLAR.

IF the modern movements in mission-
ary history have been under divine
leadership, we shall find the evidence
of unity of plan in the close and necessary
connection of its various parts with each
other. How is it? To him who carefully
watches the signal pillar, the conspicuous de-
velopments in the modern missionary epoch
are so related that each implies the others as
essential to one complete, consistent scheme.

For example, God has unquestionably gone
before His church to open doors great and
effectual for the entrance of the gospel. This
implies a corresponding movement within
His church to train and prepare an elect,
select band of warriors and workers to carry
the gospel through those open doors; and

38 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

these again imply another and more general
work, infusing into His church as a whole a
missionar}^ spirit and imparting to it a mis-
sionary character, that the men and means
might be supplied to keep the ranks of the
advancing columns full, to preserve a line of
communication, and to furnish the rations
and weapons of war. Such have been the
facts. These mutually necessary develop-
ments have all proven the work to be under
the eye and guided by the hand of one Su-
preme Head. Whichever way we look, and
from whatever point, at the history crowded
into this great century of missions, we know
not in what aspect of affairs these supernatu-
ral interpositions appear most wonderful. It
is, throughout, " the Lord's doing, and mar-
vellous in our eyes."

When we see a hundred barriers, that can
only be compared to mountains, removed as
completely as though they were cast into
the sea; when we see a hundred doors flung
open without human hands, after centuries
of rigid exclusion even toward commerce.

THE MOVING OF THE PILLAR. 39

and leaving for the missionary an open path
to the very heart of great empires, — it seems
as though the miracle wrought in Peter's be-
half, when the huge, iron city gate opened
of its own accord, had been so often repeated
in these days that it has ceased to be any
longer a marvel. When we see how, during
these hundred years, God has been leading
out his chosen few to dare the assault upon
the very citadels of paganism ; to face with-
out fear famine, fever, exposure, privation,
torture, and death; and how He has made
them brave, strong, and victorious, with every
possible hinderance as to numbers, money, and
worldly power, against which to contend, — we
can only account for their courage, consecra-
tion, or success by the fact that He who went
with Gideon against Midian, or Joshua against
Jericho, has by His angel led this "forlorn
hope." And when, once more, we remember
how, one hundred years ago, the whole Church
seemed practically dead to foreign missions ;
how Carey, in forming that first English mis-
sionary society, fought for twelve years the

40 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

apathy and even the hostility of his Christian
brethren and fellow-ministers, as Wilberforce
for forty years fought the English Parliament
to secure the abolition of the slave-trade and
the emancipation of the slave ; when we re-
member that from almost absolute and uni-
versal indifference and even opposition, one
hundred years ago, the whole Church has
wheeled into line, declaring its profound sym-
pathy with missions, forming its hundreds of
great organizations that ramify into almost
every local church, laying millions of dollars
annually on the altar of missions, and sending
thousands of missionaries to the ends of the
earth with its prayers and tears and blessing ;
when we think that for the first time since
the age of the apostles the Church of Christ,
through all her evangelical denominations,
is organized for a campaign whose professed
purpose is a world's evangelization, — once
more, we can only exclaim, " What hath God
wrought ! " Only He in whose hands are the
hearts of men, to turn them whithersoever
He will, could have wrought such a change

THE MOVING OF THE PILLAR. \l

in the whole attitude and aspect of Christen-
dom within so short a time. Saul's conver-
sion was not more miraculous than this new
conversion of the Church, Here were bar-
riers to the evangelization of the world quite
as formidable in their way as any to be found
in the superstition and hostility of pagan
peoples.

But God moved in His church as well as
before it. And so as we near the close of
this first century of modern missions, lo, this
missionary net-work overspreads the globe !
Over two hundred and fifty languages and
dialects are now the chariots to bear the won-
derful words of life to the ends of the earth.
What were rallying points in 1820 became
radiating points a half-century later; and
pagan nations, which at the beginning of the
century were the slaves of vices that were
eating away their own vitals, now, themselves
evangelized, reach out a hand to help and
save their pagan neighbors.

India is now a starry firmament, sparkling
with missionary stations; Turkey is planted

42 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

with churches from the Golden Horn to the
Tigris and Euphrates, and the cross is be-
ginning to outshine the crescent ; Syria edu-
cates young men and women in her Christian
schools, seminaries, and colleges, and from
her consecrated press scatters throughout the
dominions of Mohammed the million leaves
of the Tree of Life; Japan strides in her
" seven-league boots " toward a Christian
civilization, and with a rapidity that rivals
apostolic days; Africa is girdled, crossed,
penetrated by missionary bands, and is draw-
ing to itself the wondering gaze of the. world;
Polynesia's thousand church-spires point like
fingers to the sky, and where the cannibal
ovens roasted the victims for the feast of
death, the Lord's table is now spread for the
feast of life and love. Even papal lands
now invite Christian labor. McAU crowds
Paris and surrounding cities with his hundred
gospel stations, and Signor Arrighi prophe-
sies that the World's Evangelical Alliance will
yet meet in St. Peter's Church and lodge its
delegates in the chambers of the Vatican !

CHAPTER V.

THE OPENING OF DOORS: INDIA.

|N glancing at the opening of these
doors we naturally begin with In-
dia^ for when God entered that land
with Christian missions He was driving an
entering-wedge into the very heart, geograph-
ical and moral, of Oriental paganism, piercing
the centre of the enemy's line of battle, that
He might turn their staggering wings.

India was the " Gibraltar of paganism." It
seemed impregnable. First, it had a great
population — numbering then about two hun-
dred millions — entirely hostile to the gos-
pel. Secondly, it had two great religions,
the most subtle, seductive, and despotic the
world has yet known, — Brahminism and Mo-
hammedanism, — and holding the people in
an iron grasp. . Thirdly, there was a system

44 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

of social caste, that with the rigid, frigid fet-
ters of ice that no sun ever melts, keeps
manhood locked up, and prevents all social
fusion and homogeneity, — caste that would
make it a curse for the shadow of one man
to fall across another, or for two converts to
drink out of one sacramental cup. Once
more, as though still to shut up India, even
when the doors were open, the East India
Company was there, nominally representing
a Christian nation, really an avaricious, am-
bitious, selfish, sordid corporation, strength-
ening heathenism and weakening Christian
missions. These were the four principal bar-
riers to evangelization, all of them too great
for mere human strength or skill to over-
come. No man on earth would have been
wild enough to have proposed the moral and
spiritual regeneration of India, but for the
faith that divine power is behind the gospel
and the gospel preacher.

Yet India has been opened to the gospel,
and the process reaches far back into the
ages. Soon after the discovery of America,

THE OPENING OF DOORS: INDIA. 45

at the close of the fifteenth century, navi-
gators successfully rounded the old " Cape
of Storms," and called it " the Cape of Good
Hope," and a new route was open to the
golden Indies. In the very last day of the
sixteenth and the dawn of the seventeenth
century Queen Elizabeth granted to a com-
pany of London merchants a charter, the
original basis of the " East India Company,"
for trading with the East Indies; and in
161 2 Captain Beal obtained from the court
at Delhi sundry important privileges, orig-
inally commercial only, but gradually merg-
ing into a military occupation of the country.
Factories became depots for goods, then
forts, protecting the property and lives of
resident foreigners representing the com-
pany. Every new foothold thus obtained
was a pretext for new acquisition of terri-
tory and dominion on the part of Europeans.
The growth of that English trading company
in power and property is one of the phe-
nomena of history. Seventeen years after
the charter was issued the stock stood at

46 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

above two hundred per cent, while the fac-
tories were no longer at Surat only, but at
Java, Sumatra, Borneo, the Banda Islands,
Celebes, Malacca, Siam, the Coromandel
and Malabar coasts, but chiefly the domin-
ions of the Great Mogul, whose authority
had now set its seal and sanction on the
company. In 1620 — the year that the
" Mayflower " anchored off Plymouth —
the capital had gone up from thirty thousand
to four hundred thousand pounds, — over
thirteen-fold in twenty years.

We refer in detail to the early history of
the East India Company because this mon-
strous monopoly was the beginning of Brit-
ish empire in the very heart of the East.
Behind man's selfish schemes, back of the
avarice and ambition of unprincipled Eng-
lishmen, lay a divine purpose. Like Joseph's
sale into slavery in Egypt, " God meant it
unto good." It was the displacement of Ro-
man Catholic powers — as represented in the
Portuguese, who had exclusive privilege of
commerce with India in 1587 — by the dom-

THE OPENING OF DOORS: INDIA, 47

inant Protestant nation of the world, which
all unconsciously, and through the sordid
instruments of a trading monopoly that hated
missionaries, was laying the foundations of a
Christian empire in the Indies. Meanwhile
renewed charters with enlarged powers, re-
newed purchases with enlarged jurisdiction,
greater concessions from the governments
both of England and India, prepared the
company for that new era which began in
1748, when the political power of the British
in India opened another volume of Oriental
history. Think of an English trading com-
pany, which could have been swept from the
earth in an hour by the aroused millions of
India, alternately expelling and protecting
the Rajah of Tanjore, deposing the Nabob of
Bengal, and, backed by British arms, com-
pelling Tippoo Sahib to relinquish half his
dominions and three and a half million
pounds in bullion!

We have no space further to recite this
romance of history. Suffice it to say that
when, in 1858, the East India Company

' 48 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

was finally abolished, and all its possessions
and powers and prerogatives were turned
over to the crown of England, its Board of
Control had long been a court of final appeal.
Its military force in the East Indies cost in
one year ten million pounds to maintain;
and the receipts of the home treasury were
a million more. And the influence of this
British power in India had been on the whole
hostile to missions. One of the company's
directors said that he would rather see a band
of devils than a band of missionaries in India.
From 1792 to 18 12 religious and educational
labor was prohibited. William Wilberforce
led the movement which ended in a new
charter for the company, providing for the
tolerating of missions; but the change was
only in name. Evangelism was hindered and
heathenism helped; and as late as 1852
$3»750,ooo were paid from public funds to
repair temples, provide new idols and idol-
cars, and support a pagan priesthood.

But in 1857 the Sepoy rebellion proved
that the heathen, tlius favored by the British

THE OPENING OF DOORS: INDIA. 49

government, massacred her subjects, while
the native Christians proved her loyal friends,
and from that day the attitude of the English
government underwent a change: hostility
gave place to neutrality and neutrality to
commendation. In 1873 the Secretary of
State for India put on record the following
testimony : —

" The government cannot but acknowledge the
great obligation under which it is laid by the be-
nevolent exertions of those six hundred mission-
aries, whose blameless example and self-denying
labor are infusing new .vigor into the stereotyped
life of the great populations placed under English
rule, and are preparing them to be in every way
better men and better citizens of the great empire
in which they dwell."

The " London Quarterly Review " says of
this report, that the " testimony of the Indian
government to the importance and value of
the indirect results of Indian missions is
one of the most remarkable facts that can
claim to have a place in missionary his-
tory/* The fact is, it is a testimony ex-

so THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

torted from a long prejudiced and even hostile
party !

And so another barrier was down. If the
policy of the government was still, in some
respects, favorable to paganism; if "lands
were assigned for temples and the sup-
port of idol-worship, equivalent to previous
money-grants, and the government sinned
in the lump enough for a lifetime," — it is
still true that Christian missions were no
longer opposed, but encouraged. God had
permitted English influence and politics to
become rooted in India by strange means;
but one thing was settled, — the Euro-
pean power dominant in the heart of Asia
was to be Protestant, not Papal; and so,
in subsequent contests with Portugal and
France, England maintained her supremacy,
and the cross rather than the crucifix
seems destined to sway this great Oriental
empire.

Thus, by movements extending over cen-
turies, the two hundred and fifty miUions of
India are made accessible to the gospel.

THE OPENING OF DOORS: INDIA. 5 1

Five times the population of the United
States there wait for the Light of the World
to displace the fading " Light of Asia," and
reveal Heaven instead of Nirvana. The door
is open to the golden Indies, and in the
whole history of missions no other such op-
portunity has ever been offered. Here is a
colossal pagan empire, under one head, vir-
tually controlled by a Protestant queen, and
permeated by the influence of the great
Christian nation which she rules; civil and
religious rights assured alilre to missionary
and convert; with postal facilities, rapid trans-
portation, and telegraphic communication;
with sixty thousand schools and a hundred
colleges ; with presses scattering books, mag-
azines, and newspapers; with the English
tongue so widely diffused and so generally
understood that Julius Seelye and Joseph
Cook could speak to large audiences of
native Brahmins without an interpreter.
Here is the very intellect of Asia with its
ancient literature, its imposing architecture,
its vigorous faculties waiting to be won and

52 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

then wielded for God. If India be the Gib-
raltar of heathendom, taken for Christ it
becomes, like Gibraltar, a controlling fortress
guarding the very highway to other Oriental
empires.

CHAPTER VI.

INDIAN MISSIONS.

|HE door might be nominally open in
India, and yet our missionary work
prove a failure. Is there any reason
to believe that the door is really open, that the
gospel is actually impressing this great peo-
ple? No country has presented a field of
labor more unpromising. The general in-
telligence of the people, the subtle acuteness
of a Jesuitical priesthood, the prevalence of
pagan faiths so fascinating that even edu-
cated men from Christian lands compose
poetic panegyrics on " the Light of Asia,"
the seclusion and slavery of woman, the mon-
strous system of caste, and the strong hold
of superstition on the common mind, — so
many and such high barriers seldom defy
the gospel as in India. They have dis-

54 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

mayed even some courageous disciples.
When Robert Nesbit was about to go to
Bombay, Dr. Hill, his theological professor,
said to him: "You must be a fool for go-
ing to India to preach the gospel there !
Don't you know that the Hindus are all
better than ourselves, and that by your going
there it will spoil the matter?" And yet
God has, in spite of such ignorance and un-
belief in the Church, already wrought won-
ders in India.

A new population begins to make itself
felt in India. Christian homes rapidly multi-
ply in which the caste idea, which has ruled
India so long and so cruelly, no more holds
sway. To the caste Hindu these Christians
are outcasts ; but the outcasts are becoming
so numerous as to form a community of
their own. There are tens of thousands of
them, and they are increasing more rapidly
than ever. A silent but wonderful transfor-
mation is going on in that strange land,
and is illustrating the power of missions.

Female education is making rapid prog-

INDIAN MISSIONS. 55

ress, and is encouraged by intelligent and
wealthy natives. A Bombay merchant lately
gave fifteen thousand rupees toward the
founding of a girls' school; and the Maha-
rajah of Travancore has given a large sum
in aid of female medical education.

Rev. Narayan Sheshadri, the converted
educated Brahmin, is competent to speak
and tell what he has seen in a quarter of
a century in this most difficult field for
gospel triumph. He says that an intelligent
Hindu cannot avoid comparing his sacred
books with our Bible. The four grand
books called the Vedas^ now, by European
scholarship, unlocked to the popular mind
by translation from the ancient Sanscrit, have
had their mystic charms dissolved as light
scatters mist at morning. They are found
to consist each of three parts, — lyrical, ritual,
philosophical. The lyrics are really prayers,
and here is a specimen : " O thou Ugne,
god of fire, that ridest in a chariot drawn
by milk-white horses, ever radiant, youthful,
come to our sacrificial feast! eat of the

56 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

viands and drink of the soma juice that we
have prepared." The soma juice is an in-
toxicating drink made from the soma plant ;
and this prayer is an invocation to a whiskey-
drinking god ! How long would it take an
intelligent and candid Hindu to feel the im-
measurable inferiority of the Vedic prayers
to the Psalms of David?

As to the ideas contained in the philo-
sophical part of the Vedas, they are seen to
be equally in contrast with the sublime con-
ceptions of God and of religion contained
in our Holy Scriptures. It is not certain
whether the god of the Vedas is one or
many, or even personal. Brahm is neuter,
an IT. For ages upon ages this great IT
lies dormant, inactive; then begins to grow,

till sun and moon become its eyes, the rocks
its finger-nails, the forests its hair ; and then
it declares itself, I AM BRAHM! How
what was without life, consciousness, thought,
or emotion, thus develops, the philosophers
answer by that convenient word " mystery."
Here is nothing but an old, rude pantheism ;

INDIAN MISSIONS. $7

there is no human identity or responsibility
apart from Brahm; man's sins, follies, and
faults become GOD's. What begins in ab-
surdity ends in blasphemy. The education
which by some was thought to lift the Hin-
dus above the reach of Christianity is the
very means of showing them the incompara-
ble superiority of God's Word. Culture may
not convert them to Christ, but it converts
them from Brahm ; and the most acute ob-
servers have boldly declared that Brahmin-
ism in India is dead or dying.

This is further proven by the remarkable
decay of superstitious rites and practices.
The suUee is a thing of the past : the widow
no more burns on the funeral pyre of
her husband; children are no more flung
into the idolized Ganges by superstitious
mothers.

Caste was thought to be the insurmounta-
ble barrier to Christianity; but the railway,
that democratic institution, makes caste privi-
leges too costly for the greed of the Brahmin.
In the car he rides in the third-class com-

58 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

partment side by side with the lowest caste,
because it is cheaper; and in the horse-car
he does the same, because there are no com-
partments. And so Brahmin, Parsee, and
Sudra not only travel in company, but keep
company in travel, exchanging courtesies and
converse !

Schwarz, whose combined manliness and
godliness constrained the East India Com-
pany, and even the Rajah of Tanjore, to
build monuments to his memory, sailed for
Tranquebar in 1750. That same year four
hundred were baptized, and in 1880 the
native Christian population of India num-
bered upwards of half a million. There are
hundreds of native pastors and native
church councils. The increase is not simply
in arithmetical, but in geometrical, progres-
sion. That native Christian population grew
twenty-fold in fifty years, and during the
last three decades the ratio has advanced
from fifty per cent to sixty, and then to
ninety per cent

Not only is there this increase in numbers,

INDIAN MISSIONS. 59

but, what is more important, in influence.
To be a Christian is to be respected, to
take an advanced position, to compel others
to concede and confess superiority. Chris-
tians take the lead in intelligence, morality,
integrity; the Christian home is a constant
witness to the religion that lifts family life
to a higher plane; the Christian church is
manifestly a model of human brotherhood,
the ideal democracy. Dr. Scudder, after
twenty years spent among the Brahmins,
declares that, though there is no keener
intellect on earth than theirs, yet the gospel
wins its way to their minds and hearts.
Sheshadri turned from the popular, the philo-
sophical, and the atheistic forms of religion
to the Book of Books, and found more wis-
dom in the first verse of Genesis than in all
the Vedas. Ganga Dhar, the Brahmin of
Orissa, bowed before the Christ of God, and
devoted his transcendent gifts and graces to
the proclamation of the gospel. Even to
those acute Hindus the logic of his head
and heart is irresistible, and his simple story

60 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

of the cross makes them cry, which is like
" squeezing water out of pebbles."

Sir William Muir testifies that " thousands
have been brought over, and, in an ever-in-
creasing ratio, converts are being brought to
Christianity; and these are not shams nor
paper converts, but good and honest Chris-
tians, and many of them of a high standard."
Sir Herbert Edwardes said, twenty years
ago : " God is forming a new nation in India.
While the Hindus are busy pulling down
their own religion, the Christian church is
rising above the horizon. Every other faith
in India is decaying; Christianity alone is
beginning to run its course. I believe, if the
English were driven out to-day, Christianity
would remain and triumph." Max Miiller
said to Norman McLeod that he knew of
no people as ripe for Christianity to-day as
the East Indians.

These are a few of the testimonies of rep-
resentative men who have had rare oppor-
tunities to study the East Indian question;
yet there are hundreds of others who give

INDIAN MISSIONS. 6l

similar testimony. Sir Richard Temple, who
had been a quarter of a century on the
ground, and been governor of both the Ben-
gal and Bombay Presidencies, said in New
York in 1882, that if the growth of Christi-
anity goes on at the rate of its advancement
previous to 1880, "there will by the year
1 910 be about two million native Christians
in India." Sir Bartle Frfere, in 1873, said:
"Whatever you may be told to the con-
trary, the teaching of Christianity among the
one hundred and sixty millions of civilized,
industrious Hindus and Mohammedans in
India is effecting changes, moral, social, and
political, which, for extent and rapidity of
effect, are far more extraordinary than any-
thing that you or your fathers have wit-
nessed in modern Europe." To the same
effect are the testimonies of Sir Donald Mc-
Leod, once lieutenant-governor of the Pun-
jaub. Sir William Hill, Lord John Lawrence,
the Earl of Northbrook, Hon. W. E. Baxter,
and others.^

1 See Dr. Ellinwood's article. Foreign Missionary,
Jan., 1886, p. 354.

62 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

A jubilee was recently held in Tinnevelly
to commemorate Bishop Sargent's fifty years
of service under the Church Missionary So^
ciety. He has now six hundred assistants,
twelve thousand communicants, and a Chris-
tian community of five times that number.

But we are not limited to the testimonies of
professed disciples, whose sanguine optimism
might be thought to invest the work with a
false halo. Keshub Chunder Sen, the founder
of the Brahmo Somaj, records his significant
confession that " the spirit of Christianity
has already pervaded the whole atmosphere
of Indian society, and we breathe, think,
feel, and move in a Christian atmosphere.
Native society is being roused, enlightened,
and reformed under the influence of Christi-
anity. Our hearts are touched, conquered,
overcome by a higher power ; and this power
is Christ. Christ, not the British govern-
ment, rules India." The Prince of Travan-
core, in 1874, said publicly: —

" Where did the English-speaking people get
all their intelligence, and energy, and cleverness,

INDIAN MISSIONS. 63

and power? It is their Bible that gives it to
them. And now they bring it to us and say,
'This is what raised us. Take it and raise your-
selves.' They do not force it upon us, as the
Mohammedans did their Koran, but they bring
it in love, and translate it into our languages,
and lay it before us and say, * Look at it, read it,
examine it, and see if it is not good.* Of one
thing I am convinced, — do what we will, oppose
it as we may, it is the Christian's Bible that will/\
sooner or later, work the regeneration of thisy
land. Marvellous has been the effect of Christi-
anity in the moral moulding and leavening of
Europe. I am not a Christian ; I do not accept
the cardinal tenets of Christianity as they con-
cern man in the next world ; but I accept Chris-
tian ethics id their entirety. I have the highest
admiration for them."

Thus even the East Indians themselves
confess that before the gospel their own
religions are giving way. Hinduism and
Mohammedanism are losing their grip. Hea-
then men used to say to Dr. Scudder, " Let
us alone ; our children are bound to become
Christians."

Last October, during the semi-centennial

64 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

of the Basle Mission in Southern India,
an address of congratulation was presented,
signed by over one hundred residents of
Mangalore, mostly Brahmins and all in
high position, themselves keepers of caste,
yet seemingly glad of the victories which
Christianity has gained over it. The address
witnesses to the high character of the mis-
sionary work in uplifting those who are edu-
cated in the schools, to a higher level, and
raising the social condition of the lower
castes.

It would seem not in vain that six hundred
missionaries are sleeping in the soil of India ;
they are the buried seed of a coming har-
vest of souls. In one year sixty thousand
left Mohammedanism, Parseeism, and Brah-
minism to identify themselves with Christian
communities. Dr. Sherring, of Allahabad,
said, that if the gospel conquests should ad-
vance for two hundred and fifty years as
between 1851 and 1871, all India would be
Christianized. Sheshadri, however, well adds
that " God works according to a higher

INDIAN MISSIONS. 65

arithmetic of His own," and declares, " I
have no faith to wait for two hundred years.
From what I have noticed in our own coun-
try and other countries, the time may not be
far distant when we shall have gone from
sixty thousand converts to a hundred thou-
sand, and from a hundred thousand to a
million, and then within a short time the
whole of India will be evangelized."

f \\^

CHAPTER VII.

BURMAH AND THE KARENS.

TRMAH, beyond the sacred Ganges,
contains about three millions of peo-
ple. A country with fine forest tim-
ber and a variety of vegetable riches, stores
of mineral wealth and oil, gold-bearing sands,
and mines of iron, lead, silver, and gold, and
even rubies and sapphires, cannot be thought
poor in resources.

Here, as in Hindostan, God has permitted
British diplomacy and arms to establish an
Anglo-Indian empire, controlling the sea-
board from the mouth of the Ganges to the
Malacca Strait, and unlocking this land also
to the gospel, which, as no student of mis-
sions needs to be told, has here found a
special arena for its triumphs.

BURMAH AND THE KARENS. 67

The work among the Karens, especially,
seems to bring us back to apostolic times.

When Mr. Boardman removed from Maul-
main to Tavoy to plant there the germ of a
Christian church, there lived in his family a
middle-aged man who had been a slave, till
the missionaries illustrated " redemption " by
buying his freedom. When he left Maulmain
he was already a convert to Christianity, and
soon after reaching Tavoy was baptized. His
name was Ko-Thah-byu, and he was one of
the race of the Karens. His name will never
be forgotten ; for he was the first who in the
Burmese Empire embraced Christianity, and
afterwards for many years preached the
gospel to his despised and oppressed country-
men with rare zeal and success. His conver-
sion was a turning-point for the race to which
he belonged, for it called the attention of the
missionaries to them, and suggested that
"mission among the Karens " which, in in-
tensity of interest and measure of success,
has scarcely been equalled by any other in
modern times.

68 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

These Karens, or Karians, i. e. wild men^
are a somewhat peculiar people, scattered
over the forests and mountains of Burniah
and Siam and parts of China; and, though
more industrious and less vicious than the
Burmese, are their inferiors physically and
intellectually. They are looked down upon as
slaves, and compelled to pay heavy taxes, to
till the land, and do servile work for their
oppressors. To avoid those who would kid-
nap and enslave them, they lead a wandering
life, and live in regions comparatively remote
and inaccessible.

These Karens, though they believed in a
god and in a future state of rewards and
punishments, were without any form of re-
ligion or priesthood or superstitious rites.
They seemed divinely prepared for the
gospel, and welcomed the good news with
enthusiastic delight.

It is now nearly sixty years ago that Mr.
Boardman, constrained by the importunate
invitation of Karens in the interior, under-
took to journey to the remoter villages with

BURMAH AND THE KARENS. 69

Ko-Thah-byu as his interpreter. He found
a zayat^ built by the natives in anticipation
of his coming, large enough to contain the
whole population of the village, many of
whom stayed all night for further instruction,
and five of whom asked for baptism. After
ten days he returned to Tavoy, convinced
that this most interesting people ought to be
reached by itinerant preaching and schools.

The story is too long to be told in these
pages. Mr. Boardman's consecrated life closed
after a few years' labor, and his tomb at Tavoy
is significantly located in what was once a
Buddhist grove, beneath the shadow of a
ruined pagoda. But the work thus begun
has grown with a rapidity seldom paralleled.
In 1878 the fiftieth anniversary of the con-
version of Ko-Thah-byu was kept by jubilee
gatherings and the consecration of the Me-
morial Hall that bears his name. The Karens
themselves built it for school and other mis-
sion purposes, at a cost of fifteen thousand
dollars. It represented twenty thousand
then living disciples converted from demon-

70 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

worship, maintaining their own churches and
schools, beside twenty thousand more who in
the faith of Jesus have died and gone to be
with Him in glory. At the dedication of this
hall four veteran native Karen pastors and
hundreds of others were present. The hall
measures 134 feet on its south front, 131
on the east, and 104 on the west. It has
a splendid audience-room, 66 by 38 feet,
with a fine gallery. Along the east side is
carved in Karen, "Behold the Lamb of
God," etc. ; and on the west, " These words
. . . thou shalt teach diligently unto thy
children." What a work may this hall see
done in fifty years to come !

He who would realize what the gospel has
done for the Karen slaves must go and stand
on that " Gospel Hill," and see Ko-Thah-byu
Memorial Hall confronting Shway-Mote-Tau
pagoda on an opposing hill, with its shrines
and fanes. Here is the double monument of
what the Karens were and are. Burmah has
not only taken her stand among the givers,
but, in 1880, ranked third in the list of do-

BURMAH AND THE KARENS. 7 1

nors to the Baptist Missionary Union, — only
Massachusetts and New York outranking her !
Massachusetts gave $41,312.72; New York,
$39,469.78, and Burmah $31,616.14! and of
this amount the Karen churches gave over
$30,000! Fifty years ago in idolatry, now
an evangelizing power! And not content
with this, they set about raising another
$25,000 to endow a normal and industrial
institute. Their liberality puts to shame the
so-called benevolence of our Christians at
home. We give out of our abundance; "the
abundance of their joy and their deep poverty
abound unto the riches of their liberality."

In the Government Administration Report
for British Burmah for 1 880- 1 881 there is
a glowing tribute to the American Baptist
missionaries, followed by the statement that
there were then attached to their communion
" four hundred and fifty-one Christian Karen
parishes, most of which support their own
church, parish school, and native pastor,
and many of which subscribe considerable
sums for missionary work." The report adds :

^2 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

" Christianity continues to spread among the
Karens, to the great advantage of the Com-
monwealth ; and the Christian Karen commu-
nities are distinctly more industrious, better
educated, and more law-abiding than the
Burman and Karen villages around them.
The Karen race and the British government
owe a great debt to the American mission-
aries, who have, under Providence, wrought
this change among the Karens of Burmah."

CHAPTER VIII.

THE OPEN DOOR IN SIAM.

|IAM, or Syam, the brawuy presents
another peculiar opportunity for
the entrance of the gospel. Within
about two hundred thousand square miles of
territory is a population estimated at eight
millions. Little has been known of this
romantic country, very few works having
been published on Siam and the Siamese,
until of late, when the attention of the civil-
ized world has been turned that way. We
are now beginning to know something of
this second great river-basin of the Indo-
Chinese Peninsula, with Bangkok, its capital,
the " Venice of the Orient."

The vegetation is abundant, luxuriant, and
marvellously beautiful ; the fruits unsurpassed
in variety and excellence. The animal king-

74 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS,

dom is no less varied and interesting, includ-
ing the famous so-called "white elephant,"
as the form associated with the appearing of
Buddhas, and the transmigration of souls,
far on their way toward the Buddhist heaven,
Nirvana, In the soil lie undeveloped vast
quantities of valuable mineral and metal, and
precious stones. Though woman is by no
means man's equal, even here, her condition
is vastly superior to that of her sex generally
in the East, and her ordinary treatment is
affectionate and considerate. Social distinc-
tions are numerous, and numerical^ — five rep-
resenting the lowest slave, and one hundred
thousand the second king.

The sacred literature, in the Pali, is written
with a stylus on long slips of palm-leaf, and
the four hundred principal works embrace
four thousand volumes. The secular con-
sist of about two hundred and fifty principal
works, with two thousand volumes. Of the
males, from eighty to ninety per cent can
read, and education is afforded gratuitously
at the temples. Buddhism absolutely sways

THE OPEN DOOR IN SIAM. 75

this people. Its sacred fanes, resembling the
Egyptian in their type of architecture, are
among the costliest and finest of the Orient.
One is estimated to have cost $800,000, and
contains nine hundred images of Buddha^
the principal of which, in a reclining pos-
ture, is one hundred and fifty-eight feet long,
inlaid with pearl and overlaid with gold.
The priesthood once numbered one hundred
thousand, but are much fewer now.

Protestant missions date from the days of
Gutzlaff, Tomlin, and Abeel in 182S-1831,
and properly from the settlement of Jones
in 1833. Half a century ago all foreigners,
whether missionaries or merchants, were ex-
cluded; now all Christian countries enjoy
treaty-rights. No country on earth is per-
haps more widely open to the gospel, and
here the Presbyterian Church especially
should concentrate her forces; for Divine
Providence has especially given to this body
of Christians this land to occupy for Him.

The American Baptists have had a mission
there for over fifty years, but now they are

76 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

working only among resident Chinese, from
whom Dr. Dean, in 1837, organized the first
church of Chinese Christians in all Asia. To
the Presbyterians of America is thus left at
present the entire evangelization of the native
Siamese. To do this great work, that de-
nomination has but two main stations, at
Bangkok and Petchaburi; and two more
among the Laos, at Chiengmai and Lakawn.
Their entire force of missionaries, were they
all on the ground, would number but six
metiy twelve womeUy and nine native preachers
and teachers. In other words, twenty-seven
workers in all, who, if their responsibility
could be averaged, would have the care of
three hundred thousand souls each!

Yet few appreciate the opportunity that
Siam presents. The country feels through-
out her extent the thrill of her contact with
Western civilization. The telegraphic cir-
cuit embraces her and binds her to the
Christian world. The postal system is ex-
tending from Bangkok to the bounds of the
kingdom. Mercantile enterprise is develop-

THE OPEN DOOR IN SIAM. 7/

ing the exports and introducing imports.
The King is pronounced, next to the Mikado
of Japan, the most "progressive sovereign
in Asia." Himself an educated man and
an astronomer, he favors education. More
than this, he favors the missionaries, and has
frequently made donations toward the mis-
sion work. The government gives practical
proof of its estimate of the value of Chris-
tian missions by giving the land for a new
mission station at Lakon. The King sub-
scribes $i,ooo for a hospital building. These
are but the latest of a series of friendly
acts, showing the attitude of the royal court
toward the work of the mission.

With the death of the then reigning King
in 1851 this new and liberal policy was in-
augurated by the government. His suc-
cessor, who reigned for seventeen years, was
a cultivated gentleman and scholar, who had
been taught in languages and modern science
by a missionary of the American Board ; and
under the present reign the influence of Prot-
estant missionaries with the government, as

78 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

we have seen, has not waned. An official
document, under royal sanction, testifies to
their intelligence, integrity, and personal
worth. It acknowledges the debt of the
Siamese to them for teaching them to read
and speak the English tongue, and says:
"The American missionaries have always
been just and upright men; have never med-
dled in the affairs of government nor created
any difficulty with the Siamese; have lived
with the Siamese just as if they belonged to
the nation ; " and furthermore, this document
affirms the high standing of the missionaries
in the respect and love of the government.

Siam was not opened by gunpowder or
diplomacy, but by missionary influence, and
the whole aspect of the nation and its atti-
tude toward Christianity are gradually under-
going a change. The preaching, the teaching,
the press, and the medical missions are the
four conspicuous agencies which God is now
using to bring Siam to Christ. With what
results, a single example may show, and give
a hint of the possibilities of the near future.

THE OPEN DOOR IN SIAM. 79

When this young Eling, now about thirty
years old, patron of letters, science, and art,
recently, by a sad accident, lost his wife, he
sent his brother to the missionaries for a
copy of the New Testament ; and that elder
brother gave as a reason for the request
that the King had los^ faith in his own relig-
ion; that he could find nothing in Buddhism
to console him in his great grief. Buddhism
is the State religion. It might cost the King
his crown, or even his head, to espouse the
Christian faith; but what meaning lies en-
folded in the fact that this disconsolate mon-
arch flies to the Christian's Bible for the
solace in his bereavement, that his pagan
creed is unable to supply ! How much nearer
may Siam be to becoming a Christian na-
tion than many of us think !

It is an interesting fact that the first Zenana
teaching ever attempted in the East was by
missionary women, in 1851, among the thirty
wives and royal sisters of the King of Siam.

CHAPTER IX.

THE WALLED KINGDOM.

|HIS is the name by which China has
been known for centuries. Its vast
territory of over five and a half
million square miles — five eighths as large
as the whole continent of Africa, one tenth
as large as the globe itself — has a pop-
ulation variously estimated at from 350,-
000,000 to 500,000,000. No other country
can claim artificial water communication
of such extent; the Grand Canal, 650 miles
long, is but the largest of four hundred which
form the highways of the empire for transit
and travel, and at the same time supply a
system of irrigation. Within a country hav-
ing a coast line of 3,350 miles, a frontier of
12,550, reaching through 38 degrees of lat-

THE WALLED KINGDOM. 8 1

itude and nearly twice as many of longitude,
we may well expect to find every variety of
animal, mineral, and vegetable.

But the great attraction of China as a
mission field lies in the people, who are
called the "Oriental Yankees." They are
industrious, frugal, polite, and capable; and
while they have the vices of a pagan peo-
ple, they rank even above the East Indians in
the plane of their civilization. Proud of their
antiquity, they have a history whose authen-
tic records reach back to the age of fable.
Nations may well boast of a civilization
which is founded upon such men as Confu-
cius, who was born 550 B.C., and whose death
preceded the birth of Socrates by eleven
years; and Zoroaster, or Zarathustra, who
dates from seven hundred to five thousand
years earlier, — men who stand in their rela-
tion to China and Persia where Moses does to
the Hebrews, and Socrates to the Greeks.

Excepting steam-engines, electric tele-
graphs, and the most startling inventions of

modern days, there are few great inventions

82 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

which have not been in use in China for cen-
turies before they were known outside the
Walled Kingdom; even the mariner's com-
pass, movable type, printing and paper, porce-
lain, silk, gunpowder, etc., being long familiar
to this remarkable and exclusive people.
They have a high type of popular education,
civil service with competitive examinations,
and a social structure on firmer foundations
than any other empire, with one system of
manners, letters, and policy. It is quite ob-
vious that the specimens of Chinese charac-
ter which commonly find their way to our
shores are not fair representatives of this
ancient and remarkable people.

In no country is it possible for capacity
and fidelity to find recognition more than in
the Celestial Empire. All public offices are
open to graduates of the colleges, academies,
and universities, without distinction of nation-
ality, birth, class, or creed; and so brains
and skill are the highways to public honors
and official emoluments. Erudition, accord-
ing to their standard, is the golden mile-stone

THE WALLED KINGDOM. 83

from which all roads radiate in the adminis-
trative system.

The great wall, called by them the " Myr-
iad Mile Wall," is the most gigantic defence
ever built by man. It winds along the north
frontier of China proper for fifteen hundred
miles, from fifteen to thirty feet high, with
towers rising forty feet, and is broad enough
for six horsemen to ride abreast It may
well represent China's attitude toward Chris-
tian missions until the famous treaty of
Tientsin, in 1858. On August 25 of that
memorable year the Atlantic cable shot
across the ocean-bed the news that this co-
lossal Oriental empire was open not only
to the commerce of the world, but to the
gospel.

The pride of the Chinese in their ancient
civilization and religious and ethical faiths
presented a formidable barrier to evangeliza-
tion. Their national isolation is partly the
result of inordinate conceit. The Emperor is
the Son of Heaven, sits on a dragon throne,
signs decrees with a vermilion pencil; his

84 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS,

empire is the " middle kingdom," his people
the " celestials." The geography of the
Chinese gave nine tenths of the globe to
China, a square inch to England, and left out
America altogether. The lexicon of their
language dates back almost to the beginning
of the Christian era, and" the imperial library
of eighty thousand volumes was ancient when
that of Alexandria was burned. Yet their
"golden age" is manifestly past, and for cen-
turies they have halted and made no progress,
ever resisting innovation. But as they begin
to feel the power of contact and intercourse
with enlightened nations, the petrified con-
stitution and culture of four thousand years
begins to lose its impenetrability and inflex-
ibility. There is to be a railway from Tient-
sin to Pekin ; the sea and the capital are to
be united by a link of steel. As Carleton
Coffin prophesied, years ago, the superstition
about the " Earth Dragon " will be exploded
when the Chinaman sees the railway plough-
ing through even the burial-places of his
ancestors. Geomancy must die before mod-

THE WALLED KINGDOM. 85

ern civilization, and the gospel will take its
place.

Notwithstanding their numerous religions ;
ancestral worship, with its tablets and shrines
in every house; idolatry, with its patron
god for every trade, and its annual cost of
$i8o,cxx),cxx5; Confucianism, Tauism, Buddh-
ism, Mohammedanism, — though it be easier
to find a god than a man, the Chinese are a
nation of atheists; and with all their high
civilization, a nation of gamblers, opium-
eaters, rakes, and drunkards. Their very
language has the taint of moral leprosy, and
the walls of inns are painted with the " flow-
ers " of obscenity.

Woman's condition is degraded and de-
plorable beyond words. Mandarin Ting said
to the French traveller. Hue, " Women have
no souls." The birth of a daughter is held
to be a calamity and disgrace; the infanti-
cide of girls is fearful in extent. In forty
towns about Amoy Mr. Abeel found two
fifths of all the girls were destroyed in in-
fancy, — drowned or buried alive, — and

86 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

commonly by the father. Mr. DooHttle says
that probably more than half the families
of Foochow have destroyed one or more
female children. Those who are not killed
or exposed are sold in infancy for wives or
slaves. The husband may beat, starve, or sell
his wife, and women are constantly driven to
suicide.

It is reckoned that the Chinese Empire
contains 1,700 cities, within which lie grave-
yards containing in some cases 20,000,000
dead.

The language was another barrier to
Chinese evangelization, that was as high as
Babylon's impregnable walls. With its tones,
aspirates, and idioms; with its 43,500 words
in the official dictionary, 5,000 of which
must form a scholar's vocabulary; with root
words estimated at from 315 to 4,000, and
214 symbolic characters; with its compli-
cated '* hieroglyphs," one of which takes
over fifty strokes; with its further compli-
cations from tones and inflections, so that
one word uttered in ten different ways means

THE WALLED KINGDOM. 87

as many things, and words identical in sound
are diverse in form and sense; with its in-
capacity for sacred ideas and expression of
spiritual graces, so that for a half century
translators doubted what name to use for
God^ — the Chinese tongue seemed Satan's
master-device to exclude the gospel. Yet
happily the " Mandarin," or written language,
throughout the empire is one, however dif-
ferent the spoken dialects. A Frenchman,
taking the elementary parts of the language,
reduced them to a few hundred ; the Presby-
terian Board helped him with $5,003 to com-
plete his alphabet and presses. In 1874 one
Chinaman made over six hundred stereotype
plates, and as long ago as 1875 there were
eight presses at Shanghai alone, scattering
Christian literature.

CHAPTER X.

PROTESTANT MISSIONS IN CHINA.

ROTESTANT missions in China date
back to 1807, when Robert Morri-
son, the " last-maker " of Morpeth,
their pioneer, came to Canton. He had pre-
pared for divinity school by studying all night
and making boot-trees all day. Nominated
translator to the East India Company's fac-
tory at Canton, he lived, ate, slept, and
studied in the warerooms of a New York
merchant. There, in native dress, with long
nails and cue, praying in broken Chinese,
and studying by night beside his little
earthen lamp, this heroic man prepared to
give China the Holy Scriptures in the native
tongue. After seven years he baptized his
first convert and completed the translation

PROTESTANT MISSIONS IN CHINA, 89

of the New Testament. Joined by William
Milne, they two, in 1818, gave to that empire
the whole Bible. Eleven years later the
American Board of Commissioners for For-
eign Missions sent Bridgman, Abeel, and
others ; and so the missionary band and their
work slowly grew. Converts began to multi-
ply; between 1853 and 1871 their number had
increased more than twenty-fold. Mission-
aries were so highly respected that in one
case an offer of $10,000 in gold was made
them as an inducement to take charge of
government schools.

Five years ago over thirty missionary soci-
eties were at work in the Celestial Empire,
with something less than three hundred and
fifty missionaries and teachers, over one hun-
dred stations, and five hundred out-stations.
The China Inland Mission, under the wonder-
ful organizing power of J. Hudson Taylor, is
calling to itself the eyes of the world just
now, partly from its peculiar basis and partly
from the fact that the university graduates,
who were converted in connection with Mr.

90 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS,

Moody's labors, at Cambridge and elsewhere,
have so largely been identified with it. It was
organized in 1865, and upon five principles: —

1. It is unsectarian but evangelical, repre-
senting exclusively no branch of the Church,
but welcoming friends and workers from all
denominations.

2. It has no inflexible educational stand-
ard of qualification, insisting only on a fair
measure of ability and acquisition, with good
health, good sense, and consecration.

3. It is conducted as a work of faith, in-
curring no debt, asking no aid, fixing no
salaries, but distributing funds as they are
sent in.

4. It requires workers to identify them-
selves with the people for whom they labor,
in dress, cue, etc.

5. It magnifies dependence on God, as the
sole patron of the mission.

Its present staff is less than three hundred,
and its income for 1884 was nearly $100,000.
Rev. H. C. Du Bose prophesies that in
ten years this mission will equal in numbers

PROTESTANT MISSIONS IN CHINA. 91

the other missionaries from all lands and
churches, boards and societies.

Christian missions could not but suffer
very serious hinderance by the course of
events from 1820 to 1858. The disgraceful
opium war left a lasting reproach on the
name of England, and associated the name
of Christian with an act worthy of the worst
of barbarians. For years the British per-
sisted in flooding the country with this Indian
drug. Tao-kuang, seeing that body, mind,
and morals were dying of the drug, in 1828
issued severe prohibitory laws, and destroyed
the trade for a time, and ten years later
made the use of opium a capital offence, and
destroyed British stock to the amount of
$20,000,000. Then followed a war which in
1842 wrested from the Chinese government
concessions in favor of free trade in opium,
but intensified the hatred of all foreigners.

The very inability of the Mantchoo dynasty
to repel the Christian powers brought upon
it contempt and hatred, and led to the forma-
tion of the secret triad society, which in

92 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

1850 attempted under Tien-te to overthrow
the government, and after his death, under
Hong-siu, not only carried on one of the
most gigantic rebellions ever known, but per-
suaded Christians and missionaries to identify
themselves with their cause, under the pretext
that the rebels themselves were a sort of " Prot-
estants." This again made Christian powers
obnoxious to the Chinese government.

Then followed a war, in 1856, in which
Britain led the way, and it became the signal
for a general crusade against China, in which
France, the United States, and Russia after-
ward joined; and the final issue of this war
was the Treaty of Tientsin, which reads as
follows : —

** The Christian religion, as professed by Prot-
estants and Roman Catholics, inculcates the prac-
tice of virtue, and teaches man to do as he would
be done by. Persons teaching or professing it,
therefore, shall alike be entitled to the protection
of the Chinese authorities; nor shall any such,
peaceably pursuing their calling and not offend-
ing against the laws, be persecuted or interfered
with."

PROTESTANT MISSIONS IN CHINA. 93

In that treaty the " wall " has been thrown
down, and every man may "go up straight
before him" and take possession. To all
the provinces, with their seventeen hundred
cities and innumerable villages, the mission-
aries may go, without hinderance or molesta-
tion, claiming in case of necessity protection
and aid ; and native Chinese may claim the
privilege of both embracing and confessing
the Christian faith. Well does Dr. Gracey
say that "never before since the world be-
gan did any one document, so brief, admit
at once to the possibilities of Christianity so
large a portion of the human family, or roll
on the Christian church so much responsi-
bility. It admitted one third of the human
race to the brotherhood of Christian nations.
That door was opened not by the vermilion
pencil of the Emperor, but by the decree of
the Eternal." i

Dr. Williams, after thirty-two years in China,
thinks that half a century more of Christian
missions will evangelize, and even Christian-

1 Open Doors, by J. T. Gracey, D.D., pp. 35, 36.

94 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

ize, the empire ; Mr. Burlingame testifies that
intelligent men there put no faith in the
popular religions; and Dr. Bartlett finely
adds that this " Gibraltar of pagandom may-
become its Waterloo."

These Oriental Yankees, once brought to
Christ, will become the aggressive missionary
race of the Orient. They are very enterpris-
ing, and swarm everywhere like bees: they
are even now scattered through Siam and
India, California, South America, and Aus-
tralia, and will ultimately people Polynesia.

CHAPTER XI.

JAPAN, THE SUNRISE KINGDOM.

|0 the United States it was given to
unlock the doors of this island em-
pire, and in the light of subsequent
developments it proves one of the most im-
portant events of modern missionary history.
Those sea-gates of the Land of the Rising
Sun were bolted and barred for centuries.
In the middle of the sixteenth century, fol-
lowing close upon Portuguese merchants,
Francis Xavier, the famous apostle of the
Indies, visited the Sunrise Kingdom, and
conversions to the Papal Church were re-
ported in vast numbers, even Japanese
nobles and princes being among the con-
verts. In 1582 the Catholic converts sent an
embassy to Rome bearing letters and pres-
ents to the Pope in token of their allegiance

96 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

to the Supreme Pontiff. Their return was
the signal for new conquests over the native
heart, and in two years twelve thousand more
were baptized. The Portuguese merchants
and missionaries had thus far been favorably
received, and the success of the one was as
great as that of the other. The haughty
disdain with which these adventurers treated
the Japanese, their lordly assumptions and
arrogance, awakened distrust on the part of
the natives. Portugal and Spain were at
that time united, and a Spaniard, when asked
by Taiko Sama how it was that his king
(Philip II.) had managed to possess himself
of half the world, unwisely replied, " He
sends priests to win the people, he then
sends troops to join the native Christians,
and the conquest is easy.*' This answer was
like a wind to fan the fires of distrust al-
ready kindled. In 1587 Taiko decreed the
banishment of the missionaries; the edict
was renewed by his successor in 1596, and
the next year twenty-three priests were put
to death in one day at Nagasaki. The Ro-

JAPAN, THE SUNRISE KINGDOM. 97

mish converts, instead of adopting concili-
atory measures, defied the government and
made war against the religion of the islands,
destroying both fanes and idols. Persecu-
tion bared her red right arm, and in 1612
and 1614 many converts were put to death,
their churches and schools laid in ruins, and
their foreign faith was pronounced accursed,
as treason both against the gods and the state.
Even the Portuguese traders were driven out,
and allowed access only to the island of De-
sima. Again, in 1622 a horrible massacre of
native Christians revived the persecution ; and
when, fifteen years later, it was found that a
conspiracy had been formed between the
Japanese Roman Catholics and the Portu-
guese and Spaniards to overthrow the im-
perial throne and set up the Papal See upon
its ruins, persecuting violence swung to its
last extreme. Edicts were issued forbid-
ding Japanese, on any pretext, to quit the
country, and decreeing that if any Christian,
or even the Christians God himself , should
set foot on the islands, he should lose his

98 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

head} By the close of 1639 the Portuguese
were expelled, and their trade transferred to
the Dutch, who, as their enemies and the ene-
mies of Roman Catholicism, were tolerated.
In 1640 the native Christians openly rebelled,
seized a fort, and were only subdued by the
aid of the artillery and military science of the
Dutch. When their stronghold fell the thou-
sands within its walls were indiscriminately
slaughtered ; and henceforth intercourse with
foreigners was suspended, and even the Dutch
were confined to the island of Desima.

This distrust and dislike of foreigners kept
the ports of Japan shut even against vessels
of commerce, until the middle of this cen-
tury. In 1852, in consequence of complaints
as to the treatment of American seamen who
had been wrecked on the Japanese coast, the
United States sent Commodore M. C. Perry

1 The exact form of this ancient edict is as follows : —
" So long as the sun shall warm the earth, let no Chris-
tian be so bold as to come to Japan ; and let all know that
the King of Spain himself, or the Christian's God, or the
great God of all, if he violate this command, shall pay for
it with his head."

JAPAN, THE SUNRISE KINGDOM. 99

with an expedition to demand protection for
American ships and their crews and secure a
treaty for purposes of trade.

In 1853, on the Lord's Day, he, with a
squadron of seven ships-of-war, cast anchor
in the bay of Yeddo. Spreading the Amer-
ican flag over the capstan of his vessel, he
laid thereon an open Bible, read the One
Hundredth Psalm, and then, with his Chris-
tian crew, sang from Kethe's version : —

'' All people that on earth do dwell,

Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice ;
Him serve with mirth, His praise forth tell,
Come ye before Him and rejoice."

That first Christian psalm that ever sounded
in the bay of Yeddo echoed over the quiet
waters, the signal of a peaceful conquest.
Without firing a gun or shedding a drop of
blood, Japan's ports were thrown open to the
commerce of the world and to the evangel
of God. Perry delivered the letter from our
President to the Emperor; and on March 31,
1854, negotiations were concluded and the
treaty signed. Similar treaties followed in

lOO THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

September, 1854, with Britain, and subse-
quently with Russia and Holland.

Since then the progress of Japan toward
the civilization of the Occident, and toward
assimilation to Christian nations, has been
absolutely without precedent or parallel.
Between thirty and forty millions of people
within the space of thirty-three years — the
average lifetime of a generation — have
changed in everything. Intellectually, so-
cially, politically, religiously; in government,
education, and religion; in individual life
and family life ; in trade and manners ; in
army and navy, finance and political econ-
omy, — they are scarcely recognizable. A
young man, himself a Japanese convert, a
student in Johns Hopkins University, speak-
ing lately in Bethany Church, Philadelphia,
acknowledged that there is nothing left as it
was thirty years ago, " except the natural
scenery," and that " the Light of Asia is fad-
ing and waning ; but while it is at its sunset,
the Light of the World is rising on that
island empire."

JAPAN, THE SUNRISE KINGDOM. lOI

The Mikado is to-day showing himself one
of the most progressive sovereigns in the
world, and the people are not far behind. In
building ships and constructing machinery;
in projecting lines of railway and telegraph ;'
in establishing schools and universities ; in cul-
ture of mind and cultivation of soil ; in postal
facilities and political economy ; in banishing
feudalism and disestablishing Buddhism ; and
in a hundred other radical changes and giant
strides, — Japan is astonishing mankind. It
IS said that the newspaper is an index of civ-
ilization. Twenty-five years ago Japan had
not one ; now, there are over two thousand,
— more than in Russia and Spain combined,
or in all Asia beside.

Meanwhile, as all nations are going to Ja-
pan, Japan is going everywhere. The sea,
which was her " bulwark," is now her " path-
way," and at every capital of Europe are Jap-
anese representatives. Caste distinctions are
giving way to democratic ideas, and the old
cumbersome alphabet to Roman characters ;
while new coinage, a new tax system, a new

I02 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

social life, are the marks of progress ; and in
1 88 1 the total of literary publications was
about five thousand. In one year the total
increase in the number of pupils in schools
was two hundred thousand.

At the beginning of the present year
(1886) the old ministry with its privy coun-
cil gave place to the modern " cabinet/* and
the Mikado decrees the intelligent reorgan-
izing of the whole administration. The new
cabinet embraces eleven departments ; Count
Ito, the President and Premier, and Count
Inouye, who is Minister of Foreign Affairs,
and next to him in prominence, and Mr.
Mori, head of the department of education,
are declared to be the most progressive men
in the empire. Mori officially orders the
organization of the Imperial University at
Tokio, in five colleges, — of law, medicine,
engineering, letters, and science, — with
branch institutions in four other cities. The
people accept the new r^gime^ and are to
choose in 1890 a constituent assembly.

In all these changes Christianity is a prom-

JAPAN, THE SUNRISE KINGDOM. 103

inent, though partly unconscious, factor. In
1873 the calendar of Christian nations dis-
placed the pagan, and Anno Domini deter-
mines all dates. In 1876 the national "fifth
day " gave way to the " one day in seven "
as a day of rest. The ancient edict against
Christians, though unrepealed, is a dead let-
ter; absolute toleration is openly advocated
by editors, orators, authors, and statesmen ;
and prominent leaders, as a measure of po-
litical economy and national advancement,
advise the acceptance of Christianity as a
state religion.

Mr. Fukuzawa, who three years ago pub-
lished a book urging that Christianity be
not even tolerated within the empire, re-
cently completely changed his ground, and a
series of articles from his pen appeared in
the "Jiji Shimpo," urging with equal ve-
hemence the adoption of Christianity by the
Japanese ; and this not as a religious con-
vert, but on purely economic and political
grounds, as the best thing for Japan ethi-
cally and socially.

I04 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

Gracey says, " Japan is ripe for the Chris-
tian religion as no other is on the globe;
and it is possible Japan may become Christian
by royal decree in a day*' The people, hun-
gry for the gospel, crowd even the theatres
to hear the preacher, and the whole aspect of
missionary work in Japan is as fascinating as
a romance, while it is awful with the respon-
sibility and reality of a present and pressing
duty, which no language can sufficiently
emphasize.

At the last Triennial Conference of native
Christians at Tokio, forty of the native pas-
tors and workers were present from different
mission boards. What a signal mark of the
rapid movement of missions in Japan, since
fifteen years ago nearly every one of these
converts was enveloped in the death-shades
of paganism !

Only thirteen years since, the first Protes-
tant church was formed, yet now there are a
hundred and fifty, and from thirty-one of
these connected with the American Board
came a congratulatory letter prepared by the

JAPAN, THE SUNRISE KINGDOM. 105

native Japanese pastors, and addressed to the
Board at its great anniversary. Meanwhile
Buddhist priests are in danger of being driven
to work to avoid starvation. The popular
faith in Buddhism is about dead, and instead
of the vast sums formerly spent on temples, it
is estimated that not more than $150,000 are
now expended, and an ex-daimio sent $500
and a chandelier as a present to the mission
church at Sanda at its tenth anniversary .

Yet people see only what they want to see.
A lady spent eighteen months in Kobe, and
opposite a chapel where there was preaching
every Sunday. She reported that she had
never seen one native enter that chapel, and
that missions were accomplishing nothing for
the evangelization of Japan. It was a chapel
expressly for foreign residents , and had noth-
ing to do with the missions, whose premises
were in another part of the city.^

^ Compare " Ely Volume," Introduction, p. vii, for a
similar instance in Syria.

CHAPTER XII.

KOREA, THE HERMIT NATION.

jOREA, though the last of the hermit
nations to be opened to the gospel,
we consider next, on account of its
proximity to China and Japan. It has been
suddenly thrown open to evangelistic labor
after a strict isolation of centuries. Its terri-
tory is partly peninsular and partly insular ;
the peninsula extends southward between the
Yellow Sea and the Sea of Japan ; it is about
four hundred miles long and one hundred
and fifty miles broad, and is shaped almost
exactly like Italy. Numerous adjacent is-
lands, greatly differing in size, constitute
the Korean archipelago; they are chiefly
of granite rock, some rising two thousand
feet above sea-level. The population can-

KOREA, THE HERMIT NATION. I07

not vary far from that of Siam in number, —
from eight million to twelve million. The
climate differs greatly in the north and
south ; and the vegetable and mineral prod-
ucts compare favorably with those of other
lands.

The predominant religion is Buddhism,
though there are some followers of Confucius,
as in China, and some of a religion similar to
that of the Skin-iu in Japan. Indeed, Korea
seems in some respects a cross between these
two immediate neighbors.

In 1882 Korea was, by treaty, opened to
American commerce; but the key used by
God to unlock this empire to the gospel was
the medical mission. Somewhere between
the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries Ro-
manism was carried into this country by pa-
pal converts from Japan and China. About
one hundred years ago Senghuni, a distin-
guished official, professed conversion and was
baptized under the name of " Peter ; *' the
missionaries were popular, and the more edu-
cated classes saw that even this corrupted

I08 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

form of Christianity- was an improvement
upon paganism. The government became
alarmed; the priesthood led on a persecu-
tion, and the Catholic converts recanted or
fled to China, or endured torture and mar-
tyrdom. In 1835 Roman Catholic missions
again found entrance into Korea by way
of China and Mantchuria; and the Jesuits
claimed fifteen thousand converts, even as
late as 1857, after being again driven from
the field.

But we are especially concerned with the
late opening for Protestant missions. Japan
in 1876 made the first complete treaty
with her neighbor across the channel; six
years later, partly through the aid of the
great Chinaman, Li Hung Chang, a similar
treaty was made with the United States. In
1884 the Presbyterian Board, at the solici-
tation of Rijutei, a Korean of rank, who was
converted while representing his government
in Japan, established a station at Seoul, H. N.
Allen, M.D., a medical missionary in China,
going there. The American resident minis-

KOREA, THE HERMIT NATION. IO9

ter, General Foote, gave him an appointment
as physician to the legation, which was at
once protection to his person and promise
for his favorable reception. Dr. Allen was
simply tolerated at first; but during a re-
volt in Seoul several persons of rank were
wounded, and recovered under his care; he
saved the life of the King's nephew, Min
Yong Ik, His skilful treatment, so in con-
trast with the methods of the native doctors
and surgeons whom he found trying to
stanch the wounds with wax, won the ad-
miration of the Koreans. The King's nephew
declared that they believed him " sent from
heaven to cure the wounded." The gratitude
of the King for his medical services to the
royal family found expression in the encour-
agement given Dr. Allen to build a govern-
ment hospital, which the King names Hay
Min LOf House of Civilized Virtue, and
which is under the care of the Presbyterian
mission and the supervision of Dr. Allen.
The mission finds in Rijutei a true helper
who has devoted his energies to giving the

no THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

Koreans the New Testament in their own
tongue. Mr. Arthington, of Leeds, gave the
money to pay for printing three thousand
copies of the Gospels of Luke and John ; and
so the last door opens for the admission of
the gospel. The working force is increased
by the addition of Rev. Mr. Underwood
and Dr. Herron and his wife; and there is
every indication that here, as in Japan, God
is going to work a great change, whereat
we shall all marvel. Papal missions, with all
their perversions of Christian doctrine, God
used to prepare the way in part for the en-
trance of the gospel. Japan, waking to the
knowledge of God, has been a help to Korean
evangelization. Fragments of evangelical
truth, brought by stealth from the Sunrise
Kingdom, found their way to the heart of
Rijutei. Years passed by, and the crisis
came. Rijutei was the means of saving the
life of the Queen, and so earned favor with
the King. At once he went to Japan, where
he learned the way of Christ more perfectly,
and so was led to undertake, like Luther, to

KOREA, THE HERMIT NA TION, 1 1 1

give his own countrymen the Word of God
in their own tongue. Here is another proof
of God's seal on the work of missions. A
few years ago we were just beginning mis-
sionary teaching in Japan ; and now Japanese
converts are proposing to go to Korea as
evangelists !

We are in danger of forgetting that there
are many indirect results which both prove
the civilizing power of the gospel and prepare
the way for higher triumphs of grace.

Resultant motion is the joint effect of
opposite forces acting, for example, at right
angles, and communicating to a given body
an impulse that sends it in a direction be-
tween them, following a diagonal line. May
this not illustrate the result of the opposing
forces of Christianity and Paganism, acting
on society in heathen countries, modifying,
gradually changing, and transforming man-
kind, giving a new direction to thought, con-
science, habits of life, even where conversion
is not wrought?

Lord Lawrence said, " Christianity every-

112 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

where imparts dignity to labor, sanctity to
marriage, and brotherhood to man. Where
it does not convert, it checks ; where it does
not renew, it refines; where it does not
sanctify, it subdues."

115

CHAPTER XIIL

THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE.

|HE Ottoman Empire, before the
treaty of Berlin, comprised large
tracts of contiguous territory in
Europe, Asia, and Africa. The possessions
of the Sultan were divided into *' mediate,"
or those whose pashas are appointed directly
by the Sublime Porte, and " immediate," or
those whose governors are selected by them-
selves but approved by the Sultan and pay-
ing tribute to him as the higher sovereign.

Dr. Kolb, twenty-five years ago, estimated
the adherents of various religious faiths in
European and Asiatic Turkey at somewhat
over 31,500,000, of whom over one half were
Mussulmans, about one third Greeks and
Armenians, about one fiftieth Roman Catho-
lics, and the remainder Maronites, Nestorians,

112 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

rews, Syrians, etc. In no country, perhaps,
beside do we find so great a variety of races
and religions.

The predominant influence is, however,
Mohammedan, as also is the State relig-
ion. Previous to 1856, a Mohammedan of
Turkish birth who became a Jew or a Chris-
tian rendered himself liable to the death-
penalty, as Mohammedanism is universally
intolerant But in that year a hatti-sherif,
or hatti-kumayumy as it is called, was secured,
by which decree the Sultan abolished this
penalty, and conceded to all persons within
his dominions the right to embrace any
religion.

Whatever may be said of the conduct of
the British East India Company, and of the
legitimacy of the methods by which an Eng-
lish empire in India was secured, there is
no doubt that God has used both that com-
pany and that empire as means of preparing
a level and open highway for the gospel.
Turkey lay about midway between the Brit-
ish Isles end the East Indies, and en route

THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE. ' II5

between London and Calcutta. Turkey might
at any time take the attitude of resistance
and block up England's way between the
home government and her Indian empire.
A sultan who could lock the gates of the
Golden Horn, obstruct the passage across
the Isthmus of Suez to the Red Sea, block-
ade the ports of Syria, dispute the right of
transit from the Mediterranean to the Persian
Gulf, and thus compel British merchantmen
to round the Cape of Good Hope to reach
India, was a foe who must be made an ally.
The very security of English empire in India
made it a necessity that England should get
and hold at least a " casting vote " in the coun-
cils of the Sublime Porte. Hence Britain
kept her ablest diplomatist there, and the
wars with Egypt in 1840, with Russia in 1855
at the Crimea, and with Persia the year later,
as well as many measures of diplomacy and
state-craft, were prompted by the necessity
of protecting those East Indian possessions,
and the highway that led to them. The line
of communication must be kept open.

Il6 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

The only perfect security must be found
in the abolition of the persecuting policy of
the Moslem powers. When the Armenians
were approached early in this century by
missionary effort, the Sultan Mahmoud II.
encouraged outrages on the native Protes-
tants; and not until his army was defeated
on the Plains of Nezib, and his own death
followed, did the exiles dare to return.

In 1843, ^Q Armenian who had embraced,
and then renounced, Mohammedanism, was
executed at Constantinople; this led the
Christian governments of Europe to demand
from the Sultan a pledge that no such insult
to the Christian religion should be repeated.
Four years later, the English ambassador
secured imperial action constituting the na-
tive Protestants a community, separate and
independent; and in 1856 the hatti-sherif
with the signature of the Sultan formally
announced the era of toleration.

Whatever may be said as to the enforce-
ment of this imperial decree in those pasha-
lies that are under the Sultan's immediate

THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE. 11/

sway, it has been little more than a dead
letter in more remote districts where bigoted
Mussulmans have had control. Still we must
not forget that it was the first grand step
toward the establishment of religious freedom
and the encouragement of Christian missions
among thirty or forty millions of people.

Turkey, though by the treaty of Berlin
her territory in Asia and Europe is reduced,
still sways over one million square miles and
over twenty millions of people ; and by six
articles in that treaty the subjects of the
Turkish government are assured of civil and
religious liberty. In 1878 Asiatic Turkey
came under a British protectorate, and a
" defensive alliance " was formed between the
two nations, by which Britain pledged her
help " by force of arms " when necessary, and
the Sultan pledged himself to certain re-
forms, mainly having in view the protection
of native Christians and Christian missiona-
ries. As a matter of fact, however, a follower
of " the Prophet" espouses the Christian faith
only at peril of persecution, and practically

I20 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

to the higher education; but the supply is
far from equal to the demand. The slu^ish
intellect of the Turks is awaking, and now is
the time to take possession of its aroused
faculties. For years the one chief source of
reading matter to that people was the Chris-
tian missionary press ; by that the Word of
God has been spread through the empire,
and over a thousand different books and
newspapers beside. There is a nominal cen-
sorship to which books and tracts are subject,
and which just now there is an effort making
to render more strict; but practically it has
not hindered the publication and circulation
of Protestant literature.

For nearly fifty years the American Board
has been working to infuse new spiritual
life into the Oriental churches; and now
the hour seems to have come when God
opens the door for direct labor among the
Moslem population. Owing to the abolition
of the death-penalty, persecution for religious
opinion is now illegal. The law of the Koran
punishes apostasy with death, but treaty

THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE. 121

obligations practically annul the Koran ; and
since the case of Selim Eflfendi in 1857 ^^^
government officials have in numerous cases
been compelled to decide that converts to
Christianity were not to be molested, accord-
ing to the provisions of the " treaty of Paris '*
in 1856.

Rev. J. K. Greene, D.D., of Constantinople,
says that the scandal of Oriental Christianity
has largely ceased to hinder the conversion
of the Turks. The introduction of a purer
evangelical faith and life contrasting with the
idolatrous worship and immoral practices of
these nominal Christians has enabled these
Turks to see that these scandalous teachings
and lives are not the fruit, but the perver-
sions, of the religion of Jesus.

Christian schools are not restricted, as the
colleges at Constantinople, Beirut, Smyrna,
Harpoot, and Aintab testify, with six female
seminaries at other places, established by the
American Board.

The "Star in the East" appeals for the
immediate occupation of Constantinople by

122 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

ample missionary forces, as " the capital of the
Ottoman Empire, the seat of government;
as the heart of the Moslem faith whose pul-
sations are felt in the continents of Europe,
Asia, and Africa, and reach the distant Soudan
and India; which rules over Palestine and
affects the destinies of the Jews. Its inhabi-
tants represent the various nationalities on
whom the Holy Ghost was outpoured at
Pentecost, and who anciently were comprised
under the great Byzantine Empire. It is
now in a condition of crisis; the tide of
opportunities is more favorable now than it
ever has been for evangelistic work. The
races once enlightened by Chrysostom, Greg-
ory, and Athanasius, require again the living
Word, and are anxious to raise their fallen
candlestick. The Christian workers are ready
to help, and it is consequently of the utmost
importance as a rallying centre."

CHAPTER XIV.

THE DARK CONTINENT.

[OW Strangely, yet how rapidly, God
has opened the doors of the Dark
Continent ! Only a few years ago,
when we were studying geography, the vast
district in the interior was marked on our
maps " unexplored." We knew little of
Africa except its six thousand miles of sea-
coast, and its great desert, and that narrow
border of country which lay next the ocean
or lined the Nile. The heroic Livingstone,
entering from the south, seeking to know
something of the unknown and open a path
for the missionary, after forty attacks of fever
died on his knees in a grass hut amid the
swamps near Lake Bangweolo, early in May,
1873. His death sounded the new signal for

124 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

the evangelization of Africa. Livingstonia
is the first-fruits of that dying prayer for
Africa. The churches of Scotland united in
its foundation, and in May, 1875, the party
of missionaries left Scotland, reached the
mouth of the Zambesi, and put together their
mission vessel, — the steam-launch trans-
ported in parts, — and in October the "Ilala"
steamed into Lake Nyassa. The missionary
band, with headquarters at Bandawe, began
to survey the lake, erect buildings, make
roads, and till the soil ; to establish medical
dispensaries, with competent physicians; to
gather children into schools; to give the
people the Scriptures and a Christian liter-
ature in their own tongue ; and to preach the
gospel, gather converts, organize churches,
and educate a native ministry.

A stupendous work to undertake! No
wonder Professor Drummond confessed his
scepticism as to the results of such a scheme
amid such a people. Yet he himself sat
down at Dr. Laws's station with the seven
men and two women who were first-fruits of

THE DARK CONTINENT. 125

that mission, and with them partook of the
Lord's Supper, and saw in them the promis€>*^
of Africa's regeneration.

Livingstone's death set in motion many
other agencies for the evangelization of the
Dark Continent, and among them all none is
to be more emphasized than Livingstone's
influence on Stanley. In a recent interview,
this distinguished explorer said : —

" I have been in Africa for seventeen years,
and I have never met a man who would kill me
if I folded my hands. What has been wanted,
and what I have been endeavoring to ask for the
poor Africans, has been the good offices of Chris-
tians, ever since Livingstone taught me, during
those four months that I was with him. In 1871
I went to him as prejudiced as the biggest atheist
in London. To a reporter and correspondent,
such as I, who had only to deal with wars, mass
meetings, and political gatherings, sentimental
matters were entirely out of my province. But
there came for me a long time for reflection. I
was out there away from a worldly world. I saw
this solitary old man there, and asked myself,
' How on earth does he stop here ? Is he cracked,
or what ? What is it that inspires him ? ' For

126 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

months after we met I simply found myself listen*
ing to him, wondering at the old man carrying out
all that was said in the Bible : ' Leave all things
and follow me.' But little by little his sympathy
for others became contagious ; my sympathy was
aroused ; seeing his piety, his gentleness, his zeal,
his earnestness, and how he went quietly about
his business, I was converted by him, although
he had not tried to do it. How sad that the good
old man should have died so soon 1 How joyful
he would have been if he could have seen what
has since happened there 1 "

No sooner had Livingstone's death be-
come known than this intrepid explorer de-
termined to become his successor in opening
up Africa to civilization. Entering at Zan-
zibar in 1874, in 1877 — after a thousand
days — he emerged at the mouth of the
Congo, and the greatest step in the explora-
tion of equatorial Africa was thus taken. So
soon as the news reached England, the next
vessel that sailed for Africa bore mission-
aries. They began to plant stations from
the Congo's mouth to the equator, as well
as about the great lakes of the East; and

THE DARK CONTINENT. 12/

now all Christian denominations seem con-
centrating upon the Congo basin to carry
on with speed and vigor the work of evan-
gelization, and fulfil the prophecy of Krapf,
that " a chain of missions " would yet be
established there between the East and the
West.

The explorations of a quarter of a century
having unveiled Africa, the work of explora-
tion is so rapidly going on that the maps of
yesterday are obsolete to-day, and nothing
but the outline of the continent is as it was
twenty-five years ago. At least five great
lakes are now discovered and surveyed, —
Victoria Nyanza, Albert Nyanza, Tanganyika,
Nyassa, and Bangweolo, — which remind us
of our five great American lakes. Five great
rivers run to the four points of the compass,
— the Zambesi, Nile, Congo, Niger, and
Orange, — with many great tributaries, pro-
viding ten thousand miles of river roadway.
Victor Hugo's prediction is already true, —
that in the coming century Africa would be
the cynosure of all eyes.

128 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS,

Perhaps no more wonderful occurrence has
been recorded since Pentecost than the Ber-
lin Conference that, in the closing weeks of
1884, met to determine the Constitution of
the Congo Free State. King Leopold of Bel-
gium, losing his dear son, adopted Africa
with her sable children as his own, out of his
royal fortune giving a princely sum annu-
ally for her sake. What an event was that
when, under the presidency of Prince Bis-
marck, fifteen nations, by their representa-
tives, assembled to form the " International
Association of the Congo " ! Article VI. con-
tains the pith of the whole Declaration : —

"All the powers exercising sovereign rights,
or having influence in the said territories, under-
take to watch over the preservation of the native
races and the amelioration of the moral and ma-
terial conditions of their existence, and to co-
operate in the suppression of slavery and, above
all, of the slave-trade ; they will protect and
encourage, without distinction of nationality or
creed, all institutions and enterprises — religious,
scientific, or charitable — established and organ-

THE DARK CONTINENT. 1 29

ized for these objects^ or tending to educate the
natives and lead them to understand and appreci-
ate the advantages of civilization. Christian mis-
sionaries, men of science, explorers and their
escorts and collections, to be equally the object
o£ special protection. Liberty of conscience and
religious toleration are expressly guaranteed to
the natives, as well as to the inhabitants and for-
eigners. The free and public exercise of every
creed, the right to erect religious buildings, and
to organize missions belonging to every creed,
shall be subject to no restriction or impediment
whatever.''

And who are the national parties to this
most remarkable compact for civil and re-
ligious freedom? Not only Protestant pow-
ers, like the United States, Great Britain,
Prussia, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, but
the Greek Church, as represented by Russia ;
the Papal Church, as represented by Austria,
Belgium, Spain, Portugal, France, and Italy;
and even the Moslem power, as represented
by Turkey ! The grandeur of the event over-
whelms us! When, in the history of the
world before, have Protestant, Greek, Papal,

I30 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

and Moslem powers conferred and combined
to assure civil and religious freedom to a
new state just emerging out of obscurity
and semi-barbarism into an enlightened civ-
ilization? Were Galileo now alive, he would
certainly say, of this world, *^ and yet it
moves ! "

And what is this " Congo Free State,"
thus suddenly constituted a new empire of
freedom? It is a rich area of one and a half
million square miles, one of the richest coun-
tries of the globe, with the noble Congo and its
many navigable affluents, presenting a water
highway of from five to eight thousand miles,
and connecting with great lakes whose shore
lines would measure three thousand more;
with a population of fifty million people;
with marvellous variety of scenery, climate,
product, fauna and flora. When, in 1877,
Stanley completed his tour of Central Africa,
he had been nine hundred and ninety-nine
days from Zanzibar. He could now, as he
says, " in forty-three days after leaving Glas-
gow, be housed in his own station at Stanley

THE DARK CONTINENT. 131

Falls, and instead of running a gauntlet for
his life, from the day he reached Vivi his
ascent of the river would be one continued
ovation."

Well may all eyes turn to Africa. God is
disclosing by His providence the great min-
eral, metallic, and vegetable resources of the
interior. The ostrich is more profitable
than the South Down mutton ; the elephant-
tusks will supply the demand for ivory ; and
so, through the very avarice of men and the
higher love of science, the great unknown
continent is to be crossed with a net-work of
railways, penetrated in every direction by
travellers and explorers, settled by adven-
turers and far-sighted traders, and planted
with Christian missions. Already steam-
boats sail the rivers and great lakes; roads
are being built and railways constructed, and
a submarine cable laid. Before this manu-
script can take the printed form, changes will
have taken place which make this chapter
out of date!

If this is a wide door of opportunity, what

132 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS

shall be said of the obligation? In Stanley's
journey of seven thousand miles from Zanzi-
bar to Banana he saw neither a Christian
disciple nor a man who had even heard the
gospel message!

CHAPTER XV.

PAPAL LANDS.

OD has, in just as wonderful ways,
thrown open wide the door to the
dominions of the Pope, both on this
continent and on the continent of Europe.

As to Europe, it is one of the wonders of
the ages that changes so radical and revolu-
tionary should have taken place. In the age
succeeding the Council of Trent papal Eu-
rope meant the oldest and grandest of mon-
archies: the German Empire, the political
and military centre ; France, the intellectual
and social centre; Spain and Portugal, the
" centre of expansive force ; '* Italy, the his-
torical and ecclesiastical centre of all. Papal
Europe then represented all the old, polished
languages, and held every great historical
city, ancient university, and every influential

134 THE CRISIS OF MISSIOXS.

centre of letters, art, and civilization, except
those developed after the Reformation.

At the time of the Reformation the control
of Europe was held in the firm grasp of
Rome. Great moral and political re\^olutions
have cut off England, Scotland, Holland,
Denmark, Sweden, Prussia, and part of Ger-
many and Switzerland ; and even the coun-
tries that have not thrown off allegiance to
the Pope have undergone great change.
Papacy has lost be^-ond calculation or resto-
ration, and nowhere more surely than in Italy
itself. ** Papal Europe " has now a different
meaning. Protestantism has been and is
steadily gaining in numbers, wealth, prestige,
and in power, intellectually, morally, politi-
cally, and spiritually.

The balance of power is rei*ersed since 1789.
At the period of the Reformation Spain
and Portugal and Austria were the dominant
powers in Europe. Spain, that made Eng-
land quake at the terrors of her " Invincible
Armada," had three times, and some say
six times, the population of England; now

PAPAL LANDS. 1 35

England, after colonizing India, America, and
Australia, has twice the population of Spain.
During fifty years past England has gained
119 per cent; Prussia, 72; Austria, 27;
France, 12; or, taking excess of births
over deaths, if France be represented by i,
Austria will be represented by 3, Russia by
5 ; but Prussia by 6, and Britain by 8 ! In
1825, Protestant population was to Papal as
3 to 13, and in 1875 as i to 3.

Italy has undergone transformations which
are incredible to one who has not witnessed
them. Where two thirds of the people could
not read or write, education is now com-
pulsory. Where the very conscience of the
people seemed paralyzed, and the sense
of personal responsibility and accountability
dead, we have seen the Church party in
Rome opening numerous schools, issuing
cheap literature in large quantities, establish-
ing soup-kitchens, relieving poverty, and in-
forming ignorance. Where the Pope swayed
with an absolute sceptre, Pius IX. was a pris-
oner in the Vatican, bewailing the loss of

136 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

temporal power; and it is obvious to the
world, if not to the College of Cardinals, that
the spiritual sceptre also is broken, or at
least very loosely held. The Pope will never
again make emperors bow as penitents before
him, or torture heretics in the dungeons of
the Inquisition.

The ignorance which is the mother of
superstition is giving way before the intel-
ligence that is the handmaid of faith and
devotion. In fact, as to the papacy, we mark
a grand crash in the whole wall which has shut
out the Bible and tlie pure gospel from the
people. It is like the falling of the ramparts
of Jericho before the trumpet-blast of Joshua's
hosts ; and wherever the army of God faces
Romanism, every man may march into the
breach straight before him and take the city.

We can hardly credit it that t^\'enty-two
Protestant churches^ and a score of Protes-

^ We find this paragraph in a late paper :^

** The foundations for the twenty-second Protestant

church have just been laid in the city of Rome, Italy.

Most people will be surprised to know that there are so

many Protestant churches in Rome. It is only fair to say.

PAPAL LANDS. 1 37

tant schools are now found within the walls of
the Eternal City ; that Rome itself is open to
the circulation of the Bible and the preach-
ing of the cross ; that under the shadows of
St. Peter's and the Vatican Protestants may-
worship unmolested and carry on the work
of evangelism ; that the Bible-carts roll out of
Madrid, and in the very Spain whose name is
the historic synonym of the Inquisition the
people should so clamor for the Word of God
that copies cannot be printed fast enough to
meet the demand ; that in France, that right
arm of the papal power for centuries, land of
the exiled Huguenots and of awful St. Bar-
tholomew, both French Chambers order elim-
ination of priests and nuns from government
schools within five years ; and that the great-
est work of popular evangelization ever known
should now be in progress, and the govern-
ment aid and encourage the McAU stations,
as the best possible police to restrain and re-

however, that they are mainly intended for the foreign
residents in that city, although some of them are engaged
more or less in the work of proselyting from the Roman
Church."

I 138 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

form that mercurial people whose very blood,
like the Irishman's, is quicksilver.

Savonarola's dying cry was, "O Italy, I
warn thee that only Christ can save thee !
The time for the Holy Ghost has not come,
but it will ! " What if that martyr of Fer-
rara could have seen Italy's history from
1848 until now! Where in 1866 a Protestant
preacher was expelled for preaching, twenty
years later Leo XIIL says to his cardinals,
"With deep regret and profound anguish we
behold the impiety with which Protestants
freely and with impunity propagate their her-
etical doctrines, and attack the most august
and sacred doctrines of our holy religion, —
even here at Rome, the centre of the faith
and the zeal of the universal and infallible
teacher of the Church ! "

What we may now see, or have seen, in
Italy and Spain and France, is but a type of
what to a greater or less extent is true of all
lands held under the nominal control of the
papacy. The "twelve hundred and sixty"
days of dominion seem to have expired. No

PAPAL LANDS, 1 39

man can foresee the changes that within ten
years may yet take place. There are many
indications that there is to be a Reformed
Catholic Church, on a great scale, in which
those who within the papal communion hold
to evangelical truth shall find a refuge from
companionship and complicity with error and
heresy and iniquity. Rev. W. F. Bainbridge,
whose " World Tour " did so much for mis-
sions, met in Asia many Catholic priests who
seem to have been influenced by the accom-
panying evangelical missions; and there are
many signs in the British provinces and in
our own republic that Roman Catholicism,
in close contact with Protestantism and re-
mote from the papal centres, is being essen-
tially modified by such contact. The future
may show us a great exodus from Rome of
those who "come out of her, that they be
not partakers of her sins nor receive of her
plagues ; " nay, even a reconstructed church,
that casts oflf the cerements of the sepulchre,
and comes forth in a new life of purified
faith !

CHAPTER XVI.

MEXICO, LAND OF THE AZTECS.

IXICO, our near neighbor, is larger
than all of the United States east
of the Mississippi, having a total
area of about eight hundred thousand square
miles, and a population of at least ten mil-
lions, — one fifth of whom are of pure Euro-
pean blood, nearly one fifth native, and the
rest mixed.

The great cordillera of the Andes, which
traverses South America and is depressed at
the Isthmus of Panama, then divides into two
great arms, — one to the east, along the Gulf,
one to the west, along the Pacific, enclosing
a high table-land, crossed by sierras, broad-
est and highest at Mexico City. This remark-
able country, though in the torrid zone, has
therefore its hot and cold and temperate

MEXICO, LAND OF THE AZTECS. I41

regions, as climate depends on altitude rather
than latitude; and the Spanish language is
spoken by 63,690,000 people, second in im-
portance only to the English as the vehicle
of commerce and communication between
man and man.

Mexico is rich in resources, its wealth
mainly lying in its mines. Humboldt es-
timated their yield from 1521 to 1803 at
$2,000,000,000, and from the time of Cortes,
at six times that sum. The Spanish kings
held the mines as royal property, citizens
being allowed to work them by paying one
fifth to the government; but all such tax is
now remitted, and all the six races — whites,
Indians, negroes, mestizoes, mulattoes, and
zamboes — are on a footing of legal and
political equality.

The history of Mexico is a fascinating ro-
mance: the Toltecs, from the seventh to
the eleventh century, builders of great cities
whose ruins still exist, true founders of Mexi-
can civilization; the Chichemecs, rude and
barbarous, who succeeded them ; the Aztecs^

142 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

who came in about the beginning of the
thirteenth century, and whose dominion at
the time of the discovery of America spanned
the continent. The Aztec government was
an elective monarchy, and the laws were
spread before the people by hieroglyphical
paintings, and in the opinion of Prescott
showed high appreciation of, and profound
respect for, principles of morality.

The "Halls of the Montezumas" repre-
sented SchlegeFs poetic conception of" frozen
music." In one palace-room three thousand
guests might gather, and on the roof there
was room for a tournament. The temple
excelled the Kremlin of Moscow for gran-
deur and elaborateness.

Their religion was a compound of poetry
and cruelty. They worshipped a plurality
of gods, but held one supreme lord; built
pyramidal temples, or Teocallis, principal of
which is the great Pyramid at Cholula ; and
had altars for human victims. They believed
in three separate future states: the wicked
they consigned to everlasting darkness ; tiiose

MEXICO, LAND OF THE AZTECS. 143

who died of certain diseases, to a negative,
half torpid state; and the good and brave
they admitted to a sunlit sphere, whence they
went to animate the pure white clouds and
singing-birds of paradise.

They cased with brick or stone their solid
pyramidal temples, and by outer stairs as-
cended to the sanctuaries on the summit.
Human sacrifices were adopted in the four-
teenth century, and grew from twenty thou-
sand to fifty thousand annually. The priest
tore out the heart and cast it at the idol's
feet, and the body was devoured at the feast.

Mexico has been cursed by Romish super-
stition; a corrupt and avaricious priesthood
built grand cathedrals, convents, and palaces,
secured exemption from taxation, and so the
poor and priest-ridden people had to pay the
whole cost of government as well as support
the ecclesiastics. The tyranny of the Church
demanded such fees that even marriage was
too costly for the poor, and perhaps half of
the population living as husband and wife
have no legal relations as such.

144 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

The clergy in 1852 numbered nearly five
thousand; there were fifty-eight nunneries
and fifteen hundred nuns. The immense
revenues formerly went to the clergy, the
total amount collected in 1862 being esti-
mated at nearly $8,000,000 ; and the property
of the clergy was estimated at $300,000,000,
or one half the whole real estate, — making
a total income of $20,000,000.

The Church was divorced from the State
Sept. 25, 1873. There remained no longer
an established religion ; marriage was made
a civil contract; real estate, guarded; mo-
nastic orders received a fatal blow; and the
downfall of Romanism began, though the
priests denounced the new legislation and
threatened excommunication.

The Bible, which in 1847 had been brought
in by our armies at the point of the bayonet,
became the pioneer of this new civilization.
One man brought one from Toluca. The
reading of that book was the means of con-
verting himself, his whole family, and his
neighbors, till without knowing it they formed

MEXICO, LAND OF THE ^AZTECS. 145

among themselves a Protestant church> and
from the family of that one man three Prot-
estant preachers came !

Another, in Almacate, became the owner
of a Bible, and studied it daily. When dying,
the priest came to " confess " him ; but he
who had learned that ''the blood of Jesus
Christ cleanseth from all sin" had already
been delivered from fear of death, and tri-
umphantly replied, " I need no purgatory ! "

The work of Protestant missionaries, though

met by opposition and even persecution, finds

a people prepared. At the dedication of a

church in Michoacan, in Rodriguez' house,

^ eight hundred persons gathered, coming from

^ a distance of from fifteen to forty miles.

Seftor Torcada wrote from Titacuaro, "The

great majority are casting away idolatry and

"-' worshipping God."

The new government is the ally of reform,
and, to an extent, even of evangelization;
i^ God permitted Maximilian to lay, uncon-

^ sciously, the foundation of a revolt from

^ despotism and Romanism. Witness the con-

l 10

146 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

version of monasteries and other sacred build-
ings to secular purposes; the overturning
of religious orders, so that there is neither
" monk, nun, friar, nor Jesuit." The Palace
of the Inquisition is turned into a medical
school, a convent into a law school, a mon-
astery into a training school, and Catholic
churches into Protestant chapels. Witness
the confiscation of ecclesiastical property,
and its appropriation to educational pur-
poses; the establishment of five thousand
schools; and the general trend of events in
the direction of a higher, nobler, better life
for Mexico.

Business enterprise is building a vast rail-
road and telegraph system, as a scaffolding
for the church of God. Mexico is opening
to trade and travel. A people, in fetters for
centuries, have had the bastile of superstition
demolished before their eyes, and are dazzled
by the new light that is breaking upon them.
But here again delay risks everything! Will
not the Protestant church of America awake
to the duty of the hour?

MEXICO, LAND OF THE AZTECS. 147

Into this open door of Mexico American
Christians especially ought eagerly to press
and push evangelizing forces. This great
land is near, needy, neglected, but hopeful.
If their newly found liberties are to be a per-
manent blessing, intelligence and industry
and evangelization must displace ignorance
and idleness and superstition. For four hun-
dred years they have been victims of slavery
and oppression, and, by the confession of a
Catholic bishop, not fifteen per cent of the
people could read or write. They rise every
morning and look toward the sunrise for the
second coming of Montezuma, whom they
connect with the golden age of the past
and of the future. What a blessing if they
can be enabled to see advancing from the
east, not Montezuma, but the Redeemer of
the world, heralded by the Christians of this
republic I

CHAPTER XVIL

SOUTH AMERICAN STATES.

BSRBHAT has been written of Mexico
R%M may, to a great extent, be written
of the entire southern half of this
continent. That wind bearing southwest
and that flight of paroquets that provi-
dentially diverted Columbus from the main-
land of North America, at first to the
Bahamas, and so, in his third voyage, to the
mouth of the Orinoco ; that divine interpo-
sition that swept the caravel of Amerigo
Vespucci at first to Paria and afterward to
Brazil, — left the continent of North America
to be discovered by John Cabot and Sebas-
tian Cabot, the vassals of the English kings,
Henry VII. and Edward VI. The same hand
of God which thus gave this land to England
and Protestantism, permitted the southern

SOUTH AMERICAN STATES. I49

continent to come under the sway of papal
crowns. And so this vast peninsula with its
fourteen States waits to be "discovered"
anew by Protestant Christians and evangel-
ized. The conditions have been strikingly
similar to those of Mexico. In fact, the do-
minion of the Pope stamps all countries under
his absolute sway with a stereotyped polit-
ical, social, and moral life, so that from one
we may infer the rest. We shall find, in pro-
portion to the measure of papal control,
ignorance, superstition, priestcraft, formalism,
a low standard of morals, a fettered intellect,
and a perverted conscience.

Missionaries to South America have found
everywhere two things, — universal spiritual
destitution and formidable antagonism. And
yet it is plain that these priest-ridden masses
are weary of their thraldom, though scarce
ready for the liberty of the gospel. Espe-
cially among the men and youth there is no
love for " the Church," — at the best only a
lingering fear ; deism is widespread, practical
immorality everywhere prevalent, and no

ISO THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

conception of a spiritual type of piety; in
fact, no feature is more marked than general
religious apathy.

The priests threaten all who dare to go to
a Protestant place of worship with the ban of
excommunication, and often lead the way
in acts of lawless violence toward mission-
aries and mission property. Civil war, with
the anarchy it brings, often interrupts mis-
sion work; and yet it is plain that God is
" overturning " as He has seldom overturned
anywhere, in preparation for His reign whose
right it is.

Material progress is visible. Better dwell-
ings, farming implements, roads, bridges,
factories and mills, railroads, steam-boats,
telegraphs — in fact, all the marked features of
a higher civilization, are rapidly impressing
themselves on this great country. The peo-
ple may not love Protestantism for its spirit-
ual religion, but they see that it is everywhere
linked with civil and religious freedom, with
aggressive enterprise, good government, and
national prosperity; and as they look at

SOUTH AMERICAN STA TES. I S I

their own condition, — no intelligence or in-
tellectual progress, low moral standards and
lower moral practices, in bondage to a Jesu-
itical priesthood, and living the lives of
slaves rather than free men, — they naturally
turn to Protestantism as a help to political
and national progress.

Where Protestant missions are once planted
and firmly rooted, marked changes begin in
the whole social life. Bibles begin to be
scattered, schools established, a pure gospel
preached; and instead of the atheism that
springs out of the ruins of Romanism, evan-
gelical doctrine and practice burst into
bloom.

Among all the fourteen South American
States, Chili takes the front rank in intelli-
gence and enterprise, as Brazil does in terri-
torial area.

Chili, that has been independent of Spain
since 1818, and recognized as such since
1846, within twelve months expelled the
papal nuncio, suppressed the attempt of the
clergy to incite revolution, carried the tri-

152 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS,

umph of the liberal party through both
houses of Congress, enacted important re-
forms in the shape of laws for civil cemeter-
ies and civil marriages, and declared in favor
of final and complete separation of Church
and State.

The mission work has some notable feat-
ures, conspicuous among them the seminary
at Santiago, which is a training school and
theological seminary to prepare a native
ministry. Alexander Balfour, Esq., of Liv-
erpool, who in many ways aided the work,
pays for five years the expenses of Rev. Mr.
Allis, who has the seminary in charge.

Brazil, whose territory covers about half
the continent of South America, issued its
Declaration of Independence in 1822, and
was recognized by Portugal as a free and
independent State in 1825. It is the only
monarchy in South America. The present
Emperor, Dom Pedro, who has reigned since
1841, is a progressive sovereign. In 1866
he emancipated his own slaves; in 1871
passed a law providing for gradual abolition

SOUTH AMERICAN ST A TES. 1 5 3

of all slavery in the country; and in our cen-
tennial year visited the Great Exposition in
Philadelphia, made our schools, manufacto-
ries, political and educational system a study,
and then visited Europe; returning to his
own people to make his throne the centre of
all humanizing and civilizing influences.

During his absence the Romish party used
the opportunity to hinder Protestant missions ;
but on his return a cabinet was formed in
sympathy with the advanced and liberal
policy of the Emperor and the growing pop-
ular sentiment, and the mission work re«
ceived a new impulse and impetus. The
papal power is broken, freedom of worship
established, missionaries are protected, and
another door, great and effectual, is opened
by God to Christian evangelism.

Though a monarchy, Brazil has a General
Assembly, with senate and chamber of de-
puties, similar to the English Parliament or
the American Congress.

The Huguenots were the pioneers in the
effort to evangelize Brazil. Admiral Coligny,

1 54 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

the heroic martyr of St. Bartholomew, as
early as 1555 planned to colonize the Bra-
zilian coast as a refuge for Huguenot exiles,
and they settled on the island of Villegag-
non. This colony was short-lived. The
Methodist Episcopal Church, which has the
honor of leading the American churches in
mission work in South America, from 1836 to
1842 maintained a station at Rio de Janeiro.
The Presbyterian Church has now vigor-
ous missions in the United States of Colom-
bia, Chili, and Brazil, with over eighty mis-
sionaries, male and female, there at work.
But what are these among so many? Would
that they could be multiplied as the loaves
and fishes were ! We have but one Protes-
tant missionary to six hundred thousand
souls in South America. God is greatly
blessing the itinerating tours which, after the
example of Paul, distribute the labors of
these few men over a wide field, preaching
the Word over extended districts, and pre-
paring the way for. the local preacher and
pastor.

SOUTH AMERICAN STA TES. I S S

Now is the golden opportunity for evan-
gelizing South America. All times of transi-
tion are crises. The old is broken up, but
what the new shall be is ours, under God, to
determine. God has given us convincing
proofs that Protestantism is the lever to up-
lift these peoples to a higher plane. Prompt
and vigorous occupation of the ground, ear-
nest, consecrated evangelism, — what might
they not do for South America ! With Prot-
estant schools, colleges, and seminaries ; with
an evangelical press to scatter the leaves of
the Tree of Life; with churches gathering
converts and organizing them into evangel-
ists; with earnest Christian men to become
lawyers, doctors, statesmen, judges, educa-
tors, — we might see a religious revolution
from the Isthmus of Panama to the antarctic
circle.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE SUBSIDENCE OF OBSTACLES.

|E have thus glanced rapidly at the
opening of the doors in some of
the principal fields of missionary
labor, pagan, moslem, and papal. There is,
however, a class of phenomena connected
with modern missions, so remarkable that
it should be placed conspicuously by itself.
There are some barriers which have been
removed so suddenly, so unexpectedly, so
peculiarly, that the hand of God has been
very marked in connection with them ; they
have subsided even before they have been
encountered by the advancing mission band.

The promise that " the earth shall be full
of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters
cover the sea," not only prophesies, but illus-
trates, the world's evangelization. The time

THE SUBSIDENCE OF OBSTACLES. 1 57

is coming when the good news will have
spread in every direction, like the omnipresent
sea in its vast bed. The Church has only to
be faithful to her great trust, and, like the
pulsations of great tidal waves, the knowledge
of the Lord shall sweep against every foreign
shore, move up into every strait and bay and
estuary, and " sound the roar of its surf-line "
from Greenland to Australia, and from Brit-
ain to Japan and Polynesia. The gospel is
destined to be all-pervasive, like the sea, the
air, the light.

The sea may flood the land, either by the
rising of the ocean or the sinking of the
shore ; and the subsidence of the land is in
effect the upheaval of the sea. The disciple
rejoices when he observes those mighty move-
ments of God's grace, which, like the rapid
rising of some far-reaching tidal wave, flood
extensive districts of the world with the
knowledge and the power of the gospel;
and devout souls look and pray for the day
when some such wave of revival shall sweep
over the whole habitable globe. But let us

IS8 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

not forget that, without this startling upheaval
of the sea, it can make its bed on the conti-
nents, if they sink below its level. Often in
the history of missions has God gone before
His people, and, by the slow or sudden subsi-
dence of opposing obstacles, prepared the
way for flooding the land ; and in many cases
systems of false faith, or customs of formida-
ble antiquity, that have stood like mountain
barriers to keep out the gospel flood, have
actually disappeared.

In fact, the more we study missions, the
more we shall see that the false faiths of the
world are in a state not only of decline, but
of decay. An unseen work of undermining
is going on, and some day we may all be
startled by the general subsidence of barriers
which have hitherto seemed as deep-founded
and as high-reaching as the everlasting hills.
A few examples may well be added both to
demonstrate and illustrate this truth.

Sixty years ago, the brig " Thaddeus" was
nearing the Sandwich Islands, with the first
missionaries to those habitations of darkness

THE SUBSIDENCE OF OBSTACLES. 1 59

and cruelty on board Never was an enter-
prise, humanly speaking, more hopeless.
Seventeen persons were going to these ten
isles to evangelize them, to upheave the ocean
and flood them with the knowledge of the
Lord ; and against coast barriers as formida-
ble as ever the gospel encountered, — bar-
barism, sensuality, superstition, brutality.
These people, lost to shame, went almost
naked. Husbands had many wives, and wives
had many husbands ; and they exchanged as
they would trade in any other commodity.
Two thirds of all the children died in infancy
by the hands of the mothers, who would
choke a babe, or bury it alive in the earth-
floor of the hut, to stop its crying. A nation
of thieves, gamblers, drunkards, they sac-
rificed human beings as victims, and had
neither science nor literature, however rude.
Government was a farce; a taboo system
made death the penalty for offences so small
that they might be committed without either
will or knowledge; for a common man to
allow his shadow to fall upon a chief, for in-

I60 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

stance, could be atoned for only as his head
lay at the feet of that chief. No words can
do justice to the moral and spiritual condition
of those islands. It was a question whether
such a people could be saved, even by the
gospel ; not a few doubted whether they were
worth saving. Could you expect the sea to
sweep against such barriers and wash them
away? It would take a thousand years!

But as the boat drew near the coast, Hopu,
a native who, having found his way to this
land and to Christ, was now going back, put
off in a small boat for shore, and at once
returning swung his hat and shouted, " Oahu's
idols are no more!" God had gone before
these pioneers. The old king was dead, the
images of the gods all burned, and the first
death-blow struck at the taboo system; all
this before tite vessels prow touched tke beach.
The missionaries wrote in their journal : " Sing,
O heavens, for the Lord hath done itl"

Ah, yes, the island system was sinking and
the huge barriers subsiding; the sea need
not change its level, but only move in upon

THE SUBSIDENCE OF OBSTACLES. l6l

the sinking land. And so in two years the
missionaries began to give them a written
language and literature. The first convert
was Keopuolani, the king's mother. Within
four years the Christian Sabbath and Ten
Commandments were formally recognized by
government; and so the work went on, until
within fifty years the islands took their place
with other Christian nations, and became
themselves centres of gospel light for the
darkness around. With what amazing ra-
pidity may the sea cover the earth when He
who holds the continents in His palm lets
them sink below its level!

Japan also illustrates this theory of sub-
sidence. Such a preparation as was there
found for the gospel nd other land ever
presented to the same extent It could not
be traced to man, for Japan had been for
centuries a hermit nation, shutting herself in
and shutting others out. There was every
reason why, according to all human expecta-
tion, the institutions and character of this
exclusive people should have been founds

I62 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

after over two thousand five hundred years,
petrified and fossilized into impenetrability
and immobility. Yet God had gone before
His people, and, in advance of their approach,
thrown down gigantic barriers. Here was a
people tired of a dual government, an op-
pressive feudal nobility, and a dead state re-
ligion. Revolution had paved the way for
political reformation and social regeneration.
A nation by temperament aggressive and
progressive, divinely prepared for a new
order of things, wait for a day dawn. Just
at this critical, pivotal era in Japan's history,
the foremost of Christian nations peaceably
knocks at her doors and asks entrance. A
great republic and a great monarchy, both
Protestant and evangelical, approach for
trade, and bring the gospel. This awakened
nation finds at once a better model of gov-
ernment, a higher type of civilization, a loftier
plane of education, and a purer form of faith ;
and with incredible rapidity is taking on the
complexion and character of Christian na-
tions. Was not God in this subsidence of

THE SUBSIDENCE OF OBSTACLES. 163

obstacles? Was not this another example of
the coming of the fuhiess of His time? He
struck when the iron was hot, and only He
could know when it was hot

Yes, God not only chose his own way, but
His own time, for opening the doors of Japan.
At the very crisis of affairs, when the dual
government of seven centuries was overthrown,
and the Tycoon and his divided followers
surrendered to the Mikado as the sole ruling
power, — at this providential juncture of affairs,
when the various elements of Japanese life
were in a state of fusion, ready to be moulded
anew, God provided a matrix in which the
New Japan should take shape. Foreign
commerce was knocking loudly at the long-
shut gates, bringing with it Western thought,
enterprise, and manners. It was not only
easy, but natural, to accept the new order of
things; and consequently revolutions have
taken place, intellectually, socially, and relig-
iously, that centuries have not wrought else-
where, which astonish not only all outside
observers, but the Japanese themselves. ,

l64 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

The eyes of the world are to-day on France,
beholding with astonishment the wonderful
work of God there. Yet this is another in-
stance of subsidence. France has been the
right arm of papal power for centuries, and
seemed, a century since, likely to develop
the antichrist. How little we knew what
preparations were going forward for the in-
flowing of the gospel tides !

In 1877, Paul Bouchard, ex-mayor of
Beaune, wrote an open letter to the bishop
of his diocese, renouncing Romanism and
transferring his adhesion to Protestantism,
on grounds of consistency and patriotism.
It was not the act of a man converted to a
new faith so much as disgusted with an old
one. He forsook the state religion as a pa-
triot and political economist, denouncing
Roman Catholicism as the enemy of social
and political progress, the ally of ignorance
and superstition. His act was one echo of
Gambetta's declaration that the Romish
Church is the enemy of French republican-
ism, — ''clericalism is the foe of France."

THE SUBSIDENCE OF OBSTACLES. 165

But he went beyond Gambetta, for he re-
proached Gambetta with atheism. Bouchard
took this great step alone, and boldly wrote
five tracts for the people, giving wider expres-
sion to his views.

At the same time Eugene Reveillaud, a
lawyer, journalist, orator, and statesman, a
college graduate and a freethinker, born and
bred a Romanist, had his eyes opened to
see the rottenness of Romanism, and became
the champion of Protestantism, on similar
grounds to those of Bouchard, and wrote a
pamphlet on the "Religious Question and
the Protestant Solution." Compelled to give
up the papal church, he felt he could not
be without a church and a religion, but had
as yet no change of heart. The faithful
Huguenot pastors boldly taught that Protes-
tantism required more than a mere renuncia-
tion of Romanism; and in July, 1878, in the
Protestant meeting-house at Troyes, Reveil-
laud arose and addressed the congregation,
declaring his conversion, and manifesting a
remarkable baptism of the Spirit. From

1(56 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS,

January, 1879, his tongue and pen have been
enthusiastically given to the evangelization
of France. He publishes a weekly paper,
" I-e Signal," and goes everywhere to halls,
theatres, ball-rooms, and bams, to address
the people, showing them the need of a new
gospel of faith, repentance, and holiness.

Our generation has seen no religious move-
ment to compare with this arising of a whole
people. " There is Protestantism in the air."
In Avignon, the old residence of the popes,
Renouvier adds to his " Critique Philoso-
phique " a " Critique Religieuse " to chronicle
the Protestant movement; and in Belgium,
Emile de Laveleye writes on the "Future
of the Catholic Nations," — a warning to all
peoples of the inevitable results of Romanist
supremacy !

The rapid and radical change that has
come over France no one can conceive who
has not been there during this quiet religious
revolution. Scarce a century ago Protestants
were tortured and murdered, till even Vol-
taire's atheism vented its invective against

THE SUBSIDENCE OF OBSTACLES. 167

persecution for religious opinion, and shamed
France out of her course. Then came the
reaction of atheism, but no religious liberty.
But under MacMahon a majority of nine
ministers of the Waddington cabinet were
Huguenots, though the Huguenots repre-
sented but one-twentieth of the population.
November 2, 1879, Protestant worship was
held at Versailles, in the palace of Louis
XIV., and not far from the chamber where
he died, beneath the room where Madame
de Maintenon induced him to sign the Revo-
cation of the Edict of Nantes, nearly two
hundred years ago.

The news of one week would fill a journal
with startling items, — people assembling in
hosts everywhere, in halls, tents, and open
air, listening with intense interest to de-
nunciations of Romish priestcraft and the
good news of grace; and families, fifty
at a time, coming out to take their places
with the Protestants. It is but three hundred
years since the St. Bartholomew massacre
in 1572; and already the nation is turning

I68 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS,

from Rome. The McAll Mission has devel-
oped with a rapidity unparalleled in church
history, establishing new preaching stations
as fast as men and money can be obtained,
and finding everywhere an open door. The
tides of a pure gospel that surged vainly
against mountain barriers for centuries are
now rushing in Uke a flood. But it is a case
of subsidence. It is not the tide that has
risen, so much as the barriers that have given
way; and so France is being covered with the
knowledge of the Lord.

CHAPTER XIX.
woman's work for woman.

|MONG the most remarkable examples
of the opening of doors and the
subsidence of barriers on the one
hand, and the preparation of workers on the
other, we place, without hesitation, the organi-
zation of women's boards of missions and
the so-called zenana work. The significance
and the importance of these developments
entitle them to a special and separate record.
It is now a little over fifty years ago since,
under the moving, melting plea of Mr. Abeel,
from China, the women of London resolved
to carry the gospel to woman in the far East.
This resolve was the parent of Zenana Mis-
sions. The project seemed like the wild
scheme of unbalanced enthusiasts ; and wise

I/O THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

men pronounced it impracticable and vision-
ary. To attempt to get access to the harems
of Turkey and the zenanas of India was like
forcing gates of steel in walls of adamant
Yet something must be done. The condition
of woman in Oriental empires was so desti-
tute and desolate, so hopeless and helpless,
that it had long attracted the attention and
aroused the sympathy of the whole civilized
world. In India alone it is estimated that
there are one hundred millions of women and
girls sunk in utter ignorance and degrada-
tion ; one third of whom can neither read nor
write, one sixth of whom are widows, and of
them eighty thousand under ten years of
age. And worst of all, these women and
girls are positively unreached by any edu-
cating, elevating, or evangelizing influence.
Words cannot convey any adequate concep-
tion of the low estate of women in almost all
the empires where the gospel has not per-
vaded and moulded social life.

The work was undertaken. It is said that
the needle of a missionary's wife was the

WOAfAN'S WORK FOR WOMAN. 171

simple instrument God used to give access
to Oriental zenanas. A piece of embroidery,
wrought by her deft fingers, found its way to
the secluded inmates of a zenana ; if a woman
could do such work as that, other women
could learn under her instruction; and so,
with the cordial consent of the husband, this
Christian woman was welcomed to the inside
of his home, and as she taught his wives
the art of embroidery, she was working the
" scarlet thread," dyed in the blood of the
Lamb, into the more delicate fabric of their
hearts and lives.

And now these barriers are no more ; the
gates of steel are unlocked, and Christian
women enter almost without restraint the
homes of Turkey, India, and China. The
girls are gathering into Christian schools;
the increase in the number of female pupils
is so rapid that in ten years it has doubled,
and is likely to multiply far more rapidly in
the near future. Two years ago one hundred
and sixty lady missionaries had been enrolled
in the work of that London Mission, ancl

172 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

more have been added since ; pupils in their
zenanas numbered thousands, and in their
day schools tens of thousands. Bible-women
not only enter the richest homes with a
welcome, but enlightened Hindus actually
clamor for the education of their wives and
daughters. The Church of England Society
alone had, in 1883, under visitation eighteen
hundred zenanas with four thousand pupils ;
and both the visitors and the schools are con-
stantly increasing in numbers and influence.
A *' new world " of work is thus " discovered."
Leupolt remarks : —

" If any one had hinted twenty-five years since
that not only should we have free access to the
natives in their houses in India, but that in cities
like Benares, Lucknow, Agra, Delhi, Amritsir, and
Lahore, zenanas would be open, and European
ladies with their native assistants admitted to
teach the Word of God in them, I would have
replied, 'All things are possible to God, but I do
not expect such a glorious event in my day.' But
what has God wrought ? More than we asked or
thought, expected or prayed for. His name be
praised 1 To more than twelve hundred seraglios

WOMAN'S IVORK FOR WOMAN, 1 73

the agents of the Female Normal School and
Instruction Society have access."

Some two years ago the Indian Education
Commission reported to the government that
the most successful efforts yet made to edu-
cate women after leaving school had been
conducted by missionaries; that in every
province of India Christian ladies had de-
voted themselves to teaching in the homes
of native families; and recommended that
grants for zenana teaching be recognized as a
proper charge on public funds, etc. And it
is not a year since a Mohammedan paper
of Lahore urged the propagators of Islam to
make effort for the instruction of women in
the zenanas, alleging that the representatives
of Christian women were making such inroads
upon the homes of India that, unless a counter
effort were made, the very foundations of
Islam would be gradually destroyed.

Shaftesbury, at the jubilee meeting of the
Society for Promoting Female Education in
the East, said: "The time is at hand when
you will see the great dimensions of the work

174 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

you are now doing. Not only in India, but
throughout the East, great changes are in the
future." His prophecy is even now being
fulfilled. This society has missions not only
in India and Ceylon, but in Japan, Africa,
Persia, etc. *' If these women," says an in-
telligent Hindu, "reach the hearts of the
women of our country, they will soon get at
the heads of the men." The far-reaching in-
fluence of this zenana movement may be seen
in one representative instance. The young
queen, who came to the throne at the crisis
in Madagascar, was a pupil of Miss Bliss, at
the girls' central school at the capital of the
island.

While God thus opened the door of access
to gentile women, He moved Christian women
to organize for their greatest crusade. This
growth of women's boards of missions con-
stitutes an epoch in history.

So far as we can learn, the Woman's
Union Missionary Society, organized in New
York in i860 or 1 861, under the leadership
of the lamented Mrs. T. C. Doremus, and

WOMAN'S WORK FOR WOMAN. 1 75

with the " Missionary Link " as its organ and
periodical, is the pioneer in this country.
This undenominational society led the way,
and was the parent of the various denomina-
tional boards now found in connection with
all the great Christian bodies. The one ori-
gin of all these societies was the inaccessi-
bility of heathen women to male missionaries ;
and their aim was to engage the co-operation
of women with existing foreign missionary
boards in sending out and supporting un-
married female missionaries and teachers to
heathen women.

The rallying cry first heard in London, and
then so nobly echoed in New York, soon
began to be repeated and emphasized in
connection with the Christian women of the
different Christian denominations. Early in
1868 the New England Women's Foreign
Missionary Society was formed in Boston,
with Mrs. Albert Bowker, president, and Mrs.
Homer Bartlett, treasurer. The American
Board had in 1867 sent into the field ten
single women, appropriating to this object

176 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

$25,cxx). The women generally felt that in
such enlarged efforts in behalf of their sex
they should be both prompters and helpers.
Woman owes to Christianity what she is, not
only as a disciple, but as woman domestically
and socially. Woman naturally sympathizes
with her own sex, and appreciates the degra-
dation or elevation of womankind. Not only
is woman accessible only to woman in the
social system of most pagan peoples, but she
needs the practical illustration of what the
gospel has done for woman as seen in the
Christian woman herself. Such were some
of the considerations which lay at the founda-
tion of this uprising of women in Christian
lands in behalf of women the world over.

Moreover, in all education woman is God's
ordained pioneer. As wife, mother, sister,
daughter, she sways the sceptre in the
home ; man may be the head, but she is the
heart, of the family. The plastic clay is in
her hands: she sits at the potter's wheel;
and if vessels are moulded into fitness for
the Master's use, a sanctified hand must

WOMAN'S IVORK FOR WOMAN. 1 77

preside at the wheel, where character and
destiny take shape. To organize women,
distinctively, would quicken interest in the
spiritual welfare of their own sex, and secure
larger means for the support of women as
missionaries and teachers; connection with
existing boards would secure the benefits of
their experience and knowledge without
needless trouble and expense. Christian
women, thus organized, gave their energies
to diffuse intelligence and increase interest
as to foreign missions, and to gather offer-
ings. In addition to existing channels, they
established direct correspondence with fe-
male missionaries, and held monthly meet-
ings to hear new intelligence and pray for
the anointing of the " spirit of missions."

The collections of the first month enabled
this New England society to assume support
of a missionary about to leave for South
Africa. In March a circular was issued, ad-
dressed to Christian women, — a model of
beauty, brevity, pathos, and power. It re-
fers to the degradation and wretchedness of

178 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

women in heathen and Mohanunedan coun*
tries ; to the new doors open to labor among
them; to the special fitness of woman for
this work; and to the noble service of our
women in the war for the Union, which sug-
gests, in w^oman's work for woman, a more
glorious field for her in the conflict of the
ages. This circular also urges the formation
of auxiliary societies.

The first quarterly meeting was largely
attended. Letters were read from three wo-
men, all about to be living links between the
society and the pagan world; namely, Miss
Edwards, bound for the Zulu Mission, and
Miss Andrews and Miss Parmelee, bound
for Turkey. These were first-fruits, — bless-
ing the work of the first quarter. Other
letters were read from women already in the
field, and one from the pen of Mrs. Cham-
pion, thirty-one years before, herself a pioneer
to South Africa. This society also under-
took to maintain, as Bible-readers, ten native
women.

June 1st brought another meeting at the

WOMAN'S WORK FOR WOMAN. 1 79

Old South Church, and showed how fast and
firm were the roots of the organization in the
hearts of Christian women, and how full its
flowering stalk was of the opening blooms
that promised growing service. Mrs. Cyrus
Stone, long since by illness driven from the
Mahratta Mission, too weak to stand, sat and
pleaded for the women whose low level she so
well knew, declaring that if she had a thou-
sand lives she would give them all to lift her
sex to a higher plane. Mrs. Wheeler, of
Harpoot, appealed to mothers to give their
children, and to maidens to give themselves,
to the work ; contrasting the extravagant in-
dulgence of Christian women with the self-
denials of native converts, instancing a man
and his wife who sold their only bed and
slept on a mud floor, living for three days
upon ten cents, that they might give to the
Lord!

What was at flrst a local organization, as-
piring to no broader territory than New Eng-
land, like the banyan tree, bending down its
branches to take root on every side, became

l8o THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

now the parent of auxiliary organizations.
And so, October 8th, in connection with the
meeting of the American Board at Norwich,
Conn., the New England Women's Foreign
Missionary Society, with tears of joy, was
christened the "Women's Board of Mis-
sions."

Here we reach a new epoch. On Oct 27,
1868, many ladies met in the Second Pres-
byterian Church, Chicago, to form a similar
society for the West The States of the
interior were largely represented, and more
than fifty letters were read from those who
could not attend. Thus, about ten months
after the formation of that New England
society, there sprang into life the Women's
Board of Missions for the Interior.

The Women's Board of the East held its
first annual meeting in Boston, January, 1869,
over six hundred ladies being present, in
spite of stormy weather. Rev. Drs. Clark,
Washburn, Webb, and Kirk spoke of the vast
amount of ability in women, needing and
craving a fit field for work.

WOMAN'S WORK FOR WOMAN. l8l

As early as February, 1869, ^^ Women's
Board of the Interior undertook the support
of Miss Tyler, of Madura Mission, and of
Miss Dean, of Oroomiah, Persia, and in
March began to publish its quarterly, " Life
and Light for Heathen Women." In May, a
third missionary, — Miss Porter, of Pekin, —
besides several Bible-readers, were taken
under care; and in August two more, — Miss
Pollock and Miss Beach; and twenty-six
auxiliaries were reported. During its first
year, up to Nov. 4, 1869, $4,09677 were
gathered.

At the second annual meeting of the
Board of the East, the total receipts reported
were over $14,000; it had thirty-two mis-
sionaries and Bible-readers, and had appro-
priated $3,000 for a home for single women
at work at Constantinople.

To complete this sketch, it ought to be
added that women's missionary societies
have now become so numerous that Rev.
R. G. Wilder gives a list of twenty-two
women's boards, representing twelve denom-

1 82 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

inations, and an aggregate of receipts for
1884 of nearly one million dollars. These
twenty-two boards represent hundreds of
auxiliary societies and bands in almost every
considerable church of the land.

It ought also to be added that the steady
and rapid growth of the contributions of these
women's boards shows the effect of thor-
ough system and of " organizing the lit-
tles." The contributions of the Presbyterian
Women's Board, for example, as reported to
the Assembly in 1871, were $7,000; in 1872,
$27,000; in 1873, $64,000; in 1874, $87,000;
in 187s, $96,000; in 1876, $115,000; in
1877 and 1878, $124,000; in 1879, $136,000;
in 1880, $176,000; in 1881, $170,000; in
1882, $178,000; in 1883, $193,000; in 1884,
$204,000; and in 1885 and 1886, $224,000.
Here is an increase of thirty-two fold — from
$7,000 to $224,000 — in fifteen years; and,
except in three cases, — 1878, 1881, and 1886,
— the amount reported is an advance on the
year previous !

Chalmers used to say that in all benevolent

WOMAN'S IVORK FOR IVOMAN. 1 83

work one woman is worth just seven and a
half men. Surely "this is the finger of
God," when Christian women are organized
in such a crusade to redeem their sex in
pagan and Mohammedan lands from domes-
tic and spiritual thraldom !

Note to Page 174.

After the first edition of this book was issued, the author
received additional information, which is gladly appended
to this chapter on Woman's Work : —

" The exact facts are as follows : Mrs. Ellen B. Mason,
wife of Rev. Francis Mason, D.D., a Baptist missionary
from Burmah, stopped in Calcutta on her way to America,
and learned the story of Mrs. Mullen's zenana slippers to
which you allude on page 170. Mrs. Mason, with two
ladies still living, Mrs. J. D. Richardson and Mrs. H. C.
Gould (my mother), visited influential families in Boston ;
and the first society, consisting of nine ladies (whose names
I have), was formed in Boston, November, i860. Miss
M. V. Ball, President. Subsequently, in 1861, societies
were formed in New York, Brooklyn, and Philadelphia;
and the New York society, by reason of its strength,
was allowed to become the general society. The early
records were destroyed by fire, hence the general mis-
understanding regarding the origin of the society. These
facts are not vital, only advantageous for accuracy." —

RSV. L. A. GrOULD. .

CHAPTER XX.

THE PREPARATION OF THE CHURCH.

HE same Divine Providence which
thus opened doors, made barriers
to subside, and prepared the field
for the sower, educated the Church for the
mission work. Though the pious and prayer-
ful student of history may now trace the
moving pillar far back into the centuries,
the eyes of disciples generally were then
holden that they saw it not. The rising of
the morning-star of the Reformation was the
signal for an unconscious preparation of
God's church for the world-wide preaching
of the Word. That double reformation in
philosophy and religion laid the basis fof
purer and more primitive faith and life, gave
the Bible to the people in their own tongue,
made the line fainter between clergy and

PREPARATION OF THE CHURCH. 185

laity, and by striking a blow at priestcraft
revived both evangelical piety and evangel-
istic activity. Eyes long blinded to God's
true nature and man's real need began dimly
to see that the race was lost, and could be
saved only by the gospel, through the
Church.

Step by step proceeded the divine prepa-
ration for the modern era of missions. That
triad of inventions — the mariner's compass,
printing-press, and steam as a motor — made
all nations, neighbors, and gave winged san-
dals to the herald of the cross, while it mul-
tiplied and scattered the leaves of the Word
of Life. Still the Church as a body seemed
not only blind and deaf, but dead to all
sense either of debt or love to a dying world.
The proposal of missions to the heathen met,
a century ago, with cold indifference, if not
with sneers of ridicule; and the missionary
advance of the century, of which we often
speak with boasting, as though it were the
glory of the Church, is simply due to the
wonder-working power of God. Few per-

1 86 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

sons really appreciate how necessary it was
that the Church itself should first be con-
verted to an interest in missions.

Since Luther nailed up his theses, there
has been no historic hour so dark as the first
half of the eighteenth century. Even Eng-
land was, as Isaac Taylor said, in '^ virtual
heathenism," with a lascivious literature, an
infidel society, a worldly church, and a
deistic theology. Blackstone heard every
clergyman of note in London, but there was
not one discourse that had more Christianity
in it than the orations of Cicero, or showed
whether the preacher was a disciple of Con-
fucius, Mahomet, or Christ In America,
Samuel Blair declared that " religion lay
a-dying." In France, Voltaire, Rousseau, and
Madame de Pompadour led society ; and in
Germany, Frederick the Great made his
court the Olympus of infidels.

While Collins and Tindal were denouncing
Christianity as priestcraft, Whiston was call-
ing Bible miracles grand impositions, and
Woolston treating them as allegories; while

PREPARATION OF THE CHURCH, 1 87

Clarke and Priestley openly taught the here-
sies of Arius and Socinus, and even morality
was trampled under foot, — what missionary
activity could there be? To diffuse such
"Christianity" would be disaster; but such
a type of "piety" had no diffusive tendency
or power; if it had any divine fire left, it
could not spare a coal, or even a spark, to
light a blaze elsewhere.

The only hope of missions lay in a revival
of religion, wide-spread, deep-reaching; and
that is what God gave to His church through
a wonderful constellation of evangelists.
Whitefield, the Wesleys, Grimshaw, Romaine,
Rowlands, Berridge, Venn, Walker of Truro,
Hervey, Toplady, Fletcher, — are named by
Bishop Ryle as the twelve apostles of that new
Reformation which, between 1735 and 1785,
woke not only England but the Protestant
world from the awful sleep of irreligion and
infidelity. The Church was so nearly apos-
tate that the efforts to revive her dying life
were at first met with resistance. Whitefield
found Scotch ministers opposing him by set

1 88 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

days of fasting and prayer, as though he
were the Antichrist ; and it was the shutting
of church doors against himself and Wesley
that drove them to that open-air preaching
which proved the great stride of the century
toward the reaching of the masses.

But the Spirit of God was breathing on the
dry bones. The fires, slowly kindled at first,
burned brighter and hotter, caught here and
there, spread far and wide, till even America,
across the sea, was aflame within fifty years
from Whitefield's first sermon at Gloucester.
All Protestant Christendom thrilled with a re-
vived evangelical faith; and, as evangelistic
zeal is sure always to follow, out of these new
Pentecostal outpourings came the flaming
tongues of witness. From the silver trum-
pets pealed forth a summons to prayer for the
effusion of the Spirit upon all disciples, and
upon the whole habitable earth. Praying-
bands responded to the trumpet-peal in all
parts of Britain, and from American shores
came, in 1747, the answering echo of Jona-
than Edwards's " bugle-call to concerted

PREPARATION OF THE CHURCH, 1 89

prayer." The tidal wave of revival rose to a
higher flood-mark and moved with greater
force under the Haldanes, Andrew Fuller,
SutclifTe, Rowland Hill, and others.

In 1784 the Northamptonshire Association
made the first Monday of each month a
" monthly concert of prayer " for the world's
evangelization. The revived Church, after
this awful period of drought, began to pray
for a great rain, and a cloud like a man's
hand appeared on the horizon; and within
eight years that first Foreign Missionary So-
ciety was formed in England which, in 1793,
sent to India, William Carey, the heroic man
who, within the thirty years following, secured
the translation of the Scriptures into forty
tongues, and the circulation of two hundred
thousand copies. Thus the revival of evan-
gelical faith and of concerted prayer are the
two pillars on which rests the arch of modern
missions.

That little cloud has grown till the whole
heaven is overspread, and there is a sound
of abundance of rain. During less than one

I90 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

hundred years the namber of translations of
the Word has increased fivefold, — from fifty
to two hundred and fifty ; of Protestant mis-
sionary societies, fourteen-fold, — fi-om seven
to one hundred ; of male missionaries, eigh-
teen-fold, — from one hundred and seventy to
three thousand; of contributions, forty-fold,
— firom two hundred and fifty thousand to
ten million of dollars; of converts, fifty>fold,
— firom fifty thousand to two and a half
million; of mission schools, two hundred-
fold, — from seventy to upwards of fourteen
thousand.^

More remarkable still is it how God has
turned the whole tide of thought in the
Church since William Carey first offered to
go and meet the giant Anakim of heathen-
ism. The wave was then at its lowest ebb.
Dr. Ryland could then bid Carey "sit down,"
and leave God to care for a lost world ; and
Sydney Smith could sneer at the pious shoe-
maker of Paulerspury, and characterize his
schemes as '* the dreams of a dreamer who

^ Tliese ire givoi only as ^pmarimaitr %iires.

PREPARATION OF THE CHURCH. 191

dreams that he has been dreaming." A
little later, the Scottish General Assembly
pronounced the idea of universal missions
" fanatical and absurd, dangerous and revo-
lutionary," and provoked old John Erskine
to open the Bible battery and pour into them
hot shot and shell. Still later, the mission-
ary pioneers of America timidly ventured to
ask the General Association of the old Bay
State whether the zeal that God had kindled
in their hearts to follow Carey's footsteps was
" visionary and impracticable ; " and Ben-
jamin W. Crowninshield objected, on the
floor of the Senate of Massachusetts, to the
proposed charter of the American Board of
Commissioners for Foreign Missions, on the
ground that it " would export religion,
whereas there was none to spare among our-
selves," not knowing that " religion is a com-
modity of which the more we export the
more we have remaining."

And now, from that low ebb of less than a
century ago, the tide has risen to a flood-
mark never before reached, and is still rap-

192 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

idly rising. That same England that then
sneered at Carey is to-day prouder of him
than Macedon was of Alexander, Athens, of
Pericles, or Rome, of Cicero. London lifts to
its lofty pedestal in the world's metropolis,
the statue of Living^stone, as a perpetual in-
centive and inspiration to Christian colonies
to push into the heart of the Dark Continent
The Scotch Assembly now stands in the
vanguard of missions, and reverences Duff
almost as much as Paul; and American
churches urge their columns against the
ranks of pagan and papal hosts, and erect
missionary lectureships in the foremost of
our theological schools, to train young men
to imitate the devotion of Judson and Brain-
erd, Martyn and Taylor.

CHAPTER XXI.

THE WHITE HARVEST FIELDS.

|EFORE we pass to consider the
" gracious signs," it may be well for
us to sweep, as in one comprehensive
glance, over the wide fields made ready for
the sower, and in many cases for the sickle,
by the providence of God.

We have seen how, at the outset of the
modern missionary campaign, the foes of the
kingdom stood as in one compact phalanx,
— Herod and Pilate made friends together in
opposing Christ ; Oriental empires forbidding
approach ; Oriental religions denouncing
apostasy as a capital crime; and Oriental
churches, behind the empty shell of a dead
formalism, hiding a hatred of evangelical
faith, fully as malignant and intolerant. We
have seen God making a highway for His

194 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

chariot through the iron gates of heathen
hostility and Christian apathy, and joining
the centres of Christendom and Pagandom.

While God permitted Protestant England
to plant an empire toward the sunrise, the
Pilgrims were driven to these shores to sow
the seeds of a Christian republic beside the
setting sun. Thus Britain was unconsciously
reaching out eastward and westward to lay
the foundations for a world's evangelization.
Then the providence of God, by the issue of
conflicts in America and India, settled the
question that in both hemispheres the cross,
and not the crescent nor crucifix, was to be
dominant.

By the middle of the eighteenth century,
Asia and America, respectively, were held by
the foremost Protestant powers of the world :
England having a firm foothold in the critical
centre of Oriental paganism, and controlling
the highway to the Indies ; America prepar-
ing not only to evangelize this continent, but
to move westward and carry the gospel to
Polynesia and across the Pacific.

THE WHITE HARVEST FIELDS. 195

Truly God's hand is in all this history.
Had England not held that highway to the
East, the destinies of Europe and Asia might
have been changed ; Turkey divided between
Russia and France, if not devoured by Russia ;
the Greek and Roman churches crossing the
mountains and swaying all Asia. He, who
makes the wrath of man to praise Him, uses
English power and policy to check pope,
czar, and sultan; to shield converts from
persecution, whether by Armenians, Nesto-
rians, Moslems, or Brahmins; and to drive
an entering wedge into the heart of Asia, to
cleave in twain gnarled and knotted trunks of
Oriental pagan empires.

Meanwhile, the seed sown at Plymouth de-
velops a mighty evangelizing power, which
in course of two centuries moves across the
continent, and, as though there were no more
sea, advances toward the eastern coasts of
Asia. God has provided a counter-force,
moving from the opposite direction, to meet
England and oppose her cleaving wedge, as
anvil opposes hammer, with the resistance

196 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

not of antagonism but of co-operation. An-
other irrepressible conflict has come. Com-
merce insists, in the name of a common
human brotherhood, that there shall be an
open highway around the globe, and knocks
loudly at the gates of exclusive Eastern em-
pires, until they are unbarred. Then, where
commerce, arms, and diplomacy open the
way, the gospel quietly enters and takes
possession.

Let the glory be not unto man, but unto
God. The nations were building wiser than
they knew in constructing this level highway
for trade and travel. Back of all was the
God of nations with titanic blows cleaving a
way for His gospel from the gates of the
Golden Horn to the Chinese Sea through the
continent of Asia.

This same God who thus prepared the way
for His people's advance, quickened their
dull consciences and sluggish pulses to move
along the lines He had indicated. When the
Church, immersed in selfishness, carnality,
and scepticism, is heedless both of Christian

THE WHITE HARVEST FIELDS. 197

duty and human destitution, He sends a suc-
cession of evangelists, like the minor proph-
ets of the days of Jewish apostasy, to revive
primitive faith and life. He imparts a spirit
of prayer, uniting devout souls in earnest
supplication. He leads a few heroic disciples
to dare the assault on pagan strongholds, and
moves the Church to organize missionary
boards to sustain and strengthen these work-
ers and warriors. The whole plan bears, in
the very unity and consistency of its parts,
the marks of one providential purpose.

In view of such manifest moving of God's
providence in missions, is it strange that the
missionary worker feels inspired and encour-
aged? He moves under the very shadow
of the august divine presence; he feels
encompassed with God; the angel of His
presence goes before him. No barriers are
insurmountable, no foes formidable. Seas
dry up, mountains melt to plains, the children
of Amalek are routed and the giant sons
of Anak repulsed, and the walls of Satan's
strongholds tumble before a blow is struck.

igS THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

Annies of aliens may encompass the humble
herald of Christ, but his eyes are opened to
see the invisible hosts of God encamping
round about him to deliver him. Difficulties
do not dismay his heroic soul ; for he knows
God is with him, and that with God nothing
b impossible. He is not restrained to save
by many or by few; the silver and the gold
are His. He turneth the heart of man, and
even of kings, whithersoever He will; and
He can work so rapidly that with Him one
day is as a thousand years.

The only adequate impulse or inspiration
to the work of missions must be found, not
on the human, but on the divine, side of the
work. God's mind is in the plan; God's
hand is in the execution of it. Barriers there
may even yet be, insurmountable by human
power; ignorance, bigotry, and superstition
may wage a desperate war against the gospel,
and the fight may only be the more deter-
mined as we come to close quarters. Nay,
the Church may cry " retrench ! " while the
Lord says " advance ! " may withhold men

THE WHITE HARVEST FIELDS. 199

and money in her selfish avarice and world-
liness; but to preach the gospel to every
creature is to obey our ascended Loi?d, and
to move on to an assured and ultimate
victory.

Whichever way we turn our eyes to scan
the harvest field, the signs of the times be-
token the immediate duty of putting in the
sickle. There are sure signs of a day-dawn.
We have passed the dull gray that is the first
advance herald of the morning, and even the
purple and crimson tints that tell of the glory
hastening on ; the east shows something more
than dark clouds edged with gold, - — the
Sun of righteousness is rising on the world !
Christlieb, completing his survey, breaks forth
in rapture : " Yes, the present is, thank God,
the century of missions, such as has never
been. In it the age of world-wide missions
has begun. More than all the generations
on whose dust we tread can we to-day take
up the Psalm, *A11 the ends of the earth have
seen the salvation of our God ! ' Let us take
to ourselves the great consolation that to-day,

200 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

as never before, the work is advancing. The
long and laborious process of undermining
the chief strongholds of heathenism will one
day be followed by a great crash."

The final triumph of the gospel is as sure
as the promises of God. But we are to use
prophecy, not as a sedative and narcotic, but
as a tonic and stimulant. Duty is ours, re-
sults are God's. We are not responsible for
conversion, but we are for contact. We are
to go everywhere and preach the gospel. All
are to go, and to go to all. We are to bear
our witness among all nations, and leave our
God to bear His witness in confirmation of
our own. We are to strike for the strategic
centres, the three great empires that sway the
East, — Turkey, Hindostan, and China, — to
guide Japan in her new awakening, and the
Congo State in its new incorporation among
the free peoples of the civilized world.

Fearful will be the responsibility of even
hesitation, where delay may imply disaster
which even centuries cannot repair. Let us
promptly follow the Pillar.

CHAPTER XXII.

THE GRACIOUS SIGNS.

I HE promise of supernatural signs,
which was joined to our Lord's
last command, was sealed, in the
early history of the Church, by actual fulfil-
ment; and disciples were thus emboldened,
even in the midst of threatenings, to preach
the Word. Because those signs ceased in
fulness and frequency, it has been assumed
that they were meant to serve a certain defi-
nite purpose through a limited period. The
Scriptures assign no such limits, and the no-
tion of such limitation was an after-thought,
and an apology for their cessation.

It is to be feared that the disappearance
of those early signs had some^ connection
with the decline of primitive piety. If our
Lord designed, in some supernatural form,

202 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

to set His seal and sanction upon the faithful
and universal preaching of the gospel, it is
still plain that, when the Church lost her
separate character a^d her pure faith and
her burning zeal, and became pervaded by
the spirit of the age, the conditions no more
existed which were essential to the continued
displays of His peculiar presence and power.
It may be said that marked divine interposi-
tions are no longer necessary, since the gos-
pel has received its sufficient attestation.
But we notice that primitive saints besought
God to grant them boldness in preaching
His word, by stretching forth His hand to heal,
and doing signs and wonders in the name of
Jesus ; and seem to have regarded such inter-
positions as needful to such boldness.

Was there ever a day when worldliness
and wickedness, materialism and naturalism,
scepticism and atheism, made constant and
convincing proofs of the supernatural more
needful to give boldness to those who preach
the Word? It is a fact that supernatural
signs have always abounded, and still abound.

THE GRACIOUS SIGNS. 203

in proportion to the measure of the response
we yield to the command, " Go ye into all
the world and preach the gospel to every
creature."

The presence of God, by His providence,
in missionary history, is not more marked
than the power of His grace, in the mighty
results whose only sufficient and efficient
cause is the Divine Spirit. Such grace fur-
nishes, and becomes, God's "everlasting
sign." " Instead of the thorn comes up the
fig-tree, and instead of the brier, the myrtle-
tree ; " in other words, there is a divine dis-
placement of noxious, offensive, and hurtful
growths by the fragrant, beautiful, fruitful
plants of godliness and trees of righteous-
ness ; and this constitutes the standing, per-
petual miracle of the ages. This is God's
** everlasting sign which shall not be cut off."
Other signs may fail : the deaf may no more
be made to hear, the blind to see, the lame
to leap, or the dumb to sing; but a greater
marvel continually proves that God is Him-
self tilling the soil of the human heart and

204 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

of human society, for the plants of heaven
begin to grow, thrive, bloom, and even unbe-
lievers are compelled to confess, "ye are
God's husbandry."

These gracious signs of God's presence and
power may be traced in three prominent
directions: first, in the transformation of
personal character^ and even entire commu--
nities, by the gospel ; secondly, in tAe conse-
cration of the laborers themselves to a life
of heroic sacrifice ; and, thirdly, in the reflex
influence of missions upon the church life^
lifting it to a higher plane of unselfish giv-
ing and aggressive effort. This threefold
effect, wrought on so large a scale and in
so short a time, argues a final cause that
is nothing short of God Himself, and it is
the more indisputable from the fact that such
changes have been wrought against all the
hostile forces of the natural heart

There is no plea which can be urged in
behalf of missions that silences all objections
so promptly, stirs the soul of a believer so
profoundly, or kindles a holy enthusiasm so

THE GRACIOUS SIGNS. 205

rapidly, as the overwhelming argument and
appeal found in the triumphs of God's grace
in heathen lands. If Christ has fulfilled his
promise,," Lo, I am with you alway," in the
interpositions of Providence, even more won-
drously and gloriously has He fulfilled it in
the transformations of grace. These abun-
dantly justify the emphatic declaration already
made, that, in exact proportion to the measure
of our fidelity in bearing this gospel message
to all men, is the measure of God's direct
sanction of our work, " bearing witness both
with signs and wonders, and with divers
miracles and gifts of the Holy Ghost, accord-
ing to His own will."

These "gracious signs" are so closely
linked with the "providential signals," that
already in considering the one we have been
compelled largely to exhibit the other. For
example, in tracing the opening of the doors
in India, Burmah, Siam, China, Japan, Korea,
Africa, and papal lands, we have seen Divine
Providence and grace working together.
Those inner walls of superstition, ignorance,

206 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

prejudice, idolatry, sensuality, brutality, could
never have been thrown down by mere force;
they were like walls of ice, that could only
be melted away. And so God simply shoney
as only He can shine. The Sun of Righteous-
ness exerted His power: there came super-
natural light and love and life all mysteriously
conveyed in one ray, before which Brahmin
and Karen, Siamese and Japanese, pagan and
papist, were alike made new men in Christ
Jesus.

There are, however, examples of the super-
natural power of God's grace, furnished in
the history of modern missions, that ought
to be placed by themselves, lifted into promi-
nende, set conspicuously in the framework
of our argument. They are the golden pages
in the annals of missions, that shine with the
inapproachable glory. We not only see the
fig-tree and myrtle springing up from the same
soil which bore only the thorn and the brier,
but we see the twigs and leaves glowing with
a celestial radiance, aflame with the same
glory that made the bush burn in the desert

THE GRACIOUS SIGNS. 207

of Horeb. This it is which makes every
mission field holy ground, and inspires
every true missionary with a holy passion
for the work which brings such displays of
grace.

In confirmation of this, we take, quite at
random, a few examples of individuals, and
then of communities, where God has wrought
these wonders of gracious transformation.
Considered singly, they present a proof of
the power of God beyond the possibility of
explanation by the sceptic or infidel; nay,
beyond the philosophy of those who believe
in the omnipotence of mere culture and
civilization. Considered together, they fur-
nish overwhelming evidence of the fact that
the gospel is still both the power of God
and the wisdom of God unto salvation, able
to reach both the highest and the lowest type
of man.

Mrs. Rhea has said that it would be a
blessed thing to look at Christ through the
eyes of Moses the friend of God, or David
the Messianic psalmist, or Isaiah the Mes-

208 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

sianic prophet, or John the beloved disciple,
or Paul the chosen vessel ; but that she would
rather see Jesus through the eyes of a con-
verted pagan woman, than through those of
prophet or apostle. And her words are not
hard to understand. For to none of the
goodly fellowship of the prophets, or the
holy company of the apostles, could He
appear so wondrously beautiful as to her
whom, by His love and grace, He had lifted
out of the horrible pit and miry clay of
association with soulless cattle and beasts
of burden ! Wonan in pagan lands has for
thousands of years been unreached by any
uplifting power. Even Greece, at the summit
of culture and refinement, could offer her
education only as the badge of a courtesan.
But as soon as the religion of Jesus reached
her, she found that she had a soul, and her
intellectual, moral, and social condition began
at once to feel the elevating power of the
gospel; and in proportion as that gospel
reaches, touches, moves, and moulds woman,
does she become what God meant her to be,

THE GRACIOUS SIGNS. 209

the last and best of His creation, the com-
panion, counsellor, partner of man.

In referring thus emphatically to the work
done by the gospel of Christ in and for
woman, we take her only as the type of
humanity in its lowest depths of destitution
and degradation. However low sin and
superstition have sunk man in pagan lands,
woman is always found one grade lower, for
she is under man's feet. The ruin is yet
more absolute and awful in her case than in
his. The power, that can reach and raise
the lowest, can reach and raise whatever lies
above it; and no better proofs are needed
of what the Christian religion can do, than
are found in what it has done and is doing.
Nowhere can mankind, and especially woman-
kind, be found in lower depths of mental,
moral, and social degradation than they were
in Australia, Polynesia, and such lands of
the death-shade, whose savages were scarce
one grade higher than the brutes they hunted
and killed. The Papuan, Maori, and Malagasy
seemed lost both to God and to humanity, —

210 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

coins whose original image and superscrip-
tion were worn off; yet they were restored
to humanity and to God, to be worn as pre-
cious, burnished pieces of silver on the neck-
lace of the Bride of Christ

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE TRANSFORMATIONS OF GRACE.

|T IS one of the mysterious sayings of
prophecy, that in the golden age
that is coming, even the wolf, bear,
leopard, and lion are to be led by a little
child. Already we have foretastes of the ful-
filment of this prediction. That little child
born in Bethlehem, who, in all His manly,
godly growth in wisdom and stature and in
favor with God and man, never lost the child-
like spirit, takes by the hand and leads men
as rapacious as the wolf, as treacherous as
the leopard, as ferocious as the bear or the
lion.

When Robert Moffat proposed to go to
Africaner, the terrible demon of the Dark
Continent, he was warned that he was an
incarnate fiend, who would make a virtue of

312 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

cruelty, and murder him that he might make
a drum-head of his skin and a drinking-cup
of his skull. But Moffat had faith in the
gospel of the grace of God. This Hottentot
chief had been driven north by Dutch in-
vaders until, taking his refuge beyond the
Orange River, he became a daring and des-
perate outlaw, robbing and murdering his
victims, and swaying a wide region with the
iron sceptre of terror. The colonial govern-
ments set a price upon his capture, dead or
alive, and hired neighboring ghiefs to make
war upon him; but in vain. In i8i8 Moffat
ventured to take up his abode with Africaner.
A change took place in the diabolical ruffian,
so complete that it was a new creation. His
outward and inward life was transformed; he
became a man of peace; the helper, friend,
nurse of the missionary; a student of the
New Testament, an evangelist in spirit, a
winner of souls. Robert Mo
was based on his confidence in
the gospel to tame the fierce
ferocious men, and he saw that

THE TRANSFORMA TIONS OF GRA CE. 21$

himself combined wolf, bear, leopard, and
lion, turned into a Iamb.

What hope could there be of a South Sea
islander who, in pure malice of cruelty, first
slew his little brother without pity, and then
sent the corpse to his king for a sacrifice !
Dead to love, alive only to hate, making
sport of murder, and murder a sport ! Yet
he is but a representative — as Paul would
say, " a pattern" — of thousands from whom,
as from him, have been cast out a legion of
demons.

Sau Quala, the Karen slave, was by that
same gospel brought to Christ as the first
Karen convert, and then changed into an
apostolic worker. He aided the missionaries
in the translation of the Word, and for fifteen
years guided them through the jungles in
their missionary journeys in Tavoy and Mer-
gui ; then his holy zeal could no longer be
pent up, and he began himself to walk
through the country preaching, gathering con-
verts, planting churches, within three years
organizing nearly twenty-five hundred new

214 TiiE C^

disciples into ov
work was one of
heroically unsell
erty compelled
behind him, be
the luxury of
the face of the
ment position, 1
labor, refusing t
the Lord's wor
little biographic
tie with the exc
Where shall we
the cause of Chi
of ignorance, sel
gospel lever lift
During the re
oke school in Pi
the Nestorians,"
the school Ht
with gun and da
prayed, he sneei
ter prayed for
strike her, but tl

THE TRANSFORMA TIONS OF GRA CB. 21^

Fiske sought to win him, but he continued
to laugh and scorn for days. Then suddenly,
as if by a lightning-stroke, he was struck
down. He wept and prayed, went away to
be alone with God, and came back an en-
tirely changed man. The gun and dagger
were no more to be seen. Bowed down with
the weight of his sin, he declared that even
" if there were no hell he could not bear such
a load." He found rest in believing, and
henceforth all he could say was, " My great
sins and my great Saviour ! " Even Miss
Fiske, stunned by the miracle of such a con-
version, doubted his sincerity. But until his
death Deacon Guergis continued with lips
and life to tell of Jesus. You might have
met him travelling along the mountains, in
his red trousers, striped jacket, and big tur-
ban, with Testament and hymn-book in place
of gun and dagger, talking of sin and sal-
vation, and singing with stentorian voice,
" Rock of Ages," " There is a Fountain," etc.
On his dying bed he would rouse up and
shout, " Oh, it was free grace, free grace ! "

3l6 THE CRISIS OF MISSi

U. Bor. Sing, the heir of t
Cherra, India, was converted b
missionaries. He was warned tl
the Christians he would probab
right to be King of Cherra afl
of Rham Sing, who then ruled, b
teen months afterward, died, 1
the tribes met and unanimously
Bor. Sing was entitled to succi
that his Christian profession e
way. Messenger after messeng
urging him to recant. He was i
native council, and told that if 1
aside his religious profession tl
acknowledge him as king. His
" Put aside my Christian profe;
put aside my head-dress, or m;
as for the covenant I have m
God, I cannot for any considerai
aside ! " Another was therefoi
king in his stead. Since then
impoverished by litigation about
erty, till he is now in danger <
imprisonment; and Mr. Elliot!

THE TRANSFORM A TIONS OF GRA CE. 217

missioner of Assam, has appealed to Chris-
tians in this country on his behalf. Here is
a convert rejecting a crown for Christ !

Rev. John Thomas, of the Church Mission-
ary Society, has said of a convert among
the Shanars who died in i860, that he was,
without exception, the ablest and most
eloquent native preacher in India. " His
affection, simplicity, honesty, straightforward-
ness, amazing pulpit talents, and profound
humility, endeared him to me more than I
can describe," said this beloved missionary,
who also pronounced his last sermon on the
text, "enduring the cross, despising the
shame," the greatest sermon he ever heard
in its exaltation of Christ and its overwhelm-
ing effect

"Blind Bartimeus," of the Hawaiian Isl-
ands, is another example of transforming
grace. Out of the lowest depths of pagan
vice and vileness he rose to a level with the
most earnest, consecrated, self-oblivious dis-
ciples and laborers. His wonderful insight
into the truth, his inspired imagination, his

2l8 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

white-heat of ardor and fervor, his conta-
gious enthusiasm, his passionate love for
souls, enabled him to preach the most severe
truths with the tenderness of a seraph; and
his familiarity with the Word of God made
him, blind as he was, a walking concordance.
There is not a missionary field where such
triumphs of grace may not be constantly
seen; transformations of character quite as
marvellous and as absolutely inexplicable
without a divine factor, as any miracle of
apostolic days. Dr. Lindley used to say that
when a native Zulu, trading some trifling
article for a calico shirt, duck breeches, and a
three-legged stool, got his shirt and breeches.
on and sat on his little stool, he was a thou-
sand miles above all his fellows. But this is
only civilization. We must follow that poor
Zulu, just clothed, till the Word of God takes
root in his soul, and he becomes not only
beautiful and fruitful in holiness, but a
preacher and a winner of souls, giving the
life that has been plucked as a burning brand
from the fire of an earthly hell, to be

THE TRANSFORMATIONS OF GRACE. 219

consumed on the altar of Christian service;
and then we begin to understand how much
farther reach the transforming influences of
Christianity than those of mere civilization.
The Portuguese called the Hottentots "a
race of apes," and Dr. Vanderkemp read
over church-doors in Cape Colony, " Dogs
and Hottentots not admitted." Yet out of
those Hottentots what disciples have been
developed !

The Chinese in this country are the butt of
ridicule and the object of contempt and vio-
lence; yet Rev. Dr. Nevius and Hunter
Corbett have, with simple Chinese converts,
been working wonders of evangelism that
rival apostolic days. On their itinerating
tours, finding a few here and there open to
the gospel, they send out these new converts
to tell the story to their countrymen ; and so
does this gospel transform the lazy, selfish,
sordid Chinaman, that these missionaries find
scores of lay helpers ready to give their lives
to the work of gathering other converts to
Christ. And so in China hundreds are every

220 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

year won to Christ by lay evangelists whose
whole compensation averages from three to
five dollars a month!

The first messenger of Christ to carry the
Bible into Korea and offer it to the King was
a Chinese convert. The noblest examples of
self-denial, separation unto God, passion for
souls, singleness of aim, evangelistic zeal,
and liberal systematic giving, which have
been found during this century, have been
the outgrowth of missionary fields, and often
of the most hopeless soil, previously rank
with every unholy product. The new con-
verts from the most degraded tribes have
often put to shame the ripest fruits of our
Christian civilization!

In January, 1872, during the week of
prayer, one or two Japanese converts, re-
cently brought to Christ and taught in the
private classes of the missionaries, came into
the English meeting at Yokohama. There
they heard read and expounded, the story of
that first Pentecost from the Book of the
Acts of the Apostles. As though themselves

THE TRANSFORMATIONS OF GRACE. 221

set on fire with pentecostal flames, they fell
on their knees, and with prayers like those of
Daniel and Paul, besought God to pour out
the Spirit in a new Pentecost upon Japan, till
even the captains of the English and Amer-
ican war-ships wept and said, " The prayers
of these new Japanese converts take the heart
out of us."

In a personal communication to the au-
thor, the Rev. William Ashmore, D.D., of
Swatow, China, writes, as to the signs of
divine grace among the Chinese : —

" Bring of the fish which ye have now caughtP

" The converts give evidence, all-sufficient, that
they are of the kind the Master takes to Himself,
and not those which are thrown away. Conver- •
sion in China is followed by exactly the same \
fruits as in all the rest of the world. Love to all \
the saints they evince in word and m deed. Next *
to the love of Christ, which reigns supreme, this
sympathy and large-hearted active charity to per-
secuted brethren in other places is noteworthy.
Before conversion they cared nothing about suf- |
fering people elsewhere; but now, hearing that
some whom they have never seen are driven from

222 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

their homes for Christ's sake, they are ready to
share with them what little they have.

" The crucial test of a man's faith in China is
his repudiation of ancestral worship for himself
after death. An old Christian called his idol-
worshipping sons to his bedside, and, gathering
all his remaining strength in one last effort,
charged them to send for the Christians to read
the Scriptures at his funeral, and pray and sing
about the resurrection, and, under pain of his dis-
pleasure, have no heathen ceremonies over him
and no offerings made to him after he was gone.
Knowing their perversity, he even threatened that
if any heathen rites should disgrace his burial,
and the Lord would permit, his spirit would come
back and manifest his abhorrence. Another, a
poor woman, after asking for prayer and render-
ing up her own praise, handed me the savings of
a lifetime, — more than two hundred dollars, —
begging me to use them for Jesus. The last re-
quest of her husband was, that when his tomb
should be made, there might be written upon it
simply his name, and after it, ' a disciple of Jesus.'
Having been a faithful witness in his life, he
wished to continue witnessing after his death."

Let these few individual examples, drawn
from the sable sons of Africa, the Karen

THE TRANSFORMATIONS OF GRACE. 22$

slaves of Burmah, the wild Koords of Persia,
the superstitious Brahmins of India, the vile
pagans of Polynesia, the iron-bound Con-
fucianists of China, and the benighted Buddh-
ists of Japan, stand as illustrations of the fact
that wherever the gospel goes, its career is
one of conquest God is with His own Word,
and it returns not to Him void.

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE PRODUCTS OF GOD'S HUSBANDRY.

|E turn from individual examples of
the fruits of grace on heathen soil to
consider a few of the broader fields,
which have brought forth some thirty, some
sixty, and some even an hundred fold under
God's gracious tillage. If the conversion and
sanctiiication of individuals is a remarkable
proof of divine power, what shall be said of
communities where the whole aspect and
prospect of affairs have been not only
rapidly, but radically, transformed !

In 1816 William A. B. Johnson, a plain
German laborer, went from London, as a
school-teacher, to Sierra Leone. When he
first went to Regent's Town he found a thou-
sand people saved from the holds of slave-

PRODUCTS OF GOD'S HUSBANDRY. 225

ships ; they were wild and naked, represented
twenty-two hostile tribes, and seemed abso-
lutely beyond reformation. They had no
morals, but were shiftless, brutal thieves and
murderers, crowding together in filthy huts,
without even the conception of marriage;
and as to religion, that was devil-worship.
Johnson cast himself on that gospel which
is the power and the wisdom of God unto
salvation, and before one year had passed, old
and young began to inquire after salvation ;
the woods heard their whispered prayers,
and the hills echoed with their hymns. The
whole aspect of the settlement was changed.
Trades and even learned professions took the
place of lawlessness and violence; idleness
and ignorance gave way to industry and in-
telligence. They built a stone church, which
was regularly filled with nearly two thousand
worshippers, and schools were crowded with
children. Marriage took the place of pro-
miscuous concubinage; the Lord's Supper
displaced heathen revels ; and thievery, pro-
fanity, and blasphemy ceased. All this John-

226 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

son saw, yet he died in 1823. AH this
change was the fruit of seven years.

The existing Christian community in Tur-
key is an unanswerable proof of what the
gospel can do, even in soil as hopeless as
that of the Sultan's dominions. Here are
exhibited the fruits of the Spirit in superior
intelligence and integrity, morality and spirit-
uality, Christian activity and benevolence.
Wheeler's " Ten Years on the Euphrates " is
one of the most thrilling books in our mis-
sionary library. It shows us how, along the
great river Euphrates, scores of self-support-
ing churches have been planted, sustaining
their own native pastors, and demonstrating
the practicability of the tithe-system as the
financial basis of evangelization. Some of
these churches began with but ten believers ;
but each conscientiously gave his tithe, and
these ten tithes constituted a sum, equal to
the average income of those poor church-
members, to support a pastor willing to live
on a level with his people, and leaving him
his tithe likewise to offer to the Lord, and

PRODUCTS OF GOD'S HUSBANDRY. 227

yet have as much as they for his own
use.

And so from the Tigris to the Bosphorus,
in face of the despotic oppression and per-
secuting hostility of the Turkish government,
Protestant churches have not only been organ-
ized, and have outlived all hinderances to life
and growth, but have waxed strong wrestling
with the storm; and it is hoped that these
churches in the Ottoman Empire will soon be
able to dismiss missionary oversight and take
care of their own Christian work, not only
self-supporting and self-governing, but self-
propagating.

The " Lone Star '* Mission among the Te-
lugus has for eight years been the cynosure
of all eyes. At one time it had almost ceased
to shine, however feebly; then it suddenly
blazed forth with a brilliancy Hke that of Sir-
lus. At the anniversary meetings in Albany,
N. Y., in 1853, it was proposed to abandon
this mission, as both a fruitless and hopeless
enterprise. At least thirteen years seemed to
have been spent in vain. On that occasion

228 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

Dr. S. F. Smith wrote and published the
poem beginning

'' Shine on, Lone Star ! thy radiance bright
Shall yet illume the western sky," etc.

Twenty-five years passed away, and the
eventful year 1 878 came. In that same " Lone
Star " Mission there was a display of divine
grace that has had no parallel since the
first Pentecost. A spiritual harvest was there
gathered which seemed to many incredible.
Within twenty-one days there were added to
one church in Ongole 5,429 new converts,
and on one day, 2,222. Still later, in that
same field, there were 3,262 additional bap-
tisms, making the whole number baptized
from June 16 to July 31, — forty-five days, —
nearly 9,000 1 probably exceeding the harvest
of the first Pentecost. That church in Ongole
was organized in 1867, only eleven years
before, with eight souls. In those eleven
years every one of those little ones literally
"became a thousand." (Isa. Ix. 22; Ps.
Ixxii. 16.)

PRODUCTS OF GOD'S HUSBANDRY. 229

Nor were these converts hastily gathered
or carelessly admitted. The severe famine of
1877 had made the feeding of the starving
the work of the mission. And lest any
should be moved to join the mission church
from mercenary motives, and because there
was neither time nor strength to examine
candidates, those who applied for baptism
were kept waiting till the pressure of famine
was relieved. In fact, not one hundred of
the number received ever had from the mis-
sionaries the value of a quarter of a cent. As
we look back, we see that these fruits, instead
of being overstated^ are understated. Sixty
thousand people during that memorable year
turned to the living God from vain idols in
Southern India.

What a white harvest field may be found
in the empire of Japan ! That edict against
Christianity has never been repealed, and yet
what headway the gospel has made there,
overcoming even opposition ! At first, only
secular teaching was permitted ; then, as this
Christian teaching more and more savored of

230 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

the salt of the gospel, it was tolerated ; then
preaching in private was followed by assem-
blies for Christian worship and the organiza-
tion of Christian churches. In 1865 the first
convert was enrolled. In March, 1872, the
first Christian congregation of Yokohama was
formed with eleven members, — the first-fruits
of the prayers of those few Japanese in the
week of prayer just before. Within ten years
those eleven have multiplied one hundred-
fold. In October, 1880, the natives held a
meeting in the open air on the grounds of a
hotel in the public park at Uyeno ; some four
or five thousand people were in attendance,
and the meeting lasted two days. It was
openly advertised in the native newspapers,
and publicly announced by large post-bills,
which met the eye everywhere, and one of
them on the very spot where the old edict
board had so long stood. The mighty mo-
mentum of the gospel is felt even by the
government, and before it even the spirit of
opposition is giving way. Japan has been
taken possession of by the Church of Christ,

PRODUCTS OF GOD'S HUSBANDRY. 23 1

and the key to that Sunrise Kingdom is the
common school.

The changes in the Japanese Empire are
far more rapid and radical than we appre-
ciate ; and they are triumphs not of civiliza-
tion only, but of Christianity. Fukuzawa, in
advocating the adoption of the Christian reli-
gion by the State as a measure of political
advancement, may disavow all personal adhe-
sion to it as a disciple ; but his two sons are
at Oberlin, and are Christians. The natives,
even the most educated, cannot but feel the
superiority of the gospel to their heathen
systems ; and they marvel as they see how,
without even naming an idol. Christian dis-
ciples have a " splendid way of dying." At
Kioto, the priests organized a Society of
Natural Religion, to oppose Christianity, and
called it the " Yaso Taiji ; " but the govern-
ment forbade the use of the obnoxious word
" Taiji," as implying an intention of violent
antagonism. The priests may conspire to
oppose, but the religion of Christ is laying
hold of the people.

232 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS,

Dr. Hepburn thinks that, if all foreign mis»
sionaries were expelled to-morrow, the natives
would carry on the work. It is said that in
one district, since 1873, seventy-one Buddhist
temples have been abandoned to secular uses,
and since 1871 seven hundred throughout the
empire.

At the meeting of the American Board at
Syracuse in 1879 President Seelye moved the
following deliverance : —

"Never before has the gospel wrought such
great and speedy changes as during the past seven
years in Japan. It is not only the most remarka-
ble chapter in the history of modern missions, but
there is nothing in the history of the world to com-
pare with it. We talk about the early triumphs of
Christianity, but the early records of the Church,
bright as they may be, pale in the light of what is
taking place before our eyes at the present time.
Even Madagascar offers nothing to compare with
Japan."

Japan possesses two thousand newspapers,
— all the outgrowth of twenty-five years, —
more than Italy, or Austria, or Spain and

PRODUCTS OF COD'S HUSBANDRY, 233

Russia combined, and twice as many as all
Asia beside. Scholars of Europe and Japan
are making a new alphabet of Roman letters
to represent the eight thousand Japanese
characters; a Japanese-Latin lexicon has
been made, and Japanese-English books are
now preparing. In Fukuzawa's school at
Tokio a missionary is teaching, and Bible
doctrine is prominent. Fifteen students re-
cently asked baptism. We do not appreciate
the rapid elimination of the Asiatic features
from the government, and of the antiquated
Oriental ideas from the popular mind. The
entire New Testament is now given to the
people in their own tongue, and the Bible
societies are scattering the leaves of the Tree
of Life ; the Christian press is filling the land
with a Christian literature ; schools are gath-
ering both boys and girls, and there are three
theological seminaries; and the Island Em-
pire adopts a Christian type of civilization.

Mr. Tamura, a Japanese now in America,
acknowledges the fivefold debt which Japan
owes to this country : i. The opening of that

234 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

island empire to the world. 2. The influence
of America on the political life of Japan.
3. The pattern furnished for her educational
system. 4. The aid given to Japan in securing
an international standing. 5. The introduce
tion of Christianity. Upon this last " debt "
he expatiates in no ordinary terms. He says
that the empire was like a decaying tree,
whose fruit was cruelty, bloodshed, and cor-
ruption. "Even hope was dead. In 1859
the sower came, bearing the seed of truth
and life and hope. The Sun of Righteousness
began to shine, and the dark clouds of Shin-
tooism, Confucianism, and Buddhism began
to melt away." He testifies to the wonderful
rapidity with which the gospel roots itself in
the soil of Japan. " During the last ten years
over one hundred churches organized; over
eight thousand souls saved. The evangeliza-
tion of Japan is at hand." Thus while scep-
tical travellers are reviling and ridiculing the
work of missions, the natives of these lands
are loud-voiced in testimony to their value.
We have already seen how difficult a field

PRODUCTS OF GOD'S HUSBANDRY. 235

China presented for even a divine husbandry.
Missionaries labored in Foochow for thirty
years, among two millions of people. Eleven
years of that thirty left behind not one con*
vert, and scarce a visible token of good, to
reward all the labor and prayer expended.
Even the Church Missionary Society said,
" There are no results that justify the continu-
ance of the mission." But Mr. Wolfe, their
missionary, said, "I will not give up this
work ; " and a few months later the first
convert was baptized, then three more, and,
eighteen years after, there were three thou-
sand native disciples in Foochow. Ten years
ago it was reported that there were over
three hundred Protestant churches, with fif-
teen thousand members and fifty thousand
adherents; and these congregations, rapidly
advancing towards self-support, contributing
$20,000 annually. The appetite for reading
is such that the Chinese fight each other
in their eagerness to seize tracts distributed
among them by the missionaries ; and in one
year the mission presses at Shanghai yielded

236 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

to the Presbyterian Board five per cent upon
the whole amount spent that year for all
its missions throughout the world. A whole
town of five hundred inhabitants is lately
reported as embracing Christianity.

In Sanui, eighty miles from Canton, an un-
successful endeavor was made to get control
of a spacious temple ; it was refused at any
price. Three years after it was offered for the
nominal price of twenty dollars a year ; and
now the native pastor, Lai Pot Siin, is there
gathering his flock.

In British Columbia, on Pacific shores,
William Duncan, out of a body of brutal
Indians, some of them cannibals, built his
Metlakahtla, a Christian state, which, not
only morally and religiously, but socially,
politically, and commercially, is a new crown
for our Lord and King. After six months*
study of their language he made his first
sermon. Nine tribes crowded that one vil-
lage, and he could not get them to come to-
gether, in the same meeting; so he preached
that first sermon nine times in one evening.

PRODUCTS OF GOD'S HUSBANDRY. 237

As long ago as 1880 he stood at the
head of a community of one thousand souls,
with the largest church north of San Fran-
cisco, and manse, school, shops, and all the
marks of a Christian civilization. He is
solving the problem of the Indian ques-
tion, and proving that the decay of these
aboriginal tribes may not only be arrested,
but give place to the ingrafted scion of
gospel life. Lord DufTerin could not gather
from all the rich resources of the dead and
living languages, which his silver tongue so
grandly uses, words fit to express his aston-
ishment at what he saw in this community.
Surely it is better and cheaper to evangelize
the Indians than to exterminate them. Gen-
eral Sherman's campaign against the Chey-
ennes is reported to have cost $5,000,000;
it costs $500,000 to kill an Indian, and $500
to convert one. Those who estimate every
question on a financial basis may do well to
consider these comparative figures. History
may yet prove that there are some "good
Indians'' who are not "dead Indians."

238 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

All these examples might be multiplied
absolutely without limit. There is not a field
of missions, the world over, where the unmis-
takable fruits of grace have not been made
to grow and thrive. The Spirit of God moves
over the abyss of paganism, and divine life
develops in a new creation.

CHAPTER XXV.

THE ISLES WAITING FOR HIS LAW.

lOLYNESIA has been the scene of
gospel triumphs which, for charac-
ter, frequency, and rapidity, scarce
admit of comparison. Here is a sort of
submerged continent whose numberless pro-
jections form islands in the Pacific, arid where-
ever the gospel touches these islands it works
wonderful changes in their civil and social
life.

The story of the Sandwich Islands, or
Hawaiian group, is too familiar to need repe-
tition. Within fifty years an entire people,
saved from extinction, took their place in
the great brotherhood of Christian nations
side by side with others, on the same plane
of civilization, and in the same work of evan-
gelization. This shining example of the

240 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

dynamics of the gospel prepared us to look
for similar conquests, which singularly enough
have been specially multiplied among the
islands of the sea.

The annals of the gospel in the South
Seas should be written in starlight, for they
include some of the most shining pages in
the history of missions. John Williams, the
blacksmith's boy, the apostle of Polynesia,
found idolatry and savagery of the worst
type and lowest grade. Yet his progress
was one rapid career of conquest. Churches
and schools grew, he knew not how. A
lawless people adopt courts, frame a code
of laws, and conduct trials by jury. Printing-
presses scatter the leaves of the Tree of
Life; and a missionary society is formed,
with Pomare as its first president, and $2,500
are its first year's contribution. Within one
year after he landed at Raratonga, the popu-
lation of the whole Hervey group, numbering
seven thousand, have thrown away their idols,
and a church building six hundred feet long
is erecting. He turns to the Samoa group,

;CE THE ISLES WAITING FOR HIS LAW. 24I

l< and shortly has the whole people, numbering

sixty thousand, gathered in Christian schools.
Pomare, Queen of Tahiti and Moorea, died
at seventy years of age. At her birth the
missionaries had just come to the South Sea
Islands. Not one convert had been made.
At her death more than three hundred islands
were evangelized.

In the New Hebrides, John Geddie's mar-
ble slab bears the expressive, laconic epitaph,
and epitome of his experience at Aneityum :

Y^. " When he came here,

He found no Christians ;
When he left,
He left no heathens."

T ■'

t»

■1;

The Fiji group may perhaps challenge
any other record of gospel transformation
and triumph, in any age or land, to outshine
the golden pages of its history. In fifty
years, changes have taken place which no
pen of man can fitly portray. The condition
of the islands when, fifty years ago, mission-
aries first landed in Lakemba, was simply

horrible. Two hundred thousand people

242 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

were living in such a death-shade, that can-
nibalism was a requirement of their religion.
Infanticide, strangling of widows, tribal
wars, atrocious cruelties, were common and
awakened no repulsion. If a chief built his
hut, he surrounded the piles on which it
rested by rows of human beings, buried alive.
If he launched a canoe, the rollers by which
it was borne to the sea were living bodies,
crushed and ground to a jelly by its
weight

The story of Fiji would fill a volume, but
language has no adequate terms to describe
the abasement of this people, nor their atro-
cious and abominable customs. Such deeds
of darkness should be written in blood and
registered in hell. The Fijians are now a
Christian people. In seven years after mis-
sionary labor began among them, the island
of Ono had not one heathen left upon it, and
had become the " light-bearer " to the whole
group.

But at least the outlines of this marvel-
lous romance of missions should be drawn.

THE ISLES WAITING FOR HIS LA IV. 243

Against such colossal and gigantic diabolism
as seldom confronts even a missionary in
pagan lands, in the name of Jesus, and with
faith in his presence and power, two British
Wesleyan missionaries, — Rev. William Cross
and David Cargill, — Oct. 12, 1835, undertook
to open a mission. They gave the Fijians a
grammar and dictionary of their own tongue,
and the Gospel according to St Matthew.
Within eight months the new gospel held
sufficient sway to prevent the cruel rites of
cannibalism upon the shipwrecked crew of
the "Active." The missionary band grew,
and the sway of the gospel extended ; canni-
balism, murder, war, and finally polygamy,
gave way before it; hundreds and thousands
of native converts were gathered into Chris-
tian churches ; idolatry was abolished, houses
of Christian worship were built, and schools
organized. The whole aspect of the islands
was changed. And at the fiftieth anniver-
sary, in October, 1885, there were over 1,200
chapels; a total of 2,350 missionaries, native
ministers, teachers, and preachers ; over 26,000

244 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

communicants and 4,600 probationers, and
over 42,000 Sunday-school scholars. Every
village has its Christian churches, schools,
and homes, and there are more families that
observe family prayer and attend public wor-
ship than in the most enlightened centres of
Christendom.

One indication may be given of the prog-
ress of the gospel in Fiji, In the ancient
Fijian city of Bau stands a stone with a his-
tory like that of Moloch. It stood in front
of the chief temple, Vata mi Tawaki, which,
on a high foundation, towered above the
many shrines and fanes of Bau. The corpses
destined for cannibal orgies, trailed in their
gore along the dusty soil, were dashed by the
head against this stone, as an offering to the
divinities, before being devoured. For at
least thirty years — since cannibalism fell be-
fore the power of Christianity — this stone
has had upon it no stain of human blood,
and now is converted into a baptismal font.

With the consent and co-operation of the
chief, this weird relic of the past has been

THE ISLES WAITING FOR HIS LA W. 245

borne from the spot which it had occupied,
and set up in the great Bau church. Here
a cavity was hollowed out in it, and thus it
was changed into a font, with associations
such as few church fonts possess. Curiosity-
hunters complain of the removal of this
heathen monument, as the further carrying
away of the stone in pieces is prevented;
but the history of this fragment, and the
contrast of its past and its present position
and uses, throw much light on what mission
work has done in Fiji.

The Samoa group, or Navigator's Islands,
is in Central Polynesia, about ten degrees
below the equator, three thousand miles east
of Australia, and perhaps one fifth as far
northeast of Fiji, When first found, the
natives were the lowest, worst savages.
"Massacre Bay," by its name, records the
cruel slaughter of twelve white men by
them, in La Perouse's expedition in 1787.
Williams and Barff, first missionaries to the
group, and representing the London Society,
landed there in 1830. The transformations

246 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

effected within these fifty-five years seem
incredible.

The Scriptures were translated, so that
within thirty years the people were all
nominally Christian, and had in their hands
an octavo reference Bible in their own tongue ;
and for all Bibles or other books they were
taught to pay. Within seven years after the
Bible issued from the press, an edition of ten
thousand copies was exhausted, and the entire
outlay of over $15,000 was repaid by the
sales. Another and revised edition equally
large is exhausted. When the mission be-
gan, money was unknown to the Samoans;
now four nations are represented in mercan-
tile business, and a trade with the natives,
worth from a quarter to a half million dollars,
is annually carried on in the shops.

Of a population of thirty-five thousand,
there are now six thousand converted men
and women, and as many more who in the
same faith have fallen asleep. Eight thou-
sand children are in the schools; and Dr.
Turner says there are not probably twenty

THE ISLES WAITING FOR HIS LA W. 247

houses all over the group in which you would
not find the Word of God and daily family
worship.

Thousands of pages of Christian and edu-
cational literature are in circulation. At
Malua, on the island of Upolu, is a mission
seminary now over forty years old, supported
by the students themselves, who give up an
hour or two daily, and the whole of each
Wednesday and the first Monday of each
month, to industrial pursuits. The seminary
has a sea frontage, so that the students may
fish ; and their plantations abound with fruit
and vegetables, pigs and poultry. The only
expense to the London Society has been the
salaries of the two teachers, and the institu-
tion now owns an estate worth $50,003, and
has over eighty pupils. So popular is this
seminary, that there are two or three appli-
cants for every vacancy; and young men
have come from nineteen other islands.
Within twenty years the native churches,
beside the support of their own native pas-
tors, have contributed on an average $6,000

THE ISLES WAITING FOR HIS LA W, 249

Thomas Powell placed on the little island
of Nanumaga a native evangelist. He found
the island full of idols of stone and wood,
altars in every house, and temples almost as
many as dwellings. He was kept two hours
on the beach while the priests, with absurd
rites, sought to avert the wrath of their gods
for allowing the stranger to land. The men
and women were almost as nude as the chil-
dren, and made a virtue of nakedness. Eight
years afterward, one third of the entire popu-
lation were members of the Christian church,
and two-thirds of the children were in Chris-
tian schools ; and those new church members
have contributed to the support of the gospel
and its extension an average of $1.60 each.
Not an idol is now to be found, nor an idol
temple, and the people are all clothed decent-
ly, and sit with delight to listen to the gospel.

In all these cases the lowest type of pagan-
ism was confronted. The people seemed
sunk so low as to have scarce mind or man-
hood to grasp the simplest Christian truths.
But the Spirit of God has demonstrated that

2 so THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS^

it is both a fallacy and a heresy to affirm that
any human being is too degraded to be made
a new man in Christ Jesus, a new creation
in which old things pass away and all things
become new.

Look at Madagascar! The French gov-
ernor of the island of Bourbon told the first
Protestant missionaries to that country that
they might as well try to convert cattle, as
to make Christians of tlie Malagasy. Mada-
gascar stands now the miracle of modern
missions, "the crown of the London Mis-
sionary Society," promising to be to the Dark
Continent what England is to Europe, — an
evangelizing centre. The gospel barely got
a foothold when a Neronian persecution met
it with the black flag that meant " no quar-
ter ; " but twenty-five years failed to dislodge
it by fire or blood. And a few years ago
the Queen issued a proclamation in the name
of God declaring Christianity the law of her
realm, built a chapel for Christian worship
within court grounds, and celebrated with
her people a fortnight of jubilee. The

THE ISLES WAITING FOR HIS LAW. 25 1

Malagasy " cattle " have ** developed " in an
incredibly short period into intelligent Chris-
tian disciples. No period of Christian history
can probably show more fruits or better fruits
of thirty-five years of missionary labor, than
in Madagascar.

And so Christlieb says: "The most de-
graded of heathen nations may be brought to
listen, and learn to believe. We have thus the
comforting assurance that no race is so spirit-
ually dead that by the good news it cannot
rise to newness of life, no tongue so barbarian
that it will not admit of a translation of the
Bible, no heathen soul so sunk that he cannot
become a new creature in Christ Jesus."

Truly the gospel needs no apologetics amid
such displays of its dynamics. While it is
the power of God unto salvation to every
one that believeth, Jew or Greek, barbarian,
Scythian, bond or free, who shall be " ashamed
of the gospel of Christ?" The civilization
and evangelization of these islands, within
half a century, furnish a mightier defence of
our faith than all the apologies of the ages.

CHAPTER XXVI.

god's seal on the workmen.

[OTHER of the " gracious signs " of
the presence and power of God in
connection with the work of mis-
sionsy a special seal and sanction set upon the
work, may be found in the peculiar conse-
cration of character developed in the work-
men who have heartily entered into this great
harvest-field.

Science, that interpreter of nature, shows
us the crystal and the cell, her miracles of
inorganic symmetry and of organic life. But
God's Spirit, that interpreter of grace, re-
veals to us greater marvels in holy lives that
to the beauty of the crystal add the energy
of the cell, and shine not with a cold, im-
prisoned lustre, but with the light and life
and love of God. " History is philosophy

GOD'S SEAL ON THE WORKMEN. 253

teaching by examples," said Dionysius of
Halicarnassus. To appreciate the divine
spirit of missions, we need to study the mis-
sionary biography, which teaches by ex-
amples its power to illumine and transfigure
human character. What an alphabet is that
which presents such names as Abeel, Ash-
more, Barnes, Boardman, Brainerd, Burns,
Bushnell, Carey, Crowther, Dober, Duff, Ed-
wards, Egede, Eliot, Ellis, Farman, Fiske,
Geddie, Goodell, Goodale, Grant, Greig,
Gutzlaff, Gulick, Harms, Hannington, Hender-
son, Hepburn, Jessup, Judson, Kiernander,
Krapf, Lindley, Livingstone, McAll, Marsh-
man, Martyn, Mayhew, Milne, Moffat, Mor-
rison, Newell, Newton, Owen, Oncken,
Perkins, Plutschau, Rhea, Riggs, Ross, Scud-
der, Stoddard, Schmidt, Schwartz, Spangen-
berg, Eli Smith, Taylor, Turner, Van Dyke,
Ward, Williams, Wolff, Xavier, Ziegenbalg,
Zeisberger, Zinzendorf, and a legion beside,
whose lives constitute new chapters in the
acts of the apostles, and both demonstrate
and illustrate that true apostolic succession

254 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

of a Christ-like spirit and a Pauline enthu-
siasm and self-oblivion!

Sir R. Temple, late Governor of Bombay,
says: —

'' Of all departments I have ever administered,
none have been more efficiently or economically
conducted than that of missions ; and of all the
officers I have commanded, no better body of
men have I known than the missionaries."

In a letter written by Robert N. Cust, Esq.,
and addressed to the American Board meet-
ing at Boston in 1885, and published in the
" Missionary Herald," appears the following
passage. The whole Church may well be
proud of such a testimony,

"The missionary appears to me to be the
highest type of human excellence in the nineteenth
century, and his profession to be the noblest. He
has the enterprise of the merchant, without the
narrow desire of gain; the dauntlessness of the
soldier, without the shedding of blood ; the zeal
of the geographical explorer, but for a higher
motive than science. Now, if there is anything
greater than an English missionary, it is an Amer-

GOD'S SEAL ON THE WORKMEN, 255

ican. My words may be read on both sides of the
Atlantic, and I write them deliberately ; if my
convictions were the other way, I should not hesi-
tate to express them. I knew John Newton, of
Lahore, forty years ago, and I know him still. I
knew Farman, and Barnes, and Joseph Owen,
and many of the Episcopalian-Methodist Mission,
more than twenty-five years ago in India, and Van
Dyke, and Eli Smith, and Robinson, — the Pales-
tine explorer, — at the same period. Later on, I
have made the acquaintance of the great army of
American missionaries at Constantinople, Beiriit,
and in Egypt. I infringed on Labaree at Tiflis,
in South Russia. Many American missionaries,
starting to Africa, have come to see me in Lon-
don, and I have taken note of their character and
calibre. I have lived among missionaries of my
own country all that period, and know members
of all denominations. They are the salt of the
earthP

These words of Mr. Cust are abundantly-
authorized by the entire history of mis-
sions. PauFs self-denial and self-forgetful-
ness, patience in suffering and passion for
souls, ardor and fervor, earnestness and en-
thusiasm, holiness and heroism, are only the

256 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

anticipation and illustration of the divine
virtues exemplified in the noble army of
missionary martyrs from his day until now.
Every field of labor and every age of history
repeat the testimony that there is something
in missionary work that both demands and
develops the highest type of manhood and
womanhood.

Here is the reason why the Word of God
and the man of God must go together : the
personal witness found in the man is as need-
ful in its way as the inspired witness found
in the message. It was Morrison himself that
was the Chinese bible ; it was Mrs. Grant that
compelled even the Nestorian bishops to con-
fess the empty shell of their formalism, and
bury her sacred dust, as the temple of the
Holy Ghost, in the very floor of their holy
place; it was Mrs. Judson that won the
Burmese — who kissed her shadow as she
passed — to believe in the religion that could
shape such symmetrical womanhood. Eliot's
utter self-abnegation and David Brainerd's
martyr spirit made them almost objects of

GOD'S SEAL ON THE WORKMEN. 2^7

worship with the Indians^ as Dr. Hogg was
mourned as a father by the natives all along
the Nile, and Livingstone, by the sable sons
of the South. Christianity has somehow
produced her ripest fruits, and the ripest
fruits of manhood and womanhood, in mis-
sion fields ; and there must be something in
this work that makes heroes and martyrs.

Even the flaming zeal of Xavier is matched
by the heroism of Rosine Krapf, going with
her husband into the heart of Abyssinia,
sharing all the exposures and privations of
his flight, though even then overshadowed
by the approach of that sacred primal sorrow
of her sex. Under the shade of a tree in the
wilderness of Shoho he took the dying babe
in his arms , to dedicate it to the Triune God.
Hear her, in her own suffering, seeking to
comfort him, naming that child of sorrow by
the Amharic name for a ** tear ; " then valiantly
accompanying her husband through perils of
land and water, sharing with him shipwreck ;
and when dying, with her last breath enjoin-
ing him to bear her body to the African

2S8 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

shores, that her grave might remind the
pagan Wanikas what had brought her to that
land, and might inspire other missionaries to
bear the fiery cross through the Galla coun-
try into Abyssinia. If the annals of history
furnish any examples of more heroic self-
oblivion, what are they?

In South Africa there was established a
hospital for lepers, and in connection with it
a large piece of ground enclosed by a wall,
and containing fields which the lepers culti-
vated. There was only one entrance, and
those who entered in by that gate were not
allowed to go out. Inside were multitudes
of lepers in all stages of their loathsome dis-
ease. Two Moravian missionaries, filled with
heavenly love and anxious to carry the
tidings of joy to those in such misery, chose
the lazar-house as their field of labor. They
entered it, never to come out again; and
when they died there were other mission-
aries ready to take their places. Surely
these men followed Him who died for us
while we were yet sinners.

GOD'S SEAL ON THE WORKMEN. 259

Livingstone, in Africa, was thirty-nine times
attacked with fever, driven northward by per-
secution, yet never giving up, and dying on
his knees, of sheer exhaustion. Dober and
his co-laborers at St Thomas were told that
they could not preach to those ignorant
slaves. "Then we will sell ourselves as
slaves, and preach while we work by their
side."

The Japanese, impressed with the superi-
ority of a Christian civilization, and espe-
cially of our common schools, sent for one of
our missionaries and asked him to take the
superintendence of education throughout the
empire of Japan ; and he said, " Gentlemen, I
have not time to take the superintendence of
your schools; I have given myself to the
preaching of the gospel and the translation
of the Word of God, and I cannot under-
take secular instruction ; *' and he declined a
princely salary that he might carry on his
work.

The reason for the development of such a
type of character in missionaries is not an

26o THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

obscure one. If the missionary workman is
inspired to heroism by providential signals,
still grander, if possible, is the inspiration of
gracious signs. He ventures into the wildest
and worst wastes of the pagan world. In
that soil grows every product, — earthly, sen-
sual, devilish. Not only is the image of God
defaced and almost effaced, but the image of
man is so shattered and wrecked that the
" humanity " upon which he labors is literally
like the beasts that perish. Woman is a
tool, a slave, a victim ; home is an earthly
helL Even language is so degraded that it
has no words or phrases fit to express or
convey spiritual ideas and conceptions. Out
of that soil nothing has grown for a thousand
years but the rankest, deadliest vices, lusts,
crimes, that provoke even the patience of
God to bum up the whole harvest of evil
with the fires of His holy wrath.

In the midst of such society the humble
preacher or teacher sows the seed of the
kingdom ; and, sooner or later, the plants of
grace begin to grow and thrive ; they spread,

COD'S SEAL ON THE WORKMEN. 26 1

they crowd out the gigantic growths of sin
and superstition, until, where the Devil's har-
vest-field was, appears the garden of the
Lord, with every characteristic fruit of god-
liness abounding, blooming and fragrant.
The heathen soil supports a Christian com-
munity.

What would induce such men as Schwartz
and Carey, Morrison and Judson, Oncken
and Lindley, Jessup and Taylor, McAU and
Hannington, to leave their work? To have
such signals of Providence to guide and
guard, and such signs of grace to inspire and
encourage, is ample compensation for all the
toil, trial, peril, and privation of a missionary
life in the deserts of paganism, the land of
the shadow of death 1

CHAPTER XXVII.

THE ASPECT AND PROSPECT.

RAPID glance around the whole field
shows us the world open in all di-
rections to Christian missions, and
if every energy were put forth, we can do no
more than occupy the fields ready for the
sower with his seed, and in many cases for
the reaper with his sickle.

I. Paganism is manifestly in a state of de-
cadence. Pagan peoples have lost, or are los-
ing, faith in their idols and superstitions. The
gospel has proven itself able to reach and to
save both the lowest and the highest of the
heathen. Its divine lever is lifting whole na-
tions to a higher level of intellectual, moral,
and social life; overturning antiquated cus-
toms and deep-rooted errors; purifying the
marriage relation and establishing the family;

THE ASPECT AND PROSPECT. 263

emphasizing the dignity of man and the social
equality of woman ; abolishing caste and slav-
ery; and demolishing idols and turning idol
fanes into houses of Christian worship.

Even merchants and political economists
confess that, if Christian missions do no more,
they civilize and educate. In England, Rev.
C. Jukes, of Madagascar, stated that though,
sixty years since, no one in that island could
read, now three hundred thousand can read ;
and most of them possess at least a part of
the Bible. For every missionary to the South
Seas, from fifty thousand to one hundred thou-
sand dollars annually return in the channels
of trade ; and even Charles Darwin contrib-
uted to the London Missionary Society on the
score of philanthropy and political economy.

2. Mohammedanism has thus far proven
the most stubborn foe of the gospel, and, as
yet, its territory remains almost intact. Yet
there are hopeful features even inhere, for, be-
ing both monotheistic and iconoclastic, it is
the foe of polytheism and idolatry, and, there-
fore, so far the ally of Christianity. The very

264 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

restrictions surrounding the Koran help to
make one Arabic version of the Bible reach
people of many diverse nations and tongues.

Just now, especially in Syria and Turkey,
there are signs all around the horizon that
even the rigid resistance of Moslem bigotry
is relaxing; and direct efforts to evange-
lize the followers of Islam will at once be
made. The United Presbyterians, so suc-
cessful among the Copts in Egypt, have also
done ^much good work, and are likely to do
more, among Mohammedans. Already, in
their schools, one in seven is from this class.

3. Papacy shows an entire change of atti-
tude toward the gospel. The " twelve hundred
and sixty " years seem expired ; the wall of
adamant beyond which, for so long a time,
evangelical teachers and preachers could not
pass without daring the rack and the stake,
the dungeons of the Inquisition and the an-
athemas of the Pope, — that wall has breaches
so many and broad that gates of steel no
longer avail. Sixteen years ago the tem-
poral power of the Pope was broken, and

THE ASPECT AND PROSPECT. 265

now the spiritual sceptre is loosely held.
France welcomes McAU's gospel stations,
and Italy and Spain admit Bibles and Prot-
estant preachers ; while in the Eternal City it-
self, Protestant chapels lift their spires, like
fingers, in solemn menace, in sight of St.
Peter's great cathedral.

4. The Jews are now attracting the eyes of
the nations. Some years since there was a
powerful awakening among them in North
Africa ; hundreds and even thousands of them
are among the converts in England, America,
and Europe. Good work has been done for
them in Persia; and under Rabinowitz, in Rus-
sia, there has been for two years a gathering
of God's ancient people into New Testament
brotherhoods of a unique type, and in large
numbers. We account this last as one of the
most startling signs of the times. The fulness
of the Gentiles may soon be come in, and God's
ancient Israel may once more be graffed into
their own olive-tree.

Such is the general outlook. It will b^
observed that throughout these pages we have

266 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

laid but little stress upon mere numbers. Fig-
ures belong to the changeable and changing
factors in missions, and we prefer to deal in
the great permanent facts and principles
which underlie what is transient Moreover,
no adequate idea of the work done is con-
veyed by the numerical increase of converts,
or even of stations.

Some who antagonize missions, and aim to
belittle their success, claim that such figures
mislead by exaggerating the facts ; that these
converts are often ignorant, superstitious, half-
converted or not at all, actuated by mercena-
ry or selfish motives, or are at best unstable.
Granting all this, yet in the most favored Chris-
tian land and churches just such conditions
prevail ; and careful comparison shows that the
proportion of converts who prove unworthy
and unstable is smaller in heathen than in
Christian lands. The difficulties and dangers,
which these native converts have to face, test
their sincerity and render them courageous
and constant in their adhesion to Christ.

But more than this we may safely say. We

THE ASPECT AND PROSPECT. 267

do not place much value upon the number of
converts reported, because it actually under-
states the progress of the gospel A few only
have the courage to confess faith in Christ;
while hundreds have lost faith in idol gods
and poetic myths, or cherish a secret hope,
which only a death-bed may reveal. Statis-
tics may give us the number of Christian
churches and converts, schools and pupils;
but there are facts which have no report or
record, but which are quite as important. Dr.
Ashmore says that while converts count only
as individuals, the great masses of the heathen
are sceptical about their systems. The con-
fidence of vast numbers, in the creeds and
customs and fables in which they have been
trained, is undermined, and they are like the
Midianites, who found in their own dreams
an ominous prophecy of their defeat be-
fore Gideon. God is honeycombing Satan's
" Hell-gate," and a violent, sudden, explosive
upheaval is coming ; and the heathen them-
selves have apprehensions of the approach-
ing crisis.

268 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

Still further, every church gathered out of
a Pagan or Moslem community represents a
widely pervasive Christian atmosphere. Each
mission station is a centre of light, radiating
in every direction redeeming influences ; each
native church is the centre of a Christian com-
munity closely identified with Christianity. If
there be two million converts, there are per-
haps two hundred million to whom the
knowledge of the gospel and its transform-
ing power have more or less reached.

Here again are facts which no figures show,
no reports reveal. Light diminishes darkness
which it does not dispel. Sir Bartle Fr^re says
that the general extension of even a superfi-
cial acquaintance with Christianity " sounds
the death-knell of caste." An acute observer
of Africa's history finds the slave-trade giving
way everywhere in proportion to the preach-
ing of the gospel. Pagan institutions cannot
stand firm when Christian women penetrate to
the zenanas, and Christian schools bend the
twig that is to determine the inclination of the
tree. In India, schools that numbered thirteen

THE ASPECT AND PROSPECT. 269

in 1 86 1, counted thirteen hundred in 1883.
Buddhist temples in Siam are furnishing ma-
terials for houses of prayer to the true God ;
and in sheer despair there is an attempt to
fuse all pagan faiths, to prevent the extinction
of all.

In Syria, where every obstacle seemed to
exclude the gospel, education was the potent
key that unlocked the iron gates. Hundreds
of Protestant schools, with thousands of pu-
pils, — half of them girls, and one tenth of
those girls Mohammedans, — cannot fail to
change the entire conditions of society.
A Mohammedan pasha himself told Mrs.
Thompson that schools like hers made im-
possible another massacre like that of Mount
Lebanon in i860; for all sects are there gath-
ered, and the children of the murdered sit
side by side with those of the murderers, and
grow up together.

We have heard of an English colonel who,
though a resident in India, "saw and shot
thirty tigers, but never saw a convert ; " we
have also heard of a devoted missionary in

270 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

India who never saw one tiger, but spent his
life among converts; and we conclude that
each saw what he chose to see. Tigers are
not generally found on the mission premises,
nor converts in the jungles ; but either tigers
or converts may be found if you go where they
are.

A blue-book is the last place in the world
where one might expect to find appreciative
testimony in favor of mission work ; and yet
such appreciative testimony actually occurs
in the Blue-Book of the Government of India,
just published. In speaking of the missiona-
ries it says : —

" No statistics can give a fair view of all that they
have done, llie moral tone of their preaching is
recognized by hundreds who do not follow them as
converts. The lessons which they inculcate have
given to the people new ideas, not only on purely
religious questions, but on the nature of evil, the ob-
ligations of law, and the motives by which human
conduct should be regulated. Insensibly, a higher
standard of moral conduct is becoming familiar to
the people." *

1 New York Tribune, July 25, 1886.

THE ASPECT AND PROSPECT. 2/1

The aspect is encouraging; the prospect
is as bright as prophecy and promise can
make it Triumphs are before the Great
Conqueror, whose glory will outshine all
previous victories. That annus mirabilis of
modern missionary history is itself both a
prophecy and a foretaste of coming times of
refreshing. During that one year, and in the
land which is the key to Asiatic missions,
sixty thousand passed over the line that
parts idolatrous and Christian communis
ties; and twenty persons in Christian lands
gave to foreign missions about four millions
of dollars, — two developments that have had
no parallel in history.

No human wisdom can forecast the possi-
ble revelations of even the immediate future.
So rapid and so radical are the changes tak-
ing place, that before these pages can get into
print, what is written will have ceased to be
accurate. Even as we write, new issues of the
missionary magazines have come into our
hands, compelling revision of what is not yet
stereotyped into permanence ! These grand

272 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

bulletin boards of missions are full of news.
New Zealand has an army of twelve thou-
sand teetotalers; the island of Hainan in
China clamors for Christian schools, and is
wide open to the gospel. Dr. McKay, at
Formosa, who when he went there found
idolatry rampant, the people bitter toward
foreigners, and without preachers, churches,
or hospitals — recently, at his fourteenth anni-
versary, welcomed thirteen hundred converts
who gathered at Tamsiu to express their
grateful love ; and since then, in ten days he
has baptized over twelve hundred more ! The
Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in
Foreign Parts reports over two thousand
baptisms in the Madras district during
1885. And these are but a few of the stir-
ring reports that from all quarters announce
new doors opening, new fields inviting, new
demands urging, new successes cheering.
Verily it is the crisis of missions, and there
is a voice out of the cloud, " Go FORWARD ! "

CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE ELEMENTS IN THE CRISIS.

|HE main purpose of the preceding
pages is to impress the great fact
that we have reached the most criti-
cal point in missionary history.

What is a crisis? It is a combination of
grand opportunity and great responsibility;
the hour when the chance of glorious success
and the risk of awful failure confront each
other ; the turning-point of history and des-
tiny. We do not say the crisis of missions is
comingy — it has come^ and is even now upon
us. There have been repeated crises be-
fore, but THE CRISIS is now to be met. Never,
since Christ committed a world's evangeli-
zation to His servants, have such open doors
of opportunity, such providential removal of

barriers and subsidence of obstacles, such

274 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

general preparation for the universal and
immediate dissemination of the gospel, and
such triumphs of grace in the work of mis-
sions, supplied such inspiration to angelic
zeal and seraphic devotion ; but it may well
be doubted whether there has ever been
greater risk of losing the opportunity. We
are in peril of practical apathy, if not apos-
tasy, with respect to this stewardship of the
gospel, this obligation to a lost world.

We have looked upon the fruitful, hopeful
mission field, with its providential leadings and
gracious workings ; but to the brightest pic-
ture there is often a darker background ; and
it is necessary to a complete impression, that
we should candidly face all the facts, however
they may rebuke our listlessness and selfish-
ness. And a few of these discouragements
we must carefully and prayerfully consider, if
we would understand and solve the problem
of missions.

First of all, the Church is moving so slowly
that Satan's active agents are entering these
open doors, preoccupying these open fields.

THE ELEMENTS IN THE CRISIS. 275

The crisis will not brook delay. Satan ap-
preciates his opportunity, if we do not ours.
If we do not push our forces to the front, we
shall find it too late. We can take posses*
sion, then, if at all, only by dislodging a
foe whom our delays have permitted to pre-
cede us.

India is an example of the danger of delay.
The theosophists go there and feed the ex-
piring flame of paganism with the fuel of ra-
tionalism and mysticism. In Calcutta, Faine's
" Age of Reason " is made " plain upon the
tablets," instead of the gospel; and in univer-
sity cities like Bombay, natives eagerly read
and glibly quote Hegel, Strauss, Renan, and
IngersoU, like the blatant sceptics of young
America. European books and teachers
import materialism and atheism, sugar-coated
with subtle science and seductive philosophy.
The " Liberal Christians " send out a soli-
tary missionary to convert the East Indians
to Unitarianism, and he himself becomes
a convert to the famous Brahmo Somaj,
showing that a nominal and Cbnstless gospel

276 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

is more likely to be vanquished than vic-
torious in conflict with paganism.

Japan, again, warns us of the risk of pro->
crastination in missions. A nation ready to
be moulded is liable to be marred ; the pli-
ant sapling may be easily deformed, or the
plastic clay shaped for dishonor. Into these
openings go the devil's agents, if the Lord's
do not; and while we sleep they sow tares
in the mellow soil. What can be more im-
portant than, at the crisis of Japan's history
and destiny, to flood the land with the gos-
pel! A whole people, forsaking the effete
faith of their forefathers, asks for a better.
Such another day will never again come for
that land, and the door cannot long stand
open. It is now or never !

Shintooism may be powerless and Buddh-
ism be in its decadence, and the priests confess
the downfall of the old faiths ; but the phil-
osophies of the pantheist and materialist,
atheist and agnostic, are even now boldly
taught. Spencer, Huxley, Darwin and Buckle,
Mill and Strauss, diffuse their new gospel.

THE ELEMENTS IN THE CRISIS. 277

and education is linking itself with infidelity.
Meanwhile, nominal Christianity with its cere-
monialism, the form of godliness without its
power, comes to entrench itself. Romanism,
expelled in the seventeenth century, jesuiti-
cally renews its efforts to convert the Japan-
ese in the nineteenth.

In papal lands, again, delay is irreparable
damage. The popular current is away from
Rome, but in the direction of infidelity. Mil-
lions are sick of priest-craft, and feel clerical-
ism to be the foe of freedom and well-being.
But the reaction is toward no religion; in
breaking away from the bonds of superstition
there is a proneness to refuse all restraints of
conscience and divine law.

These multitudes are grossly ignorant, to a
degree of which we have little conception.
The little ones in our Protestant Sunday-
schools at least know the Bible from the
prayer-book, which many a Romanist does
not. So, in the Greek Church, a Russian
peasant thought the Trinity was composed of
"the Saviour, the Mother of God, and St.

2/8 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

Nicholas, the miracle-worker." Thousands
of adherents of these churches have abso-
lutely no knowledge of evangelical truth.
Their ignorance leaves them at the mercy of
designing demagogues, corrupt politicians,
and infidel anarchists. They need enlighten-
ment; and as ignorance gives way to intelli-
gence, the intellect that is casting off its
shackles must, by a coeducation of intellect
and conscience, be kept from running liberty
into license. Now is the time, when eyes are
opening, to pour in the light of the gospel.

Once more, we seem to see the angel
standing with one foot upon the sea and the
other upon the land, with the open book in
his hand, and to hear him swear that ** there
shall be delay no longer; " ^ while to God's
Church comes His majestic message, "Thou
must prophesy again before many peoples
and nations and tongues and kings."

There can be neither excuse nor extenua-
tion for the sluggishness that leaves the em-
issaries of the devil to preoccupy the mission

1 Rev. z. 6, margin.

THE ELEMENTS OF THE CRISIS, 279

field, and sow the tares before we have sown
the seed of the kingdom; to furnish the pa-
gan with a coat of mail wherewith to ward off
the arrows of the truth. While the missloa-
ary press, suffering from financial drought,
sends its little rill of pure water into desert
places, Satan's presses, with royal riches at
disposal, flood the land with poisoned streams
of Western scepticism. It is the old parable
illustrated. Here is the house of heathenism,
out of which has gone the unclean spirit; but
we leave it empty, and seven other spirits
more wicked than the first enter in and dwell
there; and the last state is worse than the
first. Oh for the zeal that pushes into the
house in advance of the evil one 1

There is no discouragement that need dis-
may a living, praying, working church. John,
in apocalyptic vision, and as the final victory
of the hosts of God draws nigh, sees the " devil
come down, having great wrath, because he
knoweth that he hath but a short time." The
violence of Satan makes no impression on a
well panoplied church, whose shield of faith is

28o THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

able to quench even his fiery darts; but to
a church lacking in missionary principle and
activity he may work disaster that centuries
will not repair.

Every conceivable motive, therefore, urges
us to undertake the last great crusade against
the powers of darkness. The command of
our ascended Lord, the voice of an enlight-
ened conscience, the impulse of the new na-
ture, the leading of the providential pillar,
the working of transforming grace, the gran-
deur of the opportunity and the peril of delay,
— all these converge like rays in one burning
focus, urging us onward and forward to the
outposts of civilization and the limits of hu-
man habitation with the word of life. Let the
trumpet signal be heard all along the lines !
God has already sounded His signal, and, like
that peal at Sinai, it is long and loud. The
last precept and promise of our Lord, which
have inspired all true service and sacrifice,
echo with new force and emphasis, louder and
clearer, in the face of new openings and new
victories. Blessed is he who, like Paul, is im-
mediately obedient unto the heavenly vision.

CHAPTER XXIX.

THE UNHEEDED SIGNALS.

SECOND important element in the
crisis of missions is the practical
insensibility and indifference of the
Church as a whole.

Dr. Anderson, whose words have been al-
ready quoted, said, with painful conviction,
that the greatest lack of the church of our
day is that it does not yield a ready response
to the providence of God. God's voice is
heard, awful with divine majesty, imperial in
its authority, commanding an advance of the
entire host and a combined assault upon the
citadels of the enemy; and while the voice
speaks the cloud moves, leading the way,
marking its course by constant conquest,
inspiring obedient souls with courage, and

282 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

assuring those who have the faith and forti-
tude to follow, that complete triumph is
before them.

Yet, while every motive urges and impels
us forward, we are in some respects going
backward. Unbelief, instead of echoing
God's call for enlargement, actually dares to
cry, " Retrenchment ! " That has been the
motto of our mission boards for ten years ; it
has echoed through our mission fields like
a death-knell to missionary advance. Last
year in one of our important mission centres
in Asia the only boys* school, girls* semi-
nary, and printing-press had to be closed for
want of money to carry them on. A great
Board, oppressed with debt, and vainly ap-
pealing to the churches for help, said to its
representatives abroad, " You must cut down
your outlay at least one tenth." And so at a
time when even to stand still is to fall back,
this cry of " Retrench ! " became the key-
note of missions.

The gospel is God's economy of grace for
the entire race of man, sunk in the same ruin.

THE UNHEEDED SIGNALS. 283

By the first Adam came one generic fall, and
by the second Adam comes one generic re-
demptioni — a universal remedy for universal
sin. Between these lost souls and this great
salvation, the one living link is the believer,
whose lips and whose life are to unite in wit-
nessing to the " Lamb of God who taketh
away the sin of the world." The glorious
work, the dispensation of the gospel, is com-
mitted to us all; being one with Christ by
faith, love and labor are to make us a bond
between Him and the lost whom He came
to seek and to save.

Here is an " altar that sanctifies the gift."
The widow's mites, laid thereon, are not only
sanctified, but magnified and glorified : they
grow into shekels of the sanctuary, precious
as gold, pellucid as crystal. But when, bet-
ter than the richest offerings, self is laid on
the altar of missions, God's own fire comes
down, not to consume but to consecrate and
glorify. Our Lord waits to " see of the trav-
ail of His soul," and to " be satisfied ; " and
the sluggishness, selfishness, and, shall we say

284 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

it? stinginess, of disciples actually hinder the
great consummation I

We shall have to account, as a Church, for
an apathy that verges on apostasy. We
should forget the trifles that often engross
our thoughts and even our meetings as
churches and as courts of Christ; cease to
contend over mere secular issues, points of
order, clerical etiquette, and minor matters of
all sorts ; and send forth through the Church
one mighty clarion-call, in God's name de-
manding both consecrated capital and conse-
crated character, to fill the needs of our
mission fields. In such an hour as this not
even prayer will suffice. For nearly a cen-
tury the church of God has been lying on
her face before God, asking for an open path
through impassable barriers. Between us and
the thousand million pagans a Red Sea lay,
too broad to bridge, too deep to wade, too
angry and stormy to cross. God has driven
it back, and here is a dry highway : the waters
that were a wall to obstruct are now a wall
to protect. What are we still lying on our

THE UNHEEDED SIGNALS. 285

face for, praying for God's interposition?
He says, "Wherefore criest thou unto me?
Go forward ! " This is not a time to stop,
even to pray. We must not delay. Just
now, " laborare est orare,*' — work is worship.
Yes, work is worship ; what James calls the
h&f)ai,<i €V€pyovfi€vrj — the energetic supplica-
tion — is just now the only acceptable prayer.
There are times when the only true supplica-
tion is the supply of men and means and mate-
rial of war. The Church has been asking for
nearly two thousand years that the kingdoms
of this world might become the kingdom of
our Lord and of His Christ. And now, behold
the highway for our God ! mountains levelled,
valleys exalted, to make a plain, level road
from Christendom as a centre, to the ends of
the earth. The chariot of God is ready ; but
notwithstanding it has a divine motor, it
moves very slowly, because the stones are
not gathered out of the way, and professed
disciples drag on it as a dead weight Ava-
rice, appetite, ambition, a secular spirit, en-
gfrossing worldly schemes, ignorance of facts,

286 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS,

and practical indifference, block the way;
while lazy self-indulgence, enervating luxury,
vicious habits of selfishness, forgetfulness of
stewardship, leave the very church of God to
hang as a hinderance upon the wheels, instead
of pushing them onwarS. Vain to pray that
" the Word of the Lord may have free course
and be glorified,'' while such hinderances are
encouraged.

There is little danger of exaggerating the
grandeur of our opportunity, or the greatness
of our responsibility, or the peril of unfaith-
fulness, neglect, or even delay. The church
of God must answer to the Master for the
practical indifference that to-day curses our
membership in the matter of missions. A
whole generation is going down to the grave.
What we are going to do for our fellow-men
of our generation must be done while they
remain to be reached, and we remain to
reach them.

Does the Church appreciate the privilege
of being co-workers together with God?
There is a definite purpose in His mind, and

i -I ■ »¥r -* -*-*' 'mnMtm-aA^mmte iwr>wn«rfi<> aiin n i i* ^i

THE UNHEEDED SIGNALS. 28/

He has been working along the lines of that
plan, steadily, from the beginning. That plan
is bound to succeed. Even our apathy can-
not thwart it. But He may be compelled to
do with us as He did with the Oriental
churches of the apostolic age, that, engrossed
in selfishness, wrapped themselves in Laodi-
cean self-complacency and were spued out of
His mouth like lukewarm water. Our candle-
stick will be removed out of its place if we do
not hold forth the Word of life, and shine as
lights in the world ; and another church will
take the place of the church of this generation
that refuses to respond to the Providence of
God and obey the signals from the great
Commander.

The Earl of Cairns, in his last missionary
appeal before the Church Missionary Society,
in Exeter Hall, March 24, 1885, urged on his
hearers the great considerations not of duty
so much as of privilege. In this work we
enter into partnership with God. Every dol-
lar given to missions, and every effort or
prayer put forth in their behalf, are expres-

288 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

sions of fellowship in God*s eternal purpose
and work ; and this is why the altar so sancti-
fies the gift. He told a short but simple
story illustrating this. In Belfast there was
a little boy, a chimney-sweep. He hap-
pened to be attracted by missions, and con-
tributed to a mission-box a sum which was
not inconsiderable for a chimney-sweep, —
the sum of twopence. One afternoon a
friend of this boy met him going along the
street in an unusual condition, for his hands
and his face were washed, and he was dressed
in very good clothes. And the friend said
to him, " Halloa ! where are you going? "
" Oh," he said, " I am going to a missionary
meeting." — " What are you going to a mis-
sionary meeting for?" "Well," said the
sweep, "you see I have become a sort of
partner in the concern, and I am going to see
how the business is getting on."

It is even so. He who in any way hear-
ing the call, responds to it with prayers and
tears, with service and sacrifice, with the
gifts of wealth or the mites of poverty, with

THE UNHEEDED SIGNALS. 289

labor or with life, is a partner with God in
the celestial business of bringing salvation to
a lost world; and no man, woman, or child
can give prayerfully without a growing inten-
sity of interest, watching how the business is
getting on.

Thomas Cooper ^ has told us that Handel's
Hallelujah Chorus was an inspiration. This
grandest of all musical harmonies was com-
posed to celebrate the spread of the Redeem-
er's kingdom. " The Bible and all it reveals
— but more especially the theme of redemp-
tion — dwelt much in Handel's memory and
in his heart and mind. He grasped the state-
ments of Christianity as facts, — facts as re-
markable as his own existence ; and rejoiced
with an elevated joy in the belief that this
Christianity would one day fill the earth. It
is this elevated joy of his own heart and soul
that he strives to express in his unequalled
Hallelujah."

Lord Northbrook, at the Church Mission-
ary meeting in June, referred to his feelings

1 Thoughts at Fourscore, p. 345.

290 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS,

at hearing this glorious chorus sung at the
opening of the Indian and Colonial Exhibi-
tion, adding, that it was not so much the
music as the words and thoughts that thrilled
him. This greatest of all musical creations
was inspired by the faith that from sea to sea,
and from the river to the ends of the earth,
His dominion shall extend; and that from
every part of this earth shall yet rise the
choral shout, " Hallelujah ! for the Lord God
omnipotent reigneth." Even so. Lord Jesus,
come quickly !

That is the grander chorus, of which Han-
del's Hallelujah is but the faint and distant
anticipation. It will combine the voices of
patriarchs and prophets, apostles and martyrs,
and all loyal, loving saints of all the ages.
Nor is there in all the world, in the obscurest
hovel of poverty, one humble soul that prays
" Thy kingdom come," that lays consecrated
offerings on the altar of missions, who shall
not join that final anthem, as one who has
helped forward the great consummation.

Mil

CHAPTER XXX.

THE LEAVEN OF A NEW THEOLOGY.

THIRD element in this crisis de-
mands a special notice, for it may,
in part, account for the shameful
apathy and lethargy that allow a thousand
millions of human beings to live and die with-
out the gospel. We refer to the practical
doubt, if not denial, of their lost condition,
which is largely the fruit of the attempt to
improve upon the old gospel.

A subtle leaven is pervading the lump.
Evangelistic effort was almost abandoned for
a thousand years through the loss of the sense
of obligation and responsibility. During the
Dark Ages there was no missionary activity.
Even after the great Reformation had dawned
in Wycliffe, and Savonarola, Huss, Luther,
Knox, and Calvin had borne the fiery cross

292 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

into Italy, Bohemia, Germany, Scotland, and
Switzerland, it took three centuries to bring
the Reformed Churches to see that " the field
is the world," and " that the good seed are
the children of the kingdom," who are not
only to sow the Word of God in the soil of
every part of that field, but to plant them-
selves as living witnesses in the midst
of pagan society, and become, even from
martyr-graves, the seed of a harvest of
souls !

The duty of a world-wide evangelism is
now universally recognized, or at least not
denied. Even churches that do nothing and
give nothing have not the temerity to dispute
the claims of a lost world upon those who
have the " corn," and will get a curse if
they " withhold it" But now another " par-
alytic stroke " dulls our nerves of sensation
and palsies our nerves of motion. There is a
current, though unexpressed, belief that a
universal and saving element runs through
all religious systems ; that there is a " Light
of Asia " as well as a " Light of the world ; "

LEAVEN OF A NEW THEOLOGY. 293

that Christianity is only an evolutional prod-
uct, the tenth and best of all the " religions,"
and the fittest to survive, but not the only
faith that contains elevating, and even re-
deeming, influences.

" God is not so unjust," it is said, " as to al-
low the heathen, who never heard of Christ,
to perish because they were not converted ; "
and so the responsibility of conveying to them
the message of salvation is thrown off without
much disturbance of conscience. In fact, an
intelligent man once evaded an earnest appeal
in behalf of the heathen by declaring it " pre-
sumptuous to interfere with other people in
the peaceable enjoyment of their religion."

This apathy of misconception, this paral-
ysis of action, are encouraged, and we are
lulled to a death-like torpor and stupor, by
the " new theology." There is a wide-spread
hope of a probation after death, of a restora-
tion of the wicked after a purgatorial punish-
ment, or of a final restitution of all things,
when even Moab and Edom, Tyre and Phil-
istia, are to take their place among the

294 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

nations, and have an opportunity to embrace
Immanuel as Saviour and King.

This is the Devil's master-piece of strategy
to keep the hosts of God within the walls of
luxurious indolence, when they should march
and move outward against the citadels of su-
perstition and idolatry. The old heresies,
scotched but not killed, revive from stun-
ning and seemingly fatal blows, to renew
the conflict upon modern fields. Paul en-
countered those in his day who opposed
evangelistic labor, "forbidding us to speak
to the Gentiles that they might be saved, to
fill up their sins alway ; for the wrath is come
upon them to the uttermost"^

We must either give up the inspiration of
the Word, or accept the lost condition of the
world. The epistle to the Romans leaves no
standing-room for candid doubt, unless we
deny that Paul spake under the moving of
the Holy Ghost. That masterly epistie, which
is logic on fire, begins with a fearful indict-
ment of the whole pagan world for idolatry

1 I Thess. ii. 16.

LEAVEN OF A NEW THEOLOGY. 295

and iniquity ; and affirms that '' they are with-
out excuscy because that when they knew God,
they glorified Him not as God," etc.

The speculative question as to the spir-
itual estate and prospects of the heathen is
here answered practically. They are not
condemned for rejecting Christ whom they
had no opportunity to accept, nor for not
using light which they did not have ; but be-
cause they shut their eyes to the light which
they had, " did not like to retain God in their
knowledge," and " held down the truth in un-
righteousness," as a man holds down and
chokes an antagonist. In every age the
heathen have had more knowledge of God
than they have desired or used. Ever since
creation there have been open before men
the book of nature, manifesting His eternal
power and Godhood ; and the book of their
own complex nature, with its divine powers
of thought, love, conscience, and will. From
these, as well as from God's providence in
history, they might have read of Him. Yet
they perversely deified blocks of wood and

296 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

stone, and worshipped the created thing—
from the sun down to the beetle — rather
than the Creator. They ran from the light
to their dark holes, like bugs that burrow in
the earth; they abandoned themselves to
crime, lust, sin ; and so God judicially aban-
doned them, first to uncleanness, then to
vile affections, and last of all to a reprobate
mind. They are to be judged not by our su-
pernatural light, but by their own natural
light; they sinned without law, and with-
out law they perish.

This argument in the first chapter Paul
supplements in the tenth by a series of
questions. " How then shall they call on
him in whom they have not believed? and
how shall they believe in him of whom they
have not heard? and how shall they hear
without a preacher? and how shall they
preach except they be sent? " These
questions are indirect affirmations that the
preacher must be sent to them, that they
may hear, and hearing, believe, and believ-
ing, call, and calling, be saved.

LEAVEN OF A NEW THEOLOGY. 297

This does not limit the power or grace of
God. If there be anj'where a soul feeling
after God, following the light of nature and
of conscience, in hope and faith that the
Great Unknown will somehow give more
light, and lead to life and blessedness, we
may safely leave such to His fatherly care.
He who sent Peter to tell a Roman centurion
words whereby he and his house might be
saved; He who went to the very coasts of
Canaan, to help one poor woman; He who
bade Philip join the Ethiopian eunuch, that
he might guide a perplexed inquirer, — will
not leave any sincere seeker to seek in vain.

But this concession does not touch the
practical question of a world's degradation
and destitution. If there come up, to those
twelve gates that open to every quarter, a
Confucius, a Zoroaster, a Socrates, a Seneca,
a Buddha, or some who from huts and hovels
looked for a dawn that never greeted and
gladdened their eyes, God may so glorify His
grace, and demonstrate the possibility of any
real inquirer's being led and lifted up by

298 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

God; but the salvation of the few would
only justify the condemnation of the rest.

It is time disciples were done with spiritual
Darwinism. The religion of Christ is no
evolution from other faiths, and survival of
the fittest. Like Aaron's rod, it swallows all
the others, embracing all that is true in any
other faith; but, like Aaron's rod, it is the
only rod that buds, for it alone is the power
and wisdom of God unto salvation. If life is
to come to the dead, it must be by the touch
of this divine rod. We are not left to the ca-
pricious winds of human doctrine, and the
sleight and cunning craftiness of men who lie
in wait to deceive. The Word of God is our
only guide and authority, and it gives no un-
certain sound. We hear there not one word
about salvation without Christ All are con-
cluded under sin, and involved in one con-
demnation; to all alike one gospel is sent,
and must be borne by those who have it.

God counts silence, inaction, indifference
among mortal sins. The blood of a thou-
sand millions of souls will be required of

LEAVEN OF A NEW THEOLOGY, 299

this generation. Nearly two thousand years
have gone by since our Lord said, " Go ye
into all the world and preach the gospel to
every creature ; " and yet Christendom stands
idly facing a lost world, grudgingly sends ten
thousand workers into the world-field, and
gives ten millions of dollars a year for the
work ; and then lazily swings in silken ham-
mocks spun out of fine theories and specu-
lations about " second probation " and " final
restoration ; " sinks into calm repose, surfeited
with repasts whose crumbs would feed a
starving world ; and at last ventures into the
presence of God, to face a whole generation
of lost souls for whose salvation no personal
effort has practically been made !

When the Holy Ghost endues us for ser-
vice. He first anoints our eyes with eye-salve,
that we may see the hell of hopelessness into
which souls are sinking. Only when we see
and feel this to be the fact shall we be
divinely impelled and compelled to shout the
tidings of salvation, till it sounds in the sepul-
chres of heathendom like the trump of God

CHAPTER XXXI.

THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS.

such a crisis as this there is but
one thing that can be done to meet
the emergency. Those within the
church who feel its importance, who accept
as a fact the ruin of a lost race, and who re-
spond to the providence of God, must, with-
out waiting for any new conditions in the
church at large, move forward in faith and
prayer, relying upon Him who can enable
one to chase a thousand, and two to put ten
thousand to flight; with Whom all things are
possible.

There is too much work yet to be done to
allow of delay. We cannot even wait for
reinforcements. Hundreds of millions of
human beings have not yet heard so much
as the faintest echo of the gospel trumpet.

THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 301

Mission stations, even where most thickly
planted, are but scattered oases in an im-
mense stretch of desert, or stars in a firma-
ment, — centres of vast vacancies. Contrasted
with the hosts of unsaved, untaught heathen,
all missionary laborers together form but
an insignificant number. Among the more
cultivated and among the more degraded
pagans, only a bare start has been made
toward evangelization ; the territory of Islam
is yet almost intact ; and even where missions
have been most successful, the extent of the
dominion of the death-shade is so great, that
millions often constitute the parish dependent
upon one man's curacy.

Every day's delay complicates the problem.
While we are sounding the silver trumpets to
rally a sluggish host to the onset, the emis-
saries of infidelity preoccupy the field. A
vicious education rears new barriers between
pagan hearts and the gospel. And so in
many ways the professed disciples of Christ
are not only failing in their duty to this lost
world, but are responsible for permitting

302 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

new obstacles to accumulate. With a sad
heart we record the deep conviction that in
the lack of the spirit of missions within the
church itself lies both the secret of the slow
response to our Lord's appeal, and the main
hinderance to the world's evangelization.

In not a few cases the principle of missions
is not practically operative in our church
life. Some of God's people have not yet
learned the lesson that the conditions of vital-
ity in a church are not only self-government
and self-support, but self-propagation. The
seed that sprang up among thorns grew long
and spindling, but it all ran to stalk; there
were no kernels in the ear. What a picture
of the Christians in whom the cares of the
world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the
lusts of other things entering in choke
the word, so that, whatever be the apparent
growth and outward prosperity, there is de-
veloped no full-grown corn in the ear, no
seed of propagation by which other harvest
fields are to be sown ! Hundreds of evangel-
ical congregations give nothing to missions

.SS^HEHH^HHiail

THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 303

at home or abroad, and the blanks in the
columns of reports year by year seem to
cause them no blushes of shame. Sheldon
Dibble's remark, as to the need of Christians
to be converted to an interest in missions,
finds an echo in Christlieb's declaration of
the need of a threefold conversion : namely,
of the heart y to secure holy affections ; of the
head, to assure right convictions ; and of the
purse, to assure ample offerings.

Where this principle of missions is not
firmly rooted and practically fruitful, not
only does it hinder missions, but the Church
runs risk in breathing its own atmosphere.
Dr. Duff has observed that the church that
is no longer evangelistic will soon cease to
be evangelical. The weapons of aggressive
warfare are the best protection for defensive
warfare. Missions are the best apologetics,
for they are the dynamics of the Church, the
vindication and justification of our faith, the
sure means of strength and growth ; and to
enshrine and enthrone missions in the very-
heart of the Church is the surest hope of

304 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

a revival of pure and primitive piety at
home.

That missions should need a plea in their
behalf marks the low ebb of spiritual life.
The very nature of the word of life is to run
and spread. " You cannot gather water in
heaps, unless you allow it to freeze." Fire
will spread while it finds fuel, and when it
can no longer spread, dies away, first to
embers and then to ashes. The plea of in-
ability to give is often not only selfish, but
hypocritical. Even in a financial crisis
plenty of money is found for luxury and
frivolity. Such selfishness is, we fear, the
cloak of an unregenerate heart. A personal
faith in Christ begets a personal love for the
lost, whom He came to seek and to save;
and, as Christlieb phrases it, " He who cannot
stand on this platform is the object of mis-
sions, not the subject of them." We do not
need Max Miiller to tell us that " Christianity
is in its nature a missionary religion, convert-
ing, advancing, aggressive, encompassing the
world," so long as the divine key-note of

THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 305

all church history and church life has been
struck in the command of Christ himself:
" Go ye into all the world and preach the
gospel to every creature." A church cold
toward missions will find heathenism in
popular forms gaining ground within her
courts, till the theological theses of her can-
didates for licensure betray a destructive
scepticism, like some in Bonn, which as-
saulted belief in the miraculous as an " epi-
demic insanity."

The principle of missions is not enough,
however, without the spirit of missions; a
law of labor for souls will not suffice without
the love for Christ and for souls, which is the
life-secret of such labor. While the spirit of
missions is still lacking, no machinery will be
adequate; the men and money will still be
shamefully inadequate, both to the extent of
the field and the needs of the work, and to
the number of disciples and the means at
their disposal. Give us the spirit of missions,
and the territory now scarcely approached

will be at once surrounded, penetrated,

306 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

possessed ; and a new motive-power will be
supplied, that will transform cold duty into
ecstatic delight

Only this spirit of missions can ever supply
the deficiency of laborers. The fields of the
papacy, now so strangely opening to the cir-
culation of the Bible and the preaching of the
cross, inviting the sowing of the seed of the
kingdom, and yielding harvests so rapidly
that reaper overtakes ploughman, — these
fields alone might well occupy all the laborers
now at work throughout the whole mission
field. At this very day the working force
should be multiplied fifty-fold in S)n:ia, Persia,
and Korea ; a hundred-fold in India, Turkey,
and Japan; and a thousand-fold in China,
Africa, and the papal states.

We need the spirit of missions to increase
our gifts. There is quite as much deficiency
in money as in men ; our gifts to the great
cause are alarmingly disproportionate both
to the openings for work and to our ability.
From the four quarters the very wings of the
wind waft to our ears the Macedonian cry;

THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 307

and yet our missionary boards bow, year
after year, under a load of debt, which, if
lifted by herculean eflfort, is only renewed.
And in the midst of a work which will not
bear even to stand still, we are actually going
back. God bore much from IsraeFs unbe-
lief in the desert. Is He bearing nothing
from His church of to-day?

We should cherish not only the princi-
ple and the spirit of missions, but also se-
cure thorough organization and co-operation.
No congregation is so small or weak that it
needs, or can afford, to pass missions by.
The weakness, assigned as a cause, is often
a consequence of such neglect. It keeps a
church weak to do nothing for those who
are without; unselfish effort quickens its
pulse and strengthens its sinews. Self-ex-
tension reacts to promote self-support; and
if churches now having only a name to live
would nourish and cherish the spirit of mis-
sions, there would be growth both in numbers
and in graces. The Moravians, with but
twenty thousand adult communicants, have

308 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

no rival as a missionary body. One out of
every seventy of their membership is in the
mission field ; and out of their poverty they
raise an annual missionary income of $240,-
000, an average of twelve dollars per member !
Even the smallest and the poorest disciple is
expected to give something to further the
Lord's work.

A thorough organization for the work will
include a thorough dissemination of a cheap,
attractive missionary literature. The facts
must be more widely known. We must put
new life into our concerts for prayer. Our
whole church activity must be consecrated
by a new spirit ; otherwise, even in the midst
of a bustling activity, we may incur what
Warneck counts the chief risk, "that mis-
sionary enterprise shall glide into mere
routine, missionary zeal become so much
rhetoric, and participation in missionary work
degenerate into mere habit, not to say eccle-
siastical business."

We need a more consecrated ministry.
Here the revival of the missionary spirit must

THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS. 309

begin. " Like people, like priest" The pas-
tor's life usually fixes the flood-mark for the
tides of church life, and very seldom do they
rise higher. William Burns incarnated the
gospel ; and to this day the Chinese feel the
power of his consecration. When pastors
burn and glow with a divine ardor and fervor
toward the work of universal missions, the
people will raise a loftier standard of mission-
ary zeal. Dr. Duff, when leaving for India
in 1829, said: "There was a time when I
had no care or concern for the heathen;
that was when I had none for my own soul.
When by the grace of God I was led to care
for my own soul, I began to care for them.
In my closet I said : ' O Lord, silver and
gold have I none. What I have I give: I
offer Thee myself! Wilt Thou accept the
gift?'"

We need a more hallowed and missionary
atmosphere in our colleges and seminaries.
There it is that the ministers are made ; and
there the first battles of the missionary field
are fought, as Waterloo was fought at Eton.

310 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

The question of duty to the heathen presents
itself during the preparation for the sacred
calling. How much depends on the careful,
prayerful weighing of these august claims !
He who is not ready for a life of self-denial
hastily dismisses them ; carnal considerations
give the casting vote in favor of home fields
that promise richer returns of salary, human
praise, worldly promotion, and personal ease.
We need spiritually minded men in the chairs
of our educational institutions, who shall
plainly teach, as Professor Phelps sharply
puts it, that he who is not ready to preach
the gospel anywhere, is fit to preach it no*
where.

CHAPTER XXXIL

THE LIVING LINKS.

^^RBNE of the practical difficulties in the
IwyJ way of the prosecution of missions
IS found in the immensity of the
field, and its remoteness. Even the most
diligent student of missions finds that his
knowledge only makes him more conscious
of his ignorance ; and the money given seems
like a little water scattered over vast territo-
ries cursed with perpetual drought As to
the great mass of our church members, they
know nothing about the subject, and have
only a vague notion that about a thousand
million of souls are in darkness and destitu-
tion. Their offerings are put into a bag with
holes : they drop out of sight, and fall some-
where, but are never traced, or heard from
again. How it would quicken both praying

312 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

and giving, if there could be a little closer
contact between the Church and the awful
destitution of heathendom !

A great lack in our churches is the lack of
living links between them and the foreign
field. When one of their own number goes
abroad, and is supported by the church at
home; where contributions to the support
of teachers, schools, or pupils abroad bring
back letters of a personal character ; where,
in any way, direct communication and contact
are established by correspondence with a defi-
nite field, — it is very helpful in the increase
both of knowledge and of zeal. The highest
ideal of beneficence is that in which our gifts
are guided by that sublimely unselfish spirit
that embraces the whole world, and is con-
tent to pour liberally into the missionary
treasury without tracing the streams to
their terminus. But we are all weak saints.
It is well to be disinterested ; but the danger
just now is of being «^«interested. The
Church has been classified into " Mission,
Anti-Mission, and Omission " Christians, and

THE LIVING LINKS. 313

nothing practically reduces the latter two
classes more than direct relations with some
field through some known and loved mis-
sionary. The church that sends out la-
borers from its own number, and through
them becomes acquainted with the field, its
people, wants, discouragements, and develop-
ments, will grow in intelligence, sympathy,
offerings, and prayers for the whole work.
We are deeply persuaded that such living
links between the home churches and the
mission field are means of grace. After
long watching of the development of
the missionary spirit in active, aggressive
churches, we have come to the calm
conclusion that if this great work is to
be properly prosecuted, each church must
have some definite field to work, and must
send to and support in that field its own
workers.

This need not interfere with the general
prosecution of missions, by leaving obscure
and unattractive fields to be neglected. Let
the assignment of the separate fields be left

314 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

to the missionary boards, as the channels of
distribution and communication; let there
be a general offering for the general work,
as well as special offerings for particular
workers in chosen fields. But let us have
in our church life the incentive, the inspira-
tion, found in the closer study of some one
people with their customs, creeds, religions ;
some one field with its needs and claims ; and
let the men and women, sent out from our
own church-home, both draw out our interest,
sympathy, prayers, and gifts toward the field,
and be the channel of information and intelli-
gence from the field to us.

Pastor Harms's church in Hermansburgh is
the convincing proof and illustration of this
law of human nature. In 1849, thirty-seven
years ago, a glimpse of the destitution of
heathendom, as they saw it through the eyes
of a poor, disabled candidate, moved that
congregation of poor peasants, farmers, and
laborers, to organize a society for sending the
gospel to foreign parts. A widow^ brought
six shillings, a laborer sixpence, and a child

THE UVING LINKS. 315

a silver penny. And upon this slender pe-
cuniary basis was built up the most colossal
individual missionary enterprise of the ages.
No bolder act is to be found in the history of
missions than that of Louis Harms, when he
proposed to his people to be their own mis-
sionaries, when he undertook to inspire poor
farmers, ignorant peasants, and rude day-la-
borers to volunteer for missionary purposes,
and both create and sustain, alike with money
and men, their own missions. It was very
decidedly " out of the usual course," and so
was the first Pentecost ; but, like that, it was
a moving of God. All the zeal of that par-
ish was turned into a new channel, and the
first definite development was the coming
forward of volunteers who offered to be-
come the living links between Hermans-
burgh in Hanover and heathendom. One
volunteer brought his farm, and this, with its
plain farm-house, was turned into a training-
school.

Africa was chosen as a field, and the train-
ing of the raw recruits began. A sailor who

3l6 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

joined the ranks suggested the building of the
ship, and in 1853 the "Candace" sailed with
a missionary colony comprising eight mis-
sionaries, two smiths, a tailor, butcher, dyer,
and three laborers. They sought to pierce
through Natal among the Kaffirs, and work
north, linking station to station in a chain.
They were in constant exchange of mission-
ary intelligence and friendly personal letters ;
and in order to diffuse this intelligence more
widely, and develop these personed ties of
sympathy more richly, a missionary maga-
zine was established, edited and published
on the premises of their own training-
school. That ship moving to and fro was
the shuttle weaving a closer and fuller
bond of contact with heathen peoples, and
those letters and gifts and living men and
women were the fleshly fibres woven and
braided into that bond. That ship was a con-
stant appeal and challenge ; and as often as
it returned, new recruits were ready. More
than forty left at one time, and in one year,
1863, one hundred offered themselves.

THE LIVING LINKS, 317

During the seventeen years of Louis
Harms's conduct of the enterprise, that
parish enjoyed one long revival, and ten
thousand members were gathered into that
church-fold; while the work grew abroad,
so that in 1883, thirty years after the
"Candace" first set sail, over thirty sta-
tions had been established, they had forty
ordained missionaries, fifty-five lay, and as
many more women, missionaries, twenty-two
natives ordained, and one hundred and eighty-
five helpers, — a total working force of three
hundred and fifty-seven ; had gathered three
thousand nine hundred and twenty com-
municants, and eight thousand five hundred
and twenty adherents, from heathendom, and
spent that year seventy thousand five hundred
dollars. Instead of finding their sympathies
and efforts narrowing by such specific labors
in one field, the result has been to expand
and enrich their missionary spirit, to render
it more catholic and cosmopolitan ; and so we
find them sending missionaries to India, Aus-
tralia, and even America.

3l8 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

Let it be observed that this small and
obscure parish in Hanover had no proxies
or substitutes. They constituted their own
board, became their own secretaries, edited
their own missionary magazine, and organ-
ized and administered their own mission
work. Is it not barely possible that the
boards of foreign missions, instead of be-
ing the mere agents or instruments of the
active benevolence of our churches, are in
too many cases a substitute for it? Are not
our people quite too content to give an an-
nual offering to missions through some such
treasury, leaving to wise and able secretaries
not only to distribute funds and workers,
but to conduct all correspondence? When
intelligence from the field is printed in a
missionary magazine, only some twenty thou-
sand copies of it are circulated among hun-
dreds of thousands of communicants, and
out of that twenty thousand, one-quarter
sent gratuitously to ministers and missiona-
ries. Would it not* be a grand help to the
diffusion of missionary intelligence, to the

THE LIVING LINKS, 319

increase of missionary offerings, and to
the awakening of a profoundly prayerful,
personal, and sympathetic interest, if each
church might be linked to the heathen
world by the life of some consecrated man
or woman ; and best of all, if that person be
one sent out from among their own number,
known personally, loved dearly, whose very
name becomes inseparably connected with
the work of a world's redemption? If the
life of Harriet Newell, Adoniram Judson,
David Livingstone, Alexander Duff, makes
all our pulses bound anew with yearnings
to save the lost, what would be the effect
on any church from which such heroic souls
went down into the deep mine of heathenism,
charging those whom they left behind to hold
the rope?

The experiment is surely worth the trial.
After centuries of comparative failure to com-
pass this great want, we may well undertake
some new scheme, such as in so many in-
stances has proven grandly successful in culti-
vating the spirit of missions. If nothing more

320 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

is feasible, surely certain missionary laborers
might be put in correspondence with par-
ticular churches, whose offerings might be
appropriated for their support, wholly or
partially. What is desirable is that the
churches at home, and the mission fields
and mission workers abroad, should get into
contact and communication; so that the
bond of sympathy, conscious fellowship, and
intelligent interest might grow and become
more vital ; so that the same influences which
now reach so powerfully the hearts of our de-
voted missionary secretaries might thrill and
vitalize the dead body of our church member-
ship. Where is the church that supports a
missionary in a foreign field, and gets soul-
stirring letters from such a missionary, that
does not feel more interest in all the fields
and all the workers?

CHAPTER XXXIII.

THE PROBLEM OF MISSIONS.

|HE spirit of missions being cherished,
and developed by a true organiza-
tion, the great problem, requiring a
solution, is the lack of men and of means to
occupy the field and to accomplish the work.

We may roughly estimate the souls that in
Pagan, Moslem, Papal, and nominally Chris-
tian lands still need to be reached with a
pure gospel at a thousand millions; and
the whole number of missionary laborers, at
thirty-five thousand. Could each of these
carry on the work of evangelization, indepen-
dently, each worker would have to care for
nearly thirty thousand souls. As a matter of
fact, more than twenty-five thousand of these
laborers are unordained native assistants,
fit only to aid trained workmen ; so that we

322 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

have not more than ten thousand missionaries,
native and foreign, competent to conduct
this work. Each of these must therefore
assume an average responsibility of one hun-
dred thousand souls ; meanwhile, the total
sum annually spent on foreign missions is
about ten millions of dollars^ — an allowance of
one cent a year for each soul of this thousand
million /

Nothing can be plainer, without argument,
than that the church of Christ has never yet
attempted to solve the problem of missions.
Dr. Duff was right in saying that we are
"playing at missions." Were true, sound,
sensible business principles applied to this
question, no practical hinderance would be
found sufficient even to delay the prosecution
of the work solemnly committed by Christ
to His church. Let us have throughout the
Church thorough organization and practical
co-operation, and within the lifetime of one
generation the gospel may be preached for
a witness, not only among all nations, but to
every living creature.

THE PROBLEM OF MISSIONS. 323

Let us consider that here is the command
of the King of kings, for more than eighteen
centuries waiting for obedient disciples to
carry it out. Mordecai, five hundred years
before Christ, issued a decree in the name of
Ahasuerus. It was the third month, Sivan,
on the three and twentieth day, that the
king's scribes were called to put that decree
in writing; it was addressed to the Jews,
lieutenants, deputies, and rulers of the prov-
inces which reached from India unto Ethio-
pia, — a hundred and twenty-seven provinces;
it had to be translated into the language of
each province, and promulgated with haste.
There were no facilities for doing this work
such as we possess; no printing-presses,
postal unions, telegraplis; no railroads and
steam-ships. Every copy must be tran-
scribed by hand, and the messengers must
go only so fast as horses and mules, camels
and dromedaries, could carry them. And
yet through all those hundred and twenty-
seven provinces the decree was published
upon the thirteenth day of the twelfth month,

324 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

Adar. Less than nine months to bear the
king's message throughout his wide domain^
while the church of Christ, after nearly nine-
teen hundred yearsy has reached only one
fourth of the human race with the gospel of
salvation.

An English preacher asked some British
soldiers, " If Queen Victoria were to issue a
proclamation, and, placing it in the hands of
her army and navy, were to say, * Go ye into
all the world and proclaim it to every crea-
ture,' how long do you think it would take to
do it ? " One of these brave fellows, accus-
tomed to obey orders without hesitation or
delay, and at peril of life, promptly answered,
" Welly I think we could manage it in about
eighteen months^

There are, perhaps, in round numbers one
hundred million of Protestants in the world.
Could each of that number somehow reach
ten of the unsaved, the whole thousand mil-
lion would be evangelized; and could each
be brought to give one cent a day, our mis-
sionary treasuries would overflow with three

THE PROBLEM OF MISSIONS. $2$

hundred and sixty-five millions of dollars
every year. Of course we cannot depend
upon any such numbers in this work. Nomi-
nal Protestants include millions of mere pro-
fessors, members of state churches, formalists
and ritualists, and millions more who do not
even profess to be disciples, and are openly
immoral and infidel.

But let us suppose that there are ten miU
lions of true disciples who can be brought
into line, and who by systematic effort can
be made to furnish men and money for this
work, even with this tenth part of Christendom
the world may be evangelized before the twen-
tieth century dawns.

We are not responsible for conversion, but
we are responsible (or contact. We cannot
compel any man to decide for Christ, but we
may compel every man to decide one way or
the other ; that is, we may so bring to every
human being the gospel message, that the
responsibility is transferred from us to him,
and that we are delivered from blood guilti-
ness. God will take care of the results, if we

326 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

do our duty. We are to preach this gospel
everywhere for a witness, not coldly, officially,
formally, but earnestly, prayerfully, lovingly ;
we are to set up Christian churches, schools,
institutions, homes, in the midst of pagan
communities, as part of this witness to the
power of the gospel ; then, whether the gos-
pel prove a savor of life or of death, our
fidelity will not fail of its reward.

We repeat, that it is our solemn and mature
conviction that before the close of this cen-
tury the gospel might be brought into con-
tact with every living soul ; for if we could
so organize and utilize ten millions of disci-
ples as that every one should be the means
of reaching with the good tidings one hundred
other souls, during the lifetime of this gen-
eration all the present population of the
globe would be evangelized ; or if the sub-
lime purpose should inspire the whole church
to do this work before this century ends,
each of this ten million believers has only to
reach between seven and eight souls every
year for the fourteen years that remain.

THE PROBLEM OF MISSIONS. 327

For many years the writer has been urging,
both by tongue and pen, the necessity and
feasibility of a grand campaign for Christ,
with reference to the immediate occupation
of all unoccupied fields, and the immediate
proclamation of the gospel to every living
soul ; and after a wide discussion of the prop-
osition by some of the ablest writers upon
the subject of missions, the conviction is only
established that the present crisis impera-
tively demands that the entire forces of the
Christian church should be enlisted and
engaged in this glorious work. A spirit of
consecrated enterprise should apply to this
giant problem the best and soundest busi-
ness principles ; a system should be devised
which shall prevent waste of time, money,
and men, and economize and administer all
the available force of the Church. The im-
perial clarion of our Lord summons all his
hosts for the great crusade.

Nehemiah was a model organizer. He
built up the broken walls of the Holy City,
and with a small, poor remnant of the people

328 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

finished the work in fifty-two days. The
perfection of his organization was the secret
of his success, and it embraced three grand
principles : first, division of labor^ every man
at work over against his own door; secondly,
co-operation, all engaged in one work and
operating upon one plan ; thirdly, concentra-
tiony all at the sound of the trumpet rallying
to defend any weak and assaulted point.
Put those three principles into practice in
the work of foreign missions, and we may
build the wall of gospel witness around the
world in a few years; we may push the
advance of our missionary hosts so rapidly
and systematically, that on every hill, in every
valley, from equator to poles and from sea to
sea, the gospel's silver trumpet shall sound.

Fifty years ago seven humble shoemakers
in a shop in Hamburg undertook the work
of evangelization on the principle of individ-
ual responsibility. In twenty years they had
organized fifty churches, gathered ten thou-
sand converts, distributed four hundred thou-
sand Bibles and eight million pages of tracts,

THE PROBLEM OF MISSIONS. 329

and preached the gospel to fifty millions of
people. As they went from place to place,
the work grew, and new converts inspired
with similar zeal became helpers, so that a
population as great as that of the United
States, or of the Congo Free State, heard
the gospel within those twenty years. If any
are distrustful of mere arithmetic as applied
to the problem of missions, here is a practi-
cal proof that it is perfectly feasible so to
organize the work as to reach one hundred
millions of people every year, and that, too,
with only an insignificant Gideon's band.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

THE LABORERS ARE FEW.

lUMAN life is too brief and the field
is too great for the Church ever to
overtake the needs of the field,
without a large increase of the working
force. These thousand millions of unevan-
gelized souls are dying at the rate of thirty
millions a year, and as many more are com-
ing on the stage of life. What can these
few thousand workers do, themselves mortal,
to meet the wants of such a mortal race?
It is plain that what we are to do for our own
generation we must do, while that generation
lasts ; and this is utterly impracticable, if not
impossible, unless the Lord of the harvest, in
answer to prayer, sencjs forth more laborers
into His harvest.

THE LABORERS ARE FEW. 33 1

We say, with hesitation, yet from the force
of deep conviction, that, if we would largely
increase the missionary force, we must in
some way lesseti the time and cost of the prep-
aration of the average workman.

The gathering of funds is sufficiently slow,
and the securing of volunteers sufficiently
difficult ; but the most formidable barrier to
the work of evangelization is that, even where
both men and money may be obtained, it
takes too long a time and too costly a culture
to train the average workman ; and this one
obstacle often overtops all others, and is
practically insurmountable.

For example, a pastor whose heart and
tongue are on fire urges the claims of a lost
world, and there are a few who respond,
" Here am I, send me ; " but they are gener-
ally for the most part from the poorer and
less-educated classes. The wealthy are often
electro-plated with avarice, and our appeals
ring upon a cold, hard, metallic surface; or
worldly schemes and business pursuits have
them in their coils. The cultivated some-

332 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS,

times drift into philosophic doubt, and some-
times are already engaged in the learned
professions, or journalism, or other congenial
work. The few dormant consciences that do
awake under our appeal are generally found
in persons to whom wealth and learning do
not open attractive doors at home. How
disheartening, when one such offers to go to
those regions beyond, to be told at the outset
that from five to ten years must be spent in
preparation !

One instance, known to the writer, may
stand for a large class. A young Welshman,
found competent to exhort, was, after the
fashion of the Welsh Methodists, licensed.
Afterward, coming to America he found a
home in one of our Presbyterian churches,
where he was much esteemed for piety,
capacity, and love for souls. He and his
earnest wife came to his pastor and begged
to be sent to a foreign field. But how was
he to get a license? Though he was sound
in doctrine, he had neither a classical nor
theological training, and had no means to

THE LABORERS ARE FEW. 333

pursue a prolonged course of study. The
most he could do would be to get, under his
pastor, a training in theology, church history,
and the English Bible. Unless some such
shorter road to the mission field could be
found, these two willing souls cannot carry
out their heart's wish, and the field that needs
workmen so much must lose two devoted
laborers.

Some denominations, when called to con-
front such perplexities, cut the Gordian knot
by putting such workers into the field. The
Romanists clothe with garb, girdle, and
crucifix, every willing and loyal servant of
the church, and send such forth with a bless-
ing. The Methodists license and evea ordain
those who are apt to teach, abating the
severity of the demand for trained and
scholarly men, in order to provide more
average workmen. Spurgeon, working • on
an independent basis, sends out from his own
college, in thirty years, nearly a thousand
ministers, missionaries, and evangelists, after
from one to three years of study. Pastor

334 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS,

Louis Harms trained raw recruits in his mis-
sion school, and, without any rigidly uniform
system of training, sent colonies of workers
to scores of new stations, encouraging every
willing soul to do the work for which he was
best fitted, and further fitting each workman
for the proposed sphere of labor.

These are signs of the times that ought not
to be undiscerned or unheeded. It is possi-
ble to hold fast to standards of qualification
which are too severe, inflexible, inelastic;
and to make the road too hard and too long
by which laborers get into the harvest field.
The solemn, weighty calling of the ministry
ought not to be entered too hastily or easily;
a high standard helps to high average attain-
ment, and unduly to lower the standard may
lower also the dignity of the office. All this
we are ready cordially to concede, as also the
demand of these days for trained men. But
even this true principle may be pushed to an
extreme; in avoiding laxity, we may swing
to rigidity.

Trained men are everywhere needed^ but it

THE LABORERS ARE FEW. 335

is as leaders, planners, organizers ; under and
behind them, very many who have far less
training may do excellent work. One master
mechanic not only guides a score of common
workmen, but stamps upon their work the
impress of his own genius, taste, and skill ; he,
like Briareus, has a hundred hands, but all
guided by one head. A few West Point grad-
uates plan defences and strategic movements
for the ordinary rank and file to garrison
or execute. The ministry needs scholarly
leaders, masterly organizers; but under a
few skilled generals an army of volunteers
may move, and carry the enemy's works by
storm.

There ought to be a change in our ecclesi-
astical tactics ; our system of training for the
mission field must be more flexible and more
economical of time and money, or we cannot
send workmen into the great world-field in
adequate numbers. Conservatism will counsel
rigid adherence to antiquated custom, on the
ground of jealousy for the sacred office ; and
justify a prolonged course of education as a

336 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

severe sifting process, that separates the
pure grain and leaves the incapable and ir-
resolute to be blown from the threshing-
floor Uke chaff.

At the same time, there are plain facts
that, like storm-signals, fly in our face and
bid us prepare for the crisis, even now at
hand. On the borders of our own land, and
in foreign lands, where our trained workmen
confront vast vacancies which must be filled
and strategic points which must be manned
against the coming conflict, they are glad to
set at work every man and woman that can
be used. Men who have no college diploma,
and could not furnish that supreme test of
scholarship, the " Latin essay," if found capa-
ble, willing, and winning, are licensed and
ordained. Abroad, native converts who
show true piety and develop real capacity
are authorized to preach, and set as pastors
over native churches, with little or no special
training except in the Bible. They are taught
the Gospels as their " systematic theology,"
and the Acts of the Apostles as their "church

THE LABORERS ARE FEW. 337

history," and the sermons of Peter and Paul as
their " homiietics/* and the pastoral epistles as
their " pastoral theology ; " and then put into
the places of trust. The necessity of having
more helpers, and of multiplying self-support-
ing churches and supplying them with pas-
tors, compels those who are on the ground,
and have control, to shorten and simplify the
course of training.

Why should not the whole church adopt
the same policy? The "rules " of our book
are servants, and not masters, and should be
made to bend, if necessary, to bear the burdens
of mission work. Any system that is unduly
oppressive, and that tempts us to evasions
and irregularities, is no longer a harness, but
a yoke, or a strait-jacket, and needs modifica-
tion. It is the almost universal testimony of
foreign missionaries that we are making a
grave mistake in demanding of candidates
a long and tedious preparation, irrespective
of their capacity, circumstances, age, charac-
ter, or prospective field and work. Facts
show that scholastic training is not necessary

338 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

for effective service. There are scores of
heroic men doing valiant battle for the Lord
and the faith, who were never in college or
seminary. Native converts, sent out in apos-
tolic fashion as lay-preachers to tell the sim-
ple story of the cross, are to-day making
disciples by the hundreds in China. Let the
church of Christ devise some safe way by
which willing souls may get into the field and
at work without this long, laborious, costly
preparation, and we may within ten years
double the number of missionaries in home
and foreign fields.

Where men are going to foreign lands, a
part of their training might be left to be
secured on the ground, while engaged in the
study of the languages of the people among
whom they are to labor. Even those who
cannot preach, but are willing to work, may
help in teaching, Bible and tract distribution,
translating, editing and printing, or even in
manual labor, all of which are closely con-
nected with missionary work. Dr. Crummell,
himself a Cambridge graduate, after twenty

THE LABORERS ARE FEW. 339

years on the Dark Continent, pleads for in-
dustrtal training. The superiority of Sierra
Leone over Liberia, as prosperous and in-
dependent, building its own churches, sup-
porting its own ministers, and contributing
largely to missionary work, he attributes
mainly to the fact that the slaves, rescued by
English cruisers and placed there for safety,
were taught trades and industries, and so
became prosperous mechanics and merchants,
and founded families whose children have
gone to England for scholarly training.

We feel persuaded also that the Church
should send forth not only individual preach-
ers and teachers, but Christian colonies^ to
mission fields. Why not, in Salt Lake Valley,
confront a hideous Mormonism with the wit-
ness of a Christian community, with conse-
crated homes, and workmen who abide in
their calling with God? Why not send
similar colonies into the Congo basin, to
plant Christian churches and schools, to illus-
trate the divine idea of family life and good
government, and in all departments of indus-

340 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

try and the learned professions, exemplify
the spirit of the gospel in the presence of
hovels of polygamy, mud idols, and licentious
indolence?

We advocate, without hesitation, a new basis
of training for mission fields, a shorter course,
and one more practical in character. Those
who are to do good work, at home or abroad,
should be sound in doctrine, familiar with
the principles of New Testament church
polity, and thoroughly trained in the English
Bible. Then they might be sent to their
fields, under control of trusted brethren, to
do such work as they are fitted for, and spend
the time that would have been spent at home
in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, in applying
themselves to the languages they are to use
in their fields, and to the study of the people
among whom they are to labor.

This method would have this additional
advantage, that it would so employ candidates
in direct work for souls, as to keep their spirit-
ual life warm and earnest We have often
observed that the seven years of our college

THE LABORERS ARE FEW. %^l

and seminary life not infrequently leave candi-
dates with a chronic chili. Long withdrawal
from active work, and absorption in mere
study, are not favorable to burning zeal.
Intellectual standards often displace the
higher spiritual ideals. If young men, in the
ardor and fervor of their first love, could be
promptly trained in the doctrinal and biblical
basis of all true mission work, and sent to the
home or foreign field to get at work for souls
while they complete their preparation for
their life-mission, not a few of our greatest
missionaries have affirmed that immense gain
would come to the work in energy and enthu-
siasm. The converted natives who are set
working before their first love grows cold,
never lose that first love. If volunteers could
be encouraged to go promptly forward with
preparations for the field, and, without tedious
delay, placed in the field and at work, they
would never lose the impulse and impetus
of their present earnestness and enthusiasm ;
others would catch fire at the altar of their
consecration, and we might find ourselves,

342 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

under the lead of Divine Providence, inaug-
urating a new era in Protestant missions.
It is plain that something needs to be done
beyond what is now doing ; some new clew
must be found to the mazes of this mis-
sionary question; some new factor found
for the solution of the greatest practical
problem ever before the Church. What we
are to do, must be done quickly. The gen-
eration is passing away, and we with it.
These millions of unsaved souls we must con-
front at the bar of God. What can we do
for their salvation, — nay, for our own salva-
tion from blood-guiltiness, — before the sun
of life shall set?

CHAPTER XXXV.

MEETING THE CRISIS.

HE field is the world, and the church
is the recruiting office for workmen.
The great disproportion between the
immense masses of the unevangelized, and the
available resources of men and money and
means from which the working force must be
drawn, makes the utmost economy necessary.
The Church has comparatively few who can
be relied on to supply consecrated workmen
or consecrated capital for this vast work ; and
yet we are positively wasting both njen and
money by the rivalry of several denomina-
tions in the same fields, while other fields are
entirely unoccupied.

Dr. Murray Mitchell said, a few years ago,
that it is a disgrace to Prgtestantism, that only
eighty years since, the mission work in the

344 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

regions beyond was systematically inaugu-
rated; and it is still a burning disgrace to
the church of Christ that the millions of
Protestant church-members sustain in the for-
eign field not over ten thousand men and wo-
men, and contribute not over ten millions of
dollars yearly, while in Scotland alone the
Presbyterian Church has more than three
thousand ministers.

How little do we appreciate the fact or the
extent of the unoccupied fields. Anam, with
twenty millions; Kurdistan, with three mil-
lions; an immense tract of the Dark Conti-
nent lying north of the equator; the vast
Congo basin, touched as yet only on its
edges, with fifty millions more; Afghanis-
tan, with eight millions. Thibet, Mongolia,
and Arabia have recently been embraced
in the great missionary girdle ; but only a be-
ginning has been made, and we might prop-
erly include them among the unoccupied
fields. Only fragments of the vast popu-
lations of China, Africa, South America,
have even come in contact with the gospel.

MEETING THE CRISIS. 345

The Greek and papal churches hold three
hundred millions under an almost unbroken
spell of ignorance and superstition. There
are one hundred and seventy millions of Is-
lam's deluded followers, and while Christian
missions have scarcely approached them,
they are themselves making new converts
to the False Prophet; in China alone, one
hundred thousand proselytes to Mohamme-
danism are reported as the result of a
recent aggressive movement. Meanwhile,
every year a vast host, equal to the entire
population of the United States, passes into
eternity.

The destitution of the great countries where
missions are most thickly planted is still ap-
palling. When, in 1881, Mr. Stevenson, of
the China Inland Mission, travelled through
China from east to west, he journeyed sixty-
one days, over more than a thousand miles,
from Bhamo in Upper Burmah, to Chun-King
in the province of Chuen, without finding one
mission station between those points; and
that awful shadow thus unrelieved by any

346 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

gospel light was a thousand miles broad, as
well as long, for on either side of his line of
travel stretched a territory five hundred miles
in breadth, with only one station, Kwei-Yang,
in its whole extent. In a word, here was a
square of territory one thousand miles long
and broad, embracing one million square
miles, thickly populated, and three mission
stations, two of them on its extreme borders
and one between. It is far better now ; but
even now the provinces of Kan-Suh and
Kwei-Chau each has three missionaries for
its three millions ; Shen-Si has ten missiona-
ries for ten millions ; Yun-Nan, four missiona-
ries for six millions. Here are four provinces,
together nearly four times as large as Great
Britain and Ireland, and twenty two mil-
lions of people, — but only twenty Protes-
tant missionaries.

At such a rate, the church of Christ, we
repeat, can never overtake the unevangelized
population of the earth. Yet our Lord meant
no absurdly impracticable project when He
said, "Disciple all nations." It would be easy

MEETING THE CRISIS. 347

for a consecrated church promptly to carry
the banner of the cross to the ends of the
earth, to furnish all the workers needful, and
to make the missionary treasuries overflow.
If one Christian woman can herself disburse
two millions of dollars in benevolence; if
one Congregational deacon can appropriate
a million to missions; if twenty persons
in one year can together give nearly four
millions, — what might not one hundred
million Protestants give, if only a tithe were
honestly and systematically laid on God's
altar?

England paid for the war in Afghanistan
sixty millions, while one eighth of that sum
was all the entire church of Christ could
devote that same year to the evangelization
of the heathen, the world-wide campaign
for Christ. As Dr. William Ashmore says,
'* Whiskey is the stand-pipe in our compara-
tive expenditures ; " it shows how much
money there is now spent for one article
of harmful indulgence, that might be spent
for missions, without touching our actual

348 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

necessities or comforts ; and the whiskey level
is nine hundred millions annually.

The internal revenue tax on tobacco in
New York alone in 1879 exceeded seven
millions of dollars. How true it is, as Rev.
F. T. Bay ley says, that "a deified appetite
outranks a crucified Christ."

For liquor and tobacco two hundred and
fifty-five times as much is annually spent as
for missions ; or taking together with these,
bread and meat, sugar and molasses, iron
and steel, lumber, cotton and woollen fabrics,
boots and shoes, and public education, every
year there are spent in these various direc-
tions six hundred and seventy-five dollars to
every dollar giveft to foreign missions.

As we could give money without feeling
it, so we could give men. Our late four
years' war not only required rivers of treas-
ure, but rivers of blood, — five hundred
thousand lives were sacrificed to save the
Union. Yet we give to the heathen world
ten thousand men and women, and can do
no more, gathering them from the whole

MEETING THE CRISIS. 349

church of Christ. The missionary band has
been called " heroic ; " and it is. Gideon was
brave ; but even after his force was reduced
from thirty-two thousand to three hundred,
he had one man to every four hundred and
fifty of the foe. But, as Dr. Ashmore says,
if Gideon's band had been reduced to the
same proportion as the missionary band to
the millions they confront, he would have
had less than one man to the hundred and
thirty-five thousand Midianites.

Can anything be done to meet this present
crisis? The writer of these pages begs those
who are praying for the coming of the king-
dom to consider the following suggestions,
in addition to those already made.

Let a great council of disciples be called
to consider the question of the world's desti-
tution, and to confer as to its speedy evan-
gelization.

At some great world-centre, like London
or New York, or at Rome, the old heart of
the papacy, or at Constantinople, the golden
gate to the Moslem empire, or at Jerusalem,

350 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

the very city of the great King, let an ecu-
menical council be summoned to meet, as
early as practicable, and let every evangeli-
cal Christian denomination be represented by
commissioners clothed with authority ; and at
such a council let three things be done : —

First, let workers from every mission field
be there, like Paul and Barnabas on their
return to Antioch from their first mission
tour, to " rehearse all that God has done with
them, and how he has opened the door of
faith to the nations." Let them present that
huge mass of facts which shows that, since
the world began, no half-century of history
has been so full of stupendous and startling
interpositions of God as the last fifty years of
modern missions. In the mouth of many wit-
nesses let every word be established ; and let
it be shown that from the Pillars of Hercules
to the Golden Horn, from the Arabian Gulf
to the Chinese Sea, from the silver bergs of
Greenland to the Southern Cape and the
Land of Fire, God has flung wide the ports
and portals of sealed empires and hermit

MEETING THE CRISIS. 35 1

nations, hurled to the very ground the walls
and barriers of ancient customs and creeds,
made all nations neighbors, and woven into
unity the history and destiny of the whole
race by the shuttles of traffic and travel. Let
all men face the fact that no outlay of men,
money, and means ever brought returns so
rich and rapid as the mission enterprise;
that even the seeming waste of precious
lives has been but the breaking of the
costly flask, filling the world with the odor
of unselfish and heroic piety, and prompting
to its imitation. Let the Hawaiian group,
first-fruits of the sea unto God, send her
witnesses; let Syria, whose soil is sacred
with Jesus' blood, tell of her Christian
schools and printing-presses; let Madagas-
car witness the power of the gospel that has
made her God's angel sounding the trumpet
of grace at the eastern gate of the Dark Con-
tinent ; let the Pacific Archipelago tell of the
thousand churches that point their spires like
fingers to the sky; let the witnesses gather
from India, where the " Lone Star " has

352 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS,

grown to a constellation of glories ; from Ja-
pan, striding in seven-league boots toward
a Christian future; from Italy and France,
just coming forth from the sepulchre of the
Dark Ages, bursting the bonds of a thousand
years of priestcraft and superstition !

The church of Christ is asleep. Let a
thousand trumpets, like the sound of many
thunders uttering their voices, rouse us all
from apathy and lethargy. Let facts, like
the fingers of God, write God's message on
the walls of our temples of mammon and
palaces of luxury, as in letters of fire, till
selfishness and worldliness shall tremble at
the manifest presence of the Lord !

Secondly, let the whole world-field be
mapped outy divided and distributed among
the evangelical denominations of Christen-
dom. To prevent waste and friction, and
apparent division of forces in the face of a
gigantic and united foe, let right of prior-
ity be conceded to those who are already
working successfully in any field, and let the
one purpose and motto be occupation of

MEETING THE CRISIS. 353

fields now destitute, and the speedy evange-
lization of the world. Let there be a careful
adjustment of the boundaries of each field,
and agreement as to the principles of mu-
tual co-operation and comity.

The monks of the Middle Ages, who went
forth in companies of twelve, electing one of
their number as captain, taking possession of
the regions beyond for Christ, set us all a
grand example; and inspired by Judson
Smith's enthusiasm, the Oberlin band was
recently formed upon this principle, and have
gone forth to occupy the province of Shen-
Si, in China.

Thirdly, let there be a proper distribution
of the forces, so as to use all workmen as
economically as possible. It is a shame to
us not to husband all our resources, where
the demand and the supply are so dispro-
portionate. As others* have magnanimously
retired from Turkey, leaving the American
Board to concentrate its energies on that
field; as Syria and Siam are left mainly to
American Presbyterians, and Egypt to the

354 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

United Presbyterians : so, where any existing
missionary force is adequate to the work, let
others retire from the field and go to some
other, unprovided for. Above all, let there
be no strife between those who are brethren,
but let a magnanimous charity abound. We
are not sure that it would not be wise and
practicable to appoint a general board of
supervision and control, representing va-
rious co-operating bodies of Christians, and
having power to act in their behalf. What is
desirable is, that in some way all unoccupied
territory shall be assigned to those who shall
feel responsible for it, and that those who
supervise the work shall thoroughly under-
stand the needs and comparative claims of
each part of the wide field, and act with
integrity, impartiality, and charity. Why not,
in these days of business schemes that are
colossal in capital, magnificent in plan, and
world-wide in their extent,— * why not under-
take the King's business as something that
requires haste, and should summon to its
prompt prosecution every loyal disciple!

CHAPTER XXXVI.

A world's missionary council.

SHE suggestions, modestly put before
the great brotherhood of fellow-
disciples, by one comparatively
obscure believer, in the preceding pages, are
a simple but earnest contribution to the solu-
tion of the greatest problem ever submitted
to the church of God. However crude they
may seem, they are the result of a quarter
of a century of constant thought and study
upon the missionary problem. In part, they
have already been put into print in fragmen-
tary forms, from time to time, and have been
met with friendly discussion and cordial ap-
probation from others who are interested in
the same great end, the evangelization of t1
world.

3S6 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

The proposition of a World-Council has
especially been received with wide and
emphatic favor. For example, a beloved
representative of the great Methodist Episco-
pal Church,^ echoing the need of complete
and " thorough organization, and of one
great, all-comprehensive plan and purpose,
and of persistent, concerted, and concentred
movements and assaults upon the strongholds
of the powers of darkness," suggests that
such a world's missionary congress be called,
that it be composed of delegates both from
the ministry and the membership of the
churches, representatives known to be un-
usually wise, pious, and missionary-spirited ;
that they be clothed with authority to act
and vote according as their own wisdom and
the manifest leadings of the providence and
Spirit of God may dictate; and that similar
workers from all the fields of mission work
give such congress the benefit of their pres-
ence, experience, and counsels. He further
suggests that such delegates be chosen at

1 Rev. J. M. Driver. Missionary Review, VIII. 464.

A WORLD'S MISSIONARY COUNCIL. 35/

least one year in advance of the assembling
of the Council, and that similar councils
might follow at longer or shorter intervals of
from one to five years, as the exigencies of
the work might require.

From none of the friends of missions, how-
ever, have more enthusiastic responses come
than from Mr. Robert Arthington, of Leeds,
England, who has been so liberal in his bene-
factions to missions, especially in Africa. In
personal letters, both to Rev. R. G. Wilder,
editor of the " Missionary Review," and to the
author of this volume, he expresses his warm
and hearty approval of the proposition of a
World-Council. He writes as follows : —

"The Church Missionary Society of London
has lately held a large number of open meetings
simultaneously over England, to promote the mis-
sionary enterprise. At one of these meetings, on
February ii, 1886, I moved the following reso-
lution, promotive of universal evangelization : —

RESOLUTION.

** *This meeting, deeply sensible that far greater
missionary effort is needed in order to fulfil the

3S8 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

parting command of Christ to His disciples,
resolves that the time has come to map out the
whole world in portions, in its heathen parts, and
allot it amongst all missionary societies, — whose
aim it is to give a whole Bible to a whole people,
— thus enlarging the fields already occupied, and
giving new spheres to each society, so as to cover
the entire globe.

" * And further it is resolved, that a request be
sent from this meeting to the committee of the
society originating these conferences, asking that
they will confer with the various missionary so-
cieties in Europe and America, with a view thus
to map^ out the world, and devise, by mutual
suggestion, a plan for general adoption.' ''

•

He further says, emphasizing the matter as

one deserving very prayerful consideration :

" I feel quite sure that good to all eternity
must come of this movement. Would not the
occupation of the whole world simply for evangel-
ization by the Word of God be greatly to His
glory ? I judge it would not be difficult to make
prayerfully the proposed apportionment of the
unevangelized parts of the world. . . . If we do
not attain all we could desire, it would be a great
advance to have made the apportionment. Who

rihMM

A WORLD'S MISSIONARY COUNCIL. 3S9

can doubt that the plan, if accepted and carried
out, would lead to an amazing increase of mission-
ary effort and success ! Any one might still be
free to preach the gospel in any part of the
world ; but for economy of time, strength, money,
and forces, all might be entreated not to establish
missions in parts assigned to others and occupied
by them. I shall be glad to assist in counsel and
correspondence, "

As this is a utilitarian age, and the ques-
tion will be asked, whether any good would
be likely to come of such a World-Council,
not equally to be secured by existing agen-
cies, we venture to add, that certain results
of the highest importance would be almost
certain to follow,

1. First of all, the very spectacle of the
gathering of the representatives of evangeli-
cal Christendom, for the sole purpose of the
speedy evangelization of the world, would
exceed in sublimity any event from Pente-
cost until now. It would awaken joy in
heaven as well as in earth.

2. It would mass the great facts of mission
as they have never been massed before. Thi

360 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

testimony would be so universal, as to be
irresistible in its cumulative force. The
members of the Council, overwhelmed by
the witness from the world-wide fields, would
return to their homes to scatter the holy fire,
— to diffuse information, to arouse the Church
to its responsibility, and to kindle inspiring
and contagious enthusiasm. The press would
be called into requisition to multiply and
scatter the reports and proceedings, and the
Council would have a trumpet-voice whose
echoes would be heard round the world.

3. We might look for results of the highest
practical value in the proper distribution and
apportionment of laborers, and the prompt
occupation of every part of the field. A holy
emulation would take the place of sectarian
rivalry. The assignment of particular fields
to particular denominations, and even to in-
dividual churches, would intensify interest
and quicken the sense of responsibility. A
practical, economical mode of administration
would commend itself to business men, and
it would bring ampler contributions to God's

A WORLD'S MISSIONARY COUNCIL, 361

treasury. Men and women would be more
ready to offer themselves to the work.

4. The impression of substantial Christian
unity would be invaluable, both in quickening
our home co-operation and in promoting the
success of our missionary labors. As Mac-
aulay says, " Where heathen unite to worship
a cow, the differences between Christian sects
dwindle into insignificance." It is the re-
proach of missions that several denominations
are needlessly occupying the same fields,
while other fields have not a missionary of
any sort.

5. Best of all, we should confidently expect
the Lord himself to acknowledge such a
council of disciples by a new effusion of the
Koly Ghost Two results would be involved
in this, — a spirit of prayer for missions, and
a spirit of personal consecration to the work.
Without these, all our methods and measures
are but so much machinery without an ade-
quate motor. We are deeply and unalter-
ably persuaded that the whole progress and
success of the work of missions depend upon

362 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

a wide-spread, radical revival of primitive
piety. There is too little prayer, and hence
too little of the power that comes by prayer.
Give us Elijah with his face between his
knees, in seven-fold supplication, and we
shall have the cloud like a man's hand,
and then an overspread sky and a mighty
rain.

In the summer of 1885 there was issued
by the Convention of Believers at Northfield,
Mass., an appeal to fellow-disciples to engage
in concerted prayer. It was printed in cir-
cular form, and sent far and wide. It has
found its way to every part of the world by
the aid of the million-tongued press. This
year, at the Summer School for Students held
at Mount Hermon, Mass., where nearly three
hundred young men from about one hundred
colleges gathered for four weeks of prayer
and Bible study, the spirit of missions was
marvellously poured out Early in the meet-
ings it became evident that a new and strange
influence was at work from above. There
had been perhaps a score of those young

A WORLD'S MISSIONARY COUNCIL. 363

^ brethren who came on the ground with the

- mission field in view. But when, on August

^ 1st, the farewell meeting was held, one hun-

dred of those students had consecrated their
' lives to the work of missions, and had chosen

^ four of their number systematically to visit

• the colleges of the land and seek to enkindle

a holy zeal for the work of a world's evangel-
ization. Those who were present at both
the Convention of 1885 and the Summer
School of 1886 were constrained to say, " This
is the finger of God." It was obviously the
work of no man, but of His Holy Spirit;
the prayers which for a year have been
ascending to God from disciples of every
name, for a new effusion of the Holy Ghost,
are beginning to be visibly and gloriously
answered.

In view of all these facts, and in hope and
faith of wider co-operation among praying
believers, and a more general and sympathetic
union and communion in believing supplica-
tion directed to this great end, we bring this
little volume to a fitting close by appending

364 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

to these chapters a copy of the Appeal,
believing that nothing but such a new out-
pouring of the Spirit in answer to prayer will
enable the church of Christ properly to meet

The Crisis of Missions.

A WORD SUPPLEMENTARY.

|S the missionary voice which sounded
from Northfield last year has re-
sounded in so many echoes, we give

it a new chance to be heard, by the humble

aid of this book.

AN APPEAL TO DISCIPLES EVERYWHERE.
Issued by the Northfield Convention.

Ta FeUffvihbflievers of every name, scattered throughout the
world. Greeting:

Assembled in the name of our Lord Jesus
Christ, with one accord, in one place, we have
continued for ten days in prayer and supplication,
communing with one another about the common
salvation, the blessed hope, and the duty of wit-
nessing to a lost world.

It was near to our place of meeting that, in
1747, at Northampton^ Jonathan Edwards sent

366 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

forth his trumpet-peal, calling upon disciples
everywhere to unite in prayer for an effusion of
the Spirit upon the whole habitable globe. That
summons to prayer marks a new era and epoch
in the history of the church of God. Praying
bands began to gather in this and other lands ;
mighty revivals of religion followed ; immorality
and infidelity were wonderfully checked ; and,
after more than fifteen hundred years of apathy
and lethargy, the spirit of missions was re-
awakened. In 1784, the monthly concert was
begun, and in 1792 the first missionary society
formed in England; in 1793, William Carey, the
pioneer missionary, sailed for India. Since then,
one hundred missionary boards have been organ-
ized, and probably not less than one hundred
thousand missionaries, including women, have
gone forth into the harvest-field. The Pillar has
moved before these humble laborers, and the two-
leaved gates have opened before them, until the
whole world is now accessible. The ports and
portals of Pagan, Moslem, and even Papal lands
are now unsealed, and the last of the hermit
nations welcomes the missionary. Results of
missionary labor in the Hawaiian and Fiji Islands,
in Madagascar, in Japan, probably have no par-
allel even in apostolic days ; while even Pentecost
is surpassed by the ingathering of ten thousand

A WORD SUPPLEMENTARY, 167

converts in one mission station in India within
sixty days, in the year 1878. The missionary
bands had scarce compassed the walls and
sounded the gospel trumpet, when those walls
fell, and we have but to march straight on and
take possession of Satan's strongholds.

God has thus, in answer to prayer, opened the
door of access to the nations. Out of the Pillar
there comes once more a voice, " Speak unto
the children of Israel, that they go forward.'*
And yet the church of God is slow to move in
response to the providence of God. Nearly a
thousand millions of the human race are yet
without the gospel ; vast districts are wholly
unoccupied. So few are the laborers, that, if
equally dividing responsibility, each must care for
at least one hundred thousand souls. And yet
there is abundance of both men and means in the
church to give the gospel to every living soul
before this century closes. If but ten millions,
out of four hundred millions of nominal Chris-
tians, would undertake such systematic labor as
that each one of that number should, in the
course of the next fifteen years, reach one hun-
dred other souls with the gospel message, the
whole present population of the globe would have
heard the good tidings by the year 1900 1

Our Lord's own words are, " Go ye, therefore,

368 THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

and disciple all nations ; " and, " This gospel of
the kingdom shall be preached in all the world
' for a witness unto all nations ; and then shall the
end come.'* Peter exhorts us both to "look for
and hasten the coming of the day of God ; *' and
what if our inactivity delays His coming ? Christ
is waiting to " see of the travail of His soul ; "
and we are impressed that two things are just
now of great importance : first, the immediate
occupation and evangelization of every destitute
district of the earth's population ; and, secondly,
a new effusion of the Spirit in answer to united
prayer.

If at some great centre like London or New
York, a great council of evangelical believers
could meet, to consider the wonder-working of
God's providence and grace in mission fields, and
how fields now unoccupied may be insured from
further neglect, and to arrange and adjust the
work so as to prevent needless waste and friction
among workmen, it might greatly further the
glorious object of a world's evangelization ; and
we earnestly commend the suggestion to the
prayerful consideration of the various bodies of
Christian believers, and the various missionary
organizations. What a spectacle it would present
both to angels and men, could believers of every
name, forgetting all things in which they differ,

A WORD SUPPLEMENTARY. 369

meet, by chosen representatives, to enter sys-
tematically and harmoniously upon the work of
sending forth laborers into every part of the
world-field !

But, above all else, our immediate and impera-
tive need is a new spirit of earnest and prevailing
prayer. The first Pentecost crowned ten days of
united, continued supplication. Every subsequent
advance may be directly traced to believing
prayer, and upon this must depend a new Pente-
cost We therefore earnestly appeal to all fellow-
disciples to join us and each other in importunate
daily supplication for a new and mighty effusion
of the Holy Spirit upon all ministers, mission-
aries, evangelists, pastors, teachers, and Christian
workers, and upon the whole earth ; that God
would impart to all Christ's witnesses the tongues
of fire, and melt hard hearts before the burning
message. It is not by might nor by power, but by
the Spirit of the Lord, that all true success must
be secured. Let us call upon God till He
answereth by fire! What we are to do for the
salvation of the lost must be done quickly ; for
the generation is passing away, and we with it.
Obedient to our marching orders, let us " go into
all the world, and preach the gospel to every
creature," while from our very hearts we pray,

" Thy kingdom come."

370

THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS.

Grace, mercy, and peace be with you all.
Done in convention at Northfield, Mass.,
August 14, 1885, D. L. Moody presiding.

Arthur T. Pierson, Philadelphia, Presby- '

terian, Chairman,
A. J. Gordon, Boston, Baptist.
L. W. MuNHALL, Indianapolis, Methodist.
Geo. F. Pentecost, Brooklyn, N. Y., Con-

gregationalist.
Wm. Ashmore, Missionary to Swatow,

China, Baptist.
J. £. Studd, London, England, Church of

England.
Miss E. Dryer, Chicago Avenue Church,

Chicago.

Committee,

MAR 5 - 1915

University Press : John Wilson & Son, Cambridge.

BOOKS ON MISSIONS

PUBLISHED BY

BOBEST OABTEB AITO BBOTHEBS, ITEW TOBK

AMONG THE TURKS. By Cyrus Hamlin, D.D.
i2mo. ^1.50.

*' As a contribution to the literature of missionSf as a portraiture ot
picturesque scenes and romantic incidents in a strange land, and as a
novel and interesting narrative, it possesses equal value." — Congrega*
iionalist.

** He knows how to tell a story capitally." — /farmer's Magastne,

OUR LIFE IN CHINA. By Helen S. C. Nevius.
i2ino. jPi.oo.
' We have lingered over this book lovingly." — Scffttish A merican.

FORTY YEARS IN THE TURKISH EMPIRE.

A Memoir of Dr. Goodell. By Dr. Prime. lamo. ^z.50.

" It would be saying very little of this volume to call it a readable
one. It is much more, — really fascinating and most instructive at the
same time." — Lutheran Quarterly,

MISSIONARY PAPERS. By John C. Lowrie, D.D.
121110. ^1.50.

TWELVE MONTHS IN MADAGASCAR. By

Dr. Mullens. i2mo. $1.75.

FORTY YEARS IN POLYNESIA. By Rev. A.

W. Murray. x2mo. ^^2.50.

FOUR YEARS IN ASHANTEE. By Ramseyer

and KuHNE. i2mo. jpi.75.

THE WEAVER BOY: Dr. Livingstone. i6mo.
MASTER MISSIONARIES. By Dr. Japp. ^i.oo.

March, 1S87.

BOOKS

PUBLISHED BY

ROBERT CARTER & BROTHERS,

530 BROADWAY, NEW YORK.

THE CRISIS OF MISSIONS ; or, The Voice out
of the Cloud. By the Rev. Arthur T. Pibrson, D.D.
i6mo jPi.25

" It is as fiucinating as a novel, and yet overflowing with facts
that make one wonder how it can be possible that such great progress
has been made in missions, even during the recent years, and he not
have known more of it. This book can but stimulate the followers of
Christ to greater love for, and more earnest efforts in, missions." —
Christian Work.

"This is a book for every Christian to read with prayer and a
sinMre desire to know his personal duty in this great and glorious
work." — New York Observer.

** In the little volume before us, the history of missions is un-
rolled as a scroll, the marvellous providences of God are traced in let-
ters which glow with the intensity of the writer's convictions, the
trumpet-call of God's providences to the Christian world is sounded
so loud and dear as to reach, one would think, the dullest ear." —
Baptist Herald.

" One of the most important books to the cause of Foreign Mis-
sions — and through them to Home Missions also — which ever has
been written. It should be in every library and every household It
should be read, studied, taken to heart, and prayed over.'* — Congre^
gationalist.

*A. L. O. E. LIBRARY.

50 vols., i6mo, in a neat wooden case, net 28.00

" All these stories have the charm and pure Christian character

which have made the name of A. L. O. £. dear to thousands of

homes." — Lutheran.,

ARNOT, Rev. WUliam.

On the Parables. i2mo 1,75

Church in the House; or, Lessons on the Acts of the
Apostles. i2mo i.eo

(I)

BERNARD, T. D.

The Progress of Doctrine in the New Testament. i2mo ^1.25
" The style is absolutely perfect. A broad, deep stream of fresh
thought, in language as clear as crystal, flows through the whole de-
vout, instructive, quickening, and inspiring work. Simply as a model
of style, every preacher might profitably study it. . . . This volume
makes the New Testament a new book to me." — Rtv, T. L. City
ler, D.D.

BICKERSTETH, Rev. E. H.

Yesterday, To-day, and Forever. A Poem. Pocket edi-
tion, jk). 50; i6mo, {S^i.oo; i2mo 1.50

"If any poem is destined to endure in the companionship of
Milton's hitherto matchless epic, we believe it will be * Yesterday,
To-day, and Forever.*" — London Globe.

BLUNT'S Coincidences and Paley's Horae Pau-

linae. i2mo 1.50

BONAR, Horatius, D.D.

Hymns of Faith and Hope. 3 vols. i6mo 2.25

Bible Thoughts and Themes. 6 vols. i2mo «... 12.00

Way of Peace 0.50

Way of Holiness 0.60

Night of Weeping 0.50

Morning of Joy 0.60

Follow the Lamb 0.40

How shall I go to God ? 0^0

BOWES, Rev. G. S.

Scripture its own Illustrator. i2mo 1.50

Information and Illustration. i2mo • 1.50

BRODIE, Emily.

Jean Lindsay, The Vicar's Daughter ...•••• 1.25

Dora Hamilton's Choice. i2mo 1.25

Elsie Gordon. i2mo 1.25

Uncle Fred's Shilling. i2mo 1.25

Lonely Jack. i2mo 1.25

Ruth's Rescue. i6mo 0.50

Nora Clinton. i2mo 1.25

The Sea Gull's Nest. i6mo 0.60

Norman and Elsie. i2mo 1.25

Five Minutes too Late 1.25

East and West 0.60

His Guardian Angel 1.25

CHARLESWORTH, Miss M. L.

Ministering Children. lamo 1.50

" ** i6mo i.oo

Sequel to Ministering Children. i2mo 1.50

« " " i6mo I.oo

(2)

CHARLES WORTH, Mist M. "L., continuid.

Oliver of the Mill. i2mo ^i.oo

Dorothy Cope, containing " The Old Looldng-Glass " and

<' Broken Looking-Glass." i2mo 1.50

CUYLER, Rev. T. L.

Pointed Papers. i2mo 1.50

Thought Hives. i2mo 1.50

From Nile to Norway 1.50

Empty Crib. 24mo i.oo

Cedar Christian. iSmo 0.75

Stray Arrows. i8mo 0.60

God's Light on Dark Clouds. Flexible, red edges . . . 0.75

'* In this beautiful little volume the author presents a grateful
offering to the * desponding and bereaved.' . . . He offers to others
what he has tested for himself. The book is written out of a full heart
and a vivid experience." — Presbyterian Review.

«D'AUBIGNE, Dr. Merle.

*History of the Reformation in the Sixteenth Century.

5 vols., i2mo, cloth, in a box 4.50

*History of the Reformation in the Time of Calvin. 8 vols.,

X2mo, cloth, in a box 8.00

" The work is now complete ; and these later volumes, together
with the original five, form a library relating to the Reformation of
incalculable value and of intense interest. The pen of this master
of history gave a charm to everything that he touched." — New York
Observer.

*A very cheap edition of Reformation in the Sixteenth
Century. 5 vols, in one, 890 pages, cloth i.oo

DICKSON, Rev. Alexander, D.D.

All about Jesus. i2mo 2.00

Beauty for Ashes. i2mo 2.00

*' His book is a 'bundle of myrrh,' and will be specially enjoyed

by those who are in trouble." — Rev. Dr. W. M. Taylor.

" Luscious as a honeycomb, with sweetness drawn firom God's

Word." — i?w. Dr. Cuyler.

DRINKWATER, Jennie M.

Only Ned. i2mo 1.25

Not Bread Alone. i2mo 1.25

Fred and Jeanie. i2mo 1.25

Tessa Wadsworth's Discipline. i2mo 1.50

Rue's Helps. i2mo 1.50

Electa ; A Story. i2mo 1.50

Fifteen. i2mo 1.50

Bek's First Comer. i2mo 1.50

Miss Prudence. i2mo Z.50

The Story of Hannah. i2mo 1.50

That Quisset House 1.50

Isobel's Between-Times • • . . z.50

(3)

EDWARDS, Jonathan.

♦Works. In 4 vols. 8vo |6.oo

" I consider Jonathan Edwards the greatest of the sons of men.*'

— Robert HaU.

FRASER, Dr. D.

Synoptical Lectures on the Books of Holy Scripture. New
and revised edition. 2 vols. z2mo 4.50

" The plan is to give a general view of the scope and contents of
each book in the Bible. It is designed not for professional students
alone, but for all educated Christians. The careful reader will gain
from its pages clear ideas of the arrangement, subject-matter, and
salient features of the Sacred Scriptures." — New York Oburver.

GIBERNE, Agnes.

Aimee. A Tale of James II. i2mo 1.50

The Curate's Home. i6mo 1.25

Floss Silverthom. i6mo 1.25

Coulyng Castle. i6mo 1.50

Muriel Bertram. i2mo 1.50

The Sun, Moon, and Stars. i2mo 1.50

The World's Foundations ; or, Geology for B^inners.

i2mo 1.50

Through the Linn. i6mo 1.25

Sweetbriar. i2mo 1.50

Duties and Duties. i6mo 1.25

Jacob Witherby. i6mo 0.60

Dedma's Promise. i2mo 1.25

Twilight Talks. i6mo 0.75

Kathleen. i2mo 1.50

Daily Evening Rest i8mo x.oo

Beryl and Pearl. i2mo 1.50

Old Umbrellas. i2mo 0.90

Among the Stars ; or, Wonders in the Sky. i2mo . . . 1.50

Madge Hardwicke i.oo

Father Aldur : a Water Story 1.50

GREEN, Prof. Wm. Henry, D.D.

The Argument of the Book of Job Unfolded. i2mo . . 1.75
" That ancient composition, so marvellous in beauty and so rich
in philosophy, is here treated in a thoroughly analytical manner, and
new depths and grander proportions of the divine original portrayed.
It is a book to stimulate research." — Methodist Recorder,

Moses and the Prophets. i2mo, cloth i.oo

" It has impressed me as one of the most thorough and condusive
pieces of apologetics that has been composed for a long time. The
critic confines himself to the positions laid down by Smith, and, with-
out being diverted by any side issues or bringing in any other views
of other theorists, replies to those positions in a style that carries
convicviovi" — Professor W, G. T. Shedd^ D.D,

The Hebrew Feasts. i2mo 1.50

(4)

QUTHRIB, Thomas, D.D.

Life and Works of Thomas Gutbrie, D.D. New, neat,
and cheap edition in ix vols. i2mo Jdo.oo

Life, a vols. ; Gospel in Ezekiel ; Inheritance of the Saints ;
Parables ; Speaking to the Heart ; Man and the Gospel ; Way to Life ;
Studies of Character ; The City and Ragged Schools ; Out of Har-
ness. (The volumes sold separately at $i.oo each.)

" His style is a model of Anglo-Saxon, strong, plain, rbythmi-
cad, and earnest. It is music to read his rich and ringing sentences,
all on fire of the Gospel* His sermons are more terse and educating
than Spurgeon's, broader and deeper than Beecher's, and vivid, keen,
convincing, and uplifting as only Guthrie's own can be." — Methodic
ProUstatU*

HAMILTON, Edward J., D.D.

The Human Mind. 8vo 3.00

Mental Science. i2mo 2.00

HAMLIN, Cyrus, D.D.

Among the Turks. lamo 1.50

HANNA, Wmiam, D.D.

Life of Christ. 3 vols. i2mo 3.00

HAUSSER, Ludwig.

Period of the Reformation. New edition 2.50

This admirable r^sum6 of the History of the Reformation in
Germany, Switzerland, France, Denmark, Sweden, and England, by
the late eminent German historian. Professor Hausser, offers in com-
pact form information which has otherwise to be sought for over a wide
field of literature.

*HENRY'S Commentaiy on the Bible.

3 vols. 4to, doth 10.00

* Another edition, in large type, 5 vols., 4to, doth . . . 15.00

*Still another edition, 9 vols., 8vo, doth 20.00

Persons desiring to purchase this Commentary can have a drcu-
lar sent them without charge giving a specimen page from each of
these editions^ by sending us their address.

** King of Bible explorers yet." — Cuyler.

*' First among the mighty, for general usefulness, we are bound
to mention Matthew Henry." — Spurgeon,

" Sparkles with jewels of wisdom and incisive humor.'* — Rev,
Dr. W. M. Taylor.

" Taking it as a whole, and as adapted to every dass of readers,
this Commentary may be said to combine more excellence than any
work of the kind that was ever written in any language.'* — Dr.
Archibald Alexander.

" There is nothing to be compared with old Matthew Henry's
Commentary for pungent and practical applications of the teachings
of the text.'* — Sunday^School Times.

(s)

HODGE, A. A., D.D.

Outlines of Theology. Revised and enlarged edition. 8vo ^3.00

** At its first publication in z86oi this work attracted much atten-
tion, and ever since it has had a large sale, and been carefully studied
both in this country and in Great Britain. It has been translated into
Welsh and modem Greek, and has been used as a text-book in several
theological schools." — PrgsfyUrian Bantur.

HODGE, Charles, D.D.

On Romans. 8vo 3.00

On Romans. Abridged. i2mo 1.75

On Ephesians. i2mo 1.75

On Corinthians. 2 vols. i2mo 3.50

** Most valuable. With no writer do we more fully agree. The

more we use Hodge, the more we value him. This applies to all his

Commentaries." — Xtv. C. H* Sfurgton,

HOLT, Emily Sarah.

Historical Tales.

Isoult Barry. i2mo 1.5a

Robin Tremayne. i2mo x.50

The Well m the Desert 1.25

Ashdiffe Hall. x2mo 1.50

Verena. A Tale. z2mo 1.50

The White Rose of Langley. i2mo 1.50

Imogen. i2mo 1.50

Clare Avery. i2mo 1.50

Lettice Eden. i2mo 1.50

For the Master's Sake i.oo

Margery's Son. i2mo x.50

Lady Sybil's Choice. i2mo 1.50

The Maiden's Lodge. i2mo 1.25

Earl Hubert's Daughter 1.50

Joyce Morrell's Harvest. i2mo 1.50

At ye Grene GriflSn. i2mo i.oo

Red and White. i2mo 1.50

Not for Him. i2mo 1.25

Wearyholme. Z2mo 1.50

John De Widifife. i2mo x.25

The Lord Mayor of London 1.50

The Lord of the Marches 1.25

A Tangled Web x.50

In All Time of our Tribulation x.50

JACOBUS, Melaxicthon W., D.D.

Notes, Critical and Explanatory.

Genesis. i2mo 1.50

Matthew and Mark x.50

Luke and John. x2mo ....«.• x.50

Acts. x2mo 1.50

(6)

KITTO, John.

Bible Illustrations. 8 vols. i2mo ^7-oo

" They are not exactly commentaries, but what marvellous expo-
ntions yon have there 1 You have reading more interesting than any
novel that was ever written, and as instructive as the heaviest theol-
ogy. The matter is quite attractive and fascinating, and yet so weighty
that the man who shall study those volumes thoroughly will not fail to
read his Bible intelligently and with growing interest" — Sfurgeon,

LEE, Wmiam.

The Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures: Its Nature and
Proof. 8vo 2.50

'* We consider ' Lee on Inspiration ' as beyond all comparison
superior to any work on the subject yet issued in our language." —
Church Journal,

LEIGHTON, Bishop.

Complete Works. 8vo 3.00

LEWIS, Prof. Tayler.

The Six Days of Creation. i2mo 1.50

LORD, Willis, DD.

Christian Theology for the People. 8vo 2.50

*' I do not hesitate in expressing the opinion that this work is, so
far as I know, the best book in existence for the purpose of popular
instruction in theology." — Dr, E. P» Humphrey.

LOWRIE, Samuel T., D.D.

The Epistles to the Hebrews Explained. 8vo .... 3.00

*' It gives evidence not only of diligent and thorough study, but
of a high degree of scholarship and acquaintance with the Scriptures.
. . . We think we hazard nothing in saying that this exposition of this
important portion of Scripture is at least equal to any that has been
produced in this country." — Herald and Presbyter,

MATHEWS, Joanna H.

Bessie Books. 6 vols., in a box 7.50

Flowerets. 6 vols., iSmo, in a box 3.60

Little Sunbeams. 6 vols., in a box 6.00

Kitty and Lulu Books. 6 vols., i8mo, in a box .... 3.60

Miss Ashton*s Girls. 6 vols 7.50

Haps and Mishaps. 6 vols., i6mo 7.50

MATHEWS, Julia A.

Dare to Do Right. 5 vols. i6mo 5.50

Drayton Hall Series. 6 vols. • , 4.50

Golden Ladder Series. 3 vols. . 3.00

(7)

McCOSH, Dr.

*Works. New and neat edition. 5 vols., Svo, uniform . |Sio.oo
Comprising: —

I. Divine Government. 4. Defence of Fundamental

a. Typical Forms. Truth.

3. The Intuitions of the Mind. 5. The Scottish Philosophy.

Any volume sold separately at 2.00

** Thousands of earnest, thoughtful men have found treasures of
argument, illustration, and learning in these pages, with which their
minds and hearts have been enriched and fortified for better work and
wider influences.'* — A^<w York Observer.

Dr. McCosh's Logic. i2mo 1.50

Christianity and Positivism. i2mo 1.75

MACDUFF, J. R., D.D.

Morning and Night Watches. 32roo 0.50

Mind and Words of Jesus, and Faithful Promiser . . . 0.50

Footsteps of St. Paul 1.50

Family Prayers. i6mo i.oo

Morning Prayers for a Year 2.00

The Bow in the Cloud 0.50

Wells of Baca 0.50

Gates of Prayer 0.75

MILLER, Hugh.

Life and Works. 12 vols. i2mo 9.00

Comprising "Life and Letters,** "Testimony of the Rocks,"
"Old Red Sandstone," "Footprints of the Creator," "First Im-
pressions of England,'* "Schools and Schoolmasters,** "Tales and
Sketches," " Popular Geology,*' " Cruise of the Betsey,** " Essays,**
and '< Headship of Christ'*

These are sold only in sets ; but the separate works can be still
got at the former prices, as follows : —

Footprints of the Creator 1.50

Old Red Sandstone T.50

Schools and Schoolmasters 1.50

Testimony of the Rocks 1.50

Cruise of the Betsey 1.50

Popular Geology 1.50

First Impressions of England 1.50

Tales and Sketches x.50

Essays 1.50

Headship of Christ 1.50

Life of Miller. By Bayne. 2 vols 3.00

" Was there ever a more delightful style than that in which his
works ve written ? Smooth and easy in its flow, yet sparkling ever
more, like the river as it reflects the sunbeam, and now and then rag-
ing with torrent-like impetuosity, as it bears all opposition before it."
^Rev. Dr, W, M. Taylor,

(8)

NEWTON, Richard, D.D.

Thb Jewel Case. 6 vols. i6mo ........ ^7.50

The Best Things 1.25

The King's Highway . 1.25

The Safe Compass 1.25

Bible Blessings 1.25

The Great Pilot 1.25

Bible Jewels i.?5

The Wonder Case. 6 vols. i6mo 7.50

Bible Wonders 1.25

Nature's Wonders 1.25

Leaves from the Tree i 25

Rills from the Fountain 1.25

The Jewish Tabernacle 1.25

Giants, and Wonderful Things «... 1.25

Rays from iht Sun of Righteousness 1.25

The King in His Beauty. i2mo 1.25

Pebbles from the Brook 1.25

Bible Promises. i6mo 1.25

Bible Warnings. i2mo 1.25

Covenant Names. i2mo 1.50

" His books for children have never been excelled in their apti-
tude to the young, and the pleasing form in which they convey religious
truth. While they are called sermons, and each passage is expository
of some passage of Scripture, they are so simple, so full of striking
and apposite illustrations, that a child will read them with as much
curiosity as he would a narrative of travel or adventure, and certainly
with fiu- more profit. '* — Episcopal Methodist.

NEWTON, Rev. W. W.

Little and Wise. i6mo 1.25

The Wicket Gate. x6mo 1.25

The Interpreter's House. i6mo 1.25

The Palace Beautiful. i6mo 1.25

Great Heart i6mo 1.25

The Pilgrim Series, comprising the above five volumes

in a box 6.00

•OLIVE LIBRARY.

40 large i6mo volumes, containing 15,340 pages, in a neat
wooden case, net 25.00

PA LEY, Wm.

Evidences of Christianity. Edited by Professor Naurae.
i2mo 1.50

PEEP OF DAY LIBRARY.

8 vols., i8mo . 4.50

Line upon Line. i8mo 0.50

Precept upon Precept. i8nio 0.50

(9)

PEEP OF DAY LIBRARY, conHnued,

The Kings of Israel. xSino ^.60

The Kings of Judah. i8mo 0.60

Captivity of Judah. i8mo 0.60

Peep of Day. i8mo 0.50

Sequel to Peep of Day. i8mo 0.60

Story of the Apostles. i8mo 0.60

♦POOL'S ANNOTATIONS.

3 vols. Royal 8vo. 3,077 pages. In cloth. (Half the
former price) 7.50

" Pool's Annotations are soandf clear, and sensible; and, taking
for all in all, I place him at the head of English commentators on the
whole Bible."— -ffw. J. C. RyU,

PRIME, E. D. G., D.D.

Forty Years in the Turkish Empire. A Memoir of Rev.
W. Goodell, D.D. i2mo 1.50

" The genial spirit, the humor and wit, the shrewd sense, the sin-
cere and cheerful piety of Dr. Goodell made him one of the most in-
teresting companions, and now make his Memoir one of the most
agreeable books." — Bibliotheca Sacra.

" We know not what to say of * Forty Years in the Turkish Em-
pire,* except to advise our readers to get the book at once and devote
their first spare time to its perusal." — Presbyterian,

RYLE, J. C.

Notes on the Gospels. 7 vols. i2mo 10.50

Matthew 1.50

Mark 1.50

Luke. 2 vols 3.00

John. 3 vols. 4.50

"It is the kernels without the shells, expressed in language
adapted to the quick comprehension of all readers." — Christian
Union.

"The 'Expository Thoughts* are excellent and useful aids to
Bible study and devotion, and many souls will be comforted, blessed,
and instructed by so clear, practical, and evangelical a work." — New
York Observer.

SHAW, Catharine.

The Gabled Farm. lamo 1.25

Nellie Arundel. i2mo 1.25

In the Sunlight. i2mo 1.25

Hilda. i2rao 1,25

Only a Cousin. i2mo 1.25

Out in the Storm. i8mo 0.50

Alick's Hero. i2mo 1,25

Left to Ourselves. i2mo i.oo

Fathoms Deep. i2mo 1.25

OntheCUffs ,.25

Dickie's Attic 1,25

(10)

SPURGBON'S WORKa

New Sermons.

1. Stoim Signals. lamo ^i.oo

2. Hands full of Honey. 1883 i.oo

3. Return, O Shulamite I 1884 i.oo

4. Healing and Service. 1885 x.oo

5. Pleading for Prayer. 1886 i.oo

6. Present Truth. X2mo i.oo

7. Types and Emblems. lamo 1.00

SPURGEON'S SERMONS.

Comprising nearly Two Hundred and Fifty Discourses,
with complete Indexes of both Texts and Subjects. 10

vols. lamo 10.00

None of the previous named volumes b in this set

SPURGEON'S SERMON NOTES.

I. From Genesis to Proverbs 1.00

II. From Ecclesiastes to Malachi i.oo

III. From Matthew to Acts. Just ready i.oo

IV. From Romans to Revelation. (Shortly) .... 1.00

All of Grace. An Earnest Word with those who are
seeking Salvation by the Lord Jesus Christ. (New.)

i6mo 0.50

Feathers for Arrows i.oo

Morning by Morning ; or, Daily Readings i.oo

Evening by Evening i.oo

Lectures to my Students. i2mo i.oo

John PIoughman*s Talk. i6mo 0.75

John Ploughman's Pictures. i6mo 0.75

John Ploughman's Talk and Pictures. In 1 vol. lamo . i.oo

WALTON, Mrs. O. F.

Christie's Old Organ. i8mo 0.40

Saved at Sea. i8mo 0.40

Little Faith. i8mo 0.40

Christie's Organ, Saved at Sea, and Little Faith. In one

vol. i6mo I.oo

A Peep behind the Scenes. i6mo i.oo

Was I Riglit? i6mo i.oo

Olive's Story. i6mo 0.75

Nobody Loves Me. i8mo 0.50

Nobody Loves Me, and Olive's Story. In one vol. i6mo i.oo
Shadows : Scenes and Incidents in the Life of an Old Arm-
chair. i6mo I.oo

Taken or Left. i8mo 0.40

Poppy's Presents 0.40

(II)

WARNER, Anna B.

Blue Flag and Cloth of Gold. i2mo {^1*25

Stories of Vinegar Hill. 3 vols. i6mo 3.00

Ellen Montgomery's Bookshelf. 5 vols 5.00

1^ Little Jack's Four Lessons. i8mo 0.50

A Bag of Stories. i6n)o 0.75

The Shoes of Peace 0.75

Tired Church-Members 0.50

WARNER, Susan.

' The Old Helmet. i2mo 2.25

Melbourne House. i2mo 2.00

Fine Needles. A Tale 1.25

My Desire. i2mo 1.75

The End of a Coil 1.75

The Letter of Credit 1.75

Nobody. i2mo 1.75

Stephen, M.D. i2mo 1.75

The Red Wallflower. i2mo 1.75

Daisy Plains 1.75

Small Beginnings. 4 vols 5.00

Say and Do Series. 6 vols 7.50

The King's People. 5 vols 7*00

'* There is a charm about Miss Warner's books that insures each

new volume of a welcome from a wide circle of readers." — Herald

and Presbyter.

WIN AND WEAR SERIES.

6 vols. 7.50

By the Same AtUhor.

Green Mountain Series. 5 vols., in a box ....•• 6.00

Ledgeside Series. 6 vols., in a box 7.50

Butterfly's Flights. 3 vols., in a box 2.25

The Highland Series. 6 vols., in a box 7.50

Hester Trueworthy's Royalty 1.25

Mabel's Step-mother 1.25

Faith Thurston's Work 1.25

Robert Graham's Promise 1.25

The Gillettes. 6 vols. 4.50

YOUNG, John.

The Christ of History. i2mo . 1.25

*' The work belongs to the highest class of the productions of
modem disciplined genius. . . . We commend it heartily to all earnest
thinkers, for such alone know the worth of a helpful book."— ^^m^
Mifming A dvertiser.

(«)

Internet Archive Audio

Featured

Top

Images

Featured

Top

Software

Featured

Top

Books

Featured

Top

Video

Featured

Top

Mobile Apps

Browser Extensions

Archive-It Subscription

Save Page Now

Full text of "The Crisis of Missions: Or, The Voice Out of the Cloud"

See other formats